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Tribute to President McKinley
President McKinley came
of a sturdy Scotch ancestry and possessed the incomparable heritage
of being a native, free-born, Anglo-Saxon American citizen. By birth
he was neither a patrician nor a peasant, but the offspring of a
plain, honest stock that filled his veins with the best blood of
both classes and his heart with all of the sympathies, all of the
hopes, and all of the aspirations of the great heart of his country.
His life had been a training school for the presidency: a teacher,
a post office clerk, a soldier, a politician, a Congressman fourteen
years, and two terms Governor of his native State.
In peace and in war, under all circumstances,
he deported himself as became the chief executive of a free and
independent people. The gold standard, the highest tariff, the freedom
of Cuba, the subjugation and purchase of the Philippines, industrial
combinations, the softening of sectional hatred, the surprising
exhibition of American courage, valor, and power in the army and
navy, especially the history of Manila Bay, San Juan, and Santiago,
and the adjustment of international complications in China,—will
[70][71] all be closely associated
with his name as President of the United States.
And yet higher still—supremely higher
than party politics and enforced national glory—McKinley as a President
in his private and domestic life was a living lesson to all Christian
civilization. His daily walk and conversation was a living lesson
constantly exemplifying the real strength of the national character—the
purity of individual conscience, the strength of personal will,
the reverence of Divine power. As a President of eighty millions
of free people he measured up to the most exalted standard for him
who fills that office. He loved and served all sections and all
classes, and was an exemplar worthy of all imitation. He lived and
died a manly man.
We are told that when Montesquieu
came to die his spiritual adviser said to him, “No man, better than
you, sir, can realize the greatness of God.” “No one,” he replied,
“knows better the littleness of man.”
So it was with our President. Passing
into that artificial sleep that robs the surgeon’s knife of pain,
the last whisper caught from his lips by the attending men of science
was, “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
In his delirium he murmured, “Nearer, my God, to Thee,” and when
the final summons came he said, “Good-by, all, good-by. It’s God’s
way. His will be done.” Then he took his chamber in the silent halls
of death.
“Not, like the quarry-slave at night,
Scourged to his dungeon, but sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, he approaches his grave
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.”
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