Gone Before Glory: The Life and Tragic Death of William Mckinley

By Stephen G. Yanoff

Award-winning historian Stephen G. Yanoff illuminates William McKinley’s remarkable life and tragic death in this highly acclaimed work, as the small-town lawyer and Civil War officer rises from obscurity to reach the highest office in the land. GONE BEFORE GLORY brilliantly charts the turbulent beginning of the twentieth century, and the anarchist activity which led to President McKinley’s assassination. Though the story of the McKinley administration has been told many times, this is the rare version that conveys the true motivations of the participants and reveals the interconnected paths that led to the tragic death of the 25th President of the United States.

A spellbinding tale of immense importance for those who enjoy American history. Thoroughly researched and brilliantly written by a born storyteller.
-- Renegade Reviews

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jul 28, 2021
• ISBN: 9781665530781

Stephen G. Yanoff

STEPHEN G. YANOFF is a former insurance company executive from Long Island, New York. He worked in Manhattan for over twenty years and became an acknowledged expert in the field of high risk insurance. His mystery novels and non-fiction history books have won numerous gold medals and over forty national and international book awards. He currently lives in Austin, Texas.

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© 2021 Stephen G. Yanoff. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 07/28/2021

ISBN: 978-1-6655-3077-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6655-3076-7 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-6655-3078-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021913487

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Chapter 1 The Bad Seed

Chapter 2 Evil Intentions

Chapter 3 The City of Light

Chapter 4 The Unimaginable

Chapter 5 Bitter Medicine

Chapter 6 Heritage and Home

Chapter 7 War Years

Chapter 8 Major McKinley

Chapter 9 Law of the Land

Chapter 10 Love and Death

Chapter 11 A Rising Politician

Chapter 12 Victory and Defeat

Chapter 13 Governor McKinley

Chapter 14 Ruin and Redemption

Chapter 15 McKinley’s Triumph

Chapter 16 Inauguration Day

Chapter 17 Trial By Fire

Chapter 18 The Splendid Little War

Chapter 19 First Lady

Chapter 20 Philippine Insurrection

Chapter 21 Trouble In China

Chapter 22 Old Rivals In A New Century

Chapter 23 Black Day In Buffalo

Chapter 24 I Done My Duty

Chapter 25 Red Emma

Chapter 26 Hell To Pay

Chapter 27 Change for the Worse

Chapter 28 Living Her Life

Chapter 29 A Time To Mourn

Chapter 30 Laid To Rest

Chapter 31 Scapegoats

Chapter 32 First-Degree Murder

Chapter 33 A Question Of Sanity

Chapter 34 Judge and Jury

Chapter 35 Damning Testimony

Chapter 36 Judgment Day

Chapter 37 Collateral Damage

Chapter 38 Ultimate Punishment

Chapter 39 Auburn Prison

Chapter 40 The Chair

This book is dedicated to

Fiona Ivy Zell

and

Leo Oliver Barlin

President McKinley is known to be something of a

fatalist - as indeed all soldiers are; confidently believing

that when the proper time comes he will be ready.

Crawfordsville Daily News-Review

December 5, 1900.

A man’s best gift to his country is his life’s blood

From President McKinley’s Speech

At San Francisco, May 23, 1901

Milestones

––––––––

CHAPTER ONE

The Bad Seed

A horrified onlooker told the police that the bullets that were fired into the president’s chest came out of nowhere, but that was just a figure of speech. All bullets come from somewhere and are fired by someone, and the two that struck William McKinley came from the barrel of a .32 caliber revolver and were fired by an assassin of German-Polish descent.

An assassin who called himself Fred Nieman.

Nieman.

The German word for nobody.

On the evening of August 31, 1901, a shy young man entered John Nowak’s saloon-hotel on the east side of Buffalo and asked for a room. The slightly built man, in his late twenties, had recently arrived from Cleveland, and he told Nowak that he had come to attend the world renowned Pan-American Exposition. He was neatly dressed in a gray suit and wore a black shoestring tie. He carried a telescope-shaped valise in one hand and a brown hat with a yellow ribbon in the other. Nowak would later describe him as handsome except for a small, almost imperceptible scar that ran along his lower left cheek.

The stranger registered as John Doe, claiming to be a souvenir salesman.

Nowak was accustomed to guests of questionable breeding, and he did not care what the young man called himself as long as he paid the room rate of two dollars a week in advance. When John Doe placed two dollars on the bar, Nowak told his clerk, Frank Walkowiak, to take their guest upstairs to his room.

Walkowiak was more curious than his employer. On the way upstairs he asked, What made you say John Doe?

The stranger hesitated for a moment, then said, Well, I’ll tell you. I’m a Polish Jew, and I didn’t like to tell him or he wouldn’t keep me in the house.

Walkowiak, who was studying law, remained skeptical. What is your real name?

Nieman, the young man answered. Fred Nieman. I’m going to sell souvenirs at the Exposition."

The two men exchanged a few more words, then Walkowiak left, not entirely satisfied but unwilling to pry any further. As Johns noted, Many of Nowak’s guests were queer fish. This one was better dressed than most.

Nieman appears to have been a model tenant, albeit a loner. He hardly ever spoke and generally arose early and remained gone for the entire day. When he returned in the evening, he went straight to his room and spent the rest of the night reading newspapers. One clipping, stuffed deep inside a coat pocket, indicated a keen interest in world affairs: A neatly folded and well-worn newspaper clipping about the assassination of Italian king Umberto I. The article described how an Italian American named Gaetano Bresci, an anarchist from New Jersey, had murdered the monarch a year earlier. As later reported, Nieman had spent a great deal of time reading the account of the murder of King Humbert [Umberto] ... the paper was very precious to him as he took it to bed every night.

Nieman studied the article carefully, fascinated by the morbid details of the crime. Bresci had declared that he had wanted to avenge the people killed in a massive demonstration in Milan on May 6, 1898. A year later, he ambushed the king and fired four times, hitting the sovereign three times in the chest, killing him instantly. Bresci stood trial in late August and was found guilty. He received a life sentence, but after serving less than a year, he was found dead in his cell – under extremely suspicious circumstances.

Nieman also read the New York Times, which means that he might have noticed another article about Bresci, published on July 31, 1900. An anarchist who knew, the assassin was asked if she thought President McKinley ought to be assassinated. Yes, she replied. If he is a bad man. Yes, if he does not do right.

In truth, Willam McKinley had done right most of his life, and in the fall of 1901, he was perhaps, with the exception of Washington, the most popular sitting president in history. Some disagreed with his policies, Seibert wrote, but nearly everyone liked the amiable president personally.

Everyone except the anarchists, and Fred Nieman, whose real name was Leon F. Czolgosz (pronounced Chol-gosh).

Czolgosz was a troubled soul and probably insane. He’d been studying the doctrines of anarchy for several years, and he idolized the famous anarchist orator, Emma Goldman, whom he met in May and then again in July 1901. There were rumors that he was in love with her, and she in turn seems to have been smitten with him. Years later, she would vividly recall his large dreamy eyes and a most sensitive face...a handsome face made doubly so by his curly golden hair.

Under Goldman’s tutelage, Czolgosz learned that the word anarchy literally meant without a leader. The word was derived from ancient Greek –– an meaning without and archos meaning leader. As Fisher noted, anarchists believed that social reform through the ballot box was futile; the ruling class would never voluntarily give up its privileged position –– or its power and property. In the view of anarchists, the end justified the means, and hidden in the ranks of those who were captivated by the vision of a stateless society, one without government or the restraint of written laws, there stood a few who were willing to punctuate the idea of anarchy with a murderous deed. They were the terrorists of their day, desperate men mostly, responsible for bringing a tragic end to the lives of [many rulers].

Desperate men do desperate things, but the cause of Czolgosz’s desperation remains open to debate. Some scholars point to his childhood, which was far from pleasant and marked by strange behavior. As a small child, he was quiet and shy, and he had a difficult time meeting other children –– especially female children. In fact, Seibert wrote, when Leon saw girls he knew coming toward him on the street, he would actually cross the street to avoid talking to them. The bashful boy never had anything to do with women and acted as though he was afraid of them.

Leon Czolgosz was born in Detroit, Michigan, on May 5, 1873, but he grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, where the family had moved in 1881. By strange coincidence, President James A. Garfield, the victim of a previous assassination, had been buried in Cleveland the very same year. Czolgosz’s mother, Maryanna Nowak, died in 1885, when he was twelve years old. His father, Paul Czolgosz, remarried a woman named Katren Metzgaltr, and together they raised eight children.

Czolgosz had five brothers, all of them law abiding citizens and gainfully employed. Waldek, thirty-four, was an unmarried mill worker. Frank, thirty-two, was a married mill worker. Jacob, thirty-two, was a veteran of the Spanish American War and was living on a government pension of $30 per month. Joseph, twenty-two, was a meat packer. Michael, twenty-one, a farmer. Czolgosz also had two sisters. Both had menial jobs, typical of the age. Ceceli, age unknown, was a married housekeeper; Victoria, twenty-one, an unmarried waitress.

In 1889, the Czolgosz family moved to Natrona, Pennsylvania, a small village approximately twenty-four miles northeast of Pittsburgh. Natrona was situated along the Allegheny River, making it an ideal location for manufacturing. In point of fact, the original village – then known as East Tarentum – began as a company town, established by the Pennsylvania Salt Manufacturing Company in 1850.

Leon Czolgosz acquired a job in a glass bottle factory, and as he soon discovered, the hours were long and the wages low. The job required him to carry hot bottles with a fork from the ovens to a cooling area. For this he earned a dollar a day. Two years later, the family moved to Cleveland, Ohio, where Leon landed a job in the Newburg Wire Mills. He remained at the mill for seven long years, earning ten dollars a week and gradually drifting toward the anarchist movement. Somewhere along the way, according to Seibert, Leon lost faith in either God, the Catholic Church, or both. Eventually he began to espouse radical ideas, telling anyone who would listen that he had come to see American social injustice and rebelled against it by embracing the anarchist doctrine. He viewed all leaders as enemies of the state and thus felt justified killing them. He thought it right and that it was his duty.

In 1894, Czolgosz began to act queerly, and according to his sister, this was also the year of increased friction between Leon and his stepmother. Briggs stated that he [Leon] would never eat with them nor come into the house when she was there if he could help it...He seldom took anything else to eat unless his stepmother was away, when he would go into the pantry and eat some things. Even stranger, he would often wait for his stepmother to leave the house and then he would run into the kitchen and fry and eat [fish] by himself, but if she returned unexpectedly or if strangers came in, he would let the fish burn or throw them away.

In 1897, Czolgosz began to exhibit symptoms of hypochondria, and as the year progressed, he made frequent visits to the doctor. When urged to go to the hospital, he reportedly said, There is no place in the hospital for poor people; if you have lots of money you will get well taken care of! In the autumn of 1897, he suffered a nervous breakdown, seemingly without cause or warning. A few months later, he began to use an inhaling machine, a clear sign that he had developed some sort of serious respiratory illness. He was treated by Dr. Marcus Rosenwasser, of Cleveland, who recorded the following notes:

April 28, 1898. - Czolgosz, Leon, 23 [note that this puts his birth year as 1875]. Worker in wire mill - Sick two years; short breath - palpitations - some wheezing at apices - emphysema (?).

Nov. 1, 1898 - Has been better throughout summer - worse past two months - wheezing - aches all over - R. Styrch sulph. 1/30 gr.

The last line in Dr. Rosenwasser’s notes refers to a prescription of strychnine sulphate, a medicine that was commonly used during the Victorian era. Liquid strychnia was widely used in mental asylums, primarily to treat patients with irritable nervous systems or depression. Despite its benefits, strychnine was one of the most potent poisons known to man, and if large doses were ingested, death could occur between fifteen and twenty minutes later.

Buckingham wrote that death is caused by suffocation; the muscles continue to contract until exhaustion causes a temporary respite, the victim dies, or the strychnine wears off and he recovers.

Though never proven, it’s possible that Czolgosz’s illness, combined with a dose of strychnine, exacerbated his mental decline. It’s also possible that the decline was due to the onset of tuberculosis, a disease that was rampant in the United States and the United Kingdom. By the end of the nineteenth century, the disease was linked to the environment in which one lived and worked, and associated with the following factors:

1. A low rate of wages, entailing discomfort and privations in the home.

2. Unsanitary conditions of the place of employment.

3. Exposure to dust arising from marble, stone, plaster, wood, metals, or textiles.

4. Excessive physical exertion or a continued constrained position.

5. Close confinement within doors.

6. Exposure to excessive heat.

7. Temptations to intemperance.

8. Long or irregular hours.

All of these risk factors were applicable to Leon Czolgosz, out even so, there is no evidence that he was ever officially diagnosed. Still, as historians have noted, tuberculosis was clearly a disease of poverty and deprivation, and its defining characteristic was a nagging cough. In addition, the disease was much more prevalent within immigrant communities, in large cities, and among the poor.

Of course, other theories were put forth, and several of them were quite credible. Dr. Walter Channing, an alienist and professor of mental diseases at Tufts Medical School, thought that Leon Czolgosz had epileptic insanity. The symptoms of this mental disorder are as follows:

Epileptic insanity is a complex accompanying epilepsy, characterized by a varying degree of mental deterioration, evidenced by impairment of intellect and, to a lesser extent, of memory; emotional irritability, impulsiveness, moral anergy, and incapacity for valuable production. It also includes certain periodical disturbances, transitory ill-humor, and dreamy states, which accompany epilepsy.

In his landmark study of Leon Czolgosz, Channing observed that shortly after the assassin’s November examination, he underwent a drastic personality change and became increasingly restless and moody. Channing was unable to prove that epileptic insanity was the cause, but he did state that Czolgosz’s 1898 illness was of tremendous importance and that some malady had transformed him from a steady, quite normal person into a sickly, unhealthy, and abnormal one.

Another theory, widely discussed but also unproven, suggested that Czolgosz had suffered a mental breakdown due to the guilt and shame of onanism –– an archaic term used to describe a person who frequently masturbated. If this was true of Czolgosz, it could explain why he avoided women, seldom dated, and kept to himself.

During the nineteenth century, the prevailing opinions of self-abuse were extremely critical, and many physicians claimed that it caused headaches, epilepsy, memory loss, blindness, and even psychosis. It’s possible that Czolgosz believed these claims, and because of his hypochondria, blindly accepted the purported side effects. While most of these claims were silly, current medical knowledge indicates that excessive masturbation can actually cause stress and anxiety. Furthermore, in the case of prolonged addiction, severe depression, shame, and self-hatred may ensue.

Regardless of the underlying cause, Czolgosz eventually became delusional and conceived the idea of performing some great deed for the benefit of the common and working people.

The shy young man from Cleveland was ready to step out of the shadows.

Leon Czolgosz, the political zealot, was prepared to do his duty.

CHAPTER TWO

Evil Intentions

Four months before he arrived in Buffalo, Czolqosz called upon Emil Schilling, a German radical who was the treasurer of a Cleveland anarchist group known as the Liberty Club. Schilling was an imposing figure, middle-aged with small, wide-set eyes. Miller wrote that people who met him [Schilling] noticed a tendency to fix his gaze for several moments with great concentration. His expression could then change quickly, his face able to contort into an ugly, almost malignant look that gave him the appearance of a dangerous looking person.

Czolgosz introduced himself as Fred Nieman, a committed socialist who was interested in learning more about anarchism. Schilling, happy to oblige, invited him to stay for dinner and gave him a book called Chicago Martyrs. I thought he was all right this time when he called on me, Schilling wrote later. He did not talk German, but English –– talked about his farm and said he lived in Bedford on a farm with his brother.

Czolgosz returned three weeks later, in early June, but this time he acted boorishly and asked a lot of strange questions. Schilling remained civil but thought that his guest acted like a secret detective who wanted to find out something. He [Nieman] was always laughing at my answers, as if he either felt superior or had formed a plan and was putting out a feeler.

The evening went from bad to worse when Nieman returned the book he had borrowed during his first visit. He had not read the book, but he had found time to peruse several issues of Free Society, a newsletter published in Portland, Oregon, the headquarters of anarchist activity on the West Coast. Among other peculiarities, the newsletter staunchly and openly advocated free love, a concept that seemed to appeal to many male anarchists.

After their second meeting, Schilling became suspicious of Nieman’s intentions, and he began to make some inquiries about him. A trusted comrade vouched for the shy, young man, describing him as a good and active member of the Polish socialist Society. Despite misgivings, Schilling ended his inquiry, a mistake he would soon regret.

Czolgosz returned a few weeks later, and on this visit he spent an hour complaining about his stepmother’s harassment and hinted that he was tired of life. In spite of his mood, he had the audacity to ask for a letter of introduction to Emma Goldman. Schilling refused, but he told him that Goldman was in Chicago. If he wanted to meet her, he should go there and introduce himself. Czolgosz had heard her speak in Cleveland in May, and he was determined to meet the fiery orator. I go to Chicago, he reportedly said.

On the afternoon of July 12, 1901, as Goldman was about to leave Chicago, Leon Czolgosz showed up at her front door and said that he urgently needed to speak with her. She explained that she had a train to catch but graciously offered to talk with him on the way to the station. According to Miller, Together the two chatted as they walked to the elevated train and boarded, carrying on their conversation while tightly gripping the straps as the train jerked and twisted through Chicago.

Goldman would later state that Czolgosz –– still using the alias of Nieman –– had grown weary of the socialists in Cleveland and was anxious to join the ranks of the Chicago anarchists. She did not have the time –– or apparently the inclination — to assist him, so she pushed him off on Abraham Issak, the publisher of Free Society.

Arriving back at Issak’s house, the two men chatted amiably, and Czolgosz explained that he was tired of unenthusiastic socialists. He was searching for a more active group, and he was greatly troubled by the outrages committed by the American government in the Philippine Islands. He went on to say that it does not harmonize with the teachings in our public schools about our flag.

Despite his unease about Czolgosz, Issak was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, later explaining that as he studied Nieman’s face, he could not help thinking that his eyes and words expressed sincerity.

A short time later, Czolgosz made his fourth and final visit to the home of Emil Schilling, and on this occasion, he declared that things were getting worse and worse — more strikes and they were getting more and more brutal against the strikers, and that something must be done.

The increased brutality was a result of social pressures brought on by rapid industrialization and a steady influx of immigrants arriving from Europe. As Fisher noted, Most arrived motivated to work, to support a family, and eventually to own land. A few brought with them a firmly established hatred of authority.

A few, like Czolgosz, had become enamored by anarchist rhetoric.

After dinner, Schilling and Czolgosz took a long walk, and when they got back to the house, Schilling asked his guest where he was planning to go next. Czolgosz hesitated, then said, Maybe Detroit, maybe Buffalo.

They parted amicably, but Schilling was now convinced that Nieman was a spy, albeit a clumsy and ignorant one. He urged the publisher of Free Society to print a warning about him, which they did in their September 1 issue:

ATTENTION!

The attention of the comrades is called to another spy. He is well-dressed, of medium height, rather narrow-shouldered, blond and about twenty-five years of age. Up to the present he has made his appearance in Chicago and Cleveland. In the former place he remained but a short time, while in Cleveland he disappeared when the comrades had confirmed themselves of his identity & were on the point of exposing him. His demeanor is of the usual sort, pretending to be greatly interested in the cause, asking for names or soliciting aid for acts of contemplated violence. If this same individual makes his appearance elsewhere, the comrades are warned in advance and can act accordingly.

Unfortunately, nobody from local, state, or federal law enforcement took notice of the warning, so when Czolgosz arrived in Buffalo, he was able to move about freely. Every day, in his solitary, secretive way, Czolgosz went out, presumably to ride on trolley cars, eat at lunch counters, shoulder his neighbors at the [Exposition] exhibits. Hundreds of people must have seen him, but no one remembered doing so.

According to a statement he later gave, Czolgosz did not plan to assassinate the president until he read about his upcoming visit in the newspaper. However, when the opportunity presented itself, he quickly and calmly sprang into action. He told himself that if he shot McKinley, it would prove something to the anarchists and they would finally accept him. He would prove to them that he hated the politics of state-supported capitalism that the president and his party represented. He wanted to strike at the American leader to prove the nation vulnerable and to shatter its illusion of safety.

Sometime before the evening of September 4, most likely the day before, Czolgosz entered Walbridge Company’s hardware store at 316 Main Street and asked to see a nickel-plated .32 caliber Iver Johnson revolver. There was method in his madness. As he knew from the carefully folded news clipping he carried in his wallet, this was the very same type of weapon that Gaetano Bresci had used to shoot Italy’s King Umberto I.

Czolgosz’s movements in early September are mostly unknown, but as Johns noted, It is likely that he spent some part of [those days] wandering around the Exposition grounds. If so, it was a foolish thing to do, as there was a formidable police presence in the area. Only a little more than a year before, wrote Olcott, a plot to assassinate the president had been discovered. It was part of a scheme, originating in a group of anarchists in Paterson, New Jersey, to kill, in regular order, six of the rulers of the world. The first two on the list had already been murdered, and the president of the United States was the fifth in turn.

The assassination plot had been hatched in Paterson, which as the Secret Service knew, had become the epicenter of the anarchist movement in New Jersey. An article in The New Jersey Law Journal underscored the seriousness of the threat and concluded with the following statement: The anarchist society in Paterson numbers about sixty members. They have a printing office and issue a weekly paper and hold meetings. Their aim is the destruction of all institutions, including matrimony and the ownership of property.

Gaetano Bresci; who had saved expense money from his job in a textile plant, lived in Paterson, and as one might expect, he was admired by Czolgosz and Emma Goldman. After he shot and killed King Umberto I, Red Emma said, We have never plotted for the death of the monarch, but the assassin has our sympathy.

History had shown that protecting the president could be problematic, especially when they threw caution to the wind. One of McKinley’s predecessors, an affable Ohioan named James Garfield, had also refused to acknowledge the inherent dangers of the presidency. Twenty years earlier, he declared that assassination can no more be guarded against than death by lightning; and it is not best to worry about either.

To understand the president’s thinking, one would have to understand the prevailing sentiment of the day, best expressed by a White House biographer:

They would have the president surrounded by a bodyguard, by men able to prevent the approach of lunatics, and dangerous persons. This proposition should be opposed with urgency, as unpatriotic and harmful in a land where republicanism has found its fullest, most notable growth. ... His [the president’s] person is safe in the fifty million hearts of his people, of those who gladly consented that he should rule over them, and who will fly to his rescue if there is a danger.

Of course, as Garfield learned, where there’s a will there’s a way. On July 2, 1881, a disgruntled office seeker named Charles Guiteau fired two bullets into his back. After eleven weeks of pain and suffering, the nation’s twentieth president died of infection and blood poisoning.

In retrospect, it seems odd that McKinley refused to acknowledge the possibility of danger, but as the record shows, he rebuffed all attempts to shelter him from the public. Before he arrived in Buffalo, his personal secretary, George Cortelyou, tried to convince him to skip the reception at the Exposition. The president reportedly said, Why Should I? No one would wish to hurt me.

When Cortelyou informed the president that they were expecting a crowd of a hundred thousand people and that it would be physically impossible to shake hands with more than a small part of the crowd, he replied, Well, they’ll know that I tried, anyhow.

McKinley’s attitude might have been different had he known that a would-be assassin was waiting for him in Buffalo, hoping to get a clear shot at him as he walked through the railway station. On September 4, at 5:55, the president’s special train rolled through Terrace Station, where an inexperienced Army officer had positioned his welcoming cannons too close to the tracks. The ensuing salute blew out several of the train’s windows — and startled the First Lady.

Ida McKinley was suffering from a pain in her hand, and she was in no mood for a boisterous celebration. Before arriving in Buffalo, she had developed a bone felon — a pocket of pus caused by an infection — on her forefinger. A botched attempt to lance the finger had resulted in blood poisoning, and soon thereafter, her health began to deteriorate. For days she existed on nothing but beef broth and brandy, and then she took a turn for the worse. Her pulse weakened and she fell into a stupor before heart stimulants were given. Dr. Rixley, her personal physician, administered the stimulants and gave her intravenous injections of salt. Miraculously, she made a full recovery.

At 6:20, the special train came to a halt at the Exposition’s terminal station, where a group of Buffalo’s most prominent citizens had gathered to greet the presidential party. The area swarmed with detectives, Pinkerton men, military personnel, and uniformed guards. Incredibly, none of this phased Leon Czolgosz. He pushed and shoved his way to the front of the crowd, waiting for the right moment to reach into his pocket and pull out his revolver. Just as he was getting close, a guard stepped in front of him, brandishing his club. Terror-stricken, Czolgosz turned and began to run, the guard in hot pursuit. Suddenly Czolgosz tripped and fell, and when he looked up, he saw that the guard had returned to his post.

Miraculously, he had escaped. He picked himself up and ran. Three days later, in a confession printed in The New York Times, he described the incident in stark detail:

On Tuesday night I went to the fair grounds and was near the railroad gate when the presidential party arrived. I tried to get near him, but the police forced me back. They forced everybody back, so that the great ruler could pass. I was close to the president when he got into the grounds, but was afraid to attempt the assassination because there were so many men in the bodyguard that watched him. I was not afraid of them or that I should get hurt, but afraid I might be seized and that my chance would be gone forever.

The president and Mrs. McKinley boarded a carriage and rode through the Exposition, preventing Czolgosz from achieving his goal. On their way through the Midway, they passed the 409-foot Tower of Light and the decorative Court of the Fountains. The procession continued over the Triumphal Bridge and down Lincoln Parkway to the residence of John Milburn at 1168 Delaware Avenue, where the president and his wife planned to spend a quiet evening.

As McKinley stepped out his carriage, he reportedly shared his initial impression of the Exposition. The grounds are beautiful, he told Milburn. I’ll see the buildings tomorrow.

CHAPTER THREE

The City of Light

Buffalo had once been the chief trading post on the Niagra frontier, whose original inhabitants were the Erie Indians. The tribe was decimated in battle, not at the hands of white Europeans, but in a prolonged war with the Iroquois. After the demise of the Erie people in the mid-seventeenth century, the Senecas became the dominant tribe until the American Revolution. When war broke out between the British and the colonists, the Senecas