Attack and assassination attempt

The first attempt to do bodily harm to a President was against Jackson. Jackson ordered the dismissal of Robert B. Randolph from the Navy for embezzlement. On May 6, 1833, Jackson sailed on USS Cygnet to Fredericksburg, Virginia, where he was to lay the cornerstone on a monument near the grave of Mary Ball Washington, George Washington's mother. During a stopover near Alexandria, Virginia, Randolph appeared and struck the President. He then fled the scene with several members of Jackson's party chasing him, including the well known writer Washington Irving. Jackson decided not to press charges.^[4]

On January 30, 1835, a more serious attack occurred in the Capitol. Jackson was crossing the Capitol Rotunda after the funeral of South Carolina Representative Warren R. Davis when Richard Lawrence approached Jackson. Lawrence aimed two pistols at Jackson, which both misfired. Jackson then attacked Lawrence with his cane, prompting his aides to restrain him. Others present, including Davy Crockett, restrained and disarmed Lawrence, who was clearly deranged.

Richard Lawrence gave the doctors several reasons for the shooting. He had recently lost his job painting houses and somehow blamed Jackson. He claimed that with the President dead, "money would be more plenty"—a reference to Jackson’s struggle with the Bank of the United States—and that he "could not rise until the President fell." Finally, he informed his interrogators that he was actually a deposed English King—Richard III, specifically, dead since 1485—and that Jackson was merely his clerk. He was deemed insane, institutionalized, and never punished for his assassination attempt.

Jackson's statue in the Rotunda is placed in front of the doorway in which the attempt occurred.