THE ASSASSINATION OF McKINLEY

By Richard Barry, an Eye-Witness.

THIS is the best-written account by an eye-witness of the assassination of President McKinley in the Music Hall of the Pan-American Exposition at Buffalo, New York, September 6, 1901. Barry was a writer for the Buffalo "Enquirer," in which this article appeared.

Czolgosz, the assassin, was an anarchist of Polish-German ancestry, who saw in McKinley an arch-representative of capital as opposed to labor in this country. He fired twice at close range, both bullets taking effect. For eight days hope for the President's recovery was entertained, but he succumbed September 14. Nine days later the assassin was tried, and was electrocuted.

McKinley had served seven months of his second term as President. In defeating, Bryan, he received the largest popular majority given a candidate for the Presidency up to that time. Unprecedented honors were paid his memory in foreign capitals, notably London, where memorial services were held in Westminster Abbey and Saint Paul's Cathedral.

McKINLEY was never in a more buoyant mood than on his Buffalo trip. This was marked by all who saw him.

The entire occurrences of the two days the beauty of the exposition, his wife's continued health, the presence of his friends, the favorable reception of his momentous speech, received, as he had hoped it would be, without a full realization of its import, the propitious weather and the strenuous applause had by that time impregnated him with negative content and positive buoyance. He entered the Temple by a rear door, saw the arrangements were complete (he did not inspect them minutely, for he surrendered such details to others, and had always been lax in guarding his person), bowed to the guards and reporters present, walked up the aisle to the appointed station and said, pleasantly, that the place was cool.

The Temple was cool, for it had been locked up all day. This offered relief from the swelter without and seemed worthy of its august name. From a point just north of the center, extending southeast and northwest at a forty-five degree angle, slightly broken, were two aisles reaching from the apex like the bend in a finger. These aisles were formed by tightly packed folding seats, pushed back smartly, so that they formed a great inextricable jumble, spread over the floor in reckless confusion, whose edges at the aisle were nicely mended by long strips of purple cloth, pieced at the end in a continuous weave of undulating invitation invitation to the President's stand at the center. There great palms lifted their somnolent, green shade and a yellow dome, like polished amber, reflected the soft lambent light that streamed in richly from the western windows. For guards there were the regulation exposition police, United States artillery men, city detectives and government secret service men.

A short lull came, the President took his place, Mr. Milburn at the left, Mr. Cortelyou at the right, Detectives Ireland and Foster three feet away in front, several reporters behind, diplomats and officials surrounding, with the guards lining the aisle.

"Let them come," said the President. The doors were opened and the surge outside pushed in the tide of humanity. There was the usual push, the usual hot day sweat, the usual trodden feet, the usual quiet patience of the waiting thousands, and soon a steady stream of people was being pushed by the guards through the aisle and past the President, as logs are propelled down a sluice by men with cant hooks at a spring drive. This continued for about eight minutes, when there appeared at the door unnoticed at the time a well-knit young man, whose right hand, with seeming innocence, was in his back pocket. That hand held a pistol, and both were concealed from even the treacherous depths of the pocket by a dirty rag. The rag was a handkerchief, but it had been carried for several days and in the perspiring heat no face mop was presentable after such long usage. It was a cheap handkerchief, plain, unmarked, ordinarily small and sorely soiled, yet it held the deadliest venom on earth.

The hand was slightly nervous, so was the man. Only a close observer would have seen it. The precision of the next few moments would prove that he had nerves of steel; the villain at the climax of a tragedy usually has stage fright, and the young man has since admitted that he came within an ace of backing out there, but was already in the Temple, while the crowd behind made retreat impossible, and forced him slowly to the precipice. He closed his teeth good, white ones, though he has the fondness of a tobacco slave for a cigar and screwed his resolution up to the point of doing. He was well built, had a good wiry form of medium height, an intelligent face with a brow high but narrow, the aquiline nose of determination, a firm chin, a coarse sensual mouth and blue German eyes. It was the head of an egotist, the mouth of an impressionable youth, the nose and chin of a resolute man. The eyes were responsive but not sympathetic, and at that moment were stolid, with little of the fierce light that burns in the basilisk iris of a fanatic. His hair was brushed in wavy brown disorder back from his forehead. At first glance he was not a striking figure. He wore a cheap, dark suit of woolen cloth, a flannel shirt and a string tie all ordinary, all unnoticeable. He appeared as a mechanic, a printer, a shipping-clerk, a worker at some high-class trade. He moved on down the line, drawing near the President. As soon as he was well past the door he withdrew the handkerchief-enclosed pistol from his pocket, holding both in front of him, as though the hand were wounded and in a sling.

This young man's history is of interest. It is worth tracing. His name was Leon F. Czolgosz (pronounced Tchollgosch). He was 28 years old, born in Detroit, Michigan. He came of poor, Polish-German parents. The mother does not yet speak English, though she has been in this country many years. The father was so indigent that at the time of this writing [ 1901 ], he was about Cleveland, his present home, looking for bread or for work, whichever should be obtainable. Czolgosz has been slightly known to the anarchists of Chicago and the West as Fred Nieman, a surname that in German means "nobody." He has not been a prominent anarchist and it is only as a hanger-on that he is recalled.

The scene [of the shooting] is but partially to be described, or rather to be described from varying angles, no one of which is obtuse enough to comprehend the gaps left by the others, for though hundreds were there, the few minutes of the shots and their denouncement have left an inextricable tangle, about which everyone is sure of the exact happening and about which no two stories agree.

A detective saw the swathed fist and said in passing comment :

"This man has a sore hand."

Another had an inkling of suspicion. "I don't know about that," he said, and reached for Czolgosz's arm. It was too late ! The first shot came, low hardly louder than a cap pistol then the second, as quick as the self-cocking trigger could work. A vague, startled thrill spread through the crowd ; it had been hit a stunning blow and for the moment was numb. About the President action was decisive, sharp, bewildering. A dozen men leaped for the assassin. A big negro, James Parker, burst through the crowd and elbowed his herculean way to an assistance which was too late. George Foster, a government secret service man, in momentary hot revenge, had smashed the assassin's nose, the blood spurting to the floor, where the two were grappling, Czolgosz struggling for a desperate last shot, his face smeared with red ooze and his eyes bleary with tigerish emotion. But his shots, so close that the peppery powder mottled the President's white vest for many inches with specks of frightful black, had been fatal, and the artilleryman who kicked the pistol from his hand got merely cold satisfaction for his rescue. The marines of the President's guard had meanwhile charged the crowd with fixed bayonets, crying, "Clear out, you sons of , " and were pricking some in driving them from the Temple.

The President was singularly calm. A huge, deep-rooted mountain oak, lightning stricken, stands as he stood then alone, transfigured, mystified and silent before toppling to its fall. Those who saw that face and noted its sweet grandeur and its indefinable surprised pathos will carry the memory to the grave. The President had been greeting little children and had just courteously bowed to an old man. He was cheery, light hearted, kindly, patient such was his nature and at that moment he was in the heydey of good spirits. Suddenly there was injected into his life this foul, dank crime, blacker than night, more hideous than a dungeon's horrors. It was the envious Casca stabbing in the neck while truckling with a sycophant's leer; but Caesar exclaiming, "Et tu, Brute!" could have shown no greater pity and no greater wounded confidence than did President McKinley at that supreme juncture. His shoulders straightened to their fullest, broadest height and he quietly surveyed the fiend still holding the smoking, hidden pistol before him. The smile, with its dimpled placid sunniness, left his face, his white lips pressed each other in a rigid line, their convex curving ends lost in the sunken contour of his mouth, and then for the briefest instant his eye assumed the penetration of a man who reads men as other men read books. For that space of time, measured by hardly more than the wink of an eye-lash, the two assassin and victim--confronted each other. A multiplicity of emotions showed in the President's face, but two were lacking. There was neither fear nor anger. First there was surprise, then reproach, then pity, benevolence, compassion, a sympathy for the wretch, and then an inkling of astounded horror as he realized the enormity of the attack, and finally as the assassin was felled to the floor his great eyes welled with gentle passion and a tear on each cheek told of calm and chastened appeal for him who brought death that wonderful, black day. He did not once lose consciousness nor self-possession. Never was dignity better exemplified, yet it was pathetic. Though hope came afterward, no one then doubted that the President had been fatally wounded. His faithful secretary, George B. Cortelyou, a man of thin and resolute physique, of wiry courage and canny calmness, was more self-possessed than any other save the President. He caught his chief as he fell and with the help of John G. Milburn, president of the exposition, carried him to a nearby bench. Mr. Cortelyou leaned over the President and asked him if he suffered much pain. The President slowly drew his hand to his bosom, fumbled at his shirt and reached within, groped there with his fingers for a moment, then drew them forth, dabbled with blood.