William McKinley

For the U.S. Senator, see William B. McKinley.

William McKinley
25th President of the United States
In office March 4, 1897 – September 14, 1901
Vice President	Garret A. Hobart (1897-1899), none (1899-1901), Theodore Roosevelt (1901)
Preceded by	Grover Cleveland
Succeeded by	Theodore Roosevelt
Personal details
Born	January 29, 1843 Niles, Ohio
Died	September 14, 1901 Buffalo, New York
Nationality	american
Political party	Republican
Spouse	Ida Saxton McKinley
Signature

William McKinley (January 29, 1843 – September 14, 1901) was the 25th President of the United States. By the 1880s the Ohioan was a nationally known Republican leader; his signature issue was high tariffs on imports as a formula for prosperity, as typified by his McKinley Tariff of 1890. In 1896 he rallied the business and financial community behind his successful effort to defend the Gold Standard against Free Silver. An indefatigable campaigner he helped rebuild the Republican party in 1896 by rejecting divisive ethnic issues and promoting pluralism--whereby every group in the nation would prosper and none would be singled out for attack. Working with campaign manager Mark Hanna McKinley introduced new advertising-style campaign techniques that revolutionized campaign practices and beat back the crusading of his arch-rival, William Jennings Bryan. The 1896 election is considered a realigning election that ended the Third Party System and opened the Progressive Era or Fourth Party System. McKinley presided over a return to prosperity after the Panic of 1893 and was reelected in 1900 after another intense campaign. As president he reluctantly fought the Spanish-American War to stop Spanish atrocities in Cuba. After victory in the "splendid little war" he annexed the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Guam, as well as Hawaii. He was assassinated by an anarchist and succeeded by Theodore Roosevelt.

Early Life

Born in Niles, Ohio on Sunday January 29, 1843, William McKinley was the seventh of nine children. He was born and raised in Niles. In 1869 he made Canton Ohio his permanent residence until he died. Most of his siblings lived within stark county. His parents, William and Nancy (Allison) McKinley were of Scots-Irish ancestry. He graduated from Poland Academy and briefly attended Allegheny College where he was a member of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity.

In June 1861, at the start of the American Civil War, he enlisted in the Union Army, as a private in the Twenty-third Regiment, Ohio Volunteer Infantry. The regiment was sent to western Virginia where it spent a year fighting small Confederate units. His superior officer, another future U.S. President, Rutherford B. Hayes, promoted McKinley to commissary sergeant for his bravery in battle. For driving a mule team delivering rations under enemy fire at Antietam, he was promoted to second lieutenant by Hayes. This pattern repeated several times during the war, and McKinley eventually mustered out as Captain and brevet Major of the same regiment in September 1865.

Legal and early political career

Following the war, McKinley attended Albany Law School in Albany, New York and was admitted to the bar in 1867. He practiced law in Canton, Ohio, and became the prosecuting attorney of Stark County, Ohio, from 1869 to 1871.

United States House of Representatives

McKinley was elected as a Republican to the United States House of Representatives and served from 1877 to 1883. He was chairman of the Committee on Revision of the Laws from 1881 to 1883. He presented his credentials as a member-elect to the Forty-eighth Congress and served from March 4, 1883 until May 27, 1884, when he was succeeded by Jonathan H. Wallace, who successfully contested his election. McKinley was again elected to the House of Representatives and served from March 4, 1885 to March 3, 1891. He was chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means from 1889 to 1891.

In 1890, he authored the McKinley Tariff, which hurt his party in the off-year elections of 1890, in which he lost his seat.

Governor of Ohio

McKinley was elected governor of Ohio in 1891, and re-elected in 1893, serving until January 13, 1896.

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1896 Democratic cartoon warns McKinley will rock the boat by overgenerous promises.

Presidency 1897-1901

Policy

William McKinley defeated William Jennings Bryan in the U.S. Presidential election of 1896, in what is considered the forerunner of modern political campaigning. Republican strategist Mark Hanna raised an unprecedented sum for the campaign and made extensive use of the media in managing the McKinley victory. McKinley promised that he would promote industry and banking and guarantee prosperity for every group in a pluralistic nation. The Democratic cartoon ridiculed the promise saying it will rock the boat.

McKinley led the country into the Spanish-American War, bringing the former colonies of Spain in the Pacific (Guam and the Philippines) and the Caribbean Sea (Cuba and Puerto Rico) under American control. In addition, the territories of Hawaii and Wake Island were annexed. Despite some vocal domestic opposition, his administration ushered the U.S. into the "New Imperialism" of the era.

McKinley campaigns on gold coin (gold standard) with support from soldiers, businessmen, farmers and professions, claiming to restore prosperity at home and victory abroad

He was re-elected in 1900, defeating the Democratic candidate, by an even larger margin.

Significant events during presidency

• Dingley Tariff (1897)
• Maximum Freight Case (1897)
• Annexation of Hawaii (1898)
• Spanish-American War (1898)
• Philippine-American War (1899-1913)
• Boxer Rebellion (1900)
• Gold Standard Act (1900)

Administration and Cabinet

OFFICE	NAME	TERM
President	William McKinley	1897–1901
Vice President	Garret A. Hobart	1897–1899
	Theodore Roosevelt	1901
Secretary of State	John Sherman	1897–1898
	William R. Day	1898
	John Hay	1898–1901
Secretary of the Treasury	Lyman J. Gage	1897–1901
Secretary of War	Russell A. Alger	1897–1899
	Elihu Root	1899–1901
Attorney General	Joseph McKenna	1897–1898
	John W. Griggs	1898–1901
	Philander C. Knox	1901
Postmaster General	James A. Gary	1897–1898
	Charles E. Smith	1898–1901
Secretary of the Navy	John D. Long	1897–1901
Secretary of the Interior	Cornelius N. Bliss	1897–1899
	Ethan A. Hitchcock	1899–1901
Secretary of Agriculture	James Wilson	1897–1901

Supreme Court appointments

McKinley appointed the following Justices to the Supreme Court of the United States:

• Joseph McKenna – 1898

States admitted to the union

None

Assassination

Leon Czolgosz shoots President McKinley with a concealed revolver.

McKinley was shot twice by anarchist Leon Czolgosz at 4:07 p.m. on September 6, 1901, at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York.

The newly-developed X-ray machine was displayed at the fair, but no one thought to use it on McKinley to search for the bullet, which might have saved his life. Also, ironically, the operating room at the exposition's emergency hospital did not have any electric lighting, even though the exteriors of many of the buildings at the extravagant exposition were covered with thousands of light bulbs. Doctors used a pan to reflect sunlight onto the operating table as they treated McKinley's wounds.

McKinley's doctors believed he would recover, and the President convalesced for more than a week at the home of the exposition's director. But McKinley eventually went into shock. He died from his wounds at 2:15 a.m. on September 14, 1901, in Buffalo. He was buried in Canton, Ohio. Czolgosz was later found guilty of murder and electrocuted.

Monuments and memorials

Statue of President McKinley in Walden, New York.

Statue of President McKinley at the Lucas County Courthouse in Toledo, Ohio.

• The statue of McKinley in Muskegon, Michigan, is believed to be the first raised in his honor in the country, put in place on May 23, 1902. [1] It was sculpted by Charles Henry Niehaus.
• McKinley Presidential Library & Museum, Canton, Ohio
• McKinley Memorial Mausoleum, Canton, Ohio, his final resting place
• McKinley Memorial, Niles, Ohio, commemorates McKinley's birthplace
• McKinley Monument, Buffalo, New York
• McKinley Statue, Adams, Massachusetts
• McKinley County, New Mexico is named in his honor.
• Mount McKinley, Alaska is named after him.
• McKinley Statue, Arcata, California
• McKinleyville, California
• McKinley Statue, Walden, New York
• McKinley Monument, Antietam Battlefield, Maryland
• McKinley Statue, Lucas County Courthouse Toledo, Ohio
• McKinley Monument, Columbus, Ohio on the grounds of the Statehouse McKinley worked in as Ohio's Governor.

Trivia

• McKinley was supposedly the inspiration for the Wizard of Oz in The Wizard of Oz.
• McKinley's portrait appeared on the U.S. $500 bill from 1928 to 1946.
• McKinley had a pet parrot named "Washington Post".
• At his inauguration, the only item of jewelry McKinley wore was his Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity badge.
• McKinley was the first President to use the telephone for campaign purposes.
• McKinley and Harry Truman are the only 20th century U.S. Presidents who never completed a college degree.

Disputed quotation

In 1903 after McKinley died an elderly supporter named James F. Rusling recalled that in 1899 McKinley had said to a religious delegation:

"The truth is I didn't want the Philippines, and when they came to us as a gift from the gods, I did not know what to do with them.... I sought counsel from all sides - Democrats as well as Republicans - but got little help. I thought first we would take only Manila; then Luzon; then other islands, perhaps, also. I walked the floor of the White House night after night until midnight; and I am not ashamed to tell you, gentlemen, that I went down on my knees and prayed Almighty God for light and guidance more than one night." "And one night late it came to me this way - I don't know how it was, but it came: (1) That we could not give them back to Spain - that would be cowardly and dishonorable; (2) that we could not turn them over to France or Germany - our commercial rivals in the Orient - that would be bad business and discreditable; (3) that we could not leave them to themselves - they were unfit for self-government - and they would soon have anarchy and misrule over there worse than Spain's was; and (4) that there was nothing left for us to do but to take them all, and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and civilize and Christianize them, and by God's grace do the very best we could by them, as our fellow men for whom Christ also died. And then I went to bed and went to sleep and slept soundly."

The question is whether McKinley said any such thing as is italicized in point #4, especially regarding "Christianize" the natives, or whether Rusling added it. McKinley was a religious person but never said God told him to do anything. McKinley never used the term Christianize (and indeed it was rare in 1898). McKinley operated a highly effective publicity bureau in the White House and he gave hundreds of interviews to reporters, and hundreds of public speeches to promote his Philippines policy. Yet no authentic speech or newspaper report contains anything like the purported words or sentiment. The man who remembered it—a Civil War veteran—had written a book on the war that was full of exaggeration. The supposed highly specific quote from memory years after the event is unlikely enough—especially when the quote uses words like "Christianize" that were never used by McKinley. The conclusion of historians such as Lewis Gould is that it is remotely possible but highly unlikely McKinley said the last part. For a discussion of this question, see Gould 1980, pp. 140-142.

See also

• U.S. presidential election, 1896
• U.S. presidential election, 1900
• History of the United States (1865-1918)

References

Secondary sources

• Harold U. Faulkner, Politics, Reform, and Expansion, 1890-1900 (1959). general history of decade
• Paul W. Glad, McKinley, Bryan, and the People (1964) brief history of 1896 election
• Lewis L. Gould, The Presidency of William McKinley (Kansas UP, 1980), standard history of his term
• Richard Jensen, The Winning of the Midwest: Social and Political Conflict, 1888-1896 (U Chicago Press, 1971) analysis of McKinley's campaigns in Ohio and 1896
• Stanley L. Jones. The Presidential Election of 1896' (U Wisconsin Press., 1964).
• Margaret Leech, In the Days of McKinley (1959)
• H. Wayne Morgan, William McKinley and His America (Syracuse UP, 1963), the standard biography
• John L. Offner, An Unwanted War: The Diplomacy of the United States and Spain over Cuba, 1895-1898 (U of North Carolina Press, 1992).

Primary sources

• McKinley, William. The Tariff; a Review of the Tariff Legislation of the United States from 1812 to 1896 (1904) online edition

External links

• Works by William McKinley at Project Gutenberg
• Audio clips of McKinley's speeches
• First Inaugural Address
• Second Inaugural Address
• IPL POTUS -- William McKinley
• Biography of William McKinley
• Encyclopedia Americana: William McKinley
• William McKinley Presidential Library and Memorial
• First State of the Union Address
• Second State of the Union Address
• Third State of the Union Address
• Fourth State of the Union Address
• White House biography
• The Assassination of President William McKinley, 1901 - an account of the killing.
• A Loose Bandage (Beck Reilly) is an alternative 20th century following the failed assassination of William McKinley.
• Assassination Site
• Library of Congress films of McKinley

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