Like Trump in 2024, President Andrew Jackson faced an attempt on his life

The failed assassination attempt on former president Donald Trump Saturday has ignited calls for unity and more temperate rhetoric as we enter the official 2024 presidential campaign season. “This is not who we are” has been a common refrain.

The sobering reality is that real and threatened acts of violence against sitting presidents and presidential candidates have been a regular feature of American politics.

The assassinations of Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy are familiar events, but two other presidents – James Garfield and William McKinley – also lost their lives at the hands of assassins. Several presidents and presidential candidates, including Ronald Reagan, Gerald Ford, and Theodore Roosevelt, were also unsuccessfully targeted by assassins.

Saturday’s events have also led some politicians, without evidence, to accuse President Joe Biden and the Democratic Party of orchestrating the attack. It is not surprising that in an era of hyper partisanship, some Americans are turning to conspiracy theories to understand this shocking and deplorable act of violence.

Andrew Jackson was the first president to be targeted for assassination

Conspiracy theories seem to offer explanations for the unexplainable, provide confirmation of preconceived biases, and create an “us-verus-them” mentality. One can clearly see how the emotions connected to presidents and presidential campaigns only heighten the appeal of conspiracism, especially when violence is introduced.

As the example of President Andrew Jackson illustrates, the intersection of political violence and conspiratorial worldviews is nothing new.

Jackson found himself the victim of several acts of attempted and actual political violence during his time as president, but two instances stand out for their use of conspiracy theories.

In 1833, a former naval officer named Robert B. Randolph physically assaulted Jackson because Old Hickory had ordered his dismissal from the Navy for financial mismanagement. Randolph blamed Jackson’s advisors for plotting his downfall, an accusation echoing charges that the president was being controlled by a coterie of ambitious men seeking to centralize executive power via a cult of personality.

Jackson, in turn, believed that Randolph was the tool of political opponents, including his former vice president, John C. Calhoun, conspiring to derail the agenda of his second term. Some of the same men, from Jackson’s perspective, had been behind recent efforts to divide the Union over tariffs and undermine his attempts to battle the financial power of the national bank.

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Two years later, Richard Lawrence, a disgruntled house painter, tried to shoot Jackson in the first attempted assassination of a sitting president. Lawrence, who successfully employed the insanity defense in his trial, was motivated by fantastical beliefs that he was British royalty and that Jackson was the main obstacle to claiming his rightful wealth. As he had in 1833, Jackson blamed Calhoun and other political enemies for trying to remove him – permanently this time – from the political scene.

Jackson's enemies were willing to kill him to stop him

Both incidents involving Jackson occurred in an era of significant partisan rancor.

Old Hickory was a polarizing figure, and his controversial attempts to consolidate power in the executive branch elicited conspiracy theories that he was setting himself up to become a lifelong tyrant.

Jackson’s supporters, meanwhile, believed that the president’s political opponents were willing to do anything, including killing him, to subvert Jackson’s role as champion of the common people.

There is a famous saying: “History never repeats itself, but it often rhymes.” When future generations look back on this era, I hope they see that we instead started a completely different stanza.

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While political violence and conspiracism have been familiar themes of presidential politics, we do not have to accept either of them as our reality. We have the choice not only to reject actual political violence but also the conspiratorial rhetoric that creates an environment in which violence becomes an acceptable alternative.

Mark R. Cheathem is professor of history and project director of the Papers of Martin Van Buren at Cumberland University. He is the author of award-winning books on Andrew Jackson and presidential campaigning. His most recent book is "Who Is James K. Polk? The Presidential Election of 1844."

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Trump assassination attempt: Political violence is part of US history