Summary Of Eric Rauchway's Murdering Mckinley

Murdering McKinley After reading Eric Rauchway’s novel Murdering McKinley, I believe that his main argument was to say that President McKinley’s assassinator, Leon Czolgosz, was not insane and that his possible insanity could not have been what drove him to attempt the assassination. Had Czolgosz been declared insane in a court of law then he may not have been held fully responsible for his actions. That being said Rauchway also went to a great length to prove that Czolgosz sentence was not due to his Anarchist beliefs and he did describe everyone’s fear of Czolgosz going down as a martyr. Rauchway wanted to express that he believed Leon Czolgosz was a fully capable, fully aware, and was one hundred percent fully responsible for the murder

He also did not grow up in a traumatizing home life and showed no physical signs of insanity, which would have given him physiological or psychological reasons to plead insanity. As one of Rauchway’s main arguments, he expresses that Leon Czolgosz motive was purely political and all he needed was a little push.

Erin Rauchway supported his argument with a lot of evidence. First he made it frank that Czolgosz identified as an anarchist and after initial arrest tried to disguise his real name (pg. 17). He was fully aware of what he had done and why, he believed, he had done it. This is shown again during interrogation and even in his trial. He answered questions willingly and simply claimed “he had done his duty” (pg.19). The police attempted to get any related anarchist information from him and were

Lloyd Vernon, was sent to find out more on Czolgosz background and family history as there was nothing left to work with. Even though Czolgosz claimed responsibility he wanted to fully disprove insanity to prevent him from becoming a martyr (pg.88). In order to do so he wanted to interview his family. Upon all of his extensive research Briggs concluded that “Czolgosz environment and upbringing made him statistically normal, but his action made him an outlier…Something peculiar—or perhaps some peculiar confluence of ordinary things—must have happened to Leon Czolgosz” (pg. 150). Upon finishing the book this does a bit of foreshadowing for what Rauchway truly believes was the final push causing Leon to commit his crime. Briggs found that in 1897 Leon came down with illness and was seeing multiple doctors. He was always taking medicine, carried a box of pills and ordered an inhaling machine. He was also smoking drugs to help with pain. (pgs. 175-176). Leon Czolgosz believed that he was dying from syphilis, which was the second major known illness that caused mental illness. Once it came to a certain stage of the illness he could become irresponsible and uncontrollable, however the doctors checked his brain and saw no signs of this (pg. 178). Leon’s incurable syphilis was confused with chancroid so because he believed he was dying that was the push, in addition to his anarchist beliefs, that drove Leon to murder President McKinley and always explains