James Rudolph Garfield
He was born October 17, 1865 the second son of former President James Abram Garfield. At 9:30 in the morning of July 2, 1881 he witnessed Charles Guiteau shoot his father at the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station in Washington D.C. He was 15 years old. He became an attorney graduating from Columbia Law School. He served in the Ohio State Legislature before becoming an influential advisor to Theodore Roosevelt.
He served as a Civil Service Commissioner from 1902 to 1903. He then became Commissioner of Corporations in the Department of Commerce and Labor investigating large corporations.
He became TR's Secretary of the Interior from 1907 to 1909 and was a prominent member of TR's inner Tennis Cabinet. Garfield was a great public supporter of TR's conservation policies. In 1912 he backed TR's third party Bull Moose candidacy for President.
After Wilson declared war in April 1917 TR choose Garfield to help him raise "The Roosevelt World War I Volunteer Division.” While congress gave Roosevelt the authority to raise the division, President Wilson refused to make use of the volunteers and the unit disbanded. Wilson told Roosevelt he was too old and that World War I was a professional soldier’s war, not the bow and arrow war he fought in Cuba nearly 20 years earlier.
James Rudolph Garfield died March 24, 1950 at the age of 84, the last surviving member of TR's cabinet.
