William McKinley

Shot on 6 September 1901 at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo by the anarchist Leon Czolgosz; the president died eight days later.

Overview

McKinley, victor of the war with Spain and architect of American overseas expansion, was greeting the public in the Temple of Music when Czolgosz, a young steelworker alienated by inequality and inspired by anarchist propaganda of the deed, fired twice through a handkerchief-wrapped hand. McKinley initially seemed to recover, then gangrene took him on 14 September, and the cowboy vice president Theodore Roosevelt assumed power. Czolgosz was convicted and electrocuted within six weeks, expressing no remorse. The third murder of an American president in thirty-six years transformed protection: the Secret Service, previously an anti-counterfeiting unit, assumed full-time presidential security. McKinley death ushered in the Progressive Era under a president determined to master, rather than resist, the new century.