It's September 19, and we will remember this date as the day President James Garfield died (1881). He won the presidential election of 1880 and had only been in office for a very short time when he was shot on July 2 while waiting for a train at the Baltimore And Potomac railroad station in Washington. The assassin was a lunatic who is always known as "disappointed office seeker Charles Guiteau."* Guiteau had supported the candidacy of Ulysses S. Grant in the 1880 election, and had written essays and speeches extolling the virtues of Grant; when Garfield won the White House, Guiteau hung around there every day, hoping to get a meeting with Garfield in order to be named a consul to the French government. He showed off the essays and speeches which he had reprinted with Garfield's name substituted for Grant's. Failing to get the political appointment, he naturally deduced that God wanted him to kill Garfield, so he shot the president.
Death did not come instantly for Garfield, who lingered through pain, infections, and hallucinations through the hot DC summer as Thomas Edison raced to perfect a metal detector to locate the bullet within the 20th president. With the magnetometer ready, Edison went searching for the bullet that, once removed, would give Garfield a chance, but a) the president was on a metal bed frame, which muddled the metal detector's readings, and b) doctors were so sure the bullet was on the right side, they wouldn't allow Edison to examine the left side.
After 79 excruciating days, Garfield died, probably shaking his head at the incompetence around him.
*Not to be confused with Leon Czolgosz, who assassinated President McKinley in 1901, and is invariably referred to as "crazed anarchist Leon Czolgosz.
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