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James A. Garfield was born and raised in Ohio. Only one year after his graduation from Williams College in North Adams, Massachusetts, in 1856 he was named president of Hiram College in Ohio. He was devoutly religious. He served in the Civil War, reaching the rank of Major General. During the war he was elected to the House of Representatives and eventually became a leader there. In 1880 he was named a senator from Ohio, but months later the Republican National Convention named him its candidate for president. He won the presidency with a narrow margin in the popular vote. But soon after, religious fanatic and disappointed office seeker Charles Guiteau (looking, as the flyer says, for "the spoils of office"), shot him in the back. He lingered for more than two months before dying. His career earned him a hero's funeral.

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