Assassination of President McKinley

Other themes and topics were well-nigh forgotten last month in the world-wide concentration of interest and sympathy upon the one absorbing topic of the assassination of the President of the United States, with its attendant circumstances and its political and other immediate consequences. President McKinley, in fulfillment of a long-standing engagement, went to Buffalo to visit the Pan-American Exposition and to make a formal address, arriving on September 4, and speaking in the Esplanade of the Exposition at noon on Thursday, September 5, before a great multitude of people, surrounded by high American officials and representatives of foreign governments. On the following day the President spent the forenoon visiting Niagara Falls, and he returned to the Exposition in time to attend a public reception in his honor. While holding this reception, he was treacherously and wickedly shot by a man to whom he was extending his hand. The details of this terrible episode are recounted elsewhere in this number of the REVIEW by Mr. Walter Wellman. After a day or two of suspense, the country received the good tidings that the President’s recovery was almost certain. But conditions against which surgery and medicine could not possibly have availed subsequently developed in the case, and President McKinley at length died as the direct result of the bullet wound. On the 12th, almost a week after the infliction of the wound, the reports had been most encouraging; but on the following day there came a radical change for the worse, and by 6 o’clock on the evening of Friday, September 13, it was plain that the President could not live through the night. The end came at about 2 o’clock Saturday morning, September 14.