27. The Incompetent Cop Who Got a President Killed
That Abraham Lincoln was assassinated at Ford’s Theater owes much to the fact that he had been assigned the most incompetent bodyguard to have ever been tasked with the protection of an American president. For much of America’s history, the protection of the country’s chief executives was very much an ad hoc affair. The Secret Service, created in 1865 to catch currency counterfeiters, was not tasked with the protection of US presidents until 1902, after the assassination of President William McKinley.
Before that, security for US presidents was quite lax. For example, on the night that Lincoln was assassinated, April 14th, 1865, only one man had been assigned to protect him: an inept and unreliable cop named John Frederick Parker. Back when Abraham Lincoln occupied the Oval Office, people were pretty blasé about presidential security. This, despite earlier close calls, such as an 1835 attempt to assassinate President Andrew Jackson, that was foiled only because both of the would-be assassin’s pistols misfired.
