And State Papers 529 



MESSAGE OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED 

 STATES, COMMUNICATED TO THE TWO 

 HOUSES OF CONGRESS, AT THE BEGIN- 

 NING OF THE FIRST SESSION OF THE 

 FIFTY-SEVENTH CONGRESS 



MESSAGE 

 To the Senate and House of Representatives: 



The Congress assembles this year under the shad- 

 ow of a great calamity. On the sixth of Septem- 

 ber, President McKinley was shot by an anarchist 

 while attending the Pan-American Exposition at 

 Buffalo, and died in that city on the fourteenth of 

 that month. 



Of the last seven elected Presidents, he is the 

 third who has been murdered, and the bare recital 

 of this fact is sufficient to justify grave alarm 

 among all loyal American citizens. Moreover, the 

 circumstances of this, the third assassination of an 

 American President, have a peculiarity sinister sig- 

 nificance. Both President Lincoln and President 

 Garfield were killed by assassins of types unfortu- 

 nately not uncommon in history; President Lincoln 

 falling a victim to the terrible passions aroused by 

 four years of civil war, and President Garfield to 

 the revengeful vanity of a disappointed office-seeker. 

 President McKinley was killed by an utterly de- 

 praved criminal belonging to that body of criminals 

 who object to all governments, good and bad alike, 

 who are against any form of popular liberty if it 

 is guaranteed by even the most just and liberal laws, 



