In Memoriam: President Garfield's Funeral March Washington for the lying in state. The Marine Band's first trip outside of Washington, under Sousa, occurred the following week when it traveled to Cleveland, Ohio for the funeral where the dirge was again performed during funeral rites. Fifty-one years later, "In Memoriam" was performed for Sousa's own funeral by the Marine Band as his remains were escorted to the Congressional Cemetery for interment. In Memoriam: President Garfield's Funeral March "In Memoriam: President Garfield's Funeral March" is a funeral dirge composed by John Philip Sousa in 1881, while serving as director of "the President's Own" United States Marine Band, for
President its republican head of state, many other nations followed suit. Haiti became the first presidential republic in Latin America when Henri Christophe assumed the title in 1807. Almost all of the American nations that became independent from Spain in the early 1810s and 1820s chose a US-style president as their chief executive. The first European president was the president of the Italian Republic of 1802, a client state of revolutionary France, in the person of Napoleon Bonaparte. The first African president was the President of Liberia (1848), while the first Asian president was the President of the Republic of China