This monument to
President James Garfield (1831-1881) depicts him giving a speech, gazing outward with papers in one hand. Garfield was elected in 1880, but he served only four months of his term before his
assassination in a
railroad station on the Mall in 1881. The Society of the Army of the Cumberland, of which Garfield had been a member, commissioned the statue in 1884. It was dedicated in May 1887.