On January 30, 1835, Andrew Jackson becomes the first
American president to experience an assassination attempt. Richard Lawrence, an
unemployed house painter, approached Jackson as he left a congressional funeral
held in the House chamber of the Capitol building and shot at him, but his gun
misfired. A furious 67-year-old Jackson confronted his attacker, clubbing
Lawrence several times with his walking cane. During the scuffle, Lawrence managed
to pull out a second loaded pistol and pulled the trigger, but it also
misfired. Jackson's aides then wrestled Lawrence away from the president,
leaving Jackson unharmed but angry and, as it turned out, paranoid.
Lawrence was most likely a mentally unstable individual with
no connections to Jackson's political rivals, but Jackson was convinced that
Lawrence had been hired by his Whig Party opponents to assassinate him. At the
time, Jackson's Democrats and the Whigs were locked in battle over Jackson's attempt
to dismantle the Bank of the United States. His vice president, Martin Van
Buren, was also wary and thereafter carried two loaded pistols with him when
visiting the Senate. Jackson's suspicions were never proven and Lawrence spent
the rest of his life in a mental institution. A century later, Smithsonian
Institute researchers conducted a study of Lawrence's derringers, during which
both guns discharged properly on the test's first try. It was later determined
that the odds of both guns misfiring during the assassination attempt were one
in 125,000.
Michael Thomas Barry is a columnist for CrimeMagazine.com and is
the author of numerous books that include Murder and Mayhem 52 Crimes
that Shocked Early California, 1849-1949. The book can be purchased at
Amazon through the following link:
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