assassinated President James A. Garfield on this date in 1881. Garfield was the second president assassinated. According to the Library of Congress:
Charles J. Guiteau shot and fatally wounded the new President James A. Garfield in the lobby of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Depot in Washington, D.C. as he yelled, “I am a [Republican] stalwart and [Vice President] Arthur is President now!” Guiteau, a lawyer with a history of mental illness, blamed the president for not selecting him for a job at the U.S. Consulate in Paris.
Afflicted with religious delusions, the factionalism of the election of 1880 had given Guiteau’s paranoia a political focus. He expressed several times the conviction that he had been commissioned by God to murder Garfield, and was surprised to discover that his action was deplored by Garfield’s political opponents and supporters alike. In spite of Guiteau’s manifest insanity at his trial, his attorneys were unable to gain an acquittal on that basis.
President Garfield did not die immediately, but lingered for 11 weeks, during which time surgeons attempted to find the bullet which had lodged in his back. In spite of Joseph Lister’s discoveries on the use of antiseptics in surgery, the practice of sterilization had not caught on, and Garfield’s wound was probed by the unwashed fingers of many physicians. The infection which ensued in his wound caused his death.
On September 6, Garfield was sent to the New Jersey shore in an attempt to aid his recovery. Despite initial signs of improvement, he died two weeks later of an infection in his back and an abdominal hemorrhage. Charles J. Guiteau was hanged on June 30, 1882.