Four sitting presidents have been killed: Abraham Lincoln, James A. Garfield, William McKinley, and John F. Kennedy. Since the vice president has for more than a century been elected from the same political party as the president, the assassination of the president is unlikely to result in major policy changes. In all of these cases, the attack weapon used was a firearm.
About List of United States presidential assassination attempts and plots in brief
More than 30 attempts to kill an incumbent or former president, or a president-elect have been made since the early 19th century. Four sitting presidents have been killed: Abraham Lincoln, James A. Garfield, William McKinley, and John F. Kennedy. Since the vice president has for more than a century been elected from the same political party as the president, the assassination of the president is unlikely to result in major policy changes. In all of these cases, the attack weapon used was a firearm. Some attackers had questionable mental stability, and a few were judged legally insane. The assassination of Abraham Lincoln took place on Good Friday, April 14, 1865, at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D. C. According to some accounts, at his last drawn breath, on the morning after the assassination, he smiled broadly and then expired. The assassin, John Wilkes Booth, was a well-known actor and a Confederate sympathizer from Maryland; though he never joined the Confederate Army, he had contacts within the Confederate secret service. He aimed a. 44-caliber Derringer pistol at the back of Lincoln’s head and fired, mortally wounding him. After remaining in a coma for eight hours, Lincoln died at 7: 22 AM on April 15. After being on the run for 12 days, Booth was tracked down and found on April 26, 1865 by Union soldiers on a farm in Virginia, some 110 kilometres south of Washington.
He refused to surrender and was fatally shot by Union cavalryman Boston Corbett. Four other conspirators were later hanged for their roles in the conspiracy. After a highly publicized trial lasting from November 14, 1881 to January 25, 1882, Garfield was found guilty and sentenced to death. For the next eleven weeks, Garfield endured medical malpractice before dying on September 19,1881, at 10: 35,PM. A subsequent appeal to the Supreme Court found Garfield to be innocent and he died on September 20, 1883, at 9:30pm. After Garfield’s death, A. J. Guiteau shot the president twice with a 442 Webley revolver; one bullet grazed the president’s shoulder, and the other pierced his back and pierced his other back. The president’s secretary, John Hay, saw “a look of unspeakable peace came upon his worn features” when Garfield died in September 1881, aged 35. After his death, Hay wrote in a letter to The New York Times that there was ‘no apparent suffering, no convulsive action, no rattling of the throat… a mere cessation of breathing’…. I had never seen upon the President’s face an expression more genial and pleasing’ Garfield died on July 2, 1879, less than four months after he took office. He was succeeded by his son, James Garfield, who was assassinated on July 30, 1880, at the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station in D.C.
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