William McKinley Assassination Conspiracy

Overview

On September 6, 1901, President William McKinley was shaking hands with the public at the Temple of Music at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. It was the kind of event McKinley enjoyed — pressing the flesh, meeting citizens, being presidential. A young man with a bandaged right hand approached. The bandage concealed a .32-caliber Iver Johnson revolver. Leon Czolgosz fired twice into the president’s abdomen.

McKinley lingered for eight days before dying of gangrene on September 14. Czolgosz, who made no attempt to flee, was seized by the crowd and beaten severely before police pulled him away. He told investigators he had acted alone, inspired by anarchist ideology and, specifically, by the lectures of Emma Goldman. He was tried, convicted, and electrocuted in less than two months.

The case was officially closed almost before it began. And that speed — that frantic rush to judgment, trial, and execution — is precisely what has kept questions alive for more than a century. Was Czolgosz truly a lone wolf? Did the anarchist networks he orbited play a role? Was there a connection to the machinations of Republican Party bosses? And did Theodore Roosevelt, the energetic young vice president who stood to gain the most from McKinley’s death, benefit just a little too conveniently from the killing?

The evidence for a broader conspiracy is circumstantial at best. But the circumstances are worth examining.

Origins & History

McKinley’s Presidency

William McKinley was the 25th President of the United States, serving from 1897 until his death. He was a Civil War veteran, a former Ohio congressman and governor, and a skilled political operator whose presidency was defined by two issues: protective tariffs and American imperial expansion. Under McKinley, the United States fought the Spanish-American War (1898), acquired the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Guam, and annexed Hawaii. He won reelection in 1900 in a comfortable victory over William Jennings Bryan.

McKinley was, by the standards of his era, a mainstream conservative Republican. He was not a figure who attracted the kind of personal animosity that made, say, Abraham Lincoln a lightning rod. But he represented something that anarchists despised: the consolidation of state and corporate power in the hands of a political establishment that served the wealthy.

The Rise of Anarchism

The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were the golden age of anarchist assassination. In the two decades before McKinley’s shooting, anarchists had killed:

• Tsar Alexander II of Russia (1881)
• President Sadi Carnot of France (1894)
• Prime Minister Antonio Canovas del Castillo of Spain (1897)
• Empress Elisabeth of Austria (1898)
• King Umberto I of Italy (1900)

The anarchist movement held that the state itself was the enemy, and that assassinating heads of state was a legitimate revolutionary act — “propaganda of the deed.” Czolgosz’s attack on McKinley was not an aberration; it was part of a documented international pattern.

Leon Czolgosz

Leon Frank Czolgosz was born in 1873 in Alpena, Michigan, to Polish immigrant parents. He left school at fourteen to work in factories. He was quiet, bookish, and increasingly alienated. In 1898, after losing his job in a wire mill, he withdrew from social life and began reading anarchist literature.

In 1901, Czolgosz attended a lecture by Emma Goldman in Cleveland, Ohio. He was deeply impressed by Goldman and attempted to ingratiate himself with local anarchist circles. But the anarchists were suspicious of him. Abraham Isaak, editor of the anarchist newspaper Free Society, published a warning that Czolgosz might be a police spy. This detail is significant: the anarchist community actively distrusted Czolgosz and tried to distance themselves from him before the assassination.

On September 6, 1901, Czolgosz positioned himself in the receiving line at the Temple of Music. His right hand was wrapped in a bandage, concealing his revolver. When he reached McKinley, he fired twice. The first bullet grazed McKinley’s chest. The second entered his abdomen, passing through his stomach, and lodging in the muscles of his back.

McKinley’s Death

McKinley was rushed to the exposition’s small emergency hospital, where surgeons operated to repair the stomach wounds. The operation appeared successful, and for several days McKinley seemed to be recovering. But the doctors could not find the second bullet, and they did not adequately address the possibility of infection.

On September 13, McKinley’s condition deteriorated rapidly. Gangrene had set in along the bullet’s track through the pancreas. He died at 2:15 a.m. on September 14, 1901.

The medical response has been a subject of its own controversy. Thomas Edison had offered the use of a new X-ray machine that could have helped locate the bullet, but the doctors declined to use it. Whether better medical care could have saved McKinley is debated, but the failure to find the second bullet and the inadequate treatment of the wound are generally cited as contributing factors in his death.

The Trial and Execution

Czolgosz was tried on September 23 and 24, 1901 — nine days after McKinley’s death. The trial lasted two days. His court-appointed defense attorneys, Loran L. Lewis and Robert C. Titus, called no witnesses and mounted essentially no defense. Lewis later said he found the case “hopeless” and saw no point in prolonging the proceedings.

Czolgosz refused to cooperate with his attorneys and declined to testify. The jury deliberated for thirty-four minutes before returning a guilty verdict. He was sentenced to death.

On October 29, 1901 — less than eight weeks after the shooting — Czolgosz was executed by electric chair at Auburn Prison. His last reported words were: “I killed the President because he was the enemy of the good people — the good working people. I am not sorry for my crime.”

After his execution, sulfuric acid was poured into his coffin to hasten the decomposition of his body.

The Crackdown

The assassination triggered a fierce government crackdown on anarchism. Emma Goldman was arrested and held for two weeks, though no evidence of conspiracy was found and she was released. Congress passed the Anarchist Exclusion Act of 1903, barring anarchists from entering the United States. The Secret Service, which had been established in 1865 to investigate counterfeiting, was given the additional responsibility of protecting the president — a duty it had not formally held at the time of McKinley’s assassination.

Key Claims

The “Lone Wolf” Question

Czolgosz claimed to have acted alone, and the official investigation accepted this. But several factors have fueled skepticism:

• The anarchist network: While Czolgosz was rejected by organized anarchists, he had attended Goldman’s lectures and corresponded with anarchist publications. The question is whether his radicalization was entirely self-directed or whether he received encouragement — even indirectly — from the broader movement
• The speed of the trial: The entire legal process, from shooting to execution, took less than two months. Czolgosz’s defense attorneys made no effort to investigate possible co-conspirators. The rush to execution has been compared to the equally hasty prosecution of Lee Harvey Oswald’s killer, Jack Ruby
• The precedent: Other anarchist assassinations of the period were carried out by individuals with documented connections to wider networks. The assassination of King Umberto I of Italy in 1900, which directly inspired Czolgosz, was carried out by Gaetano Bresci, who had traveled from the United States to Italy specifically for the purpose

The Roosevelt Question

Theodore Roosevelt was perhaps the most obvious beneficiary of McKinley’s death. At forty-two, he became the youngest president in history. He went on to transform the presidency, bust trusts, build the Panama Canal, establish national parks, and win the Nobel Peace Prize.

Roosevelt had been nominated as McKinley’s running mate in 1900 largely because Republican Party boss Thomas C. Platt of New York wanted to remove him from the governorship, where Roosevelt’s progressive reforms threatened Platt’s patronage machine. Senator Mark Hanna, McKinley’s closest political ally, had warned: “Don’t any of you realize that there’s only one life between that madman and the presidency?”

The conspiracy theory runs that Roosevelt — or, more plausibly, his allies — had some advance knowledge of or involvement in the assassination. No credible evidence supports this claim. Roosevelt was hiking in the Adirondacks when McKinley’s condition worsened and had to be retrieved by a desperate relay of messengers. His grief appeared genuine. And his political style, while aggressive, operated through legitimate channels — he had no need for assassination when he was already positioned to run for president in 1904.

The Goldman Connection

Emma Goldman’s possible role has been debated since the day of the shooting. Czolgosz told interrogators that Goldman’s lectures had inspired him. Goldman herself initially expressed sympathy for Czolgosz’s act before backing away under intense legal and public pressure.

But the relationship was one-directional. Goldman had no documented communication with Czolgosz beyond his attendance at her public lecture. Czolgosz had attempted to meet with Goldman privately but was rebuffed. Organized anarchists had actively warned each other about Czolgosz, suspecting him of being a police agent. If there was a conspiracy, it did not include Goldman — at least not in any direct operational sense.

Evidence

Supporting the Lone Wolf Conclusion

• Czolgosz consistently stated he acted alone
• Organized anarchists distrusted and distanced themselves from him before the assassination
• No correspondence, meeting records, or financial connections to a conspirator have been found
• The method (a single man with a concealed pistol in a public receiving line) required no organizational support

Supporting the Possibility of Broader Involvement

• The trial was conducted with extraordinary speed, precluding thorough investigation
• Czolgosz’s defense attorneys mounted no meaningful defense and called no witnesses
• The international anarchist network had a documented pattern of coordinated assassinations
• Czolgosz’s radicalization followed exposure to anarchist lectures and literature, suggesting an environment of incitement even if not direct conspiracy
• His body was deliberately destroyed with acid after execution, preventing any future forensic examination
• The broader political context — tensions between McKinley’s old guard and Roosevelt’s progressive faction — provided potential motive for parties beyond Czolgosz

Cultural Impact

The Birth of Presidential Security

McKinley’s assassination directly led to the Secret Service being formally assigned to protect the president. Before 1901, presidential security was minimal and largely informal. McKinley himself had resisted proposals to increase his security detail at the Pan-American Exposition. The contrast with modern presidential protection — layers of Secret Service agents, armored vehicles, advance teams — could not be more stark.

The End of the Gilded Age

McKinley’s death is often identified as a symbolic endpoint of the Gilded Age. The president who embodied corporate Republicanism was succeeded by a reformer who would challenge the very trusts and monopolies that McKinley’s party had cultivated. Whether this was ironic coincidence or something more deliberate depends on how conspiratorial one’s reading of history runs.

The Anarchist Crackdown

The Anarchist Exclusion Act of 1903 and the broader Red Scare targeting anarchists, socialists, and radicals set precedents that would echo through the twentieth century — from the Palmer Raids of 1919-20 to McCarthyism in the 1950s. Czolgosz’s act provided the justification for government suppression of radical movements that went far beyond anarchism.

Three Assassinated Presidents

McKinley was the third U.S. president to be assassinated, following Abraham Lincoln (1865) and James Garfield (1881). The three assassinations established a pattern in American political culture: the expectation that presidential violence was possible, the demand for investigation into conspiracy, and the recurring question of whether lone individuals or broader forces were responsible.

In Popular Culture

• Assassins (Stephen Sondheim musical, 1990) — features Czolgosz as one of several presidential assassins
• The President’s Lady and other turn-of-the-century historical novels
• Erik Larson, The Devil in the White City (2003) — while set at the 1893 World’s Fair, covers a similar period of American history and themes of violence amid spectacle
• Scott Miller, The President and the Assassin: McKinley, Terror, and Empire at the Dawn of the American Century (2011)
• Various PBS and History Channel documentaries on presidential assassinations

Key Figures

• William McKinley (1843-1901) — 25th President of the United States; shot on September 6, 1901, died September 14
• Leon Czolgosz (1873-1901) — Polish-American factory worker and self-described anarchist who shot McKinley; executed October 29, 1901
• Emma Goldman (1869-1940) — Prominent anarchist leader whose lectures inspired Czolgosz; arrested but released without charges
• Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) — Vice President who became the 26th President upon McKinley’s death
• Mark Hanna (1837-1904) — Republican Party boss and McKinley’s closest political ally; warned about Roosevelt’s proximity to the presidency
• Thomas C. Platt (1833-1910) — New York Republican boss who engineered Roosevelt’s vice presidential nomination to remove him from the governorship
• Abraham Isaak — Editor of anarchist newspaper Free Society who published a warning about Czolgosz before the assassination

Timeline

Sources & Further Reading

• Miller, Scott. The President and the Assassin: McKinley, Terror, and Empire at the Dawn of the American Century. Random House, 2011.
• Rauchway, Eric. Murdering McKinley: The Making of Theodore Roosevelt’s America. Hill & Wang, 2003.
• Johns, A. Wesley. The Man Who Shot McKinley. A.S. Barnes, 1970.
• Goldman, Emma. Living My Life. 2 vols. Knopf, 1931.
• Gould, Lewis L. The Presidency of William McKinley. University Press of Kansas, 1980.
• Briggs, L. Vernon. The Manner of Man That Kills: Spencer, Czolgosz, Richeson. Gorham Press, 1921.

Related Theories

• Lincoln Assassination Conspiracy — the first presidential assassination, which was a confirmed multi-person conspiracy
• Garfield Assassination — the second presidential assassination
• JFK Assassination — the most famous presidential assassination conspiracy theory