Anarchy's Exalted Victim: William Mc and Supreme Court
William McKinley was thus a second time chosen President of the United States, and went on in the duties of his great office without a break, and with nothing to warn him of the coming fatal end to his distinguished career. And Theodore Roosevelt, who had reluctantly consented to be the candidate for Vice-President, fully expected to spend four years in honorable retirement as presiding officer of the Senate, no vision arising to notify him that within a year he would be ranked among the sovereign rulers of the earth.
Thus fate moves on, and no man can foresee what lies hidden for him on its unfolding scroll. The past spreads out behind us fully revealed; the face of the future is deeply veiled. Whether joy or sorrow, fortune or ruin, life or death await us in the coming time, no man can tell. Destiny hides its decrees until the time for their accomplishment is at hand.
On the 4th of March, I901, President McKinley was again inaugurated into his great office, with every promise before him of guiding the ship of state safely over the unstable seas of public events. Everything seemed propitious. Prosperity ruled supreme in the land. The depression which had prevailed some years before was now replaced by a magnificent activity; money poured into the national treasury much more rapidly than it flowed out; in city and country alike an extraordinary outburst of industrial energy was manifest, and on the seas a mighty fleet of merchantmen bore the product of our factories and fields to the most remote quarters of the earth. It was especially in commerce that the activity of our people displayed itself. The United States had become the granary of Europe, the generous "Lady Bountiful" who gave of her abundance to the thronging millions of the earth. And the exports of foodstuffs were closely competed with by those of manufactured goods, while imports fell off to such an extent that in the fiscal year ending June 30, I90I, the balance of trade in our favor reached the magnificent total of $664,900,011, a phenomenon unequalled and even undreamed of in the preceding history of the world.
In the political world affairs seemed equally propitious. After two years of warfare the struggle in the Philippines was practically at an end, some dregs of guerrilla resistance alone remaining, while the people were widely returning to the pursuits of quiet industry and accepting with seeming satisfaction the American rule. The Taft Commission, appointed by President McKinley to establish a liberal form of government in the islands, was meeting with great success in its work, and a large number of teachers had been sent out to carry the blessing of education to the islanders, and thus give them the highest boon in the power of this country to bestow. Thus the question of Imperialism, so prominent during the year just passed, was fast dying out before the logic of events.
The difficulties which had arisen in Cuba and Porto Rico were similarly approaching an amicable settlement; the former by the acceptance of the Platt amendment which fixed the relations between this country and Cuba; the latter by the decision of the Supreme Court, which definitely settled the commercial relations of the United States and her new dependencies. The latest notable event in President McKinley's official career was his proclamation, in July, 1901, that all import and export duties on the trade of Porto Rico with the United States were abolished, and that commercially as well as politically that island had been taken into the family circle of the United States. He had proposed proclaiming a full system of civil government in the Philippine Islands on July 4, 1901, but this was delayed awaiting a decision of the Supreme Court concerning our commercial relations with those islands. But a partial system was put in operation on that date.
Thus it was as the executive head of a nation practically at peace with the world, the most prosperous and acknowledged as one of the most prominent and commanding nations of the earth, that William McKinley took his seat on March 4, 1901. With his administration unchanged, his well-tried heads of departments still in office, the sky clear above him, the last floating clouds of the troubles which had darkened his late administration fast vanishing, all looked hopeful for a quiet and peaceful period in office, unvexed by the political cares which had made his past term anything but a bed of roses.
The principal event of his new administration was indeed a private rather than a public one. Shortly after his inauguration he projected a tour of the country far more extensive than had been undertaken by any President before him, its limits being the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans on the east and west, the great lakes and the Gulf of Mexico on the north and south. His purpose was to be present at the approaching launch of the battle-ship Ohio in San Francisco, that city being reached by a journey through the South, while the return was to be made by the northern route.