MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

Scholars have long viewed the assassination of William McKinley as a bloody start to the Progressive Era, but the exact nature of progressivism is one of the era’s oldest historiographical debates. Some have argued that the Progressive Era was a departure from McKinley’s America, a period of democratization when common folk were able to stand up against the exploitation of big business and political corruption in order to form a more civil society. Others argue that progressivism is best defined by middle-class progressives’ efficient methods of social control. However, these interpretations have failed to consider the execution of McKinley’s assassin Leon Czolgosz as a useful lens for complicating traditional views of the Progressive Era. My project fills this gap by addressing how popular representations of Czolgosz’s execution reveals a more complex character of progressivism. Specifically, I will be using the Edison Manufacturing Company’s reenactment Execution of Czolgosz, with Panorama of Auburn Prison, juxtaposed with other Edison execution films and newspaper accounts of similar executions, in order to explicate the purpose of Execution of Czolgosz within the context of Progressive America. I argue that Execution of Czolgosz highlights an interplay between the progressive ideals of social control and civility by serving to provide a mock public execution for someone who represented a perceived anarchist threat to the order of society while simultaneously portraying the use of electrocution as a humane and civil means of capital punishment. In conclusion, this project, by closely examining the most popular representation of Leon Czolgosz’s execution, sheds new light on inherent contradictions within the Progressive Era.