Americans have always been captivated by the manner and meaning of their Presidents’ deaths. The assassinations of Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy shocked the nation, all the more because each coincided with the proliferation of new forms of mass communication. As the historian Richard Wightman Fox has demonstrated, advances in photography fueled widespread obsession with Lincoln's corpse, allowing people from across the nation to imagine that they were peering into an open casket. Similarly, the perpetual television re-broadcast of Abraham Zapruder’s home-movie caused millions of Americans to feel as if they had personally witnessed JFK being gunned down in Dallas. But this tradition is rooted in more than mere morbid fascination – a mysterious mix of popular culture, national identity and presidential mortality stretches back to the origins of the Republic. When Thomas Jefferson and John Adams both died on July 4, 1826 – 50 years to the day from their sign...
Life & Death, Faith & Doubt, Here & There