Was Guiteau Insane?
96 Art. VI.? :Author: W. A. F. Browne, LL.D., formerly Medical Commissioner in Lunacy, Scotland.
There is no intention of reproducing the somewhat sensational trial of Gruiteau here. There were in that melo-dramatie proceeding a number of novel, startling, and inexplicable episodes, calculated to interest and instruct our insular mind, but, except in so far as these incidents may cast a lurid light upon the conduct and character of the accused, they shall not be included in this inquiry. In the many crimes belonging to the regicidal category which have disgraced Europe during the current century; in the murder of the Emperor Alexander, in the machinations of the Nihilists, and in the abortive attempts of the political malcontents in Germany, there may be detected an intelligible though detestable incentive and object, but in the act of Gruiteau it is impossible to see any adequate cause, unless the assassination be viewed and estimated through the perpetrator’s own moral mirage.
Charles Gruiteau is described as the cadet of a family of Huguenot extraction, noted for the pertinacious tenacity with which the original principles which actuated their party were adhered to. This eulogium must, however, be received with great deductions, as in the last generations at least of these hereditary Calvinists, it appears that the father of the culprit, after vacillating between Presbyterianisrn and Wesleyanism, became ultimately, and died, a Shaker of the community of Oneida. Adding to this creed that he had attained immortality by his present union with the Saviour, and declaring on his death-bed that his fatal illness was unnecessary as a passage to Eternity, as he had already realised that state. Of the same religious body C. Gruiteau was for many years an adherent, although he ultimately apostatised and left the settlement where the sect had been located. C. Gruiteau appears to have been originally possessed of astute powers, but sadly destitute of prudence, sound judgment, and mental balance. He was endowed with an intensely nervous temperament, ever craving personal, and if possible, popular applause, forming exaggerated opinions of his own capacities, of the appreciation of these by his friends and the public, of his claims upon the influential members of the State, and of what he had achieved in order to assert and vindicate these claims and merits. There is good evidence that he was a man of pure life, and though adopting eccentric and unjustifiWAS GUITEAU INSANE? 97 able means to secure the objects of liis ambition, he did not descend to vicious or fraudulent courses. Obviously an ignorant, though pretentious aspirant, his plans were apparently the result of miscalculation or delusion, rather than of hypocritical assumption. His education cost $100, but must have been limited or imperfect, as he was declared incompetent to enter the University, and again entered the Society of Shakers, whose doctrines, as well as the Bible, had constituted a part of his studies while at school. His mental culture may have been in some degree advanced by his devotion to theological works, and his intimate relations and intimacy with institutions for selfimprovement. He afterwards prosecuted the study of law, and was subsequently admitted to the Bar in Chicago, where he practised for a considerable period, greatly improving his pecuniary resources, but condemned to the ? humbler walks of his profession. Even at this time, and when occupying what may be regarded as a favourable position, his friends perceived indications of erraticence, which may be accepted as the penumbra of alienation. He exhibited great susceptibility to the charms of females, and conceived, erroneously, that he had been addressed by some enamoured damsel worth a million dollars. His conceit prompted an effort as an orator, which was attended with signal failure. Influenced, it may be, by fanaticisms, he even before any palpable manifestation of insanity, cherished the expectation that the Lord would pay his debts, The very exercise of his ordinary avocations. brought him into contact with the preparations for the impending Presidential Election, and with the obscure though powerful politicians, who concocted and diffused the inflammable materials through the provincial population which create and ignite the ultimate conflagration. It may be understood how such stimulants as incessant conversation, canvassing, pleading the cause of a candidate,wrangling, arguing, in all probability quarrelling, must have stirred such an excitable nature as that of the accused. But there were other elements upon which such a contest would inevitably act. Gruiteau had not only to contend against his imperfect, irregular, and pernicious training, but against constitutional tendencies which can only be corrected or controlled by high and cultivated moral principle or sound or serene religious discipline. His congeners are asserted to have been proud of their genealogy, and undoubtedly inherited many of the sources of taint and unhealthy tendencies which a long line of ancestry entails.
It appears that one aunt of the prisoner died while labouring under senile dementia; (2) that her daughter, of course his cousin, became a victim to religious depression in her sixteenth year; (3) that her sister, another cousin, was deformed ; (4) that another aunt died insane; (5) that the son of the latter died a maniac; (6) that an uncle was weak-minded and destitute of self-control; (7) that the son of this irresolute uncle died insane; (8) that Gruiteau’s mother was in ill-health previous to his birth ; (9) that he had a deformed sister, and (10) tha this father was of unsound mind throughout life, in entertaining untenable religious views, and that he was, in a more marked degree, insane during the last six weeks of his life. With such strong and deep-seated predispositions, it would have been ground for astonishment had he escaped mental obliquity, morbid exaltation of sentiment, and intense systematic irritability ; nor can it be doubted that, endowed with such an original mental constitution, he yielded freely and fiercely to the violent passions and agitations of the strife; that he formed and cherished extravagant ideas of his own importance and exertions in guiding the storm; that he imagined intimate relations and even intercourse with the leaders of the movement, such as never could have existed; indeed, during his trial this tendency to delude himself into the belief that he was befriended and supported by distinguished friends, was revealed in his expectation that his defence was to be conducted by eminent counsel who, as might have been predicted, never appeared. His craving for notoriety was so extreme that it is believed he gloried in his trial as constituting him a celebrity, the observed of all observers, and the most prominent personage in the United States.
The aspect and deportment of Gruiteau during the long and exhausting continuance of his trial (72 days),, were those of an intensely nervous, impetuous, excitable, even irascible person. He was sometimes pensive, he was even timid and cowardly, after an attempt to shoot him when passing from the court to the prison ; he was bold, dictatorial, presumptuous, interrupting the court, his counsel; sometimes by pertinent, more frequently by impertinent, ejaculations or speeches. He was impatient of control, insolent to those who were aiding him, and even engaged in a scuffle with the warders by whom he was attended. He was even threatened with gagging by the court in order to repress his intolerable loquacity. If Gruiteau conceived that his deportment at the bar, sometimes frantic and furious, sometimes weak and silly, sometimes shrewd and pungent, was calculated to impress those who watched him for the purpose of drawing inferences with the notion that he was a lunatic, he must have been lamentably short-sighted and incapable of measuring either his own imitative powers, or the proneness or tendencies of the spectators to be duped or deceived. But if he entertained no such cunning design, and if he acted under his constitutional instincts and habitual manners, if, in fact, his protracted manifestations were the spontaneous and involuntary outcome of his life, character and present mental condition, he cannot be declared to be free from disease and moral’ perversion. If the hypothesis that he conceived himself the instrument of Divine vengeance, or inspired to pursue a particular course, be excluded from our investigation, his behaviour suggested great coldness, callousness, and brutality, as he never alluded to the death of his amiable and irreproachable victim, except as an event necessitated by the eminent danger of the State, and in order to reunite the party of the Stalwarts, to which Garfield and himself belonged ; as independent altogether of such principles as humanity, culpability, responsibility, and as incessantly claiming a direct agency from Deity, in order to circulate his book on ” The Truth,” and as further he displayed utter stolidity and indifference when the spine of the deceased, presented before the court for scientific purposes, was handed to him for examination, which he entered into with apparent coolness and interest. In all his interpolations, Guiteau reveals no anxiety as to his perilous situation, and voluntarily co-operates with his counsel in developing from various series of communications to officials, his real animus in the frightful tragedy for which he has been interdicted, conspicuously disclosing the fact that he was actuated, not by patriotism, not even by party motives, but by disappointment and revenge arising from his exclusion from the presence and correspondence of the rulers of” the Commonwealth, and from the ruin of his hopes, dictated obviously by overweening conceit, of an appointment to the consulate in Paris, or some equally valuable and coveted office. So far as can be gathered, the rejection of his suit, or rather the silence of his imaginary patrons, should have been traced to the Secretary, and not to the President of the Republic, towards the former of whom he was manifesting enmity even while applying for the coveted situation, and while affecting courtesy and friendship in familiar intercourse. Mr. Scoville, in his effort to bring the jury to view the offence of Guiteau as emanating from some modification of alienation, submitsto them as mental diseases under which homicide ought to be a symptom. (1) Impulsive insanity ; (2) monomania, or perversion on one subject or class of feelings; (3) uncontrollable passion or temper ; (4) tendency to kill or bloodthirst ; (5) a destructive inclination without adequate motives ; and delusions founded upon the personal or relative experience of the perpetrator. Greater or more apposite connection of the latter perversion might have been resorted to, and the subject of the pleading who hailed the designation of lunatic or insane, but repudiated that of fool, appears to have detected this omission, as in his spontaneous confession contained in the suppressed address, which was refused by the court, but circulated through the newspapers, he insists not solely upon the ground dismissed by his counsel that the death of Garfield was the consequence of surgical maltreatment, and not of the wound inflicted by his hand, but that he was the instrument or agent of Deity, and that he acted in the accomplishment of certain plans in the course of Providence, especially in the diffusion of the doctrines of his book on ” The Truth,” and, lastly, that he was influenced and guided throughout, and in the final catastrophe, by Divine inspiration. This theory assimilates his disease to what is called hereditary delusion, as was demonstrated in the case of the Oxfords ; for his pretended relation to God very closely resembles his father’s assumed union with Christ, and inherent perpetuity of existence. A most startling feature of the same document is presented in his adducing the existence of derived or hereditary taint, as an explanation of various phases of his conduct in life, and by implication of his long-harboured design against the life of Garfield. That such a resort is either unique, or exceedingly rare in the convictions, as well as in the extenuation or justification of lunatics for criminal acts, will be readily conceded.
But the exposition of the unhealth of Guiteau and of the character of many of his public doings does not depend upon the medicolegal justification by Scoville, nor upon the admissions of the party principally interested. We have the historical evidence that for a considerable time, and on various occasions, his family entertained suspicions as to his reason and responsibility. He delivered an absurd lecture on the Second Advent, he hired a room in order to address a popular assembly, broke down in the delivery, betrayed great petulance and irrationality, left his auditors in the lurch, and was, thereafter, voted by them, fifty in number, to be .crazy; and as a climax to such suspicions, armed with an axe he threatened the life of a sister, seduced into this fratricidal course by impecuniosit.y and physical disturbance. In place of analysing at length the multifarious testimonies collected, we have preferred to present in a condensed shape the essence of the evidence, or the contents of the voluminous depositions solely when they afford light, or even twilight in deciphering the superficial or profound obliquity of Guiteau’s faculties and feelings. But a very cursory glance at these data will convince the observer that the laics almost constantly and the physicians very frequently represent the accused as displaying qualities of mind which, although not essentially symptoms of insanity, must have been the result of an illregulated, vitiated, and unhealthy nature. After this alarming exhibition, Dr Rice, a physician at Merton, and having experience in similar cases, was called, in 1876, by the family to give an opinion as to his condition. He executed a certificate to the following effect?that Guiteau was insane, founding this opinion upon the following grounds, hereditary influence and exaltation of his whole emotional nature. “This exaltation was attended with explosions of emotional feeling, which appeared to arise from centric causes, not from eccentric causes “; that is, the witness could not discover any reason for it. He thought that he could detect more or less incoherence of thought, also an excessive egotism. He was the subject of intense egotism, also of an intense pseudo-religious feeling. He was always talking about Christ and Christianity, and religion without (in his judgment) having become impressed with any of the moral principles of Christianity. He thought there was also some weakening of the judgment, and, to that extent, some impairment of the intellectual faculties. He did not discover that there was very much disturbance of the intellectual or of the perceptional powers, and was unable to discover either illusion, hallucination, or delusion. To summarise the case, he came to the conclusion, first, that there was strong hereditary predisposition ; second, that there was more or less congenital moral defect, or moral imbecility. Ingrafted on this bad state of things came the effect of puberty, adding to the exaltation of his emotional nature. It affected mostly the emotions of pride and of vanity. On the supposition that his diagnosis was correct, he informed Guiteau’s friends that he believed him insane ; that he thought him dangerous, perhaps incurable, and that he ought to be secluded, that is, put in an asylum. He either corresponded or was about to correspond with a neighbouring physician to hold a consultation for the purpose of having him secluded; but that movement came to nothing, because Guiteau heard of it and left the place. He saw him in the course of an evening conversation, of which religion was not the subject, start up* suddenly and appeal to the company to come to the Lord, so incoherently that he could not tell what he was talking about, Guiteau borrowed some clothing and disappeared all at once.
But independently of what may be stigmatised as the theories of scientists, or experts, there are laid before us the opinions (1) of a clergyman, who observed in him peculiarities and wandering in public speaking; (2) of a gardener, who from his grotesque mistakes regarded him as crazy; (3) of a Miss Lockwood, who observed his abruptness and eccentricity, and requested him to leave her house; (4) of Damon, who listened to a lecture of which the principal topic was Boston and two-thirds of mankind going to perdition, when his manner was so perturbed that he was regarded as insane; (5) of Senator Logan, to whom Guiteau submitted his letter as having been the instrument which secured Garfield his elevation, upon whom he called in a summer dress, and wearing sandals when snow was on the ground, and to whom he made two successive demands for political assistance which were declined, as the Senator conceived him to be disqualified by his bearing and antecedents, a conclusion which justified him in warning his landlady to discourage Guiteau; (6) of Farmer Hubbard, who depicted him as a quick-tempered man, gesticulating wildly, vehemently, incoherently, or as sitting moodily in a comer and as unequivocally of unsound mind; (7) of Mrs. Scoville, Guiteau’s sister, who recollected that he did not speak until he was six years old, that he was a slow boy at the Academy, that he so far neglected his studies in order to plunge into the mysteries of Shakerism,that she exonerated his teachers from bestowing further care on his progress ; that in after life he became so violent in temper and conduct that her son forced his extradition from her home, that he menaced her with an axe, that his seclusion in an asylum was contemplated, or the establishing of his mental aberration before a legal court in Chicago, and that since she has always conceived him to be deranged, or silly, but as without malice or revenge ; (8) of Honourable Emery Storrs, who describes Guiteau as in a state of exaltation, as being of ill-balanced mind, ill-balanced judgment, want of average good common sense, as having been of no service to the political friends from whom lie expected patronage, expectations which he checkmated ; (9) of George T. Burrows, who discontinued his intercourse and conversation with Guiteau as he talked incessantly of the second coming of Christ and then became excited, and from various wild and irrational acts he considered him to be either a fool or crazy; (10) of Joscelyn, manager of the Oneida community, who knew him as the most egotistical of all men, as declaring himself a leader, as sincerely fanatical; (11) of Guiteau’s brother, who said that Panel was ignorant of law, dangerous although he was not afraid of him, variable in manner, insane, demonomaniac, but responsible before God; that he thought God responsible for his board; and added that they had always been at loggerheads ; (12) of Mrs. Parker, cousin by marriage, whose husband died insane, who thought the prisoner crazy, as he made love to her daughter aged 12-13 ; (13) of Jones, trustee of the Asylum in Jacksonville, who boarded in same house with Guiteau, thought him of unsound mind; (14) of President Arthur, who knew Guiteau merely through the ordinary salutation of the day, that he never spoke to him, that he never rendered any services to the party to which they belonged, and that he never promised him any recompense or reward for such imaginary assistance.
These are the facts and impressions deponed to by individuals belonging to various classes in society, many of them members of the same grade as that to which Gruiteau belonged, and all of them laics and consequently unacquainted with the phenomena of nervous disease, and ignorant of the technical nature of the signs which they had noticed. At a certain stage this section of witnesses is completed or interrupted, as it may be interpreted, by the introduction of the accused himself as a witness in the proceedings of the Court. This step may impart to us a shock or a surprise, as contrary to our views and mode of procedure, but the course, or a modification of it, has long been pursued in France. The obvious objections to such a crucial test are that the individual arraigned is an interested party, that if of sound mind the interrogatory may disturb equanimity, may impair memory, and may involve contradictions which impede or obscure the very object contemplated; and that, if insane, the responses cannot be received as reliable revelations of the existing state of intellect or sentiment; and that self-crimination, or the confession of absurdities and incongruities and falsehoods, may be volunteered or extracted in consequence of the very state of mind or of the surroundings which it is desirable to withdraw from the consideration of the person under examination. When the question at issue is simply intellectual lucidity these difficulties and objections exist in a minor degree; but when an individual is placed before an august tribunal in order to be tested collaterally as to sanity, but directly as to criminality and as to conduct which involved life or death, the onus is of an appalling character. Through this trying ordeal Gruiteau passed, and in a manner to demonstrate at once his original acuteness and the peculiarities conspicuous throughout his career. His autobiography was di-awn with considerable clearness and, as checked and criticised by the light of preceding evidence, appeared to be full and faithful. When authorised to go into the witness box, first on the pretext of authenticating certain of his letters, and ultimately in ordar to confess much that he had done, more that he had intended to do,his fancies, follies, failures; he, on taking the place appointed, requested those around to stand between him and the audience as if to protect him from the aim of an improvised executioner. He deponed that the world was in error as to the future advent of Christ, as he had descended from heaven already, and had done so ever since our faith was established, and that his lectures were based upon this principle. He affirmed that the Shakers regarded Noyes, their principal, as inspired, as God’s prophet upon earth, and that he ruled every member of the community body and soul, and that Oneida county was accepted as heaven upon earth. He described his own inspiration as dissociated from the dogmata of the Shakers, as by the operation of the will of Grod, as exemplified in the case of Paul, as an interjection into the brain influencing the will, the motives, and the life of the individual. He further confessed that he participated in his father’s belief, that all diseases emanated from Satan, that they could be cured by an effort of volition, and that medical interference was superfluous. He spoke much of his peripatetic course of lectures through the country, his want of success, his privations and the sufferings to which he was exposed, invariably comparing these to the fate of St. Paul. He expatiated very lovingly upon his connection with political parties and persons ; but must have held a very subordinate position, alike in the estimation of the wire-pullers, and in the working of the machine, standing evidently on the very edge of the whirlwind by which he was tossed and troubled ; for notwithstanding his intercourse with those who coincided in his partisanship and the circulation of a speech, which might have been delivered, he does not appear to have come actually into contact with those whose cause he had espoused, nor been allowed to experiment as to his powers of eloquence, except once, and for a few minutes in a convention of coloured voters. One conspicuous event during these convulsions was his announcing to the future President his espousal of a lady millionaire, and their united capabilities for representing the American people in the capital of Vienna. He sustained a repulse from the Secretary of State when personally pressing him for a situation, and could extract no reply from President Garfield upon the subject. When first instigated to kill the President, he obviously entertained some suspicions as to the origin of the impulse, and prayed repeatedly to Grod for enlightenment and guidance, but never had the slightest doubt that the inspiration under which he acted was divine and communicated to him for the good of his countrymen. Whenever this subject was suggested, however remotely, Gruiteau became excited, gesticulated, and was animated by a spirit differing from that which regulated the other details of his deposition. He asserted that in four distinct epochs of his life was he inspired; that he has been repeatedly the object of the special providence of the Almighty ; that he harboured the design of destroying the President for nearly a twelvemonth, ? testing the reality of his heaven-sent motive, but never divulging his intention or his preparations to anyone. He widely proclaimed that Garfield was his friend, that he had no animosity towards him, that he killed him as a patriotic deed, and felt happy and comfortable from the moment that the fata blow had been struck. He corroborated very minutely many of the circumstances narrated by previous witnesses, although occasionally he became flurried, and forgetful as to dates and as to the interpretation Avhich had been arrived at regarding many of his acts and opinions. In cross-examination, and under very severe and prolonged questioning, Guiteau adhered to the assertion that he was the agent of the Deity in the homicide, that he had no volition in the matter, that his natural feelings and affections were all repugnant to such an act; that for a long period he engaged in devotional scrutiny of his own thoughts and emotions in order to determine whether he was following his own purpose, or that of a higher and omnipotent influence; and only after long deliberation and self-examination did lie know and feel assured that the impulse was not his own but inspired.
Although sometimes contradicting or denying former affirmations, he repeated again and again that he was a man of destiny, predestined to follow out the course which he adopted, that the nomination, appointment, as well as the death of the President were all in accordance with the will and by the direct intervention of the Deity ; that his book ” The Truth ” was a second or collateral gospel, dictated by inspiration, and that although mankind were tempted by Satan, he was intensely confident that his convictions and impulses proceeded from God; that while humanly and before the law responsible, and although recoiling from the infliction of pain, even so far as to recoil from the immolation of his victim in the presence of his wife, he felt no compunction or remorse since the removal of the President; that if the citizens who fired at him were moved by a similar inspiration to his own, they were not culpable; that he visited and inspected the prison previous to the commission of his offence in order to ascertain if the amount of safety there secured would protect him from the vengeance of the mob, which he dreaded, although satisfied that he was conferring incalculable benefits upon his countrymen. Obtuseness of sentiment, utter rejection of a sense of religious duty, or the supposed triumph of a long-cherished scheme, which would stamp him as a patriot and politician, his bravery at one stage and cowardice at another, may to certain minds explain Guiteau’s conduct at the time of the homicide and subsequently; but to our apprehension his coolness and composure when his victim had fallen bleeding, and it might be expiring beside him, his sound sleep on the night of the tragedy, suggest the indifference, the torpidity, the hebetude, the support of an overmastering delusion, or some of those morbid affections of the nervous system which dull sensibility and sympathy and darken our perception of the claims of humanity and brotherly kindness.
Guiteau was habitually self-possessed, vindicated his proceedings, calmly embracing the various steps resorted to, preparatory to his final act, such as the purchase of the weapon, the borrowing the money by means of which the pistol was purchased, his practice in shooting, in order to test his calmness and precision of aim, in order to carry out the supreme will, his haunting the steps of Garfield, night and day, in order to seize upon the most suitable time and circumstances in which his fatal mission might be certainly accomplished ; he often displayed indications of exhaustion and languor and became irritable, passionately excited and vehement, whenever his removal of Grarfield, to adopt his own euphuism, was alluded to as murder, and deported himself in such a style as to suggest involuntary and morbid propensities, or, at all events, emotions which were susceptible of strong and sudden and precipitate elevation, and consequently of determining lines of conduct inconsistent, not merely with prudence and expediency, but with his own interests and natural habits of thought and action. As a natural sequence to what may be accepted as the spontaneous confessions of the accused, it may impart clearness to this narrative to introduce at this stage, the observations of the medical experts, called for the defence, who were, it is stated in attendance during Guiteau’s examination, although it would have been more conducive to the ends of justice as well to the purposes of science, that these witnesses should have personally, and separately, and previous to the trial, subjected Guiteau to rigid and protracted, though private medical and moral scrutiny, in place of arriving at conclusions, founded upon hypothetical propositions submitted to them in the Court. Dr Kiernan, a practising physician for eight years, is now managing editor of the ” Chicago Medical Keview,” and lecturer on mental diseases in the Medical College of that city. Has never been superintendent of an asylum, but had been connected with a department for the insane on Ward’s Island, and was practically the medical assistant during his connection with the establishment, as well as apothecary ; represented himself as an agnostic, as a believer in moral insanity, and in the propositions that five out of every 25 men were deranged, that there were a greater number of persons of unsound mind at liberty than in seclusion, and that those of active excitable habits, were in danger of becoming general paralytics. This expert assuming that there is in the blood of Guiteau a strong hereditary taint, that at the age of 35 years his mind was so much deranged that, according to Dr Rice, he was a fit subject to be sent to an asylum ; that, frequently after that date during the succeeding five years, he maniWAS GUITEAU INSANE? 107 fested such decided symptoms of insanity, without simulation, that many different persons conversing with him, and observing his conduct, believed him to be insane ; and further that in or about the month of June 1881, at or about the expiration of said term of five years, he became demented by the idea that he was inspired of God to remove by death the President of the United States; that he acted on what he believed to be such inspiration, and on what he believed to be in accordance with the Divine will in the preparation for, and in the accomplishment of such a purpose; thtft he committed the act of shooting the President under what he believed to be a divine command, which he was not at liberty to disobey, and which belief made out a conviction which controlled his conscience, and overpowered his will as to that act, so that he could not resist the mental pressure upon him ; and lastly, immediately after the shooting, he appeared calm and as if relieved by the performance of a great duty; and that there was no other adequate motive for the act than the conviction that he was executing the Divine will for the good of his country ; the witness conceives that, accepting these propositions as a true and legitimate exposition of the history and mental state of the accused, he would say that the prisoner was insane. Similar assumptions were submitted to all the experts subsequently examined, so that it will only be necessary to state the amount of their experience, or rather the opportunities for observing the various modifications of cerebral disease which they had possessed, and the conclusions at which they had arrived as to Guiteau’s condition, derived from their examination of his symptoms, or from the testimony of those most intimately acquainted with’his opinions and conduct. Dr Nichols, a most eminent psychologist, Bloomingdale Asylum for the Insane, was first connected with the New York State Lunatic Asylum at Utica, then with the Bloomingdale Asylum, then with the Government Hospital for the Insane for the District of Columbia; and, lastly, again with the Bloomingdale Asylum. Guided by the hypothetical statement, presented above, and from his personal examination of the prisoner, he would say that he was insane.
Dr Folson, of Boston, for the last nine years had given a large portion of his time to the study of mental diseases, was in the McLean Asylum for about a year and a half, has extended his observations to the Medical Schools of Berlin and Vienna, visiting Europe repeatedly, and has for the last three years been the Professor of Psychology in Harvard University. Accepting the contention of Guiteau’s counsel to be correct and trustworthy, he would pronounce that person to be unquestionably insane. Dr Godding, Government Hospital for the Insane, Washington, the coming Psychologist of the U. S., taking for granted that the propositions upon which the opinion of preceding medical witnesses were based were at once accurate and scientific, but, without entertaining any convictions as to the truth or falsity, was of opinion that the person described therein was unquestionably insane. Dr McBride, of Milwaukee Asylum, concurred in the view of the preceding witness.
Dr Channing has devoted his attention for eight years to the observation and care of mental disease in the Asylum for Insane Criminals at Auburn, N.Y., in the State Insane Hospital at Danvers, Mass.; and in an Asylum at Brookline, Mass. Kelying upon the -gravamena of the exculpatory document, he would declare the man to be insane.
Dr Fisher, who has been occupied with the care of lunatics for 20 years, both as medical assistant and superintendent of the Boston Asylum, guided by the propositions placed before him, although unwilling to rely on such restricted evidence, would regard Guiteau as of unsound mind.
Dr Spetzka has been a member of the profession for eight years, and engaged for six in the special investigation of nervous diseases. He studied in Vienna and America; bad been called repeatedly as an expert in the consideration of insanity ; had written articles upon the subject, and had obtained the international competition prize in 1878, for an essay on insanity. He examined Guiteau in jail, and believed him to be insane, and nothing in his collateral observationsas to his physical condition tended to modify that conviction. The particular phase or character of his alienation may be conveyed in the statement that he presents a marked tendency to delusive or insane opinions, and to the creation of morbid and fantastical projects. There is besides an unequivocal element of imbecility of judgment, and while there was no other evidence than the expression of his face for this, he had no doubt that he is a moral imbecile, or rather a moral monstrosity. The witness, while declining to express any judgment founded upon hypothetical grounds, entertains a belief that the prisoner had been in more or less of a morbid mental state throughout his life, and that he was probably insane at the time of the homicide.
On cross-examination, these opinions were not shaken, Dr. Spetzka firmly adhering to his detection of a morbid delusive tendency, and to his distinction between the capability of Guiteau as a lawyer, to recognise the effects of criminal acts, and his inability to perceive, and to be guided by the difference between right and wrong.
Dr Fordyce Barker, physician, New York, denied the ex-* istence of hereditary insanity, but admitted taint and tendency ; denied that delusions were perfectly pathognomic of insanity; denied the existence of moral insanity, as not known by psychologists; denied’that an impulse to kill, in obedience to God, could be accepted as a proof of insanity, unless in the case of an upright healthy man, who suddenly kills his child, and refers it to the will of God : denied that uncontrollable impulse per se is a form or symptom of insanity, and said that if an individual can at any time control himself, he has not lost the power of volition. He held the border line of insanity to be synonymous to ” crank ” eccentricities in dress, manners, &c., and that they may be the result of vanity. Moral perversion and wickedness may be the result of insanity. Insanity always accompanied by cerebral disease. Those bom with cerebral or skull malformation most prone to insanity.
Dr Noble, of the jail where Guiteau was confined, said that Guiteau had suffered from malaria; attributed homicide to inspiration, but referred actual death to doctors. Dr Noble has regarded him very attentively, and regards him as sane, bright, intelligent. Guiteau said had the President recovered, God must have countermanded his order, as in case of Abraham and Isaac.
Dr Allan McLean, Hamilton, New York, psychologist for more than nine years, believes Guiteau to be sane, but eccentric, able to know right from wrong, and to know the consequence of his act.
Dr Worcester, called for defence, now states that after a visit to Guiteau in prison, and after hearing a series of hypothetical propositions offered by court, he believed Guiteau to be sane when he killed Garfield. He for some time regarded him as of unsound mind, but further opportunities of observation had exposed his error. Admitted that a religious opinion might dominate the will, and amount to alienation.
Dr Talcott, psychologist for seven years, medical superintendent of the State Homoeopathic Hospital for the Insane at Middletown, lecturer on same subject, medical officer Hospital for Inebriates. He examined Guiteau in jail. From his manner at that time, and a review of the events of his life, he would infer that he was sane. He described three cases, one in which a patient was commanded by the Lord on every occasion; another who was inspired to build a house, and then to kill his wife for supposed infidelity; and a third, who was enjoined by the Almighty to destroy her children, and came to the asylum in order to avoid obedience ; but did not conceive that Guiteau was dominated by acquiescence in the voice or will of the Almighty.
Dr Stearns, medical superintendent, Hartford Asylum.
Has had more than 1,000 patients nnder his care. Has examined Guiteau four times in prison, but like many of the other experts, either pretended to be, or was received as the friend or partisan of the prisoner ; or, at all events, was so regarded by him. Apart from certain indications of abnormality in the state of the pupils, the tongue, the head, and slightly in articulation, Gruiteau was healthy. He was besides, shrewd, able to recall the events of his life, and claimed to have been influenced in his attack upon Garfield by Divine influence. He, Dr Stearns, however, adopting the hypothetical propositions of the prosecution, regarded him as sane, but acknowledged that the tendency to insanity was more than ordinarily strong in his progenitors. He said, moreover, that a lunatic might commit a crime which he perfectly knew was contrary to the laws of the land; that preparations might be made for ensuring success in the attempt, and that the offender might, in anticipation, adopt arrangements to ensure his escape and safety.
Dr Jamin-Strong, superintendent of the Asylum at Cleveland, Ohio, containing the average number of 625 patients, had treated, in all, over 2,000 insane persons. He examined the patient in prison, and watched him in court; he conceived him to be sane because he was sound in his perceptions, his sensations, his thoughts, his will; because he thought quickly and consecutively, recollected accurately; faculties entirely incompatible with insanity ; but admitted that if the hypothetical propositions presented by the defence were trustworthy, Gruiteau would be of unsound mind or a point towards unsoundness of mind. Dr Shew, superintendent Middleton, Conn., Hospital for Insane and Member of the Psychological Society. From his examination of Gruiteau he regarded him as sane, but confessed that egotism was a marked symptom in criminal madmen ; that he did not suspect him of feigning derangement in court, but that he was acting under the influence of his natural dispositions and manner ; and that a lunatic believing himself to be actuated by divine prompting or command would indicate a delusion but not an insane delusion.
Dr Evarts, superintendent of the ” Sanatorium,” a private hospital for the insane. He represented Guiteau as sane ; but did not accuse him of pretending insanity; related instances of persons believing themselves endowed with eternal life and that they possessed the power of raising the dead who were of sound mind ; finally, that Guiteau has been exaggerating his own defects, but displayed in so doing ” egotism, sharpness, smartness, vulgarity, ingratitude.” Dr MacDonald, superintendent of the New York City Asylum,’ has had 6,000 insane cases under his care, was a delegate at the International Medical Congress in London, and was Professor of Medical Jurisprudence in the University of New York, is reported to have given his evidence in a most clear and comprehensive manner. He intimated his familiarity with cases of imaginary inspiration, that these hallucinations were generally traceable to the external senses, or to some misinterpretation of the Scriptures ; that such morbid impressions completely overmastered all fear, foresight, and selfish considerations. He defined irresistible impulses as of sudden origin and execution, as, if resisted, no longer of the same class. He admitted hereditary predisposition ; but contended that if insane parents generally preceded insane children, the whole world would be mad. He did not recognise moral insanity as a disease, but as another name for wickedness. He admitted that a monomaniac might be insane at the moment when a given act was committed but perfectly sane the next. No maniac would restrain himself in order to avoid injury to another. He observed that during the interrogatory in prison Guiteau used the expression ” conception” as the originating instigation to his crime, but closed the allusion by stating that he had prayed to God, whose act it was, to avert the execution of his purpose, always accompanying this declaration with an emphatic and loud voice and gesticulation. He believes that Gruiteau has feigned what he supposes to be insanity and to the best of his ability in court.
Dr Barksdale, superintendent of the Asylum at Virginia, is impressed with the opinion that Guiteau is sane, that he has been acting insanity in court, because while calm and stolid in prison, he catches at every salient point in the proceedings now going on. Dr Collender, superintendent of the Tennessee Aslyum, ascertained Gruiteau to be in good bodily health, represents him to be of sane mind, and on the grounds that his replies were satisfactory, they were intelligent; they showed a power of concentrating his attention on questions and the subjects of questions ; they were entirely coherent and rational, and were couched in good language. Gruiteau assured Dr Collender that he slept soundly, both antecedently to and immediately after the accomplishment of the mission, which he referred to the conception, pressure, inspiration from above. Dr Kempster, Winnebago, a witness in support of the theory of Guiteau’s mental soundness, admitted that lunatics could often curb and control their unhealthy tendencies and designs, till at length the morbid influence controlled them.
Dr Gray, Superintendent of the State Lunatic Asylum of New York, studied insanity for 31 years, has had an aggregate of 12,000 lunatics under his care. He does not believe in moral insanity. In his examination, Guiteau asserted that the intention to kill the President flashed upon him, that the act was not his, that the responsibility rested on God; that he was legally, not medically insane. Dr Gray regarded the accused as of sound mind, but declined to answer categorically whether Guiteau was knowingly telling a falsehood in affirming his inspiration, Almighty pressure, &c.; but said such self-control, selfdirection, and self-guidance as he displayed was antagonistic to anything that he had ever seen in his personal experience with the insane. Moreover, the presence in him of judgment, reflection, self-command, in regard to his acts, also the fact that he controlled himself, as to the time in which he should do this act, supported this judgment. In cases of insanity there would be no preparation for personal safety. During the last ten years he had 300 cases of homicidal insanity under his care. Of these only three claimed inspiration. All of these were violent and of long duration.
Dr Bowker, of Kansas, on the part of the defence, t estified that Guiteau’s wife had confessed to him her unwillingness to apply for the divorce which was subsequently obtained, at all events until his mental state was proved to be healthy or unhealthy. Guiteau’s wife, now remarried, repudiates this confession as erroneously stated.
In manipulating the immense mass of American papers forwarded to us containing the description of this extraordinary investigation, the chief difficulty has consisted not so much in the expiscation of truth as in the elimination of the irrelevant from the relevant. It became necessary rigidly to exclude not merely extraneous topics, but much of what may be styled illustrative collateral gossip and tradition ; to disregard as much as possible the interruptions by the prisoner, although these were often coherent and illustrative of his mental defects, although more frequently wild and passionate and incongruous ebullitions of temper ; to ignore the part taken by individuals remotely connected with the trial; to shut our eyes to the unseemly, but perhaps merely affected, wrangling of the counsel, and at once to epitomise and abbreviate the depositions of many of the witnesses, and even of the experts, as running not merely into repetition or reiteration, which was perhaps unavoidable, but which repeatedly embraced the whole wild range of psychology and of psychical phases which had no connection or relation to the subject before the court. In our opinion a grand error ran through the proceedings, although less contaminating the defence; in divergence to isolated points, to particular forms and stages of alienation, to purely theoretical speculations which could not, without great difficulty and dexterity, be made to affect the opinions of the jury as to whether Gruiteau was a criminal or a lunatic. The safe and sound course would have been to embrace the whole life of the accused, and if necessary the history of his ancestors, and to have traced the different steps and stages of his motley career, up to the date of the grand and melancholy climax in which it closed, and to have analysed the factors of the various transactions in which he was engaged, and to have thus determined whether these were rational, consistent with the recognised laws of mental and moral obligations, and with the conduct and character of healthy, reliable and responsible men. In our estimation the disquisitions on irresistible impulse were uncalled for, seeing that, whatever the nature of the grand and final scenes of the sanguinary drama might be, the incentives or inspirations, or conceptions of which it was the consummation, had been passing through the consciousness of the perpetrator for a long period, had been discussed, if we may use the term, with his conscience or, as he would have asserted, with his Creator, and although part of the manifestations of a violent, versatile, and variable mind, were the result, elaborated from doubts, difficulties, and deliberation. In the same class may be comprehended the introduction of moral insanity, which, whether admitted or not by the psychologists of America, has been repeatedly pled and recognised in Courts of Law, and, which is less open to impugnment than that of many other forms of aberration, such as Mania Transitora, which has extorted sanction from these cavillers. If moral insanity be not disease or a class of disease, the Psychology of Dipsomania, Kleptomania, and a long series of other deviations from healthy motives, must be expunged from our nosologies and text-books, and the painful denunciations of ” wickedness ” applied to the perversities, the incompatibilities, the extravagance or oddities, the cruelties and crudities, of many pure and gentle and, in other respects, elevated characters. Had he been influenced by revenge or any cognate impulse, Blaine should have been his victim. Nor could Gruiteau be fairly included in such a category, for although not the perfectly immaculate pietist which he was painted, and although playing a most absurd and irregular part on the stage of life, he did not exhibit that deterioration and degradation which accompanies such a condition ; nor did his assault upon the President appear to be dictated, whatever its cause really was, by revenge or hatred, or general corruption, nor any of the elements which enter into the heart and influence the will of a moral maniac. Far be it from us to insinuate or even imagine that the diagnostic penetration of our American collaborateurs can have been affected by the fervour or fever which convulsed their fellow-countrymen on the foul parricide which called them together ; but can they dispassionately aver that the chronic inebriety of Charles Lamb was not, psychologically morbid, but baldly degrading drunkenness; or that the wise and virtuous senator of the college of justice, Lord M., and other noble lords who have adorned our house of peers in extracting books from the shelves of their bookseller, or gold or gems from the coffers of relatives, were guilty of vile and vulgar theft; or that Jonathan Martin in setting fire to York minster was not a theo-maniac, but a wretched incendiary ? The insurmountable obstacle which appals and repels these philosophers, is the apparent irreconcilability of co-ordinate and it may be contemporaneous operation of a morbid impulse and healthy and rational motives in the same mind. For is it not suspected that many minds endowed with robust and splendid qualities cherish some wild and baseless belief, are haunted by superstitious fears, or are the unresisting victims of delusion ? The confessionals of medical men, however, declare the fact, that the presence of signal and unequivocal eccentricity and hallucination is compatible with the exercise of sound judgment and brilliant fancy, with the faithful discharge of vast responsibilities, and with the external characteristics of perfect sanity. The calm, contemplative mathematician and satirist, Pascal, rested for years on the brink of an imaginary gulf; the adventurous warrior who hewed his way to the throne of Sweden was daunted from his stern purpose by an apparition in a red cloak; Fox, the founder of Quakerism, was inspired to utter maledictions upon the unbelievers around. Extreme cases are recorded where men have been accompanied by a skeleton step by step of their course; where a gory head has crossed the gaze of the impassioned orator; where one horrible thought, recurring periodically, has haunted its victim to despair and death ; but instances are constantly met with where individuals carry into ordinary intercourse, and active life, tendencies to destroy children, grotesque convictions that their frame is tenanted by unclean beasts, that they are infected by foul diseases, that their passions are acted on by the will of others, and extravagant fancies that the future is opened up to them, that they enjoy communion with unseen beings, that they see and hear and deal with objects hidden from common observation. In such circumstances the mind either detects the true nature of the impression, knows that it is diseased, refuses credence to the morbid suggestion, and struggles with and subdues the tendency; or, attributing these to errors of sense or external circumstances, it disregards their influence ; or, separating them from its ordinary operations, it is partially affected, but acts independently of their presence ; or, receiving them as realities, there remains the prudence to conceal, although there is wanting the wisdom to resist. It is somewhat difficult to comprehend the progress of Dr Gray’s mental development from belief to scepticism in moral insanity, and while that gentleman’s experience must be treated with profound respect, it is impossible to admit that he has studied, fully and faithfully, cases where the contradictions of vice and virtue, parity and pollution, truth and mendacity stand or struggle in antagonism in the same mind. What is there in our knowledge of the laws of the Nervous System which could exempt the sentiments and emotions from those physical or psychical influences which constitute disease, and which assail and destroy the sovereign power of judgment, and that inlet, that window of the soul, consciousness ?
By a most appalling Nemesis Dr Gray, who, associated with Ray, Kirkbride, Pliny Earle, has stood foremost in the ranks of American psychologists, has been formidably, if not fatally, wounded by an insane murderer, apparently actuated by some impressions connected with the trial of Guiteau. The following extract from the ” Albany Times ” of March 17, is the chief information which has reached us upon this painful subject:
” ATTEMPTED ASSASSINATION.
“Dr John P. Gray, of Utica, Siiot at by a Ckank. ” The man gives himself wp at the jail and boasts of his deed?four revolvers, a dirk knife, over 200 cartridges, and acid in his possession.
” [JJtica Heraldy March 17.] ” Utica was greatly excited about 7 p.m. yesterday by the rumour that spread like wildfire, that Dr John P. Gray, superintendent of the state lunatic asylum in this city, had just been assassinated.
” The facts in brief are as follows : About 6.50 p.m., while sitting in his private office at the Asylum with Rev. Dr Gibson, the chaplain, Dr G. A. Blumer, assistant physician, and his son John P. Gray, Jr., Dr Gray was shot through both cheeks by Henry Remshaw (then unknown), a shoemaker, bath manipulator, and veteran soldier, aged 44 years. The ball entered at the edge of Dr Gray’s whiskers, glanced over the bone under the eye, passed out through the opposite cheek and into the window casing, and then dropped on the floor. Dr Gray exclaimed, ‘ My God, I’m shot!’ The assassin ran out through the hall immediately after the shooting. John Gray and Dr. Blumer followed him to the foot of the main stone steps in front of the asylum, when the fellow turned and fired at them, and again at John’s dog, Dr Gibson was blinded by the flash of the revolver and smoke, and thought that something had exploded. Dr Gray bled profusely, but was able to walk to his room in a few moments and bathe his wound. No bones are injured, and he suffered no shock. It is probable that nothing serious will result from the wound. Eemshaw was followed by coachman James Mahar two blocks to Faass Avenue, when he turned and fired at him, and then disappeared in the intense darkness. Later developments show that he went to his home, No. 38 Noyes Street, told Mrs. Charles L. Yearhling, who occupies the lower part of the house, that he had killed Dr Gray at last, danced about, showed her four revolvers, a dirk, and piles of cartridges, and said he would give himself up. He went to the Mohawk Street jail, gave himself up to Mrs. Appleton, and when Jailer Appleton came in, gave up his arsenal, consisting of two large navy revolvers, loaded; one four-barrel repeater, loaded ; one heavy calibre derringer, loaded ; one heavy Spanish dirk knife ; twenty-one packages of 44-calibre cartridges, six in a package; two cases of large cartridges, and one bottle acetic acid and opium, and then went to bed.
“Jailer Appleton telephoned Assistant-Chief McElwaine that Eemshaw had given himself up and was locked in a cell. An officer was sent to the jail, and he returned to the stationhouse with Eemshaw at 9.30 p.m. Eemshaw declared that he was an ambassador sent from heaven by the Lord, John A. Dix, Guiteau, and Captain Jones, October 17, 1880, to kill Dr. Gray as a friend of the insane, and that he was only permitted to tell the secrets of heaven to Conkling, Blaine, and Schurz. He was locked in one of the lower cells, and an officer was detained to see that he did no harm to himself through the night. It is variously conjectured that he is a crank, a fraud, and a blackmailer. lie has never been in an asylum except as employed by Dr Gray two or three times to teach the children at the asylum how to swim. Dr Gray’s only other knowledge of the man was gained in the Bagg’s Hotel Turkish bath rooms, where Eemshaw was employed as a manipulator. He claimed that he had caught lumbago while attending Dr Gray in the baths, and wanted the doctor to pay him #20, as he had been poisoned for life.
” Eemshaw had lately made threats that he would shoot Dr Gray to several persons, but all thought him harmless, and no attention was paid to him. Wednesday he told his old employer, William M. Owens, that he intended to kill Dr Gray, and Anthony Sickenberger heard him make threats of the same kind.
” About 5 r.M. yesterday a man answering Remshaw’s description was seen moving about the asylum grounds. ” Dr Gray has been in Washington on duty in the Guiteau case about two weeks, advising with District Attorney Corkhill. During his absence, frequent calls for him have been made over the telephone, and when inquiry was made as to who wanted him and what was desired, the regular answer was, ” Never mind if he is not at home.” It is believed that Remshaw learned in some way that Dr Gray was expected on the 5.40 p.m. train from New York yesterday, for he was seen at the depot. After arrest he informed a reporter that he was at the depot intending to shoot the doctor, but refrained from doing so then on account of the crowd, fearing he would kill someone else. ” John .Bender, Jr., his nephew, says that Remshaw was sick about two years ago, he thinks from over-heating and his exertions sustained in the baths. He claimed that Dr Gray had made him crazy, and threatened to sue him for $25,000. He was married to a woman named Wasmer, but lie claimed that she was not neat enough for his house, and only lived with her two days.
” When last heard from at midnight, Dr Gray was very comfortable, and no serious consequences were anticipated from the wounds.”
Now to continue our main narrative:? The objection which has been urged, may, in like manner, be directed against the consideration bestowed upon and the speculation ingrafted upon the inspiration claimed by Guiteau. The doubt adventured as to his crediting his own professions cannot fairly be persisted in when the etiology of this assumed delusion is investigated, and when all the circumstances connected with, if not contributing to, its climax or evolution into a murderous assault are taken into consideration. ” The pressure,” whether moral, mechanical, or supernatural, which is pleaded by Guiteau, as constraining him to a course inconsistent with his foregoing life, , was not the sudden outcome of passion or disappointment or despair in his own fortunes; nor was it accompanied or accelerated or precipitated by emotional excitement or disturbance, nor by detectable intellectual confusion or obscurity of ideas. The delusion as to inspiration may legitimately be traced back to paternal instruction and training, and to the contamination of Oneida principles and practice, where a creed embodying wild fancies as to immortality and personal omnipotence were conjoined with a sanctimonious depravity which designedly, or recklessly, sanctioned vice in certain of its most loathsome forms. In dealing with Guiteau’s pretensions, it must be clearly kept in mind that he had been taught the present and palpable interference of Deity with the will and conduct of men, that He had endowed them with supremacy over death and the grave, with the power of triumphing over disease; and should this be steadily applied as a test to the prisoner’s subsequent opinions and to the ultimate growth and maturity of his errors, the reality of his selfdeception may be readily admitted. Even his habitual introspection, his religious dreams and imaginations, and his habit of referring what were obviously the suggestions of his own mind to an omniscient author in early youth, Noyes, the superintendent of the Shaker republic, and in later years to a purer though still deceptious influence, must have tended to the production of a similar effect. Whether the partially asymmetrical skull, the inequality of the pupils, the tremor of the tongue, were congenital in Guiteau or acquired, or could have any influence upon health in maturity, it is not necessary to determine. But there are phenomena, connected with infantile or early life, which do bear intimately upon the capacity to resist morbid processes of thought and sentiment, or which may directly ingraft glaring delusions upon consciousness. Guiteau was long in acquiring articulate language, he was a dullard, slow and stupid; that education, imparted in school, which contributes to invigorate and regulate judgment, seems to have been extremely limited. He became the pupil of a father deeply impressed with religious extravagance and perversion, and engaged in a positive propagandism of supernatural romances. The boy became a willing and apt disciple and for years imbibed, and long cherished with reverence, fancies which in him assumed the rank of convictions, which were calculated to mislead, alike his estimate of what was subjective and what was objective in the ideas or feelings which passed before his mind. The inevitable consequences of the doctrines which he long accepted as sacred and imperative, were to confuse his appreciation and estimate of the real and revealed relations between Deity and the will and duties of man, and to imbue him with a belief that he was an object of divine interposition, an exponent of divine purposes, and especially designed to carry out a great or national revolution. It is not, however, in diseased, or deluded intellects nor in exalted or inflamed emotions that wild and dangerous theories of inspiration have exercised power. Although many circumstances combine to demonstrate that the motive, the imaginary inspiration which led to the assassination of Garfield was morbid in its nature, it should not be forgotten that a vile and vicious inclination, long harboured and dwelt on, may have over-turned the controlling sway of caution and conscience and the sense of responsibility, and have reduced the perpetrator to a state of delirium or dementia, although the incentive was culpable and open to all condemnation. But it is difficult to comprehend what the object of Gruiteau could be in executing vengeance upon one whom he represented as his friend, to whom he had spoken only a few sentences, and whose destruction could not wipe away an offence which had never been given, which was consummated in public with perfect composure and intrepidity by a cowardly attack which would inevitably involve condign punishment and universal execration, and which could not even vindicate the wrongs of a party, as the death of Blaine might have appeared to do. It is worthy of comment, that at this grand conjuncture, when the fate and peace of America was declared by a volunteer conservator to depend upon his proceedings, that, if we can credit his revelations, he had debated the character and all the bearings of the meditated murder, and the real origin and relation of the transaction to himself before the bar of his Creator, and again and again subjected his ” conception ” to the only analysis of which he was competent, he was, though restless and uneasy, in perfect health, eating, drinking, and sleeping as at other times when undisturbed by such a momentous crisis, and that he deliberately engaged in preparations for the terrible catastrophe, a proceeding which, although denied by Dr Gray to be possible or probable, in the case of a lunatic, was, according to our knowledge, most judiciously admitted by Dr Stearns to be compatible with chronic mania or imbecility. There is this additional element in the influence of the pretended inspiration, that it was not confined to the murder of Garfield, but that it embraced a multiplicity of mental states and resolutions. The inoculation of his parents’ credulity, or rather the trail of the Oneida corruption, appears to have infected, and to a great degree vitiated, his whole life, and the notion of direct heavenly guidance is detectable in even ordinary transactions. He writes in reference to the Shaker community that he ” is driven by God.” He is buoyed up by the expectation of supernatural aid to meditate or undertake absurd or impracticable schemes and speculations, disproportioned alike to his abilities and his resources; his vision of the theocratic enterprise is not less prompted by this conception than his ludicrous expectation that the Almighty would pay his debts, in the contraction of which he manifests a suspicious facility and frequency. The extreme vanity which is attributed to him, which is even commented upon by his sceptical wife, the ill-founded ambition to expound the doctrines of Scripture in public, which led to unmitigated disgrace; his presumptuous interference with, and unfounded pretensions concerning, the party he espoused, and his behaviour in court when his life hung in the balance?con120 WAS GU1TEAU INSANE? duct winch, although it enabled him to display both extreme cleverness and extreme folly, evidently communicated to him the most intense delight as constituting him the observed of all observers, the most prominent and notorious personage in the United States, for the season more interesting than the President himself?all palpably flowed from the error that he was acting under supreme superintendence and intelligence, and was part and parcel of his doctrine of inspiration. Discrepancy is supposed to have been detected by the defence in the evidence of the experts, on the side of the prosecution, as to the real character of his behaviour. But whether his manner, addresses, tone, look, were feigned or not, we would contend that dissimulation at such a moment, and in so awful a crisis, amounted nearly to intellectual perversion, and that a murderer, who could so simulate, and so successfully simulate, when arraigned before his country, must have been either mad, or endowed with capacities hitherto undefined. His mistake as to this situation is akin to the absence of all remorse or sorrow for the deed which he was impelled by powers, which he could not resist, to perform, inasmuch as repentance might have been anticipated, from a healthy though sanguinary disposition, which Guiteau’s certainly was not. It should be further remarked that his cogitation, and uncertainty, as to the origin of the impetus which was pressing him forward, is not to be stigmatised as the doubt and dread of a pusillanimous but revengeful heart, bent upon retaliation for an offence; as such self-debate is in complete accordance with the moral difficulties and confusion which have been traced in many lunatics before the commission of crimes, and even of simple acts, which were interpreted as culpable or as possibly meritorious, and dictated, by the voice of God speaking through conscience, or fear, or faith.
We have intentionally kept aloof from all criticism, even recapitulation, of the speeches of Counsel, as these were naturally and necessarily dictated by a partisan’s spirit, by a dexterous endeavour to represent events or symptoms in that particular light which harmonised with the object of the address ; secondly, as they merely were commentaries on commentaries, glosses, or colourings of the depositions of witnesses ; and thirdly, as they were framed with the purpose of directing the minds of the jury to a judicial, and not to a medical interpretation of the case under trial. But we propose to include the closing observations in the charge of Judge Cox, when placing before the jury the grounds upon which the conduct of the accused might be regarded as indicative of cerebral disease.
Guiteau is described as ” a youth born, as it were, under malign influence; the child of a diseased mother, and of a father subject to insane delusions, reared in retirement, and imbued with fanatical religious views; subsequently, his mind filled with fanatical theories, launched on the world, with no guidance save his own impulses, evincing an incapacity for any continuous employment, changing from one pursuit to another, now a lawyer, now a religionist, and now a politician, unsuccessful in all; full of wild impracticable schemes, for which he had neither resources nor ability; subject to delusions, his mind incoherent and incompetent of reasoning coherently on any subject; with a mind so weak, and a temper so impressionable, that he became deranged, and was, therefore, impelled to the commission of a crime, the seriousness of which he could not understand.” We are disposed to accept these passages as a clear and fair, but insufficiently comprehensive, exposition of the causes which led Gruiteau to commit the awful regicide with which he is charged, and to adopt them as the principal grounds which justify us in venturing to answer the question which serves as a title to this paper, by pronouncing Guiteau of unsound mind.
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