Lyr Add: Charles Guiteau

Subject: Lyr Add: Charles Guiteau
From: Lighter
Date: 10 Nov 25 - 12:57 PM

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.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Charles Guiteau
From: Robert B. Waltz
Date: 10 Nov 25 - 01:22 PM

It seems to me that, in researching this song, I've seen a lot of sundry verses derived from other songs using this format ("The Murder of F. C. Benwell, etc.), but yes, most other versions are short -- usually no more than five verses.

All those borrowings are responsible for the long list of absurdities in the song. Guiteau wasn't "in his youthful bloom"; he was forty years old! He did have a sister, but she was soon to be institutionalized for insanity. His mother -- who had delusions -- had died in 1848, so she could hardly die in sorrow. And his father was a religious fanatic who probably would have approved of hanging his uncontrollable son.

Insanity was only one line of defense he tried, and it was never going to go anywhere; he met the M'Naughton standard of knowing that murder was wrong. His main line of defense is that he didn't kill Garfield; Garfield's doctors killed Garfield. Which is true, but the doctors wouldn't have been treating Garfield if Guiteau hadn't shot him.

Moreover, although people have argued over the years that Guiteau had schizophrenia, he clearly did not; a schizophrenia diagnosis requires delusions, hallucinations, or disorganized (incoherent) speech, and he had none of these. He was an absurd bore and a thief, and everyone he ever went near despised him. but not schizophrenic.

I could go on, but you can always read the Ballad Index entry on this song, which says all the same stuff.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Charles Guiteau
From: GeoffLawes
Date: 10 Nov 25 - 04:44 PM

Link to Mudcat thread Any September Songs? with information and recordings about Charles Guiteau and the death of President Garfield, /mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=170186#assasinationofgarfield:~:text=Subject%3A%20RE%3A%20Any%20September%20Songs%3F%0AFr

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Charles Guiteau
From: Jack Campin
Date: 11 Nov 25 - 07:10 AM

I'm sure I once saw a CD of songs on the death of American presidents, and I thought it was from Smithsonian Folkways. But I can't trace it now. Did it exist?

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Charles Guiteau
From: Monique
Date: 11 Nov 25 - 08:25 AM

Maybe it's this one...

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Charles Guiteau
From: Lighter
Date: 11 Nov 25 - 01:56 PM

The following stray lines may once have made (or could make) a single stanza.

Mellinger Edward Henry, Folk Songs form the Southern Highlands (N.Y.: J. J. Augustin, 1938). p. 333, coll. in N.C.:

James A. Garfield,
He took me to be his friend,
I shot a bullet into him
That caused his fatal end.


Tennessee Folklore Society Bulletin (Dec., 1953), p. 93, coll. in Tenn.:

The name of my revolver
Was the British Forty-Four
And when the bullet left the hull
It made an awful roar.


The point of the ballad, as usual, is the emotion: the shock and violence of the crime, the judgment of Providence, the tragedy of Guiteau's family, Guiteau's lack of remorse, and the horror of the execution. Factual accuracy need only be minimimal.

The song came to mind because Netflix is currenty showing a four-part miniseries abut Guiteau and Garfield called "Death by Lightning." I don't know if the ballad appears.

The series is described as "darkly humorous." Unlike the ballad. Count me out.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Charles Guiteau
From: Jack Campin
Date: 11 Nov 25 - 02:10 PM

Thanks Monique, that was it. Looking forward to Volume 2.

Did anything musical come out of the attempts on Ford and Reagan?

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Charles Guiteau
From: Robert B. Waltz
Date: 11 Nov 25 - 02:23 PM

Lighter wrote: The series is described as "darkly humorous." Unlike the ballad. Count me out.

I don't get Netflix (or any streaming service), so I'd have no way to tune in -- but it sounds awful.

Garfield was almost certainly the most intelligent man every to become President of the United States. I suspect I would have liked him a lot. He wasn't very decisive; I don't think he would actually have proved a great President. But his death was purely tragic. As well as a vivid illustration of both the problem of mental illness and of the American justice system.

Incidentally, since we know that there were at least two Garfield ballads, and probably more, I'm not entirely convinced that all those stray stanzas go with "Charles Guiteau."

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Charles Guiteau
From: Lighter
Date: 11 Nov 25 - 03:03 PM

Waltz & Engle's Traditional Ballad Index extensively discusses Garfield, the assassination, and Guiteau's state of mind:

https://balladindex.org/Ballads/LE11.html

I don't see the two additional stanzas fitting into Lunsford's "Mister Garfield." They appeared in texts of the Guiteau ballad.

Is there still another "Garfield" song?

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Charles Guiteau
From: Robert B. Waltz
Date: 11 Nov 25 - 04:10 PM

Lighter wrote: Is there still another "Garfield" song?

The two Garfield songs with significant traditional popularity are:
Charles Guiteau (Roud #444)
Mister Garfield (Roud #9138)

I note that this already makes Garfield the president about whom the most song versions have been written.

Art Rosenbaum collected a song called "Garfield" which he thinks is about the President. (I'm not convinced. Roud lumps it with "Mister Garfield," but I think that's one of his lumps-because-it's-too-much-work-to-look-elsewhere.)

I've read five Garfield biographies, and several mention the outpourings of poetry after his death. No evidence that any of the things went into tradition, but they existed.

Guiteau himself wrote a sort of hymn about his execution, though it isn't this. The basic words are "I'm going to the Lordy, I am so glad."

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Charles Guiteau
From: GerryM
Date: 11 Nov 25 - 04:13 PM

"Garfield was almost certainly the most intelligent man every to become President of the United States." A minority view, I think; mostly, I see people giving Jefferson that honor.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Charles Guiteau
From: Robert B. Waltz
Date: 11 Nov 25 - 04:43 PM

GerryM wrote: "Garfield was almost certainly the most intelligent man every to become President of the United States." A minority view, I think; mostly, I see people giving Jefferson that honor.

Motly, I see people who don't know who Garfield was. :-p

Jefferson is the other serious candidate, but it depends on your definition of intelligence. Since most people conflate IQ scores with intelligence (a false conflation, but it's what people do), I am using that definition.

Jefferson was more of a designer; Garfield more of an abstract thinker. If you want someone who got things done, Jefferson wins. But Garfield is the only President who created an independent proof of the Pythagorean Theorem, and he was very likely the best linguist among Presidents. He wasn't the only college president among Presidents (Wilson was one, e.g.), but he was the one who got there on merits. Contemporaries said that he was the only President who could have performed the duties of every cabinet secretary in the cabinet.

If you needed someone to get something built, Jefferson was your man. But Garfield's skills were almost tailor-made for IQ tests. So if you say that IQ tests measure intelligence (and, I repeat, I don't, but most people do), then Garfield was almost certainly the most intelligent.