The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #174500   Message #4231474
Posted By: Lighter
10-Nov-25 - 12:57 PM
Thread Name: Lyr Add: Charles Guiteau
Subject: Lyr Add: Charles Guiteau
This is the fullest text I've seen, though that in the DT - collected fifty-four years later - has an additional farewell stanza.

Toledo Weekly Blade (March 8, 1923):

                   CHARLES GUITEAU

Come all you tender Christians and hear what I have to say,
And likewise pay attention to a word from me today;
For the murder of James A. Garfield I am condemned to die
On the thirtieth day of June upon a scaffold high.

My name is Charles Guiteau; my name I'll never deny
I leave my aged parents in sorrow here to die;
How little they thought that I when in my youthful bloom
Would be taken to the scaffold to meet my fatal doom.

In the city of Washington on the second of July
In eighteen eighty-one with expectations high,
The president was leaving; he thought his cares would fly,
But I thought I'd spoil his pleasures and shoot him down to die.

'Twas down at the depot, I tried to make my escape
But Providence being against me I found I was too late;
And so I came to prison all in my youthful bloom,
And now upon a scaffold I'll meet my fatal doom.

I tried to play insane but found that would not do,
For the people were against me, and so was the jury too;
Judge Cox he wrote the sentence, and the clerk wrote it down soon
That I was to be hanged until dead on the thirtieth day of June.

My sister came to prison to bid her last farewell,
She threw her arms about me and bitterly did wail;
Said she, "My darling brother, today you'll surely die
For the murder of James Garfield upon the scaffold high.


The Evansville, Ind., Sunday Courier and Press (June 15, 1941) offered a single stanza text sung as a child by the mother of one of the staff, "and [she got] switched every time her parents heard her":

My name is Charles Guiteau,
My name I'll never deny,
I left my aged parents
In sorrow here to die.
For the murder of Charles [sic] A. Garfield
I am condemned to die,
And on the thirtieth day of June,
They'll meet to hang me high.