Anarchy's Exalted Victim
ON the 14th of April, I865, five days after the surrender of General Lee closed the long drama of the Civil War, President Lincoln fell the victim of an assassin. It was to the fierce passions engendered by the war that he owed his death. On the 2d of July, I88I, President Garfield also fell before an assassin's weapon. Here, too, passion had been excited, and his death was a lamentable incident in the history of the great Civil Service Reform. On September 6, I90I, President McKinley, the third of America's rulers to fall by the hand of an assassin, suffered a similar fate. But his murder was the more flagrant and unpardonable in that there was not a shadow of warrant for the dastardly deed. He fell at the end of a career as President distinguished for its brilliant success; fell when the country had attained the most prosperous stage in its whole history; fell while attending a great celebration of the progress of civilization in America, and while surrounded by a multitude of his admiring and applauding fellow-citizens. Never was known a deeper treachery, a fouler outrage, a baser crime than that of the unmentionable wretch who shot the honored head of a great nation while grasping his hand in seeming friendship and esteem.
This fatal act occurred six months after President McKinley took his seat a second time as the executive head of the great Republic of the West, and a suitable preliminary to the story of his death will be that of the public incidents of his second administration.
We may briefly describe the election campaign of I900, whose result so strongly indicated the sentiment of admiration of the American people for the man who had held the helm of the ship of state during four years of warlike event and public excitement. In the Republican National Convention, assembled at Philadelphia on the I9th of June, I900, the feeling of the party was decisively expressed by William McKinley's unanimous nomination on the first ballot. A similar honor was paid to the candidate for Vice-President, Theodore Roosevelt, the only vote not cast for him being his own. This unanimous nomination of the candidates for both President and Vice-President on the first ballot was, we believe, the only instance of the kind in American history.
William J. Bryan, McKinley's opponent in I896, was his opponent still, his associate for Vice-President being Adlai E. Stevenson, who had served for one term in that office under President Cleveland. The election campaign was significant in the fact that the old party war-cries, so prominent in the past, now sank into insignificance, new and burning issues having risen to take their place. For forty years the tariff question had stood in the fore-ground, being for most of that period the main subject of controversy between the two great parties. Now it sank out of sight so completely that it was hardly mentioned in the campaign. The question of free silver coinage, the leading issue in I896, was now also of declining interest. The finances of the country were in such a flourishing state that no voting capital could be made out of this question. While the country was being flooded with free gold, no stringent demand for free silver could be aroused.
In this decline of the old questions, new ones came into prominence, the main points in debate being the Trusts and the policy of so-called Imperialism. The Democratic party maintained that the vast development of great combinations of capital, known as Trusts, with their threatened enslavement of the hosts of industry, had taken place under Republican auspices and support, and that their opponents were the sustainers of monopoly. Yet this allegation was difficult to prove. The Trusts were commercial, not political enterprises. No laws had been recently passed in their favor, while laws had been passed looking to their suppression. Both parties condemned them in their platforms. It was, therefore, not easy to hold the Republicans responsible for this growing evil, or to make the Trust a leading issue in the campaign, though this was strongly attempted.
A second prominent question in controversy was that of Imperialism versus Anti-Imperialism; the policy of expansion adopted by the administration in its effort to subdue and control the people of the Philippines, and the sentiment of the opponents to this policy. Opposition to the war in the Philippines had grown to such proportions that Anti-Imperialism was taken up as a leading principle of the Democratic platform, and in the campaign that followed the orators thundered, with all the eloquence at their command, upon the exciting problem of the conquest or the independence of the Filipinos.
In the election campaign President McKinley remained at home. He had his record to speak for him, and addressed only those who visited him at Canton. Mr. Bryan, on the contrary, traversed the country widely, speaking with his remarkable oratorical ability and his extraordinary powers of endurance. His favorite theme, especially towards the end of the campaign, was the trust evil and the plutocratic tendencies of the Republican government, against which he poured forth burning denunciations.
When election day came its result showed decisively the feeling of the people upon the question at issue. McKinley was chosen President by a much larger majority than in I896, he receiving the great majority of I37 electoral votes, 42 more than in I896. The popular vote was 7,206,777 for McKinley against 6,374,397 for Bryan.