Why did the USA believe that the presidents elected in the 'zero years' will face misfortune

It happened on October 2, 1980. The US was the height of the election campaign, in which US President Jimmy Carter confronted the ambitious Republican candidate Ronald Reagan, says Air force... During one of Carter's stops in Dayton, Ohio, school students were able to ask the president a question.

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“There were predictions that (the elected - Ed.) every 20 years or in election years ending in zero, the president dies in office. Does this bother you? - asked one of the students.

“I saw these predictions. Even if I knew that I would die in office if I were president, I would still fight for this position because I think it is the most amazing, challenging and important position in the entire free world,” the US President responded.

What are we talking about?

"Curse of the Presidents", "Curse of Year Zero", "Curse of Tecumseh", "Curse of Tippecanoe". These are all names for the "legend" that a US President elected in a year ending in zero will die or be assassinated in office.

At the time a schoolboy in Dayton posed the question to Carter, this legend was gaining popularity in the United States. Indeed, at that time, of the seven presidents who were elected to office in the “zero year” since 1840, not one was able to live to the end of his term, and the assassination of one of them, President Kennedy, shocked the country.

Where did this legend come from, why did some Americans believe in it, and historians consider it to be fiction?

Tecumseh and the "Prophet"

This story began at the end of the XNUMXth century, when white Americans were expanding into the land of Indian tribes in the territory of the modern states of Ohio and Indiana.

After losing the battle in 1795, Indian leaders had to sign a treaty according to which a number of lands in the region were ceded to the United States. On them the territory of Indiana arose, the governor of which was the future US President William Harrison in 1800.

Among the chiefs who refused to sign that treaty was one of the leaders of the Tekumse Shawnee tribe. He dreamed of creating an independent territory for Indian tribes. Tekumse appealed to the leaders of other tribes to stop selling lands to the colonists, which, in his opinion, belonged to all Indians, and not to a particular tribe.

Tecumseh's brother Tenskwatawa was called "The Prophet" after he predicted a solar eclipse in 1806 and promised supernatural victory over white conquerors. Tenskwatawa became a religious leader to whom thousands of people followed, and persecuted leaders who collaborated with US authorities. The brothers founded the "City of the Prophet", where thousands of their followers gathered, and created a confederation of tribes who did not want to give up the lands of their ancestors to the colonists.

Tekumseh tried in vain to persuade Governor Harrison to break the chiefs' land purchase contracts, which he considered unfair. The war was inevitable.

“Let the whites die. They seized our lands, corrupted our women, trampled the ashes of our dead. We must drive them back by bloody means to where they came from,” he told his soldiers in 1811.

That same year, taking advantage of Tecumseh's absence, Harrison went on a campaign to the "city of the Prophet." "The Prophet" Tenkswatawa, who led the Indians and promised them an easy victory, lost to the Americans at the Battle of the Tippecanoe River. The Indians abandoned the “city of the Prophet” and the troops destroyed it.

This defeat demoralized the Indians, and Tenkswatawa lost their trust and went into exile. Harrison acquired the nickname "Tippecanoe" in honor of his victory in the battle.

However, Tekumse kept his followers and continued the fight against the Americans. When in 1812 the United States declared war on Great Britain and launched an offensive against Canada, Tekumseh fought on the side of the British forces. Tekumseh was killed in 1813 in a battle against Harrison's forces near the River Thames in what is now Canada. The confederation of tribes that he was gathering ceased to exist.

Contemporaries sang Tekumse in novels and poetry. For the Americans of the time, he was a noble enemy, a model of courage and humanity, a man of a code of honor that did not allow reprisals against prisoners. For Canadians, he generally became one of the national heroes.

Already in the twentieth century, the tabloid press actively began to spread the legend that after the death of his brother, Tenxwatawa supposedly assumed that Garrison would become the president of the United States and imposed a curse on him, according to which every US president elected in a year ending in zero would die in office.

In fact, the unexpected deaths of several presidents preceded the appearance of this legend. It turned out to be the most “romantic” against the background of those rumors and conspiracy theories that appeared after the death in office of each of them. We'll tell you how it happened.

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The Invisible Enemy

After the victory over the Indians, William Harrison served as a congressman and senator from Ohio for a long time. In 1840, that is, in “year zero,” he won the presidential election, beating Tecumseh and his Confederacy.

At the time, 68-year-old Harrison was the oldest US president in history, and some newspapers openly called him grandfather. On March 4, 1841, at his inauguration, he gave a speech that lasted nearly two hours and remains the longest inaugural speech in US history. It was cold, but the president did not put on his coat and hat to demonstrate his good health. And he caught a cold.

The next few weeks of work were intense. Overwork and another cold sent Harrison to bed at the end of March. On April 4, 1841, he became the first American president to die in office. Harrison served the shortest term of any president in US history—only 30 days.

Assassinations: Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley

In the next 60 years after Harrison's death, three presidents were assassinated in the United States - and they were elected in the "zero years."

The event that changed the history of the country was the Civil War of 1861-1865 between the southern states, which wanted to maintain slavery and united into the Confederation, and the northern states, which supported the incumbent President Abraham Lincoln, an opponent of slavery. The war lasted over 4 years and claimed up to a million lives.

In April 1865, the Confederacy surrendered, but President Lincoln did not have time to rejoice at the victory - on April 14, 1865, he became the victim of an assassination attempt. Lincoln's assassin was 26-year-old actor John Wilkes Booth. On the eve of 1864, Booth had the idea to kidnap President Lincoln and transport him to Confederate territory in order to exchange him for captured soldiers and disorganize the government. However, this intention was not realized in time.

After the surrender of the Confederate army in April 1865, Booth decided to personally assassinate the president. The assassination attempt took place in the theater box. Booth knew by heart the play that was being played in the theater, so he waited for a funny moment in it, when the whole audience laughed, burst into the box and shot the US President from behind in the head.

He then stabbed Major Henry Rathbone, who was with his bride in the box with Lincoln and the First Lady, and jumped on stage saying, “This is vengeance for the South,” and ran out of the theater. On the same day, Booth's associates were supposed to kill Vice President Johnson and Secretary of State Seward, but the participant in the attempt on the vice president's life lost his nerve and got drunk in a bar, and the Secretary of State was saved by his children.

Lincoln's assassin was found in a barn in Virginia 12 days after the assassination attempt, and Army Sergeant Boston Corbett shot Booth despite orders to take him alive. He later said that “providence” was guiding him at the moment.

Abraham Lincoln was the first US president to be assassinated.

The ease with which one man managed to kill the President of the United States has given rise to a number of conspiracy theories about treason within the Lincoln administration. But then there was no talk of the curse of the Indian leader, contemporaries believed more in the powerful allies of the slave owners who killed the presidents inconvenient for them.

In 1881, the 20th President of the United States, James Garfield, was assassinated. Garfield, like Lincoln, was a member of the Republican Party and a staunch opponent of slavery. His biography, to a certain extent, resembles the embodiment of the American dream. The boy from a poor family grew up without a father, and the contempt that his peers showed for him motivated him to study hard. As a student, he began teaching at an institute in Ohio (now Hiram College), and at the age of 26 he became its president.

After the assassination of Lincoln, Garfield became one of the leading Republican leaders in the US Congress, and in 1880 won the presidential election as a compromise candidate from the party. He did not have time to implement any reforms. On July 2, 1881, a revolver was fired at the President of the United States at a railway station in Washington. The assassination attempt was carried out by lawyer Charles Guito. He was an ardent supporter of the Republican Party and convinced himself that the President of the United States threatened its unity and future.

The last 79 days of Garfield's life were full of suffering as doctors tried to find the bullet that was lodged in his spine, using instruments and fingers that were not disinfected. An infection entered the body, purulent processes began, and in September 1881 Garfield died of sepsis and pneumonia.

20 years after Garfield, the 25th President of the United States, William McKinley, became a victim of the assassination attempt. He became president in 1897 and was re-elected in 1900. Within the United States, it was a period of industrialization, the formation of trade unions, which demanded shorter working hours and higher wages. Anarchism and socialism grew in popularity among the workers, and strikes and demonstrations sometimes ended in clashes, the death of strikers or police officers.

President McKinley believed he was leading the country to prosperity and believed he had no American enemies. When he arrived at the opening of the Pan American Exhibition in Buffalo on September 6, 1901, a crowd formed to shake his hand.

28-year-old anarchist Leon Cholgosh, the son of a migrant from Eastern Europe, came close to the US president, covering the weapon in his hand with a handkerchief and firing twice, one of the bullets hitting the president in the stomach. Due to an infection of the wound, he died on September 14, on the 8th day after the assassination attempt. The killer McKinley was electrocuted.

In 1902, the US President was for the first time provided with permanent security - two agents of the Secret Service, which at that time was subordinate to the Department of the Treasury and fought against counterfeiting.

The emergence of the story of the curse

The next two presidents elected in Year Zero, Warren Harding (1921-1923) and Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1933-1945), also died in office.

After traveling to Alaska in the summer of 1923, Harding, who had previously had health problems, fell ill and died. Immediately after his death, the press began accusing Harding's doctors of incompetence, and some media outlets even accused him of plotting to kill him. The First Lady did not give doctors permission to autopsy her husband's body. She was later accused by a former Justice Department official of poisoning the president, but the theory was exposed as false. Most likely, the president did not survive the myocardial infarction.

Harding's death did not escape the attention of the press, which needed to interest the audience in something. So in 1931, a newspaper dedicated to strange facts and events, Ripley's Believe It or Not! ("Believe It or Not") first spread the story of the White House curse. The publication drew attention to the coincidence in the deaths of several presidents elected in the zero year.

In 1945, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt died in office from a stroke, and Ripley's Believe It or Not! recalled the “curse” again in a 1948 publication. On the eve of the 1960 election, noted journalist Ed Koterba wrote: “The next president of the United States will face the terrible curse that has hung over every chief executive elected in a year ending in zero for more than a century.”

The winner of that election, John F. Kennedy, was assassinated on November 22, 1963 in Dallas. Discussions on this murder have continued to this day.

According to the official version, the murder was committed by a lone killer. However, according to a Gallup poll, in 2013, 61% of Americans believed that the Kennedy assassination was organized by a group of persons in a preliminary conspiracy, and only 30% believed in the official version.

40% of those who believed in a conspiracy could not clearly answer who participated in it. But 13% named the mafia, 13% - representatives of the federal government, 7% - the CIA, 5% - Fidel Castro, 5% - certain groups of opponents of the president. The Ku Klux Klan, the USSR and Vice President Lyndon Johnson each received 3%.

Already on the day of the murder, a suspect was detained - former Marine Corps soldier Lee Harvey Oswald, who was a supporter of leftist ideas and lived for three years in the USSR, where he worked at a factory in Minsk. Two days after Oswald was detained, Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby, who was associated with the mafia, was killed in front of journalists. The murder took place in the basement of the police department during a transfer to the prison. Jack Ruby died in prison in 1967 from cancer.

In 1964, the Warren Commission of Inquiry ruled that Oswald had killed the president without accomplices. Many Americans didn't immediately believe it. In 1992, Congress decided to declassify most of the 5 million documents on the Kennedy assassination. Another 2800 documents were declassified in 2017. The documents confirmed this version.

Jefferson Morley, a former Washington Post correspondent who runs the JFK Facts blog, told the BBC in 2017 that he doesn't trust the official story.

“The official story is this: there was this guy, Oswald, about whom no one knew anything. He suddenly appeared out of nowhere and shot the president. This well-known story is undoubtedly wrong,” he says.

Associate professor at Boston University Thomas Walen is of a different opinion.

“Not only me, but in general most historians believe that he (Oswald - Ed.) was a killer. The question is whether he was involved in some larger conspiracy,” the scientist notes.

Reagan, Taxi Driver and the Passion for Jodie Foster

On the eve of the 1980 presidential election between incumbent President Jimmy Carter and Republican Ronald Reagan, the Year Zero curse became part of the country's political life thanks to the tabloid press.

Parade magazine columnist Lloyd Shearer mentioned in his article the struggle of President William Harrison, “the first victim of the curse,” with the Indian tribes, and that after losing the battle, one of the Indian chiefs allegedly cursed the US presidents elected in Year Zero. This is how the legend took on a modern look.

That same fall, President Jimmy Carter was asked about the curse by one of the students of the school where he spoke.

But in 1980 the Americans chose not him, but Ronald Reagan. An icon of the right, he could expect an assassination attempt from ideological opponents or hostile states. Well, history can surprise.

In 1976, Texas student John Hinckley Jr. saw the cult film Taxi Driver by Martin Scorsese, starring Robert De Niro and Jodie Foster.

In the film, De Niro plays Vietnam War veteran Travis Beakley, who works as a taxi driver and is sick of American realities. He is trying to cleanse the city of “dirt,” buying up weapons, and also wants to kill the hated presidential candidate. By chance, Beakley meets an underage sex worker, played by Jodie Foster, and tries to save her life from decline. He shoots her pimp and his accomplices. Wounded during a shooting, Travis Beakley falls into a coma and awakens as a hero in the opening pages.

John Hinckley Jr. watched the film 15 more times. He began to imitate Beakley's hero - he tried to dress like him, practiced shooting and tried to connect with Jodie Foster. When the actress became a student at Yale University, a fan slipped love letters and poems under her door at least three times. Having received no answer, he decided to kill the US President, because he believed that he would become famous throughout the country and would be able to talk with the actress on an equal footing.

Before committing the assassination attempt, John Hinckley wrote a letter to Jodie Foster.

“Goodbye, I love you six trillion times. Perhaps you like me at least a little?” - he wrote on the envelope.

On March 30, 1981, John Hinckley Jr. shot Reagan six times with a revolver as he left the Hilton Hotel after a meeting with labor unions. The president was hit by only one bullet - in the lung - the guard instantly pushed him into the car and took him to the hospital. Reagan survived and recovered quite quickly, and his humorous reaction to the assassination attempt aroused the sympathy of the Americans. His representative, who remained disabled, was less fortunate.

In 1982, John Hinckley Jr. was acquitted by jury on the grounds of insanity, as he was diagnosed with mental problems. 83% of Americans surveyed by ABC said that justice did not win in this case. In 1984, Reagan signed legislation that made it much more difficult to acquit people who have committed crimes in a state of mental illness.

After the assassination attempt on the President of the United States, his wife Nancy Reagan turned to astrologer Joan Qingley to better plan the president's work schedule. The first lady confirmed this in her memoirs.

When the press found out about this in 1988, the New York Post ran the headline “Astrologer Runs White House.” Nancy Reagan later responded: "Although astrology was a factor in Ronnie's schedule, it was never the only factor, and no political decision was ever based on it."

Quingley herself claimed in her book that she planned press conferences, foreign visits, presidential plane flights and even presidential debates, determined which days it was better to be at home.

President Reagan saw the decline and collapse of the Soviet Union, which he called the “evil empire,” and died of natural causes in 2004. In the last years of his life he suffered from Alzheimer's disease. Some fans of the “Tecumseh curse” believe that it destroyed him.

John Hinckley-Molosh spent almost 35 years in prison psychiatric hospitals. In 2016, he was released by court order, imposed a number of bans. In particular, he was forbidden to keep materials about Jodie Foster and photographs with her, to approach the actress and her family members, as well as members of the Reagan family.

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"Broken Curse"

After Ronald Reagan ended his tenure in 1989, the “Tecumseh Curse” began to be forgotten. Serious historians hardly remembered it anyway, so with the advent of the Internet it settled in the space of Internet forums and sites about strange events and conspiracy theories.

In 2000, George W. Bush was elected President of the United States. His policies have often provoked protests, both in the United States and abroad, and for terrorists he could be an ideal target. However, according to official data, the closest thing to the death of Bush Jr. was in Tbilisi in 2005, when a resident of the city, Vladimir Harutyunyan, threw a grenade wrapped in a handkerchief in the direction of the stage on which the presidents of Georgia and the United States, hated by him, spoke. The grenade did not work, Harutyunyan was found and sent to prison for life, and the attempt was quickly forgotten.

In fact, due to health problems or people dissatisfied with the policies of the White House, many American presidents may not live to complete their terms. And we’re not just talking about those elected in “year zero” - for example, President Gerald Ford was tried to be assassinated twice in 1975.

Many American historians, in particular, the biographer of the Indian leader Amy Sturgess, openly called the “Tecumseh curse” a fiction.

“The origin of a legend is simply the combination of an extraordinary, but plausible, series of events with the natural human tendency to find patterns and to readily attribute to those patterns some greater meaning,” Robert Pohl, author of Urban Legends and Historical Lore of Washington, wrote about the “curse.” Columbia region".

However, the legend of the “Curse of Year Zero” still has some benefit - people who read about it become more interested in US history.

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