McKinley, six months into his second term, was shaking hands in the exposition's Temple of Music. His secretary, George Cortelyou, feared an attack there and twice took the event off the schedule, but McKinley restored it each time. Czolgosz stood in the line with a .32-calibre Iver Johnson revolver hidden under a handkerchief wrapped around his right hand. As their hands touched at 4:07 p.m., he fired twice. McKinley died on September 14.
The heat that afternoon helped Czolgosz. The usual rule that people approaching the president must show open, empty hands was not being enforced, and several people in the line were holding handkerchiefs to wipe their brows, so his wrapped hand looked like a bandaged injury.
James Parker, an American of African and Spanish descent from Georgia who had been behind Czolgosz in line, slammed into the gunman and reached for the weapon, followed a split second later by a Buffalo detective and an artilleryman. One bullet had only grazed McKinley; the other entered his abdomen and was never found. A primitive X-ray machine was on display at the fair, but the doctors did not use it.
For several days McKinley seemed to be recovering. Then gangrene set in around the wound, and he died at 2:15 a.m. on September 14. Vice President Theodore Roosevelt became, at 42, the youngest president in American history, and Czolgosz was convicted and executed in the electric chair on October 29.
Key people: William McKinley, Leon Czolgosz, James Parker