Video: '6th September 1901: President William McKinley shot at the Pan-American Exposition by Leon Czolgosz'

(Friday, September 6, 1901, 4:07 p.m. EST; during the Assassination of William McKinley) — William McKinley, the 25th president of the United States, was shot this afternoon on the grounds of the Pan-American Exposition at the Temple of Music in Buffalo, New York, six months into his second term.

McKinley had been shaking hands for approximately ten minutes when anarchist Leon Czolgosz shot McKinley twice in the abdomen with a .32 Iver Johnson revolver concealed under a handkerchief.

Eleven minutes after the shooting an ambulance arrived and McKinley was taken to the hospital on the Exposition grounds.

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McKinley had been shot twice. One bullet deflected off his ribs, making only a superficial wound.

However, the second bullet hit McKinley in the abdomen, passed completely through his stomach, hit his kidney, damaged his pancreas, and lodged somewhere in the muscles of his back.

The doctors, unable to find the bullet, left it in his body and closed up the wound, hoping McKinley would recover.

McKinley initially appeared to be recovering, but he would take a turn for the worse on Sept. 13, 1901, as his wounds became gangrenous, and he died early the next morning; he was succeeded by his vice president, Theodore Roosevelt.

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McKinley enjoyed meeting the public and was reluctant to accept the security available to his office. Secretary to the President George B. Cortelyou feared that an assassination attempt would take place during a visit to the Temple of Music and took it off the schedule twice, but McKinley restored it each time.

Czolgosz had lost his job during the economic Panic of 1893 and turned to anarchism, a political philosophy adhered to by recent assassins of foreign leaders. He regarded McKinley as a symbol of oppression and was convinced that it was his duty as an anarchist to kill him.

Czolgosz would be sentenced to death in the electric chair, and Congress passed legislation to officially charge the Secret Service with the responsibility for protecting the president.