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 COPYRIGHT, BY CL1NEDEN6T, WASHINGTON 
 
 PRESIDENT McKINLEY IN HIS LIBRARY AT THE WHITE HOUSE
 
 OUR MARTYRED PRESIDENT 
 
 As a Man, the Noblest and Purest of his Times. 
 As a Citizen, the Grandestof his Nation. 
 
 As a Statesman, the Idol of Millions of People. 
 
 MEMORIAL LIFE 
 
 OF 
 
 WILLIAM McKINLEY 
 
 CONTAINING A 
 
 FULL ACCOUNT OF HIS EARLY LIFE ; HIS AMBITION TO OBTAIN 
 
 AN EDUCATION ; HIS BRILLIANT CAREER AS A SOLDIER IN 
 
 THE CIVIL WAR; HIS PATRIOTIC RECORD AS A MEMBER 
 
 OF CONGRESS AND GOVERNOR OF HIS STATE; HIS 
 
 ABLE ADMINISTRATION AS PRESIDENT, ETC. 
 
 INCLUDING A 
 
 THRILLING ACCOUNT OF HIS ASSASSINATION ; HIS HEROIC 
 STRUGGLE FOR LIFE; HOPE OF RECOVERY SUDDENLY 
 BLASTED; PROFOUND SYMPATHY AND ANXIOUS SUS- 
 PENSE OF THE WHOLE CIVILIZED WORLD, ETC. 
 
 TOGETHER WITH A FULL 
 
 HISTORY OF ANARCHY AND ITS INFAMOUS DEEDS 
 By COL. G. W. TOWNSEND^ 
 
 THE WELL-KNOWN AUTHOR 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION 
 
 By HON. JAMES RANKIN YOUNG 
 
 Member of Congress and formerly Clerk of the United States Senate 
 
 INCLUDING THE LIFE OF PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT 
 
 Profusely Embellished with Superb Engravings
 
 EMTENCD ACCORDING TO ACT OF CONGRESS, IN THE YEAH 1901, BV 
 
 D. 2. HOWELL 
 
 M TMf OFKC'. f THE LIBRARIAN Of CONGRESS. AT WASHINGTON, D. C., U. . A.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 HE news of the appalling tragedy that ended the 
 life of our beloved President was received with pro- 
 found horror and indignation throughout the civ- 
 ilized world. It was instantly followed with a great 
 outbreak of popular wrath and execration. No 
 American Statesman or President ever filled the hearts of the 
 people more fully than he did. 
 
 The martyrdom of Lincoln and Garfield won for them a pecu- 
 liar veneration and their names are now consecrated in the memory 
 of their countrymen. President McKinley gained the highest 
 place in public esteem, admiration and love, and his name and 
 memory are doubly consecrated by his untimely death. 
 
 Brilliant as a Statesman and wise as a ruler, President 
 McKinley was more than this. He was loved for his warm and 
 generous nature. His patriotism was so broad and bold that it 
 won the applause of his political opponents. Even they believed 
 in the man. They honored his opinions and his honesty even 
 though they differed from him. He was followed with the de- 
 votion and enthusiasm of the army that bore the eagle of France 
 when Napoleon marched to his world-renowned victories. As the 
 mighty ocean is stirred by the resistless cyclone, so the hearts of 
 the American people have been moved by the infamous crime that 
 laid our third martyred President in the grave. 
 
 The complete and graphic story of President McKinley 's 
 .marvelous career is written in this volume. His life and public 
 services are a part of our country's most thrilling history, and 
 these are vividly detailed in this work which is worthy of its 
 illustrious subject. No grander record of dazzling achievements 
 can be placed under the name of any man of modern times. Not 
 merely in, intellect, eloquence and far-seeing statesmanship not 
 merely as a great political leader and advocate of our national 
 industries, welfare and great prosperity, but as a man of noble 
 
 111
 
 Iv PREFACE. 
 
 virtues and exalted character, President McKinley stood upon tne 
 highest pedestal. He fell from the very pinnacle of human fame. 
 
 From his boyhood to his entrance into the army, from his 
 noble stand for his country to the close of the Civil War, from 
 his obscure beginning as a public man to the grand successes 
 that pointed to him as a fit representative of his State in Con- 
 gress, from his proud triumphs under the dome of our National 
 Capitol to the Governorship of his State, and Presidency of the 
 United States, the reader follows him with ever-increasing interest 
 and admiration. 
 
 He was the master statesman of his age, the magnetic leader 
 and gallant defender of American rights, the idol of his nation, 
 unsurpassed in eloquence, invincible in debate the man who 
 was greater than any party and who will rank in history with 
 Washington, Lincoln, Grant and Garfield. This memorial volume 
 contains the complete and fascinating story of his life and depicts 
 in glowing colors his marvelous career. 
 
 In Congress he was considered an authority on every 
 subject upon which he expressed an opinion. Clear in his grasp 
 of public questions, eloquent in advocating the principles he pro- 
 fessed, considerate and lenient toward his opponents, affable in 
 all his intercourse with others, and manifesting always a certain 
 dignity, strength and sincerity that impressed all who knew him, 
 he was for years one of the most conspicuous figures in the halls 
 of Congress. For William McKinley to become President of the 
 United States was only a natural step from the commanding 
 position he had gained. 
 
 The story of President McKinley 's life is much like that of 
 nearly all our renowned statesmen and rulers. He was born in 
 humble life. He had that contact with Mother Earth which" 
 falls to the lot of the farmer's son. While his advantages for edu- 
 cation were not the best, he made such diligent use of his time and 
 opportunities that he became distinguished as a scholar, and espe- 
 cially as a student of political economy. He is an admirable 
 example for young men. Let them emulate his diligence, his 
 lawful ambition, his devotion to duty, and enthusiasm as a worker.
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 BY 
 
 HON. JAMES RANKIN YOUNG, 
 
 of Congress and Late Clerk of the United States Senate. 
 
 Probably there is no one fact in the history of the Republic, 
 of which Americans are prouder than that all their Presidents 
 were exceptionally good men men who filled the great office with 
 credit to themselves and honor to the Nation. They were espe- 
 cially noted for their earnest love of country, their rigid integrity 
 and the simplicity of their lives. 
 
 Simplicity was the ruling point in view when our fathers 
 founded the Government, and the Presidents, in the performance 
 of their duties, never seemed to have lost sight of the fact. Sim- 
 plicity is known to be the leading characteristic of all great men, 
 probably it would be better to say men who combine that which 
 is good with that which is great. We saw it as a shining mark 
 in Washington ; it was the ruling spirit with Jefferson, it made 
 Jackson more famous than did his deeds of heroism and aggres- 
 siveness, it was personified in Lincoln and Grant, but with no 
 desire to retract from the others, I am free to say that the perfect 
 model of simplicity was found in McKinley. 
 
 It was his life and staff. It permeated every fibre of his 
 make up. It came with him at his birth. It clung to him 
 through life as the youth at school, as the soldier in the field, in 
 his profession as a lawyer, as the servant of the public in the 
 trusted positions in which they placed him. You had but to look 
 at the benign expression ever present in his countenance to see 
 that gentleness of nature was his leading characteristic. 
 
 Probably no better idea of just what the character of man our 
 late President was can be found than in what was said of him
 
 ri INTRODUCTION. 
 
 by my brother, the late John Russell Young, who was his constant 
 companion in his home at Canton, during the week when the 
 Republican National Convention was held at St. Louis, June, 1896. 
 
 " While," says Mr. Young, writing from a table adjoining 
 that occupied by Mr. McKinley, "the Major," as the late Presi- 
 dent was then called, " is in touch with whatever is going on in 
 St. Louis, and as much in command of his forces in attendance at 
 the Convention there, as Napoleon when he saw the gray morning 
 skies brighten over the frosty plains of Austerlitz, there is in 
 what he says a spirit of generosity and magnanimity. Here is a 
 gentleman with opinions, and by no means reserved in their 
 expression, running over men, events, happenings, possibilities, 
 and ever just and true. 
 
 " He states a case or an estimate of a man, not as you would 
 like it to be, but as it is, seeking always to find the best side and 
 exhibit that. There is no throwing a man over a precipice with 
 a phrase as Conkling would have done, nor some withering ques- 
 tion of invective as so often fell from the lips of Elaine, but rather 
 Uncle Toby's way, that the world is big enough for us all, and let 
 us adjust ourselves without jostling. Behind this you have a 
 granite wall of party stalwartism, reverence, a reverence for the 
 Union, adoration for the men who saved the Union." 
 
 Continuing Mr. Young says: " Because of the doings in the 
 St. Louis Convention Canton lives in a state of uneasy hope and 
 expectation. Mr. McKinley is apparently the only placid man in 
 town. He takes the concentration of the eyes of the world upon 
 him with entire composure. He has been under fire before, has 
 ridden by the side of Sheridan and Hancock in the great war, and 
 is not to be disturbed by a mere political cannonade. You find 
 him at the trains greeting friends with words of welcome or fare- 
 well, or jogging about the town or driving over shaded lanes and 
 pointing out to some companions the growth and beauty of Canton, 
 or the centre of a group of political parties who have come to adore 
 the rising sun. 
 
 1 What they see is a resolute, quiet, courteous, kindly man, 
 with sun beaming eyes, thoughtful, considerate. It has been niy
 
 INTRODUCTION. vii 
 
 privilege to ride with him and learn all that is involved in his 
 beloved Canton, to sit with him on his spacious piazza and look out 
 upon the calm hushed town while we talked of men and events." 
 
 Speaking further on Mr. Young makes allusion to the beau- 
 tiful homelife of Mr. McKinley and his dearly beloved wife. "The 
 McKinley homestead," he says, " is an ideal American home, as 
 its master is an ideal American citizen. Taste, comfort, good 
 books, attractive decorations, the touch of the woman's hand every- 
 where, for how could there have been an Eden unless Eve had 
 made it so. An atmosphere of gentleness and repose. In spite 
 of the excitement because of the doings at the convention nobody 
 seemed to be in a hurry ; not even Governor McKinley, who, with 
 his shoulders thrown against his easy chair, talks and listens 
 listens rather than talks his fine eyes beaming through the 
 smoke of a cigar. The stillest, cosiest, sunniest place in the world, 
 the very birds picking crumbs on the window ledge, as if in a doze, 
 yet the heart of a great nation beating and throbbing towards this 
 modest home in Canton. 
 
 " As the news com.es over the wires from the convention Mr. 
 McKinley sits in his modest home the portraits of Washington, 
 Lincoln and Grant above him and goes from pile to pile of cor- 
 respondence as though the theme of his letters were orders for 
 iron or snuff and not a diadem richer than ever rested upon an 
 imperial brow a thoroughly self-contained man, who says pre- 
 cisely what he means to say ; never taken at a disadvantage, 
 eminently serious, whether listening or talking his mind upon the 
 one thing that concerns him. You divine in him a capacity for 
 doing business, of hearing what has to be said and closing the 
 conversation. When all that is useful has been said, wit, humor, 
 imagination are not apparent qualities. This man has somethiug 
 to do and must do it. 
 
 " You see in him a man of patience and courtesy. If you are 
 not answered as to your wants you carry away the impression that 
 he is more grieved over your disappointment than you could 
 possibly be. This is something like Henry Clay. He has a 
 quiet, prompt, narrative faculty. We talked much of the war
 
 viii INTRODUCTION. 
 
 days of Lincoln, Grant and Sheridan, and be was always luminous 
 and lucid, every detail coming out as though it were an etching. 
 He had served with Sheridan, was in fact the first officer Sheri- 
 dan addressed when he came upon his beaten command, having 
 ridden that immortal twenty miles, and in all his references to 
 Sheridan and Crook and other famous captains there was a beauti- 
 ful spirit of loyalty which noted the comradeship of the drum and 
 the bivouac. Mr. McKinley impresses you as one who knows 
 his mind who would have a host of friends but few of what the 
 world calls chums. 
 
 " I noted that his estimates of public men and few escaped 
 the scrutiny of a long conversation were invariably academic and 
 impartial without censure, criticism or feeling. Lincoln, Stanton, 
 Elaine, Grant, Garfield, Arthur, Randall were like so many photo- 
 graphs, and carefully studied and reverently put aside. For no 
 one had he an unkind word. His ruling faculty is j ustice, wide 
 embracing justice, tempered with kindness. 
 
 " I have to say that when the character of Mr. McKinley 
 shall have been submitted to the political autopsy inseparable 
 from the political canvass, an examination imposed something 
 like a masonic ritual, upon every candidate for the exalted posi- 
 tion of President, there is nothing in Mr. McKinley that may not 
 be called genuine and true." 
 
 He came from Scotch ancestry, or rather Scotch-Irish, like 
 Jackson, Buchanan and Arthur, His ancestors had a Pennsyl- 
 vania nurture like those of Elaine, Lincoln and Grant. McKinley' s 
 father was a Pennsylvanian ; his mother an Allison, a name dear 
 to those who recall and love the names of the Scottish Covenant. 
 He became a Methodist like so many Covenanters, of amiable mood, 
 who settled in the West, and was of course an Abolitionist 
 nourished on the corn of Garrison, Sumner and Wendell Phillips. 
 
 JAMES RANKIN YOUNG.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. PAGE 
 
 Birth and Education of President McKinley His Brilliant 
 Career in the Army and Promotion for Bravery Dis- 
 tinguished as a Lawyer, Congressman and Governor- 
 Champion of the Rights of Labor 33 
 
 CHAPTER IL 
 
 A Man of Noble Ideals and Unselfish Aims His Domestic 
 Fidelity A Governor of Rare Sagacity His Successful 
 Administration as President , , 47 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Career of President McKinley Raised to Rank of Captain 
 and Brevet-Major in the Arrny Romance of Early Life 
 Conspicuous Acts of Legislation During His Adminis- 
 tration as President . , 64 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Additional Account of President McKinley's Life Illustrious 
 Ancestry A Young Patriot in the Army First Term 
 in the White House and Re-election 90 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Incidents in President McKinley's Career Gallant Exploits 
 on the Field of Battle Daring Feat at Antietam Always 
 True to His Pledge 108 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Mr. McKinley's Commanding Influence in Congress Famclus 
 Author of the Tariff Bill Bearing His Name His Nota- 
 ble Career as Governor of Ohio First Term as President 
 
 His Home Life and Personality 126 
 
 ix
 
 , CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. PAGE 
 
 Important State Papers and Speeches of President McKinley 
 Message to Congress on the War in Cuba Addresses 
 at Peace Jubilees , 14? 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Glowing Tribute to Our Lamented President Speech on 
 Being Notified of His Second Nomination Masterly 
 Statement of the Political History of Our Country . . . 168 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Story of the Assassination of President McKinley Graphic 
 Picture of the Tragic Act The Assassin Caught and 
 Roughly Handled Public Indignation and Horror . . 189 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 Additional Account of the Assassination Two Shots in Quick 
 Succession Instant Lynching Threatened Surgeons 
 Summoned Horror at the Dastardly Deed The Nation 
 Stunned by the Terrible News 202 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 Mrs. McKinley Hears the Appalling News The Nation 
 Bowed with Grief Europe Aghast at the Diabolical 
 Crime 221 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 Strong Hopes at First of the President's Recovery Days of 
 Anxious Suspense Some Account of the Assassin 
 Arrest of Notorious Anarchists 234 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 Last Hours of the President " It is God's Way, His Will be 
 Done" Anxious Multitudes Await the Sorrowful 
 Tidings Universal Grief and Sympathy 249
 
 CONTENTS. 4 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. PAGE 
 
 Additional Account of President McKinley's Death Hope 
 Ending in Despair Medical Skill Exhausted Cause of 
 the Final Relapse 273 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 Obsequies of Our Martyred President Extraordinay Demon- 
 strations of Public Sorrow Body Lying in State at 
 Buffalo Immense Throngs of People Passing the Bier 
 Short and Simple Funeral Services 294 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 Great Outpouring of People to Honor the Martyred President 
 Tokens of Grief New President and Members of the 
 Cabinet at the Bier Memorable Scene 311 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 Funeral Cortege Reaches Washington A Nation's Tribute 
 of Respect and Love Services in the Capitol Memorial 
 Address 330 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 Eloquent Eulogy on the Dead President Floral Offerings 
 Great Crush to View the Remains Distinguished Per- 
 sons Present , 346 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 Last Funeral Rites at Canton Imposing Demonstrations 
 Scenes at the Church President Roosevelt and Other 
 Distinguished Mourners 364 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 Magnificent Tributes to Mr. McKinley Eloquent Eulogies 
 from Celebrities Grief and Indignation The Presi- 
 dent's Virtues and Character Extolled 391
 
 ^ CONTENTS, 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. PAGE 
 
 Additional Tributes to President McKinley Messages from 
 Crowned Heads Canada Observes the Da}' of Obsequies 
 All Business Suspended Throughout Our Country . . 415, 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 Personal Traits of Mr. McKinley Never Swerved from the 
 Path of Duty Anecdotes and Incidents His Kind 
 Heart Affection for Old Friends 426 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 Origin and Rise of Anarchism Its Theory and Practice 
 Aims to Overthrow All Lawful Government Assassina- 
 tions of Lincoln, Garfield and McKinley 438 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 Trial and Conviction of the Assassin Remarkable Scenes 
 in Court Counsel Laments the President's Death 
 Sentence of Death Pronounced ... 460 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 Our New President Hon. Theodore Roosevelt Hurries to 
 Buffalo on Receiving News of Mr. McKinley's Death 
 Sworn in as President with Impressive Ceremony 
 Pathetic Scene His First Official Act 467 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 The Hero of San Juan President Roosevelt's Active Life 
 Ancestry and Education His Strong Personality A 
 Man of Deep Convictions and Great Courage 481 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 President Roosevelt in the Battle of San Juan Story of 
 Brave Exploits Narrow Escape Ballad of "Teddy's 
 Terrors." 498
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Birth and Education of President McKinley His Brilliant 
 Career in the Army and Promotion for Bravery Dis- 
 tinguished as a Lawyer, Congressman and Governor 
 Champion of the Rights of Labor. 
 
 A CROWDED public reception in the Temple of Mnsic at the 
 
 Pan-American Exposition at Buffalo. President McKinley 
 shaking hands with the throng. Suddenly the sharp crack of a 
 pistol shot, repeated in an instant. The President twice wounded 
 by a desperate assassin. Horror, commotion and indignation on 
 every side. 
 
 Such is the short and appalling story of that fatal Friday 
 afternoon, the sixth of September, 1901. Our honored President, 
 who held so strong a place in the hearts of the whole American 
 people was stricken by the dastardly hand of a coward and mur- 
 derer. The shot was winged with death. 
 
 He was in the apparent enjoyment of health, honor and every 
 token of happiness. He was applauded by the vast throng that 
 crowded around him at the Exposition Grounds. In the twinkling 
 of an eye a ghastly change came over the whole scene. Men were 
 petrified by the infamous deed ; others were maddened to desper- 
 ation. We shall relate the story of Mr. McKinley's life, with the 
 earnest endeavor to make these pages worthy of the illustrious 
 President, whose tragic death has stirred the hearts of the whole 
 American people to their lowest depths. 
 
 Seldom in the public life of the statesmen of this republic 
 has the wisdom of pertinacious, continuous application to one 
 broad issue of national policy as a road to highest preferment 
 been so completely approved as in the career of President 
 William McKinley. Twice his conspicuous championship of 
 protection and home markets for American workmen almost 
 stampeded conventions to his nomination, vvh^a acceptance 
 
 3 33
 
 34 EARLY LIFE OF PRESIDENT McKlNLEY. 
 
 would have been violative of the higli stand, and of personal 
 honor, which has marked his public and private life. 
 
 Quiet, dignified, modest, considerate of others, ever ready to 
 postpone his own ambitions in favor of those of veterans of 
 longer service, faithful to friends, unwavering in integrity, tactful 
 in silencing opposition, but unyielding in matters of principle, 
 strong in his sympathy with the toilers, unchanged by success, 
 abounding in hope under defeat, of unspotted private life, he 
 won his way to the top as one of the best examples of courageous, 
 persevering, vigorous manhood that the nation has ever produced. 
 
 IN TOUCH WITH PLAIN PEOPLE. 
 
 More than any other who has reached his proud pre- 
 eminence, save only Abraham Lincoln, his touch was closest with 
 those " plain people " upon whom the martyred Lincoln relied 
 with such unhesitating confidence. While yet a youth he 
 marched in the ranks, a private soldier, and saw four years of 
 the bloody struggle which made the country all free. In poverty 
 he wrought to acquire his profession. These years of self-denial 
 brought with them the self-reliance and self-control which 
 resulted in his leadership on the floor of Congress at an age when 
 no other American, save Henry Clay, had ever achieved similar 
 prominence. 
 
 He bore his part in great debates in a manner quiet, self- 
 possessed and dignified. His incisive logic, caustic raillery at 
 antagonists, and sarcastic comments on the shortcomings of his 
 own party, gave him a mastery in debate -vhich won the admira- 
 tion even of those who opposed him. Mr. McKinley's personality 
 like his career was the fruit of a peculiarly logical and system- 
 atic character. Where others knew superficially he knew 
 thoroughly. This thoroughness and skill in handling a slender 
 majority of twenty-two enabled him to pass that tariff bill which 
 bears his name, which found less favor when enacted than it 
 has enjoyed since its revision. He afterward stood as the em- 
 bodiment and apostle of that principle. 
 
 It is not easy always to analyze the causes of a popular
 
 EARLY LIFE OF PRESIDENT McKINLEY. 35 
 
 favorite's hold upon the masses. High principle, personal mag- 
 netism, gallantry, boldness even to rashness, great skill in debate 
 or ability as a platform orator all these may in turn be cited as 
 reasons why a man should be liked or respected. But to awake 
 the love and warmest admiration of a people require qualities 
 which well nigh defy analysis. It has been Mr. McKinley's good 
 fortune to be able to offer a very large class of his fellow-citizens 
 just what they seemed to need. 
 
 He aroused and attracted their sympathies, and this tre- 
 mendous logical fact is what brought about the overwhelming 
 ground-swell which swept other aspirants off their feet, and 
 landed him an easy winner over men of larger public service and 
 greater brilliance in many of the attributes of statesmanship. 
 "All things come to him who waits," and William McKinley's 
 self-denial received its great reward. 
 
 CAME FROM A STURDY PARENTAGE. 
 
 Mr. McKinley had a long expectation of life if the longevity 
 of his parents can be taken as an indication. His father, Wil- 
 liam McKinley, Sr., died in 1893, at the ripe age of 85, and his 
 mother, Mrs. Nancy McKinley, died in 1899, at Canton, the 
 proud recipient of the filial attentions of her distinguished son. 
 Mrs. Nancy McKinley's father was of German birth, and her 
 mother was of Scotch descent. William McKinley senior's 
 grandfather was a Scotch-Irishman, and his mother was an 
 Englishwoman. Mr. McKinley, Sr., was born in Mercer County, 
 Pa., but his family moved to New Lisbon, Columbiana County, 
 O., in 1809, where for many years he was manager of a blast 
 furnace. 
 
 It was in New Lisbon that he met his wife, whom he married 
 in 1838. Two sons, David and James, were born there, but owing 
 to lack of educational facilities the father established his family 
 in a little house in Niles, Trumbull County. It was in this 
 house that William McKinley was born, Janua^ 29, 1843. It 
 is worth remark that a considerable number of prominent Ameri- 
 cans were natives of counties of Ohio, in the near vicinity of Niles.
 
 36 EARLY LIFE OF PRESIDENT McKINLEY. 
 
 Cuyahoga, thirty miles away, was the birthplace of James A. 
 Garfield. Senator Allison, of Iowa, lived only thirty miles from 
 Canton, and Senator Manderson, of Nebraska, lived and married 
 only fifteen miles from that city. Ex-Senator Thomas Collier 
 Platt kept store at one time in Massillon, only eight miles away, 
 and Senator Quay's home at Beaver is only sixty miles off. 
 Rutherford B. Hayes was a native of Delaware County, near by, 
 and Senator Sherman and General William T. Sherman were 
 born and reared at Lancaster, O., less than a hundred miles 
 away. 
 
 Several of Mr. McKinley's brothers and sisters died in 
 infancy. His oldest brother, David, was a resident of San Fran- 
 cisco, where he discharged the duty of Hawaiian Consul to the 
 United States. James, the next older brother, died about 1890. 
 Abner, a younger brother has been engaged in business in New 
 York. William McKinley entered the village school in Poland, 
 to which his family had removed when only five years old. He 
 remained in the schools of that town until in his seventeenth 
 year, when he made enough money by teaching in a near by dis- 
 trict public school to pay his matriculation fees in Allegheny 
 
 College. 
 
 CALL TO ARMS FOUND HIM READY. 
 
 He remained at the college only a few weeks when the call 
 to arms for the Civil War came, and the pale-faced, grey-eyed, 
 earnest and patriotic young student flung aside his books and 
 decided to shoulder a musket for the preservation of the Union. 
 This step was taken only after earnest conference with his 
 parents. Owing to his youth and physical immaturity they were 
 loath to consent to interruption of his studies and the incident 
 exposure to the hardship of campaigning. 
 
 But the enthusiastic patriotism of the youth kindled like 
 emotion in the Scotch-Irish blood of his parents and bore down 
 their opposition, for they saw that in spite of his youth there was 
 plenty of fighting stuff in him. And so his education in books 
 ended, and that broader education of stirring events and the ways 
 of men began.
 
 EARLY LIFE OF PRESIDENT McKINLEY. 37 
 
 Young McKinley entered the Union army a mere stripling, 
 without influence or powerful friends, with only a heart brimful of 
 patriotism and love for his flag. He joined a company of volun- 
 teers from his own neighborhood, which, after the fashion of the 
 time, took the pretentious name of "The Poland Guards." The 
 company had already selected its officers. The captain, a youth 
 named Zimmerman, was chosen because of a brief service in 
 a Pennsylvania militia company, in which he had learned the 
 facings and a few other rudiments of the school of the soldier. 
 He was the only man in the company who had any military 
 training whatever. 
 
 Another young fellow named Race was first lieutenant, and 
 J. L. Botsford, second lieutenant. This company was mustered 
 into the volunteer service at Columbus by General John C. Fre- 
 mont in June, 1861, and was attached to the Twenty-third Ohio 
 Volunteer Infantry, of which William S. Rosecranz was colonel 
 and Rutherford B. Ha}^es major. 
 
 HARDSHIPS OF A SOLDIER'S LIFE. 
 
 The regiment saw service first in General George B. 
 McClellan's campaign in the Kanawha, which wrested West 
 Virginia from the parent State and added another star to the 
 sisterhood of States. It was a campaign of few battles, hard 
 marches and plenty of experience in the hardships of soldiering. 
 Of the fourteen months which McKinley served in the ranks he 
 once said : " I always look back with pleasure on those fourteen 
 months of soldiering. They taught me a great deal. I was only 
 a school-boy when I entered the ranks, and that year was the 
 formative period of my life, during which I learned much of men 
 and affairs. I have always been glad that I entered the service 
 as a private." 
 
 Promotion came to him after Antietam. During that battle 
 he was acting commissary for his company, and in the heat of 
 the fight he took cooked rations to the front to feed his hungry 
 comrades who had been in battle line for twentyfour hours. 
 The fighters fell back in squads to refresh themselves, and were
 
 38 EARLY LIFE OF PRESIDENT McKIN^EY. 
 
 loud in praises of McKinley's thoughtfulness. He obtained 
 furlough a few days after the battle. 
 
 On his way home he passed through Columbus and paid his 
 respects to Governor Tod, who surprised the young volunteer by 
 presenting him. with a second lieutenant's commission. General 
 Hayes, who had been wounded at the battle, was home and 
 recommended the promotion. This was September 24, 1862. 
 February 7, 1863, he was promoted to first lieutenant, and on 
 July 25, 1864, captain. This latter promotion was supplemented 
 by his appointment as adjutant-general of his brigade, and he 
 remained upon the staff until mustered out in July, 1865. 
 
 It was as assistant adjutant-general that he went through 
 Sheridan's famous campaigns in the Shenandoah Valley. While 
 on his way to Winchester Sheridan found young McKinley, then 
 only 21 years old, rallying the panic-stricken troops at Cedar 
 Creek, and at Berry ville the young officer's horse was killed 
 under him. u For gallant and meritorious services at the battle 
 of the Opiquan, Cedar Creek and Fisher's Hill," reads his com- 
 mission as brevet-major, and it is signed " A. Lincoln." 
 
 ADMIRED BY YOUNG MEN. 
 
 Thus William McKinley, at a time of his life when most 
 young men are at school or preparing for professional life, had 
 experience in over four years of active warfare and had con- 
 tributed as many years of his life to active military service of his 
 country as any veteran of the Civil War. This is one of the 
 potent holds he had upon the young men of the country who 
 steadily held him in view as a paragon of youthful courage and 
 patriotism. 
 
 The war over, McKinley found himself at 22, a man without 
 a profession and means to live on. Military life still had many 
 fascinations for him, and a commission in the regular army was 
 within the reach of the influence he was now able to exert. That 
 would at least provide him with a living, and the temptation was 
 strong. His sister, Miss Anna McKinley, a woman of fine judg- 
 ment and strong character, had already established herself as a
 
 EARLY LIFE OF PRESIDENT McKINLEY. 39 
 
 school teacher in Canton, O., and she proved to be- the pioneer of 
 the McKinley family in Stark County. It was largely due to her 
 forcible arguments that the young soldier laid off his uniform 
 and devoted himself to study of law. 
 
 This period of three years between the time he left the mili- 
 tary service, in 1865, and the day he left the L,aw School, at 
 Albany, N. Y., in 1868, is one of which few facts are known. 
 The man who knows all about the difficulties and struggles with 
 lean purse and long ambition that marked those years has never 
 taken any one into his confidence concerning them. He had the 
 advantage of the law library of Judge Glidden, in whose office he 
 was entered as a law student. That able jurist took great interest 
 in his pupil and gave him freely of his knowledge. When the 
 young man was at last admitted to the bar Judge Glidden gave 
 him his first case. This is always a memorable event in the life 
 of a young lawyer. 
 
 "WON HIS FIRST CASE. 
 
 It came about thus : McKinley had found a hole in the wall 
 outside of which he stuck up his shingle as a lawyer. A fortnight 
 passed and so did all clients. Then Judge Glidden handed the 
 half-discouraged young attorney a bundle of papers with the 
 remark : 
 
 " Mac, here are the papers in a case which is coming up 
 to-morrow. I have got to go out of town and you must try it." 
 
 " I have never tried a case yet, you know, Judge ! " McKinley 
 replied. 
 
 "Well, begin on this one then," Glidden answered. McKin- 
 ley began work at once, and after studying the case all night went to 
 court next day and won the suit. Glidden called at his office a 
 few days afterward and handed McKinley $25, which he refused 
 to take. 
 
 " It is too much, Judge, for one day's pay," the conscientious 
 young attorney said. 
 
 " Nonsense, Mac," said the veteran. " Don't let that worry 
 you. I charged them $100 and can easily afford to give you a 
 quarter of it."
 
 40 EARLY LIFE OF PRESIDENT McKINLEY. 
 
 In a case which came to him soon afterward McKinley won 
 one of his most substantial earlier triumphs. He was pitted 
 against John McS weeny, one of the most brilliant lawyers at the 
 Ohio bar. It was a suit for damages for malpractice against a 
 surgeon, who, it was claimed, had set a broken leg so unskilfully 
 that the patient was made bow-legged. McSweeny brought his 
 client into court, and after he had told his story he bared his leg 
 to show how far it was out of line. 
 
 McKiuley, for the defense, demanded that the plaintiff bare 
 the other leg for comparison. The court upheld this demand, in 
 spite of McSweeny' s vigorous objection. To the confusion of the 
 plaintiff and his counsel, and the merriment of court and jury, that 
 leg was found to be the worse bowed of the two. His trousers had 
 concealed his natural deformity. 
 
 PARTNERSHIP WI*TH A LEADING LAWYER. 
 
 " My client seems to have done better by this man than did 
 nature itself," said Counsellor McKinley, " and I move that the 
 suit be dismissed with recommendation that he have his right leg 
 broken and set by the defendant in this case." The plaintiff was 
 laughed out of court. Soon after this success Judge Belden, a 
 leading lawyer of Canton, formed a partnership with the young 
 attorney which lasted until the Judge's death, in 1870. 
 
 He had already won his way so that the people in that year 
 elected him Prosecuting Attorney of Stark County, which office 
 he filled for several years. Practice now flowed in to him, and he 
 speedily won repute as an excellent advocate. He is credited 
 with making some of the best jury arguments ever heard at that 
 bar. When elected to Congress he was a recognized leader of 
 the Stark County bar and had one of the best general practices at 
 that bar. 
 
 Another case in which he especially distinguished himself was 
 that of a number of miners prosecuted for riot, whom he defended in 
 an appeal to the j ury which is remembered to this day as a triumph 
 of eloquence over hard fact. It was the first opportunity of his 
 career to test his deep sympathy with wage-workers, and his use
 
 COPYRIGHT, BY CLINEDENST, WASHINGTON 
 
 MRS. WILLIAM McKINLEY
 
 COPYRIGHT, BY CLINEOEN8T, WASHINGTON 
 
 PRESIDENT MCKINLEY EXAMINING STATE PAPERS
 
 THE WHITE HOUSE-WASHINGTON
 
 SENATOR M. A. HANNA 
 
 CHAIRMAN OF THE REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE
 
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 EARLY LIFE OF PRESIDENT McKINLEY. 41 
 
 of it gave him a hold upon their gratitude that time only 
 strengthened. 
 
 James G. Blaine, in his " Twenty Years of Congress," wrote : 
 (< William McKinley, Jr., enteted from the Canton district. He 
 enlisted in an Ohio regiment when only 18 years old, and won 
 the rank of major by meritorious services. The interests of his 
 constituents and his own bent of mind led him to the study of 
 industrial questions, and he was soon recognized in the House as 
 one of the most thorough statisticians, and one of the ablest 
 defenders of the doctrine of protection." 
 
 SYMPATHY WITH TOILERS. 
 
 The Plumed Knight touched with his trenchant pen the very 
 needle's eye of character which placed McKinley where he stood. 
 Sympathy with the toilers brought him to the study of industrial 
 questions, to which he gave the same thorough analysis and 
 intense application that he gave to his law cases. In this respect 
 he was like Garfield, having given like thorough study to political 
 subjects. It is said that Rutherford B. Hayes took occasion once 
 to advise McKinley, who seemed destined for public preferment, 
 to confine his political studies as far as possible to some partic- 
 ular subject, to master that so as to be recognized as its most 
 learned expounder. "There is the tariff and protection," he is 
 said to have advised. " It affords just the field for such endeavor 
 as I have described. In the near future it is likely to become 
 one of the leading issues upon which the voters of this nation will 
 divide probably for many years." 
 
 This conversation may have occurred, but the fact remains 
 that the natural bent of McKinley' s mind and the tendency to 
 sympathize with the toilers had early turned his intellect toward 
 that precise question. That was his theme when very early in 
 his legal career he took the stump and discussed political ques- 
 tions in his own and neighboring counties, to which his reputation 
 as an attractive speaker early penetrated. 
 
 Major McKinley was only 34 years old when, in 1877, the 
 people of the Canton district elected him to represent them in
 
 42 
 
 EARLY LIFE OF PRESIDENT McKINLEY. 
 
 Congress. Henry Clay and James G. Blaine are the most 
 conspicuous statesmen who began Congressional careers at an 
 early age. It was a Democratic House, and the new member 
 began his service at the foot of the unimportant Law Revision 
 Committee. His first term passed with no public speech of note 
 to his credit, but Speaker Samuel J. Randall had noticed the 
 
 studious application 
 of the young Ohioan 
 and his shrewdness 
 in committee work. 
 Hence, at the 
 outset of his second 
 term McKinley was 
 placed on the Judici- 
 ary Committee next 
 to Thomas Brackett 
 Reed. His ambition 
 and mental prompt- 
 ings led him to pre- 
 fer the Ways and 
 Means Committee, 
 but he was disap- 
 pointed at that time. 
 HON. WILLIAM McKINLEY. However, early in 
 
 the session the bill of Fernando Wood gave him his chance, and 
 he riddled that measure with a grasp of fact and merciless logic 
 that marked him as one of the masters of protection knowledge. 
 McKinley' s Congressional prominence may be said to have 
 fairly begun with the retirement of Garfield from the Ways and 
 Means Committee after his election to the Presidency in 1880. 
 McKinley was appointed to the vacancy, and from then until he 
 retired from Congress in 1891, after ten years of service that would 
 have been continuous except for that portion of the Forty-eighth 
 Congress when the Democrats unseated him, he remained upon 
 that most important committee. His work was so strong and in- 
 cisive that the Democrats, fearing his abilities, three times sought
 
 EARLY LIFE OF PRESIDENT McKINLEY. 43 
 
 Ills second session debate on the tariff-revision bill to throw him 
 out of Congress by gerrymandering his district. Twice placed 
 in districts so fixed that the Democratic majority seemed assured, 
 he nevertheless was elected by substantial majorities. 
 
 In 1890 an international contest was brought into the narrow 
 limits of his Congressional district. The order had gone forth 
 from Democratic free-trade headquarters that the peerless cham- 
 pion of protection must be beaten at any cost. So his district was 
 patched up until it showed a nominal Democratic plurality of 
 3,100 votes. Most men would have shirked such a contest and 
 retired upon laurels already won. 
 
 WENT BOLDLY INTO THE FIGHT. 
 
 Not so McKinley. His Scotch-Irish blood was up, and he 
 threw himself into the fight with an impetuosity that he had 
 never before exhibited. He actually carried three of the four 
 counties of his district, but was beaten by a slender plurality of 
 302 votes. He had pulled down the Democratic majority 2800 
 votes, and what his enemies sought to make his Waterloo proved 
 to be a McKinley triumph and turned Republican thought in the 
 country toward him as the leader of the greater struggle of 1896. 
 It, however, closed his Congressional career. 
 
 McKinley in Washington was a worker persistent, methodi- 
 cal and indefatigable. He was never found in the haunts of con- 
 vivial men. That side of life which fascinates and has destroyed 
 the usefulness of many brilliant men had no fascination for him. 
 His work-day was spent in committee or in the House, and the 
 business of the day over, he went straight to his home and his 
 invalid wife. Tom Murray, who for years was manager of the 
 House restaurant, says that for years he watched his daily 
 coming for a bowl of crackers and milk, which consumed, he 
 returned to his work and wrought while his colleagues regaled 
 upon terrapin and champagne. 
 
 And yet the hard-working, non-convivial member from 
 Canton was popular with his fellow-members on both sides of 
 the House. He led a bare majority of twenty-two through all
 
 44 EARLY LIFE OF PRESIDENT McKINLEY 
 
 the perils of conflicting interests. He, too, found time to 
 champion the Federal Elections bill, and to draw to its support 
 many men from widely separated territory, and representing 
 many diverse local interests. 
 
 It was McKinley's Congressional record that made him 
 illustrious. Beginning at the foot of the ladder in committee 
 appointment, he forged steadily to the front. Leadership was 
 won, not conceded. It was his presentment of the great tariff 
 bill that crowded the House of Representatives on that ever- 
 memorable May 7, 1890, when he reported it and opened a debate 
 which has become historical. His contrast between protection 
 and free trade, which closed that famous forensic utterance, 
 paints at once a picture and a prophecy. 
 
 INDEPENDENCE AND PROSPERITY. 
 
 "We have now," he said, "enjoyed twenty-nine years con- 
 tinuously of protective tariff laws the longest uninterrupted 
 period in which that policy has prevailed since the formation of 
 the Federal Government and we find ourselves at the end of 
 that period in a condition of independence and prosperity the 
 like of which has no parallel in the recorded history of the world. 
 In all that goes to make a nation great and strong and inde- 
 pendent we have made extraordinary strides. We have a 
 surplus revenue and a spotless credit. 
 
 " To reverse this system means to stop the progress of this 
 Republic. It means to turn the masses from ambition, courage 
 and hope to dependence, degradation and despair. Talk about 
 depression ! We would have it then in its fulness. Everything 
 would indeed be cheap, but how costly when measured by the 
 degradation that would ensue ! When merchandise is cheapest, 
 men are poorest, and the most distressing experiences of our 
 country aye, of all history have been when everything was 
 lowest and cheapest, measured in gold, and everything was 
 highest and dearest, measured by labor." 
 
 When Major McKinley, in 1890, lost his gerrymandered 
 district by the narrow margin of 302 votes, there was no doubt
 
 EARLY LIFE OF PRESIDENT McKlNLEY. 45 
 
 In the minds of Ohio Republicans as to who should and must be 
 their candidate for Governor. It was no consolation purse that 
 he was to race for. It was simply and solely that the 
 fortune of hostile legislative control had placed within reach as 
 candidate for the Chief Executive of the State a man of spotless 
 honor, whose many services made him the most popular man in 
 the Commonwealth. The room in the northwest corner of the 
 State House in Columbus is brimful of history. 
 
 A Secretary of the Treasury, a Chief Justice of the United 
 States and a President sat there as the Chief Executive of the 
 State before being called to higher preferment. Nearly every 
 man who has occupied the chief chair therein has been or still is 
 a vital force in the political or business history of the nation. 
 No other State has ever contributed as many Governors to the 
 National Executive in chair or council. 
 
 A FAITHFUL PUBLIC OFFICER. 
 
 Governor McKinley's career of four years in the Executive 
 Chair of Ohio was exemplification of the fact that the most inter- 
 esting period of a statesman's public service is not necessarily 
 that in which he enjoys the greatest degree of public prominence. 
 That office claimed, almost monopolized, his attention, and local 
 interests were never in the remotest degree subordinated to wider 
 political necessities. But this lessened neither the number nor 
 loyalty of his friends in all parts of the country. 
 
 His solicitude for the toilers was marked. His sympathy 
 with the eight-hour movement was early manifested. He was a 
 conspicuous champion of arbitration in the settlement of labor 
 difficulties. These convictions appeared in his recommendations 
 of legislation to protect workingmen in hazardous occupations, to- 
 secure them more considerate treatment as well as more safety in 
 the pursuit of their avocations. It was upon his recommendation 
 that the Ohio law was passed requiring that all street cars should 
 be furnished with vestibules to protect the motormen and con- 
 ductors from, inclement weather. 
 
 But it was along the line of arbitration authorized but not
 
 46 EARLY LIFE OF PRESIDENT McKINLEY. 
 
 compulsory which he regarded as the true solution of labor trou- 
 blesthat his best work was done. During his first term the 
 State Board of Arbitration was created upon the Massachusetts 
 plan, but he made its workings the subject of his personal super- 
 vision during all his administration. During the existence of the 
 Board, twenty-eight strikes, some of them involving 2000 men, 
 were investigated, and in fifteen cases the Board found a common 
 basis upon which both parties could agree. 
 
 SENDS RELIEF TO MINERS IN DISTRESS. 
 
 No account of Governor McKinley's connection with labor 
 problems would be complete without mention of the tireless energy 
 he displayed in securing relief for the 2000 miners of the Hocking 
 Valley mining district, who, early in 1895, were reported out of 
 work and destitute. The news reached him at midnight, but by 5 
 A. M., on his own responsibility, a car, loaded with provisions, 
 worth $1000, was dispatched to the afflicted district. Appeals 
 made subsequently to the Boards of Trade or Chambers of Com- 
 merce of the great cities of the State increased this initial bene- 
 faction to $32,796 worth of clothing and provisions. 
 
 Governor McKinley's two terms as the State's Executive 
 were on the whole smooth and harmonious, but he was repeatedly 
 called upon to solve perplexing problems in the relations of capital 
 and labor. In 1894 the State Government received no fewer than 
 fifteen calls for State troops to aid in enforcing the law. No such 
 demand had been made since the Civil War, but Governor Mc- 
 Kinley, obeying the dictates of his judgment, answered with such 
 popular acceptation that even those labor organizations which are 
 most radical in opposing any action in labor troubles on the part 
 of the State militia were forced to admit the wisdom of his course.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 A Man of Noble Ideals and Unselfish Aims His Domestic 
 Fidelity A Governor of Rare Sagacity His Suc- 
 cessful Administration as President. 
 
 NO events in the history of President McKinley commended 
 him more to the confidence and respect of his fellow-citizens 
 than his honorable course in two national conventions of his 
 party, when, had he shown a momentary departure in steadfast 
 loyalty in suppor: of the men he. had been instructed to vote for, 
 he might have himself been the nominee. Since 1876 he had 
 borne a prominent part in Republican national conventions. He 
 was a member of the Committee on Resolutions of the convention 
 of 1880, when the man who led the Ohio delegation, pledged to 
 the candidacy of Senator John Sherman, and who placed that 
 veteran statesman in nomination in a speech that was one of the 
 masterpieces of his public utterances, was himself made the 
 nominee. This was James A. Garfield. 
 
 Again, in 1884, he was the chosen member of the Committee 
 on Resolutions who drafted the party platform with such skill 
 that a newspaper raised his name to its column head with the 
 words, "Let the man who wrote the platform of '84 be our 
 standard-bearer for 1888." 
 
 Perhaps McKinley himself realized in 1888 that he then 
 hardly measured up to the standard of the tried and true vet- 
 erans in the public service whose names were to go before that 
 convention. Certainly no one could have declared such fact 
 more unhesitatingly or earnestly than he did. It was an occa- 
 sion never to be forgotten, and it demonstrated even then that 
 Mr. McKinley was a Presidential possibility who could afford to 
 bide his time and need not crowd veterans in public favor out of 
 a nomination which for him could have no charm unless fairly 
 won. 
 
 The balloting for President had reached the fourth call when 
 
 47
 
 48 A MAN OF HONOR AND INTEGRITY. 
 
 a Connecticut delegate cast his vote for McKinley. As soon as 
 the vote was announced McKinley rose in his seat and lifted his 
 hand for recognition of the Chair. Before he could utter half a 
 dozen words a great shout, " McKinley " went up from all over 
 the convention. Unshaken by this evidence of popular esteem, 
 
 he said : 
 
 MANLY SPEECH IN CONVENTION. 
 
 " Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the Convention : I am 
 here as one of the chosen representatives of my State ; I am here 
 by resolution of its Republican convention, passed without one 
 dissenting voice, commanding me to cast my vote for John 
 Sherman and to use every worthy endeavor for his nomination. 
 I accepted this trust because my heart and judgment were in 
 accord with the letter and spirit and purpose of that resolution. 
 It has pleased certain delegates to cast their votes for me. I am 
 not insensible of the honor they would do me, but in the presence 
 of the duty resting upon me, I cannot remain silent with honor ; 
 I cannot consistently with the credit of the State whose creden- 
 tials I bear, and which has trusted me ; I cannot with honorable 
 fidelity to John Sherman, who has trusted me in his cause and 
 with his confidence ; I cannot consistently with my own views of 
 my personal integrity consent, or seem to consent, to permit my 
 name to be used as a candidate before the convention. 
 
 U I would not restrict myself if I could find it in my heart to 
 do, but I cannot permit that to be done which could even be 
 ground for any one to suspect that I wavered in my loyalty to 
 Ohio or my devotion to the chief of her choice and the chief of 
 mine. I do not request I demand that no delegates who 
 would not cast reflection upon me shall cast a ballot for me " 
 
 When McKinley, who spoke in tones whose earnestness and 
 sincerity could not be doubted, concluded his speech his audience 
 applauded him to the echo. It was so characteristic of the man 
 that his name was not mentioned by any as a candidate. He had 
 gained another popular victory. 
 
 Four years later at Minneapolis McKinley again had oppor- 
 tunity to show that he valued honor above even nomination to
 
 TEMPLE OF MUSIC AT THE PAN AMERICAN EXPOSITION 
 
 IN THIS BUILDING PRESIDENT McKINLEY WAS ASSASSINATED 
 
 WHILE HOLDING A PUBLIC RECEPTION 
 
 BUILDING OF ETHNOLOGY AT BUFFALO
 
 PRESIDENT THEODORE ROOSEVELT
 
 THE WIDOW OF OUR MARTYRED PRESIDENT 
 
 FROM HER LATEST PHOTOGRAPH
 
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 EMMA GOLDMAN 
 
 HER INFAMOUS TEACHINGS INSPIRED CZOLGOSZ TO ASSASSINATE PRESIDENT McKINLEY
 
 ELECTRIC TOWER AT THE PAN AMERICAN EXPOSITION 
 
 UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT BUILDINU AT BUFFALO
 
 i.*.. J 1 iGMT"lS93, 6Y GEORGE G. ROCKWOOD, N. Y. 
 
 COLONEL THEODORE ROOSEVELT
 
 A MAN OF HONOR AND INTEGRITY. 49 
 
 '.he highest office in the Republic. He was the chairman of the 
 convention. When Ohio was reached on the first ballot for 
 President the leader of the delegation announced its full vote for 
 William McKinley. This was the signal for an outburst of 
 applause from floor and gallery, as spontaneous as it was vocif- 
 erous. Hurried consultations were held by many State dele- 
 gations, and amid the cheers and applause which still continued 
 one leader after another arose to the change of his State to 
 McKinley. The Major, evidently deeply affected by the demon- 
 stration, but firm and composed, rose in his place and said : 
 " I challenge the vote of Ohio." 
 
 DETERMINED TO VOTE FOR HIM. 
 
 " The gentleman is not a member of the delegation at pres- 
 ent," said Governor Foraker, who was chairman of the Ohio rep- 
 resentatives. 
 
 "I am a delegate from that State," cried McKinley, in tones 
 that could be heard above the confusion and uproar, "and I 
 demand that my vote be counted." 
 
 " Your alternate voted for you," Governor Foraker per- 
 sisted. 
 
 The vote of the delegation was polled nevertheless, and the 
 solitary vote which was cast for Harrison, was Major McKinley's. 
 Harrison was nominated, and Chairman McKinley, calling 
 Colonel Elliott F. Shepard to the chair, moved to make the nomi- 
 nation unanimous. 
 
 " Your turn will come in '96," shouted one of the 182 dele* 
 gates, who, despite his protest, voted for him in that convention. 
 This prophecy was fulfilled. 
 
 Two things commended Mr. McKinley mightly to the aver- 
 age man he could fight and he loved his wife. While these at 
 first thought seem to be virtues common enough, yet he who has 
 them has not far to go to make him a man complete. He also 
 loved children with the pathetic love of the man whose name will 
 live only in history, for the two children of his early married life 
 died, aud his wife was a confirmed invalid.
 
 50 A MAN OF HONOR AND INTEGRITY. 
 
 It was early in his struggles with the law in Canton thai 
 William McKinley met Ida Saxton, a beauty, the daughter of the 
 richest banker in the town, and a girl after his own heart. He 
 has never got over the surprise and joy which filled his soul, 
 when, having made up his mind to put his future happiness to 
 touch, he asked Ida Saxton to be his wife and she said yes. It is 
 said that her father confirmed this when along with his parental 
 blessing he said : " You are the only inan.jof all that have sought 
 her that I would have givjen her to." 
 
 It was in 1871, after he had won his first success at the bar 
 and had been successful as Prosecuting Attorney. They went to 
 housekeeping in the same house to which he returned after his 
 long service in Congress and his two terms as Governor. In that 
 pleasant little villa his two children were born. One lived to be 
 nearly four years old, while the other died in early infancy. 
 
 LARGE HEART AND WARM NATURE. 
 
 It was soon after the birth of the second daughter that the 
 fact became apparent that Mrs. McKinley would be a lifelong 
 invalid. Much could be written of the tenderness of the strong 
 and virile man to his invalid wife, but the idle gossip which has 
 already been written upon that subject has hurt where it was 
 thought to comfort. Newspapers have thoughtlessly dwelt upon 
 this affliction, singing praises of his constancy and devotion when 
 even kind words carried with them a penetrating sting. 
 
 It is enough to say that this husband and wife have never 
 been parted except during exigent work in campaigning. During 
 his service as Congressman in Washington she was always with 
 him, embroidering the slippers which constituted her principal 
 employment in his absence until the number which solaced the 
 sufferers in hospitals is said to amount to nearly four thousand. 
 From Congressional duty to his wife and back to duty was the 
 round of his Washington life. 
 
 While Governor of Ohio four rooms in the Chittenden House 
 in Columbus were their home. An early breakfast and he was 
 off to his executive duties. It was remarked that he always left
 
 A MAN OF HONOR AND INTEGRITY. 61 
 
 his hotel by a side entrance, and when well across the street he 
 turned and lifted his hat, while a handkerchief fluttered for an 
 instant from the window of his home. Then the Governor, with 
 a pleased smile, walked jauntily off toward the State House. This 
 was repeated every evening, showing that loving watch was kept 
 at that window. Occasionally, weather and health permitting, Mrs. 
 McKinley indulged in a carriage ride, her husband always 
 accompanying her. Always on Sunday the Governor took an 
 early train for Canton, and going to his mother's house, accom- 
 panied her to the First M. E. Church of which he was a member. 
 He was superintendent of its Sunday-school until public duty 
 took him to Washington. 
 
 HIS PERSONAL APPEARANCE. 
 
 Major McKinley was five feet seven inches in height and as 
 straight as Michael Angelo's statue of David. He undoubtedly 
 looked like the great Napoleon, although he said more than once 
 that he did not like to be reminded of the resemblance. He had 
 the same grave, dignified mouth, the same high, broad and full 
 forehead and the same heavy lower j aw. He was a better looking 
 man than was Napoleon, and his bright, dark eyes shone out 
 under brows which were less heavy than those of Bonaparte, and 
 his frown was by no means so terrible as that of the Little Cor- 
 poral. He appreciated, however, the value of dignity, always 
 dressed in a double-breasted frock coat and crowned his classic head 
 with a tall silk hat. 
 
 Personally, Major McKinley was a charming man to meet. 
 His presence was prepossessing, though in conversation he rarely 
 developed brilliancy or ready wit. Diguity and repose, rather 
 than force and action, appeared as his strong characteristics to 
 the man who met him casually. Yet his campaigns showed that 
 when time for action came he could go through labor that wears 
 out a corps of experienced reporters, and come out of the immense 
 strain of six weeks' constant canvass with little loss of flesh and 
 comparatively few signs of fatigue. The Gubernational char- 
 paign of 1893 was notable in this respect.
 
 52 A MAN OF HONOR AND INTEGRITY. 
 
 With the chances favoring him and business depression pre- 
 vailing, many a man would have trusted something to luck and 
 worked less persistently and energetically than under other 
 circumstances. But that was not McKinley's way. He 
 realized that his boom for the Presidency depended very largely 
 upon the size of his majority, and worked like a Trojan. Those 
 who followed him in the famous Congressional campaign of 1890 
 against John G. Warwick, and again in 1891, when he canvassed 
 the State against Campbell with such signal success, and were a 
 third time with him in 1893 say that he worked as never before. 
 
 In the speeches he made one notable characteristic was 
 always prominent. He did not make enemies. No one ever 
 heard McKinley abuse a political opponent from the stump. 
 Few men have ever heard him. speak with disrespect or malignity 
 of one in private life. Only among his close confidants, and they 
 were carefully chosen and not numerous, did he allow himself 
 to speak his mind fully. 
 
 ELECTED AND INAUGURATED. 
 
 After a very exciting campaign in 1896, Mr. McKinley was 
 elected President, and was inaugurated with most imposing cere- 
 monies in March, 1897. His administration was characterized by 
 wise and successful statesmanship, and as the period for a new 
 election drew near it became evident that he would be again the 
 unanimous choice of his party to be their standard-bearer in the 
 campaign of 1900. 
 
 An extraordinary session of Congress was called by President 
 McKinley two days after he took the oath of office on the steps of 
 the Capitol. It met in pursuance to his proclamation at noon on 
 March 15. The special message transmitted by him to both 
 Houses on the opening day was brief. It explained the deficien- 
 cies in the revenues, reviewed the bond issues of the last adminis- 
 tration, and urged Congress promptly to correct the then existing 
 condition by passing a tariff bill that would supply ample revenues 
 for the support of the Government and the liquidation of the 
 public debt,
 
 A MAN OF HONOR AND INTEGRITY. 53 
 
 No other subject of legislation was mentioned in the message, 
 and the tariff bill was the all-absorbing feature of the session. 
 The Republican members of the Ways and Means Committee 
 of the preceding House had been at work throughout the short 
 session, which ended March 4, giving hearings and preparing the 
 bill which was to be submitted at the extra session. 
 
 Three days after the session opened the Tariff bill was 
 reported to the House by the Ways and Means Committee, and 
 thirteen days later, March 31, 1897, ^ passed the House. It 
 went to the Senate, was referred to the Committee on Finance, 
 and the Republican members of that committee spent a month 
 and three days in its consideration and in preparing the amend- 
 ments, which were submitted to the Senate May 4. Its consider- 
 ation was begun in the Senate May 7, and exactly two months 
 later, July 7, it passed the Senate with 872 amendments. 
 
 TARIFF BILL PROMPTLY SIGNED. 
 
 The bill then went to conference, where, after a ten days' 
 struggle, on July 17, a complete agreement was reached by 
 which the Senate receded from 118 amendments and the House 
 from 511. The others, 243 in number, were compromised. The 
 conference report was adopted by the House July 19, at the 
 conclusion of twelve hours of continuous debate. The report 
 was taken up in the Senate July 20, and adopted Saturday, 
 July 24. The Tariff bill was signed by the President the 
 same day. 
 
 In August President McKinley promulgated amendments 
 to the civil service rules which elicited enthusiastic praise from 
 civil service reformers. The order considered of most importance 
 provided "that no removal shall be made from any position subject 
 to competitive examination except for just cause and upon 
 written charges filed with the head of the department or other 
 appointing officer, and of which the accused shall have full 
 notice and an opportunity to make defense." 
 
 Through the Hon. Stewart L. Woodford, American Minister 
 to Spain, our Cabinet at Washington addressed a note in
 
 54 A MAN OF HONOR AND INTEGRITY. 
 
 September to the Spanish government concerning the war in Cuba, 
 urging that the most strenuous efforts be made to bring it to an 
 end, and offering mediation between the contending parties. 
 Spain's reply, which was received in November, was considered 
 satisfactory and not likely to lead to any rupture between the 
 two countries. 
 
 In February, 1898, an incident occurred which created 
 universal comment. A letter was written by the Spanish 
 Minister at Washington, Senor De Lome, reflecting seriously 
 upon President McKinley, in connection with the policy our 
 administration was pursuing toward the government of Spain 
 with regard to the insurrection in Cuba. This letter was written 
 by De Lome to a friend, but failed in some way to reach its 
 destination, and was made public. Public indignation was 
 expressed at this perfidy of the Spanish Minister, and he was 
 compelled to resign. 
 
 INSURRECTION IN CUBA. 
 
 The struggle in Cuba for independence continued to be the 
 one absorbing topic that occupied the attention of Congress. 
 General Weyler ordered all the inhabitants of Cuba who were 
 suspected of sympathizing with the insurgents into the town, 
 where they were left to obtain the necessaries of life as best they 
 could. This act, which was pronounced inhuman by the Ameri- 
 can people, resulted in the death of tens of thousands of men, 
 women and children by starvation. Meanwhile, accurate reports 
 of the appalling situation in Cuba were brought by several mem- 
 bers of Congress who visited the island with a view to ascertain- 
 ing the exact facts. 
 
 These reports so inflamed the Senate and House of Repre- 
 sentatives that a number of resolutions were introduced demand- 
 ing that belligerent rights should be granted to the Cubans, and 
 further that the United States should intervene with force of arms 
 to end the war in Cuba, and secure the independence of the island. 
 These resolutions, which were referred to the Committee on 
 Foreign Relations, were indicative of the temper of Congress.
 
 A MAN OF HONOR AND INTEGRITY. i 
 
 A profound sensation was created by the destruction of the 
 United States battleship " Maine " in the harbor of Havana. The 
 " Maine" was lying in the harbor, having been sent to Cuba on a 
 friendly visit. On the evening of February 15, a terrific explosion 
 took place on board the ship, by which 266 sailors and officers lost 
 their lives and the vessel was wrecked. The cause of the explo- 
 sion was not apparent. The wounded sailors of the " Maine" were 
 unable to explain it. The explosion shook the whole city 
 of Havana, and the windows were broken in many of the houses. 
 The wounded sailors stated that the explosion took place while 
 they were asleep, so that they could give no particulars as to the 
 cause. 
 
 The Government at Washington and the whole country were 
 horrified at the destruction of one of our largest cruisers and the 
 loss of so many of our brave sailors- The excitement throughout 
 the country was intense. The chief interest in the " Maine" dis- 
 aster now centered upon the cause of the explosion that so quickly 
 sent her to the bottom of Havana habor. 
 
 MESSAGE TO CONGRESS. 
 
 A Naval Board of Inquiry went to Havana and proceeded 
 promptly to investigate the causes of the explosion that destroyed 
 the battleship. 
 
 Upon receiving the report of the Board of Inquiry, President 
 McKinley transmitted it to Congress, and with it a message which 
 he closed as follows : 
 
 " In view of these facts and of these considerations I ask the 
 Congress to authorize and empower the President to take measures 
 to secure a full and final termination of the hostilities between 
 the Government of Spain and the people of Cuba, and to secure in 
 the island the establishment of a stable government capable of 
 maintaining order and observing its international obligations, en- 
 suring peace and tranquillity and the security of its citizens as 
 well as our own, and to use the military and naval forces of the 
 United States as may be necessary for these purposes. 
 
 " And in the interest of humanity and to aid in preserving
 
 66 A MAN OF HONOR AND INTEGRITY. 
 
 the lives of the starving people of that island, I recommend 
 that the distribution of food and supplies be continued, and that 
 an appropriation be made out of the public treasury to supplement 
 the charity of our citizens. 
 
 " The issue is now with Congress. It is a solemn responsi- 
 bility. I have exhausted every effort to relieve the intolerable 
 condition of affairs which is at our doors. Prepared to execute 
 every obligation imposed upon me by the Constitution and the 
 law, I await your action." 
 
 Congress debated a week over the recommendations con- 
 tained in the President's message, and on April 18, both Houses 
 united in passing a series of resolutions calling for the interven- 
 tion of the United States to compel Spain to withdraw her forces 
 from Cuba, and thus permit the authorities at Washington to 
 provide the island with a free and independent government. The 
 demand contained in the resolution was sent to the Spanish 
 Minister at Washington on April 20, who at once called for his 
 passports and left for Canada. 
 
 AMERICAN MINISTER LEAVES MADRID. 
 
 On the same date the ultimatum of our Government was 
 sent to United States Minister Woodford, at Madrid, who was 
 curtly handed his passports before he had an opportunity of for- 
 mally presenting the document. These transactions involved a 
 virtual declaration of war, although Congress did not formally 
 declare that war actually existed until April 25, dating the time 
 back to the 2ist. 
 
 The North Atlantic Squadron was immediately ordered to 
 blockade the Cuban ports, and on April 22 proceeded to carry out 
 the order. On the same date the United States gunboat " Nash- 
 ville" captured the Spanish merchantman " Buena Ventura" in 
 the Gulf of Mexico. In this capture the first gun of the war was 
 fired. The next day President McKinley promulgated a resolution 
 calling for 125,000 volunteers. On the same day, Morro Castle, 
 commanding the harbor of Havana, fired on the United States 
 flagship " New York " but without doing any damage. Subse-
 
 A MAN OF HONOR AND INTEGRITY. 67 
 
 quent events comprised the capture of a number of Spanish 
 vessels by Admiral Sampson's squadron. 
 
 Stirring news from our Asiatic fleet was soon received. On 
 May i, Admiral Dewey practically destroyed the Spanish squad- 
 ron in the harbor of Manila, Philippine Islands, capturing nine 
 vessels and inflicting a loss of 400 killed and 600 wounded. The 
 capture of the Spanish fleet at Santiago, on July 3, and the vic- 
 tories of the American army in Cuba, resulting in the surrender 
 of all the Spanish troops in the province of Santiago, prepared 
 the way for Mr McKinley to sign a peace protocol in August and 
 a treaty of peace with Spain in December. 
 
 With a firm hand he conducted the difficult and delicate 
 diplomacy and pushed on the war that freed Cuba, brought the 
 Philippine Islands under the authority and government of the 
 United States, and restored peace to the combatants. 
 
 WAR COULD NOT BE AVERTED. 
 
 As to his policy in view of the necessary legislation for oui 
 new possessions, and his purpose to govern them in such a way as 
 to advance their welfare and to secure for them the largest liberty, 
 he declared in an eloquent speech before the Ohio Society in New 
 York that every obligation of our Government would be fulfilled. 
 
 tl After thirty-three years," he said, " of unbroken peace came 
 an unavoidable war. Happily, the conclusion was quickly 
 reached, without a suspicion of unworthy motive or practice or 
 purpose on our part, and with fadeless honor to our arms. I can- 
 not forget the quick response of the people to the country's need 
 and the quarter of a million men who freely offered their lives to 
 their country's service. It was an impressive spectacle of national 
 strength. It demonstrated our mighty reserve power and taught 
 us that large standing armies are unnecessary when every citizen 
 is a ' minute man ' ready to join the ranks for national defence. 
 
 "Out of these recent events have come to the United 
 States grave trials and responsibilities. As it was the nation's 
 war, so are its results the nation's problems. Its solution rests 
 upon us all. It is too serious to stifle. It is too earnest for
 
 68 A MAN OF HONOR AND INTEGRITY. 
 
 repose. No phrase or catchword can conceal the sacred obligation 
 it involves. No use of epithets, no aspersion of motive by those 
 who differ will contribute to that sober judgment so essential to 
 right conclusions. 
 
 "No political outcry can abrogate our treaty of peace with 
 Spain or absolve us from its solemn engagements. It is the 
 people's question and its determination is written out in their 
 enlightened verdict. We must choose between manly doing and 
 base desertion. It will never be the latter. It must be soberly 
 settled in justice and good conscience, and it will be. Righteous- 
 ness which exalteth a nation must control in its solution. 
 
 DECLARATION AGAINST IMPERIALISM. 
 
 "There can be no imperialism. Those who fear it are 
 against it. Those who have faith in the Republic are against it. 
 So that there is universal abhorrence for it and unanimous oppo- 
 sition to it. Our only difference is that those who do not agree 
 with us have no confidence in the virtue or capacity or high pur- 
 pose or good faith of this free people as a civilizing agency, 
 while we believe that the century of free goverment which the 
 American people have enjoyed has not rendered them irresolute 
 and faithless, but has fitted them for the great task of lifting up 
 and assisting to better condition and larger liberty those distant 
 people who have, through the issue of battle, become our wards. 
 
 " Let us fear not. There is no occasion for faint hearts, no 
 excuse for regrets. Nations do not grow in strength and 
 the cause of liberty and law by the doing of easy things. 
 The harder the task the greater will be the result, the benefit and 
 the honor. To doubt our power to accomplish it is to lose faith 
 in the soundness and strength of our popular institutions. The 
 liberators will never become the oppressors. A self-governed 
 people will never permit despotism in any government which they 
 foster and defend. 
 
 " Gentlemen, we have the new care and cannot shift it. And, 
 breaking up the camp of ease and isolation, let us bravely and 
 hopefully and soberly continue the march of faithful service and
 
 A MAN OF HONOR AND INTEGRITY. 59 
 
 falter not until the work is done. It is not possible that seventy- 
 five millions of American freemen are unable to establish liberty 
 and justice and good government in our new possessions. The 
 burden is our opportunity. The opportunity is greater than the 
 burden. May God give us strength to bear the one and wisdom 
 so as to embrace the other as to carry to our distant acquisi- 
 tions the guarantees of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." 
 Beyond the administration of affairs connected with our war 
 with Spain and the Filipino insurgents, and the appointment 
 of officials to govern Hawaii, Cuba, Porto Rico and the Philip- 
 pines, the chief measure of public importance during Mr. 
 McKinley's administration was the enactment, at his recom- 
 mendation, of the new currency law, whereby the gold standard 
 has been established and our currency laws are made to cor- 
 respond with those of the most enlightened nations of the earth. 
 
 DECISIVE DEMAND FROM TURKEY. 
 
 A claim was made against Turkey by our Government for 
 damages inflicted upon Americans during the massacres in 
 Armenia. This claim amounted to $90,000, and the Turkish 
 government, with its customary dilatory tactics, evaded the 
 payment of it. It was Mr. McKinley's determined purpose to 
 collect the amount due for Turkish depredations. Accordingly 
 he made a demand for payment. A month passed and no notice 
 was taken of the communication from our State Department. 
 On the 23d of May, 1900, Mr. McKinley authorized another 
 demand to be made upon Turkey, and in terms implying that 
 the next communication would be an ultimatum conveyed by a 
 battleship. The whole amount was afterward collected. 
 
 These public acts indicate the heroic qualities Mr. McKinley 
 exhibited during his administration. With a high purpose to 
 serve his country, with consummate tact and wisdom in conduct- 
 ing public affairs, with exalted patriotism and a noble resolve to 
 promote the welfare of the people in all parts of our broad land, 
 he discharged the responsible duties of his high office to the 
 entire satisfaction of his party.
 
 ANOTHER ACCOUNT OF THE GENEALOGY OF 
 THE McKINLEY FAMILY. 
 
 The following genealogical sketch of President McKinley, 
 was prepared by the Rev. A Stapleton, of Carlisle, Pa. 
 
 " It should be a matter of regret to all true historians that 
 the campaign histories of President McKinley were erroneous 
 in several important genealogical details. The data herein given 
 may be relied on as correct, as they are the result of researches 
 in the court records and other authorities still extant. 
 
 "The ancestors of President McKinley belonged to that 
 sturdy race of people called the Scotch-Irish, so called because in 
 [607 King James I. located a large number of Scots in the north- 
 ern part of Ireland on lands from which the Irish had been 
 evicted. These settlements were gradually augmented by immi- 
 gration until eventually the Scotch-Irish element predominated 
 in this region. They were stanch Presbyterians in faith and in 
 course of time developed traits and peculiarities so marked as to 
 almost stamp them as a distinct race. 
 
 SUFFERED MANY HARDSHIPS. 
 
 In course of time this noble people were overtaken by many 
 hardships, such as the successive failure of crops, besides very 
 unsatisfactory civil and religious conditions. Their only source 
 of relief was in immigration to America, in which they were 
 encouraged by agents of the American colonies. After 1715 the 
 immigration became very extensive, the chief port of arrival 
 being New Castle, on the Delaware, below Philadelphia. 
 
 " The Scotch-Irish being citizens of the' British realm their 
 arrival is not a matter of record like that of the Germans, Swiss, 
 Dutch, etc., who are designated as foreigners in the Colonial 
 records, and were required to subscribe to an oath of allegiance 
 upon arrival, besides a subsequent naturalization. Hence it 
 follows that citizens of the realm are more difficult to identify 
 than foreigners by the historian. Our only recourse is in tax lists, 
 land warrants, court records, etc. 
 
 " In the case of President McKinley we have an undisputed 
 record to his great-grandfather, David McKinley. We know that 
 
 60
 
 A MAN OF HONOR AND INTEGRITY. 61 
 
 he was a Revolutionary soldier, that hfe was born in York county, 
 Pa., that he removed to Westmoreland county after the Revolu- 
 tion, and in 1814 to Ohio, where he died. In the cemetery of the 
 Chatfield Lutheran Church in Crawford county, Ohio, may be 
 seen two modest granite markers with the following inscriptions : 
 'David McKinley, Revolutionary soldier. Born, 1755 ; died, 1840, 
 and Hannah C. Rose, born 1757 ; died 1840.' 
 
 " David McKinley was the father of James, born September 
 19, 1783, married Mary Rose, of Mercer county, Pa., and removed 
 thence to Chatfield, where he purchased a farm, on which he died. 
 He was the father of William McKinley, Sr., born in 1807, an ^ 
 died in Canton, O., in 1892. The latter was the father of Presi- 
 dent McKinley. Hannah C. Rose, buried by the side of David 
 McKinley, was the great-grandmother of the President. She was 
 also the great-grandmother of former Mayor Rose, of Cleveland. 
 
 RECORDS AT LANCASTER AND YORK. 
 
 " For the history of the family prior to David, the soldier, 
 we must rely on the courthouse records at Lancaster, and York, 
 Pa. From various documents and entries we think the evidence 
 incontrovertible that David McKinley, the head of the clan 
 McKinley in America, landed at New Castle, and located in (now) 
 Chanceford township, York county, Pa., in 1743. At that time 
 he was well along in life. He was accompanied by his wife, 
 Esther, and three sons, John, David, Stephen, and a daughter, 
 Mary. There are frequent references to these sons in the county 
 archives. 
 
 " The immigrant was a weaver by trade, but, like all thrifty 
 artisans of that day, he secured a good homestead. It is possible, 
 but not probable, that he arrived in the province earlier than 
 1743, but in this year his name first appears on the records in a 
 warrant for 316 acres of land on a beautiful elevation overlooking 
 the Susquehanna river in the distance. 
 
 " That he was a man of enterprise is shown in the fact that 
 in 1749 he circulated a petition for a public highway, which he 
 also presented to court. Tne following year lie was made super-
 
 62 A MAN OF HONOR AND INTEGRITY. 
 
 visor, and doubtless had the task imposed on himself to engineer 
 his road to completion. His name occurs frequently in the most 
 honorable way, showing him to. have been a man of unusual 
 probity and worth as a citizen. 
 
 "David McKinley, the immigrant, died intestate in 1757, 
 leaving his wife and children as already named. His daughter 
 was intermarried with Samuel Gordon. The settlement of the 
 estate shows personal property to the value of of 220, or $1,100, 
 besides the plantation, which was divided. Later, however, the 
 son John (who, with his mother, was the executor) purchased the 
 entire estate. 
 
 SECOND GENERATION COMES INTO VIEW. 
 
 " This leads us to the consideration of the second generation, 
 viz., John McKinley, eldest son of the immigrant. Before enter- 
 ing upon details we here throw out the precautionary statement 
 that the names McKinley and McGinley are both contemporane- 
 ous and interchangeable in our early records, owing to the care- 
 lessness of scribes. They were, however, separate families in 
 York county. The McGinleys proper came from James McGiii- 
 ley, who died in York county in 1755, leaving an only son, John. 
 No relationship is known to have existed between the families, 
 although remotely it might have been the case. The President's 
 ancestors, so far as we have ascertained, always wrote their name 
 as now. 
 
 " Resuming our narrative of the McKinleys, John, son of the 
 immigrant, was born about 1728, and in his day was one of the 
 foremost men of York county. He became a large land owner and 
 frequently figures in important business transactions. When 
 hostilities broke out with the mother country he stanchly sup- 
 ported the Revolution and was made wagon master for Chanceford 
 township by the Committee of Safety. He died on his estates 
 February 18, 1779, being survived by his widow, Margaret, an 
 only son, David, great-grandfather of the President, and daughters 
 Esther, Jean, Elizabeth and Susan. The widow subsequently 
 married Thomas McCulloch. She died in the winter of 1781.
 
 A MAN OF HONOR AND INTEGRITY, 63 
 
 "This leads us down to David McKinley, grandson of the 
 immigrant and great-grandfather of the President. He was born 
 on the old homestead in Chanceford township, May 16, 1755. In 
 1776 he enlisted in Captain Reed's Company of Ferrymen in the 
 war of the Revolution. This was the the Seventh Company of 
 the Eighth Battalion of York county militia. The militiamen, it 
 should be remembered, were called out in emergencies and were 
 drafted in sections for active service making what were then 
 called tours of service. In this way nearly all the militia of Penn- 
 sylvania saw many tours of service, much hard fighting and the 
 most perilous kind of military life. 
 
 "The local historians of York County had been in corre- 
 spondence with the President respecting his York County antece- 
 dents. He had expressed himself as much gratified by their 
 researches and interest in his ancestry, and faithfully promised, 
 at an opportune time, to visit the scenes of his ancestral abode. 
 Several dates for the proposed visit were partly agreed upon, and 
 great preparations for the visit were in prospect when the 
 critical events preceding the outbreak of the Spanish War com- 
 pelled successive postponements of the visit. 
 
 u As a matter of interest we may add that a muster roll of the 
 company of which his great-grandfather was a member, and ever 
 since the Revolution in the possession of the descendants of 
 Colonel John Hay, was some years ago presented to the President 
 and received by him with many expressions of delight and 
 satisfaction."
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Career of President McKinley Raised to Rank of Captain 
 and Brevet- Major in the Army Romance of Early Life 
 Conspicuous Acts of Legislation During His Adminis- 
 tration as President. 
 
 A SSOCI ATED with the glorious names and memories of Wash- 
 ** ington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Jackson, Lincoln and 
 Grant as a man twice chosen in succession by the people to be the 
 Chief Magistrate of the nation, at one of the great epochs in its 
 history, the American who died at Buffialo September 14, had not 
 yet completed the even threescore years of life, though in the fifty- 
 eight years allotedto him in private life and in public place, he had 
 run the whole gamut of human experience, nobly acquitting himself 
 in each stage in a way that gave visible embodiment to American 
 ideals and splendid traditions of things accomplished in all that 
 he set his hands to do. 
 
 As a studious boy and gall \nt soldier ; then in private life an 
 able lawyer skilled in his profession ; a public man whose re-elec- 
 tion seven times in succession to Congress represented the confi- 
 dence and unerring belief of his own neighbors ; as Governor 
 and then as President, the broad patriotic statesman whose policies 
 commanded regard at home and respect abroad, the boy born at 
 Niles, O., on January 29, 1843, represented in his struggles and 
 successes the typical American in a Republic which is opportunity 
 ior the humblest. 
 
 No President came of better stock, and it was to the sturdi- 
 ness of frame and mind, and not to the mere accidents of birth or 
 position, that made William McKinley a marked figure, whether 
 as a boy of eighteen, serving the Union on the field of battle or as 
 a President at fifty-three, planning policies that made it a nation 
 high iu the world's councils. The ancestors of the latest 
 President of the United States were Covenanters in Scotland 
 Jacobites in Ireland, Revolutionary heroes in America men who 
 
 64
 
 JOHN D. LONG 
 
 SECRETARY OF THE NAVY
 
 GEORGE B. CORTELYOU 
 
 SECRETARY TO PRESIDENT McKINLEY
 
 ELIHU ROOT-SECRETARY OF WAR
 
 CHARLES EMORY SMITH 
 
 POSTMASTER GENERAL
 
 DR. P. M. RIXEY 
 
 PRIVATE PHYSICIAN TO PRESIDENT McKINLEY AND FAMILY
 
 DR. ROSWELL P. PARK 
 SURGEON IN ATTENDANCE UPON PRESIDENT McKINLEY
 
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 SECRET SERVICE MEN FOSTER AND IRELAND WHO CAPTURED 
 
 McKIN LEY'S ASSASSIN
 
 LYMAN J. GAGE-SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY
 
 CAREER OF PRESIDENT McKINLEY. 65 
 
 fought and prayed and loved freedom ; men on whose grave, stead- 
 fast natures the world's opposition wrought about the same im- 
 pression as does the wave on the rock. On his mother's side, 
 Mr. McKinley was descended from a race which has contributed 
 moral and mental fiber to the American race equally with the 
 Scotch-Irish the Teutonic. 
 
 The first McKinley in the new world settled near York, Pa., 
 and David McKinley, the President's great-grandfather, was one 
 of those who sprang to arms at the summons of '76. . He was 
 among the first " expansionists "of this country moving his 
 family, like so many other Revolutionary veterans after peace 
 with England had been declared, to the then "continuous wilds" 
 of Ohio, and there helping to found a State. 
 
 STRUGGLE TO GAIN AN EDUCATION. 
 
 The patriot's grandson, William McKinley, Sr., was one of 
 the pioneers in the iron industry at Niles, O., which he estab- 
 lished at Fairfield, O., in 1827, when he was twenty years old, and 
 the husband of Nancy Campbell Allison, then a young woman of 
 eighteen. When the elder McKinleys moved to Niles it cannot 
 be said that the ironmaster's home represented anything more 
 than the frugal, thrifty households of the neighboring farmers. 
 The iron industry in the '305 in rural Ohio had none of the 
 return for labor or capital that are common to-day. 
 
 So the early years of the twentieth President of the United 
 States, if not spent exactly in poverty, at least represented that strug- 
 gle to gain an education and position and home comforts that made 
 the American character and the American spirit one of ceaseless 
 endeavor and unresting ambitions. The seventh son in a family 
 of nine as a small child had, therefore, none of the surroundings 
 that are supposed to weaken one for the conflicts of life. On the 
 contrary, from the very first there was everything to inure one to 
 hardship and to suggest with peculiar force the American idea 
 that every one had his future in his own hands, in his own efforts. 
 
 As was natural in the Western Reserve, the elder McKinleys 
 had the pioneers' passion for education, and by the time William
 
 66 CAREER OF PRESIDENT McKINLEY. 
 
 had gone for a few years to the public school at Niles his parents 
 decided to remove to Poland, in Mahoning County, where the 
 educational opportunities were better. In leaving Niles the 
 McKinleys departed a locality famous as the birthplace of celeb- 
 rities. Less than one hundred miles away, at Lancaster, the 
 two Shermans, soldier and Senator, were born and raised ; thirty 
 miles away, at Cuyahoga, President Garfield, the second martyr, 
 first saw the light ; in Delaware, not far distant, was born another 
 President, Rutherford B. Hayes. 
 
 Poland was a New England town in every sense but a geo- 
 graphical one. The New England spirit of discussion, of ambi- 
 tion, of religious fervor and intense political feeling, actuated the 
 democratic little colony, whose richest man could not draw his 
 check for $10,000. No doubt, this plunge into an atmosphere 
 of pugnacious denominationalism, bitter pro- and anti-slavery 
 debate, temperance agitation and discussion of the new startling 
 doctrine of woman's rights inculcated by Lucretia Mott through 
 the strong Quaker element in the town was a strong factor in 
 young McKinley's development. He joined in everything but 
 play, for which he evinced indifference wlien a book was to be had. 
 He joined, at the age of sixteen, the Methodist Church, of which 
 he always remained a staunch member. 
 
 OWED MUCH TO HIS MOTHER. 
 
 Though he did not follow her specific leanings in the matter 
 of sect, it was from his mother that he absorbed his religious 
 inspirations, and he was nearer to her in traits and character than 
 to his father. He resembled her strongly in face, in manner and 
 in many mental peculiarities. She was an Allison, of Scotch 
 Covenanter stock. There were Allisons among the victims of 
 Claverhouse's dragoons, and there were other Allisons who, after 
 long imprisonment for conscience sake, left their homes in the 
 Lowlands and sought religious freedom in the American colonies. 
 
 Nancy Allison had the characteristics of her race, and her 
 life in Ohio developed her natural gifts of management, thrift 
 and earnestness. She was profoundly religious, and at the same
 
 CAREER OF PRESIDENT McKINLEY. 67 
 
 time intensely practical. She imparted the stamp of her vigorous 
 character to all her offspring. There was no black sheep in her 
 flock. The children grew up to be serious, competent, indepen- 
 dent men and women, and the President was but typical of the 
 
 stock. 
 
 EARNEST AND SUCCESSFUL STUDENT. 
 
 His early education was received at the Poland Academy, 
 where the children of the well-to-do, although this meant very 
 little in those days, were sent. It was meagre enough, and to 
 keep him there was not accomplished without sacrifice on his 
 part as well as the family's. However, by studying and teaching 
 others as well as himself, and having the bar in view, he was 
 able, in 1860, to enter the junior class at Allegheny College, at 
 Meadville, Pa., at seventeen, having earned his matriculation 
 fees by teaching in neighboring village schools. Here he 
 plunged into study with such stern earnestness that his health 
 broke down before he had completed his first year's course. 
 Returning, he found the family in financial straits, owing to 
 his father's failure in business. So far from finishing his educa- 
 tion, it became his duty to help provide for the family, and 
 he manfully undertook it, accepting a position as teacher at $25 
 a month, and later became a clerk in the Poland post office, his 
 first slight touch with the Federal Government to whose defense 
 he was to fly next year and in whose broader service he was to 
 lead a nation of 76,000,000 a generation later. 
 
 In his study years McKinley was very fond of mathematics, 
 but for Latin he cared little, although he always passed his 
 examinations creditably. In the colleges and academies at that 
 time mathematics, grammar and the dead languages constituted 
 pretty much the whole stock of instruction. He showed no fond- 
 ness for the debates of the literary societies or the orations of the 
 regular Saturday school exercises, but he was known as a good 
 essay writer and was a forceful reasoner rather than a mere 
 rhetorician. But he was not destined to remain the village school- 
 master long, for the "irrepressible conflict" soon became a fact 
 and on June n, 1861, William McKinley became a private in
 
 fiS CAREER OF PRESIDENT McKINLEY. 
 
 Company E, of the Twenty-third Ohio Volunteer Infantry. The 
 Twenty-third Ohio was mustered into service by General Fremont 
 in June, 1861. William S. Rosecrans was its first colonel and the 
 future President Hayes its first major, and Stanley Matthews, 
 afterward United States Senator and Justice of the Supreme Court, 
 its first lieutenant-colonel. 
 
 With the Twenty-third Ohio young McKinley saw some of 
 the hardest fighting of the Civil War, and gained a distinguished 
 record with which every one is familiar. Under McClellan he 
 served in the Kanawha campaign, to which West Virginia owes 
 its existence as a separate State. His first commission, that of 
 lieutenant, came to him after the battle of Antietam, during 
 which, in his character of commissary, he imposed on himself the 
 task, which to a more self-seeking nature would have been dis- 
 tasteful, of cooking rations for the more fortunate comrades who 
 were fighting at the front, but it is a matter of record that young 
 McKinley did not stay in the rear, but served his fellows with 
 coffee and rations on the firing line itself. 
 
 ON STAFF OF GENERAL HAYES. 
 
 This seemed to him so simple and natural a thing to do, it 
 was but his duty, that he was much surprised to receive a com- 
 mission a few days later, on a recommendation signed by General 
 Hayes, who spoke in the highest esteem of him and made him a 
 member of his staff, a first lieutenancy coming a few months 
 later, on February 7, 1863, while his captaincy was won on July 
 25, 1864, for gallantry at the battle of Kernstown, near Win- 
 chester, Va. 
 
 His career kept on being onward and upward. He served on 
 the staffs of General George Cook and General Winsfield S. Han- 
 cock, voted for Lincoln in the field, and, in 1865, was assigned as 
 Acting Assistant Adjutant General on the staff of General Samuel 
 S. Carroll, commanding the veteran reserve corps at Washington, 
 and it was while he was in Washington that he was commissioned 
 by President Lincoln as Major by brevet in the Volunteer United 
 States Army "for gallant and meritorious services at the battles
 
 CAREER OF PRESIDENT McKINLEY. Ca 
 
 i 
 
 of Opequan, Cedar Creek and Fisher' s Hill." At Cedar Creek, 
 General Sheridan, on his way to Winchester had noticed him, a 
 boy of 21 rallying the demoralized troops with the intrepidity 
 of a seasoned soldier and the authority of a man. He remained with 
 the regiment nntil it was mustered out, and some idea of his grit 
 and constitution is given when it is known that during all his 
 four years' service he had never been absent once from his com- 
 mand on sick leave. 
 
 Some idea of the impression the future President made on 
 his associates during his military career is given in the words of 
 President Hayes, who, on one occasion, in talking of McKinley's 
 splendid characteristics, said : 
 
 TRIBUTE FROM PRESIDENT HAYES. 
 
 "When I first made his acquaintance he was a boy just past 
 the age of eighteen. He, with me, entered ori a new, strange 
 life, a soldier's life in the time of actual war. It was soon found 
 that he had unusual character for the business of war. Young as 
 he was, we soon found him, in executive ability, a man of unusual 
 and unsurpassed capacity. When battles were fought or service 
 was to be performed in warlik^ ^h.ngf: he always took his place. 
 The night was never too dark, the weather, never too cold for 
 prompt and efficient performance of his duty. When I became 
 commander of the regiment he soon came to me on my staff, and I 
 learned to know him like a book and love him like a brother. He 
 naturally progressed, for his talent and capacity could not be 
 unknown. 
 
 " The bloodiest day of the war, the day on which more men 
 were killed and wounded than on any other day of the war, was 
 the seventeenth of September, 1862, in the battle of Antietam. 
 That battle began at daylight. Without breakfast, without coffee, 
 the men went into the fight and continued until after the sun went 
 down. Early in the afternoon they were famished and thirsty. 
 The commissary department of the brigade was under Sergeant 
 McKinley's administration and a better choice could not have been 
 made, for when the issue came he performed a notable deed of
 
 70 CAREER OF PRESIDENT McKINLEY. 
 
 daring at the crisis of the battle, when it was uncertain which way 
 victory would turn. For fitting up two wagons with necessary 
 supplies he drove them through a storm of shells and bullets to 
 the assistance of his hungry and thirsty fellow soldiers. 
 
 " The mules of one wagon were disabled, but McKinley 
 drove the other safely through and was received with hearty 
 cheers, and from, his hands every man in the regiment was served 
 with hot coffee and warm meats, a thing that had never occurred 
 under similar circumstances in any other army in the world. 
 He passed under the fire and delivered with his own hands those 
 things so essential for the men for whom he was laboring." 
 
 PROMPT TO ACT IN EMERGENCIES. 
 
 When, in later years, Major McKinley' s qualities -as a 
 manager of important undertakings were called into question 
 by somebody, the reply was made by one familiar with his 
 record : " A man, who, before he had attained the age of twenty- 
 one, kept up the supplies of the army for General Crook in active 
 service in the field is not lacking in business ability." That 
 his action in an emergency and under great stress of circum- 
 stances is prompt and wise is shown by an incident occurring 
 during Sheridan's great battle at Opequan, when Captain Mc- 
 Kinley, an aid-de-camp on the staff of General Sheridan, brought 
 a verbal order to General Duval, commanding the second division, 
 to move his command quickly to a position on the right of the 
 Sixth Corps, the First Division having previously been ordered 
 to that position. 
 
 General Duval, on receiving the order, asked: "By what 
 route shall I move my command ? " 
 
 Captain McKinley, knowing no more about the country than 
 did General Duval, and without definite orders, replied : "I would 
 move up this creek." 
 
 General Duval replied : "I will not budge without definite 
 orders." 
 
 In reply Captain McKinley said : " This is a time of great 
 emergency, general. I order you, by command of General
 
 CAREER OF PRESIDENT McKINLEY. 71 
 
 Crook, to move your command up this ravine to a position on 
 the right of the army." 
 
 General Duval obeyed and moved on the route indicated by 
 the young aid-de-camp, attained the position, charged the enemy 
 and drove them in confusion from their works, as the result of the 
 responsibility taken by Captain McKinley in this critical moment. 
 
 Of his personal courage in battle, a historian writing of the 
 tattle of Kernstown, near Winchester, of July 24, 1864, says : 
 " When it became necessary to fall back, it was discovered that 
 one of the regiments was still at the point where it was posted at 
 the beginning of the battle. General Hayes, turning to Lieutenant 
 McKinley, directed him to go and bring away this regiment if it 
 had noc already fallen back. McKinley turned his horse, and, 
 keenly spurring it, pushed at a forced gallop obliquely toward the 
 advancing enemy. A sad look came over General Hayes's face, as 
 he saw this gallant youth push rapidly forward to almost cer- 
 tain death. None of us expected to see him again as we watched 
 him push his horse through the open fields, over fences, over 
 ditches, while a well-directed fire from the enemy was pouring 
 upon him, with shells exploding around, about and over him. 
 
 MASTERLY COURAGE IN DANGER. 
 
 "Once he was completely enveloped in the smoke of an 
 exploding shell, and we thought he had gone down, but out or 
 this smoke emerged a wiry little brown horse with McKinley still 
 firmly seated, as erect as a hussar. He reached the regiment and 
 gave the order to fall back. The colonel in reply said : ' I am 
 ready to go wherever you shall lead, but, lieutenant, I believe I 
 ought to give these fellows a volley or two before I go.' McKin- 
 ley' s reply was : ' Then up and at them as quickly as possible,' 
 and on orders the regiment arose, gave the enemy a crushing vol- 
 ley, followed with a rattling fire, and then slowly retreated under 
 McKinley's lead toward Winchester. 
 
 " As McKinley drew up by the side of Hayes after bringing 
 the regiment to the brigade, General Hayes said : 4 McKinley, I 
 never expected to see you in life again.' '
 
 72 CAREER OF PRESIDENT McKINLEY. 
 
 According to the official roster of the Twenty-third Ohio the 
 full list of the engagements in which McKinley took part run as 
 follows : Carnifex Ferry, September 10, 1861 ; Clark's Hollow, 
 May i, 1862 ; Princeton, W. Va., May 15, 1862 ; South Mountain, 
 Md., September 14, 1862 ; Antietam, September 17, 1862 ; Cloyd's 
 Mountain, Va., May 9, 1864 ; New River Bridge, Va., May 10, 
 1864 ; Buffalo Gap, W. Va., June 6, 1864 ; Lexington, W. Va., 
 June, 10, 1864 ; Buchanan, W. Va., June 14, 1864 ; Otter Creek, 
 Va., June 16, 1864 ; Buford's Gap, Va., July 21, 1864 ; Winchester, 
 Va., July 24, 1864 ; Berryville, Va., September 3, 1864 ; Opequan, 
 Va., September 19, 1864; Fisher's Hill, Va., September 22, 1864 ; 
 Cedar Creek, Va., October 10, 1864. 
 
 DESTINED TO ENTER PUBLIC LIFE. 
 
 After being mustered out and resisting an inclination to join 
 the regular army, young McKinley studied law in the office of 
 Charles E. (afterward Judge) Glidden, and attended lectures at the 
 Albany Law School. In 1867 he was admitted to the Bar. At that 
 moment in American history, above all others, to be a lawyer was 
 inevitably to enter public life. Those about him instinctively saw 
 that among men who could dream here was a man who could exe- 
 cute. Poland, a mere village of some few hundred people, was 
 plainly not the place for the u rising" young lawyer, and acting 
 on his own convictions and the advice of his elder sister, Annie, a 
 teacher who had helped him before when money affairs became 
 tightened, in 1867 he moved to Canton, then a flourishing town y 
 his father and mother following him. 
 
 The wisdom of the choice now became apparent. Canton was 
 a lively town, the center of a region that was making rapid ad- 
 vances through its manufacturing interests, and, moreover, it gave 
 his energies the needed political outlet, for almost immediately 
 after his admission as a lawyer and his removal to the larger field 
 of Canton for practice came the Ohio gubernatorial campaign of 
 1867, whose most bitterly contested feature was a constitutional 
 amendment conceding negro suffrage. In defense of the rights of 
 the colored man McKinley made his first political speech, and the
 
 CAREER OF PRESIDENT McKINLEY. 73 
 
 Republicans carried the election although the amendment itself 
 was lost. 
 
 By this time he had begun to feel at home in his profession, 
 and his success before his neighbors was such that in 1869, 
 although Stark County was usually Democratic, he was elected 
 to his first public office as prosecuting attorney, and from that 
 time on until he was elected President, in 1896, Major McKinley 
 never lost his hold on public life or the affections of the people, 
 first of his county, then of his district, then of his State and then 
 of the country. The methods followed in 1869 in his campaign 
 were those of his after life. He was assiduous in his campaign- 
 ing and persuasive, not antagonistic, in his arguments. 
 
 A REMARKABLE SPEECH. 
 
 Men who heard his first speech say that it was strong and 
 logical, and insist that they then foresaw a great career in public 
 life for the young lawyer. However that may have been, it is 
 certain that McKinley was at once welcomed by the Republican 
 county leaders as a valuable recruit, and was given numerous 
 appointments in that campaign, and in the Presidential campaign 
 of 1868, to speak at town halls and schoolhouses throughout the 
 county, and so, when his own campaign of 1869 came along, he 
 was not without political experience. 
 
 It was while he was prosecuting attorney that the romance 
 of family life, which had hitherto been left by him chiefly as a 
 loved and loving son, took a new turn, and the courtship and 
 marriage of Miss Ida Saxton made him the devoted husband 
 whose later sacrifices for a beloved wife consecrated the marriage 
 tie. and the devotion of a lifetime before his people as has been 
 the case with few men in public life. It is said fehe courtship of 
 the attorney of twenty-eight was very characteristic. He was a 
 Methodist Sunday-school teacher, and Miss Saxton conducted a 
 Bible class in a Presbyterian Church. At a certain street corner 
 each Sunday they met, and used to chat about their work. For 
 months this continued ; then one afternoon he said to her: "This 
 separation each Sunday I don't like at all you going one way
 
 74 CAREER OF PRESIDENT McKINLEY. 
 
 and I another. Suppose after this we always go the same way, 
 what do you think ? " 
 
 " I think so, too," was the quick reply. 
 
 Mrs. McKinley, or rather Miss Saxton, had been, quite the 
 belle of Canton. She was a granddaughter of the veteran Ohio 
 journalist, John Saxton, and a daughter of James A. Saxton, a 
 banker, capitalist and man of affairs. Miss Saxton had, therefore, 
 unusual opportunities for Canton. She was well educated and 
 after her graduation from Brook Hall Seminary, at Media, Pa., 
 the father sent her to Europe with her sister to give her a broader 
 view of the world and fit her for the earnest duties of life. The 
 older sister had married and gone to Cleveland to live and the 
 father hoped that Ida would form no early love attachment and 
 would remain in his home to brighten his life. 
 
 GIRLS SHOULD BE TAUGHT INDEPENDENCE. 
 
 It is said that he systematically discouraged the addresses of 
 all young men and that for the purpose of giving his daughter a 
 serious bent he persuaded her on her return from the foreign tour 
 to go into his bank as his assistant. There Ida was installed as 
 cashier. He had won a comfortable fortune, but his theory about 
 girls was that they should be taught a business that would make 
 them independent of marriage and enable them to be self-support- 
 ing in case the parents should leave Ithem without sufficient 
 property for their support. 
 
 But the stalwart young lawyer had his way, the father con- 
 sented and the marriage, which took place on January 25, 1871, was 
 a happy one, but the early loss of the two children that came to 
 bless it, one in 1871 and the other in 1873, followed by the life- 
 long invalidism of his wife, was one of the early crosses that only 
 seemed to give greater firmness to the character, greater kindness 
 to the heart. For fi>e years he took up the duties of private life 
 and became one of the best campaigners of the State, he himself 
 holding no office, but it was then that in discussing public ques- 
 tions he began to concentrate his attention on what he believed to 
 be the most important of national problems, the tariff.
 
 CAREER OF PRESIDENT McKINLEY. 75 
 
 Born and bred in a manufacturing town, he had felt the pulse 
 of industrial prosperity, noted how it nagged or quickened accord- 
 ing as the depressing influence of cheap foreign competition was 
 applied or removed. The inexorable logic of idle workmen, fire- 
 less hearths and hungry children, forced him. to take a position 
 from which he never deviated, and it came to be understood that 
 " Protection for American industries and McKinley " were synony- 
 mous terms. 
 
 In 1876 he stepped from the local platform on the wider 
 rostrum of Congressional life. Ke had long familiarized himself 
 with the conditions in the Eighteenth Ohio District and his first 
 campaign in the year when his neighbor and friend, General 
 Hayes, became President, was one that presented few difficulties 
 for himself. He won by a handsome majority, and despite all the 
 changes of form in his district, it having been gerrymandered a 
 number of times, he was re-elected seven consecutive times, 
 though it is true his majority in one case, the campaign of 1882, 
 was only 8. It was after this that all his nominations were by 
 
 acclamation. 
 
 FIRST SPEECH IN THE HOUSE. 
 
 His first speech before Congress was in opposition to Fernando 
 Wood's non-protective bill, introduced into the House in 1878. 
 Naturally, active and strong opposition was aroused by so able 
 and uncompromising a foe to free trade and the remedy of 
 gerrymandering was resorted to. In 1878 there was a re-arrange- 
 ment of his Congressional district, which placed Stark County 
 in safely opposition company. General Aquila Wiley, a popular 
 man, with a brilliant war record, was nominated against him. 
 That McKinley 's force dominated something more than districts 
 was shown by the fact that, despite the gerrymandering, he was 
 returned with 15,489 votes against 14,255 for Wiley. On his 
 return to Congress he became more and more a foe to the fiscal 
 policy of his opponents and his high value to his party was 
 recognized when he succeeded Garfield as a member of the Ways 
 and Means Committee in 1881, thus becoming one of " Pig-Iron" 
 Kelley's chief lieutenants.
 
 76 CAREER OF PRESIDENT McKINLEY. 
 
 Again and again efforts to defeat him failed, and his attacks 
 in the House on the "Morrison Tariff" in 1884 gave him a 
 national reputation, and his leadership in the tariff debate was 
 continued by his fight against the "Mills Bill" in 1888, as the 
 head of the Republican minority. It was in this year (1888) that 
 he was elected to Congress for the seventh consecutive, but, as it 
 proved, last time, and it was in this year also that the first sugges- 
 tion of his name for the Presidency was made. 
 
 It was the Chicago convention that nominated Harrison. 
 The delegates, convinced that Sherman was a political impossibility, 
 started a stampede for McKinley, which was only quelled by the 
 emphatic refusal of the Ohio statesman to betray the constituency 
 who had sent him to the convention to nominate Sherman. 
 Memorable in the history of political campaigning are the words 
 with which he concluded a speech in which gracious appreciation 
 of an honor was finally mingled with earnest recall to a duty : "I 
 demand that no delegate who would not cast reflection upon ine 
 shall vote for me." 
 
 GAINED THE GOOD WILL OF ALL. 
 
 It was such sterling political qualities as these that gave the 
 statesman a hold on all who came in contact with him in any way. 
 Events were moving fast to make him a national figure. In Con- 
 gress for the last time, the death of William D. Kelly, in January, 
 1890 made McKinley the Chairman of the Ways and Means 
 Committee and leader of his party in the House. He was not 
 unprepared for such a position, as his first speech in Congress 
 had been on the tariff issue, and since 1881 his whole attention 
 had been devoted to a study of the subject, so that he was the 
 master of the fact and theory. During these years of debate 
 he had won from friends and opponents a reputation as a singu- 
 larly clear and logical debater, who had a great talent for mar- 
 shaling facts in order like a column of troops, and threwing them 
 against the vital point in a controversy. 
 
 He had a pleasing voice of good, strong quality, he never 
 rambled, he told no anecdotes, he indulged in no sophomoric
 
 CAREER OF PRESIDENT McKINLEY. 77 
 
 flights of oratory ; lie went straight to the marrow of his theme 
 by processes of argument and illustration so clear, simple and 
 direct that he won respect and admiration from both sides of the 
 House. One of his leading opponents used to say that he had to 
 brace himself mentally not to be carried away by the strong 
 undercurrent of McKinley's irresistibly persuasive talk. 
 
 As a result of these years of study and experience he laid 
 before Congress and carried through two important measures 
 the customs administration bill and the famous McKinley tariff 
 bill the " McKinley bill," by virtue of its eminence, the latter 
 not only giving him. fame with his countrymen, but a notoriety 
 in Europe of the most far-reaching character. The McKinley bill 
 became a law on October 6, 1890, and unfortunately on his head 
 and on his bill fell all the odium of the hard times which were 
 due to other policies of other men, and as a result of a third 
 gerrymandering of his district and a reaction against his party 
 he was defeated for Congress in November, but not until he had 
 wrested three out of four counties of his district from the Demo- 
 crats and was beaten by only 302 votes, having reduced the 
 enemy's probable majority by 2800. 
 
 PROTECTION TO AMERICAN HOMES. 
 
 The law of 1890 was enacted for the American people and 
 the American home. Whatever mistakes were made in it were 
 all made in favor of the occupations and the firesides of the 
 American people. It didn't take away a single day's work from 
 a solitary workingman. It gave work and wages to all, such as 
 they had never had before. It did it by establishing new and 
 great industries in this country, which increased the demand for 
 the skill and handiwork of our laborers everywhere. It had no 
 friends in Kurope. It gave their industries no stimulus. It gave 
 no employment to their labor at the expense of our own. 
 
 During more than two years of the administration of Presi- 
 dent Harrison, and down to its end, it raised all the revenue 
 necessary to pay the vast expenditures of the Government, 
 including the interest on the public debt and the pensions. It
 
 71 CAREER OF PRESIDENT McKINLEY. 
 
 never encroached upon the gold reserve, which in the past had 
 always been sacredly preserved for the redemption of outstanding 
 paper obligations of the Government. 
 
 " During all of its operations, down to the change and reversal 
 of its policy by the election of 1892, no man can assert that in the 
 industries affected by it wages were too high, although they were 
 higher than ever before in this or any other country. If any 
 such can be found, I beg that they be named. I challenge the 
 enemies of the law of 1890 to name a single industry of that 
 kind. Further, I assert that in the industries affected by that 
 law, which the law fostered, no American consumer suffered by 
 the increased cost of any home products that he bought. He 
 never bought them so low before, nor did he ever enjoy the 
 benefit of so much open, free, home competition. Neither 
 producer nor consumer, employer or employee, suffered by that law. 
 
 LARGEST VOTE EVER CAST FOR GOVERNOR. 
 
 What the people of Ohio thought of the matter was proved 
 by their making him Governor the next year, he polling the 
 largest vote ever cast for Governor, and in 1893, when renomi- 
 nated to that office, his plurality was the largest ever given a 
 gubernatorial candidate in time of peace. It was while he was 
 Governor that he was a delegate to the Minneapolis convention 
 that renominated Harrison, where he again displayed his sense 
 of honor and stood by the President. He was chairman of the 
 convention and an attempt was made to railroad him in over the 
 heads of both Harrison and Elaine, but he steadfastly declined 
 the nomination, though the vote on the first ballot stood, Har- 
 rison, 535 ; Elaine, 182 ; McKinley, 182 : Reed, 4 ; Robert 
 Lincoln, i. 
 
 But the very sacrifices he made for his friends^ his rugged 
 honor and honorable frankness, coupled with his known policies, 
 made him the leader of his party as a man and as an exponent 
 of its economic theories of government and their application and 
 administration. Consequently, on June 18, 1896, at the Repub- 
 lican National Convention held at St. Louis, McKinley was
 
 CAREER OF PRESIDENT McKINLEY. 78 
 
 proposed for the Presidency for the third time. The situation 
 was not that of 1888 or 1892, the field was open to him and he 
 \vas nominated on the first ballot, receiving 66 1% votes, the 
 nearest to him, Reed, securing but 84^, and was elected in 
 November, receiving 7,104,799 votes at the polls, a plurality of 
 601,854 over Bryan, and in the electoral college 271 votes to 
 Bryan's 176. 
 
 The nomination and election of 1896 came to Major McKinley 
 when he was 53 years old, experienced in public life through his 
 splendid Congressional drill of fourteen years, from 1877 to 1891, and 
 his executive training as Governor of Ohio from 1892 to 1896. 
 Moreover, as one of the few rare and natural campaigners, the 
 President had come in touch with the people in a way that put him 
 thoroughly in touch with American hopes, feelings, aspirations. 
 He knew what the people believed in and he felt convinced that 
 he knew the policies, fiscal, economic, administrative, that meant 
 their welfare and permanent rehabilitation of the industries of the 
 entire country. In all his career he had never gotten out of touch 
 with the plain people, those who make up the brain and brawn of 
 the nation, and it was as their choice that he went into the White 
 House in 1897. 
 
 A CRITICAL PERIOD. 
 
 No President ever entered upon his duties at a more critical 
 moment. The country had passed through a severe industrial 
 and financial crisis, the unwise legislation of Democratic theorists 
 with the threat of their monetary vagaries had paralyzed manu- 
 factures, halted trade, put an embargo on commerce and shrunk 
 credit to such an extent that the complex business needs of the 
 country were absolutely powerless despite the vast natural 
 resources and the energy of the people. During the campaign the 
 President had not hesitated to predict returning prosperity if the 
 economic policy of the Democrats be reversed and the country rest 
 its finances on the gold standard. 
 
 On election the way he met the gigantic issues which awaited 
 him on his induction into office on March 4, 1897, and the supreme
 
 SO CAREER OF PRESIDENT McKINLEY. 
 
 skill with which he sailed the Ship of State through very stormy 
 waters won the admiration of the whole country. Immediately 
 convening Congress in extraordinary session, he recommended a 
 consideration of the tariff problem. The Dingley law was passed, 
 and business prospects brightend instantly. Under the low 
 Wilson bill tariff financial failures in the country during the 
 first six months of 1896 alone numbered 7,602, with liabilities 
 amounting to $105,535,936. 
 
 The first six months of 1900 under " McKinley times" 
 showed the smallest number of failures known in a like period of 
 time within eighteen years, the decrease in liabilities alone from 
 the first half of 1896 being $45,471,728. 
 
 SOUND CURRENCY BASIS. 
 
 The President's plan to provide a more stable currency basis, 
 as set forth in his first and second annual addresses, was that 
 " when any of the United States notes are presented for redemp- 
 tion in gold and are redeemed in gold, such notes shall be kept 
 and set apart and only paid out in exchange for gold," but though 
 the Dingley bill became law on July 24, 1897, it was not until 
 March 14, 1900, that the financial reforms of the McKinley 
 administration were completed in the passage of the " Gold 
 Standard Act." 
 
 The President's messages, after prosperity had been assured 
 by the tariff measure, so that the President indeed proved that 
 the campaign phrase dubbing William McKinley the " advance 
 agent of prosperity " had been no idle boast, were marked by a 
 broad grasp of the practical problems in hand which took on more 
 and more of an international character as the difficulties with 
 Spain over Cuba increased and the Kastern situation owing to the 
 weakness of China took on a threatening attitude. 
 
 In his message to the special session of 1897, which enacted 
 the Dingley law, the President had dwelt wholly on the tariff, but 
 in his regular message to Congress, in December, 1897, he asked 
 for the full consideration of the currency question, and he re- 
 peated this recommendation in 1898, holding before Congress the
 
 CAREER OF PRESIDENT McKINLEY. 81 
 
 necessity of putting the finances of the country on the soundest 
 possible basis. As a result of this confidence was restored 
 throughout the country, business revived, and some of the fiscal 
 effects of McKinley's first administration were marvelous. The 
 total money in circulation on July i, 1896, was $1,509,725,206. 
 
 Four years later under McKinley that had increased to 
 $2,062,425,496, and on February i, 1901, the total money in 
 circulation was $2,190,780,213. Instead of the amount of money 
 in circulation decreasing, the per capita increased from $21.15 
 Tuly i, 1896, to $26.50 Jnly i, 1900, and to $28.38 February i, 
 1901. Thus the per capita circulation of money in the United 
 States has increased over 26 per cent., the total money in circula- 
 tion over 33 per cent., and the gold in circulation over 62 per 
 
 cent. 
 
 IMMENSE CASH BALANCE. 
 
 Instead of a bankrupt Treasury, there was a cash balance 
 under the old form at the beginning of his second administration 
 of nearly $300,000,000. Under the new form, with $150,000,000 
 set aside as a reserve fund, there was an available cash balance 
 of nearly $150,000,000. In the refunding of the public debt, 
 $9,000,000 was saved, and in addition $7,000,000 annually on 
 interest. But it was not so much the successful issue of the 
 financial affairs, as near as they were to the pockets of every one, 
 that lifted the President and his administration to a level never 
 before occupied by a group of american statesmen, but the brilliant 
 achievements in the field of foreign affairs, which found the 
 United States at the beginning of the President's administration 
 a self-contained continental power, isolated and ignored in many 
 of the counsels of the world powers, and left it at the close of his 
 first administration, after the issue of the war with Spain, one ol 
 the four leading powers, in whose hands are the destinies of the 
 globe. 
 
 The first remote hint of a possible conflict with Spain and 
 the first action in Congress on the Cuban question came from the 
 Presidential appeal for the relief of the destitution of Cuba, Con- 
 gress appropriating $50,000 on May 17, 1897, Less than a yeai
 
 82 CAREER OF PRESIDENT McKINLEY. 
 
 later, as tlie situation in Cuba failed to improve, Congress passed 
 the famous $50,000,000 appropriation on March 8, 1898, to be used 
 at the President's discretion " for the national defense," and, 
 although the President was opposed to hurrying into a war until 
 all other avenues for bringing Spain to her senses were closed, 
 war rapidly became the only possible solution. 
 
 On March 23, the President sent to Spain an ultimatum con- 
 cerning f he intolerable situation in Cuba, and on April n, after 
 the report of the ^burt of Inquiry on the destruction of the "Maine" 
 had fixed the origin of the explosion on an outside cause, the 
 President sent a firm but dignified message to Congress, advising 
 intervention for the sake of humanity, but advising against a 
 recognition of the Cuban Government. 
 
 CALL FOR VOLUNTEERS. 
 
 On April 23, the President issued a call for 125,000 volunteers, 
 and in a message to Congress on April 25, the President recom- 
 mended the passage of a joint resolution declaring that war with 
 Spain existed. The acts of war then came fast and thick. 
 Dewey's victory at Manila on May i, was followed by the defeat 
 of Cervera at Santiago July 3, Hawaii was annexed on July 7, and 
 on August 9, Spain formally accepted the President's terms of 
 peace, the armistice following on August 12, and the final treaty 
 of peace being signed on December 10, 1898, by which the United 
 States became possessed of Porto Rico, Guam, the Philippines, a 
 colonial domain rivaling England's at a cost of $20,000,000, and 
 the President's policy of expansion was fully entered in upon with 
 the evident approval of the people. 
 
 The war, however, not only added to the bounds and respon- 
 sibilities of the United States, but was largely responsible under 
 the influence of the President in his intercourse with public men: 
 of the opposition in promoting an era of good feeling. The com- 
 plete obliteration of sectional lines had been secured and the 
 President found as his first term came to an end that he was more 
 truly than for many years past the President of a united country. 
 
 The influence of his example, the power of his position and
 
 CAREER OF PRESIDENT McKINLEY. 83 
 
 all the force of his ability were constantly given to this end, and 
 his gratification at the fulfillment of so noble an inspiration found 
 voice at Atlanta in these words " Reunited one country again 
 and one country forever ! Proclaim it from the press and pulpit ; 
 teach it in the schools ; write it across the skies ! The world sees 
 and feels it ; it cheers every heart North and South, and brightens 
 the life of every American home ! Let nothing ever strain it 
 again ! At peace with all the world and with each other, what can 
 stand in the pathway of our progress and prosperity." 
 
 Later, upon the field of Aiitietam, where he had distinguished 
 himself as commissary sergeant when a lad of nineteen, the Presi- 
 dent spoke again upon this subject, and said : "Standing here to- 
 day, one reflection only has crowded my mind the difference 
 between this scene and that of thirty-eight years ago. Then the 
 men who wore the blue and the men who wore the grey greeted 
 each other with shot and shell, and visited death upon their re- 
 spective ranks. We meet, after all these intervening years, with 
 but one sentiment that of loyalty to the Government of the 
 United States, love of our flag and our free institutions, and de- 
 termined, men of the North and men of the South, to make any 
 sacrifice for the honor and perpetuity of the American nation." 
 
 HIS SUCCESSFUL POLICY. 
 
 The President thus stood for reconciliation and harmony the 
 land over, and in carrying out his policies he was able by his 
 persuasive powers and the sheer force of character to rally the 
 opposition to his side, so that his policy during and after the war 
 became the policy of Congress, and what, with the new islands 
 left to his care, Cuba also in his charge as a ward by treaty, the 
 closing years of his first administration were very busy ones for 
 the President, who, however, never flinched at his work nor 
 vacillated in his determination to promote the good of the people 
 under his charge, even though the misguided revolutionists in 
 the Philippines forced the United States during 1899, 1900 and 
 1901 to take stern measures for the securing of law, order, peace 
 and prosperity for the Philippine Islands as a whole.
 
 84 CAREER OF PRESIDENT McKINLEY. 
 
 Such was the confidence in the President and his wise man- 
 agement of national affairs that not. only was he triumphantly 
 renoininated by the Philadelphia convention on June 21, 1900, 
 but was triumphantly re-elected, November 6, with a larger 
 plurality than in 1896, and with 292 votes in the electoral college 
 to Bryan's 155. McKinley carried twenty -eight States, repre- 
 senting the wealth and resources and the centres of power in the 
 country to seventeen for Bryan, and the popular vote for him was 
 7,206,677. 
 
 This support of the people for the President as a public man, 
 and their personal regard for him, evinced so often on his tours 
 through the country, the last and not the least exhibition being 
 that made during the tour of last Spring, abandoned at San Fran- 
 cisco on account of Mrs. McKinley, were but faint reflections of 
 the closet support and regard of his friends. 
 
 BECAME A NOTABLE FIGURE. 
 
 " When he was pressing the passage of the famous tariff bill 
 which was known by his name, his frankness was only matched by 
 his amiability," wrote one man. "So when the bill had been passed, 
 McKinley was the most notable figure in Washington and he was 
 respected alike by those who had fought with and those who 
 had fought against him. There probably never was a measure 
 passed in Washington of so much importance as this with so little 
 hard feeling and so few hard words. There was no mistaking 
 McKinley' s intention. He was always entirely frank and open 
 and aboveboard. He tried no devious ways ; he had no concealed 
 traps to spring. And so those who fought him hardest became his 
 well-wishers as a man, whatever they thought of his policies." 
 
 This frankness and his true self were never better exhibited 
 than in the announcement made after his return from his Cali- 
 fornia tour with regard to a third term. Almost from the bedside 
 of his helpless wife he wrote : 
 
 " I regret that the suggestion of a thiid term has been made. 
 I doubt whether I am called up:m to give it notice. But there are
 
 CAREER OF PRESIDENT McKINLEY. 85 
 
 now questions of the greatest importance before the Administra- 
 tion and the country, and their just consideration should not 
 be prejudiced in the public mind by even the suspicion of the 
 thought of a third term. In view, therefore, of the reiteration of 
 the suggestion of it, I will say now, once for all, expressing a long 
 settled conviction, that I not only am not and will not be a candi- 
 date for a third term, but would not accept a nomination for it, if 
 it were tendered me. 
 
 " My only ambition is to serve through my second term to 
 the acceptance of my countrymen, whose generous confidence I 
 so deeply appreciate, and then with them to do my duty in the 
 ranks of private citizenship. 
 
 "WILLIAM M'KINLEY." 
 
 Executive Mansion, Washington, June n, 1901. 
 A MAN OF HARD COMMON SENSE. 
 
 This letter has the true McKinley ring. It exhibits the 
 President's common sense one of his saving graces that added 
 to his high value in public life. " His predominant character- 
 istics," wrote an admirer on the eve of his re-election in 1900, 
 "his most predominant characteristics which bind great bodies of 
 men to him with rivets of steel ; which have lifted him from the 
 position of a private soldier to that of Chief Magistrate of the 
 nation, which have sustained him and carried him through the 
 many great crises confronting him, and have given him the trust 
 and confidence of the American people are his moral strength 
 and his unflinching courage to do the right as he sees it, irrespec- 
 tive of temporary consequences. His natural gentleness and his 
 tendency to ignore small and non-essential differences, his willing- 
 ness to oblige even his enemies and his utter lack of vindictive- 
 ness all these, when the times of crisis have come, and the eyes 
 of the people have turned to him, alone have given him added 
 strength to achieve great results in public affairs." 
 
 His domestic virtues were not only revealed in his tender 
 devotion to his wife, so signally exhibited last May at San 
 Francisco, but in his respect for his father, who died in November
 
 86 CAREER OF PRESIDENT McKINLEY. 
 
 1892, and for his mother, Nancy Allison McKinley, who enjoyed 
 the supreme felicity of all American mothers of seeing her son 
 in the White House, dying at Canton, O., December 12, 1897, 
 The iuvalidism of Mrs. McKinley threw a peculiarly pathetic 
 aspect over their mutual affection. Their relations were singu- 
 larly tender and touching, Mrs. McKinley seldom allowing her 
 state of health to keep her from her husband's side whenever 
 called, and he, even when so harassed by State problems as to be 
 unable to snatch time for sleep, writing to her every night when 
 absent, obeying the slightest call to her side when they were 
 
 together. 
 
 FELLOW FEELING FOR WORKINGMAN. 
 
 His intense brotherly feeling for the workingman was one 
 of his dominant characteristics, and manifested itself in more 
 practical forms than this. When Governor of Ohio in 1895, he 
 received at midnight the news that 2000 miners in the Hocking 
 Valley district were without food or employment. By five o'clock 
 the next morning $1000 worth of provisions were loaded on a car 
 and despatched to the scene of distress, on the personal respon- 
 sibility of the Governor. Later, contributions from the leading 
 cities of the State brought the relief fund up to $32,796, but the 
 tl Governor's car" was the first to arrive. 
 
 A side of Mr. McKinley's nature, of which only his more 
 intimate friends caught glimpses, was his deep religious faith. 
 In early life, during his student days at the Poland Academy, 
 he had joined the Methodist Church, of which he always 
 remained a loyal member, active in church work until national 
 issues began to fill his hands. " Many of us thought he would 
 become a minister," said Rev. Dr. Morton, his first pastor, in a 
 recent reminiscent talk. Although sensitively shrinking from 
 making a prarde or profit of his religion, he \vas always ready to 
 defend Christians and Christianity when the voice of the scoffer 
 was raised against them. 
 
 As an orator the President was supreme, belonging to that 
 highest rank of public speakers who cultivate the matter of their 
 discourse and leave the manner to nature. He never dealt in
 
 CAREER OF PRESIDENT McKINLEY. 47 
 
 sensations, never played on pathos, had no need to be a raconteur, 
 he prepared what he had to say with the ntmost care, and said it 
 in the most earnest and unaffected way he could, but with sure 
 effect. When the celebrated Mills bill came up before the House, 
 D. C. Haskill, who served with McKinley on the Ways and Means 
 Committee, asked especially for the honor of closing the debate. 
 The arrangement was made, therefore, that Haskill spoke last and 
 McKinley next to the last. When McKinley had ended his re- 
 marks, Haskill pressed forward, wrung his hand cordially and 
 exclaimed : " Major, I shall speak last ; but you, sir, have closed 
 
 the debate." 
 
 HIS REMARKABLE VOICE. 
 
 In speaking, the President had a voice of wonderful carrying 
 power, but it was the impress of conviction rather than his voice 
 that had its effect on his audiences. His attitude in the matter ol 
 principles is aptly illustrated by an anecdote of one of his congres- 
 sional campaigns, that of 1882, in Ohio, when the Democratic tidal 
 wave had left him with a very slender majority. Referring to this 
 one day Congressman Springer said rather sneeringly : " Your 
 constituents do not seem to support you, Mr. McKinley." Mr. 
 McKinley' s quick answer was worthy of a Roman tribune. " My 
 fidelity to my constituents," he said, " is not measured by the sup- 
 port they give me. I have convictions I would not surrender if 
 10,000 majority were entered against me." 
 
 A townsman in speaking of McKinley' s brief but telling 
 words uttered in the Chicago convention of 1888, on the issue 
 raised by the use of his name as a candidate for the Presidency, 
 the closing sentence of which speech, revealing as it does, the 
 speaker's high sense of honor, as has already been quoted, said: 
 ''Major, that answer of yours was a literary gem." 
 
 " Well," answered the Ohio delegate with great simplicity, " I 
 got up at 5 o'clock this morning and walked the streets of Chicago 
 until I got just what I wanted." 
 
 This speech, which throws so admirable a light on the Presi- 
 dent's character, was as follows : 
 
 " I am here as one of the chosen representatives of my State.
 
 88 CAREER OF PRESIDENT McKINLEY. 
 
 I am here by resolution of the Republican State Convention, 
 passed without a single dissenting vote, commanding me to cast 
 my vote for John Sherman for President and to use every worthy 
 endeavor for his nomination. I accepted the trust because my 
 heart and my judgment were in accord with the letter and spirit 
 and purpose of that resolution. It has pleased certain delegates to 
 cast their votes for me for President. I am not insensible to the 
 honor they would do me, but in the presence of the duty resting 
 upon me, I cannot remain silent with honor. 
 
 " I cannot, consistently with the wish of the State whose cre- 
 dentials I bear and which has trusted me ; I cannot with honor- 
 able fidelity to John Sherman ; I cannot, consistently with my 
 own views of personal integrity, consent, or seem to conset, to per- 
 mit my name to be used as a candidate before this convention. I 
 would not respect myself if I should find it in my heart to do so, 
 or permit to be done that which would ever be ground for any one 
 to suspect that I wavered in my loyalty to Ohio or my devotion 
 to the chief of her choice and the chief of mine. I do not request, 
 I demand, that no delegate who would not cast reflection upon me 
 shall cast a ballot for me." 
 
 CAMPAIGN ACHIEVEMENTS. 
 
 In number alone the McKinley speeches are impressive as 
 betokening a magnificent reserve store of vitality, ten addresses 
 a day consecutively for a month being among his campaign 
 achievements in the old times. But they were always feats of 
 strength in the intellectual even more than the physical sense, 
 many of them having already passed into the classics of politico- 
 social literature, while his State papers have not only had a pro- 
 found effect on the thought of the day, but are for the future as 
 well. 
 
 One who knew him well described him as follows : 
 
 " Quiet, dignified, modest, considerate of others ; ever mindful 
 
 of the long service of the leaders of his party, true as steel to his 
 
 friends ; unhesitating at the call of duty, no matter what the 
 
 personal sacrifice ; unwavering in his integrity, full of tact in
 
 CAREER OF PRESIDENT McKINLEY. 89 
 
 overcoming opposition, yet unyielding on vital principles ; with a 
 heart fulj of sympathy for those who toil, a disposition unspoiled 
 by success, and a private life equally spotless and self-sacrificing, 
 William McKinley stood before the American people as one of 
 the finest types of courageous, persevering, vigorous and develop- 
 ing manhood that this Republic ever produced. More than any 
 other President since Lincoln, perhaps, he was in touch with 
 those whom Abraham Lincoln loved to call the plain people of 
 this country. 
 
 A greater encomium could not be written and the people will 
 treasure it as the President's name and fame become splendid 
 memories ; for though Washingson's name is ever first in the 
 people's thoughts, Lincoln's ever immanent as the glorious 
 martyr to a great cause, the name of McKinley crystalizes an 
 epoch, the most signal in the history of the Republic, surpassing 
 in its achievements, under his administration, the most brilliant 
 efforts of the past and dazzling in its possibilities for the future 
 of the people, and of the Goverment for the people and by the 
 people, whose preservation in all perpetuity of its free institutions 
 was his fondest wish and to whose service he gave a lifetime of 
 high endeavor.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 Additional Account of President McKinley's Life Illus- 
 trious Ancestry A Young Patriot in the Army First 
 Term in the White House and Re-election. 
 
 [The following sketch of President McKinley's career was 
 prepared by Mr. George R. Prowell for a semi-official publication. 
 The data were furnished by Private Secretary Cortelyou, and the 
 article of course, with the exception of the concluding paragraphs 
 was revised by the President himself.] 
 
 WILLIAM McKINLEY, twenty-fifth President of the United 
 States, was born in Niles, Ohio, January 29, 1843 > son f 
 William and Nancy Campbell (Allison) McKinley, grandson of 
 James and Polly (Rose) McKinley and of Abner and Ann (Camp- 
 bell) Allison, and great-grandson of David and Sarah (Gray) 
 McKinley and of Andrew Rose, an ironmaster of Bucks county, 
 Pa., who was sent home from the Revolutionary War to make 
 cannon and bullets for the army. 
 
 David's father, John McKinley, came to America from Der- 
 vock, County Antrim, Ireland, in 1743, when twelve years of age, 
 and the relatives with whom he came located in Chanceford 
 township, York county, Pa. David was born there May 16, 1755, 
 served for twenty-one months in the Revolution in the Pennsyl- 
 vania line, and after peace was restored, became an iron manu- 
 facturer in Westmoreland county, where he was married, December 
 17, 1780, to Sarah Gray. He removed to Pine township, Mercer 
 county, in 1795, and in 1815 to Columbiana county, Ohio, where 
 he died in 1840. His seventh child, William, was born in Pine 
 township, in 1807, was married in 1829, an ^ engaged in iron 
 manufacturing at Niles, Trumbull county, Ohio, where his son, 
 William, \vas born. 
 
 On his removal, in 1852, to Poland, William, Jr., attended 
 the Union Seminary until 1860, when he entered the junior class 
 
 90
 
 GRAND MILITARY AND CIVIL RECORD. 91 
 
 of Allegheny College, Meadville, Pa., but before closing his class 
 year, was obliged to leave on account of a severe illness. He 
 then taught a district school, and was clerk in the Poland post 
 office. 
 
 On June n, 1861, he enlisted as a private in Company K, 
 Twenty-third Ohio Volunteer Infantry, served in Western Vir- 
 ginia, and saw his first battle at Carnifex Ferry, September 10, 
 T 86i. On April 15, 1862, he was promoted commissary sergeant, 
 and served as such in the battle of Antietam with such conspic- 
 uous gallantry as to win for him promotion, September 24, 1862, 
 to the rank of second lieutenant. On February 7, 1863, ne was 
 made first lieutenant, and on July 25, 1864, was raised to the rank 
 of captain. He served on the staffs of Generals Hayes, Crook, 
 Hancock, Sheridan and Carroll ; was brevetted major March 13, 
 1865, for gallantry at Opequan, Cedar Creek and Fisher's Hill, 
 and was serving as acting assistant adjutant general in the First 
 Division, First Army Corps, when he was mustered out, July 
 
 26, 1865. 
 
 LAW STUDENT AT YOUNGSTOWN. 
 
 He returned home, and studied law at Youngstown, Ohio, 
 and at the Albany Law School, and was admitted to the Ohio Bar 
 at Warren, in March, 1867, and settled in practice in Canton, 
 Ohio. He was elected by the Republicans of Stark county Prose- 
 cuting Attorney, and served 1870-71, but was defeated for re-elec- 
 tion. He was married January 25, 1871, to Ida, daughter of 
 James A. and Catherine (Dewalt) Saxton, of Canton, Ohio. 
 
 He was a Representative from the Seventeenth District of 
 Ohio in the Forty-fifth Congress, defeating Leslie L. Lanborn, 
 1877-79 ; from the Sixteenth District in the Forty-sixth Congress, 
 defeating General Aquilla Wiley, 1879-81, and from the Seven- 
 teenth District in the Forty-seventh Congress, defeating Leroy D. 
 Thoman, 1881-83. His party claimed that he was elected from 
 the Eighteenth District to the Forty-eighth Congress in 1882 by a 
 majority of eight votes, and he was given the certificate of election 
 but his seat was successfully contested by Jonathan H. Wallace, 
 of Columbiana county, who was seated in June, 1884.
 
 92 GRAND MILITARY AND CIVIL RECORD. 
 
 Mr. McKinley was elected from the Twentieth District to the 
 Forty-ninth Congress, defeating David R. Paige, 1885-87, and 
 from the Eighteenth District to the Fiftieth and Fifty-first Con- 
 gresses, against Wallace H. Phelps and George P. Ikert, respec- 
 tively, serving 1887-91, and was defeated in the Sixteenth District 
 for Representative to the Fifty-second Congress in 1890 by John 
 G. Warwick, of Massillon, Democrat, by 302 votes. The changes 
 in the Congressional districts were due to political expedients used 
 by the party in power, and Mr. McKinley, while always a resident of 
 Stark county, was in this way obliged to meet the conditions 
 caused by the combination of contiguous counties in the efforts of 
 the opposition to defeat him. 
 
 APPOINTED ON JUDICIARY COMMITTEE. 
 
 He was appointed by Speaker Randall in 1877 to a place on 
 the Judiciary Committee, and he succeeded Representative James 
 A. Garfied on the Ways and Means Committee in December, 1880. 
 In the Forty-sixth Congress he was appointed on the House Com- 
 mittee of Visitors to the United States Military Academy, and in 
 1 88 1 he was Chairman of the committee having in charge the 
 Garfield memorial exercises in the House. In Congress he sup- 
 ported a high protective tariff, making a notable speech on the 
 subject April 6, 1882, and his speech on the Morrison Tariff bill, 
 April 30, 1884, was said to be the most effective argument made 
 against it. 
 
 On April 16, 1890, as Chairman of the Committee on Ways 
 and Means as successor to Judge Kelley, he introduced the gen- 
 eral tariff measure afterwards known by his name, and his speech 
 before the House, May 7, 1890, fully established his powers as 
 an orator. The bill passed the House May 21, and the Senate, 
 after a protracted debate, September u, and became a law October 
 6, 1890. His notable congressional speeches not already men- 
 tioned include that on arbitration as a solution of labor troubles, 
 April 2, 1886 ; his reply, May 18, 1888, to Representative Samuel 
 J. Randall's argument in favor of the Mills Tariff Bill, of which 
 millions of copies were circulated by the manufacturing interests
 
 GRAND MILITARY AND CIVIL RECORD. 93 
 
 of the country ; his speech of December 17, 1889, introducing the 
 Customs Administration bill to simplify the laws relating to the 
 collection of revenue, and his forceful address sustaining the 
 Civil Service law, April 24, 1890; 
 
 On the organization of the Fifty-third Congress, December 
 3, 1889, he was a candidate for Speaker, but was defeated on the 
 third ballot in the Republican caucus by Thomas B. Reed. In 
 1880 he was chairman of the Republican State convention, and 
 was chosen by the Republican National convention at Chicago, 
 in June, 1880, as the Ohio member of the Republican National 
 Committee. In this capacity, during the canvass of Garfield and 
 Arthur, he spoke with General Garfield in the principal Northern 
 and Western States. 
 
 ENTRANCE INTO NATIONAL POLITICS. 
 
 In national politics his service began with his election as adele- 
 gate-at-large to the Republican National Convention that met at 
 Chicago June 3, 1884, and he was made a member of the Committee 
 on Resolutions, and supported the candidacy of James G. Blaine. 
 During the canvass of that year he spoke with the Republican 
 .candidate on his celebrated Western tour, and afterward in 
 Western Virginia and New York. In the Republican National 
 Convention that met at Chicago June 19, 1888, he was Chairman 
 of the Committee on Resolutions, and he supported the candidacy 
 of John Sherman, although there was a strong effort to have him 
 consent to the use of his own name as a candidate. 
 
 In the Republican National Convention that met at Minne- 
 apolis June 7, 1892, he was a delegate-at-large from Ohio, and 
 permanent Chairman of the Convention. He received 182 votes 
 at this Convention for the Presidential nomination, but refused to 
 consider the action of his friends, and left the chair to move to 
 make the nomination of President Harrison unanimous, and he 
 was Chairman of the Committee to notify the President of his 
 nomination. 
 
 He was Governor of Ohio, 1892-96, defeating Governor James 
 E. Campbell in 1891 by 21,500 plurality, and as Governor his
 
 94 GRAND MILITARY AND CIVIL RECORD. 
 
 sympathies were with the laboring men in their contests with 
 capitalists, and he recommended to the Legislature additional pro- 
 tection co the employes of railroads. His Democratic opponent 
 for Governor in 1893 was Lawrence T. Neal, and the issues of the 
 canvass were entirely national. McKinley opposed both free trade 
 and free silver, and he was elected by over 80,000 plurality. Dur- 
 ing his second administration of the State government he was 
 obliged to call out 3,000 members of the National Guard to sup- 
 press threatened labor riots, and he was able to prevent what 
 appeared to be inevitable mob violence, attended by lynching. 
 
 HELPS THE STARVING MINERS. 
 
 He also personally supervised the distribution of funds and 
 provisions to the starving miners in the Hocking Valley. He took 
 an active part in the Presidential campaign in 1892, travelling 
 over 16,000 miles and averaging seven speeches per day for a 
 period of over eight weeks, during which time it was estimated 
 that he addressed over 2,000,000 voters. During the Presidential 
 canvass of 1896 he remained in Canton, and received between June 
 19 and November 2, over 750,000 visitors, who journeyed from 
 all parts of the Union to make his personal acquaintance and 
 listen to his short speeches delivered from his piazza, speaking 
 in this informal way over 300 different times. 
 
 When the Republican National Convention met in St. Louis, 
 June 16, 1896, his name was again before the Convention, and on 
 the first ballot, made June 18, he received 661^2 votes to 35/^2 for 
 Thomas B. Reed, of Maine ; 6o}4 for Matthew S. Quay, of Penn- 
 sylvania ; 58 for Levi P. Morton, of New York, and 34^5 for 
 William B. Allison, of Iowa. He was elected President of the 
 United States November 3, 1896, the McKinley and Hobart 
 Electors receiving 7,104,779 votes to 6,402,925 for the Bryan and 
 Sewell Electors, and the minority candidates, Levering and John- 
 son, Prohibition, receiving 132,000 votes ; Palmer and Buckner, 
 National Democrat, 133,148 votes ; Matchett and Maguire, Social 
 Labor, 36,274 votes, and Bentley and Southgate, Nationalist, 
 13,669 votes.
 
 GRAND MILITARY AND CIVIL RECORD. 95 
 
 William McKinley was formally announced by the Electoral 
 College as the choice of that body for President of the United 
 States by a vote of 271 to 176 for W. J. Bryan, and he was inaug- 
 urated March 4, 1897, Chief Justice Fuller administering the 
 oath of office. He at once announced his Cabinet, as follows : 
 
 John Sherman, of Ohio, Secretary of State ; Lyman J. Gage, 
 of Illinois, Secretary of the Treasury ; Russell A. Alger, of Mich- 
 igan, Secretary of War ; Cornelius N. Bliss, of New York, 
 Secretary of the Interior ; John D. Long, of Massachusetts, 
 Secretary of the Navy ; James Wilson, of Iowa, Secretary of 
 Agriculture ; James A. Gary, of Maryland, Postmaster General, 
 and Joseph McKenna, of California, Attorney General. On 
 December 17, 1897, Attorney General McKenna resigned, to 
 accept the position of Associate Justice of the United States 
 Supreme Court, and President McKinley appointed John W. 
 Griggs, of New Jersey, Attorney General, January, 21, 1897. 
 
 PASSAGE OF DINGLEY TARIFF BILL, 
 
 He called an extra session of Congress to assemble March 
 15, 1897, an d the Dingley Tariff bill was passed and became a 
 law. On May 17, he sent to Congress a special message asking 
 for an appropriation for the aid of suffering American citizens 
 in Cuba and secured $50,000 for that purpose. The Administra- 
 tion was represented at foreign courts as follows : Ambassador 
 to Great Britain, John Hay, of Ohio, succeeded in 1899 by Joseph 
 H.Choate, of New York ; to France, Horace Porter, of New York ; 
 to Austria and Austria-Hungary, Charlemagne Tower, of Penn- 
 sylvania, succeeded in 1899 by Addison C. Harris, of Indiana ; 
 United States Minister to Russia, Kthan A. Hitchcock, of 
 Missouri, raised to Ambassador in 1898, and succeeded in 1899 
 by Charlemagne Tower ; Ambassador to Germany, Andrew D. 
 White, of New York; Ambassador to Icaly, William F. Draper, 
 of Massachusetts, succeeded in 1901 by George Von L. Meyer, of 
 Massachusetts ; Ambassador to Spain, Stewart L-. Woodford, of 
 New York, who served until official relations were broken off in 
 April, 1898 ; he was succeeded by Bellamy Storey of Ohio.
 
 96 GRAND MILITARY AND CIVIL RECORD. 
 
 The changes in President McKinley's Cabinet were the 
 resignation of John Sherman from the State Department, April 
 27, 1898, and the promotion of William R. Day, Assistant Secre- 
 tary of State, who resigned September 16, 1898, and was suc- 
 ceeded by John Hay, recalled from the Court of St. James ; the 
 resignation of General Russel A. Alger from the War Depart- 
 ment, August i, 1899, and the appointment of Elihu Root, of 
 New York, as his successor ; the resignation of Cornelius N. 
 Bliss from the Interior Department, December 22, 1898, to be 
 succeeded by Ethan A. Hitchcock, recalled from St. Petersburg ; 
 the resignation of James A. Gary from the Postoffice Department 
 and the appointment of Charles Emory Smith, of Pennsylvania, 
 to that office, and the resignation of John W. Griggs from the 
 office of Attorney General in March, 1901, to be succeeded by 
 Philander Chase Knox, of Pennsylvania. 
 
 SYMPATHY FOR CUBAN PATRIOTS. 
 
 The treatment of the Cuban patriots struggling for freedom 
 aroused the sympathy of the people of the United States and the 
 demands of the United States Minister at Madrid for more 
 humane treatment were disregarded. The destruction of the 
 United States cruiser " Maine " in Havana harbor, February 15, 
 1898, resulting in the death of 266 United States officers and men 
 and the wounding of 69 others, aggravated the condition of 
 affairs, and on March 7, 1898, Congress authorized the raising of 
 two new regiments of artillery ; voted $50,000,000 for national 
 defences, placing the amount in the hands of the President for 
 disposal at his discretion, and authorized the contingent 
 increase of the army to 100,000 men. 
 
 On April 13, 1898, Congress gave the President full authority 
 to act in the matter of the difficulties with Spain, and on the i6th 
 passed a resolution acknowledging Cuban independence. The 
 President signed the joint resolutions declaring the people of 
 Cuba free, and directing the President to use the land and naval 
 forces of the United States to compel Spain to withdraw from the 
 island. At noon, April 21, 1898, war was declared against Spain,
 
 PRESIDENT McKINLEY 
 fROM HIS LATENT PHOTOGRAPH
 
 03
 
 JAMES B. PARKER 
 
 THIS IS THE COLORED WAITER WHO IS SAID TO 
 HAVE SEIZED THE ASSASSIN OF PRESIDENT McKIN- 
 LEY. PARKER MADE A LARGE SUM OF MONEY BY 
 SELLING HIS PHOTOGRAPHS-
 
 2 
 O 
 
 h 
 
 o 
 
 z 
 
 E 
 
 10
 
 GRAND MILITARY AND CIVIL RECORD. 97 
 
 and on the 23d a call for 125,000 volunteers was issued. On April 
 30, Congress authorized an issue of $500,000,000 in bonds, which 
 issue was speedily taken up by popular subscription. In his 
 proclamation of April 26, 1898, the President adopted the essential 
 principles as laid down by the declaration of Paris, 1856, although 
 neither the United States nor Spain was a party to the agreement 
 between the nations as to the rights of neutrals in naval warfare. 
 The victory of the United States navy in destroying the 
 Spanish fleet at Manilla on May i, 1898, followed by the still 
 more decisive victor}^ over the Spanish fleet at Santiago, Cuba, 
 Jiily 3,1898 , marked the beginning and end of the war, the other 
 incidents of the campaign of historic import being the battle of 
 El Caney and San Juan, where, on July 1-2, 1898, the United 
 States army lost 230 killed, 1284 wounded and 79 missing, and 
 gained a decisive victory over the Spanish troops. On July 26, 
 the French Minister at Washington made known the desire of 
 Spain to negotiate for peace, and President McKinley named the 
 conditions that the United States would insist upon as a basis of 
 
 negotiations. 
 
 CONDITIONS OF PEACE. 
 
 These included the evacuation of Cuba, the ceding of Porto 
 Rico and other Spanish Islands in the West Indies, and that the 
 city, bay and harbor of Manila should be continued in the posses- 
 sion of the United States pending the conclusion of the treaty. A 
 protocol was signed on August 12 by Secretary Day and the 
 French Ambassador, M. Cambon, and October i following was 
 named as the time for the meeting to arrange the terms of peace. 
 On August 26 the President appointed William R. Day, Cushman 
 K. Davis, William P. Frye, Whitelaw Reid and Edward D. White 
 Peace Commissioners, and on September 9, George Gray was sub- 
 stituted for Mr. Justice White. 
 
 They met in Paris October i, and adjourned December, 10, 
 1898. The treaty as signed on the latter date provided that 
 Spain relinquish all claim of sovereignty over and title to Cuba, 
 the surrender of all other of the West India islands held by 
 Spain and the Island of Guam, in the Ladrone group, and the
 
 &S GRAND MILITARY AND CIVIL RECORD. 
 
 cession of the Philippines to tne United States. The United 
 States agreed to pay to Spain the sum of $20,000, ooo, to repatriate 
 all Spanish soldiers at its expense and various minor provisions. 
 On January 4, 1899, the President transmitted the treaty to the 
 Senate, which body referred it to the Committee on Foreign 
 Affairs, and it was ratified December 6, 1899. 
 
 OUTBREAK OF WAR IN THE PHILIPPINES. 
 
 Meantime hostilities had broken out in the Philippine 
 Islands between the natives and the United States troops, and the 
 President appointed Admiral George Dewey, General Hlwell S. 
 Otis, J. G. Schurman, President of Cornell University ; Dean C. 
 Worcester, of the Faculty of the University of Michigan, and 
 Charles Denby, former United States Minister to China, a Com- 
 mission to study the situation there and advise as to its settle- 
 ment. The President also appointed a delegation to represent 
 the United States at the Peace Conference called by the Czar of 
 Russia in 1898 to meet at the Hague in May, 1899. The delega- 
 tion was. made up of the United States Ambassador to Germany, 
 Andrew D. White; the United States Minister to Holland, 
 Stanford Nevil ; the President of Columbia University, Seth 
 Ivow ; Captain A. T. Mahan, U. S. N. (retired), and Captain 
 William Crozier, U. S. N., with Frederick W. Holls as Secretary 
 and counsel. 
 
 When the Republican National Convention met at Phil- 
 adelphia, June 25, 1900, President McKinley received every one of 
 the 930 votes of the delegates for renomination as the party can- 
 didate for President, and Theodore Roosevelt, of New York, 
 received 929 votes for the candidacy for Vice President, the single 
 vote missing being the delegate vote of the candidate. In the 
 election of November 6, 1903, the Republican Electors received 
 7,206,677 popular votes, to 6,374,397 for the Bryan and Stevenson 
 Klectors, the popular votes for the minority candidates standing 
 as follows : Woolley and Metcalf, Prohibiton, 208.555 ; Barker and 
 Donnelly, Anti-Fusion People's, 50,337 ; Debs and Harriman, 
 Social Democrat, 84,003 ; Maloney and Remmell, Socialist Labor,
 
 GRAND MILITARY AND CIVIL RECORD. ) 
 
 39)537 j Leonard and Wooley, United Christian, 1060, and Ellis 
 and Nichols, Union Reform, 5698. The electoral vote stood 292 
 for McKinley and Roosevelt and 155 for Bryan and Stevenson. 
 The successful Republican candidates were inaugurated March 4, 
 1901, and the President made no immediate changes in his 
 Cabinet. 
 
 He visited California with his wife and members of his 
 cabinet in 1901, and intended to make the tour extend to the 
 principal cities of the Pacific slope, but the serious illness of 
 Mrs. McKinley forced him to return to Washington after reaching 
 San Francisco. 
 
 VISIT TO PAN-AMERICAN EXPOSITION. 
 
 On September 4, 1901, he visited the Pan-American Exposi- 
 tion, at Buffalo, N. Y., and made a notable speech in which he 
 outlined the policy to be pursued by the Administration in main- 
 taining and increasing the commercial prosperity of the nation, 
 and on September 6 he held a public reception in the Temple of 
 Music, to which the citizens of Buffalo and visitors to the Expo- 
 sition gathered in great numbers. In the course of the reception, 
 about 4 o'clock P. M., one of the visitors, while shaking his hand, 
 shot him twice, one ball striking the breast bone and one entering 
 the stomach. 
 
 The would-be assassin was at once captured and proved to be 
 Leon Czolgosz, an avowed Anarchist. President McKinley was a 
 member of the Grand Army of the Republic, the Union Veteran 
 Legion and other military organizations. He received the 
 honorary degree of LL. D. from Western Reserve University 
 and McKendree College in 1897, fr m the University of Chicago 
 and Yale University in 1898, from Smith College in 1899, being 
 the second person and the first man to receive an honorary degree 
 from that institution, and from the University of California in 
 1901, and that of D. C. L. from Mt. Hoi yoke in 1899. 
 
 He was invited to visit Harvard University in June, 1901, 
 and the Corporation voted him the honorary degree of LL.D., to 
 be bestowed on the occasion, but the serious illness of Mrs.
 
 100 GRAND MILITARY AND CIVIL RECORD. 
 
 McKmley prevented his presence. The notable speeches deliv- 
 ered by Mr. McKinley, and not already mentioned, include the 
 address in Canton, O., before the Ohio State Grange, December 
 13, 1887, on "The American Farmer," in which he opposed the 
 holding of American lands by aliens, and urged the farmers to 
 be true to the principles of protection ; the address at the Home 
 Market Club, in Boston, February 9, 1888, in which he persuaded 
 the New Bngland representatives to abandon the policy of " free 
 raw material ;" the speech at the Lincoln banquet, in Toledo, O., 
 February 12, 1891, in which he answered President Cleveland's 
 address on "American Citizenship," delivered on the occasion of 
 the seventieth anniversary of the birthday of Allen G. Thurman, 
 at Columbus, O., November 13, 1890, and the oration delivered 
 on February 22, 1894, before the Union League Club, Chicago, 
 111., on the life and public services of George Washington. 
 
 GLOWING TRIBUTE TO M'KINLEY. 
 
 One of our prominent journals pays the following worthy 
 tribute to the late President : 
 
 "When the sun went down on Thursday evening the popular 
 belief was as confident as it was general that the President had 
 crossed the danger line to the side of safety, and there was a 
 universal feeling of felicitation engendered by the medical 
 bulletins, which gave assurances of not only the illustrious 
 patient's recovery, but of his speedy convalescence and early 
 return to his accustomed vigor. /" 
 
 u The first announcement of the change in the President's 
 previously favorable condition was made by his medical advisers 
 in their bulletin at 8.30 P. M.., Thursday, although the previous 
 one, which was issued at 3 P. M., stating his pulse to be 126, 
 gave the better informed few reasons for apprehension. The 8.30 
 bulletin was received at too late an hour on Thursday to reach the 
 general public, who did not hear of the relapse which the patient 
 had suffered until they read the next morning's papers. 
 
 " The shock caused by this intelligence to the country was 
 not less, and, we believe, it was even greater, than that which
 
 GRAND MILITARY AND CIVIL RECORD. 101 
 
 told of the attempted assassination of the 6th instant. Although 
 the medical bulletins had been invariably favorable, it was 
 observed, and will be now remembered, that none of them, hopeful 
 as all were, gave positive assurances that the President would 
 recover from his wounds. But the trend of every statement made 
 by his physicians was in the direction which the country wished it to 
 be, and as the days went by and the indications improved it came 
 to be commonly believed that all danger of an untoward result 
 had passed, and that the President would soon be again at his post 
 of duty. 
 
 " It was that confident belief so generally entertained which 
 rendered Thursday night's report of the President's changed con- 
 dition so serious a shock and distress to his countrymen. Since 
 he was stricken down the popular mind has been better informed 
 as to Mr. McKinley's real character, and as this more accurate 
 knowledge respecting him spread abroad, the sympathy of his 
 countrymen became the greater and more profound. 
 
 CROWDS WAITING FOR BULLETINS. 
 
 " The truth of this was made apparent yesterday, from early 
 morning till a very late hour of the night, by the crowds which 
 assembled in front of the newspaper offices and at all points where 
 the latest news from the President's bedside could be obtained. 
 The public anxiety, concern and sorrow were more generally exhib- 
 ited yesterday than at any previous time since the assassin's shots 
 were fired. The feeling shown suggested that each and all of the 
 President's countrymen felt that they were about to suffer a per- 
 sonal sorrow and were confronted by a personal calamity. 
 
 "The people perceive now more clearly than they ever before 
 did the simple worth and exalted patriotism of their President. 
 Awed by the shadow of death in which he has lain during the 
 past week, partisan detraction, rancor and misrepresentation were 
 silent, and from all parts of his country, from the organs of all 
 parties and factions, earnest tribute has been paid to the Presi- 
 dent's virtues, his life and character. 
 
 " Our high appreciation of the kindly, friendly nature of Presi-
 
 102 GRAND MILITARY AND CIVIL RECORD. 
 
 dent McKinley, his elevated spirit of patriotism, his wish to be 
 right and do right, to temper justice with mercy, was expressed in 
 this place immediately after the assassin's murderous attack upon 
 his life. There is but little to add to that tribute of respect and 
 admiration for the nation's Chief Magistrate, who, having served 
 it so faithfully in that great office, received his fatal wound at his 
 post in the discharge of a duty. 
 
 " That they appreciated his devotion to their interests and 
 welfare has been clearly and most gratifyingly shown from the 
 very hour that he was stricken down, and seldom has popular 
 admiration and the affectionate regard of a people for their ruler 
 been more commonly or convincingly exhibited than were the 
 admiration and regard shown yesterday by the American people 
 their honored ruler. 
 
 A NATIONAL CALAMITY. 
 
 u The demise of a President of the United States is always a 
 sad and deplorable event, but when death comes to him at the 
 hand of the assassin the eventbecom.es sadder and more deplorable. 
 The blow struck at his life is struck at the very vitals of free gov- 
 ernment, which makes the ruler the people's first and best found 
 choice, and which makes each sovereign citizen his personal de- 
 fender. When a blow is struck at the life of the nation's Chief 
 Magistrate the whole people feel the hurt of it and suffer the grief 
 and pain of its consequences. 
 
 " President McKinley lies dead, and the whole nation mourns 
 the death of a ruler, who became, the longer he ruled, more homored 
 and esteemed by his countrymen, who wisely chose him to rule 
 over them. He died as he lived, in high faith in God, submissive 
 to His awful will, reverently saying with his departing breath : 
 'God's will, not ours, be done.' 
 
 "The Old World and the New, from sea to sea, 
 
 Utter one voice of sympathy arjd shame ! 
 A deed accurst ! Strokes have been struck before 
 
 By the assassin's hand, whereof men doubt 
 If more of horror or disgrace they bore ; 
 
 But thy foul crime, like Cain's, stands darkly out"
 
 GRAND MILITARY AND CIVIL RECORD. *v 
 
 Another leading journal thus eulogizes Mr. McKinley : 
 "The President is dead. No words can add and none can 
 speak the loss to a land which for the third time in our day stands 
 by the bier of a President slain. Death lifts all to a new light 
 and a new place in the hearts of men. Nor less with the great 
 man gone. He had all that can come to the sons of men, He 
 fought for his land in his youth. He early won Its wide praise. 
 He shared through all his mid and active years in its greater 
 work. Twice he was called to be its head. 
 
 " This without and within in that hid life which to all men, 
 high or low, is more than all else on earth, he was blessed. 
 Early loved and early wed, through long years, with all they 
 brought of joy and grief, and the daily strain of illness for the 
 woman who to-day faces life's greatest sorrow, he wore the stain- 
 less flower of perfect and undivided love. He died as men both 
 brave and good can his face turned fearless to the great future 
 in which he saw and knew the divine love which had guided all 
 his days. 
 
 THE WORLD MADE RICHER. 
 
 " The annals of men through all time are the richer for this 
 high record of a stainless life and his land is left poor by the loss 
 of its first and foremost son. Round the world runs the shadow 
 of eclipsing grief as flags drop and the nations feel a common sor- 
 row which knows bounds as little as his name and fame. All 
 things pass. He with them. But there remains one more 
 memory of a good man grown great, dead at the post of duty, to 
 breathe hope and give strength to all who, like him, make their 
 land the heart's first desire and know that its first high service is 
 the good life and pure. He joins the triad of martyred Presidents. 
 One slain by rebellion, one by partisan rancor and one by the 
 baser passions of corroding envy and a hand raised against all 
 law, all rule and all government. 
 
 " The spirit of rebellion was buried with Lincoln. The grave 
 of Garfield is the perpetual reminder of the risks of party hate. 
 It will be the duty of those who live and, in all posts and places, 
 in all ranks and work, serve the land he loved and made greater,
 
 104 GRAND MILITARY AND CIVIL RECORD. 
 
 tp see to it that his death is the end of the creed and speech which 
 cost the nation its President. There must be an end in his grave 
 of all the envy, malice and hatred of the advance, progress and 
 success of men, which is the seed and root of anarchy, and which 
 daily seeks to set citizen against citizen." 
 
 When the news of Lincoln's assassination was filling with 
 fear and apprehension a nation just saved from disruption and 
 it seemed as if the foundation of society had vanished and the 
 pillars of order had fallen it remained for General Garfield to call 
 the people back to first principles. 
 
 The memorable speech he made in New York city on that 
 April morning in 1865, when Lincoln lay dead from an assassin's 
 bu'net, will never be forgotten. Said he to the throng as it 
 surged about him, smitten with sorrow, anger and fear : " God 
 reigns and the Government at Washington still lives.'* 
 
 GARFIELD'S IMMORTAL WORDS. 
 
 It was the irony of fate that the man who uttered these 
 words should himself be the chief actor in another tragedy that, 
 for a moment, almost paralyzed the nation again, and that his 
 words should again help to recall it to its senses. "God reigned 
 and the Government at Washington still lived." 
 
 A third time the nation is called upon to meet a similar 
 crisis. A President beloved beyond the lot of most men lies 
 dead by the hand of the assassin, and the nation is a third time 
 almost paralyzed by grief and anger. But great and irreparable 
 as the loss of William McKinley is, it is well now to remember 
 the words of General Garfield : " God reigns and the Government 
 at Washington still lives." 
 
 No man who knows where history has ranked and placed 
 other Presidents can doubt that McKinley will stand among those 
 few chiefs of the nation whose life and death close and open an 
 epoch. Assassination will give his death the hallowed associa- 
 tion of maityrdom, but this alone would not suffice for his future 
 place if he had not been called in his administration as President 
 to see the end of one era and the beginning of another.
 
 GRAND MILITARY AND CIVIL RECORD. 105 
 
 History will remember and record what his day and time 
 have often forgotten, that, as with our two greatest Presidents, 
 his life was made and molded, not by his personal career, but by 
 the nation's development. Washington began life a mere back- 
 woods partisan leader in Indian warfare and ended his public life 
 the President of a new nation, its face turned toward the conquest 
 of a continent. Lincoln, the rail-splitter, was early but one of 
 the pioneers who first filled the West with freemen and later led 
 these freemen to leave no man a slave in the land for which he 
 died. 
 
 So William McKinley had his early and youthful share in 
 the sanguinary civil war, establishing a free industrial system, 
 When this task was over he shared also in that patient internal 
 development of national resources of protection, education, and 
 honest money, which ended in the overflowing foreign trade oi 
 the past six years, and that miracle and marvel of expansion 
 when the Republic first set its victorious feet on lands beyond 
 
 the sea. 
 
 CROWN OF HIS LIFE WORK. 
 
 The lofty speech delivered the day before he was shot, the 
 unconscious blessing and prophecy of a leader of his people spoken 
 as the shadow of death drew near on the dial, was the crown, cul- 
 mination and completion of his life work. He was barely a voter 
 when he laid down the military commission of the nation to accept 
 the first civil commission of his neighbors. By his early training, 
 by temperament, by the industries of his district and the political 
 geography which put him on the dividing line between the East 
 and the West, he was set apart to the work of directing, defending, 
 'conserving and consolidating the nation's growth and progress in 
 the appointed path of national development. 
 
 On all questions and issues he, beyond his contemporaries, 
 united a knowledge of the convictions of the Bast and the needs 
 and demands of the West. On protection he stood alike for the 
 manufacturer and the farmer. On the currency he labored steadily 
 to prevent a division between the sound money vote Bast and West 
 which would have periled all, and whatever criticism of his course
 
 106 GRAND MILITARY AND CIVIL RECORD. 
 
 the hour may have bred, history and the issue have alike justified 
 his policy and position. 
 
 In all these things and at every juncture he displayed the 
 saving sense of success. The day never came when he was not 
 more clearly and closely aware than any contemporary of the de- 
 sires, the purpose and the wish of the great hody of his fellow- 
 citizens. He knew them. They trusted him. His confidence in 
 free institutions and in the prescient sagacity of the American 
 voter never wavered. No man in our day was so near the people. 
 No man so reflected the cheerful optimism, the good-humored 
 courage, the hopeful opportunism and the resolute determination 
 and industry of the average American as he. This personal en- 
 dowment, experience and insight gave him a power, clearer in the 
 last ten years than ever before, of speaking level to the compre- 
 hension, direct to the hearts and straight to the conviction of his 
 fellow-countrymen. No man in our recent day has so influenced 
 their opinion. 
 
 READY FOR EVERY GREAT DEMAND. 
 
 When the great service of his life and the crowning crisis of 
 is career came and war had brought new duties and unforeseen 
 responsibilities he was ready. He knew the secret heart and 
 inner purpose of the land he ruled and the people he loved. 
 Resolutely, without haste but without hesitation, he led the 
 nation to its new place among the nations of the earth. He 
 accepted the responsibility of momentous advance in the world 
 relations of the United States. He neither spurned precedent 
 nor was he spurred by novelty. He saw, as history will see, in 
 the greater acts of his administration, the unfolding of a past 
 which made the present necessary and inevitable. 
 
 In this great, unforeseen and successful task the purity of 
 his character, his visible loyalty to American ideals, his power in 
 winning opposition, his sincerity, the charm of his personality and 
 his unaffected regard and love for all his fellow-citizens, enabled 
 him to carry the people with him and with his view of national 
 duty, without regard to section or party.
 
 GRAND MILITARY AND CIVIL RECORD. 107 
 
 He had borne his share of detraction. He had known what 
 it was to be wilfully traduced and to face partisan rancor. To 
 all his fellow-citizens, the last fond tribute laid on his bier was 
 the precious consciousness that he had outlived and overlived all 
 this. He died loved by all, and knowing that he was loved by 
 all that the Union which he had fought as a boy to save he, 
 more than any other President, had made a " more perfect Union " 
 of tiie hearts of the American people.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Incidents in President McKinley's Career Gallant Exploits 
 on the Field of Battle Daring Feat at Antietam 
 Always True to His Pledge. 
 
 THB boy, who afterward became President, was originally in- 
 tended for the ministry, and it was said that his mother confi- 
 dently looked forward to his becoming a bishop. Probably he would 
 have realized her ambition had not fate willed that he should 
 become a lawyer. He received his first education at the public 
 schools of Niles. When he was nine years old the family 
 removed to Poland, Ohio, a place noted in the State for its educa- 
 tional advantages. 
 
 Here William was placed in Union Seminary, where he pur- 
 sued his studies until he was seventeen, when he entered the 
 junior class, and could easily have graduated the next year, but 
 that unremitting application to study undermined his health, and 
 he was forced to return home. At these institutions he had been 
 especially proficient in mathematics and the languages, and was 
 acknowledged to be the best debater in the literary societies. Ho 
 had early manifested strong religious traits, had joined the 
 Methodist Church at the age of sixteen and had been notably 
 diligent in Scriptural study. 
 
 As soon as he sufficiently recovered his health he became a 
 teacher in the public schools in the Kerr district, near Poland. 
 At the outbreak of the Civil War he was a clerk in the Poland 
 post office. At a war meeting convened in the Sparrow tavern 
 he was one of a number of boys who was so fired by the 
 patriotic enthusiasm of the occasion that they promptly stepped 
 forward and enrolled their names as intended volunteers in the 
 Union army. 
 
 Proceeding with them to Columbus, William McKinley en- 
 listed as a private in Company B, of the Twenty-third Ohio 
 
 108
 
 INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF McKINLEY. 109 
 
 Volunteer Infantry, June n, 1861. This company was destined 
 to become one of the most famous in the war. Its field and staff 
 included William S. Rosecrac s, Rutherford B. Hayes, Stanley 
 Matthews and others who aftei *vard achieved eminence in military 
 or civil life. It was engaged ; a nineteen battles and of its total 
 rank and file of 2,095 men, i( 9 were killed in battle and 107 died 
 of wounds or disease. Des ite the hardships, privations and 
 perils to which he was expos d, his constitution gained in health 
 and strength during his foui years' service. He participated in 
 all the early engagements ij . West Virginia. 
 
 His first promotion, to commissary sergeant, occurred April 
 15, 1862. As Rutherford 8. Hayes afterward said : " We soon 
 found that in business and executive ability he was of rare 
 capacity, of unusual and unsurpassing capacity, for a boy of his 
 age. When battles were fought, or a service was to be performed 
 in warlike things, he always took his place. When I became 
 commander of the regiment, he soon came to be on my staff, and 
 he remained on my staff for one or two years, so that I did, 
 literally and in fact, know him like a book and love him like a 
 
 brother." 
 
 HOT WORK AT ANTIETAM. 
 
 The company was with McClellan when they drove the 
 enemy out of Frederick, Md., and, on September T4th and lyth, 
 engaged them at South Mountain and at Antietam. In the latter 
 battle Sergeant McKinley, in charge of the commissary depart- 
 ment of his brigade, performed a notable deed of daring at the 
 crisis of the battle, when it was uncertain which way victory 
 would turn. McKinley fitted two wagons with necessary sup- 
 plies and drove them through a storm of shells and bullets to the 
 assistance of his hungry and thirsty fellow soldiers. The mules 
 of one wagon were disabled, but McKinley drove the other 
 safely through and was received with hearty cheers. "From 
 Sergeant McKinley's hand," said President Hayes, "every man 
 in the regiment was served with hot coffee and warm meats, a 
 thing which had never occurred under similar circumstances in 
 any other army in the world. "
 
 110 INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF McKINLEY. 
 
 For this feat he was promoted to lieutenant, September 24, 
 1862. 
 
 A greater exploit was that which he performed at the battle 
 of Kernstown, near Winchescer, July 24, 1864, when he rode his 
 horse, on a forlorn hope, through a fierce Confederate fire, to 
 carry Hayes' orders to Colonel William Brown, and thus extri- 
 cated that officer's command, the Thirteenth West Virginia, from 
 a perilous position. 
 
 On July 25th following he was promoted to be captain, and 
 on March 14, 1865, received from the President a document which 
 he valued above all the other papers in his possession. This was 
 a commission as major by brevet in the Volunteer United States 
 Army " for gallant and meritorious services at the battles of 
 Opequan, Cedar Creek and Fisher's Hill," signed "A. Lincoln." 
 This was just a month before the assassination of the latter. On 
 June 26, 1865, he was mustered out with his regiment, and re- 
 turned to Poland, with the record of having been present and 
 active in every engagement in which his regiment had partici- 
 pated, and in performing with valor and judgment every duty 
 assigned to him. 
 
 ADMITTED TO THE BAR. 
 
 He at once began the study of the law, first in the office of 
 Lrlidden & Wilson, at Youngstown, Ohio, and afterward at the 
 Law School in Albany, N. Y. In March, 1867, he was admitted 
 to the bar at Warren, Ohio. He settled at Canton, which ever 
 afterward was his home, and soon attracted attention as a 
 lawyer of diligence, sobriety and eloquence. Though the 
 county was strongly Democratic, and he was an uncompromis- 
 ing Republican, he was elected one term as prosecuting attorney. 
 He threw himself into every political campaign with all the 
 energy of his nature, and his services were so highly valued that 
 he spoke more frequently in his county and district than even 
 the principal candidates on the ticket. When Rutherford B. Hayes 
 ran for the Governorship of Ohio, against the Greenback candi- 
 date, Allen, McKinley was an eloquent and passionate advocate 
 ^ honest money and resumption
 
 INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF McKlNLr.Y. Ill 
 
 Meanwhile, in 1871, he had married Miss Ida Saxton, a 
 leading belle of Poland, Ohio. It was a love match in its incep- 
 tion ; it remained a tender and beantifnl idyl to the very end. 
 Indeed, no public man was ever a nobler exponent of all the 
 domestic virtues than McKinley. His mother worshipped him, 
 his wife ^v/iized him. 
 
 It was in 1876 that he announced himself a candidate for 
 Congress. The sitting Representative, L. D. Woodworth, with 
 Judge Frease, and other prominent Republicans, three of them 
 from his own county, were his opponents for the nomination. 
 
 The Stark County delegates to the Congressional Conven- 
 tion were elected by a popular vote. McKinley carried every 
 township in the county but one, and that had but a single 
 delegate. In the other counties he was almost equally success- 
 ful, and the primaries gave him a majority of the delegates in 
 the district. He was nominated on the first ballot over all the 
 other candidates. 
 
 OLD POLITICIANS ASTONISHED. 
 
 This sudden rise into prominence and popularity naturally 
 gave the old politicians a shock. Here was a new and unknown 
 factor in the politics of the district. He had been accorded an 
 opportunity which to them had seemed hopeless, had accepted 
 and won recognition. It was soon discovered that he had not 
 only come into the politics of the district, but that he had come 
 to stay. For fourteen years after this event he represented the 
 district of which Stark county was a part ; not the same district, 
 for the Democrats did not relish the prominent part he was 
 playing in Congress, and gerrymandered him three times, the 
 last time (in 1890) successfully. 
 
 The first attempt to change his district was made as early as 
 1878 by the Democrats, who, by gerrymandering the county, put 
 him into a district that had 1,800 Democratic majority. McKin- 
 ley carried it by 1,300 votes. In 1882 he had another narrow 
 escape. It will be recalled that 1882 was a bad year for Republicans. 
 The New York State Convention resented President Arthur usinj?
 
 112 INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF McKINLEY. 
 
 his influence to nominate his Secretary of the Treasury, Judge 
 Folger, for the Governorship of that State. The party was also 
 torn up in Pennsylvania. Grover Cleveland was elected Gover- 
 nor over Judge Folger by a tremendous majority, and General 
 Beaver was defeated in Pennsylvania by a then comparatively 
 tnknown man, Governor Pattison. That year McKinley's origi- 
 nal district had been restored, and he was seeking a " third term," 
 something not accorded its Representatives. He had strong 
 opposition for the nomination, some of it rankling until the elec- 
 tion, and that, with the popular discontent temporarily prevailing, 
 brought his majority down to eight votes. 
 
 Mr. McKinley's congressional career was marked by indus- 
 try and executive ability. He early showed that he was a pro- 
 nounced protectionist of an extreme sort. In the theories of 
 Alexander Hamilton and Henry Clay, which to those statesmen 
 seemed fitted only to temporary conditions, Mr. McKinley in 
 those days seemed to read a permanent policy in which American 
 prosperity was indissolubly involved. 
 
 UNDERSTOOD THE SUBJECT. 
 
 He had faithfully pursued a course of study in political 
 economy which had stored his retentive memory with facts and 
 figures bearing upon the protectionist side of the question. These 
 bare bones he reclothed with palpitating flesh, in a spirit of truly 
 altruistic and partistic pride, and in the firm belief that he was 
 benefitting alike his fellow citizens and their common country. 
 His utter sincerity, the charm and dignity of his manner, the 
 apparent logical weight of his arguments and the simplicity with 
 which they were worded captured his audiences not only on the 
 stump, but in Congress. 
 
 His unfailing courtesy won him friends even among those 
 whom he could not convert. A signal instance happened on May 
 18, 1888, when he yielded his place on the floor of the House to 
 allow the moribund Samuel J. Randall to conclude a speech inter- 
 rupted by the call of time. 
 
 When, as a member of the Republican National Presidential
 
 INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF McK-INLEY. 113 
 
 Convention of 1884, he was placed on the Committee of Platform, 
 it was he that was selected to draft the tariff planks. He went 
 to the Convention as a Blaine man. Foraker fought desperately 
 for Sherman. After the third ballot bad been taken, and the hall 
 was in confusion, with the Sherman forces clamoring for adjoiirn- 
 inent, MeKinley arose, and in a short speech rallied the Blaine 
 men, beat the effort to suspend and so helped materially in the 
 selecting of his candidate on the next ballot. 
 
 He emerged from this convention with a national reputation. 
 In the convention four years later he was a marked ma>n. He 
 was now pledged to Sherman. But, as in 1884, it soon developed 
 that the nomination for Sherman was impossible. A compromise 
 candidate seemed inevitable. 
 
 LOUD CHEERS FOR M'KINLEY. 
 
 There' were whispers of disloyalty even: in the Ohio delega- 
 tion. Rumor was busy with McKinley's name. The night 
 before the balloting began he made the ronnd of States' head- 
 quarters and earnestly pleaded, even with tears in his eyes, that 
 none of the delegates should vote for him. Next day, on the 
 sixth ballot, a Cincinnati delegate disregarded this plea. He 
 cast his vote for McKiriley. There were resounding cheers' 
 throughout the hall. The next State on the roll cast sixteen 
 votes for MeKinley. The cheers were renewed with greater 
 volume. It looked as i- the scene of Garfield's nomination in 
 1880 were to be repeated, and that the convention would be 
 stampeded for M-cKinley. Instantly Mr". MeKinley leaped to his 
 feet. He made an- impassioned appeal. He re'nvkkled the con- 
 vention that he was pledged to John Sherman. 
 
 " I do not request, I demand," he concluded, " that no deleg'ate 
 who- would not cast reflection upon me shall cast a : ballot for me.' r 
 
 He was too evidently in earnest not to be accepted at his 
 word. That speech turned the tide to Harrison, who was- selected 
 on the seventh ballot. 
 
 Some one told him afterward that he had done as 
 thing as ever had been known in politics. 
 
 8
 
 114 INCIDENTS IN THE UF OF M 
 
 " Is it, then, so honorable,'' was Mr. McKinley' s comment, 
 " to refrain from a dishonorable deed ? " 
 
 At the organization of the Fifty-first Congress Mr. McKinley 
 was a candidate for Speaker, but, thongh strongly supported, he 
 was defeated in caucus by Thomas B. Reed. Appointed Chairman 
 of the Ways and Means Committee, he became the leader of the 
 House under circumstances of peculiar difficulty, for his party had 
 only a nominal majority, and the opposition assumed a policy of 
 obstruction. It was during this Congress that he made his most 
 notable speeches on the tariff question, and, on April 16, 1890, he 
 introduced the general tariff measure which has since borne his 
 name. The bill passed the House, and after protracted and stormy 
 debates and repeated amendments was signed by the President, 
 October 6, 1890. 
 
 CRY FOR TARIFF REFORM. 
 
 This was just before the general elections, when the Repub- 
 licans were defeated, as had been generally expected. The 
 McKinley bill, which had proved unpopular with the country at 
 large, was held to be one of the elements of the Republican defeat. 
 Cleveland's announced policy of tariff reform had chimed in with 
 the popular mood. Mr. McKinley' s own district, which had been 
 fiercely contested, was carried against him. Thereupon a popular 
 movement arose in Ohio for his nomination as Governor. It 
 gathered such strength that the Republican convention in June of 
 the next year nominated him by acclamation. He was elected 
 and, in 1893, was re-elected. 
 
 Even before the National Convention of 1892 McKinley had 
 expressed himself in favor of the renomination of President Har- 
 rison. He went there a Harrison delegate. Again he was elected 
 chairman and again an attempt was made to nominate him over 
 Harrison and Elaine. He pursued the same course as in the prior 
 convention. By a masterful speech from the platform he arrested 
 the movement in his favor and turned the tide toward the man to 
 whom he was pledged. In the campaign which followed he was 
 one of the most unwearied and effective of the orators who stumped 
 the country for Harrison.
 
 INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF McKINLEY. 115 
 
 It was no fault of his that the fight was lost, save that the 
 unpopularity of the " McKinley bill " was one of the factors which 
 made for defeat. 
 
 In the State elections of 1894 he made a remarkable record 
 as a campaign speaker. He not only stumped his own State, but 
 made a tour through the West, and in a series of speeches through 
 Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, 
 Indiana and Michigan was greeted by enormous crowds. He began 
 his speeches at dawn, and often spoke a dozen times a day from 
 the car of his special train, from the adjacent platforms, or in the 
 largest halls in the chief cities along his route. On undertaking 
 the journey he had agreed to make forty-six speeches. He made, 
 in fact, 371 speeches in 300 towns. It was estimated that he had 
 travelled over sixteen thousand miles and addressed over two 
 million persons. At every point visited his party achieved enor- 
 mous success at the ensuing elections, the popular branch of Con- 
 gress, largely through his impetus, being carried by more than 
 two-thirds majority. 
 
 THOUGHT OF THE COUNTRY FIXED ON HIM. 
 
 On the expiration of his term as Governor he retired to his 
 home at Canton. He was universally looked upon as the Repub- 
 lican banner bearer in the next Presidential campaign. As the 
 time drew nigh for the convention to meet, State after State and 
 district after district declared for him. The Democratic party 
 had been torn by the rise of the free silver heresy, which demanded 
 the free coinage of silver at 16 to i as the necessary condition to 
 the return of financial prosperity in the country. 
 
 The Republican party was to a much lesser degree affected 
 by it. Nevertheless, Mr. McKinley chose to observe the policy 
 of silence. Though frequently importuned for his views on the 
 silver question, it was not until the Republican National Con- 
 vention, on June 18, 1896, had, on the first ballot, nominated him 
 for the Presidency, on a gold platform, that he openly avowed 
 himself the leader of the sound money forces. 
 
 On July 10 following the threatened split in the Democratic
 
 118 INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF McKlNLEY. 
 
 party was precipitated by the nomination at the Democratic 
 National Convention, held at Chicago, of William J. Bryan, on a 
 platform advocating the free coinage of silver. A large nnmber 
 of the most prominent Democrats in the country, and especially 
 in the Eastern States, supported by a number of the most influen- 
 tial Democratic papers and voters, all of whom were in favor of 
 the gold standard, refused to accept the nomination of Bryan. A 
 majority went over to McKinley, but an influential minority 
 gathered together under the name of the National Democratic 
 Part}', held a convention at Indianapolis on September 2 and 3, 
 and nominated as their standard bearers General John M. Palmer, 
 of Illinois, and Simon B. Buckner, of Kentucky. 
 
 It was generally understood that this convention and nomi- 
 nation were simply to enable the anti-silver Democrats who were 
 opposed to the Chicago platform, and nevertheless could not 
 make up their minds to vote for a Republican President, the 
 chance to express their disapproval at the polls. The movement 
 undoubtedly was of assistance to McKinley. 
 
 A CAMPAIGN FIERCELY FOUGHT. 
 
 The McKinley-Bryan campaign of 1896 was one of the most 
 fiercely contested in the history of the Presidential elections. It 
 was fought on the battleground of principle. There was none 
 of the "mud throwing" which tarnished the record of other 
 furious party engagements. Both candidates were acknowledged 
 to be of unsullied personal character. 
 
 The silver question was practically the only issue before 
 the country, but the interests it involved were so tremendous, the 
 revolution it caused in political demarcations so unusual, that the 
 emotions and passions of the voters were stirred to fever heat 
 The result proved overwelrningly in favor of McKinley. He was 
 elected to the Presidency by an electoral majority of 95 votes and 
 a popular plurality of 601,854. 
 
 It was Mr. McKinley's good or bad fortune to assume the 
 telm of government at a momentous, and what seemed like a 
 perilous crisis in the national life j it vvas his good fortune to
 
 INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF McKINLEY. lit 
 
 guide the Ship of State to a peaceful haven. It is too eafly now, 
 it must be left to the historian of the future, to decide accurately 
 how far the triumph was due to the sagacity of the helmsman, 
 how far to the enormous advantages which were inherent in the 
 vessel he managed. 
 
 Two things are certain. First, the result of the war with 
 Spain startled all civilized nations and announced that here in 
 the Western hemisphere had arisen a new power with whom those 
 nations must reckon in future. Second, the conduct of Mr. 
 McKinley before, during and after the war, and the policies he had 
 inaugurated toward our new possessions met with the approval of 
 a large majority of his fellow citizens. 
 
 TRIBUTE FROM AMBASSADOR YOUNG. 
 
 When William McKinley was first named for the Presidency 
 by the Republican National Convention in St. Louis on June 18, 
 1896, he was at his home in Canton, Ohio. With him wsts John Rus- 
 sell Young, our late Ambassador to China, who wrote the follow- 
 ing story of the man who was destined to become one of the 
 country's martyrs, and of his home life : 
 
 "It has been my privilege to take part in a ceremony that 
 should live in history with the recent coronation of the Czar, of 
 which so much has been written with brilliancy and color. In 
 Moscow all the nations participated in the tendering of the crown 
 to the monarch of an empire; the pageant is known to you all. In 
 Canton I have this afternoon witnessed the tender of a crown even 
 more lustrous than that of the Czar, involving, as seems to be the 
 Will of Providence, the President of the United States. 
 
 " The sun rested heavily on Canton all day. The town was 
 in an uneasy, restless condition. The one thought was McKinley; 
 The Major, from being an established and prosperous industry, 
 tad become a mania. The people walked about in a state of 
 repression. There was no politics in their concern, for at Cantori 
 McKinley is not a political issue. A bright-eyed newsdealet 
 develops a stately esteem for the Major, whose nomination among 
 SO many other things would be such a blessing to the town.
 
 118 INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF McKINLEY. 
 
 " It must be a trial to have the eyes of the world turned upon 
 you, and this, to modest Canton, resting here upon the smiling, 
 sheltered plains, with her all too marvelous industries and such 
 an amount of as yet unexplained progress over which to rejoice, 
 to suddenly become the centre of the world's eyes is a sore trial. 
 And you went about the wholesome, contented and well shaded 
 town, whose streets would put many an older town to blush, feel- 
 ing that the air was charged with cyclonic influences and not 
 knowing what the day might bring forth. The Major was in his 
 pretty little home, twirling his eye-glasses and receiving friends 
 with exquisite courtesy. Not a taciturn, but assuredly not a talk- 
 ative man. 
 
 11 The only change in him that I could note upon this day of 
 his destiny was that he seemed a little better dressed than usual, 
 a kind of wedding-day touch in his raiment. A soft breeze swept 
 around the piazza and the sun kept watch and ward ; now and 
 then a fervent Cantonese would stop and pause and look at his 
 home in wonder. Occasionally one more daring would approach 
 the piazza, to say that he was on the road ; that he had come from 
 Akron, Alliance or Cleveland, and that the boys were only able by 
 medical advice to hold themselves in, but as soon as the news 
 came Ohio would glow with carmine and fire. 
 
 THE OLD COMRADE. 
 
 " Now and then a veteran would hobble up, and if a little 
 hazy in speech and gait, what matter ? He only wanted to ex- 
 plain that he belonged to such a regiment, and if he did not have a 
 bullet he had a ballot and would send it home as in the old days. 
 This is the home to which the Governor brought his bride. Here 
 his children came to him, and from here God took them away, for 
 he is a childless man. Therefore it is a home with sacred memories. 
 
 " One could not but recall the Moscow coronation as he 
 stepped into the modest library. You notice that perhaps the 
 roller desk is closed. In one corner is a long-distance telephone. 
 A bright-eyed youth, with a flush of auburn hair, whom every 
 one calls 'Sam,' has the telephone in charge. The person at the
 
 INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF McKINLEY. 119 
 
 other end of the wire is apparently a cousin, as Sam's outside com- 
 munications have a domestic bearing. It is the room of the busy 
 man with many books the kind of books, as you note by their 
 character, which a busy man cares to have near him ; the library 
 of the student who means to know what he must know in five 
 minutes. 
 
 "It is a small company, mainly old friends, classmates, fel- 
 low soldiers, in a state of tremor and anxiety as they come to wit- 
 ness this crowning honor to a comrade. Just across the hall 
 several ladies have assembled, and you hear the soft echoes of 
 merry talk. Mrs. McKinley has a few friends to share with her 
 the emotions and joys of the day. About one, the venerable 
 mother arrived, just in time for the luncheon, and as she pauses 
 to greet friends you note the radiant, soft, almost triumphant 
 smile which shows the compensation and peace that rests upon 
 
 her soul. 
 
 CALMLY AWAITING THE NEWS. 
 
 " The cynosure of seventy millions of Americans sits in an 
 easy chair, holding his eyeglasses, apparently the most uncon- 
 cerned person in the room. The piazza is crowded with the 
 neighbors and newspaper gentlemen. The convention is on and 
 messages come to him over the telegraph and the telephone. 
 ' Sam,' at his telephone, is anxious that the telegraph shall not 
 beat him. and is pleased when the secretary reads ft cm the yel- 
 low slip what he had announced a minute before. The news 
 reports are brought in on typewritten sheets and read aloud. 
 Occasionally there comes a private telegram, which the Major 
 puts on a file and goes on twirling his glasses. 
 
 "Apart from the wedding-day look of his clothes and just a little 
 closer compression of his lips and a touch of pallor on the fore- 
 head, the Major shows no care. He looks after his guests, quick 
 to every suggestion of hospitality. You must have a chair, or, if 
 you care to follow the ballots, he will hand you a form, or perhaps 
 a glass of water would be refreshing a quick, observant e}'e as 
 to the details of hospitality. 
 
 "There are pauses, not much talk, rather the eyeglass twirl,
 
 120 INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF McKINLEY. 
 
 bits of innocent, but especially valuable, conversation thrown in 
 now and then, but rather a tendency to silence, all thoughts bent 
 on St. Louis and every ear listening to the telegraph tick. 
 
 "The news came minute by minute. Every stage of the 
 St. Louis pageant was made clear. We heard the fight over the 
 platform, retirement of the silver men, and finally the order to 
 call the roll of the States. We hear of the speeches. Lodge is 
 now on his feet. Depew has taken the floor for Morton. He has 
 called the receding silver delegates erring sisters, at which there 
 is a smile over the room. Allison has been presented, and then 
 Foraker comes, bringing with him the McKinley crash. Some 
 of us walked over to the telephone and heard the roar of the 
 multitude hundreds of miles away, the noise, the shouting, the 
 music and the singing of the songs. 
 
 PROLONGED ENTHUSIASM. 
 
 " 'Sam', at the telephone was rather impatient over this 
 enthusiasm his one affair that the convention should nominate 
 McKinley. The tedium was broken by ripples of talk, remem- 
 brances of famous scenes in other conventions, when Lincoln 
 defeated Seward, the tremendous struggle between Elaine and 
 Grant and the similar incidents in Minneapolis. It was remem- 
 bered that the usual duration of these convention blizzards was 
 about half an hour, and watches were taken out to note now long 
 the hurly-burly would last. 
 
 " There is an end to everything, even a convention blizzard, 
 and in time we heard, with a sigh of relief, that the storm had 
 gone down, and that the States were to be called. 
 
 " There were pauses when some of the votes were challenged, 
 but little conversation. I asked the Governor during the pause 
 when New York was being called whether votes thus far had 
 reached his estimate. l Rather exceeds it,' he answered, when one 
 of the company who had been keeping the tally ventured the pre- 
 diction that when the votes of Ohio were reached there would be 
 votes sufficient to nominate the Governor. Another dwelt upon 
 the poetic fitness of the nomination being made by McKinley's 
 
 8
 
 INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF McKINLEY. 12 1 
 
 own State. There were observations arising out of the incident, 
 but the Governor said nothing, looking over the list and awaiting 
 the announcement that the ballot was proceeding. Finally Ohio 
 cast her forty-six votes, Pennsylvania following, and it was done. 
 
 " There was just a faint touch of color on the face of McKin- 
 ley as some friends spoke a word of congratulation to him on this 
 the moment of his career. He talked of some personal matters of 
 minor import ; showed no emotion and expressed no feeling, bul: 
 when Pennsylvania was passed calmly took up his convention 
 form and continued to note the vote. 
 
 " But iu^the meantime the gun was fired, the bells were rung 
 and Canton knew that the bolt had at last come out of the heavens, 
 and all of the town turned out. So I came from the Governor's 
 house. The streets swarmed with people men, women, children, 
 all rushing in a double-quick to the McKinley home, everybody 
 smiling and many cheering. The crowd was so large that it was 
 necessary to walk in the street. 
 
 FLAGS, DRUMS AND LOUD CHEERS. 
 
 "Steam whistles were blowing, the houses blossomed with 
 flags, drums were beating, every breast bloomed with a McKinley 
 favor, the stores were closed, clubs began to march, the members 
 shouting and crying * McKinley comes.' It is a beautiful sum- 
 mer night as I write, and the town is in revelry, cannon firing, 
 fireworks, horns blowing, the air filled with smoke and noise. 
 Canton will long remember this .day. St. Louis has crowned her 
 eminent citizen a czar, and enthusiasm in eyery form, question- 
 able or otherwise, rules the hour." 
 
 In commenting on the death of the President, a prominent 
 newspaper supplies us with the following very appreciative esti- 
 mate of his character : 
 
 '' Life's work well done ; 
 Life's race well run ; 
 Life's crown well won ; 
 Now comes rest 
 
 ** Both the expected and the unexpected have happened.
 
 122 INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF McKINLEY. 
 
 expectation of recovery was born of our hope, of the almost cer- 
 tainty that so dire a calamity could not blight a period of such 
 prosperity. And yet when that shot was fired, which was ' heard 
 round the world,' the whole nation trembled for the safety of its 
 President, and the heartbeats of the people were mingled with 
 sobs of unrestrained sorrow. 
 
 " Mr. McKinley in his official capacity represented more that 
 is dear to human progress than any other personage or any 
 potentate on the planet. He, morever, illustrated in his own 
 career the grandeur of those multiform and inspiring opportu- 
 nities which the genius of our government offers to every child 
 cradled within the limits of our domain. His early poverty did 
 not stand in the way of his later preferment. He expanded the 
 circle of his narrow circumstances by the faithful performance of 
 every duty that fell to his lot, until at last it embraced the good 
 will and confidence of a whole people, who gladly thrust upon 
 him the high honors and responsibilities of their Chief Execu- 
 tive. Whether as a school teacher in his youth, or as a private 
 in the Civil War, where he won promotion by earnest fidelity as 
 well as by deeds of daring, or later on in the Governor's chair or 
 on the floor of Congress, he showed the qualities which men first 
 learn to envy and then to admire. 
 
 TRUE TO GOD AND COUNTRY. 
 
 " He had but one rule, to be true to his God, his country and 
 his own ideal of a noble character, and if as a consequence he won 
 renown it was because he deserved it. We may have differed 
 with him as to his political theories, we may have thrown the 
 whole strength of logic and argument into the opposition, but at 
 this moment, when death has opened the door across whose 
 mysterious threshold he has passed into eternity and into history, 
 we think of him not as a partisan but as a man, and gladly give 
 the meed of praise which is his due. 
 
 ' There is no politics in the chamber wherein rests the bier. 
 When death has made good its' claim on mortality we are in no 
 mood to speak of aught else than the character, the motives, the
 
 INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF McKINLEY, 123 
 
 virtues of the departed, and under this impulse the whole 
 American people bow their heads in the presence of a nati 
 
 bereavement. , . 
 
 " Mr McKinley was a hard and successful fighter for 
 party a brave soldier when volunteers were sought for a dangerous 
 expedition, a most intrepid debater when his personal convictions 
 were involved, and so honorable that on at least two occasions, 
 when the nomination for the Presidency was within easy reach, 
 he turned the tide 'from himself in favor of the candidate to whom 
 he had pledged his personal influence. That he had the ambition 
 of office is not to be denied, but that he would not accept office 
 unless he could do so with an unsullied conscience is a fact ot 
 which his friends and the whole nation may well be proud, while 
 his political opponents and rivals admire the fidelity which it i 
 hard to imitate. 
 
 CHARACTER BUILT ON PRINCIPLE. 
 Mr McKinley has shown by his life that there are but few 
 things which last-a character which is built on moral principle, 
 an ambition which seeks the good of the country and a religion 
 which can rob the passage from the present to the future 
 
 day following Mr. McKinley's death, another journal 
 paid him this well-merited tribute : 
 
 "Even as a wave of astonishment accompanied the tide ol 
 horror that was spread over the land by the assassin's blow at th< 
 life of the President, so there is now a shock of surprise mingled 
 with the grief which bows the American people. The news from 
 the stricken Cbief Magistrate's bedside from almost the first had 
 been so steadily encouraging, that fear of a fatal result was all but 
 banished. Dread gave place not merely to hope, but to nearly 
 perfect confidence in his recovery. 
 
 " The doctors were unanimous in signing the cheerful re- 
 ports issued up to midnight on Thursday, and relatives and 
 personal friends, who were kept privately informed of the condi- 
 tions exceeded the official bulletins in their assurances to the
 
 124 INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF McKINLEY. 
 
 public that the President would live. The republic was prepar- 
 ing for a heartfelt thangksgiving such as has not occurred since 
 Lee surrendered at Appomatox. The suddenness of the blow 
 makes it all the harder to bear. Rejoicing has been so swiftly 
 turned into mourning that the revulsion of feeling stuns the 
 nation. 
 
 " He is gone, and for the people, whose freely chosen chief 
 servant he was, there remains in this hour only grief that cannot 
 be given expression with tongue or pen, since language fails, in 
 the presence of a tragedy so causeless, so pathetic, so hideous. 
 Blameless in his private life, a man so kindly, so richly endowed 
 with the capacity for inspiring friendship, so filled with good will 
 toward others that even his political opponents responded with 
 good will in their turn a warm-hearted, cordial, Christian gentle- 
 man, William McKinley was without personal enemies, and it 
 seemed unthinkable that even madness itself could wish him 
 
 harm. 
 
 MISCREANT OR MANIAC? 
 
 ' Yet in the flower of his usefulness this good man has been 
 cut down by an assassin. The wretch does not plead what is 
 understood in America as a political motive. The President's 
 policies had critics in plenty, fellow-countrymen of the party in 
 antagonisim to his, and not a few in his own party. But the 
 miscreant or maniac who took his life pretends to no sympathy 
 with the views of these critics. Though his victim was the 
 elected Chief Magistrate of a self-governing republic, limited in 
 his power by the Constitution and the laws, and the supreme 
 antithesis of a hereditary and absolute monarch, the assassin 
 selected him as the representative of despotism. 
 
 It would be a satisfaction had this creature come to us from 
 some remote and poisonous quarter of darkest Europe, where 
 anarchy is bred by tyranny, but we have to face the strange and 
 humiliating fact that he was born and reared among ourselves, 
 though his mind, whether it be sane or diseased, is as little 
 American in its workings as if he had never wandered beyond 
 the confines of a Polish commune. The assassin is himself as
 
 INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF McKINLEY. 125 
 
 unexpected, as amazing, as his act was horrible and astounding. 
 But such as the wretch is debased, abnormal, petty and gro- 
 tesque it was in his power to slaughter greatness and wrap a 
 nation in black. For a crime so tremendous human law has no 
 penalty that does not impress with its immeasurable inadequacy. 
 
 " While his countrymen stand about the bier of the murdered 
 President sorrow's must be the one voice heard. The President 
 has fallen, but the republic is unharmed. The tasks left unfin- 
 ished by William McKinley will be taken up by the hands of 
 him whom the laws, equal to every emergency of State, appoint 
 to fill the place so awfully, so bloodily made vacant. Amid the 
 nation's grief, amid the tears for the man and the Magistrate 
 taken from us by so foul and unnatural a crime, there comes to 
 every American out of the past the voice of another victim of an 
 assassin's bullet, who, when men were turned distraught by 
 Lincoln's death, cried to them : 
 
 " ( God reigns, and the government at Washington still lives 1' "
 
 CHAPTER \H. 
 
 Mr. McKinley's Commanding Influence in Congress Famous 
 Author of the Tariff Bill Bearing His Name His Notable 
 Career as Governor of Ohio First Term as President 
 His Home Life and Personality. 
 
 T^O tell the story of McKinley's seven terms in Congress would 
 be to tell the history of that body and of the nation for four- 
 teen years. From the beginning he was an active and conspicuous 
 member of the House. He was an American, and he reckoned 
 nothing that concerned Americans to be unworthy of his notice. 
 He recognized, however, that in view of the vast development, 
 extension and multiplication of human interests there was little 
 hope for success as a universal genius. A man must be a special- 
 ist if he would attain the greatest eminence and the greatest use- 
 fulness. Already, indeed, he had devoted his attention especially 
 to the subject of the tariff and its bearings upon American industry. 
 The story is told tjiat soon after he opened his law office at 
 Canton, while he was as yet an untrained youth, he was drawn 
 into a debate upon that subject. Pitted against him was a trained, 
 shrewd and experienced lawyer, who had at his tongue's end all 
 the specious sophistries' of free trade. The older and more expert 
 debater won a seeming victory, but McKinley, though silenced for 
 a time, was not convinced. " No one will ever overcome me again 
 in that way," he said to a companion. " I know I am right and I 
 know that I can prove it." Thenceforth the study of books and 
 men and conditions of industry to attain that end was the chief 
 labor of his life. 
 
 The first speech he made in Congress was on the subject of 
 the tariff, and, as already stated, was in opposition to the non- 
 protective bill introduced by Fernando Wood, of New York, in 
 1878. That speech made a marked impression upon the House 
 and the nation, and thenceforth its author was looked to in every 
 tariff debate to be one of the chief upholders of protection. An 
 
 126
 
 AUTHOR OF "THE FAMOUS TARIFF fclLL 1ft 
 
 incident related by Judge Kelley, member of Congress from Penn. 
 sylvania, in his eulogy upon Dudley C. Haskell, shows how 
 effectively McKinley answered this expectation. It was when 
 the famous Mills bill was before the House. Kelley was to open 
 the debate on the Republican side and McKinley was to close it. 
 Haskell, who was a member of the Ways and Means Committee, 
 and a particularly strong debater, desired the honor of closing 
 the debate, and asked Judge Kelley to persuade McKinley to 
 give way to him. 
 
 The Judge went to McKinley and repeated Haskell' s request. 
 McKinley readily consented, saying that he did not care in what 
 order he spoke. So it happened that McKinley was the fourth 
 or fifth speaker and Haskell was to talk last. At the conclusion 
 of McKinley's speech, a number of the members crowded around 
 to congratulate him. Foremost among them was Haskell, who 
 seized McKinley's hand enthusiastically, exclaiming: " Major, I 
 shall speak last ; but you, sir, have closed the debate." 
 
 AN AUTHORITY ON TARIFF QUESTIONS. 
 
 With such years of preparation Major McKinley was uni- 
 versally recognized as the one man of all best qualified to frame 
 a new tariff law, which it seemed desirable to enact when the 
 Republicans resumed full control of the Government in 1889. 
 He was appointed Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, 
 and presently gave to the nation the great measure which bears 
 his name. Of his work, in connection with it, he spoke modestly. 
 " I was Chairman of the Committee," he said, " and I performed 
 my duties as best I could. That is all. Some of the strongest 
 men in Congress were on the Committee, and the eight of us 
 heard everybody, considered everything, and made up the best 
 tariff law we knew how to frame." Envious rivals and unscru- 
 pulous foes have sought to belittle his fame by declaring that it 
 was not his bill at all, that it was really framed by others, and 
 that his connection with it was purely accidental. 
 
 To no intelligent reader of the history of the time can it be 
 necessary to spend much space in refuting that stupid calumny.
 
 128 
 
 McKinley was the author and finisher of that bill. He conceived 
 its general principles. He gave countless days and nights of 
 study and of toil to the elaboration of its details. By his unsui- 
 passed leadership he secured its adoption by the House without 
 resorting to a party caucus an unprecedented achievement. He 
 bore the brunt of the hostile criticism which was heaped upon 
 the law by the free traders of Great Britain, To him, and to 
 him alone, are due the honor and the fame which the better 
 judgment of the world has awarded to the author of that historic 
 
 measure. 
 
 BENEFITS OF THE BILL. 
 
 The McKinley Tariff bill took the tax from some of the 
 chief necessities of life, stimulated old industries, and called new 
 ones of vast magnitude into prosperous existence ; greatly 
 extended, by a wise system of reciprocity, the foreign commerce 
 of the country, and provided means for conducting the Govern- 
 ment and for keeping the financial credit of the nation unim- 
 paired. These are the facts now abundantly recognized beyond 
 all challenge. We may quote as absolutely true the words 
 spoken by Mr. McKinley himself at the time when the measure 
 was repealed and a substitute put in its place : 
 
 "The law of 1890 was enacted for the American people and 
 the American home. Whatever mistakes were made in it were 
 all anade in favor of the occupations and the firesides of the 
 American people. It didn't take away a single day's work from 
 a solitary American workingrnan. It gave work and wages to 
 all, such as they had never had before. It did it by establishing 
 new and great industries m this country, which increased the 
 demand for the skill and handiwork of our laborers everywhere. 
 It had no friends in Europe. It gave their industries no stimu- 
 lus. It gave no employment to their labor at the expense of our 
 own. 
 
 " During more than two years of the Administration of Presi- 
 dent Harrison, and down to its end, it raised all the revenue 
 necessary to pay the vast expenditures of the Government, includ- 
 ing the interest on the public debt and the pensions. It never
 
 AUTHOR OF THE FAMOUS TARIFF BILL. 12 
 
 encroached upon the gold reserve, which in the past had always 
 been sacredly preserved for the redemption of outstanding paper 
 obligations of the Government. 
 
 "During all of its operations, down to the change and 
 reversal of its policy by the election, of 1892, no man can assert 
 that in the industries affected by it wages were too high, although 
 they were higher than ever before in this or any other country. 
 If any such can be found, I beg that they be named. I chal- 
 lenge the enemies of the law of 1890 to name a single industry of 
 that kind. Further, I assert that in the industries affected by 
 that law, which that law fostered, no American consumer suffered 
 by the increased cost of any home products that he bought. He 
 never bought them so low before, nor did he ever enjoy the bene- 
 fit of so much open, free, home competition. Neither producer 
 nor consumer, employer or employe, suffered by that law." 
 
 NOMINATED FOR GOVERNOR. 
 
 At the election of 1890, as we have said, the opposing party 
 by gerrymandering defeated Mr. McKinley by 3.00 votes in a dis- 
 trict normally Democratic by 2,900, and thus prevented his return 
 to Congress. The answer to his defeat came unhesitatingly. 
 Mr. McKinley was nominatsd by the Republicans by acclamation 
 for Governor of the State. Then followed one of the most memor- 
 able campaigns ever waged in the Buckeye State. 
 
 Mr. McKinley began his campaign on August i, and for 
 three months he travelled night and day, making from two to a 
 dozen speeches a day, until he had visited every county in the 
 State. His campaign was on national issues, on the tariff, on 
 protection ; and so eloquently and passionately did he defend his 
 principles that great crowds turned out to- hear him. The atten- 
 tion of the whole country was drawn to the State of Ohio and its 
 campaign. Newspaper correspondents followed the champion of 
 protection in his tour of the State, and filled the press of the 
 country with descriptions of scenes novel in political campaigns. 
 
 Every inch of ground was stubbornly contested, but the peo- 
 ple turned to McKinley as the apostle of the true dispensation,
 
 180 
 
 ard women and children said he had made protection and tariff 
 plain to them. In that campaign, the first general campaign 
 Mr. McKinley had ever made, he was pronounced the best vote- 
 getter ever seen on the stnmp in Ohio. He won the admiration 
 of opponents, as he won the devotion of his own party, and his 
 election by a handsome majority was gratifying to one party, 
 without being a source of bitterness to the rank and file of the 
 other. As his first term in the Governor's chair drew toward its 
 close he was renominated by acclamation, and after another spirited 
 campaign he was re-elected, in 1893, by a majority of more than 
 80,000, at that time the largest but one in the history of the State. 
 
 SECURED NEEDED REFORMS. 
 
 As Governor, Mr. McKinley never forgot that he was the 
 Chief Magistrate, not merely of the party which had elected him, 
 but of the whole State, and he was untiring in his efforts to secure 
 for the whole State a wise, economical, and honorable administra- 
 tion. He took great interest in the management of the public 
 institutions of the State, making a special study of means for their 
 betterment, and securing many important and much-needed re- 
 forms. He urged the preserving and improving of the canal 
 system, and was an earnest promoter of the movement for good 
 roads. To the question of tax reform he paid much attention and 
 repeatedly urged its importance upon the Legislature. Many 
 questions relating to the welfare of workingmen became acute 
 during his administration, and were dealt with by him in a spirit of 
 intelligent sympathy. 
 
 He had already long been known as an advocate of the eight- 
 Lour system, and of arbitration as a means of settling disputes 
 between employers and employes. It was due to his initiative 
 that the State Board of Arbitration was established in Ohio, and 
 to its successful operation he gave for nearly four years his close 
 personal attention. He made various wise recommendations for 
 legislation for the better protection of life and limb in industrial 
 pursuits, and as a result several salutary laws to such effect were 
 put upon the statute books. When destitution and distress
 
 AUTHOR OF THE FAMOUS TARIFF BILL. 131 
 
 prevailed among the miners of the Hocking Valley, he acted with 
 characteristic promptness and decision. News that many families 
 were in danger of starving reached him at midnight. Before sun- 
 rise he had a carload of provisions on the way to their relief. 
 
 During the summer of 1894 strikes and other disturbances 
 prevailed, especially on the chief railroad lines, and for three 
 weeks regiments of militia were on duty, acquitting themselves 
 most creditably for the protection of property and enforcement of 
 the law, without any unnecesssary harshness towards either party 
 to the disputes. On two noteworthy occasions desperate efforts 
 were made by ill-advised mobs to commit the crime of lynching. 
 Governor McKinley promptly used the military forces of the State 
 to prevent such violence of law and dishonor of the Commonwealth, 
 and showed himself a thorough master of the trying situation. 
 
 NO FRIEND TO RED TAPE. 
 
 A distinctive feature of the McKinley Administration was the 
 absence of red tape and needless formality. In his method of 
 transacting business the Governor was concise and direct, and in 
 his intercourse with people, though dignified, he was always ap- 
 proachable and genial. Access was readily had to him at all 
 reasonable times, and no matter of actual interest ever failed to 
 receive his courteous, prompt and painstaking attention. 
 
 In 1884, Mr. McKinley was a delegate-at-large from Ohio 
 to the Republican Nominating Convention, and helped to place 
 James G. Elaine on the ticket. At the National Convention of 
 1888 he represented Ohio in the same capacity and was an earnest 
 and loyal supporter of John Sherman. At that convention, after 
 the first day's balloting, the indications were that Mr. McKinley 
 himself might be made the candidate. Then his strength of pur- 
 pose and his high ideas of loyalty and honor showed themselves, 
 for in an earnest and stirring speech he demanded that no vote be 
 cast for him. 
 
 From the first two delegates had been voting persistently for 
 him, although he had not, of course, been formally placed in 
 nomination. Now the number of his supporters rose to fourteen.
 
 132 AUTHOR OF THE FAMOUS TARIFF BILL. 
 
 All the Republican Congressmen at Washington telegraphed to 
 the convention urging his nomination. The air became electrified 
 with premonitions of a stampede. 
 
 Mr. McKinley had listened to the announcement of two votes 
 for him on each ballot with mingled annoyance and amusement. 
 But now the case was growing serious. The next ballot might 
 give him a majority of the whole convention. He had only to sit 
 still and the ripe fruit would drop into his hands. He had only 
 to utter an equivocal protest and the result would be the same. 
 But there was nothing equivocal about William McKinley. On 
 one side was his personal honor; on the other side the Presidency 
 of the United States. In choosing between the two hesitation was 
 impossible. He sprang to his feet with an expression upon his 
 face and an accent in his voice that thrilled the vast assembly, but 
 hushed it mute and silent as the grave while he spoke and fore- 
 stalled the movement to make him the Presidential nominee. 
 
 CHAIRMAN OF THE CONVENTION. 
 
 Mr, McKinley again occupied a seat as a delegate-at-large 
 from Ohio in the National Convention of 1892, and was made the 
 permanent chairman of the convention. On this occasion an 
 incident similar to that of 1888 occurred. Mr. McKinley was 
 pledged in honor to the support of President Harrison for renomi- 
 nation, and he, as earnestly and as loyalty as he had supported 
 Mr. Sherman four years before, labored for Mr. Harrison's suc- 
 cess. The Republican leaders who were opposed to Harrison's 
 renomination sought to accomplish their purpose by stampeding 
 the convention for McKinley himself. No less than 183 votes 
 were cast for him, against his earnest protest. 
 
 When the vote of Ohio was announced, " 44 for McKinley," 
 he himself from the chair challenged its correctness. The reply 
 was made that he was not then a member of the delegation, his 
 alternate taking his place when he was elected to the chair. 
 Thereupon Mr. McKinley called another man to the chair and 
 took his place upon the floor, checked the incipient stampede, 
 and moved that the renomination of Harrison be made unani-
 
 AUTHOR OF THE FAMOUS TARIFF BILL. 133 
 
 mous. " Your turn will come in 1896 !" shouted his supporters, 
 and that prophecy was destined to be fulfilled. 
 
 Having meanwhile, as has already been set forth, been 
 thrown out of his seat in the House of Representatives, and 
 served two terms as Governor of Ohio, Mr. McKinley formally 
 entered the campaign of 1896, as an aspirant for the Republican 
 nomination, and so earnestly and skilfully was the canvass in 
 his behalf conducted, under the leadership of Mark A. Hanna, 
 that, when the convention assembled at St. Louis in that year, 
 his nomination was a foregone conclusion. 
 
 On the first and ofluy ballot taken he received 66 1 1-2 votes, 
 to 84 1-2 cast for Thor^as B. Reed, 60 1-2 for Matthew S. Quay 
 (58 of these coming from the State of Pennsylvania), 58 for Levi 
 P. Morton, and 35 1-2 for William B. Allison. The election 
 resulted in a triumphant victory for Mr. McKinley, who received 
 271 votes in the Electoral College, to 176 cast for William J. 
 Bryan. Garret A. Hobart, of New Jersey, was elected Vice- 
 President at the same time, but died before the end of his term 
 
 in omce. 
 
 REVIVAL OF PROSPERITY. 
 
 The first administration of President McKinley was marked 
 by the passage of the Dingley Tariff Act in June, 1897, by the 
 beginning of a revival of prosperity throughout the country 
 which has continued ever since j by the successful \vaging of the 
 war that wrested from Spain the last vestiges of her vast colonial 
 empire, and placed the United States in the first rank as a World 
 Power ; and by the approval, on March 14, 1900, of the Act of 
 Congress unequivocally establishing the gold standard. 
 
 Soon after Mr. McKinley was inducted into office, an effort 
 was made to secure the recognition by Congress of the belligerency 
 of the Cuban insurgents, but the joint resolution to that effect 
 secured the endorsement of the Senate only. The relations 
 between the United States and Spain were severely strained 
 throughout the year 1897 because of the brutal manner in which 
 the efforts to restore Spanish domination in Cuba were prosecuted. 
 
 On January 25, 1898, the protected cruiser Maine arrived in
 
 134 AUTHOR OF THE FAMOUS TARIFF BILL, 
 
 the harbor of Havana, having been ordered thither by President 
 McKinley as an act of courtesy to the Spanish Government, and 
 not as a menace, which was the interpretation put upon it by the 
 Spanish people, if not by their government. On February 15, the 
 Maine was blown up while riding peacefully in the harbor of 
 Havana, with terrible loss of life. After this tragedy the termina- 
 tion of peaceful relations between the United States and Spain 
 was only a question of time. 
 
 On March 5, General Fitzhugh Lee's recall from his position 
 as Consul-General of the United States at Havana was requested by 
 the Spanish Government, and promptly refused by the United States. 
 Two days later a bill was introduced in the House appropriating 
 $50,000,000 for national defense, which became a law by President 
 McKinley' s signature on March 9. The report of a Court of 
 Inquiry into the Maine disaster, which was transmitted to Con- 
 gress and made public on March 28, still further strained the 
 relations between the two countries, and on April 5, all the United 
 States Consuls in Cuba were recalled. 
 
 FIGHT FOR CUBAN INDEPENDENCE. 
 
 On the nth, President McKinley sent a message to Congress 
 on the Cuban situation, in which he advised the intervention of 
 the United States in the affairs of the island, but without a recog- 
 nition of the insurgent government. This conservative action 
 was directly due to the firmness of the President in resisting the 
 policy advocated by the radical element in Congress. The situa- 
 tion developed rapidly after this, and on April 19, Congress passed 
 the joint resolution recognizing the independence of the Island of 
 Cuba, and authorizing the President to intervene with the armed 
 forces of the United States. 
 
 On the following day, President McKinley issued an ulti- 
 matum to Spain, in accordance with the terms of the resolution 
 passed by Congress ; on the 2ist, Minister Woodford received his 
 passports from the Spanish Government, and on the 22d, President 
 McKinley issued a proclamation declaring that a state of hostil- 
 ities existed.
 
 AUTHOR OF THE FAMOUS TARIFF BILL. 135 
 
 It is unnecessary in this connection to enter into the details 
 of the brief but brilliant campaign which ensued, and which 
 resul^d, despite many mistakes and blunders by the War 
 Department, in the prompt extinction of Spanish rule, not only 
 in Cuba and in Porto Rico, but in the Philippine archipelago as 
 well. On August 12, a peace protocol was signed between Spain 
 and the United States, and hostilities were suddenly terminated. 
 The two nations then entered upon the task of restoring peaceful 
 relations, which were effected by the signing at Paris, on Decem- 
 ber ia, of a formal treaty of peace. 
 
 RETURN OF PEACE. 
 
 On February 10, 1899, the treaty of peace, having been rati- 
 fied by the Senate was signed by President McKinley, and on 
 March 17, the Queen Regent of Spain affixed her signature to the 
 same document. The complete return of peaceful relations was 
 signalized on June 16 by the arrival in Madrid of Bellamy Storer, 
 the new Minister of the United States to Spain. Meanwhile, early 
 in the year, a formidable insurrection against United States 
 authority broke out in the Philippines, under the leadership of 
 Emilio Aguinaldo, and was prosecuted with varying success until 
 its collapse early in 1901, which was signalized, on March 23, by 
 the capture of Aguinaldo. 
 
 As President McKinley' s first term drew towards a close, 
 there was no dissentient voice in the Republican party to the 
 popular demand for his renomination and re-election. The 
 National Convention of 1900 met in Philadelphia, in June, and 
 renominated Mr. McKinley by a unanimous voice, Governor 
 Theodore Roosevelt, of New York, being placed on the ticket as 
 the candidate for Vice President, and William J. Bryan again 
 becoming McKinley' s Democratic and Populistic opponent. The 
 contest at the polls resulted in an even more decided triumph for 
 Mr. McKinley than that of 1896, he receiving 292 votes in the 
 Electoral Colleges, to 155 cast fv>r Mr, Bryan. Every Northern 
 State, except Colorado, Idaho, Montana and Nevada gave its vote 
 to William McKinley.
 
 136 
 
 President McKinley was inaugurated for his second term on 
 March 4, 1901, when he reappointed his Cabinet, and made few 
 changes in the personnel of his first administration. The policy 
 which he had adopted in dealing with the Territories acquired 
 from Spain was amply sustained by the decisions of the Supreme 
 Court in the so-called insular cases, delivered in June, as far as 
 they disposed of the issues before the Court. There was a recog- 
 nized difference between the situation in Porto Rico and that in 
 the Philippines, and the final disposition of the status of the 
 latter was not then determined. 
 
 GOVERNMENT FOR THE PHILIPPINES. 
 
 The decisions of the Court, as far as they went, made neces- 
 sary some slight alterations in the plans which President McKinley 
 had made for proclaiming a full system of civil govern- 
 ment in the Pldlippines on July 4th, but a partial system was 
 put in operation on that date. Late in July, on notice from the 
 Porto Rican Legislature that a system of local taxation had been 
 established in the island which would yield revenue sufficient for 
 the support of its government, the President issued a proclama- 
 tion declaring the abolition of import and export duties on the 
 trade of Porto Rico with the United States, which had been im- 
 posed by the so-called Foraker law r , which provided a form of 
 civil government for the island. 
 
 This was the last notable event in President McKinley' s 
 administration previous to the brutal assault upon him by the 
 anaichist Czolgosz, within the enclosure of the Pan-American 
 Exposition at Buffalo, on Friday, September 6th. 
 
 The domestic life of William McKinley was typical of the 
 best American phase. On the occasion of his visit to his sister, 
 at Canton, just after the war, which decided his life vocation, he 
 met one of his sister's friends, a pretty school girl, named Ida 
 Saxton, the daughter of James Saxton, a well-to-do banker of the 
 town. A mere acquaintanceship was formed at the time, and 
 when he went to Albany to study law, and she to a seminary at 
 Media, in Pennsylvania, to complete her education, they tempo-
 
 187 
 
 rarily lost sight of each other. A few years later, when Mr. 
 McKinley returned to Canton to open his lay office, and Miss 
 Saxton came home from school and a European tour, they met 
 again and renewed the old acquaintance, which soon passed 
 through the stage of mere friendship into love. 
 
 Their marriage took place on January 35, 1871, in the Pres- 
 byterian Church at Canton, which had been built almost entirely 
 through the liberality of the bride's grandmother. The cere- 
 mony was performed by Dr. Buckingham, the pastor of the church, 
 assisted by Dr. Endsley, of the Methodist Episcopal Church, of 
 which Major McKinley was a member. 
 
 THE HOME OF THE PRESIDENT. 
 
 Major and Mrs. McKinley began housekeeping in Canton in 
 the house which has been made familiar to the world by innum- 
 erable illustrations, although a great part of their married life has 
 been passed at Washington during her husband's long term of 
 service in Congress as well as the Presidency, and four years of 
 it in the Governor's mansion at Columbus. Two daughters were 
 born to them, both dying in early childhood. The first child, 
 named Kate, was born on Christmas Day, 1871. 
 
 Just before the birth of the second daughter, named Ida, Mrs. 
 McKinley was called upon to mourn the death of her own mother, 
 and never recovered fully from the shock and the long and severe 
 illness which she sustained as a consequence. The younger child 
 died within six months, and shortly afterwards Mr. and Mrs. Mc- 
 Kinley were called upon to follow their first born also to the grave. 
 
 This accumulation of afflictions increased the devotion to each 
 other of the bereaved parents, which has been the occasion of 
 remark by all who have been brought into personal contact with 
 them. Mrs. McKinley, as already stated, never recovered from 
 the prostration of health and strength from which she suffered at 
 the time of the illness already alluded to. A partial paralysis of 
 one leg made it difficult, although not painful, for her to be upon 
 her feet, and this inability for exercise in. turn had a serious effect 
 upon her general health,
 
 138 AUTHOR OF THE FAMOUS TARIFF BILL. 
 
 Yet she had always accompanied her husband when he went 
 to Washington in the discharge of his Congressional duties, and 
 on more than one occasion accompanied him on extended tours in 
 different parts of the country. On the other hand, Mr. McKinley 
 never spent away from his wife's side a single hour that had not 
 been demanded for the actual performance of his public duties. 
 
 In the spring of 1901, President McKinley, accompanied Vy 
 several members of his Cabinet, made a notable journey across 
 the Continent, to be present at San Francisco on the occasion of 
 the launching there of the battleship "Ohio." Mrs. McKinley 
 accompanied the President on this trip, which was destined to 
 prove too protracted and too fatiguing for her feeble health. A 
 few days before the Presidential party was due in San Francisco, 
 it was found necessary for the President to hasten to that place 
 with his wife, whose condition had now become critical. 
 
 LINGERED AT DEATH'S DOOR. 
 
 For some days during May Mrs. McKinley lingered at death's 
 door; but at last there was a change for the better, and, after she 
 had gained sufficient strength to stand the journey East, she rapidly 
 recovered her former measure of health at her old home in Canton. 
 Throughout this trying and anxious period, the President's devo- 
 tion to his sick and helpless wife was touching in the extreme, 
 and evoked in his favor the universal admiration of his country- 
 men. 
 
 President McKinley had a singularly attractive personality. 
 Always courteous and affable, he possessed a dignity of mind 
 and deportment that precluded any attempt at offensive famil- 
 iarity. Nature had endowed him with a splendid constitution, 
 which had never been impaired by excesses of any sort. In 
 physique below, rather than above, the medium height, his broad 
 shoulders and erect figure gave him a commanding presence. His 
 face was often likened to that of Napoleon Bonaparte, but it 
 actually resembled that of Daniel Webster more closely. He 
 had a full, high, and broad forehead ; deep-set, piercing eyes of 
 bluish grey, which looked almost black beneath the heavy black
 
 AUTHOR OF THE FAMOUS TARIFF BILL. 139 
 
 eyebrows ; a square and massive jaw, and clean-cut features 
 throughout. 
 
 Possessed of unusual oratorical powers, he was also a delight- 
 ful conversationalist. His conversation, which ranged easily over 
 all the interesting topics and episodes of the day, was distin- 
 guished by an absolute purity of tone, no word ever escaping his 
 lips that he might hesitate to utter in any presence. He drank 
 no intoxicating liquors, but was fond of a good cigar, and was 
 also fond of music, and had almost a passion for flowers. He 
 invariably dressed in black, wearing a frock coat closely buttoned, 
 and a silk hat, and his face was always smoothly shaven. 
 
 As a public speaker, his appearance on the platform instantly 
 commanded attention, and he was always impressive as well as 
 pleasing. Gifted with a rich tenor voice, full and vibrant, he 
 never had to strain it to make himself heard. In public he talked 
 slowly and earnestly, in words of common use and of few sylla- 
 bles, his discourse being enforced by comparatively little gesticu- 
 lation. However abstract might be his theme or exalted his 
 ideas, his language was always made plain to the ordinary intel- 
 ligence. 
 
 INVOLVED BY BANKER'S FAILURE. 
 
 By the failure, in February, 1893, of Robert I/. Walker, a 
 prominent banker and capitalist of Youngstown, Ohio, Mr. 
 McKinley, who was then Governor of the State, was deeply 
 involved. He had trusted implicitly in Mr. Walker's honesty and 
 good judgment, and had become more deeply involved, by the 
 endorsement of the insolvent's paper, than he suspected. Mr. 
 McKinley, as soon as he was made aware of the extent of his 
 misfortune, turned all his property over to trustees, for the benefit 
 of his creditors, the separate estate of Mrs. McKinley, which was 
 considerable in size, taking the same course without any hesita- 
 tion on her part. The total indebtedness amounted to $106,000, 
 all which was provided for by friends in the course of a year, and 
 in February, 1894, the trustees deeded back to both Mr. and Mrs. 
 McKinley their original estates intact. 
 
 The death of President McKinley came with the greater
 
 140 AUTHOR OF THE FAMOUS TARIFF BILL, 
 
 shock after the hope of his recovery had seemed so well estab- 
 lished. In the week of waiting the country learned how highly 
 it prized the life that was hanging in the balance. Mr. McKinley 
 had come to the Presidency with the usual distrust of many and 
 with the enthusiastic devotion probably of very few. Year by 
 year, as he steadily broadened to the responsibilities of his high 
 office, and the party politician ripened into the national statesman, 
 he had constantly grown in the estimation of his countrymen, 
 who recognized in him a high type of patriotic American citizen- 
 ship, and freely extended to him the confidence that his proved 
 chaiacter had earned. 
 
 HELD IN HIGHEST ESTEEM. 
 
 No modern President has held a surer place in contemporary 
 esteem than McKinley had attained through years of trial that 
 had tested and developed his higher qualities. At no time in his 
 career was the universality of this kindly feeling toward him 
 more apparent than at this fatal visit to Buffalo and in the ready 
 response to his uplifting speech at the Exposition. It was a 
 speech that must in any event have been remembered, but that 
 will be recalled with especial interest now as marking the cul- 
 mination of McKinley's development in statesmanship and 
 embodying his last patriotic aspirations for the great nation whose 
 true spirit he had so well understood. 
 
 In his personal and domestic relations also we may ba glad to 
 claim him as a typical American, clean, upright and serious- 
 minded, of simple habits yet meeting all the exactions of life 
 with unaffected dignity. These personal qualities had strength- 
 ened the general confidence that grew up in the President's public 
 character, and thus an element of personal sorrow was added to 
 the horror with with which the country heard of his cruel 
 assassination. 
 
 Recovery from such a wound seemed at the time impossible, 
 until the really marvelous skill of surgery had opened a hope 
 that in a few days grew almost to a certainty. Yet the shock 
 was greater than had been believed, and in spite of skill and
 
 AUTHOR OF THE FAMOUS TARIFF BIU- Ul 
 
 science the sufferer's life has ebbed away, to the heartfelt grief of 
 the whole American people. 
 
 The man who needs ovt prayers to-day is the new President. 
 Under our Republican system a change of administration makes 
 no apparent disturbance, yet may ultimately involve more 
 actual difference of policy than the accession of a monarch. Of 
 the Vice Presidents who have succeeded to the Presidency hereto- 
 fore, Tyler, Fillmore and Johnson broke more or less completely 
 with their party associations and the change frpm Garfield to 
 Arthur was of pronounced effect. 
 
 Jn each case the Vice President had represented a different fac- 
 tion in his party ; but there is no such recognized division in the 
 party at this time and no reason to anticipate any change of 
 policy from Mr. Roosevelt beyond that which may eventually 
 result from his own different temperament and that pf the JJJSJ} 
 he is likely to select as his advisers. 
 
 POWER OF EXECUTIVE LJMITEP, 
 
 The absolute power of the President is limited ; his influence 
 is great. Mr, Roosevelt brings to the office an experience beyond 
 his years, a broad culture that is unusual in our public men, an 
 earnestness and energy that have shown in many fields of en- 
 deavor, and above all, a burning patriotism that is inspired 
 always by high ideals and governed by a courageous uprightness 
 that cannot fail to make its impression on our public life. 
 
 He is not untried in responsible position, and he always has car- 
 ried himself with such high honor that we need not fear to trust 
 the Chief Magistracy to him, confident that all the energy of his 
 nature and the strength of his manly character will be devoted 
 purely, and with a sober sense of deep responsibility, to the unsel- 
 fish service of the nation r 
 
 And so, amid the profound sorrow that has fallen upon us 
 all, the nation goep on its way in confidence and hope. Our insti- 
 tutions are deep-rooted beyond the reach of passing change, and 
 the integrity and devotion of the national conscience will hold the 
 country safe and right through all vicissitudes..
 
 142 
 
 place in our history is secure. His administration has been in 
 many ways illustrious and the work that was given him to do was 
 well achieved. Though there seemed years of usefulness yet 
 before him, they could have added little to the completeness of his 
 fame or to the honor in which his memory will be cherished by 
 his countrymen. 
 
 This generation of Americans has suffered no public grief so 
 poignant as that which filled the country. The death of Presi- 
 dent McKinley carried into every patriotic home a sorrow such as 
 the taking off of very few public men has ever before caused. 
 The cruelty and wantonness of the murderous deed, committed 
 upon one whose life had been signally and successfully devoted 
 to the service of his country, came suddenly like a personal 
 blow to every loyal member of the nation. At once there was a 
 short season of anguish and despair. 
 
 GREAT JOY AT GOOD NEWS. 
 
 Then quickly followed word after word of hope and cheer. 
 The sunshine of thanksgiving began to chase away the shadows 
 of gloom and suspense. Gratitude and joy were breaking forth 
 from millions of anxious hearts at the assured prospect that the 
 life of the stricken statesman would be spared. Suddenly, in the 
 swiftness of a single night, all hope was dashed to the ground, and 
 within twenty-four hours his soul had passed into the impene- 
 trable mystery. 
 
 It is these circumstances which have peculiarly deepened the 
 sadness of the national affliction. Already grievous enough as it 
 had been, it had yet to fall upon the nation with the redoubled 
 force of a second calamity. It was like the mockery of fate. 
 
 For in this memorable week of the tender solicitude of a 
 nation for its fallen chief, it had come to see and understand 
 him as he really was in his career and character, and to feel, 
 after all, how close he had been to them in the patriotic fellow- 
 ship of their hope and aspirations. Indeed, there must be few 
 of his countrymen who have not been impressed by the obvi- 
 ous sincerity of the popular admiration and affection for him
 
 AUTHOR OF THE FAMOUS TARIFF BILL 143 
 
 something to which, in our time, only the posthumous memory of 
 Lincoln is a parallel. 
 
 And when hereafter the lamentations over a great loss have 
 subsided, and men shall come to pass estimate upon the life of 
 "William McKinley without emotion, they will pronounce it to 
 have been worthy in its simplicity and its probity of comparison 
 with that of any public man this country has produced at any 
 stage of its history. It may not be said that he was a great man 
 in the usual sense of the term, certainly not that 9 he was a 
 genius ; but it will be said that in his relation to great events he 
 acted for his country with a sagacity which genius does not 
 
 possess. 
 
 STERLING COMMON SENSE. 
 
 In his sterling common sense he was a well balanced man. 
 In his public policies he was eminently successful. Identified 
 by name, personality and action with the principles of protection ; 
 its unfailing and unselfish champion, even when it seemed that 
 the country had been persuaded to abandon it, he lived to see it 
 incorporated into the affairs of the government, and largely 
 through his own tenacity, more firmly than it had ever been ; to 
 administer it himself, with remarkable results, and then as the 
 very last act of his career, to point out how the time was coming 
 when it must be adopted to a new era of industrial greatness. 
 
 He entered the Presidency in the midst of the gravest 
 uncertainty as to the financial future of the United States, and at a 
 a time, too, when men who did not understand the tact and patience 
 of his statesmanship, distrusted his ability or his methods in settling 
 the issue. Yet he worked out the problem of adjusting his party 
 to fundamental doctrines of financial stability and honesty so 
 well that it finally became a unit behind him ; and his death now 
 raises no apprehension of a crisis or even of insecurity, over 
 what, only five years ago, was a chronic source of alarm and 
 agitation. 
 
 Pre-eminently a man of peace, he was one of the four Presi- 
 dents who have been called upon to conduct war ; and he was 
 hurried unexpectedly into the consideration of problems such as
 
 144 
 
 nad confronted none of his predecessors and such as had been 
 largely alien to his own study and experience. He met them 
 with the ability of a man who " grows " to new occasions and new 
 duties. In the Spanish war his administration surprised the 
 world by the celerity of its complete success. How far the policy 
 which he pursued in dealing with the complicated and exceptional 
 questions growing out of the war may be a permanent success 
 can only be determined by time. But it is certain that in its 
 general features it has been in- consonance with the wishes of a 
 large majority of lis countrymen. 
 
 ENJOYED UNUSUAL CONFIDENCE. 
 
 In the Presidency Mr. McKinley came gradually but surely 
 to earn more than an ordinary share of personal confidence. Even 
 his opponents in party leadership liked him as a man. This was 
 not due simply to his personal sympathy and cheerful manners. 
 It was the result also of a respect for his integrity and sincerity. 
 It arose, too, in a large degree from observation or knowledge of a 
 private or domestic life upon which even all the malevolent and 
 careless gossip of the national capital never east a shadow of dis* 
 repute and which has helped to raise the standard of American 
 manhood in contemplating the gentle, yet heroic fidelity of his 
 devotion to the wife of his youth. 
 
 Yet such are the strange caprices of our destinies it has 
 been the lot of such a man to die a cruel death when still in the 
 happy vigor of his years, at a time when the homes of his country- 
 men were never more prosperous, when the fame of the Republic 
 was never more glorious, and when he himself had become one of 
 the most respected and beloved of all our Presidents. He will be 
 long remembered with affectionate reverence as an eminent 
 American, true to the best of the old and good traditions of his 
 land and as a victim of the vilest and most insensate system of 
 political malignancy known to modern times. He has left behind, 
 too, the example of that kindly and well-ordered life which 
 may face even so sudden and piteous a fate as his with the 
 noble fortitude of those midnight words in his last agony,
 
 AUTHOR OF THE FAMOUS TARIFF BILL. 145 
 
 "Good bye all, good bye; it is God's way; let His will, not 
 
 ours, be done." 
 
 And now, in this solemn hour, the Executive power ot 
 Republic passes into the hands of a citizen who, while in many 
 respects much different in his personal attributes from the fallen 
 President, has also many of the best virtues of an American 
 patriot The transition will be peaceful and orderly, and 
 government with Theodore Roosevelt at its head, will suffer no 
 
 strain or shock. 
 
 There is no occasion for misgivings or distrust. 
 President, it is true, is only forty-two years of age the youngest 
 man that has ever been summoned to the office ; and in ;the inten 
 sity of his temperament and his zeal for his convictions, he has 
 sometimes betrayed the faults of impetuosity. These have been 
 the outgrowth of a spirit that has not been incompatible in 1 
 past with high and useful public service. Indeed, with a con- 
 siderable number of his countrymen, he is the object of that 
 enthusiastic esteem which goes with unflinching bravery in the 
 pursuit of high ideals. 
 
 HIS EDUCATION AND EXPERIENCE. 
 
 It is to be remembered that he has been engaged in public 
 affairs ever since his youth, that education as well as experience in 
 important trusts qualify him for the nation's service, and that m 
 the exercise of such an administrative trust as the Governorship 
 of the first State of the Union, he emerged from it with a clean, 
 honorable and creditable record. 
 
 With every essential policy of the administration he has bee 
 in complete accord, and there will unquestionably be no departure 
 from these policies, whatever may be ultimately the changes 
 among his constitutional advisers. 
 
 In the meantime let President Roosevelt have the full benefit 
 of an immediate recognition of his obviously patriotic qualities as 
 a man. In meeting his new responsibilities the nation should be 
 forbearing in criticism founded upon past judgments.^ Let it 
 exercise that moderation and that charity of speech which ever
 
 146 AUTHOR OF THE FAMOUS TARIFF BILL. 
 
 marked the life of the patriot who has passed to his eternal 
 rest. 
 
 Following are some of the notable sentiments in the Presi- 
 dent's speech at the Pan-American Exposition at Buffalo, Sep- 
 tember 5, which were received with great enthusiasm : 
 
 "Expositions are the timekeepers of progress. 
 
 " The wisdom and energy of all the nations are none too great 
 for the world's work. 
 
 11 Isolation is no longer possible, or desirable. 
 
 "We must not rest in fancied security that we will forever 
 sell everything and buy little or nothing. 
 
 " The period of exclusiveness is past. The expansion of our 
 trade and commerce is the pressing problem. 
 
 " Reciprocity treaties are in harmony with the spirit of the 
 times ; measures of retaliation are not. 
 
 " We must encourage our merchant marine. We must have 
 more ships. They must be under the American flag. 
 
 " We must build an Isthmian canal. 
 
 " The construction of a Pacific cable can be no longer post- 
 poned. 
 
 "This exposition would have touched the heart of that 
 American statesman whose mind was ever alert and thought ever 
 constant for a larger commerce and a truer fraternity of the 
 Republics of the new world. He needs no identification to an 
 assemblage of Americans everywhere, for the name of Elaine is 
 inseparably associated with the Pan-American movement."
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Important State Papers and Speeches of President McKin- 
 ley Message to Congress on the War in Cuba Ad- 
 dresses at Peace Jubilees. 
 
 A MOURNFUL interest now attaches to President McKinley's 
 last public address. It was delivered on Thursday, Septem- 
 ber 5th, to a great throng at Buffalo. From his entry to the 
 Exposition grounds soon after ten o'clock in the morning until 
 the dying out of the lights of the illumination of the grounds and 
 buildings at night, the day at the Pan-American Exposition -was 
 a long ovation to President McKinley. 
 
 As the President, accompanied by Mrs. McKinley, Mrs. Will- 
 iam Hamlin, of the Board of Women Managers, and John G. 
 Milburn, drove to the Lincoln Parkway entrance, they were met 
 by detachments of United States marines and the seacoast artillery, 
 and the Sixty-fifth and Seventy-fourth New York regiments under 
 General S. M. Welcix. A President's salute of twenty-one guns 
 was fired. The great crowd which covered the esplanade before 
 the grand stand, a quarter of a mile square, overflowed into the 
 Court of Fountains. There were more than 30,000 who joined in 
 the cheers that greeted the President as he assisted Mrs. McKin- 
 le}' from the carriage to the stand, where wtr^ seated many dis- 
 tinguished persons, among them the representatives of Mexico 
 and most of the Central and South American republics. 
 
 There was almost absolute quiet when Mr. Milburn arose and 
 said simply : " Ladies and gentlemen The President." 
 
 Cheers again drowned all else. When they had subsided the 
 President began his address. 
 
 After welcoming the representatives of other nations, praising 
 expositions in general as the "timekeepers of progress," and not- 
 ing the benefits to be derived from comparison of products and 
 friendly competition, the President referred to the march of im- 
 provement and invention with reference to its effect upon the 
 
 147
 
 143 STATE PAPERS AND SPEECHES. 
 
 world's commerce and moral and material advancement. He 
 referred also to the growing disposition to settle international 
 differences in the conrt of arbitration, the " noblest forum " for 
 the settlement of such disputes. He then said : 
 
 " My fellow citizens, trade statistics indicate that this country 
 is in a state of unexampled prosperity. The figures are almost 
 appalling. They show that we are utilizing our fields and forests 
 and mines, and that we are furnishing profitable employment to 
 the millions of workingmen throughout the United States bringing 
 comfort and happiness to their homes, and making it possib 1 to 
 lay by savings for old age and disability. 
 
 PROSPERITY EVERYWHERE. 
 
 "That all the people are participating in this great prosperity 
 is seen in every American community, and shown by the enor- 
 mous and unprecedented deposits in our savings banks. Our duty 
 in the care and security of these deposits and their safe invest- 
 ment demands the highest integrity and the best business 
 capacity. 
 
 "Our industrial enterpises, which have grown to such great 
 proportions, affect the homes and occupations of the people and the 
 welfare of the country. Our capacity to produce has developed so 
 enormously and our products have so multiplied that the problem 
 of more markets requires out urgent and immediate attention. 
 
 ' We must not repose in fancied security that we can forever 
 sell everything and buy little or nothing. Reciprocity is th(. 
 natural outgrowth of our wonderful industrial development under 
 the domestic policy now firmly established. 
 
 'What we produce beyond our domestic consumption must 
 have a vent abroad. The excess must be relieved through a 
 foreign outlet, and we should sell everywhere we can and buy 
 wherever the buying will enlarge our sales and productions, and 
 thereby make a greater demand for home labor. 
 
 ' The period of exclusiveness is past. The expansion of our 
 trade and commerce is the pressing problem. Commercial wars 
 are unprofitable. A policy of good will and friendly trade rela-
 
 STATE PAPERS AND SPEECHES. 149 
 
 tions will prevent reprisals. Reciprocity treaties are in harmony 
 with the spirit of the times; measures of retaliation are not. If, 
 perchance, some of our tariffs are no longer needed for revenue or 
 to encourage and protect our industries at home, why should they 
 not be employed to extend and promote our markets abroad? 
 
 "Then too, we have inadequate steamship service, 
 lines of steamships have already been put in commission between 
 the Pacific coast ports oi the United States and those on the west- 
 ern coasts of Mexico and Central and South America. Tnese 
 should be followed up with direct steamship lines between the 
 western coast of the United States and South American ports. 
 
 "We must have more ships. They must be under the 
 American flag, built and manned and owned by Americans. These 
 will not only be profitable in a commercial sense; they wil 
 messengers of peace and amity wherever they go. 
 
 LARGER COMMERCE AND TRUER FRATERNITY. 
 We must build the isthmian canal, which will unite the two 
 oceans and give a straight line of water communication with the 
 western coasts of Central and South America and Mexico, 
 construction of a Pacific cable cannot be longer postponed. 
 
 "This Exposition would have touched the heart of 
 American statesman whose mind was ever alert and thought ever 
 constant for a larger commerce and a truer fraternity of ^the repul> 
 lies of the New World. His broad American spirit 
 
 manifested here. 
 
 "He needs no identification to an assemblage of Americans 
 anywhere, for the name of Blaine is inseparably associated with 
 the Pan-American movement, which finds here practical and sub- 
 stantial expression, and which we all hope will be firmly advanced 
 by the Pan-American Congress that assembles this autumn 
 
 capital of Mexico. 
 
 " Let us ever remember that our interest is in concord, r 
 conflict ; and that our real eminence rests in the victories of peace, 
 
 not those of war. 
 
 "Our earnest prayer is that God will graciously vo
 
 150 STATE PAPERS AND SPEECHES. 
 
 prosperity, happiness and peace to all our neighbors, and like 
 blessings to all the peoples and powers of earth." 
 
 President McKinley's reference to the establishment of recip- 
 rocal treaties, the necessity of building an isthmian canal and a 
 Pacific cable, and his reference to the work of Mr. Elaine in the 
 carrying out of the Pan- American idea brought forth especially 
 enthusiastic applause. Upon the conclusion of his address the 
 President held an impromptu reception for fifteen minutes. 
 
 Mr. McKinley's statesmanlike ability in dealing with great 
 public questions was shown on many occasions. This appeared 
 especially during the events preceding our war with Spain. His 
 message to Congress on April n, 1898, is a masterpiece of its 
 
 kind. 
 
 MESSAGE ON THE CUBAN QUESTION. 
 
 We reproduce the message here, as it contains a concise state- 
 ment of the matters in controversy, and is an important State, 
 paper which every person who would be well informed will desire 
 to preserve. 
 
 " To THE CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES : 
 
 " Obedient to that precept of the Constitution which com- 
 mands the President to give, from time to time, to the Congress 
 information of the state of the Union, and to recommend to their 
 consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and ex- 
 pedient, it becomes my duty now to address your body with regard 
 to the grave crisis that has arisen in the relations of the United 
 States to Spain by reason of the warfare-that for more than three 
 years has raged in the neighboring island of Cuba. 
 
 " I do so, because of the intimate connection of the Cuban 
 question with the state our own Union, and the grave relation the 
 course which it is now incumbent upon the nation to adopt, must 
 needs bear to the traditional policy of our Government, if it is to 
 accord with the precepts laid down by the founders of the Repub- 
 lic, and religiously observed by succeeding administrations to the 
 present day. 
 
 " The present revolution is but the successor of other similar
 
 STATE PAPERS AND SPEECHES. 
 
 insurrections which have occurred in Cuba against the dominion 
 of Spain, extending over a period of nearly half a centuty, each 
 of which, during its progress, has subjected the United States to 
 gr~at e-Tort and expense in enforcing its neutrality laws, caused 
 enormous losses to American trade and commerce, caused irrita- 
 tion, annoyance and disturbance among our citizens, and by the 
 exercise of cruel, barbarous and uncivilized practices of warfare, 
 shocked the sensibilities and offended the humane sympathies of 
 our people. 
 
 "Since the present revolution began, in February, 18^5, this 
 country has seen the fertile domain of our threshold ravaged by 
 fire and sword in the course of a struggle unequalled in the 
 history of the island, and rarely paralleled as to the number of 
 the combatants and the bitterness of the contest by any revolu- 
 tion of modern times, where a determined people striving to be 
 free have been oppressed by the power of the sovereign State. 
 
 COMMERCE PARALYZED. 
 
 " Our people have beheld a once prosperous community re- 
 duced to comparative want, its lucrative commerce virtually para- 
 lyzed, its exceptional productiveness diminished, its fields laid 
 waste, its mills in ruins, and its people perishing by tens of thou- 
 sands from, hunger and destitution. We have found ourselves 
 constrained, in the observance of that strict neutrality which our 
 laws enjoin, and which the law of nations commands, to police 
 our waters and watch our own seaports in prevention of any 
 unlawful act in aid of the Cubans. 
 
 "Our trade has suffered, the capital invested by our citizens 
 in Cuba has been largely lost, and the temper and forbearance of 
 our people have been so seriously tried as to beget a perilous 
 unrest among our own citizens, which has inevitably found its 
 expression from time to time in the National Legislature, so that 
 issues, wholly external to our own body politic, stand in the way 
 of that close devotion to domestic advancement that becomes a 
 self-contained Commonwealth, whose primal maxim has been the 
 avoidance of all foreign entanglements, All this must need
 
 152 STATE PAPERS AND SPEECHES. 
 
 awaken, and has, indeed, aroused the utmost concern on the part 
 of this government as well during my predecessor's term as in 
 my own. 
 
 " In April, 1896, the evils from which our country suffered 
 through the Cuban war became so onerous that my predecessor 
 made an effort to bring about a peace through the mediation of 
 this Government in any way that might tend to an honorable 
 adjustment of the contest between Spain and her revolted colony, 
 on the basis of some effective scheme of self-government for Cuba 
 under the flag and sovereignty of Spain. It failed, through the 
 refusal of the Spanish Government, then in power, to consider 
 any form of mediation or, indeed, any plan of settlement which 
 did not begin with the actual submission of the insurgents to the 
 mother country, and then only on such terms as Spain herself 
 might see fit to grant. The war continued unabated .The resist- 
 ance of the insurgents was in no wise diminished. 
 
 HORRORS OF INHUMAN STRIFE. 
 
 " The efforts of Spain were increased both by the despatch 
 of fresh levies to Cuba and by the addition to the horrors of the 
 strife of a new and inhuman phase, happily unprececlent in 
 the modern histories of civilized Christian peoples. The policy 
 of devastation and concentration by the Captain-General's bando 
 of October, 1896, in the province of Pinar del Rio was thence 
 extended to embrace all of the island to which the power of the 
 Spanish arms was able to reach by occupation or by military 
 operations. 
 
 " The peasantry, including all dwelling in the open agricul- 
 tural interior, were driven into the garrison towns or isolated 
 places held by the troops. The raising and moving of provisions 
 of all kinds were interdicted. The fields were laid waste, dwel- 
 lings unroofed and fired, mills destroyed, and, in short, everything 
 that could desolate the land and render it unfit for human 
 habitation or support, was commanded by one or the other of the 
 contending parties aud executed by all the powers at their
 
 STATE PAPERS AND SPEECHES. 153 
 
 11 By the time the present Administration took office a year 
 ago, reconcentration so-called had been made effective over the 
 better part of the four central and western provinces, Santa Clara, 
 Mantanzas, Havana and Pinar del Rio. The agricultural popu- 
 lation, to the estimated number of 300,000 or more, was herded 
 within the towns and their immediate vicinage, deprived of the 
 means of support, rendered destitute of shelter, left poorly clad, 
 and exposed to the most unsanitary conditions. As the scarcity 
 of food increased with the devastation of the depopulated areas 
 of production, destitution and want became misery and star- 
 vation. 
 
 " Month by month the death rate increased in an alarming 
 ratio. By March, 1897, according to conservative estimate from 
 official Spanish sources, the mortality among the reconcentrados, 
 from starvation and the diseases thereto incident, exceeded 50 
 per centum of their total number. No practical relief was ac- 
 corded to the destitute. The overburdened towns, already suffer- 
 ing from the general dearth, could give no aid. 
 
 CONFRONTED WITH GRAVE PROBLEMS. 
 
 " In this state of affairs my administration found itself 
 confronted with the grave problems of its duty. My message of 
 last December reviewed the situation, and narrated the steps taken 
 with a view to relieving its acuteness and opening the way to 
 some form of honorable settlement. The assassination of the 
 Prime Minister, Canovas, led to a change of Government in 
 Spain. The former administration pledged to subjugation with- 
 out concession, gave place to that of a more liberal party, com- 
 mitted long in advance to a policy of reform involving the wider 
 principle of home rule for Cuba and Porto Rico. 
 
 " The overtures of this Government, made through its new 
 Envoy, General Woodford, and looking to an immediate and 
 effective amelioration of the condition of the island, although 
 not accepted to the extent of admitted mediation in any shape, 
 were met by assurances that home rule, in an advanced phase, 
 would be forthwith offered to Cuba, without waiting for the war
 
 154 STATE PAPERS AND SPEECHES. 
 
 to end, and that more humane methods should henceforth prevail 
 in the conduct of hostilities. 
 
 "While these negotiations were in progress the increasing 
 destitution of the unfortunate reconcentrados and the alarming 
 mortality among them claimed earnest attention. The success 
 which had attended the limited measure of relief extended to the 
 suffering American citizens among them by the judicious expen- 
 diture through the Consular agencies of the money appropriated 
 expressly for their succor by the joint resolution approved May 
 24, 1897, prompted the humane extension of a similar scheme of 
 aid to the great body of sufferers. 
 
 "A suggestion to this end was acquiesced in by the Spanish, 
 authorities. On the 24th of December last I caused to be issued 
 an appeal to the American people inviting contributions in money 
 or in kind for the succor of the starving sufferers in Cuba, follow- 
 ing this on the 8th of January by a similar public announcement 
 of the formation of a Central Cuban Relief Committee, with head- 
 quarters in New York City, com posed of three members represent- 
 ing the National Red Cross and the religious and business elements 
 of the community. 
 
 SPAIN'S FRIENDLY FEELING. 
 
 <( Coincidently with these declarations, the new Government 
 of Spain continued to complete the policy already begun by its 
 predecessor of testifying friendly regard for this nation by releas- 
 ing American citizens held under one charge or another connected 
 with the insurrection, so that by the end of November not a single 
 person entitled in any way to our national protection remained in 
 a Spanish prison. 
 
 'The war in Cuba is of such a nature that short of subju- 
 gation or extermination a final military victory for either side 
 seems impracticable. The alternative lies in the physical 
 exhaustion of the one or the other party, or, perhaps, of both a 
 condition which in effect ended the ten years' war by the truce of 
 Zanjon. The prospect of such a protraction and conclusion of 
 the present strife is a contingency hardly to be contemplated with
 
 STATE PAPERS AND SPEECHES. 155 
 
 equanimity by the civilized world, and least of all by the United 
 States, affected and injured as we are, deeply and intimately, by 
 its very existence. 
 
 ' Realizing this, it appeared to be my duty in a spirit of true 
 friendliness, no less to Spain than to the Cubans who have so 
 much to lose by the prolongation of the struggle, to seek to bring 
 about an immediate termination of the war. To this end I sub- 
 mitted on the 2yth ultimo, as a result of much representation 
 and correspondence through the United States Minister at 
 Madrid, propositions to the Spanish Government looking to an 
 armistice until October i, for the negotiations of peace with the 
 good offices of the President. 
 
 "In addition, I asked the immediate revocation of the order 
 of reconcentration so as to permit the people to return to their 
 farms, and the needy to be relieved with provisions and supplies 
 from the United States, co-operating with the Spanish authorities 
 so as to afford full relief. 
 
 OFFER OF THE SPANISH CABINET. 
 
 "The reply of the Spanish Cabinet was received on the 
 night of the 3ist ultimo. It offers as the means to bring about 
 peace in Cuba, to confide the preparation thereof to the Insular 
 Parliament, inasmuch as the concurrence of that body would be 
 necessary to reach a final result, it being, however, understood 
 that the powers reserved by the Constitution to the Central Gov- 
 ernment are not lessened or diminished. As the Cuban Parlia- 
 ment does not meet until the 4th of May next, the Spanish Gov- 
 ernment would not object for its part to accept at once a suspen- 
 sion of hostilities if asked for by the insurgents from the Gene- 
 ral-in-Chief, to whom it would pertain in such case to determine 
 the duration and conditions of the armistice. 
 
 " The propositions submitted by General Woodford and the 
 reply of the Spanish Government were both in the form of brief 
 memoranda, the texts of which are before me, and are substan- 
 tially in the language above given. 
 
 " There remain the alternative forms of intervention to end
 
 156 STATE PAPERS AND SPEECHES. 
 
 the war, either as an impartial neutral by imposing a rational 
 compromise between the contestants or as the active ally of the 
 one party or the other. 
 
 " As to the first, it is not to be forgotten that during the last 
 few months the relation of the United States has virtually been 
 one of friendly intervention in many ways, each not of itself 
 conclusive, but all tending to the exertion of a potential influence 
 toward an ultimate pacific result just and honorable to all inter- 
 ests concerned. The spirit of all our acts hitherto has been an 
 earnest, unselfish desire for peace and prosperity in Cuba, untar- 
 nished by differences between us and Spain and unstained by the 
 blood of American citizens. 
 
 HOPELESS SACRIFICE OF LIFE. 
 
 " The forcible intervention of the United States as a neutral, 
 to stop the war, according to the large dictates of humanity and 
 following many historical precedents where neighboring States 
 have interfered to check the hopeless sacrifices of life by inter- 
 necine conflicts beyond their borders, is justifiable on rational 
 grounds. It involves, however, hostile constraint upon both the 
 parties to the contest as well to enforce a truce as to guide the 
 eventual settlement. 
 
 " The grounds for such intervention may be briefly summar- 
 ized as follows : First. In the cause of humanity and to put an 
 end to the barbarities, bloodshed, starvation, and horrible miseries 
 now existing there, and which the parties to the conflict are either 
 unable to or unwilling to stop or mitigate. It is no answer to say 
 this is all in another country, belonging to another nation, and is 
 therefore none of our business. It is specially our duty, for it is 
 right at our door. 
 
 "Second. We owe it to our citizens in Cuba to afford them 
 that protection and indemnity for life and property which no gov- 
 ernment there can or will afford, and to that end to terminate the 
 conditions that deprive them of legal protection. 
 
 ' Third. The right to intervene may be justified by the very 
 serious injury to the commerce, trade and business of our people,
 
 STATE PAPERS AND SPEECHES. 157 
 
 and by the wanton destruction of property and devastation of the 
 island. 
 
 " Fourth. Aid, which is of the utmost importance. The 
 present condition of affairs in Cuba is a constant menace to our 
 peace and entails upon this government an enormous expense. 
 With such a conflict waged for years in an island so near us and 
 with which our people have such trade and business relations ; 
 where the lives and liberty of our citizens are in constant danger 
 and their property destroyed and themselves ruined ; where our 
 trading vessels are liable to seizure and are seized at our very door 
 by warships of a foreign nation ; the expeditions of filibustering 
 that we are powerless altogether to prevent, and the irritating 
 questions and entanglements thus arising all these and others 
 that I need not mention, with the resulting strained relations, are a 
 constant menace to our peace and compel us to keep on a semi-war 
 footing with a nation with which we are at peace. 
 
 DESTRUCTION OF THE BATTLESHIP MAINE. 
 
 " These elements of danger and disorder already pointed out 
 have been strikingly illustrated by a tragic event which has deeply 
 and j ustly moved the American people. I have already trans- 
 mitted to Congress the report of the Naval Court of Inquiry on the 
 destruction of the battleship "Maine" in the harbor of Havana, 
 during the night of the fifteenth of February. The destruction 
 of that noble vessel has filled the national heart with inexpressible 
 horror. Two hundred and sixty-six brave sailors and marines and 
 two officers of our navy, reposing in the fancied security of a 
 friendly harbor, have been hurled to death; grief and want brought 
 to their homes and sorrow to the nation. 
 
 " The Naval Court of Inquiry, which, it is needless to say, 
 commands the unqualified confidence of the Government, was 
 unanimous in its conclusions that the destruction of the " Maine" 
 was caused by an exterior explosion that of a submarine mine. 
 It did not assume to place the responsibility. That remains to be 
 fixed. 
 
 " In any event the destruction of the <k Maine," by whatever
 
 158 
 
 STATE PAPERS AND SPEECHES. 
 
 exterior cause, is a patent and impressive proof of a state of things 
 in Cuba that is intolerable. That condition is thus shown to be 
 such that the Spanish Government cannot assure safety and 
 security to a vessel of the American Navy in the harbor of 
 Hrvana on a mission of peace and rightfully there. 
 
 ' 4 Further referring in this connection to recent diplomatic 
 correspondence, a despatch from our Minister to Spain, of the 26th 
 ultimo, contained the statement that the Spanish Minister for 
 Foreign Affairs assured him positively that Spain will do all that 
 the highest honor and justice required in the matter of the "Maine." 
 The reply above referred to of the 3ist ultimo also contained an 
 expression of the readiness of Spain to submit to an arbitration all 
 the differences which can arise in this matter, which is subse- 
 quently explained by the note of the Spanish Minister at Wash- 
 ington of the loth instant, as follows : 
 
 " 'As to the question of fact which springs from the diversity 
 of views between the report of the American and Spanish boards, 
 Spain proposes that the fact be ascertained by an impartial in- 
 vestigation by experts, whose decision Spain accepts in advance.' 
 To this I have made no reply. 
 
 "WAR IN CUBA MUST STOP." 
 
 Cl In the name of humanity, in the name of civilization, in 
 behalf of endangered American interests which give us the right 
 to speak and to act, the war in Cuba must stop. 
 
 " In view of these facts and of these considerations, I ask the 
 Congress to authorize and empower the President to take measures 
 to secure a full and final termination of hostilities between the 
 government of Spain and the people of Cuba, and to secure in 
 the island the establishment of a stable government, capable of 
 maintaining order and observing its international obligations, 
 insuring peace and tranquillity, and the security of its citizens as 
 well as our own, and to use the military and naval forces of the 
 United States as may be necessary for these purposes. 
 
 " And in the interest of humanity, and to aid in preserving 
 the lives of the starving people of the island, I recommend that
 
 STATE PAPERS AND SPEECHES. 15 
 
 the distribution of the food and 'supplies be continued, and that an 
 appropriation be made out of the public treasury to supplement 
 the charity of our citizens. The issue is now with Congress. It 
 is a solemn responsibility. I have exhausted every effort to relieve 
 the intolerable condition of affairs which is at our doors. 
 
 " Prepared to execute every obligation imposed upon me by 
 the Constitution and the law, I await your action. 
 
 "Since the preparation of the foregoing message official infor- 
 mation was received by me that the latest decree of the Queen 
 Regent of Spain directs General Blanco, in order to prepare and 
 facilitate peace, to proclaim a suspension of hostilities, the duration 
 and details of which have not yet been communicated to me. This 
 fact, with every other pertinent consideration, will, I am sure, have 
 your just and careful attention in the solemn deliberations upon 
 which you are about to enter. If this measure attains a success- 
 ful result, then our aspirations as a Christian peace-loving people 
 will be realized. If it fails, it will be only another justification for 
 our contempleted action. WILLIAM McKINLBY. 
 
 " Executive Mansion, April n, 1898." 
 
 INTOLERABLE CONDITIONS IN CUBA. 
 
 The causes stated in the President's message constituted the 
 real occasion for war between the United States and Spain. It 
 was felt that the condition of the people of Cuba could no longer 
 be tolerated, especially as it involved the rights of American citi- 
 zens and endangered our commercial relations. Our citizens were 
 liable to arrest on suspicion of sympathizing with the insurgents. 
 Their property, in many instances, had been wantonly destroyed, 
 and they had been compelled to suffer disaster from fire and sword. 
 It was not in the nature of things that such outrages should con- 
 tinue without arousing public indignation and creating a demand 
 that these atrocities should be discontinued even at the cost of war. 
 
 During the progress of hostilities with Spain the President 
 showed in every way his appreciation of the brave demeanor of 
 the American soldiers who promptly responded to their country's 
 call.
 
 STATE PAPERS AND SPEECHES. 
 
 
 he following official correspondence between Presldem 
 McKinley and General Breckinridge, in which the President 
 pays tribute to the troops who could not be sent to the front was 
 made public August I2th. 
 
 " CHICKAMAUGA PARK, GA., Aug. 10, 1898. 
 "THE PRESIDENT: 
 
 " May I not ask you, in the name and behalf of the forty 
 thousand men of this command, to visit it while it is still intact ? 
 There is much to be said showing how beneficial and needed such 
 a visit is ; but you will appreciate better than I can tell you the 
 disappointment and consequent depression many men must feel, 
 especially the sick, when they joined together for a purpose, and 
 have done so much to show their readiness and worthiness to 
 serve their country in the field, but find themselves leaving the 
 military service without a battle or campaign. All who see fJieru 
 must recognize their merit and personal interest, must encourage 
 all if you can find time to review this command. 
 
 "BRECKINRIDGE, Major General Commanding." 
 
 The following was the President's reply : 
 
 " EXECUTIVE MANSION, Washington, Aug. n, 1898. 
 " MAJOR GENERAL BRECKINRIDGE, Chickamauga Park : 
 
 11 Replying to your invitation I beg to say that it would give 
 me great pleasure to show by a personal visit to Chickamauga 
 Park my high regard for the forty thousand troops of your com- 
 mand, who so patriotically responded to the call for volunteers 
 and who have been for upwards of two months ready for any 
 service and sacrifice the country might require. My duties, how- 
 ever, will not admit of absence from Washington at this time. 
 
 ''The highest tribute that can be paid to a soldier is to say 
 that he performed his full duty. The field of duty is determined 
 by his government, and wherever that chances to be is the place 
 of honor. All have helped in the great cause, whether in camp 
 or battle, and when peace comes all will be alike entitled to the 
 nation's gratitude. " WILLIAM McKiNLEY."
 
 STATE PAPERS AND SPEECHES. 
 
 The war having been brought to a successful issue, on the 
 evening of August 12, 1898, President McKinley issued the fol- 
 lowing proclamation : 
 
 " BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 
 
 "A PROCLAMATION. 
 
 " Whereas, B}- a protocol concluded and signed August 12, 
 1898, by William R. Day, Secretary of State of the United States, 
 and His Excellency, Jules Cambon, Ambassador Extraordinary 
 and Minister Plenipotentiary of the Republic of France at Wash- 
 ington, respectively representing for this purpose the Government 
 of the United States and the Government of Spain, the United 
 States and Spain have formally agreed upon the terms on which 
 negotiations for the establishment of peace between the two coun- 
 tries shall be undertaken ; and 
 
 " Whereas, It is in said protocol agreed that upon its conclu- 
 sion and signature hostilities between the two countries shall be 
 suspended, and that notice to that effect shall be given as soon as 
 possible by each government to the commanders of its military 
 and naval forces. 
 
 HOSTILITIES ARE SUSPENDED. 
 
 " Now, therefore, I, William McKinley, President of the 
 United States, do, in accordance with the stipulations of the proto- 
 col, declare and proclaim on the part of the United States a sus- 
 pension of hostilities, and do hereby command that orders be 
 immediately given through the proper channels to the command- 
 ers of the military and naval forces of the United States to abstain 
 from all acts inconsistent with this proclamation. 
 
 " In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused 
 the seal of the United States to be affixed. 
 
 "Done in the city of Washington, this i2th day of August, 
 in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and ninety- 
 eight, and of the Independence of the United States the one hun- 
 dred and twenty-third. " WILLIAM McKiNLEY." 
 
 " By the President, WILLIAM R. DAY, Secretary of State." 
 11
 
 162 STATE PAPERS AND SPEECHES. 
 
 In October many towns and cities in all parts of the United 
 States held peace jubilees, to comniem orate the end of the war, 
 and express the public satisfaction over its results. Chicago's 
 great peace jubilee began on Monday, October i/th, and con- 
 tinued for several days. President and Mrs. McKinley were pres. 
 ent, with several members of the Cabinet, many foreign ministers 
 and secretaries, Senators, Representatives, Governors, officers of 
 the army and navy, mayors of cities, prelates of the churches and 
 other distinguished men. 
 
 Arches were erected across many streets and named in honor 
 of army and navy heroes of the Spanish war. Flags and bunting 
 decorated every building in the downtown district. Countless 
 lines of electric lights were strung for illuminating the streets 
 and every preparation was made to celebrate the victories at 
 Manila and Santiago. There were banquets, parades and a j ubilee 
 ball, and the city was crowded for many days. 
 
 AT THE CHICAGO AUDITORIUM. 
 
 The jubilee was inaugurated with a union thanksgiving 
 service at the Auditorium President McKinley attended and 
 listened to addresses by a Jewish rabbi, a Roman Catholic priest, 
 a Presbyterian clergyman and a noted colored orator. The 
 applause for the President was terrific, and at one time he was 
 compelled to rise in his box and respond to the frantic cheering 
 of the audience. The services, however, were of a religious char- 
 acter. 
 
 The President's party was driven to the Auditorium at 8 
 o'clock, and all along the way people lined the streets to^vatch 
 the passage of the President's carriage. Easily 12,000 people 
 were within the great Auditorium, and probably as many more 
 were on the outside unable to obtain admittance. 
 
 A great public meeting was held in the Auditorium on Tues- 
 day. The presiding officer, George K. Peck, spoke briefly. The 
 President was undemonstrative until Mr. Peck said, in reference 
 to peace : ( We have given good lives for it, and every life makes 
 it more precious." Then the President applauded. A moment
 
 STATE PAPERS AND SPEECHES. 163 
 
 later the orator struck another chord, which seemed to arouse the 
 enthusiasm of the nation's chief. " Our greatest victory he 
 said, '4s the supreme victory which the North and South have 
 won over each other." At this the President and all applaud. 
 
 vigorously. 
 
 As President McKinley and party arose to leave, there were 
 loud calls for the Chief Executive. For fully five minutes the 
 enthusiasm of the audience would not let him speak, 
 spoke as follows : 
 
 THE PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS. 
 
 " My fellow citizens, I have been deeply moved by this great 
 demonstration. I have been deeply touched by the words of 
 patriotism that have been uttered by the distinguished men s 
 eloquently in your presence. 
 
 "It is gratifying to all of us to know that this has never 
 ceased to be a war of humanity. The last ship that went out of 
 the harbor of Havana before war was declared was an American 
 ship that had taken to the suffering people of Cuba the supplies 
 furnished by American charity (applause), and the first ship t 
 sail into the harbor of Santiago was an American ship bearing 
 food supplies to the suffering Cubans (applause), and I am sure it 
 is the universal prayer of American citizens that justice and 
 humanity and civilization shall characterize the final settlemeu 
 of peace," as they have distinguished the progress of 
 
 (ApP u a My e countrymen, the currents of destiny flow through the 
 hearts of our people. Who will check them, who will divert 
 them^who will stop them ? And the movements of men, planned 
 and designed by the Master of Men, will never be interrupted by 
 the American people." (Great applause.) 
 
 The military parade occupied Wednesday, and so great was 
 the crowd of people along the route that the police had great diffi- 
 culty in keeping an open passage for the men in line. 
 
 The President rose and uncovered as the veterans of the 
 war passed him. This aroused the enthusiasm of the spectators
 
 164 STATE PAPERS AND SPEECHES. 
 
 and he was cheered time and again. When the last man in line 
 had gone by the President was escorted to the Union League 
 Clnb, where he partook of luncheon as the guest of the club. 
 More than a thousand persons were at the table, including the 
 guests of the city and prominent members of the organization. 
 
 While the President was at luncheon a great crowd outside 
 called for him. They would not be denied, and the President 
 stepped out on the reviewing stand. As soon as quiet was restored 
 
 he said : 
 
 LOUD CHEERS FOR THE VETERANS. 
 
 " I witness with pride and satisfaction the cheers of the mul- 
 titudes as the veterans of the civil war on both sides of the 
 contest have been reviewed. (Great applause.) I witness with 
 increasing pride the wild acclaim of the people as you watch the 
 volunteers and the regulars and our naval reserves (the guardians 
 of the people on land and sea) pass before your eyes. The 
 demonstration of to-day is worth everything to our country, for I 
 read in the faces and hearts of my countrymen the purpose to see 
 to it that this government, with its free institutions, shall never 
 perish from the face of the earth. 
 
 " I wish I might take the hand of every patriotic woman, man 
 and child here to-day. (Applause.) But I cannot do that. (Voice 
 from the crowd, * But you've got our hearts,' followed by prolonged 
 cheering). And so I leave with you not only my thanks, but the 
 thanks of this great nation, for your patriotism and devotion to 
 the flag." (Great cheering.) 
 
 On the 25th, 26th, 2yth and 28th of October a National Jubi- 
 lee to commemorate the return of peace drew to Philadelphia the 
 most notable officials of the Government, and the most renowned 
 commanders and heroes of the war. The festivities, which were 
 attended by hundreds of thousands of people, who exhibited their 
 patriotism in every possible way, began with a great naval parade 
 on the Delaware on the afternoon of the 25th. 
 
 The naval review was one of the grandest spectacles that has 
 ever been witnessed in this country. Every craft on the river, 
 from the usually inconsequential tugboat to the fleet of massive
 
 STATE PAPERS AND SPEECHES. 165 
 
 warships that honored the city with its presence, and from the 
 dingy rowboat to every sailing vessel of material size, was gaily 
 decorated. The multitude of piers that project into the stream on 
 both sides of the river were likewise beautified by a generous dis- 
 play of flags and bunting. The whole scene was inspiring, and, 
 with each Government vessel booming forth a salute of seventeen, 
 guns to the Secretary of the Navy as he passed the moored mon- 
 sters of war on the luxurious steam yacht "May," the spirit of 
 patriotism was so manifest that one's sense of love for country 
 demonstrated itself in long and loud cheers. 
 
 BRILLIANT NAVAL DISPLAY, 
 
 Every class of vessel in the United States navy was repre- 
 sented in the motionless line of warships, from the great massive 
 battleship down to the daring torpedo-boat, as well as that 
 valuable arm of the service represented by the transport and 
 despatch boat. The crowd of sightseers realized that, in the 
 battles of the war, all of them performed their duty in the spirit 
 as well as to the letter, on scouting service, or in carrying 
 despatches, on blockade duty, or in pitched engagements, and all, 
 with the heroes on board of them, were accorded that enthusiast 
 reception which a loyal American people are capable of giving. 
 The men were not forgotten in the admiration of the ships, 
 a matter of history that every man, wherever found, down in the 
 engine room, among the stokers, or behind the guns, performed 
 his whole duty, and the cheering was for them as we] 
 ships which they manned. 
 
 Following the Secretary of the Navy the great crowds on the 
 boats in the line of parading vessels, over two miles long cheered 
 lustily as they glided slowly by in their turn in single file. 
 Columbia came in for her share of applause, and then the May- 
 flower recalled by her presence her excellent record, and she was 
 cheered. But when the New Orleans, that defiant cruiser whose 
 telling shots were felt by the Spanish forts on the coast of Cuba 
 was passed, it seemed as if the crowd wanted to board her and 
 personally grasp the hands of her officers and crew.
 
 166 STATE PAPERS AND SPEECHES. 
 
 But if they were demonstrative then, words almost fail to 
 describe their enthusiasm as they passed that battle monster, the 
 battleship Texas, the flag-ship of Commodore Philip's squadron. 
 It was not an easy thing to recall, from her present condition, 
 that the Texas, with "Jack" Philip in command, had taken a 
 foremost part in one of the most marvelous marine battles in 
 naval history. All the other war vessels were greeted with en- 
 thusiasm, and the booming of guns which saluted the Secretary 
 of the Navy contributed much to render the occasion both inspiring 
 and impressive. 
 
 Much of the interest in the National Jubilee centered in 
 Military Day. Mile after mile, hour after hour of marching men, 
 popular heroes of the Spanish war, officers on horseback, privates 
 on foot, gray-haired Grand Army veterans, the scarred battle flags 
 of the Rebellion, music of bands, enormous numbers of cheering 
 people massed in stands and on sidewalks, the senior general oi 
 the United States Army leading the seven-mile line, the President 
 of the United States and the Commander-in-Chief of the Army 
 and Navy reviewing it ; and, as a frame to the picture, the city 
 gay with color shining in the clear sunshine of a perfect October 
 
 day. 
 
 APPLAUSE FOR THE NOTABLES. 
 
 Hvery popular favorite in the parade was liberally applauded. 
 General Miles and General Wheeler, Hobson and his men, the 
 Rough Riders' detachment, the gallant Tenth Cavalry, the colored 
 troopers who came to the relief of Roosevelt's men when they were 
 so hard pressed at El Caney ; Captain Sigsbee, the marines and 
 the Twenty-first Infantry were received with the wildest demon- 
 strations of delight. 
 
 President McKinley, who was the guest of the Clover Club, 
 of Philadelphia, said, in his address : 
 
 "It is most gratifying to me to participate with the people of 
 Philadelphia in this great patriotic celebration. It has been a 
 pageant the like of which I do not believe has been seen since the 
 close of the civil war, when the army of Grant and Sherman and 
 the navy of Farragut and Porter met in that great celebration in
 
 STATE PAPERS AND SPEECHES. 167 
 
 Washington and was reviewed by President Lincoln. And I know 
 of no better place in which to have such a celebration than m this 
 glorious city, which witnessed the Declaration of Independence. 
 "As I stood on the reviewing stand to-day my heart was filled 
 only with gratitude to the God of battles, who has so favored us, 
 and to the soldiers and sailors who have won such victories on 
 land and sea and have given such a new meaning to American 
 valor No braver soldiers or sailors ever assembled under a flag^ 
 " You had to-day the heroes of Guantanamo, of Santiago, ol 
 Porto Rico. We had unfortunately none of the heroes of Manila, 
 but our hearts go out to-night to the brave ^wey''-here 
 President was interrupted with tremendous cheers-' and to Mernt 
 and to Otis and to all the brave men with them. 
 
 "Gentlemen, the American people are ready. If the Mernmac 
 is to be sunk-" here the President turned to the young naval 
 constructor, while every one shouted 'Hobson-' "yes Hobson 
 is ready to do it and to succeed in what Ms foes never have been 
 able to do sink an American ship. 
 
 "I propose a toast to the army and navy, without whose 
 sacrifices we could not now celebrate the victory, a toast not only 
 o the men who were in the front, in the trenches, but the men 
 who were willing and anxious to go, but who could not be sent.
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Glowing Tribute to Our Lamented President Speech on 
 Being Notified of His Second Nomination Masterly 
 Statement of the Political History of Our Country. 
 
 'T'HH sorrow over Mr. McKinley's -untimely death was not con- 
 fined to any one section of our country. This is made plain 
 by the following editorial from the "Atlanta Constitution," which 
 gives eloquent voice to the grief that was common to our whole 
 people : 
 
 ' The death of the President comes to the people of the 
 United States as a common grief. In the North, to whose cause 
 he was espoused when civil war raged ; in the South, to whose 
 people he brought a message of real fraternity ; in the new nation, 
 baptized in the blood of all sections, the name of McKinley had 
 become a household word. He was close to each, without indif- 
 ference to either ; with the love of a father, he looked forward to 
 the maturity of the nation over which he had been called to 
 preside. 
 
 'The hour of death removes politics, but better still the love 
 of a lifetime had extracted whatever asperity might have existed. 
 The high office of President was fittingly filled by a man meas- 
 uring up to its requirements. To him it made no difference whether 
 patriot had worn blue or gray ; he accepted the heart-loyalty of 
 the present as the token of the future. There will be many 
 evidences of the dead President's administration to perpetuate 
 his name. 
 
 " He had an eye to the material supremacy of the Union ; 
 he had expanded the limits of American authority beyond the 
 seas, but, greater than all-the greatest possible was the bind- 
 ing of domestic wounds and the healing of internal estrange- 
 ment. 
 
 'The nation mourns for McKinley ; the South kneels at his 
 bier ; the whole world sees a weeping but united nation. 
 
 loo
 
 McKINLEY ON THE CONDITION OF THE COUNTRY. 169 
 
 " But government never stands still. With the closing of the 
 career of the President, the Vice President comes into office. This 
 brings to the nation no shock of policy or of person. The people 
 elected McKinley and Roosevelt as in one purpose, and one in 
 policies. Theodore Roosevelt is an outspoken man ; brave, and 
 ready to meet every emergency. Placed in positions of untried 
 trust, he has proven equal to every occasion. His qualities are 
 of the manly order. He, like the late President, is full of hope 
 for his country, and looks to a glorious future for it. In his blood 
 there courses a Georgian strain. That he will meet his new 
 responsibility there need be no doubt. Theodore Roosevelt will 
 prove a worthy successor of William McKinley. 
 
 A LESSON OF RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 " To the nation itself there comes the lesson of responsibility. 
 A government of laws can only be upheld by a people devoted to 
 law observance. We have permitted canker to grow up in the body 
 politic. We have overlooked the vile abuse of our institutions 
 by men who sought our protection only to betray it. While the 
 nation's chief was in agony vile men rejoiced, and brazen women, 
 like the Goldman fiend, laughed officers to scorn. Law was 
 mocked, and there was only helplessness to look on. There must 
 be a change ! There must be no compromising with civic crime ! 
 The Anarchist must go ! He must not gloat over the grief of a 
 strong nation. Herein lies work for the people ! " 
 
 This eulogy is fully merited, as may be seen from the public 
 utterances of Mr. McKinley which have regard to every section 
 of our broad land and to all the varied conditions of labor and 
 finance. His address to the committee that notified him of his 
 second nomination for President was an elaborate declaration of 
 great principles. Every issue involved in the campaign was 
 discussed at length, and the document possesses great value as a 
 sketch of the political history of the country during the adminis- 
 tration. The following is the text of the address : 
 
 The nomination of the Republican Convention of June, 19, 
 1900, for the office of President of the United States, which, as
 
 170 McKINLEY ON THE CONDITION OF THE COUNTRY. 
 
 the official representative of the convention, you have conveyed 
 to me, is accepted. I have carefully examined the platform 
 adopted and give to it my hearty approval. Upon the great issue 
 of the last national election it is clear. It upholds the gold 
 standard and endorses the legislation of the present Congress, 
 by which that standard has been effectively strengthened. The 
 stability of our national currency is, therefore, secure so long as 
 those who adhere to this platform are kept in control of the 
 government. 
 
 FRIENDS OF THE GOLD STANDARD. 
 
 In the first battle, that of 1896, the friends of the gold stand- 
 ard and of sound currency were triumphant, and the country is 
 enjoying the fruits of that victory. Our antagonists, however, 
 are not satisfied. They compel us to a second battle upon the 
 same lines on which the first was fought and won. While regret- 
 ting the reopening of this question, which can only disturb the 
 present satisfactory condition of the government and visit uncer- 
 tainty upon our great business enterprises, we accept the issue 
 and again invite the sound money forces to join in winning an- 
 other, and, we hope, a permanent triumph for an honest financial 
 system system which will continue inviolable the public faith. 
 
 As in 1896, the three silver parties are united, under the 
 same leader who immediately after the election of the year, in an 
 address to the bimetalists, said : 
 
 !c The friends of bimetalism have not been vanquished ; they 
 have simply been overcome. They believe that the gold standard 
 is a conspiracy of the money-changers against the welfare of the 
 human race and they will continue the warfar against it." 
 
 The policy thus proclaimed has been accepted and confirmed 
 by these parties. The Silver Democratic platform of 1900 con- 
 tinues the warfare against the so-called gold conspiracy when it 
 expressly says : " We reiterate the demand of that (the Chicago) 
 platform of 1896 for an American financial system made by the 
 American people for themselves, which shall restore and maintain 
 a bimetalic price level, and as part of such system the immediate
 
 McKINLEY ON THE CONDITION OF THE COUNTRY. 171 
 
 restoration of the free and unlimited coinage of silver and gold at 
 the present ratio of 16 to i, without waiting for the aid 
 of any other nation." 
 
 So the issue is presented. It will be noted that the demand 
 is for the immediate restoration of the free coinage of silver at 16 
 to i If another issue is paramount, this is immediate, 
 admit of no delay and will suffer no postponement. 
 
 Turning to the other associated parties, we find in the Fopu 
 list national platform, adopted at Sioux Falls, S. D., May 10, 1900, 
 the following declaration : 
 
 " We pledge anew the People's party never to cease the agi- 
 tation until this financial conspiracy is blotted from the statute 
 books, the Lincoln greenback restored, the bonds all paid, and all 
 corporation money forever retired. We reaffirm the demand 
 for the reopening of the mints of the United States for the free 
 and unlimited coinage of silver and gold at the present legal ratio 
 of 16 to i, the immediate increase in the volume of silver coins 
 and certificates thus created to be substituted, dollar for dollar, for 
 the bank notes issued by private corporations under special privi- 
 lege, granted by law of March 14, ioo-" 
 
 EXTRAORDINARY ANNOUNCEMENT. 
 The platform of the Silver party, adopted at Kansas City, 
 Tulv 6, 1900, makes the following announcement : 
 J " We declare it to be our intention to lend our efforts to the 
 repeal of this currency law, which not only repudiates the ancient 
 In P d time-honored principles of the American people before the 
 Constitution was adopted, but is violative ?^ %&"** 
 Constitution itself; and we shall not cease our efforts unt. 
 has been established in its place a monetary system based up. 
 the free and unlimited coinage of silver and gold into money 
 at the present legal ratio of 16 to i by the independent action of 
 the United States, under which system all paper money 
 issued by the government, and all such money coined or issued 
 shall be a full legal tender in payment of all debts, public and 
 private, without exception,"
 
 172 McKINLEY ON THE CONDITION OF THE COUNTRY. 
 
 In all three platforms these parties announce that their efforts 
 shall be unceasing until the gold act shall be blotted from the 
 statute books and the free and unlimited coinage of silver at 16 
 to i shall take its place. 
 
 The relative importance of the issues I do not stop to discuss. 
 All of them are important. Whichever party is successful will 
 be bound in conscience to carry into administration and legisla- 
 tion its several declarations and doctrines. One declaration will 
 be as obligatory as another, but all are not immediate. It is not 
 possible that these parties would treat the doctrine of 1 6 to i, the 
 immediate realization of which is demanded by their several plat- 
 forms, as void and inoperative in the event that they should be 
 clothed with power. Otherwise their profession of faith is insin- 
 cere. 
 
 FIGHT ON THE SILVER ISSUE. 
 
 It is, therefore, the imperative business of those opposed to 
 this financial heresy to prevent the triumph of the parties whose 
 union is only assured by adherence to the silver issue. Will the 
 American people, through indifference or fancied security, hazard 
 the overthrow of the wise financial legislation of the past year 
 and revive the danger of the silver standard, with all of the 
 inevitable evils of shattered confidence and general disaster which 
 justly alarmed and aroused them in 1896 ? 
 
 The Chicago platform of 1896 is reaffirmed in its entirety by 
 the Kansas City convention. Nothing has been omitted or 
 recalled; so that all the perils then threatened are presented 
 anew, with the added force of a deliberate reaffirmation. Four 
 years ago the people refused to place the seal of their approval 
 upon these dangerous and revolutionary policies, and this year 
 they will not fail to record again their earnest dissent. 
 
 The Republican party remains faithful to its principle of a 
 tariff wkich supplies sufficient revenues for the government and 
 adequate protection to our enterprises and producers ; and of 
 reciprocity which opens foreign markets to the fruits of American 
 laboi, and furnishes new channels through which to market the 
 surplus of American farms, The time-honored principles of
 
 McKlNLEY ON THE CONDITION OF THE COUNTRY. 173 
 
 protection and reciprocity were the first pledges of Republican 
 victory to be written into public law. 
 
 The present Congress has given to Alaska a territorial gov- 
 ernment, for which it had waited more than a quarter of a century; 
 has established a representative government in Hawaii ; has 
 enacted bills for the most liberal treatment of the pensioners and 
 their widows ; has revived the free homestead policy. In its great 
 financial law it provided for the establishment of banks of issue 
 with a capital of $25,000, for the benefit of villages and rural 
 communities, and bringing the opportunity for profitable business 
 in banking within the reach of moderate capital. Many are 
 already availing themselves of this privilege. 
 
 UNITED STATES BONDS. 
 
 During the past year more than nineteen millions of United 
 States bonds have been paid from the surplus revenues of the 
 Treasury, and in addition twenty-five millions of 2 per cents 
 matured, called by the government, are in process of payment. 
 Pacific railroad bonds issued by the government in aid of the 
 roads in the sum of nearly forty-four million dollars have been 
 paid since December 31, 1897. The Treasury balance is in satis- 
 factory condition, showing on September i, $135,419,000, in addi- 
 tion to the $150,000,000 gold reserve held in the Treasury. The 
 Government's relations with the Pacific railroads have been sub- 
 stantially closed, $121,421,000 being received from these roads, 
 the greater part in cash and the remainder with ample securities 
 for payments deferred. 
 
 Instead of diminishing, as was predicted four years ago, the 
 volume of our currency is greater per capita than it has ever 
 been. It was $21.10 in 1896. It has increased to $26.50 on July 
 i, 1900, and $26.85 on September i, 1900. Our total money on 
 July i, 1896, was $1,506,434,966 ; on July i, 1900, it was $2,062,- 
 425,490, and $2,096,683,042 on September i, 1900. 
 
 Our industrial and agricultural conditions are more promis- 
 ing than they have been for many years ; probably more so than 
 they have ever been. Prosperity abounds everywhere through-
 
 174 McKINLEY ON THE CONDITION OF THE COUNTRY. 
 
 out the Republic. I rejoice that the Southern as well as the 
 Northern States are enjoying a full share of these improved 
 national conditions, and that all are contributing so largely to 
 our remarkable industrial development. The money lender 
 receives lower rewards for his capital than if it were invested in 
 active business. The rates of interest are lower than they have 
 ever been in this country, while those things which are produced 
 on the farm and in the workshop and the labor producing them 
 have advanced in value. 
 
 SATISFACTORY FOREIGN TRADE. 
 
 Our foreign trade shows a satisfactory and increasing growth. 
 The amount of our exports for the year 1900, over those of the 
 exceptionally prosperous year of 1899, was about half a million 
 dollars for every day of the year, and these sums have gone into 
 the homes and enterprise of the people. There has been an in- 
 crease of over $50,000,000 in the exports of agricultural products ; 
 $92,692,220 in manufactures, and in products of the mines of over 
 $10,000,000. Our trade balances cannot fail to give satisfaction 
 to the people of the country. In 1898 we sold abroad $615,432,- 
 676 of products more than we bought abroad ; in 1899, $529,874,- 
 813 and in 1900, $544,471,701, making, during the three years, a 
 total balance in our favor of $1,689,779,190 nearly five times the 
 balance of trade in our favor for the whole period of 108 years, 
 from 1790 to June 30, 1897, inclusive. 
 
 Four hundred and thirty-six million dollars of gold have 
 been added to the gold stock of the United States since July i, 
 1896. The law of March 14, 1900, authorized the refunding into 
 2 per cent, bonds of that part of the public debt represented by 
 the 3 per cents, due in 1908 ; the 4 per cents, due in 1907 ; and 
 the 5 per cents, due in 1904, aggregating $840,000,000. More 
 than one-third of the sum of these bonds was refunded in the 
 first three months after the passage of the act, and on Sep- 
 tember i the sum had been increased more than $33,000,000, 
 making in all $33>57 8 >O5O, resulting in a net saving of over 
 $8,379,520.
 
 McKINLEY ON THE CONDITION OF THE COUNTRY. 175 
 
 The ordinary receipts of the government for the fiscal year 
 1900 were $79,827,060 in excess of its expenditures. 
 
 While our receipts both from customs and internal reveune 
 have been greatly increased, our expenditures have been decreas- 
 ing. Civil and miscellaneous expenses for the fiscal year ending 
 June 30, 1900, were nearly $14,000,000 less than in 1899, while 
 on the war account there is a decrease of more than $95,000,000. 
 There were required $8,000,000 less to support the navy this year 
 than last, and the expenditures on account of Indians were nearly 
 two and three-quarter million dollars less than in 1899. 
 
 ITEMS OF INCREASE IN TAX. 
 
 The only two items of increase in the public expenses of 
 1900 over 1899 are for pensions and interest on the public debt. 
 For 1890 we expended for pensions $139,394,929, and for the fiscal 
 year 1900 our payments on this account amounted to $140,877,- 
 316. The net increase of interest on the public debt of 1900 over 
 1899, required by the war loan, was $263,408.25. While Congress 
 authorized the Government to make a war loan of $400,000,000 at 
 the beginning of the war with Spain, only $200,000,000 of bonds 
 were issued, bearing three per cent, interest, which were promptly 
 and patriotically taken by our citizens. 
 
 Unless something unforeseen occurs to reduce our revenue 
 or increase our expenditures, the Congress at its next session 
 should reduce taxation very materially. 
 
 Five years ago we were selling Government bonds bearing 
 as high as five per cent, interest. Now we are redeeming them 
 with a bond at par bearing two per cent, interest. We are selling 
 our surplus products and lending our surplus money to Europe. 
 One result of our selling to other nations so much more than we 
 have bought from them during the past three years is a radical 
 improvement of our financial relations. 
 
 The great amounts of capital which have been borrowed of 
 Europe for our rapid, material development have remained a con- 
 stant drain upon our resources for interest and dividends, and 
 made our money markets liable to constant disturbances by calls
 
 176 
 
 for payment or heavy sales of our securities whenever moneyed 
 stringency or panic occurred abroad. We have now been paying 
 these debts and bringing home many of our securities and estab- 
 lishing countervailing credits abroad by our loans, and placing 
 ourselves upon a sure foundation of financial independence. 
 
 In the unfortunate contest between Great Britain and the 
 Boer States of South Africa, the United States has maintained an 
 attitude of neutrality in accordance with its well-known traditional 
 policy. It did not hesitate, however, when requested by the Gov- 
 ernments of the South African republics to exercise its good 
 offices for a cessation of hostilities. It is to be observed that 
 while the South African republics made like requests of other 
 powers, the United States is the only one which complied The 
 British Government declined to accept the intervention of any 
 power. 
 
 CARRIED BY FOREIGN SHIPS. 
 
 Ninety-one per cent, of our exports and imports are now 
 carried by foreign ships. For ocean transportation we pay an- 
 nually to foreign ship owners over $165,000,000. We ought to 
 own the ships for our carrying trade with the world and we ought 
 build them in American shipyards and man them with Ameri- 
 can sailors. Our own citizens should receive the transportation 
 charges now paid to foreigners. I have called the attention of 
 Congress to this subject in my several annual messages. In that 
 of December 6, 1897, * said : 
 
 "Most desirable from every standpoint of national interest 
 and patriotism is the effort to extend our foreign commerce To 
 this end our merchant marine should be improved and enlarged 
 Irld I w ^ Ur 5 UU Share f the Car ^ trade of the 
 longer." ^ 
 
 In my message of December 5, 1899, I said : 
 
 ir national development will be one-sided and unsatis- 
 
 >ry so long as the remarkable growth of our inland industries 
 remains unaccompanied by progress on the seas. There is no 
 lack of constitutional authority for legislation which shall give
 
 McKINLEY ON THE CONDITION OF THE COUNTRY. 177 
 
 the country maritime strength commensurate with its industrial 
 achievements and with its rank among the nations of the earth. 
 "The past year has recorded exceptional activity in our ship- 
 yards, and the promises of continued prosperity in ship building 
 are abundant. Advanced legislation for the protection of our 
 seamen has been enacted. Our coast trade, under regulations 
 wisely framed at the beginning of the government and since, 
 shows results for the last fiscal year unequaled in our records or 
 those of any other power. We shall fail to realize our oppor- 
 tunities, however, if we complacently regard only matters at home, 
 and blind ourselves to the necessity of securing our share in the 
 valuable carrying trade of the world." I now reiterate these 
 
 views. 
 
 GREAT WATERWAY WANTED. 
 
 A subject of immediate importance to our country is the 
 completion of a great waterway between the Atlantic and Pacific. 
 The construction of a maritime canal is now more than ever 
 indispensable to that intimate and ready communication between 
 our Eastern and Western seaports demanded by the annexation 
 of the Hawaiian Islands and the expansion of our influence and 
 trade in the Pacific. 
 
 Our national policy more imperatively than ever calls for its 
 completion and control by this government ; and it is believed 
 that the next session of Congress, after receiving the full report 
 of the commission appointed under the act approved March 3, 
 1899, will make provisions for the sure accomplishment of this 
 great work. 
 
 Combinations of capital which control the market in com- 
 modities necessary to the general use of the people, by suppress- 
 ing natural and ordinary competition, thus enhancing prices to 
 the general consumer, are obnoxious to the common law and the 
 public welfare. They are dangerous conspiracies against the 
 public good, and should be made the subject of prohibitory or 
 penal legislation. Publicity will be a helpful influence to check 
 this evil. Uniformity of legislation in the several States should 
 
 be secured. Discrimination between what is injurious and what 
 12
 
 178 McKINLEY ON THE CONDITION OF THE COUNTRY. 
 
 is useful and necessary in business operations is essential to the 
 wise aid effective treatment of this subject. Honest co-operation 
 of capital is necessary to meet new business conditions and 
 extend our rapidly increasing foreign trade, but conspiracies and 
 combinations intended to restrict business, create monopolies 
 and control prices should be effectively restrained. 
 
 The best service which can be rendered to labor is to afford it 
 an opportunity for steady and remunerative employment, and 
 give it every encouragement for advancement. The policy that 
 subserves this end is the true American policy. The last three 
 years have been more satisfactory to American workingnien than 
 many preceeding years. Any change of the present industrial or 
 financial policy of the government would be disastrous to their 
 highest interests. With prosperity at home and an increasing 
 foreign market for American products, employment should con- 
 tinue to wait upon labor, and with the present gold standard the 
 workingman is secured against payments for his labor in a de- 
 preciated currency. 
 
 SHORT DAY FOR LABOR. 
 
 For labor, a short day is better than a short dollar ; one will 
 lighten the burdens, the other lessen the rewards of toil. The 
 one will promote contentment and independence ; the other penury 
 and want. The wages of labor should be adequate to keep the 
 home in comfort, educate the children, and, with thrift and 
 economy, lay something by for the days of infirmity and old age. 
 
 Practical civil service reform has always had the support and 
 encouragement of the Republican party. The future of the merit 
 system is safe in its hands. 
 
 During the present administration, as occasions have arisen 
 for modification or amendments in the existing civil service law 
 and rules, they have been made. Important amendments were 
 promulgated by Executive order under date of May 29, 1899, 
 having for their principal purpose the exception from competitive 
 examination of certain places involving fiduciary responsibilities 
 or duties of a strictly confidential, scientific or executive character,
 
 McKINLEY ON THE CONDITION OF THE COUNTRY. 179 
 
 which it was thought might better be filled either by non-com- 
 petitive examination or by other tests of fitness in the discretion 
 of the appointing officer. It is gratifying that the experience of 
 more than a year has vindicated these changes in the marked 
 improvement of the public service. 
 
 The merit system, as far as practicable, is made the basis for 
 appointments to office in our new territory. 
 
 The American people are profoundly grateful to the soldiers, 
 sailors and marines, who have, in every time of conflict, fought 
 their country's battles and defended its honor. The survivors 
 and the widows and the orphans of those who have fallen are 
 justly entitled to receive the generous and considerate care of the 
 nation. Few are now left of those who fought in the Mexican 
 War, and while many of the veterans of the Civil War are still 
 spared to us, their numbers are rapidly diminishing, and age and 
 infirmity are increasing their dependence. 
 
 CARE FOR OLD SOLDIERS. 
 
 These, with the soldiers of the Spanish War, will not be neg- 
 lected by their grateful countrymen. The pension laws have 
 been liberal. They should be justly administered, and will be. 
 Preference should be given to the soldiers, sailors and marines, 
 their widows and orphans, with respect to employment in the public 
 service. 
 
 We have been in possession of Cuba since the first of January, 
 1899. We have restored order and established domestic tran- 
 quillity. We have fed the starving, clothed the naked, and 
 ministered to the sick. We have improved the sanitary condition 
 of the island. We have simulated industry, introduced public 
 education, and taken a full and comprehensive enumeration of 
 the inhabitants. The qualification of electors has been settled, 
 and under it officers have been chosen for all the municipalities 
 of Cuba. These local governments are now in operation, admin- 
 istered bjr the people. 
 
 An election has been ordered to be held on the i5th of Sep- 
 tember, under a fair election law already tried in the municipal
 
 180 McKINLEY ON THE CONDITION OF THE COUNTRY. 
 
 elections, to choose members of a Constitutional Convention, and 
 the convention, by the same order, is to assemble on the first 
 Monday of November to frame a constitution upon which an 
 independent government for the island will rest. All this is a 
 long step in the fulfillment of our sacred guarantee to the peole of 
 Cuba. 
 
 We hold Porto Rico by the same title as the Philippines. 
 The treaty of peace which ceded us the one conveyed to us 
 the other. Congress has given to this island a government in 
 which the inhabitants participate, elect their own legislature, enact 
 their own local laws, provide their own system of taxation, and in 
 these respects have the same power and privileges enjoyed by 
 other territories belonging to the United States, and a much larger 
 measure of self-government than was given to the inhabitants of 
 Louisiana under Jefferson. 
 
 ESTABLISHING A GOVERNMENT. 
 
 A district court of the United States for Porto Rico has been 
 established and local courts have been inaugurated, all of which 
 are in operation. The generous treatment of the Porto Ricans 
 accords with the most liberal thought of our own country and 
 encourages the best aspirations of the people of the island. 
 
 While they do not have instant free commercial intercourse 
 with the United States, Congress complied with my recommenda- 
 tion by removing, on May i, eighty-five per cent, of the duties 
 and providing for the removal of the remaining fiteen per cent, on 
 the ist of March, 1902, or earlier if the Legislature of Porto Rico 
 shall provide local revenues for the expenses of conducting the 
 government. During this intermediate period Porto Rican prod- 
 ucts coming into the United States pay a tariff of fifteen per cent, 
 of the rates under the Dingley act, and our goods going to Porto 
 Rico pay a like rate. 
 
 The duties thus paid and collected both in Porto Rico and 
 the United States are paid to the Gove-minent of Porto Rico and 
 no part thereof is taken by the National Government. All of the 
 duties from November i, 1898, to June 30, 1900, aggregating the
 
 McKINLEY ON THE CONDITION OF THE COUNTRY, 181 
 
 sum of $2,250,523.21, paid at the Custom House in the United 
 States upon Porto Rican products, under the laws existing prior 
 to the above mentioned act of Congress, have gone into the 
 Treasury of Porto Rico to relieve the destitute and for schools 
 and other public purposes. In addition to this we have made 
 expenditures for relief, education and improvement. 
 
 For the sake of full and intelligent understanding of the 
 Philippine question, and to give to the people authentic informa- 
 tion of the acts and aims of the administration, President Mc- 
 Kinley presents at some length in excerpts from his messages 
 and other state papers, the events of importance leading up to the 
 present situation, and then says of the Filipinos : 
 
 " Bvery effort has been directed to their peace and prosperity, 
 their advancement and well being, not for our aggrandizement 
 nor for pride of might, nor for trade or commerce, not for exploita- 
 tion, but for humanity and civilization, and for the protection of 
 the vast majority of the population who welcome our sovereignty 
 against the designing minority whose first demand after the 
 surrender of Manila by the Spanish army, was to enter the city 
 that they might loot it and destroy those not in svmpathy with 
 their selfish and treacherous designs. 
 
 WHAT WAS TO BE DONE? 
 
 "Would not our adversaries have sent Dewey's fleet to 
 Manila to capture and destroy the Spanish sea power there, or, 
 despatching it there, would they have withdrawn it after the de- 
 struction of the Spanish fleet ; and if the latter, whither would 
 they have directed it to sail ? Where could it have gone ? What 
 port of the Orient was open to it ? Do our adversaries condemn 
 the expedition under the command of General Merritt to 
 strengthen Dewey in the distant ocean and assist in our triumph 
 over Spain, with which nation we were at war ? Was it not our 
 highest duty to strike Spain at every vulnerable point, that the war 
 might be successfully concluded at the earliest practical moment? 
 
 "And was it not our duty to protect the lives and property of 
 those who came within our control by the fortunes of war?
 
 182 McKINLEY ON THE CONDITION OF THE COUNTRY. 
 
 Could we have come away at any time between May i, 1898, and 
 the conclusion of peace without a stain upon our good name ? 
 Could we have come away without dishonor at any time after the 
 ratification of the peace treaty by the Senate of the United 
 States ? 
 
 " There has been no time since the destruction of the enemy's 
 fleet when we could or should have left the Philippine archi- 
 pelago. After the treaty of peace was ratified, no power but Con- 
 gress could surrender our sovereignty or alienate a foot of the 
 territory thus acquired. The Congress has not seen fit to do one 
 or the other, and the President had no authority to do either if he 
 had been so inclined, which he was not. So long as the sover- 
 eignty remains in us it is the duty of the executive, whoever he 
 may be, to uphold that sovereignty, and if it be attacked to sup- 
 press its assailants. Would our political adversaries do less ? 
 
 THE REAL ISSUE. 
 
 " With all the exaggerated phrase-making of this electoral 
 contest we are in danger of being diverted from the real conten- 
 tion. We are in agreement with all of those who supported the 
 war with Spain, and also with those who counseled the ratification 
 of the treaty of peace. Upon these two great essential steps 
 there can be no issue, and out of these came all of our responsi- 
 bilities. If others would shirk the obligations imposed by the 
 war and the treaty, we must decline to act further with them, and 
 here the issue was made. 
 
 " It is our purpose to establish in the Philippines a govern- 
 ment suitable to the wants and conditions of the inhabitants, and 
 to prepare them for self-government, and to give them self- 
 government when they are ready for it, and as rapidly as they 
 are read}'- for it. That I am aiming to do under my constitutional 
 authority, and will continue to do until Congress shall determine 
 the political status of the inhabitants of the archipelago. 
 
 " Are our opponents against the treaty? If so they must be 
 reminded that it could not have been ratified in the Senate but 
 for their assistance, The. Senate which ratified the treaty and
 
 McKINLEY ON THE CONDITION OF THE COUNTRY. 183 
 
 the Congress which added its sanction by a large appropriation 
 comprised Senators and Representatives of the people of all 
 parties. 
 
 "Would our opponents surrender to the insurgents, abandon 
 our sovereignty or cede it to them ? If that be not their purpose, 
 then it should promptly be disclaimed for only evil can result 
 from the hopes raised by our opponents in the minds of the 
 Filipinos, that with their success at the polls in November there 
 will be a withdrawal of our army and of American sovereignty 
 over the archipelago ; the complete independence of the Tagalog 
 people recognized and the powers of government over all the 
 other people of the archipelago conferred upon the Tagalog leaders. 
 
 RUSHING US ON TO WAR. 
 
 " There were those who, two years ago, were rushing us on to 
 war with Spain, who are unwilling now to accept its clear conse- 
 quence, as there are those among us who advocated the ratification 
 of the treaty of peace, but now protest against its obligations. 
 Nations which go to war must be prepared to accept its resultant 
 obligations, and when they make treaties must keep them. 
 
 " Those who profess to distrust the liberal and honorable pur- 
 poses of the administration in its treatment of the Philippines are 
 not j ustified. Imperialism has no place in its creed or conduct. 
 Freedom is a rock upon which the Republican party was builded, 
 and now rests. Liberty is the great Republican doctrine for 
 which the people went to war, and for which a million lives were 
 offered and billions of dollars were expended to make it a lawful 
 legacy of all, without the consent of master or slave. 
 
 " If our opponents would only practice as well as preach the 
 doctrines of Abraham Lincoln, there would be no fear for the 
 safety of our institutions at home or their rightful influence in 
 any territory over which our flag floats. Empire has been ex- 
 pelled from Porto Rico and the Philippines by American freemen. 
 The flag of the Republic now floats over these islands as an 
 emblem of rightful sovereignty. Will the Republic stay and 
 dispense to their inhabitants the blessing of liberty, education
 
 184 McKINLEY ON THE CONDITION OF THE COUNTRY. 
 
 and free institutions, or steal away, leaving them to anarchy and 
 imperialism ? 
 
 " The American question is between duty and desertion the 
 American verdict will be for duty and against desertion ; for the 
 Republic, against both anarchy and imperialism. 
 
 " The country has been fully advised of the purposes of the 
 United States in China, and they will be faithfully adhered to as 
 already defined. 
 
 " Not only have we reason for thanksgiving for our material 
 blessings, but we should rejoice in the complete unification of the 
 people of all sections of our country that has so happily 
 developed in the last few years and made for us a more perfect 
 Union. 
 
 "The obliteration of old differences, the common devotion to 
 the flag and the common sacrifices for its honor, so conspicuously 
 shown by the men of the North and the South in the Spanish 
 war, have so strengthened the ties of friendship and mutual 
 respect that nothing can ever divide us. The nation faces the 
 new century gratefully and hopefully, with increasing love of 
 country, with firm faith in its free institutions and with high 
 resolve that they ' shall not perish from the earth.' 
 
 " Very respectfully yours, 
 
 " WILLIAM M'KINLEY." 
 
 It was universally conceded that in this letter Mr. McKin- 
 ley had furnished a masterly statement of the political condition 
 of our country. It was the thoughtful estimate of a statesman 
 and a patriot one who loved his country and rejoiced in her pros- 
 perity. His statements were gratifying to all parts of the land. 
 He paid a high and merited compliment to the soldiers of every 
 section who sprang to arms at the outbreak of our war with 
 Spain. 
 
 His knowledge of the interior condition and prospects of our 
 commercial trade enabled him to speak with authority upon these 
 points and his language was reassuring. It was a message of 
 good cheer to the nation.
 
 PRINCIPAL EVENTS DURING PRESIDENT 
 McKINLEY'S ADMINISTRATION. 
 
 1897. 
 Inaugurated March 4. 
 
 Fifty-fifth Congress convened March 15. 
 
 A new Extradition Treaty between the United States and Brazil 
 
 signed at Rio, May 16. 
 Dingley Tariff law passed, July 24. 
 Attorney-General Joseph McKenna, of California, appointed to the 
 
 Supreme Bench, December 16. 
 
 1898. 
 
 City of Greater New York inaugurated, January i. 
 
 J. W. Griggs, of New Jersey, Attorney-General, January 25. 
 
 Meeting of the National Monetary Convention at Indianapolis to 
 
 devise currency reform, January 25. 
 
 The battleship Maine destroyed in Havana harbor, February 15. 
 Congress appropriates $50,000,000 for national defence, March 8. 
 Congress recognizes Cuban independence, April 16. 
 War declared against Spain, April 21. 
 
 Resignation of John Sherman, Secretary of State, April 25. 
 Dewey destroys the Spanish fleet at Manila, May i. 
 Lieutenant Hobson sinks the " Merrimac," June 3. 
 Cervera's squadron destroyed off Santiago, July 3. 
 Hawaii annexed to the United States, July 6. 
 Treaty of peace signed with Spain, December 10. 
 
 1899. 
 
 Flag raised over Guam, February i. 
 
 Treaty of peace with Spain ratified by Senate, February 6. 
 
 First encounter between Americans and Filipinos, February 4. 
 
 Peace Conference at the Hague, May 18. 
 
 Resignation of Russell A. Alger, Secretary of War, July 19. 
 
 Blihu Root appointed Secretary of War, July 22. 
 
 Thomas B. Reed resigns his place in Congress, August 22. 
 
 The Venezuela award made, October 3. 
 
 185
 
 186 PRINCIPAL EVENTS DURING McKINLEY'S ADMINISTRATION. 
 
 A modus vivendi anent the Alaskan boundary dispute adopted, 
 
 October 12. 
 
 Samoan treaty signed, December 2. 
 Lawton killed in the Philippines, December 19. 
 
 1900. 
 
 The United States Senate ratified the Samoan treaty, January 16. 
 President McKinley signed the gold standard bill, March 14. 
 Foraker Porto Rican Act passed by Congress, April 12. 
 Chinese begin their attacks on the Legations in Pekin, June 19. 
 McKinley renominated at Philadelphia, June 21. 
 The allies capture Pekin, August 14. 
 John Sherman died, October 22. 
 A convention to frame a constitution for Cuba began its sessions 
 
 at Havana, November 5. 
 McKinley re-elected, November 6. 
 Ministers of the powers in Pekin sign a joint note, December 22. 
 
 1901. 
 
 Hopkins reapportionment bill defeated, January 8. 
 Incorporatian of the billion dollar Steel Trust, February 23. 
 Death of William M. Kvarts, February 28. 
 The adoption of the Platt Amendment, February 28. 
 President McKinley' second Inauguration, March 4. 
 Death of former President Harrison, March 13. 
 Capture of Aguinaldo, March 23. 
 
 President McKinley started on his Western tour April 20. 
 Western tour abandoned because of Mrs. McKiuley's ill health, 
 
 May 12. 
 
 Pan-American Exposition opened at Buffalo, May i. 
 Supreme Court's decision on the Insular Cases, May 27. 
 President McKinley positively refused to be a candidate for a 
 
 third term, June n. 
 President McKinley arrived at Buffalo and made his famous 
 
 address at the Pan-American Exposition, September 5. 
 Assassinated, September 6.
 
 PRESIDENT McKINLEY'S LIFE IN BRIEF. 
 
 1843 Born at Niles, Truinbull county, O., January 29. 
 
 1 86 1 Enlisted in Twenty-third Ohio Volunteer Infantry at the 
 age of eighteen. 
 
 1865 Mustered out of service with rank of Captain and Brevet 
 Major. 
 
 1869 to 1871 Prosecuting Attorney of Stark county. 
 
 1879 Elected to Fifty-fifth Congress. 
 
 1888 Refused to allow his name to be presented for the Presi- 
 dency, and held Ohio delegation for Senator John Sherman. 
 
 1889 Became Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee of 
 the House of Representatives and drafted McKinley tariff bill. 
 
 1890 Defeated for re-election to Congress. 
 
 1891 Retired from Congress March 4. 
 
 1891 Elected Governor of Ohio. 
 
 1893 Re-elected Governor of Ohio. 
 
 1896 Nominated for President and elected by a plurality of 
 814,831. 
 
 1897 Inaugurated President March 4. 
 
 1900 Re-nominated and re-elected President by a plurality of 
 832,280. 
 
 1901 Inaugurated President for second term March 4. 
 
 1901 Shot down by an assassin at Buffalo, September 6. 
 
 1901 Died at Buffalo, September 14. 
 
 1901 Obsequies at Buffalo, at Washington and Canton, Septem- 
 ber 15, 17 and 19. 
 
 The pathetic circumstances of the death of President 
 McKinley, the simple manliness with which he faced " the doom 
 we dread," the infinite cruelty and appalling injustice of his 
 assassination and the profound sympathy felt for his invalid wife 
 make it difficult if not impossible to speak of the career of the 
 dead ruler with the moderation of the careful historian. The 
 critical spirit is dumb in the presence of the dead who die for the 
 nation, as McKinley died. In the hours of dire foreboding and 
 of physical pain, as when he became conscious of the inevitable 
 end, he was the patient, uncomplaining and brave man who meets 
 
 137
 
 188 McKINLEY ON THE CONDITION OF THE COUNTRY. 
 
 the worst without bravado but also without fear, and who accepts 
 the decree of death as the will of Heaven. At no time in his 
 varied and successful career had his character seemed so admir- 
 able as in the last trying hours. 
 
 THE THREE MARTYRED PRESIDENTS. 
 
 The careers of no public men better represent the possibili- 
 ties of American life than those of the three Presidents who have 
 fallen at the hands of assassins. All were poor boys with no 
 other aids to ambition than their own qualities of character. In 
 his amiable frailties as a public man not less that in his strong- 
 est attributes the President whose death we mourn was a repre- 
 sentative American. Born in Ohio where the streams of trans- 
 allegheny migration from North and South met and commingled 
 and political agitation was ceaseless, at a time when the over- 
 shadowing sectional question pressed for final settlement, and 
 having been educated chiefly in the public schools, where all the 
 influence was democratic, it was natural and almost inevitable 
 that the first ambition of the young man William McKinley 
 shoul be political. 
 
 He demonstrated the depth and sincerity of his youthful 
 patriotism by enlisting as a private soldier in the volunteer army 
 for the preservation of the Union. In that service he revealed an 
 amiability of temperament which easily won the votes of his fel- 
 lows in favor of his promotion and assured the popularity of his 
 later years. He was a friendly man, and he loved his fellow men. 
 
 At the time when as a young lawyer William McKinley 
 entered actively into politics party lines were strongly drawn. 
 Not to be a Republican was almost to be a traitor in the eyes of 
 the leaders of " Ben " Wade's type. It would have been peculiar 
 if young McKinley had been less devoted to his party or less 
 submissive to its decrees. The spirit of that time continued to 
 influence his political actions throughout his lifetime, and it will 
 account for the degree to which the President was willing to 
 recede from his own opinion whenever it was opposed by the 
 aggressive leaders of his party.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 Story of the Assassination of President McKinley Graphic 
 Picture of the Tragic Act The Assassjn Caught and 
 Roughly Handled Public Indignation and Horror. 
 
 minutes before the appalling tragedy that ended the life 
 of the President, the dense crowd was in the most cheerful 
 humor, In the Temple of Music, at the Pan American Exposition 
 In Buffalo. The police had experienced no trouble of any kind, 
 and when the President's carriage, containing besides the Chief 
 Executive, President Milburn of the Pan-American Exposition, 
 and Private Secretary Cortelyou drove up to the side entrance of 
 the Temple, it was met by a mighty salute of cheers and 
 applause. 
 
 The three gentlemen alighted, and were escorted to the door 
 of the building. Immediately the carriage containing Secret 
 Service Operatives, George Foster and S. R. Ireland drove up, 
 and these detectives, with several other Secret Service men, en- 
 tered the building together. Inside they were met by Directoi 
 General Buchanan, who had arrived but a moment before, and he 
 directed them as to where to stand. 
 
 In passing to the place, the President took off his hat and 
 smiled pleasantly to a little group of newspaper men and to the 
 guards which |had been sationed in the place. To one of the 
 reporters he spoke, smilingly, saying : " It is much cooler in here 
 isn't it ? " The interior of the building had been arranged for the 
 purpose. From the main entrance, which opens to the southeast 
 from the Temple on the wide esplanade, where the thousands had 
 gathered, an aisle had been made through the rows of seats in the 
 building to near the centre. 
 
 This aisle was about eight feet wide, and turned near the 
 centre to the southwest door of the temple, so that there was a 
 passage dividing the south part of the structure into a right 
 
 189
 
 19 Q STORY OF THE ASSASSINATION. 
 
 angle. It was so arranged that the people, who would shake hands 
 with the President would enter at the southeast door, meet the 
 President in the centre and then pass on out the southwest door. 
 From the southeast door, and extending on up to and around 
 the curve, was a line of soldiers from the Seventy-third Sea Coast 
 Artillery on either side, and these were interspersed with neatly 
 uniformed guards from the Exposition police, under the command 
 of Captain Darner. When the Presidential party was within the 
 building, the soldiers were ordered to come to " attention," and 
 all took their places. 
 
 WAITING FOR THE CROWD. 
 
 The President was escorted to the centre of the palm bower, 
 and Mr. Milburn took a position on his left so as to introduce the 
 people as they came in. Secretary Cortelyou stood by the Presi- 
 dent to the right, Secret Service Operator Foster, who has 
 traveled everywhere with the President, took a position not more 
 than two feet in front of Mr. Miburn, and Secret Service Opera- 
 tor Ireland stood by his left, so that he was the same distance in 
 front of the President as was Foster in front of the Exposition 
 President. 
 
 Through this narrow two-foot passage the people, who would 
 meet the President, must pass, and when all was ready, with 
 detectives scattered throughout the aisle, the President smiled to 
 Mr. Buchanan, who \vas standing near the corporal in charge of 
 the artillerymen, and said that he was ready to meet the people. 
 He was very pleasant and, as he waited for the doors to open, he 
 rubbed his hands together, adj usted his long Prince Albert coat, 
 and laughingly chatted with Mr. Milburn, while Secretary Cor- 
 telyou gave a last few instructions to the officers as to the manner 
 in which the crowds were to be hurried on through, so that as 
 many as possible could meet the Executive. 
 
 Mr. Milburn ordered the door open and immediately a waver- 
 ing line of people, who had been squeezed against the outside of 
 the door for hours, began to wend its way up through the line 
 of soldiers and police to the place where the President stood. An
 
 GROUND PLAN OF THE PAN-AMERICAN EXPOSITION AT BUFFALO. 
 
 191
 
 J92 STORY OF TH ASSASSINATION. 
 
 oid man, with silvery white hair, was the first to reach the 
 President, and the little girl he carried on his shoulder received a 
 warm salutation. 
 
 Organist W. J. Gomph started on the sonata in F, by Bach ; 
 low at first, and swelling gradually to more majestic proportions, 
 until the whole auditorium was filled with the melodious tones of 
 the big pipe organ. 
 
 The crowd had been pouring through hardly more than five 
 minutes, when the organist brought from his powerful instrument 
 its loudest notes, drowning even the scuffle of feet. About half 
 of the people who passed the President were women and children. 
 
 TOOK SPECIAL NOTICE OF THE CHILDREN. 
 
 To every child the President bent over, shook hands warmly 
 and said some kinds words, so as to make the young heart glad. 
 As each person passed he was viewed critically by the secret ser- 
 vice men. Their hands were watched, their faces and actions 
 noted. Far down the line a man of unusual aspect, to some, 
 appeared, taking his turn in the line. He was short, heavy, dark, 
 and beneath a heavy mustache was a pair of straight, bloodless 
 lips. Under the black brows gleamed a pair of glistening black 
 eyes. He was picked at once as a suspicious person, and when he 
 reached Foster, the secret service man, he held his hand on him 
 until he had reached the President and had clasped his hand. 
 Ireland was equally alert, and the slightest move on the part of 
 this man, who is now supposed to have been an accomplice, and 
 for whom a search was promptly made, would have been checked 
 by the officers. 
 
 Immediately following this man was the assassin. He was 
 a rather tall, boyish looking fellow, apparently twenty-five years 
 old, he was born in America of Polish parents. His smooth, 
 rather pointed face would not indicate his purpose of slaying the 
 National Executive. 
 
 The Secret Service men noted that about his right hand was 
 wrapped a handkerchief, and as he carried the hand uplifted, 
 although supported by a sling under his coat, the officers believed
 
 STORY OF THE ASSASSINATION. 193 
 
 his hand was injured, and especially as he extended his left hand 
 across the right so as to shake hands with the President. 
 
 It was noticed that the Italian who was in front ot the 
 assassin held back, apparently to shield the young man, so that 
 it was necessary for Ireland to push him on. 
 
 Innocently facing the assassin, the President smiled as he 
 extended his right hand to meet the left of the man before him. 
 As the youth extended his left hand he whipped out his right 
 hand, the one which held the revolver, and before any one knew 
 what was transpiring, two shots rang out, one following the other 
 after the briefest portion of a second. For the first moment there 
 was not a sound. 
 
 HE SUDDENLY REELED BACK. 
 
 The President drew his right hand quickly to his chest, 
 raised his head and his eyes looked upward and rolled. He 
 swerved a moment, reeled and was caught in the arms of Secre- 
 tary Cortelyou to his right. Catching himself for the briefest 
 second, President McKinley, whose face was now the whiteness 
 of death, looked at the assassin as the officers and soldiers bore 
 him to the floor, and said feebly, " May God forgive him." The 
 President was carried first one way, then a step in another direc- 
 tion. The excitement was so sudden and the pandemonium so 
 great, that for a minute no one knew what to do. Finally, some 
 one said to carry him inside the purple edge of the aisle and seat 
 him. This was the only thing to do at the moment and prepa- 
 rations were made at once to find a resting place. 
 
 A couple of men tore the benches aside and trampled the 
 bunting down, while Mr. Milburn and Secretary Cortelyou half 
 carried the President over the line and into the passageway leading 
 to the stage, which had not been used. The President was able 
 to walk a little, but was leaning easily on his escorts. In passing 
 over the bunting his foot caught, and for a moment he stumbled. 
 A reporter extricated the wounded man's foot, and the President 
 was carried to a seat, where a half dozen men stood by and fanned 
 him vigorously, 
 
 13
 
 194 STORY OF THE ASSASSINATION. 
 
 Quick call was sent for doctors and to the ambulance. 
 While seated for a moment, Secretary Cortelyou leaned over 
 the President, and inquired : " Do you feel much pain ? " White 
 and trembling the President slipped his hand into the opening 
 of his shirt front, near the heart, and said : "This wound pains 
 greatly." As the President withdrew his hand, the first and 
 second fingers were covered with blood. He looked at them, his 
 hand dropped to his side, and he became faint. His head 
 dropped heavily to his chest, and those about him turned away. 
 
 "O MY GOD, ARE YOU SHOT?" 
 
 Minister Aspiroz, of Mexico, broke through the little crowd 
 excitedly, and awakened the faint into which the President had 
 sunk by dramatically exclaiming in English : " O my God, Mr. 
 President, are you shot ? " While the excited diplomat was being 
 restrained from caressing the Executive, and falling at his feet, 
 the President replied, gasping between each word: "Yes I 
 believe I am." 
 
 The President's head then fell backward, he partially fainting 
 again. Mr. Milburn placed his hand back of the wounded man's 
 head, and offered a support for it. This seemed to resuscitate the 
 President, and afterward he sat stoically in the chair, his legs 
 spread out on the floor and his lips clinched firmly, as though he 
 would fight determinedly against death, should it be appearing. 
 He was giving the fight of a soldier, and more than one turned 
 away, and tremblingly all in the building trembled and shook, 
 not from fear, but the tension, and remarked : " He is certainly 
 a soldier." 
 
 While all this was transpiring, the drama had not yet ended 
 on the scene of the shooting. The shots had hardly been fired 
 when Foster and Ireland were on top of the assassin. Ireland, 
 quick as thought, had knocked the smoking weapon from the 
 man's hand, and at the same time he and his companion officer, 
 with a dozen Exposition police and as many artillerymen, literal!}^ 
 crushed him to the floor. While the President was being led 
 away, the artillerymen and guards cleared the building in a few
 
 STORY OF THE ASSASSINATION. 195 
 
 minutes of those who had entered to meet the President, but to do 
 this it was necessary to draw their sabre bayonets and use extreme 
 force. 
 
 FOSTER CLUTCHED HIM BY THE THROAT. 
 
 Foster reached under the crowd, and by his almost super- 
 human strength pulled the intending murderer from under the 
 heap. The assassin was grabbed by a half dozen guards and 
 soldiers and by the secret service men who were near the scene 
 at the time. Forcing the youth, for that is what he is, to the 
 open, Foster clutched him by the throat with his left hand, and 
 saying : " You murderer !" then struck him a most vicious blow 
 with his fist squarely in the face. The blow was so powerful that 
 the man was sent through the guards and went sprawling upon 
 the floor. He hardly touched the floor, when he was again set 
 upon, this time by the guards and soldiers. He was kicked 
 repeatedly, until Captain Darner rushed in and drew back the 
 guards. Foster made another attempt to get at the assassin, but 
 he was held back, although he protested that he had possession 
 of his mind and that he knew what he was doing. The prisoner 
 was hurried into a little room just off the west stage of the 
 Temple of Music, being dragged through the crowd by Patrolmen 
 James and McCauley. His lip was bleeding and his face was 
 swelling from James's blows. Around him there were a group of 
 officers. Once inside, the door was closed with a bang, and the 
 mob surging against that door of the building, with a blind im- 
 pulse to get near him, fairly made the walls creak. 
 
 The entire scene in the room was for a moment confusion. 
 There were eager officials going in and out of the door. Some 
 people were trying to conceal the fact that the prisoner was there, 
 and others betraying the fact in a loud voice as soon as they had left 
 the room. One excited Exposition official invited the people to go 
 in and get the man as he hurried out on some mission that had 
 come to him. 
 
 In the room with the prisoner were Colonel Byrne, Command- 
 ant of the Exposition Police; Captain Vallely, Chief of the Detec-
 
 196 STORY OF THE ASSASSINATION. 
 
 tive Bureau ; Detective Ziegler, Buffalo Police Detectives Solomon 
 and Geary, Secret Servicemen Sam Ireland, Foster and Captain 
 Darner, of the Exposition Police ; Major Robertson of the Exposi- 
 tion Police ; Mr. John N. Scatchered and a few others coming and 
 going. 
 
 COWARDLY CONDUCT OF THE ASSASSIN. 
 
 Czolgosz was on the table in the room, and sat there, now and 
 then putting his sleeve to his lip ; at other times looking at the 
 floor or keeping his shoes close together, rubbing them nervously. 
 He would now and then breathe deeply with his nervous 
 agitation, but for other signs there were none. He remained silent. 
 Outside the building could be seen the great tumultuous throng 
 of people. From all quarters of the grounds they were gathering 
 toward the common centre. Now and then a woman's face, red 
 with the heat, could be seen peering up over the heads of those in 
 front, and struggling to raise her hand, she would wipe away the 
 tears from her eyes- On a lofty porch on one of the great staff 
 flower jardinieres an old man, with a long white beard, a broad 
 brimmed veteran's hat and a G. A. R. button in his lapel, sat 
 shaking his head in sorrow. 
 
 Now and then some man's voice would call out, " Don't let 
 him get away ! " and there would be a score of answering shouts of 
 "Kill him! Hang him !" "Take him up on the arch and burn 
 him!" 
 
 Around the main doors was a squad of fifteen police and a detach- 
 ment of the United States marines. They had just arrived at 
 the station and were in command of Captain Leonard. Thev 
 formed their line, and in a loud clear voice, came the order, 
 "Load rifles!" The breeches clicked, and the men held up to 
 plain view the hard steel and the encasing brass as they filled the 
 Lee-Metfords with cartridges. The moral effect was obvious, for 
 the women started the movement to draw back, and the tense 
 wave of vengeance seemed broken. Men and women who had 
 been dry eyed began to cry. The lips of soldiers and policemen 
 were twitching, but the heads on the broad shoulders were
 
 STORY OF THE ASSASSINATION. 197 
 
 motionless as the breath was held firm and steady. So men 
 look when facing - nughty duty, with a mighty heart. The 
 little room, where f he prisonei was, contained a quantity of rope 
 of different size? and sorts. It is the rope used for shutting oft 
 the esplanade at times or dnll and especial fetes. "Rope off 
 the south approaches *o the building so that we can get the wagon 
 inhere,'' said Colonel Byrne. "You will never get that wagon 
 with him in it forty feet away," said Sam Ireland. 
 
 HURRYING THE CULPRIT TO PRISON. 
 
 " We must have a carriage and horses ; the people can stop 
 an automobile better than they can horses." Some distance 
 away was the carriage in which a portion of the committee had 
 come to the Temple of Music. 
 
 "Get that carriage over there," said Scatcherd to the sergeant 
 of the police at the southwest door. On the box of the carriage 
 was a stockily built little Irish coachman. As he received his 
 orders that it was to be his carriage that was to take away the 
 would-be assassin through that eager, bloodthirsy, vengeful mob, 
 a slow smile of pleasure spread into a delighted grin. "All right," 
 he said curtly, and never another word until the prisoner was safe 
 behind bars. 
 
 " Colonel Byrne, send for another platoon of police. Had you 
 not better get them from the Second Precinct ? Gentlemen, every 
 minute of this delay is making the task all the more dangerous. 
 This crowd is getting more and more worked up, and it is getting 
 bigger. It reaches way out over the esplanade now. Give this 
 man to me, and I give you my word I will get him to Buffalo. 
 Here are two Buffalo officers who will go with me." 
 
 "The best plan is to jump him right into this carriage 
 coming, and get right out of here," said Samuel Ireland.. Captain 
 Darner and Colonel Byrne quietly directed exterior movements of 
 the police and informed the military guards, both marines and 
 artillerymen. 
 
 The roped off space was sufficient to admit the carriage. 
 Colonel Byrne gave the signal. Guards James and McCauley
 
 198 STORY OF THE ASSASSINATION. 
 
 were on either side of the prisoner on the edge of the table. Cap- 
 tain Vallely led the way, and Detectives Solomon and Geary j ust 
 behind. The Irish coachman whipped up his team, dashed into 
 the door, the marines and artillerymen dropped their guns till 
 the bayonets were at charge. The carriage drew up at the door, 
 a policeman swung open the carriage door. The door of the 
 southwest entrance, leading into the little room opened, and out 
 came the prisoner and convoy. He was literally hurled into the 
 carriage by the burly patrolmen. Secret Serviceman Foster 
 slammed the door, and the carriage was off on a mad dash for the 
 triumphal causeway and the Lincoln Park gateway beyond. 
 
 WILD CRIES FROM THE ENRAGED CROWD. 
 
 At the minute the carriage drew up a wild mad surge of the 
 people came from all the other doors, for a ragged yell had gone 
 up, " Here he comes! This door, this door! " The lines of soldiers 
 and policemen swayed but held firm. "There he is ! Kill him ! 
 Kill him! Hit him! Hit him! Don't let that carriage get away, 
 you cowards! Stop it! Hang him! Kill the bloody Anarchist!" 
 was a Bedlam of curses and yells from people fighting in closer, 
 waving their fists, with here and there a revolver gleaming, as its 
 bearer threw it up in the sunlight above his head for the safety of 
 those around him. The roar of that mob was a sound never to 
 be forgotten by any who have heard it. It had the deadly, intense 
 growl, the wild, bloodthirsty shriek, and the savage note that is 
 heard only in the voices of the angered mob. 
 
 As the carriage moved away Captain Vallely swung himself 
 free from the crowd of officers and leaped with one bound to the 
 seat beside the coachman. As the carriage forged its way to the 
 limit beyond the rope men, and even women, sprang forward and 
 caught the fenders, snatched at the horses' harness, and scores of 
 them were struck by the horses' shoulders as the crowd behind 
 refused to let them retire sufficiently to make passageway. The 
 driver had a long, keen whip and plied it alternatively on the 
 horses and the faces and heads of the crowd. Once, as the 
 carriage neared the triumphal causeway, the crush became too
 
 STORY OF THE ASSASSINATION. 199 
 
 dense for it to seem possible to force through. Behind strong 
 limbed, angry men were in pursuit in the wake, 'the carriage had 
 seemed to swirl them in, and they were frantically endeavor- 
 ing to find a hold on the smooth, polished surface and the rounded 
 corners as they would slip and fall and be trampled on. 
 
 TERRIBLE EXECRATIONS ON THE ASSASSIN. 
 
 It looked as if the carriage was going to be stopped in front, 
 but the coachman smiled, and standing up sped his long lash out 
 in front over the horses' heads. They increased their speed to a 
 gallop and the crowd succeeded in opening. Once on the cause- 
 way all was well, for the outer limits of the crowd had been reached 
 and the narrowness of the way beyond, as well as the downhill 
 slope, facilitated the movement. 
 
 Hard and fast the carriage went to the Lincoln Park gate, 
 which swung open as the carriage drew near. From this point 
 straight down Delaware avenue the journey was uninterrupted, 
 only that three or four bicyclists followed, and spread the news. 
 The prisoner from the moment he had touched the cushions of the 
 carriage cowered in the rear left hand corner, now and then rais- 
 ing his head ; as he would look out of the windows when fighting 
 through the crowd, and he could hear their awful impre- 
 cations as they struggled to get near enough to take the vengeance 
 of brutes, convulsive shivers ran through his slender body, and his 
 eye.s rolled with terror. His lips were dry and parched, and he 
 wetted them constantly with his tongue. Just south of Utica 
 street the carriage met the light police wagon, containing Super- 
 intendent of Buffalo Police Bull, who wheeled, and followed the 
 carriage down to headquarters, at Station No. i, at the junction of 
 the Terrace, Erie and Seneca streets. 
 
 The carriage drew up sharply, and the prisoner was taken in 
 while a score of idlers about looked on with bare interest. A 
 moment later, the bike men who were following had told thejn 
 that the President had been shot, and the man who had done it 
 was the prisoner who had just been taken in. From that germ 
 the mob fever grew and swelled. All over the vicinity, into the
 
 200 STORY OF THE ASSASSINATION. 
 
 neighboring saloons and railroad men's quarters, the tidings spread 
 and knots of people that formed the nucleus of the downtown mob 
 began to collect. Back at the Temple of Music the crowd con- 
 tinued to grow larger. Rumors spread that the man who had 
 done the shooting was still in the building, and it was necessary 
 to hold the guards there for hours. The very fact that the guards 
 remained convinced the people that they had been made victims of 
 a ruse, and it was at a late hour that the last of the throng dis- 
 persed. 
 
 IDENTITY OF THE ASSASSIN DISCOVERED. 
 
 It was learned by the police shortly before midnight that the 
 man who attempted President McKinley's life is Leon F. 
 Czolgosz, a Polish lad, who came from Cleveland. 
 
 The prisoner at first proved quite communicative, so much 
 so, in fact, that little dependence could be placed on what he said. 
 He first gave his name as Fred Neiman, said his home was in 
 Detroit, and that he had been in Buffalo about a week. He said 
 he had been boarding at a place in Broadway. Later this place 
 was located as John Nowak's saloon, a Raines law hotel, No. 
 1078 Broadway. Here the prisoner occupied room 8. Nowak, 
 the proprietor, said he knew very little about his guest. 
 
 He came there, he declared, last Saturday, sa}dng he 
 had come to see the Pan-American, and that his home was in 
 Toledo. He had been alone at all times about Nowak's place, 
 and had no visitors. In his room was found a small traveling 
 bag of cheap make. It contained an empty cartridge box and a 
 few clothes. With these facts in hand, the police went at the 
 prisoner with renewed vigor, in the effort to obtain either a full 
 confession or a straight account of his identity and movements 
 prior to his arrival in Buffalo. He at first admitted that he was 
 an Anarchist in sympathy at least, but denied strenuously that 
 the attempt on the life of the President was the result of a pre- 
 concerted plot on the part of any Anarchist society. 
 
 At times he was defiant and again indifferent. But at no 
 time did he betray the remotest sign of remorse. He declared
 
 STORY OF THE ASSASSINATION. 201 
 
 the deed was not premeditated, but in the same breath refused to 
 say why he perpetrated it. When charged by District Attorney 
 Penny with being the instrument of an organized band of con- 
 spirators, he protested vehemently that he never even thought of 
 perpetrating the crime until this morning. After long and per- 
 sistent questioning, it was announced at police headquarters that 
 the prisoner had made a partial confession, which he had signed. 
 
 HIS BOASTFUL CONFESSION. 
 
 As near as can be learned the facts contained in tht- 
 confession are as follows : 
 
 The man's name is Leon Czolgosz. He is of decided Polish 
 extraction. His home is in Cleveland. He is an avowed Anar- 
 chist, and an ardent disciple of Emma Goldman, whose teachings, 
 he alleges, are responsible for to-day's attack on the President. 
 He denies steadfastly that he is the instrument of any body of 
 Anarchists, or the tool of any coterie of plotters. He declares 
 he did not even have a confederate. His only reason for the 
 deed, he declares, is that he believed the present form of govern- 
 ment in the United States was unjust, and he concluded the 
 most effective way to remedy it was to kill the President. These 
 conclusions, he declares, he reached through the teachings of 
 Emma Goldman. 
 
 He denies having any confederate, and says he bought 
 the revolver with which the act was committed in Buffalo. He 
 has seven brothers and sisters in Cleveland, and the Cleveland 
 directory has the names of about that number living on Hosmer 
 street and Ackland avenue, which adjoin. Some of them are 
 butchers and others in different trades. He shows no sign of 
 insanity, but is very reticent about much of his career. While 
 acknowledging himself an Anarchist, he does not state to what 
 branch of the organization he belongs.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 Additional Account of the Assassination Two Shots in Quick 
 Succession Instant Lynching Threatened Surgeons 
 Summoned Horror at the Dastardly Deed The Nation 
 Stunned by the Terrible News. 
 
 BOTH shots took effect on the President. One struck the 
 sternum, deviated to the right and stopped beneath the skin 
 at the point directly below the right nipple. It was a superficial 
 wound and the bullet was removed immediately after the arrival 
 of surgeons. The second bullet entered and passed through the 
 stomach. An operation, which was performed within two hours 
 after the shooting, failed to find the bullet and the incision was 
 sewed up. 
 
 The President was removed to the home of John G. Milburn, 
 President of the Pan-American Exposition, where, at midnight, he 
 was resting comfortably. The physicians said they were hopeful 
 and that the wound was not necessarily fatal. 
 
 The man who did the shooting gave his name as Fred 
 Nieman, which was an assumed name. He said he was 28 years 
 old, a blacksmith by occupation, born in Detroit and had come to 
 Buffalo the preceding Saturday. When asked why he shot the 
 President, he said : " I only done my duty." 
 
 He was asked if he was an Anarchist, and he said : " Yes, 
 I am." 
 
 The assassination had apparently been planned with care. 
 The assassin entered the Temple of Music in the long line of 
 those waiting to shake hands with the President. Over his right 
 hand he wore a white handkerchief, as if the hand were bandaged. 
 Beneath this handkerchief he had concealed a short-barrelled 32- 
 caliber Derringer revolver. 
 
 A little girl was immediately ahead of him in the line and 
 the President, after patting her kindly on the head, turned with a 
 
 202
 
 ADDITIONAL ACCOUNT OF THE ASSASSINATION. -J03 
 
 smile of welcome and extended his hand. The miscreant thrust 
 out both his hands, brushed aside the President's right hand, 
 with his left hand, lurched forward against the President, and 
 thrusting his right hand close against his breast, pulled the 
 trigger twice. The shots came in such quick succession as to be 
 almost simultaneous. 
 
 At the first shot the President quivered and clutched at his 
 chest. At the second shot he doubled slightly forward and sank 
 back. It all happened in an instant. Quick as he was, the 
 assassin was not quick enough to fire a third shot. Almost 
 before the noise of the firing sounded, he was seized by S. R. 
 Ireland, of the United States Secret Service, in charge of the New 
 York district, who stood directly opposite the President. Ireland 
 hurled him to the floor. 
 
 LEAPED ON HIM AS HE FELL. 
 
 A negro, named John Parker, leaped upon him as he fell, 
 and they rolled over on the floor. Soldiers of the United States 
 artillery, detailed at the reception, sprang upon the pair, and 
 Exposition police and Secret Service detectives also rushed upon 
 them. Detective Gallagher clutched the assassin's right hand, 
 tore from it the handkerchief and seized the revolver. The artil- 
 lerymen, seeing Gallagher with the revolver, grabbed him and 
 held him powerless, snatching the pistol from his grasp. Private 
 Frank O'Brien, of the artillery, got the pistol. Gallagher held 
 to the hankerchief. 
 
 Ireland and the negro held the anarchist, endeavoring, with 
 the aid of Secret Service Detective Foster, to shield him from the 
 attacks of the infuriated artillerymen and the policemen's clubs. 
 Meanwhile the President, supported by Detective Geary and 
 President Milburn, and surrounded by Secretary George B. Cor- 
 telyou and a number of Exposition officials, was aided to a chair. 
 
 His face was deathly white. He made no outcry, but sank 
 back with one hand holding his abdomen, the other fumbling at 
 his breast. His eyes were open and he was clearly conscious of 
 all that transpired. He looked up into President Milburn' s face
 
 204 ADDITIONAL ACCOUNT OF THE ASSASSINATION. 
 
 and gasped the name of his secretary, Cortelyou- Mr. Cortelyou 
 bent over the President, who gasped brokenly : 
 
 " Be careful about my wife. Do not tell her, or, at least, do 
 not exaggerate it." 
 
 Then, moved by a paroxysm of pain, he writhed to the left 
 and his eyes fell upon the prostrate form of his would-be murderer 
 lying on the floor, bloodstained and helpless, beneath the blows 
 of the guard. The President raised his right hand, stained with 
 his own blood, and placed it on the shoulder of his secretary. 
 "Let no one hurt him," he gasped, and sank back, as his secre- 
 tary ordered the guard to bear the culprit out. of the President's 
 
 sight. 
 
 SEARCHED BY THE POLICE. 
 
 They carried him into a side room at the northeast corner 
 of the temple. There they searched him and found upon him a 
 letter relating to lodgings. They washed the blood from his face 
 and asked him who he was and why he had done the dreadful 
 deed. He made no answer at once, but finally gave the name of 
 Nieman. He was of medium height, smooth shaven, brown- 
 haired, dressed as an ordinary mechanic. He offered no expla- 
 nation of the bloody deed, except that he was an anarchist and 
 had done his duty. 
 
 An ambulance from the Exposition Emergency Hospital 
 was summoned immediately, and the President, still conscious, 
 sank upon the stretchers and, accompanied by President Milburn 
 and Secretary Cortelyou, was hurried to the hospital, where, in 
 nine minutes after the shooting, he was awaiting the coming of 
 surgeons who had been summoned instantly from all parts of the 
 city and by special trains from near by. The President was 
 entirely conscious as he lay on the stretcher in the hospital. He 
 conversed with his Secretary and Mr. Milburn. 
 
 "I am sorry," he said "to have been the cause of trouble to 
 this Exposition or inconvenience to its officials or the people." 
 The three thoughts in his mind were : First, for his wife ; second, 
 that the assassin should not be harmed : third, regret for any 
 inconvenience occasioned.
 
 ADDITIONAL ACCOUNT OF THE ASSASSINATION. 205 
 
 The news of the shooting spread with great rapidity through- 
 out the Kxposition. People were dumbfounded and appalled. 
 Women wept. Strong men asked where it had happened, and when 
 they learned they turned with blanched faces and clenched hands 
 toward the Temple of Music. The light of vengeance gleamed 
 in their eyes as the throng grew inco a multitude. 
 
 Inside th" Temnlc, with the President gone and his assailant 
 helpless in a siae room, the proolem arose of how to get the 
 assassin away from tiK. grounds and beyond the reach of the 
 people. Some advised hurrying him out by a back way, but even 
 the back ways were watched by the throng. Others advocated 
 attempting the dash through the crowd with him, but this was 
 abandoned when suggested. Guards were sent for and more 
 details of soldiers. A carriage was called, a space had been roped 
 off south of the Temple with a heavy rope. The crowd was soon 
 dragging out the iron stanchions holding this rope and was meas- 
 uring it near a tall flag pole. 
 
 CRIES OF " LYNCH HIM!" 
 
 " Lynch him ! " cried a hundred voices, and a start was made 
 for one of the entrances of the Temple of Music. The soldiers 
 and police sprang outside and beat back the orowd. To and fro 
 they fought. In the midst of the confussion the assassin, still 
 bleeding from his blows and pale and silent, with his shirt torn, 
 was led out quickly by Captain James E. Valleley, Chief of the 
 Exposition Detectives, Assistant Commandant Robertson and 
 detectives. They thrust him into the closed carriage. Three 
 detectives leaped in with him, and Captain Valleley jumped upon 
 the driver's seat, as they lashed the horses into a gallop. 
 
 A roar of rage burst from the crowd, " Murderer ! Assassin ! 
 Lynch him ! " yelled the crowd, and men, women and children 
 tore at the guards, sprang at the horses, and clutched the whirl- 
 ing wheels of the carriage. The murderer huddled back in the 
 corner, concealed by the bodies of two detectives. " The rope \ 
 the rope ! " yelled the crowd, and they started forward, all in one 
 great fight, the soldiery to save, the citizens to take, the man's
 
 206 ADDITIONAL ACCOUNT OF THE ASSASSINATION. 
 
 life. Soldiers fought a way clear at the heads of the horses, and, 
 persued by infuriated thousands, the carriage whirled across the 
 esplanade and vanished through Lincoln Parkway gate, going 
 down Delaware Avenue to reach the police headquarters. 
 
 " Where have they taken him ? " asked the crowd of the 
 soldiers. 
 
 When the soldiers told them, hundreds hurried to the exits 
 and started towards the city in search of the life of the assassin. 
 They gathered at police headquarters, and as the evening wore 
 away, their number grew. They waited as if for a signal. Again 
 and again they would repeat the question, " Is the President still 
 alive ? " and when the answer came that there was hope, they 
 turned again toward the building and waited in silence. 
 
 GROANS AND SOBS. 
 
 At the emergency hospital, while the throng was crying for 
 the life of the villain, the Exposition officials and the railroad 
 officials and the telegraph officials were searching the city and 
 the adjacent country for the greatest surgeons. They learned that 
 Dr. Roswell Park was at Niagara Falls and General Agent 
 Harry Parry, of the New York Central Railroad, ordered a 
 special train to hurry him to the President's side. Dr. B. W. Lee, 
 of St. Louis, Dr. Storer, of Chicago, and other medical men were 
 on the grounds, and they joined the hospital staff. 
 
 The President was borne out of the Temple of Music at 
 4.14 o'clock by Doctors Hall, Ellis and Mann, Jr., of the hospital, 
 in charge of the ambulance. The crowd fell back when it saw 
 the figure of the President. Groans and sobs were the only 
 sounds heard. There was no need for the police to ask the crowd 
 to move back. The crowd itself cleared a pathway along the 
 course shouting ahead, " Keep back, keep back ; make way, make 
 way." 
 
 Colonel Chapin, of General Roe's staff, with the mounted 
 escort which had accompained President McKinley in his outdoor 
 appearance since his arrival in Buffalo, surrounded the ambulance, 
 and at full gallop they whirled to the hospital. With them went
 
 ADDITIONAL ACCOUNT OF THE ASSASSINATION. 207 
 
 President Milburn and Secretary Cortelyou. Six doctors were at 
 the President's side within thirty seconds after his arrival. Miss 
 Walters, the superintendent of the nurses of the hospital, immedi- 
 ately had all made ready for the task of the surgeons. Outside 
 the police established safety lines and the crowd fell back, stand- 
 ing silent or moving softly. 
 
 The President was stripped and placed where the surgeons 
 might see his wounds. Guarding the door was Detective Foster, 
 of the Secret Service, and his assistants. In the room with the 
 President besides the surgeons were Mr. Milburn and Secretary 
 Cortelyou. In the hall of the hospital were Chairman Scatcherd 
 and Secretary of Agriculture Wilson and other prominent men. 
 
 When a face appeared for a moment at the hospital door the 
 crowd trembled as if expecting to hear that the President was 
 dead. When the announcement came, the first announcement, 
 that he was shot twice, but that there was hope of his life, people 
 hugged each other and silently waved their hats in the air or 
 clapped their hands and murmured gratefully with eyes closed. 
 
 ONE BULLET EXTRACTED. 
 
 At 4.45 o'clock the good word came that one of the bullets had 
 been extracted, that his wound was superficial and had done no 
 serious harm. It was joyous, but a moment later came the news 
 of the second bullet and the second wound. The surgeons were 
 in consultation before beginning an operation. At 5.07 a small 
 gray-bearded man pushed his way through the crowd and ap- 
 proached the hospital. He was Dr. Matthew D. Mann and Mr. 
 Scatcherd met him at the hospital door precisely one hour after 
 the President had been shot. The surgeons were waiting for the 
 coming of the President's physician, Dr. P. M. Rixey, and for Dr. 
 Park. 
 
 At 5.52 o'clock Secretary W. V. Cox, of the Government 
 Board of Exposition Managers, arrived with Dr. Rixey, Mrs. 
 Rixey and Mrs. Cortelyou. They had come from the Milburn 
 home, where Mrs. McKinley was sleeping, all unconscious of the 
 calamity that had befallen the President. On the space before the
 
 208 ADDITIONAL ACCOUNT OF THE ASSASSINATION. 
 
 hospital officers of the army and navy, including Captain Hobson, 
 and directors of the Exposition, bankers and diplomats, stood in 
 silence awaiting the result of what the surgeons might decide. 
 
 The President of the Cuban Commission to the Exposition, 
 Senor Edelberto Farres, appeared with his full commission and 
 conveyed to those within the hospital the announcement that 
 Cuba sorrowed with the American people and that whatever she 
 could do would be a favor and an honor to the island. One by 
 one the diplomats reiterated these sentiments. The Ambassadors 
 and Ministers stood eagerly waiting for the slightest ray of hope. 
 They heard in silence at 6 o'clock the announcement by Captain 
 Valleley that he had delivered the prisoner safely at police head- 
 quarters in the custody of the detectives who had seized him. 
 
 THE THRONG KEEP SILENT. 
 
 The 6 o'clock whistles were blowing \vhen Mr. Scatcherd and 
 Mr. Hamlin emerged from the hospital and asked that the crowd 
 move still further back and preserve quiet. Their request was 
 obeyed instantly, even the small boys ceasing their shouts. It 
 was announced that the President was about to undergo the 
 operation to find the second bullet. Dr. Mann with Drs. Par- 
 menter, Mynter and Rixey were to be in charge of the operating 
 room with Dr. Mann. As already stated the second bullet was 
 not found, and the hope was that it would become encycted and 
 result in no harm. 
 
 It is impossble to describe the overwhelming shock to our 
 whole country by the awful tragedy. Washington was simply 
 stunned by the news that President McKinley had been shot. As 
 the word spread through the streets like wildfire, men and women 
 looked at each other and said : "I don't believe it." It was fully 
 thirty minutes after the first bulletin was placarded before the 
 awful truth was appreciated. 
 
 At all points where the slightest intelligence could be secured 
 from Buffalo, people congregated in sad and sorrowful crowds. 
 There were no demonstrations beyond muttered horror and low 
 execrations of the dastardly deed. Thousands gazed in silence
 
 ADDITIONAL ACCOUNT OF THE ASSASSINATION. 209 
 
 at the bulletin boards, and as succeeding notices brought no 
 assurance, tears were wiped from their eyes and suppressed sobs 
 were heard throughout the throng. 
 
 Gradually the tone of the despatches changed and a reaction 
 set in, until at last, when a bulletin was displayed announcing 
 that the President would recover, a hearty cheer went up from 
 thousands of throats and the tension was at an end. Then the 
 people broke out in noisy discussion of the terrible event and if 
 all the threats and suggestions of extermination against the 
 Anarchists could have been put into active operation not one of 
 the breed would have been alive in the United States at midnight. 
 
 OTHER ASSASSINATIONS. 
 
 It was only twenty years, two decades, since Washington was 
 last startled by the report of the assassin's pistol, and President 
 Garfield was shot down in the Pennsylvania railroad depot. 
 Thirty-six years ago, only a little more than a generation, the 
 greatest tragedy in the history of the nation was enacted when 
 President Lincoln was murdered. Washington felt these tragic 
 events in a peculiar manner. To the people of this city the 
 President of the United States is a living, tangible personality, a 
 part of the everyday life of the city, and any accident or disaster 
 happening to him touches every one most closely and personally. 
 
 The news that President McKinley had been shot struck 
 every one as though a close friend or member of his family had 
 been the victim of the murderous assault. The news came 
 shortly after the closing of the departments for the day, when 
 thousands of Government employees, men and women, were on 
 the streets homeward bound. As the word sped along that the 
 President had been shot, ladies would rush toward any one who 
 they thought could give information and demand : "Is it so? Is 
 it so ?" Strong men broke down and wept like children. 
 Nowhere in the United States was President McKinley known so 
 well as in Washington, where he first came as a young member 
 of Congress some twenty-five years before. 
 
 It so happened that not a member of his Cabinet was present 
 
 14
 
 210 ADDITIONAL ACCOUNT OF THE ASSASSINATION. 
 
 in the city. Scattered all over the country, enjoying, as he had 
 been, their annnal vacation, his official family received the sad 
 intelligence in widely separated localities. The assistant secre- 
 taries and chiefs of the bureaus in all the departments were 
 speedily informed of the horrible event at Buffalo. 
 
 Some of these men, like Comptroller of the Currency Dawes, 
 had not left their offices, and the shock to them was almost 
 paralyzing. They rushed to the nearest telegraph and news- 
 paper offices in the hope that the first report was untrue. When 
 confirmation of the tidings was received, these men, many of them 
 close, warm personal friends of the President, sank down and 
 sobbed like children. 
 
 FELT IT AS A PERSONAL LOSS. 
 
 Each one felt that the death of the President would be a 
 distinct personal blow to himself. They began to rehearse in 
 broken voices the virtues and magnificent character of William 
 McKinley. Then they would be shaken with a wave of horror 
 that any creature of human semblance and possessed of 
 thought and soul could take the life of such a man. At the 
 War Department, General Gillespie, who is Acting Secretary 
 of War, and Colonel Ward, who is Acting Adjutant General, 
 were in their offices when the news came from Buffalo. 
 Colonel Wiser, commandant of Fort Porter, at Buffalo, wired 
 directly to the Department, giving official information of the 
 shooting of the President and the arrest of the would-be assassin. 
 The despatch follows : 
 
 "Adjutant General, U. S. A., Washington, D. C. : 
 
 " President shot at reception in Temple of Music about 4 P. M. 
 Corporal Bertschey and detail of men of my company caught 
 the assassin at once and held him down till the Secret Service men 
 overpowered him and took the prisoner out of their hands, my 
 men being unarmed. Condition of President not known. Re- 
 volver in my possession. 
 
 44 Buffalo, September 6. "(Signed) WISER, Commanding."
 
 ADDITIONAL ACCOUNT O^ THE ASSASSINATION. 211 
 
 The War Department officials immediately communicated 
 with Secretary Root and Assistant Secretary Sanger, who were at 
 their homes in New York, and instructions were sent to Colonel 
 Wiser, at Fort Porter, to detail men to act as a guard about the 
 hospital where the President lay, and afterward about the house 
 to which he was removed. At the White House there were none 
 but the corps of clerks and telegraph operators present, but 
 inquiries by the hundred were received over the telephone and 
 the telegraph, asking for official news. 
 
 Colonel Montgomery, chief of the operators at the White 
 House, gave out the bulletins as rapidly as they were received, 
 but they were only a repetition of those coining in at the news- 
 paper offices and over the regular telegraph wires. Hundreds of 
 anxious citizens passed under the White House portals, or stopped 
 to inquire the latest news, evidently attracted to the official home 
 of the great man whom, they believed to be dying in Buffalo. 
 
 At the Secret Service Bureau the officials in charge did not care 
 to discuss the shooting, except to join in the general expressions 
 of horror that an attempt should be made upon the life of the 
 President. Chief Wilkie, of the bureau, was absent from the 
 city, and none of his subordinates cared to discuss the precautions 
 that had been taken to prevent just such a tragedy as had 
 
 occurred. 
 
 OBJECTION TO BEING GUARDED. 
 
 The President always requested Chief Wilkie and his assist- 
 ants to refrain from making public the arrangements for guarding 
 him on his trips and at his receptions. The President, however, 
 never moved out of Washington, nor did he appear at any public 
 function without alert officers of the Secret Service Bureau being 
 near to him. In most cases he did not know the men who were 
 detailed to guard him, and was not consulted about the arrange- 
 ments. He never had the slightest personal fear, and was averse 
 to the detailing of men to guard him. In a general way he knew 
 that the Secret Service officers were in attendance, but his move- 
 ments were always unrestricted and made without any thought 
 of possible danger to himself.
 
 212 ADDITIONAL ACCOUNT OF THE ASSASSINATION. 
 
 When he entered upon his first term as President he 
 abolished some of the prominent guard provisions about the 
 White House. The number of policemen was reduced and the 
 little sentr} 71 box which had been erected on the front lawn during 
 President Cleveland's second administration and from which an 
 officer could keep an eye on all the approaches to the front of the 
 Executive Mansion was removed by Mr. McKinley's direction. 
 
 When a member of Congress, Mr. McKinley had formed the 
 habit of taking long walks through the streets, and when he 
 returned to Washington as President he resumed the practice as 
 far as time would permit. He walked frequently in the north- 
 western section of the city and often was seen taking his consti- 
 tutional along Pennsylvania avenue and other business streets. 
 
 " HAVE NEVER DONE ANY MAN A WRONG." 
 
 In this he followed the example of President Grant and Presi- 
 dent Harrison, both of whom were familiar figures on the streets 
 of the Capital. If any one suggested to President McKinley 
 that he should exercise precaution he invariably answered : 
 
 "I have never done any man a wrong and believe no man 
 will ever do me one." The idea that his life might be at the 
 mercy of a murderous crank never entered his head. When it 
 was suggested to him he merely laughed and said he was not 
 afraid to trust the people. 
 
 Of late years President McKinley had not walked so much, 
 but it was principally because of lack of time. During the Spanish 
 war he was kept so closely to his office that he had to give up the 
 long, pleasant strolls he formerly had taken in the residence por- 
 tion of the city. With his private secretary he would repair to 
 the grounds in the rear of the White House and walk rapidly 
 to and fro for a few moments to get the physical exercise he 
 needed. During those troublous times the watchmen were 
 doubled about the White House grounds, but not at the sugges- 
 tion of the President. Secret Service men were stationed near 
 the Mansion or within its doors, but without the knowledge or 
 consent ofthe Chief Executive.
 
 ADDITIONAL ACCOUNT OF THE ASSASSINATION. 213 
 
 Officials of the Secret Service Bureau believe tliat the tragedy 
 was unavoidable. They say it could have occurred at any of the 
 President's receptions in the White House. At these public 
 functions, where the President shakes hands with two or three 
 thousand people, any one can pass scrutiny who bears a decent 
 exterior and has the appearance of a respectable citizen. This 
 was the apparent character of the man who did the shooting at 
 Buffalo. 
 
 If the will of the people of Washington could have beeu 
 executed, the anarchist who fired the murderous bullets into the 
 President's body would have had short shrift. In the crowds that 
 surrounded the bulletin boards were many grave and dignified 
 citizens who did not hesitate to express a desire to hold the rope 
 that would swing the wretch into eternity. With the hope of the 
 President's recovery, the utterly inadequate punishment that 
 could be administered to the anarchist impressed itself upon the 
 people. Had Mr. McKinley recovered from the wound, the charge 
 to be brought against the man who shot him would have been 
 "assault with intent to kill." 
 
 MAXIMUM PUNISHMENT. 
 
 Under the laws of the State of New York this crime entails 
 a maximum punishment of only ten years imprisonment. Had 
 the attempt been made in the District of Columbia it would have 
 been possible to imprison the criminal for twenty years. There 
 have been, at various times, bills before Congress prescribing 
 punishment for the crime of attempt upon the life of the Chief 
 Executive. Nothing was ever done, however, and now every law- 
 maker regrets that a Federal statute has not been enacted provid- 
 ing adequate punishment for the attempted murder of the Presi- 
 dent. As death has resulted from the assassin's bullet, the 
 punishment is, of course, death. 
 
 In the diplomatic quarters of the city the news of the 
 assassination of President McKinley came as a tremendous 
 shock. Nearly all of the Ambassadors and Ministers were absent 
 from Washington, but the Charges d' Affaires and secretaries who
 
 214 ADDITIONAL ACCOUNT OF THE ASSASSINATION. 
 
 were left on duty, expressed the keenest regrets and displayed the 
 deepest sympathy over the tragedy. 
 
 Among the representatives of all foreign powers, President 
 McKinley was very popular. They not only entertained the 
 respect which is due a ruling magistrate but they had a deeper 
 and more personal feeling toward the President. His exemplary 
 life at the Capital, his tender solicitude for his wife and his many 
 charming personal attributes placed him high in the estimation of 
 all the diplomats. He was as punctilious in his observance of 
 diplomatic forms and ceremony as the most exacting could require 
 and at the same time exhibited a courtesy that was most charm- 
 ing. He was able to steer a judicious course in all the petty 
 controversies regarding public functions that have arisen in the 
 diplomatic corps where the most intense jealousy exists regarding 
 precedence and other rights. 
 
 SYMPATHY FOR MRS. M'KINLEY. 
 
 In the tragic occurrence the people of Washington had their 
 sympathies most deeply stirred when they considered the terrible 
 ordeal to which Mrs. McKinley was subjected. The greatest con- 
 cern was felt regarding her, and those who best know her absolute 
 reliance upon her husband felt that the death of the latter would 
 be fatal to his wife. Her friends here were fearful that her recent 
 illness had weakened her so that she might not survive the shock. 
 Mrs. McKinley always relied upon her husband with implicit 
 trust. It is known that her life has been saved in times past by 
 the exercise of his strong vitality and masterful will. 
 
 The influence he had over her was almost hypnotic. On 
 more than one occasion the physicians in attendance testified that 
 Mrs. McKinley has been drawn from the verge of the grave by 
 her husband's wonderful, magnetic powers. His devotion to his 
 wife was beautiful. Probably no other part of his character 
 earned him so completely the love of the whole people. The 
 perfect sympathy between Mr. and Mrs. McKinley touched the 
 entire nation and was best known in Washington. Theii mar- 
 ried life covered some thirty years, and the union was ideal. It
 
 ADDITIONAL ACCOUNT OF THE ASSASSINATION. 
 
 215 
 
 is recalled that a short time before the President and Mrs. McKin- 
 ley went to Canton, the mistress of the White House said that 
 she would rejoice most heartily when the public life of the Presi- 
 dent would be ended and they could go back to their quiet home 
 in Ohio. 
 
 " It is a great honor for my husband to be President of the 
 United States, and I appreciate it fully, but it means much priva- 
 tion and self-sacrifice for us both," was the wistful declaration of 
 the gentle invalid. 
 
 When the news of the shooting of President McKinley 
 reached Washington, the telephone system of the city was simply 
 paralyzed for a time and so many were the calls upon the news 
 offices and upon the officials who might be supposed to have 
 knowledge of the details of the shooting, that the operators were 
 overwhelmed. A reporter for the Associated Press carried to the 
 White House the first bulletin announcing the shooting of the 
 President. The executive mansion was reached about 4.24, and 
 at that time all its few inmates were in total ignorance of the 
 tragedy in which their chief had just played so serious a part. 
 
 ALL QUIET AT THE WHITE HOUSE. 
 
 A policeman paced up and down under the portico as usual, 
 but his serene countenance intimated that he was totally ignorant 
 of the affair. Inside there were few to receive the news, the most 
 prominent personage there being a telegraph operator, Secretary 
 Pruden, who was in charge of the White House, having left his 
 office for the day, as had his subordinates. 
 
 The force at the White House after the President's departure 
 was in constant communication with him, and while he conducted 
 most of the business of his office at his home in Canton, the 
 majority of the papers with which he had to deal were prepared 
 in Washington and forwarded through the White House clerical 
 force. All reports received from him by officials were cheerful 
 and high spirited. 
 
 General Gillespie, Acting Secretary of War, got into com- 
 munication with Secretary Root and Assistant Secretary Sanger,
 
 216 ADDITIONAL ACCOUNT OF THE ASSASSINATION. 
 
 and as a result of the telephone talk, he proceeded to use some of 
 the forces at his disposal. He telegraphed au order to have an 
 officer, a physician and a squad of men proceed immediately to 
 the hospital where the President was lying to act as a guard. 
 Steps were next taken to provide for the future of the Executive 
 Branch of the Government. It was realized that even under the 
 most favorable conditions the President's injuries were of such a 
 character as to make it almost certain that he could not undertake 
 for a long time to discharge the duties of Chief Executive, even in 
 the most formal way. 
 
 Every member of the Cabinet able to travel was expected 
 to speed at once to Buffalo, and there a Cabinet council would be 
 held to decide upon the course to be followed by the Executive 
 Branch. Vice President Roosevelt was understood to be in 
 
 Vermont. 
 
 LAW OF SUCCESSION. 
 
 The Vice President, by the Constitution of the United States, 
 becomes President, if at any time the President is removed by 
 death or disability to perform the duties of his office. This pro- 
 vision is contained in Paragraph VI, Section, I, Article II, in the 
 following words : 
 
 " VI in case of the removal of the President from office, or 
 of his death, resignation, or inability to discharge the powers and 
 duties of the said office, the same shall devolve on the Vice 
 President," etc. 
 
 At 7 o'clock Colonel Montgomery, the chief operator at the 
 White House, received a message from a confidential but reliable 
 source in Buffalo saying that the informant had learned on good 
 authority that the President's wounds were not necessarily fatal 
 and that it was believed that he would live. General Gillespie 
 telegraphed Vice President Roosevelt at Burlington, Vt, and he 
 started in haste for Buffalo. 
 
 Chinese Minister Wu, when seen, was a picture of distress. 
 He realized keenly the tremendous indebtedness of China to 
 President McKinley's kindly impulses in her great trials in 
 the past year, and was shocked at the great calamity that had
 
 ADDITIONAL ACCOUNT OF THE ASSASSINATION. 2 17 
 
 { 
 
 befallen him. He said that lie could not conceive of any sort of 
 motive for such an inexcusable deed, and he was severe in his 
 denunciation of anarchists. He asked why they were permitted 
 to hatch such plots as this in a Republic where the people could 
 readily change their President if they were in the slightest degree 
 dissatisfied with his official conduct or his private personality. In 
 conclusion, almost with tears, he expressed the hope that the 
 President would speedily recover from his terrible injury. 
 
 It was somewhat gratifying to the officials at Washington 
 that the very first expression of official sympathy should come 
 from the Island of Cuba, in the shape of the following telegram : 
 
 "September 6, 1901. Received at War Department 7.45 P.M. 
 
 Havana. Adjutant General. Washington. 
 
 " Mayor and City Council of Havana have called, expressing 
 sorrow and solicitude for the President and desire that his family 
 be advised of these expressions. 
 
 " (Signed) SCOTT, Adjutant General.'' 
 
 MR. ROOSEVELT GREATLY AFFECTED. 
 
 Vice-President Roosevelt received the news by telephone first 
 at Isle La Motte. He turned pale and trembled violently. His 
 first words were : " I am so inexpressibly shocked, horrified and 
 grieved that I cannot find words to express my feelings." At a 
 second bulletin he said : " Like all other people and like the 
 whole civilized world, you will be overjoyed to hear the good news 
 that the President will recover." 
 
 Upon his arrival at Burlington, Mr. Roosevelt was met by a 
 crowd of messenger boys and reporters. He eagerly read the 
 messages relating to the President's condition, but made no re- 
 marks. To the newspaper men he said : " I am so shocked and 
 grieved that I cannot make a statement. There is nothing for me 
 to sa}-; I shall go to-night to Senator Proctor's home and from 
 there direct to Buffalo." 
 
 When asked if several newspaper men might accompany him, 
 he refused, saying it would be a desecration under the circum- 
 stances. Mr. Roosevelt boarded the special car "Grand Isle,"
 
 218 ADDITIONAL ACCOUNT OF THE ASSASSINATION. 
 
 owned by President Clement, of the Rutland road, and accom- 
 panied by President Clement and Senator Proctor left at 8.35 for 
 Proctor. From there arrangements were made for a special train 
 to Buffalo, and he arrived the next morning. 
 
 When the news of the President's injuries was announced 
 by Senator Proctor at Isle La Motte, where the annual meeting of 
 the Fish and Game League of Vermont was being held, a moan 
 went up from the crowd and the reception which was in progress 
 was stopped. 
 
 "TOO HORRIBLE TO CONTEMPLATE." 
 
 Upon being informed at the Union Club, of Cleveland, of the 
 assassination of the President, Senator Hanna was astounded and 
 refused to believe it. A little later, after reading a telegram, 
 he said, with tears in his eyes : 
 
 " I have just received a message from the Associated Press 
 and I am forced to believe that the rumor is true. I cannot say any- 
 thing about it. It is too horrible to even contemplate. To think 
 that such a thing could happen to so splendid a man as McKin- 
 ley, and at this time and upon such an occasion. It is horrible, 
 awful. McKinley never had any fear of danger from that source. 
 Of course, I never talked to him upon such a subject, but I knew 
 he never even dreamed of anything like this happening. I can't 
 be interviewed upon this, it is too awful." 
 
 The Senator made immediate preparations to leave for Buf- 
 falo. Shortly after 4 o'clock he left the Union Club and boarded 
 a street car for his office, on Superior street. When he reached 
 the street he was stopped and surrounded by excited citizens, who 
 wanted to know if the rumors were true that the President had 
 been shot at Buffalo. " Yes, I am afraid it is too true," replied 
 the Senator, as he pushed his way through the crowd. On the 
 car the same questions were asked by every one. The Senator 
 answered all questions politely, but refused to enter into conver- 
 sation with any one. Most of the time he sat with bowed head, 
 deep in sorrow. 
 
 To a reporter who accompanied him he turned suddenly in
 
 ADDITIONAL ACCOUNT OF THE ASSASSINATION 1 . 219 
 
 the car and exclaimed : " What is this great country coming 
 to when such men as Lincoln, Garfield and McKinley fall by the 
 bullet of assassins ? Oh, it is fearful, dreadful, horrible ! I shall 
 hurry to the bedside of the President as rapidly as the train will 
 take me. I only hope that he is not seriously injured, but I am 
 afraid that my hopes will be in vain. I do want to reach the President 
 before he dies, if he is going to die. Nobody can be safe from 
 the work of an insane man, it seems. It is terrible." As the 
 Senator boarded a car tears were streaming down his face. 
 
 United States Senator Cullom, who was in Chicago on the 
 day of the shooting, was greatly affected when he heard the news. 
 
 DENOUNCED BY THE ILLINOIS SENATOR. 
 
 " I can hardly believe the announcement," he said, after a 
 time. " That was a dastardly attack, and the man who committed 
 the act should have been punished right there. It is the most 
 horrible crime imaginable. The nation could hardly afford to 
 lose President McKinley, and it would be awful to see a man of 
 so many admirable qualities cut down thus at the height of his 
 career. He is a great man and a great President. He is nearer 
 the hearts of the great body of the people than any other ruler 
 since Lincoln. 
 
 " Abraham Lincoln, James A. Garfield and William McKinley 
 were the three Presidents most thoroughly in sympathy, appar- 
 ently, with the great body of the common people of the country, 
 that we have had since the beginning of our Constitutional Gov- 
 ernment. Mr. Lincoln was assassinated in the early part of his 
 second term ; Mr. Garfield during the first few months of his first 
 term, and an attempt has been made to assassinate President 
 McKinley in the early part of his second term. It seems strange 
 to my mind that such a fate should befall such men men who 
 were all generous to a fault, and who were faithfully performing 
 the great duties of their high office. 
 
 " No man was of a more kindly nature than President 
 McKinley. His heart beat in unison with the great body of the 
 people of the country, and of the world. His sole purpose was
 
 220 ADDITIONAL ACCOUNT OF THE ASSASSINATION. 
 
 to do his duty, to take care that the laws should be faithfully 
 executed, and that the country should go on in its career of 
 growth and prosperity, and yet he seems to have shared the fate 
 of those great men who have gone before him. 
 
 "I sincerely hope he may recover to carry out his purpose 
 in the interest of the United States Government, and of the 
 people, to the end of his official term, and be allowed to retire, as 
 he has unqualifiedly expressed his purpose to do, when his term 
 shall expire. There can be no question that he has made one of 
 the greatest Presidents of the United States. His name will be 
 linked closely with that of Washington and Lincoln, and deserv- 
 edly so. Even on yesterday he delivered an address to the people 
 at the Exposition which is full of wisdom, and showed that his 
 whole heart and life were absorbed by a desire to do what was 
 best for his own country, not forgetting the other nations of the 
 world. It will be a great thing for the United States, and for the 
 world, if he shall be spared. If he shall be taken away, it is my 
 sincere hope and prayer that the policies of President McKinley 
 during his term shall be continued.'*
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 Mrs. McKinley Hears the Appalling News The Nation 
 Bowed with Grief Europe Aghast at the Diabolical 
 Crime. 
 
 JWl RS. McKINLHY received the news of the assassination with 
 4.*' * the utmost courage. Because of the fear that the an- 
 nouncement might injuriously affect her health, it was deemed 
 desirable to postpone as long as possible the breaking of the sad 
 news. When informed, however, of the attacks on her husband, 
 she exhibited remarkable fortitude. 
 
 After the President was cared for at the Exposition grounds, 
 Director General W. I. Buchanan started for the Milburn home 
 to forestall any information that might reach there by telephone 
 or otherwise. Luckily, he was first to arrive with the infor- 
 mation. The Niagara Falls trip had tired Mrs. McKinley, and 
 on returning to the Milburn home she took leave of her nieces, 
 the Misses Barber and Miss Duncan, as well as their hostess, 
 Mrs. Milburn, and went to her room to rest. 
 
 Mr. Buchanan broke the news as gently as possible to the 
 nieces, and consulted with them and Mrs. Milburn as to the best 
 course to pursue in informing Mrs. McKinley. It was finally 
 decided that on awakening, or shortly thereafter, Mr. Buchanan 
 should tell her, if in the meantime her physician, Dr. Rixey, 
 had not arrived. Mrs. McKinley awoke from her sleep at about 
 5.30 o'clock. She was feeling splendidly, she said, and at once 
 took up her crocheting, which is one of her favorite diversions. 
 
 Immediately on Mr. Buchanan's arrival at the Milburn home 
 he had telephonic communication therewith cut off, for already 
 there had been several calls, and he decided on this as the wisest 
 course to pursue, lest Mrs. McKinley, hearing the continued 
 ringing of the 'phone bell might inquire what it meant. While 
 
 the light of day remained, Mrs. McKinley continued with her 
 
 221
 
 222 MRS. McKINLEY HEARS THE APPALLING NEWS. 
 
 crocheting, keeping to her room. When it became dusk, and the 
 President had not arrived, she began to feel anxious concerning 
 him. 
 
 "I wonder why he does not come," she asked one of her 
 nieces. 
 
 There was no clock in Mrs. McKinley's room, and when it 
 was 7 o'clock she had no idea it was so late, and this is when she 
 began to feel anxious concerning her husband, for he was due to 
 return to Mr. Milburn's house at 6 o'clock. At 7 o'clock, Dr. 
 Rixey arrived at the Milburn home. He had been driven hur- 
 riedly down Delaware avenue in an open carriage. As he came 
 up, Mr. Buchanan was out on the lawn. 
 
 " Do you know," said Mr. Buchanan, "I had a sort of premo- 
 nition of this ? Since early morning I had been extremely nervous 
 and feared that something might go wrong. Our trip to the Falls 
 was uneventful, but what an awful sad ending to our day." 
 
 NEWS BROKEN TO HER GENTLY. 
 
 At 7.20 o'clock Dr. Rixey came out of the house accompanied 
 by Colonel Webb Hayes, a son of ex-President Hayes, who was a 
 friend of Mr. McKinley. They entered a carriage and returned to 
 the Exposition Hospital. After Dr. Rixey had gone, Director 
 General Buchanan said that the doctor had broken the news in a 
 most gentle manner to Mrs. McKinley. He said she stood it 
 bravely, though considerably affected. 
 
 If it was possible to bring him to her she wanted it done. 
 Dr. Rixey assured her that the President could be brought with 
 safety from the Exposition grounds, and when he left Mr. Mil- 
 burn's it was to complete all arrangements for the removal of the 
 President. A big force of regular patrolmen were assigned to 
 the Milburn home. 
 
 Canton, the President's home, was bowed down with grief. 
 The news of the attempt j upon the life of President McKinley 
 and the fact that his life still hung in the balance carried sorrow 
 into every house in the city. After the first bulletin announcing 
 the firing of the shot everything else was abandoned in efforts to
 
 MRS. McKINLEY HEARS THE APPALLING NEWS. 223 
 
 get additional particulars and in watching the bulletin board and 
 the extra editions of the newspapers for information on the con- 
 dition of the distinguished Cantonian. Groups of men standing 
 on the street, the tears streaming down their cheeks as they dis- 
 cussed the awful tragedy, were a common sight about the business 
 section of the city. 
 
 At first the news was not believed. But the confirmation 
 came all too soon. The Stark County fair, which the President 
 attended Tuesday, was just closing when the first news came. 
 The race track, the side shows and the various exhibits were 
 deserted in one grand rush for the car line to reach the city, 
 where the news might be received more fully and more 
 
 promptly. 
 
 THEY HURRIED TO THE HOUSE. 
 
 Then with the hope of receiving earlier and more direct news 
 many people hurried to the McKinley house, which was in the 
 charge of eight servants and attaches, who were there during the 
 summer vacation. No information was received at the house 
 until late in the evening. Dr. T. H. Phillips, who is regarded as 
 the President's physician, although lie had little use for the 
 services of a physician, regarded the President as a man of most 
 remarkable constitution and able to resist what would prove fatal 
 to one of the average strength. If prime condition of health and 
 a naturally strong constitution could overcome the assaults of the 
 assassin, the Canton friends of the President felt that he would 
 yet be spared. 
 
 Mrs. M. C. Barber, the sister of Mrs. McKinley, was the only 
 near relative of the family in the city. She bore up heroically 
 under the terrible news, but was well nigh prostrated, aside from 
 the condition of the President ; she suffered from a realization of 
 what the affair must mean to her sister. 
 
 Every time President McKinley was at Canton since his first 
 inauguration he was accompanied by George Foster, formerly of 
 Upper Sandusky, of the Secret Service, who guarded him as closely 
 as the President would allow. This did not amount to shadowing 
 ail of his movements, because this was distasteful to the Presi-
 
 224 MRS. McKINLEY HEARS THE APPALLING NEWS. 
 
 dent. He also watched the McKinley premises more or less 
 closely, especially at night, and occasionally had the local police 
 keep a little closer to the house than their regular beats provided. 
 He also kept in close touch with the Secret Service headquarters 
 and investigated every rumor reported to him of which there were 
 many. 
 
 The only semblance of a scare that occurred during the two 
 months' sojourn of the President to Canton was about three weeks 
 before. Foster, during his usual rounds, saw a man passing the 
 McKinley home two or three times in a manner that indicated 
 more than idle curiosity. He watched the man's movements and 
 saw him pass through a private driveway between the McKinley 
 home and the Bockius residence adi oining. His hat was drawn 
 over his face and there were other suspicious actions. 
 
 THE STRANGER SHADOWED. 
 
 Foster shadowed the stranger and he quickened his pace 
 toward the center of town. Two blocks below the McKinley 
 home the stranger boarded a trolley car. Foster got on the same 
 car. They both went through the public square and were trans- 
 ferred east. Four blocks further the line turns at right angles. 
 The stranger jumped off the car at this point and Foster got off 
 as the corner was rounded. The secret service man went through 
 the corridor of the Barnett House to the street on which the 
 stranger had left the ca:: but foun:) n^ mrther trace of him. 
 
 All the saloons IT the vicinity were visited without results, 
 as were also the railwa^ stations and yards half a block away. 
 The supposition then was tha* ^h.e fellow was either irresponsible 
 or a possible burglar at one or ttc other of the two houses. The 
 Bockius home belongs to a wealthy family and in the past has 
 been visited by burglars, who were well rewarded. Joseph Saxton, 
 Mrs. McKinley' s uncle, on receiving the news, said : "I was 
 terribly shocked to hear the news. I am in hopes that he will 
 recover, and I trust in God and believe He will take care of him." 
 
 Rev. Dr. C. E. Manchester, pastor of the President's church, 
 said : "I have strong hopes of the President's recovery, as he is
 
 MRS. McKINLEY HEARS THE APPALLING NEWS. 225 
 
 a man of such clean life and good habits. He never intimated to 
 me that he had any fear of snch a thing, and I don't believe that 
 he knew what personal fear was. He is a Christian in the true 
 sense of the word and is a man who has strong faith in an over- 
 ruling Providence." 
 
 The news of the assassination of the President did not reach 
 Cardinal Gibbons until nearly 7 o'clock in the evening, his Emi- 
 nence having been out driving. Soon after he heard it a reporter 
 called upon him in his study. His Eminence, as the visitor 
 entered, raised his -hands in mute appeal, and in a voice which 
 shook with emotion exclaimed : "I hope from the bottom of my 
 heart, sir, that you bring me some better news than that which I 
 have heard." 
 
 TRIBUTE FROM CARDINAL GIBBONS. 
 
 Upon being informed that the condition of the President was 
 still very grave, the Cardinal sank into a chair and said : 
 
 " It is sad, indeed, that an insane fanatic can have it in his 
 power to endanger the life of the head of a great nation like this, 
 and a man possessing the many virtues of President McKinley. 
 The man who did it must be a mad man. The President has no 
 personal enemies and no one but a madman would have committed 
 such a deed. If, however, he has a spark of reason left, and it 
 can be shown that he is responsible, no punishment would be too 
 great for him." 
 
 After a moment's hesitation the Cardinal resumed : " I am 
 filled with sadness beyond expression at receiving this news. I 
 not only honor President McKinley as the head of a great nation, 
 but I have the privilege of regarding him as a friend and am 
 obligated to him for many favors. I repeat that this awful 
 calamity must have been the work of an insane man, for, while 
 the President had hosts of political opponents, it seems incredible 
 that he could have a personal enemy. 
 
 " But few Presidents who have occupied the chair have been 
 better equipped for the Presidency than he. He was trained for 
 the place by having served his country in minor capacities, as 
 
 15
 
 226 MRS - McKINLEY HEARS THE APPALLING NEWS. 
 
 Congressman, Governor, and the effect of this training has been 
 repeatedly shown during his Presidential career. 
 
 " His characteristic virtues are patience and forbearance. He 
 is always ready to receive any one and to give careful attention 
 to any demand upon him, whatever might be their character. 
 The wound which has been inflicted upon him is not only a 
 national calamity but comes as a personal affliction to every house 
 in the land. Every son and every daughter in the United States 
 should feel it as they would feel a blow struck at the head of his 
 or her family. 
 
 " I have always heard him most admired for his domestic 
 virtues and for his tender affection and solicitude for his wife. No 
 more beautiful example of domestic virtue and felicity has prob- 
 ably ever been seen in this or any other country than that of 
 President and Mrs. McKinley. 
 
 UNSHAKEN ON FIRM FOUNDATION. 
 
 " It is my earnest prayer that the Lord may spare him to fill 
 out the term he has begun so well. But whatever be the outcome 
 of this awful crime, of course the nation will remain unshaken 
 upon the firm foundation our forefathers builded for it. 
 
 " Perhaps the best tribute to the stability of our institutions 
 is the fact that, whilst the blow at the President arouses universal 
 sorrow and indignation, it does not in the least shake our faith 
 in the correctness of the principles of our government, and will 
 not retard for an instant its machinery or create more than a 
 passing ripple upon the waters over which is gliding our noble 
 Ship of State. 
 
 'You may announce, if you want," said his Eminence, in 
 conclusion, "that I will order immediately that prayers shall be 
 held in every church in my diocese on Sunday next. If the 
 President still lives, and God grant that he may, they will be for 
 his recovery." 
 
 The news of the assassination of President McKinley was 
 received in London shortly before 10 o'clock at night, and quickly 
 spread through the clubs and hotels of the West End. Details
 
 AIRS. McKINLEY HEARS THE APPALLING NEWS. 227 
 
 were meager, but it was understood that the wounds were serious 
 and that the President's life was in danger. All who heard the 
 sad intelligence were outspoken in their expressions of horror at 
 the occurrence and sympathy with Mrs. McKinley. 
 
 Everybody hoped that the President would recover sufficiently 
 again to direct the affairs of state. Only a short time before the 
 English people were sympathizing with President McKinley 
 because of his wife's serious illness, and now they tendered con- 
 dolence to her because of the terrible deed at Buffalo. 
 
 The first reports were discredited ; then, with the confirma- 
 tion and general dissemination of the news, arose a far-reaching 
 feeling of sorrow and indignation, which, wherever Americans 
 were gathered, almost gained the proportions of a panic, accom- 
 panied by feverish anxiety for further details. The thousands of 
 Americans in London were mostly at the theatres when the news 
 arrived, and returning to their hotels found anxious groups of 
 Englishmen and Americans discussing, what, without distinction 
 of race, was regarded as a national calamity. 
 
 ANXIOUS INQUIRIES. 
 
 London's telephones, usually silent at night, tingled with 
 impatient inquiries addressed to newspapers and American cor- 
 respondents in the hope of securing a denial of the report. The 
 announcement of the assassination was received too late for extra 
 editions of the papers to announce the news to the mass of the 
 English people. A correspondent conveyed the intelligence to 
 Mr. J. W. Mackay, Colonel Ochiltree, Messrs. C. L. Pullman and 
 J. W. Gates and many others, all of whom desired to express 
 their unspeakable indignation at the cowardly act, and deepest 
 sympathy with President McKinley. 
 
 In no part of the country was the death of President 
 McKinley more sincerely mourned than in our Southern States. 
 In a letter to the "Manufacturer's Record," of Baltimore, United 
 States Senator J. D. McLaurin, of South Carolina, told of an 
 interview which he had with President McKinley, one day during 
 the early days of the Spanish War.
 
 228 MRS. McKINLEY HEARS THE APPALLING NEWS. 
 
 " The President," says Senator McLaurin, "spoke beauti- 
 fully and tender!}/ of the Southern people, and of how he 
 intended to use the power and influence of his great office to 
 reunite our country. I can recall the words, but who can paint 
 the earnestness and eloquence as, raising one hand on high, he 
 said : ' Senator, by the help of God I propose to be the President 
 of the whole country, the South as much as the North, and before 
 the end of my term the South will understand this.' 
 
 " No wonder, as a true Southern man, I loved aud trusted 
 President McKinley. I stood by him in the Senate and else- 
 where, and I thank God that I did. Patriotic in purpose and pure 
 in heart, his noble soul is now with Him whom the hate of man 
 nailed to the cross. Like Lincoln, who saved the country, 
 McKinley, who reunited it, lies a martyr to envy and hate." 
 
 HISTORY'S ROLL OF ASSASSINATIONS. 
 
 Two Presidents of the United States and many rulers of 
 other nations were assassinated during the nineteenth century. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln was the first President of the United States 
 to meet death at the hands of an assassin. As every schoolboy 
 knows, he was shot by the insane actor, Wilkes Booth, in Ford's 
 Theatre, Washington, on the evening of April 14, 1865. The 
 President died the next day, and Booth, though he escaped at the 
 time, was shot in a barn a few days later, and his body was buried 
 at sea by attaches of the Secret Service. 
 
 James A. Garfield, the second martyr President, received his 
 fatal wound July 2, 1881. His assassin was Charles Guiteau, 
 who came upon his victim as he was standing in the Baltimore 
 and Potomac railway station in the National Capital. The Presi- 
 dent was on his way at the time to attend the commencement 
 exercises of Williams College, and accompanying him was his 
 Secretary of State, James G. Blaine. As the President was walking 
 through the station, arm in arm with his secretary, Guiteau, draw- 
 ing a heavy revolver from his pocket, fired at the President. 
 Once more Guiteau fired, and the President dropped to the
 
 HISTORY'S ROLL OF ASSASSINATIONS. 220 
 
 floor, covered with blood. Guiteau fled, but was caught before 
 he left the station. Meanwhile the President neither moved 
 nor spoke. 
 
 An ambulance took him to the White House, where the best 
 surgeons of Washington were hastily summoned. Contrary to 
 the expectations of the surgeons, the President rallied from his 
 torpor, and, after several days, it was determined to remove him 
 to the seashore. He was taken to Elberon, N. J., where, for a 
 time, the sea breezes seemed to assist nature in restoring his 
 health. For eighty days he lingered, and then, on Monday, Sep- 
 tember 10, 1881, death relieved him of his sufferings. 
 
 ATTEMPT ON LIFE OF PRESIDENT JACKSON. 
 
 Few persons remember the attempt of Richard Lawrence to 
 shoot President Jackson. 
 
 It occurred on January 30, 1835. On that day the two 
 Houses of Congress convened for the obsequies of W. R. Davis, a 
 Representative from South Carolina, then recently deceased. 
 President Jackson and the heads of departments were in attend- 
 ance. After a discourse by the Chaplain of the House, a funeral 
 procession was formed, in which the President walked arm in arm 
 with the Secretary of the Treasury, Levi Woodbury. 
 
 The procession left the hall of the House of Representatives 
 and was passing through the rotunda, on the way to the eastern 
 portico, when Lawrence, as he perceived the President approach, 
 stepped forward from the crowd, advanced to within a few feet of 
 him, drew a pistol, aimed it at the President, and pulled the 
 trigger. The cap missed fire. Secretary Woodbury and others 
 sprang to arrest him ; he, however, had time to draw another 
 pistol, but this second attempt to shoot was equally unsuccessful. 
 He was thrown down, disarmed and secured. 
 
 In taking aim he stood so near the President that the latter 
 instinctively started forward to strike the pistol aside with his 
 cane ; so that, had not the caps failed, there is every probability 
 that a dangerous, probably a fatal wound would have been given. 
 
 The trial of Lawrence was postponed until April, apparently
 
 230 
 
 HISTORY'S ROLL OF ASSASSINATIONS. 
 
 to allow time for searching his antecedents and investigating his 
 mental condition. Both the evidence and Lawrence's demeanor 
 in the court room satisfied the public at the time that the shoot- 
 ing was the act of a lunatic. He had for some time believed 
 himself to be King of the United States and Jackson to be an 
 intruder and usurper. In the court room his behavior was so 
 wild and disorderly that his counsel begged that he might be 
 removed and the trial proceeded without him. 
 
 When the District Attorney commenced speaking, Lawrence 
 started up, wildly exclaiming : " What means this personal 
 indignity ? Is it decreed that I am to be brought here ? And for 
 what ? I desire to know if I, who claim the crown of the United 
 States, likewise the crown of Great Britain, and who am superior 
 to this court, am to be treated thus ? " And the proceedings 
 were frequently broken by like interruptions. As the jury agreed 
 with the medical men that he was an irresponsible monomanic, 
 he was committed to an asylum. 
 
 KING HUMBERT OF ITALY. 
 
 The last ruler to be assassinated in the nineteenth century 
 was King Humbert of Italy. Bresci, an anarchist from Paterson, 
 N. J., chosen expressly for the purpose, shot the King at Monza, 
 a small town near Milan, on July 29, 1900. Death came almost 
 instantly. Bresci was imprisoned in an underground cell, whose 
 width compelled him to stand continually day and night. Only a 
 few weeks ago the newspapers recorded the fact that the assassin, 
 worn out by the harsh treatment accorded him by his keepers, 
 had committed suicide. 
 
 Elizabeth, Empress of Austro-Hungary, was stabbed to death 
 by Lucheni, an anarchist, September 10, 1898, while she was re- 
 cuperating in the Swiss city of Geneva. At the time of the stab- 
 bing the Empress was out walking. She had taken no precaution 
 against violence. She was removed to her hotel, where she died 
 two hours later. 
 
 It was on June 24, 1894, that President Carnot, of France, 
 was stabbed by an Italian anarchist named Santo, who managed
 
 HISTORY'S ROLL OF ASSASSINATIONS. 231 
 
 to get close to him, on the pretext of presenting a petition, while 
 he was driving through the streets of Lyons. Santo had drawn 
 lots at a meeting of anarchists to kill Carnot. Following Carnot's 
 death anti-Italian riots ensued throughout the length and breadth 
 of France. 
 
 Alexander II of Russia, the liberator of the serfs, was killed 
 by an explosion of a bomb thrown by a man who himself was 
 killed by the same explosive. The assassination took place at 
 St. Petersburg, March 13, 1881, as the Czar was returning from a 
 review of his favorite regiment. Only a few hours before he had 
 been warned that the Nihilists were awaiting their opportunity to 
 
 take his life. 
 
 DEATH OF AN INSANE CZAR. 
 
 The insane Paul I, of Russia, was killed by Count Pablen, 
 on March 24, 1801. Paul's own son, Alexander I, who was near, 
 was fully cleared from complicity in the assassination. 
 
 Michael IV, of Servia, was assassinated June 20, 1868. 
 
 Nasr-Ed-Din, Shah of Persia, was assassinated May i, 1896, 
 as he was entering the shrine near his palace. The man who 
 shot him was disguised as a woman, and is believed to have been 
 a tool of a band of conspirators. He was caught and suffered the 
 most horrible death th^t Oriental ingenuity could devise. 
 
 Juan Idiarte Borda, President of Uruguay, was killed August 
 27, 1897, at Montevideo by Avelino Arredondo, an officer in the 
 Uruguyan army. 
 
 Sultan Abdul Aziz, of Turkey, was killed mysteriously June 
 4, 1876. It was suspected that members of the royal family had 
 a hand in his assassination. 
 
 Sultan Selini, of Turkey, was stabbed in 1808. President 
 D'Istria, of Greece, died from a saber wound in 1831 ; Duke of 
 Parma, Italy, was killed in 1854. The President of Hayti was 
 stabbed in 1859. President Baita, of Peru, was shot in 1872. 
 President Moreno, of Ecuador, was shot in 1872, and his successor, 
 President Guthrie, suffered the same fate in 1873. President 
 Barrios, Guatemala, was shot in 1885. The Queen of Greece was 
 poisoned.
 
 232 
 
 HISTORY'S ROLL OF ASSASSINATIONS. 
 
 Among other famous assassinations was that of Gustavus 
 III, of Sweden. He was shot at a masquerade ball by Count 
 Aukerstiono, March 16, 1792. 
 
 Balthazar Geraid was the assassin of William the Silent, of 
 Orange, at Delft, July 10, 1584. 
 
 Henry IV, of France was killed by Ravaillar, May 14, 1610. 
 The murderer was burned, tern by not pincers, hot lead was 
 poured into his wounds and finally he was pulled asunder by 
 horses. 
 
 A monk, Jacques Clement, was the assassin of Henry III, of 
 France. The date was July 31, 1589. 
 
 While escaping from the battlefield of Sanchielburn 
 James III, of Scotland, was killed by the rebel Borthwick, June 
 
 ii, 1488. 
 
 MURDER IN SCOTLAND. 
 
 James I, of Scotland, was murdered at Perth by conspirators, 
 headed by Sir Robert Graham and Earl Athol, February 21, 1437. 
 The assassins wer^ nai^sd 
 
 John the Pea.** ss, 01 Burgundy, while conferring with the 
 French Dauphin on thu bridge of Montereau, was assassinated by 
 Orleanists, the Daupnin s attendants, September 10, 1419. 
 
 Darius III, of Persia, was killed 330 B. C. by Bessus, who 
 was torn to pieces. 
 
 Philip II, of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great, was 
 assassinated by Pausanias at Aegae during the celebration of 
 games at his daughter's wedding, 336 B. C. 
 
 Julius Caesar was assassinated 44 B. C. by Brutus at the foot 
 of the statute of Pornpey, the base of which was bathed in Caesar's 
 blood. 
 
 Attempts at assassination of rulers have been legion. Some 
 of those from the time of George III down follow : 
 
 George III of England, mad attempt by Margaret Nicholson, 
 August 2, 1786, again, by James Hatfield, May 15, 1800. 
 
 Napoleon I, attempt by an infernal machine, December 24, 
 1800. 
 
 George IV. (when regent), attempt, January 26, 1817.
 
 233 
 
 Louis Philippe of France, many attempts, by Fieschi, July 
 28, 1835 ; by Allbaud, June 25, 1836 ; by Meimier, December 27, 
 1836; by Darinos, October 15, 1840 ; by Lecomte, April 14, 1846 ; 
 by Henry, July, 29, 1846. 
 
 Frederick William IV of Prussia, attempt, by Sofelage, May 
 22, 1850. 
 
 Francis Joseph of Austria, attempt, by Libenyi, February 
 
 18, 1853- 
 
 Isabella II of Spain, attempts by La Riva, May 4, 1847 > by 
 Merino, February 2, 1852 ; by Raymond Fuentes, May 28, 1856. 
 
 Napoleon III, attempts by Pianori, April 28, 1855 ; by 
 Bellernarre, September 8, 1855 ; by Orisini and others (France), 
 January 14, 1858. 
 
 Amedeus, Duke of Aosta, when King of Spain, attempt, July 
 
 19, 1872. 
 
 Prince Bismarck, attempt, by Blind, May 7, 1866 ; by Kull- 
 man, July 13, 1874. 
 
 Abdul Aziz, Sultan of Turkey, June 4, 1876. 
 
 William I of Prussia and Germany, attempts, by Oscar 
 Becker, July 14, 1861 ; by Hodel, May n, 1878 ; by Dr. Nobel- 
 ing, June 2, 1878. 
 
 Humbert I, King of Italy, attempt, by John Passaranti, 
 March 17, 1888. 
 
 Lord Lytton, Viceroy of India, attempt, by Busa, December 
 12, 1878. 
 
 Alfonso XII of Spain, attempts, by J. O. Moncast, October 
 25, 1878 ; by Francisco Otero Gonzales, December 30, 1879. 
 
 Loris Melikoff, Russian general, attempt, March 4, 1880. 
 
 September 6, 1901. The assassination that shocked the 
 world more than any other crime, was that of President McKin- 
 ley, at the Pan-American Exposition, Buffalo. He died on Sep- 
 tember 14. The assassin was convicted of murder on Septem- 
 ber 24, and sentenced on the 26th to be electrocuted at Auburn 
 Penitentiary during the week beginning October 28.
 
 CHAPTER XIL 
 
 Strong Hopes at First of the President's Recovery Days of 
 Anxious Suspense Some Account of the Assassin Ar- 
 rest of Notorious Anarchists. 
 
 FOR six days after the President was shot the bulletins an- 
 nounced that his condition was favorable and there was a 
 prospect of his recovery. This intelligence was everywhere 
 received with great rejoicing, and relieved the agony of suspense. 
 On September 8th the following statement was made by a promi- 
 nent surgeon, who was among those in attendance upon the 
 President : 
 
 " In regard to the present condition of President McKinley, 
 I would call your attention to the fact that it is but little over 
 forty-eight hours since the shot was fired. It is as yet too soon 
 to speak confidently of the outcome. At the present hour, how- 
 ever, and giving due consideration to the severity of the injury 
 and the importance and extent of the operation required, the 
 patient's condition is entirely satisfactory. 
 
 " It is gratifying to find that up to the present time none of 
 the numerous signs of inflammation or septic conditions have 
 appeared. The temperature is not too high. It is lower to-night 
 than it was this morning. The pulse is better ; the facial expres- 
 sion is entirely satisfactory ; the mind is clear ; there is no pain 
 or tenderness, no nausea, and no distension of the abdomen. At 
 this stage I consider that this is a satisfactory condition, and yet 
 it is much too soon to feel real confidence that unfavorable condi- 
 tions have been entirely escaped entirely too soon to make any 
 such statements. For the present we are entirely satisfied, and if 
 these conditions continue for the next two days we shall feel 
 further confidence. 
 
 " I may add to that this truthful tribute: If the President 
 234
 
 HOPES OF THE PRESIDENT'S RECOVERY. 
 
 23* 
 
 lives, he will owe his life to the promptness and surgical skill 
 which his professional attendants showed." 
 
 A correspondent who learned all the particulars of the Presi- 
 dent's condition made the following comments : 
 
 " President McKinley maintains a good measure of his strength, 
 and those who watch at his bedside hold higher hope for his ulti- 
 mate recovery. The shock from the wounds inflicted upon him 
 by Leon Czolgosz seems to have been less than was anticipated, 
 and that is regarded as highly favorable to him. It is admitted 
 that the crisis in his condition has not yet come, and that there is 
 the gravest danger until it has been safely passed. All the bulletins 
 sent from the chamber of the wounded President indicated a spirit 
 of hopefulness. 
 
 FEAR OF BLOOD POISONING. 
 
 "The greatest fear of the President's physicians is that 
 septic poisoning will set in, and it is for the first symptoms of 
 this that they are now watching. One bullet lodged in the mus- 
 cles of the back, and the physicians have decided that, for the 
 present, it is of secondary importance, The bullet took a hori- 
 zontal course, but neither the intestines nor the kidneys were 
 injured. Of this the physicians are confident. If inflammation 
 should appear in the neighborhood of the place where the bullet 
 is believed to have lodged, the Roentgen ray will be used to 
 locate the bullet, and the doctors do not think there will be difficulty 
 in extracting it. 
 
 " Two physicians and two trained nurses are with the Presi- 
 dent constantly. All others were excluded from the sick chamber 
 this morning, as it was found tha' th^ distinguished patient could 
 not be restrained from spe?jdng to those who entered the room. 
 Quiet and absolute ireedom from the least excitement are con- 
 sidered extreme 1 y essential. 
 
 " Mrs. McKinley bears up bravely in her sorrow and the 
 physicians in attendance feel but little concern on her account. 
 At the request of the President, whose first thoughts were of her, 
 she was told that he was not seriously wounded, and when she
 
 23G HOPES OF THE PRESIDENT'S RECOVERY. 
 
 first saw him lie had rallied from the operation, and was suffering" 
 little pain. She was content to leave his side during the night 
 and rest herself. 
 
 " With common impulse to spare the sufferer the annoyance 
 that noise would inflict, the public keeps off the street in the 
 neighborhood of the Milburn residence. The police have no 
 trouble to keep the people at proper distance. A detachment of 
 the Fourteenth United States Infantry was ordered to the house 
 irom Fort Porter. A picket line was established in front of the 
 house but the sentries found no work to do. Ropes were stretched 
 across Delaware Avenue in order to keep teams off that thor- 
 oughfare. 
 
 THE MILBURN RESIDENCE. 
 
 " The Milburn residence is a large two and a half story brick 
 building. Graceful ivy climbs over the front of it, and on the 
 large lawn which surrounds it are a number of pretty shade trees. 
 The President lies in the rear room on the second floor. The 
 room was chosen because it insured the most complete quiet. 
 Telegraph wires have been led to the stable in the rear of the 
 Milburn residence and offices opened there. The bulletins telling 
 of the condition of the President are sent there by Dr. Rixey and 
 at once transmitted to the world. 
 
 " Czolgosz insists that he alone planned the crime which may 
 rob the United States of its Chief Executive, but that statement 
 is not accepted as true. There is a belief tnac he was fided by 
 others in a deliberate plot, and that confederates accompanied him 
 to Buffalo and assisted in its execution." 
 
 This buoyant iiope that the President's ife would be spared 
 was encouraged from day to day The Governess of some of the 
 States appointed a day of thanksgiving and rejoicing and a hope- 
 ful feeling pervaded "-he entire country. 
 
 "We trust in God, and believe Mr. McKinley is going to 
 recover speedily. I know that he has the best medical attendance 
 that can he obtained, and I am perfectly satisfied that these 
 doctors are handling the case splendidly. It is a great pleasure 
 to know the deep interest and sympathy felt by the American.
 
 HOPES OF THE PRESIDENTS RECOVERY. 237 
 
 people. The case is progressing so favorably that we are very 
 happy." 
 
 Mrs. McKinley, the wife of the President, said this at the 
 Milburn house, just after the three o'clock bulletin of the physi- 
 cians was issued. This bulletin was the strongest and most 
 favorable that had been put forward by the physicians since the 
 President was shot. The seventy-two hours, which was the limit 
 they had fixed for the development of peritonitis, had almost ex- 
 pired, and their confidence had wonderfully encouraged the wife 
 of the President. 
 
 Mrs. McKinley was bearing up wonderfully under the ordeal. 
 Stories were published that it had been deemed unwise to inform 
 her of the shooting of her husband ; that she did not know that 
 an attempt had been made on his life, and that she had been told 
 he had been injured by a fall. This preposterous fiction, carry- 
 ing with it the inference that it was not safe to acquaint Mrs. 
 McKinley with the real danger that had menaced her husband, 
 aroused intense indignation, and was demolished by the most 
 sweeping denials. 
 
 BORE UP WITH GREAT COMPOSURE. 
 
 As a matter of fact, Mrs. McKinley was informed of the at- 
 tempt on her husband's life by Czolgosz within a few hours of 
 the firing of the shots. She received the news with calmness, 
 and bore up with heroic composure, being much with her hus- 
 band and having the utmost faith in his recuperative powers. 
 These reports were regarded in Buffalo, not only by the members 
 of the Cabinet, but by the public generally, as heartless and mis- 
 chievous inventions. 
 
 President McKinley improved so rapidly that on Monday, 
 September 9th, it was confidently believed that the danger line 
 had been passed. The President asked for the daily papers and 
 for food, which were, of course, denied him. He jokingly re- 
 marked that it was hard enough to be shot, without being starved 
 to death. For the first time since the shooting he spoke of his 
 assailant, and said; "He must have been crazy." When told
 
 238 
 
 HOPES OF THE PRESIDENTS RECOVERY. 
 
 that the man was an Anarchist, he said that he hoped he would 
 get fair treatment. 
 
 On the same day, Senator M. A. Hanna wore a look of 
 supreme contentment when he left the house where the President 
 was lying, bravely battling with death. He felt absolutely 
 certain that the President's recovery was only a matter of a few 
 weeks, and he dictated this statement to a correspondent : 
 
 " You may say, for the information of the American people, 
 that all the news we have is good news. We know that the 
 greatest danger is already past. We hope that in a few hours 
 the President's physicians will announce that his case is beyond 
 the possibility of a relapse. 
 
 "Just say that for me, and I think it will give more satisfac- 
 tion than if I talked a column." 
 
 " You have no fears that there may be. a change for the 
 worse? " I asked. 
 
 SENATOR HANNA'S DREAM. 
 
 "That reminds me of a dream I had last night. You know 
 dreams go by contraries. Well, sir, in this dream I was up at the 
 Milburn house waiting to hear how the President was getting 
 along, and everybody was feeling very good. We thought the 
 danger was all past. I was sitting there talking with General 
 Brooke and Mr. Cortelyou, and we were felicitating ourselves on 
 how well the physicians had been carrying the case. 
 
 u Suddenly, in my dream, Dr. McBurney entered the room 
 through the door leading from the sick room with a look of the 
 utmost horror and distress on his face. I rushed up to him, and, 
 putting a hand on either shoulder, said : ' What is it, doctor ? 
 What is it ? Let us know the worst.' ' 
 
 " Dr. McBurney replied : * My dear Senator, it is absolutely 
 the worst that could happen. The President has had a tremen- 
 dous change for the worse. His temperature is now 440 degrees. 5 
 I fell back in my chair in utter collapse, and then I awoke. But, 
 do you know, I couldn't rest easy until I saw the early bulletins 
 this monr'-ig."
 
 HOPES OF THE PRESIDENT'S RECOVERY. 239 
 
 " I am overjoyed to know that everything is going all right." 
 In these words, Vice-President Roosevelt signified his pleas- 
 ure at the encouraging reports from the sick chamber of President 
 McKinley. His manner indicated that they were heartfelt. We 
 know now that everything was not " going right," and the confi- 
 dence of Mr. Roosevelt was ill founded. 
 
 The Vice-President occupied a position of extreme delicacy 
 after the President was shot and uncertainty remained as to the 
 result of his wounds. He felt the blow so keenly, however, that 
 no room, was left in his mind for the thought that his enemie 
 were watching every word and action in the hope of finding some- 
 thing which might be misconstrued to his disadvantage. His 
 first impulse was to come immediately to Buffalo, and he did so 
 without delay. 
 
 MESSAGES OF SYMPATHY. 
 
 A newspaper correspondent furnishes the following : 
 
 "President McKinley was told that from all parts of the 
 world messages of sympathy had arrived. He was also told that 
 the American public had shown great grief over his misfortune, 
 and had demonstrated that he holds a strong grip upon the affec- 
 tions of his fellow countrymen. He was deeply touched, and said 
 that he felt himself to be too highly honored. To Dr. Rixey he 
 said that he hoped to recover to show that he appreciated all that 
 had been done for him. 
 
 " Nothing has caused so deep distress to the friends of Presi- 
 dent McKinley as the publication of the cruel canard that Mrs. 
 McKinley has not yet been informed of the attack made upon 
 her husband. This publication carries with it the impres- 
 sion that the President's wife is in no mental condition to realize 
 what is going on about her, as it has been known that she had 
 seen her husband each day since his injury, and that she has 
 known of the crowds that gather in front of the house eager to 
 learn of his condition. 
 
 "The truth is that Mrs. McKinley was told a few hours after 
 the shooting, and more, she has been kept in no ignorance <?f his
 
 24f HOPES OF THE PRESIDENTS RECOVERY. 
 
 condition since. She is stronger to-day than she has been before 
 in years, and the physicians are all of the opinion that the tragedy 
 has aronsed her from that lethargy which was perhaps the prime 
 cause of her illness. 
 
 u The strangest feature of the progress that has been made 
 toward recovery by President McKinley is that he has at no time 
 shown any symptoms of relapse. After the operation there was 
 no sinking spell which usually results from such a shock, and 
 from the moment that his wounds were dressed his progress has 
 been steady and satisfactory. Bach hour has shown an improve- 
 ment over the previous one. 
 
 " Dr. McBurney said that in all his experience as a physician 
 he has never known another patient who exhibited so great a 
 tendency to respond to medical treatment as does President Mc- 
 Kinley. * It is marvelous,' said he, ' and it is worthy of the study 
 of men who are capable of understanding such matters.' 
 
 HER VISITS QUIETED HIM. 
 
 " Mrs. McKinley was permitted to have more than the hour 
 with her husband. This was granted for the reason that the 
 physicians have found that her visits, if anything, had a bene- 
 ficial effect upon the President. He seems to rest more easily 
 when she is with him than at any other time. She obeys the 
 injunction not to permit her husband to talk, and it seems to 
 give the President confidence in himself to see that his wife is so 
 greatly improved in health. 
 
 " She went to his rooms a little before ten o'clock this morn- 
 ing, and remained there until after eleven. After she left him the 
 President asked how long it would be before he would be per- 
 mitted to partake of food. Dr. Rixey told him that the wounds 
 in his stomach would not heal inside of a week or ten days, and, 
 during that time it would be impossible for him to take any solid 
 substance. This information was far from pleasant, but the 
 President made no complaint. 
 
 ;< There seems to be no abatement in the interest displayed 
 in President McKinley's condition, and there is certainly no
 
 HOPES OF THE PRESIDENTS RECOVERY. 2 41 
 
 abatement in the sympathy of the public. It is a paradoxical 
 condition of affairs that the attempted assassination of President 
 McKinley has drawn to Buffalo more people than have been in 
 the city at any other time since the Pan-American Exposition 
 opened, and yet, the effect has been to cut the attendance to the 
 fair almost fifty per cent. Visitors seem to be here for the 
 purpose of extending sympathy to the President and to learn of 
 his condition. It is the opinion of the management of the Expo- 
 sition that the attendance will mend in a few days. 
 
 <{ At the hour when Buffalonians most generally retire, the 
 announcement was made last night that President McKinley 
 was constantly improving and that his condition was entirely 
 satisfactory. Yet, in spite of all this, the crowds refused to be 
 satisfied, and all night long they lingered in the streets near the 
 Milburn house. They pushed in as close as the guard would 
 permit them, and at the half hour intervals insisted upon sending 
 messengers into the newspaper tent to obtain the latest in- 
 formation. 
 
 THOUSANDS GATHERED OUTSIDE. 
 
 " After each bulletin a few would retire, but others were ready 
 to take their places, and at sunrise this morning more than two 
 thousand persons were within two blocks of the house in which 
 the stricken President lies. It is so cold to-night that this will 
 hardly be repeated. But so persistent are the demands for the 
 latest information that arrangments have been made with the 
 telephone company to give the bulletins to all who may request 
 them. This service is continuous, and four telephone stations 
 have been set apart for the dissemination of news from the 
 Milburn house. 
 
 " Another indication of confidence in the President's recovery 
 was the announcement made by Mr. Buchanan, of the Pan- 
 American Exposition, that there would be another President's 
 day before the exhibition closed. It is proposed to make the 
 occasion a festival of rejoicing over the President's recovery. Mr. 
 Buchanan did not make the announcement until he had received 
 rather positive assurances that the President would recover." 
 
 16
 
 242 HOPES OF THE PRESIDENTS RECOVERY. 
 
 From these statements it will be seen how confident were 
 those nearest the President that he would recover, and his valua- 
 ble life would be spared to his countrymen and the world. Alas, 
 for human hope I 
 
 " I look upon the President's recovery as assured," said 
 Lyman J. Gage, Secretary of the Treasury, at the Buffalo Club, 
 before his departure for Washington. " Dr. McBurney told me 
 to-day that the wounds in the stomach were healing nicely, and 
 that there was no longer any thing to fear from them. 
 
 ** There has not been the slightest symptom of peritonitis, 
 and, in fact, there have been absolutely no bad symptoms in the 
 case. Dr. McBurney told me that one or two things might 
 happen to the bullet, which has not yet been removed. It would 
 either remain lodged in the muscles of the back, or else it had 
 fallen down into some one of the abdominal spaces. In either 
 case, nothing was to be feared from it, unless it should cause 
 inflammation, and in that event it could be located at once and 
 removed without difficulty. 
 
 CRITICAL PERIOD. 
 
 " I asked the doctor how long it would be before inflamma- 
 tion appeared if I should shoot myself in the leg and the bullet 
 should lodge there. He told me that it would appear within 
 thirty-six hours after the operation. In the President's case that 
 period has been passed, and, as no unfavorable symptoms have 
 occurred, I believe that nothing serious is to be feared from the 
 presence of the bullet. It has probably been encysted long ago." 
 
 Secretary Gage said that there were no pending matters of 
 importance at present, the settlement of which would be embar- 
 rassed by the attack upon the President's life. He and Senator 
 Hanna then joked about the monetary affairs of the Government, 
 their tones indicating even more clearly than their assurances 
 that the two men were completely reassured as to the President's 
 condition. 
 
 "I shall go to Washington," said Secretary Gage. "It 
 seems to me that my place is there."
 
 HOPES OF THE PRESIDENT'S RECOVERY. 243 
 
 The deep interest manifested in the President's welfare over- 
 shadowed everything else, even the Exposition and business. 
 Special services were held daily at St. Paul's Church, where noon- 
 day prayers were offered for the President's recovery. When the 
 Right Rev. Bishop Walker began the service on Tuesday the 
 church was well filled with worshipers. 
 
 At ten o'clock Abner McKinley, brother of the President ; 
 William Hawk, of Canton, an intimate of the President's family, 
 and Charles Miller, also of Canton and a cousin of the President, 
 with Colonel W. C. Brown, of New Yerk, came up the avenue in 
 an automobile at lively speed and were promptly admitted. 
 Later, when Abner McKinley emphasized the statement that the 
 President was rapidly improving, the glad tidings went along the 
 line of anxious watchers. 
 
 As Mr. McKinley's brother departed Senator Hanna and 
 other friends arrived, and presently the cottage piazza was full of 
 guests. Messengers were running with joyful briskness, and a 
 score of cameras were leveled at Mr. Hanna, who simply beamed 
 on everybody and even addressed pleasant words to the photo- 
 graphers. 
 
 FAVORABLE NEWS. 
 
 When Senator Hanna left the cottage, half an hour later, his 
 face was in smiles, and he walked arm in arm with a friend down 
 the pavement telling every one that the day for anxiety had 
 passed. Senator Fairbanks and Mr. Dawes, Controller of the 
 Currency, emerged from the cottage ten minutes later, their faces 
 also smiling, and the exclamations "Splendid! Splendid! Good 
 news indeed !" fell from the lips of Senator Fairbanks. 
 
 As the rising temperature drove the chill of the morning 
 from the atmosphere it had a new rallying effect on the President. 
 In an incredibly short time the news was on every lip that the 
 President was really going to recover. The temperature con- 
 tinued falling and the pulse and respiration gradually return :d 
 toward that much longed for point, normal. 
 
 At noon the President was said to be asleep, and later his 
 condition was reported as improving so rapidly as to make an
 
 244 HOPES OF THE PRESIDENTS RECOVERY. 
 
 X-ray search for the bullet unnecessary. A second operation 
 was not considered imperative, unless the bullet should be found 
 near the spine and liable to cause paralysis. All these points 
 were discussed with surprising freedom by the crowds strung 
 along the barricade north and south of the cottage. 
 
 Vice-President Roosevelt came at noon, and when he left the 
 cottage his manner indicated that danger had passed. He was 
 accosted by a negro trimming a lawn on the avenue. 
 
 " May I shake your hand ? " asked the black man, as he 
 approached Mr. Roosevelt. "You certainly may," replied the 
 Vice-President, grasping his hand heartily. Two workingmen 
 with dinner pails came along, and they, too, greeted the Vice- 
 President, who shook them warmly by the hand. 
 
 " Are you not afraid to be stopped ? " one of them asked. 
 
 HAS NO FEAR. 
 
 " No," replied Mr. Roosevelt, with animation. " I hope no 
 official in our country will ever be afraid. You workingmen are 
 our protection, and I am sure that the crime of Friday will only 
 make you more determined to have the laws enforced and the 
 lives of public officials whom you elect to office protected. Such 
 men as you, with the ballot, are the salvation of the country, and 
 there is no need of resorting to violence." 
 
 As Mr. Roosevelt continued walking he was asked about the 
 President's condition. " I have every faith," he said, " in the 
 physicians, and I believe the bulletins are not too sanguine. 
 I am convinced that the President will recover, and rapidly, too. 
 As a matter of fact, the country is full of old soldiers, many of 
 whom carry bullets in their bodies, and they do not suffer any 
 great inconvenience or pain. I remember two of my own men 
 who were shot in the same manner in the Cuban War. Yet they 
 lay in the marshes, as extraordinary as it may seem, for some 
 considerable time without attendance, and both recovered. Yes. 
 I believe the President is out of danger." 
 
 The day following came another reassuring statement from 
 the President's chamber.
 
 HOPES OF THE PRESIDENT'S RECOVERY. 245 
 
 " President McKinley' s condition continues favorable. While 
 this is true, and there is no intention to give needless alarm, it is 
 not unfair now to say that optimism may be carried to an extreme. 
 The Presient is still far on the wrong side of the line of absolute 
 safety. This is established by the information given by a mem- 
 ber of his official family, which is to the effect that even if Presi- 
 dent McKinley continues to improve as steadily as he has during 
 the last four days it will not be less than three weeks, and proba- 
 bly a month, before he can leave Buffalo. 
 
 " So far is it from my intention to give cause for alarm 
 concerning President McKinley that I will say that all news from 
 him to-day was good news. The President is becoming stronger 
 every hour. He is now able to move himself about in bed with 
 
 little difficulty. 
 
 LIKELY TO CARRY THE BULLET. 
 
 "That he will probably carry the bullet of the assassin with 
 him to the grave, is the opinion of Dr. Charles McBurney. In a 
 statement this morning after the consultation of the physicians 
 he said that unless the bullet embedded in the muscles of the 
 back caused trouble there would be no necessity to extract it. In 
 his opinion, it would not even be located with the X-ray. Nothing 
 could be gained by the use of the X-ray, he said, except the 
 satisfaction of curiosity. President McKinley has been permitted 
 several times to-day to drink water, the first he has had since the 
 attempt was made upon his life. The amount given has been 
 small, but that he has received any indicates the confidence of 
 his physicians. 
 
 " Nourishment in a liquid form is also being administered 
 to him in the normal manner and without the slightest ill effect. 
 This is considered one of the best symptoms of his convalescence. 
 Gradually this liquid nourishment will be strengthened, and if 
 there are no setbacks it will be only a few days before Mr. Mc- 
 Kinley will be allowed solid food. At first it will be only in 
 infinitely small quantities, but if no ill effects follow the amount 
 will be increased as the physicians think best. 
 
 " Realizing the intense interest that exists on the part of the
 
 246 HOPES OF THE PRESIDENT'S RECOVERY. 
 
 public in everything that pertains to President McKinley, the 
 authorities to-day gave permission to an artist to sketch within 
 the Milburn house. He was not permitted to enter the room 
 where the President rests, but that room was carefully described 
 to him by those who do go in and out. 
 
 " Great interest in current events is being manifested by 
 President McKinley, but thus far all knowledge of the world out- 
 side the room he occupies has been kept from him. While per- 
 haps no harm would come from his being informed of the world's 
 doings, it is deemed wise for the present to give him as little as 
 possible to think about. 
 
 " No one has yet been allowed to see him except Mrs. 
 McKinley, Secretary Cortelyou and the physicians. Even Mrs. 
 McKiuley goes to his room only once a day and then remains for 
 only a short time. To-day she did not go to the President until 
 after her drive, and then sat beside his bed only a few minutes. 
 
 DEVOTED AND COURAGEOUS. 
 
 " When Mrs. McKinley visits the President very little is said 
 by either. Sitting beside his bed, the devoted and courageous 
 wife holds her husband's hand and in silent communion for the 
 most part they pass the minutes allowed them to be together by 
 the careful physicians. 
 
 "There is little distinction between day and night in the 
 President's room. He has no regular hours for sleeping, but 
 every few hours he becomes drowsy and he generally sleeps 
 several hours at a time. There is always a nurse in attendance 
 upon him, and at least one of the physicians remains in an ad- 
 joining room. When he awakens from one of his naps he is 
 given a small drink of water containing nourishing ingredients, 
 and the physician in charge takes his temperature, pulse and 
 respiration. 
 
 " It is not often that more than two persons are in his room 
 at the same time, quiet being one of the main necessities at 
 present, and the physicians are extremely careful not to disturb 
 him more than is absolutely necessary. Whichever one is to
 
 HOPES OF THE PRESIDENT'S RECOVERY. 241 
 
 make the examination at any particular time goes in alone and 
 makes a report to the others. 
 
 "During the visits of Mrs. McKinley to the President's bed- 
 side there has been no discussion of the attempted assassination. 
 Mrs. McKinley, however, is in possession of all the facts connected 
 with it. Almost immediately after the President was removed 
 from the Exposition grounds to the Milburn residence, the opera- 
 tion being over, she was taken by Dr. Rixey to his room and she- 
 then knew all but the most harrowing details. The news was 
 broken to her as gently as possible, but no effort was made to 
 conceal the main facts from her. 
 
 "Her strength, courage and cheerfulness have been the 
 marvel of all those who know her best, but they have feared she 
 would by this time break down under the strain. Yet she seems 
 stronger to-day than ever and never had been more self-contained 
 and cheerful than when she visited the President this afternoon." 
 
 WHAT A DETECTIVE SAID. 
 
 In an interview, Secret Service Detective Ireland, who, with 
 Detectives Foster and Gallagher, were near the President when 
 the shots were fired, said : 
 
 " It is incorrect, as has been stated, that the least fear of an 
 assault was entertained by the Presidential party. Since the 
 Spanish War the President has traveled all over the country, and 
 has met people everywhere. In Canton he walks to church and 
 downtown without the sign of secret service men of any kind, 
 as an escort. In Washington he walks about the White House 
 grounds, drives out freely, and has enjoyed much freedom from 
 the presence of detectives. 
 
 " It has been my custom to stand back of the President, and 
 just to his left, so that I could see the right hand of every person 
 approaching, but yesterday I was requested to stand opposite the 
 President so that Mr. Milburn could stand to the left and intro- 
 duce the people who approached. That way I was unable to get 
 a good look at everyone's right hand. 
 
 " A few moments before Czolgosz approached, a man came
 
 248 HOPES OF -THE PRESIDENTS RECOVERY. 
 
 along with three fingers of his right hand tied in a bandage and 
 he had shaken hands with his left. When Czolgosz came up I 
 noticed he was a boyish looking fellow, with an innocent face 
 perfectly calm, and I also noticed that his right hand was wrappe 
 in what appeared to be a bandage. 
 
 "I watched him closely, but was interrupted by the man in 
 front of him, who held on to the President's hand an unusually 
 long time This man appeared to be an Italian, and wore a short, 
 heavy, black mustache. He was persistent, and it was necessary 
 for me to push him along so that the others could reach 
 
 President. , _. 
 
 " Tust as he released the President's hand, and as the Presi- 
 dent was reaching for the hand of the assassin, there were two 
 quick shots. Startled for a moment, I looked up and saw 
 President draw his right hand up under his coat, straighten up 
 and, pressing his lips together, give Czolgosz the most scornful 
 and contemptuous look possible to imagine. 
 
 THE BIG COLORED MAN. 
 
 At the same time I reached for the young man and caught 
 his left arm. The big colored man standing just back of him, 
 and who would have been the next to take the President^ hand, 
 struck the young man in the neck with one hand, and with the 
 other reached for the revolver, which had been discharged through 
 the handkerchief and the shots from which had set fire 
 
 linen. . j i 
 
 "Immediately a dozen men fell upon the assassin and bore 
 him to the floor. While on the floor Czolgosz again tried to dis- 
 charge the revolver, but before he could point it at the President, 
 it was knocked from his hand by the colored man. It n 
 across the floor and one of the artillerymen picked it up and put 
 it in his pocket. On the way down to the station Czolgosz would 
 not say a word, but seemed greatly agitated,"
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 Last Hours of the President " It is God's Way, His Will 
 be Done" Anxious Multitudes Await the Sorrowful 
 Tidings Universal Grief and Sympathy. 
 
 Friday morning, September thirteenth, the unexpected Intel, 
 ligence was sent forth to the world that President McKinley 
 had suffered a serious relapse and was at death's door. The news 
 came with greater force from the fact that through five preceding 
 days the bulletins from the sick room had been so encouraging 
 and satisfactory. 
 
 All the hopes that had been inspired of the illustrious 
 patient's recovery were suddenly extinguished. The country may 
 be said to have almost held its breath during the day, which closed 
 with the gloomy announcement that the President could not live. 
 The suspense was universal and gloom was written on every face. 
 
 Milburn House, Buffalo, N. Y., Sept. 14. President McKinle}' 
 died at the Milburn house at 2.15 A. M. in the morning of Sep- 
 tember 1 4th. He has been unconscious since 7.50 P. M. His 
 last conscious hour on earth was spent with the wife to whom he 
 devoted a lifetime of care His last words were an humble sub- 
 mission to the will of the God in whom he believed. He was 
 reconciled to the cruel fate to which an assassin's bullet had con- 
 demned him, and faced death in the same spirit of calmness and 
 poise which marked his long and honorable career. 
 
 His relatives and the members of his official family were at 
 the Milburn house, except Secretary Wilson, who did not avail 
 himself of the opportunity, and some of his personal and political 
 friends took leave of him. This painful ceremony was simple. His 
 friends came to the door of the sick room, took a longing glance 
 at him and turned tearfully away. He was practically unconscious 
 during this time. But the powerful heart stimulants, including 
 oxygen, were employed to restore him to consciousness for. his 
 final parting with his wife. He asked for her, and she sat at his 
 
 249
 
 260 LAST HOURS OF THE PRESIDENT. 
 
 side and held his hand. He consoled her and bade her good-bye. 
 She went through the heart trying scene with the same bravery 
 and fortitude with which she bore the grief of the tragedy which 
 ended his life. 
 
 Before 6 o'clock it was clear to those at the President's bed- 
 side that he was dying and preparations were made for the last 
 sad offices of farewell from those who were nearest and dearest to 
 him. Oxygen had been administered steadily, but with little 
 effect in keeping back the approach of death. The President 
 came out of one period of unconsciousness only to relapse into 
 another. But in this period, when his mind was partially clear, 
 occurred a series of events of profundly touching character. 
 Downstairs, with strained and tear stained faces, members of the 
 Cabinet were grouped in anxious waiting. 
 
 KNEW THE END WAS NEAR. 
 
 They knew the end was near, and that the time had come 
 when they must see him for the last time on earth. This was 
 about 6 o'clock. One by one they ascended the stairway 
 Secretary Root, Secretary Hitchcock and Attorney General Knox. 
 Secretary Wilson also was there, but he held back, not wishing 
 to see the President in his last agony. There was only a 
 momentary stay of the Cabinet officers at the threshold of the 
 death chamber. Then they withdrew, the tears streaming down 
 their faces and the words of intense grief choking in their 
 throats. 
 
 After ihey left the sick room, the physicians rallied him to 
 consciouness, and the President asked almost immediately that 
 his wife be brought to him. The doctors fell back into the 
 shadows of the room as Mrs. McKinley came through the door- 
 way. The strong face of the dying man lighted up with a faint 
 smile as their hands were clasped. She sat beside him and held 
 his hand. Despite her physical weakness, she bore up bravely 
 under the ordeal. 
 
 . The President in his last period of consciouness, which ended 
 about 7.40, chanted the words of the hyinn, " Nearer, My God, to
 
 LAST HOURS OF THE PRESIDENT 251 
 
 Theey ' and his last audible conscious words as taken down by Dr. 
 Mann at the bedside were : 
 
 " Good-bye, all, good-bye. It is God's way. His will be done." 
 Then his mind began to wander, and soon afterward he com- 
 pletely lost consciousness. His life was prolonged for hours by 
 .the administration of oxygen, and the President finally expressed 
 a desire to be allowed to die. About 8.30 the administration of 
 oxygen ceased and the pulse grew fainter and fainter. He was 
 sinking gradually like a child into the eternal slumber. By 10 
 o'clock the pulse could no longer be felt in his extremities, and 
 they grew cold. Below stairs the grief stricken gathering waited 
 sadly for the end. 
 
 All the evening those who had hastened here as fast as steel 
 and steam could carry them continued to arrive. They drove up 
 in carriages at a gallop or whisked up in automobiles, all intent 
 upon getting here before death came. One of the last to arrive 
 was Attorney General Knox, who reached the house at 9.30. He 
 was permitted to go upstairs to look for the last time on the 
 face of his chief. 
 
 "THE PRESIDENT IS DYING." 
 
 At 9.37 Secretary Cortelyou, who had been much of the time 
 with his dying chief, sent out formal notification that the Presi- 
 dent was dying. But the President lingered on, his pulse growing 
 fainter and fainter. 
 
 There was no need for official bulletins after this. Those 
 who came from the house at intervals told the same story that the 
 President was dying, and that the end might come at any time. 
 His tremendous vitality was the only remaining factor in the 
 result, and this gave hope only of brief postponement of the end. 
 Secretary Root and Secretary Wilson came from the house about 
 midnight, and paced up and down the sidewalk. All that Secre- 
 tar}^ Root said was : " The night has not yet come." 
 
 Despite the fact that vitality continued to ebb as midnight 
 approached no efforts were spared to keep the spark of life glow- 
 ing. Dr- Janeway, of New York city, arrived at the Buffalo depot
 
 252 LAST HOURS OF THE PRESIDENT. 
 
 at 11.40 o'clock. George Urban was waiting for him, and they 
 drove at a breakneck pace to the Milburn house. He was shown 
 to the President's room at once, and began an examination of the 
 almost inanimate form. 
 
 Secretary of the Navy Long arrived at the Milburn house at 
 12.06 o'clock. This was his first visit to the city, and he had the 
 extreme satisfaction of seeing the President alive, even though 
 he was not conscious of his visitor's presence. Secretary Long 
 was visibly effected. 
 
 LOOKING ANXIOUSLY FOR ROOSEVELT. 
 
 There was no possibility that Mr. Roosevelt would get to 
 Buffalo Friday night. Ansley Wilcox, who entertained the Vice- 
 President, said to inquirers that the best information he had was 
 that Mr. Roosevelt would arrive next day. He said that the Vice- 
 President would be unable to reach a railroad station much before 
 4 o'clock next morning, and that would bring him to Buffalo 
 about noon on Saturday. Mr. Wilcox said, in explanation of 
 Mr. Roosevelt's being so far out of touch : 
 
 " The Vice President was at all times very optimistic, and 
 when he went away was absolutely positive that the President 
 would recover, and that the convalescence would be rapid. He 
 certainly never expected to-day's sad occurrences." 
 
 Shortly after midnight the President's breathing was barely 
 perceptible. His pulse had practically ceased, and the extremities 
 were cold. It was recognized that nothing remained but the last 
 struggle, and some of the friends of the family who had remained 
 through the day, began to leave the house, not caring to be 
 present at the final scenes. 
 
 Such an intense state of anxiety existed among the watchers 
 that rumors gained frequent circulation that death already had 
 actually occurred. The arrival of the coroner gave rise to one of 
 such rumors, and numerous groundless despatches were sent say- 
 ing that the end had come. These were speedily set at rest by 
 an official statement from within the house that the reports of 
 death were groundless, and that the President still lived.
 
 LAST HOURS OF THE PRESIDENT. 253 
 
 Coroner Wilson said that he had been ordered by the District 
 Attorney of the county to go to the Milburn residence as soon as 
 possible after the announcement of death. He had seen a reput- 
 able local paper issued, with the announcement that the Presi- 
 dent died at 11.06 P. M., and had hurried up so that there would 
 be no delay in removing the body. He was very much chagrined 
 when Dr. Mann met him at the door and told him that his services 
 were not required and that he would be notified when he was 
 wanted. Dr. Mann said that the President was still alive 
 and that Dr. Janeway was examining the heart action. There 
 was really no hope, but they did not desire gruesome antici- 
 pation. 
 
 One of the members of the Cabinet who came from the house 
 at 2 o'clock for a stroll along the front walk said a meeting of the 
 Cabinet would be held probably in the morning to take such 
 action as would be required by the circumstances. He said the 
 expectation of the Cabinet was that the remains would be taken 
 to Washington, and then lie in state in the Capitol, afterwards 
 going to Canton for final interment. 
 
 FELL INTO A GENTLE SLUMBER. 
 
 President McKinley's death was entirely painless. He had 
 been sinking gradually but steadily through the entire night, and 
 for almost four hours had been unconscious. When the end 
 finally came, Dr. Rixey alone of the physicians was with him, but 
 so gradual was the approach of death that it is diflicult to say the 
 exact second he breathed his last. Dr. Rixey, standing by the 
 bedside, held the President's hand, felt for the pulse that was 
 imperceptible, bending forward he felt the President's heart and 
 listened for the breath that was not drawn, and then announced 
 the end. 
 
 When the announcement was first made to Mrs. McKinley 
 that her husband could not live, she seemed to be resigned and 
 bore up bravely, but as the full significance of her loss came upon 
 her, she gave way under the strain, and at the time of her hus- 
 band's death she was under the care of a physician and nurses.
 
 254 LAST HOURS OF THE PRESIDENT. 
 
 It was feared that she will recover from the loss of her husband 
 with difficulty, if at all. 
 
 Immediately after the death of President McKinley, Secre- 
 tary Cortelyou came out of the Milburn house and to the visiting 
 newspaper men announced the end. A telegram had been sent 
 to President Roosevelt and an attempt was made to intercept him 
 on his journey. A call was issued for a Cabinet meeting early in 
 the morning. 
 
 The announcement rf the death to the members of the Cabi- 
 net was made by Webb Hayes, who said : " It is all over." 
 
 Mrs. McKinley last saw her husband between n and 12. At 
 that time she sat by the bedside holding his hand. The mem- 
 bers of the Cabinet were admitted to the sick room singly at that 
 time. The actual death probably occurred about two o'clock, it 
 being understood that Dr. Rixey delayed the announcement 
 momentarily to assure himself. 
 
 GREAT EXCITEMENT ON THE AVENUE. 
 
 The announcement of the news to those waiting below was 
 postponed until the members of the family had withdrawn. 
 Through Secretary Cortelyou the waiting newspaper men received 
 the notification. In a trice there was the keenest excitement on 
 the broad avenue, but there was no semblance of disorder. 
 
 When the news was imparted to those down stairs a great sigh 
 of anguish went up from the strong men there assembled. The 
 members of the Cabinet, Senators and close friends remained but 
 a few minutes. Then, with mournful tread and bowed heads, 
 they came out into the darkness and went away. There was not 
 one among them with dry eyes, and some moaned in an agony of 
 grief. 
 
 The military guard was augmented immediately upon the 
 announcement. The waiting crowds melted away rapidly, giving 
 expression in unmistakable terms to the great sorrow they felt. 
 Within a brief space of time the newspaper men, the police, the 
 sentries of the guard, and those whose duties kept them abroad, 
 were the only persons in evidence within the immediate vicinity.
 
 LAST HOURS OF THE PRESIDENT. 265 
 
 Senator Burroughs said: "The President's death seemed to be 
 painless. He seemed to fall into calm and peaceful repose." 
 
 With the momentary excitement incident upon the announce- 
 ment at an end, the entire scene became one of unmistakable and 
 deep mourning. As if nature lent its aid to the grieving crowds, 
 a dense fog settled like a pall over the city. The Milburn house 
 became a tomb of silence. Lights not extinguished were 
 dimmed, visitors were denied admittance and the mourning 
 family and their more intimate friends were speedily left alone 
 with their distinguished dead. 
 
 OFFICIAL ANNOUNCEMENT. 
 
 When the blow fell and official announcement came that 
 President McKinle}* had passed away at 2.15 o'clock, the crowds 
 which had been on the streets, restlessly and sorrowfully 
 awaiting news of the end, had retired for the night, as had all the 
 Government officials save a few clerks at the State, War and Navy 
 Departments. Secretary Hay had given directions what should 
 be done, and Acting Chief Clerk Martin and other employes, as 
 soon as they received official confirmation of the news, immedi- 
 ately indicted cablegrams to each and every United States Ambas- 
 sador and Minister, notifying them that President McKinley died 
 at 2.15 o'clock in the morning, in Buffalo, and instructing them 
 so to inform the Governments to which they were accredited. 
 
 There were no details in the messages nothing but this 
 brief announcement and they were identical in language, except 
 in the names of the persons addressed. The Ambassadors and 
 Ministers were expected to communicate the information in turn 
 to the United States Consular officers within the limits of 
 their posts. In cases of countries like Australia and Canada, 
 where the United States Government is not represented in a diplo- 
 matic capacity, messages of like character were sent to the 
 United States Consuls General, who were to repeat them to the 
 Consuls. The original message was signed by Secretary Hay, 
 Mr. Babcock, his private secretary, having taken it from the 
 State Department to the Secretary's home for that purpose.
 
 256 LAST HOURS OF THE PRESIDENT. 
 
 Arrangements were made by which Secretary Hay would 
 meet Acting Secretary of War Gillespie and Acting Secretary of 
 the Navy Hackett in the State Department in the morning for 
 the purpose of promulgating the necessary orders of the three 
 departments. The order of the War Department was prepared. 
 It was drafted on lines similar to that issued when President Gar- 
 field was stricken. It was telegraphed to Secretary Root for his 
 approval, and issued in his name. The order was addressed to all 
 division and department commanders in the United States, the 
 Philippines, Cuba, Porto Rico and Alaska, and announced the 
 death of President McKinley, and directed that all work be sus- 
 pended for the day, all flags to be at half staff, and that thirteen 
 guns be fired in the morning and one at intervals of half an hour 
 and forty-five guns at suuset. 
 
 A GUARD OF HONOR. 
 
 A similar order was issued by the Navy Department. It is 
 also stated that a guard of honor, consisting of high officers of the 
 army and navy, would be named to escort the remains of the dead 
 President to Washington and to the place of interment. 
 
 The White House promptly sent the official announcement 
 it had receieved of the death to Secretaries Hay and Gage, the 
 only Cabinet members in town, and notified the Commissioners 
 of the Distrct of Columbia. The White House flag was half- 
 masted, but a comparatively recentlact of Congress forbids draping 
 public buildings with emblems of mourning. 
 
 When the bulletins from the Milburn house grew hopeless 
 in tone, preparations were made by the police and military to 
 preserve the public peace and protect the assassin, Czolgosz. 
 During the period of general rejoicing, marked by the reports of 
 the President's improvement, public feeling against Czolgosz 
 passed from the violent form it took on the day and night of the 
 shooting. But this bitterness returned when it became evident 
 that the President must die, and the temper of the people, 
 gathered in knots and crowds in the streets, was for violence. 
 Each fresh bulletin, carrying only bad news, brought out expres-
 
 LAST HOURS OF THE PRESIDENT. 267 
 
 sions against Czolgosz. Superintendent of Police Bull held the 
 full police department in reserve, and made his plans so that 300 
 men could be assembled at police headquarters in five mtnutes' 
 notice. 
 
 After communication with Superintendent Bull, Colonel M. 
 Welch ordered out the Sixty-fifth and Seventy-fourth Regiments 
 of the National Guard. These regiments were assembled at their 
 arsenals at 8.15 o'clock, and stood armed in readiness to any call. 
 Colonel Welch, who commands the Sixty-fifth Regiment, said 
 that he and Colonel Fox, of the Seventy-fourth, had agreed on 
 this course. " I have ordered the regiments to assemble at the 
 armories on my own responsibility," said Colonel Welch. "They 
 will be prepared to respond to any call from the Superintendent 
 of Police or the Mayor to quell riot or disturbance, to protect 
 police headquarters and to maintain law and order in the city." 
 
 % 
 
 REGIMENTS ON DUTY. 
 
 The members of the two regiments were summoned to their 
 armories by messenger, telegraph and proclamation in theatres 
 and public places. This news only helped to divert attention 
 from the dying President to the cell which held his assassin. 
 Superintendent Bull issued a public statement, in which he said 
 he was prepared to check, by force if necessary, any demonstra- 
 tion that might be made by the people against the prisoner. 
 
 " Crowds will not be allowed to congregate on the streets," 
 said Superintendent Bull, "and should people gather in any con- 
 siderable numbers in the vicinity of police headquarters, they 
 will be dispersed promptly. We do not propose to allow our 
 prisoner to be taken from us, and will meet force with force. The 
 prisoner will not be removed from police headquarters to the jail. 
 We are able to protect him, and we have the Sixty-fifth and 
 Seventy-fourth Regiments under arms if we need them. No 
 matter how dastardly this man's crime is, we intend, for the good 
 name of the American people, to keep him safe for the vengeance 
 of the law." 
 
 That these preparations were quite necessary became apparent 
 
 17
 
 258 LAST HOURS OF THE PRESIDENT. 
 
 by 8.30 o'clock at-night, when the people had assembled in the 
 vicinity of police headquarters in such numbers that the streets 
 were blocked and impassable. The police roped off all the streets 
 at a distance of 300 to 400 feet from the nearest point of the 
 building, and refused to admit any one within that limit. One 
 hundred patrolmen patroled the ropes and fought back the 
 crowds, while the mounted men galloped to and fro holding the 
 crowds in repression. 
 
 New details of police from the outside stations came in from 
 time to time, and Superintendent Bull kept in constant touch on 
 the telephone with Colonel Welch, who was at the Sixty-fifth 
 armory, less than a mile away. Among the crowds the report 
 was circulated that Czolgosz had been removed to the jail or some 
 other place of confinement, but this was denied by Superintendent 
 Bull and the other police officials. 
 
 LAST DAY'S BULLETINS. 
 
 The reader will be interested in the bulletins issued on the 
 day preceding the President's death. 
 
 The following was issued by the President's physicians at 
 9 A. M. : 
 
 " The President's condition has somewhat improved during 
 
 the past few hours. There is a better response to stimulation. 
 
 He is conscious and free from pain. Pulse, 128 ; temperature, 99.8. 
 
 "P. M. Rixey, M. D. Mann, Roswell Park, Herman Mynter, 
 
 Eugene Wasdin, Charles G. Stockton. 
 
 "GEORGE B. CORTELYOU, 
 
 " Secretary to the President." 
 
 " 12.30 P. M. The President's physicians report that his 
 condition is practically unchanged since the 9 o'clock bulletin. 
 He is sleeping quietly. "GEORGE B. CORTELYOU, 
 
 "Secretary to the President." 
 
 The following bulletin was issued by the President's physi- 
 cians at 2.30 P. M. : 
 
 " The President has more than held his own since morning.
 
 LAST HOURS OF THE PRESIDENT. 259 
 
 and his condition justifies the expectation of fnrther improvement. 
 He is better than yesterday at this time. Pulse, 123 ; tempera- 
 ture, 99.4. 
 
 " P. M. Rixey, M. D. Mann, Herman Mynter, Eugene Wasdin, 
 George G. Stockton. " GEORGE B. CORTELYOU, 
 
 "Secretary to the President." 
 
 Secretary Cortelyou walked over to the press headquarters shortly 
 after the bulletin dated 2.30 P. M. was issued, and explained that 
 the sentence in the bulletin, "he is better than yesterday at this 
 time," should be stricken out. When the physicians were prepar- 
 ing the bulletin, he said, they had in mind the President's condi- 
 tion Thursday up to midnight. It will be remembered that it was 
 just before that time when the first very alarming intimation 
 began to come from the sick room about the impossibility of 
 scouring from the President's stomach the undigested food, which 
 not only threatened to contaminate the system, but which caused 
 him exceedingly great discomfort. Resort had been had to a 
 drastic bolus of calomel and oil. Just at midnight this radical 
 remedy had its effect, and the movement of the bowels came, 
 bringing with it an immediate lowering of pulse and great relief. 
 
 NO ENCOURAGEMENT. 
 
 "4 P. M. The President's physicians report that he is only 
 slightly improved since the last bulletin. The pulse and tem- 
 perature remain the same as at that hour. 
 
 "GEORGE B. CORTELYOU, 
 
 "Secretary to the President." 
 
 "5-35 P- M- The President's physicians report that his con- 
 dition is grave at this hour. He is suffering from extreme pros- 
 tration. Oxygen is being given. He responds to stimulation but 
 poorly. Pulse, 125 ; respiration, 40. 
 
 "GEORGE B. CORTELYOU, 
 
 " Secretary to the President." 
 
 "6.30 P. M. The President's physicians report that his 
 condition is most serious, in spite of vigorous stimulation. The
 
 260 LAST HOURS OF THE PRESIDENT. 
 
 depression continues and is profound. Unless it can be ielieved 
 the end is only a question of time. 
 
 "GEORGE B. CORTELYOU, 
 
 " Secretary to the President." 
 
 Hope and fear alternated all day among the watchers in and 
 around the Milburn house. Every fragment of information was 
 eagerly sought in the hope that it might be construed to mean 
 that the danger had passed, and that reasonable hope of the Presi- 
 dent's recovery might be entertained. Members of the President's 
 family, the physicians, the officials of the Federal Government, 
 and all who passed in and out of the house during the day were 
 questioned as to the President's condition, but little of an encour- 
 aging nature could be learned. The truth was too evident to be 
 passed over or concealed. The President's life was hanging in 
 the balance. The watchers felt that any moment might come the 
 announcement of a change which would foreshadow the end. 
 
 WAS TAKING NOURISHMENT. 
 
 When the slight improvement noted in the early bulletins 
 was maintained during the afternoon, and it was learned that the 
 President was taking small quantities of nourishment, hope rose 
 that he would pass the crisis in safety. Everybody knew, and no 
 attempt was made to conceal it, that the coming night would in 
 all human probability decide whether the President was to live or 
 die. It was known that he was being kept alive by heart stimu- 
 lants, and that the physicians had obtained a supply of oxygen, 
 to be administered if the worst came. 
 
 During the day President McKinley was conscious when he 
 was not sleeping. Early in the morning when he woke he looked 
 out of the window and saw that the sky was overcast with heavy 
 clouds. " It is not so bright as it was yesterday," said he. His 
 eyes then caught the waving leaves of the trees glistening with 
 rain. Their bright green evidently made an agreeable impression 
 upon him. 
 
 " It is pleasant to see them," said he feebly. 
 
 As fast as steam could bring them the members of the Presi-
 
 LAST HOURS OF THE PRESIDENT. 201 
 
 dent's Cabinet, his relatives and the physicians, who had left 
 Buffalo, convinced that the President would recover, were whirled 
 back to this city. They went at once to the house in which he 
 was lying and the information which they obtained there was of a 
 nature to heighten, rather than to relieve their fears. All night 
 the doctors had worked in the sick room to keep the President 
 alive. 
 
 Day broke with a gloomy sky and a pouring rain broken by 
 frequent bursts of gusty downpours. It seemed as though nature 
 was sympathizing with the gloom which surrounded the ivy-clad 
 house, about which the sentries were steadily marching. Sec- 
 retary Cortelyou and Mr. Milburn had announced at half-past 4 
 o'clock that the efforts of the doctors had produced a rally. Mrs. 
 McKinley was then sleeping and great care was taken to prevent 
 her from being awakened. 
 
 HIS NATURAL SLEEP. 
 
 President McKinley fell asleep at half past 5 o'clock, and 
 slept for an hour. Dr. Wasdin said that this was the most 
 natural sleep that he had had during the night. 
 
 Secretary Hitchcock and Mr. Milburn appeared soon after 
 the President awoke at half-past 6 o'clock. They said that both 
 Dr. Rixey and Dr. Stockton believed the President still had a 
 fighting chance. 
 
 Almost as soon as it became light men and women began to 
 gather at the ropes which have been stretched across the streets 
 a block away in each direction from the Milburn jhouse. As the 
 day bore on the crowds increased, and were even greater than 
 they were on the day after the President was shot. 
 
 It was during the early hours of the morning that the Presi- 
 dent's sinking spell was at its worst, and but little encourage- 
 ment was drawn from the bulletins issued at 9 o'clock. It was 
 noted that whilst the President's temperature had fallen his pulse 
 had risen five beats in the minute, from 123 to 128, which showed 
 that his heart was beating like the ticking of a watch. The con- 
 clusion was drawn that the apparent improvement in his condi-
 
 202 LAST HOURS OF THE PRESIDENT. 
 
 tion was due solely to the action of the digitalis, strychnine and 
 other medicine that had been given him to sustain the heart 
 action. 
 
 Senator Hanna, who went to Cleveland, jubilant in the cer 
 tainty that the President was going to get well, and that h* 
 might safely attend the meeting of the G. A. R. in his home city, 
 reached the Milburn house at two minutes before 10 o'clock. In 
 his anxiety to reach the President's bedside he had come from 
 Cleveland, a distance of 183 miles, at the rate of sixty-eight 
 miles an hour. 
 
 DISTINGUISHED ARRIVALS. 
 
 With Senator Hanna came Mrs. Hanna, Judge Day, of 
 Canton ; Colonel Myron P. Herrick, of Cleveland; Senator Fair- 
 banks of Indiana ; Mrs. Duncan and Miss McKinley, sisters of 
 the President ; Miss Duncan and Mrs. Herrick. Senator Hanna 
 reached the house first. The members of his party arrived soon 
 afterward. They joined Secretaries Wilson and Hitchcock, Mr. 
 and Mrs. Herman Baer, Abner McKinley, Mrs. Lafayette 
 McWilliams, Mr. Milburn, Wilson S. Bissel, John N. Scatcherd 
 and Representative Alexander, who were in the house. The new 
 arrivals were immediately informed of the critical condition of 
 the President and their faces, which had been grave, became still 
 graver as they listened. 
 
 At this time anxiety in regard to the President's condition 
 had become intense throughout Buffalo. Hundreds of men, 
 women and children were massed at the ropes, their faces turned 
 in the direction of the house, though many of them were unable 
 to see it, and, of course, all were too far away to be able to hear 
 anything. So many persons had gathered in the Milburn house 
 that it was crowded. Groups formed on the lawn in front of the 
 house to discuss the situation, and to exchange the latest news 
 from the doctors. 
 
 Across the street from the house there were scores of news- 
 paper men waiting for news of the President's condition, and 
 dozens of telegraph instruments were ticking noisily under the
 
 LAST HOURS OF THE PRESIDENT. 263 
 
 tents which had been erected to shelter them. At a quarter 
 before n o'clock President McKinley had another nap. Dr. Park 
 and Dr. Rixey remained by his side. 
 
 Early in the morning, on the advice of the surgeons, Dr. 
 Edward Jaueway, of New York city, and Dr. W. W. Johnson, of 
 Washington, were summoned. Dr. Janeway was at St. Hubert's 
 Inn, in the Adirondacks. He started for Buffalo as soon as he 
 had been notified by Mr. Cortelyou that his presence was desired. 
 Dr. Johnson was at Jamaica Island, off Portsmouth, N. H. 
 
 Secretary Cortelyou was asked whether it was true that the 
 physicians had been compelled to begin feeding the President 
 through the stomach before it was safe to do so because the means 
 first taken to give nourishment had caused irritation, resulting 
 in the rejection of the food which had been injected before it had 
 imparted any nourishment to the patient. This was the explana- 
 tion commonly accepted of the surprisingly short time that had 
 been permitted to elapse before the President was allowed to 
 receive liquid and even solid food into his stomach. 
 
 SATISFACTORY RESULTS. 
 
 Mr. Cortelyou said that he had not been informed upon this 
 point. He said that the stoppage of the functions of the bowels 
 had created a poison in the President's system, but that during 
 the day this had been practically eliminated. 
 
 Dr. Roswell Park said : " The President was not given solid 
 food before he could stand it. He was perfectly able to assimilate 
 the food given him, had it not been that the impoverished food 
 affected the heart. The heart refused to act properly without 
 strong blood food, and that was why the toast, soaked in hot beef 
 juice, was given him. He was not given coffee. He relished the 
 food, and asked for a cigar, but this was denied. Everything 
 known to medical science was done for him, and there was no mis- 
 take made." Dr. Herman Mynter said : " At the time solid 
 food was given him he was able to take it. There can be no mis- 
 take about that. I do not believe that the food in his stomach 
 had much effect on the heart."
 
 264 LAST HOURS OF THE PRESIDENT. 
 
 The President was asleep at half-past i o'clock. Only injec- 
 tions of saline solution and digitalis in light doses had been 
 used up to that hour. One of the physicians sat constantly at 
 the bedside, with his fingers on the President's pulse, ready at 
 any alarming change in the action of the heart to apply remedies 
 which were in readiness to be used as a last resort. Tanks of 
 oxygen were ready at hand to be drawn upon, and all the appli- 
 ances that medical skill and science could provide were within 
 reach. The beating of the pulse was sufficiently strong to enable 
 the physicians to permit the President to have his sleep out. 
 
 Dr. McBurney arrived at the Milburn house a little before 8 
 o'clock. Shortly after his arrival oxygen was administered to the 
 President, and under its influence the patient aroused. 
 
 He was fully conscious, and whispered to Dr. Rixey that he 
 knew that the end was at hand. He asked to see his wife, and 
 Mrs. McKinley was sent for. She entered his room, and it was 
 apparent to those present that of the two principal figures in this 
 intense drama President McKinley, about to solve the great mys- 
 tery, the more fully realized the significance of the awful moment. 
 There was no show of fear in the attitude of the nation's Execu- 
 tive. 
 
 INFORMED HE WAS DYING. 
 
 On the outside Mr. Milburn explained to Mrs. Kinley that 
 the President was dying, and that he could live till morning only 
 in the event of the direct interposition of Providence. She then 
 came to a full realization of the loss that was upon her, and she 
 showed symptoms of a collapse. Herbert P. Bissell rushed to 
 the assistance of the sorrowing wife, who was being literally sup- 
 ported by Mr. Milburn. Word was sent to Dr. Wasdin, who 
 came from the President's chamber and administered a restora- 
 tive. Little by little she came back to her normal condition. 
 Several women friends were with her, and in their sympathy she 
 found surcease. To one she whispered : "I will be strong for 
 his sake." 
 
 An attempt was made to persuade Mrs. McKinley to retire 
 and get some rest. $he refused. She said that her duty was
 
 LAST HOURS OF THE PRESIDENT. 266 
 
 there, and there she would remain within call of those who were 
 with her husband. She said that she hoped that the President 
 would arouse, and she might then have the comfort of a last word 
 with him. 
 
 As soon as it was known that oxygen was being administered, 
 all knew that the beginning of the end had come. This bulletin 
 was as follows : 
 
 "The President's physicians report that his condition is 
 grave at this hour. He is suffering from extreme prostration. 
 Oxygen is being used. He responds to stimulation, but poorly." 
 
 As the oxygen had been provided only as a last resort, every- 
 body understood that its use meant that the President's hour had 
 come. His condition was such that there was no hope of his 
 gaining strength through the stimulant sufficient to enable him 
 to combat death. After this announcement the bulletins telling 
 the story of the final struggle followed each other rapidly. The 
 streets in front of the bulletin boards were filled with men and 
 women who watched sadly each fresh announcement of the nearer 
 approach of the end. 
 
 OLD PASTOR PRESENT. 
 
 The Rev. C. V. Wilson, of North Tonawanda, pastor of Mr. 
 McKinley's old church in Canton, was with the President and 
 prayed with him. Mr. Wilson left the Milburn house shortly 
 before (9 o'clock. Tears were streaming from his eyes, and he 
 was almost completely overcome by grief. 
 
 The relatives of the dying President, the members of his 
 Cabinet and those personal friends who were in the house were 
 taking their leave of him. After all had seen Mr. McKinley, 
 the situation developed into one of mere waiting for the announce- 
 ment of the President's death. 
 
 The last offices about the bedside had been said, and the 
 President had again lapsed into unconsciousness. During his 
 conscious moments Mrs. McKinley was brought into the chamber, 
 and there was an affecting farewell. Members of the Cabinet,
 
 266 LAST HOURS OF THE PRESIDENT. 
 
 one by one, saw the President for a few moments. Then the 
 President softly chanted a hymn. Just before he lapsed into uncon- 
 sciousnes he begged the doctors to let him die. His last audible 
 words were, as already stated, were said by Dr. Mann to be, 
 "Good-bye all, good-bye. It is God's way. Let His will, not 
 ours, be done." 
 
 The following intensely interesting account of the President's 
 last moments is furnished by one of the faithful female nurses 
 who watched over him : 
 
 " The President occupied a bed in the north wing of the 
 Milburn home, the room formerly occupied by the Milburn boys 
 before entering college. It was simple in its arrangement, and 
 yet attractive and handsome. Two beds of the ordinary hospital 
 style were located in the room. 
 
 SHOWED RESTLESSNESS. 
 
 " Previous to the relapse suffered by the President he had 
 become somewhat whimsical, and had several times asked that he 
 be moved to a new bed, thus accounting for the presence of the 
 two beds in the room. A large easy-chair occupied the northeast 
 corner of the room, and when Mrs. McKinley visited her husband, 
 this chair was drawn alongside the bed for her comfort. 
 
 "The President lay with the foot of his bed! westward, 
 thereby preventing the sun from shining in his face. On the 
 west wall there hung a large picture of Washington, a magnifi- 
 cent creation by Graves, and this particularly pleased the stricken 
 President. Often during his confinement I heard him comment 
 on the picture, characterizing Washington as a noble statesman, 
 who was created to meet an emergency. 
 
 " All the nurses lived within easy calling distance of the 
 house, and messengers were constantly on hand prepared to rouse 
 them. None of the medicines were either kept or prepared in the 
 sick room. All this was done in an adjoining room which was 
 fitted up temporarily for the purpose. 
 
 " It was customary for the doctors to blend the medicines, 
 but the dressings were usually prepared by Miss McKenzie, the
 
 LAST HOURS OF THE PRESIDENT. 267 
 
 Philadelphia nurse, who was summoned a few days before the 
 President died. The corps of nurses was made up of Steward 
 Elliott and Privates Hodgkins and Vollmeyer, of the United 
 States Hospital Corps, and Misses Hunt, Mohun and Connelly, 
 the corps being under the charge of Miss McKenzie. 
 
 ; 'The day which brought the fatal relapse brought surprise 
 to us all. In the morning we had lifted him from one bed to 
 another at his request. In his new bed he seemed to rest very 
 easy. He turned without causing himself pain of suffering. 
 'See how I am progressing, doctor,' he said when Dr. Was- 
 din came that morning, and he turned from one side to 
 another without apparent effort. The doctor smiled and assured 
 him that he was progressing well, but advised him to remain 
 as quiet as possible. 
 
 TIDY PERSONAL HABITS. 
 
 " Ordinarily the President was a man of remarkably clean 
 and tidy personal habits, and never was known to pass from one 
 day to another without a shave. His beard grew very fast, and 
 naturally, after lying in bed almost a week without shaving, his 
 face was very rough. He made many comments on it the day 
 that he began to grow worse, and he asked me when I thought it 
 would be permissible to have a barber shave him. He even joked 
 a bit about it with the doctors when they came. 
 
 " That morning they gave him some beef juice, just a little bit 
 at a time. This he relished greatly, for his had been a continuous 
 fast for a week. He smacked his lips after the beef juice was 
 given him and asked if he could not take more. This was denied 
 him, and he was compelled to wait another twenty minutes before 
 taking more. Then he took considerable. He remained quiet 
 for some time, apparently satisfied. 
 
 "About this time he had occasion to speak of the press and 
 how it was treating his case. All information was denied him, 
 and his queries were turned aside in some way or another. Then 
 he asked for toast and coffee. This was |a serious problem and 
 occasioned a consultation of the doctors. When they returned
 
 268 LAST HOURS OF THE PRESIDENT. 
 
 with the news that he might have the toast and coffee his face 
 lighted up and he appeared to be very grateful. 
 
 "The toast and coffee, just a little of each, was given him, 
 and he ate it with relish and turned on his right side and pre- 
 pared to sleep. His sleep lasted for several hours, and when he 
 awoke he appeared to be greatly refreshed. From that time, 
 however, the fatigue which eventually resulted in the relapse was 
 noticeable. At 3 o'clock he was very tired, but made no com- 
 plaint that would indicate that the food had ill effects. 
 
 " Later in the afternoon he became somewhat worse, and in 
 the evening, when the usual night reaction came, he fared worse 
 than ever before. Grave apprehensions were felt then, and the 
 nurses, including Miss McKenzie, and the doctors, were all sum- 
 moned. Then followed a series of consultations and conferences 
 which continued until midnight, when he took a decided change 
 for the worse. 
 
 BRIGHT AND CHEERY. 
 
 " It has been said that the President was in a stupor at this 
 time. That is not true. The patient was as bright and cheery 
 as could possibly be expected, and occasionally conversed in a 
 low tone. He was somewhat tired, however, and seldom moved 
 in bed. As morning approached he became worse. The bulletins 
 given out from time to time during the morning hours describing 
 his condition were absolutely correct. It was a gradual decline. 
 Friday morning Mrs. McKinley made her usual visit to the sick 
 room. The President knew he was worse, and here again his 
 first thoughts were of his helpmate. It would worry her. 
 
 " He summoned one of the doctors, Dr. Wasdin, I believe, 
 and asked that the truth of his condition be kept from her. This 
 was a difficult proposition, however, as Mrs. McKinley had 
 watched his condition closely, and quickly detected the smallest 
 and most insignificant change. Then he offered to co-operate in 
 keeping the news from her. He gathered all his strength 
 together, and made a herculean effort to allay any suspicions she 
 might have. He succeeded admirably, and she left the room
 
 LAST HOURS OF THE PRESIDENT. 269 
 
 after ten minutes with her husband in the belief that he was at 
 least holding his own. 
 
 " When she left he lapsed into the state which characterized 
 the very early morning. He was not in a stupor, however, and 
 recognized everybody. The morning was marked by frequent 
 consul ations and conferences, and nearly all of them were followed 
 by bulletins on the President's condition. Dr. Rixey was the 
 prime figure in nearly all these conferences, yet he would take 
 no step without the consent of the other physicians. Late in the 
 afternoon it became apparent that the President was not to last 
 for long, his life was slowly ebbing away. 
 
 Slowly, but surely, the sands in President McKinley's life 
 glasss were dropping away. No person made that statement 
 about the house at this time, but the very atmosphere seemed to 
 contain something that said plainly that the President was pass- 
 ing away. About 4 o'clock his pulsation became so alarming that 
 saline solution injections were resorted to. This had the effect of 
 buoying up hopes for a time, just for a short time, however, and 
 then he suffered a slight change for the worse again. 
 
 NO RESPONSE TO TREATMENT. 
 
 " At this time he was in a stupor. I went to his bedside and 
 touched his lips with water, but there was no response either by 
 sign or action. He appeared to be conscious and yet unconscious. 
 He knew none of us. Every one considered the case hopeless, 
 and knew that it was but a question of vitality ; that he must soon 
 die. As the hour of 9 o'clock approached his condition became 
 rapidly worse, and I have since learned that even in the house the 
 report was circulated that the President was dying. 
 
 " At this time it was deemed advisable to bring the family to 
 the death chamber. They came one at a time. First came the 
 members of the Cabinet singly, glanced at their dying chief and 
 passed on. Tears were in the eyes of all of them. Then came 
 Abner McKinley and his wife and Mr. and Mrs. Baer, the latter 
 a niece of the President. They remained only a minute and 
 passed on out of the room. Then came Senator Hanna, the dearest
 
 270 LAST HOURS OF THE PRESIDENT. 
 
 friend the President ever had. He, too, was to be denied by death 
 the joy of recognition. 
 
 " Then Mrs. McKinley came poor, brave little woman. 
 
 " The easy chair was drawn close to the bedside, and she was 
 seated there. The President's face lighted up. He recognized 
 her, and it seemed as if the nurses and doctors would burst into 
 tears. She took his hand, the hand which in one short week had 
 become emaciated and thin, and held it. 
 
 " His face lighted up and he murmured: 'God's will, not 
 ours, be done.' 
 
 "To my knowledge these were the last words the President 
 ever uttered. 
 
 WAS LED AWAY WEEPING. 
 
 " Mrs. McKinley remained with him for a half hour and was 
 then led, weeping, from the room. The President had lapsed 
 into the sleep which knows no awakening. He was wholly 
 unconscious. Once, near n o'clock, I thought I saw him move 
 and try to say something, but it was not audible. At 11.15 
 o'clock Mrs. McKinley came again and this time remained with 
 her dying husband for an hour. She said nothing and the Presi- 
 dent lay like one who had passed the river of death. 
 
 " The extremities were becoming cold and the pulse was so 
 faint that it could not be recorded by the most sensitive instru- 
 ments. After an hour's time Mrs. McKinley was led away to 
 her room. It was the last time she would ever see her husband 
 alive. For the next two hours his condition became worse, if 
 .such a thing were possible, and it seemed several times as if he 
 must be dead. 
 
 " Application of the instruments which record the respira- 
 tion, however, showed that he was still breathing. At 2. 15 o'clock 
 he died. 
 
 " Dr. Rixey thought best to wait a few minutes before giving 
 out the bulletin, to make sure that the vital spark had left the 
 body. He applied the apparatus and the dial remained unmoved. 
 He was dead.
 
 LAST HOURS OF THE PRESIDENT. 271 
 
 " The undertaker came and laid out the body on the bed on 
 which it had lain for a week. The hands were folded across the 
 breast, and a sheet was drawn over the face. Private Hodgins, 
 of the Hospital Corps, was detailed to guard the body, and 
 throughout the remainder of the night he stood at attention at 
 the foot of the bed. At 5.30 o'clock he was relieved by Private 
 Voltmeyer, of the same branch of the service."
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 Additional Account of President McKinley's Death Hope 
 Ending in Despair Medical Skill Exhausted Cause of 
 the Final Relapse. 
 
 The President's last day, which ended in despair, was begun 
 in hope. The ills that came on Thursday afternoon, when the 
 organs of digestion refused to handle the solid food that had been 
 taken earlier in the day, had seemingly been overcome by mid- 
 night, and when the new day came it found the President 
 relieved and resting. Hope that had suddenly dropped from the 
 high place which it had held, began to revive. The healing of 
 the wounds had progressed favorably, general conditions were in 
 the main quite satisfactory, and the immediate future of the 
 case seemed to hold no threat. 
 
 The physicians who had been in almost constant attendance 
 during the night parted, and the watch in the sick room was 
 reduced. Suddenly there was a failure of the heart, which, for 
 several days had been manifesting signs of weakness, and the 
 President sank toward unconsciousness. This was at two 
 o'clock in the morning. There was an immediate application of 
 restoratives, and a general call went out to the absent physicians 
 and nurses. Digitalis, strychnia and saline solution were admin- 
 istered to the patient, but there was no immediate response to 
 treatment. 
 
 The physicians admitted that he was desperately ill, and 
 Secretary Cortelyou decided to send for the relatives and close 
 friends of the President, the Vice-President and members of the 
 Cabinet. Those within reach were called by telephone or mes- 
 senger, and telegrams were rushed to those who had left the city. 
 The first of the messages went out at 2.30 o'clock, and within 
 half an hour the Milburn house began to fill again. The serious 
 condition of the President and the general call sent out gave rise 
 to a general feeling of alarm that was never again allayed. 
 
 272
 
 HOPE ENDING IN DESPAIR. 273 
 
 Desperate measures were resorted to in order to stimulate 
 trie heart, and the sinking spell was over by four o'clock. It was 
 decided to continue the treatment, and the physicians laid their 
 greatest hope on weathering the day. It was agreed that if the 
 wounded man could be carried for twenty-four hours that his 
 chances would be very favorable, for the wounds were healing 
 splendidly. 
 
 It was decided to summon Dr. W. W. Johnston, of Washing- 
 ton, and Dr. E. G. Janeway, of New York, heart specialists, and 
 telegrams were hurried out asking that they come at once. Before 
 dawn a dozen of the relatives and friends of the President arrived 
 at the Milburn house. They assembled in the drawing room, where 
 they waited for tidings from the sick room above them. The 
 physicians assured them that the President had a fighting chance 
 for life and to the hope that in the end victory would be his, they 
 clung all day. 
 
 PROFOUND GRIEF AND HORROR. 
 
 Hundreds of visitors came during the morning, and if the police 
 had not kept the streets clear and barred entrance to Delaware 
 avenue there would have been thousands. Senator Hanna, a close 
 personal and political friend of the President, hurried up from 
 Cleveland by special train. Other friends arrived by regular 
 trains, and all through the day they came in increasing numbers. 
 Their regret and sympathy were profound. The day developed 
 but little encouragement for them, however. 
 
 During the forenoon the President made a slight gain of 
 strength, and held it well into the afternoon. His physicians 
 announced that they had again given him nourishment, and it 
 was thought that possibly there was a chance for a further gain 
 of strength. It was known, however, that he was in a very 
 serious state, and every interest was centred in the sick room in 
 ".he Milburn house, where the struggle was in progress. 
 
 Suddenly, at 5 o'clock in the afternoon, there was a repetition 
 of the heart attack, and those in the presence of the stricken man 
 knew that the end was at hand. This knowledge soon spread to 
 
 18
 
 274 HOPE ENDING IN DESPAIR. 
 
 the street, and the waiting newspaper men bulletined it to the 
 world. Every one who came from the house was besought for an 
 expression as to the state of the President. Bach succeeding 
 report was worse than its predecessor, and the official bulletins 
 were absolutely without hope. 
 
 The following account of the impending calamity is from the 
 pen of a correspondent who was at tho ]\ a. burn house : " Since five 
 o'clock this afternoon President M-Kinley has made a brave but 
 hopeless fight -..gainst aeath. His physicians said early in the 
 day that he had a fighting chance, and the President made the 
 most of it. He lay limp and nearly liieless all day, and hardly 
 conscious of the r resence of physicians, who were expending all 
 the resources of their profession to preserve the vital spark. All 
 ordinary expedients failing, desperate means were resorted to. 
 Oxygen was administered to keep up respiration. Powerful 
 stimulants were employed to aid the action of the heart. There 
 was an early response to these extreme methods, but, after a 
 time, collapse came, and with it the announcement that the Presi- 
 dent was dying. 
 
 FAILURE OF VITAL ORGANS. 
 
 "The President's relapse is admittedly the result of the 
 failure of his digestive organs to assimilate the food which he ate 
 yesterday. Important bodily functions became impaired. The 
 result was loss of the previous gains that had given the doctors so 
 much hope of the ultimate outcome of the gallant struggle for 
 life. It became absolutely essential to relieve the President's 
 distress, which was threatening and immediate. Calomel was 
 resorted to. It was administered in a small dose, under the 
 direction of Dr. Stockton. With it, drugs calculated to stimulate 
 the heart were also administered. 
 
 " The calomel, after hours of anxious observation on the part 
 of the attending doctors, operated as they hoped, but with a 
 result that was distressing to the President. He thereafter became 
 weaker and more helpless. He acted as if he had undergone a 
 strain that had fearfully impaired his slendei store of vitality.
 
 HOPE ENDING IN DESPAIR. 276 
 
 Hope was abandoned early in the evening, although the physi- 
 cians kept up the endeavors to prolong his life. 
 
 l< 'The President was unconscious up to 7.20 o'clock. He then 
 came tc and asked for Mrs. McKinley, who was waiting to be 
 admitted to the chamber. He recognized her, but a few moments 
 later became unconscious. Digitalis and strychnine were losing 
 their potency as heart stimulants, and saline solution was no 
 longer efficacious. Artificial respiration was promoted with the 
 aid of oxygen, and life and breath were literally being pumped 
 into the President. Mrs. McKinley continued with him, praying 
 for the success of these experiments, but with her hopes well nigh 
 exhausted. 
 
 RELATIVES AND FRIENDS ADMITTED. 
 
 " When the physicians decided there was no hope for the 
 President, the relatives and intimate friends waiting in the draw- 
 ing room below were admitted one by one to faintly grasp the 
 hand of the President in a silent farewell. None of these was 
 recognized by the President Senator Hanna, whose grief won 
 the respect of all, held the nerveless fingers of the President and 
 looked vainly into his eyes for a sigh of recognition. 
 
 " All this time the doctors were spending their efforts on the 
 President, determined to fight the battle to the end. Dr. Charles 
 McBurney, who had come post-haste to the President's bedside, 
 arrived too late to be of service, and could only approve of the 
 methods being used by the other physicians. Senator Depew, 
 Secretary Root, Senator Fairbanks and Secretaries Wilson and 
 Hitchcock called at the house through the evening, but received 
 not a glimmer of hope. A little before 10 o'clock it was observed 
 that the President's extremities were growing cold, while his 
 pulse was fluttering and his respiration was irregular and forced. 
 Reports from those leaving the house continued unfavorable. 
 
 "When Dr. Mynter came out, at 11.30 o'clock, he said the 
 end was very near, although he might live an hour. The doctors 
 had practically abandoned the exhausting effort to maintain life. 
 Nc more powerful stimulants were, administered, and death was 
 allowed tc take its progress But the President held on teua-
 
 276 HOPE ENDING IN DESPAIR. 
 
 ciously. Bach new statement from the house said he could live 
 but a few minutes, but the President continued to breathe. * He 
 is alive, that is all,' was the word sent out by Secretary Cortelyou 
 at midnight." 
 
 From authoritative officials the following details of the final 
 scenes in and about the death chamber were secured : The 
 President liad continued in an unconscious state since 8.30 P. M. 
 Dr. Rixey remained with him at all times and until death came. 
 The other doctors were in the room at times, and then repaired to 
 the front room, where their consultations had been held. About 
 2 o'clock Dr. Rixey noted the unmistakable signs of dissolution, 
 and the immediate members of the family were summoned to the 
 
 bedside. 
 
 SILENCE AND SADNESS. 
 
 Silently and sadly the members of the family stole into the 
 room. They stood about the foot and sides of the bed where the 
 great man's life was ebbing away. Those in the circle were : 
 
 Abner McKinley, the President's brother ; Mrs. Abner 
 McKinley, Miss Helen, the President's sister ; Miss Barber, a 
 niece, Miss Sarah Duncan, Lieutenant J. F. McKinley, a nephew ; 
 William M. Duncan, a nephew ; Hon. Charles G. Dawes, the 
 Comptroller of the Currency ; F. M. Osborn, a cousin ; Colonel 
 Webb C. Hayes ; John Barber, a nephew ; Secretary George B. 
 Cortelyou ; Colonel W. C. Brown, the business partner of Abner 
 McKinley ; Dr. P. M. Rixey, the family physician, and six nurses 
 and attendants. In an adjoining room sat the physicians, 
 including Drs. McBurney, Wasdin, Park, Stockton and Mynter. 
 
 It was now 2.05 o'clock, and the minutes were slipping away. 
 Only the sobs of those in the circle about the President's bedside 
 broke the awe-like silence. Five minutes passed, then six, seven, 
 eight. 
 
 Now Dr. Rixey bent forward, and then one of his hands was 
 raised as if in warning. The fluttering heart was just going to 
 rest. A moment more and Dr. Rixey straightened up, and with 
 choking voice, said : " The President is dead." 
 
 Secretary Cortelyou was the first to turn from the stricken
 
 HOPE ENDING IN DESPAIR. 277 
 
 circle. He stepped from the chamber to the outer hall and then 
 down the stairway to the large room, where the members of the 
 Cabinet, Senators and distinguished officials were assembled. As 
 his tense, white face appeared at the doorway, a hush fell upon 
 the assemblage. " Gentlemen, the President has passed away," 
 he said. 
 
 For a moment not a word came in reply. Even though the 
 end had been expected the actual announcement that William 
 McKinley was dead fairly stunned these men, who had been 
 his closest confidants and advisers. Then a groan of anguish 
 went up from the assembled officials. They cried outright like 
 children. All the pent up emotions of the last few days were 
 let loose. They turned from the room and came from the house 
 with streaming eyes. 
 
 CAME AS A TERRIBLE SURPRISE. 
 
 The city, not only in those parts near the Milburn house, 
 but all over, and even out in the Exposition grounds, went into a 
 state of ferment when the news of the sudden collapse of the 
 President was announced. The ill news of the early day had 
 been somewhat softened by the later afternoon announcement 
 that there was a slight improvement, and the sudden announce- 
 ment of his approaching dissolution came as a great surprise. 
 
 Up about the corners, near the Milburn house, was a pic_ 
 turesque but rather gruesome scene, when it is remembered that 
 the crowds gathered there were awaiting the President's death. 
 The half dozen tents and the two big election booths made it look 
 like the midway of a fair, but the ropes that were stretched from 
 corner to corner, the solemn looking police guard, the pacing 
 soldiers, and, above all, the quietness of the assembled multitude, 
 bore witness to the solemnity of the occasion. 
 
 The Milburn house was hardly discernible among the trees, 
 the lights in the house having been dimmed ; but at a few 
 minutes' intervals there would come out some person who had 
 information to bear, and then the eager crowd would surround 
 him. But from the time that Secretary Cortelyou told that the
 
 278 HOPE ENDING IN DESPAIR. 
 
 President was very weak, there was nothing to encourage a belief 
 that there could be a recovery. 
 
 A further description of the solemn scene is from an eye- 
 witness and is as follows : 
 
 " Once more the muffled drums are beating for a murdered 
 President. The piteous half-masted flag again hangs mournfully 
 above the housetops for the man chosen of the people, who has 
 been stricken down by an assassin. Men and women in the 
 streets of Buffalo, in the cars and in their hotels and homes mutter 
 this thing and lapse into mute wonder that it can be so. 
 
 "Our people are not given to vociferations. As they went 
 about their aifairs to-day, clad in light colors the women at least 
 one could but faintly guess the self-respecting sorrow at their 
 hearts, which would seem to call for sombre black, if color can be 
 emblematic of grief. But the deep grief was there. A word to 
 one of them brought the emotion to the surface. So I have seen 
 tears well up and trickle down manly faces and brows knit closely 
 and hands clutched ominously, for the President was dead. 
 
 THE WORLD KNEW IT, 
 
 " All the world knew it now. The world could and did share 
 their sorrow, but that did not lighten the load of sorrow upon 
 William McKinley's fellow citizens here. Anger was strong that 
 their President had been shot down an anger that no mere 
 wreaking of venegeance on the wretched murderer could satisfy, 
 but their tenderest pity, sympathy and love was for the man so 
 ' Rich in saving common sense, 
 And, as the greatest only are, 
 
 In his simplicity sublime.' 
 
 "Herein it was that though the busy city, shocked to the 
 core, paused not in its daily round, all hearts were beating with 
 the muffled drums for the murdered President, for the beloved 
 man stricken, like Lincoln and like Garfield, in the rich moment 
 of a nation's trust and at the pinnacle of a nation's power, and 
 beating as well for the widowed woman sitting in a daze of grief 
 in the room where the southern sun was sending light that
 
 HOPE ENDING IN DESPAIR. 279 
 
 brought 110 comfort and warmth that could master the chill upon 
 him at rest in the room near by. 
 
 " So the gray morning dawned on Buffalo. All the watchers 
 were weary at the Milburn house, and most of them were sleep- 
 ing, for now vigil would not avail. Like all the houses on either 
 side of Delaware avenue, the house stands apart from its neigh- 
 bors, with a strip of verdant lawn between it and the sidewalk of 
 the elm and maple shaded street. There are finer houses on the 
 avenue which is the avenue of such elegance as Buffalo knows 
 a fine dignified highway, bespeaking wealth and refinement in 
 its dwellers, and marking the various architectural steps in the 
 succession of builders. 
 
 HOUSE WHERE HE DIED. 
 
 "The Milburn house, with its ivy-clad porch, its pointed 
 gables, and wings painted in sober brownish gray where the ivy 
 is not clambering, would not be distinguished from a hundred 
 like it ; but in this world of mystery that is, of things happen- 
 ing which we fail fully to understand it had become perforce the 
 spot most to be regarded in the world to-da}^, and for a day 
 to come. After that the scene will shift to other places, as in the 
 way of the world of change. 
 
 " You have been told of the way the house is, and has been, 
 guarded since the fateful Friday at the Exposition, a mile or so 
 away the avenues and the cross streets roped off; of police- 
 men guarding the ropes and soldier sentinels pacing up and 
 down upon the green sward immediately surrounding the house ; 
 at the rope barriers, silent, whispering groups, waiting a word 
 from those within. 
 
 "Add the coming of night to that, the lights beginning to 
 show faintly in the house, and fear on the faces of all who come 
 and go upon the threshold. Step by step the way the grim battle 
 was going was known to those without the turn for the worse of 
 the night before ; the heroic measures taken to whip up the tired 
 out heart of the patient. 
 
 " It has been a day of gloom around the Milburn house. In
 
 280 HOPE ENDING IN DESPAIR. 
 
 ) 
 
 dignified silence many of the great men of the country have 
 entered the house of death, and in silence passed out of it. The 
 tense excitement and awful suspense of the preceding twenty- 
 four hours were followed to-day by a peace and quiet expressive 
 of the nation's mourning. American flags were early draped on 
 the front of the house, but otherwise there was no evidence of 
 mourning except in the sad hearts and faces of the hundreds who 
 called to pay their respects. 
 
 " On the lawns of the Milburn house the guards paced silently 
 to and fro, while policemen kept back the crowds that pressed 
 thick against the ropes which a block away cut off access to the 
 streets leading to the house where the body of the martyred Presi- 
 dent lies. By four o'clock this morning the nerve racking ten- 
 sion of those who for a day and a night had watched near the 
 bedside of the dying President, awaiting the announcement that 
 the end had come, gave way to calmness and resignation, and 
 only a few of the newspaper men and the telegraph operators 
 remained at the corner which a few hours before had been so 
 thronged. While the telegraph keys clicked off the details of one 
 of the saddest deaths in history the darkness slowly melted into 
 dawn and another day was ushered in. 
 
 SHOWING REMARKABLE FORTITUDE. 
 
 ''After the Milburn house became quiet at five o'clock this 
 morning the first word was brought out by Miss Duncan, who 
 said Mrs. McKinley was bearing up bravely. The undertakers 
 were then in the house and Secretary Cortelyou was sleeping. 
 Since Mr. McKinley was shot he had previously had only eight 
 hours sl^ep. 
 
 " Miss Helen McKinley, Miss Mary Barber and Mrs. Lafay- 
 ette McWilliams were the first callers. Lieutenant James 
 McKinley followed, and then Mrs. Garret A. Hobart arrived. In 
 a few minutes Mrs. McWilliams came out of the house, and as she 
 stepped into her carnage she said : l Mrs. McKinley is resting 
 quietly. She realized long before many others what the outcome 
 might be, and during the last few days had prepared herself.'
 
 HOPE ENDING IN DESPAIR. 281 
 
 " Secretaries Wilson, Hitchcock, Root and Smith, and Attor- 
 ney-General Knox arrived at half-past ten o'clock, and a few 
 minutes later Senator Hanna, Senator Burrows, Colonel Herrick 
 and former Judge Day came up, The Cabinet at once went into 
 session in the library, and invited Senator Hanna, Colonel Herrick 
 and Judge Day to join in their deliberations. 
 
 " The scene in the vicinity of the Milburn house at midnight, 
 the last midnight that William McKinley was to see for ever- 
 more, was weirdly pathetic. It was intensely dark with a thin 
 mist in the air, arising above the tree tops and making the 
 electric lights blind and glimmer uncanny. In the tents and 
 election booths devoted to the newspaper correspondents and 
 telegraph operators the light shone brightly, throwing the 
 shadows of the workers in sable silhouette against the gleaming 
 whiteness of the tents. Under the dark foliage of the arching 
 trees on Delaware avenue the gleam of a sentry's gun flashed 
 now and then as the noiseless figure in blue came and went like 
 a ghost" 
 
 GRIM SENTINELS IN BLACK. 
 
 Stretching away to the west along Ferry street, was a row 
 of yellow lights from carriage lamps where automobiles stood like 
 grim sentinels in black, waiting to bear the darkest tidings to 
 the country that it has heard in two score years. Just within the 
 confining limits of a cable that gleamed like a streak of saffron 
 under the electric light, a policeman paced to and fro, pausing 
 now and then to say a few words in an undertone to the groups 
 of waiting, restless, whispering correspondents, who either lined 
 up against the rope or else conversed in groups in the street 
 rapidly disintegrating to surround the latest comer from the house 
 that was covered not only by the blackness of the night but by 
 the shadow of impending death. 
 
 Absolute silence reigned within the cordon established a 
 week ago by the police. At all the intersecting streets two 
 squares away hundreds of people, men and women, some on 
 wheels, others in carriages, hundreds on foot, stood silently
 
 282 HOl'E ENDING IN DESPAIR. 
 
 waiting news from where the pale lights glimmered in the house 
 of death. Bvery comer from that direction was held up and ques- 
 tioned by the obliging policeman, while everyone stood on tip-toe 
 and listened with bated breath for the details. 
 
 The coming and going of notables occupied the attention of 
 the newspaper men, and furnished bulletins for the waiting world. 
 Over in the telegraph booths some of the correspondents who had 
 been on duty for forty hours almost constant^, tried to get a few 
 winks of sleep in hard, uncomfortable chairs. Messenger boys 
 lay prone on the floors of the booths and slept the sleep of 
 exhaustion. Scattered through the crowds of correspondents 
 outside were secret service men and plain clothes detectives. 
 Just what they were doing no one seemed able to fathom. 
 
 A NIGHT TO BE REMEMBERED. 
 
 Thus the dreary hours dragged on till midnight and after. 
 Word came that newsboys down town were calling extras that 
 the President was dead. Then the police began moving a crowd 
 of morbidly curious women and their escorts who had crowded 
 around the telegraph booth. Tired messenger boys were roused 
 from their sleep and sent skurrying down town with bunches of 
 "specials" as fast as bicycles could go under the pressure of 
 wearied legs. Some kind soul with the spirit of a Samaritan sent 
 in some refreshments in liquid form to the fagged operators and 
 tired correspondents. 
 
 There was a lull for ten minutes, the telegraph instruments 
 clicked out noisily with strident sounds in the chill darkness. 
 Somebody who had been there began drooning a story of San- 
 tiago and Schley, and the next instant, like a hurricane, a squad 
 of breathless men burst into the postal booth. There was a 
 murmur of "dead," a scurrying grab for copy paper, and a dozen 
 hands were writing the culmination of the story. 
 
 "Coroner Wilson has just gone into Milburns ; he was sum- 
 moned at 12. 10," exclaimed someone. Then there was a break 
 from the booth to where a little knot gathered at the ropes and 
 under the trees. Before half the correspondents could get across
 
 HOPE ENDING IN DESPAIR. 283 
 
 the street two figures, one that of Coroner Wilson, the other of 
 Harry Hamlin, disappeared under the trees toward the house. 
 
 "Stop it! Stop it!" came a sharp imperious voice. "Kill 
 that bulletin. He is not dead. Dr. Mann says he is still alive, 
 and that Janeway is conducting an examination." It was a 
 Washington correspondent, of national fame and wide experience 
 who uttered the words. 
 
 A hasty investigation revealed the truth of his announce- 
 ment, and then the bulletins were recalled. The President still 
 lived. 
 
 Down in the heart of the city a different scene was being 
 enacted. There all was life and bustle, excitement, execration, 
 anxiety ; every newspaper office had a thousand men and women 
 about it. Five-minute bulletins were posted as received by tele- 
 phone. 
 
 STREETS PACKED WITH PEOPLE. 
 
 Downtown, Main street was a human hive. Crowds as great 
 as any which have filled the streets in noontide packed the side- 
 walks and made passing of street cars almost impossible. Women 
 were almost as numerous as men. Here again police precaution 
 was evident, mounted police, the entire service, rode up and 
 down, pushed over toward the pavement, and kept the roadway 
 clear, and the throngs on the street moving. It was a queer 
 sight this thing of mounted police in the heart of the city. 
 
 Then above the clang of car gongs and the hoarse cries of 
 fakirs already on the streets with "souvenirs" of the assassin, 
 came the shrill resonant cries of the newsboys calling a midnight 
 extra. "The death of McKinley." It was a fake to be sure, but 
 it caught, and though the President was still this side of the Dark 
 River the cruel enterprise of the newsmonger had him robed for 
 the grave. 
 
 Rumors were thick, every other man on the street had a 
 fresh one and the latest was no worse than the first. Curious 
 crowds, mostly women, gathered around the telegraph offices and 
 craned their necks to watch the weary operators and hurrying 
 correspondents at their work. It was all unnatural, strange,
 
 284 HOPE ENDING IN DESPAIR. 
 
 almost incomprehensible. To this crowd on the street was added 
 from time to time groups recruited from the arriving trains, gap- 
 ing yokels with lunch for three days in a splint basket, trim 
 tourists and the canaille of the curb. It was believed to be the 
 President's death night, and all were eager, sympathetically eager 
 for the latest facts. 
 
 Another authority, who had a full knowledge of the situa- 
 tion, made the following statement : 
 
 "President McKinley never had one chance to recover from 
 the assassin's bullet, according to the widespread report of the 
 autopsy held this afternoon. Nature, doctors say, could not help 
 along the work of the surgeons. The President died of ' toxemia 
 caused by necrosis of the tissues.' That is another way of saying 
 that gangrene killed him. This could not have been prevented, 
 the doctors, say, by any surgical or medical treatment. 
 
 EVERY PROSPECT OF RECOVERY. 
 
 " The world was permitted to believe that President McKinley 
 was on the road to recovery, because some of the attending 
 physicians in talking for publication consented to construe the 
 President's condition as highly favorable after a considerable 
 period of time had elapsed without unfavorable symptoms being 
 made manifest. Professional etiquette restrains the doctors who 
 talk now from naming their fellows who were responsible for this. 
 All were too sanguine. 
 
 "Some of the doctors, notably Dr. Wasdin, are inclined to 
 believe that President McKinley was shot with poisoned bullets. 
 This is not proved. The only way in which it can be proved is 
 by examination of the remaining bullets, and particularly of the 
 bullet which struck the President in the breast. But the Presi- 
 dent would have died of his wounds if the bullets were perfectly 
 clean. His system did not possess the vitality to repair the dam- 
 age done to his vital organs. This does not mean that the Presi- 
 dent's system was in bad condition, but only that his vitality was 
 low, or, in other words, that he had small recuperative powers, as 
 result showed.
 
 HOPE ENDING IN DESPAIR. 286 
 
 "When the President was shot he received the best possible 
 surgical attention at the earliest possible moment. The sur- 
 geons exhausted all the resources of their science and skill. 
 After that they had to depend upon nature coming to their assist- 
 ance and nature failed them. The complications which followed the 
 mending of the President's wounds were, the doctors confess, fully 
 beyond their ken. The gangrenous affection did not manifest 
 itself in any way that could be detected by them. It brought about 
 those conditions of the heart and of the intestines which, during 
 the last two days, showed to the physicians that something was 
 wrong, but what it was they never knew to a certainty until they 
 made the autopsy to-day. 
 
 THE BULLET A MYSTERY. 
 
 " Lodgment of the second bullet in the abdominal wall back 
 of the stomach had nothing to do with the President's death. It 
 did all of its damage in the abdominal cavity. That bullet 
 remains a mystery. It was not located during the President's 
 life, and two hours of careful search for it after death failed to find 
 it. The fact that this bullet remained in the President's body 
 without setting up any disorder where it stopped, militates against 
 the theory that it might have been poisoned. 
 
 "The fatal bullet did more damage to the President's vital 
 organs than even they knew until to-day. They have assumed 
 that when they had repaired the wounds of the stomach they had 
 attended to all that was necessary. Damage to the suprarenal 
 capsule and the left kidney was never discovered by them during 
 the operation which was expected to save the President's life. 
 Why this was so has not yet been explained. 
 
 "The autopsy shows that the bullet passed through the 
 stomach near its lower quarter and then entered the muscles of 
 the backbone behind the kidneys and aorta. From that spot 
 surgical skill would have been utterly powerless to extract it 
 if it had been discovered. On its way the bullet tore away the 
 suprarenal capsule and pierced the left kidney, destroying the 
 upper part of that organ.
 
 286 HOPE ENDING IN DESPAIR. 
 
 " When the gangrene which developed also affected the pan- 
 creas, this set free poisons which entered the blood and affected 
 the heart, and so, in the end, produced death. The absorption of 
 these poisons was what caused the weakness and exhaustion of the 
 President. The cathartics administered Wednesday and Thurs- 
 day may have caused further weakness, but death would have 
 been inevitable without them. The wounded kidney of itself was not 
 a serious matter, according to Dr. Mann. He says the injury to that 
 organ might have developed in abscess, but that it was not neces- 
 sarily a part of the fatal conditions. The gangrene which 
 developed in the stomach wounds primarily and was communi- 
 cated to the pancreas, which supplies food to the stomach, was the 
 basic cause of death. 
 
 THE FIRST SHOT. 
 
 " The doctors commenced work on the autopsy about noon, as 
 soon as Coroner Wilson had officially viewed the President's body, 
 and had given them permission. They found that the first bullet 
 fired at President McKinley by the assassin did not pass through 
 the skin. It probably struck a button on his shirt or vest and 
 was deflected. After the cause of death had been determined the 
 doctors searched for the second, or fatal, bullet. They looked for 
 two hours, Dr. Mann says, and finally gave it up. A suggestion 
 was made that the X-ray apparatus be used to obtain a skiagraph 
 of the wounded region, but it was not done. 
 
 " After the autopsy the following official report, written by 
 Dr. Mann, the surgeon who performed the operation in laparotomy 
 on the President's stomach, was issued after being signed by all 
 of the consulting staff except Dr. McBurney. Bight other physi- 
 cians also signed. The report follows : 
 
 " ' The bullet which struck over the breast bone did not pass 
 through the skin, and did little harm. 
 
 " ' The other bullet passed through both walls of the stomach 
 near its lower border. Both holes were found to be perfectly closed 
 by the stitches, but the tissue around each hole had become gan- 
 grenous. After passing through the stomach the bullet passed
 
 HOPE ENDING IN DESPAIR. 287 
 
 into the back walls of the abdomen, hitting and tearing the upper 
 end of the kidney. This portion of the bnllet track was also 
 gangrenous, the gangrene involving the pancreas. The bullet has 
 not been found. 
 
 " 'There was no sign of peritonitis or disease of other organs. 
 The heart walls were very thin, and there was no evidence of any 
 attempt at repair on the part of nature, and death resulted from 
 the gangrene, which affected the stomach around the bullet 
 wounds as well as the tissues around the further course of the 
 bullet. Death was unavoidable by any surgical or medical treat- 
 ment, and was the direct result of the bullet wound. 
 
 " '(Signed) Harvey D. Gaylord, M. D.; Herman G. Matzinger, 
 M. D.; P. M. Rixey, M. D.; Matthew D. Mann, M. D.; Herman 
 Mynter, M. D. ; Roswell Park, M. D. ; Eugene Wasdin, M. D. ; 
 Charles G. Stockton, M. D.; Edward G. Janeway, M. D.; W. W. 
 Johnson, M. D.; W. P. Kendall, U. S. A.; Charles Cary, M. D.; 
 Edward L. Munson, assistant surgeon, U. S. A., and Hermanus 
 L. Baer, M. D.' 
 
 CONCLAVE OF DOCTORS. 
 
 "Drs. Rixey, Mann, Mynter, Park and Wasdin were the 
 attending surgeons. Dr. Stockton was added to the staff Thurs- 
 day night. Drs. Janeway and Johnson were the heart specialists 
 sent for on Friday. Dr. Baer is Abner McKinley's son-in-law. 
 The others were Buffalo practitioners of note, who were merely 
 called in to assist at the autopsy." 
 
 Dr. Roswell Park, speaking of the probable direct cause of 
 the President's death, said : " Apparently the bullet after passing 
 through the stomach penetrated to the pancreatic gland, though 
 we were not able to discover this fact while the President lived. 
 The ball cut a small grove through an edge of the left kidney 
 and then reached the pancreas, afterward imbedding itself some- 
 where in the muscles or tissues of the back. There was nothing 
 to indicate that the pancreas had been struck by the bullet in the 
 examinations that were made at the time of the first opera- 
 tion.
 
 288 HOPE ENDING IN DESPAIR. 
 
 "After the wound and incision made by the operating 
 surgeons had been closed, it seems that the pancreas fluid escaped 
 steadily into the system. Of course, there was no way for us to 
 know this, or we should have discovered some trace of the fact. 
 We could not cut through to where the ball had embedded itself 
 and trace its course backward from there. The pancreas fluid, 
 which properly aids in the assimilation of starchy stuffs, flowed 
 constantly from the wound and was absorbed by the tissues. It 
 reached the veins, and through them the heart. It likewise 
 provoked gangrene of the tissues. No, the use of the X-ray 
 would not have aided in the discovery of this trouble." 
 
 " Did the possibility of the pancreas having been entered by 
 the bullet ever enter into the calculation of the surgeons when 
 they were in consultation ? " 
 
 NO WAY TO FIND OUT. 
 
 " Not until the President took the turn for the worse, after 
 he had taken the solid food Thursday. Then it was only 
 discussed in a negative fashion, not regarded as among the 
 possibilities. In any event, there was no method by which we 
 could have discovered the fact. The President realized that 
 there was no hope for his recovery at least forty-eight hours 
 before he passed away. He was never told by those at his side 
 that they knew he could not live. The X-ray was brought to 
 the house only with the idea of having it near and in readiness 
 should the occasion arise for its use. We did not find that it 
 could help us at any time." 
 
 Dr. Park did not explain how President McKinley knew that 
 he was beyond recovery at a time when the physicians were 
 sending out favorable bulletins and all but announcing that he 
 was out of danger. 
 
 Dr Mynter, who was in attendance upon the President almost 
 from the moment he was struck down, said: "The assassin's 
 bullet, from what our examinations demonstrated, passed first 
 through the abdomen, then through the front and back of the 
 stomach. From there it tore through the mesentery of the colon
 
 HOPE ENDING IN DESPAIR. 288 
 
 transversum, notched off a corner of the left kidney and passed 
 through the rear wall of the peritoneum. After that it dis- 
 appeared in the muscles of the back, and we could get no trace 
 of its resting place. It would not have been possible to cut in 
 and reach it. 
 
 " I have treated hundreds of gunshot wounds in my experi- 
 ence as a surgeon, but never before have I found that conditions 
 developed such as have come up in this case. From the point of 
 entrance of the ball to where it disappeared there had developed a 
 gangrenous course. There was no peritonitis. 
 
 " You ask me if the bullet was poisoned ? I must tell you 
 that I do not know. I have never come in contact with an instance 
 of a bullet being poisoned, but there is this gangrenous course, 
 such as neither I nor any of the other surgeons attending the 
 President had ever encountered. I cannot account for it. 
 
 THERE WAS NO HOPE. 
 
 " The President's stomach was amply capable of retaining 
 what food was given to him, but the gangrenous spots in the wall 
 of the organ were working the mischief. Had he survived the 
 night, I am satisfied that to-day would have found these mortified 
 portions falling away, dropping the contents of the stomach into 
 the abdomen, and then death would have ensued quickly. 
 
 " Most assuredly the solids given him worked not one whit of 
 harm. We only permitted him to have a few nibbles of toast, 
 that he might chew on them and remove the secretions from his 
 tongue. It was absolutely necessary and worked no injury. 
 The coffee was beneficial, what little he had of it. I give coffee as 
 a stimulant where people suffer from heart trouble." 
 
 Dr. Matthew D. Mann, the surgeon who performed the opera- 
 tion on President McKinley immediately after the shooting, and 
 who was principally in charge of the case during the President's 
 prostration, said that the autopsy showed two unquestionable facts: 
 
 First, that the President never had the slightest chance to 
 recover; and 
 
 Second, that the surgical steps taken immediately after he 
 
 19
 
 290 HOPE ENDING IN DESPAIR. 
 
 was shot were what might have saved his life under favorable 
 conditions. 
 
 Dr. Mann said that the President's hurt was one that under 
 nearly any circumstances would be fatal. In the case of a young 
 man in perfect health and vigor the same prompt surgical atten- 
 tion after the same injuries might save life. 
 
 "The evidence we find after the autopsy," said Dr. Mann, 
 "is to this effect. Even the first impulse toward recovery never 
 existed in the President's case. The bullet wound showed abso- 
 lutely no intention to heal. Nature did absolutely nothing to 
 mend the damage. The bullet punctures in the stomach were 
 held together by the sutures, preventing the escape of foreign 
 matter into the abdominal cavity, but the tissues had shown no 
 disposition to unite. The President's death was due to the poison 
 developed by the gangreneous condition of the bullet wound. 
 The poison was absorbed into the system, and killed just as 
 surely as would poison taken by the mouth. 
 
 FAVORABLE SYMPTOMS. 
 
 "There was no high inflammation. The constant low temper- 
 ature, of course, demonstrates that, and there was no evidence of 
 peritonitis or septicemia. I can only say that the President was 
 in a low condition, and repair by nature consequently did not 
 follow his injury. 
 
 " I do not mean by that that the President was not physically 
 strong. The condition I define is different from physical weak- 
 ness. His vitality was low ; he had no recuperative powers. It 
 was found that his heart was rather thin. I mean by that that 
 like any other muscle of the body which is not kept at a proper 
 development by exercise, it lacked strength." 
 
 I asked Dr. Mann if it is true that the President died simply 
 from heart failure. 
 
 "No," said he, "that was not the cause of death. As I said 
 a few minutes ago, the cause of death is absolutely plain. It was 
 gangreneous poison. Many a man has a heart like President 
 McKinley. Any man who leads a sedentary life gets short of
 
 HOPE ENDING IN DESPAIR. 291 
 
 wind. That is due to the fact that his heart, not beiiig sufficiently 
 exercised, is more or less thin." 
 
 "How is it," was asked, "that the bullet was not found in 
 the autopsy ? " 
 
 "The only answer to that question is that the bullet was not 
 discoverable. In three hours' search it could not be found. I 
 think that fact is sufficient reply to any possible critcism which 
 may have been offered concerning the failure of the surgeons to 
 search for the bullet during the first operation. At the autopsy, 
 with the abdomen open and the breastbone removed, it was 
 impossible to find the bullet. How futile, therefore, would have 
 been the effort to find it when the President was living? " 
 
 The following lines are expressive of the tender sympathy 
 felt for Mrs. McKinley : 
 
 DEAR HEART AND TRUE. 
 
 Dear Heart, who mourning has the grief 
 
 Of this wide world to soothe her own ! 
 
 For but to hear the name of the beloved 
 
 Breathed by some other voice full tenderly 
 
 Hath kept full many a heart from breaking quite ; 
 
 And thus, so she ; to her the silence kept inviolate, 
 
 Or broken but by harmony of sacred song, 
 
 Or slow, sweet, music of the vibrant bells 
 
 That girt the earth with sound ; 
 
 Sure this must soothe, uplift, inspire, 
 
 To wait to wait another day 
 
 A day when all her days of sorrow 
 
 Soothed by his dear love ; 
 
 When all her days of sorrow sweetened by such memories, 
 
 Are done. And then The Silence, Silence ! 
 
 Then, The Wakening, The Life ! 
 
 So, fuller, richer, grander, by the depths of this, 
 
 So, satisfying and eterne ! 
 
 So, borne above her loss by myriads ; 
 
 So, wrapt in incense of their prayers ; 
 
 So, thought on by all women and all men, 
 
 She still may live live on, 
 
 Dear Heart and True ! 
 
 * 
 
 A very appreciative notice of President McKinley appeared 
 in the "Atlanta Constitution," and was only one of hundreds of
 
 292 HOPE ENDING IN DESPAIR. 
 
 similar expressions of grief throughout the South. Nowhere was 
 Mr. KcKinley better loved or more sincerely mourned. 
 
 ALL IS OVER. 
 
 " With the final ceremonies of state, rendered in the federal 
 capitol building yesterday, the nation has taken leave of the late 
 Dresident. 
 
 "Today, in Canton, he belongs to his family. Tomorrow, in 
 his grave, he will belong to eternity. 
 
 "The assassin's work was a shock to the nation. In the 
 desperation of the hour of affliction the public heart was hardened 
 and called for vengeance. By the catafalque upon which the body 
 of the victim laid so reposefully, we almost caught the smile of 
 life the victim, the offering upon the altar of country, was 
 surrounded by estranged hearts made one. Let no rude voice 
 ever presume to disturb this holy consecration to country ! 
 
 " Upon the firing line of organized society Mr. McKinley had 
 stood. The society that had fought its battle for recognition 
 through the darkness of patriarchalism ; that had found some 
 consideration in feudalism ; that had been rudely pressed back 
 by absolutism, found its resting place upon a new continent, and 
 its exemplars stood in an honored line, at one end of which was 
 George Washington at the other, William McKinley ! But 
 though society had fought this battle against power, it has not 
 yet won in the struggle against ignorance and vice. Vice, malig- 
 nant, did its work in Buffalo, but society has shown itself strong 
 enough to rally and stand upon its feet. McKinley has fallen 
 upon the firing line of progress ; his body has been borne away 
 from the trench to receive the honors due the soldier dead at the 
 post of duty. 
 
 The President found a mighty nation when he was called 
 into office. Washington had established its independence. 
 Jefferson had outlined its civic purpose. Monroe had warned 
 the world of its growing importance. Lincoln had held it 
 together against an inherited struggle. 
 
 McKinley found the nation strong and rich, but torn by seeds
 
 HOPE ENDING IN DESPAIR. 293 
 
 of dissension. With a courtesy chivalry had never approached ; 
 with a kindliness so apparent that it allowed of no donbt, he 
 touched the sensitive point, and pronounced the words that 
 restored the unity of purpose that had marked the Continentals 
 when they fought and starved together in 1776. 
 
 This is the man whose body has lain in the nation's Capitol, 
 and from whom we have taken leave. Magnanimous, kind- 
 hearted, patriotic, he has been borne away, and the nation, weep- 
 ing over a fallen leader, feels the stronger for the work he has 
 done.
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 Obsequies of Our Martyred President Extraordinary 
 Demonstrations of Public Sorrow Body Lying in 
 State at Buffalo Immense Throngs of People Passing 
 the Bier Short and Simple Funeral Services. 
 
 IT had rained fitfully through the night, but as the morning 
 advanced a genial sun dispelled the heavy clouds. The 
 morning to which Buffalo awoke was balmy, and seemed to have 
 done with its sorrow. But the people had not ; they had learned 
 that services for the dead President would be held at the Miiburn 
 house, and that later the body of the murdered President would 
 lie in State at the City Hall. 
 
 By general consent they resolved to await the latter oppor- 
 tunity of looking upon his face in death which a short nine days 
 before they had seen in ruddy life. The streets were astir earl 3^ 
 but the movement was that of a people sorely oppressed with 
 grief, and the gentle sunlight did but give it a silver lining. At 
 the roped barriers drawn around the City Hall they gathered and 
 waited patiently. Down the abutting streets they stretched out, 
 two abreast, for half a mile in two directions, silent or talking in 
 low tones, most of them wearing white badges with " We mourn 
 our loss" and the late President's portrait in black. As for a 
 brother, a father, were they mourning, without the smallest tinge 
 of affectation. 
 
 Along the main streets mourning insignia of black, black 
 and white and purple had been placed. The displa3>-s were man}^, 
 but scarcely one was worthy of particular note. A broad crape 
 streamer dependent from a half draped flag was the most effective 
 emblem seen. The washed out flags put up in joy over the 
 Exposition were too many for the little mourning material used, 
 but the tender respect was there all the same. 
 
 As it was Sunday, the commercial false note common to such 
 
 294
 
 OBSEQUIES OF OUR MARTYRED PRESIDENT. 295 
 
 occasions was not heard. The street fakirs who on Saturday had 
 hidden their Pan-American souvenirs and had substituted for 
 them stocks of funeral emblems, were out of sight. Nothing 
 marred the dignity, the decorum of the day. The police had 
 little to do in managing the crowds. A word was silently obeyed. 
 Democracy was preaching a powerful sermon, and all that 
 happened until nightfall bore it out. All was for ordered liberty 
 among equals before the law. The thrill of emotion made it as 
 human and living as it well could be. 
 
 The new President, bodily tired and mentally worn out, had 
 slept well in the pillared house on the avenue. There was no 
 waking, alas, for him whom the new one had succeeded. At the 
 Milburn cottage, where lay the remains of William McKinley, 
 the sunshine was fitfully busy, making arabesques of shadows on 
 the lawn, over which the sentries still were pacing. At the 
 distant barriers of rope there was no great crowd. 
 
 ON THE WATCH FOR ASSASSINS. 
 
 There was close scrutiny of all who wished to pass. This 
 was so not merely because of the desire to limit the number near 
 the house of death, but also because of the dread that in some 
 friendly guise another murderer would pass, and this is the curse 
 of crime. lake the enemy in the night, it scatters tares of dis- 
 trust between man and man where the wheat of loving confidence 
 should grow. The uniformed police were watchful and not a 
 little feverishly nervous, and secret service men swarmed at every 
 elbow. 
 
 In th 'i cottage the simple preparations had been made for the 
 service. Perhaps in holding the services at the cottage simplicity 
 had been over strained. The smallest church will hold more 
 people than the parlor of the largest cottage. Great care had 
 been taken in limiting the invitations, but even nearly half of 
 those who came could not enter and remain. Doubtless other and 
 more delicate considerations ruled in making the order of things 
 what it was. 
 
 By half-past ten a goodly number had arrived. In tall silk
 
 296 OBSEQUIES OF OUR MARTYRED PRESIDENT. 
 
 hats, black coats and black gloves they stood in groups upon the 
 lawn and waited. Some came on foot, but most in carriages, the 
 ropes being lowered and raised as the carriages went past. Hard 
 on eleven the hearse with its four high stepping, coal black Flem- 
 ish horses, its fringed black hammercloth and silver-plated 
 carriage lamps, drove up a simple equipage enough, such as any 
 well to do private family might engage. Why not a catafalque 
 for the nation's dead ? Again a nice discretion ruled, a deference 
 to the well known law of the simple ways of life and death 
 that marked William McKiuley. 
 
 Anon the rhythmic tramp of many feet is heard, and the 
 armed escort is marching by. Barely two hundred men they 
 seem, and chosen from all the arms of the service. Sailors in 
 their brown-legginged short dress, marines with a touch of red on 
 their blue uniform, a company of regulars, a couple of companies 
 from the National Guard, a handful from the Hospital Corps 
 
 that was all. 
 
 THE CABINET IN ATTENDANCE. 
 
 Members of the Cabinet began to appear. Postmaster-Gen- 
 eral Smith and Secretary Wilson, the latter the more venerable 
 looking, with his gray beard, entered the house. Governor Odell, 
 very erect, waited on the lawn. General "Dan" Sickles, in a 
 Grand Army hat, hobbled out of his carriage on his crutches. He 
 was coming to see another old soldier of the civil war another 
 comrade laid to rest. 
 
 Secretary Root, very careworn, came on foot with some 
 ladies. Senator Hanna, the gravity of a great loss brooding over 
 him and making him forgetful at moments of what was said and 
 done about him, stood apart. Secretary Long, who is proverbially 
 forgetful of the small things of life, came in a straw hat ; but 
 the hat was so much in his hand, and his strong, earnest face 
 was so seamed with grief, that the unconventional headgear was 
 noticed by few. 
 
 Six members of the Cabinet were on the lawn or in the house 
 when, at a minute or two before eleven, President Roosevelt 
 stepped out of his plain carriage. He was dressed in tasteful
 
 OBSEQUIES OF OUR MARTYRED PRESIDENT. 297 
 
 black, and raised his tall hat in salute many times as he walked 
 through the crowd on the lawn, now lined up with a passage 
 between. The sun was still shifting from glow to shadow as the 
 lines on the lawn followed the President into the house. 
 
 Entering beneath ivied porch and turning to the right in the 
 wide hall, one was at once in the room where all that was not im- 
 mortal of President McKinley lay. No attempt had been made 
 to alter this parlor and library into a mortuary chamber. So the 
 black shadow did not fall so heavily across one on entering. 
 Another step, and the coffin on its trestle was before one. 
 
 THE HISTORIC ROOM. 
 
 It is a large, oblong room, and book shelves line it in places. 
 It has two windows that let light in through thin white curtains. 
 A large photograph of the mutilated winged victory caught much 
 of this light, and seemed painfully emblematic of what was doing 
 there, standing out as it did from the wall paper, which showed 
 great bunches of red flowers on a white ground. The upper part 
 of the coffin cover had been removed, and a national flag draped 
 about the lower part, on which rested wreaths of white asters, 
 yellow roses and a large one of purple asters. Other wreaths 
 there were around the trestles. 
 
 As the mourners entered they passed up to the windows and 
 down on the left side of the coffin, gazing on the dead face with 
 his own tide of emotion within his breast. Some lingered and 
 gazed, and many tears fell, but not a word was spoken, save a 
 whispered one to those who wished to pass out rather than bear 
 the oppressive moments that were to follow. 
 
 The dead President's head rested on a pillow of tufted white 
 satin ; his left hand lay across his breast. They had dressed him 
 in black, a black tie, a white stand-up collar. In the lapel of his 
 coat was a bronze Grand Army button, sole ornament, sole emblem 
 of what he had been a lover of his country, faithful unto death. 
 The features were somewhat shrunk and drawn with suffering, 
 and the skin was yellowish ; but the sacrament of a great peace 
 was upon his closed eyelids, and the bony modeling of chin and
 
 203 OBSEQUIES OF OUR MARTYRED PRESIDENT. 
 
 forehead and the clear line of the silent lips showed that his type 
 was noble, and that the heart which refused to beat longer was 
 true while it could pulsate. 
 
 Opposite the house on the other side of the avenue the band 
 of the Sixty-fifth was stationed, and, as the coffin was borne on 
 the shoulders of eight corporals, one from each branch of the 
 united services, came down the path a long roll came from the. 
 muffled drums, and then the President's favorite hymn was played 
 as the coffin was placed in the hearse. The following are the 
 words of the hymn : 
 
 I. Nearer, my God, to Thee, 
 
 Nearer to Thee ; 
 E'en though it be a Cross 
 
 That raiseth me ; 
 Still all my song shall be, 
 
 Nearer, my God, to Thee, 
 Nearer, my God, to Thee, 
 
 Nearer to Thee ! 
 
 II. Though like the wanderer, 
 
 The sun gone down, 
 Darkness be over me, 
 
 My rest a stone, 
 Yet in my dreams I'd be, 
 
 Nearer, my God, to Thee, 
 Nearer, my God, to Thee, 
 
 Nearer to Thee ! 
 
 III. There let the way appear 
 
 Steps unto heaven ; 
 All that Thou sendest me 
 
 In mercy given ; 
 Angels to beckon me 
 
 Nearer, my God, to Thee, 
 Nearer to Thee ! 
 
 IV. Or if on joyful wing, 
 
 Cleaving the sky, 
 Sun, moon and stars forgot; 
 
 Upward I fly 
 Still all my song shall be, 
 
 Nearer, my God, to Thee, 
 Nearer to Thee !
 
 OBSEQUIES OF OUR MARTYRED PRESIDENT. 299 
 
 President Roosevelt and the Cabinet followed the coffin and 
 entered the first two carriages. Governor Odell and Senator Hanna 
 rode together, the latter' s broad face still wet. So they followed, 
 foreign diplomats with stolid faces, Senators and officials and 
 former officials. The son of former President Harrison was about. 
 Former Attorney General Bissell, a relic of Cleveland's time, and 
 so like Mr. Cleveland, passed from the honse on foot. 
 
 The military escort deployed from column of four to column 
 of platoons, and, led by the band, to the tap of a single drum, 
 passed slowly down the avenue, the regulars carrying a furled 
 flag, with a draping of crepe. On each side of the hearse was a 
 guard of honor of eight sailors from the Michigan. The people 
 below the barriers awaited the passing of the funeral cortege in 
 respectful sympathetic silence, and so saw it pass slowly by in 
 solemn dignity. 
 
 CROWDS AROUND THE CITY HALL. 
 
 Down about the City Hall, a handsome pile of granite in the 
 heart of Buffalo, two miles away, the crowd had become enor- 
 mous, but Chief Bull has learned to handle crowds, and there was 
 no pushing, no confusion. Such of us as did not go with the 
 funeral procession went at once to the City Hall, where the pre- 
 parations for a public view of the dead President had been admi- 
 rably made, and, as it proved, strictly carried out. Scarcely, 
 however, had we entered the hall than a torrential downpour of 
 rain began. The procession was still nearly a quarter of a mile 
 away, the strains of Chopin's funeral march coming faintly to 
 our ears. Every man not in a closed carriage must have been 
 soaked through and through. 
 
 On the spacious main floor of the City Hall, which is reached 
 by a flight of stone steps, the walls were hung in black and the 
 large recesses on either side tastefully banked with palms and 
 palmettos. Near the center of the hall, at a point midway between 
 four lighted six branch chandeliers, was the slightly inclined 
 platform for the coffin. Up the steps it was borne by its eight 
 bearers, who turned deftly they carry the dead, feet foremost and
 
 300 OBSEQUIES OF OUR MARTYRED PRESIDENT. 
 
 lowered their precious burden gently into its place, the lid was 
 removed, some adjustments made, and then the lower part of the 
 lid replaced, while President Roosevelt and the chief mourners 
 stood on either side. When all was in place, the President and 
 Cabinet, again looking on the body within, passed out of the rear 
 of the hall to their carriages. 
 
 The rain was falling at intervals, but it could not keep the 
 crowd of citizens away. It was the hour of the people, and a 
 little rain could not keep them back. On, in moist garments, 
 they came, two by two, in two streams, looked sharply down at 
 the form in the coffin and were hurried along and out. Hour 
 after hour the living stream continued. At each side of the coffin 
 and at each end stood a man on guard. A sailor with drawn cutlas, 
 an officer with drawn sword, a marine and a regular with fixed 
 bayonets. Thece was no time for incidents beyond hurrying the 
 few, inconsiderate of those behind, who wished to linger because 
 they loved and pitied. But all was done gently, and the tide was 
 
 kept flowing. 
 
 INDIANS AS MOURNERS. 
 
 It was toward four o'clock that the most picturesque visit was 
 made. One hundred and fifty Indians, chiefs, braves, squaws, and 
 pappooses from the Exposition, dressed in their many colored 
 blankets, with painted faces, entered the hall. A great wreath of 
 asters had preceded them, bearing an inscription to the Great 
 White Chief. As they came into the hall in a great group they 
 looked wildly about them, but the hush of it all, the solemnity, 
 the casket under the lights, the statue like figures of the guard, 
 had an awesome effect upon them, and they fell into a line of 
 two abreast at a word from their white leader, and so passed up to 
 where the coffin lay. As each Indian chief or brave came up he 
 halted, drew a white aster from the folds of his blanket and gently 
 placed it on the coffin. Then with some muttered word passed on. 
 
 Long had they wished to see the Great White Father ; that 
 -wish was the final lure that drew many of them to the Exposition. 
 Day after day they had come to their white leader. " When will 
 the Great Father come ? " He came, they saw him, and then they
 
 OBSEQUIES OF OUR MARTYRED PRESIDENT. 301 
 
 heard lie was shot. Great was their anger, great their desire to 
 see vengeance wreaked upon the murderer. They would hunt 
 him. He was caught, they were told. If the President died the 
 murderer would be put to death. Oh, no ; that was not their 
 idea. Give him to them and let them give him the terrible 
 Apache formula. 
 
 The Sioux, the Arapahoes could torture him with many 
 varieties of pain, but to kill him quick, like that, clapping their 
 hands, Oh, infamous. Do you love your great chief that you 
 kill the treacherous murderer in a flash ? Long after the Indians 
 had passed the grave white people continued to come and go. A 
 river of love and compassion, and as night was falling and the 
 stars were coming out in the clear vault of the deep blue sky the 
 line still was moving without apparent end. 
 
 RED MEN'S FAREWELL TO THE GREAT CHIEF. 
 
 The following touching inscription accompanied a wreath or 
 purple asters, the tribute of the Indians at the Pan-American 
 Exposition : 
 
 " Farewell of Chief Geronimo, Blue Horse, Flat Iron and 
 Red Shirt and the 700 braves of the Indian Congress. Like 
 Lincoln and Garfield, President McKinley never abused authority 
 except on the side of mercy. The martyred great White Chief 
 will stand in memory next to the Saviour of mankind ; we loved 
 him living ; we love him still." 
 
 Another account of the simple services at the house contains 
 the following particulars : By the head of the coffin on its 
 right stood President Roosevelt, upright as at attention, his hat 
 held to his breast, his eyes fixed on the face of the dead. Secre- 
 tary Root and the other members of the Cabinet were in line with 
 him, and below these was Governor Odell and behind him 
 Senator Hanna. The room was now uncomfortably full. The 
 hall was full and across the dining room was full. Many passed 
 out and stood bareheaded on the lawn, for now the services were 
 beginning. 
 
 Unseen of all below and on the floor above the widow of the
 
 302 OBSEQUIES OF OUR MARTYRED PRESIDENT. 
 
 dead remained with Mrs. and Miss Barber by her, and Dr. Rixey 
 caring for her. She said little one heard, only begging that if 
 her dead were to be taken away for the people to see that he be 
 brought back to the house again, that she might watch with him 
 till morning and all this with little or no outward sign of grief, 
 for she sees but dimly through the veil. Those who are without 
 and within think of her. 
 
 Magnificently impressive, by reason of their simplicity, were 
 the services at Buffalo over all that remained of William McKinley 
 save the memory that will linger in the hearts of the American 
 people, whom he loved and who loved and trusted him. The 
 grandeur and pomp that ofttimes lift, at the last, men of mean 
 attainments to a pinnacle of suppositions greatness were not 
 present. They would have been so far out of place as to be a 
 shock to the sorrowing hearts that gathered at the Milburn cottage 
 in Delaware avenue at eleven o'clock. 
 
 EXTREMELY SIMPLE CEREMONIES. 
 
 Could President McKinley have directed the ceremonies him- 
 self, those who knew him best are united in the belief that he 
 would have changed none of the details. It was a simple cere- 
 mony. Except for the presence of many of the most distinguished 
 men in the nation, the services in the house might have been the 
 last words said over any one of a hundred thousand men, so far as 
 one unacquainted with the facts could have observed. 
 
 Barely two hundred people were admitted to the house, and 
 those only by special invitation. Except for the newspaper men, 
 the military escort, and the guard of police there were few people 
 within a block of the cottage while the services were in progress. 
 
 During the morning the casket was taken down stairs and 
 was placed in the large library at the front of the house, just off 
 the hall. It rested between the two front windows, with the head 
 toward the street and about two feet from a large pier glass. The 
 upper half of the casket was open, and on the lower half rested a 
 large wreath of purple violets, red roses and white chrysanthe- 
 mums. Two other wreaths of red roses and white chrysanthe-
 
 OBSEQUIES OF OUR MARTYRED PRESIDENT. 303 
 
 mums rested on a marble shelf at the base of the mirror. The 
 carpet itself was draped with a large American flag. 
 
 Shortly after 10 o'clock those invited to the ceremony began 
 to arrive. At first they came singly or in small parties, and there 
 was considerable intervals between the arrivals of the carriages, 
 but as the honr for the service drew nearer, carriages drove up 
 in rapid succession. Until just before eleven o'clock very few 
 entered the house, preferring to remain on the lawn, where they, 
 for the most part, stood in silent groups, awed by the sad mission 
 on which they had come. Most of them, however, had gone in 
 when, at three minutes of eleven, President Roosevelt drove up 
 in a carriage with Mr. and Mrs. Ansley Wilcox. He shook hands 
 in silence with several members of the Cabinet, who met him at the 
 carriage, and then slowly walked to the piazza and into the house. 
 
 MILITARY AND NAVAL ESCORT. 
 
 Meanwhile, a company of regulars of the Fourteenth Regi- 
 ment, from Fort Porter; a detail of marines from Camp Haywood, 
 at the Pan-American Exposition; a company of marines from the 
 steamship "Michigan," and a company each from the Sixty-fifth 
 and Seventy-fourth Regiments, of the National Guard of New 
 York, had drawn up in Delaware avenue, and, stretched out in a 
 long line, facing the house, stood at rest. 
 
 At each door and window in the room in which lay the casket 
 a regular or marine had been posted. At one of the front win- 
 dows stood a soldier and at the other a sailor. At the door leading 
 into the hall stood a marine and a regular ; at the door leading 
 into the dining-room at the rear a marine was posted, and a 
 sergeant stood at the door leading into a smaller library on the 
 north side of the house. 
 
 In this small library were most of the members of the 
 McKinley family and a few of their closest friends. Mrs. 
 McKinley, the chief sufferer of all, did not come down stairs 
 during the services. With Mrs. Barber, Miss Barber, Mrs. 
 Hobart and Dr. Rixey, she sat at the head of the stairs leading 
 into the main hall. All the doors were open, and she could hear
 
 304 OBSEQUIES OF OUR MARTYRED PRESIDENT. 
 
 every word of the minister's earnest prayer, and the sweet strains 
 of the choir reached her in her seclusion as they sang the Presi- 
 dent's favorite hymns. 
 
 Not once did she break down, but sat through it all silent 
 and possessed. It seemed as if her great grief had exhausted 
 her power for suffering. With a handkerchief at her eyes, she 
 buried her suffering in her broken heart as she sat there, hardly 
 stirring, until j ust before the casket was carried out. Then she 
 was gently raised from her chair and led away to her own room. 
 
 It was a quarter before eleven o'clock when the people who 
 had been waiting on the lawn entered the house and in single file 
 passed into the room where the casket lay. Casting a last look 
 on the features of the President, most of them returned to the 
 main hall, but enough remained to fill every available spot in the 
 library. Senator Hanna was the first man of national prominence 
 to enter the room. He was followed by the Cabinet members, 
 who took seats on chairs that had been reserved for them to the 
 left of the casket, while the Senator sat down beside Governor 
 Odell on the right side of the room. 
 
 COMPANY ROSE IN HIS HONOR. 
 
 President Roosevelt entered the library from the small room 
 where the members of the family sat at one minute before 1 1 
 o'clock. As he came in every one rose. Gravely he walked past 
 the line of the Cabinet members to the head of the casket. For 
 a moment he gazed on the face of McKinley. His eyes were 
 suffused with tears and his mouth twitched, but with a superb 
 effort he mastered his emotions, and during the remainder of the 
 service his face was set and grim. 
 
 Turning, Mr. Roosevelt spoke in a low voice to Secretary 
 Long, who stood next to him. He evidently requested that Cabi- 
 net precedence be observed, for Secretary Root took Secretary 
 Long's place in the line. Back of Mr. Root stood Postmaster- 
 General Smith, and then, in order, Secretary Long, Attorney 
 General Knox, Secretary Hitchcock and Secretary Wilson. 
 
 At this moment the Rev. Dr. Charles Edward Locke, of the
 
 OBSEQUIES OF OUR MARTYRED PRESIDENT. 305 
 
 Delware Avenue Methodist Episcopal Church, son of that Dr. 
 Locke who for many years was the McKinley pastor at Canton, 
 entered the room through the double doors connecting with the 
 dining room. 
 
 He went to the door leading into the outer hall so that his 
 words might be audible to Mrs. McKinley, who sat at the head 
 of the stairs leading up from the hall, and there took his stand. 
 The quartet from the First Presbyterian Church had been sta- 
 tioned in the dining room, and with the sweet strains of " Lead, 
 Kindly Light," the services were begun. Eyes that before had 
 been dry and hard filled with tears as this verse was sung with 
 exquisite feeling and pathos. 
 
 DIVINE AID EARNESTLY SOUGHT. 
 
 Dr. Locke raised his hands as the music died away. For a 
 moment there was intense silence, then in prayer, his words 
 uttered so that they reached the ears of the woman sorrowing for 
 her dead, he made this eloquent appeal : 
 
 " ' O God, our help in ages past, 
 
 Our hope for years to come, 
 Our shelter from the stormy blast, 
 
 And our eternal home.' 
 
 " We, Thy servants, humbly beseech Thee for manifestations 
 of Thy favor as we come into Thy presence. We laud and mag- 
 nify Thy holy name and praise Thee for all Thy goodness. Be 
 merciful unto us and bless us as, stricken with overwhelming 
 sorrow, we come unto Thee. Forgive us for our doubts and fears 
 and faltering faith ; pardon all our sins and shortcomings, and 
 help us to say, ' Thy will be done.' In this night of grief abide 
 with us till the dawning. Speak to our troubled souls, O, God, 
 and give to us in this hour of unutterable grief the peace and quiet 
 which Thy presence only can afford. We thank Thee that Thou 
 answerest the sobbing sigh of the heart, and dost assure us that 
 if a man die he shall live again. 
 
 " We praise Thee for Jesus Christ, thy Son, our Saviour and 
 
 20
 
 306 OBSEQUIES OF OUR MARTYRED PRESIDENT. 
 
 Blder Brother, that He came 'to bring life and immortality to 
 light,' and because He lives we shall live also. We thank Thee 
 that death is victory, that 'to die is gain.' Have mercy upon us 
 in this dispensation of Thy Providence. We believe in Thee we 
 trust Thee our God of Love, 'the same yesterday, to-day and 
 forever'. 
 
 " We thank Thee for the unsullied life of Thy servant, our 
 martyred President, whom Thou hast taken to his coronation, 
 and we pray for the final triumph of all the divine principles of 
 pure character and free government for which he stood while he 
 lived and which were baptized by his blood in his death. 
 
 PRAYER FOR NEW PRESIDENT. 
 
 " Hear our prayer for blessings of consolation upon all those 
 who were associated with him in the administration of the affairs 
 of the Government Especially vouchsafe Thy presence to Thy 
 servant, who has been suddenly called to assume the holy responsi- 
 bilities of Chief Magistrate. O, God, bless our dear nation, and 
 guide the Ship of State through stormy seas. Help Thy people to 
 be brave to fight the battles of the Lord, and wise to solve all prob- 
 lems of freedom. 
 
 " Graciously hear us for comfortable blessings to rest upon 
 the family circle of our departed friend. Tenderly sustain thine 
 handmaiden upon whom the blow of this sorrow most heavily 
 falls. Accompany her, O, God, as Thou hast promised, through 
 this dark valley and shadow, and may she fear no evil, because 
 thou art with her. 
 
 "All these things we ask in the name of Jesus Christ, our 
 Lord, who has taught us when we pray to say : 
 
 "Our Father, which art in heaven, Hallowed be Thy name. 
 Thy kingdom come ; Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. 
 Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as 
 we forgive those who trespass against us; And lead us not into 
 temptation, but deliver us from evil; for Thine is the kingdom 
 and the power and the glory, forever. Amen. 
 
 " May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God
 
 OBSEQUIES OF OUR MARTYRED PRESIDENT. 30? 
 
 the Father, and Communion of the Holy Spirit be with us alj, 
 evermore. Amen." 
 
 As Dr. Locke began the Lord's Prayer the mourners joined 
 with him, and all bowed low their heads as he pronounced the 
 benediction. For a moment there was a hush. The services 
 were finished, but no one moved. President Roosevelt stood 
 immovable at the head of the casket, the Cabinet members in a 
 line at the side. Then a man who seemed suddenly to have 
 grown old slowly rose from his seat beside Governor Odell and 
 slowly, very slowly, walked alone past the line of Cabinet officers 
 and to the side of the new President. His hands clasped behind 
 his back, his head bent down on his great chest, Senator Hanna 
 stood and gazed on the face of the man he loved. 
 
 SADLY LEFT THE ROOM. 
 
 It seemed to the mourners that he stood looking down at his 
 dear friend's face for fully five minutes in reality it was nearly 
 two minutes before he turned and slowly, sadly retraced his 
 steps across the room. His eyes were suffused with tears and on 
 his face was a drawn, haggard look that was almost startling in 
 its intensity. His were the last eyes to look on the face of the 
 martyred President in the house where he had died. 
 
 As Senator Hanna sat down the casket was closed, and the 
 soldiers and sailors advanced from the points where, they had been 
 stationed, and lifting it gently but firmly on their broad shoulders 
 they slowly began their solemn march to the hearse which stood 
 waiting outside. Close behind the casket followed President 
 Roosevelt, with Secretary Root on his left and the other members 
 of the Cabinet following. Slowly they made their way into the 
 hall, out the front door, down the steps and down the walk to thd 
 hearse, while a band posted across the street softly played "Nearer, 
 My God to Thee." Lifting their precious burden into the funeral 
 carriage they closed the doors. 4 
 
 The hearse was driven across the street, and one after another 
 the carriages came to the curb. In the first carriage President 
 Roosevelt, Secretary Root, Postmaster-General Smith and Attor-
 
 308 OBSEQUIES OF OUR MARTYRED PRESIDENT. 
 
 ney-General Knox took seats and started out on their long drive 
 to the City Hall. In the second carriage sat Secretaries Wilson, 
 Hitchcock and Long and Secretary Cortelyou, that marvelous 
 man who bore up so well during all these trying days. General 
 Brooke sat alone in the third carriage, and Dr. and Mrs. Locke 
 occupied the fourth. 
 
 Then came the hearse, drawn by four black horses. Walking 
 beside the hearse were the active bearers, the soldiers and marines 
 and a detail from the Grand Army of the Republic followed close 
 behind. Next came a company of marines from Camp Haywood 
 at the Pan-American Exposition. Then the Sixty-fifth Regiment 
 band, a company of the Fourteenth Regiment stationed at Fort 
 Porter, a company each from the Sixty-fifth and Seventy-fourth 
 Regiments, and a detail of sailors and marines from the Michigan. 
 
 The glories of our birth and state 
 
 Are shadows, not substantial things ; 
 Man has no armor against fate. 
 
 Death lays his every hand on kings ; 
 Sceptre and crown must tumble down, 
 And in the dust be equal made. 
 
 MIGHTY CONCOURSE OF MOURNERS. 
 
 Even nature mourned for the poor clay that but a few hours 
 before was ruler of a mighty people, while Church and man paid 
 obsequious tribute of grief to the slain chieftain. Sable clouds 
 darkened the skies and mourning winds lamented in the tree tops, 
 and when the pomp of state unfolded banner at his bier, and 
 sounded requiem with trumpet and drum, the heavens were riven 
 and a deluge fell. 
 
 It could not drown the reverent sorrow of the mighty con- 
 courses gathered for these solemn rites. Thousands upon thou- 
 sands pressed and surged into a seemingly endless stream, and 
 stepped with gentle footfall and hushed breath past the crape- 
 garbed catafalque, where the waxen frame of greatness reposed in 
 the supreme indifference of death. At night the doors were 
 closed, and in the dread silence of its chamber, where time and 
 nickering gas jets threw fearful shadows round, for servants of
 
 OBSEQUIES OF OUR MARTYRED PRESIDENT. 309 
 
 the Republic kept guard and vigil over the dust of the Com- 
 m ande r-iu-Chief . 
 
 Simplicity that had in it something of majesty marked the 
 ceremonies of the day. Huge banks of gray cloud hung low in 
 the sky and a dismal wind crooned in the thick foliage of the 
 gardens when the assemblage began to gather before the Milburn 
 house, and those with cards of authorization passed within. 
 Ranked along the opposite curb were Company I, of the Four- 
 teenth Regular Infantry, a corps of marines in command of young 
 Captain Leonard, who lost his arm in China, and a body of sailors 
 from the battleship Indiana and the old frigate Michigan. In 
 front of these stood the Sixty-fifth Regiment band, and at the 
 intersection of the two streets a platoon of mounted policemen, 
 the officers in helmets and uniforms, tricked out with full dress, 
 
 white and gold. 
 
 LYING IN STATE. 
 
 On a creped platform between the two windows of the spacious 
 library, which looks out on the lawn, rested the casket. It was of 
 massive mahogany with an outer covering of unrelieved crepe, 
 and with double doors of glass and wood interlaid. The upper 
 half of the casket was open, revealing the face and shoulders of 
 the dead President, and across the lower half lay an American 
 flag upon which rested a hugh wreath of purple violets, red roses 
 and white chrysanthemums. Between the windows a mirror 
 reached almost from floor to ceiling, reflecting the solemn panto- 
 mine-like, sinister mockery of destiny. On its marble shelf at 
 the bottom were two wreaths of roses and white chrysanthemums, 
 with pendant purple ribbons. 
 
 Throughout the services a soldier and sailor stood like 
 statues at either window, and at front and rear doors were a ser- 
 geant of infantry and a private. Thus far were the formalities 
 of state regarded in that hall of the illustrious dead. 
 
 But in every soul gathered there stirred an emotion more 
 vital and human than any panoply of power could give. It was 
 for the woman and the wife, the fragile leaflet, buffeted and 
 wounded by the storms of circumstance, who had known the
 
 BIO OBSEQUIES OF OUR MARTYRED PRESIDENT. 
 
 moulding tenement lying there as more than chief and ruler, 
 as lover, friend and husband, in whom the exigent ceremonies of 
 statecraft had never touched except to loftier and grander values, 
 the tender humanities of the home. 
 
 Bvery eye mutely asked for her. Bvery heart throbbed 
 quicker for her poignant anguish, but no one save a few 
 cherished friends and guardians saw her. Until the verbal 
 services began she sat in a room above with her sister, Mrs. 
 Barber ; the latter's daughter, Dr. Rixby and Mrs. Garrett A. 
 Hobart, widow of the former -Vice President. 
 
 They brought her to the head of the stairs, and there she sat, 
 while the clergyman brokenly framed his devout phrases. Like 
 a statue she sat, her delicate face clothed in spectral pallor, her 
 eyes staring blankly into space, her thin hands folded placidly in 
 
 her lap. 
 
 The striking lines here inserted are from the pen of the 
 
 gifted poetess, Ella Wheeler Wilcox : 
 
 " In the midst of sunny waters, lo ! the mighty Ship of State, 
 
 Staggers, bruised and torn and wounded by a derelict of fate, 
 
 One that drifted from its moorings, in the anchorage of hate, 
 
 On the deck our noble Pilot, in the glory of his prime, 
 
 Lies in woe-impelling silence, dead before his hour or time, 
 
 Victim of a mind self-centred, a godless fool of crime. 
 
 One of earth's dissension-breeders, one of Hate's unreasoning tools, 
 
 In the annals of the ages, when the world's hot anger cools, 
 
 He who sought for Crime's distinction shall be known as Chief of Fools. 
 
 In the annals of the ages, he who had no thought of fame 
 
 (Keeping on the path of duty, caring not for praise or blame), 
 
 Close beside the deathless Lincoln, writ in light, will shine his name. 
 
 Youth proclaimed him as a hero ; Time, a statesman ; Love, a man. 
 
 Death has crowned him as a martyr, so from goal to goal he ran, 
 
 Knowing all the sum of glory that a human life may span. 
 
 He was chosen by the people ; not an accident of birth 
 
 Made him ruler of a nation, but his own intrinsic worth. 
 
 Fools may govern over kingdoms not republics of the earth. 
 
 He has raised the lover's standard, by his loyalty and faith. 
 
 He has shown how virile manhood may keep free from scandal's breath. 
 
 He has gazed, with trust unshaken, in the awful eyes of death. 
 
 In the mighty march of progress he has sought to do his best. 
 
 Let his enemies be silent, as we lay him down to rest, 
 
 And may God assuage the anguish of one suffering woman's breast
 
 CHAPTER XVL 
 
 Great Outpouring of People to Honor the Martyred Presi- 
 dent Tokens of Grief New President and Members of 
 the Cabinet at the Bier Memorable Scene. 
 
 OUCH a spontaneous outpouring of men and women desirous 
 ^ of paying their respects to a man whom they had loved and 
 admired as that which took place in Buffalo never before occurred 
 in this country. As early as five o'clock in the morning crowds 
 began to gather at the points of vantage around the City Hall. 
 They stood there all day, constantly increasing in numbers, and 
 regardless of the wind and rain, which drenched them to the skin, 
 in order that they might have a last look at the face of the dead 
 President. 
 
 No fewer than one hundred and fifty thousand persons were 
 massed at one time behind the lines of police which held them in 
 check. For hours, in double lines, two abreast, they filed past 
 the coffin containing Mr. McKinley's body. Though they went 
 through the City Hall at the rate of from one hundred and 
 twenty-five to one hundred and eighty a minute, the stream never 
 slackened. Late in the afternoon there were two lines, each 
 nearly, if not quite, a mile long, in which were standing men and 
 women who waited patiently for hours, many of them wet through 
 and nearly all of them without food, in order to see the President's 
 face. 
 
 When Mrs. McKinley consented to permit her husband's 
 body to lie in state in the City Hall, she would not permit it to 
 be taken from the Milburn house until the committee in charge 
 of the arrangements had promised to return it to her at six 
 o'clock. She could not bear to have it out of her sight. The 
 promise was made, but when it was seen what a vast outpouring 
 blocked the streets, she was persuaded to forego it. It was 
 planned originally to close the doors of the City Hall at five 
 
 311
 
 312 HONORS TO OUR MARTYRED PRESIDENT. 
 
 o'clock. When that hour came 35,000 people had seen the body, 
 and more than 100,000 more were waiting. 
 
 It was evident to all who watched the sad faced procession 
 that morbid curiosity had very little to do with the enormous 
 assembly of people. Their attitude and expression signified a 
 genuine and affectionate interest. Many were profoundly affected 
 at the sight of the pale face in the coffin. 
 
 Special trains brought thousands from Lockport, Niagara 
 Falls, Rochester and other cities and towns in the western part 
 of the State, while many Canadians crossed the Niagara river. 
 Members of the Buffalo committee, who watched the crowd pass, 
 said that not more than half of those who saw the body were 
 residents of this city. 
 
 EMBLEMS OF SORROW. 
 
 All night decorators were preparing the City Hall for the 
 reception of the body. Funeral bunting was draped both inside 
 and outside. During the storm of the early morning, however, 
 the exterior decorations- were torn down and some of the bunting 
 became entangled in the machinery of the great clock on the 
 tower, causing it to stop. It was said that the hands pointed to 
 a quarter past two, the time at which the President breathed his 
 last on the preceding morning. 
 
 A block away ropes had been stretched across the streets 
 leading to the City Hall, and behind those the crowd massed 
 itself to the number of thousands. Though the assemblage was 
 patient its mere weight pushed the ropes out of place, and the 
 police were constantly employed in holding the lines. Though 
 the sky clouded in the early morning it was not sufficiently 
 threatening to cause preparations to be made for rain, and many 
 of the crowd were wholly unprovided with protection. The fact 
 that it was Sunday accounted for more elaborate costumes than 
 would have been worn on any other day. As the hour drew near 
 for the appearance of the procession, which was to bring the 
 President's body from the Milburn house, the clouds grew blacker, 
 and a few warning drops began to fall. It was then too late to
 
 HONORS TO OUR MARTYRED PRESIDENT. 313 
 
 seek storm coats or umbrellas, and the dense masses of people 
 held their places. 
 
 Leaving the Milburn house, the cortege started down 
 Delaware avenue slowly and solemnly. So slowly, in fact, did it 
 proceed that it took nearly two hours and a half to traverse the 
 two and a half miles between the Milburn house and the City 
 Hall. Thousands accompanied it or watched it go by from the 
 broad sidewalks. The mournful and deliberate pace with which 
 it proceeded added much to the impressiveness of the scene. 
 
 The City Hall occupies an entire block between Delaware 
 avenue on the west and Franklin street on the east ; on the north 
 is Eagle street, and Church street is on the south. Around the 
 hall are grassy spaces and the streets on all sides of it are more 
 than the usual width, so that there was plenty of room for the 
 funeral procession and for the crowds which sought the hall after 
 
 it arrived. 
 
 STRAINS OF THE FUNERAL MUSIC. 
 
 Outside the hall the crowds waited, silently and patiently, 
 until one o'clcck, when the strains of Chopin's funeral march were 
 heard in Delaware avenue, to the north. In a few moments the 
 head of the procession swung from Delaware avenue into Kagle 
 street, and then into Franklin street, before the main entrance. 
 The soldiers and marines wheeled into line along the curbs and 
 grounded arms. 
 
 At this moment the threatening clouds opened and let fall a 
 drenching torrent of rain, which was swept across the square by 
 a strong, gusty wind. The horses attached to the carriage in 
 which were President Roosevelt and Secretary Root became 
 excited j ust ab they were turning into Franklin street and began 
 to rear and plunge. Policemen caught their bridles, however, 
 and succeeded in quieting them. The hearse drew up before the 
 door and the band began to play the music of the hymn " Nearer, 
 My God, to Thee," as the military bearers took the coffin upon 
 their shoulders. 
 
 Before this President Roosevelt, the members of the Cabinet 
 and the principal mourners had gathered in the rotunda. Presi-
 
 314 HONORS TO OUR MARTYRED PRESIDENT. 
 
 dent Roosevelt was the first to enter. From the pillars and the 
 staircases hung draperies of black and white bunting. The in- 
 terior of the hall forms a cross, a wide corridor running through 
 it from east to west, and another corridor, somewhat narrower, 
 crossing this at right angles from north to south. It had been 
 arranged that the crowds should enter the wide corridor at the 
 eastern entrance and pass out at the western entrance. Half way 
 a low, sloping platform, draped in black, had been placed for the 
 comn. It was so arranged that the head of the coffin should be 
 slightly higher than its foot, which was toward the east. 
 
 On either side of the entrances to the transverse corridor had 
 been blocked by banks of palms and ferns. Directly above the 
 spot where the coffin was to lie is a circular opening to the second 
 floor. This had been completely covered by a dome of black 
 bunting within, which hung straight down above the coffin, four 
 American flags forming with their lower edges a cross which 
 pointed to the four points of the compass. 
 
 DRAPED WITH THE STARS AND STRIPES. 
 
 President Roosevelt and the members of the Cabinet ranged 
 themselves about the spot where the President's body was to rest. 
 President Roosevelt stood at the foot of the coffin on the right 
 hand, with Secretary Root opposite and facing him. On President 
 Roosevelt's left were Attorney General Knox, Secretary Long and 
 Secretary Wilson. On Mr. Root's right hand were Postmaster 
 General Smith, Secretary Hitchcock and Mr. Cortelyou, the pri- 
 vate secretary. 
 
 As soon as these lines had formed the bearers brought the 
 coffin slowly into the hall and lowered it carefully into place. 
 The lid was removed so that the upper half was open, and the 
 lower half was draped with a flag, upon which were masses of red 
 and white roses. There were no flowers inside the coffin. The 
 body of the President lay on its back, clad in a black frock coat, 
 with the left hand resting across the breast One glance at the 
 face, startingly changed from its appearance in life, told the story 
 of the suffering which had been endured before death came.
 
 HONORS TO OUR MARTYRED PRESIDENT. 315 
 
 Not a word was said, and as soon as the coffin had been 
 arranged, President Roosevelt and Mr. Root, followed by the other 
 Secretaries, led the way past the coffin on either side, each glanc- 
 ing for moment on the dead face. They then passed quickly out 
 of the western entrance. Behind them came Senator Hanna, 
 Senator Fairbanks and about one hundred men and women who 
 had been waiting in the City Hall or who had accompanied the 
 body from the Milburn residence. 
 
 President Roosevelt and those who immediately followed him 
 had passed out of the building at eighteen minutes after one 
 o'clock. There was a slight delay while the guard was posted. 
 At the head of the coffin stood Sergeant Galway, of the Seventy- 
 fourth Infantry Regiment, of the regular army with his rifle at 
 attention. Chief Master-at-Atms Luze, of the " Indiana," stood 
 facing him at the foot, with his drawn cutlass at his shoulder. On 
 the south, facing the coffin, stood Sergeant Gunther, of the Four- 
 teenth Regiment. A. D. Coburn, a sailor from the " Indiana," 
 stood facing him on the north. 
 
 THOUSANDS TAKE A LAST LOOK. 
 
 These men stood absolutely motionless, looking neither to 
 the right nor left when the first of the crowd was admitted The 
 lines approached the eastern entrance from Eagle street on the 
 north and Church street on the south. They were formed by the 
 police, two abreast, and approached the hall in a wide sweeping 
 curve, which, was drawn in constantly where the currents joined. 
 Both passed quickly out at the western entrance and down the 
 steps, dispersing in various directions. 
 
 Nothing was heard in the beginning but the tread of feet on 
 the marble floor, as the crowd passed through without stopping. 
 Each individual had time only for a hasty glance as he was urged 
 forward by the police and by those who followed. The plan was 
 so arranged that four persons could pass the coffin, two abreast on 
 each side, at the same moment. As the afternoon wore on and 
 the lines grew longer at their source, much faster than they were 
 melting away at the hall, the police found it necessary to urge
 
 316 HONORS TO OUR MARTYRED PRESIDENT. 
 
 greater haste in order that as many as possible might be admitted. 
 Among the foremost to reach the coffin was a slender man, 
 poorly dressed, with iron gray hair and moustache. Beside the 
 coffin he leaned over and made a menacing gesture with his hand. 
 " Curse the man that shot you I" he said. The police urged him 
 forward and he went out shaking his head and muttering threats 
 against the anarchists. 
 
 CHILDREN IN THE CROWD 
 
 Many men and women brought with them young children, 
 whom they raised in their arms in order that they might see, and 
 perhaps remember in after life, the face of the President. A 
 tattered and grimy bootblack, with his box slung over his shoulder, 
 leading by the hand his sister, smaller but no less grimy than he, 
 filed by, walking on tiptoe in order to look into the coffin. Many 
 of those who came wore mourning badges or buttons bearing 
 portraits of the President, edged with black. At frequent intervals 
 in the crowd could be seen men wearing the buttons of the G. 
 A. R., who had come to pay their last respects to their fallen 
 comrade. Some of them walked with crutches, while others 
 carried empty sleeves. They bowed their heads reverently as 
 they passed and their eyes were moist as they made their way 
 toward the exit. 
 
 There was a cessation of the rain soon after the coffin had 
 been brought into the building, and for half an hour it held up. 
 At a quarter before two o'clock, however, the storm began again, 
 giving tens of thousands of men and women another drenching. 
 The wind was so high that umbrellas afforded little protection. 
 In many cases they were turned inside out or torn from the hands 
 of their owners. In all the downpour, however, every one main- 
 tained his place in line. Women wearing shirt waists which had 
 been wet through were in the procession, regardless, apparently, 
 of their discomfort so long as they could gratify their desire to 
 see the President. 
 
 Toward the end of the afternoon some Indians, in their 
 blankets and feathers, followed by their squaws, filed by. As
 
 HONORS TO OUR MARTYRED PRESIDENT. 317 
 
 they passed each of them dropped a white carnation upon the 
 President's coffin. Two chnbby little Indian girls forgot their 
 ceremony, and went out each clasping her flower tightly in her 
 brown hand. The officials of the Exposition and the representa- 
 tives of foreign governments commissioned to attend the Exposi- 
 tion with exhibits from other countries were in line. 
 
 Soldiers of the regular army, in their blue cape coats, went 
 by, and policemen off duty, holding their helmets in their 
 hands ; National Guardsmen with khaki gaiters ; colored men, 
 among them James Parker, who felled Czolgosz before he could 
 fire a third shot at the President ; little girls in their Sunday 
 dresses, with their braided hair over their shoulders ; young men, 
 husbands and wives, mothers with their sons or daughters went 
 by in the never ending stream. One wrinkled old woman with 
 a child in her arms, which she seemed almost too feeble to carry, 
 had waited for hours outside, and finally succeeded in seeing the 
 President when her turn came. 
 
 Flowers were received at the hall from Helen Miller Gould, 
 Tent No. 8, Daughters of Veterans ; from the Commissioners of 
 Chili to the Exposition ; from the Mexican Commissioners, and 
 from General Porfirio Diaz, President of Mexico, and many 
 
 others. 
 
 DOORS OF THE HALL KEPT OPEN. 
 
 Monotonously the streams of people flowed past the cofEn 
 while twilight fell and darkness gathered. The interior of the 
 City Hall was illuminated by electricity, and the streets in the 
 vicinity were brightly lighted. Toward sunset the sky cleared 
 and there was an immediate increase in the already enormous 
 crowds. Though it had been planned to close the doors of the 
 hall at 5 o'clock the committee in charge of the ceremonies were 
 unwilling to disappoint the great throngs, and it was decided to 
 keep the hall open until the streams were exhausted. 
 
 Senator Hanna selected the President's coffin. The frame 
 was of red cedar, covered with black cloth, and inside was a copper 
 box with a white satin lining. The handles were of ebony finish. 
 The cover of the copper box consisted of a full length pane of
 
 M8 HONORS TO OUR MARTYRED PRESIDENT. 
 
 plate glass, which, rendered the box air tight. Upon the outer 
 box of the casket was the inscription: "William McKinley, 
 born January 29, 1843, died September 14, 1901." Instead of 
 falling away, as was expected, the crowds waiting to see the 
 President's body seemed to diminish very little during the even- 
 ing. 
 
 LAMENTED BY THOUSANDS. 
 
 The following additional account is from the pen of an eye 
 witness of the wonderful scene : 
 
 "All Buffalo is at the bier of the dead President to-night. 
 From i o'clock to-day, through fierce storm and sweltering sun, 
 two apparently endless lines of humanity have been moving 
 steadily past the black, rose-covered coffin in the rotunda of the 
 City Hall of that which in life was William McKinley. 
 
 " The throng which pressed up through the barren, grass- 
 worn shelters of City Hall Park in New York sixteen years ago 
 to look on the set features of the hero of Appomattox was not 
 more reverent, eager or patient than this throng is to-night. The 
 press began when President Roosevelt left the coffin side shortly 
 after i o'clock. From indications the rotunda of City Hall will 
 not be deserted before daylight to-inorrow, though the crowd, by 
 twos, passes the casket at the rate of nearly 200 per minute. 
 
 " As the placid, pallid features appear beneath the plate glass 
 of the coffin bed they are sunken and slightly discolored. The 
 body is robed in a black frock suit and in the left lapel of the 
 coat is the button of the Legion of Honor. There are no other 
 medals, marks or insignia ; nothing to indicate, that beneath the 
 rose and autumn leaves repose the remains of the Chief of the 
 greatest nation of the age. 
 
 " The scenes at the historic Milburn house in the morning 
 were simple in the extreme. Services which, beyond the signifi- 
 cance of the prayer, would have marked the last rites over the 
 body of the plainest citizen. Two hymns, a Scriptural reading, 
 a prayer and all was over. Then the shuffle of feet marking 
 time, the low word of command, the mournful dirge and the 
 march to the City Hall began.
 
 HONORS TO OUR MARTYRED PRESIDENT. 319 
 
 " President Roosevelt reached the Milburn house at ri 
 <*'clock, half an hour before the time set for the services. He was 
 apparently unaccompanied, but an instant after he alighted three 
 commonplace looking men, they might have been bookkeepers or 
 clerks or grocers, slipped out of a carriage that followed. It was 
 the secret service and local detective guard over the new 
 President. A few minutes later the Cabinet arrived. Then Rev. 
 C. B. Locke, of the Delaware Avenue Methodist Episcopal 
 Church, a sallow, dark-haired intellectual man, came with his 
 wife. At intervals the invited personages, mostly Buffalo folks, 
 the statesmen in the city, walked slowly up the flagstone 
 
 pavement. 
 
 TRAMP OF POLICE. 
 
 " Before the services began there was a sound of feet keeping 
 time on the asphalt and a small squad of police appeared, and 
 were quickly and quietly distributed around the house. A few 
 moments later a company of the Fourteenth United States 
 Infantry marched almost noiselessly up Delaware avenue and 
 took up a position opposite the house. Then a company of 
 marines, under the one-armed hero, Captain Leonard, took a 
 position to the right of the infantry, and in quick order came a 
 picked company of the Sixty-fifth and Seventy-fourth Regiments 
 of the National Guard of New York. 
 
 " Stretching up Delaware avenue was a line of black car- 
 riages headed by the hearse. The latter was sombre black, 
 without plumes, drawn by four black horses, each led by a 
 policeman. Down West Ferry street a dozen mounted policemen 
 stood beside the horses waiting the order to lead the escort. 
 
 " Meantime the services in the house of death had begun. 
 The body reposing in a black, lusterless, hood cloth casket with 
 black handles, lay near the centre of the library, the head toward 
 the Bast, where the light from a large bay window fell full upon 
 it. Around the foot of the coffin was wrapped a large silk flag. 
 
 "When the services began President Roosevelt took a posi- 
 tion standing near the head of the casket. To his right were the 
 members of the Cabinet, each dressed like the President, in black,
 
 320 HONORS TO OUR MARTYRED PRESIDENT. 
 
 with a tiny band of black silk crepe around the left arm above 
 the elbow. Outside the lawn was filled with persons unable to 
 obtain entrance to the house. 
 
 "Grouped around the parlor were men whose names are 
 known throughout the world, and whose faces in pictorial present- 
 ment are known everywhere : Senators Chauncey Depew; Keene, 
 of New Jersey ; Mark Hanna, of Ohio ; Fairbanks, of Indiana ; 
 Burroughs, of Maine ; Congressmen Alexander, of Buffalo, and 
 Olmsted, of Pennsylvania, while the attendant physicians in the 
 last illness and every principal official of the Pan- American Ex- 
 position were also present. 
 
 " None of the family or personal friends of the dead President 
 was present in the library. Upstairs where she could hear all that 
 was said, but out of sight of the casket and concealed even from 
 intimate friends, Mrs. McKinley sat attended by Dr. Rixey. The 
 other relations, Abner McKinley and family, the President's sister 
 and sister-in-law, were all seated near the head of the stairs. 
 
 THE FUNERAL HYMNS. 
 
 " A selected quartet with splendid effect sang "Lead, Kindly 
 Light," and then Dr. C. B. Locke, of the Delaware Avenue Metho- 
 dist Episcopal Church, advanced to the head of the casket and 
 read the fifteenth chapter of the First Corinthians. Again the 
 quartet sang, this time, "Nearer, My God, to Thee." Then Dr. 
 Locke prayed fervently. (His prayer has been inserted in a pre- 
 ceeding chapter.) 
 
 " This ended the services. There was a slight pause and 
 President Roosevelt advancing took a long look at the calm fea- 
 tures in the casket. It was manifest that he was moved by deep 
 emotion. Then the members of the Cabinet, the men who in re- 
 cent years perhaps have known President McKinley more inti- 
 mately than any others, looked their farewell. Among the last 
 was Senator Mark Hanna. He gazed long and earnestly at the 
 face of his friend, his frame betraying the intensity of his feelings. 
 Then turning suddenly he sank into a chair and buried his face in 
 his hands.
 
 ONE OP PRESIDENT McKINLEY'S FAVORITE HYMNS. 
 
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 J LEAD, kindly Light! amid the encircling gloom, 
 
 Lead'thou me on ; 
 The night is dark, and I am far from home^ 
 
 Lead thou me on ; 
 
 Keep thou my feet; I do not ask to see 
 The distant scene ; one step enough for m, 
 
 2 I was not ever thus, nor prayed that thoui 
 
 Shouldst lead me on ; 
 I loved to choose and see my path ; but n<n$ 
 
 Lead thou me on ; 
 
 I loved the garish day, and, spite of fears, 
 Pride ruled my will. Remember not past yearj* 
 
 3 So long thy power hast blest me, sure it still 
 
 Will lead me on 
 O'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent, till 
 
 The night is gone, 
 And with the morn those angel faces smile 
 
 haye toyed }oig since, jn_d lost a while] 
 
 21 
 
 321
 
 322 
 
 HONORS TO OUR MARTYRED PRESIDENT. 
 
 " The crowd on the lawn was scattering now, the mounted 
 police had wheeled into company front and were waiting the 
 order to march. Swiftly a hush fell over the crowd. The hun- 
 dred or more newspaper correspondents over by the telegraph 
 tents became more attentive. The President and Cabinet emerged 
 from the house and lined up on either side of the walk, bare 
 headed. General Brooke and his aides, adding a touch of brilliant 
 color in their uniforms, fell further to the rear, there was the low 
 mellow roll of a snare drum and then the casket appeared in the 
 doorway, borne aloft on the shoulders of four sergeants of infan- 
 try and artillery and as many gunners' mates from the revenue 
 cutter " Michigan." 
 
 "NEARER, MY GOD, TO THEE." 
 
 " As the leader of the Sixty-fifth Regiment band caught the 
 gleam of the flag-draped coffin through the ivy over the porch, he 
 gave a quick signal and the band softly played the President's 
 favorite hymn, " Nearer, My God, to Thee." Every head was 
 bared. Absolute silence reigned. The top of the casket bore a 
 pillow of roses, banked in brown autumn leaves, a wreath of 
 royal purple immortelles, a handful of brilliant red flowers and 
 then over the head another pillow of white roses. 
 
 "The mounted police led off, followed by regulars and 
 marines, and the rest of the soldiery. After them came the car- 
 riages of the Cabinet Ministers. In the first carriage with Presi- 
 dent Roosevelt were Secretary Root, Attorney-General Knox and 
 Postmaster-General Smith, the three latter being the senior Cabi- 
 net officers now in the city. The second carriage contained Sec- 
 retaries Wilson and Hitchcock and Secretary Cortelyou. The 
 third carriage contained General Brooke, of the United States 
 army, and two aides. Following was a carriage with Senators 
 Hanna, Fairbanks and Burroughs, and Governor Odell, of New 
 York. Immediately preceding the hearse was a carriage with 
 Rev. Dr. Locke and his wife. None of the family accompanied 
 the body to the City Hall. 
 
 "The procession moved down Delaware avenue, just as noon
 
 HONORS TO OUR MARTYRED PRESIDENT. 
 
 was striking, between parallel lines of mourning thousands. As 
 the flag-wrapped coffin went past evety hat was raised and a silence 
 as of the grave fell over the host. Down in the vicinity of the 
 City Hall, meantime, a great concourse had assembled, held 
 within bounds by restraining ropes. Policemen were stationed 
 every dozen feet inside these barriers, while the entire force of 
 mounted police kept the more eager and restless ones in submis- 
 sion. It was not a turbulent crowd, but its very mass made it 
 restless. On Franklin street, at the junction with Eagle, the 
 crush was something terrible, and half a dozen women fainted 
 and were rescued and cared for by the police. 
 
 " The rotunda of the Buffalo City Hall with its entrances 
 east and west and its cross sections is shaped like a cross with a 
 circular dome rising at the intersection of the arms. This was 
 roofed with black festoons, while both sides of the rotunda, north 
 and south, were a solid mass of green palms. In the center of 
 this, directly under the dome, was a platform draped in black 
 cashmere, and raised ten inches above the floor, the western end 
 being five or six inches higher than the eastern. On this the 
 body of the President reposed. 
 
 SET FLORAL PIECE. 
 
 " In the center of the south bank of palms was a huge set 
 piece of immortelles, the flags of the United States and France 
 crossed beneath a door with oustretched wings. It was the gift of 
 the Society Francaise, of Buffalo, and was the only set floral piece 
 in the City Hall. All around the circular balcony were festoons 
 of black and white and flags draped with crepe. 
 
 " The day opened brilliantly. The sun streamed in un- 
 dimmed radiance over the closing scenes at the Milburn house, 
 but as the cortege moved slowly down the wide avenue the west 
 became darkened with clouds, purplish-black and within an hour, 
 light raindrops, heralds of the coming storm, caused thousands 
 of umbrellas to be lifted like great black mushrooms over the 
 heads of the packed thousands. 
 
 <; Then appeared a startling and dramatic climax to the
 
 324 HONORS TO OUR MARTYRED PRESIDENT. 
 
 movement of the procession. Just as its head appeared at the 
 City Hall square and while the full rich notes of Chopin's fune- 
 ral inarch swelled out over the heads of the multitude and came 
 back in mellow echoes like a benediction from the towering walls 
 on either side, the storm burst forth in all its fury. 
 
 " It swept blinding gusts of rain around the corners of the 
 great granite building, that stung the face like whipcords. It 
 seemed for the space of five minutes as if every window of heaven 
 had been opened. The gutters rose like mimic mountain torrents, 
 waterspouts and gargoyles bubbled and foamed out little cata- 
 racts. But in the midst of this torrent not a soul stirred. The 
 soldierly, drenched and unprotected, stood like statues. The 
 packed crowds never wavered, only here and there on the high 
 rooofs of adjoining buildings the spectators sought shelter. 
 
 MOURNERS ENTER ROTUNDA. 
 
 " Before the coffin had been deposited on the catafalque the 
 official mourners entered the rotunda. President Roosevelt 
 walked up the steps of the main entrance under an umbrella 
 held by Secret Service Operative Foster. Others performed a 
 similar service for the Cabinet ministers. President Roosevelt 
 took his position to the left of the casket with Secretary Root to 
 his left and then Secretaries Long and Hitchcock beyond im a 
 line. On the opposite side of the casket were Secretary Wilson, Post- 
 master General Smith, Attorney General Knox and General 
 Brooke, of the army. As soon as the body was deposited in the 
 catafalque, President Roosevelt, with Secretary Root by his side, 
 and followed by the other Cabinet officers, left the building. 
 
 " Within five minutes the signal was given and the patient 
 populace was admitted. The police kept it moving steadily. At 
 the head of the coffin was a sergeant of infantry with fixed bay- 
 onet, at the foot a sailor, a gunner's mate with drawn cutlas, 
 while on either side were another sergeant of artillery and a 
 marine. 
 
 '* The scenes during the day will never be forgotten by these 
 who witnessed them. Men, women and children, the halt, the
 
 HONORS TO OUR MARTYRED PRESIDENT. 325 
 
 lame and blind, rich and poor, Jew, Gentile, Greek and barbarian ; 
 the minister of the gospel and the habitue of the slums ; the 
 sweet-faced matron from a home of refinement and the scarlet 
 Jezebel of the curb ; the canting fanatic, who had cursed the 
 canteen and President McKinley during his life and the besotted 
 dram drinker from the groggery in the alley, all, all were in line 
 to look with love and sorrow for the last time on the face of the 
 
 dead. 
 
 LONG UNBROKEN LINE, 
 
 " The rain descended, but still the line remained unbroken, 
 stretching away for three squares. Men and women were in line 
 for four hours. Some had children in their arms. When at last 
 the police got the people in order two compact lines were formed, 
 one passing on each side of the casket. What a picture it was. 
 Women wept and men with eyes full of tears held their children 
 on high that they might see and remember, even in death, the 
 face of the splendid Christian, and upright statesman. As I write 
 near to midnight the lines still wind their sinuous way around 
 the square and past the black casket and white face of the voice- 
 less, pulseless inmate. 
 
 " The wretched, God-forgotten degenerate who wrought this 
 splendid ruin is hidden somewhere in the city. He was spirited 
 away when the fear grew that he might be the subject of a frenzied 
 attack. It is said that to escape the crowd he was disguised as a 
 policeman. Back at the Milburn house, Mrs. McKinley rests 
 under her great affliction with the physicians fearful of the final 
 outcome. Her vitality is very near the point of exhaustion. The 
 golden thread is strained very nearly to the snapping point." 
 
 The following comment by a prominent journal voiced the 
 sentiments of our whole people respecting Mr. McKinley : 
 
 "The mournful news from Buffalo falls heavily on the 
 hearts of a sorrowing nation. William McKinley is dead. The 
 hopes of the nation, but yesterday so high, and apparently so well 
 justified by the confidence of the physicians, are thus abruptly 
 and cruelly crushed. For the moment the American people will 
 think only of the great, gentle-hearted man whose name has been
 
 326 HONORS TO OUR MARTYRED PRESIDENT. 
 
 added to those of Lincoln and Garneld on the Republic's roll of 
 martyr-Presidents. Perhaps the bitterest drop in this cup of 
 national grief is that the assassin has taken from the nation's 
 highest post of duty a man who, in all the relationships of life, 
 public and private, and no less in his ofncial than in his domestic 
 character, was amiable and generous to a fault, kindly to the 
 point of tenderness and devotedly true in all things. 
 
 " His blameless and really beautiful home life, the typically 
 American constancy of affection which bound him to his wife and 
 her to him, making each the first object of the other's solicitude, 
 so that the public rarely saw and never thought of the President 
 without seeing and thinkiug also of Mrs. McKinley, especially 
 endeared him to the masses of home-loving Americans. This 
 side of his character gave him while he lived, and will keep for 
 him now that he is dead, the same kiud of profound popular re- 
 spect and liking which the other branch of the Anglo-Saxon 
 family felt and still feels for Queen Victoria. 
 
 REMARKABLE PROSPERITY. 
 
 "This is neither the place nor the hour for any extended re- 
 view of Mr. McKinley' s administration or political policies. It is 
 merely stating facts in a brief and comprehensive way to say that 
 the country has enjoyed a remarkable period of material pros- 
 perity since he was first inaugurated ; that his financial policy, 
 which held the country fast to the moorings of a sound and 
 honest currency, was a fundamental condition of that prosperity. 
 For this alone the nation will ever remember his two elections 
 with gratitude. Beyond this, as his last speech at Buffalo clearly 
 showed, Mr. McKinley had an open, receptive and therefore pro- 
 gressive mind, and, had not the hand of the assassin interposed, 
 was ready to lead his party and the country in the inauguration 
 of a broader, freer and sounder commercial policy. 
 
 ' To lose such a man at such a time is indeed a great national 
 misfortune. To lose him. in such a manner a sacrifice to the 
 motiveless mania for murder of the anarchists is the most 
 lamentable feature of it all. Yet will he not have died in vain if his
 
 HONORS TO OUR MARTYRED PRESIDENT. 327 
 
 death leads to a concentration of all the resources of civilization 
 in a stern and effective effort to repress the international Ishmael- 
 ites whose hands are against all law-abiding men, and against 
 whom, theiefore, che hands of all law-abiding men must be joined. 
 u One of the best and best beloved of American Presidents 
 falls a victim to the worst and most abhorred of evil passions. The 
 nation is plunged into mourning for him who had, through his 
 patriotism, his labors and his wisdom, given it cause for its highest 
 rejoicings. The trusted leader, under whose benign administra- 
 tion the last scars of old fraternal strife disappeared, unprece- 
 dented prosperity was given to the whole land, and the power and 
 fame of America were wondrously magnified, is taken from us 
 through the vile machinations of an alien growth which never 
 should have had so much as a foothold upon American soil. 
 
 ONE OF THE COMMON PEOPLE. 
 
 " As we review his pure and lofty career, literally without 
 fear and without reproach in public and in private life, there comes 
 a thrill of pride at the thought that this man was an American 
 citizen, one of the " common people," a typical product of our 
 race. But as we think of the manner of his taking off it is im- 
 possible to restrain a passionate disgust and loathing at the 
 thought that the soil upon which such a man grew should be 
 polluted by the presence of even one single anarchist. The nation, 
 bowed in grief for its irreparable loss, offers to Mrs. McKinley, 
 recently so near to death herself, now so brave and calm, the as- 
 surance of its tenderest sympathy in her utter desolation. 
 
 " Whether the President recovered or not from his would-be 
 murderer's assault -an assault from which of all men the broad 
 humanity of his character and purposes should have defended him 
 his place was already secure in the great line of American rulers 
 and statesmen. Whether his fate was to couple itself with Lin- 
 coln's, stricken down at the very threshold of a second term of 
 office, or he was to be spared to imitate the example of Washing- 
 ton and retire, his work completed, amid the plaudits of his coun- 
 trymen, he could safely count on the impartial judgment of
 
 328 HONORS TO OUR MARTYRED PRESIDENT. 
 
 history to link his name with those of the two great Presidents to 
 whom beyond all others this country owes the impulses of which 
 have made it an indivisible and sovereign Union. 
 
 "To the work of nationalization begun by Washington and 
 completed in the clash of arms by Lincoln, it fell to President 
 McKinley's statesmanship to give the final healing and harmon- 
 izing touches, and his administration has seen the nation emerge 
 at last from the shadows of sectionalism and realize, after a 
 century of effort, that 'more perfect union' which it was the 
 fundamental purpose of the Federal constitution to promote. 
 
 SET UP A NEW MILESTONE. 
 
 " Though supplementary in their character, President 
 McKinley's contributions to the creation of a truly national 
 spirit have therefore been as genuine and as vital as either 
 Lincoln's or Washington's. His first administration must, in 
 fact, be accepted as marking a new and important milestone in our 
 political development. Three distinct services in broadening and 
 unifying our national life are to be credited to William McKin- 
 leys' political leadership. His first Presidential campaign broke 
 at last the lines of the Solid South, and his second showed that 
 the wedge driven into that crumbling fabric of sectional passions 
 and sectional prejudices had been driven in to stay. The war 
 with Spain hastened the process which the canvass of 1896 had 
 so happily begun, and the call of the Government for troops 
 reunited old foes in war and politics under a single flag. 
 
 " But the first McKinley administration did more than 
 merely soothe sectional resentments ; it saw uprooted two political 
 issues which had long been used to inflame internal dissensions 
 to set class against class and section against section. The tariff 
 question which had been artfully employed to array the agri- 
 cultural against the manufacturing States and Southern interests 
 against Northern interests, ceased, after the passage of the Ding- 
 ley act, to be a bone of partisan contention, while the silver 
 question, which was depended on to pit the poor against the rich, 
 and the far West and South against the rest of the Union, dropped
 
 HONORS TO OUR MARTYRED PRESIDENT. 
 
 with the election of 1900 out of the category of disturbing political 
 problems. 
 
 "Sectional prejudices beaten down and sectional questions 
 thrust aside, American political life has naturally entered its last 
 and truest national phase. In the train of our victory over Spain 
 new responsibilities and new opportunities have come, which force 
 the nation more and more to forget internal distractions and to 
 face the problems of our changed relationship with the outside 
 world. 
 
 THE TREATY WITH SPAIN. 
 
 " With the conclusion of the Treaty of Paris American energy 
 felt itself turned to new tasks and new questions of statecraft, and 
 a new ferment of national spirit has signalized the final acceptance 
 by the United States of its true role as one of the greatest powers 
 in the civilized world. President McKinley's first administration 
 promises to take its color in history from the Paris convention 
 and the consequences flowing from that epoch making instrument; 
 and with this last rounded development of American nationality 
 his name is certain to be as fitly associated as Lincoln's is with 
 its middle phase, or Washington's is with it earliest beginnings." 
 
 Mr. McKinley was always actuated in his administration of 
 public affairs by the homely tenet of Lincoln to act as " God gives 
 us to see the right," blended with that ancient democratic axiom, 
 "Vox populi, vox Dei." Like General Grant, he put the will of 
 the people paramount and tried to make sure the greatest good 
 for the greatest number. He believed in the mandate of the 
 majority, and obeyed it, holding that the citizen had the supreme 
 power. He believed that the popular will of educated masses 
 could hardly give unjust orders or make unfair demands. 
 
 Having long been a member of Congress he knew and re- 
 spected the authority of that body. He had policies of his own 
 formulation which he urged upon the representatives of the people, 
 but when they refused to adopt them, he bowed to their decision 
 and executed the laws they passed as cheerfully as he would those 
 of his own suggestion.
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 Funeral Cortege Reaches Washington A Nation's Tribute 
 of Respect and Love Services in the Capitol Memo- 
 rial Address of Bishop Andrews. 
 
 DENEATH the great white dome of the Capitol funeral services 
 *-' of state were held over the remains of the dead President. It 
 was eminently fitting that the services should be conducted 
 in that beautiful rotunda hallowed by the history of the last sad 
 rites of two other martyrs to the cause of the Republic. As befitted 
 the occasion and the character of the man whose remains were 
 lying cold and rigid in the narrow embrace of the metallic casket, 
 the services were simple. 
 
 They were conducted in accordance with the rites of the 
 Methodist Episcopal Church, of which President McKinley was a 
 lifelong member. Consisting only of two nymns, a song, a prayer, 
 an address and a benediction, they were beautifu? and solemnly 
 impressive. Gathered around the bier were representatives of 
 every phase of American national life, including the President and 
 the only surviving ex-President of the United States, together 
 with representatives at this capital of almost every nation of the 
 earth. Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and all the 
 Republics to the southward of the United States mingled their 
 tears with those of the American people. 
 
 Despite the fact that no attempt had been made to decorate 
 the interior of the rotunda, beyond the arrangements made about 
 the catafalque, the assemblage presented a memorable sight. The 
 sombre black of the attire of the hundreds of civilians present was 
 splashed brilliantly with the blue and gold of the representatives 
 of the army and the navy and the court costumes of the Diplo- 
 matic Corps. As the sweet notes of Mr. McKinley's favorite 
 hymn, "Lead, Kindly Light," floated through the great rotunda, 
 the assemblage rose to its feet. Bared heads were bowed and eyes 
 
 Streamed with tears. At the conclusion of the hymn, as Rev. Dr. 
 330
 
 IMPRESSIVE SERVICES AT THE CAPITOL. 
 
 331 
 
 Nay lor, Presiding Elder of the Washington District, rose to offer 
 prayer, the hush that fell upon the people was profound. When, 
 in conclusion, he repeated the words of the Lord's Prayer, the 
 great audience joined solemnly with him. The murmur of their 
 voices resembled nothing less than the roll of far distant surf. 
 
 Scarcely had the word amen been breathed when the liquid 
 tone of that sweetly pleading song, "Some Time We'll Under- 
 stand," went straight to the heart of every auditor. The solo 
 was sung by Mrs. Thomas C. Noyes, and the beautiful refrain 
 was echoed and re-echoed by the double quartette choir. 
 
 ELOQUENT TRIBUTE TO THE DEAD. 
 
 The venerable Bishop Edward G. Andrews, of Ohio, the 
 oldest Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, then took his 
 position at the head of the bier. A gentle breeze through the 
 rotunda stirred the delicate blooms which lay upon the coffin, 
 and the " peace that passeth all understanding" seemed to rest 
 upon the venerable man's countenance as he began his eulogy of 
 the life and works of William McKinley. His words were 
 simple, but his whole heart was in every one of them. His 
 tribute to the Christian fortitude of the dead President was im- 
 pressive. Upon the conclusion of the sermon, the audience, as 
 if by pre-arrangement, joined the choir in singing " Nearer, My 
 God, to Thee." All present seemed to be imbued with a senti- 
 ment of hallowed resignation as the divine blessing was asked by 
 the Rev. W. H. Chapman, acting pastor of the Metropolitan 
 Methodist Episcopal Church, upon both the living and the dead. 
 
 Mrs. McKinley, bereft of husband and prostrated by her 
 overwhelming sorrow, did not attend the services at the Capitol. 
 It was deemed wise by those now nearest and dearest to her that 
 she should not undergo the ordeal her attendance would entail 
 upon her. She remained at the White House, comforted by 
 every attention that loving thoughtfulness could suggest. 
 
 Arrangements for the movement of the funeral cortege from 
 the White House to the Capitol were completed that night after 
 the remains of the President had been deposited in the historic
 
 332 IMPRESSIVE SERVICES AT THE CAPITOL 
 
 East Room of the mansion. It was a perfect autumn day, but 
 the morning dawned gray and dreary. The sky was overcast 
 with low flying clouds. Nature itself seemed to be in mourning 
 for the nation's dead. As the hours passed dashes of rain fell 
 at intervals, but, despite this discomfort, tens of thousands of sor- 
 rowing people appeared early upon the streets. Both sides of 
 Pennsylvania avenue, from the White House to the Capitol, were 
 massed with an impenetrable cordon of people, wishing in this 
 way to pay fiual tribute of love and respect for the dead. 
 
 DISTINGUISHED ESCORT. 
 
 As the funeral cortege, escorted by troops representing every 
 department of the nation's martial service, and by representatives 
 of religious and civic organizations, passed down the broad thor- 
 oughfare to the solemn notes of the Dead March from "Saul" 
 wailed by the bands, the sorrowing people bared their heads 
 despite the rain, and the many tear-stained faces bespoke their 
 grief more eloquently than words. It was a silent throng. Not 
 a sound was heard. With aching hearts all remembered that 
 only a few months ago, the dead President, then in the fulness 
 of life and triumph, had passed along that same thoroughfare to 
 be inaugurated a second time President. The flags that had flut- 
 tered greeting to him in March were furled and crepe bedecked 
 in September. The cheers of spring became the sobs of autumn- 
 Grief had usurped the place of joy. 
 
 As with solemn and cadenced tread the procession moved 
 down the avenue, the people recognized as one of the mourners 
 their former President, Grover Cleveland, who had come to pay 
 his tribute to his successor. They recognized, too, their iie\? 
 President, upon whom the responsibilities of Chief Executive had 
 been thrust so unexpectedly. With silent salute they greeted 
 him, and with them he mingled his tears in sorrow for the dead. 
 
 Among the hundreds of other distinguished persons who 
 were in attendance upon the funeral services were : Governor 
 Gregory, of Rhode Island ; Governor Yates, of Illinois ; Governor 
 Hill, of Maine ; Governor Crane, of Massachusetts ; Governor
 
 IMPRESSIVE SERVICES AT THE CAPITOL. 333 
 
 Aycock, of North Carolina ; Governor White, of West Virginia ; 
 Governor Stickney, of Vermont, and Governor Voorhees, of New 
 Jersey. Colonel Stone represented the Governor of California, 
 and Colonel A. C. Kauffman, of Charleston, represented Governor 
 McSweeney, of South Carolina, and conve3^ed the Governor's 
 regrets that he was nnable personally to attend; District Commis- 
 sioners; J. Pierpont Morgan, of New York ; John Kasson, former 
 Special Reciprocity Commissioner ; Pension Commissioner Henry 
 Clay Evans. The Grand Master of the Knights Templar of the 
 United States, was represented by Grand Junior Warden Frank 
 H. Thomas. Among the prominent women present were Mrs. 
 Garret A. Hobart, widow of ex-Vice-President Hobart, who was 
 escorted by her son, and Mrs. Russel A. Alger. 
 
 LAST LOOK AT THE DEAD PRESIDENT. 
 
 At the conclusion of the funeral services in the rotunda, the 
 casket lid was removed in order that the immediate friends of the 
 dead President might be afforded the comfort of a last glance at 
 his features, and that the people whom he loved and who loved 
 him might pass the bier for the same purpose. At half-past 12 
 the crowds began to file through the rotunda, and during the six 
 hours in which the body was lying in state, it seemed that 55,000 
 people viewed the remains. 
 
 Just at i o'clock a frightful calamity was narrowly averted 
 at the east front of the Capitol. For hours the vast throng of 
 peopl? had been massed in front of the Capitol awaiting an oppor- 
 tunity to enter the rotunda. When the doors were opened tens 
 of thousands of people rushed almost frantically to the main 
 staircase. 
 
 The police and military guards were swept aside and almost 
 in a twinking there was a tremendous crush at the foot of the 
 great staircase. The immense throng swept backward and for- 
 ward like the surging of a mighty sea. Women and children, a 
 few of the latter babes in arms, were caught in the crowd, and 
 many were badly hurt. Strong men held children and even women 
 high above the heads of the surging crowd to protect them from
 
 334 IMPRESSIVE SERVICES AT THE CAPITOL. 
 
 bodily injury. Despite the efforts of the police and military and 
 the cooler heads in the throng, approximately a hundred people 
 were inj ured. Some of the more seriously hurt were carried into 
 the rotunda and into various adjoining apartments of the Capitol, 
 where first aid treatment was given them. A number were 
 hurried to hospitals in ambulances, but the majority either were 
 taken to or subsequently went unassisted to their homes. 
 
 After the crush had been abated upon the staircase and 
 plaza, immediately in front of it were found tattered pieces of 
 men's and women's wearing apparel of all kinds, crushed hats, 
 gloves and even shoes, watches, pocketbooks, keys and knives 
 were picked up. 
 
 MORE THAN ONE HUNDRED FLORAL OFFERINGS. 
 
 When the remains of the dead President were finally closed 
 forever to the view of Washington people, the cavalry escort 
 again was formed and conveyed them to the special train which 
 now is carryiug the body to Canton. The magnificent display of 
 floral offerings, numbering no less than 125 pieces and makiug 
 the most remarkable floral tribute ever seen here, were taken to 
 the station from the Capitol in carriages and wagons, and there 
 placed aboard a special car which had been provided for them. 
 Three sections, comprising in all twenty passenger coaches, were 
 necessary to accommodate all those who accepted invitations to 
 make the journey to Canton. 
 
 An eye-witness thus describes the impressive scene : 
 " Early this morning the chief officers of the Government, 
 civil, military and judicial, began to arrive, and many others 
 whose names are familiar the world over came singly and in 
 groups to pay their tribute at his official home to the nation's 
 illustrious dead. Several members of the diplomatic corps in 
 court costume were among the early comers. Ex-President 
 Cleveland and ex-Secretary of War Larnont arrived about 8.30, 
 and were shown at once to seats in the Red Parlor. The mem- 
 bers of the Cabinet began to arrive soon after, and were imme- 
 diately followed by the members of the Senate Committee and the
 
 IMPRESSIVE SERVICES AT THE CAPITOL. 335 
 
 members of the United States Supreme Court, headed by Chief 
 Justice Fuller, in their robes of office. 
 
 " President Roosevelt arrived at 8.50 o'clock, accompanied by 
 his wife and his sister, and went immediately to the Blue Parlor, 
 where they were joined by the members of the Cabinet. The 
 President wore a frock coat, and a band of crepe on the left arm. 
 Mrs. McKinley arose earlier than usual to prepare for the ordeal. 
 She had rested quite well during the night, but her pale face told 
 plainly of her sufferings. She gave no sign of collapse, however, 
 and her physician confidently believes that she will keep up her 
 strength and courage to the end. 
 
 GRAND ARMY REPRESENTED. 
 
 " Senator Hanna reached the White House only a short time 
 before the procession was to move. His face looked drawn, and, 
 leaning heavily on his cane, it was plainly evident that he was 
 suffering. While the men of note were arriving at the White 
 House, the funeral escort, nnder command of Major General John 
 R. Brooke, was forming immediately in front of the White House. 
 Besides regular soldiers, sailors and marines, the escort was made 
 up of a detachment of the National Guard, members of the Grand 
 Army of the Republic, Loyal Legion and kindred bodies and 
 civic organizations, and representatives of all branches of the 
 National Government, and the Governors of States and their 
 staffs. 
 
 "The public had been astir early, and the streets were 
 crowded with people. Wire cables strung along the entire route 
 of march from the White House to the Capitol, kept it clear for 
 the funeral procession. 
 
 " At precisely 9 o'clock a silent command was given, and the 
 body bearers silently and reverently raised to their stalwart 
 shoulders the casket containing all that was mortal of the illus- 
 trious dead. They walked with slow, cadence step, and, as they 
 appeared at the main door of the White House, the Marine Band, 
 stationed on the avenue opposite the mansion, struck up the 
 hymn the dead President loved so well, " Nearer, My God, to
 
 336 IMPRESSIVE SERVICES AT THE CAPITOL. 
 
 Thee." There was perfect silence throughout the big mansion, 
 and as the last sad strain of the music died away the throng in 
 the building lifted their heads, but their eyes were wet 
 
 " As the hearse moved away, the mourners from the White 
 House entered carriages and followed the body on its march to 
 the Capitol, where the funeral services were to be held. It was 
 thought early in the morning that Mrs. McKinley might feel 
 strong enough to attend the services there,but it was finally decided 
 that it would be imprudent to tax her vitality more than was 
 absolutely necessary, and so she concluded to remain in her room 
 under the immediate care of Dr. Rixey, Mrs. Barber, her sister, 
 and her niece, Miss Barber. 
 
 BUGLE SOUNDED "MARCH." 
 
 " Slowly down the White House driveway, through a fine 
 drizzling rain, the solemn cortege wound its way down to the gate 
 leading to the avenue, and halted. Then with a grand solemn 
 swing the artillery band began the ' Dead March from Saul,' a 
 blast from a bugle sounded l march ' and the head of the proces- 
 sion was moving on its way to the Capitol. The casket in a black, 
 carved hearse and drawn by six coal black horses, caparisoned in 
 black net with trailing tassels and a stalwart groom at the head 
 of each, moved down through the gateway and came to a stand 
 alongside of the moving procession. 
 
 " Major General John R. Brooke was at the head of the line, 
 mounted on a splendid charger. Behind him came his aides, the 
 red coated artillery band, a squadron of cavalry with red and 
 white guidons limp in the damp air, a battery of field artillery, 
 with the men sitting straight and stiff as statues, a company of 
 engineers, two battalions of coast artillery and a detachment of 
 tht hospital corps. Then came the naval contingent of the first 
 section, headed by the Marine Band, who were followed by a bat- 
 talion of marines and one of sailors from the North Atlantic squad- 
 ron, very picturesque and strong. 
 
 " As the National Guard of the District of Columbia brought 
 Up the rear of the first section of the parade, the civic section of
 
 IMPRESSIVE SERVICES AT THE CAPITOL. 337 
 
 the procession marched into line. It was under command of Gen- 
 eral Henry V. Boynton as Chief Marshal, and comprised detach- 
 ments from the Military Order of the Loyal Legion, the Regular 
 Army and Navy Union, the Union Veteran Legion, the Spanish 
 War Veterans and the Grand Army of the Republic. As these 
 veterans of the Civil War passed the waiting hearse wheeled 
 slowly into line, the guards of honor from the army and navy took 
 up positions on either side of the hearse, and the funeral cortege 
 proper took its appointed place behind a delegation of the Grand 
 Army of the Republic. 
 
 "Close behind the hearse came a carriage in which were 
 seated ex-President Grover Cleveland, Rear Admiral Robley D. 
 Kvans and General John Wilson. In a carriage drawn by four 
 fine black horses coming next were President Roosevelt, Mrs. 
 Roosevelt and Commander W. S. Cowles, the President's brother- 
 in-law. Then followed a line of carriages bearing all the members 
 of the Cabinet, a number of ex-members and behind them the 
 diplomatic corps. 
 
 BETWEEN SILENT THRONGS. 
 
 " Solemnly the funeral party wound down past the Treasury- 
 Building and into the broad sweep of Pennsylvania avenue amid 
 a profound silence that was awful to those who only six months 
 ago had witnessed the enthusiastic plaudits which greeted the 
 dead man as he made the same march to assume for a second 
 time the honors and burdens of the Presidential office. 
 
 " The artillery band played a solemn dirge as it with slow 
 steps led the sorrowful way down the avenue. All the military 
 organizations carried their arms, but with colors draped and furled. 
 The crowds were silent. All were sad, mournful and oppressive. 
 The people stood with heads uncovered, and many bowed in 
 apparently silent prayer as the hearse passed along. A slow 
 drizzling rain was falling. 
 
 " After the carriages, in which were the diplomats, followed 
 a long line of others containing the Justices of the Supreme Court, 
 the Senate and House committees appointed to attend the funeral^
 
 338 IMPRESSIVE SERVICES AT THE CAPITOL. 
 
 the local judiciary, the assistant secretaries of the several execu- 
 tive departments, members of the various Government commis- 
 sions and official representatives of the insular governments. 
 
 "The remainder of the procession was composed of a large 
 representation of local bodies of Knights Templar, over 1000 
 members of the Grand Army of the Republic, the United Con- 
 federate Veterans of the city of Washington and of Alexandria, 
 Va., various religious and patriotic societies, including the Sons 
 of the American Revolution, secret societies and labor organiza- 
 tions of the city. Scattered here and there at intervals were rep- 
 resentatives of out-of-town organizations, including the Ohio 
 Republican Club, the Republican Club of New York city, the 
 New York Italian Chamber of Commerce and of the New York 
 Board of Trade and Transportation, the New York Democratic 
 Honest Money League and the Southern Manufacturers' Club of 
 Charlotte, N. C. 
 
 THE ORGANIZATIONS IN THE PROCESSION. 
 
 1{ The Military Order of the Loyal Legion, of which Presi- 
 dent McKinley was an honored member, with a representation from 
 the New York and Pennsylvania Commanderies, formed a con- 
 spicuous part in this procession, as also did the Knights Templar 
 of this city and of Alexandria, Va., and a battalion of the uniform 
 rank Knights of Pythias. The full force of the letter carriers of 
 Washington, each with a band of black crepe on his arm, walked 
 to the solemn tread of the dirge. 
 
 "At 10.12 o'clock the head of the procession arrived at the 
 north end of the Capitol plaza, but instead of swinging directly 
 into the plaza and passing in front of the Capitol, as usually is 
 done on the occasion of Presidential inaugurations, the military 
 contingent passed eastward on B street, thence south on First 
 street, Bast. Headed by Maj or-General John R. Brooke and 
 staff and the Fifth Artillery Corps Band, the troops swept around 
 to the south end of the plaza, and then marched to position front- 
 ing the main entrance to the Capitol. As soon as they had been 
 formed at rest, the artillery band on the left and the Marine Band
 
 IMPRESSIVE SERVICES AT THE CAPITOL 339 
 
 on the right of the entrance, the funeral cortege, with its guard 
 of honor, entered the plaza from the north. As the hearse halted 
 in front of the main staircase the troops, responding to almost 
 whispered commands, presented arms. 
 
 u The guard of honor ascended the steps, the naval officers 
 on the right and the army officers on the left, forming a cordon 
 on each side, just within the ranks of the artillerymen, seamen 
 and marines. 
 
 " As the eight sturdy body-bearers, four from the army and 
 four from the navy, tenderly drew the flag-draped casket from the 
 hearse, the band sweetly wailed the pleading notes of ' Nearer, 
 My God, to Thee.' Every head in the vast attendant throng was 
 bared. Tear bedimmed eyes were raised to Heaven and a silent 
 prayer went up from the thousands of hearts. With careful and 
 solemn tread the body-bearers began the ascent of the staircase 
 with their precious burden, and tenderly bore it to the catafalque 
 in the rotunda." 
 
 UNPRECEDENTED DISPLAY OF MOURNING. 
 
 The display of mourning for the death of President McKin- 
 ley was one of the most remarkable demonstrations that this 
 country has ever witnessed. The testimony of regret and sorrow 
 for the late Chief Magistrate, and the expression of detestation for 
 the hateful blow which removed him from a post of usefulness, 
 were universal and sincere. The evidences of genuine deep 
 sorrow were apparent on every hand, in every city and hamlet in . 
 the land, and grief at the cruel blow penetrated every patriotic 
 household, and affected every right-minded man in the country. 
 
 The emblems of mourning which are displayed in profusion 
 on business houses, private dwellings, public buildings and at all 
 the haunts of men were not merely the trappings of woe the 
 sign of a perfunctory observance of the decencies and proprieties 
 of the occasion. They were the eager, voluntary, true expressions 
 of the feeling everywhere prevalent. There probably never was 
 a more genuine, spontaneous national outburst of emotion. In 
 this wonderful expression of feeling great influence is uudoubt-
 
 340 IMPRESSIVE SERVICES AT THE CAPITOL 
 
 edly exerted by the character and traits of the gentle man, who 
 possessed a singularly winning and healthy nature, and exempli- 
 fied in his life the wholesome and admirable Christian virtues 
 which are the real safeguards of a nation. 
 
 The manner and circumstance of his taking off ; the infamous 
 character and the deliberate, malignant, base method of the 
 inhuman assassin ; the innocence of the victim, which should 
 have rendered him safe from attack, and the fine and noble bear- 
 ing of the sufferer when the inevitable end came all conspired 
 to awaken the best sentiments of the whole country. But in 
 addition to all of these contributing causes to the universal 
 expression of grief, there was a cause for indignation and sorrow 
 of equal force. An enemy to free government aimed a blow at 
 the Republic and struck down the Chief who was the choice of 
 the people. 
 
 THE WHOLE PEOPLE ATTACKED. 
 
 A malignant attack was made upon the whole people in the 
 person of the Chief Magistrate who represented in his high office 
 the majesty, power and dignity of the nation, and, consciously or 
 unconsciously, all citizens throughout the land were not only 
 expressing their grief and sorrow at the grievous blow which had 
 fallen upon a good and true man, but were showing their detesta- 
 tion of a foul blow directed against the Republic, and offering the 
 strongest testimony of their unalterable devotion to that Govern- 
 ment, by and for the people, which was never more strongly 
 entrenched in the hearts of its people than it is to-day. 
 
 From an observer of the great demonstration at the Capitol 
 we furnish the reader with the following graphic account : 
 
 ;i Washington, curiously composite city as to its humanity, is 
 used to public spectacle. It is as much a part of its life to-day as 
 it must have been with the temple cities of Egypt, three thousand 
 years ago. Now it is an inauguration, now the departure of great 
 ones, now the home-coming of victors, now a funeral. It has, in 
 fact, the parade habit, and consequently its emotions are some- 
 what blunted by overweai.
 
 IMPRESSIVE SERVICES AT THE CAPITOL. 341 
 
 *' But it always can be counted on for enough of feeling to 
 make the meaning of its presence on the streets seem real. On 
 either side of the portico are masses of votive wreaths and flowers 
 in every form to give color to the eye and perfume to the air. 
 Officers of the army and navy are ascending the steps and greet- 
 ing each other decorously. 
 
 " Admiral Dewey, in his full uniform, bland of face and light 
 of movement, stops to talk with the swarthy Rear Admiral 
 Crowniii shield, and the tall form of Rear Admiral Bradford joins 
 the group. Melville, Rear Admiral, too, shows his long woolly 
 white hair and beard. And Rear Admiral O'Neill, clean cut of 
 face and figure, is greeting Rear Admiral Watson, a small, clean 
 shaven man. General Otis, tall, ruddy faced, and General 
 Gillespie, of fine figure and white mustache, are having a word. 
 It strikes one that all our generals and admirals are on in years, 
 and one thinks of the days of '64 and '65, when the great com- 
 manders were men in the early forties and under. Among the 
 major generals there is Fitzhugh Lee, stout, stalwart, but aging. 
 
 POTENTATES, FRIENDS AND ADMIRERS. 
 
 "The waiting catafalque in the centre, beneath the dome, 
 one notes on entering, is set about with chairs in segments of the 
 circle, eight segments, with about one hundred chairs in each. 
 A small harmonium is near the head of the catafalque, which, on 
 a low back platform, stands about two feet high. It is draped in 
 black cloth, and all around are great pieces of flowers from foreign 
 potentates, from States and cities, from friends and admirers. 
 
 " The import of the scene is heavy in the larger sense on 
 each one gathering there, but the spell of it is not so deep as it 
 was at Buffalo, where the personal feeling was fresher and deeper. 
 The men here have seen great tragedies and great struggles, and 
 were part of them. The whispered talk turned mostly to the 
 event, but often turned away as we waited there, and this was 
 natural, and is set down so as to truly mirror the event. The 
 tragedies of history, the great tragedies, move in their vast 
 solemnity without reference to the seriousness or want of it in
 
 342 IMPRESSIVE SERVICES AT THE CAPITOL. 
 
 the minor details. Then this was something in a sense spec- 
 tacular, and we are not good at spectacles. 
 
 " It is 10 o'clock and the chairs are filling. After well known 
 faces appear ' Fighting Bob' Evans shows his shrewd face among 
 the naval men. A handful of Senators come from the Senate 
 Chamber only six at first, though others drift in later. Senator 
 Allison, gray bearded, looking like a mild version of General 
 Grant ; Senator Clapp, of Minnesota, with his likeness to the 
 strong faced John A. Logan ; Senator Culloni, of Illinois, rough 
 bearded, but shaven of the upper lip, in the style of 1860 ; Senator 
 Nelson, lumbering and rustic looking. After them comes former 
 Senator Gorman, of Maryland, clear of eye, sharp of outline and 
 lithe of movement. General Alger and his wife have coine in, 
 and with them former Postmaster-General Gary. 
 
 WOMEN IN FULL MOURNING. 
 
 * c Women are drifting quietly in through many doors, all 
 mostly in full mourning or wearing black hats and skirts, with 
 white waist and a very chic crepe band and bow on the left arm 
 above the elbow. The Rev. Mr. Powers, who preached the fun- 
 eral sermon at Garfield's funeral here, a man of pale minis- 
 terial face with a small white mustache, is seated with his 
 memories. 
 
 " A delegation of the House of Representatives comes in. 
 c Joe ' Cannon, with his knotty face and chin whisker ; Amos J. 
 Cummings, whose eyes are bright as ever, but whose mustache is 
 whitening ; Hopkins, of the Ways and Means, reddish and alert 
 and much chatted to. Whitelaw Reid, former Minister to France, 
 thoughtful looking, comes in slowly, Bishop Satterlee is seated 
 beside an army man. 
 
 " Around runs a whisper, for Grover Cleveland, twice Presi- 
 dent of the United States and the only living former President, 
 is entering. He looks well and slightly tanned, something thin- 
 ner than when he was at the White House, and also showing the 
 march of whitening time. He sits beside Rear Admiral Robley 
 D. Evans, Whispers run that Cleveland in all his eight years
 
 IMPRESSIVE SERVICES AT THE CAPITOI. S43 
 
 was constantly on the lookout for assassination when he was out 
 of doors. 
 
 "At twenty minutes to eleven o'clock a bugle call is heard in 
 the court without. It is evidently a signal, for almost simul- 
 taneously the active heads of the government enter. President 
 Roosevelt, with Mrs. Roosevelt, in deep mourning, 011 his arm, 
 and his son and two daughters following, head the Hue. Mrs. 
 Roosevelt walks with sympathetically bowed head, her coming a 
 woman's gracious tribute to the widow of her husband's pre- 
 decessor. The Cabinet, headed by Secretaries Hay and Gage, 
 with Secretary Root and Attorney General Knox follow. 
 
 THE SECRETARY OF STATE. 
 
 " Mr. Hay looks white and far from strong, but evidently 
 steeling himself for a ceremony certain to bring his own recent 
 bereavement the loss of his son painfully before him. His 
 dark beard, with its powdering of white, his parted hair and 
 glasses give him a stern, autocratic look, far from his bearing of 
 the moment. Abner McKinley, very pale, poor man ! and leading 
 his wife, heads the family party from the White House, where 
 Mrs. McKinley remains for the afternoon her last in the home 
 of the Presidents. Senator Hanna, still pale and shaken, is with 
 the family party. 
 
 " There is a breath of music, the music of the oft-played 
 hymn, heard from without, a ring of feet on the marble pavement, 
 and the guard of honor enter from the east porch, followed by the 
 eight men bearing the late President's coffin, now wholly covered 
 with an American flag, on which are piles of beautiful white roses. 
 Slowly the bearers turn and lay their burden down, the head to 
 the west and the feet to the rising sun. 
 
 " While the attendants are arranging matters about the 
 catafalque, the Ambassadors, Ministers and attaches of the for- 
 eign legations enter, two and two, their bright uniforms give an 
 extra dash of color to the gathering. Senor Aspiroz, the Mexican 
 Minister, his dark uniform coat, a perfect dazzle of gold lace, dark 
 skinned and strong faced, gazes sympathetically about. The
 
 344 IMPRESSIVE SERVICES AT THE CAPITOL. 
 
 Turkish and English attaches give vivid reds and greens to the 
 picture. 
 
 " Minister Wu, in his Chinese garb, beams kindly over his 
 spectacles. He comes from a land where sudden deaths have been 
 much enforced of late. He wears a black faced, conical cap, with 
 a scarlet crown and a gold button on the top. The Spanish and 
 Portuguese Ministers are in diplomatic uniforms, heavily laced 
 
 with gold. 
 
 THE SOUTH FULLY REPRESENTED. 
 
 " Still people are coming. Senator Tillman, General Jere- 
 miah Wilson and General Longstreet, of Confederate fame, are 
 entering, and there is the new Acting Vice-President, William B. 
 Frye, of Maine, his mild blue eyes blinking in the light. He has 
 an earnest face and an appealing expression. Mrs. Garret A. 
 Hobart and her son are seated close together. James G. Elaine, Jr., 
 and his wife are there. Senator Chauncey M. Depew and 
 Senator Platt, of New York, are across the aisle. With the 
 former is J. Pierpont Morgan. They chat earnestly. Stephen B. 
 Elkins and Senator Cockrell are noted, but one would have to call 
 a very long roll to tell of them all. 
 
 " At a few minutes before eleven the double quartet near the 
 harmonium sang ' Lead, Kindly Light.' With fine clearness of 
 tone the Rev. Henry R. Naylor, presiding elder of the Methodist 
 Church, led in a heartfelt prayer, only a word or two of which 
 reached mortal ears at any distance from the speaker on account 
 of the mocking echoes from the dome. 
 
 " Then Mrs. Thomas C. Noyes, of Washington, sang, with a 
 soprano voice of great clearness, volume and wide range, the hymn 
 ' Some Time We'll Understand.' Mrs. Noyes sang with great 
 feeling and effect, bringing tears to the eyes of not a few. She 
 made a pretty picture, dressed in black and wearing a picture hat, 
 with long black feather, and a high lace collar of a square cut. 
 Nervous for the first few notes, as well she might be, her face 
 as she went on became a study of ingenuous earnestness while 
 her clear notes ran like birds diving on high above our heads. 
 
 " Bishop Andrews, of the Methodist Church, followed in an.
 
 IMPRESSIVE SERVICES AT THE CAPITOL. 348 
 
 address that lasted some fifteen minutes. He was fluent and 
 earnest, and looked very like Senator Hoar, but the bafHing 
 echoes once more took up the discourse, and, exaggerating what 
 may be called the ministerial tone of the prelate, produced a 
 strange effect. After the singing of * Nearer, My God, to Thee,' 
 in which nearly all present joined in subdued tone, producing a 
 touching effect, a brief blessing was given by the Rev. W. H. 
 Chapman. With extended hands and uplifted eyes he prayed for 
 mercy and peace and light, and so the service came to an end. 
 
 " Not many minutes had passed before all had departed save 
 the guard, under the charge of Colonel Bingham. The attend- 
 ants rearranged the chamber for the popular view of the remains. 
 The chairs disappeared, except a line each side from east to west. 
 On these were laid the floral offerings. When, therefore, the lid 
 had been lifted from the head of the coffin the people passed 
 between a lane of costly flowers, each of which told a tale. 
 
 " Looking out upon the multitude now waiting under a 
 drizzling rain, it seemed as if there were fifty thousand umbrellas 
 in sight where a short time before a flower bed of humanity met 
 the view. There was much crowding and pushing a while, but at 
 length it was straightened out and the stream kept flowing through 
 the hall until the time came, with the evening lights, to close the 
 coffin lid to Washington forever."
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 Eloquent Eulogy on the Dead President Floral Offerings 
 Great Crush to View the Remains Distinguished Per- 
 sons Present. 
 
 THE funeral services at the Capitol over the remains of the 
 late President McKinley were simple and beautiful. They 
 were of the form prescribed in the Methodist Church. Two 
 hymns, a prayer, an address and a benediction comprised all of 
 it ; yet the impression left at the end was of perfection. 
 
 The people were slow in gathering. Among the first comers 
 were the army officers. General Randolph, Chief of Artillery, 
 and in charge of the military arrangements at the Capitol, was 
 first among these, and soon afterwards came General Gillespie, 
 Chief of Engineers, and General Fitzhugh Lee. Soon the num- 
 ber of officers became too great to distinguish between them, and 
 the rotunda began to light up with dashes of gold lace and gilt 
 buttons and flashing sword scabbards, scattered through the 
 soberly dressed crowd of civilians. 
 
 Before 10 o'clock the latter had assembled in such numbers 
 as to fill the greater part of the seating space not reserved for the 
 persons in the funeral procession, who were to enter the rotunda. 
 
 Just at 10 o'clock Admiral Dewey made his appearance, ac- 
 companied by General Otis, General Davis and General Ruggles. 
 He glanced over the scene within, and then took up his station at 
 the eastern entrance, where he was joined by the other members 
 of the guard of honor. 
 
 Mrs. Hobart, with her son, and Mrs. Russell A. Alger, 
 escorted by Colonel Hecker, also entered during this time of waiting. 
 The clergymen and the choir, the latter from the Metropolitan 
 Methodist Episcopal Church, which Mr. McKinley attended, filed 
 in, and were seated at the head of the catafalque. At twenty 
 minutes to n o'clock the Cabinet entered, and were seated to the 
 
 346
 
 EULOGY BY BISHOP ANDREWS. 3ti 
 
 south of the platform ; and then to the strains of * 'Nearer, My 
 God, To Thee," by the Marine Band outside, the casket was 
 borne into the rotunda. General Gillespie and Colonel Binghani 
 led the way, and every one arose. The guard of honor on either 
 side separated, and the casket was placed gently upon the 
 
 catafalque. 
 
 THE FAMILY GROUP. 
 
 Next came members of the family of the deceased, Abner 
 McKinley leading. They were seated near the head of the casket. 
 Mrs. McKinley was not present. Senator Hanna was with the 
 family party. Next the diplomatic corps entered, all in full 
 court regalia, and were seated to the south. Former President 
 Cleveland, with General Wilson, his escort, sat in the first row. 
 
 Lastly came President Roosevelt, escorted by Captain Cowles, 
 and preceded by Mr. Cortelyou, secretary to the President. He 
 was given a seat at the end of the row occupied by the Cabinet, 
 just south of the casket. Mr. Roosevelt's face was set, and he 
 appeared to be restraining his emotions with difficulty. 
 
 When the noise occasioned by seating the late comers had 
 ceased a hush fell upon the people, and then the choir softly sang 
 "Lead, Kindly Light," Cardinal Newman's divine anthem, while 
 every one stood in reverence. 
 
 At the conclusion of the hymn Rev. Dr. Henry R. Naylor. 
 Presiding Elder of the Washington District of the Methodist 
 Episcopal Church, delivered the invocation, while the distinguished 
 company listened with bowed heads. Dr. Naylor said : 
 
 "Oh, Lord God, our Heavenly Father, a bereaved nation 
 cometh to Thee in its deep sorrow ; to whom can we go in such 
 an hour as this but unto Thee. Thou only art able to comfort 
 and support the afflicted. 
 
 " Death strikes down the tallest and best of men, and conse- 
 quent changes are continually occurring among nations and 
 communities. But we have been taught that Thou art the same 
 yesterday, to-day and forever ; that with Thee there is no variable- 
 ness nor the least shadow of turning. So in the midst of our grief 
 we turn to Thee for help.
 
 848 EULOGY BY BISHOP ANDREWS. 
 
 "We thank Thee, O, Lord, that years ago Thou didst give 
 unto this Nation a man whose loss we mourn to-day. We thank 
 Thee for the pure and unselfish life he was enabled to live in the 
 midst of so eventful an experience. We thank Thee for the faith- 
 ful and distinguished services which he was enabled to render to 
 Thee, to our Country and to the world. 
 
 " We bless Thee for such a citizen, for such a lawmaker, for 
 such a Governer, for such a President, for such a husband, for 
 such a Christian example and for a friend. 
 
 :< But, O, Lord, we deplore our loss to-day ; sincerely implore 
 Thy sanctifying benediction. We pray Thee for that dear one who 
 has been walking by his side through the years, sharing his tri- 
 umphs and partaking of his sorrows. Give to her all needed 
 sustenance and the comfort her stricken heart so greatly craves. 
 And under the shadow of this great calamity may she learn, as 
 never before, the Fatherhood of God, and the matchless character 
 of His sustaining grace, 
 
 PRAYER FOR THE NEW PRESIDENT. 
 
 "And, O, Lord, we sincerely pray for him upon whom the 
 mantle of Presidential authority has so suddenly and unexpectedly 
 fallen. Help him to walk worthy the high vocation whereunto he 
 has been called. He needs Thy guiding hand and Thy inspiring 
 spirit continually. May he always present to the nation and to the 
 world divinely illumined judgment, a brave heart and an unsul- 
 lied character. 
 
 " Hear our prayer, O, Lord, for the official family of the 
 Administration, those men who are associated with Thy servant, 
 the President, in the administration of the affairs of government 
 guide them in all their deliberations, to the nation's welfare and 
 the glory of God. 
 
 "And now, Lord, we humbly pray for Thy blessing and con- 
 solation to come to all the people of our land and nation. Forgive 
 our past shortcomings, our sins of omission as well as our sins of 
 commission. Help us to make the Golden Rule the standard of 
 our lives, that we may 'do unto others as we would have them do
 
 EULOGY BY BISHOP ANDREWS. 349 
 
 unto us,' and thus become, indeed, a people whose God is the 
 Lord. 
 
 " These things we humbly ask in the name of Him who 
 taught us, when we pray, to say : ' Our Father, which art in 
 heaven, Hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will 
 be done in earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily 
 bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that tres- 
 pass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us 
 from evil, for Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, 
 forever. Amen.' " 
 
 MOST EFFECTIVE MUSIC. 
 
 As the pastor ceased, the voices of the choir swelled forth 
 and the rich, pure soprano notes of Mrs. Thomas C. Noyes led the 
 hymn, "Sometime We'll Understand." The music was remarka- 
 bly effective and touching as the notes came back in soft echoes 
 from the fulness of the dome overhead. As soon as the hymn 
 ceased, Bishop Edward G. Andrews, of the Methodist Episcopal 
 Church, who had come from Ohio to say the last words over the 
 remains of his lifelong friend and parishioner, arose; He stood at 
 the head of the casket and spoke in sympathetic voice, and with 
 many evidences of deep emotion. The acoustic qualities of the 
 rotunda do not favor such addresses, and, although the bishop spoke 
 in clear and firm tones, the rippling echoes from all sides made it 
 difficult for those a short distance from him to catch his words, 
 The bishop said: 
 
 " Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord, Who of His 
 abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by 
 the resurrection of Christ from the dead, to an inheritance uncor- 
 ruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven 
 for us, by the power of God through faith unto salvation, ready 
 to be revealed in the last time. 
 
 " The services for the dead are fitly and almost of necessity 
 services of religion and of immortal hope. In the presence of the 
 shroud and the coffin and the narrow home, questions concerning 
 intellectual cjuality, concerning public station, concerning
 
 850 EULOGY BY BISHOP ANDREWS. 
 
 great achievements, sink into comparative insignificance, and 
 questions concerning character and man's relation to the Lord 
 and Giver of life, even the life eternal, emerge to our view 
 and impress themselves npon us. 
 
 " Character abides. We bring nothing into this world, we can 
 carry nothing out. We, ourselves, depart with all the accumulations 
 of tendency and habit and quality which the years have given to us. 
 We ask, therefore, even at the grave of the illustrious, not altogether 
 what great achievement they had performed, [and how they had com- 
 mended themselves to the memory and affection or respect of the 
 world, but chiefly of what sort they were, what the interior nature 
 of the man was, what were his affinities. Were they with the 
 good, the truth, the noble ? What his relation to the infinite Lord 
 of the universe and to the compassionate Savior of mankind ; 
 what his fitness for that great hereafter to which he had passed. 
 
 HIS HIGH ACHIEVEMENTS. 
 
 " And such great questions come to us with moment, even in 
 the hour when we gather around the bier of those whom we pro- 
 foundly respect and eulogize and whom we tenderly love. In the 
 years to come, the days and the months that lie immediately 
 before us, will give full utterance as to the high statesmanship 
 and great achievements of the illustrious man whom we mourn 
 to-day. We shall not touch them to-day. The nation already has 
 broken out in its grief and poured its tears, and is still pouring 
 them, over the loss of a beloved man. It is well. But we ask 
 this morning of what sort this man is, so that we may, perhaps, 
 knowing the moral and spiritual life that is past, be able to shape 
 the far- with drawing future. 
 
 " I think we must all concede that nature and training, and, 
 reverently be it said, the inspiration of the Almighty con- 
 spired to conform a man admirable in his moral temper and aims. 
 We, none of us can doubt, I think, that even by nature he was 
 eminently gifted. The kindly, calm and equitable temperament, 
 the kindly and generous heart, the love of justice and right, and 
 the tendeney toward faith aud loyalty to unseen powers and
 
 EULOGY BY BISHOP ANDREWS. 351 
 
 authorities these things must have beeu with him from his 
 childhood, from his infancy ; but upon them supervened the 
 training, for which he was always tenderly thankful, and of which 
 even this great nation, from sea to sea, continually has taken 
 note. 
 
 " It was an humble home in which he was born. Narrow con- 
 ditions were around him ; but faith in God had lifted that lowly 
 roof, according to the statement of some great writer, up to the 
 very heavens and permitted its inmates to behold the things 
 eternal, immortal and divine; and he came under that training. 
 
 HIS FILIAL AFFECTION. 
 
 " It is a beautiful thing that to the end of his life he bent 
 reverently before that mother whose example and teaching and 
 prayer had so fashioned his mind and all his aims. The school 
 came but briefly, and then came to him the Chuich with a minis- 
 tration of power. He accepted the truth which it taught. He 
 believed in God and in Jesus Christ, through whom God was 
 revealed. He accepted the divine law of the Scripture ; he based 
 his hope on Jesus Christ, the appointed and only Redeemer of 
 men ; and the Church, beginning its operation upon his character 
 at an early period of his life, continued even to its close to mould 
 him. He waited attentively upon its ministrations. 
 
 "He gladly partook with his brethren of the symbols of 
 mysterioiis passion and redeeming love of the Lord Jesus Christ. 
 He was helpful in all those beneficences and activities ; and from 
 the Church, to the close of his life, he received inspiration that 
 lifted him above much of the trouble and weakness incident to 
 our human nature, and blessings be to God, may we say, in the 
 last and final hour they enabled him confidently, tenderly to say, 
 ' It is His Will, not ours, that will be done.' 
 
 " Such influences gave to us William McKinley. And what 
 was he ? A man of incorruptible personal and political integrity. 
 I suppose no one ever attempted to approach him in the way of a 
 bribe ; and we remember, with great felicitation at this time for 
 such an example to ourselves, that when great financial difficul-
 
 362 EULOGY BY BISHOP ANDREWS. 
 
 ties arid perils encompassed him, lie determined to deliver all he 
 possessed to his creditors, that there should be no challenge of his 
 perfect honesty in the matter. A man of immaculate purity, shall 
 we say ? No stain was upon his escutcheon ; no syllable of sus- 
 picion that I ever heard was whispered against his character. He 
 walked in perfect and noble self-control. 
 
 " Beyond that, this man has somehow wrought in him I 
 suppose upon the foundations of a very happily constructed 
 nature a great and generous love for his fellow men. He 
 believed in men. He had himself been brought up among the 
 common people. He knew their labors, struggles, necessities. 
 He loved them ; but I think beyond that it was to the Church 
 and its teachings concerning the Fatherhood of God and universal 
 brotherhood of man that he was indebted for that habit of kind- 
 ness, for that generosity of spirit, that was wrought into his very 
 substance and became him so that, though he was of all men most 
 courteous, no one ever supposed but that courtesy was from the 
 
 heart. 
 
 A MAN OF LARGE HEART. 
 
 " It was spontaneous, unaffected, kindly, attractive, in a most 
 eminent degree. What he was in the narrower circle of those 
 to whom he was personally attached, I think he was also in the 
 greatness of his comprehensive love toward the race of which he 
 was a part. If any man had been lifted up to take into his pur- 
 view and desire to help all classes and conditions of men, all 
 nationalities beside his own, it was this man. Shall I speak a 
 word next of that which I will hardly avert to the tenderness of 
 that domestic love, which has so often been commented upon ? I 
 pass it with only that word. I take it that no words can set forth 
 fully the unfaltering kindness and carefulness and upbearing love 
 which belonged to this great man. 
 
 " And he was a man who believed in right ; who had a pro- 
 found conviction that the courses of this world must be ordered 
 in accordance with everlasting righteousness, or this world's 
 highest point of good will never be reached ; that no nation can 
 expect success in life except as it conforms to the eternal love of
 
 EULOGY BY BISHOP ANDREWS. 353 
 
 the infinite Lord, and places itself in individual and collective 
 activity according to the Divine will. It was deeply ingrained 
 in him that righteousness was the perfection of any man and of 
 any people. 
 
 " Simplicity belonged to him. I need not dwell upon it, and 
 I close the statement of these qualities by saying, that, under- 
 lying all and overreaching all, and penetrating all, there was a 
 profound loyalty to God, the great King of the universe, the 
 author of all good, the eternal hope of all that trust in Him. 
 
 PATIENT AND THOROUGH. 
 
 " And now, may I say, further, that it seemed to me that to 
 whatever we may attribute all the illustriousness of this man, 
 all the greatness of his achievements ; whatever of that we may 
 attribute to his intellectual character and quality ; whatever of it 
 we may attribute to the patient and thorough study which he 
 gave to the various questions thrust upon him for attention ; for 
 all his successes as a politician, as a statesman, as a man of this 
 great country, those successes were largely due to the moral 
 qualities of which I have spoken. 
 
 " They drew to him the hearts of man everywhere, and par- 
 ticularly of those who best knew him. They called to his side 
 helpers in every exigency of his career, so that, when his future 
 was at one time likely to have been imperiled and utterly ruined 
 by his financial conditions, they who had resources, for the sake 
 of helping a man who had in him such qualities, came to his side 
 and put him on the high road of additional and larger success. 
 His high qualities drew to him the good will of his associates in 
 political life in an eminent degree. They believed in him, felt 
 his kindness, confided in his honesty and in his honor. 
 
 " His qualities even associated with him in kindly relations 
 those who were political opponents. They made it possible for 
 him to enter that land with which he, as one of the soldiers of the 
 Union, had been in some sort of war, and to draw closer the tie 
 that was to bind all the parts in one firmer and indissoluble 
 union. They commanded the confidence of the great body of 
 
 23
 
 354 EULOGY BY BISHOP ANDREWS. 
 
 Congress, so that they listened to his plans and accepted kindly 
 and hopefully and trustfully all his declarations. 
 
 " His qualities gave him reputation, not in this land alone 
 but throughout the world, and made it possible for him to minister 
 in the style in which he has within the last two or three years 
 ministered to the welfare and peace of human kind. It was out 
 of the profound depths of his moral and religious character that 
 came the possibilities of that usefulness which we are all glad to 
 -attribute to him. 
 
 " And will such a man die ? Is it possible that He who 
 created, redeemed, transformed, uplifted, illumined such a man 
 will permit him to fall into oblivion ? The instincts of morality 
 are in all good men. The divine word of the Scripture leaves us 
 no room for doubt. ' I', said one whom he trusted, ' am the 
 resurrection and the life. He that believeth in Me, though he 
 were dead, yet shall he live, and whosoever liveth and believeth 
 in Me shall never die.' 
 
 LOST ONLY TO EARTH. 
 
 " Lost to us, but not to his God. Lost from earth, but 
 entered heaven. Lost from these labors and toils and perils, but 
 entered into the everlasting peace and ever advancing progress. 
 Blessed be God, who gives us this hope in this hour of calamity 
 and enables us to triumph, through Him who hath redeemed us. 
 
 "If there is a personal immortality before him, let us also 
 rejoice that there is an immortality and memory in the hearts of 
 a large and ever growing people, who, through the ages to come, 
 the generations that are yet to be, will look back upon this life, 
 upon its nobility and purity and 'service to humanity, and thank 
 God for it. The years draw on when his name shall be counted 
 among the illustrious of the earth. William of Orange is not 
 dead. Cromwell is not dead. Washington lives in the hearts 
 and lives of his countrymen. Lincoln, with his infinite sorrow, 
 lives to teach us and lead us on. And McKinley shall summon 
 all statesmen and all his countrymen to purer living, nobler aims, 
 sweeter faith and immortal blessedness."
 
 EULOGY BY BISHOP ANDREWS. 355 
 
 
 The address lasted only a bare quarter of an hour. As the 
 bishop concluded every one in the vast rotunda rose, and the 
 choir, intoning the air, hundreds of voices joined in the grand 
 old hymn, "Nearer, My God, to Thee." 
 
 It was an affecting moment. In the midst of the singing 
 Admiral Robley D. Evans, advancing with silent tread, placed a 
 beautiful blue floral cross at the foot of the casket. 
 
 The last notes died away softly, and, with uplifted hands, 
 the benediction was. pronounced by Rev. Dr. W. H. Chapman, 
 acting pastor of the Metropolitan Church. This ended the 
 religious service. 
 
 THE COMPANY RETIRE. 
 
 There was a pause for a few minutes while the ushers cleared 
 the aisles and the assemblage began to withdraw. First to retire 
 was President Roosevelt, and as he entered so he left, preceded a 
 short distance by Major McCawley and Captain Gilmore, with 
 Colonel Bingham and Captain Cowles almost pressing against 
 him. The remainder of the company retired in the order in 
 which they entered, the Cabinet members following the President, 
 and after them going the Diplomatic Corps, the Supreme Court, 
 Senators and Representatives, officers of the army and navy and 
 officials of lesser degree. 
 
 Absolutely no attempt had been made to drape the interior of 
 the vast rotunda, and save for the black structure in the centre 
 and a small organ, and the floral pieces set against the walls 
 beneath the eight historical paintings, the- place presented its 
 usual aspect before the services began, and there was little to 
 encourage the half dozen photograghers who were early at the 
 Capitol in their efforts to perpetuate the scene at that stage. 
 
 The catafalque was exceedingly simple in design. An oblong 
 platform, about nine by twelve feet, and raised but six inches 
 above the floor, supported the bier, which was the same plain, 
 strong structure that has been used at the Capitol since Lincoln's 
 day for state funerals. New, rich black broadcloth covered it 
 completely, as well as the platform and a small reading stand,
 
 356 EULOGY BY BISHOP ANDREWS. 
 
 and the only signs of ornamentation about it were the heavy black 
 tassels and the artistic drapery of the cloth. The catafalque 
 occupied the centre of a circle of perhaps forty feet in diameter. 
 At the point was placed a circular row of cane-seated chairs and a 
 dozen of such rows sufficed to fill out the space remaining in the 
 rotunda, excepting the four broad aisleb running toward the cardi- 
 nal points of the compass. 
 
 The floral offerings were many and beautiful in design. Con- 
 spicuous among the many pieces was the great white shield of 
 immortelles, six feet in height, bearing the inscription in purple 
 flowers : " Tribute from the army in the Philippines," above the 
 Eighth Army Corps insignia, in red and blue. 
 
 OFFERING OF WHITE ROSES. 
 
 As many white roses as were the years of the dead President 
 was the offering of Colonel Bingham and the White House em- 
 ployes. A beautiful simple wreath of laurel came from the 
 Nineteenth Ward Republican Committee of St. Louis. A splen- 
 did sheaf of palms, with broad purple white ribbons, and sur- 
 rounded by a laurel sheath, came from the sister Republic of 
 Guatemala. 
 
 The Chinese residents of Philadelphia sent a tall white shaft 
 of flowers, with a purple ribbon bearing the words : " Our friend 
 at rest," and some quaint Chinese characters in gold. A beautiful 
 wreath of purple orchids, filled in the centre with spreading 
 palms, bore on a silver plate this inscription : 'To the memory 
 of William McKinley, President of the United States, whose 
 noble character and Republican virtues will leave behind an ever- 
 lasting trace in the history of the American world. Julio A. 
 Roca, President of the Argentine Republic." 
 
 Lilies of the valley and oak leaves, wrought into a wreath, 
 represented Hayti's gift, and crossed palms, with a card bearing 
 the one word, "Sympathy," came from Mrs. John Addison 
 Porter. 
 
 The Richmond City Council sent a magnificent tribute in 
 the shape of a mammoth wreath of red roses and ivy leaves, tied
 
 EULOGY BY BISHOP ANDREWS. 
 
 357 
 
 with the national colors. Light Battery A, Philadelphia artillery, 
 10 sent a green wreath, embedded with orchids, and the Loyal 
 Legion remembered "Companion William McKinley" through a 
 vast wreath of lilies and roses. Columbia's tribute came through 
 Minister Silva, in the shape of a great cluster of palm and purple 
 immortelles, and nearly every inch of wall space carried like 
 fermgs. One of the most effective of these was the wreath of 
 palms and orchids from Mrs. Garret A. Hobart, herself not Ion* 
 since bereaved. 
 
 The opening of the doors of the rotunda of the Capitol in 
 -der to permit an inspection of the remains of President McKin 
 ey, caused a rush of the vast throng that]had been congregated on 
 the east side of the building since early morning. The result 
 was that many women and children were badly hurt. The crowd 
 brushed by the police cordon, stationed at the foot of the steps as 
 had been chaff. A terrible congestion on the Capitol step< 
 and at the entrance door followed. 
 
 GREAT PRESSURE FROM THE CROWD. 
 
 At the latter point there was such extreme pressure that 
 imbers of women fainted. Many who thus became helpless 
 fted up bodily and carried out over the heads of the crowd 
 while others, less fortunate, were trampled under foot and seri- 
 ously bruised. Of the latter, twelve or fifteen were taken into 
 :he Capitol. The room immediately under the rotunda, where the 
 President's remains lay in calm and peaceful repose, was a tern- 
 porary hospital, filled with screaming women, lying prone upon 
 improvised couches. 
 
 One of them had a broken arm and another had suffered 
 iternal injuries, which caused excruciating pain. The office of 
 the Captain of Police also was used to accommodate the injured 
 as were several other places about the building. It is estimated 
 that no fewer than fifty women and children were injured to some 
 extent, but most of them were able to go to their homes. A few 
 were taken to the Emergency Hospital. 
 
 As soon as the rotunda was cleared of those who had been 

 
 358 , EULOGY BY BISHOP ANDREWS. 
 
 invited to attend the religious services, the bier was prepared for 
 the inspection of the general public. The floral offerings which 
 covered the coffin were put aside and the lid was lifted from the 
 head of the coffin, Some time was required to put things entirely 
 in order, and it was half-past twelve before the throng, which had 
 been waiting from early morning on the outside, was admitted. 
 
 As the coffin rested upon the catafalque it was just about 
 high enough to permit of easy inspection by adults. The crowd 
 entered through the east main door of the Capitol and passed out 
 through the west exit. The people came in double file, one line 
 passing to the right and the other to the left of the casket. Only 
 a hurried glance was permitted to any one, as it was announced 
 that the ceremony would close promptly at 6.30 o'clock. When- 
 ever there was an attempt to linger, especially over the casket, as 
 there was in many instances, the person making it was admon- 
 ished by the Capitol police to "pass on." 
 
 HURRIED PAST THE CASKET. 
 
 When they still remained they were pushed along. In this 
 way about 130 people were enabled to review the remains every 
 minute. The pressure from the outside was terrific. Many 
 women and children fainted, and others were more or less hurt. 
 The crowd consisted of men, women and children, and all colors 
 and ages were represented. Many children were carried through 
 the building in the arms of their parents. As the body of the 
 dead President lay in state it was guarded by representatives of 
 all branches of the nation's martial service, under the command 
 of General W. F. Randolph, Chief of Artillery. Directly at the 
 head of the casket stood a marine, who faced another at the foot. 
 
 On each side of these two sentinels the crowd passed. On 
 either side of the marine at the head stood an artilleryman, while 
 the marine at the foot of the casket was flanked by seamen. 
 Other artillerymen, seamen and marines formed a lane through 
 which the people passed. Back of them on either side was a line 
 of floral pieces. There were over a hundred of these. The whole 
 scene was photographed scores of times. Apparently the throng
 
 EULOGY BY BISHOP ANDREWS. 359 
 
 was in an apprehensive state of mind, for every time a flashlight 
 picture was taken piteous screams were heard from the people 
 about the entrance. 
 
 Washington, Sept. 17. Ex-President Grover Cleveland, 
 accompanied by Vice President Lament, of the Northern Pacific 
 Railroad, Mr. Cleveland's Secretary of War, arrived in Wash- 
 ington to-day to participate in the obsequies of the late President. 
 They reached here at 4.05 o'clock this morning in Mr. Lament's 
 private car " Yellowstone," which Mr. Cleveland boarded at 
 Princeton Junction last night. The two arose shortly after 7 
 o'clock, and breakfasted on the car. Mr. Cleveland refused to see 
 callers, and to a newspaper man, who sought an interview, he sent 
 word that he had nothing to say. 
 
 THEY REPORT TO THE PRESIDENT. 
 
 General John M.Wilson, retired, formerly chief of engineers, 
 and Rear Admiral Robley D. Kvans, of the navy, who had been 
 designated to take charge of the ex-President, arrived at the 
 station shortly before 8 o'clock, and immediately reported to the 
 former President. The latter was sitting in the observation part 
 of the car, smoking and awaiting the party. He wore a Prince 
 Albert suit, with silk hat, and carried his gloves in his hands. 
 He chatted for a few minutes with General Wilson over the 
 arrangements, expressing his earnest desire to participate in them, 
 and then the party made their way down the long platform and 
 out on the street. There was a crowd in the depot, and most of 
 them recognized him instantly and saluted him. A path had to 
 be made for him through the waiting room. The party were 
 driven first to Admiral Evans' home, and then to the White 
 House, where they arrived shortly before the time the cortege was 
 scheduled to move. 
 
 In foreign countries there were unusual demonstrations of 
 sorrow. The Bank of England exhibited for signature a mem- 
 orial of the " Bankers, Merchants and Traders of the City of 
 London," expressing sorrow at President McKinley's death, which 
 Mr. Choate, the United States Ambassador, was asked to forward
 
 360 EULOGY BY BISHOP ANDREWS. 
 
 to the people of the United States and Mrs. McKinley. The 
 Rothschilds, the Barings, the South African Chartered Company 
 and all the greatest financial houses signed the memorial. 
 
 Colonel Sir William James Colville, the King's Master of 
 Ceremonies, called on Mr. Choate and placed his services at the 
 Ambassador's disposal in connection with the reception of the 
 Diplomatic Corps at Westminster Abbey, Thursday, on the 
 occasion of the memorial service in honor of the late President of 
 the United States. 
 
 The Cotton Exchange and the Corn Exchange were ordered 
 to be closed on Thursday, the day of the interment of the remains 
 of the late President McKinley The Pig Iron Exchange of 
 Glasgow, was ordered to be closed Thursday, when the remains 
 of President McKinley were interred at Canton, O. 
 
 MOURNING IN PARIS. 
 
 By invitation of General Horace Porter, the United States 
 Ambassador at Paris, the resident and traveling Americans met 
 at his residence to adopt resolutions on the assassination of Presi- 
 dent McKinley. The attendance was numerous, including many 
 ladies dressed in mourning. General Porter who had completely 
 recovered from his indisposition, presided at the meeting. Senator 
 Lodge, Secretary Vignaud and Consul General Gowdy were the 
 Vice Presidents. General Porter, in feeling terms, announced 
 the purpose of the meeting. Senator Lodge, in moving the adop- 
 tion of the resolutions, eloquently outlined the career of the late 
 President and his administration. The Senator alluded in grate- 
 ful terms to the touching manifestation of sympathy shown by the 
 people of Paris and France at the sorrow of the American 
 Republic. 
 
 The following resolution was voted : " William McKinley, 
 President of the United States, is dead. He was an eminent 
 statesman, soldier and patriot, a great Chief Magistrate, whose 
 administration will stand out as one of the most eventful and 
 illustrious in American history. He has fallen at the zenith of 
 his fame, in the height of a great career, by the hand of an
 
 EULOGY BY BISHOP ANDREWS. 361 
 
 assassin. The enormity of the wanton crime, measured by the 
 grievous loss, has brought sorrow to the Republic and all her 
 citizens. 
 
 'We, Americans, now in Paris, desire to make a public record 
 of the feeling which at this hour of grief we share with all our 
 countrymen. With them we unite in profound sorrow for the 
 untimely death of President McKinley, as well as in admiration 
 of his character as a man and his great public services, which have 
 brought so much honor to the Republic. 
 
 "We wish to declare our utter abhorrence of the foul crime, 
 to which President McKinley fell a victim and of the teachings 
 which produced it. 
 
 "To her to whom the President gave a lifelong devotion, as 
 pure as it was beautiful, we offer our deepest, heartfelt sym- 
 pathy. 
 
 THEIR GENEROUS CONFIDENCE. 
 
 " To President Roosevelt, called so suddenly and under such 
 sad conditions to the Presidency, we present our sincere and 
 respectful sympathy, and would also express our generous confi- 
 dence in the hope and belief that his administration will redound 
 to his own honor and to the general welfare of our country. 
 
 " We are profoundly grateful to the President and people of 
 our sister Republic for their quick sympathy and touching expres- 
 sions of condolence at this moment of great national sorrow of the 
 United States." 
 
 Earlier in the afternoon the members of the American Cham- 
 ber of Commerce met and passed appropriate resolutions. Presi- 
 dent Kimbel, Consul General Gowdy and Mr. Seligman, the 
 banker, spoke with much feeling. The resolutions adopted were 
 cabled to the Secretary of State at Washington. 
 
 A tribute from William J. Bryan to the dead President was 
 given to the Associated Press. Quoting the words of Major Mc- 
 Kinley, " God's will, not ours, be done," Mr. Bryan recalled the 
 pathetic scenes at the deathbed, and continued : 
 
 " The terrible deed at Buffalo, rudely breaking the ties of 
 family and friendship and horrifying every patriotic citizen.
 
 362 EULOGY BY BISHOP ANDREWS. 
 
 crowns a most extraordinary life with a halo that cannot but exalt 
 its victim's place in history, while his bravery during the trying 
 ordeal, his forgiving spirit and his fortitude in the final hours give 
 glimpses of his inner life which nothing less tragic could have 
 revealed. 
 
 " But inexpressibly sad as is the death of McKinley, the 
 illustrious citizen, it is the damnable murder of McKinley, the 
 President, that melts 75,000,000 hearts into one and brings hush 
 to the farm, the factory and the forum. The death, even when 
 produced by natural causes, of a public servant charged with the 
 tremendous responsibilities which press upon a President shocks 
 the entire country, and is infinitely multiplied when the circum- 
 stances attending constitute an attack upon the Government itself. 
 No one can estimate the far-reaching effect of such an act as that 
 which now casts a gloom over our land. It shames America in 
 the eyes of the world, it impairs her moral prestige and gives 
 enemies of free government a chance to mock at her, and it excites 
 an indignation which, while righteous in itself, may lead to acts 
 which will partake of the spirit of lawlessness. 
 
 MUST AVENGE THE OUTRAGE. 
 
 "As the President's death overwhelms all in a common sor- 
 row, so it imposes a common responsibility, namely : To so avenge 
 the wrong done to the President, his family and the country as to 
 make the Executive life secure without abridgement of freedom 
 of speech or freedom of the press." 
 
 King Edward, King Christian, Queen Alexandra and the 
 Empress Dowager of Russia, surrounded by the princes and 
 princesses of their families, personally expressed in special audi- 
 ence granted to the United States Minister, Air. Swenson, their 
 deep sympathy and indignation at the death of Mr. McKinley. 
 
 King Edward's closing words to Mr. Swenson were the fol- 
 lowing : " Convey my heartfelt sympathy for the loss of so grand 
 a man to so great a nation, a man who was so good a friend to 
 Great Britain." 
 
 A tribute, entitled "William McKinley An Appreciation,"
 
 EULOGY BY BISHOP ANDREWS. 363 
 
 written by Secretary John D. Long, was given prominence in a 
 Boston journal. In part it said : 
 
 " President McKinley, of blessed life, is now, and more and 
 more as time goes on, will be of blessed memory. The asperi- 
 ties which afflict a public servant during his official career will 
 quickly be forgotten, and the calm, just verdict of history will 
 pronounce him a man of ideally pure, true character, a patriot of 
 single and disinterested devotion to his country, and a statesman 
 unexcelled for tact, prudence and practical competency. His 
 domestic life is one of the precious sanctities of American senti- 
 ment. 
 
 "As an Executive, his administration has been a series of 
 remarkable achievements. It has been attended by great mili- 
 tary successes, by an abounding prosperity. 
 
 " It has put out the last embers of sectional bitterness. It 
 has been marked by appointments of high character and especial 
 fitness to places of great trust. The tone of the public official, 
 the efficiency of the civil service, the integrity and fidelity of all 
 departments and branches of the executive government were 
 never so high as to-day. 
 
 "President McKinley leaves an unblemished record in public 
 and private life. And a record not merely free from blemish, but 
 bright with good deeds done, with great services rendered."
 
 CHAPTER XIX, 
 
 Last Funeral Rites at Canton Imposing Demonstrations- 
 Scenes at the Church President Roosevelt and Other 
 Distinguished Mourners. 
 
 WITH the going down of the sun, on September iQth, the 
 body of William McKinley, late President of the United 
 States, was committed to the tomb, in the presence of his suc- 
 cessor in office, the chiefs of all departments of the Government, 
 and a vast multitude of people, who fitted the cemetery and stood 
 silently and with bared heads while the last words were spoken 
 and the last honors were paid the martyred Chief Magistrate. 
 
 The last scene of all closed with the booming of minute 
 guns, varied by the quick, sharp report of the nineteen guns pre- 
 scribed to salute the President, the touching music of the favorite 
 hymn of the deceased, and finally by the bugle notes, reverberat- 
 ing over the hills, as they sounded "taps" the soldier's good- 
 night. All was ended. The troops, who had marched to the 
 tomb slowly, solemnly, with mournful music and drooping colors, 
 were moved into column while the smoke of the guns still hung 
 among the foliage like incense, and the bugle notes echoed and 
 re-echoed across the fertile valley of the Nimisilla, as if reluctant 
 to depart. 
 
 The words of command rang out in strange contrast with the 
 suppressed tones that had so shortly directed the funeral move- 
 ment, the bands struck up lively airs, the homeward march began 
 with quick step and swinging gait, the iron jaws of the vault were 
 closed with a snap, and William McKinley was alone with the 
 military watchers who will guard his remains for an indefinite 
 period, and until a permanent resting place is selected. The sun 
 sank below the horizon, and the shades of night were creeping 
 over the last scene in the tragedy that formed the climax of the 
 late President's life before the last of the funeral procession left 
 the gates of the cemetery behind. 
 364
 
 LAST FUNERAL RITES AT CANTON. 866 
 
 The day opened with lowering clouds that threatened to 
 envelope the closing scene with a pall' and deluge the vast multi- 
 tude of sorrowing spectators. Fortunately, as the sun gained 
 ascension the clouds were dissipated ; the atmosphere, which had 
 been damp and penetrating, became bright and cheering, bringing 
 assurances of the best meteorological conditions and furnishing 
 cause for popular rejoicing and thanksgiving. 
 
 All through the night and early morning, trains, loaded with 
 pilgrims to Canton, rumbled into the stations. Before the morn- 
 ing was far advanced, the streets were packed with people of both 
 sexes, all sizes and conditions, who moved in solid mass about the 
 City 'Hall, passed in orderly procession through the vault-like 
 chamber, with its mournful drapery and its oppressive funeral 
 light, where the remains reposed in state and were exposed to 
 view for the last time. 
 
 IN THE LITTLE FRONT PARLOR. 
 
 The McKinley residence divided with the City Hall the 
 popular interest. The precious casket rested in the little front 
 parlor, and, while none was admitted, all could pass in silence 
 and gaze upon the house that held it, surrounded by armed men, 
 whose measured step was the only sound that disturbed the pre- 
 vailing quiet. Crossed palms, held by black and white ribbons, 
 and fastened against the wall on the right of the door, were 
 only outward evidence of the deep grief that overwhelmed 
 household, and which weighed upon the bereaved widow 
 
 William McKinley. 
 
 The procession was behind the time appointed m j 
 the delay arising from the numerous organizations and large 
 numbers of those who composed them. The escort was made up 
 of the entire force of the State Guards, many commandnes of 
 Knights Templar, Masonic lodges and posts of the Grand Army, 
 of which organizations the deceased was a member ; survivors 
 his old regiment, organizations from every section of Ohio, and 
 delegations from other States, including their Governors. 
 
 The immediate family, together with the United States
 
 366 
 
 LAST FUNERAL RITES AT CANTON. 
 
 officials in attendance, the President, the Cabinet, the general 
 fficers of the army, headed by the Lieutenant-General, who 
 reached Canton ,n the evening ; the Rear Admirals of the navy 
 soldiers and sailors who have faithfully guarded and born; 
 the remains from place to place since leaving Buffalo- Senators 
 of the United States and Representatives-eleft, formed and fol! 
 in the same regulation order that was observed in the 
 
 -^ ** * to 
 
 in which the services were held. 
 
 The building was filled to its utmost capacity, and sur- 
 rounded on the outside by a vast multitude, which was held back 
 . military escort, formed in Hue to await the closing of the 
 ligious exercises and to make the last march to the cemetery 
 th a 11 the pomp and ceremony befitting the occasion. Mrs 
 .mley did not go to the church. She was desirous of follow- 
 her beloved to the end, but was finally prevailed upon to 
 remain at home by her relatives and her physician. 
 
 PROCESSION REACHES THE CHURCH. 
 
 President Roosevelt and the members of the family were in 
 
 position directly in front of the hearse as the representatives of a 
 
 en nation and mourning people. The funeral procession 
 
 reached the church about two o'clock. The doors were k p 
 
 >sed against general admission until the casket was in place 
 
 and the relatives and official attendants were seated. The platform 
 
 from which the regular .church services are conduced wa" 
 
 extended in order to accommodate the large number of clergymen 
 
 More than one hundred clergymen we re thus accommodated 
 and formed a fitting background for the many floral contribution 
 ked in front, and the sombre hangings that covered the wall 
 
 frltS, feSt n ;t hatWere 10 Ped Wkh br ad ^"e ribbon 
 the pillars and the great organ. The army and navy officers 
 
 consenting the special guard of honor, occupied the two fr 0n 
 pew, on the nght and left of the main aisle. The Preside* a
 
 LAST FUNERAL RITES AT CANTON. 367 
 
 the head of the second pew on the right, the members of the 
 Cabinet sitting with him and about him according to their rank 
 in the order of succession to the Presidency as established by 
 Congress to meet a possible, but happily, it is hoped, a remote 
 contingency. 
 
 The services occupied nearly an hour and a half, and were 
 in every sense appropriate, their simplicity adding to their 
 impressiveness. The music was by a quartette, two male and 
 two female voices. There was no organ accompaniment to con- 
 ceal the sweetness and tenderness of the voices, which filled the 
 edifice, floating harmoniously across the groined ceiling and out 
 to the auditorium and gallery of an annex to the main building, 
 and which is so constructed that it can be made part of it, as was 
 the case at the funeral. 
 
 A BEAUTIFUL EULOGY. 
 
 The delivery of the eulogy by Rev. Dr. Manchester, pastor, 
 friend and neighbor of the late President, occupied thirty-five 
 minutes, and was a most touching and beautiful tribute to the 
 public services and personal worth of the deceased. The services 
 closed with singing "Nearer, my God, to Thee," by the quartette. 
 When the benediction was pronounced the organ began in mur- 
 muring tones Chopin's funeral march, which swelled into a 
 volume of melody as the congregation slowly moved from the 
 church after the removal of the casket. 
 
 Upon emerging from the church the remains were again 
 received by the troops with the prescribed honors, the column of 
 march was resumed and passing between two lines of solid 
 humanity that stretched from the church to West Lawn Cemetery, 
 every constituent unit of which stood reverently and mournfully 
 as the cortege passed, they were borne to the tomb. 
 
 The following additional account of an eye-witness affords a 
 graphic picture of the solemn scene : 
 
 " As the time approached for bearing the bpdy of the dead 
 President from the McKinley home to the church the little 
 cottage on North Market street was the centre of a vast con-
 
 368 LAST FUNERAL RITES AT CANTON. 
 
 course of people. Regiment after regiment of soldiers, acting as 
 guards, were in triple lines from curbs back to the lawns. The 
 walks had been cleared, and the multitude took refuge on the 
 great sweep of la\vns, where they formed a solid mass of human- 
 ity, surging forward to the lines of soldiers. In front of the 
 McKinley cottage were drawn up the two rigid files of body 
 bearers eight sailors of the navy and eight soldiers of the army 
 awaiting the order to go within and take up the casket. 
 
 "Just at i o'clock the black chargers of the Cleveland Troop 
 swept down the street, their riders four abreast, in their brilliant 
 Hussar uniforms, with flags bound in crepe, and every saber hilt 
 bearing its fluttering emblem of mourning. Their coming was 
 the signal for the approach of President Roosevelt and the mem- 
 bers of the Cabinet. The Presidential party moved up the walk 
 to the entrance of the house and formed in a group to the left. 
 The President's face looked very grave, and he stood there 
 silently, with uncovered head, awaiting the body of the dead 
 chieftain. 
 
 MEMBERS OF THE CABINET. 
 
 " Beside him stood Secretary Gage, Secretary Root, Secretary 
 Wilson and Secretary Hitchcock, and just across Attorney General 
 Knox, Postmaster General Smith, Assistant Secretary of State 
 Hill, representing Secretary Hay, and Secretary Cortelyou. 
 Extending further down the walk was the guard of honor, the 
 ranking Generals of the army on the right and the chief figures 
 of the navy on the left. 
 
 " Lieutenant-General Miles, in the full uniform of his high 
 rank, with sword at side and band of crepe about his arm, 
 stood alongside the members of the Cabinet, and with him were 
 Major-General Brooke, Major-General Otis, Major-General Mac- 
 Arthur and Brigadier-General Gillespie. Across from them were 
 ranged Rear-Admiral Farquhar, representing Admiral Dewey, 
 ranking head of the navy ; Rear-Admiral Crowninshield, Rear- 
 Admiral O'Neil, Rear- Admiral Kenney and Brigadier-General 
 Heywood, the latter Coinmander-m-Chief of the Marine Corps.
 
 LAST FUNERAL RITES AT CANTON. 369 
 
 Just inside the gate stood the civilian Honorary Court, in double 
 line, including Governor Nash, of Ohio ; Governor Caldwell, 
 Judge Williams, of the Ohio Supreme Court ; Henry B. Mac- 
 Farland, President of the Commissioners of the District of 
 Columbia ; Mayor Diehl, of Buffalo ; Judge Day, the lifelong 
 friend of the President ; Mr. Milburn, at whose house he died, 
 and others in civil life near and dear to the dead chief. < 
 
 " As the Presidential party came up, the black chargers off 
 Troop A swung into battalion front facing the house, and the 
 long line of flashing sabres advanced to salute. 
 
 "Now the deep-toned wail of the church bells began, and 
 every steeple in Canton gave forth its dolorous plaint. It was 
 1.15 o'clock, and the time had come for taking up the body. A 
 brief private service had been held within the darkened chamber, 
 Dr. Manchester saying a prayer while the relatives gathered 
 around, and Mrs. McKinley listened from the half open door of 
 her adjoining room. The double file of body -bearers now stepped 
 into the room, and, raising their flag-wrapped casket to their 
 shoulders, bore it through the open entrance. 
 
 MAJESTIC IN ITS SILENCE. 
 
 " A solemn hush fell upon the multitude as the bearers 
 advanced with measured tread. Not a bugle blast went up ; not 
 a strain of the hymns the dead ruler had loved so well. The 
 scene was majestic in its silence. As the casket was borne along, 
 above the line of heads could be seen enfolding Stars and Stripes, 
 and on top great masses of white roses and delicate lavender 
 orchids. Tenderly the coffin was committed to the hearse, and 
 the silence was broken as the order to march passed from officer 
 to officer. 
 
 " The great procession now took up its mournful journey, 
 passing under the sweep of giant arches robed in black, between 
 two living tides of humanity massed along the streets, covering 
 housetops and filling windows. The church bells still were 
 tolling, mingling their dismal tones with the cadence of the 
 funeral dirge. Preceding the funeral car and forming the first 
 
 24
 
 370 LAST FUNERAL RITES AT CANTON. 
 
 division rode General Torrance, National Commander, G. A. R., 
 with a long line of grizzled veterans. 
 
 " After them moved the National Guard of the State of Ohio, 
 platoon after platoon, under command of General Charles A. 
 Dick. Then came the solemn funeral cortege, the late Presi- 
 dent's favorite command, Troop A, riding ahead. At the head 
 of each of the coal black horses drawing the hearse marched a 
 soldier. The heads of the horses bore tall, black plumes, and 
 over them were thrown long palls of black. 
 
 MILITARY AND NAVAL GUARDS. 
 
 " At either side of the hearse marched the guard of military 
 and naval honor, the generals on the right, led by General Miles, 
 and the admirals on the left, led by Admiral Farquhar. Then 
 came the long line of carriages for the relatives and friends, and 
 after them the innumerable military and civic organizations that 
 had assembled to pay this last honor to the fallen chief. In the 
 line were division after division of Knights Templar, Knights of 
 Pythias, Free Masons, Odd Fellows and representatives of benefi- 
 cial orders, chambers of commerce, as well as delegations of citi- 
 zens from cities and towns throughout the State and country. 
 
 " It was 1.50 o'clock when the procession passed the Court 
 House and turned into Tuscarawas street to the stately stone 
 edifice where the funeral service was to be held. At the church 
 entrance were drawn up deep files of soldiers, with bayonets 
 advanced, keeping a clear area for the advancing casket and the 
 long train of mourners. The hearse halted, while President 
 Roosevelt and members of the Cabinet alighted. Again they 
 grouped themselves at either side of the entrance, and, with 
 uncovered heads, awaited the passing of the casket. Then the 
 flower covered coffin was brought from the hearse, and, as it 
 passed within the black draped entrance, the President and his 
 Cabinet followed within the edfice. The mourners, too, passed 
 inside of the edifice, but the stricken widow was not among them. 
 She had remained behind in the old home, alone with her grief." 
 . The scene witUin ^e church when the casket was carried in
 
 LAST FUNERAL RITES AT CANTON. 37J 
 
 on the brawny shoulders of the soldiers and sailors was profoundly 
 impressive. A black border, twenty feet high, relieved at intervals 
 by narrow white bands, falling to the floor, swept completely 
 around the interior. Only the gilt organ pipes, back of the pulpit, 
 rose above it. The vestibules on either side of the chancel lead- 
 ing into the church were black tunnels, the stained glass win- 
 dows on either side were framed in black and the balcony of 
 the Sunday-school to the rear, thrown open into the church 
 by large sliding doors, was shrouded in the same sombre 
 colors. 
 
 Graceful black streamers festooned along the arches of the 
 nave formed a black canopy above the chancel. From this directly 
 above the low flag-covered catafalque, on which the casket was to 
 rest, hung a beautiful silk banner, its blood-red and snow-white 
 folds tied midway with a band of crepe. 
 
 FLORAL BEAUTIES. 
 
 But it was the floral display at the front of the church which 
 filled the whole edifice with glory. The centre of it all was a 
 great wreath of American Beauties, framing a black-bordered por- 
 trait of President McKinley. From it, extending outward and 
 upward, was a perfect wealth of gorgeous blossoms. The effect 
 was as if a great rushing wave of color had broken into flowers at 
 the foot of the bier. They extended up even to the organ pipes, 
 against which lay four wreaths, three broken as if to represent 
 the quarters of the moon. It was exquisite. Words melt away 
 powerless before the tender beauty. 
 
 Purple and green were the dominant notes orchids, violets, 
 palms and evergreens against the sombre background. There 
 were many handsome pieces. Against the walls on either side 
 were floral flags, and upon the pulpit rested an urn in white car- 
 nations, broken at the base to represent the water flowing from it. 
 At either side of this urn were the cross of the Knights Templar 
 and the crown of the Knights of Pythias, while to the east was the 
 square and compass of Masonry. 
 
 Almost directly above the support for the coffin a sunburst
 
 372 LAST FUNERAL RITES AT CANTON. 
 
 of lights glittered like brilliant stars in a black sky. The light 
 from without came dimly through the stained glass windows. 
 
 Under the quivering folds of the starry banner, with the 
 lights shedding their effulgence from above, the fragrance of the 
 flowers hovering all about, and the music of Beethoven's Grand 
 Funeral March pulsing from the organ, the bod}* bearers gently 
 lowered the flag-draped and flower-adorned coffin to its support. 
 Vhe members of the Loyal Legion, Governor Nash, Governor 
 McMillin, of Tennessee, and Governor Longino, of Mississipi, 
 each with his full uniformed staff, had already entered the church 
 from the west entrance, and had filled up the most westerly of 
 the sections of pews. 
 
 MEMBERS OF THE SENATE AND HOUSE. 
 
 The members of the Senate and the House of Repre- 
 sentatives had preceded the coffin through the door at the side 
 of the chancel through which it entered. They were ushered 
 in as at all State ceremonies by the Sergeant-at-Arms of 
 each bod} 7 . Senators Allison, of Iowa, and Bate, of Tennessee, 
 headed the Senatorial representation, of which there were about 
 forty, and Speaker Henderson and Representative Dalzell that of 
 the House, of which more than half of the membership must 
 have been present. 
 
 The Congressional party filled up the entire east section of 
 pews and the rear half of the two central sections. The local 
 clergymen occupied the seats below the organ, usually occupied 
 by the choir. All had risen as the coffin was borne in. 
 
 The generals and admirals of the army and navy, who com- 
 prised the guard of honor, in their resplendent uniforms, followed 
 the body and occupied the first pew on either side of the centre 
 aisle. President Roosevelt and the Cabinet came slowly after. 
 All were in black and wore black gloves. The President took his 
 place immediately behind Lieutenant-General Miles, next the 
 centre aisle in the second pew to the eastward. So close was he 
 to the coffin he could almost have leaned over and touched it. 
 The fourth pew from the front, that always occupied by President
 
 LAST FUNERAL RITES AT CANTON. 373 
 
 McKinley, was draped in black, and remained vacant. After 
 these had been seated, the door leading into the Sunday-school 
 was opened, and the seats arranged ^elow, as well as those in the 
 balcony, were soon filled with the representatives of various 
 organizations and the fellow townsmen of the martyred President. 
 Conspicuous among these were the survivors of the Twenty- 
 third Ohio, President McKiiiley's old regiment, who brought into 
 the church the tattered battle flags the regiment had carried 
 throughout the Civil War. 
 
 It was after 2 o'clock when the quartette arose and lifted up 
 their voices with the touching words of u Beautiful Isle of Some- 
 where." When the sound of the last line had died away, Rev. 
 O. B. Milligan, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church, in which 
 President and Mrs. McKinley were married thirty years ago, 
 offered a fervent prayer. Every head within the church bent in 
 solemn reverence as the invocation went up. 
 
 PASSAGES FROM THE BIBLE. 
 
 Dr. John A. Hall, pastor of the Trinity Lutheran Church, 
 then read from the Bible the beautiful iQth Psalm, and Rev. B. P. 
 Herburck verses 41 to 58 of the twenty-fifth chapter of i Cor- 
 inthians. With great feeling he read the inspiring words telling 
 of the mystery that all would not sleep, but all be changed. 
 
 The quartette then sang Cardinal Newman's grand hymn, 
 the beautiful words floating through all the church, 
 " Lead, kindly light, amid the encircling gloom." 
 
 Dr. C. B. Manchester then delivered an address, which lasted 
 twenty-four minutes, on the life of the late President and the 
 lessons taught by his noble character and death. 
 
 Bishop I. W. Joyce, of Minneapolis, followed with a brief 
 prayer, and the services were concluded with the singing of the 
 hymn which President McKinley repeated on his deathbed, 
 " Nearer, My God, to Thee ; Nearer to Thee." The entire con- 
 gregation arose and joined in the last stanza. Father Valtmau, 
 of Chicago, chaplain of the Twenty-ninth Infantry, pronounced 
 the benediction. Then the notes of the organ again arose. The 
 
 i -
 
 374 LAST FUNERAL RITES AT CANTON. 
 
 coffin was taken up and borne from the church. The relatives 
 and those in official life, went out in the order they had entered. 
 It was shortly after three o'clock when the silent and anxious 
 throngs outside the church saw the solemn pageant reappear 
 through the church doors. First came the guard of military 
 and naval honor, the generals and admirals, forming in double 
 line leading from the entrance to the waiting hearse. Again the 
 flag-draped casket with its wealth of flowers, appeared, and was 
 committed to the hearse. The President and members of the 
 Cabinet followed, arm in arm, and stepped into the waiting car- 
 riages. The relatives entered carriages next. Then the squad- 
 ron of troopers broke from their battalion front and, wheeling 
 into platoons, took up the march to the grave. 
 
 SORROWFUL FACES EVERYWHERE. 
 
 In the long line of carriages were United States Senators and 
 members of the House of Representatives from every section of 
 the country, Justices of the United States Supreme Court, the 
 ranking heads of the army and navy, governors of States and 
 mayors of cities, and the dead President's fellow townsmen. Out 
 Tuscarawas street the long procession moved through a section of 
 the city where the sound of the dirge had not before been heard. 
 But it presented the same sorrow-stricken aspect that had been 
 observed in the heart of the city. Funeral arches spanned the 
 street, some of them, it is understood, having been erected by 
 school children. The houses were hung with black and even the 
 stately elms along the way had their trunks enshrouded in black 
 and white drapery. 
 
 Rev. O. B. Milligan, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church 
 of Canton, delivered the invocation, which was as follows : 
 
 " O God, our God, our nation's God, Thou God and Father 
 of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of Mercies and God of all 
 comfort we have entered the courts of Thy house to-day with 
 bowed and burdened hearts. In Thy inscrutable providence Thou 
 hast permitted this great calamity to come upon us. Truly ' Thy 
 ways are in the deep, and Thy paths in the mighty waters.' We
 
 LAST FUNERAL RITES AT CANTON. 375 
 
 bow in meekness before this exhibition of Thy sovereignty, and 
 own Thy right to do as Thou wilt in the armies of heaven and 
 amongst the sons of men. But blessed be Thy name; Thy 
 sovereignty over us is the sovereignty of love. 
 
 "Thou art our Father, and 'like as a father pitieth his 
 children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him.' Thou hast so 
 revealed Thyself to us in Thy Word, but especially in Jesus 
 Christ, who was the brightness of Thy glory and the express 
 image of Thy person. Therefore, O Lord, we can the more cheer- 
 fully submit to the doings of Thy hand and heart. 
 
 " We can say with him whom we so deply mourn, ' This is 
 God's way; His will, not ours, be done.' and, whilst we cannot 
 understand Thy gracious purposes in this dispensation, help us, 
 Lord, to wait in patient confidence, assured that Thou, who art 
 Thine own interpreter, will reveal Thy thoughts of peace and 
 purposes of mercy in this great mystery. In this spirit help us 
 to accept this providence and still to trust Thee. 
 
 CAUSES FOR THANKSGIVING. 
 
 " We thank Thee, O Lord, for this life which has been taken 
 so rudely from us. We thank Thee for Thy servant's endow- 
 ments and achievements. We thank Thee for the evidences that 
 he was chosen, of Thee, for great purposes in this world, and for 
 the splendid way in which, by Thy grace, these purposes were 
 wrought out in his life. Adorned by Thee, we thank Thee for what 
 he was in himself, in his home, in society, in Church and State and 
 national relations. We bless Thee for the inspiration of his 
 example, and we rejoice that, though dead, his influence for good 
 will ever live among us. Blessed be Thy Name, in the temple of 
 American honor another is written among the immortals. Help 
 us all, O Lord, to see in his life the divine possibilities of life, 
 and to strive for a like fidelity as we go forward to meet life's 
 appointments. 
 
 "Vouchsafe, we pray Thee, all needful blessings to our 
 nation in this season of sore bereavement. Thou knowest, O 
 God, how this blow has struck every heart, how this sorrow
 
 376 LAST FUNERAL RITES AT CANTON. 
 
 pierces every soul. The nation is dotted with sackcloth and 
 bowed with grief. Our land is full of mourning, our hearts are 
 heavy with an inexpressible and almost unendurable sorrow. 
 
 "Surely Thou hast stricken us in Thy sore displeasure, for 
 Thou dost not afflict willingly ; Thou dost not delight in punish- 
 ment. O, that Thou wouldst help us to search our hearts to seek 
 out even the hidden depths and springs of wickedness, to rid us 
 of the evil, that the abundant favor of our God may be returned 
 to us, and that the sublime things we hope for, in our nation'? 
 future, may be realized. And until we have discovered the evil 
 and rooted it out, let not Thy goodness depart from us. 
 
 "In afflicting, O Lord, be merciful. Remember not our sins 
 against us and visit us in the plentitude of Thy grace. 
 
 PRAYER FOR THE NEW PRESIDENT. 
 
 "Vouchsafe, we pray Thee, the fullness of Thy grace to 
 Thy servant, who has so unexpectedly been inducted into the 
 solemn responsibilities of the office of Chief Magistrate. May he 
 be endowed with all needed gifts to administer the Govern ment 
 to the glory and the welfare of this great people. Give him Thy 
 protection from secret foes and unworthy friends. Fill his heart 
 with Thy fear and give him the confidence and love of the nation. 
 
 "And now, O Lord, trustfully do we commit to Thy infinite, 
 tender and gracious care, she who has been most bitterly bereaved. 
 Tender as are our hearts toward her in this sad hour ; passing 
 tender as was her husband's heart toward her, as together they 
 passed through all the scenes of joy and sorrow which were 
 appointed them in life, may the heart of God be more tender still. 
 Bind her round with the sufficient consolations of Thy presence 
 and grace ; and, as by faith, she leans upon the unseen arm of 
 the Infinite, may she ever find Thee a present help in time of 
 need. 
 
 " Sanctify this dispensation to us all. May we hear it in the 
 voice of the Eternal, crying, 'All flesh is grass, and all the godli- 
 ness thereof as the flower of the field. The grass withereth, the 
 flower fadeth, but the word of our God will stand forever,' Help
 
 LAST FUNERAL RITES AT CANTON. 377 
 
 us that we may diligently improve this providence to our growth 
 in grace, and in the saving knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. 
 By Thy grace, dear Lord, prepare us all for life's duties and 
 trials, of the solemnities of death and for a blessed immortality. 
 These, and every other needed blessing, we plead for in the name 
 of Him who taught us to pray : 
 
 "'Our Father, which art in heaven, Hallowed by Thy name. 
 Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven. 
 Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses as 
 we forgive those who trespass against us. Andlead us not into temp- 
 tation, but deliver us from evil, and Thine to be the power, and the 
 glory, forever and ever. Amen.' " 
 
 TOUCHING ADDRESS BY McKINLEY'S PASTOR, 
 
 The address of Rev. C. E. Manchester, President McKinley's 
 pastor, was as follows : 
 
 " Our President is dead. The silver cord is loosed, the 
 golden bow is broken, the pitcher is broken at the fountain, the 
 wheel broken at the cistern. The mourners go about the streets. 
 One voice is heard a wail of sorrow from all the laud, for 'The 
 beauty of Israel is slain upon thy high places. How are the mighty 
 fallen ? I am distressed for thee, my brother. Very pleasant 
 hast thou been unto me.' 
 
 " Our President is dead. 
 
 " We can hardly believe it. We had hoped and prayed, and 
 it seemed that our hopes were to be realized and our prayers 
 answered, when the emotion of joy was changed to one of grave 
 apprehension. Still we waited, for we said, ' It may be that God 
 will be gracious and merciful unto us.' It seemed to us that it 
 must be His will to spare the life of one so well beloved and so 
 much needed. Thus, alternating between hope and fear, the weary 
 hours passed on. 
 
 "Then came the tidings of defeated sciences, of the failure of 
 love and prayer to hold its object to the earth. We seemed to 
 hear the faintly muttered words, ' Good-bye, all ; good-bye. It's 
 God's will. His will be done,' and then ' Nearer, My God, to
 
 378 LAST FUNERAL RITES AT CANTON. 
 
 Thee.' So, nestling nearer to his God, he passed out into uncon- 
 sciousness, skirted the dark shores of the sea of death for a time, 
 and then passed on to be at rest. His great heart had ceased to 
 beat. 
 
 " 'Our hearts are heavy with sorrow 
 
 A voice is heard on earth of kinsfolk weeping 
 The loss of one they love ; 
 
 But he has gone where the redeemed are keeping 
 A festival above. 
 " 'The mourners throng the ways, and from the steeple 
 
 The funeral bells toll slow ; 
 But on the golden streets the holy people 
 
 Are passing to and fro. 
 And saying as they meet, " Rejoice," 
 
 Another long waited for is come. 
 The Saviour's heart is glad, a younger brother 
 Has reached the Father's home.' 
 
 THE WORLD HAS LOST A MAN. 
 
 " The cause of this universal mourning is to be found in the 
 man himself. The inspired penman's picture of Jonathan, liken- 
 ing him unto the c beauty of Israel,' could not be more appropri- 
 ately employed than in chanting the lament over our fallen chief- 
 tain. It does no violence to human speech, nor is it fulsome 
 eulogy to speak thus of him, for who that has seen his stately 
 bearing, his grace and manliness of demeanor, his kindliness of 
 aspect, but gives assent from this description of him ? Was it 
 characteristic of our beloved President that men met him only to 
 love him ? 
 
 " They might indeed differ with him, but in the presence of 
 such dignity of character and grace of manner none could fail to 
 love the man. The people confided in him, believed in him. It 
 was said of Lincoln that probably no man since the days of Wash- 
 ington was ever so deeply imbedded and enshrined in the hearts 
 of the people, but it is true of McKinley in a larger sense. Indus- 
 trial and social conditions are such that he was even more than 
 his predecessors the friend of the whole people.
 
 LAST FUNERAL RITES AT CANTON. 370 
 
 " A touching scene was enacted in this church on Sunday 
 night The services had closed. The worshipers were gone to 
 their homes. Only a few lingered to discuss the sad event that 
 brings us together to-day. Three men in working garb of a 
 foreign race and unfamiliar tongue entered the room. They 
 approached the altar, kneeling before it and before his picture. 
 Their lips moved as if in prayer, while tears furrowed their cheeks. 
 They may have been thinking of their own King Humbert, and 
 of his untimely death. Their emotion was eloquent, eloquent 
 beyond speech, and it bore testimony to their appreciation of 
 manly friendship and honest worth. 
 
 " It is a glorious thing to be able to say in this presence, with 
 our illustrious dead before us, that he never betrayed the con- 
 fidence of his countrymen. Not for personal gain or pre-eminence 
 would he mar the beauty of his soul. He kept it clean and white 
 before God and man, and his hands were unsullied by bribes. 
 
 A MAN OF SINGLE AIM. 
 
 " His eyes looked right on, and his eyelids looked straight 
 before him. He was sincere, plain and honest, just, benevolent and 
 kind. He never disappointed those who believed in him, but 
 measured up to every duty, and met every responsibility in life 
 grandly and unflinchingly. 
 
 " Not only was our President brave, heroic and honest ; he 
 was as gallant a knight as ever rode the lists for his lady lover in 
 the days when knighthood was in flower. It is but a few weeks 
 since the nation looked on with tear dimmed eyes as it saw with 
 what tender conjugal devotion he sat at the bedside of his beloved 
 wife, when all feared that a fatal illness was upon her. No public 
 clamor that he might show himself to the populace, no demand of 
 social function was sufficient to draw the lover from the bedside 
 of his wife. He watched and waited while we all prayed and she 
 lived. 
 
 " This sweet and tender story all the world knows, and the 
 world knows that his whole life had run in this one groove of love. 
 It was a strong arm that she leaned upon, and it never failed her.
 
 380 LAST FUNERAL RITES AT CANTON. 
 
 Her smile was more to him than the plaudits of the multitude, 
 and for her greeting his acknowledgments of them must wait. 
 After receiving the fatal wound, his first thought v:as that the 
 terrible news might be broken gently to her. May God in this 
 deep hour of sorrow comfort her. May his grace be greater than 
 her anguish. May the widows' God be her God. 
 
 u Another beauty in the character of our President, that was a 
 chaplet of grace about his neck, was that he was a Christian. In the 
 broadest, noblest sense of the word, that was true. His confidence 
 in God was strong and unwavering. It held him steady in many 
 a storm where others were driven before the wind and tossed. He 
 believed in the Fatherhood of God and in His sovereignty. His 
 faith in the Gospel of Christ was deep and abiding. He had no 
 patience with any other theme of pulpit discourse. * Christ and 
 Him crucified' was, to his mind, the only panacea for the world's 
 disorders. He believed it to be a supreme duty of the Christian 
 minister to preach the word. He said : ' We do not look for great 
 business men in the pulpit, but for great preachers.' 
 
 WANTED HIM TO BE A MINISTER. 
 
 " It is well known that his godly mother had hoped for him 
 that he would become a minister of the Gospel, and that she 
 believed it to be the highest vocation in life. It was not, how- 
 ever, his mother's faith that made him a Christian. He had 
 gained in early life a personal knowledge of Jesus, which guided 
 him in the performance of greater duties and vaster responsibili- 
 ties than have been the lot of any other American President. He 
 said at one time, while bearing heavy burdens, that he had not dis- 
 charged the daily duties of his life but for the fact that he had 
 faith in God. 
 
 " William McKinley believed in prayer, in the beauty of it, 
 in the potency of it. Its language was not unfamiliar to him, 
 and his public addresses not infrequently evince the fact. 
 
 "It was perfectly consistent with his lifelong convictions and 
 his personal experiences that he should say as the first critical 
 moment after the assassination approached ' Thy Kingdom come ;
 
 LAST FUNERAL RITES AT CANTON. 381 
 
 Thy will be done ;' and that he should declare at the last, ' It is 
 God's will ; His will be done.' He lived grandly ; it was fitting 
 that he should die grandly. And now that the majesty of death 
 has touched and claimed him, we find that in his supreme moment 
 he was still a conqueror. 
 
 " My friends and countrymen, with what language shall I 
 attempt to give expression to the deep horror of our souls as I 
 speak of the cause of his death ? When we consider the magni- 
 tude of the crime that has plunged the country and the world into 
 unutterable grief, we are not surprised that one nationality after 
 another has hastened to repudiate the dreadful act. This gentle 
 spirit, who hated no one, to whom every man was a brother, was 
 suddenly smitten by the cruel hand of an assassin, and that, too, 
 while in the very act of extending a kind and generous greeting 
 to one who approached him under the sacred guise of friendship. 
 
 THE CRIME A MYSTERY. 
 
 " Could the assailant have realized how awful was the act he 
 was about to perform, how utterly heartless the deed, methinks 
 he would have stayed his hand at the very threshold of it. In all 
 the coming years men will seek in vain to fathom the enormity 
 of that crime. Had this man who fell been a despot, a try ant, an 
 oppressor, an insane frenzy to rid the world of him might have 
 sought excuse, but it was the people's friend who fell when Will- 
 iam McKinley received the fatal wound. 
 
 "Himself a son of toil, his sympathies were with the toiler. 
 No one who has seen the matchless grace and perfect ease with 
 which he greeted such, can ever doubt that his heart was in his 
 open hand. Every heart throbs for his countrymen. That his 
 life should be sacrificed at such a time, just when there was 
 abundant peace, when all the Americas were rejoicing together, is 
 one of the inscrutable mysteries of Providence. Like many others 
 it must be left for future revelations to explain. 
 
 " In the midst of our sorrow we have much to console us. 
 He lived to see his nation greater than ever before. All sectional 
 lines are blotted out. There is no South, no North, no East, no
 
 382 LAST FUNERAL RITES AT CANTON. 
 
 West. Washington saw the beginning of our national life. Lin- 
 coln passed through the night of our history and saw the dawn. 
 McKinley beheld his country in the splendor of its noon. Truly 
 he died in the fulness of his fame. With Paul he could say, and 
 with equal truthfulness, ' I am now ready to be offered.' The 
 work assigned him had been well done. The nation was at peace. 
 We had fairly entered upon an era of unparalleled prosperity. 
 Our revenues were generous. Our standing among the nations 
 was secure. 
 
 " Our President was safely enshrined in the affections of a 
 united people. It was not at him that the fatal shot was fired, 
 but at the very life of the Government. His offering was vicarious. 
 It was blood poured upon the altar of human liberty. In view of 
 these things we are not surprised to hear, from one who was 
 present when this great soul passed away, that he never before 
 saw a death so peaceful, or a dying man so crowned with grandeur. 
 
 LESSONS OF THE TRAGEDY. 
 
 " Let us turn now to a brief consideration of some of the les- 
 sons that we are to learn from this sad event. 
 
 " The first one that will occur to us all is the old, old lesson, 
 that ' in the midst of life we are in death.' ' Man goeth forth to 
 his work and to his labor until the evening.' 
 
 " Our President went forth in the fulness of his strength, in 
 his manly beauty, and was suddenly smitten by the hand that 
 brought death with it. None of us can tell what a day may bring 
 forth. Let us, therefore, remember that ' no man liveth to him- 
 self, and none of us dieth to himself.' May each day's close see 
 each day's duty done. 
 
 "Another great lesson that we should heed is the vanity of 
 mere eaithly greatness. In the presence of the Dread Messenger 
 how small are all the trappings of wealth and distinctions of rank 
 and power. I beseech you, seek Him, who said : ' I am the 
 resurrection and the life ; he that beHeveth in Me, though lie 
 were dead, yet shall he live ; and whosoever liveth and believeth 
 in Me shall never die.' There is but one Saviour for the sin-sick
 
 LAST FUNERAL RITES AT CANTON. 383 
 
 and the weary. I entreat yon, find Him as our brother found 
 Him. 
 
 " But our last words must be spoken. Little more than four 
 years ago we bade him good-bye as he went to assume the great 
 responsibilities to which the nation had called him. His last 
 words as he left us were : ' Nothing could give me greater pleasure 
 than this farewell greeting this evidence of your friendship and 
 sympathy, your good will, and, I am sure, the prayers of all the 
 people with whom I have lived so long and whose confidence and 
 esteem are dearer to me than any other earthly honors. To all 
 of us the future is as a sealed book ; but if I can, by official act 
 or administration or utterance, in any degree add to the pros- 
 perity and unity of our beloved country, and the advancement 
 and well being of our splendid citizenship, I will devote the best 
 and most unselfish efforts of my life to that end. With this 
 thought uppermost in my mind, I reluctantly take leave of my 
 friends and neighbors, cherishing in my heart the sweetest mem- 
 ories and thoughts of my old home my home now and, I trust, 
 my home hereafter, so long as I live.' 
 
 SLEEPS IN THE CITY HE LOVED. 
 
 " We hoped with him that, when his work was done, freed 
 from the burdens of his great office, crowned with the affections of a 
 happy people, he might be permitted to close his earthly life in 
 the home he had loved. 
 
 " He has, indeed, returned to us, but how ? Borne to the 
 strains of 4 Nearer, My God, to Thee,' and placed where he first 
 began life's struggle, that the people might look and weep at so 
 sad a home coming. 
 
 " But it was a triumphal march. How vast the procession ! 
 The nation rose and stood with uncovered head. The people of 
 the land are chief mourners. The nations of the earth weep with 
 them. But oh, what a victory ! I do not ask you in the heat of 
 public address, but in the calm moments of mature reflection, 
 what other man ever had such high honors bestowed upon him, 
 and by so many people ? What pageant had equalled this that
 
 884 LAST FUNERAL RITES AT CANTON. 
 
 we look upon to-day ? We gave liini to the nation but a little 
 more than four years ago. He went out with the light of the 
 morning upon his brow, but with his task set and the purpose to 
 complete. We take him back a mighty conqueror ! 
 " 'The churchyard, where his children rest, 
 
 The quiet spot that suits him best, 
 
 There shall his grave be made, 
 
 And there his bones be laid. 
 
 And there his countrymen shall come, 
 
 With memory proud, with pity dumb, 
 
 And strangers, far and near, 
 
 For many and many a year, 
 
 For many and many an age, 
 
 While history on her ample page 
 
 The virtues shall enroll 
 
 Of that paternal soul.' ' 
 
 LAID TO REST. 
 
 It was exactly four minutes after four when the funeral car 
 bore the remains of the dead President through the gateway of 
 his last resting place. Twenty minutes after that time the brief 
 services at the vault were over, the members of the family and 
 the distinguished men of the nation who had come so far to do 
 him honor had passed through the gates on their homeward way. 
 One hour and forty minutes after the hearse had entered the 
 cemetery the place was clear and the dead President was resting 
 alone under the watchful care of the men of the regular army. 
 
 A sentry's measured tread resounded from the cement walk 
 before the vault, another kept vigil on the grassy slope above, 
 and at the head and at the foot of the casket stood armed men. 
 Before the door, which was not closed tight, was pitched the 
 tent of the guard, and there it will remain until the doors are 
 closed to-morrow. Sentries will then guard the vault every hour 
 of the day and night until the body has been borne to its final 
 resting place. 
 
 For nearly an hour before the head of the funeral procession 
 arrived at the gate of the cemetery the strains of the dirges
 
 LAST FUNERAL RITES AT CANTON. 885 
 
 played by the bands came over the hilltops to the watchers by 
 the vault, telling them that the procession was on its way. 
 Finally, at 3.30 o'clock, the detachment of mounted police head- 
 ing the parade came slowly around the corner of Lincoln street 
 and passed up West Third street to the cemetery gates. Behind 
 them came the Grand Army band of Canton, the solemn notes of 
 " Nearer, My God, to Thee," welling out as it came up the drive- 
 way. 
 
 THE GRAND ARMY POSTS. 
 
 A moment after entering the cemetery the music was 
 changed to Chopin's Funeral Interlude, and it was to the sound 
 of this that the band passed out and on to Kentucky avenue at 
 the south side of the enclosure. Behind the band came the Grand 
 Army posts, fully 500 of the veterans marching by. 
 
 As they passed along the flower strewn path many of them 
 were weeping bitterly, and they stooped by dozens to gather the 
 blossoms which lay at their feet, and carried them away as memen- 
 toes. The sweet pea blossoms that were scattered along the road 
 were the offering of the school children of Nashville, Tenn., and 
 no tribute of love that was seen during the funeral exercises 
 more amply fulfilled its mission or more completely carried its 
 message of affection. 
 
 After the veterans came, in well set ranks, with rifles at 
 "arms port," the men of the Sixth Ohio Infantry, of the National 
 Guard, the Engineer Corps of the National Guard from Cleve- 
 land, and the comrades of the late President in the ranks of the 
 Twenty-third Ohio Volunteers during the Civil War. 
 
 Then came a long line of carriages bearing the members of the 
 family and the distinguished visitors. From the first carriage 
 that stopped at the foot of the walk leading up to the vault, Presi- 
 dent Roosevelt and Commander Cowles of the navy alighted. 
 Without waiting for those in the second carriage, which contained 
 Secretaries Root and Gage and Attorney-General Knox, the Presi- 
 dent walked slowly toward the vault and took a position on the south 
 side of the walk close to the door. As Secretary Root came up the 
 walk he assumed a similar position on the north side of the walk, 
 
 25
 
 386 LAST FUNERAL RITES AT CANTON. 
 
 and the other members of the Cabinet ranged themselves by the side 
 of the President and Secretary of War. 
 
 With bared heads the President and members of the Cabinet, 
 who were followed by the officers of the army and navy, stood on 
 either side of the walk, the lines reaching just to the edge of the 
 roadway. Within a minute after the formation of the lines the 
 funeral car came up the walk. The casket was gently lifted from 
 the hearse and borne to the door of the vault, where it was rested 
 upon the catafalque. It was carried by the same men of the 
 army and navy who had carried it ever since it left Buffalo. 
 Before them as it came up the the path walked Colonel Bingham, 
 who had been aide to President McKinley. 
 
 At its head on the right walked Lieutenant Hamlin of the 
 army, and in a corresponding position on the left Lieutenant 
 Eberle of the navy. Just as the bearers lowered it to the cata- 
 falque, Abner McKinley and Mrs. Barber alighted from their 
 carriage, and stood at the foot of the line of officers. They 
 remained here for a few seconds and then passed up to the foot of 
 the casket, where they remained during the brief services. 
 
 BURIAL SERVICE. 
 
 There was a moment's pause as Colonel Bingham looked to 
 see that all was in readiness. He then looked toward Bishop 
 Joyce, of Minneapolis, who read the burial service of the Methodist 
 Church, slowly, but in a voice that could be heard distinctly by 
 all who were grouped around the vault. Instantly from eight 
 bugles rang out the notes of the soldier's last call "Taps." It 
 was beautifully done, and the last notes of the bugles died away 
 so softly that all who heard it remained listening for a few 
 seconds to hear if it was really ended. 
 
 When the last note had floated away Secretary Wilson was 
 in tears, Secretary Hitchcock was also weeping, and the President 
 was gazing grimly at the walk. It was the last moment for the 
 men who had been so closely associated with the President for so 
 long, and the thought seemed greater than most of them could 
 bear.
 
 LAST FUNERAL RITES AT CANTON. 887 
 
 It was all ended at last, and Captain Biddle, of Company C, 
 of the Fourteenth Infantry, who will command the guard which 
 is to be placed around the vault, stepped up to a line of five sol- 
 diers, which he had posted just north of the doorway, and who, 
 throughout the ceremony, had stood at present arms as rigid as 
 though carved out of iron. One of them passed quickly into the 
 vault, taking station at the head of the casket, another placed 
 himself at the foot, and three men stood in the doorway, two on 
 the lower step and the third on the floor of the vault, directly 
 behind them. There they remained until after the passage of the 
 funeral procession. 
 
 A graceful tribute from the pen of Maud McDougal follows : 
 " No need to ask the way from the McKinley home to West- 
 lawn Cemetery to-day. The veriest stranger could have found it. 
 It led between two black banks of people, fringed with the blue 
 and khaki of the National Guard of Ohio. The sorrowful journey 
 was only once broken, and then at the church where he held his 
 
 faith. 
 
 LISTENED WITH BARED HEADS. 
 
 " And the people without, the people who had loved him, 
 crowded close, some of them inside the church, more on the steps 
 and far out into the street, listening with bared heads and bated 
 breath to the beliefs on which had been built so fine a life and so 
 noble a death. Then once more the march of death was taken up 
 to music, which now wailed of the woe of the people bereft, and 
 again told in almost triumphant solemnity of a rest well earned. 
 
 " Familiar hymn tunes acquired a new, if sombre, sweetness 
 as they marked the rise and fall of the steps of those who accom- 
 panied the city's hero but a little way on his journey. And the 
 booming of the ' Dead March,' and the haunting sweetness of 
 Chopin's Funeral March will ring in Canton's ears for many a 
 day to come. To the sorrowing multitudes who knew that he 
 was theirs for but a few minutes longer at best, the final passing 
 of William McKinley from their lives, but not from their hearts, 
 seemed to accomplish itself between the beats of a pulse. 
 
 "To the few who were admitted to the cemetery and had
 
 888 LAST FUNERAL RITES AT CANTON. 
 
 stood for perhaps one hour, perhaps two, tense with expectation, 
 it seemed an age from the time that the majestic distant notes of 
 the great ' Dead March ' were first heard to the moment when the 
 shrill, sweet notes of l Flee As a Bird ' heralded the approach of 
 the funeral party. It was the second division of the procession, 
 however, in which interest centred. It was for it that all the 
 other divisions were organized. And it, in its turn, was organized 
 purely as an escort to a black-draped hearse, and to do honor to 
 the still figure that lay under the flag for which it had offered its 
 life to defend, its brain and best energy to glorify and in the 
 services of which it had met death gloriously and ungrudgingly. 
 " The formation of the procession was as follows : Troop A, 
 in all the brarery of its glittering uniform, swept up the circle 
 and ranged itself under the trees to the right. After it, in pitiable 
 contrast, came the 'President's Regiment,' or what was left of it, 
 the regiment he fought with and endured with and won honor 
 with through the Civil War. 
 
 NO POMP OR PAGEANTRY. 
 
 "No arrogance of black and gold and red here, no pride of 
 prancing hoofs only thirty men, poor, many of them, and 
 stricken in years ; men who had called McKinley 'Major' when 
 they did not call him comrade, faltering in broken line, stopping 
 one after another to pick up as precious souvenirs the flowers that 
 the school children of Nashville had sent to strew the last stage 
 of the President's journey, which lay between the wide gates of 
 the cemetery and the narrow gates of the receiving vault. 
 
 " Then came another contrast, bewilderingly different in its 
 nature, as President Roosevelt, the members of the Cabinet, Min- 
 isters from other lands and the officiating clergymen were driven 
 up and alighted, a sorrow-stricken group, waiting to receive the 
 mighty dead. It was an impressive sight as the hearse drew up. 
 The whole side of the slope under which the receiving vault is 
 built was buried in a mass of bloom, sent to show the sympathy of 
 the whole world of far Australia, of Canada, of Brazil and Chile, 
 of Continental Europe and Central America with a nation's loss.
 
 LAST FUNERAL RITES AT CANTON. 389 
 
 " The twelve stalwart bearers, representing all branches of 
 both army and navy, who had all through the sad journey lifted 
 their loved burden lovingly and borne it tenderly, took the weight 
 on their broad shoulders for almost the last time, and the admi- 
 rals and commanding officers of both branches of the service 
 lined themselves upon either side of the flag-draped, flower-cov- 
 ered casket. 
 
 " In long double lines from the entrance to the vault to the 
 edge of the driveway these dignitaries ranged, their heads rever- 
 ently bared, in order of their rank, from Roosevelt and Gage down 
 to the military and naval men. At their head, the black entrance 
 to the vault yawning behind him, the flag-draped bier within show- 
 ing but dimly, stood venerable Bishop Joyce waiting. 
 
 BUGLERS SOUNDED "TAPS." 
 
 " Bearing their loved burden high above all these honored 
 heads, while a squad of buglers from the Canton G. A. R. band 
 sounded taps, the soldiers and sailors advanced slowly to lay it 
 at the churchman's feet. Solemnly the words of the Methodist 
 service rang out that all might hear: 
 
 " 'I heard a voice from heaven say, Blessed- are the dead 
 which die in the Lord.' 
 
 " And for the last time the boys in blue lifted the weight of a 
 nation's woe to their stalwart shoulders and, the good Bishop 
 leading them in, bore it from the light of day to the gray gloom of 
 the tomb. With streaming eyes, they who had been the Presi- 
 dent's family, official and unofficial, watched it pass into the 
 shadow. With heavy hearts they acquiesced in the posting of 
 the guard, three men at the entrance to the tomb and one at the 
 head, one at the foot of the bier, which seemed to shut them who 
 loved and shared his life out from him as effectually as it did the 
 veriest stranger. 
 
 " Then, since on the isolation of death even they must not 
 intrude, they turned sadly away. Following them came Senators 
 and Representatives, the great majority of the people's representa- 
 tives at Washington, each, as he passed the guarded doorway,
 
 890 LAST FUNERAL RITES AT CANTON. 
 
 reverently uncovering. After them walked the federal employes 
 of four great cities. It must have been nearly 7 o'clock when 
 the last of these filed past the door of the open tomb, when the 
 last head was bared, and the last tear-dimmed eyes that sought 
 out the vague shape of the bier in the shadow behind the impas- 
 sive guard.'*
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 Magnificent Tributes to Mr. McKinley Eloquent Eulogies 
 from Celebrities Grief and Indignation The President's 
 Virtues and Character Extolled. 
 
 TJ ON. WAYNE MAcVEAGH, who was Attorney-General in 
 * 1 President Garfield's Cabinet, said at a great memorial 
 meeting in Philadelphia : 
 
 " I am quite incapable of making you any formal address 
 to-night. Others will discharge that duty, and I am here simply 
 as one of you, to stand side by side with you in this expression of 
 our share in the universal sorrow which binds the nation together 
 North and South and East and West as a united people, mourn- 
 ing for their chosen leader, who has been so suddenly and so 
 cruelly taken from them. 
 
 " It has happened to me to know intimately and well each of 
 our martyred Presidents. It is thirty-six years since, in obedience 
 to the request of President Lincoln, I reached Washington in the 
 dim gray of an April morning to find that he was dead. It is just 
 twenty years ago to-night since I sat by President Garfield as he 
 died. It is only twelve days ago that all the joy of reaching 
 home was changed into unutterable grief and pain by learning 
 that President McKinley had been shot ; and now he also is 
 hidden from us in the grave. 
 
 " It was eminently fitting that this great and noble city 
 should array herself in the habiliments of mourning and give 
 this solemn and impressive celebration of the feelings of her 
 citizens at the appalling calamity which has befallen us. With 
 the Mayor in the chair, surrounded by this vast concourse of her 
 representative citizens of all parties and denominations and of 
 every walk in life, with solemn music, and with the presence of 
 the reverend clergy, Philadelphia attests her grief in a manner 
 worthy of her and worthy of the affection felt for her by the 
 beloved President whose loss she mourns ; for he was in the habit 
 
 391
 
 392 MAGNIFICENT TRIBUTES TO MR. McKINLEY. 
 
 of frequently expressing his great regard for our city, feeling, as 
 he once said to me, when he was here, as if he was at home. 
 
 ' What is to be said in the way of eulogy must be said by 
 others. I do not feel equal to it, but some things all men know. 
 He was a brave and faithful soldier in as righteous a war as was 
 ever waged. As Chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means 
 he was necessarily influential while framing tariffs in assisting 
 others toward the making of great fortunes ; but whatever he did 
 was done because he believed it to be for the general welfare ; and 
 no suspicion ever existed, not only of improper gain, but not even 
 improper motive on his part. 
 
 TOO GOOD TO BE GREEDY. 
 
 " Like Lincoln and Garfield, he was too good an American to 
 care to be rich. As a husband, he has left us a measure of duty 
 in self-denial to which few of us can hope to attain. A professed 
 believer in the Christian religion, he lived more nearly in obe- 
 dience to its requirements, and was more fully imbued with the 
 spirit of the Master than is often found in this practical and 
 metallic age. Indeed, there need be no better test of his true 
 Christian spirit than that his only reported allusion to his mur- 
 derer was an entreaty in his behalf, and his last words assuredly 
 were suggested by the words of our Lord on the Mount of Olives: 
 'God's will, not ours, be done.' 
 
 4 Yes, we have lost three noble President's by the assassin's 
 hands, and all the assasins were native-born Americans. The 
 first was a scholar, and used a Latin quotation to justify his hate, 
 born of the Civil War. The second was an educated man, and 
 his act was due to what he supposed was an unequal distribution 
 of the spoils of office. 
 
 " Of the real motive of the assassin of President McKinley 
 we know too little yet to form a final judgment ; but surely the 
 alarming outbreak of bitter hatred appearing about in so many 
 different parts of the country requires the earnest and serious con- 
 sideration of all good citizens, for he must learn the true cause of 
 them before he can be able to apply an effective remedy. It will,
 
 MAGNIFICENT TRIBUTES TO MR. McKINLEY. 393 
 
 however, always be true that, under the whole wide canopy of 
 Heaven, there can be found no antidote to hate but love. 
 
 "Meanwhile, we may all rejoice that the Bench and Bar of 
 Buffalo are reflecting credit upon the whole country by again 
 securing reverence for the calm, orderly and resistless processes 
 of the law. 
 
 "And after all, my friends, it is upon the processes of the 
 law that you and I must, in the last resort, depend for the per- 
 petuity and the greatness of the Government our dead President 
 loved so devotedly, and which he believed, as you and I believe to 
 be, in spite of all abatement, the best Government under which, 
 men have ever lived, and no other form of government could in 
 a single generation have produced and conducted to the seat of 
 the Chief Magistracy three such rulers as Lincoln, Garfield and 
 McKinley. 
 
 " We grieve at having lost them, but we are proud having 
 had them as our Presidents. Our hearts just now are full of 
 sorrow at losing him we have met to mourn. 
 
 " 'And while the races of mankind endure 
 
 Let their great examples stand 
 
 Colossal seen of eveiy land. 
 To keep the soldier firm, the statesman pure, 
 
 Till in all lands and through all human story 
 
 The path of duty be the way to glory.' " 
 
 ELOQUENT WORDS OF ARCHBISHOP RYAN. 
 
 " Honored by an invitation to speak on this sad and solemn 
 occasion, I naturally regard it from the religious standpoint. 
 Religion is an integral portion of our nature, as real as the intel- 
 lectual or material portion of it, and cannot be ignored in indi- 
 vidual or national character. It has had more influence on our 
 race than any other power. I am gratified to state that the 
 deceased President recognized its great claims ; that, according to 
 his convictions and the dictates of his conscience, he was a 
 religious man. His forgiveness of his murderer and his profound 
 submission to the Divine will, expressed in these words, * This is
 
 394 MAGNIFICENT TRIBUTES TO MR McKINLEY. 
 
 God's way. His will, not ours, be done,' shows clearly the power 
 of religion over him. 
 
 " That he was fair to those who differed from his religious 
 convictions I am persuaded. I know, on the best authority, that 
 as Governor of Ohio he was kind, almost partial, to the Catholics 
 of that State when it was unpopular to be such. I had occasion 
 to visit him in the interest of the Catholic Indians, and I am 
 satisfied that whatever concessions were made were made through 
 his influence, and that full justice would have been done to them 
 could he have followed the impulses of his heart, which public 
 men cannot always do. 
 
 " But, ladies and gentlemen, there are thoughts that force 
 themselves upon us to-night, greater and more important than 
 the consideration of the personal religion of any individual, how- 
 ever exalted and lamented. These refer to the welfare of the 
 country, which the deceased President loved, served and ruled. 
 They are, I believe, thoughts of gravest moment, and appropriate 
 to this occasion. 'Better is the house of mourning than the 
 house of joy,' for the consideration of these questions. 
 
 CHIEF ERROR OF OUR AGE. 
 
 "One of the greatest errors of our age and country is disre- 
 gard in State and Church of principles and doctrines. It matters 
 little, it is said, what men believe and teach, provided they do not 
 act in disobedience of law. We relegate principles and doctrines 
 to the region of theory, and take cognizance only of actions. 
 Occasionally the public is awakened to a sense of the fallacy of 
 this position. A few years ago the body of a young man was 
 found. He had committed suicide and left a note stating that he 
 was induced to do so by the defense of suicide in a lecture of 
 Robert Ingersoll. Here were found cause and effect The 
 wretched man who has slain the President of the United States 
 assures us that he was influenced to do so by the speeches and 
 writings of a woman Anarchist another instance of cause and 
 effect. 
 
 ( Wars between men may cease,' says Bdmund Burke,
 
 MAGNIFICENT TRIBUTES TO MR. McKINLEY. 395 
 
 'wars between principles shall never cease.' By conquest or com- 
 promise wars between men cease ; but principles are in eternal 
 antagonism. It is illogical and suicidal to ignore principles and 
 doctrines as they will inevitably act themselves out into actions 
 for good or evil. Men say we want only the morality of Christi- 
 anity, but without its dogmas, as if these dogmas did not create 
 and cannot alone perpetuate that morality. Again they say, ' We 
 care not what the Anarchist writes or speaks, provided he does 
 not kill.' As if the writing and speaking addressed to young and 
 fiery hearts may not lead to murder. 
 
 WHERE IS THE REMEDY? 
 
 " But it may be asked, Where is the remedy ? You cannot 
 legislate the world into morality. You cannot, in a free country, 
 prevent free speech and the liberty of the press. You may say it 
 is not the liberty of speech or press I would prevent, but its 
 license. But who is to be judge between liberty and license? 
 Ah, gentlemen, the truth is, we need a power that shall go deeper 
 than can the legislator and his law, that goes right straight to 
 the very core of conscience. We need more religion. Con- 
 science is the great arbiter to decide what is liberty and what is 
 license. And we need religion that is not merely sentimental, 
 but doctrinal ; not merely of God in His mercy, but of God in 
 His justice also ; not merely of heaven and its joys, but of hell 
 and its just punishments. 
 
 " Because this is a land of liberty, and there are fewer 
 restraining influences from without, we need the more from 
 within. I am alarmed for the future of this Republic if disregard 
 and contempt for religious doctrines should increase. No nation 
 has ever continued to live without religion and its restraints. 
 Uncivilized nations are conquered from without, but civilized 
 ones from within, by the force of their own passions. 
 
 " Egypt, Greece and Rome lived because of truths, mixed, it 
 is true, with falsehoods, which their religions possessed. There 
 was much of conservative truth in the religion of the pagans. 
 They believed in God and Providence, and future reward and
 
 896 MAGNIFICENT TRIBUTES TO MR. McKINLEY. 
 
 punishment for the observance or violation of law, human and 
 divine. Our modern unbelievers would sweep all these truths 
 away, and with them they would sweep away this glorious young 
 Republic. 
 
 " If we are to perpetuate this splendid Republic, we must 
 perpetuate Christianity to protect it. On this most solemn occa- 
 sion, and standing in spirit by the newly made grave of our 
 murdered President, and in the name of the Founder of Christi- 
 anity, whom we all love, I ask you to keep the deposit of 
 Christianity and hand it down as the richest heritage you can 
 leave to your posterity and your beloved country." 
 
 When informed of the death of President McKinley, Hon. 
 John Wanamaker, who was a memebr of President Harrison's 
 Cabinet, made the following statement : 
 
 MILLIONS OF HEARTS IN AGONY. 
 
 "The passing on of William McKinley is an awful mystery. 
 There are millions of hearts that are overwhelmed with agony. 
 As against the miserable creature called a man who destroyed 
 this noble life there are thousands and thousands of men in the 
 United States, noble and true, who would unhesitatingly and 
 gladly have given their lives if his could have been spared, so full 
 was it of gifts and graces, of growth and of genuine goodness. 
 
 " Almost like a flash in the sky he passed on without spot 
 or decay or the withering of powers to the eternal and enduring. 
 He lived and died nobly. ' Good-bye,' he said * good-bye to all. 
 It is God's way.' Always a sage and a soldier, and now a saint." 
 
 The Right Rev. Ozi W. Whitaker, Bishop of the Protestant 
 Episcopal Church, Diocese of Pennsylvania, gave the following 
 estimate of the life and character of the late President : 
 
 " There can be but one opinion as to the character of the late 
 President McKinley. It was of the highest type of Christian man- 
 hood. I knew him personally, having met him on erery occasion 
 on which he visited Philadelphia as President, and I have been 
 impressed, as everyone who came in contact with him must have 
 been, with his qualities as a man, a statesman and a Christian.
 
 MAGNIFICENT TRIBUTES TO MR. McKINLEY. 897 
 
 "The address he delivered at Buffalo the day before he 
 received his death wound was the latest illustration of the far- 
 seeing, broad-minded statesmanship for which he was noted. 
 From the time he was shot till his death the spirit of fortitude 
 and magnanimity he displayed touched all hearts. His death 
 was the death of a sincere Christian. It is certain that he will 
 always be remembered with peculiar affection by the American 
 people, and I believe he will hold in their minds and hearts as 
 high a place as any President who preceded him." 
 
 FROM A WELL KNOWN BISHOP. 
 
 Bishop Whitaker issued the following letter to the clergy of 
 his diocese, instructing them to hold a memorial service for the 
 late President : 
 
 " To the Clergy of the Diocese of Pennsylvania. Dear 
 brethren : In accordance with the proclamation of the President 
 of the United States, I recommend that the several congregations 
 of the diocese hold a memorial service to our late beloved President 
 in their respective churches, on Thursday, September 19, at n 
 o'clock A. M. A form of service will be sent to you later. The 
 hymns suggested seem most appropriate, but you may substitute 
 others in your discretion." 
 
 Through the courtesy of the " Boston Globe " we present to 
 the reader a number of touching tributes to Mr. McKinley from 
 the pens of our most gifted authors. They appeared in the 
 Memorial Edition of this journal and occupy the remainder of the 
 
 chapter : 
 
 EVEN AS A CHILD. 
 
 EVEN as a child to whom sad neighbors speak, 
 In a symbol, saying that his father " sleeps " 
 Who feels their meaning, even as his cheek 
 
 Feels the first teardrop as it stings and leaps 
 Who keenly knows his loss, and yet denies 
 Its awful import grieves unreconciled, 
 Moans, drowses, rouses, with new-drowning eyes 
 Even as a child.
 
 MAGNIFICENT TRIBUTES TO MR. McKINLEY. 
 
 Even as a child ; with empty, aimless hand 
 
 Clasped sudden to the heart all hope deserts 
 With tears that blur all lights on sea or land 
 
 The lip that quivers and the throat that hurts 
 Even so, the nation that has known his love 
 
 Is orphaned now ; and, whelmed in anguish wild, 
 Knows but its sorrow and the ache thereof, 
 
 Even as a child. JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY. 
 
 N 
 
 A NATION IN SORROW. 
 
 ATION bright with the sunrise glow 
 Full of the century's throbbing 
 
 Why do you bow your head so low ? 
 Why do we hear you sobbing ? 
 
 Death has climbed to my highest place, 
 
 And tears of a people are no disgrace ; 
 
 Sorrow is better told than kept ; 
 
 And grief is holy, for God has wept. 
 
 Nation with banner f oldest birth, 
 Stars to the high stars sweeping, 
 
 Why have you not a flag on earth 
 But to the half-mast creeping ? 
 
 Many a brave man had to die 
 
 To hold those colors against the sky ; 
 
 Agonies such as this reveal 
 
 That every banner to Heaven must kneel. 
 
 Nation with tasks that might appal 
 
 Planets of weak endeavor, 
 Why did the best man of you all 
 
 Sail from your shores forever ? 
 Not forever, and not from sight, 
 But nearer to God's sweet, kindly light ; 
 Through the mists to a stormy sea, 
 Where all the heroes of ages be. 
 
 Nation with weapons fierce and grim, 
 Sharpen with rage your sadness ; 
 
 Tear the murderer limb from limb 
 Torture him into madness !
 
 MAGNIFICENT TRIBUTES TO MR. MCKINLEY. 
 
 No ! I have Heaven too much in awe 
 The law to avenge with lack of law ; 
 Take we the soul from its tainted clod, 
 And lay it down at the feet of God. 
 
 Nation whose love for home ne'er dies, 
 
 Cruel the clouds that hover ! 
 What do you say when a woman cries, 
 
 "Give me my husband lover?" 
 Sad heart, carry the grievous wrong, 
 In Faith's own arms; it will not be long, 
 Here, and in lands you never knew, 
 He more than ever will comfort you. 
 
 Nation of many tribes and lands 
 
 Strength of the world's best nations, 
 Say ! would a million murderous hands 
 
 Crumble your deep foundations ? 
 Never ! No poison e'er can blight 
 The flowers and fruitage of Truth and Right ; 
 Never ! the land that the tryant fears 
 Shall live in splendor a thousand years. 
 
 WILL CARLETON. 
 
 THE DARKENED SKIES. 
 
 E air was filled with music, every heart 
 1 Throbbed its thanksgiving for the season's wealth. 
 
 With splendors piled appeared the magic mart 
 
 Whose arches gave their echoes for thy health. 
 
 Thy train made entrance on the brilliant scene 
 Like the fair galley of a victor crowned ; 
 
 While Nature smiled, propitious and serene, 
 
 Thine and the Nation's heart the death blow found. 
 
 Dark grow the skies, the sounds of joy are hushed. 
 
 Reason can scarce attest the sudden change ; 
 When did the flower of hope, so fully flushed, 
 
 So swiftly fail, with portent sad and strange?
 
 400 MAGNIFICENT TRIBUTES TO MR. McKlNLEY. 
 
 Thine was the glory of successful rule, 
 
 Thine, in thy manly youth, the warrior's wreath. 
 For what of thy good service might a fool 
 
 Aim at thy breast, unarmed, the stroke of death? 
 The garlands hung on thy triumphal way 
 
 Shall now be heaped thy mournful bier above, 
 Yet with best conquest ends the noble day, 
 
 Resigmng life, but keeping faith and love. 
 
 JULIA WARD HOWE. 
 
 MOURNED BY EVERY AMERICAN. 
 
 He was the Head of the Nation, lie fell in its service, the base 
 hand that took his life struck dead the hostility in every feeling 
 heart that harbored it, and he passes to the peace of the grave 
 mourned not by such as were his friends, only, but by all who 
 
 bear the American name. 
 
 SAMUEL L. CLEMENS (MARK TWAIN). 
 
 A FIXED STAR IN OUR FIRMANENT. 
 
 As the name of William McKinley becomes fixed in the firma- 
 ment of our nation's history it appears to us at once, and seems 
 destined to remain to us, a name to charm by. Can we say now, so 
 soon, in what his greatness consists, and what is to prove at last 
 the broadest measure of his permanent fame ? With certainty, cer- 
 tainly not; yet there is a solace in the effort to do so, that at least 
 explains, if it does not amply justify, so early an endeavor. 
 
 A living statesman of one of the dynastic governments of 
 Europe is currently quoted as saying that the fame of our late 
 President will be that he was the greatest commercial statesman 
 of his time. If this be so, and it seems very near the truth, what, 
 then, is the greatness, and what are the limitations of " com- 
 mercial " statesmanship ? Is it nearly or quite the highest 
 degree, or is it nearly or quite the lowest ? Other states- 
 men have delivered their peoples from the perfidy of tyrants, from 
 the oppression of nobles, from debasing iniquities of ancient cus- 
 toms, from bigots, fanatics and robber hordes : was their states- 
 manship, therefore, larger than a commercial statesmanship 
 may be ?
 
 MAGNIFICENT TRIBUTES TO MR. McKlNLEY. 401 
 
 Or is it not true that for our crowning question we ask con- 
 cerning such rulers, " What after they had dragged down the 
 despot, hurled back the invader, obliterated the pit of degradation 
 what was their wisdom and power to uplift and push forward 
 those industries of peace which prosper the main mass of men, 
 and give them opportunity and incentive for the arts, the sciences, 
 the virtues ; how much did their statesmanship do to fill the sail, 
 to oil the wr eel, to light the mine, to speed the plow and the loom ? " 
 
 GREAT COMMERCIAL QUESTIONS. 
 
 It is only when we contemplate the world-wide reach of great 
 commercial questions, the bewildering intricacies of conflicting 
 interests and theories, the far-reaching disastrousness of their 
 misunderstanding, and the vast beneficence of their correct solu- 
 tion, that we are prepared to confess the greatness of a mind and 
 soul that confronts and answers them with supreme mastery. 
 
 The hoary Eastern question is and has always been a prob- 
 lem of commercial statesmanship. Such is four-fifths of every 
 foreign policy of Europe. It was a blunder of commercial states- 
 manship that lost to Great Britain her American colonies, and it 
 is on commercial statesmanship that her modern greatness is 
 largel}' founded. A potential factor in the long decay of Spain 
 has been her lack of commercial statesmanship, and commercial 
 statesmanship is to-day the consuming study of every worthy 
 sovereign and of every cabinet in the civilized world. 
 
 If it ever seems necessary to write that he whose loss leaves 
 our nation widowed wrought no mighty changes in our general 
 legislation, achieved no vast reform in our institutions, and 
 righted no great wrongs between conflicting elements of the popu- 
 lation, the word must go with it that his public life was without 
 a stain of dishonor, that he was a model of private virtue, duty 
 and affection, a true and ardent lover of mankind, and that in the 
 mighty functions of commercial statesmanship he was easily first 
 among contemporary statesmen and rulers, the greatest of his 
 
 time. 
 
 GEORGE W. CABLE. 
 26
 
 402 MAGNIFICENT TRIBUTES TO MR. McKINLEY. 
 
 AT THE EXPOSITION. 
 
 THE devil's best tools 
 Are the fingers of fools. 
 All pious, good people, 
 Who live in a steeple, 
 Over spire and gilt vane 
 Whirling round, round again 
 Like joy behind sorrow or ease after pain. 
 But the worst, most accursed, 
 Is prim and sedate 
 He stands up straight, 
 So lowly elate, 
 But creeps through the gate 
 Into rooms of the great, 
 And cowers in the chamber of State. 
 Let him learn, if he can r-~i 
 The first lesson of Man, 
 The last, for he must, 
 He shall learn, and discern 
 The fire of live coals in our urn. 
 
 RICHARD HENRY STODDARD. 
 A PATRIOT OF THE NOBLEST TYPE. 
 
 William McKinley, like some who went before him, dies a 
 martyr to republican institutions. It was for those institutions 
 that our fathers fought and died in two great wars. And the 
 President of this Republic represents those institutions more 
 than any other man. 
 
 The nation had been gradually making up its mind about 
 William McKinley. But now that he has gone from our midst, 
 we realize suddenly that he possessed many of those qualities, 
 the value of which is inestimable in his situation. 
 
 He was first of all a patriot of the noblest type. For he had 
 the good of his country nearest his heart. He never sought to 
 exalt himself at the expense of his country. Rather he sought 
 to efface himself in his submission to the desires of the people. 
 He was willing to hear and heed the opinions of the humblest
 
 MAGNIFICENT TRIBUTES TO MR McKINLEY. 403 
 
 citizen. It was sometimes said of him that he was dominated. 
 He was dominated, but by no man. He was dominated by the 
 voice of his countrymen. William McKinley will live in history 
 as a President of great dignity, moderation and wisdom ; as a 
 God-fearing man, whose life was an example to his fellow-citizens. 
 And the best that can be said of him is that he was an American. 
 It is well to remember that a government of the people has 
 just as much right to protect itself from its enemies as has a 
 monarchy. 
 
 WINSTON CHURCHILL. 
 
 A MAN OF GENEROUS NATURE. 
 
 While I feel my inadequacy to the task, I am highly honored 
 in being selected with others to express sorrow at the cruel deed 
 that has brought desolation to a home and grief to a nation. 
 
 In doing so it may not be uninteresting to detail a few 
 incidents that will exhibit the social and kindly side of Mr. 
 McKinley 's generous nature. Some years ago I visited Canton, 
 O., in my professional capacity. During my engagement I was 
 invited to meet the then Congressman McKinley at the house of 
 one of his relatives. He entered the room with his invalid wife 
 leaning on his arm, and I often noticed during the evening his 
 attentive and affectionate solicitude for his companion. His 
 manner was most cordial and friendly. 
 
 Our next meeting was in Cleveland, where we dined together 
 in company with Mr. Robert Lincoln and Mr. Mark Hanna. 
 That night the entire party came to the theatre to see the comedy 
 of the " Rivals," acted by the star cast. 
 
 After the performance, the Congressman came behind the 
 curtain and was introduced to the company. He expressed his 
 enjoyment of the play, remarking how strange it was that such 
 talent was not oftener brought together. "Possibly," he said, 
 "it might be dangerous to give the public too much of a good 
 thing." Our next meeting was after he became President, my 
 wife and I lunching with his family at the executive mansion. 
 General and Mrs. Miles were also of the company. The President
 
 404 MAGNIFICENT TRIBUTES TO MR. McKINLEY. 
 
 seemed interested in the history of the stage, and enjoyed remi- 
 niscences of it or anecdotes of actors with great relish. 
 
 Passing through Washington on my way to Florida, I called 
 to pay my respects. This was just at the time when strained 
 relations were tightening their grip upon America and Spain. 
 The President spoke of these, but expressed a hope that serious 
 trouble might be avoided. I told him that I traveled much, and 
 that I gleaned from the expressions of wise and thoughtful men 
 that the country did not want war. He replied, " I am glad to 
 hear it." This was before the destruction of the " Maine." I 
 have met him several times since, and to me his views seemed 
 broad and liberal. 
 
 I was never more shocked that when the terrible news of the 
 assassination was brought to me ; our household was in a fever 
 of excitement, our very domestics in tears ; and now, that the 
 worst has come, a home made desolate and a nation plunged in 
 sorrow, we can only hope that time may soften the blow, and that 
 wise legislation may place a barrier that will forever prevent the 
 reoccurrence of such an act. JOSEPH JEFFERSON. 
 
 T 
 
 A LIFE'S STORY. 
 
 WO together and only two 
 
 One a soldier and one a maid; 
 Ev'ryskyis heavenly blue, 
 
 And all the dim forebodings fade. 
 Two together and only two 
 
 One a husband and one a wife, 
 Ready to walk the wide world through, 
 
 Heart and hand on the road of life. 
 Two together and only two 
 
 Fronting Fortune and braving fears 
 Two together and only two 
 
 Above two little graves in tears. 
 Two together and only two 
 
 He a Nation's chosen chief 
 She a wife to follow through 
 
 The massive gates that lead to grief.
 
 MAGNIFICENT TRIBUTES TO MR. McKINLEY. 405 
 
 Two together and only two- 
 One to watch, with all love's wealth, 
 
 One to walk 'mid wilds of rue 
 
 To seek the pleasant paths of health. 
 
 Two together and only two 
 
 See the clouds and pains depart 
 From the Land's first lady, who 
 
 Is still first lady of his heart, 
 
 Two together and only two 
 
 Cannons boom and cities cheer, 
 Skies are bright and friends are true; 
 
 Who shall say that death is near? 
 
 Two together and only two 
 
 Joy seems sure forever more, 
 Yet the hand that millions drew 
 
 Of hearts has opened Death's dark door. 
 
 Two together and only two 
 
 While amid his own he stands, 
 Death now breaks the circle through 
 
 And grasps him with his vise-like hands. 
 
 Two together and only two 
 
 Never death such loving parts, 
 Loyal wife and husband true, 
 
 For Love hath wed your hands and hearts. 
 
 Two together and only two 
 
 Peoples pray that you may meet 
 Where the dark skies change to blue, 
 
 And all that's bitter turns to sweet. 
 
 JOHN BURNS. 
 HIS PLACE IN THE NATIONAL HEART. 
 
 Who lias yet invented the smokeless powder of grief ? The 
 first emotions consequent on a great public catastrophe are like 
 the blur of an oM-fashibned battle ; it is only when the atmosphere 
 clears that we begin to see anything plainly. 
 
 The nation is undergoing something like what the surgeons
 
 406 MAGNIFICENT TRIBUTES TO MR. McKINLEY. 
 
 call shock. The sense of immeasurable outrage is yet so keen, 
 the effects of a ragged wound are yet so severe, that we scarcely 
 know where, or why, we are most hurt. 
 
 While the black draped train goes ploughing its way through 
 flowers half across the continent, while the nation stands uncov- 
 ered before the catafalque, who can calmly estimate the martyr's 
 personality ? But it is not his position in history that you seek 
 to define ; it is his place at this hour in the national heart There 
 can be no doubt that this is a very strong, warm place. The pub- 
 lic affection closes upon him jealously. Few men of our times 
 have shown a more remarkable power to make friends, and what 
 is more, to retain them (for these twain are not one) than William 
 
 McKinley. 
 
 PERSONAL KINDLINESS. 
 
 Whoever differed from him, on great matters or small, seems 
 to have been half won over, and wholly mollified by the personal 
 kindliness and courtesy of the man. Political opponents, or those 
 of his own party who could not follow his policy, are among the 
 first to do him honor now. 
 
 I remember how generously and courteously the entreating 
 protests of one citizen against the impending war were received. 
 These took the form of letters so candid, so urgent, and so 
 repeated that the writer could have felt no surprise if they had 
 been disregarded altogether. Many another must have had 
 similar experience and come away from it, convinced of the sin- 
 cerity and conscientiousness of the man. 
 
 These personal traits ran all through his character. Most 
 remarkable has been the tribute of the nation to McKinley, the 
 man of common, human virtues. He was a Christian believer 
 who loved his God, and was never afraid to say so; who, Christ- 
 like, forgave his murderer on the first impulse, not the second ; 
 who said : " Don't let them hurt him," before the smoke from the 
 assassin's revolver had spent itself in the air ; who died breathing 
 out his soul in sacred words, the sincerity of which commands 
 absolute respect. In a time when faith is darkened, and religious 
 character unfashionable, let him be remembered for these things.
 
 MAGNIFICENT TRIBUTES TO MR. McKINLEY. 407 
 
 Most touching, too, and quite as remarkable has been the 
 profound, wide and genuine reverence offered to the domestic 
 qualities of the man. In a day when, as one has well said, the 
 great national danger is " the decadence of the home idea," his 
 private life shows like an uplifted hand pointing to something 
 higher and more elect than most of us attain to in the stress and 
 disillusion of daily life. 
 
 He, the husband of an invalid wife who was never suffered to 
 feel that her misfortunes encroached upon his comfort, sapped 
 his strength, wearied his patience, or reduced his affection, 
 deserves all the tender tears that fall upon his bier and more. 
 
 Many an obscure citizen, called to cherish an ailing wife at 
 cost of personal sacrifices known only to himself and to her, will 
 feel his burden lighter, his love warmer, his courage stronger, 
 for this great example. And many a sick woman, thinking : 
 " How tender he is to me to-day ! " will have reason to bless the 
 quiet influence of the dead President, who found it inevitable and 
 made it manly to put the needs of the woman he had loved and 
 wedded forever in the foreground of his heart and of his life. 
 
 ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS WARD. 
 
 SLAIN BY A HUMAN REPTILE. 
 
 President McKinley's murder belongs, as do those of Lincoln 
 and Oarfield, to the category of crimes that could not be fore- 
 seen, nor easily averted. It is like a clot of blood flung on a fair 
 picture by the hand of a ruffian. It is as though the man, rich 
 in the love and respect of millions, had been bitten to death by a 
 reptile or a rabid dog. We may crush the reptile ; we may kill 
 the dog ; but their extermination will not bring back the precious 
 life, nor atone for its loss. The loss is immeasurable, the punish- 
 ment utterly inadequate. 
 
 A noble California redwood takes centuries to reach its per- 
 fect growth. It may be destroyed in a day by a spark from a 
 careless hunter's camp fire or by the ax of a soulless log-chopper. 
 When Lord Rosse had finished his great telescope, after years of 
 skilful work, and at the cost of a fortune, he generously exhibited
 
 408 MAGNIFICENT TRIBUTES TO MR. McKINLEY. 
 
 it to the public ; and one of the first men who canie to see it flung 
 a huge stone full at the costly lens ! Fortunately his aim was as 
 bad as his heart ; but that heart was filled with all the destructive 
 spirit of an assassin. 
 
 The same man would have as recklessly shot at a president, 
 or king, or queen, not because either had wronged him, but 
 because "the Lord had respect to Abel aud to his offerings," and 
 that was enough for Cain ! 
 
 The vanity of human grandeur is brought home to us more 
 vividly by such a tragedy than by the assassination of any royal 
 potentate. A king or emperor is usually born to his high estate. 
 A president is chosen from the ranks by the free will of the 
 people ; and by so much more is he "the state" itself than any 
 anointed sovereign can be. It took over half a century to make 
 a president of this man whom the people had tried and found 
 worthy in almost every station of public life. It takes time to 
 grow a redwood tree. Is it necessary that it should be in the 
 power of any idle blackguard to cut it down with one blow ? I 
 
 think not. 
 
 HAND SHAKING CONDEMNED. 
 
 There is nothing democratic about permitting anybody and 
 everybody to shake the hand of the President. Rather is it a 
 survival of the old royal fashion which attached a certain sanctity 
 to the person of the ruler, and made the subject think that he 
 was enjoying a peculiar privilege by being allowed to see and 
 touch the precious object. The President is the chief servant of 
 the people, and, as such, he has constant, serious, arduous work 
 to do. His master has no right to interrupt him at his work, nor 
 to intrude upon him in his leisure. Popular levees are a popular 
 humbug, meaningless, tiresome, dangerous. Let us give our 
 heroes the boon of individual freedom. 
 
 Instead of doing that, we burden them with public " recep- 
 tions," with parades, with fulsome panegyric, or stand them up 
 to be kissed, after which we change the throne to the pillory and 
 hurl ridicule at them in place of bouquets. Our hero does a truly 
 daring deed, and he is forthwith thrust upon the lecture platform,
 
 MAGNIFICENT TRIBUTES TO MR. McKINLEY. 409 
 
 interviewed and photographed without mercy, and then given 
 over to the wits and witlings because he has been too gracious to 
 his foolish feminine admirers. 
 
 Another is covered with laurels, until he offends the peculiar 
 taste of an ill-mannered public by doing as he sees fit with the 
 "Injun gift" of a house which he unwisely accepted from them. 
 The government at this moment is sorting out the tar and 
 feathers for one or the other or both of the two heroes whom we 
 set upon naval pedestals a couple of years ago. The hero in the 
 hands of the populace is like the South American spider which 
 must flee from the arms of his spouse before she has time to 
 
 devour him ! 
 
 RISK OF LIFE. 
 
 Our Presidents are too valuable to have their lives risked at 
 the hands of any chance scoundrel covetous of wide-spread 
 infamy. William McKinley, especially, was too choice a product 
 of republican institutions to be destroyed by an instrument of 
 disorder. 
 
 His successor is one of the bravest of men. Therefore, he 
 should not be rash. Therefore, we, the people, should forego the 
 empty privilege of forcing ourselves upon his privacy, or of 
 asking him to exhibit himself for the delectation of the gaping 
 multitude and the weapon of another possible Booth or Guiteau, 
 or the ignoble beast with the crooked name who has just destroyed 
 a great and good man. 
 
 JAMES JEFFREY RCHE. (Editor of "The Pilot") 
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 FOULLY ASSASSINATED APRIL 14, 1865. 
 
 This is the remarkable poem in which, on May 6, 1 865, London " Punch " 
 confessed its error, after having for four years lampooned Lincoln with 
 pencil and with pen. It is attributed to Tom Taylor. 
 
 r OU lay a wreath on murdered Lincoln's bier 
 
 You, who with mocking pencil wont to trace, 
 Broad for the self-complacent British sneer, 
 
 His length of shambling limb, his furrowed face, 
 
 Y
 
 410 MAGNIFICENT TRIBUTES TO MR. McKINLEY. 
 
 His gaunt, gnarled hands, his unkempt, bristling hair, 
 His garb uncouth, his bearing ill at ease, 
 
 His lack of all we prize as debonair, 
 
 Of power or will to shine, of art to please. 
 
 You, whose smart pen backed by the pencil's laugh, 
 
 Judging each step, as though the way were plain ; 
 Reckless, so it could point a paragraph, 
 
 Of Chief's perplexity, or peoples' pain. 
 
 Besides this corpse, that bears for winding-sheet 
 The Stars and Stripes he lived to rear anew, 
 
 Between the mourners at his head and feet, 
 
 Say, scurrile-jester, is there room for you ? 
 
 Ys, he had lived to shame me from my sneer, 
 To lame my pencil, and confute my pen 
 
 To make me own this hind of princes peer, 
 
 This rail-splitter, a true born king of men. 
 
 My shallow judgment I had learned to rue, 
 Noting how to occasion's hight he rose, 
 
 How his quaint wit made home-truth seem more true, 
 How, iron-like, his temper grew by blows. 
 
 How humbled yet how hopeful he could be ; 
 
 How in good fortune and in ill the same ; 
 Nor bitter in success, nor boastful he, 
 
 Thirsty for gold, nor feverish for fame. 
 
 He went about his work such work as few 
 
 Ever had laid on head and heart and hand 
 
 As one who knows, where there's a task to do, 
 
 Man's honest will must Heaven's good grace command ; 
 
 Who trusts the strength will with the burden grow, 
 That God makes instruments to work His will, 
 
 If but that will we can arrive to know, 
 
 Nor tamper with the weights of good and ill. 
 
 So he went forth to battle, on the side 
 
 That he felt clear was Liberty's and Right's, 
 
 As in his peasant boyhood he had piled 
 
 His warfare with rude nature's thwarting mights
 
 MAGNIFICENT TRIBUTES TO MR. McKINLEY. 41J 
 
 The uncleared forest, the unbroken soil, 
 
 The iron-bark, that turns the laborer's ax, 
 The rapid that o'erbears the boatman's toil, 
 
 The prairie, hiding the mazed wanderer's tracks, 
 
 The ambushed Indian, and the prowling bear 
 
 Such were the needs that helped his youth to train ; 
 
 Rough culture but such trees large fruit may bear, 
 If but their stocks be of right girth and grain. 
 
 So he grew up, a destined work to do, 
 
 And lived to do it ; four long suffering years, 
 Ill-fate, ill-fortune, ill-report, lived through, 
 
 And then he heard the hisses changed to cheers, 
 
 The taunts to tribute, the abuse to praise, 
 
 And took both with the same unwavering mood ; 
 
 Till, as he came on light, from darkling days, 
 
 And seemed to touch the goal from where he stood, 
 
 A felon hand, between the goal and him, 
 
 Reached from behind his back, a trigger prest 
 
 And those perplexed and patient eyes were dim, 
 
 Those gaunt, long-laboring limbs were laid to rest ! 
 
 The words of mercy were upon his lips, 
 
 Forgiveness in his heart and on his pen, 
 When this vile murderer brought swift eclipse 
 
 To thoughts of peace on earth, good will to men. 
 
 The Old World and the New, from sea to sea, 
 
 Utter one voice of sympathy and shame ! 
 Sore heart, so stopped when it at last beat high, 
 
 Sad life, cut short just as its triumph came. 
 
 A deed accurst ! Strokes have been struck before 
 
 By the assassin's hand, whereof men doubt 
 If more of horror or disgrace they bore ; 
 
 But thy foul crime, like Cain's, stands darkly out 
 
 Vile hand, that brandest murder on a strife, 
 
 Whate'er its grounds, stoutly and nobly striven ; 
 
 And with the martyr's crown crownest a life 
 With much to praise little to be forgiven !
 
 41* MAGNIFICENT TRIBUTES TO MR. McKINLEY. 
 
 AFTER THE BURIAL. 
 
 Written for the " Boston Globe's" Garfield Memorial Edition, Sept. 27, 1881. 
 
 I. 
 
 FALLEN with autumn's falling leaf, 
 Ere yet his summer's noon was past, 
 Our friend, our guide, our trusted chief 
 What words can match a woe so vast, 
 
 And whose the chartered claim to speak 
 
 The sacred grief where all have part, 
 When sorrow saddens every cheek 
 
 And broods in every aching heart ? 
 
 Yet nature prompts the burning phrase 
 That thrills the hushed and shrouded hall, 
 
 The loud lament, the sorrowing praise, 
 The silent tear that love let's fall. 
 
 In loftiest verse, in lowliest rhyme, 
 
 Shall strive unblamed the minstrel choir 
 
 The singers of the new-born time 
 
 And trembling age with outworn lyre. 
 
 N room for pride, no place for blame 
 
 We fling our bosoms on the grave 
 Pale scentless faded all we claim, 
 
 This only what we had we gave. 
 
 Ah, could the grief of all who mourn 
 
 Btend in one voice its bitter cry, 
 The wail t& Heaven's high arches borne 
 
 Would echo through the caverned sky. 
 
 II. 
 O happiest land whose peaceful choice 
 
 Fills with a breath its empty throne ! 
 God, speakitig through thy peoples voice, 
 
 Has made that voice for once his own. 
 
 No angry passion shakes the state 
 
 Wfrose weary servant seeks for rest 
 And who could fear that scowling hate 
 
 Would strike at that unguarded breast ?
 
 MAGNIFICENT TRIBUTES TO MR. McKlNLEY, 
 
 He stands, unconscious of his doom 
 In manly strength, erect, serene 
 
 Around him summer spreads her bloom 
 He falls what horror clothes the scene ! 
 
 How swift the sudden flash of woe 
 
 Where all was bright as childhood's dream ) 
 
 As if from heaven's ethereal bow 
 
 Had leaped the lightning's arrowy gleam. 
 
 Blot the foul deed from history's page 
 
 Let not the all betraying sun 
 Blush for the day that stains an age 
 
 When murder's blackest wreath was won. 
 
 Pale on his couch the sufferer lies, 
 The weary battleground of pain ; 
 
 Love tends his pillow, science tries 
 Her every art, alas ! in vain. 
 
 The strife endures how long ! how long ! 
 
 Life, death, seem balanced in the scale, 
 While round his bed a viewless throng 
 
 Awaits each morrow's changing tale. 
 
 In realms the desert ocean parts 
 
 What myriads watch with tear-filled eyes. 
 
 His pulse beats echoing in their hearts, 
 His breathing counted with their sighs ! 
 
 Slowly the stores of life are spent, 
 Yet hope still battles with despair 
 
 Will Heaven not yield when knees are bent ? 
 Answer, O Thou that hearest prayer 1 
 
 But silent is the brazen sky 
 
 On sweeps the meteor's threatening train 
 Unswerving Nature's mute reply, 
 
 Bound in her admantine chain. 
 
 Not ours the verdict to decide 
 
 Whom death shall claim or skill shall save : 
 The hero's life though Heaven denied 
 
 It gave our land a martyr's grave.
 
 414 MAGNIFICENT TRIBUTES TO MR. McKINLEV. 
 
 Nor count the teaching vainly sent 
 
 How human hearts their griefs may share- 
 The lesson woman's love has lent, 
 
 What hope may do, what faith can bear ! 
 
 Farewell ! the leaf-strown earth enfolds 
 Our stay, our pride, our hopes, our fears, 
 
 And autumn's golden sun beholds 
 A nation bowed, a world in tears. 
 
 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 Additional Tributes to President McKinley Messages from 
 Crowned Heads Canada Observes the Day of Obse- 
 quiesAll Business Suspended Throughout Our Country. 
 
 DEPLYING to Mrs. McKinley's acknowledgment of his tele- 
 * ^ gram of sympathy, King Edward telegraphed to Ambas- 
 sador Choate : 
 
 " Please convey to Mrs. McKinley my best thanks for her 
 kind message. The Queen and I feel most deeply for her in the 
 hour of her great affliction and pray that God may give her 
 strength to bear her heavy cross. Our thoughts will to-day be 
 especially with the American nation when its distinguished Presi- 
 dent is laid to rest. " EDWARD R." 
 
 Throughout Ontario the day of the funeral was observed as 
 a day of mourning for the late President McKinley. In accord- 
 ance with instructions from Ottawa, the schools and courts in 
 Toronto and other cities were closed. Memorial services, attended 
 by crowds, were held by the leading churches, where tributes 
 were paid to the martyred President and his favorite hymns were 
 sung. 
 
 The Dominion Methodist Church at Ottawa was crowded 
 with those who took part in the memorial services. Rev. S. G. 
 Bland, Methodist, and Rev. A. A. Cameron, Baptist, delivered 
 brief sermons and all the other Protestant denominations assisted 
 in the service. In front of the pulpit the Union Jack and the 
 Stars and Stripes were crossed and draped in black. The church 
 was also draped and decorated and the choir was all in 
 black. 
 
 Rev. Mr. Bland spoke of McKinley as a typical American 
 citizen and said that a country which could produce such men as 
 Lincoln, Garfield and McKinley could not be called a failure. 
 
 415
 
 416 ADDITIONAL TRIBUTES TO PRESIDENT McKlNLEY. 
 
 All the Cabinet Ministers who were in the city and who could 
 possibly attend were present at the service. Colonel Turner, the 
 United States Consul General, was present. 
 
 Sir Thomas Lipton said, on board his steam yacht, the 
 "Brin," referring to the shooting of the President: "I was 
 stunned on receiving the news. I could feel no worse if it had 
 been King Edward himself who had been shot. I am sure that 
 every Britisher extends the hand of sympathy to all Americans 
 in this sad affair." 
 
 "'Twas as the general pulse 
 
 Of life stood still, and Nature made a pause. 
 
 An awful pause ! Prophetic of her end." 
 
 PAUSE OF A CONTINENT. 
 
 Solemn and impressive beyond the power of words to describe 
 was that deathlike pause of a continent when the last sad rites 
 were being paid at Canton. Those who saw the mighty crowds 
 in all our cities when, at the first stroke of the tolling bells, all 
 motion ceased, all heads were bared, and the silence of death fell 
 upon the scene, to be emphasized a moment later by the stifled 
 sobs of women, will never forget the scene. 
 
 All over the continent similar scenes were being enacted. 
 The factory, the forge and the loom were stilled. Steamships 
 upon the waters and railway trains climbing the mountains and 
 crossing the plains stood still, while eighty millions of people 
 with bowed heads thought only of their dead President, borne to 
 his last resting place in the little cemetery in Ohio. 
 
 Affecting obsequies were held in Westminster Abbey and 
 St. Paul's, the services being attended by throngs as deeply 
 moved as those that filled the churches throughout the United 
 States. All round the globe there was mourning. The whole 
 civilized world took part in the funeral of the beloved Chief 
 Magistrate of the American people. He is gone, but his story 
 remains to inspire the struggling youth of his country, and his 
 character to help future generations in forming sweet, patriotic 
 and lofty ideals of life and conduct.
 
 ADDITIONAL TRIBUTES TO PRESIDENT McKINLEY. 417 
 
 " 'Old Glory' hangs low and the gentle wind's breath 
 
 Seems to touch with sweet kindness the emblems of death, 
 There's a tear in the eye and a weight on the heart, 
 And a cloud in the sky that will not depart. 
 
 " We prayed he might live : Thou hast answered our prayer, 
 In a way we least thought in our depths of despair. 
 He lives and shall live until Time is no more, 
 And the Ship of State grounds on Eternity's shore. 
 
 " For to live was to leave all the laurels he'd won, 
 And, taking Thy hand, whisper, ' Thy will be done.' 
 His life showed a man on whom man could rely, 
 His death showed the world how a Christian can die." 
 
 STRIKING SENTENCES FROM THE EULOGIES. 
 
 " The cause of this universal mourning is to be found in the 
 man himself." Rev. C. E. Manchester's Funeral Address at Canton. 
 
 " One hundred thousand preachers in 100,000 sermons could 
 not have taught as much as these last words : ' It is God's way ; 
 His will, not ours, be done.' " Rev. Dr. Henry C. Me Cook. 
 
 " In the temple of American honor another is written among 
 the immortals." Rev. O. B. Millgari's Opening Prayer. 
 
 " An obedient and affectionate son, patriotic and faithful as a 
 soldier, honest and upright as a citizen, tender and devoted as a 
 husband, and truthful, generous, unselfish, moral and clean in 
 every relation of life." Grover Cleveland. 
 
 " He was never so much alive as now. It is God's way." 
 Rev. John R. Paxton. 
 
 "He has intensified and energized our love of country and 
 our devotion to our political institutions." Cardinal Gibbons. 
 
 . " I know of nothing more sublime in all the roll of martyrs 
 or heroes than the calm and child-like resignation with which he 
 said, 'It is God's Avay ; His will be done.' ' James M. Beck. 
 
 " Whatever he did, was done for the general welfare ; like 
 Lincoln and Garfield, he was too good an American to care to be 
 rich." Wayne MacVeagh. 
 
 27
 
 418 ADDITIONAL TRIBUTES TO PRESIDENT McKlNLEY. 
 
 A leading journal thus voices the popular feeling : 
 
 " Once more thy head is bowed in dreadful shame, 
 
 O Liberty ! Thy cheeks are wet with tears ! 
 Once more the far off skeptic speaks thy name 
 
 And on his fellows' faces notes the sneers ! 
 
 Out from the darkness of the drear, dead years 
 The foul old crimson claw again is thrust, 
 Once more the voice of doubt assails our ears, 
 Once more we press our faces to the dust, 
 But in our hearts, thank God, there still is trust. 
 O Freedom, though they strike thee down, thy head 
 
 Shall still be raised, and still thy voice shall guide ! 
 And thou shall even grasp and crush the red, 
 
 Smeared hand whose ugly stain is on thy side ! 
 
 Though sobs are heard where yesterday the pride 
 Of honor and of strength had ample tongue. 
 
 Though doubters may be eager to deride, 
 Still hope, thank God, is ours thank God, the young 
 Brave heart beats on that is so sadly wrung. " 
 
 GRANDEUR OF HIS CAREER. 
 
 Another journal thus expresses the national sorrow : 
 
 '" He the more fortunate ! yea, he hath finished ! 
 
 For him there is no longer any future. 
 
 His life is bright bright without spot it was 
 
 And cannot cease to be. No ominous hour 
 
 Knocks at his door with tidings of mishap.' 
 
 Far off is he, above desire and fear ; 
 
 No more submitted to the change and chance 
 
 Of the unsteady planets. O, 'tis well 
 
 With him.' 
 
 " Nothing has given more dignity and grandeur to the career 
 of the departed President than his dying hour. Of all the 
 impressive words that he has spoken in his lifetime, and they 
 were very many, none are so sure of immortal remembrance as 
 his last conscious message, 'It is God's way ; His will be done.' 
 In these words flashed forth for the last time on earth the soul 
 of William McKiuley, a touching, thrilling revelation of his pro- 
 found faith, his undying trust in God, and of his submissive yet 
 courageous manhood. Who has faced the King of Terrors more
 
 ADDITIONAL TRIBUTES TO PRESIDENT McKINLEY. 419 
 
 intrepidly, more nobly ? He was summoned in the fulness of 
 earthly achievement, honor and triumph, at the summit of his 
 powers, and in the midst of duty well done in an exalted past, to 
 the rewards of those who are faithful unto death. 
 
 " It is well to-day with the martyred President. His taking 
 off, as he himself fully recognized, is a part of the inscrutable 
 plan of God's rule and government, to which we are all, from 
 the most exalted to the humblest, subject. This is a startling 
 reminder that this is a world in which there are no accidents. 
 There are none such in the economy of God. 
 
 ASTOUNDED AT THE CRIME. 
 
 "The ways of Providence are beyond searching. Ex-Presi- 
 dent Cleveland, in referring to the sad event, said that in the 
 gloom surrounding the third presidential murder it is hard 
 to repress ' a feeling of stunning amazement that in free America, 
 blessed with a conservative government consecrated to popular 
 welfare and contentment, the danger of the assassin should 
 ever encompass the faithful discharge of the highest official duty. 
 It is hard at such a time as this to await calmly and patiently 
 the unfolding of the purpose of God.' 
 
 " The only answer is, ' It is God's way; His will be done.' 
 We cannot fathom the Divine purposes in the awful event. This 
 we know, that it has brought a common bereavement, impressed 
 upon us the oneness of American citizenship in moments of 
 national loss or danger. We divide into parties and factious; we 
 clamor for diverse national political policies, and differ noisily 
 about this course of action and that. There are strenuous periods 
 when the people seem to have no common interest, and proclaim 
 that their differences are irreconcilable. But when the President 
 is stricken the whole country is united by the solemn event, and 
 it is revealed how helpful, how necessary it is that we should be 
 reminded that we are one people, with one destiny and one hope. 
 The discipline of sorrow and bereavement is always hard to under- 
 stand and to bear. We must bow to it. ' It is God's way ; His 
 will be done.'
 
 420 ADDITIONAL TRIBUTES TO PRESIDENT McKINLEY. 
 
 "The sad event has bound in closer ties the English speaking 
 peoples. The death of Queen Victoria brought out a wonderful 
 expression of sorrow in the United States. It was beyond imagii 
 ing that our kin beyond the sea would so soon be mourning the 
 death of a President of the United States. We have moved far 
 along the path of international good will when nations thus deplore 
 the demise of foreign rulers. The Hnglish demonstrations are 
 peculiarly significant. The English newspapers have gone into 
 mourning. 
 
 ENGLISH COURT IN MOURNING. 
 
 " King Edward has commanded the court to go into mourning, 
 and at all public meetings called for any purpose fitting reference 
 has been made to President McKinley's death. English news- 
 papers suggest that the Duke of Cornwall and York, the heir to 
 the throne, shall attend the obsequies. These incidents indicate 
 that the English speaking peoples are practically one, not in a 
 political sense, but are one in sympathy. The American loss is, 
 in a very accurate sense, the world's loss. These tokens of sincere 
 grief in distant lands dignify and ennoble human nature, and we 
 trust are the harbingers of the millennial peace." 
 
 No less touching is the eulogy that follows : 
 
 "In the course of his splendid eulogy pronounced at the 
 Webster memorial meeting, held in Boston shortly after the 
 famous statesman's death, Rufus Choate said, as a climax to many 
 brilliant passages : 
 
 " 'His plain neighbors loved him, and one said when Web- 
 ster was laid in the grave ' How lonesome the world seems ! ' 
 
 u Probably no portion of Choate' s great effort threw a broader 
 beam of light upon the character of the real Webster. The vast 
 concourse of President McKinley's old time friends, fellow towns- 
 men and neighbors which assembled yesterday at Canton, and 
 the vaster assembly of the nation which was present at Canton in 
 thought and reverent sympathy, were a heartfelt tribute to the 
 martyred head of the nation. Not this alone. It was a mark of
 
 ADDITIONAL TRIBUTES TO PRESIDENT MCKINLEY. 421 
 
 recognition of the superb manhood that was in him, a quality 
 which always reveals itself to the 'plain people,' of whom Lin- 
 coln spoke always with the profoundest respect and affection, and 
 with whom McKinley and Lincoln and the greatest of earth have 
 been proud to claim kinship. 
 
 "That President McKinley was a popular President was 
 made sufficiently evident in his lifetime by his success in the 
 political arena ; but it was by his death that we fully appreciated 
 how firm was his hold on the affections and regard of the Ameri- 
 can people. His taking off came like a family bereavement, and 
 the universal sorrow carried with it a feeling of personal loss. 
 The nation ceased its toil. The wheels of industry stopped. In 
 every city and village in the land memorial services were held. 
 In the solemn observances yesterday all sects and creeds and all 
 earthly divisions and distinctions were effaced in the common 
 bereavement. 
 
 HONORED BY HIS OPPONENTS. 
 
 "Some of the finest tributes to President McKinley' s memory 
 came from his political opponents. He has joined the immortals. 
 We may say of him, as Beecher said of Lincoln : 
 
 " l In the midst of this great continent his dust shall rest a 
 sacred treasure to myriads who shall pilgrim to that shrine to 
 kindle anew their zeal and their patriotism.' 
 
 " The nation comes forth from its affliction confident of its 
 future, rejoicing in its strength, and, we believe, more thoroughly 
 united than it has ever been. It was the frequently expressed 
 wish of President McKinley that the sectionalism that still lingers 
 among us as the reminiscence of old strifes should be abolished. 
 May we not hope that this wish will be fully realized ? At no 
 time has the outlook for the national prosperity been more prom- 
 ising. We have reached another ' era of good feeling ' in our 
 domestic politics. The conciliator}*, just and patriotic motives 
 and policy^ of the late President did much to soften partisan 
 rancor. 
 
 " His reciprocity policy, as outlined in his Buffalo speech,
 
 422 ADDITIONAL TRIBUTES TO PRESIDENT McKINLEY. 
 
 his last formal utterance on political themes, make for industrial 
 peace and a compromise between those holding diverse economical 
 opinions. Abroad the United States is universally respected as 
 one of the world's greatest Powers, standing for international 
 good will. The new head of the nation represents the spirit of 
 the new American age, and by inclination as well as by his direct 
 pledge will continue the policies which have been so successfully 
 developed by President McKinley, and have received the popular 
 approval at the polls. 
 
 "Our Ship of State will not always find smooth seas, but it 
 has weathered many a stormy cape in safety. The loss of three 
 Presidents by assassination, and a Civil War which brought the 
 nation to the severest test of its self-saving power, cautious us 
 that the freest and most beneficent Government, formed to avoid 
 the oppressions and wrongs of despotism, cannot expect exemption 
 from peril. The nation has been sufficient for its self-preserva- 
 tion in the darkest hour. It faces the future as a strong man 
 faces the duties and the responsibility of a new day." 
 
 RESPECT AND ADMIRATION. 
 
 Many civic bodies gave expression to their respect and 
 admiration for Mr. McKinley by formally passing resolutions, 
 accompanied by glowing speeches at the time of their adoption. 
 One of the greatest demonstrations of this kind was by the Union 
 League, of Philadelphia. One of the resolutions was the fol- 
 lowing : 
 
 " That the Union League expresses unbounded admiration 
 of his private character, which was a model in all of life's relations. 
 A kindly man, whose genial presence prompted confidence that 
 was never betrayed ; a tender husband, whose loving devotion was 
 a perfect type of marital life ; an upright Christian, whose daily 
 life and brave death is an inspiration, his untimely taking off has 
 called forth the heartfelt sympathy of the civilized world." 
 
 In speaking of the resolution United States Senator Penrose 
 said : u For 2000 miles I have traveled across the American conti-
 
 ADDITIONAL TRIBUTES TO PRESIDENT McKINLEY. 423 
 
 nent, starting the day cm which the President died, and I shall 
 never forget the extraordinary scene which was witnessed every 
 mile of the route. Great crowds at every station, all classes and 
 conditions, very many in the Western part of our great country 
 of the opposite political party, and all in hushed expectation to 
 receive the latest details of the President's death, all oppressed 
 with a sense of humiliation and shame and indignation that sucl 
 an event could have happened in free America. 
 
 "Even while passing through the portion of country where 
 the prosperity of the people has been affected by the decline in 
 the value of silver there was sorrow and indignation at this dread- 
 ful event which has occurred in the history of our country 
 came to the town which was his home and there were people from 
 all over the United States, but particularly from the adjacent por- 
 tions of Ohio, men had brought their wives and their children and 
 hid driven for miles. They thronged the streets and stood thei 
 until late in the afternoon that they might catch a passing glimpse 
 of the hearse containing the body of their beloved President. 
 
 WREATHS OF POETRY. 
 
 Poets in graceful verse, sang the praises of the martyred 
 President,' as will be seen from the following effusions : 
 
 ' Nearer to Thee,' with dying lips he spoke 
 
 The sacred words of Christian hope and cheer, 
 As toward the Valley of the Shadow passed 
 
 His calm, heroic soul that knew not fear. 
 Thy will be done ; ' the anxious watchers heard 
 
 The faint, low whisper in the silent room ; 
 Earth's darkness merging fast into the dawn, 
 
 Eternal Day for Night of sombre gloom. 
 ' It is God's will ; ' as he had lived he died 
 
 Statesman and soldier, fearing not to bear 
 Fate's heavy cross ; while swift from sea to sea 
 
 Rolled the deep accents of a nation's prayer. 
 Dust unto dust ; ' in solemn state he lies 
 
 Who bowed to Death, yet won a deathless name, 
 And wears in triumph on his marble brow 
 
 The martyr's crown, the hero's wreath of tame.
 
 .424 ADDITIONAL TRIBUTES TO PRESIDENT McKINLEY. 
 
 It is fitting that we should find a place here for Walt 
 Whitman's lines on the death of Lincoln : 
 
 "Hushed be the camps to-day, 
 And soldiers, let us drape our war-worn weapons 
 And each with musing soul retire to celebrate 
 Our dear commander's death. 
 
 No more for him life's stormy conflicts, 
 Nor victory, nor defeat no more time's dark events, 
 Charging like ceaseless clouds across the sky. 
 
 But sing, poet, in our name, 
 
 Sing of the love we bore him because you, dwellers in camps knew 
 it truly. 
 
 As they invault the coffin there, 
 
 Sing as they close the doors of earth upon him one verse 
 For the heavy hearts of soldiers." 
 
 SENATOR FORAKER'S EULOGY. 
 
 One of the most eloquent eulogies on Mr. McKinley came 
 from United States Senator Foraker, who was long and intimately 
 associated with him. The Senator said : 
 
 "In the vigor of robust manhood; at the very height of his 
 powers ; in the possession of all his faculties ; in the midst of a 
 great work of world-wide importance ; in the enjoyment of the 
 admiration, love and affection of all classes of our people to a 
 degree never before permitted to any other man ; at a time of pro- 
 found peace, when nothing was occurring to excite the pas- 
 sions of men ; when we were engaged in a celebraion of the 
 triumphs of art, science, literature, commerce, civilization and all 
 that goes to make up the greatest prosperity, advancement and 
 happiness the world has ever known; surrounded by thousands of 
 his countrymen, vying with each other in demonstrations of friend- 
 ship and good-will, the President of the United States, without a 
 moment's warning, was stricken down by an assassin, who, while 
 greeting him with one hand shot him to death with the other. 
 
 'We can scarce realize that such a crime was possible, 
 much less that it has been actually committed, and our sorrow is
 
 ADDITIONAL TRIBUTES TO PRESIDENT McKlNLEY. 42t 
 
 yet too fresh, our grief too poignant and onr indignation too acute 
 for us to contemplate it dispassionately or discuss it considerately. 
 " But while we can't now speak becomingly of the murderer 
 and hir awful crime, we can fittingly employ this hour to com- 
 memorate the virtues of his victim and to recount, in par 
 his great services to his country. 
 
 " The allotted age of man is three-score and ten, but Wil 
 McKinley was not yet 5 9 when his career ended In these sh, 
 years he did a wondrous work. In its accomplishment he was 
 unaided by fortuitous circumstances. He was of humble origin 
 and without influential friends, except as he made them. 
 
 "He died prond of his work and in the just expectation that 
 time will vindicate his wisdom, his purpose and his lab, 
 it will. THE CROWNING TRIUMPH. 
 
 " What he was not permitted to finish will be taken up by 
 other hands, and when the complete, crowning triumph comes, i 
 will rest upon the foundations he has laid. 
 
 " His great loss to the country will not be in connection with 
 policies now in process of solution, but rather in connection with 
 ew questions. What he has marked out and put the impress of 
 h s greafZe upon will receive the unquestioned support of his 
 own party and of the great majority of the American people. He 
 hid so gained the confidence of his followers and 'he whole 
 country in his leadership that practically all differences of opinion 
 on new propositions would have yielded to his judgment 
 
 And when the dread hour of dissolution overtook him and 
 the last touching farewell had been spoken he sank to rest inur- 
 mur ng Nearer" My God, to Thee.' This was his last triumph 
 hfs greatest. His whole life was given to humanity, but 
 
 eeneratious yet unborn like a soothing 
 fortitude and resignation give us a 
 
 what was in the Apostle's mind when he "*4, 
 where is thy sting ? O, grave, where is thy victory ?
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 Personal Traits of Mr. McKinley Reminiscences of His 
 Boyhood Anecdotes and Incidents His Kind Heart- 
 Affection for Old Friends.-Never Swerved from the Path 
 of Duty. 
 
 ROYALTY to old friends, absolutely without regard to their 
 worldly station, was a conspicuous trait of Mr McKinley'^ 
 character. It is related that at the second inauguration among 
 :he White House guests were Jack Adams, who runs the Presi- 
 dent's farm near Canton, and his friend, Mr. Alexander, a tin- 
 smith from Minerva, Columbiana county, O. Mr. Adams came 
 to Washington at the President's invitation, but had no idea of 
 doing more than "eating one meal in the White House " as he 
 expressed it. Here is Mr. Adams' own story of how he happened 
 to be stopping at the White House during the inauguration week : 
 "Just before the inauguration of 1897, Mr. McKinley asked 
 I did not want to come to Washington. Well, I was pretty 
 busy fixing up things on the farm just then, so I said no, I would 
 come to the next one. The President laughed and said to remind 
 him and he would send me a pass. I got it. When my friend 
 Alexander and I went up to the White House the President held 
 out his hand and said: 'I'm glad to see you,' and asked me 
 about my health and my family and how everybody was doing 
 told him I had just come to town and got a room 
 
 * w ~ re to sta ^ KZ re n 
 
 ! White House, you and your friend.' I said that I did not 
 .ike to impose upon him, but he replied that it was no imposition, 
 and that I must bring my grip and stay the week out as his 
 guest, and he would see that I had a good time and do everything 
 for me that he could do. He made out a ticket that passed us to 
 tiie grand stand to see the parade, and also gave us seats at the 
 
 '1 and admission to the inauguration ball." 
 A lady in Ohio has a souvenir of Mr. McKinley which she 
 prize; very highly. It is a stanza written by him when twelve 
 
 4'2t\
 
 PERSONAL TRAITS OF MR. McKINLEY. 
 
 427 
 
 years old, conveying to this lady, who was then a schoolgirl, a 
 sentiment which impressed his mind at that time. The following 
 is a fac-simile of the stanza, penned, as the reader wil. see, i 
 careful handwriting of a schoolboy : 
 
 In this little incident we see revealed the character of he 
 m an Probably if Mr. McKinley in his last days had seen the 
 "anza he wrcJto his "Friend Lucy," he would have smiled at 
 the innocence of boyhood, but he would not have disapproved of 
 the sentiment he then expressed. 
 
 COLONEL BONNER'S REMINISCENCES. 
 
 Colonel J. C. Bonner, Collector of Cnstoms, was probably 
 
 '- 
 
 A,
 
 428 PERSONAL TRAITS OF MR. McKINLEY. 
 
 was Chairman of the Lucas County Republican Executive Com- 
 mittee, and Mr. McKinley was then Congressman McKinley, and 
 Chairman of the House Committee on Ways and Means. 
 
 The tariff bill which bears Mr. McKinley's name was at that 
 time being prepared. Mr. Bonner, in the manufacture of brushes 
 was painfully aware that the American made goods were kept out 
 of the American markets because of the cheapness with which 
 the German product could be manufactured and placed on sale 
 here. He determined, if possible, to effect a remedy. 
 
 He went to Washington, called at the office of Congressman 
 McKinley, which the latter always called his "den," and without 
 ceremony or red tape of any sort, was received. At first sight 
 Mr. Bonner was much impressed with him, and, as afterwards 
 proved, the liking was mutual. Mr. Bonner stated his business. 
 The country was being flooded with foreign made goods ; in this 
 instance, toothbrushes, which were sold at so low a price that the 
 American made product could not well compete. 
 
 TWICE ACROSS THE OCEAN. 
 
 The bones of which the handles were made were sawed up in 
 Chicago, then shipped to Germany, made up and shipped back 
 and sold at a lower price than Bonner and the five other firms in 
 this country could furnish them at. 
 
 ; <But I am told," said Mr. McKinley, "in letters from R reat 
 houses m Philadelphia and New York, that they are satisfied 
 with the present conditions, and that they do not think it neces- 
 sary for a tariff on toothbrushes." 
 
 He named the firms, and then Mr. Bonner explained that 
 these were great wholesale houses which bought all their goods 
 
 lazing the local manufac- 
 
 see" said the Congressman, "I thought there was some- 
 
 here. How 
 
 to protect American interests?" Mr. Bonner 'said 
 per :ent would do. Forty per cent, it shall be," said Mr 
 McKmley, Ancl forty per cent, it was made and remained.
 
 PERSONAL TRAITS OF MR. McKINLEY. 429 
 
 When President McKinley first ran for governor it was pro- 
 posed that he should make a speech in Toledo The candidate 
 had appeared but once before in this city and then only at a 
 lionet' at which he had responded to a toast. There were 
 factional differences in the Republican camp in Lucas county at 
 and it was feared that the meeting would have the 
 IppearaTceof a frost, but Mr. Bonner and several others deter- 
 mined that Mr. McKinley should be heard there. 
 
 Some thought that a committee of two was al 
 necessary to go down to Sandusky and meet him, and escort hirn^ 
 But opTnLs differed and twenty prominent citizens guarantee 
 *aoo in the way of tickets and the Wheeling & Lake Erie road 
 pTon a specill train, allowing the local managers to put on 
 whatever crowd it desired. 
 
 A GREAT TURN-OUT. 
 
 The result of it was that nine carloads of people were : taken 
 to Sandusky to greet the candidate and bring him to Toledo A 
 L ar was fitted up and decorated and festooned and an artillery 
 
 
 
 P ..*~. 
 
 Tu. 
 
 station. ^ 1 ^med So ?reat was the 
 
 ^ fthttMr: stS^tS cS^pack within Memorial 
 Han atditv^ne^y for the candidate to speak at several 
 places along the march to the hall.
 
 430 
 
 PERSONAL TRAITS OF MR. McKINLEY. 
 
 At the corner of Jefferson and Superior streets one speech 
 was made, and outside the hall itself another. The 'Father of the 
 McKinley Bill had set the town on fire. There was no longer 
 any doubt as to how he would he received in Toledo. Neither 
 this nor subsequent visits were frosts. 
 
 When Mr. McKinley was elected governor he appointed 
 Mr. Bonner upon his personal staff in spite of great pressure 
 from great powers to make the appointment in another direction 
 To illustrate how strictly President McKinley did his duty 
 despite what effect it might have upon him personally, Colonel 
 Bonner tells of an incident which occurred during a political con- 
 vention at Columbus, when McKinley was governor, and when 
 Mr. Bonner was chairman of the state committee. 
 
 DURING THE GREAT STRIKES. 
 
 It was during the great mining troubles and railroad strikes 
 in the Wheeling Creek district and the State was in an uproar 
 because of them. Colonel Bonner was much about the govern- 
 or's office, at the latter's invitation, having charge of the conven- 
 tion arrangements and it being thought advisable that he should 
 be in touch with Governor McKinley, thus being an eyewitness 
 of the incident. At this time, it must be remembered, the friends 
 of Governor McKinley were booming him for the presidential 
 nomination. 
 
 Private Secretary James Boyle came in and announced that a 
 prominent politician was without and desired to speak to him. The 
 governor was occupied and it was so reported to the gentleman. 
 
 ' Tell him," said the politician, "that it is a matter of great 
 importance." This was done. The Wheeling Creek rioters were 
 at that time sullen and growling. 
 
 Every means had been used to quiet them without a show of 
 force. The subject of calling out the militia had been broached. 
 The prominent politician sent in this message to the governor: 
 
 'Tell him," said the message brought in by Mr. Boyle that "in 
 my opinion if he calls out the State militia he will never become 
 President of the United States."
 
 PERSONAL TRAITS OF MR. McKINLEY. 
 
 431 
 
 Onick as a flask, with the delivery of this message, Governor 
 McKtoley turned to his secretary and said: 'You return to 
 this man and tell him that we will take care of the stnke firs, 
 
 and the presidency afterward." 
 
 Inside of three hours every regiment of the State 
 except the First regiment, had been called out, and was en route 
 to the scene of the trouble. The strike was settled, not a life was 
 ost in the settlement, and despite the warning of the politician, 
 Governor McKinley became President not only once, but twice. 
 
 McKinley was governor, a daring bank robbery 
 Mumbus Grove. The robber entered the bank and shot 
 
 Sft St away from the influence of the men who would 
 move heaven and earth to save their friend. 
 
 FOLLOWED BY TELEGRAMS. 
 But his escae from Columbus had been discovered and score 
 
 tr, lit:, 
 
 excited. A man law to take itc 
 
 to 
 
 with the prison ?
 
 432 PERSONAL TRAITS OF MR. McKINLEV. 
 
 A walk down to a newspaper office was suggested. Arrived 
 there the hour was growing close to midnight, and the day was 
 close to Friday, hangman's day. The first intimation of the 
 approaching tragedy was the bulletin to the effect that the peni- 
 tentiary warden had entered the prison cell and had read the 
 death warrant. Other particulars followed rapidly, but nothing 
 of what the governor was waiting for. The death march was 
 bulletined, the last clang of the cell doors, the heavy respiration 
 even of the accused and convicted. The governor's emotion was 
 intense. 
 
 MADE A FULL CONFESSION. 
 
 " L, there nothing from the man himself?" he exclaimed. 
 Finally it came, a full confession, just before the last act. The 
 governor's face illumined. He had been right the man was 
 guilty the man had admitted it. Again had duty been done. 
 
 Quite as impressive as anything else in the developments of 
 the tragedy was the clear light in which they showed how Presi- 
 dent McKinley's personal charms and qualities as a man won the 
 affection of the country. Particularly was this noticeable in 
 Washington, where, from his long service in Congress and for 
 more than four years in the Presidential chair he became known 
 personally as to no other part of the country, except, perhaps, to 
 his neighbors in Canton. Dr. David J. Hill, Assistant Secretary 
 of State, once remarked to a friend when Mr. McKinley's person- 
 ality was under discussion, that if " the Lord had ever breathed 
 the breath of life into a more gracious and amiable man than Mr. 
 McKinley," Dr. Hill had yet to find it out. This was a thoroughly 
 characteristic estimate, and one that was by no means confined in 
 its expression to occasions of grief. 
 
 Mr. McKinley, according to the best estimates, always did 
 the amiable and courteous thing. If he ever had any feeling of 
 injured dignity or ill-temper, he never let it be discovered even by 
 those nearest to him. Everybody who went to the White House 
 came away pleasantly impressed, whether he were Republican 
 >emocrat, Populist, anti-Imperialist or Socialist; a negro, a 
 Chinese or a Caucasian. It has not been uncommon with other
 
 PERSONAL TRAITS OF MR. McKINLEY. 438 
 
 Presidents for men of more or less prominence to come away from 
 the White House saying rather unpleasant things about the treat- 
 ment they had received. 
 
 With McKinley it was different, and in that personal equation 
 doubtless lay a large share of his success, as a public man and 
 party leader, in securing acceptance of the policies for which he 
 stood. When before, it was frequently asked, has a President 
 carried the House of Representatives in three Congresses in suc- 
 session ? When before has a President sustained such friendly 
 relations with the Senators that they have rejected none of his 
 nominations for office, or that he, in turn, has had to veto none of 
 their bills ? For this was substantially the situation. 
 
 UNUSUAL COURTESY. 
 
 The very few vetoes and rejected nominations, and their 
 number was trifling, were rarely unwelcome to the other side, but 
 were rather in the nature of the correction of errors due to newly 
 discovered evidence. 
 
 When the Secretary of the Anti-Imperialist League first 
 visited Washington the President came out of a Cabinet meeting 
 to receive him a most unusual courtesy. Many a President who 
 had been flattered as McKinley was would have taken affront at 
 some of the utterances of the League, and, standing on his 
 dignity, have refused altogether to see its representative. One of 
 McKinley' s predecessors steadily refused to see, during his term 
 of office, an eminent doctor of divinity who several times called on 
 public business, because he had as a preacher alluded to his 
 alleged Sabbath-breaking propensities. 
 
 President Arthur, with all that graciousness of manner which 
 has associated itself with his name, proved a hard master for the 
 clerical force in his immediate employ. If he desired a letter or 
 a paper from the files for any purpose, he could brook no delay, 
 and was seemingly unwilling to grant that time might be neces- 
 sary even for those who served a President. 
 
 In fact, those who know the White House best, in its various 
 aspects toward the public, are able to relate a great many iiici- 
 
 28
 
 434 PERSONAL TRAITS OF MR. Me KIN LEY. 
 
 dents showing considerable human nature on the part of the 
 various Presidents who have occupied it, but of McKinley they 
 have nothing to relate but pleasant things, kindly acts, and 
 genial ways. He seemed never offended at those who most 
 severely criticised him. We read in the newspapers that Senator 
 Tillman declared that McKinley was gradually becoming a dicta- 
 tor, to the subversion of the old Republic ; the next day we read 
 that Mr. Tillman went to the White House to ask for a small 
 consulship for one of his constituents, and, strange to relate, that, 
 although an opposition Democrat, he readily obtained it. 
 
 A PERFECT GENTLEMAN. 
 
 In fact, Tillman said in a public way that in his opinion no 
 finer gentleman from George Washington's time to the present 
 had ever occupied the Presidential chair. He never went to the 
 White House in the latter part of Mr. Cleveland's administration, 
 just as there were many Republicans of prominence that were 
 not very neighborly with Mr. Harrison, and others, to be sure, 
 who did not like Mr. Arthur. 
 
 It has long become notable to outside observers, who have 
 talked with public men, who have come away from a conference 
 with the Chief Executive, how generally he made their wishes his 
 own. In the organization of the first Philippine Commission, 
 one of the men provisionally selected hastened to Washington 
 to tell Mr. McKinley that he was not much of a believer in his 
 expansion policy, and that, probably knowing this, Mr. MrKinley 
 would want somebody else to serve. 
 
 " Quite the contrary," was the President's answer. " We 
 need just the element of opinion on the Commission which you 
 represent. I am glad that you feel as you do about it." Another 
 man whom McKinley was about to appoint to a high office 
 expressed in the same way his skepticism on the subject of pro- 
 tection, as identified with Mr. McKinley' s name. In the same 
 spirit, Mr. McKinley assured him that the view of the case which 
 he held was the very one which the President was eager to have 
 represented.
 
 PERSONAL TRAITS OF MR. McKINLEY. 136 
 
 Mr. McKinley was so able to see both sides of questions, to 
 recognize personal and local limitations, that his relation with 
 the world and with the American public was wonderfully pleasant. 
 It will be recalled how enthusiastic the Democratic South became 
 when, on his visit to that section, he allowed a Confederate badge, 
 pinned playfully on the lapel of his coat, to remain there all day, 
 and how he recommended that the Federal Government join with 
 the Southern States in the care of the cemeteries in which were 
 buried the Confederate dead. Wherever he went, North, East, 
 West or South, he fell in so acceptably with the prevailing views 
 and aspirations of the people as to win their most marked favor. 
 By his diplomatic way, he led a great many persons to his 
 manner of thinking, when they did not realize that they were 
 being led. 
 
 Among the facts belonging to President McKiuley's career 
 must be placed the heroic struggle of medical skill and science 
 to prevent that career from being ended so suddenly. The story of 
 what went on in the sick room reads more like fiction than reality. 
 
 THE DOCTORS ENDORSED. 
 
 "The Medical News," in its issue of September 21, printed a 
 review of President McKinley' s case from a medical point of view. 
 The article recited the circumstances of the shooting and reprinted 
 the official report of the autopsy and certain unofficial statements 
 credited by the press to the doctors in attendance. It then takes 
 up the subject of the gangrenous condition of the wound and in 
 this connection says : 
 
 "Gangrene, extensive as it was, seems to us not so different 
 from others observed under analogous circumstances as to require 
 the assumption of exceptional causes for it^> explanation. Necrosis 
 of tissue of a thinner cr thicker cylinder along the track of a 
 bullet is thought to be the ru ^,. and ordinarily it is easily taken 
 care of by liquefaction and absorption. And necrosis, even of a 
 considerable extent, in feeble patients, about a sutured wound is 
 certainly not unknown, even if rare, and is explained by inter-
 
 436 PERSONAL TRAITS OF MR. McKINLEY. 
 
 ference with the local circulation either by tension or by the 
 spread of coagulation within the blood vessels. 
 
 " The spread of the process in a patient of low reparative 
 power would not be so very exceptional or surprising. Was the 
 President such a patient ? Apparently he was. According to 
 Dr. Wasdin, when the incision was reopened toward the end of 
 the fifth day ' no effort ' was required to open it throughout its 
 entire length, although only the track of the bullet was affected. 
 That expression would hardly have been used unless he had 
 intended to indicate that the amount of repair usual after that 
 lapse of time had not taken place. Then, the President was fifty- 
 eight years of age, had led a sedentary, laborious and anxious 
 life, and had a complexion and appearance which, for some years, 
 had been commented upon as indicative of impaired vitality. 
 
 ACTED WITH PROMPTNESS. 
 
 " It is evident that the surgeons, notably Doctors Mann and 
 Mynter, with whom the first decision lay, acted with commend- 
 able promptitude and courage in undertaking the operation, and 
 showed excellent judgment in its course and skill in its execution. 
 
 "They did all that could properly have been done and 
 nothing that should have been left undone. The usual causes 
 of death after such inj ury and operation were escaped or removed 
 or prevented, and their patient succumbed to a complication which 
 is so rare that it could not reasonably have been anticipated, and 
 could not have been averted. 
 
 u The President died because he could not carry on the 
 processes of repair and because the effort to do so was more than 
 the vitality of the tissues involved could support. This, of course, 
 excluded the possible presence of poison brought by the bullet or 
 of destructive action by the pancreatic juices. If either of those 
 was a factor, it needs only to substitute it in the statement for the 
 assumed defective vitality of the patient. Whatever cause acted, 
 it was unrecognizable at the operation and uncontrolable then or 
 subsequently. 
 
 " There has been some criticism of the confident assurance of
 
 PERSONAL TRAITS OF MR. McKINLEY. 437 
 
 recovery made by those in attendance after the fifth day. To us 
 the progress of the case up to that time appears fully to have 
 justified those assurances and the public anxiety to have required 
 them." 
 
 The review of the case closes with the following reference 
 the doctors: " They did their work skillfully and judiciously, 
 their behavior was dignified, restrained and worthy of the bes 
 traditions of the profession, and they have the misfortune, whei 
 success seemed to have been secured, of seeing it overthrown by a 
 complication which could not have been foreseen or avo: id. 
 They deserve our admiration and sympathy, not our criticism.
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 Origin and Rise of Anarchism Its Theory and Practice 
 Aims to Overthrow All Lawful Government Assas- 
 sinations From Alexander II. to President McKinley. 
 
 THE civilized world looked on aghast when the apostles of dis- 
 order, the believers in the " rights of the people" as they 
 phrased it, seized Paris in the name of the Commune on March 
 17, 1871, and held it until the rightful government of the republic 
 regained control of the capital on May 27. The frightful 
 excesses of these two months have never been surpassed in the 
 annals of war, and without knowing it the civilized world was 
 beholding a demonstration of what government and social exist- 
 ence would be like under the supremacy of a set of revolutionists, 
 known later as " anarchists," but who then had no such conve- 
 nient sobriquet to designate themselves or their beliefs. 
 
 Neither Communism nor Anarchism originated during the 
 Commune. On the contrary, the general idea which took a most 
 violent shape in the Slav and Latin countries in the 80' s grew 
 out of the revolutions of 1848. Proudhon in France and Karl 
 Marx in Germany, and, above all, Michael Bakunin, a Russian, 
 all ardent social reformers, were the real creators of the interna- 
 tional movement. 
 
 Bakunin was born in Russia, 1814, and died in Berne, in 
 1876. He took part in the German revolutionary movements of 
 1848, and was the founder of Nihilism in his own country. He 
 was exiled to Siberia in 1851, but escaped to Japan, got back to 
 England by 1861, and in 1865 he was one of the organizers of 
 the " International Association of Workingmen," a pet project of 
 Karl Marx. 
 
 Bakunin, Marx and all other reformers of all grades, from 
 philosophic idealists to downright cut-throats, carried on the propa- 
 ganda of the International Association until 1872, when there 
 
 was a split, and at the Hague conference the Socialists proper, 
 438
 
 ORIGIN AND RISE OF ANARCHISM. 439 
 
 wlio believed in orderly reform and governmental methods, drew 
 apart from the extremists, who met in what was really the first 
 Anarchist congress in the world, held the same year at Saint- 
 Irnier, Switzerland. 
 
 By this time, 1872, the extremists were well organized in 
 most of the leading States of Europe, particularly in Russia, and 
 the Latin countries. In Itaty, Counts Caffiero and Malatesta 
 were followers of Bakunin and leaders in the movement. They 
 had a large following, and the name by which they were known 
 was Internationalists, and they constituted the " Federazione 
 Internazionale dei Lavoratori " (International Federation of 
 Workers), with the motto, " Atheism, Anarchy and Collectivism," 
 which was the Italian branch of Karl Marx's London organiza- 
 tion, but which from the first, owing to the disturbed state of 
 things, politically and economically, in Italy, had taken a more 
 radical turn. Marx might believe in a constructive, peaceful 
 revolution of society. 
 
 FLOURISHED IN ITALY. 
 
 Not so the Italians, who were anarchistic at the start. Con- 
 sequently from 1872 to 1880 the anarchist movement flourished 
 in Italy, while in other and freer countries it languished, save in 
 Spain, and the Italians were at the head of every workers' associa- 
 tion for economic purposes. In 1876 they took possession of 
 thftown of Benevento. Amongst the revolutionists there were 
 Camero, the Russian revolutionist and writer, Stepniak, and 
 others ; but the movement was immediately suppressed by the 
 government, which realized for the first time that Italy as well 
 as Europe was confronted by a new and very dangerous social 
 movement. 
 
 This early propaganda of anarchism was largely due, it must 
 be said, to the missionary work of those who took part in the 
 so-called Social Democratic Alliance, which Bakunin founded at 
 Geneva, Switzerland, in 1868. The Alliance, like the Inter- 
 national Association, was divided into a central committee and 
 national bureaus. But together with this division went a secret
 
 440 ORIGIN AND RISE OF ANARCHISM. 
 
 organization. Bakunin, the pronounced enemy of all organiza- 
 tions in theory, created in practice a secret society quite according 
 to the rules of Carbonarism, a hierarchy which was in total con- 
 tradiction to the anti-authority tendencies of the society. 
 
 According to the secret statutes of the "Alliance" three 
 grades were recognized: (i) "The International Brethren," 100 
 in number, who formed a kind of sacred college, and were to play 
 the leading parts in the soon expected, immediate social revolution, 
 with Bakunin at their head; (2) "The National Brethren," who 
 were organized by the International Brethren into a national 
 association in every country, but who were allowed to suspect 
 nothing of the international organization ; (3) lastly came the 
 Secret International Alliance, the pendant of the public alliance, 
 operating through the permanent central committee. 
 
 BECAME MORE VIOLENT. 
 
 The Alliance as an open organization did not last long, as 
 it was amalgamated with the "International" in 1869, the 
 extremists and conservatives all working together until their 
 final separation in 1872. During the latter part of the 70' s the 
 extremists in all parts of Europe Latins, Slavs, Teutons became 
 more and more violent, and it was about this time that the 
 Governments of Europe began to look into the question of 
 anarchism, though it had not yet revealed itself in all its true 
 colors, for though Bakunin was an extremist he had not himself 
 invented the propaganda "by the deed," which latei on led to the 
 series of attacks on the rulers of Europe, which respected no one 
 were he autocrat or a parliamentary sovereign. 
 
 This idea of violence grew slowly as compared with the 
 purely political idea that anarchists should in no way encourage 
 any orderly form of government even if they were in power. For 
 instance, the Congress of Berne, which followed Bakunin' s death 
 in 1876, under the leadership of Elisee Reclus, officially blamed 
 the Paris Commune of 1871 for constituting itself into an organ- 
 ized government. As irresponsible as the Commune had been, it 
 had not been irresponsible enough for men like Reclus.
 
 ORIGIN AND RISE OF ANARCHISM. 441 
 
 Moreover, it was at the Berne convention that Count Mala- 
 testa, one of the evil geniuses of anarchy, who represented the 
 Italian extremists, who at that time were one of the most powerful 
 groups in Europe, took the step that has made anarchism the 
 "red terror" ever since; for, in the name of the Italian Federation, 
 he declared the necessity of joining the "insurrectional act" to 
 the other means of propaganda. 
 
 In 1878 the congress of Fribourg (in Switzerland) definite^ 
 adopted the propositions of Reclus explaining why its members 
 were revolutionists, anarchists and collectivists; and it pronounced 
 unanimously for the "collective appropriation of social riches, the 
 abolition of the State under all its forms, for insurrectional and 
 revolutionary action, and against the use of the ballot as a mis- 
 chievous instrument incapable of realizing the sovereignty of the 
 
 people." 
 
 BREEDING REVOLUTION. 
 
 The propaganda of revolution was carried on throughout 
 Europe with great vigor. In Russia it became allied with Nihil- 
 ism, and everywhere it spread hatred of government and all 
 political and economic authority. In Italy, France and Spain 
 the movement was particularly vigorous, and Spain from the 'yo's 
 had a strong influence in determining the orientation of the move- 
 ment. But it was not until 1881 that the Spanish Federation for the 
 first time positively shut out all the weak-kneed brethren who still 
 clung to Socialist organizations and had not yet utterly broken 
 with all organized society. 
 
 The propaganda of irresponsible individualism, of violence 
 and of unreasoning hatred for any one in executive place, were he 
 a devil or an angel, was openly advocated at the Anarchist con- 
 gress held at Barcelona in 1881. This Barcelona congress was 
 the first exclusively Anarchist congress, since there for the first 
 time was no qiiestion of fraternizing even with those extreme 
 revolutionary Socialists that still admitted some principle of State 
 authority. 
 
 Whatever the Spanish Anarchists might have accomplished 
 internationally, and there is no doubting their evil intentions, by
 
 442 ORIGIN AND RISE OF ANARCHISM. 
 
 the irony of fate it was in peaceful London that the definite organ- 
 ization to carry out the philosophy of violence was put into effect. 
 Ever since the early '6o's London had been the rendezvous of all 
 European revolutionists and agitators. Marx, Bakunin, Stepniak, 
 Aveling, Kropotkin had made it their headquarters, and now, at 
 a critical moment in the history of anarchism an extremist came 
 on the scene who believed in putting into effect all the dreams of 
 Reclus, Proudhon, Kropotkin and others, after the revolutionary 
 ideas of Bakunin. 
 
 This man was Herr Johann Most, who had been expelled 
 from Berlin in 1879, after Germany had begun to legislate against 
 the Social-Democrats and all their ilk. Most soon took hold of 
 the extremists of all nations then gathered in London and formed 
 a secret " Propagandist Club," to carry on an international 
 revolutionary agitation, and to prepare directly for the general 
 revolution which Most thought was near at hand. For this pur- 
 pose a committee was to be formed in every country in order to 
 form groups after the Nihilist pattern, and at the proper time to 
 take the lead of the movement. 
 
 HUE AND CRY FOR " FREEDOM." 
 
 The activity of all these national organizations was to be 
 united in the Central Committee in London, which was an inter- 
 national body. The organ of the organization was to be the 
 " Freedom." The following of this new movement grew rapidly 
 in every country, and already in 1881 a great demonstration of 
 Most's ideas took place at the memorable International Revolu- 
 tionary Congress in London, the holding of which was mainly 
 due to the initiative of Most and the well-known Nihilist, 
 Hartmann. 
 
 Already in April, 1881, a preliminary congress had been held 
 in Paris, at which the procedure of the "Parliamentary Socialists" 
 had been rejected, since only a social revolution was regarded as 
 a remedy ; in the struggle against present day society all and 
 any means were looked upon as right and justifiable ; and in view 
 of this, the distribution of leaflets, the sending of emissaries, and
 
 ORIGIN AND RISE OF ANARCHISM. 443 
 
 the use of explosives were recommended. A German living in 
 London had proposed an amendment involving the forcible 
 removal of all potentates after the manner of the assassination of 
 the Russian Czar, but this was rejected as "at present not yet 
 suitable." 
 
 The congress following this preliminary one took place 
 in London, 011 July 14 to 19, 1881, and was attended by about 
 forty delegates, the representatives of several hundred groups. 
 It announced its principles as follows : 
 
 ANNIHILATION OF RULERS. 
 
 " The revolutionaries of all countries are uniting into an 
 ' International Social Revolutionary Working Men's Association, 3 
 for the purpose of a social revolution. The headquarters of the asso- 
 ciation is at London, and sub-committees are formed in Paris, 
 Geneva and New York. In every place where like minded sup- 
 porters exist, sections and an executive committee of three 
 persons are to be formed. The committees of a country are to 
 keep up with one another, and, with the central committee, 
 regular communication by means of continual reports and 
 information, and have to collect money for the purchase of poison 
 and weapons, as well as to find places suitable for laying mines, 
 and so on. To attain the proposed end, the annihilation of all 
 rulers, ministers of State, nobility, the clergy, the most promi- 
 nent capitalists, and other exploiters, any means are permissible, 
 and, therefore, great attention should be given specially to the 
 study of chemistry and the preparation of explosives, as being 
 the most important weapons. Together with the chief committee 
 in London, there will also be established an executive committee 
 of international composition and an information bureau, whose 
 duty is to carry out the decisions of the chief committee and to 
 conduct correspondence." 
 
 This congress and the decisions passed thereat had very far- 
 reaching and fateful consequences for the development of the 
 anarchism of action. The executive committee set to work at 
 once, aud sought to carry out every point of the proposed pro-
 
 444 ORIGIN AND RISE OF ANARCHISM. 
 
 gram, but especially to utilize for purposes of demonstration and 
 for feverish agitation every revolutionary movement of whatever 
 origin or tendency it might be, whether proceeding from Russian 
 Nihilism or Irish Fenianism. Kow successful their activity was, 
 was proved only too well by now unceasing outrages in every 
 country. 
 
 Most and Kropotkin were now apparently agreed that the 
 time had come for adding what is known as the " propaganda of 
 the deed" to words and writing. In fact Kropotkin, although 
 to-day he poses as a philosophic Anarchist, had already, in 1879 
 advocated the doctrine of action in France, and it was after his 
 incendiary discourses at the London congress that he was 
 expelled from Switzerland. Four years previously he had 
 migrated from Russian nihilism to international anarchy and 
 begun the publication of its first organ in company with Paul 
 Brousse, another disciple of Baktmin, and now, strange to say, 
 the mildest of Socialists. It was Prince Kropotkin who shortly 
 afterward induced the members of the party to drop the word 
 Collectivist." 
 
 TWO GROUPS. 
 
 At a congress in Paris, also in the same year, the Anarchists 
 
 were quite excluded from the company of the International 
 
 socialists, and from this time on the Anarchist and Socialist 
 
 groups may be said to have become wholly distinct, while the 
 
 Anarchists, themselves split up into two sections, the one led by 
 
 men like Professor Reclus in France and Prince Kropotkin, both 
 
 said to be the wildest mannered of men who ever associated with 
 
 bomb-throwers, and the other section led by men like Herr Most 
 
 and Count Malatesta, Bakunin's great disciple, who believed in 
 
 violence, and still believes in it, as was shown in an interview 
 
 ter the assassination of Humbert on July 37, 1900. Kropotkin 
 
 times, however, has urged insurrectionary movements, and his 
 
 hands are not so free of blood as he claims. 
 
 It was but natural that after all these years of revolutionary 
 
 movements, actual and philosophical, that the era of violence 
 
 soon set in and it came in Italy, Spain, Germany and
 
 ORIGIN AND RISE OF ANARCHISM. 445 
 
 Russia, in which countries, during the latter part of the 70*8 
 several attempts to assassinate those in power were made, the 
 effort in Russia culminating in the killing of the Czar Alex- 
 ander II., iii St. Petersburg, on March 13, 1881. 
 
 From this time on the European governments realized that 
 they were dealing with a formidable enemy of modern society 
 and most of the stricter monarchical governments made ever}' 
 effort to stamp the organization out. The Anarchists, revolution- 
 ary and philosophical, however, found an asylum in Switzerland 
 and in Great Britain and in the United States and the plotting of 
 the various groups went on without much interruption save in 
 Russia, where the police ruled with an iron hand. 
 
 INFAMOUS PLOTS. 
 
 In the early 80' s the United States had been the rendezvous 
 for a large number of German and Slavic, Russian, Poles and 
 Swiss refugees driven out of Europe by the repressive measures 
 following hard upon the assassination of the Czar. These revo- 
 lutionists settled down in New York and Chicago chiefly where 
 they formed two large groups, devoted to plotting against the 
 Government and any of its agents, and encouraging discontent. 
 One of the most conspicuous of these agitators was Most, who 
 came over in 1883, having found London too hot for him. He 
 kept up a red-hot agitation and was fond of saying that the time 
 had come for bullets and not for ballots. 
 
 In Chicago the group grew very bold and when an effort was 
 made to break up one of their meetings held in Haymarket 
 Square, on May 4, 1886, at which they were proclaiming 
 revolutionary doctrines, a bomb was thrown and seven policemen 
 were killed, and a large number injured. Seven of the ring- 
 leaders were arrested, tried and convicted and four were executed 
 on November n, 1887, two others being imprisoned for life, and 
 the third sentenced to fifteen years in the penitentiary. This 
 outbreak made a profound impression on the public mind and by 
 reason of the summary execution and the general hostility the 
 open avowal of anarchy was for the moment suppressed.
 
 446 ORIGIN AND RISE OF ANARCHISM. 
 
 But neither in this country nor in Kurope was there any 
 real cessation in the movement and the revival of anarchistic 
 attacks in France, culminating in the death of Carnot in 1894, 
 had been a marked feature of the latter part of 1893, when Paris 
 was in a regular panic, owing to a number of bomb throwings, 
 which French outbreaks had been the natural consequence of the 
 upheaval in Spain, which had resulted in the Barcelona horror, 
 when, on November 8, 1893, thirty people were killed and eighty 
 injured by a bomb thrown by the Anarchists in the Lyceum. 
 Theater. This Barcelona attack had been preceded by an effort 
 to kill General Campos on September 24, 1893, by a bomb, while 
 in Chicago a half-crazed man assassinated Mayor Carter H. Har- 
 rison on October 28th. 
 
 PARDON FOR ANARCHISTS. 
 
 A maudlin sentiment had, however, developed in this country 
 on the subject of anarchism, and this was taken advantage of by 
 Governor Altgeld, of Illinois, who, on Jnne 26, 1893, pardoned 
 the three anarchists, Fielden, Schwab and Neebe, who were still 
 serving out their terms for their complicity in the Haymarket 
 murder of 1886. This action of the Governor of Illnois and the 
 demagoguery of Populist orators so encouraged anarchy in this 
 country that a convention of avowed anarchists was held during 
 the World's Fair. 
 
 Aftei the outbreaks of 1893, and the murder of Carnot, on 
 Jnne 24, 1894, there was a lull in anarchist activity until Senor 
 Cauovas del Castillo, the Premier of Spain, was assassinated by 
 Golli, an Italian anarchist, on August 8, 1897. This was fol- 
 lowed a year later by the brutal, wanton murder of the Bmpress 
 Elizabeth, by Luccheni, also an Italian ; and this, after a two 
 years' interval, by the murder of King Humbert, at Mouza, 
 Italy, by Angelo Bresci, an Italian, who had lived at Paterson, 
 N. J., where the plot to kill the king was hatched. 
 
 Although up to this time in most American communities the 
 anarchists had been German or Slavic, the Italian groups were 
 fast taking the lead in agitation, and the action of Bresci was the
 
 ORIGIN AND RISE OF ANARCHISM. 447 
 
 natural outgrowth of the undisturbed existence of these groups 
 in and about New York. 
 
 The assassination of King Humbert warned all governments 
 that the time had come to combine against the anarchists, but a 
 year had not gone by before an Italian boy, named Sipido, tried 
 to kill the then Prince of Wales while he was entering a railway 
 car in Brussels, and the craze seemed to be unabated, the situ- 
 ation thus developed at the beginning of the twentieth century 
 forming a problem which Europe has tried to deal with collec- 
 tively, but in vain, as all plans at concerted action have come to 
 naught, though the view is gaining in Great Britain, as well as 
 in the rest of Europe and in the United States, that something 
 must be done to scotch those who boldly proclaim themselves, 
 whether as dreamy philosophers or actual plotters, the enemies 
 of all human society. 
 
 FIRST MARTYRED PRESIDENT. 
 
 The first time that the American people were called upon to 
 mourn for an assassinated President was when Abraham Lincoln 
 fell by a shot from John Wilkes Booth's pistol, in Ford's Theatre, 
 at Washington, on the night of April 14, 1865. M r - Lincoln had 
 attended a Cabinet meeting on that day, and in the evening, 
 accompanied by Mrs. Lincoln, Miss Harris, of Albany, and her 
 half-brother, Major Henry R. Rathbone, had gone to the theatre 
 to witness the performance of "Our American Cousin." 
 
 While the play was in progress a shot was heard, and a 
 man was seen to jump from the President's box on to the stage, 
 brandishing a pistol. Those who sat near the stage heard him 
 shout in a theatrical manner, "Sic semper tyrannis the South 
 is avenged ! " He rushed to the rear of the building, mounted a 
 horse, which had been kept in waiting for him, and dashed away. 
 The President was carried to a house opposite the theatie, where 
 he passed away, surrounded by his family, on the morning of 
 April 1 5th. 
 
 On the same night that he was shot by John Wilkes Booth, 
 an assassin entered the room of William H. Seward, who lay ill
 
 448 ORIGIN AND RISE OF ANARCHISM. 
 
 abed, and stabbed him and wounded Secretary Se ward's son, who 
 attempted to stay his hand. The murder of Vice-President 
 Johnson, Secretary Stanton and General Grant was contemplated 
 by the conspirators, who succeeded only in assassinating the 
 President. 
 
 The assassin was tracked by a squadron of cavalrymen, and 
 twelve days after the assassination he was found in a barn, where 
 he had secreted himself, and from which he was taken after 
 having been mortally wounded. The people in the Northern 
 States at that time were rejoicing over the termination of hostili- 
 ties with the South, peace seemed to be near at hand, families 
 looked for the return of the men who had gone to the field in the 
 service of their country, and every city, village and hamlet was 
 decorated with flags and bunting. 
 
 FLAGS IN MOURNING. 
 
 There were no orders issued to that effect, but by common 
 consent edges of mourning were sewn around the flags, the 
 streamers were covered with crepe, and within a few hours after 
 the news of Lincoln's assassination had come nearly every house 
 in the loyal States was draped in mourning. The body of the 
 assassinated Piesident was taken to the Capitol on April 2oth, 
 and a great concourse oi people viewed it before the funeral train 
 started for Springfield. In every principal city along the line the 
 train halted, and at Baltimore, Harrisburg, Philadelphia, New 
 York, Albany, Buffalo, Cleveland and Chicago catafalques were 
 erected, and weeping multitudes looked upon the face of the dead 
 emancipator. 
 
 The conspirators who were responsible for the assassination 
 were tried by court martial at Washington, and four, namely, 
 Payne, Harold, Azerodt and Mrs. Surratt, were hanged ; the stage 
 carpenter at Ford's theatre who turned out the lights to facilitate 
 the escape of Booth, the man who held his horse at the stage 
 entrance, and Dr. Mudd, who set the limb which Booth broke in 
 jumping from the box, were sent to prison for long terms. 
 
 Andrew Johnson, the Vice-President, was sworn in as Presi-
 
 ORIGIN AND RISE OF ANARCHISM. 449 
 
 dent of the United States on the morning of April 15, a few min- 
 utes after the President had passed away. The death of Abraham 
 Lincoln wiped out party feeling in the Northern States to a great 
 extent, and among the eulogies that were delivered some of the 
 best were spoken by members of the Democratic party, who for 
 years had opposed Mr. Lincoln and his policy. 
 
 The only other occasion when the American people were called 
 upon to mourn for an assassinated President was when General 
 Garfield passed away in consequence of the wounds inflicted on 
 him by a crazy assassin. 
 
 The President was leaving Washington, on July 2, 1881, on 
 a trip through New England, having nothing specially in view 
 beyond the commencement exercises of Williams College, 
 William stown. He had had a season of more than ordinarily hard 
 work and much vexation over a fight in the Republican party of 
 the State of New York, which had originated through his appoint- 
 ment of a Collector for the Port of New York. At a Cabinet 
 meeting held July i, the day before his departure from Washing- 
 ton, he told some of the members of the Cabinet that he looked 
 forward with great pleasure to his corning vacation, that he needed 
 rest, was going to take it, and not allow affairs of State to bother 
 
 him. 
 
 GARFIELD ASSASSINATED. 
 
 As he was passing through the waiting room of the Baltimore 
 and Potomac Railroad station, the next morning, leaning on the 
 arm of Mr. Elaine, an assassin approached him and fired point 
 blank upon the President. The first ball passed through his coat 
 sleeve, whereupon the President half turned and received the 
 second shot in the back. The bullet fractured a rib and lodged 
 so deeply in the body that it could not be extracted at that time. 
 The wounded President was carried back to the White House, 
 where, for ten weeks, attended by the best medical skill available, 
 and having all the comforts that love could procure, he lingered 
 between life and death. His cheerfulness and fortitude awakened 
 the sympathy and commanded the admiration of the whole world. 
 
 Bulletins announcing his condition were published daily in 
 
 29
 
 450 ORIGIN AND RISE OF ANARCHISM. 
 
 every city in the Uuioii and in all the capitals of Europe. A day 
 of national supplication was set apart while the President lingered 
 at Washington, and it was sacredly observed. For a time his 
 physicians were hopeful, and the bulletins for a period led the 
 public to believe that the President would resume his duties, but 
 when the torrid weather of midsummer came the patient failed 
 perceptibly, and although it was done at great hazard, he was 
 removed on September 6, 1881, by a special train to Blberon, N. 
 J. The invigorating sea breezes seemed at first to have a bene- 
 ficial effect, but on September 15 unmistakable symptoms of blood 
 poisoning were discovered, and on the nineteenth, after a few hours 
 of unconsciousness, he died. 
 
 Three days later a special train, heavily draped with emblems 
 of mourning, passed through crowds of reverent spectators to 
 Washington, and the body was placed in the rotunda of the 
 Capitol, where it lay in state for two days. 
 
 HUNG FOR THE FOUL DEED. 
 
 His murderer, Charles Jules Guiteau, who was caught as 
 soon as he committed the crime, suffered the death penalty in the 
 jail in Washington after his trial and conviction. 
 
 It was announced from Washington that active measures 
 would be taken to stamp out anarchism, in which all civilized 
 nations would be expected to join. The following is from a well- 
 known newspaper correspondent : 
 
 "As a result of the assassination of President McKinley, 
 there will be a renewal of the international effort to] bring about 
 the suppression of anarchists. The few diplomats in Wash- 
 ington were greatly shocked by the news from Buffalo, and there 
 was a unanimous expression of the view that the several govern- 
 ments should reach an international agreement to stamp out 
 anarchy as swiftly as possible. 
 
 " Minister Wu is the only diplomat of envoy rank in the 
 city. When I saw him to-night he expressed the utmost horror 
 at the assault upon the President. * It is a great calamity,' he 
 said. ( I am shocked beyond expression by the news. What
 
 ORIGIN AND RISE OF ANARCHISM. 451 
 
 could have prompted the purpose to kill such a good man as Mr. 
 McKiuley, who has governed the country so wisely and so well ? 
 And, in any event, why should an attempt be made to assassinate 
 a President of a republic when his term of office is for four years 
 and his successor can then be lawfully and peacefully elected ? ' 
 
 " I suggested to the Minister that the President's assailant 
 proved to be an anarchist. 
 
 " ' The anarchists should all be hanged,' he responded. 
 ' They should not be allowed to commit such dastardly crimes. 
 It is a shame, a shame. I cannot say how deeply grieved I am.' 
 
 " The Chinese Minister was asked what would have been the 
 procedure in his country. He answered with his usual promptness : 
 
 " 'We would give him the death of lin-chi. Do you know 
 what that means ? His family and realtives would also be held 
 to account for the education of such a monster. The crime, how- 
 ever, would be impossible in my country. Besides a deep-rooted 
 respect of the Emperor, there are sufficient guards, and promis- 
 cuous receptions and handshakings are not tolerated ; but if by 
 any possible chance such a criminal should arise, he would be 
 condemned to the lin-chi and his relatives called to account.' 
 
 A HORRIBLE DEATH. 
 
 " The lin-chi is the death of a thousand cuts. The Minister 
 says it is a statutory punishment for certain crimes so heinous 
 that the imagination is appalled to contemplate them in the 
 abstract. Among these are the murder of a father or mother. 
 
 " Mr. Thomas Herron, the Colombian Charge d' Affaires, 
 dwelt upon the President's character and acts throughout the 
 world. ' His benevolence of character robbed him of personal 
 enemies,' Mr. Herron said. ' He is a great and good man, and 
 Colombia will join the United Sates in the prayer for his 
 recovery. Society should protect itself by taking measures for 
 the suppression of anarchists. The tragedy at Buffalo may have 
 the effect of bringing this about.' 
 
 " Suppression of anarchists has engaged the attention of 
 governments of Europe for years, but up to this time no con-
 
 452 ORIGIN AND RISK OF ANARCHISM. 
 
 certed action has been taken. The United States was invited 
 several years ago to attend an anti-anarchistic conference, bnt 
 declined the invitation, becanse it was unable to bind itself to 
 observe any course of procedure that might be determined upon 
 because of the safeguards thrown by the Constitution around 
 personal liberty and personal rights. One of the great causes of 
 complaint by Europe against the United States is the liberty with 
 which anarchists can hatch their conspiracies in this country. 
 
 " Immediately after the assassination of King Humbert of 
 Italy the Italian government made representations to the United 
 States contemplating the punishment of all anarchists at Pater- 
 son, N. J., who were involved in the crime. The evidence was 
 furnished to the State Department, but' the Federal government 
 was unable to do more than refer the matter to the Governor of 
 New Jersey, with the request that he make a thorough investiga- 
 tion, and if the law could be applied to any persons suspected of 
 complicity to begin the proper legal measures. 
 
 ACCOMPLICES ESCAPED. 
 
 " Insufficient evidence and the difficulty of finding a law to 
 fit the charge of conspiracy against the life of a foreign sovereign 
 permitted the escape of the accomplices of King Humbert's assas- 
 sin. Italy was compelled to acquiesce in the failure of the United 
 States to destroy what she was convinced was a nest of conspira- 
 tors at Paterson, but naturally she was deeply exercised over 
 what she regarded as the inexplicable attitude of the Washington 
 government. 
 
 "It is generally believed in diplomatic circles that the recall 
 of Baron Fava, the Italian Ambassador, was the outgrowth of the 
 American policy of non-action. Italy now will doubtless appre- 
 ciate that the American government was as powerless to protect 
 its own Chief Executive as it was to prevent a conspiracy against 
 the life of her sovereign. It is believed by the diplomats that 
 Europe will consider the present moment opportune to revive 
 the proposal of an international understanding for the suppres- 
 sion of anarchists.
 
 ORIGIN AND RISE OF ANARCHISM. 453 
 
 " In official circles it is said that an amendment of some 
 kind to the constitution would have to be made, as it was at pres- 
 ent impossible to punish a man participating in a conspiracy 
 against the life of a foreign sovereign. Until the authorization 
 is therefore given to the Executive, it is likely that the State 
 Department would be compelled to observe the precedent already 
 established and decline the invitation tendered. 
 
 " Senor Calvo, Minister from Costa Rica, expressed the 
 greatest horror of the terrible outrage upon the President. ' Such 
 things occurring in a free Republic are terrible,' he said. ' The 
 crime itself is atrocious on all occasions, but when directed against 
 the life of such a kindly and righteous President as Mr. McKin- 
 ley it surpasses the utmost credulity.' 
 
 SEDITIOUS PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 " Mr. Calvo continued : * I am surprised that the rigid postal 
 laws of the United States should permit the circulation of sedi- 
 tious matter. It is treason to counsel the destruction of the ruler 
 of a country, yet these virulent anarchistic sheets must pass 
 freely through the mails in order to be circulated. Your laws 
 are properly stringent against publications or writings inciting 
 fraud or immorality. No avowed anarchist should be permitted 
 to receive or mail letters. His ebullitions should be confiscated 
 wherever found. This is a matter of public safety.' 
 
 " Kogoro Takahira, Minister from Japan, has returned to 
 Washington deeply affected by the tragedy. He said : ' Nobody 
 could expect that such a good President of the United States 
 should become the victim of such an appalling and dastardly 
 crime. It is hardly possible to express one's feelings on such an 
 occasion, but we join the people of the United States in receiving 
 the sad news with surprise and indignation, and our sincere and 
 honest wishes are that he should recover speedily and perma- 
 nently ; and in this statemen I am confident that I voice the 
 sentiment of my government and my people throughout all 
 Japan.' 
 
 "Mr. Takahira further said that he would never forget the
 
 454 ORIGIN AND RISE OF ANARCHISM. 
 
 last day he spent with the President at Buffalo. When the party 
 returned from Niagara the diplomats proceeded to their hotel. 
 A friend at the Exposition grounds attempted to telephone him 
 the sad news, but was unable to secure a wire which was not 
 busy. He left the President in the highest spirits and expected 
 to meet him that night at dinner at the house of Mrs. Williams. 
 He was beginning his preparations for the dinner when the sad 
 intelligence was communicated and he immediately hastened to 
 the Milburn home to express his grief. He added that in his 
 country such a crime was impossible." 
 
 A metropolitan journal thus describes the situation, and does 
 not take a hopeful view of our government being able to entirely 
 stamp out anarchism. 
 
 THE DREAM OF FOOLS. 
 
 " It is needless," it says, " to waste time denouncing anarch- 
 ism. All men who are not dreamers agree that society cannot 
 exist without laws and officers to enforce them, and that every 
 legitimate means should be used to check the spread of anarchism 
 and put an end to the crimes of anarchists. If, however, 
 anarchists go no further than holding a private opinion that the 
 world can get along without laws, we have no possible legal 
 ground for action against them, since they are guilty merely 
 of folly. 
 
 "The crimes of anarchists, therefore, may for practical 
 purposes be divided into two classes murderous assaults, like 
 that upon President McKinley, and the instigation of such 
 assaults. For dealing with these crimes the first legitimate means 
 is the existing law ; the second, such amendments as are in 
 accord with our Constitution and political traditions, and are 
 capable of enforcement. 
 
 V As for murder, we already have adequate laws. Death is 
 a sufficient penalty. Furthermore, the case of the Chicago 
 anarchists shows that those who incite to murder, even though 
 they may not strike the blow themselves, may be convicted as 
 accomplices before the fact. If the Penal Code of any State lacks
 
 ORIGIN AND RISE OF ANARCHISM. 455 
 
 such a provision as that under which the convictions were 
 obtained in Illinois in 1886, an amendment is a comparatively 
 easy matter. 
 
 " Every anarchist who plans such an assassination expects 
 nothing but death. He hopes to succeed, and he knows that in 
 any event he is sure of capture. Even if we mark our horror of 
 attacks upon the President by imposing the death penalty in 
 every case, we shall merely satisfy our feelings, without making 
 the least headway in checking the crime. 
 
 " In regard to incendiary talk, we already have, in New York 
 State at least, a law which has been invoked several times with 
 salutary effect. Section 451 of the Penal Code, entitled ' Unlaw- 
 ful Assemblages,' reads : 
 
 THE LAW IN THE MATTER. 
 
 Ul Whenever three or more persons assemble with intent to 
 commit any unlawful act by force ; or assemble with intent to 
 carry out any purpose in such a manner as to disturb the public 
 peace ; or being assembled, attempt or threaten any act tending 
 toward a breach of the peace, or any injury to person or property, 
 or any unlawful act, such an assembly is unlawful, and every 
 person participating therein by his presence, aid, or instigation 
 is guilty of a misdemeanor. But this section shall not be so con- 
 strued as to prevent the peaceable assembling of persons for law- 
 ful purposes of protest or petition.' 
 
 "According to the same code, a misdemeanor ' is punishable 
 by imprisonment in a penitentiary or county jail for not more 
 than one year, or by a fine of not more than $500, or by both.' 
 Under this law, John Most and Emma Goldman have served 
 terms in the penitentiary. 
 
 "One proposition, which has been urged by a Boston journal, 
 is a general law to send the anarchist to the lunatic asylum, 
 instead of to jail. If the anarchist really be a lunatic, there is 
 no difficulty whatever about sending him to the asylum under the 
 present law. If he be not mentally diseased, no law to commit 
 him to an asylum can be framed under which the editor of the
 
 4^ ORIGIN AND RISE OF ANARCHISM. 
 
 Boston journal will be safe. A law which should declare Anar- 
 chists, Communists, Christian Scientists, Populists, or any other 
 class of citizens insane, could never be enacted except by a Legis- 
 lature of lunatics. 
 
 "The only possible change in the present law is to make the 
 crime of incendiary talk a felony, rather than a misdemeanor 
 that is, make it punishable by long imprisonment or death. In 
 the heat of the present excitement, the death penalty has been 
 proposed for attempted assassination ; but public opinion, on 
 sober second thought, would reject such an amendment as likely 
 to make martyrs of the anarchists, win sympathy for them, and 
 strengthen their cause, rather than weaken it. The plan of 
 lengthening the term of imprisonment beyond a year is more 
 
 feasible. 
 
 REASONABLE SAFEGUARDS. 
 
 "Even here, however, we run the risk of imposing too severe 
 a penalty, and thus losing more than we gain. Such an amend- 
 ment should not pass till the present excitement has subsided, 
 the subject has been fully discussed, the experience of other 
 countries carefully considered, and every safeguard provided for 
 reasonable freedom of speech. With such precautions it might 
 be well to allow the Judge to extend the sentence in atrocious 
 cases. 
 
 "Judicious enforcement of the present law, then, and an 
 amendment declaring incendiary talk a felony instead of a mis- 
 demeanor, really exhaust our resources in dealing with the 
 offenses of anarchists who are already resident in the United 
 States. The question of exclusion remains. 
 
 "By the present law we prohibit the immigration to this 
 country of ' persons who have been convicted of a felony or other 
 infamous crime, or misdemeanor involving moral turpitude.' An 
 effort to close our doors to all anarchists meets with some of the 
 same difficulties that attend a movement to visit any other pun- 
 ishment on them as a class. One bill for this purpose has alreadv 
 been abandoned in Congress as impracticable. We cannot exclude 
 the ' philosophical ' auarchist, who holds his theory as a private
 
 ORIGIN AND RISE OF ANARCHISM. 457 
 
 opinion, and abhors the use of force ; we cannot detect him, and, 
 even if we could, he is not particularly dangerous. Then, too, 
 we must bear in mind that his anarchism, fostered in many cases 
 by Russian despotism, is likely to be laid aside and forgotten 
 when he breathes the free air of the republic. 
 
 " Under the present law we can already keep out all who 
 have been convicted of violence or of instigating it. The only 
 class, therefore, for which we need a new law is made up of the 
 instigators of violence, who have not been detected or captured in 
 Europe. We can hardly go to the length of excluding them on 
 mere hearsay or suspicion, but, if we want anything like legal 
 evidence, we must maintain in Europe a detective and police 
 force superior to that maintained by the European governments, 
 which are more eager than ours to run down and convict an 
 
 anarchist. 
 
 TRADITIONS OF A CENTURY. 
 
 " Nor can we trample on our traditions of a century and a 
 quarter by sending back men of high character and aims who are 
 political refugees. In short, we shall find it beyond our power to 
 do much more than enforce rigorously the present law." 
 
 The method by which freedom of speech may be limited so 
 that the preaching of anarchism shall be effectually repressed 
 without endangering any legitimate right is a problem that now 
 confronts the American people. 
 
 In 1893 and 1894, France teemed with associations and clubs 
 of anarchists of the most dangerous type. Bombs were being 
 thrown about in public places, and the disorder finally resulted in 
 the stabbing of President Sadi-Carnot while riding in his carriage 
 at the exposition in Lyons. The French Parliament promptly 
 took the whole subject under advisement and passed a series of 
 laws which have been in a high degree effectual in breaking up 
 anarchist organizations all over the republic. These laws in the 
 main are three in number. The first, enacted on December 12, 
 1893, had for its purpose a modification of the libel laws so that 
 exceptional penalties could be enforced against the publishers of 
 anarchistic papers.
 
 458 ORIGIN AND RISE OF ANARCHISM. 
 
 The second, passed December 18, 1893, made it a punishable 
 offense to belong to anarchistic associations and clubs, and the 
 third, passed July 28, 1894, just after Sadi-Carnot's assassination, 
 carried the principle still farther, increased the penalties and pre- 
 scribed changes in legal process calculated to make conviction 
 more speedy and certain. As a result of this legislation danger- 
 ous groups have been dissolved in France, newspapers have 
 been suppressed, club rooms have been abandoned and libraries 
 have been dispersed. 
 
 THE FRENCH LAW. 
 
 Summarizing this legislation, we can very soon find lines 
 along which to frame laws against the anarchists in this country. 
 The French law creates three distinct classes of crime " provo- 
 cation," "apologie" and " excitation " of soldiers to disobedience 
 of their superior officers. While the last of these deeply concerns 
 a country in which military conscription is universal, it can play 
 but small part with us, and there remain, therefore, the two 
 crimes of " provocation " and " apologie," that is, incitement to 
 crime (murder or destruction of property) by the spread of 
 anarchistic teachings and the justification or glorification of 
 crimes of anarchists by anarchists. 
 
 " Apologie," while it used to be a punishable offense in 
 France, was abandoned many years ago. " It was not suspected 
 then," says M. Loubat in his admirable work on the French laws 
 against anarchists, " that a diabolical sect would arise to glorify 
 assassination, incendiarism and destruction and make saints and 
 heroes of abominable bandits." At the death of Sadi-Carnot the 
 crime had to be revived for the anarchists, and many of them 
 have been punished in France for the exaltation of the authors of 
 foul deeds. 
 
 The French penalties are sufficiently severe to potently deter 
 the spread of anarchistic doctrine. If either of the two crimes of 
 "provocation" or " apologie " is committed through the press the 
 punishment is imprisonment for from one to five years and the 
 payment of a fine of from. 100 to 3,000 francs, together with con,-
 
 ORIGIN AND RISE OF ANARCHISM. 459 
 
 fiscation of all outstanding copies of the publication. If it is com- 
 mitted in a more private way the penalties are only slightly 
 modified. The act of incitement or exaltation is punishable, 
 even if only one person be present, and whether by speech, by 
 printed paper, by writing, cartoon, placard, song, cry (such as 
 "Hurrah for anarchy") or by any other means, the crime is the 
 same. 
 
 If the sentence pronounced is for more than one year or if the 
 prisoner has been before convicted of a like offense at any time 
 within ten years the law prescribes an additional penalty of exile. 
 The publication of a report of anarchist trials in the courts is pro- 
 hibited under heavy penalties. Every member of an anarchistic 
 organization formed to advocate attacks on life and property 
 may be imprisoned and banished by the French law and the meet- 
 ing places of the organization closed up. Those who lease build- 
 ings to such societies are made accessories to the crime. 
 
 It is along these lines that we must shape anti-anarchist 
 legislation in this country, and we should begin the work at once. 
 There are bands of these social brigands in each large American 
 city. We owe it to ourselves to uproot these pernicious gangs, 
 which, whatever else they have done, have produced in a short 
 time the murderers of the heads of two great governments, Presi- 
 dent McKinley and King Humbert. It is no infringement of any 
 valuable American liberty to suppress their newspapers, dissolve 
 their clubs and close up their meeting places. These results can 
 be attained here as well as in France, and by a very similar system 
 of legal procedure.
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 Trial and Conviction of the Assassin Remarkable Scenes in 
 Court Counsel Laments the President's Death Sen- 
 tence of Death Pronounced. 
 
 THB assassin of President McKinley was convicted of murder 
 in the first degree at 4.26 o'clock in the afternoon of Sep- 
 tember 24th. Less than three hours of trial was required to 
 hurry him to his doom, so that this will probably rank as the 
 quickest capital case in the criminal annals of America. 
 
 Virtually nothing was done beyond the narration of the 
 established facts of the killing. What was termed defense con- 
 sisted merely in admonition to the jury to gravely consider 
 whether or not the assassin was laboring under mental aberra- 
 tion, but no witnesses were called, and the address of counsel was, 
 in all effect, a plea for the prosecution. 
 
 The jury was away from the court room exactly thirty-five 
 minutes, but only from a sense of the decencies of legal proce- 
 dure. They were unanimous in their finding before they left the 
 box, and spent not a moment in deliberation. 
 
 Says an eye-witness of the trial : 
 
 " Almost at the very moment that the last dramatic episode 
 was acting to-day, the father, brother and sister of the assassin 
 arrived from Cleveland. They are Paul, Waldeck and Victoria 
 Czolgosz. Their avowed purpose was to aid in the speedy pun- 
 ishment of the murderer of whom they speak in terms of loathing, 
 but they were nevertheless taken into custody as a measure of 
 precaution, and Czolgosz does not know they are in the city. 
 Even if he knew he probably would not care. 
 
 " The fellow is thoroughly callous. Resigned to the inevi- 
 table consequences of his crime from the very moment of its 
 inception, he is evidently empty of all human feeling. Neither 
 hoping nor wishing for compassion, he rejected the creeds of God 
 
 460
 
 CONVICTION AND SENTENCE OF THE ASSASSIN. 461 
 
 and man and the ties of blood and friendship at the same time, 
 and, with the abject indifference of an animal, has ever since 
 looked forward only to the verdict of the darkness and the 
 silence that awaits him. 
 
 " So much became clear in to-day's testimony, which revealed 
 many new details, and awful corroboration was given to it in the 
 aspect and bearing of the creature at the most desperate moment 
 that well can fall to human kind. Not the tremor of a lash 
 ruffled his stolidity when the words -of doom were uttered. His 
 fixed, abstracted gaze never stirred. He was still stone and iron, 
 unrelenting, remorseless and heedless. 
 
 " It was only twenty minutes to 10 o'clock when the detec- 
 tives brought him into court this morning. When they 
 unshackled his hands he passed them carelessly over his thick 
 damp locks. Then he crossed his legs, tapped a tattoo on the 
 arm of his chair for a moment, and settled into the immovable 
 attitude which has marked him throughout. 
 
 BEGAN TO CARE FOR HIS APPEARANCE. 
 
 " He did not sleep well last night, his wardens said, but ale 
 his breakfast this morning with relish, consuming chops, eggs, 
 rolls and three cups of coffee. He displayed some vanity about 
 his appearance, too, insisting on straightening his hair with his 
 fingers and smoothing the wrinkles in his clothes." 
 
 By 10 o'clock Justice White was on the bench, the lawyers 
 in their places, and the hearing of evidence again in swift prog- 
 ress. Mr. Mann was recalled and gave some very interesting 
 medical testimony. Judge Lewis cross-examined. First he 
 
 asked : 
 
 " How do you guard against the invasion of germs in the 
 
 wound ? " 
 
 " By being very careful in the treatment," said the doctor. 
 
 *When was the condition found at the autopsy to be 
 expected from the wounds the President received?" 
 
 " It was not expected, and was very unusual. I never before 
 saw anything just like it."
 
 462 CONVICTION AND SENTENCE OF THE ASSASSIN 
 
 " Were there any indications that the President was not in 
 good physical condition ? " 
 
 "The President was not in perfect condition. He had been 
 somewhat weakened by hard work and lack of exercise," 
 
 District Attorney Penny then asked : 
 
 " From your knowledge and history of the case was there 
 anything known to medical or surgical science which could have 
 saved the life of the President ? n 
 
 " There was not." 
 
 Lewis L. Babcock, who was a member of the ceremonies 
 committee on President's day, and Bdward Rice, chairman of that 
 committee, then gave their eye-witness versions of the shooting. 
 Both were within a few feet of the President at the time. Mr. 
 Rice's narration was very graphic. 
 
 A ZEALOUS STUDENT OF ANARCHISM. 
 
 The next witness gave the first circumstantial story of the 
 confession alleged to have been made by Czolgosz on the night 
 of his arrest. He was James I/. Quackenbush, also a member 
 of the ceremonial committee. He said : 
 
 " I accompanied District Attorney Penny to police headquar- 
 ters, arriving there between 10 and n o'clock. Upon reaching 
 there we went to Chief Bull's office. Defendant was at a table 
 in his office. Detectives Geary and Solomon, Inspector Donovan, 
 Chief Bull, Mr. Haller, Mr. Storr and Frank T. Haggerty were 
 present, and at intervals Mr. Ireland, myself and Mr. Cusack. 
 Mr. Penny immediately began to talk to the defendant about 
 what he had done. 
 
 " Then the defendant replied that he had killed the Presi- 
 dent because he thought it was his duty. He said he understood 
 the consequences, and was willing to take chances. 
 
 " He illustrated with a handkerchief the way he had done 
 it. He said he went to the Falls the day before to kill the Presi- 
 dent, but was not able to get near enough. He added that he 
 went to the Temple of Music for the purpose of killing the 
 President, having his hand with the revolver in his right-hand
 
 CONVICTION AND SENTENCE OF THE ASSASSIN. 468 
 
 pocket. He stood in the crowd, but said that when he got in the 
 line he pnt the hand against his stomach. Had he not been 
 stopped he would have fired more shots. 
 
 " He said he had been thinking about killing the President 
 for three or four days. He had definitely determined to kill the 
 President the day before." 
 
 " Did he say why ? " asked the District Attorney. 
 
 " Yes ; he said that he did not believe in the government ; 
 that President McKinley was a tyrant, and should be removed. 
 When he saw the President in the grounds, with the crowds 
 struggling to get near him, he said he did not believe that any 
 one man should receive such service, while all others regarded it 
 as a privilege to render it." 
 
 " Did he say where he had learned such theories ? " 
 
 "THOUGHT IT WAS HIS DUTY." 
 
 " He said he had been studying those doctrines for several 
 years ; that he did not believe in government, the church, or the 
 marriage relation. He gave names of several papers he had read, 
 one of the Free Society, and mentioned places in Ohio where he 
 had heard these subjects discussed." 
 
 This was the first official mention of the anarchy plea story, 
 and it was apparent on cross-examination that Judge Titus was 
 skeptical about it. 
 
 "Were these statements made," he asked, "in response to 
 suggestions from the officials or voluntarily ? " 
 
 "At first," answered the witness, "in response to questions. 
 Afterward he talked in a conversational way, and did not decline 
 to answer anything." 
 
 "Was he excited?" 
 
 " I should say he was disturbed, but not mentally. His face 
 hurt him where he had been struck, but he talked naturally. I 
 asked him to write a brief statement for publication, and he 
 started to, but his hand shook so, he dictated the follow- 
 ing : 
 
 " 'I killed President McKinley because I believed it to be my
 
 464 . CONVICTION. AND SENTENCE OF THE ASSASSIN. 
 
 duty. I don't believe one man should have so much service and 
 another man should have none.' " 
 
 District Attorney Penney then interpolated : 
 ' You made a statement that he said he was an anarchist is 
 that right ? " 
 
 :< I didn't make it so strong as that. He said he didn't 
 believe in rulers, and had done his duty." 
 
 The District Attorney used the word several times in ques- 
 tioning him, and the substance of his answers was that he did all 
 the theorizing on the matter for himself. 
 
 "During this line of testimony Czolgosz, without shifting his 
 position, allowed his head to incline until it almost touched his left 
 shoulder, but he did not raise his eyes, and once or twice dropped 
 into a little doze. He was so absolutely unconcerned that he did 
 not appear to be even listening to the testimony. 
 
 THE ASSASSIN THROTTLED. 
 
 With the calling of the Secret Service operatives the amus- 
 ing little rivalry as to who first attacked the assassin after the 
 shooting came up. 
 
 Albert Gallagher, of the Chicago office, said that he jumped 
 toward Czolgosz and was borne down in the crowd. The revolver 
 was knocked from the assassin's hand and somebody else got it, 
 but he got the handkerchief He took this from his pocketbook 
 and displayed it. It was a dirty rag, with two holes made by the 
 bullets, and it was not a woman's handkerchief, as some imagina- 
 tive stories have said. 
 
 George K. Foster, the Washington Secret Service man, said : 
 
 " I saw this man here (pointing to the assassin) put his 
 hands together with a clap, and simultaneously I heard two 
 reports. 
 
 " I grabbed this man here (again pointing to Czolgosz), and 
 just then some one gave him a shove from the other side. We 
 went down to the floor. I tried to get a crack at him as he went 
 down, but could not. I saw Gallagher and yelled : ' Al, get the 
 gun ! get the gun ! Al, get the gun !' "
 
 CONVICTION AND SENTENCE OF THE ASSASSIN. 465 
 
 Judge Titus took up the cross-examination. 
 
 " Were you observing the people in the line to see if they 
 were armed ?" 
 
 "I was trying to." 
 
 " Didn't you see this man with his arm across his breast ?" 
 
 " No ; they were passing too close together." 
 
 ' The line passed right in front of you, and this man had his 
 arm vip with a white handkerchief wound round his hand, and 
 yet you could not see it ?" 
 
 " I didn't see it and I was looking," answered Foster. 
 
 POLICE SUPERINTENDENT TESTIFIES. 
 
 The testimony of the afternoon session was largely corrobo- 
 rative of what had gone before. Superintendent Bull, of the local 
 police, reiterated the story of the confession, and added that of 
 the visit of Walter Nowak, of Cleveland, to Czolgosz the morning 
 after the shooting. He said : 
 
 " On Saturday morning Nowak was brought into the Super- 
 intendent's office and immediately recognized Czolgosz. Nowak 
 said that he knew him in Cleveland. He said to Czolgosz : ' You 
 know me, Czolgosz. I have always been a good friend of yours. 
 Why did you commit this crime this crime which will bring 
 disgrace on the whole Polish race this crime which will bring 
 disgrace on your father and family ?' 
 
 "Czolgosz only smiled, and said that Nowak was not a par- 
 ticular friend." 
 
 u He was asked if he wanted to see a lawyer, and he said he 
 did not because he did not need one. He also said he had no 
 friends, and did not care to see his father and mother." 
 
 At the end of this testimony District Attorney Penney rested 
 for the people, and amid profound silence Jiidge Lewis arose to 
 open the defense. He began by explaining the position of himself 
 and his colleague, and almost entreated that the legal necessity of 
 it be understood. As he went on to discuss the case his voice 
 trembled and he almost wept. 
 
 "That, gentlemen, is about all I have to say. Our President 
 
 30
 
 466 CONVICTION AND SENTENCE OF THE ASSASSIN. 
 
 was a grand man. I watched his career for twenty years, and 
 always had the profoundest esteem for him. He was a tender and 
 devoted husband, a man of finest character, and his death is the 
 saddest blow I have ever known." 
 
 He concluded abruptly, sank into his chair, and pressed a 
 handkerchief to his eyes. It was the strangest plea for a murderer 
 ever heard. Judge Titus then arose. 
 
 " The remarks of my associate," he said, " so completely cover 
 the ground that it is not necessary for me to add anything." 
 
 SENTENCED TO DEATH. 
 
 This sudden action on the face of the expectation of expert 
 testimony on insanity was a great surprise, and a buzz of talk 
 followed. Silence fell again when District Attorney Penney arose 
 for the last speech. It was brief, but full of feeling. He dwelt 
 upon the entire certainty of the people's case and the utter 
 absence of defense and urged that just as a defendant must be 
 presumed innocent until proved guilty, so he must be presumed 
 sane until proved otherwise. 
 
 Apart from that argument the Prosecutor spoke of the horror 
 of the crime and the eminent virtues of the martyr in such a strain 
 of simple eloquence that men and women wept alike. Czolgosz 
 never moved a muscle. 
 
 It was 3.25 o'clock when Judge White charged the jury. 
 He, too, paid tender tribute to the memory of the dead man and 
 then instructed the jury in the legal requirements of the city. 
 
 They retired at 3.51, and thirty-five minutes later brought in 
 a verdict of murder in the first degree. 
 
 On September 26th, Leon Czolgosz was sentenced to die dur- 
 ing the week beginning October 28th. The sentence was pro- 
 nounced by Justice White before whom the murderer was tried. 
 The assassin showed signs of fear as the voice of the Judge pro- 
 nounced his doom. During the night following, guarded by near- 
 ly a score of deputy sheriffs, he was removed to Auburn Peniten- 
 tiary. He collapsed on arriving at the prison, said he was sorry 
 for his deed and expressed sympathy for Mrs. McKinley.
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 Our New President Hon. Theodore Roosevelt Hurries to 
 Buffalo on Receiving News of Mr. McKinley's Death 
 Sworn in as President with Impressive Ceremony 
 Pathetic Scene His First Official Act. 
 
 our martyred President breathed his last, Vice-Presi- 
 dent Roosevelt was far up in the Adirondack Mountains of 
 northern New York. A few hours later his private secretary 
 gave out the following statement : 
 
 ' The Vice-President wishes it understood that when he left 
 the Tahawus Club house yesterday morning, (September i3th) 
 to go on his hunting trip into the mountains, he had just received 
 a dispatch from Buffalo stating that President McKinley was in 
 splendid condition and was not in the slightest danger." 
 
 Having been summoned to return instantly to Buffalo, Mr. 
 Roosevelt was wildly careering over the mountain passes of the 
 Adirondacks in a swinging, bouncing buckboard when President 
 McKinley expired, and he became in fact the President of the 
 United States. He thought he was racing with death, but death 
 had already won. He was on the last relay before reaching Aden 
 Alair, and Orrin Kellogg, one of the surest drivers in the North 
 Woods, was urging his two bronchos to do their best up the wind- 
 ing inclines and down again. 
 
 It was at Aden Alair that " Mike " Cronin took the impatient 
 Vice-President in charge and at the same time earned for himself 
 eternal fame as the most level headed and uncommunicative per- 
 son the world ever saw. In his pocket there reposed a telegram, 
 conveyed by telephone and \vritten down, addressed to Mr. Roose- 
 velt. He knew it contained the fateful news from Buffalo. 
 
 He noted Mr. Roosevelt's increasing nervousness and thought 
 it the part of discretion and wisdom to deliver the telegram, at the 
 
 467
 
 468 OUR NEW PRESIDENT. 
 
 other end of the twenty mile route. Mr. Roosevelt was in abso- 
 lute ignorance of the termination of the fatal tragedy at Buffalo, 
 and the astute driver thought it best not to increase his impatience 
 or further try his nerves. So, for a score of long, tortuous miles 
 he grimly sat alongside his lone, but distinguished passenger, 
 keeping as tight a grip on his secret as he did on his reins. 
 
 This is Secretary Hay's official notification to Mr. Roosevelt, 
 sent before daylight in the morning, and which " Mike " 
 Cronin, the driver, did not deliver until the perilous ride over the 
 Adirondacks was over : 
 
 " Hon. Theodore Roosevelt, North Creek, N. Y. 
 "The President died at 2:15 this morning. 
 
 "JOHN HAY, Secretary of State." 
 
 DASH DOWN THE MOUNTAIN ROADS. 
 
 But the story of the dash down the rocky mountain roads is 
 best told by " Mike" Cronin himself. First, he must be described. 
 He is the landlord of the Aden Lair Lodge. In the sturdy man- 
 hood of the thirties, he is the perfect type of the hardy moun- 
 taineer, rugged and strong, with the eagle's eye and the bulldog's 
 nerve and tenacity. He is just the man to guide the chariot of 
 the hills, the vehicle that flies, the buckboard. When the Vice- 
 President jumped out of the Kellogg buckboard, Cronin was 
 ready. Two horses, j ust as impatient as the man they were to 
 haul, had long been hitched and standing alongside the road. A 
 lantern was suspended over the dashboard. Its flickering light 
 only made the driving reins more clearly visible. The black 
 night it made blacker. 
 
 But this is the way the Spyhnx of the Mountains tells it : 
 
 " I received notice at noon, over the telephone, to have every- 
 thing ready for quick work, and that is j ust exactly what I did, 
 and I was soon ready to start at any moment Mr. Roosevelt might 
 reach Aden Lair. I had a span of blacks fast steppers hooked 
 up, and, what was still better than their speed, they knew the 
 road as well as I did myself, having made the trip from three to
 
 OUR NEW PRESIDENT. 469 
 
 six times a week all summer. I had expected Mr. Roosevelt 
 along several hours sooner as he might have been had it not 
 been for the careless bungling in getting word to him. He ought 
 to have been hustled along faster, too. 
 
 " My ! I made the last sixteen miles in one hour and forty- 
 three minutes. It was the darkest night I ever saw. I could not 
 even see my horses, except the spots where the flickering lantern 
 light fell on them. This time beat the best record ever made 
 before by a quarter of an hour, and that record I had made myself, 
 with a two-seater, in daylight. 
 
 " While I was watching for Mr. Roosevelt I was fooled several 
 times. There was a dance at a road house, three miles from my 
 place, and after midnight the crowd was driving home a regulai 
 stream coming, with lights in their wagons and I kept thinking 
 each one was Mr. Roosevelt. There was a rainy mist, or a misty 
 rain, and this made the night, already very dark, perfectly black. 
 
 ROOSEVELT'S REMARKABLE NERVE. 
 
 u Mr. Roosevelt is the nerviest man I ever saw, and I ain't 
 easily scared myself. At one place, while we were going down a 
 slippery hill, one of the horses stumbled. It was a ticklish bit of 
 road, and I was beginning to get somewhat uneasy and began 
 holding the team back, but Mr. Roosevelt said : ' Oh, that don't 
 matter. Push ahead ! ' 
 
 " At another place we were going around a curve on a dugout 
 which, you know, is a piece of road cut in a steep hillside. It 
 was a dangerous place, for if we had been upset we would have 
 been pitched headlong down seventy-five or a hundred feet. I 
 told Mr. Roosevelt the danger as we drew near this risky spot, 
 and suggested that I should slow up until we struck a better road. 
 He replied : ' Not at all ; push ahead. If you are not afraid I am 
 not. Push ahead ! ' And so we did. Luckily we had a clear road, 
 and did not meet a single team through the whole drive. 
 
 " Did the President talk much ? Very little about the situa^ 
 tion. Most of the time he seemed to be in deep thought and very 
 sad. About all the words he spoke were ' Keep up the pace.' He
 
 470 OUR NEW PRESIDENT, 
 
 held his watch in his hand all the while, and kept continually 
 asking how far we had come or how far we still had to go, Until 
 he got to Aden Lair he had carried a lantern in his hand, and 
 he offered to do the same with me, but I told him it would be only 
 a bother. I tell you, Mr. Roosevelt is a nervy man. I shall never 
 drive over that dark road again without seeming to hear him say, 
 'Push along ! Hurry up! Go faster P That is the simple tale 
 of a ride that is destined to be historic. 
 
 ANXIOUSLY AWAITING HIS ARRIVAL. 
 
 During the time that " Mike " Cronin was swinging through 
 mountain defiles the little group of watchers at the North Creek 
 station grew more anxious, as further news from the on-flying 
 President was now shut off. ' Eagerly they watched the waves of 
 light creep up the eastern sky, and guesses were made as to the 
 probable hour of arrival, but they all proved at least an hour 
 too late, for "Mike" Cronin is a veritable Jehu, and the Presi- 
 dent's eager anxiety caused a quick and tireless response. Some 
 of the villagers began to stir about, and each one of those who 
 had kept vigil through the night stood with eyes strained upon 
 the turn in the road where the President was soon to appear. 
 
 At length, with a simultaneous cry of "There he comes!" the 
 blacks swept in sight and fairly flew to the platform steps. With 
 one bound Mr. Roosevelt was on the ground. With another he 
 was on the platform receiving the greetings of his private secre- 
 tary, Loeb, who, in low and hurried tones gave him his first news 
 of President McKinley's death. The anxious face at once grew 
 grave and sad. Then he gave the correspondent in waiting a 
 cordial hand grasp. Another handshake with Station Agent 
 Campbell and he rushed into his private car. 
 
 Superinten4ent Hammond waved his hand for the start and 
 followed his distinguished guest. Secretary Loeb and the con- 
 ductor also stepped aboard. Nobody else was allowed on the 
 train. The veteran engine driver pulled the throttle, and the 
 party vanished in the mist rising from the Hudson, here a mere 
 ribbon of silver shining in the growing light.
 
 OUR NEW PRESIDENT, 471 
 
 Swiftly they flew along the bank of this classic stream, banks 
 of vapor still sleeping in the lowlands, and the far summits of the 
 green sloped mountains glowing in the beams of the morning 
 sun, still concealed behind them. On they sped, never pausing 
 at the villages still wrapped in slumber, past Luzerne, Corinth, 
 Saratoga, without rest, until Albany was reached, the great dome 
 of its towering capitol doubtless calling up strange dreams and 
 memories in the mind of the nation's new Chief Magistrate. 
 
 The coming of the new President at Buffalo, the incidents 
 that filled his life between i o'clock in the afternoon and the time 
 he retired, were of the most momentous and impressive character. 
 A special train whirled him from the wilderness of the Adirondacks 
 to tha deathbed of the President within the short space of nine 
 hours. The train consisted of an engine and two cars, and was 
 drawn up at the platform at North Creek, on the eastern slope of 
 Adirondack range, at 5 o'clock in the morning. 
 
 THE LIGHTNING TRAIN. 
 
 As soon as Mr. Roosevelt was aboard, the engineer, with 
 instructions to make the run of his life to Albany, pulled the 
 throttle wide open and the train sprang out of the dawn into a 
 stretch of track 104 miles long. 
 
 Mr. Roosevelt's only traveling companion was his secretary, 
 Mr. Loeb. Albany was reached at 8.04 o'clock. With a pause 
 only long enough to change engines the special pulled out of the 
 Albany depot at lightning speed. The curtains of his car were 
 drawn. No railroad train ever made the aine between Albany 
 and Syracuse that the Roosevelt special did. Syracuse was 
 reached at 10 o'clock. The special sped through Rochester and 
 passed a crowd of nearly 50,000 people, at 12.08. At 1.38 o'clock 
 it pulled into the Buffalo depot, having broken every record for a 
 run between Albany and that city. 
 
 General Roe and Mr. Wilcox were waiting for the Vice- 
 President, who stepped briskly from the train. He clutched the 
 arm of Mr. Wilcox and was guided through the crowd of 3000 
 people out of the depot to the sidewalk, where a closed carriage
 
 472 OUR NEW PRESIDENT. 
 
 was awaiting him. Oil the box of the carriage was a coachman 
 in blue and white livery. 
 
 As the Vice-President and his companions came out of the 
 depot three men sprang alertly to their sides. They were secret 
 service detectives, instructed not to be five feet from the Vice- 
 President until further orders. As soon as the Vice-President, 
 Secretary of War and Mr. Wilcox had entered the carriage, the 
 door was slammed and it dashed through the crowd. 
 
 Ten feet behind it was another carriage, containing the three 
 secret service men. On either side of it were two mounted 
 policemen. Following the carriage containing the detectives was 
 a detail of the signal corps of the National Guard, brilliant in 
 trappings of blue and gold, mounted on spirited horses and with 
 sabres and chains clanking in accompaniment to the hoof beats 
 of the horses. 
 
 THROUGH THE SILENT THRONG. 
 
 The cavalcade swept through Exchange Place into Main 
 street, which was choked with people. There were no cheers, no 
 swinging of hats or waving of handkerchiefs. The Vice-Presideut 
 was engaged in earnest conversation with Mr. Wilcox. 
 
 As the carriage drew up in front of the Wilcox residence, on 
 Delaware avenue, there were 5000 people gathered at the inter- 
 section of Allen and North streets. In the house President 
 Roosevelt found waiting for him Mr. Milburn, Mr. Scatcherd, 
 Secretary of War Root, Secretary Long and Postmaster-General 
 Smith. He changed his clothing and partook of a light 
 luncheon. 
 
 When he came to resume his headgear he discovered that 
 he had not brought a silk hat with him, so Mr. Scatcherd, whose 
 head is the same size as that of Mr. Roosevelt, sent to his house 
 for one. The President wore that throughout the day. Ten 
 minutes later he entered his carriage to go to the Milburn house. 
 As Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Wilcox stepped into the carriage Mr. 
 Roosevelt discovered that the signal corps was drawn up on either 
 side of the street, forming a cordon through which his carriage 
 was to pass.
 
 OUR NEW PRESIDENT. 473 
 
 The Vice-President hesitated a minute and then got into the 
 carriage, but as the militia started to follow he leaned out of the 
 window and said something to the coachman. The coachman 
 pulled up his horses. The Vice-President turned, and, discerning 
 Lieutenant Colonel Chapin, who had been detailed to provide a 
 military escort for him, signalled for him to come up. The Vice- 
 President leaned far out of the carriage and said, with manifest 
 displeasure : " Colonel, tell your men that I don't want any escort, 
 I only needed two men two policemen will do. I desire the 
 military escort to remain here." 
 
 " All right, Mr. President," said Colonel Chapin, saluting. 
 
 " Go on," said the Vice-President to the coachman of his 
 carriage. The coachman whipped up his horses. The carriage 
 had proceeded about twenty feet when the Vice-President leaned out 
 of the window again. His attention had been attracted by the 
 rattle of hoofs following him. He thought the militia was dis- 
 obeying orders. He discovered it was a detail of mounted police 
 that had been furnished by the city. 
 
 DOES NOT WANT ANY ESCORT. 
 
 " Hold on," he called to his coachman. Then, turning to 
 the sergeant, riding at the head of the police detail, he said : 
 "Sergeant, I do not want any escort to the Milburn house. Tell 
 your men to stay here." The sergeant saluted and held his men 
 back. 
 
 "Go on," said the Vice-President. The policemen turned 
 back, and the carriage, followed by another vehicle containing the 
 Secret Service detectives, dashed up the avenue, which was lined 
 deep with people. As the Vice-President alighted from the car- 
 riage at the Milburn mansion a dozen photographers aimed their 
 cameras at him, but he threw his arm up to prevent them catching 
 his face. 
 
 The President after the meeting of the Cabinet saw a few 
 personal friends and then putting on his hat said to Secretary 
 Root : " Let us take a little walk ; it will do us both good." Sec- 
 retary Root assented and they walked out on the porch.
 
 474 OUR NEW PRESIDENT, 
 
 His host, Mr. Ansley Wilcox said : " Shan't I go a^^ig with 
 you ? " He replied, " No, I am going to take a short walk up the 
 street with Secretary Root and will return again." When he got 
 down to the foot of the walk a couple of policemen and a couple of 
 detectives in citizens' clothes started to follow him. He turned 
 and told his secretary to tell them that he did not desire any- 
 protection. " I do not want to estalish the precedent of going 
 about guarded." 
 
 The policemen and detectives touched their hats, but before 
 he had gone a hundred yards two of them were walking just 
 behind him and two of them were following him on the 
 other side of the street. The two distinguished men attracted 
 but little attention until they got near the police lines on Dela- 
 ware avenue, when, as the President stopped to shake hands and 
 say good-bye to Secretary Root, some of the crowd recognized him 
 and he was surrounded. The police drove the crowd back and the 
 President, when he found that he could not help attracting atten- 
 tion, said good-bye to Secretary Root and returned to the house 
 alone. 
 
 MR. ROOSEVELT TAKES THE OATH OF OFFICE. 
 
 Hon. Theodore Roosevelt was sworn in as President of the 
 United States at 3.36 o'clock on the afternoon of Saturday, Sep- 
 tember i4th. Standing in a low-ceiled, narrow room in the quaint 
 old mansion occupied by Ansley Wilcox, in the fashionable part 
 of Delaware avenue, the aristocratic thoroughfare of Buffalo, Mr. 
 Roosevelt swore to administer the laws of the Government of 
 which he is now the head. He stood erect, holding his right 
 hand high above his head. His massive shoulders were thrown 
 well back, as, with his head inclined a little forward, he repeated 
 the form of the oath of office in clear, distinct tones, that fell 
 impressively upon the ears of the forty-three persons grouped 
 about the room. 
 
 His face was a study in earnestness and determination, as he 
 uttered the words which made him President of the United States. 
 His face was much paler than it was wont to be, and his eyes, 
 though bright and steady, gleamed mistily through his big-bowed
 
 OUR NEW PRESIDENT. 475 
 
 gold spectacles. His attire was sombre and modest. A well-fit- 
 ting worsted frock coat draped his athletic figure almost to the 
 knees. His trousers were dark gray, with pinstripes. A thin 
 skein of golden chain looped from the two lower pockets of his 
 waistcoat. While he was waiting for the ceremony he toyed with 
 this chain with his right hand. 
 
 The place selected for the ceremony of taking the oath was 
 the library of Mr. Wilcox's house, a rather small room, but pic- 
 turesque, the heavy oak trimmings and the massive bookcases 
 giving it somewhat the appearance of a legal den. A pretty bay 
 window with stained glass and heavy hangings formed a back- 
 ground, and against this the President took his position. 
 
 Judge Hazel stood near the President in the bay window, and 
 the latter showed his extreme nervousness by plucking at the 
 lapel of his long frock coat and nervously tapping the hardwood 
 floor with his heel. He stepped over once to Secretary Root, and 
 for about five minutes they conversed earnestly. The question 
 at issue was whether the President should first sign an oath of 
 office and then swear in or whether he should swear in first and 
 sign the document in the case after. 
 
 SECRETARY ROOT BREAKS DOWN. 
 
 At precisely 3.32 o'clock Secretary Root ceased his conver- 
 sation with the President, and, stepping back, while an absolute 
 hush fell upon every one in the room, said in an almost inaudible 
 voice : 
 
 "Mr. Vice-President, I " Then his voice broke, and for 
 
 fully two minutes the tears came down his face and his lips 
 quivered, so that he could not continue his utterances. There 
 were sympathetic tears from those about him, and two great 
 drops ran down either cheek of the successor of William 
 McKinley. Mr. Root's chin was on his breast. Suddenly throw- 
 ing back his head, as if with an effort, he continued in broken 
 voice : 
 
 " I have been requested, on behalf of the Cabinet of the late 
 President, at least those who are present in Buffalo, all except
 
 476 OUR MEW PRESIDENT. 
 
 two, to request that for reasons of weight affecting the affairs of 
 government, you should proceed to take the constitutional oath 
 of office of President of the United States." 
 
 Judge Hazel had stepped to the rear of the President, and 
 Mr. Roosevelt, coming closer to Secretary Root, said, in a voice 
 that at first wavered, but finally came deep and strong, while, as 
 if to control his nervousness, he held firmly to the lapel of his 
 coat with his right hand : 
 
 " I shall take the oath at once in accordance with your re- 
 quest, and in this hour of deep and terrible national bereavement 
 I wish to state that it shall be my aim to continue absolutely 
 unbroken the policy of President McKinley for the peace and 
 prosperity and honor of our beloved country.' 1 
 
 A HUSH LIKE THAT OF DEATH. 
 
 The President stepped farther into the bay window, and 
 Judge Hazel, taking up the constitutional oath of office, which 
 had been prepared on parchment, asked the President to raise his 
 right hand and repeat it after him. There was a hush like death in 
 the room as the Judge read a few words at a time, and the Presi- 
 dent, in a strong voice and without a tremor, and with his raised 
 hand as steady as if carved from marble, repeated it after him. 
 
 "And thus I swear," he ended it. 
 
 The hand dropped by the side, the chin for an instant rested 
 on the breast, and the silence remained unbroken for a couple of 
 minutes, as though the new President of the United States was 
 offering silent prayer. 
 
 Judge Hazel broke the silence, saying : " Mr. President, 
 please attach your signature." And the President, turning to a 
 small table near-by, wrote "Theodore Roosevelt" at the bottom 
 of the document in a firm hand. 
 
 " I should like to see the members of the Cabinet a few 
 moments after the others retire," said the President, and this 
 was the signal for the score of the people, who had been favored 
 by witnessing the ceremony, to retire. 
 
 As they turned to go the President said : " I will shake
 
 OUR NEW PRESIDENT. 477 
 
 hands with you people, gladly," and, with something of his old 
 sniile returning, he first shook hands with the members of the 
 Cabinet present, then Senator Depew and finally with a few 
 guests and newspaper men. 
 
 Those present in the room were Secretary of the Navy Long, 
 Secretary of Agriculture Wilson, Secretary of the Interior Hitch- 
 cock, Ansley Wilcox, his personal friend ; William Loeb, private 
 secretary of Mr. Roosevelt ; Secretary of War Root, Post- 
 master General Smith, Senator Depew, Dr. Mann and Dr. Stock- 
 ton and twenty-four representatives of American and English 
 newspapers, who had been invited by Mr. Roosevelt to witness 
 the ceremony. In a doorway stood Mrs. Wilcox, Miss Wilcox, 
 Mrs. John G. Milburn, Mrs. Carlton Sprague, Mrs. Dr. Mann 
 and Mrs. Charles Carrey. 
 
 INTIMATE FRIEND OF THE DEAD RULER. 
 
 The first man to enter the house after the ceremony attracted 
 almost as much attention as the new President. It was Senator 
 Mark Hanna, the most intimate friend of the dead ruler. The 
 meeting between Senator Hanna and the new President was 
 cordjal, though naturally solemn. The Senator did not look well, 
 his faee was pale and furrowed with gray lines. His eyes lacked 
 the steady gleam which politicians have known for many years. 
 He leaned heavily on a stout cane. 
 
 President Roosevelt descried Mr. Hanna before he had 
 mounted the steps of the house. He came alertly and expec- 
 tantly through the crowd of well wishers surrounding him and 
 held out both hands. " How do you do, Senator, I am glad to 
 see you," he said, in tones rather modified from his usual 
 resonant enunciation. 
 
 The lifelong friend of the dead President had his soft gray 
 slouch hat in his right hand. He transferred it to his left, which 
 held his cane, and holding out his right hand, he looked steadily 
 at the new national chieftain. " Mr. President," he said, and 
 those who were standing within a few feet thought they detected 
 a quaver in his voice. " Mr. President, 1 wish you success and a
 
 478 OUR NEW PRESIDENT. 
 
 prosperous administration ; I trnst that you will command me if 
 I can be of service." 
 
 The two men, easily the two most interesting figures in the 
 great tragedy, clasped hands for nearly a minute, but did not ex- 
 change another word. The President walked to the door beside 
 the limping figure of the Ohio Senator, who, as he passed dowi: 
 the stone walk faced the crowd and received many hearty hand- 
 shakes, and heard many words of sympathy, but it is doubtful if 
 he appreciated them. He looked straight ahead as he went, and 
 extended his hand in the most perfunctory manner. 
 
 As he entered the carriage waiting for him and was driven 
 away his eyes were bent on the floor of the carriage, and he seemed 
 to be thinking deeply. For an hour after the ceremony which had 
 made him President, Mr. Roosevelt stood in the drawing room of 
 the Wilcox mansion and heard expressions of good will. These 
 were varied in form and he voiced his thanks most heartily. 
 
 FERVENT BLESSINGS ON ROOSEVELT. 
 
 " God bless you, Mr. President," " I wish you success, Mr. 
 President, the country will pray for your success, Mr. President," 
 were the customary forms of salutation and congratulation. A 
 correspondent, who stood just back of Mr. Roosevelt, did not hear 
 the words "I congratulate you," used once. There could be no 
 congratulations over President McKinley's death. 
 
 When all of the persons who had witnessed the ceremony had 
 left the house and the last of the callers had gone, the President 
 retired to the apartments reserved for his use during his stay in 
 Buffalo. The President passed the evening rather quietly at Mr. 
 Wilcox's home, dining quite late. Governor B. B. Odell, of New 
 York ; Congressman Lucius Littauer, of New York, and William 
 Warden, of Buffalo, called during the evening, as did also Colonel 
 Russell Harrison. The President, while affable, showed some 
 effects of the long journey and the day's strain. However, he 
 found time to have a chat with Governor Odell. The Governor 
 told the President that he intended issuing a proclamation concern- 
 ing the President's death, and discussed the tenor of it. President
 
 OUR NEW PRESIDENT. 472 
 
 Roosevelt said that he, too, would issue a proclamation, and that 
 he had put it in the hands of Secretary Cortelyou to prepare as to 
 form, after preparing the substance. 
 
 At a meeting of the Cabinet in the afternoon, President 
 Roosevelt requested that the members retain their positions, at 
 least for the present, and they promised that they would do so. 
 He also received assurances that Secretaries Hay and Gage, who 
 were absent, would remain for the time being. 
 
 The first official act of President Roosevelt was the issuing 
 of the following proclamation, the appropriateness and felicitous 
 expression of which could not be improved : 
 
 PROCLAMATION BY THE PRESIDENT. 
 
 "By the President of the United States of America, a 
 proclamation : 
 
 "A terrible bereavement has befallen our people. The Presi- 
 dent of the United States has been struck down ; a crime com- 
 mitted not only against the Chief Magistrate, but against every 
 law-abiding and liberty-loving citizen. 
 
 " President McKinley crowned a life of largest love for his 
 fellowmen, of most earnest endeavor for their welfare, by a death 
 of Christian fortitude ; and both the way in which he lived his 
 life and the way in which, in the supreme hour of trial, he met 
 his death, will remain forever a precious heritage of our people. 
 
 " It is meet that we, as a nation, express our abiding love and 
 reverence for his life, our deep sorrow for his untimely death. 
 
 "Now, therefore, I, Theodore Roosevelt, President of the 
 United States of America, do appoint Thursday next, September 
 19, the day in which the body of the dead President will be laid 
 in its last earthly resting place, as a day of mourning and prayer 
 throughout the United States. I earnestly recommend all the 
 people to assemble in their respective places of divine worship, 
 there to bow down in submission to the will -of Almighty God, 
 and to pay out of full hearts their homage of love and reverence 
 to the great and good President, whose death has smitten the 
 nation with bitter grief.
 
 480 OUR NEW PRESIDENT, 
 
 " In witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand and 
 caused the seal of the United States to be affixed. 
 
 "Done at the city of Washington, the I4th day of September, 
 A.D., one thousand nine hundred and one, and of the Inde- 
 pendence of the United States the one hundred and twenty-sixth. 
 
 "(SEAL.) THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 " By the President, 
 
 "JOHN HAY, Secretary of State."
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 The Hero of San Juan President Roosevelt's Active Life- 
 Ancestry and Education His Strong Personality A 
 Man of Deep Convictions and Great Courage. 
 
 Presidents die, but our government continues with unim- 
 paired vitality. Stocks fall, but values remain. The govern- 
 ment of this Republic is based on the bedrock of the Constitution, 
 and has in it, we fondly hope, the principle of immortality. A 
 stricken nation weeps for its beloved President, William McKin- 
 ley, but its grief has in it no element of serious doubt or appre- 
 hension for the future. There is no interregnum. Theodore 
 Roosevelt is President of the United States. 
 
 No man ever came to the President's office so young as he, 
 bnt for twenty years he has been in the public eye. He has had 
 more political experience and has been more in touch with public 
 events than a large number of our Presidents previous to their 
 inauguration. He has been all his life a student -of our history 
 and of public questions. He is a man of high standards and 
 strong convictions and intense patriotism. 
 
 His impetuous zeai and earnestness in whatever he under- 
 takes has been heretofore one of the main sources of his strength 
 and political success. Tempered and sobered by the grave 
 responsibilities of his new position, these qualities, wisely directed, 
 will make his administration a power for good, full of solid 
 achievement that makes for the peace and happiness of the 
 
 people. 
 
 While, therefore, we mourn with unaffected grief for our be- 
 loved and honored President, William McKinley, there is no cause 
 for alarm or uneasiness for the future. In the language of President 
 McKinley, in one of his public addresses, " The structure of the 
 fathers stands secure upon the foundations on which they raised 
 it, and is to-day, as it has been in the years past, and as it will be 
 in the years to come, the Government of the people, by the people, 
 
 31 481
 
 482 SKETCH OF PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT. 
 
 for the people. Be not disturbed. There is no fear for the 
 Republic." 
 
 Theodore Roosevelt was born in New York city on October 
 27, 1858, and comes from a family that for generations has been 
 noted for its wealth, social position, high intelligence, disinterested 
 public spirit, general usefulness and philanthropy. 
 
 He is a Knickerbocker of the Knickerbockers, being seventh 
 in descent from Klaas Martensen van Roosevelt, who, with his 
 wife, Jannetje Samuels-Thomas, emigrated from the Netherlands 
 to New Amsterdam in 1649, an d became one of the most promi- 
 nent and prosperous burghers of that settlement. For two and 
 a half centuries the descendants of this couple have nourished in 
 and near the city of New York, maintaining unimpaired the high 
 social standing assumed at the beginning, and by thrift, industry 
 and enterprise adding materially to the wealth acquired by inheri- 
 tance. With the special opportunities for distinction afforded by 
 the Revolution, a number of them came into marked prominence. 
 
 CELEBRATED ANCESTORS. 
 
 Just previous to that struggle, and during its earlier years, 
 Isaac Roosevelt was a member of the New York Provincial Cou - 
 gress. Later he sat in the State Legislature, and for several 
 years was a member of the New York City Council. For quite 
 a long period he was President of the Bank of New York. Jacobus 
 J. Roosevelt, great-grandfather of the subject of this sketch, who 
 was born in 1759, gave his services without compensation as com- 
 missary during the War for Independence. A brother of this 
 Revolutionary patriot, Nicolas J. Roosevelt, born in New York 
 city in 1767, was an inventor of ability, and an associate of Robert 
 L. Livingston, John Stevens and Robert Fulton in developing the 
 steamboat and steam navigation. 
 
 The grandfather of Governor Roosevelt, Cornelius van Shaick 
 Roosevelt, born in New York city in 1794, was an importer of 
 hardware and plate glass, and one of the five richest men in the 
 town. He was one of the founders of the Chemical Bank. One 
 of his brothers, James J. Roosevelt, was a warm friend and ardent
 
 SKETCH OF PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT. 433 
 
 supporter of Andrew Jackson; served in the New York Legisla- 
 ture and in Congress, and was a Justice of the Supreme Court of 
 New York from 1851 to 1859. 
 
 A cousin, James Henry Roosevelt, was distinguished for his 
 philanthropies, and left an estate of a million dollars which, by 
 good management was doubled in value to found the famous 
 Roosevelt Hospital in New York city. Cornelius V. S. Roosevelt 
 married Mary Barnhill, of Philadelphia. Of their six sons, the 
 sole survivor is the Hon. Robert B. Roosevelt, one of New York's 
 most distinguished citizens, who has served in Congress and also 
 as a United States Minister to the Netherlands. 
 
 Theodore, another son, born in New York City, and deceased 
 in 1878, was the father of President Theodore Roosevelt. He 
 married Martha Bulloch, who with four of their children, sur- 
 vived him. Theodore Roosevelt, Sr., continued in the business 
 founded by his father, and became a controlling factor in the plate 
 glass trade. He greatly augmented the family fortune, and at his 
 death was reputed a millionaire. 
 
 WEALTH NO BAR TO ACTIVITY. 
 
 Theodore Roosevelt, therefore, was born to comparative wealth, 
 but did not let that deter him from a life of activity. After grad- 
 uating from Harvard, in 1880, he spent some time in European 
 travel, climbing the Alps and tramping through the country dis- 
 tricts of Germany. On his return home, he began the study of 
 law, but plunged at once into politics, and in 1881 was elected to 
 the State Assembly. 
 
 By re-election he continued in that body during the sessions 
 of 1883 and 1884. He introduced important reform measures, 
 and his entire legislative career was made conspicuous by the 
 courage and zeal with which he assailed political abuses. 
 
 In 1886 Mr. Roosevelt was the Republican candidate for 
 Mayor against Abram S. Hewitt, United Democracy, and Henry 
 George, United Labor. Mr. Hewitt was elected by about 22,000 
 plurality. In 1889 he was appointed by President Harrison a 
 member of the United States Civil Service Commission. His
 
 484 SKETCH OF PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT. 
 
 ability and rugged honesty in the administration of the affairs of 
 that office greatly helped to strengthen his hold on popular 
 regard. 
 
 He continuedin thatoffice until May i, 1895, when he resigned 
 to accept the office of Police Commissioner from Mayor Strong. 
 Through his fearlessness and administrative ability as President 
 of the Board, the demoralized police force was greatly improved. 
 Early in 1897 ne was called by the President to give up his New 
 York office to become Assistant Secretary of the Navy. Then 
 again his energy and quick mastery of detail had much to do with 
 the speedy equipment of the navy for its brilliant feats in the war 
 
 with Spain. 
 
 CRAVED SERVICE IN THE FIELD. 
 
 But soon after the outbreak of the war his patriotism and 
 love of active life led him to leave the comparative quiet of his 
 government office for service in the field. As a lieutenant-colonel 
 of volunteers he recruited the First Volunteer Cavalry, popularly 
 known as the Rough Riders. The men were gathered largely 
 from the cowboys of the Wes't and Southwest, but also numbered 
 many college-bred men of the East. 
 
 In the beginning he was second in command, with the rank 
 of lieutenant colonel, Dr. Leonard Wood being colonel. But 
 at the close of the war the latter was a brigadier general, and 
 Roosevelt was colonel in command. Since no horses were trans- 
 ported to Cuba, this regiment, together with the rest of the cav- 
 alry, was obliged to serve on foot. 
 
 The regiment distinguished itself in the Santiago campaign, 
 and Colonel Roosevelt became famous for his bravery in leading 
 the charge up San Juan Hill on July i. He was an efficient 
 officer, and won the love and admiration of his men. His care 
 for them was shown by the circulation of the famous "round 
 robin," which he wrote, protesting against keeping the army 
 longer in Cuba. 
 
 This violation of official rule deeply angered some of those 
 in power at Washington, and there was a talk of visiting dis- 
 pleasure on his head. But Roosevelt was by this time in such
 
 SKETCH OF PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT. 485 
 
 high favor with the whole people that nothing was done beyond 
 the publication of a letter by Secretary of War Alger reflecting 
 on Roosevelt, which was received with general denunciation, and 
 Roosevelt was, instead, commissioned colonel on July n. 
 
 Colonel Roosevelt was nominated as Governor of New York 
 State on September 27, 1898, receiving 753 votes, as againt 214 
 for Governor Frank S. Black. His Democratic opponent was 
 Judge Augustus Van Wyck. Colonel Roosevelt entered into the 
 campaign with characteristic enthusiasm, and visited nearly 
 every part of the State. He drew to his support the majority of 
 the Independent Republicans and many of the Democrats, and 
 carried New York State by a plurality of 18,079. 
 
 A STRONG CHARACTER. 
 
 He brought to the new position the same force and personality 
 that he had displayed in everything he had previously under, 
 taken. Although classed in some particulars as an Independent 
 Republican, he did not totally ignore the machine. Nor did he 
 invariably follow its advice. He consulted all factions and fol- 
 lowed what seemed to him to be the best course for the State. 
 He maintained his reputation for independence, yet held the re- 
 spect of the greater part of the machine managers. 
 
 As the Presidential year of 1900 approached, it became ap- 
 parent that there was a popular demand that Roosevelt should 
 have a place on the Republican ticket. He at first refused to 
 listen to any such suggestion, declaring that he much preferred 
 to be Governor of New York, but was finally induced to consent 
 to the use of his name, and at the convention held in this city, 
 in June, 1900, he was enthusiastically nominated for Vice-Presi- 
 dent. He went into the campaign with his accustomed vigor, 
 making a tour of the country and speaking at many places. His 
 tour was, in fact, the one picturesque feature of an otherwise 
 rather dull and uninteresting campaign. 
 
 After his election he spent the winter quietly, with the 
 exception of a hunting trip in the Rocky Mountains, on returning 
 from which he had to contradict numerous wild stories of his
 
 486 SKETCH OF PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT. 
 
 alleged exploits, written by imaginative correspondents who were 
 never near his party. He presided over the Senate during the 
 session of 1901 with dignity and a comprehension of his duties 
 which made a favorable impression on that body and upon the 
 country. 
 
 In the midst of his intensely active life Mr. Roosevelt has 
 found time to do considerable literary work. The year after he 
 was graduated from college he published his "Naval War of 
 1812 ;" in 1886 there came from his pen a "Life of Thomas H. 
 Benton," published in the "American Statesmen Series;" the 
 following year he published a " Life of Gouverneur Morris," 
 which was followed in 1888 by his popular " Ranch Life and 
 Hunting Trail." 
 
 AUTHOR OF MANY WORKS. 
 
 In 1889 were published the first two volumes of what he consid- 
 ers his greatest work, "The Winning of the West." In 1890 
 he added to the series of "Historic Towns " a " History of New 
 York City." " Essays on Practical Politics," published in 1892, 
 was followed the next year by " The Wilderness Hunter," while 
 in 1894 he added a third volume to his " Winning of the West." 
 In 1898 he collected a volume of essays, entitled "American Political 
 Ideas." Since the Spanish war he has written a book on " The 
 Rough Riders." 
 
 When Theodore Roosevelt was first considered by the Repub- 
 lican leaders for the position of Vice President, the possibility of 
 his succession to the office of Chief Magistrate was thoroughly 
 debated, and it was resolved that should he be called, under the 
 organic law to act as President of the United States he would be a 
 perfectly safe man for his party and for the people. There were 
 those who feared his strenuosity his radicalism in certain lines 
 and his sturdy insistence on reform in the party, but after fully 
 considering the character and history of the famous Rough Rider 
 leader, his character was passed and he was voted a sound party 
 man and an eligible and trusty candidate. 
 
 Roosevelt's character is summed up pretty well in this mes
 
 SKETCH OF PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT. 487 
 
 sage he sent a few years ago to a meeting of young men in New 
 York City : 
 
 " First and foremost be American, heart and soul, and go in 
 with any person, heedless of anything but that person's qualifica- 
 tions. For myself I'd as quickly work beside Pat Dugan as with 
 the last descendant of a patroon ; it literally makes no difference 
 to me so long as the work is good and the man is in earnest. One 
 other thing I'd like to teach the young man of wealth. That he 
 who has not got wealth owes his first duty to his family, but he who 
 has means owes his first duty to his State. It is ignoble to try to 
 heap money on money. I would preach the doctrine of work to 
 all, and to the men of wealth the doctrine of unremunerative 
 work." 
 
 NEEDS NO APOLOGIES. 
 
 A salient point in the public and private career of Theodore 
 Roosevelt is that no one ever had to apologize for him. Away 
 out on. the northwestern border of North Dakota, 600 miles from 
 St. Paul, where the little Missouri winds its swift way through 
 the heart of the Bad Lands, there stands the town of Medora. 
 There Theodore Roosevelt first put the eight-pointed cross brand 
 on his own cattle, and gave the outside world an initial illustra- 
 tion of what kind of strenuousness he believed in. 
 
 Before that time (1886-87) ^ s personality had impressed itself 
 upon college mates at Columbia and the small circle of intimate 
 friends about him in New York city. But Medora, whether he 
 intended it to be so or not, was the starting point in his public 
 career. The man who would "come west" and not steal cattle 
 from his neighbors, who would "tote" fair, who, bred in luxury, 
 would take the worst as well as the best of ranch life without a 
 murmer, was a novelty to the press as well as the public, and as 
 " cow man " the present President of the United States is known. 
 
 " What strong direction did your home influence take in your 
 boyhood ? " was asked Mr. Roosevelt. 
 
 "Why," he replied, "I was brought up with the constant 
 injunction to be active and industrious. My father all my 
 people held that no one had a right to merely cumber the
 
 488 SKETCH OF PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT. 
 
 earth ; that the most contemptible of created beings is the man 
 who does nothing. I imbibed the idea that I must work hard, 
 whether at making money or whatever. 
 
 " The whole family training taught me that I must be doing, 
 must be working and at decent work. I made my health what 
 it is. I determined to be strong and well, and did everything 
 to make myself so. By the time I entered Harvard College I 
 was able to take iny part in whatever sports I liked. I wrestled 
 and sparred and ran a great deal while in college, and though I 
 never came in first, I got more good out of the exercise than 
 those who did, because I immensely enjoyed it and never injured 
 
 myself. 
 
 PRACTICED WRESTLING AND BOXING. 
 
 " I was fond of wrestling and boxing ; I think I was a good 
 deal of a wrestler, and though I never won a championship, yet 
 more than once I won my trial heats and got into the final round. 
 I was captain of my polo team, at one time, but since I left college 
 I have taken most of my exercise in the 'cow country' or moun- 
 tain hunting." 
 
 Returning from the West he plunged into politics and was 
 thrice chosen to the New York Legislature, wherein he became 
 famous as a free lance. 
 
 It was at this time that Mr. Roosevelt became involved in a 
 conflict with the party organization and defeated it. He did it 
 so thoroughly that his own delegates were sent to the county, 
 State and national conventions of 1884. That was the year Jaines 
 G. Blaiiie desired to be President. Air. Roosevelt escaped the 
 Elaine contagion and took the New York delegation away from 
 that statesman. He formed a combination between the Arthur 
 and Edmunds men and defeated t>e Elaine following. 
 
 He was sent to the Chicago convention with Andrew D. 
 White, George William Curtis and a number of other famous men. 
 It may be written here that Mr. Roosevelt never left the Republi- 
 can party, but he has always felt that upon a question of principle 
 he was bound to act upon his own judgment. He has held that city 
 politics should be divorced from those of the State and the nation;
 
 SKETCH OF PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT. 489 
 
 that politics is not a grab game for spoils, but a dignified, honor- 
 able science to be unselfishly pursued ; and yet he recognizes the 
 fact that, in order to do good work in politics one must work with 
 his party, which is to say with an organization. As a legislator he 
 was a sore spot to "machine" partisans or men of corrupt in- 
 clinations. Courageous men loved him. 
 
 While in the Legislature he secured the passage of the 
 measure which gave the Mayor of New York the power and 
 opportunity to do his best in wielding the appointing power in 
 connection with the police force. Prior to this the old Tweed 
 charter had vested in the aldermen the power of rejecting or 
 accepting the Mayor's appointments. The Roosevelt bill took 
 this power from the aldermen. The Roosevelt investigation of 
 the same year placed the county clerk's office, which had been 
 reaping $82,000 a year in fees, upon a salary, and various other 
 reforms were effected. In 1886 Mr. Roosevelt ran for Mayor of 
 New York and polled a larger proportion of the total vote than 
 was polled by any Republican canditate until W. L. Strong was 
 
 elected. 
 
 ,.;.- CIVIL SERVICE COMMISSIONER. 
 
 When General Harrison came to the Presidency he appointed 
 Mr. Roosevelt Civil Service Commissioner, and that position he 
 held until he became Police Commissioner of the city of New 
 York. In the six years that he was Civil Service Commissioner 
 he saw the law applied to twice as many offices as when he took 
 the office ; in fact, he added 20,000 offices to the scope of the 
 reform law. The law was also well executed while he was in 
 
 office. 
 
 From the Police Commissionership he passed to the position 
 of Assistant Secretary of the Navy, where he woke up the fossils, 
 gave Dewey the Manila opportunity, infused vigor into the 
 officialism of Washington, made some people dislike him and a 
 great many more care for him, and when war was threatened 
 jumped into the centre of action with Colonel Leonard S. Wood 
 and organized the Rough Riders. They fought like demons at 
 Las Guasimas. They passed on to Kettle Hill, to San Juan and
 
 490 SKETCH OF PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT. 
 
 to Santiago. He was on the firing line always, taking just what 
 his men did, asking no more. Regular army officers called him an 
 "ideal commander." His regiment was cared for as few were 
 during the short period of the Spanish-American War. From 
 Santiago he went to Camp Wikoff, and thence to the Governorship 
 of New York by popular will. As Governor, he marked himself 
 by his persistent fight against legislative corruption, and in favor 
 of fair corporation taxation. 
 
 Mr. Roosevelt married Miss Edith Kermit Carrow in 1886, 
 and they have five children, three boys and two girls, and a 
 daughter by the first Mrs. Roosevelt. His home, where all his 
 children were born, is called Sagamore Hill, and is at Oyster Bay, 
 1,. I. In New York city he sometimes occupies a rented house. 
 Mrs. Roosevelt and the children are essentially a part of his life. 
 While his official duties keep him away from them they are never 
 absent from his thought nor he from theirs. His home life is as 
 ideal as his public life is clean. 
 
 MADE SPEECHES IN THE WEST. 
 
 Colonel Roosevelt visited the West and made several speeches 
 in which he fully maintained the independent stand he years ago 
 assumed, but heartily endorsed the policies of the administration 
 and the fundamental principles of the Republican party. 
 
 Theodore Roosevelt has had sorrow, having lost a beloved 
 mother and a most charming wife, his first love, who was Miss 
 Alice Lee, of Boston. They died in the same house within a few 
 hours of each other, and the grief of the great strong man was 
 pitiful to behold. 
 
 The present Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt, who, before her mar- 
 riage was Edith Carow, of New York, is a remarkable woman, and 
 one of rare personality. She is a woman of the highest principle 
 and of a far more than ordinary mental calibre. From her earliest 
 childhood she has been an omnivorous reader and a constant 
 student. She has always shrunk from anything like notoriety, 
 and the necessary publicity that her husband's position has forced 
 upon her has been, so far as lay in her power, made less
 
 SKETCH OF PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT. 4gl 
 
 conspicuous. She is a New Yorker by birth, was educated at one 
 of the fashionable schools and has spent several years traveling 
 abroad. She is an accomplished linguist and her musical knowl- 
 edge is far above the ordinary. 
 
 Ever since her marriage she has devoted herself, heart and 
 soul, to her husband's career and at the same time has been a 
 devoted mother. She has not, in one sense of the word, gone 
 into society at all, although by her birth as well as her marriage 
 she has always had a position which involves certain social duties. 
 Her circle of acquaintances has been from childhood the same as 
 her husband's, and they have among their friends the leading 
 people of the country. Mrs. Roosevelt is rather petite, has brown 
 hair and brown eyes, a clear skin with some color when she is 
 excited, but her chief beauty is her mouth, which is marvelously 
 expressive. 
 
 HIS PERSON AND DRESS. 
 
 Mrs. Roosevelt dresses neatly and simply with a quiet ele- 
 gance. Her wealth of tresses is pushed back from the forehead, 
 except a few curly ringlets that play about her temples. She is 
 not an athlete, but she is a finished horsewoman and is fond of 
 outdoor exercise. Mrs. Roosevelt is a member of half a dozen 
 clubs and has long been identified with a score of charities. 
 
 She possesses the great talent which made Mrs. Cleveland so 
 popular, of remembering the faces of people she meets once or 
 twice and also being able to remember- all about them. She is 
 the boon companion, as well as the very wise and tender mother, 
 of her stepdaughter and her own children, who are much younger 
 than Miss Alice Roosevelt. She has a wide knowledge of politics, 
 both foreign and American. She is a frail looking women, but 
 has much more strength than she arjparently possesses. She is 
 deeply religious. 
 
 Mr. Roosevelt's two sisters are women noted for their rare 
 charm, intelligence and their most gracious manners. Mrs. 
 Cowles, former^ Miss Anna Roosevelt, has been married only a 
 few years, although she is older than her brother Theodore. Her
 
 492 SKETCH OF PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT. 
 
 charitable work is known the world over, and her business ability 
 is striking. 
 
 When her cousin, Mr. J. Roosevelt, was in charge of the 
 British Embassy in London, she went over as his guest and 
 stayed with him for a time, taking charge of his household. Her 
 success as a hostess was marvelous in London, in fact, in Eng- 
 land, where she made countless warm friends, and where she met 
 Commander Cowles, whom she married the following year. In 
 Washington, where she is a very marked personality, she comes 
 nearer to having a salon than any other American woman. 
 
 STRONG LOVE OF HOME. 
 
 The Roosevelt love of home is a marked characteristic of the 
 family not confined at all to this generation, for the Roosevelt clanish- 
 nesswas at one time a by word, and to this day the immediate members 
 of the Roosevelt family apparently find more pleasure in each 
 other's society than in that of any of their friends. Mr. Roosevelt 
 certainly takes intense pleasure in being with his children, as 
 they do in being with him. Home for the Roosevelt is the " dearest 
 spot on earth." 
 
 A prominent journal says : " Upon Theodore Roosevelt, 
 whom circumstances as unexpected as they are sad have made the 
 twenty-fifth President of the United States, the eyes of an ex- 
 pectant nation are now turned, dimmed though they be with tears. 
 What will the new President make of his opportunity ? What 
 will be his policy, and whom will he seek for his advisers ? Such 
 are the questions on many lips. President Roosevelt has as yet 
 had little to say on these topics of absorbing public interest ; 
 indeed, volubility on these subjects on his part would at this time 
 have been most unbecoming. The few words spoken by him, 
 however, after the oath of office had been administered by Judge 
 Hazel at Buffalo are reassuring. 
 
 " ' In this hour of deep and national bereavement,' said the 
 newly inaugurated Chief Magistrate, ' I wish to state that it shall 
 be my aim to continue absolutely and without variance the policy 
 of President McKinley for the peace and prosperity and honor of
 
 SKETCH OF PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT. 493 
 
 our beloved country.' Nothing more could be desired, particu- 
 larly if the words of the incoming Executive referred to the later 
 policy cf his lamented predecessor, whose outlook had become 
 broadened by experience and inspired by a spirit more cosmopoli- 
 tan than that which had characterized the putative author of the 
 McKinley bill. 
 
 " But Mr. Roosevelt is not an unknown quantity in public 
 life in the United States. Few men at his age in recent Ameri- 
 can history have attained equal distinction and notoriety the 
 word being used in no invidious or disparaging sense. He has 
 lived in the white light of publicity almost from his youthful cow- 
 boy days. He sprang into early fame as the historian of the 
 conquest of the Great West, and has since remained prominent; 
 with few intermissions, in various branches of the public service 
 more or less important. He has been Police Commissioner in 
 New York city, Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Colonel of Vol- 
 unteers, Governor of his native State, and Vice President of the 
 Union ; and now he has attained the highest honor within reach 
 of an American citizen. 
 
 HIS CHARACTER AN OPEN BOOK. 
 
 "If Theodore Roosevelt's character has not been read by 
 the American people as an open book spread out before them, it 
 has not been through any fault of his own. He has not been 
 content to talk of the strenuous life ; he has lived it. Intensity 
 is his predominant trait. His greatest failing, perhaps, is lack 
 of steadiness by which it is not to be inferred that he is weak. 
 Far from that being the case, he is, if anything, too strong-willed. 
 But what is meant is that he has betrayed in the past want of 
 poise. This failing, however, is usually associated with imma- 
 turity, and is likely to be sloughed off as the individual possessed 
 of it attains riper experience. 
 
 " President Roosevelt has wit and grit, and if he shall keep 
 his feet on firm ground, the affairs of the nation will doubtless be 
 quite secure in his hands, and will be conducted by him with dis- 
 creet conservatism. The weight of responsibility is not conducive
 
 494 SKETCH OF PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT. 
 
 to soaring ; and thus ballasted there is every ground for expecting 
 President Roosevelt to turn his back to the glory-crowned heights 
 and to travel the safe though prosaic and toilsome path of duty, 
 as will be required of him by the national interests." 
 
 The following estimate of Mr. Roosevelt was written during 
 the campaign that made him Vice-President. It is from a Colorado 
 poet in praise of the Rough Rider : 
 
 " Now, doff your hat to Teddy, boys, for he's the proper man. 
 His life has been a triumph since its starting first began. 
 His pluck and spirit in the days he roamed upon the range 
 Has builded up a character no circumstance can change. 
 From a cowboy on the ' round-up ' to the Governor of his State 
 We've always found a man in him that's strictly up to date. 
 As a daring ' bronco buster/ or a Colonel in command, 
 We'll greet him with McKinley with an open, hearty hand. 
 He served his country nobly and fired his faithful boys 
 With patriotic valor, amid the cannon's noise. 
 And, as they to him were loyal, in battle's fierce array, 
 So will the voters prove to be upon election day. 
 Now doff your hats to Teddy, boys, the man with grit and nerve 
 In every office that he fills, the people will he serve. 
 Progression is his policy, no laggard in the race, 
 He'll lead us on to victory, whatever be the pace." 
 
 Theodore Roosevelt is the third graduate of Harvard Uni- 
 versity to hold the highest honor in the gift of the American 
 people. John Adams and John Quincy Adams were, graduated 
 from Harvard. It was in 1825 when J. Q. Adams became presi- 
 dent. Now comes Roosevelt. Roosevelt entered Harvard in 1876, 
 when he was eighteen years old. His work in college was charac- 
 terized by the enthusiasm and earnestness which have become 
 known to all the people as dominant traits of his character in 
 public life. 
 
 When he came to the Cambridge college he was a slight lac 
 and not in robust health, but he at once took a judicious anc 
 regular interest in athletics and in a little while the effects were 
 apparent in his stalwart figure and redoubled energy. He
 
 SKETCH OF PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT. 495 
 
 wrestled and sparred and ran a great deal, but never indulging 
 in athletic work to the point of injury. 
 
 In his studies young Roosevelt was looked upon " as pecu- 
 liarly earnest and mature in the way he took hold of things," as 
 one of his classmates put it. Ex-Mayor Josiah Quincy, of Boston, 
 who was in college with Roosevelt, says of him : 
 
 " He exhibited in his college days most of the traits of 
 character which he has shown in after years and on the larger 
 stage of political life. In appearance and manner he has changed 
 remarkably little in twenty years, and I should say that his lead- 
 ing characteristic in college was the very quality of strenuousness 
 which is now so associated with his public character. In what- 
 ever he did he showed unusual energy, and the same aggressive 
 earnestness which has carried so far in later life. 
 
 MATURE BEYOND HIS YEARS. 
 
 " He exhibited a maturity of character, if not of intellectual 
 development, greater than that of most of his classmates, and was 
 looked upon as one of the notable members of the class as one 
 who possessed certain qualities of leadership and of popularity 
 which might carry him far in the days to come, if not counter- 
 balanced by impulsiveness in action or obstinacy in adhering to 
 his own ideas. He was certainly regarded as a man of unusually 
 good fighting qualities, of determination, pluck and tenacity. 
 
 " If his classmates had been asked in their senior year to 
 pick out the one member of the class who would be best adapted 
 for such a service w r hich he rendered with the Rough Riders in 
 Cuba I think that, almost with one voice, they would have named 
 Roosevelt. Theodore Roosevelt is in many respects as broad and 
 typical an American as the country has produced." 
 
 Both his fellows and his teachers say that he was much above 
 the average as a student. He was just as original, just as reliant 
 on his own judgment as he is now. In a mere matter of opinion 
 or of dogma he had no respect for an instructor say-so above his 
 own convictions, and some of his contemporaries in college recall 
 with smiles some very strenuous discussions with teachers in
 
 496 SKETCH OF PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT. 
 
 which he was involved by his habit of defending his own convic- 
 tions. 
 
 At graduation he was one of the comparatively few who took 
 honors, his subject being natural history. When yonng Roose- 
 velt entered college he developed the taste for hunting and natural 
 history which has since led him so often and so far through field 
 and forest. His rifle and his hunting kit were the most conspicu- 
 ous things in his room. His birds he mounted himself. 
 
 Live turtles and insects were always to be found in his study, 
 and one who lived in the house with him at the time recalls well 
 the excitement caused by a particularly large turtle sent by a 
 friend from the southern seas, which got out of its box one night and 
 started for the bathroom in search for water. Although well 
 toward the top as a student he still had his full share of the gay 
 rout that whiles dull care away. In his sophomore year he was 
 one of the forty men in his class who belonged to the Institute of 
 
 1770. 
 
 BELONGED TO SEVERAL CLUBS. 
 
 In his senior year he was a member of the Porcelain, the 
 Alpha Delta Phi, and the Hasty Pudding Clubs, being secretary 
 of the last named. In the society of Boston he was often seen. 
 
 Roosevelt's membershiD in clubs other than social shows 
 conspicuously the kind of college man he was. In rowing, base- 
 ball and foot-ball he was an earnest champion, but never a promi- 
 nent participant. In the other athletic contests he was often seen. 
 It was as a boxer that he excelled. Boxing was a regular feature 
 of the Harvard contests of that day, and " Teddy," as he was uni- 
 versally called, was the winner of many a bout. 
 
 He had his share in college journalism. During his senior 
 year he was one of the editors of the "Advocate." Unlike the other 
 editors, he was not himself a frequent contributor. 
 
 The range of his interests is shown by this enumeration of 
 clubs in which he had membership. The Natural History Society, 
 of which he was vice-president ; the Art Club, of which Professor 
 Charles Eliot Norton was the president ; the Finance Club, the 
 Glee Club (associate member), the Harvard Rifle Corps, the O. K.
 
 SKETCH Of PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT. 47 
 
 Society, of which he was treasurer, and the Harvard Athletic 
 Association, of which he was steward. 
 
 Roosevelt's share of class-day honors was membership in the 
 class committee. All who knew Roosevelt in his college days 
 speak of him as dashing and picturesque in his ways and hand- 
 some appearance. His photograph, taken at graduation, shows 
 no moustache, but a rather generous allowance of side whiskers. 
 
 Although he was near sighted and wore glasses at the time, 
 they do not appear in the photograph. Maturity and sobriety are 
 the most evident characteristics of the countenance. A companion 
 of student days tells a story to show that the future President did 
 things then much as he does them now. A horse in a stable close 
 to Roosevelt's room made a sudden noise one night which de- 
 manded instant attention. 
 
 BOUNDED FROM AN UPPER WINDOW. 
 
 Young Roosevelt was in bed at the time, but he waited not 
 for daytime clothes. Nor did he even wait to go down the steps. 
 He bounded out the second-story window, and had quieted the 
 row before the less impetuous neighbors arrived. It was while in 
 college that he conceived the idea of his history of the American 
 Navy in the War of 1812. This volume was written soon after 
 leaving college. He was not yet twenty-four when it was completed. 
 
 In view of the position which the author afterward held, next 
 to the head of the American Navy, the preface, written before the 
 beginning of our present navy, is of striking interest He says : 
 "At present people are beginning to realize that it is folly for the 
 great English-speaking Republic to rely for defense upon a navy 
 composed partly of antiquated hulks and partly of new vessels 
 rather more worthless than the old." 
 
 32
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 President Roosevelt in the Battle of San Juan Story of 
 Brave Exploits Narrow Escape Ballad of " Teddy's 
 Terrors." 
 
 THE part acted by President Roosevelt in our war with Spain 
 gave him great prominence and showed the sterling charac- 
 teristics of the man. General Wheeler's official account of the 
 first battle at Santiago officially known as the battle of Siboney, 
 or La Quasina, thus refers to the famous Rough Rider : 
 
 u Colonel Wood's regiment was on the extreme left of the 
 line and too far distant for me to be a personal witness of the 
 individual conduct of the officers and men ; but the magnificent 
 bravery shown by the regiment under the lead of Colonel Wood 
 testifies to his courage and skill and the energy and determina- 
 tion of his officers, which have been marked from the moment he 
 reported to me at Tampa, Fla., and I have abundant evidence of 
 his brave and good conduct on the field, and I recommend him. 
 for the consideration of the Government. I must rely upon his 
 report to do justice to his officers and men, but I desire person- 
 ally to add that all I have said regarding Colonel Wood applies 
 equally to Colonel Roosevelt. 
 
 " I was immediately with the troops of the First and Tenth 
 Regular Cavalry, dismounted, and I personally noticed their 
 brave and good conduct, which will be specially mentioned by 
 General Young." 
 
 " There must have been nearly fifteen hundred Spaniards in 
 front and to the sides of us," said Lieutenant-Colonel Roosevelt 
 just after the fight. " They held the ridges with the rifle pits 
 and machine guns, and hid a body of men in ambush in the 
 thick jungle at the sides of the road over which we were advanc- 
 ing. Our advance guard struck the men in ambush and drove 
 them out. But they lost Captain Capron, Lieutenant Thomas 
 and about fifteen men killed or wounded. 
 
 493
 
 STORY OF BRAVE EXPLOITS. 499 
 
 ' The Spanish firing was accurate, so accurate indeed that it 
 surprised me, and their firing was fearfully heavy. I want to say 
 a word fjr our own men," continued Lieutenant-Colonel Roose- 
 velt. "Every officer and man did his duty up to the handle. Not 
 a man flinched." 
 
 From another officer who took a prominent part in the fight- 
 ing, more details were obtained. " When the firing began," said 
 he, ''Lieutenant-Colonel Roosevelt took the right wing with 
 Troops G and K, under Captains Llewelyn and Jenkins, and 
 moved to the support of Captain Capron, who was getting it hard. 
 At the same time Colonel Wood and Major Brodie took the left 
 wing and advanced in open order on the Spanish right wing. 
 Major Brodie was wounded before the troops had advanced one 
 hundred yards. Colonel Wood then took the right wing and 
 shifted Colonel Roosevelt to the left. 
 
 "WITH A YELL, THE MEN SPRANG FORWARD." 
 
 " In the meantime the fire of the Spaniards had increased in 
 volume, but, notwithstanding this, an order for a general charge 
 was given, and with a yell the men sprang forward. Colonel 
 Roosevelt, in front of his men, snatched a rifle and ammunition 
 belt from a wounded soldier, and cheering and yelling with his 
 men, led the advance. In a moment the bullets were singing 
 like a swarm of bees all around them, and every instant some poor 
 fellow went down. On the right wing Captain McClintock had 
 his leg broken by a bullet from a machine gun, while four of his 
 men went down. At the same time Captain Luna, of Troop F, 
 lost nine of his men. Then the reserves, Troops K and E, were 
 ordered up. 
 
 " There was no more hesitation. Colonel Wood, with the 
 right wing, charged straight at a block-house eight hundred yards 
 away, and Colonel Roosevelt on the left, charged at the same 
 time. Up the men went, yelling like fiends and never stopping 
 to return the fire of the Spaniards, but keeping on with a grim 
 determination to capture the block-house. 
 
 " That charge was the end. When within five hundred yards
 
 500 STORY OF BRAVE EXPLOITS. 
 
 of the coveted point the Spaniards broke and ran, and for the first 
 time we had the pleasure, which the Spaniards had been experi- 
 encing all through the engagement, of shooting with the enemy 
 in sight." 
 
 Said an officer of high rank : "I cannot speak coo highly ot 
 Colonel Theodore Roosevelt. He is every inch a fighter, and led 
 a charge of dismounted cavalry against men in pits at San Juan 
 successfully. It was a wonderful charge, and showed Roosevelt's 
 grit. I was not there, but I have been told of it repeatedly by 
 those who saw the Colonel on the hill. 
 
 Two reports made by Colonel Theodore Roosevelt to his 
 superior officer in front of Santiago in July were given out by the 
 War Department at Washington, December 22, 1898. Both re- 
 ports describe the operations of the Rough Riders in the battle of 
 San Juan, the second telling a much fuller story. 
 
 THE BRAVE TROOPERS. 
 
 In his first report, dated July 4th, he mentions by name many 
 of the troopers who distinguished themselves by their bravery. 
 This part of the report, which was made by Roosevelt, as lieu- 
 tenant-colonel in charge of the regiment, to Colonel Wood, tem- 
 porarily in charge of the brigade, was as follows : 
 
 " We went into the fight about four hundred and ninety 
 strong. Eighty-six were killed or wounded and there are half a 
 dozen missing. The great heat prostrated nearly forty men, 
 some of them among the best in the regiment. Besides Captain 
 O'Neill and Lieutenant Haskell, who were killed. Lieutenants 
 Leahy, Devereaux and Case were wounded. All behaved with 
 great gallantry. As for Captain O'Neill, his loss is one of the 
 severest that could have befallen the regiment. He was a man 
 of cool head, great executive ability and literally dauntless 
 courage. 
 
 u To attempt to give a list of the men who showed signal 
 valor would necessitate sending in an almost complete roster of 
 the regiment. Many of the cases which I mention stand merely 
 as examples of the rest, not as exceptions.
 
 STORY OF BRAVE EXPLOITS. 501 
 
 "Captain Jenkins acted as Major and showed such con- 
 spicuous gallantry and efficiency that I earnestly hope he may 
 be promoted to major as soon as a vacancy occurs. Captains 
 Lewellen, Muller and Luna led their troops throughout the 
 charges, handling them admirably. At the end of the battle 
 Lieutenants Kane, Greenwood and Goodrich were in charge of 
 their troops immediately under my eye, and I wish particularly 
 to commend their conduct throughout. 
 
 " But the most conspicuous gallantry was shown by Trooper 
 Rowland. He was wounded in the side in our first fight, but kept 
 in the firing line. He was sent to the hospital the next day, but 
 left it and marched out to us, overtaking us, and fought all 
 through this battle with such indifference to danger that I was 
 forced again and again to restrain and threaten him for running 
 
 needless risks. 
 
 CLIMBED A WIRE FENCE. 
 
 "Great gallantry .was also shown by four troopers whom I 
 cannot identify and by Trooper Winslow Clark, of Troop G. It 
 was after we had taken the first hill. I had called out to rush the 
 second, and having by that time lost my horse, climbed a wire 
 fence and started toward it. 
 
 " After going a couple of hundred yards under a heavy fire, 
 I found that no one else had come. As I discovered later, it was 
 simply because in the confusion, with men shooting and being 
 shot, they had not noticed me start. I told the five men to wait 
 a moment, as it might be misunderstood if we all ran back, while 
 I ran back and started the regiment, and as soon as I did so the 
 regiment came with a rush. 
 
 " But meanwhile the five men coolly lay down in the open, 
 returning the fire from the trenches. It is to be wondered at that 
 only Clark was seriously wounded, and he called out, as we passed 
 again, to lay his canteen where he could reach it, but to continue 
 the charge and leave him where he was. All the wounded had to 
 be left until after the fight, for we could spare no men from the 
 firing line. Very respectfully, 
 
 " THEODORE ROOSEVELT."
 
 502 STORY OF BRAVE EXPLOITS. 
 
 The second and more important report was addressed to Brig- 
 adier General Wood, and dated Camp Hamilton, near Santiago, 
 July 2ofh. It was as follows : 
 
 " SIR In obedience to your directions I herewith report on 
 the operations of my regiment from the ist to the i/th inst., 
 inclusive 
 
 " As I have already made you two reports about the first 
 day's operations, I shall pass over them rather briefly. 
 
 " On the morning of the first day my regiment was formed 
 at the head of the second brigade, by the El Paso sugar mill. 
 When the batteries opened the Spaniards replied to us with 
 shrapnel, which killed and wounded several of the men of my 
 regiment. We then marched towards the right, and my regiment 
 crossed theford before the balloon came down there and attracted 
 the fire of the enemy, so at that point we lost no one. My orders 
 had been to march forward until I joined General Lawton's right 
 wing, but after going about three-quarters of a mile, I was halted 
 and told to remain in reserve near the creek by a deep lane. 
 
 A SHOWER OF BULLETS. 
 
 " The bullets dropped thick among us for the next hour 
 while we lay there, and many of my men were killed or wounded. 
 Among the former was Captain O'Neill, whose loss was a very 
 heavy blow to the regiment, for he was a singularly gallant and 
 efficient officer. Acting Lieutenant Haskell was also shot at this 
 time. He showed the utmost courage and had been of great use 
 during the fighting and marching. It seems to me some action 
 should be taken about him. 
 
 " You then sent me word to move forward in support of the 
 regular cavalry, and I advanced the regiment in column of com- 
 panies, each company deployed as skirmishers. We moved 
 through several skirmish lines of the regiment ahead of us, as it 
 seemed to me our only chance was in rushing the intrenchrnents 
 in front instead of firing at them from a distance. 
 
 " Accordingly we charged the blockhouse and entrenchments 
 on the hill to our right against a heavy fire. It was taken in
 
 STORY OF BRAVE EXPLOITS. 
 
 503 
 
 good style, the men of my regiment thus being the first to capture 
 any fortified position and to break through the Spanish lines 
 The guidons of G and E trood were first at this point, but some 
 of the men of A and B troops, who were with me personally, got 
 in ^ahead of them. At the last wire fence up this hill l' was 
 obliged to abandon my horse, and after that we went on foot. 
 
 "After capturing this hill we first of all directed a heavy 
 fire upon the San Juan hill to our left, which was at the time 
 being assailed by the regular infantry and cavalry, supported by 
 Captain Parker's Catling guns. By the time San Juan was 
 taken a large force had assembled on the hill we had previously 
 captured, consisting not only of my own regiment, but of the 
 Ninth and portions of other cavalry regiments. 
 
 CHARGE UNDER HOT FIRE. 
 
 ' We then charged forward under a very heavy fire across the 
 valley against the Spanish entrenchments on the hill in the rear 
 of San Juan hill. This we also took, capturing several prisoners. 
 ' We then formed in whatever order we could and moved for- 
 ward, driving the Spanish before us to the crest of the hills in 
 front, which were immediately opposite the city of Santiago itself. 
 Here I received orders to halt and hold the line on the hill's 
 crest. I had at the time fragments of the Sixth Cavalry Regi- 
 ment and an occasional infantryman under me three or four 
 hundred men all told. As I was the highest there, I took com- 
 mand of all of them, and so continued till next morning. 
 
 " The Spaniards attempted a counter attack that afternoon, 
 but were easily driven back, and then, until after dark, we 
 remained under a heavy fire from their rifles and great guns, 
 lying flat on our faces on a gentle slope just behind the crest. 
 
 " Captain Parker's Catling battery was run up to the ri^ht 
 of my regiment and did most excellent and gallant service. In 
 order to charge the men had, of course, been obliged to throw 
 away their packs, and we had nothing to sleep in and nothing to 
 eat. We were lucky enough, however, to find in the last block- 
 house captured, the Spanish dinners, still cooking, which we ate
 
 504 STORY OF BRAVE EXPLOITS. 
 
 with relish. They consisted chiefly of rice and peas, with a big 
 pot containing a stew of fresh meat, probably for the officers. 
 
 " We also distributed the captured Spanish blankets as far as 
 they would go among our men, and gathered a good deal of 
 Mauser ammunition for use in the Colt rapid fire guns, which 
 were being brought up. That night we dug entrenchments across 
 the front. 
 
 u At three o'clock in the morning the Spaniards made another 
 attack upon us, which was easily repelled, and at four they opened 
 the day with a heavy rifle and shrapnel fire. All day long we 
 remained under this, replying whenever we got the chance. In 
 the evening, at about eight o'clock, the Spaniards fired three guns 
 and then opened a very heavy rifle fire, their skirmishers coming 
 
 well forward. 
 
 MEN IN THE TRENCHES. 
 
 " I got all my*men down into the trenches, as did the other 
 command near me, and we opened a heavy return fire. The 
 Spanish advance was at once stopped, and after an hour their fire 
 died away. This night we completed most of our trenches and 
 began to build bomb proofs. The protection afforded our men 
 was good, and the next morning I had but one man wounded from 
 the rifle and shell fire until twelve o'clock, when the truce came. 
 
 "I do not mention the officers and men who particularly dis. 
 tinguished themselves as I have nothing to add in this respect to 
 what was contained in my former letter. 
 
 " There were numerous Red Cross flags flying in the various 
 parts of the city, two of them so arranged that they directty 
 covered batteries in our front and for some time were the cause 
 of our not firing at them. The Spanish guerrillas were very 
 active, especially in our rear, where they seemed by preference to 
 attack the wounded men who were being carried on litters, the 
 doctors and medical attendants with Red Cross flags on theii 
 arms and the burial parties. 
 
 " I organized a detail of sharpshooters and sent them out 
 after the guerrillas, of whom they killed thirteen. Two of the 
 men thus killed were shot several hours after the truce had been
 
 STORY OF BRAVE EXPLOITS. 505 
 
 in operation, because, in spite of this fact, they kept firing upon 
 our men as they went to draw water. They were stationed in the 
 trees, as the guerrillas were generally, and, owing to the density 
 of the foliage and to the use of smokeless powder rifles, it was an 
 exceedingly difficult matter to locate them. 
 
 "For the next seven days, until the loth, we lay in our line 
 while the truce continued. We had continually to work at addi- 
 tional bombproofs and at the trenches, and as we had no proper 
 supply of food and utterly inadequate medical facilities the men 
 suffered a good deal. The officers chipped together, purchased 
 beans, tomatoes and sugar for the men, so that they might have 
 some relief from the bacon and hardtack. With a great deal of 
 difficulty we got them coffee. 
 
 FOUGHT AFTER BEING WOUNDED. 
 
 "As for the sick and wounded, they suffered so in the hospitals 
 when sent to the rear for lack of food and attention that we found 
 it best to keep them at the front and give them such care as our 
 own doctors could. As I mentioned in my previous letter, 
 thirteen of our wounded men continued to fight through the 
 battle in spite of their injuries. In spite of their wounds those 
 sent to the rear, many both sick and wounded, came up to rejoin 
 us as soon as their condition allowed them to walk. 
 
 " On the loth the truce was at an end and the bombardment 
 reopened. As far as our lines were concerned, it was on the 
 Spanish part very feeble. We suffered no losses, and speedily 
 got the fire from their trenches in our front completely under 
 control. On the nth we moved three-quarters of a mile to the 
 right, the truce again being on. 
 
 " Nothing happened there, except we continued to watch and 
 do our best to get the men, especially the sick, properly fed. 
 Having no transportation, and being able to get hardly any 
 through the regular channels, we used anything we could find- 
 captured Spanish cavalry horses, abandoned mules, some of which 
 had been injured, but which our men took and cured; diminutive, 
 skinny ponies purchased from the Cubans, etc.
 
 506 STORY OF BRAVE EXPLOITS. 
 
 " By these means and by the exertions of the officers we were 
 able, from time to time, to get supplies of beans, sugar, tomatoes 
 and even oatmeal, while from the Red Cross people we got our 
 invaluable load of rice, cornmeal, etc. 
 
 "All of this was of the utmost consequence, not only for the 
 sick, but for those nominally well, as the lack of proper food was 
 telling terribly on the men. It was utterly impossible to get 
 them clothes and shoes. Those they had were, in many cases, 
 literally dropping to pieces. 
 
 " On the seventeenth the city surrendered. On the eighteenth 
 we shifted camp to here, the best camp we have had, but the march 
 hither under the noonday sun told very heavily on our men, 
 weakened by underfeeding and overwork, and the next morning 
 123 cases were reported to the doctor, and I now have but half of 
 the 600 men, with which I landed four weeks ago, fit for duty, 
 and these are not fit to do anything like the work they could 
 do then. 
 
 A NIGHT OF HARDSHIPS. 
 
 " As we had but one wagon, the change necessitated leaving 
 much of my stuff behind, with a night of discomfort, with scanty 
 shelter and scanty food for the most of the officers and many of 
 the men. Only the possession of the improvised pack train 
 alluded to above, saved us from being worse. 
 
 " Yesterday I sent in a detail of six officers and men to see if 
 they could not purchase or make arrangements for a supply of 
 proper food and proper clothing for the men, even if we had to 
 pay it out of our own pockets. Our suffering has been due, 
 primarily, to lack of transportation and of proper food or suffi- 
 cient clothing and of medical supplies. 
 
 " We should now have wagon sheets for tentage. Very 
 respectfully, 
 
 Among the United States regulars whose terms of enlistment 
 expired during the Santiago campaign, and who quit the service 
 upon returning to this country, was a man of the Ninth Infantry,
 
 STORY OF BRAVE EXPLOITS. 507 
 
 known to the members of the regiment as Johnson of Maryland. 
 He was a tall, lanky Southerner, and the pride of the Ninth be- 
 cause of his marksmanship, which was so true that Johnson was 
 head and shoulders over all the others in handling a Krag- 
 Jorgensen. 
 
 He appeared to be the most contented man in Uncle Sam's 
 service, and often spoke of re-enlisting, until an event occurred 
 just after the first day's fighting at San Juan, which caused him 
 to change his mind, and he vowed never to handle a gun again. 
 He would never speak of it to his comrades, but they all knew 
 why he quit ; and although they argued and tried to persuade him 
 to remain, Johnson only sook his head and said, " No, boys, I can't 
 stay with you any longer. I'd like to, but don't ask me again. 
 I can't do it. I must get out." 
 
 STORY OF A TROOPER. 
 
 One of the members of Johnson's company tells the story of 
 what caused the Ninth to loose its crack shot. 
 
 " We had been engaged in the hottest kind of work for some 
 hours, and after taking the first line of Spanish trenches we were 
 fixing them up for our own use. The Spaniards had been driven 
 back, but their sharpshooters were still at it, picking off our men 
 here and there. The Mauser bullets were whizzing around us 
 pretty lively, and I noticed that Johnson was getting more and 
 more impatient every minute, and acting as if he was just aching 
 to get at those Spanish sharpshooters, and finally he turned to me, 
 and in his drawling tone, said : ' Say, its tough we can't get a 
 chance at them.' 
 
 " He soon got his chance, however, for just as dusk began our 
 captain ordered a dozen of us to advance a short distance ahead, 
 and well beyond the trenches our forces had captured. When we 
 arrived on the spot we were halted on the edge of a dense wood. 
 Just ahead of us was an open space of clear ground, and on the 
 other side of that a low, thick brush, which extended as far as I 
 
 could see. 
 
 "Just before night came on we received our final orders,
 
 508 STORY OF BRAVE EXPLOITS. 
 
 which were to pay particular attention to the brush just ahead of 
 us on the other side of the clearing, and to shoot at the first head 
 we saw. We had settled down to our tiresome occupation of 
 watching and waiting, but always prepared for anything, and 
 Johnson and I were talking in low tones of the day's fighting we 
 had just passed through, when we heard the sound of a dry twig 
 breaking. We were alert in an instant, and all the men in our 
 line were looking straight ahead with pieces half raised, ready for 
 use. As 1 looked at Johnson I could see him smile, apparently 
 with the hope of a chance to shoot. The sound repeated itself, 
 this time a little nearer, but still quite indistinct. 
 
 " An instant later we again heard it, and it sounded directly 
 ahead of Johnson and me, and was, beyond a doubt, a cautious 
 tread, but too heavy for a man. While we waited in almost 
 breathless silence for something to happen we again heard the 
 cautious tread, now quite plain. It was the tread of a horse and 
 was just ahead of us. Suddenly, as the head became plainer, a 
 dark object appeared just above the top of the brush. Dozens of 
 guns were raised, but Johnson whispered : 'I've got him.' 
 
 HORSE AND RIDER STEP OUT. 
 
 " He crawled a few paces forward and we saw him raise his 
 gun, his fingers nervously working on the trigger. At that 
 instant the brush parted and a horse and rider stepped out. We 
 saw Johnson stretch out his piece and we expected to see a flash, 
 but just then the rider turned in his saddle, and by the dim light 
 from the dull red glow that still tinged the sky we saw a pair of 
 eyeglasses flash. We all knew at once who it was, but not one 
 of us spoke. We were probably too horrified, and before I could 
 say a word Johnson turned to me, and "with a look on his face I 
 shall never forget, exclaimed in a hoarse voice : 
 
 " * My God, Ben, Roosevelt 1 And I nearly plucked him !' 
 
 "With this he threw his gun from him and just sat there 
 
 and stared at the place in the brush where Colonel Roosevelt and 
 
 his horse had entered. The latter, when he heard the voices of 
 
 our men, came straight up to us, and appeared surprised to find
 
 STORY Of feRAVE EXPLOITS. 09 
 
 us So far beyond the trench. When he heard of the orders about 
 shooting at the first head we saw, he smiled and said : 
 
 '"That is the first I've heard of the orders. They were 
 probably issued while I was away on a little reconnoitering on 
 my own hook.' 
 
 " He spoke cheeringly to the men about and passed on, little 
 thinking how near he was to death a few minutes before. The 
 more we thought of it after he passed the more in the dumps we 
 got, for every one of us loved the Colonel of the Rough Riders, 
 particularly for his kindness to his men, and I tell you it was a 
 gloomy crowd that sat there watching Johnson, who, with his 
 head supported by his hand, was either praying or thinking 
 
 hard. 
 
 NOT HAPPY AFTERWARD. 
 
 "We were relieved shortly . afterward, and as we marched 
 back in silence Johnson walked with bowed head and none of us 
 spoke to him, for we imagined that he felt as if he would like to 
 be alone. From that day Johnson showed a restlessness that was 
 new to him, and I never saw him so happy as the day he stepped 
 aboard the transport bound for home. 
 
 "I don't know whether any word of the affair ever reached 
 Colonel Roosevelt's ears, but it was a mighty narrow ; escape, and 
 I tell you that I would rather have twenty-five Spaniards with 
 a bead on me at 100 yards than for Johnson to pick me out for a 
 target at 300 yards. In the first case you would have a good 
 chance of escaping injury, but with Johnson shooting i 
 clear case of cashing in your chips." 
 
 THE BALLAD OF "TEDDY'S TERRORS." 
 
 As RELATED BY ROUND-UP RUBE, OF RATTLESNAKE GULCK. 
 THERE wus a lovely regiment whose men wus strong and stout, 
 Fer some, they had diplomas, and fer some wus warrants out, 
 And Wood, he was their colonel bold, an' Teddy was his mate, 
 And they called 'em "Teddy's Lambkin's," fer their gentleness wus great, 
 Now a good ole man named Shafter says to Teddy and to Wood :- 
 "There's a joint called Santiago where we ain't well understood,-
 
 510 STORY OF BRAVE EXPLOITS. 
 
 So, take yer lamb-like regiment, and if you are polite 
 
 I think yer gentle little ways '11 set the matter right." 
 
 So when Teddy's boy's got movin' and the sun was on the fry, 
 
 And the atmosphere was coaxing them to lay right down and die, 
 
 Some gents from Santiago who wus mad 'cause they wus there 
 
 Lay down behind some bushes to put bullets through their hair. 
 
 Now Teddy's happy Sunday School wus movin' on its way 
 
 A-seekin* in its peaceful style some Dagos fer to slay ; 
 
 And the gents from Santiago, with aversion in their hearts, 
 
 Wus hiding at the cross-roads fer to blow 'em all apart. 
 
 There's a Spanish comic paper that has give us sundry digs 
 
 A-callin' of us cowards and dishonest Yankee pigs; 
 
 And I guess these folks had read it, and had thought 'twould be immense 
 
 Jest to paralyze them lambkins they wus runnin' up agains'. 
 
 So when our boys had pretty near arrived where they wus at, 
 
 And the time it was propitious fer to start that there combat, 
 
 They let her fly a-thinkin' they would make a dreadful tear, 
 
 An' then rubber-necked to see if any Yankees wus still there. 
 
 Now you can well imagine wot a dreadful start they had 
 
 To see 'em still a' standin' there and lookin' bold and bad, 
 
 Fer when this gentle regiment had heard the bullets fly, 
 
 They had a vi-lent hankerin' to make them Spaniards die. 
 
 So Teddy, he came runnin' with his glasses on his nose, 
 
 And when the Spanish saw his teeth you may believe they froze ; 
 
 And Wood was there 'long with 'im, with his cheese-knife in his hand, 
 
 While at their heels came yellin' all that peaceful, gentle band. 
 
 They fought them bloody Spaniards at their own familiar game, 
 
 And the gents from Santiago didn't like it quite the same 
 
 Fer you plug yer next door neighbor with a rifle ball or two 
 
 And he don't feel so robustous as when he's a-pluggin' you. 
 
 So when the shells wus hoppin', while the breech-blocks clicked and smoked, 
 
 An' the powder wouldn't blow away until a fellow choked, 
 
 That regiment of Yankee pigs wus gunnin' through the bush, 
 
 An' raisin' merry hell with that there Santiago push. 
 
 Then Teddy seen 'em runnin', and he gives a monstrous bawl, 
 
 And grabbed a red hot rifle where a guy had let it fall, 
 
 And fixin' of his spectacles more firmly on his face, 
 
 He started to assassinate them all around the place.
 
 511 
 
 So through the scrubby underbrush from bay" n't plant to tree, 
 
 Where the thorns would rip a feller's pants a shockin' sight to see, 
 
 He led his boy's a-dancin' on, a shoutin' left and right, 
 
 And not missin' many Spanish knobs that showed 'emselves in sight. 
 
 And when them Santiago gents wus finished to their cost, 
 
 Then Teddy's boys, they took a look, and found that they w.us lost, 
 
 And as their crewel enemies was freed from earthly pain, 
 
 They all sat down to wait fer friends to lead 'em back again. 
 
 That's the tale of Teddy's terrors, and the valiant deed they done, 
 
 But all tales, they should have morals, so o' course this tale has one. 
 
 So paste this idea in yer cage, wotever else you do, 
 
 Fer perhaps you'll thank me fer it yet before yer game is through : 
 
 The soldier-boy that wears the blue is gentle-like and meek, 
 But I doubt he'll mind the Bible if you soak him on the cheek; 
 An' should you get him riled a bit, you want to have a care, 
 Fer if he ever starts to fight he'll finish Gawd knows where ! 
 
 STEPHEN F. WHITMAN. 
 
 THE NOMINATION. 
 
 As the time for the nominating conventions in 1900 drew near, 
 public attention was turned to Mr. Roosevelt as a candidate for 
 Vice-President. The nomination was thrust upon him. In 
 nominating Governor Roosevelt for Vice-President, Colonel 
 Young of Iowa, spoke as follows: 
 
 " On the ship Yucatan was that famous regiment of Rough 
 Riders of the far West and the Mississippi Valley (applause). In 
 command of that regiment was that fearless young American, 
 student, scholar, plainsman, reviewer, historian, statesman, sol- 
 dier, of the middle West by adoption, of New York by birth. 
 That fleet sailed around the point, coming to the place of landing, 
 stood off the harbor, two years ago to-morrow, and the navy bom- 
 barded that shore to make a place for landing, and no man who 
 lives who was in that campaign as an officer, as a soldier, or as a 
 camp follower, can fail to recall the spectacle ; and, if he closes 
 his eyes he sees the awful scenes in that campaign in June and 
 July, 1898.
 
 612 STOR\ OF BRAVE EXPLOITS. 
 
 "And the leader of that .campaign of one of those regiments 
 shall be the name that I shall place before the Convention for the 
 office of Vice-President of the United States (applause.) 
 
 "Now, gentlemen of the Convention, I place before yon this 
 distinguished leader of Republicanism of the United States ;;this 
 leader of the aspirations of the people, whose hearts are right, 
 and this leader of the aspirations of the young men of this country. 
 Their hearts and consciences are with this young leader, whom I 
 shall name for the Vice-Presidency of the United States Theodore 
 Roosevelt, of New York." (Loud cheering.) 
 
 When the roll of states was called, it is needless to say every 
 delegate voted for Roosevelt with one exception, and that was 
 himself. A demonstration of the wildest and most enthusiastic 
 character, and lasting half an hour, followed the announcement 
 that Roosevelt was the nominee for Vice-President. 
 
 Palms were waved, the standards of the various delegations 
 were hurried to the platform, the band attempted to make itself 
 heard amid the loud acclaim, processions of excited, cheering dele- 
 gates marched up and down the aisles, and the popular New York 
 Governor was congratulated by as many as could get within 
 reach of him.