(2 of 3)
Charles Julius Guiteau, 39, was known to President James A. Garfield only as a bragging pest who incessantly ailed at the White House to ask for "the Paris consulship." Guiteau, a lawyer and evangelist, described himself as an employee of "Jesus Christ & Co.," but wandering around Washington, sockless and absurd, he announced that his real mission was the salvation of unity in the Republican Party. At last he decided that God's will had ordained Garfield's death. He bought a .44-cal. revolver, tested it by firing at saplings along the Potomac, and went by the Washington jail to check on its comforts. "Very excellent," he decided.
When Garfield entered Washington's Baltimore & Potomac railway station at 9:20 a.m., July 2, 1881, on his way to a two-week vacation in the North, Guiteau stepped from behind a bench, walked within a few feet of the President and shot him in the back. "My God, what is this!" Garfield cried, toppling forward. Guiteau was captured immediately. He pleaded insanity of the "Abrahamic" variety—like Abraham in murderous pursuit of Isaac, he was in the command of a wrathful God "Let your verdict be that it was the Deity's act not mine," he told his jurors, but they took only 65 minutes to condemn him to death. Garfield, cheerful and brave throughout his struggle for life, died 80 days after the shooting.
Leon F. Czolgosz, 28, thought of himself as an anarchist. But he seemed such a dubious character in even that company that five days before his murder of President William McKinley, Free Society, an anarchist periodical, carried a warning that he was a spy. After reading of the anarchist assassination of Italy's King Humbert I, the idea of killing the President began to grow in his mind. A week before the murder, he bought a .32-cal pistol for $4.50.
On Sept. 6, 1901, Czolgosz took a place in a receiving line in the Temple of Music at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo. Crowds streamed into the domed room to shake the President's hand. Czolgosz, dressed in his best, simply stepped in among them. None of the 50 guards present noticed the gun he held wrapped in a white handkerchief. McKinley extended his hand as Czolgosz drew up to him. The killer slapped it away and fired two shots point-blank into the President's chest and abdomen Guards and soldiers pounced on him and beat him with rifle butts until McKinley called out, "Be easy with him boys." McKinley died eight days later. Czolgosz told his disgusted lawyers that he would take no part in his defense. "I killed the President because he was the enemy of the good working people," he said. "I am not sorry for my crime." The trial lasted 81 hours. The jury needed only 34 minutes to condemn him to death.