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‘Reckless utterances on the stump.’

It is December 3, 1901.

The new president, Theodore Roosevelt, has sent his written Annual Message, now called the State of the Union, to the Congress.

From the 1896 campaign.

Roosevelt has been in office less than three months — since September 14 — the day on which his predecessor, William McKinley, succumbed to an infection caused by an assassin’s bullets.

The assassin was a 28-year-old unemployed, self-declared anarchist.

He fired two shots from a concealed hand gun into McKinley’s chest as he greeted well-wishers in a receiving line at Buffalo’s Pan American Exposition.

President McKinley, left, and his Cabinet.

McKinley became the third president to be assassinated in a span of thirty-five years.

Assassin Leon Czolgosz (1873-1901). He was born into poverty in Ohio, McKinley's home state, and worked for a while at a Cleveland steel mill. Reports claim Czolgosz suffered some sort of mental breakdown two years before the assassination. At his arraignment, he pleaded 'guilty,' but the judge overruled him, entering a plea of 'not guilty' on his behalf.

From the assassin’s voluntary, uncoerced confession:

“In these meetings I attended

“I heard people talk about the duty they were under to educate the people against the present form of Government

“and they should [do] all they could to change form of Government.” 

William McKinley, the 25th American president (1843-1901). During the US Civil War, McKinley served as a private in an Ohio volunteer infantry company and fought in the Second Battle of Bull Run (Manassas) and Antietam, among others. Above, right, McKinley at the end of the war.

The assassin was convicted and and executed within six weeks of the killing.

His last words:

"I killed the President because he was the enemy of the good people – the good working people.

“I am not sorry for my crime.”

McKinley, in Buffalo, makes his last speech the day before the shooting.

McKinley’s assassination was the first topic Roosevelt addressed in his Annual Message.

And he lays partial blame for the killing on demagogues who stoke aimless discontent.

Vice President Theodore Roosevelt's September 6 request for more information concerning President McKinley's condition. Roosevelt was in Vermont at the time of the shooting, preparing to deliver an address to the Vermont Fish and Game League.

From Roosevelt’s Message:

“The Congress assembles this year under the shadow of a great calamity.

“The circumstances of this, the third assassination of an American President, have a peculiarly sinister significance.

“This criminal was a professed anarchist,

“inflamed by the teachings of professed anarchists,

“and probably also by the reckless utterances of those who,

“on the stump and in the public press,

“appeal to the dark and evil spirits of malice and greed, envy and sullen hatred.

Roosevelt takes the oath of office in a private home in Buffalo on September 14, 1901, a few hours after McKinley's death. Roosevelt barred photographers from the room. Said Republican king-maker Mark Hanna: 'that damned cowboy is president now.' The National Park Service now maintains the house and it is open to the public.

“The wind is sowed by the men who preach such doctrines,

“and they cannot escape their share of responsibility for the whirlwind that is reaped.

Roosevelt in his White House office, 1905.

“This applies alike to the deliberate demagogue,

“to the exploiter of sensationalism,

“and to the crude and foolish visionary who, for whatever reason,

“apologizes for crime

“or excites aimless discontent.”

September 18, 2024, Uniondale, New York.

We’ve been warned.

Today’s incendiary political rhetoric is nothing new.

Neither is the danger which it creates.

*******************************

I’ll see you tomorrow.

— Brenda

Banner image: Roosevelt in his third-party bid for the presidency, 1912.