William McKinley quotes - page 2
All our people loved their dead President. His kindly nature and lovable traits of character, and his amiable consideration for all about him will long live in the minds and hearts of his countrymen. He loved them in return with such patriotism and unselfishness that in this hour of their grief and humiliation he would say to them: 'It is God's will; I am content. If there is a lesson in my life of death, let it be taught to those who still live, and leave the destiny of their country in their keeping.' Let us, then, as our dead is buried out of our sight, seek for the lessons and the admonitions that may be suggested by the life and death which constitutes our theme.
William McKinley
Through the two months between the blowing up of the Maine and the declaration of war I vacillated between hope that the President would succeed in preventing a war and fear that the savage cries coming from the Hill would be too much for him, as they were in the end. I honestly believed then as I do now that he was doing his best, and this in spite of the fact that my heart was hot with resentment for what I considered his cowardly desertion of my Poland friends in 1893. McKinley was patient, collected, surprisingly determined.
William McKinley