50 Fun Facts About James A. Garfield

Legend says the ambidextrous James A. Garfield could write Latin with one hand and which language with the other?

Greek is the language in the tale, though biographer Allan Peskin said the evidence does not support it. Garfield did teach classical languages, and he was the first known left-handed president.

While serving as a congressman, James A. Garfield published his own original proof of which famous result in geometry?

The Pythagorean theorem got a fresh proof from Garfield in 1876, worked out while trading maths puzzles with fellow members of Congress. An education journal printed it that year.

Which famous inventor built an early metal detector to hunt for the bullet lodged inside President James A. Garfield?

Alexander Graham Bell hurried his new device to the White House, yet it never found the bullet. The chief physician let him search only the side of the body where the bullet was not.

The lead physician who treated the wounded James A. Garfield, Willard Bliss, had which unusual given first name?

Doctor really was his first name: his parents named him Doctor Willard Bliss after a New England surgeon. He then earned the title, and took personal charge of the president's care.

James A. Garfield, raised in poverty in rural Ohio, was the last US president born in what kind of home?

A log cabin in Orange Township was his birthplace, and no president since has been born in one. His father died before James turned two, leaving the family to scrape by on a small farm.

To help the wounded James A. Garfield through a hot Washington summer, Navy engineers built an early form of what?

Air conditioner is the modern name for it: fans drove air across ice and then dried it, cooling the sickroom by about 20 degrees Fahrenheit. Noise and damp were the early snags.

Which member of James A. Garfield's cabinet, a president's son, stood nearby when Garfield was shot in 1881?

Robert Todd Lincoln, the secretary of war, was at the scene 16 years after his own father was killed. He was also in Buffalo in 1901 on the day William McKinley was shot.

James A. Garfield's 1880 presidential run made famous a style of campaigning named after which part of his Ohio home?

The front porch of his Mentor farmhouse became his stage, as thousands of visitors travelled there to hear him speak. Later candidates, William McKinley among them, copied the idea.

At sixteen, the future president James A. Garfield worked on an Ohio canal boat, managing which animals that pulled it?

Mules hauled the boat and young Garfield managed them, lasting six weeks before illness sent him home. While he recovered, he promised to give up the canal for a year of school.

Historians blame which complication, worsened by his own physicians, for the death of the wounded James A. Garfield?

Infection spread after a dozen physicians probed the wound with unwashed fingers and instruments. One surgeon-historian argues that today he would have gone home within two or three days.

Which disappointed office seeker shot President James A. Garfield in Washington in the summer of 1881?

Charles Guiteau believed a speech he had printed won Garfield the election and earned him a diplomatic job. Turned away again and again, he bought a revolver and trailed the president for weeks.

Which New Yorker, vice president under James A. Garfield, became the 21st president when Garfield died?

Chester A. Arthur took the oath at his own home in New York City at 2:15 in the morning. By coincidence, he and Garfield had once held the same teaching job in Pownal, Vermont.

President James A. Garfield was shot in the waiting room of what kind of building in Washington, D.C.?

Railroad station travellers saw it happen as he set off on a summer holiday. Presidents then moved about without guards, and the newspapers had printed his travel plans.

Because James A. Garfield won the 1880 Republican nomination without seeking it, he is remembered by which racing term?

A dark horse is exactly what he was: he arrived to nominate another man and left as the candidate on the 36th ballot. He protested to his own delegation that he was not running.

After James A. Garfield's death, his widow added a wing to their Ohio home that became America's first what?

Presidential library is the name now given to the wing she built in 1885 to hold his books and papers. She spent much of the rest of her life preserving them.

In 1880 James A. Garfield became the first presidential candidate to give a campaign speech in which foreign language?

German was his choice when a party of German visitors joined a crowd of some 5,000 at his home. No presidential candidate before him had campaigned in a foreign tongue.

James A. Garfield's murder by a frustrated job seeker pushed Congress to pass the Pendleton Act, which reformed what?

The civil service began filling jobs by competitive exam instead of party favour. The law was signed by Garfield's successor, a man who had himself risen through the old patronage machine.

The trial of the man who shot James A. Garfield was an early high-profile American test of which courtroom defense?

Insanity was the plea his lawyers argued, while the defendant insulted them in open court and passed notes to spectators asking for advice. The jury convicted him all the same in January 1882.

President James A. Garfield named which famous Black abolitionist and orator as recorder of deeds for Washington, D.C.?

Frederick Douglass got the Washington job, one of several prominent positions Garfield gave to Black leaders. Garfield also pressed for federally funded schooling for freed families in the South.

James A. Garfield argued his very first case as a lawyer in 1866, appearing before which judicial body?

The US Supreme Court heard him argue for over two hours in Ex parte Milligan, and he won: civilians could not be tried by army courts while ordinary courts were open. His clients never paid him.

The young James A. Garfield paid his way through the Western Reserve Eclectic Institute by working as what?

Janitor was his job on arrival. Within a few years he was teaching there while still a student, and by 26 he was running the place.

James A. Garfield narrowly beat which Democrat, a Union hero of Gettysburg, in the 1880 presidential election?

Winfield Scott Hancock ran him desperately close in the popular vote, one of the tightest ever recorded. The Electoral College was far clearer, splitting 214 to 155.

James A. Garfield died in a seaside cottage at Elberon, near Long Branch, on the coast of which state?

New Jersey sea air was meant to revive him, and volunteers laid a rail spur to the cottage door in a single night. He died there about two weeks after arriving, aged 49.

Which Marine Band leader composed the march In Memoriam after the death of President James A. Garfield?

John Philip Sousa wrote it in shock at the news, and it was played as the body reached Washington and again at the burial. His band had played at Garfield's inaugural ball months earlier.

The man who shot James A. Garfield believed he was owed a job as American consul in which European capital?

Paris was the prize he demanded, though he spoke no French. The secretary of state finally told him never to raise the consulship again, and within weeks he had bought a gun.

James A. Garfield sat on the 1877 Electoral Commission that gave a disputed presidency to which fellow Ohio Republican?

Rutherford Hayes won the disputed election by a party-line vote of 8 to 7. Garfield had opposed creating the commission at all, arguing that Congress should simply count the votes itself.

Which New York senator and party boss resigned in 1881 after losing an appointments fight with James A. Garfield?

Roscoe Conkling quit expecting the New York legislature to send him straight back in triumph. It chose someone else, which ended his career and showed a president could face down a party boss.

James A. Garfield made a legendary ride across Missionary Ridge to reach troops still fighting at which 1863 battle?

Chickamauga was a Union defeat, but Garfield guessed that part of the army was still holding its ground and rode to find it. He was right, and the ride made his name as a soldier.

Which actor plays President James A. Garfield in the 2025 Netflix miniseries Death by Lightning?

Michael Shannon plays the president, opposite Matthew Macfadyen as the man who shot him. Shannon has said he did not know much about Garfield before he began work on the role.

Which relative of James A. Garfield was the first of her kind to attend a president's inauguration, in 1881?

His mother, Eliza, had raised him in poverty after his father's early death and lived to see him take the oath. He carried her up and down the White House stairs himself, and she outlived him by more than six years.

James A. Garfield was principal of the Western Reserve Eclectic Institute, an Ohio school now known by which name?

Hiram College took its present name in 1867. Garfield arrived there as a student, was soon teaching as well, and became principal six years after he first enrolled.

James A. Garfield graduated with honors in 1856 from which Massachusetts school, then led by Mark Hopkins?

Williams College let him enter as a third-year student after a quick exam. He was on his way back there to give a speech on the morning he was shot.

Before entering politics, James A. Garfield preached on a regular circuit of churches of which Protestant movement?

Disciples of Christ churches sometimes paid him a dollar a sermon. He was baptized into the movement at 18, and it also founded the school where he studied and later taught.

The man who shot James A. Garfield declared himself part of which Republican faction loyal to the patronage system?

Stalwarts backed the spoils system and a third term for Ulysses Grant, and the gunman hoped his act would hand them the White House. The public fury turned on the faction instead.

The Star Route frauds that James A. Garfield ordered rooted out had drained money from which federal department?

The Post Office had been overpaying for mail contracts on remote routes, with insiders splitting the profit. Garfield pressed on even after learning his own campaign manager was implicated.

The wounded James A. Garfield reportedly offered to send which hated sickbed food of his to the hungry Sitting Bull?

Oatmeal porridge was served to him daily and he detested it. Told that the captive Lakota leader was starving, he first snapped that he could starve, then offered him the porridge instead.

James A. Garfield gave up his army commission in 1863 to enter Congress, having risen to which rank?

Major general was his final rank, reached with no military training before the war. In 1861 he had raised a regiment himself, recruiting many of his own former students.

James A. Garfield's brigade arrived for the second day of which bloody 1862 Tennessee battle under Ulysses Grant?

Shiloh was the bloodiest battle of the war up to then, and Garfield's men helped drive the Confederates back on the second day. He was under fire for hours and came through unhurt.

James A. Garfield's towering memorial tomb stands in Lake View Cemetery in which Ohio city?

Cleveland buried him after some 150,000 mourners, about the city's whole population, paid their respects. The 180-foot tower over his tomb was dedicated nine years later.

As a committee chairman, James A. Garfield investigated the Black Friday panic of 1869, a plot to corner which market?

Gold was the target of speculators Jay Gould and James Fisk, whose scheme collapsed when the Treasury sold from its reserves. Garfield's inquiry cleared President Grant of any part in it.

Which boys' novelist, creator of Ragged Dick, wrote a popular life of James A. Garfield in the year of his death?

Horatio Alger rushed the book out in 1881, filling it with invented conversations rather than facts. It still sold well, drawing on Garfield's boyhood job on the canals.

The man who shot James A. Garfield dances up the gallows steps in Assassins, a musical by which composer?

Stephen Sondheim gave the gunman a merry cakewalk to the noose, growing more hopeful with every verse. The show gathers presidential attackers from John Wilkes Booth to John Hinckley on one stage.

On the scaffold in 1882, the man who killed James A. Garfield did which unusual thing before he was hanged?

Recited his own poem is the plain truth: he chanted, in a sad and doleful style, verses he said he had written that morning. He had already read aloud from the Bible and cursed the new president.

James A. Garfield's assassin picked his revolver partly for how it would look when it was one day displayed where?

In a museum is where he pictured it after the shooting. The Smithsonian did put the gun on show in the early 1900s, but it has since been lost.

James A. Garfield served as chief of staff to which Union commander of the Army of the Cumberland in 1863?

William Rosecrans loved late-night talk and called Garfield the first well-read person in the army, so the two argued religion into the small hours. Garfield later pushed him to attack when he stalled.

James A. Garfield went to the 1880 Republican convention to nominate which Treasury secretary, but was chosen himself?

John Sherman ran a distant third while Garfield's calm speech for him won over the hall. When the stampede began, Garfield protested that he would not betray his man, and was overruled.

James A. Garfield personally commanded only one pitched battle, an 1862 Union win in eastern Kentucky with which name?

Middle Creek ended with the Confederates pulling back towards Virginia, days after Garfield had tricked them into believing they were outnumbered. The win brought him promotion to brigadier.

The Washington spot where James A. Garfield was shot in 1881 is now covered by a building of which institution?

National Gallery of Art visitors walk over the place today, in the West Building. The original building was torn down in 1908, and the site then went unmarked for more than a century.

James A. Garfield's published 1876 mathematical proof works by finding the area of which four-sided shape in two ways?

A trapezoid made of three triangles does the work: its area is written two ways and the result drops out. One historian of mathematics called it a very clever proof.

Reporters covering the 1880 campaign gave James A. Garfield's farmhouse in Mentor, Ohio, which lasting nickname?

Lawnfield was the reporters' name for it, and it stuck. Garfield had bought the Mentor property only four years earlier, and it is now a national historic site open to visitors.