President Shot!!

While waiting in the oppessive heat at the railroad station that was summer in Washington, D.C., President James Garfield was gunned down by a person who some called a mad man. The date was July 2, 1881.

Garfield, was born in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, the last of the “log cabin presidents”, in 1831. He served from Ohio in the House of Representatives beginning in 1862 after a brief stint in the military during the Civil War.

In 1880, he became a dark horse candidate for the office of the president on the 36th ballot. That fall he won a narrow victory over Democrat Winfield Scott Hancock also a veteran of the Civil War by a mere 10,000 votes.

While waiting for a train to take him to New England and away from the summer heat, Charles Guiteau an attorney and a person who sought a political position in the Garfield administration, shot the unguarded president in the back.

Though mortally wounded, Garfield in office only four months at the time of the shooting lingered for two and half months before succumbing to his wounds September 19th, 1881 making his tenue the second shortest term as president in American history.