President James A. Garfield Shot

President James A. Garfield Shot

At the conclusion of a cabinet meeting on June 30, 1881, President James A. Garfield asked Robert Lincoln, the secretary of war and the son of Abraham Lincoln, about a nightmare that President Lincoln had shortly before his assassination. The secretary told of the dream in which his father had seen a corpse on display in the East Room of the White House. In the dream, President Lincoln asks “who is dead in the White House?” and the sentry guarding the body replies “the president.” Garfield and the other officials listened intently as Robert Lincoln recounted the incident, but they were only momentarily impressed by its prophetic quality. No one present would have believed that only two days later, on July 2, 1881, an assassin's bullet would strike Garfield.

The day of the tragedy was to have been the beginning of a holiday for the 20th president of the United States. To escape the hot Washington summer, Garfield planned to go to the New Jersey seaside resort of Elberon and then on to Williamstown, Massachusetts, where he was to attend his 25th class reunion at Williams College. A special railroad car had been reserved for the president and his accompanying cabinet members, which was attached to the train that was scheduled to leave Washington's Baltimore and Potomac Railway depot at 9:30 A.M. on July 2, 1881.

Garfield and his secretary of state, James G. Blaine, arrived at the railroad station at Sixth and B Streets at about 9:20 A.M. on the fateful day. After remaining in Blaine's carriage for roughly ten minutes, the two men made their way to the train. The waiting room of the depot was almost deserted, but as the president and secretary of state passed the empty benches, two gun shots rang out. The bullets found their intended target; Garfield gasped, “my god, what is this?” and sank to the floor.

Garfield's assailant, Charles J. Guiteau, fled from the scene immediately after firing the shots even though he realized that he would not be able to escape and was ready to accept imprisonment. He feared, however, that the inflamed emotions of the moment might result in his being lynched on the spot. When patrolman Patrick Kearney caught and arrested Guiteau, Guiteau said “keep quiet, my friend. I wish to go to jail.”

Guiteau's life had always been as erratic and yet calculating as his actions and words at the Baltimore and Potomac depot. His father, Luther Guiteau, was the superintendent of schools for Freeport, Illinois, and a friend of John H. Noyes, the founder of the polygamous utopian community at Oneida, New York. Young Charles Guiteau joined the Oneida group in his late teens, but found farm life uninteresting. He left for New York City, where he tried to promote his religious views in a short-lived newspaper called the New York Theocrat. Moving to Chicago, he married there and found a position as a clerk in a law firm. For over ten years, Guiteau made his living by swindling and cheating gullible merchants, pawnbrokers, and boardinghouse owners.

Beginning in 1873, Guiteau fell on hard times. His wife grew tired of his questionable activities and divorced him. The newspapers exposed his improper behavior as a collections lawyer. Guiteau became increasingly unbalanced, and began to entertain the delusion that he would eventually become president of the United States.

James Garfield's candidacy for president in 1880 sparked Guiteau's hopes. He offered his services as a public speaker to the Republican Party and passed out copies of his prepared speech, “Garfield and Hancock,” to all who would accept them. Guiteau even sent a copy to Garfield himself with the suggestion that Guiteau should receive an appointment as United States Consul to Vienna, Austria, as a reward. After Garfield's inauguration, Guiteau managed to see the president at the White House, where he begged Garfield for an appointment as consul in Paris, France. When the president ignored him, Guiteau sought the assistance of Secretary of State Blaine, who also ignored him. Frustrated beyond his limited endurance, Guiteau (in a letter that Garfield probably never saw) warned the president to remove Blaine or “you and the Republican Party will come to grief.”

Blaming Garfield personally for his plight, Guiteau came to believe that he was part of a divine plan to kill the president. On June 6, 1881, with money borrowed from a cousin, Guiteau bought a .44-caliber British Bulldog pistol, a box of cartridges, and a penknife from O'Meara's Gun Shop. He selected a pistol with a white bone handle because, as he later testified at his trial, he believed that it would look better in a museum.

For the next four weeks Guiteau divided his time between target practice at an isolated place along the Potomac and following Garfield through the streets of the capital. Guiteau let several opportunities to shoot the president pass. However, when he heard that Garfield would be leaving Washington on July 2, he decided that day would give him the ideal opportunity to carry out his plan.

Early on July 2, Guiteau wrote a letter explaining his intended actions. He asserted that he held no ill will towards Garfield, but that the “President's tragic death was a sad necessity, [and]…it will unite the Republican Party and save the Republic.” Then, Guiteau left for the depot.

One of Guiteau's two shots merely grazed Garfield's left arm. The other bullet, however, lodged in Garfield's back and proved to be a mortal wound. In a state of deep shock and only partially conscious, the president was moved to the second floor of the depot. Members of the cabinet quickly gathered at his side. The sight of the stricken president was particularly upsetting to Robert Lincoln, and he remarked in dismay: “How many hours of sorrow I have passed in this town.”

The first doctors to examine Garfield believed that the president would not live out the day. They did, however, permit him to be moved. In a bed hastily mounted on a wagon, he was brought back to the White House only a few hours after he had started out for his intended summer holiday.

For two days Garfield was close to death. On July 5, however, his condition stabilized and for the first time since the shooting he was able to eat and retain food. The many doctors attending the president concluded that the bullet had entered his back, been deflected downwards through his peritoneal cavity, and was embedded in the front wall of his abdomen. However, since they were unsure of its exact location, they hesitated to probe for the bullet. Instead, their treatment of the president amounted to little more than intensive nursing care, and blood poisoning posed the greatest threat to Garfield's life in the days that followed.

Room number 18, situated on the south side of the second floor of the White House and commanding a view of the Potomac River, became Garfield's sickroom. The doctors attending the president allowed his wife, Lucretia, and his children to visit frequently. Several trusted advisers and the wives of cabinet members were also permitted to see him; the latter often helped fan Garfield during the hot Washington summer.

Since he had survived the initial crisis, many observers believed that Garfield would recover. However, on July 23 he took a turn for the worse, and his condition steadily deteriorated. The track taken by the bullet through Garfield's body had become infected, but at that time there were no antibiotics for treatment. In short, the doctors were helpless. They did, however, enlist the help of inventor Alexander Graham Bell in their effort to find the bullet. By the end of July, Bell had devised an electrical instrument with which he hoped to pinpoint the bullet's location. On August 1, Bell used his invention on Garfield. The findings were inconclusive, however, and it is questionable whether the president would have survived the necessary surgery to remove the bullet anyway.

Throughout his long ordeal, Garfield displayed courage and fortitude. By the end of August, however, his physical condition was “absolutely critical” according to a friend. The heat of the Washington summer compounded the president's suffering, and he desperately wanted to leave the nation's capital. At first his doctors were reluctant to move him, but they finally agreed that a stay at the seashore might prove beneficial. Charles Franklyn offered Garfield the use of his 25-room house in Elberon, New Jersey, and plans to transport the stricken president to that resort were quickly put in motion.

Garfield withstood the railroad trip to Elberon on September 6, 1881, so well that hopes for his eventual recovery resurged. Several days later, however, the weakened president developed pneumonia. On September 19, 1881, he complained of severe chest pains, and in the evening he lost consciousness. He died at 10:35 P.M. that evening.

Garfield's death plunged the nation into mourning. On September 21 his body was returned to Washington, and for the next two days the president's casket lay in state in the rotunda of the Capitol Building. During that time more than 100,000 persons filed past the bier. On September 23, a special service honoring President Garfield took place in the rotunda, and then his remains were placed aboard a funeral train and carried to their final resting place in Cleveland, Ohio.

As the train passed through the major cities, towns, and villages along its route, bells tolled to express the nation's grief. Thousands of citizens stood along the railroad tracks and paid their final respects to the president. In downtown Cleveland a public funeral was held for Garfield, and then his remains were entombed at Lakeview Cemetery several miles away. Public observances honoring Garfield did not conclude until February 27, 1882, when President Chester A. Arthur eulogized his predecessor before a joint session of Congress.

On November 14, 1881, the trial of Garfield's assassin began. Guiteau based his defense on a plea of insanity, but on January 5, 1882, he was found guilty as charged. He was hanged on June 30, 1882, before a crowd of over two hundred spectators.

Garfield's death produced one positive result. The bizarre motivation of his assassin emphasized the abuses of the spoils system, whereby governmental jobs were distributed as rewards for support during election campaigns. In the months following Garfield's death, an outraged public demanded an end to this system, resulting in the passage of the Pendleton Act, which reformed the federal bureaucracy and established the modern Civil Service.