James Garfield Custom Display Featuring Assassination Carpet Fragment

A relic relating to 20th U.S. President James A. Garfield (1831-1881) exhibited in a custom display, an oblong fragment of olive green wool carpet removed from the site of Garfield's shooting at the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station on July 2, 1881. Approximately .5" x .5". It is affixed to a University Archives certification display sheet measuring 8.5" x 11." Sourced from and certified authentic by University Archives, one of the foremost authorities of historical relics and artifacts. Near fine condition.

On the morning of July 2, 1881, James Garfield was en route to leave Washington, D.C. to deliver a speech at his alma mater, Williams College, before returning to New Jersey for the summer. Garfield arrived at the Sixth Street Station of the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad accompanied by his two sons. U.S. Secretary of State James G. Blaine and U.S. Secretary of War Robert Todd Lincoln were also present. He traveled without a bodyguard (sixteen years after the assassination of his predecessor Abraham Lincoln, the killing was still characterized as a Civil War aberration.) While conversing with Blaine in a lounge near the ladies' waiting room, Garfield was shot at point-blank range by disgruntled office seeker Charles J. Guiteau (1841-1882) somewhere in the vicinity of this carpet swatch.

Garfield was shot twice, once in the arm and once in the back. The second bullet lodged near Garfield’s pancreas and proved irretrievable despite Alexander Graham Bell’s attempts to locate the bullet using the newly developing science of metal detection. Garfield died from complications of an infection at age forty-nine. His death was ensured by the constant probing of many doctors unfamiliar with basic germ theory, after seven weeks of excruciating convalescence in the White House and along the New Jersey shore. The presidential assassin Guiteau was executed by hanging in 1882 following one of the first American court proceedings that considered insanity as a mitigating factor.

The Baltimore and Potomac Railroad station was designed by Joseph M. Wilson in the Neo-Gothic style and operated between its opening in 1872 and its closure in 1907. It connected the nation's Capital to Baltimore and by extension New York, New England, and all points north. The structure was viewed as an eyesore soon after its completion, and Washingtonians resented the traffic, noise, and coal smoke it generated. Motions to raze the station were accelerated after Garfield's shooting there, but it would not be until a presidential directive by Theodore Roosevelt guaranteed its dismantling in 1908. The National Gallery of Art now partly stands on the site.

Provenance:

The carpet swatch is accompanied by a photocopy of a period hand-written information card which reads in full: "The above is a piece of the carpet on which President Garfield stood when the fatal shot was fired."

The attached images are for reference purposes only; these show a contemporary print of Garfield's assassination, and the memorial erected at the train station which was lost after the station was razed in 1908.

This item comes with a Certificate from John Reznikoff, a premier authenticator for both major 3rd party authentication services, PSA and JSA (James Spence Authentications), as well as numerous auction houses.

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