M’Kinley [excerpt]

     William McKinley was inaugurated for his second term on March 4, 1901. On September 6, 1901, the almost unbelievable news was telegraphed over the country that President McKinley, while in the Temple of Music at the Pan-American Exposition at Buffalo, had been shot twice by an assassin, an anarchist named Leon Czolgosz. But it proved only too true, and for a week the people of the country watched the bulletins and prayed for the President, who fought bravely against death. The wound in the stomach was fatal, and William McKinley, the third martyred President of the Republican Party, passed away on [283][284] September 14, 1901, at the home of John G. Milburn in Buffalo. The great purity and simplicity of his life, his devotion to his wife, his courageous struggle for the great economical principles which had brought the country to the highest degree of prosperity ever known, and the splendid record of his administration made his loss deeply felt by the nation, and he was enshrined beside Lincoln in American history. The last words of William McKinley exhibited the Christian character of a great life: “It is God’s way; His will be done.”