Death of President McKinley

     The whole country north and south were shocked beyond measure when the telegraph flashed the news over the country that the President had been shot down by an anarchist. We heard soldiers of the Lost Cause say, “Wish we could get at the fiend, we would soon make short work of it.” Men stood around our streets in groups paralyzed with horror at the awfulness of the crime. Words are inadequate to express the grief of this Southland.
     Albert Pike Camp of Confederate Veterans met in council soon after the occurrence and passed resolutions of sympathy which were telegraphed to Secretary Cortelyou.
     For some days we felt absolutely sure he would recover. We know Drs. Roswell Park and M. D. Mann and Herman Myn- [309][310] ter and felt that their work was well done. The bullet wounds in front and rear walls of the stomach sewed up the abdomen cleansed of stomach contents which had entered it from the wounded organ seemed to leave nothing to be desired, and the days which followed, led us to hope for his early recovery. Our hopes were disappointed and our kindly hearted president is dead. He met the grim destroyer in a brave and manly way. When he realized that death was inevitable he said, “It is God’s way. His will be done. Good-bye to all.” Not one word of complaint against his inhuman assassin.
     As one who wraps the drapery of his couch about him and lies down to pleasant dreams, William McKinley, clasping the hand of his beloved and stricken wife, crossed over the river. May God bless and comfort his loving companion.
     Since his election to the presidency McKinley had grown greatly in the esteem of his countrymen. Especially had the South learned to love him. Congressman McKinley warmly advocating and voting for the Force Bill was a very different man from President McKinley, when he commissioned Fitzhugh Lee and Joseph Wheeler as Major Generals in the United States army. Very different from the man who, in a speech at Atlanta, Ga., said, “In the Province of God the time has come when the national government should help you to care for the graves of your dead.” We say McKinley had grown greatly in breadth of character and gentleness of heart in these few years, and when he delivered this generous sentiment to a throng of veterans of the Lost Cause, there was scarcely a dry eye in the vast audience. He then and there won all our hearts.
     McKinley has not died in vain. This country will rise in its might and wrath and take some step to rid itself of an element from which we can derive only evil.
     A poor boy, a poor young man, he illustrates again, as did Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, Garfield and Cleveland, that the highest honor in the gift of the people is open to the poorest, if they are worthy.
     In this country we have never thought it possible that anarchy would strike at the head of our nation. Where everybody is so free to win the highest prize, why should anyone wish to strike down the winner? Lincoln met his end at the hands of a mad man in revenge for the hanging of his friend. Garfield was assassinated by a disappointed politician who believed that by reason of the quarrel between Garfield and Conklin and [310][311] Blaine the republican party would be ruined and that it was Garfield who would bring the ruin. In this case it is anarchism striking at the very life of the state. Let the state take warning.
     When Bob Tombs left the congress of the United States at the time Georgia seceeded [sic] from the Union, he delivered a speech which electrified the South. In it he said, “The price of Liberty is the blood of the brave.”
     And the blood of McKinley will not have been shed in vain, if these United States, stirred from center to circumference, as it has never been before, shall make it forever impossible for such a deed to occur again. God grant this time may soon come.