THE ASSASSIN FROM ILLINOIS

THE STORY OF JAMES EARL RAY

On April 4, 1968, civil rights leader, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was shot and killed while standing on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. The man arrested and charged -- and who entered a guilty plea – for the murder was James Earl Ray, who became one of the most hated men in America.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 

Why the small-time crook would have even consider killing a man like Dr. King remains a mystery to most, as every crime that he ever committed was for money, never for political convictions. Many have speculated that he was paid to kill King, and he went to his grave professing his innocence, but what really happened is unknown. Few Illinois residents know (or care to remember) that James Earl Ray was a native of the state – specifically Alton, Illinois – or that a robbery that he committed in Alton may have actually financed the assassination of Dr. King.

James Earl Ray was born in Alton on March 10, 1928 in a small frame house in the 1000 block of West Ninth Street. His family moved to Quincy after his father was run out of town following his arrest for writing a series of bad checks. It was in Alton, however, that Ray's criminal career began. He was a cheap crook who held up gas stations and stores and was arrested several times for burglary and armed robbery. In a 1952 robbery attempt, he actually dropped his wallet at the crime scene, which led to his arrest. He spent time at the Illinois State Prison in Joliet and then returned to Alton again.

James Earl Ray

In 1959, he robbed Wegner's Food Store in Alton and fled to Missouri. While on the run from police officers, he clownishly fell out of his escape car and was immediately arrested. Ray was already wanted for a robbery in that state and so he was sentenced to two terms at the Missouri State Prison. Incredibly, he escaped from prison by hiding in a large box that was used to transport bread to the prison's farm crew. He vanished on April 23, 1967 and again returned to Alton.

In July 1967, Ray robbed the Bank of Alton and managed to get away with $30,000. Investigators came to believe that it was with this money that Ray fled the country after killing Dr. King.

After the robbery, he left Alton and eight months later, turned up in Memphis. Using several aliases, Ray rented rooms all over the city, one of which was directly across the street from the motel where King was staying. As he stood at a bathroom window on the night of April 4, Ray had a clear shot at the civil rights leader as he emerged from his second-floor room and stood talking to some friends on the balcony. The assassin raised his rifle and sighting through a pair of binoculars, squeezed the trigger only once. The bullet ripped through King's neck, passed through his lower jaw, severed his spinal column and sent him spinning back against the wall. King died without speaking an hour later at a nearby hospital.

Friends and staff members of Dr. King react after shots ring out 

at the Lorraine Motel

The moment after firing his weapon, Ray calmly left his possessions in the room and casually drove away from Memphis, crossing into Canada three days later. Despite being listed on the FBI "most wanted" list, he stayed in Toronto for a month and then using a Canadian passport (and another alias), he departed for London. After remaining there for six days, he flew to Lisbon, spent five days at the Hotel Portugal and returned to London. Some reports claim that it was in Lisbon that Ray received payment for killing King. Back in London, though, Ray moved erratically from hotel to hotel and then, as if to prove what a moronic small-time hoodlum he was, Ray called several London newspapers and inquired as to how one might go about enlisting in the mercenary military forces in Africa. Days later, he was arrested by the London police.

Ray was almost immediately scheduled to stand trial in Memphis in March 1969 but then he abruptly pled guilty after being extradited from England. He was sentenced to 99 years in prison after just a two-hour hearing. Three days later, Ray recanted his confession and claimed that he had been set up for the assassination by a man named "Raoul," who he had met in Montreal. He later wrote a book that claimed he was a political prisoner and the victim of a vast conspiracy.

Ray had hired Jack Kershaw as his attorney, who promoted Ray's claim that he was not responsible for the shooting. Kershaw and his client met with representatives of the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations and convinced the committee to run ballistics tests—which ultimately proved inconclusive—that they felt would show that Ray had not fired the fatal shot. Kershaw claimed that the escape was additional proof that Ray had been involved in a conspiracy that had provided him with the outside assistance he would have needed to break out of jail. Kershaw convinced Ray to take a polygraph test as part of an interview with Playboy magazine. The magazine said that the test results showed "that Ray did, in fact, kill Martin Luther King Jr. and that he did so alone." Needless to say, this was not what Ray wanted to hear but he managed to spin it into further evidence of the conspiracy against him.

Strangely, though, Dr. King’s son, Dexter, met with Ray in 1997 and publicly supported his efforts to obtain a retrial. Dr. William Pepper, a friend of King in the last year of his life, represented Ray in a televised mock trial in an attempt to get him the trial he never had. The King family has since concluded that Ray did not have anything to do with the murder of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Ray died in prison on April 23, 1998, at the age of 70, from complications related to kidney disease and liver failure caused by hepatitis C. While his claims of far-reaching conspiracies may be hard to swallow, there are still a number of unanswered questions in regards to Ray and the King assassination. However, they are questions that are likely never going to be answered.

"JUST LIKE CHICAGO, EH MAYOR?"

The Assassination of Anton Cermak:
When the Mob Killed the Mayor

On February 15, 1933, President-Elect Franklin D. Roosevelt narrowly escaped an assassin’s bullet while giving an impromptu speech from the back of an open car in the Bayfront Park area of Miami, Florida. Roosevelt escaped injury that day, but four other people were wounded. The would-be assassin’s aim was spoiled when Lilian Cross, a doctor’s wife, hit his arm with her purse and spoiled his aim. Two of the gunshot victims died that day, including a female bystander and the mayor of Chicago, Anton Cermak. The mayor had attended the event to patch up relations with Roosevelt after opposing him for the presidency during the Democratic Convention in Chicago.

After the assassin, a deranged, unemployed bricklayer named Giuseppe Zangara, was captured, he told the police that he “hated the rich” but had nothing against the president. He never really explained why he tried to kill Roosevelt – but according to mob legend, he was not the intended target anyway. Zangara, the stories say, had been hired to kill Anton Cermak – revenge by the Chicago Outfit.

Frank Nitti

To understand the story, we have to return to Chicago in 1931, shortly after Al Capone went to federal prison on tax evasion charges. In his place, as head of the Outfit, was a man named Frank Nitti, an Italian immigrant who worked his way up through the ranks of organized crime to work for John Torrio and his successor, Al Capone. Under Capone, Nitti gained a fearsome reputation as an enforcer. Originally working as a bodyguard, Capone began tasking Nitti with the planning and execution of some of the gang’s most notable assassinations, like that of Hymie Weiss in 1926. He also ran Capone's liquor smuggling and distribution operation, importing whisky from Canada and selling it through a network of speakeasies around Chicago. Known as one of Capone’s top captains, he was trusted for his leadership and business skills but he never wanted leadership of the gang.

However, after Capone went to prison, newspaper reporters began looking for a new face for the head of the gang and somehow, Nitti ended up as that man. While an efficient organizer under Capone, it had been his job to make sure that Capone's orders had been carried out, not to give them himself. Nitti was only supposed to be a member of the board of directors of the new Outfit, not the man in charge. When Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky established their national crime syndicate, they dealt with Paul "The Waiter" Ricca as the leader of the Chicago mob and not with Nitti.

However, Ricca and the others used Nitti's high profile with the press to keep the heat off the real inner workings of the Outfit. He became a valuable man to take the heat. Chicago mayor Anton Cermak even dispatched his own police "hit men" to try and take out Nitti so that he could replace him with other gangsters who kept him on the payroll.

Anton Cermak

Anton Cermak, an Austria-Hungarian immigrant, was swept into the Chicago mayor’s office as a reform candidate after the violence of the Prohibition beer wars and the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. He began his political career as a precinct captain and in 1902 was elected to the Illinois House of Representatives. Seven years later, he would take his place as alderman of the 12th Ward. Cermak was elected president of the Cook County Board of Commissioners in 1922, chairman of the Cook County Democratic Party in 1928, and mayor of Chicago in 1931.

Breaking the hold that the Irish had on Chicago politics, he brought ethnic groups like Poles, Czechs, Ukrainians, Jews, Italians, and African Americans to the polling places. Cermak made many enemies among the local politicians. As Cermak climbed the political ladder, the resentment of the Party leadership grew. When the bosses rejected his bid to become the mayoral candidate, Cermak swore revenge. He formed his political army from the non-Irish elements, and even persuaded black politician William L. Dawson to switch from the Republican to the Democratic Party.

After the corruption that had infiltrated William “Big Bill” Thompson’s previous administrations, even the mob couldn’t keep him in office. The voters' disgust with the corruption of his machine and his inability – or rather unwillingness -- to clean up organized crime in Chicago were cited as major factors in Cermak capturing 58% of the vote in the mayoral election on April 6, 1931. Cermak's victory finished Thompson as a political power and largely ended the Republican Party's power in Chicago.

But Cermak turned out to be nearly as corrupt as Thompson – he just wasn’t so visible about it. His plan was to eliminate the Chicago Outfit in favor of mobster Ted Newberry, who had taken over the remnants of the O’Banion / Moran gang and territories.

On December 19, 1932, a team of Chicago police, headed by Detective Sergeants Harry Lang and Harry Miller, raided Frank Nitti's office in Room 554 of the LaSalle Building. Lang shot Nitti three times in the back and neck. He then shot himself in the finger to make the shooting look like self-defense, claiming that Nitti had shot him first. Nitti was badly wounded during the attempt on his life. He lingered near death for a time, but recovered only to end up standing trial for the shooting of one of the cops during the gun battle.

Court testimony claimed that the murder attempt was personally ordered by newly elected Mayor Anton Cermak, who supposedly wanted to eliminate the Outfit in favor of Ted Newberry and then redistribute Capone’s territories. During the trial, Miller testified that Lang received $15,000 to kill Nitti. Another uniformed officer who was present at the shooting testified that Nitti was shot while unarmed. Nitti’s trial ended with a hung jury.  Harry Lang and Harry Miller were both fired from the police force and each fined $100 for assault.

This was not the end of story, though. Legend has it that the Outfit got its revenge.

Anton Cermak and Franklin D. Roosevelt

On February 15, 1933, Cermak was shot in Bayfront Park in Miami. Cermak was on the reviewing stand and, after President-elect Franklin Roosevelt made a short speech from an open car, he waved over Cermak to join him. As Roosevelt's car was about to start, shots rang out and Cermak and four others were hit.

They were shot by a man named Giuseppe Zangara, an Italian immigrant who had come to the United States in 1923. A poorly educated bricklayer, Zangara suffered severe pain in his abdomen, later attributed to adhesions of the gall bladder, possibly originating from an appendectomy performed in 1926. These adhesions were later cited as a cause for his increasing mental delusions. It became increasingly difficult for him to work due to both his physical and mental conditions.

A wounded Cermak being taken to an ambulance

Cermak was rushed to the hospital. As he was taken away by ambulance, Cermak was supposed to have said to the president, "I am glad that it was me instead of you." They became the most famous words that Cermak ever uttered -- or they would have been, if he had really said them. A reporter who was there that day, Ed Gilbreth, stated that the phrase was created by William Randolph Hearst’s Chicago Herald-American to make a good headline and sell papers. Cermak never said anything of the sort and his dislike of Roosevelt was well-known.

Meanwhile, Zangara was arrested and charged with four counts of attempted murder. At the Dade County Courthouse jail, he confessed and stated, “I have the gun in my hand. I kill kings and presidents first and next all capitalists.” He pleaded guilty to the attempted murder counts and was sentenced to 80 years in prison. As he was led out of the courtroom, Zangara told the judge, “Four times 20 is 80. Oh, judge, don't be stingy. Give me a hundred years.”

On March 6, nineteen days after the shooting, Cermak died at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami, partly because of his wounds. A short time later, his personal physician, Dr. Karl A. Meyer, said that Cermak's primary cause of death was ulcerative colitis, commenting, "The mayor would have recovered from the bullet wound had it not been for the complication of colitis. The autopsy disclosed the wound had healed... the other complications were not directly due to the bullet wound."

Giuseppe Zangara

After Cermak’s death, Zangara pleaded guilty to the additional murder charge, and was sentenced to death by Circuit Court Judge Uly Thompson. Zangara said after hearing his sentence: “You give me electric chair. I no afraid of that chair! You one of capitalists. You is crook man too. Put me in electric chair. I no care!” On March 20, 1933, after spending only 10 days on Death Row, Zangara was executed in Old Sparky, the electric chair at Florida State Prison in Raiford, Florida. Zangara became enraged when he learned no newsreel cameras would be filming his final moments. Zangara's final statement was "Viva Italia! Goodbye to all poor peoples everywhere! Pusha da button!"

Anton Cermak was interred in a mausoleum at Bohemian National Cemetery in Chicago. The mayor's death was followed by a struggle for succession to his party chairmanship and to the mayor's office. A plaque honoring Cermak still stands at the site of the assassination in Miami's Bayfront Park. It is inscribed with the famous words that Cermak never uttered, "I'm glad it was me instead of you."

The true reason why Zangara fired a gun that day in Miami will likely never be known. His reasons could have been as simple as he claimed – that he wanted to kill rich people – or as complicated as many have suggested over the years. It has been claimed that Zangara was hired by the Outfit, who planned to have revenge against the mayor for his attack on Nitti and his conspiracy to destroy the Outfit. Some versions of this story assert that Zangara was a diversion for a second gunman who was to supposed to shoot Cermak, but this alleged second gunman never made it to the park.

We’ll never know for sure, although some words uttered by a reporter who was standing nearby might have provided more of a clue in the shooting than officials would admit. Just as the shots rang out, a reporter standing nearby allegedly joked to Cermak, "Just like Chicago, eh Mayor?"  And maybe it was.

Want to read the rest of the story? Check out Troy Taylor’s book, Blood, Guns & Valentines: The Haunting of Al Capone and Chicago’s Gangland Ghosts, available autographed as part of the “Dead Men Do Tell Tales” series [Click Here to See the Series and Order Your Copy] and as a Kindle edition from Amazon. 

The Man who Murdered the Assassin

THE MAN WHO MURDERED THE ASSASSIN

The Enigmatic Boston Corbett – killer of John Wilkes Booth

On this date, April 26, 1865, John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of President Abraham Lincoln, was surrounded by federal troops in a barn near Port Royal, Virginia and shot to death. Legends persisted for decades – starting almost from the time the fatal shot was fired and continuing to this day --- that Booth was not the man who died in that barn. Allegedly, he lived on for many years, only to eventually die in Enid, Oklahoma… but that’s a story for another time (see my book INTO THE SHADOWS).

For this anniversary of Booth’s accepted death, we will be taking a closer look at the man who killed him – a very strange gentleman named Boston Corbett, who may have been part of a larger conspiracy himself.

Boston Corbett is largely considered to have been the Jack Ruby of his day – the man who killed the killer of the President of the United States. Jack Ruby’s shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald on November 24, 1963, in the basement of the Dallas, Texas jail was witnessed by reporters, police officers and a national television audience. But Boston Corbett’s shooting of John Wilkes Booth on April 26, 1865, at a tobacco barn near Port Royal, Virginia was hardly witnessed by anyone – and it attracted controversy from the beginning. While he was celebrated for a short time as Booth’s killer, his real place in the Lincoln assassination remains in question after all of these years.

Sergeant Boston Corbett had been assigned to Lieutenant Edward Doherty, one of the Federal officers that had been given the task of tracking down Lincoln’s assassin. The soldiers found several witnesses who recognized Booth and eventually discovered sympathizer Willie Jett, who had arranged lodging for Booth at the tobacco farm where he was later discovered.

Boston Corbett

It was Corbett who fired the fatal bullet that killed Booth and it is at this point that many conspiracy theories about him begin. Among the theories is the idea that Corbett was under different orders than the other soldiers. Some believe he was actually told to silence Booth so that Edwin Stanton could not be implicated in a plot against the president. It is unlikely that this was the case, however, as Corbett is not believed to have had contact with Stanton before leaving Washington. He did act on orders to kill Booth, however, if not orders from government officials, then from a higher authority.

He shot Booth on direct orders from God.

He was born Thomas H. Corbett in London in 1832 and immigrated with his parents to Troy, New York seven years later. As a young man in the 1850s, Corbett went into the hat-making industry at a time when the dire occupational hazards of the trade had yet to be discovered. As he worked, he was exposed to large quantities of mercury, which often caused insanity (thus, the expression “mad as a hatter”). The inescapable inhaling of the vapors from the mercury affected the brain and caused hallucinatory episodes, twitches and tics and outright psychoses and his work as a hat-maker was certainly the root of Boston Corbett’s madness.

He worked in the trade in Troy and Albany, in Richmond, Virginia and in Boston and New York City for several years. He is said to have married during this period, losing his wife and a baby during childbirth. After this tragedy, he became homeless and began drinking. He eventually strayed into religion after attending a revival meeting in New York.

In 1857, while working in Boston, Corbett was baptized, apparently into the Methodist Church, and the experience so moved him that he adopted the name of the city where he found his faith as his own. He was by now a local eccentric. He wore his hair long because images of Jesus showed him with long locks and he preached to any passerby who paused in curiosity.

Corbett’s religious fanaticism, loud but harmless, took a violent turn in the summer of 1858. After a revival meeting at a Boston church, he was propositioned on the street by two prostitutes. The experience so disturbed him that he returned to the boarding house where he lived and castrated himself with a pair of scissors. He was treated at Massachusetts General Hospital from the middle of July to the first weeks in August for his self-inflicted wound.

What happened to Boston Corbett over the course of the next two years is unknown, but at some point, he returned to New York and in April 1861, enlisted as a private in Company I, Twelfth New York Militia. Behavioral problems marred his record from the start. They began when he heard Colonel Butterfield, commander of the militia regiment, using profanity toward his new recruits. Corbett reprimanded the Colonel for using the Lord’s name in vain and for this, was marched off to the guardhouse. A few days later, Butterfield offered to release him if he apologized, but Corbett refused.

Corbett later re-enlisted, this time in Company L, Sixteenth New York Cavalry, where he was promoted to corporal and later rose to the rank of sergeant. This was in spite of the numerous disciplinary problems that he had over his demand that officers not use profanity and his condemnation of fellow soldiers who drank. New York cavalrymen remembered their odd comrade for his periodic punishment tours where he carried a knapsack filled with bricks around the guardhouse but his commanders saw him as a fierce and resolute fighting man. He fought bravely in battle, although his odd and erratic behavior often made his superiors wary of using him for some assignments.

 In June 1864, Confederate raiders under John Singleton Mosby cornered a squad of Union troopers, including Corbett, at Culpepper Courthouse in Virginia. Corbett refused to surrender, found cover and opened fire on Mosby and his twenty-six raiders. He only gave up after his ammunition ran out. Mosby was impressed.

Corbett and his comrades were sent to the notorious Andersonville prison in Georgia and endured five months of incarceration there, three of them in an outdoor compound. He was released during a prisoner exchange in November 1864 and was sent to an Army hospital in Maryland to recover from exposure, malnutrition and scurvy. By the early spring of 1865, Corbett had returned to his unit and in April was the first man to volunteer for service in the pursuit of President Lincoln’s assassin, John Wilkes Booth.

John Wilkes Booth

Corbett was among the men who cornered Booth and David Herold at the Port Royal tobacco barn and he was stationed at a point on the building’s perimeter when it was set on fire. Through a gap in the barn’s siding, he saw a lone figure inside. He stated at the conspiracy trial one month later that he had never seen Booth before but the man in the barn had a broken leg and made “desperate replies” to the Federal officers who demanded his surrender. He gave a statement on May 1, 1865 that read:

I saw [Booth] in the act of stooping or springing, and concluded he was going to use his weapons. I immediately took steady aim upon him with my revolver and fired – shooting him through the neck and head. He was then carried out of the barn before the fire reached him; was taken to the Piazza of the house… Lt. Doherty, and the detective officers who were in front of the barn, did not seem to know that I had shot him, but supposed he had shot himself, until I informed Lt. Doherty of the fact – showing him my pistol which bore evidence of the truth of my statement, which also confirmed by the man placed at my right-hand who saw it.

 Corbett’s shot was an extraordinary one considering the distance, the weapon, the smoke and fire in the barn and the confusion that was occurring outside of it. The bullet struck the man inside in the back of the head – almost at the same place where Booth’s bullet struck Lincoln – and severed his spinal cord.

The assassin was dragged from the burning barn and placed on a mattress from the nearby Garrett house. He was scarcely recognizable as the handsome actor. The man was filthy, his hair in tangles, and eleven-day growth of beard on his emaciated face. He died a few minutes after being taken from the barn.

After the shooting at the farm, Corbett was placed under arrest by Colonel Conger, Doherty’s superior officer in the search party. The charge against him was a breach of military discipline “in firing without Doherty’s order and in defiance of Gen. Baker’s order” and Corbett was placed under guard along with David Herold and returned to Washington. When they arrived, Corbett was imprisoned, awaiting court martial. However, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, upon hearing the story of the incident, ordered Corbett to be released. He announced theatrically, “The rebel is dead, the patriot lives – the patriot is released!”

Corbett mustered out of the Army on August 17, 1865 and moved to Danbury, Connecticut. There, he found work, again in the hat trade, and supplemented his income with occasional lectures, accompanied by lantern slides, on his exploits as “Lincoln’s Avenger.”

But, was he really? Even those who did not question the idea that the assassin died at the Garrett farm, they did wonder whether or not Corbett actually fired the fatal shot, or whether Booth committed suicide or escaped. Some believed that Colonel Conger fired the shot from the corner of the barn (he received a suspiciously high $15,000 of the combined $75,000 reward offered for Booth and Herold’s capture). Others believed that Lieutenant Doherty had done the shooting and pointed out that he received $5,250 of the reward money and was never questioned during the conspirator’s trial. Corbett’s shot was almost impossible and many believed that he simply could not have done it. In 1903, an early Lincoln assassination researcher, David M. DeWitt, wrote that Corbett was at least thirty feet from the barn when the shot was fired that killed Booth.

In the end, Corbett received $1,653.85 as part of the reward for bringing Booth to justice. His petition for a federal pension for his service in the Army, specifically for his work as a volunteer in the search for Lincoln’s assassin, came through in 1882. He was granted $7.50 a month in appreciation for his “service” to the United States.

Corbett eventually gave up work as a hat-maker and showed up in the late 1860s, in Camden, New Jersey, where he worked as a minister. He later went west and ended up in Kansas in the 1870s, showing signs of a deteriorating mental state. He lived as a reclusive farmer for years, occasionally working as a “fire and brimstone” evangelist. In November 1885, he was arrested after threatening some boys playing baseball on the Sabbath with a pistol. The case was dismissed by the county attorney.

A year after this incident, through the efforts of the Grand Army of the Republic and a state legislator from Cloud County, where Corbett lived, he was hired as an assistant doorkeeper at the Kansas House of Representatives in Topeka. He reported for duty in January 1887, but only lasted a month before his insanity got the better of him.

Corbett, in his madness, believed that the other doorkeepers and the politicians were laughing at him behind his back. This led to him threatening a janitor with a knife and then pointing a revolver at the House sergeant-in-arms. He broke into the House gallery with his weapons, causing the lawmakers, staff and workers to flee for their lives. Corbett was quickly arrested and taken before a judge the next day. A quick verdict was pronounced and he was sent to the Topeka Asylum for the Insane.

He failed on his first attempt to escape but on May 26, 1888, he succeeded. Walking around the grounds of the asylum with other inmates that day, Corbett saw a pony that belonged to the young son of the superintendent tied up in front of the hospital office. He hurried over, stole the horse, and rode away.

A week later, with flyers posted about him around the state, Corbett surfaced in Neodesha in the southeastern part of the state. There, he met a local schoolmaster named Richard Thatcher and Irwin Ford, the son of a soldier who had been imprisoned with Corbett at Andersonville. The two men supplied Corbett with a fresh horse, food and money. They said that Corbett told them that he had been “shamefully treated” and intended to flee to Mexico.

He may have done just that, although we’ll never know for sure. He was in good health when he escaped from the hospital and Mexico was the perfect place for him to do just what he did – disappear.

The Assassination that Almost Was...

THE ASSASSINATION THAT ALMOST WAS..

The First Time Someone Tried to Kill the President

In American history, there have been four assassinations of our president – Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, William McKinley and John F. Kennedy. There have also been a number of attempts to kill the president with assassination tries most famously aimed at Theodore Roosevelt, Gerald Ford by remnants of the Manson family and Ronald Reagan by John Hinckley. But on this date, January 30, 1835, the first attempt was made to kill an American president when a man named Richard Lawrence attempted to kill Andrew Jackson.

To anyone familiar with history, this was certainly not the first time that someone had tried to kill Andrew “Old Hickory” Jackson. He had a long and storied career as a military officer, fighting Indians and the British at New Orleans, and he also fought several duels both before and after his political career.

Andrew Jackson

When he was only a teenager, Jackson was captured by the British during the American Revolution. Ordered by a British officer to clean his boots, Jackson refused and earned a scar on his head from the officer’s saber. Even as a young man, he refused to back down when he knew something was wrong. His confrontational nature would serve him well as both a duelist – and as President.

The first duel that Jackson fought started in a courtroom, which was not an uncommon occurrence at the time. Many legal and political differences were solved on the dueling fields as matters of honor. In this case, Jackson was serving as the prosecutor for the North Carolina Territorial (later Tennessee) Court in 1788. During a civil suit, Jackson went up against Waightsill Avery, a noted Revolutionary veteran and one of the most respected lawyers in North Carolina. In fact, Jackson was turned down by Avery previously for a law internship.

Jackson, then just 21 years old, was overmatched by Avery in the suit. Avery ridiculed Jackson's legal position with sarcasm. In a letter, Jackson challenged Avery, "My character you have injured, and further you have insulted me in the presence of a court and a large audience." By the time of the duel, Jackson's temper cooled. Their seconds (assistants) agreed that honor had been achieved. Both deliberately missed with their shots and shook hands.

Fifteen years later, Jackson again tangled with a distinguished veteran. Tennessee governor John Sevier was a self-assured man who blocked Jackson's coveted election as major general of the Tennessee militia. By 1802, Jackson won the major generalship narrowly over then ex-governor Sevier. Then Jackson publicly introduced evidence he discovered of Sevier dealing in forged land warrants. Sevier later burst into Judge Jackson's Knoxville court with a cutlass and demanded a fight. Jackson replied with a challenge of his own. A duel in Virginia was arranged by their seconds, but the two met prematurely by chance in the West Tennessee Indian country. Jackson dismounted and approached Sevier brandishing a pistol. After some cursing, each holstered their weapons. But Jackson refused to let it go. He taunted the former governor and Sevier drew his sword. Jackson went for his pistol and Sevier hid behind a tree. Sevier's son, James, took aim on Jackson and Dr. Thomas Vandyke, Jackson's companion, took aim on James. After more parley, the men withdrew and the scheduled duel never happened.

With Jackson's next duel, the tables were turned--- two young lawyers challenged Jackson. Stemming from a horse racing wager, Thomas Swann told Charles Dickinson that Jackson accused him of double-dealing. Swann demanded satisfaction, but Jackson suspected Dickinson was behind the challenge, "the base, poltroon and cowardly tale-bearer will always act in the background." Swann confronted Jackson in a Nashville tavern and Jackson beat him with a cane. This insult resulted in a challenge.

As arranged, Dickinson, who was 15 years younger than his opponent, met Jackson at Harrison's Mill, Kentucky for the duel. Dickinson was a fine marksman and Jackson only adequate. Only 24 feet separated them when the command "fire" was announced. Dickinson fired first and to his amazement, Jackson hardly flinched. Then Jackson fired calmly. The bullet struck Dickinson in the stomach and he collapsed. As he rode away, Jackson was in pain. Dickinson's bullet had hit near his heart but not fatally. Dickinson died at dusk.

The duel with John Dickinson left one man dead and a bullet in Jackson’s body for the rest of his life. 

Jackson would carry Dickinson's bullet for the rest of his life, as well as his violent reputation. His political opponents used his dueling past against him, declaring him unfit for the presidency. The American people didn’t care and they continued to elect him. Jackson became a polarizing figure who dominated the Second Party System in the 1820s and 1830s, as president he dismantled the Second Bank of the United States and initiated forced relocation and resettlement of Native American tribes from the Southeast to west of the Mississippi River. His enthusiastic followers created the modern Democratic Party. The 1830–1850 period later became known as the era of Jacksonian democracy.

He also holds the rather dubious honor of being the first president to survive both an attack and an assassination attempt while in office.

The first presidential attack came when Jackson ordered the dismissal of Robert B. Randolph from the Navy for embezzlement. On May 6, 1833, Jackson sailed on USS Cygnet to Fredericksburg, Virginia, where he was to lay the cornerstone on a monument near the grave of Mary Ball Washington, George Washington's mother. During a stopover near Alexandria, Randolph appeared and struck the President. He fled the scene chased by several members of Jackson's party, including the well-known writer Washington Irving. Jackson decided not to press charges.

On January 30, 1835, the first attempt to kill a sitting President of the United States occurred just outside the United States Capitol. When Jackson was leaving through the East Portico after the funeral of South Carolina Representative Warren R. Davis, Richard Lawrence, an unemployed housepainter from England, aimed a pistol at Jackson, which misfired. Lawrence pulled out a second pistol, which also misfired.

Historians believe the humid weather contributed to the double misfiring. Lawrence was restrained, and legend says that Jackson attacked Lawrence with his cane. Others present, including David Crockett, the famous Tennessee frontiersman, restrained and disarmed Lawrence.

The first attempt on the life of an American president, Andrew Jackson, occurred on January 30, 1835.  

Lawrence told doctors later his reasons for the shooting. He blamed Jackson for the loss of his job. He claimed that with the President dead, "money would be more plenty" (a reference to Jackson's struggle with the Bank of the United States) and that he "could not rise until the President fell". Finally, he told his interrogators that he was a deposed English King—specifically, Richard III, dead since 1485—and that Jackson was his clerk.

Lawrence had worked as a painter and there is speculation that exposure to the chemicals in his paints may have contributed to his derangement. After losing his job in the early 1830s, his personality saw a dramatic change. He was previously conservatively dressed, but now he dressed flamboyantly, and grew a mustache. He gave up looking for work, saying that he had no need to work as the American government owed him a large sum of money but that President Andrew Jackson was keeping him from receiving it. Lawrence also blamed Jackson for killing his father.

Lawrence was brought to trial on April 11, 1835 at the District of Columbia City Hall. The prosecuting attorney was Francis Scott Key. After only five minutes of deliberation, the jury found Lawrence not guilty by reason of insanity. In the years following his conviction, Lawrence was held by several institutions and hospitals. In 1855, he was committed to the newly-opened Government Hospital for the Insane (later renamed St. Elizabeths Hospital) in Washington, D.C. where he remained until his death in 1861.

Even though this was the first attempt to assassinate an American president, there was – as there would be with all later assassinations – speculation that Lawrence was part of a conspiracy. While nobody denied Lawrence's involvement, many people, including Jackson, believed that he may have been supported or put up to carrying out the assassination attempt by the President's political enemies. Senator John C. Calhoun made a statement on the U.S. Senate floor that he was not connected to the attack. Jackson believed Calhoun, an old enemy of his, was at the bottom of the attempt. Jackson also suspected a former friend and supporter, Senator George Poindexter of Mississippi, who had used Lawrence to do some house painting a few months earlier. Poindexter was unable to convince his supporters in Mississippi that he was not involved in a plot against the President, and was defeated for reelection. All subsequent evidence indicates that Lawrence was a deranged man acting alone most likely due to paranoid schizophrenic delusions.

Strangely, though, due to public curiosity concerning the double misfires, the pistols that Lawrence used were tested and retested. Each time they performed perfectly. This gave rise to the legend that Jackson was being protected by the same mystical powers that were protecting the young nation. The national pride that surrounded this belief shaped the country, fueling the American expansion in the late 1830s and beyond.