Assassination!: The Brick Chronicle of Attempts on the Lives of Twelve US Presidents (13 page)

“Glory, glory, glory” were Charles Julius Guiteau’s last words before he gave a signal to the hangman to drop the trap door, causing him to fall to his death on June 30, 1882.

It was also a chance to see demonstrations of the latest technological marvels, including improved phonographs, motion picture mutoscopes, x-ray devices, and a machine called the electrograph, which could transmit pictures across telegraph wires.

Furthermore, it was a chance to experience the strange and the exotic, including an elephant that the British military had used in Afghanistan, and a “Trip to the Moon” exhibit in which midgets with spikes on their backs danced and handed out green cheese.

The popular, recently reelected President William McKinley visited the exposition on September 5, 1901, and delivered what was considered one of the best speeches of his career to a crowd of over 50,000.

The next day, the president visited Niagara Falls and was scheduled to return to the expo for a public reception at 4 PM. Nervous about security, the president’s secretary twice urged him to cancel the event. “Why should I?” McKinley responded. “No one would wish to hurt me.”

As thousands waited in line for a chance to shake hands with the president, McKinley’s security men kept their eye on a suspicious-looking, dark-haired man with a moustache.

When the swarthy man reached the front of the line, he clasped the president’s hand for an oddly long period of time. Finally, one of the security men stepped forward to intervene and move the man along.

Noticing that the next man in line had a bandaged right hand, McKinley offered him his left hand to shake.

But this man did not want to shake the president’s hand. Instead, he shot him twice in the chest with a revolver concealed by the white handkerchief wrapped around his hand.

McKinley started to fall backward but was caught by his security men. Thinking quickly, James Parker, the man waiting in line behind the assassin, punched the gunman in the neck, stopping him from getting off a third shot.

Realizing what had happened, the crowd began to viciously pummel the assassin. He would likely have been killed on the spot but that the seriously wounded president was heard to say, “Don’t let them hurt him. . . . Go easy on him, boys.”