James Garfield Autographs
James Abram Garfield (November 19, 1831 – September 19, 1881) was the 20th president of the United States, serving from March 1881 until his death in September that year after being shot in July. A preacher, lawyer, and Civil War general, Garfield served nine terms in the United States House of Representatives and is the only sitting member of the House to be elected president. Before he ran for president, the Ohio General Assembly had elected him to the U.S. Senate, a position he declined upon becoming president-elect.
Garfield was born into poverty in a log cabin and grew up in northeast Ohio. After graduating from Williams College in 1856, he studied law and became an attorney. Garfield was a preacher in the Restoration Movement and president of the Western Reserve Eclectic Institute, affiliated with the Disciples. He was elected as a Republican member of the Ohio State Senate in 1859, serving until 1861. Garfield opposed Confederate secession, was a major general in the Union Army during the American Civil War, and fought in the battles of Middle Creek, Shiloh, and Chickamauga. He was elected to Congress in 1862 to represent Ohio's 19th district. Throughout his congressional service, Garfield firmly supported the gold standard and gained a reputation as a skilled orator. He initially agreed with Radical Republican views on Reconstruction but later favored a Moderate Republican–aligned approach to civil rights enforcement for freedmen. Garfield's aptitude for mathematics extended to his own proof of the Pythagorean theorem, published in 1876, and his advocacy of using statistics to inform government policy.
At the 1880 Republican National Convention, delegates chose Garfield, who had not sought the White House, as a compromise presidential nominee on the 36th ballot. In the 1880 presidential election, he conducted a low-key front porch campaign and narrowly defeated the Democratic nominee, Winfield Scott Hancock. Garfield's accomplishments as president included his assertion of presidential authority against senatorial courtesy in executive appointments, a purge of corruption in the Post Office, and his appointment of a Supreme Court justice. He advocated for agricultural technology, an educated electorate, and civil rights for African Americans. He also proposed substantial civil service reforms, which were passed by Congress in 1883 as the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act and signed into law by his successor, Chester A. Arthur. Garfield was a member of the intraparty "Half-Breed" faction that used the powers of the presidency to defy the powerful "Stalwart" Senator Roscoe Conkling from New York. He did this by appointing Blaine faction leader William H. Robertson to the lucrative post of Collector of the Port of New York. The ensuing political battle resulted in Robertson's confirmation and the resignations of Conkling and Thomas C. Platt from the Senate.
Read more about James Garfield on Wikipedia
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Traded items with a signature of James Garfield
The most expensive item with a signature of James Garfield (James Garfield rare Presidential signed document approving treaty with China) was sold in April 2018 for $15,000.00 while the cheapest item (2020 Historic Autograph President James Garfield #20) found a new owner for $1.99 in November 2022. The month with the most items sold (7) was September 2023 with an average selling price of $9.50 for an autographed item of James Garfield. Sold items reached their highest average selling price in October 2017 with $7,500.00 and the month that saw the lowest prices with $5.25 was January 2024. In average, an autographed item from James Garfield is worth $226.57.
Most recently, these items with a signature of James Garfield were sold on eBay - click here for more items.
