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Dramatic Assassination Plots from History and Their Outcomes

Khalid Elhassan October 29, 2020 34 min

Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand - Austria-Hungary — The arrest of Gavrilo Princip after his shooting of Franz Ferdinand and his wife. BBC

11. Assassination Attempt Ends With Bystanders Rescuing the Assassin from Getting Beat to Death by His Target

The attempted assassination of Andrew Jackson in 1835. Smithsonian Magazine

To carry out his assassination, Richard Lawrence waited behind one of the US Capitol’s pillars. When Andrew Jackson passed by, he took a shot at the president’s back. The pistol misfired. Lawrence pulled out a second pistol and tried another shot, only to get another misfire. By then, Jackson had noticed what Lawrence was up to, and was understandably pissed off. That was bad news for Lawrence.

Andrew Jackson standing over his pummeled would-be assassin. Library of Congress

Although 67-years-old at the time – quite old and long in the tooth by the standards of the day – an enraged Jackson fell upon the much younger Lawrence, and proceeded to bludgeon him with his cane. The would-be assassin was lucky in that people in the vicinity intervened to stop a riled-up Old Hickory from beating him to death. Bystanders stepped in to restrain the president, and hustled Lawrence off to the safety of prison.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.