BRIDGET'S GUIDE TO THE GREAT, NOT-S0-GREAT AND DOWNRIGHT ABOMINABLE AMERICAN PRESIDENTS

20) JAMES A. GARFIELD

President from March to September 1881, which means...

...we have our FOURTH President who died in office!

The A stood for Abram

Garfield was the first left-handed President.

A former minister of the Disciples of Christ, he was the first preacher to become president.

He won the popular vote by less than 10,000 votes, the tiniest margin in US history.

He was a renowned civil rights reformer who went out of his way to appoint former skaves to government positions, and envisioned a univeral education system free to all Americans.

Garfield was shot and wounded by Charles J. Guiteau, a staunch Republican and Garfield supporter, who expected the President to give him the position of consul in Paris, depsite the fact that he could not speak French. Garfield had a single meeting with Guiteau at the White House. No position was forthcoming. Guiteau became so enraged by the perceived snub that he made several unconsummated plans to kill the President. Finally, he hid out by the ladies waiting room of a Baltimore railway station from which Garfield was scheduled to depart. Once the Head Of State came into view, his disgruntled nemesis shot him in the arm and the back. Neither shot killed him but none of the team of 12 doctors who attened to him could locate the bullet in his back. The longer they took, the more the wound became infected. He died eleven weeks later.

Garfield was one of the THREE presidents who held the office in 1881.