On a summer morning, July 2, 1881, James A. Garfield, a 49-year-old White male, was in high spirits. The 20th President of the United States, in office for only four months, was preparing to leave Washington, D.C., for a family vacation. As he walked through the Baltimore and Potomac train station, a disturbed lawyer named Charles J. Guiteau emerged from the crowd and shot him twice in the back with a. 44 caliber revolver. The first bullet grazed his arm, but the second lodged behind his pancreas. Neither wound was immediately fatal. Guiteau, a delusional office-seeker who felt he was owed a consulship for his supposed role in Garfield's election victory, was immediately apprehended at the scene. He calmly surrendered, believing his act was a divine inspiration and a political necessity.
The ensuing 79 days were an agonizing ordeal for President Garfield.
A series of doctors attended to him, but their methods, performed in an era before the widespread acceptance of germ theory, proved disastrous. In their frantic and repeated attempts to locate the bullet, physicians probed the wound with unsterilized fingers and instruments. This introduced infection, which soon developed into widespread sepsis, causing his body to be wracked with fever and chills. As his condition deteriorated, Garfield’s weight plummeted from 210 pounds to a mere 130. In early September, hoping the sea air would aid his recovery, he was carefully transported by a specially prepared train to a seaside cottage in Elberon, New Jersey.
The change of location, however, brought no relief. The infection continued its relentless assault on his weakened body. On the evening of September 19, 1881, after enduring immense suffering, James A. Garfield died from a combination of complications arising from his wound, including a fatal hemorrhage from a ruptured splenic artery and blood poisoning. His death was not a direct result of the assassin's bullet, but rather the subsequent unhygienic medical treatment he received.
The man who fired the shot, Charles Guiteau, was put on trial for murder. The proceedings became a national spectacle, marked by Guiteau's bizarre and erratic behavior; he frequently insulted the judge, jury, and his own lawyers, and delivered parts of his testimony in the form of epic poems. His defense team argued that he was not guilty by reason of insanity, a plea that was one of the first of its kind in a high-profile American case. Guiteau himself claimed that while he had shot the president, it was the doctors who had actually killed him. The jury was unconvinced by his claims of divine instruction and insanity. After deliberating for only an hour, they found him guilty of murder. On June 30, 1882, Charles Guiteau was executed by hanging in Washington, D.C.
