Visions and Tasks, 1898-1901 [excerpt]

     It is anticipating events a little to refer at this juncture to the assassination in Buffalo of President McKinley, who died from his wound on September 14 of this year, but it is opportune to think of his demise side by side with that of the British sovereign. Bishop Satterlee had deep confidence in and admiration for President McKinley. One thing he always was at pains to arrange for the representatives of church societies and other organizations that frequently gathered in Washington, and that was, presentation to the President. No President could have been more lavish with his time in this respect than President McKinley. It was the very friendliness of the man that earned him both the love of the common folk and his tragic end. At the memorial service for the “martyred” President at the pro-Cathedral the Bishop said with passion:

     The scene of that black Friday, Sept. 6, marks one of the foulest acts of treachery the world has ever known. We welcome the stranger to our American shores. We bid him God speed, as he becomes one of us; and in return he slays our chief. Henceforth the symbol of the anarchist will be an outstretched hand of friendship grasping, under the pure white cloak of loyalty and patriotism, an assassin’s weapon.

     In view of the Bishop’s own last words on his deathbed there is more than ordinary significance in his reference to McKinley’s farewell to earth:

     What are all the poor laurels of mere worldly success beside the triumph of that deathbed scene? He, our revered leader and chief, died not only as a martyr for his country but as a Christian confessor, whose ruling passion, strong in death, outpoured itself in that stalwart cry of an undying faith: “Thy will be done. Nearer, my God, to Thee.”
     In death, as in life, out of the fulness [sic] of the heart the mouth speaketh.