   #copyright

William McKinley

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: USA Presidents

   William McKinley
   William McKinley
     __________________________________________________________________

   25th President of the United States
   In office
   March 4, 1897 –  September 14, 1901
   Vice President(s)   Garret A. Hobart (1897-1899),
   none (1899-1901),
   Theodore Roosevelt (1901)
   Preceded by Grover Cleveland
   Succeeded by Theodore Roosevelt
     __________________________________________________________________

   Born January 29, 1843
   Niles, Ohio
   Died September 14, 1901
   Buffalo, New York
   Political party Republican
   Spouse Ida Saxton McKinley
   Religion Methodist
   Signature

   William McKinley ( January 29, 1843 – September 14, 1901) was the 25th
   President of the United States. By the 1880s, the Ohioan was a
   nationally known Republican leader; his signature issue was high
   tariffs on imports as a formula for prosperity, as typified by his
   McKinley Tariff of 1890. In 1896, he rallied the business and financial
   communities behind his successful effort to defend the Gold Standard
   against Free Silver. An indefatigable campaigner, he helped rebuild the
   Republican Party in 1896 by rejecting divisive ethnic issues and
   promoting pluralism—whereby every group in the nation would prosper and
   none would be singled out for attack. Working with campaign manager
   Mark Hanna, McKinley 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 considered a realigning election that ended the Third Party System
   and opened the Progressive Era or Fourth Party System. McKinley
   presided over a return to prosperity after the Panic of 1893 and was
   reelected in 1900 after another intense campaign. As president, he
   fought the Spanish-American War in response to reports of Spanish
   atrocities in Cuba. After victory in the "splendid little war", he
   annexed the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Guam, as well as Hawaii. He
   was assassinated by an anarchist and succeeded by Theodore Roosevelt.

Early life

   Born in Niles, Ohio on Sunday January 29, 1843, William McKinley was
   the seventh of nine children. In 1869, he made Canton, Ohio his
   permanent residence until he died. Most of his siblings lived within
   Stark County. His parents, William and Nancy (Allison) McKinley were of
   Scots-Irish ancestry. He graduated from Poland Academy and briefly
   attended Allegheny College where he was a member of the Sigma Alpha
   Epsilon fraternity.

   In June 1861, at the start of the American Civil War, he enlisted in
   the Union Army, as a private in the Twenty-third 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 including meat and coffee under enemy fire at
   Antietam, he was promoted to second lieutenant by Hayes. 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.

Legal and early political career

   Following the war, McKinley attended Albany Law School in Albany, New
   York and was admitted to the bar in 1867. He practiced law in Canton,
   Ohio, and became the prosecuting attorney of Stark County, Ohio, from
   1869 to 1871.

United States House of Representatives

   McKinley was elected as a Republican to the United States House of
   Representatives and first served from 1877 to 1883. He was chairman of
   the Committee on Revision of the Laws from 1881 to 1883. He presented
   his credentials as a member-elect to the Forty-eighth Congress and
   served from March 4, 1883, until May 27, 1884, when he was succeeded by
   Jonathan H. Wallace, who successfully contested his election. McKinley
   was again elected to the House of Representatives and served from March
   4, 1885 to March 4, 1891. He was chairman of the Committee on Ways and
   Means from 1889 to 1891. In 1890, he authored the McKinley Tariff,
   which hurt his party in the off-year elections of 1890, in which he
   lost his seat.

Presidency 1897-1901

Policy

   William McKinley defeated William Jennings Bryan in the U.S.
   Presidential election of 1896, in what is considered the forerunner of
   modern political campaigning. Republican strategist Mark Hanna raised
   an unprecedented sum for the campaign and made extensive use of the
   media in managing the McKinley victory. McKinley promised that he would
   promote industry and banking and guarantee prosperity for every group
   in a pluralistic nation. The Democratic cartoon ridiculed the promise
   saying it will rock the boat.

   McKinley led the country into the Spanish-American War, bringing the
   former colonies of Spain in the Pacific (Guam and the Philippines) and
   the Caribbean Sea (Cuba and Puerto Rico) under American control. In
   addition, the territories of Hawaii and Wake Island were annexed.
   Despite some vocal domestic opposition, his administration ushered the
   U.S. into the " New Imperialism" of the era.
   McKinley campaigns on gold coin (gold standard) with support from
   soldiers, businessmen, farmers and professions, claiming to restore
   prosperity at home and victory abroad
   Enlarge
   McKinley campaigns on gold coin (gold standard) with support from
   soldiers, businessmen, farmers and professions, claiming to restore
   prosperity at home and victory abroad

   He was re-elected in 1900, again defeating the Democratic candidate,
   Bryan, and by an even larger margin.

Significant events during presidency

     * Dingley Tariff (1897)
     * Maximum Freight Case (1897)
     * Annexation of Hawaii (1898)
     * Spanish-American War (1898)
     * Philippine-American War (1899-1913)
     * Boxer Rebellion (1900)
     * Gold Standard Act (1900)

Administration and Cabinet

   OFFICE                    NAME               TERM
   President                 William McKinley   1897–1901
   Vice President            Garret A. Hobart   1897–1899
                             Theodore Roosevelt 1901
   Secretary of State        John Sherman       1897–1898
                             William R. Day     1898
                             John Hay           1898–1901
   Secretary of the Treasury Lyman J. Gage      1897–1901
   Secretary of War          Russell A. Alger   1897–1899
                             Elihu Root         1899–1901
   Attorney General          Joseph McKenna     1897–1898
                             John W. Griggs     1898–1901
                             Philander C. Knox  1901
   Postmaster General        James A. Gary      1897–1898
                             Charles E. Smith   1898–1901
   Secretary of the Navy     John D. Long       1897–1901
   Secretary of the Interior Cornelius N. Bliss 1897–1899
                             Ethan A. Hitchcock 1899–1901
   Secretary of Agriculture  James Wilson       1897–1901

Supreme Court appointments

   McKinley appointed the following Justices to the Supreme Court of the
   United States:
     * Joseph McKenna – 1898 AAA

States admitted to the union

   None

Assassination

   Leon Czolgosz shoots President McKinley with a concealed revolver.
   Enlarge
   Leon Czolgosz shoots President McKinley with a concealed revolver.

   McKinley was shot twice by anarchist Leon Czolgosz at 4:07 p.m. on
   September 6, 1901, at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York.
   One bullet was easily found and extracted, but the second bullet had
   lodged in a difficult-to-find place. Doctors used the very best 19th
   century technology to probe for the bullet, which only made matters
   worse. The newly-developed X-ray machine was displayed at the fair, but
   it was thought of as a technological novelty, not a serious piece of
   medical equipment; consequently, no one thought to use it on McKinley
   to search for the bullet, a procedure that might have saved his life.
   Also, ironically, the operating room at the exposition's emergency
   hospital did not have any electric lighting, even though the exteriors
   of many of the buildings at the extravagant exposition were covered
   with thousands of light bulbs. Doctors used a pan to reflect sunlight
   onto the operating table as they treated McKinley's wounds.

   McKinley's doctors believed he would recover, and the President
   convalesced for more than a week at the home of the exposition's
   director. But McKinley eventually went into shock. He died from his
   wounds at 2:15 a.m. on September 14, 1901, in Buffalo. He was buried in
   Canton, Ohio. Czolgosz was later found guilty of murder and
   electrocuted.

Monuments and memorials

   Statue of President McKinley in Walden, New York.
   Enlarge
   Statue of President McKinley in Walden, New York.
   Statue of President McKinley at the Lucas County Courthouse in Toledo,
   Ohio.
   Enlarge
   Statue of President McKinley at the Lucas County Courthouse in Toledo,
   Ohio.
     * The statue of McKinley in Muskegon, Michigan, is believed to be the
       first raised in his honour in the country, put in place on May 23,
       1902. It was sculpted by Charles Henry Niehaus.
     * McKinley Presidential Library & Museum, Canton, Ohio
     * McKinley Memorial Mausoleum, Canton, Ohio, his final resting place
     * McKinley Memorial, Niles, Ohio, commemorates McKinley's birthplace
     * McKinley Classical Junior Academy, middle school in St. Louis, MO
     * McKinley Monument, Buffalo, New York
     * McKinley Statue, Adams, Massachusetts
     * McKinley County, New Mexico is named in his honour.
     * Mount McKinley, Alaska is named after him.
     * McKinley Statue, Arcata, California
     * McKinleyville, California
     * McKinley Statue, Montgomery County Public Library Dayton, Ohio
     * McKinley Statue, Walden, New York
     * McKinley Monument, Antietam Battlefield, Maryland
     * McKinley Statue, Lucas County Courthouse Toledo, Ohio
     * McKinley Monument, Columbus, Ohio on the grounds of the Statehouse
       McKinley worked in as Ohio's Governor.
     * McKinley Statue, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania outside Philadelphia
       City Hall.
     * Calle McKinley (McKinley Street), Mayaguez, Puerto Rico.
     * Mckinley Elementary Lakewood, Ohio
     * William McKinley Junior High School, Fort Hamilton, Bay Ridge, New
       York.

Trivia

     * McKinley was supposedly the inspiration for the Wizard of Oz in The
       Wizard of Oz.
     * McKinley's portrait appeared on the U.S. $500 bill from 1928 to
       1946.
     * McKinley had a pet parrot named " Washington Post".
     * At his inauguration, the only item of jewelry McKinley wore was his
       Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity badge.
     * After McKinley's assassination, the mandate of the Secret Service
       was altered to include protection of the president.
     * McKinley was the last US Civil War veteran to be President.

Disputed quotation

   In 1903, an elderly supporter named James F. Rusling recalled that in
   1899, McKinley had said to a religious delegation:

     "The truth is I didn't want the Philippines, and when they came to
     us as a gift from the gods, I did not know what to do with them....
     I sought counsel from all sides - Democrats as well as Republicans -
     but got little help. I thought first we would take only Manila; then
     Luzon; then other islands, perhaps, also. I walked the floor of the
     White House night after night until midnight; and I am not ashamed
     to tell you, gentlemen, that I went down on my knees and prayed
     Almighty God for light and guidance more than one night." "And one
     night late it came to me this way - I don't know how it was, but it
     came: (1) That we could not give them back to Spain - that would be
     cowardly and dishonorable; (2) that we could not turn them over to
     France or Germany - our commercial rivals in the Orient - that would
     be bad business and discreditable; (3) that we could not leave them
     to themselves - they were unfit for self-government - and they would
     soon have anarchy and misrule over there worse than Spain's was; and
     (4) that there was nothing left for us to do but to take them all,
     and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and civilize and
     Christianize them, and by God's grace do the very best we could by
     them, as our fellow men for whom Christ also died. And then I went
     to bed and went to sleep and slept soundly."

   The question is whether McKinley said any such thing as is italicized
   in point #4, especially regarding "Christianize" the natives, or
   whether Rusling added it. McKinley was a religious person but never
   said God told him to do anything. McKinley never used the term
   Christianize (and indeed it was rare in 1898). McKinley operated a
   highly effective publicity bureau in the White House and he gave
   hundreds of interviews to reporters, and hundreds of public speeches to
   promote his Philippines policy. Yet no authentic speech or newspaper
   report contains anything like the purported words or sentiment. The man
   who remembered it—a Civil War veteran—had written a book on the war
   that was full of exaggeration. The supposed highly specific quote from
   memory years after the event is unlikely enough—especially when the
   quote uses words like "Christianize" that were never used by McKinley.
   The conclusion of historians such as Lewis Gould is that it is remotely
   possible but highly unlikely McKinley said the last part. For a
   discussion of this question, see Gould 1980, pp. 140-142.

   Retrieved from " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_McKinley"
   This reference article is mainly selected from the English Wikipedia
   with only minor checks and changes (see www.wikipedia.org for details
   of authors and sources) and is available under the GNU Free
   Documentation License. See also our Disclaimer.
