On September 25, 1881, in Cleveland, more than 150,000-a number equal to the entire population of that city- paid their respects. His body was transported to the Capitol and then continued on to Cleveland for burial. Garfield’s funeral train left Long Branch on the same special track that brought him there, traveling over tracks blanketed with flowers and past houses adorned with flags. After eleven weeks of intensive and other care Garfield died in Elberon, New Jersey, the second of four Presidents to be assassinated, following Abraham Lincoln. Guiteau, a disgruntled office seeker, at the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station in Washington, D.C. President James Garfield was shot by Charles J. In the 1880 presidential election, Garfield conducted a low-key front porch campaign, and narrowly defeated Democrat Winfield Scott Hancock. Blaine – could get enough votes to secure the nomination, delegates chose Garfield as a compromise on the 36th ballot. When neither Sherman nor his rivals – Ulysses S. President James Garfield statue in his Cleveland Memorial at Lake View CemeteryĪt the 1880 Republican National Convention, Senator-elect Garfield attended as campaign manager for Secretary of the Treasury John Sherman, and gave the presidential nomination speech for him.

He is the only sitting House member to be elected president. Garfield had served nine terms in the House of Representatives, and had been elected to the Senate before his candidacy for the White House, though he declined the senatorship once he was president-elect. He was first elected to Congress in 1862 to represent Ohio’s 19th District. Garfield opposed Confederate secession, served as a major general in the Union Army during the American Civil War, and fought in the battles of Middle Creek, Shiloh, and Chickamauga. President James Garfield was raised in humble circumstances on an Ohio farm by his widowed mother.He was born the youngest of five children in a log cabin in Orange Township, now Moreland Hills, a suburb of Cleveland. He was an exemplar of the American success story: that even the poorest boy might someday become President of the United States. President James Garfield was the 20th President of the United States, serving from March 4, 1881, until his assassination later that year.

James garfield casket