"Nearer, My God, to Thee" is a 19th-century Christian hymn by Sarah Flower Adams, which retells the story of Jacob's dream.
The hymn is well known, among other uses, as the alleged last song the band on RMS Titanic played before the ship sank and was sung by the crew and passengers of the SS Valencia as it sank off the Canadian coast in 1906.
George Orrell, the bandmaster of the rescue ship, RMS Carpathia, who spoke with survivors, related: "The ship's band in any emergency is expected to play to calm the passengers. After the Titanic struck the iceberg the band began to play bright music, dance music, comic songs – anything that would prevent the passengers from becoming panic-stricken... various awe-stricken passengers began to think of the death that faced them and asked the bandmaster to play hymns. The one which appealed to all was 'Nearer My God to Thee'."
On the morning of September 13, McKinley's condition deteriorated. Specialists were summoned; although at first some doctors hoped that McKinley might survive with a weakened heart, by afternoon they knew that the case was hopeless. Unknown to the doctors, gangrene was growing on the walls of McKinley's stomach and slowly poisoning his blood. McKinley drifted in and out of consciousness all day, but when awake he was a model patient. By evening, McKinley too knew he was dying, "It is useless, gentlemen. I think we ought to have prayer." Relatives and friends gathered around the death bed. The first lady sobbed over him, saying, "I want to go, too. I want to go, too." Her husband replied, "We are all going, we are all going. God's will be done, not ours," and with final strength put an arm around her. He may also have sung part of his favorite hymn, "Nearer, My God, to Thee," although other accounts have the first lady singing it softly to him.
An excerpt from William McKinley's last speech before his assassination, given at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo on September 5, 1901:
At the beginning of the nineteenth century there was not a mile of steam railroad on the globe. Now there are enough miles to make its circuit many times. Then there was not a line of electric telegraph; now we have a vast mileage traversing all lands and seas. God and man have linked the nations together. No nation can longer be indifferent to any other. And as we are brought more and more in touch with each other the less occasion there is for misunderstandings and the stronger the disposition, when we have differences, to adjust them in the court of arbitration, which is the noblest forum for the settlement of international disputes.
My fellow citizens, trade statistics indicate that this country is in a state of unexampled prosperity. The figures are almost appalling. They show that we are utilizing our fields and forests and mines and that we are furnishing profitable employment to the millions of workingmen throughout the United States, bringing comfort and happiness to their homes and making it possible to lay by savings for old age and disability. That all the people are participating in this great prosperity is seen in every American community, and shown by the enormous and unprecedented deposits in our savings banks. Our duty is the care and security of these deposits, and their safe investment demands the highest integrity and the best business capacity of those in charge of these depositories of the people's earnings.