Jedediah Hyde Baxter In 1872, he was appointed Chief Medical Purveyor, and in 1874 he received promotion to colonel. In 1875, Baxter graduated from Columbian University (now George Washington University Law School) with an LL.B. degree. Baxter's duties as Chief Medical Purveyor included serving as personal physician to the President of the United States, and he attended James A. Garfield's family. Baxter was out of town when Charles J. Guiteau shot Garfield in July 1881, and was not able to examine Garfield following the shooting. Garfield's other physicians prevented Baxter from seeing Garfield, which generated controversy both immediately after the shooting and after
Charles R. Skinner in Washington D.C. in 1882, and had been asked to attend the execution of Garfield's assassin, Charles Guiteau, but was unable to attend due to the illness of his daughter. He was invited to Czolgosz's execution by the warden of Auburn Prison, and attended as one of only twelve "official" witnesses to the execution as required by New York law. Less than two months after shooting McKinley, Czolgosz was executed on October 29, 1901 in Auburn Prison. Czolgosz was executed in the electric chair, an early usage of this new form of execution. Thomas Edison later re-enacted the execution in