18811776 Club
Guiteau shoots Garfield twice from behind; the president is carried from the Baltimore and Potomac station
An office seeker with a .44 revolver stalked the president for weeks; Garfield had no bodyguard when he entered the station this morning.
James Garfield had been president for less than four months and had no bodyguard when he walked into the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad station on July 2, 1881, headed for a train to Williams College. Charles Guiteau, a delusional office seeker who believed he was owed a diplomatic post for campaign work Garfield barely remembered, had stalked him for weeks. At 9:30 that morning, Guiteau shot Garfield twice from behind with a .44 British Bulldog revolver. Garfield lingered for eleven weeks before dying that September in New Jersey…
