d of unprecedented magnitude; all of which, combined with the
disintegration of the Democratic party, gave McKinley a notable victory.

The great event of his first administration was the war with Spain,
undertaken to free Cuba, into which McKinley, be it said to his credit,
was driven unwillingly by public clamor, cunningly fostered by a portion
of the press. Its close saw the purchase of the Philippines, and the
entrance of the United States upon a colonial policy believed by many to
be wholly contrary to the spirit of its founders.

There was never any question of McKinley's renomination, for his
prestige and personal popularity were immense, and his victory was
again decisive. He had broadened rapidly, had gained in statesmanship,
had acquired a truer insight into the country's needs, and was now
freed, to a great extent, from party obligations. Great hopes were built
upon his second administration, and they would no doubt have been
fulfilled, in part at least; but a few months after his inauguration, he
was shot through the body by an irresponsible anarchist while holding a
public reception at Buffalo, and died within the week. The years which
have elapsed since his death enable us to view him more calmly than was
possible while he lived, and the country has come to recognize in him an
honest and well-meaning man, of more than ordinary ability, who might
have risen to true statesmanship and won for himself a high place in the
country's history had he been spared.

On the ticket with McKinley, a young New Yorker named Theodore Roosevelt
had been elected Vice-President. Roosevelt had long been prominent in
his native state as an enthusiastic reformer, had made a sensational
record in the war with Spain, and, on his return home, had been elected
governor by popular clamor, rather than by the will of the politicians,
to whom his rough-and-ready methods were extremely repugnant. So when
the national convention was about to be held, they conceived the great
idea of removing him from state politics and putting him on the shelf,
so to speak, by electing him Vice-President, and the plan was carried
out in spite of Roosevelt's protests. Alas for the politicians! It was
with a sort of poetic justice that he took the oath as President on the
day of McKinley's death, September 14, 1901, while they were still
rubbing their eyes and wondering what had happened.

His evident honesty of purpose, combined with an impulsive and ene