McKinley, William

McKinley, William (1843–1901), Civil War veteran and twenty‐fifth president of the United States.Born and raised in Ohio, McKinley enlisted in 1861 as a private in the 23rd Ohio Volunteer Regiment. A commissary sergeant at the Battle of Antietam (1862), he was later promoted to captain and ended his military service as brevet major. His career in law and Republican politics included terms as congressman, senator, and two‐term governor of Ohio before his election as president in 1896.

The president's own military experience and the opposition of big business made him reluctant to lead the nation into war, so he pressed the Spanish government to control a rebellion that had begun in Cuba in 1895. An astute politician, McKinley was aware of his countrymen's growing impatience as the conflict persisted, particularly after the sinking of the USS Maine in Havana Harbor. When the Spanish government proved unable to end the war, he asked Congress for a war declaration in April 1898.

As commander in chief in the Spanish‐American War, McKinley monitored all phases of the conflict. He also stepped in to run the War Department when Secretary of War Russell Alger proved incapable of the demands of managing a 27,000‐man regular army and thousands of volunteers. Fortunately, the Spanish were war‐weary and poorly supplied, and the U.S. Navy was newly outfitted. Only 379 Americans lost their lives in combat.

McKinley gave subordinates such as Commodore George Dewey in the Philippines and Gen. Rufus Shafter in Cuba considerable latitude, though he approved all key decisions, such as sending ground forces to support Dewey's tenuous naval control. (He welcomed Shafter's negotiation of a peaceful occupation of Santiago de Cuba after that city had fallen under U.S. siege.)

The president controlled the diplomatic agenda as well. He supported the Teller Amendment to the war declaration that ruled out annexation of Cuba, but refused to extend recognition to the rebel governments in Cuba or in the Philippines. The occupation government that Gen. Leonard Wood established in Cuba was removed only when the Cubans approved the Platt Amendment (1901) that effectively made their island a U.S. protectorate. McKinley demanded that Spain relinquish control of the Philippines to the United States in the peace treaty signed in Paris 10 December 1898, and he authorized the use of U.S. troops to put down a bloody guerrilla war against U.S. occupation of the Philippines.
[See also Cuba, U.S. Military Involvement in; Philippine War; Philippines, U.S. Military Involvement in the; Spanish‐American War.]

Bibliography

Lewis L. Gould , The Presidency of William McKinley, 1982.
John Dobson , Reticent Expansionism, 1988.

John M. Dobson