Visitors queued to shake the president’s hand in a music hall at Buffalo’s Pan-American Exposition. On September 6, 1901, one man in the line, Leon Czolgosz, shot William McKinley. The president did not die that day. He survived for eight days, and his death on September 14 brought Vice President Theodore Roosevelt to the presidency.
The timing matters. The attack happened amid a fair devoted to modern progress, and it unfolded before cameras and reporters in a newly mass-mediated political world. The surviving photographs show McKinley at the reception; they do not show the moment he was shot.
A public president at the exposition
McKinley had visited the Buffalo fair the previous day and spoken about trade and national prosperity. On September 6 he toured Niagara Falls before returning for a public reception at the Temple of Music. The line of well-wishers made contact between president and visitors possible, but also gave an attacker a way to approach at close range.
Czolgosz, who identified with anarchist ideas, concealed his weapon under a cloth. The two shots caused wounds that initially did not appear inevitably fatal. Bystanders subdued him. Accounts of the attack often dwell on a few dramatic seconds; the next eight days are equally important to the story.
The interval before death
Doctors operated and monitored McKinley in Buffalo. Early reports offered hope, and Roosevelt left the area. McKinley’s condition then worsened. He died on September 14. The National Park Service records that Roosevelt returned and took the oath in Buffalo that day.
The episode changed the presidency at a moment when the United States was expanding its power abroad and contesting the shape of industry at home. Roosevelt’s succession was constitutional, but the speed and violence of the transition unsettled the country. Later security arrangements for presidents grew in the shadow of assassination, although no single protective policy can be reduced to this event alone.
What the record can show
Photographs taken at or near the exposition convey the setting and public nature of the reception. They cannot establish the attack’s every movement. The Library of Congress also preserves a contemporary film description: its camera operators had hoped to film the president leaving the Temple of Music, but the attack prevented that planned scene. Their surviving footage shows the crowd outside afterward.
Distinguishing the image before the shooting, the footage after it, and later artistic depictions keeps the story honest. It also gives McKinley’s final public appearance its proper place without presenting an illustration as an eyewitness photograph.
Explore other political turning points in Major Historical Events, or return to the September 6 edition.
Sources and method
The date, venue, medical interval and succession are checked against the National Park Service’s September 6 account and its site history. The Library of Congress’s film record distinguishes the crowd after the attack from an image of the attack itself.
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