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JAMES A. GARFIELD.

JAMES ABRAHAM GARFIELD, twentieth president of the United States, was born in Orange, Cuyahoga County, Ohio, November 19, 1831; he graduated at Williams College, Massachusetts, in 1856; studied and practiced law; was a member of the Ohio Senate in 1859 -1860. In the civil war he entered the military service in 1861 as colonel of the Forty-second Ohio Volunteers, and served in southeastern Kentucky, where (January, 1862), in command of a brigade, he forced Humphrey Marshall and his command to evacuate Kentucky, and for this service was promoted to be brigadier-general of volunteers, January 11, 1862; also served at Shiloh, Corinth, etc. In 1863 he was appointed chief of staff by General Rosecrans, with whom he continued to serve until December 5, 1863, having in the meantime (September 19, 1863) been promoted to be major-general of volunteers for gallantry at the battle of Chickamauga, when he resigned to take his seat in the Thirty-eighth Congress, to which he had been elected, and was re-elected to each succeeding Congress, serving as chairman of the committees on military affairs, banking and appropriations; elected United States Senator from Ohio January 13, 1880; nominated for president by the Republicans at Chicago, Ill., with Chester A. Arthur for vice-president. June 8, 1880, and elected November 2, 1880; shot and mortally wounded July 2, 1881, by Charles J,. Guiteau, who was lying in wait for him in the Baltimore & Potomac Railroad Station in Washington, D. C., as the presidential party was about leaving for an extended pleasure-trip through New England. President Garfield was removed in a critical condition September 6, 1881, from the White House at Washington in a specially arranged car to Long Branch, N. J., where he died September 19, 1881. A bronze statue of him was unveiled at Washington, D. C., May 12, 1887. The city of Cleveland erected a beautiful monument to his memory in Lake View Park, where his remains are buried.





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The Ohio Hundred Year Book - Columbus, Fred J. Heer, State Printer, 1901

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