(1831-81), twentieth president of the United States (1881). Born in Orange, Ohio, Garfield graduated from Williams College in Massachusetts and returned to Ohio to teach at Hiram College. He served as a general during the Civil War and as a member of the House of Representatives for seventeen years (1863-81) and the Senate for one year (1859). He won the Republican nomination for the
election of 1880 as a dark horse candidate because of a deadlock between supporters of Ulysses S. Grant and James G. Blaine. Garfield defeated the Democratic nominee, Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock, becoming the last president to be born in a log cabin. During his term of office he tried to reunite the
Stalwart and
Half-Breed factions of the Republican party. After serving only four months, Garfield, on July 2, 1881, was shot by
Charles Guiteau, a deranged political office seeker, and died eighty days later.
