The Backstory: Politics: Assassinations, Duels, and Beatdowns

Violence in the world of politics seems to be getting worse as time goes by… including the recent assassination of a right-wing political influencer. But taking a look back, violence stemming from differences in political ideology is nothing new.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Well, once again in the world of politics, we've had
an assassination. Just this week, it was the murder of
right wing influencer Charlie Kirk. But despite all the shock
and awe, this kind of thing is nothing new in
American political history. I'm Patty Steele settling differences with assassinations, duels,
and beatdowns on the floor of Congress. That's next on

(00:22):
the backstory. The backstory is back. It's a stressful time
in politics, and it feels like there's been unprecedented violence
for the last few years. This week, of course, there
was the murder of thirty one year old right wing
influencer Charlie Kirk. Just this past June, two Minnesota politicians

(00:45):
and their spouses were shot, leaving two of them dead
and two others wounded. Others have been targeted, including President Trump,
who was shot in the ear while on the campaign
trail in twenty twenty four. And every time something happens,
folks say, what's happened to this country and to our
political system. This isn't who we are, But you know what,

(01:07):
it's actually exactly who we are and have been. What's
happening now is not a whole lot different than it's
ever been. We just hear and see more of it
because of media, TV and cell phones are always on
the scene to capture it all and share it with
us in real time. But let's take a look back
at some of the violent events that came about because

(01:30):
of angry politics. First of all, in US history, four
presidents have been assassinated pretty much always over politics, including
Abraham Lincoln in eighteen sixty five, James Garfield in eighteen
eighty one, William McKinley in nineteen oh one, and John F.
Kennedy in nineteen sixty three. Now on top of that,

(01:51):
in nineteen sixty eight, Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy
was assassinated late at night following a campaign speech in
Los Angeles. Plus, there were at least nine attempted assassinations
on the lives of presidents or candidates in our history.
One of those left the victim badly wounded. That happened

(02:12):
back in nineteen seventy two. George Wallace, an old schooled
Southern Democrat, was running for president when he was shot
during a campaign stop in Maryland. He was left paralyzed
from the waist down, but political ideology played a role
in violence throughout our history. Now we think of all
the Founding Fathers as just a big, happy fraternity of

(02:34):
guys who believed in the cause, but actually they frequently disagreed,
sometimes violently with one another. Case in point the death
of Alexander Hamilton in a duel with Aaron Burr. They
had virulent disagreements about their political beliefs, and after Hamilton
publicly insulted Burr, it led to the duel that left

(02:55):
Hamilton dead. Then, in the run up to the Civil War,
the violence that resulted from different politics grew really intense.
It got particularly bad in the South, where slave owners
and abolitionists fought viciously. In the North, while there was
no slavery, laws allowed bounty hunters to capture and slaved

(03:16):
people who'd escaped and return them to their owners. In
the South, this also led to some ferocious battles. In
eighteen fifty six, the anti slavery Republican senator Charles Sumner
gave a speech in which he labeled slavery a crime,
and he was nearly beaten to death on the Senate
floor by a pro slavery congressman from South Carolina who

(03:39):
attacked Sumner with a metal tipped cane. Another disagreement on
slavery almost led to a duel in which the Southerner
involved requested they duel using bowie knives. All this led
to members of Congress carrying weapons onto the House and
Senate floors in order to defend themselves. And then in
eighteen fifty nine, John Brown, an intensely devout white abolitionist

(04:02):
who believed violence was the means to an end when
it came to slavery, was arrested for inciting a slave
rebellion and was hung in Harper's Ferry, Virginia. But political
violence didn't end with the Civil War. In the aftermath
of Lincoln's assassination in eighteen sixty five, another president, James Garfield,

(04:22):
was shot by a disgruntled campaign worker who wanted more power,
And then twenty years after that, President William McKinley was
shot and killed. And during that period, by the way,
on average one congressman was assassinated every seven years. People
were really worked up about politics. One of the most
common ways to express their political outrage was in constant

(04:46):
torch carrying rallies, where tens of thousands of marchers rampaged
through cities and towns. Late at night. Fights broke out,
some involving guns and knives, in saloons and on train cars.
Many of them were organized by the wide Awakes clubs
that formed across the country. The eighteen eighties saw massive

(05:06):
battle on Broadway in New York City. Now, this mass
violence was blamed on alcohol by many of the women's
temperance movements, and actually was where the seeds for prohibition
first germinated. It was also a time in which the
nation had its all time biggest voter turnout during elections.
In eighteen seventy six, there was an almost eighty three

(05:27):
percent voter turnout, crazy when you think about us now
in the sixty percent range, and even then only in
presidential years. So people were intense about their politics. In fact,
even women who weren't allowed to vote back then. As
we got into the nineteen hundreds, anarchists were front and center.
President McKinley was assassinated by an anarchist, and a massive

(05:50):
bombing on Wall Street, which was never solved, was suspected
of being carried out by anarchists. Moving forward to the
nineteen sixties and seventies, political upheaval was huge. In fact,
between nineteen sixty nine and nineteen seventy, there were four
three hundred and thirty bombings in the US, almost fifteen
hundred attempted bombings, and over thirty five thousand bomb threats.

(06:14):
Pretty much all of them were politically motivated and mostly
by left leaning groups. So what we're experiencing, while disturbing,
is not all that different from where we've been in
our almost two hundred and fifty year existence as a nation.
The question is what motivates individuals to try to kill
others because of their ideologies. Well, despite the differences in

(06:38):
their backgrounds and motives, these people share a common trait,
a willingness to resort to extreme violence to support their agenda,
And once again, that tells us something about the need
to turn down the heat, both on the part of
the media and in our own conversations about United States politics.
Everybody has an opinion. You might not like it, but

(07:00):
that's okay because, as Abraham Lincoln implied, that free exchange
of thought is what's always made democracy work. I hope
you're enjoying the backstory with Patty Steele. Please leave a
review and follow or subscribe. For free to get new
episodes delivered automatically, and also feel free to DM me
if you have a story you'd like me to cover.

(07:20):
On Facebook, It's Patty Steele and on Instagram Real Patty Steele.
I'm Patty Steele. The Backstory is a production of iHeartMedia,
Premieer Networks, the Elvis Durand Group, and Steel Trap Productions.
Our producer is Doug Fraser. Our writer Jake Kushner. We

(07:42):
have new episodes every Tuesday and Friday. Feel free to
reach out to me with comments and even story suggestions
on Instagram at Real Patty Steele and on Facebook at
Patty Steele. Thanks for listening to the Backstory with Patty Steele,
the pieces of history you didn't know you needed to know.