A history of attacks on the US Capitol before this week

A history of attacks on the US Capitol before this week

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For more than four hours, supporters of President Donald Trump occupied the Capitol in an attempt to fight the ceremonial count of electoral votes to confirm the victory of President-elect Joe Biden. A woman was shot in the chest and then died, DC police told CNN. Several police officers were injured with at least one transported to the hospital, several sources told CNN.

Until Wednesday, the Capitol saw other attacks three times – in 1814, 1954 and 1998.

Here is a look at these incidents.

A view of the Capitol after the British fire on August 24, 1814.
British troops attacked the Capitol on August 24, 1814, during the War of 1812, according to the Capitol Architect’s website.

The attack was retaliation for the fire in the Canadian capital, York, by the Americans, in April 1813. British troops encountered little or no resistance during the attack, according to the Capitol architect’s website.

Most of the city’s population fled at the time, the website says, but “those who remained … witnessed a horrible spectacle.”

“The British set fire to the main rooms of the Capitol, which then housed the Library of Congress, as well as the Chamber, the Senate and the Supreme Court,” says the website. “The White House, the navy yard and several American warships were also burned.”

The Capitol was still under construction at the time, and most of the damage to the wing parts was severe. Fortunately, the building was not destroyed, says the website.

“The external structure has survived and many of the internal spaces have remained intact,” says the website.

Nationalists attack the Capitol in 1954

Puerto Rican nationalists (left) Irving Flores Rodriguez, Rafael Cancel Miranda, Lolita Lebron and Andres Figueroa Cordero are in a police line after his arrest after a 1954 Capitol shooting.

Puerto Rican nationalists smuggled weapons into the Capitol and opened fire in 1954, said Samuel Holliday, director of grants and operations for the United States Capitol Historical Society.

The shooting occurred on March 1, 1954, when representatives met in the Chamber’s plenary session for an imminent vote, according to the Chamber’s history and archives website. Three men and a woman – all members of the Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico – traveled from New York City to Washington to take their places in the visitor gallery above the chamber.

The quartet then opened fire and displayed the flag of Puerto Rico. Five congressmen were injured in the shooting, the website says.

Three of the attackers were arrested quickly and a fourth, who escaped the Capitol, was arrested late in the afternoon, according to the Chamber’s website.

The violent act of protest aimed to draw attention to the demand for Puerto Rico’s independence, the website says. It was annexed by the United States in 1898.

Nationalists received sentences ranging from 16 to 75 years in federal prison for the attack, the Chamber website said. More than two decades later, President Jimmy Carter granted them leniency.

Two Capitol police officers shot in 1998

Tourists leave the Capitol on a stretcher after the violence and chaos caused by the shootings that took the lives of US Capitol police officers John Gibson and Jacob J. Chestnut.
Two Capitol police officers were shot dead on July 24, 1998, according to a story on the House of Representatives website.

A sniper with a history of mental illness passed a security checkpoint, killing policeman Jacob J. Chestnut Jr. in the process, the website says.

When the shots were fired, the sniper ran towards a door that led to the apartments of then-majority Whip Tom DeLay, of Texas. Detective John M. Gibson told aides to seek cover while he and the sniper exchanged fire. Gibson was mortally wounded during the shooting, but gave other officers a chance to take down the sniper. A tourist was also injured.

Police officers described the attacker, who survived the attack, as an unstable individual who also made threats to the Pentagon.

Days after the shooting, the House and Senate passed a resolution for a memorial service for officers at the Capitol Rotunda.

On April 22, 1999, a federal judge ruled that the sniper suffered from mental illness and was incompetent to stand trial.

Only a successful coup d’état in 1898

The aftermath of the 1898 racial riots in Wilmington, North Carolina, from the Library of Congress.

There was a successful coup in the country’s history, but it was a local uprising in a city in North Carolina, not in the nation’s capital.

When members of the Fusion Party took office in Wilmington, North Carolina, in 1898, white residents of the port city were not happy to be represented by black businessmen and their white allies, according to the William Madison Randall Library at the University of Carolina North Wilmington.

This led to America’s only successful coup d’état on November 10, 1898, when a group of armed white men attacked and killed black citizens across the city. The crowd was led by a group of powerful community leaders known as the Nine Secretes, according to the library’s online guide to the coup.

“The events of the 1898 coup marked a turning point in the post-Reconstruction South that changed the trajectory of race relations in North Carolina and marked the beginning of Jim Crow’s laws in the state, which further reinforced racial segregation in the mid-20th century. , “states the site.

The North Carolina General Assembly in 2000 established the Wilmington Riot Commission of 1898 to develop a historical record of the coup and “assess the economic impact of the riot on African Americans locally and across the region and state”. according to the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.

CNN’s Ted Barrett, Manu Raju and Peter Nickeas contributed to this report.

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