William McKinley

President of the United States (1897–1901)

• Born: January 29, 1843
• Birthplace: Niles, Ohio
• Died: September 14, 1901
• Place of death: Buffalo, New York

By strengthening the powers of the presidency, McKinley prepared the way for forceful executives of the twentieth century such as Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Franklin D. Roosevelt. His expansionist policies brought the overseas territories of Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Guam, and Hawaii into the American empire.

Early Life

William McKinley Jr.’s mother, née Nancy Allison, was descended from pious Scottish ancestors; his father, William McKinley Sr., of Scots-Irish and English Puritan descent, was an iron founder in Pennsylvania and Ohio. The elder McKinley’s iron furnace brought only a meager living. The son grew up in a rural environment and attended the Methodist Church faithfully with his parents. When the family moved to the larger town of Poland, near Youngstown, Ohio, William was able to attend the academy there in preparation for college. He was able to complete only one term during 1860 at Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania; family financial reverses prevented resumption of his studies. Young McKinley had proved himself to be a good public speaker and a diligent, if not brilliant, student.

Because of his short stature—five feet, six inches tall—erect posture, and somber countenance, McKinley’s physical appearance has often been compared to that of Napoleon Bonaparte. His gray, penetrating eyes gazed intently from a pale, serious face. McKinley did not have a sophisticated or cosmopolitan upbringing, yet he had a manner that was sedate and dignified. Those who knew him well were also aware of his good sense of humor and kindly disposition. He was abstemious, almost prudish in behavior. In early life, he disdained smoking, drinking, dancing, and gambling. In his middle years, however, he became addicted to the use of tobacco.

At the outset of the Civil War (1861), he enlisted as a private in the Twenty-Third Ohio Volunteer Infantry. He participated in many of the major battles of the conflict, including the clash at Antietam. He rose rapidly through the ranks during his four years, attaining the rank of captain by 1864. He demonstrated impressive administrative abilities while serving on the staff of General Rutherford B. Hayes . His growing friendship with Hayes would serve him well in his later political career. He was mustered out of the service in 1865, with the brevet rank of major, a title that would often be used with his name.

After the war, McKinley studied law briefly at the Albany (New York) Law School and was admitted to the bar and set up his practice at Canton, Ohio, in 1867. This northeastern Ohio town became his home for the remainder of his life. In 1871, he married Ida Saxton, a young woman from a wealthy home. However, the couple enjoyed only two tranquil years of marriage before a severe nervous illness struck down Ida. Many of her later years were spent as a virtual invalid. William McKinley seemed to show infinite and unending compassion and devotion to his sick wife. He always found time during even his presidential years to minister to her needs.

Life’s Work

William McKinley served twelve years as a Republican member of the US House of Representatives, from 1877 to 1891, a period interrupted briefly by his loss of the 1882 election. The loss came from one of the periodic Democratic gerrymanders that plagued his career in Congress. He quickly became one of the leading proponents of protectionism in the House. His knowledge of the tariff issue and industrial questions helped him to secure a place on the Ways and Means Committee, a position that allowed him a major influence over revenue matters. He became chair of the committee in 1889, after having lost in a battle for Speaker of the House to Thomas B. Reed.

McKinley’s most important achievement in the Congress was the successful passage, in 1890, of a highly protectionist tariff that came to be known as the McKinley Act. The bill provided for a reciprocal lowering of the tariffs of two countries when a treaty to accomplish this could be negotiated. Several European states did enter into such arrangements with the United States. McKinley’s tariff also reduced the excess revenue from the tariff that had been swelling the treasury. Sugar was placed on the free list, and American producers were compensated for this loss of protection by a subsidy of two cents a pound, paid to refiners. What had seemed to be McKinley’s moment of triumph soon became abysmal defeat, however, when a storm of criticism from consumers brought about the defeat of many Republican congressmen in the 1890 elections, including McKinley himself.

The defeat in McKinley’s district of Ohio in 1890 had been partly a result of another Democratic gerrymander rather than a wholesale repudiation of the candidate. His reputation still intact in Ohio, McKinley, with the backing of the wealthy Cleveland industrialist Marcus A. Hanna, won the governorship in 1891 and 1893. In 1892, Hanna tried to engineer the nomination of McKinley for president, but McKinley refused to encourage the movement because of his conviction that the Republican Party should stand by its incumbent president, Benjamin Harrison.

By 1896, when McKinley was ready to accept his party’s nomination, a new issue had begun to overshadow the tariff question. Grover Cleveland’s term (1893–1897) had been an era of severe depression and suffering, especially for the farmers. Many of those at the lower economic level began to see some hope in a new panacea. The monetization of silver would allow for inflation of the currency, bringing relief to debtors and a hoped-for increase in agricultural prices. Such ideas were anathema to financiers and industrialists. The eastern aristocracy of wealth stood foursquare for the gold standard.

Although the “standpatters” had faith in McKinley as the apostle of protectionism, his record on the currency issue was less encouraging. He had in fact voted for overriding Hayes’s veto of the Bland-Allison Act in 1878, a bill providing for the issuing of a moderate number of silver certificates. McKinley now took a position more reassuring to business. He favored a gold standard until such time as the other nations agreed to an international bimetallic (silver and gold) standard. It was not expected by most businesspeople that such an international agreement was likely.

In the election of 1896, McKinley ran against the prosilver candidate of the Democrats, William Jennings Bryan . In the campaign, McKinley stayed at his home in Canton, Ohio. He would appear on his front porch to make campaign speeches to supporters who were brought in by train for his rallies. The dignified campaign was in sharp contrast to the whirlwind tour of Bryan, who spoke from the rear of his train in numerous hamlets and towns along his path. To many, Bryan seemed a dangerous demagogue, while McKinley appeared to be an experienced and sane candidate who would restore prosperity and confidence. McKinley won by a comfortable margin.

One of McKinley’s most important abilities as an administrator was a talent for choosing gifted men to work with him. However, he did choose a few men to serve in his first cabinet who proved unequal to the task. The elderly John Sherman was physically unable to carry on the duties of secretary of state at a time when international affairs were moving toward a critical stage. He served slightly more than a year. Later, McKinley chose such able men as John Hay, secretary of state; Philander Knox, attorney general; and Elihu Root, secretary of war.

During McKinley’s first year as president, Congress passed a tariff that continued the high protectionist policies advocated by the president, the Dingley Act. The president sent emissaries to England to begin the process of sounding out other nations on the prospects for international bimetalism. The industrial nations had little interest in this proposal. The currency question would not be settled for McKinley until 1900, when the Congress passed the Gold Standard Act that declared that gold would be the only standard of value for the dollar. The debt-ridden farmers failed to receive the relief they sought. However, new discoveries of gold around the world did increase the supply of the precious metal slightly, and during McKinley’s first term, the economy increased so markedly that most of the agrarian protest agitation died out.

The most significant theme of McKinley’s presidency involved foreign affairs. Although McKinley came out of the Civil War with a strong aversion to war, events and pressures around him seemed to be carrying the nation toward war with Spain. In 1895, the Cuban people had begun a guerrilla war aimed at securing independence from Spain. The Spanish government appeared adamant in its determination to hold on to the last relics of empire in the New World. The United States found its interests inextricably involved in the fortunes of the rebels. The island’s geographic proximity and its close economic ties made its destiny a major concern. The brutal treatment of Cubans in what were called “reconcentration” areas provoked sympathy and concern.

William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal and Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World found the Cuban atrocities a ready-made source for the kind of sensational stories that could build up newspaper circulation. To the cry of the yellow journals were soon added the chorus of angry congressmen and senators. McKinley preferred the quiet path of diplomacy as a means of settling the issues between Spain and the United States, but an increase of pressure and tension in 1898 persuaded him to submit the issue to a Congress already determined upon war. In February 1898, the destruction of the American battleship Maine , probably because of an internal explosion, incited further angry demands for war. The assumption that the Spanish had intentionally destroyed an American vessel was a highly unlikely one, but many Americans rashly made that assumption.

McKinley took a direct hand in guiding the conduct of the war that lasted only from April through August of 1898. Only the office of president was available to coordinate the activities of the war and navy departments. The war was primarily a naval affair fought in Manila Bay in the Philippines and near Santiago in Cuba. The navy demonstrated that it had finally achieved the modernity expected of a major power. It won decisive battles in both theaters. McKinley had entered the war for the avowed purpose of liberating Cuba from Spain, but during the course of the conflict, he made a decision to send troops to Manila to follow up the defeat of the Spanish fleet in the bay. The decision indicated a shift in direction, an apparent decision to use the conflict as a means of acquiring territory. McKinley directed the American representatives at Paris to secure a peace treaty that included the acquisition from Spain of Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippine Islands.

The president easily defeated Bryan in the election of 1900. The slogan “a full dinner pail” reflected the reality that the agricultural crisis had eased and that workers were again finding employment. However, McKinley served only a half year of his second term before being succeeded by his vice president, Theodore Roosevelt. An anarchist, Leon Czolgosz, shot the president while he was attending the Pan-American Exposition at Buffalo. McKinley lived eight more days. Death came on September 14, 1901.

Significance

As president, McKinley led the United States toward the creation of an overseas empire. Grover Cleveland had rejected an attempt to annex the Hawaiian Islands , but McKinley, fearing that Japan might gain a foothold, pressed for action. Congress annexed the islands by joint resolution in July 1898. In 1899, McKinley acquired a settlement by treaty with Germany that recognized American control over a part of the Samoan Islands. The agreement granted Pago Pago to the United States, thus providing a strategically important South Pacific base for the navy. The Treaty of Paris of 1898, which ended the war with Spain, brought Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines into the empire. Although Cuba was set free, it became a protectorate of the United States. McKinley’s secretary of state, John Hay, began the process of removing barriers to the building of a canal by the United States. Negotiations to remove Britain’s objections were begun but not finished before McKinley’s death.

Although McKinley is usually not placed on most historians’ list of the greatest American presidents, he did prepare the way for an increase in presidential influence and power in the twentieth century. He did not stand by idly while Congress conducted its business apart from the executive branch. He actively sought to influence legislation by suggesting the possibility of special sessions and by utilizing the veto threat. McKinley’s direct guidance of the war effort also exemplifies his use of power in the fashion of a twentieth-century president. Although he did not always explain his actions publicly, he seems to have been acting effectively and purposefully in his conduct of diplomacy. At the outset of his administration, he had to assert some control of foreign affairs because of the ineptness of the aged John Sherman. During McKinley’s presidency, it became clear that the United States had reached great power. The power of the navy, demonstrated by the brief and spectacular victories of the Spanish-American War, dictated that the United States would have to be accepted as one of the major forces in international politics.

The strengthening of industry, trade, and the economy of the United States was McKinley’s major domestic aim throughout his career. He tried to accomplish this aim primarily through the tariff and by avoiding policies that would be injurious to the business community. Later economic experience seems to show that the nation might have profited from freer trade and a slight inflation of the currency. Just before his death, McKinley seems to have been intimating that he was reconsidering the tariff issue himself.

Bibliography

Armstrong, William H. Major McKinley: William McKinley and the Civil War. Kent: Kent State UP, 2000. Print.

Glad, Paul W. McKinley, Bryan, and the People. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1964. Print.

Gould, Lewis L. The Presidency of William McKinley. Lawrence: UP of Kansas, 1981. Print.

Kapur, Nick. "William McKinley's Values and the Origins of the Spanish-American War: A Reinterpretation." Presidential Studies Quarterly 41.1 (2011): 18–38. Print.

Leech, Margaret. In the Days of McKinley. New York: Harper, 1959. Print.

Morgan, Howard Wayne. America’s Road to Empire: The War with Spain and Overseas Expansion. New York: Wiley, 1965. Print.

Morgan, Howard Wayne. William McKinley and His America. Syracuse: Syracuse UP, 1963. Print.

Phillips, Kevin. William McKinley. New York: Holt, 2003.

Saldin, Robert P. "William McKinley and the Rhetorical Presidency." Presidential Studies Quarterly 41.1 (2011): 119–34. Print.

Skrabec, Quentin R., Jr. William McKinley, Apostle of Protectionism. New York: Algora, 2008. Print.