Marshall Everett

“ I am an anarchist because I love individual freedom, and I will not surrender that freedom. A leader must sooner or later be the victim of the masses he thinks he controls. When I definitely entered the work I gave myself a solemn pledge that I would study, that I would make passion bow to reason, that I would not be carried away from the truth by sentiment. I soon saw that the safest and wisest way to keep myself free was not to be a leader. That is why I am connected with no party. I am a member of no group. Individual freedom and responsibility—there is the basis of true anarchy. ”

“ The business block which bears his name, the old law office where he worked, are wrapped in mourning. The multitude is silent in the streets with loops of crepe on arms and shoulders.
The courthouse, scene of his early struggles as a lawyer, has been transformed, as it were, into a huge funeral crypt, swathed in the garb of sorrow from sill to tower peak. Across the front, shining in letters of gold against the somber background, is inscribed President McKinley’s last message to those he loved: “It is God’s way; His will, not ours, be done.” ”

“ The farmer, the rice-grower, the miner, the vast army of wage-earners from one end of the country to the other, the chief producers of wealth, men whose capital is their brain and muscle, who aspire to better their condition and elevate themselves and their fellows; the young man whose future is yet before him, and which he must carve out with his hand and head, who is without the aid of fortune or of a long ancestral line—these are our steadfast allies in this great contest for the preservation of the American system. ”

“ Heartrending beyond the power of pen to describe were the scenes at the side of the bier while the simple folk of Canton walked slowly by in two single files. The sorrow of those who knew the President was too intense for utterance, but was so full it burst the bounds of control over the emotions. Rough workingmen trembled from head to foot and their chests heaved with emotion, as great tears rolled down their faces. The ghastly appearance of President McKinley’s face, which was blue and thin, far more discolored than it was when the body lay in state in Buffalo, made the grief more poignant. ”

“ American Beauty roses were piled above the rails. Glowing asters and gleaming violets alternated with wild flowers and the vivid reds and yellows of autumn leaves. And the iron wheels that whirled the funeral party south cut through the banks of bloom and filled the air with perfume as fragrant as the nation’s love.
Schools were dismissed, and little groups of boys and girls stood in silent, puzzled wonder as the train rolled past. At every cross-road from dawn to dark were gathered farmers’ teams, with men and women, waiting to pay their silent, tearful tribute to the dead. ”

“ O Lord God, our heavenly Father, a bereaved nation cometh to Thee in its deep sorrow! To whom can we go in such an hour as this but to Thee? Thou only art able to comfort and support the afflicted. Death strikes down the tallest and best of men and consequent changes are continually occurring among nations and communities. But we have been taught that Thou art the same yesterday, to-day and forever; that in Thee there is no variableness nor the least shadow of turning. So in the midst of our grief we turn to Thee for help. ”

“ Through the delicate and trying events of the late war he stood firm, courageous and conservative, and under his leadership we emerged triumphant, our national honor untarnished, our credit unassailed, and the equal devotion of every section of our common country to the welfare of the republic, cemented forever. Never in the memory of this generation has there stood at the head of the government a truer patriot, a wiser or more courageous leader, or a better example of the highest type of American manhood. ”

“ We believe in thee, we trust thee, our God of love—‘the same yesterday, to-day, and forever.’ We thank thee for the unsullied life of thy servant, our martyred President, whom thou hast taken to his coronation, and we pray for the final triumph of all the divine principles of pure character and free government for which he stood while he lived and which were baptized by his blood in his death. ”

“ The living present is ours; the present of prosperity and activity in business, of good wages and quick payments, of labor employed and capital invested; of sunshine in the market-place and the stir of abounding life in the workshop and on the farm. It is with this that we have replaced the depression, the doubts, the dull business, the low wages, the idle labor, the frightened capital, the dark clouds which overhung industry and agriculture in 1896. This is what we would preserve, so far as sound government and wise legislation can do it. ”

“ Never was such a funeral procession. Never before was a death so causeless, a chief so beloved so pitilessly laid low, and never was humanity startled from universal peace with a grief so sad.
It was a curious journey for the five draped cars, with their engine banked in black. The half hundred attendants—the widow with her friends, the new President with his advisers, the guards and escort making up the visible government of the nation, hurrying from the threshold of woe to the vestibule of a new administration. ”

“ And such great questions come to us with moment, even in the hour when we gather around the bier of those whom we profoundly respect and eulogize and whom we tenderly love. In the years to come the days and the months that lie immediately before us will give full utterance as to the high statesmanship and great achievements of the illustrious man whom we mourn to-day. We shall not touch them to-day. The nation already has broken out in its grief and poured its tears, and is still pouring them, over the loss of a loved man. ”

“ I said:
“The long trial has proved that the object for which Spain has waged the war cannot be attained. The fire of insurrection may flame or may smoulder with varying seasons, but it has not been, and it is plain that it cannot be, extinguished by present methods. The only hope of relief and repose from a condition which can no longer be endured is the enforced pacification of Cuba. In the name of humanity, in the name of civilization, in behalf of endangered American interests, which give us the right and the duty to speak, the existing war in Cuba must stop.” ”

“ In all the coming years men will seek in vain to fathom the enormity of that crime. Had this man who fell been a despot, a tyrant, an oppressor, an insane frenzy to rid the world of him might have sought excuse; but it was the people’s friend who fell when William McKinley received the fatal wound.
“Himself a son of toil, his sympathies were with the toiler. No one who has seen the matchless grace and perfect ease with which he greeted such can ever doubt that his heart was in his open hand. Every heart throb was for his countrymen. ”

“ The horror of the tragic event grew when it was learned that the assassin was an anarchist, and not an insane man as was first supposed.
Then came the full realization that the murderous bullet of the assassin was aimed not only at the foremost citizen of the Republic, but that the Red Thing called Anarchy had raised its blood-stained hand against government, against all peaceable authority and law. It was a blow struck at all the institutions of society that men hold dear and sacred. ”

“ One cannot say that he foresaw the time when the Republic should issue its mandate to a monarch of the old world, when it should serve notice of ejectment upon a king; when it should lay the restraining hand upon a mob of emperors and potentates struggling in disgraceful melee for the spoliation of an ancient nation. And yet, standing in the shadow of his funeral flags, with the echoes of knelling bells in the ears, and the memory of that mighty work so late accomplished, one can but see abundant reason for the belief that HE KNEW! ”

“ 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!” ”

“ The rising storm of civil strife swept the next candidate of the party, immortal Lincoln, to the highest place in the nation, from whence he guided the Republic and its destinies through the raging tempest until an assassin’s missile laid him low, and that at the moment when the country could least have spared him, and when it seemed that fate to be just might have been more kindly to both him and his people, for he deserved to enjoy the fruit of his work, and the people would have had pleasure and profit in his presence. ”

“ Of course we know that individual freedom cannot exist without a union with other free associates. We all live by the support of one another; that is the social life which has created us; that it is the work of all which gives to each the consciousness of his rights and the power to defend them. Every social product is the work of the whole community, to which all have a claim in equal manner.
“For we are all communists. It is ours to conquer and defend common property and to overthrow governments by whatever name they may be called.” ”

“ No election or other observable political significance hung on the issue, but none the less it was a notable night, a stupendous incident in the life of William McKinley. He knew the nation needed a policy of protective tariff for the building up of an industrial empire on the broad and deep foundation of agriculture which three quarters of a century had laid. He knew that the time had come when the mills were important if the nation would grow strong—and that the mills could be summoned into existence only by the adoption of a policy of encouragement and fostering care. ”