Saturday, June 11, 2016

What happened to the man who killed President McKinley?

President McKinley's assassin was a man by the name of Leon Czolgosz. Czolgosz was a Polish-American anarchist who killed McKinley for political reasons. He was one of a growing number of anarchists in the United States who believed they could bring about political change through targeted acts of violence against government officials. The idea was that it was the government itself that was responsible for systemic injustice against the poor and dispossessed. For anarchists like Czolgosz, it didn't much matter which party was in power; the system of government remained fundamentally the same, grinding down the poor and making the rich even richer.
It was such a toxic combination of social justice idealism and a commitment to political violence that led Czolgosz to shoot McKinley on 6th September, 1901. (McKinley died of an infection to his wound eight days later.) Czolgosz's punishment was swift and severe. After a speedy trial he was sentenced to death by electrocution, and he was executed in Auburn Prison, New York, on the 29th October, 1901.

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