George E. Goodfellow On July 2, 1881, President James Garfield was shot by assassin Charles J. Guiteau. One bullet was thought later to have possibly lodged near his liver but could not be found. Standard medical practice at the time called for physicians to insert their unsterilized fingers into the wound to probe and locate the path of the bullet. Neither the germ theory nor Dr. Joseph Lister's technique for "antisepsis surgery" using dilute carbolic acid, which had been first demonstrated in 1865, much less surgically opening abdominal cavities to repair gunshot wounds, had not yet been accepted as standard practice by prevailing
Moses J. Liddell loss of slave labor. As a result of these conditions the Jones-Liddell feud came to a boil when Liddell's father, St. John Richardson Liddell, was assassinated by the Jones family on February 14, 1870. In ratalliation of his father's murder, on February 18, 1870, when Moses J. Liddell saw the accused assassin of his father, Col. Charles Jones, Liddell shot him while Jones was being transported to the boat in custody at Harrisonburg. Jones did not die as a result of the gunshot wounds. As a result of the political unrest due to the sensationalized feud, Moses J. Liddell along