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1.13 Corbis

1.14 Library of Congress

1.15 Library of Congress

1.16 Library of Congress

1.17 Corbis

1.18 Corbis

Insert Two

2.1 National Museum of Health and Medicine (NCP 1858)

2.2 Library of Congress

2.3 The Historical Society of Washington, D.C.

2.4 National Museum of Health and Medicine (NCP 1860)

2.5 Library of Congress

2.6 Special Collections, University of Virginia Library

2.7 Library of Congress

2.8 Division of Political History, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution

2.9 Library of Congress

2.10 Library of Congress

2.11 Hiram College Archives

2.12 National Museum of Health and Medicine (NCP 1861)

2.13 Hiram College Archives

2.14 The White House Historical Association

2.15 Library of Congress

2.16 Hiram College Archives

2.17 Library of Congress

2.18 Library of Congress

Born into abject poverty, James Garfield paid for his first year of college by working as the school’s carpenter and janitor, but so extraordinary was his academic achievement that by his second year he was promoted to assistant professor of literature and ancient languages. Just before his wedding to Lucretia Rudolph he was made the school’s president, at twenty-six years of age. (Illustration credit 1.1)

Little more than a year after he accepted a seat in the Ohio state senate, Garfield joined the Union Army to fight in the Civil War. Although his service was hailed as heroic and he was quickly promoted to brigadier general, Garfield was haunted by the memory of the young soldiers he had seen killed in battle. “Something went out of him,” he told a friend, “that never came back; the sense of the sacredness of life and the impossibility of destroying it.” (Illustration credit 1.2)

In 1876, Garfield attended the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia to see some of the world’s most ambitious scientific and artistic inventions, including the towering hand and torch that were then all that had been completed of the Statue of Liberty. Also at the exhibition were twenty-nine-year-old Alexander Graham Bell and the renowned British surgeon Dr. Joseph Lister. (Illustration credit 1.3)

At the 1880 Republican Convention, Garfield (standing center stage, right side of the photograph) gave the nominating address for John Sherman, then secretary of the treasury. Speaking to a rapt audience, Garfield, who was not a candidate himself, asked a simple question: “And now, gentlemen of the Convention, what do we want?” To his dismay and the crowd’s delight, one man shouted, “We want Garfield!”—starting a cascade of support that ended in his nomination. (Illustration credit 1.4)

Three days after Garfield’s surprise nomination, a dangerously delusional young man named Charles Guiteau boarded the steamship Stonington for an overnight crossing from Connecticut to New York that ended tragically in a fiery maritime disaster. To Guiteau, his survival meant that he had been chosen by God for a task of great importance. (Illustration credit 1.5)

On November 2, 1880, Garfield was elected the twentieth president of the United States. Although he approached his presidency with a characteristic sense of purpose, he mourned the quiet, contemplative life he was about to lose. “There is a tone of sadness running through this triumph,” he wrote, “which I can hardly explain.” (Illustration credit 1.6)

The greatest threat to Garfield’s presidency came from within his own party, in the person of Roscoe Conkling, a preening senior Republican senator from New York and arguably the most powerful man in the country. Although he expected the new president to bend to his will, Conkling found in Garfield a surprisingly unyielding opponent. “Of course I deprecate war,” Garfield wrote, “but if it is brought to my door the bringer will find me at home.” (Illustration credit 1.7)

Never comfortable in her role as first lady, Lucretia Garfield was as quiet and reserved as her husband was warm and expansive. The early years of their marriage had been difficult, but over time Garfield had fallen deeply