The Right to Be Happy

How do misfits and outsiders get into the history books? They assassinate the president, and live forever on the Broadway stage.

I saw Stephen Sondheim's Assassins last night. Who would've thought that a musical based on the life stories of nine would-be presidential assassins could be so compelling? The difficulty for Sondheim is to balance his wit and humor without being flip or casual about the deaths of four presidents.

The production accents the carnival funhouse of American history and of course that's where Sondheim's clever turn-of-phrases and surprising lyrical ideas really shine (and you can see why Magnetic Fields songwriter Stephin Merritt worships him). Sondheim's lyrics succeed in fleshing out how history bears on marginalized (or just crazy) individuals. There are also some touching moments about the individual assassins' lives. But at the end of the play, this is still a musical about assassins starring Doogie Howser as Lee Harvey Oswald. The weirdness is both its strength and its limitation.

The coolest part for me was learning about Charles Julius Guiteau. James Garfield's assassin flunked out of college and then got thrown out of the Oneida Christian commune before conning his way into a law clerkship. While his wife was avoiding angry creditors, Guiteau contracted syphillis from a prostitute. His wife divorced him.

Broke and alone, Guiteau turned to a time-honored moneymaker: religious hucksterism. He toured the country preaching a weird, garbled faith and charging Christians for listening. History House (you've got to read this story, folks) quotes a newspaper of the time:

Is There a Hell? Fifty Deceived People [are] of the opinion that there ought to be. The man Charles J. Guiteau, if such really is his name, who calls himself an eminent Chicago lawyer, has fraud and imbecility plainly stamped upon his countenance... Although the impudent scoundrel had talked only fifteen minutes, he suddenly perorated brilliantly by thanking the audience for their attention and bidding them good-night. Before the astounded fifty had recovered from their amazement... [he] had fled from the building and escaped.

Guiteau sucked up to the most prominent politicians of the day. After regularly preaching a stump speech for Ulysses S. Grant, he threw his support to James Garfield. But instead of writing a new speech for Garfield, he just inserted Garfield's name at the end of his long speech recounting Grant's battle victories.

Eventually, Guiteau became convinced that his job should be as an ambassador. He pestered Republican politicians for a job, writing

Next Spring I expect to marry the daughter of a deceased New York Republican millionaire and I think we can represent the United States Government at the court of Vienna with dignity and grace.

Of course he was summarily dismissed. But believing that his speech had been instrumental in Garfield's victory, Guiteau felt embittered and began plotting to kill the president.

Guiteau ordered a hansome cab to wait as Garfield and an aide went to board the train on July 2, 1881. Guiteau shot Garfield in the back and promptly took himself to the jail, writing a letter for more troops to protect him from an angry mob that he thought might form.

When Guiteau eventually went to the gallows, people were paying as much as $300 for an opportunity to watch the assassin hang. But ever the optimistic huckster, Guiteau kept singing even when his head was covered with a black hood by the hangman. And he sang a song that he wrote:

I saved my party and my land;
Glory Hallelujah!
But they have murdered me for it
And that is the reason
I am going to the Lordy.
Glory Hallelujah! Glory Hallelujah!
I am going to the Lordy.

View the Charles Guiteau Collection at Georgetown. Read more about the trial and execution of Guiteau. Read the lyrics from a Tin Pan Alley song about Guiteau.

James Garfield was the "last of the log cabin Presidents." Read his story here. His death wasn't technically caused by Guiteau, but by dirty doctors rooting their filthy fingers around his guts. Read his medical history here, and the story of medical incompetence here. And who knew log cabin presidents had their own websites?