In the nearly 250 years since its founding, the United States has witnessed its fair share of political violence, from four presidential assassinations to an 1856 caning on the Senate floor to a 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol that left at least five dead. Despite this history of bloodshed, Saturday’s attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump shocked the nation, drawing comparisons to the tumultuous 1960s, a decade marked by the killings of such public figures as John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., among others, and threatening to further fracture the populace at a pivotal point in the 2024 presidential race.
Thomas Matthew Crooks, the 20-year-old who opened fire at a Trump campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13, failed to assassinate the former president, only wounding him in the ear. But the gunman, whose motive and state of mind are still unknown, killed one bystander and seriously injured two others before being shot by the Secret Service himself.
Crooks’ attack was the 16th of its kind in American history. According to a 2009 report by the Congressional Research Service, 15 “direct assaults against presidents, presidents-elect and candidates” took place between 1835 and 2005, resulting in the deaths of five politicians: Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, William McKinley, John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy. (Other assassination plots have targeted such presidents as George Washington, Herbert Hoover and Barack Obama, but authorities uncovered these conspiracies before the would-be killers could take action.)
“Political violence correlates with times of partisan, tribal politics, usually noted by very close elections, high turnout, competitive races and lots of turnover of power between parties,” says Jon Grinspan, a curator of political and military history at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. “Basically, the odd truth is that [in] periods when the electorate is engaged, voting at high levels and really fighting out elections, political violence goes way up.”
The driving forces behind these attacks differ widely. Some assassins sought to kill the president to make a political statement. Others had more self-serving reasons, seeking fame or notoriety. Many struggled with mental illness.
The political ramifications of a failed assassination attempt have varied. The attempt on President Ronald Reagan’s life, for example, endeared him to the public and temporarily unified the nation. While it’s impossible to know how the attack on Trump will affect the outcome of the election, if it does at all, history offers some guidance. Looking back, Grinspan says that the public “mostly moved on and forgot” these failed assaults on American leaders. The general trend, the curator adds, is one of “outrage, and then forgetting.”
As the fallout of this past weekend’s events unfolds, here’s what you need to know about ten other failed attempts to assassinate an American president or presidential candidate.