Publication information
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Source: Congregationalist and Christian World
Source type: magazine
Document type: editorial
Document title: “The Call to a Day of Mourning”
Author(s): anonymous
Date of publication: 21 September 1901
Volume number: 86
Issue number: 38
Pagination: 411

 
Citation
“The Call to a Day of Mourning.” Congregationalist and Christian World 21 Sept. 1901 v86n38: p. 411.
 
Transcription
full text
 
Keywords
Theodore Roosevelt (first official proclamation: full text).
 
Named persons
John Hay; William McKinley; Theodore Roosevelt.
 
Document

 

The Call to a Day of Mourning

The new President’s first public utterance to the people of the nation was issued on the 14th, and is a call to a day of national mourning. It reads thus:

     A terrible bereavement has befallen our people. The President of the United States has been struck down; a crime committed not only against the chief magistrate, but against every law-abiding and liberty-loving citizen. President McKinley crowned a life of largest love for his fellowmen, of most earnest endeavor for their welfare, by a death of Christian fortitude, and both the way in which he lived his life and the way in which, in the supreme hour of trial, he met his death, will remain forever a precious heritage of our people. It is meet that we as a nation express our abiding love and reverence for his life, our deep sorrow for his untimely death.
     Now, therefore, I, Theodore Roosevelt, President of the United States of America, do appoint Thursday next, Sept. 19, the day in which the body of the dead President will be laid in its last earthly resting place, as a day of mourning and prayer throughout the United States. I earnestly recommend all the people to assemble on that day in their respective places of divine worship, there to bow down in submission to the will of Almighty God, and to pay out of full hearts their homage of love and reverence to the great and good President whose death has smitten the nation with bitter grief.
     In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed. Done at the city of Buffalo, the 14th day of September, A. D. One Thousand Nine Hundred and One, and of the independence of the United States the One Hundred and Twenty-Sixth.

(Seal)                   

 
THEODORE ROOSEVELT.     
     By the President, JOHN HAY,  
 
Secretary of State.     
 

 


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