Presidential Addresses 



when young went to war for the honor and the life 

 of the Nation, who for four years did his part in the 

 camp, on the march, in battle, rising steadily up 

 ward from the ranks, and to whom it was given in 

 after life to show himself exemplary in public and 

 in private conduct, to become the ideal of the Nation 

 in peace as he had been a typical representative of 

 the Nation's young sons in war. 



It is not too much to say that no man since Lin 

 coln was as widely and as universally beloved in 

 this country as was President McKinley ; for it was 

 given to him not only to rise to the most exalted 

 station but to typify in his character and conduct 

 those virtues which any citizen worthy of the name 

 likes to regard as typically American; to typify the 

 virtues of cleanly and upright living in all relations 

 private and public, in the most intimate family re 

 lations, in the relations of business, in relations 

 with his neighbors, and finally in his conduct of the 

 great affairs of state. And exactly as it was given 

 to him to do his part in settling aright the greatest 

 problem which it has ever befallen this Nation to 

 settle since it became a Nation the problem of the 

 preservation of the Union and the abolition of slav 

 ery exactly as it was his good fortune to do his 

 part as a man should in his youth in settling that 

 great problem, so it was his good fortune, when he 

 became in fact and in name the Nation's chief, to 

 settle the problems springing out of the Spanish 

 War ; problems less important only than those which 

 were dealt with by the men who under the lead of 



