“It wasn’t until after the assassination of President McKinley that it became a formal objective for the Secret Service to protect the president. That made Theodore Roosevelt the first president with round-the-clock Secret Service protection.” – A Children’s Illustrated History of Presidential Assassinations
On July 13, 2024, former President Donald Trump became the most recent US president to have an attempt on his life when a 20-year-old Pennsylvania man took several shots at him as he led a campaign rally in the town of Butler. As only the second former president to be injured during an attack, Trump joins Theodore Roosevelt, who in 1912, also survived an attempt on his life. While four presidents have been assassinated while in office, Reagan is the only sitting president to survive.
In Bryan Young’s 2014 book, “A Children’s Illustrated History of Presidential Assassinations”, Young provides an age-appropriate recounting of the dark history of assassination attempts and strikes on sitting Presidents, former Presidents, and Presidential candidates over America’s 235 years as a country. From four assassinations and dozens of attempts, Young details the stories of the assassins, their complaints, and their consequences.
Abraham Lincoln entered politics, in part, intending to stop the spread of slavery to new territories, causing Southern states to secede from the Union following his election as President in 1861. As he presided over a divided country, the Civil War began just one month after his inauguration. By 1863, Lincoln doubled down on his anti-slavery positions with the Emancipation Proclamation, and his support of the Thirteenth Amendment, abolishing slavery across the country. An anti-Lincoln, pro-South actor devised a kidnapping and then an assassination to end Union leadership in America.
The assassination of John F. Kennedy is the most known by modern Americans. In 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald, a Communist sympathizer, fled to the Soviet Union where he trained in guns. Returning to the US in 1963, Oswald obtained a job at the Texas Depository. While Kennedy was driven past the grassy knoll in his open convertible, Oswald ended his life in only his third year in office. The Church Committee formed to investigate the intelligence community's involvement in his death, may have concluded that Oswald was a lone assassin. Still, those who have direct knowledge of the information, continue to claim the CIA was involved.
In total, dozens of attempts have been made over the years for various complex motives, with political discourse and mental illness the major reasons for these attacks. All assailants have been male except for two women who stalked and assailed Gerald Ford twice within weeks in 1975, with one tied to cult leader Charles Manson. Firearms were used in every assassination attempt, except for George W. Bush, whose would-be assassin used a grenade in the country of Georgia while Bush was meeting with their president. While Zachary Taylor officially died unexpectedly from a bacterial infection of the small intestine in 1850, presidential lore questions whether poison may have led to his demise.
In 1902, the Secret Service became the protective arm for presidents following the assassination of McKinley, making Theodore Roosevelt the first president to receive continuous protection. Following the assassination of Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy in 1968, that protection was extended to presidential candidates during their election campaigns.
While threatening a president is considered a felony subject to fines and imprisonment, there is little doubt, that as the government grows and the power stakes rise, the insane and the aggrieved will continue to use violence to reach their ends.
In 1835, the first assassination attempt on a US president occurred when Andrew Jackson survived his assassin when both his guns failed to discharge. Years later, the Smithsonian Institute decided to examine both guns, discovering that each fired correctly on the first pull, suggesting providence may have led to his survival.
The story behind the attack on Trump is yet to be written as facts continue to be gathered. Whether by Secret Service incompetence or a disgruntled attacker remains unknown. It is likely, however, that fate also had a hand, as Trump, who by the turn of his head in the final seconds, cheated death. Evil doesn’t always get their way.
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