American History Hit - President James A. Garfield: Sex Cults & Assassination

Episode Date: May 8, 2024

This may have been the second shortest Presidency in the history of the United States, but the term of James Garfield is definitely not one to miss.From his dark horse nomination to his assassination by Charles Guiteau, Don is speaking with bestselling author of ‘An Assassin in Utopia,' Susan Wels.Produced by Sophie Gee. Edited by Aidan Lonergan. Senior Producer was Charlotte Long.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for $1 per month for 3 months with code AMERICANHISTORY sign up at https://historyhit.com/subscription/ You can take part in our listener survey here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Want to explore even more history? Sign up to History Hit, where you will discover history from around the world. From the American Revolution to prehistoric Scotland, there is plenty to discover. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with a brand new release every week, exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com slash subscribe to bring the past alive. In the early summer of 1881, inside O'Meara's store, in the city of Washington, D.C., a wiry man with nervous eyes is making a purchase. His name is Charles Gitton, and he is choosing between two revolvers on sale.

One has a wooden, dark brown handle. The others is ivory, and goes by the memorable title, The British Bulldog. Gito vacillates, staring at the guns, pondering the most disturbing of shopping gratu. He is considering which gun will look best in a museum display case, beside a plaque explaining it is the weapon that once killed a U.S. President. Finally, he makes his choice. He decides on the ivory-handled British Bulldog. It will best mark his place in history as the soon-to-be assassin of President James Garfield.

Hello, and glad you're listening. It's American History Hit, and I'm Don Wildman, your host. here with the next in our sequence of presidential episodes. Today, our 20th Chief Magistrate, President James Garfield of Ohio, preceded by Rutherford B. Hayes, also Ohio. He will be succeeded by, tragically so, his vice president, Chester A. Arthur of New York. James Garfield was a moderate to an extreme, which, in a way, is how he became the Dark Horse Republican nominee in the presidential election of 1880.

Interestingly, the only person ever elected to the presidency straight out of the U.S. House of Representatives, where he'd spent numerous terms serving Ohio's 19th District. He was a congressman for 17 years, 1863 to 1880. He'd married his high school sweetheart and had seven children. Garfield was, by all appearances, anyway, the very model of Midwestern stability. Prior to politics, Garfield fought for the union, signed on in 1861 with no. military training. He'd apparently read a few books on the subject. And after two years of combat from Kentucky to Georgia, he'd attained the rank of Major General, two stars. So esteemed was his

reputation back home in Ohio that he was elected to Congress defeating his opponent without even campaigning. Torn between his service to the Union or to the good people of Ohio, he actually consulted President Abraham Lincoln, who recommended he resigned from the Army and take his seat in the House. He had plenty of generals, said Lincoln, what he really needed was support in Congress. James Garfield was a highly educated, deeply religious man who began as a preacher, became a college president in his 20s, served in the civil war, then landed in politics. But as the nation left reconstruction behind and entered an era powered by industrialization and party machine politics, Garfield's agenda would be quickly

derailed by a demented man with a gun. As such, he shares his proud political ascendancy with the bottoming out of a man named Charles Gitoe and his strange movement that he was a part of in upstate New York. We discuss it all at length with Susan Wells, bestselling author of numerous histories such as Titanic, the legacy of the world's greatest ocean liner, Amelia Earhart, the thrill of it, as well as many others. But most recently, she released a book on our topic today, entitled An Assassin in Utopia, the True Story of a 19th century sex cult and a president's murder. murder. Welcome Susan Wells to American History Hit. Thank you for having me. Delighted to be here.

Sex cult. Forget the presidential stuff. Let's talk about unseemly communes of the 1870s. Well, I think of this as misfit history. It's the offbeat underside of the American story that rarely makes it into official narratives. But it's absolutely fascinating stuff, and it really provides a glimpse of what life was like in the early to mid-19th century. Absolutely. Which rivaled the 1960s in our own era for just countercultural social experiments. Isn't that an interesting thing that you only really grasp as you get older, how repeated these major eras are? It's so interesting how much they mirror each other. It's true.

And there are many connections to presidential politics in this story. So, for example, the Oneida community, which is the sex cult I talk about in my book, was founded by a man named John Humphrey-Noyce, whose first cousin was Rutherford B. Hayes. Wow, there you go. And one of his followers was Charles Gatotot, who went on to assassinate James Garfield in 1881. Crazy, crazy. Garfield, there isn't much presidency to discuss, you know, tragically, as I say, inaugurated March 1881, shot in July, just a few months later, suffers through all of August, half of September, and then dies. It's too bad. He would have been a good one, don't you agree?

The problem was that he was kind of an accidental president. He was drafted during the Republican National Convention in 1880 as a dark horse because the convention was deadlocked. After 33 ballots, exhausting ballots, they still couldn't settle on a candidate. And then all of a sudden, Garfield's name came into contention. And he was there at the convention to nominate somebody else, John Sherman of Ohio. But all of a sudden, momentum shifted to Garfield. And in three ballots, he became the candidate.

So the problem was that when you come into a presidential campaign as a dark horse without any pre-work, you don't really have an agenda. There were no great policies that he wanted to pursue. And I think he was generally a melancholy guy. He was kind of gloomy by nature, even though he was also extremely popular, glad-handed, a wonderful speaker, physically imposing. There's a bunch of bullet points about this guy that are fascinating. He's one of those log cabin presidents. He was born in a log cabin up from poverty and climbs to the highest office in the land, which is an extraordinary fact of several different presidents in the 1800s.

It's incredible. He was, by definition, a radical Republican. Is that fair to say? Well, he was very much pro-reconstruction. He was very much anti-slavery. He was very involved in all of that. But there was a split in the Republican Party that really occurred under the Hayes presidency. It was the most intimately contested presidential election in American history that actually

foreshadowed what happened on January 6th. I can refer listeners back to that episode. The Hayes episode is fascinating in that they actually do the inauguration in the executive mention because they're so afraid of the riot that might occur. Well, they were afraid of another civil war. They were afraid of insurrections. I mean, there were calls for people to come armed to Washington. There were duplicate ballots, second election.

ballot submitted by three of the states favoring Hayes' opponent instead of Hayes. And so it was just incredibly contested. And even after the election, half of Americans felt that he was a fraud. They called him his fraudulency. Anyway, in order to win the election, there was a deal struck. And one of the, there was a deal struck with Southern states, because there were three Southern states that were in the balance. It was Florida, South Carolina, and Louisiana. In order to get their electoral votes, the Hayes people had to promise to end reconstruction. So that was the deal. So Hayes comes into office.

He was a good guy. But it ended reconstruction and, of course, opened the door for Jim Crow and all of the other nightmares of American history ever since. So there was a split in the Republican Party. There were people who were just aghast that that had happened, who were very pro reconstruction. Then there was another problem because there were. Republican power brokers who thrived on the patronage system. And the patronage system was centered in New York

in the New York Custom House, and the collector of the New York Custom House was nominated as Garfield's vice president. Chester Arthur. Right. The collector. Exactly. So when Hayes was president, he threw Arthur out of office, which alienated all the people who were pro-patronage and pro-power politics in the Republican Party. So there was a basic war. Yeah. Well, this is what I'm referring to in the opening where I say kind of institutionalization of these party politics, which the Republicans had everything to do with. And they kind of figured out how to do a lot of skimming and so forth. But we want to talk about this assassination. This is an incredible story, really, which is why you have a great book about it. Let's start with Charles Gitoe. And the fact that this has a lot to do with the staffing of these administrations. Let me just take a moment and explain a difference from then to now. It used to be that the inauguration happened in March. And the reason for this was because it was hard in the old days for people to get to Washington and for all the telegraphing and communications to happen, much less put people literally into offices there. So they always had a longer period of time.

The inauguration wouldn't happen until March. The reason they changed that in the modern age in the 30s was because of the improvement of transportation and so forth. So that's why we have a January inauguration instead of a March one. But during that time period, after the election from November, December, January, February, that was a long period of time during which time they basically just started vetting people for office, right? And it was a big pain in the butt for these guys. These presidents come in with some kind of agenda and they end up being in all, you know, just meetings for months. Garfield hated this, didn't he?

Not just Garfield. Grant hated it. I mean, everybody hated it. It just absolutely consumed the time of the president of the United States. vetting people for office. I mean, literally there would be lines of job seekers out the door of the White House. This was an era when the White House was wide open to the public. And literally just lines would snake around the block and they would all have to be, their applications would have to be accepted.

They would, were vetted. And Charles Goteau was one of those office seekers. And in fact, he actually got into an audience with James Garfield into his office. and it was, I think Garfield was not plused by how odd this guy was. How had he been involved? He'd worked for the campaign already, right? Yeah, so Guteau was from the Midwest. His father was from upstate New York. And this is where the sex cult comes in, because the sex cult, the Oneida community, was in upstate New York. And his father, Luther Gatow, had known about the community. He was an ardent

admirer of it and always kind of wanted to join. it, but he had moved his family to the Midwest. Then when in 1860, when Gatot was 19, he was studying in Ann Arbor and absolutely failing in his studies. So he started corresponding with the Oneida community asking for them to admit him. He said that he was drawn to Oneida by an irresistible power. And he was finally accepted, but it became very clear that he was oddball from the very beginning. He was excitable with a quick temper. He would mutter and gesture wildly when he was angry. the women didn't like him either. And this was a community that was based, actually invented the term free love. So sexual mastery was the equivalent of prayer in this community. Wow. Anyway, but the women didn't like him either and they started calling him get out. So he went on from there. He eventually left the Oneida community in 1866 and he was determined to start a religious newspaper. And newspapers were like the internet of the era. They had expanded explosively since the 1860s.

And new thought leaders emerged, including this guy named Corace Greeley. And when I was writing this book, when I was beginning to write this book, the only thing I knew about Horace Greeley was if he supposedly said, go West Youngman. I didn't know anything else about him. But he became... I had to stop it yesterday. One day before this, I was in Horace Greeley's house in Chappaquin. I was just sitting in the house, having an interview with the local historian in Chappaqua,

sitting in the back seat in the back room in his... kitchen, old Horace Greeley. Anyway, sorry, I just want to back up. Stopping you there is a good chance to say, let's talk about this Oneida community a little more generally. I think it's a fascinating time to understand why such a cult would exist. This was happening a lot in the 1800s, where at the tail end of what was known as the Second Great Awakening, which kind of wraps up around the 1870s and the 1880s. So this starts the Oneida community, which refers to what exactly? What does that name come from? Well, it was property owned by the Oneida tribe in upstate New York, in this sort of central western New York. And that was the name that it was taken. The community

actually started in Vermont and Putney, Vermont, but they were forced to leave because there was a threat of imprisonment for fornication. So the leader fled. The Monters do not like to fornicate. That's always been the case. Well, another part of the interesting story, but the leader, John Humphrey-Noy's, was Rutherford B. Hayes' first cousin fled Vermont and started bunking with a follower in upstate New York named Jonathan Byrd. And he found out about this property that was available. And so he purchased this property and then summoned his followers. And in 1848, they created the Oneida community, which expanded to maybe 300 members at its peak. Right. This is the time of the burned over district, which is what they call this western part of New York at the time,

strange term, but it really refers to the religious quality of the times, really. There's so many movements, the Mormons being the most famous, of course, but then there's the Oneidas, there's others. It's all over the place. What made New York such a hotbed of revivalism? No, I kind of think about it as maybe Berkeley in the 1960s. It was a place of westward expansion, you know, people from Vermont, from Massachusetts. The next kind of open space they went to was New York, upstate New York. From there, they went across. else the Great Lakes to the Midwest. I guess the Erie Canal had everything to do with it, right? I mean, you had all these communities. Yeah, in the 1820s, the Erie Canal for sure. But it was the

whole anti-slavery movement took off there. Feminism took off there. All of these religious impulses, the Shakers, the Mormons, everything took place in upstate New York. But really, it was more than just upstate New York. It was a national phenomenon that was happening after the American revolution because the revolution had crumbled politics and governmental structures, but also social and religious structures. And so it was just a clear field. So as Americans were moving west, it was a blank slate. And Emerson, the great philosopher Emerson, said, every reading man has a draft of a new community in his pocket. It was completely carte blanche. You could just kind of create the society that you wanted. Now, John Humphrey-Noise, who created the Oneida community,

grew up absolutely terrified of women, believe it or not. And so the only way he could cope was to declare that he was perfect and God's messenger on earth. And he created this community where he could do absolutely no wrong and had access to every woman in the community who he wanted, created his own world. I will just add that Oneida was one of more than 70 utopian communities that emerged in the United States in the wake of the revolution. So this was not a lot of a solo phenomenon. I suppose it's a vacuum into which great deal of egos can spread their wings, and John Henry Noyes would be one of them. But what were the tenants of this group that through free love to each other, we were realizing God's dream on earth, or what was the deal?

Yeah, well, John Humphrey Noyes laid it all out and actually publicized his sexual theories widely in newspapers and the annual reports that he published. But lovemaking in Oneida was considered a refined skill that was actually going to take its place among the fine arts. Oh. Ranking above music, painting, and sculpture. I mean, that's how specific it was. And it required training, like any art, you know, mastery of any art. So it was the duty of the oldest, most trusted members to teach the youngest.

So men as old as 60 would initiate the young girls and boys were intimately tutored by women past menopause. And sex, according to noise, was a sacrament. It was the most exquisite method of communing with God and Christ. This was all within a religious contest. Primitive Christianity was how they termed it. And group marriage, he preached, was actually commanded by Jesus and the Apostles. So it was a very unique theology, but it definitely attracted a lot of followers. Into this community comes Charles Gito, but he's not welcomed.

He's basically kicked out, right? And this begins, would you say, his descendency? Well, it was clear from his behavior at the Oneida community. It was clear to everybody else, all of his fellow communards, that he was off. He left the community, supposedly to start this religious newspaper when he was 23 years old with no experience, whatever. Editors, printers, writers, just laughed him away. And so he went back and begged to be readmitted to the community. And then finally, in 1866, he left permanently. He didn't have a place. But he started getting drawn to politics when Horace Greeley ran for president in 1872. And he had actually asked Greeley for a job on his newspaper, the New York Tribune and had been rejected. But in 1872, when Greeley became a candidate for president, Gatot came up with this bizarre idea that by working on Greeley's campaign, really would absolutely win, no question about it, and he would be so grateful to Charles Gatot that he would reward him with an appointment

as a foreign minister. Now, this is a guy who, you know, had absolutely no qualifications for any position like that, but he was obsessed with this. And he actually wrote a speech for Horace Greeley, which he managed to give a rally or two in New York. He got laughed at when he gave the speech. It was just ridiculous stuff. But he was obsessed with this idea. Anyway, At the end of the day, the election of 1872, Greeley was running against Grant. Grant crushed Greeley, and then shockingly, greedly died just three weeks after the election in an absolutely tragic way, which I get into it in the book. It was very bizarre. He died even before the electoral college votes had been counted. And then all of a sudden, Kato's plan was, well, what is my plan has absolutely been.

A lost soul without direction. Exactly. But he had a fallback. and he told an acquaintance that he was going to pursue a different path to fame. He was going to shoot some of our public men, he said. So even back in 1872, this was in his mind. And back when he was in the Oneida community, he was sure that he was going to replace John Humphrey-Noyce as the leader of the Oneida community and that he was also going to be president of the United States.

So his ego was maniacally inflated. So that was kind of his mindset. And so when James Garfield became the nominee for president in 1880, Guteau had been spending four years as a threadbare itinerant preacher and, you know, just leaving town whenever his boarding bills came due. I mean, he never paid for anything. All of a sudden, he lit on politics again. And he thought, in the same plan for Greeley, if I work on Garfield's campaign, he's going to be so indebted to me that he's going to appoint me as a foreign minister. He rewrote his speech for Greeley. as a campaign speech for James Garfield.

And that started the whole thing. I had read about his work, of course, in Garfield, but I didn't know that it was a repeat act, you know, that this was a second act of what he had begun under Greeley. That's so interesting. Well, that it's largely overlooked. Right. I mean, these people, it's so awful with history and presidential assassins. We have to sort of dive into these misfit characters as if they're more important.

And they get what they want in the end. They get the grandiosity. unfortunately, that's what they were looking for in the first place. It's true. I mean, Ghetto said, I will be famous in this world, and he was right. So one night Garfield and Gatot give a speech at the same event. Is that correct? It's unbelievable, really.

I mean, what happened was after the Republican National Convention, the Republican National Committee gathered at the Fifth Avenue Hotel in New York, and Gatow shows up, and he shows up with this rewritten, really speech, rewritten for Garfield, and he's showing it to everybody and he's hobnobbing it. Everybody's very, very polite to him. Polite to him. And he actually is invited to give a speech in front of thousands of people at a tortulet rally on Fifth Avenue on the balcony. He's the last speaker.

He's on the balcony with James Garfield and all of these other dignitaries. And it's just, it's incredible. I mean, the New York Times reported it. It is there. Charles Gattow from Illinois. Yeah. But very unkempt and almost certainly mentally ill at this point, right? Right.

But, you know, people were, as I say, were very polite to him. And perhaps for them, he represented the common man. And so they slotted him in as the last speaker in front of thousands. Well, no wonder he thinks he's in the door. I mean, he's standing on the podium with a man right after. It's incredible. Yes. So when this process begins of getting these offices filled, I almost understand his feelings.

I'm especially in the mind of a mentally ill man, why I should be an office seeker. I should do this. So at what point does he start lining up for one of those jobs? He wants to be the consul de France, right? The foreign minister to Paris, yes. Yeah. And so after the inauguration, he goes to Washington and he starts lining up at the White House. And as I say, he was actually ushered into Garfield's office at one point and presented a copy of a speech with the words Paris consulate scrawled on top of it. And I think Garfield had no one. idea who this person was and what he was dealing with. But this is what presidents had to deal with. It was just the worst part of the office. And Garfield would complain in his diary. It's like,

oh, my God, if only these office seekers would leave me alone so I could actually focus on policy. I mean, this is why I wanted to be president of the United States. He's got cabinet officers fronting him. James Blaine is his secretary of state to be, right? Well, yes. But it was still the president's job, believe it or not, to approve individuals for, you know, hundreds of government posts. It's very hard for us to grok that today. But that's that way it was. And it was just, it was the bane of grants existence as well. I mean, it was just a horrible, horrible thing. But I did read that Blaine was the one who says to Gatot, no way, get out of here. You're not getting this job, right? Yeah. So what happened was Gatot was showing up at the White House every two days,

every three days. They knew him there. I mean, he was a very, very familiar face. And finally, in March, they told him that they had sent his consulship application to the State Department. So Gatotot started haunting the State Department day after day after day, asking to speak to Secretary of State James Blaine. And Blaine managed to avoid him for the most part, but one day, he managed to corner Blaine and ask him about an appointment as the consul to Paris. And Blaine just said, look, don't ever mention this to me again. I mean, this is just not going to happen. Well, Gatot was deeply offended by this, and it was at that point that he began formulating a plan to assassinate James Garfield because he considered Chester Arthur an ally.

James Blaine was his enemy now, okay? And James Blaine and Garfield were, you know, thick as thieves. So he thought that by removing Garfield, he would also be removing Blaine, Chester Arthur, his buddy, would become president and would become obviously so grateful to Gatot for enabling him to get elevated to that office that he would, you know, make everything wonderful. Get him out of jail, among other things. So that's how it all started. I'll be back with more American history after this short break. In the midst of all of this, Gatot really sees a higher calling for himself, doesn't he? These kinds of minds, this conspiratorial mindset,

starts working and connecting dots, and he's going to fix a bigger problem, isn't he? It's so funny because I think of Gatot as sort of Fun House mirror image of what the American mindset was, or sort of the American male mindset was in those days. So many people had this aspiration to do great, grand things because it was possible for the first time, right? So James Garfield wanted to live a life, he said, with Thunny's. in it. Harz Grieley went from literally rags to riches to become, well, maybe not riches, but to becoming, you know, the most powerful newspaper publisher in the country. Well, Gatot had that same aspiration, but it was so twisted. It was really a fun house mirror image of it.

So he did want to have an impact. He wanted his name literally to go thundering down the ages. He said that. So he was very characteristic of the time. Yes, very grand also. But it does reflect the culture. I mean, coming out of the civil war, coming out of a depression, which was the 1870s, terrible depression, suddenly there's a new spirit in this land and people are grabbing on and thinking, oh, this is my moment. I'm sure whole generations are coming up that way. But there is a split in the Republican Party, right, that he kind of identifies and might have an effect on in his mind. Well, yes, and it has a lot to do with power brokers like a man named Roscoe Conkling, who also actually came from the Oneida area in upstate New York.

He became under President Grant. He became the most powerful power broker in the U.S. legislature as a senator. Grant gave him power over the New York Custom House, which was the richest source of patronage in the country. So, for example, whoever controlled the custom. House controlled thousands of political jobs, which they dispensed to their supporters. Now, they could rally those supporters to campaign for them to do. It was a political army that they could muster at will. And Conkling absolutely did that. Now, Conkling's deputy was Chester Arthur. Okay. So Chester Arthur was completely tied into this corrupt system of political

patronage centered in New York, in the New York Custom House. And Chester Arthur becomes through all the chess playing of Republican politics, James Garfield's vice president. So within the office of presidency, we have the two factions of the Republican Party. That's right. You have James Garfield, who was very much against that kind of cronyism, and Chester Arthur, who was the symbol of that cronyism. Absolutely, they represented the split in the Republican Party. And Charles Gatot would fix the whole thing. Yes.

by finally acting on his original plan, which was to shoot one of these great public men and fix the problem with the Republican Party. Was he really getting that specific? Oh, yeah, absolutely. You know, I talked about newspapers, how they were the Internet of the era and then just revolutionized life in the United States. Well, Gatot was a newspaper fanatic. And when they caught him or when he finally, he surrendered to police basically after the shooting, he had more than 50 newspaper clippings on his. body. So, I mean, he followed every detail very, very closely. He was very, very up to date about all the politics. He's that Mel Gibson character in that Julia Roberts movie, isn't he? He's the guy who's

sitting around at night figuring it all out. It's very much that strange mental illness, isn't it? Well, also, he was very smart. You know, he was also, he had managed to get himself a law degree. He had been a practicing lawyer for a time in Chicago before he was, more or less, kicked out of the profession. But he was not a dumb guy. Garfield was shot at the B&O railroad station in Washington, D.C. What was he doing there and where was he going at the time? This to me is one of the saddest parts of this story because the whole first three, four months of his presidency, he was just absolutely at war about this rift in the Republican Party. He was being absolutely crippled by Conkling and his crew. They wouldn't.

let him appoint who he wanted as cabinet members. It was just a horrible wrestling match. And by July, Garfield had put it all to rest. He had won. Actually, Conkling had resigned from the Senate. I mean, the field was clear finally for him to actually do something as president. And in the meantime, his wife, Lucretia, had been really gravely ill with malaria. She had almost died. And so he was also coping with that. She was finally better. And on July 2nd, he was about to start a month-long vacation away from Washington. And he was so happy.

His personal steward at the White House was talking about how he'd never been so cheerful. And actually, he literally did a handspring over a bed in a bedroom in the White House in front of his two sons. They couldn't believe it. He was over 200 pounds. And he managed to pull this up. But that was his mood as he went. Went to catch the 930 train to take him off on the first leg of this vacation. Wow.

He was going to see his alumni friends from Williams College, wasn't he? That was part of it. But basically, he was going to be away from Washington for the whole month. Lucretia was going to join him. She was on the Jersey Shore at the time. And she had recovered from her horrible illness. Things were finally looking good. Wow.

And he gets to the railroad station, James Blaine, his secretary of state, and dear friend picks him up at the White House, personally drives the carriage, chummy, chummy, talking, having a wonderful morning. They get to the station. He gets, Garfield gets out of the carriage, you know, has a few jolly words with the policeman, asking how long we have before the train takes off. James Blaine accompanies him into the station. They walk through, and Gatot is waiting there.

And Gatot shoots him two times. Right in the back. In the back, yeah. That was the blow that proved fatal, not because of the shot, but because of what the doctors did. But anyway, 10 weeks later, Garfield dies of that. Exactly. I do want to talk about the length of his death, which goes on for months. It's a fascinating conversation.

But let me just take one last look at Gatot prior to this assassination. He had gone so far as to buy a gun that he knew would look good in a museum. I learned that fact correctly. It was a British bulldog, yes. I mean, he is playing out this entire grandiosity, you know, right to the end, knowing that he will then become famous as a result. But did he have hopes that someone would come in and rescue him? Was his plan going to work at that moment as far as he was concerned? Oh, yeah. He was very confident of it. And in fact, he had actually visited the jail where he knew he was going to go. And he thought it actually was pretty good. And he'd be given three meals a day. So he was all over that. That was great. He actually. gained quite a bit of weight in his first few months at the jail because he was eating so well. This was a guy who, you know, as I say, never paid his boarding bills. He just, you know, he was very hand to mouth. We will come back to Charles Gatot in a moment to find out his fate.

But let's discuss this very strange episode of how Garfield is treated, medically treated, and then finally dies. This all becomes a matter of sepsis, isn't it? Yes. The doctor's who attended him did not believe in Lister's advice. And so they were all about trying to find the bullet. So they were plunging their dirty fingers into his wounds. Okay. But he shot twice, right? He shot twice, yeah. How were they not fatal? I mean, where did they land? You know, honestly, if they had just left him alone, he would have recovered. Oh, really? It was, yeah, it didn't sever his spine. It was near his spine, but it really didn't affect anything that was very important. And when they did the autopsy, I mean, they just found it embedded in scar tissue

near his spine. So he would have been okay. But it was the infection caused by the doctors who were attending him, caused him to die. So you mentioned Lister. This is the 1880s. How much is known about bacteria and all of that? I'm not an expert in this, but I believe it was all new stuff. I mean, knew enough that doctors in New York weren't sold that this was. Right. But it was in the news. It It was in the news. The doctors were talking about it. And would there have been an argument about this in the White House? You should do this. You should do that. And people weren't taking the advice. No, because there was a particular doctor, Dr. William Bliss, who took charge of the whole thing, took charge of it beginning at the railroad station and certainly at the White House, and he pretty much fired all the other doctors. And nobody, nobody said, Bliss, you take charge of this.

He self-appointed himself. He had known Garfield briefly in Ohio. So he somehow or other believed that he had an advantage over the others. But he was the one who determined all of his care and determined what role everybody else was going to play. And no, he was not following Lister's advice. Garfield gets stronger and then he fades. And there's a whole roller coaster ride through these months, isn't there? Yeah, yeah. At first, everybody thought he was going to die right away. But then he rallied and his appetite came back and he was eating lamb chops and people were very optimistic. And then toward the end of the summer, he just started falling apart. And I think the infection started taking over. And so they moved, they decided to move him from Washington, D.C., move him from the White

House to the Jersey Shore because he was always very soothed by the beach and the waves, but also it was considered it a much healthier environment for him because malaria was just rampant in Washington. Behind the White House, it was just vile. It was mudflats that were terrible. If you don't die, if you're not dying from the fingers probing your bullet wound, then a glass of water might kill you. Or the smell, the smell, literally. And of course, I don't know if you've been to Washington, D.C. in the middle of summer or the end of summer. But wow.

And there was no air conditioning. So it was an act of kindness to get him to the Jersey shore. But of course, transporting him was just this Herkulean effort. There's an odd episode where Alexander Graham Bell comes to the White House, right? And brings his new machine that can actually detect metal and swears that he can find the bullet. This was big news, right? This was being tracked in the newspapers. This was the headline of the day. Well, it was, you know, it was another really interesting side story in this, in this whole journey. Yes, he developed a prototype of a metal detector, came to the White House, tried to find

the bullet with this device. He couldn't find it. And Candice Millard's book, Destiny of the Republic really focuses on that part of the story. But, you know, there are many, many interesting pieces to this whole saga. So had not these doctors kept sticking their dirty fingers into that wound, the body could have healed itself. And we would have James Garfield, possibly a two-term president. Well, I think that's the consensus. He would have survived the shooting. Yes. Amazing. All right. The title of your book connotes the fact that there is a real tie between this social milieu that Gitton is drawn to and his family is as well and the events of his life. Is that a fair relationship or is it really a two-part story like that?

It's a two-part story, but you know, the book is about the assassination of James Garfield. It's also about the utopian experiments that happened in the early and mid-19th century. But it's really a lens into this time that I think. think is largely forgotten by American historians and certainly by, we don't learn about this time in school, right? Right. It's rarely taught in colleges. And it's an absolutely fascinating time full of spiritualism and utopian experiments.

And, I mean, the United community not only had their sex cult, but they were also the first eugenics experiment in the United States. So there was so much to this era. Horace Greeley and the rise of newspapers and Horace Greeley's best friend, believe it or not, was P.T. Barnum. And so that whole showmanship and hocksterism, all of this took root in the American character in those days. And these are just all stories that I weave together in this port. It's really a portrait of an era. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I can't help but think it's like a blank canvas of America had suddenly appeared. You know, and people are like painting a new nation onto this canvas for various reasons, largely,

as I say, economically probably, but also coming out of the war. There was just a brand new generation, I'm sure, not unlike the 60s where you had the baby boom. All of this kind of cultural and generational brew was at hand. And utopian communities were, they seem to always pop up at times like this, don't think? Yeah, they do. But I think we forgot that this was a hotbed. Exactly. And we're speaking so negatively, but I mean, as you mentioned before, you end up with women's rights.

you end up with all kinds of, certainly abolition had already, you know, taken hold and happened. And much of that happens in New York for all kinds of economic reasons probably, but culturally it was all sort of happen in there. And that's what really spirits the nation forward towards an age of progressivism, which is right around the corner. A lot of that was taking root at this time. So for better or worse, that's what we're talking about here.

Let's discuss what the fate of Charles Goteau. He is tried in November 1881, hard to defend this act. Yeah, and he was hanged in June 1882. Well, but he pleased insane, right? He pleases insanity. Yeah, yeah. His brother-in-law was his official attorney during the trial, but he controlled it. He was, and very weirdly, I mean, he would just gesticulate and expostulate in court.

I mean, he was like a crazy monkey in the courtroom. So the newspapers were having kind of a field day with that. It was a very, very closely watched trial, of course. I'm sure. brought in the Oneida community and figured the Oneida community as a potential cause of his dementia. So there was testimony from John Hoppernoy's, and there were side stories about that as well. Yes, a certain Victorianism, I'm sure, took hold there. People have sex, shoot presidents, something like that. Yes.

And he is hanged in June the following years. Is that right, June of 1882? And so ends this very sad tale. but a really fascinating, amazing lens, as you say, into this milieu that this man was born from, but also this political culture that had really started to finally refine itself and order itself under these presidencies. I encourage all to read this book. I can't wait to give it at Christmas or something. I just like these kinds of stories that take us into these presidential histories, but also the cultural times that they're in. We have been speaking with best-selling author, Susan Wells, and the recently, published book of hers we've discussed is called an assassin in Utopia, the true story of a 19th century

sex cult and a president's murder. A true crime honesty, if ever there is, much celebrated in all the right circles, a kaleidoscopic romp, says the New York Times. And that's just the tip of the iceberg, if you will. She's also written books about Titanic and many others. The Olympics I'm interested by. Where can readers read more about you, Susan? Well, I have a website, susanwellsauthor.com. I have a Facebook page, Susan Wells author, so all of those sources.

Well, it's been a great pleasure to meet you. Thank you so much. Thank you. I hope you enjoyed this episode of American History Hit. Please remember to like, review, and subscribe. Follow us wherever you get your podcasts. And I'll see you next time.