James A. Garfield was assassinated by Charles J. Guiteau in 1881. Guiteau, an emotionally unsettled office seeker, believed Garfield’s refusal to appoint him to a European consulship justified violence as a “divine” or political necessity to advance the country, and he shot Garfield in the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station in Washington, D.C. on July 2, 1881. Garfield survived the initial shooting but died later that year from complications (infection and other causes related to the injury) on September 19, 1881. The act helped spur civil service reform, notably the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act of 1883, which aimed to reduce patronage abuses by instituting competitive examinations and merit-based hiring.
