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Charles J. Guiteau

1841–1882 · 41 years

The failure who believed God owed him a consulship in Paris

Portrait of Charles J. Guiteau — C. M. Bell — 1881 — Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

Nothing he tried had worked. Guiteau grew up in Freeport, Illinois, under a father who beat him for mispronouncing words and who preached the perfectionist gospel of John Humphrey Noyes. He inherited 1,000 dollars, failed the University of Michigan entrance examinations, and in June 1860 joined Noyes's Oneida Community instead, where the women rejected him and turned his name into the nickname Charles Gitout. He left, sued Noyes for back wages, and talked his way past a three-question bar examination in Chicago. He argued one case and his client was convicted. He lived on debt collection, keeping far more than he passed on. His wife divorced him in 1874. In 1880 he wrote a campaign speech for Grant and swapped in Garfield's name when Garfield took the nomination.

He believed the speech had elected Garfield, and that the debt was a consulship. He wanted Vienna, then Paris. He was living in Washington without a coat or boots, writing letters on hotel stationery, when Secretary of State James G. Blaine told him on May 14, 1881, never to raise the Paris consulship again. On July 2 Guiteau shot the president twice from behind at the Baltimore and Potomac depot. He surrendered at once, saying he was a Stalwart of the Stalwarts, the pro-Conkling faction, and Arthur was president now. Garfield lived eleven more weeks.

Garfield did not die of the shooting but of the search for the bullet. Doctors led by Willard Bliss, who had appointed himself chief physician, probed the wound repeatedly with unwashed fingers and unsterilized instruments, driving infection into a channel they had made themselves. Alexander Graham Bell built a metal detector for the case and was allowed to search only the side Bliss insisted the bullet lay on. Unable to keep food down, the president fell from 210 pounds to 130. He was moved by train to Elberon, New Jersey, and died there on September 19 of sepsis and a ruptured splenic artery. At trial Guiteau said the doctors killed Garfield and he had only shot him. Modern surgeons agree that sterile care would have saved him. The jury did not think it made him any less the killer.

His mental state was the case, and it still is. The defense argued insanity under the M'Naghten rule. Guiteau insisted that he was legally insane, because God had taken away his free will, but not medically insane, a distinction that set him against his own lawyers. The jury convicted him on January 25, 1882, and he was hanged in Washington that June 30. The autopsy called the thickening around his brain syphilis. Later clinicians have argued for schizophrenia. Part of that brain is in a jar at the Mütter Museum, and the diagnosis remains open. The politics closed faster. He killed a president to save the patronage system, and Congress began dismantling it with the Pendleton Act of 1883.

Lifespan

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Charles J. Guiteau's life against the full span of the corpus.

Notable works

The Truth: A Companion to the Bible book
Sold on his lecture tour and lifted almost entirely from John Humphrey Noyes 1879
Garfield against Hancock speech
Written for Grant, then revised by swapping in the nominee's name. Delivered at most twice and handed out in print to Republican committee members. 1880
The Truth, and the Removal book
Written in jail — his defense of the killing and his account of the trial 1882
I Am Going to the Lordy song
The poem he chanted on the scaffold, with a note that it might be set to music 1882

Life in brief

with age at each point

September 8, 1841 aged 0 Born in Freeport, Illinois The fourth of six children. His mother died when he was seven.
June 1860 aged 18 Joins the Oneida Community after failing the University of Michigan entrance examinations He stayed five years, was largely shunned, and later sued the founder for back wages.
August 1868 aged 26 Admitted to the Illinois bar after a cursory examination He was asked three questions and answered two correctly. He argued a single case in court and lost it.
April 1874 aged 32 His wife is granted a divorce He had arranged the evidence of adultery himself.
May 14, 1881 aged 39 Blaine tells him never to raise the Paris consulship again Guiteau had been pressing the administration for a diplomatic post since the inauguration.
July 2, 1881 aged 39 Shoots President Garfield at the Baltimore and Potomac depot in Washington He was arrested at the scene by a patrolman and taken to the police station.
September 19, 1881 aged 40 Garfield dies at Elberon, New Jersey, eleven weeks after the shooting Sepsis following repeated probing of the wound. The charge against Guiteau became murder.
January 25, 1882 aged 40 Convicted of murder in a trial that turned on his sanity One of the first American cases to put a claim of temporary insanity before a jury. He shouted at the jurors as the verdict was read.
June 30, 1882 aged 40 Hanged in Washington He recited a poem written that morning. His brain and skeleton were kept by what is now the National Museum of Health and Medicine.