Volume V Part 26 (2/2)
President McKinley's Remains Pa.s.sing the United States Treasury, Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C.
Copyright, 1901, by Underwood & Underwood.
Not a little of Mr. McKinley's apparent vacillation and of his complaisance toward men and interests representing wealth was due to an endowment of exquisite finesse which stooped to conquer, which led by seeming to follow, or by yielding an inch took an ell. In him was rooted by inheritance a quick sense of the manufacturer's point of view, for his father and grandfather had been iron-furnace men, and a certain conservative instinct, characteristic of his party, which deemed the counsel of broadcloth wiser than the clamor of rags, and equally patriotic withal. Notwithstanding this, history cannot but p.r.o.nounce McKinley's love of country, his whole Americanism, in fact, as sincere, st.u.r.dy, and democratic as Abraham Lincoln's.
Mr. McKinley's power and breadth as a statesman were greatly augmented by the responsibilities of the presidency. Before his accession to that exalted office he had helped devise but one great public measure, the McKinley Bill, and his speeches upon his chosen theme, protection, were more earnest than varied or profound. But witness the largeness of view marking the directions of April 7, 1900, to the Taft Philippine Commission: ”The Commission should bear in mind that the government which they are establis.h.i.+ng is designed not for our satisfaction or for the expression of our theoretical views, but for the happiness, peace, and prosperity of the people of the Philippine Islands, and the measures adopted should be made to conform to their customs, their habits, and even their prejudices, to the fullest extent consistent with the accomplishment of the indispensable requisites of just and effective government.”
Most of President McKinley's appointments were wise; several of the most important ones quite remarkably so. He managed discreetly in crises. He saw the whole of a situation as few statesmen have done, penetrating to details and obscure aspects, which others, even experts, had overlooked.
During the Spanish War his advice was always wise and helpful, and at points vital. Courteous to all foreign powers, and falling into no spectacular jangles with any, he was obsequious to none. No other ruler, party to intervention in China during the Boxer rebellion in 1900, acted there so sanely, or withdrew with so creditable a record.
What made it certain that Mr. McKinley's name would be forever remembered with honor was not merely or mainly the fact that his administration marked a great climacteric in our national career. His intimates in office and in public life unanimously testified that in shaping the nation's new destiny he played an active and not a pa.s.sive role. He dominated his cabinet, diligently attending to the advice each member offered, but by no means always following it. Party bosses seeking to lead him were themselves led, oftenest without being aware of it, to accomplish his wishes.
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The Home of William McKinley, at Canton, Ohio.
Copyright, 1901, by Underwood & Underwood.
As a practical politician in the better sense of the word McKinley was a master. Repeatedly, at critical junctures, he saved his following from rupture, while the opposition became an impotent rout. Hardly a contrast in American political warfare has been more striking than the pitiful demoralization of the Democracy in the campaign of 1900 compared with the closed ranks and solid front of the Republican array.
Anti-imperialists like Carnegie and h.o.a.r, silver men like Senator Stewart, and the low-tariff Republicans of the West united to hold aloft the McKinley banner.
The result was not due, as some fancied, to Mr. Hanna. Nor did it mean that there was no discord among Republicans, for there was much. The discipline proceeded from the candidate's influence, from his harmonizing personal leaders.h.i.+p. This he exercised not through oratory, for he had none of the tricks of speech, not even the knack of story-telling, but by the mere force of his will and his wisdom.
Mr. McKinley's private character was pure, exemplary, and n.o.ble. His life-long devotion to an invalid wife; his fidelity to his friends; the charm, consideration, and tact of his demeanor toward everyone; and, above all, the Christian sublimity of his last days created at once a foundation and a crown for his fame.
Ex-President Cleveland said: ”You will constantly hear as accounting for Mr. McKinley's great success that he was obedient and affectionate as a son, patriotic and faithful as a soldier, honest and upright as a citizen, tender and devoted as a husband, and truthful, generous, unselfish, moral, and clean in every relation of life. He never thought of those things as too weak for his manliness.”
A special grand jury forthwith indicted the a.s.sa.s.sin, who, talking freely enough with his guards, refused all intercourse with the attorneys a.s.signed to defend him, and with the expert sent to test his sanity. He was promptly placed upon trial, convicted, sentenced, and executed, all without any of the unseemly incidents attending the trial of Guiteau after Garfield's a.s.sa.s.sination. No heed was given to those who, some of them from pulpits, fulminated anarchy as bad as that of the anarchists by demanding that Czolgosz be lynched. These prompt but perfectly orderly and dispa.s.sionate proceedings were a great credit to the State of New York.
Leon Czolgosz, the murderer of President McKinley, was born in this country, of Russian-Polish parentage, in 1875. He received some education, was apprenticed to a blacksmith in Detroit, and later employed in Cleveland and in Chicago. At the time of his crime he had been working in a Cleveland wire mill. It was said that at Cleveland he had heard Emma Goldman deliver an anarchist address, and that this inspired his fell purpose. It was suspected that he was the tool of an anarchist plot, and that the man preceding him in the line when he shot the President was an accomplice, but there was no evidence that either was true. There were indications that Czolgosz had made overtures to the anarchists and been rejected as a spy. No accessories were found. Nor did the dreadful act betoken that anarchism was increasing in our country, or that any special propagandism in its favor was on. To all appearance, it stood unrelated, so far as America was concerned.
Leon Czolgosz's heart had caught fire from the malignant pa.s.sion of red anarchy abroad, which had within seven years struck down the President of France, the Empress of Austria, the King of Italy, and the Prime Minister of Spain. In their fanatic diabolism its devotees impartially hated government, whether despotic or free, and would, no doubt, gladly have made America, the freest of the great commonwealths, for that reason a hatching ground for their dark conspiracies.
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Interior of room in Wilc.o.x House where Theodore Roosevelt took the oath of Presidency.
They were no less hostile to one than to the other of our political parties. The murder had no political significance, though certainly calculated to rebuke virulent editorials and cartoons in political papers, wont to season political debate with too hot personal condiment, printed and pictorial. President McKinley had suffered from this and so had his predecessor.
Upon such an occasion orderly government, both in the States and in the nation, reasonably sought muniment against any possible new danger from anarchy. McKinley's own State leading, States enacted statutes denouncing penalties upon such as a.s.sailed, by either speech or act, the life or the bodily safety of anyone in authority. The Federal Government followed with a similar anti-anarchist law of wide scope.
Deeply as the country prized McKinley--and the sense of loss by his death increased with the days--Vice-President Theodore Roosevelt took over the presidency with as little jar as a military post suffers from changing guard.
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