Columbian Exposition in Chicago. For the last year or two of his life he lived with May, who was married to Dwight L. Moody's eldest son, William R. Moody. These years were tragic for Whittle and a measure of the personal sacrifice he had made for his religion. Working and living with troops during the Spanish-American War led to a complete breakdown of his health [49] and, finally, to the old soldier's first application for a Civil War pension. Although a claim based upon his wound at Vicksburg was approved in 1900, efforts to persuade a tightfisted and coldhearted Pension Bureau to approve payments at a higher rate were apparently fruitless, despite the efforts of such influential friends as President William McKinley, Major General Howard, and John Wanamaker, the Philadelphia merchant. Poor in worldly goods, the major went to his reward the next year.[50]
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Bliss, Whittle, and Moody were now dead, and Ira Sankey, who had made "Hold the Fort" as popular in the British Isles as in the United States, was in broken health and would join his friends in the heavenly chorus in 1908.[51]
