CONGRESS. (THE PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE.) 



139 



THE PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE. 

 Dec. 3, after due notification from the Senate 

 and the House, that they were organized and 

 ready to receive any communication from the 

 President, the annual message was sent in as 

 follows : 



To the Senate and House of Representatives: 



The Congress assembles this year under the 

 shadow of a great calamity. On the 6th of Sep- 

 tember President McKinley was shot by an an- 

 archist while attending the Pan-American Expo- 

 sition at Buffalo, and died in that city on the 

 14th of that month. 



Of the last seven elected Presidents, he is the 

 third who has been murdered, and the bare re- 

 cital of this fact is sufficient to justify grave 

 alarm among all loyal American citizens. More- 

 over, the circumstances of this, the third assassi- 

 nation of an American President, have a pecul- 

 iarly sinister significance. Both President Lin- 

 coln and President Garfield were killed by assas- 

 sins of types unfortunately riot 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 

 McKmley was killed by an utterly depraved 

 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, and who are as hostile to the upright ex- 

 ponent of a free people's sober will as to the 

 tyrannical and irresponsible despot. 



It is not too much to say that at the time of 

 President McKinley's death he was the most 

 widely loved man in all the United States; while 

 we have never had any public man of his posi- 

 tion who has been so wholly free from the bitter 

 animosities incident to public life. His political 

 opponents were the first to bear the heartiest, and 

 most generous tribute to the broad kindliness of 

 nature, the sweetness and gentleness of character 

 which so endeared him to his close associates. 

 To a standard of lofty integrity in public life he 

 united the tender affections and home virtues 

 which are all-important in the make-up of na- 

 tional character. A gallant soldier in the great 

 war for the Union, he also shone as an example 

 to all our people because of his conduct in the 

 most sacred and intimate of home relations. 

 There could be no personal hatred of him, for he 

 never acted with aught but consideration for the 

 welfare of others. No one could fail to respect 

 turn who knew him in public or private life. The 

 defenders of those murderous criminals who 

 seek to excuse their criminality by asserting that 

 it is exercised for political ends, inveigh against 

 wealth and irresponsible power. But for this as- 

 sassination even this base apology can not be 

 urged. 



President McKinley was a man of moderate 

 means, a man whose stock sprang from the 

 sturdy tillers of the soil, who had himself be- 

 longed among the wage-workers, who had en- 

 tered the army as a private soldier. Wealth was 

 not struck at when the President was assassi- 

 nated, but the honest toil which is content with 

 moderate gains after a lifetime of unremitting 

 labor, largely in the service of the public. Still 

 less was power struck at in the sense that power 

 is irresponsible or centered in the hands of any 

 )ne individual. The blow was not aimed at tyr- 

 inny or wealth. It was aimed at one of the 

 strongest champions the wage-worker has ever 

 lad; at one of the most faithful representatives 



of the system of public rights and representative 

 government who has ever risen to public office. 

 President McKinley filled that political office for 

 which the entire people vote, and no President 

 not even Lincoln himself was ever more ear- 

 nestly anxious to represent the well-thought-out 

 wishes of the people; his one anxiety in every 

 crisis was to keep in closest touch with the peopfe 

 to find out what they thought and to endeavor 

 to give expression to their thought, after having 

 endeavored to guide that thought aright. He 

 had just been reelected to the presidency because 

 the majority of our citizens, the majority of our 

 farmers and wage-workers, believed that he had 

 faithfully upheld their interests for four years. 

 They felt themselves in close and intimate touch 

 with him. They felt that he represented so well 

 and so honorably all their ideals and aspirations 

 that they wished him to continue for another 

 four years to represent them. 



And this was the man at whom the assassin 

 struck! That there might be nothing lacking to 

 complete the Judas-like infamy of his act, he 

 took advantage of an occasion when the Presi- 

 dent was meeting the people generally; and ad- 

 vancing as if to take the hand outstretched to 

 him in kindly and brotherly fellowship, he 

 turned the noble and generous confidence of the 

 victim into an opportunity to strike the fatal 

 blow. There is no baser deed in all annals of 

 crime. 



The shock, the grief of the country, are bitter 

 in the minds of all who saw the dark days, while 

 the President yet hovered between life and death. 

 At last the light was stilled in the kindly eyes 

 and the breath went from the lips that even in 

 mortal agony uttered no words save of forgive- 

 ness to his murderer, of love for his friends, and 

 of unfaltering trust in the will of the Most High. 

 Such a death, crowning the glory of such a life, 

 leaves us with infinite sorrow, but with such 

 pride in what he had accomplished and in his 

 own personal character, that we feel the blow 

 not as struck at him, but as struck at the na- 

 tion. Wa mourn a good and great President who 

 is dead; but while we mourn we are lifted up by 

 the splendid achievements of his life and the 

 grand heroism with which he met his death. 



When we turn from the man to the nation, 

 the harm done is so great as to excite our 

 gravest apprehensions and to demand our wisest 

 and most resolute action. This criminal was a 

 professed anarchist, inflamed by the teachings of 

 professed anarchists, and probably also by the 

 reckless utterances of those who, on the stump 

 and in the public press, appeal to the dark and 

 evil spirits of malice and greed, envy and sullen 

 hatred. The wind is sowed by the men who 

 preach such doctrines, and they can not escape 

 their share of responsibility for the whirlwind 

 that is reaped. This applies alike to the delib- 

 erate demagogue, to the exploiter of sensation- 

 alism, and to the crude and foolish visionary 

 who, for whatever reason, apologizes for crime 

 or excites aimless discontent. 



The blow was aimed not at this President, but 

 at all Presidents: at every symbol of government. 

 President McKinley was 'as 'emphatically the em- 

 bodiment of the popular will of the nation ox- 

 pressed through the forms of law as a New Eng- 

 land town-meeting is in similar fashion the eni- 

 bodiment of the law-abiding purpose and practise 

 of the people of the town. On no conceivable 

 theory could the murder of the President be 

 accepted as due to protest against " inequalities 

 in the social order." save as the murder of all the 

 freemen engaged in a town-meeting could be ac- 



