Chester A. Arthur where the former Senator hoped for a quick re-election to the Senate, and with it, a defeat for the Garfield administration. The Republican majority in the state legislature was divided on the question, to Conkling and Platt's surprise, and an intense campaign in the state house ensued. While in Albany on July 2, Arthur learned that Garfield had been shot. The assassin, Charles J. Guiteau, was a deranged office-seeker who believed that Garfield's successor would appoint him to a patronage job. He proclaimed to onlookers: "I am a Stalwart, and Arthur will be President!" Guiteau was found to be mentally
Charles J. Guiteau Arbor, Michigan, in order to attend the University of Michigan. Due to inadequate academic preparation, he failed the entrance examinations. Despite cramming in French and algebra at Ann Arbor High School, during which time he received numerous letters from his father concerning his progress, he quit, and in June 1860 joined the utopian religious sect the Oneida Community, in Oneida, New York, with which Guiteau's father already had close affiliations. According to Brian Resnick of "The Atlantic", Guiteau "worshiped" the group's founder, John Humphrey Noyes, once writing that he had "perfect, entire and absolute confidence in him in all things".