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Do assassins’ bullets hit their marks? Do these acts of violence redirect historical trajectories?
In today’s volatile political climate, questions like these are not merely of academic interest.
Let’s take a look at the historical record.
The assassination of Julius Caesar on the Ides of March in 44 B.C.—perhaps history’s most famous cautionary tale about power, ambition, betrayal and the consequences of political violence—marked a pivotal turning point in the history of Rome, leading to the end of the Roman Republic and the rise of the Roman Empire.
Orchestrated by a group of senators who feared Caesar’s growing power and potential to establish a dictatorship, the plot carried consequences directly opposed to what the plotters intended. Caesar’s murder created a power vacuum that led to a series of civil wars. The republic’s political system, already weakened, could not withstand the turmoil, and power became concentrated in the hands of a single ruler.
Nor did Abraham Lincoln’s assassination on April 14, 1865, just days after the end of the Civil War, achieve the results that John Wilkes Booth intended. Instead of destabilizing the Union and reviving the Confederate cause, the assassination led to national mourning and ultimately resulted in a stronger commitment to Lincoln’s vision of a united country.
However, historians continue to debate the consequences of Lincoln’s death on postwar Reconstruction. If Lincoln’s handpicked successor, Andrew Johnson, adopted a lenient approach toward the former Confederate leaders and resisted measures to protect freed women and men and contributed to Reconstruction’s failure to produce a more racially just society, his recalcitrance also led to the ratification of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments, which laid the foundation for later civil rights advances.
What about the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary on June 28, 1914, in Sarajevo? Did it accomplish the goals of Gavrilo Princip and the Black Hand: To break the South Slavic territories, including Bosnia and Herzegovina, away from Austro-Hungarian control and create a unified Slavic state?
It did, in part. However, the immediate result was a world war rather than a swift path to South Slavic independence. That conflict resulted in the death of at least 16 million combatants and civilians, the collapse of four empires (the Austro-Hungarian, German, Ottoman and Russian) and a redrawing of national boundaries and creation of new nation states, including the establishment of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (later Yugoslavia). This new nation aligned with some of Princip’s nationalist aspirations, but which also led to ethnic tensions and conflicts that persist to today.
How about other assassinations?
- James Earl Ray, a white supremacist, sought to halt the civil rights movement by assassinating Martin Luther King Jr. In fact, King’s death expedited the passage of the Fair Housing Act of 1968 and cemented King’s legacy as a martyr for civil rights, inspiring future generations to continue his work. And yet, it is also true that without King’s leadership, the movement was never again able to marshal the same level of public or legislative support.
- The assassination of Robert F. Kennedy by Sirhan Sirhan, a Palestinian with anti-Zionist motivations, likely affected the outcome of the 1968 presidential election, contributing to Richard Nixon’s victory and depriving the United States of a leader who could have potentially advanced progressive causes, civil rights and antipoverty programs. But it had no impact on U.S. support for Israel. Richard Nixon was himself a staunch supporter of the Jewish state and provided indispensable aid to Israel during the 1973 Arab-Israeli war.
- The assassination of Indira Gandhi in 1984 by her Sikh bodyguards in retribution for the Indian military storming the Golden Temple, a sacred Sikh site, to remove militants, triggered violent anti-Sikh riots, leading to thousands of deaths and widespread destruction. Her son Rajiv Gandhi succeeded her and led the Congress Party to a landslide victory in the subsequent elections, bolstered by a wave of sympathy. The assassination deepened the divide between Sikhs and the Indian government, leading to prolonged periods of unrest and insurgency in Punjab.
- Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination in 1995 by Yigal Amir, a Jewish extremist, who opposed the Oslo Accords, did significantly disrupt the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Israeli-Palestinian dialogues have remained largely stalled since Rabin’s death, with intermittent violence and failed negotiations, accomplishing Amir’s goal of halting the Oslo Accords. The murder also exacerbated existing social and political divisions in Israel, laying bare the tensions between secular and religious communities and between peace proponents and hard-liners.
As these examples suggest, political assassination’s consequences are unpredictable. Political murder has often altered the course of history, whether by removing pivotal leaders at critical moments, creating power vacuums, galvanizing public opinion, influencing political momentum, triggering political upheavals or catalyzing social and ideological shifts.
But an assassination’s impact also depends largely on other factors: the subsequent actions of a political leader’s successor, the broader sociopolitical context, the level of a society’s consensus and the resilience of political institutions.
Meanwhile, failed assassination attempts in the United States have not significantly influenced election results. Indeed, some of those who were attacked, like the incumbent Gerald Ford, lost their election bids. Yet that does not mean that such attacks lacked political impact. Ronald Reagan was not alone in benefiting from an unsuccessful assassination attempt. John Hinckley’s attack helped him marshal support for his policy proposals and consolidate power and influence and enhanced his political legitimacy.
As the historians Matthew Dallek and Robert Dallek point out, “Political Violence May Be Un-American, but It Is Not Uncommon.” In the 20th century, “there were at least six serious failed attempts on the lives of presidents and one on a former president.” In addition, one president elect—Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933—and two other presidential candidates—Robert F. Kennedy, who was killed in 1968, and George C. Wallace, who was left paralyzed in 1972—were also shot.
As CBS News reports,
“At least seven of the past nine presidents have been targets of assaults, attacks or assassination attempts. The Congressional Research Service report says presidents who survived attacks include Gerald Ford (twice in 1975), Ronald Reagan (a near-fatal shooting in 1981), Bill Clinton (when the White House was fired upon in 1994) and George W. Bush (when an attacker threw a grenade that did not explode towards him and the president of Georgia during an event in Tbilisi in 2005). The latest Congressional Research Service report, citing Secret Service as source, also says that there have been attempts on former President Barack Obama, Trump and President Biden.”
In the 20th century, at least eight governors, seven U.S. senators, nine U.S. congressmen, 11 mayors, 17 state legislators and 11 judges were violently attacked. No other country with a population of over 50 million has had as high a number of political assassinations or attempted assassinations.
A 2009 study, “Hit or Miss? The Effects of Assassinations on Institutions and War,” by economists Benjamin F. Jones and Benjamin A. Olken found that three countries—the Dominican Republic, Spain and the United States—had the largest number of assassinations of national leaders between 1875 and 2004.
The actual number—three—is not large. Yet few would deny that the United States has had a surprisingly large amount of political, racial and labor-related violence, political extremism and domestic terrorism for a country that prides itself on its commitment to democratic principles and ability to compromise.
Contributing to violence are deeply rooted cultural divides and ideological differences over issues like abortion, immigration and race, partisan divisions, racial and ethnic tensions, economic disparities, resource competition, status anxieties (over the loss of social, economic or political status), and a legacy of violence that has tended to romanticize or justify violence.
This nation’s relatively weak party institutions and labor organizations and the prevalence of civil rights and social justice movements, often in confrontation with various countermovements and authorities, have also contributed to the prevalence of politically infused violence.
The nation’s voluminous record of political violence and assassinations raises many difficult and disturbing questions. Why has the United States, with its commitment to rule of law and due process, been so susceptible to assassination? Has the U.S. always faced the horror of assassination or has the crime’s frequency increased in recent years?
Political assassination was unknown in colonial America. Prior to the American Revolution, there was not a single instance in which a major colonial official was assassinated. There was political violence in early America, but it tended to take the form of mob action. Crowds consisting of land-hungry frontiersmen, debtor farmers, unskilled seamen, skilled artisans and business and professional men engaged in riotous dissent against British colonial officials, profiteering merchants or Tories. The Stamp Act protests and the Boston Tea Party were only the most famous instances of crowd outbursts.
The other major form of political violence in early America was the duel between politically prominent individuals. The best-known political duel took place between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr in 1804, but other prominent politicians were also involved in duels, including Benedict Arnold and Andrew Jackson, who participated in dozens of dueling situations and killed one man. One of the last political duels occurred in 1857, when David S. Terry, chief justice of the California Supreme Court, killed U.S. senator David C. Broderick in a dispute over the issue of slavery.
As the Yale historian Joanne B. Freeman has explained in her 2002 study, Affairs of Honor: National Politics in the New Republic, the new nation’s culture of honor and manliness, which was most deeply rooted in the South, viewed duels as a way to secure one’s reputation, jostle for status and display courage.
But political violence also took other forms, as she describes in her 2018 volume, The Field of Blood: Violence in Congress and the Road to Civil War. Southern members of Congress engaged in canings, fistfights and threats involving displays of Bowie knives and cocked pistols in attempts to intimidate fellow representatives and senators, often over the issue of slavery. The caning of Massachusetts senator Charles Sumner by Congressman Preston Brooks was only the most notorious incident of political violence in the U.S. Capitol.
It was not until 1835 that there was an attempt on the life of a president. The 67-year-old Andrew Jackson went to the U.S. Capitol to attend the funeral services for a congressman when an unemployed English house painter stepped up, drew a pistol and fired point-blank. A percussion cap exploded, but a bullet failed to discharge from the gun barrel. Lifting his cane above his head, Jackson lunged at his assailant. But before he could thrash the young man, the attacker drew a second pistol and fired again. A second explosion rang out, but again the gun failed to fire. The odds against both guns misfiring were 125,000 to 1. A jury found the assailant (who claimed to be the rightful heir to the British throne) not guilty on grounds of insanity. He was subsequently confined to Washington’s Government Hospital for the Insane.
It was not an historical accident that America’s plague of assassinations began with an attack on Andrew Jackson. As president, the old general succeeded in shifting political authority away from Congress to the office of the presidency. He also succeeded in popularizing the notion that the chief executive was the true representative of the American people. By increasing the emphasis that the nation places on the presidency, Jackson made the office an increasingly important symbol for Americans—but also a ready target for disgruntled individuals. Throughout American history, assassins have exhibited little animosity or even interest in the individual who holds the presidency. Instead, by striking at a president, they have sought to attack a symbol and an office.
Political assassinations in the U.S. have tended to occur during periods of civil strife. The assault on Jackson coincided with the first sharp upsurge in civil violence in U.S. history. Where there had been just seven acts of mob violence in the 1810s and 21 incidents in the 1820s, the number rose to 115 in the 1830s before declining steeply in the 1840s.
Rapid urban growth, a large transient urban population, ethnic conflict and the disruption of local economic markets all contributed to social turbulence. Mobs, often led by prominent doctors, lawyers, merchants, bankers, judges and other “gentlemen of property and standing” attacked abolitionists in New York and Boston; burned convents in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania; assaulted Irish workers in Maryland; harassed Mormons in Ohio and Missouri; hanged gamblers and prostitutes in Vicksburg, Miss.; and razed homes in Black neighborhoods in Cincinnati, Philadelphia and Providence.
A new wave of political violence and murder swept the nation during the decade and a half following Abraham Lincoln’s assassination on Good Friday of 1865. Between 1865 and 1877, 34 political officials were attacked, 24 of them fatally. Among those attacked included a U.S. senator, two congressional representatives, three state governors, 10 state legislators, eight judges and 10 other officeholders. Much of the violence was concentrated in the South (2,000 persons were killed or wounded in Louisiana in the weeks before the 1868 election, 150 were murdered in one Florida county, and in Texas, an army commander reported, “Murders of Negroes are so common as to render it impossible to keep accurate accounts of them”). This wave of political violence ended in 1881, when President James A. Garfield was assassinated by Charles A. Guiteau, a frustrated office seeker, four months after his inauguration.
In the 20th century, there were three peak periods of political violence and assassination. The first occurred at the turn of the century, a period of bitter labor strife, widespread lynching and six major race riots. A second eruption of civil violence occurred during the late 1920s and 1930s, stimulated by bootlegging and the Depression.
Political violence reached a new peak during the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s. Attacks were made on four of six presidents (one successfully, one nearly so). Among those murdered were three U.S. ambassadors, a presidential aspirant (Robert Kennedy in 1968), a neo-Nazi (George Lincoln Rockwell), a rock star (John Lennon) and three Black leaders (Malcolm X, Medgar Evers and Martin Luther King Jr.).
Who are the individuals who have attempted to murder our national leaders? Have they been alienated, psychotic misfits, living on the margins of society and craving publicity, or rational individuals with clearly defined political goals?
In general, presidential assailants tended to be outsiders, unusually sensitive to the political cults or sensations of the time. Few have had steady employment (only two of 11 worked regularly in the year leading up to the assassination attempt). Only one was married with children. A large number were immigrants or children of immigrants (seven of 11). Few carefully planned their assault (all but two fired pistols, which are only effective at close range).
Assassins’ motives have ranged across a wide spectrum. Some have clearly been mentally deranged, like Richard Lawrence or John Schrank, who wounded Theodore Roosevelt as the ex-president ran for a third term in 1912, or John Hinckley Jr., who shot President Ronald Reagan and three other men in 1981. Schrank claimed the shooting was ordered by President William McKinley’s ghost as punishment for Roosevelt’s attempt to establish a dictatorship. Hinckley, a jury found, lacked the ability to control his actions because he suffered from a mental delusion involving actress Jodie Foster.
Other assassins had clear political or ideological motives for their crimes but suffered from a paranoid or schizophrenic style of thinking and chose their victims almost at random. Giuseppe Zangara, a 32-year-old Italian bricklayer, who shot at President-Elect Franklin Roosevelt in 1933 but killed Chicago mayor Anton Cermak instead, believed that the U.S. government was hostile to immigrant radicals. He originally planned to shoot Herbert Hoover before he read in a Miami newspaper that Roosevelt would be in town the next day.
Samuel Byck, a 44-year-old Philadelphian, was angry at the Small Business Administration when he rushed a gate at Baltimore-Washington International Airport in 1974 and killed a security guard in an aborted attempt to seize an airliner and stage a kamikaze-style attack on the White House.
Only a small number of assassination attempts have been motivated by ideology, such as Booth’s assault on Lincoln in 1865 or anarchist Leon Czolgosz against McKinley in 1901 (declared Czolgosz, “I don’t believe in the Republican form of government and I don’t believe we should have any rulers. It is right to kill them”).
In only two cases was the assassin a member of an organized conspiracy: in 1865, when Booth and five other men plotted to assassinate Lincoln, General U. S. Grant, Vice President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of State William H. Seward, and in 1950, when two Puerto Rican nationalists, Oscar Collazo and Griselio Torresola, protesting American dominance of their country, attempted to shoot their way into President Harry Truman’s temporary residence at Blair House. Even in these instances, however, there was no plan to seize control of the government or alter government policies: the traditional goals of a political conspiracy.
The attempt to murder former president Trump prompted outcries that such acts are deeply un-American. Yet this country has a history of involvement in covert operations aimed at overthrowing foreign leaders, particularly during the Cold War. The U.S. CIA was deeply involved in efforts to remove Patrice Lumumba of Democratic Republic of the Congo from power. While Lumumba was executed in 1961 by Congolese rivals with the support of Belgian authorities, there is evidence suggesting U.S. complicity.
That same year, the U.S. government had a hand in supporting the assassination of Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic. While the assassination was carried out by Trujillo’s own military officers, the U.S. provided arms and tacit support to the conspirators.
Two years later, the U.S. government supported a coup against South Vietnamese president Ngo Dinh Diem, who was subsequently executed by South Vietnamese military officers. The Kennedy administration had given tacit approval for the coup but apparently did not directly order the assassination.
The Reagan administration conducted airstrikes against Muammar Gaddafi’s residence in 1986, seeking to kill him in retaliation for Libyan involvement in terrorist activities. Gaddafi survived and remained in power until 2011, when he was killed by Libyan rebels during a civil war, with NATO support.
The CIA also made numerous attempts to assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro during the 1960s and 1970s. Methods included poisoned cigars, exploding seashells and hiring mafia hit men. Despite these efforts, all attempts failed, and Castro remained in power until 2008.
In a recent opinion essay, the New York Times columnist Ross Douthat suggested that the attempted assassination of Trump doesn’t necessarily tell us anything about American society today or the 2024 presidential election’s likely outcome:
“A single assassination attempt by a loner with a rifle doesn’t necessarily tell us anything about whether America is poised to plunge into a political abyss. Nor do the motives of would-be assassins necessarily map onto a given era’s partisan divisions.”
I suspect that Douthat’s wrong. I agree with the incisive blogger Fredrik deBoer, who argues that the gunman at the campaign rally in Butler, Pa., fits a distinctive American cultural type: He’s a socially impotent, disaffected male loser, the kind of person who is often linked to school shootings and other kinds of seemingly pointless acts of violence.
DeBoer suggests that the search for a motive is misplaced. Such individuals do not engage in violence for ideological reasons but because they are directionless and lost and seek an outlet for their anger, anomie and frustration in an irrational act of violence that almost always leads to their death.
The idea of doing such a heinous act because one is lost, lonely and there’s nothing else better to do, coupled with easy access to military-style weapons, may be the most painful reality that this country does not want to accept.
