The Friday evening, Sept. 6 edition of the Geneva Daily Times published an EXTRA: “PRESIDENT MCKINLEY ASSASSINATED AT BUFFALO TODAY.”
The wire-service dispatch reflected the reporter’s shock, which undoubtedly mirrored the nation’s reaction, including most Genevans. “The shooting was done by an insane man, who is now under arrest.” President McKinley was at the Pan-American Exposition, greeting large crowds lined up to shake his hand, when “the crank” ran to a spot near the president, shouted something in an unintelligible tone, raised the pistol, and discharged two shots in quick succession.
While the President was attended by physicians in a nearby house, “the greatest excitement prevailed on the grounds. People ran hither and thither, and it was only with difficulty that the police were able to prevent the president’s assailant from being lynched.” The assailant disappeared into the crowd but was quickly apprehended. The dispatch said that information was limited and “it is almost impossible to get definite statements as to the president’s condition.” The physicians consider McKinley’s recovery “a matter of doubt.”
The Saturday evening edition had front-page updates. The President had undergone surgery and was conscious and alert. One bullet penetrated his stomach, and while the operation to repair the damage was successful, the doctors feared the complication of peritonitis.
At first, the assailant told police his name was 28-year-old Fred Nieman (which means “no man” in German) and that he was a blacksmith. Under the pressure of questioning, he admitted that his name was Leon Czolgosz (ZOHL-gosh) from Ohio, and that he was an anarchist. “He is well known in most of the larger American cities as a socialist. He is also known as Fred Nieman, and is a Pole.” (He was an American citizen, the son of Polish immigrants.)
The reporter used what now seem to be odd turns of phrase. Describing the rapidity of the two gunshots, the dispatch said: “It all happened in a tinkling — in less time than it takes to snap four fingers twice.”
Colloquially, “tinkling” was often confused with “twinkling,” in the sense of Paul’s prophecy to the Corinthians: “In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye. . . . the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed” (1 Corinthians 15:52, King James Version). As for how to “snap four fingers twice,” I could find no contemporary source.
Czolgosz was “seized by S.R. Ireland, a United States Secret Service man,” and a “huge negro named John Parker leaped upon him as he fell, and they rolled over on the floor.” Then soldiers detailed to participate in the ceremony “sprang upon the pair, and exposition police and Secret Service detectives also rushed upon him,” intent on beating Czolgosz to a pulp. Parker and Ireland shielded Czolgosz from their blows, holding him down while Czolgosz was disarmed.
Meanwhile, the wounded McKinley, who was seated on a chair and white as a sheet, witnessed the melee. He told his secretary, “Be careful about my wife. Do not tell her.” He reacted to the pummeling of Czolgosz, “ ‘Let no one hurt him,’ he gasped, and sank back.”
Word spread through the crowd: “The light of vengeance gleamed in their eyes and the doom of a murderer hovered over the throng.” As officials thrust the bleeding Czolgosz into a carriage, the angry crowd removed the thick rope that authorities had passed through stanchions before the assassination to control crowds. Once the rope was freed, calls of “Lynch him!” were followed by a rush toward the site where the President had been shot, while soldiers and police tried to hold the angry crowd back. The driver of the carriage, Captain Vallely, chief of the Pan-American Exposition Police Detectives, lashed the horses into a gallop to enraged yells of “Murderer! Assassin! Lynch him! Hang him.” The crowd of “men, women and children tore at the guards, sprang at the horses and clutched the whirling wheels of the carriage.” The military, faced with the surging mob, “fought a way clear at the head of the horses and, pursued by infuriated thousands, the carriage whirled across the esplanade and on to police headquarters.”
When questioned, Czolgosz said he was “an anarchist and had done his duty.”
Originating in Europe in response to the economic inequities of industrial capitalism, anarchism overlapped with Marxist communism. While both ideologies agreed that workers should own production, Marxists advocated a strong, centralized government to control the economy. Anarchist theorists, most notably Peter Kropotkin (1842 to 1921), argued for a stateless society, one based on mutual cooperation and aid, and voluntary social organizations. In America, Benjamin R. Tucker embraced a different form of anarchism, sometimes called individualist anarchism. He advocated free markets and socialism, which in his thinking meant something akin to libertarianism.
In the Times editorial of Sept. 7, the editor offers his solution to the threat posed in the United States and abroad by the members of the “bloody band” of “red-handed anarchists. “Speech can be too free. Is it freedom to permit warped and weak minds to advocate their nefarious plans and their red-handed principles at our very doors? Is the toleration of anarchy essential to liberty? These are the questions we are asking ourselves while our president lies at the door of death.”
He wasn’t the first, and certainly wouldn’t be the last, to advocate sacrificing the foundations of democracy in order to fend off a foe who wanted to destroy democracy.
McKinley lingered until Sept. 14, 1901.
Linda Robertson is a retired faculty member from Hobart and William Smith Colleges, where she started the Media and Society Program. She has made several documentaries about the history of abolition in upstate New York, including Geneva. Her new historical novel, “The Lusitania Code: A Lady Butterschloss Mystery” (Level Best Books, 2026), is now available at all major online booksellers.