Garfield Shot: President Fatally Wounded by Assassin

Charles Guiteau fired two shots at President James Garfield in the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station in Washington on the morning of July 2, 1881. One bullet grazed the president s arm. The second lodged near his spine. Garfield survived the shooting itself — what killed him was the medical treatment that followed. Guiteau was a delusional, failed lawyer who had written an unsolicited speech supporting Garfield during the 1880 campaign and convinced himself he deserved an ambassadorship in return. When his repeated visits to the State Department and White House produced nothing, he decided God had commanded him to remove the president. He borrowed money to buy a revolver with an ivory handle, reasoning it would look better in a museum. Garfield lay in the White House for weeks while his doctors probed the bullet wound repeatedly with unsterilized fingers and instruments, searching for the bullet. Alexander Graham Bell brought an early metal detector to the president s bedside, but the device was confused by the steel-spring mattress — and the doctors were searching the wrong side of the body. The wound that might have healed became massively infected. Garfield was moved to the New Jersey shore in September, where supporters built a temporary rail spur to his cottage in a single night. He died on September 19, 1881, seventy-nine days after the shooting. His autopsy revealed the bullet was safely encapsulated in tissue four inches from the spine and would not have been fatal if left alone. The infection created by his doctors instruments had killed him. Guiteau was hanged on June 30, 1882. His trial became a landmark in the debate over the insanity defense, though the jury rejected his claims in under an hour. The assassination s most lasting consequence was the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act of 1883, which replaced the spoils system of political appointments with merit-based hiring.