Complete Life of William McKinley and Story of His Assassination / An Authentic and Official Memorial Edition, Containing Every Incident in the Career of the Immortal Statesman, Soldier, Orator and Patriot

by Marshall Everett

WORK OF EVACUATION.

The Porto Rican joint commissions speedily accomplished its task, and by October 18th the evacuation of the island was completed. The United States flag was raised over the island at noon on that day.

As soon as we are in possession of Cuba and have pacified the island it will be necessary to give aid and direction to its people to form a government for themselves. This should be undertaken at the earliest moment consistent with safety and assured success.

It is important that our relations with these people shall be of the most friendly character and our commercial relations close and reciprocal. It should be our duty to assist in every proper way to build up the waste places of the island, encourage the industry of the people and assist them to form a government which shall be free and independent, thus realizing the best aspirations of the Cuban people.

Spanish rule must be replaced by a just, benevolent and humane government, created by the people of Cuba, capable of performing all international obligations, and which shall encourage thrift, industry and prosperity, and promote peace and good will among all of the inhabitants, whatever may have been their relations in the past. Neither revenge nor passion should have a place in the new government.

WM. McKINLEY,

President of the United States.

CHAPTER XXII.
McKINLEY AND EXPANSION.

When the thirteen original states won freedom from England and independence before the world, the new republic possessed an area of 827,844 square miles.

That expansion, or an extending of the borders of the republic, has been the fixed policy of the nation it is necessary only to say that there have since been added 2,895,380 square miles. The territory now embraced within the confines of the United States of America is almost five times as great as the original area, vast as was the extent of that great region which America won for Americans—native and naturalized. The territory acquired by expansion since the Revolutionary War is three-and-a-half times greater than the original thirteen states.

With such a record it is pretty clear expansion is an American policy, and in keeping with the traditions of the republic.

In the one hundred and fifteen years following the peace with Great Britain, 2,771,040 square miles had been added by conquest or purchase—usually by conquest first, and later by a sort of consolatory payment of what the property would have been worth if the enemy had ceded it without the trouble or expense of a war.

In the three last years of McKinley’s administration the area of the nation was extended 124,340 square miles. In truth, however, this extension of territory was all accomplished in a single year. It may be interesting to add, however, that the total annexation preceding the war with Spain averaged 24,696 square miles annually; while the expansion accomplished by President McKinley’s administration from the moment he secured the first treaty of addition down to the present time averages 41,446 square miles annually.

He secured almost double the average annual increase of territory credited to any or all previous administrations.

Briefly stated, the several former annexations were as follows:

ANNEXATION FROM 1783 TO 1893:
	Amount Paid.	Square Miles.
Louisiana	$15,000,000	1,171,931
Florida	5,000,000	52,268
Texas	28,500,000	376,133
California		545,783
Gadsden Purchase	10,500,000	45,535
Alaska	7,200,000	577,390
	$66,200,000	2,769,040
ANNEXATION FROM 1893 TO 1901:
	Amount Paid.	Square Miles.
Hawaii		6,740
Philippine Islands	$20,000,000	114,000
Porto Rico		3,600
	$20,000,000	124,340
		Square Miles.
Original territory		827,844
Annexed first 110 years		2,769,040
Annexed last three years		124,340
		3,721,224

But the territory acquired in the McKinley administration has been for the purpose of safeguarding that matchless possession secured in all the preceding century, and of insuring to the millions who inhabit this land the certainty that they shall continue in the enjoyment of that prosperity their past labors and the sacrifices of their fathers have placed in their possession.

For example, the annexation of the Hawaiian Islands was a war measure. At the moment of Admiral Dewey’s victory in Manila Bay, the United States became an active power in the Pacific, and every consideration, naval and commercial, made it desirable that the American flag should float over this fertile group. Figuratively speaking, Hawaii was sitting on Uncle Sam’s doorstep waiting to come in. The islands had offered themselves to the United States Government. It was not necessary to wage a war of conquest or open peaceful negotiations. All that was necessary was to pass a resolution of annexation.

Accordingly, on June 15, the Newlands annexation resolution was passed by the House of Representatives by a vote of 209 to 91. The Senate passed the same resolution by a vote of 42 to 21, and President McKinley approved it July 7, 1898.

The Hawaiian Islands, formerly known as the Sandwich Islands, are situated in the North Pacific Ocean, and lie between longitude 154 degrees 40 minutes and 160 degrees 30 minutes west from Greenwich, and latitude 22 degrees 16 minutes and 18 degrees 55 minutes north. They are thus on the very edge of the tropics, but their position in mid-ocean and the prevalence of the northeast trade winds give them a climate of perpetual summer without enervating heat. The group occupies a central position in the North Pacific, 2,089 nautical miles southwest of San Francisco; 4,640 from Panama; 3,800 from Auckland, New Zealand; 4,950 from Hongkong, and 3,440 from Yokohama. Its location gives it great importance from a military as well as from a commercial point of view.

Broadly speaking, Hawaii may be said to lie about one-third of the distance on the accustomed routes from San Francisco to Japanese and Chinese ports; from San Francisco to Australia; from ports of British Columbia to Australia and British India, and about half-way from the Isthmus of Panama to Yokohama and Hongkong. The construction of a ship canal across the isthmus would extend this geographical relation to the ports of the Gulf of Mexico and of the Atlantic Seaboard of North and South America. No other point in the North Pacific has such a dominating relation to the trade between America and Asia, as a place of call and depot of supplies for vessels.

From a naval standpoint, Hawaii is the great strategic base of the Pacific. Under the present conditions of naval warfare, created by the use of steam as a motive power, Hawaii secures to the maritime nation possessing it an immense advantage as a depot for the supply of coal. Modern battleships, depending absolutely upon coal, are enabled to avail themselves of their full capacity of speed and energy only by having some half-way station in the Pacific where they can replenish their stores of fuel and refit. A battleship or cruiser starting from an Asiatic or Australian port, with the view of operating along the coast of either North America or South America, is unable to act effectively for any length of time at the end of so long a voyage unless she is able to refill her bunkers at some point on the way. On the other hand, the United States, possessing Hawaii, is able to advance its line of defense 2,000 miles from the Pacific coast, and, with a fortified harbor and a strong fleet at Honolulu, is in a position to conduct either defensive or offensive operations in the North Pacific to greater advantage than any other power.

For practical purposes, there are eight islands in the Hawaiian group. The others are mere rocks, of no value at present. These eight islands, beginning from the northwest, are named Niihau, Kauai, Oahu, Molokai, Lanai, Kahoolawe, Maui and Hawaii. The areas of the islands are:

	Square Miles.
Niihau	97
Kauai	590
Oahu	600
Molokai	270
Maui	760
Lanai	150
Kahoolawe	63
Hawaii	4,210
Total	6,740

On Oahu is the capital, Honolulu. It is a city numbering 30,000 inhabitants, and is pleasantly situated on the south side of the Island. The city extends a considerable distance up Nuuanu Valley, and has wings extending northwest and southeast. Except in the business blocks, every house stands in its own garden, and some of the houses are very handsome.

The city is lighted with electric light, there is a complete telephone system, and tramcars run at short intervals along the principal streets and continue out to a sea-bathing resort and public park, four miles from the city. There are numerous stores where all kinds of goods can be obtained. The public buildings are attractive and commodious. There are numerous churches, schools, a public library of over 10,000 volumes, Y. M. C. A. Hall, Masonic Temple, Odd Fellows’ Hall, and theater. There is frequent steam communication with San Francisco, once a month with Victoria (British Columbia), and twice a month with New Zealand and the Australian colonies. Steamers also connect Honolulu with Japan. There are three evening daily papers published in English, one daily morning paper and two weeklies. Besides these, there are papers published in the Hawaiian, Portuguese, Japanese and Chinese languages, and also monthly magazines in various tongues.

United States Consul-General Mills, of Honolulu, under date of February 8, 1897, transmitted to the Department of State the official figures showing the result of the census of the Hawaiian Islands, which had just been completed. The Hawaiians head the list with a total of 31,019. The Japanese colonization comes next, with the Chinese a close third. The official table, as prepared at the census office, in 1890, is:

Nationality.	Males.	Females.	Total.
Hawaiian	16,399	14,620	31,019
Part Hawaiian	4,249	4,236	8,485
American	1,975	1,111	3,086
British	1,406	844	2,250
German	866	566	1,432
French	56	45	101
Norwegian	216	162	378
Portuguese	8,202	6,989	15,191
Japanese	19,212	5,195	24,407
Chinese	19,167	2,449	21,616
South Sea Islanders	321	134	455
Other nationalities	448	152	600
Total	72,517	36,503	109,020

The acquiring of Porto Rico, with its 3,600 square miles and nearly a million inhabitants, did not require the firing of a gun so far as the natives were concerned. The slight resistance offered by the Spaniards who had for so many years held the island, was not serious enough to earn the name of warfare, though so good a judge and careful an observer as Richard Harding Davis declares this was due more to the masterly management of General Miles, who commanded there in person, than to any other cause—a conclusion which he reaches by comparing the Porto Rican campaign with General Shafter’s invasion of Cuba. The conditions, however, do not present a parallel case. The Cubans wanted the Spaniards expelled, to be sure; but they wanted to govern that island themselves. And they had grown so strong, had fought so long and stubbornly, and had consequently compelled the Spaniards to maintain so great a strength that the Americans found “the Gem of the Antilles” held with a force that could offer quite a stubborn dispute. The Porto Ricans, on the contrary, while wanting the Spaniards expelled, had never made much effort at self government, and the Spaniards there were by no means equipped to defend their possessions. Indeed, their defense was the merest formality. And once they ceased opposition to the forces of General Miles, the native and resident people rushed to welcome the Americans.

So that these richest and most valuable objects of McKinley expansion came to the possession of the great republic at practically no cost at all—of either “blood or treasure.”

Of course the military occupation of Porto Rico did not formally invest title to the island in the United States. The case with Hawaii was different, because no power but the resident people made any claim to that rich prize.

Porto Rico, the most beautiful island of the Antilles, which was ceded to the United States by the Spanish-American treaty at Paris, 1898, is situated at the entrance to the Gulf of Mexico, east of Haiti, from which it is separated by the Mona Passage. Haiti lies between it and Cuba. Porto Rico is 95 miles long and 35 broad, with an area of about 3,600 square miles, or nearly three-fourths the size of the State of Connecticut (4,990 square miles), and considerably larger than that of the States of Delaware and Rhode Island, which aggregate 3,300 square miles. The island has always been noted for its mineral and agricultural wealth; hence the Spanish name, which, in English, means “rich harbor.”

Porto Rico, or Puerto Rico (the Spanish name), was discovered by Columbus on his second voyage, November 16, 1493. The discoverer first sighted land near Cape San Juan and for three days sailed along the northern coast, landing at Aguadilla. The richness and fertility of the island caused him to name it Puerto Rico or “rich port.” He saw little or nothing of the natives, who fled at his approach, believing that they were about to be attacked.

The actual conquest of the island was made in 1510, two years after his first visit, by Juan Ponce De Leon, Governor of the Island of Haiti, then known as Hispaniola. He won the confidence of the natives and landed an expedition to subjugate them. The Spanish conquest of Porto Rico was marked by the bloodshed and cruelty that has characterized Spanish conquest in all parts of the Western world. Natives were slaughtered, or condemned to slavery. The colonization of Porto Rico by Spaniards then followed, and to-day there is scarcely a trace of aboriginal blood in the islands.

The aboriginal population numbered about 600,000; they were copper-colored, though somewhat darker than the Indians of the North American continent. The aborigines called the island Boringuen and themselves Boringuenans.

Physically, Porto Rico is a continuation of the emerged lands of Haiti. It is very mountainous, the altitudes ranging from 1,500 to 3,600 feet, and among the rocks coralligenous limestones predominate. All lands exposed to the northeast trade winds have abundant rains. The mean temperature at the city of San Juan is 80.7 degrees F. In January and February it is 76.5 degrees, and in July and August, 83.2 degrees. The island is known as the most healthful of the Antilles. There are no reptiles and no wild animals, except rats, which are numerous. The hills are covered with tropical forests and the lands are very productive. The streams are numerous and some of them are navigable to the foothills.

The most flourishing plantations of Porto Rico are situated on the littoral plains and in the valleys of rivers, which are diligently cultivated. The principal products are sugar, molasses, coffee, tobacco; then maize, rice, cotton, tobacco, hides, dyewoods, timber, and rice. Coffee is produced to the extent of over 16,000 tons per annum, and the annual sugar production averages 67,000 tons.

The forests abound in mahogany, cedar, ebony, dyewoods, and a great variety of medicinal and industrial plants. All kinds of tropical fruits are found. An average of 190,000,000 bananas, 6,500,000 oranges, 2,500,000 cocoanuts, and 7,000,000 pounds of tobacco is produced annually.

Sugar cane is cultivated on 61,000 acres, and the production of sugar is the most important industry. Coffee is another staple product; and the tobacco, which ranks second to that of the famous Cebu variety, may be produced in almost limitless quantities. The mineral resources are not extensive. Gold has been found, but by no means in paying quantities. Lead, copper and iron are present, and may be profitably mined.

The government of the people of Porto Rico is by a governor-general, who acts wholly under the direction of the President and Congress of the United States, and all the subordinate officers of the islands are appointees of the home government.

The most important of the lands embraced in the McKinley expansion is the group of islands known as the Philippine archipelago, the westernmost of the four great tropical groups of the Pacific. To be exact, the Philippines are situated between 4 and 20 degrees north latitude and 161 and 127 degrees east longitude, in front of China and Cochin China. The archipelago is composed of some 2,000 islands, with an approximate area of 114,000 square miles.

The principal islands are Luzon (Batanes, Babuyanes, Polillo, Calanduanes, Mindoro, Marinduque, Burias, Masbate, etc., lying adjacent) on the north; the Visayas (Tablas, Panay, Negros, Cebu, Bohol, Leyte, Samar, etc.), prolonged southwest by the Calamaines, Palawan, and Balabac; Mindanao and the adjacent islands Dinagat, Surigao, Basilan, etc., and on the extreme south, the Sulu archipelago. The Island of Luzon, on which the capital is situated, is larger than New York and Massachusetts, and Mindanao is nearly as large. An idea of the extent of the Philippines may be formed when it is stated that the six New England States and New York, New Jersey, Maryland and Delaware have 10 per cent less area.

The approximate area of the larger islands is as follows: Luzon, 41,000; Mindanao, 37,500; Samar, 5,300; Panay, 4,600; Palawan, 4,150; Mindoro, 4,050; Leyte, 3,090; Negros, 2,300; Cebu, 1,650; Masbate, 1,315; Bohol, 925.

The population has been estimated at from 8,000,000 to 10,000,000, of which number about 25,000 are Europeans, about half of the latter residing in the city of Manila. The present American population is not included in these figures.

Manila, the capital of the entire archipelago, is situated in the Island of Luzon, at the mouth of the River Pasig, which empties into the Bay of Manila. The city has 300,000 inhabitants, of whom 15,000 are Europeans and 100,000 Chinese, who are largely engaged in industry. It is the seat of a yearly increasing commerce. The houses are built with reference to earthquakes, and although large, possess few pretensions to architectural beauty. The city proper within the walls is small, little more than two miles in circumference. Here are grouped the government buildings and religious institutions. The suburbs, of which Binondo ranks first in order of importance, are the centers of trade. The police of the city were under military discipline and composed of natives. A force of watchmen, paid by the tradesmen, patrolled the more populous part of the city from 10 o’clock at night until 5 in the morning. A very low average of crime is said to exist, though the native classes are much addicted to gambling, cock-fighting, etc. At the time of American occupation there were six daily papers: “El Diario de Manila,” “La Oceania Española,” published in the morning, and “El Comercio,” “La Voz Española,” “El Español,” and “El Noticero,” which appear in the evening.

Manila has a cathedral of the seventeenth century, an Archbishop’s palace, a university school of art, an observatory, a large government cigar factory, and many educational and charitable institutions.

There are some 4,000 horses in the city, used for carriages and street cars. Buffaloes are employed for dray and other heavy work.

On February 6, 1898, Manila suffered from a severe fire, and it is interesting to note that the city would have been lost had it not been for the excellent service of a fire engine which had been imported from the United States.

Iloilo, the chief town of the populous province of the same name, in the Island of Panay, is situated in latitude 10 degrees 48 minutes W., near the southeastern extremity of the island, and 250 miles from Manila. The harbor is well protected and the anchorage good. At spring tides, the whole town is covered with water, but notwithstanding this it is a very healthy place, there being always a breeze. It is much cooler in Iloilo than in Manila. The means of communication with the interior are very inadequate, and retard the development of the port. The principal manufacture is pineapple cloth. The country around Iloilo is very fertile and is extensively cultivated, sugar, tobacco, and rice being grown, and there are many towns in the vicinity that are larger than the port.

Cebu, the capital of the island of this name, was at one time the seat of the administration of revenue for the whole of the Visayas. It is well-built and possesses fine roads. The trade is principally in hemp and sugar.

Other towns are Laog, with a population (1887) of 30,642; Banang, 35,598; Batangas, 35,587, and Lipa, 43,408.

The principal mineral productions are gold, galena, copper, iron, mercury and coal. Extensive auriferous ore deposits have been opened up, and they are known to exist in many of the islands, chiefly in Luzon, Bengues, Vicols and Mindanao. Very little exploration or systematic mining has been attempted, but it is said that there is no brook that empties into the Pacific Ocean, whose sand and gravel does not at least pan the color of gold. Heavy nuggets are sometimes brought down from the sierras.

Galena (50 per cent of pure metal) is found in veins in Luzon and Cebu. Copper has been discovered in many parts of the Philippines. Iron—from 75 to 80 per cent. pure metal—is known to exist in Luzon. The coal found up to the present time is not true coal, but lignite; but it is probable true coal will be found, as the mountains of Japan abound in that mineral, and the geological formation in both groups seems to be the same.

Hemp (abaca), the most important product of the archipelago, is the fiber of a species of banana, and is produced by scraping the leaves with a peculiar knife, which requires expert handling. Improved machinery will vastly increase the profit of this product. Thread is spun from the fiber, and cloth is woven that excels in fineness the best Tussore silk.

The production of sugar is being rapidly developed, the principal sugar provinces being those of the north, or most progressive part of the island. But at present the means of reducing the cane to sugar are crude. It is quite certain the business will become immensely profitable as soon as modern methods can be introduced.

Tobacco would be an important resource of the Philippines with proper management. But the timber wealth of the islands is incalculable. There are many varieties of trees, the forests yielding resins, gums, dye products, fine-grained ornamental wood, and also heavy timber suitable for building purposes. Teak, ebony, and sandalwood are found; also ilang-ilang, camphor, pepper, cinnamon, tea and all tropical fruits.

But the securing of the Philippines has differed in many essential respects from the methods obtaining in the other cases. The expansion in that direction has cost the $20,000,000 paid to Spain for a relinquishment of her rights there, besides the cost of the war with Spain, and the succeeding war with the natives. Just what these two items may in the end appear cannot at present be definitely stated, any more than the value of the islands so acquired can be declared at once.

But if there were nothing beside Admiral Dewey’s victory at Manila Bay, May 1, 1898, to place on the credit side of the ledger, and all the expense for military, naval and civil operations since accrued to charge against it on the debit side, the balance would be still vastly in favor of the United States. All the losses of every description that have fallen in any way upon the republic since May 1, 1898, are more than compensated by the value of that one day.

Before the Manila Bay fight the United States was an unconsidered nation. It was not regarded as a power at all. The world treated the American Republic with a good natured contempt, or refrained altogether from considering it. The nations across the seas made all their arrangements of peace or war, of commerce and of crowns, without even remotely considering “the States.” So far as the large questions affecting world interests were concerned, the United States provoked no more calculation than did Uruguay.

Of course it was understood that the Republic was big, and abounding full of material resources—a sort of undeveloped and untrained giant. It was conceded that the Republic kept a sort of curmudgeon watch over the whole hemisphere—barring Canada; and that no “Power” could make war on Mexico or Latin America without the certainty of getting into a fight which might be extremely distressing. And so no one made war there.

But the Republic was a hermit nation before Dewey received McKinley’s order to fire, and, obeying, won his marvelous victory.

From that time forward the United States of America has been a world power. It has actually dominated every European nation in the China affair. It has in a day leaped to a place where it towers above the Powers of older lands, and commands them. And they must obey. A nation with such a navy as Dewey exhibited, with such power as the fleet under Schley demonstrated at Santiago, is a nation to make terms with. A nation which could in a month fling an army of 97,000 men across twelve thousand miles of ocean, and never miss them at home, is a nation to respect. A nation with such a navy and army and such boundless resources, which had also possessed itself of Hawaii, the half-way house in the wide Pacific; which also held the Philippines, garrisoned and guarded at the very doors of Asia, and which had made the islands of the Atlantic its outposts against an advance from Europe—that nation is Master of the World. They all recognized it. And every day that has passed since the Olympia led that line of boats past Corregidor has increased the estimate which the nations of the earth have of the United States of America.

The recent purchase of the Danish West India Islands is but another link in the chain which secures to the Republic the vast possessions the years have brought. When that transaction is completed, which can not be until the Senate shall ratify the act, this young world power will be girdled with guardians against any enemy who may advance.

It is a curious commentary on the scornful estimate of the Republic entertained by the old world powers, and a definite proof of its existence, that they never confessed America had captured their markets until they discovered it had captured the means of holding the markets, and extending them. They never rallied to combine against “the encroachments of American trade” until the time had passed when their combining might be effective. They can not stop either the commercial or the military advance of the Republic. And the crown of the world’s control rests to-day on the head of the nation which William McKinley roused from lethargy; which he summoned from a fat and comfortable repose, and charged with the duty of taking its rightful place among the nations of the earth. And that crown, so wisely secured, can never be taken away.

A longer life would have given President McKinley opportunity to develop the field into which he had led the Republic; but it is proof of the man’s quality that he did his work so well it cannot be undone. He stood like a rock against declaring war with Spain not only until he knew what was the will of the people, but until they knew it. He did not go forward until, out of the mighty passions of April, 1898, the millions of Americans had come to know themselves. When the vital purpose of the nation was so fixed it never could turn back, then the hand of the President made the signal which flung wide the gates of the great Republic, and commanded his legions to possess the earth.

That was a mighty trial a supreme test of a marvelous man. He knew the vital consequences bound up in action then. Things could never again be as they were before war was declared. It was not simply a fight with Spain, and a victory over her; it was an advance upon the world. It was not simply measuring lances with Leon and Castile; it was measuring the might of brain and brawn, of courage and skill, of America’s splendid manhood, against all the forces of all the world, and for all time! He could not let his people make a mistake. If he had yielded at the first hot demand for war, the recall would have sounded from millions before the first day’s march was done. But he waited till the pressure of his people proved that they were all of one mind; that they had heard the assembly call of a world duty, and had all “fallen in.” And then he gave the command: “Forward!”

McKinley and expansion!

Has it ever occurred to the reader how small a part of the McKinley expansion is expressed in these figures: “124,340 square miles annexed?”

That is only the land, the rock and soil, the food and drink, the most material and least expressive of all the elements in this material advance. Even in square miles, imagine what the annexation of Hawaii means. Compute the vastness of that realm acquired in the Philippines. Why, it is the breadth of the whole Pacific Ocean, and a path so wide that no nation can send a ship around the world without trespassing on the boundless domain of the young Republic. William McKinley has advanced the borders of his nation to include the seas. He has set the boundaries of the United States of America so far that they embrace one-half the earth. From the sentinel, St. Thomas, eastern outpost in the Atlantic’s waves, across the continent, and out to the farthest verge of the mighty Pacific, to the gates of ancient Asia, he has fixed the frontiers of his country.

That is expansion under McKinley!

CHAPTER XXIII.
SECOND PRESIDENTIAL NOMINATION AND ELECTION OF McKINLEY.

That McKinley would receive a second nomination at the hands of his party was settled long before the convention of 1900 was called. The fact that under his administration prosperity had been restored, at once gave him a prestige that only the most egregious blundering could overcome. To blunder was not a characteristic of the President, and he made no false step. His hand was steadily on the helm of the ship of state, and while he never sought for troubled waters, he never turned aside if it was necessary for the public good that they should be encountered.

His splendid handling of all the delicate questions that grew out of the Spanish war, as well as the firmness with which he met that great emergency in our national life, made it appear that to him, and him alone, must be entrusted the task of shaping the policy of the government in its new and suddenly acquired position of a world power.

No Republican throughout the land gave thought for an instant to succeeding the President. His leadership was as pronounced as that of Lincoln, in 1864, or Grant in 1872. Nor was there any question as to party policy. To define the relations of the government as a world power; to tranquillize the new possessions; give them stable government, and ultimately to work out whatever destiny had in store for them and the United States—these were the pressing questions.

To be sure, there were the cries against trusts, a clamor against “government by injunction,” a recrudescence of the silver question, and other matters, but who so well qualified to meet them all safely and creditably to his country as the man who had for so many years, in different spheres of activity, proved his fitness for the work, and his loyalty to the people?

It was in some such frame of mind as to the head of the ticket that the delegates to the Republican national convention gathered in the convention hall at Philadelphia, June 19, 1900.

While President McKinley’s renomination was a foregone conclusion, there was a lively fight in progress over the nomination of Vice President. The death of Garret A. Hobart, Vice President, had brought forward a host of aspirants for that position. Favorite sons from various states were brought out, and the contest was keen. Lieutenant-Governor Timothy Woodruff of New York was one of the persistent seekers after the honor, and he had a considerable following. Cornelius N. Bliss of the same state was also put forward, and the name of Governor Roosevelt was often mentioned. Illinois had in the forefront Private Joe Fifer and Congressman Hitt; Iowa presented Congressman Dolliver; Senator C. K. Davis of Minnesota was also mentioned, and Secretary Long of the Navy was considered a possibility.

Senator Platt, of New York, was credited with a desire to force the nomination of Governor Roosevelt, for the purpose of taking that energetic young man out of New York state politics, and the administration was said to be opposed to such a proceeding. There was no doubt concerning the attitude of the Governor. He declared openly and frequently that he did not want the nomination, and finally went so far as to assert he would not accept the place if tendered.

The convention was called to order by Senator M. A. Hanna, chairman of the National Committee, amidst the greatest enthusiasm. There were 906 delegates, and they roared with an exuberance rarely heard apart from such a gathering. In his opening remarks, Chairman Hanna said: “We are now forming our battalions under the leadership of our general, William McKinley,” and a roar arose that continued for several minutes. The chairman then introduced Senator Wolcott, of Colorado, as temporary chairman of the convention. In his address to the convention, Senator Wolcott said:

“The spirit of justice and liberty that animated our fathers found voice three-quarters of a century later in this same City of Brotherly Love, when Fremont led the forlorn hope of united patriots who laid here the foundations of our party, and put human freedom as its corner-stone. It compelled our ears to listen to the cry of suffering across the shallow waters of the gulf two years ago. While we observe the law of nations and maintain that neutrality which we owe to a great and friendly government, the same spirit lives to-day in the genuine sympathy we cherish for the brave men now fighting for their homes in the veldts of South Africa. It prompts us in our determination to give the dusky races of the Philippines the blessings of good government and republican institutions, and finds voice in our indignant protest against the violent suppression of the rights of the colored men in the South. That spirit will survive in the breasts of patriotic men as long as the nation endures, and the events of the past have taught us that it can find its fair and free and full expression only in the principles and policy of the Republican party.

From a photograph taken for and used by courtesy of the Chicago Inter Ocean.
CROWDS IN LINE AT THE CITY HALL, BUFFALO, WAITING TO VIEW THE PRESIDENT’S REMAINS.

From a photograph taken for and used by the Chicago Inter Ocean.

“The first and pleasant duty of this great convention, as well as its instinctive impulse, is to send a message of affectionate greeting to our leader and our country’s President, William McKinley. In all that pertains to our welfare in times of peace his genius has directed us. He has shown an unerring mastery of the economic problems which confront us, and has guided us out of the slough of financial disaster, impaired credit, and commercial stagnation, up to the high and safe ground of national prosperity and financial stability. Through the delicate and trying events of the late war he stood firm, courageous and conservative, and under his leadership we emerged triumphant, our national honor untarnished, our credit unassailed, and the equal devotion of every section of our common country to the welfare of the republic, cemented forever. Never in the memory of this generation has there stood at the head of the government a truer patriot, a wiser or more courageous leader, or a better example of the highest type of American manhood. The victories of peace and the victories of war are alike inscribed upon his banner.”

The second day’s proceedings of the convention introduced Senator H. C. Lodge, of Massachusetts, as the permanent chairman of the body. Twenty thousand people attended the session, in the expectation that President McKinley would be renominated, but for the time being they were disappointed. In his opening speech Chairman Lodge said:

“Dominant among the issues of four years ago was that of our monetary and financial system. The Republican party promised to uphold our credit, to protect our currency from revolution and to maintain the gold standard. We have done so. Failing to secure, after honest effort, any encouragement for international bimetallism, we have passed a law strengthening the gold standard and planting it more firmly than ever in our financial system, improving our banking laws, buttressing our credit, and refunding the public debt at 2 per cent interest, the lowest rate in the world. It was a great work well done.”

Concerning the war with Spain he said:

“Here they are, these great feats: A war of a hundred days, with many victories and no defeats, with no prisoners taken from us, and no advance stayed; with a triumphant outcome startling in its completeness and in its world-wide meaning. Was ever a war more justly entered upon, more quickly fought, more fully won, more thorough in its results? Cuba is free. Spain has been driven from the Western hemisphere. Fresh glory has come to our arms and crowned our flag. It was the work of the American people, but the Republican party was their instrument.

“So much for the past. We are proud of it, but we do not expect to live upon it, for the Republican party is pre-eminently the party of action, and its march is ever forward. The deeds of yesterday are in their turn a pledge and proof that what we promise we perform, and that the people who put faith in our declarations in 1896 were not deceived, and may place the same trust in us in 1900. But our pathway has never lain among dead issues, nor have we won our victories and made history by delving in political graveyards.

“We are the party of to-day, with cheerful yesterdays and confident to-morrows. The living present is ours; the present of prosperity and activity in business, of good wages and quick payments, of labor employed and capital invested; of sunshine in the market-place and the stir of abounding life in the workshop and on the farm. It is with this that we have replaced the depression, the doubts, the dull business, the low wages, the idle labor, the frightened capital, the dark clouds which overhung industry and agriculture in 1896. This is what we would preserve, so far as sound government and wise legislation can do it. This is what we offer now.”

In such an atmosphere of optimism the convention proceeded to adopt the platform on which the candidates should ask the suffrages of the American electorate. That document set forth that four years before—

“When the people assembled at the polls after a term of Democratic legislation and administration, business was dead, industry was paralyzed, and the national credit disastrously impaired. The country’s capital was hidden away and its labor distressed and unemployed.

“The Democrats had no other plan with which to improve the ruinous conditions, which they had themselves produced, than to coin silver at the ratio of 16 to 1. The Republican party, denouncing this plan as sure to produce conditions even worse than those from which relief was sought, promised to restore prosperity by means of two legislative measures—a protective tariff and a law making gold the standard of value.

“The people, by great majorities, issued to the Republican party a commission to enact these laws. This commission has been executed, and the Republican promise is redeemed. Prosperity, more general and more abundant than we have ever known, has followed these enactments. There is no longer controversy as to the value of any government obligations. Every American dollar is a gold dollar, or its assured equivalent, and American credit stands higher than that of any other nation. Capital is fully employed and everywhere labor is profitably occupied.

“We endorse the administration of William McKinley. Its acts have been established in wisdom and in patriotism, and at home and abroad it has distinctly elevated and extended the influence of the American nation. Walking untried paths and facing unforeseen responsibilities, President McKinley has been in every situation the true American patriot, and the upright statesman, clear in vision, strong in judgment, firm in action, always inspiring, and deserving the confidence of his countrymen.”

The platform further declared in favor of a renewal of “allegiance to the principle of the gold standard”; of a law to effectually restrain and prevent all conspiracies and combinations intended to restrict business, to create monopolies, to limit production or to control prices; the protection policy was endorsed, and legislation in favor of the interests of workingmen advocated; help to American shipping, pensions for soldiers, maintenance of the civil service system, construction of an isthmian canal, and endorsement of the treaty of Paris were also favored.

This brought the convention to its third and last day’s session, and it was a veritable love feast. Factional fights and all friction as to policy had been swept away. All that was now necessary was the naming of the ticket. Twenty thousand people again crowded the convention hall, and the great building was shaken again and again by the enthusiastic applause of the multitude.

Alabama yielded to Ohio when the call of States began, and Senator Foraker, to whom had been accorded the honor of nominating the President, arose and said:

“Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the Convention: Alabama yields to Ohio, and I thank Alabama for that accommodation. Alabama has so yielded, however, by reason of a fact that would seem in an important sense to make the duty that has been assigned to me a superfluous duty, for Alabama has yielded because of the fact that our candidate for the Presidency has in fact been already nominated. He was nominated by the distinguished Senator from Colorado when he assumed the duties of temporary chairman. He was nominated again yesterday by the distinguished Senator from Massachusetts, when he took the office of permanent chairman, and he was nominated for a third time when the Senator from Indiana yesterday read us the platform.

“And not only has he been nominated by this convention, but he was also nominated by the whole American people. From one end of this land to the other, in every mind, only one and the same man is thought of for the honor which we are now about to confer, and that man is the first choice of every other man who wishes Republican success next November. Upon this account, it is indeed not necessary for me or anyone else to speak for him here or elsewhere. He has already spoken for himself, and to all the world.

“He has a record replete with brilliant achievements; a record that speaks at once both his performances and his highest energy. It comprehends both peace and war, and constitutes the most striking illustration possible of triumphant and inspiring fidelity and success in the discharge of public duty.”

The nomination was seconded by Governor Roosevelt, Senator Thurston, John W. Yerkes, of Kentucky, George Knight, of California, and Governor Mount, of Indiana. When Senator Foraker pronounced the name of the President, there was a great demonstration on the part of the convention. Someone threw into the delegate’s division a great bundle of red, white and blue plumes, made of pampas grass. The delegates caught them up, and with flags, handkerchiefs and State banners waving, shouted themselves hoarse. The whole convention, 926 delegates, voted for President McKinley.

Then came the nomination for Vice-President. The wisdom of the convention had decided on Governor Roosevelt, and all other candidates had withdrawn from the contest. Though strongly against his inclination, the Governor had agreed to accept the position. Colonel Lafayette Young, of Iowa, nominated the Governor, and Butler Murray, of Massachusetts, Gen. J. M. Ashton, of Wisconsin, and Senator Depew, of New York, seconded the nomination. Senator Depew said, in closing:

“We have the best ticket ever presented. We have at the head of it a Western man with Eastern notions, and we have at the other end, an Eastern man with Western character—the statesman and the cowboy, the accomplished man of affairs, and the heroic fighter. The man who has proved great as President, and the fighter who has proved great as Governor. We leave this old town simply to keep on shouting and working to make it unanimous for McKinley and for Roosevelt.”

CHAPTER XXIV.
PRESIDENT McKINLEY AND THE CHINESE CRISIS.

When, in 1899 and 1900 the civilized world was filled with indignation over the atrocities of the “Boxers,” a vast element in China, and when it became necessary for the United States to send its contingent of soldiers to the scene, for the protection of United States interests there, and of its diplomatic corps, this government’s hand in the matter was guided by President McKinley.

The result was like that of all other affairs in which the comity of nations has been involved, during President McKinley’s incumbency of the executive place, so far as the United States were concerned. It was creditable to this country, and was ramified by the judicious and commendably conservative character of the man.

The conduct of our country in it all was devoid of elements of greed and spoliation, or revenge, or any sort of unnecessary violence, and there was an utter and entire absence of outrage.

The great uprising of a large part of the Chinese population against the presence of foreigners in the empire, which began in the latter part of 1899 and resulted in the loss of untold thousands of lives, was one of the strangest occurrences in the history of the world. At its inception little was thought of it by the other nations, for China has been the home of disorders, insurrections, uprisings and rebellions for many centuries, but when the revolt spread from one province to another; when Christian missionaries were ruthlessly slaughtered on every hand; when natives who had been converted to Christianity were subjected to the most horrible tortures; when foreign ministers in Peking were assassinated and legations burned; when the guards of other countries whose duty it was to protect the foreign representatives and members of legations were attacked by the imperial Chinese troops and forced to shoot down the soldiers of the empire as well as the rioters by the thousand in order to save themselves; when millions of dollars’ worth of property belonging to missionaries and citizens of other countries had been burned; when the fleets of foreign nations were fired upon by the Chinese, as was the case at Taku on the morning of June 17th, 1900, resulting in the taking of the forts by the foreign fleets after a brisk bombardment; and, finally, when the American, British, German, Russian, French, Italian and Japanese soldiers, sailors and marines sent to the relief of the imprisoned ambassadors and ministers of the great powers of the world were beaten back by the Chinese troops with heavy loss, then, and then only, did the other nations fully realize the great danger that confronted them. The awful Yellow Terror was wild for blood, and determined to drive every one of the “white devils,” as the Celestials call all foreigners, out of the Empire.

When the outside countries demanded that their ambassadors and ministers, as well as their citizens in China, be protected, the Chinese government replied that the uprising was too widespread to be controlled, and then the powers took the matter in hand themselves and sent troops by the thousand—the aggregate by the end of July, 1900, being nearly 100,000, with fully that many on their way or ready to start. Meanwhile the Chinese imperial troops, most of them having joined the insurgents, showed their fighting qualities in several engagements, and the tried and trained warriors of the United States, England, France, Russia, Germany, and other countries soon found they were opposed by no mean foe. The Chinese have a contempt for death, and are stoical when undergoing the most frightful punishment; they fell in ranks and rows and heaps before the steady fire of the invaders, but yet they came on. The one thing they did not like, however, was the use of the bayonet against them, and when the foreign troops resorted to the cold steel and rushed upon them with it the Chinese invariably gave way.

The uprising which began in 1899 was the most extensive China had ever known, and the national government soon found itself helpless. It was incited by the secret society Ye-Ho-Chuan, or “Boxers,” the literal meaning or translation of the name of the society being “Righteousness, Harmony and Fists.” It had about 4,000,000 members in the Empire, and while the society was formed for the purpose of overthrowing the Manchu dynasty, which represented not more than 12,000,000 of the 450,000,000 people of China, its hatred of all foreigners was the predominating spirit. The “Boxers” first began by attacking the outlying foreign mission settlements and then worked their way to the capital of the Empire, leaving a bloody trail behind them.

China had always hated the people of outside countries, and never had much to do with them until about the first quarter of the nineteenth century. China traded as little as she could with the outside world. Indeed, there was formerly a law punishing with death any Chinaman who ever visited any other country. “China for the Chinese,” was the watchword, and the lives of foreigners have never been safe in the Flowery Kingdom.

China is thousands of years old, and was known to the ancients—the oldest nations of which history makes record. It was mentioned in ancient Sanskrit literature, but little was known of it. It was called by the earliest civilizations as Seres; two thousand or more years ago it was known as Chin, possibly because of the Thsin dynasty, which occupied the throne some two hundred years before Christ. In the Middle Ages it was called Cathay. The probabilities are that the name China comes from the race called Chinas, who lived in the mountains near the Indies, and was a branch of the Dard races. This name probably reached Europe through the Arabs.

In 1840 China had her first experience with a civilized power. She had been fighting barbarian nations like herself for many centuries, but had never become embroiled with any of the western countries. England had been doing a large trade with China in opium, to which the mandarins of the Empire, who really ruled the country, objected, and finally they stopped all foreign trade whatever. England declared war and captured Canton, Shanghai and other important cities, after subjecting them to bombardment, and China, to gain peace, being defenseless, paid England an indemnity of $21,000,000 and opened the ports of Amoy, Fuh-Chow-Foo, Ningpo and Shanghai to foreign trade.

Troubles then began to visit poor China in hordes. A rebellion broke out in consequence of the failure of the Emperor Heenfung to carry out promised reforms, and taking advantage of this, one Hung Sew-tseuen, who had been converted to Christianity, and who knew the longing of his countrymen for a native Chinese dynasty, proclaimed the inauguration of the Taiping dynasty with himself as the first Emperor. This was in 1852. He overran several provinces and captured Nanking, which he made his capital, and was further aided in his schemes by England, which declared war against the Tartar or Manchu dynasty in 1857 and gained further trade advantages. France also joined in this campaign and the allies marched to the very gates of Peking. A war indemnity of 8,000,000 taels was also paid by the imperial government to the victors.

China quarreled with Japan over Corea, the Hermit Kingdom, in 1894, and was badly whipped both on sea and land. The Japanese fleet and army captured and occupied Port Arthur and Wei-Hai-Wei, the two strongest harbors on the northern China coast. Japan proposed to keep Port Arthur. Russia, with the assistance of Germany and France, compelled Japan to restore Port Arthur to China. Afterwards Russia took Port Arthur herself, and proceeded to make it the strongest military and naval base in the Pacific.

From 1895 until 1899 the outrages in China on foreign missions, schools, and hospitals were of monthly occurrence. At the same time foreign aggression on Chinese territory became more marked. Russia, Germany, France and England acquired large areas of territory, either by lease or by force, and began fortifications, railroads, factories, etc. This foreign aggression only intensified the popular discontent among the Chinese masses, and the secret societies flourished as never before.

The “Boxers” had been ravaging, pillaging and murdering for some months before the European powers became awakened to the seriousness of the situation. During the latter part of May, 1900, the Washington government addressed a note of warning to Peking to the effect that the United States could not stand idly by and see its citizens slaughtered and their property destroyed, as the Chinese government was bound by treaty to protect the persons and property of citizens of friendly nations. No reply was made to this, for it soon became apparent that the Dowager Empress was friendly to the “Boxers.” Small bodies of imperial troops were sent against the “Boxers,” but the latter easily overcame the soldiers, who at once joined them.

The “Boxers” society was organized in the province of Shan-Tung, and it grew so rapidly that the great provinces of Shan-Tung, Honan and Pechili were completely under its control. Soon it had branches in every province of the Empire, and entirely dominated Pechili, the province in which Peking lies. Its leaders were energetic and resourceful, and by the end of May, 1900, all China was aflame.

The 4,000,000 membership of the “Boxers” society was made up of coolies, river men, idlers, pirates, bandits, and criminals of all classes. But their leaders, although unknown to the European authorities in the far East in the latter part of 1899 when the great uprising was inaugurated, were men of ability and shrewdness.

The “Boxers” might reasonably be considered as simply a part and parcel of the revolutionary propaganda in China. The society differed little from other societies known at different times as the “Society of Heaven,” the “Heaven and Earth Society,” the “Triads,” the “Black Flags,” the “Teente Brotherhood,” the “Tea Society,” the “Water Lilies,” the “Floods,” or the “Vegetarians.”

These societies and others with different names but similar purposes, waged constant war against the foreigners. They always resented the presence of Christian missions and commercial enterprises alike. To them the engineer who surveyed a railroad, the physician who came to end an epidemic, and the missionary were equally the objects of aversion, and the secret society murdered the one as cheerfully as the other.

Previous to the “Boxer” outbreak there were three or four rebellions which tended to put the Celestials in the humor to fight anything and anybody, particularly the foreigners.

China is yet honeycombed, and has been for centuries, as no other country in the world with secret societies, embracing all classes, having an existence dating from the second century of the Christian era—an existence not of tradition but vouched for by record.

Up to 1898 these secret societies had for their main object the overthrow of the Manchu or Tartar dynasty, but after that they devoted their attention to the expulsion of the foreigner from the land. It has always been a mistake to believe that John Chinaman was a stranger to patriotism. Indeed, so passionately devoted is he to his native country that he makes arrangements for the return of his bones to the Flowery Kingdom in the event of his dying in foreign lands. This fiber of patriotism was utilized in 1900 by that extraordinarily clever woman, the Dowager Empress, to rally the entire nation into the presentation of a virtually united front to the foreigner, to convert the secret societies from anti-dynastic into anti-foreign movements, and to achieve that which the Triad sought in vain to bring about at the time of the Taiping rebellion—namely: coöperation of all the secret societies, one with another, against the common foe, which this time was not the Manchu conqueror but the white foreigner.

It can hardly be denied that from about 1840 to 1900 China was subjected to a degree of indignity, insult, extortion, and bullying on the part of some of the foreign powers no Christian power would have tolerated. Treaties were imposed upon her by force, her finest harbors seized, and vast stretches of her littoral successively placed under foreign rule. She was compelled to consent to agreements providing for the transfer of her immense river trade to foreign flags, and for the gridironing of the entire land by means of foreign built and foreign controlled railroads, while for every concession made by her a dozen new ones were presented by the foreign powers.

In December, 1899, the Empress issued a secret edict, addressed to the Viceroys of the various provinces.

“The various foreign powers cast upon us looks of tigerlike voracity, hustling each other in their endeavors to be the first to seize upon our innermost territories,” she declared.

“They fail to understand that there are certain things which this Empire can never consent to do, and that if hard pressed we have no alternative but to rely upon the justice of our cause.”

Four weeks later another edict was dispatched to the same officials by the Dowager Empress, who had, it was said, English or American blood in her veins, her mother having been a Eurasian, or child of a white father and Manchu mother. In this second edict the Viceroys were warned to exercise a prudent discrimination towards the disturbers of public peace.

“The reckless fellows who band together and create riot on the pretext of securing the inauguration of reforms,” were to be punished, while those “loyal subjects who learn gymnastic drill for the protection of their families and their country,” that was to say, the members of the “Righteous Harmony Fists (‘Boxers’) association,” were to be favored. The “Boxers” association was openly a society for the cultivation of gymnastics, but secretly an anti-foreign political movement, something like those “Turnverein” or gymnastic societies which played so important a political rôle in Germany at the beginning of the nineteenth century, becoming one of the most important factors in the liberation of the fatherland from the presence of the French invader. From the time the “Boxers” were openly encouraged by the Empress, they became a means of union among all the various secret societies, and the fact that these societies in all parts of the immense Chinese Empire simultaneously took to arms to drive out the foreigner was due to the adroitness of the old Empress, who thus, at the close of the nineteenth century, emulated in a way the rôle played by Queen Louise of Prussia when she roused her countrymen to rid Germany from the thraldom of Napoleon.

However, the Chinese went about it in the most horrible fashion, subjecting the objects of their hatred to the most agonizing tortures and inflicting upon them every conceivable atrocity the barbarian mind could invent.

The fact that Hon. Edwin H. Conger, United States Minister to China, his wife and daughter, were among the foreign ambassadors and ministers shut up in Peking, and sometimes reported massacred, was sufficient reason that the United States should join with the allied armies in the war against “The Yellow Terror,” and there were other good reasons. Thus came about the part that the United States naval and military forces took in that war, in which occurred the battle of Tien-Tsin and the relief of Peking, together with the development of the fact that Minister Conger and his family were safe. All of which are matters of recent history, and for which there is no reason that it should be repeated here.

In the entire war, however, the exemplary conduct of the American soldiers was apparent to the world, and it has been shown that the kindness of President McKinley and the humane nature that characterized him in all things was the spirit that pervaded the American camp.

The brutality and savagery of the Russian troops composing a part of the allied forces which captured the City of Tien-Tsin July 14, 1900, were almost beyond belief. In view of the frightful excesses of the soldiers of the Czar, it was not at all strange that the Chinese should have regarded the people of the so-called civilized nations with distrust. It should be said in this connection, and in justice to the other troops of the international column, that the Russians were the only ones who committed excesses of any sort, while the United States troops did what they could to prevent looting and murder. The Americans commanded the admiration of all by their conduct, but the Russians were condemned on every side.

Further testimony of the great respect and admiration manifested for the United States troops is shown in the story of the march to Peking:

A correspondent, in describing the men as they appeared when sweeping through a town not far from Tien-Tsin, said the Americans impressed the spectators more than any other troops because they looked and acted so business-like. It was most gratifying to the people of the United States that the reports from China were invariably favorable to their soldiers, who compelled the respect and admiration of the allies and Chinese alike. It was demonstrated as never before that the American soldier was the most effective fighter on earth. It was not claimed that he led all others in bravery, but certainly no one ranked higher than he in that respect. All had courage and daring, but no other soldier shot so accurately. The Chinese gave testimony to that effect, and they had the best kind of an opportunity to learn the facts.

“When we see so many falling around us that we are forced to run,” said a captured Chinaman, “then we know we are fighting Americans.”

This superiority in marksmanship was conceded by the allies, too. They had seen it demonstrated often, and the brave man is quick to give credit where credit is due. “When firing at the top of a wall,” said one correspondent, “the American bullets chip the masonry.” The Japanese gave especially convincing evidence of the opinion in which the American soldier was held in China. They are enthusiastic little fellows, and are ever anxious to learn all that friend or foe can teach them, and they gave particular attention to the methods and work of the Americans.

“We do not shoot as well as you,” said a Japanese officer, “but we have seen the importance of learning it. Look out for us; in a few years more we shall shoot even as well as the Americans.”

If imitation is the sincerest flattery, Uncle Sam’s enlisted men have reason to feel proud, for no one is so quick as the Jap to see what is worth imitating. His judgment and perceptive power in this line are what brought him so rapidly to the front.

All in all, the people of the United States had ample excuse for pride in the men who were representing them on the battlefield in China. The record made was splendid.

After describing the appearance of the troops of other nationalities on the march, the correspondent said:

“Then came the Americans, looking so hardy and determined, marching like veterans, although so many of them were very young, and carrying their rifles like men who know how to use them. They do know how to use them, as the Chinese are well aware. When there is any hot work to do—where fine marksmanship is needed—they always have the United States troops attend to it, and the job is always well done.

“Captain Reilly’s Battery—only about 200 horses and six guns—closed the United States column. Poor Reilly! He fell while directing his men before the walls of the Sacred City at Peking, and died like the hero he was. There was no attempt at show when Reilly’s battery passed the spot where we were standing—none of the ‘pomp and circumstance of glorious war’—and Reilly himself, a little bald, gray man, a sort of Joe Wheeler. But Reilly is the fashion here to-day and everybody wants to see him.”

Thoroughly illustrative of President McKinley’s attitude in that war, and characteristic of him and his administration, is the following correspondence between him and the Emperor of China:

On July 19th the Emperor of China appealed to President McKinley to intercede with the powers to bring about peace. It reached Washington July 23rd. The following is the Emperor’s appeal:

“The Emperor of China. To his Excellency the President of the United States, Greeting:—China has long maintained friendly relations with the United States, and is deeply conscious that the object of the United States is international commerce. Neither country entertains the least suspicion or distrust toward the other. Recent outbreaks of mutual antipathy between the people and Christian missions caused the foreign powers to view with suspicion the position of the imperial government as favorable to the people and prejudicial to the missions, with the result that the Taku forts were attacked and captured. Consequently, there has been clashing of forces with calamitous consequences. The situation has become more and more serious and critical.

“We have just received a telegraphic memorial from our envoy, Wu Ting Fang, and it is highly gratifying to us to learn that the United States government, having in view the friendly relations between the two countries, has taken a deep interest in the present situation. Now China, driven by the irresistible course of events, has unfortunately incurred well-nigh universal indignation. For settling the present difficulty, China places special reliance in the United States. We address this message to your excellency in all sincerity and candidness with the hope that your excellency will devise measures and take the initiative in bringing about a concert of the powers for the restoration of order and peace. The favor of a kind reply is earnestly requested, and awaited with the greatest anxiety.

“KWANG-HSU, 26th year, 6th Moon, 23rd day (July 19).”

President McKinley at once replied as follows:

“The President of the United States, to the Emperor of China, Greeting:—I have received your majesty’s message of the 19th of July, and am glad to know that your majesty recognizes the fact that the government and people of the United States desire of China nothing but what is just and equitable. The purpose for which we landed troops in China was the rescue of our legation from grave danger and the protection of the lives and property of Americans who were sojourning in China in the enjoyment of rights guaranteed them by treaty and by international law. The same purposes are publicly declared by all the powers which have landed military forces in your majesty’s empire.

“I am to infer from your majesty’s letter that the malefactors who have disturbed the peace of China, who have murdered the Minister of Germany and a member of the Japanese legation, and who now hold besieged in Peking those foreign diplomatists who still survive, have not only not received any favor or encouragement from your majesty, but are actually in rebellion against the imperial authority. If this be the case, I most solemnly urge upon your majesty’s government to give public assurance whether the foreign Ministers are alive, and, if so, in what condition.

“2. To put the diplomatic representatives of the powers in immediate and free communication with their respective governments and to remove all danger to their lives and liberty.

“3. To place the imperial authorities of China in communication with the relief expedition so that coöperation may be secured between them for the liberation of the legationers, the protection of foreigners and the restoration of order.

“If these objects are accomplished, it is the belief of this government that no obstacles will be found to exist on the part of the powers to an amicable settlement of all the questions arising out of the recent troubles, and the friendly good offices of this government will, with the assent of the other powers, be cheerfully placed at your majesty’s disposition for that purpose.

“WILLIAM McKINLEY.

“By the President: JOHN HAY, Secretary of State.

“July 23, 1900.”

By reason of the good offices of President McKinley, a settlement of the Chinese troubles was had that was equitable to all parties concerned. It is doubtful if such a result could have been reached otherwise.

As it was, instead of attempted dismemberment of the Chinese Empire, and a program of wholesale looting, spoliation and consequent disturbances between the powers interested, the matter was settled with honor to all the world.

McKinley’s kindly heart and hand was of the leaven that leavened it all.

CHAPTER XXV.
McKINLEY: BUILDER OF A WORLD POWER.

The traveller standing close at the foot of a mountain can form no idea of its altitude nor of its bulk. He can have no conception of its grandeur, of its majesty, of the myriad beauties which embellish its sides and crown its summit, nor of the limitless riches concealed in its bosom. It is only when time and distance and reflection; when frequent returns and thoughtful visits have set the scene in fair perspective that he appreciates the marvels of the mountain.

The American citizen to-day cannot easily appreciate the full value of William McKinley’s life work. It was not his career as a soldier, his record as a lawyer, his achievements in the halls of Congress; it was not as Governor nor as President that posterity will recognize him at his very greatest, and it was not in either of these capacities that he made his mightiest impress upon the American Republic.

His master work was in giving his country its proper place in the family of the world.

Extravagant eulogy would say he reconstructed the Republic; that he conjured a new nation into life; that he lifted the millions of his countrymen from darkness into light; that he bestowed the grandeur of imperial sunshine upon the humble inhabitants of a neglected land. The extravagant eulogy would not be wholly inaccurate in essence, nor necessarily offensive in terms. And yet the more modest statement more nearly comprehends the essential truth.

He did not recreate the Republic. Practically all the elements here at the end of his life were here at the beginning. He did not conjure up a new nation. The mighty people who followed his bidding in 1898 and so on to the end could never have been conjured from its elements by any force less potential than Omnipotence!

And yet the true American can get a better conception of the dignity of his citizenship; a better estimate of the majesty of national life, a prouder view of world-wide actions upon the theater of the world if he will but patiently and justly consider the steps in the transition which certainly has occurred, and trace the credit through each crisis to the influence most potent in producing that result.

It is believed the work and influence of William McKinley was that most potent force; that, more than any other one man he has led his people from the halls of an heritage of which they were justly proud up to the threshold of an estate immeasurably more magnificent.

Let us begin at the beginning. When he came back from the army he deliberately studied the whole situation. He saw the national condition then existing, judged with astonishing accuracy what would be the salient successive features in its future development, calculated with rare discrimination what treatment would be best in each era, and devoted all his energies to aiding in that progress to the very limit of his ability. He had never a doubt from the first what the end would be. But he did have a more sure foresight of what the future held than had most other Americans then living. One cannot say that he foresaw the time when the Republic should issue its mandate to a monarch of the old world, when it should serve notice of ejectment upon a king; when it should lay the restraining hand upon a mob of emperors and potentates struggling in disgraceful melee for the spoliation of an ancient nation. And yet, standing in the shadow of his funeral flags, with the echoes of knelling bells in the ears, and the memory of that mighty work so late accomplished, one can but see abundant reason for the belief that HE KNEW! How else shall one account for that conduct which admits of explanation on no other ground than that the guiding spirit understood? How else shall one justify the actions which committed him to criticism, which could reflect honor upon him only in the event of this marvelous accomplishment?

THE CATAFALQUE IN THE ROTUNDA OF THE CAPITOL AT WASHINGTON.

From a photograph taken for and used by courtesy of the Chicago Inter Ocean.

It was clear to him that for twenty years after the war the nation would be busy in construction; that the general aim would be to establish productive industries—North and South—that men would be building homes, advancing into new country, opening new mines, reaching farther into the wilderness, reclaiming more and more of the waste land, building more railroads, launching more steamships; and that there would come a period of erecting new homes, of beautifying, of adornment, of polish; and that then would come an era of study toward the conservation of forces, the learning of less expensive ways of doing what had been effectively done before—the era of economizing—to be swiftly followed by the era of stupendous wealth. And let that man who contends the essentials of this picture were not foreseen by William McKinley account on any other basis, if he can, for that statesman’s steadfast progress toward the one result which they alone could produce. Let that man who denies, reflect for a moment that these stages of development—from first to last—were foretold by William McKinley in a thousand speeches. It is not contended that in 1876 he “revealed” to his fellows that war with Spain would come in 1898; nor that he declared in 1880 that “the flag of the free” would wave over lands in the shadows of Asia at the sunrise of a new century. But no man who knows the history of his country and follows well this true story of William McKinley’s life can contend that he did not in 1876 see the imminence of that tariff struggle which culminated in 1880; nor that he failed in 1892 to see the need of a financial reform which 1896 should usher in; or that he underrated in 1898 the mighty consequences of that step which launched his people into a foreign war.

It has been said that he, almost alone of Americans, stood for a protective tariff at the very close of the Civil War. Foreseeing that period of industrial development, he looked at the rolling oceans, and knew each billow would bear on its foamy back a load of goods for American markets; and that each departing ship would heap in its hold the dollars that Americans had paid for those goods. And he knew that, with such a policy, American development could never go beyond the bondman stage; that “the land of the free and the home of the brave” would indefinitely remain mortgaged to the lords of cheaper labor, the host of shrewder men.

So from the first he struggled for a tariff rate which seemed small lessening of the burden that the war had left. Against the superficial charge of injustice he offered the defense of ultimate benefit, and if some of his countrymen were slow to see, let it be said to the credit of a majority that they followed him—not always seeing, but ever trusting until the crisis had passed.

Surely it is no exaggeration to say that William McKinley did more than any other man in America to fix and maintain the policy of protection. It can scarcely be too much to say that, without him, the protective policy would have been overthrown.

If these are conceded, it must follow that the preparation for the newer era, developed from that in which he labored, may be chiefly credited to him.

It was necessary to foster the industries of the United States. Maybe in the following of that policy some selfish persons took a mean and unpatriotic advantage of their countrymen, and claimed a concession they neither needed nor deserved. But in the main the effort was to build up such a wealth as no nation on earth ever before acquired in a similar lapse of time, by peaceful pursuits or the conquests of a victorious war. And if the day came when all that wealth was needed, it may be triumphantly rejoined that the money was here.

Over and over again Mr. McKinley had been assailed with the contention that, while protection would infallibly enrich a certain favored class—the manufacturers—it would as certainly impoverish and keep in poverty the people who must buy their goods. But the issue confounded them. Every class in America shared in the stupendous prosperity which protection insured. Never was labor so largely employed, never had it been so munificently rewarded. Never was the farmer so fortunately situated. Wide as were his fields, he added to them. Bountiful as were his harvests, he found markets for them. Never was the mechanic so much in demand. Never was the artisan so much sought after. And—as the flight of time brought the inevitable desire for refinement—never was there such a compensation for the artist, or the writer, the singer or the sculptor. The overflowing coffers of the country enriched all the countrymen who deserved.

Then came the pause when a nation, rising to the stature of maturity, looked over the mountain boundary, looked over the ocean wall, and felt the unformed impulse to share in the affairs of the world. It was so natural, as inevitable, as that the youth of health and strength should feel the stirring of desire to mingle with his kind. It is not scorn of home. It is not contempt for the precious past. But it is obedience to a law which Abram heard away there in Ur, of the Chaldees, and obeyed in his western pilgrimage. It is the process of growth which the Creator meant all mankind should feel.

At the doors of the continent lay the island of Cuba. From time before the Republic was founded, that island had been the spoil of the Spaniards. There was not a day since Ovando landed that did not see the Cubans cruelly treated by the Don. How they ever throve under a domination so severe is one of the mysteries. The Ruler of all the Earth must have raised up that people and preserved it through awful adversity for a purpose neither its leaders nor their task masters could foresee.

But the tax collector was there. The Castilian despoiler was there. The hand of the oppressor was laid heavily upon the Cubans, and they died at the edge of the sword through two hundred years of tyranny.

And in that day when the American Republic had attained its growth, had reached its manhood, there was a protest against a continuance of cruelty. The Republic demanded that the Don cease from troubling; that the Cubans be rescued.

President McKinley waited until the united voice of his countrymen convinced him that they had surely arrived at years of national discretion, and that their challenge was not the utterance of a passionate mood but the expression of an unalterable determination. And then he issued his order to Spain:

“Leave the West Indies forever!”

There was reason in the demand. Cuba lay so close to our shores that her continual suffering, the outrages perpetrated upon her people, became a scandal in the eyes of the Republic. It was like a strong man standing unmoved while a child is being beaten by a bully.

Besides, one consequence of such rule as the Spaniards maintained was a perilous sanitary condition in the cities that traded continually with the ports of the States. American cities had learned the rules of health, and had banished yellow fever and the cholera. But what profit in that provision if a ship sailed across the narrow sea and spread the plague upon our shores? There was reason in self defense for the notice to quit.

That fundamental principle of the nation called the “Monroe doctrine” forbade any power in the old world from extending its rule in the new. It is but a logical sequence of that system that an old world power which cannot in two hundred years complete its subjugation of a new world people has never had a right it could maintain here; that no king from Europe had title to soil in the Western hemisphere if he could not perfect that title in that lapse of time. And as a policy of the nation and the interest of the nation joined in dictating the action, the Spaniards were commanded to retire. The time had come when President McKinley could make his case good even in the courts of old-world kings. And there was not a murmur of protest from a palace abroad when Madrid received that portentous command.

But there was another reason—another consideration which men too often overlook, yet which was of the most stupendous value to the Republic. War with a foreign power would reunite a country divided by civil strife, and stubbornly, ill-temperedly refusing to perfect its peace.

It was probably admitted that the passions following the rebellion and particularly provoked by the assassination of President Lincoln, served as warrant for a severity in dealing with the Southern States which was far beyond the boundaries of justice. There was a Draconian rigidity about the laws which the losers were compelled to obey; a perhaps needless austerity in impressing the fact of conquest. Sectional passions were aroused, sectional jealousies and animosities were inflamed until unthinking men both North and South had achieved the bad success of creating a religion of hate. In the years when Major McKinley was acting the citizen-soldier part—putting away his sword and devoting himself to the activities of peace—many less patriotic and wise than he were teaching their children to hate the South. As the Swiss youth imbibed hatred of Austria with their mother’s milk, so these children in the North were filled with a bitter rage against the children who sat in the Southland, under the shadow of the stars and stripes. And the generation grew up in that enmity for brothers in the Republic, and many men profited by making the propagation of strife their one profession—the division of their country their one occupation. The poets say that love begets love. It is certainly as true that hatred begets hate. And if the youth of the North approached public questions always with the poison of sectional prejudice rankling in their hearts and warping their judgments, be sure the people of the South most cordially reciprocated. To thousands above the Ohio river, the states below that stream were still “rebel.” To thousands below the people of the North were brutal and murderous invaders.

Through all the period when the nation was gathering material strength the effort of wise men was to heal that hurt, to reunite the nation, to erase forever that bitter dividing sectional line. But they could not succeed. Throughout Major McKinley’s public speeches, dating from that first debate, when he was scarcely out of uniform, clear to the end of his career, one finds to-day no word of anger against the South; one finds unnumbered expressions of fraternal love and good will.

Others followed his example, and swelled the rising chorus of a newer Union. But it was from 1865 to 1898, a mere mockery. The fabric of fraternity was but a gossamer web. The bridge that spanned the chasm was a network of fancy, and men knew they could not cross. The very brotherhood in which men from the two sections met in public and private life was the sheerest superficiality, and each was ready to fly to arms at a moment’s notice.

What, above all things, was needed as an absolute condition precedent to national advance? Why, national unity! And no man had been able to effect it. But when William McKinley heard that rising demand for stern measures with Spain, he heard as well the pledge of a new and everlasting bond of union.

So that the war with Spain was not merely the checking of a bully, the act of a humane power, the safeguarding of cities from the descent of the plague, the assuring of security to Americans resident in Cuba and the protection to American trade with that island. It was, as well, the master magic which could banish strife at home; it was the building of a Vulcan forge to weld beyond the power of breaking the one bond “from the lakes to the gulf.” For the first stroke at Americans by Spaniards was a challenge that was answered by indignant manhood in every state from the everglades of Florida to the snow-crowned heights of Mount Tacoma. And OUR NATION sprang to arms!

Sometimes there is internal strife in your family, in your circle of friends, in your party. That is a wise father who can deftly devise a situation which compels his household to make common cause. That is a shrewd citizen who can rally his friends by a stroke which menaces all of them. That politician is skillful who can swiftly sweep away dissension by a turn which menaces the whole organization. And that was a wise President who saw behind the rising war cloud the rainbow of a hope which nothing else could reveal.

There was no need for them to blow up the Maine. Without that dastardly act, there would inevitably have come a change. Spanish oppression in Cuba would have ceased. The reforms demanded by the Republic would have been accomplished—every one. But, it would have been by the action of Spain, and without inflicting upon that nation the expense, the humiliation and the disaster of a war. Possibly, too, had those reforms been made, had the conscience and humanity of Americans been satisfied without striking a blow, the abolishing of the sectional line would not have occurred.

But it is needless to speculate on what might have occurred. What did occur is known. It was definite. At the moment when Spain, had she rightly appreciated the situation, should have borne herself with all dignity and honor, the blow which hurled down her house was struck. In the middle of the night the darkness was rifted with a lance of flame, the world was rocked with the shock of explosion, and a battleship, on an errand of peace and courtesy, was crushed in the grip of a submarine mine—and all over the still surface of the starlit bay floated the mangled corpses of the slain. The darkest deed since St. Bartholomew night, the most savage act since Calcutta’s Black Hole had stained the page of history, and Christian civilization had seen a Christian nation sound the deepest deep of infamy.

That bursting mine jolted the molecules of mankind into a new combination, and the Republic became a Union indeed. After all, blood is thicker than water; and he who uttered that—

“—bubbling cry

Of some strong swimmer in his agony—”

was an American. Of course America was roused.

The story of the War with Spain has been well told. But it fails to impress its moral if you miss the master hand of President McKinley in fixing forever the unity of the Union. He appointed to the command of American soldiers those who had commanded with ability, either North or South, in the Civil War. And they proved his sagacity, for—without exception—they quit them like men. They were strong. The flag of Washington at Valley Forge, of Gates at Yorktown, of Jackson at New Orleans, of Perry on Lake Erie, of Lawrence, and Fremont, and Grant was the one banner about which they rallied. They won the war. And they brought no honor to either North or South—but brought it all HOME.

This cannot well be overestimated. The time had come when the Republic must advance from the formative stage to the stature of a power of the world. It could not do so divided. Through the skillful use of possibilities placed in his hands by the war, President McKinley at a stroke, and within a week from that night in February when Havana harbor heaved with the heaving of a treacherous stroke, made his people one.

Then they were ready!

Swiftly came the knocking of Hawaii for admission to the national fold. It needed no war. No cannon, no circling sword or plunging bayonet was in demand. The thousands of lives sought citizenship in the Republic, and the material millions offered themselves for the nation’s enrichment. And in a day the United States of America held half the ocean as its own.

No need of recapitulating. The Ladrones, Porto Rico, and the Philippines, an empire wider than Ferdinand knew, a region richer in wealth and more pregnant with possibility than Carthage conquered, was added to the Republic in a year. The nation which had insisted on a home market, had taken command of the markets of the world. The nation which had only insisted that no foreign power interfere on this side the Atlantic, stretched the arm of might and the word of command into the camps of kings—and secured obedience.

Nothing that occurred in the United States could in any way have produced the events which took place in China. The Boxer rebellion was a local event, due solely to conditions existing there. American interests—of merchant and missionary, of ambassador and traveller, of scientist and scholar—were all affected by those massacres which amazed the world. Imagine, if you will, what would have been the result had the Republic been in 1900 what it was in 1890. Then we had no army in the Philippines. The nations of Europe, hurrying in response to that cry for help from the hundreds in the legation, had small thought of America. Well, American merchants had been massacred, American property destroyed, American missions burned and American consuls assailed. But to the European of 1890 there would not have been a suggestion of America appearing on the scene with force of arms.

But the America of 1900 providentially had a force at hand. The fact had already been established that the Republic was a world power, and must be considered as such. And when General Chaffee marched from Tien Tsin to Pekin, he was not regarded as an intruder. He was not looked upon with cold superciliousness. The king’s men knew there was no place on the face of the earth where the Republic might not appear. They knew it had the right to appear at any point where its interests were menaced, or where honor called. And they knew it had the power to go, to do, and to return with laurels.

Perhaps the Republic’s influence over the king’s men at Pekin was the greatest evidence of President McKinley’s masterly administration. That influence checked the looting. It preserved native rights. It assisted in a just retribution, and then stayed the mailed fist of unchristian vengeance. It prevented the partition of China, and insured the integrity of that ancient empire. And it loomed before the world as a nation strong enough to take care of itself at home or abroad, and wise enough to be just. It was an exhibition that did more for the good fame of the Republic than any other act imaginable.

And not a detail of it could have happened had not the army been in Luzon. Not a detail could have happened in 1890!

It is not easy for a little man to change his mind. The small man must be “consistent,” because he can see nothing but small things; because he can not appreciate the changes which inevitably come in the world. But the world does change; and he who tries to make the clothes of yesterday fit the occasion of to-day makes utter failure. Not many men who followed Major McKinley, the protectionist, could easily grasp the purpose of President McKinley, the supporter of the gold standard. Not all who indorsed him in his financial policy could appreciate the swift changes which succeeded each other in the world policies from 1898 to 1901. Yet each was necessary in its place, and if the President had failed to grasp the situation, if he had failed to take at its flood that tide in the affairs of nations, the Republic that mourns him to-day would be but a hermit Union, refusing to employ its majestic powers and of no more consideration in the assembly of nations than is the navy of Switzerland in a marine exhibition.

No year ever brought swifter development to a people than did 1898 to the United States of America. Questions of military policy and questions of statesmanship, matters of immediate expediency and matters that looked to the future—all these crowded the hurrying hours of that most immemorial year. It is not curious that even the President was outrun by the speeding conditions. When Porto Rico became a part of the United States it was asked: “Shall her products come in free at the ports of the mainland?” And President McKinley, pressed upon by a multitude of duties, occupied with a myriad cares, filling his days and his nights with most careful watching of details that had multiplied in a twelvemonth, said: “It is our plain duty to give free trade to Porto Rico.” And the word was heralded to the ends of the earth. Then came the practical. If that sound theory should be enforced in actual commerce, a disturbance would arise which would prove lamentable. It were better to preserve the forms of a tariff until such time as revenues of the island would support the government of the island, giving back, meanwhile, every dollar derived from the Porto Ricans by that tariff. The changing conditions had made that the wiser plan.

President McKinley led his fellow countrymen through the changes of the passing years, guiding them always in the way most wise for that peculiar time, and turning to new methods when the new occasion demanded. And in the end we see the magnificent structure which his planning and his labors have perfected. We see the very greatest nation on earth, made great by protection; we see the richest nation, made rich with a sound money; we see the strongest nation, made strong by an actual union; and we see the most potent and influential nation on earth, made so by the foreign policy of William McKinley. Remember—

“For I doubt not through the ages

One increasing purpose runs;

And the thoughts of men are widening

With the process of the suns.”

CHAPTER XXVI.
PRIVATE LIFE OF WILLIAM McKINLEY.

“Mother McKinley” often expressed the keynote of the case when she said: “He was a good boy.”

She by no means meant that young William lacked virile and manly qualities. On the contrary, she used to delight in telling of the mischievous pranks which had made a part of his boyhood existence. But there was a judgment and good sense about his escapades which absolutely prevented them from partaking of the nature of cruelty and saved him at all times from acts which might bring shame in their train of consequences. He was a “good” boy, in the sense that he was not a “mean” boy. And so, while he was always certain to command the respect of his companions—of all that was best in boyhood—he was a loving and a dutiful son. He was never afflicted with the silly theory that a boy need not obey nor respect his parents. For this those parents doubtless deserve a large measure of credit. Besides so measuring their lives as to deserve his respect, they so ordered his life as to insure his obedience. And in his whole life it is said that he never wounded either father or mother with an insolent word.

He was kind to his brother and his sisters. The money he earned he was always willing to share with them, and paid out many a dollar of his hard-earned wages for their education or for little presents which could add to their happiness.

Toward his mother he was always lovingly deferential. To the day of her death he was solicitous about her, tenderly caring for her, unwaveringly thoughtful. A very beautiful relation was that which existed between them. And no mother was ever more proud of her son, or with more reason declared that he had grown up to be precisely the sort of man she knew from the beginning he would be. Toward his father there was always a gentle deference, a filial respect and the fellowship which wise men can cultivate in their sons. His father lived to see him honored by his countrymen, and in the enjoyment of a happy home and a competence. And the stern old man who had chosen his location with a view of his children’s good always a little relaxed the grim lines of mouth and brow when this son of his honest manhood was in his presence.

And so it was that when he grew to maturity and established a home temple of his own, the habit of a lifetime was guaranty that he would bring happiness and not sorrow with him.

There is a pretty story current in Canton to the effect that young Major McKinley first met Ida Saxton shortly after locating in the little city, and that he admired her greatly. But she was scarcely more than a school girl at the time, the daughter of a banker, the granddaughter of an editor, and a girl of such beauty that the young man, with nothing but his profession and his hopes, with little practice and no property, might well regard her hopeless. Besides, there was small opportunity for them to be thrown together. The Saxtons were not attendants at the Methodist church, and were rarely seen at its social functions. They were persons of wealth and established position and much sought after.

Yet it could not escape him that the charmingly beautiful girl was his ideal, the divinity about whom the dreams of an honorable young man may be woven. She completed her studies at school, and went for a trip to Europe in company with her mother. They were gone a year. When they returned young Major McKinley had evidently advanced somewhat in worldly estate. He had secured a number of fees, and was saving money. As he lived at all times within his means, he had arrived at the honorable distinction of a bank account. It is probable he selected the Saxton bank solely because it was convenient of location, being near the stairway which led to his modest office, and directly on his way as he passed to and from the courthouse. And yet it must have been a matter of agreeable surprise to him when he entered the bank one morning and found Miss Ida Saxton occupying a place at the cashier’s window.

Of course they had met. It would scarcely have been possible for them to escape that. But there had been small acquaintance between them. And this new relation, which touched on the borders of both the business and the social life, was a means of developing an attachment which it is doubtful if any other course could have afforded.

Miss Saxton had taken a place in the bank because of an impulse, as common as it is honorable, that she must “do something.” There was, of course, no necessity for her to struggle to become self-supporting. But there was, on the other hand, no purpose in her mind to be weakly dependent.

There was the place of their better acquaintance. There he learned to admire more and more the bright, happy young woman, as fair as the morning, and as careful as the American daughter should be. And there she learned to respect the strong, steady young lawyer, the masterful man, the prudent and sagacious citizen. The fact was, he was fair to look upon, strong, healthful of body, and that he still possessed somewhat of the glow which military glory sheds upon those who had honorable part in the great struggle.

Of their courtship it were both bold and unpardonable to speak. Whatever detail of that interesting period might, with propriety, have been said while both were living, is hushed in the shadow of the death chamber now and becomes too sacred for discussion.

They were married January 25, 1871. William McKinley was at that time twenty-eight years old and his bride was five years younger. It is a significant fact in the life of this good woman that she almost immediately united with the Methodist church, and joined her husband in attendance upon its forms of worship.

In 1873 a girl baby was born to them, and the fond mother bestowed upon it the name of Kate. It is said to have been a beautiful child, and was adored by its parents, and by the grandparents on either side. For by this time the father and mother of William McKinley had removed from Poland and taken up their residence in Canton. The strong son had drawn them from the place which had been home so long and established them in the city that had given him so cordial a welcome.

When little Kate was nearly four years old Mrs. Saxton, mother of Mrs. McKinley, died. The blow was a peculiarly severe one, for within a month her second child, also a girl, was born—but to close her eyes on the earth almost as soon as she had opened them. They named her Ida, the father hoping in the brief days of the delicate little life that the child would bring back vigor and interest in existence to the depressed wife, whose grief at the death of her own mother was scarcely assuaged.

But in this gentle hope he was doomed to disappointment, for little Ida faded from among them. And then the third great blow fell, for a few weeks after the baby’s death little Kate sickened and died.

Ida Saxton had been a strong, healthy girl. She was not delicate of physique; and while she was in no sense buxom or amazonian, she was far from frail. Yet the accumulated shocks and sorrows of those sad days completely unstrung her. And the woman who deserved and might have had a world of happiness, a heaven of domestic joy on earth, never again was blest with health.

No more children came to them, but their home has always catered to the rippling laughter and the joyous songs of young life. Even to the end, even on that last day at Buffalo, when horror leaped from the heart of happiness, there were young people with them. But in that hour of his wife’s great trial, when he could not share her suffering, nor take an iota from the black pall of grief which enveloped her, William McKinley began a life of devotion a thousand times more gentle and kind than the intensest courtship of a lover. And through all the long years that have followed—for twenty-four long years—he has never wavered night nor day in the most assiduous care a husband can possibly bestow. No time has been so hurried, no demand of politics so exacting, no weariness so heavy that he has failed to remember her. If near her, he has gone to her, and expressed by his presence the thoughtful love which he felt. If she were absent he has always sent her a message. And, however brief, however little he might have to say that would interest her, he has kept strong and true that faith in her wifely heart that he would “love, cherish and protect” her in an infinitely more tender way than any vow could bind him.

For a while after the death of the little girls Mrs. McKinley concluded she wanted to live near “Mother McKinley,” and they two took a couple of rooms in the house of the elders. Her own mother was dead, and the grief-stricken woman sorely needed the strong, steadfast hand and hearty comfort of that fine old matron who had done so much in building the character of a grand American.

But presently Major McKinley found a new interest with which he hoped to distract his wife’s mind from the cloud of sorrows that would not lift. He was building a house. He was establishing a home of their very own. And in the occupation of watching the workmen her spirits came back again. She could not regain her physical health, and never has. But the clouds were dispelled, and the old cheerful, happy look came back to the blue eyes, and the fair face again resumed its wonted roundness of outline and sweetness of expression. And these have never again departed.

Of course no man deserves praise or credit for kindness to his wife; and when her illness renders attention the more necessary, there is still less reason for indulging in adulatory phrases. But in the case of William McKinley there is, even with the most undemonstrative, warrant for expressing the admiration which every good man and true woman must certainly feel.

In spite of a physical weakness which stubbornly clung to the little woman, the home life of Major and Mrs. McKinley has always been singularly happy. She loved children, as has been said, and always had them around her. She loved music; and there has always been singing and the best of instrumentalists at her home. She loved roses; and the house has always been a bower of floral beauty and of perfume.

In time a larger house was builded, and into it the family removed. It was really but an extending of the dwelling which had been their home in the old days. And it is the house to which unnumbered thousands made pilgrimages in 1896. It will be understood that Mrs. McKinley possessed a fortune in her own right. Her father died late in the seventies, following his wife’s demise; and the Saxton estate was divided between three heirs—a sister, a brother, and Mrs. McKinley. But the man who could attend her with all the solicitude of a mother was not the man to use a dollar he had not earned. When financial disaster came upon him, in 1893, his wife—for once opposing his will—turned over all her property for the benefit of those creditors whom a security debt had created. The good home went too. And the man who had done so much for his country, who was so nearly a model of American manhood, began paying rent as at the beginning. The debts were all wiped out, absolutely; and Mrs. McKinley’s estate was released to her, and the old home became again the property of the man who had earned it, and who so richly deserved it. But even in that hour of a new tribulation, he never faltered in his loving care for his wife, or the filial considerateness he had always paid his mother.

When that mother fell ill and died, her son had reached the highest honor the greatest nation can bestow. But he hurried from the presidential mansion to her bedside at Canton, and sorrowfully followed her to the grave.

It may seem by a reading of the domestic side of President McKinley’s life that it is more sad and somber than is the lot of most men to suffer. But this, a thousand friends will testify, is clearly an error. The home life of the President has been uniformly happy. Never an unkind word, never a frown, never a sorrow inflicted within the portals, and always the music of song and laughter, the perfume of roses and the blessing of loving words—there is no sadness in such a picture.

CHAPTER XXVII.
McKINLEY’S EULOGY OF LINCOLN.

In self-sacrifice and patriotism, President McKinley reflected many qualities of Abraham Lincoln. How closely he had studied the character of the great Lincoln is shown in an address delivered by Mr. McKinley on Lincoln’s Birthday anniversary, February 12, 1895, before the Unconditional Republican Club of Albany, N. Y. Mr. McKinley said:

“A noble manhood, nobly consecrated to man, never dies. The martyr of liberty, the emancipator of a race, the savior of the only free government among men may be buried from human sight, but his deeds will live in human gratitude forever.

“The story of his simple life is the story of the plain, honest, manly citizen, true patriot and profound statesman who, believing with all the strength of his mighty soul in the institutions of his country, won, because of them, the highest place in its government—then fell a sacrifice to the Union he held so dear, and which Providence spared his life long enough to save. We meet to-night to do honor to one whose achievements have heightened human aspirations and broadened the field of opportunity to the races of men. While the party with which we stand, and for which he stood, can justly claim him, and without dispute can boast the distinction of being the first to honor and trust him, his fame has leaped the bounds of party and country, and now belongs to mankind and the ages.

“Lincoln had sublime faith in the people. He walked with and among them. He recognized the importance and power of an enlightened public sentiment and was guided by it. Even amid the vicissitudes of war he concealed little from public review and inspection. In all he did he invited rather than evaded examination and criticism. He submitted his plans and purposes, as far as practicable, to public consideration with perfect frankness and sincerity. There was such homely simplicity in his character that it could not be hedged in by the pomp of place, nor the ceremonials of high official station. He was so accessible to the public that he seemed to take the people into his confidence. Here, perhaps, was one secret of his power. The people never lost their confidence in him, however much they unconsciously added to his personal discomfort and trials. His patience was almost superhuman. And who will say that he was mistaken in his treatment of the thousands who thronged continually about him? More than once when reproached for permitting visitors to crowd upon him, he asked, in pained surprise, ‘Why, what harm does this confidence in men do me?’

“In all the long years of slavery agitation, Lincoln always carried the people with him. In 1854 Illinois cast loose from her old Democratic moorings and followed his leadership in a most emphatic protest against the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. In 1858 the people of Illinois indorsed his opposition to the aggression of slavery, in a State usually Democratic, even against so popular a leader as the Little Giant. In 1860, the whole country indorsed his position on slavery, even when the people were continually harangued that his election meant the dissolution of the Union. During the war the people advanced with him step by step to its final overthrow. Indeed, in the election of 1864, the people not only indorsed emancipation, but went far toward recognizing the political equality of the negro. They heartily justified the President in having enlisted colored soldiers to fight side by side with the white man in the noble cause of union and liberty. Aye, they did more; they indorsed his position on another and vastly more important phase of the race problem. They approved his course as President in re-organizing the government of Louisiana, and a hostile press did not fail to call attention to the fact that this meant eventually negro suffrage in that State.

“The greatest names in American history are Washington and Lincoln. One is forever associated with the independence of the States and formation of the Federal Union; the other with universal freedom and the preservation of the Union. Washington enforced the Declaration of Independence as against England; Lincoln proclaimed its fulfillment not only to a downtrodden race in America, but to all people for all time who may seek the protection of our flag. These illustrious men achieved grander results for mankind within a single century, from 1775 to 1865, than any other men ever accomplished in all the years since first the flight of time began. Washington engaged in no ordinary revolution; with him it was not who should rule, but what should rule. He drew his sword not for a change of rulers upon an established throne, but to establish a new government which should acknowledge no throne but the tribute of the people. Lincoln accepted war to save the Union, the safeguard of our liberties, and re-establish it on ‘indestructible foundations’ as forever ‘one and indivisible.’ To quote his own grand words: Now we are contending ‘that this Nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.’

“Each lived to accomplish his appointed task. Each received the unbounded gratitude of the people of his time and each is held in great and ever-increasing reverence by posterity. The fame of each will never die; it will grow with the ages, because it is based upon imperishable service to humanity; not to the people of a single generation or country, but to the whole human family, wherever scattered, forever.

“The present generation knows Washington only from history, and by that alone can judge him. Lincoln we know by history also, but thousands are still living who participated in the great events in which he was leader and master. Many of his contemporaries survived him; some are here yet in almost every locality. So Lincoln is not far removed from us; he may be said to be still known to the millions—not surrounded by the mist of antiquity, nor a halo of idolatry that is impenetrable. He never was inaccessible to the people; thousands carry with them yet the words which he spoke in their hearing; thousands remember the pressure of his hand; and thousands have not forgotten that indescribably sad, thoughtful, far-seeing expression which impressed everybody. Nobody could keep the people away from him, and when they came he would suffer no one to drive them back. So it is that an unusually large number of the American people came to know this great man and that he is still so well remembered by them. It cannot be said that they were all mistaken about him or that they misinterpreted his greatness. Men are still connected with the Government who served during his administration. There are at least two senators, and perhaps twice as many representatives, who participated in his first inauguration—men who stood side by side with him in the trying duties of his administration and who have been, without interruption, in one branch or another of the public service ever since. The Supreme Court of the United States still has among its members one whom Lincoln appointed, and so of other branches of the Federal judiciary. His faithful private secretaries are still alive and have rendered posterity a great service in their history of Lincoln and his times. They have told the story of his life and public services with such entire frankness and fidelity as to exhibit to the world ‘the very inner courts of his soul.’

ARRIVAL OF THE FUNERAL PROCESSION AT THE EAST FRONT OF THE CAPITOL, WASHINGTON.

SAILORS FROM THE BATTLESHIP ILLINOIS IN THE FUNERAL PROCESSION, WASHINGTON.

“This host of witnesses, without exception, agree as to the true nobility and intellectual greatness of Lincoln. All proudly claim for Lincoln the highest abilities and the most distinguished and self-sacrificing patriotism. Lincoln taught them, and has taught us, that no party or partisan can escape responsibility to the people; that no party advantage, or presumed party advantage, should ever swerve us from the plain path of duty, which is ever the path of honor and distinction. He emphasized his words by his daily life and deeds. He showed to the world by his lofty example, as well as by precept and maxim, that there are times when the voice of partisanship should be hushed and that of patriotism only be heeded. He taught that a good service done for the country, even in aid of an unfriendly administration, brings to the men and the party, who rise above the temptation of temporary partisan advantage, a lasting gain in the respect and confidence of the people. He showed that such patriotic devotion is usually rewarded, not only with retention in power and the consciousness of duty well and bravely done, but with the gratification of beholding the blessings of relief and prosperity, not of a party or section, but of the whole country. This he held should be the first and great consideration with all public servants.

“Lincoln was a man of moderation. He was neither an autocrat nor a tyrant. If he moved slowly sometimes, it was because it was better to move slowly and he was only waiting for his reserves to come up. Possessing almost unlimited power, he yet carried himself like one of the humblest of men. He weighed every subject. He considered and reflected upon every phase of public duty. He got the average judgment of the plain people. He had a high sense of justice, a clear understanding of the rights of others, and never needlessly inflicted an injury upon any man. He always taught and enforced the doctrine of mercy and charity on every occasion. Even in the excess of rejoicing, he said to a party who came to serenade him a few nights after the Presidential election in November, 1864: ‘Now that the election is over, may not all having a common interest reunite in a common effort to save our common country? So long as I have been here I have not willingly planted a thorn in any man’s bosom. While I am deeply sensible to the high compliment of a re-election, and duly grateful, as I trust, to Almighty God for having directed my countrymen to a right conclusion, as I think, for their own good, it adds nothing to my satisfaction that any other man may be disappointed or pained by the result.’”

CHAPTER XXVIII.
PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT TAKES THE OATH OF OFFICE.

Theodore Roosevelt became President of the United States at 3:32 o’clock Saturday afternoon, September 14, 1901. The oath of office was administered by Judge John R. Hazel, of the United States District Court, in the library of the residence of Mr. Ansley Wilcox, at Buffalo. Mr. Wilcox was an old friend of the Vice-President, and the latter had made Mr. Wilcox’s house his home during his stay in Buffalo, after the shooting of the President.

The delay in taking the oath after the death of the President was the result of the sanguine feeling among the people that President McKinley would recover from his wounds. No one shared this feeling in a higher degree than the Vice-President. When the news that the President had been shot became public Vice-President Roosevelt was in the East. He started immediately for Buffalo, and was at the President’s bedside as soon as possible. He remained in Buffalo until the physicians announced that there was no fear of the President’s death, and then left for the Adirondacks.

When the President began to sink Thursday night messages were sent to the Vice-President and those members of the Cabinet who, like himself, had left Buffalo, deluded into the belief that the President would soon be able to return to the Capital. The Vice-President, with his usual promptitude, started on the return trip to Buffalo, greatly saddened by the news which made such a step necessary. He made a hard night ride from the North Woods to Albany, and by the use of a special train reached Buffalo at 1:35 o’clock Saturday afternoon.

To avoid the crowd which had gathered at the Union Station to see him, the Vice-President alighted at the Terrace Station of the New York Central, where a police and military escort awaited him. He insisted first of all on visiting Mrs. McKinley and offering condolences to her in her hour of anguish. This step he desired to take simply as a private citizen, and when it was accomplished the Vice-President announced himself as ready to take the oath as President. A strong escort of military and police had assembled at the Milburn house to escort him to Mr. Wilcox’s, but its presence annoyed the Vice-President, and he halted the guards with a quick, imperative military command, saying he would have only two policemen to go along with him. Later he announced that he did not want to establish the precedent of going about guarded.

The place selected for the administration of the oath was the library of Mr. Wilcox’s house, a rather small room, but picturesque, the heavy oak trimmings and the massive bookcases giving it somewhat the appearance of a legal den. A pretty bay window with stained glass and heavy hangings formed a background, and against this Colonel Roosevelt took his position.

Judge Hazel stood near him in the bay window, and Colonel Roosevelt showed his almost extreme nervousness by plucking at the lapel of his long frock coat and nervously tapping the hardwood floor with his heel.

He stepped over once to Secretary Root and for about five minutes they conversed earnestly. The question at issue was whether the President should first sign an oath of office and then swear in or whether he should swear in first and sign the document in the case after.

Secretary Root ceased his conversation with Colonel Roosevelt, and, stepping back, while an absolute hush fell upon every one in the room, said, in an almost inaudible voice:

“Mr. Vice-President, I——” Then his voice faltered, and for fully two minutes, the tears came down his face and his lips quivered so that he could not continue his utterances. There were sympathetic tears from those about him, and two great drops ran down either cheek of the successor of William McKinley.

Mr. Root’s chin was on his breast. Suddenly throwing back his head as if with an effort, he continued in broken voice:

“I have been requested, on behalf of the Cabinet of the late President, at least those who are present in Buffalo, all except two, to request that for reasons of weight affecting the affairs of government, you should proceed to take the constitutional oath of President of the United States.”

Colonel Roosevelt stepped farther into the bay window, and Judge Hazel, taking up the constitutional oath of office, which had been prepared on parchment, asked him to raise his right hand and repeat it after him. There was a hush like death in the room as the Judge read a few words at a time, and Colonel Roosevelt, in a strong voice and without a tremor, and with his raised hand steady, repeated it after him.

“And thus I swear,” he ended it. The hand dropped by the side, the chin for an instant rested on the breast, and the silence remained unbroken for a couple of minutes as though the new President of the United States were offering silent prayer. Judge Hazel broke it, saying:

“Mr. President, please attach your signature,” and the President, turning to a small table near by, wrote “Theodore Roosevelt” at the bottom of the document in a firm hand.

The new President was visibly shaken, but he controlled himself admirably, and with the deep solemnity of the occasion full upon him, he announced to those present that his aim would be to be William McKinley’s successor in deed as well as in name. Deliberately he proclaimed it in these words:

“In this hour of deep and terrible bereavement, I wish to state that it shall be my aim to continue absolutely unbroken the policy of President McKinley for the peace and prosperity and honor of our beloved country.”

The great, far-reaching significance of this pledge to continue the policy of the dead President, announced at the very threshold of a new governmental regime, profoundly impressed his hearers, and President Roosevelt’s first step after taking the oath was in line with its redemption. His first act was to ask the members of the Cabinet to retain their portfolios in order to aid him to conduct the government on lines laid down by him whose policy he had declared he would uphold. Such an appeal was not to be resisted, and every member of the Cabinet, including Secretary of State Hay and Secretary of the Treasury Gage, who were communicated with in Washington, have agreed for the present, at least, to retain their several portfolios.

President Roosevelt remained in Buffalo until the funeral cortege started for Washington, when he accompanied it.

Theodore Roosevelt was born October 20, 1858, at No. 28 East Twentieth street, New York City. His father, also Theodore Roosevelt, was a member of an old New York Dutch family, and Mr. Roosevelt is of the eighth generation of the stock in the United States. Mingled with the Dutch in Theodore Roosevelt’s veins are strains of English, Celtic, and French. His mother was Miss Martha Bulloch, and came of a distinguished Georgia family, which had given to that state a Governor, Archibald Bulloch, in revolutionary times. In a later generation a member of the family built the Confederate privateer Alabama.

The father of Theodore Roosevelt was a merchant and importer of glassware. During the Civil War he was a noted figure in New York. He had great strength of character and liking for practical benevolence, which made him foremost in many such charities. Newsboys’ lodging-houses, the allotment system, which permitted soldiers during the war to have portions of their pay sent to their families, and other forms of direct help to the poorer classes found in him a champion. His ancestors had been aldermen, judges of the supreme court of the city, and representatives in the National Congress. In revolutionary times New York chose a Roosevelt to act with Alexander Hamilton in the United States Constitutional Convention. Roosevelt street was once a cowpath on the Roosevelt farm, and the Roosevelt hospital is the gift of a wealthy member of a recent generation of the family.

As a child Theodore Roosevelt was puny and backward. He could not keep up with his fellows either in study or play, and on this account was taught by a private tutor at home. The country residence of the Roosevelts was at Oyster Bay, Long Island, and here the children were brought up. They were compelled by their father to take plenty of outdoor exercise, and young Theodore, soon realizing that he must have strength of body if he was to do anything in life, entered into the scheme for the improvement of his physical condition with the same enthusiasm and determination which has characterized every act of his life. He grew up an athlete, strong and active, and when he entered Harvard in 1875 he soon became prominent in field sports. He became noted as a boxer and wrestler, and was for a time captain of the college polo team. He did not neglect his studies, and when he was graduated, in 1880, he took high honors. During his stay in the university he had been editor of the Advocate, a college paper, and gave particular attention to the study of history and natural history. He became a member of the Phi Beta Kappa Greek letter fraternity.

At the conclusion of his college course he went abroad for a year, spending part of the time in study in Dresden. His love for athletics led him to successfully attempt the ascent of the Jung-Frau and the Matterhorn, and won for him a membership in the Alpine Club of London. He returned to New York in 1881, and in the same year married Miss Alice Lee of Boston. Two years later he had the misfortune to lose his wife and his mother within a week.

Theodore Roosevelt has been an ardent student of history from his college days, and before he was twenty-three years old had entered the field himself as a writer. He is an enthusiastic admirer of Washington, Lincoln, and Grant. On his return from Europe, and while engaged on his historical work, he entered the law office of his uncle, Robert B. Roosevelt, with the design of fitting himself for the bar. He was of too restless a disposition to find content in such a sober calling, and the whole bent of his mind, as shown by his reading, his writing, and the effort to do something extraordinary, something that would mark him above his fellows, which had made him a bidder for college championships and prompted him to tempt the dangers of the Swiss mountain peaks, sent him hurrying into politics before he had settled down to anything like deep study of the law.

He attended his first primary in 1881, in the Twenty-first assembly district of New York. It was a gathering with little to charm the ordinary young man of aristocratic lineage and wealth, but Theodore Roosevelt had studied history with a purpose. He knew that through the primary led the way to political preferment, and he at once entered into the battle of politics, in which he was to prove a gladiator of astonishing prowess, routing and terrifying his enemies, but often startling his allies by the originality and recklessness of his methods.

The natural enthusiasm of young Roosevelt, his undeniable personal charm, and the swirl of interest with which he descended into the arena of local politics, made him friends on every side in a community where leaders are at a high premium, and within a few months the young college man was elected to the Assembly of the state from his home district.

His ability and his methods were in strong evidence at the following session of the Legislature. He proved a rallying power for the Republican minority, and actually succeeded in passing legislation which the majority submitted to only through fear and which his own party in the state would never have fathered had it been in power. Mr. Roosevelt was the undisputed leader of the Republicans in the Assembly within two months after his election, and he immediately turned his attention to the purification of New York City. This would have appalled a man less determined or more experienced. But the young aspirant for a place in history reckoned neither with conditions nor precedents. His success, considering the strength of the combination against which he was arrayed, was extraordinary. He succeeded in securing the passage of the bill which deprived the city council of New York of the power to veto the appointments of the mayor, a prerogative which had nullified every previous attempt at reform and had made the spoliation of the city’s coffers an easy matter in the time of Tweed and other bosses.

Mr. Roosevelt’s methods, it was cheerfully predicted by his political opponents, would certainly result in his retirement from participation in the state councils of New York, but this proved far from the case. Wherever Theodore Roosevelt has been thrown with any class of people, wherever they have come to know him personally, he has attracted to himself enthusiastic friendship and confidence. Theatrical though many of his acts have appeared, his honesty, his personal fearlessness, and the purity of his motives have not been questioned.

He became so popular that not only was he returned to three sessions of the Assembly, but his party in the state soon realized that he was one of its strongest men, and he was sent to the Republican National Convention of 1884 as chairman of the New York delegation.

Meanwhile he had been hammering away at corruption in New York, and had secured the passage of the act making the offices of the county clerk, sheriff, and register salaried ones. He had been chairman of the committee to investigate the work of county officials, and, as a result of that investigation, offered the bill which cut off from the clerk of the county of New York an income in fees which approximated $82,000 per annum; from the sheriff, $100,000, and from the register also a very high return in fees. From the county offices to the police was not far and Roosevelt was agitating an investigation and reform in the guardianship of the city when he left the Legislature. After the convention, to which he went uninstructed, but in favor of the nomination of Mr. Edmunds against James G. Blaine, his health failed. The deaths of his wife and mother had been a severe shock, for Mr. Roosevelt is a man of the strongest personal attachments. He turned aside from public life for a time and went West.

He had been a lover of hunting from boyhood, and when he decided to spend some time in the wilds of Montana, he took up the life as he found it there. On the banks of the Little Missouri he built a log house, working on it himself, and there turned ranchman, cowboy and hunter. He engaged in one of the last of the big buffalo hunts, and saturated himself with the life of the West. His trips in this and later years were not alone confined to this section of the West, and his courage, intelligence, and companionable nature made him a name which in later years drew to his standard thousands of cowboys, among whom his name had come to mean all that they admire, and all that appeals to their natures. The love and admiration was not one-sided, for Mr. Roosevelt came to regard these hardy, open-hearted, plain-spoken guardians of the wilderness as the finest types of manhood.

In these years and between 1886 and 1888 Mr. Roosevelt was also busy on much of his literary work. The most important of his works—“The Winning of the West,” a history in four volumes of the acquisition of the territory west of the Alleghenies—required an enormous amount of research. On its publication it leaped at once into popularity, and soon acquired a reputation as a most reliable text-book.

His hunting trips and his months of life among the men and the game of the West have supplied the material for a number of Mr. Roosevelt’s books, among them “The Wilderness Hunter,” “Hunting Trips of a Ranchman,” and “Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail.” His most noted work of recent years is “The Rough Riders,” being a history of the formation, the battles, career, and disbandment of the remarkable body of soldiers comprising the regiment which Mr. Roosevelt recruited largely himself, and of which he was lieutenant-colonel and colonel in the brief campaign in Cuba. His style is interesting and clear, and while the story is told in the first person, there is a simplicity of narrative and a cordiality of praise to all who seem to deserve.

Mr. Roosevelt’s more important works have been historical, but his writings have not been confined to this subject. He has contributed many articles to scientific magazines, particularly on discrimination of species and sub-species of the larger animals of the West. A species of elk is named after him, and he made known the enlarged Western species of a little insectivora called the shrew.

This period of writing and hunting was broken by two important events. He was defeated as candidate for mayor of New York and he married again. The second wife of the Vice President elect was Miss Edith Kermit Carow, daughter of an old New York family. They have five children—three sons and two daughters. The marriage took place in 1886, and in the same year Theodore Roosevelt was the Republican nominee for mayor of his native city. Opposed to him were Abram S. Hewitt, the Democratic candidate, and Henry George, the apostle of single tax. So great an enthusiasm had been created by Mr. George’s book, “[Progress and Poverty],” and so quickly did he attach to himself all the floating element dissatisfied with the regime of both the old parties and without the vested wealth threatened by the theories of their leader that both of the old parties were alarmed. It was said that fear that George would be elected sent thousands of Republican votes to Hewitt, whose chances of success seemed greatly better than those of his young Republican opponent. Hewitt was elected, but Mr. Roosevelt received a larger proportion of the votes cast than had any other Republican candidate for mayor up to that time.

For years after this Mr. Roosevelt was not prominent in politics. He spent his time in writing and hunting trips to the West. Never an idle man, he accomplished an immense amount of research in the preparation of his historical works.

President Harrison appointed Theodore Roosevelt a member of the United States Civil Service Commission May 13, 1889. While in the New York Legislature much of his efforts had been directed to the improvement of the public service. He was one of the most noted advocates in the country of the merit system, and his enmity to the spoilsman had won him objurgations of press and party on numberless occasions. To his new duties he brought enthusiastic faith in the righteousness and the expediency of a civil-service system, and he at once embarked on a campaign for establishing its permanency and for its extension, which again made him the butt of almost daily attacks. In Congress and in the ranks of the leaders of his party hundreds of opponents sprang up to attack him, but he held to his way and eventually won to his own way of thinking many public men. Though always determined and aggressive, Mr. Roosevelt is a man of great tact, and to this no less than to the resolute assurance of his methods was due the success of his efforts for the extension of the civil service in the national service.

He served for six years, two of them under President Harrison’s successor, Mr. Cleveland. In that time the number of persons who were made subject to the civil-service law was increased from 12,000 to nearly 40,000, and the still further great increase made by the orders of President Cleveland in the late years of his first administration was largely due to Mr. Roosevelt’s efforts. He was not a member of the commission when they were promulgated, but they had been considered by the commission and were favorably regarded by the President almost a year before they were made law by the President’s order.

In the years he then spent in Washington Mr. Roosevelt made many strong friends. In the commission he was loved and respected by every one, from his fellow commissioners to the laborers. He declined to be president of the commission, though the place was offered him more than once, but he was the acknowledged force and head of its work. When the great extensions afterward made by the President were first proposed to Mr. Cleveland he suggested that it would be better to codify the rules of the commission before taking such action. This was done, though it took some time, and shortly after it had been accomplished the chief examiner of the commission, Mr. Webster, died, which again put affairs in such shape that it was regarded as inexpedient to add greatly to the duties of the commission at that time.

As a result, the order for the large extension of the operation of the civil-service law, which had been in contemplation by the President and the commission for more than a year, and with which Mr. Roosevelt had much to do, was not promulgated until after he had resigned from the commission to accept the appointment as police commissioner of the city of New York under Mayor Strong. President Cleveland, who had reappointed Mr. Roosevelt as civil-service commissioner, though he had been originally named for the place as a Republican by President Harrison, strongly advised Mr. Roosevelt not to leave the commission and not to take the New York place. The President’s letter to Mr. Roosevelt on his resignation is full of expressions of the highest esteem and appreciation of his services.

In the wave of reform which swept over New York in 1894–95 the men, including Mayor Strong, who were borne into power were something of the same stamp as the civil-service commissioner. They were of the class which fought political rings, and they turned to Mr. Roosevelt to take a hand in purifying the police force of New York City, which was alleged to be a sink of political rottenness and studied inefficiency. Mr. Roosevelt resigned as civil-service commissioner May 5, 1895, and was appointed police commissioner of New York City May 24 following.

The uproar that followed the introduction of Roosevelt methods in the conduct of the New York police force has never been equaled as a police sensation in that city. Within a month after his appointment the whole force was in a state of fright. The new commissioner made night rounds himself, and, being unknown to the men, he caught scores of them in dereliction of duty. He dismissed and promoted and punished entirely on a plane of his own. Politics ceased to save or help the men, and the bosses were up in arms. In this emergency an attempt was made to have Roosevelt’s appointment by Mayor Strong vetoed by the city council, and it was discovered that an act of the Legislature, passed some twelve years prior, had taken the power of veto from the city council. Theodore Roosevelt was the author of this act, and its passage had been secured after one of the strongest fights he had made when a member of the State Legislature.

Commissioner Roosevelt announced that he would enforce the laws as he found them. He gave special attention to the operations of the excise law on Sunday, and after severe measures had been used on some of the more hardy saloon-keepers, New York at last had, in June, 1895, for the first time within the memory of living man, a “dry” Sunday. A great deal of good was done by Commissioner Roosevelt in breaking up much of the blackmail which had been levied by policemen; in transferring and degrading officers who were notoriously responsible for the bad name the force had, and in making promotions for merit, fidelity, and courage, Mr. Roosevelt’s career as a police commissioner made him extremely unpopular with the class at which his crusade was aimed.

The fierce crusade against the saloon-keepers was brief, and its effect lasted but a few weeks. The new commissioner gave his attention to more important matters, and really made the force cleaner than it had been before. He undoubtedly gained the hearty devotion of the better class of policemen. He was most careful of their comfort, and quick to see and reward merit. He was also quick to punish, and this kept the worse half of the men on their good behavior.

One important result Mr. Roosevelt obtained in this position was the dissipation of much of the antagonism which had theretofore been apparent on every occasion between labor unions and the force. Men on strike had been accustomed to regard the policeman as a natural enemy, but all this was changed. On one occasion, when a large number of operatives were out of work, Mr. Roosevelt sent for their leaders, and, after a discussion on the situation, suggested that the strikers should organize pickets to keep their own men in order. He promised that the police should support and respect the rights of these pickets and the result was most satisfactory. The threat of a cordon of police was removed from the strikers, and no collision such as had occurred on so many similar occasions, took place with the guardians of the law.

The attacks of the enemies which Mr. Roosevelt’s methods raised up against him were not confined to verbal denunciation nor expressions through the press. Dynamite bombs were left in his office, a part of his associates on the police board fought his every move, and all the skill of New York politicians with whom he interfered was exercised to trap him into a situation where he would become discredited in his work. In this they were unsuccessful and the stormy career of the police force continued. In the end the new commissioner conquered. He had the necessary power and the personal courage and tenacity of purpose to carry out his plans. He fought blackmail until he had practically stopped it and he promoted and removed men without regard to color, creed, or politics. He resigned in April, 1897, to become Assistant Secretary of the Navy.

Theodore Roosevelt was appointed Assistant Secretary of the Navy April 19, 1897. The troubles of the Cubans with Spain, the long history of oppression and outrage to which they had been subjected, and the years of warfare they had known with the armies of Weyler and Campos, had excited American sympathy, and many public men realized that interference by the United States was almost assured. In this connection it was realized by President McKinley and his advisers that the navy was not in condition to make it an effective war instrument in the impending conflict. In casting about for a man to fill the position of Assistant Secretary of the Navy, which place carried with it much of the executive work which would be required in putting fighting ships into shape, the President and Secretary Long were favorably disposed toward Mr. Roosevelt, who was one of the many candidates for the place. His work on the naval war of 1812 had acquired fame for its accuracy and its exhibition of wide knowledge of naval matters on the part of the author and Mr. Roosevelt was asked to accept the appointment.

He brought to the duties of the office a great interest in the work, as well as the tremendous energy and talent for closely studying and mastering his work which had characterized him in other fields. He also brought to the position some of his startling methods, and again proved himself “a storm center,” a name he had already been given, and to which he has earned better title in each succeeding year. In the fall of 1897 he was detailed to inspect the fleet gathered at Hampton Roads, and he kept the commanders and their jackies in a ferment for a week. Whenever he thought of a drill he would like to see, he ordered it. The crews were called to night quarters and all sorts of emergency orders were given at all sorts of hours. When the Assistant Secretary came back to Washington to report, he had mastered some of the important details of the situation, at least.

During his rather brief connection with the department Mr. Roosevelt was a strong advocate of the naval personnel bill. He was also in charge of the purchase of auxiliary vessels after war was actually declared.

He had brought about the purchase of many guns, much ammunition, and large stores of provisions for the navy. He had secured a great increase in the amount of gunnery practice. He had hurried the work on the new ships and had the old ones repaired. He had caused every vessel to be supplied with coal to her full capacity, and had the crew of every ship recruited to its full strength. His services were fully recognized by Secretary Long, who thanked him in a letter full of appreciation when he left his place in the Navy Department. Mr. Roosevelt was urged to remain in his place by many of the most prominent newspapers of the country, who believed that his services there would be of great value in the approaching struggle.

Mr. Roosevelt had determined to resign his position in order to take active service in the field. His adventurous nature would not allow him to remain in an office when there was a prospect of fighting for the flag. He had determined to organize a regiment of Western men, whom, he rightly believed, would strike terror to the hearts of the Spaniards. Mr. Roosevelt’s resignation as Assistant Secretary of the Navy bears date of May 6, 1898. His appointment as lieutenant-colonel, First Regiment, United States Volunteer Cavalry, is dated May 5, 1898.

The First United States Volunteer Cavalry was one of the most remarkable fighting aggregations ever enlisted in any country. It was chosen from some 3,500 applicants and numbered about 900. The plains gave it its largest membership, and the name under which it soon came to be known was “Roosevelt’s Rough Riders.”

Dr. Leonard Wood, a United States Army officer, and a close friend of Colonel Roosevelt, was made colonel of the regiment. Colonel Roosevelt believed he was not sufficiently well informed concerning military matters to handle the regiment during the preliminary work, and he readily acquiesced in the appointment of his friend. The regiment rendezvoused at San Antonio, Texas, and there was kept at work learning the discipline of soldier life, until it was finally called to the front. Among the recruits were hundreds of cowboys who were perfect horsemen as well as dead shots. But such an outburst of popular interest attended the recruiting of this regiment that Colonel Wood and Lieutenant-Colonel Roosevelt were soon overwhelmed with applications for enlistment from the college men, athletes, clubmen, sons of millionaire parents, who loved the idea of adventure and battle in such company. As a result several companies were recruited from the pick of the young men of the country. Nearly every noted club of the country had its quota, and scores of Wall street stockbrokers wore khaki in the ranks. When finally the regiment was gathered at Tampa, Florida, it constituted a body of men than whom it would be hard to find any more perfectly fitted for such war as the conflict with Spain in the jungles of Cuba assured. Old Indian fighters were there by the score, and there were even six full-blooded Indians among the enlisted men.

The Rough Riders, it was originally intended, should be mounted, and as cavalry they went to the rendezvous at Tampa. But when the time came to go to Cuba there was no room on the transports for horses, and these cavalrymen, like the rest of the men who had enlisted in all the regiments assembled at the Florida port, were mad to get to the front. Rather than not see some of the fighting, the commander of the Rough Riders secured a place for his men among the troops sent to participate in the siege of Santiago, and they went as dismounted cavalry. As such they went to Cuba and fought through the brief but bloody campaign before the besieged city. They never had an opportunity to display their skill as horsemen after they left the training camps at San Antonio and Tampa, but they won a reputation for courage and cheerful patience under hardship, battle, and disease which is not surpassed in history.

This was not the first military service of Roosevelt. Soon after his graduation from Harvard he had joined the Eighth Regiment, New York National Guard, and had been in time promoted to the captaincy of a company. He remained a militiaman for four years, leaving his command only when he took up his permanent residence in Washington as a member of the civil-service commission.

The transports carrying the army of invasion to Cuba sailed from Port Tampa June 13, 1898. Thirty large vessels carried the troops and took six days to reach Daiquiri, the little port to the east of the harbor of Santiago, where the army was disembarked. The Rough Riders were in the brigade commanded by General S. B. M. Young, together with the First (white) and Tenth (colored) Regular Cavalry Regiments, and was a part of the division commanded by General Joseph Wheeler.

The first fight of the Rough Riders took place in the advance from Daiquiri toward Santiago. They were sent out on a hill trail to attack the position of the Spaniards, who blocked the road to the town. The Spanish occupied ridges opposite to those along which the trail used by the Rough Riders led, and a fierce fight took place in the jungle. The Spanish had smokeless powder, and it was almost impossible to locate them in the underbrush. The Rough Riders behaved with great gallantry, and took the position occupied by the enemy, but not without considerable loss. For distinguished gallantry in this action, Lieutenant-Colonel Roosevelt was promoted to be Colonel July 11, 1898. The place of this engagement is called Las Guasimas, “the thorns,” from the large number of trees of that species found there. The Rough Riders in this action acted in concert with other attacking forces composing the vanguard of the army. Several days after this General Young was taken with fever, and Colonel Wood, taking command of the brigade, Colonel Roosevelt became commanding officer of the regiment.

In this capacity he commanded the Rough Riders in the battle of San Juan, where they withstood a heavy fire for a long time, and finally, when ordered to advance, made a gallant charge, capturing two of the hills occupied by the enemy. The fall of Santiago followed the American success, and a period of inactivity began for the American troops. Insufficient transportation had entailed improper and insufficient food, and, together with the effects of the climate, began to have serious effects on the troops. Fever decimated their ranks, and those who were still able to attend to their duties were weakened by disease.

It soon became apparent to the officers in command of the Americans that the only salvation for their men was removal to the North. It had been reported that yellow fever was epidemic among the soldiers in camp about Santiago, and while this was not at all true, most of the men were suffering from malarial fever, and there was some fear of the introduction of the tropic scourge into the United States if the troops were brought home suffering from it.

Colonel Roosevelt was in command of the brigade at this time, owing to General Wood having been made Governor-General of Santiago, and as such the commander of the Rough Riders discussed with the other Generals an appeal to the authorities to remove the troops back to the United States. There was disinclination on the part of the regular officers to take the initiative, as much correspondence had taken place between General Shafter and the War Department, the latter stating the reasons why it seemed inexpedient to cause the removal at that time. In this emergency Colonel Roosevelt prepared a presentation of the situation, and, after reading over the rough draft to the other commanders, submitted it to General Shafter.

Directly afterward a circular letter was prepared and signed by all the Generals and commanding officers and presented to General Shafter. This came to be known as “the round robin,” and its result was instantaneous. Both letters, Colonel Roosevelt’s and the round robin, were published throughout the United States and created a profound sensation. Within three days after they had been delivered to General Shafter the order for the return of the army was issued.

The Rough Riders, with their Colonel, returned to Camp Wikoff, at the northern extremity of Long Island, in late August, and on September 15, 1898, were mustered out of service with Colonel Roosevelt.

The campaign for the control of New York State in the approaching election of a Governor had already begun when the Rough Riders returned from Cuba. Colonel Roosevelt’s name had often been mentioned for the Republican nomination and the popular enthusiasm for this selection was supported by the leaders of the party in the state. Governor Frank S. Black had been elected by an enormous plurality two years previously, and according to all traditions should have been renominated. He was set aside, however, for the new hero, and the convention at Saratoga nominated Colonel Roosevelt with a hurrah. The friends of Governor Black had fought bitterly so long as there seemed a chance of success, and they started the rumor that Colonel Roosevelt was ineligible for the nomination, as he had relinquished his residence in New York when he went to Washington to enter the Navy Department.

The actual campaign was a most picturesque one. B. B. Odell, chairman of the state committee and now Governor of New York, was opposed to Colonel Roosevelt stumping the state in his own behalf, but it soon became apparent that general apathy existed, and consent was reluctantly given to the candidate to do so. There followed a series of speeches that woke up the voters. Colonel Roosevelt, by nature forceful, direct, and theatrical in his manner and method, went back and forward, up and down New York, accompanied by a few of his Rough Riders in their uniforms. These cowboys made speeches, telling, usually, how much they thought of their Colonel, and the tour met with success. Colonel Roosevelt was elected Governor over Augustus Van Wyck, the Democratic candidate, by a plurality of about 17,000 votes.

Among the achievements of Governor Roosevelt as chief executive of the Empire State were the enforcement of the law to tax corporations, which had been passed at a special session of the Legislature called by the Governor for that purpose; making the Erie Canal Commission non-partisan; his aid to the tenement commission in their work for the betterment of the poor in New York, and in breaking up the sweatshops through rigid enforcement of the factory law.

As a writer Mr. Roosevelt has been a contributor to magazines of innumerable articles on historical, political, and scientific subjects. A list of his more extended and important works includes “The Winning of the West,” “[Life of Gouverneur Morris],” “[Life of Thomas Hart Benton],” “[Naval War of 1812],” “History of New York,” “American Ideals and Other Essays,” “The Wilderness Hunter,” “Hunting Trips of a Ranchman,” “Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail,” “The Strenuous Life,” and “[The Rough Riders].”

SCENE ON MARKET STREET, CANTON.

RECEIVING VAULT, WESTLAWN CEMETERY, CANTON, OHIO.

CHAPTER XXIX.
GREAT EVENTS OF THE WORLD DURING PRESIDENT McKINLEY’S ADMINISTRATIONS.

William McKinley was inaugurated as the twenty-fifth President of the United States March 4, 1897, succeeding Grover Cleveland, who was serving his second term. Garret A. Hobart was sworn in as Vice-President on the same day. The campaign between Bryan and McKinley had been one of the most vigorously-fought in the history of the nation. The Democratic party made the money question paramount, and the Republican victory on that issue induced McKinley to call an extra session of Congress eleven days after his inauguration. The gold standard was adopted, after which Congress adjourned.

During April, May and June Turkey and Greece were at war. Greece was the aggressor, but the outcome of the short campaign was disastrous for King George’s troops, which were defeated in every battle by the Turks, who displayed a knowledge of warfare that struck surprise throughout Europe. Greece was made to pay a heavy indemnity and to cede Thessaly to Turkey at the treaty of peace, signed September 18.

The first heavy shipments of gold from the Klondike region began to arrive at San Francisco and Puget Sound ports. The output reached over $20,000,000 a year.

The boundary treaty between Venezuela and Great Britain was ratified at Washington June 14. It was regarding this boundary that President Cleveland in the previous December threatened Great Britain with war unless justice was done the South American republic.

July 24 the Dingley tariff bill became a law, the President having signed it. This bill was practically a substitution of the old McKinley tariff for the Wilson bill.

The first general knowledge of automobiles was spread by long newspaper reports of a race between horseless carriages in France. The machines were driven by electricity and gasoline.

August 25 is Independence day in Uruguay. While engaged in celebrating the event President Borda was shot and killed by an assassin.

Star Pointer, the famous pacing stallion, on August 28 lowered the world’s record for a mile at Readville, Mass., to 1:59¼.

Charles A. Dana, for years famous as the editor of the New York Sun, died at Glen Cove, Long Island, October 17.

An attempt to assassinate President Diaz of Mexico September 15 failed. During Diaz’s term in office—more than twenty years—no less than eight attempts to kill him were made. Twice he was slightly injured.

Dr. Fridtjof Nansen, the Norwegian arctic explorer, whose expedition came nearer reaching the North Pole than any previous attempt, reached America in October on a lecture tour. He was paid $65,000 for fifty lectures, probably the largest sum ever paid for such work.

A conspiracy against the President of Brazil resulted in a concerted attack on him November 5. He was not injured, but his brother was fatally wounded and the minister of war was killed in his efforts to save the life of the President.

Mrs. Nancy A. McKinley, the aged mother of President McKinley, died at Canton December 12. She was buried in the President’s family plot at Canton, where McKinley’s two daughters lie buried.

1898 was an eventful year in McKinley’s administration owing to the outbreak of the Spanish war. In Europe it will be best remembered because of deaths of Gladstone and Bismarck.

The insurrection in Cuba had reached a stage when humanitarian efforts on the part of this country seemed necessary owing to the reconcentrado methods introduced by Weyler. The battleship Maine was sent to Havana, arriving there January 25. No demonstration was made, but it was hoped the moral effect of the presence of a warship would lead to good results.

The Maine was blown up by a submarine mine February 15. The events of the Spanish war will follow chronologically.

February 8—Letter was published written by Minister De Lome disparaging President McKinley. After publication of the letter De Lome asked the Spanish government to accept his resignation.

February 15—Battleship Maine blown up.

February 17—United States government appointed a naval court to inquire into the cause of the destruction of the Maine.

March 5—General Fitzhugh Lee’s recall requested by the Spanish government and promptly refused by the United States.

March 7—Bill introduced in the House appropriating $50,000,000 for national defense. Passed the House March 7 and the Senate March 8, and was signed by the President.

March 12—Battleship Oregon sailed from San Francisco to meet the Atlantic squadron.

March 12—Spain offered armistice to the Cuban insurgents.

March 25—Report of the Maine Court of Inquiry delivered to the President and transmitted to Congress, reaching there March 28.

April 5—United States consuls in Cuba recalled.

April 11—President McKinley sends message to Congress on the Cuban situation, in which he advises intervention without recognition of the Cuban government.

April 19—Congress recognizes independence of Cuba and authorizes the use of United States forces in intervention.

April 20—President issues ultimatum to Spain.

April 21—An infernal machine was sent President McKinley, but the White House detectives grew suspicious of the peculiar package and it was investigated. It was filled with a powerful explosive.

April 22—Proclamation announcing war issued by President McKinley.

April 23—President McKinley issued a call for 125,000 volunteers.

April 24—War against the United States formally declared by Spain.

May 1—Spanish fleet at Manila entirely destroyed by Dewey’s fleet.

May 8—Miss Helen Gould sent the government a check for $100,000 to add to the war fund.

May 19—William Ewart Gladstone died at Hawarden. He was England’s greatest parliamentarian and a leader for many years. He was acknowledged throughout the world as one of the ablest men of modern times. He was born in 1809.

May 19—Arrival of Admiral Cervera’s fleet in the harbor of Santiago, Cuba.

May 25—Second call for 75,000 volunteers issued by the President.

June 3—Merrimac sunk in the harbor of Santiago by Lieutenant Hobson.

June 20—United States Army of Invasion landed in Cuba under General Shafter.

July 1 and 2—El Caney and San Juan, Cuba, captured by United States troops with heavy loss.

July 3—Admiral Cervera’s fleet attempted to escape and was entirely destroyed by United States fleet under command of Commodore Schley.

July 3–6—No newspapers were published in Chicago in these days of great events on sea and land, owing to a strike of the stereotypers. New men were secured July 6 and publication resumed. The newspaper owners formed a trust to fight the workers. Bulletin boards throughout the city were used to convey the latest news to the citizens.

July 4—The French line steamer La Bourgogne collided with the British ship Cromartyshire sixty miles south of Sable Island, near Newfoundland, and sunk. Five hundred and sixty of the 725 persons on board were drowned.

July—Agitation of the Dreyfus case in France followed by anti-Semitic riots.

July 26—Spanish government, through French Ambassador Cambon, asked for terms of peace.

July 30—Prince Otto Leopold von Bismarck died at Friedrichsruh. He had been chancellor of the German Empire and for thirty years was the greatest figure in European politics. He was born in 1815.

August 12—Peace protocol signed and armistice proclaimed. Cuban blockade raised.

September 18—Miss Winnie Davis, daughter of Jefferson Davis and known as the “Daughter of the Confederacy,” died at Narragansett Pier, R. I. She was born in Richmond, Va., in 1864. Her efforts to cement the union between the North and the South in recent years received high praise.

October 17—University of Chicago conferred the degree of LL. D. on President McKinley.

October 18—United States takes formal possession of Porto Rico.

December 10—Peace treaty signed at Paris.

The year 1899 witnessed the closing acts of the Spanish war proper, but in the meantime the troops left in the Philippine Islands came in conflict with Aguinaldo’s forces, and the friction soon lead to the Filipino outbreak. Hostilities were opened February 4, when the American lines just without Manila were attacked by 20,000 insurgents. The attack was repulsed with great loss, and the American troops under General Otis then took the aggressive. Several fierce engagements resulted, in which the Americans were invariably victorious.

In Europe the Dreyfus trial attracted great attention during July and August. Later the South African trouble came up and overshadowed all other subjects. The war was the final outcome of the Jameson raid of 1895, by which a party of Englishmen hoped to overthrow the Transvaal Republic under President Kruger, and establish a province under the protection of England.

Kruger’s reply to England’s demands for a new franchise law was given September 17. It repudiated England’s claim, and both sides knew war to be inevitable. Preparations for the conflict at once began.

October 12 the Boers invaded British territory and on the 20th of that month the first battle, at Glencoe, resulted. Both commanders were killed. The battle did not give either side the advantage. Mafeking was besieged October 26 and Ladysmith October 28. Kimberley, where Cecil Rhodes was at the time, next found a cordon of Boer soldiers and batteries surrounding it. The Boers were successful in the engagements at Modder River and Colenso, although both sides sustained heavy loss. The year closed with the three towns under siege and the British disheartened.

President McKinley signed the peace treaty with Spain February 10, and the Queen Regent of Spain signed the document March 17, ending the war formally. Already there had been severe engagements in the Philippines and many of the volunteers who served in Cuba were sent to the new possessions in the Pacific.

General Lawton and General McArthur were the most prominent in the campaigns in the interior of Luzon. They drove the enemy from town to town, capturing many prisoners. On April 27 Colonel Funston of the Twentieth Kansas Regiment, with two volunteers as companions, swam the Rio Grande River in the face of a murderous fire from the concealed enemy. A rope was carried across and by this means the soldiers were enabled to follow on rafts. The exploit ranks next to Dewey’s victory in Philippine war annals.

The “embalmed beef” investigation ended at Washington February 6. On the following day the President suspended General Eagan from duty for six years for his attack on General Miles during the hearing of the beef scandal.

Dewey was made a full admiral by Congress March 3.

Charles M. Murphy rode a mile on a bicycle in 57⅘ seconds, behind an engine with a wind shield.

Captain Alfred Dreyfus returned to France from Devil’s Island July 1. His trial began July 7. He was again found guilty, but the sentence of ten years’ imprisonment was not enforced, which was a practical vindication of the artillery officer.

Secretary of War Alger resigned July 15, and Elihu Root was appointed to succeed him July 22.

Cornelius Vanderbilt, born 1843, died at New York September 12.

Admiral Dewey arrived at New York from the Philippines via the Suez Canal September 26. A great naval demonstration in the harbor and an immense parade followed.

The American Cup defender, Columbia, defeated Sir Thomas Lipton’s Shamrock I. off New York harbor in the international yacht races October 20.

Vice-President Hobart died at Paterson, N. J., November 21. He was born in 1844.

World interest at the opening of the year 1900 was centered in the heroic struggle of the Boers, who in the rapid campaigns of November and December, 1899, had won several notable victories over the British forces and had Mafeking, Ladysmith and Kimberley beleaguered. The tide of war swept the soldiers of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State irresistibly along. It was in the dark days of England’s plight, that orders were issued from London to recall General Buller, and Lord Roberts was selected to take charge of the South African armies.

Roberts arrived at Cape Town, January 10. In a few weeks all was in readiness for the advance and the tide had turned. General French’s dash relieved Kimberley February 15, and Cronje was driven back at Modder drift the same day. The intrepid Boer leader with his 4,000 men intrenched himself at Paardeberg on the Modder River, but was forced to capitulate on February 27. This was a severe blow to the republican forces.

The onward march of Roberts continued, Bloemfontein, the capital of the Orange Free State, being entered March 13. On March 28, the siege of Ladysmith was raised. June 5, Pretoria was entered and then began the guerrilla warfare which continued throughout the year. In October Kruger fled from South Africa, landing in France November 22.

Next in importance to the Boer war was the Boxer uprising in China, which horrified the entire civilized world by its atrocities. Beginning in March and April reports began to come from China telling of hordes of fanatics, who were threatening the lives and property of missionaries. The real state of affairs was not realized until in May, when the Boxers grew so strong they overawed the government, and on May 28, they seized Peking, the capital. Then the world stood aghast, but it was too late to save the lives of thousands of Christian Chinese.

Threats from Europe failed to accomplish the all-important object and when, on June 16, Baron von Ketteler, the German minister to China, was murdered, armed forces were rushed to China. After weeks of desultory fighting, in which several hundred of the allied forces were killed, the international relief column entered Peking, August 15. Minister Conger was alive, he along with many other whites having fortified the British legation, where the attacks of the armed rabble and Boxers were repulsed.

The European powers took possession of the Chinese government and each demanded a heavy indemnity for the losses sustained. It was through the intervention of President McKinley and Secretary Hay, that the Chinese were enabled to make satisfactory terms with the other nations which had troops in China. The “open door” policy, by which commercial rights were accorded all nations at the ports of China, was a victory for the United States. At the end of the year the allies were in possession of Peking, while the Emperor and Dowager Empress were in the interior. There was no fighting of any consequence after August.

In the Philippines, the insurgents were gradually falling back before the advance of the American forces. Aguinaldo retreated to the mountains and his followers were in great part dispersed. Here and there would be found a small armed band, but the skirmishes invariably resulted in American victories.

The result of the gubernatorial election in Kentucky, in 1899, was long in doubt and both Democrats and Republicans attempted to seize the State government. Excitement was intense when, on January 30, William Goebel, the Democratic aspirant, was shot and fatally wounded. He died February 3. Governor Taylor, the Republican incumbent, was indicted as an accessory to the crime. For a time serious trouble was feared, but the courts were allowed to settle the claim and civil war was averted.

February 5, the Hay-Pauncefote treaty was signed, amending the Clayton-Bulwer treaty. The chief feature of the old treaty was the agreement that any canal joining the Atlantic and Pacific would be jointly controlled. America is now free to build and control an isthmian canal.

A fire at Ottawa, Canada, swept several square miles of area April 26, rendering 1,500 persons homeless and destroying $15,000,000 worth of property.

May 28, a total eclipse of the sun was visible in most of the Southern States, and several good photographs of the heavenly bodies obtained.

McKinley and Roosevelt were nominated at Philadelphia, June 21.

Three hundred lives were lost and $10,000,000 worth of property destroyed in a fire which started in the North German Lloyd piers at New York and communicated to the ocean liners Saale, Bremen and Main.

July 5, Bryan and Stevenson were nominated at the Kansas City convention.

King Humbert of Italy was assassinated by an anarchist from Paterson, N. J., named Bresci, July 30.

A hurricane swept the gulf states on the night of September 8, reaching the proportions of a tidal wave at Galveston. A large portion of the city was wrecked, 6,000 lives lost, and property worth $12,000,000 destroyed. The havoc created by the waters has no parallel in American annals, with the possible exception of the Johnstown disaster.

John Sherman, of Ohio, Senator, Secretary of Treasury, and Secretary of State, died at Washington, October 21. He was one of the Republican leaders for many years.

November 6, the national election resulted in the re-election of President McKinley by a large majority.

Conditions in South Africa, remained practically unchanged during the fall of 1900, and the spring of 1901. The Boers refused to surrender and harassed the British whenever possible. England formally annexed both the Transvaal and the Orange Free State, but the encouragement of the continental powers of Europe induced the Boers to continue the struggle. President Kruger made his home in Holland. Mrs. Kruger died at Pretoria, where she remained when her husband left for Europe.

England’s gloom was intensified when, in January, it was announced that the health of the aged Queen Victoria was rapidly failing. She died January 22, and the Prince of Wales was proclaimed King Edward VII. The coronation will take place in 1902.

McKinley and Roosevelt were inaugurated March 4.

Former President Benjamin Harrison died at his Indianapolis home, March 13. After his term as President, he resumed the practice of law and appeared in some of the most important international cases of recent years.

The rebellion in the Philippines, which had lost its effectiveness in 1900, received another blow when, on March 23, General Funston, with a few companions, captured Aguinaldo. The Americans were accompanied by a band of Filipinos. The natives announced that they had taken the Americans prisoners, and were taking them to Aguinaldo. By this ruse his hiding place was discovered. Aguinaldo took the oath of allegiance to the United States and was given a residence in Manila, where he is under surveillance.

In industrial circles, the most momentous event of the year was the incorporation of the billion dollar steel trust, by J. Pierpont Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, and others, April 1. The consolidation of the various interests lead to a strike by the Amalgamated Association of Steel, Iron and Tin Workers, June 30, under the leadership of Theodore Shaffer, of Pittsburg. The strike was not well organized and many of the men refused to obey the orders to walk out.

President and Mrs. McKinley left Washington on an extended tour, April 29. They travelled through the South, along the Mexican border and through Southern California, reaching San Francisco May 12. Here Mrs. McKinley was taken seriously ill. The tour was announced at an end. After a week of rest Mrs. McKinley was able to return to Washington by easy stages.

May 28, Cuba voted to accept the Platt amendment to the Constitution.

During the first few days of July an oppressively hot wave swept over the country, hundreds dying from the heat. In New York the suffering was pathetic. Following this wave came a period of drouth, which extended over the entire country doing inestimable damage to crops. In some districts rain did not fall for two months, and vegetation all perished. Prices of produce rose rapidly, but copious rains in August and September saved many of the late crops.

Dowager Empress Frederick, mother of Emperor Wilhelm of Germany, died at Berlin in August. She had been living in practical retirement since the death of her husband, Emperor Frederick, in 1888. She was the oldest child of Queen Victoria.

After years of negotiations, the United States and Denmark arranged satisfactory terms, September 2, and the Danish West Indies, three small islands near Porto Rico, will be transferred to this country. The chief object in acquiring these islands was to get possession of the port of St. Thomas, one of the best in the West Indies. The islands are St. Thomas, St. John and St. Croix. The price paid is a little over $4,000,000.

September 2, President and Mrs. McKinley started for the Pan-American Exposition, where the President had arranged to deliver an address on President’s Day, September 5. The address was a notable one, as it outlined McKinley’s national policy for the coming years. Within 24 hours of the deliverance of the famous speech, the President was shot down by the assassin.

CHAPTER XXX.
THE FUNERAL SERVICE AT BUFFALO.

The first funeral service over the remains of President McKinley was held at the Milburn house in Buffalo, Sunday, September 15, at 11 o’clock.

At the house only the President’s wife, his relatives, his personal friends, and his official family were gathered for their last farewell. It was simply the funeral of William McKinley, the man.

Grief is too weak a word for what Mrs. McKinley suffered. It was not merely the loss of one dear to her. It was the loss of all there was in the world, the one strong arm on which for years she has leaned for support, almost as a child leans upon its mother.

There is a story of unwavering patience and devotion in that part of the late President’s life which only has been touched upon, much as has been said about it, and which even those who knew most of its details can hardly grasp, in the all but unparalleled depth of love that it involves.

Even in their own sorrow the thoughts of all who were gathered about the dead President’s bier in the room below were going out in pity to her whose desolation was so utter, so far beyond all hope.

The extremity of pathos was reached when, before the ceremony, Mrs. McKinley, the poor, grief-crushed widow, had been led into the chamber by her physician, Dr. Rixey, and had sat awhile alone with him who had supported and comforted her through all their years of wedded life.

Her support was gone, but she had not broken down. Dry-eyed, she gazed upon him. She fondled his face. She did not seem to realize he was dead.

Then she was led away to the head of the stairs, where she could hear the services.

The extremity of impressiveness followed when the new President stood beside the casket steeling himself for a look into the face of the dead.

The tension in the room was great. Every one seemed to be waiting. The minister of the gospel stood with the holy book in his hand ready to begin.

Perhaps it might have been sixty seconds. It seemed longer. Then the President turned and advanced one step. He bowed his head and looked. Long he gazed, standing immovable, save for a twitching of the muscles of the chin. At last he stepped back. Tears were in President Roosevelt’s eyes as he went to the chair reserved for him.

Another dramatic scene came when the service was over and the Rev. Mr. Locke had pronounced the benediction. Before any one had moved, and while there was the same perfect stillness, Senator Hanna, who had not before found courage to look upon the dead face of his friend, stepped out from where he had been standing behind Governor Odell. It was his last chance to see the features of President McKinley. There was a look on his face that told more than sobs would have done. It was the look of a man whose grief was pent up within him.

The Senator had quite a few steps to take to get to the head of the casket. When he got to the head of the bier, by President Roosevelt, he stood with his head resting on his breast and his hands clasped behind his back, looking down on the face of his friend. He stood there possibly a minute, but to every one it seemed more like five. No one stirred while he stood. The scene was beyond expression.

As the Senator turned his head around those in the room saw his face, and there were tears trickling down it. One of the Cabinet members put out his arm and the Senator instinctively seemed to follow it. He went between Senator Long and Attorney-General Knox and sat down in a chair near the wall; then he bowed his head.

To most of those present at the services at the Milburn house, the dead President had been friend and comrade, a relationship beside which that of President seemed for the moment to sink into insignificance. It was as his friends that they heard the two hymns sung and the passage from the Bible read.

It was so impressive that the people who were there stood silent, with something tugging at their throats and making sobs impossible. There were no sobs heard, and yet there were those there who had known the dead President all his life. Many eyes were filled with tears, but they were shed softly. While the services proceeded there was no audible sound of grief.

But in the faces of every one, from President and the Cabinet Ministers down to soldier and servant, grief of the deepest kind was written too plainly to be mistaken, and the tears stole silently down the furrows in the faces of gray-haired friends who had known intimately the man whose funeral it was.

The service at the Milburn house began a few minutes after 11 o’clock and it was over in about fifteen minutes.

The entire military and naval force formed in company front near the house and there awaited the time for the services to begin.

Meantime the members of the Cabinet, officials high in the government service, and near friends of the martyred President began to fill the walks leading up to the entrance of the Milburn residence. They came separately and in groups, some walking, while those in carriages were admitted within the roped enclosure up to the curb.

Two and two, a long line of men of dignified bearing marched up to see the house—the foreign commissioners sent to the exposition, and after them the State commissioners. With the foreigners was a colonel of the Mexican army in his full uniform of black with scarlet stripes and peaked gold braided cap. The other members of the Cabinet in the city, Secretary Long, Attorney-General Knox, Postmaster General Smith, the close confidants and friends of the late chief, Senator Hanna, Judge Day, Governors Odell, Yates, and Gregory, Representatives Alexander and Ryan, Major-General Brooke, E. H. Butler, H. H. Kohlsaat, and many others were present.

It was just eight minutes before the opening of the service when a covered barouche drove up to the house, bringing President Roosevelt and Mr. and Mrs. Wilcox, at whose home he is a guest. The President looked grave as he alighted and turned to assist Mrs. Wilcox from the carriage. His face did not relax into a smile to the salutation of those nearest the carriage, but he acknowledged the greetings silently and with an inclination of the head. Word passed up the well filled walk that the President had arrived, and those waiting to gain entrance fell back, making a narrow lane, through which Mr. Roosevelt passed along to the house.

Outside the house there was a half hour of silence and waiting. Within the house of death was woe unspeakable.

In the drawing-room, to the right of the hall, as President Roosevelt entered, the dead chieftain was stretched upon his bier. His head was to the rising sun. On his face was written the story of the Christian forbearance with which he had met his martyrdom. Only the thinness of his face bore mute testimony to the patient suffering he had endured.

The dead President was dressed as he always was in life. The black frock coat was buttoned across the breast where the first bullet of the assassin had struck. The black string tie below the standing collar showed the little triangle of white shirt front. The right hand lay at his side. The left was across his body. He looked as millions of his countrymen have seen him.

The body lay in a black casket on a black bearskin rug. Over the lower limbs was hung the starry banner he had loved so well. The flowers were few, as befitted the simple nature of the man. A spray of white chrysanthemums, a flaming bunch of blood red American Beauty roses, and a magnificent bunch of violets were on the casket. That was all. Behind the head, against a pier mirror, between the two curtained windows, rested two superb wreaths of white asters and roses. These were the only flowers in the room.

Two sentries, one from the sea and one from the land, guarded the remains. They stood in the window embrasures behind the head of the casket. The one on the north was a sergeant of infantry. In the other window was the sailor, garbed in the loose blue blouse of the navy.

The family had taken leave of their loved one before the others arrived. Mrs. Hobart, widow of the Vice-President during Mr. McKinley’s first term; Mrs. Lafayette McWilliams of Chicago, Miss Barber, Miss Mary Barber, and Dr. Rixey remained with Mrs. McKinley during the services.

The other members of the family—Mr. and Mrs. Abner McKinley, Miss Helen McKinley, Mrs. Duncan, Miss Duncan, Mr. and Mrs. Barber, and Dr. and Mrs. Baer—had withdrawn into the library to the north of the drawing-room, in which the casket lay, and here also gathered other friends when the service was held.

The friends and public associates of the dead President all had opportunity to view the remains before the service began. The members of the Cabinet had taken their leave before the others arrived. They remained seated beside their dead chief while the sad procession viewed the body. They were on the north side of it. A place directly at the head had been reserved for President Roosevelt. Secretary Root sat alongside this empty chair. Then came Attorney-General Knox, Secretary Long, Secretary Hitchcock, Secretary Wilson, and Postmaster-General Smith, in the order named.

Senator Hanna entered the room at this time, but did not approach the casket. His face was set like an iron-willed man who would not let down the barriers of his grief. The Senator spoke to no one. His eyes were vacant. He passed through the throng and seated himself behind Governor Odell, sinking far down into his chair and resting his head upon his hand. During all the service that followed he did not stir.

Just before 11 o’clock President Roosevelt entered, coming into the room from the rear through the library. After passing into the hall he had made his way around through the sitting-room behind into the library. There was an instantaneous movement in the room as the President appeared. The procession was still passing from the south side, around the head of the casket and back between it and the members of the Cabinet seated at its side.

Every one rose and all eyes were turned toward the President. He moved forward again with the tide of the procession to his place at the head of the line of Cabinet officers. He held himself erect, his left hand carrying his silk hat. Those who were coming toward him fell back on either side to let him pass. He paused once or twice to shake hands silently, but there was no smile to accompany his greetings. He, too, like the man deep down in his seat against the wall, who had forgotten to rise when the President of the United States entered, seemed to be restraining a great grief.

When President Roosevelt reached the head of the line of Cabinet officers he kept his face away from the casket. The infantryman guarding the dead stood before him rigid as a statue. Although the Commander-in-Chief approached until he could have touched him, the soldier did not salute. The President spoke to Secretary Root, or perhaps it would be more precise to say that the latter spoke to him.

Colonel Bingham, the aid to the President, standing ten feet below the foot of the casket at the side of the loyal Cortelyou, glanced in the direction of the Rev. Charles Edward Locke of the Delaware Avenue Methodist Episcopal Church, who was to conduct the service.

The pastor was at the door leading into the hall, a station whence his words could be heard at the head of the stairs. The signal was given and there welled out from the hall the beautiful words of “Lead, Kindly Light,” sung by a quartet. It was one of President McKinley’s favorite hymns. Every one within sound of the music knew it and half of those in the room put their faces in their hands to hide their tears. Controller Dawes leaned against a bookcase and wept. President Roosevelt seemed to be swaying to and fro as if his footing were insecure.

When the singing ended the clergyman read from the fifteenth chapter of the First Corinthians. All had risen as he began and remained standing through the remainder of the service. Again the voices rose with the words of “Nearer, My God, to Thee,” the words President McKinley had repeated at intervals of consciousness during the day of agony before he died. As the music died away the pastor spoke again.

“Let us pray,” he said, and every head fell upon its breast. He began his invocation with a stanza from a hymn sung in the Methodist Church. His prayer was as follows:

“O, God, our help in ages past,

Our hope for years to come,

Our shelter from the stormy blast

And our eternal home.

“We, thy servants, humbly beseech thee for manifestations of thy favor as we come into thy presence. We laud and magnify thy holy name and praise thee for all thy goodness. Be merciful unto us and bless us, as, stricken with overwhelming sorrow, we come to thee. Forgive us for our doubts and fears and faltering faith; pardon all our sins and shortcomings and help us to say, ‘Thy will be done.’

“In this dark night of grief abide with us till the dawning. Speak to our troubled souls, O God, and give to us in this hour of unutterable grief the peace and quiet which thy presence only can afford. We thank thee that thou answerest the sobbing sigh of the heart, and dost assure us that if a man die he shall live again. We praise thee for Jesus Christ, thy Son, our Savior and elder brother; that he came ‘to bring life and immortality to light,’ and because he lives we shall live also. We thank thee that death is victory, that ‘to die is gain.’

“Have mercy upon us in this dispensation of thy providence. We believe in thee, we trust thee, our God of love—‘the same yesterday, to-day, and forever.’ We thank thee for the unsullied life of thy servant, our martyred President, whom thou hast taken to his coronation, and we pray for the final triumph of all the divine principles of pure character and free government for which he stood while he lived and which were baptized by his blood in his death.

“Hear our prayer for blessings of consolation upon all those who were associated with him in the administration of the affairs of the government; especially vouchsafe thy presence to thy servant who has been suddenly called to assume the holy responsibility of our Chief Magistrate.

“O God, bless our dear nation, and guide the ship of State through stormy seas; help thy people to be brave to fight the battles of the Lord and wise to solve all the problems of freedom.

“Graciously hear us for comforting blessings to rest upon the family circle of our departed friend. Tenderly sustain thine handmaiden upon whom the blow of this sorrow most heavily falls. Accompany her, O God, as thou hast promised, through this dark valley and shadow, and may she fear no evil because thou art with her.

“All these things we ask in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord, who has taught us when we pray to say, ‘Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come; thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.’

“May the grace of our Lord, Jesus Christ, the love of God the Father, and communion of the Holy Spirit be with us all evermore. Amen.”

All present joined in the Lord’s prayer as the minister repeated it, President Roosevelt’s voice being audible at the back of the room.

The service concluded with a simple benediction.

GENERALS MILES, SHAFTER AND OTIS ENTERING THE MCKINLEY RESIDENCE AT CANTON.

THE LAST RETURN TO HIS OLD HOME. TAKING THE CASKET OUT OF THE CAR WINDOW AT CANTON.

CHAPTER XXXI.
LYING IN STATE IN BUFFALO.

The funeral services of William McKinley, the man, took place in the Milburn house in Buffalo, Sunday morning, September 15. The funeral of William McKinley, the President, commenced the next afternoon in the official residence of the city where he died.

At the city hall in Buffalo everything was as he, who never denied the people’s desire to meet him face to face, and who paid with his life for the self-sacrifice, would have had it. From noon into another day, the reverent thousands upon thousands flowed past his bier, taking a last look on the face they so loved for what it meant to them and their country.

The funeral cortege left the house of President Milburn of the exposition at 11:45 o’clock. Slowly and solemnly, in time to the funeral march, it moved between two huge masses of men, women and children, stretching away two miles and a half to the city hall. Nearly two hours were required to traverse the distance.

Fully 50,000 people saw it pass. They were packed into windows, perched on roofs, massed on verandas, and compressed into solid masses covering the broad sidewalks and grass plots. Most of them stood bareheaded as it passed. Young and old, the strong and the age-bent and the lame faced it with hats in hand, unmindful of wind and rain.

All eyes were on the hearse. President Roosevelt, who rode first in the line, might have claimed some attention for the living if he would. Instead he shrank back in his carriage out of sight. The day belonged to him who had gone, and the new President would have it so.

The Sixty-fifth Regiment New York National Guard band led the line. Behind it were the military escort and a full battalion of soldiers made up of national guardsmen, United States infantry, United States artillery and United States marines. Then came the carriage of President Roosevelt and members of the Cabinet, preceding the hearse. Behind came the line of carriages of friends and associates of the dead President.

The waiting cadences of Chopin’s funeral march rose and fell. In the tear-starting productions of that music-famed Pole, the overflowing heart of a nation, mourning the foul work of another Pole, found bitterest expression. The liquid tones of bells attuned came up from the southward to mellow Chopin’s funeral cry with a note of hope.

While the military band poured out music the chimes in the belfry of old St. Paul’s Cathedral reverently rendered “Abide With Me,” “Nearer, My God, to Thee,” and then “America.”

All night decorators had been at work preparing the city hall. Funeral bunting was draped inside and outside. During the storm of the early morning the exterior decorations were torn down, and some of the bunting became entangled in the machinery of the great clock on the tower. It stopped with the hands pointed to a quarter past two, the hour at which the President had breathed his last on the preceding night.

A block away ropes had been stretched across the streets leading to the city hall, and behind these the crowd was massed in thousands. Its mere weight pushed the ropes out of place, and the police were constantly overpowered in trying to hold the crowd in line against the patient multitude which neither threat of rain nor the storm itself could disturb.

The head of the funeral line reached the city hall a few minutes after noon. The military escort marched down past the main entrance, wheeled into line and came to “present arms” at the moment the storm which had been threatening broke. Rain fell in torrents and belated thunder peals mingled detonations through it.

The carriages carrying President Roosevelt and the Cabinet members rolled up and were discharged. Then the hearse came, and four sergeants of the United States army and four quartermasters from the naval detachment lifted the casket on their shoulders and bore it within, while the band played “Nearer, My God, to Thee.”

Directly above the spot where the coffin was to lie there was a dome of black bunting, within which hung straight down above the coffin four American flags, forming with their lower edges a cross which pointed to the four points of the compass.

President Roosevelt and the Cabinet ranged themselves about the spot where the body was to rest. Mr. Roosevelt stood at the foot of the coffin on its right hand, with Secretary Root opposite and facing him. On President Roosevelt’s left were Attorney-General Knox, Secretary Long and Secretary Wilson. On Mr. Root’s right hand were Postmaster-General Smith, Secretary Hitchcock and Mr. Cortelyou, the President’s private secretary.

The casket’s upper half was open. The lower half was draped in a flag upon which were masses of red and white roses. The body of the President lay on its back and was clad in a black frock coat, with the left hand resting across the breast. One glance at the face, startlingly changed from its appearance in life, told the story of the suffering which had been endured before death came.

Not a word was said. As soon as the coffin had been arranged, President Roosevelt and Mr. Root, followed by the other secretaries, led the way past the coffin on either side, each glancing for a moment at the dead face. They then passed quickly out of the western entrance. Behind them came Senator Hanna, Senator Fairbanks and about one hundred more men and women who had been waiting in the city hall or who had accompanied the body from the Milburn residence.

President Roosevelt and those who immediately followed him had passed out of the building at eighteen minutes after one o’clock, and there was a slight delay while the guard was posted. At the head of the coffin stood Sergeant Galway of the Seventy-fourth Infantry Regiment of the regular army. Chief Master at Arms Luze of the Indiana stood facing him at the foot with his drawn cutlass at his shoulder. On the south, facing the coffin, stood Sergeant Gunther of the Fourteenth Regiment, and Coburn, a sailor from the Indiana, stood facing him on the north.

The lines approached the eastern entrance from Eagle street on the north and Church street on the south. They were formed by the police, two abreast, and approached the hall in a wide sweeping curve of humanity, which was drawn in constantly at the entrance of the building where the currents joined. Between files of police the stream from the north passed by on the north side of the coffin, while the southern stream flowed by on the south. Both passed quickly out at the western entrance and down the steps, dispersing in various directions.

Nothing was heard in the building but the tread of feet on the marble floor as the crowd passed through without stopping at the rate of about one hundred and sixty a minute. Each individual had time only for a hasty glance as he was urged forward by the police and by those who followed. The plan was so arranged that four persons could pass the coffin, two abreast on each side, at the same moment.

As the afternoon wore on and the lines grew longer at their source, much faster than they were melting away at the hall, the police found it necessary to urge greater haste in order that as many as possible might be admitted.

“Move right along; move right along, now; step lively, please; hurry up; move right up, now,” they repeated over and over, at the same time urging the crowd forward with their hands. In spite of their efforts, which necessarily marred to some extent the solemnity of the scene, the crowds outside continued to increase.

The great majority of the crowd was made up of what political orators call the “common people.” It was noticed that there were many workingmen in the lines, and apparently they were not the least sincere of the mourners. A workingman and his wife and children were the first to see the face of the departed President when the lines commenced to move.

Nothing could more clearly show the hold which William McKinley had on the hearts of the great mass of the people. While he lived they gave him their votes. Dead, they did their all to testify the regard in which they held him. Accustomed to rising early six days in the week, they rose early again on this seventh and took possession of the streets. From breakfast time until afternoon they held their places.

The first woman seen to shed a tear was clad in rusty brown. Her garb, neat and well brushed though it was, and the knotted finger with which she clasped a faded shawl, told of life by hard work. She looked once on the dead face and burst into tears.

Men and women struggled along for hours through the press in stolid patience to press kisses upon the cold glass. Little children were led past weeping as if they had lost a father. G. A. R. men marched by, lifting their hands to their hats in a last military salute to “the major” and the President, who was to them also “commander.”

Not by any means all who passed were born under the flag they now call theirs. From the East Side came troops of Poles, denouncing the act of Czolgosz, their countryman in blood. Italians came in troops, their women uncovering shawled heads and dropping tears for the man whose language they probably could not speak. And before and behind throughout the constant stream was the American workingman, bearing himself as if he realized the loss of his best friend.

Among the foremost to reach the coffin was a slender man, poorly dressed, with iron-gray hair and mustache. The little G. A. R. copper button was in his coat lapel. Beside the coffin he leaned over and made a menacing gesture with his hand:

“Curse the man that shot you!” he said.

The police urged him forward, and he went out shaking his head and muttering against the anarchists.

Many men and women brought with them young children, whom they raised in their arms to see and perhaps remember in after life the face of the President. A tattered and grimy bootblack, with his box slung over his shoulder, leading by the hand his sister, smaller but no less grimy than he, filed by, walking on tiptoe to see.

The Indians came in the late afternoon, fifty chiefs from the Pan-American Indian congress, with squaws and papooses. Geronimo, Blue Horse, Flat Iron, Little Wound and Red Shirt led them. Each red man, little or high, carried a white carnation in his hand, which he laid reverently upon the coffin of the “Great Father.” Two chubby little Indian girls forgot, and went on, each clasping her flower in a little brown hand.

The storm came again after two o’clock, and with renewed fury. The rain fell in torrents, and was driven by the wind in sheets like small cataracts. But the lines and masses of people waiting for a chance to see their President for a last time never wavered. About half carried umbrellas. They served no purpose except to further drench those who had none, until the wind caught them, turned them inside out and whirled them into the gutters. Hats, women’s as well as men’s, followed.

By this time the waiting crowds had reached the most cosmopolitan stage. Silk-hatted men and women in automobile coats waited in line with mechanics and women from the factories and stores. All were drenched, and all seemed alike indifferent.

They came through the city hall rotunda with water streaming from their garments, until pools and rivers formed on the marble floor. Great baskets of sawdust had to be brought in and spread to absorb it lest people should fall on the slippery floors.

The officials of the exposition and the representatives of foreign governments commissioned to attend the exposition with exhibits from other countries were in the lines. Soldiers of the regular army, in their blue cape coats, went by, and also policemen off duty, holding their helmets in their hands. National guardsmen with khaki gaiters; colored men, among them James Parker, who figured in the capture of Czolgosz; little girls in their Sunday dresses, with their braided hair over their shoulders; young men, husbands and wives, mothers with their sons or daughters, went by in the never-ending stream.

Many flowers were sent to the house and others were sent to the city hall. Among them was a large wreath of purple asters, with a card on which was written:

“Farewell of Chief Geronimo, Blue Horse, Flat Iron and Red Shirt and the 700 braves of the Indian congress. Like Lincoln and Garfield, President McKinley never abused authority except on the side of mercy. The martyred Great White Chief will stand in memory next to the Savior of mankind. We loved him living, we love him still.”

On the other side of the card was the following:

“Geronimo’s eulogy. The rainbow of hope is out of the sky. Heavy clouds hang about us. Tears wet the ground of the tepees. The chief of the nation is dead. Farewell.”

Flowers were received at the hall also from Helen Miller Gould Tent No. 8, Daughters of Veterans; from the commissioners of Chile to the exposition; from Manuel de Aspiroz, the Mexican Ambassador to the United States, and his family; from the Cuban commissioners to the exposition; from the Mexican commissioners, and from General Porfirio Diaz, President of Mexico.

Monotonously the streams of people flowed past the coffin while twilight fell and darkness gathered. The interior of the city hall was illuminated by electricity, and the streets in the vicinity were brightly lighted. Toward sunset the sky cleared, and there was an immediate increase in the already enormous crowds.

The endurance of the people finally gave out at 11 o’clock at night. At that time practically everybody who sought the opportunity had seen the dead President and the doors were closed. The military guard detailed by order of General Brooke was left in charge of the body.

A death mask of the President’s face was made by Eduard L. A. Pausch of Hartford, Conn. Pausch has modeled the features of many of the distinguished men who have died in this country in recent years. The mask is a faithful reproduction of the late President McKinley’s features.

CHAPTER XXXII.
THE FUNERAL TRAIN TO WASHINGTON.

From the scene of President McKinley’s assassination to the Capital of the nation the hearse of the murdered President made its way. Through almost half a thousand miles, past a hundred towns that had been blessed through his services, between two lines of mourners that massed in unnumbered throngs all the way from Buffalo to Washington, the hurrying train proceeded, anguished mourners within the cars, loving and sorrow-stricken friends without.

President McKinley had left Washington, September 6, 1901, in the full tide of life, in the full flush of hope and power. His cold body, with life extinct, started on the return Monday, September 16, housed in the mournful trappings of woe.

From 7 o’clock in the morning to 8 o’clock at night the solemn progress continued. In the flush of the September dawn the nation’s dead was hurried out of the city, which, waving a sad farewell with its one hand, clutched tight his murderer with the other. The roar of mad Niagara sank to a growl of thirsty vengeance reserved for the wretch that remained, and the mists rose up from the deeps of the dead, and bent in gentle majesty to the south as the echo of departing wheels wore away.

Never was such a funeral procession. Never before was a death so causeless, a chief so beloved so pitilessly laid low, and never was humanity startled from universal peace with a grief so sad.

It was a curious journey for the five draped cars, with their engine banked in black. The half hundred attendants—the widow with her friends, the new President with his advisers, the guards and escort making up the visible government of the nation, hurrying from the threshold of woe to the vestibule of a new administration.

No other business occupied the road’s attention till this caravan of the dead should pass. Ahead of it ran a pilot engine, insuring against any possible accident. Behind it all business waited till it was far away.

Loving hearts devised new forms of testimony to the fallen chief, and gentle hands discharged the duties that the day imposed. Time and again the track was heaped for rods with all manner of flowers before the on-coming train. American Beauty roses were piled above the rails. Glowing asters and gleaming violets alternated with wild flowers and the vivid reds and yellows of autumn leaves. And the iron wheels that whirled the funeral party south cut through the banks of bloom and filled the air with perfume as fragrant as the nation’s love.

Schools were dismissed, and little groups of boys and girls stood in silent, puzzled wonder as the train rolled past. At every cross-road from dawn to dark were gathered farmers’ teams, with men and women, waiting to pay their silent, tearful tribute to the dead. At every town the flags were held at half-mast, and the streets were crowded with the masses of Americans sincere in their sympathy for the living, profoundly sorrowing for the dead.

There were traces of tears in every face. There were evidences of respect in every attitude. The bells of every village tolled while the flag-draped coffin went hurrying past.

Nothing more pathetic marked the whole procession than the homely badges of black and purple ribbon worn by men in the towns and little cities. There had been no time for the emblems of factory fashioning to reach them, and little rosettes composed by women’s hands dotted the bosoms of dresses and the lapels of coats.

Business was suspended. All interest in life was held in abeyance, for the nation’s dead was going by.

The one relief to this monotone of woe was furnished by lads in Pennsylvania, who took coins from their slender stores of saving, and laid them on the rails, rescuing them, flattened, when the train had passed. And they will preserve these among their treasures to the end of life.

Down the Susquehanna River the banks seemed lined with watchers, who had assembled for a view, the one tribute possible for them to pay. Upon the opposite side of the track a highway ran, and farmers’ homes, fronting it, were draped in mourning, and in their windows displayed the portraits of the President so foully slain, with flags and flowers wreathed into borders, and flashing their testimony of sorrow to those who accompanied the dead.

Shortly after leaving Buffalo Mrs. McKinley was persuaded to lie down, and she rested there undisturbed for hours, her friends watching her continually, and attentive to her every want. She was speechless, simply staring straight before her as if the meaning of this awful blow could not be comprehended. Toward noon she rose, and sat at a window, looking off at the fleeting panorama of hills and fields, and reverent friends who vainly yearned to lighten her sorrow. There were no tears until the train paused in the station at Harrisburg. The crowds had been very dense, and she became conscious that thousands peered intently into the coaches as they passed; so she moved away from the window and still sat silent. There was a moment’s wait in the station and then the iron arches of the roof rang with the swelling numbers of the song, “Nearer, My God, To Thee!” The Harrisburg Choral Society, 300 strong, had assembled at the farther wall; and the rolling tide of its melody filled the great structure. It came to the silent little woman in the second coach, so sadly, hopelessly alone; and she bowed her head and wept.

As the train pulled out the Choral Society took up the lines: “My Country, ’Tis of Thee;” and as the sorrowing guardians were hurried away ten thousand voices in the crowd outside the depot and along the streets evidently without prearrangement, joined in that, their funeral anthem:

“Our Father’s God, to Thee,

Author of Liberty,

To Thee we sing.

Long may our land be bright

With Freedom’s holy light—

Protect us with Thy might,

Great God, our King!”

Through its wavering melody sounded the note of a bugle. A trumpeter was sounding “Taps.”

President Roosevelt, his Cabinet and friends occupied the fourth car, and transacted such business as could not be postponed. Between them and Mrs. McKinley’s coach was a combination diner and buffet car; and there the new President went for luncheon at noon. The women who attended Mrs. McKinley brought refreshments to her, and urged her to eat; but she could not. The forward car, a “combination,” was occupied by the members of the escort party and a number of correspondents, while in the compartment immediately back of the engine such baggage as was necessary for the party’s immediate use was stored.

The last car on the train was an observation car, in the center of which the casket was placed. About it was grouped the sentinels from the army and the navy—whose guardian care was no longer needed; and beside it reposed masses of floral offerings. The car was so arranged that a view of the interior could be had by the crowds that were passed.

At Baltimore the train was reversed, the catafalque car being placed in front, while the others occupied their relative positions in the rear.

Darkness came shortly after the train left Baltimore, and the lights of farm houses in the country still revealed the waiting watchers—always standing, always uncovered, always mutely joining in the universal expression of grief.

Night enveloped the Capital City in its mighty pall as the funeral procession ended. The train pulled into the depot at 8:38. The run from Buffalo had been made in an average of thirty-five miles an hour. The President and his friends alighted. Mrs. McKinley was assisted to her carriage. The stalwart soldiers and sailors gently lifted the casket from its place in the car and carried it through a waiting, silent, tearful crowd, to the hearse at the gates, and it was driven slowly along the streets to the White House.

It was a sad home-coming. Just two weeks before President McKinley, full of life and crowned with all the honors that a successful career could earn, happy in the love of his people and the respect of the world, had gone to visit the Buffalo Exposition; to lend some measure of encouragement to that enterprise, and to see the marvels that had been there assembled. In the midst of them he had fallen. And here, at the end of a fortnight, in the darkness of an autumn night, in the silence of an inexpressible sorrow, his hearse was rolling dully along the avenue, and only the prayers and eulogies and lying in state separated all that was mortal of William McKinley from the unending rest of the grave.

CHAPTER XXXIII.
THE LAST NIGHT IN THE WHITE HOUSE.

Borne upon the shoulders of stalwart representatives of the army and navy, of which he had been Commander-in-Chief for more than four years, all that was mortal of William McKinley, late President of the United States, was returned to the capital of the nation.

As President McKinley left the White House the morning of July 5 for a vacation trip to his home at Canton, O., some of the attachés of the Executive Mansion assembled on the portico to bid him a fond farewell and express their hope for a pleasant trip.

“Take good care of yourselves, boys, until I come back in the fall,” was the President’s response as he entered his waiting carriage and was driven to the railroad station to take the train for home. These were the last words ever uttered by William McKinley in the shadow of the big white mansion which had been his official residence since March 4, 1897.

He came back in the fall, as he had promised he would, not in the flush of manhood, buoyant in spirits and recuperated from the arduous duties of his official position, but in a narrow, black-cloth-covered casket, around which were draped the colors he had fought to defend when in his teens, and which in maturer years he had seen floating victoriously in every quarter of the globe.

Following his bier as chief mourner came his successor to the Presidency, Theodore Roosevelt, accompanied by the members of his official family and thousands of his countrymen, who mourned in silence his untimely end.

Never before in the history of the capital of this nation has such a scene been witnessed as that presented along the magnificent boulevard known as Pennsylvania avenue. Although it was well-nigh impossible to distinguish anything perfectly in the gloom of the night, mothers brought their children in arms, and stood patiently watching until the cavalcade passed up the avenue and was finally hidden from view in the grounds surrounding the Executive Mansion.

It was a distinguished party which awaited at the Pennsylvania railroad station the home-coming of William McKinley.

Among the first arrivals at the railroad station were Secretary of State Hay and Secretary Gage of the Treasury department. Both wore upon their high silk hats mourning bands for members of their own families—the Secretary of State for a son and the Secretary of the Treasury for a wife who was one of the most notable figures of the administration now closed.

While waiting the arrival of the funeral train a passenger train pulled into the station from the west, and among those who alighted and pushed his way through the crowd was Senator William E. Mason of Illinois, accompanied by his wife and little ones. As the Senator from Illinois passed through the crowd he was recognized, and amid the hum and buzz of conversation could be distinguished the words: “There goes Senator Mason.”

Meanwhile the crowd on the station platform was each second becoming augmented by the arrival of men distinguished in army and navy circles and the walks of civil life. Judson Lyons, Register of the United States Treasury, whose name adorns every bank note of the government, was conspicuous in the throng, not only on account of his towering height and figure but for his color as well, for the successor of General Rosecrans, formerly Register of the Treasury, is a negro.

Nodding plumes of yellow, red, and white, marking the different branches of the army, cavalry, artillery, and infantry, respectively, were conspicuous in the throng, while the gold laced and chapeaued naval officers present reminded the spectator of an army and navy reception night at the White House.

To add to this effect, there was Captain Charles McCauley of the Marine Corps and Captain J. C. Gilmore of the artillery, both of whom had been detailed at the Executive Mansion by President McKinley to assist him in receiving the public at the various receptions held during the gay season when in charge of the State, War, and Navy department here; Sergeant-at-Arms Ransdell of the United States Senate, the bosom friend and companion of the late President Harrison, who appointed him Marshal of the District of Columbia; Acting Secretary of War William Gary Sanger; Colonel Frank Denny, U. S. Marine Corps; Lieutenant Thomas Wood, President McFarland, and Commissioner John W. Ross of the District of Columbia; Chief Wilkie of the U. S. Secret Service; General George H. Harries and the members of the staff of the National Guard of the District of Columbia in full uniform.

Standing at attention in full dress uniform, with swords at their side, stood a dozen sergeants of the Signal Corps of the United States Army, under the command of Captain Charles McKay Saltzman. It was to be their solemn duty to act as body bearers for the President of the United States, relieving the sailors and soldiers who had performed this duty from Buffalo to the Capitol. These body bearers were George H. Kelly, Isaac Hamilton, Frank Gunnard, Harry T. Burlingame, Stephen Bledsoe, Eugene Lazar, Joseph H. Embleton, Harry S. Gribbelle, Charles G. Monroe, William H. Taylor, Thomas A. Davis, and James S. Holmes.

Not a loud word was uttered, and the scene about the station was of a most awe-inspiring and impressive nature as an engine draped with black came slowly puffing into the shed, and instantly all heads were bared. It was the engine drawing the funeral party, and a hush of expectancy pervaded the entire group gathered upon the platform to await its coming. Hardly had the driving wheels ceased to revolve before the body bearers were boarding the front car, which contained the casket and floral tributes, which almost concealed from view the earthly remains of William McKinley. Secretaries Hay and Gage led a mournful procession to the rear car of the train, in which President Roosevelt and the members of the Cabinet were seated.

In deference to the wishes of Mrs. McKinley, the family, and immediate relatives of the President, a passageway was opened for them at the lower end of the platform in order that they might evade the gaze of a curious crowd. Carriages were drawn up awaiting the arrival of the train, and, assisted by Colonel Bingham and Dr. Rixey, Mrs. McKinley was led to a victoria and driven to the White House. She seemed to be bearing up remarkably well under the strain to which she has been subjected, although the lines under her eyes and the haggard expression of the features showed it was only by the greatest exertion of will power that she was being restrained from a collapse.

Abner McKinley and his family occupied the next two carriages, and Mrs. Baer, formerly Miss Mabel McKinley, and her husband, were assigned a carriage to themselves. Mrs. Baer was attired in deep mourning, and it was with difficulty, even with the aid of her crutches, that she could sustain herself sufficiently to traverse the short distance from the train to her carriage.

While this scene was in the focus the members of the Cabinet and guard of honor, composed of army and navy officers, were escorting President Roosevelt from his car to his position in the carriage just behind the hearse which was to convey the body of his predecessor to the executive mansion. Close beside the President walked big George Foster, the secret service agent, who had accompanied President McKinley on nearly all of his trips.

General John R. Brooke walked beside the President on the left, and immediately behind came Secretaries Gage and Hay, walking arm in arm. Five special detectives kept guard over this quartet—Sergeants Clark and Foy of New York, Detective Carroll of Newark, N. J., and Detectives Helan and McNamee of Washington.

These detectives had instructions not to let the President out of their sight until he was safely ensconced in his house, the residence of his brother-in-law, Paymaster W. S. Cowles of the United States Navy, in the fashionable part of Washington. As soon as the President entered his carriage with General Brooke the detectives closed around it and permitted no one to come within twenty feet of its occupant.

Prior to the President entering his carriage there was a delay for a few minutes at the entrance to the baggage-room to permit the remains of President McKinley to be borne through the crowd and placed in the hearse awaiting them. This sable equipage was drawn by six black horses, each animal covered with a heavy black netting, and each horse led by a negro groom in regulation funeral dress.

There was a shuffling of feet as the crowd of distinguished men in attendance upon the President followed his footsteps, which led towards waiting carriages and, surrounded by clattering cavalry and fully equipped infantry, President Roosevelt and the escort left the railroad station and started up Pennsylvania avenue through the lanes of people, who occupied every available inch of room from the curbstone to the building line of the houses against which they pressed.

It was a weird but solemn spectacle that greeted the vision of President Roosevelt and his escort as they rode through the silent streets of the capital to make preparation for the funeral services to be held in the Capitol Building next day. Men, women, and children peered into the darkness in a vain endeavor to ascertain who were the occupants of the carriages, but in this they were disappointed, for darkness threw a veil over the scene from one end of the route to the other.

All that could be seen was the gleam of sabers as the cavalry clattered up the avenue and the gleam of a musket barrel and the glitter of gold lace when an electric light or a gas jet threw some gleams of radiance upon them.

Not a word was uttered during that solemn drive, and Theodore Roosevelt, twenty-sixth President of the United States, was not even visible as he came to take the position which had been filled so ably and efficiently by William McKinley.

It was a different inauguration procession from that in which President Roosevelt participated last March, for while on that occasion there was glad acclaim and exulting shouts of gratified patriots, on this occasion there was silence, somberness, and gloom, painful in its intensity.

And thus Theodore Roosevelt entered the Capitol of the nation to become the first citizen of the greatest republic on earth.

In the east room at the White House, where President McKinley so often was the central figure of noble gatherings, his mortal remains were placed. It was his last night in the place he had made his home for four and one-half years.

Up-stairs the widow occupied the room where she underwent so much suffering and where she was nursed back to health by the devoted husband who now is lost to her for all time.

Except for the immediate family, the guards, and the servants, the executive mansion was deserted, the public retiring and leaving those nearest and dearest to the dead President alone with their grief.

Throughout the day workmen had been busy placing the great east room in condition for the reception of the body of the dead President. That immense room, in which President McKinley had participated in so many public functions, and had taken the hands of thousands of his countrymen, was transformed into a tomb for the time being, and all evidences of past festivities were removed.

It was in this same room that the remains of Lincoln, Garfield, Secretary of State Gresham, and other distinguished public servants rested before final interment. It was also in this magnificent apartment that Nellie Grant was married to Algernon Sartoris of England while her father was President.

As the shades of evening began to fall the guards around the White House were doubled. The gates were closed and policemen were stationed at the various entrances, with positive instructions to allow no one to pass except those on actual duty in an official capacity.

In the meantime the interior of the east room had been robbed of its barren appearance by the placing of a number of potted plants and palms around the room and in the recesses of the windows. In addition to the floral decorations from the Executive greenhouses the tributes from foreign and domestic officials converted the room into a beautiful and fragrant floral bower.

The display of floral tributes deposited in the east room was perhaps never equaled in the history of a public or private funeral in the United States. The predominating emblems were laurel wreaths, but they were so diversified in construction and ornamentation with colored flowers and ribbons that no two pieces were actually alike.

One of the most striking set pieces was an immense shield, appropriately inscribed, and profusely decorated with purple ribbon, from “The American Army in the Philippines.” This floral tribute was made up on an order by cable at a cost of over $500. Another striking piece was an immense floral pedestal, surmounted by a floral wreath, standing twelve feet high. This came from the Commissioner of Pensions and his associates in the Pension bureau. There were magnificent wreaths from Mrs. Garret A. Hobart, the wife of the late Vice-President, also one from the government of Costa Rica, one from the President of Costa Rica, Rafael Iglesias.

An immense laurel wreath, decorated with yellow, blue, and red ribbons, came from the Colombian Legation. There was also an immense wreath of orchids inscribed from the Municipality of Havana, Cuba.

And there, sleeping the dreamless sleep of death, beneath a wilderness of blossoms from the loving hands of his countrymen, William McKinley passed his last night in the White House.

CROWDS VIEWING THE REMAINS AT THE COURT HOUSE, CANTON.

TAKING THE CASKET INTO THE CHURCH AT CANTON.

CHAPTER XXXIV.
FUNERAL SERVICES AND PROCESSION AT WASHINGTON.

At 9 o’clock Tuesday morning, September 17, 1901, the funeral cortege of William McKinley, twenty-fifth President of the United States, third incumbent of the office to fall by an assassin’s hand, started from the White House toward the capitol. President Roosevelt, accompanied by his wife and sister, arrived half an hour earlier at the Executive Mansion, and were given seats in the big Red Room. Almost immediately after came former President Cleveland, with Daniel Lamont. Others, notable in the official and social life of the nation, quickly assembled, and the rooms and corridors were filled with a silent, sorrowful throng. Just before 9 o’clock Senator Hanna came into the room. He is visibly aged by the events of the past fortnight. His face seems drawn and pallid, his form is less erect, and all that vigorous, quickly deciding manner seems gone.

Precisely at the hour appointed the big men from the ranks of the Army and the Navy lifted the black casket of him who had been named “Our Well Beloved,” and carried for the last time through the doors and down to the waiting hearse. There was on the part of the thousands, both those of the party and the throngs outside, an instant recognition of the contrast between this departure from the White House, and William McKinley’s other passings through its doors.

A long line of carriages waited in the streets, and scores of others were massed in the ample grounds at the east front of the mansion. The muffled drums beat the long roll, the military band played “Nearer, My God, to Thee;” and then, as the solemn march began, the mournful strains of the “Dead March from Saul” were borne by the morning breezes over the assembled thousands.

President Roosevelt, with his wife and sister, occupied the first carriage behind the hearse, a band of black crepe bound about his arm. The carriage was drawn by four black horses. Next in order came the carriage of Grover Cleveland, who was accompanied by General John M. Wilson and Robley D. Evans. Following directly came the Justices of the Supreme Court, in their robes of office. Army and navy men, in full uniform, continued the slow moving procession. Representatives of foreign governments in all their trappings of state, followed in order. One carriage was occupied by Hon. Gerald Lowther, of the British Legation, assigned by a cabled order to personally represent King Edward VII. of England.

Major-General John R. Brooks commanded the entire line, riding a splendid black charger. He was surrounded with his aides, all well mounted.

A cold rain began to fall as the procession started from the White House. It at no time amounted to a heavy shower, but the chilling “drizzle” which marked Mr. McKinley’s second inauguration was precisely repeated in this his last progress to the capitol. The flags were limp. The banners were drooping. The wealth of mourning decoration on buildings laid flat against the walls. As the cortege wound down into Pennsylvania avenue it passed between gathered thousands of people who banked the great highway from end to end, and stood in reverent silence while the dead went by.

In that procession were soldiers and sailors from every service, civic societies, a camp of United Confederate Veterans from Alexandria, Virginia, and a host of miscellaneous organizations. The home of the nation’s government awaited the cortege in silent simplicity. A flag, flying at half mast over the marble entrance, was the only sign of mourning. The law decrees that the government buildings in Washington shall not be draped, and they wore no visible sign of the nation’s bereavement.

Time and again as the line moved from west to east the notes of that plaintive song, “Nearer, My God, to Thee,” rose on the air. At the steps of the capitol a bugle sounded the silver notes of “Church Call.” The soldiers and sailors lifted the casket again from the hearse, and carried it with solemn strides up the long flight of marble steps to the open portal, and deposited it on the catafalque directly in the center of the rotunda, beneath the mighty dome which crowns the capitol. The friends and late advisers of the nation’s chief, the notable men of the country filed in and grouped themselves to the north of the center. Mrs. McKinley was not present. In her weakened condition it was thought wise to afford her all possible repose, as the trip to Canton will tax all her little store of strength.

A hush as of death fell upon the assembly, and then, beginning softly, but swelling grandly as the hymn progressed, a choir sang Cardinal Newman’s touching hymn: “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’s 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 hath blessed 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.

Rev. Dr. Naylor, presiding elder of the Washington District of the Methodist Episcopal church, stood close by the head of the casket, and with folded hands, glanced once around that assembled multitude, then bowed his head. Instantly there was a subdued rustling, a sigh of acquiescence, and every head was bent in reverence. His first words were scarcely heard. Outside the storm had risen, and the rain was driving with an angry roar against the great dome above them. Outside, also, a mighty throng of men and women were massed, insistent on admission, crowding for places sheltered from the rain. Dr. Naylor’s prayer seemed echoed in the hearts of those bent in sorrow about the coffin. And this was his prayer:

“O Lord God, our heavenly Father, a bereaved nation cometh to Thee in its deep sorrow! To whom can we go in such an hour as this but to Thee? Thou only art able to comfort and support the afflicted. Death strikes down the tallest and best of men and consequent changes are continually occurring among nations and communities. But we have been taught that Thou art the same yesterday, to-day and forever; that in Thee there is no variableness nor the least shadow of turning. 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 render 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 a friend.

“But, O Lord, we deplore our loss to-day; sincerely implore Thy sanctifying benediction. We pray Thee for that dear one who has been walking by his side through the years, sharing his 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 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 unexpectedly fallen. Help him to walk worthy the high vocation whereunto he has been called. He needs Thy guiding hand and Thine inspiring spirit continually. May he always present to the nation 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 administration, those men who are associated with Thy servant, the President, in the administration of the affairs of government; guide them in all their deliberations to the nation’s welfare and the glory of God.

“And now, Lord, we humbly pray for Thy blessing and 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 standard of our lives, and 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 glory, forever. Amen.’”

As the bowed heads lifted a sweet voice rose in song. It was Mrs. Thomas C. Noyes, one who had honored the President—as all women honored him—one who had known him well. The words, the air, the pathos of the scene, combined in a wonderful impressiveness.

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.

CHORUS.

Then trust in God through all thy days;

Fear not, for He doth hold thy hand;

Though dark the way, still sing and praise;

Some time, some time, we’ll understand.

We’ll catch the broken thread again,

And finish what we here began;

Heav’n will 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;

’Tis there, some time, we’ll understand.

Why what we longed 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.

The venerable Bishop Andrews, the church of which William McKinley had been an almost lifelong member, rose and read the scriptural assurances of life beyond the grave—the blessed assurances that bring such comfort in the hour of grief. Then began the sermon—the funeral oration over the body of his President and his friend.

“Blessed be the God and Father of Our Lord, who of his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope of the resurrection of Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for us who are now, by the power of God through faith unto salvation, ready to be revealed in the last time.

“The services for the dead are fitly and almost of necessity services of religion and of immortal hope. In the presence of the shroud and the coffin and the narrow home, questions concerning intellectual quality, concerning public station, concerning great achievements, sink into comparative insignificance; and questions concerning character and man’s relation to the Lord and giver of life, even the life eternal, emerge to our view and impress themselves upon us.

“Character abides. We bring nothing into this world; we can carry nothing out. We ourselves depart with all the accumulations of tendency and habit and quality which the years have given to us. We ask, therefore, even at the grave of the illustrious, not altogether what great achievement they had performed and how they had commended themselves to the memory and affection or respect of the world, but chiefly of what sort they were; what the interior nature of the man was; what were his affinities? Were they with the good, the true, the noble? What his relation to the infinite Lord of the universe and to the compassionate Savior of mankind; what his fitness for that great hereafter to which he had passed?

“And such great questions come to us with moment, even in the hour when we gather around the bier of those whom we profoundly respect and eulogize and whom we tenderly love. In the years to come the days and the months that lie immediately before us will give full utterance as to the high statesmanship and great achievements of the illustrious man whom we mourn to-day. We shall not touch them to-day. The nation already has broken out in its grief and poured its tears, and is still pouring them, over the loss of a loved man. It is well. But we ask this morning of what sort this man is, so that we may perhaps, knowing the moral and spiritual life that is past, be able to shape the far-withdrawing future.

“I think we must all concede that nature and training are—reverently be it said—the inspiration of the Almighty, conspired to conform a man, a man admirable in his moral temper and aims. We none of us can doubt. I think that even by nature he was eminently gifted. The kindly, calm, and equitable temperament, the kindly and generous heart, the love of justice and right, and the tendency toward faith and loyalty to unseen powers and authorities—these things must have been with him from his childhood, from his infancy; but upon them supervened the training for which he was always tenderly thankful and of which even this great nation from sea to sea continually has taken note.

“It was a humble home in which he was born. Narrow conditions were around him, but faith in God had lifted that lowly roof, according to the statement of some great writer, ‘up to the very heavens and permitted its inmates to behold the things eternal, immortal, and divine;’ and he came under that training.

“It is a beautiful thing that to the end of his life he bent reverently before that mother whose example and teaching and prayer had so fashioned his mind and all his aims. The school came but briefly, and then came to him the church with its ministration of power. He accepted the truth which it taught. He believed in God and in Jesus Christ, through whom God was revealed. He accepted the divine law of the scripture; he based his hope on Jesus Christ, the appointed and only Redeemer of men; and the church, beginning its operation upon his character at an early period of his life, continued even to its close to mold him. He waited attentively upon its administration. He gladly partook with his brethren of the symbols of mysterious passion and redeeming love of the Lord Jesus Christ. He was helpful in all of those beneficences and activities; and from the church, to the close of his life, he received inspiration that lifted him above much of the trouble and weakness incident to our human nature; and, blessings be to God, may we say, in the last final hour they enabled him confidently, tenderly, to say: ‘It is his will, not ours, that will be done.’

“Such influences gave to us William McKinley. And what was he? A man of incorruptible personal and political integrity. I suppose no one ever attempted to approach him in the way of a bribe; and we remember with great felicitation at this time for such an example to ourselves that when great financial difficulties and perils encompassed him he determined to deliver all he possessed to his creditors, that there should be no challenge of his perfect honesty in the matter. A man of immaculate purity, shall we say? No stain was upon his escutcheon, no syllable of suspicion was ever heard whispered against his character. He walked in perfect and noble self-control.

“Beyond that this man had somehow wrought in him—I suppose upon the foundation of a very happily constructed nature—a great and generous love of his fellow-men. He believed in men. He had himself been brought up among the common people. He knew their labors, struggles, necessities. He loved them; but I think that beyond that it was to the church and its teachings concerning the fatherhood of God and universal brotherhood of man that he was indebted for that habit of kindness, for that generosity of spirit, that was wrought into his very substance and became him so, though he was of all men most courteous, no one ever supposed but his courtesy was from the heart. It was spontaneous, unaffected, kindly in a most eminent degree.

“What he was in the narrow field of those to whom he was personally attached, I think he was also in the greatness of his comprehensive love toward the race of which he was part.

“Shall I speak a word next of that which I will hardly advert to? The tenderness of that domestic love which has so often been commented upon? I pass it with only that word. I take it that no words can set forth fully the unfaltering kindness and carefulness and upbearing love which belonged to this great man.

“And he was a man who believed in right, who had a profound conviction that the courses of this world must be ordered in accordance with everlasting righteousness, or this world’s highest point of good will never be reached; that no nation can expect success in life except as it conforms to the eternal love of the infinite Lord and pass itself in individual and collective activity according to that divine will.

“It was deeply ingrained in him that righteousness was the perfection of any man and any people. Simplicity belonged to him. I need not dwell upon it, and I close the statement of these qualities by saying that underlying all and overreaching all and penetrating all there was a profound loyalty to guard the great king of the universe, the author of all good, the eternal hope of all that trust in him.

“And now, may I say further that it seemed to me that to whatever we may attribute all the illustriousness of this man, all the greatness of his achievements—whatever of that we may attribute to his intellectual character and quality, whatever of it we may attribute to the patient and thorough study which he gave to the various questions thrust upon him for attention, for all his success as a politician, as a statesman, as a man of this great country, those successes were largely due to the moral qualities of which I have spoken. They drew to him the hearts of men everywhere and particularly of those who best knew him. They called to his side helpers in every exigency of his career, so that when his future was at one time likely to have been imperilled and utterly ruined by his financial conditions, they who had resources, for the sake of helping a man who had in him such qualities, came to his side and put him on the high road of additional and larger success.

“His high qualities drew to him the good will of his associates in political life in an eminent degree. They believed in him, felt his kindness, confided in his honesty and in his honor. His qualities even associated with him in kindly relations those who were his political opponents. They made it possible for him to enter that land with which he, as one of the soldiers of the union, had been in some sort at war and to draw closer the tie that was to bind all the parts in one firmer and indissoluble union. They commanded the confidence of the great body of Congress, so that they listened to his plans and accepted kindly, and hopefully, and trustfully, all his declarations.

“His qualities gave him reputation, not in this land alone, but throughout the world, and made it possible for him to minister in the style in which he has within the last two or three years ministered to the welfare and peace of humankind. It was out of the profound depths of his moral and religious character that came the possibilities of that usefulness which we are all glad to attribute to him.

“And will such a man die? Is it possible that he who created, redeemed, transformed, uplifted, illumined such a man will permit him to fall into oblivion? The instincts of morality are in all good men. The divine word of the Scripture leaves us no room for doubt. ‘I,’ said one whom we trusted, ‘am the resurrection and the life. He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live, and whosoever liveth and believeth in me, shall never die.’

“Lost to us, but not to his God. Lost from earth, but entered heaven. Lost from these labors, and toils, and perils, but entered into the everlasting peace and ever-advancing progress. Blessed be God, who gives us this hope in the hour of our calamity and enables us to triumph through him who hath redeemed us.

“If there is a personal immortality before him let us also rejoice that there is an immortality and memory in the hearts of a large and ever-growing people, who, through the ages to come, the generations that are yet to be, will look back upon this life, upon its nobility, and purity, and service to humanity and thank God for it.

“The years draw on when his name shall be counted among the illustrious of the earth. William of Orange is not dead. Cromwell is not dead. Washington lives in the hearts and lives of his countrymen. Lincoln, with his infinite sorrow, lives to teach us and lead us on. And McKinley shall summon all statesmen, and all his countrymen, to pure living, nobler aims, sweeter and immortal blessedness.”

Again the words and music of that favorite song, “Nearer, my God, to Thee,” echoed through the great rotunda, and then the sad audience dispersed. The funeral of another President was ended.

In the midst of the singing Admiral Robley Evans, advancing with silent tread, placed a beautiful blue floral cross at the foot of the casket.

The last notes died away softly, and with uplifted hands the benediction was pronounced by the Rev. Dr. W. H. Chapman, acting pastor of the Metropolitan Church. This ended the religious service.

There was a pause for a few minutes while the ushers cleared the aisles, and the assemblage began to withdraw. First to retire was President Roosevelt, and as he entered so he left, preceded a short distance by Major McCawley and Captain Gilmore, with Colonel Bingham and Captain Cowles almost pressing against him.

The remainder of the company retired in the order in which they entered, the Cabinet members following the President, and after them going the diplomatic corps, the Supreme Court, Senators and Representatives, officers of the army and navy, and officials of less degree.

As soon as the rotunda was cleared of those who had been invited to attend the religious services the bier was prepared for passage out through the west exit.

The people came in double file, one line passing to the right and the other to the left of the casket. Only a hurried glance was permitted to any one, as it was announced that the ceremony would close promptly at 6:30 o’clock. Whenever there was an attempt to linger, especially over the casket, as there was in many instances, the person making it was admonished by the Capitol police to “pass on.” When they still remained they were pushed along. In this way about one hundred and thirty people were enabled to view the remains every minute.

CHAPTER XXXV.
LYING IN STATE AT THE CAPITOL.

As soon as the funeral service in the Capitol had concluded, and the audience had dispersed, the guards took their places about the casket, and the big bronze doors of the Capitol were thrown open, and the crowds were admitted. They came in two long lines from both the east and west portals and passed down, one on either side of the catafalque. It was the intention to have those who entered at the east door pass out at the west, and those who came in from the west—from the Pennsylvania avenue side—to leave at the opposite entrance. But the local police arrangements had been very imperfectly provided, and confusion resulted. Had the day been fair probably no untoward circumstances would have marred the solemnity of the occasion. But the storm without added to the discomfort of the crush; and the first two hours of the lying in state made up a scene to be regretted. The crowding at times almost approached the frenzy of a panic. Men were hustled, despite all their struggles. Women and children were thrown down and trampled on. There was no noise, such as usually accompanies a panic in theatres, or on the occasion of a fire, but there was a half-savage exercise of brute force, a dumb insistence on position. And against that frightful pressure human strength was helpless. Men were pressed as with the impetus of engines against stone walls and columns. Women were ground against the sharp angles of granite, or hurled without warning upon the wounding edges of marble.

The force of police provided was wholly inadequate, and for two sad hours the lines that viewed the dead missed the characterization of a mob only because of their evident sympathy.

Men with clothes torn, women with bleeding faces appeared continually in the lines; and back to the south in the rotunda, toward the senate wing, was gathered a constantly increasing company of those who had been injured.

As soon as the faulty condition was discovered those in charge of the funeral ceremonies had called on the police department for a better control; and the reserves were ordered out. Even then it seemed a hopeless time before they could get in position, and restore order in the boundless crowds.

It was the one feature up to that time which had marred the solemn stateliness of the funeral.

As it was, the crowds were simply flung through the bronze doors, and projected to the very side of the casket, where they appeared half hysterical, and wholly lost to the impressive nature of the hour.

Coincident with the restoration of order by the reinforced police, came the ambulances from the Emergency Hospital; and scores were taken away for treatment, while other scores were treated without removal from the rotunda.

After the reserves had taken their places, and had controlled the crowds, a steady, orderly procession came through the doors from 12 o’clock noon until 6 in the evening. In that time more than 30,000 persons passed the casket of their dead chief, and looked for the last time on his pain-marked face.

The appearance of the casket which contained the body of the martyred President was particularly impressive. It was wrapped entirely in a beautiful American flag. Over the top of the casket were laid three groups of flowers, that at the end being a conspicuous sheaf which had been prepared at the express request and under the personal direction of the new President of the United States.

Many beautiful floral designs were grouped around the casket. Conspicuous among them was a massive cushion floral tribute in the form of an army badge from the G. A. R. and offerings from the Loyal Legion and other soldier organizations. General Corbin, now en route home from Manila; General Adna R. Chaffee, and the Commissioners of Porto Rico had floral offerings laid about the bier.

A design of over six feet in diameter composed of galax leaves and American beauty roses, about which was entwined the American flag, came from the Mayor and Council of Richmond, Va. Other tributes came from Mrs. James A. Garfield, widow of another martyred President; Mrs. Garret A. Hobart, Secretaries Hay and Hitchcock, General and Mrs. Miles, Ambassador Porter at Paris, the Argentine, Guatemalan, Costa Rican, and other legations, and the municipality of Havana.

The casket rested exactly beneath the center of the great dome of the Capitol, and surrounding it on all sides were the large historical paintings representing the greatest events of the life of the republic. Above, on the extreme top of the dome, was the beautiful historical painting of the apotheosis of George Washington, while on the floor itself, within easy range of the eye from the center, were statues of Lincoln and Grant, the two great governmental personages of the present generation.

The casket was guarded by details of artillerymen, marines, and sailors, but it was hemmed in by such a distinguished circle of public men as to set it in a proper frame.

The big, black casket was the period at the end of an era. The marble effigies of the great men about it, the canvases on which the features of statesmen and soldiers lived in oil, were but the mute testimonies to a condition which had passed. The pale form, lying in state between moving lines of those who had loved him, was all that earth had left of the man who gathered together the possibilities of the past—who could express the spirit, the effectiveness and the hope of the future.

There was the statue of George Washington, twice a President, once maligned, now half deified. There was John Marshall, once Chief Justice of the United States; once a patriot soldier at Valley Forge; once presiding at the trial of Aaron Burr—whose hand had been raised in a bolder assault; but always the champion of law, the lover of order, the son of republican independence. There hung the portrait of Captain Lawrence—and his dying words carried new courage to the hearts of the mourners: “Don’t Give Up the Ship!”

There was Madison, whose seat of government had been driven from the capital when the British assailed the nation in the war of 1812; the man who had watched from the hills to the north the smoke that rose from the burning buildings of the nation.

All the history of the past was bound up in the pictured forms and the marble allegories of that rotunda. And over it all lifted the painted interior of the dome, the apotheosis of that first President, who had been first in war, and first in peace, but who now made room for another beside him in the hearts of his countrymen.

All they had promised, all the nation of the past had hoped for and striven for had been expressed in the administration, had been made possible by the wise statesmanship of this hero who lay still and silent in death below them. And it seemed to the crowds that bent with bared heads as they passed by the coffin that the very death of this great man had made more secure the destiny of the nation.

Outside the storm raged more fiercely, and the people clamored against the savagery of an unguided crowd. Outside the winds were voicing their own requiem, and wailing at the feet of that symbol of liberty which crowns the highest height of the colossal building. And here in the darkened rotunda, where state occasions had signalized the progress of a people from weakness unto strength, from experiment to established systems—forty thousand people—delegates from eighty million of their fellows, touched with reverent fingers the trappings of the dead and moved on to mingle again with the world. While he had lain sick in that fair house of his friend at Buffalo, it had seemed to these thousands that the one voice of the Republic must be:

“Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee.”

Yet as they gazed at the pensive face, as they looked into the countenance which had never feared, had never found a duty too difficult for performing, they added the lines—

“Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears,

Our faith triumphant o’er our fears,

Are all with thee—are all with thee.”

And so they passed out again to the day of gloom, confident that the sunshine of to-morrow would certainly come. And the close of the day left the dead alone with his guards.

A terrible crush, accompanied by a panic, occurred in front of the Capitol while the thousands of people were struggling for a look at the dead President. Fully fifty people were more or less injured and one man lost his life.

Long before the remains had started from the White House the crowd had begun to gather in front of the Capitol building. By the time the great bronze doors of the eastern entrance were swung open the people were massed for acres. A line of police guarded the base of the Capitol steps and gave directions that a double line should be formed as the people should be admitted two abreast. But when the crowd saw that the doors had been opened and that the line had started to go through, there was a general movement to get closer to the point of admittance.

Those in the rear pressed forward and those in the middle, not being able to hold back against the weight, were pressed with greater force against those ahead. Quickly those in front and along the line of ropes were crowded so tightly that they could scarcely breathe.

There were women and children and babies in arms in the press, and soon the section in front of the steps became a fighting mass of humanity. Men seized small children and held them high over their heads to keep them from being trampled under foot or crushed in the terrible weight which was thrown against them.

A woman was heard to scream and beg for help. The crowd became panic-stricken and women began fainting on every side. An ineffectual squad of mounted police thought to drive back those in the rear and separate the crowd by plunging their horses into the worst of the fray. The result was what might be expected. The panic was increased. The crowd broke all bounds.

The little line of police at the foot of the wide flight of steps was swept down like so many straws. The crowd flowed up the stairs like a mighty flood. One of the mounted officers, goring his horse with his spurs, was carried, horse and all, half way up the steps. Women screamed as they found themselves under the trampling hoofs and men fought to get away.

A colored man at one side whipped out a knife and slashed the rope against which the crowd was pressing. Those in front fell headlong and the rest followed, trampling them under foot.

At the doors of the Capitol rotunda, where the dead President lay in state, the surging was checked. With herculean efforts the capitol police fought off the rising sea of people and closed the gates against them. But quickly they had to be opened in response to the appeal in the name of humanity.

The Capitol police helped to drag the fainting and injured into the building, where they were laid out in rows. Calls were sent to the hospitals and surgeons were sent in an ambulance. The Capitol was the only refuge for those who had been borne down in the rush, and the victims were passed over the heads of the crowd and taken in at the doors.

The committee-rooms were pressed into service and women were taken to them and attended by the doctors. Ambulances drove up, but could not penetrate the dense crowd. Colonel Dan Ransdell, sergeant-at-arms of the Senate, arrived on the scene and gave orders that the doors be thrown wide open. This, he perceived, was the only way the congestion could be relieved. It was growing worse at every moment.

The crowd broke in when the obstructions were removed and in a moment the rotunda was filled and packed. Then the Capitol police hurried the people through and out the other side.

Meantime the trouble in front had been growing worse rather than better. Men and women fought like beasts to get out of the suffocating crush. Clothing was torn; hats, coats, umbrellas, neckties, women’s silk waists and light summer gowns were torn and scattered in every direction. The mounted police charged about the outskirts of the crowd adding to the excitement. Some colored men at the western edge got into a fight and whipped out razors, which were brandished about and several were severely cut.

The ambulances dashed about clanging their bells and adding to the turmoil. They made hurried trips to the hospitals carrying the senseless and bleeding. Often they carried as many as half a dozen at a time. The police appealed to the crowd to fall back, but it was like talking to the ocean.

Fearing that the disorder would spread to the rotunda and that the remains of the President might be endangered the Capitol police, under the command of Captain McGrew, determined again to close the doors. This was accomplished only after the greatest efforts. The people within were then driven out on the western side and the stairways and halls were also thrown open to facilitate their exit.

A force of police on foot was hurried to the rescue and the crowd was charged from the sides and driven back toward the east again. This relieved the pressure about the steps and gradually order was restored. Then the officers insisted that the people be formed into double line and the space about the entrance was cleared. By two o’clock the line was passing through the rotunda again in quiet and decent fashion.

People who have witnessed similar gatherings at the Capitol express wonder that there have not been panics and crushes before. The police of Washington seem to have little idea of handling large crowds. At inauguration times the only reason there has not been trouble is that the exercises have been held in the open air. The crowds which come together are permitted to mass over large areas without openings and passageways through which the women and others may escape in case they desire to get away.

The management of this part of the programme was under the charge of the War Department, and earlier in the day there was a company of soldiers on duty keeping the crowd within bounds and under control. But this company was withdrawn and the rest was left to the city officers, who claim that the force was insufficient for the occasion.

When the people had had an opportunity to view the remains of their beloved President, the body was taken to the depot, and between eight and nine o’clock in the evening the funeral train departed for Canton.

McKINLEY’S GUARD IN ADVANCE OF HEARSE, CANTON.

PLACING THE BODY IN THE VAULT AT WESTLAWN CEMETERY, CANTON.

CHAPTER XXXVI.
THE ASSASSIN ARRAIGNED.

At the mid-hour, when the people were filing past the casket that held all that was mortal of the late President of the United States, in the rotunda of the capitol at Washington, Leon Czolgosz, his assassin, was being arraigned for trial in the court room at Buffalo.

“Are you guilty, or not guilty?” was the question which the Law asked of him.

Whatever he was, whatever he had done, the public of the nation was too great to visit upon him the summary vengeance his awful act so richly merited.

Society is better than Czolgosz thought it to be. If it had been the monster he pictured, if it had been the unreasoning and unjust force he had been taught, and which his mad act showed that he believed, that man would have been turned loose from the jail in Buffalo, and the society he condemned would have had its will with him. And the mangled fragments of the Third Assassin would have borne mute testimony to the truth—as well, perhaps, as the justice—of the estimate which he placed upon it.

But instead of that, society gave him all the forms of trial, all the possibilities of defense.

He had the assistance of learned counsel. He might well be sure that all that his most devoted friend could say in wisdom for his defense will be brought forward on his trial. He was not condemned unheard. He was placed with hands unbound in the presence of a sedate tribunal—of one of the tribunals which all the organs of his creed had been maligning in their every issue; and there he was asked:

“Are you guilty, or not guilty?”

District Attorney Penney almost shouted the words at Leon Czolgosz, sitting in the county courtroom at 3 o’clock this afternoon. The assassin did not even turn his eyes toward his questioner. Two hundred auditors watched him, listening for his answer, but he did not look at any of them, and his unshaven lips were silent. He stared at the floor, and shunned the eyes of his fellow creatures.

The assassin, arrayed in clean linen for the first time since he shot the President, sat sullen before the court while the charges were being read. He looked no man in the eye. Sometimes his lips moved nervously, as if he would speak. But he only moistened them with his tongue, and with groveling eyes sat stolid and voiceless.

“Are you guilty? Answer yes or no!” thundered the district attorney, but the fair-haired monster in the chair paid no heed.

“Do you understand what has been read?” asked Mr. Penney.

For an instant the skulking glance of the assassin fixed itself upon the lawyer’s face. An immediate hush fell upon the audience. The assassin leaned forward in his chair, then dropped his eyes, then leaned back in silence.

“You have been indicted for murder in the first degree,” said Mr. Penney.

Czolgosz’s eyes wandered toward the ceiling for a second, then to the floor. Then he shifted half way round in his chair and sat mute in the face of his accuser.

Judge Loren L. Lewis, former justice of the Supreme Court, who had been assigned to the defense of the assassin by Judge Edward K. Emery, then arose and addressed the court. It was at once apparent that the duty was distasteful, but Mr. Lewis entered a plea of “Not Guilty.”

He asked permission to reserve the right to withdraw the plea, enter a special plea, or withdraw the demurrer if, after consultation with Judge Titus, also assigned to the case, it was decided to decline the assignment. Judge Titus being in Milwaukee, Mr. Lewis said that it was impossible to enter further into the case, and, therefore, he informally offered the plea of not guilty.

Attorney Lewis then told the court that he had called upon the prisoner, but had been met with a stubborn refusal to discuss the case. Czolgosz would not even admit that he wished the services of counsel. Mr. Lewis asked the court for permission to introduce alienists to examine into the prisoner’s mental condition, as this step had already been taken by the attorneys for the people. He mentioned incidentally that he was sorry his name had been connected with the case, but that as a lawyer and an officer of the court he felt himself obligated to carry out its wishes.

Mr. Penney next gave notice that he would move to have the trial transferred to the Supreme Court, and would ask notice of it for next Monday. Czolgosz’s attorney then said that he knew of no reason why his client should not be ready Monday, but Judge Emery upon request agreed not to enter the order till Mr. Titus, associate counsel for Czolgosz, returns from Milwaukee.

Mr. Lewis’ request to be permitted to introduce alienists gave rise to the prevalent belief that the defense will be built upon the theory of insanity.

At the close of Attorney Lewis’ address Judge Emery said:

“Remove the prisoner.”

He was quickly handcuffed. There was a rush of spectators toward the stairway leading to the tunnel that connects the courthouse with the jail. Czolgosz, the assassin, now manacled and hustled along, passed within a lane of staring citizens.

His dirty sleeve brushed against the drapery of black that enwrapped the pillars of the halls and stairs as he descended. Above his head, as he passed downward into the tunnel, the black encinctured portrait of the martyred President looked down upon his frowzy head as he went. But he did not look up. Surrounded by detectives, mute, sullen and shambling, he shuffled down the stone stairway.

Then a low hiss, subdued but ominous, rose from the watching crowd. It swelled and echoed down the squalid passageway as the murderer slunk away and passed back to the jail, which is connected by a dark subway under Delaware avenue with the courthouse.

It was the opinion of those who saw Czolgosz to-day that he is shamming insanity. Since his arrest he has made no rational request, except that he be shaved. Chief of Detectives Cusack said “No,” and the murderer came into court to-day with a ten days’ growth of beard that made him look disheveled and dirty.

“He gets no razor while he is my prisoner,” explained Cusack. “That would be too easy.”

The audience which assembled in court to witness Czolgosz’s arraignment to-day was not as large as was expected. Few believed that Judges Titus and Lewis would consent to serve in behalf of the accused assassin. Both the lawyers assigned to the case by Judge Emery are high in their profession, and it is well known that they are mortified and annoyed by the assignment. However, the law requires that the court’s behest be followed, and it is probable that the attorneys named will carry out the instructions of Judge Emery.

There is something in the family history of the assassin which sheds a baleful light on the acts of the present, and they were revealed in the very hour when he was standing trial for his life in Buffalo.

There was a time when the father of this young man took the law into his own hands. And this is the story of it:

The elder Czolgosz was one of the colonists in Presque Isle County, ruled over by Henry Molitor, who was an illegitimate son of King Louis of Wurtemberg, and who fled from Germany under sentence of death.

Stung to desperation by King Molitor’s tyrannies and vice, a band of colonists poured a volley of shots through the window of the company store on August 16, 1876, killing Molitor.

The principal actors in this tragedy, of whom the elder Czolgosz was one, were sentenced to prison for life, but were subsequently pardoned. Amid such surroundings Assassin Czolgosz was born and reared.

All that occurred twenty-five years ago. It could have had no influence on the life of the lad, if, indeed, he had then been born. But it in some degree shows the strain of blood in the family, and in some measure accounts for the stolid silence in which that young man sits when, for murder most foul, he is called before the bar of the people.

---

Following is the formal true bill returned by the grand jury of Erie County, New York, against Leon F. Czolgosz, the assassin of the late President McKinley:

The people of the State of New York, entered against Leon F. Czolgosz, alias Fred Nieman.

The grand jury of the County of Erie, by this indictment, accuse Leon F. Czolgosz, alias Fred Nieman, of the crime of murder in the first degree.

That the said Leon F. Czolgosz, alias Fred Nieman, on the sixth day of September, in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and one, at the City of Buffalo, in the County of Erie, with force and arms in and upon one William McKinley, in the peace of the people of the State of New York, then and there being, willfully, feloniously and from a deliberate and premeditated design to effect the death of said William McKinley, did make an assault, and the said Leon F. Czolgosz, alias Fred Nieman, then and there willfully, feloniously and from a deliberate and premeditated design to effect the death of the said William McKinley, did shoot off and discharge to, at, against and upon the said William McKinley a certain pistol and firearm, then and there charged and loaded with gunpowder and leaden bullets, and the said Leon F. Czolgosz, alias Fred Nieman, with the leaden bullets aforesaid, out of the pistol and firearm aforesaid, then and there by force of the gunpowder aforesaid, shot off, sent forth and discharged, him, the said Leon F. Czolgosz, then and there feloniously, willfully and with a deliberate and premeditated design to effect the death of the said William McKinley, did strike, penetrate and wound, giving unto him, the said William McKinley, then and there with the leaden bullets aforesaid so as aforesaid discharged, sent forth and shot out of the pistol and firearm aforesaid, by the said Leon F. Czolgosz, alias Fred Nieman, in and upon the stomach, abdomen and body of the said William McKinley, one mortal wound, of which said mortal wound he, the said William McKinley, from the sixth day of September, in the year aforesaid, until the fourteenth day of September, in the same year aforesaid, at the city and county aforesaid, did languish, and, languishing, did live, on which said last-mentioned day he, the said William McKinley, at the city and county aforesaid, of the said mortal wound, did die; contrary to the form of the statute in such case made and provided, and against the peace of the people of the State of New York and their dignity.

Second Count—And the grand jury of the County of Erie aforesaid by this indictment do further accuse the said Leon F. Czolgosz, alias Fred Nieman, of the crime of murder in the first degree, committed as follows, to-wit:

That on the sixth day of September, in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and one, at the City of Buffalo, and in the County of Erie, the said Leon F. Czolgosz, alias Fred Nieman, in and upon the body of one William McKinley, in the peace of the people of the State of New York to and there being willfully, feloniously and of his malice aforethought, did make an assault, and a certain pistol then and there charged with gunpowder and one leaden bullet, which he, the said Leon F. Czolgosz, alias Fred Nieman, in his right hand then and there had, and held to, at, against and upon the said William McKinley, then and there willfully, feloniously and of his malice aforethought, did shoot off and discharge, and the said Leon F. Czolgosz, alias Fred Nieman, with the leaden bullet aforesaid, then and there by the force of the gunpowder aforesaid shot off, sent forth and discharged as aforesaid, him, the said William McKinley, in and upon the stomach, abdomen and body of him, the said William McKinley, then and there willfully, feloniously and of his malice aforethought, did strike, penetrate and wound, giving unto him, the said William McKinley, then and there with the leaden bullet aforesaid, so as aforesaid discharged, sent forth and shot out of the pistol aforesaid, in and upon the stomach, abdomen and body of him, the said William McKinley, one mortal wound, of which said mortal wound he, the said William McKinley, from the said sixth day of September, in the year aforesaid, at the city and county aforesaid, did languish, and, languishing, did live; on which said last-mentioned day he, the said William McKinley, at the city and county aforesaid, of the said mortal wound, did die.

And so the grand jury aforesaid do say that the said Leon F. Czolgosz, alias Fred Nieman, him the said William McKinley, in the manner and form and by the means aforesaid, did kill and murder against the form of the statute in such case made and provided and against the peace of the people of the State of New York and their dignity.

(Signed.)

THOMAS PENNEY,

District Attorney of Erie County.

CHAPTER XXXVII.
THE SAD JOURNEY TO CANTON.

The funeral train bearing the remains of President McKinley crossed the west line of Pennsylvania and entered his home State and his home Congressional District at 10 o’clock a. m., Wednesday, September 18, 1901.

This is the district he represented for fourteen years in the halls of Congress. Many who had known the President personally, who had shaken his hand and gazed into his genial face, lined the tracks to do honor to all that remained on earth of their neighbor, friend and chief. From the State line to Canton, the President’s home, the line of mourners was almost continuous. Although a stirring depth of feeling had been manifested as the train passed through other States of the Union with its burden, nowhere was poignant grief so evident as it was during the sad journey through the President’s home State.

It is the second time the State of Ohio has been called upon to pay homage to the ashes of one of its sons, elevated to the Presidency and then stricken by an assassin’s bullet in the prime of his career.

The mustering of popular sentiment was awe-inspiring, both because of the numerical strength of the mourners and the intensity of feeling shown. In every sense was the trip of the President’s body to its last resting place memorable. Miles upon miles of humanity were passed, thousands upon thousands of heads were bared. Hundreds upon hundreds of crape-tied flags were displayed, while, in the distance, the emblem of the nation was seen at half-mast upon the schoolhouse or other public building.

Company upon company of State militia presented arms, while peal upon peal of the death knell came from church and courthouse bells. In all there was not a smile seen from the train, and the ears of President Roosevelt and Mrs. McKinley were not jarred by the sound of cheers or unseemly shouts of acclaim. The thousands of school children, lined up near the track, maintained a silence as profound, as sympathetic and as reverent as their elders, who felt more deeply.

Through Maryland and Pennsylvania, where the outlines of black mountains frowned dimly upon the train as it passed in the night, bonfires were seen where they had been lit to keep the watchers awake in their night vigil. The flames lit up the sides of the funeral train and cast flickering shadows against the sides of the great hills. In the towns at night the torches lit up the anxious, sympathetic faces of the mourners, who had lost sleep and braved the chill so as to have a brief look at the train which was hurrying to the President’s burial ground.

An entire regiment of the State troops was ranked along the tracks at Pittsburg near the station. No stop was made at the big sooty city. Against one of the hills were placed several hundred girls in the form of a flag. The long railroad bridge over the Allegheny was solid with men and boys, whose coats almost touched the train as it passed through.

From Pittsburg the train followed the Ohio river for miles. Old river steamboats blew sorrowful, long-drawn-out salutes to the passing train. Flags upon them were at half-mast.

On the shores of West Virginia opposite there were crowds assembled who saw the train speed by in the distance. Many of the towns on the banks of the Ohio consisted of long strings of houses in the gulch. Some of the towns containing only a few thousand inhabitants stretched along for a great distance. All the people were gathered at the track, both from the towns and the country sides for miles around. Doorsteps of every house were filled with watchers, the old folks’ faces were seen gazing through the windows and the roof tops were thronged.

At a country cross-road, where there was not a house in sight, several score of men, women and children were gathered. The buggies and farm wagons a little distance away showed they had come from a distance. Their horses were munching in their feed bags, unaware of what was the mournful occasion of their day’s journey.

East Palestine, the first Ohio station passed by the train, appeared to be a little village nestled in between two great hills. There were enough people scattered at the tracks, however, to warrant the presumption that it was a city of considerable importance.

From early dawn, when the first rays of the sun came shimmering through the Allegheny mists, the country through which the McKinley funeral train passed seemed alive with waiting people. As the train was later than its schedule the probabilities were that many thousands lined up along the track had been waiting for almost an hour for the fleeting glimpse of the cars accompanying the murdered President’s body to its last resting place.

Steel workers, with their dinner pails in their hands, ran the risk of being late at the mills in order to pay their last homage to the dead. It was at the steel towns, just east of Pittsburg, that the largest early crowds lined the tracks.

Between and east of the mill towns was the open mountain country interspersed with an occasional cluster of houses near coal mines or oil wells. Even in the open country as early as 6 a. m. there were people gathered at the cross-roads or leaning against farm fences.

Faces were seen peering through, up and down windows of houses situated near the tracks. In railroad yards hundreds were crowded on top of cars so as to obtain a view as the sections of the Presidential train picked their way through the maze of tracks. Women and girls as well as men and boys were eager to see the cars go by.

In the railroad cars in Pitcairn, a few miles east of Pittsburg, hundreds of factory girls were lined up. It was 8:35 a. m. when the train passed through Pitcairn, so most of the girls with lunch boxes under their arms must have been quite late to work, all for the sake of the few seconds’ look at the train which brought so close to them the victim of the anarchist’s bullet and his successor, President Roosevelt.

Young women who were not shop girls were there, too, evidently having come from the most exclusive residence districts of the little city, trudging through the rough tracks to obtain a brief look.

Away from the crowds at the towns solitary watchers were passed. Engineers and firemen of passing trains leaned far out of their cab windows when the train approached. Boys and girls, perched high on rocky crags, remained in their points of vantage to see the train fly past.

As the train neared Pittsburg it passed between a continuous line of men and women, boys and girls, miles long.

There was hardly a space of a dozen feet that was not filled. On the sides and tops of the near-by foothills colored specks told of the bright dresses of women and girls, who were watching the entrance of the long tunnel in Pittsburg, which was like a human archway, so many persons of all ages and sexes were crowded around and above the black opening.

One enterprising lad was high on a church steeple and waved his hat. The viaducts were simply jammed with thousands of human beings. The high tops of the iron girders were covered with boys, while the vertical steel pillars supported venturesome climbers. Windows of mills and factories, where employes were busy a moment before, were crowded with eager faces as the train drew near.

From beyond Braddock, which is twelve miles from Pittsburg, the continuous and mournful ovation began and continued almost in a solid line until the train was miles out of the Smoky City.

On top of a carload of stone in Pittsburg were about a hundred girls, and they presented a most picturesque appearance. Although the crowds were far greater than ever greeted any President of the United States alive, not a smile was seen, not a cheer was heard. The train passed between the walls of solemn-visaged humanity miles long.

The sun burst through the smoky pall at intervals and lit up the bright colors of the women’s dresses with an indescribable effect. Although the dresses were bright, the faces were not. They were evidently filled with sympathy for the dead President and Mrs. McKinley, and with execration of the assassin whose foul deed was the cause of the present sad demonstration.

Thousands upon thousands of bared heads of the men as seen from the train windows bore evidence of their reverence for the ashes of their President, while the grim set of their countenances bespoke little of the quality of mercy for the murderous anarchist.

Grassy terraces covered with a bright green carpet were dotted with the pink, red and blue dresses of the women and girls, presenting in the bright sunshine a wonderful effect. The crowds thickened as the depot was approached until every street was jammed and every available space filled hundreds deep.

As the train sped through the Ohio hills the country smiled with glowing golden rod as if to remind those on the train that the simple blossom was a favorite with the late President. The mowed fields were as green as if the summer were young instead of at its close.

Gorgeous red of the sumac and the russet brown of the ivy were the only colors to relieve the green of the woods. The aspect of the land was pleasant as if the honored son of Ohio were being welcomed to his last home-coming by the earth which was to receive him so soon. A sprinkling of clouds tempered the rays of the sun and relieved its glare, making it an ideal day for rejoicing, rather than gloom.

Smiling as were the elements, however, their gladsome joy was not reflected in the countenances of the fellow-citizens of the departed Ohioan. Had the sky been somber as night and the earth as desolate as the desert the countenances of those thousands of human beings assembled along the route could not have been gloomier.

One noticeable feature of the crowds was that so many people were attired in their Sunday best. These had arrayed themselves as for a funeral, the same as if some member of their own family was to be buried, and all for the sake of the mere glimpse of the presidential train and for the privilege of paying a momentary mute homage to the memory of the illustrious dead.

In other days Canton has been clothed in a gay garb of color, bands have played stirringly, richly attired women have smiled and men have shouted for William McKinley. But those were happier days than this, the occasion of the home-coming of a guide, friend and neighbor who, having climbed the ladder of fame, fell before the assassin’s bullet and died in the arms of his country.

In all the little city which the dead President loved there was hardly a structure that bore no badge of sorrow. In Tuscarawas street, from one end to the other, business houses were hung heavy with crape and at intervals huge arches, draped and festooned in mourning colors, spanned the route of the procession from the train to the county courthouse.

One of the arches was in front of the Canton high school, half a block from McKinley avenue. The school was draped, and in every window was a black-bordered portrait of the late President. In this thoroughfare, too, are two large churches, one of which was regularly attended by Major McKinley, the First Methodist Episcopal, at Cleveland avenue, a block from the courthouse. At each corner of the edifice and above the big cathedral windows were broad draperies deftly looped, each bearing a large white rosette. The other church, the First Presbyterian, was similarly adorned.

The courthouse, the scene of the lying in state, was a mass of sable hue. At the entrance, between the two big doors, was a tablet wrought in crape and upon the cloth shield was emblazoned in white the utterance of the President when told that he must die:

“It is God’s way. His will, not ours, be done.”

In front of the courthouse was another massive arch.

Canton was astir with break of day, such residents as had not displayed badges and draperies of mourning performing the task that morning. At Nimicella Park the soldiers of Troop A of Cleveland and the militia of various parts of the State were busy preparing to escort the distinguished dead up Tuscarawas street.

On every corner in the downtown districts boys and men were shouting out “Official badges here” and selling pictures of the dead President.

Before 8 o’clock the rotunda of the courthouse had been prepared for the reception of the body. With the exception of dainty white streamers from the chandeliers there was no trace of white in the large apartment wherein the public should have a last look upon the face of the departed executive. The walls and ceilings were covered with black cloth looped here and there from the ornamental pillars with streamers and rosettes of the same color. From each chandelier was suspended a small American flag, a larger one fluttering just above the catafalque.

Three hours before the funeral train was scheduled to arrive more than a thousand men and women had gathered at Courthouse square and hundreds of others had congregated in the vicinity of the railway depot, each anxious to be as near the casket as possible when it was taken from the car Pacific.

At the McKinley home itself, almost the only residence in Canton that bore no trace of mourning, was another throng, and there was not a door or window that had not been peered at most assiduously by curious visitors and equally curious residents of the city.

Every train brought crowds of visitors, come to witness and take a sorrowful share in the last rites. Every hotel was full to overflowing, four or five persons occupying a room scarcely large enough for two, and halls and parlors had been filled with cots. Even these brought prices as high as would procure one of the best rooms in a metropolitan hotel.

Complete plans could not be made until after the arrival of the funeral train. It had been the intention to have the body lie in state until evening and then remove it to the McKinley home in North Market street, but Mrs. McKinley objected, asserting that she could not endure the thought of having her husband’s body disturbed.

Above the high steps and over the main entrance to the courthouse hung a painting of Maj. McKinley twenty feet square. It had a white border and made a very effective piece against the broad expanse of black that obscured all the first part of the second story of the structure. The most effective arch in the city was that in front of the high school. This was erected by the pupils of the public schools. It was square on top and bore on either side a picture of the dead President. On the left of each picture was the legend “We loved him,” and on the right “He loved us.”

On either support was a large card bearing this: “Canton Public Schools.”

CHAPTER XXXVIII.
CANTON BATHED IN TEARS.

The funeral train proper, bearing the body of President McKinley, arrived at 12 o’clock. It was met by Judge Day, at the head of the local reception committee, while assembled about the station was the entire militia of the State.

Mrs. McKinley, weeping piteously, was helped from the train by Dr. Rixey and Abner McKinley and conducted to a carriage.

The body was then lifted from the catafalque car and carried on the shoulders of the body-bearers through a pathway formed by President Roosevelt and his cabinet to the waiting hearse. The surrounding soldiers were at present arms and bugles sounded taps.

The President and cabinet then entered carriages. They were followed by the guard of honor, headed by Admiral Dewey and General Miles in full uniform, and the sad procession then moved up Tenth street in the direction of the courthouse, where the body was to lie in state. Soldiers at intervals all the way kept back the immense crowds which thronged the streets. The procession passed all the way beneath big arches draped with black.

President Roosevelt and the members of the cabinet were the first to pass by the bier, followed by the highest officers of the army and navy, Senator Hanna and many others high in public life.

Later the public was admitted to the chamber and thousands viewed the body. Mrs. McKinley and the relatives did not go to the courthouse. She stood the trip fairly well, and soon after arriving went to sleep in the old home.

Mrs. McKinley was almost the first to leave the train. She leaned heavily on the arm of Abner McKinley and was supported on the other side by Dr. Rixey. She walked slowly toward the carriage prepared for her and was taken to the home of which she has been mistress for so many years. There was not a person of the hundreds who saw her at the depot but who knew her. Her sweet face was not visible through the heavy black of her mourning veil, but her frail form and bearing made her instantly recognized by those assembled.

A sublime hush fell upon all. There were scores of women present and all were in tears. It was a great, silent outpouring of deep sympathy for the crushed soul of their beloved neighbor.

President Roosevelt and the cabinet left their car in the opposite direction and took their places in the closed carriages for the funeral procession. The great throng regarded them respectfully. For five years those gathered here had annually received as President of the United States their fellow townsman. The sorrow of the citizens of Canton was yet too poignant to permit of the expression of any other emotion than grief. Eight artillerymen and eight soldiers slowly trod down the steps of the Pacific, the car in which the President’s body rested. A passing cloud which had cast its kindly shade upon the dolorous form of the President’s widow now withdrew from the face of the sun so as to permit the warming rays to rest upon the casket of the dead President.

A window was raised toward the rear of the car, the same window through which the body had been passed thrice before. The opening looked very small. Eight of the guards, four bluejackets and four red-striped sergeants of artillery, stood below to receive the heavy burden. A moment later the end of the coffin, draped with the red, white and blue of its silken covering, protruded. A few of the onlookers had not thought it necessary to remove their hats, they had been so absorbed in the incoming of the train. Their heads were bared instantly. The eight soldiers and sailors received the great weight on their shoulders. They were sturdy men, but their limbs trembled under the strain.

Preceded by Judge Day and other members of the reception committee, the coffin was borne the whole length of the station platform, several hundred feet. The militia surrounding the station stood at present arms. At the end of the platform was the hearse chosen to carry the corpse in the procession to the courthouse.

“Present arms!” came the command from the sergeant of hussars opposite the hearse. Magnificently caparisoned in all the trappings of their full dress, Troop A of the Cleveland Hussars had been chosen to precede the hearse in the procession.

At the call one hundred swords were unsheathed and held pointing upward from the broad bosoms of the cavalrymen. The bright blades, freshly burnished for the occasion, flashed the sunlight like white fire. The gold lace shone, and the bearskin caps, towering above the erect heads of the hussars, added to the martial effect.

In the attitude of present, like a hundred equestrian statues, the hussars remained motionless until the casket had been placed within the hearse. If a horse moved its foot or whisked a fly from its sides the motion was not apparent. The air was still, the crowd was still, the engine at the head of the train was still, and the intense silence pervaded the entire surroundings.

Heartrending beyond the power of pen to describe were the scenes at the side of the bier while the simple folk of Canton walked slowly by in two single files. The sorrow of those who knew the President was too intense for utterance, but was so full it burst the bounds of control over the emotions. Rough workingmen trembled from head to foot and their chests heaved with emotion, as great tears rolled down their faces. The ghastly appearance of President McKinley’s face, which was blue and thin, far more discolored than it was when the body lay in state in Buffalo, made the grief more poignant.

It seemed as though none who had known him in his genial vigor as their fellow townsman and neighbor could see that discolored face, the result of the assassin’s deadly work, without bursting into tears.

A farmer of 80, old, bent and weather-beaten, tottered in the line as he wound his decrepit way through the black corridor to the bier. When he saw the pinched, drawn face he placed his great gnarled hands to his face and wept as no heart-broken child could weep. He was bowed and broken when he entered the darkened hall and his step was shaky. When he left his shaggy white head was bowed lower, his spirit seemed broken almost to the point of leaving his aged frame and his step was a staggering shuffle. He was the impersonation of abject, venerable grief.

The sight had been throughout profoundly impressive.

Up the street soldiers at intervals of ten feet with difficulty restrained the solid wall of people. Canton had suddenly become a city of 100,000, and the entire population was in the streets. The station itself was cleared, a company of soldiers of the Eighth Ohio from Worcester keeping the platform clear. Opposite, over the heads of acres of people, on the wall of a big manufacturing establishment, was an enormous shield thirty feet high, with McKinley’s black-bordered picture in the center. The local committee, headed by ex-Secretary of State William R. Day and Judge Grant, was on the platform.

All about were the black symbols of mourning. The approach of the train was unheralded. No whistle was blown, no bell was rung. In absolute silence it rolled into the station. Even the black-hooded locomotive gave no sound. There was no panting of exhaust pipes. The energy that brought it seemed to have been absolutely expended. At the mere sight of the train the people who had been waiting there for hours were greatly affected. Women sobbed and men wept.

For a full minute after it had stopped no one appeared. Judge Day and his committee moved slowly down the platform in front of the line of soldiers to the catafalque car and waited. Colonel Bingham, the President’s aid, then gave directions for the removal of the casket from the car. The coffin was too large to be taken through the door and a broad window at the side was unscrewed and removed.

While this was going on the floral pieces inside were carefully lifted out and placed upon the ground at the side of the track. When all was ready the soldiers and sailors who had accompanied the body all the way from Buffalo emerged from the car and took up their places. The soldiers trailed their arms and the sailors held their drawn cutlasses at their sides. Only the body-bearers were bareheaded and unarmed.

Meantime President Roosevelt, with his brother-in-law, Captain Cowles of the navy, in full uniform, at his side, had descended from the car ahead of that occupied by Mrs. McKinley. The members of the Cabinet, excepting Secretary of State Hay and Secretary of the Navy Long, were present. Secretary Cortelyou, Governor Nash, Lieutenant-Governor Caldwell and Judge Marshall J. Williams of the Supreme Court, representing the three branches of the State government of Ohio, followed President Roosevelt from the train.

The President was met by Judge Grant of the Reception Committee, and the official party then moved to the west of the station, where they formed in line, with the President at the head. All were uncovered.

With the body placed in the hearse, the bugle note sounded again and the hundred swords were sheathed. The hundred bright steels faced to the right, and with slow step the men advanced to take the position of honor before the hearse. At the given signal the soft notes of “Nearer, My God, To Thee,” swelled up from the military band. The horses kept the slow step perfectly. The two drivers of the hearse, who had kept their heads bared reverently, replaced their hats and gave the sign to the black horses which were to draw the catafalque.

The two steeds stepped forward and the funeral procession was in motion. At that moment the power plant of the Canton Electric Light Company was started. A mournful whir broke upon every ear. It was like the dirge note of a Scotch bag-pipe. It fitted in with the notes of the President’s hymn perfectly, as if the ancient pipers of the clan of the McKinleys were sounding the dirge for their chieftain.

DISPLAY OF FLOWERS IN FRONT OF RECEIVING VAULT, WESTLAWN CEMETERY, CANTON, OHIO.

U. S. SENATE PASSING THE SPANISH WAR APPROPRIATION OF $50,000,000.

Save the plaintive whir of the electric motor, the gentle notes of the hymn and the slow and mournful click of the horses’ hoofs upon the brick pavement all was silence. For the first time in over thirty years William McKinley passed through the familiar streets of Canton and there was silence.

With bared heads and tearful eyes the dense throngs that lined Cherry, Tuscarawas and Market streets observed with restless eagerness the progress of the funeral procession to the courthouse. It was three-quarters of an hour after the column moved that the casket was carried into the somber rotunda of the big public building, and in that time thousands of women sobbed and men wept.

Following the President’s carriage were carriages containing members of the Cabinet, after whom came the diplomats and citizens. It was nearly 1 o’clock when the President reached the courthouse. He waited until the casket had been borne inside and placed on the catafalque. Then, attended by Commander Cowles and the members of the Cabinet, the Executive entered the rotunda, passed by the body of the illustrious dead, bowed low a moment over the face of his predecessor and left the building.

With the Commodore he went direct to the residence of Mrs. George H. Harter, 933 North Market street, where he took luncheon. After the President came the Cabinet members, Secretary Root leading, and then the military guard of honor and the diplomatic corps in turn. Ten minutes later the public was admitted in two columns, one passing on each side of the casket.

The decorations of the rotunda were exceedingly impressive. A striking conceit of the artist consisted of three chairs, all covered with crape. They represent the chairs of state left vacant by the tragic deaths of Lincoln, Garfield and the statesman mourned to-day. At the head of the casket stands a Knight Templar, at the foot a member of the Ohio militia, while the sides are guarded respectively by a regular army soldier and a marine.

Meantime Admiral Dewey, General Miles and the other high officers of the army and navy, who composed the guard of honor, had moved around the east side of the station. They also entered carriages and took their place in the larger procession that was now forming. All were attired in the full uniform of their ranks. They were fairly ablaze with gold lace.

The shrill notes of the bugle had given the first sign to the waiting multitude outside the station that the casket was approaching. Instantly the long lines of soldiers became rigid, standing at present arms. The black horses of the Cleveland Troop, immediately facing the station, stood motionless, their riders with sabers lowered. Slowly through the entrance came the stalwart soldiers and sailors, with solemn tread, bearing aloft the flag-covered coffin of the man this city loved so well. As it came into view a great sigh went up from the dense throng.

Immediately following the mounted troops came the hearse bearing its flag-covered burden. This was the sight that sent a hush along the dense, long lines of humanity stretching for a mile away to the courthouse. As the casket passed every head was bowed and every face evidenced the great personal grief which had come upon the community.

CHAPTER XXXIX.
FUNERAL SERVICES IN ALL CHURCHES.

While funeral services were being held over the remains of President McKinley on the Sunday after his death, every church edifice in the whole nation was the scene of a similar service. Without regard to sect or creed, without regard to location, far or near, high or low, in cathedral and in chapel, the words of preacher and the heartfelt sympathy of people rose in united worship to the God whom William McKinley had worshiped.

Services in the Metropolitan Methodist Church at Washington, of which President McKinley was a member and constant attendant when at Washington, were of an unusually impressive character.

The congregation present tested the capacity of the building, many persons being compelled to stand. Drapings of black covered the President’s pew, and these sombre habiliments of woe covered the pulpit, partly made of olive wood from Jerusalem. During the service the choir sang “Lead, Kindly Light,” and “Nearer, My God, to Thee,” favorites of the dead President, the vast congregation joining in both selections. Rev. Dr. F. M. Bristol, the pastor, was in Europe; but Rev. W. H. Chapman delivered the sermon, taking his text from Jeremiah, “Judah mourneth.” In the course of his remarks Dr. Chapman said:

“No safer, purer man than William McKinley has ever presided over this great republic and no man was ever more admired. Adorned was he with the highest and noblest virtues, which gave dignity and force to his character and moral beauty to his life. He was a Christian man and exemplified in his daily life the sublime principles of Christianity. From early manhood he had been identified with the Christian church, with that branch which we represent. It was the church of his mother, the church in which he had been trained from childhood, that he had received lessons which added to those imparted to him by his maternal parent laid the foundation for that solid, symmetrical character which he attained and for which he was distinguished.

“Christianity nobly sustained him during his illness, enabling him to endure calmly and submissively. In his quiet moments, with eyes closed but not asleep, he said, ‘Nearer, my God, to Thee.’ To his beloved companion who had trod with him for many years the path of life, bending over him with tearful eyes and throbbing heart, near the parting hour, he said ‘Not our will, but God’s will be done,’ meaning ‘be resigned but trustful; leave all with the Lord and it shall be well with thee when I am gone.’ How peaceful and resigned he went into the valley, covered with splendid sunshine and found rest from his labors! He has left behind him, to his kindred and to us the rich legacy of a splendid character and an unsullied record. A life that says to others: ‘This is the way. Walk in it, the way that leads to moral wealth, far above all material wealth, and which leads at last to heaven and to God.’

“We shall miss him in this sanctuary and look no more upon him in yonder pew devotional in worship and listening attentively to the precious word as if indeed it were manna to his soul and a refreshing stream from the fountain of life. But he worshiped today in the temple not made with hands, with many of those with whom he was wont to worship in the church below. May we all imitate his example, emulate his virtues and at the last be counted worthy of a place with him in the kingdom of heaven.”

Rev. Dr. Frank W. Gunsaulus, of the Central Church, at Chicago, used these words:

“The awful feature of this calamity is undisguised in the fact that it is a stroke against the enterprise of government, which is the noblest enterprise undertaken by man. It was a dagger thrust at the heart of civilization. It makes it all the more horrible and helps us to see the ghastly features of anarchy more truly when we reflect that the wound which it opened was through the now stilled heart of a man at once so loving, so loved and so lovable as the President. To so dishearten the whole of Christendom in its efforts toward public order, that wretch had to pierce through one of the fairest and sweetest lives the world has known. And it was this tender and noble man who believed so profoundly in the safety of free government. When anarchists were loud in 1893 the now silent orator eloquently said: ‘With patriotism in our hearts and the flag of our country in our hands there is no danger of anarchy.’ It is a frightful thing to believe that this confidence has been at all shaken, and it is the instant demand of our religion and our education that somehow they shall be made able to put patriotism into the hearts of the alien peoples and to get them to take hold sympathetically of our flag and love it, so that anarchy may be impossible. William McKinley’s kindly heart and generous spirit, his enormous public services, resulting in countless benefits to the poor man, his unswerving devotion to the principle that no minority is without rights, his purity and power are permanent forces and realities which have been exalted upon an altar of martyrdom. The assassin supposed he could slay them from the high and heavenly place in which the citizens of the republic behold them. They will organize into a knightly personality and William McKinley will be the slayer of anarchy in America. From this time forward, whatever makes for anarchy must hide its treacherous face away from the light of him whom we loved. Slanderous lies as to the motives and character of those whom the nation has trusted with the reins of government, the vulgarity of newly acquired wealth which seems often to flaunt itself in the face of human need, the wild ravings of men who have no idea of loyalty to government and law, the thoughtless debate of theologians who have forgotten the simple dictates of Christian religion and the Godless enemies of public justice, all writhe away like serpents smitten with intolerable light as we think of the awful price we have paid and ever must pay if we fail to do our duty in upholding the flag and making it a symbol as sacred and as just as the cross of Christ. William McKinley has entered into the Holy of Holies bearing our sins. Let us awake to newness of life.”

At St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York Archbishop Corrigan was too much moved to deliver the sermon, but throughout the sermon by Father Lavelle he knelt in prayer. Father Lavelle devoted his entire sermon to the life of President McKinley, and his words received the closest attention. He first read the open letter of the Archbishop to the clergy in his diocese asking for prayers for the late President, praising the latter’s virtues and condemning anarchy.

“These words of our Archbishop,” he added, “express as complete as words can the sentiment of the American people in general and the Catholics as well on this day of national sorrow. I say as well as words can, because on occasions of this kind the very best words seem hollow and meaningless compared with the depth and vast significance that stirs the heart of the nation, William McKinley was one whose name, even if misfortune had not overtaken him, would have gone down to posterity as one of the greatest Presidents of the United States. This is conceded by all, those who opposed him politically as well. He was really the idol of the nation. We all voted for him either directly or indirectly. If we voted for his opponent we did so for the principle, not for the man, as no one had a better character than William McKinley.

“He was a statesman who has left an indelible impression upon the history of this country and of the world, and before he was President the name of William McKinley was better known outside of the United States and throughout the world than any other American. He was a man of large faith in God and of deep religious sense. He was devoid of bigotry. During two summers spent away from Washington he spent his vacation at Lake Champlain, in the immediate vicinity of the Catholic Summer School, and the courtesy and kindliness he showed was such as to bring him nearer to the hearts of all people there and make him seem as if he was one of them.

“‘Justice will be done.’ That was the principal guiding star of his life; the aim and object that spurred him on to his duty. Well does he deserve a nation’s tears and gratitude. Does it not seem strange that a life so noble, a life without stain, at which the voice of calumny was never once lifted, should find an enemy capable of destroying the vital spark?”

Father Lavelle then referred to anarchism and to the writings of Pope Leo XIII on the subject. At this time Archbishop Corrigan showed his deep emotion and kept his handkerchief pressed to his eyes for some time. In speaking of anarchists the Rev. Mr. Lavelle said:

“These misguided creatures sometimes pretend to find a root of their false doctrines in the Scriptures themselves. Anarchy is as impassible as that five is equal to two. We trace the beginning of this inequality in God Himself. In our family, where the father and mother must be the head, this man, the anarchist, gets over the difficulty by destroying the family. If we wish to prevent a renewal of the calamity which we mourn to-day it is only through stronger faith in God. That is the bulwark of society and of this nation. You have noticed in the morning papers that the new President has issued a proclamation, asking the people to assemble in their places of worship on next Thursday and pray for our illustrious dead. In accordance with that proclamation our reverend Archbishop has set aside that day for services in this diocese. A special mass will be held in the Cathedral at 10 o’clock, and I beg all of you who can to come and pray with your hearts for this noble, true man, whom we have lost.

“May we come to that service with the thought that the holy sacrifice may go up to God, asking for new strength for our people and for the unblemished hero who has gone—asking for the new President strength, health and God’s spirit, so that they may aid him in the proper discharge of his duties, and that never again in our history may we find that the head of our nation has been laid low by anarchy, jealousy or any other passion.”

Time and again through the service, when the speaker’s words touched upon the beauties of President McKinley’s life, the Archbishop was seen to bow his head in tears, while great sobs choked his frame.

One of the notable incidents of the day was Rev. F. D. Powers’ sermon at the Vermont Avenue Christian church in Washington. He it was who conducted the funeral services over the body of President Garfield, in the rotunda of the capitol, twenty years ago. He chose as his text the words of Christ to Peter in the garden of Gethsemane: “The cup which my Father gave me, shall I not drink it?” He said in part:

“Our beloved Christian President, in the terrible moment when the blow was struck, said: ‘Do him no harm; he does not know what he is doing.’ How true and wise and just and Christlike! And when he resigned himself to the faithful surgeons with that faith and majestic courage and magnificent simplicity that marked his character of life throughout, he said: ‘Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name; Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done,’ and passed into unconsciousness with those last words on his lips. Hear him, as all the glory of this world fades above his vision and the gates of the unseen are swinging wide, when he breathed the hymn, ‘Nearer, my God, to Thee, nearer to Thee.’ Hear him as the last farewell is taken: ‘It is God’s way. His will be done.’ How he speaks to the nation! How he speaks to the ages! God holds the cup, and the draught is wholesome and needful. God help us to be ready, as he was! Death is a friend of ours, and we must be ever ready to entertain him. God make us strong in Him who said: ‘I am the resurrection and the life.’”

Historic Trinity church, in New York, was crowded with worshippers. Rev. Morgan Dix, the pastor, is a son of that stern old Governor John A. Dix, who in an earlier day sounded the note of a vigorous policy: “If any man hauls down the American flag, shoot him on the spot.”

Dr. Dix, before a congregation that filled every available seat and overflowed in the aisles, delivered a sermon that was a eulogy of the virtues and statesmanship of the late President, William McKinley. After denouncing the crime Dr. Dix severely arraigned anarchy as a danger which would destroy modern civilization, and recommended that action be taken to suppress it. In the liturgical part of the service which preceded the sermon the President’s favorite hymn, “Lead, Kindly Light,” was sung. Dr. Dix spoke in part as follows:

“Men and brethren, eye to eye, hand to hand, heart to heart, we face each other now crying, ‘Woe is me!’ Woe for the common grief, woe worth the day and the tidings which it brings of destruction, desolation, death and violence lording it over us all! We are one in our distress at the last calamity and national affliction, in horror at an unspeakable crime. And so suddenly has the blow been dealt that there has been no time to search for the words which one might wish to speak. Two things surely are filling our thoughts today. We are looking at the man; we are looking at the crime. As for the man, his warmest friends, his greatest admirers, could have asked for him no more brilliant apotheosis. Estimates have varied of him, his ability, his work. But millions have been praying as men seldom pray that his life might be precious in the sight of God; and far beyond our borders, and widely through foreign lands, others innumerable, our brethren in a common humanity, have been on their knees pleading for his life. This tells the story of his character, his acts, his greatness; the general consent of the wide world, from which there can be no appeal.

“Our President was a great man in the highest sense in which that adjective can be applied. I am not speaking as a publicist, nor analyzing a political career; there is room for difference of judgment there; but there are other matters upon which we are all agreed. What is it to find in the highest place among us a man devout and faithful in his Christian profession, modest, calm, capable; a pattern of the domestic virtues, an example of right living? Has not the public, the great American nation, taken in the beauty first of that good, honest, loyal life? Is it not for this that the man has been beloved and mourned throughout our families and our homes?

“What makes the Christian gentleman to begin with but simplicity and sincerity of life, courteous manners, dislike of pride and ostentation, abhorrence of display and vulgar show? So have we thought first of this man, and then we have followed his life through its varied phases. We have seen the quiet student, the soldier, the legislator, the executive officer; and, looking on, our admiration has grown more and more. We have seen him chosen by a vast popular movement to be the chief magistrate of the nation; we have scanned his conduct and acts during four years, among the most critical in the nation’s history, and as the result of such scrutiny in the broadest light that could be thrown upon his path, and under the severest criticism to which a public man can be subjected, we have seen him re-elected to his great office by a larger vote than ever amid the acclamation of the people and to the confusion of his adversaries.

“All this we have seen. And then we have said: ‘In this system of ours we do not ask for a man who shall make and control, but for a man who shall wisely guide, oversee, direct; a man who catches the spirit of the age, who knows the signs of the times, who interprets movements, and in his sound judgment shapes their course.’ Looking at the last four years, more full of vital issues to the nation than any since the days of Abraham Lincoln, we have seen wonderful things. A nation passing on from small to great, from narrow places to broad, the horizon enlarging all the while, the nation attaining its majority, the world looking on with amazement, great questions put and answered well, great principles settled, great deeds done for freedom and clarifying of evil, and instruction in sound views of government; one great, grand, forward, upward movement, dazzling the eyes and charming the senses and kindling hope. And at the head of all this a man—not as if he were the author of these things, but certainly the wise, prudent, earnest leader; such a leader as Providence, we believe, must have raised for that particular work and inclined us to put in that position. That was the man.

“And up to Friday, September 6, that was the scene presented by our happy and highly favored land—a land blessed and contented, at peace and secure; never before so prosperous, never yet so honored abroad, never yet so hopeful, so confident; marching on its splendid path to greater things. And always at the head that good citizen, that earnest patriot, that wise head, that warm, affectionate heart, that friendly, fearless instance of the best that our American civilization has yet brought forth to help and cheer; trusted by a great people; strong, able, healthful, with his friends about him and the light of coming years in front. That was the fate of the people, and that was their will, and according to all ideas the will of the people is the law of the land, and he who gainsays is the enemy of the sovereign people. So stood matters a week ago last Friday.

“And now what shall we say?

“The crime; what was it? That high treason against the sovereign people of these United States? Let us compare crime with crime, and we shall see in this the worst of all we have ever known, the worst, the most outrageous ever committed in this land.”

After reviewing the assassination of Garfield and Lincoln, Dr. Dix continued:

“But there was worse to come. And it has come. Something else; something new among us; not new elsewhere, alas! but new in this land supposed to be a land of freemen, the refuge for the oppressed, the home of the higher and better civilization. Right in the path on which the great nation is advancing stands the most horrid spectre by which social order has yet been confronted. A shadow has fallen on the road, blacker than any shadow of death. Be the individual who he may that happens to represent this new foe, he is of very little consequence compared with the motive which inspired his act. This spectre to-day announced as its aim and end the total destruction of modern civilization, the overthrow of all law, of all governments, of restraint of any kind on the private individual will. And the fatal blow of Friday, September 6, was dealt at the Chief Magistrate of the United States by a believer in that system and in exact accordance with its well-known principles.

“And that lends the real horror to the act and gives its double horror to the crime. It is not a crime like other crimes; it is not one with which we are familiar. And our hearts sink at the thought that we are now at length face to face with this infernal propaganda, and have felt in the merciless butchery of our great and good President the first taste of more to come, unless God grants the wisdom and teaches the way to defend our lives.

“Next to the anguish of the hour which has made strong men weep like children and melted hearts at the cruel desolation of a pure and loving home comes the dread engendered of a doubt as to the will and power of the nation to save its own life; whether there is force enough among us to rise and lay strong hold on this monster now distinctly revealed and upon us, in the murderous attack on the noblest and best in the land. Already we are beginning to hear it said that the people are rallying from the blow; that the first alarm is over; that all are recovering courage; that finance will soon flow again in its usual channels; that we shall go forward once more in the pursuit of arts and the ordinary vocations of the time. Yes, all this is well, but will the nation fail to act as a great nation should, to deal as it ought to do with the most deadly foe that it has or ever can have? For if this foe prevails, the nation, the state, the law, the government will disappear forever and ever. Are we to forget what has thrown us into this present mourning and these tears? Are we to lapse into a fatal apathy, and let the preaching of murder and inciting to murder and the applauding of murder go on as before? Are the laws still to protect the very persons who hate and detest them and are banded together for the overthrow of society? It seems to me that the most solemn issue of the hour is as to what we have to do who remain—whether we are equal to the occasion. Are we now to fall back before this enemy, the last and most dangerous we have ever encountered or ever shall, and let things drift from bad to worse, in new instances of a passion which spares not one life that stands in its way?

“There is a great deal to be said of the national sins which have led to such national judgments as we have felt and are feeling now; of the falling away from religious standards, of the loss of faith, of growing luxury and sin, of the decline in morals and piety which invite the judgments of heaven; of the indifference to law, the loss of respect for authority, the habit of railing at and writing on public men and telling lies about them, such as that gross one heard not long ago that our President was a traitor and would fain overthrow our republican and democratic government—for these things there will be time to speak later, but to-day I cannot speak of more than these two—the man and the crime.

“And so leave we the beloved and honored President to his rest and his future glory; for certainly his name will shine magnificently among those of the greatest of the lives immortal—with those of Washington and Lincoln; great for the way in which he guided the country through a mighty crisis in its fortunes; great in his closing words; great in his constant thought for others; great in his submission to the will of God—greatest perhaps in that death-bed scene, so perfectly accordant with the precepts of the Gospel and the example of his Savior.” (Here Dr. Dix became so affected that he sobbed audibly.)

The Rev. Dr. Dix made the announcement that on Thursday, the day of the funeral, a Litany service would be held at noon, and that another service would be held in the afternoon of the same day, when the offices of the dead would be read.

The foregoing expressions are given as expressing the general tone of the sermons delivered in all of the churches, from the stately cathedrals of the great cities, to the humble little frame or log buildings in remote communities.

CHAPTER XL.
CANTON’S FAREWELL TO McKINLEY.

William McKinley had come home for the last time.

At Buffalo, at Washington and throughout the hundreds of miles between, the nation had mourned the dead President. The city and state which gave him to the nation now knelt and wept for him. For a decade and more his life had been the greatest fact in their history. To say Ohio or Canton was to say McKinley.

Two weeks before he left them in the full tide of health and strength, followed by the cheers of his neighbors, who felt themselves honored in him, their President. And now he was brought back dead. He whose life was all of kindness and love had been stricken by the hand of an assassin. That thought added a bitter drop to the cup of woe which his city and state now drinks.

Canton had done its utmost a score of times in honor of William McKinley. The demonstration as he came home with the representatives of a sorrowing nation and of sympathizing peoples in his funeral train rolled them all up into one supreme testimonial.

Imagine the picture. The city robed in black. Places of business are closed and draped. Crepe from public buildings and on private houses where death has never entered. Arches of mourning span the street. Flags looped with crepe and great banners of black and white wave overhead. The business block which bears his name, the old law office where he worked, are wrapped in mourning. The multitude is silent in the streets with loops of crepe on arms and shoulders.

The courthouse, scene of his early struggles as a lawyer, has been transformed, as it were, into a huge funeral crypt, swathed in the garb of sorrow from sill to tower peak. Across the front, shining in letters of gold against the somber background, is inscribed President McKinley’s last message to those he loved: “It is God’s way; His will, not ours, be done.”

There the stricken President’s body lay all day guarded by soldiers of the state and nation, only one step from the tomb, while his old friends and neighbors, companions of his early struggles and his later triumphs, streamed by for one last look at his face.

For one night he rested under the cottage roof whence he went to the highest seat in the nation.

The scenes along the last stage of President McKinley’s progress toward the grave duplicated those which accompanied his funeral train from Buffalo to Washington. Most of the journey from Washington to this city was by night. It made no difference to the people who sought the last chance to show their regard for the lamented President.

The funeral train slipped out of Washington at 8:20 o’clock, leaving an uncovered multitude behind. At Baltimore thousands were in waiting. The train stopped only long enough to change engines and then started northward.

All along the way railroad operations were suspended. Not a bell rang, not a whistle blew, not a wheel turned. It was as if the whole world knelt in the presence of the nation’s dead.

Throughout the night the train passed between a constant line of camp fires through the valleys and among the hills of Pennsylvania. As the black draped engine approached the gathered people rose, and by the flickering of their camp fires they could be seen and heard standing with bared heads and singing “Nearer, My God, to Thee.”

Gangs of miners came up from the shaft on dozens of hillsides, their lamps gleaming through the night as they stood caps in hand to show their regard for a statesman who was ever their friend.

Solitary track walkers turned aside and uncovered. That was the supreme evidence of reverential honor. When one man does that in the isolation and darkness of the night he does it because it expresses what is in his heart.

At Harrisburg 20,000 people remained in the street around the railroad station until long after midnight. Then the train plunged into the Juniata valley and commenced its long climb over the mountains. And still camp fires glowed beside the track and still voices were raised throughout the night in that old hymn which has become a nation’s funeral chant.

Half the population of Johnstown, the first of the great steel manufacturing centers through which the train passed, was at the track and a company of local militia stood drawn up at attention. Four women with uplifted hands knelt on the station platform. From the smoke-covered city came the sound of the church bells tolling out the universal sorrow as the train slowed down that the people might better see the impressive spectacle within the observation car—the casket with its burden of flowers, the two grim, armed sentries on guard, “one at the head and the other at the foot.”

Those in the Canton reception committee rode as if to the funeral of one their own kin. They had known William McKinley and worked with him in business and official and social life for years. They loved him as a brother, and as a brother they mourned his death.

Some of them gave way utterly to their emotions and wept like children. A notable example was Judge Isaac H. Taylor. He had served in Congress with Mr. McKinley when they represented adjoining districts. Away back in the ’80s, when the Congressional map of Ohio was remade, the counties in which they lived were thrown into the same district. Both had hosts of friends. Both wanted to go back to Congress. The district was nearly evenly divided between them. If the contest for the nomination in the new district had gone to the point such political rivalries usually reach, both might have had to give way to a new man.

In that contingency Judge Taylor had the eye of the prophet and a breast full of admiration for his rival. He went to him and said:

“Major, I think I am as good a lawyer as you are, and I know that you are a better Congressman than I am. This district needs you in Washington and it can get along without me. If I can’t get on the bench I can make a living practicing law. You must take this nomination. My friends will be for you.”

That action by Judge Taylor, so much do great events hang upon seeming trivialities, sent Mr. McKinley back to Washington to continue his career in the public service, and mayhap it made him President of the United States. Judge Taylor may have been thinking of this to-day when the funeral cortege passed through the streets of Canton. More likely he was thinking of the qualities of the man for whom he had sacrificed his own ambitions. He wept bitterly, and, turning to his friends, said: “We have lost the best man I ever knew.”

Through Tenth street and then to Cherry and Tuscarawas the solemn pageant moved between solid masses of people, banked from curb to store front, crowding the house tops and filling every window. Turning into Market street, the main thoroughfare of the city, the procession moved under great curtains of mourning, strung from building to building across the street every hundred feet.

The line moved to the music of “Nearer, My God, to Thee,” played as a funeral march. Except for the gentle notes of the old hymn it moved through absolute silence. Every hat was off. Every head was reverently bent. In the intervals of the music one could hear the soft footfalls of the moving soldiers, so completely did silence envelop the scene.

The funeral march finally led through the public square, where Mr. McKinley had addressed his fellow citizens times almost without number on those issues and principles which made him President. Other times without number the people had gathered by thousands in that same square in his honor. To-day the old courthouse clock looked down upon the same spot and upon the same people as in other days, its hand stopped at fifteen minutes after two, the hour at which the President died, a silent reminder of God’s way.

As the head of the procession reached the great square the military ranks swung about, forming solid fronts facing the approaching hearse. As it was driven to the curb the bearers stepped from the places alongside and again took up their burden. Before the eyes of the vast concourse filling the square the casket was tenderly raised and borne up the wide stone steps of the courthouse. The strains of “Nearer, My God, to Thee” were still sounding as the flag-draped coffin was taken to the main corridor of the building.

The interior of the corridor was a mass of black. There, as elsewhere, the people of Canton seemed to find much relief for their feelings by exhausting the possibilities of outward expressions of sorrow. From front to rear of the building inside there was not visible one square inch of bare wall. The vault of blackness typified the dark void in Canton’s heart. Opposite the head of the casket upon a raised platform stood three chairs clothed in black, symbolizing the vacant places of the three martyred Presidents, Lincoln, Garfield and McKinley.

The President’s casket was guarded, as always since he died, by picked men of the army and navy. An additional guard of honor was supplied in this instance by Canton Commandery Knights Templar, to which President McKinley belonged.

When word was given that all was ready for the last public farewell, President Roosevelt, followed by his Cabinet, stepped into the hall. He glanced down as he reached the casket, halted for a moment, and went on with set face. The members of the Cabinet followed him one by one.

The officers of the army and navy, headed by General Miles, General Otis and General Brooke, came next. Objection was made by some of the army officials to the bright light shed by the electric globes full in the face of the President, and a desire was expressed that it should be dimmed. The chandelier was too high to reach, and a delay of fully ten minutes ensued while a hunt was made for a chair. The light at the base of the chandelier was then extinguished and other electric light globes on the chandelier turned off. The result was a decided advantage. The light, while being ample, was much softer and more in keeping with the occasion.

Four detachments of militia then marched into the hall and were drawn up in a line reaching from the entrance on the south to the bier. Another line stretched from the bier to the place where the hall diverged, and down each side hall were other lines. Strict orders were given to see that there was no delay in the crowd as it passed out of the building.

When everything was ready for the public to enter, Joseph Saxton, uncle of Mrs. McKinley, an aged man bowed deeply with the weight of years, entered from the east hall and passed up to the casket. He stood for fully two minutes gazing into the face of his distinguished kinsman. He then passed slowly down the hall, his head bowed low, his lips twitching convulsively.

A few final details were arranged and then the door was opened to the public. Two little girls were the first to approach the casket. Directly behind them was a tall powerful man with a red mustache. As he gazed into the casket he caught his breath in a quick sharp sob that was audible in every part of the hallway. He then gave way entirely, and, weeping bitterly, passed out.

For five hours the old friends and neighbors of the stricken chieftain marched by in two constant streams, fed by a river of men and women and children, which stretched away through the city for nearly a mile. These were no mere curiosity seekers, eager to see how a dead President looked. They were men and women who knew and loved him and children who planned in their youthful dreams to emulate him.

Tears came unbidden to wet the bier. Perhaps it was the great change that had come upon the countenance which moved them more than the sight of the familiar features. The signs of discoloration which appeared upon the brow and cheeks yesterday at the state ceremonial in the rotunda of the capital at Washington had deepened and the lips had become livid.

One of the first men in the line was an old farmer from the lower end of Stark County. He paused beside the casket and burst into tears. “His kindness and his counsel saved a boy of mine,” the old man murmured half in apology to the guards as he tottered out of the building.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

JAMES A. GARFIELD.

Old soldiers who had served with the “major,” as they called him, stumped by with limping feet on wooden legs and on crutches. Poor men and poor women whom he had helped when they needed help, and without anybody being the wiser, dropped flowers on the pall. One old soldier broke through the line a second time for another look.

“I went to the war with him,” the old man said, “and I would not have come back but for him. He saw that I wasn’t forgotten in the hospital.” The apology was enough to excuse the old man’s breach of the rules in the eyes of the guard.

A little girl came along. She stopped long enough to press a kiss upon the glass above the dead face and then ran from the building with streaming eyes. One of the guards thought he saw her drop something and looked. He found it hidden away among the costly wreaths and clusters of roses and immortelles and almost priceless orchids. It was a little cluster of common, late blooming garden flowers, and to it was tied with a piece of thread a note written in a cramped childish hand:

DEAR MR. M’KINLEY: I wish

I could send you some prettier flowers,

but these are all I have. I am

sorry you got shot.

KATIE LEE.

That guard had a spark of poetry in his soul. He picked up the modest little bunch of flowers and tenderly laid it across a cluster of orchids.

“I thought I saw the President smile,” he said when he told a comrade.

The line continued to form, to swing by, and to melt away until the sun went down. Its characteristics changed with each minute. Men who manage great business enterprises and men who make the politics of this state walked side by side with the miner, the factory hand, the farmer and the laborer. But a single dominant characteristic made them as one. Every face bore the mark of sorrow, and in most eyes were the traces of tears.

Late in the afternoon an aged man leaning upon two crutches, which he managed with difficulty, appeared at the door through which the people were making their exit. He asked the sentry to allow him to enter, and when the soldier refused, saying he had received orders to allow nobody through that door, the old man stood back the picture of woe. In a short time he again asked the young sentry in pleading tones to allow him entrance through the doorway, saying that in his feeble condition he was not able to stand in the line which at that time was extending fully a mile from the entrance.

“I fought in his regiment during the war,” he said, “and I just want to lay this flag on his coffin and then keep it as a reminder of the time I saw him last.”

“Take it in,” said the sentry, the catch of a sob in his bronzed throat; and the veteran hobbled into the hall. When he got inside he had more trouble, and was compelled to explain his errand several times. Finally the line passing the coffin was stopped long enough to allow the old man to step to its side for a glance into the coffin and to lay his tiny flag on its glass front. Then he turned back with the crowd, hugging the now sanctified flag tightly beneath his coat.

At one time a group of schoolgirls approached the casket. There were six of them and they came three abreast. One in the forward row leaned over for a look, and, gently disengaging from the bosom of her dress a scarlet geranium, laid it gently on the top of the wreaths that rested there. The others followed her example, and although the sentries had orders to permit nobody to place anything upon the coffin or to touch the floral offerings that were already there the little tributes of the girls were allowed to remain.

All through the afternoon the crowd passed the catafalque approximately at the rate of 100 every minute, making in the five hours in which the body lay in state a total of 30,000 people, practically a number equal to the actual population of Canton. When the doors were closed at 6 o’clock the line, four abreast, stretched fully one mile from the courthouse, and people were still coming from the side streets to take their places in line.

Twilight had come as the guard and escort were formed to remove the casket to the McKinley cottage. The streets were still thronged. Amid silence that played upon the heart as the shades of night were drawn closer the casket was carried from the courthouse for the last journey of William McKinley to the little cottage, where the greatest fortune that can come to any man should come to him.

The Grand Army post of the city acted as escort. Most of these old soldiers had served in the war with him in the Twenty-third Ohio. The heaviness of personal grief was in their footsteps as they marched away.

There was no ceremony at the McKinley cottage. The casket was borne within and laid in the little front parlor from which the nation had called its chosen chief five years ago.

Mrs. McKinley was in her room when the body came. Her anguish broke out afresh on this reminder that all which had taken place there was at an end and that, worst of all, he who had wrapped her life in tenderness, who had been through many years more than husband, than father, in his care for her weakness, was now cold in death.

Friends hastened to her side and did the little which friends can do at such a time. All others were excluded. Guards were quickly thrown about the house. Darkness fell, and for the last time Mrs. McKinley was left alone with her dead.

The following day, city and state followed the mortal remains of their great son to the tomb. Other cities by their chiefs, other states by their governors, offered sympathy to their sister. All of the mournful pomp and circumstance which the devoted regard of his friends and people could throw around the occasion followed to the grave, and the life of William McKinley was history.

The funeral services began at 1:30 p. m. at the First Methodist Episcopal Church, of which the martyred President was a communicant and trustee. They were brief, by the expressed wish of the family.

Rev. O. R. Milligan, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church, in which President and Mrs. McKinley were married thirty years ago, made the opening prayer. Dr. John Hall of the Trinity Lutheran Church made the first scriptural reading and Dr. E. P. Herbruck of the Trinity Reformed Church the second. Dr. C. E. Manchester, pastor of the late President’s church, delivered the only address. A quartet sang “Beautiful Isle of Somewhere,” and another quartet rendered Cardinal Newman’s hymn, “Lead, Kindly Light.”

An imposing procession, consisting of many of the G. A. R. posts in the state, the National Guard of Ohio, details of regulars from all branches of the service, fraternal, social and civic organizations and representatives of commercial bodies from all over the country, the governors of several states with their staffs, the House and Senate of the United States and the cabinet and President of the United States followed the remains to Westlawn Cemetery.

Strange as it may seem, the only house in all that sorrow-stricken city without a touch of mourning drapery was the old McKinley cottage. The blinds were drawn, but there was no outward token of the blow that had robbed it of its most precious possession. The flowers bloomed on the lawn as they did two weeks ago. There was not even a bow of crape upon the door when the stricken widow was carried through it into the darkened home by Abner McKinley and Dr. Rixey. Only the hitching post at the curb in front of the residence had been swathed in black by the citizens in order that it might conform to the general scheme of mourning decoration that had been adopted.

President Roosevelt, at the home of Mrs. William Harter, kept himself from all visitors except intimate personal friends all day. He felt keenly the position into which he had been thrust by fate in the form of an assassin’s bullet. He was much pained by the unseemly cheering which greeted the funeral train at Washington.

The President was closely guarded at night. He did not like it, but he was forced to submit. Detachments of state militia were posted at the Harter home, and sentries paced under the windows on all sides of the house. They also kept guard at the McKinley cottage, where the dead President lay.

In that cottage, as the hour of midnight approached, one of the most dramatic scenes of the whole sad event transpired. Mrs. McKinley had asked to be taken for a moment to the room where her dead husband lay. She wished, for the moment, that every one, even the guards, be removed. She was for the time entirely calm, and she longed for just one precious season of silent communion at the side of him who had been her life, her love, for more than thirty years.

So they led her to the room where lights subdued revealed but dimly the details of those decorations about the bier. They watched her, for the frail body had suffered so keenly, the hold on life seemed so light, that they dare not leave her utterly. But in the room she was alone. They had placed a chair near the casket, and there she sat, looking from dry, puzzled eyes at the square, black bulk which held the form of her girlhood’s lover. The thin, white hands were clasped in her lap, the face—pain-refined from twenty years of trial—was bent slightly forward, and she seemed questioning that mighty fact.

She was entirely calm, and her attendants, keeping vigil from the darkened hall, felt the grip of her mighty, unspoken sorrow, as she sought in the night for a touch of that vanished hand, for a glimpse of a day that was dead.

CHAPTER XLI.
McKINLEY LAID AT REST.

The mortal remains of President McKinley are at rest. For six days and through hundreds of miles a sorrowing nation has followed his bier. Now the last look has been taken, the last farewells have been said. The last salute to a dead President has echoed above his head.

His body was laid for the moment in the little cemetery of Canton, guarded by soldiers of the flag he loved so well, until it shall be placed beside the mother and other dear ones who departed before him. There the people who loved and honored him will raise a monument to his name and make of his grave a shrine.

But his highest monument must ever remain in the hearts of his countrymen. A mourning people raises its head from the dust and goes forward encouraged and guided by the life he lived.

Gray and somber dawned the morning of the entombment. There was a chill in the air indicating that nature was in full harmony with the multitudes who were here to see. It was just twenty years to the day since the death of James A. Garfield, the second martyred President, and many remembered that fact and were still further depressed.

Before the sun had been able to pierce its way through the clouds, infantry, cavalry and artillery were moving in the direction of the McKinley home. Long before 9 o’clock five thousand members of the Ohio National Guard were in position, some assisting in guarding the streets, others ready to take part in the funeral procession. Regulars were there in great numbers. Sailors and marines were out. Civic bodies were formed.

Entrance to the church was by card. Although the public knew this, all hoped against hope that by some chance they could force their way into the edifice. Hours before the doors were opened long lines were formed by the holders of cards, and back of them were thousands who were willing to stand in the chill air on a single chance that enough room might be spared for them to squeeze in.

The same eight stalwart soldiers and marines who had carried the coffin when it had been previously moved, shouldered it and bore it down the steps, down the path through the yard, with its beautiful lawn and flowerbeds gay with the blossoms of the late summer, out to the waiting hearse. The casket was draped in the flag that William McKinley had fought to maintain as that of an undivided country. About the coffin flowers were massed in such quantities as to fill the hearse.

A signal was given and the forward move began. Thayer’s military band led the way behind the police guard. As the hearse moved the familiar strains of “Nearer, My God, to Thee” were sounded. The music was soft and sweet, barely loud enough to be heard a block away.

The strains of “Lead, Kindly Light” announced the approach to the church, and a hush fell upon the struggling throng. The cavalry escort slowly swung into Tuscarawas street at the head of the funeral line, with the bugles silent and all orders given by signs. The cavalrymen formed three sides of a hollow square opposite the church doors, brought their swords to the position of “present arms” and sat like statues.

The great organ inside the church was waked by the first faint ripple of music from the street, which quivered through the black-draped doors, and commenced to breathe softly through the auditorium the solemn notes of Beethoven’s funeral march.

Four girls rose and joined their voices to the beautiful melody of the beautiful song, “Beautiful Isle of Somewhere.” It was like an answer to complaining hearts as it ran:

Somewhere the sun is shining;

Somewhere the song birds dwell;

Hush, then, thy sad repining;

God lives and all is well.

Somewhere, somewhere,

Beautiful Isle of Somewhere;

Land of the true, where we live anew;

Beautiful Isle of Somewhere.

Somewhere the load is lifted,

Close by an open gate;

Somewhere the clouds are rifted;

Somewhere the angels wait.

Somewhere, somewhere,

Beautiful Isle of Somewhere,

Land of the true, where we live anew;

Beautiful Isle of Somewhere.

Rev. O. B. Milligan, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church, led in prayer. In these words he asked for Divine light on a way out of the shadow cast upon the nation, and especially for heavenly assistance for Mrs. McKinley in her great sorrow.

Everybody in the church joined in the Lord’s prayer, Rev. Dr. John A. Hall, pastor of Trinity Lutheran Church, then read from the scriptures the Nineteenth Psalm, to which President McKinley was accustomed to turn for comfort when his heart was heavy. Rev. E. P. Herbruck, pastor of Trinity Reformed Church, also read from the scriptures, selecting the fifteenth chapter of the first epistle to the Corinthians, verses 41 to 58.

The quartet again arose and sang Cardinal Newman’s grand hymn, “Lead, Kindly Light,” the beautiful words floating through all the church.

Rev. Dr. C. E. Manchester, pastor of the First Methodist Episcopal Church of Canton, then delivered the funeral sermon.

“Our President is dead. The silver cord is loosed, the golden bowl is broken, the pitcher is broken at the fountain, the wheel broken at the cistern, the mourners go about the streets.

“One voice is heard, a wail of sorrow from all the land, for the beauty of Israel is slain upon the high places. How are the mighty fallen! I am distressed for thee, my brother. Very pleasant hast thou been unto me. Our President is dead.

“We can hardly believe it. We had hoped and prayed and it seemed that our hopes were to be realized and our prayers answered when the emotion of joy was changed to one of grave apprehension. Still we waited, for we said, ‘It may be that God will be gracious and merciful unto us.’ It seemed to us that it must be His will to spare the life of one so well beloved and so much needed.

“Thus, alternating between hope and fear, the weary hours passed on. Then came the tidings of defeated sciences, of the failure of love and prayer to hold its object to the earth. We seemed to hear the faintly muttered words: ‘Good-by all, good-by. It’s God’s way. His will be done,’ and then, ‘Nearer, My God, to Thee.’

“So, nestling nearer to his God, he passed out into unconsciousness, skirted the dark shores of the sea of death for a time and then passed on to be at rest. His great heart had ceased to beat. Our hearts are heavy with sorrow.

“A voice is heard on earth of kinsfolk weeping

The loss of one they love;

But he has gone where the redeemed are keeping

A festival above.

“The mourners throng the ways and from the steeple

The funeral bells toll slow;

But on the golden streets the holy people

Are passing to and fro.

“And saying as they meet, ‘Rejoice. Another,

Long waited for is come.

The Savior’s heart is glad, a younger Brother

Has reached the Father’s home.’”

“The cause of this universal mourning is to be found in the man himself. The inspired penman’s picture of Jonathan, likening him unto the ‘Beauty of Israel,’ could not be more appropriately employed than in chanting the lament of our fallen chieftain. It does no violence to human speech, nor is it fulsome eulogy, to speak thus of him, for who that has seen his stately bearing, his grace and manliness of demeanor, his kindliness of aspect, but gives assent to this description of him.

“It was characteristic of our beloved President that men met him only to love him. They might indeed differ with him, but in the presence of such dignity of character and grace of manner none could fail to love the man. The people confided in him, believed in him. It was said of Lincoln that probably no man since the days of Washington was ever so deeply imbedded and enshrined in the hearts of the people, but it is true of McKinley in a larger sense. Industrial and social conditions are such that he was, even more than his predecessors, the friend of the whole people.

“A touching scene was enacted in this church last Sunday night. The services had closed. The worshipers were gone to their homes. Only a few lingered to discuss the sad event that brings us together to-day. Three men in working garb, of a foreign race and unfamiliar tongue, entered the room. They approached the altar, kneeling before it and before his picture. Their lips moved as if in prayer, while tears furrowed their cheeks. They may have been thinking of their own King Humbert and of his untimely death. Their emotion was eloquent, eloquent beyond speech, and it bore testimony to their appreciation of manly friendship and of honest worth.

“It is a glorious thing to be able to say in this presence, with our illustrious dead before us, that he never betrayed the confidence of his countrymen. Not for personal gain or pre-eminence would he mar the beauty of his soul. He kept it clean and white before God and man, and his hands were unsullied by bribes. ‘His eyes looked right on, and his eyelids looked straight before him.’

“He was sincere, plain and honest, just, benevolent and kind. He never disappointed those who believed in him, but measured up to every duty, and met every responsibility in life grandly and unflinchingly.

“Not only was our President brave, heroic and honest; he was as gallant a knight as ever rode the lists for his lady love in the days when knighthood was in flower. It is but a few weeks since the nation looked on with tear-dimmed eyes as it saw with what tender conjugal devotion he sat at the bedside of his beloved wife, when all feared that a fatal illness was upon her. No public clamor that he might show himself to the populace, no demand of a social function, was sufficient to draw the lover from the bedside of his wife. He watched and waited while we all prayed—and she lived.

“This sweet and tender story all the world knows, and the world knows that his whole life had run in this one groove of love. It was a strong arm that she leaned upon, and it never failed her. Her smile was more to him than the plaudits of the multitude, and for her greeting his acknowledgments of them must wait. After receiving the fatal wound his first thought was that the terrible news might be broken gently to her.

“May God in this deep hour of sorrow comfort her. May His grace be greater than her anguish. May the widow’s God be her God.

“Another beauty in the character of our President that was a chaplet of grace about his neck was that he was a Christian. In the broadest, noblest sense of the word that was true. His confidence in God was strong and unwavering. It held him steady in many a storm where others were driven before the wind and tossed. He believed in the fatherhood of God and in His sovereignty.

“His faith in the gospel of Christ was deep and abiding. He had no patience with any other theme of pulpit discourse. ‘Christ and Him crucified’ was to his mind the only panacea for the world’s disorders. He believed it to be the supreme duty of the Christian minister to preach the word. He said ‘We do not look for great business men to enter the pulpit, but for great preachers.’

“It is well known that his godly mother had hoped for him that he would become a minister of the gospel and that she believed it to be the highest vocation in life. It was not, however, his mother’s faith that made him a Christian. He had gained in early life a personal knowledge of Jesus which guided him in the performance of greater duties and vaster than have been the lot of any other American President. He said at one time, while bearing heavy burdens, that he could not discharge the daily duties of his life but for the fact that he had faith in God.

“William McKinley believed in prayer, in the beauty of it, in the potency of it. Its language was not unfamiliar to him, and his public addresses not infrequently evinced the fact. It was perfectly consistent with his lifelong convictions and his personal experiences that he should say at the first critical moment after the assassination approached, ‘Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done.’ He lived grandly; it was fitting that he should die grandly. And now that the majesty of death has touched and calmed him, we find that in his supreme moment he was still a conqueror.

“My friends and countrymen, with what language shall I attempt to give expression to the deep horror of our souls as I speak of the cause of his death? When we consider the magnitude of the crime that has plunged the country and the world into unutterable grief, we are not surprised that one nationality after another has hastened to repudiate the dreadful act.

“This gentle spirit, who hated no one, to whom every man was a brother, was suddenly smitten by the cruel hand of an assassin, and that, too, while in the very act of extending a kind and generous greeting to one who approached him under the sacred guise of friendship. Could the assailant have realized how awful was the act he was about to perform, how utterly heartless the deed, methinks he would have stayed his hand at the very threshold of it.

“In all the coming years men will seek in vain to fathom the enormity of that crime. Had this man who fell been a despot, a tyrant, an oppressor, an insane frenzy to rid the world of him might have sought excuse; but it was the people’s friend who fell when William McKinley received the fatal wound.

“Himself a son of toil, his sympathies were with the toiler. No one who has seen the matchless grace and perfect ease with which he greeted such can ever doubt that his heart was in his open hand. Every heart throb was for his countrymen.

“That his life should be sacrificed at such a time, just when there was abundant peace, when all the Americans were rejoicing together, is one of the inscrutable mysteries of Providence. Like many others, it must be left for future revelations to explain.

“In the midst of our sorrow we have much to console us. He lived to see his nation greater than ever before. All sectional lines are blotted out. There is no South, no North, no East, no West. Washington saw the beginning of our national life. Lincoln passed through the night of our history and saw the dawn. McKinley beheld his country in the splendor of its noon. Truly, he died in the fullness of his fame.

“With Paul he could say, and with equal truthfulness, ‘I am now ready to be offered.’ The work assigned him had been well done. The nation was at peace. We had fairly entered upon an era of unparalleled prosperity. Our revenues were generous. Our standing among the nations was secure. Our President was safely enshrined in the affections of a united people.

“It was not at him that the fatal shot was fired, but at the very life of the government. His offering was vicarious. It was blood poured upon the altar of human liberty. In view of these things we are not surprised to hear from one who was present when this great soul passed away that he never before saw a death so peaceful, or a dying man so crowned with grandeur.

“Let us turn now to a brief consideration of some of the lessons that we are to learn from this sad event. The first one that will occur to us all is the old, old lesson that ‘in the midst of life we are in death.’ ‘Man goeth forth to his work and to his labor until the evening.’ ‘He fleeth as it were a shadow and never continueth in one stay.’

“Our President went forth in the fullness of his strength, in his manly beauty, and was suddenly smitten by the hand that brought death with it. None of us can tell what a day may bring forth. Let us therefore remember that ‘no man liveth to himself and none of us dieth to himself.’ ‘May each day’s close see each day’s duty done.’

“Another great lesson that we should heed is the vanity of mere earthly greatness. In the presence of the Dread Messenger how small are all the trappings of wealth and distinctions of rank and power. I beseech you, seek Him who said, ‘I am the resurrection and the life; he that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die.’ There is but one Savior for the sinsick and the weary. I entreat you, find Him, as our brother found Him.

“But our last words must be spoken. Little more than four years ago we bade him good-by as he went to assume the great responsibilities to which the nation had called him. His last words as he left us were:

“‘Nothing could give me greater pleasure than this farewell greeting—this evidence of your friendship and sympathy, your good will, and I am sure the prayers of all the people with whom I have lived so long and whose confidence and esteem are dearer to me than any other earthly honors.

“‘To all of us the future is as a sealed book, but if I can, by official act or administration or utterance, in any degree add to the prosperity and unity of our beloved country, and the advancement and well-being of our splendid citizenship, I will devote the best and most unselfish efforts of my life to that end. With this thought uppermost in my mind, I reluctantly take leave of my friends and neighbors, cherishing in my heart the sweetest memories and thoughts of my old home—my home now—and I trust my home hereafter so long as I shall live.’

“We hoped, with him, that when his work was done, freed from the burdens of his great office, crowned with the affections of a happy people, he might be permitted to close his earthly life in the home he loved. He has indeed returned to us, but how? Borne to the strains of ‘Nearer, My God, to Thee,’ and placed where he first began life’s struggle, that the people might look and weep over so sad a home-coming.

“But it was a triumphal march. How vast the procession. The nation rose, stood with uncovered head. The people of the land are chief mourners. The nations of the earth weep with them. But, oh, what a victory! I do not ask you in the heat of public address, but in the calm moments of mature reflection, what other man ever had such high honors bestowed upon him and by so many people? What pageant has equaled this that we look upon to-night?

“We gave him to the nation but a little more than four years ago. He went out with the light of the morning upon his brow, but with his task set, and the purpose to complete it. We take him back a mighty conqueror.

“‘The churchyard where his children rest,

The quiet spot that suits him best;

There shall his grave be made,

And there his bones be laid.

And there his countrymen shall come,

With memory proud, with pity dumb,

And strangers far and near,

For many and many a year,

For many and many an age,

While history on her ample page

The virtues shall enroll

Of that paternal soul.’”

Venerable Bishop I. W. Joyce of Minneapolis then led in brief prayer. He had been conducting the East Ohio Methodist Episcopal conference at New Philadelphia when the President died. The conference adjourned, and Bishop Joyce and his cabinet have been ever since at the disposal of the friends of the President. He especially remembered President Roosevelt in his petition this afternoon.

The choir then sang “Nearer, My God, to Thee,” at first softly, and then rising into the passionate declaration, “Still all my song shall be.” It was as if the whole nation were being brought closer to the great white throne by the sacrifice of their President’s life.

Rev. Father Edward J. Vattmann of Chicago pronounced the benediction. He is chaplain of the United States Army at Fort Sheridan.

It was after 3 o’clock when the silent and anxious throngs outside the church saw the solemn pageant reappear through the church doors. A more impressive sight than the cortege of the President from the church to the cemetery has seldom been witnessed in this country. Nominally it was a private funeral. Actually it was a national demonstration. More than 12,000 marching men were in line. About 6,000 were the citizen soldiery of Ohio. The others were old soldiers and members of civic and fraternal organizations from all quarters of the state.

The head of the cortege arrived at Westlawn Cemetery at 3:30 o’clock. The roadway from the gate to the receiving vault was carpeted with flowers. Geraniums, carnations, sweet peas and roses had been strewn in great profusion. The old soldiers who had marched the weary march to honor their old comrade a last time could not forego the chance to take away a fragrant souvenir of his earthly end. One by one they stooped to gather a flower, and when they had passed the roadway it was almost bare.

The funeral car reached the cemetery gates at 4 o’clock. From the hilltop the President’s salute of twenty-one guns, fired at intervals of one minute, announced its coming. The military guards came to a “present” with a snap as the funeral car approached for the last scene in the life and death of William McKinley—a scene beautiful and impressive as his life had been.

After the arrival of the casket there was a moment’s pause as Colonel Bingham looked to see that all was in readiness. He then looked toward Bishop Joyce, who read the burial service of the Methodist church, slowly but in a voice that could be heard distinctly by all who were grouped about the vault. Instantly from the eight buglers rang out the notes of the soldier’s last call, “taps.”

With bared heads the President and members of the cabinet, who were followed by the officers of the army and navy, stood on each side of the walk, the lines reaching just to the edge of the roadway. Within a minute after the formation of the lines, the funeral car came up to the walk. The casket was gently lifted from the hearse, and borne to the floor of the vault, where it was rested upon the catafalque.

The last of the procession passed the bier at 5:45 o’clock, and then orders were given by Captain Riddle that the cemetery be cleared. This was quickly done, and the President was left in the care of his guard of honor. The first sentry to be posted in a tour of guard duty before the doorway was Private Otto White of Company C, Fourteenth Infantry, whose home is in Genoa, Ohio.

The vault gates closed with a hollow clang as the soldiers took up the weary round of sentry duty in the lonely cemetery. Two miles away, in the cottage so lately the home of a President, a heart-broken widow wrestled with her grief.

And the funeral of William McKinley was over.

CHAPTER XLII.
NATION OBSERVES BURIAL DAY.

When King David lay dead, at the threshold of Judah’s mighty era, the Bible tells us “There was sorrow in the cities.”

That, better than any other language that could be employed, describes the state of affairs in the United States of America when the body of the dead President lay in state in the town which had been his home on the day of his burial. Every city in the land chose its own methods of expressing the grief that was felt, but all united, at the selfsame hour, to express in the several ways the grief that was felt for the nation’s bereavement.

In Canton, of course, the expression of sorrow was profound. Nothing else occupied the attention or the time of any one within the gates of the city but that one great, overpowering subject.

In Washington all the many public offices of the government were closed, and the army of employes gave the day to sorrowing for the dead. There were services in nearly all of the churches. Theaters were closed. No places of amusement admitted frequenters. The storm-drenched draperies of woe that had been spread so lavishly on the day the remains of the President arrived from Buffalo, gave a drearier aspect to the silent and sorrowing city. There was little travel. Street cars nearly vacant hummed unchecked through the streets. Galleries and points usually sought by visitors were left quite abandoned. Even the great Washington Monument had fewer visitors than on any day since President Garfield lay in state in the White House.

In Chicago there were services in the Auditorium, presided over by some of the foremost citizens, and addressed by orators of note throughout the nation. A multitude of social organizations joined in a monster parade. It was a general holiday, and workmen laid down the tools of their craft, and postponed activity and wage-earning till the body of the dead should be at rest. Naval veterans from the war with Spain formed a compact phalanx and marched for the last time in honor of him who had been their chief.

In New Orleans a general holiday also was decreed, and schools were closed; shops were deserted; the activity of the city was still. It has been described as nearly approaching those distressful days when the fear of the plague had laid a silencing hand on the industries of the town. There was no fear in the present case. But the pall of a sorrow was great enough to palsy all movement. President McKinley had endeared himself to the people of the South as no other President had done since the civil war. His trip across the continent last May was of the greatest benefit to his fame and popularity in the South. It was realized that here was a man who was President of the whole United States, and that he held those in that section of the country as close to his heart and his hope as the people of any other section.

In San Francisco a service was held in the City Hall, addressed by a number of the prominent citizens. It was here that Mrs. McKinley was taken ill when the Presidential party was on its journey across the country; and it was here that President McKinley gave that great evidence of his devotion to his wife. It disarranged the plans of the people who had the trip in charge, and of the managers of the fair at which he was to have appeared. But above and beyond all desire for profit was their recognition of the generous and noble qualities of the man. And they paid their heartfelt tribute to the departed.

In Montreal, Canada, the provincial synod of the Anglican Church held a memorial service in Christ Church cathedral in honor of the memory of President McKinley. The Duke of York, who was in the city at the time, attended the service, and gave every evidence of that grief which he had at other times expressed. It had been the intention of the city authorities of Montreal to give a series of fetes in honor of the Duke and the Duchess, as has been the custom in most of the cities which they have visited in the course of their tour about the world, forming the better acquaintance of the subjects of the English King. But these plans were abandoned, although a large sum of money had already been expended. Neither the Duke nor his wife wished to proceed with the festivities.

London was a city of sorrow. The recent death of the Queen had called forth expressions of sorrow from President McKinley and the people of the United States which had touched a very tender chord in the nature of the Englishmen. And they were grieved beyond expression at the disaster that had befallen the Republic. They devoted the day to a special service in Westminster Abbey, a rare performance indeed. Portraits of President McKinley were displayed in all the shop windows, and were freely sold on the streets. All the papers of the British capital printed expressions of sorrow and of appreciation of the good qualities of the man who had passed away, and all expressed the hope that the nation would be comforted in its grief. One of the most touching features of their publications was the tone of sympathy for Mrs. McKinley. There was a pathos about these words which keenly recalled the late bereavement of the nation of Victoria.

PRESIDENT LINCOLN AND HIS CABINET.

Funeral services were held in far-away Manila. All the government offices were closed, and the buildings were draped in black. There was a peculiar sadness in the crowds that passed up and down the streets. Most business houses were closed for half the day, some for the entire day. Among the expressions of sorrow sent from Manila was one from Emilio Aguinaldo. He declared President McKinley a noble enemy, and a valued friend, and for the good of all the people under the flag of the Republic he could not but look on the death of such a man, particularly in such a manner, as an unparalleled calamity. He gave utterance to the most vigorous condemnation of the dastardly act which cost the President his life.

And so, from the rising to the setting of the sun, “there was sorrow in the cities.” It was not in the big cities alone. Wherever communities had been gathered, there was sorrow, and the effort to express the grief that was universal throughout the nation. Churches were filled with communicants and friends. Men and women who had not been in the habit of attending divine services made this the occasion when they paid their tribute of respect to the memory of a great man fallen. Pastors and orators employed their best talents in extolling the virtues of the dead, and holding out hope to the living.

And not even in the cities—large or small—was the grief monopolized. There was not a farm house, perhaps, in the land where grief was absent. In those hours when the service was being conducted over the bier of the martyred President in Canton, there was a bowing of heads throughout every part of the land. The beneficent results of the public labors of this man had reached to the farthest home, and the fame of his loyal manhood had penetrated all hearts. He was loved and honored and mourned. And the nation paused at the brink of his grave, in body or in spirit, whether they stood in the city he had called his home, and whether they held to their places at any other point in the broad land.

The sorrow of the cities bathed all the land in tears.

Of all the tributes paid to the memory of the dead President, none approached in majesty and impressiveness that utter abandonment of all occupation for the moments when the burial was actually taking place. For five minutes, from 2:30 to 2:35, there was absolute rest throughout the nation. That was the time when the body of the murdered President was being lifted to its last final repose.

And from the Atlantic to the Pacific, not a wheel turned for those five minutes.

For the space of five minutes every train in the country was stopped, and held motionless. Engineers, firemen, conductors and crews paused for that period in their occupation, turned devoutly to the little town where the last sad rites were being performed, and sent their thoughts out to the hovering spirit of the man who had fallen.

Labor in shop, in store, on farm, in mill—everywhere—had ceased.

That stopping of America, that pause of the United States, that wait of every citizen while the body of one dead was lowered to the tomb, is a mightier miracle than that which marked the last victory of Judea’s leader.

Five minutes taken out of life! Five minutes snatched from activity, lost to productive effort, subtracted from material struggle! It is an amazing thing in the most energetic, the most thrifty nation on the face of the earth.

And yet that five minutes, stricken from the total money value of the day, brought in return a sense of tenderness, of fraternity with all the other millions waiting, bowed and reverent, which nothing else could have produced. That five minutes was the best investment that busy lives could make. It brought them nearer to the ideal life that had been ended. It helped to impress upon them the value of his splendid example. It gave them a better confidence in the citizenship of America. It enacted anew the law of love, and blessed with its swift ministrations the purer patriotism for which this man of the people, this believer in God had stood as a representative.

Silence and tears for the noble victim of malignant hate; new resolves for the upholding of law and the extension of real liberty; unbounded faith in the stability of our republican institutions; an impressive warning to the foes of order—such was the day’s meaning to every loyal American citizen.

Eighty millions of people gathered about six feet by two of hallowed earth! That is the spectacle bought at a price so matchless.

CHAPTER XLIII.
ASSASSINATIONS OF LINCOLN AND GARFIELD.

There had been a long and fratricidal war, the most pitiful that has ever occurred in the history of the world, or even that of heaven, described by Milton. For in the latter the rebellious ones were urged on by envy and utter wickedness, with no thought of right on their side, and their end was “outer darkness.” In the Civil War between the States, both sides fought for what they deemed the right, and the patriotism of both was as pure as mother love.

Born of the one side and nurtured by the other, Abraham Lincoln loved both alike, but the logic of events and the uncontrollable influences of environment made him the President and partisan of the Union, the head and director of a stern, relentless, cruel and long-continued war, for the preservation of that Union’s integrity on one side, for independence and the strong claim of “States rights” on the other.

There had been marches and battles, sufferings unspeakable, misery, sorrow, death, destruction, all the woes of war, on both sides, four long, dark years, and through it all steadfast in duty, earnest and honest, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, with a heart as great as God giveth, and an intelligence as high as heaven, had, with kindly face and even temper, borne through it his burden of responsibility and his soul sorrow in it all.

The end of the war had come, and the great, good man, who had thousands of times earned the satisfaction and sweet peace that should have come to him and been to him a living joy, was, at the moment of his worthy triumph of that which was to prove best for all, laid low in death, at the hands of a monomaniac, an irresponsible, unfortunate enemy to both causes and to himself.

The nation mourned; even Lincoln’s enemies condemned the deed, and from that day to this there has been a deep regret in the heart of that generation, and the generation that has succeeded, that Lincoln did not live to see the great good that he had wrought. Yet in the finitude of human understanding we may not have fully felt that Jehovah’s wisdom called him to the higher and broader sphere of heaven that he might in a more exalted and perfect manner enjoy the results of his great work.

But Lincoln lived to see the dawn of peace. When he came to deliver his second inaugural address the way was clear, but in that splendid effort there was not a note of victory; there was no exultation over a fallen foe. It breathed but the spirit of brotherly love and the incense of prayerful hopes.

“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphans, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.” This was the word and spirit of his way in all the trying time. He went down to death with that flowing from his soul and as a benediction to the people, the republic and its institutions.

It was not long after this beautiful message that General Lee gave up his stronghold at Richmond, departing with about half of his original army, and that closely pursued by the victorious hosts led by General Grant. The army in blue overtook the gray remnant at Appomattox, and there one April day, amid its sunshine and showers, its smiles and its tears, War’s sable plume bowed before the white banner of Peace, and Lincoln’s great mission had been performed.

The flag of the Union had once more become the flag of all the country, and in this condition of affairs President Lincoln visited Richmond and the final scenes of the mighty conflict and then returned to Washington to begin his new work of “binding up the nation’s wounds.”

He had now reached the climax of his career and had touched the highest point of his greatness. His great task was done and the heavy burden that had so long worn upon his heart had been lifted off and carried away. Then, when the whole nation was rejoicing over the return of peace, the Saviour of the Union was stricken down by the hand of an assassin.

From early youth, Mr. Lincoln had been followed by presentiments that he would die a violent death, or that his final days would be marked by some great tragic event. And yet from the time of his first election to the Presidency it had been an unsuccessful task upon the part of his closest friends to endeavor to make him understand that he was in constant danger of assassination; for, notwithstanding his presentiments, he always laughed at their fears in that direction, in his splendid courage.

During the summer months he lived at the Soldiers’ Home, some miles from Washington, and frequently made the trip between the White House and the Home, unguarded and without escort. Secretary of War Stanton and Ward Lamon, Marshal of the District of Columbia, were in a constant state of alarm over this unnecessary exposure of the President to the danger of assassination. They frequently warned him and provided suitable bodyguards to attend him. But Lincoln as constantly gave the guards the slip, and, mounting his favorite saddle-horse, would set out alone, and often after dark, for the lone ride to his place of rest.

One night, while thus riding, a would-be assassin fired on him from ambush, the bullet passing through his famous high hat. But Lincoln never would admit that the shot had been fired to kill him. He persisted in attributing the incident to an accident, and begged his friends to forget it and say nothing concerning it.

Now that all the circumstances are known as to the assassination, it has been made plain that there was a deep-laid and well-conceived plot to kill President Lincoln long before the crime was actually committed.

When Lincoln was delivering his second inaugural address, on the steps of the Capitol, an excited individual attempted to force his way through the guards in the building to get on the platform with the President. It was afterward learned that this man was John Wilkes Booth, who was afterward more successful in his assassin intent. On the night of April 14, 1865, at Ford’s Theater, Washington, the assassin accomplished his terrible purpose.

The manager of that theater had invited the President to witness a performance of a new play, “Our American Cousin,” in which the then famous actress, Laura Keane, was playing. Lincoln was peculiarly fond of the theater. It was his most satisfactory source of relaxation from the burdens and anxieties of his life. He particularly delighted in Shakespeare’s plays and never lost a reasonable opportunity to witness their worthy presentation. Mrs. Lincoln was even more fond of the drama, and was less discriminating in her choice as to plays.

As “Our American Cousin” was a new play, the President was not specially anxious to see it, but as Mrs. Lincoln was very much inclined to attend, her husband consented and accepted the invitation.

General Grant was in Washington at the time, and as he was extremely anxious about the personal safety of the President, he reported every day regularly at the White House. Thus the General and Mrs. Grant had been invited by the President to accompany him and Mrs. Lincoln on this occasion, and Grant had accepted, but at the moment while the General and the President were talking on the subject, a message came from Mrs. Grant to the effect that she wished to leave Washington that evening to visit her daughter in Burlington. General Grant thereupon made his excuses to the President and went his way to accompany his wife to the railway station. It afterwards became known that it was part of the plot to assassinate General Grant also, and but for the fortunate departure of Mrs. Grant from Washington, the great commander would have fallen with his illustrious chief.

General Grant afterward remarked that as he and Mrs. Grant were riding along Pennsylvania avenue to the railway station, a horseman rode rapidly by them, but wheeled his horse and came back, peering into the carriage as he passed.

Mrs. Grant, at the time, said to the General: “That is the very man who sat near us at luncheon to-day, and tried to overhear our conversation. He was so rude, you remember, as to cause us to leave the dining-room. Here he is again, riding after us.”

General Grant attributed the actions of the man to idle curiosity, but learned afterward that the man was John Wilkes Booth.

It has been suggested that the probable reason for Lincoln’s disinclination to attend the theater on that fatal night was something of a promise that he had made to his friend and bodyguard, who had once been his law partner, Ward Lamon, then Marshal of the District of Columbia.

Two days previous Lincoln had sent Lamon to Richmond on business connected with the call of a convention to discuss reconstruction. Before his departure, Lamon had held an interview with Mr. Usher, Secretary of the Interior, in which he had requested the Secretary to endeavor to persuade the President to be more cautious as to his personal safety, and to go out as little as possible while Lamon was absent. Together they called upon the President, and Lamon preferred his request for the promise.

“I think I can venture to say I will,” was the reply. “What is it?”

“Promise me that you will not go out, after night, while I am gone,” said Lamon, “particularly to the theater.”

President Lincoln turned to Secretary Usher and said: “Usher, this boy is a monomaniac on the subject of my safety. I can hear him or hear of him being around at all times in the night, to prevent somebody from murdering me. He thinks I shall be killed, and we think he is going crazy. What does any one want to assassinate me for? If any one wants to do so, he can do it any day or night, if he is ready to give his life for mine. It is nonsense.”

The Secretary, however, insisted that it would be well to heed Lamon’s warning, as he was thrown, all the time, among persons from whom he had better opportunities to know concerning such matters, than any one else.

“Well,” said the President to the Marshal, “I promise to do the best I can toward it.”

The assassination of President Lincoln was most carefully planned, even to the smallest detail. The box set apart for the President’s party was a double one, in the second tier, and at the left of the stage. It had two doors with spring locks, but Booth had loosened the screws with which the locks were fastened, so that it was impossible to secure them from the inside. In one door he had made a gimlet hole, in order to be able to see what was going on inside.

An employe of the theater, named Spangler, who was an accomplice of the assassin, had even gone so far as to arrange the seats in the box to suit the purpose of the assassin.

On that eventful night the body of the theater was densely crowded with people. The presidential party arrived a few minutes after nine o’clock and was composed of the President and Mrs. Lincoln, Miss Harris and Mayor Rathbone, daughter and step-son of Senator Harris of New York, and the vast audience arose and cheered as the President was ushered to his box.

Booth, the assassin, came into the theater about ten o’clock, and being a well-known actor, of influence in his circle, could easily take unusual liberties about the theater.

He had not only planned to kill the President, but had also made excellent arrangements to escape into Maryland. A swift horse, saddled, bridled and ready for the venturesome race, was in waiting at the rear of the theater. For a few minutes the assassin pretended to be interested in the play, and then he gradually made his way around the back of the seats in the second tier to the door of the President’s box.

Before reaching that point, however, he was halted by a messenger of the President, who had been stationed at the end of the passage leading to the boxes to prevent the intrusion of unwelcome persons. To this man Booth delivered a card purporting to be a message from the President to the effect that he had sent for the bearer. Thus Booth was permitted to enter.

Inside the passageway leading to the boxes the assassin closed the outer door and secured it with a bar that had been provided for the occasion. Thus it became impossible for any one on the outside to follow the assassin by means immediately at hand. Booth quickly entered the box by the right hand door to where the President was sitting in the left hand corner, nearest the audience and in an easy armchair. He was leaning on one hand and held with the other a fold of the drapery. He, with the others, was intently watching the performance on the stage, and a pleasant smile was on his face.

In the right hand the assassin carried a small, silver-mounted derringer pistol and in his left a long-bladed double-edged dagger. The pistol he placed behind the President’s left ear and fired, and at the report the victim bent slightly forward, his eyes closed, but in every other respect his attitude remained unchanged.

The report of the pistol startled Major Rathbone, who sprang to his feet and grappled with the assassin, who was then about six feet away from the President. Booth escaped from the grasp of Major Rathbone and throwing down the pistol struck at Rathbone with the dagger, inflicting a severe wound. The assassin then placed his hand lightly on the railing of the box and vaulted to the stage, eight or ten feet below.

The President’s box had been heavily draped with a large flag of the Union, and in jumping Booth’s spurs caught in the folds of the flag, which was carried with him, and as he fell heavily his ankle was sprained, an incident that more than anything else led to his capture and death.

The assassin, as he arose, walked, without sign of pain, and theatrically, across the stage, and as he did so turned to the audience, flourished his dagger and exclaimed, “Sic semper tyrannis!” adding, “The South is avenged!”

The audience was stunned for the moment with horror, and seemed incapable of action, excepting one man, a lawyer named Stuart. He instantly comprehended the situation and leaping to the stage attempted the capture of the assassin, but Booth, being familiar with the arrangement of the stage, eluded his pursuer by darting out through one of the stage entrances to a rear door, where the horse stood, held in readiness for him, and vaulting into the saddle, dashed away, taking a street leading into Virginia.

Miss Keane rushed to the President’s box with water and stimulants, and medical aid was quickly at hand.

The full import of the act dawned upon the audience and it realized the tragedy, then followed a scene such as has never been witnessed in any other public gathering. Women wept, shrieked and fainted, men raved and swore, and horror was depicted upon every face. Before the audience could emerge from the theater horsemen were dashing through the streets, and the telegraph was carrying the details of the awful tragedy to all the world.

The assassin’s bullet did not produce instant death, but the President never again became conscious. He was carried to a house opposite the theater, where he died the next morning. In the meantime the authorities had become aware of the wide-reaching conspiracy, and the capital was in a state of terror.

On the night of the assassination of Lincoln, Secretary of State Seward was attacked, though in bed with a broken arm, by Booth’s fellow-conspirators and badly wounded.

The assassins had also planned to take the lives of Vice-President Johnson and Secretary Stanton. Booth had called on Vice-President Johnson the day before, and not finding him, had left a card.

Secretary Stanton acted with his usual promptness and courage, and though acting as President during the period of excitement, he directed the plans for the capture of Booth.

After President Lincoln had been taken to the house where he died, he was at once divested of his clothing by the surgeons in attendance.

Surgeon-General Barnes presiding, examined the wound, and it was at once seen that he could not possibly survive many hours. The ball had entered on the left side of the head, behind the left ear, and three inches from it. Its course was obliquely forward, traversing the brain, and lodging just behind the right eye. The President was at once surrounded by the prominent officers of the government. Mrs. Lincoln, overcome with emotion, was led from the theater to the house where her husband lay. Secretary McCullough, Attorney-General Speed, Secretary Welles, Senator Sumner, and other distinguished gentlemen, remained in the room through the night.

When first brought into the house the President’s breathing was regular, but difficult. This continued throughout the night, he giving, with occasional exceptions, no indications of suffering, and remaining, with closed eyes, perfectly unconscious. At about seven in the morning his breathing became more difficult, and was interrupted at intervals sometimes for so long a time that he was supposed to be dead. At twenty-two minutes past seven he ceased breathing, and thus expired. There was no convulsive action, no rattling in the throat, no appearance of suffering of any kind—none of the symptoms which ordinarily attend dissolution and add to its terrors. From the instant he was struck by the ball of the assassin, he had not given the slightest indication that he was conscious of anything that occurred around him.

The news that the President had been shot spread at once through the town, and was instantly followed by tidings of a murderous assault, still more terrible in its details, upon the Secretary of State. Some days previously Mr. Seward had been thrown from his carriage, and seriously injured. His right arm was broken above the elbow, his jaw was fractured, and his whole system seriously shattered. For nearly a fortnight he had been confined to his bed, unable to swallow anything but liquids, and reduced, by pain and this enforced abstinence, to a state of extreme debility. His room was on the third floor of his residence in Madison Place, fronting on President Square, and the bed on which he lay stood opposite the door by which the room was entered, and about ten feet from it. At a few minutes past ten—within five minutes of the time when the President was shot—a man, proved afterwards to be Lewis Payne Powell, generally known as Payne, rang at the door of Mr. Seward’s residence, and said to the colored lad who opened it that he had some medicines prescribed for Mr. Seward by Dr. Verdi, his family physician, which he must deliver in person. The lad said that no one could go up to Mr. Seward’s room; but Payne pushed him aside and rushed up stairs. He had reached the third floor, and was about to enter Mr. Seward’s room, when he was confronted by Mr. Frederick W. Seward, the Secretary’s son, to whom he made the same statement of his errand. He was refused admission, when he drew a pistol and snapped it at Frederick without effect; he then struck him with it upon the head twice, with such force as to break the pistol and prostrate his victim, fracturing his skull. Hearing the noise, Miss Fannie Seward, who was in her father’s room, opened the door, into which Payne instantly rushed, and, drawing a bowie-knife, threw himself upon the bed, and made three powerful stabs at the throat of Mr. Seward, who had raised himself up at the first alarm, and who instantly divined the real nature and intention of the assault. Each blow inflicted a terrible wound, but, before the assassin could deal another, he was seized around the body by an invalid soldier named Robinson, who was in attendance as nurse, and who strove to drag the murderer from his victim. Payne at once struck at Robinson and inflicted upon him several serious wounds, but did not succeed in freeing himself from his grasp. Mr. Seward, the instant his murderer’s attention was withdrawn from him, threw himself off the bed at the farther side; and Payne, finding that his victim was thus beyond his reach, broke away from Robinson, and rushed to the door. The colored lad in the lower hall had run into the street for help, and Miss Fannie Seward shouted “Murder!” from the upper window. The assassin, on reaching the upper hall, met Major Augustus Seward, another son of the Secretary, whom he struck with his dagger, and on the stairs encountered Mr. Hansell, one of the Secretary’s attendants, whom he stabbed in the back. Forcing his way through all these obstacles, he rushed down the stairs, and finding, to his surprise, no one there to oppose his progress, he passed out at the front door, mounted a horse he had left standing in front of the house, and rode leisurely away.

When the news of this appalling tragedy spread through the city, it carried consternation to every heart. Treading close on the heels of the President’s murder—perpetrated, indeed, at the same instant—it was instinctively felt to be the work of a conspiracy, secret, remorseless, and terrible. The Secretary of War, Mr. Stanton, had left Mr. Seward’s bedside not twenty minutes before the assault, and was in his private chamber, preparing to retire, when a messenger brought tidings of the tragedy, and summoned his instant attendance. On his way to Mr. Seward’s house, Mr. Stanton heard of the simultaneous murder of the President, and instantly felt that the Government was enveloped in the meshes of a conspiracy, whose agents were unknown, and which was all the more terrible for the darkness and mystery in which it moved. Orders were instantly given to close all drinking-shops and all places of public resort in the city, guards were stationed at every point, and all possible precautions were taken for the safety of the Vice-President and other prominent Government officials. A vague terror brooded over the population of the town. Men whispered to each other as they met, in the gloom of midnight, and the deeper gloom of the shadowy crime which surrounded them. Presently, passionate indignation replaced this paralysis of the public heart, and, but for the precautions adopted on the instant by the Government, the public vengeance would have been wreaked upon the rebels confined in the Old Capitol Prison. All these feelings, however, gradually subsided, and gave way to a feeling of intense anxiety for the life of the President. Crowds of people assembled in the neighborhood of the house where the dying martyr lay, eager for tidings of his condition, throughout the night; and when, early in the morning, it was announced that he was dead, a feeling of solemn awe filled every heart, and sat, a brooding grief, upon every face.

And so it was through all the length and breadth of the land. In every State, in every town, in every household, there was a dull and bitter agony, as the telegraph bore tidings of the awful deed. Everywhere throughout the Union, the public heart, bounding with exultation at the triumphant close of the great war, and ready to celebrate with a mighty joy the return of peace, stood still with a sacred terror, as it was smitten by the terrible tidings from the capital of the Nation. In the great cities of the land all business instantly stopped—no man had the heart to think of gain—flags drooped half-mast from every winged messenger of the sea, from every church spire, from every tree of liberty, and from every public building. Masses of the people came together by a spontaneous impulse, to look in each other’s faces, as if they could read there some hint of the meaning of these dreadful deeds—some omen of the country’s fate. Thousands upon thousands, drawn by a common feeling, crowded around every place of public resort, and listened eagerly to whatever any public speaker chose to say. Wall street, in New York, was thronged by a vast multitude of men, to whom eminent public officials addressed words of sympathy and of hope. Gradually as the day wore on, emblems of mourning were hung from the windows of every house throughout the town, and before the sun had set every city, throughout the length and breadth of the land, to which tidings of the great calamity had been borne by the telegraph, was enshrouded in the shadow of the national grief. On the next day, which was Sunday, every pulpit resounded with eloquent eulogies of the murdered President, and with such comments on his death as faith in an overruling Providence alone could prompt. The whole country was plunged into profound grief—and none deplored the crime which had deprived the Nation of its head with more sincerity than those who had been involved in the guilt of the rebellion, and who had just begun to appreciate those merciful and forgiving elements in Mr. Lincoln’s character, whose exercise they themselves would need so soon.

Immediately after his death, the body of the President was removed to the Executive Mansion, embalmed, and placed in the Green Room, which had been prepared by suitable emblems of mourning for its reception. Near the center of the room stood the grand catafalque four feet high, upon which rested the mahogany coffin, covered with flowers—the last sad offerings of affection—in which the body was placed for its final rest.

The conspiracy to assassinate President Lincoln involved altogether twenty-five people. Among the number captured and tried were David C. Herold, G. W. Atzerodt, Louis Payne, Edward Spangler, Michael O’Loughlin, Samuel Arnold, Mrs. Surratt and Dr. Samuel Mudd. Dr. Mudd was deported to the Dry Tortugas. While there an epidemic of yellow fever broke out and he rendered such good service that he was granted a pardon and died some years ago in Maryland.

John Surratt, the son of the woman who was hanged, made his escape to Italy, where he became one of the Papal guards in the Vatican at Rome. His presence there was discovered by Archbishop Hughes, and although there were no extradition laws to cover the case, the Italian Government gave him up to the United States authorities.

He had two trials. At the first the jury disagreed; the long delay before his second trial allowed him to escape by pleading the statute of limitation. Spangler and O’Loughlin were sent to the Dry Tortugas and served their time.

Ford, the owner of the theater in which the President was assassinated, was a Southern sympathizer, and when he attempted to reopen his theater, after the great national tragedy, Secretary Stanton refused to allow it. The Government afterward bought the property and turned it into a national museum.

Booth, the arch-conspirator, accompanied by David C. Herold, finally made his way into Maryland, where, eleven days after the assassination, the two were discovered in a barn. Herold surrendered, but Booth, who refused to be taken alive, was shot and killed by Boston Corbett, a sergeant of cavalry.