The Great Guiteau Trial: with life of the cowardly assassin : A full account! A complete history! The judge's charge to the jury. Speeches of counsel on both sides. Likenesses of all the parties concerned. Guiteau as a theologian, a politician, a tramp lawyer, a society beat, and as a member of the Oneida community.

Date:
[1882], [©1882]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The Great Guiteau Trial: with life of the cowardly assassin : A full account! A complete history! The judge's charge to the jury. Speeches of counsel on both sides. Likenesses of all the parties concerned. Guiteau as a theologian, a politician, a tramp lawyer, a society beat, and as a member of the Oneida community. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    In a low and deliberate tone he began, but soon his manner became wild and N iolent, and, pounding upon the table, le delivered himself of the foHowing liarangue: I am not guilty of the charge set forth in the indictment. It wiis God's act, not mine, and God will lake care of it, and don't let the Amer- ican people forget it. He will take care of it; and every officer of this govern- ment, from the Executive down to that marshal, 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 the ground and I am hung. The Jews put the despised Galilean into the grave. For the time they trimphed, but at the destruction of Jerusalem, forty years afterward, the Almighty got even with them. I am not afraid of death. I am here as God's man. Kill me to-morrow if you want. I am God's man and have been from the start. Judge Cox Pronounces Sen- tence. Judge Cox then proceeded to pass sentence, addressing the prisoner as fol- lows : You have been convicted of a crime so terrible in its circumstances and so far- reaching in its results that it has drawn upon you the horror of the whole world and the execrations of your country- men. The excitement produced by such an offence made it no easy^ask to secure for you a fair and impartial trial; but you have had the power of the United States Treasury and of the Government in your service to protect your person from violence and to procure evidence from all parts of the country. You have had as fair and impartial a jury as ever assembled in a court of justice. You have been defended by counsel with a zeal and devotion that merit tlie highest encomium, and I certainly have done iny best to secure a fair presenta- tion of your defence. Notwithstanding all this, you have been found guilty. It would have been a comfort to many people if the verdict of the jui\y had established the fact that your act was that of an irresponsible man. What motive dould have induced you to this ac; must be a matter of con- jecture. Probably men will think that some fanaticism or morbid desire for self-exaltation was the real inspiration for the act. It would have left the peo- ple the satisfying belief that the crime of political assassination was something entirely foreign to the institutions and civilization of our country; but the result has denied them that comfort. The country will accept it as a fact that that crime can be committed, and the Court will have to deal with it with the highest penalty known to the criminal code to serve as an example to others. Your career has been so extraordinary that people might well at times have doubted your sanity. But one cannot but believe that when the crime was committed you thoroughly understood the nature of the crime and its conse- quences, (Guiteau—* I was acting as God's man,') and that you had moral sense and conscience enough to recog- nize the moral iniquity of such an act. (Prisoner—' That's a matter of opinion.') Your own testimony shows that you re- coiled with horror from the idea. You say that you prayed against it. Yoa say that you thought it might be pre- vented. This shows that your con- science warned you against it; but, by the wretched sophistry of your own tnind, you worked yourself up against the protest of your own conscience. Your own testimony seems to con- trovert the theories of your., counsel. They have maintained, and thought honestly, I believe, that you were driven against your will by an insane impulse to commit the act; but your testimony showed that you deliberately resolved to do it, and that a deliberate and mis- guided will was the sole impulse. This may seem insanity to some persons, but the law looks upon it as a wilful crime. You will have due opportunity of having any error I may have committed during the course of the trial passed upon by the court in banc, but meanwhile it is necessary for me to pronounce the sen- tence of the law—that you be taken hence to the common jail of the District, from whence you came, and there be kept in confinement, and on Friday, the 30th day of June, 1882, you be taken to the place prepared for the execution within the walls of said jail, and there^ between the hours of twelve M., and tw»