Why Lincoln and McKinley Don't Belong in the Same Conspiracy

Every few years someone tries to draw a straight line between Abraham Lincoln's assassination and William McKinley's. The pattern feels compelling on the surface: two presidents killed by gunfire, both associated with major shifts in American power, both dead before their work was finished. It's tempting to look for a hidden hand behind both killings, some elite interest that needed each man removed.

The evidence doesn't support it. These are two different stories, with two different kinds of killers, for two different reasons. Here's what the record actually shows.

Lincoln: A Documented Conspiracy, Born of a Collapsing Confederacy

Lincoln was shot on April 14, 1865, at Ford's Theatre. Context matters here: the Civil War was ending. Robert E. Lee had surrendered at Appomattox five days earlier. The Confederacy was finished as a fighting force, and its most committed loyalists knew it.

The assassin, John Wilkes Booth, was a Confederate sympathizer and a working actor. His grievance wasn't abstract. Lincoln had just given a speech floating the idea of voting rights for Black Americans, specifically veterans and men Lincoln called "very intelligent." Booth reportedly told a companion this would be Lincoln's last speech.

This was a real conspiracy, and a well-documented one. Booth didn't act alone. He organized a small group, including Lewis Powell, George Atzerodt, David Herold, and others, around a coordinated plan to kill three men in one night: Lincoln, Secretary of State William Seward, and Vice President Andrew Johnson. Powell did attack and seriously wound Seward that same evening. Atzerodt was assigned to kill Johnson and lost his nerve.

Mary Surratt, whose boardinghouse served as a meeting place for the plotters, was tried, convicted, and executed alongside Powell, Herold, and Atzerodt. Others involved received prison sentences. Booth himself was hunted down and killed twelve days after the shooting.

None of this required a hidden power structure. It was a small circle of Confederate loyalists, driven by the end of the war and fear of Black political equality, acting on a plan that unraveled within weeks.

McKinley: A Lone Anarchist, No Coordinated Plot

McKinley's case is a different animal entirely. Shot on September 6, 1901, at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, he was standing in a public receiving line, greeting ordinary citizens, when he was attacked. He died eight days later from infection.

There was no war ending, no collapsing government behind this one. McKinley had just won reelection in 1900. His presidency was defined by the Spanish-American War, the annexation of the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Guam, and continued support for the gold standard and protective tariffs, all contentious issues, but none of them the stated motive for his death.

The assassin, Leon Czolgosz, was an American-born anarchist, the son of Polish immigrants. He had attended a speech by Emma Goldman, a leading anarchist voice of the era, and was apparently moved by it. But Goldman had no role in planning the attack. She was investigated and released. Czolgosz told police plainly: "I am an anarchist. I killed the President because I done my duty." He wasn't targeting a specific policy. He was targeting McKinley as a symbol of the state itself, of what anarchists at the time called the ruling class.

Authorities investigated thoroughly, questioning Goldman and other figures in the anarchist movement. They found no accomplices and no organized plot. Czolgosz acted alone. That conclusion holds up in the historical record. This was ideologically motivated, but it was a lone actor, not a conspiracy.

Where the Comparison Actually Holds, and Where It Breaks

LincolnMcKinleyAssassin's alignmentConfederate sympathizerAnarchistGrievanceUnion victory, abolition, Black suffrageThe state and "ruling class" as an ideaConspiracyYes, documented, multiple conspiratorsNo, lone actor, thoroughly investigatedNational contextCivil War endingNo war; economic expansion and empire

There's a loose thematic echo here. Both men presided over real shifts in American power. Lincoln asserted federal supremacy and ended slavery. McKinley oversaw America's emergence as an overseas imperial power and defended the gold standard against William Jennings Bryan's silver movement, one of the sharpest populist challenges of the era. Both changes provoked genuine, sometimes violent, ideological opposition.

But that's where the parallel ends. There's no evidence tying the two assassinations together, and no evidence of a common power elite orchestrating either one. Lincoln's death came out of a specific, organized Confederate plot tied to the war's collapse. McKinley's death came from one man's ideological commitment to anarchism, acting without accomplices.

Treating these two events as branches of the same conspiracy makes for a good story. It just isn't the one the historical record tells.

Dan Mason writes The Mason Brief.