ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE. DRAWING-ALL NATIONS MOURN PRESIDENT MCKINLEY'S UNTIMELY DEATH.... PORTRAITS-THREE PRESIDENTS WHO HAVE FALLEN VICTIMS TO ASSASSINS' BULLETS.. 129 PORTRAIT-WILLIAM MCKINLEY, FATHER OF PRESIDENT MCKINLEY. PAGE. 183 184 201 201 202 BIRTHPLACE OF WILLIAM MCKINLEY, NILES, OHIO..... CATAFALQUE IN THE NATIONAL CAPITOL USED FOR THE THIRD TIME FOR A STRICKEN THE UNITED STATES SENATE VOTING THE $50,000,000 SPANISH WAR APPROPRIATION... 292 THE FIRST M. E. CHURCH, CANTON, OHIO.... 309 PRESIDENT MCKINLEY'S TRANSCONTINENTAL TRIP... 309 FUNERAL TRAIN REMOVING PRESIDENT MCKINLEY'S BODY FROM BUFFALO TO CAPITOL.. 310 PRESIDENT MCKINLEY'S FUNERAL CORTEGE ON THE WAY TO THE CAPITOL AT WASH THE MCKINLEY FAMILY PLAT, WESTLAWN CEMETERY, CANTON, OHIO.. 345 CASKET COVERED WITH FLORAL OFFERINGS BORNE UP THE STEPS OF THE CAPITOL AT WASHINGTON 400 INTRODUCTION. A rapacity for notoriety seems to be the common characteristic of the murderers of our Presidents. They have slaughtered three of the noblest and tenderest and most generous of men, and it is not certain but the consuming passion of all the bloody miscreants was vanity. Among the assassins of our martyred Presidents the one who was in the greater degree insane was Booth. He had no grievance except that of senti ment. He knew nothing of politics, but was for the section in which he was born. He was not a lunatic, but a madman. He was not at any time a combatant. Among the fighting men North and South was found first, when the war ended, the spirit of conciliation and generosity. They felt that the soldiers arrayed against each other were, after all, countrymen, and their destiny was to live together in their Father's house, that as the war was over, all the soldiers who had been in it should get together as "comrades." There was no rancor in personalities among the heroes of the contending armies. The splendid chapter of history made at "Appomattox" illustrates this, and the heroes who surrendered so honorably were twice vanquished, first by arms and then by kindness. The words current in the States of the fallen Confederacy were that "the South lost her best friend when Lincoln was killed," and will remain the true, settled feeling of those who saw too late the tenderness of the heart of the President and the wisdom of his good will "with malice toward none, charity for all." The first martyred President was the victim of a vengeful folly and fury without understanding, and the loss to the whole country of the life put out in a frenzy was incalculable and everlasting. The wound is not healed and the scar can not be effaced. The murderer of President Garfield was a most ignoble creature, who distinctly belonged to the criminal class. The man was a strange mixture of vindictive vanity and vicious incapacity. He was of the most insignificant class of office seekers, especially persistent as well as ludicrous until he became a horror. His anxiety to be rewarded for services that were a part of his infuriate malady grew upon him. His despondency became malicious. He was a hissing serpent in the weeds. His idea of the public service and politician was embodied in the theory, after he had murdered the President, that he could depend upon others who were disappointed in the distribution of offices to sustain him in his policy of "removal." There were those who antagonized Garfield in respect to the distribution of patronage (indeed, far the greater number of the faultfinders,) who had nothing in common with the assassin, but a powerful impression that they were called upon to give command and that disobedience was unfaithfulness. The life of President Garfield, before he was shot in the back, to linger from July to September, was troubled by assaults contemptible in origin and purpose. They were meant to annoy and threaten. A campaign of viciousness was opened, There were shots as from an ambush spitting from newspapers, because the President did not admit that his high office was held by a personal servant. After he had exerted himself to make peace subject to the maintenance of his dignity, he was aroused to assert himself without regard to antagonisms. The deluded assassin, through his trial, sought to appear as one who could claim as friends the critics of Garfield. He assumed they had been with him in feeling; that they sympathized with his selfishness and with the infamous origin of the invented grief that made him a murderer. Booth strode across the stage after entering Lincoln's box, and attitudinized crying "Sic semper tyrannis." There was a great army, but no sentinel, policemen or detective to guard Lincoln-it was held impossible that the President should be assassinated. Booth was hunted down and shot in a burning barn. He died deserted and in torture. Guiteau was displayed as the most deplorable and desperate wretch who, historically striking down a great man, was hanged by the neck with the utmost ignominy. He was the most loathsome reptile that ever ended a noble life, and made the word "removal" a synonym for murder. President McKinley, the kindliest of men, a hero equipped with all the generosities of manliness, whose titles to public respect and high regard were the most excellent of his era—a man who as a boy carried a musket in the ranks of the army of his country, and was fearless as he was gentle, for "the bravest are the tenderest, the loving are the daring”—is the third President assailed by an assassin! One of the foremost men of all this world, winning not alone the applause of our own people, but |