President McKinley's Killer and the America He Left Behind by Jessica S. Gunderson

It is through that prism that they see all of American history. They dislike presidents who lowered taxes, protected American workers, and avoided getting the United States entangled in foreign conflicts that had nothing to do with protecting the American people.

The unrepentant killer’s last words were “I killed the president because he was the enemy of the good people-the working people.” His electrocution was reenacted and filmed by Thomas Edison.Most historians of the American presidency-walking in lockstep with today’s hard-Left academic establishment-favor presidents who were big-government statists and globalists. He claimed to have killed McKinley because the president was the head of what Czolgosz thought was a corrupt government.

As a young adult, he gravitated toward socialist and anarchist ideology. According to witnesses, McKinley’s last words were those of the hymn “Nearer My God to Thee.” Vice President Theodore Roosevelt was sworn in as president immediately following McKinley’s death.Ĭzolgosz, a Polish immigrant, grew up in Detroit and had worked as a child laborer in a steel mill. Later that day, however, the president’s condition worsened rapidly and, on September 14, McKinley died from gangrene that had remained undetected in the internal wound. He was rushed into surgery and seemed to be on the mend by September 12. McKinley suffered one superficial wound to the sternum and another bullet dangerously entered his abdomen. The president reportedly rose slightly on his toes before collapsing forward, saying “be careful how you tell my wife.” Czolgosz was attempting to fire a third bullet into the stricken president when aides wrestled him to the ground. Czolgosz moved in close to the president and fired two shots into McKinley’s chest. McKinley, perhaps assuming the handkerchief was an attempt by Czolgosz to hide a physical defect, kindly reached for the man’s left hand to shake. McKinley was shaking hands in a long reception line at the Pan-American Exhibition in Buffalo, New York, when a 28-year-old anarchist named Leon Czolgosz approached him with a gun concealed in a handkerchief in his right hand. Czolgosz had shot McKinley on Septemthe president succumbed to his wounds eight days later. On October 29, 1901, President William McKinley’s assassin, Leon Czolgosz, is executed in the electric chair at Auburn Prison in New York.

President McKinley's Killer and the America He Left Behind by Jessica S. Gunderson