YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

From the library of
GOV. GIFFORD PINCHOT, Yale 1889
and MRS. PINCHOT
The gift of
GIFFORD B. PINCHOT, Yale 1938

WILLIAM McKINLEY

WHITE HOU5E FEB 2 a I SOI.

/c^J^~7

WILLIAM McKINLEY

HIS LIFE AND WORK

BY
CHARLES H. GROSVENOR
"IT IS GOD'S WAY"

THE CONTINENTAL ASSEMBLY
WASHINGTON, D. C,
1901

Copyright, 1901, by
THE CONTINENTAL ASSEMBLY
WASHINGTON, D. C.

Trow Directory
Printing &" Bookbinding Company
New York

EltU

Contents

PAGE
Authoe's Eemaeks  7
William McKinley : His Life and Woek ... 9
Editoeials feom Eepeesentative Newspapees . . .21
Teibutes feom Goveenoes of States . . . .127
Addeess of Goveenoe Geoege K. Nash at the McKinley
Memoeial Meeting of the Franklin County Bab . 166
Peesident McKinley's Last Speech .... 168
The Stoey of Peesident McKinley's Boyhood by His
Mother  175
Peayee foe Peesident McKinley in the Eotunda of
the Capitol Building, Washington, D. C, by Eev.
De. Heney E. Nayloe  180
Ex-President Cleveland's Eulogy, Delivebed Befoee the
Faculty and Students of Peinceton University . 182
Some Time We'll Undeestand  184
Last Words of Famous Men and Women . . .185

The late President McKinley's physician, Dr. Kixey, states that
after his distinguished patient could no longer speak in audible
words he could distinguish his lips uttering in whispers the words
of the following hymn, " Nearer, My God, to Thee " :

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 to Thee.

There let my way appear
Steps unto heaven;
All that Thou sendest ms
In mercy given;
Angels to beckon me
Nearer, my God, to Thee,
Nearer to Thee.

Though like a wanderer,
Weary and lone,
Darkness comes over me,
My rest a stone;
Yet in my dreams I'd be
Nearer, my God, to Thee,
Nearer to Thee.

Then with my waking thoughts
Bright with Thy praise.
Out of my stony griefs
Altars I'll raise;
So by my woes to be
Nearer, my God, to Thee,
Nearer to Thee.

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.

The following was a favorite hymn of the late President
McKinley, " Lead, Kindly Light " :
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 me.
I was not ever thus, nor prayed that Thou
Shouldst lead me on;
I loved to choose and see my path; but now
Lead Thou me on!
I loved the garish day; and, spite of fears,
Pride ruled my will: remember not past years.
So long Thy power has 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,
Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile.

William jEc&itile?

By the President of the United States of America.
A PROCLAMATION.
A terrible bereavement has befallen our people. The President
of the United States has been struck down ; a crime committed 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 fellow-
men, of most earnest endeavor for their welfare, by a death of Chris
tian 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 re
main forever a precious heritage of our people.
It is meet that we as a nation express our abiding love and rev
erence 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, 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 on that day
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
the homage of love and reverence to the great and good President,
whose death has smitten the nation with bitter grief.
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 fourteenth day of Septem
ber, a.d. one thousand nine hundred and one, and of the Indepen
dence of the United States, the one hundred and twenty-sixth.
THEODORE ROOSEVELT.
By the President : (Seal)
JOHN HAY, Secretary of State.

J

AUTHOR'S REMARKS
IT is a hard task to write a biographical sketch
of a living friend. It is a harder task to write
of William McKinley. I knew him for twenty-
five years. I was first attracted to his great char
acteristics as to no other rising public man. I
came to know him well. I came to love him
dearly. I do not hesitate to use the words " I
loved him," but I cannot write as I would wish to
now of William McKinley dead.
During last winter, under a contract which I made,
I wrote sketches of all the Presidents of the United
States for a publication not yet quite ready to be
presented to the public. That book will make its
appearance in due time and will be a very attrac
tive publication, in my judgment, even aside from
the sketches which it gave me so much pleasure to
write. This little volume is intended to convey to the
public, at little expense, some of the utterances of
the great men of the country and of the great edi
tors of the country who have spoken and written
in honor of McKinley. The editorials have been
selected from the great dailies, and afford examples
of the finest and purest literature. And there are

WILLIAM McKINLEY
selections from the eulogies by the governors of
States. I have no financial interest in the publication of
this book or the other to which I have referred, and
have made no demand upon the publishers for any
profit on the sale of this little volume. It has,
however, been required by me that a liberal portion
of the gross receipts of this volume shall be con
tributed to the building of a splendid monument to
the memory of William McKinley. That is, it shall
be a contribution to the enterprise of others, and
not as an independent monument. The fund thus
raised will be controlled and disposed of by myself
in the interest aforesaid, and shall be sacredly used
for that purpose and for that purpose alone.
No other publisher has had any authority to use
my name in connection with any other publication.
No mention will be made in this book of the
creature who has brought mourning into every
household of this broad land, and it will be time
enough in the future to devote the best energies and
the best intelligence of the best men of the United
States to ward off and prevent a recurrence of the
horrors of the past thirty days.

Washington, D. C, September 21, 1901.

WILLIAM McKINLEY
His Life &P Work

WILLIAM McKINLEY was the twenty-
fourth person who held the office of
President of the United States. Grover
Cleveland was twice elected, with an interval
between his first and second administrations, and so
by some McKinley is counted the twenty-fifth
President, but if that rule obtained there would be
duplication of all the Presidents who have held the
office twice. It is true that Mr. Cleveland was
elected to a second term in a manner widely
different from the others who have held the office
more than one term, for he was defeated for his
second term, in fact, and was renominated and
re-elected, but I have chosen to call Mr. McKinley
the twenty-fourth President of the United States.
William McKinley was born on the 29th day of
January, 1843, at Niles, in Trumbull County, Ohio,
in the Congressional District now represented by
Hon. Charles Dick. The ancestors of McKinley on
the paternal side were Scotch-Irish immigrants
from Scotland and became residents of Pennsyl
vania. His great-grandfather served in the Revo
lutionary War, and in 1814 went to Ohio and
settled there, and the family has resided in that
State ever since.

WILLIAM McKINLEY
The grandmother of the President, Mary Rose,
came from a Puritan family that went from
England to Holland and then from Holland to
Pennsylvania, coming over with William Penn as
one of the colony of the great Quaker. The father
of the President, William McKinley, Senior, was
born in Mercer County, Pennsylvania, in 1807, and
married Nancy Campbell Anderson, of Columbiana
County, Ohio, in 1829. Both the father and
grandfather of the President were iron manufac
turers. The father was a devout Methodist, a
Whig and Republican, an advocate of a protective
tariff, and in all these particulars the son has fol
lowed in the footsteps of his distinguished ancestor.
His father died in 1882 at the age of eighty-five.
His mother died at Canton, Ohio, in 1897, at the
age of eighty-nine.
William McKinley attended the public schools
at Niles, the Union Seminary at Poland, Ohio, and
for a term attended Allegheny College, at Mead-
ville, Pennsylvania, and he taught in the public
schools. Mr. McKinley was a clerk in a small
country post-office when the war began, and on
June 11, 1861, he enlisted as a private in the
Twenty-third Ohio Volunteer Infantry. He went
into active service at once in West Virginia, and it
may be said of him during his entire military
career that he was always in active service. For
special services at Antietam he was promoted to

WILLIAM McKINLEY
Second Lieutenant, his commission dating from
September 24, 1862, and on February 7, 1863, he
was again promoted to First Lieutenant. He was
in the great Lynchburg retreat in which his regi
ment marched 180 miles, practically fighting from
start to finish during that long-drawn-out and
terrible retreat.
He was in the battle at Winchester and was
especially noted for his gallantry. It was here
that he performed the feat of personal courage
which probably saved a regiment from capture.
Going to it with an order under heavy fire, riding
at the risk of his life, he delivered the order and
saved the regiment. He became Captain at the
age of twenty-one years, and was in the fighting in
the Shenandoah Valley. At Berryville his horse
was shot under him. He served on the staffs of
Hayes, Crook, and Hancock, and was brevetted
Major of Volunteers by President Lincoln for
special bravery in the battles of Opequan, Cedar
Creek, and Fisher's Hill. No man in his grade of
service earned brighter distinction for personal
gallantry than did young McKinley. At the close
of the war, being mustered out on July 21, 1865,
he returned to his home at Poland, Ohio, and
began the study of law. He attended the law
school at Albany, N. Y., and was admitted to the
bar at Warren, 0., in March, 1867, and removed
to Canton, which has ever since been his

WILLIAM McKINLEY
home. In 1867 he made his first political speech
in favor of the Constitutional Amendment submitted
to the voters of Ohio to strike out the word
" white" where it appears in the Constitution as a
qualification for voters. It was a campaign in
which the lowest possible prejudices of man's heart
were appealed to by the opposition, and while
Hayes was elected Governor by a trifling majority,
a Democratic Legislature was chosen and the Con
stitutional Amendment defeated. In 1869 he was
elected Prosecuting Attorney of Stark County,
served one term and was defeated for re-election.
In January, 1871, he married Miss Ida Saxton,
the daughter of a distinguished newspaper editor
and banker at Canton. Two daughters were born
to them, both of whom died in early childhood.
He was elected to Congress in 1876 and came to
Washington with the administration of Hayes,
under whose command he had served during the
greater portion of the war. He was a close
personal and confidential friend of Hayes ; he be
lieved in Hayes, and Hayes believed in him. He
served seven terms in Congress, with the exception
that upon a frivolous contest he was unseated
about the middle of one term.
He was a candidate for Speaker at the organiza
tion of the Fifty-first Congress, but was defeated
by Mr. Reed, who gave him the great position of
Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, and

WILLIAM McKINLEY
hence he became leader of the Republican majority
of the House. Returning to Ohio he encountered a
gerrymander of his district, and while the district
had usually given a Democratic majority of be
tween three and four thousand, he came within six
or seven hundred of an election. In 1891 he was
elected Governor of Ohio by about the usual
plurality, and in 1893 he was re-elected by the
overwhelming majority of nearly 81,000. He was
a friend of Blaine. He supported Blaine for the
nomination in 1884, was a member of the Com
mittee on Resolutions and presented the platform
to the Convention. He was a Delegate at Large in
1888 and supported John Sherman, and was again
chairman of the Committee on Resolutions. In
1892 he was again a Delegate at Large from Ohio
and supported the renomination of Harrison. He
served as Chairman of the Convention. In that
Convention he steadily refused to permit his name
to be presented, but, notwithstanding this fact, he
received 182 votes for President.
In 1896 he was nominated for President at the
St. Louis Convention, receiving 661 1-2 votes to
84 1-2 votes given for Thomas B. Reed, 61 1-2
votes for Matthew S. Quay, 58 votes for Levi P.
Morton, and 35 1-2 votes for William B. Allison.
He was elected by a plurality of the popular vote
of over 600,000 and received 271 electoral votes
against 176 for William J. Bryan, of Nebraska.
13

WILLIAM McKINLEY
He was renominated for President by acclamation
at Philadelphia on June 21, 1900, and received
292 electoral votes to 155 for William J. Bryan.
As heretofore stated, it is not so easy to write
of living men as of those who have completed
their careers and passed into history. This much
may be said of the first term of William McKinley :
He encountered vast questions of constitutional
law and vast exigencies of administration. He in
herited, as it were, from his predecessor, a con
dition existing between the tremendous popular
feeling in the United States in sympathy with the
people of Cuba and the dread of war with a foreign
power. Step by step his country was forced into war
with Spain. He did not seek this condition and
struggled patriotically against it. He believed that
diplomacy might accomplish all that war could
accomplish and leave this country in far better
position than could come of actual hostilities.
Never for one moment hesitating to execute the
determination of the American people that the
domination of Spain should be shaken off from the
Gem of the Antilles, he held back earnestly against
precipitating hostilities, and it may well be believed
to-day but for the mysterious sinking of the Maine
in the harbor of Havana his purpose in that behalf
would have been achieved. This country was ill
prepared for war. With an army of less than
i4

WILLIAM McKINLEY
25,000 effective men, without arms and ammunition
or appliances, war came. In February, prior to
the declaration of war in April, Congress appro
priated |50,000,000 to be used by the President to
put the country on a war footing and prepare for
the exigencies that seemed so imminent.
The expenditure of that money, under the direct
personal administration of the President, produced
marvellous results, and in a brief sketch it is only
possible to say that before the first day of July,
1898, we had an army of a quarter of a million of
men, armed, equipped, well fed, well housed and
well clothed. It is not my purpose to discuss the
operations of the army or the navy. It is sufficient
to say that before August 10th of that year, within
one hundred and twenty days from the declaration
of war, Spain had been overthrown and conquered
on land and sea, stripped of her navy and her army
destroyed, and both substantially made prisoners.
The achievement of the United States in the
organization and preparation for war, the adminis
tration of all the branches of the army and naval
service, and the distinction won by our soldiers and
sailors on land and sea, is a chapter in the world's
history, brilliant beyond comparison or description.
Following the war came the great questions of what
was to be done with the acquired territory. By
the treaty of Paris, which was signed December 10,
1898, we acquired the sovereignty of Porto Rico

WILLIAM McKINLEY
and the Philippine Islands, and the grave questions
which arose are still undecided. Among the
foreign complications which fell to the lot of
President McKinley's administration to solve, and
which met him on the very threshold, was the
Hawaiian affair. The withdrawal of the treaty
negotiated by Mr. Harrison from the Senate by
President Cleveland left for four years a condition
of substantial anarchy in the Sandwich Islands.
McKinley made haste to bring about a ratification
of the treaty of annexation, and his administration
has proceeded gradually, but constantly, to the
work of the establishment of civil government in
those islands. Other complications met him, in
cluding the Behring Sea seal question, which caused
no little irritation, but which was finally satis
factorily settled and disposed of. Great irritation
grew up between the settlers and gold-seekers
along the Alaskan boundary, but by wisely arranged
modus Vivendi satisfactory results are in process of
being reached.
From the very first President McKinley bent to
the task of removing the lingering prejudice and ill-
feeling existing between the North and the South,
which for thirty -three years had followed the Civil
War. Without going into details it is proper in
this connection to say that at the end of his first
administration the traces and scars of civil strife
are practically eliminated and a better condition of
16

WILLIAM McKINLEY
feeling exists between the North and the South
than has ever existed from the days of Calhoun
down to the present hour. Conciliation with firm
ness, recognition of the merits of all men, and the
just appreciation of adverse opinion, have been the
strong characteristics of his administration.
Mr. McKinley had served in the House of Repre
sentatives for a long period of time. In that
relation he had come in close contact with the men
prominent in affairs in the United States. He had
been himself a strong, uncompromising Republican.
His partisanship never faltered when it was a
question of his party's success, but his judgment
and appreciation of the men of the Democratic
Party was so fair and so generous that he found
himself duly appreciated by the men of the Demo
cratic Party who had served with him in Congress,
and this fact alone smoothed the way to the
relations now existing between the President and
the minority of the country. While the campaign
of 1900 was bitterly fought on both sides, the
personal popularity of McKinley is traceable in the
election returns from every precinct in the Demo
cratic States. No partisan candidate for President
ever received so large a vote from the opposite
party as did McKinley. The numbers ran up into
many thousands in many of the Southern States, as
indicated by the small pluralities against McKinley
in the very districts and States where large plurali-
17

WILLIAM McKINLEY
ties or majorities were given for the regular Demo
cratic candidates for Governor, for Congressman
and for other officers.
It was said of him during his first campaign that
he would be unduly yielding to pressure, that he
would mould his sentiments to escape antagonism
with persistent advisers, and that he would be
dominated by leaders of his party. The end of his
first administration shows that there was not the
smallest foundation for any one of these suggestions.
While he has ever been yielding to the opinions
of others, when his own opinion was thereby
modified, he has exhibited a steady, unyielding
purpose of his own to carry into effect by his
administrative acts the great principles and ideas
he believed to underlie the foundations of the
Government and to be indispensable to its pros
perity. At the close of his first administration he has
the great joy to recognize that during no other four
years of the history of this country was there ever
such mighty strides of prosperity witnessed here or
elsewhere. The growth of business, the expansion
of trade, the development of manufactures, the
employment and compensation of labor, the pros
perity of agriculture with the growth of the national
sentiment at home and the recognition of the
mighty power and consequence of the nation
abroad, have given to his administration a degree of
18

WILLIAM McKINLEY
success unparalleled. The personal characteristics
of McKinley were most attractive. No comparison
should be instituted between the personality of
public men, much less the President of the United
States, but McKinley was, in his relation to the
masses of the people, and with all the people, from
the highest to the lowest, a marvel of genial habits
and characteristics which it would be vain for me
to attempt to describe. He upheld the dignity of
the Presidential office and reached with hand and
heart of man to every person who ever came in
contact with him. The geniality and kindliness
with which he was wont to meet the people was as
genuine as the shining of the sun in the morning.
There was none of the sycophant, none of the
hunter for popularity, none of the tricks of the
handshaker, but the genial, warm-hearted, true
man who looks his neighbor in the face and
recognizes the imprint of the Maker.
Note. — The foregoing sketch was written in January, 1901,
during the lifetime of William McKinley and appears exactly
as written at that time. The publication of this book having
been delayed so long, it remains now to be stated that William
McKinley was assassinated in the Temple of Music of the Buf
falo Exposition on September 6, 1901. He lingered with great
promise of recovery until the early hours of September 13, 1901,
when a reaction set in, which resulted in his untimely death at
2.15 on the morning of September 14, 1901. He died at the
residence of John W. Milburn, President of the Buffalo Exposi
tion. His remains were conveyed from Buffalo to the Capitol
'9

WILLIAM McKINLEY
in Washington, where they laid in state on September 17th, and
were thence conveyed to Canton, O., where they were laid to
rest on September 19th.
It is impossible for me to add words of sufficient eulogy to
satisfy my own feelings. To the great mass of American people
the death of McKinley came as a personal grief and a permanent
personal sorrow. There was not a city, town, hamlet, shop, mine,
factory, or farm in the United States that did not exhibit tokens
of grief. Words of condolence and sympathy came from every
civilized nation on the globe. Nothing like it has ever been
witnessed as the result of the death of any man. Not alone re
spected, he was beloved by the people. Tears flowed, eulogies
were pronounced, houses were draped all over the world. On
the day of his funeral the entire commerce of the United States,
even to the street railroads and trolley lines, ceased for five min
utes, and there was an absolute silence of all business enterprise
and business movement throughout the United States; a great
tribute to the man who had done so much for the welfare of
his country. He died in the full vigor of his great manhood.
He fell right at his post of duty. He fell when his great policies
had reached their culmination in the prosperity of his country,
the abolishment of sectional lines, the fraternity of sentiment
and action, and amid the tears of his devoted people.

Editorials from Representative
Newspapers
Cincinnati Daily Enquirer.
THE PEESIDENT NO MOKE.
The mortal end of President William McKinley has come.
To him the mystery of the other and better world is unsealed.
" 'Tis but a man gone," if we view the incident from the stand
point of every-day life. With thousands of others who had held
brief careers on this big round globe, his spirit fled on the 14th of
September, 1901. The tragedy of nature has a fearful enact
ment every day, if we stop in our vocations and our pleasures
to count those who have fallen in the unremitting battle of ex
istence. If each person were called upon to mourn all the dead,
there would be an unceasing deluge of tears.
Ordinarily, when a life goes out the busy world goes on and
scarcely heeds the murmurs of the few who are directly be
reaved. This is a part of the wise provision of nature. It is
only when a man of exalted position, and of great moral worth,
passes away, that grief assumes the mien of universality — that
" enterprises of great pith and moment " are arrested in the
general tribute, not merely to the man, but to the mighty interests
and civilizations which he represents by the voice of the people.
It is also wise that on such an occasion the lesson of the brevity
of life — brief alike to sovereign and peasant, to President and
plain citizen — should impress itself on all.
The awful shock to the President's invalid wife, to his imme-

WILLIAM McKINLEY
diate relatives and intimate friends, is something so inexpressible
that no one could adequately write it without a deep feeling of
sorrow and sympathy that in themselves disarm his pen. But it
is still a more solemn event in its general aspect. It is the result
of the work of a wretched assassin against the voice of eighty
millions of people who give the model Republic the breath of
life. A murderer has braved the sentiment of a free and en
lightened people and made a great country almost desperate in
its helplessness against a vulgar criminal.
The great heart of American citizenship beats in sorrow for
William McKinley as a man and as a Chief Executive.
The consolation upon which we must rely is in the perpetuity
of our institutions — their stable strength against the most fearful
shocks. Great men have come and gone, and contributed their
sparks of genius to the creation of the fabric that is indestructible.
William McKinley has done his part. He has made his impress,
and the Government will go on without him and his predeces
sors in the cause of the public.

San Francisco Call.

DEAD.

The President's death, coming close upon the bright promise
of his recovery, hurts the good heart of the people more than if
the assassin's malice had effected its purpose immediately. In
the universal sorrow there is little to be said that is comforting.
Our people have taken pride in the peculiarly American career
of their Presidents. Washington was the owner of a large es
tate, but his life was that of a plain man, the planter's life of his
time, and aside from his work as a civil engineer and his military
experience, his interests were with the land, the crops, and the
markets, and his country.
The elder and younger Adams were more nearly patrician

WILLIAM McKINLEY
than any others of our Presidents. Jefferson lived upon the in
come of his land, and Madison and Monroe were men of means
below the average of their time. Jackson was orphaned by the
Eevolution in his childhood. His mother died by the wayside
on her way from nursing the wounded Continentals, and while
in the Presidency he was concerned in the marketing of the crops
produced, and the skins of wild animals killed, on the lands
around the Hermitage. Martin Van Buren's life began among
humble surroundings at Kinderhook, and both the Harrisons
had rugged struggles in early life. Lincoln and Johnson had
no heritage but their genius. Grant began on an Ohio farm.
Garfield was a barefoot boy on the canal, and Cleveland had his
growth upward through a weight of poverty and privation.
To this class belonged William McKinley. The first neces
sity of his life was self-support, and the Civil War found him a
youth contributing cheerfully as a breadwinner to the typically
American family into which he was born. The tocsin stirred
him to immediate action, and he entered the ranks as a private
soldier, offering his life for that of his country, to witness the
victory of the Union as a commissioned officer.
In Congress, as Governor of his State, and as President, he
was always the typical American. On him no experience was
lost. His early privations, his observations as an industrial
doctrinaire, his keen analysis of the conditions of popular pros
perity, formed in him the resolution to do his might for the in
dustrial, financial, and commercial supremacy of his country,
to the end that not only should opportunity be equal and better
than in his youth, but that the means of men to grasp it should
be increased. Dominated by this idea, his election to the Presi
dency made him the instrument of its realization.
He has fallen in the mi^t of his fruition among men. By
his fidelity his country is the foremost nation. No empire past
or present exceeded its power. He found it industrially de
pressed and financially dependent. It mourns with his house-
23

WILLIAM McKINLEY
hold, a nation that centres within itself the power to dictate to
the world.
The day that a wretched assassin executed upon him the
malice of his detractors, his country could boast the largest num
ber of the best paid laborers, the most prosperous farmers and
manufacturers in the world, the most contented homes, the best
fed and best clothed people upon whom the sun shines. In all
this his agency was direct and not intermediate. The benefactor
of his country dies, murdered by a monster who prates in jus
tification his love of " the common people ! " A typical Ameri
can, the light of the nation's life, is dead, slain by the distorted
spawn of imported degeneracy, inspired by a sentiment pro
moted by one who should be outlawed by all races and all nations
and scorned by all men.
The nation will wipe away its tears and go forward. The
great President survives himself. The impulse his potent genius
has given to the interests of the people will continue. This is
a land of law which all make, all must obey, and none can assassi
nate. His constitutional successor will take the great office and
its great responsibilities, and bear them like a man. The assassin
sought to murder a nation, but that nation will live with power
unimpaired. It will fulfil the high destiny devised for it by
its stricken citizen and chief. Its people will draw closer to
gether. They will, with awakened zeal, demand that American
life and energy shall be less polluted by the turbid stream that
has poured upon our shores, bringing the morbid and murderous
blood that breeds such reptiles as this assassin. They will more
quickly mark the degenerate ingrate among themselves, whose
cunning lies and false alarms misrepresent his country. Over
the white face of the dead they will take a fresh oath of fidelity
to freedom, to American principles, to a higher sense of duty,
and they will make this a land in which no traitor to the prin
ciples of its people can live.
While the bells toll for the dead and the sombre emblems of
24

WILLIAM McKINLEY
mourning are abroad, and the sun shines less brightly and men
go softly and downcast, let no one mistake it all for a sign of
despair. It means heart-soreness and sorrow as the beginning of
a high resolve that toleration of the causes of this mighty crime
has ended.

From the Washington Post.
THE PRESIDENT IS DEAD.
Our beloved President is dead. The hopes, the almost con
fident expectations, with which we entered upon the current
week have led us to his grave. Even as lately as three days ago
the buoyant feeling prompted by the official bulletins still pos
sessed us. Millions of men and women rejoiced in what they
had accepted as a sure promise of his restoration. Even yester
day they hoped. But the end is here. The shadow fades upon
the wall. And of William McKinley, a few hours ago the
greatest ruler in the whole world, there remains only the memory
of his abundant virtues and the shining record of his honorable
achievement. One risks nothing in the assertion that no President of the
United States since the foundation of the American Union ever
won so thoroughly the personal affection of his fellow-citizens.
We have had soldiers and statesmen, patriots and martyrs, and
they have commanded our admiration, our enthusiasm, our grati
tude, our loyalty. But Mr. McKinley had all this and more —
he had our sympathies, our impulses of fellow-feeling, our
brotherly and filial devotion. It is no small thing for a Chief
Magistrate, set above eighty million of people, to secure not only
the respect and «onfidence, but the deep and genuine friendship
of those over whom he has been called to rule. It is, indeed,
a thing as rare as it is great, for it is given only to such as truly
love their brethren and demonstrate it in their daily lives.
25

WILLIAM McKINLEY
McKinley was so deeply rooted in the nation's love, he had so
enveloped himself in popular esteem, not even the bitterest ene
mies of the Republican Party could be brought to imagine evil
in his case, no matter what scandal might touch the organization
itself. Whatever happened, his 'scutcheon was clear and bright.
Under any circumstances, the people's faith in him was fixed.
What indescribable pathos characterizes the closing chapter
of this remarkable career! Ten days ago he stood erect, the
figure of a fine virility, full of health and strength, his intellectual
powers at their zenith. He had scarcely entered upon his sec
ond term as President, having been re-elected under cir
cumstances that made his success almost a national ovation.
Beloved on every hand, honored, trusted, hailed as the people's
friend and sympathizer; sure of popular support in everything
and anything he did, he was the most enviable public man in all
the world. To-day he lies in his coffin, ready for the tomb.
Mankind will honor his memory not less for the splendid forti
tude with which he met his fate than for the triumphs he
achieved in life. History furnishes no nobler spectacle than that
of the stricken President, one hand upon his breast, looking with
a gentle pity at the wretch who had just wounded him to death.
History records no more touching episode than that of Mr.
McKinley lapsing slowly into unconsciousness, and, while the
surgeons waited, whispering, " Thy kingdom come; Thy will be
done," as he passed into the world of dreams. A Christian sol
dier, he. With the shadows closing round about him, shutting
out the fair vision of an earthly greatness without parallel upon
this globe, it was as though he heard the Master's call, which
others could not hear, and his brave lips answered: Adsum!
Then came awakening, an interval of hope and cheerfulness,
illumined always by that patient courage which had ennobled
the whole tragedy, and then the darkening valley, the weary eyes,
the final sleep.
No place now for conventional retrospect or calculating fore-
26

WILLIAM McKINLEY
cast. We give this hour to our grief. The man we loved lies
dead, the victim of a crime too diabolical for words — a crime
which stuns while it afflicts us. But we know that he died
humbly, lovingly, without fear. He must have fancied the green
fields and heard the running brooks, and seen the purple chang
ing on the hill, for as he passed he murmured:
" Nearer, my God, to Thee! "

From the Baltimore Sun.
THE DEATH OF THE PRESIDENT.
The death of President McKinley, after the optimistic and
cheering reports which have come from his bedside day after
day, is scarcely less of a shock to the country than was the an
nouncement of the murderous attack upon him. The false
hopes upon which the public has been fed serve, indeed, to in
tensify the general grief and depression and add the pang of
bitter disappointment to the original burden of regret and sor
row. Many persons of experience and conservatism, it is true,
accepted the daily bulletins issued at Buffalo with considerable
allowance for the possibility of human error, but the physicians
and surgeons in attendance on the President were men of emi
nence in their profession, and the tone of their bulletins was
so confident and buoyant that the great majority of people
were led to believe that the danger-point had been passed and
that the recovery of the distinguished patient was in all prob
ability but a matter of a few weeks. The fall from this height
of hope is, as we have said, a second blow scarcely less severe
than the first, and invests the momentous tragedy with a deep
pathos that touches every heart. The physicians will doubtless
be the objects of criticism in many quarters, but whether their
explanations are entirely satisfactory or not, it should be re-
27

WILLIAM McKINLEY
membered that the issues of life and death are in higher hands
than theirs, and that they exerted all their skill and intelligence
in the struggle against death. The melancholy termination of
the battle shows that medical and surgical science still fights
in the dark in many cases against its old antagonist, Death, and
that there are still many things connected with life and disease
undreamt of in its philosophy. If the President was not to re
cover, it was unquestionably best both for him and the country
that he should have passed away after his brief illness of little
more than a week, rather than have been doomed to linger on in
suffering for two months and a half, like President Garfield.
Both he and the country are saved the protracted agony of sus
pense and pain which would have been involved in a long and
vain contest with a fatal wound, and we have the sad satisfaction
of knowing that he has been saved the torture of a lingering
death, the keen pangs of hope deferred, and the weariness of
mind and body that oppress the sufferer who is forced to pass
slowly through the valley of the great shadow.
Little more than ten months ago William McKinley seemed
one of the favorite sons of fortune. Re-elected to the chief
office of the nation by an overwhelming electoral vote after one
of the most tremendous struggles in our political annals and a
campaign involving issues of world-wide consequence, he rode
conspicuous on the crest of that great wave of victory as one
of the most important and significant figures of contemporaneous
history. Identified with a new and far-reaching policy of gov
ernment that placed us among the national dictators of the world,
and the representative of a new regime of aspiration that
stretched out its hands for power and business development to
the uttermost ends of the earth, no other ruler among men
seemed to stand on so glorious a summit of possibility as an
architect of national greatness and a moulder of national destiny.
His future appeared full of nothing but greatness and good
fortune, while that of his Presidential rival suggested only
28

WILLIAM McKINLEY
political obscurity and failure. And yet if he had been defeated
last November and his Democratic rival elected, he would have
been alive to-day and Mr. Bryan would probably have been
the victim of the undiscriminating anarchist, whose murderous
creed knows no distinction of party or form of government.
This would seem to be the very mockery of fate. And yet it
was not a fate which Mr. McKinley would have been willing to
escape at the sacrifice of what he considered his duty to his
country. Now that he lies silent in the calm radiance of death
the passions and prejudices of " life's little day " give way to a
broader charity and to a deeper insight, and we see face to face
the soul which we saw as through a glass darkly during the
storms of faction and the clouds of party rivalry. Duty and des
tiny were favorite words of Mr. McKinley, and we can cheer
fully concede now that they came from his heart, and that as
he was true to his conceptions of duty he would not have shirked
his destiny, dark and bloody though it has been, could he have
foreseen that his re-election was but the portal to death. It
was another of the fortunate circumstances of his misfortune
that while his sufferings were not prolonged, he lived long
enough to know of the outpouring of national love which the
attack on him produced and of the universal good-will and es
teem with which he was personally regarded in every section of
the country. He lived long enough to feel the solace of the
prayers that men offered for his recovery, and to realize that if
destiny had given him a martyr's cross, it also brought the mar
tyr's crown of immortality and honor. Quite as truly as any
soldier who falls in battle, he died for his country as the victim
of a social propaganda which wages war against the representa
tives of all civilization and government.
The Divine Healer did not answer, as we asked, our prayers
for his recovery. We asked for his life, and He has given him
" a long life, even forever and ever." His own prayer as he
sank into unconsciousness before the surgical operation was that
29

WILLIAM McKINLEY
of the soldier and the Christian — "Thy kingdom come; Thy
will be done." It was the spirit of one ready for any fate, the
spirit of a manly, Christian gentleman, who had faced danger
and death and all the problems of life many times before, and
was prepared to face the last great problem with the same brave
and unshaken heart. In this solemn moment, when death unites
the nation in a brotherhood of sorrow, all true Americans will
delight in doing honor" to the noble personal qualities which
illuminated the life of Mr. McKinley and made him a splendid
type of American manhood, which is the highest expression of
humanity. Mr. McKinley was a man of strong and solid mind,
if not of brilliant intellectuality, and history will give him high
rank among our Presidents, not only because of his association
with the great events of his time, but because of real ability and
comprehensive grasp in public affairs, and this without refer
ence to whether he was right or wrong in his views of govern
ment policy. But his moral qualities are those which the Ameri
can people will admire and dwell upon most at this juncture —
his personal and public purity, his kindly heart and generous
impulses, his shining domestic virtues, his love of country, and
his brave and undaunted soul. If his name is associated in his
tory with grave changes in governmental policy and national at
titude as regards foreign affairs, it will also be associated with
the patriotic and noble effort to bury sectional discord at home
and to unite in peace and love the States torn asunder many
years ago by hate and war. Standing by the man who has died
for the nation, we are all to-day Americans, and nothing but
Americans. As the blood of the martyr is the seed of the Church,
the tragedy of Mr. McKinley's death should strengthen the
foundations of the Republic by bringing closer together all who
love free institutions and giving fresh power to old ideals and
aspirations. His touching prayer — " Thy kingdom come ; Thy
will be done " — should be the inspiration for the revival of a
higher Americanism that will know no rivalry but that of bring-
3°

WILLIAM McKINLEY
ing our republican institutions to the loftiest attainable level
and of making our common country better, greater, and more
glorious than ever before.

Los Angeles Express.
PRESIDENT McKINLEY IS DEAD.
At last the worst has been realized. The President's assassin
did his atrocious work in a manner that was surely deadly. Presi
dent McKinley breathed his last at 2.15 this morning. The par
ticulars of his passing are given in the despatches from Buffalo
in sufficient detail.
The life of President McKinley has been sacrificed on the
altar of firm government and rational being. The assassin, that
most detestable of creatures, has robbed the Government of the
United States of its executive head, and the people of the United
States of the man they have delighted to regard as the first citi
zen of the Republic.
And now he is cut short in his high and brilliant career. He
is dead! President McKinley is no more. The Los Angeles
" Express," with all other patriotic journals and all good citizens,
commits him to lasting history. His name and the story of his
tragic ending never will be forgotten.

From the Philadelphia Press.
THE NATION'S LOSS.
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
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WILLIAM McKINLEY
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 or 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 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 Presi
dents. 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, in all posts and places, in
all ranks and work, to serve the land he loved and made greater,
to 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.
32

WILLIAM McKINLEY
St. Louis Globe-Democrat.
MR. McKINLEY IN HISTORY.
William McKinley's particular distinction in history will be
that he was at the head of the Government when the United
States, emerging from its condition of exclusiveness and aloof
ness, entered the comity of world-nations. Other Presidents
also have dealt with great domestic problems, like the finances
and the tariff, at times when these issues came up in an acute
phase. Other Presidents have likewise directed the public
affairs of the country through great wars, some foreign and some
domestic. Washington, the country's first political chieftain,
had been its military commander in the conflict which made it
a nation. Madison was at the front at the time when the war
of 1812-15 gained for the country the social independence which
supplemented the political independence won by Washington.
Polk was President through the war of 1846-48, which, by the
annexation of New Mexico and California, advanced the coun
try's boundaries on the southwest to the Pacific, and contributed
the latest accession of contiguous territory. Lincoln, in the con
flict of 1861-65, made the nation, in the words of Chief-Justice
Chase, in a decision rendered a few years afterward, an " indc
structible union of indestructible States."
It was Mr. McKinley's peculiar honor that he controlled
the Government's destinies at the time when the United States,
ceasing to be restricted in its concerns to the Western hemisphere,
projected itself into the expanding circle of world interests and
activities. This ned departure originated with the late Presi
dent himself, so far as regards its practical operation. At the
time when the terms of peace with Spain were being arranged
Congress was not in session. During that epochal period the
President had an absolutely free hand in the management of the
affairs of the Government. He could have made what terms he
33

WILLIAM McKINLEY
liked with Spain without any fear of opposition on the part of
Congress. Porto Rico and the Philippines could have been
given up, as many prominent newspapers and Congressmen ad
vocated at the time and afterward. All the country except the
trans-Mississippi region seemed to be indifferent on those points.
The region between the Mississippi and the Pacific, particularly
between the Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains, urged from
the beginning that the flag in Porto Rico and the Philippines
be kept up. Mr. McKinley, who was quicker than any other
President since Lincoln to grasp the popular will, and who
obeyed it more implicitly than any other executive since the
Civil War President, swung the entire country over to the posi
tion taken by this section, and inscribed this policy on the world's
statutes. The outside world was earlier than this country in gauging
the momentous significance of this broadening of the United
States' sphere of activity. Premier Salisbury grasped it when
he made his celebrated contrast between growing and dying na
tions. The late ex-Premier Crispi viewed it as a portent when
he attempted to project his vision into the future to the time
when the wealthy, expanding, aggressive, and militant United
States of America should come in conflict with the stationary,
hampered, tradition-fettered, and disunited Europe. The picture
which the great Italian statesman drew is not accepted by the
American people. They believe that part of the country's mis
sion is to spread the blessings of civilization and democracy
throughout the world, and hasten the era of universal peace.
This view has already been justified by concrete facts. In the
sway which it has just exerted in China there is an indication of
the direction in which the influence of the United States is to
work in the coming time. Even while seeming to follow Con
gress on some important questions, the late President in reality
usually led. He was a tribune and representative of the Ameri
can people in one of the momentous crises of their history.
34

WILLIAM McKINLEY
William McKinley was the creator and the director of the new
and greater United States which has just entered the circle of
world nations.

Indianapolis Journal.
OUR DEAD PRESIDENT.
The American people can say the worst has happened, but
not altogether the unexpected. From the moment that the
shooting of the President was announced, and the location and
nature of his really serious wounds were known, there was a
general feeling that his recovery was doubtful, and behind all
the hopeful bulletins there lurked a fear that the wound or
resulting complications would prove fatal. The President's
strong constitution, his robust health, and his great will-power
were in his favor, but his age, though not great, was rather
against him, and there were so many possibilities involved that
everybody felt there was a strong probability that he would not
recover. This worst presentiment has been verified, and the
American people are called to mourn the death of the third of
their Presidents slain by the assassin.
There are those who were much nearer to Mr. McKinley
than were the people at large, and to whom his death means
much more than it does to the most of his countrymen. For
these universal sympathy will go out in the largest degree, be
cause they mourn the death of one who was near and dear to,
them, but the people also will mourn the loss of a great leader
and President, whom they were learning more and more to trust
and follow. No American statesman has ever grown more
steadily or rapidly in public estimation at home and abroad than
Mr. McKinley did from his first election as President. When
he was called to the Presidential chair there were some even of
his political supporters who doubted whether he would meas
ure up to the requirements of the office. These doubts were
35

WILLIAM McKINLEY
soon dispelled. He more than fulfilled the expectations and pre
dictions of those who had the best means of knowing and judging
him. During an administration of stress and storm he showed
himself easily the master of every situation, and won the ad
miration of his countrymen by his political tact and that of
foreigners by his wise statesmanship. His election for a sec
ond term was a splendid popular indorsement of his first ad
ministration, and the two together form one of the most brilliant
eras in our history. There can be no doubt but the future his
torian will class William McKinley among the greatest of our
Presidents — great in his patriotism, in his leadership, in his
devotion to duty, in his singleness of purpose, in his conscien
tiousness, in his moral courage, in his nearness to and trust in
the people, in his loyalty to high ideals, in his simplicity of char
acter, in his personal and domestic virtues — in short, great in all
that goes to make a statesman and ruler for a free people to be
proud of. This will be McKinley's place in history. The ver
dict has already been measurably anticipated by the judgment
of intelligent foreigners, who, at their distance, are better capa
ble of forecasting the judgment of posterity than are Mr.
McKinley's countrymen of to-day. Among them there is jio
dissenting voice in the opinion that he was one of the greatest
Presidents we have had. The London " Globe," usually un
friendly to the United States, says : " He played with signal
distinction and entire success the difficult part so suddenly im
posed upon him by the new imperial destiny of the United
States." Lord Salisbury's private secretary, speaking for the
British Premier, said that in Mr. McKinley's death " the whole
world will lose a man of greater integrity and statesmanship
than it at present realizes." Similar expressions have come from
all over the world. In the national mourning this event will
cause the American people can feel that they have the sincere
sympathy of all civilized peoples, irrespective of the cause of the
President's death and " the deep damnation of his taking off."
36

WILLIAM McKINLEY
Language fails to express the magnitude of the nation's loss
by the death of its Chief Magistrate under such circumstances
— such a President, at such a time, and by such means! The
death of such a man as Mr. McKinley after his retirement from
office, and from natural causes, would have been a national loss,
as was that of ex-President Harrison, but to have him stricken
down by the bullet of an assassin in the fulness of health and
the very culmination of his career will intensify the popular
grief. President McKinley had grown very steadily in popular
estimation since his first election, but if there was any lack of
appreciation of his character by his countrymen they need only
accept foreign estimates of him. Without exception the states
men and papers of Europe have pronounced him one of the
greatest and most admirable of our Presidents. The paper with
the largest circulation of any in Russia said : " He is an example
of manliness, uprightness, and noble-mindedness, of which the
great Republic is justly proud." Similar tributes to his charac
ter were paid all over Europe.
Yet even the death of such a President by the hand of an
assassin will not shake the Government nor terrify the Ameri
can people. It is as true now as when Garfield declared it after
the assassination of Abraham Lincoln: " God reigns and the
Government at Washington still lives! " The American people
are less excitable and more self-contained and self-controlled
now than they were forty or even twenty years ago. They feel
that the eyes of the world are on them, and that they must carry
themselves in a manner befitting a great government and people.
Their horror, indignation, and grief at this shocking crime are
too great for expression, and, therefore, they will not try to ex
press them in violent outbreaks or phrases. They will take to
heart the lesson taught by the event, and will try to make their
Government and institutions more worthy of popular support
and loyalty than ever before. But they will not forget the crime,
nor the criminal, nor the odious school of thought he represents.
37

WILLIAM McKINLEY
Philadelphia North-American.
DEATH OF THE PRESIDENT.
Even as a wave of astonishment accompanied the tide of hor
ror that was spread over the land by the assassin's blow at the
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 Chief 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 reports issued up to mid
night on Thursday, and relatives and personal friends, who were
kept privately informed of the conditions, exceeded the official
bulletins in their assurances to the public that the President
would live. The Republic was preparing for a heartfelt thanks
giving such as has not occurred since Lee surrendered at Appo
mattox. 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 can
not 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
gentleman, William McKinley was without personal enemies,
and it seemed unthinkable that even madness itself could wish
him harm.
Yet, in the flower of his usefulness, this good man has been
cut down by an assassin. The wretch does not plead what is
38

WILLIAM McKINLEY
understood in America as a political motive. The President's
policies had critics in plenty, fellow-countrymen of the party in
antagonism to his, and not a few in his own party. But the mis
creant 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 quar
ter 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 Russian commune.
The assassin is himself as unexpected, as amazing, as his act was
horrible and astounding. But such as the wretch is — debased,
abnormal, petty, and grotesque — it was in his power to slaugh
ter greatness and wrap a nation in black. For a crime so tre
mendous 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 Presi
dent has fallen, but the Republic is unharmed. The tasks left
unfinished by William McKinley will be taken up by the hands
of him whom the laws, equal to every emergency of state, ap
point 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! " 39

WILLIAM McKINLEY
Minneapolis Journal.
McKINLEY'S PLACE IN HISTORY.
" We uncommiserate pass into the night
From the loud banquet, and, departing, leave
A tremor in men's memories, faint and sweet
And frail as music."
Time is fleeting; life is moving; the world is for the living,
the grave for the dead. But while the humble millions live
their lives and die their deaths unknown and but briefly
mourned, and many of the great are cursed in death and
tearlessly consigned to tombs that have too long awaited them,
there are a few of the great, so blessed in life and death that they
do not " uncommiserate pass into the night " from the banquet
of life and endeavor, leaving behind them only memories " frail
as music." Of these blessed of the Lord was William McKinley, more
truly by the grace of God President of the United States than
was ever king or emperor of the blood divinely chosen.
Men long remember the righteous great whose lives have
gone out tragically and pathetically. The tender memory and
the sense of personal loss survive with such men far beyond
their generation. What patriot does not, to this day, personally
mourn the death of Lincoln — even though the noble war Presi
dent had been gathered to his fathers before the mourner was
yet come out of the mist of time ? What tender-hearted boy, as
he ponders the life of Garfield, does not feel that in him he lost
an unknown friend?
Thus were the fates kind to William McKinley, grievous
as his loss is to us, hot as our indignation is at the dastard mur
derer, when they inscribed his name upon the roll of martyr
Presidents, of Presidents who paid in a shorter term of earthly
life for the greatness of station and immortality of fame.
40

WILLIAM McKINLEY
But the fame and memory of the late President are founded
on his life even more than the manner of his death. The old
Arab maxim admonishes man, who cries at birth, so to live that
others shall weep at his death. So lived McKinley the man, so
acted McKinley the President.
Fortunate in his opportunities, he so availed himself of them
that he must be numbered among the great as well as the martyr
Presidents. On the scroll of Presidents who by a happy union of talents
and opportunities have won immortal fame by their official
acts are:
George Washington, founder of the Republic and inspirer of
the great policy of non-interference with the affairs of other
nations. Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence,
who gave the national impulse toward democracy, and by the
bold purchase of Louisiana acquired for the nation a territorial
stage worthy of the nascent greatness of its people.
James Monroe, first to establish a positive foreign policy, in
the political doctrine that bears his name, and has for eighty
years been the palladium of the Republics of Latin America
against the territorial greed of Europe.
Abraham Lincoln, emancipator of the slave and unifier of
the nation.
William McKinley, father of the new twentieth-century na
tional policy of world-wide power, influence, and beneficence for
the great Republic.
These five Presidents are not by any means the only promi
nent men who have sat in the President's chair. The list does
not include Andrew Jackson, U. S. Grant, and others of marked
abilities and historic achievements, whose fame rests on what
they did elsewhere rather than in the President's chair.
Contemporaneous judgment of a man is apt to be of little
value. One such judge will see him as he sees the near-by build-
4i

WILLIAM McKINLEY
ing loom larger than the distant one. Another, with the almost
universal feeling of men that the golden age of earth was in
remote antiquity, will judge him by a standard that assumes
that all great men died a long time ago. It is impossible to know
that one is asserting the verdict of history in writing of a man
whose life and death fill the foreground of the present view.
But if we follow the method here chosen and without any at
tempt to measure the late President by his predecessors, endeavor
to ascertain whether his name is linked with a national policy or
movement of vast import, and find that it is, then must we
believe that William McKinley's name will be written as the
fifth of the great Presidents of the first century and a quarter
of national life.

Virginian- Pilot, Norfolk, Virginia.
WILLIAM McKINLEY.
William McKinley was, in many respects, a typical Ameri
can. He was a man who rose by the force of what was in him,
step by step, to the highest position to which any man may rise
in the world as we know it to-day, being chosen thereto twice
by the suffrages of his fellow-citizens. That, surely, was no
mean achievement, and betokened no ordinary man.
William McKinley served as President through one of the
most critical stages in our country's history. It was a period of
tremendous events, of transition, of broadening views, and of
strange conditions and new situations. From the nature of the
case he must occupy a large place in history — possibly the largest
of any of our Presidents, so far, save Washington and Lincoln,
and Grant by reason of his military record.
What history's judgment of McKinley will be it is, of
course, impossible to conjecture. It will all depend upon the
fruit policies recognized as his shall bear, and concerning which
his countrymen — one in sorrow at his death and in fierce indig-
42

WILLIAM McKINLEY
nation at the method of his taking off — are divided, and must
for years remain divided according to their wont. No accurate
estimate of the man will be possible for fifty years, perhaps, or
longer, because only then will the results of his administration
in a great crisis become apparent. If those results vindicate his
judgment, he will stand as one of the greatest statesmen of his
country and his age. If they do not, he will stand as an able
administrator, who erred seriously but honestly as 'a constructive
statesman. McKinley died by the hand of a wretch who was in all essen
tials an alien. He was sacrificed to an alien madness, the product
of conditions against which his country and the institutions of
his country, from the settlement at Jamestown to- the Exposi
tion at Buffalo, have been a triumphant protest. In his murder
and the manner of it there was nothing American, and no stain
of it rests upon Americans or American institutions.
It is no empty platitude to say that in his death all differ
ences of party and section are forgotten, and that the sorrow at
his death is most sincere and profound. If proof of that were
needed, it is to be found in abundance in the pathetic eagerness
with which the people of every class have hung about the bulle
tin-boards during the week of his brave struggle with death.
Certainly the highest tribute ever paid William McKinley has
come from the lips of " the plain citizen " during this time.
Day by day and year by year, William McKinley had grown
upon his countrymen as he served them, and had he died
naturally, instead of by cowardly violence, there would have been
the most profound sorrow not merely at his death but at the loss
to the country of his large knowledge of public affairs, his
catholicity of judgment, and enlightened patriotism.
But he died by the hand of an assassin — a miserable, cring
ing, crack-brained mongrel, not worth the expense of electrocu
tion. Surely this was one of the bitter and inexplicable ironies
of life. The shame and the pity of it !
43

WILLIAM McKINLEY
His bitterest enemy must admit that William McKinley lived
blamelessly and died bravely. While there was hope, he fought
for his life valiantly, as a lesser man would not have done, and
when there was none, he went " as one who wraps the drapery
of his couch about him and lies down to pleasant dreams," leav
ing the burdens he fain would have borne longer to other shoul
ders. May they prove equal to the task.
And now it is for this country of free and equal citizens to
deal with the devilish propaganda that bred the murderer of
President McKinley.

The Toledo Blade.
WILLIAM McKINLEY.
Facing the tragedy which has cast a pall of blackness over
the nation, all political differences fall away, and the voice of
partisanship is hushed. From all over the Union, men of all
conditions join in expressing their abhorrence of the attempted
crime, and in fervent hope of the recovery of the Chief Magis
trate. Like the lightning-flash in the darkness of midnight, the
tragedy of this attempted murder revealed to all the true great
ness of the man and the implicit confidence of the American
people in his wise statesmanship.
Like Lincoln, William McKinley was struck down at the
highest point of his career. Chosen for the second time to the
Presidency by a larger majority — greater than any previous
President ever received — he again entered upon its duties in the
full tide of public favor, with nearly all the grave difficulties
and perplexing questions of his first term solved and with every
prospect of finding his second administration a period of peace
and prosperity to the people.
To his speech at the Buffalo Exposition the nations of the
world listened with grave attention. His words did not breathe
44

WILLIAM McKINLEY
of war and conquest, but of the victories of peace which the
nation is to win in the near future. He outlined the policies
which are to secure these results, and which are the logical out
come of those of the past.
Reciprocity, the development of our merchant marine, the
Isthmian canal, and a Pacific cable, he held to be necessary to
the future prosperity of the United States, and he set forth their
importance in clear and fitting words, whose significance was felt
around the globe. The nations listened with admiration, not
apprehension, when he declared that our interest is in accord,
not conflict, and that our real eminence rests in the victories of
peace, not those of war. His words were his keynote for future
action.

The Galveston News.
WILLIAM McKINLEY.
The head of the nation is dead, not in the course of the work
ings of the laws of Nature, but by the cruel hand of murder.
He went to his death not because of antagonism of him who
slew him toward him, but because he was the highest represen
tative of a free and prosperous people. He represented the Gov
ernment, and it was the Government that the blow was aimed
at. Hence the sorrow over his death is made great not only be
cause of the noble character of the man thus untimely taken
off, but also by that patriotism which feels that the blow was
at the country. Mr. McKinley will live in history as the beloved
among his people. His name will be written without an expres
sion of excuse or explanation following it. He lived in a memor
able epoch — lived when the Republic may be said to have
merged from youth into full and strong manhood. For within
his terms truly a revolution has come about. The Spanish war
— the marvellous material progress which has marked the life
of the Republic within the last five years, were the years of his
45

WILLIAM McKINLEY
position in the highest of its equity. It was fortunate that he
was cautious rather than bold; that he felt his way instead of
rushing forward; that he had the faculty of inducing rather than
driving; that he was conservative and matter of fact rather than
radical and sensational. For that revolution, greater than even
we can properly appreciate, could have not been brought to its
present point without a jar to the fabric but in men other than he
was. Mr. McKinley may not have been great as men are counted
great. He was not the Moltke or Grant or Lee in military
science; nor Talleyrand or Bismarck or Seward in diplomacy.
He was a plain, every-day gentleman of the highest intelligence,
and a genius in nothing. He was never so weak as to excite any
thing but respect from those who disagreed with him, and he
was never so great as to excite hate from individuals or fear from
his country. He was a good neighbor President — a home Presi
dent, a political President, and a lover of his country, who has
contributed as much to its greatness as any of his predecessors
who have gone before. And there is not upon all the land,
north, south, east, or west, a man in whose heart a love of
country abides, or in whose breast an admiration for a good citi
zen exists, who will not drop a tear over his grave and say he
was an American- — a citizen, and both of that type which will
make the nation's name glorious and its citizenship the grandest
the world has seen.

The Oregonian, Portland, Ore.
DEATH OF THE PRESIDENT.
For the third time in little more than a generation the
American people sit in grief in the presence of a murdered Presi
dent. In that solemn hour when the head of the great family
of the State lies low in death, passions die out, resentment fades
away, criticism is paralyzed, and the universal voice is one of
sorrow. The blow struck at the faithful husband has fallen
46

WILLIAM McKINLEY
upon every home, the outrage offered the Executive strikes at
every member of the body politic. In the week of waiting since
the first shock of the tragedy, the paroxysm of anger against
his assailant has given place to fond solicitude for the sufferer,
made more tender by the suspense of the intervening time, its
misgivings and rejoicing, hopes and fears. Instead of the cry
for vengeance, the prayer of the nation is only for a sacred silence
in which to bury its dead, then a day to mete out justice only,
and turn again to the burden of the busy years.
Circumstances and his own fidelity have combined to lift the
dead man's domestic life high in attention. All that is best, and
loveliest in the American home has had in him its finest type
and flower. Home-loving and home-tending were bred in him
through his Scotch Covenanter ancestry, one German and one
English grandfather, perhaps made warmer by the stay in
Northern Ireland, where one of his family went to death at
Royalist hands in the stormy days of 1798. Strong and homely
stock gave us both Lincoln and McKinley. Nancy Hanks bore
us the one and Nancy Allison the other. The President's wife
has been an invalid for years, and his devotion to her is the
commonest of stories. It was on Christmas Day, 1871, that
their first child was born, a girl that lived only to the age of
three, and another daughter also died in infancy. No act of
William McKinley has ever dishonored those little graves in
the Canton Cemetery or cast a shadow over the gentle life now
strangely called to survive him. Long herself the object of fond
solicitude, and only a few weeks ago an anxious care at San
Francisco, it has been her lot to turn from sufferer into watcher,
and now to mourn the husband who, she had every right to ex
pect, would himself sit by her own last bed and close her dying
eyes. This domestic story, raised by chance into full view of
the world, is an object-lesson to the courts of the Old World and
an inspiring pattern for the New. Its significance lies not so
much in its prominence as in the fact of its typical character.
47

WILLIAM McKINLEY
For there are many such. Profligates are few at the head of
American homes.
But the tragedy has its wider national and universal bear
ing. A career has been spoiled, whose end none could foresee.
From the gallant soldier-boy, assiduous Congressman, popular
Governor, he came up to be an amiable and uniformly admired
President. Like Lincoln, he was at the helm of State through
a great and momentous epoch of our history, and, like Lincoln,
a wicked crime took him off just when the fury of battle was
to be transformed and guided into the channels of constructive
statesmanship. Lincoln passed through one administration of
storm and entered another, whose task was to be the readjust
ment of the nation to new conditions, but upon whose threshold
he passed away, leaving the work to untried and unfamiliar
hands. Just so it is with McKinley. The catastrophe of 1865
to 1868 no one could foresee. Nor can we foresee to-day the
way ahead. We have reason to hope for far better things; but
hope is all.
How impotent is man to fulfil his fondest dreams and bring
to realization his proudest ambitions! Death marks the highest
for his prize as unerringly as the humblest. Rich and poor,
high and low, we all come into the world by the same gate of
pain and leave by the same pale ferryman for the unknown
shore. Buffalo sits distressed in the darkened shadows of her
late magnificence, and the best surgeons in the land are buried
in the ruins of their own hopes. The man who consented against
his will to be buried for four years in the Vice-Presidency finds
himself thrust in an hour into the most honored place within
the gift of man. The policies that have been years in formation,
and that vitally concern the welfare of all civilization, are put
in peril of miscarriage or overthrow. Powerful cliques that have
ruled political affairs in every State see the ground slipping from
under them, and a widely different school of statesmanship
coming into power. None of these portentous developments
48

WILLIAM McKINLEY
could have been foreseen; none, it appears, could have been pre
vented. The world has changed this morning over-night, and
to-morrow's scroll is as mysterious and unsuspected as these two
fateful Fridays were a week ago, when the Presidential party
set out gleefully on its last journey from the White House.
Above the solace that comes from the unsullied home and
the blameless life is the greater consolation that our peace and
order, manners and institutions, will survive the shock as steadily
as the liner rides the summer sea. No wheel in all the compli
cated machinery that governs eighty million people will pause
in its revolution. Upon the ship of state no sail will start, no
mast quiver, no seaman tremble at his post. Among the com
manders there will be no irresolution or delay, among the lowest
servants there will be neither question nor cavil. It is the su
preme and glorious test of our English-American civilization
that while men, however great or apparently necessary, may
come and go, the Constitution and the laws continue undisturbed,
the people, as the source and efficacy of power, are constant to
their heritage of law and order, and faithful to their obligation of
civic duty. The Government remains, the flag is there, the host
moves forward with unbroken step.

The Springfield Union, Springfield, Mass.
PRESIDENT McKINLEY.
Well done, thou good and faithful servant, is the thought
that rises from millions of swelling hearts this morning, of him
who lies in death's embrace in Buffalo. Brave, loyal, Christian
gentleman he lived, bravely he passed into the valley of the
shadow, more than conqueror through Him in whose name he
wrought. William McKinley the man, even more than William Mc
Kinley the President, has occupied the minds and hearts of
49

WILLIAM McKINLEY
men since the assassin's bullet struck him down a week ago. In
the deadly strife of civil war his fellows knew him for a man
of courage and a patriot, ready and willing to lay down his life
in his country's service; in positions of trust, and finally the
highest post his nation could give, they found in him a Con
gressman, a Governor, and a President of the truest, wisest,
and noblest statesmanship; in his last suffering and death they
recognize in him one who measured up to the full stature of a
man, one of earth's genuine noblemen, whose career is an in
spiration and example for his countrymen to emulate.
McKinley has again exemplified the old-fashioned but ever-
new truths of the fathers that have distinguished this nation for
a people ruled of God. Through all the long and varied ex
periences of a life spent among the scenes of war and blood
shed, and in the councils of politicians, where temptation and
corruption stalk at men's heels, he has preserved the simple faith
of his fathers and has lived a clean life in the sight of God and
man. His course in these latter days, when guile and treachery
abound, has once more justified the ways of God to men and
proved to them that scoff the beauty and far-reaching influence
of virtue. It is this side of the man's personality that places him in
the affection of his countrymen alongside those greater of his
predecessors, Washington and Lincoln, who, if they led the
American nation in times more crucial, did not surpass our latest
Chief Executive in the accomplishment of the duty that lay be
fore them.
History will judge of William McKinley when the genera
tion that saw him will have passed away, but even now his ser
vices to his country for forty busy years, closing with his leader
ship through the most difficult period since Lincoln died, are
recognized by his grateful fellow-citizens as the greatest that any
man can give.
Americans are proud to point to McKinley as the representa-
5o

WILLIAM McKINLEY
tive American of these days. It is probable that he is the last
President of the generation that fought the Civil War, and he
links that time with the new and greater development upon
which his people have entered. Like Lincoln, he did not live to
see the full fruits of the policy he marked out.
He leaves to able and patriotic hands to fulfil the task he
so well began, and his memory will enlighten the path of his
successor, who has taken instruction from that ripeness of wis
dom and patience of spirit.

Buffalo Courier.
PRESIDENT McKINLEY'S DEATH.
Our President is dead.
" The silver cord is loosed, the golden bowl is broken."
" The spirit has returned unto God who gave it."
As lightning out of a clear sky came the stroke of one week
ago yesterday. Hardly less heavy upon the public heart was
the blow contained in the news of his relapse, for as the days
had passed by hope had grown strong that Mr. McKinley would
live, would recover. But he sleeps the final sleep, and the whole
world weeps, for " he was a good man, and a just."
In this solemn hour of a great nation's sorrow, let us speak
only of its loss. Later will be time to consider the consequences,
to think further of the insensate wretch whose murderous shot,
directed at an invulnerable Government, could but strike down
the man who was the chosen of eighty millions as their chief,
causing him, all innocent, mortal injury and pain. It is so
pitiful, so completely causeless, that even angels may shed tears
for such a sacrifice.
William McKinley has been the third President of the
United States to fall by the hands of an assassin. The great
Lincoln was killed by a crazed enthusiast for a defeated cause.
5i

WILLIAM McKINLEY
Garfield was the victim of a dissatisfied, egotistical fool, whose
responsibility must always be doubted. But Mr. McKinley was
deliberately, diabolically, given his death-wound, simply because
he represented organized society, and notwithstanding that, of
all the Presidents of the freest country on the earth, he was of
its people the best beloved. No other had come so closely to the
hearts of so many of them. Against the immortal Lincoln a
section of the country was arrayed. Not until years after he
had been laid in the grave was there true, unanimous apprecia
tion of his exalted worth. Even Washington had many bitter
personal enemies. McKinley had few; you might count them on
the fingers of a hand, and dismiss them as inconsequential, how
ever widely a great minority of his countrymen may have differed
from his views on various public questions. It was as the gra
cious, pure-minded citizen, that the people loved him; as the
merciful man who shrank from administering chastisement even
where mercy was undeserved; as the representative and embodi
ment of all that is admirable and lovable in American domestic
life. Providence willed that as President he should direct a
successful war, but it was a war of humanity, waged on just
principle. He abhorred its necessity, and was grateful to his
Maker for its cessation, for he was essentially a man of peace,
with high ideals, who from his soul desired the welfare of man
kind. Whether his official course was altogether for the best,
may be left to history to show. The excellence of his intention
throughout his administration probably no living person doubts.
Apparently favored singularly by destiny, which raised him
from comparative obscurity to the most lofty station, it seemed
that the happiest period of his life had been attained when last
week he came, by earnest invitation, which accorded well with
his own wish, to view the Pan-American Exposition and meet
the patriotic throngs who were eager to greet him. And it was
at the Exposition that he was stricken, in as beautiful a setting
as the earth has seen for a tragedy of the centuries. While all
52

WILLIAM McKINLEY
America mourns, for Buffalo the cup has an added bitterness,
although she is most innocent, for here the President was
wounded to death, literally in the house of his friends.
The President is dead, but the fell purpose of his murderer
utterly fails, for constitutional government will go on without
interruption, and law will continue supreme. Theodore Roose
velt becomes the twenty-fifth President of the United States. In
the darkness and the silence of the present we seek not to look
into the future. We only think to mourn our illustrious dead,
and to recall his virtues, saying, as he would say for the land he
loved so well, long live the Republic!

Times- Star, Cincinnati, Ohio.
WILLIAM McKINLEY.
" It is God's way. His will be done."
In these, the dying words of the martyred President, the
nation to-day alone can find solace and comfort.
William McKinley died as he had lived, a Christian gentle
man. He faced death fearlessly and courageously, and in dying
gave, not only to the sorrowing wife, but to the bereaved nation,
the divine words which cheer and comfort them in this, their
hour of grief and despair.
William McKinley was a many-sided man, but from what
ever side we study him, he appears to advantage.
Is it as the youth? We find him battling for his country's
preservation. Is it as the man of middle age? We find him serving his
country in the halls of Congress, outlining policies which have
only the well-being of his country and his countrymen as their
foundation. Is it as the man of mature age? We find him called by the
53

WILLIAM McKINLEY
people to rescue them from the gloom of industrial depression,
to lead them through a victorious war, and to bring the blessing
of American liberty to millions of people who had known naught
but centuries of oppression.
Is it as the statesman ? We find him assuring for the United
States a prominent place in the proceedings of the first Peace
Congress, and outlining policies which kept the blush of shame
from the cheeks of his fellow-countrymen by our conduct in
China, and which served as a deterrent example to the other
powers. Is it as a Christian? His sublime faith in Him who died to
save mankind, his fortitude in his final hour were but the evi
dences of a life without a flaw, a life as clear and pure as the
bubbling spring.
Is it as the husband? The whole world knows the devotion
which he lavished upon an invalid wife, whom even with his
dying breath he sought to uphold and sustain by divine in
spiration. William McKinley's ideals were those that become such a
man. They were of the highest, the noblest, and the most
patriotic — the uplifting of his people, the uplifting of his nation.
He knew the inequalities of the world; the suffering and
the misery of human life; the squalor and the wretchedness of
the poor. But he did not inveigh against them; he did not
preach discontent; he did not seek to change in a day condi
tions which have been the growth of hundreds of centuries. On
the contrary, he applied himself resolutely to the task of better
ing them as far as lay within the power of one man ; of improving
conditions by practical measures and policies as far as was pos
sible during the short span of life of one man; of instituting
policies which would advance the people and the nation even
but the slightest, believing that a gain, no matter how slight,
was one that would count for future generations. He was an
evolutionist; not a revolutionist. He sought improvement; not
54

WILLIAM McKINLEY
regeneration. He devoted his life to the people and their ad
vancement; he offered up his life on the altar of his country.
That a man who had such a love for his people should trust
them was to be expected. William McKinley's trust in the
people was implicit. He made no parade of it; he sought no
political advantage from it; he never posed as a friend of the
people; but as the years passed the people came to recognize in
him their friend, their champion, and to love as well as to honor
and respect him.
If William McKinley had a fault in this life, it was his con
fidence in the people, a confidence that cost him his life. He
was never so happy as when mingling with the people. To meet
his countrymen and grasp them cordially by the hand was his
highest pleasure. The presence of officers on public occasions
was always distasteful to him; they were forced upon him by
more cautious minds against his protest. He believed he had
nothing to fear from the people; that in their hands he was
more safe than if surrounded by guards and spies.
WiUiam McKinley was our first Congressional President.
He looked upon that body as the representatives of the people,
and was ever ready to yield to the body which came direct from
the people and which was responsible to them. Much of the
criticism which befel him as Chief Magistrate came from this
fact — a fact, however, which redounds to his glory and his great
ness when the causes which inspired it are carefully considered.
Mr. McKinley had served for many years in the House of Rep
resentatives ; he had witnessed the frequent clashes between the
executive and the legislative branches of our Government; they
had sorrowed and grieved him. He came to the executive chair
imbued with the idea that the establishment of three co-ordinate
branches of the Government by the forefathers had not been
intended to necessarily create a rivalry and a friction, and he
devoted his best years and his greatest endeavor to obliterating
this rivalry and friction. Under such conditions, a weak man
55

WILLIAM McKINLEY
would have been a puppet in the hands of Congress, a weak man
would have proven a failure. William McKinley was not a
weak man, but a strong man. He understood clearly the limita
tions of the rights and powers of the Executive; he appreciated
thoroughly the rights and powers of Congress. He did not allow
the usurpation of the powers of the executive branch, nor did
he attempt the usurpation of the powers of the legislative branch.
He lived up to the best interpretation of the organic law of the
country, and established a harmony between the two conflicting
branches of the Government never known in the nation's history.
Those who have been most intimate with the President have
long been aware of his one personal ambition. He yearned to
have his administration known as the era of good feeling; he
labored unceasingly to wipe out sectional feeling and to remove
all that might remain as a result of internecine strife. He recog
nized that as the era of prosperity the policies of the party of
which he was the representative had had a share. He sought
to create an era with which he would be more personally iden
tified, to realize a dream which the prophetic Washington had
dreamt — to unite the country in the steel bands of friendship,
to wipe out the rancorousness and the bitterness of issues which
were passed, and to proudly declare that " We now know no
North, no South, no East, no West, but are all for a common
country." A united nation weeps at his bier, in the tears that are shed
by a sorrowing people comes the fulfilment of the life-purpose
of a Christian, a statesman, and, above all, a gentleman. In
the universal grief we are drawn closer together than ever be
fore, in the commingling of tears we are moved by a common
impulse, in which shall be washed away the bitterness of the
past. Perhaps his death was the sacrifice demanded to complete
this cementing of the people to which President McKinley de
voted his best thought and energy. 56

WILLIAM McKINLEY
The News and Courier, Charleston, S. C.
THE DEAD PRESIDENT.
The nation is in tears. At the moment when it believed
that its prayers had been heard — when the tidings that came
from Buffalo were big with hope and comfort — rejoicing was
changed into sorrow with the ominous announcement that the
President's condition was once more critical and that the worst
was feared. The smile that had come back to the lips of listen
ing millions vanished in an instant. The nerves that had re
gained something of their wonted steadiness, plunged and knotted
again with intense anxiety. Throughout yesterday the people
held their breath and watched and waited, hoping against hope
that the clean, rational life which the wounded man had lived
would avail much against the ravages of the Great Destroyer.
But prayer and science and a people's love were alike impotent.
President William McKinley, having fought in the hour of his
last extremity with the gallantry, the steadfastness, the uncom
plaining, unquailing courage which marked and illumined his
progress through life, surrendered to the inscrutable will of the
Ruler of life and death. With sublime fortitude he bore the
supreme demand that was made upon him. With a resignation
which never faltered, he went out into the shadows glorified by
the light of Christian faith.
It is surely a grievous dispensation which has come upon
him and upon the people, who loved and honored him. Having
fairly won his way up to the pinnacle of human ambition — with
the proof of his worth and well-doing vibrant in the acclama
tions which heralded and followed him to the uttermost parts
of the land he served — he was struck down by fanaticism,
criminally bigoted, viciously selfish, unspeakably dastardly, and
depraved. In a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, the pillars of
the temple he had builded were cast down. The shouting of the
57

WILLIAM McKINLEY
people was hushed. The nation gasped in horror, and fell to
its knees in humble supplication. It is of no avail that it shall
rise again, with heart aflame and throat athirst for vengeance —
that the voices rising to Heaven in demand that blood shall be
repaid by blood will be as the roar of an angry ocean. It is a
President and a Nature's monarch for an anarchist and a human
pigmy ! The evil that has been done cannot be undone. Tears
may not be quenched with blood. Were Czolgocz torn limb
from limb it would not lessen by one jot or tittle the pitiful
majesty of him above whose bier a nation bows to-day in bene
diction. This is not the time to review his life or his work. To-day
he should be, and he will be, naught else than a martyr. The
love which his fellow-countrymen bore him while he lived will
wax strong and all-conquering now that he is dead. To history
belongs the prerogative of a critical analysis of his character and
his public conduct; the present is entitled to no more than the
tribute which honest men pay to the virtues, the courage, the
manhood, the upright living which are reckoned the best and
noblest achievements of human endeavor.
And to the pity which wells up in every heart for the dead
President and the profound sense of grief with which the nation
regards its own bereavement there will be added another thought
— a thought of the broken-hearted woman into whose presence
even sympathy may not go, save it be uncovered and having put
its shoes from off its feet. The frail body that has borne many
burdens must take up another, beside which the others are as
nothing. And she must bear it alone, for all that millions of
men and women would so willingly sustain and comfort her.
There is not a heart in the whole land that does not go out to
her with unspeakable tenderness.
President McKinley is dead. A kindly Christian gentle
man, a pure-living citizen, an able statesman, a patriotic ruler
has given up his life in the discharge of the duties to which his
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WILLIAM McKINLEY
fellow-countrymen called him. His life honors American man
hood. His character and achievements will live as inspirations
to those who survive, and to those who will follow him and them.
If any consolation whatever is to be found in so great a tragedy,
it springs from the consciousness that nations, no less than men,
may not attain their highest development save through adversity
and misfortunes nobly borne and bravely overcome.

Journal, Providence, R. I.
President McKinley has died for his country. It was at the
office, not at the man alone, that a despicable dastard aimed his
revolver, and freedom shrieked when the President fell. The
great heart of a great nation is bowed in grief. In its personal,
political, and domestic phases, the President's death is unutter
ably, inexpressibly sorrowful. It comes with greater force be
cause some of the most eminent surgeons in the land thought
only twenty-four hours before that all the chances of recovery
were in his favor. When the startling announcement came that
there was no hope, the evening shadows fell over a heart-broken
people, mighty in all that makes a nation great, but powerless
to help the suffering and beloved President.
The account of the President's last hours will bring tears to
the eyes of strong men. Death is always tragic, but the killing
of the President of the United States by a sneaking villain, al
though it is the last of a trio of distressingly similar crimes, is a
shock that makes patriots thoughtful. Happily, it draws them
more closely together, and in fervent, prayerful reverence they
are grateful because in the face of such a calamity they know
that " God reigns and the Government at Washington still
lives." We seem so helpless in such a crisis that we can only
look up at the sky and wonder what power it is that works out
such deeds for our good. If the prayers of his countrymen could
59

WILLIAM McKINLEY
have saved him, if the sympathy of those who have admired his
fortitude could have relieved his pain, he would not have passed
away. The American citizen who has not been moved to ab
horrence of " the deep damnation of his taking off " and to in
describable emotions by the tragic sufferings of his last hours, is
lacking either in loyalty to his country or in those tenderer sen
timents that whole-souled men are the first to feel but the last to
proclaim. Rhode Island shares in the common affliction. .No home,
no factory, no shop is free to-day from a sense of sorrow and of
loss. Everywhere that men rub elbows they have but one topic
of conversation. They need indulge in no fulsome eulogies ; they
need not waste words in idle panegyrics; but they are not worthy
of the name of " American " if their blood does not boil at the
assassin's mad brutality and if there is not solemn grief in their
hearts at the national loss. Their feelings are in harmony with
the tolling bells.

Chicago Tribune.
DEATH OF THE PRESIDENT. '
After a week of constantly increasing hope, of bulletins
which day by day have reported improvement, the President has
passed away. The change at the last came suddenly, and when
there was apparently nothing in the patient's condition to arouse
extraordinary apprehensions. The rejoicing of the people is
turned to lamenting, and in place of thanksgiving there will be
grief throughout the land. The bullet of the assassin at last has
done its deadly work.
President McKinley is dead and the nation mourns. It
mourns as one which has suffered a great loss, but a loss which
is not irreparable. His work has been, to a great extent, accom
plished. Of the problems which confronted him when he was
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WILLIAM McKINLEY
elected, or which have arisen since his election, nearly all have
been happily solved by him.
The war with Spain has been conducted to a successful con
clusion. The country is at peace with all mankind. It is tran
quil and prosperous. There are no threatening clouds visible
on the political or business horizon.
If the President thought of himself at all in his last mo
ments he could have taken comfort in the reflection that he had
well-nigh fulfilled his mission — that he had done for the people
all and more than they had expected of him, and had won for
himself fame that time cannot obliterate. So far as one can
read the future there was little of great moment left for him to
do for his country during the next three years except to carry
out that policy of the extension of its commercial relations out
lined by him in his last public address.
The work which President McKinley left undone others can
take up and carry forward, following the paths marked out by
him. Though he has gone, the cause of commercial expansion
and of the trade supremacy of America surely will find other
champions as sagacious and as persistent as he and who, like him,
will be willing to sacrifice selfish and personal considerations to
promote the welfare of the Republic.
President McKinley has gone to a grave from which " honor,
love, obedience, troops of friends " could not save him. Theo
dore Roosevelt is President now. This change in rulers is sud
den, but the people will feel that their interests and those of
their government will be safe in the hands of the man who has
been lifted up from the second to the first place.
They have no reason to fear any permanent shock of busi
ness or political relations. The new President is not likely to
pursue an aggressive policy calculated to embroil the United
States with other nations. Probably he will be as calm,
judicious, and conservative as President McKinley has been.
Responsibility engenders sobriety of speech and action. Pre-
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WILLIAM McKINLEY
sumably the trusted advisers of the dead President will, be the
trusted advisers of President Roosevelt, and the new order of
things will be a continuation of the old order.
The legacy of President McKinley to his successor is a united
country and a united party, an expanded and a prosperous Re
public, and governmental policies on which the people have set
the seal of their approval. This is a legacy which President
Roosevelt surely will use with discretion and wisdom.

Kansas City Journal.
THE NATION'S SORROW.
The sad tragedy has ended. The life of the patient sufferer
has gone out. The nation has lost one of the most kindly and
lovable citizens, and one of the purest and best statesmen it ever
had. His nature was as gentle and sympathetic as his mental
powers were strong and vigorous. He was of, from, and for
the people; his ear was ever bent to listen to their wishes, and
their welfare was his chief care and constant concern. No other
President of the American nation ever succeeded in winning
the esteem and affection of the whole people, while living, in
the degree that he has done. Every worthy citizen to-day is con
scious of a feeling of personal bereavement. Not only has the
eountry been deprived of a great and good President, but every
city, every hamlet, every household feels that it has lost a noble
friend. It is inexpressibly sad that one so useful and so dear
to the nation should be cut off in the prime of manhood, before
the completion of his great life's work, and by the foul hand of
an assassin; but fate is inexorable, and those who remain behind
can only bow in submission and hope that the faith in a blessed
hereafter which he cherished so long and so devoutly may be
abundantly realized. 62

WILLIAM McKINLEY
The administration of President McKinley was one of the
most trying and most successful the nation has ever known.
Elected for the specific purpose of guiding the country out of
depression into prosperity, he not only accomplished this great
work with amazing thoroughness, but managed a foreign war
and solved its important problems besides. His statesmanship
won the profound admiration of the civilized world. Under his
administration the prestige and influence of the American Re
public rose to an eminence never before approximated. Death
came to him while at the very zenith of his fame and popularity.
He would have passed into history as one of the truly great men
of earth without the assassin's aid, but now he is also a martyr,
and the present and future generations of his countrymen will
revere his memory as one of their sacred possessions. Universal
sympathy will go out especially to the invalid wife, upon whom
the blow will fall with greatest force, for he was her all. Mill
ions of prayers will go up that her life may not also be included
in the sacrifice that has cast so deep a shadow over the land.

The Evening Star, Washington, D. C.
WILLIAM McKINLEY.
The country was prepared yesterday for the blow that fell
at an early hour this morning. The bulletins from Buffalo all
too truly told of the calamity that was rapidly approaching.
Higher or warmer hopes of a people were never dashed to earth.
And yet we should be thankful for the week that has elapsed
since the assassin's pistol was fired. In that time, while we have
been buoyed up by the fair promises of the President's recovery,
we yet, in pondering the deed that disabled him and put him in
such peril, have come into a feeling that helps us to bear the
great loss now that it has come. It is not as it would have been
had he perished upon the instant, without a thought of danger
63

WILLIAM McKINLEY
himself and with the country in a holiday mood of happiness
and good cheer.
An eminent, a beautiful, and a most useful life has come
to a close. In the character of William McKinley were mingled
all the qualities that make for righteousness and justice. He
loved his fellow-men. He strove to do good. His ambition was
of the highest order. His patriotism was unbounded. And so,
full of love, full of energy, full of high capacity, full of pride
of nationality, he rose by gradual well-timed steps from the
ranks of the sturdy plain people to the place of head of the
State. In every office he acquitted himself with distinction.
As a young soldier he was promoted for gallantry in action. As
a legislator his name was linked with measures of world-wide
influence. As Governor of his native commonwealth he gave
to the people a clean and wholesome administration of their
affairs, and as Chief Magistrate of the United States — a post of
the greatest difficulty and responsibility — he has laid the country
under such a debt as insures him a place among the greatest men
who have ever served it.
We naturally turn in this hour, however, from the magis
trate, great as he was in that capacity, to the man. He was cor
rect of life, and true to every high personal obligation. His
heart was always in his home. His constant thought was of those
to whom his first duty was due. The most exacting of his pub
lic duties — and they were many — never caused him to forget or
neglect the tender ties of the hearthstone. If every man, in
deed, were as thoughtful of those committed to his care and
watchfulness, and as gifted with the sense of generous bestowal,
it is not too much to say that this world would be something of
a paradise. He gave not only to his countrymen, but to all men,
a most inspiring and uplifting example of what the son, the hus
band, the friend, the citizen should be; and in exhibiting his
graces of character in the house of all the people — the White
House — he set his light upon a hill, and rendered in that way a
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WILLIAM McKINLEY
service as valuable as any that pertained to the public policies
of the Government.
The President's last days were among his very best. He
was in perfect health when stricken, and filling an engagement
which appealed strongly to his pride and his principles. His
last speech was in advocacy of a greater America, and full of
sound suggestions as to policies for national growth and happi
ness. It will live, and will influence our future. A final mes
sage, delivered thus by such a man in the very shadow of the
tomb, cannot but have an abiding place in our memories. Com
posed and forgiving in the presence of his assassin, serene and
resigned in the hour of death, he has departed, with the affections
and amidst the lamentations of all his countrymen, and with the
respect and profound regret of all the world.

The Rocky Mountain News, Denver, Col.
"GOD'S WILL, NOT OURS, BE DONE."
The crack of the anarchist's pistol in the great music-hall
of the Exposition hardly created more consternation than did
the news of the President's dying condition yesterday morning.
The night before the country retired to rest confident in the
early recovery of Mr. McKinley. The great surgeons and phy
sicians had departed for their distant homes after giving to the
world assurances of their illustrious patient's welfare. Vice-
President Roosevelt, the members of the Cabinet and statesmen
close to the President's heart, had bidden adieus to one another
with smiling faces, expecting not to meet again until in the
presence of their prostrate chief they convened in Washington
to carry on the public business. All of this the country learned
on Thursday evening, and it slumbered until morning soothed
with the last lullabies from the sick-chamber in Buffalo. But
what an awakening! The morning papers banished hope. The
6S

WILLIAM McKINLEY
failing heart, the fleeing strength, the weariness of death, the
fruitless labors of the great physicians to counteract the fatal
symptoms told the country that human help could not avail, and
only the miracles which the Nazarene performed 2,000 years ago
could avail to hold the soul of the great beloved in its earthly
tenement. Last night the mighty tragedy ended. The President is
dead. To-day this nation, and all Christian and heathen nations,
mourn at the bier, for the world knows that he who is dead in
life had been an exalted, an upright, and a compassionate man.
A LESSON TO MANKIND.
This generation has not witnessed more affecting or more
impressive scenes than those at the bedside of dying President
McKinley last night. Indeed, to parallel them we must turn
to the death-beds of those great and good men whose lives were
beacon-lights to illumine the path of humanity and who passed
into the unknown with, the smile of peace on their lips and their
hearts serene with calm hope in the mercy of an all-merciful
Creator. No Christian virgin seeking the martyr's crown in
Rome's enpurpled amphitheatre faced death with courage more
superb than William McKinley displayed while he looked upon
the countenance of the dread angel. The poor clay, struggling
to retain the vital spark, was as though it existed not. There
remained only the majesty of an immortal human soul warm
with compassion for those who wept, imperial in its preparedness
for flight to that bourn whence none return, yet like to a little
child in its resignation to the will of the Supreme Being whose
it is to give and to take away.
The watchers by the bedside heard the President striving to
repeat the words of that hymn of aspiration, " Nearer, my God,
to Thee," which has soothed and comforted unnumbered mill
ions. As his poor wife, herself lately called back from the very
verge of the grave, clasped his hand in mute grief, a benign
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WILLIAM McKINLEY
smile lighted his face, and he whispered, " Not our will, but
God's, be done."
Literature and art have preserved the record of no nobler
scene. When we reflect that this man was neither ascetic nor priest,
that his life was passed in the fierce struggles of partisanship,
and that he had gained the highest prize to be wrested from poli
tics, we can only wonder that he preserved his inner self so
sacredly a pure and holy thing apart from the conflicts which
raged about bim.
Mild and impassionate at all times, yet he lacked not fire
and daring, as was shown by his record in the Civil War.
Personally the essence of integrity, yet it was fortune's gift
to him to sail placidly on a stormy sea, which boiled and surged
with the struggles of strong, scheming, unscrupulous, and daring
men. It is too early to write of McKinley the political chieftain,
nor have we the wish to do so, but as we stand by the bier of
McKinley the man we well may sorrow that a nature so sweet
and winning, a manner and bearing and habit of thought so
courteous and kindly, and a soul so clean and upright, have been
stricken by the hideous crime of an assassin.

Topeka Daily Capital.
THE PRESIDENT IS DEAD.
On the morning of April 15, 1865, at the moment when the
spirit of the great martyr President took its flight, Secretary
Stanton, turning to those about him, said, while the tears
streamed down his face:
" Now he belongs to the ages."
So we say of our beloved President, whose lifelong service
to his country ended last night as Lincoln's ended: " He belongs
to the ages." 67

WILLIAM McKINLEY
The nation mourns this morning not only the loss of one of
the greatest of its Presidents, but one of its purest, noblest citi
zens. No man excepting Washington and Lincoln in our his
tory was, during his public life, so close to the heart of the peo
ple. Not attempting to guide or control events, but not shrinking
from the severest tasks and most exacting responsibilities, meet
ing every emergency with a resolute will and a calm sagacity
and wisdom which marked him as one of the great statesmen of
the century, President McKinley held a steady hand upon the
helm and kept the old ship straight in its course.
And what a voyage it has made in these five historic years!
For the marvellous advance the nation has made since 1896,
both in its domestic prosperity and in its prestige among the
powers of the world, history will award the credit to the wise
and sagacious President, the modest but self-reliant and far-see
ing statesman whose administration has witnessed these triumphs.
Serious as the loss to the nation is felt to be in President
McKinley's death, it is not this which afflicts every heart with a
sense of personal bereavement. The President was beloved in
every home in the Republic. His modesty, his benevolence and
kindliness, his gracious and courtly bearing, which made no dis
tinction between the humblest citizen and the ambassador of a
foreign state, his touching devotion to his wife, his unaffected
American simplicity of life and character, gave to President
McKinley a place in the hearts of the people which it is given
few even of the most trusted and distinguished to win.
The death of the President in the height of his great fame
and usefulness is a sore bereavement to the country; it is a deep
sorrow and grief to all Americans, and it is an awful and a
hideous crime before God and man.
God grant that this third deadly blow upon our country from
the blighting hand of anarchy may be the last, and that the na
tion may cleanse its soil of this polluting brood forever.
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WILLIAM McKINLEY
The Age-Herald, Birmingham, Ala.
DEATH OF PRESIDENT McKINLEY.
Death closes the scene at last. Not even modern surgery
and the prayers of a united people could save the head of the
nation from the grievous wounds of a cowardly, sneaking assas
sin. A third martyr President is added to the list, and the heart
of the nation is bowed down with grief.
It is much too early to define William McKinley's place in
the list of Presidents, or to estimate his power in the conduct
of public affairs, but it is not too early to say that no one among
Republican Presidents and leaders equalled, or even approached,
him in friendliness toward the South. He stood quite apart
from his associates in that respect.
Even before his nomination in 1896, he advocated national
unity, urging all to work for the complete reconciliation of the
two sections; and when the war with Spain came on he treated
the South with the utmost consideration, selecting from the
grizzled wearers of the gray several of his general officers. He
insisted upon justice to the South, and the result was the two
sections were drawn together and unified as they had not before
been in over fifty years, for the estrangement antedated the
Civil War.
Many will recall his speeches when he came into this State
about three years ago, in which he urged that Congress should
care for the Confederate cemeteries just as it does for the Fed
eral resting-places of the brave. His suggestion was not fully
carried into effect, but his untimely death may be followed by
its full adoption. It would be a noble memorial to a good, broad-
minded man — a man of rare equipoise and moderation and jus
tice. He always had faith in Southern industrial resources, and
his advocacy of an Isthmian canal in the last speech he made in
69

WILLIAM McKINLEY
this world shows that, if he had lived, he would have striven to
benefit this section of the country. The South had good reason
to love him, and it will indeed be many a day before a Repub
lican so just will be called to preside over the destinies of the
country. The wearers of the gray and the wearers of the blue
have united in the sad week just ended in words of praise for
the man who entered the Civil War as a private soldier, coming
out of it a major, and to-day, in the presence of death, the South
mourns deeply, and affectionately even, the loss that has come
to a people united in truth and in reality. He did more to unify
the country than all of his party had done before him, and when
ever he visited the South he was made to feel in numerous mani
festations the gratitude of Southern hearts.

New York Herald.
THE MAN AND HIS FAITH.
Death is always impressive. It is one of the experiences
through which we pass, either with the grim fortitude of an
unyielding will, if our outlook into the future is cloudy or misty,
or, if we have faith, then with the trembling assurance of one
who traverses the dark with a lantern to guide his way.
There is an infinite difference in the mental attitude of one
whose earthly day is spent and who faces the impenetrable
shadows of an eternal night and one who knows that there is a
to-morrow hidden behind to-day, and that the sun which gilds
the west with pleasant memories will soon gild the east with the
radiant beauty of a higher life.
The heart that clings to immortality has an element of
strength which is otherwise unknown. I have seen death many
a time as it stole with slippered feet into a tearful household,
and have watched the varying emotions with which the sufferer
met the inevitable. I am free to confess that some who have
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WILLIAM McKINLEY
said their last farewells, but have had no hope of a continued
existence, have bravely stood the shock of fate and taken the
step into the dark without a tremor of fear. In that supreme
moment they have been even glad to be relieved of physical
pain and to enter on the rest which is equivalent to oblivion.
But I have also seen something as much grander than this as the
grandeur of a symphony built by a master brain is greater than
that of the cradle song with which the nurse sings the child to
sleep. The eyes have seen what comes within range of mortal
vision only in that hour when heaven discloses itself to those
who are about to enter therein. At eventide there was light, and
that light filled the last moments with the crimsoned beauty of
a sunset cloud. Farewells were mellowed by the certainty of a
reunion which would come in good time, and the tired traveller
whispered of hand-claps in a better land. The couch of the
sufferer seemed surrounded by " invisible beings who walk the
earth both when we wake and when we sleep," and religious
faith, ripening into resignation, parted the lips to say, as Mr.
McKinley said, " It is God's way; His way is best." Then I
have talked in serious strain to my own soul, and have declared
that this simple trust, which can make us buoyant when the
tears of our loved ones are falling like a sudden shower, is the
most practical thing known to man, and is worth more than all
else that earth can offer.
To so live that to die is gain, and to be conscious that it is a
gain; to be glad of the exchange of an earthly for a spiritual
body, and to fall asleep in the certainty of waking in a higher
and a nobler life is to grasp the consummation so devoutly to be
wished, and to reach the ideal which God places within reach of
honesty, truth, and fidelity.
The President — the mortal part of him — lies in the shadow
of death. We mourn him because he was the friend of the Re
public, because his public policy was based on the best welfare
of the people as he understood it. We revere his memory be-
7i

WILLIAM McKINLEY
cause in both his private and his official life he was the sturdy
defender of the right, a man with a conscience. It is no flattery
to say in this hour of our national bereavement that a sense of
personal loss increases our sorrow, but as we think of him on
this Sunday morning it is not in connection with the office he
filled so much as in connection with the courageous manliness
of the man. Simple-minded, quiet in heart, he was at first hope
ful of recovery, and did his part to stay the progress of his
malady, but when he saw that it had been otherwise decreed he
looked through the window at the green trees and the blue sky,
whispering, "How beautiful!" Then, with the peaceful ac
ceptance of his doom, bade us all good-by, and with " Thy will
be done," fell asleep.
We shall cherish the memory of our dead — his life an in
centive to the youth of his country, his record unblemished by
regrets. He has passed beyond the reach of time, and his last
hours were made radiant by a faith in God and a certainty of the
immortality which awaits us all. Such an example, such a death
bed, speak to us with an eloquence which cannot be resisted.
That kind of religion leads one in the footsteps of the Master,
both when He entered Gethsemane and when He ascended to
Heaven.

The Courier-Journal, Louisville, Ky.
WILLIAM McKINLEY.
For the third time in a single generation the people of the
United States stand awe-struck about the bier of a murdered
President. In the present instance the horror takes on a sharper
edge of grief out of the sudden revulsion of feeling from hope
to despair; from the confident belief that the hand of the assas
sin had missed its mark to the swift descent of the dread Angel
of Death without warning and before our eyes; eyes that were
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WILLIAM McKINLEY
but yesterday lit with the glad elation of danger passed, now
dimmed and wet with tears. It comes to us as a personal afflic
tion, as a sorrow we cannot drive away from our door-sill. Even
rage and shame are for the moment quenched by the pity of it,
the sense of humiliation is drowned by the sense of humility,
and, as we bow our heads in silent prayer, the virtues of him that
is dead rise between us and him that struck the blow.
Truly, the words quoted by Blaine to picture the slayer of
Garfield apply to the slayer of McKinley with deeper sig
nificance and added emphasis. " Whoever," he said, " shall
hereafter draw a portrait of murder, if he would show it as it
has been exhibited where it was last to be looked for, let him
not give it the grim visage of Moloch, the brow knitted by re
venge, the face black with settled hate. Let him draw rather
a decorous, smooth-faced, bloodless demon; not so much an ex
ample of human nature in its depravity and its paroxysms of
crime, as an infernal being, a fiend in the ordinary display and
development of his character." How perfect a description of
Czolgosz, the moral leper; differing from Guiteau in the cold
serenity and causelessness of his act, even as McKinley differed
from Garfield in a gentler nature and a sweeter and purer grace.
It will not be said by the most censorious critic of William
McKinley that he was not a well-intentioned man, who loved
his country and tried to do his duty. To those who had the hap
piness personally to know him he seemed very much more than
this ; a man who brought to the public service a strong character
and large capabilities, but who in his private relations of life
was graciousness personified; patient, kindly, sympathetic. The
notion that he was not his own master, and the master of all
about him, was singularly at fault. Nothing could the better
prove this than his fidelity to his friends. It is the weak man
who kicks away the ladder when he has climbed to the top.
McKinley showed himself grateful to every round of the ladder.
In his heart he feared no man's rivalry, not even the accusation
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WILLIAM McKINLEY
and appearance of a division of power. He knew as few men
have known how to say " No " as if conferring a favor and to
send the suitor away at least half-satisfied.
He was the strictest, the most orthodox of partisans in the
sense that he earnestly believed his party to be right. " The
party, right or wrong," meant with him the conviction that
parties are aggregations; made up both of right and wrong;
and that as to the sum-totals and in the long run he was surer
of realizing his ideals by keeping closely in the party line.
Thus, though accessible to his political adversaries, and most con
siderate in his intercourse with them, he took counsel mainly of
his political friends ; a very Jackson in this respect, without Old
Hickory's vehemence, his obdurate likes and dislikes.
Justly to understand William McKinley we must take this
into account. It is the lode-star that sheds a flood of light upon
all that he said and did. He resembled Lincoln in the stead
fastness of his partyism and the benignancy of his utterances and
conduct. Opposed to him upon most public questions, both theoretical
and practical, we yet cannot help thinking that his removal from
the head of affairs at this time is a national calamity. However
men may differ as to the new questions which are even now
but half risen above the disk of the political firmament, there
cannot be two opinions as to the proposition that they should
be met with intelligent disposition. If in the nature of the case
they augment the power of the Executive — though for a time
only — it is of the first importance that that Executive should
be an honest man not given to excesses of assumption, or radical
experimentation. In William McKinley we had such a man.
The promptitude and firmness with which he put his foot upon
the third-term suggestion gave the country assurance that he
was working to no ulterior purpose. It was direct proof of dis
interestedness. It stripped the new problems of all extraneous
matter, sending a most misleading and dangerous issue to the
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WILLIAM McKINLEY
rear, and put them before the country upon their merits. If
Mr. McKinley had done no other service to the State, this would
have been of incalculable value.
But there was one other thing which he did for which he
received discredit among thoughtless people. They said he
" kept his ear to the ground." If by that it was meant that he
tried to keep in close touch with public opinion, to catch, as it
were, the heartbeats of the people, why not? What President
before him would have dared to place upon the lapel of his coat
and proudly to wear a Confederate badge? But he, too, was
the President who restored Wheeler and Lee to the military ser
vice. He vetoed few bills. He stopped them before they got
to him. He had no nominations rejected. Congress was with
him, not against him.
Critics, seeking to deny him the higher virtues of statesman
ship, called him a clever politician. And so he was. But was
it only clever politics that was able to hold the Government
well in hand and keep it out of a premature declaration of war
until the moral basis of that war should be clearly laid and the
people be thoroughly united? Was it only clever politics to
pilot the ship of state through the breakers which succeed all
wars and to bring her back into port intact and with so little
strain that thus far we can scarce see any sign of danger, or
even of stress of weather? What may betide, what may be hid
in the womb of the future, we know not. We can only judge
the sailing as far as we have gone. The elements may thicken
and grow dark. The skies may be overspread. Perils may gather
on every hand. But the sailing has been too smooth over seas
that were so strange for anybody to deny the actual statesman
ship, however he may dispute the doctrinal statesmanship of
William McKinley.
The death of Lincoln was certainly untimely. He was the
friend, not the enemy, of that part of the country which at that
moment most needed a friend. Had he lived the course of events
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WILLIAM McKINLEY
would have been surely different. There would have been no
era of reconstruction, with its rigors, made possible alone by his
taking off. Reading that dark chapter anew, we can see in the
death of William McKinley nothing less than a national
calamity; the removal from the head of affairs at an important
epoch of a disinterested, able, patriotic man, who had those af
fairs well in hand; and the casting loose of the moorings of the
ship of state, to be driven out among the winds and waves of
a most dangerous and treacherous sea, pilotless, rudderless, domi
nated by partyism, factionism, ambition, and all the evil spirits
of the vasty deep of human passion let loose, the hand of the
master gone!
He doeth all things well. Yea, but whom He loveth He
chasteneth. Was it that the stricken South stood in need of
chastisement that the kindly Lincoln was removed and the dread
gospel of hate and force was set up in his place? And has this
bereavement come upon us as a punishment, and the forerunner
of other punishment to follow, for our high-blown arrogance
and pride, our wicked forgetfulness of the homely, home-spun
traditions of our being and our faith? The answer to the riddle
we shall know full surely, and soon enough.
Standing by the dead body of William McKinley, the man
— the simple, generous, gentle man — our Chieftain yet our fel
low-citizen — we can only mourn; mourn for our country and
ourselves that he is gone ; mourn for the evil that has come upon
us by this cruel and unnatural murder; mourning above all for
that stricken one, that bosom friend, that wilted flower, cruelly
struck down by the hand of the assassin, never to hope again
until the angels shall open their wings and take her where they
have taken him. God have mercy upon us this day, as a nation
and as a people! It is too dreadful to contemplate. May it
make us better men and women, now and forever, amen !
Henkt Wattekson.

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WILLIAM McKINLEY
Boston Globe, September 14, 1901.
THE DEAD PRESIDENT.
The death of President McKinley has sent a thrill of pro
found sorrow into the hearts of all classes of people. That a
man with such a sunny, genial temperament should be the tar
get of an assassin, is one of the extraordinary events of our time.
That he should be taken in the prime of his maturer manhood
adds to the universal sorrow occasioned by his death.
This is not the time nor the place to dwell upon the character
istics of the hare-brained monster who caused his death, or to
urge that proper national and State laws should be passed to con
trol or exclude from this country men who are avowed anarchists.
That question will come up and be settled and settled right at no
distant day.
It is rather a time to dwell lovingly and sorrowfully and sym
pathetically with seventy-five millions of people who mourn our
Chief Magistrate's untimely end and deplore the " deep damna
tion of his taking off."
It is a time for us to dwell upon the active and useful life
which President McKinley led in the span of fifty-eight years
which he was permitted to live. His record is certainly a remark
able one, even in this free and enlightened country, whose his
tory is illustrated with the brilliant and courageous acts of self-
made men in numerous lines of activity and usefulness. Born
in 1843, Mr. McKinley entered the service of his country as a
private in 1861, when only eighteen years of age. In April,
1862, he was promoted to commissary sergeant. In September
of the same year he was promoted to be second lieutenant for
gallantry at Antietam. He was promoted to first lieutenant in
1863, raised to a captaincy in 1864, and was made brevet major
in 1865. His was a continuous and brave service from the beginning
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WILLIAM McKINLEY
of the Civil War to the end. It is a remarkable fact that in
serving for this long period and participating jn many battles,
being almost constantly in danger for four arduous years, he
was never wounded, and was fated at last to die by the bullet
of an anarchist. In his army service he passed through showers
of bullets which must have aggregated tons of lead, and was
never harmed, but met his death at the hands of a cowardly
assassin in the midst of an exhibition of the fruits of peace and
progress. With his career as a lawyer and his upward march in politics
the people are familiar. His services in Congress and as Gov
ernor ,of Ohio made him one of the most prominent public men
in the country. First elected President in 1896, in 1898 he did
what he could to prevent the Spanish War, because he was
familiar from his own experiences with the horrors of strife,
but when it came he endeavored to do his whole duty with intel
ligence, patriotism, and at a great sacrifice of mental and phys
ical force.
Emerson says, " If a man wishes friends, he must be a friend
himself." William McKinley evidently believed this sentiment,
and carried it out faithfully from the beginning of his life to
the end. When thanked the other day by a man to whom he
had been a good friend he simply replied, " My friends have
been very good to me." A man who doesn't stand by his friends
in religion, in politics, in business, and in social life, in adversity
and prosperity, has something lacking in his makeup, which pre
vents a successful and perfectly rounded life. President McKin
ley met this test in a superb and striking manner.
The President of the United States has to live in the " bright
sunlight of publicity " every day, and it is due to this fact that
Mr. McKinley's domestic life became familiar to the rank and
file of the American people. His ceaseless devotion to his wife
under all circumstances, in health and in sickness, endeared him
more especially to the women of the country over whose destinies
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WILLIAM McKINLEY
he presided. In his case the husband remained the lover, sin
cerely and completely, and he set an example to the men of
this and succeeding generations, which must always have a
beneficial effect upon the homes of the American people.
I have always maintained that any man, no matter how rich
or powerful he may become, no matter what positions of power
he may hold, will, as he draws near the end of his life, find
the most satisfaction in reviewing the acts where he has been
helpful and kind to those who are weaker and poorer than he is.
President McKinley's life has been filled with acts of kindness
which make up one of the brightest and most satisfactory pages
of his busy life. He will be sincerely mourned by the American
people as a whole, but his memory will be especially prized by
the host of people whose burdens were lifted and into whose
lives bright rays of sunshine came from the kind heart of Will
iam McKinley.

Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia, Pa.
PRESIDENT McKINLEY DEAD.
President McKinley is dead. It is a shock not only to our
own country, but to every civilized government in the world,
for other governments have learned first to respect and then
to admire the man who has met them in the field of diplomacy,
who has shown them the way out of the Chinese question, who
has handled the Spanish problem with such marked ability, and
who, in the very last speech that he was ever destined to make,
that delivered at Buffalo on the day before he was shot down,
breathed to the whole world a spirit of peace and good-will, and
gave assurance that this great country of ours did not intend to
fight unfairly for trade, but that in reciprocity there should be.
cordial dealings.
It has seemed, since the bullet of the assassin found its mark
79

WILLIAM McKINLEY
and while the President has been lingering between life and
death, that the nation could not spare him. The people have
remembered what he has done, and that in the consummation
of his policies the greatest prosperity that we have ever known
has come to us. He will go down to history and will remain in
their memories as one of the great Presidents.
For it is not the leading of men in times of a crisis such as
convulsed the nation in the 60's that alone makes a President
great. Peace also hath its victories, and also calls for wise states
manship, and it is the wisdom displayed by the McKinley ad
ministration that has brought such widespread blessings to our
shores. McKinley has made few mistakes. He was not respon
sible for the Spanish war, but when it came he fought it out,
and then came the problems that would have swamped a man
of smaller calibre — those of Porto Rico, Cuba, the Philippines.
It is useless here to go over the details of the Paris Peace Com
mission, to follow the instructions given by the President, which
added so much new territory to our possessions. It is all fresh
in the public mind — how the President was bitterly assailed be
cause he would not abandon the Philippines to their fate, which
would have been continuous revolution or the forcible taking
of the islands by other powers. The so-called anti-Imperialists
have been overwhelmed with the now very general public be
lief that the President did just right; that, in fact, he could
have done nothing else, while his determination to give the fullest
measure of self-government to the Philippines has been made
known by the work of the Philippine Commission.
And during the solving of these problems the Chinese ques
tion loomed up with its dangerous possibilities, for there were
nations ready to demand a slice of territory to the detriment
of the great and growing trade of the United States. Long be
fore Pekin had become a slaughter-house the McKinley admin
istration had secured by diplomacy the consent of the various
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WILLIAM McKINLEY
powers to the maintenance of the open door, but in times such
as befel the representatives of the powers in China when the
Boxers were murdering and plundering, such agreements are
not to be relied upon. But it was the courage of McKinley, the
splendid diplomacy displayed, that won a magnificent triumph
for the United States and left the Chinese Empire intact, with
a grand trade outlook for this country. When a President suc
ceeds in practically forcing the whole world to his way of think
ing, he must needs be reckoned in history as a great President.
His earlier contests were won upon the tariff questions, which
made his name famous before he became President. He fought
for his principles even when the election of Cleveland seemed
to show their unpopularity with the majority. But he lived to
see those principles triumph grandly, until now the opponents
of his political party have about abandoned the field of free
trade, and the commercial nations are welcoming his extension
of the Blaine plan of reciprocity. Protection, honest money as
opposed to unlimited silver, the extension of commerce, the
building up of the merchant marine, the construction of the
inter-oceanic canal — all these have become policies, some of
which are not yet carried out. But the country will look to
his successor to continue them.
The President is dead. Long live the President! Turn we
now to Roosevelt, for although the nation mourns as it has
mourned only upon few occasions before, the nation itself it not
dead. It must go on living. And so, what of Roosevelt?
There will be those to feel nervous, for financial circles are
quick to take alarm. It will be recalled of Roosevelt at first
blush that he is essentially the " rough rider," the man of war,
the intense American, the possible jingo, and the fear will be
expressed that in dealing with the South American troubles,
which must now fall to him, there will be danger that the coun
try will be plunged into serious difficulties. But it must also
be recalled that Roosevelt is a man of experience in public life,

WILLIAM McKINLEY
that he is a student, that as Governor of New York he made a
distinct success, and that, accepting as he must do, the unfinished
work of McKinley, he will feel in duty bound to carry on that
work to its legitimate conclusion.
Changes of administration always create some nervousness,
but in the case of Roosevelt we believe that he will have no de
sire to stray in any way from the high standard set, and that a
wise conservatism will prevail.
The nation mourns — but the nation is safe.

Milwaukee Sentinel, MiUvaukee, Wis.
A NATION MOURNS.
President McKinley is dead. For the third time in less than
half a century the hand of an assassin has brutally murdered the
chief chosen by the American people as a fit man to preside
over the destinies of the nation.
Born in humble circumstances of poor parents, President
McKinley was a shining example of the success that can be
achieved in the United States by those who earnestly, conscien
tiously, and industriously strive for success along right lines.
His life and works give the lie to the slanderers of the American
Republic who rail against society and attempt to light the fires
of class hatred in order that those who have incurred their dis
pleasure may be consumed.
Throughout his life President McKinley grew in mental
stature and intellectual strength from year to year. His fame
was not built upon a limited number of great achievements, but
upon innumerable accomplishments filling out each year of his
life from the day he offered himself as a boy soldier in the de
fence of his country to the time when he was stricken down by
the murderous hand of a fanatical anarchist.
This affliction enters every home in the land. To-day the
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WILLIAM McKINLEY
American people mourn as one family for the head of the house
hold. In such an hour, with a great national sorrow oppressing
the people, it is natural to turn for comfort to the words of
that other martyred President who, in addressing the frantic
people of New York when the great Lincoln was stricken,
calmed them with the assurance, " God reigns and the Govern
ment at Washington still lives! "

Illinois State Journal, Springfield, III.
ASSASSIN STRUCK AT THE PEOPLE THROUGH
THEIR PRESIDENT.
Another good man has suffere'd the extreme of mortality for
the people of this nation and the mortal frame of William McKin
ley lies cold because a wicked assassin took away the precious
boon of life conferred by the Creator. Without even the poor
excuse of resentment for some fancied wrong or slight, with
out any grievance, either real or imaginary, against his victim,
without the shadow of malice against the man whose life he
sought, the cowardly villain put a bullet in the body of the
executive he should have honored and respected while the gener
ous official stood with hand outstretched in kindly welcome to
the hand that smote. It is an awful thought that a creature en
dowed with God-given intelligence could so far forget the rights
of others and the duty he owes to the Great Judge as to stand
before his victim in public and with professed friendship and
respect speed the murderous bullet; and yet, such a man lives
and has his friends, admirers, and endorsers.
William McKinley was the choice of the intelligent freemen
of America for the highest office in the gift of the Republic. He
administered the great responsibilities of that post with such skill
and fidelity as to win approval from a greater number of elec
tors than even the great majority which established him in office
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WILLIAM McKINLEY
upon his first candidacy. The verdict of the people of the na
tion was that William McKinley was wise, just, and safe; that
his policies and methods were satisfactory, and that a very large
majority preferred to retain him rather than to permit a change
to be made. The people were entitled to his services as an offi
cial, and he was entitled to live and move and have his being
among them until it should be decreed by Providence that life
should cease. No man had the right to intervene and terminate
that life.
As an individual William McKinley was esteemed superior
to the average in many respects and was frequently conceded
to be a near approach to the ideal. His life was honorable in
every respect. His family relations were conspicuously tender
and sincere, and his devotion to the good woman who shared
his name and hopes, although unostentatious, was very generally
recognized and commented upon. It was of that self-sacrific
ing quality which alone denotes true affection and unselfishness,
and the object of such devoted affection was never allowed to
suffer through unfortunate affliction because of some public ob
ligation. This characteristic alone was accepted by many as
an index to the nature of the man so greatly honored by his fel
low-citizens, but it was not the only indication of the good
ness of heart which dominated the gentle spirit at the head of
public affairs in the United States. The President was a godly
man. He identified himself with one of the great Christian
denominations, and was a sincere worshipper at the divine altar.
No man could preside acceptably over the welfare of 70,000,000
of people who was not at heart a good man and a believer in
the divine Ruler. William McKinley's faith was well placed
and it was firm. The pathetic scenes around the deathbed of
the expiring executive show that his heart was right, and that
his spirit was at peace with its Maker.
Mingled with the tears of the people of this country who
loved, respected, and honored their murdered President, will be
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WILLIAM McKINLEY
the sympathetic outpourings of the intelligent people of all
nations of the earth, for this executive was known, respected,
and admired throughout all the lands of enlightenment. But
the people of other nations will feel more than an ordinary
interest in the fatal termination of this assassination because
the crack of the pistol represents the hiss of a venomous reptile
which seeks to destroy popular government in the form which
has been developed gradually through more than a century of
national existence. It will be recognized, generally, as an as
sault upon free institutions rather than mere personal expres
sion of a desire for individual destruction. It means that there
is an element in the United States which awaits only a favorable
opportunity to light the torch which shall begin a destructive
conflagration in the anticipation that it may clear the way for
the foundation of a nation of incoherent and irresponsible incon
gruities, a lawless band of destroyers whose only aim is to gather
and enjoy the fruits of the toil and economy of others without
even the form of justice. It is not known, either at home or
abroad, how extensive an element of the population of this coun
try that lawless band is, and the outrage so universally lamented
to-day is regarded to some extent as the possible forerunner of
further acts of like nature. The tears of the mourners may
be dried by their fears.
Many prayers will go up from Christian hearts for the gen
tle helpmate who is so sadly bereft. Many supplications will
wend their way upward for divine support in this trying hour
of bereavement. Always severe to devoted hearts, the tearing
asunder of such ties as bound the nation's chief in holy wed
lock will prove more than ordinarily trying to the one who has
been shielded so long and so tenderly. It is the hope of all
good people that the lady may be able to survive the shock, and
that her life also may not be upon the soul of the slayer. Her
loss is greater than that of any other individual or association
of individuals, and she is deserving of the utmost consideration.
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WILLIAM McKINLEY
Sacramento Bee, Sacramento, Cal.
THE NATION MOURNS HER MARTYRED DEAD.
The death of President McKinley has plunged the nation
into heartfelt grief. He has died a martyr, for his assassina
tion was not because of any private enmity, but a blow directed
at the life of the nation.
It is a tragic end to a career of remarkable success in pub
lic life, which had promised many more years of active service
and efficiency. But yet, in one sense, it is a glorious termina
tion. The name of William McKinley will go down in history
coupled with that of Lincoln and Garfield, for the crown of
martyrdom is common to the three.
While in politics the late President excited criticism and
antagonism, as any party leader necessarily must, he was al
ways recognized as a worthy representative of the highest type
of American citizenship. No taint of dishonor rests upon his
reputation. In his private life he was ever clean, kindly, courte
ous, and self-respecting. Few public men have been in closer
touch with the people, in social as well as in political relations.
There was nothing of the autocrat in the make-up of William
McKinley, and not many of the public men of the United
States ever enjoyed a greater personal popularity.
In his domestic relations, more particularly, the martyred
President was a model of what a good husband and father ought
to be. One of the most cruel aspects of his death is the be
reavement it has caused where his affections centred, and where
strength is lacking to endure so poignant an affliction.
In the calamity that has befallen the nation every honest
citizen must feel a sense of personal loss. It is Republicanism,
Democracy in America, that has been stricken by the crime of
Czolgosz, and every member of the body politic has thus been
assailed. 86

WILLIAM McKINLEY
Happily the foundations of our Government are laid too
broad and deep to be shaken by anarchy. The bullet of the
assassin has had power to wound, but not to endanger the na
tion's life.
It emerges from this trial, as from all others, stronger and
purer from the test.
The blood of its martyrs is the seed of its liberty and the
cement of its unity.
North and South, East and West, are merged in the com
mon sorrow.
Every such event draws citizens closer together by those
" mystic chords of sympathy " to which the immortal Lincoln
so eloquently referred in one of the noblest of orations.

Chicago Inter-Ocean, Chicago, 111.
WILLIAM McKINLEY.
William McKinley is dead. The Chief Magistrate, chosen
by 80,000,000 freemen to guide and govern their common
wealth, has fallen at his post of duty. The most benevolent of
America's public servants has been cut off in the midst of his
humane career.
Benevolence was the strongest trait of William McKinley's
character. In private and in public life his chief aim was to
add to the sum of human happiness. His whole public career
was devoted to efforts to make his countrymen more prosperous
— to make life easier, happier, and brighter for all about him.
And in these efforts he greatly succeeded.
Under his guidance, his countrymen enjoyed more comfort
and more happiness than ever before in the history of the United
States. The material prosperity of the American people under
his administration is a thrice-told tale. Under the policies for
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WILLIAM McKINLEY
which he stood this nation advanced as never before. Nor was
the advancement wholly material. For with prosperity' came
leisure and opportunity for mental and spiritual progress such
as millions had never before known.
Nor were the achievements of William McKinley's adminis
tration confined to the boundaries of the Republic. Under it
the people rose in their might and gave freedom to alien mill
ions for centuries ground beneath the heel of despotism. Cuba,
Porto Rico, and the isles of the Philippines were liberated both
from their European tyrants and from the baser elements among
their own people. This nation led the way to the rescue of
civilization from Mongolian barbarism. The prestige of the Re
public was enhanced throughout the earth. The area of free
dom was enlarged and its pillars everywhere were strengthened.
Yet in this hour of sorrow the people's thought must turn
from William McKinley the statesman to William McKinley
the man. In word and deed his life was pure. Amid all the
criticism of his public acts his personal integrity was never ques
tioned. Amid all the temptations of lofty station his cleanli
ness and rectitude of personal conduct were never doubted.
William McKinley the statesman had many opponents and some
enemies. William McKinley the man deserved the enmity of
no human being.
He loved justice, but his errors, when he erred, were ever
on the side of mercy. He loved his country with all his heart
and soul, and strove ever for her welfare and honor. He loved
mankind, and his last public utterance was a prayer for the
peace and happiness of all the human race, while his first word
after receiving the fatal blow was a command that mercy be
shown his assassin. '.
That this just and merciful man, whose every thought was
good-will itself, should have been so cruelly torn from the sta
tion he adorned, from the nation he loved, and from the mill
ions who loved him, but adds to the horror and detestation felt
88

WILLIAM McKINLEY
for the crime and the criminals. For with William McKinley's
blood mor.e than one hand is stained.
Yet of these base and infamous men none wishes to think
now. Better, far better, is it to think of the good man who
has gone to the reward which his steadfast faith had won.
About his bier the nations mourn. Yet his life and deeds re
main in memory as a worthy example to the present and
posterity.

The Dispatch, Pittsburg, Pa.
THE NATION'S DEAD.
At 2.15 o'clock this morning the struggle for life was over.
The public during the past week passed from the daze of shock
to the earliest hopes, thence as the progress seemed rapid toward
recovery to rejoicing and over-confidence; then, as the unfavor
able turn appeared, to alarm, dismay, and, finally, as the last
breath passed away, to despair and mourning. The high hopes
of Wednesday make the fatal event of this morning the harder
to accept. But it is fate. All that is left of the statesman, about
whom less than eight days ago thousands were thronging in
affection and admiration, is the dull and insensate clay. To this
and to memory the nation must pay the final and mournful
honors. William McKinley's public life extended over the past twen
ty-five years, and for the last eleven years had been a leading
part of the history of the country. But his personal record
since he reached adult age is a part of the memory which the
nation will hold dear as a characteristic American life. The
youth who, fresh from school, was among the first to rally to
the defence of the Union, and who through four years of war
served his country with honor and credit, is no less significant
as making up the man than the Congressman whose industry
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WILLIAM McKINLEY
brought him the leadership, or the President who patiently and
even tentatively led his country through new and untried junct
ures to the solution of unexpected issues. All typify the char
acteristics which make American citizenship at its best, and
show the highest possibilities open to him who believes in his
country and himself.
The statesmanship of the late President was of his time and
his nation. He did not display the bold and meteoric strokes
of Blaine, the set and impassive determination of Grant, or the
rugged and somewhat obstinate independence of Cleveland. He
was disposed to approach new problems in a tentative spirit. He
accepted the limitations of politics and circumstances, and was
willing to modify his original views as progress might show to
be best, or as practical need might dictate. But above the neces
sity of feeling his way and adapting his course to conditions
was the guiding and predominant purpose of working out the
best results possible for his country. It must be recognized that
in this way he accomplished great results. The labors which
Washington and Lincoln performed were greater than his. But
next to them the record of taking the headship of a nation in
the depth of commercial depression and carrying it through
war and the untried puzzles of expansion to an undreamed-of
zenith of peace, prosperity, and good feeling is unrivalled on the
part of other American Presidents.
It is one of the atrocities of this murderous lunacy that of
the nine Presidents in the past forty years the three kindliest,
most lovable, and most democratic are those which have fallen
by assassins' bullets. The other six had qualities which were
likely to inflame opposition, or dim their popularity. But Lin
coln, Garfield, and McKinley were of all men the three that
should have been safe from the assassin's hate. And of the
three, as already said, McKinley was the one who seemed in
alienably secure in the affection and admiration of the masses.

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WILLIAM McKINLEY
Dallas News.
WILLIAM McKINLEY.
The head of the nation is dead, not in the course of the work
ing of the laws of nature, but by the cruel hand of murder. He
went to his death not because of the antagonism of him who
slew him toward him, but because he was the highest represen
tative of a free and prosperous people. He represented the
Government, and it was the Government that the blow was aimed
at. Hence the sorrow over his death is made great not only be
cause of the noble character of the man thus untimely taken
off, but also by that patriotism which feels that the blow was
at the country. Mr. McKinley will live in history as the be
loved among his people. His name will be written without an
expression of excuse or explanation following it. He lived in
a memorable epoch — lived when the Republic may be said to
have emerged from youth into full and strong manhood. For
within his terms truly a revolution has come about. The Span
ish War, the marvellous material progress which has marked the
life of the Republic within the last five years were the years of
his position as the highest of its agents. It was fortunate that
he was cautious rather than bold; that he felt his way instead
of rushing forward; that he had the faculty of inducing rather
than driving; that he was conservative and matter-of-fact than
radical and sensational. For that revolution, greater than even
we can properly appreciate, could have not been brought to its
present point without a jar to the fabric had he been other than
he was. Mr. McKinley may not have been great as men are
counted great. He was not the Moltke nor Grant nor Lee in
military science — no Talleyrand nor Bismarck nor Seward in
diplomacy. He was a plain, every-day gentleman of the high
est intelligence and a genius in nothing. He was never so weak
as to excite anything but respect from those who disagreed with
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WILLIAM McKINLEY
him, and he was never so great as to excite hate from individu
als or fear from his country. He was a good neighbor Presi
dent, a home President, a patriot President, and a lover of his
country, who has contributed as much to its greatness as any
of his predecessors. And there is not within all the land, North,
South, East, or West, a man in whose heart a love of country
abides, or in whose breast an admiration for a good citizen ex
ists who will not drop a tear over his grave and say he was an
American — a citizen — and both of that type which will make
the nation's name glorious and its citizenship the grandest the
world has seen.

Cleveland Plain Dealer, Cleveland, O.
SHRINED IN A PEOPLE'S LOVE.
Dead!
For the third time the nation is bowed in grief over a mur
dered President, struck down by the hand of an assassin without
shadow of cause or extenuating circumstances.
Abraham Lincoln, James A. Garfield, William McKinley,
martyr Presidents whose memory will be shrined in the hearts
of the American people as long as the country shall endure.
Men of honorable lives and patriotic services, slain for no faults
of their own, but because they had been chosen to embody the
power of the people, and the blow that struck them was aimed
at that power.
For the crime against its own majesty in the killing of the
President the sovereign people of the United States will exact
the severest penalty the law can inflict, but the universal sor
row is for the man as well as for the official. William McKin
ley had borne his high office so well that he won the esteem and
personal friendship of all. His death is everywhere felt a per
sonal loss. 92

WILLIAM McKINLEY
Here, where he is so well known to all, where he went in
and out as on© of our own people, where he has his most inti
mate friends and not a single enemy, the death of William
McKinley comes nearer than the passing away of a President.
There is no vacancy in the Presidential office, but a friend has
gone whose place will never be filled.
To sorrow for the loss of the President, neighbor, and friend
is added keen sympathy for the stricken wife over whom he
had watched with such devotion and loving solicitude. The
hearts of all go out to Mrs. McKinley in this, her hour of su
preme trial.
Bowed in sorrow over the dead, there is one consoling
thought. He who gave his life for his country was worthy the
honors the people had bestowed on him, the love they felt for
him, the place his memory will hold in their hearts.

Boston Journal.
PRESIDENT McKINLEY.
If hope deferred maketh the heart sick, what of hope grown
keen and buoyant that is suddenly turned to bitterest grief?
Had the bullet of the assassin proved instantly fatal, the
shock to the nation might have been more startling, but the
sorrow would have been less intense. This week of suffering,
borne with manly fortitude and Christian faith, has endeared
William McKinley as never before to the great, warm heart of
the American people. Since Lincoln they have so loved no
President. Their passion of sympathy, their yearning that all
might go well with the stricken executive, have burned away
the barriers of partisanship as with the consuming and purify
ing force of fire. " Ah, if he lives, if he lives " — men said —
" what a power he will be — how we shall all be glad and proud
to heed and follow him! " But it was not to be. He who
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WILLIAM McKINLEY
would have been the nation's hero is its martyr. He has fallen
in our cause. His murderer was inflamed to the awful deed by
the ravings of alien outlaws, who hate the Republic for its or
dered liberty and its majestic strength.
But this is no time for thought of vengeance. That would
have been far from the kindly heart of the dead President. The
people who loved him are too full of grief to-day for any other
emotion. They are looking back, through the crowded years.
They see the ardent young soldier of Antietam and Cedar Creek,
the student returned to his books, the modest practitioner of
law, the hard-working District Attorney, the new member of
Congress who made men listen when he spoke, and point to him
as one destined for distinction; then the Governor of Ohio,
brave in defeat, faithful among the faithless, clinging still in
those cyclonic years of 1890-1891 to his profound belief in the
American principle of protection; then, by the grateful choice
of a chastened people, the President of the United States.
It was William McKinley's unswerving advocacy of the pro
tective policy which made him President. He believed in pro
tection as implicitly as he believed in our republican form of
government. Indeed, he regarded the one as the essential and
inevitable complement of the other. When the pendulum of
public sentiment, having gone for a time astray, swung back
to the American system in 1893 and afterward, the ablest, -most
consistent, and most convincing champion of protectionism in
all America became the logical Republican candidate in the
next Presidential election. Friend and foe alike acknowledged
this. The McKinley law did not have to wait until 1896 for
its vindication. The Congressional campaign of 1894, waged
almost exclusively on the tariff question, brought overwhelming
defeat to the Democracy. That was before the silver issue had
come in to split the party in twain. In 1893, on the tariff ques
tion alone, William McKinley had been elected Governor of
his native State by the unheard-of plurality of 81,000.
94

WILLIAM McKINLEY
Thus the tariff controversy, ending in absolute triumph for
protectionism, marked Governor McKinley out plainly as the
nation's Chief Magistrate. The silver question was a mighty
force in the memorable Presidential campaign of 1896, but the
result had really been decided beforehand. Republican victory
was certain, and it was no more sweeping on the tariff and silver
questions together than it had been on the tariff only two years
before. This is a great, significant fact which should be remembered
in justice to William McKinley's public services. He will go
down in history as the foremost protectionist of the later half
of the nineteenth century, as Henry Clay was of the earlier
one. Protectionism could not make Clay President, but it could
and did make McKinley President. That is a fair measure of
the steady growth in favor of this economic principle among the
thinking citizens of the United States.
But William McKinley was not a man of one idea. He
brought to the advocacy of sound money in 1896 the same lucid
intellect and earnest heart which he had given year after year
to his distinctive policy of protection. The best sound-money
arguments in that campaign were the arguments that came from
the pen or the lips of the Republican candidate himself. How
true he was to his pledges the record of Congress attests. First
the tariff, then the currency were buttressed by legislation, and
the prosperity which the menace of free trade and free silver
had banished came back as by the wave of the magician's wand.
No sooner were those weighty problems settled than another,
uglier, and more perplexing, pressed imperatively for solution.
President McKinley's handling of the grave crisis that culmi
nated in the Spanish War was a flawless example of wise and
brave statesmanship. He used his utmost endeavors to prepare
the country for a conflict, but he exhausted every resource of
diplomacy before he would consent to the striking of a blow.
No clamor of Congress, no taunts of " weakness " or " coward-
95

WILLIAM McKINLEY
ice," could move him. He was too good a soldier; he had been
under fire before. When he did give the signal he had a united
country behind him — united as it never had been in any war
with a foreign or domestic enemy.
That war of 1898 left a vexatious heritage. President
McKinley met the Philippine problem as he had met the prob
lems that preceded it, with patience, courage, moderation, faith
in man, and faith in God. He was subjected for a time to such
a storm of abuse as had poured on no President since Lincoln,
but he bore it exactly as Lincoln bore his heavy burden, and
he lived to see the vindication of his policy and to receive the
overwhelming approval of the people. His re-election a year
ago by immense popular and electoral majorities was the very
greatest honor which the American nation ever gave an Ameri
can President.
William McKinley was a great President because he was a
great man. He was an unassuming man; he had no meteoric
genius, he had no theatrical magnetism. He won men to him
by the power of his transparent honesty. Here, everybody in
stinctively recognized, is a man who means everything he says.
There were other men more scholarly; other men more elo
quent. What made William McKinley the first public man of
America was the wonderful quality of his earnestness. Those
who heard him speak before the Home Market Club in Boston
a year and a half ago will never, so long as they live, forget the
absolute sincerity and unflinching courage that rang out in every
syllable. He dies with his great work unfinished, as Lincoln died be
fore him. But, like Lincoln, he had gone far enough to see
the light ahead. The years to come will be easier than the years
just behind us — thanks to the wisdom, the bravery, and the
devotion of the noble soul that has departed. In our grief we
must not forget our gratitude. 96

WILLIAM McKINLEY
The Constitution, Atlanta, Ga.
THE NATION'S GRIEF.
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 ex
isted. The high office of President was fittingly filled by a
man measuring up to its requirements. To him it made no dif
ference 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 su
premacy of the Union; he had expanded the limits of American
authority beyond the seas, but, greater than all — the greatest
possible — was the binding of domestic wounds and the heal
ing of internal estrangement.
The, nation mourns for McKinley; the South kneels at his
bier; the whole world sees a weeping but united nation.
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 one in 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 quali-
97

WILLIAM McKINLEY
ties 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 Roose
velt will prove a worthy successor of William McKinley.
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 compromis
ing with civic crime! The anarchist must go! He must not
gloat over the grief of a strong nation. Herein lies work for
the people!

Chicago Daily News.
DEATH OF PRESIDENT McKINLEY.
With the death of William McKinley, twenty-fifth Presi
dent of the United States, a great epoch closes. The beginning
of a greater epoch was foreshadowed in the remarkable address
delivered by the late President on the day before the assassin
struck him down.
Three of the seven Presidents elected by the people of this
nation since 1860 have been assassinated. Therefore no one had
reason to be greatly surprised when a furious degenerate, who
calls himself an anarchist, slew in cold blood one of the best
beloved of the Presidents. The man who stands as the chief
representative of order and sane government is in constant peril
from any loathsome creature who, with boundless egotism,
98

WILLIAM McKINLEY
chooses to kill that he may show his malice against the human
race. Assassination has come to be quite the most probable death
for the head of a government. The lesson which should come
to all from this latest monstrous deed is to modify extreme
opinions, to respect the office of President and the man who
fills it to the best of his ability, to sympathize with his perils
and his heavy cares rather than to envy his honors and sneer
at his supposed motives in his public acts.
In spite of the hideous aspect of the assassination of the
President and in the face of the universal lamentation which
it has caused throughout the nation and the world, it is com
forting to know that for the victim the moment when the crime
was committed was peculiarly fortunate. The policy of the
President's administration had been crowned with marvellous
success. Under its stimulating influence the nation had emerged
from financial gloom and disorder. Successful in war and in
great colonial enterprises, successful in its striving for the regen
eration of Cuba, successful in diplomacy abroad and legislation
at home, successful beyond precedent in its foreign trade, the
nation, under the guidance of its twenty-fifth President, was at
high tide of prosperity and honor. Thus was its Chief Executive
abundantly justified in outlining, in his address at the Buffalo
Exposition, great policies for the continuance of national pros
perity and the enhancement of national greatness. That his
words were wise is generally conceded. Having done much for
the nation, his administration was ready to do much more.
Thus, before the assassin struck down this earnest, great Ameri
can his fame was made doubly secure.
With the greater epoch which must come from the adoption
of the policies advocated in the last address of the late President
his name will be inseparably linked. His greatness grew from
event to event. Like Lincoln, he waited on the wishes of the
people and was very near to them, since they furnished him with
the inspiration for his work. This extreme sensitiveness to na-
99

WILLIAM McKINLEY
tional needs expressed by the strong common-sense of the en
lightened people is one of the most valuable traits of a ruler
of a Republic. It may be doubted whether any other President
save Lincoln had it in the same degree as did McKinley.
He was a thoroughly good man. He was one of the Repub
lic's great Presidents. His death is universally lamented.

St. Paul Dispatch.
THE PRESIDENT IS DEAD.
It is finished.
Dead!The American people have turned to face their sorrow in
dumb agony, speechless. From black Friday to black Friday
they have listened, tremulously, at the door of Fate. Not all
the time have they been conscious that the sun of hope could
go down before so dark a midnight as that which separated the
eighth day of their suspense from the fatal ninth. They have
been intensely nervous, nervously excited, saying bitter things,
and bitterly deserved things. Fearing the thunderbolt, they
have let the lightning of their wrath vent itself against the ene
mies of the Republic and the enemy of the most lovable of men.
They have spent their strength. To-day there is but one thought,
one word.
Dead! It is not sacrilege to say that greater love hath no man than
this, that he lay down his life for his friends, nay, not only for
his friends, but for his enemies, for the seventy-six millions of
souls to whom his life means freedom, and to the millions in
the islands of the sea, even to the millions of struggling people
everywhere. It is not sacrilege because it is again the Christ-drama which
has been enacted. Man has died that man may live. The week
has been spent in a Garden of Gethsemane. The last words of

WILLIAM McKINLEY
this master of a loving people — did they not paraphrase the
words in the Garden, two thousand years ago, " Nevertheless, not
as I will, but as Thou wilt? " — " It is God's way. His will be
done." In the first agony of his crucifixion, were not the words
the same in spirit as those in the last agony of the Great Cruci
fixion — " Let no one hurt him " — " Father, forgive them, for
they know not what they do! "
It is not the mere man McKinley who lies dead in the city
by the lake, waiting the Arimathean tomb. It is the Master
with pierced heart and pierced side. It is wounded Liberty,
which shall yet rise and appear to the people on the road to
Emmaus, into whose side the doubting Thomas of even anarchy
shall thrust its hands and declare: "I believe; help thou my
unbelief," Liberty which shall become transfigured on the mount
of ascension. Who shall doubt that this is the " blood of a new
testament-"? Even now to the people pinnacled upon the sum
mit of grief, there comes, not an angel of darkness, but an
angel of light, showing them the nations of the earth, bound
together by this blood of a new testament. William McKinley
is dead, but not before he has led America to its place among
the nations of the earth. When the King of England, the Em
peror of Germany, the Queen Regent of Spain can each employ
the same language of " dastardly attempt " in referring to the
assassin's deed, and when all civilized people openly recognize
that this assassination is the attempt to assassinate the People,
the infinite price we pay is almost worth the infinite reward.
Dead!
Dead; but still living, still speaking. The day before the
murderer's bullet struck him down, the President of the United
States made an address to the American people, which marked
the summit of his statesmanship. It was more than an address
to the American people. It was a manifesto to all men. That
most notable sentence of all, " The period of exclusiveness is
past," will subtly shape the policies of our nation and of the

WILLIAM McKINLEY
world, in this new century pregnant with the world's destiny.
Had McKinley made deliberate choice he could not have died
at a moment more fitting. It was the psychologic moment of
his career to impress himself upon the nations as a great world
force. The Buffalo speech was delivered in the Parliament of
Man, for the Federation of the World.
We may feel that God was unkind to permit this crime.
Viewed in its larger light, must we not say with the lips silent
now forever, " It is God's way " ?
It is not too early to give to William McKinley his place
among our Presidents and among world statesmen. The tre-
mendousness of the moment enlarges the powers of vision, of
judgment. He will take his place among the martyr Presidents,
that glorious trinity of Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, Will
iam McKinley. He will take his place among the powerful
Presidents, that great trinity of George Washington, Abraham
Lincoln, William McKinley. As Washington stood alone in the
crisis of the nation's birth, as Lincoln stood alone in the crisis
of the nation's threatened death, so McKinley stood alone in the
crisis of the nation's growth, a milder term, but a period fraught
with equal terror. As a man, the people of the world pay him
tribute for a charm of personality, a nobility of manhood, a
courtesy with acquaintances, a lealty toward friends, a tender
ness with loved ones, for a sweetness and serenity of spirit amid
the irritations of a public career, under the criticism of a search
light scrutiny. As a ruler the governments of the world do him
honor for his catholic spirit, his democratic sympathies, for clear
vision, keen insight, and firm grasp in the larger problems of a
world that is a new world.
It is left for the people of the United States to love him.
This they are doing with greater love and more universal than
ever fell to the lot of a President. And it is left for them, the
harder task, of a faith that good shall somehow be the final goal
of ill, and that the blood of the martyrs shall be for a covenant.

WILLIAM McKINLEY

The Times, Philadelphia, Pa.
THE NATION'S GRIEF.
A third time within the memory of our generation the nation
is appalled by a murderous assault upon the President. A crime
so wanton, so cruel, so unreasonable, not against one man but
against humanity, leaves us for the moment stunned and mysti
fied. It casts over the country a cloud of sorrow and doubt.
It suggests some awful catastrophe for which we are unprepared.
The murder of Lincoln, at a time when the clouds of war
were lifting and he was entering on a new era of constructive
statesmanship in a spirit of charity and peace, was nevertheless
the sequel of a period of bitter strife and passion, when the Presi
dent appeared to many minds the embodiment of a hated power.
The assassination of Garfield, however associated with partisan
dispute, was the individual act of an imbecile. We have learned
too little as yet of the man who shot President McKinley at
Buffalo to determine his criminal classification, and his crime is
so far unaccountable. We can but class it with those other
manifestations of the spirit of anarchy, the reckless hatred of
organized authority, that have shocked the European world. It
is a crime as inexplicable and as futile as the assassination of
the President of the French Republic, and more appalling in
proportion as we have supposed ourselves removed from revolu
tionary violence.
It was only yesterday that the whole country was applaud
ing President McKinley's happy speech at the Buffalo Exposi
tion, its broad outlook, its calm and cheerful spirit, the sunny
temperament it displayed. It seemed to mark the culmination
of a fortunate career, that had carried him on to higher and
higher usefulness, making him in some sense the representative
of that wider life the nation has attained and of its broadening
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WILLIAM McKINLEY
influence in the civilization of the world. It was a speech so
full of hope and courage and good-will that it stirred the national
consciousness. But a few hours later came the distressing news
of the cowardly assault, and congratulation gave place to sorrow
and anxiety.
Mr. McKinley has happily outlived the narrow limitations
of his earlier public life. The politician in him has grown into
the statesman, and more and more he has broadened to the re
quirements of his high office. But even were it otherwise, there
would be no thought to-day but for his virtues, his high char
acter as a man, his dignity as President. It is the President
who has been wounded, and every loyal American recoils at the
injury. Yet the nation is greater and stronger than any man, how
ever influential, however exalted in station. It was Garfield's
own exclamation: " God reigns and the Government still lives."
There is no peril in the succession. The country will go on its
way in any event. But a shock like this cannot be without
effect, and it must be in a sober spirit that our people take up
their tasks to-day, awaiting with painful anxiety the news from
the bedside of the stricken President.

Advertiser, Montgomery, Ala.
THE PRESIDENT'S DEATH.
Yesterday there was a hush even in the places where ordina
rily excitement prevails, because of the painful news constantly
coming from the bedside of the dying President. Everywhere
in the tenderest tones and most sympathetic terms the expected
news was discussed. It was the uppermost thought in the minds
of millions of American people, and wherever civilization pre-
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WILLIAM McKINLEY
vails the condition of Mr. McKinley was an earnest topic of
conversation. All day the bulletins indicated that the end was near, yet
so great was the desire to hear something favorable, that people
lingered around the boards and thronged newspaper and tele
graph offices hoping to the last that some word of encourage
ment would come. Their hopes were never realized.
At the hour of 2:15 o'clock this morning Mr. McKinley
passed away, gently and quietly. His last words were to her
who for so many years was the object of his unwearying care
and attention. The gentle and afflicted wife, who was so near
unto death a few weeks ago, received as his last message the
comforting words, " God's will, not ours be done," marking him
to the last as the Christian statesman whose life was consistent
with his professions.
The whole world has denounced the crime which took away
from the scenes of life the head of the greatest Republic that
has ever existed. It does seem inexplicable that one so gentle and
so full of kindness should fall the victim of an assassin. It
can scarcely be denied that Mr. McKinley was the most popular
President who has ever filled the executive office. His political
opponents respected and admired him. Those who knew him
best felt for him a genuine affection, and there will be no
mourners because of his death more sincere than strong men
who often combatted his political views, but who loved the man.
The whole land is in mourning, because it is realized that a
just man held the reins, and that now they have dropped from
his hand. He has been tried and they felt safe while he was
at the helm, but we must remember that the same conditions
have existed before and that under our form of government there
will be no hiatus. The succession will be orderly and quiet,
and we must patiently await the future, trusting that it will
bring a continuance of the good order and the good-will that
have so happily prevailed in recent years.
J°5

WILLIAM McKINLEY
Buffalo Express, Buffalo, N. Y
OUR PRESIDENT.
The news of the death of the President comes to the coun
try with a double shock. It would not be half so terrible if it
had followed quickly the shooting. But the world had every
reason to believe that the President was getting well. Appar
ently, he was about to escape the usual fate of rulers in like
straits. But, alas-! the " McKinley luck " was too good to last
on this occasion. The great life went out last evening, just as
common lives do, at the crisis of the illness.
The country first began to have doubts that all was not going
well with the President about forty-eight hours ago, when it
was found necessary to reopen the wound to allay the irritation.
People said to themselves : " This is the beginning of the trouble
which we have grown to expect in such cases. We saw it in the
instance of Garfield; we saw it again in the instance of Grant."
The calling in on Thursday of another physician, Dr. Stockton,
was another intimation to the wise. The acute trouble began
that evening in the failure of the digestive apparatus to do its
work. That relieved, the heart next threw out danger signals.
Its weakness was beyond repair.
In this age of unrest and unreason, of running after false
gods, of the introduction of hateful class distinctions, of the
attempted Europeanization of our Government, it is a pleasure
to recollect that America can still produce such men as McKin
ley, and that their fellow-citizens still prefer them to pretenders
of the new school. William McKinley was a spiritual descend
ant of the men who fought with Cromwell, who came over in
the Mayflower, who carved out this country with the sword,
who laid its foundations in the Constitution, who defended it
against sectionalism and its own baser part. His counterparts
and prototypes are to be found in the history of every great
106

WILLIAM McKINLEY
nation, ancient and modern, at the time they had reached their
highest stage of moral and intellectual progress. This type of
humanity is characterized by deep seriousness, by singleness of
purpose, by purity of private life, by utter self-absorption in
public duty, by steady advances to leadership gained by modest
merit. Such were " Plutarch's men." Such was William
McKinley. It is an impressive circumstance that not a single charge
affecting McKinley's public or private life was launched during
the long campaign of political vituperation and personal mis
representation. We doubt if this were ever true of any other
man who was so long in public life as Major McKinley. For
McKinley did not reach his greatness at a single bound. He
did not come up in a night, as did some of his rivals. He was
content to make small advances, to serve before he aspired to
lead. His career was typically American. He had the usual
hard-wrought youth, he made his own way in the world, he
prepared himself for a profession, he became a volunteer soldier,
he took to politics instinctively, he loved one party and served
it, he rose from one grade of the public service to another. He
met his fellow-men on many grounds, he studied them, he believed
in them. He placed his mark high and took no low means to
win his goal. He was a man, a statesman and a philosopher.
He had borne success and defeat with equanimity. He went
into political retirement for the sake of a political doctrine in
which he believed. He beggared himself to pay a debt of honor.
Never an extremist, he never compromised with his convictions
for the sake of immediate profit. He believed in himself and
in his country.
There is no greater slander than to call McKinley a dull
man. He seemed to plod because he wanted to be sure. When
he knew his subject, no man could be more eloquent or ingen
ious in its presentation. He shared with Gladstone the rare fac
ulty of making facts fascinating, of rendering statistics interest-
107

WILLIAM McKINLEY
ing. This is a gift which is born only of the most sincere con
viction. McKinley was the greatest living authority on tariffs,
yet who shall say that he was a one-sided man? His papers
and speeches prove him to have been master of the whole domain
of statecraft. Such broad, searching intelligence, such grasp and
comprehension, surely cannot fall short of genius! His courage
was as undoubted as his integrity. He dared to do what he
knew to be right.
No candid review of the McKinley administrations can deny
them the credit of being history-making. The period from
March 4, 1897, to September 13, 1901, will stand out by itself
in the annals of the nation as distinctly as do the administra
tions of Jefferson and of Jackson, the two peace Presidents who
have most clearly stamped their individuality upon the nation's
history. This is not merely because of the addition of a great
colonial empire to our possessions. Apart from the colonial ex
pansion, the McKinley administration has had a striking and
interesting individuality. The Spanish War alone would have
made it memorable. The amazing industrial development would
have marked it hardly less strongly. But perhaps the political
success that has attended it is the most remarkable feature of
all. All these characteristics combined give it a place by itself.
There is no previous administration since the organization of
the Republic which can be said to have been like McKinley's,
except in remote or fragmentary particulars. It has been like
Jefferson's in its success, but has been the opposite of Jeffer
son's, resembling more that of John Adams, in its aims. It has
been compared to Lincoln's, but the resemblance can hardly be
said to go beyond the fact that both were war administrations.
It approaches nearer to that| of Polk, but Polk's administration
had only a war to distinguish it and was otherwise a failure, end
ing in the defeat of the President's party. It has been like
Jackson's in the power it has developed, but while the Jackson
administration smashed its enemies, the McKinley administra-
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WILLIAM McKINLEY
tion has generally conciliated them, leading many to compare it
with the Monroe " era of good feeling."
The Spanish War undoubtedly would have been fought
whoever had been President. The industrial development has
been for the most part the logical result of long-established Re
publican policies and, therefore, would have come under any
Republican President, supported, as McKinley has been, by Re
publican Congresses. The colonial policy and the political suc
cess must be set down as McKinley's own.
McKinley attached to himself the business interests of the
country — the men of wealth and energy who are the dominat
ing class in every community — as they never before were at
tached to any single political leader. He converted those fac
tions of his own party which originally were suspicious or openly
hostile into his most ardent friends. He broke down the opposi
tion party till it almost ceased the pretence of opposing him
whenever any important policy was at stake. He gained a
mastery over Congress more complete, probably, than was ever
before held by any President. What the administration asked,
Congress generally did, regardless of consistency and sometimes
of the personal judgment of many of the members. He domi
nated his Cabinet to such an extent that no single member has
been able to impress his own individuality on any of the vigor
ous and successful policies that have been adopted, and even the
dissensions within the Cabinet, which usually have marred other
administrations, have been kept below the surface, if any have
existed. The methods employed were remarkably simple. Where
other administrations have been content to satisfy their own par
ties, or sometimes merely factions, the McKinley administration
undertook, so far as possible, to give everybody what he wanted,
or, if not that, something equally good — something good enough
to check serious opposition to the administration in general.
Conditions were very favorable at the beginning. The adminis-
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WILLIAM McKINLEY
tration assumed office while the country was suffering from a
prolonged period of hard times. A low-tariff experiment had
proved a disastrous failure. The intelligence of the country
was already practically united against the silver craze. Even
in the Democratic South the business men really did not believe
in it or hope for its success. The rapid development of pros
perity under the stimulus of protection and a sound financial
policy was of itself sufficient to attach a great popular following
to the administration. When men found they could make
money where before they could barely continue business; that
they could get good prices where before they could hardly realize
the cost of production; that they could obtain steady work at fair
wages where before they were much of the time in idleness,
it was natural that they should feel that the administration under
which these things had been brought about was a good one.
Yet these blessings might have been forgotten, as had oc
curred in similar circumstances before, if great pains had not
been taken to conciliate those politicians who controlled the
organizations through which hostility to the administration
might have been worked up. While the Democracy has been
undermined in its strongholds, the Republican party in the
North and West has been built up to a greater strength than it
ever reached before. Wherever an opportunity appeared to
attach a strong political or business interest to the administra
tion, it has been improved.
All this was skilful politics — in some respects the most skil
ful that has been seen in the history of the United States.
Critics as well as friends recognized that there was a master hand
at the helm. Perhaps the strongest evidence of the foresight
which has directed the McKinley policies is that whatever criti
cism they have aroused while in progress of development has been
much lessened or has entirely disappeared when the results be
came apparent. This was true of the tariff, which has passed
out of the list of American political issues. It was true of the

WILLIAM McKINLEY
silver question, which was defeated more disastrously after the
country had had four years of sound money than when it first
appealed to popular favor and has now, in all probability, joined
the tariff as a dead issue. It is too soon to assert the same re
sults of the expansion policy, but it is a fact that the opposi
tion which it aroused has been to a great extent silenced by the
general approval of the measures taken for the temporary admin
istration of the Philippines since the adoption of the Spooner
Law putting all power in the hands of the President. States
men usually wait till long after they are out of power, often till
after death, to receive the approbation which William McKinley
was accorded at the very height of his career.
What the future had in store, in so far as this great mind
was able to direct it, can only be inferred. Yet it is known that
he purposed to make a large expansion of markets by means of
reciprocity a feature of his coming policy. That was disclosed
by his last public speech on the day before he was shot. It is
also known that whatever further successes might have been
piled upon the triumphs he already had won, they totally mis
understood his character who supposed he might be cherishing
an ambition for a third term. He repudiated that suggestion
as soon as it was made in language which left nothing more to
be said on the subject. He strove to serve his country; not to
gratify personal ambitions. His name is written large in his
country's history.
But this is not the time, nor is there now the space to dilate
on the character and services of William McKinley. Suffice it
to say that he was the best beloved in our long line of Presi
dents. Political enemies he had, but no personal ones. The
manner of his taking-off endeared him still more to his country
men. While each of us wrestles with his own grief, no one
will neglect to spare a tear for the woman who survives the
martyred President. Mrs. McKinley's condition must be piti
able, indeed. Her whole life was wrapped up in that of the man

WILLIAM McKINLEY
who has gone, as was his in hers. Splendid as he was as a states
man, inspiring as a political leader, magnetic as a man, great as
was his public career, the finest and the noblest side of McKin
ley's character was the devotion he showed as a husband.
As for the treacherous assassin and his God-accursed, man-
hating kind, there will be no paltering in dealing with them now.

Indianapolis News.
WILLIAM McKINLEY.
How much of good utterly perishes when a good man dies!
How sheer the waste is when a man in the full maturity of
life is cut off! The result of what he has done lives, but with
him ends the ripeness of thought, the richness of attainment
that we call experience, the scope of judgment and power of
conclusion that he alone may deliver, as the problems of life
pass through the alembic of his mind. It is this that is the irrep
arable loss. Other men may discharge the duties; nothing in
this sense depends on any one man. But what might have been
had this one man still lived to apply the sum of his wisdom,
appeals to the reflection as well as the imagination to sharpen
the edge of untimely death as the severance of the affections
sharpens it, and realizes the full weight of the aphorism that
" not all the preaching since Adam has made death other than
death." Of William McKinley, early in his public career, it was said
by James A. Garfield, who knew him well and who had the
power of knowledge:
" In him we find the best representative of the possibilities
of American life. Boy and man, he typifies American youth
and manhood, and illustrates the benefits and glory of our free
institutions. He did not flash forth as a meteor; he rose with
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WILLIAM McKINLEY
measured and stately step over rough paths and through years
of rugged work. He earned his passage to every preferment.
He was tried and tested at every step in his pathway of progress.
He produced his passport to every gateway to opportunity and
glory." Every word of this is true — so true that it might have been
spoken now at the completion of McKinley's life. But that
which is implied is the larger truth, and that is the full-rounded,
well-balanced, exactly attempered personality. A view of his
life as we know it from his earliest to his latest day shows this
forth. There was neither precocity nor promise in his youth
above that of others. He had one supreme advantage, he was
well-born, in the circumstance which the wise man coveted in
the words: " Give me neither poverty nor riches." The alter
native statement is: " Remove far from me vanity and lies."
This was the happy lot of William McKinley. The " destruc
tion of the poor, which is their poverty," he knew not, nor did
he feel the temptations of wealth.
A schoolboy in his " teens," he seemed to have no other
thought than that he owed a duty to his country, and within
three months of the firing on Sumter, was in the field, a private
in the ranks; but he did not prove to be a " little corporal,"
as his admirers so often called him from his fancied resemblance
to Napoleon. He was not a genius in any sense, military or civil;
just a sturdy American boy. But, thanks to the happy chance
of his descent, he had a training imbued with the spirit of
steady subordination and tireless devotion that could be counted
on for the full discharge of every obligation. It took him four
years to become a major, and he had attracted attention only as
a brave, obedient soldier, ready and instant always.
As a four years' veteran he began life at twenty-two by
studying law. This he went about by deliberate choice, duly
educating himself for his work. In his career at the bar he
developed power as an advocate; and yet, here, as in all else,
"3

WILLIAM McKINLEY
there was nothing unusual. He was not brilliant. He had a
fine manner, and a distinguished presence. He had, moreover,
a quality of sweetness added to the serious impression that he
produced, which seasoned it always and commended it to the
moral nature. He did not in the beginning, nor in the end,
leave the impression of a great man. He did leave always the
impression of a clean, sane, sincere nature, one that viewed life
and his relation to it with a solemn sense of responsibility, that
carried with it always assurance of his undeviating devotion.
The generation beginning the real work of the life of to-day
can hardly realize the prominence that politics occupied in the
life of the generation that began work in the decade after the
Civil War. The public mind was in a ferment; the grave
questions raised by the war were all up for settlement; the
prodigious expanse of the country was for the first time open
to the common comprehension. A young man could get a hear
ing then. Here again this young man was fortunate. He had
a comeliness of person like Hamlet, but better than this, he had
Horatio's quality — he was blest with those
Whose blood and judgment are so well commingled,
That they are not a pipe for Fortune's finger
To sound what stop she please.
Strikingly handsome, yet with all suggestion of manliness, with
a rich tenor voice full and vibrant, he had a seriousness and
sweetness of manner, above all an impression of conviction and
sincerity that won him instant attention. And yet as a speaker
he grew slowly; known first in his little town, then by degrees
in his county, and only by accident recommended to those whose
command of opportunities could give him a wider audience.
His first political preferment — nomination for prosecuting
attorney — was given to him as a mere formality. He had
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WILLIAM McKINLEY
served, so well in a small way as a party speaker, that he was
made the candidate because election was considered hopeless.
Yet he was elected, and this might be said to be the first demon
stration of his hold on the people. The surprise was universal;
possibly he himself shared in it. Thence onward he labored in
cessantly as a lawyer and as a political speaker, and thence on
ward his life is impressive, from the vast amount of its work
and his constant readiness for it.
From first to last there runs through his life and career
one unbroken quality — poise. When he got to Congress his life
gave no evidence of ability to attract attention or to attain an
unusual position. He simply plodded on, doing his duty dili
gently and meeting the ever-growing request for his presence as
a public speaker with addresses on various occasions. It was
the old colonel who had watched over him as a boy, who had
guided and cared for him in the army, who was then President,
Rutherford B. Hayes, that pointed out to him his hope for some
thing more than commonplace service. In the intimacy of their
life, one day at the White House President Hayes said to him:
" To achieve success and fame you must pursue a special line,"
and advised him to devote himself to the tariff, as a subject that
would not be settled for years. Rutherford B. Hayes made
McKinley as clearly as one man ever makes another. Who shall
say that but for President Hayes's advice this opportunity might
have come and passed, as it came and passed to others? But
McKinley was, of all men, one to profit most highly by such ad
vice, for he had supremely the quality of devotion and serious
ness of purpose. He soon became known in Congress as an au
thority on the tariff.
Like all men devoted to one idea, he became a doctrinaire,
and to some degree a fanatic. And it was well for him so;
for with the triumph of the policy for which he stood, and with
which, happily for him, he became identified by name, in the
McKinley bill, there came a reaction; but not for him. When
"5

WILLIAM McKINLEY
party defeat seemed to indicate that the principle of protection
had been in part at least repudiated by the people, he was con
spicuously steadfast. The national defeat he declared " had not
made Republican principles less true, nor our faith in their ulti
mate triumph less firm." And so, if he was a fanatic at this
period of his life, it was well for him and for his party that
he was so.
But he was not a true fanatic. His last public utterance,
a few hours before he was shot, showed true statesmanship in
manifesting the understanding that this great principle for
which he had stood and with which his public life was identified,
could be modified for him by circumstances, and that the time
had come to modify it. " The period of exclusiveness is past ;
reciprocity treaties are in harmony with the spirit of the times;
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? " Here the poise of this admirable nature manifested
itself supremely. How much it promised of wise guidance for
our future!
His Presidential administration partook of the qualities of
the man with one exception. In his deference to the politicians
he showed a weakness new and unsuspected, by contradicting
himself and to an extent reversing his attitude toward the spoils
system. He did not make a complete surrender, but he wavered.
He wavered, too, in his views on the all-important subject of the
new relations of our dependencies. It can fairly be said for him
in this, however, that the situation was new, and that his ex
pressed conviction as to our policy may have been formed on
inadequate consideration, and that he was brave enough to con
tradict himself when further experience pointed to what he
believed to be higher wisdom. In other attributes his adminis
tration was one of the best that the country has ever had, and
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WILLIAM McKINLEY
was conspicuously able in more than one crisis created by cir
cumstances new and almost without precedent. He threw the
whole weight of his character and office on the side of peace
when war seemed inevitable; but history will probably say that,
as the result of war, he caught the spirit of conquest. He in
dubitably favored a retention of the dependencies and a political
expansion of the country. In his tour previous to his decision
on this question he interrogated the people, and in defence of
his after course declared that the people had so instructed him.
But he interrogated the people like a skilful advocate.
Brief as the time has been since then, we have become accus
tomed to the situation. But, let us remember, that at that time
we were at the parting of the ways. The cherished beliefs of
this country had been that this continent was all of the coun
try; that with the Eastern world we had nothing to do; of the1
Western world we were the guardian — sitting here in the se
curity of the seas. The expansion that we had constantly illus
trated in our growth, and had always believed in, contemplated
inevitably the introduction of our institutions and the admission
of the new lands to full statehood in due constitutional progres
sion. History, we believe, will say that President McKinley
threw the weight of his great personality and of his tremendous
prestige, acquired by the successful conduct of the war, on the
side of taking the new step that has opened to us the possibility of
possessions in every part of the world with all of the responsibili
ties of empire.
It is this that will make the McKinley administration espe
cially marked in our history. The foreign press, notably the
English, which understands us sometimes better than we under
stand ourselves (as we may recall in its predictions about us
previously to the Spanish War), notes clearly this significance of
McKinley's administration. " He was the first to recognize
clearly," says one, " the necessity for the expansion of the United
States. His period of office will always be famous as the epoch
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WILLIAM McKINLEY
in which the foundation of the American empire began." An
other notes that " his last speech sounded the note of a com
mercial empire, with which his name will be associated. He
was the first President to expound the imperial idea." This
contemporaneous verdict is undeniably true. If he was not the
first to recognize clearly the necessity of political expansion, he
was the great factor in making it. Commercial expansion was a
necessity, felt before political expansion was dreamed of. And
it would come, and will come, because it is a fact of evolution.
But President McKinley was great enough to recognize the su
premacy of the opportunity that was his, and in his last speech
he practically stood forward as a leader, taking the first step
in the direction that must be taken to realize commercial empire.
In his other great administrative acts he showed wisdom,
and, constantly, his quality of poise. He did well, perhaps, in
the slowness with which he gave consistency to the movement
for a sound currency. He did not go so fast as abler men than
he desired, but looking back — as history will look back — it may,
perhaps, be written of him, that he was the wiser; that he
waited for the due time.
His management of the world crisis in China would shed
lustre on the proudest ministry of constitutional government
anywhere. He had the wisdom to have by his side a far-seeing
statesman, and to gather around him able men; but he will
be accredited, and justly, with the approval that gave a wonder
ful victory to our policy in China. Here was a situation that
at any time had in it the possibilities of a world war. Through
out, he played our part so skilfully, so wisely, so firmly, that his
tory will be likely to say that he not only won renown for his
country, but that he really guided the West as against the East,
and brought the older powers of Europe to his way. No pages
in the annals of our history will shine brighter than those which
record the achievements of the McKinley administration in the
Spanish and in the Chinese War; and no pages will be more
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WILLIAM McKINLEY
momentous than those which record the acts of that administra
tion in founding the American empire.
His individuality counted for more in this new epoch than
that of any other of our Presidents, except Washington in the
foundation period, and Lincoln in the great change that carried
the country from slavery to freedom. More than any other man,
he has launched the Republic on its new way. How wise the
work was, contemporaneous inquiry may ask in vain; the future
alone can answer. It may be that he has interpreted the will
of the people, as Lincoln did. Whatever be the wisdom of the
doctrine of the " saving remnant," our institutions are imbedded
in the belief that all of the people are wiser than any of the
people. William McKinley came from the people, and was of
the people; he was bone of their bone and flesh of their flesh.
He was part of their public life and affairs during forty years.
Like Lincoln in the great crisis of the Civil War, he may have
translated the real will of the people into action. History may
show that, like Lincoln, he rode the ground swell in the face
of surface waves. The people certainly believed in him, he had
their confidence, and his life passed in their service. He had
shown that quality which they always have chosen in their Presi
dents — poise. For this they have passed by brilliant men, from
Clay tot Blaine. In the midst of his supreme work, the people
had an opportunity to pass judgment on it again. They restated
it with increased emphasis.
History will surely trace the way of this people, through the
momentous period, in which they have come to a consciousness
of their power, and have asserted themselves in the world as an
empire, like a strong onward march. They were not the sub
jects of cunningly contrived circumstances; they were neither
coerced nor cajoled by an imperious personality, nor bewildered
by the glamour of genius which a century ago led France into
the wilderness. They had at this time a man of themselves; an
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WILLIAM McKINLEY
exemplar of all of the virtues that they extol; sprung from the
sturdiest stock that founded liberty in this land; nurtured in
the traditions that have made the land what it is; born and
brought up in a life whose even tenor made it a very type of
American life; illustrating the beauty of a home life as this
people conceive it; assimilating the religious life of the people
as part of his own; untroubled by any unwholesome ambitions,
aspiring never, waiting always, having learned not merely the
lesson to labor, but to wait. This man was part of the people
as no President has been since Lincoln. He will be identified as
closely with their aspirations and achievements and will occupy
a most exalted place in being the instrument that gave expres
sion to those aspirations and achievements.

Brooklyn Eagle, Brooklyn, N. Y.
McKINLEY IN HISTORY.
The President of the United States, William McKinley, died
this morning, from wounds inflicted by an assassin on the after
noon of September 6th, while the Chief Magistrate was the guest
of thousands of eitizens who were gathered to do to him honor.
The experience is the third of the kind through which the
American people have passed. The first two were accountable
by the penultimate frenzies of expiring war, in the one instance,
and by the shock of a factional feud on a canting and cross
cut mind, in the other instance.
The third instance is chargeable to causes in which the whole
world realizes a common peril, feels a common shock, and shares
a common responsibility. The prevalence and tolerance of false
teaching concerning liberty, property, and government is the
cause, in this latest instance, of the deed at which all stand
aghast. In each of the three cases a brain equally weak, equally
wicked, and equally vain was the pervert-instrument of evil
forces and of evil men who sought to turn those forces to the
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WILLIAM McKINLEY
profit of their own hates or pockets. Sectional savagery culmi
nated and ended in Lincoln's murder. Factional fury culminated
and was exhausted in Garfield's murder. The wickedness of
stimulating class hatreds, to win unfit votes for unfit men and to
sell unfit papers in largest possible numbers, comes to its ulti
mate, let us hope, in McKinley's murder. There may be other
political assassinations in America, but sectionalism, party ran
cor, and anarchy would be able to score no more to their credit.
Recoil from the effect should carry in it cure of the cause.
There never was a gentler or finer man than the illustrious
victim of influences that should henceforth be as forbidden as
abhorrent here. Mr. McKinley was almost unique in his prep
aration for the Presidency. He rose from minor political ser
vice in his country to a membership of Congress for fourteen
years, and to a governorship of his State for four years. He
was the leader of the House when he ceased from Congress. He
was the exponent of protection when it seemed the issue. He
was named by his party for President, as its free choice, after
he had twice refused to be its candidate, when the satisfaction
of his ambition would have involved the suspicion of perfidy to
pledges to other men. Service in the Congressional opposition
and service with the Congressional majority fell to him for
about an equal number of years. His service in the governor
ship coincided with the growth in national politics of the prin
ciple which he especially impersonated. The principle was pro
tection — an emergent, temporary, exigent, incidental matter,
meant alike wisely to slow yet surely eventually to accomplish
the movement of the world toward freedom of trade.
The last public words of his were those in which he spoke
of the loosening of tariffs and of far freer trade through reciproc
ity. His campaigns threw on him and on his party issues not
made in the purposes or platforms which politicians foresaw or
preferred. He owed his election, the first time, to a wholly dif
ferent question from the one to which he owed his nomination
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WILLIAM McKINLEY
then. He owed his election, the second time, to causes which his
first administration was never expected or created to shape or
make or denote.
The good genius of America was only carrying on the pro
gressive mission of America, with a new, a needed and an admir
able agent. The party rancor which the personality of Wash
ington stilled, and the elements of which he fused into unity
for the solidarity and permanence of the infant Republic, fell
to the lowest temperature of passion and rose to the highest
expression of a common patriotism under William McKinley,
attained by it in modern times. The issueless and stupid " era
of good feeling " under Monroe is no more to be compared with
the contemporary patriotism of peace than is sleep to be com
pared with life. The desire of Lincoln for a union of hearts and
of hands, among brothers whom Civil War had set in conflict,
was accomplished by William McKinley in his masterly man
agement of the war to make the bounds of freedom larger yet
than Lincoln foresaw or dreamed. The North and the South
in Cuba and in Porto Rico, at Santiago and in the Philippines
united under a single flag, in the making of a better America,
the valor and genius they had shown against one another on
fields of fratricide.
How greatly his nature as well as his experience assisted him
all can see in the retrospect of his life. He had strong passions.
He learned to master them. The ability was acquired in the
school of sorrow and in service of love rendered to suffering.
He was so devoted to his wife that her constant invalidism bred
in him a self-control that nothing in politics or government could
disestablish. In the sick room were learned and strengthened
the self-poise, the patience, the silence, the fortitude, the seren
ity, and the spiritual refinement that made him, as Mr. Hoar
said, the best-beloved of our Presidents.
He was not the most original or aggressive, but he was the
most effective of Republican Presidents, since Lincoln. He did

WILLIAM McKINLEY
things and he secured the doing of things. His reasons were
outwrought into results. The chieftains of his party grounded
their arms at his feet in life as sincerely and wholeheartedly
as they mingled their tears round those feet in his death. But
his singular success in influencing legislation, in guiding admin
istration, and in persuading the people bred in him neither vanity
nor self-confidence nor arrogance. He was modest, grateful,
self-effacing, and almost diffident in his bearing. He rejoiced
in truthful estimate of his motive. He disrelished fulsome trib
utes to his talents or skill. He loved the simplicities and the
realities, home, music, song, friendship, fresh air, flowers, the
sunlight, trees, sky, birds, and little children.
There must be no weakness in the recall of his virtues and
of his deeds. As he drew from duty, country and opportunity,
inspiration and capacity, so must America draw capacity and
inspiration from his career. The word of God to the sons of
men is Forward! The man who succeeds him in law and by
the ordination of suffrage is, like McKinley, a soldier, a states
man, a patriot, an exemplar of religion, and a gentleman, experi
enced in varied fields of affairs. The record and the benedic
tion of the man gone will abide with and influence the man who
takes up his work. He is entitled to the confidence and co-opera
tion of his countrymen. The hooded Providence which has ever
protected and guided our people and which has never failed in
its requisition of men for emergencies or of fit forces for fit func
tions has the nation in charge still. Theodore Roosevelt will be
as obedient unto the heavenly vision of duty as William McKin
ley was, for each was born and each by events was made Ameri
can to the core, and the American people not only carry in them
selves the power to do the things the world needs to have done,
but they also carry in them the power to make their Presidents
equal to the doing of those things, in their name, as they are
presented for estimate and for action in the ordinary or in the
extraordinary occasions of our national life.
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WILLIAM McKINLEY
Ohio State Journal, Columbus, O.
THE PRESIDENT IS DEAD.
A great calamity has befallen the American people. The
black pall of a great sorrow covers the land. President McKin
ley is dead.
The courteous and beloved leader; the gentle and devoted
husband; the great-souled, manly man, and the broad-minded
and far-sighted statesman has succumbed to the assassin's foul
attack and is no more.
In the presence of such a sorrow words fail and silent tears
bespeak a loss too deep for words. It is inexpressibly sad. Here
in his native State, whose honor has been spotless in his keeping
and whose people have rejoiced in his greatness because they
loved his strong and beautiful character, the blow falls with all
the poignancy of personal bereavement.
The great loss is all the more terrible because it has brought
an unspeakable disgrace upon the American people. Three
times within a generation the noblest and the best of American
Presidents have fallen by the hand of an assassin.
No other country in the world has such a black blot upon
it in this respect as free America. Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley
— three martyrs to liberty and nationality in less than forty
years. Not even despotic, absolute Russia can show such a rec
ord. There is crushing humiliation in the fact.
Has it come that liberty cannot exist without license run
ning riot? Must order-loving America, with all its freedom, its
intelligence, and its abounding prosperity, admit reluctantly that
its measure of liberty, in speech and press, has been too great?
Certainly the time has come when anarchy must be stamped
out in America and immigration must be restricted more sharply.
We have been too careless of the wild-eyed agitator spouting on
the street corner; too tolerant also of the demagogue inciting
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WILLIAM McKINLEY
class against class for party and personal advantage. Serene
in our confidence in American self-control, the mad rantings of
anarchy and demagogy have been passed by as harmless vapor-
ings. This has been a mistake. We must realize that American
cities have become cosmopolitan. In their congested centres
are thousands who have no true appreciation of the meaning of
liberty. Greater efforts at enlightenment in these districts must
be made, and with them must be enforced a greater respect for
law and higher regard for public office as it typifies the whole
people. Some means must be found also for the regulation of the in
cendiary yellow newspaper. Indirectly the vicious and senseless
abuse of the President by rabid partisan sheets has been respon
sible for Czolgosz's awful crime. But of this more will be said
later. The martyred President will go down in history as one of
the greatest and noblest men who has ever been honored by the
American people with the highest office in their gift. His devo
tion to the people has never been surpassed. No other Presi
dent ever sought more earnestly to learn true public sentiment
than William McKinley, and none was ever guided more im
plicitly by it.
He believed in the people and they had faith in him. He
regarded himself in the highest and best sense as their represen
tative. History will place William McKinley beside Lincoln
and Washington in high ability, in lofty character, and in far-
sighted statesmanship.
His five years as President have marked a great epoch in
American history. Whatever may befall, the nation will go
forward to the fulfilment of the policies which were formulated
and successfully inaugurated by him.
The pity of it is that one so admirably fitted by all the graces
of mind and person for the vast responsibility of the present
"3

WILLIAM McKINLEY
should not have been permitted to carry to its conclusion the
great work he had begun.
The nation is fortunate, however, in having a man of the
lofty type of Theodore Roosevelt to succeed William McKinley.
He has come into the chief magistracy in a time of peace and
prosperity, but with a great work and vast responsibility before
him. He brings to it stalwart Americanism, thorough honesty
of purpose, great ability, and a splendid record of strict fidelity
to duty and the earnest fulfilment of every trust that the peo
ple have given him.
The honor, the prosperity, and the beloved institutions of the
country are safe in his hands.

126

Tributes from Governors of States

State of Rhode Island, Etc, Executive Department,
Peovidence, September 28, 1901.
Like that of most of our greater Americans, the career of
William McKinley was of the kind that it is popular to define
as " typically American." Born in humble circumstances and
even in his chosen path meeting with obstacles and discourage
ments, he rose to achieve the highest honor in the gift of the
American people, an honor which we all feel is greater than any
other nation can offer its citizens. The McKinley period is
marked for history as an epoch in the progress of the American
nation. Under the President's leadership, the United States
assumed their rightful position as a world power, a position for
which there had been uninterrupted preparation since the dawn
of Independence. And it is an extraordinary tribute to our late
President that none of the great strides that the nation has
made from time to time was ever before taken with equal una
nimity on the part of Congress and people. In a word, no Presi
dent has ever expressed so closely in his important official acts the
contemporary sentiment of his fellow-countrymen. In the of
fice of President, McKinley was the personification of representa
tive government, so intimately did he understand and so suc
cessfully did he execute the people's will. Of his personal char
acter and private life no praise can speak too highly. Of his
martyrdom, we may only echo his own dying words — " It is
God's way."
William Geegoey,
Governor State of Rhode Island.
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WILLIAM McKINLEY
Executive Office, Des Moines, Iowa,
September 26, 1901.
I think it is not extravagant to say that William McKinley
passed from earth the personal friend of more people, and more
generally beloved by those who knew him than any other person
whose dwelling has been among men. Not alone throughout the
length and breadth of the United States were business houses
closed, office doors locked, street-cars and continental trains
stopped at the solemn hours of his obsequies, but all Christen
dom seemed to tarry at his bier. The position which the hon
ored dead held in the estimation of his countrymen and the
world was not accidental. It was well earned by faithful ser
vice performed in many relations, and rendered under many and
divergent conditions. As a citizen he was exemplary; as a sol
dier he was valiant; as a statesman the peer of the greatest;
as a public servant, faithful; as a husband, ideal; as a Chris
tian, commendable; and at all times and under all circumstances
he was a gentleman. Wherever Christian civilization exists or
shall be hereafter established, now and to all time, wives will
recount his devotion as a husband, and parents tell the story of
his life. Leslie M. Shaw,
Governor of Iowa.

State of Delaware, Executive Department,
Dover, Del., September 26, 1901.
The earthly career of William McKinley is closed, but in
the loving memory of his country it has just begun. He needs
no special eulogy, his life as a soldier, statesman, and husband
was conspicuous for bravery, high ability, and loving devotion
— a nobleman by nature, by nature richly endowed. He was al
ways great enough to do the right because he believed it was
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WILLIAM McKINLEY
right. Our great nation has never been blessed with a better
administration than that of our lamented and martyred Presi
dent.
John Hume,
Governor of Delaware.

Territory of New Mexico, Office of the Executive,
Santa Fe, September 30, 1901.
The death of President McKinley is too recent and too shock
ing for anyone who has the ability and feeling to properly eulo
gize him in whom —
" Unbounded courage and compassion joined,
Tempering each other in the victor's mind,
Alternately proclaim him good and great,
And make the hero and the man complete."
For nearly forty years he has lived and moved in the fierce
light that beats upon our public men and reveals the slightest
flaw in motive or in character, and like the perfect gem this light
brought out in him the latent beauties of his nature, which were
his chiefest hold upon the people whom he knew and loved
so well. It was not his mastery of political science, his statecraft,
or his wisdom that brought him closer to the people than any
one before him and made his untimely death felt as a personal
grief to every home in our country; which stayed the wheels
of commerce between the Atlantic and Pacific, and caused the
telegraph to pause and the heart of this great nation to stand
still for five solemn moments, while his sacred remains were sor
rowfully entombed by loving hands on the green hillside near
the little city which was his home.
It was the clear, honest, kindly Christian character of the
man which the nation mourned, and it is this which will place
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WILLIAM McKINLEY
the name of William McKinley highest among those great of
whom it can be said: " He loved his fellow-men."
He has passed from us in the prime and pride of life, just
after he had uttered words of peace and good-will to all the
world, at a festival in honor of the brotherhood of men and to
exemplify the peaceful arts which have made the Americas
great and one in purpose.
To us who mourn, it seems that his life work was scarce
begun, there is so much to do, and he who is gone appeared
to us the best equipped for its doing. But to Him who doeth
all things well, it was otherwise. His time had come and found
him fully ready. His first thought was for that loved wife
whom he had shielded and protected so long, his next was for
giveness to the unhappy man who had slain him, and his last,
complete resignation to the will of God. His, a model life, a
Christian death. The whole world mourns.
" He was a man, take him for all in all,"
We " shall not look upon his like again."
Miguel A. Otero,
Governor.

State of Oregon, Executive Department,
Salem, September 30, 1901.
For nearly twenty years the name of William McKinley
had been a familiar one to the reading public of the United
States. The degree of industry and ability it requires to be
come prominent in the national House of Representatives may
be understood when it is remembered that of the three hundred
and fifty members of that body, not more than fifty, perhaps,
in any one house succeed in making a reputation reaching be
yond their immediate districts or States, but so pronounced were
McKinley's acquirements that before he had finished his second
term he had attracted national attention. He soon became one
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WILLIAM McKINLEY
of the recognized leaders of his party, and, therefore, a man to
be watched by his political opponents. By untiring industry
and close application he became, in 1889, a candidate for speaker
against Honorable Thomas B. Reed, the defeat for which posi
tion made him, eventually, President of the United States. He
told the writer of these lines, in October, 1899, that he had
never, _before or since, been so anxious for success as during that
campaign for the speakership, but added that if he had been
elected " I should to-day probably be a member of Congress
from Ohio."
The exceeding popularity which clusters- around his name
to-day has naught to do with the fact that he has been num
bered with our martyred Presidents. At no time in his pub
lic career had he occupied so warm a spot in the hearts of all
classes of his countrymen as during the past year. He had
been tried in the exacting experiences of the public service and
had not been found wanting. Coining to the Presidency at
a time of profound peace, without a cloud to mar the political
horizon in any quarter, within less than one year complications
arose which led to a war with a foreign government, and which
not only changed the policies and geography of the world, but
left a train of international questions of varied and complex
character. To the settlement of these, in a satisfactory man
ner, President McKinley addressed himself, with that determi
nation which was always characteristic of him, and the day of
his death found us at perfect peace with every nation on earth,
the greatest power in the world, and prosperous beyond any
former period in our history.
No one of our Presidents has been subjected to so great a
test of statesmanship, save Lincoln, as that which confronted
McKinley at the beginning of the Spanish War. The destruc
tion of the battleship Maine burst upon the country like a thun
derbolt from a clear sky, and, considering it as an act of Span
ish treachery, the American people unanimously demanded the
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WILLIAM McKINLEY
immediate declaration of war, and while the President knew that
we had neither ships, ammunition, nor guns, and that a declara
tion of war before we were able to support it by force would be
suicidal, he was compelled to endure the impatience and com
plaints of the people without fully explaining to them the actual
reason for the delay. Few Presidents have ever gone through
the trying ordeal that was William McKinley's during the time
intervening between the destruction of the Maine and the
declaration of war against Spain, in his effort to stay the hand
of Congress until preparation was made to insure that magnifi
cent victory which was afterward ours, and no greater tribute
was ever paid to any President than when Congress, by the
unanimous vote of both Houses, voted the sum of $50,000,000
for the prosecution of the war, to be expended by him wholly at
his discretion. No man could have been taken from public life at this
time who would be so greatly missed as he. We shall see him
no more, nor hear his kindly voice exhorting the people to still
loftier heights of morality and patriotism. His life may be
said to have been a consecrated devotion to the care of his
afflicted wife and to what he thought were the best interests of
the country he loved so well. He will always stand in history,
as he does to-day in the hearts of his countrymen, as a model
product of American manhood, and to whose example any
mother in the land can point her son and advise him to follow
after. More than this cannot be said of any man. His con
tinually growing popularity only reached its summit on the day
of his death. The common people of the country have lost an
untiring friend, and the spirit of good government an able ad
vocate and unfaltering devotee.
No greater eulogy has been uttered anywhere in this broad
land than when one of our own writers said, " No act of Will
iam McKinley has ever dishonored those little graves in the
Canton cemetery, or cast a shadow across the life now so strangely
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WILLIAM McKINLEY
called to survive him," and, although his mortal remains are
resting beneath the sod of the beautiful eminence overlooking
his beloved Ohio home, by the side of his little children whose
departure to the unseen world so many years ago has no doubt
been a continually contributing factor in the construction of
his most admirable character, he has left an impress for good
upon his country's history that is not surpassed by any of his
illustrious predecessors. J. J. Geer,
Governor of the State of Oregon.

Executive Department,
Charleston, W. Va., September 30, 1901.
The awful crime of Friday, September 6th, which cul
minated in the death of our beloved President, produced in no
State or section of our country more profound and universal
sorrow and grief than among the citizens of West Virginia. Our
people knew McKinley as neighbor, friend, and comrade; his
face and voice were familiar to many thousands of our residents ;
he was universally loved as a man and trusted and respected
as our Chief Executive. Nowhere were the tributes of sorrow
and respect more general and sincere, and on the day of the
funeral memorial services were held in every city, town, and vil
lage of our Commonwealth.
A grand, good, pure, able, and safe leader of the people
has fallen by a dastard's deed; struck down in the zenith of his
career, when his successful leadership had placed our country
at the head of the nations of the world; when peace and pros
perity had poured their blessings in unexampled degree upon
our land, and when our future as a people was the brightest.
Truly, God moves in a mysterious way. Lincoln, Garfield,
McKinley — martyrs to their country— a noble triumvirate. But
0 ! the pity of their killing and the deep humiliation and sense
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WILLIAM McKINLEY
of shame which tinge our sorrow. It may truly be said that,
while Lincoln saved the Union, McKinley united it.
McKinley's life was one of earnest endeavor. His public
record is a glorious one of high resolve and noble achievement.
His life is an inspiration to the youth of our land in its example
of hard work, conscientiously and courageously done. He won
every step of his advancement on his merits. His fame as a
patriot, statesman, and great leader is secure for all time.
He lived a noble life and died a Christian. In nothing was
he greater than at the time he was shot and in his last conscious
hours. His life as a consistent, loving, Christian man, and his
beautiful and trusting faith, as his feet entered in .the valley
of the shadow of death, are a benediction to the nation as well
as an inspiration to millions of his fellow-men to higher and bet
ter living. Let me close this imperfect and brief tribute to one whom
I knew and loved as a personal friend, whose devoted follower
I was for many years, with the tender, eloquent, and gracious
words which the editor of the Nashville American used in com
menting to his readers on the death of our most universally be
loved and martyred President:
" Gracious and gentle and charitable was William McKin
ley. There was never in public life a cleaner, more moral, up
right personal character. A patriot who had in peace and in
war served his country with the best of his ability, which grew
greater with years; having sincere love for it and faith and
confidence in its institutions, its integrity and stability and its
future, as he had love for its past; a Christian, modest, devout,
and courageous; a husband whose abiding love and tender de
votion have made him one of the sublimest lovers in history,
and won for him the admiration of all who love a lover; a friend
whose warm and generous friendship drew men to him in lov
ing loyalty; a man whose genial nature and disposition, gra
cious manner, gentle courtesy, and unfailing kindness won the
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WILLIAM McKINLEY
respect and esteem and personal friendship of all who came in
contact with him — such was President McKinley whose gentle
soul has taken flight to the great hereafter."
A. B. White,
Governor.

State of Maine, Executive Department,
Augusta, September 27, 1901.
In the death of McKinley the nation meets a loss which no
man can measure in this first hour of grief. Coming as it does
in the wake of assuring news presaging the executive's recovery,
the blow is the harder to bear. The time is not yet ripe to
accord President McKinley his final place in the world's Hall
of Fame. Years must pass before historians settle those mat
ters, but a world that has watched the great leader as he has
worked at the multitudinous problems of an eventful adminis
tration will accord him a place among the highest.
As a President he will be classed with Washington and Lin
coln — wise, watchful, and ever kindly, standing for that which
was broadest and highest in the onward and upward growth
of the world. To the field of international affairs he lent him-
Belf with wonderful aptitude, and into diplomacy he infused
a new force and placed the United States of America on equal
terms with the other nations of the earth. The diplomatic policy
of McKinley was always for the right, regardless of national
self-advancement, forgetting never the rights of the unfortunate,
and maintaining ever the triumph of right over might.
His administration has been typical of the spirit of protec
tion, and under his guiding mind and hand the nation has en
joyed the greatest period of prosperity ever known. But his
death will not change this in the slightest degree, for the coun
try will move on in the ways of prosperity, and there will be
no overturn in the business world. But it is sad, indeed, that
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WILLIAM McKINLEY
this life should be taken just on the eve of the nation's greatest
development. It does not seem right that he should be denied
the pleasure and the well-earned satisfaction of seeing his plans
brought to fruition.
In President Roosevelt I have every confidence — in his in
tegrity, his patriotism, and his ability. He will take up the
work so felicitously begun by McKinley, and with sure hand and
keen grasp of affairs will see that the nation takes no backward
step in the march of progress.
But in my grief and sorrow there is a touch of shame that
such a thing could happen in this great free country of ours —
in a time of peace when people were met together for good-will
and harmony. I hate to think that there are men so perverted
and lost to all good impulses that within a generation three Presi
dents of this Republic fall before the hand of the assassin.
John Fremont Hill,
Governor.

Territory of Oklahoma, Executive Department,
Guthrie, September 28, 1901.
I first knew President McKinley when he made his first race
for Congress. My home was at Alliance, and I cast my first bal
lot for Congressman for him that year, and at the election of
1878 and also of 1880 it was my privilege to vote for McKinley
for Congress. I was attracted by his high and lofty spirit, clean
character, and genial manner, and formed the impression then
that he possessed exceptional qualities that would in time place
him in the highest place in the gift of the American people.
After removing to the West I watched his career with keen
est interest, and was never disappointed in what I expected him
to do. His devotion to the interest of American labor stands
out as a characteristic of his life-work, and his methods of deal-
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WILLIAM McKINLEY
ing with his fellow-men were so graceful that they misled some
but captivated all.
As we saw him in life from day to day, associated with other
men, we admired his great qualities and marked his successes.
Pie passed before us as a sort of moving picture, his different
acts appearing before us at different times, and we did not realize
until now, when his life-work is completed and we view his char
acter and his great qualities as a whole, what manner of man
he was. While he lived we could not make comparisons with
the great men who have preceded him. We now have the right,
and it becomes our duty to compare him with the others who
have attracted bur love and admiration on account of their great
qualities and great work for their fellow-men and for their coun
try, and when we review anew the lives of the great Americans
who stand out in our history as the greatest with a view of
making an estimate of McKinley, I am forced to conclude that
none were greater than he, and I believe that when the Ameri
can people fully understand themselves they will find that
McKinley comes nearer up to the standard of an ideal Ameri
can citizen than any of his predecessors.
William M. Jenkins,
Governor.

The Governor's Office, State House,
Columbus, O.
To the People of Ohio:
With great sorrow I announce to you that William McKin
ley, President of the United States, is dead.
His whole life was dedicated to patriotic public service. As
a boy he was a brave and loyal soldier of the Union. Fourteen
years in the Congress of the United States were marked in the
framing and advocacy by him of laws most wise and beneficial
to the country. During four years as Governor of Ohio he
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WILLIAM McKINLEY
earned and received our love and affection. It was, however,
as President of the United States that his devotion to his coun
try showed in its greatest brilliancy and his very eminent ability
became most marked. His work as the nation's Chief Executive
was of such a character that it will live and bless the Republic
for all time, and will be his most enduring monument. His
never-ceasing kindness and affection to an invalid wife have en
deared him to every man, woman, and child in our land.
Your hearts are filled with intense grief. I ask you to mani
fest this by displaying upon your homes and places of business
the usual evidences of mourning, and upon the day of his funeral
by honoring his memory in every possible appropriate manner.
Pray also that God may shield our beloved and stricken country
from harm on account of this great affliction and ever keep us
in His gracious care. In testimony whereof, I have hereunto
affixed my name and the great seal of the State of Ohio, this
14th day of September, a.d. 1901.
(Signed) George K. Nash.
By the Governor:
Lewis C. Laylin, Secretary of State.

State of Minnesota, Executive Department,
St. Paul, September 30, 1901.
Never before in all human history has the death of a man
been so deeply and universally mourned as that of William
McKinley. Why was it? Not only because he was great, but
because he was good. He loved the plain people, and everyone
of them felt that he had lost a dear friend. It is difficult to
state what most endeared him to the people. Whether the lead
ing of the nation from the deepest gloom to the greatest pros
perity; or, the successful prosecution of the Spanish-American
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WILLIAM McKINLEY
War that freed Cuba, made us a world power, and added much
territory and millions of people to our domains; or the uniting
of the North and the South, not in name only, but in fact. His
untimely death was nowhere more sincerely regretted than in
the Southland. Perhaps, after all, he was loved as much for
his tender devotion to his sick wife. No armored knight of olden
times was more gallant to his lady-love than he to the mistress
of his heart. The beautiful picture of this man in San Francisco
beside the idol of his home when the populace was demanding
his attention can never be forgotten. Unconsciously, perhaps,
yet I believe on account of this illustrious example, all men are
more tender of the dear ones at home.
McKinley's life typifies in a pre-eminent degree the possi
bilities of the American youth. From private soldier to Presi
dent — and such a President! He was a soldier with an un
tarnished record, a citizen without reproach, and one of Amer
ica's greatest statesmen. S. R. Van Sant,
Governor State of Minnesota.

State of Michigan, Executive Department,
Lansing, Mich.
A PROCLAMATION.
To the People of the State of Michigan:
William McKinley, the twenty-fifth President of the United
States, lies dead at Buffalo, the third Chief Executive of the
Union to be stricken by the bloody hands of assassination. The
nation bows in agonized grief at the side of his bier, where the
world is sending tributes of praise for the manly man, the far-
sighted statesman, the devoted patriot, the gallant soldier, the
model husband, and tender father. His life was the exemplifica
tion of the cardinal virtues of Christian integrity, nobility of
character, and devotion to duty, and was an inspiration to all
i39

WILLIAM McKINLEY
true Americans. History will write for him one of her bright
est and most glorious pages. As he was beloved, so will his
death be deplored. In the light of his martyrdom vanishes all
striving. Death has silenced the mighty brain and stilled the
warm heart in the very hour when the nation's needs are great
est. He had piloted the country through perils the darkest
since the days of Civil War, to the time of outlining the wise
policies which the nation must pursue in its career as a world
wide power. Even as he was called to death, the people were
yet drinking in eagerly the words of his last public address
wherein he pointed out with prophetic vision the path his coun
try must tread, the path of duty and stern responsibility. God
will pardon the people if they cannot see clearly and accept only
blindly the President's dying words, " It is God's way. His
will be done." The years he has been at the head of the nation
have been years great with momentous events; a war in the
cause of humanity has healed the wounds of civil strife, and
planted the stars and stripes on the mountain tops where all
the world may see. The people are to be congratulated that the
law of succession places the Presidency in the hands of a man
who has been tested in the furnace-heat of national require
ments and not a flaw detected. May God's richest blessings rest
upon Theodore Roosevelt in the great office to which he has
been called.
In testimony of the grief of the people of the State of Michi
gan it is directed that the Capitol be draped in mourning, and
that the flags upon all State buildings be displayed at half-mast
until after the interment; that on the day of the funeral all
departments of the State Government be closed and all business
as far as practicable be suspended. Let there be special ser
vices in the schools and all places of worship on that day, and
the day, a day of supplication to Almighty God that He may
in the future as in the past guide His people, protecting and
prospering them. It is recommended that to-morrow every pul-
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WILLIAM McKINLEY
pit call upon the Divine Father that He comfort the widow of
the President and the people who mourn. Let the flag of the
nation everywhere within the commonwealth be at half-mast,
for the nation's chief is dead.
In testimony whereof I have hereunto set my hand and
caused the Great Seal of the State to be affixed, at Lansing,
this fourteenth day of September, a.d. 1901, and of the Inde
pendence of the United States the One Hundred Twenty-sixth.
(Signed) A. T. Bliss,
Governor.
By the Governor:
Fred M. Warner,
Secretary of State.

State of North Carolina, Executive Department,
Raleigh, October 4, 1901.
The death of President McKinley, particularly in the form
in which it occurred, was a great shock to the entire country.
He was a good and great man. He earnestly strove to be a
President of the entire country, and it was his good fortune to
be President at a time when a foreign war enabled him to show
to the people of the South that the bitterness of the " War Be
tween the States " had passed away. He was a just and gen
erous man, and the people of the South without exception will
always do honor to his memory. If to have been an instrument
in bringing the people of the entire country into perfect accord
brings happiness, then surely President McKinley was happy both
in his life and in his death. He enjoyed the confidence of the
American people as few men have ever done, and he died with
the affection of them all surrounding him. To live in the es
teem of the American people, to die with their love come to
few men. Let us hope that the inspiration of his life and his
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WILLIAM McKINLEY
patient fortitude in death and his firm reliance upon God may
forever be to the people of this country sacred things inspiring
them to better living and higher purposes.
Very truly yours,
Charles B. Aycock,
Governor of North Carolina.

Executive Chamber,
Lincoln, Neb., September 27, 1901.
William McKinley represented the purest and noblest type
of American manhood. Rarely, if ever, has nature combined
so many noble traits in one individual with every part perfect.
He was a dutiful son, a devoted husband, a patriotic citizen, a
brave soldier, and a master of statesmanship. From his boy
hood to the close of his life, his days were distinguished for
purity, love, and patriotism. Though occupying a conspicuous
position in public life, crowning his career with the most ex
alted testimonial df public esteem and confidence at the bestowal
of the people of any nation, he was still the humble citizen, still
solicitous of the welfare of all his fellow-men. Human history
affords no other character-study like that embodied in the life
of President McKinley. It is emblazoned and embellished with
attributes representing the highest human ideals. No architect
of character has yet furnished a model like it. The most care
ful scrutiny reveals no imperfection.
His life is a study for the youth of the nation and for man
kind everywhere. It is an example whose emulation must neces
sarily ripen into higher and nobler citizenship. He lived a life
of spotless honor, and, though a martyr, yielded sublimely, in
prayerful obedience to the inevitable summons.
America, though young in years, has furnished the world
with many splendid types of manhood, but among the types of
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WILLIAM McKINLEY
all the world, the one which rises highest and which has made
the greatest impression on human minds everywhere, is that of
William McKinley. In point of practical statesmanship Presi
dent McKinley's achievements stand without a parallel. The
groundwork of the prevailing era of unprecedented prosperity
was laid very early during his first term, and that, too, in face
of the fact that at the time he assumed the reins of government
the industrial and commercial interests of the nation were in the
throes of a distressful panic. The statesmanship displayed in
accomplishing the change from an era of industrial and com
mercial depression to one of boundless prosperity knows no equal
in the history of human affairs. Looked at from every view
point, William McKinley must be regarded as nature's greatest
human effort in the period of his years.
Ezra P. Savage,
Governor of Nebraska.

The Governor's Office,
Jefferson City, Mo.
At this time it is not practicable for me to give a just and
comprehensive estimate of the character of President McKinley.
My personal relations with him, for now nearly twenty
years, have been so cordial that I feel his loss most keenly. I
made his acquaintance at the National Capital in 1883, and the
friendship established then has been strengthened with the
passing years. Differing with him upon many public questions,
I have never failed to recognize his honesty, sincerity, patriot
ism, and marked ability.
The President always maintained his convictions with cour
tesy and courage unfailing. In Congress he was a ready de
bater and a resourceful legislator. It mattered not how sharp
and keen the contest may have been along partisan lines, he was
always a courteous gentleman. 143

WILLIAM McKINLEY
His private life was pure and stainless. The devotion to his
invalid wife was so constant and so gentle that it won the esteem
of all who had knowledge of his domestic relations. This beauti
ful trait of his well-poised character was the occasion of much
favorable comment at Washington long before his name was
mentioned in connection with the Presidency.
As President he has been broad-minded, patriotic, and con
siderate of the opinions of those who differed with him.
It should be remembered that Mr. McKinley was the most
potent personality in destroying the last lingering embers of
sectional hatred. His conduct during the Spanish-American
War disarmed opposition, and he won the affection of the South,
when, out of a heart abundant in love, he declared that Southern
cemeteries, where lie the ashes of the Confederate dead, should
hereafter receive the same generous care from the National Gov
ernment as the cemeteries in which rest the sleeping dust of the
Union dead. In my opinion President McKinley accomplished
more to entomb sectionalism forever than any President who
has been elected by the Republican Party since the days of
Abraham Lincoln.
It was a cruel, wanton shot which struck him down, but he
passes to the other shore amid the sobs, the sighs, and the tears
of the whole people, and in no part of the Republic is grief more
sincere than among the people of the South.
The President proved to be a great leader of his party. He
was honest, able, resourceful, and exhibited consummate tact in
harmonizing and unifying the powerful forces of that great
organization. At this time, however, I do not care to think of
him in connection with partisan questions. I prefer to remember
him as I knew him in the quiet social circle — a charming per
sonality, a true friend, with a heart big enough to embrace every
American, and a hand that was ever outstretched to help the
friendless and the needy. A. M. Dockery,
Governor State of Missouri.
144

WILLIAM McKINLEY October 10, 1901.
The earthly career of William McKinley is closed; in the
loving memory of his country it has only begun. He needs no
special eulogy, his life will be one of the brightest pages in our
country's history. As a soldier, statesman, and husband he was
conspicuous for true courage, high ability, and loving devotion;
he was one of the best executives our great nation ever had, at
all times having the strength and courage to do right because it
was right. We admit our eyes are dim, and our faith slow, but
great indeed must be the resulting good to compensate for the
sacrifice demanded in his death. We can only bow to the yoke
and pass under the rod. We are talking of monuments to his
memory; he needs none, because, while living, he builded in the
hearts of his people the foundation of the greatest monument
possible to erect, one that will grow for generations as his won
derful life and ability grow in appreciation by the nation he so
loved, and who twice gave him their confidence and trust. What
monument can man build of stone to compare with the loving
trust and sacred remembrance of 70,000,000 free people? Will
iam McKinley was one of Nature's noblemen, and by her richly
endowed. John Hume,
Governor of Delaware.

State of Washington, Executive Department,
Olympia, September 30, 1901.
President McKinley was an eminent man, who attained
prominence by reason of marked abilities, both native and ac
quired. In all the relations of life he was exemplary. A model
to be followed. As President of the United States, he conducted
the nation through the Spanish War with great skill. I think
no man in his position could have been more successful. And
yet, with all his abilities and attainments, it may be said of him
»45

WILLIAM McKINLEY
that nothing in his life honored him so much as his conduct at
the time of his most lamentable taking off. At the time of the
assassination, in all the crowd that surrounded him, his was the
only calm and dignified presence maintained. His command,
" Let no man hurt him," was Christ-like and passed the ordinary
nature of man. When President Jackson was attacked by a
would-be murderer, on leaving the hall of the House of Represen
tatives, the doughty old general struck viciously at his assailant
with his cane. Jackson's attitude was proper enough and right
enough from the human standpoint, but McKinley, under like
circumstances, ascended to a vastly higher plane. And for this,
and in consequence of it, he incited the universal admiration of
the world. This will cause him to be remembered when all else
in connection with his career has been forgotten.
John R. Rogers,
Governor of Washington.

Tahlequah, Indian Ter.
PROCLAMATION.
The life of President McKinley has been taken. In his
death the Cherokees, too, sustain a loss equal to that of other
loyal citizens of the United States. Such a calamity bows us
down in grief.
Let us show our sorrow because he died such a death, and
express our admiration for a life deserving commendation. His
exemplary Christian and domestic career should be copied and
imitated in every home in the land, and his persistent effort to
do some good for mankind should meet with approval from the
very depth of every heart.
Now, therefore, I, T. M. Buffington, Principal Chief of the
Cherokee Nation, do designate Thursday next, September 19th,
the day on which the body of the President will be interred in
146

WILLIAM McKINLEY
its final worldly tabernacle, as a day of prayer in this nation.
I fervently advise that all the people throughout the Cherokee
Nation congregate in places of worship and there hold suitable
religious services in honor and in memory of a President whose
life should be exemplified, and whose death grieves all good
people. In witness whereof, I hereunto set my hand and cause the
seal of the Cherokee Nation to be affixed at Tahlequah, Indian
Territory, on this the 17th day of September, a.d. 1901.
T. M. Buffington,
Principal Chief of Cherokee Nation.
By the Principal Chief:
J. T. Parks,
Executive Secretary.

Executive Office, Helena, Mont.
So much has been said and written in eulogy of the life of
President McKinley that I cannot hope to add anything to that
splendid monument which the press, the pulpit, and the people
have with one accord so conscientiously and lovingly erected to
his memory. It was my good fortune to know him personally, and, above
all else, I appreciated the soundness of his integrity, the purity
of his morals, the amiableness of his urbanity, the graces of his
modesty, and, generally, the decorations and amenities of his life.
To my mind no President since the Revolution has been
confronted with problems more complex or weighty than those
which have pressed themselves upon him for consideration and
decision. In a government composed of many parties reflecting all
shades of political opinion, it would be remarkable if his states
manship should go unchallenged; but upon the sincerity of his
purposes, the integrity of his motives, and the uprightness of his
i47

WILLIAM McKINLEY
conduct as citizen, soldier, and official, there can be but one
opinion, and that places him high upon the roll of exemplars
worthy of all emulation.
These indispensable qualities, so fully exemplified in his life,
are the fortresses behind which 70,000,000 people, devoted to
the Constitution and the laws, stand in solid phalanx, and,
whether pitying or defying, the stupid assassin in his vain at
tempt to overthrow government, are instinct with the patriotic
sentiment of the poet who exclaimed:
" Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State !
Sail on, O Union strong and great !
Humanity with all its fears,
With all the hope of future years,
Is hanging breathless on thy fate !
We know what master laid thy keel,
What workmen wrought thy ribs of steel,
Who made each mast, and sail and rope,
What anvils rang, what hammers beat,
In what a forge and what a heat
Were shaped the anchors of thy hope ! "
J. K. Toole,
Governor of Montana.

Denver, Col., September 15, 1901.
Our departed President has shown, in his intercourse with
the people and his devotion to his invalid wife, the heart and
mind of a man fully endowed with a Christian and a charitable
spirit. We have lost a noble and a great ruler. What this
country owes to him in his wise management of the govern
mental affairs of the nation can never be realized by this genera
tion. His works are of the kind that endure.
James B. Orman,
Governor State of Colorado.
148

WILLIAM McKINLEY
Hartford, Conn., September 15, 1901.
It is hardly within the power of language to measure the loss
to the nation or the feeling of sorrow and indignation that now
fills the heart of every American worthy of the name. Such
cowardly murders ought never to be possible, and if the Presi
dent cannot appear in public without danger of assassination, he
should be absolutely protected against such danger. The civil
ized nations might well consider the propriety of securing an
island where all persons of lawless and anarchistic tendencies
could be deported without hope of escape, there to apply to each
other without restraint their notions of social bliss.
Anyone acquainted with President Roosevelt knows that he
will meet the grave responsibilities now facing him with a cour
age and honesty of purpose excelled by no man, and that noth
ing will be done to shake the masterly, merciful, and wise policy
of his illustrious and beloved predecessor. But the dominant
desire of all sane people now is to have the assassination of Presi
dents prevented in the future, and the insane disciples of Cain
now at large mercifully imprisoned or restricted to their own
society. George P. McLean, Governor.

Lincoln, Neb., September 14, 1901.
The spectacle at Buffalo is both pathetic and impressive. In
the presence of this awful crime, organized society, sensitive of
right and wrong, is exhausting every means within its power to
maintain the majesty of the law. The assassin of President
McKinley is in jail, and a cordon of police and two companies
of militia are there to see that he is not harmed, or the law trans
gressed. Is this not an impressive lesson to those who preach
the doctrine of redressing grievances through the medium of
rapine and murder? Ezra P. Savage,
Lieutenant Governor.

49

WILLIAM McKINLEY
Jefferson City, Mo., September 14, 1901.
Governor Dockery, in issuing his proclamation to-day, re
quested that, as a tribute of respect to the memory of our late
President on the day set apart for his funeral all public offices
be closed; that the people refrain from their ordinary avoca
tions and assemble at their usual place of worship to ask that the
blessings of Almighty God abide with our beloved Republic.
He said:
" The assassin's bullet has accomplished its murderous mis
sion. After a courageous, but unavailing life struggle our Presi
dent has passed through the valley into the great hereafter. The
national sorrow is so overwhelming that language is utterly im
potent to express its abhorrence of the awful tragedy enacted
at Buffalo. The shot that laid President McKinley low was
aimed at our Government. A new danger menaces our free in
stitutions, but the American people will meet it with the same
courage and fidelity that have hitherto enabled them to master
grave problems." O. P. Gentry,
Secretary to the Governor.

Baton Rouge, La., September 15, 1901.
It is with profound sorrow that I have learned of the death
of the President. The South has lost a friend and the country
a great and good man. No President since the Civil War has
done more to destroy the feeling resulting from that strife and
unite the two sections in cordial friendship. He had great faith
and confidence in the masses of the people, and it is dreadful to
contemplate that he should lose his life while exhibiting that
confidence by mingling with the people. His home life was
beautiful, and his devotion to his invalid wife won for him the
affectionate regard of all good people.
W. W. Heard.
i5°

WILLIAM McKINLEY
Salem, Ore., September 15, 1901.
The people of Oregon feel that they have sustained a per
sonal loss in the tragic death of President McKinley. It is a
costly sacrifice to make, but the compensation will be in the
awakened determination of the American people to proceed un
der a new impulse, born of the great national loss, to enact legis
lation which will make it a crime either to advocate the doc
trine of anarchy or to express sympathy with those who do. We
have dallied with this matter too long already, and to further
trifle with it will be suicidal. The only way to prevent the
further spread of this poison through our governmental system
is to prevent it. The entire State of Oregon is in mourning to
day, but its people have an abiding faith in the wisdom, in
tegrity, and ability of the incoming Chief Executive.
T. T. Geer.

Helena, Mont., September 15, 1901.
Montana mourns the President's untimely death, and will
unite with her sister States in all lawful efforts to wipe out the
festering remnant that inspired the insensate assassin to his aw
ful deed. J. K. Toole.

Montgomery, Ala., September 15, 1901.
State flag at half-mast ; national salute now being fired from
Capitol hill. Alabama mourns the loss of our country's great
chieftain. John W. A. Sanford.
151

WILLIAM McKINLEY
Frankfort, Ky., September 14, 1901.
The death of President McKinley is a terrible shock to every
American citizen, and nowhere is it more sincerely mourned than
in Kentucky. He was a great and good man. His private life
was pure and stainless and worthy of the emulation of any man.
His public life, even to those who, like myself, differed from him
in politics, was a model of patriotism and statesmanship. Big-
hearted and broad-minded, he never showed any of that bitter
ness and prejudice usually engendered by sectional warfare or
political contests, and to-day, regardless of politics or religious
creed, in the South as well as in the North, in the West as well
as in the East, the heart of every good American citizen is bowed
deep with grief over the death of our honored and beloved Presi
dent. Especially do we sympathize with his noble wife, to whom
his devotion was so loyal and beautiful. His death teaches us,
too, that the most effective measures should be taken to stamp
out the disease that caused it — anarchy. National and State
legislation should be sufficiently strong to make it impossible for
such a pest to exist on American soil, and those who teach assas
sination and the destruction of government should be treated as
public enemies.
J. C. W. Beckham.

Carson, Nev., September 14, 1901.
Nevada joins with the people of the United States in their
deep sorrow for the loss of a great and good man, exalted in
public life, unblemished in example before the world, actuated
by unselfish sympathy for his fellow-man, and, above all, re
flecting the highest devotion and love in the sacred precincts of
domestic and social life. Reinhold Sadler.
152

WILLIAM McKINLEY
Des Moines, Iowa, September 15, 1901.
For the third time this nation stands breathless, weeping, and
appalled at the bier of its Chief Executive. The blow struck at
the life of the President wounded all hearts, but the sadness
caused by his death is not greater than the remorse that such
things are possible with a people who acknowledge no perma
nent national ruler but law and with whom justice, according
to law, is a cardinal principle. The life that has thus gone out
through violence will be the subject of many encomiums and
volumes of well-merited praise. These four and a half years,
during which William McKinley occupied the chair of the Chief
Executive, will ever be an inspiration to those who shall suc
ceed him. To the record of these years statesman, scholar, and
political economist will turn for helpful suggestions. To the
brave soldier, the devoted husband, the wise statesman, the just
and liberty-loving Chief Executive, as well as to the ideal gentle
man, parents will long direct their children. To the heroic yet
calm, serene, and peaceful sufferer the Christian Church will
ever revert for proof of what faith in God through Christ can
do for a man in high as well as in low estate. " Nearer, My
God, to Thee " will be sung with gentler accent because whis
pered with latest breath by one who was well-nigh the idol of
80,000,000 people.
I add an incident illustrative of the kind heart and unselfish
interest in those about him ever manifested in this life. Dur
ing a trip across Iowa a crowd had gathered as usual at the rear
of the platform, and many hands were extended that they might
touch his, whose was a benediction. Among the number was
a woman somewhat past the prime of life. Those who saw her
needed not to be told that she had been a burden-bearer. Her
clothes were plain, her figure bent, and her face bore deeply
printed lines of care. I shall not soon forget that expression
of admiration, almost adoration, as she looked, evidently for the
i53

WILLIAM McKINLEY
first time, into the face of her President; nor shall I ever for
get the kindly response as he reached past several strong and
well-dressed men to take her hand, and then, instantly remov
ing a carnation from the lapel of his coat, he slipped it to her
withered hand just as the train moved out. Of course, the crowd
responded; not so much that a flower had been presented to a
careworn woman as in recognition of the self-forgetfulness and
the ever-present thought and care for others which so charac
terized the man McKinley. Leslie M. Shaw.

Salt Lake, Utah, September 15, 1901.
William McKinley was the ideal President of our country.
The economic policies with which his name is indissolubly asso
ciated have been vindicated by a splendor of commercial achieve
ments unparalleled in the history of the world. His conduct of
the Spanish-American War developed conservative strength, dig
nity, and humaneness beyond the power of words to express.
The example of his domestic life, so pure and upright, is a price
less heritage to the homes of our people. All in all, he was a
valiant soldier, a wise statesman, a lovable man. His fame is
secure in the hearts of his countrymen. His name will be for
ever spoken by them in conjunction with Washington and Lin
coln. Heber M. Wells.

Cheyenne, Wyo., September 14, 1901.
The citizens of Wyoming consider President McKinley's un
timely death not only a national misfortune, but one personal
to themselves as individuals. No President of the United States
before, I believe, has been loved and respected by so many of
his fellow-citizens as Mr. McKinley. De Forest Richards.
154

WILLIAM McKINLEY
Lansing, Mich., September 15, 1901.
History will write for President McKinley one of its bright
est pages. His life was the exemplification of the cardinal virtues
of Christian integrity, nobility of character, and devotion to
duty, and was inspiration to all true Americans. Even as he
was called to death the people were yet drinking in eagerly the
words of his last public address, wherein he pointed out with
prophetic vision the path his country must tread, the path of
duty and stern responsibility. Aaron T. Bliss.

Commonwealth of Virginia, Governor's Office,
Richmond, Va., September 19, 1901.
President McKinley often spoke of Virginia as the mother
of his State, and as the bosom of the daughter is opened to re
ceive his body to-day, we would have the world to know that
Virginians are gathered here in this historic hall to give expres
sion to their sorrow and to do honor to his name.
He was my friend and the friend of my people. His cour
tesy and kindness and his desire to help Virginia will not be
forgotten. He was a man without bitterness, whose life was
crowned by his effort to abolish sectional lines, and whose death
cements the completion of his cherished work.
Rarely has a country been called to mourn the loss of a
chieftain so well beloved.
"His life was gentle and the elements so mixed in him _ that nat
ure might stand up
And say to all the world : This is a man ! "
A gallant soldier, he was magnanimous to those less favored
by fortune. A man, noble, courteous, and brave. A husband,
gentle, tender, and true. A Christian, childlike, and devout and
i55

WILLIAM McKINLEY
even in the gathering shadows of death his faith was steadfast
and knew no wavering. Cut off at the zenith of his glory; shot
down while the approving plaudits of multitudes were ringing
in his ears; he had no words save those of acquiescence in the
divine decree, and hushed the moans of anguish in the prayer
of " Not my will but Thine be done." The scenes around his
deathbed are ineffaceable: Turning a longing look at the trees
waving around his window, as if sighing for their shade once
more, he murmured: "Oh, how beautiful," and with the glori
ous light of an immortal life resplendent on his brow, he said to
her to whom he had given a wealth of love and tenderness : " It's
God's way. Good-by, good-by." Immortal words that will re
sound around the world and echo in every clime, inspiring Chris
tian hearts to perfect faith. His life was the life of a patriot,
his death was the death of a saint.
While our grief is made more poignant when we recall those
qualities of mind and heart with which William McKinley was
endowed, and remember those gentle attributes which ever char
acterized him, there is something more than a personal tribute
in these widespread manifestations of sorrow. In the tears of
the people are the seeds of the nation's strength. Behold, what
hath a generation wrought. The sable drapery which hangs
around the stately columns of this old building, that once echoed
with the noise of war, now hushed in sadness; the solemn toll
of the bells in this, the capital city of the Confederacy-^bells
that once sounded battle alarms now pealing forth their notes
of sorrow; the once angry growl of the cannon, now the melan
choly moan of the funeral gun are alike emblems of sorrow for
a fallen'chieftain, and tributes to the enduring strength of the
Union. William McKinley was the agent chosen by Providence to
knit up the few strands of strife that remained from that great
struggle in which he had borne such a noble part. How well
he discharged his duty, and how fully he accomplished his work,
156

WILLIAM McKINLEY
is evidenced by the people of every section clasping hands across
his bier and mingling their tears around his tomb, while their
voices join in requiems at his grave.
The greatest honor paid to his memory is in the bowed
heads and grief-stricken hearts of the old Confederates, assem
bled here amid the ruins of their hopes, while with unfeigned
sorrow they mourn the loss of that illustrious man who was Presi
dent of all the people. Yes, his cherished ambition was to bring
the people of every section into closer fellowship and union, and
with generous hand he reached out to the men of the South and
made them feel that in the great office of President partisan
strife was forgotten. The country has lost a beloved President,
the South a true and loyal friend. J. Hoge Tyler,
Governor.

State of Kansas, Executive Department,
Governor's Office.
The future alone will accord to President McKinley his
proper place in history. But if his place is fixed by his successes,
he will hold a position as one of the greatest men of the time
in which he lived. He was the foremost champion of protection,
and lived to see that policy crystallized into law and his fondest
hopes realized in an era of prosperity the greatest the country
had ever known. He was in hearty accord with his party's posi
tion on the question of sound money, and saw the vast business
of the country firmly established upon that basis. He believed
in extending the principles of popular free government to other
countries, and was the most potent agency in establishing these
principles in Porto Rico, Hawaii, and the Philippines.
During his administration, under his wise and conservative
leadership, prosperity came to the people and power to the na
tion, exceeding the hopes of the most sanguine of his contem
poraries. These results were largely due to his splendid execu-
i57

WILLIAM McKINLEY
tive ability and his able management of public affairs. He had
a large grasp of public questions, great faith in the country's
future, was honest in public and pure in private life, and will
take rank with the greatest of Americans.
W. E. Stanley.

State of Colorado, Executive Chamber,
Denver, October 8, 1901.
Our late President, William McKinley, was a true man in
every sense of the word. He was beloved by all people, irre
spective of party affiliations, for his kindly Christian character,
his charity for all, and for the courageous, yet gentle manner
in which he managed the governmental affairs of the nation.
The way in which he solved the many and difficult problems
devolving upon him, both foreign and domestic, showed him
to be one of the greatest diplomats the world has ever known.
The home is one of the bulwarks of the American nation,
and in that phase of his life he set an example to all home-lov
ing citizens. The love and devotion which he bestowed upon his
invalid wife were touching in the extreme.
He was ever ready to give his service to his country. As a
young man he fought gallantly for the maintenance of the
Union. In later years, in the halls of Congress, he rendered
most valuable and efficient services to his country, and during
his occupancy of the Presidential chair he rendered a service to
all humanity. His name will go down in history with the great men of
the world. The foimdation which he laid is of the enduring
kind, and thereon will be built a structure which will be ever
lasting, a great and glorious nation.
Very truly yours,
James B. Orman,
Governor.
158

WILLIAM McKINLEY
State of South Carolina, Executive Chamber,
Columbia.
The greatest glory which can be achieved by mortal man is
so to live that when his life is done and he has passed away, his
worth as a man, his dignity of character, his simple nobility of
mind and heart, his every step in the walk of life, which was
to him but the path of duty, shall be pointed out by the Chris
tian mothers of this land to their sons as worthy of emulation.
Such a life was that of William McKinley. The lustre of his
official career may grow dim with the passing years, his glory
as the ruler of a great nation may fade, but his private life, his
obedience as a son, his faithfulness as a soldier, his tenderness
as a husband and father, will live forever.
Step by step he had gone up the rungs of the ladder of fame
until he had reached the height of man's ambition.
It was then that the fatal blow which laid him cold in death
was struck — a blow aimed not at him, but at us, at our institu
tions, at our republican form of government, a blow the object
of which was to destroy all government. But ere that fatal
blow was struck, the purpose for which he lived had been accom
plished, his life-work was done. Under his administration the
North and South were more strongly united, not by the cruel
' and stern decree of war, but by the indissoluble and holy bonds
of brotherly love. He had taken up the work where the im
mortal Grady had laid it down, and the cold, still form of him
to whom it had been allowed to contribute so much to this great
work was laid to rest in his native soil 'mid the sobs and tears
of a united people.
To the South the memory of President McKinley will always
be sacred, and our people will ever think of him with feelings of
tenderness mingled with reverence. Never will his words, de
livered at the Atlanta reunion of the old Confederates, be for
gotten here, for there it was that he said he wanted the graves
i59

WILLIAM McKINLEY
of our heroic dead to be cared for by the National Government.
No petty jealousies rankled in his breast, he was the President
of no section or party, but he saw the " glorious future that
awaits us if unitedly, wisely, and bravely we face the new prob
lems now pressing upon us, determined to solve them for right
and humanity."
He himself had entered that bloody strife as a private and
had done his duty as a soldier and as a man, and when the smoke
of battle had lifted and the turmoil and din of the strife was
oyer, there was no animosity in his heart against a cause that
was forever fallen, and he offered us the hand of friendship and
wanted us to be once again his brothers.
All honor to the memory of William McKinley, and may the
mourning of a nation in some degree comfort the wife of his
bosom. M. B. McSweeney, Governor.

State of Kentucky, Executive Office,
Frankfort.
The death of President McKinley is a terrible shock to
every American citizen, and nowhere is it more sincerely
mourned than in Kentucky. He was a great and a good man.
His private life was pure and stainless and worthy the emula
tion of any man. His public life, even to those who, like my
self, differed from him in politics, was a model of patriotism
and statesmanship. Big-hearted and broad-minded, he never
showed any of that bitterness and prejudice usually engendered
by sectional warfare or political contests, and to-day, regardless
of political or religious creed, in the South as well as in the
North, in the West as well as in the East, the heart of every
good American citizen is bowed deep in grief over the death
of our honored and beloved President. Especially do we sym-
160

WILLIAM McKINLEY
pathize with his noble wife, to whom his devotion was so loyal
and beautiful.
His death teaches us, too, that the most effective measures
should be taken to stamp out the disease that caused it — anarchy.
National and State legislation should be sufficiently strong to
make it impossible for such a pest to exist on American soiL
and those who teach assassination and the destruction of govern
ment should be treated as public enemies.
J. C. W. Beckham,
Governor of Kentucky.

Jackson, Miss., September 14, 1901.
The people of Mississippi mourn the untimely death of the
President. As a tribute of respect the different departments of
the State Government have been closed for the day and the flag
on the Capitol hung at half-mast. James T. Harrison,
Lieutenant-Governor and Acting Governor.

State of Louisiana, Executive Department,
Baton Rouge, October 8, 1901.
The life, character, and public services of President McKin
ley have demonstrated in the highest degree the superiority of
our free institutions over those governments where distinctions
are limited and these reserved almost exclusively to favored
classes. The career of President McKinley, starting from the
common plane of the American youth, rising from the ranks in
the volunteer army to the grade of major — onward to a Con
gressional seat, then to the gubernatorial chair of his State, did
not culminate with his elevation to the Presidency. He as
cended from the Presidency to the loftier sphere of the patriot,
l6l

WILLIAM McKINLEY
when he sought, and not in vain, to heal the wounds left open
by decades of sectional strife. In receiving his death-wound
he presented an example of courage, fortitude, magnanimity, and
sublime faith in his Creator, which was a fitting apotheosis of a
life of devotion to country and home, such as the history of no
other nation in ancient or modern times has shown.
Very respectfully,
W. W. Heard,
Governor.

The State of Wyoming, Executive Department,
Cheyenne, October 11, 1901.
The heritage of a country, in the example of a great and
good man, is a precious boon to those who come after him, as
rulers of a land which he loved and honored.
Mr. McKinley served his country on the battle-field, in the
halls of Congress, in the highest office of his State, and as Presi
dent of the United States, and died with no blemish on his
character or reputation.
He was a courageous soldier, an able statesman, an honor
able President, and an honest man; his private life was pure
and above reproach. His kindly heart and his untiring devo
tion to his country, his family and his friends, has caused him
to be loved and respected by the people of the United States as
no other citizen has been, for
" He hath kept the whiteness of his soul,
And thus men o'er him wept."
If our young men, who will soon be the chosen rulers of
this nation, will emulate his example in their private and pub
lic lives, we can look forward to a national existence that will
be the pride of our own citizens, and the admiration of the
civilized world. DeF. Richards.
162

WILLIAM McKINLEY
State of New York, Executive Chamber,
Albany, October 15, 1901.
It is seldom that a man in public life secures such a hold on
the affections of the people as that which our late President ob
tained during his life. His public life was of such a character
as to be above criticism, and his tragic death has but accentuated
in the hearts of the American people the virtues which he was
known to possess. During his long public career the breath of
dishonor never touched him, and his domestic life was as pure
as his public record. Outside of these virtues, for which he was
loved and for which his memory will be revered, his official acts
will perpetuate his fame. It is needless to recapitulate them.
His name was closely connected with the economic measures that
have done so much to bring about the present era of prosperity,
and the history of our Government for the past four years may
be written as the history of William McKinley.
B. B. Odell,
Governor.

PROCLAMATION.
Executive Department, State of California,
Sacramento.
At this time of a nation's sorrow, the people of the State of
California join in the deep grief shared by their fellow-citizens
in all the States and Territories of the Union, on account of the
sad and untimely death, on the 14th day of September, a.d.
1901, of our grand and good President, William McKinley.
To the list of sacrifices of those whose eminent statesmanship
was guided by a devotion to American liberty, and by a sin
cere love for their fellow-men, our Republic now despondently
163

WILLIAM McKINLEY
adds to the revered and lamented names of Lincoln and Garfield,
her beloved son, the martyred William McKinley.
In public testimony of the sorrow of the people of the State
of California, for the loss of their illustrious President and noble
citizen, William McKinley, I, as the Chief Executive of the
State, do hereby order that the flags be placed and kept at half-
mast on all the State buildings for thirty days from this date.
I do further order that the day which shall hereafter be selected
and set apart for the funeral of President McKinley be, and the
same is hereby declared to be a public holiday for general prayer
and mourning.
In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused
the great seal of this State to be hereunto affixed, this 14th day
of September, a.d. 1901. Henry T. Gage,
Governor of the State of California.
Attest: C. F. Curry,
Secretary of State.

Executive Department, State of South Dakota,
Pierre, October 10, 1901.
The terrible tragedy enacted in the Music Hall on the Ex
position grounds in Buffalo brought the most poignant grief to
the civilized world. To every patriotic home his death came
with the force of a terrible personal bereavement.
Throughout all history, few men have ever been so univer
sally loved by his countrymen and respected and mourned by
the nations of the world.
In history William McKinley will occupy an illustrious posi
tion. His exalted character, his Christian fortitude and piety,
his patriotism, his splendid achievements will forever be treas
ured as a most sacred heritage.
He lived and ruled during the most critical period in the
164

WILLIAM McKINLEY
history of our country. Urged on by the mystic forces of un
foreseen events he sacredly and successfully directed the course
of the nation, when it grandly emerged as a world-power.
The memorable words of Garfield, in his eulogy upon the
lamented Lincoln and later applied by McKinley to Garfield,
may now fittingly be applied to the martyred McKinley.
" He loved to clutch the Golden Keys,
To mold a mighty State's decree,
And shape the whispers of the throne ;
And, moving up, from higher to higher,
Becomes on Fortune's crowning slope,
The pillar of a Nation's hope,
The centre of the World's desire."
Charles N. Herried,
Governor of South Dakota.

State of Ohio, Executive Department,
Office of the Governor,
Columbus, October 15, 1901.
The Continental Assembly,
Corcoran Building, Washington, D. 0.
Gentlemen: The Governor directs me to acknowledge the
receipt of your favor of the 3d inst., in which you ask for his
eulogy on the life and character of the late lamented Presi
dent, for publication in General Grosvenor's book. Enclosed
herewith please find a copy of the remarks delivered by the
Governor upon this subject before the Franklin County Bar
Association. He desires that this shall be used for your pub
lication. Very truly yours, Frederick N. Sinks,
Private Secretary.
'65

ADDRESS OF GOVERNOR GEORGE K. NASH AT
THE McKINLEY MEMORIAL MEETING OF THE
FRANKLIN COUNTY BAR.
Columbus, O., Saturday, September 21, 1901.
Mr. President and Gentlemen: It is a privilege which I
esteem most highly to be permitted to join with my fellow-mem
bers of the bar of Franklin County in doing honor to one of the
greatest and most patriotic Presidents the United States ever had.
It is proper that we should do so because the bar of Ohio
furnished this man to our country. We all mourn his loss most
deeply. We miss him as a friend; we miss him as President,
and the State and nation have done all the honor they could
in laying his remains away to rest in his beloved city of Canton.
We ought to be thankful that he has left behind him a
noble life, which will forever be remembered by the American
people. It will be a lesson to all generations to come of the
patriotism of a great man. The whole life of William McKin
ley was devoted to the service of his country. When as a private
soldier he trudged over the National Pike from Columbus to
Camp Chase, carrying his musket upon his shoulder, he began
to teach us that lesson of patriotism. Every act of his during
the days of war, from 1861 to 1865, ought to inspire the young
men of this country to devote themselves to the nation which
he loved so well. When he returned home as other soldiers did,
he prepared himself for the bar, was admitted, and during the
short period that he engaged in the practice of law he showed
himself to be a man who would make an eminent lawyer.
But his love of country called his footsteps in another direc
tion. He became a member of the Congress of the United States.
1 66

WILLIAM McKINLEY
In that great body he was inspired by the same patriotism which
moved him from 1861 to 1865; his every act, his every thought,
all his work were for the benefit of his country. Then he be
came the Governor of our beloved State. As such Governor
most of us knew him personally and learned to love him. We
loved him because he was a faithful official; because he was
upright and honest, and because his every thought was for the
benefit of the State which he governed.
The people of the United States learned to know William
McKinley as we knew him and they called him to be President
of this country. He seems to have been called just at the right
moment, as Lincoln was. He was called just as this country
was to engage in war with a foreign power. The duties which
were thrust upon him were irksome; they were exacting, but
the patriotism of William McKinley caused him to discharge
every duty in the most faithful manner. Victory soon came
for this country, a victory which had been planned by William
McKinley; our armies and our navies were guided by his hand,
and it was his faithful heart that sustained our flag in every
conflict. Complete victory was achieved; a new and a great
work was undertaken for the nation.
His plans for the greatness and future growth of our nation
had been unfolded, and just then God called him home. In
this life which I have briefly epitomized is a monument to the
glory of William McKinley more lasting than any that can be
devised by the mind or constructed by the hand of man. It
will be a lesson which will be studied by the young men of this
country for all time. It will teach them to love their country,
to love their flag, and cause them to ward off danger from this
Republic whenever it may approach.

167

President McKinley's Last Speech
Delivered September 5, 1901, President's Day, at
the Pan-American Exposition, Buffalo

President Milburn, Director-General Buchanan, Commis
sioners, Ladies, and Gentlemen: I am glad to again be in the
city of Buffalo and exchange greetings with her people, to whose
generous hospitality I am not a stranger, and with whose good
will I have been repeatedly and signally honored. To-day I
have additional satisfaction in meeting and giving welcome to
the foreign representatives assembled here, whose presence and
participation in this Exposition have contributed in so marked
a degree to its interest and success. To the Commissioners of
the Dominion of Canada and the British Colonies, the French
Colonies, the republics of Mexico and of Central and South
America, and the Commissioners of Cuba and Porto Rico, who
share with us in this undertaking, we give the hand of fellow
ship, and felicitate with them upon the triumphs of art, science,
education, and manufacture, which the old has bequeathed to
the new century.
Expositions are the time-keepers of progress. They record
the world's advancement. They stimulate the energy, enter
prise, and intellect of the people, and quicken human genius.
They go into the home. They broaden and brighten the daily
life of the people. They open mighty storehouses of informa
tion to the student. Every exposition, great or small, has helped
to some onward step.
Comparison of ideas is always educational, and as such in-
168

WILLIAM McKINLEY
structs the brain and hand of men. Friendly rivalry follows,
which is the spur to industrial improvement, the inspiration to
useful invention and to high endeavor in all departments of
human activity. It exacts a study of the wants, comforts, and
even the whims of the people, and recognizes the efficacy of
high quality and low prices to win their favor. The quest for
trade is an incentive to men of business to devise, invent, im
prove, and economize in the cost of production. Business life,
whether among ourselves or with other peoples, is ever a sharp
struggle for success. It will be none the less so in the future.
Without competition we would be clinging to the clumsy and
antiquated processes of farming and manufacture, and the
methods of business of long ago, and the twentieth would be
no further advanced than the eighteenth century. But though
commercial competitors we are, commercial enemies we must
not be.
The Pan-American Exposition has done its work thoroughly,
presenting in its exhibits evidences of the highest skill and illus
trating the progress of the human family in the western hemi
sphere. This portion of the earth has no cause for humiliation
for the part it has performed in the march of civilization. It
has not accomplished everything; far from it. It has simply
done its best, and without vanity or boastfulness, and recogniz
ing the manifold achievements of others, it invites the friendly
rivalry of all the Powers in the peaceful pursuits of trade and
commerce, and will co-operate with all in advancing the high
est and best interests of humanity. The wisdom and energy
of all the nations are none too great for the world's work. The
success of art, science, industry, and invention is an international
asset, and a common glory.
After all, how near one to the other is every part of the
world. Modern inventions have brought into close relation
widely separated peoples and made them better acquainted.
Geographic and political divisions will continue to exist, but
169

WILLIAM McKINLEY
distances have been effaced. Swift ships and fast trains are
becoming cosmopolitan. They invade fields which a few years
ago were impenetrable. The world's products are exchanged
as never before and with increasing transportation facilities come
increasing knowledge and larger trade. Prices are fixed with
mathematical precision by supply and demand. The world's
selling prices are regulated by market and crop reports. We
travel greater distances in a shorter space of time and with more
ease than was ever dreamed of by the fathers. Isolation is no
longer possible or desirable. The same important news is read,
though in different languages, the same day in all Christendom.
The telegraph keeps us advised of what is occurring every
where, and the press foreshadows, with more or less accuracy,
the plans and purposes of the nations. Market prices of products
and of securities are hourly known in every commercial mart,
and the investments of the people extend beyond their own
national boundaries into the remotest parts of the earth. Vast
transactions are conducted and international exchanges are made
by the tick of the cable. Every event of interest is immediately
bulletined. The quick gathering and transmission of news, like
rapid transit, are of recent origin, and are only made possible
by the genius of the inventor and the courage of the investor.
It took a special messenger of the Government, with every facil
ity known at the time for rapid travel, nineteen days to go from
the city of Washington to New Orleans with a message to Gen
eral Jackson that the war with England had ceased and a treaty
of peace had been signed. How different now. We reached
General Miles, in Porto Rico, and he was able through the mili
tary telegraph to stop his army on the firing line with the mes
sage that the United States and Spain had signed a protocol
suspending hostilities. We knew almost instantly of the first
shots fired at Santiago, and the subsequent surrender of the
Spanish forces was known at Washington within less than an
hour of its consummation. The first ship of Cervera's fleet had
170

WILLIAM McKINLEY
hardly emerged from that historic harbor when the fact was
flashed to our Capitol, and the swift destruction that followed
was announced immediately through the wonderful medium of
telegraphy. So accustomed are we to safe and easy communication with
distant lands that its temporary interruption, even in ordinary
times, results in loss and inconvenience. We shall never for
get the days of anxious waiting and suspense when no informa
tion was permitted to be sent from Pekin, and the diplomatic
representatives of the nations in China, cut off from all com
munication, inside and outside of the walled capital, were sur
rounded by an angry and misguided mob that threatened their
lives; nor the joy that thrilled the world when a single mes
sage from the Government of the United States brought through
our Minister the first news of the safety of the besieged diplo
mats. At the beginning of the nineteenth century there was not a
mile of steam railroad on the globe ; now there are enough miles
to make its circuit many times. Then there was not a line of
electric telegraph; now we have a vast mileage traversing all
lands and all seas. God and man have linked the nations to
gether. No nation can longer be indifferent to any other. And
as we are brought more and more in touch with each other, the
less occasion is there for misunderstandings, and the stronger
the disposition, when we have differences, to adjust them in the
court of arbitration, which is the noblest forum for the settle
ment of international disputes.
My fellow-citizens, trade statistics indicate that this coun
try is in a state of unexampled prosperity. The figures are al
most appalling. They show that we are utilizing our fields and
forests and mines, and that we are furnishing profitable em
ployment to the millions of workingmen throughout the United
States, bringing comfort and happiness to their homes, and mak
ing it possible to lay by savings for old age and disability. That
171

WILLIAM McKINLEY
all the people are participating in this great prosperity is seen
in every American community and shown by the enormous and
unprecedented deposits in our savings banks. Our duty in the
care and security of these deposits and their safe investment
demands the highest integrity and the best business capacity of
those in charge of these depositories of the people's earnings.
We have a vast and intricate business, built up through years
of toil and struggle, in which every part of the country has its
stake, which will not permit of either neglect, or of undue self
ishness. No narrow, sordid policy will subserve it. The great
est skill and wisdom on the part of manufacturers and producers
will be required to hold and increase it. Our industrial enter
prises, 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 enor
mously and our products have so multiplied that the problem of
more markets requires our urgent and immediate attention.
Only a broad and enlightened policy will keep what we have.
No other policy will get more. In these times of marvellous
business energy and gain we ought to be looking to the future,
strengthening the weak places in our industrial and commercial
systems, that we may be ready for any storm or strain.
By sensible trade arrangements which will not interrupt our
home production we .shall extend the outlets for our increasing
surplus. A system which provides a mutual exchange of com
modities is manifestly essential to the continued and healthful
growth of our export trade. We must not repose in fancied
security that we can forever sell everything and buy little or
nothing. If such a thing were possible it would not be best for
us or for those with whom we deal. We should take from our
customers such of their products as we can use without harm
to our industries and labor. Reciprocity is the natural out
growth of our wonderful industrial development under the do
mestic policy now firmly established. 172

WILLIAM McKINLEY
What we produce beyond our domestic consumption must
have a vent abroad. The excess must be relieved through a for
eign 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 bur
trade and commerce is the pressing problem. Commercial wars
are unprofitable. A policy of good-will and friendly trade rela
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. New lines
of steamships have already been put in commission between the
Pacific coast ports of the United States and those on the western
coasts of Mexico and Central and South America. These should
be followed up with direct steamship lines between the western
coast of the United States and South American ports. One of
the needs of the times is direct commercial lines from our vast
fields of production to the fields of consumption that we have
but barely touched. Next in advantage to having the thing to
sell is to have the conveyance to carry it to the buyer. We must
encourage our merchant marine. 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 will be messengers of peace and amity
wherever they go.
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. The
construction of a Pacific cable cannot be longer postponed. In
the furtherance of these objects of national interest and concern
you are performing an important part. This Exposition would
173

WILLIAM McKINLEY
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. His
broad American spirit is felt and manifested here. He needs
no identification to an assemblage of Americans anywhere, for
the' name of Blaine is inseparably associated with the Pan-Ameri
can movement which finds here practical and substantial ex
pression, and which we all hope will be firmly advanced by the
Pan-American Congress that assembles this autumn in the cap
ital of Mexico. The good work will go on. It cannot be stopped.
These buildings will disappear; this creation of art and beauty
and industry will perish from sight, but their influence will re
main to " make it live beyond its too short living with praises
and thanksgiving." Who can tell the new thoughts that have
been awakened, the ambitions fired, and the high achievements .
that will be wrought through this Exposition?
Let us ever remember that our interest is in concord, not
conflict; and that our real eminence rests in the victories of
peace, not those of war. We hope that all who are represented
here may be moved to higher and nobler effort for their own
and the world's good, and that out of this city may come not
only greater commerce and trade for us all, but, more essential
than these, relations of mutual respect, confidence, and friend
ship which will deepen and endure. Our earnest prayer is that
God will graciously vouchsafe prosperity, happiness, and peace
to all our neighbors, and like blessings to all the peoples and
powers of earth.

174

The Story of President McKinley's
Boyhood by His Mother

I make acknowledgments to Julius Chambers, special corre
spondent of the New York Journal, for the following sketch of
President McKinley's boyhood from his mother. It is an in
spiration to boys and young men, and to everyone to nobler
thought and action. C. H. Grosvenor.
The Mother's Story.
I don't think my bringing up had so very much to do with
making my son William the President of the United States. I
had six children, and I had all my own work to do. I did the
best I could, of course, but I could not devote all of my time
to him. William was naturally a good boy. He was not particularly
a good baby. He cried a great deal. He was very bright, and
he began to take notice of things very young. He was a healthy
boy. We lived in a country village, and. he had plenty of outdoor
air and exercise. He was a good boy in school, and his teachers
always said he was very bright. He had his little squabbles
with his brothers and sisters, I suppose, like all other children.
I never paid much attention to that. He was always an obedient
boy. He was very affectionate and he was very fond of his
home. i75

WILLIAM McKINLEY
We were Methodists, though we never went to the extent of
curbing the innocent sports of the children. William was taken
to Sunday-school about the same time that he began his studies
in the village schoolhouse. He continued to be a faithful attend
ant every Sunday till he went away to the war. I brought up
all my children to understand that they must study and im
prove their minds.
My ideas of an education were wholly practical, not theo
retical. I put the children into school just as early as they
could go alone to the teacher, and then kept them at it. I didn't
allow them to stay away. As you may imagine, I had little
time for their studies, though I kept track of their work in a
general way through the reports and their teachers. I did most
of the household work, except the washing and ironing, and
made nearly all the children's clothes; but I saw that the chil
dren were up in the morning, had breakfast, and were promptly
ready for school.
That was the way five days of every week began for me.
Ours was a hard, earnest life. My husband was always an
early riser, and off to his work. I am now speaking of our life
in Niles. At Poland he was away from home most of the time,
and the whole burden of the family cares fell on me.
We moved to Poland when William was about eleven years
old. We went there because the schools were better. My hus
band was a foundryman, and his work kept him at Niles.
William was a great hand for marbles, and he was very
fond of his bow and arrow. He got so that he was a very good
shot with the arrow and could hit almost anything that he aimed
at. The thing he loved best of all was a kite. It seems to
me I never went into the kitchen without seeing a paste-pot or
a ball of string, waiting to be made into a kite. He never cared
much for pets. I don't believe he ever had one.
We did not own a horse, so he never rode or drove. He
was always teasing to go barefooted the minute he came home
176

WILLIAM McKINLEY
from school. In going barefooted, when he stubbed a toe or
bruised his foot he was as proud of it as a king in showing
the injury to other boys. When summer came he always had
a stone bruise, and his shoes came off when the snow was off
the ground.
Although William had no taste for fishing, and rarely, if
ever, attempted the sport, he was very fond of swimming in
the deep pool on Yellow Creek, a little way above the dam.
The swimming hole was reached by the left bank of the river,
after crossing the bridge, and was shaded by a large black oak
that spread its branches far over the water. Here the boys used
to go after school on warm summer evenings and splash about
in the water for some time.
Our first home in Poland was on the main street, just east
of the corner store. It was — and still is — a frame building,
painted slate color, and was not as large as the houses we after
ward dwelt in. I judge that it has not changed. Our second
residence was further down the street, toward the mill, where
Dr. Elliott now lives. The third house, now occupied by Mrs.
Smithers, was on the opposite side from the other two and had
a veranda along the entire front of the house.
William was promptly entered at the seminary, and de
veloped strong inclinations to study. In time he became a mem
ber of the literary association in the Poland Union Seminary,
as the institution was called, and I frequently heard of his taking
part in debates and other literary contests. Mrs. Morse, who
was his teacher, says that he excelled in the study of languages,
although he was fairly good at figures. I know that he was
a constant reader, and by the time he was fifteen he began to
read poetry, being especially fond of Longfellow and Whittier,
and, I believe, Byron. From this time of his boyhood he gave
up most of his sports, except ball playing, swimming, and skat
ing. The boys played ball on the common behind the burying
ground and also behind the seminary. 177

WILLIAM McKINLEY
Politically, the McKinleys were stanch abolitionists, and
William early imbibed very radical views regarding the enslave
ment of the colored race. As a mere boy, he used to go to a
tannery kept by Joseph Smith and engage in warm controversies
on the slavery question. Mr. Smith was a Democrat, and so
were several of the workmen about the tannery. These disputes
never seemed to have occasioned any ill feeling toward William,
because he was always popular with the very men with whom
he had the most controversy. This was shown, also, by his
being selected as a clerk at the little post office. As William
grew older he developed fondness for the society of young
women. This was encouraged by me. He had always shown
great affection for his sisters, often preferring to remain indoors
with them on holidays rather than to join in sports with other
boys on the common.
His boyhood days ended when he left home to go to the
war. That took him out into the world in the broadest sense.
Except a few weeks at Allegheny College, this was his first ab
sence from home.
What do I regard as essential in bringing up a boy to be
President? I can scarcely say; there are so many things to
teach boys. They should be taught to be honest in dealing with
their fellow-men. They should win their respect and confidence.
Then, boys should be brought up to love home, if you want to
make good men and Presidents, too, of them. The home train
ing, such as is inculcated in the true American home, is a great
safeguard to the lads of this country. Boys, to be good men,
must be good to their parents. Any boy who wants to be
President should be honest and truthful, and he should love
his home, his family, and his country. No boy will ever be
President who is afraid of hard work. I think religion is a
great thing for a boy. I knew William was a bright boy and
a good boy, but I never dreamed that he would be President of
the United States. 178

WILLIAM McKINLEY
After all, I don't believe I did raise the boy to be Presi
dent. I tried to bring up the boy to be a good man, and that
is the best that any mother can do. The first thing I knew,
my son turned around and began to raise me to be the mother
of a President.

179

PRAYER FOR PRESIDENT McKINLEY IN THE RO
TUNDA OF THE CAPITOL BUILDING, WASH
INGTON, D. C, BY REV. DR. HENRY R. NAY-
LOR. O Lord God, our Heavenly Father, a bereaved nation com-
eth 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 com
fort and support the afflicted. Death strikes down the tallest
and best of men, and consequent changes are continually occur
ring 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 variableness nor the least shadow of turn
ing. So in the midst of our grief we turn to Thee for help.
We thank Thee, O Lord, that years ago Thou didst give
to 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
faithful and distinguished services which he was enabled to ren
der to Thee, to our country, and to the world. We bless Thee
for such a citizen, for such a lawmaker, for such a Governor,
for such a President, for such a husband, for such a Christian
example, and for such a friend.
But, O Lord, we deplore our loss to-day; we sincerely im
plore Thy sanctifying benediction. We pray Thee for that dear
one who has been walking by his side through the years, shar
ing his triumphs 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
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WILLIAM McKINLEY
learn as never before the fatherhood of God and the matchless
character of His sustaining grace.
And, O Lord, we sincerely pray for him upon whom the
mantle of Presidential authority has so suddenly and unexpect
edly fallen. Help him to walk worthy the high vocation where-
unto he has been called. He needs Thy guiding hand and Thine
inspiring spirit continually. May he always present to the na
tion and to the world divinely illumined judgment, a brave heart,
and an unsullied character.
Hear our prayer, O Lord, for the official family of the ad
ministration, those, men who are associated with Thy servant,
the President, in the administration of 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
consolation 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 stand
ard of our lives, that we may " do unto others as we would have
them do 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 on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily
bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that
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.

iSi

EX-PRESIDENT CLEVELAND'S EULOGY, DELIV
ERED BEFORE THE FACULTY AND STUDENTS
OF PRINCETON UNIVERSITY.
To-day the grave closes over the man that had been chosen
by the people of the United States to represent their sovereignty,
to protect and defend their Constitution, to faithfully execute
the laws made for their welfare, and to safely uphold the integ
rity of the Republic.
He passes from the public sight not bearing the wreaths and
garlands of his countrymen's approving acclaim, but amid the
sobs and tears of a mourning nation. The whole nation loved
their President. His kindly disposition and affectionate traits,
his amiable consideration for all around him, will long be in
the hearts of his countrymen. He loved them in return with
such patriotism and unselfishness that in this hour of their grief
and humiliation he would say to them, "It is God's will; I
am content. If there is a lesson in my life or death, let it be
taught to those who still live and have the destiny of their coun
try in their keeping."
First in my thoughts are the lessons to be learned from the
career of William McKinley by the young men who make up
the students to-day of our university. They are not obscure
nor difficult. The man who is universally mourned to-day was
not deficient in education, but with all you will have of his
grand career and his services to his country, you will not hear
that what he accomplished was due entirely to his education.
He was an obedient and affectionate son, patriotic and faithful
as a soldier, honest, and upright as a citizen, tender and devoted
182

WILLIAM McKINLEY
as a husband, and truthful, generous, unselfish, moral, and clean
in every relation of life.
There is a most serious lesson for all of us in the tragedy
of our late President's death. If we are to escape further attacks
upon our peace and security, we must boldly and resolutely
grapple with the monster of anarchy. It is not a thing that we
can safely leave to be dealt with by party or partisanship. Noth
ing can guarantee us against its menace except the teaching and
the practice of the best citizenship, the exposure of the ends and
aims of the gospel of discontent and hatred of social order, and
the brave enactment and execution of repressive laws.
By the memory of our martyred President let us resolve to
cultivate and preserve the qualities that made him great and
useful, and let us determine to meet the call of patriotic duty
in every time of our country's danger or need.

183

Some Time We'll Understand
Not now, but in the coming years,
It may be in the better land,
We'll read the meaning of our tears,
And there, some time, we'll understand.
We'll catch the broken thread again,
And finish what we here began;
Heav'n will the mysteries explain,
And then, ah, then, we'll understand.
We'll know why clouds instead of sun
Were over many a cherished plan;
Why song has ceased when scarce begun;
"lis there, some time, we'll understand.
Why what we long for most of all
Eludes so oft our eager hand;
Why hopes are crushed and castles fall,
Up there, some time, we'll understand.
God knows the way, He holds the key,
He guides us with unerring hand.
Some time with tearless eyes we'll see;
Yes there, up there, we'll understand.
chorus.
Then trust in God through all thy days;
Fear not, for He doth hold thy hand;
Though dark thy way, still sing and praise;
Some time, some time, we'll understand.
The foregoing verses, most appropriate to the occasion, were
so touchingly sung by Mrs. T. L. Noyes at the funeral services
in the Rotunda of the Capitol as our late President's remains
rested there, that all who heard her, including the great men
of our land, were melted to tears. 184

Last Words of Famous Men and
Women

" Good-by all. It is God's way — His will, not ours, be
done."— William McKinley (1843-1901).
The dying words of great men are of especial significance
at this time, when all the world is reverently discussing the
death of President McKinley and the words of Christian resig
nation with which he bade farewell to life:
Adams, John (1735-1826), American statesman: "Jeffer
son survives."
Adams, John Quincy (1767-1848), American statesman:
" This is the last of earth ! I am content ! "
Beethoven, Ludwig (1770-1827), German composer: "I
shall hear now! " (He was deaf.)
Bozzaris, Markos (1790-1823), Greek patriot:, " To die for
liberty is a pleasure and not a pain."
Bronte, Charlotte (1816-1855), English novelist: "I am
not going to die, am I? He will not separate us, we have been
so happy! " (To her husband.)
Brooks, Phillips (1835-1893), American clergyman: " Katie,
you may go; I shall not need you any more. I am going home."
Buckland, Francis (1826-1880), English naturalist: " I am
going on a long journey, and I shall see many strange animals
by the way."
Burke, Edmund (1730-1797), English statesman: "God
bless you." 185

WILLIAM McKINLEY
Burns, Robert (1759-1796), Scottish poet: "Don't let that
awkward squad fire over my grave."
Byron, Lord (1788-1824), English poet: "I must sleep
now." Calvin, John (1509-1564), Protestant reformer: "Thou,
Lord, bruisest me; but I am abundantly satisfied, since it is
from Thy hand."
Chalmers, Thomas (1780-1847), Scottish divine: " A gen
eral good-night."
Charles I. of England (1600-1649): "Remember."
Charles II. of England (1630-1685): "Don't let poor
Nelly (Nell Gwynne) starve."
Chesterfield, Lord (1694-1773), English courtier: "Give
the doctor a chair."
Columbus, Christopher (1440-1506), Italian navigator:
" Lord, into Thy hands I commit my spirit."
Cowper, William (1731-1800), English poet: "Feel? I
feel unutterable, unutterable despair. What does it signify? "
Cromwell, Oliver (1599-1658), English statesman: "My
desire is to make what haste I may to be gone."
De Stael, Madame (1766-1817), French authoress: "I
have loved my God, my father, and liberty."
Eliot, George (1820-1880), English novelist: "Tell them
[the doctors] I have a great pain in the left side."
Franklin, Benjamin (1706-1790), American philosopher:
" A dying man can do nothing easy."
Frederick the Great of Prussia (1712-1786): "We are
over the hill. We shall go better now."
Gilbert, Sir Humphrey (1539-1583), English navigator:
" We are as near heaven by sea as by land."
Gladstone, William Ewart (1809-1898), British statesman:
" Amen." Goethe (1749-1832), German poet: "Open the shutters
and let in more light." 186

WILLIAM McKINLEY
Greeley, Horace (1811-1872), American journalist: "It
is done." Hale, Nathan (1755-1776), American patriot: "I only re
gret that I have but one life to give to my country."
Havelock, Henry (1795-1857), English general: " Tell my
son to come and see how a Christian can die."
Henry, Patrick (1736-1810), American orator and patriot:
" Here is a book [the Bible] worth more than all others ever
printed; yet it is my misfortune never to have found time to
read it. It is now too late. I trust in the mercy of God."
Holmes, Oliver Wendell (1809-1894), American poet and
prose writer: " That is better, thank you." (To his son, who
had just assisted him to his favorite chair.)
Humboldt, Frederick (1769-1859), German savant and
traveller: " How grand these rays! They seem to beckon earth
to heaven." Jefferson, Thomas (1743-1826), American statesman: "I
resign my spirit to God and my daughter to my country."
Josephine (1763-1814), Empress of France: " Isle of Elba!
Napoleon! "
Julian (331-363), Roman Emperor: "O Galilean, thou
hast conquered! "
Keats, John (1795-1821), English poet: " I feel the daisies
growing over me."
Latimer, Hugh (1472-1555), English reformer: " Be of
good cheer, brother; we shall this day kindle such a torch in
England as I trust shall never be extinguished." (To Nicholas
Ridley, who was burned with him.)
Lawrence, James (1781-1813), American naval officer:
" Don't give up the ship."
Louis XIII. of France (1601-1643): "There come to me
thoughts that torment me."
Louis XIV. of France (1638-1715) : " I thought dying had
been harder." 187

WILLIAM McKINLEY
Louis XVIII. of France (1755-1824): " A king should die
standing." Louise of Prussia (1776-1810): "I am a Queen, but have
not power to move my arms."
Marie Louise (1791-1847), Empress of France: "I will
not sleep; I wish to meet death wide awake."
Marie Antoinette (1755-1793), Queen of France: "Fare
well, my children, forever; I go to your father."
Marion, Francis (1732-1795), American general: "Thank
God, I can lay my hand upon my heart and say that since I
came to man's estate I have never intentionally done wrong to
anyone." Moody, Dwight L. (1837-1899), American evangelist:
" Earth is receding; heaven is approaching; God is calling me."
Napoleon (1769-1821), Emperor of France: " Head of the
army." Napoleon ILL of France (1803-1873): "Were you at
Sedan?" (To Dr. Conneau.)
Nelson, Horatio (1758-1805), English admiral: "I thank
God I have done my duty."
Palmer, John (1740-1798), English actor: " There is an
other and better world."
Pitt, William (1759-1806), English statesman: "Oh, my
country, how I love thee! "
Raleigh, Sir Walter (1552-1618), English courtier and navi
gator: "Why dost thou not strike? Strike, man!" (To his
executioner.) Roland, Madame (1754-1793), French lady: " O Liberty,
how many crimes are committed in thy name ! "
Scott, Sir Walter (1771-1832), Scottish poet and novelist:
" I feel as if I were to be myself again. God bless you all."
Scott, Winfield (1786-1866), American general: "James,
take good care of the horse." 188

WILLIAM McKINLEY
Sidney, Sir Philip (1622-1683), English patriot: " I would
not change my joy for the empire of the world."
Thurlow, Edward (1732-1806), English lawyer: "I'll be
shot if I don't believe I'm dying! "
Vane, Henry (1612-1662), English statesman: " Ten thou
sand deaths for me ere I stain the purity of my conscience."
Washington, George (1732-1799), American general and
statesman : " It is well. I am about to die, and I look upon
it with perfect resignation."
Webster, Daniel (1782-1852), American statesman: "I
still live."
Wellington, Duke of (1769-1852), British general and
statesman: " Yes, if you please." (To a servant asking if he
would have some tea.)
Wesley, John (1703-1791), English divine: "The best of
all is, God is with us. Farewell."
Wilson, Daniel (1778-1858), English theologian: "Sleep!
I am asleep already; I am talking in my sleep."
Wolfe, James (1726-1759), English general: "What, do
they run already? "

189

Addendum

Times-Mirror, Los Angeles, Cal.
The President is dead.
William McKinley is no more.
The kindly heart of the good President is stilled forever.
This is a superlative tragedy. It is the nation's loss — the
world's loss; for humanity at large is the loser in the death of this
great and noble man.
To the American people, who loved him, and whom he loved,
this sad and most pitiful taking-off comes with the shock of per
sonal bereavement. And it is a personal bereavement to all of
us who are true Americans. He was our President and our
friend — the friend of all. To no man has it ever been given to
enjoy so fully, so completely, so unreservedly, the love, the confi
dence, the esteem, of his countrymen.
It seems well-nigh impossible that we can be reconciled to this
loss of our beloved Chief. The loss is irreparable, and the great
heart of the nation feels that it is so.
That William McKinley, of all men, should suffer death at the
hands of an assassin seems a thing too monstrous for belief. If
ever a good man lived upon this earth, it was he. It is not believ
able that he ever harbored a thought of ill against any man, or
knowingly injured any person.
But, while the public life of William McKinley has been one
unbroken line of noble endeavor and superb achievement, it has
been equalled by the sublime virtues of his private life. As the
modest, manly citizen, the devoted husband, the patriotic Ameri
can, he was a model for all men. Nothing in human affairs could
have been more touching than his devotion to the sweet but
fragile woman who has been the sharer of his joys and his sorrows.
To her, he was as the oak to the vine; the staff to the weary and
wayworn traveller; the buoy of hope and strength to one buffeting
with the sea. And it is one of the most touching phases of this
terrible tragedy of the nation that he was her support and com
fort, even while he was passing through the valley of the shadow
of death. " God's will, not ours, be done." No words uttered
by a man with the touch of death already upon him could be more
sublime. The American people are slow to anger, but they will not forget
nor forgive this wanton and atrocious crime.
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YALE UNIVERSITY

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