HEADQUARTERS ARMY OF THE UNITED STATES,
WASHINGTON, Aug. 29, 1881.
Dear Brother: The
President is sensibly better to-day, and all the friends and family feel
encouraged. If to-morrow he be on the upward mend I shall go to New York, New
London, Worcester, and Boston, to be gone ten days, but if you have occasion to
write, the letter will be forwarded. But you may be sure that I shall be here
in case of necessity. The Cabinet desire that the prisoner, Guiteau, be
regularly tried by the courts. We can defend the jail against the world, unless
there be treachery. But when the time comes to take him from the jail to the
court-house we cannot use soldiers, for the law prohibits their use as a posse
comitatus. I apprehend no violence here even if the President dies, but sooner
or later Guiteau will die. The feeling is too universal for him ever to escape.
SOURCE: Rachel
Sherman Thorndike, Editor, The Sherman Letters: Correspondence Between
General and Senator Sherman from 1837 to 1891, p. 352-3
