New Faces in Old Places [excerpt]

     As Senator La Follette once said, McKinley never had a fair chance as President to show what was in him: his first term was broken into by the Spanish War, and his second was cut off almost at its beginning by assassination. He was sweet-natured and a born manager of men, and no one who ever filled the Presidential chair left behind him a more fragrant memory. As his murder occurred in Buffalo, and Czolgosz, who killed him, was tried and put to death there, the episode serves our present purpose only in leading up to the accession of Theodore Roosevelt of New York, the Vice-president, who was recalled from a summer vacation in the mountains to take the head of the [230][231] state. His inauguration was of the simplest sort, at the house of a friend in Buffalo, where some members of the McKinley Cabinet and a few other gentlemen met to witness the administration of the oath.