On this day in 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.
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Divine protection? Or incompetent shooter (wet powder, half cocked hammer, etc) A little of both perhaps. One certainty is we need a lot more Andrew Jackson’s today!!
We Choctaw rue this event. The being unsuccessful part, anyway.
If it wasn’t Jackson it would have been somebody else kicking your ass. That was just how things were going to work out. Don’t blame Jackson. Though I admit to harboring some resentment towards Sherman and Lincoln so I do feel you.
Amen brother! Lincoln and Sherman should be well done by now in Hell. I don’t relish in it and wish they had made better decisions but actions have consequences.
He had some balls to go up against the damned bankers. Sorry about the Indian thing.
Trump needs to channel Jackson every freakin day! Stop dicking around with these bastards and declare martial law already. Arrest Obama, Hillary and a host of others now before its too late. Yes, it is dangerous and painful but if they take him out early or win in 2020 its over for us and it will be even more painful. When a significant number on our side decide that all is lost or honor is finally discovered and our slavery is rejected, it will be ugly.
The Whigs – the successors to the mercantilist Federalists, and the predecessors of the crony-capitalist republican party. At lease History.com bothered to mention the Second Bank. Its ALWAYS about the criminal central banks.
Can you imagine just how fucked up this country would be if NOT for the abolition of the Second Bank? Just think of all the innovation, etc. that would have been stifled by a federal government with those resources. Truly scary to think about.
End the Fed
January 30, 1945 was a particularly bad day for 9343 passengers on the MV Wilhelm Gustloff.
If the Russians hadn’t done it, no doubt the US or Britain happily would have. Indeed, a serious war crime. But war crime charges are always ONLY put against the losers.
The Tet offensive was launched on this day in 1968.