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On the morning of July 2, 1881, the President entered the railway station at Washington, intending to take an eastern trip. Charles J. Guiteau, a disappointed office-seeker, crept up behind him and fired two bullets at him, one of which lodged in his back. The President died on September 19th, after weeks of suffering.
He was elected President by a small majority, and enraged the many enemies of James G. Blaine by selecting that astute politician as his secretary of state. One of these, a rattle-brained New Yorker named Charles J. Guiteau, approached the President on July 2, 1881, as he was waiting at a railroad station in Washington, about to start on a journey, and shot him through the body.
In one way and another I fancy that I am well acquainted with the assassins of history. Of those who slew Caesar I learned in my schooldays, and between Ravaillac, who did the business for Henry of Navarre, and Booth and Guiteau, my familiar knowledge seems almost at first hand.
This was how the Catholic Church in Red River stimulated the diseased vanity and the lawless spirit of this thrice-dangerous Guiteau of the plains. I have already said that Bruce was put up by Riel as a mere figure-head. When the end of the pretence had been accomplished, this poor scare-crow was thrown down and Louis Riel assumed the presidency of the Provisional Government.
I occupied a seat betwixt Corkhill and Scoville, Guiteau's brother-in-law and voluntary attorney. I say "voluntary" because from the first Guiteau rejected him and vilely abused him, vociferously insisting upon being his own lawyer. From the moment Guiteau entered the trial room it was a theatrical extravaganza.
Only Scoville intervened between me and Guiteau and I had an excellent opportunity to see, hear and size him up. In visage and voice he was the meanest creature I have, either in life or in dreams, encountered. He had the face and intonations of a demon. Everything about him was loathsome. I cannot doubt that his criminal colleagues of history were of the same description.
A request for a statement as to the life of Abraham Lincoln elicited, among other less startling pieces of information, the fact that many of the applicants thought that he was a general in the Civil War; several thought that he was President of the Confederate States; three thought he had been assassinated by Jefferson Davis, one by Thomas Jefferson, one by Garfield, several by Guiteau, and one by Ballington Booth the last representing a memory of the fact that he had been shot by a man named Booth, to whose surname the writer added the name with which he was most familiar in connection therewith.
Garfield the First Lady in the Land Her Illness The Assassination The Long Agony Death of President Garfield Funeral Ceremonies at Washington Interment at Cleveland Trial of Guiteau His Conviction and Execution. Bayard President Pro Tempore One Day Senator David Davis Chosen to Preside Pro Tempore. Conkling Appointed a Justice of the Supreme Court The Garfield Memorial Services at the Capitol Mr.
Though the issue was somewhat overshadowed in 1880, when Garfield was returned mainly on the tariff issue to be assassinated later by a disappointed place-hunter named Guiteau and succeeded by Arthur it revived in full force in 1884 when the Republican candidate was James G. Blaine. Blaine was personally typical of the degeneration of the Republican Party after the close of the Civil War.
The very humanitarians who abhor them are stirred to murder by them: the dagger of Brutus and Ravaillac is still active in the hands of Caserio and Luccheni; and the pistol has come to its aid in the hands of Guiteau and Czolgosz. Our remedies are still limited to endurance or assassination; and the assassin is still judicially assassinated on the principle that two blacks make a white.
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