Bullet Replacing the Ballot

In Ragtime, Doctorow mentions the increase of militia and Secret Service to guard US presidents and vice-presidents. Doctorow describes the scene outside of Vice President Jim Sherman’s Republican Party dinner as the Vice President arrived by saying, “Not only the local police in their white evening gloves but a platoon of militia were on hand, keeping the entrance cleared and pushing the crowd back from the street in anticipation of the arrival of the Vice-President’s car” (190). Doctorow attributes this rise in militia and Secret Service to the assassination of President McKinley in 1901, the third presidential assassination in 36 years. Doctorow associates McKinley’s assassination with the election of 1912 and talks about the assassination attempt of Roosevelt and the shooting of New York City’s mayor, William J. Gaynor saying, “Gun were going off everywhere” (191).

Doctorow may be using these historical details to show how the events in the early 20^th century relate to the events of the 1960s and 1970s. Doctorow first published Ragtime in 1974 after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy. While Doctorow is not talking directly about the assassinations of the 60’s and 70’s, his reference to the historical details of the assassination of the early 20^th century show the correlation between the two times. People feared that the bullet was replacing the ballot after the deaths of MLK and RFK, but Doctorow is showing that the bullet has always been present in American History. Doctorow’s allusions to the historical details of the assassinations in the early 20^th century show his awareness of the events occurring during the time the book was published and the relative comparisons between the 60s and the early 1900s.

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Sifakis, Carl. "William McKinley, assassination of." The Encyclopedia of American Crime, Second Edition. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2001. American History Online. Facts On File, Inc. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?

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Sifakis, Carl. "Martin Luther King Jr., assassination of." The Encyclopedia of American Crime, Second Edition. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2001. American History Online. Facts On File, Inc. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?

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