Political assassination

“ No one questions the fact that a Nazi named Planetta murdered Engelbert Dollfuss in his chancellery, that Gavrilo Prinzip shot the Archduke Francis Ferdinand in Sarajevo, or that President Castillo Armas of Guatemala was killed by a Communist among his bodyguards, Romero Vasquez, who underscored his part of the plot by committing suicide.
In modern history, however, one political assassination is still being hotly debated, not merely as to the motives which prompted the deed, but as to the identity of the one whose bullet inflicted the fatal wound. ”

“ It might have contained two or three sub-machine guns with sufficient ammunition and a few hand grenades.
You object that the assassin would certainly be caught and executed. I agree. Political assassins almost never escape. But political assassins must always and nearly always are willing to take this chance. You can take it as a rule of political assassination, however, that if the assassin is bold enough, he can always get his man. ”

“ It was a political crime, made with the view of changing, by assassination, the President chosen by you. It has excited, throughout the civilized world, the most profound horror. The President has suffered for more than two months, and is still suffering, from wounds inflicted by an assassin. His life still hangs by a thread. ”

“ AMERICA has always taken tragedy lightly. Too busy to stop the activity of their twenty-million-horse-power society, Americans ignore tragic motives that would have overshadowed the Middle Ages; and the world learns to regard assassination as a form of hysteria, and death as neurosis, to be treated by a rest-cure. Three hideous political murders, that would have fattened the Eumenides with horror, have thrown scarcely a shadow on the White House. ”

“ To talk about the "head of the state" when alive as merely the representative of an impersonal political entity, to talk of him when executing some cruel function in the name of "law and order" as a mere mechanical figure "doing his duty," and, when assassinated, as "the man, the brother and the father of his family" over whose fate we are supposed to weep our eyes out, is a little too thin. Every sphere of life has its dangers, the chief danger attending the headship of a Government being assassination. ”

“ In a land where the citizens are free to express their ideas, and where the will of the people does not merely make the law but appoints the person who is to carry the law into effect, in such a country political assassination is the manifestation of a despotic tendency identical with that to whose destruction in Russia we have devoted ourselves. ”

“ We have selected the assassination of President McKinley as representative of this class of political murders, because he was dearest to the American heart, and also because, in our opinion, he was the most illustrious of the many victims of anarchistic vengeance. ”

“ A party, he explained, has either the force to overthrow the Government, or it has not; in the former case it has no need of political assassination, and in the latter the assassinations have no effect, because Governments are not so stupid as to let themselves be frightened by those who cannot overthrow them. ”

“ Assassination is one of the rarest incidents in modern political life. It used to be a common method of political warfare; but the growth and progress of civilisation has demonstrated its utter folly and inutility. ”

“ But, gentlemen of the jury, now came the time when a man's ambitions blindfolded him to all reason. The desire to overcome the obstacle robbed him of his sane judgment, and in such a case the spoiler invites himself, political murders have occurred quite often, committed by some power that works in the dark and only too frequently of late the assassin was classed as an anarchist, but the real instigators could never be brought before justice. ”

“ Moreover, they point out that when people expatiate on the terrible list of political assassinations they altogether overlook their cause. They are not in all cases the result of irresponsible hysteria. ”

“ The assassin, who, it was for a time supposed, had been inflamed by the editorials and cartoons of the demagogic opposition press, but who professed to hold the views of that branch of anarchists who believe in the assassination of rulers and persons exercising political authority, was promptly seized, and was convicted and executed in October 1901. ”

“ Considered morally, their methods can never be justified; yet it was by these methods, with assassination added, that the political leaders of the rebellion sought to obtain success, and because of this, must for all time in history fall under the condemnation of the enlightened Christian conscience of the world. ”

“ John Bigelow, the American consul in Paris, wrote under date of July 15th, 1864: "There is no doubt that, from a period anterior to the breaking out of the insurrection, plots and conspiracies for the purposes of assassination have been frequently formed and organized." Mr. Bigelow had reported to Mr. Seward a plot which had become known abroad. Mr. Seward added: "Assassination is not an American practice or habit; and one so vicious and so desperate cannot be engrafted into our political system. ”

“ President McKinley’s death is typical of the modern attempts on the lives of sovereigns and prominent men. These attempts have lost much of the personal character which in former times made them so interesting. They are much more the results of a wholesale conspiracy against the organization of society than against great individuals. Unfortunately political assassinations have not become of rarer occurrence during the last fifty years, as might have been hoped from the progress of education and civilization. ”

“ Some are specific, such as threats; danger may be implied from others, such as membership or activity in an organization which believes in assassination as a political weapon. All material received by PRS was separately screened and a determination made as to whether the information might indicate possible harm to the President. ”

“ Short of surrendering to the police, he did all that lay in his power to identify himself as one who had attempted a mass murder of unprecedented proportions.
One could go down a long list of political assassinations throughout the world during the past century, and find that almost without exception the identity of the extroverted killer was not a matter of the slightest doubt. ”

“ Now that their battalions of treason are broken and flying before the victorious legions of the republic, the chief traitors in this great crime against your government secretly conspire with their hired confederates to achieve by assassination, if possible, what they have in vain attempted by wager of battle—the overthrow of the government of the United States and the subversion of its Constitution and laws. ”

“ It is a far more heinous crime to conspire against the government of the United States and to murder its President for the purpose of bringing anarchy and confusion on the land, than to murder a single individual. ”

“ But, alas! what are all good and great qualities; what are human hopes and human happiness to the revengeful hand of an assassin? What are sweet dreams of peace; what are visions of the future? A simple leaden bullet and a few grains of powder are sufficient in the shortest limit of time to blast and ruin all that is precious in human existence, not alone of the murdered, but of the murderer. I write this in the deep gloom flung over my spirit by the cruel, wanton, and cold-blooded attempted assassination of Abraham Garfield, as well as that of Abraham Lincoln. ”

“ The horrid monster of a widespread, treasonable conspiracy to overthrow the government, which had been conjured up in the imagination of the Secretary of War and then cherished in the secret recesses of the Bureau of Military Justice, would have immediately shrunk into the comparatively simple case of an assassination of the President and an attempted assassination of the Secretary of State, by two worthless villains suddenly seizing opportunity by the forelock to accomplish their murderous purpose. ”

“ Are they not citizens? Why not clamor against slaying for their crime of treason, which is cognizable in the civil courts, by your rifled ordnance and the leaden hail of your musketry in battle, these public enemies, without trial by jury? Are they not citizens? Why is the clamor confined exclusively to the trial by military tribunals of justice of traitorous spies, traitorous conspirators, and assassins hired to do secretly what the armed rebel attempts to do openly—murder your nationality by assassinating its defenders and its executive officers? ”

“ Assassination is even more of a crime here than elsewhere; we are under the eyes of the Revolution, we are the priests of the Republic, we are the victims of duty, and must not be possible to slander our combat. ”

“ The horror of the tragic event grew when it was learned that the assassin was an anarchist, and not an insane man as was first supposed.
Then came the full realization that the murderous bullet of the assassin was aimed not only at the foremost citizen of the Republic, but that the Red Thing called Anarchy had raised its blood-stained hand against government, against all peaceable authority and law. It was a blow struck at all the institutions of society that men hold dear and sacred. ”

“ Secret assassination is an ancient art. It has been practised in every age and in every nation and its votaries have been hunted down and exterminated by decent people. To-day, for the first time in the history of the world, we have the spectacle of stealthy death for the defenceless adopted as a government policy. For the decency and safety of mankind the allied nations have highly resolved that the government which promotes such a policy must “perish from the earth.” ”

“ Without underrating the influence exercised by great men upon the course of events, and leaving aside speculations as to what possibly might have happened had the bloody deeds in question been committed at different periods or under different circumstances, and taking into consideration only the facts as they are recorded, it may be said that the murders of political potentates, for the accomplishment of whatever ends they may have been designed, were, as a rule, mere ineffectual atrocities. ”

“ Whether the Jacobite theory about the rights of governments and the duties of subjects were or were not well founded, assassination must always be considered as a great crime. It is condemned even by the maxims of worldly honour and morality. ”

“ The murder itself was almost forgotten by those who wished to screen the murderers, and the most wicked theories were broached and sown broadcast by men, who, under cloak of reverence for what they called the law, toiled with herculean energy to weaken the arm of the Government, extended in time of war to save the servants of the people from being slaughtered by assassins in public places, and tracked even to their firesides by the agents and friends of slavery. ”

“ Assassination has made its last effort to become indigenous here. The public sentiment of Loyalist and Rebel has denounced it: the world has remarked it with uplifted hands and words of execration. Therefore, as long as history shall hold good, the murder of the President will be a theme for poesy, romance and tragedy. We who live in this consecrated time keep the sacred souvenirs of Mr. Lincoln's death in our possession; and the best of these are the news letters descriptive of his apotheosis, and the fate of the conspirators who slew him. ”

“ Resolved, That in our capacity of business men and citizens, we vow eternal hate to the treachery and treason of the rebellion, which, in addition to its before unnumbered crimes, has added the cowardly assassination of Abraham Lincoln in the vain hope of destroying this Republic. ”

“ You are to turn back the leaves of history to that red page on which is recorded in letters of blood the awful incidents of that April night on which the assassin's work was done on the body246 of the Chief Magistrate of the American republic,—a night on which for the first time in our existence as a nation, a blow was struck with the fell purpose not only of destroying human life, but the life of the nation, the life of liberty itself. ”

“ The American people, as all civilized nations, look with horror upon offers of rewards for the assassination of any enemies, as relapses into the disgraceful courses of savage times.
The assassination of a prisoner of war, is a murder of the blackest kind, and if it takes place, in consequence of the offer of a reward or not, and remains unpunished by the hostile government, the Law of War authorizes the most impressive retaliation, so that the repetition of a crime most dangerous to civilization, may be prevented, and a downward course into barbarity may be arrested. ”

“ When such crimes are perpetrated the public mind is apt to fall into gloom and perplexity; for it is ignorant alike of the causes and the consequences of such deeds. But it is one of our duties to reassure the country under unreasoning panic or despondency. Assassination has never changed the history of the world.... ”

“ They have flouted the authority of the King, and they are silencing by assassination those who raise their voices to condemn them. Yesterday in Rennes two young men who addressed the people as I am addressing you were done to death in the streets by assassins at the instigation of the nobility. Their blood cries out for vengeance. ”

“ But if the assassination of such persons is meant as the first step of a general design to attack and destroy by force the government of the country, or to compel the sovereign to adopt such measures as they may think fit, then that assassination assumes a different complexion, and may be considered an overt act of one or both of those species of treason which I have mentioned. ”