McKinley shot twice at point-blank range in a Buffalo music hall
President William McKinley spent the afternoon of September 6, 1901, shaking hands with strangers, this time in the Temple of Music at Buffalo's Pan-American Exposition. Leon Czolgosz, an anarchist carrying a revolver wrapped in a handkerchief, slapped aside McKinley's outstretched hand and fired twice into his abdomen. Bystander James Parker struck Czolgosz in the neck and knocked the gun from his hand before he could fire a third shot, and a bleeding McKinley told the crowd beating his attacker, "Go easy on him, boys." The wounds turned gangrenous; McKinley died eight days later.
McKinley's death made Theodore Roosevelt president at forty-two. It also pushed Congress to give the Secret Service formal, permanent responsibility for guarding the president. Presidential receiving lines like McKinley's largely disappeared afterward; security now screens the public before any president gets close.
QWhat actually stopped the first bullet from doing worse damage to McKinley?
A coat button. As Czolgosz fired twice at point-blank range, the first bullet struck one of the buttons on McKinley's jacket and ricocheted away, lodging harmlessly in the fabric instead of his body. The second shot had no such luck, piercing his stomach and, unlike the first, was never recovered by surgeons. That stray piece of tailoring meant the first bullet never reached him at all; the second, unstopped, caused the fatal wound. A button, not a guard, was the only thing standing between McKinley and a worse wound that day.
QWhat did the Secret Service agent assigned to McKinley do to Czolgosz after the shots were fired?
George Foster, McKinley's regular Secret Service agent, physically struck Czolgosz to the ground while searching him after the shooting. Foster's anger reportedly flared because Czolgosz kept twisting his head around to keep watching the wounded president rather than staying still, and Foster knocked him down for it. This happened amid the chaos of onlookers and police already beating Czolgosz following James Parker's intervention. Foster's blow was a small footnote next to the larger scramble around Czolgosz.
QWhat happened to Czolgosz's body after his execution to make sure nothing of him survived?
Prison officials doused his coffin in sulfuric acid before burial on the prison grounds, deliberately disfiguring his remains beyond recognition. Before that, his brain had already been removed and examined by scientist Edward Anthony Spitzka, part of an effort to search his anatomy for some physical explanation of his crime. There was no headstone, no marked grave anyone could visit, and no physical trace left intact. No headstone marked the spot, and no trace of him remained.
