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Famous for the assassination of President James Garfield, Guiteau is best described as a narcissistic madman. In his early life, he was heavily involved with religion and fraud alike. He thought himself a somewhat gifted writer and influential person so he became a member of the Oneida religion where he published a newspaper based on the faith (one which he mostly copied and stole) called The Daily Theocrat. As part of the Oneida religion, Guitea was widely hated for joining solely to practice the free, noncommital love in which members took part; however, he would never achieve this. Members of the community referred to him as Charles Get Out in order to exile him. At the same time, Charles was a man of great ego and worked as a debt collector, an experience he used to avoid the debt collectors sent after him. he refused financial help from all and sought money through quick get-rich schemes. His brother once offered help to which he received a response where Guiteau told him to shove his financial aid where the sun doesn't shine. He was a man who at one point in time was a lawyer in Chicago only arguing one case which he lost. Upon being expelled from the Oneida faith, Guiteau would first publish the Daily Theocrat though it was relatively unsuccessful leading him to gain an interest in politics. after several years of mediocre speech writing and little success, he became convinced he was working with the wrong political parties (this being the lack of success with the Stalwarts) and promptly switched sides mid-campaign to write speeches for James Garfield's campaign trail, which he delivered to small crowds himself. Once Garfield was elected to office, Guiteau took this as a sign that his speeches had single-handedly won Garfield the presidency. From this point on, Guiteau would trail the president and the secretary of state James G Blaine. He would beg Blaine at many encounters to be rewarded for his help in the election with a consulship in Vienna, then Paris to which Blaine eventually snapped demanding that Guiteau never speak on the matter as long as he lived. At this point, Guiteau had finally cracked and became disillusioned with the Republicans and had a nervous breakdown. He believed that Garfield would ruin the party by removing the patronage system. He decided that the only way to save the nation was for VP Chester A Arthur (a Stlawart) to become the acting president. Guitea borrowed 15 dollars and set out to buy a gun to kill Garfield with (he had deemed that a knife would be too ineffective and he would be crushed by Garfield's security). He purchased a pearl handle revolver on the basis that it would look cooler in a museum than a revolver without pearl handles. On July 2, 1881, Guitea lept out from a train station that Garfield was at and shot him twice in the back. He declared himself "the stalwart of stalwarts... Arthur is now president!" Garfield would not die immediately but instead would die 11 weeks later due to a lack of surgical understanding and malpractice. Guiteau received great attention for his actions and went through a lengthy trial process where he attempted to plead insanity. He was planning on creating a lecture circuit to speak on and running for president himself in 1884. He was deemed competent by the courts and sentenced to die, "He's no more insane than I am. There's nothing of the mad about Guiteau: he's a cool, calculating blackguard, a polished ruffian, who has gradually prepared himself to pose in this way before the world. He was a deadbeat, pure and simple. Finally, he got tired of the monotony of deadbeating. He wanted excitement of some other kind and notoriety ... and he got it." Guitea was hanged for his crime and upon meeting the hangman he shook his hand, he proceeded to deliver a self-written poem titled I am going to Lordy in which he claimed divine inspiration for the killing ( the poem was originally meant to be backed by an orchestra according to Guiteau's wishes upon hanging).
"Charles Guiteau sees you, gasps and runs towards you, greeting you with lots of compliments and nose licks."
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