Life of William McKinley, Our Martyred President: With Short Biographies of ...
By Samuel Fallows
We cannot more fittingly close this volume than by giving the above eloquent speech of Senator Thurston in seconding the nomination of William McKinley for the presidency in 1896. It contains a glowing prophecy which met a magnificent fulfillment.
"The beneficent bow of a regained prosperity" did indeed "span the American heavens" when Mr. McKinley was elected to the highest office the people could confer upon him. And though he has gone, at the end of his arduous and beneficent life to the reward of the righteous in the upper and eternal kingdom of God, the radiant bow of promise still arches in splendor over the American nation.
The good work of unity, reciprocity and good will so auspiciously inaugurated by our "well beloved" martyred President will be grandly carried forward as the years roll on. We need have no pessimistic fears regarding the future of our own America. Anarchy is but a passing evil incident in our progressive march into history. The funeral of William McKinley, unprecedented in the annals of mankind, did not mean the burial of the republic.
Above the undertone of the sorrowful strains that burst from millions of American lips, when we laid our honored dead to rest, was the exultant overtone of the heaven-inspired song of that youthful continental chaplain, in the darkest days of the Revolution, who wrote:
"Columbia, Columbia, to glory arise,
The queen of the world, and the child of the skies." There is no consumption in Columbia's blood; there is no fever in her veins; there is no paralysis in her limbs; there is no organic disease in her heart. The strength of the everlasting hills is in her glorious frame; the beauty of her flashing lakes and rivers and seas is in her tear-stained face; the light of benignity is in her beaming eyes, though the gleaming sword of justice against anarchy is in her uplifted hand; a sweep oceanic is in her expanding thought. To "hush the tumult of war and give peace to the world" is her divinely appointed mission. She is indeed the child of the skies. She shall not fail nor be discouraged in her sublime work. "No weapon that is formed against her shall prosper, for heaven will never abandon the offspring of its love.