I'll Be Damned if I Don't Do It: Insane Richard Lawrence and the First Assassination Attempt on a U.S. President January 30, 1835

He had said to random passersby, “I’ll be damned if I don’t do it.” 

Those are the words of unemployed house painter Richard Lawrence on the day that he attempted to assassinate the President of the United States.

January 30, 1835 was a cold and misty day in our nation’s capital.  On that day freezing rain hung in the air and dark and ominous clouds encircled the then domeless rotunda of the United States Capitol building.  It would be over another 30 years, after the end of the American Civil War and after another of our nation’s Presidents had been murdered, that the dome on the Capitol building would finally be completed.  

But on that day in 1835 then controversial President of the United States Andrew Jackson was on the steps of the Capitol building to attend the funeral of Representative Warren R. Davis of South Carolina who had unexpectedly passed away just a few days prior and whose body now lay in state on the porch of the Capitol building.

President Jackson stood on the steps of the Capitol that day flanked by two members of his cabinet, Levi Woodbury the Secretary of the Treasury and Mahlon Dickerson Secretary of the Navy.  

Andrew Jackson, though history has deemed him to be a largely successful and definitely influential President, had many enemies while in office.  In the press, and to many members of the general public at large, the President was derisively referred to as “King Jackson” and was accused of being a power hungry ex-general and an uneducated country bumpkin gone out of control.

While some considered Andrew Jackson to be a true “Man of the People” others believed he was mad and sought only to expand the powers of the federal government way beyond their constitutional bounds and create a new form of American dictatorship.  

One such person who thought; who fervently believed that President Jackson was an aspiring third world dictator who had ascended to the Presidency of the United States, was an oft unemployed, delusional and mentally ill thirty-five year old house painter who lived with his parents--Richard Lawrence.

U.S. Capitol Building as seen in 1835

On January 30, 1835 it was Richard Lawrence, who stood armed with two pistols, and elegantly dressed in top hat and coattails in the attire of an early 19th century gentleman, waiting on the steps of the Capitol Building ready to murder the President of the United States.

Afterwards, as he descended the steps of the Capitol flanked by the two secretaries, President Andrew Jackson would recall making eye contact with a, “[H}andsome and well-dressed young man.”

That handsome and well-dressed young man was Richard Lawrence.

Upon making eye contact with President Jackson, Lawrence, who stood less than ten feet away from the President, took one of the pistols out of the pocket of his overcoat and fired.  

Because a light sleet was falling the cap on the flintlock gun exploded but the spark did not light the powder and the gun misfired.  Congressman Thomas Hart Benton, an eyewitness to the assassination attempt later recalled that, “The explosion of the cap was so loud that many persons thought the pistol had fired.”  (Meachem 298)

But the first pistol didn’t fire and Richard Lawrence stood stock still on the steps of the Capitol with the smoking gun still held in his outstretched hand, absolutely dumbfounded by the fact that he had not killed President Andrew Jackson.

Lawrence dropped the pistol where he stood and pulled the other one out of another pocket in his overcoat, but it too failed to fire because the powder did not light in the damp and rainy conditions.

Then, most likely to everyone’s shock and continued horror, President Andrew Jackson charged at his would-be assassin.  The President ran down the steps of the United States Capitol building shouting expletives at Richard Lawrence with his walking stick raised high above his head.

Richard Lawrence, who until that moment had stood firm in his determination and resolve to assassinate the man that he called “King Jackson” suddenly seemed to panic as America’s Chief Executive came running down the steps after him.  Lawrence tried to turn and run away but a United States Navy Lieutenant who had been standing nearby, knocked Lawrence to the ground and the President was able to catch up to Richard Lawrence and land several blows with his cane on the top of  his head.

After being afforded the opportunity to beat his assailant rather soundly with his walking stick President Jackson, obviously quite shaken, was wrapped in blankets and thrown into a waiting carriage where he was immediately taken to the White House.  Richard Lawrence, failed assassin (actually the first man who ever attempted to murder a sitting President of the United States) after being beaten and bloodied on the steps of the United States Capitol was dragged off in chains to jail.

As it turned out, President Andrew Jackson was a very fortunate man and it may have been the wet weather and the unfinished Capitol rotunda which saved his life.  

In the days after the assassination attempt the pistols that Richard Lawrence carried were meticulously examined and according to Congressman Benton, “Found to be well loaded, and fired afterwards without fail, carrying their bullets true, and driving them through inch thick wooden boards at a distance of thirty feet.”  (Meacham 299)

Had construction on the Capitol rotunda been complete in 1835, then perhaps the place where both Jackson and Lawerence stood would have at least been partially covered, and had it not been raining, the powder in at least one of Richard Lawrence’s two pistols would surely have ignited and most likely killed the seventh President of the United States.

But Andrew Jackson, the man they called Old Hickory, the same man who had stood up as a young boy to a sword wielding British officer during the American Revolution, and who had defeated the British army at the Battle of New Orleans during the War of 1812, and who had defended his own honor in dozens of duels as a younger man, would go on to serve over two more years as President of the United States and live to the ripe old age of seventy-eight before passing away in 1845, none the worse for Richard Lawrence would-be assassinaton attempt.

However, in the wake of the failed assassination attempt it would be the trial and story behind Richard Lawrence that would fascinate the American public and prove to be one of the most bizarre personal stories in the annals of our nation’s history.

Andrew Jackson one of the fist U.S. Presidents to be Photographed

Richard Lawrence was brought to trial on April 11, 1835 in the city hall of Washington D.C. located in an area known even today as judiciary square.  The prosecuting attorney was Francis Scott Key, the author of The Star Spangled Banner and like Jackson himself, an American hero from the War of 1812.

Though the guilt of Richard Lawerence in regards to his assassination attempt on President Andrew Jackson was nothing more than a fait accompli, the trial descended into somewhat of a circus atmosphere.

Constantly, throughout the proceedings, Lawrence would randomly shout out epitaphs against the United States of America and do everything he could to disrupt the trial including singing, screaming and even belching!

The defendant Richard Lawrence, utterly refused to recognize the legitimacy of the court proceedings against him and at times, according to witnesses, seemed not to even fully comprehend where he was!  At one point Lawrence stood up in front of the courtroom and shouted, “It is for me gentlemen to pass judgment upon you, and not you upon me!”

In the end, after several days of a bizarre spectacle of a trial, it took the jurors less than five minutes of deliberation to return with a verdict of, “Not guilty by reason of insanity,” which was what Lawrence’s defense attorney’s had sought all along.

Richard Lawrence became, perhaps, the first criminal in the history of the United States to ever be acquitted of a crime due to reasons of insanity, though he definitely wouldn’t be the last.

And what made the case of Richard Lawrence so interesting, aside from the fact that he was the first man ever to attempt to murder the President of the United States, was that those who knew him, and had known him throughout his life, testified to the fact that he had not always been insane, and many asserted that Richard Lawrence only lost his mind, and his grip on reality sometime around the age of thirty-two after nearly two decades of working on and off as a house painter and breathing in the toxic paint fumes on an almost constant basis.

Lawrence was born in England probably around the year 1800.  At the age of twelve his family immigrated to the United States and settled in Virginia not far from our nation’s new capital in Washington D.C.

Acquaintances and relatives who knew Richard Lawrence and who testified at his trial referred to the young Richard as a, “fine young boy,” who was known to be reserved and almost shy as a boy and young man.  Those who knew him as a teenager, about the time that he started to take up work as a house painter said that the young Richard was hard-working and industrious and never said a bad word about anyone.

He was known for his good looks and his quiet demeanor.

But in the year 1832, maybe a year or two after his thirtieth birthday, Richard Lawrence’s behavior abruptly and inexplicably changed.  Out of the blue he suddenly announced to his family that he would be returning to England after over twenty years living in the United States.

But after a month he told his family that he had decided against international travel because it was, “too cold,” and he announced that he was going to seek a new career as a landscape artist.

He went to live in Philadelphia for a time and talked once again of returning to England to pursue a career in art, but then he returned home and exhibited signs of paranoia and schizophrenia.  He told his parents that, “Certain unnamed persons prevented him from traveling abroad,” and that the government of the United States did not approve of his plan to return to England to become an artist.

It was sometime at the beginning of 1834 that Richard Lawrence abruptly quit his job and became convinced that it was President Andrew Jackson, and the Second Federal Bank of the United States of America, that was intentionally keeping him from inheriting the English fortune that he believed was rightfully his, though neither Richard nor his family had any inheritance whatsoever in England or anywhere else.  Richard’s own brother testified that he had, on many occasions, attempted to persuade Richard that his delusions regarding his supposed inheritance were untrue, but that as time went on Richard Lawerence’s delusions only deepened.

Eventually, Lawrence came to believe that if he could assassinate President Andrew Jackson and ensure that Vice President Martin Van Buren (a fiscal conservative from New York) became President then the Second Bank of the United States would be abolished and he would be able to receive his rightful inheritance from England.

Lawrence's attempted assassination

Around Christmas 1834, Richard Lawrence moved to Washington D.C. and started to meticulously observe the actions of President Andrew Jackson. He changed his appearance by growing a mustache and dressing like an English gentleman.  He bought two pistols and plotted the assassination of the President of the United States.

On the day of the assassination attempt, as the rain fell, witnesses said they saw Richard Lawrence sitting on a bench near the Capitol Building laughing loudly to himself.  Only moments before he walked away to go shoot the President of the United States, Richard Lawrence yelled out to all those who walked by, “I’ll be damned if I don’t do it…”

After being found not guilty by reason of insanity Richard Lawrence spent the next two decades committed to a number of various hospitals and mental institutions before finally being transferred to the newly opened Government Hospital for the Insane in Washington D.C. in 1855 which today is known as St. Elizabeth’s Psychiatric Hospital.  Richard Lawrence died there at the age of sixty-one or sixty-two on June 13, 1861.

Government Hospital for the Insane in the 19th Century

Cited

Meacham, John.  American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House Pub. 

Random House, NY 2008