James A. Garfield was the last of the ‘log cabin presidents’, and made his staple by attacked political corruption and won back for the Presidency a measure of prestige it had lost during the Reconstruction period. On the 36th ballot (1880), Garfield himself became the "dark horse" nominee, and only won the election by a margin of only 10,000 popular votes. One of Garfield’s only attempted political moves was in foreign affairs, when Garfield's Secretary of State invited all American republics to a conference to meet in Washington in 1882. However, the conference never took place, for on July 2, 1881, in a Washington railroad station, an embittered attorney who had sought a political position, but did not receive it, shot the President. Mortally wounded, Garfield lay in the White House for weeks. Alexander Graham Bell, also notably the inventor of the telephone, tried unsuccessfully to find the bullet with an induction-balance electrical device, which he himself had designed. On September 6, Garfield was taken to the New Jersey seaside and for a few days he seemed to be recuperating, but on September 19, 1881, he died from an infection and internal hemorrhage. Garfield was the second of only four presidents to be assassinated in office