District of Columbia City Hall Scott Key, (1779–1843), and was sentenced to a mental institution. The building was also the site of the 1867 trial of John Surratt, an alleged conspirator in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln who was later acquitted. However, Charles J. Guiteau, the assassin of President James A. Garfield, was convicted at the courthouse in 1882. The Old City Hall was the scene of a fugitive slave trial known as the "Pearl incident," which was the largest single escape by slaves attempted in U.S. history. Two men were convicted in 1848 of attempting to free more than 70 slaves by sailing them
Charles J. Guiteau and distraught after his final encounter with Blaine, he decided the only solution was to remove Garfield and elevate Vice President Chester A. Arthur, an acolyte of Senator Roscoe Conkling, the Stalwart leader who managed Grant's 1880 campaign and was not on friendly terms with Garfield. Guiteau felt that God told him to kill the president; he felt that such an act would be a "removal" as opposed to an assassination. He also felt that Garfield needed to be killed to rid the Republican Party of Blaine's influence. Borrowing $15 from George Maynard, a relative by marriage, Guiteau set out