On September 5, 1901, the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York, welcomed President William McKinley for what the fair designated “President’s Day.” In the U.S. Government Building, photographer Frances Benjamin Johnston made a posed group portrait of McKinley with exposition officials and guests. Later that day, McKinley delivered what would become his final public address before foreign representatives and a vast crowd on the exposition’s Esplanade. Johnston also photographed him speaking and touring the grounds.
McKinley’s address projected confidence in the nation’s future. He praised peace, prosperity, and industrial development while arguing that the United States should pursue reciprocal trade agreements rather than economic isolation. “The period of exclusiveness is past,” he declared. “The expansion of our trade and commerce is the pressing problem.”
The posed portrait is poignant because it preserves McKinley at a moment of ceremony and optimism, only hours before his Buffalo visit would become a national tragedy. Fresh from a decisive reelection victory in 1900, he stood at the center of an America increasingly engaged in overseas trade and influence after the Spanish-American War. His highly public appearance at the exposition also reflects the comparatively accessible character of presidential events at the turn of the twentieth century.
The following afternoon, September 6, McKinley greeted members of the public in a receiving line at the exposition’s Temple of Music. Leon Czolgosz, an anarchist, approached the president and shot him twice at close range. McKinley died of his wounds on September 14, 1901, and Vice President Theodore Roosevelt succeeded him. The contrast between Johnston’s composed, celebratory portrait and the violence that followed gives the image its enduring force.
Image: President William McKinley with exposition officials and guests at the Pan-American Exposition, Buffalo, New York, September 5, 1901. Photograph by Frances Benjamin Johnston. Public domain; Library of Congress collection
