Learn more about James Garfield, the 20th U.S. president, whose plans for Reconstruction were cut short by an assassin's bullet, at Biography.com. read more
James Abram Garfield was born on November 19, 1831, in a log cabin in Orange, Ohio, near Cleveland. His father, Abram Garfield, died less than two years later, so his mother, Eliza Ballou Garfield, raised young James and her older children while also managing the family’s small farm. read more