"Charles Guiteau" is a traditional song about the assassination of President James A. Garfield by Charles Guiteau. For a while, it was believed that Guiteau wrote the song himself, possibly because of the poem "I am Going to the Lordy", which Guiteau actually did write on the day of his execution. The song is modelled very closely on the ballad of James A. Rogers who washanged for murder in New York City in 1858. Except for the name of the criminal and the location the first verses of both songs are almost identical. Guiteau was a lawyer who wrote a speech about James Garfield during his campaign in 1880. When Garfield was elected, Guiteau insisted that he be awarded with an ambassadorship in Paris. When he was denied, he shot President Garfield at the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station on July 2, 1881. Garfield died from his wounds on September 19th. The song is included in the Roud Collection as #444. It was recorded by Bascom Lamar Lunsford, Kelly Harrell (this recording was included in the Anthology of American Folk Music), Ramblin' Jack Elliot and others. It was printed in Alan Lomax's Folk Songs of North America. I learned it from the Anthology and Lomax's Folk Songs of North America.