The 1880 election was one of the narrowest presidential contests in history. Almost nine million ballots were cast, and the winner was James Garfield, with a margin of less than seven thousand. James A. Garfield of Ohio was the last president to be born in a log cabin. Like Presidents Grant and Hayes before him, Garfield rose to the rank of general during the Civil War. But this young general did not thrill in the soldier's life. "No blaze of glory," he wrote, could ever make up for the "horrors" of war.
