Assassination of President William McKinley

Elected President in 1896 against Democratic rival, William Jennings Bryan, William McKinley successfully led the nation back to prosperity after the Panic of 1893, as well as leading the military to victory in the Spanish-American War, which saw the Spanish colonies of Puerto Rico and the Philippines handed over to the United States.

Re-elected handily in a rematch against Bryan in 1900, McKinley was poised for another four years of high popularity, along with his second-term Vice President, Theodore Roosevelt.

Risky President McKinley

Despite the assassinations of Abraham Lincoln in 1865 and James Garfield in 1881, McKinley frequently chose to sideline his security detail, so that the president could mingle with the American people any chance he could get.

During a long trip scheduled for the months following his second inauguration, McKinley scheduled major speeches intending to promote his plan for more protective tariffs on foreign goods, culminating with a speech at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York.

Who Assassinated President McKinley?

When McKinley’s wife, Ida, became gravely ill on the cross-country train trip, McKinley postponed his visit to the exposition, finally making his way to Buffalo on September 5th, 1901. On September 5th, while McKinley and Ida disembarked their private car at the Buffalo train station, anarchist George Czolgosz made his first secretive attempt on the president’s life, but finding McKinley too well guarded, he dropped back for a second attempt on September 6th.

An immigrant from Poland, Czolgosz regarded McKinley as a symbol of wealth and oppression over the working man, and when McKinley reached to shake Czolgosz’ hand in a reception line at the exposition, Czolgosz shot the president twice in the abdomen with a concealed pistol he kept wrapped within a cloth napkin.

In the days following his injuries, McKinley appeared to be recovering, however he died of gangrene on September 13th, making him the third sitting American president to lose his life to an assassin’s bullet. After Czolgosz was executed by means of electrocution, in 1906, congress passed legislation designating the Secret Service as the agency in charge of all future presidential security.