The Death of a President- JFK Assassinated

Today in 1963, President John F. Kennedy traveled to Dallas to campaign for re-election. He was riding through the streets of Dallas in an open car with his wife Jacqueline, Governor Connelly of Texas and the governor’s wife. While approaching the Texas Book Depository building and the waving crowds, the governor’s wife Nellie turned to President Kennedy and said, “Mr. President, you can’t say Dallas doesn’t love you.” As the president acknowledged Mrs. Connelly, the limousine pulled past the Book Depository and shots were fired.

Witnesses claimed they heard three shots, but when pressed later to say where the shots were fired from; there were many different accounts. With this discrepancy among witnesses, a thousand conspiracy theories were born. The Warren Commission, which was formed to determine the person/persons responsible for the assassination, stated that President Kennedy was shot by Lee Harvey Oswald. The commission also believed that Oswald acted alone. One of the major pieces of evidence used by the Warren Commission to examine the assassination was an amateur home movie taken by Abraham Zapruder. Here is a clip of the movie, but please note that it shows the assassination and is extremely graphic.

Some of the records from the Warren Commission were sealed after the investigation, leading many conspiracy theorists to believe that there was a cover-up at work. Due to public pressure, Congress passed the John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, which stated that all assassination related records should be housed at the National Archives. Feel free to search the online collection at the National Archive site.

When many people talk about the Kennedy assassination, they often talk about where they were when they heard the news and their own horror at seeing images of a president being gunned down. Others remember the seemingly impossible site of Mrs. Kennedy standing next to Lyndon Johnson as he took his oath of office while still wearing the pink suit covered in her husband’s blood. In addition to sensory reactions to that day in our history, many grieve for what might have been. Namely, many question whether Kennedy would have led the country as swiftly into the Vietnam War as the Johnson administration did. Whether or not there is any merit to these claims, November 22^nd will continue to be a sad day in our nation’s history.

On November 22, 1963, President Kennedy was scheduled to deliver what is now known as his Trade Mart speech. Here is a quotation from his speech that went undelivered:

The United States is a peaceful nation. And where our strength and determination are clear, our words need merely to convey conviction, not belligerence. If we are strong, our strength will speak for itself. If we are weak, words will be of no help.

[Images via Cache and upi]

Anniversary of the Warren Commission Report

On September 27, 1964 the Warren Commission concluded that there was no conspiracy to assassinate John F. Kennedy, and that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. The Commission consisted of Earl Warren, Richard Russel, Jr., John Sherman Cooper, Hale Boggs, Gerald Ford, Allen Welsh Dulles and John J. McCloy. The Commission’s findings have been thought of as controversial ever since they were made available to the public three days after they were presented to President Johnson on the 24^th. Many still believe that President Kennedy was killed as a result of a conspiracy and by more than one shooter (ie the shooters on the grassy knoll theory). In his posthumous memoir, Teddy Kennedy stated that he accepted the findings of the Warren Commission, but his brother Robert was notably cynical about the commission’s findings for the remainder of his life.

For a pop culture investigation into the Warren Commission’s findings, check out Oliver Stone’s JFK. This film follows New Orleans’ District Attorney Jim Garrison’s investigation into the assassination, which reveals an elaborate conspiracy. For any conspiracy nuts out there, even if your strain of conspiracy isn’t specific to the Kennedy assassination, you may want to check out this film. I’ve heard that Stone footnoted the screenplay to emphasize that his claims could be supported by facts, but I’ve never seen a copy of it. Has anyone heard of this?

[Image via PBS]

Another One Bites the Dust…. Chester A. Arthur is sworn in as President after President Garfield’s death by assassination.

On July 2, 1881, President Garfield was shot in the back by Charles J. Guiteau at a train station. As Guiteau shot Garfield he shouted “I am a Stalwart of the Stalwarts…Arthur is president now.” Chester Arthur was Garfield’s Vice-President and a member of the Stalwart faction of the Republican Party. With this statement, Arthur immediately came under suspicion as possibly being linked to Guiteau. He wasn’t, but that comment certainly made for an awkward transition to Arthur’s presidency. President Garfield lived until September 19^th, when it is believed he died from a combination of infections and poor medical treatment. On September 20^th, Chester Arthur was sworn in as the 21^st President of the United States.

Chester A. Arthur was born in Fairfield, Vermont in 1829. He attended Union College and went on to practice law in New York City. During the Civil War, he served as Quartermaster General of the state of New York. In 1871, President Ulysses S. Grant appointed Arthur as the Collector of the Port of New York, a very lucrative position within the spoils system. Arthur supervised an excessive amount of employees in the position as a part of Roscoe Conkling’s Stalwart Republican machine. In 1878, President Hayes threw Arthur out of his position at the Port of New York in an effort to reform the civil service system. When Arthur became Vice President under Garfield in 1880, he remained loyal to Conkling in favoring the spoils system of rewarding party loyalty through patronage. However, when he ascended to the presidency one of his greatest political achievements was the Pendleton Act, a major civil service reform bill. Apparently, when Arthur became president he decided to legislate without any fear of political retribution or worries about how his actions might affect his own re-election. This attitude may have been influenced by a medical diagnosis that Arthur kept secret after taking the oath of the presidency. A year after Arthur became president, he was diagnosed with a fatal kidney disease. This seemed to free him from any great concern over his own political future beyond his term. He attempted to gain his party’s nomination in 1884 to keep up appearances, but was unsuccessful. President Arthur died in 1886. Publisher Alexander K. McClure summed up President Arthur’s presidency saying, “No man ever entered the Presidency so profoundly and widely distrusted, and no one ever retired…more generally respected.” Even the cynical Mark Twain summed up Arthur’s legacy with approval, “It would be hard indeed to better President Arthur’s administration.”

Read more about President Chester Arthur at the official White House website.

Images via NPS.gov and Wikepedia]

“There is a certain fatality about presidential functions when I am present” - The Curse of Robert Todd Lincoln

Yesterday I marked the death of President McKinley as a result of assassination. A strange and trivial fact about presidential assassinations occurred to me after writing about the McKinley assassination that I thought I would share it with you. Robert Todd Lincoln has the unfortunate distinction of having been present at three separate presidential assassinations:

1) Robert Todd Lincoln was not present at Ford’s Theater when his father was shot on April 14, 1865, but he was there when Lincoln died hours later.

2) On July 2, 1881, Lincoln (who was serving as Secretary of War) was at the Sixth Street Train Station in Washington D.C. at the invitation of President James A. Garfield, and was an eyewitness to his assassination (Garfield was shot by Charles J. Guiteau).

3) On September 6, 1901, President William McKinley invited Robert Todd Lincoln to join him at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. Lincoln was an eyewitness to the shooting that resulted in McKinley’s death on September 14^th.

Robert Todd Lincoln seemed to be aware of his own curse; which resulted in presidential deaths as a result of his very presence. When later invited to a presidential event, Lincoln supposedly demurred saying, “No, I'm not going, and they'd better not ask me, because there is a certain fatality about presidential functions when I am present.”

While he seemed to be conscious of his own curse, it is interesting to note that his last public appearance was with Presidents Warren G. Harding and William Howard Taft at the dedication of the Lincoln Memorial in 1922. Both president survived the occasion which may have proved that there was no curse after all….but it still seems strange to me.

Here is a video that Thomas Edison’s film company made commemorating the assassinations of Lincoln, Garfield and McKinley. The film, made shortly after McKinley’s death, shows an angel like figure looking on the images of the fallen presidents, followed by a scene in which a figure that represents the assassins falls on the altar of justice presumably begging forgiveness. If only Edison knew of the curse of Robert Todd Lincoln, he might have had Lincoln standing awkwardly in the background through all three assassinations…

[Image via Pastorron7 and Jive Mofo]