History of the United States, Volume 5Andrews, Elisha Benjamin
History
History of the United States, Volume 5
Andrews, Elisha Benjamin
United States -- History
The result was not due, as some fancied, to Mr. Hanna. Nor did it mean
that there was no discord among Republicans, for there was much. The
discipline proceeded from the candidate's influence, from his
harmonizing personal leadership. This he exercised not through oratory,
for he had none of the tricks of speech, not even the knack of
story-telling, but by the mere force of his will and his wisdom.
Mr. McKinley's private character was pure, exemplary, and noble. His
life-long devotion to an invalid wife; his fidelity to his friends; the
charm, consideration, and tact of his demeanor toward everyone; and,
above all, the Christian sublimity of his last days created at once a
foundation and a crown for his fame.
Ex-President Cleveland said: "You will constantly hear as accounting for
Mr. McKinley's great success that he was obedient and affectionate as a
son, patriotic and faithful as a soldier, honest and upright as a
citizen, tender and devoted as a husband, and truthful, generous,
unselfish, moral, and clean in every relation of life. He never thought
of those things as too weak for his manliness."
A special grand jury forthwith indicted the assassin, who, talking
freely enough with his guards, refused all intercourse with the
attorneys assigned to defend him, and with the expert sent to test his
sanity. He was promptly placed upon trial, convicted, sentenced, and
executed, all without any of the unseemly incidents attending the trial
of Guiteau after Garfield's assassination. No heed was given to those
who, some of them from pulpits, fulminated anarchy as bad as that of the
anarchists by demanding that Czolgosz be lynched. These prompt but
perfectly orderly and dispassionate proceedings were a great credit to
the State of New York.
Leon Czolgosz, the murderer of President McKinley, was born in this
country, of Russian-Polish parentage, in 1875. He received some
education, was apprenticed to a blacksmith in Detroit, and later
employed in Cleveland and in Chicago. At the time of his crime he had
been working in a Cleveland wire mill. It was said that at Cleveland he
had heard Emma Goldman deliver an anarchist address, and that this
inspired his fell purpose. It was suspected that he was the tool of an
anarchist plot, and that the man preceding him in the line when he shot
the President was an accomplice, but there was no evidence that either
was true. There were indications that Czolgosz had made overtures to the
anarchists and been rejected as a spy. No accessories were found. Nor
did the dreadful act betoken that anarchism was increasing in our
country, or that any special propagandism in its favor was on. To all
appearance, it stood unrelated, so far as America was concerned.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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