The assassination attempt on Donald Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania, in which the former US president and the most likely Republican candidate in the upcoming presidential elections was wounded, shocked the American and international public. An avalanche of accusations from one side and the other of the political spectrum immediately began, and state authorities are still checking all the circumstances related to this case and the motivation of the assassin, who was killed on the spot.
The history of American politics remembers a large number of assassinations of the most prominent and powerful people in the country. Victims of assassinations, or attempted assassinations, were presidents and presidential candidates, as well as more influential political leaders. IPESE brings a reminder of the list of these assassinations…
The assassination of Abraham Lincoln
The sixteenth president of the United States of America, the man who united the North and the South, Abraham Lincoln, was assassinated on April 14, 1865, in the Ford Theater in Washington. At the time, a well-known actor, John Wilkes Booth, a sympathizer of the just-defeated Confederate States of America, shot Lincoln at 10:15 p.m. with a Derringer pistol, aiming at the back of the head of the current president, who was sitting in his seat in the theater watching the play. Lincoln spent the next 9 hours in a coma, only to die the next morning.
Booth made the decision to assassinate Lincoln on April 11, after hearing a speech in which the President spoke about the voting rights of African Americans. With his associates, he planned to kill, in addition to Lincoln, Vice President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of State William Seward. However, the rest of their plan failed: Seward was wounded but not killed, while Johnson’s assassin abandoned his plan. Murderer John Wilkes Booth was found 110 kilometers south of Washington after a 12-day manhunt, and was killed after refusing to surrender.
The last US president to be assassinated was the 35th President, John Fitzgerald Kennedy. This assassination is probably the most famous, covered in many films and series, but also the most controversial, so it is still the subject of various conspiracy theories.
The assassination of James Garfield
James Garfield, the 20th president of the USA, died on September 19, 1881, two and a half months after the assassination, in which he was seriously wounded on July 2 at the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station. As President Garfield arrived at the station, author and lawyer Charles Guiteau shot him twice with a Webley British Bulldog revolver: one shot grazed Garfield’s shoulder and the other went through his back. The President struggled for 79 days with wounds, and incompetent doctors, who treated his wound with unsterilized instruments and fingers, which led to infection and death.
The assassin Guiteau was arrested immediately after the attack, and after a trial that lasted three months, he was sentenced to death on January 25, 1882. He was hanged on June 30, two days before the anniversary of the assassination. When it comes to the motive, historians state that Guiteau was a mentally unstable person, due to the consequences of neurosyphilis. He claimed that he shot Garfield because he was disappointed that he had not been given the post of US Ambassador to France, and he took credit for the president’s election to the post because of a speech he had written in support of him.
The assassination of William McKinley
William McKinley, the 25th President of the United States, was assassinated on September 6, 1901, at the Temple of Music, in Buffalo, New York, while attending the Pan American Exposition. The president was approached by anarchist Leon Czolgosz, who had a revolver hidden under his handkerchief, and shot McKinley twice at close range. The first bullet, as stated in historical sources, hit the medal that McKinley was wearing on his jacket, and bounced into the jacket sleeve, while the second bullet hit the president in the stomach. Although at first it seemed that the doctors would be able to save McKinley, his condition suddenly deteriorated after eight days of fighting for his life, and he died on September 14, after the onset of gangrene.
The assassin Czolgosz was defeated on the spot, and members of the army severely beat him, so it was not believed that he would survive and wait for the trial. However, he recovered and on September 24, after a trial that lasted only two days, he was sentenced to death. The verdict was carried out in the electric chair on October 29. Czolgosz is believed to have shot McKinley for political reasons, but it is not clear what he intended to accomplish with the assassination. After this assassination, the first in the 20th century, the US Congress ordered the Secret Service to provide permanent protection to the person who is the President of the United States of America.
Attempted assassination of Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th President of the United States, held the position from 1901 to 1909, and embarked on a new presidential campaign in 1912, having founded the Progressive Party, disillusioned with the views of his successor as president, Howard Taft. Roosevelt was on the campaign trail in Milwaukee, when on October 14 he was approached by John Schrank, a tavern owner from New York who had been following him for weeks. Schrank shot Roosevelt with a Colt revolver, and the speech that Roosevelt printed on 50 pages and put in his pocket slowed the bullet and saved his life.
Being an experienced hunter and anatomist, Roosevelt noticed that he was not coughing up blood, and correctly concluded that the bullet had not reached the lungs, but had lodged in the muscle before this vital organ. He even insisted on giving a speech (which saved his life), and only after 84 minutes and 50 pages read, did he accept to be given medical help. He began his speech by saying, “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.” Medical examination in Roosevelt’s pectoral muscle, and that it did not reach the lungs, and they concluded that it was better to leave it inside than to take it out, so Roosevelt carried this “souvenir” inside him for the rest of his life.
Shrank was immediately overpowered, and Roosevelt asked the crowd, which started to lynch, not to hurt him, saying that he was not seriously wounded. The former president then told the police to take Schrank into custody and make sure that he remained unharmed
Roosevelt still lost the election, and the new president became the Democrat Woodrow Wilson. At the trial, the assassin Schrank claimed that “the assassinated President McKinley visited him in his dreams and asked him to avenge him by killing Roosevelt.” He was declared insane and was kept in a psychiatric institution until his death in 1943.
The assassination of John F. Kennedy
The last US president to be assassinated was the 35th President, John Fitzgerald Kennedy. This assassination is probably the most famous, covered in many films and series, but also the most controversial, so it is still the subject of various conspiracy theories. Kennedy was assassinated at 12:30 in the afternoon on November 22, 1963, in a vehicle in which he was passing through Dallas, Texas, with his wife Jacqueline and Texas Governor John Connally and his wife.
Kennedy was shot by ex-Marine Lee Harvey Oswald from the sixth floor of a book warehouse, which was in the path of the presidential motorcade. Oswald shot Kennedy with one bullet in the back and another in the back of the head. Governor Connally was seriously wounded in the attack, and Kennedy was rushed to Parkland Memorial Hospital, where he was pronounced dead half an hour after the assassination.
The assassin Oswald was arrested and charged with the murder of Kennedy and the police officer he killed a few hours after the assassination. The murderer did not receive justice: while he was being transported from the city to the county jail, on November 24, Oswald was killed in the basement of the Dallas Police Station by Jack Ruby, the owner of several night clubs in Dallas. After much speculation and different claims regarding this assassination, the Warren Commission determined in September 1964 that Oswald acted completely alone, that he killed Kennedy and Officer Tippit, and that Jack Ruby killed Oswald acting without an accomplice. Nevertheless, to this day, a large percentage of Americans believe that there was a conspiracy to cover up the true circumstances surrounding the Kennedy assassination.
While standing on the balcony in front of the room, on April 4 at 6:01 in the afternoon, King was shot by assassin James Earl Ray. The bullet entered King’s right cheek, broke his jaw, then severed his spinal cord and came to rest in his shoulder.
The assassination of Martin Luther King
The leading civil activist and fighter for equality, Martin Luther King, was one of the most important people on the political scene of the United States of America in the sixties of the last century, although he did not hold a high government position. Always on the move, King tirelessly fought for the rights of the oppressed, primarily African Americans. On March 29, 1968, King went to Memphis to support striking workers demanding higher wages and better working conditions. King’s flight to Memphis was delayed due to bomb threats, and he, facing death threats, said “Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. And I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land! And so I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man!”.
King took room 306 at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. While standing on the balcony in front of the room, on April 4 at 6:01 in the afternoon, King was shot by assassin James Earl Ray. The bullet entered King’s right cheek, broke his jaw, then severed his spinal cord and came to rest in his shoulder. After emergency surgery, King died an hour later at St. Joseph’s Hospital, and an autopsy showed that he “had the heart of a 60-year-old man, even though he was 39 at the time of his death,” wrote his biographer Taylor Branch, citing the stress as the cause of this.
King’s killer, James Earl Ray, was sentenced to 99 years in prison for King’s murder, but the entire case has been the subject of many conspiracy theories. Ray fled the US after the murder, and was caught in England. Lloyd Jowers, the owner of the restaurant, began claiming in 1993 that he was part of a conspiracy to assassinate Martin Luther King, and that Ray was a “scapegoat.” The King family later claimed that Ray was the victim of a conspiracy, and that they believed the real killer was Memphis police officer Earl Clark. James Earl Ray died in 1999, and a new investigation into King’s assassination was ordered, resulting in a 2000 Justice Department report concluding that there was no conspiracy to assassinate Martin Luther King.
The assassination of Robert Kennedy
The brother of the assassinated President John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, was himself a powerful and influential politician, and already in 1968, 5 years after his brother’s assassination, he had a leading role in the presidential elections. He was the leading candidate for the nomination of the Democratic Party for the election, and his main source of voters was poor citizens, African Americans, among Catholics, Hispanic Americans and younger voters. Not long after winning a key internal party election in California, Robert Kennedy was shot by Sirhan Sirhan, a 25-year-old Palestinian, allegedly for supporting Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War. Kennedy died 25 hours after the assassination, Sirhan was arrested and convicted, but the assassination of Robert Kennedy is still a controversial topic and the subject of many conspiracy theories.
On June 5, Robert Kennedy celebrated a major victory in the key state of California at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Shortly after midnight, after his speech, Kennedy passed through the hotel’s kitchen, which he was told was a shortcut to the press room. He went through the kitchen despite his bodyguard’s advice not to. Kennedy was shaking hands with hotel employee Juan Romero in the kitchen, and at that moment Sirhan Sirhan approached him with a revolver and shot Kennedy with three bullets.
Sirhan was quickly subdued, and an ambulance arrived minutes later to take the presidential candidate to Los Angeles Central Hospital. Doctors tried to save him, removing bullet fragments and bone from Kennedy’s brain, but the wounds were too severe and Robert succumbed to his injuries on June 6, 25 hours after the assassination.
Attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan
Republican Ronald Reagan, former actor and 40th president of the USA, survived the assassination on March 30, 1981, in front of the Washington Hilton Hotel. The assassin John Hinckley Jr. then approached him and fired six shots at the president, hitting Reagan and three other people. Reagan was seriously injured by a bullet that hit the presidential limousine, then deflected and hit the president: it went through his armpit, broke a rib, punctured a lung and caused massive internal bleeding.
Reagan was in critical condition when he arrived at George Washington University Hospital, but doctors were able to stabilize him before surgery, which was successful. Reagan made a full recovery and was released from the hospital after less than two weeks. In addition to Reagan, White House PR James Brady, Secret Service agent Tim McCarthy and police officer Thomas Delahanty were also wounded in the shooting. All survived, but Brady suffered severe brain damage.
The assassin, Hinckley Jr., was immediately arrested and later said he “tried to kill Reagan to impress actress Jodie Foster.” He was declared mentally ill and kept in a psychiatric institution for the next 35 years. Hinckley Jr. was released on September 10, 2016.
Author: IPESE Research Team
Featured image source: Brendan McDermid/Reuters
