Authored by James Hickman via SchiffSovereign.com,
On the afternoon of September 6, 1901, President William McKinley stood in a receiving line at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York, shaking hands with a crowd of well-wishers.
One of the people in the crowd was a young man named Leon Czolgosz… who was patiently waiting with a revolver wrapped in a handkerchief. When he reached the front, he fired twice into the president’s abdomen.
McKinley died eight days later, and, Czolgosz, an unemployed factory worker, went to the electric chair without a trace of remorse. He insisted it was his duty to strike down a symbol of oppression.
Czolgosz wasn’t a crazed madman, but rather a product of his time.
The America of 1901 was 125 years into its history - the exact midpoint between the Declaration of Independence and today.
And despite the US economy already being the largest in the world at that point, the year 1901 did not feel like a nation striding confidently into the American Century.
The US financial system lurched from panic to panic, and to a great many observers, the young republic looked less like a rising power and more like a country unraveling.
The rich versus poor divide was growing, and violent socialist movements spread. Political assassinations, terrorism, and bombings became a recurring feature of public life.
The political violence did not end with McKinley’s assassination, either. Followers of the Italian anarchist Luigi Galleani wag
