On this day in 1900, William Justus Goebel was sworn in as Kentucky’s 34th governor.
While lying in a hospital bed after having been shot in the chest by an unknown assailant the previous day.
Goebel died on February 3, 1900, from the gunshot wound, making him the only state governor ever to be assassinated.
The incident was the culmination of a near civil war between Democrats and Republicans in the state. Goebel, a Democrat, had been declared the winner of a very close election and many speculated that the outgoing Republican governor, William S. Taylor, who lost by about 2,000 votes, might have been responsible for the attack on Goebel in Frankfort.
Taylor fled to Indiana to escape indictment, with the governor of that state refusing to extradite him back to Kentucky to face trial with several other co-defendants in Goebel’s assassination. He was pardoned in 1909 by Republican governor Augustus E. Wilson, who won election after the end of Goebel’s term, which was served by his lieutenant governor, J. C. W. Beckham.
Things have not changed much. Recently three men of similar political persuasion tried to kidnap the governor of Michigan. Prior to that a mob, also of similar political persuasion, stormed the national capitol with some of whom avowing to lynch the sitting vice president.
As we often say, the more things change, the more they stay the same!