and political grounds before the constitutional questions involved came up for adjudication. The dominant business interests of the country were opposed to the full incorporation of the new possessions, and public opinion decided the question that way. . . . The Supreme Court could not have reversed the decision of the American people where such far-reaching acts of the President and Congress were involved, without creating serious confusion. Consequently they bowed their heads before un fait accompli." Or, in the concise witticism of Mr. Dooley, "Whether or not the flag followed the Constitution, the Supreme Court followed the election returns."2

It was with the proud consciousness of having served the people well that President McKinley took the oath of office for the second time on March 4, 1901. The country had given his administration a remarkable indorsement in the election of 1900, and only two days before the inauguration Congress had shown its absolute confidence in his policy in the Philippines by granting him the "powers of a Roman proconsul" under the terms of the Spooner Amendment. We were enjoying an unprecedented prosperity at home and prestige abroad. The President, according to his biographer, Olcott, was contemplating "a forward movement" in his second term. He intended to emphasize the policies of trust regulation and enlarged commerce through reciprocity agreements. Reciprocity treaties were already negotiated or in process of negotiation with France, Italy, Portugal, Germany, and several of the Latin-American powers. Secretary Hay, who had won the praise of the German chancellor, Prince von Bülow, for his diplomatic skill, was already busy

1 J. H. Latané, "America as a World Power," pp. 151, 152.

2 The next year the court denied that the Hawaiian Islands were not entitled to the right of jury trial, before the passage of the organic act of April 30, 1900, making the novel distinction between the "fundamental" and the "formal" portions of the Constitution, and holding that only the former were binding on the executive and Congress in the government of dependencies.

3 A symbol of our prestige might be found in the prominent position which we had at the Paris International Exposition of the summer of 1900. Not only did the United States have more space and a larger exhibit than any other foreign nation, but it carried off the largest number of grand prizes and medals—in all, over twelve hundred.

in the negotiation of a treaty with Great Britain, which should secure to us a free hand in the construction and control of an Isthmian canal. At the end of April, 1901, President McKinley left Washington with the members of his cabinet and several invited guests for a grand tour of the country. His reception at every stopping-place out to the Pacific coast (Memphis, New Orleans, Houston, El Paso) demonstrated both his firm hold on the affections of the people and the popularity of his official program. The almost fatal illness of his wife at San Francisco obliged him to interrupt his tour and hasten back to Washington in the early summer. On the fifth of September he attended the Pan-American Exposition at Buffalo and made his last speech-in the opinion of many the noblest speech of his life. His subject was coöperation with the powers of the world not only in friendly rivalry for commerce and trade but also in "relations of mutual respect and confidence." He had already shown by his advocacy of free trade with Porto Rico and by the numerous reciprocity treaties that he was outgrowing the doctrine of an exclusive tariff, and now he confessed his conversion openly. "We must not repose in fancied security that we can forever sell everything and buy little or nothing. . . . The period of exclusion is past. The expansion of our trade and commerce is the pressing problem. Commercial wars are unprofitable. . . . Reciprocity treaties are in harmony with the spirit of the times, measures of retaliation are not. If perchance some of our tariffs are no longer needed for revenue or to encourage and foster our industries at home, why should they not be employed to extend and promote our markets abroad?... Let us ever remember that our interest is in concord, not conflict, and that our real eminence rests on the victories of peace and not those of war."

The next day, when the press of the country and of foreign lands was ringing with praise for his speech, the President held a public reception in the Temple of Music. A young Pole, with a handkerchief wrapped about his hand as if to cover an injury, advanced in the line, and, as the President stretched out his hand to greet him, fired two shots from a revolver hid in the

bandage. One bullet glanced from the President's breast and arm, the other penetrated his stomach. As he sank into the arms of Secretary Cortelyou, his first words were to "tell Mrs. McKinley gently," his second not to allow the assassin to be hurt. He survived the operation of sewing up the perforation of the walls of the stomach and gained strength so steadily that a few days after the assault his physicians announced that his recovery was practically certain. Most of the friends and officials who had hastened to Buffalo on the news of the tragedy (Hanna, Herrick, Dawes, Judge Day, Theodore Roosevelt) returned to their business or vacations rejoicing. But on Thursday, September 12, a sudden change for the worse came, and early Saturday morning the President died.1

Vice President Roosevelt was in camp near the top of Mount Marcy in the Adirondacks, more than twenty miles from the nearest railroad station when he heard that the President was dying. After a perilous midnight drive down the mountain in the rain and blackness, he reached the station at daybreak to learn that McKinley was dead. He arrived at Buffalo to find the members of the cabinet, except Secretaries Hay and Shaw, gathered at the house of Mr. Ansley Wilcox, where he immediately took the oath of office, adding, "In this hour of deep and terrible bereavement, I wish to state that it shall be my intention and endeavor to continue, absolutely unbroken, the policy of President McKinley, for the peace and prosperity and honor of our beloved country."

William McKinley's high qualities as a gentlemen and a friend are universally recognized. He had the faculty, through his unfailing courtesy, sympathy, and patience, of attaching men to him in lifelong devotion. Judgments have varied, however, in the estimate of McKinley as a public official. Because his relations with Congress were exceptionally harmonious, he has been charged with subserviency to the "men at the other end

1 An autopsy revealed a diseased condition of the viscera which made it impossible for the President to rally from a wound which for a man in normal health would not have proved fatal. The medical authorities thought that at any rate he probably would not have lived more than two years.

of the avenue," against whom Cleveland had warned him to be on his guard. Because he abandoned his advocacy of bimetallism at the beginning of his administration, and was apparently ready to abandon his advocacy of high protection at the end of it, he has been accused of lack of political conviction. It is true that his whole disposition, in contrast to Cleveland's, inclined him to accommodation, conciliation, and compromise with political adversaries. Yet he was doubtless as honest and perhaps as wise in this course as the more belligerent are in theirs. To call a man "weak" because he does not quarrel may well be to miss some of the finer qualities of human nature. At any rate, those closest to McKinley, and therefore best able to judge him, have testified almost unanimously to his strength of will and character. Hay and Root-men of exceptional power-said that he was at all times the master. Jules Cambon, the French ambassador, said to him, in the course of the negotiation of the protocol with Spain, "Mr. President, you are like adamant." Mark Hanna is popularly supposed to have "dominated" McKinley, but the opposite was the truth. Hanna's attitude toward the President was, as one writer humorously puts it, "like that of a bashful lover toward his sweetheart." That McKinley was always right in his decisions on the momentous questions with which he was confronted in the critical years of our "adventurous departure on untried paths" we need not contend;1 but we must agree with the tribute paid to the President by Benjamin Ide Wheeler of the University of California, in conferring upon him the degree of Doctor of Laws in the spring of 1901, in the words now engraved on the McKinley Memorial at Canton, Ohio: "A statesman singularly gifted to unite the discordant forces of government and mold the diverse purposes of men towards progressive and salutary action."

1 The unrelieved eulogy of McKinley's biographer, Charles S. Olcott ("The Life of William McKinley," Vol. II, pp. 334-375), should be corrected by H. T. Peck's far more discriminating estimate in "Twenty Years of the Republic," pp. 657-665. Indeed, these pages of Peck's are among the finest in a book of unusually sustained excellence.

CHAPTER VI

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

The two things in America which seem to me most extraordinary are Niagara Falls and Theodore Roosevelt.-JOHN MORLEY

THE ANNUS MIRABILIS-1902

"About certain persons," wrote Percival Lowell, "there exists a subtle something which leaves its impression upon the consciousness of all who come in contact with them, as if we had suddenly been placed in the field of a magnetic force." That quality of unique personality belonged to Theodore Roosevelt in the highest degree. If it is true, as Emerson says, that "the great man is one who does not remind us of anybody else," then Roosevelt was among the truly great. He conforms to no type, falls into no class. He is sui generis. So intensely and uninterruptedly directive was the influence of his character upon public affairs that the biographers could not wait for his death, or even for his retirement from office, before beginning their work; and the historians have been tempted to lapse into biography on reaching his administration. "After all," said Secretary Root to him on the occasion of his renomination in 1904, "your personality has been the administration."

Unquenchable energy was the master trait of Roosevelt's character. His mind was a magnetic coil which intensified the currents of thought and action that flowed through it. Because he arrived at decisions quickly, he was often accused of arriving at them hastily; and those who could not keep pace with his rapid intellectual processes believed that caprice was running away with his judgment. Where other men were content to hold views or opinions, he had convictions, which he urged with the persistency of the reformer who cannot brook delay