DEATH-BED OF PRESIDENT McKINLEY.
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:
Milburn House, Buffalo, N. Y., September 12.—The following bulletin
was issued by the President’s physicians at 8:30 p. m.:
The President’s condition this evening is not quite so good.
His food has not agreed with him and has been stopped.
Excretion has not yet been properly established. The kidneys
are acting well. His pulse is not satisfactory, but has
improved in the last two hours. The wound is doing well. He
is resting quietly. Temperature, 100.2°; pulse, 128.
P. M. Rixey,
M. D. Mann,
Roswell Park,
Herman Mynter,
Eugene Wasdin,
Charles D. Stockton.
George B. Cortelyou,
Secretary to the President.
Little by little the people learned. Early on Thursday there were signs
of pain. There were alarming developments. The physicians, carefully
scanning every evidence, breathlessly watching their patient’s every
moment, learned that a relapse had come. They battled against it. They
called up all the known agencies for assisting nature in opposing the
grim enemy that threatened.
But the President was sinking. That was the truth about it.
All through Thursday night, all through Friday that battling for life
went on, the patient, brave and uncomplaining victim of a reasonless
shot, was subjecting himself utterly to the control of the medical men.
And they were exhausting the possibilities of medicine and of surgery.
They were doing all that man could do. They were rendering such service
as king’s can not command. But the baffling difficulty continued. They
could not understand.
Down through the body, hidden from their eyes, ran the channel which a
murderous bullet had plowed. And in every inch of its course the fatal
gangrene had settled. Death was at his feast in the President’s body!
Nothing could check that devastation. Nothing could spur the heart to
combat longer. Nothing could restore those pulses to normal beating.
The President was dying!
All through the early hours of Friday night it was known he could not
live to another sunrise. Friends, relatives, cabinet officers, the Vice
President—all were summoned; and they were hastening to the bedside in
the hush of an awful sorrow.
At three o’clock Friday morning all of the physicians were gathered at
the bedside of the President. It was stated that digitalis was being
administered. Drs. Mynter and Mann arrived at the house at 2:40, having
been sent for hurriedly.
Dr. Park reached the house at 2:50, and shortly after him came
Secretaries Hitchcock and Wilson.
Several messengers were hurried from the house and it was understood
that they carried dispatches to the absent members of the Cabinet and
the kin of the President.
Additional lights burned. The household was astir. It was manifest that
the wounded President faced a grave and menacing crisis.
Alarm could be read in the faces of those to whose nursing and care he
was committed.
Mrs. Newell, one of the trained nurses suddenly called, arrived at 3:15.
She sprang from an electric carriage and ran down the sidewalk to the
house.
The scene about the house was dramatic. The attendants could be seen
hurrying about behind the unshaded and brightly lighted windows, and
messengers came and went hastily through the guarded door.
Outside half a hundred newspaper correspondents were assembled awaiting
news.
Meanwhile the nation—the world—stood watching for the final word.
Buffalo, where the President was assassinated, stood agape with horror
and rage.
It was past midday when he had entered upon his final struggle. The
thousands gathered at the Pan-American Exposition, the nation and the
outside world were not prepared even then for a realization that the
worst was at hand.
A furious rainstorm was sweeping the city when the first ominous
announcement came from the Milburn house:
“President McKinley is dying. He can live but a few moments.”
Then signal service operators took possession of the telegraph wires
leading to the house of death. Cabinet officers and members of the
President’s family began to arrive, and the beginning of the end had
come.
Then it was announced that the President might live for several hours.
But even then his limbs were growing cold and his pulse was fluttering
with the feeble efforts of his will alone. He was conscious. Every light
in the house was aglow.
Within, the wife had paid her last tribute to her dying sweetheart of
thirty years. Dr. Rixey led her into the room, and as she laid her head
alongside his she sobbed:
“I cannot let him go.”
She knew that the President was dying then, and in the dim silence of
her adjoining room she waited and wept as the hours sped and the doctors
wondered at the mighty battle of the dying man.
It was midnight when Secretary Long of the Navy arrived. He found his
beloved chief alive, but unconscious, and Dr. Mann told him, as he stood
in the hallway, “The President is pulseless and dying, but he may live
an hour.”
At half an hour past midnight Coroner Wilson arrived at the Milburn
house, and an unfounded announcement of McKinley’s death was quickly
telegraphed to all parts of the country. He left as soon as he found
that the order summoning him was a mistake.
But the President, now finally unconscious, and breathing but faintly,
struggled on. Midnight, 1 and 2 o’clock, found him wavering on the
verge, and the men of science could but stand and marvel at the wondrous
but hopeless fight which he had maintained so long. Intervals of
apparent consciousness came upon him. Sometimes he opened his fading
eyes and gazed calmly around.
At 2 o’clock the dim, gray light began to fall across his shrunken face,
and then—death won!
He had been unconscious, the doctors said, for nearly six hours. During
all this time he had been gradually sinking. For the last half hour he
had been in such condition that it was difficult to tell when he
breathed.
With him at the time of his death was Dr. Rixey, alone of all the
physicians, and by the side of the bed were grouped Senator Hanna and
members of the President’s family.
He died unattended by a minister of the gospel, but his last words were
an humble submission to the will of God, in whom he believed. He was
reconciled to the cruel fate to which an assassin’s bullet had condemned
him, and faced death in the same spirit of calmness and poise which has
marked his long and honorable career.
His last conscious words, reduced to writing by Dr. Mann, who stood at
his bedside when they were uttered, were as follows:
“Good-by, all; good-by. It is God’s way. His will be done, not ours.”
His relatives and the members of his official family were at the Milburn
house, except Secretary Wilson, who did not avail himself of the
opportunity and some of his personal and political friends took leave of
him. This painful ceremony was simple. His friends came to the door of
the sick room, took a longing glance at him and turned tearfully away.
He was practically unconscious during this time, but the powerful heart
stimulants, including oxygen, were employed to restore him to
consciousness for his final parting with his wife. He asked for her and
she sat at his side and held his hand. He consoled her and bade her
good-by.
She went through the heart-trying scene with the same bravery and
fortitude with which she had borne the grief of the tragedy which ended
his life.
That last day on earth had tried him severely. He had commenced wearing
away a little before 3 o’clock Friday morning. Throughout the day and
evening the expectations of attendants, physicians and friends
oscillated as a pendulum between hope and despair. Hopeless bulletins
followed encouraging reports from the sick room, and they in turn gave
way to recurrent hope.
The truth was too evident to be passed over or concealed. The
President’s life was hanging in the balance. The watchers felt that at
any moment might come the announcement of a change which would
foreshadow the end.
When it was learned that the President was taking small quantities of
nourishment hope rose that he would pass the crisis in safety. Everybody
knew, though—and no attempt was made to conceal it—that the coming night
would in all human probability be his last on earth. It was known that
he was being kept alive by the strongest of heart stimulants, and that
the physicians had obtained a supply of oxygen to be administered if the
worse came.
During the day President McKinley was conscious when he was not
sleeping. Early in the morning when he awoke he looked out of the window
and saw that the sky was overcast with heavy clouds.
“It is not so bright as it was yesterday,” said he.
His eyes then caught the waving branches of the trees, glistening with
rain, and their bright green evidently made an agreeable impression upon
him.
“It is pleasant to see them,” said he, feebly.
Mrs. McKinley did not take her usual drive. She saw the President once
before night, and then only for a moment. No words passed between them.
The physicians led her to the bedside of her husband, and after she had
looked at him for a moment they led her away.
While Mrs. McKinley was told that the President was not so well the
physicians deemed it best not to attempt to explain to her fully the
nature of the complications which had arisen or the real gravity of his
condition.
As fast as steam could bring them the President’s secretaries, the
members of his family and the physicians who had left convinced that the
President would recover, were whirled back to Buffalo. They went at once
to the house in which he was lying, and the information which they
obtained there was of a nature to heighten rather than to relieve their
fears.
All night the doctors worked to keep the President alive. The day broke
with a gloomy sky and a pouring rain, broken by frequent bursts of gusty
downpours. It seemed as though nature was sympathizing with the gloom
which surrounded the ivy-clad house about which the sentries were
steadily marching.
The 2 o’clock bulletin, issued at 2:30, swung the pendulum away over on
the side of confidence. It stated that the President had more than held
his own since morning, and that his condition justified the expectation
of further improvement. It added: “He is better than at this time
yesterday.”
Faces up and down the street brightened. Telegraph messenger boys, in
their youthful spirits, restrained all the day by the gloom around the
Milburn house, whooped as they ran and nobody reproved. The sun shone
again.
But the news was too good to last. Secretary Cortelyou walked across the
street to the press and telegraph tents and explained that the sentence.
“He is better than at this time yesterday,” should be stricken out. Then
the sky was black again.
The bravery of Mrs. McKinley in this last moment was only paralleled by
the heroism with which the President himself, murmuring the words of
“Nearer, My God, to Thee,” turned his face away from all so dear to him
in life, and passed into the last and eternal sleep.
All through the struggle of Friday when the erratic heart of the
President leaped and then failed, Mrs. McKinley’s courage had been at
the highest point. The beautiful womanhood within her, the memories of
thirty years of perfect married life, the recollections of the tender
devotions of the dying President, rose and gave her the strength needed
to face the worst.
She remained in her apartments surrounded by friends, anxious to be by
the President’s side, but obedient to Dr. Rixey’s wishes that she should
not come until she was called.
Oxygen had been given the President, and under its influence he had
slightly revived. He told Dr. Rixey that he realized he was about to
die, and he asked for Mrs. McKinley.
She came and knelt down by his bed and his eyes rested lovingly upon
her. His first solicitude was for her—her care, her happiness. All the
love of three decades shone in his face as he feebly put out his hands
and covered her own with his.
He knew that he was dying, she only half apprehended it. But even in
such a trial she kept herself up most bravely, lifting her tear-stained
face to Dr. Rixey’s and exclaiming:
“I know that you will save him. I cannot let him go. The country cannot
spare him.”
The President’s strength did not last long. Unconsciousness returned to
him, and they led Mrs. McKinley away.
When she was without the room Mr. Milburn told her that the President
could hardly live until morning.
Herbert P. Bissell came to her side as she wavered, and Dr. Wasdin
hurried from the President’s chamber and administered a restorative.
Little by little Mrs. McKinley gained new strength, and in half an hour
was in full control of herself. Several ladies sat beside her, and to
one of these she turned and whispered:
“I will be strong for his sake.”
An invalid herself, racked for twenty years with pain, almost helpless
at times, since the years in which her children passed from her, the
wife and sweetheart of the dying President conquered herself.
And so the heavy hours hurried away. Midnight had come, and gone. The
dawn was lingering far in the east, and not even the edge of the world
glowed with the promise of day. It had rained on Friday, and a storm had
raged which will long be remembered by those who were called abroad in
the troubled city. As at the close of Napoleon’s life the elements
warred tumultuously, so on the last day of this gentler ruler, the winds
and the clouds filled the earth with tears and the sounds of weeping.
They did not know, but his physicians were helpless from the start. The
demon who had struck so surely, might well make mockery of them. Six
days of pain, six days of agony, six days of hovering at the slippery
brink of death—and on the seventh he was at rest.
The great heart of the President was still forever. The man who had
confessed his God in childhood, bade farewell to earth with the words:
“Thy will be done!” The man who had helped his parents and his brothers
and his sisters, who had periled his life freely in the defense of his
country, who had made an honorable name and given the blessing of a
husband’s love to one good woman, the man who had never harmed a human
being purposely, who had lived at peace with God and man almost for
three-score years, had drifted across the bar. His heart had throbbed
lightly, and was still. The varying pulse had ceased, and the calm eyes
that had fronted life and death and destiny without ever flinching—this
Man was dead. The head of a nation, the chief executive of eighty
millions of people, the statesman who had guided his country so wisely
and so well, had been thrust from earth by an assassin who had no cause
of complaint, who had no wrongs to avenge, no advantage to secure, no
benefit to hope.
And into the silent room where all need for silence had passed, where
footfalls need not be guided lightly, where bated breath were no more
known, the night wind came through wide-flung windows, and touched the
lips and brow and nerveless hands. And the sound of unchecked weeping
waited for the dawn.