Charles Burleigh Purvis very successful at Howard, and was credited with keeping the medical department running during the financial panic of 1873. He attended President Garfield after he was shot by an assassin on July 2, 1881. This made him the first black physician to attend to a sitting president. Later in 1881 he was appointed by President Chester Arthur to Surgeon-in-Charge at the Freedmen's hospital. Purvis was surgeon-in-charge at the Freedmen's Hospital from October 1, 1881, to 1894, and in that role was the first black person to head a hospital under civilian authority. In a letter from 1908, Purvis stated he
Charles J. Guiteau Scoville then became lead counsel for the defense. While Scoville's legal experience lay in land title examination, he had married Guiteau's sister and was thus obliged to defend him in court when no one else would. Wayne MacVeagh, the U.S. Attorney General, served as the chief prosecutor. MacVeagh named five lawyers to the prosecution team: George Corkhill, Walter Davidge, retired judge John K. Porter, Elihu Root, and E.B. Smith. Guiteau's trial was one of the first high-profile cases in the United States where a defense based on a claim of temporary insanity was considered. Guiteau vehemently insisted that while he