LYING IN STATE IN BUFFALO.
The funeral services of William McKinley, the man, took place in the
Milburn house in Buffalo, Sunday morning, September 15. The funeral of
William McKinley, the President, commenced the next afternoon in the
official residence of the city where he died.
At the city hall in Buffalo everything was as he, who never denied the
people’s desire to meet him face to face, and who paid with his life for
the self-sacrifice, would have had it. From noon into another day, the
reverent thousands upon thousands flowed past his bier, taking a last
look on the face they so loved for what it meant to them and their
country.
The funeral cortege left the house of President Milburn of the
exposition at 11:45 o’clock. Slowly and solemnly, in time to the funeral
march, it moved between two huge masses of men, women and children,
stretching away two miles and a half to the city hall. Nearly two hours
were required to traverse the distance.
Fully 50,000 people saw it pass. They were packed into windows, perched
on roofs, massed on verandas, and compressed into solid masses covering
the broad sidewalks and grass plots. Most of them stood bareheaded as it
passed. Young and old, the strong and the age-bent and the lame faced it
with hats in hand, unmindful of wind and rain.
All eyes were on the hearse. President Roosevelt, who rode first in the
line, might have claimed some attention for the living if he would.
Instead he shrank back in his carriage out of sight. The day belonged to
him who had gone, and the new President would have it so.
The Sixty-fifth Regiment New York National Guard band led the line.
Behind it were the military escort and a full battalion of soldiers made
up of national guardsmen, United States infantry, United States
artillery and United States marines. Then came the carriage of President
Roosevelt and members of the Cabinet, preceding the hearse. Behind came
the line of carriages of friends and associates of the dead President.
The waiting cadences of Chopin’s funeral march rose and fell. In the
tear-starting productions of that music-famed Pole, the overflowing
heart of a nation, mourning the foul work of another Pole, found
bitterest expression. The liquid tones of bells attuned came up from the
southward to mellow Chopin’s funeral cry with a note of hope.
While the military band poured out music the chimes in the belfry of old
St. Paul’s Cathedral reverently rendered “Abide With Me,” “Nearer, My
God, to Thee,” and then “America.”
All night decorators had been at work preparing the city hall. Funeral
bunting was draped inside and outside. During the storm of the early
morning the exterior decorations were torn down, and some of the bunting
became entangled in the machinery of the great clock on the tower. It
stopped with the hands pointed to a quarter past two, the hour at which
the President had breathed his last on the preceding night.
A block away ropes had been stretched across the streets leading to the
city hall, and behind these the crowd was massed in thousands. Its mere
weight pushed the ropes out of place, and the police were constantly
overpowered in trying to hold the crowd in line against the patient
multitude which neither threat of rain nor the storm itself could
disturb.
The head of the funeral line reached the city hall a few minutes after
noon. The military escort marched down past the main entrance, wheeled
into line and came to “present arms” at the moment the storm which had
been threatening broke. Rain fell in torrents and belated thunder peals
mingled detonations through it.
The carriages carrying President Roosevelt and the Cabinet members
rolled up and were discharged. Then the hearse came, and four sergeants
of the United States army and four quartermasters from the naval
detachment lifted the casket on their shoulders and bore it within,
while the band played “Nearer, My God, to Thee.”
Directly above the spot where the coffin was to lie there was a dome of
black bunting, within which hung straight down above the coffin four
American flags, forming with their lower edges a cross which pointed to
the four points of the compass.
President Roosevelt and the Cabinet ranged themselves about the spot
where the body was to rest. Mr. Roosevelt stood at the foot of the
coffin on its right hand, with Secretary Root opposite and facing him.
On President Roosevelt’s left were Attorney-General Knox, Secretary Long
and Secretary Wilson. On Mr. Root’s right hand were Postmaster-General
Smith, Secretary Hitchcock and Mr. Cortelyou, the President’s private
secretary.
The casket’s upper half was open. The lower half was draped in a flag
upon which were masses of red and white roses. The body of the President
lay on its back and was clad in a black frock coat, with the left hand
resting across the breast. One glance at the face, startlingly changed
from its appearance in life, told the story of the suffering which had
been endured before death came.
Not a word was said. As soon as the coffin had been arranged, President
Roosevelt and Mr. Root, followed by the other secretaries, led the way
past the coffin on either side, each glancing for a moment at the dead
face. They then passed quickly out of the western entrance. Behind them
came Senator Hanna, Senator Fairbanks and about one hundred more men and
women who had been waiting in the city hall or who had accompanied the
body from the Milburn residence.
President Roosevelt and those who immediately followed him had passed
out of the building at eighteen minutes after one o’clock, and there was
a slight delay while the guard was posted. At the head of the coffin
stood Sergeant Galway of the Seventy-fourth Infantry Regiment of the
regular army. Chief Master at Arms Luze of the Indiana stood facing him
at the foot with his drawn cutlass at his shoulder. On the south, facing
the coffin, stood Sergeant Gunther of the Fourteenth Regiment, and
Coburn, a sailor from the Indiana, stood facing him on the north.
The lines approached the eastern entrance from Eagle street on the north
and Church street on the south. They were formed by the police, two
abreast, and approached the hall in a wide sweeping curve of humanity,
which was drawn in constantly at the entrance of the building where the
currents joined. Between files of police the stream from the north
passed by on the north side of the coffin, while the southern stream
flowed by on the south. Both passed quickly out at the western entrance
and down the steps, dispersing in various directions.
Nothing was heard in the building but the tread of feet on the marble
floor as the crowd passed through without stopping at the rate of about
one hundred and sixty a minute. Each individual had time only for a
hasty glance as he was urged forward by the police and by those who
followed. The plan was so arranged that four persons could pass the
coffin, two abreast on each side, at the same moment.
As the afternoon wore on and the lines grew longer at their source, much
faster than they were melting away at the hall, the police found it
necessary to urge greater haste in order that as many as possible might
be admitted.
“Move right along; move right along, now; step lively, please; hurry up;
move right up, now,” they repeated over and over, at the same time
urging the crowd forward with their hands. In spite of their efforts,
which necessarily marred to some extent the solemnity of the scene, the
crowds outside continued to increase.
The great majority of the crowd was made up of what political orators
call the “common people.” It was noticed that there were many workingmen
in the lines, and apparently they were not the least sincere of the
mourners. A workingman and his wife and children were the first to see
the face of the departed President when the lines commenced to move.
Nothing could more clearly show the hold which William McKinley had on
the hearts of the great mass of the people. While he lived they gave him
their votes. Dead, they did their all to testify the regard in which
they held him. Accustomed to rising early six days in the week, they
rose early again on this seventh and took possession of the streets.
From breakfast time until afternoon they held their places.
The first woman seen to shed a tear was clad in rusty brown. Her garb,
neat and well brushed though it was, and the knotted finger with which
she clasped a faded shawl, told of life by hard work. She looked once on
the dead face and burst into tears.
Men and women struggled along for hours through the press in stolid
patience to press kisses upon the cold glass. Little children were led
past weeping as if they had lost a father. G. A. R. men marched by,
lifting their hands to their hats in a last military salute to “the
major” and the President, who was to them also “commander.”
Not by any means all who passed were born under the flag they now call
theirs. From the East Side came troops of Poles, denouncing the act of
Czolgosz, their countryman in blood. Italians came in troops, their
women uncovering shawled heads and dropping tears for the man whose
language they probably could not speak. And before and behind throughout
the constant stream was the American workingman, bearing himself as if
he realized the loss of his best friend.
Among the foremost to reach the coffin was a slender man, poorly
dressed, with iron-gray hair and mustache. The little G. A. R. copper
button was in his coat lapel. Beside the coffin he leaned over and made
a menacing gesture with his hand:
“Curse the man that shot you!” he said.
The police urged him forward, and he went out shaking his head and
muttering against the anarchists.
Many men and women brought with them young children, whom they raised in
their arms to see and perhaps remember in after life the face of the
President. A tattered and grimy bootblack, with his box slung over his
shoulder, leading by the hand his sister, smaller but no less grimy than
he, filed by, walking on tiptoe to see.
The Indians came in the late afternoon, fifty chiefs from the
Pan-American Indian congress, with squaws and papooses. Geronimo, Blue
Horse, Flat Iron, Little Wound and Red Shirt led them. Each red man,
little or high, carried a white carnation in his hand, which he laid
reverently upon the coffin of the “Great Father.” Two chubby little
Indian girls forgot, and went on, each clasping her flower in a little
brown hand.
The storm came again after two o’clock, and with renewed fury. The rain
fell in torrents, and was driven by the wind in sheets like small
cataracts. But the lines and masses of people waiting for a chance to
see their President for a last time never wavered. About half carried
umbrellas. They served no purpose except to further drench those who had
none, until the wind caught them, turned them inside out and whirled
them into the gutters. Hats, women’s as well as men’s, followed.
By this time the waiting crowds had reached the most cosmopolitan stage.
Silk-hatted men and women in automobile coats waited in line with
mechanics and women from the factories and stores. All were drenched,
and all seemed alike indifferent.
They came through the city hall rotunda with water streaming from their
garments, until pools and rivers formed on the marble floor. Great
baskets of sawdust had to be brought in and spread to absorb it lest
people should fall on the slippery floors.
The officials of the exposition and the representatives of foreign
governments commissioned to attend the exposition with exhibits from
other countries were in the lines. Soldiers of the regular army, in
their blue cape coats, went by, and also policemen off duty, holding
their helmets in their hands. National guardsmen with khaki gaiters;
colored men, among them James Parker, who figured in the capture of
Czolgosz; little girls in their Sunday dresses, with their braided hair
over their shoulders; young men, husbands and wives, mothers with their
sons or daughters, went by in the never-ending stream.
Many flowers were sent to the house and others were sent to the city
hall. Among them was a large wreath of purple asters, with a card on
which was written:
“Farewell of Chief Geronimo, Blue Horse, Flat Iron and Red Shirt and the
700 braves of the Indian congress. Like Lincoln and Garfield, President
McKinley never abused authority except on the side of mercy. The
martyred Great White Chief will stand in memory next to the Savior of
mankind. We loved him living, we love him still.”
On the other side of the card was the following:
“Geronimo’s eulogy. The rainbow of hope is out of the sky. Heavy clouds
hang about us. Tears wet the ground of the tepees. The chief of the
nation is dead. Farewell.”
Flowers were received at the hall also from Helen Miller Gould Tent No.
8, Daughters of Veterans; from the commissioners of Chile to the
exposition; from Manuel de Aspiroz, the Mexican Ambassador to the United
States, and his family; from the Cuban commissioners to the exposition;
from the Mexican commissioners, and from General Porfirio Diaz,
President of Mexico.
Monotonously the streams of people flowed past the coffin while twilight
fell and darkness gathered. The interior of the city hall was
illuminated by electricity, and the streets in the vicinity were
brightly lighted. Toward sunset the sky cleared, and there was an
immediate increase in the already enormous crowds.
The endurance of the people finally gave out at 11 o’clock at night. At
that time practically everybody who sought the opportunity had seen the
dead President and the doors were closed. The military guard detailed by
order of General Brooke was left in charge of the body.
A death mask of the President’s face was made by Eduard L. A. Pausch of
Hartford, Conn. Pausch has modeled the features of many of the
distinguished men who have died in this country in recent years. The
mask is a faithful reproduction of the late President McKinley’s
features.