The Story of Garfield: Farm-Boy, Soldier, and President

James Garfield came from nothing - a log cabin in Ohio, a father dead before his birth, a mother who scrubbed floors to keep him alive. This 1894 biography traces his impossible journey from farm boy to Civil War general to the White House. Rutherford captures the raw ambition and iron will that allowed a boy who once worked as a canal boat driver to become one of America's most eloquent orators - and one of its shortest-serving presidents. Written just years after Garfield's assassination at the hands of a disappointed office-seeker, this is intimate, Victorian-era hagiography at its finest. For readers who want to understand the 19th-century American dream in its most dramatic form - and the man who embodied it before tragedy cut his story short.