GARFIELD, 20th, 1881

James Abram Garfield was strong, broad shouldered and substantial with a large head and bushy, light-brown hair. His features were plain but manly and sensible. Garfield was elected President at age forty-nine. He was six feet in height and weighed 185 pounds.

He was one of the few scholarly men of the Presidency. A lover of poetry and the classics, he wrote passable verse, could read and write in Latin and Greek, and used to entertain his friends by simultaneously writing Latin with one hand and Greek with the other.

At rest he may have seemed ordinary, but when engaged in public speaking, a contemporary noted that Garfield's voice "took on a sort of explosive quality" as he moved toward his climax, "his language gained the height of simple and massive eloquence," and his arguments came forth "like a solid shot from a cannon."

Charles J. Guiteau borrowed ten dollars and purchased a .44 caliber "British Bulldog" pistol. According to Garfield biographer Allan Peskin, Guiteau chose the particular model because he believed it "would look more imposing in the museum case that it was destined to occupy." On July 2, 1881, Guiteau fired two bullets into Garfield. One caused a superficial arm wound. The whereabouts of this second bullet was a mystery despite even the efforts of Alexander Graham Bell, who used his newly-invented induction balance, better known now as a metal detector, to locate the bullet.

By the time Garfield died on September 19, his doctors had turned a three-inch-deep, harmless wound into a twenty-inch-long contaminated gash stretching from his ribs to his groin and oozing more pus each day. Garfield's medical bill was $18,500.

For some period after the shooting, Garfield was fed rectally. It is likely that he died of malnutrition.

At his trial, Guiteau admitted shooting the President but denied killing him. Instead, he claimed that Garfield's physicians killed him. Guiteau was executed because his defense was not strong enough.

d. September 19, 1881 (Elberon, New Jersey) at 49, assassinated.