Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 10.djvu/191

 ouiteau'b oase. 1I9 �According to the testimony of Dr. Strong, he inquired of the defend- ant if he claimed to have had any direct revelation from heaven, and the answer was that he did not believe in any such nonsense. �According to Dr. McDonald, who interviewai the prisoner on the thirteenth of November, he did not then, in terms, speak of his idea of removing the president as an inspiration, but as a conception of his own, and said that, after conceiving the idea, he tried to put it aside; that it was repulsive to him at first; that he waited a week or two, thinking over it and waiting for the Almighty to interfere. He had conceived the idea bimself, but he wished the Almighty to have the opportunity of interfering to prevent its execution; and at the end of two weeks, no interference coming from the Almighty, he formed the deliberate purpose of executing the act, etc. �According to the testimony of Dr. Gray, the prisoner said that he had received no instructions, heard no voice of God, saw no vision in the night, or at any time ; that the idea came into his own mind first, and after thinking over it and reading the papers, when he arrived at the conclusion to do the act, he believed then it was a right act, and was justified by the political situation. �When asked how he could apply this as an instruction from the Deity, he said it was a pressure of the Deity ; that this duty ofdoing it, as he claimed, had pressed him to it. �Again, he said he had not eonnected the Deity with the ineeption and development of the act; that itwas his own. He did not get the inspi- ration until the time came for it, and that the inspiration came when he had reached the conclusion and determination to do the act. �Perhaps the most remarkable of the prisoner's statements to Dr. Gray was that at the very time when he was planning the assassina- tion, he was also devising a theory of insanity whieh should be his def nce, which theory was to be that he believed the act of killing was an inspired act. �Perhaps equally remarkable was the prisoner's theory propounded in this conversation, viz., that he was not medically insane, but legally 80, i. e., irresponsU}le,heG&nse the act waS done withoiit malice. �Finally, on this subject, you have the defendant's own testimony. �He does not profess to have had any visions or direct revelation or distorted conception of facts. �But he says that while pondering over the political situation the idea suddeniy occurred to him that if the president were out of the way the dissensions of his party would be healed; that he read the papers with an eye on the pQssibility of the president's removal, and ��� �