The Day in History: Leon Czolgosz Assassinates William McKinley (1901)

Leon Frank Czolgosz (pronounced choll-gosh), (May 1873 – October 29, 1901) (also used his mother's maiden name "Nieman" and variations thereof was the assassin of U.S. President William McKinley. In the last few years of his life, he was heavily influenced by anarchists like Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman.

Early life

One of seven children of Polish immigrants, Czolgosz was born in Alpena, Michigan in 1873. His family moved to Detroit when he was five years old, and at the age of sixteen he was sent to work in a glass factory in Natrona, Pennsylvania for two years before moving back home.

He left his family farm in Warrensville, Ohio, at the age of ten to work at the American Steel and Wire Company with two of his brothers. At the height of his employment, he was making $4 a day, a high wage at the time.

After the workers of his factory went on strike, he and his brothers were fired. Czolgosz then returned to the family farm in Warrensville.

Interest in anarchism

In 1898, after witnessing a series of similar strikes (many ending in violence), Czolgosz again returned home, where he was constantly at odds with his stepmother and with his family's Roman Catholic beliefs. It was later recounted that through his life he had never shown any interest in friendship or romantic relationships, and was bullied throughout his childhood by peers. He became a recluse and spent much of his time alone reading socialist and anarchist newspapers. He was impressed after hearing a speech by the political radical Emma Goldman, whom he met for the first time during one of her lectures in Cleveland in 1901. After the lecture, Czolgosz approached the speakers' platform and asked for reading recommendations. A few days later, he visited her home in Chicago and introduced himself as Nieman (Low German for new man), but Goldman was on her way to the train station. He only had enough time to explain to her about his disappointment in Cleveland's socialists, and for Goldman to introduce him to her anarchist friends who were at the train station. She later wrote a piece in defense of Czolgosz.

Czolgosz was never known to be accepted into any anarchist group. Indeed, his fanaticism and comments about violence aroused anarchists' suspicions; some even thought he might have been a covert government agent. Furthermore, Czolgosz was known to have been a Republican (the same party as President McKinley), and had voted in the Republican primaries in Cleveland.

The radical Free Society newspaper issued a warning pertaining to Czolgosz reading:

"The attention of the comrades is called to another spy. He is well dressed, of medium height, rather narrow shouldered, blond, and about 25 years of age. Up to the present he has made his appearance in Chicago and Cleveland. In the former place he remained a short time, while in Cleveland he disappeared when the comrades had confirmed themselves of his identity and were on the point interested in the cause, asking for names, or soliciting aid for acts of contemplated violence. If this individual makes his appearance elsewhere, the comrades are warned in advance and can act accordingly."

Czolgosz's experiences had convinced him there was a great injustice in American society, an inequality which allowed the wealthy to enrich themselves by exploiting the poor. He concluded that the reason for this was the structure of government itself. Then on July 29, 1900, King Umberto I of Italy was assassinated by anarchist Gaetano Bresci. Bresci told the press he had to take matters into his own hands for the sake of the common man. The assassination sent shockwaves through the American anarchist movement. In Bresci, Czolgosz found his hero: a man who had the courage to sacrifice himself for the cause. The assassination inspired Czolgosz enough that he went to the trouble to duplicate the event as much as possible, buying the same type Iver Johnson revolver Bresci had used. When he was later arrested, police found a folded newspaper clipping about Bresci in Czolgosz’s pocket.

Assassination of President McKinley

A sketch of Czolgosz shooting McKinley.On August 31, 1901, Czolgosz moved to Buffalo, New York and rented a room near the site of the Pan-American Exposition.

On September 6 he went to the exposition with a .32 caliber Iver-Johnson "Safety Automatic" revolver (serial #463344) he had purchased on September 2 for $4.50. With the gun wrapped in a handkerchief in his pocket, Czolgosz approached McKinley's procession, the President having been standing in a receiving line outside of the Temple of Music greeting the public for ten minutes. At 4:07 p.m., Czolgosz reached the front of the line. The President thrust out his hand; Czolgosz slapped it aside and shot McKinley twice at point blank range.

Members of the crowd immediately subdued Czolgosz, before the 4th Bridgade, National Guard Signal Corps and police intervened. He had been beaten so severely it was initially thought he might not live to stand trial.

Trial and execution

Police mug shot of Leon Czolgosz.On September 13, the day before McKinley succumbed to his wounds, Czolgosz was transferred from the police headquarters, which were undergoing repairs, to the Erie County Women's Penitentiary until the 16th, after which he was taken to the Erie County Jail before being arraigned before County Judge Emery. After the arraignment, he was transferred to Auburn State Prison.

A grand jury indicted Czolgosz, who spoke freely with his guards, yet refused all interaction with Robert C. Titus and Lorin L. Lewis, the prominent judge-turned-attorneys assigned to defend him, and with the expert sent to test his sanity.

The district attorney at trial was Thomas Penny and his assistant Mr. Haller, who made a "flawless" performance. Although Czolgosz answered that he was pleading "Guilty", the presiding Judge overruled and entered a "Not Guilty" plea on his behalf.

Czolgosz' prisoner card at Auburn.He was convicted and sentenced to death on September 23, in a brief trial that lasted eight and a half hours from jury selection to verdict. Upon returning to Auburn Prison, he asked the Warden if this meant he would be transferred to Sing Sing to be electrocuted, and seemed surprised to learn that Auburn had its own electric chair.

So, unlike Lincoln and Garfield's assassins, Czolgosz was tried and executed under state authority, not federal.

He was executed by electrocution, by three jolts at 1700 volts each, on October 29, 1901, in Auburn Prison in Auburn, New York. His brother Waldek and his brother-in-law Frank Bandowski were in attendance, though when Waldek asked the Warden for his brother's body to be taken for proper burial, he was informed that he "would never be able to take it away" and that crowds of people would mob him, so the body had to be buried on prison grounds.

His last words were "I killed the President because he was the enemy of the good people — the good working people. I am not sorry for my crime." As the prison guards strapped him into the chair, however, he did say through clenched teeth, "I am sorry I could not see my father." Sulfuric acid was thrown into his coffin so that his body would be completely disfigured, resulting in its decomposition within twelve hours. His letters and clothes were burned.

Emma Goldman was arrested on suspicion of being involved in the assassination, but was released because there was no evidence to support this suspicion.

The scene of the crime, the Temple of Music, was torn down in November 1901. A stone marker in the middle of Fordham Drive, a residential street in Buffalo today marks the approximate spot where the event occurred. Czolgosz's revolver is on display at the Pan-American Exposition exhibit of the Erie County Historical Society in Buffalo.

In 1921 Lloyd Vernon Briggs, Director of the Massachusetts Department for Mental Hygiene reviewed the Czolgosz case and the cases of Clarence Richeson and Bertram G. Spencer. Contrary to views at the time of the assassination, he concluded that Czolgosz was "a diseased man, a man who had been suffering from some form of mental disease for years. He was not medically responsible and in the light of present-day psychiatry and of modern surgical procedure, there is a great question whether he was even legally responsible for the death of our President."

His brain was autopsied by Edward Anthony Spitzka.

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