Translated material
Presidents and their killers
Not a single leader is safe from attempts on his life, and the President of the United States is no exception. Four presidents fell victims of attempts.
The first was Abraham Lincoln . On April 14, 1865, he was mortally wounded in the bed of the Ford Washington Theater by actor John Wilks Buto and died the next day.
John Boot, shining in Shakespeare's plays, gained a reputation as the "most charming man of America." In the Civil War, he sympathized with the south. In the summer of 1864, he headed a conspiracy to abduct Lincoln. The conspirators planned to take the president of the Union hostage, bring him to the capital of the Confederation of Richmond and demand the liberation of prisoners of war of confederates. The first attempt to abduct fell off, as Lincoln changed his plans. On April 9, 1865, the commander of the armed forces of the Confederation, General Robert Lee, signed surrender. The abduction lost its meaning, and Bout decided to kill the president. Three other conspirators were supposed to be killed by Vice President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of State William Seward. All three attempts were supposed to happen at the same time, at 10:15 pm Holy Friday.
Butt weapons consisted of a single -shot short -barreled pistol and a hunting knife. His plan was a success. The policeman guarding Lincoln was excommunicated from his post at the presidential box - he went to the bar to refresh. The third act of the comedy "Our American cousin" was already going on. The president was in a bed in the company of his wife Mary and a young couple, Clara Harris and Major Henry Ratbon. Exactly at 10:15, the boot opened the door of the box and pointed at Lincoln in the head. Major Ratbon rushed at Bota, but he grabbed the knife and in the ensuing battle wounded the enemy in his hand, after which he jumped out of the box onto the stage and shouted: Sic Semper Tyrannis! ("Let it always be so with tyrants!"). Waving a knife, Bout laid his way behind the curtains and, despite his leg broken during jump, disappeared in front of the amazed audience. A horse was waiting on his street. Jumping into the saddle, an actor who played his best role, rose from the city.
The conspirator who was instructed to kill the vice president did not make any attempt to do this. The Secretary of State was wounded, but survived.
The pursuit overtook the attackers, Buta and David Harold, only in the early morning of April 26 on a farm in Virginia. Both hid in the barn. Harold, who did not kill anyone, eventually surrendered. Bout refused, and the pursuers set fire to the barn, but Buta failed to smoke, and he was shot dead.
From the diary of Buta, found in the body, and his accomplices, it is revealed that he hoped to plunge the country into the "electoral chaos" by triple murder. Of the nine conspirators, four, including Harold, were hanged, three were sentenced to life imprisonment, one - six years in prison. Another managed to run to Canada.
The last witness of the murder of Lincoln Samuel Seymour died at the age of 96 in 1956. At a fateful performance at the Ford Theater, he was a five -year -old child. Major Ratbon in 1883 killed his wife and spent the rest of his life in a shelter for the insane. Andrew Johnson brought the presidential oath at 10 a.m. on April 15.
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On July 2, 1881, at about 8:30 in the morning of the mentally ill Charles Julius Gito at the Railway Station in Washington, he shot James Garfield at the 20th President of the United States. The bullet hit the back. A total of 10 doctors soon arrived at the scene. They put a bottle of hot water to the feet of his legs, opened, then closed the window, placed the wounded on the mattress and transported to the White House - it was all the help rendered in place. The wound looked not serious. Garfield was injected with morphine, and it was torn. Only at 5:30 in the afternoon they took off his blood soaked in blood. The president was given a glass of champagne. He was immediately vomited. The vomiting continued with small breaks until the morning. Finally, the chief surgeon of the US Naval Forces Wales plunged a finger into a gaping wound and announced that the president had been shot by the liver. After him, another 14 doctors picked their fingers wound, trying to find and extract a bullet. Almost no one believed in microbes then, antiseptics mocked the pasteur and the methods. In addition, the consultation was divided into a party of allopats and homeopaths. The patient eventually became the prey of the latter.
The policeman, who escorted Gito into the station, was so passionate about his participation in the historical incident that he did not even guess to take away from the arrested pistol. Gito demanded $ 25 from a reporter who arrived to draw his portrait. The police station was cordoned off by the troops in order to prevent attempts at the murderer's lynching.
Meanwhile, terrible heat fell on the city. In Washington, located on the marshy bank of Potomac, malaria was a common disease. “Washington Post” wrote that the White House cannot be used more as a residence of the head of state, because he “teems with parasites from the cellar on the attic”. Garfield suffered from the heat, and others invented all kinds of ways to alleviate his torment. Folls of ice and various air cooling were hastily delivered to the White House. The compressor delivered from New York in disassembled form was mounted, but did not work: the engineers did not have a sufficiently powerful motor to set it in motion.
Agony continued. Three weeks after the assassination attempt, July 26, the doctors realized that they had failed in attempts to find a bullet. At the DRIA, Alexander Bell appeared. Wanting to help doctors, he invented a metal detector consisting of two electromagnets connected to a telephone tube. The device turned out to be completely useless: the bullet was not at all where Bell was looking for it, besides, Garfield was lying on an iron bed. The Garfield diet did not correspond to the nature of the wound: he ate shirts, eggs and drank brandy; At the same time, vomiting continued, and he quickly lost weight. In essence, the only thing the doctors helped him was drainage tubes through which they pumped pus. The press soon lost faith in the honesty of doctors who made peppy statements for printing, at the same time in personal diaries, as it turned out later, indulging in the most gloomy pessimism. In August, the suffering of Garfield became unbearable. On August 19, his right eye rolled up. After 10 days, the doctors subjected him to a new test: several cuts were made on the president’s face, from which pus poured. Having come to his senses, Garfield demanded that he be transported to his native state, where he was heading on the day of the assassination attempt. On September 19, 1881, he died in Elberon, New Jersey. He ruled the country for only four months and died for 80 days.
After his death, the Scharlatans had the arrogance to present the widow of the deceased for their accounts for a tidy amount. Together with the cost of air conditioning and other devices, a special car for the delivery of a dying president in Ohio and magnificent funerals of expenses was expressed by a six -digit figure. Congress paid all bills, but in half, or even smaller. Gito was hanged during the life of Garfield.
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On September 6, 1901 , in Buffalo, New York, anarchist Leon Cholgosh killed President William McKinli .
This happened at the Panmerican exhibition, in the Pavilion "Temple of Music". Cholgosh survived the many hours before the doors opened, the sounds of Bach sonata came from the giant organ, and the audience filled the hall. The president went to the people and began to shake hands. Being left -handed, he held out his left hand to Cholgosh. Cholgosh raised the right, which was bandaged. Two shots struck from under the bandage.
During the arrest, Cholgosh said that he was an anarchist and "just fulfilled his duty." President McKinli died on September 14. The trial of Cholgosh took place in the same month and lasted only 8 hours 25 minutes. He was executed in an electric chair on October 29, 1901. The coffin with a body was loaded into acid, where it disappeared within 12 hours.
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Only after this third case, the US president received personal protection. It was entrusted to the secret service, which obeys the Ministry of Finance and was created in 1865 to combat the counterfeiters. The presence of bodyguards did not save the life of President John Kennedy , who was killed on November 22, 1963 in Dallas, Texas.
The attempts on the life of six more American presidents ended unsuccessfully for the attempts. The tragic death was escaped by Andrew Jackson , Franklin and Theodor Roosevelta, Harry Truman , Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan .
In Theodore, Roosevelt was shot after he resigned. On October 14, 1912, the former president played at Miluoi at a rally of his party. He just went to the podium when a shot thundered from the hall. The bullet fell into the badge of the frock coat, where the case for glasses lay, which saved Roosevelt from serious consequences. (According to other sources, the text of speech lay in his pocket). The speaker was nevertheless wounded, but still made his one and a half hourly speech to the end and only then went to the hospital.
Someone John Schrenke shot at Roosevelt, who said after the arrest: "Anyone who is going to be elected for a third term deserves to death." In the diary that was found in his pocket, it was said that in a dream Schrenka was the spirit of President McKinli, who, pointing to Teddy Roosevelt, said: "Here is my killer, avenge me." John Schrenke was executed in an electric chair.
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The responsibility of the Secret Service of the United States includes the protection of both the current president and vice president and members of their families, as well as the main candidates for these posts, as well as former presidents, widows of former presidents before their marriage, children of former presidents before they reach the age of 16, the highest officials of foreign countries during their visits in the United States, and at the direction of the president, special representatives of the United States in their own. foreign trips. One of the main functions of the secret service is the struggle against the prediction of state property, the fake of securities of the United States and foreign states and financial crimes.
Some of the incidents around the White House are committed by people with a flawed psyche, or even just mentally ill. So, in December 1974, a man named Marshall Fields rammed the northwestern gate with his “Chevrolet-Evrole-Empol” machine and, saying that he was the Messiah, threatened to blow himself up with the guards. After four -hour negotiations, he surrendered. In October 1978, a man in a white kimono and the Bible in his hands moved through the fence of the White House and said that he was hoping to convince President Carter to remove the inscription "we are trusting in God" from American money. " When the secret service agents approached him, he grabbed a knife hidden between the pages of the Bible, and wounded two agents.