CHAPTER VIII.
DAYS OF ANXIETY AND SORROW.
The Nation was thrown into a state of grief and indignation never before approached at the terrible news from Buffalo Friday, September 6th. Methods for transmitting intelligence have been vastly improved since the assassination of Garfield, since which time no such national calamity has befallen the United States. Poignant regret, intense indignation, and a feeling of dismay mingled in the hearts of the eighty million Americans who stood appalled at the news which swept like wild fire and reached every part of the world in an incredibly short time.
It was an appalling thought that this great republic, with all its promises and all its deeds for oppressed humanity, exposed its chief magistrates to more deadly chances than does any empire or kingdom. But seven men regularly elected Presidents in the last thirty-six years, and three of them brought low with the assassin’s bullet!
The news of the attempt on the life of the President was received from one end of the country to the other first with horrified amazement and then with the deepest grief. In every city in the United States men and women gathered and waited for hours to get every scrap of information that came over the wires. In thousands of small towns the whole population stood about the local telegraph offices and watched tearfully and anxiously for bulletins.
Telegraph offices everywhere were swamped with business, messages of sympathy for the President and his wife from almost every man of prominence in the nation, and for hours after the shooting telephone trunk lines were so overburdened that only a small percentage of subscribers were able to secure service.
Dispatches from every State in the Union showed how widespread and intense was the feeling of dismay and the sense of personal affliction with which the news was received. Public men of all shades of political opinion and social status alike shared the anxiety and found themselves grasping hands with one another and praying that Mr. McKinley’s life might be spared. All the details of the tragedy were sought for with trembling eagerness, and in all the large centers of population every effort was made to supply this demand by the newspapers, which issued extras at intervals till far into the night.
Early Saturday morning began arrangements for public prayer in many of the churches on Sunday. Archbishop Ireland of the Catholic Church, Bishop Potter, the Episcopal prelate; Cardinal Gibbons of Baltimore, and high church dignitaries of all denominations joined in the universal supplication to the Heavenly Father to spare the life of the stricken President. Fervent were the invocations and the hopeful news of the following days seemed to portend a favorable answer to the prayers of a nation.
Political lines were forgotten and Democrat and Populist was as eager to show respect for the head of the government as the Republicans. It was respect shown a good man; it was also respect shown the Chief Executive occupying an exalted position by the suffrage of the people.
At the moment when the country was enshrouded in the gloom of the awful tragedy, when it was bowed with its own sorrow and overflowing with sympathy for the bereaved widow, consideration of the dead statesman’s career and of the political controversies to which it gave rise, was not attempted. So quick had been the revulsion of feeling, so terrible the shock, that the one emotion of grief was overmastering and all-absorbing.
It had been said many times during the era of alternate hope and fear that Mr. McKinley was the most beloved of our Presidents since Lincoln, and the frequency of the assertion in every quarter and among all classes of people is excellent evidence of its truth. Nor are the reasons for his exceptional hold on the affections of the people far to seek. He had to begin with that sweet and winning personality which captivated everyone who saw him. Thousands felt its influence at Buffalo on the day when the wretched murderer committed his deadly assault, and they responded to it with an affectionate regard, as other thousands had done among the many crowded assemblages with which the President had so freely mingled.