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Updated: June 29, 2025
The day that President Garfield was shot by the assassin Guiteau, we were at a little watering place on Long Island Sound; and in the mail matter of that day came a letter with the Melbourne post-mark on it. It was for my wife, but I recognized Mr. Bascom's handwriting on the envelope, and opened it.
Blaine, the Secretary of State, Guiteau approached him casually, and, drawing out a pistol, fired two shots in rapid succession, one of which took effect on the President above the third rib. The assassin was at once secured, and the wounded President was carried back carefully to the White House.
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.
The biting poverty of it all led my father, with his family, to move to one of the famous cotton plantations of Dallas County, Ala. I seem to recall taking an interest in the world about me quite early. Especially do I recall, as one of my earliest recollections, the death of Garfield, so cruelly slain by the madman Guiteau. My father was greatly distressed, I remember, by his death.
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.
The new President had been but a few months in office, when Guiteau followed him into the railway station at Washington, and, as he entered the waiting-room, shot him in the back. The President fell wounded, but not unconscious. In great pain, he still remembered his loved ones, and moaned, "My poor wife and children." Then he dictated a message to his wife.
The day that President Garfield was shot by the assassin Guiteau, we were at a little watering place on Long Island Sound; and in the mail matter of that day came a letter with the Melbourne post-mark on it. It was for my wife, but I recognized Mr. Bascom's handwriting on the envelope, and opened it.
GARFIELD, JAMES ABRAM. Born at Orange, Cuyahoga County, Ohio, November 19, 1831; instructor in and later president of Hiram College, Ohio, 1856-61; joined the Union army as lieutenant-colonel of volunteers, 1861; defeated General Humphrey Marshall at the battle of Middle Creek, January 10, 1862; promoted brigadier-general, 1862; promoted major-general, 1863; member of Congress, 1863-80; elected United States senator, 1880; elected President, 1880; inaugurated, March 4, 1881; shot in Washington by Guiteau, July 2, 1881; died at Elberon, New Jersey, September 19, 1881.
But the jury, enlightened by the lucid instructions of the court, were convinced that Guiteau had not been led to commit the murder by an insane delusion, but by his own reasoning and his own free will, and that, therefore, he was to bear the consequences of his own deliberate choice. Their verdict was "guilty," and the political crank was hanged.
This was the precise point on which turned the celebrated case of Guiteau, the murderer of President Garfield. His trial before the Supreme Court, District of Columbia, December, 1882, was one of the most interesting that have ever occurred in this country or elsewhere in connection with the plea of insanity.
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