 Poor and fatherless , Garfield was mocked by his fellow boys , and throughout his life was very sensitive to slights . He escaped through reading , devouring all the books he could find . He left home at age 16 in 1847 . Rejected by the only ship in port in Cleveland , Garfield instead found work on a canal boat , responsible for managing the mules that pulled it . This labor would be used to good effect by Horatio Alger , who penned Garfield 's campaign biography in 1880 . 
