James A. Garfield National Historic Site

James Abram Garfield became the 20th president of the United States in 1881 and was assassinated later that year. He had been an influential member of the House of Representatives from 1863 to 1880, but his presidency was too short to confirm the indications that he would have been the moderate, successful leader that the Republican party required in the 1880s. Garfield is now remembered mostly as the last chief executive to be born in a log cabin and as a dark-horse candidate for the 1880 Republican presidential nomination. Garfield was born on Nov. 19, 1831, in Cuyahoga County, Ohio.