Political violence, such as the one that nearly cost former President Donald Trump his life this Saturday, has been a feature of the American narrative since its beginnings. A look back at these disastrous episodes of political attacks, sometimes marked by madness and anarchy, but also by the social tensions of a country with multiple episodes of turbulence.
Alexander Hamilton
The first major American political figure to fall to an adversary’s bullets was former Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, founder of the Federalist Party and a trusted aide to first President George Washington. He was killed by then-Vice President Aaron Burr in a duel that was fought over political differences—and deep-seated animosity between the two men.
Hamilton took his last breath on July 12, 1804, almost 220 years to the day before the assassination attempt on Donald Trump on Saturday. Burr was charged but never tried; he even served out his term as vice president.
Abraham Lincoln
The first president to be killed in office was Abraham Lincoln, shot by actor John Wilkes Booth on April 14, 1865, during a performance in a Washington, D.C. theater.
“Lincoln’s assassination occurred at a time of great political tension,” explains Christophe Cloutier-Roy, deputy director of the Raoul Dandurand Chair’s Observatory on the United States. “It was the end of the Civil War, there was a strong geographical division between the North and the South, and the issue of slavery still polarized American society enormously… It’s similar to current divisions marked by extreme polarization between Democrats and Republicans, by marked ideological differences, by a demonization of the opposing party, and by an opposition between urban and rural environments.”
Lincoln’s assassination was part of a larger conspiracy to decapitate the American government and resurrect the Confederacy. “It wasn’t just Lincoln who was targeted, but also his vice president, Andrew Jackson, and his secretary of state, William H. Seward,” Cloutier-Roy continues. “It was a very elaborate destabilization attempt.” Only Lincoln ultimately fell to the bullets. His assassin’s escape, killed as soon as he was discovered in a Virginia stable, ended on April 26.
James Garfield
The 20e U.S. President James Garfield was assassinated in 1881, less than 20 years after Abraham Lincoln. It was lawyer Charles J. Guiteau, convinced that the federal government had deprived him of a diplomatic post that was rightfully his, who fired his revolver at the elected official as he strolled through a Washington train station. President Garfield remained bedridden for nearly 10 weeks before succumbing to his injuries on September 19. His assassin was executed the following year.
William McKinley
Twenty years later, it was President William McKinley who would die in office. This time, the shots came from an unemployed 28-year-old anarchist, Leon F. Czolgosz, who shot him twice in the chest during a crowd bath in Buffalo. The wound became infected; McKinley died on September 14, 1901, eight days after the assassination attempt. His assassin died in the electric chair on October 29 of the same year.
Theodore Roosevelt
In Milwaukee, on October 14, 1912, a disturbed man convinced that the ghost of William McKinley was ordering him to kill Theodore Roosevelt, John Schrank, shot the former president at point-blank range while he was campaigning to reclaim the White House.
The bullet lodged in the politician’s chest after ricocheting off a metal glasses case and a 50-page speech folded into the lapel of his jacket. Despite the blood flowing from the wound, he decided to deliver his speech, apologizing for having to cut it short due to the circumstances. He spoke for 90 minutes before accepting medical treatment.
Teddy Roosevelt lost the election, but never lost the bullet lodged in his body: doctors believed that removing the projectile posed a greater danger to the former president than leaving it in place.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
FDR also escaped an assassination attempt shortly after his election in 1933. An Italian-born anarchist, Giuseppe Zangara, opened fire while the elected official was giving a speech in the back of a convertible in Miami. Roosevelt escaped unharmed and was sworn in in March 1933, but Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak died shortly afterward.
Tried and found guilty of the murder and the attack, Zangara was sentenced to death.
Harry S. Truman
The 33e The president himself escaped unscathed from a home invasion by two gunmen in 1950. A police officer and one of the attackers died in the attack. Harry Truman himself commuted the death sentence of the other attacker, Oscar Collazo, to life in prison, but President Jimmy Carter eventually pardoned him in 1979.
John F. Kennedy
The fourth and last American president to be assassinated was John Fitzgerald Kennedy, killed in Dallas in November 1963, in the middle of a parade, under the horrified gaze of his wife and the curious onlookers gathered on the edge of Dealey Plaza.
A few hours after the attack, the police arrested Lee Harvey Oswald. He would never stand trial: he died two days after his arrest, shot by a local bar owner, Jack Ruby, inside the Dallas police headquarters.
“It was a time when American society was in turmoil,” observes Christopher Cloutier-Roy. “JFK was assassinated; so was his brother, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, in 1968. So was Martin Luther King Jr the same year. It was a particularly tumultuous chapter in American history because of the social tensions surrounding desegregation and the Vietnam War, among other things.
Gerald Ford
Two assassination attempts were made on Gerald Ford in the space of three weeks. And, even more surprising, the 37the The president escaped each time. The first occurred on September 5, 1975 in California: Lynette Fromme, a follower of the bloodthirsty guru Charles Manson, tried to shoot President Ford, but her gun jammed. The second occurred 17 days later, when Sara Jane Moore opened fire on the president in the lobby of a San Francisco hotel, but missed.
Fromme and Moore were released from prison in 2009 and 2007, respectively. To this day, they remain the only two women in American history to have attempted to kill a president.
Ronald Reagan
When John Hinckley Jr opened fire on Ronald Reagan in 1981 in the name of a delusional obsession with actress Jodie Foster, he did not miss his target. He hit 40e President Donald Trump shot him in the chest as he left a Washington hotel, in addition to injuring three other people, including White House spokesman James Brady, who was left paralyzed as a result of the attack.
The attempted assassin was found not guilty by reason of insanity; however, he was not released until 2022 after a three-decade stay in a psychiatric facility.
Donald J. Trump
With his fist raised and his face covered in blood, former President Donald Trump joined the grim ranks of targets of political attacks in the United States on Saturday. The shooter’s motive remains unknown at this time, but the event comes amid rising political violence and easily accessible firearms. “Collectively, yes, we are shocked by the attack, but are we really surprised?” asks Christophe Cloutier-Roy, of the Raoul-Dandurand Chair.
“Before Saturday, there was an attack on the husband of [l’ancienne présidente démocrate de la Chambre des représentants] Nancy Pelosi; there was a shooter who targeted Republican Rep. Steve Scalise in 2017. There are also Supreme Court justices who have been targeted… and that’s not to mention the January 6, 2021 insurrection, which was an unprecedented violence against American politicians. Saturday’s attack is a testament to the extreme tensions that are polarizing the country.”