McKinley was a popular president due to his success in the Spanish-American War. However, due to the war, his plans to visit the exposition had been postponed for a while, until September that year. The exposition boasted a tall electric tower powered by Niagara Falls, which was quite a sight to behold. McKinley's eagerness to visit and hold a reception there was highly questioned by his aides, who thought he was unnecessarily exposing himself to danger. Unfortunately, McKinley went through with his visit, a costly and ultimately fatal mistake, even though his personal secretary had tried to cancel it twice.
After the reception, McKinley stood in front of a line of visitors, greeting them one by one with a warm and genuine smile and his famous handshake. He was beloved by the people, and was so confident that he had actually mentioned that he thought no one would hurt him during the reception. Czolgosz was in the line though, hiding his gun under his right hand and pretending to have a disability or injury. This fooled McKinley's chief bodyguard George Foster, and when Czolgosz reached the front of the line, it fooled McKinley himself. When McKinley reached out to shake the left hand of his soon-to-be assassin, Czolgosz thrust his right hand toward the chest of the president and fired two quick shots. McKinley, still an unselfish man even in the face of death, staggered towards a chair and told his guards to be careful about how they told his wife about what happened. He also told them not to hurt Czolgosz and be easy with him.
It turned out that one of the bullets had penetrated McKinley's abdomen. He underwent surgery about an hour after the shooting, and he seemed to progress daily. However, gangrene had been forming along the path of the bullet within him, and medicine at the time was not equipped to deal with it. As a result, the president passed away on September 14th, eight days after his assassin fired the bullets.
The country was in shock, and many citizens called for Czolgosz's head. Thousands gathered around his prison transport in a mob. Soon after, Czolgosz confessed to the crime, saying it was because he believed McKinley had too much service, but the people still got what they wanted. Leon Czolgosz was sentenced to death by electrocution, and was executed six weeks after he killed the president.
As it so happened to be, McKinley's former running mate and vice president Theodore Roosevelt was sworn in as president, becoming the youngest man ever to hold that position. Although the means by which he became president was awful, Roosevelt set the standard for what a president should be in the 1900's, and went on to have a profound impact during his presidency.
The President on his way to the reception, just minutes before being shot.
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It's always the most popular presidents that get assassinated. JFK, Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley all were very popular amongst most people yet the minority hated these figures so much that they murdered them. It's unfortunate that McKinley didn't take the proper security precautions that would have saved his life. Czolgosz's motivation for killing McKinley was the fact that he had lost his job and turned to a political ideology known as anarchism. This assassination demonstrates that there is never a president that is loved by all.
ReplyDeletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_William_McKinley
I thought this post was very informative. I wanted to do some more in-depth research on the motive behind Czolgosz's decision to murder Mckinley. While he was working in a wire mill, wages were cut, and soon after he was fired. He became more radical after he started learning about anarchists such as Gaetano Bresci. He felt that Mckinley was oppressive and against the working class. He also believed that the government was corrupt.
ReplyDeleteSource:
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/mckinley-assassin-is-executed
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Leon-Czolgosz
I found the post very in-depth and easy to read. I was particularly interested by the end of the post when you mentioned Teddy Roosevelt. Seeing the fate of McKinley I looked up any assassination attempts upon Teddy and found he did indeed face one. In Milwaukee, while campaigning for a third term in 1812, which meant he had a 4 year gap between his second term and potential third, he was shot in the chest. Fortunately, his 50 some page speech slowed down the bullet, keeping it from causing greater damage. He survived the incident, and still gave the speech after the assassination attempt, changing his opening remarks to: "Ladies and gentlemen, I don't know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot, but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose." During the speech he continued to bleed and for an hour he would speak until finally going to the hospital.
ReplyDeleteSources:
https://www.nydailynews.com/news/justice-story/takes-kill-bull-moose-article-1.1179536?pgno=1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_presidential_assassination_attempts_and_plots#Theodore_Roosevelt
I really liked your thorough portrayal of the incident from start to finish. Your brief mentioning of Czolgosz's death by electrification got me curious about the change of the death penalty in America during the time. Thought to be a quicker and more humane way of execution compared to traditional death by hanging, the electric chair was first adopted into New York in 1888. It soon spread to other states and reach its peak in 1949. However, electrocution was questioned for its possible violation of the 8th Amendment, and in 2008, the Nebraska Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional. By the 21th century, several states have allowed the choice between lethal injection and electrocution.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.britannica.com/topic/electrocution