September 1901 turned into a month-long tragic drama as America’s President struggled unsuccessfully for his life. This world event had a western New York setting, and deeply affected the people of the region.
William McKinley was a gentle man and a gentleman, diligent rather than brilliant, soft-spoken, well-liked. He had entered the Civil War as a private at 18 and left it as a major at 22, after fighting gallantly at Antietam, Winchester, Kernstown, and a host of other actions under Rutherford B. Hayes. As a captain in one battle he had directly ordered a recalcitrant general to put his division into motion, and the general had obeyed.
After climbing the ranks of Republican politics, McKinley was elected President in 1896, defeating William Jennings Bryan, whose reform proposals, plus support for organized labor and small farmers, terrified the big-money men by then controlling the Party of Lincoln. McKinley conducted a “front-porch” campaign; while Bryan stumped the nation, the Republican candidate treated friendly delegations to set speeches at his home.
In 1898 America fought its “splendid little war” with Spain, taking over Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Guam, some smaller islands, and (temporarily) Cuba, besides picking up Hawaii on the side. Northern and Southern soldiers fought together, winning an empire in three months by spectacular victories and almost no loss of life. Orators enthused that the wounds of the Civil War had been healed, and McKinley beat Bryan in their 1900 rematch.
The national healing was, of course, a partial reconciliation of whites, made possible only at the expense of black Americans, including those who had fought alongside Teddy Roosevelt at San Juan Hill. Bryan, by the way, opposed imperialism, and ran the 1900 campaign on that basis. Even so, he had raised his own regiment of volunteers, which was assigned to guard Tampa for the duration of the war. McKinley may have been a gentleman, but he was no fool. Bryan would get no chance to do anything remotely heroic.
McKinley’s second inauguration was the last for a Civil War President. Roosevelt, his energetic young VP who had been given the second spot to keep him “on the shelf,” had been a small boy when he watched Lincoln’s funeral procession. Roosevelt had recently been governor of New York.
McKinley loved world’s fairs, and eagerly visited the 1901 Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo. Besides highlighting our domination of the hemisphere, the Pan-Am emphasized electricity. Most of the country had none at all, and many that did had it only part-time. With an inexhaustible supply being generated at Niagara Falls, Buffalo staggered the world with its oceans of lights.
On September 5 the President made a speech to 50,000 visitors, proclaiming that America’s era of isolation was over. On the next day he visited Niagara Falls, attended a luncheon along with his semi-invalid wife, then returned to the fair over the objections of his secretary, George Cortelyou, who worried about his safety. “No one would want to hurt me,” scoffed McKinley, who was determined to shake hands with visitors. Cortelyou stationed police who overlooked a bland young man with his right hand wrapped in a bandage. As the ever-courteous McKinley stretched out his left hand, Leon Czolgosz shot him twice with a revolver concealed in the bandages. Stumbling back, the President whispered to Cortelyou, “My wife—be careful how you tell her.” His next words, as police and spectators piled on the assailant, were, “Don’t let them hurt him.”
One of the bullets had gone deep, and doctors, ignoring an x-ray machine displayed at the fair, couldn’t find it. But they had high hopes, so Roosevelt and the cabinet, who had raced to McKinley’s side, dispersed several days later. On September 13, doctors recognized gangrene. Word was flashed to Roosevelt, vacationing in the Adirondacks (blackflies and all) 12 miles from a telephone and up a steep slope. Three driver working in relays rushed TR to the train along a narrow mountain road in the dark. But McKinley died, faintly singing “Nearer, My God to Thee,” before Roosevelt arrived to be sworn in as the youngest President America has ever had. Judge Hazel, who administered the oath, would later rule against both Henry Ford and Glenn Curtiss in acrimonious patent disputes. The train carrying both Presidents to Washington stopped briefly at Arcade before passing out of New York through Olean.
One of Roosevelt’s first acts was to declare Thursday, Sept. 19, a day of mourning. Schools and businesses closed, although Hammondsport Post Office stayed open to 11:00 because the morning mail arrived so late. The Presbyterian Church there held a memorial service Sunday night, but St. James Episcopal waited until Thursday, with McKinley’s brother Masons attending in a body. Hammondsport’s G. A. R. Post passed a resolution honoring its fallen comrade. The loss was traumatic to Americans who had already endured the assassinations of Lincoln (1865) and Garfield (1881). The equivalent for us would be having had Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama killed. Robert Todd Lincoln, son of Abraham, endured the agony of being on hand for all three assassinations.
Czolgosz, an anarchist, had shot McKinley simply because he headed the government. Emma Goldman and other outspoken anarchists were clapped into jail, then truculently released when it became clear that Czolgosz had acted alone. The law moved swiftly back then. Czolgosz’s trial opened September 24. He was electrocuted at Auburn within the month, and quickly forgotten.
Attention turned to the vibrant, not to say hyperactive, new President, who quickly thrilled or scandalized the nation by inviting Booker T. Washington to lunch at the Executive Mansion. United States Senator “Pitchfork Ben” Tillman of Georgia screeched that the South would have to lynch a thousand Negroes to force them back into their place. McKinley’s friend and campaign manager, Mark Hanna, steamed, “Now that cowboy is in the White House!” Teddy Roosevelt would set the standard for 20th-century presidents; his activist example would not be lost on Teddy’s niece, Miss Eleanor Roosevelt, nor on their distant cousin Franklin, who was in 1901 a student at Harvard.
One structure remains from the Pan-Am… the Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society, which is worth both a visit and a separate blog entry (stay tuned). The Buffalo home where TR took the oath of office is now Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural National Historic Site.