William McKinley, twenty-fifth President of the United States, died at fifteen minutes past two o’clock on the morning of Saturday, September 14, 1901, at the age of fifty-eight years. He had lived just six and a half days after receiving his wound at the hands of Leon Czolgosz, the anarchist.
From the time President McKinley was carried to the bed in the Milburn home, at Buffalo, there had been a continually rising barometer of hope. Frightful as had been the shock of his wound, serious as were the consequences in a bullet necessarily retained in his body, the great reserves of courage and of strength had come to the President’s rescue, and he had seemed to mend from the start. As the days passed following the assault, the whole nation emerged from that black pall of gloom which fell in the hour when men first whispered: “The President is shot!” Usual vocations were taken up again. Social activities were renewed. The people in general, scarcely pausing from the pressure of a necessary labor, caught the note of encouragement, and were happy as they worked. Apprehension almost faded away as the days of the week followed each other, and every succeeding bulletin painted but brighter the scene in the sick room. By Wednesday the millions of Americans who were watching with eyes of love at that bedside—however near or remote they might be—had quite dismissed the thought of a fatal ending to the President’s case. They accepted his speedy recovery as a fact to be shared with jubilation, and had forgotten the grip of dismay and fear which seized them when the first news came.
And out of this rising glow of happiness came, late Thursday night, another shock—the bitterer for the hope which had preceded it.
“The President is worse.” That was the message men whispered to each other. After bulletins which exhausted the possibility of variety in statement came one which chilled the warm heart of the nation, and frightened far away the hope which had seemed so certain. The Thursday morning statement of physicians and secretary reported all that could be argued from the sanguine statements of preceding days.
At three o’clock in the afternoon there was a note of distress in the reporting. The country had already been apprised, through the watchful press, of such “hurryings to and fro” as presaged a return of peril, and of fear. There were drawn, white faces at the windows of the Milburn house. The calm of preceding days was disturbed. Messengers were sent flying to various destinations. Carriages and automobiles rolled up or rolled away in a haste which could mean but burning anxiety. And in the evening hours came that carefully considered bulletin which was the more portentous for the very vagueness of its terms: