The Electrifying Fall of Rainbow City Page 8

  Below him on the fairgrounds, the sun beat down on the audience, and here and there women fainted and dropped. Ambulances darted across the asphalt. Closer by, the crowd clapped at intervals. Some of them, especially those at the very front, could actually hear what the president said.

  McKinley closed his speech by appealing to the future. He hoped Rainbow City would not only stimulate commerce and international respect but also serve as a beacon. “This creation of art and beauty and industry will perish from sight,” he said, “but [its] influence will remain.” The president sat down, held the hand of his wife, and then rose to acknowledge the cheering crowd.

  The speech was swiftly carried by telegraph. Republican editors applauded the talk of opening Latin American markets, while in Europe, the response was muted if not hostile. McKinley’s “Pan- Americanism” fell flat in London. It was “imbued with an expansive, even aggressive spirit,” commented London’s Standard. The imperial United States was determined to go its own way regardless of the consequences. “Europe will never march out of America,” the paper declared. Other foreign newspapers echoed the sentiment.

  Not far from the podium, with his gun heavy in his pocket, Nieman watched the president speak. He had been at the fair for hours, seeing visitors massing for the distinguished guest. “I heard it was President’s Day,” he said later. “All those people seemed bowing to the great ruler.” He was now set on killing McKinley. “It was in my heart; there was no escape for me,” he confessed. “I could not have conquered it had my life been at stake.” But he did not think the time was right.

  Police detectives, who dutifully surveyed the throng, did not take notice of Nieman. Instead, they spotted an older woman trying to climb up on the president’s stand as he finished his speech. They blocked her, and she swore loudly. Some people mistook her for Carrie Nation, the outspoken temperance advocate. Later in the day, officers noticed another dubious character—a young boy who had been trailing the president and who carried a bundle under his arm. Obviously, said a reporter, he was “a crank or a dangerous person.” Having followed McKinley from building to building, the boy was finally stopped. The bundle that he was carrying? His dinner.9

  President McKinley addresses the crowd at the Exposition, September 5.

  Throughout the grounds that afternoon, the crowds surged. Entrance turnstiles that had revolved slowly in the morning began to spin, and by the end of the day recorded 116,000 visitors. The final tally must have warmed the hearts, not to mention eased the minds, of Exposition backers. A week earlier, directors had predicted that if daily numbers persisted, the fair would be able to honor its debts and reward investors.

  Over on the Midway on President’s Day, Frank Bostock was in his element. He had promised audiences that he would make a rare appearance in the training arena, and there he stood, with Wallace, Jr., one of the “intractable” lions. Bostock took a long whip, and while Wallace skulked from one end of the circular cage to the other, Bostock threatened him. He did not have the lion do tricks. “No one can ever do that,” said his press agent, but the Animal King did make the animal back down in fright. His “calm and complete victory,” reported the agent, “earned him a storm of applause.”

  Chiquita, on the other hand, was lying low. Even on Cuba Day, August 29, she had gone about her business without comment. Cuban dignitaries had come, toured the grounds, and delivered formal addresses, but Chiquita, the most famous “Cuban” at the Exposition, was not seen or mentioned. Perhaps she did not want to call attention to her fictitious descent. Or perhaps she wanted to avoid attention altogether. She and Tony were still seeing each other. He had been hired by the Indian Congress on the Midway after Bostock fired him, and had secured the help of a showman’s child to deliver notes to her. Some nights he even managed to climb through the back window of her quarters to spend time with her.

  William McKinley spent the rest of Thursday, September 5, touring foreign exhibits, accepting cigars, and talking with dignitaries. At the New York State Building, he enjoyed, or appeared to enjoy, a luncheon of crabmeat pâté, sweetbreads, roast turkey, and cream pudding with cherries and chestnuts. Fortified by a short nap and bolstered by her nurses, Mrs. McKinley had rallied enough to accompany her husband as he spoke from the bandstand. But then she wilted. The Board of Women Managers had prepared a lobster Newburg luncheon for her, but she was “so weary” after her husband’s address that she retreated to the Milburn home to rest. Amid table settings of white roses and asters, the women lunched on lobster and bonbons without her. The guest list was limited, claimed one observer, and, even without the guest of honor, the occasion was deemed quite satisfactory.

  In the evening, for the benefit of the distinguished visitors, fireworks master James Pain lit the sky with the best displays gunpowder could produce. For two hours, he fired off his magical mix of colors: mauve and magenta, canary yellow, Nile green, vermillion, and azure blue. He shot up violets and pansies, passionflowers, heliotrope, and clusters of fireflies. He let loose Whirlwinds, Sunbursts, Peacock Plumes, and even Niagara Falls, with a cascade of liquid fire. To honor the president, Pain lit rockets that screamed like an eagle; then he produced in lights a naval battleship and McKinley’s own magisterial face. His grand finale was a shell celebrating “Our Empire.” At 1,000 feet in the night sky, a firework burst open with the colors of the United States, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and, of course, the Philippines.

  Mabel Barnes and Abby Hale made sure to get a good seat at the evening’s display, so they arrived at 5:30, two and a half hours early. They had a picnic, rested, and studied the crowds. Being such early birds, they also got a good look at McKinley as he gathered with his entourage at the Life Saving Station on the Park Lake. They could not hear the conversation near the president’s group, however.

  Which may have been a good thing. McKinley’s companions were uneasy. Between the bursts of colored light, the night seemed pitch black. “I was impressed,” said Secretary of Agriculture James Wilson, who was sitting near the president, “with the ease with which some evil disposed person could have crept up in the darkness . . . and have done the President bodily harm.” George Cortelyou felt the same way. As the two advisers sat on the benches watching the fireworks, they discussed how they might protect McKinley. Wilson found the topic so consuming that he could take little delight in the spectacle. The reason, he said later, was “dread.”

  Perhaps the president’s escorts wanted to let the world know that they had been alert that night. Or perhaps, out of the corner of an eye, they had actually seen someone—the same slight, brown-haired man—everywhere they went. And then they had put it out of mind. Nieman confessed he had been following McKinley but couldn’t get a good look at him. So he waited. He wanted “a better chance.”10

  III

  THE WAITER

  Some of the people who were in the Temple of Music at the Pan-American Exposition on September 6 fell into shock for a month or so, and then they picked up their old routines. Others, though, saw their customary habits shattered forever. For these people, there was always life before Friday, September 6, and life after.

  Jim Parker knew about that split. He was among the thousands who hoped to get a look at the president, or, even better, to shake his hand. Parker was a waiter at the Plaza Restaurant, just north of the Electric Tower. Before that, he had been a waiter at Saratoga, New York, and even earlier he had worked in Atlanta and Savannah, in the post office, on the railroads, and as a constable. While it is likely none of these jobs paid particularly well, all of them were preferable to the work he had done as a child. Until he was eight years old, he had been enslaved in Georgia.

  Parker may have actually felt lucky to get a job at an Exposition restaurant. While service jobs had been an African American domain for decades, young white women recently had been offered more and more of these positions. But Parker had experience, which probably kept him employed. And he was hard to forget. His slender face and friendly eyes were not p
articularly memorable, but in an era when many men barely topped five feet tall, his height—six feet two inches—was worthy of notice.

  Nieman might have said he cared about people like Parker—those who had almost nothing and who faced a future with only a little bit more than nothing. These were the men, on the bottom rung of America’s ladder of power, for whom anarchists spoke and for whom violent anarchists supposedly did their killing. Parker, though, would not have returned the sentiment. He may not have liked how hard he had to work, but whatever anger he stored was not directed at the American president. Other African Americans were disappointed with McKinley. Not only had he seemed to turn a blind eye to the atrocities of lynching, but lately he seemed to be getting cozier with ex-Confederates.

  Jim Parker.

  In December 1898, in Atlanta, McKinley had affixed a gray badge to his lapel as a sign of forgiveness to his former enemies and announced new federal oversight for Confederate, as well as Union, graves. There had been, McKinley announced, “an evolution of sentiment.” While many black leaders in that brutal era recoiled at McKinley’s willingness to forget and forgive, more conservative spokesmen, such as Booker T. Washington, continued to stand behind him.

  Whatever the nature of his own politics, Jim Parker felt enough respect for the chief executive to want to meet him. In the middle of the afternoon that Friday, he slipped away from the restaurant, snaked his way through the Esplanade crowds, and got in line near the open door of the Temple of Music.11

  IV

  NIAGARA

  Ida McKinley had been to Niagara Falls before, but her husband had not, and the president beamed with pleasure on Friday morning as she pointed out the celebrated sights of the cataract and the gorge. The presidential carriage drove through the nearby village, and several young boys raced alongside, took off their hats, and gave them three cheers. Other onlookers took up the cheers, and soon the whole crowd shouted its enthusiasm. The boys were thrilled to be so close to the McKinleys, and the couple, in turn, was enchanted.12

  There were other people in Niagara Falls that day who wanted President McKinley’s attention. It is unclear how or why they came up with the plan, but two vaudeville actresses, Martha Wagenfuhrer and Maud Willard, decided to capitalize on the president’s visit. The women, who performed in local theaters, decided that they would climb into barrels (outfitted barrels were, it seems, a local specialty), enter the Whirlpool Rapids below the falls, rotate through the Whirlpool, and dazzle the president. If they lived to tell the tale—and no woman had ever done so—their celebrity would be assured and they would have a new show to sell.

  Thirty-four-year-old Wagenfuhrer, a recent immigrant from Germany and a resident of Buffalo, would go first. If the timing was right, her barrel would catch the eye of McKinley as he looked down the gorge. If he missed her, she would at least have his crowds, and her stunt would be witnessed by thousands of people clustered on the Canadian and American shores.

  Martha Wagenfuhrer (left); a section of the Niagara Escarpment, from above the big falls to beyond the Whirlpool (right). The river flows north from Lake Erie, over the two falls, and toward Lake Ontario.

  People would later say that Martha had been drinking, and that was the reason she delayed her start. But there were other problems. The men carrying her barrel down the steep path to the river’s edge lost their grip, dropping it. It rolled down the bank, slamming into trees and rocks. When Wagenfuhrer saw that its hoops had come loose, she insisted they be fixed. A cooper was summoned. Hours passed before she slid into the big cask, and by then President McKinley had been to the Whirlpool, seen the gorge, marveled at the falls, had lunch, and toured a power plant. He had even made it back to the Exposition. To make matters worse, the people lining the railroad tracks above the gorge—some of whom had helped pay for Wagenfuhrer’s stunt—had turned mean. “Fake!” they yelled down at her. “Coward!”

  Men closed the lid of her barrel at around six o’clock, but not before she heard something about President McKinley. No time for that, though. Soon enough, she was bounding through the lower Niagara River. Her barrel drifted toward the rapids and took the current. Up above, in electric cars, people strained to see. The barrel pitched and spun and was swept into the Whirlpool. And there it stayed, going around and around in a sickening circuit, for over an hour.

  As the light faded, watchers had a hard time keeping track of Martha, her dark barrel lost against the dark water. Along the Canadian side of the river, rescuers lit fires near the places where the Whirlpool usually disgorged objects, and they waited. Finally the barrel sprung free, and, with a great shout of triumph, rescuers seized it and wrapped it with a towline. Ashore, they broke into the cover and pulled the woman out. Martha Wagenfuhrer was unconscious, but she was breathing. After ten minutes on the shore, she came to.

  Traumatized, Martha discouraged Maud Willard from performing her own barrel stunt the next day. “She wasn’t as strong as I was,” Martha said. “I tried to persuade her to give it up.” Maud, though, wasn’t going to give up anything.13

  As for Martha’s new celebrity? Her feat was about to be swallowed by a news story coming out of Buffalo.

  V

  THE COOL OF THE TEMPLE

  At the International Hotel in Niagara Falls, on the American side, where the presidential party ate lunch that Friday, members of the group thought that Director-General Buchanan seemed preoccupied. During the trip on the Gorge Railway, he had also seemed restless, walking back and forth, back and forth, by the touring car. Now he paced the dining room. One of the party asked his wife what she thought was bothering him. Mrs. Buchanan laughed. “Isn’t he foolish,” she said. “He told me he felt as if something was going to be wrong before they got through.”

  Chances are that exposition directors during presidential visits always felt themselves perched on the edge of calamity. Buchanan couldn’t have known that Nieman had taken a streetcar to Niagara Falls that morning and had tried to follow the president’s group. Or that he had tried to get close to them so that he could, as he put it, “carry out his purpose.” Or that he had just taken a streetcar back to Buffalo and headed to the Exposition grounds.14

  After returning from Niagara Falls, President McKinley left his wife at the Milburn house to recover from the excursion and took a carriage to the Temple of Music with his entourage. He had changed his white shirt since the trip to the falls, and, as his carriage inched its way through the inevitable crowd, he appeared crisp and ready. He walked up the steps of the building jauntily—or as jauntily as a heavy man could move in the heat—looked up at the arches above him, and noted aloud that it was pleasantly cool.

  Inside, he positioned himself in the sort of place he must have stood thousands of times as a public man: under flags, drapes, potted trees, and palms. He stood amid a small army: three Secret Service men, a handful of fair dignitaries, Exposition guards, and the loyal George Cortelyou. Not to mention almost sixty soldiers of the Seventy-third Coast Artillery. These troops, likely recovered from the ignominy of blasting the president’s train, were pleased to be given this position of honor.

  The reception line connected the exits, all the better to streamline the greeting. It would be a short reception. The day had been long, the president probably was tired, and Mr. Cortelyou, as always, was nervous. But McKinley was good at this. In fact, smoothly shaking hands with constituents was considered his specialty. He took an individual’s right arm, got enough of a grip on the elbow to move the person along while making a pleasantry, and swiveled to the next in line.15

  Outside, in the sweltering air, some people had been waiting in line for more than an hour. Nieman had been waiting. Despite the temperature, he looked pulled together. He wore a laundered shirt, a vest, a jacket, and he had combed, parted, and oiled his hair. He kept one hand in his pocket and his fingers closed around his handkerchief. His handkerchief, in turn, was wrapped around his gun.

  Finally, the door opened and the visitors were welcom
ed into the rotunda. Inside, an organist worked his way through music. Was it Bach or Schumann? No one could remember later, although other details were etched diamond-clear.

  The line was tight, and the Temple of Music was soon dense with bodies. Officials asked those carrying lunchboxes—who knew what was inside?—to go to the rear. Chances were that these uncertain sorts would never make it to the president. A flutter of white stirred among the crowd—another concern. The closeness had begun to make people hot and uncomfortable, so they took out their handkerchiefs. They unfolded them, mopped the moisture from their faces, and put them away. Later on, as they got close to McKinley, they pulled out the cloths again and wiped their hands.

  Jim Parker, the waiter, had arrived early enough to get a good place in line, but even now he knew he would be lucky to get to the president before the reception ended. He would have liked to move ahead of the clean-cut man in front of him, but the man had sharp elbows and kept his place. Parker couldn’t see this, but the man had pulled out his handkerchief, holding it close to his chest.

  Opposite the president, where he had been positioned, Secret Service man James Ireland studied the reception line and watched an injured man take his turn. Poor fellow, three fingers bound up. Had to use his left hand to say hello.

  Now a black-haired man with a mustache was taking a long time with McKinley. He looked Italian. Anarchists, the agent thought, looked Italian.

  George Foster, another Secret Service agent, also noticed the dark-skinned man.

  Together, they moved him along.

  It was four o’clock. President McKinley had been shaking hands for about ten minutes.

  A mother and a little girl moved into place. The president bent down to talk with the child.

  Then, coming up, a neat, boyish-looking, fair-skinned fellow. His hand was wrapped up, too—another injury. A laborer, no doubt. And close behind him, some sort of colossus—a towering black man.