[From the American Law Review for February, 1882.] 
THE RESPONSIBILITY OF QUITEAU. 
The medical experts who have been called during the trial of 
the assassin of President Garfield have probably never had 
placed before them a more difficult task than to settle in their 
own minds the exact mental state of Guiteau on the 2d of July 
last. There is sufficient evidence of either of several forms of 
mental disease in his case to establish a reasonable probability of 
the existence of any one of them, and yet not enough to amount 
to positive proof that the man was suffering from any particular 
recognized type of insanity when he was arrested. 
If it be assumed that he is a partial imbecile, and, following 
out the line of thought suggested by Darwin and Hughlings 
Jackson, that in the process of devolution he has lost just those 
faculties of mind which come latest in the evolution of a high 
order of civilization, namely, a nice sense of right and wrong, 
a fine recognition of what is due to others than one’s self, reflec- 
tion, reason, and judgment, —it is entirely consistent that he 
should have quick perceptive faculties, a retentive memory, 
extraordinary acuteness, extreme self-will, and inordinate ego- 
ism. It may be said that, if this supposition be correct, Guiteau 
is simply an anomaly in the fourth quarter of the nineteenth cen- 
tury, and that he is only a type of an earlier civilization than 
ours. That may or may not be true ; the only way of settling 
the point is to ascertain, if that be possible, whether, in the 
first place, there is in his case that progressive loss of mental 
power from year to year which is characteristic of disease of the 
mind, and of which there is some, but not conclusive evidence; 
and, in the second place, whether there have been from time to 
time attacks similar to a mild form of mania, which not seldom 
occur in complete or partial idiots and imbeciles. 
VOL 111. —N. S. 86 
THE RESPONSIBILITY OF GUITEAU. 
From the history of the case, it is not impossible that there 
have been at different times, with intervals of several years, 
recurrent attacks of mania of a form not rare in private prac- 
tice ; a form just severe enough to render asylum treatment 
desirable but difficult to enforce; under the influence of which 
crimes are rarely committed, until, in the course of time, the 
progressive diminution in mental power brings all the higher 
faculties of the brain so far under the control of its lower func- 
tions that all sorts of violations of law, decency, and social order 
are the result. With this explanation of the facts in the case, or 
supposing that there is simply physical degeneration of the brain 
of long standing or partial imbecility with periodic excitement 
and progressive loss of brain-power and self-control, it is per- 
fectly natural that a man may be comparatively sane at his trial 
in December and very insane when he committed his crime in 
July, and that he should have appeared perfectly sane to people 
who saw him at certain times and in some of his relations of life, 
while to other people at different times he seemed thoroughly 
insane. 
There are some indications sufficient to create a suspicion of 
an organic disease of the brain in Guiteau’s case which, although 
as yet in an early stage, may be of such an extent as to create an 
excessive exaltation with extravagant delusions, and to involve 
probably as complete irresponsibility as is found in any form of 
insanity, a question which time alone could positively settle, 
and which the previous existence of syphilis renders more prob- 
able, as the two diseases are often associated. Again, it may be 
maintained that a bad inherited organization, worse training in 
boyhood and youth, the pernicious influence of free-love and 
communism during six years of early manhood, extreme self-will, 
knowing no law but self-indulgence, general moral obliquity, 
and entire want of sympathy with society, may have led on, from 
one step to another, a man whose ambition knew no bounds, 
whose love of notoriety was only equalled by his cunning and 
unscrupulousness, and who finally in one desperate act risked 
his worthless life on the small chance of escaping the just penalty 
of his deed. 
Among the many experts with whom I have talked upon these 
points there was a striking unanimity of opinion that the only 
satisfactory means of arriving at an approximately correct solu- THE RESPONSIBILITY OF GUITEAU. 
87 
tion of these questions would be to place the assassin under the 
observation of competent physicians for a considerable period of 
time. But, with these points established, there would be still 
the difficulty of deciding whether the crime were committed by 
virtue of the insanity, if it were proved to exist, or through a 
purely criminal motive, inasmuch as bad people may become 
insane as well as those who are of high character and law- 
abiding. Indeed, I have seen several persons in whom pure 
wickedness existing previous to mental disease on the one hand, 
and insanity itself on the other, were so intricately connected 
that it did not seem to me to lie within the power of any human 
being to say how far the one or the other was responsible for the 
crime committed. 
On this point it is rather an interesting fact that the insane 
are less inclined than the sane to hold other insane people irre- 
sponsible, and many of them express the opinion that all persons 
should be treated alike, sane or insane, when they commit 
crimes. Perhaps this is due to the fact that, in insane asylums, 
it is a matter of common observation that the inmates are gov- 
erned very largely by considerations of self-interest, and that 
very many of them can and do behave perfectly well, as soon as 
they learn that they must do so. Indeed, an insane man in an 
asylum in Scotland, in commenting on the fact that the testi- 
mony of insane inmates of public institutions has been accepted 
repeatedly in court, and that once at least a man was convicted 
through the evidence of an insane patient in an asylum, makes 
the following rather striking statement: “ Comparatively few of 
the insane are so far gone, even when at their worst, that some 
ray of reason does not break forth from their darkened mind, 
while by far the largest proportion know right from wrong, good 
from evil, and are as well, if not better, qualified than ordinary 
people, from the very regulating, tempering, and sharpening of 
their mental and moral powers, caused by the heat of the fire of 
affliction which they have passed through, to judge in any given 
circumstances, and to give the naked, unbiassed truth when called 
on as witnesses.” 
The insane, too, especially those of the Guiteau type, not sel- 
dom assume for themselves an irresponsibility which does not 
exist, and make it the excuse for wrong-doing which they can 
perfectly well control, as is constantly shown in their abuse of 88 
THE RESPONSIBILITY OF GUITEATJ. 
attendants and physicians in hospitals. They may even murder, 
also, or commit any other crime, from precisely the same motives 
as govern ordinary criminals, not a few instances having been 
reported where patients have murdered attendants or other pa- 
tients simply from hatred or revenge, and sometimes so adroitly, 
with such careful planning and execution, that the author of the 
deed was never detected. Even if it be granted, therefore, that 
a given criminal is insane, the protection of society demands 
that there should be a careful discrimination between deeds 
committed under a disease destroying volition and self-control 
in the particular case, and those where the motive and method 
were purely those of the criminal. In the latter case, however, 
the fact should be borne in mind that a person quite demented 
by virtue of insanity may act precisely like a deliberate wrong- 
doer, hut, by reason of having lost his mind to a great extent, 
with an insufficient or trivial motive. 
It is not always easy, sometimes it is impossible, to say 
whether a crime is an insane act or not. Two young women, 
for instance, killed their babies under circumstances that might 
suggest either irresponsibility or great hardness of nature and 
cruelty. In both there was about the same amount of external 
evidence of insanity, in neither case very clear. The one w’as 
happily married, and, so far as could be known, had no possible 
sane motive for killing her child. When left alone with it for a 
little while she kindled a fire in the kitchen stove and heated to 
boiling some water, into which she threw her infant. Upon the 
return of her servant she was found sitting by the shapeless 
mass smiling, but refused to say why the deed had been done. 
In the insane asylum, to which she was sent, there was, for some 
months, no indication of insanity beyond the facts that she never 
spoke, and that she had an expression of quiet satisfaction on her 
face unnatural, under the circumstances, to a sane person. Her 
physical health was good, and the ordinary relations of the asy- 
lum life were properly attended to. She was orderly and quiet, 
and understood, as well as performed, what was required of her. 
Several months later, she said that she had killed her child 
because her husband had bestowed improper attentions upon 
her maid, a pure delusion, which, even if it had foundation, 
would not have justified the act in law. She was clearly insane, 
as was shown by later evidence, but finally recovered. THE RESPONSIBILITY OF GUITEAU. 
89 
The other was betrayed and deserted, with scarcely any one 
to befriend her, and hardly knowing where to turn for her daily 
bread. She had been left alone in the world at the age of four- 
teen, and had previously had an illegitimate child, to which she 
gave every care and attention that a mother could bestow. Al- 
though unscrupulous, according to the usages of society, in some 
matters, she had her own standard of right and wrong, to which 
she adhered. There was every evidence that her general be- 
havior was good, and that she kept habitually away from evil 
associations ; and she certainly was not licentious. She was 
very industrious and overworked in her daily life up to the very 
hour of her confinement, previous to which she had been alter- 
nately depressed and moderately exhilarated. The fierceness 
with which she said, at the time of her trial, that she would kill 
her seducer if she ever saw him, led to the inference that she 
would certainly do so. For the ten days succeeding the birth of 
the child, the mother was kept at one of the charitable institu- 
tions of Boston, where she did not see any one previously known 
to her. After her discharge, being left for twenty minutes alone 
with the infant, she killed it by a violent blow with her fist, 
fracturing the skull, and then crushed it between the pillow and 
mattress of her bed. She took it home, concealed it in her trunk 
for a favorable opportunity to throw it into the river, and went 
to seek for work to her old employer, who readily took her back, 
knowing her good habits and efficiency. Her babe was found, 
and her employer was told of the fact, which she suspected, 
because he “ seemed nervous ” in his manner, although none of 
the other girls could detect anything of the sort. She then im- 
mediatety accused herself by saying: “ I know what’s the mat- 
ter. I killed my baby, and they have found it.” She had no 
love whatever for her infant, and when arrested regretted that 
she had not kept it with her, as she thought it so weak that it 
must soon have died from natural causes. She manifested a 
want of a realizing sense of what she had done and a manner 
suggestive to the expert of the ways of the insane to fully as 
great a degree as the first young woman, but she had also the 
criminal motive, and to a certain extent her previous life was 
not inconsistent with the crime of infanticide. 
Was her despondency from despair natural to her condition 
or from the melancholy of insanity ? was her deed the act of 90 
THE RESPONSIBILITY OF GUITEAU. 
an insane mind or of one trained to concealment, and already 
familiar with crime ? are questions which simply could not be 
answered definitely of a woman examined as to her mental con- 
dition several months after her arrest. 
Those who see a great deal of the insane are inclined to give 
them the benefit of the doubt nearly always in matters relating 
to their punishability; but their friends often consider them 
simply “ ugly,” and treat them accordingly. Indeed, the opinion 
was offered to asylum physicians not long ago, by a gentleman 
bringing his brother for commitment, that all he needed w'as to 
be knocked down occasionally, which was the treatment he 
received at home ; and a similar feeling is quite generally ex- 
pressed by the public at large, from the clergy down, whenever 
an insane person commits any serious crime. While it must be 
acknowledged that society is often unjust to the individual in 
its anxiety to protect itself from danger of all kinds, yet it is 
equally true that there are more insane persons out of confine- 
ment than in safe-keeping, and that many of them are inclined 
or not to suicide or other crime in proportion to their expectation 
of being held accountable or not. Three inmates of an asylum 
were once overheard discussing this matter. 
The first, committed for the eighth time to the asylum, said: 
“ When a person has once been confined in a lunatic hospital 
he may commit any crime without punishment.” The second, a 
man who thought himself about to be confined with triplets, 
replied : “ After an insane man has recovered from his disease, 
he then becomes responsible, if not actually insane at the time of 
the offence against the laws.” The third believed that he was 
the Great Napoleon, and said of another inmate of the same 
asylum who had the same delusion: “Yes, the poor devil has 
really supposed himself to be myself (the Great Napoleon) 
ever since I gave him one of my coats at St. Helena;” he 
remarked, “No one recovers completely from an attack of insan- 
ity, and, if once insane, he is, although recovered, irresponsible 
for the rest of his life.” 
Probably there never will be an agreement in opinion, either 
among experts or in the community at large, as to the insanity 
of Guiteau. The conviction exists that he is decidedly insane, 
and that his crime never would have been committed but for his 
insanity ; although it would be admitted that insanity alone could THE RESPONSIBILITY OF GUITEAU. 
91 
not have produced such a deed, that there was a large crimi- 
nal element in it. There is an opinion that the sober second 
thought of the country will be decidedly in this direction, and 
that there will be at least a doubt whether secure confinement 
for life of such criminals is not more worthy of a great nation 
than hanging, more consistent with humanity, and just as safe 
for society. 
On the other hand, there is just as honest a belief that the 
whole theory and conduct of the assassination can be fully 
explained from the conditions and circumstances of the case, 
independently of insanity, that therefore the assassin was not 
insane, and that the protection of society demands that he should 
be hanged, even if he is medically insane. Both opinions are 
entitled to consideration. 
For twenty-five years Guiteau has been opinionated, despotic, 
self-willed, egotistical, and unscrupulous to a degree that has 
made him intensely offensive to a great part of the people with 
whom he came in contact. At the same time, he always assumed 
the character of an excessive religionist, without any real rever- 
ence or true morality, while Ids relations with women were so 
impure that he contracted disease thereby more than once ; and 
his ordinary pious talk often seemed like the worst blasphemy. 
There seems about equal ground for supposing that his lectur- 
ing on the second coming of Christ, his religious exhortations, his 
publishing a companion to the Bible knowing that he had no 
money to pay for it, and his wandering about from house to 
house and town to town without paying his railroad-fares or 
board-bills, might arise from a weak or diseased brain on the one 
hand, or, on the other, from a determination to lead a life in which 
his pietistic pretensions might bring him into good society, for 
which he had a craving, and give him his daily bread without 
the steady, concentrated work which he seemed incapable or un- 
ready to undertake. His temporary practice of law in New York 
and Chicago threw no light on this question, for, although he 
was finally unsuccessful in both places, it is not clear whether 
that fact was due to sheer incompetency, amounting or not to par- 
tial imbecility, or to dishonest methods and irregular practices. At 
all events, he showed a quickness of perception, a ready memorjq 
and cunning adroitness, together with decided lack of judgment 
and self-control, that on the one hand do not indicate insanity or 92 
THE RESPONSIBILITY OP GUITEAU. 
moral imbecility, and on the other hand do not conclusively prove 
entire sanity. 
When he left the Oneida community, where he was a restless 
and not easily governed socialist, his claim for excessive damages 
for the use of his time and his attack on the community’s charac- 
ter might be considered insane acts, if he had not promptly 
abandoned the suit when he found that he was liable to punish- 
ment for libel; and his extravagant proposal to found a Daily 
Theocratic Press, if appearing to some to indicate insane delu- 
sions, was to others only a foolish attempt of an inexperienced, 
conceited young man to carry out a suggestion which had already 
been made by some one else. His silly suit of $lOO,OOO against 
the New York Herald for alleged damage to his character, 
his belief that he had frightened their counsel into a wish for 
a compromise, his expectation of an adjustment of his claim, and 
his final abandonment of it all on the ground that he did not 
wish that powerful paper’s influence against him politically, 
although he had no social or political position, are so extrav- 
agant, that, if honest, he would almost on these grounds alone 
be considered insane by some, but not by all, persons. 
The attempt to revive a bankrupt Chicago paper (afterwards 
successfully accomplished) was sensible enough; but for an un- 
successful, crack-brained ne'er do weel to try it, by attempting to 
borrow respectively $200,000 and $50,000 of strangers, whom he 
promised to make President of the United States and Governor 
of Illinois, seems nothing less than sheer insanity, or more brazen- 
faced and witless effrontery to get control of money than is seen 
in people of wholly sound minds. 
Guiteau claimed inspiration as far back as 1865, when he asked 
his father for assistance for his projected paper. At the time 
of his trial he asserted that he was inspired also twice before, 
upon entering and when leaving the free-love community, and 
also once afterwards, when he shot the President. 
For some time it was a matter of doubt whether this inspiration 
were really that which is characteristic of insanity, or simply a 
habit of mock piety, arising in a nature trained to the external 
observance of the cant of religion, and accustomed to excuse 
itself for various misdeeds by throwing the responsibility upon 
Providence, or to deceive itself into the supposition that its own 
wishes, long meditated upon, were inspired. In support of the THE RESPONSIBILITY OF GUITEAU. 
latter theory is the fact that there were no hallucinations of hear- 
ing (false hearing) so likely in that kind of insanity, and that 
the inspiration was talked about in a matter-of-fact kind of way 
which was conclusive as to its character, even before the evidence 
for the prosecution showed that the idea of inspiration was an 
afterthought to the murder. 
Six years ago, Guiteau raised an axe against his sister, and ap- 
peared insane to some persons, including his sister’s family physi- 
cian, who desired to seclude him in an insane asylum ; but to other 
people he showed no traces of mental disorder; and the facts 
observed at that time, although suggestive of insanity, certainly 
do not prove it to the satisfaction of medical experts. The same 
statement is true, also, of his apparently extravagant belief, 
during the political campaign in 1872, that if Mr. Greeley were 
elected President he would be chosen to a foreign mission, un- 
fitted as he was for any responsible position, and without even 
the “ claims ” of political services that hungry office-seekers 
urge. 
Up to the time of the assassination, therefore, the evidence of 
pure insanity was conclusive to those who looked at the assassin 
from the point of view of his friends, with the natural tendency 
to exaggerate his exaltation, delusion, gospel ministration, and 
general lack of the higher faculties of the brain; while the op- 
posite bias would naturally lead to explaining his whole life on 
the basis of general incapacity produced by bad habits, and of the 
bold manoeuvres of a man desperate for money and unscrupulous 
as to the means of getting it, a view which is strengthened by 
his heartless practice of borrowing money, never intending to 
pay, of people who could not afford to lose it, and by his con- 
stant practice of cheating hotel-keepers and boarding-house 
mistresses out of their dues. 
A doubt whether all this even could not be attributed to men- 
tal disorder is strengthened by the fact that there exists a strong 
hereditary tendency in Guiteau’s family to degenerative disease, 
which, it is true, produces criminals as well as insane members, 
the physical degeneration manifesting itself in a great variety 
of ways, perhaps least often in perversion of character and in 
the degradation of the higher functions of the brain alone. In 
Guiteau’s case, up to last July, there was nothing to indicate 
the real criminal character; whereas his freedom from the use of 94 
THE RESPONSIBILITY OF GUITEAU. 
intoxicating liquors, and avoidance of the customs and haunts 
and practices of criminals, to frequent libraries, attend lectures, 
&c., rather point in the opposite direction, a view which is 
strengthened by the high character of his father’s family and 
associations. At worst, he was an unscrupulous, pious fraud, 
without any standing in society, without property, in debt, with 
no family of his own, and with no tie to the world even to bal- 
ance his hatred of its social forms or to steady his temptation to 
prey upon it for a living. His assuming to enter upon the polit- 
ical work of 1880 was only a repetition of his previous attempts 
in 1872, and his expectation of an office high above his capacity, 
deserts, or “ claims ” was on a par with his hope of getting a 
foreign mission nine years ago. In both cases he abandoned the 
pursuit of office precisely like a sane man, simply upon seeing 
the result of the election in the first case, and upon being rebuffed 
by the Secretary of State in the second. 
If there is positive evidence, as is thought by some, that 
Guiteau has been insane for many years, it lies in his general 
exaltation and delusion; in his feebleness of judgment, reason, 
and reflection; in his moral perversion; and in his apparently 
increasing weakness of mind, as shown in the growing expansive- 
ness of his ideas and the lack of reasonable self-control, perhaps 
due largely to more and more indulgence in vicious propensities. 
Guiteau’s fondness for hanging about people in high position 
and the readiness of politicians always to conciliate voters or per- 
sons willing to do even the vilest work to secure votes suggest 
that his assuming familiarity was probably treated in a manner 
to make a man of weak mind really suppose that he was “ on 
good terms with them,” and that he might expect an office, 
although his demand, if honest, for one of the highest official 
positions (especially if it is true, as he says, that he still expects 
to be President), can hardly come from any other than a crazy 
man. While he was seeking for office, his correspondence and 
actions show conclusively that he meant to marry some wealthy 
lady of high position, of many of whom he fancied that he needed 
only to take his choice, a delusion which some would consider 
insane, others not. 
When he was informed by the Secretary of State that he could 
have no office, his appearance of extraordinary exaltation changed 
to one of disappointment. The newspapers were full of the 95 
THE RESPONSIBILITY OF GUITEAU. 
quarrel between the two wings of the Republican party, blaming 
the President in unmeasured terms for having brought it about, 
and threatening all sorts of political vengeance. It was feared 
and the fact may easily have been stated in Guiteau’s hearing 
that there was even danger of the murder of the President, and 
that the crime of Booth would be repeated. At all events, he 
now claims that the idea came to him about the middle of May; 
that for two weeks he watched and prayed to ascertain whether 
it was a suggestion from the devil or an inspiration from the 
Lord, when he finally became satisfied of its divine origin, and 
that he must shoot Mr. Garfield, “because he had proved a 
traitor to the men who elected him,” in refusing the patronage 
of his position to the Grant-Conkling element of the Republican 
party. He asserts that the Lord commanded him to remove the 
President for the salvation of the country; but it is evident that 
the imperative impulse under which he claims to have acted did 
not exist, inasmuch as there was such long-continued planning, 
quiet preparation for every possible issue, and evident self-con- 
trol in resisting his purpose of murder at several appointed times, 
for reasons of simple convenience or expediency. Plis inspira- 
tion has every appearance of being at best simply the strong con- 
viction or determination of a weak or diseased mind, and not an 
insane delusion, strictly speaking. 
The whole manner of the man must have convinced any one 
familiar with insanity that the theories of inspiration and impulse 
were only afterthoughts, or adopted as means to escape the gal- 
lows, even before it had been proved that he made no mention of 
them in his early explanations of the murder. They are suggestive 
of a poor imitation of those features of the case of Freeman, the 
Pocasset murderer. The facts which may be considered proven 
are, that, claiming to wander over the earth as an evangelist, like 
the Apostle Paul, he stated about a year ago that he had entered 
the field of politics because “ theology did not pay.” Two 
weeks before the murder, while claiming to be under an uncon- 
trollable divine pressure to kill the President, he wrote a quiet 
letter to Boston sa}dng that he was engaged in politics, and ask- 
ing for a copy of his book on the second coming of Christ, 
meaning to revise it for republication. Although borrowing the 
money to buy a pistol, he purchased an expensive one, thinking 
that it would look better on exhibition at the State Department, 96 
THE RESPONSIBILITY OP GUITEAU. 
Twice he went out to practise with it, firing twenty shots at a 
mark. He entered the church which Mr. Garfield usually at- 
tended a half hour before the end of the service, to see the place 
where he sat, and then went outside to see where he could fire 
at him through one of the windows. Once he awaited the re- 
turn of the President from the house of the Secretary of State, 
lurking in an alley at night, and he stated that he should have 
shot him if he had come out alone; but when he appeared in 
company, saying that he refrained because the evening was hot, 
and he did not feel like it. Once he failed to carry out his idea 
because Mrs. Garfield was on the President’s arm, and he said 
he should never have shot him in her company. On the morn- 
ing of the murder he appeared most calm, engaged a hack to 
convey him to the vicinity of the jail, in which he meant to seek 
protection against the popular fury, placed the revised copy of 
his book and newspaper clippings showing the excited state of 
mind of many politicians over the quarrel in the Republican 
party on a newsdealer’s shelf, shot Mr. Garfield, sent a note to 
General Sherman demanding the protection of the army, and 
was so cool when arrested that it was thought at first that he 
must have been the wrong man. He wrote an address to the 
American people, saying that he had murdered President Gar- 
field for the sake of restoring harmony to the Republican party, 
and salvation to the country. There can be no doubt, I think, 
that he honestly supposed that the anti-Garfield politicians would 
support him in his act; that he fully expected to be enrolled 
among the great patriots of the world ; that he should be ac- 
quitted of crime, and become a great man ; that he should visit 
Europe, and come back to this country lecturing, selling his mis- 
erable little book, and parading generally as the famous Guiteau, 
rich and happy. That he had legal malice in his heart in killing 
Mr. Garfield was too evident from the genuine way in which 
he said that he killed him, because he proved a traitor to the 
men who elected him. 
It can hardly be claimed that the act was purely the outcome 
of an insane mind, and that the insanity wholly caused it. I 
should rather place it in the same category with the deliberate 
murder of a hated insane asylum superintendent by a patient 
who hoped thereby to change the whole hospital management, 
secure freedom, and escape punishment. In that case the re- 
sponsibility might not be always easily measured. THE RESPONSIBILITY OP GUITEAU. 
97 
Whether Guiteau’s delusion was wholly an insane one or not, 
it must be conceded that his processes of reasoning are very 
like those of the insane, and totally different from those of the 
sane. His manner, appearance, and expressions, too, are very 
decidedly suggestive of the lower wards in an insane asylum. 
His riotous behavior in court is not wholly like that of an insane 
person, and yet not entirely unlike it, but with the element of 
self-asserting bullyism, that might be either a part of insanity or 
not, whether it be assumed or not in imitation of the action in 
court of the maniac who attempted to kill President Jackson. 
His heartless ingratitude manifested in the brutal treatment ot a 
brother-in-law, who has sacrificed his own interests to undertake 
the thankless task of his defence, and his beastly, open adultery, 
in order to drive his Avife into getting a divorce, are certainly 
suggestive that a great part of his conduct is due to depravity 
rather than insanity. It is evident to one Avatching the trial 
that Guiteau is either absorbed in the self-satisfied notoriety for 
which he has yearned all his life, or that in his insanity he entirely 
fails to appreciate the real gravity of his case. His Avitty remarks, 
impertinent jibes, ready rejoinders, quick perception of points, 
keen amusement, intense animosity, extraordinary memory, leAvd 
allusions in the presence of a mixed audience, irrepressible gab- 
bling, and his fearless, reckless behavior, generall}r, suggest to 
one person or another the hardened, desperate criminal, deter- 
mined to have all the fun and notoriety he can before dying, or 
the lunatic at least partially irresponsible. The latter view is 
upheld by the persistent Avay in which he has constantly injured 
his own case by accusing his brother of being a defaulter in open 
court; by calling his OAvn witnesses liars; by asking for money 
for his defence from those Avho gave to the fund for the widow 
whose husband he assassinated ; and by going off into all sorts of 
rambling advice to the government to suppress Mormonism, or 
to President Arthur to appoint or remove this or that officer, on 
the ground that he can properly direct the man whom he made 
President. A sane man, certainly, in the middle of a trial for 
his life, Avould hardly be entirely lost, as Avas Guiteau, to his real 
position in gleaming pleasure at recounting his life’s adventures 
on the witness-stand, and while reading about the Apostle Paul 
from his book “ The Truth.” 
Acknowledging that Guiteau is medically insane, even that he 98 
THE RESPONSIBILITY OF GUITEAU. 
has lost much of the power belonging to an originally bad brain, 
and that his delusion in regard to the result of the murder of 
President Garfield was an insane one, it must be conceded that 
he knows right from wrong, good from evil, in the abstract; that 
he had sufficient power of self-control not to murder; that he 
does not highly value a human life, which he considers of small 
importance as compared with the terrible slaughter of the late 
war; that he expected to escape punishment; that now he readily 
accepts the plea of legal insanity at the time of the crime, think- 
ing that he is sane at the present time; and that he is extremely 
anxious to avoid the just reward of murder, points which 
there is some reason to suppose, from his study of the law, that 
he may have fully considered before the assassination. Whether 
he fully believes his act to have been right or not, and does not 
know the difference between right and wrong in that particular 
deed, seems to me, like many other important facts in this case, 
impossible to determine from an untruthful man on trial for his 
life, and ready for any deceit to gain a little longer term of his 
wretched existence. His apparent happiness, want of concern, 
good sleeping, and great appetite may be explained on the 
ground of insanity, or by the supposition that he is a careless, 
reckless man, undergoing considerable mental strain. Guiteau’s 
full appreciation of the present political situation is certainly 
conclusive as to his responsibility, if his present mental state is 
the same that it was upon the day of the murder. 
In reply to questions, he said that Mr. Conkling probably has 
as much influence with the present administration as Mr. Blaine 
had with the former, that General Grant and Mr. Conkling are 
“ running ” the government now, and that the present state of 
the political parties in the country is a little better than it was 
last June. In ansvrer to the query whether the old quarrel 
will not break out again between Mr. Blaine and Mr. Conkling, 
he quickly replied, “We will not discuss that question.” The 
fact, therefore, that Mr. Blaine was not shot, and that Mr. Gar- 
field was shot, would argue either an insane act or malice towards 
the late President, with a hope of reward, secretly or openly, in 
money or in notoriety, or in both, from those who were so stoutly 
blaming Mr. Garfield’s conduct in appointing Mr. Blaine to the 
position of Secretary of State as wrell as in other nominations 
distasteful to them, and perhaps, to a certain extent, unsatisfao- THE RESPONSIBILITY OF GUITEAU. 
99 
Tory to the country at large. Whether Guiteau has organic 
disease of the brain in an early stage or not, at the present time, 
cannot be positively ascertained, as the prominent mental symp- 
toms of it in his case may be only the exaggeration of natural 
traits and not pathological, while the physical symptoms are not 
pronounced enougli to justify more than a strong suspicion of its 
existence. It may be said, however, that in such disease there 
is a striking Joss of responsibility, which, of course, would be 
difficult to detect in a person who had never been in his life one 
to be depended upon. Two cases of this disease in which there 
was a marked loss of self-control in an earlier stage than it is 
seen in insane asylums, or by asylum superintendents, and where 
the obliquity produced by disease was mistaken for depravity or 
criminality, may be quoted. The first was a gentleman of high 
character and good standing, with a respected and loved wife 
and family of children, who, away from home, married a pretty 
girl beneath his station. There had been for a while some un- 
steadiness of purpose, and loss of the accustomed power of con- 
centration of mind in his business. The crime was so thoroughly 
inconsistent with his character that he was finally placed in an 
insane asylum for observation before trial, where he was kept 
secluded at rest for a couple of months, and then declared per- 
fectly sane, simply because the asylum physicians were not 
familiar with the perversion of character and slight intellectual 
impairment so common in the early stages of the disease. The 
man was sentenced to fifteen years’ confinement in the State 
prison; but he showed unmistakable evidence of his disorder as 
soon as he arrived there and attempted to work. Later, he was 
sent to the insane asylum a complete mental and physical wreck, 
certain of dying in a few years at the natural termination of his 
malady, his family in the mean time having suffered the un- 
merited disgrace of his having been treated as a criminal. 
The second was a very brilliant young lawyer, elected mayor of 
his city two years in succession, where there was mild cerebral 
stimulation similar to that produced by coffee or wine, but con- 
stant, in the very early stage of the disease, the moral perversion 
coming later, and showing itself in little acts of frequent occur- 
rence, which soon made his many friends enemies. The first 
striking misdeed committed by him was to engage to speak in 
one city in a Republican campaign meeting, he being president 100 
THE RESPONSIBILITY OF GUITEAU. 
of the local Republican committee, and then to go to another city 
the same evening, breaking his first engagement, and addressing 
the opposition with fierce denunciation of his own party. The 
natural course of the disease followed, and he passed through 
mental decay to death in four years. Both of these persons were 
of pure life and fine character, so that the moral perversion, and 
entire change to what seemed like depravity, without external 
cause, were of themselves important symptoms of insanity. It 
would be' impossible to diagnosticate this disease in Guiteau’s 
case until the paralytic symptoms should exist, and they are 
often comparatively late in their appearance. But a bad man 
may become worse, even a criminal, by virtue of disease, when 
otherwise he might have remained simply a nuisance and a fraud. 
My own opinion is very decided that Guiteau is an insane man, 
that he would have been thought a proper subject for detention 
in an insane asylum a half dozen years ago, if he had been sent 
there, and that once committed, he would not have been dis- 
charged to entire freedom by the advice of the medical officers. 
His responsibility is not so easily determined. The elements of 
crime and insanity are so interwoven in his character that it 
seems to me impossible to say how far each was responsible 
for the murder. It is my opinion that without insanity the 
assassination would not have been attempted. With Guiteau’s 
amount of insanitj7’ alone, and none of the criminal motive, the 
crime would have been probably equally impossible. 
The trial of Guiteau has shown the desirability of greater 
exactness in the laws regarding responsibility for crime, but still 
more the unsatisfactory character of hypothetical questions, which 
usually admit of only one answer, and it also illustrates the diffi- 
culty of getting direct, impartial testimony from experts sum- 
moned to uphold either side of a case, rather than to assist the 
court. 
Chas. F. Folsom, M.D. 
Boston, Mass.