On January 30, 1835, the first attempted presidential assassination took place. President Jackson was leaving funeral services for his friend, Warren Advise, a congressman from South Carolina. During the funeral, his would-be assassin, Richard Lawrence, waited from his vantage point behind a pillar on the east portico of the Capitol. When Jackson came out to the Rotunda, Lawrence made his move getting within eight feet of the President. He took out his pistol and fired directly at the JacksonΓÇÖs head.
Luckily, the gun misfired with the cap exploding noisily. An angry President Jackson ran at his assailant, raising his cane in self defense. Lawrence pulled out a second gun which misfired yet again. Onlookers forced the assailant to the ground and prevented President Jackson from beating him to a pulp.
President Jackson was utterly convinced that the assassination attempted had been arranged by his political adversaries, namely the Whig party. He refused to accept independent physicians opinions that Lawrence was suffering from some mental disease, probably what is known today as paranoid schizophrenia.
Richard LawrenceΓÇÖs actions had always been erratic. During his childhood, his family called him a fine boy and of good moral habits. But like most schizophrenics, his behavior began to change in his teens shortly after the family moved from England to the United States. By age thirty, he was known in the community for fits of wild rages and unexplained laughter. Lawrence threatened to kill anyone who did him the slightest wrong and was utterly convinced that Jackson had inappropriately wrestled the English throne away from him.
It took the jury in his trial only several days to find him criminally insane. He was sentenced to spend the rest of his life in a mental institution. He was still there when he died in June 1861.
