Author’s note: This blog contains a description of the assassination and autopsy of President James Garfield, and light spoilers for the Netflix series Death by Lightning.
Netflix’s 2025 historical series Death by Lightning opens at an Army Medical Museum warehouse in 1969. In a moment of comical morbidity that would set the tone for the show, a dusty jar escapes a crate and rolls across the floor. What appears to be a human brain swims within its cloudy waters. Examining its gruesome contents, the foreman reads the label and asks one of the series’ central questions: “Who the [expletive] is Charles Guiteau?”
Well, who was he? Charles J. Guiteau was a delusional, narcissistic office-seeker, intent on using the spoils system to obtain the consulship position he believed he was due. Incensed at Garfield’s failure to acknowledge his perceived contribution to his campaign, Guiteau’s dangerous delusion became all-encompassing.
On July 2, 1881, Charles Guiteau stalked the American President into the Baltimore & Potomac Railroad Depot (now the site of the National Gallery of Art). He carried a .44 caliber snub-nosed revolver in his pocket. Morally bereft coward to the end, Guiteau shot President James Garfield in the back. Garfield had served only four months in office.
Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station, ca 1890-1990. The scene of President Garfield’s assassination. (Thornton Owen photograph collection, OW 50)
Guiteau’s deranged fantasy had ushered in a national nightmare. Garfield held on tenuously to life as his doctors probed his body for the bullet. Meanwhile, Guiteau languished in the District of Columbia jail, believing still that he would be liberated and commended for his heroic actions by then Vice President Chester Arthur.
Guiteau lived and died in infamy, as the architect of a tragedy that changed the direction of American history.
The portion of Guiteau’s brain removed for scientific study and featured in the pilot episode of Death by Lightning remains in the collection of the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Silver Spring.
By employing this framing device, Death by Lightning illustrates a recurring type of museum mystery: the rediscovery of artifacts that have long remained hidden within archival collections. In addition to Guiteau’s brain, another artifact that makes its enigmatic appearance in the final moments of the series. The bullet charged with a terrible purpose appears only briefly: pinched within the forceps of army pathologist Dr. Daniel S. Lamb as he performs the autopsy of the assassinated American President.
This very bullet has been secure within the DC History Center’s collections for the past seventy years.
Garfield bullet (left) pictured beside prop bullet from Death by Lightning (right). Courtesy Mike Makowsky, series creator, who visited the bullet in December 2025.
Weathered by time and its nearly three months residency in Garfield’s body, Guiteau’s bullet sports a slightly indented nose from impact. A hole is bored through the bullet’s core. It is an unassuming item that holds a violent history. This bullet killed a sitting American president.
How this infamous object came into the ownership of the DC History Center is a curious tale. Like other evidence from Guiteau’s trial, the bullet’s whereabouts had been unknown for decades. The tale of the bullet’s extraordinary provenance picks up at the John G. and James H. Miller safemaster firm in Washington DC. The firm dismantled an abandoned safe that had been in their possession for so long that the information on who had turned it over was lost.
Much to the surprise of the safe masters, the contents of the safe included the bullet, autopsy photographs detailing sections of Garfield’s spine and illustrating the bullet’s trajectory. A letter written and signed by chief physician Dr. D.W. Bliss certified the authenticity of the object.
Washington Star columnist and local historian John Clagett Proctor reported the miraculous find in the Sunday Star on March 16, 1947. In his article, Proctor includes a quote from the late Superintendent of the Police Richard Sylvester, who recalled the failure of the police department to retain possession of the evidence.
Proctor’s daughter Maud Proctor Callis donated the bullet and corresponding documents to the Historical Society (then under the leadership of Ulysses S. Grant III) in 1955, shortly before her father’s death.
Autopsy photograph showing injury to section of Garfield’s spine, Feb 24, 1882 (James A. Garfield autopsy collection, MS 0580).
Whether the bullet itself can be described as Garfield’s killer depends on your perspective. The true culprit of Garfield’s demise was likely sepsis. Far from a fatal shot, the bullet’s trajectory had missed impacting his spinal cord and major organs. Yet the President’s health continued to decline.
In denial about Garfield’s rapidly deteriorating condition and desperate to reap his reputational due, Dr. Bliss continued to give hopeful reports to local papers, insisting that the President was recovering. However, Bliss could not escape the cost of his own hubris. Suspicious of recent advances in germ theory, the doctor refused to incorporate antiseptic methods into his practice. Bliss and his team repeatedly inserted unsterilized fingers and equipment into the open wound in an attempt to locate the bullet.
Eager to assert himself in the hunt for the bullet, famed inventor Alexander Graham Bell applied himself to crafting a machine that could help save the president. Bell’s induction balance functioned as metal detector and precursor to the modern x-ray. However, Bliss instructed Bell to search only one side of Garfield’s body. As a result, the bullet remained elusive, despite the success of the device.
After only four months in office Garfield passed from this mortal world on September 19, 1881. He survived for 80 days in excruciating pain while a septic infection introduced by his own doctor’s contaminated fingers and equipment ravaged his body.
Autopsy photograph showing wound to Garfield’s first lumber vertebrae, Feb 24, 1882 (James A. Garfield autopsy collection, MS 0580).
United in grief, American citizens mourned their shared loss. James Garfield was a man of principle, a veteran of the Civil War, and fierce advocate for abolition and black suffrage. He was a master orator and a respected Congressman, serving nine terms in the House of Representatives. A beloved husband, father, and friend to many; his loss sent shockwaves rippling across the country.
Reluctantly ascending to an office he never coveted, Chester A. Arthur became the 21st President of the United States. Exceeding all expectations, President Arthur honored Garfield’s legacy by reforming the civil service and ending the spoils system (from which he had previously benefited).
Arthur’s commitment to supporting and elevating competent public servants and rooting out corruption and fraud became the foundation for the modern federal service. Such as it was.
Letter of authenticity signed by Dr. D.W. Bliss, Sept 20, 1881 (James A. Garfield autopsy collection, MS 0580).
Whether housed in climate-controlled facilities, tucked away in dusty warehouses, or brought to life on screen, artifacts retain traces of the visceral encounters that shape history.
Garfield’s decline and death is extraordinarily well documented. In addition to the fateful bullet, the DC History Center’s collections house autopsy documents, engravings and woodcuts, postmortem reports, and a clinical history autographed by attending physician surgeon Robert Reyburn.
Death by Lightning is currently streaming on Netflix. Special thanks to Mike Makowsky, series creator, and Candice Millard, historian and author of Destiny of the Republic for their witnessing, conversation, and for telling Garfield’s story with such deep care.
President Garfield’s casket (right, American flag) and his wife Lucretia Garfield (left) at the James A. Garfield Monument, courtesy Autumn Kalikin.
Autumn Kalikin is the Senior Manager of Collections at the DC History Center. Like President James Garfield, she was born and raised in Cuyahoga County, Ohio.
[i] John Clagett Proctor, “Garfield Bullet Unearthed” The Sunday Star, March 16, 1947.
