William McKinley

William McKinley was born on January 29, 1843, in Niles, OhioOhioOhio is a state in the Midwestern United States; its capital is Columbus. It joined the Union in 1803 as the 17th state, the first carved from the Northwest Territory, and its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 11,799,448.Open the full entry, then a town of about 300 people, the seventh of eight children. His father, William McKinley Sr., born in 1807, managed a charcoal furnace and was a small-scale iron founder; his mother, Nancy Allison McKinley, born in 1809, was devoutly religious.⁠[1][2][3][4]

In 1852 the family moved to nearby Poland, Ohio, so that the children could attend a school run by the Presbyterian seminary there; he became president of its first debating club. He at first planned to become a Methodist minister.⁠[3][2][4][5]

He entered Allegheny College in Meadville, PennsylvaniaPennsylvaniaPennsylvania (officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania) is a Middle Atlantic state of the United States; its capital is Harrisburg, and Philadelphia and Pittsburgh are its two great metropolitan areas. One of the original 13 states, it ratified the U.S. Constitution on December 12, 1787, the second state to do so. Its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 13,002,700.Open the full entry, but attended only one term because of illness and money problems; he then worked as a postal clerk and was teaching at the Kerr School near Poland when the Civil War began.⁠[2][4]

When the war began he enlisted as a private in the 23rd Ohio Volunteer Infantry, led by Rutherford B. HayesRutherford B. HayesRutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) was an American lawyer, soldier and politician who served as a U.S. representative and governor of Ohio and was the 19th president of the United States from 1877 to 1881.Open the full entry, the first man in Poland to volunteer; Hayes became his lifelong friend and mentor.⁠[4][6][5]

He was promoted to commissary sergeant. At the Battle of Antietam on September 17, 1862, he brought food and coffee to the troops under heavy fire, earning promotion to second lieutenant and a place on Hayes’s staff; he ended the war as a brevet major.⁠[4][6][2]

After the war he read law in the office of Judge Charles E. Glidden, attended Albany Law School in New York in 1866–1867 without graduating, and was admitted to the Ohio bar in 1867; he then practiced in Canton, Ohio, where he kept a home for the rest of his life.⁠[6][4][3]

In 1869, at 26, he was elected prosecuting attorney of Stark County, his first election victory; he lost his bid for reelection in 1871 and returned to private practice.⁠[3][2]

In 1869 he met Ida Saxton, a banker’s daughter, at a picnic in Canton; they married at the First Presbyterian Church in Canton on January 25, 1871, when he was 27 and she was 23.⁠[2][3][4][7]

In 1876 he was elected to Congress from Ohio’s 17th District and served from 1877 to 1883. Jonathan Wallace contested the 1882 result, and in May 1884 the House seated Wallace; McKinley returned to the House from 1885 to 1891.⁠[6][3][4]

In Congress he became known as a staunch protectionist and persuasive speaker and backed gold over silver. During an 1876 debate his opponent, Levi Lamborn, wore a scarlet carnation; McKinley soon began wearing one himself, and it became his trademark. In 1889 he lost the race for Speaker of the House to Thomas Reed of Maine and became chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.⁠[4][2]

He drafted and passed the strongly protectionist McKinley Tariff of 1890, which raised duties on imported goods to protect American business and manufacturing. In that year’s elections voters rejected him along with many other Republicans; the McKinley Memorial Library attributes his defeat to Democratic gerrymandering and voter anger at the tariff’s higher consumer prices.⁠[2][5][4]

In 1891 he narrowly defeated the incumbent, James E. Campbell, to become Governor of Ohio, serving two two-year terms from 1892 to 1896, with the support of Mark Hanna. He created an arbitration system to settle labor disputes, and in 1894 he called out the National Guard to curb strike violence by members of the United Mine Workers.⁠[6][3][8][2]

In 1892 he served as permanent chairman of the Republican National Convention and resisted efforts to nominate him against Benjamin HarrisonBenjamin HarrisonBenjamin Harrison (1833–1901) was an American lawyer, soldier, and Republican politician who represented Indiana in the U.S. Senate and served as the 23rd President of the United States from 1889 to 1893.Open the full entry. During the depression of 1893 he co-signed more than $100,000 in notes for a friend’s business, which failed; friends led by Mark Hanna raised the money to repay the loans, and he was reelected. In the 1894 congressional campaign he made 371 speeches for party candidates.⁠[6][4][2]

At the Republican National Convention in St. Louis he was nominated on the first ballot with 661 votes to 84 for his nearest rival, House Speaker Thomas B. Reed; Garret A. Hobart of New Jersey became his running mate. Meeting in Chicago, the Democrats nominated William Jennings Bryan of Nebraska on the fifth ballot, and the Populists fused with the Democrats behind Bryan.⁠[9][4]

Republicans raised about $4 million, mostly from business interests, and printed about 200 million pamphlets. He ran a “front-porch” campaign from his home in Canton, partly to stay near his ailing wife, giving 350 speeches to about 750,000 visitors, while Bryan traveled 18,000 miles in three months.⁠[9][4]

He defeated Bryan 51% to 47% in the popular vote, a margin of about 600,000 votes, and won more than a third more electoral votes. The Miller Center’s essay calls it the greatest electoral sweep in twenty-five years.⁠[3][9][5]

On March 4, 1897, he took the oath as the 25th President of the United States in front of the Original Senate Wing of the Capitol, administered by Chief Justice Melville W. Fuller, on a Bible presented by the bishops of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. It was the first inaugural ceremony recorded by a motion picture camera. Vice President Garret A. Hobart had been sworn in on March 3.⁠[10]

He called a special session of Congress to revise the tariff and signed the Dingley Tariff of 1897, which raised duties by an average of 57 percent, the highest protective tariff in U.S. history to that time, and allowed the president to negotiate lower rates or duty-free trade with individual nations.⁠[11][8][12]

Cuban revolutionaries had been fighting Spanish colonial rule since 1895. The battleship Maine, sent to Havana to protect American interests, exploded and sank in Havana harbor on February 15, 1898, under mysterious circumstances, killing 266 of the 354 men aboard. On March 28 a naval court of inquiry presented findings to Congress blaming an external explosion, a conclusion the Miller Center’s timeline describes as incorrect.⁠[13][4][11]

On April 11, 1898, he asked Congress for authority to end the fighting in Cuba. Congress then passed a joint resolution recognizing Cuban independence, demanding Spain’s withdrawal, disclaiming any U.S. intention to annex Cuba, and authorizing military action. Spain rejected the ultimatum and broke off relations; he ordered a naval blockade of Cuba and called for 125,000 volunteers. After Spain declared war, Congress declared war on Spain on April 25.⁠[13][5]

The Miller Center’s essay notes that it was the first U.S. war with a European power since the War of 1812.⁠[5]

On May 1, Commodore George Dewey’s Asiatic Squadron defeated the Spanish naval force defending the Philippines at Manila Bay. U.S. troops landed at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, on June 10, with more forces landing near Santiago on June 22 and 24; Theodore RooseveltTheodore RooseveltTheodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) was an American Republican politician, writer, naturalist, and soldier who served as the 26th President of the United States from 1901 to 1909 and received the 1906 Nobel Peace Prize for mediating an end to the Russo-Japanese War.Open the full entry and his Rough Riders took San Juan Hill. On July 3 the U.S. Navy destroyed the Spanish Caribbean squadron as it tried to escape the blockade of Santiago.⁠[13][4]

On July 26 the French ambassador, Jules Cambon, approached the administration about peace terms at Spain’s request, and a cease-fire was signed on August 12, after about three months of war. Secretary of State John Hay called it a “splendid little war.”⁠[13][5]

He pushed through Congress a joint resolution annexing the Hawaiian Islands and signed it on July 7, 1898; supporters argued that HawaiiHawaiiHawaii is a U.S. state consisting of a group of volcanic islands in the central Pacific Ocean; its capital is Honolulu, on the island of Oʻahu. Hawaii was admitted to the Union on August 21, 1959, as the 50th state. Its population at the 2020 Census (April 1, 2020) was 1,455,271.Open the full entry was economically vital and a strategic base toward Asia. Under the joint resolution Hawaii became U.S. territory on August 12, 1898.⁠[5][11][13]

Peace commissioners led by William R. Day signed the Treaty of Paris with Spain on December 10, 1898: Cuba gained independence, Spain ceded Guam and Puerto Rico, and it sold the Philippines to the United States for $20 million. He supported the treaty, arguing that the United States had a duty to take responsibility for “the welfare of an alien people.” The Senate ratified it on February 6, 1899, by 57 to 27, a margin of one vote.⁠[13][11][8]

Cuba then became a U.S. protectorate.⁠[5]

On February 4, 1899, two days before the Senate ratified the Treaty of Paris, fighting broke out between U.S. forces and Filipino nationalists led by Emilio Aguinaldo, who sought independence and proclaimed a Philippine Republic. In 1900 the colonial government under the future president William Howard TaftWilliam Howard TaftWilliam Howard Taft (1857–1930) was an American lawyer, judge and politician who served as the 27th president of the United States from 1909 to 1913 and as the 10th chief justice of the United States from 1921 to 1930, the only person to have held both offices.Open the full entry launched a pacification effort called the “policy of attraction.” U.S. forces captured Aguinaldo on March 23, 1901.⁠[14][11]

The war killed more than 4,200 American and more than 20,000 Filipino combatants, and as many as 200,000 Filipino civilians died of violence, famine, and disease. President Theodore Roosevelt declared the conflict over on July 4, 1902.⁠[14]

On September 6, 1899, Secretary of State John Hay sent the first Open Door note to the powers with interests in China, including Britain, France, Russia, Germany, and Japan, proposing equal trading opportunities for merchants of all nations. During the Boxer uprising of 1900 McKinley sent troops to join the international relief expedition to rescue foreigners besieged in Beijing, and on July 3 Hay issued a second note stressing respect for China’s “territorial and administrative integrity.”⁠[15][3][5]

In 1900 he signed the Gold Standard Act, formally placing U.S. currency on the gold standard.⁠[3][11]

Vice President Garret A. Hobart died in office in 1899, and the vice presidency stayed vacant for the rest of the first term. In 1900 the Republicans renominated him in Philadelphia and chose Governor Theodore Roosevelt of New York as his running mate, over the protests of Mark Hanna. The Democrats renominated William Jennings Bryan in Kansas City, with Adlai E. Stevenson as his running mate.⁠[4][9][16]

He again campaigned from home while Roosevelt toured the country. He received 7,218,491 popular votes (51.7%) to Bryan’s 6,356,734 (45.5%), and won the electoral vote 292 to 155. Republicans won 55 Senate seats to the Democrats’ 31 and 197 House seats to 151.⁠[9][6]

On March 4, 1901, he again took the oath on the East Portico of the Capitol, administered by Chief Justice Melville W. Fuller, and Theodore Roosevelt became the 25th vice president. It was the first time the House and Senate formed the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies to arrange an inauguration; Senator Marcus A. Hanna chaired it.⁠[17]

In his second term the Supreme Court, in the Insular Cases, upheld the administration’s power over the territories won from Spain in 1898. After the inauguration he made a western speaking tour urging control of trusts and commercial reciprocity to expand foreign trade.⁠[6][8]

On September 5, 1901, he spoke at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York, endorsing tariff reciprocity in what proved to be his last speech. At 4:07 p.m. on September 6, while greeting the public in the exposition’s Temple of Music, he was shot twice at point-blank range by the anarchist Leon Czolgosz, with a .32-caliber revolver hidden under a handkerchief.⁠[3][4][11]

After two operations he died of infection in Buffalo on September 14, 1901, aged 58, the third U.S. president assassinated, after Abraham LincolnAbraham LincolnAbraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was the 16th president of the United States (1861–1865). Born to a frontier farming family in Kentucky, he had less than a year of formal schooling, taught himself law, and served in the Illinois legislature and the U.S. House of Representatives before winning the presidency as the Republican candidate in 1860. During the Civil War he preserved the Union, issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 and pushed the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery through Congress. He was shot by John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s Theatre in Washington on April 14, 1865, and died the next day.Open the full entry and James A. GarfieldJames A. GarfieldJames A. Garfield (1831–1881) was an American educator, soldier and politician who rose to major general in the Civil War, served for many years in the U.S. House of Representatives and was the 20th president of the United States in 1881, dying in office after being shot.Open the full entry. His last words to his secretary, George B. Cortelyou, concerned his wife. Theodore Roosevelt succeeded him as president.⁠[3][4][5][8]

Czolgosz was tried, convicted, and executed in the electric chair on October 29, 1901.⁠[11][4]

His body lay in state for public viewing at Buffalo City Hall and then in Washington, D.C., and reached Canton, Ohio, on September 18, where it was placed in Westlawn Cemetery.⁠[4][3]

His wife, Ida McKinley, died in Canton on May 26, 1907. On October 10, 1907, his remains were moved to the McKinley National Memorial in Canton, where he rests with his wife and their two young daughters; the memorial is approached by 108 steps.⁠[3][4]

His wife, Ida Saxton McKinley, was born in Canton on June 8, 1847. Their first daughter, Katie (Katherine), was born on December 25, 1871, and died of typhoid fever in 1875; their second daughter, Ida, was born on April 1, 1873, and died about four months later. Ida Saxton McKinley’s mother died the same year.⁠[3][4]

These losses left Ida Saxton McKinley with depression, phlebitis, and epilepsy and made her a semi-invalid. McKinley was known for his devotion to her and broke White House protocol by seating her beside him at state dinners.⁠[4][5]

During his presidency Black Americans suffered civil rights violations, murders, and torture; McKinley was troubled by these events but reluctant to return to Reconstruction-era methods of control. The McKinley Presidential Library & Museum states that he appointed more Black people to federal positions than all previous presidents combined.⁠[4][3]

The McKinley National Memorial in Canton is open to visitors through the McKinley Presidential Library & Museum, which combines a history museum, a science center, a planetarium, and a research library and holds more than 42,000 items. The National McKinley Birthplace Memorial stands on the site of his one-room schoolhouse in Niles. In 1904 Ohio adopted the scarlet carnation as its state flower.⁠[18][3][4]

The William McKinley Papers at the Library of Congress contain about 131,000 items spanning roughly 1847 to 1935, mostly from 1897 to 1901; George B. Cortelyou sent them to the Library in 1935.⁠[19]

The Miller Center’s essays note that from the early twentieth century to the 1960s historians mostly saw him as a weak president driven by popular passions, a nationalistic press, and Mark Hanna; revisionists in the 1960s portrayed him as a cunning leader bent on expanding American influence; and recent scholarship holds that he worked hard to avoid war with Spain, acted decisively once diplomacy was exhausted, and asserted strong authority over his cabinet and generals. Scholars broadly agree that he helped shape the modern presidency, for example through regular press briefings, an early forerunner of the presidential press conference.⁠[16][5]

McKinley Presidential Library & Museum: Official website: https://mckinleymuseum.org/ (opens in a new window).⁠[18]