Leon Czolgosz was an American anarchist of Polish extraction who shot President William McKinley while the president was attending the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York in September 1901.Born in Michigan in May 1873, the 28-year-old Czolgosz was the son of ethnic Polish immigrants from Prussia. He arrived in Buffalo on August 31, 1901 and stalked the president once he arrived at the exposition. He bought a pistol on September 2nd and on September 6th, joined a receiving line at the Temple of Music whose members moved forward to shake hands with the president. The meet-and-greet was only expected to last was 10 minutes, but that was enough to change history.The assassin had secreted his pistol wrapped in a handkerchief inside his pocket. When he made it to the head of the line and McKinley extended his hand, Czolgosz swatted it away and twice pulled the trigger of his weapon, shooting McKinley in the stomach. The two bullets fired at point-blank range staggered the president, but did not immediately kill him. (He lived on for a week and a day, expiring on the 14th.)The crowd in the Temple of Music seized Czolgosz and beat him to the point of death before soldiers and police intervened. The near-dead Czolgosz was jailed and stood trial on September 23rd, nine days after McKinley died of his wounds. Czolgosz had been deeply influenced by the anarchists Alexander Berkman (himself the would-be assassin of Henry Clay Frick) and Emma Goldman, whom he had seen give a public speech and subsequently met.Czolgosz's meeting with Goldman occurred the very same year he killed McKinley, and she was arrested as part of a possible conspiracy but was released for lack of evidence. It was apparent Czolgosz acted alone. Goldman tried to rally support for the assassin, comparing him in print to Brutus who had slain Julius Caesar, but many anarchists shunned Czolgosz, as he had brought opprobrium onto the movement. Theodore Roosevelt, the new president, had declared, "When compared with the suppression of anarchy, every other question sinks into insignificance.At his arraignment, Czolgosz pleaded guilty, which is not allowed in a capital trial, and the judge changed his plea to "not guilty". His lawyers wanted to go with an insanity defense such as used for Charles J. Guiteau, the assassin of President James Garfield, but a defiant Czolgosz refused to cooperate with them as, to him, they were symbols of the authority he hated and had struck out against in the Temple of Music. He clearly wanted to be martyred, and he was, convicted after a two day trial when the jury came back with a guilty verdict after one hour. He was executed in the electric chair at Auburn State Prison (Auburn, New York) on October 29, 1901, 53 days after he shot and fatally wounded President McKinley.
