Richard
Lawrence was born in England in or about 1800 and arrived in the US when he 12
or 13 years old. His father died in the District of Columbia, in the old Ward
One sector, in or about 1829.
Lawrence,
a handsome young man, was known to be sober, well spoke but shy and reserved
and by 1832, according to his family, seemed be losing his sanity. He lived
with his sister and brother-in-law for a while but after an attempt to murder
his sister for no known reason, he was arrested and later moved to a boarding
house.
Since
he made his living as a house painter, there is considerable speculation on the
possibility that exposure to the chemicals in the paint had affected Lawrence’s
mind.
On
January 30, 1835, a cold, rainy and generally miserable day Lawrence was seen
in his paint shop in Georgetown (then a part of Maryland) on the corner of
Pennsylvania and 21st Street, having a very loud argument with himself which
ended when he screamed “All right, I’ll be damned if I don’t do it”
A
few hours later went up to the Capitol building to murder President Andrew
Jackson while he attended to the wake of Rep. Warren Davis of South Carolina at
a State Funeral Service at the Capitol.
As
the frail President, leaning on his walking stick, enter the building, Lawrence
leaped out from behind a pillar near the East Portico, brandished two
single-shot brass pistols that had belonged to his father.
Lawrence
leaped out from behind the pillar and standing less than five feet from the
President fired his pistol, but it misfired. President Jackson, with Treasury
Secretary Taney on his left, had been expecting an attempt on his life, cussed
Lawrence, raised his cane and charged the assassin thrashing him.
Lawrence
stepped back, fired the other pistol, but that too misfired. (US Marshal’s
tested the pistols he used and retested them and each time they performed
flawlessly. A New York Times article calculated the chances of both of
Lawrence’s pistols misfiring to be 1 in about 125,000.) A navy Lieutenant named
Gedney, who was with Jackson, leaped on Lawrence, wrestled him to the ground
and pulled the two pistols out of his hand.
Richard
Lawrence’s act was the first instance of a President of the United States being
the target of an assassination. A few years before, Jackson had become the only
president to be physically assaulted.
On
May 6, 1833, Jackson, age 66, ill and frail, sailed on USS Cygnet to
Fredericksburg, Virginia, where he was to lay the cornerstone on a monument
near the grave of Mary Ball Washington, George Washington's mother.
(Jackson
was rarely in good health to begin with. During his life he suffered from
smallpox,
osteomyelitis, malaria, dysentery, rheumatism, dropsy, “cholera morbus”
(widespread intestinal inflammation), amyloidosis (a waxy degeneration of body
tissues) and bronchiectasis (inflamed and dilated bronchial tubes). He also had
a
bullet
lodged inside his lungs from a duel.)
Jackson
had fired Navy lieutenant, Robert Randolph for embezzlement. During a stopover
near Alexandria, Jackson decided to entertain visitors to the boat and
Randolph, walked aboard, said nothing, walked up to President, removed his
gloves and punched him in the face. (Some say that Randolph punched the
President, some say he slapped him and other say he tweaked the President’s
nose)
Jackson,
who had been reading a book, fell back and was trapped in his chair behind the
table as Randolph was quickly held back by some of Jackson’s associates and
some of Randolph’s own friends who had boarded the steamboat with Randolph.
Jackson
angrily yelled, “What, Sir! What, Sir!”, as he scrambled to get out of his seat
and lunged for his cane. Rather than face an angry Jackson man to man, Randolph
broke lose and fled only to be run down and captured by Jacksons staff and
friends including the writer Washington Irving.
Jackson
was not seriously hurt but he was furious and embarrassed. “Had I been apprised
that Randolph stood before me” he said “I should have been prepared for him,
and I could have defended myself. No villain has ever escaped me before; and he
would not, had it not been for my confined situation.”
Jackson
declined to press charges, but Randolph was arrested anyway. By the time
Randolph went to trial for attacking Jackson, the President was retired to his
estate in
Tennessee.
In a letter to the new President Martin Van Buren, Jackson said, “I have to
this old age complied with my mother’s advice to ‘indict no man for assault and
battery or sue him for slander’, and to fine or imprison Randolph would be no
gratification." Jackson asked President Van Buren to pardon Randolph if
his assailant was found guilty for the attack.
Back
in Washington in 1836, during questioning, it quickly became clear that the
shooter Richard Lawrence was a babbling lunatic who offered no less than six
reasons to explain the shooting including his belief that he was the secret king
of England, Richard III who died in 1485 and that Jackson was his clerk. In
fact, on his first day in court, where he was defended by Francis Scott Key,
Lawrence, impeccably dressed and well spoken, rose and addressed the court with
great dignity and said "I am under the protection of my father at home.
The throne of Great Britain and the throne of this country of right belong to
me. I am superior to this tribunal. I ask you to consider whether you are safe
in your course of proceedings.” The judge respectfully reminded Lawrence that
he would be heard through his Counsel, and politely requested him to take his
seat.
When
the Jurors were called in and sworn on the bible, Lawrence rose again and
shouted "Swear on that book, but remember that I am King of England and of
this country, and will most assuredly punish you"
When
the court ordered Lawrence to sit and be silent he said, "I will not"
and remained standing until a federal marshal sat him down and stood by his
chair for the rest of the trial.
A
half a dozen doctors testified that they believed that Lawrence was insane; and
that he was unable to discriminate between right and wrong in a case connected
with his delusion; and that if the act of assaulting the President was
connected with the subject of his delusion, he was not to be considered as
morally accountable for the act. Lawrence was institutionalized at what would
become St. Elizabeth’s hospital (He was the institution's seventh inmate) until
his death in 1861.
Jackson
suspected that a circle of his political enemies orchestrated the attempt on
his life, but his suspicions were never proven. His primary suspect was his
decades-long enemy Henry Clay and Senator John C. Calhoun. Jackson told aides
that he suspected both were involved in his potential assassination and had
likely hired or convinced Lawrence to pull the trigger. Speculation grew so
severe that Calhoun made a statement on the Senate floor that he was not
connected to the attack. Jackson also suspected Senator George Poindexter of
Mississippi, (Below) who had used Lawrence to do some house painting a few
months earlier. There were several reports, by reliable witnesses, that on the
morning of the failed assassination, that Lawrence had been to Poindexter’s
house. Poindexter denied the charges but was soundly defeated for re-election
anyway.
(Foot
note on Poindexter’s interesting private life. In 1804 Poindexter married Lydia
Carter the daughter of a prominent Natchez businessman and plantation owner.
The couple had two sons , George and Albert but Poindexter publicly accused his
wife of infidelity and claimed that their second child, Albert, was the product
of an extramarital affair between his wife and their neighbor. In 1816
Poindexter married Agatha Ball Chinn, part of an old and distinguished southern
family, but had a life-long liaison with a slave woman who worked on his
plantation.)
