Austin Abbott

Austin Abbott (December 18, 1831-April 19, 1896) was a lawyer and academic. He is probably best remembered as being the government counsel in the trial of Charles J. Guiteau for the assassination of President James Garfield. He was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1831. He graduated from New York University in 1851. The following year, he was admitted to the bar and became a partner in the legal firm Abbott Bros., a firm he stayed with through 1870. He married Ella E. D. Gilman in 1854. He assisted commissioners in preparing the codes of New York in 1865. In 1881, he took the case against Guiteau and won. The case was one of the first highly publicized uses of the insanity defense in the United States. He would later become the dean...