Richard Lawrence: A Failed Presidential Assassin
It was only luck that prevented Andrew Jackson from being the first assassinated president
Richard Lawrence was a British house painter who had emigrated to America with his family at the turn of the nineteenth century. He was, in many ways, an average person, but as he got older he became more and more erratic. At one point he told his family he was going back to England, only to return a month later, declaring that he had changed his mind because it was too cold. Unfortunately, he became obsessed with Andrew ‘Old Hickory’ Jackson, who finally became president in 1829.
The two men’s worlds intersected at a funeral in January 1835. Lawrence had been following Jackson for some time and was seen to be agitated on the day. As he left a paint shop, he was heard to mutter to himself, ‘I’ll be damned if I don’t do it.’
When Jackson was walking away from the funeral gathering, Lawrence stepped out behind the president, raised and fired a pistol. Nothing happened. However Lawrence had been thorough in his plans and raised a second pistol, but this, too, failed to fire. Jackson was a man of action in every possible sense, and on this occasion he showed Lawrence just why he was sometimes called ‘Old Hickory’ as he wielded his hickory walking stick and beat his…