James A. Garfield

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
James A. Garfield
Signature of James Garfield
Portrait of James A. Garfield (In: De Huisvriend. Geillustreerd Magazijn. 1881, p. 141. Wood engraving (1881))

James Abram Garfield (born November 19, 1831 in Orange , Cuyahoga County , Ohio , †  September 19, 1881 in Elberon , Monmouth County , New Jersey ) was an American politician ( Republican Party ) and from March 4, 1881 to his The 20th  President of the United States died as a result of an assassination attempt .

Life to the presidency

James A. Garfield is named after his older brother James Ballou Garfield, who died as a child, and his father, Abram Garfield, who died when his son was 18 months old. After his father's death, he was raised by his mother and uncle. He worked his way up from a poor background and is considered the last president to be born in a log cabin. Garfield married Lucretia Rudolph and had seven children with her. Their son James , born in 1865, was US Secretary of the Interior from 1907 to 1909 .

From 1851 to 1854 Garfield attended the Western Reserve Eclectic Institute in Hiram , Ohio. He graduated from Williams College in Williamstown , Massachusetts in 1856 . Before his political career he was a math teacher and preacher; in these professions he was able to develop his speaker talent, which was much respected at the time. He also delivered in 1876 one of several proofs of the Pythagorean theorem . However, his academic career did not satisfy him, which is why he still studied law. At the same time he went into politics: in 1859 he was elected to the Ohio Senate. He served on the Northern side in the Civil War and ended the war as Major General . He took u. a. In 1862 he took part in the Battle of Shiloh and the First Battle of Corinth . In September 1863 he fought in the losing battle of Chickamauga .

Garfield returned to politics in late 1863 and was elected to the United States House of Representatives ; until 1878 he was regularly re-elected. In 1876 he became the Republican faction leader in Washington, DC He was a finance expert and advocated high protective tariffs and the "Radical Reconstruction " in the southern states . In 1880 the Ohio Parliament elected him to succeed the outgoing Allen G. Thurman in the US Senate , in which his term of office would have started on March 4, 1881. However, due to his election as president, he never took this office.

Presidency

Illustration of the celebrations for Garfield's inauguration in March 1881
The assassination attempt on President Garfield (center right); to his left, Secretary of State James G. Blaine
Laying out of Garfield's coffin

At the Republican National Convention in Chicago in June 1880 Garfield was nominated as a candidate for the upcoming presidential election, which he then won against the Democratic candidate Winfield Scott Hancock . John Sherman took his place in the US Senate . To date, Garfield is the only president who moved directly from the House of Representatives to the presidency.

As a member of the Half-Breeds , Garfield stood for a reform of the civil service and - now also - for moderate treatment of the inferior southern states. He also advocated a moral renewal of the now corrupt Republican Party, which on the one hand earned him great respect, but on the other also meant his undoing: Garfield was killed at the (later so-called) Pennsylvania Station in Washington, DC on July 2, 1881 Shot of a mental patient named Charles J. Guiteau . The assassin wanted to become a consul in Paris, but had been turned down because of mental disorders and demanded revenge.

One of the bullets in his back could not be found despite a metal detector developed by Alexander Graham Bell . Later investigations revealed that the President was lying on a bed with metal springs while searching for the projectile, which was not noticed. In addition, bare fingers and non-sterile instruments were often used in the numerous examinations, since knowledge about pathogenic germs and asepsis was hardly widespread at that time . The president died on September 19th as a result of an infection with this bullet. The defense attorneys of his murderer argued afterwards that it was not the bullet but the doctors (especially Dr. Willard Bliss ) that caused the president's death. Guiteau was declared insane by experts, but was found guilty under public pressure and hanged.

In the eleven weeks between the assassination attempt and Garfield's death, serious constitutional controversy arose over the position of the Vice President during the presidential de facto incapacity.

Monument in front of the Capitol

His murder was a shock - especially in the west of the country, some cities and counties ( Garfield County ) were named after him. His tenure was brought to an end by Vice President Chester A. Arthur . After Abraham Lincoln in 1865, Garfield was the second US president to die of an assassination attempt .

Garfield had managed to permanently strengthen the position of the president; but for the first time he was also concerned with a balance between the executive and legislative branches .

Garfield memorials

To commemorate his services, a circular building, the James A. Garfield Memorial , was erected in a cemetery in Cleveland in 1890 . The James A. Garfield Monument stands in the gardens outside the Capitol in Washington, DC It is a bronze statue of John Quincy Adams Ward on a granite plinth designed by Richard Morris Hunt . Lawnfield in Mentor , Ohio, the house in which Garfield lived from 1876 until his death, was family owned until 1936 and is now a National Historic Site . During the presidential election, he carried out the first Front Porch Campaign in American history; he campaigned from the front porch of his house without visiting the various states.

There are also six counties in the United States named after him.

See also

literature

  • Portrait of James A. Garfield, wood engraving. In: De Huisvriend. Geillustreerd Magazijn. 1881, p. 141.
  • Ulrike Skorsetz: James A. Garfield (1881): The Reformer prevented. In: Christof Mauch (ed.): The American Presidents: 44 historical portraits from George Washington to Barack Obama. 6th, continued and updated edition. Beck, Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3-406-58742-9 , pp. 219-221.
  • Candice Millard: Destiny of the Republic. A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President. Anchor Books, New York NY 2012, ISBN 978-0-7679-2971-4 .
  • Ira Rutkow: James A. Garfield (= The American Presidents Series . Ed. By Arthur M. Schlesinger , Sean Wilentz . The 20th President ). Times Books, New York 2006, ISBN 0-8050-6950-X .
  • Robert O. Rupp (Ed.): James A. Garfield. A Bibliography (= Bibliographies of the Presidents of the United States. Vol. 20). Greenwood Press, Westport CT et al. 1997, ISBN 0-313-28178-5 ( Compiling research literature up to 1998).
  • Allan Peskin: Garfield. A biography. Kent State University Press, Kent OH 1978, ISBN 0-87338-210-2 .

Web links

Commons : James A. Garfield  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files
Wikiquote: James A. Garfield  - Quotes
Wikisource: James A. Garfield  - Sources and full texts (English)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Allan Peskin: Garfield. A biography. 1978, p. 144.
  2. ↑ See Bill Bryson : Made in America. An Informal History of the English Language in the United States. New Edition. Black Swan, London 1998, ISBN 978-0-552-99805-5 , p. 102.
  3. ↑ James A. Garfield National Historic Site. In: American Presidents Travel Itenerary. National Park Service , accessed May 20, 2015 .
  4. ↑ Charles Curry Aiken, Joseph Nathan Kane: The American Counties: Origins of County Names, Dates of Creation, Area, and Population Data, 1950-2010 . 6th edition. Scarecrow Press, Lanham 2013, ISBN 978-0-8108-8762-6 , p. Xiv.
personal data
SURNAME Garfield, James A.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Garfield, James Abram (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American politician and 20th President of the United States
DATE OF BIRTH November 19, 1831
PLACE OF BIRTH Orange , Cuyahoga County , Ohio, United States
DATE OF DEATH September 19, 1881
Place of death Elberon , Monmouth County , New Jersey, United States