William McKinley: Building the American Century

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At the moment of his death, it’s likely that William McKinley assumed his name would live forever as the 25th president of the United States. McKinley had helped steer his nation out of its worst economic slump prior to the Great Depression. He’d overseen a victorious war against a European power, shepherded through the annexation of Hawaii, the purchase of the Philippines, and supervised the creation of an American empire at home too. It was popular—the first president to win consecutive second terms in a quarter of a century. So when he was gunned down by a terrorist in 1901, it must have seemed as if future generations would revere him alongside Abraham Lincoln. But of course, that’s not what happened. Today, William McKinley is largely forgotten by the general public, known merely for being the guy whose death propelled Vice President Teddy Roosevelt to the White House.

So how did this happen? How did a man whose presidency seemed to usher in a new epoch slide so gently into oblivion? Today, Biographics is telling the story of William McKinley, the forgotten architect of the American century.

Given how anonymous he is today, it’s fitting that William McKinley’s early life was so marvelously obscure. Born on January 29, 1843, in the small town of Niles, Ohio, young William grew up the seventh of eight children, doing all the things that boys did for fun in the mid-19th century—swimming, hunting, and learning to ride a horse. His parents were utterly ordinary; his mother was a homemaker while his father ran a small foundry. It wasn’t enough to make them rich, but it was enough to live without worry. Average as they were, there were two things that marked out the boy’s parents as unusual. One was a ferocious belief in the value of education. Although they were happy in Niles, Mr. and Mrs. McKinley hated the idea of their kids growing up semi-educated. When William was just 10, they moved to the town of Poland just so that he could attend private school.

But it was the second notable thing about his family that would have the biggest impact: both parents were ardent abolitionists. This was a time when many in the North campaigned against slavery’s expansion but stopped short of wanting to outlaw it in the South. The McKinleys, by contrast, drilled into their children that slavery was evil and worth putting your life on the line to eradicate. Those beliefs would soon have a profound effect on young William’s future.

In 1860, a combination of illness and financial troubles forced 16-year-old McKinley to leave college and return home, taking up work as a postal clerk to make ends meet. Barely had he settled into this role when news reached Ohio that a South Carolina militia had bombarded Fort Sumter, kickstarting the Civil War. Within weeks, McKinley had signed up, joining the Ohio 23rd Regiment, determined to do his duty—a duty that he’d carry out with jaw-dropping zeal. As a private, McKinley was almost suicidally brave, gaining a reputation for riding through dense cannon fire to deliver urgent messages. He served at Antietam, still regarded as the bloodiest single day in U.S. history, where he charged through heavy enemy fire to deliver supplies to Union troops.

It was antics like these that brought him to the attention of his commander, Rutherford B. Hayes. Twenty years older than McKinley, Hayes regarded all his men as family, treating them with legendary respect, but he seemed to have a special affection for the young man from Niles. After Antietam, he placed McKinley on his general staff. By the time the war was over, he seemed to consider the lad an honorary son. For his part, McKinley returned home with the rank of brevet major. For the rest of his life, those closest to him would refer to him affectionately as “the Major.”

Yet while he might have returned to civilian life, McKinley wouldn’t go back to his pre-war job in Ohio. The young man opened a law practice in Canton, becoming locally successful. But the real change would come courtesy of his new mentor. In 1867, Rutherford Hayes came to McKinley and basically said, “Young man, I’ve decided to run for governor. Fancy doing my dirty work?” Something for Hayes that year was McKinley’s first brush with politics, and evidently, he liked what he saw. After Hayes won, the younger man threw himself into Republican politics. In 1869, he was elected prosecuting attorney of Stark County, and while that might seem like a minor post to start with, it was just the beginning.

Now that he had gotten a taste of it, McKinley wouldn’t be content to just sit around in Stark County. Oh no, instead he was going to take that ambition all the way to Washington.

In 1869, McKinley met Ida Saxton, highly educated and extremely progressive on rights for women and African Americans. Ida was everything McKinley dreamed of in a partner. The pair met at a picnic that summer, and by January 1871, they married. Just 11 months later, on Christmas Day, their daughter Catherine was born. Not long after, in 1873, their second daughter followed. But if 1869 was the highlight of McKinley’s life, 1873 would represent the blackest depths. Just four months after being born, their youngest daughter died. Around the same time, his mother passed away, and the combined tragedy seems to have broken Ida for the rest of her life.

Ida would be crippled with depression, which only got worse when their daughter Catherine likewise died in 1875. Combined with a sudden onset of epilepsy, the mental breakdown helped turn her into an invalid, someone in need of long-term care. Care for her would be William McKinley’s number one concern throughout the rest of his story, even as his star rises and he becomes president. For some members of the public, this was scandalous; for others, admirable. But it’s unlikely the future president gave it much thought either way. For four short years, he and Ida enjoyed a perfect life. In return, he would now stand by her until the bitter end.

Not that his extra duties as caregiver would get in the way of McKinley’s rise. The same year his mentor Rutherford Hayes decided to run for the White House, McKinley ran for his own seat in Congress. So loyal was he to the old man that he took time off from his own campaign to stump for him. Evidently, he didn’t do any harm; that November, McKinley won a seat in the House of Representatives, a seat he would hold for a brief period following the 1882 election for 14 years.

In a whimsical little twist, McKinley celebrated his win by sticking a scarlet carnation in his lapel, a fashion choice that he kept up for the rest of his career. It would be thanks to this that Ohio adopted the carnation as its state flower in 1904. But while McKinley had definitely won his congressional run, the same cannot be said for Hayes. The 1876 election was the tightest in history, with just a handful of contested electoral votes separating Hayes from his Democratic opponent. After a bitter political fight, the Democrats agreed to drop their claim to those all-important votes in return for President Hayes ending Reconstruction. For a supporter of African American rights, this was likely a nasty blow to McKinley, not that he was brave enough to show it.

Throughout his time in Washington, McKinley would remain on Hayes’ good side, and in return, the president would help propel his career ever higher. By 1889, that included reaching the heights of chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, from where McKinley was able to pursue his pet project: tariffs. In this era, the Republican Party was broadly against free trade, preferring instead a form of protectionism to help boost American manufacturers. McKinley was all in on this, believing aggressive trade policies would help improve the lives of ordinary people. So much so that in 1890, he used his position to push through something known as the McKinley Tariff, slapping import taxes on over 1,500 goods.

McKinley confidently expected the act to raise prosperity for manufacturers, which it absolutely did. Unfortunately, it also sent consumer prices skyrocketing. The hike on goods was so eye-watering that it effectively dynamited the congressional Republican Party. By the 1890 midterms, voters were so angry that the GOP lost 93 seats and control of the House. Among those swept out of office was William McKinley. Stung and hurt, McKinley slunk back to Ohio to run for governor. Although he won, it was hardly a resounding success; McKinley’s margin of victory was barely a polling error. But politics is a winner-takes-all game, and whether voters were enthusiastic for him or not, McKinley was now the governor of the Buckeye State.

It would be in this new role that he’d soon meet the man who’d make him president.

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Mark Hanna occupies a strange, shifting place in McKinley’s story. In the early 20th century, the wealthy Hanna was often cast in the role of puppet master—the guy who made McKinley president to push his own pet policies. Today, though, a more common view has it that McKinley used Hanna more than Hanna used him, leveraging his patron’s wealth to pursue independent goals. Whatever the truth, there’s no doubt their meeting while McKinley was governor set both men on the path back to Washington, but only after fate gave a little bit of a helping hand.

In 1893, the same year that Rutherford Hayes went off to the great Ohio in the sky, Democrat Grover Cleveland began his second non-consecutive term in the White House. Unfortunately for his party, no sooner had he started than America was walloped by one of the worst depressions in history. The Panic of 1893 collapsed the economy; unemployment jumped to 19%. Scores of banks and railroads failed, savings were wiped out, and investors lost everything. Among those nearly destroyed was McKinley, who’d foolishly co-signed a $100,000 bank loan for a friend. When the friend went bust, McKinley was left on the hook for the money. Luckily, the wealthy Mark Hanna stepped in to bail him out, and that left McKinley perfectly poised to reap the depression’s bitter rewards.

With the economy in free fall, the electorate gave the Democrats a shellacking. The 1894 midterms remain the worst defeat of any party in an off-presidential election year. What the Republicans had suffered in 1890, the Democrats were now suffering ten times over, and the 1896 election was now looking like an assured GOP victory. All McKinley had to do was make sure that his name was on the ticket. By now, McKinley was a known quantity, having chaired the Republican National Convention and governed Ohio for years. But rather than take his chances, he was determined to make sure he was the delegates’ only choice. Backed by Hanna’s money and spin operation, McKinley ran perhaps the first recognizably modern nomination campaign in history, one marked by some interesting firsts. Perhaps the biggest was his decision to speak to two all-Black audiences while campaigning—the first white candidate to ever do so.

Yet it would be in the presidential campaign itself that McKinley really redefined what American politics could be. Given the nomination that summer, with Garrett Hobart as his VP pick, McKinley launched what was then the largest election campaign the nation had ever seen. Backed by a war chest of four million dollars, the Republican Party flooded swing states with political leaflets, mailings, pins, badges—you name it, anything to keep their candidate’s name in people’s minds. McKinley himself, meanwhile, took the old-fashioned front porch campaign to a whole new level. In the months leading up to November, he invited a total of 750,000 people to hear him speak, and not just in any old order. Across 350 speeches, McKinley tailored his pitch to different groups: to the traditional Republican WASPs, but also to Jews, to Catholics, to Black people, to immigrants from Portugal, Bohemia, Germany—you name it.

After decades in which the two parties had come to rely on their bases, McKinley was trying to build a big tent coalition, one that included as many traditional Democratic voters as possible. For their part, the Democrats put up the populist firebrand William Jennings Bryan, but while he had energy, Bryan was playing an old game, preaching to the choir. Even as McKinley was luring them away to his exciting new channel, that November, the results were unambiguous. McKinley beat Bryan by a margin of 600,000 in the popular vote and nearly 100 in the electoral college. For those of us alive today, used to reading about Ronald Reagan’s 1980 landslide or FDR crushing it in 1932, McKinley’s victory might seem unspectacular. But make no mistake, in 1896, it was a political earthquake. For the first time since Ulysses S. Grant was re-elected a quarter-century earlier, a candidate had won over 50% of the popular vote. The era of extremely narrow victories was over. McKinley had just won the most convincing mandate in a generation, and he would use that to completely upend politics.

In one specific way, the election of William McKinley sparked the end of an era. Upon his inauguration, the 25th president became the fifth and last Civil War veteran to reach the highest office. Perhaps fittingly, his time in the White House would be dominated by conflict, but this time the fighting wouldn’t be taking place on American soil, but in the last remaining outposts of the Spanish Empire. Back in 1895, when McKinley was still just governor of Ohio, the people of Cuba had risen in revolt against Madrid, to which Madrid had responded by herding 300,000 Cubans into concentration camps—an insane overreaction that had done for Spain’s reputation what the newsnight interview did for Prince Andrew. By the time McKinley became commander-in-chief, the American public and press were demanding some form of intervention. At first, the new president kept things diplomatic. By gently applying pressure to Madrid, McKinley got the Spaniards to grudgingly release the camp prisoners and grant Cuba limited authority. This even led Washington to send the battleship Maine to Havana as a show of friendship.

But then, on February 15, 1898, everything went to hell. That day, a mysterious explosion destroyed the Maine in harbor, killing 226 crewmen. In the aftermath, a tsunami of anger washed over America. Before an investigation could be concluded, the press was whipping up fervor for war with Madrid. Not so long ago, historians believed that McKinley allowed this fervor to carry him along, dragging him into the war before he knew all the facts—the Iraq War of the late 19th century. But newer scholarship disputes this version. In modern tellings, McKinley did all he could to avoid war until it became necessary, desperately keeping diplomatic channels open until Spain angrily cut contact. Whichever version is true, the outcome was absolutely the same. On April 23, Madrid declared war; two days later, Washington did the same—the first time America had declared war on a European power since 1812.

Yet while the War of 1812 would result in a messy draw, the Spanish-American War would have a much clearer outcome. By that, we mean the United States absolutely crushed Madrid within days. Spain specifically had been destroyed in the Philippines. Not long after, the Atlantic fleet was sunk near Jamaica, and American troops were marching on Puerto Rico. Cuba itself—former Assistant Secretary of the Navy Teddy Roosevelt victoriously led his Rough Riders up San Juan Hill, with Santiago falling not long after. By August 12, Spain had been defeated, and the war was over—a war in which McKinley had played a vital role, using newly installed telephones to talk to his generals in real time.

It wasn’t the war itself that so shaped McKinley’s presidency, but what came after. From the ashes of Spain’s defeat, the 25th president helped build a true American empire. At the height of the fighting, in July, McKinley had already signed an order officially annexing Hawaii. Now, with Madrid defeated, he oversaw a peace treaty that expanded Washington’s holdings further still. Under the terms thrashed out, Puerto Rico and Guam became American possessions, and Cuba was nominally granted independence but was likewise drawn into Washington’s orbit. But the biggest change was the purchase of the Philippines for $20 million. Madrid signed over its great Pacific outpost. With that purchase, the U.S. became a true colonial power. McKin