Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Popularity of JFK and Lincoln cloud the memory of two other presidents who died at the hands of an assassin



As the 50th anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s assassination approaches, and that of Abraham Lincoln remains in the public consciousness, we might take the time to remember that two other presidents died at the hands of an assassin. Their deaths were the engine for significant changes in the way the federal bureaucracy was staffed, and an “old” organization was redesigned to provide protection for the president. Yet today these presidents are mostly unremembered and unknown to the public. 

After Lincoln, the second president to succumb to an assassin’s designs was James A. Garfield in 1881. Garfield was an unlikely president, having been nominated despite expressing a desire not to be the nominee in 1880. He initially backed another candidate, John Sherman, over incumbent Ulysses S. Grant; but his nomination speech for Sherman caused such a stir among delegates at the Republican Convention that after three dozen ballots, a majority of delegates swung to Garfield. During the election campaign against former Union Army general Winfield Scott Hancock, Garfield played up his “rags to riches” background on his way to a close election victory. Garfield, who during his tenure as a congressman from Ohio had been a member of the Radical Republican faction, in his inauguration speech he continued to preach the elevation of the ex-slaves. He was also a strong supporter of public education as the means to elevate the ordinary citizen in general. 

Garfield was president for only a few months, and his demise had its roots in the “patronage”—or “spoils”—system in play at the time, where political and campaign supporters were rewarded with job appointments. Garfield was beset by so many demands from would-be officeholders that he wondered why anyone would want to be president. His refusal to satisfy some of them created bitter enemies. 

One of these enemies, Charles Guiteau, was practically a complete stranger to him, having only met him once in an informal setting. One of those people who became radicalized after failing in a number enterprises, he was likely insane—as his family judged him in 1875 when he was committed to an asylum, but apparently escaped. In 1880 Guiteau wrote and distributed a pamphlet in which he supported first Grant and then Garfield for president. After Garfield’s victory, he had it in his mind that this pamphlet was instrumental in the result, and he deserved a diplomat post in Paris as a reward.  

To this purpose Guiteau roamed Washington, DC for months in the only suit of clothes he owned, attempting to gain access to the president and pestering Secretary of State James G. Blaine for his desired appointment. When Blaine finally told him never to return and bother him again about the matter, Guiteau switched his intentions to vengeance; in his delusions, he believed that Garfield had “divided” the Republican Party, and that by removing him it would bring warring party factions together. 

With borrowed money, Guiteau purchased a 44 caliber revolver. He also sent letters in every direction telegraphing his designs, but rather than causing suspicious among government officials, he was apparently simply judged as nuts. He even visited the DC jail, asking for a “tour” so that he could see where he would be incarcerated later. On the day of the assassination attempt, July 2, 1881, Garfield—who like presidents before did not feel he required a security detail—stopped by in the Sixth Street train station in the capitol, before he continued to Williams College to give a speech. Unbeknownst to him, Guiteau was camped out in the waiting room, preparing to exact his revenge. As the president entered the room, Guiteau stepped forward and shot Garfield twice; one bullet lodged in his shoulder, but was not fatal, while the other hit him in the back. It was not found by attending physicians until the autopsy.

Today, it is believed that Garfield would have survived his wounds, had it not been for the lack of competent surgeons among those who attended him. He was told the day of the shooting that he would not survive the night, yet Garfield lived for another 80 days. In fact he died not just from incompetence—the erroneous probing for the bullet in his back only served to puncture his liver and create another channel in which infected pus could filter into—but the unsterilized habits of doctors, whose dirty hands and instruments did the rest of the work of the bullet. Garfield eventually succumbed to pneumonia and infection that ravaged his body. At his trial, Guiteau claimed that he had not killed Garfield, but incompetent doctors did—which was in fact half-true.

Guiteau’s trial turned out to be a media circus, as he harangued the court with his literary “prowess” on the stand, insulting his defense attorneys and preferring to “consult” with the audience. He actually believed that he would be acquitted, after which he would go on a lecture tour and perhaps even run for president himself. In his delusion, he seemed completely unaware of the hatred that people held for him; he was even shocked when he was found guilty of murder. Guiteau was clearly insane, and his counsel tried to use this as a defense; but his courtroom antics soured the jury from even considering this. On the day of his execution, Guiteau sang and danced his way up the scaffold stairs, rejoicing that he was on his way to meet his “Lordy.” 

One result of Garfield’s assassination was the passage of the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act in 1883, which declared that civil service jobs could no longer be political appointments, but given based on merit and competitive exams. Although not a direct result of the assassination, concerns over who would govern if a president was disabled for a long period of time was decided in 1967 by 25th Amendment, in which Section 3 stipulates that the vice president will assume presidential powers during the period of the president’s incapacity. What was not settled, however, was the question of presidential security; that would have to wait until the next presidential assassination twenty years later.

President William McKinley had just been reelected for a second term of office in 1901. In 1897, the Republican McKinley ran as the “prosperity” candidate, opposed to populist William Jennings Bryan running on the Democratic ticket. This was the first presidential election in which industry giants contributed what was then shockingly huge sums of campaign cash to defeat a too “radical” candidate. Bryan might have won the election, having carried all of the Midwest and Northeastern states; but Southern Democrats apparently decided his pro-farmer and working class program was too radical, for reasons we can surmise. 

As president, McKinley’s main domestic accomplishment was the passage of high tariffs, which aided the growth of American industry; he would soon change his position, however, in order to open foreign markets to surplus American goods. But McKinley would be better known—with a little “push” from William Randolph Hearst’s “yellow journalism” machine—as the biggest proponent of imperialism since James K. Polk, largely at the expense of Spain. The Spanish-American War would net Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines. His presidency would also be known as a time when respectable old men could still dominate the political scene—but soon to be replaced by younger men, like Theodore Roosevelt, who had other ideas on how to run the country.

During McKinley’s presidency, the anarchist movement was beginning to build steam. It had already been blamed for the Haymarket Square bombing in 1886, and would continue conducting violent activities in the name of opposition to oppression for decades to come. One of these anarchists was Michigan-born Leon Czolgosz. Probably due to past experiences in the labor force, Czolgosz was ripe for the propaganda of anarchist leaders like Emma Goldman, who supplied him with literature on the subject. He would eventually see McKinley as the embodiment of a system that enriched the few against the many impoverished—and he acted to remove that “infection” of the body politic, and usher in a new era more empathetic to the problems of the common man. Although it certainly wasn’t in response to McKinley’s assassination, this action would bring in a president who at least in part would realize certain of those expectations.

Czolgosz took up residence in Buffalo, NY but traveled about the country in a failed effort to “connect” with anarchists groups he found suitable to join. When he read in a Chicago newspaper that McKinley would be soon visiting Buffalo to make an appearance at the Pan-American Exposition, he returned home to plot his next move; this was his “big chance” to strike a “blow” for the oppressed. After purchasing a gun a few days prior, on September 6, 1901 Czolgosz stood amongst a crowd of McKinley’s “fans” in the Temple of Music. The president did enjoy immense popularity, and no doubt he reveled in this adulation and had no fear. 

Unfortunately, Czolgosz was not one of those “fans.” While McKinley was walking through a line of people shaking hands, the president’s security detail grew suspicious when he was approached by a “swarthy” man who seemed “tense.” But it was the next man in line—Czolgosz—who had a gun in the hand that McKinley was not shaking. Czolgosz fired off two shots point blank in his stomach before the next person in line, a half-black, half-Spanish man named James Parker, reached over and grabbed the gun. Soon, others were on top of the assassin, giving him a ferocious beating until the wounded McKinley ordered it stopped.

Only one bullet entered McKinley’s body; the other deflected off a button. But as in the case of Garfield, he would not survive the level of surgical competency of the times. Partly because of McKinley’s large girth, it was impossible to look for the bullet without fear of causing further damage, as had been the case in Garfield’s death. It was also believed that a bullet lodged in the body could cause no further damage. McKinley’s stomach was found to have an entrance and an exit hole, and these were stitched closed; however, the failure to discover the path of the bullet and any further openings allowed these passages to become infected—again as in the case of Garfield.  McKinley would die eight days later of gangrene of the stomach, pancreas, and a kidney—all that had been penetrated by the bullet; failure to quickly address the damage to the pancreas was likely the most fatal result. 

Czolgosz was tried in Buffalo nine days after McKinley’s death. His defense attorney seemed more interested in defending his own reputation than defending his client. Czolgosz was sentenced to death, and after his execution his body was dissolved with acid. There was the expected backlash against anyone who was suspected to be an anarchist, but police failed to find anyone they could prove to have aided the assassin. Various surveillance programs designed to keep tabs on the activities of anarchists would form the basis of the future FBI. 

After the assassination, there were calls for greater security for the president. The Secret Service was already in existence, but it was not specifically tasked to provide security; because there were a limited number of federal law enforcement organs at the time, it also acted as a police force doing much the same work as the FBI does now. Following McKinley’s assassination, Congress enlarged its duties to protect the president, and it wasn’t until after JFK’s assassination that the Secret Service began focusing almost exclusively on security operations.

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