NARRATOR: On September 6, 1901
President
William McKinley was shot.
Eight days later, he died.
Teddy Roosevelt became president
and the first president
to have around the clock
Secret Service protection.
But why did it take
Congress 25 presidencies
and three assassinations
to make that happen?
To answer that,
we have to go back
to the end of the
Civil War when America
had some real money problems.
By 1865, up to one half of
American money in circulation
was fake.
So on April 14, 1865,
President Abraham Lincoln
authorized the creation
of a government agency
to fight counterfeiting.
He called it the Secret Service.
Later that night, Lincoln
would be assassinated.
But that wasn't enough to
convince Congress to give
the president his own police.
And it wasn't enough, in
1881, when President James
A. Garfield was assassinated.
Because, for the most
part, Congress feared
centralized power
more than they feared
for the president's life.
Congress had hesitated to create
a national law enforcement
agency, preferring to leave
matters of law and order
to the individual states.
But toward the end
of the 19th century,
these attitudes began
to change as America
grew into an economic and
imperialist powerhouse.
McKinley's presidency,
in particular,
was marked by unparalleled
industrial and territorial
expansion.
But as America grew
in size and power, so,
too, did the threats against it.
Anarchists who advocated
for stateless societies
had been staging attacks
against powerful governments
across the world
since the 1870s,
including one that
sparked Chicago's
Haymarket Riot in 1886.
Leaders at the
national level grew
more concerned about
the president's safety,
fearing he may be a target.
So the Secret Service stepped
in to unofficially protect
the president, when needed.
When President McKinley attended
the Pan American Exposition
in Buffalo in
September of 1901, he
had a fair amount of security,
18 exposition guards,
seven soldiers provided by
the 73rd Seacoast Artillery,
and three Secret Service agents.
McKinley, though, like many
presidents before and after,
found protection
mostly annoying,
believing it got in between
the president and the people.
So when Americans lined up
to shake hands with McKinley
on September 6, he nixed the
standard two guards next to him
in exchange for his
secretary and the president
of the Exposition.
That was a big mistake, because
in line to meet the president
that day was a lone
anarchist who may have also
suffered from mental illness.
When his turn came to
shake hands with McKinley,
he instead drew a gun hidden
beneath his handkerchief
and shot the president twice,
point blank in the stomach.
[music playing]
[camera flashes]
His name was Leon Czolgosz.
And that's important.
Because while he was a
natural born American citizen,
Leon Czolgosz didn't quite
have the same Anglo-Saxon ring
as John Wilkes Booth.
And this foreign-looking
name added to the perception
that anarchism was coming into
America through foreigners,
leading to the passage of the
1903 Immigration Act, which
allowed anyone
associated with anarchism
to be barred or expelled.
It became the first federal
law since the 1798 Alien
and Sedition Acts,
authorizing deportation
and exclusion based on a
person's ideological beliefs
and associations.
McKinley's death also
confirmed the real fear
that US presidents
would be targeted
for political assassinations,
spurring the expansion
of the Secret Service to
officially include protecting
our nation's leaders, which was
a smart move because as America
rose in power through the
20th century, so, too,
would the number of threads
against its presidents.
[music playing]
