I really have no idea how many U.S. presidents have visited Memphis over the years. Somebody I’ll have to look through the Lauderdale Mansion guest books and make a list. But I do know that William McKinley paid us a visit here on April 30, 1901, because I found proof of it, in the form of an old stereopticon card, showing him making a speech in Court Square.
Our 25th president had been elected to a second term in office in 1900 and, for reasons that he never made clear to me, decided to embark on a goodwill tour of the country the following year, taking with him five of his cabinet members. The party left Washington, D.C., by train in mid-April and made a looping journey through the sunny Southland. Newspapers reported that the individual railroad cars, “among the handsomest ever constructed in this country,” were given names. The president’s special coach was the Olympia. Others were Omena, Guina, St. James, Pelion, and Charmion. Just in case anyone asks you.
After a brief stop in Corinth, Mississippi, the train arrived at the Calhoun Street Station (site of today’s Central Station), on Tuesday afternoon, April 30th. An artillery squad fired a 21-gun salute, and Company A of the Confederate Veterans (yes, there were plenty of them still alive) formed an honor guard as McKinley and his entourage filed into fancy carriages for the drive to Court Square. The newspapers of the day noted the irony, “as the men in grey with the western sun beaming fiercely on their grey heads and stooped forms marched as a guard to the former leader of the blue and the Grand Army of the Republic.” We were still cranky about the way that whole thing turned out, you see.
