Guiteau hangs at the Washington jail; Garfield's killer takes nine months to follow him
James Garfield had been dead for nine months, but his killer had spent that time becoming a spectacle. Charles Julius Guiteau — failed lawyer, delusional office-seeker, and self-declared savior of the Republican Party — was hanged at the Washington, D.C. jail on June 30, 1882, less than a year after he shot the president twice from behind at the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station. Guiteau had purchased his .442 Webley revolver with ivory grips specifically because he thought it would look better in a museum. The jury had not been sympathetic to the logic.
Guiteau's trial was among the first in American legal history to mount a serious insanity defense, and its failure set the terms of that debate for decades. More lastingly, the fury over Garfield's death gave reformers the political opening they had been denied for years: Congress passed the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act in 1883, replacing the spoils system with merit-based appointments and reshaping the federal government's relationship to politics in ways that still hold.
QWhy did Guiteau specifically choose a revolver with ivory grips when cheaper models were available?
Guiteau selected a .442 Webley British Bulldog revolver with ivory grips over a standard wooden-handled model — paying extra for the upgrade — because he believed the gun would eventually be displayed in a museum as a historical artifact. He was, in his own assessment, about to perform an act of political salvation, and he wanted the instrument of that act to look the part. The ivory-handled revolver was given to the Smithsonian, but it has since been lost.
QWhat did Guiteau do in the hours before shooting the president, and how carefully had he planned the getaway?
The morning of July 2, 1881, Guiteau got his shoes shined before heading to the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station. He had already arranged for a cab to be waiting outside — not to flee, but to transport him to the police station to turn himself in. He had also written a letter to General William Sherman explaining his reasoning. The combination of meticulous logistics and complete openness about his intent was consistent with someone who believed, entirely, that history would vindicate him. It did not.
QHow did Guiteau distinguish, in court, between 'the shooting' and 'the killing' — and what did that tell the jury?
During the trial, Guiteau offered one of the stranger legal formulations of the nineteenth century: 'I deny the killing, if your honor please. We admit the shooting.' His reasoning was that the doctors, not the bullet, had killed Garfield — a claim that had some medical basis, since the wound was not inherently fatal and repeated unsterilized probing almost certainly caused the fatal infection. The jury was not persuaded by the distinction. The argument resurfaced in later legal scholarship as an early version of the intervening-cause defense, and it remains a footnote in American criminal law.
