Lincoln Assasinated For Going Against Banks

[Thomas Thorne]

Andrew Jackson suspected,but could not produce evidence, that his political enemies were involved with Richard Lawrence, both of whose pistols misfired when he tried to kill the president in 1835. Being Jackson, he beat his assailant with a cane.

Jackson partly based his suspicions of his enemies on the fact that Lawrence had briefly been employed as a house painter by Sen. George Poindexter, a Jacksonian critic, long after Lawrence first displayed signs of severe mental illness. Poindexter was defeated for reelection due to his inability to prove a negative. But to date no one has substantiated involvement,inspiration or participation by anyone other than Richard Lawrence in his attempt to kill Jackson.

Richard Lawrence lived long before the advent of psychotropic medications, so it is somewhat difficult to compare him with more recent assassins and would be assassins. He seemed to me much more demented than either Charles Guiteau, or John Hinckley,the only people who IMO had significant mental illness when they tried to kill a sitting
president. Lawrence spent the last 26 years of his life after he tried to kill Jackson in various hospitals and institutions.

Tom