CHAPTER 10 The Dark Dreams of Presidents History is but the unrolled scroll of Prophecy. james a. garfield The idea came to Guiteau suddenly, "like a ash," he would later say. On May 18, two days after Conkling''s dramatic resignation, Guiteau, "depressed and perplexed . wearied in mind and body," had climbed into bed at 8:00 p.m., much earlier than usual. He had been lying on his cot in his small, rented room for an hour, unable to sleep, his mind churning, when he was struck by a single, pulsing thought: "If the President was out of the way every thing would go better.
" Guiteau was certain the idea had not come from his own, feverish mind. It was a divine inspiration, a message from God. He was, he believed, in a unique position to recognize divine inspiration when it occurred because it had happened to him before. Even before the wreck of the steamship Stonington , he had been inspired, he said, to join the Oneida Community, to leave so that he might start a religious newspaper, and to become a traveling evangelist. Each time God had called him, he had answered. This time, for the First time, he hesitated. Despite his certainty that the message had come directly from God, he did not want to listen. The next morning, when the thought returned "with renewed force," he recoiled from it.
"I was kept horriFied," he said, "kept throwing it off." Wherever he went and whatever he did, however, the idea stayed with him. "It kept growing upon me, pressing me, goading me." Guiteau had "no ill-will to the President," he insisted. In fact, he believed that he had given GarField every opportunity to save his own life. He was certain that God wanted GarField out of the way because he was a danger to the Republican Party and, ultimately, the American people. As Conkling''s war with GarField had escalated, Guiteau wrote to the president repeatedly, advising him that the best way to respond to the senator''s demands was to give in to them. "It seems to me that the only way out of this difFiculty is to withdraw Mr.
R.," he wrote, referring to GarField''s appointment of Judge Robertson to run the New York Customs House. "I am on friendly terms with Senator Conkling and the rest of our Senators, but I write this on my own account and in the spirit of a peacemaker." Guiteau also felt that he had done all he could to warn GarField about Blaine. After the secretary of state had snapped at him outside of the State Department, he bitterly recounted the exchange in a letter to GarField. "Until Saturday I supposed Mr. Blaine was my friend in the matter of the Paris consulship," he wrote, still wounded by the memory. " ''Never speak to me again,'' said Mr.
Blaine, Saturday, ''on the Paris consulship as long as you live.'' Heretofore he has been my friend." Even after his divine inspiration, Guiteau continued to appeal to GarField. On May 23, he again wrote to the president, advising him to demand Blaine''s "immediate resignation." "I have been trying to be your friend," he wrote darkly. "I do not know whether you appreciate it or not." GarField would be wise to listen to him, he warned, "otherwise you and the Republican party will come to grief. I will see you in the morning if I can and talk with you.
" Guiteau did not see GarField the next morning, or any day after that. Unknown to him, he had been barred from the president''s ofFice. Even among the strange and strikingly persistent ofFice seekers that Filled GarField''s anteroom every day, Guiteau had stood out. Brown, GarField''s private secretary, had long before relegated Guiteau''s letters to what was known as "the eccentric File," but he continued to welcome him to the White House with the same courtesy he extended to every other caller. That did not change until Guiteau''s eccentricity and doggedness turned into belligerence. Finally, after a heated argument with one of the president''s ushers that ended with Guiteau sitting in a corner of the waiting room, glowering, Brown issued orders that "he should be quietly kept away." Soon after, Guiteau stopped going to the White House altogether. He gave up trying to secure an appointment, and he no longer fought the press of divine inspiration.
For two weeks, he had prayed to God to show him that he had misunderstood the message he had received that night. "That is the way I test the Deity," he would later explain. "When I feel the pressure upon me to do a certain thing and I have any doubt about it I keep praying that the Deity may stay it in some way if I am wrong." Despite his prayers and constant vigilance, he had received no such sign. By the end of May, Guiteau had given himself up entirely to his new obsession. Alone in his room, with nowhere to go and no one to talk to, he pored over newspaper accounts of the battle between Conkling and the White House, Fixating on any criticism of GarField, real or implied. "I kept reading the papers and kept being impressed," he remembered, "and the idea kept bearing and bearing and bearing down upon me." Finally, on June 1, thoroughly convinced of "the divinity of the inspiration," he made up his mind.
He would kill the president. The next day, Guiteau began to prepare. Although he believed he was doing God''s work, he had been driven for so long by a desire for fame and prestige that his First thought was not how he would assassinate the president, but the attention he would receive after he did. "I thought just what people would talk and thought what a tremendous excitement it would create," he wrote, "and I kept thinking about it all week." With his forthcoming celebrity in mind, Guiteau decided that his First task should be to edit a religious book he had written several years ago called The Truth: A Companion to the Bible . The publicity it would bring the book, he believed, was one of the principal reasons God wanted him to assassinate the president. "Two points will be accomplished," he wrote. "It will save the Republic, and create a demand for my book, The Truth.
This book was not written for money. It was written to save souls. In order to attract public attention the book needs the notice the President''s removal will give it." There would be a great demand for the book following GarField''s death, he reasoned, so it should be "in proper shape." As was true of most things in Guiteau''s life, The Truth was largely stolen. In a single- sentence preface, he insisted that "a new line of thought runs through this book, and the Author asks for it a careful attention." There was, however, nothing new about The Truth . The ideas, most of them copied verbatim, came from a book called The Berean , which John Humphrey Noyes, the founder of Oneida, had written in 1847, and which Guiteau''s father had treasured, believing that it was "better than the Bible.
" Even The Truth ''s publication had been fraudulent. Guiteau had tried to persuade D. Lothrop & Co., one of the most respected publishers in Boston, to publish the book, but they had declined. Determined to see The Truth in print, and for it to have the illusion, if not the reality, of respectability, he hired a printing company to produce a thousand copies, all with "D. Lothrop and Company" on the binding and cover page. After trying unsuccessfully to sell the book for 50 cents apiece on the streets of Boston, he left town without paying the printer. The next stage of Guiteau''s plan was more difFicult than the First.
If he was to assassinate the president, he realized, he would need a gun. Guiteau knew nothing about guns. Not only had he never owned a gun, he had never even Fired one. On June 6, he left his boardinghouse and walked to a sporting goods store that he had spotted on the corner of Fifteenth and F Streets, on the ground oor of a tavern. Upon opening the door, his eyes immediately fell on a showcase that held a selection of revolvers. He walked directly to the case, pointed to the largest gun, and asked the store''s owner, John O''Meara, if he could hold it. He "did not call it by name or ask for any special pistol," O''Meara would later recall. "He examined it carefully, and inquired as to its accuracy, and made a few commonplace remarks.
" After a few minutes, Guiteau handed the revolver back to O''Meara and told him that he would return in a few days. Two days later, George Maynard, the man from whom Guiteau had borrowed $10 three months earlier, was at work when he looked up to Find the small, thin man standing once more in his ofFice. He had walked in so quietly that Maynard had not even heard him. Looking at Guiteau, he noticed that he held his head at an unusual angle, tilted slightly forward. "He had a peculiar manner," Maynard would later say, "a peculiar attitude, a peculiar walk." What struck Maynard most of all, however, was the desperation he saw in the man standing before him. "The principal thing," he remembered, "was that he looked hungry." Guiteau explained that he had received the $150 he had been expecting in March, but had used it to pay other bills.
He was now, he said, awaiting an even larger check, this one for $500. In the meantime, he needed money to pay his board bill. If Maynard would give him $15, he would pay him back the full $25 as soon as he received his next windfall. Although by this point Maynard could not have had any hope of being repaid, he was, as Guiteau knew, "a good fellow." Three minutes after he had walked in the door, Guiteau left with enough money to buy a gun. That same day, Guiteau returned to John O.