Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1897-12-11
DEATHS IN POLITICS.

Gno ClOsluS udyo VI al oASi'ihS Vol
ysss, in which he was the most striking
and picturesque. figure, will serve to
recall some of the other dramatic
deaths of publicists and statesmen.
In Georges own state Alexander
Smith, a prominent carpet msnufac-
turer, who was q candidate for con-
press on the Republican ticket in a
New York district in 1873, died on
the election night, five minutes after
receiving the announcement of his VIC
tory, and in the special election the
Democrats recovered the district. But
on critical occasions death has often in
this country struck a far more shining
mark than it did here. William Hen
ry Harrison's demise in 1841, a month
after his. Inauguration, right at the out
set of the Whig party's career of pow
err, sent Tyler to the presidency, pre-
cipitated the conflict between him and
congress on the bank question split
his party and was one of the causes of
its defeat in 1874. Deaths second in
yasion of the White House took off
Taylor in 1850, who was an opponent
of Clay's compromise measure of that
wear, and put Fillmore, who favored
the legislation, and who signed the
compromise bills without hesitation,
at the head of the government. Lin
coins death at the crowning moment
of his career gave under johnson q
more virulent character to the conflict
between president and congress than
it would otherwise have assumed, and
delayed the work of reconstruction.
Garfield's assassination marked the
climax of the factional feud in the Re-
publican party, defeated Blaine and
the Republicans in 1884 and started
Cleveland on his long career of sue
cess.
~ live in an inverted order," said
Burke on the death Of his SOD, who
had just been elected to parliament.
"They who ought to have succeeded
me have gone before me. They who
should have been to me in the place
of posterity are in the place of ances-
tors" This death led Burke to re-
fuse the title of Lord Beaconsfeld,
which George III had offered him, in
directly caused savage attacks on
Burke by his political enemies, caused
crisis in parliament and called out
from him one of the profoundest OF
his constitutional expositions, his
"Letter to Noble Lord" :,
The Earl of Chatham was seized
with an apoplectic fit and died in l77S,
when rising to speak in the house OF
lords against the motion for the rec
ognition of the independence of Eng
lands American colonies. He had
been an able and consistent friend of
the Americans, but he opposed peace
with them at that time because this
would be triumph for England's ina
tural enemy" France. Premier sPen-
Ger Percival was shot dead in the lob
by of the parliament house in 1872
but bis taking off produced no impor-
tant political consequences. The death
of Castlereagh, the British foreign
minister by suicide, in 1922, startled
Europe, put Canning in the foreign
Office, turned England's lukewarm
friendship toward the Holy Alliance
into open hostility, and, through Can
ning's friendship for the United States
at the time Monroe issued his historic
declaration in 1928, "called the new
world into existence to redress the
balance of the DID," The fall from
horse which killed Peel in 1850 came
at a time when the troubles of the Rus
sell ministry promised to open to the
veteran Opportunist chieftain a new
career of glory.
The theological student, Sand, who
assassinated Kotzebue in Mannheim IN
1919 for his powerful opposition to
German freedom, alarmed Stein and
Hardenberg, who were older and wiser
friends of liberty than Sand, and they
saw that the assassin's work had de-
stroyed their hopes. "Now the Con-
stitution is impossible" said William
Won Humboldt, in words that were
prophetic. Time and circumstances
made Kotzebue's death triumph for
absolutism instead of democracy.
Marshal Prim's assassination in 1870
startled the world, even at time when
the Franco German war was furnish
ing new sensation almost every week,
deprived Spain of an alert and re,
sourceful mind at decidedly critical
period of her history, and took from
King Amadeus, whom he had just
elevated to the Spanish throne, an ad-
wiser whose guidance might have
changed the current of future events.
The assassination of Alexander II, in
1881 came at an inopportune time for
the assassins, for it checked the reforms
then in progress in Russia, removed
the liberator of 24,000,000 serfs, and
put upon the throne the most reaction
ary of the Russian monarchs of the
century except Nicholas 1. Canovas's
recent death took place at the most
critical stage in Spain's career since
the revolutionary days Of 1S6S-75, put
new party in power, made swift
and sweeping change in the manage
ment of affairs in Cuba, and may be
precursor of further and still more