BIRTHPLACE OF WM. McKINLEY, NILES, OHIO.

CATAFALQUE IN THE NATIONAL CAPITOL USED FOR
THE THIRD TIME FOR A STRICKEN PRESIDENT.

CHAPTER XIV.

PRESIDENT MCKINLEY AS AN ORATOR.

His Speeches Before the People Compared with those of Other Famous Americans— Extracts that Prove His Vast Scope of Information and Power of Varied Expression.

One of the traditions of the American people, until the war of the States and sections, held it unsafe and not in the best form for Presidents, or candidates for the great office, to make unofficial addresses to the public. The responsibilities of the Presidential office are so great there has been a feeling the President himself should, with rare exceptions, be heard only in State papers, and, at any rate, that whatever he might have to say should be reduced to writing, that there could be no misreporting or uncertainty. Of the earlier Presidents, John Adams only could have appeared at his best on the stump, and his dignity, as he interpreted it, did not permit him to make so free with the people as to harangue them from platforms. The three great public speakers of the second generation of American statesmen-Webster, Clay and Calhoun-did not reach the great office. It became a theory largely accepted that an orator could not be chosen President. Henry Clay's failure in that particular was the example most cited to prove that oratory did not go with the Presidency, but Clay's weakness as a candidate was letter writing, and it is a legend still afloat that he wrote himself out of the Presidency in explanation of his position touching the annexation of Texas. He damaged himself aiding the Free Soil defection from the Whig ranks, in a speech at Richmond, Indiana, referring in a spirit of levity to the fact that a slave-his property-accompanied him as a servant. He offered to make a present of this intelligent black man to a prominent Abolitionist, of Richmond, if the young man himself would approve of it. This was a startling proposition in a Quaker community. Martin Van Buren was a facile writer and speaker, but not an orator. His son, "Prince John," was an orator.

As a public speaker, Abraham Lincoln was far superior to any of his predecessors with the exception of John Quincy Adams; but Mr. Lincoln, as President, rarely talked directly to the people. He read his Gettysburg speech from two slips of paper upon which he had written

with a lead pencil what he had to say. He spoke from a White House window after the surrender of Lee, and called upon the band of music in attendance to play "Dixie," as the tune had been "annexed" to our National airs.

Andrew Johnson had some reputation and conceit of oratory, was exuberant in speech and often strong, but his swing around the circle in which he appealed to the country in behalf of his "policy" as against Congress, was not a fortunate adventure. It lacked dignity in the eyes of the people, but failed of success.

General Grant's reputation when he became President was that of "the silent soldier," but he developepd a talent for pithy conversational sayings and speeches brief and telling, so that he became a good, though by no means gaudy, after-dinner speaker, and actually took the stump for Garfield, winning back to himself all hearts that had turned away from him on account of the third term candidacy. Nothing displayed in a more pleasing way than this incident illustrates, the greatness and generosity of his good sense and the genuineness of his patriotic sensibility.

President Hayes was a forcible and pleasing public speaker, but not to be classed as an orator, though often strong and effective. He commanded an excellent style, but his best faculty in preparing public papers was his ability in condensation.

Presidential eloquence has been almost a Republican peculiarity. The oratorical power of John Quincy Adams in the House of Representatives combating slavery increase, holds him in the remembrance of the American people, while his Presidential literature is forgotten, though it was excellent of its kind, and he is hardly to be named among the eloquent Presidents, for he developed his faculty of speaking when in advanced years he became a member of the House.

Abraham Lincoln was indebted to his debates with Douglas for National reputation and advancement to the first place; and this was enhanced by his messages, letters and the Gettysburg oration.

James A. Garfield was a born orator of immense capacity, and after his nomination for the Presidency, made a series of speeches along the Erie Railroad from New York to Warren, Ohio, including a stop and speech at Chautauqua. This was regarded a daring expedition, but proved a successful movement, though he was assailed with bitter vehemence.

Horace Greeley, in 1872, made a series of speeches during a tour in the Ohio Valley that proved his intellect was never brighter or his remarkable command of language greater than just before the darkly shadowed end of his career.

Mr. Blaine well knew, when a candidate for the Presidency, that the chances were against him, but his Western tour was a splendid showing of his potentiality, and he believed with great confidence it would turn the tide and win the fight. The idea has seized many that he lost the Presidency through errors on the stump, but it is not true. The famous Delmonico banquet was opposed to his judgment, and he yielded with extreme reluctance to the urgency of his friends, repeatedly exercised, to accept the invitation to attend the function; and the banquet itself was gotten up to aid in replenishing the campaign fund. The mistake involving him in the Birchard incident was simply an omission while the Doctor was speaking to listen to what he was saying—Mr. Blaine at the moment thinking of what he was himself to say, and framing his sentences; and so the celebrated alliteration escaped his notice, but the stenographers of the Democratic Committee caught the fatal phrase, and in a few hours were using it loudly, and they made it flamboyant in posters all over the country. Mr. Blaine, in his speeches as a Presidential candidate, reached on several occasions a great height and rare felicity. There is a masterly appeal in his speech near his birthplace, when, pointing to the Monongahela, he opened with the words, "I was born on the banks of yonder river;" and continued in a fascinating strain of reminiscence and application of the principles that he advocated, to the wants of the country.

President Benjamin Harrison was exceedingly able and enlightened in discretion, as well as courage, when he received the delegations of Republicans that crowded upon him at his residence in Indianapolis. His policy of speech-making was to have one thought, point or idea before him as a text, whenever, and that was very often-half a dozen, even a dozen times a day-he faced a multitude gathered in his dooryard and filling the street; and, of course, a speech was insisted upon. At last all the country wondered at his versatility-his constant freshness of study, theme and expression and the aptitude and power of his utterances. His friends were for a while timid about his much speaking, but found him so admirably equipped that apprehension gave way to applause and adulation. President Harrison exceeded all his prede