Introduction

Mei: ​Hi welcome to Crash Course. Our names are Mei and Audrey. Today, we are discussing
how you, yes you, can change the course of history - and become famous for it.

Audrey:​ Time and time again in US history, great social movements (hint hint, the Progressive
Era, the New Deal, or any other time during crisis) have inspired great change...But you could
also just buy a cheap gun and try to kill the President. Because if you can’t be famous, be
infamous, right?

*cut to intro

Mei: ​Shooting the president or attempting to murder him is not a new phenomena in US History.
Of the 44 inhabitants of the Oval Office so far, sixteen have seen documented attacks on their
lives. That’s a whooping 37-ish% of all the white dudes plus Obama who president-ed who were
almost assassinated.

Audrey: ​Thought Bullet already? That’s so unorthodox.

Thought Bullet:
Audrey:​ Assassinations have played a major role in world history. Each and every period in
world history has several stories telling us how important and influential people were murdered in
cold blood, for reasons best known to the assassins or killers themselves (or sometimes, not
quite).

Mei: ​Any murderer is anyone who kills someone else intentionally. But an assassin is a murderer
of an important person in a surprise attack for political reasons. Usually it is methodically planned
out…

Audrey:​ Some synonymous to assassin, for those wordy nerds, would be: Booth, Guiteau,
Oswald, ​Czolgosz ​some polish guy’s whose last name we can’t pronounce.

Mei: ​ Several historical documents tell us that assassinations have been carried out for different
purposes which range from personal grudges to financial and/or political benefits.

Audrey​: The first man to be assassinated dates back 5,300 years ago. He took an arrow to the
back. Since then, practically all nations have suffered the loss of an important person through
assassination.

Mei: ​Since then, a number of assassinations have occurred in all cultures, nations, and time
periods. Julius Caesar, Robert Kennedy, Indira Gandhi, Emperor Peter III, Rafael Trujillo,

Audrey: Huey Long, Ngo Ninh Diem, Francisco Madero, Franz Ferdinand, Yang Di, Chief
Pontiac, etc.
 Mei:​ Sometimes, you don’t have to hold a political office to be assassinated. Several social
leaders have lost their lives to assassins all over the world.

Audrey: MLK, Malcolm X, Aldo Moro, Harvey Milk, Mahatma Gandhi, Leon Trotsky,

Mei: ​John Paul Oulo, David Webster, Alan Berg, Tupac Shakur...this could go on forever.

Transition:
So back to the US, because this is a US History Crash course...

Assassinated #1: Lincoln

Audrey: Five days after Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox Court House in Virginia
(which essentially ended the Civil War), Lincoln found himself at a Laura Keene’s performance
of “Our American Cousin”, situated with his family and a few friends laughing his top hat off.

Mei: But Laura Keene would not be the memorable actress of the evening. The one actor that
really got to his head was John Wilkes Booth.

Audrey: Booth was a well-known actor at the time was born and raised in Maryland. During the
onset and throughout t​he Civil War, he had remained in the North, despite his Confederate
sympathies.

Mei: As the Confederate influence/power began to wane, he and several associates hatched a plot
to kidnap the president and deliver Lincoln to the Confederate capital. However, the planned
kidnapping failed. Two weeks later, Richmond had fallen to Union forces.

Audrey: By April of 1865, Confederate armies were nearly collapsed across the South. Booth was
not pleased with the demise of the Confederacy and devised a new plan.(evil laugh)

Mei: Booth shot Lincoln behind his left ear and the bullet lodged itself behind his right eye at
10:15pm. He then stabbed army officer Henry Rathbone in the arm and jumped from the
president's box to the stage, breaking a leg.

Ha. Booth broke a leg and broke the Fourth Wall...

Oh me-from-the-past, this is no time for theatrical humor. Plus, there is no Tony for Best
Assassin. Yet.

Audrey: Anyways, Booth managed to escape the theatre, and Lincoln was brought to a nearby
boarding house where he died early the next morning. Already, the manhunt for Booth had begun.
10,000 federal troops, detectives and police personnel were involved. Eventually Booth and his
 co-conspirators were found. Booth himself was shot, and his other fugitives were sentenced to
death.

16 Years Later... - Garfield Assassinated

Mei: Flash forward a little over a decade and a half, and it’s the thick of the Gilded Age, a time
remembered for great thinking, inventing, entrepreneur-ing, writing, and social-changing. But like
most seemingly perfect times in history, there were an array of political issues.

Audrey: During this era, ​the Presidency was at an all-time low in power and influence, and the
Congress was rife with corruption, as the US government heavily relied on the spoils system.
Under this system, elected officials appointed friends and supporters to government jobs,
regardless of their qualifications.

Mei: Obviously this can and did cause issues. For Garfield, it was fatal. Four months after he
succeeded Hayes, Garfield would reap the consequences of denying the accomplished writer and
lawyer, Charles Guiteau (GUh-toe) his request to be an ambassador to Paris as a reward for
writing one of Garfield’s speeches that was supposedly the reason for Garfield’s presidential win.

Audrey: On June 2nd, Guiteau went to the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station in
Washington D.C. At the sight of Garfield, he fired his gun twice. Garfield lost his right to bear (a
healthy arm) as he was hit once there, and once in the back. No vital organs were hit. Doctors
quickly ran to the president and used their fingers to poke and prod Garfield’s wounds.

Mei: Surgeons tried to locate the bullet in the president's back. Even Alexander Graham Bell tried
to help by inventing a metal detector. Unfortunately for the president, the bullet was embedded so
deeply in his body that the metal detector could not locate it.This along with unsterilized tools
added to the mass amounts of germs that gave Garfield an awful infection lasting for 80 days
before killing him.

Audrey: Guiteau would later be hung for the shooting. His last words were “Yes, I shot him, but
his doctors killed him." Which is completely true. And why American doctors now accept and
use antiseptics. Thank gosh for that!

William McKinley
Mei: William McKinley, another Gilded Age president, had a better turnout than Garfield. I say
that because he lasted longer than 4 months in office...and McKinley made it through a whole
term of avoiding the active debates over the “money question” (gold standard) by enacting the
highest tariff in history, painting himself as a supporter of industrial monopolies as they
developed at an unprecedented rate, and led the nation to a victory in the Spanish American War.

Audrey: However, right as things were becoming favorable, McKinley took a bullet to the chest
from Polish immigrant, Leon Czgolz. Leon had grown up in Detroit, and became a steel mill
 worker. Czgolz became further dissatisfied with the expansion of monopolies, and took the
opportunity to shoot McKinley twice at the Buffalo Pan-American Exposition. McKinley was
rushed to the hospital, but died eight days later.

Mei: Czgolz (CHOL-gosh!) was convicted, and sentenced to the electric chair. He had claimed
that he killed McKinley because he was the head of a corrupt government. I mean listen to his last
words - “I killed the president because he was the enemy of the good people - the working
people.”

Audrey: Obviously, McKinley’s assassination spurred change and had a lasting impact on the
future history.

Oh! I know - his lasting impact was this twitter page. Check it out. His campaign manager was on
point with these puns. (read some of them)

Me-from-the past, No. Just no.

Mei: So the real immediate impact of McKinley’s death was a stronger pull to nativist sentiments.
The fact that Leon was Polish made many Americans turn against immigrants and make
grandiose statements about the inherent radical nature of foreign-born citizens.

Audrey: And the lasting impact - the enactment by Congress to the expansion of Secret Service
agent’s jobs to include protecting the president.

John F. Kennedy
Mei: The last president assassinated (so far - watch out Trump…) was John F Kennedy. John F.
Kennedy at the youthful age of 43, became the youngest man and the first Roman Catholic to
hold office. He was born into one of America’s wealthiest families and parlayed an elite
education and a reputation as a military hero into a successful run for Congress in 1946 and for
the Senate in 1952.

Audrey: As president, Kennedy confronted mounting Cold War tensions in Cuba, Vietnam and
elsewhere. He also led a renewed drive for public service and eventually provided federal support
for the growing civil rights movement.

Mei: In November of 1963, Kennedy looked towards his reelection, and chose to travel to Texas
to promote his political agenda. On the 22nd day of the month, while in Dallas, Kennedy was shot
by a Lee Harvey Oswald.

Audrey: Oswald actually liked Kennedy, especially for his crusade on Civil Rights, but hated the
economic system Kennedy promoted: capitalism. ​Oswald had allegiances to the Communist and
Socialist parties, and even spent time in Soviet Russia. His assassin motives, therefore, weren’t
necessarily an attack directly on Kennedy, rather, a way to prove his point and attack system,
which hinged on his political allegiances and a general hatred for America.
 (Assassination video)

Mystery Document
(Show video)

H: This speech was given five days after President Kennedy was assassinated, as Lyndon B.
Johnson stepped into office. Kennedy was a popular president to many, and his assassination
shocked people around the country.

I: The intended audience of this speech was the general public of the United States. This seen as
Johnson addresses his “Fellow Americans.” Johnson assures them that Kennedy’s legacy will live
on in the years to come.

P: The purpose of this document was to assure the American people that even though Kennedy
was gone, his legacy would be maintained and everyone will be safe. Additionally, because much
of the population was confused, Johnson worked to instill trust back into the government.

P: Lyndon B. Johnson was the Vice President under President John F. Kennedy. Johnson was a
democratic politician who ran against Kennedy for the democratic nomination and when he lost,
Kennedy graciously asked him to be his running mate.

Back to Kennedy
Mei: So Kennedy was taking the initial-tive on and was like, just f***kin’ kidding Texas, I don’t
want your votes anymore. I’ll bite the bullet..And Johnson, more timid, was like: I won’t, but I
will take your job Johnny boy?

Oh, me-from the past, thank god you have APUSH next year with Boyle.

Audrey: Johnson was sworn in as the 36th president of the United States at 2:39 p.m, just 1 hour
and 39 minutes after Kennedy was declared dead. He took the presidential oath of office aboard
Air Force One​ as it sat on the runway at Dallas Love Field airport. Feeling a need to stick up for
his predecessor, ​President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed the President's Commission on the
Assassination of President Kennedy “to evaluate matters relating to the assassination and the
subsequent killing of the alleged assassin, and to report its findings and conclusions to him.”

Mei: To this day, there are still major conspiracies. People investigating and forming theories
about multiple shooters, the “Magic Bullet”, etc.

End:
Shooting for synthesis? Perhaps discuss the fourteen other presidents who almost died…
1. Andrew Jackson = shot at but shooter misfired (darn)
2. Theodore Roosevelt = shot to the chest but speech saved his life
3. William Howard Taft = diabetes….just kidding, was supposed to bite the bullet
4. Herbert Hoover = failed bomb attempt
5. Franklin D. Roosevelt = six shots fired, not one hit him. Now that’s a new deal from fate!
6. Harry Truman = attempts not once but twice; once via letter bombs, once via gun
7. Richard Nixon = attempts not once but twice; both via a gun
8. Gerald Ford = shot at twice on separate occasions
9. Jimmy Carter = Raymond Lee Harvey carried a gun to one of his speech
10. Ronald Reagan = ​a single bullet which broke a rib, punctured a lung, and caused serious
internal bleeding
11. George H.W Bush = bombing attempt during Bush (the better one) visit to Kuwait
University
12. Bill Clinton = four attempts, 3 from shooters, 1 from a bomb
13. George Bush = failed bomb attempt (darn)
14. Barack Obama = 5 planned attempts, two actually carried out, one via a gun and the other
via a letter laced with a deadly poison
15. DONALD TRUMP​??????​!!!!!!!!!!