Complete Life of William McKinley and Story of His Assassination: An Authentic and Official Memorial Edition, Containing Every Incident in the Career of the Immortal Statesman, Soldier, Orator and PatriotEverett, Marshall
History
Complete Life of William McKinley and Story of His Assassination: An Authentic and Official Memorial Edition, Containing Every Incident in the Career of the Immortal Statesman, Soldier, Orator and Patriot
“I was at the house of Abraham Isaak. Yes, the house at 515 Carroll
street. I was preparing to take the Nickel Plate train for the East with
Miss Isaak. A ring came at the door. I answered the bell and found a
young man there. He asked for Mr. Isaak. The latter had left the house,
promising to meet us at the station and say good-by. I so told the young
man and I further told him that he might go to the station with us and
meet Mr. Isaak there. So you see,” she asserted, “he would not even have
been with me for thirty-five minutes had I not asked him to go to the
train.
“The young man—yes, it was Czolgosz, who shot the President—said that he
had met me before. He said he had heard me lecture in Cleveland. I had
delivered a lecture there on May 6, but I can’t remember all the people
who shake hands with me, can I? I had no remembrance of him. We went to
the station on the elevated train and this man accompanied us. I asked
him where he had heard of Mr. Isaak. He said he had read the latter’s
paper, Free Society. He did not talk to me about a plot. I never heard
of him from that time until McKinley was shot.”
Emma Goldman’s ideas on anarchy are contained in an interview had with
her some months before President McKinley’s assassination. She said:
“If a man came to me and told me he was planning an assassination I
would think him an utter fool and refuse to pay any attention to him.
The man who has such a plan, if he is earnest and honest, knows no
secret is safe when told. He does the deed himself, runs the risk
himself, pays the penalty himself. I honor him for the spirit that
prompts him. It is no small thing for a man to be willing to lay down
his life for the cause of humanity. The act is noble, but it is
mistaken. While I do not advocate violence, neither do I condemn the
anarchist who resorts to it.
“I was an anarchist when I left Russia to come to America,” she
continued, “but I had hardly formulated my belief. The final influence
that crystallized my views was the hanging of the Chicago anarchists in
1887.
“I am an anarchist because I love individual freedom, and I will not
surrender that freedom. A leader must sooner or later be the victim of
the masses he thinks he controls. When I definitely entered the work I
gave myself a solemn pledge that I would study, that I would make
passion bow to reason, that I would not be carried away from the truth
by sentiment. I soon saw that the safest and wisest way to keep myself
free was not to be a leader. That is why I am connected with no party. I
am a member of no group. Individual freedom and responsibility—there is
the basis of true anarchy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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