Last year, I learned and wrote about William Henry Harrison, the shortest-serving US President, from his memorial outside of Cincinnati. (Click here to read that piece.) So when planning my trip to Cleveland this year, it came as a pleasant surprise to me that America’s second shortest-serving President, James Garfield, had his memorial there, along with his home-turned-national-historic-site just outside of the city.

The United States has had ten Presidents serve less than a full term, with five starting one and dying before it was complete, and another five finishing the term of a President who died (or resigned, in the case of Richard Nixon) and not being elected to another term of their own merit. (And no, the five and five don’t all correspond to each other. The aforementioned Nixon served more than a full term before Gerald Ford had less than one, Lyndon B. Johnson finished Kennedy’s term but was then elected again, and so on.)

James Garfield is second on the list of shortest-serving, and while his 199 days are a huge increase over Harrison’s 31, it still marks just over six months of a four year term. (It appears I’ll next have to visit Louisville to learn and write about Zachary Taylor, who at just over a year in office is the third shortest.) Like Harrison, we really don’t know what he would have done with his term, but we can certainly learn about Garfield as a person, and experience some of his life from right here in Cleveland, Ohio.

James Garfield was born in 1831 in Orange Township, Ohio, near today’s Columbus. He was the last President to be born in a log cabin. After graduating college, he became an attorney, and then a professor at what is now Hiram College in Hiram, Ohio. Before long, he was president of the college.

After the Civil War broke out, Garfield, a staunch abolitionist, accepted a commission into the Union Army in 1861. He distinguished himself in battle, notably at Shiloh (click here to read about a visit to that battlefield) and Chickamauga, rising to the rank of major general. (He started as a colonel, so it’s not like he went from private, but still, impressive.) But his military career was a short one, as he resigned to run for Congress in 1862.

Moving once to avoid a gerrymander that would have cost him his seat, James Garfield ended up representing an area northeast of Cleveland. In 1876, he purchased a large farm in his new district, with a house on more than 100 acres. This home, called Lawnfield, would play an important role in his future political life. Today, the house and eight acres immediately surrounding it make up James A. Garfield National Historic Site.

In 1880, James Garfield ran for President. It was the norm in those days for the candidates to mainly smile, while the best speakers in the party did the talking. Garfield wanted to actually speak to people. And he did, right here on his front porch. Thousands came to meet the candidate, and James Garfield’s “front porch campaign” was a success. (The campaign itself had an office in one of the outbuildings just back of the house.)

Tours of the Garfield house are with either a ranger or volunteer, and are free, running about an hour. They enter via that famous front porch, and explore both the original farmhouse and a later addition made by Lucretia Garfield. All of the furnishings are original, and the wallpaper is an exact replica. It is quite the look back in time to that fateful period.

James Garfield would win the 1880 presidential election. Boosted by his front porch, his war service, and his reputation as “Farmer James,” Garfield would dominate the Electoral College, basically sweeping the northern states, although his victory in the popular vote was less than 2,000 out of 9.2 million votes cast. (Interestingly, the victory made James Garfield the only sitting member of the House to ever be elected President, with no others before or since.)

It is hard to know what James Garfield’s presidency would have looked like. He ran on a platform of civil service reform, tariffs, and basically just not being a Democrat. (Remember that before the two parties almost fully swapped ideologies during the Civil Rights era, Democrats were the party of slavery and Southern secession.) But he never had a chance to implement much.

On July 2, 1881, James Garfield was shot at what is now Washington’s Union Station by Charles Guiteau. Guiteau apparently believed that if he assassinated the President, VP Chester Arthur would, upon ascending to that office, give him a job as the ambassador to France. Hiding in the station, he shot the President twice, once in the arm and once in the torso. Incredibly, no vital organs were hit.

Doctors were unable to find the bullet that was imbedded in Garfield’s abdomen. Whether from the wound or their prodding (typically with bare hands inside the wound itself), James Garfield would ultimately die of infection just over two months later, on September 19. In those 80 days, the President lost 80 pounds due to infection, although he was apparently fully lucid until the last week or so.

(Charles Guiteau was tried for the assassination, and was found both guilty and – almost shockingly – sane. He was executed by hanging.)

In the wake of the President’s death, an outpouring of public grief led to two early crowdfunding campaigns. One raised roughly $350,000 (about $11 million in today’s dollars) for Garfield’s widow Lucretia and the family, allowing them to remain on the farm. (More on this in a moment.) The other raised a little over $100,000 for a memorial to the President to be built in Cleveland’s Lake View Cemetery.

The James Garfield Monument was built at the highest point in the cemetery, and opened in 1890. It boasts a 150 foot tower with a huge atrium inside, stone reliefs of five monumental events in the life of the President, and an underground burial chamber.

Short tours of the structure are given by cemetery volunteers. The highlight is the atrium, with a larger than life statue of James Garfield, stained glass and mosaic, and beautifully decorated arches.

Visitors can also climb partway up the tower for what is probably one of the best views of the modern Cleveland skyline anywhere in the city.

Below ground, James Garfield and his wife Lucretia lie in wooden caskets, along with urns containing the remains of their daughter Mary and her husband.

As for the money Lucretia received, a portion of it was used to expand the farmhouse at Lawnfield. She added what was the first Presidential Library (although it wasn’t open to the public) to hold James Garfield’s collection of books as well as his personal papers, including decades of his expenses and receipts, which were housed in a vault she added to the room. She also continued to run the farm itself, until her death in 1918.

Several years after Lucretia’s death, the house and its contents were donated to the Western Reserve Historical Society, and in 2008, the site was transferred to the National Parks Service as today’s James A. Garfield National Historic Site, although it received the NHS designation in 1980. (Note, as of this writing, due to funding cuts the site is only open Friday through Sunday.)

The visitors center, housed in what was the Garfield carriage house, contains a variety of artifacts from the life of James Garfield in a small museum, as well as some artist renderings of important events.

If obscure American history is a passion of yours, taking a day in Cleveland to see James A. Garfield National Historic Site and to visit the James Garfield Monument at Lake View Cemetery is a solid change from most visitors who just run straight downtown to see the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. It is a chance to learn about the twentieth US President and his briefest of terms, and to recognize the life that existed before his election. It is a day well spent.

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