![]() Robert Lincoln and his family were approaching Buffalo via train when the shooting occurred.Īfter finishing his time as Secretary of War, Lincoln returned to private legal practice, then served as U.S. Leon Czolgosz shoots President William McKinley at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo on September 6, 1901. After Garfield’s late September funeral and once Congress convened in December 1881, Arthur kept only one cabinet officer appointed by Garfield: Robert Todd Lincoln, who served as Secretary of War until the end of the Arthur presidency. Arthur was sworn in as the 21st President of the United States and traveled to Elberon, New Jersey, where Garfield died, to escort his predecessor’s body back to the capital. Garfield died on September 19, 1881, eighty days after being shot. “How many hours of sorrow I have passed in this town.” “My god,” he said to a New York Times reporter the day after the shooting. However, the memory of his father’s murder sixteen years before haunted him. When Garfield was moved back to the White House, Lincoln made sure that “all intruders were out of the grounds and a strong military guard on duty there and another at the jail to prevent lynching and a reserve between.” As historian Jason Emerson notes, Lincoln’s decisive actions after the attack on Garfield were reminiscent of Secretary of War Edwin Stanton’s on the night Booth shot Abraham Lincoln. Bliss, then ordered four companies of soldiers to immediately come to the train depot for security. By Lincoln’s own recollection, “I think I reached him in fifteen seconds.” Secretary Lincoln immediately sent for Dr. Blaine when Charles Guiteau approached from behind and shot Garfield twice. He was about forty feet away and walking toward President Garfield and Secretary of State James G. He went to Washington, D.C.’s Baltimore and Potomac train station that morning to meet the President and let him know that the Lincolns would be along on July 3. While some cabinet members and their wives were scheduled to go on the trip, Lincoln was unable to depart until the following day. On July 2, 1881, President Garfield was scheduled to leave for a trip to New England. Lincoln was about 40 feet away and walking toward Blaine and Garfield. Blaine was standing next to the President when Guiteau attacked. Garfield.Ĭharles Guiteau shot President James A. In early 1881, however, he relented and agreed to serve as Secretary of War under President James A. Lincoln always declined, partially due to lack of interest but also because he knew his greatest appeal to the Republican Party was not his ability but his surname. Over the next decade-and-a-half, many Republicans tried to talk Robert Lincoln into running for political office. Future Secretary of State John Hay, one of Abraham Lincoln’s private secretaries and a lifelong friend of Robert’s, wrote that, “After a natural outburst of grief, young Lincoln devoted himself the rest of the night to soothing and comforting his mother.” Robert was there at 7:22 a.m. He immediately left for the Petersen house, where his father, unconscious but alive, had been taken after Booth shot him. Several different people claimed to have been the one to inform him of John Wilkes Booth’s attack on his father at the theater, and Lincoln himself remembered only that numerous people came to him that night with the awful news. The younger Lincoln declined, telling his father that he planned to retire early that night. Grant’s staff, to Ford’s Theater to see a performance of Our American Cousin on the night of April 14, 1865. ![]() He was about 40 feet away when President James A. Rather, it was his close connection to three presidential assassinations in just 36 years. However, it was not the deaths of his brothers or his mother for which he is most famous or for which he believed himself to be cursed. Sadly, Robert Lincoln was very familiar with death. At one point, he committed her to an asylum. In the years after his father’s death, Robert Lincoln also watched his mother, Mary, descend into financial hardship and manic depression. Robert Lincoln’s last brother, Thomas, whom their father had called “Tad,” died at age 18 in 1871. The death of “Willie” made the Civil War’s dark days that much darker for the Lincoln family. A second brother, William, died in the White House on February 20, 1862. One of his brothers, Edward, died as a boy in Springfield, Illinois long before their father became president. Robert Todd Lincoln, eldest son of President and Mrs. Robert was not present when President Lincoln was shot, but was by his father’s side when he died. ![]() A young Robert Todd Lincoln in 1865, the year his father was assassinated.
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