One, (Wofe** OJ£tiU*m fllck;^ /9«/ Hollinger Corp. pH8.5 E 711 .6 .D76 Copy 1 PRESIDENT WILLIAM McKINLEY " OUR INTEREST IS IN CONCORD, NOT CONFLICT, AND OUR REAL EMINENCE RESTS IN THE VICTORIES OF PEACE, NOT THOSE OF WAR." " OUR EARNEST PRAYER IS THAT GOD WILL GRACIOUSLY VOUCHSAFE PROSPERITY, HAPPINESS AND PEACE TO ALL OUR NEIGHBORS, AND LIKE BLESS- INGS TO ALL THE PEOPLES AND POWERS OF EARTH." " MY WIFE : BE CAREFUL ABOUT HER I DON'T LET HER KNOW." " LET NO ONE HURT HIM." " I AM SORRY TO HAVE BEEN A CAUSE OF TROUBLE TO THE EXPOSITION." " GOOD-BY, ALL, GOOD-BY. IT IS GOD's WAY. HIS WILL BE DONE, NOT OURS." UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS MEMORIAL CONVOCATION THE ARMORY SEPTEMBER 19 1901 Address by PRESIDENT ANDREW S DRAPER LL D p. 260 "01 Whereas, On the 19th of September of the current year, at the Armory of the University of Illinois, President A. S. Draper, in the presence of the Trustees, Faculty and students of the University, delivered a very instructive and impressive address on the life and character of President McKinley, and on the lessons to be learned from the event which has called forth universal execration and mourning, therefore Resolved, That the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois, desiring to voice their approval of the sentiments and opinions expressed by President Draper in this admirable ad- dress, request his consent to the publication and distribution of the same, and, after such consent is obtained, do hereby instruct the Secretary to have the same suitably published in pamphlet form. [Action by the Board of Trustees of the University of- Illi- nois September 28, 1901.] PRESIDENT WILLIAM McKINLEY " OUR INTEREST IS IN CONCORD, NOT CONFLICT, AND OUR REAL EMINENCE RESTS IN THE VICTORIES OF PEACE, NOT THOSE OF WAR." " OUR EARNEST PRAYER IS THAT GOD WILL GRACIOUSLY VOUCHSAFE PROSPERITY, HAPPINESS AND PEACE TO ALL OUR NEIGHBORS, AND LIKE BLESS- INGS TO ALL THE PEOPLES AND POWERS OF EARTH." " MY WIFE I BE CAREFUL ABOUT HER '. DON'T LET HER KNOW." " LET NO ONE HURT HIM." " I AM SORRY TO HAVE BEEN A CAUSE OF TROUBLE TO THE EXPOSITION." " GOOD-BY, ALL, GOOD-BY. IT IS god's WAY. HIS WILL BE DONE, NOT OURS." UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS MEMORIAL CONVOCATION THE ARMORY SEPTEMBER 19 1901 Address by PRESIDENT ANDREW S DRAPER LL D it PROGRAM Andante Boos Military Band Scriptures Rev Franklin L Graff Prayer Rev John W Miller Nearer my God to Thee Military Band and Congregation Memorial Address President Draper America Military Band and Congregation Benediction Rev Franklin L Graff The Palms Faure Military Band tg PRESIDENT WILLIAM McKINLEY For the third time in the brief period of a generation the President has been wounded to the death by assassination. In that period no President has died in office from natural causes. Three of the seven men who, since 1860, have been carried to the head of the purest democracy in the world by the free voice of the people thereof, have met violent deaths by foul and murderous hands. And the dark deed has, in each case, been as unprovoked as foul, as senseless as murderous. Each time the blow has fallen upon a plain man, of generous impulses and gentle ways, who had given no personal offense or provocation. Each blow has caused the deepest sorrow and stirred the noblest emotions in every part of the land. In each case the stupid and brutal hand which moved to destroy has served to build up, for as the millions have gathered once and again, and yet again, at the bier of their Chief Magistrate to tell the story of their common grief, they have looked upon the flag and recalled what it has cost and what it signifies ; they have again, and yet again, invoked the help of the Father of All and dedicated themselves anew to the task of making the Government of the people yet more secure. Once again the Nation stands in sorrow and humiliation at the portals of the grave of a President struck down with savage cunning and deliberate plan at the very center of the world's highest civilization. It is not strange that the shock, for the moment, stunned the sensibilities of eighty millions of freemen. It is not unnatural that the immediate impulse was for vengeance upon the monster who had shot the President the people loved. It is a signal encouragement that, in these four or live funeral days, reason has strongly asserted her sway and the popular thought has clearly seen that vengeance is but a savage and not an effective remedy for a brutal and an un- natural crime. Each of the funeral services over the remains of President McKinley has been attended with added solemnity and sug- gestiveness. On Sunday the private or family service was held at the home where he died. With the usual Christian service the family and personal friends gave the form of their dear one over to the people who claimed him and to the public ceremonial which the position he had attained made impera- tive. On Tuesday, at the official funeral, the officers of Govern- ment, the Congress, the Courts, the Army and the Navy, and the representatives of all the other nations inarched down "The Avenue" with heavy and measured step, and held their imposing service under the great dome of the Capitol. But to- day the people's funeral is more impressive and has a deeper meaning than any which has gone before. At this hour all the labors of eighty millions of people are halted, their stores and offices and factories are closed, even their never-resting lines of communication and transportation are stilled, as in spirit they gather around the grave at Canton to give the dust of the President back to our common mother earth, while they lift their grief by mingling it, and think upon what shall be hereafter. The ponderous wheels of Government move on without interruption for the new President is invested with all the functions of the Office, by the simple ceremonial of taking the oath and kissing the Bible. Responding to his proclamation, as well as to our own impulses, we have stopped all work for the day, in this opening and organizing week of the University year, that we may gather in formal convocation and give ex- pression to the bitter, unreconciled and indignant grief which we share with that overwhelming body of our countrymen who know the worth of free institutions and who stand for the progress of righteousness and the reign of law. SALIENT FACTS IN THE PRESIDENT'S LIFE To attempt any very close examination of the history or any very exact analysis of the qualities of President McKinley is beyond the possibilities of this brief hour. He came from a great stock which has done much for the settlement and stability of America. The blood of the Cove- nanters did much for him. The moral and physical sinews of the McKinleys were seasoned and hardened by the stalwart preaching of John Knox and the strenuous battles against the Stewart kings for religious and political liberty in Scotland. Coming to the New World at the middle of the Eighteenth Century the McKinleys became farmers in Pennsylvania where so many of the Scotch-Irish, a rugged people upon a rugged soil, have settled. Of this family young David McKinley shared the hardships and the glories of Washington's Army and then settled down to the severe but men-producing life of the pio- neer farmer. While the McKinleys were coining from Scotland and breaking the hard soil of Pennsylvania, an English family by the name of Rose, persecuted for conscience sake and impelled by the imperious and unyielding spirit of English Puritanism, was moving by the way of free Holland to the same State to open the mountains and take out the coal and iron from which have been developed the foremost of American manufacturing industries. While David McKinley was fighting the first bat- tles of the Republic, Andrew Rose was supplying iron for patriot cannon, and in time he became, himself, a gallant soldier in the patriot army. And when the battles were over David McKinley and Mary, daughter of Andrew Rose, became friends, and lovers, and hus- band and wife. The first issue of this union was a son, given the name of William, who became a pioneer in the iron busi- ness in eastern Ohio. He married Nancy Allison a descendant, like himself, of Covenanter stock. To them were given eight children, one of whom, born in 1843, inherited his father's name of William, and inscribed that name upon the scroll of the immortals. Who shall wonder, when these brief facts are noted, at the substantial character, the intrepid blood, the love of work, and the inherent aptitude for industrial investigations which made William McKinley a great leader of men and the twenty-fourth President of the United States ? He grew up like many an ordinary American boy. He at- tended the village school. At a very early age he showed a tendency towards argument and oratory. He prepared for col- lege and entered Allegheny at sixteen, but sickness soon com- pelled him to suspend his college course. Then the father be- came embarrassed in business and the son felt obliged to share the family support. He taught school, and in the teaching of others did the most to teach himself. At eighteen, when he was yet teaching, came the war between the states. Without a mo- ment's waiting he entered as a private soldier the 23d Ohio Regiment, of which William S. Rosecrans was colonel, Stanley Matthews lieutenant colonel, and Rutherford B. Hayes major. For fourteen months he carried a musket. There was no harder fighter and none with more fighting to do. He shared in all the sickening, shuddering experiences of the Army of the Po- tomac. Referring to this period he recently said: "I always look back with pleasure to those fourteen months I served in the ranks. They taught me a great deal. The year was a formative period in my life. I have always been glad I en- tered the service as a private." His veteran carriage at Antie- tum gained him a lieutenancy. There is much of interesting and glorious detail in his soldier life, but we must pass it by. Gallant and meritorious service in time won a major's com- mission over the signature of Lincoln. When the war was fully over, in July, 1865, he was mustered out. Now he must face life. Should he go back to college or forthwith into the struggle of life ? He took a middle course. He went to the old Albany Law School, the department of law of Union University, and, in 1867, graduated. In the next nine years he displayed no little aptitude for the bar. He became the efficient public prosecutor of the county in which he lived. But his interest grew in public afiairs rather than in the drudg- ery of the office or the trial at bar. His power as a public speaker enlarged and he drifted inevitably towards public life. In 1870 he sought the nomination and was elected to Congress. In 1878 his district had been gerrymandered against him, but he overcame an adverse majority of 2,500 and was elected by more than 1,200. Seven times he was elected. In Congress he became so hard a student of American industrial problems, and so much of a specialist upon revenue and protective tariffs, and withal so ready and accomplished in debate, as to make a very considerable impression upon the Country. It must not be imagined that his bark glided smoothly and easily along the stream. It had to be propelled against adverse winds by physical and intellectual forces. His forcefulness and in time his very prominence in the House of Representatives arrayed against him the sharpest political opposition. Ohio has long been the tramping ground of very hostile political parties, and frequently they have been so evenly divided as to cause the control of the legislature to rest first with one and then with the other. Neither has hesitated to use its legislative power to redistrict the State so as to make it more difficult for the opposition to again get control, and in this process it has always been considered legitimate political warfare to outline districts which would make it difficult or impossible for leaders of the opposition to gain re-election. This was done so effectu- ally by the democrats against Mr. McKinley that when, in 1889, he was a candidate for re-election, he was defeated. But, as very often happens in such matters, the vigor of his canvass in a hopeless contest, and the widespread regret at his defeat, made him, in the ensuing campaign, the logical candidate of his party for Governor of the State. That campaign was one of the most memorable in the long list of memorable cam- paigns in Ohio. It was the first general canvass the candidate had ever made, but it proved him, as a strategist and upon the hustings, one of the strongest men who had ever participated in an Ohio State campaign. His personal character stood the search light of vigorous opposition and appealed to the better nature and the sounder thinking of the people, while his spirit stirred and quickened the activities of his political associates ; and his words, even among his opponents, left no bitterness behind him. He was elected and then re-elected by one of the largest majorities ever thrown in the State. His administration as Governor of Ohio was not marked by hazardous or brilliant exploits, but by such unvarying kindli- 6 ness, such steadiness and such uniformly patriotic sense, as to command the confidence of the State and of the Country. As early as 1880 he had been talked about for the Presidency. In 1884 he was something of a factor in the National Convention. In 1888 the nomination was within his grasp, but he declined it upon a point of honor. He was a delegate in the National Convention under the instructions of his State to support Senator Sherman. The delegation did it loyally, but the event proved that the nomination of Sherman was impossible. A stampede was imminent. The air of the convention was charged with feverish expectancy. All the republican con- gressmen in Washington, seeing his availability, joined in a telegram to the convention urging his nomination. Two dele- gates had been voting for him through several ballots, but the number was so small that, although it had both annoyed and amused him, he could not protest against it without seeming to desire to attract attention to himself. On the next ballot his vote rose to fourteen, and the movement towards him was decisive and unmistakable. He was recognized at once as the available man in a trying situation, and all believed that he had but to sit still and the nomination would come to him at once. But he would not sit still. He sprang to his feet and electri- fied the convention and perhaps assured his great future by the unthinking revelation of his great soul. Let us hear his very words : "I am here as one of the chosen representatives of my State. I ana here by resolution of the Republican State Con- vention, passed without a single dissenting vote, commanding me to cast my vote for John Sherman for President and to use every worthy endeavor for his nomination. I accepted the trust because my heart and my judgment were in accord with the letter and spirit and purpose of that resolution. It has pleased certain delegates to cast their vote for me for Presi- dent. I am not insensible to the honor they would do me, but in the presence of the duty resting upon me, I cannot remain silent with honor. " I cannot consistently with the wish of the State whose credentials I bear and which has trusted me ; I cannot with honorable fidelity to John Sherman ; I cannot consistently with my own views of personal integrity, consent, or seem to consent, to permit my name to be used as a candidate before this convention. I would not respect myself if I should find it in my heart to do so, or permit to be done that which would ever be ground for anyone to suspect that I wavered in my loyalty to Ohio or my devotion to the chief of her choice and the chief of mine. I do not request, I demand that no delegate who would not cast reflection upon me shall cast a ballot for me." Another was nominated and elected. Four years later Mr. McKinley was himself chairman of the nominating convention and held unsurpassed popularity in that vast assemblage. The re-nomination of President Harrison was widely believed to be of doubtful expediency and the tendency of the convention was again overwhelmingly towards McKinley. Against his repeated and forceful protests the vote for him had reached 182. But he had given his word and did not falter. Leaving the chair he moved that the nomination of Harrison be made unanimous, and carried a doubting convention to that con- summation. In the campaign which followed, as we all know, the candidate was defeated. By the middle of the ensuing administration it had become quite manifest to experienced observers of political occurences that the popular feeling would produce the nomination of McKinley for President in the next National Convention of his party. There were some decided efforts to stem the tide in the great states of Illinois, Pennsylvania, and New York, but they were unavailing, and upon the first ballot he had a clear ma- jority of all the votes, was named by acclamation, then elected, and, four years later, renominated without question, and re- elected with decisiveness. ADMINISTRATION AS PRESIDENT It is difficult, under the spell upon us today, to declare with any confidence the exact place which will be accorded to 8 Mr. McKinley by the sober judgment of history; but it is safe enough to say that each month of his highest public service has gained for him a yet larger share in the esteem of his countrymen, and that the great things accomplished in his ad- ministration have ensured for him an exalted place among the very great names upon the roll of the makers of our Country. Few men have understood, have been filled with, have ex- pressed the spirit and purposes of our national life so com- pletely as he. Few have appreciated the proprieties or met the responsibilities of the great station to which he rose so fully as he. Few of the Presidents have had so inspiring an outlook, have held their own lives so open to the better impulses and the higher leadings of the Nation, and have been so able to ex- ercise the functions of their great office for such a large meas- ure of national upbuilding and advancement as he. In all his public life Mr. McKinley has been a hard student, a tenacious advocate and a conspicuous representative of the policy of imposing protective duties for the promotion of American industries. There is no temptation to enter upon the discussion of the merits of that policy now, nor to forget that there are many who do not accept it. But no one, ad- herent or opponent, will deny that his purposes were patriotic. As Fisher Ames said of Alexander Hamilton, in none of the revenue bills which he framed is there to be found a clause which savors of despotic power. To this very important subject he devoted the studiousness and the aggressiveness of his life. He left no loop-holes of escape, no avenues of retreat. He had ready command of the facts and his logic never failed. He risked his public life upon his economic and industrial theories, and the event proved that he did it wisely and well. His con- fident outlook and his convincing advocacy combined with his personal qualities to carry him to the Presidency. And the new energy which was given to American industries by his election, seemed to vindicate his philosophy and cer- tainly gained for him a yet larger measure of personal and public regard. His administration found our industries 9 depressed and discouraged, and speedily saw them teem with unprecedented vigor and life. It is not said that his admini- stration did it, but one can hardly deny that the confidence with which capital and labor both regarded him had very much to do with it. Nor will any one doubt that the iu- dustrial activity which has everywhere taken possession of the land during his Presidency has of itself given a warmer glow to the feelings of the people towards the President who had al- ways and everywhere foretold it. For the first time in his life this unwavering disciple of the extreme policy of protection revealed the influence of new conditions upon his opinions touching the relations of national tariff policies and national industries in his address at Buffalo on the day before his assassination. That address taken in connection with what had gone before exemplifies the patriotism and the sagacity of the man. He had discerned, and that shows that he was willing to see, that new conditions in the world were forcing a revision of political creeds and a modification of governmental policies. His last public utter- ance promises to become a precious political legacy to his Country. Let us hear a sentence or two from that memorable public expression : "A system which provides a mutual exchange of com- modities is manifestly essential to the continued and healthful growth of our export trade. We must not repose in fancied security that we can forever sell everything and buy little or nothing. If such a thing were possible, it would not be best for us or those with whom we deal. We should take from our customers such of their products as we can use without harm to our industries and labor." " The period of exclusiveness is past. The expansion of our trade and commerce is the pressing problem. Commercial wars are unprofitable. A policy of good will and friendly trade rela- tions will prevent reprisals. Reciprocity treaties are in harmony with the spirit of the times ; measures of retaliation are not." " Our interest is in concord, not conflict, and our real emi- nence rests in the victories of peace, not those of war." 10 " Our earnest prayer is that God will graciously vouchsafe prosperity, happiness, and peace to all our neighbors, and like blessings to the peoples and powers of earth," If Mr. McKinley was a tenacious and aggressive partisan upon protective tariffs he was not commonly so upon other subjects. Ordinarily he was mild in his expressions and judicial in his temperament to a degree which led to the quite common belief that he was vacillating and weak. In the Presi- dential Office he kept closely in sympathy with the over- whelming sentiment of the Country, and so made himself the exponent of very great undertakings, and his office the instru- ment of very great deeds. His first election turned very largely upon the matter of the standards of national and international finance. He was by no means an original gold monometalist. He became such because forced by the extreme attitude of his opponent, because led by the teachings of students of the subject, because carried along by the drift of the sentiment of his country, because sustained by the growing courage of his party. In this as in many other mat- ters he followed or he fell in with sentiment, quite as much as he led it. Touching the most stirring events of his administration, —the war with Spain for the rescue of Cuba and the acquisi tion and pacification, in sequence, of great island empires in both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, he did not have the initiative. The abuse heaped upon him by the opponents of these undertakings, assuming as we do the right of opposition, was wholly misplaced and unwarranted. All that he did in connection with these very trying events he did as the conser- vative, cautious, responsible, and reliable agent and instru- ment of his country. If he had done less he would have been centured more. The affection and admiration of his people grew because with some apparent and natural reluctance he made himself the instrument of the people and did the great work of the nation and the age with such a steady and patriotic hand. If his agressive leadership touching industrial questions and tariff legislation, upon which he felt that he was, and upon which 11 he unquestionably was, an expert, opened the way for his upright character and attractive personality to reach the Presidency, his sympathy with all mankind, his readiness to listen to others upon matters concerning which he laid no claim to special proficiency, and his unexpected firmness under pressure, went quite as far to prove his greatness, to make him a world leader of men, and to fix his place in history. It may well be frankly said, and it may well be grateful to those who admired and loved him most, that Mr. McKinley's public character grew to new and unexpected proportions dur- ing his term in the Presidency. It is not always so ; that it was so with him is distinctly gratifying to all his countrymen in this trying hour. When chosen, the very common estimate of the best thinkers of the Nation was that he was clean and affable, but vacillating; clever and attractive, but not stern or resistive. It used to be said that stronger men and great com- mercial interests used him. His political opponents first at- tributed stronger qualities to him than his political associates recognized in him. It is doubtless true that the statesmen of Europe have rated his political sagacity and power higher than has commonly been done by the statesmen of America. But the highest responsibility and the severest trial proved the metal of which the man was made, and developed to the ut- most the great qualities that were in him. There was no taint of uncleanliness about his administra- tion. If wrong was done the wrong-doer was efficiently prose- cuted. Men of the first ability and of the largest experience were called to his Cabinet, and the public business was trans- acted safely and well. He mingled with the crowd frequently. He spoke and wrote freely. He came to represent and express national sentiment splendidly. All he said gave higher tone and truer ring to the best there is in our citizenship. He re- vealed wide and well-grounded information and, in an unex- pected measure, developed the power of imagination and of construction. Things went his way. His administration found his party torn and dissevered into fragments and left it a consolidated and energized force. He drew other parties to,. 12 him. He became the leader of a people as well as of a party. When war with Spain was imminent, Congress, without any dissent, placed fifty millions of dollars in his hands for its prose- cution. Policies which he espoused were carried out. Before his term was half over discerning men began to say that he was putting other men to his purposes rather than that self- seekers were using him. Other peoples recognized his quali- ties. Under his leadership his people had attained a new place in the esteem of other nations. It was no mere coinci- dence, it was no empty form, when the great exchanges of London and Liverpool, of Paris and Berlin, shut down upon the instant of his death. It was the natural but impressive recog- nition of his leadership in the wide field of national politics, of the eminence which he and his people had gained in the yet wider field of international comity and commerce. Before the sad end came, the facts accomplished under his admistration, in recovering the public confidence, in regaining the common industries, in enlarging our trade to a point which stirs the ap- prehension of all the nations, in the hard and successful blow for the oppressed at our door, in extending free government and opening the way for the working of God's righteousness in the hearts of other millions of the earth, lifted him to the very pinnacle of fame here and throughout the world. PURE LIFE AND HEROIC DEATH As admiration for him grew, and as the fame of his public life extended, his personal qualities became better known and the knowledge endeared him to all who regard cleanliness and courage, simplicity and virtue. In tastes he was frugal. In estate he was not rich, and, although the opportunities were great, he was not grasping. When misplaced confidence in another brought upon him a loss of more than he possessed, he gave up all he had that he might save others so far as he could. That he loved public life none will doubt, but the little frame cottage at Canton, from which he is carried this afternoon, was infinitely more grateful to him than the Execu- tive Mansion in the "shining city." At seventeen he united with 13 the Methodist Episcopal Church, and his eminence never led him to discredit the profession he then made. His presidential train was ordered to a side-track upon Sundays; and if opportunity offered, whether at home or abroad, he uniformly went out of the glare of his great office on the morning of the sacred day to mingle with his democratic denomination and worship God according to the simple usages of his church. His home life was an ideal for all the world. His marriage was happy. Two little girls came into his life, but they were not to remain and, in infancy, passed on to the beyond. His wife, always frail, has long been an invalid, but his care for her, tender, unbroken and self-sacrificing, exceeding by far the mere devotion of a lover, now becomes one of the most pathetic as well as one of the most delightful themes in history. In temperament he was full of sunshine. A perfect picture of good manliness he would greet a visitor to the White House with a heartiness which was both genuine and irresistible. There are in his career no great peaks or promontories which rear their heads above the road upon which he steadily ad- vanced heavenward. His fame will rest upon no single occa- sion, upon no mere opportunity or chance. He was both a usual and an unusual man. In all our history there is no bet- ter illustration of the conquering power of the homely virtues. By physical and intellectual cleanliness, by devotion to wife and home and church, by native gentleness and generosity, by freedom from all bitterness and guile, by habits of study and the acquired power of logical thinking and of forcible expres- sion, by the purity of his patriotism, by the exalted plane and the timeliness of his public utterances, by his readiness to learn and to accept as well as to lead, by his unexpected firmness in executive action, and by steadiness and patience from first to last, he pursued a rugged road to an emminence which com- manded the respect of all the world. When he went with native but misplaced generosity to be- come a familiar figure in the Exposition, which he believed was to help on the more complete realization of his national ideals, there was but little more which could gain for him a yet 14 higher place in the esteem of his countrymen, and that was supplied in the cause and the heroism of his death. He had ridden along the roadways, through long lines of people who had come in great numbers to see him; he had passed through the buildings that his word and his smile might reward the labor of the exhibitors; he had made his great ad- dress; he had surrendered himself to the hand-shaking of the multitude ; he had warmly greeted a little girl in the intermin- able line and looked after her as she passed, perhaps thinking of the two little girls who had come into and quickly gone out of his own life; he had moved to grasp the hand of a fiend in the garb of honest toil, when the red right-hand of anarchism fired the bullet which tore through his body and appalled man- kind. With his unceasing care for others, with sublime forti- tude and patriotic impulse which the very presence of immedi- ate death could not overthrow, he talked of his wife and of the trouble he might be to the Exposition, and enjoined the crowd to let no one hurt his murderer. For days the thanksgiving of the Nation arose upon the reports of the experts that he would survive. But it was not to be. With a nobility not sur- passed by that of any of the great in human history, not by that of Hampden praying for the king who was over- throwing the liberties of his country, not by that of Sidney upon the field of Zutphen refusing the cup which could help another, not by that of Strafford on Tower Hill sustaining the court which had wrongfully condemned him, nor yet by that of Christ on Calvary petitioning the Father to forgive his enemies who knew not what they did, he said: "Good-by, all, good-by. It is God's way. His will be done, not ours" and passed into eternal peace. ANARCHISM IN AMERICA There is but one sentiment. Criminals and degenerates do not count. The grief is universal. Some of us reasoned as he did and voted for him ; some of us reasoned otherwise and voted against him. There is no regret at this on either side ; and so there is no going before and there is no lagging behind in the expression of bitter sorrow today. 15 But there is humilation and indignation and determina- tion in the soul of this people now ; and these will endure even beyond the bitter grief. The bullet which tore through the person of the President tore through the soul of every man and woman of sensibility and honor in the land. Every citizen of rectitude, every lover of his Country, feels the iron in his own life. Three times in forty years the head of the American Re- public has been shot to death. There is a factor in the pres- ent case which was absent from the ones which preceded it, and there is an element in popular feeling now which was not present on former occasions. The great Lincoln was murdered by a madman when the land was drenched in blood and ac- customed to tradgedy. War was yet rife ; and while the dreadful act was not warfare, but murder, it may have been thought to be the rough work of war by the infuriated leadei and the little band of shallow conspirators who took up the direful task. There was terror, widespread and justified, be- cause of the apprehension that, weakened by war, the Nation might not survive. With one impulse the people arose splendidly to the occasion, hunted and hanged the conspirators, and confidence asserted itself superbly. Garfield was murdered by a worthless tramp, who had nothing to live for, who was maddened at being turned back when hunting a place, and who had become unbalanced through unseemly and distracting political feuds. If there was apprehension of more serious re- sults it was without occasion, and but local and momentary. If there was indignation it was soon satisfied by the adequate punishment of the crime and the ready belief that none but the criminal were involved. In each case the criminal stood alone, and in each he had a fancied personal grievance against the vic- tim of his dreadful deed. In the present case the criminal does not stand alone, and he claims no personal grievance. And in the present case there is no public apprehension. We not only know that assassination has never changed the course of a nation, but we know the antecedents, the feelings and the power of this people. Happily there is confidence, en- tire and universal, in the learning and patriotism, in the 16 rugged aggressiveness and the proved fitness for high admini- strative trust, of that distinguished offspring of a distinguished lineage, that eminent son of Harvard University, who, under the Constitution, comes to the succession at this trying hour. With the self-poise and the reserve power which inhere in English speaking peoples, with such a man in the supreme place, and with the calm words which he gave us at the crucial hour, the foundations of Government do not feel the slightest shock. But there is shame that such a foul act can find a resting place in this fair land, and there is the universal resentment which a virile people ought to feel against those enemies of human society who have been organizing secret alliances throughout the world, preaching irrational doctrines and inciting if not executing fiendish deeds which defeat rather than aid the detestable end they have in view, while they stir the horror of all mankind. The last century has been stained deeply with the blood of rulers, beginning with the Russian Czar in 1801 and ending with President McKinley. But the assassination of the Presi- dent of the French Republic in 1894 doubtless marked the be- ginning of the work of the modern revolutionary anarchists, and all such deeds since then have apparantly proceeded from them. In seven years they have killed the heads of the two great republics of the world, the king of a third great power, the empress of a fourth, the prime minister of another European kingdom, and only failed in the attempt upon the heir to Britain's throne. They make no distinction in rulers. It makes no difference to them whether one is an hereditary monarch or freely chosen by a people to represent and express the common will; whether he be a Christian philanthropist or a brutal tyrant. They would kill all rulers and representatives. They make no discrimination in kinds of government ; they would overthrow all government. They are against headship in the family and so they would overthrow the family. They rebel against the power of God in the human soul and so they say there is no God. 17 In the manifesto of the Geneva Conference of 1882 they say : "We anarchists are men without any rulers. Our ruler is our enemy. Our enemy is the owner of the land. Our enemy is the manufacturer. Our enemy is the priest, the minister of God. Our enemy is the state whether monarchical, oligarchical, or democratic. Our enemy is the law. If these are our enemies, we are theirs. We are in accord with every one who defies the law by a revolutionary act. We intend to re-conquer the land and the factory from the land owner and the manufacturer; we intend to annihilate the state under whatever name it may be concealed. We mean to get our freedom back in spite of priest or law. Between us and all political parties, whether conservatives or moderates, whether they fight for freedom or not, a deep gulf is fixed. According to our strength we will work for the humilation of all legal institutions." Where liberty has most abided, there, for obvious reasons, have the sophistries of anarchism stalked most boldly. Switzerland, early and long the home of freedom, with her im- pressive mountains and her beautiful lakes and her cleanly people, has been a propagating ground. British law and liberty has afforded them undeserved protection. Under the security of the free institutions of the United States the anni- versary of the assassination of King Humbert was the other day publicly celebrated in the American city from which the assassin went to commit the horrid deed. In nearly all of the continental nations of Europe to be even suspected of anar- chism, that is not only of intending or inciting murder but of advocating the overthrow of the law, is to be a criminal, punish- able with imprisonment, and with but two havens of escape, free England, and America with yet larger freedom and less of the justice which makes freedom secure. That the liberalization of the New World has recently been drawing large numbers of the members of the "propaganda of force" from the slums and the saloons of the Old World out of which they have often been driven is asserted by the authorities of Scotland Yard, and cor- roborated by evidences only too manifest among us. 18 Is the Common Law, are the Great Charters, are our Fed- eral Constitution and the constitutions of all our states to be in- voked and relied upon to protect the enemies of all order ? The blood which won these muniments did not so intend it. Shall the temple of our covenant harbor the hostiles of all covenants, no matter how sacred and how imperative these covenants may be ? The common impulse of our citizenship revolts against it. I know that it is said there are differing theories and differ- ing classes in anarchism; that there are those who oppose force and those who invoke, sustain or exercise it. I do not know, the world probably will never know, how closely the wretched man in the Buffalo jail is associated with the "propaganda of force" or the measure of direct responsibility which anarchistic theorists may have in the murder of the la- mented President whose body we today commit in tears to the bosom of our common mother earth. Leave all that to the law, the court and the officers. But is one not to be held punishable for his spoken or written sophistries when he goes as far as he dares and as far as he can to overthrow all the sacred things for which armies have fought and martyrs have died, in all the years since human society began to get upon its feet, in all the ages since God began to act through the souls of men ? Must we hang the simple minded boy, as I am inclined to think he is, and then throw the technicalities of our law about the agitator whose irrational vaporings over- turned his mind and led straight on to the consummation of the dreadful act ? We will not support this suggestion either in itself or in its logic. The spirit of our system does not in- tend it. If laws have not been enacted to make crimes of the spoken or written word which would level our institutions and which leads right on to the murder of the President, it is be- cause the need has not been anticipated and not because the free-speech and free-press clause in the first amendment to the Federal Constitution, since copied in all the constitutions, was ever intended to forbid it. The liberty of the press and of the platform, the privacy of 19 association and communication, are sacred things. They were wrested from the kings, handed down in the Great Charters and specifically asserted in our constitutions because they were natural rights so much and so wrongfully invaded by monarch- ical power before the development of democracy in the world. These sacred guarantees of sacred things were never intended to protect license and defeat the very ends for which all government exists. The Constitution of Illinois expresses the intent and pur- pose of all of our constitutions better than the others com- monly do when in Article 2, Section 3, it declares that "the liberty of conscience hereby secured shall not be construed to * * * excuse acts of licentiousness, or justify acts in- consistent with the peace or safety of the State." And again when in the next section it declares that " Every person may freely speak, write and publish on all subjects, being responsible for the abuse of that liberty." The legal writers, and the courts so far as they have gone, are well agreed that these guarantees are to be construed in the light of the conditions which existed at the time they were enacted ; that a moral wrong is not to be justified by a naked legal phrase ; that the history and tradidions of government are not to be overthrown ; that the ends of government are not to be thwarted by mere words in a government constitution ; that well defined purposes and manifest intent are to control. It has been said, it was said only the other day by an ad- mirable writer in the foremost of our weekly periodicals, that the head of our State was safe because the disciples of the "propaganda of action" were unmolested under our flag. What an instant and terrible refutation ! But no matter. We do not know whether the execrable act which has plunged this whole Nation into bitter sorrow was their work or not. We do know that if it had been it would have been performed in such a way and disowned and disguised just as it has been, for the organ of the sect, published in our midst, has enjoined that "never more than one anarchist should take charge of an attempt so that in case of discovery the anarchist party may suffer as 20 little as possible." But let that all go. Are we to warm the self-declared and deadly enemies of all government and en- courage them to multiply and prey upon others on the mere tacit understanding that they shall not destroy us ? If we do, the harvest will be as dreadful as it ought to be. Neither men nor society will ever save themselves, or grow in stature or in security, through express compromises or implied understand- ings with evil. Away with any such meaning to the most sacred things in our written and fundamental law! and down with any tacit un- derstandings which are opposed to the universal good! Society is to outlaw and put its heel upon all persons and publications whose utterances are held by all civilization to be irra- tional, morally illicit, opposed to all the sacred things which society has been lighting for these hundreds of years, and in- evitably and necessarily dangerous. A LESSON TO LEARN It seems to me that there is a great lesson for this splendid Nation yet to learn, and the sacred soil about President Mc- Kinley's grave, hallowed as it is, is not profaned if we stand upon it as we determine that we will learn that lesson. License, defiance to all that protects and all that secures us, is being indulged and allowed, falsely and profanely, in the name of liberty. It is something new in this Country that scandulous journals profit most through inciting and nourish- ing the basest tastes. A coarse and vicious stage flaunts its offensive advertisements in our faces and sends forth appeals for patronage which our fathers would not only have resented, but which they would have punished as well. The saloons multiply in number only to enlarge the armies of the vicious and unemployed. We have been accustomed to look with ap- prehension upon the coming of the European Sabbath, for the floodgates of revelry and dissipation are let loose and no municipal authority limits and regulates and controls as the authorities of Europe do. Labor unions, — altogether proper for legitimate ends, have undertaken to say who may work and 21 upon what conditions. Men have been beaten and killed be- cause they believed in the gospel of work in a free land. Pas- sengers on trolley cars have been killed because a "union," un- authorized by law, has decreed that one who has not complied with its conditions shall not be allowed to operate the car. Public officers have betrayed their sacred trusts at such times because of the fear that efficiency might turn away vicious votes. Men have been hanged and burned and shot to death by infuriated mobs upon mere suspicion and without any form of authorized trial, and sometimes the people themselves have been indifferent or have even tacitly consented thereto. All this nourishes and cloaks the spirit of irresponsibility, of irreverence, or lawlessness, of disobedience, and of anarchism. If our fathers were rigid in their beliefs and severe in their forms, we have become lax to a degree which outrages the convictions of Christian people, which defies the sensibili- ties of the lovers of stability and order, which produces a dis- agreeable harvest, and which loudly calls for the fuller exercise of the common powers for the protection and uplifting of the common life. Under the influence of the emotions which have coursed through our hearts in this fateful week, under the spell of the sacred place where we stand today, let us see anew the imper- ative conditions of moral progress and of social order ; let us realize that upon us these things rest ; let us give ourselves to the burdensome and unceasing task with a clearness of vision and a courage in action worthy of the greatest and the best who have gone before. The Nation will carry itself with circumspection, but it must not forget. It will investigate the abhorrent crime at Buffalo with dignity : it will prove the facts as required by our law : it will inflict punishment with deliberation. While this goes forward in an orderly way it will reckon with itself and with the future ; and then it will move upward on the highway of constitutional progress. The crime was not against Mr. McKinley. He was the ob- ject in the assassin's way ; the splendid representative of that 22 at which the foul blow was aimed. The crime was against our Government, and against all government, against our people, and against all people. It was against you and me, our parents and our children. It was against our Christian civilization, against all that has been won by battle and gathered by phil- osophy and science through the trying out of the ages. Perhaps in the ways of Almighty God, this deep sorrow, this piercing of the souls of all true Americans, was necessary to solemnize this Nation, to lead it to realize the perils which must always encompass it, to induce it to unite with all the forces of righteousness and of order throughout the world, not only in the making of laws but in the enforcement of laws ; not only in a discussion of theories, but in an overwhelming onset which will slush out the spawning places of anarchism and level to the ground all the fastnesses of evil. Whether or not it was necessary, it is certainly having that effect. From every part of the round world which has seen an intellectual and a moral advance, comes the spirit and the purpose to join forces about the grave of the murdered President at Canton today, that all may have the wisdom of each other's experience and the strength of each other's cour- age in the great onward movement toward the complete re- generation of the world. CONCLUSION. President McKinley: — The University of Illinois pays to your memory the tribute of its enduring homage and respect. Your life was not in vain, and your dreadful death shall not go without its compensations. Your mind was pure, your example was ennobling, your words were an inspiration to all earnest, liberty-loving men and women throughout the world. Your spirit brought the people of your Country more closely together than they had been in generations, and bound all the forces of order in all countries in a firmer union than had obtained in all history before. Your life went out in the midst of the universal sorrow. The industries of the people stand hushed and still, but the great throbbing heart of the Nation beats heavily at this hour as your mortal body is committed to the grave. You were brave in war: you were great in peace. The step of the Army is heavy with the feeling of comradeship; an artillery caisson might rightfully have been your funeral car; the insignia of the Loyal Legion becomes your breast even in your coffin; the bright flag of your country is the appropriate decoration of your bier. But the honors, like the victories, of peace exceed those of war. What you did to heal the wounds and mend the waste when wars were over starts the inarch of the millions to your tomb and betokens a renown which the army of the people can not give. A splendid mausoleum, graceful arches and towering col- umns, teeming libraries and noble churches, stately streets and thronging cities will bear to the future your name, and with it the esteem of the men and women who knew you. But even these will poorly express the depth of feeling which fills the land with grief and humiliation at your violent and untimely death. Your countrymen will care for the frail companion of your life until her pale cheek shall flush in the soft sunlight of the eternal morning to which you have gone ; and what you said, and what you did, and what you were, and the nobility of your death, will give wisdom and inspiration and courage to the passing generations of Americans forever and forevermore. L1BKHKY Uh CUIMbKb^ 013 903 247