Democratic Sentinel, Volume 6, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 February 1882 — THE ASSASSIN. [ARTICLE]

THE ASSASSIN.

The Death-Sentence PaMed Upon the Aeaiawin. In the Criminal Court at Washington, on Saturday, Feb. 4, Judge Cox overruled the motion for a new trial in the case of the murderer of President Garfield. Scoville thereupon filed a motion in arrest of judgment Judge Cox then asked the assassin if he had aught to say why sentence should not be passed upon him. The prisoner arose, pale, but with lips compressed, and desperate determination stamped upon his features, In a low and deliberate tone he began, but soon his manner became wild and violent, and. pounding upon the table, he delivered himself of the following harangue: I am not guilty of the charge set forth in the indictment. It was God’s act, not mine, and God will take care of it, and don’t let the American people forget it He will take care of it and of every officer of this Government, from the Executive down to that Marshal, taking in every man on that jury, and every member of this bench will pay for it, and the American nation will roll in blood if my body goes into the ground and lam hung. The Jews put the despised Galilean in the grave. For the time they triumphed, but at the destruction of Jerusalem, forty years afterward, the Almighty sot even yvith them. lam not afraid of death. am here as God’s man. Kill me to-morrow if you want lam God’s man, and I have been from the start.” Judge Cox then proceeded to pass sentencs, addressing the prisoner as follows: “ You have been convicted of a crime so tenable in its circumstances, and so far-reaching in its results, that it has drawn upon you the honor of the whole world and the execrations of your countrymen. The excitement produced by such an offense made it no easy task to secure for you a fair and impartial trial, but you have had the power of the United States treasury and of the Government in your service, to protect your person from violence and to procure evidence from all parts of the country. You have had as fair and impartial a jury as ever assembled in a court of justice. You have been defended by counsel with a zeal and devotion that merits the highest encomium, and I certainly have done my best to secure a fair presentation of your defense. Notwithstanding all this you have been found guilty. It would have been a comfort to many people if the verdict of the jury had established the fact that your act was that of an irresponsible man. It would have left the people a satisfying belief that the crime of political assassination was something entirely foreign to the institutions and civilization of our country; but the result has denied them that comfort The country will accept it as a fact that the crime can be committed, and the court will have to deal with it with the highest penalty known to the criminal code, to serve as an example to others. Your career has been so extraordinary that people might well, at times, have doubted your sanity, but one can not but believe that when the crime was committed you thoroughly understood tne nature of the crime and its consequences ” —[Guiteau —I was acting as God’s man]—“ and that you had moral sense and conscience enough to recognize the moral iniquity of such an act” The Prisoner—That’s a matter of opinion. “Your own testimony shows that you recoiled with' horror from tho idea. You say that you prayed against it. You say that your conscience warned you against it, but by the wretched sophistry of your own mind you worked yourself up against the protest of your own conscience. What motive could have induced you to this act must be a matter of conjecture. Probably men will think that some fanaticism or morbid desire for seif-exaltation was the real inspiration for the act. Your own testimony seems to controvert the theories of your counsel. They have maintained and thought, honestly, I believe, that you were driven against your will by an insane impulse. The testimony showed that you deliberately resolved to do it, and that your deliberate and misguided will was the sole impulse. This may seem insanity to some persons, but the law looks upon it as a willful crime. You will have due opportunity of having any errors I may have committed during the course of trial passed upon by the court in banc ; but, meanwhile, it is necessary for me to pronounce the sentence of the law—that you be taken hence to the common jaU of the District, from whence you came, and there be kept in confinement, and on Friday, the 80th day of June, 1882, you be taken into the place prepared for your execution, within the walls of said jail, and there, between the hours of 12 and 2 p. m., you be hanged by the neck until you are dead, and may the Lord have mercy on vour soul. ” During the reading Guiteau stood apparently unmoved and with his gaze riveted upon the Judge, but when the final words were spoken he struck the table vielently and shouted: “ And may the Lord have mercy on your soul. I’d rather stand where I do than where the jury does, and where your Honor stands. I’m not afraid to die. I stand here as God’s man, and God Almighty will curse every man who has had a part in procuring this unrighteous verdict. Nothing but good has come from Garfield’s removal, and that will be the verdict of posterity on my inspiration. I don’t care a snap for the verdict of this corrupt generation. I would rather a thousand times be in my position than that of those who have hounded me to death. I shall have.a glorious flight to glory, but that miserable scoundrel, Corkhill, will have a permanent job down below, where the devil is preparing for him.” After apparently talking himself out the prisoner turned to his brother and, without the slightest trace of excitement, conversed for some minutes before being taken from the court-room. George Scoville has returned to bls home in Chicago. He will not prepare the appeal papers in the case before March. Guards watch the assassin night and day. Guiteau was vaccinated in the jail on the day that he received his death sentence. A Small-Pox Letter. Deputy Warden Russ was opening Guiteau’s mail in the jail office, when all of a sudden the officials scattered in every direction. The cause of the excitement was the opening of a letter from Marietta, Hl., which contained the following message : “ Here, I send you some small-pox. It is worse than the sentence of Judge Cox. Rub yourself with the scab, and it will surely stop your gab.” In the center of the sheet was pasted something that looked like a black wafer. Mr. Russ at once scratched a match and burned the sheet of paper. “I don’t know,” he said, “but people think these letters go right to Guiteau. His letters have to pass through the inspection officers, and if there is any small-pox virus in them it might spread through the whole jail.” The prisoner’s mail will hereafter be handled very carefully. Mr. Scoville says hehas received four such letters, and has asked the Postmaster General to have his letters examined and fumigated. Mr. Scoville, upon the receipt of the first letter, had himself vaccinated. Guiteau, when he heard about Mr. Scoville’s letters, was very anxious to be vaccinated, ana his wishes were complied with.