The inside of the Garfield Memorial at Lake View Cemetery outside of Cleveland.

I’ll let James Garfield’s biography on whitehouse.gov provide some of the basic details about his life.

Garfield was the last U.S. president to be born in a log cabin.

“He was born in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, in 1831,” that biography explains. “Fatherless at two, he later drove canal boat teams, somehow earning enough money for an education. He was graduated from Williams College in Massachusetts in 1856, and he returned to the Western Reserve Eclectic Institute (later Hiram College) in Ohio as a classics professor. Within a year he was made its president.”

He was elected to the state Senate in Ohio in 1859 before entering military service during the Civil War.

Times Observer photos by Josh Cotton James Garfield and his wife, Lucretia, were laid to rest in the crypt of the Garfield Memorial outside Cleveland when it was finished in 1890.

“In 1862, when Union military victories had been few, he successfully led a brigade at Middle Creek, Kentucky, against Confederate troops,” the biography states. “At 31, Garfield became a brigadier general, two years later a major general of volunteers.”

He was elected to Congress in 1862 and Lincoln convinced him to resign his commission for service in Congress. He would serve in the House for the next 18 years.

He was selected as the Republican nomination in 1880 on the 36th ballot at the convention, defeating the Democratic nominee, Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock (best known for his generalship during the Civil War) by only 10,000 popular votes.

As President, Garfield strengthened Federal authority over the New York Customs House, stronghold of Senator Roscoe Conkling, who was leader of the Stalwart Republicans and dispenser of patronage in New York. When Garfield submitted to the Senate a list of appointments including many of Conkling’s friends, he named Conkling’s arch-rival William H. Robertson to run the Customs House. Conkling contested the nomination, tried to persuade the Senate to block it, and appealed to the Republican caucus to compel its withdrawal.

But Garfield would not submit: “This…will settle the question whether the President is registering clerk of the Senate or the Executive of the United States…. shall the principal port of entry … be under the control of the administration or under the local control of a factional senator.”

The exterior of the Garfield Memorial.

Given that this was an era known for political corruption (it was the Gilded Age after all), Garfield’s conduct is particularly noteworthy here.

In foreign affairs, Garfield’s Secretary of State invited all American republics to a conference to meet in Washington in 1882. But the conference never took place.

It didn’t take place because Garfield was shot on July 2, 1881.

He lingered until September 19.

The Warren Mail included a report in the Sept. 20 edition under the headline: “DEAD! The End of the Struggle! The Nation in Tears over its Terrible Bereavement.”

“The painful intelligence comes this (Tuesday) morning as we go to press that President Garfield died Monday night, Sept. 19, 1881, at 10:35,” the report started. “This sad ending of the terrible struggle was not unexpected. Saturday and Sunday he had another relapse. Chills and fever were followed by great exhaustion from which he never rallied.

“About 30 minutes before death and while asleep his pulse rose to 1:20 and was somewhat feeble. At 10 minutes after 10 o’clock he awoke complaining of severe pain over the region of his heart and almost immediately became unconscious and ceased to breathe at 10:35 p.m.”

The initial article included some detail of the local response.

“Immediately many business places were draped in black and signs of the universal sorrow were visible in nearly every face,” the report said. “All seemed to feel the sorrow of a personal bereavement.

“The President – our president – after a heroic struggle is dead at last. A noble life goes out. A great and good man and the Chief Magistrate of a great nation respected by all men and all nations lies cold and silent in death…. Like the beloved Lincoln, he was stricken down by a miserable wretch at the post of duty. Though he held the helm of State only six months, he had done much, very much, to help the country and place the name of James A. Garfield high among the greatest and noblest rulers of the earth.”

The majority of the following edition – Sept. 27 – was dedicated to Garfield coverage as well as some of his successor, Chester Arthur. The Mail made the following claim: “Altogether, this issue of the Mail is a good one to preserve.”

What looks like an editorial was critical of the president’s medical care.

“Viewed through the lens of modern trauma care, President Garfield’s wounds would be regarded as distinctly survivable,” according to a 2018 article from the American College of Surgeons. “From the day of the shooting, and over the next nine weeks, (physicians) probed the president’s wound with their unwashed fingers or metal probes with little regard for sterility.”

“We have no disposition to find fault with the President’s doctors,” the Mail’s editors said. “They are no doubt among the most skillful and learned in their profession, and they, of course, did all they could for the patient.

“But don’t it make a man shake a little to see how badly he may be handled by the best of doctors? The autopsy, elsewhere published, shows that the diagnosis of the doctors was wide of the mark.”

They included a Garfield quote that seems prescient: “Individuals may wear for a time the glory of our institutions, but they carry it not to the grave with them. Like raindrops from heaven, they may pass through the circle of the shining bow and add to its lustre, but when they have sunk in the earth again the proud arch still spans the sky and shines gloriously on.”

“The fund for Mrs. (Lucretia) Garfield Friday reached the handsome total of $287,000 and will hardly stop short of $300,000,” another tidbit siad. “The generosity as well as the sympathy of the people is aroused in this matter and refuses to recognize any narrow limits to its expression.

According to the National Park Service, the fund totaled $360,000 and is equivalent to $9 million today.

“This allowed her to educate her children and continue living” on the farm in Mentor. “It also gave her the income to build an addition onto the back of the farmhouse that her husband knew and loved.”

That addition is by far the grandest room in the home and has the feel of a shrine or memorial that she had built in memory of her husband.

Garfield is buried at the Lake View Cemetery on a hill outside of Cleveland. His grave is open to the public for tours.

According to the Cemetery, Garfield was initially sealed in a temporary crypt while the monument was under construction, completed in 1890.

He and his wife were laid to rest in the basement of the structure.

The dedication ceremony in late May was attended by President Harrison, among other national dignitaries.

The Warren Mail picked up a wire item on the dedication: “The monument to the memory of James Abram Garfield was dedicated with fitting pomp and circumstance. Citizens and veterans from every part of the land thronged the streets. The city was bright with decorations. Eloquent orators paid tribute to the memory of the martyred President.

Garfield holds a warm place in the hearts of his countrymen. This is not due alone to the high position he filled nor to the services he rendered his country on the field of battle, in Congress, and the President’s chair.

Garfield’s death was fortunate for his fame. His lingering illness drew the sympathy and affection of the American people to him in a way which his own great deeds never could have done.

The coincidence of his taking-off served to link his name with that of Lincoln in the popular mind, and the affections of a united people will ever be displayed toward the two martyred Presidents of the Republic.