HISTORY’S MOST NARCISSITIC ASSASSIN

There are many famous individuals throughout history who displayed a great sense of narcissism. However, in the annals of underappreciated and underrated figures, none stands to be a better example of narcissism than Charles J. Guiteau, who was most famous for assassinating the 20th U.S. president, James Garfield.

While the competition for the most narcissistic individual is certainly stiff, Guiteau perhaps manages to make all others seem relatively modest, by comparison. Born in Freeport, Illinois, in 1841, his mother died when he was young, which left him in the care of his father, who would instill a lot of religious values that guided his actions at multiple points in his life.

At age 18, Guiteau would join the Oneida Community in New York state, which was a perfectionist community with very unusual codes of conduct. The unusual rules included mutual criticisms, where members would openly criticize and insult their colleagues in an effort to discourage any negative traits. He was genuinely disliked by the community and, whereas the mutual criticisms were normally out of formality, the insults for him were genuine.

This dislike of Guiteau earned him the nickname “Charles Gitout.” After realizing that the nickname was a personal one, on top of a formal one, Guiteau left the community to start an unsuccessful newspaper called “The Daily Theocrat.”

He would return to Illinois, where he passed the bar exam and became a licensed attorney in Chicago, where he would eventually meet and marry his wife. While his career was unsuccessful, having only argued in one case in court, he would manage to become a skilled con man and would flee from town to town with his wife.

The 31-year-old Guiteau then took a crack at politics and attempted to convince voters to elect the Democratic candidate, Horace Greeley, in the 1872 presidential election. Guiteau was convinced that if (or rather, when) Greeley won his bid for presidency, Greeley would be indebted to him and would grant his request to become the “Minister of Chile.” Instead, Greeley lost in a landslide election against incumbent President Ulysses S. Grant.

Guiteau did not have a very happy marriage, likely as a result of always being on the run from debt collectors. To get a legal divorce, Guiteau and his wife agreed to let Guiteau hire a prostitute and have that prostitute testify in court of his unfaithfulness. He indeed was granted his divorce – and given syphilis as a parting gift from the prostitute.

Guiteau returned to religion and published a book called “The Truth,” which plagiarized most of the teachings of Oneida Community founder John Humphrey Noyes. Ironically, his father, responsible for Guiteau’s religious foundation, believed that his son was possessed by Satan.

As it happened, Guiteau would spiral further into his narcissism and would believe that his life was laid out with divine blessings. This would be aggravated in 1880, when he was a passenger on a ship that collided with another. While Guiteau’s ship survived and its passengers suffered no injuries, the other ship sank, with many of its passengers perishing. Guiteau saw the incident as a divine message that he had a higher purpose in life. Later the same year, Guiteau would reenter politics but this time as a supporter of the Republican party. Among the likely Republican nominees, former President Grant attempted to run for a third term, first having to battle GOP contender James G. Blaine. Guiteau wrote a speech that supported Grant’s presumed autumn campaign against the Democrat, Winfield Scott Hancock, called “Grant against Hancock.”

In a surprise turn of political events, James Garfield would instead win the Republican nomination – after which Guiteau simply changed the names in his speech to “Garfield against Hancock.”

Guiteau would go on to believe that he was single-handedly the reason why Garfield won the general election. Believing that his “essential” assistance should be rewarded, he petitioned the government to award him a position for a consulship to either Vienna or Paris. After being

repeatedly denied, he would sneak into hotel rooms and continue to send letters petitioning for a job from the government, while also keeping track of the new president and his cabinet members’ schedule.

At one point, he tracked down Blaine, the new Secretary of State, and inquired about his consulship. Blaine, agitated by Guiteau’s insistent presence, snapped and scolded him, shouting, “Never speak to me again on the Paris consulship as long you live!”

Guiteau considered himself a Republican loyalist and started to believe that Garfield would destroy the Republican Party. He believed that God had sent him on a divine mission to save the GOP by assassinating Garfield (either that, or he was still bitter about his repeated rejections). He would eventually go shopping for a pistol and was faced with a dilemma in choosing between a pistol with a wooden grip or one with an ivory grip. He later declared that he chose the latter because it would look greater in a museum when he saved the Republican Party. (Ironically, the gun is still missing.)

Guiteau shot Garfield at the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station, in the nation’s capital, where Garfield would die 11 weeks later. The president’s death is actually believed to have been caused by unsterilized tools that physicians used to treat him. Guiteau would finally become a media sensation and center of attention at his trial, where he became infamous for insulting everybody present, including his own defense team. In one instance, Guiteau gave an autobiography to a newspaper that ended with a personal advertisement concluding with, “[Looking for]… a nice Christian lady under 30 years of age.”

At his subsequent execution in 1882, Guiteau waved and smiled at the spectators, and believed that they supported his actions. Shortly before, he argued that he should be let free because it was not he who killed Garfield but rather (ironically likely true) the malpractice of the president’s physicians.

Nonetheless, he was hanged and would become a symbol of narcissistic behavior.

While there have been many narcissists who would go on to hold wild beliefs such as godhood, there where times when they had shown some sense of reality. Guiteau was, in a way, even more

narcissistic for never believing that he was at fault to begin with, going so far as to believe that his own gun would be famous in the same fashion as Longinius’ spear.

Truly, here was an individual who could give most, if not all, narcissists a run for their money.