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It took three assassinated U.S. presidents before someone finally said, “Maybe we should put some actual effort into protecting these guys.” Lincoln didn’t get to see how the play ended. Garfield never made that train. William McKinley never got to finish shaking those hands. After McKinley was shot, the Secret Service got a new role and we got lots of Teddy Roosevelt quotes.
--On This Day in History, Shit Went Down: September 14, 1901--
President William McKinley didn’t like security coming between him and the people, which is likely a feeling he came to regret. On September 6, 1901, he was six months into his second term and attending the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. Part of the attendance at the fair involved visiting the Temple of Music where the president would meet with the crowd and shake hands. McKinley’s secretary, George Cortelyou, worried there would be an assassination attempt at said music temple and removed it from the schedule. McKinley put it back on the schedule. Cortelyou removed it a second time. McKinley put it back on a second time. Cortelyou was all the fuck is wrong with you? and McKinley said (actual quote), “No one would wish to hurt me.”
But Leon Czolgosz wanted to hurt him real bad.
After the financial crash of 1893, Czolgosz lost his job. Over the ensuing years he became involved with anarchism and was radicalized toward violence by believing that America was an unjust society where the rich exploited the poor and . . . Oh, wait. That’s actually true. Anyway, he decided McKinley had to die.
In the Temple of Music, McKinley was doing the handshaking. When Leon’s turn came, he slapped the president’s hand aside and shot him twice with a .32 caliber revolver. One shot ricocheted off a button and lodged in McKinley’s jacket. The other entered his abdomen. The crowd jumped Czolgosz and started beating the shit out him like he’d just shot the president. McKinley said, “Go easy on him, boys.”
It wasn’t a fatal wound, except for the shit state of medicine at the time. Stomach wounds can be nasty, and McKinley got gangrene and died September 14, 1901. Afterward, the Secret Service, which had been around since 1865 protecting money, got the added job of protecting the president, Teddy Roosevelt got the job of president, and Leon Czolgosz got the electric chair.
You may have noticed that there is no shortage of criticism of a certain semi-sentient taint stain of a president in this book. Permit me to share one of those quotes from Teddy: “To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”
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