Description:

Guiteau Charles

Original manuscript draft page, 6.25” x 7.75”. Marginal tears and losses, light toning and soiling, glue remnants. Manuscript reads: [Brooklyn?] newspaper recently published a column + and a half of interview a lengthy interview with my brother John Watson W. Guiteau of Boston and I herewith extract from it. The interview is headed “Guiteau,” + is about me.” Guiteau has pasted a cutout of the newspaper article to which he refers onto this page.


Also included is a lengthy, yet incomplete letter from one of Guiteau's admirers, Clara Augusta Davis, of West Hoboken, New Jersey, dated January 11, 1882. While Davis does not excuse Guiteau's murder of the President, throughout her letters she expresses her sincere belief that he truly believed that he was doing God's work and was insane.


Davis even speaks of a personal visit to Guiteau in confinement, writing: "I had hoped to see you … but Pa, who, dear soul, is the most indulgent of parents, felt constrained to refuse my petition to visit you at the jail.” Guiteau has crossed out “West Hoboken” and has written in “New York”, adding “No 2.” at the top of the page.


Following James A. Garfield's death on September 19, 1881, Charles Guiteau, who had already been imprisoned and charged with attempted murder, was now charged with murder and went on trial on November 14, 1881. The trial concluded on January 30, 1882 and on February 4, the court sentenced him to hang on June 30. While awaiting his execution, Guiteau composed a sequel to his 1879 religious tract, The Truth, a Companion to the Bible, entitled, The Removal (the term he employed to describe his assassination of President Garfield). The condemned prisoner employed Gibson Brothers of Washington to print the book as The Truth and The Removal.

Extremely Rare. These are among the only known pages of Guiteau's manuscript for The Removal known to be extant in private hands. Auction records reveal no other draft pages of the present, most important manuscript. Only Malcolm Forbes had a similar Guiteau item, sold at auction in 2002 (Christies, March 27, 2002, Lot 122, $9,988).


From the family of printer William Gibson, whose firm printed the book in 1882.


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