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Garfield was born on November 19, 1831, the youngest of five children born to Abram and Eliza Garfield. Abram died when James was 18 months old and the future president was raised on an Ohio farm by his widowed mother and elder brother. He was educated at Williams College, in Williamson, Massachusetts, graduating in 1856, where he was described as an outstanding student. During the 1850s he was a preacher and also taught school. He began to study law in 1859 and was admitted to the Ohio bar in 1861.
Garfield entered politics as a Republican, after campaigning for the party's antislavery platform in Ohio. He married his former pupil Lucretia Rudolph in 1858 and served as an Ohio State Senator from 1859 to 1861. Garfield opposed Confederate secession, and served in the Union Army during the Civil War, achieving the rank of Major General. He fought in the battles of Middle Creek, Shiloh and Chickamauga. Garfield was elected to Congress in 1862 as Representative of the 19th District of Ohio, while serving in the Army.
Garfield served nine consecutive terms in Congress where he gained a reputation as a skilled orator. He was Chairman of the Military Affairs Committee and the Appropriations Committee and a member of the Ways and Means Committee. Garfield initially agreed with Radical Republican views regarding Reconstruction, but later favored a moderate approach for civil rights enforcement for Freedmen. In 1880, the Ohio legislature elected him to the U.S. Senate. However in that same year, the leading Republican presidential contenders (Ulysses S. Grant, James G. Blaine and John Sherman) failed to get enough support at their convention to win their party's nomination for president and Garfield became the party's compromise nominee for the 1880 Presidential Election. He successfully campaigned to defeat Democrat Winfield Scott Hancock in the election. To date he is the only sitting Representative to have been elected President.
Garfield's presidency lasted just 200 days. During his brief time in office, he advocated a bi-metal monetary system, agricultural technology, an educated electorate, and civil rights for African-Americans, including government sponsored public education for African-American children. He proposed substantial civil service reform, and his reforms were eventually passed by Congress in 1883 and signed into law by his successor, Chester Alan Arthur.
On the morning of July 2, 1881, Garfield was on his way to speak at his alma mater, Williams College. He was accompanied by two of his cabinet members James G. Blaine and Robert Todd Lincoln, and his two sons James and Harry. As he was walking through the Sixth Street Station of the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad in Washington at 9:30 am, he was shot twice from behind, once across the arm and once in the back by assassin Charles J. Guiteau, a disgruntled office seeker. As Guiteau was being arrested after the shooting, he repeatedly said, "I am a Stalwart of the Stalwarts! I did it and I want to be arrested! Arthur is President now!" This very briefly led to unfounded suspicions that Arthur or his supporters had put Guiteau up to the crime.
Garfield remained bedridden in the White House with fever and extreme pain. On September 6, 1881 he was moved to the Jersey Shore in the hope that the fresh air and quiet might help in his recovery. On Monday, September 19, 1881, at 10:20 p.m. President Garfield suffered a massive heart attack and a ruptured splenic artery aneurysm, following blood poisoning and bronchial pneumonia. Garfield was pronounced dead at 10:35 p.m. exactly two months before his 50th birthday. His final words were "My work is done."
Assassin Charles Guiteau was found guilty of murder on January 5, 1882, and was sentenced to death. He was executed on June 30, 1882.