Federal Trials and Great Debates in United States History

United States v. Guiteau

Assassination and Insanity

in Gilded Age America

by

Winston Bowman

Associate Historian

Federal Judicial History Office

Federal Judicial Center

Federal Judicial Center

2019

This Federal Judicial Center publication was undertaken in furtherance of the Center’s statutory mission to “conduct, coordinate, and encourage

programs relating to the history of the judicial branch of the United States government.” While the Center regards the content as responsible and valuable,

these materials do not reflect policy or recommendations of the Board of the Federal Judicial Center.
On the title page: Charles Guiteau interrupts 

proceedings during his trial for the assassination of 

President James Garfield.

Complete History of the Trial of Guiteau (1882)

All images in this publication are in the public

domain unless otherwise noted.
United States v. Guiteau

Contents

Part 1. The Case in Context, 1

A Short Narrative, 1

The Judicial Process in United States v. Guiteau:

A Chronology, 31

Part 2. The Federal Judiciary, 33

Legal Questions Before the Federal Courts, 33

The Federal Courts and Their Jurisdiction, 35

Part 3. Biographies, 37

Judges, 37

Lawyers, 40

The Victim, 43

Prominent Witnesses, 45

Part 4. Media Coverage and Public Debates, 51

Part 5. Historical Documents, 55

Letter from Charles Guiteau “to the American 

 People,” 55

Charles Guiteau’s “Autobiography,” 56

Testimony of James Blaine, 58

Letter Threatening the Court, 63

“The Voice of the People,” 64

Testimony of Charles Guiteau, 65

Testimony of E.C. Spitzka, 68

 Boston Post Editorial Supporting Justice Cox, 72
Historical Documents, cont’d

Testimony of Joseph S. Reynolds, 72

Testimony of John Gray, 76

Charles E. Grinnell, “Concerning some

 Criticisms upon the Trial of Guiteau,” 79

Closing Argument of Walter Davidge, 82

Closing Argument of Charles Guiteau, 85

“Forcible Epithets Applied to Garfield’s Murderer

 by Judge Porter,” Boston Daily Globe, 88

Charge to the Jury, 90

Sentence, 94

Opinion of the Supreme Court of the District of

 Columbia Upholding Guiteau’s Conviction, 97

Justice Joseph Bradley’s Opinion Denying Guiteau’s

 Petition for a Writ of Habeas Corpus, 99

Opinion of Attorney General Benjamin Harris

 Brewster Recommending the Denial of a Petition

 for Reprieve, 101

Bibliography, 103
United States v. Guiteau

The Case in Context

A Short Narrative

On July 2, 1881, an obscure, itinerant office seeker named

 Charles Guiteau shot President James Garfield twice at 

close range in a Washington, D.C., train station. The second bullet entered Garfield’s lower back, broke two ribs, damaged 

his spine, and lodged near his pancreas. The President struggled 

to recover for more than two months, the nation following every 

development in horrified fascination. He died on September 19 

while convalescing on the New Jersey shore. 

Garfield is little-remembered today. His presidency was the 

second-shortest in American history and he was incapacitated for 

nearly half of it. But for a time, he became a national martyr and 

his assassin the nation’s most hated man. Calls to lynch Guiteau 

began at the scene of the crime and multiple attempts were made 

Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, July 16, 1881

1
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Federal Trials and Great Debates in United States History

on his life while he was in custody. Avoiding his own murder, Guiteau stood trial in the 

Supreme Court of the District of Columbia (“SCDC”), a federal court that exercised criminal jurisdiction over the Nation’s Capital. 

The trial posed a significant challenge for the judiciary, which faced competing pressures to punish Garfield’s assassin and demonstrate that it could deal fairly with even the 

most reviled defendants. Guiteau’s absurd behavior at trial proved an additional difficulty 

for the presiding judge, Associate Justice Walter Cox.1 Since Guiteau offered a form of insanity defense—he claimed God had commanded him to “remove” the President—Justice 

Cox believed Guiteau needed to be present for the jury to evaluate his sanity. Nonetheless, 

the defendant’s repeated outbursts threatened to derail the trial and led many observers to 

criticize the judge. While the public never warmed to Guiteau, he increasingly became a 

source of perverse curiosity and gallows humor. Fears that the accused’s antics would sway 

the court proved unfounded, however. The jury convicted him after just an hour’s deliberation, and Cox sentenced him to death. 

Though the District of Columbia did not have a dedicated appellate court at the 

time, a panel of the SCDC’s other justices heard an appeal in which Guiteau’s lawyers 

raised important jurisdictional issues occasioned by the peculiar nature of the case and the 

district in which it was tried. The panel ruled against Guiteau, as did U.S. Supreme Court 

Justice Joseph Bradley on a petition for a writ of habeas corpus. After President Chester 

Arthur—a man Guiteau repeatedly claimed to have “made”—denied appeals for clemency, 

Guiteau was hanged on June 30, 1882.

The first judicial trial of a presidential assassin was historically significant in its own 

right, but the impact of the trial also reached broader issues than Guiteau’s guilt or insanity: the use of medical evidence, the scope of federal jurisdiction, the relationship between 

the courts and the press, and the unique legal status of the Nation’s Capital. The trial also 

indirectly triggered major civil-service reform, as Garfield’s death at the hands of a hapless office seeker highlighted the venality of political patronage and the need for change. 

Drawing together these events and themes, United States v. Guiteau provides teachers with 

a useful tool for engaging students in the complex and interrelated histories of law and 

political culture in Gilded Age America.

The Strange Career of Charles Guiteau

Charles Julius Guiteau (pronounced “Gett-o”) was born in 1841 in Freeport, Illinois. His 

mother, Jane, was seriously ill for much of the pregnancy, and evidence at trial cast doubt 

on her mental health following the birth. She died when her son was seven. Guiteau’s father, Luther, worked at the local bank and had, at one time, served as county court clerk. 

The family was comfortable but not wealthy. 

1. SCDC judges were styled “Associate Justice” and “Chief Justice.” These positions should not be confused with 

the similarly named posts on the Supreme Court of the United States.
3

United States v. Guiteau

The young Charles could not speak intelligibly until he was six, and his father appears to 

have treated him as a strange and inferior child. Luther beat his son for his odd behavior 

and speech impediments. Though Luther was otherwise respected in his community, 

he held unusual religious convictions, including a belief that he would never die, which 

Guiteau’s lawyers argued showed insanity ran in the family.

At the age of nineteen, Guiteau acceded to his father’s wish that he join the Oneida 

community in upstate New York. The community, led by John Humphrey Noyes, was 

founded on the principle that humans could “perfect” themselves through prayer and 

education, thus freeing themselves from sin. This idea 

appealed to Luther, who idolized Noyes, though he was 

unable to persuade his second wife that they should join 

the commune. 

The Oneida group scandalized much of the rest of 

Victorian America because of its belief in “complex marriage,” a form of free love. The young Guiteau was an 

unpopular member, earning a reputation for shiftlessness. Although the community was synonymous with 

promiscuity in the popular imagination, its women “did 

not extend love and confidence toward” Guiteau, and he 

acquired the unflattering nickname “Charles Gitout.” He 

later complained that he was “practically a [S]haker all the 

time [he] was in the community[.]”

After approximately five years in Oneida, Guiteau left, ostensibly to found a religious 

newspaper called The Theocrat, which would advance Noyes’s interpretation of the Bible 

(though Guiteau often passed off Noyes’s ideas as his own). That enterprise proved the first 

of several ambitious professional failures, and Guiteau returned to Oneida after just four 

months. A year later, however, he left the group for good, tired of the manual labor and 

criticism he had endured and bitter about money he claimed Noyes had pilfered from him. 

Noyes told Luther that his son was a lunatic. 

Following a brief fallow period living on a small inheritance, Guiteau pursued a legal career. He studied in the offices of attorney and retired general Joseph Reynolds, who 

proved an undemanding apprentice master. In lieu of administering a formal bar examination to Guiteau, Reynolds wrote a note to state prosecutor Charles Reed, who, after asking 

Guiteau three questions (one of which he answered incorrectly), recommended that a local 

judge admit Guiteau. Both Reed and Reynolds would later play important roles in Guiteau’s trial. On his admittance, Guiteau took up a small, and largely disreputable, practice 

arranging bail and collecting debts, first in Chicago and then in New York, where he spent 

Charles Guiteau in 1882.
4

Federal Trials and Great Debates in United States History

a short time in jail for failing to pay his office rent. After the New York Herald published an 

article suggesting that Guiteau could not be trusted with client funds, he launched a libel 

suit for the absurd sum of $100,000, but was quickly forced to drop the case. 

Guiteau married briefly and unhappily. His ex-wife, Annie Dunmire, testified twice 

at the trial for the prosecution. Guiteau appears to have been both physically and emotionally abusive to her and may have contracted syphilis having sex with a prostitute during 

the marriage. He claimed this last transgression was necessary to provide legal grounds for 

a divorce. The couple did divorce in 1874. The next year, Guiteau made an audacious, but 

doomed, attempt to buy a Chicago newspaper, promising prospective lenders that he could get them elected 

to attractive offices, including the presidency, by publishing flattering stories. That scheme, like so many of 

his ideas before the assassination, went nowhere.

His career and personal life in tatters, Guiteau

drifted back toward his family, briefly living at the 

Wisconsin summer home of his sister Frances and her 

husband George Scoville, a more established Illinois 

attorney who became Guiteau’s lead counsel at trial. 

After a misunderstanding involving wood Guiteau had 

chopped on the Scovilles’ property, he flew into a rage 

and attacked his sister with an axe. The Scovilles’ doctor recommended interning Guiteau in a mental asylum, but Guiteau ran away before he 

could be committed.

Penniless and homeless, Guiteau reinvented himself as a religious lecturer, travelling 

from town to town by riding the rails without a ticket and bilking hotel and boardinghouse proprietors across the Midwest and East Coast. He self-published a book called 

The Truth: A Companion to the Bible, which borrowed large passages from Noyes’s work. 

He tried, without success, to sell it on his travels. At one point, Guiteau was arrested in 

Michigan for failing to pay for his board in the last town. He managed to avoid jail by 

jumping off a train moving at about thirty-five miles per hour. After surviving this perilous 

escape and avoiding death during a later boat collision, Guiteau became convinced God 

was interceding in his life and had marked him out for greatness. His religious speeches, 

when he managed to deliver them, were usually disasters, however. Few attended and even 

fewer took him seriously. 

Perhaps he would do better at a different kind of public speaking. Politics, thought 

Guiteau, would offer him an opportunity to realize his greatness and gain the fame and 

status for which he hungered.

Guiteau became

convinced God 

was interceding

in his life and

had marked him 

out for greatness.
5

United States v. Guiteau

The Election of 1880

The politics of Guiteau’s time were inextricably linked with the rise of corporate power and the injection of influence peddling and graft into the party system. As America’s 

cities swelled, political “machines” increasingly dominated their civic life. A handful of 

well-connected figures at the heads of these machines wielded tremendous power over 

both officeholders and the electorate using a combination of patronage, bribery, and veiled 

threats. At the national level, the so-called spoils system empowered each new President to 

fill thousands of civil-service vacancies with few restrictions as to the qualifications or credentials of those filling the positions. As a result, thousands of posts were filled as political 

favors and rewards for past service to the President’s party. 

Republicans had won every presidential election since 1860 and thus dominated 

the levers of power under the spoils system. The party’s dominance began to falter in the 

mid-to-late 1870s, however. Recession, fatigue over reconstruction in the South, and a 

rash of corruption scandals combined with the nomination of the uninspiring Rutherford 

B. Hayes to neuter enthusiasm for the party heading into the 1876 election. After a wave

of racial violence in the South further suppressed Republican support, Democrat Samuel

Tilden won the popular vote, but the electoral college tally remained uncertain for months

due to contested outcomes in several states.

To resolve the dispute, which threatened to escalate into another sectional conflict, 

Congress set up an Electoral Commission consisting of five senators, five congressmen 

(including Garfield, who was then a representative from Ohio), and five Supreme Court 

justices. The Commission, by an 8–7 vote, awarded the outstanding states to Hayes, giving him victory by a single electoral college vote. Although the nature and timing of the 

parties’ acquiescence remain somewhat unclear, most historians agree that Republicans 

consented to the end of reconstruction in return for Democrats’ acceptance of the Commission’s result. 

After Hayes made good on a promise not to run for reelection, control of the party 

was finely balanced heading into the 1880 election. Republicans increasingly divided into 

two camps: “stalwarts” supported the renomination of Grant, who had chosen not to run 

for a third term in 1876, but had now reentered politics; most “half-breeds” supported the 

candidacy of former Speaker of the House James Blaine.

At the Republican convention, however, Garfield emerged as a surprise compromise 

candidate. Despite associations with both the 1876 election controversy and the Crédit 

Mobilier corruption scandal, Garfield managed to appear above the fray of much of the 

more unseemly political infighting of the period. He also had a compelling backstory as 

a self-made man and Civil War hero. Perhaps as importantly, it appears that both Blaine 

and the leading stalwart, Senator Roscoe Conkling, believed their camp could exert in-
6

Federal Trials and Great Debates in United States History

fluence over Garfield as President. The stalwarts also earned a consolation prize with the 

nomination of Conkling’s protégé Chester Arthur as Vice President. Running a “frontporch” campaign in which he seldom left his home state, Garfield won the electoral college 

comfortably against fellow Civil War general Winfield Hancock (though the popular vote 

was a virtual tie). 

In the Gilded Age, it was possible for a ne’er-do-well like Guiteau to 

meet the great and good of American 

politics in an election year. During 

and immediately after the 1880 election, Guiteau managed to meet the 

future President, First Lady, Vice 

President, Secretary of State, and 

several members of Congress. He repeatedly attempted to gain a role as a 

surrogate speaker for the campaign, 

carrying with him a stump speech, 

“Garfield against Hancock” (the original title had been “Grant against Hancock,” but 

Guiteau changed little else about the speech when Garfield won the nomination). Guiteau 

believed party service of this sort could lead to an appointment after the election. He eventually delivered the speech to a small, mostly African-American audience in New York, 

impressing no one of anything but his own peculiarity. Though the speech was a failure 

and influential figures in the party had, at best, humored him as an irrelevancy, Guiteau 

told anyone who would listen that he had swung the election for Garfield. 

Guiteau Applies for Office

Civil-service reform was among the more pressing issues Garfield inherited on his assumption of the presidency. He adopted a moderate position, refusing to be swayed by powerbrokers like Conkling, who had previously controlled federal patronage in New York, 

but demonstrating a willingness to appoint party cronies to some posts to keep the wheels 

moving. He made no major calls for reform, but revived a tradition of accepting calls from 

the public, including office seekers. This proved a mistake, however, as Garfield was often 

overwhelmed by waves of aspirants calling at his office and pestering him for work.

Guiteau was among the most persistent pests. A few days after the inauguration, he 

drifted down to Washington, D.C., where he stayed at a succession of respectable boarding houses, never paying his bill. Throwing about the names of prominent politicians he 

had barely (and in some cases never) met, Guiteau attempted to insinuate himself into 

The 1880 Republican ticket.
7

United States v. Guiteau

the Capital’s elite circles and gain a position fitting his self-proclaimed eminence. For all 

his failures, Guiteau was obsessed with prestige. He referred to anything and anybody 

he admired as “high-toned”—a phrase that 

approached the level of a verbal tic during 

the trial—and dismissed his denigrators as 

belonging to a lower class of gentlemen. 

He repeatedly demanded glamorous posts 

in Vienna and Paris, convinced that Garfield and the party owed him such an appointment as a “personal tribute.” Though 

he only managed to gain one brief meeting 

with the President, he called so frequently at the State Department that Blaine, by 

this point Secretary of State, had to insist 

that Guiteau “[n]ever speak to me again on 

the Paris consulship as long as you live.” 

Blaine’s frustration was understandable. Guiteau’s claims about his influence 

on the election were preposterous, and 

the grandeur of the positions he demanded lent color to the subsequent portrait of 

him as an egomaniac. Nevertheless, Guiteau’s brushes with important men like 

Blaine and Garfield appear to have fanned 

the flames of his ambition. He increasingly 

fancied himself a future President and an agent of God.

The Assassination

Guiteau wrote to Garfield following Blaine’s rebuff. “I supposed Mr. Blaine was my friend 

in the matter of the Paris consulship[,]” he groused, “but from his tone on Saturday, I judge 

he is trying to run the State Department in the interest of the Blaine element in ‘84.” “You 

ought to demand his immediate resignation[,]” Guiteau warned the President, “[o]therwise, you and the Republican party will come to grief.” It is doubtful whether Garfield 

ever read the missive and inconceivable that he would have cared about Guiteau’s opinion 

of Cabinet members. But in the jilted office seeker’s mind, Blaine’s snub and Garfield’s 

silence could mean only one thing: the Secretary of State had manipulated the President 

and turned his administration into a nest of half-breed ingrates. “Ingratitude[,]” he wrote 

A failure, Guiteau’s speech nevertheless fueled his 

belief that Garfield owed him an appointment.

Georgetown University Law Center Library
8

Federal Trials and Great Debates in United States History

in a grandiose letter to “the American people” as he planned the assassination, “is the basest 

of crimes.” 

As the late spring and summer of 1881 bore witness to further infighting between 

the two wings of the party (the Senate deadlocked on several of Garfield’s nominees and 

Conkling resigned in protest at Garfield’s refusal to appoint his preferred candidate to the 

lucrative post of Collector of the Port of New York), Guiteau became evermore convinced 

that decisive action was needed. Slowly, an idea—he insisted it was a divine 

inspiration—developed in his head. If 

the President were “removed,” the stalwart Arthur would reunite the party, 

save the nation from a second civil war 

and, presumably, reward Guiteau as 

the nation’s deliverer. Later asked why 

he would kill Garfield when his beef 

seemed to be with Blaine, Guiteau explained that if he killed Blaine, another 

half-breed would rise up in his stead, 

whereas removing Garfield and installing Arthur would ensure unity. In fact, 

Guiteau’s attitude towards Garfield 

seems to have fluctuated wildly. Within three sentences of each other in the 

same letter he wrote that he harbored “no ill will to the President” and that “[i]n the President’s madness he has wrecked the once grand old Republican party, and for this he dies.”

Whether driven by insanity, ambition, or inspiration, Guiteau borrowed some money and bought a gun, bullets, and a knife. Given the choice between pistols with plain 

and mother-of-pearl handles, he chose the latter, more expensive option because he felt it 

would look better in a museum. He practiced his aim a few times by the banks of the Potomac River. He revised The Truth in anticipation of increased public demand. He stalked 

Garfield—something remarkably easy to do before a wall of security was erected around 

the presidency in the twentieth century.

Guiteau came close to pulling the trigger at least twice as he followed Garfield around 

Washington. Once, Garfield was with his wife Lucretia, who was likely suffering from 

malaria. As Guiteau later wrote, she “looked so thin and clung so tenderly to the President’s arm, my heart failed me to part them[.]” A second time, he followed Garfield to his 

church—the perfect place to fulfill the Lord’s mission—but again failed to follow through.

Puck magazine, July 13, 1881.
9

United States v. Guiteau

Finally, on the morning of July 2, Guiteau waited at the Baltimore and Pacific Railway Station in Washington (now the site of the National Gallery of Art). Garfield had 

planned to leave from the station to visit his recuperating wife and attend his college 

reunion. The trip was noted in the press, and Guiteau knew to expect his quarry there. 

Blaine and several other officials were there to see Garfield onto the train or continue business aboard. Guiteau saw the Secretary of State and President walk into the station together. Coming up behind the two men in the 

ladies’ waiting room, he fired a shot. It grazed 

Garfield’s arm. Garfield cried out, “My God, 

what is this?” Guiteau took two steps forward 

and fired a second bullet into the President’s 

back, and Garfield sank to the floor.

Testimony at trial differed as to whether Guiteau attempted to scurry out of the 

station or was captured where he stood by a 

nearby police officer. It appears that Guiteau’s 

escape plan, such as it was, involved having a 

coach driver take him to the jailhouse in any 

event. Guiteau told the arresting officer that 

he had an important message, right, to deliver to General William Tecumseh Sherman, 

the Commanding General of the U.S. Army. 

Though ignorant of Guiteau’s note, Sherman 

did order troops out onto the streets, fearing 

a broader conspiracy against the government, and had a group of soldiers guard the jailhouse with a cannon to stop vigilantes from lynching Garfield’s assailant.

According to a Venezualan diplomat who happened to be in the station at the time 

of the shooting, a group of onlookers had agitated for Guiteau to be lynched, but he had 

already been taken into custody. During Guiteau’s time in jail, at least two people (he 

claimed there were more), including one of his guards, tried to kill him. A shot from a 

man on horseback who drew up alongside Guiteau’s police wagon missed him by inches. 

He received numerous other death threats, but would manage to survive through his trial 

and appeal.

Garfield’s Illness and Death

Garfield did not die immediately either, but his condition was severe. He flitted in and 

out of consciousness. He vomited profusely and bled disquietingly little (a sign of internal 

To General Sherman:

I have just shot the President.

I shot him several times as I wished 

him to go as easily as possible.

His death was a political necessity.

I am a lawyer, theologian, and

politician. I am a Stalwart of the

Stalwarts. I was with Gen. Grant, 

and the rest of our men in New York 

during the Canvass.

I am going to the Jail.

Please order out your troops and

take possession of the Jail at once.

Very respectfully

Charles Guiteau
10

Federal Trials and Great Debates in United States History

hemorrhage). He couldn’t walk. His extremities were cold. He told Smith Townsend, the 

first doctor at the scene, that he was “a dead man.” The scene conjured for many the specter of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination sixteen years earlier. Indeed, Robert Todd Lincoln, 

Lincoln’s son and Garfield’s Secretary of War, had the unpleasant distinction of being present at the aftermath of both shootings, as well as the subsequent assassination of William 

McKinley in 1901.

Townsend ordered Garfield moved to the White House, where he remained for the 

next several weeks. Under the direction of the confusingly named Dr. Doctor Bliss, most 

of the physicians treating Garfield were traditionalists who subscribed to the view—increasingly challenged at the time and now thoroughly debunked—that wounds needed to 

be palpated and provoked into releasing pus to heal. They repeatedly inserted fingers and 

unsanitized probes into Garfield’s wound in an attempt to let pus run into an unobstructed 

channel. Analysis of postmortem evidence suggests this treatment may have done as much 

harm as the bullet. 

Apart from their mistreatment of the wound, Garfield’s doctors gave him care that 

was questionable at the time and would be considered grossly negligent today. Perhaps understandably anxious to ease his discomfort, they gave Garfield an excess of opioid-based 

pain medication that made him ill and suppressed his appetite. They gave him purgatives 

and resorted to feeding him through a rectal tube to counter these effects. Garfield, who in 

his prime had a robust, husky physique, lost approximately eighty pounds in the weeks following the shooting. The few visitors who were able to see him during that time were shaken by his frailty. Unable to find the bullet, the doctors called in renowned Scottish inventor 

Sketch by William A. Skinkle showing Bell’s attempt to locate the bullet. Frank Leslie’s Illustrated 

Newspaper, Aug. 20, 1882.
11

United States v. Guiteau

Alexander Graham Bell, who had a developed a device designed to locate projectiles in the 

body. The device was subsequently shown to work well on other subjects and remained in 

use into the twentieth century, but the physicians told Bell to search in entirely the wrong 

area of Garfield’s body, and he was unable to locate the bullet. 

Public interest in Garfield’s condition united the country in morbid fascination. His 

doctors released twice-daily updates, reprinted in virtually every newspaper and displayed 

on public bulletin boards in several cities. The nation cheered every encouraging sign of 

increased appetite or decreased temperature 

and braced for the worst with every note of 

deterioration in the President’s health. In fact, 

many of the updates bore little relation to his 

actual condition. The bedridden Garfield was 

able to meet with his Cabinet only once and 

could conduct relatively little other official 

business over the course of the summer.

One of the biggest problems with Garfield’s care was temperature control. Before 

the advent of modern air conditioning, the 

heat and humidity of a Washington summer 

could be brutal even for those in good health. 

Most politicians spent the season away from the Capital if they could. In his sickbed, Garfield frequently ran a temperature and complained of the unrelenting heat. 

After trying various solutions employing around a half-million tons of ice and ranging from hanging wet towels around the room to an elaborate jerry-rigged cooling device 

designed by Navy engineers, Garfield’s doctors opted to move him to more comfortable 

climes. A British millionaire, whom the President had never met but who was apparently 

moved by his condition, offered the use of his beachside house in Elberon, New Jersey. 

In early September, Garfield was loaded onto a train with temporary tracks laid up to the 

beach house to avoid the need for transport by carriage. The cooler weather and sea air did 

not do the trick, however, and Garfield died on September 19, 1881.

The nation plunged into a period of somewhat theatrical mourning after Garfield’s 

death. His emaciated body lay in state at the U.S. Capitol, and thousands of mourners 

poured into the District to see the slain president. The White House was draped in black. 

The burgeoning tabloid press and consumerist apparatus burst into life with a flood of

tributes and tacky memorabilia. There was a run on black cloth and other mourning accoutrements, with reports of merchants hoarding materials and gouging grieving customers. 

A Washington summer 

could be brutal even

for those in good health. 

Garfield frequently 

complained of the

unrelenting heat.
12

Federal Trials and Great Debates in United States History

Guiteau was initially distraught at the news of Garfield’s death, but quickly rebounded. The day after he received the news, he wrote to the newly elevated Arthur, “[m]y 

inspiration is a God send to you and I assume you appreciate it.... It raises you from a 

political cipher to the President of 

the U.S.[,]” and, he added with 

characteristic gracelessness, “from 

$8,000 to $50,000 a year[.]” 

Preparations for Trial

Guiteau was held in custody 

without charge through the summer. George Corkhill, the U.S. 

District Attorney for the District 

of Columbia, announced in the 

days after the shooting that he would wait to bring charges until the President either recovered or died. Guiteau seems to have been happy to have his room and board paid for 

for once—he remarked several times at trial that he ate far better in jail than he had on 

the outside—but he chafed at the isolation of his solitary cell and, in particular, his lack 

of access to newspapers discussing his handiwork. (Guiteau became a voracious consumer 

of the news during his trial, often pointedly flipping through the papers during testimony 

and making inappropriate announcements regarding press coverage.) 

While Guiteau stewed in jail, Corkhill deposed witnesses and gathered evidence. 

He allowed General Reynolds to visit Guiteau in jail and report back on their conversations. He also gave interviews to the press, responding to the widespread speculation that 

the shooter must be mad—a view Garfield himself had privately expressed—by declaring 

that Guiteau was “no more insane than I am.” Such a statement would have been a mixed 

reassurance to the public. Several observers (including Justice Cox at the end of the case) 

expressed the sentiment that it would better reflect on the state of American society to 

attribute the assassination to the isolated act of a lunatic than to acknowledge that the 

world’s leading democracy had endured two political assassinations in sixteen years. Even 

so, the greater fear, one to which the prosecution would allude frequently, was that the 

president’s assassin would go unpunished.

Corkhill, a political appointee few rated as an exceptional lawyer, had outside help 

once trial preparations began. U.S. Attorney General Isaac MacVeagh drafted Walter Davidge, the leading light of the District of Columbia bar, to assist. The prosecution also 

called on the services of former New York Court of Appeals Judge John K. Porter, one of 

the nation’s most prominent trial lawyers. 

Mourning drapery at the White House.

Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center
13

United States v. Guiteau

Guiteau’s brother-in-law, George Scoville, happened to arrive in Washington on 

business shortly after Guiteau was arrested. With Corkhill’s permission, he was allowed to 

meet with Guiteau in jail and, after some cajoling from his wife, decided he had to defend 

a relative he had long considered insane. Scoville felt no other reputable lawyer would 

zealously represent such a despised client and, he told Corkhill, he could not allow the 

government to “hang an insane man ... with impunity.” 

Once the case began, Guiteau also insisted on representing himself, although he 

frequently boasted that the best lawyers in the country were poised to replace Scoville at 

any moment. Justice Cox initially demanded that Guiteau speak through his counsel, but 

when it became clear this was a hopeless command, he tolerated Guiteau interrupting the 

proceedings. At the end of the case, Cox indicated that he had decided to allow Guiteau 

to remain in the courtroom and make these interjections so the jury could properly evaluate the defendant’s sanity. It appears the prosecution also decided at some point that this 

course of action was best, probably to avoid any risk of a guilty verdict being overturned 

on appeal. After the trial, U.S. Attorney General Benjamin Harris Brewster told President 

Arthur that Guiteau had been extended “more latitude than was ever known to have been 

allowed to any defendant in all of the recorded annals of the law.”

On October 8, a grand jury returned an eleven-count indictment against Guiteau. 

All of the charges were for murder and most were redundant, though some offered contradictory accounts of the facts of the crime. This approach seems to have been an attempt 

to cover every contingency at trial. One count, for example, asserted that, after he was 

shot, Garfield “then and there instantly died.” This was patently untrue as a factual matter, 

but it may have reflected a legal theory calibrated to address the anticipated jurisdictional 

argument that Garfield’s murder had not occurred in the District of Columbia because he 

had died in New Jersey. On October 14, Guiteau was arraigned and formally indicted in 

the SCDC.

That court, now the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, held an unusual place in the judicial branch. A federal court whose judges were appointed under 

Article III of the Constitution, the SCDC also exercised jurisdiction more akin to that of 

state and local courts. (Much of this jurisdiction has since devolved to other courts in the 

District.) Most federal courts did not handle murder trials, for example, but the SCDC 

routinely heard such cases based on a 1790 statute putting murder in any “district of country” under the exclusive jurisdiction of the United States a federal offense. 

The SCDC’s role in the case was a major test for the federal courts. While today many 

assume (often erroneously) that most cases of national importance will eventually reach 

the federal courts, this was far from obvious to nineteenth-century Americans. Prior to the 

Civil War, most federal-question cases were litigated in state courts. In the aftermath of the 
14

Federal Trials and Great Debates in United States History

war, Congress gave the federal judiciary expanded jurisdiction and entrusted much of the 

work of enforcing the hard-won rights of freedpeople to the federal courts. Nevertheless, 

many Reconstruction-Era politicians expressed a lack of confidence in the courts’ ability 

to handle major national controversies. The conspirators in the Lincoln assassination were 

tried by military commission, and the long-festering federal prosecution of Confederate 

leader Jefferson Davis had been abandoned after years of false starts and delays. When the 

constitutionality of military reconstruction had arisen in a case before the Supreme Court 

of the United States, Congress revoked the jurisdiction under which the Court had heard 

the appeal. Though Cox and the judicial system were often heavily criticized during the 

evidence phase of the trial, most observers ultimately concluded that the trial vindicated 

the notion that an impartial federal judicial proceeding was the best way to resolve even a 

case as controversial and politically sensitive as Guiteau’s.

Unfamiliar with both criminal law and practice in the SCDC, Scoville asked the 

court to appoint local counsel. Approximately three weeks before the start of trial, Justice 

Cox appointed rising Washington attorney Leigh Robinson to this unenviable task, though 

Robinson attempted to find alternative counsel at several points and eventually withdrew 

from the case after an argument with Scoville. Indeed, the trial began unceremoniously 

on November 14, 1881, when Robinson, apparently without the knowledge or consent of 

his client or co-counsel, demanded a continuance so a more experienced lawyer could take 

his place. He claimed to have lined up an eminent attorney for the job, but refused to tell 

the bemused Scoville his name. Incensed, Guiteau demanded that the trial move forward. 

Referring to Robinson, he complained to the court, “I know nothing about him; I don’t 

like the way he talks; and I ask him to retire. I expect to have some money shortly, and I 

can employ any counsel I please.” Justice Cox responded with exasperation, noting that he 

was eager to avoid any appearance that the defendant was being “hurried to the gallows 

without a fair trial.” Given both Guiteau’s and Scoville’s insistence that the trial continue 

as planned, however, Cox proceeded to jury selection. 

Jury Selection

That process proved unusually difficult. Virtually all the prospective jurors were familiar 

with the case, and most had remarkably pronounced views as to Guiteau’s culpability. 

One, fittingly named John Lynch, claimed that Guiteau “ought to be hung or burnt or 

something else.” “I don’t think there is any evidence in the United States[,]” Lynch told 

the court, “to convince me any other way.” Lynch was by no means the only prospective 

juror who wanted to skip the trial and proceed to summary execution. While Justice Cox 

permitted those with preexisting opinions on Guiteau’s guilt to sit on the jury, he excluded 

a large number of jurors who admitted their beliefs could not be swayed by any evidence. 
15

United States v. Guiteau

Although many federal judges conducted voir dire themselves, Justice Cox permitted 

counsel to question each of the potential jurors. Guiteau took an active role in this process, giving Scoville a list of questions 

about the prospective jurors’ religious 

beliefs and stressing that he did not 

want any African-American jurors (as it 

transpired, one of the twelve men empaneled, Ralph Wormley, was an African-American plasterer for the Pension 

Bureau).2

The Case for the Prosecution

The prosecution’s case-in-chief was relatively straightforward. Though Corkhill, Davidge, and Porter had a squadron of medical experts prepared to 

testify to Guiteau’s sanity, they did not 

need to prove Guiteau was sane; Guiteau’s lawyers had the burden of proof 

on that issue. Thus, the prosecution initially focused on the facts of the crime itself, with 

Blaine the star witness (among thirty-one). That Guiteau had planned and executed the 

shooting was scarcely in doubt, but the prosecution team meticulously laid out the sequence of events, Guiteau’s self-recorded efforts to plan the crime, and, where they could 

insert it into the record, the accused’s lengthy record of petty crime and perfidy. 

Throughout the prosecution’s case—indeed, throughout the entire trial—the defendant was a constant source of disruption. He paid so little attention to Justice Cox’s calls 

for order that the judge eventually gave up asking for it. The trial, always bound to attract 

attention, quickly became the best show in town, with long waits for public seating in the 

gallery. Though most of those in the audience were disgusted by Guiteau’s crime, they were 

increasingly amused by his antics and peculiar egocentrism. One observer later recalled the 

atmosphere in the courtroom:

Never have I passed five hours in a theatre so filled with thrills.... From the 

moment Guiteau entered the trial room it was a theatrical extravaganza. He 

was in irons, sandwiched between two deputy sheriffs, came in shouting like a 

madman, and began at once railing at the judge, the jury and the audience. A 

very necessary rule had been established that when he interposed whatever was 

being said or done automatically stopped. Then when he ceased, the case went 

on again as if nothing had happened. 

Cartoon of Justice searching a graveyard for unbiased 

jurors. Puck magazine, October 26, 1881.

2. Unlike several witnesses and many other potential jurors, Wormley was not identified as “colored” in the 

transcript of the voir dire. The transcript referred to him this way later in the trial, when proceedings had to be 

postponed briefly due to his illness.
16

Federal Trials and Great Debates in United States History

The relish with which Guiteau took to being the center of attention leaps off the 

page of the trial transcript, yet it is equally clear he was unaware that the joke was often on 

him when the court erupted, as it often did, in laughter. Reports of hilarity in the court, 

moreover, fueled increasingly angry reactions nationwide to the conduct of the case. A 

New Jersey justice of the peace, for example, wrote an open letter to Justice Cox, scolding 

him that if “you intend to allow a clown to act to amuse the spectators, I would advise you 

to withdraw ... and not further disgrace the position you so dishonorably fill[.]” 

Despite the constant interruptions, the prosecution rested on November 21, 1881. 

The show, however, had only just begun.

The Defense

From the outset, the defense team was somewhat fractured. Scoville and Robinson hinted 

near the beginning of the trial that the defense would challenge the court’s jurisdiction 

based on Garfield’s extraterritorial death, but Scoville did not fully pursue this line until 

the conclusion of the trial. At several points, Guiteau also suggested the true legal cause of 

Garfield’s death was medical malpractice. He merely shot Garfield, he argued; “[t]he doctors killed him.” Scoville, probably sensibly, seems to have believed that argument a dead 

end. When Robinson cross-examined Dr. Bliss along these lines, however, the two lawyers 

had an ugly falling out in the press and then in court that led Robinson to withdraw from 

the case. 

 Now operating alone, Scoville chose to focus his energies on an insanity defense, 

though his version of this defense varied significantly from the one Guiteau preferred. Scoville introduced evidence from dozens of acquaintances and family members attempting 

to show that Guiteau was congenitally insane, unable to understand wrong from right, 

and powerless to control his impulses. One of these witnesses, Charles Reed, the Illinois 

attorney who had rubber-stamped Guiteau’s bar application, testified to a lengthy and 

bizarre diatribe Guiteau had delivered in a petty larceny case in Chicago. Shortly after his 

testimony, Reed began informally advising Scoville on the case and eventually joined as 

co-counsel. Though he continued to take a backseat to Scoville in questioning witnesses, 

Reed took a more prominent role after the trial.

The insanity defense Scoville, and eventually Reed, developed angered Guiteau, who 

seems to have found much of this evidence damaging to his ego. He repeatedly interrupted 

proceedings to demand that Scoville drop this line of questioning and to insult his brother-in-law’s competence for daring to suggest he was anything but entirely rational and 

respectable. Instead, Guiteau attempted to develop an alternative theory, often known as 

the “deific decree” defense. He claimed that he was an otherwise sane man who had operated under what he believed to be an instruction from God to kill Garfield. Though he did 
17

United States v. Guiteau

not go so far as to suggest God appeared or spoke to him, he repeatedly claimed a form of 

“pressure” from “the Deity” had compelled him to pull the trigger. Although it may have 

been asking too much to expect consistency from a defendant in an insanity case, Guiteau’s 

position on this issue was hard to pin down. At times he seemed to take extravagant pride 

in doing “the Deity’s” work. At others, he acknowledged remorse and even allowed that 

his inspiration had been a delusion. “I would not do it again for a million dollars, with the 

mind I have got now[,]” he admitted near the end of the trial.

It was unclear how well either of these theories would comport with the insanity 

instruction Justice Cox would ultimately give the jury. The law of insanity was in flux at 

the time the SCDC heard Guiteau. In the first half of the nineteenth century, British and 

American courts had gradually transitioned away from a standard (sometimes known as 

the “wild beast” rule) that required a near-total loss of reason and memory. The defense 

was successfully employed by several failed murderers who had operated under insane 

delusions, even though they otherwise retained considerable ability to reason and could 

remember the crime. Indeed, President Andrew Jackson’s would-be assassin was acquitted 

(but confined to a mental institution) in such circumstances by the SCDC’s predecessor 

court in 1835. 

The acquittal of partially or temporarily insane successful killers proved controversial. Following such an acquittal in M’Naghten’s Case (1843), British law lords attempted 

Justice Cox tolerated Guiteau’s numerous outbursts during the trial. Complete History of the Trial of 

Guiteau, 1882.
18

Federal Trials and Great Debates in United States History

to clarify the insanity standard. The resulting rule held that defendants’ mental illness must 

deprive them of the ability either to appreciate the “nature and quality” of their actions or 

to understand that those acts were wrong. While American courts were not bound to adhere to English law, nineteenth-century judges were often influenced by English doctrinal 

changes. In 1844, prominent Massachusetts judge Lemuel Shaw adopted the M’Naghten

rule in his charge to a murder jury, and the rule was quickly embraced by most state courts.

By the time of the Garfield assassination, 

however, the M’Naghten rule was under fire 

from multiple angles. A rash of sensational acquittals of men who had killed their wives’ lovers in a state of “frenzy” led some critics to label 

the defense the “insanity dodge.” Indeed, Congressman Garfield had commended a judge for 

narrowing the construction of the defense in 

such a case in 1871, referring to the defense 

as a “wicked absurdity” and lamenting that if 

the law were any more lenient, “all that a man 

would need to secure immunity from murder, 

would be to tear his hair and rave a little[.]” 

Other critics of the standard argued that 

it did not take account of recent innovations in psychology. Restricting the test to the defendant’s knowledge and moral sense, for instance, did not take full stock of the degree to 

which mental health issues affected a defendant’s emotions, as well as his or her cognitive 

ability. Similarly, the test did not account for the degree to which psychosis could rob a defendant of self-control. Several experts argued it was unfair to punish people for impulses 

they could not govern. 

To assuage these concerns, some jurisdictions began instructing juries that the defendant should be acquitted if he or she was driven to act by an insane “irresistible impulse.” 

In 1870, New Hampshire’s Superior Court of Judicature rejected both this test and the 

M’Naghten rule for a third standard that simply inquired whether the crime was the “product” of a defendant’s mental illness. This rule promised a more objective standard that 

would be easier for juries to comprehend, though it was often criticized for being difficult 

to implement in practice.

Scoville appears to have recognized that Guiteau’s mental state did not fit the 

M’Naghten rule neatly. Guiteau might not have been much of a lawyer, but he certainly 

knew killing the President was a crime. He had, moreover, planned the assassination over 

the course of several weeks, writing notes that suggested he was aware of the legal and poA rash of acquittals

of men who had killed

their wives’ lovers in

a “frenzy” led to

criticism of the

“insanity dodge.”
19

United States v. Guiteau

litical consequences of killing the President. Though Guiteau insisted only “cranks” failed 

to see he had done the nation a service, he had wanted to go to the jail immediately after 

the shooting and asked Sherman to protect him because he knew the public might react 

angrily. Additionally, he had recorded doubts as to whether the assassination was morally 

justified and had recoiled from killing Garfield in front of his frail wife. This all suggested 

that he appreciated the “nature and character” of the assassination and, at least on some 

level, was aware it was wrong. Whether the crime was the “product” of Guiteau’s delusions 

and whether he was able to control himself when driven by the mad impulse to kill Garfield, however, were murkier questions. Scoville developed his theory of Guiteau’s insanity 

without knowing for certain which test Justice Cox would apply, but he clearly had these 

two alternative tests in mind as he introduced evidence. While Cox would ultimately rely 

on the M’Naghten rule, he permitted Scoville a good deal of latitude in building a case for 

Guiteau’s insanity along multiple lines during testimony. 

Scoville tested the bounds of that latitude at times, particularly in calling prominent witnesses to make seemingly minor points. He dragged in ailing Senator and former 

Supreme Court Justice David Davis (who had no meaningful connection to the case and 

seemed bewildered that he had been called) to establish the well-known political situation 

at the time of the assassination. He also attempted to compel President Arthur to testify 

to the ridiculous nature of Guiteau’s political ambitions. The prosecutors resisted Scoville’s 

position that he had the power to subpoena the President just like any other potential 

witness, at one point advancing a constitutional argument that Arthur was immune from 

ordinary judicial process of this sort. Arthur had good reason to avoid appearing at the 

trial: Scurrilous gossip in the days following the shooting had suggested he was secretly 

behind the assassination attempt. Guiteau had also repeatedly called Arthur his “friend” 

and expressed confidence that he would appoint Guiteau to some high office after the trial. Ultimately, the lawyers resolved the issue by agreeing to written responses to Scoville’s 

questions, which Arthur supplied on December 8.

Guiteau took the stand from November 28 to December 2. In some senses, he performed far better than one might expect, demonstrating an unusually strong memory for 

dates and details and, in the main, offering a consistent account of the strange sophistry 

that had led him to the assassination. Nevertheless, the prosecution successfully turned 

Guiteau’s performance against him, later arguing that his memory and ability to match 

wits with seasoned lawyers negated Scoville’s theory of a man whose mental condition left 

him beyond legal responsibility. Porter’s cross-examination, moreover, skillfully juxtaposed 

Guiteau’s claims of divine inspiration against his patient and worldly preparation for the 

crime. When Guiteau suggested Garfield’s death had been God’s work, for example, Porter 

spat back, “Who bought the pistol, the Deity or you?” 
20

Federal Trials and Great Debates in United States History

Arguably the most compelling evidence for the defense came from Guiteau’s family 

and acquaintances. Though her appearance in court led to some awkward moments, as 

Scoville found himself interrogating his wife, Guiteau’s sister painted the picture of a manchild who had been troubled from youth and progressively degenerated into a pattern of 

deranged, and occasionally violent, behavior. The degree to which such a pattern helped or 

harmed Guiteau’s case, however, hinged 

to some degree on medical expert testimony.

Medical Insanity 

At the same time the law was entertaining conflicting theories of insanity, the 

sciences and social sciences were undergoing a parallel transformation in their 

approaches to mental illness. The modern discipline of psychology was still in 

its infancy around the time of the Guiteau trial, which preceded the seminal 

works of William James and Sigmund 

Freud. Medical doctors studying cognition and emotion entertained varying 

theories of the nature and causes of insanity. The vexed questions of congenital 

and “moral” insanity had divided these 

experts for years by the time Guiteau exposed the rift to a broader public. Orthodox opinion in earlier decades held that mental illness, properly considered, was a physical disease 

that changed a person’s existing behavior or thought patterns; it could never be a hereditary 

or inborn condition that defined a person’s character or interactions throughout life.

On this theory, the model insane criminal was the respectable middle-class parent 

who suddenly murdered his or her children without provocation. Individuals with a track 

record of aberrant or criminal behavior were simply bad people. A new school, however, 

argued that mental illness rendered some individuals inherently unable to grapple with 

right or wrong or to comport themselves according to ordinary standards of human action 

and interaction. This view was controversial because it seemed to pathologize behaviors 

that were once neatly attributed to “vice.” Even so, the new model had gained substantial 

acceptance in Europe, and was beginning to take hold in the American medical academy, 

by the early 1880s.

Caricature of Guiteau’s insanity plea. Harper’s Weekly, 

December 10, 1881. 
21

United States v. Guiteau

In Guiteau, Scoville tried to articulate a theory along the lines of this second model 

of insanity. Though he was able to produce lay witnesses to testify to Guiteau’s odd behavior and manner, Scoville had somewhat more difficulty finding credible doctors who were 

willing to risk their careers by testifying that they considered Guiteau insane. Attempting 

to solve this problem, Scoville asked most of his experts a lengthy and convoluted “hypothetical” question that captured the defense’s case:

Assume it to be a fact that there was a strong hereditary taint of insanity in the 

blood of the prisoner at bar; also that at about the age of 35 years his own mind 

was so much deranged that he was a fit subject to be sent to an insane asylum; 

also, that at different times from that date during the next succeeding five 

years he manifested such decided symptoms of insanity, without simulation, 

that many different persons, conversing with him and observing his conduct, 

believed him to be insane; also, that during the month of June, 1881, at about 

the expiration of said term of five years, he honestly became dominated by 

the idea that he was inspired of God to remove by death the President of the 

United States; also, that he acted upon what he believed to be such inspiration, 

and what he believed to be in accordance with the divine will, in preparation 

for and in the accomplishment of such a purpose; also, that he committed the 

act of shooting the President under what he believed to be a divine command, 

which he was not at liberty to disobey, and which belief amounted to a conviction that controlled his conscience and overpowered his will as to that act, so 

that he could not resist the mental pressure upon him; also that immediately 

after the shooting he appeared calm and as one relieved by the performance of a 

great duty; also, that there was no adequate motive for the act than the conviction that he was executing the divine will for the good of his country. Assuming 

all these propositions to be true, state whether, in your opinion, the prisoner 

was sane or insane at the time of shooting President Garfield. 

While some of the experts expressed discomfort in answering such a contrived question, most ultimately acknowledged that they would deem such a subject insane.

The defense’s most important expert, E.C. Spitzka, was not available to testify until 

midway through the prosecution’s rebuttal of the defense. When he did appear, Spitzka provided the strongest testimony corroborating Scoville’s theory. Unlike most of the 

other defense experts, Spitzka conducted an in-person examination of the prisoner and 

was willing to testify directly to Guiteau’s insanity without resorting to elaborate hypotheticals. Spitzka diagnosed Guiteau as a “moral monstrosity,” someone constitutionally, 

and perhaps genetically, incapable of moral reasoning. The vehemence with which Spitzka expressed this view—he claimed he could tell Guiteau was mad just by looking at 

him—may have somewhat curbed the impact of his evidence. Nevertheless, it was clear 

that the prosecution team found his testimony worrisome. They did little to discredit him 
22

Federal Trials and Great Debates in United States History

on cross-examination, moreover. Davidge made the mistake of attempting to undercut 

Spitzka’s otherwise sterling medical credentials by pointing out that he had taught at a 

veterinary college. Asked if he was, in fact, a vet, Spitzka replied tartly, “[i]n the sense that 

I treat asses who ask me stupid questions, I am.” 

Medical and legal definitions of insanity were not coextensive. The law, then as now, 

was primarily concerned with insanity as a comparatively narrow question of responsibility, rather than as an overall picture of the defendant’s mental and emotional state. Nonetheless, the evidence the defense had adduced suggested there was meaningful support for 

Scoville’s theory that Guiteau was, and perhaps always had been, insane. It now fell to the 

prosecution to contradict that evidence.

The Prosecution’s Rebuttal

The prosecution called and recalled more than sixty witnesses to chip away at both the lay 

and expert evidence of Guiteau’s mental illness. With Scoville having laid out Guiteau’s 

lifetime of odd behavior, the prosecution set about showing that this pattern could just 

as easily be accounted for by arrogance and immorality. Porter, Corkhill, and Davidge 

brought in clients and lawyers Guiteau had cheated and boardinghouse operators he had 

run out on. They called General Sherman to rebut the idea that Guiteau’s note was a 

manifestation of insanity (Sherman, had, after all, done most of the things Guiteau had 

suggested on his own initiative). They also assembled their own line of political figures to 

show that, far from a manifestation of madness, Guiteau’s campaign for a desirable office 

was de rigueur under the spoils system. 

Perhaps the most damaging rebuttal witness was Joseph Reynolds, the attorney who 

had mentored Guiteau for a time in Chicago. He had visited Guiteau in jail in collaboration with Corkhill and testified that Guiteau spoke at length about his political motives 

for the assassination on these visits, but never indicated that any form of divine “pressure” 

or “inspiration” played a role. In Reynolds’ telling, Guiteau’s insanity defense was a transparent cover for his baser motives for killing the President. Guiteau reacted angrily to 

Reynolds’s testimony, repeatedly labeling the witness a spy and a liar, slamming his hands 

on the desk, and cursing Corkhill to God. 

The prosecutors also called more than a dozen medical experts who testified that 

Guiteau was sane. They saved the strongest of these witnesses for last. Dr. John Gray was 

a leading figure in the mental health establishment, having run the large asylum in Utica, 

New York, for nearly three decades and having served as the editor of the American Journal 

of Insanity for almost as long. He took issue with Spitzka’s entire theory of insanity. Whereas Spitzka had focused on a range of behaviors significantly deviating from the norms of 

social interaction, Gray classified insanity in more categorical terms. For him, insanity was 
23

United States v. Guiteau

“a disease of the brain, in which there is ... a change in the individual, a departure from 

himself, from his own ordinary standard of mental action, a change in his way of feeling 

and thinking and acting.” 

On this model of insanity, Guiteau’s lifetime record worked against him. Far from establishing his madness, it outlined a devious, narcissistic character entirely consistent with 

killing a prominent man for notoriety. Guiteau had not claimed any physical disease—

physical abnormalities in Guiteau’s brain were 

only discovered during his autopsy—indeed, 

he hadn’t had so much as a headache prior 

to killing Garfield. Guiteau had control of 

his faculties and had planned and executed 

a crime that was, for Gray, a function of evil 

rather than insanity. As Scoville pointed out 

in his closing argument, however, Gray’s confidence that Guiteau suffered from no physical 

illness was based solely on his own assessment 

of conversations with the defendant. His assertions were unverifiable because medical science 

at the time did not enable him to examine the 

physical structure of Guiteau’s brain while he 

was alive. As Guiteau put it, doctors like Gray 

“hang a man and examine his brain afterward.” 

Opinion of the Court on Prayers

Testimony in the trial concluded on January 4, 1882. The attorneys then argued for two 

days about the instructions Justice Cox should give the jury. The most important of these 

were the insanity instructions offered by both sides and the defense’s proposed instruction 

on the place of Garfield’s death, which suggested Guiteau could not be found guilty if the 

jury found Garfield had died outside the District of Columbia.

On January 10, Justice Cox ruled on both issues. Noting that the M’Naghten standard remained the “general rule” prevailing in most states, Cox decided to apply this standard and substantially accepted the government’s theory of the law of insanity. The alternative tests, Cox reasoned, did not give jurors sufficient guidance and left them “liable to 

be swayed by all the wild theories which ingenious counsel have made use of from time

to time to secure acquittal and defeat the ends of justice.” While Cox acknowledged that 

the legal standards for insanity had to be flexible and might change with new medical 

insights, he suggested that, “in the present condition of that science, it is at least a debatOn Gray’s model of 

insanity, Guiteau’s 

record, far from

establishing madness, 

outlined a character 

consistent with killing 

a prominent man for 

notoriety.
24

Federal Trials and Great Debates in United States History

able question whether the [M’Naghten rule] calls for modification.” In the absence of a 

medical consensus, Cox believed it safest to defer to the rule used by the majority of other 

courts.

Justice Cox also ruled for the prosecution on the jurisdictional question. Relying 

on an old body of common-law jurisprudence in England and the United States, Reed 

had argued that, since death was an essential element of murder, the crime could only 

be completed in a jurisdiction if the victim had been attacked and died there. If the jury 

found that Guiteau shot Garfield in Washington and the victim died in New Jersey, Reed 

insisted, the District’s courts had no jurisdiction over the crime. 

This reasoning may seem far-fetched to modern readers, but, as Justice Cox acknowledged, at least two early-nineteenth-century decisions from the SCDC’s predecessor apparently applied such a rule. The opinions in these cases, Cox noted, did not thoroughly 

discuss the issue and appear to have relied on fragmentary language from English cases 

and treatises such as seventeenth-century jurist Edward Coke’s statement that “if a man 

had been feloniously stricken or poisoned in one county and after had died in another 

county, no sufficient indictment could thereof be taken in either of said counties[.]” Those 

deciding these cases, Cox reasoned, had not understood the full context of the English 

precedents, many of which had fallen into disuse. The rule Coke outlined, for instance, 

“grew out of the long since obsolete rule that jurors had to be summoned from the parish, vill or neighborhood of a crime, on account of their knowledge of the facts, of the 

parties, and witnesses.” On the basis of a thorough analysis, several other jurisdictions had 

permitted prosecutions in the state where the attack was committed. “In this condition of 

affairs,” Cox ruled, “I feel at liberty to adopt and announce the opinion which seems most 

to conform to common sense, and that is that the jurisdiction is complete where the fatal 

wound was inflicted.”

Publicly, Scoville expressed confidence that the jury would acquit, telling journalists that “we care nothing for the mere words of the instruction.” Privately, he must have 

known that Justice Cox’s rulings were a blow to his client’s chances. 

Closing Arguments

The closing arguments must have seemed interminable to the jury. They lasted almost two 

weeks, including Saturdays, and occupy nearly 500 pages of densely packed, small-print 

text in the trial transcript. 

Davidge made the first of the arguments. For him, the case was simple: Guiteau was 

a sane but evil man. His motive was neither insanity nor divinity, but egotism on a par few 

could rival. Davidge laid out the defendant’s pitiful career of indolence and petty hustling 

and compared it to the life of his sainted victim. Yet Guiteau, he marveled with asperity, 
25

United States v. Guiteau

was the one who had “the indescribable egotism [to] ... put himself on the same plane as 

the Savior of mankind and the prophets.” Guiteau may have been an eccentric, Davidge 

conceded, but allowing him to escape conviction on that ground would be “tantamount 

to inviting every crackbrained, ill-balanced man, with or without motive, to resort to the 

knife or the pistol, and to slay a man for party purposes, or, it may be, without any purposes whatever.” 

Reed and Scoville responded with separate arguments. Reed attempted to recreate 

the career Davidge had derided, piecing together a pattern of strange behavior and asking 

whether they would not consider such a man mad if they encountered him in their everyday lives. Appealing to this common-sense understanding of sanity, he pleaded with the 

jury to resist the urge to “send a man to the gallows on the opinion of doctors[.]”

Scoville’s five-day closing argument was largely consumed by a painstaking restatement of the evidence delivered over the last several weeks. At times, however, it was also extraordinary for the savagery of his attack on the prosecution. The three opposing attorneys, 

he seemed convinced, had formed a “conspiracy” to condemn a man they knew to be mad, 

the better to sate the public’s thirst for retribution and further their own ambitions. Judge 

Porter, for example, according to Scoville, had “come here to Washington and prostituted 

his talents to hang an insane man.” The prosecution attorneys responded with repeated 

interruptions that rivalled Guiteau’s own for their frequency and incivility. 

Unsurprisingly, Guiteau wanted to speak on his own behalf. He promised an oration 

that would “go thundering down the ages.” Initially, Justice Cox sustained the prosecution’s 

objection. While he would ordinarily permit a defendant to speak on his own behalf, Cox 

acknowledged, Guiteau’s erratic behavior throughout the trial suggested that his closing 

argument would run the proceeding off the rails entirely. Nevertheless, Guiteau composed 

a statement and slipped it to a reporter in the courtroom. A few days after it was published 

in the New York Herald, Corkhill withdrew the government’s objection. He told the court 

he wanted to avoid any prospect for reversal on the ground Guiteau had not been afforded 

every opportunity to defend himself. It is also probable that he saw nothing to trouble the 

prosecution in the speech that had been published. 

Guiteau’s speech was repetitive and at times pathetic, but it largely rehashed his 

arguments that he had been inspired by God to “remove” Garfield, that he was neither “a 

wicked man [nor] a lunatic,” but “a patriot,” and that the opinion of “high-toned” people 

had come around to his way of thinking. “Some of the best people of America,” he bragged 

with no apparent sense of irony, “think me the greatest man of this age, and this feeling is 

growing.” He told the jury, with tears in his eyes, that he would be President himself one 

day. The jurors would no doubt have been struck by Guiteau’s pitiable sense of self-importance, though they may well have taken this as a sign of narcissism rather than madness.
26

Federal Trials and Great Debates in United States History

Porter concluded the arguments with a lengthy, and frequently vicious, assault on 

Guiteau’s character. For him, Guiteau was

cunning, crafty, and remorseless, utterly selfish from his youth up, low and 

brutal in his instincts, inordinate in his love for notoriety, eaten up by a thirst 

for money which has gnawed into his soul like a cancer; a beggar, a hypocrite, 

a canter, a swindler, a lawyer who with many years of practice in two great cities never won a cause ... a man who has left in every State through which he 

passed a trail of knavery, fraud and imposition.... 

Even John Wilkes Booth compared favorably to Guiteau in Porter’s estimation. 

Whereas Lincoln’s assassin had at least been a “brave” man, the cowardly Guiteau was “the 

most cold-blooded and selfish murderer of the last sixty centuries.” One wonders if the 

jury might have begun to feel sorry for Guiteau after days of this withering assault, but he 

matched Porter’s condemnations with a litany of petty insults, accusing Porter of alcoholism and promising him that “God Almighty will put you down with Corkhill.”

Verdict and Sentence

Justice Cox’s charge to the jury followed immediately on the heels of Porter’s argument. 

Cox ignored public demands that he instruct the jury to find Guiteau guilty (a controversial practice that the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional in 1895). Instead, he began 

by reciting the safeguards afforded federal defendants by the Constitution, lamenting that 

“you have been daily witnesses” to the “difficulty and trial of patience” with which those 

protections had been extended to Guiteau. Cox noted that there was little doubt that Guiteau had planned and committed the attack on Garfield and that that attack had caused 

his death. As such, he focused on the question of insanity. There was, he acknowledged, 

some evidence to support both Scoville’s portrait of a lifelong fantasist who had allowed 

his delusions to control his actions and Guiteau’s own account that he was acting under 

what he believed to be “pressure” from God. Whether Guiteau had labored under such 

delusions and whether they were the products of insanity or narcissism, he left to the jury. 

Nevertheless, Justice Cox emphasized evidence he clearly believed undermined both 

of the defense’s insanity theories. Guiteau’s self-recorded account of the plan to kill Garfield and his subsequent discussions with Reynolds suggested he was motivated by politics 

and a desire for fame, rather than divine intervention. His behavior around the time of the 

crime suggested he understood the nature of his actions. That Guiteau may have convinced 

himself he was justified by some odd political theory, Cox instructed, did not matter for 

legal purposes.

Though Justice Cox’s language was measured, particularly compared to the fortnight 

of invective that preceded it, the jurors could have been in little doubt as to the judge’s 
27

United States v. Guiteau

view of the case. And, indeed, they seem to have been in little doubt at all. They returned 

a unanimous guilty verdict in around an hour (though, as Scoville later noted, the curious 

verdict of “[g]uilty as indicted” suggested that Guiteau had been convicted on all eleven 

counts, some of which were contradictory). The verdict was met with wild applause in the 

courtroom, while Guiteau responded to the poll of the jurors with a bitter riposte: “My 

blood be on the head of that jury; don’t you forget it.” 

On February 4, Justice Cox sentenced Guiteau to death. While he acknowledged 

that Guiteau’s “career has been so extraordinary that people may have well at different 

times doubted [his] sanity,” Cox concluded Guiteau was driven by a “mixture of political 

fanaticism [and] a morbid desire for self-exaltation” to kill Garfield. This, he allowed, 

“may seem insanity to some people, but the law looks upon it as a willful crime.” Guiteau’s 

response was a distillation of his vanity, spite, and preposterous sense of destiny. “Nothing 

but good has come from Garfield’s removal,” he claimed, “and that will be posterity’s idea 

on it.... I will go to glory. I won’t go yet. I expect to be president before I go.” 

Appeal

The District of Columbia did not gain a dedicated appellate court until 1893. The SCDC, 

however, heard appeals from criminal cases in a “general term” convened by a panel of 

three justices. Reed’s arguments on appeal focused on two related jurisdictional questions. 

First, he argued that Justice Cox had erred in ruling that the murder had occurred in the 

District of Columbia. Second, he argued that a 1790 federal statute making murder a 

federal crime when committed in any “district of country” controlled by the federal government could not have referred to the District of Columbia, which did not then exist. 

In a unanimous opinion written by Justice Charles Pinckney James, the court upheld 

Justice Cox’s ruling on the first issue, employing nearly identical reasoning. Justice Alexander Hagner wrote separately to expound on the history of Maryland’s common and statutory law on the subject, since the District of Columbia had adopted much of Maryland’s 

law at its creation. Noting that the SCDC had long tried murder cases under the 1790 

statute, Justice James’s opinion for the court also deduced that Congress had passed that 

law in anticipation of the District’s founding. James reasoned that much of the language 

of the statute was borrowed from the clause of the Constitution giving the federal government power over the seat of government, which suggested that Congress had intended to 

use this power in making murder in the District of Columbia a federal offense. 

Habeas Corpus

Prior to 1889, the Supreme Court of the United States did not have appellate jurisdiction 

over most federal criminal cases. Federal prisoners could, however, petition the Court for 
28

Federal Trials and Great Debates in United States History

a writ of habeas corpus, arguing that their conviction and continued detention violated 

federal laws or the Constitution. In this case, Guiteau petitioned for a writ on the ground 

that the SCDC lacked jurisdiction. Justice Joseph Bradley heard Guiteau’s petition. 

In a chambers opinion (a written decision by a single justice), Bradley rejected the 

petition, reasoning that the SCDC had correctly exercised jurisdiction over the case. Praising Justice Cox’s conduct of the trial, Bradley declined to refer the case to the full Supreme 

Court, reasoning that “[p]rompt action ... is due both to the prisoner and to the administration of justice.” This decision effectively ended Guiteau’s judicial recourse. 

Calls for Clemency and Execution

Guiteau’s sister Frances continued to campaign for clemency for her brother. Without success, she appealed to President Garfield’s widow to join her brother’s cause. She also held 

a series of lectures attempting to raise money to campaign for Guiteau’s release. Guiteau’s 

brother, John, made a more formal application for a stay of execution with Arthur, but the 

President refused to meet with him. Arthur gave more consideration to the petition of a 

group of reform-minded psychiatrists who requested that he set up a commission to investigate the prisoner’s mental state. Ultimately, however, Arthur rejected all these appeals.

Throughout this process, Guiteau evidently remained convinced he would find a 

way clear. He wrote several letters to Arthur’s appointees asking for money to hire better 

lawyers, arguing the officeholders owed their jobs to him. The letters were never delivered. 

He had a new and more flattering set of photographs taken of him without his trademark 

scraggly beard and sent them out to newspapers, requesting that they advertise his willingness to sell autographs to raise funds.

When Reed informed him that Justice Bradley had denied his petition, Guiteau 

continued to hold out hope that the full Supreme Court would take the case in January 

1883 (it is unclear whether he knew Bradley chose not to refer the petition). In the meantime, he wrote to Arthur: “I made you, and saved the American people great trouble. And 

the least you can do is let me go; but I appreciate your delicate position, and I am willing 

to stay here until January, if necessary.” 

Guiteau never made it to January. On June 30, 1882, he was executed outside his 

jail, by the banks of the Anacostia River. He rendered his final words in the form of a song, 

facing page, delivered in a trembling falsetto voice, he said, to mimic a child’s.

Aftermath and Legacy 

After his death, Guiteau was autopsied. The results, while not entirely conclusive, suggested the possibility of syphilitic paresis or perhaps brain damage caused by chronic malaria. 

The small but growing body of American doctors who believed Guiteau insane found 
29

United States v. Guiteau

vindication in the results. The larger body of European experts who had been critical of 

Guiteau’s trial and execution pointed to the autopsy results as proof Guiteau had been 

rushed to the gallows. In the years that followed Guiteau’s execution, this opinion came to 

dominate the medical academy. 

As the medical consensus around Guiteau’s condition grew, many legal observers 

became increasingly confident in their assertions that he would never have been tried, 

and certainly never executed, if he had picked a less-prominent victim. The accuracy of 

this view remains unclear. Guiteau’s medical condition at the time of the crime arguably 

did not answer many of the questions posed by the case. Indeed, almost all involved in 

I am going to the Lordy, I am so glad,

I am going to the Lordy, I am so glad,

I am going to the Lordy,

Glory hallelujah! Glory hallelujah!

I am going to the Lordy.

I love the Lordy with all my soul,

Glory hallelujah!

And that is the reason I am going to the Lord,

Glory hallelujah! Glory hallelujah!

I am going to the Lord.

I saved my party and land,

Glory hallelujah!

But they murdered me for it,

And that is the reason I am going to the Lordy,

Glory hallelujah! Glory hallelujah!

I am going to the Lordy!

I wonder what I will do when I get to the Lordy,

I guess that I will weep no more

When I get to the Lordy!

Glory hallelujah!

I wonder what I will see when I get to the Lordy,

I expect to see most glorious things,

Beyond all earthly conception,

When I am with the Lordy!

Glory hallelujah! Glory hallelujah!

I am with the Lord.
30

Federal Trials and Great Debates in United States History

the trial seemed willing to acknowledge that Guiteau was, in the parlance of the time, 

“cranked.” Whether that should have absolved him of responsibility for Garfield’s murder 

was a different, and perhaps far harder, question. As Davidge noted in his closing argument, all murders are, in some sense, manifestations of a form of madness. The law makes 

fine distinctions—now as then—between the forms of that seemingly insane behavior that 

deserve punishment and those that do not. These distinctions arguably reflect the moral 

sense of society as much as any doctrinal logic, which makes their application difficult to 

gainsay from an historical remove. 

There was assuredly a strong desire to see Guiteau hanged for killing Garfield, and it 

is difficult to say whether any evidence of Guiteau’s insanity could have led a jury to acquit 

him. Nevertheless, there is little to support any assertion that Guiteau’s trial was merely 

a façade. Few modern prosecutors would engage in the sort of inflammatory language 

Porter, Davidge, and Corkhill employed at times during the trial. Even so, virtually all the 

contemporary criticism of the case was that the court had been far too lenient with Guiteau and his lawyers. Justice Cox faced and resisted mounting public pressure to put the 

stroppy assassin in his place and ensure he was executed with or without customary due 

process. At a time when the federal courts were increasingly assuming their modern role 

as arbiters of major national debates, the Guiteau trial arguably demonstrated that federal 

courts could be trusted to handle such issues in a dispassionate manner. 

The case also had an important political legacy, though it was quite different from the 

one Guiteau predicted. The Garfield assassination, and the parade of prominent witnesses 

marched through the courtroom, helped build political consensus around disbanding the 

spoils system. Arthur, the man who had perhaps benefitted most from that system, ultimately supported bipartisan reform legislation. The Pendleton Act, which Arthur signed in 

1883, ensured that a large number of civil-service positions that were once objects of the 

sort of patronage Guiteau expected for his “party service” were thereafter assigned on the 

basis of merit and examination.

Substantial though its contemporary impact was, the trial is perhaps of greatest use 

to historians and teachers as a window into the legal and political culture of the Gilded 

Age. Guiteau seemed curiously oblivious to the mores that papered over the baser elements 

of late-nineteenth-century America, and he hopelessly misjudged his own place in that 

society. Yet, perhaps because he was such an outsider, he seems to have understood the 

avarice, hypocrisy, and snobbery of his own times better than most. Guiteau’s unabashed 

embrace of these vices—his proud declaration that he was the “stalwart of the stalwarts”—

raised a mirror to Gilded-Age society in a way that may account for Americans’ disgust 

with the trial as much as their horror at his crime. 
31

United States v. Guiteau

The Judicial Process in

United States v. Guiteau

A Chronology

July 2, 1881

Charles Guiteau shoots James Garfield in Washington, D.C.

Guiteau is arrested immediately.

September 19, 1881

President Garfield dies in Elberon, New Jersey.

October 8, 1881

A grand jury in the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia 

returns an eleven-count indictment against Guiteau for Garfield’s 

murder.

October 14, 1881

Guiteau is arraigned and indicted for Garfield’s murder in the 

Supreme Court of the District of Columbia.

November 14, 1881

The murder trial begins.

January 25, 1882

The jury finds Guiteau guilty as indicted.

February 4, 1882

Justice Walter Cox sentences Guiteau to death by hanging.
32

Federal Trials and Great Debates in United States History

May 9, 1882

The general term of the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia hears Guiteau’s appeal.

May 22, 1882

The general term affirms the judgment on appeal.

June 19, 1882

Justice Joseph Bradley denies Guiteau’s petition for a writ of habeas corpus and declines to refer the petition to the full Supreme 

Court of the United States.

June 30, 1882

Guiteau is hanged in Washington, D.C.
United States v. Guiteau

2

The Federal Judiciary

Legal Questions Before the Federal Courts

What was the legal insanity standard in the District of 

Columbia?

Justice Cox adopted the M’Naghten rule. This rule, borrowed 

from one formulated in England following a controversial acquittal, requires defendants to prove that a mental illness prevented 

them from comprehending the nature or consequences of their 

actions, or from understanding whether those actions were right 

or wrong. Throughout the trial, Scoville alluded to two alternative 

standards that better corresponded to the evidence offered by his 

witnesses. The first, known as the “irresistible impulse” standard, 

asked whether the defendant’s mental condition made it impossible for him or her to conform his or her actions to the law. The 

second, then known as the “New Hampshire” standard, but now 

generally called the “product” test, simply asked whether a mental 

disease or disorder caused the crime. While New Hampshire was 

then the only jurisdiction to adopt this test, the District of Columbia’s courts employed it in the mid-twentieth century before 

adopting a different standard from the American Law Institute’s 

Model Penal Code (1962). Justice Cox rejected the New Hampshire and irresistible-impulse tests on the grounds that they gave 

the jury too little guidance.

Was Charles Guiteau insane when he killed President 

Garfield?

No. In finding Guiteau guilty of murder, the jury rejected Sco-
34

Federal Trials and Great Debates in United States History

ville’s argument that Guiteau was insane. The jury likewise rejected Guiteau’s own argument that, while otherwise sane, he had been compelled to kill by what he sincerely 

believed was a command from God. This defense, sometimes known as the “deific decree” 

defense, is generally regarded as a form of insanity defense. Despite the jury’s conclusions, 

several scholars, psychologists, and medical doctors have subsequently suggested that Guiteau was, in fact, insane.

Was Guiteau guilty of murder?

Yes. The jury took approximately an hour to decide Guiteau’s guilt. Guiteau admitted that 

he planned the attack on Garfield and intended to kill him to preserve the unity of the 

Republican Party. Barring the jury’s acceptance of Guiteau’s insanity defense, this testimony alone was likely sufficient to condemn him. A few early indications at trial suggested 

that Guiteau or his lawyers might argue that the legal cause of Garfield’s death was poor 

medical treatment rather than the gunshot wound, but the defense did not pursue this 

argument. 

Could the defense compel a sitting President to testify?

Judge Cox did not rule on this question, put permitted Scoville to submit written interrogatories to President Chester Arthur after the parties agreed to this course. Guiteau 

repeatedly bragged that Arthur owed his office to him and expressed confidence that his 

“friend” would pardon him out of gratitude even if he was convicted. Understandably, 

Arthur wanted to avoid appearing in court with anyone making such claims, and the prosecution was wary of potential lines of questioning. Nevertheless, Scoville insisted that Arthur’s testimony was essential to Guiteau’s defense and issued a subpoena to the President. 

Although Arthur did not formally assert any privilege against compulsory testimony in 

the case, the prosecutors claimed the judiciary did not have the power to compel a sitting 

President to testify—an argument that Scoville characterized as “simply absurd.” Arthur 

complied with the request for information, providing terse responses to six questions and 

defusing the debate. 

Did the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia have jurisdiction to 

hear the case?

Yes. Guiteau’s trial in the District of Columbia raised two major jurisdictional questions: 

(1) whether Garfield’s death in New Jersey meant the crime had not really been committed

in the District; and (2) whether Congress had authorized the SCDC to hear murder cases

arising in the Nation’s Capital. Justice Cox ruled on the first issue after the conclusion of

the evidence. Following a complex analysis, Cox determined that the best interpretation of
35

United States v. Guiteau

The Federal Courts and Their Jurisdiction

Supreme Court of the District of Columbia

The Supreme Court of the District of Columbia (SCDC) was the site of most of the judicial 

proceedings in United States v. Guiteau. Associate Justice Walter Cox presided over the trial at 

a criminal term, and three of the court’s other justices heard Guiteau’s unsuccessful appeal at 

a general term.

Congress created the SCDC in 1863 as a replacement for the Circuit Court of the District of Columbia after doubts were raised over the loyalty of one of the earlier courts’ judges. 

The new court consisted of three justices and a chief justice appointed to serve during good 

behavior by the President by and with the advice and consent of the Senate. Congress added 

a fifth seat to the court in 1870 and a sixth, to which Justice Cox was the first judge appointed, in 1879.

The court initially exercised a blend of trial and appellate jurisdiction through the use 

of terms. Any justice could hear trials and motions in the criminal and special terms. Parties 

aggrieved by rulings in these terms could appeal to the general term, which consisted of a 

panel of any three justices. In 1893, Congress created the Court of Appeals of the District of 

Columbia, which subsumed the SCDC’s appellate jurisdiction. 

Because of the District’s unique legal status, the SCDC exercised jurisdiction over both 

local and federal matters from its inception. In 1933, the Supreme Court of the United 

States held that Congress’s plenary power over the District of Columbia enabled it to grant 

the SCDC this unusually broad remit while preserving its status under Article III of the Constitution (thereby protecting SCDC judges’ salary and tenure). Although Congress changed 

the court’s name to the District Court of the United States for the District of Columbia in 

1936, the court continued to exercise both local and federal jurisdiction until 1973. In that 

year, Congress transferred the court’s local jurisdiction to the recently formed Superior Court 

of the District of Columbia, bringing the court’s jurisdiction broadly in line with that of other federal district courts. It is now known as the United States District Court for the District 

of Columbia. 

Supreme Court of the United States

Associate Justice Joseph Bradley of the Supreme Court of the United States denied Guiteau’s 

petition for a writ of habeas corpus and declined to refer the case to the full Supreme Court. 

These decisions effectively ended judicial involvement in Guiteau’s case.

The Supreme Court is the nation’s highest appellate court. The Constitution grants the 

Supreme Court original jurisdiction in cases in which states are a party and those involving 

diplomats, but empowers Congress to determine the Court’s size and scope of appellate jurisdiction. The Judiciary Act of 1789 established a Supreme Court with one chief justice and 

five associate justices. Congress subsequently increased and reduced the number of justices 

several times during the early- and mid-nineteenth century, though the Court has retained 

nine seats since 1869. Throughout its first century, the Supreme Court was responsible for 

deciding most civil appeals, and the justices had little control over a docket that was increasingly overcrowded. The Court gained discretionary power over the bulk of its appellate 

docket in 1925.
36

Federal Trials and Great Debates in United States History

English and American precedents suggested that a court in the jurisdiction in which a fatal 

blow was struck had jurisdiction over the crime, even if the death occurred elsewhere. Both 

the general session of the SCDC and Supreme Court Justice Joseph Bradley, ruling on a 

petition for a writ of habeas corpus, came to the same conclusion. The SCDC general term 

also ruled on the second question during Guiteau’s appeal, holding that a 1790 federal law 

referring to murders committed in any “district of country” under federal control included the District of Columbia, even though the District did not exist when the statute was 

passed. Noting that the SCDC had long tried murder cases under that statute, the court 

reasoned that Congress had passed the law in anticipation of the District of Columbia’s imminent creation. Scoville briefly raised a third argument peripherally related to jurisdiction 

when he challenged Judge Cox’s decision to continue the trial from one court term to the 

next, though he apparently did not pursue this claim with much vigor.
United States v. Guiteau

to death. His conduct of the trial was initially controversial. Many observers demanded 

he take a firmer line with the unruly Guiteau. Nevertheless, Cox was ultimately praised 

in most quarters for an even-handed approach 

that left little ground for appeal. 

Walter Cox was born in Georgetown, 

District of Columbia, then a separate municipality, in 1826. He attended Georgetown University, receiving a 

bachelor’s degree in 1843 and a master’s degree the following year. 

He graduated from Harvard Law School in 1847. 

After Harvard, Cox entered private practice in Washington. 

His successful legal career lasted over thirty years, during which 

time he also held a number of local legal and political offices in 

Georgetown and Washington. He also taught at the Columbian 

University School of Law (now The George Washington University Law School) from 1874 to 1879 and again between 1899 and 

1902. 

President Rutherford B. Hayes nominated Cox to a newly 

created seat on the SCDC on February 26, 1879. The Senate approved his nomination by voice vote on March 1. Cox served on 

3

Biographies

Judges

Associate Justice Walter Smith Cox

Justice Cox presided over Charles Guiteau’s murder trial in the 

Supreme Court of the District of Columbia. After the jury returned a guilty verdict, Cox sentenced Guiteau 

Cox

Georgetown University Law Center Library
38

Federal Trials and Great Debates in United States History

the court for approximately twenty years, retiring in 1899. During his brief retirement, 

Cox resumed his academic career, publishing a legal treatise for women in 1901. He died 

in 1902.

Associate Justice Charles Pinckney James

Justice Charles Pinckney James wrote the SCDC’s opinion on Guiteau’s appeal. He upheld 

Justice Cox’s determination that the court had jurisdiction to hear the 

case.

James was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1818. He graduated from 

Harvard College in 1838 and shortly thereafter returned to Cincinnati, 

where he practiced law until taking a position as a law professor at Cincinnati College (now the University of Cincinnati) in 1850. He served as 

a judge on the city’s Superior Court from 1856 to 1864, when he moved 

to Washington, D.C.

James practiced law in the Capital for fifteen years and worked 

part-time as a professor at Georgetown University from 1870 to 1874. For much of the 

early part of his career in Washington, James also served on a commission revising federal 

statutes. He received a recess appointment to the SCDC on July 24, 1879. James was 

confirmed by the Senate and received his permanent commission on December 10 of that 

year. He served on the court until his retirement in 1892. James died in 1899.

Associate Justice Alexander Burton Hagner

Justice Hagner, in a concurring opinion in the SCDC’s appellate judgment in Guiteau, 

detailed the history of Maryland’s law on murders involving an attack in 

one jurisdiction and a death in another. Based on this analysis, Hagner 

concluded that Maryland (and thus District of Columbia) law permitted the prosecution and punishment of murderers whose victims died 

elsewhere.

Hagner was born in Washington, D.C., in 1826. He was educated 

at St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland, and at the College of New 

Jersey (now Princeton University). After reading law (a process of legal 

apprenticeship) in 1848, he became a lawyer in Maryland, engaging in 

private practice in Annapolis until he joined the SCDC in 1879. He also served as a state 

delegate from 1854 to 1855 and as a special judge in the circuit court of Prince George’s 

County, which neighbors the District of Columbia. 

President Rutherford B. Hayes nominated Hagner to the SCDC on January 17, 

1879. The U.S. Senate confirmed his nomination four days later. He served until his retirement in 1903. Hagner died in 1915. 

James

Hagner

Georgetown University Law Center Library Hagner Family Collection
39

United States v. Guiteau

Associate Justice Joseph Bradley

Justice Bradley ruled on Guiteau’s petition for a writ of habeas corpus, determining that 

the SCDC had properly exercised jurisdiction over the case and that it was not necessary 

for the full Supreme Court of the United States to hear the case. 

Bradley was born in upstate New York in 1813, the son of a farmer. With the aid of a local church fund, he was able to attend Rutgers 

College in New Jersey, graduating in 1836. After Rutgers, Bradley read 

law. On joining the New Jersey bar in 1839, Bradley forged a modest 

but successful private practice. Beginning in the late 1840s, he embarked 

on a more lucrative career as a corporate attorney for major New Jersey 

railway companies and other corporations. He was active in local Whig 

politics and later aligned himself with the Republicans.

Several of Bradley’s corporations did substantial business in the 

South, and he initially appeared to favor a conciliatory approach to states seceding from 

the Union in 1861. Once hostilities began in earnest, however, Bradley proved a firm 

unionist. He launched an unsuccessful campaign for the House of Representatives as a 

Republican in 1862, but remained active in Republican politics after the war, campaigning 

for Ulysses S. Grant in the 1868 election.

President Grant nominated Bradley to the Supreme Court of the United States on 

February 7, 1870. The Senate confirmed his nomination, and he received his commission 

on March 21, 1870. Bradley’s nomination, along with that of Justice William Strong, came 

on the same day as a controversial decision striking down the federal government’s use of 

paper money as legal tender, and many observers claimed Grant had selected the two new 

justices to overturn that decision. Bradley subsequently voted to do so in a series of cases 

beginning in 1871. 

Though several recent histories have suggested he represented a form of moderate

Republican constitutionalism, Bradley’s tenure on the Court is often associated with opinions embracing a limited view of legal equality in the post-war era. He penned a now-infamous concurring opinion in an 1873 case upholding Illinois’s restrictions on women 

practicing law that adopted a narrow understanding of women’s role in society. And in 

1883, he wrote a majority opinion striking down a landmark civil-rights law, making the 

ill-fated remark that African Americans could no longer be treated as the “special favorite[s] of the law.”

Like Garfield, Bradley served on the inter-branch commission deciding the 1876 

presidential election. Bradley’s selection, however, proved controversial. The law had specified four of the five justices to serve on the commission, with a fifth to be selected by the 

Court itself. Congressional Democrats acceded to this selection process in the expectation 

Bradley
40

Federal Trials and Great Debates in United States History

that the justices would select David Davis, who was widely considered the most “neutral” 

member of the Court. Shortly thereafter, however, Davis was appointed to the U.S. Senate 

and Bradley, who was perceived as a more reliable Republican vote, filled the fifth Supreme 

Court spot on the commission. Bradley ultimately cast the deciding vote in favor of Rutherford B. Hayes in each of the contested states, leading to Democratic cries of partisanship 

and undue influence.

Bradley served on the Court until his death in 1892.

Lawyers

George Scoville

George Scoville felt compelled to represent his brother-in-law Charles Guiteau, firmly convinced the assassination was the product of Guiteau’s insanity. Although Scoville had little 

experience in criminal law, he generally acquitted himself well against 

a team of renowned criminal attorneys in a case he seemed destined to 

lose. Scoville had to deal with an array of pressures in the case, not least 

of which the difficulty of coping with his obstreperous client. Guiteau 

vacillated between heaping praise on Scoville and blaming him for every 

minor setback in the case. 

The primary bone of contention between the two was the nature of 

the insanity defense. Guiteau repeatedly objected to Scoville’s attempts 

to introduce evidence of Guiteau’s lifelong pattern of erratic behavior, 

instead insisting on a “deific decree” defense. Scoville faced a second, rather awkward, 

family conflict when he called his wife to the stand. Frances Scoville’s testimony attempted 

to lay out her brother’s history of insanity and suggested a pattern of hereditary madness, 

but the lawyer often appeared frustrated with his wife’s inability to follow courtroom procedures or to confine her answers to the questions posed. 

Scoville was born in upstate New York in 1824 and become a member of the bar 

in 1848. He moved to Chicago in 1851 and established himself as a leading real-estate 

lawyer. He had little experience with criminal law during his more than thirty years at the 

bar before Guiteau. Though he understandably feared involvement in the case could ruin 

his career, Scoville won plaudits from many legal observers for his conduct of the defense 

under difficult circumstances. 

The trial seems to have had a more negative effect on the Scovilles’ family life. He and 

Frances divorced shortly after the trial, and George attempted to have his wife committed 

to a mental institution. The divorce proceedings were a cause célèbre and sordid details, including Scoville’s allegations of his wife’s infidelity, appeared in the national press. Around 

this time, Scoville relocated to Indiana. He died in 1906. 

Scoville
41

United States v. Guiteau

Leigh Robinson

Justice Cox assigned Leigh Robinson to the case on October 26, 1881, approximately 

three weeks before the trial. He left the case on November 21, 1881, just a week after it 

began, because of a dispute with Scoville, who did not want to pursue 

Robinson’s preferred theory that Garfield’s death was caused by medical 

malpractice. Robinson appears to have been eager to disengage from the 

case from the outset, though he was a regular visitor at the court following his withdrawal.

Robinson was born in Richmond, Virginia, in 1840. His father was 

a well-regarded lawyer and treatise writer. He attended the University 

of Virginia, before moving to Washington to join his father’s law firm. 

Robinson’s legal career was interrupted by service in the Confederate 

Army during the Civil War, but he returned to the District after the war, where he would 

continue to practice successfully until his death in 1922.

Charles H. Reed

Charles Reed was in the unusual position of being both a witness and a lawyer in Guiteau. 

Scoville called him to testify to Guiteau’s erratic behavior in court during a petty larceny 

case. After his testimony, Reed began advising Scoville on an informal 

basis before joining him as co-counsel on December 23, 1882. Reed 

initially took a backseat to Scoville, but assumed a more prominent role 

in arguing Guiteau’s appeal and habeas petition. 

Reed was born in Wyoming County, New York, in 1834. After 

reading law in New York, he relocated to Kewanne, Illinois. He moved 

to Rock Island the next year and partnered with successful attorney Joseph Knox. The two moved their growing practice to Chicago in 1860. 

In 1862, Knox was appointed state’s attorney and selected Reed as his 

deputy. When Knox left office in 1864, Reed was elected his successor, winning re-election in 1868 and 1872. He initially established a fine reputation as a prosecutor and was 

frequently praised for his bonhomie. Over the course of his twelve years in office, however, 

Reed increasingly became known as a somewhat lax attorney, more interested in establishing political relationships than winning cases. Scoville recalled Reed as a “good-hearted 

fellow,” but not the most rigorous lawyer. As state’s attorney, Reed allowed Guiteau to join 

the bar with the most minimal of questioning.

Reed lost his bid for re-election in 1876 and appears to have endured a period of 

personal and professional decline between this loss and his involvement in Guiteau. He 

may well have seen his involvement in such a high-profile trial as a route back to a more 

successful practice, but he failed to parlay his newfound prominence into professional gain 

Robinson

Reed
42

Federal Trials and Great Debates in United States History

and, according to one Illinois paper, “lost his grip” after the trial. Reed’s life from that 

point was seemingly consumed by depression. He attempted suicide in 1887, jumping 

from a New York ferry boat and narrowly avoiding drowning to death. He continued to 

suffer from “melancholia” after the attempt. Reed moved to Baltimore around this time, 

where he gained a reputation for quiet eccentricity. According to one report, he habitually 

walked up and down Charles Street with his body bowed and head down, refusing to speak 

to anyone. He died in 1892, “a wreck in mind, body, and fortune.” 

George Corkhill

As District Attorney for the District of Columbia, George Corkhill led much of the pretrial preparation under the supervision of Attorney General Isaac McVeagh. Corkhill continued to play an active role during the trial, although Walter Davidge and 

John Porter, two better-regarded private lawyers, were widely viewed as 

the lead counsel for the prosecution. Corkhill appears to have riled Guiteau more than any other lawyer in the case, and many of the defendant’s 

most vitriolic outbursts in court were reserved for the District Attorney.

Corkhill was born in New Rumley, Ohio, in 1838. His family relocated to Burlington, Iowa, in 1847. He attended Iowa Wesleyan University and Harvard Law School. Corkhill joined the army at the outbreak of the Civil War, leading a group of volunteers from Iowa. He was 

brevetted (awarded the rank, but not the pay, of the position) lieutenant colonel for his 

participation in the Peninsula Campaign in 1862. Following the war, Corkhill moved to 

St. Louis, Missouri, where he practiced law for two years, before returning to Iowa. There, 

he was appointed clerk of the U.S. Circuit Court and eventually district attorney for the 

first judicial district of Iowa. 

In 1873, Corkhill moved to Washington, D.C., where he managed the Daily Chronicle newspaper. Married to the daughter of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Miller until her 

death in 1876, Corkhill was well-connected in the city’s political circles and was appointed 

U.S. District Attorney in 1880. He retired from his position shortly after the Guiteau trial 

and resumed private practice until his death in 1886. 

Walter D. Davidge

Walter Davidge was widely considered the leading trial lawyer in Washington, D.C., prior to Guiteau. Attorney General McVeagh asked him to 

join the defense team with District Attorney Corkhill and former New 

York state court judge John Porter. 

Davidge was born in Baltimore in or around 1823. He attended 

Baltimore City College before moving to Washington, D.C. There he 

read law with Justice Cox’s father, Clement Cox. He formed his own law 

Corkhill

Davidge
43

United States v. Guiteau

firm with another young lawyer from Clement Cox’s firm and quickly established a strong 

reputation in the city. He helped to found the District of Columbia Bar Association and 

was one of the association’s early presidents.

Davidge’s successful legal career in Washington spanned several decades. On his 

death in 1901, the District’s courts closed as a mark of respect. 

Judge John K. Porter

Seen by many as the lead counsel for the prosecution, Judge John K. Porter gave the final 

closing argument in the case. Though he arrived on the prosecution team 

with unimpeachable credentials as a trial lawyer, some observers criticized his approach to the case and his inflammatory tone.

Porter was born in Waterford, New York, in 1819. He graduated 

from Union College at the age of eighteen and launched a successful 

legal career—first in Waterford and then in Albany, where he established 

an excellent reputation as an appellate advocate. In 1861, he successfully defended newspaper editor Horace Greeley in a celebrated libel suit 

brought by the speaker of the state assembly. Three years later, he was 

appointed to the state Court of Appeals, resigning in 1868 to resume private practice. 

In 1885, Porter suffered an attack of “apoplexy,” likely caused by either a cerebral hemorrhage or a stroke. He remained an invalid until his death in 1892.

The Victim

President James Abram Garfield was the victim of Guiteau’s bizarre plan to reunify the 

Republican Party Garfield had represented in Congress and the White 

House. 

The twentieth President’s life reads like an assortment of rags-toriches tropes that made him an obvious candidate for hero worship in 

the months following his death. Garfield was born into poverty (in a 

log cabin, no less) and was fatherless from the age of two. He worked in 

manual labor until, at least as his personal lore had it, a near-death experience on a canal barge convinced him to seek an education. Bright and 

hardworking, the young Garfield won a scholarship to Williams College 

in Massachusetts and worked as a carpenter and janitor to make ends meet. He excelled 

academically and eventually became a professor at, and then president of, Western Reserve 

Eclectic Institute (renamed Hiram College in 1867) in Ohio. 

Garfield served as an officer in the Civil War, winning an impressive victory at the 

Battle of Middle Creek in 1862, which helped secure Union control of Kentucky. The 

victory earned Garfield the rank of brigadier general and his first taste of national acclaim. 

Porter

Garfield

New York Court of Appeals
44

Federal Trials and Great Debates in United States History

He left the military to pursue politics, becoming a U.S. representative for Ohio in 1863, 

in which role he served until assuming the presidency eighteen years later. 

Garfield had read law and was admitted to the Ohio bar in 1861, but the war interrupted his legal career. Though a staunch Republican, he was one of a team of high-profile 

figures who, following the war, represented Confederate sympathizers tried by military 

commission. In his first-ever courtroom appearance, Garfield won a major victory before 

the U.S. Supreme Court in Ex Parte Milligan (1866), an influential case that established 

that military authorities could not try civilians where regular courts remained in operation.

Garfield was not considered a frontrunner for his party’s presidential nomination 

going into the 1880 Republican National Convention. (Nominating conventions served 

a more active role in selecting nominees than they do today and were often the sites of 

deal-making and intrigue.) His speech nominating Treasury Secretary John Sherman impressed the convention audience, however, and—as successive vote counts revealed an impasse between 

the stalwart and half-breed factions of the party—Garfield slowly 

emerged as a compromise candidate. He won the nomination on 

the thirty-seventh ballot. Garfield ran a “front porch” campaign in 

the general election, seldom venturing out of Ohio. This approach 

paid dividends as he defeated another former general, Winfield 

Scott Hancock. 

Garfield’s brief presidency was consumed by a turf war between the two wings of the Republican Party. Though he was nominated as a unifier, both sides believed they could bring the new 

President to heel. When Garfield rejected stalwart leader Roscoe 

Conkling’s pick for the influential post of Collector of the Port of New York, it appeared 

to many that he had sided with Blaine and the half-breeds. Guiteau saw this move as a sign 

of ingratitude from the President and treachery from the Secretary of State.

After the assassination attempt, Garfield spent months convalescing in the White 

House. His every minor temperature or weight change held the nation rapt, although his 

doctors frequently reported inaccurate information to preserve morale. Several scholars 

have blamed their medical treatment, arguably outmoded even in the 1880s, for Garfield’s 

failure to recover. He ultimately moved to the house of a British millionaire on the New 

Jersey shore in an attempt to escape the heat of the Washington summer. He died there on 

September 19, 1881. 

Garfield’s death occasioned an outpouring of grief that seems outsize to modern 

Americans conditioned to think of Garfield, if at all, as one of the forgotten presidents. 

In 1884, a prominent monument to him was installed near the U.S. Capitol building. 

Garfield Memorial
45

United States v. Guiteau

An even more impressive monument was erected at his burial site in Cleveland. Garfield’s 

widow, Lucretia, began the tradition of presidential libraries by converting part of their 

Ohio home for that purpose. 

Despite this, Garfield largely faded from the public consciousness in the decades 

following his death. And, although recent popular histories have done something to revive 

his memory, he remains a minor figure in the public imagination.

Prominent Witnesses

Guiteau’s trial was unusual, if not unique, for the number of prominent and colorful witnesses called. Two presidents, a secretary of state, the army’s most senior general, several 

members of Congress, and a minister of the Venezuelan government were among the 

141 witnesses who gave evidence at one point or another. The following biographies are 

designed to give a flavor of those called and are selected based on a balance of their importance to the case and to the period (thus, for example, future President Benjamin Harrison 

is omitted because his testimony was perfunctory).

Secretary of State James G. Blaine

Secretary of State James G. Blaine was with Garfield when Guiteau fired the shots that led 

to the case. In his capacity as Secretary of State he also played an important role in Guiteau’s imagined political conspiracy. Like Garfield, Blaine 

was a towering figure in his own time but is not well-known today. The 

leading light of the half-breed wing of the Republican Party, Blaine was 

bitter rivals with Senator Roscoe Conkling, the de facto leader of the 

stalwart faction. This divide between the party’s personalities and cliques 

obsessed Guiteau in the months preceding the assassination. After Blaine 

rejected Guiteau’s repeated attempts to gain an office abroad, Guiteau 

became convinced that Blaine was consumed by his own ambition and 

would ruin the party. Surmising that Garfield was a close ally to Blaine, and perhaps his 

puppet, Guiteau became convinced that “removing” the President was the only way to 

ensure the stalwarts would return to power and reunite the party.

Blaine was born in West Brownsville, Pennsylvania, in 1830. After attending Washington and Jefferson College, he worked as a teacher before relocating to Maine. There he 

became a newspaper editor, which he eventually parlayed into a career in politics. He was 

elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1862, becoming Speaker in 1869. He ran 

for the Republican presidential nomination in both 1876 and 1880, each time losing out 

to compromise candidates amid internal strife in the party.

He was selected to serve in the Senate in 1880, but declined the position for the State 

Department post. Garfield’s nomination of Blaine lent the latter important influence in 

Blaine
46

Federal Trials and Great Debates in United States History

the new administration, but it came at a cost as Garfield insisted that Blaine relinquish his 

presidential ambitions. Shortly after Garfield’s death, President Arthur selected Frederick 

Frelinghuysen to replace Blaine; Blaine left office in December 1881. 

This would not be the end of Blaine’s political career, however, as he finally secured 

the Republican nomination for President in 1884, eventually losing in the general election 

to Grover Cleveland—the first time a Republican had lost a presidential election since 

before the Civil War. When Benjamin Harrison regained the White House for the Republicans in 1889, he appointed Blaine Secretary of State for a second time. In his three years 

in the Harrison administration, Blaine pursued a more active role for the United States in 

world affairs, a change in policy that ultimately led to interventions in Latin America and 

Asia in the years after Blaine retired due to ill health in 1892. He died the next year.

General William Tecumseh Sherman

One of the strangest aspects of Guiteau’s plot involved an undelivered note addressed to 

William Tecumseh Sherman, the Commanding General of the U.S. Army. Convinced 

that the legendary Civil War leader would be sympathetic to his attempt 

to reunite the country, Guiteau asked Sherman to bring troops to the 

jail, presumably to secure his safety or release. In fact, as Sherman testified during his appearance at the trial, he did order out troops after the 

shooting, first to the train depot where the assassination had taken place, 

and then dispersed throughout the city. He did so, however, out of concern that the attack on Garfield might be part of a broader conspiracy 

against the government. Though unaware of Guiteau’s request, Sherman 

also ordered a force to guard the jail and assist police with Guiteau’s 

security, for which Guiteau later thanked him with evident satisfaction. The prosecution 

used this testimony as rebuttal evidence against the suggestion that Guiteau’s note was a 

manifestation of his insanity.

Sherman was born in Lancaster, Ohio, in 1820. He attended the prestigious United States Military Academy at West Point, where he established a lasting reputation as a 

brilliant, if sometimes cavalier, officer. Sherman rose through the ranks to become one of 

the most important leaders in the Union Army during the Civil War, assuming command 

in the western theater after his friend and immediate superior Ulysses Grant’s promotion 

to Commanding General in 1864. Sherman cut a swath across much of the Deep South 

in the final two years of the war, winning important victories in Georgia, Florida, and the 

Carolinas, but also securing a place in infamy among southerners for his scorched-earth 

approach. Following the South’s surrender, Sherman attempted to negotiate terms for the 

peace without authorization from either Grant or civilian leaders and found himself reprimanded despite his victories in the field. 

Sherman

National Archives
47

United States v. Guiteau

When Grant became President in 1869, Sherman was elevated to Commanding 

General, the most senior post in the U.S. military. He held this position until 1883, and 

also briefly acted as Secretary of War in 1869. He left his post as Commanding General 

in 1883 and retired from the military the following year. He died of pneumonia in 1891.

Senator John A. Logan

Among the numerous national figures drawn into the trial by Guiteau’s bizarre political aspirations, Senator John A. Logan was perhaps the most familiar with the defendant. Logan 

had the misfortune of staying at the same Washington, D.C., boardinghouse as Guiteau. The latter used this as an opportunity to press Logan for 

recommendations and sate his appetite for the approval of “high-toned” 

figures. Guiteau repeatedly used Logan’s name in his quixotic search for 

a political appointment, though Logan apparently believed him insane. 

Logan was born in Illinois in 1826. After service in the Mexican-American War, he attended Louisville University and joined the bar. 

At just twenty-six years of age, he was elected to the Illinois legislature. 

In 1858 he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, but left the 

House to serve in the army during the Civil War, rising to the rank of major general.

After the war, Logan returned to the House of Representatives, serving until he was 

appointed U.S. senator for the state of Illinois in 1871. In 1884, he ran as James Blaine’s 

vice presidential candidate on the losing Republican ticket. He remained in the Senate 

after the election, having been selected for a third term by the Illinois legislature. He died 

in 1886.

Joseph S. Reynolds

J.S. Reynolds supervised Guiteau in the late 1860s as the latter apprenticed for the bar. 

He later visited Guiteau in jail and relayed their discussions to Corkhill. His testimony 

that Guiteau was motivated solely by political animus, rather than divine inspiration, infuriated Guiteau, who denounced Reynolds as a “spy.” Justice Cox emphasized Reynolds’s 

damaging testimony in his charge to the jury.

Reynolds was born in New Lenox, Illinois, in 1839. He moved to Chicago at the 

age of seventeen. With the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, Reynolds volunteered as

a private in the army. He distinguished himself in battle and worked his way up through 

the ranks with remarkable speed, serving as a colonel in Sherman’s Army during his 

march to the sea. President Lincoln gave him a brevet appointment as a brigadier general 

in 1865.

On leaving the military shortly after the war, Reynolds attended the Chicago Union 

College of Law and read law with a local former judge. He formed a successful legal pracLogan

U.S. Senate Historical Office
48

Federal Trials and Great Debates in United States History

tice and also became active in state politics. He was elected to the state house in 1867 and 

to the state senate in 1872. 

Reynolds retired in 1902 and moved to Southern California, where he died in 1911.

President Chester A. Arthur

President Chester Arthur’s legacy was forever intertwined with Garfield’s assassin. On Garfield’s death, Arthur became the twenty-first President of the United States. Throughout 

his confinement and trial, Guiteau repeatedly proclaimed that he had “made” Arthur and 

that his “friend” owed him a debt of gratitude, declarations Arthur undoubtedly did not appreciate. Though Arthur ultimately surprised critics 

by showing an independent streak, some scurrilous reporters had hinted 

that he might have been part of a stalwart conspiracy to kill Garfield. 

Scoville attempted to call Arthur, who had interacted with Guiteau 

several times during the 1880 campaign, to substantiate his argument 

that Guiteau’s political ambitions were a preposterous outgrowth of his 

insanity. Though the prosecution lawyers initially took a firm line, arguing that Scoville and the court did not have the power to compel a 

sitting President to testify, they acceded to Arthur providing written answers to six questions propounded by Scoville, apparently with the President’s consent. Arthur’s responses 

echoed those of several other prominent figures regarding Guiteau’s political aspirations: 

Guiteau was never seen as anything more than a hanger-on. 

After Guiteau’s trial defense and appeals failed, his family and a group of psychiatrists 

asked Arthur to commute or postpone Guiteau’s death sentence. Arthur refused to do so, 

and Guiteau was executed on June 30, 1882.

Arthur was born in Fairfield, Vermont, in 1829. He graduated from Union College 

in 1848. He briefly worked as a teacher before reading law and joining the bar in New 

York City.

During the Civil War, he served as Quartermaster General for the State of New York. 

In 1871, President Grant appointed him Collector of the Port of New York. At a time before the federal income tax, this post accounted for roughly one third of the federal government’s revenue. The position was highly sought after and frequently the source of political 

intrigue and corruption. Arthur owed his job to Senator Conkling’s political machine and 

was not above party graft himself, filling the Customs House with political cronies, many 

of whom were primarily interested in lining their own pockets. President Hayes removed 

Arthur from office in 1878 as part of an attempt to clean up the revenue collection system.

Arthur’s nomination as vice president at the 1880 Republican Convention was widely seen 

as a gesture to the stalwart wing of the party, and many expected Arthur to govern in line 

with Conkling’s views when he assumed the presidency. To the astonishment of many of 

Arthur
49

United States v. Guiteau

his detractors, Arthur rejected Conkling’s advice and supported efforts to reform the civil 

service system, in part as a tribute to Garfield and, perhaps, in part because Democrats 

running on that platform had gained ground in the 1882 election. The legislation he 

signed, commonly known as the Pendleton Act, left a good deal of the reform work to the 

executive branch, and Arthur again exceeded expectations by setting up a robust commission to ensure appointments were made on the basis of merit rather than party allegiance. 

Arthur secretly suffered from a serious kidney disorder for much of his presidency and 

made only a half-hearted bid for re-election. The Republican convention selected Blaine 

over him in 1884. Arthur died in 1886. 

Frances Scoville

Frances Scoville, née Guiteau, testified at the trial about her brother’s history of odd behavior, including his attempt to attack her with an ax. She also testified about the history 

of insanity in her family. This put her in the unenviable position of being examined by 

her husband, George Scoville. Her testimony was somewhat tense, as Scoville repeatedly 

chided her for failing to answer questions as narrowly as possible. In 

the aftermath of the trial, Frances became the most avid campaigner for 

clemency for her brother. 

Frances was born in January 1836, approximately six years before 

her brother. Like Guiteau, she was raised in Freeport, Illinois. She appears to have borne much of the work of caring for her younger brother. 

After marrying George Scoville, she lived in Chicago and spent the summers in Wisconsin, where Guiteau attacked her.

Following the trial, Frances remained devoted to her brother and 

campaigned for his release without success. She participated in a lecture series to raise 

money for Guiteau and attempted to recruit Lucretia Garfield to her brother’s cause. She 

also published a novel that presented a lightly fictionalized version of her brother’s life.

The Scovilles’ marriage appears to have been failing around the time of the trial. In 

1882, George attempted to have his wife committed to a mental institution. The two were 

divorced in 1883, with the details of their breakup feeding hunger for salacious details 

about the family. She later remarried (although that relationship also failed). 

As Frances Norton, she worked as a progressive social campaigner and suffragist in 

Chicago into the 1900s. She died in 1912. 

Dr. Edward Charles Spitzka

E.C. Spitzka was arguably the defense’s most important medical expert. He emphatically

diagnosed Guiteau as an insane “moral monstrosity.” His model of both the concept of

insanity and Guiteau’s own psychological makeup clashed markedly with the prosecution’s

leading expert, John Gray.

Scoville
50

Federal Trials and Great Debates in United States History

Spitzka was born in New York City in 1852. He studied at the 

College of the City of New York’s University Medical College before 

spending three years abroad studying at medical schools in Leipzig 

and Vienna. He held several teaching posts at medical schools in New 

York throughout his career and served as the editor of the American 

Journal of Neurology from 1881 to 1884. 

After the trial, Spitzka took vindication in Guiteau’s autopsy, 

which appeared to offer some physical support for his claims that Guiteau was insane. He published an influential treatise on insanity in 

1883.

In his later years, Spitzka suffered from necrosis of the upper jaw. He died of apoplexy in 1914.

Dr. John P. Gray

John Gray was the final witness and leading expert for the prosecution in Guiteau. He testified that insanity was a physical illness that changed a person’s character. Gray confidently 

rejected Spitzka’s theory that Guiteau’s personality and moral sense had 

been shaped by long-term mental illness. In Gray’s view, Guiteau was 

simply a degenerate; the assassination was entirely consistent with his 

character and could not be attributed to any obvious physical ailment. 

Gray was born in 1825 in Centre County, Pennsylvania. He was 

educated at Dickinson College and the University of Pennsylvania Medical School, where he received his M.D. in 1849. After a brief stint at 

a hospital in Philadelphia, he moved to the Utica Asylum, New York’s 

leading mental institution. He became superintendent of the asylum in 

1854 and the following year became editor of the American Journal of Insanity. 

In March 1882, a man entered Gray’s office and shot him in the face. The assailant, 

who had previously been diagnosed insane, declared he was an ambassador from heaven 

sent to kill Gray. Gray lived for another four years, but apparently never fully recovered 

from the shock. He died in 1886.

Gray

Spitzka

U.S. National Library of Medicine
United States v. Guiteau

4

Media Coverage and Public Debates

As the first civilian trial of a presidential assassin, Guiteau

dominated the national press for over a year. Garfield’s 

illness had captivated the nation, and the press continued 

to play up both the affection most Americans felt for the slain 

President and the reserves of contempt they stored for his assassin. Most of the press accounts of the trial accurately reported the 

substance of witnesses’ testimony and Guiteau’s interruptions, but 

often spun the language to frame it in terms of Guiteau’s villainy. 

Guiteau was obsessed by the press coverage of the trial, 

though he often seemed to miss the point of articles criticizing the 

proceedings and snatched at any statements even faintly praising 

“Hyenas” circling Garfield’s tomb. Puck, March 22, 1882
52

Federal Trials and Great Debates in United States History

the defense. The press’s ravenous appetite for details of the assassination and the trial meant 

that papers were often accused of giving Guiteau a mouthpiece. The New York Herald’s 

decision to publish Guiteau’s “Autobiography” came in for particular criticism, though 

the Herald and other papers continued to publish work Guiteau handed them in court, 

including his intended closing argument to the jury. 

Much of the press coverage and public discourse around the trial focused on criticisms that the trial process was taking too long and indulging the defendant too much. 

Many papers pilloried Justice Cox when he did not follow through on threats to restrain 

Guiteau or remove him from the courtroom. A Washington Critic article published just two 

weeks into the trial, for instance, claimed to “echo universal sentiment” in arguing that

the time has come for this miserable business to stop. The threat of the court 

to gag the babbling devil would be far better in practice than in prospect. We 

firmly believe that if Justice Cox does not shut the felon’s mouth with a gag, 

some braver man will close it forever with a bullet and that, too, with not 

merely the approbation but the applause of mankind. It is all very fine to talk 

of law and order, but there is a limit to human patience. Guiteau has crowded 

that limit, and if Judge Cox does not act somebody else will. Let the rabid cur 

be muzzled.

The implicit threats of violence in that statement were echoed even more forcefully 

in letters to the lawyers and Justice Cox stating that they would be lynched along with the 

prisoner if he were not speedily convicted. The guard who attempted to kill Guiteau was 

widely praised, and public campaigns raised substantial funds for his legal defense (though 

he was eventually imprisoned).

In the aftermath of the jury’s verdict, the coverage of the trial generally became more 

favorable. Though some legal critics continued to argue that Davidge and Porter had risked 

a reversal with their bombastic presentations to the jury, most papers and members of the 

public seemed satisfied that Guiteau had been convicted after a fair trial.

Although the criticism of Justice Cox during the trial had reached a level sufficient 

to trouble Supreme Court Justice Stephen Field while traveling in Britain, most of the 

post-mortem coverage of his conduct came to emphasize that he had skillfully avoided 

any potential grounds for legitimate appeal and defended the impartiality of the federal 

judiciary without imperiling a guilty verdict. Many in the press engaged in self-satisfied 

paeans to the rule of law and compared the American legal system favorably to those of 

other nations that had dealt with recent assassinations.

The historical memory of the trial is mixed. Though for a few decades it was widely celebrated as a trial of the century, Guiteau had largely faded into obscurity by the 

mid-twentieth century. A prominent 1968 monograph by historian of science Charles 
53

United States v. Guiteau

Rosenberg placed the trial in the context of evolving conceptions of madness and medical 

science in late-nineteenth-century America, reviving its significance for some scholars. The 

case was also frequently, and largely inaccurately, cited as the first to employ a modern 

insanity defense (though it was certainly the most prominent nineteenth-century federal 

insanity trial).

In recent years, readable popular histories by Sarah Vowell and Candice Millard have 

revived the memory of the Garfield assassination, while Stephen Sondheim’s award-wining 

musical Assassins reimagines Guiteau and other presidential murderers in a lightly comedic 

context, though each of these accounts has tended to privilege the crime over the trial. 

United States v. Guiteau

5

Historical Documents

Letter from Charles Guiteau “to the American

People”—June 16, 18813

Guiteau penned this letter, and several others, as he planned the assassination. In it, he attempts to explain and justify his decision to 

kill Garfield.

To the American People:

I conceived the idea of removing the President four weeks 

ago. Not a soul knew of my purpose. I conceived the idea myself 

and kept it to myself. I read the newspapers carefully, for and 

against the administration, and gradually the conviction settled 

on me that the President’s removal was a political necessity, because he proved a traitor to the men that made him, and thereby 

imperiled the life of the Republic. At the last Presidential election 

the Republican party carried every Northern State. To-day, owing 

to the misconduct of the President and his Secretary of State, they 

could hardly carry ten Northern States. They certainly could not 

carry New York, and that is the pivotal State. 

Ingratitude is the basest of crimes. That the President, under the manipulation of his Secretary of State, has been guilty of 

the basest ingratitude to the Stalwarts, admits of no denial. The 

expressed purpose of the President has been to crush Gen. Grant 

and Senator Conkling, and thereby open the way for his renomination in 1884. In the President’s madness he has wrecked the 

once grand old Republican party, and for this he dies.

3. Report of the Proceedings in the Case of United States vs. Charles J. Guiteau,

Tried in the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia, Holding a Criminal Term, 

and beginning November 14, 1881, Part I (Gov’t Printing Off. 1882), at 216.
56

Federal Trials and Great Debates in United States History

The men that saved the Republic must govern it and not the men who sought its life. 

I had no ill-will to the President. 

This is not murder. It is a political necessity. It will make my friend Arthur President 

and save the Republic. I have sacrificed only one. I shot the President as I would a rebel if I 

saw him pulling down the American flag. I leave my justification to God and the American 

people. 

I expect President Arthur and Senator Conkling will give the Nation the finest administration it has ever had. They are honest and have plenty of brains and experience.

Charles Guiteau.

Charles Guiteau’s “Autobiography”—October, 18814

While he awaited his trial in jail, Guiteau met with a reporter from the New York Herald, a 

paper he had once sued in a far-fetched libel action. Guiteau conveyed to the reporter a version 

of his life story that was later published in the paper and circulated in other publications around 

the country. Guiteau’s self-serving account of his life and crime, as well as his pitiful pleas for romance and his surreal presidential ambitions, led to widespread mockery and a series of “prank” 

letters from writers posing as wealthy female suitors. Despite the reporter’s repeated criticisms of 

him, Guiteau took pride in the article, referring to it repeatedly during the trial, and attempted 

to read from it during his time on the stand.

The assassin, Charles Guiteau, has narrated to me the history of his life.... In a literary 

point of view, the work, it is needless to say, is of no value whatever. As the record of a 

man who will [live] in all our history as one of the greatest of our criminals it possesses, 

however, a special interest and importance.... His vanity has been, to your correspondent, 

literally nauseating. Guiteau has an idea that the civilized world is holding its breath waiting to hear the minutest details in his career. He thinks the people have an especially acute 

desire to be fully informed concerning his conduct during confinement in jail, and he has 

frequently urged your correspondent to describe his dress and demeanor....

The manuscript has been withheld from publication to this period of time from considerations of propriety, and it is scarcely necessary to add that it is now published not to humor the intense desire for notoriety on the part of the prisoner, but in deference to public 

anxiety—to correct, if possible, various misapprehensions and suspicions which may still 

exist respecting the true significance of the crime....

“I have not,” he says, 

“used the words assassination or assassin in this work. These words grate on the 

mind and produ[c]e a bad feeling. I think of General Garfield’s condition as a 

4. Guiteau. Autobiography of Garfield’s Assassin, N.Y. Herald, reprinted in Stark Cnty. Democrat, Oct. 20, 1881,

at 1, 3.
57

United States v. Guiteau

removal and not an assassination. My idea simply stated was to remove as easily 

as possible Mr. James A. Garfield, a quiet and good natured citizen of Ohio, 

who temporarily occupied the position of President of the United States, and 

substitute in his place Mr. Chester A. Arthur, of New York, a distinguished 

and highly estimable gentleman. Mr. Garfield I intended to quietly remove to 

Paradise (which is a great improvement on this world), while Mr. Arthur saved 

the Republic.” 

And he adds:—

“Not a soul in the universe knew of my purpose to remove the President.

If it has failed I shall never attempt it again. My motive was purely political and patriotic, and I acted under Divine pressure. It was the same kind of

pressure that led Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac.” ...

“I shot the President without malice or murderous intent. I deny any legal liability in this case. In order to constitute the crime of murder two elements must 

coexist. First, an actual homicide; second, malice—malice in law or malice in 

fact.... Malice in law is liquidated in this case by the fact and the circumstances ...

attending the removal of the President. I had none but the best feelings, personally, toward the President; I always thought of him and spoke of him as Gen. Garfield.”

“I never had the slightest idea of removing Mr. Blaine or any member of 

the administration. My only object was to r[e]move Mr. Garfield in his official 

capacity as President of the United States to unite the Republican party and 

save the Republic from going into the control of the rebels and Democrats. 

This was the sole idea that induced me to remove the President. I appreciate all 

the religion and sentiment and honor connected with the removal; no one can 

surpass me in this; but I put away all sentiment and did my duty to God and 

to the American people.” ...

The fourth chapter in Guiteau’s autobiography contains little that is of interest. He 

gives his impressions of men in public life whom he casually met; whom he bored for 

office or money. It is a record of intense egotism. His speech, “Garfield against Hancock,” 

he used everywhere as his letter of introduction. If a public man failed to recognize him 

out came the speech. He tells how he was snubbed by Mr. Conkling, whom he styles “My 

Lord Roscoe,” and who nearly always seemed to him to be on his “high horse.” ... Mr. 

Blaine he met two or three times at the State Department.... Mr. Conkling he saw one 

day in the Vice President’s room at the Capitol. The ex-Senator was in conversation with a 

gentleman. “I sat within a few feet of him,” says Guiteau, 

“on the sofa. I eyed him and he eyed me, and when he got through with his 

friend I stepped up to him and said ‘Good morning, Senator,’ and he said ‘good 

morning.’ I said, ‘I hope to get an appointment, Senator, and I hope when the 
58

Federal Trials and Great Debates in United States History

matter comes up you will remember me,’ and he simply said, ‘perfectly,’ and I 

bowed and he bowed and we parted.” ... 

In bringing his autobiography to an end he says, 

“And now I speak of two matters strictly personal. First—I am looking for a 

wife and see no objection to mentioning it here. I want an elegant Christian 

lady of wealth, under thirty, belonging to a first class family. Any such lady can 

address me in the utmost confidence. My Mother died when I was only seven, 

and I have always felt it a great privation to have no mother. If my mother had 

lived I never should have got into the Oneida Community, and my life, no 

doubt, would have been happier every way. Nearly three years after I left the 

Community I was unfortunately married. At last I made up my mind that I 

would sever the bonds, and I was divorced in 1874. I am fond of female society, 

and I judge the ladies are of me, and I should be delighted to find my mate.” ...

“The second” subject in which he desires to take the public into his confidence refers 

to the Presidency. “For twenty years,” he writes, 

“I have had an idea that I should be President. I had the idea when I lived in the 

Oneida Community, and it has never left me. When I left Boston for New York 

in June 1880, I remember distinctly I felt that I was on my way to the White 

House. I had this feeling all through the canvass last fall in New York, although 

I mentioned it to only two persons. My idea is that I shall be nominated and 

elected as Lincoln and Garfield were—that is, by the act of God. If I were 

President I should seek to give the nation a first-class administration in every 

respect; I want nothing sectional or crooked around me. My object would be 

to unify the entire American people and make them happy, prosperous and 

God-fearing.”

Testimony of James Blaine—November 17, 18815

Secretary of State James Blaine was the first, and arguably the most important, percipient witness called by the prosecution in Guiteau. Blaine had witnessed the crime firsthand and was also 

familiar with Guiteau’s attempts to gain a diplomatic post.

By the District Attorney:

Q. Were you acquainted with James A. Garfield? —A. I was acquainted with him

from the year 1863 to the hour of his death.

Q. Are you acquainted with the prisoner at the bar? Have you ever seen him?

— A. I saw him very frequently in the months of March and April, and also in

May, but not so frequently.

5. Report of the Proceedings in the Case of United States vs. Charles J. Guiteau, Tried in the Supreme Court

of the District of Columbia, Holding a Criminal Term, and beginning November 14, 1881, Part I (Gov’t Printing 

Off. 1882), at 120–23, 131–36.
59

United States v. Guiteau

Q. Were you in company with the President at the time he was shot?

— A. I was by his side....

Q. You met the President by appointment on the morning of the assassination.

You may state what occasioned the meeting.

— A. On the night of July 1 I was engaged until nearly midnight with the

President on public business. On parting with him, he suggested that I had 

better call and see him in the morning before he left, because there might 

be some matters to which he desired to direct my attention. I went to the 

White House on the morning of Saturday, July 2, in response to this suggestion of the President, reaching there at nine o’clock, or not later than three 

minutes past nine. I was detained some little time in conference with the 

President in the Cabinet room, and in the library a very few minutes, and 

then started with him for the depot. He rode in the carriage in which I went 

to the White House.... On reaching the depot, at the B street side—the 

ladies’ entrance, I think it is called—we sat a moment and finished the subject we were then conversing upon. After this the President turned around 

to say good bye to me, and I said, “No, I will escort you to the car.” I said 

some pleasant little thing to him to the effect that I did not think it was 

proper for a President to go entirely unattended—something of that sort. 

“I will escort you to the car; and besides I wish to see the gentlemen of the 

Cabinet who are going to leave with you.” With that he alighted. He got in 

at the White House first, of course, and that brought him on the side which 

was next to the pavement. On arriving at the depot, and as the carriage was 

a small coupe, he necessarily got out first, as a matter of convenience, and 

I immediately followed him. He took my arm. As we ascended the steps he 

turned to the left. He was on my left and turned to speak to some one, I 

think a police officer[.]... When he turned to speak to this man our arms 

became disengaged, according to my impression and recollection, and as we 

walked through the ladies’ waiting-room we were not arm in arm, but side 

by side. We had got about two-thirds of the way across the room, when suddenly, without any premonition whatever, there was a very loud report of 

a pistol discharge, followed in a very brief interval by a second shot. At the 

instant when I first heard the report it occurred to me that it was occasioned 

by some trouble between persons with whom we were in no way related; 

that some sudden deed of violence was being committed, and I touched the 

President as though to hurry him on to get out of it. I thought there might 

be some danger to his person and to my own by being there if there were 

stray bullets flying around. Just as I did that the President rather threw up 

his hands and said, “My God! What is this?” According to my impression, it 

seemed to have been almost between the shots that he said that. Of course, 

in so exciting and horrible a scene as that I could only give an impression, 

and not an absolute statement. There was then a rush past me of a man who, 

according to my recollection, passed on my right, though I am aware that 
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Federal Trials and Great Debates in United States History

that statement must be taken merely as my impression. I immediately followed after the man, whether it was on the left or the right I cannot be sure. 

I followed after him instinctively, and went, I suppose, a distance of eight 

feet, judging by the point at which I remember I stopped just outside of 

the door that leads from the ladies’ waiting-room into the main room, and 

the shout came up immediately “We have got him; we have caught him.” I 

then turned, and the President had sank. He was sinking as I left him, and 

had quite sank down, and as I got nearer to him (I think I was the first or 

the second person that got back to him) he was vomiting profusely, and I 

think at that moment was unconscious. Of course, immediately a very large 

crowd surrounded him, and mattresses were brought from a sleeping-car in 

the depot; he was removed to an upper room in the depot, and medical aid 

was at hand in as brief a time as possible. The examinations were made, and 

he was returned to the White House, reaching there, I should say, about 

fifty minutes or possibly an hour after he was shot.... Those are the facts in 

brief connected with my observation. When in the upper room of the depot 

there was a gathering around of the Cabinet ministers, who immediately 

retired there from the car in which they were. There had yet been no report 

made at all of who had fired the shot; but I gave the information that the 

man I saw running, whom I went after, and whom I saw the police take, was 

Charles Guiteau. I recognized the man, and I made that statement to the 

members of the Cabinet, to the attending surgeons, and to General Sherman before, I think, the police had even discovered his name. I recognized 

the man as the one who \ fled. Of course, the shot being behind my back, I 

did not see him with a pistol in his hand. He did not, in running, have the 

pistol exposed....

Q. How often had you seen the prisoner before, to the best of your recollection?

— A. Well, very often. Numerical statements are apt to be exaggerated when

you are recalling a thing of that kind. According to my recollection, I should 

say he visited the State Department twenty or twenty-five times; it might 

have been eight or ten, but eight or ten visits that are of that kind are apt to 

make the impression of twenty-five or thirty. 

Q. You saw him personally?

— A. O, very frequently.

Q. Was he an applicant for office?

— A. He was a very persistent applicant for the consul-generalship at Paris.

Q. Did you have any conversation with him on that subject?

— A. Several times. I never gave him the slightest encouragement that he could

receive the appointment....

By Mr. Scoville:...

Q. Has it been a usual thing for applicants for offices of that character to come
61

United States v. Guiteau

there without any backing?

— A. O very common. He would often be one of forty in a single morning. 

Q. And all alike in the forty substantially?

— A. All alike in desire, and pretty nearly all alike in disappointment. [Laughter]. His case was not peculiar at all in that respect....

Q. I wish you would state a little more fully as to the particulars, if you remember

them, of the interview when you finally rejected his application, as I understand

you did, peremptorily, either for the Austrian mission or the Paris consulship?

— A. There is nothing very salient to state in regard to it. He had come there

repeatedly without encouragement, and the office was more or less filled every morning with gentlemen who were applying for many more places than 

were in my discretion to bestow. He was like several others, rather persistent 

in his application, and coming, coming again, and coming yet again, and I 

finally said to him that he need not have the faintest expectation of receiving the Paris consulship and I did not desire him to speak to me about it. I 

did not do it with any special harshness as I recall, but merely to conclude 

a matter which was of no value to me and was of course interrupting me in 

the performance of more important duties. 

Q. Did you at the same time say to him, substantially, that if the President chose

to appoint him that you had no objections? Was not that interview concluded

with some such remark?

— A. I should say not; I should have had very decided objections.

Q. On what ground?

— A. The Paris consulship is a very important office—an office of great consequence—and I did not think that Mr. Guiteau belonged to the rank and 

class of men that would naturally be assigned to it. 

Q. For what reason?

— A. Well, for the simple reason that I think a man who would have been of

sufficient consequence to be considered by the President for that position, 

would have been a well-known public man. It has always been assigned to 

gentlemen of conspicuous rank for intelligence and public service. I do not 

class him in that list.

Q. By public service do you mean party service?

—A. It might be party service. Mr. George Walker, the occupant of the place,

is a gentleman who has had very large public service....

Q. ... I wish to ask if it was not expected, and was not common, in the distribution of these offices to pass them around as a reward for party service?

— A. Well, I should say that that was an element always entered into, and yet

not a conspicuous element in the State Department. A great many of the 
62

Federal Trials and Great Debates in United States History

most eligible commissions abroad are held by gentlemen who never did 

party service at all....

Q. Was there anything peculiar or out of the ordinary course of things in Guiteau’s

application for office, because he based his claims on party service?

— A. O, no, that is very common....

Q. What was the condition of the Republican party as to unanimity and harmony

for six weeks before the shooting of the President?

— A. There were some dissensions in it.

Q. Considerable was there not?

— A. Yes, sir.

Q. ... [S]tate to the jury briefly the substance of that trouble that arose in the Republican party.

— A. ... The President had appointed Judge Robertson collector of customs

in New York, and upon the propriety of that appointment there grew up a 

good deal of feeling between him and the administration and the Senators 

from New York. That is a matter of public history....

Q. I believe Guiteau refers to the term “stalwart” in some of his letters, does he

not?

— A. I believe he does.

Q. What will any one understand properly from the use of that word?

— A. If the counsel is wishing a chapter in political history to form a part of

the testimony, it ought to be a correct one. The term “stalwart” originated 

before that, and I invented it myself.

Q. Then you are just the man we want to have explain it fully. Now, then, when

Guiteau, in his letters or in his speeches in the latter part of 1880 and along the

first part of 1881, refers to himself as a “stalwart,” what does that mean?

— A. I suppose by that he meant to class himself with the particular personal

supporters of General Grant at that time....

Q. What was understood by the term “half-breed” in New York?

— A. The “half-breeds” included all the Republican party in New York not

included in the “stalwarts.” (Laughter.)

Q. Then there were only two divisions there. To which branch did the person appointed as the collector of the port of New York belong?

— A. He was classed, in the nomenclature of New York, as a “half-breed.”

Q. To what branch did Senator Conkling belong?

— A. He was understood to be a “stalwart.”

Mr. Scoville. That is all....
63

United States v. Guiteau

The Prisoner. Will your honor allow me to address you a moment? I am dissatisfied with my counsel. 

The Court. No; I don’t want to hear any more. I am satisfied with your counsel. 

The Prisoner. (Excitedly.) I am not, decidedly. I think it is an outrage on justice 

that I should be forced to appear here with counsel not of my own choosing. 

Mr. Scoville is doing splendidly, and I want it to be understood I appreciate 

his services. I am here charged with a felony, and I want to defend myself, and 

there will be a row all the way through if I don’t have the opportunity. 

The Court. If you don’t keep silence I will order you out of the court-room in 

irons. Now, nothing more. 

The Prisoner. I don’t care if you do. The American people have something to do 

with this. 

Letter Threatening the Court—November 26, 18816

This letter, reprinted in a Buffalo newspaper, was apparently sent to George Scoville shortly 

before his client’s testimony. Though its authorship and authenticity are not entirely clear, it suggests the strength of feeling against Guiteau and, increasingly, Justice Cox.

Milwaukee, Nov. 26.

To C. J. Guiteau, Judge Cox, and the Jury now trying Guiteau:

Gentlemen:—You are hereby notified that if the trial of Guiteau for the 

murder of General Garfield results in the acquittal of the prisoner, he and you 

may commend your souls to a merciful God and say farewell to your relatives. 

We are now 1,000 strong in this city. Branch organizations are being formed 

in all the principal cities of the country. We expect at least 20,000 from NewYork, and the whole State of Ohio.... Our object is “death to Guiteau,” and he 

cannot escape us. If he is acquitted or declared insane, we are sworn to march 

to Washington and lynch the assassin, together with Judge Cox and the jury. 

Outraged Justice demands a sacrifice for the deliberate murder of the noble 

Garfield; for the farce which has been permitted to invade her solemn temples; 

for the prostitution of law at the hands of the miserable Cox. One has failed, 

but there are thousands who have yet to fail. Beware!

[Signed.] ThePresident

of the Garfield Avengers.

6. Buffalo Morning Express, Dec. 2, 1881, at 1.
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Federal Trials and Great Debates in United States History

“The Voice of the People”—November 28, 18817

This collection of outraged letters and editorials regarding the case is suggestive of some of the 

strong criticism meted out at Justice Cox’s conduct of the trial and, particularly, his apparent 

tolerance for Guiteau’s outbursts.

Judge Cox is daily receiving letters, most of them anonymous and some inclosing newspaper clippings, reflecting on his conduct of the Guiteau case. Following are samples:

Minnesota.

St. Paul, Nov. 21.

To Judge Cox: 

Sir:... You are making a farce of the Guiteau trial. It is a disgrace to the nation and 

the world. For the love of God and the country charge that jury to convict him of murder 

in the first degree. Justice demands that he must hang. If he goes free it is an e[n]couragement to any man who is disappointed at the actions of another to coolly murder him. If 

the jury do not cause him to be hung, the people will hang him, and you with him. Do you 

trifle with the feelings of 50,000,000 of people. The insanity dodge is too common. Hang 

a few and others will not go crazy. The people want justice done.... The people are becoming disgusted with lawyers and judges. “Judge Lynch” will soon be the people’s judge.

St. Paul, Nov. 22.—Judge Cox: We see by this morning’s press that Jones, would-be 

murderer of the scoundrel and assassin, Guiteau, has been held in $5,000 bail. Do you 

not think you are showing altogether too much compassion and mercy to the notorious 

scoundrel and murderer Guiteau? For the sake of humanity and the memory of so good a 

man as Garfield, mete out justice to him. The hearts of the nation ache for vengeance on 

the wretch who deprived us of our dearly beloved president, James A. Garfield.

Ladies of St. Paul.

New Jersey

Sir: The eyes of the world are upon you as a judge in the trial of that villain of an 

assassin, Guiteau. The farcical scene that is being reported in the New York papers as occurring in your court certainly does not add much credit to your fitness as a judge sitting 

in trial of so important a case. In reading my Tribune to-day, I am shocked at the report of 

“Laughter,” “Laughter.” Sir, is this a respectable manner of conducting even a petty case? 

If you are determined that in your court you intend to allow a clown to act to amuse the 

spectators, I would advise you to withdraw, as Mr. Robinson has done, and not further 

disgrace the position you so dishonorably fill. I will not be surprised to read in my Tribune 

7. The Voice of the People, The Evening News (Emporia, Kan.), Dec. 3, 1881, at 1.
65

United States v. Guiteau

of to-morrow that you joined in the laughter with this d—d assassin. Let there be no 

more circus at the trial of the meanest murderer the world ever saw. I am ashamed of you. 

Hoping I will not be shocked at reading any more circus scenes during this trial, I remain 

yours, Edward Day.

A Washington Lady complains that the palate of the contemptible wretch is tickled wit

stewed oysters, eggs, juicy beefsteaks and other dainties.

A Party of Philadelphians write: “Moral imbecility, when it leads men to kill others,

precisely what men are hanged for in well regulated communities. If we will only punish 

saints who commit murders we shall have few executions.” ...

Washington

An evening paper commenting upon the disgraceful proceedings in the trial of the assassin 

of Garfield says: “We think we echo universal sentiment when we say that the time has 

come for this miserable business to stop. The threat of the court to gag the babbling devil 

would be far better in practice than in prospect. We firmly believe that if Judge Cox does 

not shut the felon’s foul mouth with a gag, some braver man will close it forever with a 

bullet, and that, too, with not merely the approbation but the applause of mankind. It is 

all very fine to talk of law and order, but there is limit to human patience. Guiteau has 

crowded that limit, and if Judge Cox does not act somebody else will. Let the rabid cur be 

muzzled.[”] 

Testimony of Charles Guiteau—November 30, 18818

Guiteau was on the stand from November 28 to December 2, 1881. The defendant’s testimony 

proved a critical point in the trial. While he was lucid and often cagey, some of his answers, and 

refusals to answer, on cross-examination were damaging for his “inspiration” theory. In some 

ways, Guiteau’s excellent recall and ability to hold his own against experienced lawyers for most 

of his testimony undermined Scoville’s insanity defense even more thoroughly. This excerpt comes 

from John Porter’s cross-examination.

Q. Are you conscious of being a man of very considerable ability?

— A. I express no opinion on that, judge.

Q. You have been a man of a great deal of force of will and determination?

— A. Some people say so.

Q. It has been a characteristic of yours from boyhood, has it not?

— A. To be very earnest in what I undertake; yes, sir.

8. Report of the Proceedings in the Case of United States vs. Charles J. Guiteau, Tried in the Supreme Court

of the District of Columbia, Holding a Criminal Term, and beginning November 14, 1881, Part I (Gov’t Printing 

Off. 1882), at 606–17.
66

Federal Trials and Great Debates in United States History

Q. You determined to kill General Garfield, did you not?

— A. I decline to answer. That is a pretty strong way to put it. I consider myself

simply the agent of the Deity. I had no personal volition in the matter; if I 

had had any choice I would not have done it....

Q. Did you say, as Mr. John R. Scott swears, on leaving the depot on the day of the

murder of the President, “General Arthur is now the President of the United

States”?

— A. I decline to say whether I did or not.

Q. Have you any objection that the jury should know whether you said that or

not?

— A. Well, it is possible I did say so.

Q. You think you did?

— A. My impression is that I said something to that effect....

Q. That you thought he was President?

— A. I supposed at the time that he was.

Q. You thought you had killed President Garfield?

— A. I supposed so at the time; yes, sir.

Q. You intended to kill him?

— A. I thought the Deity and I had done it, sir. I want it distinctly understood

that I did not do that act in my own personality. I unite myself with the 

Deity, and I want you gentlemen to so understand it. I never should have 

shot the President on my own personal account. I want that distinctly understood.

Q. Who bought the pistol, the Deity or you?

— A. (Excitedly.) I say the Deity inspired the act, and the Deity will take care

of it.

Q. Who bought the pistol, the Deity or you?

— A. The Deity furnished the money by which I bought it as the agent of the

Deity.

Q. I thought it was somebody else who furnished the money?

— A. I say the Deity furnished the money with which I bought it.

Q. He furnished you all the money you ever had on earth, did He not?

— A. I presume He did. I have great respect for the Deity’s fatherly care.

Q. Through whose hand was it that you were furnished the money to buy that

murderous weapon?

— A. It is of no consequence whether it was Mr. Jones or Mr. Maynard, or

anybody else. Mr. Maynard swore that he lent me $15....
67

United States v. Guiteau

Q. What did you do with that money?

— A. I used it for several purposes.

Q. What were they?

— A. It is of no consequence. I have no objection to stating decidedly that I

got $15 of Mr. Maynard and used $10 of it to buy the pistol with....

Q. Were you inspired to borrow $15 of Mr. Maynard?

— A. I do not think I was specially; no, sir. It was of no consequence whether

I got it from him or somebody else....

Q. Were you inspired to buy that British bull-dog pistol?

— A. I do not claim that I was to do the specific act; but I claim that the Deity

inspired me to remove the President, and I had to use my ordinary judgment as to ways and means to accomplish the Deity’s will....

Q. The only inspiration that you had, as I understand you, was to use a pistol on

the President?

— A. The inspiration consisted in trying to remove the President for the good

of the American people, and all these details are nothing. 

Q. Were you inspired to remove him by murder?

— A. I was inspired to execute the divine will.

Q. By murder?

— A. So called; yes, sir; so-called murder.

Q. You intended to do it?

— A. I intended to execute the divine will, sir.

Q. You did not succeed?

— A. I think the doctors did the work.

Q. The Deity tried and you tried, and both failed, but the doctors succeeded?

— A. The Deity confirmed my act by letting the President down as gently as he

did.

Q. Do you think that it was letting him down gently to allow him to suffer that

torture, over which you professed to feel so much solicitude, during those long

months?

— A. The whole matter was in the hands of the Deity, and I do not wish to

discuss it any further in this connection. Of course I appreciate the mere 

outward fact of the President’s disability in his long sickness as much as any 

person in the world. That is a very narrow view to take of this matter—just 

the mere outward fact of the President’s disability and sickness....

Q. Did you contemplate his removal otherwise than by murder?
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Federal Trials and Great Debates in United States History

—A. No, sir; I do not like the word murder; I don’t like that word.

Mr. Porter: I know you do not like the word; it is a hard word, but it is there.

— A. It don’t represent the actual facts in this matter. 

Q. It does not represent the inspiration?

— A. No, sir; it does not. If I had shot the President of the United States on my

own personal account, no punishment would be too severe or too quick for 

me; but acting as the agent of the Deity puts an entirely different construction upon the act, and that is the thing that I want to put into this court 

and jury and the opposing counsel. I say this was an absolute necessity, in 

view of the political situation, for the good of the American people, and to 

save the nation from another war. That is the view I want you to entertain, 

and not settle down on a cold-blooded idea of murder. I never had the first 

conception of his removal as murder.

Q. Do you feel under great obligations to the American people?

—A. I think the American people may some time consider themselves under

great obligations to me, sir....

Testimony of E.C. Spitzka—December 12, 18819

The defense’s leading expert witness, E.C. Spitzka, testified that Guiteau was almost certainly 

insane at the time of the crime, and indeed, throughout his life. The excerpts below include parts 

of both Scoville’s direct examination and Walter Davidge’s cross examination.

By Mr. Scoville:

Q. Do you know the prisoner here; have you seen him before?

— A. I examined him yesterday in jail....

Q. Will you state to the jury the result of that examination[?]

— A. The result of my examination was that I found this man insane.

Q. Did you have any question on that subject?

— A. Not the slightest....

Q. I wish you would state to the jury somewhat further, in your own way, the

particular phase or character of the insanity in this case, as observed by you.

— A. I may say that would be very difficult to me to render clear to any jury

not composed of experts. I can simply say that the marked feature of this 

man’s insanity, is a tendency to delusive or insane opinion, and to the creation of morbid and fantastical projects; that there is a marked element of 

9. Report of the Proceedings in the Case of United States vs. Charles J. Guiteau, Tried in the Supreme Court of

the District of Columbia, Holding a Criminal Term, and beginning November 14, 1881, Part II (Gov’t Printing 

Off. 1882), at 964–79.
69

United States v. Guiteau

imbecility of judgement, and while I had no other evidence than the expression of his face, I should have no doubt that he was also a moral imbecile, 

or rather a moral monstrosity.... 

Q. ...Will you state whether you observed any indication of insanity from his

eyes[?] I do not mean from your examination, but from his general appearance?

— A. That was to my mind the most conclusive evidence of insanity. I concluded that I had an insane man to deal with on sight, before I asked him 

any questions. He has got the insane manner as well marked as I have ever 

seen it in an asylum....

By Mr. Davidge:

Q. What do you mean by insanity?

— A. That is a question I never attempt to answer. I can give you an approximate definition. 

Q. I would be glad to have it.

— A. Any profound deviation from the normal standard of human thought

and action, excluding the ordinary phenomena of the common nervous 

diseases of acute ... intoxication and of febrile delirium.

Q. There are very many degrees. There may be a greater or less departure from the

standard that you mention?

— A. Certainly. There is every degree.

Q. There may be a degree involving want of discrimination between right and

wrong, and there may be other degrees that do not involve that want of discrimination, may there not?

— A. That is so, and it varies in the history of the same person....

Q. Have you been a professor in any college?...

— A. I was professor of comparative anatomy at the Columbia Veterinary College....

Q. What sort of a college is that?

— A. It is a college where physicians are instructed in the art of treating the

lower animals.

Q. Horses mainly, I suppose?

— A. Yes, sir. The branch I taught is one taught in medical schools.

Q. Yes?

— A. The branch that is pursued by such men as Thomas Huxley, by Baron

Cuvièr, by Gratiolet, by Haeckel, and other of our most eminent scientists. 

I have no reason to be ashamed of it.
70

Federal Trials and Great Debates in United States History

Mr. Davidge. I do not say that you need to be ashamed of it. 

The Witness. The question has been asked me before or suggested from a special quarter[.] I know that this comes from the same quarter now, and I have 

expected it, and it is done with the purpose of casting a reflection upon the 

witness.

Q. All these celebrated gentlemen whose names you have mentioned belong to

what are called horse doctors?

— A. I never have treated any animal but the ass, and that animal had two

legs, and therefore I could not consider myself a veterinary physician, but a 

human professional.

Q. You are a veterinary surgeon, are you not?

— A. In the sense that I treat asses who ask me stupid questions, I am....

Q. At any rate, you made an examination as well as you could into his mental

condition. Tell me how that examination was conducted.

— A. I represented myself as a professor of phrenology, in order that he should

not suspect that I was a medical expert. In this way I was enabled to induce 

him to allow me to instill atropine into his eye. I told him that the science 

of phrenology had advanced, and we now examined the eye as well as the 

outside of the head. That was simply to insure my object, as he was quite 

refractory and was afraid something would be done to prevent him from 

sleeping; he wanted to be in good condition, in order to deliver a speech this 

morning....

Q. And this was a shrewd scheme concocted between you and Scoville in order to

deceive that prisoner?

— A. I do not know about its shrewdness; it was a scheme altogether of my

own concoction.

Q. It was adopted by Mr. Scoville?

— A. Yes.

The Prisoner. I didn’t care one way or the other. I only told the truth; that

was all....

Q. ... You say you examined the shape of his head?

— A. I did. Then I said to him, “I will have to know a little about the psychology of your crime, on the removal of the President.” He then said, “Psychological; doesn’t that come from [illegible], mind, soul?” “Yes;” I said. Then 

I said, “What objection did you have to the President?” “I hadn’t any; he 

was in the hands of Blaine;” I said, “Why didn’t you remove Mr. Blaine if 

you had these objections against him; not the President?” he said, “Because 

that would not have done any good; there would have been just such another one as Blaine to step into his shoes, and Arthur would not have been 

President, and he has cemented the Republican party.” Then he became 
71

United States v. Guiteau

wildly excited about the trial. Yelled forth about the way the prosecution 

was attacking him, bringing up, as he said, lying witnesses, and he yelled 

out loudly, declaiming and showing the insane manner to perfection ...

I told him to keep cool; it was difficult to restrain him and he wandered off 

to another subject, I disremember what. I said to him, “Why do you interrupt the court then if you say that God has got this thing in His hands and 

will lead it to a successful conclusion as far as you are concerned, and that 

you are resigned to whatever fate is administered to you?” “Why,” said he, 

“don’t you know that Jesus Christ himself, who was so lamb-like, said “— 

something ... about somebody being sent down to utter condemnation for 

lying. Says he, “Can I not do the same thing? Am I not just in the position 

of Jesus Christ? Am I not here a martyr? Have I not sacrificed myself for the 

American people?” And so on through a regular farrago of the kind that is 

familiar to those who visit the wards of a lunatic asylum. That will about 

comprise what I found of his mental condition; I found his memory good; 

I found that he had the legal attainments, as far as I have a right to pass an 

opinion, of a third-rate shyster of a criminal court; he displayed a certain 

amount of judgment certainly; he parried questions to answer those that he 

preferred to answer, and betrayed great egotism in everything he said....

Q. About how long was this interview that you had with the prisoner?

— A. The time I was present in the cell was an hour and a half, about....

Q. You found that he parried questions?

— A. Wherever a question was asked whose answer would wound his egotism

and vanity, he parried it to go off to some subject that would develop his 

greatness, or his high position, or his great services, or whatever else was 

flattering to his self-love....

Q. ... Did you form the opinion that this man did not know the difference between right and wrong?

— A. That would depend upon the interpretation that is given to that question. If you were to ask me whether he knew the legal consequence of acts 

I should say, without any hesitation, that at least since he has been a lawyer 

he has always known the ordinary legal consequences of criminal acts....

The Prisoner. Ask him whether he thinks I was responsible on the 2d day of July 

last. 

Mr. Davidge. That is a point in which we are all very much interested here. We 

think that is the legal standard. We may be wrong.

The Prisoner. You are wrong, decidedly. 

Q. If it is the legal standard, I understand you to say distinctly that you have no

doubt he did know the difference between right and wrong, under that definition.
72

Federal Trials and Great Debates in United States History

The Prisoner. He said when I was a lawyer.

— A. I would not like to answer anything under the construction of a foreign 

mind. I wish to have my answer stand just as I gave it, that this man since 

he has been a lawyer has always known the ordinary consequences attaching 

to criminal acts. I wish to reserve again that that is not my test of right and 

wrong.

Mr. Davidge. I understand that; but it will be that of the court, we think. 

The Witness. Well, I have nothing to do with that. 

Mr. Davidge. No; you have nothing to do with that.

Boston Post Editorial Supporting Justice Cox—December 15, 188110

This editorial was one of several defending Justice Cox’s conduct of the trial against the even 

more numerous and vociferous criticisms. It correctly noted that Justice Cox had deliberately 

given Guiteau latitude in the trial to ensure there could be no question that Guiteau had been, 

in Justice Cox’s words, “hurried to the gallows without a fair trial.”

Everyday a great outcry goes up, especially from western papers, against Judge Cox, because he does not silence the gentle Guiteau. These western papers would gag the assassin, send him to solitary confinement, etc. In fact, these western editors are very terrible 

fellows, who, if placed in Judge Cox’s place, would probably make as bad a mess of the 

case as possible. The fact is that Judge Cox is in a very embarrassing position. The country 

wants Guiteau convicted, but it cannot afford during the trial to show any animosity toward the prisoner, or in any way indicate an opinion for or against him. Judge Cox in this 

case represents the country, and under the circumstances, he can better afford to let his 

court be turned into a menagerie than do anything that can be pointed at in the future as 

prejudicing the case of the accused. The difficulties surrounding the judge should be appreciated, and though his course may not always be approved, he should, under the trying 

circumstances, be exempt from harsh criticism. 

Testimony of Joseph S. Reynolds—December 15, 188111

Guiteau’s former mentor Joseph Reynolds offered some of the most damaging testimony in the 

prosecution’s rebuttal evidence to Guiteau’s deific decree defense. Reynolds’s account of his visits 

to Guiteau in prison suggested that Guiteau was motivated by politics, rather than a divine in10. Boston Post, Dec. 15, 1881, at 1.

11. Report of the Proceedings in the Case of United States vs. Charles J. Guiteau, Tried in the Supreme Court

of the District of Columbia, Holding a Criminal Term, and beginning November 14, 1881, Part II (Gov’t Printing 

Off. 1882), at 1099–1105.
73

United States v. Guiteau

spiration, to kill Garfield. Reasonable minds may differ as to whether Reynolds’s testimony and 

Guiteau’s in-court response strengthened or weakened Scoville’s version of the insanity defense.

Q. When did you [last see Guiteau] in Chicago?

— A. During about the year 1879. I do not think I heard anything of him or 

saw him after probably the early part of 1879. 

Q. Where did you next see him?

— A. I next saw him on July 14th, of this year, in the jail.

Q. How long after the murder of President Garfield?

— A. That would be twelve days after....

Q. Did you have any extended conversation with him there on the subject of this 

murder?

— A. Well, I had quite an extended conversation. The first part of the conversation was not on the subject of the assassination, but the latter part of it 

was on that subject. I should say the general conversation probably lasted 

half an hour, and may be a little more, and then that matter came up and 

was talked about....

Q. How did the conversation commence?

The Witness. About the assassination?

The District Attorney. Yes.

A. He asked me where I was on the day—

The District Attorney. (Interposing.) Do you desire to use the memorandum 

which you made[?]

The Witness. It will assist me in being more accurate.

The Prisoner. You would not allow me to refer to my Herald interview. I have no 

objection to the general’s using the memorandum if he wishes to. 

Mr. Scoville. State first what you remember. 

The Witness. I watched with considerable interest how he would introduce the 

subject. It was alluded to by him first by asking where I was on the day of the 

assassination....

The Witness. (Referring to memoranda.) ... He said, “Where was you on the day 

of the assassination?”

Mr. Davidge. He used those words? 

The Witness. That was just the remark he made. He used that identical word....

Q. Did he use the word “assassinated[?]”

— A. ... He used the word. I use it just as he used it.
74

Federal Trials and Great Debates in United States History

The Prisoner. I never used it so in connection with General Garfield; I always 

spoke of it as the removal. 

The Witness. After that time you will observe he used the word removal. 

Q. But at this time he said, “assassinated”?

— A. Yes. I recollect that distinctly.

Q. He said, “When the people know just why I assassinated the President.”

— A. “When all this matter gets before the people, and they know just why

I assassinated the President, there will be a big reaction in my favor. Such 

papers as the New York Herald, the Inter-Ocean, and the National Republican, and such men as General Grant, Mr. Conkling, Arthur, and General 

Logan, will at the proper time make themselves known as my friends. I do 

not know how long I will have to remain here. It depends on how soon the 

President dies. Then I will go abroad for a year or two”—

The Prisoner. (Interrupting.) That is erroneous.

The Witness. (Continuing to read.) “I have an understanding with Colonel 

Corkhill. He is not going to push this thing until the people are on my side,”— 

The Prisoner. That is what Corkhill said, but he lied about it since. That is the 

way he played double all last summer, in a lying sort of a way. I found him out. 

He is a first-class fraud. 

The Witness. (Continuing.) —”and then I will be discharged on a writ of habeas 

corpus.” ...

Q. At that time public opinion was that the President was going to recover?

— A. Yes, sir....

The Prisoner. You cut me off from newspapers and from reporters for three 

months. I made up my mind to let the Lord manage this whole business, just 

as He is doing....

Q. Did he make any reference to inspiration at that interview?

— A. He did not.

The Prisoner. It was not necessary. Do you think I want to put that in every 

sentence?...

Q. When was the next interview?

— A. The next interview was the forenoon of the next day, July 15....

Q. Will you state to the jury what that conversation consisted of upon the 15th

day of July.

— A. Yes, sir.

The Prisoner. I want to ask the general if he was in the employ of Mr. Corkhill 

at that time? He pretended to be my friend, and said he had just gone from 

Chicago and wanted to see me. He was the second man I saw. Mr. Scoville 
75

United States v. Guiteau

was the first and General Reynolds was the second. If he was in the employ of 

Corkhill at the time this conversation was obtained, I would like to know it....

The Witness. I suppose, your honor, that can come out on cross-examination?

The Court. Certainly. Go on....

The Witness. He was expecting every moment a reporter of this New York Herald, who was to bring him the short-hand [of Guiteau’s autobiography] written 

out, and he was to revise it. He was quite anxious that that should occur, and 

was not so communicative as the day before, and what I elicited from him was 

more from direct questions than voluntary statements on his part. 

The Prisoner. That only shows the extraordinary trickery of the prosecution from 

the very start [striking the table with his fist]. They lied to me. Corkhill is the 

man that did it, and God Almighty will curse him for it. You mark my words, 

Corkhill; you mark my words man.

Q. What did he say in reply to any questions propounded by you at that interview?

— A. After making this explanation about the Herald man he said (reading

from the memorandum), “I first thought of removing General Garfield 

about six weeks ago. For two weeks I was undecided. It was the situation at 

Albany that suggested it to me. As the factional fight became”—

The Prisoner. That is true—the political situation that I have been thundering 

from the very start. The jury will understand that this man was a spy, sent there 

by the Government to get my private information, under the guise of being 

my own personal friend from Chicago. Let the American people pass on his 

character. 

Q. You say it was the situation at Albany that suggested it to his mind. Go on.

— A. (Continuing to read). “As the factional fight became more bitter, I became more decided to remove Gen. Garfield.” 

The Prisoner. That shows it is politics gentlemen, instead of office[-]seeking. You 

fellows say I was a disappointed office-seeker. 

— A. (Continuing.) “I knew Arthur would at once become President.” 

The Prisoner. (Interrupting.) That shows you are weak and false in your position....

— A. (Continuing.) “If I had not seen that the President was doing great wrong 

to the Stalwarts, and was wrecking the Republican party, I would not have 

assassinated him.”

The Prisoner. I would not have removed him, and there would not have been 

any inspiration for his removal, either. (Striking the table with his fist.) The 

Deity forced me to do it. . . .

— A. (Continuing.) “I had not a particle of ill-will towards General Garfield 
76

Federal Trials and Great Debates in United States History

as a man. It was the critical situation of the Republican party that required 

he should be removed. When the Stalwarts are in power I have no fear of 

being punished. They will know it was I that placed them in power, and for 

doing that they will not see me punished. They will have the best of reasons 

for not punishing me, for there was no malice in the act of my shooting.” 

— A. ... “It was a patriotic act. I thought my friends would come to see me by 

the hundred; I expect them now when General Garfield is dead. It is proper 

they should not come now.” That was the substance of the conversation....

Testimony of John Gray—December 30–31, 188112

The Prosecution called several expert witnesses to rebut the defense’s claim that Guiteau was 

insane at the time of the assassination. Their final witness, John Gray, the superintendent of the 

New York State Lunatic Asylum in Utica, put the medical case against Guiteau most forcefully. 

By the District Attorney:

Q. I will ask you to tell the jury what is insanity.

— A. Insanity is a disease of the brain, in which there is an association of mental disturbance, a change in the individual, a departure from himself, from 

his own ordinary standard of mental action, a change in his way of feeling 

and thinking and acting. 

The Prisoner. That is my case. I shot the President on the second of July. I would 

not do it again for a million dollars, with the mind I have got now....

Q. ... I understand you to say that, in your thirty years’ experience with the insane, you have never met any form of insanity which is exhibited alone through

depravity, immorality, or viciousness?

— A. No, sir; that would be in direct antagonism to the very idea of insanity.

That is vice and wickedness, there being no disease.

Q. You do not believe in moral insanity, so called?

— A. No, sir; I have not, for a great many years.

Q. Will you explain to the jury what that term signifies?

— A. It is intended to signify a condition of perversion of the moral faculties,

or moral character of the individual, leaving the intellectual faculties still 

sound. Inasmuch as I, in my own view, cannot conceive of any moral act, 

or the exercise of any moral affection, without an intellectual operation or 

mental action accompanying it, so I cannot possibly dissever this mental 

unity. I look upon man, in his mental condition, as being a simple unit; that 

his mental being consists of his intellectual and moral faculties so united 

12. Report of the Proceedings in the Case of United States vs. Charles J. Guiteau, Tried in the Supreme Court

of the District of Columbia, Holding a Criminal Term, and beginning November 14, 1881, Part II (Gov’t Printing 

Off. 1882), at 1591–1618.
77

United States v. Guiteau

that everything he does must spring out of them jointly. Disease is a thing of 

the body; a sickness of the brain, if it is insanity. No physical sickness could 

reflect itself through a man’s moral nature only. 

Q. Suppose a man was a habitual liar, a habitual cheat, a hypocrite, an ingrate, and

was habitually imposing upon other men through such conduct, would that

indicate, to your mind, insanity?

— A. No, sir; it would indicate depravity.

Q. Has insanity, in itself, any tendency to incite men to become criminal?

— A. No, sir; no more than neuralgia or dyspepsia, or anything else. It is only a

disease of the brain. It don’t put anything new into a man; it only perverts what 

is there....

Q. You have stated that you have had an experience with the insane covering thirty

years, and have been a close, careful observer and student of their habits and

conversation. I will ask you to state whether from your examination of the

prisoner you have formed an opinion as to whether he was sane or insane, at

the time you were making your examination?

— A. I did.

Q. Will you state what that opinion was

— A. My opinion was that he was sane.

The District Attorney. The court may now adjourn....

Saturday, December 31, 1881.

... By the District Attorney.:

Q. You stated, on the adjournment of the court last night, that from your examination of this prisoner made in the jail, you were of the opinion at that time

that he was a sane man. Will you give to the jury the reasons which convinced

you that that opinion was correct?

— A. In looking over the history of the prisoner as given to me by himself, and

considering his physical health through life, first, I can see no evidences at 

any period through his life when he has been insane, or has had any symptoms of insanity....

Coming down to the period of his arrival in Washington on the 5th of 

March he was in good health, and he came for the purpose of applying 

for an office; that during that time down to the killing of the President he 

continued in good health; said he had not even had a headache or any evidences whatever of any physical disturbance. He followed up his efforts to 

obtain an office, as he informed me, persistently, and in the manner which 

he himself thought best to secure it, by personal application. He claimed no 

inspiration or no insanity of any kind....
78

Federal Trials and Great Debates in United States History

The Prisoner. I claim inspiration at the beginning and at the middle and at the 

end of this entire transaction. The whole thing was derived from inspiration. 

All these experts understand it. 

The District Attorney. Go on, doctor.

— A. (Continuing.) I took into consideration, in forming my opinion, his 

statement that this inspiration which he claimed, or press of Deity, did not 

come to him at the time of the inception of the act, and not until after he 

had fully made up his mind to do the act. 

The Prisoner. The making up of my mind was the result of the grinding pressure, 

and there is where the inspiration came. Right on that very point. The grinding 

pressure made the inspiration. Get that in straight now. 

The District Attorney. Go right on, doctor. 

— A. (Continuing.) Also that during this time in which he was considering the 

question he held in abeyance his own act, his own intention. He controlled 

his own will; he controlled his own thoughts, reflections, and intentions to 

do or not do the act pending the obtaining of the consulship....

And the presence in him of reason, judgment, reflection, and self-control, 

in regard to his act, controlled me in forming my opinion; also, the fact 

that he controlled himself as to the time in which he should do this act of 

violence.

The Prisoner. The Lord don’t employ a fool to do his work. Please remember 

that.

— A. (Continuing.) All of which, in the light of my experience with insane 

persons who have the delusion that they are controlled or directed or commanded or inspired by the Almighty, would be entirely inconsistent. Such 

self-control, self-direction, and self-guidance is antagonistic to anything I 

have ever seen in my personal experience in connection with the insane, 

having such a delusion as a command of God or a pressure of God upon 

them, or an inspiration. I took into consideration also, in that same connection, the fact of his providing carefully for his own safety and protection 

after the act—preparing beforehand, before he had committed the act, deliberately, for his own preservation. 

The Prisoner. I was not going to allow an infuriated mob to destroy me when 

they didn’t know anything about my motive.

— A. (Continuing.) In the light of my experience with insane persons of that 

class, laboring under such insane delusions, there would be no preparation 

for personal safety, and no thought of personal safety. 

The Prisoner. You are talking about cranks.

— A. (Continuing.) Also, the fact that he stated to me that he recognized 

his mental condition as one of insanity; that he recognized this which he 
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United States v. Guiteau

claimed as insanity under the terms of pressure of the Deity and inspiration, 

beforehand, and he stated to me that he had looked further into that matter 

and had considered in connection with it, that it was a defense, and a defense which he would make after he had committed the act.

The Prisoner. That is absolutely false. I never said so. 

— A. (Continuing.) Those circumstances and statements are utterly inconsistent with anything in the nature of insanity that I have ever experienced or 

observed in connection with any act of violence towards an individual, and 

especially in connection with any case where there is a profound delusion 

that they are under the command of God[.]... In considering whether this 

was or could be an insane delusion those circumstances were taken into 

consideration, and then the fact—

The Prisoner. (Interrupting.) Insane pressure is the word. I don’t claim there was 

any delusion about it.

— A. (Continuing.) —and then the fact that when persons recognize a delusion as an insane delusion in themselves, and claim that the delusion is 

evidence of insanity, they cannot be insane. That must be assumed. No man 

who has such a delusion and is insane, recognizes himself as anything but 

sane, or recognizes that delusion as anything but an evidence of his sanity. 

Whenever he recognizes it as a delusion, and as a false belief, and as a false 

conception in his own mind, and reasons upon it, he ceases to be an insane 

man. 

The Prisoner. You are talking about cranks. Talk about Abraham and the thirty-eight cases in the Bible where God Almighty directed people to kill.

— A. (Continuing.) I took into consideration also the deliberation with which 

he proceeded, as well as the change of purpose, from time to time which he 

manifested....

The Prisoner. Dr. Gray this morning is arguing the case for the prosecution, 

which no expert has a right to do; he is just to confine himself to facts and not 

go into an argument. Porter will do that business—Judge Porter, I mean....

Charles E. Grinnell, “Concerning some Criticisms upon the Trial of

Guiteau”—January 188213

Near the end of the trial, Charles Grinnell, a prominent Boston lawyer and editor of the American Law Review, published this editorial defending the conduct of the Guiteau case against 

criticisms in the press. 

The certainty that Guiteau’s case will remain one of the most celebrated in history stimulates some critics to judge the persons concerned by unreasonable standards, and without 

13. Charles E. Grinnell, Concerning Some Criticisms upon the Trial of Guiteau, 16 Am. L. Rev. 50, at 50–55 (Jan.

1882).
80

Federal Trials and Great Debates in United States History

even a due regard to necessity. From an historical point of view, we have to ask whether 

the conduct of a cause which took a nation, with all its imperfections, by surprise has been 

according to such a standard as the time, the place, the circumstances, and the average 

character and education of the people allow and require....

The whole nation has been excited, the whole court has been excited, the prisoner is 

either one of the most excitable of the sane or of the responsible insane, or is an irresponsible insane person....

It is no child’s play to try to reckon one’s own bearings, and to form an opinion 

concerning the wavering line by which certain individuals are doomed either to death or 

imprisonment, according to what one’s own mental poise indicates as a tentative standard 

of sanity for practical purposes; but it must be done by each man on the jury. It is not 

pleasant to be a public prosecutor of men, whether proved innocent or guilty; but some 

lawyer must do it. It requires a more robust mind and heart than can be found in every 

rich or successful lawyer to face dire fate as Mr. Scoville has done, and fight for fair play 

against the prejudice and malice of slanderous folk, against leaders of the bar, against his 

very client, who claims to be his own counsel in the case, and against the danger from other 

assassins. Nor do we know any judge on any bench, and we know not a few, north, south, 

east, and west, in the United States, who we believe, up to the moment of this writing, 

would, on the whole, have fulfilled the grave duties of the judicial trust in the conduct of 

this trial, and especially in the most difficult task, the judicious treatment of the prisoner, 

with a more profound or more elevated conception of the true meaning and use of the 

discretion of the court than Mr. Justice Cox....

Of course, at the beginning every one concerned in the trial necessarily felt the pressure of an intense public excitement. We do not think that every utterance of the judge 

has been of the soundest in law or in wisdom, nor do we think that all that Mr. Scoville 

has done has been in the best taste; but, taking all the things which we have tried to suggest into consideration, we are convinced that, on the whole, the trial has been conducted 

according to such a standard as the time, the place, the circumstances, and the average 

character and education of the people of this country allow and require. Therefore we say 

that, so far from being a disgrace to the District of Columbia, the trial is an honor to the 

United States.

We do not expect all of those gentlemen to agree with us who have not travelled 

through the United States. Especially do we not expect to persuade those discontented 

travellers whom we have heard in Europe sneering at our common country in some broken 

form of foreign speech....

We have already grown familiar with the quasi-conspiracy of excitement by which 

some of the mildest mannered of men trick themselves into the notion that they desire 
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United States v. Guiteau

somebody else effectively to assassinate Guiteau. They fancy that it would be well that 

one who has committed a murder for his own sake should be murdered for their sake 

by some volunteer in crime who, proxy though he be, could not implicate his moral 

principals....

Since the beginning of this remarkable trial, the eyes of the learned and the ignorant, the experienced and the inexperienced, the wise and the foolish, all over the country, 

have been turned, not upon Mr. Justice Cox, but upon hurried telegrams and breathless 

editorials about what that learned and sensible gentleman is understood as having said, 

under most trying circumstances. Now, it seems to us to savor of a weakness, pardonable 

perhaps in a law school, for lawyers to scoff at a judge because he is not one of the greatest 

authorities in the law. Such a test, if applied practically, would drive most students, professors, attorneys, and counsellors into occupations far humbler than those of their present 

profession....

Matters of form, manner, and taste are always subordinate among the unpretending 

people, who make the larger part of the good and sound life of every country; and when a 

false prophet is on trial for his life for the murder of a ruler, it is in the interest of truth that 

the court should be long-suffering. There is dignity in patience, good temper, self-control, 

and consideration for others’ infirmities or vices, whether in an army, an insane hospital, a 

market, or a court. Whether it would have subdued the prisoner into some measure of decorum to have resorted to more aggressive means of discipline, in or out of the court-room, 

is a question about which differences of opinion spring from different temperaments. But 

from our observation of the prisoner we think that, notwithstanding his outrageous behavior, it has been wise not to take any more notice of his license than the court has taken. If 

he is not insane, he would probably, even under discipline, still play his game to influence 

the jury; if he is insane, it might add more difficulties and delays to the trial to attempt to 

silence him.

After all, then, it is our opinion that, in this as in many other important cases, the 

persons who are on the spot, and who are responsible for the matters in hand, have understood and attended to their business with a discretion superior to that of some of the most 

highly esteemed among the spectators.
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Closing Argument of Walter Davidge—January 12–13, 188214

Davidge offered the first closing argument for the prosecution, portraying Guiteau as “the greatest criminal of the age.” This excerpt from his lengthy argument focuses on the issue of Guiteau’s 

sanity.

[I]f any human being has that degree of intelligence which enables him to understand the

act which he is doing, and if he has sense enough to know and does know that the act is

in violation of the law of land, or wrong, then no frenzy, no passion will afford any excuse

whatever; then no disease of his moral nature will constitute any excuse whatever; then no

belief, however profound, although a man through reason and reflection may reach the

conclusion that the act is the suggestion of or commanded by Almighty God, will afford

any excuse whatever for the perpetration of crime. The sole and exclusive excuse is disease

of the mind obliterating the sense of the difference between right and wrong, and absolutely controlling the judgment and reason of the party.

Thus, you will see, gentlemen, that the degree of reason necessary to make a man 

responsible is very limited indeed. Thus you will see that a man may be what has been here 

styled a crank, or off his balance, or even partially insane, and may be abundantly responsible for crime....

What is the act committed here? Murder! Murder by lying in wait, what is commonly called assassination. How large a degree of intelligence does it take to inform any 

man that that is wrong; that that is in violation of the law of the land? What degree of 

intelligence was requisite to make a lawyer know that it was in violation of the law of the 

land to kill? What degree of intelligence was required to make a religious man know that 

the everlasting edict had gone forth from Almighty God “Thou shalt do no murder”? The 

degree of intelligence, gentlemen, is necessarily small. There is no hardship in holding a 

man to responsibility where he has sense enough to know the act he is doing and the moral 

character of that act. It is that element which gives such great importance to the present 

case. If I could conceive it possible that by your verdict you were to assert that the degree 

of intelligence required by these instructions did not exist here, I would deplore that result 

more deeply than I have language to express. I would regret a result of that sort as tantamount to inviting every crack-brained, ill-balanced man, with or without motive, to resort 

to the knife or to the pistol, and to slay a man for party purposes, or, it may be, without 

any purposes whatever....

My learned brothers on the other side say not that this man did not know what he 

was doing; for they have not the hardihood to deny that. They know that that bullet propelled from that pistol and entering the body of a human being would produce death. But 

the defense is twofold. Mr. Scoville says that the intelligence of this man was of such a low 

14. Report of the Proceedings in the Case of United States vs. Charles J. Guiteau, Tried in the Supreme Court

of the District of Columbia, Holding a Criminal Term, and beginning November 14, 1881, Part III (Gov’t Printing 

Off. 1882), at 1863–66, 1876–78, 1926.
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United States v. Guiteau

order that he did not know that it was wrong to commit a murder. Mr. Scoville says that 

his intelligence was habitually so low that he did not know it was wrong to slay the President of the United States. The prisoner apprehending the falsity of a pretension of that 

sort supplemented it with another, and he acted wisely. He said he was no fool, and we all 

know that he is no fool.... You doubtless have observed that at a certain point in the trial 

... the prisoner denounced Mr. Scoville as a fool or a jackass for insisting on the first line of 

defense. It is not for me to say how far the prisoner’s view of the conduct of his counsel was 

right or wrong. I believe, and I will show you hereafter, that Scoville acted for the best. He 

did all that could be done, though heaven knows that all was not much.... But it indicates 

the shrewdness and intelligence of this defendant, that he fully apprehended the situation. 

He knew he would inevitably be uncovered here. He knew that it was impossible to run 

the gauntlet of this trial as an imbecile, but that he would be stripped both in respect of 

intellectual and moral character, hence he had his cherished invention, to wit, the so-called 

inspiration....

A word or two now as to the crime here. I have said it was murder. It is more than 

murder. It is the murder of the head of a nation itself; the murder of the Chief Magistrate 

of fifty millions of people. It is said that “There is divinity which doth hedge in a king.” We 

have no king. But one would suppose that the ruler of a republic such as we boast, through 

the simple majesty of his august office, and without royal forms or royal trappings, would 

inspire respect equal to that inspired by either king or kaiser. That is the crime, political 

assassination! The murder of the head of a great republic! This man, the slain, was great in 

council, great in the field, endeared to the hearts and affections of the people.

It has been said here that the murder of one man is not different from the murder of 

another. It is so in point of law, it is so in respect of the indictment; but when you are called 

to pass upon the great question whether the defendant is to be shielded from punishment 

on the ground of want of intelligence, it becomes of the utmost importance to know exactly whose light of life was extinguished. A man may not have intelligence enough to be 

made responsible, even for a less crime; but it is ... very hard to conceive of the individual 

with any degree of intelligence at all, incapable of comprehending that the head of a great 

constitutional republic is not to be shot down like a dog. That is the victim....

I told you the crime. Political assassination. I told you the victim. Now, who is this 

prisoner? In the beginning we did not know who he was. We could not have entertained 

a very good opinion of him in the beginning; but for a little while here he passed quite 

current as an imbecile, a fool. He has since been uncovered; indeed, you will recollect he 

uncovered himself. He went upon the stand. After that, nobody any longer doubted the 

degree of intelligence of that man. After that, nobody doubted that he knew the act he was 

doing; that he had intelligence enough to know that act was wrong. 
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What has been shown by the developments of the present case? Why, that this man, 

represented to you by the opening speech of Mr. Scoville as weak, incapable of talking 

coherently, an imbecile (you recollect all these representations), is one of the vilest of the 

human race, a man of gigantic schemes all his life, showing a tendency in the direction of 

schemes that would startle an ordinary mind[.]... If I were to sum up the moral and intellectual qualities of that man, I would say he had the daring eye of the vulture combined 

with the heart of the wolf. 

Such is the crime, such is the victim, such is the slayer. It is a very strange coincidence 

that this great and good man, among the foremost not only of his countrymen, but of the 

world, should, by some mysterious dispensation, be brought in contact with this low, vile, 

wicked man in relation of slayer and slain; and yet it is so....

In the beginning it was sought to show that the prisoner was off his balance; that 

he was crazy; that he was insane, as one or two said, all generalities amounting to nothing 

and meaning nothing. Now the court comes in and says to you that the insanity you are to 

look for in this case is that degree of insanity that disables a man from knowing what he is 

doing and that the act is wrong. Did he know he was planting a bullet in the body of the 

President? That is the first and not denied. Next, did he know that it was wrong to rob a 

nation of its chief, a woman of her husband, children of a father, and a man of his own life; 

did he know it? That is the only question before you at present....

Whenever a crime is committed that thrills and startles humanity and no other defense is available, that of insanity is almost sure to be interposed. In the present case the 

example set in respect of other great crimes appears to have been followed. There was no 

peculiar disadvantage in respect of the experiment here. The prisoner was and is peculiar 

in his manner. His counsel, Mr. Scoville, had, if he has not now, the sympathy of the 

community. Very many people too of aesthetic taste thought it would be a very happy 

escape from a dilemma involving as they thought national disgrace, if it could be established that the murderer of a President of this great country was insane—a large body of 

sentimentalists, for whose opinions let me say, I have little or no respect; for go where you 

will in this great land, you cannot travel a hundred miles without meeting both the court 

house and the jail, and these institutions which dot this land over from North to South are 

simply the indications that whatever we would have, yet the weakness and wickedness of 

human nature are such as to require corresponding means set in force for the punishment 

of human crimes....

All crime is a delusion. All wickedness is a delusion. What thoughtful man would 

do wrong when he might do right? What man has ever done wrong without feeling and 

knowing afterwards that it was the unwisest thing he could do? The court tells you that 

not only must the prisoner have labored under a delusion, but that that delusion must 
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be an insane delusion and the product of disease of the mind. All these learned men who 

have been examined here—I will not stop to name them—declare that this man is not the 

subject of disease of the mind; and the court tells you, furthermore, that even if he had disease of the mind, the extent of that disease must have been so great that he did not know, 

whilst hatching this fearful crime, either that it was against the law of the land or that it 

was wrong in itself. Such is the very language of the court....

Closing Argument of Charles Guiteau—January 21, 188215

Guiteau’s argument to the jury reflects his own theory of the case, as well as his manifold linguist 

tics and pronounced character traits. The excerpt below is taken from the first part of his address.

The Prisoner. I am going to sit down because I can talk. I am not afraid of any one shooting me. This shooting business is declining. 

The Court. (To the Prisoner.) You may proceed now.

The Prisoner. If the court please, gentlemen of the jury: The prosecution pretend I am 

a wicked man. Mr. Scoville and Mr. Reed say I am a lunatic. I certainly was a lunatic on 

July 2 when I fired on the President, and the American people generally think I was, and 

I presume you think I was. Can you imagine anything more insane than my going to that 

depot and shooting the President of the United States? You are here to say whether I was 

sane or insane at the moment I fired that shot. You have nothing to do with my condition 

before or since that shot was fired.... If I fired it on my own account I was sane. If I fired it, 

supposing myself the agent of the Deity I was insane, and you must acquit. This is the law 

as given in the recent decision of the New York court of appeals. It revolutionizes the old 

rule and is a grand step forward in the law of insanity. It is worthy of this age of railroads, 

electricity, and telephones, and it well comes from the progressive State of New York. I 

have no hesitation in saying that is a special Providence in my favor, and I ask this court 

and jury to so consider it. Some of the best people of America think me the greatest man 

of this age, and this feeling is growing. They believe in my inspiration, and that Providence 

and I have really saved the nation another war....

I desire to thank my sister, brother, and counsel, Mr[.] Scoville and Mr. Reed, for 

their valuable services on this trial. I intend to give my counsel an ample fee, especially 

Mr. Scoville. He is a stanch man and a hero, and I commend him to Chicago and the 

Northwest as a first-class lawyer, and a Christian gentleman. We have differed as to this 

defense. He has his theory and I have mine. I told him to work his theory for all it was 

15. Report of the Proceedings in the Case of United States vs. Charles J. Guiteau, Tried in the Supreme Court

of the District of Columbia, Holding a Criminal Term, and beginning November 14, 1881, Part III (Gov’t Printing 

Off. 1882), at 2202–07.
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worth, and he has done it in a masterly way, and I commend him for his zeal and ability 

as an advocate. Considering his slight experience as an advocate, he showed himself to be 

a man of marked resources. In other words, you cannot tell what there is in a man until he 

has a chance. Talent lies dormant. A chance develops it. Some men never have a chance, 

and go down in obscurity. There are plenty of brains in this world. It is only the man who 

has a chance that develops brains. It is brains and opportunity, i.e., Providence, that makes 

great men....

I am not here as a wicked man, or as a lunatic, I am here as a patriot, and my 

speech is as follows. I read from the New York Herald, gentlemen. It covers over a page. 

It was sent by telegraph Sunday, and published in all the leading papers in America Monday:...

To-day I suffer in bonds as a patriot. Washington was a patriot. Grant was a patriot.... They raised the old war-cry, “Rally round the flag, boys,” and thousands of the 

choicest sons of the Republic went forth to battle, to victory or death. Washington and 

Grant, by their valor and success in war, won the admiration of mankind. To-day I suffer in 

bonds as a patriot, because I had the inspiration and nerve to unite a great political party, 

to the end the nation might be saved another desolating war....

Admitting that the late President died from the shot, which I deny as a matter of fact, 

still the circumstances attending the shooting liquidate the presumption of malice either 

in law or in fact. Had he been properly treated he probably would have been alive to-day, 

whatever my inspiration or intention. The Deity allowed the doctors to finish my work 

gradually, because He wanted to prepare the people for the change and also confirm my 

original inspiration. I am well satisfied with the Deity’s conduct of the case thus far, and I 

have no doubt that He will continue to father it to the end, and that the public will sooner 

or later see the special providence in the late President’s removal. Nothing but the political 

situation last spring justified his removal. The break in the Republican party then was widening week by week, and I foresaw a civil war. My inspiration was to remove the late President at once, and thereby close the breach before it got so wide that nothing but a civil war 

could close it. The last war cost the nation a million of men and a billion of money. The 

Lord wanted to prevent a repetition of this desolation and inspired me to execute His will.

Why did He inspire me in preference to some one else? Because I had the brains and 

nerve, probably, to do the work. The Lord does not employ incompetent persons to serve 

Him. He uses the best material He can find. No doubt there were thousands of Republicans who felt as I did about the late President wrecking the Republican party, and had 

they the conception, the nerve, the brains, and the opportunity and special authority from 

the Deity they would have removed him. I, of all the world, was the only man who had 

authority from the Deity to do it. Without the Deity’s pressure I never should have sought 
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United States v. Guiteau

to remove the President. This pressure destroyed my free agency. The Deity compelled me 

to do the act, just as a highwayman compels a man to give him money, after placing a pistol 

at his victim’s head. The victim may know it is absolutely wrong for him to give money that 

his wife and child need, but how can he keep it with a pistol at his head?...

General Arthur, as President, is doing splendidly. No man can do better. I am especially pleased with his conciliatory spirit and wisdom toward the opposition. It is exactly 

what I wished him to do, viz., unite the factions of the Republican party, to the end that 

the nation may be happy and prosperous....

In short, everybody politically is happy, save a few cranks, and they will probably 

be happy soon. Happiness is catching. The political situation to-day is just what I knew 

it would be last June if Mr. Garfield was removed. Everything in this case so far has gone 

about as I anticipated last June, which is an evidence of the Deity’s confirmation of my act.

I have been in jail since July 2, and have borne my confinement patiently and quietly, 

knowing that my vindication would come. Thrice I have been shot at and came near being 

shot dead, but the Lord kept me harmless. 

(Rising excitedly and pointing at his sleeve.) There is the mark of Jones’s bullet as I 

was going to my home in the jail one day. It came very near piercing my heart. . . . You see 

how the Lord has protected me (resuming his seat)....

I have no doubt as to my spiritual destiny. I have always been a lover of the Lord, and 

whether I live one year or thirty—

(The prisoner here broke out crying, wiped his eyes with his handkerchief and proceeded with emotion.)

I am His. I have had this idea for twenty years, and it has never left me. As a matter 

of fact I presume I shall live to be President. General Arthur is a good man, every way. I 

happen to know him well. I was with him constantly in New York during the canvass. So 

with General Grant, Conkling, and the rest of those men. They have not taken an active 

part in my defense because it would not be proper. But I know how they feel on this case. 

They elected Garfield, and they know that under Blaine’s influence he proved a traitor to 

them, and imperiled the Republic. Had Garfield shown the spirit and wisdom of Arthur 

he probably would have been alive to-day. But he sold himself body and soul to Blaine; and 

Blaine is morally responsible for his death. Mr. Blaine is a good fellow personally, but he 

is a good, vindictive politician, and he wanted to get even with Grant and Conkling and 

Arthur for defeating him at the Chicago Convention, and Garfield weakly yielded himself 

to Blaine’s influence, and it finally resulted in his death. 

The prosecution have introduced certain witnesses who are guilty of rank perjury, and 

it has excited my wrath, and I have denounced them in plain language. I hate the mean, 

deceptive way of the prosecution. My opinion of the District attorney is well known. The 
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defense has been unfortunate in having insufficient counsel, but notwithstanding this I 

expect justice will be done me, and my motive and inspiration vindicated. 

People are saying, “Well, if the Lord did it, let it go.” 

The mob crucified the Savior of mankind, and Paul, his great apostle, went to an 

ignominious death. This happened many centuries ago. For eighteen centuries no man has 

exerted such a tremendous influence on the civilization of the race than has the despised 

Galilean and His great apostle. They did their work and left the result to their Almighty 

Father. And so must all inspired men do their work regardless of consequences, and leave 

the result to the Almighty....

“Forcible Epithets Applied to Garfield’s Murderer by Judge Porter,” Boston 

Daily Globe—January 25, 188216

This article praising John Porter’s forceful closing argument captures both the emotion in the 

courtroom and the reception of Guiteau’s case in much of the nation.

Washington, January 24.—Judge Porter spoke all day today, but did not conclude his argument.... He will, it is thought, speak until he has produced such a frame of mind among 

the jurors as will leave no doubt as to the verdict....

His brief review of what he had gone over yesterday enabled him to repeat with 

redoubled emphasis the scathing denunciation he then applied to the prisoner. He had 

shown, he said, that [Guiteau’s] defence was founded on sham and brazen falsehood.

Untruths Had Been Uttered with effrontery forced by persistency, reduplicate

by reiteration. He had shown this prisoner to be a liar and a swindler and a murderer. 

They had seen him grow from a lawless, disobedient, ungrateful child to be a vile man that 

stung those who had benefitted him; that he had an inordinate lust for unholy notoriety 

and malice as unbounded as his vanity until he had become, not by birth, as Dr. Spitzka 

said, but by culture, a moral monstrosity. As the speaker warmed in his theme new and 

more forcible epithets came to his tongue. Such execrations have seldom fallen from the 

lips of man....

The press, too, had been arraigned and convicted of The Murder of Garfield

the blistered tongue of this murderous liar. Judge Porter paid a glowing tribute to ex-Senator Conkling and General Grant, though he mentioned the names of neither of the gentlemen, who, he said, had been charged, with the present President of the United States, as 

responsible for the assassination. 

The prisoner having cried out from the dock that General Arthur was made president 

16. Forcible Epithets Applied to Garfield’s Murderer by Judge Porter, Boston Daily Globe, Jan. 25, 1882, at 1.
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United States v. Guiteau

by his inspiration, Judge Porter turned upon him sharply and said that President Arthur 

had been made president by Guiteau as he might have been made president by a rattlesnake. The prisoner, whose interruptions were made usually with characteristic sang froid, 

became furious when Judge Porter, with solemn utterance, declared that, though Guiteau 

had sworn that he prayed to God, there was not a soul in that assembly that shrunk from 

meeting his Maker as this wretch did.

“You are an infernal scoundrel,” shrieked Guiteau. “God Almighty will put you 

down below with Corkhill.” ...

In reply to the theory that the “political situation” did it, Judge Porter observed that 

it is true that in the heat of political strife they said hard things of one another, but is that 

hoisting the black flag and giving liberty to a murderer to kill whom he pleases? That’s the 

theory of this defence.... Judge Porter referred to the scriptural passage that described the 

scene where the cast out devils took refuge in the swine and the swine rushed into the sea 

and were choked. Whether or not, he said, the devil in Guiteau was to be choked by law 

remained for the jury to say. Judge Porter suffered many interruptions by the prisoner. He 

became silent whenever the prisoner spoke and then, turning his own words upon him, let 

flow the ever ready torrents of denunciation. 

Guiteau vented his rage by repeatedly charging the speaker with being a wine bibber. 

His favorite exclamations when Judge Porter had finished a particularly high sounding 

sentence were, “That’s all bosh,” or “That’s very fine,” “Do that again.”

 He pretended to read from the newspapers during a portion of the day, but his wonderful ears never lost a word that Judge Porter uttered, though he was separated from him 

by the width of the room. Part of the day the prisoner was engaged in answering demands 

for his autograph. When the court adjourned a few minutes after 3 o’clock Judge Porter 

was at once surrounded, and was kept busy replying to compliments bestowed upon him. 

Then he fell into the hands of the ever-present autograph hunters, and could not go away 

until long after the other participants in the trial had disappeared....
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Charge to the Jury—January 25, 188217

Justice Cox’s lengthy charge to the jury focused primarily on the question of Guiteau’s insanity. 

While Justice Cox did not, as many observers demanded, instruct the jury to find Guiteau 

guilty, his instruction suggests that he found much of Guiteau’s own evidence damning.

Gentlemen of the Petit Jury:

[T]o constitute the crime of murder, the assassin must have a responsibly sane mind.... An 

irresponsibly insane man can no more commit murder than a sane man can do so without 

killing. His condition of mind cannot be separated from the act. If he is laboring under 

disease of his mental faculties—if that is a proper expression—to such an extent that he 

does not know what he is doing, or does not know that it is wrong, then he is wanting in 

that sound memory and discretion which make a part of the definition of murder....

The defence of insanity has been so abused as to be brought into great discredit. It 

has been the last resort in cases of unquestionable guilt, and has been the excuse to juries 

for acquittal, when their own and the public sympathy have been with the accused, and 

especially when the provocation to homicide has excused it according to public sentiment, 

but not according to law. For these reasons, it is viewed with suspicion and disfavor, whenever public sentiment is hostile to the accused. Nevertheless, if insanity be established ... 

it is a perfect defence to an indictment for murder, and must be allowed full weight....

[T]here is a debatable border-line between the sane and the insane, and there is often

great difficulty in determining on which side of it a party is to be placed. There are cases in 

which a man’s mental faculties generally seem to be in full vigor, but on some one subject 

he seems to be deranged. He is possessed, perhaps, with a belief which every one recognizes 

as absurd, which he has not reasoned himself into, and cannot be reasoned out of, which 

we call an insane delusion, or he has, in addition, some morbid propensity, seemingly in 

harsh discord with the rest of his intellectual and moral nature.

These are cases of what, for want of a better term, is called partial insanity.

Sometimes its existence, and at other times its limits, are doubtful and undefinable. 

And it is in these cases that the difficulty arises of determining whether the patient has 

passed the line of moral or legal accountability for his actions....

[T]he true test of criminal responsibility, where the defence of insanity is interposed,

is whether the accused had sufficient use of his reason to understand the nature of the act 

with which he is charged, and to understand that it was wrong for him to commit it; that 

if this was the fact he is criminally responsible for it, whatever peculiarities may be shown 

about him in other respects; whereas, if his reason was so defective, in consequence of 

mental disorder, generally supposed to be caused by brain disease, that he could not un17. Guiteau’s Case, 10 F. 161, 163–86 (S.D.N.Y. 1882).
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United States v. Guiteau

derstand what he was doing, or that what he was doing was wrong, he ought to be treated 

as an irresponsible person....

You are to determine whether, at the time when the homicide was committed, the 

defendant was laboring under any insane delusion prompting and impelling him to the 

deed.

Very naturally you look, first, for any explanation of the act which may have been 

made by the defendant himself at the time or immediately before and after.

You have had laid before you, especially, several papers which were in his possession, 

and which purport to assign the motives for his deed....

The emphatic manner in which, in both the papers delivered to Gen. Reynolds, 

the defendant declared that the assassination was his own conception and execution, and 

whether right or wrong he took the entire responsibility, his detailed description of the 

manner in which the idea occurred to him, and how it was strengthened by his reading, 

etc., and his omission to state anything about a direct inspiration from the Deity at that 

time, are all circumstances to be considered by you on the question whether he then held 

that idea.

On the other hand, you have the prisoner’s testimony in which he now asserts that 

he conceived himself to be under an inspiration at the time. He also advanced this claim 

in his interviews with the expert witnesses shortly before the trial.

It becomes necessary, then, to examine the case on the assumption that the prisoner’s 

testimony may be true, and to ascertain from his declaration and testimony what kind of 

inspiration it is which he thus asserts....

According to the testimony of Dr. Gray, the prisoner said that he had received no instructions, heard no voice of God, saw no vision in the night, or at any time; that the idea 

came into his own mind first, and after thinking over it and reading the papers, when he 

arrived at the conclusion to do the act, he believed then it was a right act, and was justified 

by the political situation.

When asked how he could apply this as an instruction from the Deity, he said it was 

a pressure of the Deity; that this duty of doing it, as he claimed, had pressed him to it.

Again, he said he had not connected the Deity with the inception and development 

of the act; that it was his own. He did not get the inspiration until the time came for it, 

and that the inspiration came when he had reached the conclusion and determination to 

do the act.

Perhaps the most remarkable of the prisoner’s statements to Dr. Gray was that at the 

very time when he was planning the assassination, he was also devising a theory of insanity 

which should be his defence, which theory was to be that he believed the act of killing was 

an inspired act....
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[Guiteau] says that while pondering over the political situation the idea suddenly 

occurred to him that if the president were out of the way the dissensions of his party would 

be healed; that he read the papers with an eye on the possibility of the president’s removal, 

and the idea kept pressing on him; that he was horrified; kept throwing it off; did not want 

to give it attention; tried to shake it off; but it kept growing upon him, so that at the end 

of two weeks his mind was thoroughly fixed as to the necessity for the president’s removal 

and the divinity of the inspiration. He never had the slightest doubt of the divinity of 

the inspiration from the first of June. He kept praying about it, and that if it was not the 

Lord’s will that he should remove the president there would be some way by which His 

providence would intercept the act. He kept reading the newspapers, and his inspiration 

was being confirmed every day, and since the first day of June he has never had a doubt 

about the divinity of the act.

In the cross-examination he said: If the political necessity had not existed the president would not have been removed—there would have been no necessity for the inspiration. About the first of June he made up his mind as to the inspiration of the act, and the 

necessity for it; from the sixteenth of June to the second of July he prayed that if he was 

wrong, the Deity would stop him by His providence; in May it was an embryo inspiration—a mere impression that possibly it might have to be done; he was doubting whether 

it was the Deity that was inspiring him, and was praying that the Deity would not let 

him make a mistake about it; and that at last it was the Deity, and not he, who killed the 

president.

Again, the confirmation that it was the Deity, and not the devil, who inspired the 

idea of removing the president, came to him in the fact that the newspapers were all denouncing the president. He saw that the political situation required the removal of the 

president, and that is the way he knew that his intended act was inspired by the Deity; but 

for the political situation, he would have thought that it came from the devil....

On all this the question for you is, whether, on the one hand, the idea of killing the 

president first presented itself to the defendant in the shape of a command or inspiration 

of the Deity, in the manner in which insane delusions of that kind arise, of which you 

have heard much in the testimony; or, on the other hand, it was a conception of his own, 

followed out to a resolution to act; and if he thought at all about inspiration, it was simply 

a speculation or theory, or theoretical conclusion of his own mind, drawn from the expediency or necessity of the act, that his previously conceived ideas were inspired.

If the latter is a correct representation of his state of mind it would show nothing 

more than one of the same vagaries of reasoning that I have already characterized as furnishing no excuse for crime.

Unquestionably a man may be insanely convinced that he is inspired by the Al-
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United States v. Guiteau

mighty to do an act, to a degree that will destroy his responsibility for the act.

But, on the other hand, he cannot escape responsibility by baptizing his own spontaneous conceptions and reflections and deliberate resolves with the name of inspiration.

On the direct question whether the prisoner knew that he was doing wrong at the 

time of the killing, the only direct testimony is his own, to the contrary effect....

It has been argued with great force, on the part of the defendant, that there are a 

great many things in his conduct which could never be expected of a sane man, and which 

are only explainable on the theory of insanity. The very extravagance of his expectations 

in connection with this deed—that he would be protected by the men he was to benefit, 

would be applauded by the whole country when his motives were made known—has been 

dwelt upon as the strongest evidence of unsoundness.

Whether this and other strange things in his career are really indicative of partial 

insanity, or can be accounted for by ignorance of men, exaggerated egotism, or perverted 

moral sense, might be a question of difficulty. And difficulties of this kind you might find 

very perplexing, if you were compelled to determine the question of insanity generally, 

without any rule for your guidance.

But the only safe rule for you is to direct your reflections to the one question which 

is the test of criminal responsibility, and which has been so often repeated to you, viz., 

whether, whatever may have been the prisoner’s singularities and eccentricities, he possessed the mental capacity, at the time the act was committed, to know that it was wrong, 

or was deprived of that capacity by mental disease....

From the materials that have been presented to you two pictures have been drawn 

by counsel.

The one represents a youth of more than the average of mental endowments, surrounded by certain demoralizing influences at a time when his character was being developed; starting in life without resources, but developing a vicious sharpness and cunning; 

conceiving “enterprises of great pith and moment,” that indicated unusual forecast, though 

beyond his resources; consumed all the while by insatiate vanity and craving for notoriety; 

violent in temper, selfish in disposition, immoral, and dishonest in every direction; leading 

a life, for years, of hypocrisy, swindling, and fraud; and finally, as the culmination of a 

depraved career, working himself into a resolution to startle the country with a crime that 

would secure him a bad eminence, and, perhaps, a future reward.

The other represents a youth born, as it were, under malign influences, the child of 

a diseased mother, and a father subject to religious delusions; deprived of his mother at 

an early age; reared in retirement and under the influence of fanatical religious views; subsequently, with his mind filled with fanatical theories, launched upon the world with no 

guidance save his own impulses; then evincing an incapacity for any continuous occupa-
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tion; changing from one pursuit to another—now a lawyer, now a religionist, now a politician—unsuccessful in all; full of wild impracticable schemes, for which he had neither resources nor ability; subject to delusions about his abilities and prospects of success, and his 

relations with others; his mind incoherent and incapable of reasoning connectedly on any 

subject; withal, amiable, gentle, and not aggressive, but the victim of surrounding influences, with a mind so weak and a temperament so impressible that, under the excitement 

of political controversy, he became frenzied and insanely deluded, and thereby impelled to 

the commission of a crime, the guilt of which he could not, at the moment, understand.

It is for you to determine which of these is the portrait of the accused....

Now gentlemen, retire to your rooms and consider this matter, and make due deliberation in the case of the United States against Guiteau.

Sentence—February 4, 188218

Following the jury’s verdict on January 25, the court heard a series of arguments seeking to 

set aside the verdict on February 3 and 4, 1882. After rejecting these, Justice Cox sentenced 

Guiteau to hang. The judge’s sentencing statement offers an insight into his view of the case, 

while Guiteau’s response to his death sentence is illustrative of his disruptive and erratic conduct 

throughout the trial. 

The Prisoner. Do I understand it is necessary to pass sentence now[?]

The Court. The sentence is passed now, but the execution of it is deferred until 

after the consideration by the court in banc.

The Prisoner. Within what time will your honor—(To Mr. Scoville who is attempting to silence him.) Keep quiet yourself. You just keep your mouth still; 

you convicted me by your fool theory and consummate asinine conduct. If you 

had kept entirely away from me I would have had the best lawyers in America, 

and I could have got them in October, but you came on to the case and I didn’t 

ask you. Your intentions are good, but you are deficient in brains and experience. I want brains and experience on this case and not intentions. That is my 

record on you. Now, I want you to let me alone and I will pull out of this. You 

have got me into this trouble. 

The District Attorney. The duty is imposed on me now of asking the court to 

pass sentence in accordance with the verdict.

The Prisoner. I ask your honor to defer that as long as you can.

The Court. (To the prisoner.) Stand up. (The prisoner arose.) Have you anything 

to say why sentence should not be passed upon you[?]

18. Report of the Proceedings in the Case of United States vs. Charles J. Guiteau, Tried in the Supreme Court

of the District of Columbia, Holding a Criminal Term, and beginning November 14, 1881, Part III (Gov’t Printing 

Off. 1882), at 2419–22.
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United States v. Guiteau

The Prisoner. I am not guilty, sir, of the charge set forth in the indictment. It was 

God’s act and not mine, and God will take care of it, and don’t the American 

people forget it; and every officer, judicial or otherwise, from the President 

down to that marshal (Mr. Henry), taking in every man on that jury and every 

member of this bench, will pay for it, and the American nation will roll in 

blood if my body goes into that ground and I am hung. I tell you the mills of 

the gods grind slow, but they grind sure. Those Jews put the despised Galilean 

into the grave and they had their way for a little time, but at the destruction of 

Jerusalem, forty years after, the Almighty got even with them. I tell you I am 

here as God’s man. I have no fear of death. Kill me tomorrow if you want to. I 

am here as God’s man and have been from the start. I care not what men shall 

do with me.

The Court (Solemnly.) You have been convicted of a crime which was so terrible 

in its circumstances and so far reaching in its consequences that it has drawn 

upon you the notice of the whole world and the execrations of all your countrymen. Under the excitement produced by such an offense as that it was no 

easy task for you to have a fair trial. But you have had the whole power and 

treasury of the government in your service to protect your person from violence 

and to secure the attendance of your proofs from the most remote parts of the 

country. I think you have had as fair and impartial a jury as ever assembled in 

this court. You have been defended by counsel with zeal and ability and devotion that merit the highest encomiums, leaving nothing to be desired for you 

in that respect, and I have certainly done my best to secure a fair presentation 

of your defense. Notwithstanding all this you have been found guilty. It would 

have been a comfort to many people if the verdict of this jury had established 

the fact that your act was that of an irresponsible man. It would have left people 

in the satisfying belief that the crime of political assassination was something 

entirely foreign to the institutions and civilization of this country. But the result of your trial has denied people that comfort, and it is only left to the country to accept the fact that even that crime may be committed, and it is for the 

courts to deal with it by imposing the highest penalty known to the criminal 

code in order to deter others from following so vicious an example. Your career 

has been so extraordinary that people may have well at different times doubted 

your sanity. But I cannot do otherwise than believe, as this jury believed, that 

when this crime was committed you thoroughly understood the nature of this 

act and its consequences, and you had entire control of your actions. 

The Prisoner. (Interjecting.) I was acting as God’s man. 

The Court. (Continuing.) Your own testimony shows that you recoiled with horror from the idea when it first occurred to you. You say that you prayed against 

it; that you thought it might be a suggestion of the devil. All these things show 

that your conscience was warning you against it. Yet, by a kind of wretched 

sophistry of your own, you worked yourself up to the commission of this offense in face of the plain protest of your own conscience. What motive could 
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have induced you to this perverse exercise of your faculties may be a matter 

of speculation. I think probably most men will think that with some possible 

mixture of political fanaticism, a morbid desire for self-exaltation was the real 

inspiration of the act. Your own testimony seems to me to sweep away some of 

the theories of your own counsel. They have maintained and thought honestly 

that you were driven against your own will by some insane, irresistible impulse 

to commit this act. But your testimony shows that you deliberately resolved to 

do it, that you willed to do it, and that your own deliberate but misguided will 

was the sole impulse to the commission of the deed. All this may seem insanity 

to some people, but the law looks upon it as a willful crime. 

I need not enlarge any further upon this case. You will have a full opportunity 

of having any errors that I may have committed to your prejudice redressed in 

the general term. But meanwhile, it is necessary that I should pronounce the 

judgment of the court, which is that you be taken hence to the common jail of 

the District of Columbia, whence you came, and there be kept in confinement, 

and that on Friday, the 30th day of June, in the year of our Lord, one thousand 

eight hundred and eighty-two, you be taken to the place prepared for your execution within the walls of said jail, and then and there, between the hours of 

twelve o’clock meridian and two post meridian of the same day, you be hung 

by the neck until you shall be dead; and may God have mercy upon your soul.

The Prisoner. (Wildly.) And may God have mercy upon your soul. I am a good 

deal better off to-day than that jury is.

Mr. Scoville. (Interposing and addressing the court.) I enter an appeal in accordance with the statute provided. 

The Prisoner. (Continuing.) I am here as God’s man, and don’t you forget it. 

God Almighty will curse every man who has had anything to do with this case. 

Don’t you forget that.

Mr. Scoville. (Addressing the court.) I suppose the order will be granted staying 

the execution until after the next term of court.

The Court. Yes; the next term of the court will be the fourth Monday of April. 

The Prisoner. (Continuing clamorously.) Nothing but good has come from Garfield’s removal, and that will be posterity’s idea on it. Everybody is happy here 

except a few cranks. Nothing but good has come to this country by his removal. That is the reason the Lord directed me to remove him....

I would rather be in my place than Corkhill’s. I shall have a flight to glory, and 

I am not afraid to go. But that man Corkhill is—we will let up on Corkhill and 

those scoundrels. They have a permanent job below. I will go to glory. I won’t 

go yet. I expect to be President before I go.
97

United States v. Guiteau

Opinion of the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia Upholding 

Guiteau’s Conviction—May 22, 188219

The District of Columbia did not gain a federal appellate court until 1893. However, a general 

term of the SCDC heard an appeal in Guiteau’s case, in which the defendant’s lawyers argued 

that the court did not have jurisdiction. There were two primary grounds for this argument: 

(1) that the statute making murder a federal capital offense when committed on land under

federal control did not include the District of Columbia; and (2) that the murder had not been

committed in the District because Garfield had died in New Jersey. The excerpt below focuses on

the first question. Justice Alexander Hagner’s concurring opinion is omitted.

Mr. Justice James (delivering the opinion of the court):

... This indictment is founded on section 5339 of the Revised Statutes of the United 

States, which provides that—

Every person who commits murder within any fort, arsenal, dock-yard, magazine, or in any other place, or district of country under the exclusive jurisdiction of the United States * * * shall suffer death. 

As the argument on the part of the defendant questioned the application of this 

general statute to the District of Columbia, and as this question has not hitherto been formally presented on appeal, we propose now to re-examine it, notwithstanding indictments 

under this statute have always been sustained in the criminal court and sentence [h]as been 

affirmed here.

That part of section 5339 which has been cited was drawn, in the revision of the 

statutes, from the act of April 30, 1790, known as the first crimes act, which was passed in 

the second session of the first Congress, when the legislature was occupied in measures for 

putting the new government in operation.... 

The Constitution of the United States had provided that:

The Congress shall have power * * * to exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever, over such district (not exceeding ten miles square) as may by 

cession of particular States, and the acceptance of Congress, become the seat 

of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like authority over 

all places purchased by the consent of the legislature of the State in which the 

same shall be, for the erection of forts, magazines, arsenals, dock-yards, and 

other needful buildings. (Art. I, sect. 8.)

It will be observed that, in designating the places in which the commission of murder 

should be deemed a crime against the United States, the legislature employed substantially, and to some extent precisely, the language found in that clause of the Constitution 

19. Report of the Proceedings in the Case of United States vs. Charles J. Guiteau, Tried in the Supreme Court

of the District of Columbia, Holding a Criminal Term, and beginning November 14, 1881, Part III (Gov’t Printing 

Off. 1882), at 2569–71.
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Federal Trials and Great Debates in United States History

which conferred upon it the power to exercise exclusive legislation over certain places.... 

Considered from this point of view, the terms of the law indicate an intention to provide, 

so far as the crime of murder was concerned, not only for the forts, arsenals, magazines, 

and dock yards mentioned in the Constitution, but for the particular district described in 

the same clause of that instrument. The designation of place was as strictly applicable to 

the district, as to the forts and magazines there mentioned. And if it be objected that the 

new government possessed at that time no district of country which had become its seat, 

the answer is, that neither had it at that time the dock-yards and magazines for which the 

statute provided protection against this crime. Every part of that section related to places 

yet to be acquired. Therefore, if its terms aptly described the “district of country” which 

has since been acquired as the seat of the Government of the United States, they must be 

held to apply to that district quite as certainly, and by the same rule of construction, by 

which they applied to forts and dock-yards which were not then in existence, but have 

been acquired since the passage of that act. We are not even embarrassed, under this theory 

of construction, by a suggestion that Congress must be supposed, in that case, to be legislating about a matter which then floated in uncertainty; for this very district of country, 

subject to ascertainment by certain measures to be taken on the part of the United States, 

was accepted, for the purposes of a seat of government, by the act of July 16, 1790, passed 

at the same session with the crimes act, and only eleven weeks later, so that its acquisition 

must already have been regarded as substantially an accomplished fact.... 

We believe, therefore, that the third section of the act of 1790 has been in force in 

this district ever since it came under the exclusive jurisdiction of the United States. But 

if we had had any doubt upon that question, we should hold, without doubt, that it has 

been in force here since the 21st day of February, 1871, by virtue of the act of that date 

establishing a new form of government for this District. The thirty-fourth section of that 

act, which is now embodied in section 93 of the Revised Statutes, for the District of Columbia, provides that:

All the laws of the United States which are not locally inapplicable shall have 

the same force and effect within the District as elsewhere in the United States. 

Under the operation of this provision other laws of the United States relating to 

crimes have been enforced here; and if any law can come within the description of “not 

locally inapplicable,” surely the law of 1790, which, by its strict and peculiar terms, is not 

only applicable, but, as we think, was originally intended to be locally applied, must do 

so....
99

United States v. Guiteau

Justice Joseph Bradley’s Opinion Denying Guiteau’s Petition for a Writ of 

Habeas Corpus—June 19, 188220

Federal law did not permit criminal appeals to the Supreme Court of the United States until 

1889. However, federal prisoners could challenge their detention on the ground that the trial 

court lacked jurisdiction through a collateral suit seeking a writ of habeas corpus. In a final 

attempt to gain judicial recourse, Reed petitioned the Supreme Court for such a writ. Petitions 

were ordinarily heard by a single justice, who could decide the case himself or refer the matter 

to the full Supreme Court. In this instance, Associate Justice Joseph Bradley determined that 

the SCDC had jurisdiction. Bradley’s decision not to refer the case to the full Supreme Court 

effectively ended the judiciary’s involvement in Guiteau’s case.

Mr. Justice Bradley:

Charles J. Guiteau, being in prison under sentence of death for the murder of President 

Garfield, applies for a habeas corpus to be discharged from said imprisonment, on the 

ground that the criminal court of the District of Columbia, by which he was tried and 

convicted, had no jurisdiction of his offense. The supposed want of jurisdiction is based 

on the fact that, although the mortal wound was inflicted in the District, the death of the 

President took place in New Jersey; whereas the act under which the indictment was found 

(section 5339 of the Revised Statutes) only declares that murder committed within any 

fort, arsenal, dock-yard, magazine or in any place or district of country under the exclusive 

jurisdiction of the United States, shall suffer death; and jurisdiction is only given to the 

court to try “crimes and offenses committed within the District.” (Revised Statutes District 

of Columbia, sec. 763, as amended.) It is contended that the murder was committed only 

partly within the District and partly in New Jersey, and, therefore, cannot be said to have 

been committed within the District. 

By the strict technicality of the common law this position would probably be correct, 

although Lord Chief Justice Hale, the greatest criminal lawyer and judge that ever lived, 

uses this language: “At common law,” says he, “if a man had been stricken in one county 

and died in another, it was doubtful whether he were indictable, or triable in either; but 

the more common opinion was, that he might be indicted where the stroke was given, for 

the death was but a consequent, and might be found, though in another county; and if 

the party died in another county, the body was removed into the county where the stroke 

was given for the coroner to take an inquest super visum corporis.” This passage shows 

that, in Hale’s opinion, the principal crime was committed where the stroke was given, 

and that when the production of the dead body gave the jury ocular demonstration of the 

corpus delicti, the difficulty of jurisdiction was overcome. But to remove the doubt as to 

20. Report of the Proceedings in the Case of United States vs. Charles J. Guiteau, Tried in the Supreme Court

of the District of Columbia, Holding a Criminal Term, and beginning November 14, 1881, Part III (Gov’t Printing 

Off. 1882), at 2634–36.
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the power of the jurors to try such a case, it was enacted by ... statute ... that the murderer 

might be tried in the county where the death occurred; and to remedy the difficulty where 

the stroke, or the death, happened out of England, it was enacted by a subsequent statute 

... that the trial might be in the county where the stroke was given, if the party died out 

of the realm; or where the death occurred, if the stroke was given out of the realm; thus, 

in effect, making the murder a crime in the county in which either the stroke was given or 

the death occurred. These statutes, as the supreme court of the District hold, and as their 

reasoning satisfactorily shows, were in force in Maryland in 1801, when the District of 

Columbia was organized, and, by the organic act of Congress, became laws of the District. 

If, therefore, the District had continued a part of the State of Maryland, with those laws in 

force, and if the murder in question had taken place exactly as it did, it would have been 

considered a murder committed within the State of Maryland, and within the county 

out of which the District was carved, and would have been indictable and triable in such 

county. When, therefore, Congress, in 1801, conferred upon the court of the District jurisdiction to try all crimes and offenses committed within the District, it gave jurisdiction 

to try the murder of which the prisoner has been found guilty, the present law being a mere 

codification of that enactment. For the same reason, the crimes act of 1790, when it came 

to operate upon the District, became applicable to such a murder....

It is unnecessary to say that such a construction of the statutes and acts of Congress 

much better subserves the purposes of justice, and is more in consonance with their object and intent, than the extremely technical construction contended for on behalf of the 

prisoner....

In a case of grave doubt and difficulty, and appellate in its character (as this case is), I 

have a right, undoubtedly, to refer the matter to the Supreme Court of the United States, 

... but such is not the usual course, and is not to be followed, if it can well be avoided. 

Prompt action is one of the beneficial characteristics of the remedy of habeas corpus, and 

is due both to the prisoner and to the administration of justice. The law gives jurisdiction 

to, and places the responsibility upon, a single judge to grant or refuse the writ; and it is 

his duty to decide an application therefor if he can do so with reasonable confidence in his 

own conclusion; and it is his right to do so in every case.

The application is denied. 
101

United States v. Guiteau

Opinion of Attorney General Benjamin Harris Brewster Recommending 

the Denial of a Petition for Reprieve—June 23, 188221

After Guiteau failed to secure an acquittal in the courts, both his family and outside groups 

attempted to obtain clemency from President Arthur. The document below, issued weeks before 

Guiteau’s execution, reflects Attorney General Benjamin Harris Brewster’s advice that the President should reject an effort by members of the National Association for the Protection of the 

Insane and the Prevention of Insanity to have the President set up a commission to investigate 

Guiteau’s mental health. Arthur ultimately rejected all calls for clemency or pardon. 

To the President:

Sir: Yesterday was sent to me by your secretary the papers presented by Miss Chevaillier,22

of Boston, consisting of petitions and letters from physicians and experts in support of 

an application for the appointment of a commission to consider the mental condition 

of Charles J. Guiteau, and also praying for his reprieve pending such an investigation. In 

addition to the papers transmitted to me by your secretary, I have had presented to me 

to-day a written argument or statement from Dr. W. W. Godding, and also an argument 

signed by George M. Beard, M.D.; W. W. Godding, M.D.; and Miss A. A. Chevaillier. 

The whole question has been carefully and thoughtfully considered, and I have arrived 

at the conclusion that I can not recommend a reprieve for the purpose requested. It is 

doubtful if the President, in a case like this, has the power to appoint such a commission 

to reverse the sentence of the law. The case of this man has been thoroughly and fairly tried 

in a prolonged public judicial investigation, in a court of competent jurisdiction, before 

an able, upright judge, and a jury of impartial men. Abundance of testimony was offered 

upon the question of his sanity or insanity; in fact that was the main and only issue and 

the only point contested. The willful, deliberate, and premeditated killing of President 

Garfield by the defendant, Charles J. Guiteau, was an admitted fact. It was conceded to 

have been done by lying in wait for his victim with a deadly weapon, carefully prepared for 

the purpose. The weapon was used with intent to kill, and the shooting by the defendant 

caused the death of President Garfield. All these facts were undisputed. The only question 

mooted was of the moral, mental, and legal responsibility of the accused. The question of 

sanity or insanity, I repeat, was the only issue. He had a painfully protracted trial, during 

which latitude in every particular was allowed, almost to the straining of the law, in his 

behalf; more latitude than was ever known to have been given to any defendant in all of 

the recorded annals of the law. He was permitted to say at pleasure all that occurred to 

him, whether in order or out of order. The evidence was overwhelmingly against him upon 

this very point of insanity. The case was submitted to the jury by a judge of acknowledged 

21. Official Opinions of the Attorneys-General of the United States, Advising the President and Heads of

Departments in Relation to Their Official Duties, and Expounding the Constitution, Treaties with Foreign Governments and with Indian Tribes, and the Public Laws of the Country, vol. XVII (Gov’t Printing Off. 1890), at 

394–96.

22. Social worker A.A. Chevaillier was the National Association’s secretary.
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learning; a discerning, cautious, upright officer, in a charge that was calm, deliberate, and 

fair, and within one hour after that charge the jury found the prisoner guilty in manner 

and form as he stood indicted. In view of this I again express my decided conviction that 

the requests submitted in these petitions ought not to be granted....

The assertion that the sense of all the best medical talent sustains this application . 

. . is contradicted by Dr. Godding, who to-day, when heard orally by me, admitted that 

outside of those now applying for this reprieve the preponderance of the medical talent 

of this country was the other way and believed him to be sane. I will further add that the 

defendant has exhausted all of the remedies of the law for his relief. Since his trial his cause 

has been heard with deliberate care before the whole bench of the Supreme Court of the 

District of Columbia, and no error in fact or law has been found, but that court dismissed 

his appeal and ordered judgment on the verdict. 

After that he applied to Mr. Justice Bradley, of the Supreme Court of the United 

States, for a writ of habeas corpus, and again the subject was considered by that learned 

justice, and the careful conduct of the Supreme Court of the District commented on and 

applauded and the writ of habeas corpus refused.

At the last hour you are asked to reprieve this justly condemned man—to investigate 

in an unusual if not irregular way a fact that has been solemnly determined by the constituted authorities of the law.

I submit it ought not to be done. It will establish a dangerous precedent. It will shake 

the public confidence in the certainty and justice of the courts by substituting your will for 

the judgment of the law and its forms at the instigation of a few who assert that he was and 

is insane, and who press their application contrary to the “preponderance of the medical 

talent of the country who believe the other way and think him sane,” as is admitted by one 

of the most conspicuous, earnest, and important of the petitioners. 

I am, sir, very respectfully, 

Benjamin Harris Brewster. 
103

United States v. Guiteau

Bibliography

Archival and Unpublished Materials

James Gillespie Blaine Family Papers, Library of Congress Manuscripts Division,

Washington, D.C.

The Charles Guiteau Collection, Georgetown University Library, Washington, D.C.

United States v. Guiteau; Case no. 14056, criminal dockets and case files, 1863–1946; 

Records of the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia, Record Group 21; National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C. 

Published Primary Sources

Grinnell, Charles E. “Concerning Some Criticisms upon the Trial of Guiteau,” American 

Law Review, vol. 16 (Jan. 1882): 50–55.

“Guiteau—Where can he be Punished?” The Colorado Law Reporter, vol. II, no. 2 (Oct. 

1881): 49–63. 

Hayes, H.G. and C.J. Hayes, A Complete History of the Trial of Guiteau, Assassin of President Garfield (Philadelphia: Hubbard Bros., 1882).

Jackson, E. Hilton. “The Trial of Guiteau,” Virginia Law Register, vol. 9 (1904): 1023.

Newspaper collections at the Library of Congress and Newspapers.com 

Report of the Proceedings in the Case of the United States vs. Charles J. Guiteau tried in the 

Supreme Court of the District of Columbia, holding a Criminal Term, and Beginning 

November 14, 1881, parts I–III (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1882). 

Official Opinions of the Attorneys-General of the United States, Advising the President and 

Heads of Departments in Relation to Their Official Duties, and Expounding the Constitution, Treaties with Foreign Governments and with Indian Tribes, and the Public Laws 

of the Country, vol. XVII (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1890): 394–96.

Secondary Sources

Bellamy, Jay. “A Stalwart of Stalwarts: Garfield’s Assassin Sees Deed as a Special Duty,” 

Prologue, vol. 48, no. 3 (Fall 2016), accessed at https://www.archives.gov/

publications/prologue/2016/fall/guiteau

Clark, James C. “The Murder of President James A. Garfield,” Prologue, vol. 24, no. 2 

(Summer 1992), 129–39, accessed at https://www.archives.gov/files/publications/

prologue/1992/summer/garfield.pdf

Millard, Candice. Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a 

President (New York: Anchor Books, 2011).
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Mitchell, Stewart. “The Man Who Murdered Garfield,” Proceedings of the Massachusetts 

Historical Society, vol. 67 (Oct. 1941–May 1944), 452–489. 

Oliver, Willard M. and Nancy E. Marion. Killing the President: Assassinations, Attempts, 

and Rumored Attempts on U.S. Commanders-in-Chief (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 

2010). 

Rosenberg, Charles E. The Trial of the Assassin Guiteau: Psychiatry and the Law in the 

Gilded Age (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998).

Vowell, Sarah. Assassination Vacation (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005).
Federal Trials and Great Debates in U.S. History

Since 2006, the Federal Judicial Center, in partnership with the American Bar Association 

Division for Public Education, has hosted Federal Trials and Great Debates, an annual 

summer institute for teachers of history, law, and government. Participants from across 

the country come to Washington, D.C., each June to meet with federal judges, scholars, 

and curriculum experts to examine the history of the federal judiciary and to study three 

historic cases in the federal trial courts. The materials on these cases, while designed for 

teachers, are valuable resources for all seeking to learn more about the role the federal judiciary has played in our nation’s history.

The Pentagon Papers in the Federal Courts, Jake Kobrick, May 2019

United States v. Guiteau: Assassination and Insanity in Gilded Age America,

Winston Bowman, 2019

U.S. v. Clay: Muhammad Ali’s Fight Against the Vietnam Draft, Winston

Bowman, 2018

The Flag Salute Cases, Winston Bowman, 2017

The Rosenberg Trial, Jake Kobrick, 2013

Olmstead v. United States: The Constitutional Challenges of Prohibition Enforcement, Richard F. Hamm, 2010

The Debs Case: Labor, Capital, and the Federal Courts of the 1890s, David

Ray Papke, 2008

The Chicago Seven: 1960s Radicalism in the Federal Courts, Bruce A. Ragsdale, 2008

The Sedition Act Trials, Bruce A. Ragsdale, 2005

Ex parte Merryman and Debates on Civil Liberties During the Civil War,

Bruce A. Ragsdale, 2007

The Aaron Burr Treason Trial, Charles F. Hobson, 2006

Chew Heong v. United States: Chinese Exclusion and the Federal Courts,

Lucy Salyer, 2006

The Trial of Susan B. Anthony, Ann D. Gordon, 2005

Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board and the Desegregation of New Orleans

Schools, Davison M. Douglas, 2005

Amistad: The Federal Courts and the Challenge to Slavery, Bruce A. Ragsdale,

2002
The Federal Judicial Center

Board

The Chief Justice of the United States, Chair

Magistrate Judge Tim A. Baker, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana

Judge Duane Benton, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit

Judge Nancy Freudenthal, U.S. District Court for the District of Wyoming

Chief Judge Barbara J. Houser, U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Texas

Judge Raymond Jackson, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia

Judge George Z. Singal, U.S. District Court for the District of Maine

Judge David S. Tatel, U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit

James C. Duff, Director of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts

Director

John S. Cooke

Deputy Director

Clara Altman

About the Federal Judicial Center

The Federal Judicial Center is the research and education agency of the federal judicial system. It was 

established by Congress in 1967 (28 U.S.C. §§ 620–629), on the recommendation of the Judicial 

Conference of the United States.

By statute, the Chief Justice of the United States chairs the Center’s Board, which also includes the 

director of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts and seven judges elected by the Judicial 

Conference.

The organization of the Center reflects its primary statutory mandates. The Education Division 

plans and produces education and training for judges and court staff, including in-person programs, 

video programs, publications, curriculum packages for in-district training, and Web-based programs and 

resources. The Research Division examines and evaluates current and alternative federal court practices 

and policies. This research assists Judicial Conference committees, who request most Center research, in 

developing policy recommendations. The Center’s research also contributes substantially to its 

educational programs. The Federal Judicial History Office helps courts and others study and preserve 

federal judicial history. The International Judicial Relations Office provides information to judicial and 

legal officials from foreign countries and informs federal judicial personnel of developments in 

international law and other court systems that may affect their work. Two units of the Director’s 

Office—the Information Technology Office and the Editorial & Information Services Office—support 

Center missions through technology, editorial and design assistance, and organization and dissemination 

of Center resources.