Destiny of the Republic - Candice Millard [123]
The central question of the trial—whether or not Guiteau was insane—seemed to most Americans a waste of time. Insane or not, they wanted to see him hanged, at the very least. “Hanging is too good for you, you stinking cuss,” a Union veteran had written to him. “You ought to be burned alive and let rot. You savage cannibal dog.” A farmer from Maryland tried to accomplish what William Mason had failed to do. As the prison coach carried Guiteau from the courtroom back to the District Jail one day, he rode up on his horse, drew his pistol, and fired at the prisoner. Once again, the shot missed Guiteau, but left him terrified, with a singed hole in his coat.
The trial, punctuated by Guiteau’s constant outbursts and heightened by testimony from members of the Senate, the secretary of state, and, by letter, even President Arthur, finally ended on January 26, 1882. At 4:35 that afternoon, after more than two months of testimony, the prosecution rested. Less than an hour later, the jury returned with a verdict.
“Gentlemen of the jury,” the clerk called out, his voice harsh against the perfect silence of the courtroom, “have you agreed upon a verdict?” The foreman, a man named John Hamlin, replied that they had. “What say you,” asked the clerk. “Is the defendant guilty or not guilty?” “Guilty as indicted, sir,” Hamlin said.
Before Hamlin had even finished speaking, the courtroom erupted in thunderous applause. So deafening were the cheers that the bailiff’s shout for order could hardly be heard. When the crowd, under threat of expulsion from the courtroom, finally quieted, one voice alone rang out. “My blood be on the head of the jury, don’t you forget it,” Guiteau cried. “That is my answer.… God will avenge this outrage.”
Even after he had been found guilty and sentenced to death, Guiteau believed that he would be set free. It was only a matter of time—and presidential influence. He had already written to Arthur several times, demanding a full pardon, but after the U.S. Supreme Court denied his appeal, he wrote again. The letter was a window into Guiteau’s strained mind. “I am willing to DIE for my inspiration,” he wrote, “but it will make a terrible reckoning for you and this nation. I made you … and the least you can do is to let me go.” Then, suddenly switching tracks from dire threat to friendly advice, he offered what seemed to him a reasonable compromise. “But I appreciate your delicate position,” he wrote, “and I am willing to stay here until January, if necessary.”
Besides Guiteau himself, the only people who believed that his life might yet be spared were his brother and sister. John Guiteau, although he had long been deeply ashamed of his younger brother, and had often been bitterly angry with him, could not bear to see him die. “Whatever your impressions may be,” he had written to Charles after the trial ended, “I want you to know that I feel towards you as a brother and a friend, and shall, in the short time remaining, do all I can to save your life.” He was convinced that Charles was insane, and that if the American people could only be made to understand that fact, they would want to see him locked away in an asylum, not hanged. “The public have never had the facts, nor the Court,” he wrote to Charles. “And they know not what they are about to do.”
Finally, John also wrote to the president, seeking not a pardon, but simply a stay of execution. In his letter to Arthur, he asked only for enough time to present further evidence of his brother’s insanity. He hoped that the president would give him “an audience before a decision is reached, that I may make a brief statement of my brother’s unfortunate