William McKinley

• William McKinley, Jr. (January 29, 1843 – September 14, 1901) was
the 25th President of the United States, and the last veteran of
the American Civil War to be elected to the office.
• He was the last president to serve in the 19th century and the first to
serve in the 20th.
• By the 1880s McKinley was a national Republican leader; his signature
issue was high tariffs on imports as a formula for prosperity, as typified
by his McKinley Tariff of 1890.
• As the Republican candidate in the 1896 presidential election, he
upheld the gold standard, and promoted pluralism among ethnic
groups.
• His campaign, designed by Mark Hanna, introduced new advertising-
style campaign techniques that revolutionized campaign practices and
beat back the crusading of his arch-rival, William Jennings Bryan.
• The 1896 election is often considered a realigning election that marked
the beginning of the Progressive Era.
• McKinley presided over a return to prosperity after the Panic of 1893,
and made gold the base of the currency.
• He demanded that Spain end its atrocities in Cuba, which were
outraging public opinion; Spain resisted the interference and
the Spanish-American Warbecame inevitable in 1898.
• The war was fast and easy, as the weak Spanish fleets were sunk and
both Cuba and the Philippines were captured in 90 days. At the peace
conference, McKinley agreed to purchase the former Spanish colonies
of the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Guam, and set up a protectorate
over Cuba.
• Although support for the war itself was widespread, the Democrats and
anti-imperialists vehemently opposed the annexation of the
Philippines, fearing a loss of republican values.
• McKinley agreed to the request from the independent Republic of
Hawaii to join the U.S., with all its residents becoming full American
citizens.
• McKinley was reelected in the 1900 presidential election after another
intense campaign versus Bryan, this one focused on foreign policy and
the return of prosperity
• After McKinley's assassination in 1901 by an anarchist, Leon Czolgosz,
he was succeeded by Vice President Theodore Roosevelt.
• The McKinley clan arrived in Pennsylvania in the 1740s as part of a
large migration of Scotch Irish.
• McKinley's grandfather David McKinley, after fighting in the American
Revolution, moved to Ohio in the 1790s.
• William McKinley was born in Niles, Ohio, on January 29, 1843, the
seventh of nine children.
• His parents, William Sr. (November 15, 1807 – November 24, 1892)
and Nancy (Allison) McKinley (April 22, 1809 – December 12, 1897),
were of Scots-Irish and English ancestry.
• When McKinley was ten years old, he moved to Poland, Ohio.
• He graduated from Poland Seminary and attended Mount Union
College, where he was a member of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity,
then attendedAllegheny College for one term in 1860.
• He did not take a degree.
• In June 1861, at the start of the American Civil War, he enlisted in
the Union Army, as a private in the 23rd Regiment, Ohio Volunteer
Infantry.
• The regiment was sent to western Virginia, where it spent a year
fighting small Confederate units.
• His superior officer, another future U.S. president, Rutherford B. Hayes,
promoted McKinley to commissary sergeant for his bravery in battle.
For driving a mule team delivering rations under enemy fire
at Antietam, Hayes promoted him to Second Lieutenant.
• This pattern repeated several times during the war, and McKinley
eventually mustered out as captain and brevet major of the same
regiment in September 1865.
• In 1869, the year he entered politics, McKinley met and began courting
his future wife, Ida Saxton, marrying her two years later when she was
23 and he was 28.
• Within the first three years of their marriage the McKinleys would have
two daughters, Katherine and Ida, but neither child lived to see the age
of five.