Harry Augustus Garfield Harry Augustus Garfield Harry Augustus "Hal" Garfield (October 11, 1863 – December 12, 1942) was an American lawyer, academic and public official. He was president of Williams College and supervised the Federal Fuel Administration during World War I. Garfield was the son of President James A. Garfield and First Lady Lucretia Garfield, and the brother and law partner of Secretary of the Interior James Rudolph Garfield. At the age of 17 he and his 15-year-old brother James watched in horror as their father was shot down by assassin Charles Guiteau. After graduating from Williams College in 1885, he went on
1880 Republican National Convention agenda to visitors. Garfield enlisted the support of the other candidates from the convention to help with the campaign. The 1880 Democratic National Convention chose Winfield Scott Hancock as the presidential candidate and William Hayden English as his vice-presidential running mate. The election featured a very close popular vote that put Garfield ahead with a majority of less than 10,000; some sources put the margin as low as 2,000. However, Garfield won the election with 214 of the 369 electoral votes in the country. On July 2, 1881, Garfield was shot by a former Chicago lawyer named Charles J. Guiteau