quote:
1901
Leon Czolgosz is electrocuted for the assassination of US President William McKinley. Czolgosz, an anarchist, shot McKinley on September 6 during a public reception at the Temple of Music in Buffalo, N.Y. Despite early hopes of recovery, McKinley died September 14, in Buffalo, NY.

McKinley died a very slow, and very public death. Modern germ theory hadn't been accepted at this point so physicians on the scene simply stuck their fingers into the wound to dig the bullet out.

He developed sepsis and, over the course of several weeks, slowly withered away. All with the press camped outside his door reporting on his daily decline.

The Republican leadership, including McKinley, so distrusted Teddy Roosevelt that no one told him how bad McKinley's condition had become. So when McKinley died Teddy had just finished climbing the tallest mountain in New York and had to make a perilous trip down the mountain, at breakneck speeds, to be sworn in as President by a local justice of the peace.

It would be the start of the schism that eventually formed the modern Republican party. Teddy was a devote reformer and his bitter departure from the party put things in motion for the Republican party of today. Oddly enough, it also set in motion the modern Democratic party because FDR, Teddy's distant cousin, decided he couldn't run as a Republican because he would always be in Teddy's rather immense shadow.

Teddy Roosevelt's ascension to power is arguable the most important political event in US history since Lincoln was elected. All because Leon Czolgosz had a crush on Emma Goldman, the leading female anarchist of the day. He basically assassinated the President and set all this into motion in the hopes of impressing her.