Political Assassinations And Attempts In Us History

The long, dark history of political violence in the United States Violence has been employed to achieve political objectives throughout history. Taking the life of a perceived enemy is as old as mankind. Antiquity is filled with examples of political murders, such as when Julius Caesar was felled by assassins in 44 BCE. While assassinations and assassination attempts are not unique to the American way of life, denizens of other nations sometimes look upon the US as populated by reckless cowboys owing to a “Wild West” attitude about violence, especially episodes involving guns. In this book, J. Michael Martinez focuses on assassinations and attempts in the American republic. Nine American presidents—Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, James A. Garfield, William McKinley, Harry S. Truman, John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Ronald Reagan—have been the targets of assassins. President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt was also a target shortly before he was sworn into office in 1933. Moreover, three presidential candidates—Theodore Roosevelt, Robert F. Kennedy, and George Wallace—were shot by assailants. In addition to presidents and candidates for the presidency, eight governors, seven U.S. senators, nine U.S. House members, eleven mayors, seventeen state legislators, and eleven judges have been victims of political violence. Not all political assassinations involve elected officials. Some of those targeted, such as Joseph Smith, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King Jr., were public figures who influenced political issues. But their cases are instructive because of their connection to, and influence on, the political process. No other nation with a population of over 50 million people has witnessed as many political assassinations or attempts. These violent episodes trigger a series of important questions. First, why has the United States—a country constructed on a bedrock of the rule of law and firmly committed to due process—been so susceptible to political violence? Martinez addresses these questions as he examines twenty-five instances of violence against elected officials and public figures in American history.

Since the birth of our nation and the election of the first president, groups of organized plotters or individuals have been determined to assassinate the chief executive. From the Founding Fathers to the Great Depression, three presidents have been assassinated: Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, and William McKinley. However, unknown to the general public, almost all presidents have been threatened, put in danger, or survived "near lethal approaches" during their terms. Plotting to Kill the President reveals the numerous, previously untold incidents when assassins, plotters, and individuals have threatened the lives of American presidents, from George Washington to Herbert Hoover. Mel Ayton has uncovered these episodes, including an attempt to assassinate President Hayes during his inauguration ceremony, an attempt to shoot Benjamin Harrison on the streets of Washington, an assassination attempt on President Roosevelt at the White House, and many other incidents that have never been reported or have been covered up. Ayton also recounts the stories of Secret Service agents and bodyguards from each administration who put their lives in danger to protect the commander in chief. Plotting to Kill the President demonstrates the unsettling truth that even while the nation sleeps, those who would kill the president are often hard at work devising new schemes.

This book offers an analysis of every American presidential assassination and various attempted assassinations, examining the events surrounding each event and the people involved. The assassinations and attempted assassinations of American presidents were pivotal events that reverberated throughout the nation, even in cases where the murder was botched. The individuals behind each plot are often fascinating studies in obsession and distorted perception of reality—like President James Garfield's assassin, who spent an extra dollar on the gun he chose for the act simply because it would look better in a museum display after the event. For the first time under one cover, this text offers a concise study of every presidential assassination, attempt, and rumor. Each chapter focuses on a single American assassination, providing an analysis of the president, the assassin, and the events that shaped their arrival at that place in time. The chapter then describes the assassination or attempt itself and the long-term impacts of the crime. Accounts of the more contemporary incidents involving Presidents John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush especially demonstrate the evolution of the monumental task of protecting the U.S. president in a free and open society.

Throughout American history, Presidents and Presidential candidates have faced countless assassination threats and attempts on their lives. These threats have extended not only to sitting Presidents and candidates but also to Presidents-elect and former Presidents. Assassinations, Threats, and the American Presidency: From Andrew Jackson to Barack Obama walks through Presidential history, looking at the countless assassination threats and attempts that have occurred throughout history. Historian Ronald L. Feinman discusses the Presidencies of sixteen Presidents, as well as three important candidates and five living Presidents today, and how they were directly threatened with assassination, ranging from the first known threat to Andrew Jackson in 1833, to threats to Barack Obama in late 2014. All nineteen of these Presidents and candidates were threatened with assassination—six being killed, three wounded, and ten unhurt. Additionally, he reveals information about some failed attempts, which, had they been successful, could have resulted in fifteen different men who would have become President of the United States. Which ones would have been able to fill the responsibilities? Which ones would have been disastrous in the Oval Office? Assassination attempts, both successful and failures have been part of our political culture for over 180 years, and the problem of Presidential security, safety and protection remains a serious problem today. With the President being faced with countless death threats, the Secret Service and FBI are forced to employ all kinds of technological methods to protect our Chief Executive and his family, as well as other top officials in the line of succession. Feinman brings to light how these agencies have grown, both technologically and physically, to counter these attacks. He, also, sheds light on how these threats to our Presidency have devastated, changed, and grown our United States into what it is today.

In American history, four U.S. Presidents have been murdered at the hands of an assassin. In each case the assassinations changed the course of American history. But most historians have overlooked or downplayed the many threats modern presidents have faced, and survived. Author Mel Ayton sets the record straight in his new book Hunting the Presidents: Threats, Plots and Assassination Attempts—From FDR to Obama, telling the sensational story of largely forgotten—or never-before revealed—malicious attempts to slay America’s leaders. Supported by court records, newspaper archives, government reports, FBI files, and transcripts of interviews from presidential libraries, Hunting the Presidents reveals: How an armed, would-be assassin stalked President Roosevelt and spent ten days waiting across the street from the White House for his chance to shoot him How the Secret Service foiled a plot by a Cuban immigrant who told coworkers he was going to shoot LBJ from a window overlooking the president’s motorcade route How a deranged man broke into Reagan’s California home and attempted to strangle the former president before he was subdued by Secret Service agents. In early 1992 a mentally deranged man stalking Bush turned up at the wrong presidential venue for his planned assassination attempt The relationships presidents held with their protectors and the effect it had on the Secret Service’s mission Hunting the Presidents opens the vault of stories about how many of our recent Presidents have come within a hair’s breadth of assassination, leaving America’s fate in the balance. Most of these stories have remained buried—until now. Includes glossy photo signature of historic pictures and documents

Ben-Yehuda presents an in-depth inquiry into the nature and patterns of political assassinations and executions by Jews in Palestine and Israel. Extensive empirical evidence is used to analyze the social construction of violent and aggressive human behavior, using a sociology of deviance perspective. Political assassinations and executions are placed within their particular cultural matrix to describe how this specific form of killing has been conceptualized as part of an alternative system of justice. "The taking of a human life is generally regarded as the ultimate evil. Given this fact, it is important to examine and understand how it is explained, justified, and cloaked in a 'vocabulary of motives.' Such acts are, in the author's words, 'socially constructed and interpreted,' dependent on the observer's location in a specific 'symbolic-moral universe.'Moreover, such acts (political assassination specifically) are manifestations of struggles that represent attempts to legitimate these world-views, rhetorical devices that serve to define 'boundary-markers' between such universes — moral crusades that attempt to validate one view vis-a-vis another. This general approach to political assassinations is original. Its application to assassinations by Israelis is original. The fact that the book is empirical marks it off from many speculations on the subject. A number of the author's findings make a distinct contribution.

Most murder happens for private reasons, such as jealousy and greed but, when it's politically motivated, murder takes on the more elegant-sounding label of assassination. Starting with ancient Egypt and Rome then going right up to the present day, Assassination: Political Murder Through the Ages provides the facts and circumstances, the quirky and precise details as well as the power and politics that lie behind both the famous and the less well-known assassinations in recorded history. There are also a number of failed, foiled or simply bungled assassination attempts. Some of the names included are: Akhenaton, Hipparchus, Julius Caesar, Thomas Beckett, Jean-Paul Marat, Franz Ferdinand, Nikolai Ceausescu, Diane Fossey, John F Kennedy, Olof Palme, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Yitzak Rabin, Benigno Aquino, Mahatma Ghandi, Harvey Milk, Abraham Lincoln, Bobby Kennedy. Why did the ancient Romans shed so much of each other's blood? Who killed Olof Palme? Why are American presidents such tempting target, for assassins? The answers to these and many other intriguing questions are all in Assassination: Political Murder Through the Ages. Book jacket.

Washington Bullets is written in the best traditions of Marxist journalism and history-writing. It is a book of fluent and readable stories, full of detail about US imperialism, but never letting the minutiae obscure the larger political point. The book contains essays on acts of US imperialism, from the 1953 Iran coup to the 2019 ousting of Evo Morales in Bolivia. Despite all this, Washington Bullets is a book about possibilities, about hope, about genuine heroes. Washington Bullets is a book infused with this madness, the madness that dares to invent the future.

‘Written with Burleigh’s characteristic brio, with pithy summaries of historical moments (he is brilliant on the Americans in Vietnam, for example) and full of surprising vignettes’ – The Times ’Book of the Week’ In Day of the Assassins, acclaimed historian Michael Burleigh examines assassination as a special category of political violence and asks whether, like a contagious disease, it can be catching. Focusing chiefly on the last century and a half, Burleigh takes readers from Europe, Russia, Israel and the United States to the Congo, India, Iran, Laos, Rwanda, South Africa and Vietnam. And, as we travel, we revisit notable assassinations, among them Leon Trotsky, Hendrik Verwoerd, Juvénal Habyarimana, Indira Gandhi, Yitzhak Rabin and Jamal Khashoggi. Combining human drama, questions of political morality and the sheer randomness of events, Day of the Assassins is a riveting insight into the politics of violence. ‘Brilliant and timely . . . Our world today is as dangerous and mixed-up as it has ever been. Luckily we have Michael Burleigh to help us make sense of it.’ – Mail on Sunday