'Death by Lightning': The Bizarre, True Story of Charles Guiteau and James A. Garfield

The series, created by Mike Makowsky, is based on the 2011 book Destiny of the Republic by Candice Millard, and is rife with political history that’s sometimes stranger than fiction. Did Garfield, a congressman from Ohio, actually earn the Republican nomination on the strength of one rousing speech, meant to lend his support for another candidate? Did Guiteau really join a religious sex cult before becoming obsessed with Garfield’s campaign? And did Chester A. Arthur, Garfield’s frenemy of a vice president played by Nick Offerman, really like sausages that much? Here’s what’s fact and fiction in Death by Lightning. The series begins in 1969, almost 100 years after the deaths of Garfield and Guiteau, when Guiteau’s brain—preserved in a jar—rolls off a shelf in a medical lab and is discovered by employees. While that may sound as though it’s straight out of a science fiction novel, it’s true. After Guiteau was executed on June 30th, 1882, his body was sent to the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Maryland for an autopsy. According to the biography Second Mourning: The Untold Story Of America’s Most Bizarre Murder written by Stephen G. Yanoff, Guiteau’s brain and his enlarged spleen were preserved and kept in museum storage, where they’d remain, for years, collecting dust. Now, portions of Guiteau’s brain sit in a solution of 70% alcohol and 30% water on display at the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia. Other parts of Guiteau’s bizarre and tragic life depicted in Death by Lightning have merit. Throughout the series, his character references a fraught childhood, punctuated by a terrible relationship with his physically abusive father, Luther Wilson Guiteau. Charles J. Guiteau was the fourth of six children, and after his mother died when he was seven, he was primarily raised by his father, and elder sister Franny, played in the series by Paula Malcomson. In the first episode, Franny lovingly recalls an anecdote in which their father would offer them a dime if Guiteau could sit still for five minutes—something the restless boy was unable to do, and, per a journal from the University of Missouri–Kansas City School of Law, actually happened to Guiteau. That restlessness was to blame for Guiteau trying and failing at many endeavors, including attending the University of Michigan, where he dropped out after one year. At the behest of his father, Guiteau joined the Oneida Community, a utopian religious colony founded by John Humphrey Noyes in Oneida, New York. In Death by Lightning, the Oneida Community is portrayed as a Christian religious sex cult, where members lived on a farm, attended bible study, and, most notably, had sex whenever and wherever they want —well, all the members except Guiteau, who was ostracized from the Bible communism community and deemed by the members too strange to fornicate with. In truth, the Oneida Community, which believed that Jesus had returned to earth in 70 AD, coined the concept of “free love,” encouraging members to have relations with any consenting adult, and proposing the very modern idea of “complex marriages” where possessiveness and monogamy were frowned upon. Despite the polyamory of it all, the erratic Guiteau was apparently unpopular with the members of the commune, earning the nickname “Charlie Gitout” (a.k.a. Get Out). He wound up leaving and returning to the Oneida Community twice in 1865 and 1866, eventually filing a lawsuit against Noyes, whom he had previously worshipped, demanding to be compensated for menial labor he had completed while living there. His need for recognition and retribution for acts of service he purportedly had done would be a recurring theme for the increasingly desperate and out of touch Guiteau. While Guiteau was attempting (and failing) to sew his wild oats in upstate New York, Garfield was living a very different life befitting a future president. Born into poverty in rural Ohio in 1831, Garfield would pull himself up by his bootstraps, graduating Phi Beta Kappa from William College, and proving himself something of a war hero as a Union general in the Civil War, commanding troops at the battles of Middle Creek, Shiloh, and Chickamauga, helping to launch his political career. Garfield was elected to Congress in Ohio in 1862 as a Republican, running on a pro-abolition platform that condemned the KKK. (Remember, back then Republicans were the progressives; they were “The Party of Lincoln” who abhorred slavery and secession). In 1858, he met and married his wife Lucretia Garfield, played in the series by Betty Gilpin, with whom he’d have seven children. According to Death by Lightning, Garfield had no major aspirations for higher office, but fell into the top spot at the 1880 Republican National Convention in Chicago through a combination of talent and timing, delivering a powerful speech in support for his fellow Ohio Senator John Sherman’s bid for the presidency. According to Dark Horse: The Surprise Election and Political Murder of President James A. Garfield by Kenneth D. Ackerman, Garfield did accidentally nab the nomination spot due in part to a virtuosic speech, delivered extempore, detailing the qualities he believed a president should have before pledging his support for Sherman at the very end of the speech. Garfield apparently protested the votes that he received at first, but Sherman and his supporters suspected that the humble Ohio senator always secretly had higher aspirations for himself. “[Garfield] has been of no service to you,” read a telegraph Sherman received, Ackerman wrote. “He was extremely lukewarm in his support.” Garfield infamously had tepid feelings for his running mate, Chester A. Arthur, collector of the Port of New York and deeply embedded in the New York political corruption ring led by Senator Roscoe Conkling, played by Shea Whigham. On Death by Lightning, Offerman plays Arthur as a bit of a buffoon and a lush, ill–equipped for the Vice Presidential post, and always looking for a sausage. There’s no historical indication that Arthur was as obsessed with sausages as Death by Lightning suggests, but the portly Arthur was known to be a bit of a gourmand, whose favorite food was actually mutton chops. Despite being on opposite sides of their party, Garfield and mutton chop-loving Arthur joined forces and won the presidential election in 1880. But Garfield’s meteoric rise to the nation’s top office would be cut short by Charles J. Guiteau a little more than three months into his presidency. On July 2nd, 1881, Guiteau shot President Garfield twice at the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station in Washington, D.C. Guiteau believed that he had been instrumental in Garfield winning the 1880 election, and, as such, was owed a diplomatic position somewhere in Europe, pinpointing France in part because of his French Huguenot ancestry. After stalking Garfield and his cabinet for months attempting to gain their attention and respect, the deluded Guiteau resorted to shooting the president, with one bullet grazing his arm and the other lodging in his back. But it wasn’t Guiteau’s bullet that killed Garfield, rather a far more preventable medical condition: sepsis. Garfield was taken to the White House where his wound was repeatedly reopened as doctors, led by Doctor Willard Bliss, tried to remove the bullet from his back. He survived for 11 weeks, but his condition worsened. By the end, Garfield was having consistent hallucinations and was given nutrient enemas because he was no longer able to digest food. As portrayed on Death by Lightning, Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone, did drop by the White House to try and find the lodged bullet with a metal detector he invented, but it malfunctioned in part because Garfield was lying on a metal bed frame, and because Dr. Bliss only allowed to check Garfield’s right side. Garfield died on Monday, September 19, 1881 in Long Branch, NJ. His cause of death was sepsis due to infection from the use of unsterilized surgical instruments trying to locate the bullet. Many physicians believe that Garfield would have survived had proper sterilization measures been taken, which were already used in Europe. “It was the most horrific death you can imagine,” wrote Millard in her biography. “He was riddled with infection and, when they did the autopsy, there were huge gouges. The fingers had created these burrowing holes through him and they were filled with pus and infection. He lost so much weight and was horribly dehydrated. He almost certainly would have survived had it not been for his doctors.” Guiteau’s end was no more merciful. He went on trial on November 7th, 1881, represented by his brother in law, George Scoville, and garnered attention for his bizarre behavior—insulting his defense attorney, and claiming that he was innocent because God demanded that he assassinate the president. According to Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell, Guiteau’s trial was one of the first major trials to seriously consider the innocent by reasons of insanity defense. Ultimately, Guiteau was convicted on January 25, 1882 and sentenced to death by hanging. Guiteau stubbed his toe on the way up to the gallows on June 30, 1882, two days before the anniversary of the shooting. He then recited a musical poem he wrote, “I Am Going To The Lordy,” (further musicalized in Stephen Sondheim’s musical Assassins) before dropping to his death. "Assassination can no more be guarded against than Death by Lightning," MacFadyen says as Garfield, shortly before his death. While it sounds eerily prescient, Garfield did actually write that very sentiment in a letter, unaware of the fate that would befall him. But at least he wasn’t living his life in fear of the outcome: “And it is best not to worry about either," he added.