On July 2, 1881, James A. Garfield - 20th president of the United States - was shot in the back while waiting for a train in Washington, D.C.

The last president to be born in a log cabin, he hailed from Orange, Ohio, a frontier town in Cuyahoga County. Garfield became a teacher, then a college president in Ohio. He helped found the Republican Party and was elected to the Ohio Legislature in 1859. When the Civil War broke out, he joined the Union Army and rose to major general. President Lincoln urged him to resign his commission after he was elected to the 38th Congress during the war. Less than eight months after he won the 1880 presidential election, he was shot by a deranged man. The president languished at the White House for weeks while surgeons tried to find the bullet that was lodged in his back. He died Sept. 19.

Rebecca Goodman

E-mail rgoodman@enquirer.com or call (513) 768-8361