Jedediah Hyde Baxter Columbian University (now George Washington University Law School) with an LL.B. degree. Baxter's duties included serving as personal physician to the President of the United States. He attended James A. Garfield's family, but was out of town when Charles J. Guiteau shot Garfield in July 1881. As a result, Baxter did not examine Garfield following the shooting or treat him during his subsequent illness. By the time he rushed back to Washington, Doctor Willard Bliss had taken charge and would not let Baxter see the wounded President. According to contemporary accounts, Bliss stated that Baxter was attempting to see Garfield
Charles J. Guiteau to be the center of attention for once in his life. Guiteau sent a letter in which he argued that Arthur should set him free because he had just increased Arthur's salary by making him president. At one point, Guiteau argued before Judge Cox that Garfield was killed not by the bullets but by medical malpractice ("The doctors killed Garfield, I just shot him"). Throughout the trial and up until his execution, Guiteau was housed at St. Elizabeths Hospital in the southeastern quadrant of Washington, D.C. While in prison and awaiting execution, Guiteau wrote a defense of the assassination he