On September 6 in 1901, Leon Frank Czolgosz shot President William McKinley in the stomach and mortally wounded him. Though the doctors initially thought he might survive, the president died a week later. As it turned out, his death was a tragedy far beyond his family’s grief, and much farther reaching than anyone could have predicted.

It is ironic that Czolgosz proclaimed himself an anarchist. Though McKinley was no angel (he strongly supported protectionist tariffs and was responsible for annexing Hawaii), he was a principled man of small government compared to the vice-president that filled his shoes. Czologosz had just put into the White House the young Theodore Roosevelt, regarded affectionately by historians as a plain-speaking cowboy type, more accurately described as a ruthless powermonger.

In the forty years before TR’s presidency, his predecessors had issued a total of 158 executive orders. In his seven years of office, Teddy issued 1,006 – more than any other president in history except for Wilson and that other Roosevelt. He sent the American military to intervene in strikes of private companies. He set the precedent of ordering troops out into the world, then publicly daring Congress to cut off the funds that would return them safely home. The only obstacle that kept him from realizing his grandest dreams of glory was the utter nuisance of peace. “If there is not the war, you don’t get the great general,” he lamented. “If Lincoln had lived in times of peace, no one would know his name now.” Later, he would openly envy Wilson for the chance to fight in World War I.

Roosevelt did not besmirch the Oval Office singlehandedly. But he did take the first steps in breaking down limits to presidential power, opening the way for Wilson and then FDR to trample the last of the boundaries. Tellingly, he is an admitted hero of John McCain. As an anarchist, Leon Czologosz committed the worst mistake possible that day he shot McKinley.