The murder of President Garfield and the subsequent trial of his assassin Charles Guiteau had far reaching implications, even into the twentieth century. It changed the way courts and society looked at insanity and it changed the way our government awards civil service jobs.
Charles Guiteau’s use of the insanity defense was the first in a Federal trial. Immediately after his trial the cry went up from the medical profession to change his verdict. They wanted to study Guiteau in an effort to find out what begat his madness. Guiteau was a tricky case though. Was he insane? He argued he was not. He knew the difference between sane and insane. Today we argue a defendant must know he did wrong, contrary to the laws of God and man. According to Guiteau, he knew he was doing wrong in the eyes of man but not in the eyes of God, since God had told him to shoot the president. It wasn’t until 1895 that the Supreme Court took up the question of insanity in the case of Davis v. U.S. In that case they held that “malice is presumed from certain facts and persons are held responsible for the consequences of their acts upon the principle of presumption.”(Robinson,185) The courts in the nineteenth century struggled with the question of insanity and brought about a reform movement in that arena. The new ways of thinking were paternalistic and progressive and started to attack the old rules, including M’Naughtan. The trial of Guiteau made the shortcomings in the study of the insane all too apparent. The term “moral insanity” was obsolete. The trial also showed the fallibility of letting jurors decide the existence of insanity. Jurors, then as now, let circumstances influence their decisions. In the twentieth century John Hinckley was found legally insane after he shot President Reagan whereas Charles Guiteau was found legally sane. They both had delusions of grandeur, they both shot a president yet Guiteau was found criminally guilty. Guiteau’s death helped bring about a change in opinion in American psychiatry. In a more broad sense though, the trial helped shape a “modern and institutionalized intellectual life.”(Rosenberg,248) It marked ‘the beginning of modern academic medicine and science” in America when doctors strove for peer acceptance and approval.
Charles Guiteau was the catalyst for the Pendleton Act of 1883 which made civil service appointments and promotions based on merit. Before the War of the Rebellion there was widespread support for the spoils system. Cronyism was rampant, with many jobs in the government going to the biggest contributors to the winning party.There were some grumblings and attempts at reform but they usually died in Congress. Ironically, it was Garfield who “single handedly pushed the Pendleton bill forward.”(Maranto/Schultz,55) After his death there was hardly a newspaper in the nation, hardly a speech given that did not decry the spoils system and blame the assassination on it. Would Guiteau have shot Garfield had he not been a rejected office-seeker? Of course, we can’t know that. “The reform of 1883 was one of the most momentous events in the nation’s political and administrative development.”(Rosenbloom,1) The issue of civil service reform had been on the front burner, so to speak, for some time and the public uproar over reform unfortunately carried over to Guiteau’s trial, ensuring he would be executed. The Missouri Civil Service Reform Association actually “rejoiced over the attempted assassination which assured the success of reform.”(Hoogenboom,210) In this sense, Garfield became a martyr for civil service reform. After his death the cry went up that “reformed civil service would be the most fitting monument” to him.(Hoogenboom,213) In fact, a publication circulating at the time declared Garfield “died a martyr to the fierceness of factional politics and the victim” of the spoils system.”(Hoogenboom,213) After his death the cry went up to finish his work on civil service reform. Had the Pendleton bill already been in place, there would have been no reason for Guiteau to blame Garfield for not getting a job. His death was one of the biggest catalysts for civil service reform in America. Civil Service reform has underwent many changes through the years and different administrations, with the Progressive Era bringing about the most. “The overall goal of this era was to professionalize the federal bureaucracy” and to take the politics and corruption out of it.(Maranto/Schultz,81)
Garfield’s death also helped push forward protection for the president. It wasn’t until the assassination of President McKinley that the Secret Service, long an arm of the U.S. treasury had its duties expanded to include the protection of the President. It took three presidents to die at the hands an assassin but it was really after Garfield’s death that the cry went up that something must be done.
To say Charles Guiteau was responsible for changing government or attitudes about mental health would be overstating his importance. Of course, it would have delighted him. As I’ve said, civil service reform was already in the works. His case merely accelerated it. Reform was already underway in the psychiatric world also but his trial was debated in academic circles, discussion panels and seminars and added to the science of psychiatry. In the twentieth century the question of legal insanity is still being debated. We carry over the debate that started in the nineteenth century as to who was criminally culpable and what are the standards of insanity. We still debate the merit system with each president and administration pushing for changes, either through policies or Congress. “To this day, the politics/administration dichotomy is an important theoretical characteristic of the federal bureaucracy.”(Maranto/Schultz,81) I don’t think we’re any closer today than we were one hundred years ago.
Works Cited
Robinson, Daniel N. Wild beasts & idle humours the insanity defense from antiquity to the present. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard UP, 1996.
Rosenberg, Charles E. The Trial of the Assassin Guiteau Psychiatry and the Law in the Gilded Age. New York: University Of Chicago P, 1995.
Maranto, Robert. Short history of the United States Civil Service. Lanham, Md: University P of America, 1991.
Centenary issues of the Pendleton Act of 1883 the problematic legacy of Civil Service reform. New York: M. Dekker, 1982.
Hoogenboom, Ari. Outlawing The Spoils. Urbana: University of Illinois P, 1968.
