James Garfield — 20th President (1881)

**James Garfield** served only 200 days as president before being assassinated by a disappointed office-seeker. He was the last president born in a log cabin, a former canal boy who became a classics professor, a Civil War general, and a nine-term congressman. Garfield was brilliant — he could simultaneously write in Latin with one hand and Greek with the other — and his brief presidency focused on civil service reform and anti-corruption.