Lone Wolf Terrorism (20 page)

By 1880, Guiteau had become immersed in politics, and he followed that year's presidential campaign closely. It was a tumultuous time for party politics in America, with the Republican Party split at its national convention in Chicago in June between two warring factions. On one side were “the Stalwarts,” known for being unapologetic advocates of the spoils system, where elected officials would use patronage to distribute jobs to their friends and supporters, regardless of their qualifications for the particular job. On the other side were the reformers, known as “the Half-Breeds.” The Stalwarts's candidate was former president Ulysses S. Grant, who would be serving a third term if elected, while the Half-Breeds had two contenders, John Sherman (brother of General William Sherman) and Senator James G. Blaine of Maine. When none of the leading candidates could win a majority of votes at the convention, the delegates turned to a
dark-horse compromise candidate on the thirty-sixth ballot, James A. Garfield, who had been a general during the Civil War and was now a senator from Ohio.
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The nomination of Garfield caught everyone by surprise, including Guiteau, who had expected Grant to be the nominee. Guiteau was an admirer of Grant and the Stalwart faction, believing that the spoils system was the best way for him to attain a high-level government job. He had prepared a speech titled “Grant against Hancock” (the latter being the expected nominee of the Democratic Party), but once Garfield got the nomination, he simply changed the title to “Garfield against Hancock” and left virtually everything else the same.
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It was this speech that Guiteau would later claim helped win Garfield the presidency. And Guiteau believed that he should be rewarded by the new administration. The speech, which may have once been delivered to a small audience in Troy, New York, asserted that if the Democrats won the presidency, it would lead to a resumption of the Civil War because the Democrats had only sectional, rather than national, loyalties.
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“I think I have a right to claim your help on the strength of this speech,” Guiteau wrote in a personal note to Blaine, the newly appointed secretary of state, shortly after the March 1881 inauguration of Garfield. “It was sent to our leading editors and orators in August. It was the first shot in the rebel war claim idea, and it was their idea that elected Garfield…. I will talk with you about this as soon as I can get a chance.”
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Guiteau was relentless in hounding Blaine and Garfield about being politically rewarded. These were the days when citizens had easy access to elected officials, and Guiteau took full advantage of it. He would walk the corridors of the State Department and White House, seeking to talk with Blaine and Garfield whenever he spotted them, or he would have personal notes delivered to them. His continual requests for a high-level appointment to Paris finally angered Blaine, who in May 1881 shouted at him: “Never speak to me again on the Paris consulship as long as you live!”
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Around this time, two major figures in the Stalwart faction,
Senators Roscoe Conkling and Thomas Platt, both resigned from the Senate to protest President Garfield's refusal to follow their recommendations for patronage appointments. This was the inspiration Guiteau needed to finalize his plans to assassinate Garfield. He could now consider himself part of the Stalwarts, a comrade-in-arms, and no longer feel alone in his frustrations with the new administration. “Now, for the first time in his oddly chaotic life,” political scientist James Clarke writes, “Guiteau found himself sharing his outsider status with men he admired: Conkling and Platt and the other Stalwarts. And it was in this realization—not the denial of the various appointments he had sought—that his assassination scheme germinated.”
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Guiteau believed that the “removal” of the president would unite the two factions of the Republican Party and save the government from “going into the hands of the ex-rebels and their northern allies,” causing another civil war. In Guiteau's mind, it would be patriotism, not personal revenge, which would lead him to kill the president.
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He also found inspiration in a message he claimed came from God one night in May, telling him that “if the President was out of the way every thing would go better.”
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By June, Guiteau was well on his way to carrying out the assassination. He had purchased a .44-caliber, ivory-handled revolver for $10. He could have bought a wooden-handled model for $9, but he believed the more expensive one would look better in a museum or library, where he was sure it would be put on display after he killed Garfield. Guiteau had one small problem though. He was afraid of firearms and didn't know how to shoot a gun. So he went to the bank of a canal and practiced shooting at a small tree growing in the water. He also paid a visit to the jail he expected to be taken to after the assassination. He wanted to make sure it was both comfortable and secure. He was afraid that there might be lynch mobs after him, but he believed that would not last long, since the American people would ultimately understand why he killed the president and would eventually hail him as a hero.
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Guiteau also prepared several letters and notes that he knew would be read by the public after the assassination. In one letter,
which he titled “Address to the American People,” he wrote: “I had no ill-will to the President. This is not murder. It is a political necessity.”
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In another letter, he wrote: “The President's removal is an act of God. I am clear in my purpose to remove the President. Two objects will be accomplished: It will unite the Republican party and save the Republic, and it will create a great demand for my book, ‘The Truth.' This book was written to save souls and not for money, and the Lord wants to save souls by circulating the book.”
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Meanwhile, the thirty-nine-year-old Guiteau stalked the president, this time not seeking a job, but instead looking for the best opportunity to kill him. On one occasion, he attended Garfield's church with the loaded revolver in his pocket, but he decided against killing the president that day. On another occasion, after learning of the president's travel schedule from newspaper stories, Guiteau went to the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station in Washington, DC, with the intention of shooting Garfield. He changed his mind, however, when he saw that Garfield was accompanied by his wife. “My heart would not allow me to remove him in the presence of Mrs. Garfield,” he would later testify at his trial. “She was a sick lady, and the shock might have killed her. That was my reason for not doing it. I only had authority to remove the President.”
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That “authority,” which Guiteau would continually describe in his trial and in the letters he wrote preceding the assassination, came from God.

On yet another occasion, the evening of July 1, he sat on a park bench across from the White House and followed Garfield on foot as the president walked a few blocks to the home of Secretary of State Blaine. Again, Guiteau had his revolver with him but did not use it. He then followed both Blaine and Garfield as they walked together back to the White House, but, again, Guiteau chose not to kill either man that night. Guiteau was enraged at seeing Blaine, who had told him to never speak to him again, walking with Garfield. He believed that Garfield had “sold himself body and soul to Blaine.” Guiteau promised himself that he would not hesitate at the next opportunity to assassinate the president.
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That would come the next morning, when he fired two shots at Garfield as the president was walking through the waiting room of the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station. Garfield was traveling from Washington to New Jersey, where he would pick up his wife, who was recovering from an illness at their summer home by the ocean, and then they planned to travel to Williams College in Massachusetts for Garfield's twenty-fifth class reunion. Guiteau had read about the president's travel plans and made sure that he would be in the waiting room when Garfield walked through, accompanied once again by Blaine. The first shot sliced through the president's right arm, while the second bullet went into his back. As Garfield crumpled to the floor, Guiteau attempted to escape, but he was promptly captured by a police officer and others who had witnessed the shooting. An angry crowd quickly formed after the shots rang out. As cries of “Lynch him!” echoed through the station, the police officer ushered Guiteau outside and transported him to police headquarters and then to jail. There had also been a mob gathering outside the station wanting to lynch the assassin.
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The president, meanwhile, was attended to by a growing stream of doctors who were called to the station. Garfield was later transported back to the White House at his own request, where it was not believed he would survive the night. However, when he made it through the first forty-eight hours, doctors became more optimistic, with one stating that the president would make a full recovery. That buoyed everyone's hopes, but his condition then worsened. It would still take two and a half months before he would die. His last days were spent at his seaside cottage in New Jersey, where he passed away on September 19. The cause of death was a rupturing of an aneurysm in the splenic artery.
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The president's slow death was one of the most agonizing periods in American history. People across the country woke up each morning wanting to know what the latest prognosis was for the president. What became apparent after his death was that the treatment he received was abhorrent. Garfield “had miraculously survived the
initial trauma of the bullet wound, [but] was so riddled with infection that he was literally rotting to death.”
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The infection was caused mainly by his doctors' refusal to use sterilized procedures in treating Garfield. The practice of antiseptic surgery was still controversial in the United States (but not in Europe) at the time. Garfield's doctors repeatedly probed his wound with unsterilized hands and instruments in an attempt to locate the bullet. “Far from preventing or even delaying the president's death,” wrote one historian, “his doctors very likely caused it.”
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It wasn't long after Garfield died that his assassin was put on trial. Guiteau's lawyer, who was his brother-in-law, argued that his client was insane and should be found not guilty. The potential for Guiteau to “get away with murder,” however, worried many Americans who wanted him hanged.
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The prosecutor, retired judge John K. Porter, put it best in his closing argument when he laid the groundwork for why the jury should convict Guiteau even if they thought he was insane:

If men like the prisoner were irresponsible [due to insanity], who would be safe? What household would be secure? What church would protect its worshipers, even with the aid of the law?…If it were true that…[all] insane [men]…are licensed to murder you and yours, they are equally licensed to forge your name, to enter your house by midnight burglary, to stab your wife as she sleeps by your side, to force your strong box and seize your wells, to ravish your daughters. This is the nature of the license, for which the counsel for the prisoner contends.
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Porter didn't have to fret about the jury's decision. Although the trial lasted more than two months, the jury found Guiteau guilty after just one hour of deliberation. Throughout the trial, Guiteau claimed that God instructed him to assassinate Garfield and that the murder was not related to his not receiving a political appointment. “I have told you a hundred times,” a frustrated Guiteau told Porter in response to yet another question about his motivations, “that my
getting or not getting the Paris Consulship had nothing to do with my removing the President.”
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In his disturbed mind, Guiteau believed that he would be preventing another civil war by killing Garfield. “I do not pretend that the war was immediate,” he testified, “but I do say emphatically that the bitterness in the Republican Party was deepening hour by hour, and that by two or three years at least the Nation would have been in a flame of war.”
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He also told the court, “I am not a disappointed office-seeker.”
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Guiteau was hanged on June 30, 1882. The lone wolf assassin would have been shocked, and maybe even amused, to learn that his moment of violence actually helped lead to one of the most significant government reform acts in American history. The perception that Guiteau was just “a disappointed office-seeker” led to the end of the “spoils system,” whereby the majority of jobs in government went to the political friends and supporters of the president. Congress passed, and President Chester A. Arthur signed, the Pendleton Act in 1883, which provided that federal government jobs be awarded on the basis of merit and that government employees be selected through competitive exams. The law also protected government workers from being fired or demoted for political reasons. Other aspects of this revolutionary law made it illegal for supervisors and others to require employees to give political service or contributions. Finally, the US Civil Service Commission was established to enforce this act. The new law “transformed the nature of public service.” When it went into effect, only 10 percent of the federal government's 132,000 employees were covered, while today, more than 90 percent of the approximately 2.7 million federal workers are covered.
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Unfortunately, another legacy of the Garfield assassination was ignored. The easy access any potential killer had to a president of the United States did not change with the killing of Garfield. Even though Americans had lost President Abraham Lincoln to an assassination less than twenty years earlier, the Garfield assassination did not result in an outcry that the president must now be protected. The American public “did not believe…that Garfield had been
assassinated because he had walked into the train station, just as he had traveled everywhere since the day of his election, wholly unprotected.”
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The idea of placing Secret Service agents or other guards around presidents permanently and thereby distancing presidents from the public “seemed too imperial, too un-American.”
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It would take yet another assassination barely two decades later to change that perception.