Four of the 44 men who have thus far been president have been shot to death while in office. Two, James A. Garfield and William McKinley, did not make an impression, and are largely forgotten. Two others, John F. Kennedy and Abraham Lincoln, did, and are not.

Shot on Good Friday, Lincoln, of course, is a secular saint — Clinton Rossiter called him “the martyred Christ of the passion play of democracy” — and is viewed as being something quite close to a biblical figure.