I am Going to the Lordy grip on reality." Howard Kissel said that "The Ballad of Guiteau" was one of the oddest songs of "Assassins" due to the use of the poem. 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
Charles J. Guiteau Arbor, Michigan, in order to attend the University of Michigan. Due to inadequate academic preparation, he failed the entrance examinations. Despite cramming in French and algebra at Ann Arbor High School, during which time he received numerous letters from his father concerning his progress, he quit, and in June 1860 joined the utopian religious sect the Oneida Community, in Oneida, New York, with which Guiteau's father already had close affiliations. According to Brian Resnick of "The Atlantic", Guiteau "worshiped" the group's founder, John Humphrey Noyes, once writing that he had "perfect, entire and absolute confidence in him in all things".