A fracas ensued that resulted in Robertson's confirmation and the resignations of Conkling and Thomas C. Platt from the Senate.
On July 2, 1881, Charles J. Guiteau, a disappointed and delusional office seeker, shot Garfield at the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station in Washington. The wound was not immediately fatal, but managed to kill Garfield on September 19, 1881, due to infection caused by his doctors' unsanitary methods.

Childhood and early life[edit]
Replica of the log cabin in Moreland Hills, Ohio, where Garfield was born
James Abram Garfield was born the youngest of five children on November 19, 1831, in a log cabin in Orange Township, now Moreland Hills, Ohio. Orange Township had been in the Western Reserve until 1800. Garfield's ancestor Edward Garfield immigrated from Hillmorton, Warwickshire, England, to Massachusetts around 1630. James's father Abram was born in Worcester, New York, and came to Ohio to woo his childhood sweetheart, Mehitabel Ballou, only to find her married. He instead wed her sister Eliza, who was born in New Hampshire. James was named after an earlier son of Eliza and Abram who had died in infancy.