A few of the most infamous assassination attempts in US history.
Richard Lawrence, 1835 Richard Lawrence may not have assassinated a U.S. President, but he was the first one to try.
The mentally ill – out of work house painter believed he was King Richard III of England and that he needed to kill Andrew Jackson, who was keeping him from ascending to the throne. (The real Richard III died in 1485, by the way).
In the weeks leading up to the assassination attempt on Jackson, Lawrence began observing Jackson’s movements. Witnesses later testified that Lawrence was often seen sitting in his paint shop muttering to himself about Jackson. On January 30, 1835, the day of the assassination attempt, Lawrence was seen sitting in his paint shop with a book in his hand while laughing. Lawrence suddenly got up, left the shop and stated, “I’ll be damned if I don’t do it.”The crowd (which included Representative David “Davy” Crockett) eventually intervened and wrestled Lawrence into submissionLawrence became convinced that he was not receiving the money because of President Andrew Jackson‘s opposition to the Second Bank of the United States. He felt that if Jackson were no longer in office, Vice President Martin Van Buren would establish a national bank and allow Congress to pay him the money for his English estate claims.Why didn’t the pistols fire? Lawrence’s pistols were later examined. The powder was said to be of good quality, and when tested, they both fired. The damp conditions of the day may have increased the odds of a misfire, but the odds of two successive misfires were still very slim. After the conspiracy theories faded from the public mind, a sentiment arose that the President had been spared by divine providence, a belief the President shared.
Lawrence was brought to trial on April 11, 1835, at the District of Columbia City Hall. The prosecuting attorney was Francis Scott Key. At his trial, Lawrence was prone to wild rants and he refused to recognize the legitimacy of the proceedings.
John Schrank, 1912
At 8:10 o’clock on the night of Oct. 14, 1912, an attempt was made to assassinate Ex-President Theodore Roosevelt in the city of Milwaukee.
Both Taft and Democratic nominee Woodrow Wilson suspended their own campaigning until Roosevelt recovered and resumed his. When asked if the shooting would affect his election campaign, he said to the reporter “I’m fit as a bull moose”, which inspired the party’s emblem.[ Roosevelt made only two more speeches in the campaign. Although Roosevelt won more votes and electoral votes than Taft, Wilson bested both of them to win the presidency.
The General Slocum was a negligent boat disaster in which the boat burned and sank, and New York area’s worst disaster in terms of loss of life, until the September 11, 2001 attacks.
Schrank stalked Roosevelt for some time, tracking him through New Orleans, Chicago and finally to Milwaukee. He made his move on Oct. 14 as the former President left his hotel after dinner.
Luckily for Roosevelt, the bullet passed first through his eyeglasses case and 50 pages of a speech he planned to give later that night — slowing down significantly and failing to penetrate his lung. Roosevelt declined medical attention until after he’d delivered his speech.
President Theodore Roosevelt’s secretary Elbert Martin holds the pages of the President’s speech pierced by an assassin’s bullet, . (Photo by PhotoQuest/Getty Images)
At the same moment Capt. A. O. Girard, a former Rough Rider and bodyguard of the ex-President, and several policemen were upon him. Col. Roosevelt’s knees bent just a trifle, and his right hand reached forward on the door of the car tonneau.
Then he straightened himself and reached back against the upholstered seat, but in the same instant he straightened himself, he again raised his hat, a reassuring smile upon his face, apparently the coolest and least excited of any one in the frenzied mob, who crowding in upon the man who fired the shot, continued to call out:
“Kill him, kill him.”
I had stepped into the car beside Col. Roosevelt, about to take my seat when the shot was fired, said his guard, throwing my arm about the Colonel’s waist, I asked him if he had been hit, and after Col. Roosevelt saying in an aside,
“He pinked me, Harry,” called out to those who were wildly tearing at the would-be assassin: “Don’t hurt him; bring him to me here!”
Capt. A. O. Girard top left
Roosevelt would spend the next eight days in the hospital. The bullet had lodged in his chest wall and removing it was deemed too unsafe. The wound healed and he never reported trouble from the injury again.
Schrank, on the other hand, was never tried for the attempted assassination. Instead, he was sent to the Northern State Hospital for the mentally disturbed in Oshkosh. Later, he was transferred to the Central State Mental Hospital in Waupun, Wisconsin. He was not allowed to receive any visitors or communications from the outside world for the next thirty years, until his death on September 16, 1943.
