Murdering McKinley: The Making of Theodore Roosevelt's America

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The authors goal of trying to show how the 20th century was going to be radically different from the 19th is a tough one to pull of but Rauchway makes a valiant effort. This book deserves five starts because it takes a topic that no one else has attempted and presents the information well. There are a few minor errors that I discovered but on the whole it presents a useful history that when taken in context is an excellent segway into the era of American imperialism. Overall this is a good book that is a great read for those who have knowledge about the Gilded Age.

While President McKinley's assasination (and as Rauchway would argue, even his legacy) is much forgotten today, this book reminds the reader that its impact on American politics is no less dramatic than the assasinations of Lincoln and Kennedy. Czolgosz (the assasin), by murdering McKinley, directly paved the way for Theodore Roosevelt's entrance into the White House, and from there the first modern progressive president was born. Rauchway makes interesting obersvations about the social inequalities of the turn of the century, the moral decay in American cities, the rise of anarchism, the growing fusion of big businesses and politics, and an outdated legal system struggling to catch up with medical advancement. Lastly, the book made me draw comparisions between the fear of anarchists that enveloped the nation after McKinley's assasination in September 1901, and the fear of terrorists after 9/11, exactly 100 years later. Overall, this is a great read for anyone interested in history, law or criminal psychology.

In this highly original, thought-provoking book, Eric Rauchaway examines the trends that shaped a new America at the dawn of the 20th century. The assassination of President William McKinley is a pivotal event in Rauchaway's interpretation of the era, for he makes it clear that both the man who gunned McKinley down, Leon Czolgosz, and the man who ascended to the presidency in McKinley's place, Theodore Roosevelt, were shaped by those same forces of change. In the introduction, he boldly declares, "In a sense therefore, McKinley had two killers: the man who shot him and destroyed his body, and the man who succeeded him and erased his legacy." Rauchaway's narrative begins with McKinley's murder and its immediate aftermath, including Roosevelt's ascencion to the presidency and Czolgosz's unusally swift trial, conviction and execution. He makes a convicing case that the leaders of the time wanted to brand the assassin as a calculating foreign anarchist, then dispose of him as quickly as possible. (And as thoroughly as possible. Acid was poured into the grave to destroy his body after burial.) In 1902, an alienist (pyschologist), Dr. Vernon Briggs of Boston, went in search of answers to the deeper questions about Czolgosz's motives and sanity. Rauchaway vividly recreates his journeys to the places Czolgosz lived, worked, traveled and was imprisoned. What emerges is a picture of a man far removed from the "official" portrait that has persisted for more than a century. Czolgosz, who was in fact American-born, had tried to live out the dream of economic success, but instead fell victim to the upheavals of the 1890s. And while he may have voiced an interest in anarchism as a political idealogy, it almost certainly never went beyond that. So the assassin instead can be seen as one of many victims of the social and economic forces that were shaping the country at this great turning point. Those same forces also opened the doors for Theodore Roosevelt to steer the country in directions far removed from his predecessor's path. Yet, a dozen years later, as Roosevelt took a bullet in a failed assassination attempt during his own bid to return to power, it became clear that the tides of history had even pushed him aside.--William C. Hall

The assassinations of Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy are clearly the two most traumatic in American history in terms of American presidents. After that the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. would be the most prominent such event. The assassinations of James Garfield and William McKinley have always paled in comparison to these others, but Eric Rauchway of the University of California, Davis makes a case for appreciating the importance of the latter in "Murdering McKinley: The Making of Theodore Roosevelt's America."On September 6, 1901, President William McKinley was shot by Leon Czolgosz at the Temple of Music at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. Of the two rounds that were fired the first knicked off a button on McKinley's vest while the second tore into the President's stomach. As he fought the pain, McKinley stopped the soldiers who rushed to his aid from beating Czolgosz to death. The hospital at the Exposition was not equipped to deal with this sort of wound. Dr. Matthew Mann, a local gynecologist, performed the emergency surgery. The bullet had entered the stomach and exited out the back wall of the stomach. While Mann sewed up both holes he was unable to retrieve the bullet. The operation was considered a success and it looked like McKinley would recover, which is why Vice President Theodore Roosevelt left Buffalo after visiting the President. But gangrene set in McKinley's intestines and on September 14th he died, making Roosevelt the youngest President in American history (JFK was the youngest man to be elected).Theodore Roosevelt is remembered today as the first modern President, who Progressivism is the forbearer of modern American liberalism. It was TR who saw the United States become a World Power. If we are talking about the five most important Presidents in American history in terms of altering the course of the nation, then Theodore Roosevelt is going to be on that list (Jefferson, Lincoln, and Franklin Roosevelt are the other clear cut choices, and I would go with Jackson for the fifth choice but that one is the most debatable). In "Murdering McKinley," Rauchway looks at the lessons TR drew from the assassination.This rather short book (288 pages) follows two lines of analysis. First, it looks at the conflicting explanations that were advanced at the time to explain why Czolgosz assassinated McKinley: (1) Czolgosz was mentally deranged and the assassination was no social statement but simply the act of a lunatic. (2) Czolgosz was part of an anarchist conspiracy engaged in terrorist activity. Rauchway clearly envisions parallels to the contemporary world when he writes about how a "war on anarchism" was being conduced with a coalition of European nations. (3) Czolgosz was protesting against the social injustices of the existing American class system. However, Rauchway comes up with an alternative hypothesis, based on Czolgosz's erroneous belief that he was dying of syphilis, which con