St. Elizabeths Hospital presidential assassins Richard Lawrence (who attempted to kill Andrew Jackson) and John Hinckley Jr., who shot Ronald Reagan, as well as the assassin of James Garfield, Charles J. Guiteau (until his execution). Other notable residents were Mary Fuller, James Swann, Ezra Pound, and William Chester Minor. The poet Ezra Pound was kept in St. Elizabeths on the charge of treason for 13 years (1946–58). Despite his being sane, and proving it by publication of two volumes of poetry and several translations, he was deemed unfit to stand trial by reason of insanity. In 1958 the treason charges were dropped, but
James A. Garfield appointing William H. Robertson to the lucrative post of Collector of the Port of New York, starting a fracas that ended with Robertson's confirmation and Conkling's resignation from the Senate. Garfield advocated agricultural technology, an educated electorate, and civil rights for African Americans. He also proposed substantial civil service reform, eventually passed by Congress in 1883 and signed into law by his successor, Chester A. Arthur, as the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act. On July 2, 1881, he was shot at the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station in Washington D.C. by Charles J. Guiteau, a disappointed office seeker. The wound