Death by Lightning real history: the true story of Charles Guiteau and a president’s assassination

On the morning of 2 July 1881, Charles Guiteau secured his infamous place in American political history when he fired two shots at James Garfield. The 20th President of the United States would die almost three months later. Guiteau’s life was ended the following year, at the end of a rope.

The assassination was Guiteau’s last violent response to a life of not receiving what he thought he deserved from the world. Almost certainly living with an undiagnosed mental health condition, Guiteau failed as a lawyer, journalist, author and preacher; he failed as a husband and as a member of a religious commune; and he failed, risibly, in his foray into politics.

It could be said the only thing he succeeded at was killing the president. And he almost failed in that.

Death by Lightning, a 2025 Netflix four-episode drama starring Matthew Macfadyen as Guiteau and Michael Shannon as Garfield, tells Giteau’s story while acknowledging that, as presidential assassins go, his name is hardly as well known as John Wilkes Booth or Lee Harvey Oswald, killers of Abraham Lincoln and John F Kennedy respectively. The opening line of the series, delivered as Guiteau’s preserved brain rolls across the floor in a jar, sums it up: “Who the f*** is Charles Guiteau?!”

Who was the real Charles Guiteau?

Charles Julius Guiteau had a rough start. Born on 8 September 1841 in Freeport, Illinois, he was the fourth of six children to a mother suffering from psychotic episodes. She died when Charles was seven, and his father was a disciplinarian, and often abusive.

Like the man he later killed, the young Guiteau looked to better his situation through education, only to fail in in his attempt to get into the University of Michigan, stumbling at the entrance exam. Leaving schooling behind, he instead joined a religious sect – the Oneida Community – in New York state in 1860.

Did Charles Giteau join a ‘free love’ commune?

Yes, he did. The Oneida Community believed in the possibility of perfectionism, being totally free of sin on Earth. To that end, they practiced mutual criticism (getting together in groups to berate the sin out of each other), a form of proto-eugenics to ensure only perfect babies were born, and ‘complex marriage’, where anyone could sleep with anyone else.

While Guiteau idolised its founder, John Humphrey Noyes, he never fitted in at Oneida. He begrudged menial labour and could not find pleasure in the free-love doctrine as no one wanted to be his partner. Finding him egotistical, community members called him “Charles Gitout”.

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He obliged, leaving to start a newspaper based on Oneida’s teachings, The Daily Theocrat. It failed, as did his return to his community and his resultant lawsuits against Noyes. By this point, several people described him as “insane”, including his sister Frances who recalled how he once held an axe over his head as if to kill her.

Moving to Chicago, Guiteau managed to take a severely lax exam to be admitted to the bar and married a librarian named Annie Bunn. That did not improve his outlook, though: instead of becoming a lawyer he worked as a bill collector (and stole money from clients, for which he received a stint in jail) and he was abusive to Annie until she sought a divorce.

In 1872, while in New York City, Guiteau showed his first interest in politics by writing a speech in support of a presidential candidate, Horace Greeley. For that alone, he believed he would deserve a reward in the form of an ambassadorial job in Chile.

When that did not work out, Guiteau made a brief return to religion, writing a book titled The Truth, which he essentially copied from Oneida’s literature, and became an itinerant preacher. No one seemed to respond to his rambling sermons, yet he increasingly felt that not only was he doing God’s work, but, after surviving the sinking of a paddle steamer, he had divine protection.

With this unshakeable sense of purpose – a drive which by this point was clearly seen by others as fantasism – Guiteau stepped back into politics.

Did Charles Guiteau meet James Garfield?

It is not known whether the two men met as part of the 1880 presidential election, in which Garfield had won the Republican ticket, although there was no concrete reason that they would have, since Guiteau did not have an active role in the campaign. That was not for want of trying; he constantly and desperately offered his assistance.

This began before Garfield was on the ticket. At the Republican National Convention in 1880, many expected Ulysses S Grant to secure the nomination, given that he had held the office twice already and was the figurehead of the leading faction in the party, the Stalwarts.

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This group advocated the continuation of the ‘spoils system’, a long-established form of patronage whereby government posts were filled by supporters and cronies rather than on merit. Guiteau, harking back to the ambassadorship he felt he had deserved in turn for his support for Greeley, believed he would benefit from the spoils system, so he backed Grant.

He wrote a speech titled ‘Grant against Hancock’ (the Democratic candidate, Winfield Scott Hancock). Except, Guiteau had thrown his support behind the wrong horse; at the convention, Grant failed to get enough votes for the nomination, and Garfield unexpectedly became the compromise candidate.

This turned out not to a problem for Guiteau: he simply revised his speech by changing all the uses of ‘Grant’ to ‘Garfield’ and kept everything else the same. While he may have delivered it to a small group of people and printed a few copies for distribution, that was the extent of his contribution to the 1880 election.

Why did Charles Guiteau assassinate James Garfield?

When Garfield won the presidency, Guiteau became utterly convinced that it had been solely down to his speech. In return, he expected to be given a prestigious post in his administration, and set about asking for a consulship in Vienna, Austria, which he later changed to Paris, France.

Joining the throngs of office seekers in Washington DC, a destitute Guiteau hung around quizzing anyone for an update on what was owed to him. The rest of the time, he snuck between boarding houses without paying. He focused much of his efforts on James Blaine, then the Secretary of State, bothering him regularly. One day in May 1881, an exasperated Blaine reportedly snapped: “Never speak to me again on the Paris consulship as long as you live!”

Devastated, Guiteau came to a realisation: Garfield was out to destroy the spoils system and the only way to save it – and get the Paris job – was to kill him. Garfield’s Vice President, Chester Arthur – a prominent figure in the Stalwarts faction – would take over. More than that, Guiteau concluded that God had told him that Garfield’s “removal” was for the good of the Republican Party and the country.

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When and how did Charles Guiteau assassinate James Garfield?

Borrowing money from a relative, Guiteau bought a short-barrelled British Bulldog revolver, deciding to go for the ivory grip over wood as he thought it would be more attractive when the weapon inevitably became part of a museum exhibit on the assassination.

He tested his aim against trees in Washington’s parks and then began to stalk Garfield. During his trial, it became clear that he backed away from taking a shot on a few occasions, once in a church and on another, so that he would not kill Garfield in front of his wife. Eventually, Guiteau saw his opportunity in the newspaper: the president would be getting a train on 2 July 1881.

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That morning, Guiteau lay in wait at the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station for Garfield and his small entourage. Even after Abraham Lincoln’s assassination 16 years earlier, presidents did not have a security detail, so nobody stopped Guiteau as he approached and fired. One shot grazed Garfield’s arm, while the other hit him in the back.

Guiteau tried to escape, but ran into a policeman. Accepting his arrest, he declared: “I am a Stalwart. Arthur is now President of the United States.”

Garfield survived the attack and may have fully recovered had it not been for the shoddy medical care he received, typified by doctors treating his wound with unsterilised tools and hands. His condition gradually worsened and he died 11 weeks after the assassination, on 19 September 1880. He had been president for just over eight months. All that time, Guiteau waited in prison.

What happened at Charles Guiteau’s trial?

Once Garfield died, Guiteau could be charged with murder, his trial began in November. His brother-in-law George Scoville acted as his defence lawyer and put forward a plea of insanity.

Guiteau certainly gave credence to that defence with his erratic behaviour in court. He interrupted and swore at everyone, including Scoville; delivered his testimony as epic poems; and passed notes to spectators asking for advice.

Yet while he asserted that he had been insane at the moment of shooting – since God had taken away his free will – he insisted that he was not medically insane, to his defence’s chagrin. He ended up agreeing with the prosecution in that he knew his actions to be unlawful.

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Besides, he argued, the responsibility of Garfield’s death should fall to his doctors, not him. “I just shot him,” he said.

When not in court, he dictated his autobiography for The New York Herald, which included a personal ad seeking “a nice Christian lady under 30 years of age”, and started planning what to do after the trial. Guiteau maintained he did the right thing and believed many Americans backed him. He even wrote to Arthur saying he should be grateful for the higher salary now that he was president.

Certain of being released, Guiteau anticipated going on a speaking tour of the country, followed by his run for president in 1884.

Instead, when the trial concluded in late January 1882, the jury took less than an hour to find him guilty, to which he yelled, “You are all low, consummate jackasses!”. Guiteau was sentenced to death by hanging.

When was Charles Guiteau executed?

The execution was carried out on 30 June 1882, two days before the first anniversary of the shooting.

On the scaffold, Guiteau recited a poem he wrote that morning, a rambling verse with the phrases “Glory hallelujah” and “I am going to the Lordy” repeated over and over.

His request for an orchestra to provide musical accompaniment was denied.

What happened to Charles Guiteau’s brain?

Death by Lightning would have us believe that Charles Guiteau’s brain is in a jar somewhere – and this is absolutely true. Parts of it are still on display at the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia, an institution specialising in medical history.

After the hanging, Guiteau’s body was autopsied and his brain sent off for study in the hopes of discovering an anatomical explanation for insanity. His state of mind remains a topic of debate to this day, with diagnoses ranging from syphilis, schizophrenia and psychopathy.

Death by Lightning is streaming on Netflix now. For more content like this, check out the best historical movies of all time as chosen by historians, history TV shows and films to stream tonight, and our picks of the new history TV and radio released in the UK this week.