On this date in 1881, President James A. Garfield is shot as he walks through a railroad waiting room in Washington, D.C. Garfield’s assassin was an attorney and political office-seeker named Charles Guiteau. He was a relative stranger to the president and his administration in an era when federal positions were doled out on a “who you know” basis. When his requests for an appointment were ignored, a furious Guiteau stalked the president, vowing revenge. On the morning of July 2, 1881, Garfield headed for the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad station on his way to a short vacation. As he walked through the station toward the waiting train, Guiteau stepped behind the president and fired two shots. The first bullet grazed Garfield’s arm; the second lodged below his pancreas. Doctors made several unsuccessful attempts to remove the bullet while Garfield lay in his White House bedroom, awake and in pain. Alexander Graham Bell, who was one of Garfield’s physicians, tried to use an early version of a metal detector to find the second bullet, but also failed.

Historical accounts vary as to the exact cause of Garfield’s death. Some believe that the physicians’ treatments—which included the administration of quinine, morphine, brandy and calomel and feeding him through the rectum–may have hastened his demise. Others insist Garfield died from an already advanced case of heart disease. By early September, Garfield, was recuperating at a seaside retreat at Elberon, New Jersey. He died on September 19, 1881. Autopsy reports at the time said that pressure from the festering internal wound had created an aneurism that was the likely cause of death. Upon Garfield’s demise, Vice President Chester A. Arthur was inaugurated as the 20th President of the United States. Garfield had three funerals: one in Elberon; another in Washington, where his body rested in state in the Capitol for three days; and a third in Cleveland, Ohio, where he was buried. Charles Guiteau’s murder trial began in November, and in January 1882 he was found guilty and sentenced to death. On June 30, 1882, he was hanged at his jail in Washington.