REPORT OF THE PROCEEDINGS IN THE CASE OF THE UNITED STATES VS. CHARLES J. GUITEAU (3 Vols.) - Scarce!

TRIED IN THE SUPREME COURT OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, HOLDING A CRIMINAL TERM, AND BEGINNING NOVEMBER 14, 1881.

IN THREE PARTS

H.H. ALEXANDER AND EDWARD D. EASTON, Official Stenographers

Washington, Government Printing Office, 1882

Vol. 1 – vi, 1-954 pp., Vol. 2 – (2) 955-1820 pp. Vol. 3 -(2) 1821-2681 pp.

On July 2, 1881, Charles Guiteau, usually described as a “disgruntled office-seeker”, shot President James A. Garfield in a Washington railway station in an assassination attempt.  The bullet hit the President in the back, and Garfield, who was only 50 years old and in excellent physical condition, might have survived the attempt, if his medical doctors had not been so incompetent.  Tragically, an infection set in, and he lingered in agony until he died almost three months later, on September 19, 1881.  I would strongly recommend Candace Millard’s excellent Destiny of the Republic, which describes the story in captivating and tragic detail.

Guiteau was quickly put on trial.  His trial defense was based on a plea of temporary insanity, one of the first significant cases in the United States to use that defense.  Much of the trial transcript consists of the testimony about the definition of insanity.  Psychiatry was in its early days as a field of study, and so insanity was little understood.  For example, two of the foldout charts show measurements of Guiteau’s skull, as though physical brain size affected sanity.  Another fold-out chart compares multiple cases of diagnosed insanity in other subjects.

Regardless, the defense did not work, and he was quickly convicted and executed on June 30, 1882. 

This is the official trial transcript of Guiteau’s trial and conviction, and the volumes are particularly scarce.  There were a number of popularly published books about Guiteau’s life and trial, but I cannot find any other set of this complete trial record available anywhere outside of major libraries, and a search of auction records does not show any copies sold publicly since 1924. 

Not only is the set exceedingly scarce, the condition of this particular set is near fine.  The volumes are NOT ex-library, but are sturdily bound in gray-brown buckram with the titles on red and black leather badges on the spine, in the style often seen with lawbook bindings.  The text is age toned, but appears unread, with no marks or damage at all.  There are four fold-out charts, the first a diagram of the railway station layout where the assassination took place, and the other three already described above, relating to testimony on Guiteau’s insanity defense.  While all the charts are complete, age has made them very fragile, and so the larger charts cannot be completely unfolded without tearing them further.  (They show some tears along the creases where earlier attempts were made to unfold them, and I have chosen not to risk any further damage.)

It is highly unlikely that any other complete set of this historically important record can be found in such excellent condition.

Offered at $2,500

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