ears with equal and patriotic love every foot of our soil, every
State of our Union.

A mighty duty, sir, and a mighty inspiration impels every one of us
to-night to lose in patriotic consecration whatever estranges, whatever
divides. We, sir, are Americans--and we stand for human liberty! The
uplifting force of the American idea is under every throne on earth.
France, Brazil--these are our victories. To redeem the earth from
kingcraft and oppression--this is our mission! And we shall not fail.
God has sown in our soil the seed of His millennial harvest, and He will
not lay the sickle to the ripening crop until His full and perfect day
has come. Our history, sir, has been a constant and expanding miracle,
from Plymouth Rock and Jamestown, all the way--aye, even from the hour
when from the voiceless and traceless ocean a new world rose to the
sight of the inspired sailor. As we approach the fourth centennial of
that stupendous day--when the old world will come to marvel and to learn
amid our gathered treasures--let us resolve to crown the miracles of our
past with the spectacle of a Republic, compact, united, indissoluble in
the bonds of love--loving from the Lakes to the Gulf--the wounds of war
healed in every heart as on every hill, serene and resplendent at the
summit of human achievement and earthly glory, blazing out the path and
making clear the way up which all the nations of the earth must come in
God's appointed time!

_WILLIAM McKINLEY_

LAST SPEECH

Delivered at the World's Fair, Buffalo, N.Y., on September 5, 1901, the
day before he was assassinated.

I am glad again to be in the city of Buffalo and exchange greetings with
her people, to whose generous hospitality I am not a stranger, and with
whose good will I have been repeatedly and signally honored. To-day I
have additional satisfaction in meeting and giving welcome to the
foreign representatives assembled here, whose presence and participation
in this Exposition have contributed in so marked a degree to its
interest and success. To the commissioners of the Dominion of Canada and
the British Colonies, the French Colonies, the Republics of Mexico and
of Central and South America, and the commissioners of Cuba and Porto
Rico, who share with us in this undertaking, we give the hand of
fellowship and felicitate with them upon the triumphs of art, science,
education and manufacture which the old has bequeathed to the new
century.

Expositions are the