September 6-14, 1901: The Assassination and Death of William McKinley, the Rise of Theodore Roosevelt

The last known photograph of the 25th President of the United States,

William McKinley, walking into the Temple of Music, September 6, 1901.

September 6, 1901: President William McKinley is shot in Buffalo, New York. He dies 8 days later, at the age of 58.

A native of Canton, Ohio, McKinley had served in the Union Army in the American Civil War, and had served his home State in Congress and as Governor. Nominated for President by the Republican Party in 1896, with a depression going on, he ran on what his campaign chairman, Ohio political fixer Mark Hanna, called "the full dinner pail."

His Democratic opponent was Congressman William Jennings Bryan of Nebraska, who said the answer to America's economic woes was the free coinage of silver, as opposed to gold. This split the party, and painted Bryan and the Democrats as people playing games with the economy.

The election was on November 3, and many bosses told their employees, "If Bryan wins on Tuesday, don't come to work on Wednesday." It was a threat that workers could be fired for voting for Bryan, but it was also a scare tactic: If Bryan wins, this company won't survive. McKinley won in a landslide, as Bryan's "Populist" message simply didn't reach enough Americans.

McKinley's reforms did end the depression that had begun with a tariff bill in 1890 -- which he, as Congressman, had written -- but really got going with the stock market's Panic of 1893. (They didn't call them "crashes" until 1929.) He also launched the Spanish-American War of 1898, which further enriched the already-rich.

Still, there was lots of discontent. Bryan thought his Populist message would work in 1900, paired with anger over the imperialism of 1898. It didn't: McKinley won in an even bigger landslide.

In 1901, Buffalo was enjoying the fruits of the Industrial Revolution, and launched the Pan-American Exposition, a world's fair. McKinley attended, and gave a speech on September 5, producing one of the earliest voice recordings of any President.

The next day, September 6, he was at the Exposition's Temple of Music, shaking hands with well-wishers. One man did not wish him well: Leon Czolgosz a 28-year-old Polish-American steelworker from Michigan, who admitted his crime, saying that it wasn't fair that one man should have so much power when most people had so little. At 4:07 PM, he shot McKinley twice in the abdomen.

Leon Czolgosz

McKinley was taken to the house of the Exposition's president, prominent Buffalo lawyer John G. Milburn. Vice President Theodore Roosevelt had been vacationing with his family in the Adirondack Mountains of New York State when he received word that McKinley was shot. He rushed by train to Buffalo, visited McKinley, and was told by the doctors that the President would recover. He took them at their word, got on a train, and went back to his family.

For 8 days, doctors tried in vain to reach the bullet. As with the assassination of President James Garfield 20 years earlier, they may have done him more harm than good. He died at 2:15 AM on September 14, 1901.

Vice President Theodore Roosevelt came to Buffalo by train, and was sworn in at the home of another major Buffalo lawyer, Ansley Wilcox, 1 mile south of where McKinley was being treated. (The Wilcox House has been preserved, and it stands at 641 Delaware Avenue. The Milburn House, at 1140 Delaware Avenue, was not, and was demolished in 1957.)

Artist's depiction of the Inauguration.

No photographs were allowed.

Roosevelt made no speech, no "Inaugural Address," aside from his statement when Hazel asked him if he was ready to take the Oath: "I will take the oath. And in this hour of deep and terrible national bereavement, I wish to state that it shall be my aim to continue, absolutely without variance, the policy of President McKinley, for the peace and honor of our beloved country."

Under the Presidential Succession Act of 1886, from McKinley's death on September 14, 1901 until the next Presidential term began on March 4, 1905, the man next in line for the Presidency was the Secretary of State, John Hay.

It took just 7 weeks to try, convict and execute Czolgosz, and even his fellow anarchists turned on him, saying he did their cause more harm than good.

The great fear of McKinley loyalists is that TR wouldn't continue McKinley's policies. Senator Mark Hanna of Ohio, the political boss who did more than anyone else to turn McKinley from a failed Congressman into a popular Governor and then a beloved President, but had opposed Roosevelt's replacement of the late Garret Hobart as Vice President on the 1900 Republican ticket, said, "That damned cowboy is President now!"

TR managed to have it both ways: He continued McKinley's expansionist foreign policy, but was considerably more progressive in domestic policy, just as Hanna had feared. In many ways, he became the 1st modern President of the United States.

He hated the nickname "Teddy,"

although he didn't mind people using his initials, "TR."

Hanna despised Roosevelt, and may have put up a candidate to oppose him in the 1904 election, possibly himself. But he died early in the year, and TR rough-rode his way to a landslide win. On March 4, 1905, he got a real Inauguration, at the U.S. Capitol, and used the same Bible he used when he was sworn in as Governor of New York in 1899.

Ansley Wilcox died in 1930. His house, at 641 Delaware Avenue, has been preserved as Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural National Historic Site. Judge John Hazel lived until 1951.

It has been suggested that Buffalo never recovered from the assassination, and that a curse was placed on its sports teams ever since. They've never had a Major League Baseball team since, unless you count the Federal League of 1914 and 1915. They lost the NBA's Braves. The NHL's Sabres have played for over 50 years, and have never won a Stanley Cup. And although the Bills won 2 AFL Championships, they've never won one in the NFL. Nor has any Buffalo-area team won an NCAA football or basketball championship. Because of COVID restrictions, the Toronto Blue Jays played "home games" at Sahlen Field in Buffalo in 2020 and 2021.

The site of the Temple of Music is now a suburban housing development. There is a historical marker at the site, at 17 Fordham Drive. This is 4 miles north of the McKinley Monument, in Niagara Square, on which City Hall stands. City Hall has statues of the 2 Presidents who called Buffalo home, Millard Fillmore (1850-53) and Grover Cleveland (1885-89 and 1893-97). 

A recent photo of the site

 

January 22, 1901: Queen Victoria Dies

One of the last photos of Queen Victoria.

Her son, King Edward VII, is on the right.

His son, King George V, is on the left.

And his son, King Edward VIII, is the boy in the sailor suit.

January 22, 1901, 125 years ago: Victoria, By the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, Queen, Defender of the Faith, Empress of India, head of state for about one-quarter of all the people then living on planet Earth, does the unthinkable.

She dies.

She passes away at the age of 81, at Osborne House, her country estate on the Isle of Wight, 88 miles southwest of London. The last of a series of strokes brought her life to a close, 63 years after she took the throne, longer than any English or British monarch ever had, breaking the record of her grandfather, King George III, who lasted just under 60 years. Three entire generations of her subjects had known no other monarch of Britain except her.

She was born on May 24, 1819, the daughter of Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn, a son of King George III. Her uncle, King George IV, died without legitimate children. So did his brother, King William IV. And Edward died before either George or William. So Victoria became Queen when she was only 18, on William's death on June 20, 1837.

At the time, through the mental incapacity of George III, and the dissipation and profligacy of George IV and William IV, the British monarchy was at its lowest point since Oliver Cromwell chopped off the head of Charles I in 1649.

The Industrial Revolution was in its early stages. Railroads were a new thing. Photography was in its infancy. There were no telephones, no telegraphs, no railroads, no automobiles, no air vehicles except hot-air balloons, no recorded sound, no recorded images. Victoria had more in common with Alfred the Great, who unified England 1,000 years before her reign, than she did with King Charles III, born 48 years after her death.

She married Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, ending the House of Hanover. They produced 9 children:

* Victoria, who married Crown Prince Friedrich of Germany, who became Kaiser Friedrich III, and they were the parents of Kaiser Wilhelm II.

* Albert Edward, who became King Edward VII of Britain. He married Alexandra, daughter of King Christian IX of Denmark. Their son became King George V of Britain, and their daughter Maud married King Haakon VII of Norway.

* Alice, who married Louis IV, Grand Duke of Hesse (in Germany). Their daughter, Alexandra, married Czar Nicholas II of Russia.

* Alfred, who became the Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (in Germany). His daughter, Marie, married King Ferdinand I of Romania.

* Helena, who married Prince Christian of Schleswig-Holstein (in Germany).

* Louise, who married John Campbell, the 9th Duke of Argyll (in Scotland).

* Arthur, who inherited his grandfather's titles of Duke of Connaught and Strathearn (Connaught is in Ireland, and Strathearn is in Scotland), and served as Governor-General of Canada. His daughter, Margaret, is an ancestor of the monarchs of Sweden and Denmark.

* Leopold, who became the Duke of Albany (in Scotland). And:

* Beatrice, who married Prince Henry of Battenberg (in Germany). Their daughter, Victoria Eugenie, married King Alfonso XIII of Spain.

And so, Victoria was "The Grandmother of Europe." Her son Albert Edward, or "Bertie," thus became "The Uncle of Europe." And Christian IX of Denmark became "The Father-in-Law of Europe."

Bertie was 59 years old when he finally became King, and, most of that time, because he was a disobedient child and then a compulsive womanizer, frequently cheating on Alexandra, Victoria never fully trusted him. As he put it, "I don't mind praying to an Eternal Father, but I seem to have been afflicted with an eternal mother."

Victoria lived long enough to be wildly cheered at her Golden Jubilee (50th Anniversary) in 1887 and her Diamond Jubilee (60th Anniversary) in 1897; to have her voice recorded in 1888; and to be filmed at a garden party at Buckingham Palace in 1898, and on a state visit to Dublin, Ireland in 1900.

But in her last years, she was beset by rheumatism, which combined with her passion for comfort food to make walking impossible; and she was nearly blind due to cataracts. Later in 1900, she began to suffer strokes. Her last diary entry was written from Osbourne House on Sunday, January 13, 1901, and referred to her daughters Helen, or "Lenchen," and Beatrice. It reads:

Had a fair night, but was a little wakeful. Got up earlier & had some milk. — Lenchen came & read some papers. — Out before 1, in the garden chair, Lenchen & Beatrice going with me. — Rested a little, had some food, & took a short drive with Lenchen & Beatrice. — Rested when I came in & at 5.30, went down to the Drawing room, where a short service was held, by Mr Clement Smith, who performed it so well, & it was a great comfort to me. — Rested again afterwards, then did some signing & dictated to Lenchen.

Nine days later, on January 22, at 6:30 PM, she died of another stroke at Osborne House. Bertie and Kaiser Wilhelm, her eldest grandson, were in the room. She was laid to rest in the Royal Mausoleum, on the grounds of Windsor Castle in Berkshire, about 25 miles west of Central London. She and her husband, Prince Albert, are the Mausoleum's only occupants.

Victoria was played by Blanche Forsythe in Sixty Years a Queen in 1913, Jenny Jugo in Victoria in Dover in 1936, Anna Neagle in Victoria the Great in 1937 and Sixty Glorious Years in 1938, Renée Asherson in Happy and Glorious in 1952, Romy Schneider in a remake of Victoria in Dover in 1954, Julie Harris in Hallmark Hall of Fame's Victoria Regina in 1961, Lola Brooks in The Young Victoria in 1963, Annette Crosbie in Edward the Seventh in 1975, Lurene Tuttle on an episode of Voyagers! in 1983, Judi Dench in Mrs. Brown in 1997 and its sequel Victoria & Abdul in 2017, Victoria Hamilton in Victoria & Albert in 2001, Emily Blunt in The Young Victoria in 2009, Amanda Root in The Black Prince in 2017, and Jenna Coleman in Victoria in 2019.

Her son, Edward VII, reigned until he died in 1910. His son, George V, reigned until he died in 1936. His son, Edward VIII, abdicated the throne later that year, in favor of his brother, George VI. He reigned until he died in 1952. His daughter became Queen Elizabeth II, and she broke all longevity records for English and British monarchs, celebrating a Platinum Jubilee (70th Anniversary) in 2022. She died later that year, and her son became King Charles III.