The Life and Work of James A. Garfield, Twentieth President of the United…

James Garfield rose from a log cabin in Ohio to occupy the White House in just 200 days, the most improbable president in American history. This Victorian-era biography, written by historian John Clark Ridpath shortly after Garfield's death, captures the full arc of a remarkable life: the boyhood struggles, the self-educated brilliance, the Civil War valor that made him a national hero, and the 18 years of congressional service that honed him into a statesman. But it is the tragedy that elevates this account beyond mere biography. Garfield was shot by Charles Guiteau in July 1881 and lingered for eighty days, his suffering transfixing a nation. Ridpath wrote while the wound was still fresh, with the immediacy of witness. For readers interested in Victorian historiography, the assassinatioin of presidents, or the making of American political mythology, this remains a compelling primary source: the story of a good man destroyed by violence, told by a writer who believed history was moral instruction.