On this day – July 2nd

The President is shot

On July 2nd, 1881, United States President James A Garfield was shot by Charl;es Julius Guiteau at the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station in Washington,

Garfield died some two months later from infections and attempted treatments – there were those who said that he would have recovered quite easily if the doctors had left him alone.

Guiteau's motive, such as it was, was that he had played a large part in Garfield's successful election, and should have been rewarded with a consulate. He was so offended by the Garfield administration's rejections of his applications to serve in Vienna or Paris that he decided to kill Garfield.

After Garfield's death, Guiteau was tried for murder, and a great controversy grew up about whether he was sane or otherwise. Guiteau vehemently insisted that while he had been legally insane at the time of the shooting (because God had taken away his free will), he was not really medically insane.

Anyway, he clearly enjoyed the celebrity status he achieved throughout the trial and was still laughing and joking with the officials when they led him to the scaffold.

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