I am Going to the Lordy I am Going to the Lordy "I am Going to the Lordy" is a poem written by Charles J. Guiteau, the assassin of U.S. President James A. Garfield. He wrote it on June 30, 1882, the morning of his execution. He read it at the gallows. "I am Going to the Lordy" was used as a base for the song "The Ballad of Guiteau" in the Stephen Sondheim musical "Assassins", where Guiteau sings a version of the song while cakewalking up and down the scaffold. On 30 June 1882, the day of the execution of Guiteau for the assassination of
James A. Garfield on a more modest scale than Garfield and Hunt had envisioned, ultimately ending in the construction of the Squadron of Evolution. Garfield was shot by Charles J. Guiteau, a disgruntled office seeker, at the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station in Washington, D.C. on July 2, 1881. After eleven weeks of intensive and other care Garfield died in Elberon, New Jersey, the second of four presidents to be assassinated, following Abraham Lincoln. Guiteau had followed various professions in his life, but in 1880 had determined to gain federal office by supporting what he expected would be the winning Republican ticket. He