US President James Garfield (aged 49) was shot by Charles Guiteau in Washington, DC

The assassination of President James A. Garfield took place in Washington, D.C. on July 2, 1881, at the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station. Garfield was shot by Charles J. Guiteau at 9:30 am, less than four months into Garfield's term as the 20th President of the United States.

Garfield died eleven weeks later on September 19, 1881, the second of four Presidents to be assassinated, following Abraham Lincoln and preceding William McKinley and John F. Kennedy. His Vice President, Chester A. Arthur, succeeded Garfield as President.

Garfield survived the longest after being shot, compared to the other presidents who were assassinated;

• Lincoln died nine hours after being shot,
• Kennedy died almost immediately,
• and McKinley survived for a week before dying.

His assassin, Guiteau, also lived the longest after the event, executed

• almost a year after the shooting and nine months after Garfield's death;
• John Wilkes Booth was hunted down and killed twelve days after Lincoln's death,
• Lee Harvey Oswald was murdered two days after Kennedy was shot, and
• Leon Czolgosz was executed little over a month after killing McKinley.