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James A. Garfield (1831)close

James Garfield was born on a frontier farm in Cuyahoga County, Ohio in 1831. While President of Hiram College, Garfield was elected to Ohio senate in 1859 and served as an officer in the Union Army during the Civil War. At the 1880 Republican Nation Convention, Garfield became a "dark horse" nominee on the thirty-sixth ballot. He went on to win the election by a margin of only 10,000 popular vote and became the twentieth president. Less than 4 months after his inauguration, Garfield was shot by a disgruntled office-seeker while waiting for a train in Washington, DC. He never recovered from the wound and died on September 19, 1881, at the age of 49.

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