Charles Jules Guiteau, who assassinated President Garfield, is usually described as a disappointed office-seeker who wanted revenge. In reality, however, Guiteau was a victim of mental illness, probably paranoid schizophrenia. He lived for a long time in the utopian Oneida Community, but was unable to cope with life there, and subsequently became, in succession, a lawyer, a bill collector, a writer of abstruse theological tracts, a lecturer, and a petty swindler. Turning to politics in 1880, he joined the Stalwart faction of the Republican party in their campaign to run Grant for a third term, spending most of his time lounging around campaign headquarters, but also giving occasional partisan talks. When Garfield won the Republican nomination, Guiteau supported him. On November 11, 1880, he wrote politely to Secretary of State William Evarts, asking for the ministry in Vienna in return for his work in the campaign, which, he said, had been of critical importance. He moved to Washington, slept on park benches, haunted the State Department, now demanding to be made Consul at Paris. He wrote insistent letters to the President, and more and more included in them criticisms of Garfield’s policies. In mid-May, 1881, he seems to have decided that Garfield, who had aligned himself with the Half-Breed faction of the Republican Party, enemies of the Stalwarts, should be assassinated. He planned twice to kill Garfield, but was unable to bring himself to act. Then on July 2, when Garfield was in the Washington railroad station waiting for a train, Guiteau shot him. The President lived in pain through the summer, but died on September 19.
On November 14 the trial of Guiteau began. It proved to be an important one in the development of criminal justice because Guiteau pleaded insanity, and the legal status of such a plea was still uncertain. Guiteau, who assisted at his own defense, was found guilty on January 5, 1882, and executed on July 30.
The following account of the assassination is Guiteau’s own, taken from the autobiography he wrote while in prison: H. H. Alexander: The Life of Guiteau and the Official History of the Most Exciting Case on Record … (1882). See Charles E. Rosenberg: The Trial of the Assassin Guiteau: Psychiatry and Law in the Gilded Age (1968).
“I have not,” he says, “used the words ‘assassination’ or ‘assassin’ in this work. These words grate on the mind and produce a bad feeling. I think of General Garfield’s condition as a removal and not as an assassination. My idea simply stated was to remove as easily as possible Mr. James A. Garfield, a quiet and good-natured citizen of Ohio, who temporarily occupied the position of President of the United States, and substitute in his place Mr. Chester A. Arthur, of New York, a distinguished and highly estimable gentleman.…
“Two weeks after I conceived the idea my mind was thoroughly settled on the intention to remove the President. I then prepared myself. I sent to Boston for a copy of my book, ‘The Truth,’ and I spent a week in preparing that. I cut out a paragraph and a line and a word here and there and added one or two new chapters, put some new ideas in it and I greatly improved it. I knew that it would probably have a large sale on account of the notoriety that the act of removing the President would give me, and I wished the book to go out to the public in proper shape. That was one preparation for it.
“Another preparation was to think the matter all out in detail and to buy a revolver and to prepare myself for executing the idea. This required some two or three weeks, and I gave my entire time and mind in preparing myself to execute the conception of removing the President.… My mind was perfectly clear in regard to removing the President; I had not the slightest doubt about my duty to the Lord and to the American people in trying to remove the President, and I want to say here, as emphatically as words can make it, that, from the moment when I fully decided to remove the President, I have never had the slightest shadow on my mind; my purpose had been just as clear and just as determined as anything could be. I believed that I was acting under a special Divine authority to remove him, and this Divine pressure was upon me from the time when I fully resolved to remove him until I actually shot him. It was only by nerving myself to the utmost that I did it at all, and I never had the slightest doubt as the Divine inspiration of the act, and that it was for the best interest of the American people.”
“Having heard on Friday from the papers, and also by my inquiries of the doorkeeper at the White House, Friday evening, that the President was going to Long Branch Saturday morning, I resolved to remove him at the depot. I took my breakfast at the Riggs House about eight o’clock. I ate well and felt well in body and mind. I went into Lafayette Square and sat there some little time after breakfast, waiting for nine o’clock to come, and then I went to the depot and I got there about ten minutes after nine.…
“I examined my revolver to see that it was all right, and took off the paper that I had wrapped around it to keep the moisture off. I waited five or six minutes longer, sat down on a seat in the ladies’ room, and very soon the President drove up. He was in company with a gentleman who, I understand, was Mr. Blaine.…
“The President got out on the pavement side and Mr. Blaine on the other side. They entered the ladies’ room; I stood there watching the President and they passed by me. Before they reached the depot I had been promenading up and down the ladies’ room between the ticket office door and the news stand door, a space of some ten or twelve feet. I walked up and down there I should say two or three times working myself up, as I knew the hour was at hand. The President and Mr. Blaine came into the ladies’ room and walked right by me; they did not notice me as there were quite a number of ladies and children in the room.
“There was quite a large crowd of ticket-purchasers at the gentlemen’s ticket office in the adjoining room; the depot seemed to be quite full of people. There was quite a crowd and commotion around, and the President was in the act of passing from the ladies’ room to the main entrance through the door. I should say he was about four or five feet from the door nearest the ticket office, in the act of passing through the door to get through the depot to the cars. He was about three or four feet from the door. It stood five or six feet behind him, right in the middle of the room, and as he was in the act of walking away from me I pulled out the revolver and fired. He straightened up and threw his head back and seemed to be perfectly bewildered. He did not seem to know what struck him. I looked at him; he did not drop; I thereupon pulled again. He dropped his head, seemed to reel, and fell over. I do not know where the first shot hit; I aimed at the hollow of his back; I did not aim for any particular place, but I knew if I got those two bullets in his back he would certainly go. I was in a diagonal direction from the President, to the northwest, and supposed both shots struck.
“I was in the act of putting my revolver back into my pocket when the depot policeman seized me and said, ‘You shot the President of the United States.’ He was terribly excited; he hardly knew his head from his feet, and I said, ‘Keep quiet, my friend; keep quiet, my friend. I want to go to jail.’ A moment after the policeman seized me by the left arm; clutched me with terrible force. Another gentleman—an older man, I should say, and less robust—seized me by the right ram. At this moment the ticket agent and a great crowd of people rushed around me, and the ticket agent said, ‘That’s him; that’s him’; and he pushed out his arm to seize me around the neck, and I says, ‘Keep quiet, my friends; I want to go to jail; and the officers, one on each side of me, rushed me right off to the Police Headquarters, and the officer who first seized me by the hand says, ‘This man has just shot the President of the United States,’ and he was terribly excited. And I said, ‘Keep quiet, my friend; keep quiet; I have got some papers which will explain the whole matter.’
“They held my hands up—one policeman on one side and one on the other—and they went through me, took away my revolver and what little change I had, my comb and my toothpick, all my papers, and I gave them my letter to the White House; told them that I wished they would send that letter to the White House at once, and the officer began to read my letter to the White House, and in this envelope containing my letter to the White House was my speech ‘Garfield against Hancock.’ He glanced his eye over the letter and I was telling him about sending it at once to the White House to explain the matter and he said, ‘We will put you into the White House!’ So I said nothing after that.