Thursday, September 19, 1901
THE NATION’S CHIEF EXPIRES
William McKinley, the twenty-fourth President of the United States, died at 2:15 Saturday morning, at Buffalo.
The bullet fired by Leon Czolgosz, the anarchist assassin, has done its awful work.
Theodore Roosevelt, in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution, is now the President.
President McKinley’s end was peaceful. The noble courage and Christian spirit which had characterized his splendid public career and his sweet domestic life were pathetically shown in his last moments of consciousness. His one thought was of his wife, who held his hand in a loving, lingering farewell. His last words were to her.
They were: “Good-by, All. Good-by. It is God’s way. His Will be done.”
Members of the Cabinet, Secretary Cortelyou and the others who had watched through the hours of suspense and anxiety from the first sinking spell, entered the chamber of the dying President, touched his hand and murmured a word of farewell. The president softly uttered the words of his favorite hymn, “Nearer, My God, to Thee,” and then lapsed into unconsciousness…
It was 11:30 o’clock when three long rolls of muffled drum told those outside the house that the funeral cor-tege was about to appear. At the moment the coffin appeared, “Nearer, My God, to Thee” ascended in subdued strains from one of the military bands. Tenderly the bearers lowered the coffin from their shoulders and placed it in the hearse. Soldiers and sailors swung into long columns and took up the march southward toward the City Hall. As the funeral cortege moved south on Delaware avenue toward the City Hall a vast concourse of people looked on. It began raining hard and the people were drenched by the time the body reached the hall…
RETRIBUTION
Czolgos, in his cell, is refused newspapers and tobacco, for both of which he asks each day. He is deprived of all the petty comforts of prison life and is made to feel the contempt in which his keepers hold. His passage to the grave will be quickly accomplished and his trial will prove a mere formality. He has absolutely no chance of escape. For him, there is no sympathy, and we suppose he only asks a swift and certain death. This will be no punishment for he will go to his death with outstretched arms.
But there is one thing that may move him if he has a natural feeling left, and that is that ruin he has brought upon his family.
His father has been discharged from his position and the family has been driven out of their home and will be hounded by the American people as long as their identity is known. Much sympathy is expressed for them, but the shadow of the great crime will darken all their lives. Czolgosz probably never thought of this contingency.
JAMES C. MCPHERSON DEAD
James C. McPherson, for many years a resident of Lewisburg and member of the bar of Greenbrier County, came to his death last Sunday by a self-inflicted wound from a pistol. McPherson belonged to one of the most refined and aristocratic of families and in early youth gave promise of a bright future. He allowed drink to get the better of him and for many years he has been “dropping down the ladder, rung by rung.”
He had been on a protracted spree and called from his office to a passerby to come in and open a certain drawer for him. The man stepped in and did so. He saw a pistol lying in the drawer and hastily pushed the drawer shut and left the office.
He had not gone many steps until a shot rang out, and McPherson was found with a bullet wound in his side. This was Saturday. He died Sunday morning.
Thus ended Jim McPherson, a natural born gentleman, who fell a victim to excessive use of intoxicants. His life perhaps paints a mural that, but for the grace of God, the like would happen more often.
