Democratic Sentinel, Volume 5, Number 52, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 January 1882 — Guiteau’s Suppressed Speech. [ARTICLE]

Guiteau’s Suppressed Speech.

Guiteau, the assassin, furnished the Abbociated Press with a brief of his proposed address to the jury. It is like his usual drivel about the Deity having inspired the dastardly act. It is a combination of bombast, egotism and Mbspnemy. He starts . out by saying: “If the court please, gentlemen of the jury, I am a patriot To-day I suffer in bonds as a patriot. Washington was a patriot; Grant was a patriot Washington led the armies of the Revolution through eight years of bloody war to victory and glory; Grant led the armies of the Union to victory and glory; and to-day the nation is prosperous and happy. To-day—Christmas, 1881—I suffer in bonds s a patriot because I had the-inspiration and nerve to unite a great political party, to the end that the nation might be saved from anothet devastating war. To-day I suffer in bonds as a patriot. There is not the first element of murder in this case.” After harping at considerable tength upon the old plea of inspiration, quoting Beecher, Talmage and other and declaring that wen he became President in 1884 he would clean out the Mormons -right speedily, fee closes thus to the jury: “To hang a man in my mental condition on July 2, when I fired on the President, would be a lasting disgrace to the American people. The mothers and daughters of the republic are praying that you wdl Vindicate my inspiration. I beg you do not get»the Deity down on you by meddling with this case. I beg, for your own sake; and for the sake of the American people, ana for the sake of generations yet unborrifthat you let this case alone. You cannot afford to toficft' ItA Let your verdict be that it was DeityM act, not mine. When the President was shot his Cabinet telegraphed to foreign nations that it was the ict of a ‘madman?’and it will be far better in every way that it be* officially decided that it was the act of a 'rnadtnaiL'”