Four Presidents Have Been Assassinated In Office

The first of the four presidents to be assassinatedin the United States was Abraham Lincoln. On April 14, 1865, John Wilkes Booth shot Lincoln as he sat in Ford's Theater in Washington. He died the next day.

The 56-year-old Lincoln fought hard for the Union during the Civil War period and was struck down shortly after being re-elected for a second term. Booth, a well-known actor and Southern sympathizer, was shot and killed on April 26, in a barn in Bowling Green, Virginia, by Union soldiers.

In a Washington railway station on July 2, 1881, James A. Garfield was shot in the back by Charles J. Guiteau. Garfield lingered in agony through the hot summer before dying on September 19, 1881. He was only 49 years old. Guiteau, who was refused an ambassadorial appointment by Garfield, was hanged the following year.

William McKinley was shot on September 6, 1901. by Leon Czoigosz while attempting to shake hands at the Pan- American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. McKinley, a keen politician and conservative, died at age 58, on September 6,1901 Leon Czolgosz, a sell proclaimed anarchist, was electrocuted.

On November 22. 1963, John F. Kennedy was shot to death by sniper bullets as he rode in a motorcade in Dallas, Texas.

The Warren Commission named Lee Harvey Oswald as the "lone"assassin of the 46 year-old president. This was either the biggest cover-up, or the biggest mistake, in history. Evidence has been gathered by Harry Dean, a former agent of the Central Intelligence Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation; and by other investigators, that Lee Harvey Oswald was framed by U.S. Congressman John Rousselot and former Army General Edwin A. Walker.