James A. Garfield

Shot on 2 July 1881 in Washington by Charles Guiteau, a disgruntled office seeker; the president died eleven weeks later of infection.

Overview

Garfield, a Civil War general and compromise presidential choice, had barely taken office when Guiteau, a failed lawyer and religious eccentric who believed a campaign speech entitled him to the Paris consulship, shot him at the Baltimore and Potomac station. The bullets were not immediately fatal; doctors probed wounds with unclean fingers and instruments for weeks, and Garfield wasted away, dying on 19 September. Alexander Graham Bell tried an early metal detector to locate the ball. Guiteau was convicted and hanged in 1882, and the trial helped define the insanity defense in American law. The tragedy moved the states to reform the patronage system through the Pendleton Act of 1883, replacing the spoils system with merit examinations.