Leon F Czolgosz

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McKinley, William (1843–1901), twenty‐fifth president of the United States. Born in Niles, Ohio, William McKinley attended Allegheny College briefly before volunteering for the Civil War. He rose to the rank of major in the Union Army, a title that he carried into national politics. Practicing as an attorney in Canton, Ohio, he married Ida Sexton in 1871 and became an active Republican. Elected to Congress in 1876, he served until defeated in 1890. He chaired the House Ways and Means Committee, hence the McKinley Tariff of 1890 bears his name. He was elected governor of Ohio in 1891 and reelected in 1893. The frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination in 1896, he won on the first ballot, went on to defeat his Democratic opponent, William Jennings Bryan, the candidate of western agrarians and the free silver movement.

Although his close friendship with Cleveland industrialist Mark Hanna aided McKinley's political rise as governor and president, he was the dominant figure in their relationship. In the White House from 1897 to 1901, McKinley is sometimes considered the first modern president: He cultivated the press, traveled frequently to push his programs, and exercised significant influence on Congress.

McKinley's reputation rests on his handling of the crisis in Cuba that led to the Spanish‐American War. Unlike his predecessor Grover Cleveland, McKinley insisted that the Cuban rebels have a role in any negotiated settlement. He also specified that Spain must end the rebellion quickly. This policy intensified the pressure on Madrid, which refused to relinquish Cuba peacefully. Popular sentiment for war increased sharply in February 1898 after an explosion of unknown origin destroyed the USS Maine in Havana harbor, killing many sailors. By late March it was clear that Spain would not concede, and McKinley asked Congress for authority to intervene in Cuba. Within weeks, the two nations were at war.

A strong and effective war president, McKinley also dominated the negotiations that produced an armistice in August 1898. He made the decision that the United States should acquire the Philippines in the Treaty of Paris. McKinley's leadership assured Senate approval of the pact in February 1899. For the two years that followed, McKinley used his war powers to subdue an insurrection in the Philippines and establish a civilian government. His forceful approach to foreign affairs, reinforced by Secretary of State John Hay, also produced the “Open Door” policy in China (1899), the dispatching of American troops to China to help subdue the Boxer Rebellion (1900), and the talks with Great Britain that facilitated construction of the Panama Canal. In domestic affairs, McKinley championed the gold standard and the protective tariff, but also advocated reciprocal trade treaties to open up markets overseas to American exporters.

McKinley won reelection in 1900, again defeating Bryan, but he was assassinated in September 1901 in Buffalo, New York, by anarchist Leon Czolgosz. McKinley was an important architect of the twentieth‐century presidency and a decisive force in the nation's rise to world power.
See also Democratic Party; Expansionism; Federal Government, Executive Branch: The Presidency; Foreign Relations: U.S. Relations with Asia; Foreign Relations: U.S. Relations with Latin America; Foreign Trade, U.S.; Populist Era; Populist Party; Republican Party; Tariffs.

Bibliography

Lewis L. Gould , The Presidency of William McKinley, 1980.
Lewis L. Gould and and Craig H. Roell , William McKinley: A Bibliography, 1988.

Lewis L. Gould

Schiller Leon [ Leon de Schildenfeld] (1887–1954), Polish director and designer, an innovator in the style of Wyspiański, who, with Craig and Stanislavsky, constituted the main influences on his work. An exponent of ‘total theatre’, he was also a champion of both romantic and realistic drama, and became one of the outstanding figures in Polish theatre history. After the First World War he worked at the Polski Teatr in Warsaw and at the Reduta Theatre before founding his own Bogusławski Theatre in 1924, where he directed, among other classics, a revival of Krasiński's The Undivine Comedy in 1926. His political affiliations with the left, and a controversial production of Brecht's Die Dreigroschenoper, led to the closing of his theatre in 1930, and he went to Lwów, where his outstanding productions were of Tretyakov's Roar, China! and Mickiewicz's Forefathers' Eve; he also directed a production of the latter in Bulgarian in Sofia in 1937. Interned at Auschwitz, he was released in 1941 and, since the Germans had closed all the Polish theatres, set to work secretly to produce, in a convent near Warsaw, some of the old Polish liturgical dramas. In 1946 he became director of the theatre in Łódź, where his last important production was The Tempest in 1947.

Leon F. Czolgosz , c.1873–1901, American anarchist, b. Detroit, Mich. He shot and killed William McKinley in Buffalo on Sept. 6, 1901, saying that the President was "an enemy of good working people." Czolgosz was later adjudged sane and was executed.