McKinley, William (1843-1901)

William McKinley (1843-1901)

President of the united states, 1897-1901

Sources

Early Life. Born in Niles, Ohio, on 29 January 1843, McKinley lived for much of his childhood in Poland, Ohio. He entered Allegheny College when he was seventeen but soon left because of illness and worked as a teacher and a post-office clerk before the outbreak of the Civil War. After the war he read law and studied at the Albany Law School (1866-1867) before passing the Ohio bar examination and establishing a law office in Canton, Ohio. On 25 January 1871 he married Ida Saxton, the daughter of a prominent Canton banker and businessman.

Political Career. Elected to the House of Representatives on the Republican ticket in 1876, McKinley served in Congress until 1891, after a Democratic gerrymandering of the Ohio House districts cost him the 1890 election. As a congressman McKinley developed a reputation for favoring civil-service reform and a high tariff. In 1890, as chairman of the House Ways and Means Com-mittee, he secured the passage of the protectionist McKinley Tariff, which raised duties on most imports. Returning to Ohio, McKinley was elected governor in November 1891 and served in that office until January 1896. During the 1890s, as the issue of monetary reform became more and more crucial, McKinley appeared at first to favor increased silver coinage. In 1896, however, backed by millionaire Marcus Hanna, McKinley ran for president on a Republican platform that emphasized the gold standard and high protectionist tariffs, defeating free-silver Democrat William Jennings Bryan, who called for lowered tariffs.

The Presidency. After McKinley took office on 4 March 1897 Congress passed the Dingley Act, once again raising tariffs, which had been lowered during the administration of McKinley’s predecessor, Democrat Grover Cleveland. Although Cleveland had tried to maintain U.S. neutrality in the Cuban uprising against Spain, McKinley had won the election on a platform that endorsed Cuban independence, and he soon faced a mounting cry for U.S. military aid to the Cuban rebels. Forced into war with Spain by an upsurge of public sentiment after the explosion of the U.S. warship Maine in Havana harbor on 15 February 1898, the United States emerged from that brief conflict with new possessions in the Caribbean and the Pacific. The issue of how the United States should administer these territories immediately gripped the country, with Democrats and many reformminded Republicans advocating independence for all the territories and some expansionist (mostly western) Republicans advocating keeping them as U.S. possessions. McKinley’s own views were a mix of the “imperialist” and “anti-imperialist” positions and eventually became: independence for Cuba, with the United States maintaining the right to intervene in its internal affairs; U.S. control over the Philippines until it was deemed ready for self-government; and territory status for Guam, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico.

Assassination. Reelected in 1900 with the popular Theodore Roosevelt of New York as his vice president, McKinley was shot by an assassin while visiting the Pan-American Exhibition in Buffalo, New York, on 6 September 1901, almost exactly six months after his second inauguration. He died on 14 September and was succeeded by Vice President Roosevelt.

Sources

Lewis L. Gould, The Presidency of William McKinley (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1980);

Charles S. Olcott, The Life of William McKinley, 2 volumes (Boston & New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1916).