TeenageRepublican
10-20-2007, 03:04 PM
I enjoy talking about the killing of JFK very much. I found another president that was killed one year in to his term. His name was James Abram Garfield, 20th president of the USA.
Here is why he was shot:
CHARLES GUITEAU COLLECTION
The Charles J. Guiteau Collection consists of correspondence, affidavits and printed material by and about Guiteau, the notorious attorney who assassinated U.S. President James Abram Garfield on July 2, 1881. The assassination resulted in one of the most celebrated American "insanity trials" of the nineteenth century, which became something of a legal milestone in the judgement of the criminally insane.
Over the decades, most authorities, including medical professionals, have agreed that Guiteau suffered from insanity. Charles E. Rosenberg, author of "The Trial of the Assassin Guiteau - Psychiatry and Law in the Gilded Age" (1968), wrote of the case: "Within a dozen years of Guiteau's execution, few interested pysicians doubted that he had been insane, indeed chronically and obviously so. Those harshest in their judgment did not hesitate to call the trial a miscarriage of justice...
Charles Julius Guiteau was born on September 8, 1841, in Freeport, Illinois, the fourth of six children of Luther Wilson Guiteau and Jane Howe. The latter died when Charles was quite young, on September 25, 1848. Luther Guiteau then remarried.
As a youth, Charles Guiteau worked for his father who was a business man, later elected county clerk, and then employed as a cashier in Freeport's Second National Bank. Luther Guiteau was very much against sending his son to college. However, in 1859, an inheritance from his maternal grandfather, provided Charles with the means to attend the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. If Charles had been discontented with life at home, he was even more unhappy at university. For solace and direction, he turned to the religious doctrines of John Humphrey Noyes, founder of the Oneida Community in New York State in the 1840s, who promulgated a kind of "Bible communism." In fact, Luther Guiteau was already a follower of Noyes' teachings.
Snip Snip
The following year, Guiteau's behavior became not merely erratic but bizarre. After failing to obtain the collatoral for another newspaper venture, this time attempting to buy a newspaper called the "Inter-Ocean," Guiteau again availed himself of his sister's generosity, moving into the Scoville house for some months.
Snip Snip
Initially, Guiteau favored the Stalwarts and their attempt to nominate Ulysses S. Grant for a third term. When Garfield was nominated, however, Guiteau changed sides. He soon became a familiar figure stationed outside Republican headquarters on Fifth Avenue in New York City. Here, on August 6, 1880, he delivered his speech, "Garfield vs. Hancock," (see Folder 11, printed copy). After Garfield's election, in 1881, Guiteau moved to Washington, D.C., in the hope of an appointment. He bombarded Secretary of State James G. Blaine with letters. Finally, after receiving either rebuff or no response at all, Guiteau again changed sides to the Stalwarts' cause.
In mid-May 1881, he conceived the idea to "remove" the president. On June 16, 1881, he delivered the first of several "explanations" for his action, an "Address to the American People," (see Folder 7, original manuscript). He also wrote a letter to the White House and a similar one to be sent to General William T. Sherman, stating, "I have just shot the President...His death was a political necessity. I am a lawyer, theologian and politician. I am a Stalwart of the Stalwarts..." (see Folder 3, original to Sherman).
On July 2, 1881, Charles Guiteau shot President Garfield, once in the arm and once, fatally, in the back, as the latter was about to depart for a vacation from the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station. The shooting occurred in the presence of a small entourage of Garfield's aides, including Secretary Blaine.
Read More Here:
http://www.library.georgetown.edu/dept/speccoll/cl133.htm
What do you think of this shooting?
Here is why he was shot:
CHARLES GUITEAU COLLECTION
The Charles J. Guiteau Collection consists of correspondence, affidavits and printed material by and about Guiteau, the notorious attorney who assassinated U.S. President James Abram Garfield on July 2, 1881. The assassination resulted in one of the most celebrated American "insanity trials" of the nineteenth century, which became something of a legal milestone in the judgement of the criminally insane.
Over the decades, most authorities, including medical professionals, have agreed that Guiteau suffered from insanity. Charles E. Rosenberg, author of "The Trial of the Assassin Guiteau - Psychiatry and Law in the Gilded Age" (1968), wrote of the case: "Within a dozen years of Guiteau's execution, few interested pysicians doubted that he had been insane, indeed chronically and obviously so. Those harshest in their judgment did not hesitate to call the trial a miscarriage of justice...
Charles Julius Guiteau was born on September 8, 1841, in Freeport, Illinois, the fourth of six children of Luther Wilson Guiteau and Jane Howe. The latter died when Charles was quite young, on September 25, 1848. Luther Guiteau then remarried.
As a youth, Charles Guiteau worked for his father who was a business man, later elected county clerk, and then employed as a cashier in Freeport's Second National Bank. Luther Guiteau was very much against sending his son to college. However, in 1859, an inheritance from his maternal grandfather, provided Charles with the means to attend the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. If Charles had been discontented with life at home, he was even more unhappy at university. For solace and direction, he turned to the religious doctrines of John Humphrey Noyes, founder of the Oneida Community in New York State in the 1840s, who promulgated a kind of "Bible communism." In fact, Luther Guiteau was already a follower of Noyes' teachings.
Snip Snip
The following year, Guiteau's behavior became not merely erratic but bizarre. After failing to obtain the collatoral for another newspaper venture, this time attempting to buy a newspaper called the "Inter-Ocean," Guiteau again availed himself of his sister's generosity, moving into the Scoville house for some months.
Snip Snip
Initially, Guiteau favored the Stalwarts and their attempt to nominate Ulysses S. Grant for a third term. When Garfield was nominated, however, Guiteau changed sides. He soon became a familiar figure stationed outside Republican headquarters on Fifth Avenue in New York City. Here, on August 6, 1880, he delivered his speech, "Garfield vs. Hancock," (see Folder 11, printed copy). After Garfield's election, in 1881, Guiteau moved to Washington, D.C., in the hope of an appointment. He bombarded Secretary of State James G. Blaine with letters. Finally, after receiving either rebuff or no response at all, Guiteau again changed sides to the Stalwarts' cause.
In mid-May 1881, he conceived the idea to "remove" the president. On June 16, 1881, he delivered the first of several "explanations" for his action, an "Address to the American People," (see Folder 7, original manuscript). He also wrote a letter to the White House and a similar one to be sent to General William T. Sherman, stating, "I have just shot the President...His death was a political necessity. I am a lawyer, theologian and politician. I am a Stalwart of the Stalwarts..." (see Folder 3, original to Sherman).
On July 2, 1881, Charles Guiteau shot President Garfield, once in the arm and once, fatally, in the back, as the latter was about to depart for a vacation from the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station. The shooting occurred in the presence of a small entourage of Garfield's aides, including Secretary Blaine.
Read More Here:
http://www.library.georgetown.edu/dept/speccoll/cl133.htm
What do you think of this shooting?