Assassination Vacation

With her sister Amy and nephew Owen, Vowell visits Garfield’s mausoleum at Lakeview Cemetery in Ohio. Also at the cemetery is the grave of Mark Hanna, who was an Ohio senator and the campaign manager of William McKinley’s 1896 presidential campaign. At the nearby city of Canton, Vowel visits the McKinley National Memorial and McKinley’s presidential library and museum.

Next, Vowel goes to the city of Buffalo, New York, where McKinley was shot in 1901. The site of McKinley’s assassination is just a “simple marker” (193). While meeting with the public and shaking hands at a building for the Pan-American Expedition, McKinley was stabbed by Leon Czogloz. McKinley was supposed to inaugurate the Expedition earlier, but it was delayed by the outbreak of the Spanish-American War in 1898. Vowell describes the war as one that resulted in “the United States” becoming “a world power overnight” (196). McKinley himself was responsible for seizing the Philippines, Cuba, and Guam from Spain and annexing Hawaii. The Pan-American Exhibition showed two women, each representing North and South America, embracing in friendship, which Vowell deems, “the best possible picture not just of the exposition and its aims of hemispheric friendship, but of the McKinley administration itself” (196).