It is a sobering number. Four. When people ask how many presidents of the United States were assassinated, the answer is strictly four, though the "almosts" and the "what-ifs" could fill a dozen library shelves. We think of it as a modern tragedy because of the grainy footage of 1963, but the reality is that political murder has haunted the American presidency for over half of its existence.
It changed the country every single time. It wasn't just about a person dying; it was about the immediate, often violent shift in policy that followed. You have these moments where history is heading in one direction, a trigger is pulled, and suddenly the nation is on a completely different path. It's jarring.
The Four Names You Need to Know
Abraham Lincoln, James A. Garfield, William McKinley, and John F. Kennedy. That’s the list.
Most people can name Lincoln and JFK without blinking. They are the bookends of this dark history. But the middle two? Garfield and McKinley often get lost in the shuffle of "Gilded Age" history, which is a shame because their deaths were arguably just as impactful on how our government functions today.
Abraham Lincoln (1865)
The first was the hardest. Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s Theatre on April 14, 1865. It’s wild to think about, but the Civil War had basically just ended. Lee had surrendered at Appomattox only days prior. Booth wasn’t just a random "lone wolf"—he was a famous actor and a Confederate sympathizer who thought he could restart the war by decapitating the Union government.
He almost did. Booth’s plan included killing the Vice President and the Secretary of State, too.
Lincoln lingered for hours. He died the next morning at the Petersen House across the street. The impact was immediate and devastating. Reconstruction—the process of bringing the South back into the fold—went from Lincoln’s "malice toward none" approach to the much harsher, more chaotic reality under Andrew Johnson. Honestly, we are still feeling the social and political ripples of that specific change today.
James A. Garfield (1881)
Garfield is the one that really gets me. He was only in office for four months when Charles Guiteau shot him at a train station in Washington, D.C. Here’s the kicker: the bullets didn’t kill him. His doctors did.
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Guiteau was a "disappointed office seeker." He thought he deserved a high-level consulship in Paris because he’d given a couple of speeches for Garfield. When he didn’t get it, he decided God told him to "remove" the President.
Garfield lived for 80 days after being shot. Eighty days of absolute torture. This was before the medical world fully accepted Joseph Lister’s germ theory. Doctors stuck their unwashed fingers and dirty metal probes into the wound looking for the bullet. They turned a non-lethal three-inch wound into a massive, infected hole. By the time he died of septicemia and a ruptured aneurysm, he was a shadow of himself.
William McKinley (1901)
McKinley was at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. He was shaking hands—something he loved to do—when Leon Czolgosz, an anarchist, approached him with a gun hidden under a handkerchief.
Czolgosz shot him twice in the abdomen. McKinley actually lived for eight days. He seemed to be recovering, but gangrene set in. His death is what finally forced the Secret Service to make presidential protection their primary, full-time job. Before this, they were mostly busy chasing down counterfeiters.
John F. Kennedy (1963)
The one everyone knows. The Dallas motorcade. Lee Harvey Oswald. The Zapruder film.
Kennedy’s assassination is the fountainhead of modern conspiracy theories, but the factual reality is that it ended the "Camelot" era and thrust Lyndon B. Johnson into the presidency. This led directly to the massive escalation of the Vietnam War and the passage of the Civil Rights Act. It was a pivot point that defines the modern American identity.
Why the Number Isn't Higher (The Close Calls)
When looking at how many presidents of the United States were assassinated, it’s just as important to look at the near misses. The Secret Service is good, but sometimes it’s just pure, dumb luck.
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Take Andrew Jackson in 1835. A guy named Richard Lawrence walked up to him with two pistols. He pulled the trigger on the first one. Misfire. He pulled the trigger on the second one. Misfire. Jackson, who was 67 and in poor health, proceeded to beat the man with his cane until his aides pulled him off. Statistically, the odds of both guns misfiring were astronomical. It was humid that day, and the moisture likely saved Jackson’s life.
Then there’s Teddy Roosevelt. He wasn't technically the sitting president at the time—he was running for a third term—but he was shot in the chest right before a speech. The bullet passed through his steel eyeglass case and a 50-page manuscript of his speech. It lodged in his rib. Instead of going to the hospital, he went on stage, showed the crowd his bloody shirt, and talked for 90 minutes. He literally said, "It takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose."
We also have to mention:
- Franklin D. Roosevelt: Shot at in Miami in 1933; missed him but killed the Mayor of Chicago.
- Harry Truman: Two Puerto Rican nationalists tried to storm Blair House in 1950. A massive gunfight ensued.
- Gerald Ford: Two separate attempts in the same month (September 1975). Both were by women—Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme and Sara Jane Moore.
- Ronald Reagan: The 1981 shooting by John Hinckley Jr. This is the closest a sitting president has come to dying without actually dying. The bullet was inches from his heart.
The Motives: It's Rarely a Simple Plot
We like to think of these events as grand political conspiracies. The reality is usually much lonelier.
Historians like James W. Clarke, who wrote American Assassins: The Darker Side of Politics, point out that most of these men weren't part of a shadowy cabal. They were often mentally unstable, socially isolated, or driven by a very specific, personal delusion.
Czolgosz was an anarchist, sure, but he was also a loner who had been kicked out of anarchist circles for being too "weird." Guiteau was objectively delusional. Oswald was a defector who couldn't find a place in either the US or the USSR. Only Booth really represented a coherent, albeit dying, political cause.
The Technological Shift in Protection
After McKinley died, the game changed. You couldn't just walk up to the President anymore.
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Before 1901, the White House was basically open to the public. You could literally walk in and ask to see the President. Lincoln used to have "office hours" where random citizens would line up to ask him for favors or complain about their neighbors. That ended.
Today, the "bubble" is impenetrable. We’re talking about the Integrated Protective Encryption, the armored "Beast" limo, and a Secret Service budget that runs into the billions. Even with all that, the risk never hits zero. The 2024 attempt on Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, proved that. It showed that even with modern drone tech and elite snipers, a single person with a rifle can still find a gap in the perimeter.
What This Means for Us Today
Understanding how many presidents of the United States were assassinated isn't just a trivia game. It’s a study in national resilience.
Every time a president is killed, the Vice President takes the oath almost immediately. The system doesn't break. In 1881, people were terrified that the government would collapse because Garfield was incapacitated for months. It didn't. In 1963, LBJ took the oath on an airplane while the former president’s body was in the hold.
The continuity of government is the real story here.
Actionable Insights for History Buffs
If you want to understand the deeper context of these events, don't just read the Wikipedia summaries.
- Visit the Sites: If you’re ever in D.C., go to Ford’s Theatre. Stand in the Petersen House. It’s tiny. It’s cramped. It makes the tragedy feel human instead of historical.
- Read the Medical Reports: Specifically for Garfield. It’s a fascinating, albeit gross, look at how the "experts" of the time caused more harm than the assassin. Check out Destiny of the Republic by Candice Millard. It’s the gold standard on this.
- Analyze the Successions: Look at the policy shifts between the dead president and the successor. The jump from McKinley to Teddy Roosevelt, for instance, turned the U.S. into a global imperial power and started the trust-busting era.
- Watch the Primary Sources: For JFK, watch the raw footage of the news breaks from that day. Seeing Walter Cronkite lose his composure tells you more about the national psyche than any documentary ever could.
The number is four. But the impact is immeasurable. Each of those four moments fundamentally redefined what it means to be an American and how the American government interacts with its people.