I shot him. The doctors and Alexander Graham Bell killed him.

September 12, 2005 4:31 PM

"I have just shot the President. I shot him several times as I wished him to go as easily as possible. His death was a political necessity." Handwritten note from Charles Guiteau to William T. Sherman after Guiteau shot President James Garfield. And this note:

To the American People: I conceived the idea of removing the President four weeks ago. Not a soul knew of my purpose. I conceived the idea myself and kept it to myself. I read the newspapers carefully for and against the Administration, and gradually the conviction settled on me that the President's removal was a political necessity, because he proved a traitor to the men that made him, and thereby imperilled the life of the Republic...This is not murder. It is a political necessity...

From Georgetown University's Charles Guiteau Collection. [more inside]
posted by kirkaracha (46 comments total)

Guiteau shot Garfield on July 2, 1881, and Garfield died on September 19, 1881, of blood poisoning and bronchial pneumonia. There was a medical challenge:

The problem was that a bullet was lodged inside his chest. The two methods of treatment at the time were: (1) If the bullet had penetrated the liver (or other organs) it would mean certain death without surgery to remove it. (2) If the bullet hadn't penetrated an organ was wasn't lodged tightly against an organ at the present time, the chances of recovery were much better if they delayed the surgery until the president's condition stabilized. Therefore, finding the exact location of the bullet was very critical in the president's recovery. X-rays had not been invented yet so the only way to determine the exact location of the bullet was to do a manual probe with instruments. If they were to make continued probes to locate the bullet, it increased the risk of infection.

As part of the treatment Alexander Graham Bell and Simon Newcomb invented what may have been the first metal detector to try to find the bullet. The metal detector worked in tests, but failed on Garfield because he was lying a coil spring mattress, and the metal in the mattress threw the detector off (the coil spring mattress had just been invented and was stil unusual). The doctors' poking around for the bullet probably killed Garfield.

Despite his insane behavior during his trial and his probably-correct claim that the doctors caused Garfield's death, Guiteau was found guilty on January 23, 1882, and was hanged on June 30, 1882.
posted by kirkaracha at 4:31 PM on September 12, 2005

Laserscoped Uzis' and black helicopters in three... two... one...
posted by CynicalKnight at 4:34 PM on September 12, 2005

No. I don't think assasination is a valid political option no matter how much you dislike the current administration.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 4:35 PM on September 12, 2005

why not ?
posted by mishaco at 4:39 PM on September 12, 2005

Which country are we talking about? It seems to be considered a valid option for some countries.
posted by spock at 4:41 PM on September 12, 2005

Instead, Kill my Landlord
posted by CynicalKnight at 4:42 PM on September 12, 2005

Brilliant!
posted by caddis at 4:50 PM on September 12, 2005

BOB
Well, there's a dignity in royalty. A majesty which precludes the likelihood ofassassination. Now if your were to point a pistol at a king or a queen you hands would shake as though palsied.

BARBER
Well, I wouldn't point no pistol at nobody, sir.

BOB
Well, that's a wise policy. A wise policy. But if you did, I can assure you that if you did the sight of royalty would cause you to dismiss all thoughts of bloodshed and you would stand - how shall I put it? - in awe. Now a president? I mean, why not shoot a president?
posted by gramschmidt at 4:51 PM on September 12, 2005

I Shot the President?
But I Did Not Shoot the VP?

Seems a pretty ripe parody to mine.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 4:52 PM on September 12, 2005

...if you don't mind an evaluatory visit from the SS.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 4:53 PM on September 12, 2005

gramschmidt writes "I mean, why not shoot a president?"

You can only get away with that if you're a fundamentalist preacher with his own TV network, and then only w/ regards to foreign Presidents.
posted by clevershark at 4:54 PM on September 12, 2005

See also: Sondheim's Assassins
posted by mayfly wake at 4:55 PM on September 12, 2005

So, this shooting of presidents has a precedent?
posted by fenriq at 5:03 PM on September 12, 2005

No, actually, I meant to point out that a song called "Charles Giteau" by Kelly Harrell appears on Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music. There's a clip at that first linked page, but a full version might be here for a while.
posted by gramschmidt at 5:04 PM on September 12, 2005

re: assassination

In June, about 100 people gathered at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative Washington think tank, to hear a lecture by John Yoo on "fighting the new terrorism." Mr. Yoo recommended an unusual idea: assassinating more suspected terrorists.

A law professor at the University of California at Berkeley, he said his proposal would require "a change in the way we think about the executive order banning assassination, which has been with us since the 1970s." Such a change is needed, he said, because it is wartime: "A nation at war may use force against members of the enemy at any time, regardless of their proximity to hostilities or their activity at the time of attack."

Mr. Yoo, 38 years old, is no ordinary ivory-tower theorist. During a two-year stint at the Justice Department from 2001 through 2003, he wrote some of the most controversial internal legal opinions justifying the Bush administration's aggressive approach to detaining and interrogating suspected terrorists.

Some of those memos have become public, but not all of them. Asked after his AEI talk whether there is a classified Justice Department opinion justifying assassinations, Mr. Yoo hinted that he'd written one himself. "You would think they -- the administration -- would have had an opinion about it, given all the other opinions, wouldn't you?" he said, adding, "And you know who would have done the work."

A spokesman for the Justice Department declined to comment...

posted by kliuless at 5:10 PM on September 12, 2005

Shooting Bush would make people forget his failures, and vote in someone worse.
posted by Pretty_Generic at 5:15 PM on September 12, 2005

I've heard another presumably earlier because scratchier verison of the ballad than that of Mr Harrell. Shades of my adolescence, can't place it now. More lively than Harrell's. Haven't thought about it for years. More here if you're interested.

Good post, thank you.
posted by IndigoJones at 5:20 PM on September 12, 2005

Sorry, version, not cel phone
posted by IndigoJones at 5:21 PM on September 12, 2005

Shooting Bush would get us Cheney.
posted by leapingsheep at 5:24 PM on September 12, 2005

Shooting Bush would make people forget his failures, and vote in someone worse.

Yeah, aside from the various moral arguments that everybody save Pat Robertson has to abide by, making martyrs is a baaaad idea. Shoot Bush and I give it a year before we end up with a de facto theocracy.
posted by Dormant Gorilla at 5:27 PM on September 12, 2005

because he proved a traitor to the men that made him, and thereby imperilled the life of the Republic

GW seems faithful to his backers, in my opinion, it's that group of people that are traitors to the mainstream American self interest.
posted by nervousfritz at 5:28 PM on September 12, 2005

Charles Guiteau was an insane murderer. I propose that we don't look to his words as inspiration for facing any current political crisis.

Instead of wasting our energy trying to get rid of Bush via impeachment or worse (which would, ultimately, leave us with Cheney as our president), those of us who don't like the way the country is running need to do everything we can to make sure that mid-term elections go very well for the opposition party - once we identify it.
posted by Joey Michaels at 5:33 PM on September 12, 2005

I propose that we don't look to his words as inspiration

I 2nd that
posted by nervousfritz at 5:45 PM on September 12, 2005

Well, most US states do kill people for doing bad things. This guy wasn't too far removed from that.
posted by Hildegarde at 6:14 PM on September 12, 2005

I think assassinating Karl Rove makes much more sense myself. Don't shoot the sock puppet, shoot the hand?

Offhand, a nice honest confession of guilt like that is pretty refreshing. I wonder what the Kennedy assassins would have written?
posted by anthill at 6:14 PM on September 12, 2005

Ahem. Where in the FPP does it say anything about killing Bush?
posted by fungible at 7:02 PM on September 12, 2005

Ahem. Where in the FPP does it say anything about killing Bush?
posted by fungible at 10:02 PM EST on September 12 [!]

Right-wing persecution fantasy.
posted by Rothko at 7:07 PM on September 12, 2005

If bush was assassinated, it would be a huge boost for his 'cause'. It would instantly erase all the crap he's pulled in the mind of the public. He would be a hero, like JFK (who was supposedly not doing to well in the mind of the public at the time he was assassinated).

If bush was assassinated bush = hero would be burned into the history books. Can you imagine how much that would suck? bleh.

Discussing presidential assassination in the US is kind of like discussing politics in China. Speech restrictions aren’t really a big deal to most people really.
posted by delmoi at 7:10 PM on September 12, 2005

Sarah Vowell's Assassination Vacation [Amazon link] lays out just what a pathetic, crazy, self-obsessed loser Guiteau was:

"It is surprising that Guiteau would go down in history as a 'disappointed office seeker,' because the adjective 'disappointed' implies the guy was capable of registering disappointment. Even though he was, at the time of the assassination, a divorce, a college dropout, a failed lawyer, preacher, and writer. Even though, during his youthful residence at the sexed-up Oneida Community he was the one guy who could not get laid."
posted by PlusDistance at 7:11 PM on September 12, 2005

I don't think anyone should kill Bush.

Scaife, however...
posted by insomnia_lj at 7:17 PM on September 12, 2005

I don't believe that Bush is really an individual with agency, he's kind of a node in a nasty old boys network, and it's the network that has to be disassembled, through peaceful and rhetorical means, and replaced with something better than old school democratic politics and corruption.

And a pony. I want a pony.
posted by mecran01 at 7:33 PM on September 12, 2005

Bush needs to just be a miserable failure...
Now Pat Robertson on the other hand.....
posted by stevejensen at 7:33 PM on September 12, 2005

gramschmidt - I just bought that movie. :)
posted by dreamsign at 7:42 PM on September 12, 2005

at first blush, i thought someone shot Bush and i was happy, but then as i read past the first few words, my feeling of joy diminished when i realized what the post was really about. oh well...
posted by TrinityB5 at 8:32 PM on September 12, 2005

I was hoping that I could find the text of the poem that Guiteau wrote and recited for the occasion of his execution, but all I can find is Sondheim's adaptation of it. At least they start the same:

I am going to the Lordy,
I am so glad!

It's in the aforementioned Assassination Vacation, but I don't have that handy.
posted by infidelpants at 8:55 PM on September 12, 2005

Wow, I'm disappointed in how this turned out.
posted by kirkaracha at 9:22 PM on September 12, 2005

why?
posted by caddis at 9:34 PM on September 12, 2005

That guy was no Leon Czolgosz.
posted by mookieproof at 10:07 PM on September 12, 2005

Ahem. Where in the FPP does it say anything about killing Bush?

Nowhere. Duh.
posted by Satapher at 12:27 AM on September 13, 2005

through peaceful and rhetorical means

good luck. history is a rosetta stone.
posted by Satapher at 12:29 AM on September 13, 2005

Garfield's original wound was 3.5 inches long, and ended with the bullet lodged in a harmless part of the abdomen. The wound was probed by the fingers of numerous physicians during the rest of Garfield's life so that, by the time of his death, the wound track was 20 inches long and oozing pus.

posted by moonbiter at 2:18 AM on September 13, 2005

history is 20 inches long and oozizng pus.

(let me have coffee and I will regret this nonsense)
posted by kingfisher, his musclebound cat at 4:33 AM on September 13, 2005

why?
Short version: what fungible said.
posted by kirkaracha at 6:29 AM on September 13, 2005

Oh, I thought it was brilliant satire. It is still quite an interesting post though.
posted by caddis at 6:54 AM on September 13, 2005

I propose that we don't look to his words as inspiration

easily done. I can't read his handwriting.
posted by surplus at 12:21 PM on September 13, 2005

by the time of his death, the wound track was 20 inches long and oozing pus.

20 inches?! Good god man, that's a giant wound. Yeah..uh...he died from the bullet, all right.

Did his doctors have it out for him?
posted by graventy at 1:08 PM on September 13, 2005