An Assassin in Utopia: A Book Review

An Assassin in Utopia: The True Story of a Nineteenth-Century Sex Cult and a President’s Murder, is one of those “you can’t make this stuff up” historical episodes, well documented and engagingly told by Susan Wels.

In 1881, Charles Julius Guiteau, considered a certifiable “lunatic” (possibly schizophrenic in modern terms) shot President James Garfield. He lingered in pain for ten weeks, and died. Guiteau was apprehended and jailed immediately following the shot, and a trial occurred some months later. He was found guilty and hung despite a plea of insanity (reasonable) by his legal counselor, a family member. (Americans in 1881 had no sympathy for presidential assassins.)

And herein lies the connection between Guiteau (the assassin) and the Oneida Community (utopia).

During the first half of the 19th Century, a wide range of ministries, collectives and cultish-communities began cropping up in pristine idyllic settings, promising a new Garden of…