This is a work a fiction. Although, as will be noted below, most of the people, events, and locations are historically accurate, there is no evidence of that any of the skullduggery depicted in the previous pages comports to the actual history. In other words, no reader should come away from this story thinking that I endorse my version of events as true. Of course, if I’ve done my job, readers will not find any definitive cause to consider these events false.
Walter George, Harry Swayne, Lucinda Swayne, Natasha Kolodkin, and Anthony Hawkesworth are fictional, as are the minor players involved in the conspiracy. Mike Hannigan is also fictional because there is no evidence the real chief of detectives in Chicago on whom Hannigan is based indulged in any of the shenanigans attributed to him.
All the other major characters—Wilkie, Czolgosz, Abe Isaak, Emma Goldman, Big Jim Parker, Foster and Ireland, Mark Hanna, and, of course, William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt—are real and drawn as closely as possible to real life. Wilkie did remain on as head of the Secret Service Division, which after President McKinley’s death, was given official responsibility for protecting the president. Leon Czolgosz, who had indeed said that he “done his duty,” was executed in the electric chair at Auburn State Prison on October 29, 1901.
The shooting of President McKinley, his convalescence at Millburn House, and subsequent death are as they happened, drawn from newspaper accounts of the time. The same is true of the roundup, questioning, and eventual freeing of the anarchists in the wake of shooting. Foster and Ireland never could adequately explain their failure to notice the oversized bandage on Czolgosz’s hand, although at one point they said their line of sight was blocked.
The debate over whether to place the Atlantic-Pacific canal in Panama or Nicaragua took place precisely as is depicted. McKinley favored Nicaragua, as did Roosevelt initially, while Secretary of State Hay, third in line for the presidency, always favored the Panama option. The United States ultimately paid $40,000,000 for the French rights and equipment, and did foment a revolution in Panama that resulted in its independence from Colombia.