Eyewitness To Two Presidential Assassinations – Dale’s Daily Data

I think it’s one of the most tragic and weirdest chapters in American history – three  American presidents shot and killed in a period of 36 years.  And one man was a witness to two of them, but had a connection to the third.

He held the position of Secretary of War under James Garfield and was at the Washington train station to see Garfield off on a trip to the New Jersey shore for a college reunion.  It was there that Garfield was shot twice by a lone gunman just four months into his presidency.  Garfield died of infection 12 weeks later.

20 years later he received an invitation to join President William McKinley in Buffalo for the Pan American Exposition and arrived just in time to see a lone gunman mortally wound McKinley.  McKinley died eight days later of gangrene.

Strangely, this man who witnessed the assassinations of two presidents could also have witnessed a third.  He’d been invited to Ford’s Theatre on the night Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, but declined.  If he had accepted he would have been sitting in the Presidential box to see an evening performance of “Our American Cousin”.

That invitation was extended to Robert Todd Lincoln, the only son of Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln.  His decision against going to the show was something he regretted for the rest of his life, but fate brought Lincoln to the Washington train station and to the Pan American Exposition where he witnessed history.

After the assassination of McKinley, Robert Todd Lincoln turned down all Presidential invitations except the one for the dedication of the Lincoln Memorial.