Garfield adored his children, but he was determined not to spoil them, or allow anyone else to. “Whatever fate may await me, I am resolved, if possible, to save my children from being injured by my presidency,” he wrote. “ ‘Hoc opus, hic labor est.’ Every attempt, therefore, to flatter them, or to make more of them than they deserve, I shall do all I can to prevent, and to arm them against.”
