William McKinley (1897-1901)
William McKinley's election in 1896 launched an era of Republican dominance that continued until 1910. McKinley governed during a period of intense American expansionism. Domestically, he supported policies that benefitted American business, including high protective tariffs and deflationary fiscal policies.
The seventh of nine children of an iron maker, McKinley received his education at local schools in Ohio. He attended college briefly but withdrew because of illness and financial troubles. In 1861, McKinley enlisted as a private in an Ohio infantry regiment and participated in several battles. He was the last Civil War veteran elected president. He studied the law after the war, first in Ohio and then in Albany, New York. He returned to Ohio in 1867. Admitted to the bar later that year, he established his law practice in Canton. In 1871, he married Ida Saxton, daughter of a local banker. It was a long and loving marriage, but following the early deaths of two daughters, Ida, who suffered from epilepsy after 1873, became a semi-invalid and remained so for the rest of her life.
From 1871 to 1875, McKinley practiced law and worked for the Republican Party. He served in the United States House of Representatives from 1877 to 1884 and again from 1885 to 1891. He eventually rose to the leadership of the powerful Ways and Means Committee, where he worked to pass the McKinley Tariff of 1890. At the Republican National Convention in 1888, McKinley met Marcus A. Hanna, a wealthy Cleveland businessman, who would become his lifelong friend, political mentor, and manager. McKinley lost his seat in the House in 1890, but won election as governor of Ohio in 1892. He served two terms.
In 1896, McKinley easily gained the Republican nomination. He addressed selected delegations at his home in Canton in a "front porch" campaign. Mark Hanna capably handled the national campaign. Running against Democrat William Jennings Bryan, whose platform called for inflationary coinage of silver, McKinley defended the gold standard. The Democratic Party split on the silver issue, and many anti-silver Democrats, including retiring President Cleveland, refused to support Bryan. Bryan lost, in spite of his strength in the West and the South. McKinley’s majority in the popular vote was the first of such presidential wins, since President Grant’s second term in 1872.
McKinley called Congress into special session to pass the Dingley Tariff Act of 1897 as one his first actions as president. The Dingley Tariff raised import duties even higher than the already highly protectionist McKinley Tariff. In 1900, he approved the fiscally conservative Gold Standard Act, which based the currency firmly on gold. Although he personally disapproved of trusts, he did little to restrict their formation. The number of these monopolistic business conglomerates increased markedly during his presidency.
Foreign policy dominated McKinley’s administration. In 1895, Cuba revolted against Spanish repression. Fueled by sensationalized reporting and the still-unexplained explosion of the American battleship Maine in Havana Harbor, public outcry against Spain created irresistible pressure to liberate Cuba. McKinley tried to reach a peaceful resolution, but in April 1898, Congress declared war. During the course of the 100-day Spanish American War, the United States destroyed the Spanish fleet, won the Battle of Manila Bay in the Philippines, and occupied Puerto Rico. Cuba gained her independence, but with her sovereignty restricted by an American right of intervention. The United States took possession of Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines. McKinley justified these controversial actions with economic, military, and humanitarian arguments.
In 1898, the United States annexed Hawaii and extended the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which prevented Chinese immigration to the United States mainland. The following year America and Germany partitioned the Samoan Islands in the Pacific. Secretary of State John Hay gained an “Open Door” trading policy with China, but in 1900 McKinley sent 5,000 American troops to China to help put down the nationalistic Boxer Rebellion.
In the 1900 election, McKinley beat Bryan by an even larger margin. He began his second term by encouraging Secretary of State Hay's negotiations with Great Britain to modify the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty to permit construction of a canal in Central America. On September 6, 1901, an anarchist shot McKinley at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. President McKinley was visiting the Pan American Exposition in Buffalo on September 6, 1901, when Leon Czolgosz shot him twice in the stomach. By September 10, doctors in Buffalo thought he was recovering. He died on September 14, 1901.
September 6.—President McKinley is shot twice by Leon Czolgosz while receiving guests at a reception in the Temple of Music at the Pan-American exposition The Chicago Record-Herald wrote: "The South had learned to love and trust McKinley. Although it followed blindly the political custom of a quarter century and more of giving its electoral vote to his opponent it came to regard McKinley as the first president since the war who really understood the South and who had an adequate comprehension of its exhaustless resources and its great industrial future. McKinley knew the South by personal contact with her people, and the economic theories he championed in his earlier political career, and which gave him fame as a statesman, caused him to investigate the industrial possibilities of the South and to familiarize himself with her industrial conditions."
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