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Upon the Death of William McKinley
The assassination of
President McKinley, a strong man, in the very prime and vigor of
the most exalted position of public usefulness possible to the human
race, resting upon the very summit of American honor, in the full
of enjoyment of the profound respect of universal civilization,
upon a mission of perfect peace, and standing, as it seemed to all,
solid and secure upon the devotion, the love, and the loyalty of
a great and mighty people, and in the very midst of a multitude
of friends,—why he should be so stricken down, at such a time; why
such a man, at such an hour and at such ignoble hands should fall,
is to me a thing so monstrous, so incomprehensible, a question so
utterly beyond the compass of any conception of either mine or yours,
that I believe that no finite mind can even imagine why it should
have happened so. And it was a question, too, that seemed to have
puzzled much the troubled brain of the suffering President during
the last hours of his life, if not to its very end. For to a heart
so free from malice as his, to a nature so gentle, so knightly,
and so noble, to a mind so lofty and so pure, a character so clean,
so chaste and kind, and so filled with charity to all his race,
it must have seemed incredible that any creature in human form or
otherwise should seek to take his life. We might moralize, theorize,
or philosophize upon the causes, remote or near, that could produce
conditions to render such a tragedy [72][73]
possible; but after all, perhaps, it is well enough, at least for
the present, to leave this great question and its answer just where
he left it, who was its victim—for among the last, if not the very
last, words that he uttered as he died was the simple single sentence
that solved it all: “It was God’s way.” That settled it as it settles
all great questions, especially the supreme question, as to how
or why or when a man shall die. It was the answer of a Christian,
a philosopher, a brave man, who could “calmly lay his burdens down,
and seek his rest, with all his country’s honors blest.”
Concerning the assassin, here is no
place to speak of that. The personal mention of a monster of malice,
a fiend so foul, so cruel and so cowardly should never mar a presence
so sacred and so holy as this. We may safely leave the fate of this
moral deformity to the future. Our brethren of the North will deal
with him according to the laws of the land. They are cooler under
crises, more dispassionate, more long-suffering and patient than
we of the hot-blooded South, and equally just in the end. But one
opinion I will venture to assert—an humble one of my own, ’tis true,
and, for aught I know, hitherto wholly unexpressed, and that is:
Had this thing been done on Southern soil, had a deed so dastardly,
a crime so cruel, so cowardly and so causeless been committed in
a crowd of Southern men like the mighty multitude where this thing
happened, aye, even in the intensely Southern State of Arkansas,
not all the cordons of all the police of all the municipalities
of the combined Commonwealth, backed by armies and banked with siege
guns, could for one moment have stayed the storm of righteous wrath
and just indignation that would have seized the assassin on the
spot and ripped him limb from limb, and sent his blood-stained soul
to judgment before the smoke had ceased [73][74]
to curl from his pistol’s mouth—and in less time than I have taken
to tell it. But let that pass. It is to be regretted, perhaps, that
we have let too many things pass in this government. I shall pause
to mention only one, but it is the saddest, I think, of all. It
is yet within the memory of living man, scarce more than a generation
gone by, when it was the proudest boast of American citizenship
that we lived in a land where the earth was absolutely free to all,
where every man, rich or poor, or high or low, or weak or strong,
or what not, be he President or pauper, could pursue his path in
peace along the public highway, or wander through the fields or
wend his way among the woods, or walk the crowded streets at will,
by midday or by moonlight, whenever, wherever, and however he chose,
and none there be who dare molest or make him afraid; and we used
to smile with amusement when we’d read of the armed troops that
thronged and tramped at the heels of kings, of the pampered soldiery
that sentineled the palaces of power, and the mailed warriors and
squadrons of cavalry that thundered beside the chariots of czars
and queens and princes and potentates, to guard their royal persons
from the vengeance of the despot-ridden subjects of the Old World;
but we can now no longer boast, no longer smile. We have let that
pass. Those good old, grand old golden days have gone, we fear,
forever.
But to recur to the President. The
little time allotted here will not allow even an attempt to trace
this bright career that has just been blotted out in blood, nor
may we sketch anew the royal path of life along which he never failed
to tread. He wore the highest honors that his country could confer,
and wore them well and worthily. He had achieved the most exalted
station of political power in this government, the loftiest eminence,
the very keystone of the [74][75] tallest
arch of American honor that ever sprung from the basic foundations
of our Constitution. Other men before him had occupied that high
position, had risen, reigned, and fallen. Other men had reached
those towering heights and returned again to the walks of private
life, to pass their days in peace among their families and friends.
But not so with him. He came down no more. The departure of this
spirit from this proudest pinnacle of earthly honor and power to
realms yet higher still may be likened to the eagle’s flight, as
standing upon the peak of some splintered crag, lifted above the
storm-swept summit of some lonely mountain height, he plumes his
pinions in the sun, unfurls his mighty wings, then boldly launching
upwards to the sky, he cleaves his gallant way beyond the clouds
of earth. It was enough. “Come up higher.” He hath gone. But in
a lowly humble way, in a simple personal way, as a friend or father,
husband, son, or brother, we can only weep with those who weep,
and mourn with those who mourn, and tenderly sympathize with those
whom his death hath personally bereft. It is all that we can do.
We can only hope that the song birds that warble in springtime shall
sweetly sound above his sleeping dust; that the sunlit leaves of
summer shall softly whisper hope to the dull, cold ear of death,
and that the sheeted snows of winter with love shall lay their pure
white pall above the bosom of the dead, true type, fit emblem, of
the record of spotless honor that his noble name hath borne.
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