Assassination Vacation

  “Not that I was eavesdropping,” I say, “but that is not Paul Revere. That is General Sherman.”

  “Oh,” says the same guy who said the same thing about Paul Revere. The boy glares at me as if he’s wishing I’d get trampled under the hooves of Paul Revere’s horse.

  Between the hair and the stare, the Sherman monument does convey how ominous Sherman must have been. Which makes Charles Guiteau’s note to Sherman, found at the train station not far from Garfield’s bleeding body, all the more remarkable, because in the note, Guiteau has the nerve to tell William T. Sherman what to do. Guiteau wrote:

  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 General 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

  I have seen Guiteau’s original note. It resides across town in the Charles J. Guiteau Collection at the Georgetown University Library. Guiteau carried it in his pocket, and the original folds are still visible in the paper. Guiteau’s flowery script bears little indication of madness. In fact, it’s downright grandmotherly.

  Guiteau purchased the gun he used to shoot Garfield just up the street from the Sherman statue, on the corner of Fifteenth and F. He splurged on a handsome bulldog revolver because he imagined that someday, that particular weapon would look good in a museum. (The gun was lost though — the train station tiles notwithstanding, Garfield stuff wasn’t as obsessively cared for as Lincoln mementoes.)

  The building where Guiteau bought his weapon has been torn down. A commercial building of shops and offices called Metropolitan Square stands there now. On the corner of Fifteenth and F, there are two plaques — one enumerating the many historical events that occurred on the site, and another one picturing the street as it looked in the early nineteenth century, with women in bonnets milling about next to a horse-drawn carriage in front of the Rhodes Tavern, a building erected here in 1799 that was torn down in 1984. According to the plaque’s long list, the tavern, among other things, hosted the first city election in 1802 and witnessed “every inaugural parade from Thomas Jefferson’s in 1805 until Ronald Reagan’s in 1981.” Then, in its wonderfully, obviously spiteful closer, the plaque’s list ends, “Ballot initiative to preserve the building approved by Washington citizens, 1983. Razed, 1984.” What’s not to admire about that kind of civic grudge?

  There is no mention of Guiteau and his gun, not that there should be. In fact, according to a 1999 article in the Washington Times published before the plaque was hung, one of the plaque putter-uppers comes right out and says Guiteau and the gun shop that was here will be omitted from the list.

  In the seven or so minutes it takes me to copy down the full text of the verbose plaque — I left out the parts about the congressional boardinghouse and the three years the Washington Stock Exchange was based here — something curious happens. Even though the corner of Fifteenth and F is hardly a tourist hot spot, the fact that I am staring at this obscure, out-of-the-way plaque taking notes attracts five separate families of tourists, who are suddenly elbowing me aside to videotape the plaque. Someone’s fitful son slams into my arm, jerking my pen and messing up my notes. “Sorry,” his mom whimpers, yanking him off the sidewalk. One dad reads aloud to a couple of children who are neither tall enough to see nor old enough to read that the Riggs Bank was here from 1840 to 1884, because kids love to know where banks used to be.

  I have a strange sensation I can’t put my finger on. Suddenly it registers. I think I might be crowded. This is a new development in Garfield pilgrimage — other pilgrims.

  I stroll over to Lafayette Park to get some air, plunking down on a bench across from the White House, just like Charles Guiteau used to do. Crooking my neck left I can also see the Court of Claims, where Secretary of State James G. Blaine’s house used to be. (It was also Secretary of State Seward’s house before Blaine, the one in which he was stabbed in the Lincoln assassination conspiracy.)

  Upon arriving in Washington from New York, Guiteau dropped by the White House every day begging to be appointed ambassador to France. In his diary, Garfield’s annoyance at the throngs of office seekers is weirdly prophetic given the violence to come, complaining of “the indurate office seeker who pursues his prey with the grip of death…as highway men draw pistols.” He also confesses that it will be “some trouble to keep from despising them.” Three weeks before the assassination, which is to say three weeks into his administration, the beg-a-thon has clearly taken its toll. Garfield laments, “Once or twice, I felt like crying out in agony of my soul against the greed for office, and its consumption of my time. My services ought to be worth more to the government than to be thus spent.” He goes on to fear that this and all the other presidential hogwash will mentally “cripple” him, wondering, “What might a vigorous thinker do, if he could be allowed to use the opportunities of a Presidential term in vital, useful activity? Some civil service reform will come by necessity, after the wearisome years of wasted Presidents have paved the way for it.” On that last point, he was wrong, as his successor, Chester Arthur, would sign a civil service reform bill into law, partly as a Garfield memorial.

  Garfield’s secretary, no doubt exasperated by the persistent kook Guiteau, had pawned off Guiteau on Secretary of State James G. Blaine, explaining to Guiteau that the French ambassadorship would be decided at the State Department over at the Old Executive Office Building around the corner. Not that Blaine suffered Guiteau for long. On May 14, having had enough of the scruffy oddball who actually believed he deserved one of the cushiest appointments in the history of diplomacy, Blaine screamed at him, “Never speak to me again on the Paris consulship as long as you live!”

  Guiteau fired off a letter to the White House describing Secretary Blaine as a “wicked man.” He told the president, “You ought to demand his immediate resignation. Otherwise, you and the Republican party will come to grief.”

  Meanwhile, Garfield took a stand on the most controversial appointment of all, the collector of the New York Custom House. Defying New York senator Roscoe Conkling, Garfield chose William H. Robertson, a seemingly neutral choice. Conkling, however, exploded. Here’s what happened. Conkling threatened to block Robertson’s Senate confirmation. Garfield pressed the other senators to back his nominee or forsake White House support for the rest of his term. Feeling the political wind blow toward Garfield, Conkling outrageously resigned from the Senate so he didn’t have to be there when Garfield won. Conkling forced his fellow New York senator, Tom Platt, to follow suit and resign too. Robertson was confirmed. Meanwhile, Conkling and Platt took the train to Albany, planning to get reappointed by the state legislature — senators weren’t popularly elected until 1913 — and to return to Washington spoiling for revenge. However, in the Albany hotel where they were staying, ex-senator Platt was spotted entering his hotel room with a lady, a hotel room with a transom over the door in a hotel where many of his political enemies were also staying, one of whom spied the tryst-in-progress and invited all his buddies to take turns peeping in on Platt. Neither Platt nor his comrade Conkling was reappointed to the Senate. (Though Platt would eventually rise from the ashes, reenter the Senate, filling Conkling’s shoes as boss of New York. In fact, it was Platt’s idea, in 1900, to get New York’s annoying governor out of his hair by having him neutered, which is to say nominated for vice president, never predicting that President McKinley would be assassinated less than a year later, making Theodore Roosevelt president of the United States.)

  Garfield’s diary simply states, “In the war of Conkling versus the administration I have been strengthened in the public judgment.” Which is a nice way of saying, “Nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah.” Garfield was right, t
hough. The voters did appreciate Garfield standing up to boss rule. The Republican Party, on the other hand, was in turmoil. The Stalwarts were disgraced.

  Garfield humiliated the Stalwart faction just as the Stalwart Charles Guiteau’s diplomatic dreams were dashed. Guiteau, ever resourceful, found a new reason for being, a moment of clarity born of divine inspiration. God told him to kill the president. In his “Letter to the American People,” written on June 16 and found in his pocket when he was arrested on July 2 at the train station, Guiteau explains:

  I conceived of the idea of removing the President four weeks ago. Not a soul knew my purpose. I conceived the idea 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 who made him, and thereby imperiled the life of the Republic. At the late Presidential election, the Republican party carried every Northern State. Today, 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.

  Where did Guiteau get his insane notions? Think back to the Republican platform in Garfield’s presidential campaign. Guiteau, in his own off-key way, is merely covering that inflammatory campaign song “If the Johnnies Get into Power.” So Garfield is the victim of Guiteau, but he’s also the victim of his own party rhetoric of exaggerating a Democratic victory into a matter of life and death. Guiteau took these exaggerations to heart, explaining in his letter that while he had “no ill-will to the President” as a person, the president has “wrecked the once grand old Republican party.” He continues,

  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.

  After God commanded Guiteau to kill Garfield, it actually took the assassin a couple of weeks to summon the nerve to pull the trigger, and all that time he tracked the movements of the president and his friends and family, hunting him. Then Guiteau would go down to the banks of the Potomac to practice shooting by aiming at rocks and trees.

  The night before the assassination, Guiteau watched Garfield leave the White House and walk alone to Blaine’s house. After a while, the president and the secretary of state left the house together. At his trial, Guiteau, who was spying on them from Lafayette Park, remembered they were “in the most delightful and cozy fellowship possible; just as hilarious as two young girls.” It’s a pretty picture — nice that Garfield enjoyed the last walk he’d ever take.

  Normally, Lafayette Park is one of my favorite spots in town. I like the Marquis de Lafayette and his statue, like thinking about William H. Seward. Sometimes I even like looking at the White House, depending on whose house it is. But sitting where Guiteau stalked Garfield, staring at the White House gives me the creeps. So I take off.

  Onward and over to Logan Circle, to the General Logan monument. Yet another equestrian job, this one on its eastern side boasts the lone D.C. sculptural representation of President Chester Alan Arthur. Arthur administers the senatorial oath to the old general; seven others even more forgotten than Arthur (if that’s possible) stare on.

  Arthur was mortified that Garfield’s assassin claimed that he did it so Arthur could be president. As Garfield lay dying, Arthur cringed, hiding out in his Manhattan house on Lexington Avenue, embarrassed and scared. Out of tact, he wanted to avoid the impression that he was taking over the administration but also to allay suspicions that he conspired with Guiteau.

  I have some sympathy for Arthur. For starters, he never wanted to be president, and then to have to assume the presidency all because some lunatic Arthur barely noticed hanging around Republic HQ during the campaign killed Garfield on his behalf. Later that evening, after I got home from the Logan monument, I listened to a friend’s voice mail telling me that he was listening to the radio and the radio host described the current president as the worst president of all time, except for maybe Chester Arthur, and my friend wanted to know if that was true. I e-mailed him back that actually, Chester Arthur wasn’t so bad, unless you were Chinese (he limited immigration). He signed a civil service bill into a law. Plus, after Garfield’s death, Arthur’s old pal ex-senator Conkling swooped in and, unbelievably, commanded Arthur to fire Garfield’s customs collector! Arthur was appalled and said no. The two men would never speak again, though in New York City their statues have to stare wordlessly across Madison Square Park at each other in perpetuity.

  (You can learn even more about how Arthur is or is not remembered by stopping by his Lexington Avenue house, where he took the presidential oath the day Garfield died. The moment does warrant a plaque, though not necessarily a plaque people are supposed to be able to see. The plaque hangs inside what is now an apartment building’s foyer. If you look hard through the glass security door, you can kind of make out a sign above the mailboxes that says something about Arthur and civil service reform.)

  In Washington, the District of Columbia Court Building at 451 Indiana Avenue NW was built as the old city hall, becoming a courthouse in 1873. A statue of Abraham Lincoln, erected three years after his assassination, stands in front of the steps.

  Today, the dignified columned structure looks abandoned, surrounded by a perimeter of chain-link fence. But in 1881–82, this is where Charles Guiteau’s murder trial took place.

  Guiteau’s trial was a sensation — a laugh riot well attended by the ladies of Washington, who packed picnic baskets to catch his act. Newspaper accounts describe the proceedings as a circus. A political cartoon by Thomas Nast in Harper’s Weekly, entitled “From Grave to Gay,” pictured an elfin Guiteau, perched on Garfield’s grave in the middle of the courtroom, surrounded by grinning lawyers and jurors. Slogans littering the ground include “Anything for a laugh” and “ ‘Funny’ Insanity by Guiteau.”

  Appointing himself co-counsel in his defense, Guiteau constantly interrupted his own attorneys, including the beleaguered George Scoville, his brother-in-law. Guiteau repeatedly pointed out that in shooting Garfield he was only carrying out the command of God. Finally, the exasperated prosecutor asked him, “Who bought the pistol, the Deity or you?” Then, after the prosecutor brought up the minor matter of the commandment “Thou shalt not kill,” Guiteau asserted that God the Father grandfathered Guiteau past this rule. Guiteau then went on to compare himself to Napoleon, Jesus, the apostle Paul and Martin Luther. Guiteau pointed out that like them, he was “a man of destiny.” Guiteau pulled stunts such as lobbying the judge to be able to read aloud his autobiography because it would be an oration on par with Cicero’s that “will go thundering down the ages.” It was a crowd-pleaser, especially since Guiteau read excerpts from admiring letters received from his fellow lunatics. “No one,” he said, “wants to shoot or hang me save a few cranks, who are so ignorant they can hardly read or write. High-toned people” — Guiteau’s highest praise — “are saying, ‘Well, if the Lord did it, let it go.’ ”

  Except for the dead-serious details of his assassinating President Garfield and being in all likelihood clinically insane, Charles Guiteau might be the funniest man in American history — a guy so relentlessly upbeat, so unfailingly optimistic about his place in the world, so very happy for others lucky enough to have made his acquaintance, such a sunshiny self-important glass-all-full sort of fool that he cannot open his mouth or take out his pen without coming up with one unintentionally hilarious gag after another.

  The Garfield assassination is always described, on the rare occasions it is described, this way: James Garfield was shot by a disappointed office seeker who had wanted to be appointed ambassador to France.

  It is surprising that Guiteau would go down in history as a “disappointed office seeker,” because the adjective “disappointed” implies the guy wa
s capable of registering disappointment. Even though he was, at the time of the assassination, a divorcé, a college dropout, ia failed lawyer, preacher, and writer. Even though, during his youthful residence at the sexed-up Oneida Community he was the one guy in a free love commune who could not get laid. When Charles Guiteau looked in the mirror he did not see a raggedy homeless man, a wife beater, a dud. He saw the ambassador to France. He wasn’t out of work. No, sir. Charles J. Guiteau was “in the employ of Jesus Christ & Co.”

  In his musical Assassins, Stephen Sondheim plays up the inherent humor in Guiteau’s unwarranted self-love and sugary outlook. Compared to Hinckley, a downbeat creep, or the McKinley assassin Czolgosz, a sad son of immigrants always dragging down the room with laments about the unfairness of factory working conditions, Guiteau is the audience’s goal-oriented golden boy who smiles while he sings perky lyrics like “look on the bright side.”

  During Guiteau’s trial, one horrifying but effective stunt by the prosecution involved passing around Garfield’s spine, which had been removed during the autopsy. Seeing the president’s vertebrae being pawed by the jury made the ladies present cry. But this was an uncharacteristically somber exception. Mostly, the attendees ate up Guiteau’s entertaining outbursts. (Everyone except for Harriet Blaine, the wife of Secretary of State James G. She made a point of showing up every day not to laugh, out of respect for her late friend Garfield. When the trial ended she wrote of Guiteau, “I want it impossible for that hoarse, cracked voice, ever to raise itself again.”)

  Scoville mounted a convincing insanity defense, assembling expert witnesses, including a former doctor of Guiteau’s who had examined him years earlier right after Guiteau threatened his sister with an axe. Also, Guiteau’s own babbling, always eccentric and frequently delusional, reads today like classic crackpot. But in 1882, the insanity defense was new and controversial; add a dead president to the mix and the country’s thirst for revenge makes an insanity acquittal all the more unlikely. On January 5, 1882, the jury reached a guilty verdict.