“. . . and for the man, if it is just to call him man, that struck the blow, only a single excuse exists, that his brain had been turned by the dark conspiracies in which he was involved, and that it was at the instigation of a fanaticism excited to the pitch of insanity that the deed was done.”

“. . . only some fiend in human form, in whose heart every instinct of manhood was strangled, could plot or execute the murder of the President of the United States.”

“It is unfortunate that the name of an assassin must be linked with that of his victim, and in that way perpetuated; yet we are sure that whenever mentioned it will be only with reprobation for his conduct and to hold up his name to execration.”

“It is due the State of New York to say the assassin was handled from the day of his crime to the moment of his disappearance in quicklime, with eminent good sense, perfect propriety, the inflexible policy being to spurn aside all sensationalism, have the duty of the State performed without hesitation or consenting in any way to the wretched sentimentalism giving murderers a promise of fame, however miserable.”

“Czolgosz is one of a large and growing class who suffer from Plutophobia.”

“In many respects he became a complete realization of degeneracy.”

“The manhood of the average American will not permit him, even in imagination, to descend to the murky depths in which must grovel so vile a reptile as he who assaulted our chief magistrate.”

“In Chicago he would have been lynched in a moment.”

“. . . he appears to be a strange creature of moods, a dreamy, uncanny sort of individual in whom the quality of imagination has been abnormally developed.”

“It is idle to denounce the man who committed the crime. If he is sane words cannot paint the heinous character of his offense against human and divine law. If he is demented, the pathos, the sorrow and the tragedy still remain. . . .”

“He did what it was his duty to do, and we honor him, while personally thinking his effort might better have been employed across the ocean upon some crowned head.”

“He is probably some German lunatic and fool.”

“. . . an anarchist of foreign birth—one of those mad dogs of civilization that range two worlds with hell in their hearts, a blind, venomous rage against all rule, an insane aspiration to abolish government by destroying the heads of government.”

“. . . he thought by ending the president’s life he would give solace to his own aching heart.”

“So far as can be ascertained Czolgosz is of a piece with all the Anarchist type of murderers. His one overmastering trait is vanity. He is just the kind of vermin the Anarchist master spirits use as tools for their crimes. Like all of them, he is a coward at heart.”

“I respect the man who did the shooting as much as I respect any soldier who fought for his country.”

“He was such a timid boy, so afraid of everything. Why, he was the biggest coward you ever saw in your life.”

“He said anarchy was his religion.”

“He was a great coward . . . and I am surprised he had the nerve to do as he did.”

“He was a coward, and I don’t see where he got the nerve to shoot any one.”

“Those who knew him cannot understand how he ever plucked up the nerve to do his daring deed.”

“He had the appearance of one who, while not particularly proud of what he had done, was satisfied with his act.”

“I think Czolgosz was one of those down-trodden men who see all which the rich inflict upon the poor, who think of it, who brood over it and in despair resolve to strike a blow they think for the good of their fellow men.”

“Leon might be a better boy than he is, but he would not shoot the good Mr. McKinley.”

“He is a queer admixture of strength and weakness, and, to my mind, can either be the ready tool of forcible convictions, strongly brought to bear upon him, or of an egotistical vanity which creates a lurking insanity in the attempt to gain notoriety.”

“It is to be regretted that Czolgosz did not seek notoriety by going over Niagara in a barrel instead of shooting the President in Buffalo.”

“No Siberia would be too tough for the villainous Czolgosz.”

“The man who shot our President is probably the miserable instrument of stronger minds.”

“Anarchists look at Czolgosz as a man of action. In their eyes he is a hero. He has done something more than to sit at a table and drink beer and talk. A man like Czolgosz does more good to the cause of Anarchy than 1,000 pages of written matter.”

“He ought to be strung up.”

“Czolgosz seems to be a typical anarchist, blindly determined to kill a ruler because he is a ruler, and reckless of the consequences to himself.”

“Paul Czolgosz, the father, always predicted that Leon would die on the gallows.”

“In my country that wretch Czolgosz would receive the extreme penalty,—death by slow torture.”

“Before the commission of his dastardly crime the wretch Czolgosz was but an atom in that vast aggregate of millions called the people; today his name is one for lawless folk to conjure with; a name which makes crowned heads shake with palsy and presidents of republics look to the doubling of their bodyguard.”

“There is no reason to believe that Czolgosz is insane; he is simply a fanatic, and believes he has done a grand thing which will give him a great name.”

“He is described by those who know him as a lazy, cowardly, easily led young man of mediocre intellect.”

“The Polish Anarchist, Czolgosz, who attempted to assassinate the President, was hardly more sensitive to the motives to which men ordinarily respond than one of the lions in the building near where the President fell. Such a man has far more in common with the beast than humanity.”

“Some of the press accounts speak of him as being crazy, and after reading the papers one would imagine that he was one of those long-haired and wire-whiskered bomb-throwers. But he is not: he is a nice-looking fellow and talks intelligently. . . .”

“Leon’s deed is giving us terrible worry and we feel that he is deserving of any punishment that may be inflicted.”

“If what the newspapers tell us is true, Czolgosz is a fine mixture of knave and fool.”

“He is the product of the saloon. Not an unnatural product, either. The boy who from his earliest infancy has been used to ribald oaths, and by the precept and example of his father and his father’s chums is taught to disobey all law and hate law makers, naturally enough grows to be an anarchist in faith and a murderer at heart.”

“No, Leon Czolgosz, alias Nieman, is not insane, but is a pronounced Anarchist of the bloodiest and most cunning type.”

“If there ever was an instance where lynch law could be consistently applied, it is in the case of Czolgosz, for his treacherous attempt to assassination the President.”

“Hard work and plenty of it would have kept Czolgosz’ [sic] mind and body in a healthful condition, wherein he would have been unmoved by the follies of agitators and kept free from the rancor against the rich and powerful which led him into pessimism and crime.”

“. . . this particular creature of blood had no motive which ordinary human beings could ever share.”

“If I had been there, I would have blown the scoundrel to atoms, if I had a pistol.”

“This cuss, with the unpronouncable [sic] name, who shot the president, was hatched from an egg laid by a meaner reptile than himself.”

“In truth, Czolgosz is not more guilty than those who taught him.”

“He must have been crazy.”

“Czolgosz’ guilt is clear and unquestioned.”

“In God’s name, hang the man as he deserves!”

“Czolgosz is not a fanatic. He is not crazy. He is not even a fool. He is the perfect type of the anarchist.”

“I believe he should be burned at the stake and thus set an example for other Anarchists of the country.”

“It will be hard for the criminologists to bring him under any of their classifications of innate criminality.”

“. . . a young, smooth-faced workingman of foreign type, not, if one may judge by the photographs, of peculiarly repulsive or degenerate cast of features, but not notably intelligent in appearance.”

“I can’t say whether he is an anarchist or not. He may call himself an anarchist, but that does not mean necessarily that he understands anarchy.”

“I do not believe Czolgosz is an anarchist, or if he is he is a crazy one.”

“Nothing reported concerning Czolgosz is more easy of belief than the statement of his stepmother that he is a fool.”

             Most infamously Czolgosz acted.
             Can he pay the debt contracted
With the paltry little life he calls his own?
             Killed, for fancied fault detected,
             Man by million men elected.
Such conceit as this of his is seldom known.
                   Soon, Czolgosz, too, will be no more,
                   And God will even up the score.

“He is clearly a product of the proletarian class in the United States today.”

“He calls himself an anarchist, but even they refuse to admit that he is one of them or that their teachings are in any way responsible for his mad act.”

“. . . the man who committed [the assassination] played the part, both of a criminal and of a fool.”

“He must be a fool!”

“The poor fellow. He could not have known what he was doing.”

“. . . if there is any power in a world’s detestation, it will be a poor sort of Hell that is not yawning for Czolgosz. There is no use for a Hell that doesn’t want him and his sort.”

“. . . one of the vilest of villains.”

“The one word that seems to fully describe him is that he is a ‘degenerate’—vicious from his earliest childhood, and made more so by harsh treatment—stupid, gluttonous, and knowing no more of the laws of our country than to believe that the murder of the President would overturn the Government.”

“His face indicates a simple, tranquil nature. There is nothing about him in his face or his manner suggestive of violence or intensity.”

“This man Czolgosz is simply playing out the part that has been given him to play. He is not insane; he is not stupid or oblivious of what is taking place around him, but he is simply acting out what he has practised and rehearsed probably for months.”

“Hang him in a public square, before the gaze of the people, with face uncovered. When choked to death, let his corpse hang for twenty-four hours; then cut him down and burn his miserable remains in carbolic acid, so that not a speck of his vile dust will remain on American soil. . . .”

“This man who attempted to assassinate McKinley, like many other men believed that the people are oppressed.”

“. . . he is a rebel against all the conservative forces of religion and society.”

“Mr. McKinley’s last sublime public utterance was one of forgiveness for his assassin. When the anarchist was struggling with the guard, the President, forgetting his wounds, cried: ‘Let no man harm him.’ He counselled moderation and expressed pity for the assassin. We will not go that far. The man deserves no more pity than any other cowardly criminal. He deserves still less the exaltation that passionate and revengeful people would give him above the common herd of murderers.”

“He appeared to be a kindly disposed German boy, and had a decided Teutonic complexion that could not be mistaken.”

“Out of a foul and malignant heart came the impulse to betray and murder the nation’s head.”

“No, Czolgosz is not an anarchist; he is a nihilist—or insane. He will never be executed; mark my words.”

“. . . a vile thing having the appearance of a man, a Frankenstein monster whose bread and salt came from the country he so sorrowfully afflicted.”

“. . . one whose narrow brain had soaked in the poisonous teachings of the offscourings of Europe.”

“His name is foremost in every public print in the world, familiar to children who have never heard of the greatest lawgivers, conquerors, reformers.”

“. . . Czolgosz seems to be only a type and executor of opinions founded upon social conditions unsatisfactory to, and oppressive of, certain classes of the people.”

“. . . he is not a voluble chap.”

“He does not appear to be of the familiar type of anarchists, nor is he good-looking enough to attract the second glance of one meeting him.”

“Czolgosz answers well the description of the ‘mildest-looking man who ever scuttled ship or cut a throat.’”

“We shall fail to comprehend how the slayer could do his deed; but at least we may see that he is as alien to our humanity as he was to our institutions, and that he need not be reckoned one of us. A little relief is in that.”

“. . . this man was mentally responsible for his act, sane in every way and deserving of his end.”

Thou stinkest in the nostrils of the world
     As putrid offal on the shoe of man.
Assassin base! we loathe, yet pity thee,
     An pray God’s judgment may as generous be.

“When we said we thought him to be insane we spoke the truth. No man could act toward us, his counsel and helpers, as he has done unless his senses were hampered in some way.”

“His mind may have been to a certain extent unhinged by fanaticism, but it was clear to all that he was in complete possession of his faculties, and quite understood the consequences of his actions.”

“It is well to stop and think what a hero Czolgosz is from his point of view. He believed that he was doing the greatest possible good to the country by assassinating the President. He expected that upon the firing of that shot his liberties, his happiness and life itself would speedily come to an end. How many are there who would be willing to sacrifice their lives to do the human race the greatest possible good of which they know? What is written in the New Testament about the crucifixion of Jesus Christ sums up into the same kind of heroism.”

“The assassin is in the hands of the law,—let him suffer the dues of the law, in full measure, pressed down and running over. Give him prison fare and no more. Let him sleep on a hard plank and no better. And by all means keep away from him the silly women that will ache to bring bouquets to him.”

“. . . in conversation and appearance he was more intelligent than the average Polish laborer . . . .”

“Of all the thousands of people upon those grounds, this one was perhaps the most insignificant in physical and mental equipment, in character, in capacity—a mere worm crawling in the dust. Yet he had in his perverted heart the venomous purpose, held in his hand the tiny instrument, which were to set the world a-weeping.”

“It was hard to realize that this country harbored a single individual so void of human instincts that he should attempt to kill one whose every act in life ought to insure him against harm by the vilest human character.”

What fiend is this whose vengeful heart
     Could lodge such hate to foul man’s name?
It can’t be man that did the deed,
     The devil ’twas that lit the flame
That fired his soul, in friendship’s guise,
To kill the brave, the good, the wise!

“The assassin is guilty as Judas.”

“Is Czolgosz a half-crazed fanatic, irresponsible, representing nothing but his own wild vagaries, or is he the natural product of a system of teaching, the legitimate outcome of certain degenerate tendencies which have been allowed to persist? He professes that he was impelled to the crime by the vicious teaching of Emma Goldman. There was a purpose in his act, a shrewdness in its execution, a method in his madness that never originated with himself. He is the product of a movement, the outcome of visionary ideas, the logical result of certain established tendencies. In this view of the case he is more than a puny individual, more than a hollow-chested, flabby-muscled degenerate. He is a Frankenstein that we have raised up among us. Nor can we attribute the paternity of this monster to the effete despotisms of the old land. This is the misery of it all. He was born on our own soil, he grew up amidst the liberty-loving children of America. He was fashioned by the tendencies that surrounded him from early manhood. These are all facts that we cannot blink, distasteful as they are to our national pride.”

“Father and stepmother give him the reputation of a timid weakling, a ne’er-do-well.”

“No war exists, no oppression, no depression, no party strife, no agitation of disputed questions, nothing to give the semblance of ‘a mission’ to the miserable youth who has only carved his name in black marble.”

“The assassin of the President represents . . . ignoble discontent.”

“This misguided young man who has done a deed that brings upon him the execrations of mankind is a product of countless evil influences that by force of circumstances have focused in him.”

“The murderer of our President was a real crank. He was a crank because he permitted his mind to centre itself, unrestrained by the principles of real philanthropy, upon sophistries which, while they profess to preach the betterment of mankind, are at bottom concentrated selfishness. True perspective was impossible and sound judgment not to be expected.”

“. . . no penalty he can pay can expiate his guilt.”

“It matters little whether the assailant of the President was the fanatical tool of shrewder anarchistic miscreants, whether solitary in crime, he craved a despicable notoriety or whether, weak in mind and morals, isolated in his broodings, ignorant of the sentiments of his fellow citizens, he imagined he was ridding the world of a tyrant, he is a product of American soil.”

“. . . he has the signs of strength and weakness, but these are unfortunately blended in such a way that they do not give him the right use of his qualities as a normal American citizen.”

“He has, from the standard of an anarchist, achieved a brilliant success, and his example will be followed by others if possible.”

“The man who shot McKinley belongs to the very fountain head [sic] of all that is ruinous and riotous. This government, that has been such a friend to the oppressed of all nations, has been insulted, protection is menaced and no innocent person is safe. Yes, this anarchist should suffer the severest penalty of the law.”

“Czolgosz is the type of Hun and Vandal, which Macaulay, the English historian, declared long ago in a letter to Thomas Jefferson would ravage our republic in the twentieth century.”

“. . . one needs must bespeak pity for the man upon whom is heaped to-day the execration and wrath of a whole nation. Leon Czolgosz needs love. He has always needed it. His mad act was a lightning-flash revelation of a miserable, loveless, beaten life. We cannot recoil in horror from him, for he is our brother; neither can we cast him from us, for we are still our brother’s keeper, bound eternally together by deep, mysterious laws. What is in us is in him—the same soul-needs and desires, the same noble possibilities.”

“The shame and indignation that has been expressed, everywhere, at the dastardly crime of the heartless anarchist who committed the deed has exemplified the humility the American citizen feels,—that, in his land of liberty, order, justice, and humanity, there should exist one whose heart is so hardened to the purpose of the republic, whose conscience is so foreign to its liberties, and whose mind so insensible to its wonderful benefits, that he would dare to raise the hand of the assassin against its ruler. This person claims to be an American-born citizen. More horrifying the deed; far deeper our disgrace.”

“. . . a loathsome wretch whose name should never appear in print.”

“His bones should never be allowed to mingle with American soil. When the great sentence shall be executed, as it should be with swift justice becoming such an unspeakable tragedy, we could wish the United States Government would take the remains of the atrocious murderer 100 miles to sea and then, pinioned and manacled, with his revolver in his belt and a millstone chained about his neck, sink the corpse a thousand fathoms to the bottom of the ocean. . . .”

“. . . Leon Czolgosz will pass out into another world probably never realizing the horror and the grief he has caused in the world he is leaving behind.”

“It was not his religion, but his denial of all religion, that made him an outlaw and a murderer.”

“Why did such a creature commit a crime so unutterably disproportionate to his capacity?”

“If Czolgosz had desired to help Anarchism his act was illogical, ill-advised, foolish, INSANE, inasmuch as the legitimate and necessary result was just what we see—a tremendous accession of power to Archism, to rulership and rulers. If he was and is an Archist in disguise, or if he was hired by Archists to kill McKinley, then his act was rational, it was logical, just as some of the early Christians were rational and logical in their course when they voluntarily sought martyrdom in order to hasten the triumph of Christianity.”

“For three weeks the pulpit and press of this country have so far surpassed Czolgosz in their exhibition of murderous frenzy that the latter seems an angel of light in comparison.”

“No crueller punishment could have been devised for the Buffalo specimen than to expel him from the prison which was his refuge. So faulty is our obedience to laws at the best that he would hardly have lived to walk twenty paces from the jail door. The ‘oppressed’ people would have converted him into souvenirs.”

“Czolgosz would never have been heard of had he found the ‘luck’ in life that he expected. He was an offshoot of our public schools and not of Anarchy.”

“. . . his murderous act derived its impulse not from his own malice, but from an outside source; in other words, that he was merely an instrument—a willing instrument, it may be conceded—of external influences to which the weakness of his character made him susceptible.”

“What future he saw before him as he wedged through the crowd and felt the trigger of his revolver only he himself knows. But today Czolgosz looks upon the past as a man does sadly upon a vanished illusion. Notoriety has been snatched from him. Even his own clan have refused to voice his name. Locked up in solitude, his actions, his sociological beliefs, his feelings have all gone unchronicled. Obscurity is his, remorse is his, the darkness of a cell is his, the horror of clanging chains, unheard save by himself, is his.”

“He is a strange product—a puzzle.”

“. . . he loved his fellow-men, not wisely but too well.”

“He is the most heartless man I ever saw. He has not the grace to love God.”

“Without doubt he was the most remarkable criminal that this country has ever produced.”

“He was a venomous worm differing in infamy from the other anarchistic worms in that he sought notoriety by murdering a ruler while they talked of doing it.”

“Guiteau’s shooting of Garfield in the back was an awful deed, as was the work of Booth in assassinating Lincoln, but we have not the contempt for them that we have for Czolgosz, who offered one hand in friendship and then dealt murder with the other.”

“It is a pity that certain priests were so active in their efforts to lead the condemned man to repentance. What was the use of it? If the good old orthodox belief in a hell of burning brimstone is correct, it would be a sin to try to keep Czolgosz out of it.”

“. . . his name will be recalled with a shudder, and remembered only to be consigned to infamy’s red role of traitors, regicides and butcher-assassins.”

“Czolgosz was impractical—a dreamer, as I take it—incapable of adapting himself to his environment.”

“. . . an off-cast of society . . . who in his life never did one single deed for the good of mankind.”

“Spiritually he is an imbecile.”

“The wretch who attacked President McKinley seems to have been inspired directly by the enunciation of anarchical doctrines; but in a country where illegal, violent, and murderous acts are constantly being performed by mobs of citizens who take the law into their own hands and hang, shoot, and burn human beings ‘for the public good,’ in such a country how can it be expected that individuals will not sometimes act on their own peculiar theories of ‘public good’ and perform executions without warrant of law?”

“Czolgosz, misguided wretch, was at least honest and unselfish. He committed the deed because he thought it would benefit the laboring classes, well knowing that it would cost him his life. He made himself a willing sacrifice to what he thought would be the benefit of the toiling millions.”

“If ever the power of a criminal suggestion over a mind that yields to mesmeric influence was clearly revealed, it was in the influence which this speech by Emma Goldman exercised upon the brain of Leon Czolgosz, impelling him to the assassination of William McKinley.”

“. . . the half responsible fellow who took the life of our President is less guilty than those who have made our thought atmosphere filthy with thoughts of revenge, of jealousy, of discontent, of atheism.”

“The terrible crime was conceived by himself as the result of a naturally weak nature meditating on the doctrine of violence. It is probable that, if he had not happened to encounter an apostle of anarchy, he would have lived a commonplace, undeveloped life, without doing any act of violence and without developing any particularly vicious traits. There was nothing to show that he had any proper realization of the enormity of the crime that he committed. He was simply a pitiful victim of anarchism. But he was not insane, not irresponsible. He was only a degenerate. He gives the best possible reason for all judicious restraint on the preaching of dangerous doctrines. When they lodge in a weak mind like his there is always a grave danger of tragic results.”

“Had Czolgosz been industrious and sincere in his desire to lead an honorable career, and to become a good citizen, our late President would, no doubt, have been alive to-day.”

“. . . the name of the assassin should be dropped from public print or discussion so that he will be as nearly forgotten as possible.”

“Born and reared a Roman Catholic, sent in his youth to a parochial school, and never, so far as can be learned, an attendant on our ‘godless’ public schools, this man is mentally and morally a product of Christianity.”

“One’s belief depends on his surroundings and the teachings he has received. One grows up naturally to believe in polygamy in Morocco, and it was perfectly natural that Czolgosz, associating only with anarchists, listening only to their arguments and ravings, should accept their belief.”

“Czolgosz was not an Anarchist, in any proper or etymologic sense of the word, but the Archists have so persistently advertised him as such—lionized him as such—that the common people, the ignorant common people, are beginning to think better of Anarchy and Anarchists, are beginning to accept Czolgosz as the type of the savior that is to come—the savior of the working masses, the oppressed masses, from the tyranny of the trusts, and of the government that creates and upholds the trusts.”

“He is but an example of intelligence misdirected, enthusiasm gone wild and an egotism no greater or less than many a well-balanced man possesses. Given the same amount of intelligence, directed into some special channel, say science, for instance, and Czolgosz to-day would be alive and respected. Combine with this the enthusiasm which was part and parcel of the man’s nature toward a thing in which he was interested and he could have counted upon a fair share of success. He probably was one of those people who require a hobby. If they chance to bestride a harmless one nobody is hurt and the world goes on its way no worse and no better for their peculiar choice of steeds.”

“Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed. Czolgosz has paid the legal penalty for his murder of President McKinley, declaring to the last that he acted purely from a sense of duty and that he had no accomplices. Physicians who examined the assassin before and after death affirm that he was sane and of normal physical and mental development. There is some satisfaction in the theory now accepted by the police that Czolgosz’s crime was not the result of a conspiracy—one Czolgosz is enough.”

                                         No creeping thing
On God’s green earth so loathsome is as you.

“Czolgosz may, or may not, have had a sincere regard for the welfare of the working people. Whatever he felt, it is evident that he held government in detestation. No sane man hates good government, and, from my standpoint, no sane man can believe in Czolgosz’s methods. No wrong can be righted by wrong methods. Czolgosz’s methods are not only wrong, but diabolically wrong.”

“. . . Czolgosz’s bearing, conduct and declarations from the time he murdered the President down to that of his execution have been entirely consistent with the teachings and the creed of Anarchism and stamp him as an Anarchist of the deepest dye.”

“Czolgosz was not a type, but an unreasoning, though not insane, moral pervert.”

“I don’t believe in the Republican form of government, and I don’t believe we should have any rulers. It is right to kill them. I had that idea when I shot the President, and that is why I was there.”

“He is the product of Anarchy, sane and responsible.”

“He slew a greater than himself, and by the act achieved greatness. The insignificant became significant.”

“. . . Czolgosz was a man with the beautiful soul of a child and the energy of a giant.”

“The Anarchy which exists here and elsewhere, the strife of classes, is not the result of Atheism and Materialism but the fruit of centuries of oppression by ecclesiastics and kings. These have been the exemplars of the brute force doctrine and criminals like Czolgosz are their logical and legitimate pupils and products.”

“Now that this Grendel has appeared among us and taken off one of our greatest citizens, from whence is to come the noble Beowulf, who shall slay both the monster and its mother?”

“In the assassin we have the product of atheism. . . .”

“Il y a des jeunes gens si purs que leur vie est un cristal qui reflète leurs pensées en toute ingénuité, et dont les gestes se propagent et vivent à l’unisson de leur cœur. Je crois que Czolgosz était un de ceux-là.”

“The world may well dismiss Czolgosz as in no sense the exponent of, but rather a sporadic product of Socialism and Anarchy, and simply regard him as a soft creature, not deranged, but acting under an evil impulse, fully conscious of what he was doing and what the consequences would be.”

“If he ever called himself an Anarchist he did so in ignorance of the meaning of the word, and of the methods of propaganda taught by the leaders of that cult.”

None shall weep for thee;
Few shall pray for thee;
God will deal with thee.

“. . . one whose mind had become so diseased that he was delirious in his reasoning beyond all our comprehensions.”

“The weight of evidence seems to be in favor of the view that Czolgosz was an anarchist who was not insane, but who presented a certain degenerate type common to the class.”

“Had he slain a less prominent and less beloved personage than the great and good President, the question of defending him on the plea of irresponsibility might have received a judicial hearing, and, doubtless, experts could have been found to defend him on that plea, and perhaps successfully. This is especially true had he occupied a higher social position and been surrounded by wealthy and influential friends.”

“. . . the murderer was only a wretched decadent, a mere tool in the hands of conspirators. . . .”

“Czolgosz was an implement in the hands of Evolution, and to condemn him for his act would be as silly as to condemn the flood for sweeping away the village built in the bed of the river.”

“. . . one whose mental and moral nature had been wholly perverted.”

“The characterization of Czolgosz may be summed up as a whole in the words: Immature, primitive, atavistic. His personality was unmistakable. The moral potentialities of his character only awaited the touch of opportunity to bring into action. He was a predestined criminal—a mental and moral degenerate whose etiology is lost in the intricate and insoluble mysteries that characterize nature’s moods under the sway of hereditary law and reversion to type.”

“But what was the state of Czolgosz’s mind? Legally sane of course, for it would be contrary to sound public policy to extenuate such crimes on the plea of insanity in any but the most flagrantly insane.”

“. . . everything in his history as shown by his conduct and declarations, points to the existence in him of the social disease, Anarchy, of which he was a victim.”

“He is a significant product and a revelation of an insane, unkind, spurious civilization.”

“Czolgosz himself was hardly a native; though born in America, his associations had not been American.”

“Czolgosz was not a type frequently found in our public lunatic asylums, but rather an aggravated specimen from the insane borderlands.”

“Czolgosz can no more be regarded an anarchist or a rational product of anarchy than a casual visitor to a synagogue can be regarded as an orthodox Jew.”

“The assassin is himself a victim to his terribly mistaken zeal for what he regards as reform.”

“So far from knowing he was doing wrong, he believed he was doing right—a right for which he was ready to sacrifice his life, and from which he, in his grave, could gain no good.”

“Say what you will about Czolgosz, he took his life in his hand to assert his crazy creed.”

“Czolgosz was the nemises [sic] which reckless wrong, clothed in official purple, nourished and brought forth. The power that shot down defenseless workingmen at Hazleton under the very shadow of the American flag, and which spread death and desolation thruout [sic] the Philippine Islands; which murdered by majesty of law and pilfered in patriotism’s name, that power created Czolgosz.”

“Believing as I have, that a public school is in itself a social community where the child learns, if he learns nothing else, the necessity for subordinating his individual will to the welfare of the whole, I wondered how it was possible for this man to grow up in this republic with such a defective mind and character.”

“Leon had a large heart and loved humanity. He keenly felt the injustice which the government in social and public life imposed upon him. He saw the cause of the unequal politico-economic struggle for a miserable existence, and eventually sacrificed his own life, taking with him as he thought the boldest servant of the capitalistic system.”

“He was a young man, born in this country, educated in the common schools, in good health, and with unimpaired mind. He was a believer in the religion of his fathers and in the government of his country until he fell under the fatal influence of the anarchists. He attended their meetings, he hearkened to their harangues, he drank in their doctrines. The poison saturated his soul. He abjured his religion, he renounced his country, he devoted himself to the destruction of society. He became, what every anarchist is at heart, an apostate, a traitor, an outlaw.”

“I will not call Czolgosz an Anarchist, for I think him simply a product of the public schools, and more of a Socialist discontent than anything else.”

“. . . this poor boy who gave up his life for the downtrodden and exploited.”

“Without McKinley, Czolgosz could not have been; and without Czolgosz history would be incomplete.”

“All hail the memory of Leon Czolgosz, sublime in his boyish candor and simplicity, magnificent in his high moral courage and iron will.”

The fame that thou didst seek is sunk
     In infamy so dark,
No miscreant alive, though drunk,
     Thy name for praise would mark.

“Every feeling in him must have protested against the killing of a smiling elderly gentleman who was receiving him like a father.”

“His act was an insane one, but no man can be insane alone, for none of us lives to himself, and every man is, and must be, a social symptom.”

“Czolgosz did not slay because he was an anarchist. He slew because he was a primitive man.”

“Czolgoz [sic] the assassin was reared amid blows, and curses, and trained to anarchy in the vicious ward of an American city. Untouched by loving sympathy, uncared for by church missionary or Sunday school teacher, the springs of life were poisoned. Whatever good was in him was never called forth. Had some one loved him in childhood, and been solicitous for his life in early years, on that memorable day at Buffalo he might have brought instead of a smoking revolver, a boquet [sic] of fragrant flowers to President McKinley.”

“There is no reason to believe him insane, but the logic employed to prove his sanity was not altogether scientific.”

“He was a Pole by birth, and had a long line of revolutionary ancestry behind him. The Polish race of all others is the most likely to advocate revolution and assassination as ‘reform’ measures. Long years of oppression, and reaction against it, are responsible for this trait. The ‘removal’ of political and social obstacles was, therefore, an inborn principle with Czolgosz. What heredity had begun education completed, for he was trained in Polish parochial schools.”

“He was an unintelligent, dull young man whose brain had been inflamed by listening to the oratory of foreign anarchists. . . .”

“His soul craved freedom and he longed to hear the trumpet of the liberating battle.”

“. . . we cannot fail to see that he belonged to the class of the obnubilated, and of the morally insane.”

“If martyrdom is insisted upon, which was the martyr, the man who had had the good of life, who was past middle years, who had received reward and distinction to satiety, who had ordered others killed without once jeopardizing his own life, and to whom death came more easily than to millions who die of long want and slow tortures of disease, or this young strong soul which struck its own blow and paid with its own life, so capable of the utterest devotion, so embittered and ruined in its youth, so hopeless, so wasted, so cast out of the heart of pity, so altogether alone in its last agony?”

“In quell’ adolescente quadrilustre era più carattere, più energia, più coscienza che non siano di consueto in molti uomini e magari in molti superuomini orgogliosi e vani.”

“. . . an anarchist with a name unpronounceable by an Anglo-Saxon tongue. . . .”

“. . . a low, ignorant cur whose mind was deluded by ignorance, disgrace and shame. He was fed by the flaunting thought of those beastly flesh eaters whose whole life is sloth and a curse to the human race; whose body has been built up by the flesh of swine, known as the lowest animal to the human race. What could you expect from a man of people constantly fed on hogs’ brains. . . .”

“Poor Leon Czolgosz, your crime consisted of too sensitive a social consciousness. Unlike your idealless and brainless American brothers, your ideals soared above the belly and the bank account.”

“Had there been a rope handy I should have helped to hang the brute to the nearest lamppost.”

“Now, after a decade, as we approach his sombre suffering figure, we see in him the nameless representative of a nameless humanity—humanity enduring endlessly, hoping endlessly, and forever thrust back into the abyss of poverty and despair.”

“‘I did it for the good of the people,’ were the last words of the solitary youth in the death-chair of Auburn prison. But the people knew him not, the people passed him by in blind hatred. Yet with all that, he was flesh of their flesh and blood of their blood. He suffered for them, endured humiliation for them, gave his life for them. His tragedy consisted in his great and intense love for the people, but unlike many of his brother slaves he could neither submit nor bow his neck. Thus he had to die.”

“He was an example of an uneducated man imbued with anarchistic ideas, especially in an extreme form.”

“He succeeded in bringing about a sudden change in rulers, and I am prepared to argue that the change was rather for the worse than the better, but he did not aid one jot or tittle in bringing about a change in the character of the rule. He did not make a single contribution of value to a people distressed with economic ills of great magnitude.”

“We have not the least doubt that the future historians, who will not be content with picturing the glories of great generals and their armies, but who will deal with the struggles of humanity for greater freedom, will assign to Leon Czolgosz a more honorable niche in the temple of humanity, than to William McKinley.”

“. . . Leon Czolgosz was of that idealist calibre which our perverted society forever nails to the cross.”

“The wretch Czolgoz [sic], was not the product of American civilization, but that of Europe, where unequal laws, social customs and military rule, degrade and brutalize the masses.”

“The assassin was really a defective who had long been drifting to paranoia, and whose actual delusions of persecution and grandeur found soil in which to grow.”

“. . . there can be no doubt that in a social psychological sense the motives which urged him on were essentially the same as those that led a John Brown to attack Harpers Ferry, or that inspired the men of the Chicago Haymarket trial to their bold arraignment of society before they died on the scaffold.”

“This ass with the unpronounceable name was probably more insane than usual this week or two back, and may get back upon his bearings by and by, but he was over the sanity-border when he shot the President.”

“There is no doubt that he was an uneducated, misguided fanatic.”

“. . . a pitiless man whom Satan hath bound. . . .”

More wanton or inhuman fiend
     Could not have raised the murderous hand,
Nor found in human breast a-kin,
     With heart so black, and soul so damned.