Charles J. Guiteau was a man who strove for excellence.
Unfortunately, all he could achieve was mediocrity, but in a seemingly
impossible feat, his mediocrity is electrifying. It’s bold enough to have made
him an historical figure. He thought the road to greatness was paved with
political favor, with religious fervor, with all sorts of failed business
attempts, and it didn’t help that he believed he was on a mission from God.
The J stands for Julius, which is sort of funny when you
think about it.
He was born in Freeport, IL, on September 8, 1841. He got a
windfall inheritance from his grandfather and wanted to go to the University of
Michigan, but in his first extant run-in with mediocrity, he failed the
entrance exam due to lack of preparation. While he was there, his father wrote
to him about the Oneida Community in New York. Today, Oneida would be
considered a cult and possibly a problem to be dealt with at some point, like
David Koresh and his group. But back then they were a utopian society with a
healthy helping of free love a century before the hippies arrived on the
counterculture scene in America.
Their main belief was that Jesus already came back in 70 AD,
and it was up to humanity to bring about the thousand years of sin-free life.
The men practiced sex without cumming as a profession of their love. Property
belonged to everyone. Everyone was married to everyone else. If someone wanted
to reproduce, they would go before a committee to be spiritually and morally matched
to someone. Once the kids are weaned off the tit, they’re raised by doctors,
not their parents. Parents could visit if they wished.
They folded in 1881, for reasons soon to be evident, but a
faction still survives today in an odd form. Oneida is currently one of the
biggest silverware companies in the world.
Guiteau and his father joined the community. Guiteau was
enthralled by the group so much that he said of its founder, John Humphrey
Noyes that he had “perfect, entire and absolute confidence in him in all
things.” He left twice. The first time so he could start an Oneida newspaper in
New Jersey (which failed, as most of his attempts at anything did). The second
time because he suddenly changed his mind about Noyes. The Oneida women did not
want to mate with him, and the men rode him down with insults. They nicknamed
him Charles Gitout. All this time he’d worked to help the Oneida Community, but
he felt unappreciated by them. His anger raged so much he wound up suing Noyes.
He thought the community owed him money for his work on their behalf. He was,
in all likelihood, not familiar with how utopian communes work, possibly
because he didn’t get into the University of Michigan.
Noyes, by the way, believed Guiteau to be “irresponsible and
insane.” Guiteau would prove him right on both counts before his time on this
planet was over.
Guiteau moved back to Illinois where he tried to be a lawyer
in Chicago. It’s pretty evident that he did not have the credentials to do that
job. He only tried one case in court and lost. Seeing the writing on the wall,
he decided to try his luck as a bill collector, except he usually kept the
money, himself.
He married Annie Bunn, a woman he abused on a regular basis,
and they moved to New York to escape creditors, and here he became a Democrat
and got into politics. In 1872 he supported Horace Greeley himself for
president. Greeley famously said, “Go west, young man, go west and grow up with
the country.” Guiteau wrote a speech on his behalf, but it was mediocre. All
the same he became certain that if Greeley won the election, he would appoint
Guiteau as ambassador to Chile.
Greeley lost horribly to Ulysses S. Grant, who was president
at the time.
Annie had had enough. She wanted a divorce. Remember, at the
time divorce was exceptionally difficult to achieve. In an odd moment of
magnanimity he decided to help her get that divorce, except his method was to
sleep with a sex worker to legally prove his infidelity. It is possible that
this was how he got the syphilis that would plague him (or, more appropriately,
plague the United States) for the rest of his life.
A year later he plagiarized Noyes by writing a book called The Truth. Guiteau’s father, more
reasonable than Gitout, decided at this point that his son was possessed by the
devil. Guiteau disagreed. He was on a mission from God, so he started traveling
the country, preaching wherever he found people to listen.
In 1880 he moved to Boston, where he quickly fled because he
owed people money. A recurring theme in his life.
In 1876 he got involved in a presidential election again.
Today Republicans are divided between the MAGA assholes and reasonable people.
Back then they were divided into the Stalwarts and the Half-Breeds. Guiteau,
much to the later chagrin of the rest of his group, was a Stalwart, meaning he
wanted former slaves to have rights, and he was for patronage. That is when
someone is elected, instead of them getting qualified people for political
assignments, they give them to friends and supporters, which also sounds
familiar to modern ears. Not surprising that Guiteau was a huge fan of patronage.
The Half-Breeds wanted to eliminate the concept and get competent people for
important jobs.
Guiteau put his all into supporting Grant, who was trying
for a third nonconsecutive term in the Executive Mansion (it wasn’t really
called the White House until Theodore Rex’s time). Guiteau wrote a speech
called “Grant Against Hancock.” Guess what he wanted in return.
Grant did not get the nomination. Instead James Garfield
did, so Guiteau rewrote the speech and titled it “Garfield Against Hancock.”
The only rewriting he did was to change the name of the candidate. That’s even
lower than mediocrity. That’s downright lazy, but par for the course for
Guiteau. He delivered the speech twice and printed it for distribution.
Garfield won the election. So of course Guiteau wanted patronage. He repeatedly
made his case to Garfield and his Cabinet to no avail. Guiteau at first wanted
to be consul to Vienna, but then he got greedy and wanted Paris instead.
In those days, rather than stump for political favoritism,
people lined up to receive jobs from the president, usually in person. The
Secret Service thought Lincoln’s assassination was an outlier, so they never
made policy changes. Back then, if you wanted to, you could have walked up to
the Executive Mansion, knocked on the door and requested an audience with the
president. And you might actually have gotten it.
Guiteau now lived in Washington, DC, so he could routinely
request his patronage from Garfield, but Garfield kept saying no.
Guiteau’s life was like a George Thorogood song. He stayed
at rooming houses and, to avoid paying rent, would leave out the window to
avoid the landlord. Maybe throw some Nick Cave in there, too, as Guiteau had to
get around in the freezing cold with just ratty old clothes to keep him warm,
sans hat or footwear. He scavenged discarded newspapers from hotels, and he
wrote letters to the president on complimentary hotel stationary, pretending to
be a guest.
On May 14, 1881, he ran into James G. Blaine, the leader of
the Half-Breeds and the current (at the time) Secretary of State. As per usual
Guiteau begged for patronage, but Blaine had had enough of his bullshit. He
told Guiteau, “Never speak to me again on the Paris consulship as long as you
live!”
This was the last straw. Guiteau decided that since Garfield
refused to grant him patronage, then he was probably working to outlaw the very
concept. That would destroy the Republican party. It didn’t make any sense to
him because Chester A. Arthur, Garfield’s vice-president, was one of the most
devoted acolytes of Roscoe Conkling, the leader of the Stalwarts who would most
certainly grant Guiteau his “much-deserved” patronage. If only there was a way
to remove Garfield and replace him with Arthur . . .
Guiteau started keeping track of Garfield’s comings and
goings with murder on his mind. He knew he couldn’t kill the president, a Civil
War veteran, with a knife. That would be too risky. He said, “Garfield would
have crushed the life out of me with a single blow of his fist!” So he went shopping
for a gun. He decided that since God was running this show, it wouldn’t be an
assassination. It would be “removal.”
Guiteau borrowed fifteen dollars from a relative and went to
O’Meara’s in DC. He wanted a .442 Webbley British Bulldog revolver. There were
two versions: wood grips or ivory. Like most men on a mission from God, Guiteau
thought the one with ivory grips would look better in a museum. He couldn’t
afford it, though, as it was on sale for sixteen dollars. He talked the
shopkeeper down and got the one with ivory grips.
Maybe he really was on a mission from God.
Or maybe not. The gun was given to the Smithsonian, but no
one knows where it is now. So much for being on display in a museum. But
Guiteau would, indeed, get one of his belongings put on display in a museum.
Just not in the way he would have thought.
The recoil was a bitch, but he went target shooting until he
got a, uh, grip on it.
One day he trailed Garfield to the train station, but he
decided not to act because the First Lady was there. She was ill, and Guiteau
didn’t want to upset her.
It was a different time.
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| Guiteau vs. Garfield |
July 2, 1881. The newspaper says Garfield is going to be at
the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station. He’s going on vacation, and he
can’t wait to meet up with his wife and take it easy for a little bit. Guiteau is
already there, killing time. He got his shoes shined while he waited. No one
knows if he paid for the service.
Garfield enters the train station, and Guiteau sneaks up
from behind. He fires at Garfield twice. The first shot gets his arm, but the
second goes into his back, barely missing his spine.
Guiteau, in yet another moment of mediocrity, assumed the
president was dead and declared to his captors, “I am a Stalwart of the
Stalwarts! Arthur is president now!”
Cue the sound of every Stalwart’s butthole clenching. They
did not survive what we, today, would call a PR nightmare.
Four of our presidents have been assassinated (so far), and
of them Garfield was the only one to not die immediately or even the following
day. He lived a pretty long time for someone who had a bullet in his back
during a time when doctors thought washing their hands between patients was
ludicrous. Garfield lived so long after getting shot that Guiteau, during his
trial, claimed that he didn’t kill
the president. The doctors did. It’s a fair assessment. Never mind not washing
their hands. They didn’t have sterile gloves back then. Or sterile anything. So
Garfield died of an infection on September 19, 1881. Many doctors now believe
that if this happened today, with today’s understanding of medicine, Garfield
would not have died. But these doctors shoved their fingers in the back wound
so they could find the bullet. Gloveless fingers. Dirty fingers.
When Garfield died, Guiteau was charged. He pled not guilty.
With the proud bleating of the mediocre, he declared he would defend himself,
ensuring he had a fool for a client. The court recognized this, so they got him
an actual lawyer. Granted, his specialty was real estate, but George Scoville
was unfortunate enough to be Guiteau’s brother-in-law. He felt obliged.
Now that someone else was his lawyer, Guiteau decided to
plea insanity, the first high profile case in US history where that happened.
Guiteau claimed God took his free will. An alienist spoke on Guiteau’s behalf,
and today would have made an excellent argument. Too bad they couldn’t have
done an autopsy before Guiteau’s death. The evidence they found supported the
alienist’s testimony.
Guiteau didn’t act very sane in the courtroom. He routinely
cursed out everyone, including the judge. He gave testimony in epic poem
format. He used his autobiography to try to get laid (not all that crazy, but
still pretty inappropriate). It got so bad that he was almost assassinated. He tried to get Arthur to pardon him,
since without Guiteau, Arthur wouldn’t be president. Dammit, Arthur owed him a pardon. It would be the
ultimate form of patronage.
(Incidentally, Arthur was the one who rendered patronage
illegal. It did not destroy the country or even the Republican party. However,
so many politicians got angry over not being able to essentially sell positions
of power to their friends that they went back later and killed the act. Hence
our situation today in the current administration, where an anti-vaxxer is in
charge of healthcare, for example.)
But Guiteau was found guilty. Even though the hangman’s
noose awaited, he made plans for a lecture tour. He wrote about why he killed
Garfield in a book called The Truth, and
the Removal. He even decided to run for president in 1884.
June 30, 1882.
Guiteau reportedly danced up the steps to the rope,
cheerfully waving to the audience. With scratchy hemp at his neck he told the
world that God made him do it. He cursed the government with God’s “eternal
enmity.” He called President Arthur “a coward and an ingrate.” He then got his
last request: to read his poem, “I Am Going to the Lordy.” He’d wanted an
orchestral accompaniment but was denied.
He dropped the paper the poem was written on, and the
hangman draped his head in black. And finally Charles J. Guiteau danced the
final time, a hempen jig.
The rope was torn to pieces and sold as souvenirs. They
buried his body in the corner of the prison yard. Screws back then were much
the same as they are today, and they plotted to dig him up and tear him to
pieces to be sold as souvenirs. This came to light early, and his body was sent
to the National Museum of Health and Medicine. They bleached his skeleton and put
him in storage. They held on to his brain and his enlarged spleen. His brain is
now on display in the Mutter Museum, where I saw it nearly a decade ago.
During the autopsy they discovered he had phimosis. Don’t
Google that. It’s when the foreskin of the penis is so tight that the glans
can’t escape it during an erection. They discovered syphilis, which can make
people act insane during the late stages.
And that right there might be what actually killed the 20th
President of the United States. The only other suspect was a born loser.
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| Guiteau's brain. |
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