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TO 
 
 MY MOTHER 
 
We dwell on his statesmanship with pride, 
 We love, of his life, its Christ-like side. 
 
 His trusting faith in the All-Wise One, 
 ''It is God's way; His will be done/' 
 His loving care of his faihtful wife, 
 Ev'ry day of a busy life; 
 His thoughtful word for the deadly foe, 
 "Let no one harm him." Aye, we know 
 He must have sat at the Maste/s feet. 
 To speak forgiveness so complete, 
 "Nearer, my God, to Thee," his prayer, 
 "E'en though it be a cross," to bear. 
 Comforting words for the faithful heart 
 Who knew the hour had come to part. 
 The "good-bye, all'* at life's^ ebbing tide, 
 A message to our nation wide; 
 No one forgotten — his great heart knew 
 The grief his people must pass through. 
 With sorrowing hearts we kneel and pray, 
 "God's will be done, not ours," alway. 
 
 We dwell on his statesmanship with pride. 
 We love, of his life, its Christ-like side, 
 
 M. Winchester Adams. 
 
INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS 
 
 by 
 
 President Roosevelt 
 
 "As delivered at Canton, Ohio 
 in 1903 
 
McKINLEY I\ THE LICRARV AT THE WHITE HOUSE. 
 Reproduced by courtesy of Collier's Weekly. 
 
WILLIAM 
 M^KINLLY 
 
 A hiOoKArrilCAL STUDY 
 
 BY 
 
 A. ELWOOD CORNING 
 
 With Introductory Address 
 by President Roosevelt 
 
 Illustrated 
 
 BROADWAY PUBLISHING CO. 
 
 NEIV YORK 
 
 1907 
 
LiSRARY of CONGRESS 
 
 
 Two Copies Received 
 APR 29 1907 
 
 M 
 
 A Copyright Entry C*. ■ 
 OLASS A KXc, No. 
 
 / 7*r^oU 
 
 COPY B. j 
 
 Copyri-lit, igoj 
 
An Address 
 
 BY 
 
 PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT. 
 
 (Throughout our history, and, indeed, throughout history 
 generally, it has been given to only a very few thrice-favored 
 men to take so marked a lead in the crises faced by their 
 several generations that thereafter each stands as the em- 
 bodiment of the triumphant effort of his generation. Presi- 
 dent McKinley was one of these men. 
 
 If during the lifetime of a generation no crisis occurs 
 sufficient to call out in marked manner the energies of the 
 strongest leader, then, of course, the world does not and can 
 not know of the existence of such a leader; and in conse- 
 quence there are long periods in the history of every nation 
 during which no man appears who leaves an indelible mark 
 in history. If, on the other hand, the crisis is one so many- 
 sided as to call for the development and exercise of many 
 distinct attributes, it may be that more than one man will 
 appear in order that the requirements shall be fully met. In 
 the Revolution and in the period of constructive statesman- 
 ship immediately following it, for our good fortune it befell 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 US that the highest military and the highest civic attributes 
 were embodied in Washington, and so in him we have one 
 of the undying men of history — a great soldier; if possible, 
 an even greater statesman, and, above all, a public servant 
 whose lofty and disinterested patriotism rendered his power 
 and ability — alike on fought fields and in council chambers 
 — of the most far-reaching service to the republic. In the 
 Civil War the two functions were divided, and Lincoln and 
 Grant will stand forevermore with their names inscribed on 
 the honor roll of those who have deserved well of mankind 
 by saving to humanity a precious heritage. In similar fashion 
 Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson each stands as the 
 foremost representative of the great movement of his gen- 
 eration, and their names symbolize to us their times and the 
 hppes and aspirations of their times. 
 
 i It was given to President McKinley to take the foremost 
 place in our political life at a time when our country was 
 brought face to face with problems more momentous than 
 any whose solution we have ever attempted, save only in the 
 Revolution and in the Civil War; and it was under his lead- 
 ership that the nation solved these mighty problems aright. 
 Therefore he shall stand in the eyes of history not merely 
 as the first man of his generation, but as among the greatest 
 figures in our national life, coming second only to the men 
 of the two great crises in which the Union was founded and 
 preserved. 
 
 No man could carry through successfully such a task as 
 President McKinley undertook unless trained by long years 
 of effort for its performance. Knowledge of his fellow- 
 citizens, ability to understand them, keen sympathy with even 
 their innermost feelings, and yet power to lead them, to- 
 gether with far-sighted sagacity and resolute belief both in 
 the people and in their future — all these were needed in the 
 man who headed the march of our people during the event- 
 
INTRODUCTION Hi 
 
 ful years from 1896 to 1901. These were the qualities pos- 
 sessed by McKinley, and developed by him throughout his 
 whole history previous to assuming the Presidency. As a 
 lad he had the inestimable privilege of serving, first in the 
 ranks, and then as a commissioned officer, in the great war 
 for national union, righteousness and grandeur; he was one 
 of those whom a kindly Providence permitted to take part 
 in a struggle which ennobled every man who fought therein. 
 He who when little more than a boy had seen the grim 
 steadfastness which after four years of giant struggle re- 
 stored the Union and freed the slave was not thereafter to 
 be daunted by danger or frightened out of his belief in the 
 great destiny of our people. 
 
 Some years after the war closed McKinley came to Con- 
 gress, and rose, during a succession of terms, to leadership 
 in his party in the lower house. He also became Governor 
 of his native State, Ohio. During this varied service he 
 received practical training of the kind most valuable to him 
 when he became Chief Executive of the nation. To the high 
 faith of his early years was added the capacity to realize his 
 ideals, to work with his fellow-men at the same time that he 
 led them. 
 
 President McKinley's rise to greatness had in it nothing 
 of the sudden, nothing of the unexpected or seemingly acci- 
 dental. Throughout his long term of service in Congress 
 there was a steady increase alike in his power of leadership 
 and in the recognition of that power both by his associates in 
 public life and by the public itself. Session after session his 
 influence fh the House grew greater; his party antagonists 
 grew to look upon him with constantly increasing respect; 
 his party friends with constantly increasing faith and admira- 
 tion. Eight years before he was nominated for President he 
 was already considered a Presidential possibility. Four 
 years before he was nominated only his own high sense of 
 
IV INTRODUCTION 
 
 honor prevented his being made a formidable competitor of 
 the chief upon whom the choice of the convention then actu- 
 ally fell. In 1896 he was chosen because the great mass of 
 his party knew him and believed in him, and regarded him 
 as symbolizing their ideals, as representing their aspirations. 
 In estimating the forces which brought about his nomination 
 and election I do not undervalue that devoted personal friend- 
 ship which he had the faculty to inspire in so marked a de- 
 gree among the ablest and most influential leaders; this lead- 
 ership was of immense consequence in bringing about the 
 result; but, after all, the prime factor was the trust in and 
 devotion to him felt by the great mass of men who had come 
 to accept him as their recognized spokesman. In his nom- 
 ination the national convention of a great party carried into 
 effect in good faith the deliberate judgment of that party as 
 to who its candidate should be. 
 
 But even as a candidate President McKinley was far 
 more than the candidate of a party, and as President he was 
 in the broadest and fullest sense the President of all the 
 people of all sections of the country. 
 
 His first nomination came to him because of the qualities 
 he had shown in healthy and open political leadership, the 
 leadership which by word and deed impresses itself as a 
 virile force for good upon the people at large, and which has 
 nothing in common with mere intrigue or manipulation. But 
 in 1896 the issue was fairly joined, chiefly upon a question 
 which, as a party question, was entirely new, so that the old 
 lines of political cleavage were in large part abandoned. All 
 other issues sank in importance when compared with the 
 vital need of keeping our financial system on the high and 
 honorable plane imperatively demanded by our position as 
 a great civilized power. As the champion of such a principle 
 President McKinley received the support not only of hi« own 
 party, but of hundreds of thousands of those to whom he had 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 been politically opposed. He triumphed, and he made good , 
 with scrupulous fidelity the promises upon which the cam- ; 
 paign was won. We were at the time in a period of great * 
 industrial depression, and it was promised for and on behalf 
 of McKinley that if he were elected our financial system 
 should not only be preserved unharmed, but improved, and 
 our economic system shaped in accordance with those theo- 
 ries which have always marked our periods of greatest pros- 
 perity. The promises were kept, and following their keeping 
 came the prosperity which we now enjoy. All that was fore- 
 told concerning the well-being which would follow the elec- 
 tion of McKinley has been justified by the event. 
 
 But, as so often happens in our history, the President was 
 forced to face questions other than those at issue at the time 
 of his election. Within a year the situation in Cuba had be- 
 come literally intolerable. President McKinley had fought 
 too well in his youth, he knew too well at first hand what 
 war really was, lightly to enter into a struggle. He sought 
 by every honorable means to preserve peace, to avert war. 
 He made every eflfort consistent with the national honor to 
 bring about an amicable settlement of the Cuban difficulty. 
 Then, when it became evident that these efforts were useless, 
 that peace could not be honorably entertained, he devoted 
 his strength to making the war as short and as decisive as pos- 
 sible. It is needless to tell the result in detail. Suffice it 
 to say that rarely indeed in history has a contest so far- 
 reaching in the importance of its outcome been achieved 
 with such ease. There followed a harder task. As a result 
 of the war we came into possession of Cuba, Porto Rico and 
 the Philippines. In each island the conditons were such that 
 "we had to face problems entirely new to our national experi- 
 ence, and, moreover, in each island or group of islands the 
 problems differed radically from those presented in the 
 Others. In Porto Rico the task was simple. The island 
 
Vi INTRODUCTION 
 
 could not be independent. It became in all essentials a part 
 of the Union. It has been given all the benefits of our eco- 
 nomic and financial system. Its inhabitants have been given 
 the highest individual liberty, while yet their government has 
 been kept under the supervision of officials so well chosen 
 that the island can be appealed to as affording a model for 
 all such experiments in the future; and this result was main- 
 ly owing to the admirable choice of instruments by President 
 McKinley when he selected the governing officials. 
 
 In Cuba, where we were pledged to give the island inde- 
 pendence, the pledge was kept, not merely in letter, but in 
 spirit. It would have been a betrayal of our duty to have 
 given Cuba independence out of hand. President McKinley, 
 with his usual singular sagacity in the choice of agents, se- 
 lected in General Leonard Wood the man of all others best 
 fit to bring the island through its uncertain period of prepa- 
 ration for independence, and the result of his wisdom was 
 shown when last May the island became in name and in fact 
 a free republic, for it started with a better equipment and 
 under more favorable conditions than had ever previously 
 been the case with any Spanish-American commonwealth. 
 
 Finally, in the Philippines, the problem was one of great 
 complexity. There was an insurrectionary party claiming to 
 represent the people of the islands, and putting forth their 
 claim with a certain speciousness which deceived no small 
 number of excellent men here at home, and which afforded 
 to yet others a chance to arouse a factious party spirit against 
 the President. Of course, looking back, it is now easy to see 
 that it would have been both absurd and wicked to abandon 
 the Philippine Archipelago and let the scores of different 
 tribes — Christian, Mahometan and pagan, in every stage of 
 semi-civilization and Asiatic barbarism — turn the islands into 
 a welter of bloody savagery, with the absolute certainty that 
 some strong power would have to step in and take posses- 
 
INTRODUCTION Vll 
 
 sion. But though now it is easy enough to see that our duty 
 was to stay in the islands, to put down the insurrection by 
 force of arms, and then to establish freedom, giving civil 
 government, it needed genuine statesmanship to see this and 
 to act accordingly at the time of the first revolt. 
 
 A weaker and less far-sighted man than President Mc- 
 Kinley would have shrunk from a task very difficult in itself 
 and certain to furnish occasion for attack and misrepresenta- 
 tion no less than for honest understanding. But President 
 McKinley never flinched. He refused to consider the thought 
 of abandoning our duty in our new possessions. While sedu- 
 lously endeavoring to act with the utmost humanity toward 
 the insurrectionists, he never faltered in the determination 
 to put them down by force of arms, alike for the sake of our 
 own interest and honor, and for the sake of the interest of 
 the islanders, and particularly of the great numbers of friend- 
 ly natives, including those most highly civilized, for whom 
 abandonment by us would have meant ruin and death. Again 
 his policy was most amply vindicated. Peace has come to 
 the islands, together with a greater measure of individual lib- 
 erty and self-government than they have ever before known. 
 All the tasks set us as a result of the war with Spain have 
 so far been well and honorably accomplished, and as a result 
 this nation stands higher than ever before among the nations 
 of mankind. 
 
 President McKinley's second campaign was fought mainly 
 on the issue of approving what he had done in his first admin- 
 istration, and specifically what he had done as regards these 
 problems sprmging out of the war with Spain. The result 
 was that the popular verdict in his favor was more over- 
 whelming than it had been before. 
 
 No other President in our history has seen high and honor- 
 able effort crowned with more conspicuous personal success. 
 No other President entered upon his second term feeling such 
 
VIU INTRODUCTION 
 
 right to a profound and peaceful satisfaction. Then by a 
 stroke of horror, so strange in its fantastic iniquity as to stand 
 unique in the black annals of crime, he was struck down. 
 The brave, strong, gentle heart was stilled forever, and word 
 was brought to the woman who wept that she was to walk 
 thenceforth alone in the shadow. The hideous infamy of the 
 deed shocked the nation to its depths, for the man thus struck 
 at was in a peculiar sense the champion of the plain people, 
 in a peculiar sense the representative and the exponent of 
 those ideals which, if we live up to them, will make, as they 
 have largely made, our country a blessed refuge for all who 
 strive to do right and to live their lives simply and well as 
 light is given them. The nation was stunned, and the people 
 mourned with a sense of bitter bereavement because they had 
 lost a man whose heart beat for them as the heart of Lincoln 
 once had beaten. We did right to mourn; for the loss was 
 ours, not his. He died in the golden fulness of his triumph. 
 He died victorious in that highest of all kinds of strife — 
 the strife for an ampler, juster and more generous national 
 life. For him the laurel; but woe for those whom he left 
 behind; woe to the nation that lost him; and woe to man- 
 kind that there should exist creatures so foul that one among 
 them should strike at so noble a life. 
 
 We are gathered together to-night to recall his memory, 
 to pay our tribute of respect to the great chief and leader 
 ';vho fell in the harness, who was stricken down while his eyes 
 were bright with "the light that tells of triumph tasted.'' Wc 
 can honor him best by the way we show in actual deed that 
 we have taken to heart the lessons of his life. We must 
 strive to achieve, each in the measure that he can, something 
 of the qualities which made President McKinley a leader of 
 men, a mighty power for good — his strength, his courage, his 
 courtesy and dignity, his sense of justice, his ever-present 
 kindliness and regard for the rights of others. He won great- 
 
INTRODUCTION IX 
 
 ness by meeting and solving the issues as they arose— not 
 by shirking them — meeting them with wisdom, with the exer- 
 cise of the most skilful and cautious judgment, but with fear- 
 less resolution when the time of crisis came. He met each 
 crisis on its own merits; he never sought excuse for shirking 
 a task in the fact that it was different from the one he had 
 expected to face. The long public career, which opened when 
 as a boy he carried a musket in the ranks and closed when 
 as a man in the prime of his intellectual strength he stood 
 among the world's chief statesmen, came to what it was be- 
 cause he treated each triumph as opening the road to fresh 
 effort, not as an excuse for ceasing from effort. He under- 
 took mighty tasks. Some of them he finished completely; 
 others we must finish; and there remain yet others which he 
 did not have to face, but which if we are worthy to be the in- 
 heritors of his principles, we will in our turn face with the 
 same resolution, the same sanity, the same unfaltering belief 
 in the greatness of this country, and unfaltering championship 
 of the rights of each and all of our people, which marked 
 his high and splendid career, 
 
CHAPTERS 
 
 1. Family Relations, Boyhood and Education' r 
 
 2. A Soldier and His War Record 20 
 
 3. Lawyer and Officeholder 52 
 
 4. An Orator and His Speeches 78 
 
 5. A President and His Cabinet. 109 
 
 6. McKinley in the Home and as Commander- 
 
 in-Chief 133 
 
 7. McKinley's Diplomacy, Morals and Religion.. 160 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 McKinley in the White House Library. . . . 
 
 Frontispiece 
 
 PACK 
 
 liirthplace lo ^ 
 
 McKinley at the Age of Fifteen i8 -^ 
 
 McKinley in Fraternity Costume 36 - 
 
 AlcKinley in His Library, Canton, Ohio. ... 66 ^ 
 
 A Characteristic Pose 84 / 
 
 McKinley Delivering His First Inaugural 
 
 Speech 106 • 
 
 The War Cabinet 1 10 ' 
 
 Home of McKinley, Canton, Ohio 134 
 
 Katie McKinley, the President's Daughter. . 138 
 
 McKinley on the Famous Front Porch 146 
 
 Temporary Tomb of McKinley, Canton, 
 
 Ohio 172 
 
 Interior View First M. E. Church, Canton, 
 
 Ohio 180' 
 
 McKinlev National Memorial, Canton. Ohio 184/ 
 
WILLIAM Mckinley. 
 
 A 
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDY 
 
WILLIAM Mckinley 
 
 A Biographical Study 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 FAMILY RELATIONS, BOYHOOD AND EDUCATION 
 
 IN an address delivered before the Phillips 
 Exeter Academy, in 1893, Phillips Brooks 
 said: ''Since the noblest life on earth 
 is always human life, the literature which 
 deals with human life must always be the no- 
 blest literature. And since the individual hu- 
 man life must always have a distinctness and 
 interest which cannot belong to any of the 
 groups of human lives, biography must always 
 have a charm which no other kind of history 
 can rival. I believe fully that the intrinsic 
 life of any human being is so interesting that 
 if it can be simply and sympathetically put in 
 words, it will be legitimately interesting to 
 other men.'* 
 
 The scope and aim of this biography is a 
 
William McKinley 
 
 portrayal of William McKinley, not so much 
 in an historical sense as in that of his personal- 
 ity. I will not try to be conventional. I aim 
 to sketch the man as he really was; what he 
 was among his friends; what he was in the 
 hours of work as well as in the hours of leis- 
 ure; what he said himself and what his close 
 associates said of him. In short, I aim to 
 speak the truth, while endeavoring to bring 
 in important events and throw sidelights on 
 his character that may be interesting, without 
 giving a complete and connected biography of 
 the man. 
 
 No one is more cognizant than the author 
 of the fact that the time has not come to judge 
 impartially and accurately the acts of William 
 McKinley as a statesman. The main details 
 of his career have been rehearsed so often that 
 they are familiarly known to the reading pub- 
 lic, but as to the meaning and significance of 
 his life we do not know where history will 
 place him. We are too near his time to right- 
 ly determine his full stature. But it is be- 
 lieved that with the passing seasons, when the 
 secret workings of his life have been revealed, 
 that his memory will shine with brighter lustre 
 and his fame will be more radiant than during 
 the years he dwelt among us. This biography 
 then is not only a series of sketches, but an ap- 
 preciation of the character of William McKin- 
 ley. What we say, then, of his character and 
 
'A Biographical Study 
 
 his kindness of heart we say without fear of 
 challenge. 
 
 Few men have been so universally beloved 
 as was William McKinley. Senator George 
 F. Hoar, of Massachusetts, a man who differed 
 with McKinley as to his Philippine policy, said 
 in his autobiography that ''No man has lived 
 in this country since Daniel Webster died, save 
 McKinley alone, who had so large a number 
 of devoted friends and admirers in all parts of 
 the country." 
 
 McKinley was brilliant as a statesman and 
 uniformly wise as a ruler. But it can be said 
 with deliberate judgment that the most strik- 
 ing feature of his whole life was his warm, 
 genial and generous nature. The last word 
 can never be said, wrote a well-known writer, 
 of such a man. To know William McKinley 
 was to love him. His influence in both public 
 and private life was of the loftiest and most 
 benignant sort. 
 
 Every nation and clime produce characters 
 which cannot perish from human memory. 
 They inbreed within the soul of man, passions 
 of love, honor and fidelity. They command 
 our respect and admiration. We look upon 
 them with a source of joy and pride, when we 
 note what they were and what they accom- 
 plished for the good of humanity. They in- 
 carnated the spirit of the times in which they 
 lived, and they were the embodiment of the 
 
 1 
 
William McKinley 
 
 mental and moral forces of their period. Such 
 was Washington at the beginning of American 
 history. Such was Lincoln during the great- 
 est crisis which ever befell our country. And 
 such was McKinley during the third period of 
 moment in the history of our nation. 
 
 McKinley's rise from obscurity to fame and 
 power was no strange coincidence. The his- 
 tory of America since her inception has been 
 full of such records. McKinley's was only 
 one of the many. We have our Lincolns, our 
 Garfields, our Greeleys. 
 
 The successes of McKinley's life, gained dur- 
 ing hard years of unceasing toil, were steps of 
 evolution. Like Abraham Lincoln, the higher 
 he rose the more modest, the more serene, the 
 more gentle and the more kindly in his deal- 
 ings with his fellow-men he became. Thus, 
 when he assumed the Presidency, he was equal 
 to all the cares and responsibilities that the high 
 office embodied. He had the advantage of 
 good blood; for his ancestors were sturdy, in- 
 dustrious, high-minded, public-spirited and fru- 
 gal. They did not belong to the royal class of 
 Scotland, but were of a more substantial type, 
 which eschewed that land and sought a larger 
 freedom in the New World. Owing to some 
 of the inaccurate data which has been published 
 concerning President McKinley's genealogy, I 
 will quote from a sketch, which may be relied 
 
'A Biographical Study 
 
 upon as being correct, prepared by the Rev. A. 
 Stapleton. 
 
 ''The ancestors of President McKinley be- 
 longed to that sturdy race of people called the 
 Scotch-Irish, so called because in 1607 King 
 James I. located a large number of Scots in the 
 northern part of Ireland on lands from which 
 the Irish had been evicted. These settlements 
 were gradually augmented by immigration un- 
 til eventually the Scotch-Irish element predom- 
 inated in this region. They were stanch Pres- 
 byterians in faith, and in course of time devel- 
 oped traits and peculiarities so marked as to 
 stamp them as almost a distinct race. In 
 course of time this noble people were overtaken 
 by many hardships, such as the successive fail- 
 ure of crops, besides very unsatisfactory civil 
 and religious conditions. Their only source 
 of relief was in emigration to America, in 
 which they were encouraged by agents of the 
 American colonies. After 171 5 the emigra- 
 tion became very extensive, the chief port of 
 arrival being New Castle, on the Delaware, be- 
 low Philadelphia. The Scotch-Irish being 
 citizens of the British realm, their arrival is 
 not a matter of record, that of the Germans, 
 Swiss, Dutch, etc., who are designated as for- 
 eigners in the colonial records, and were re- 
 quired to subscribe to an oath of allegiance 
 upon arrival, besides a subsequent naturaliza- 
 tion. Hence it follows that citizens of the 
 
(5 William McKinley 
 
 realm are more difficult to identify than for- 
 eigners by the historian. Our only recourse 
 is in tax lists, land warrants, court records, etc. 
 
 "In the case of President McKinley we have 
 an undisputed record to his great-grandfather, 
 David McKinley. We know that he was a 
 Revolutionary soldier, that he was born in 
 York County, Pa., that he removed to West- 
 moreland County after the Revolution, and in 
 1814 to Ohio, where he died. In the cem- 
 etery of the Chatfield Lutheran Church, in 
 Crawford County, Ohio, may be seen two 
 modest granite markers with the following in- 
 scription : 
 
 " *David McKinley, Revolutionary soldier, 
 born, 1755; died, 1840, and Hannah C. Rose, 
 born, 1757; died, 1840.* 
 
 "David McKinley was the father of James, 
 born September 19, 1783; married Mary Rose, 
 of Mercer County, Pa., and removed thence to 
 Chatfield, where he purchased a farm, on 
 which he died. He was the father of William 
 McKinley, Sr., born in 1807, and died in Can- 
 ton, Ohio, in 1892. The latter was the father 
 of President McKinley. Hannah C. Rose, 
 buried by the side of David McKinley, was the 
 great-grandmother of the President. 
 
 "For the history of the family prior to Da- 
 vid, the soldier, we must rely on the court- 
 house records at Lancaster, and York, Pa. 
 From various documents and entries we think 
 
'A Biographical Study 
 
 the evidence incontrovertible that David Mc- 
 Kinley, the head of the clan McKinley in 
 America, landed at New Castle, and located in 
 (now) Chanceford Township, York County, 
 Pa., in 1743. At that time he was well along in 
 life. He was accompanied by his wife, Esther, 
 and three sons, John, David, Stephen and a 
 daughter, Mary. There are frequent references 
 to these sons in the county archives. The im- 
 migrant was a weaver by trade, but, like all 
 thrifty artisans of that day, he secured a good 
 homestead. It is possible, but not probable, 
 that he arrived in the province earlier than 
 1743, but in this year his name first appeared 
 on the records in a warrant for 316 acres of 
 land on a beautiful elevation, overlooking the 
 Susquehanna River in the distance. 
 
 ''That he was a man of enterprise is shown 
 in the fact that in 1749 he circulated a petition 
 for a public highway, which he also presented 
 to Court. The following year he was made 
 supervisor, and doubtless had the task imposed 
 on himself to engineer his road to completion. 
 His name occurs frequently in the most honor- 
 able way, showing him to have been a man of 
 unusual probity and worth as a citizen. 
 
 "David McKinley, the immigrant, died in- 
 testate in 1757, leaving his wife and children 
 as already named. His daughter was inter- 
 married with Samuel Gordon. The settlement 
 of the estate shows personal prosperity to the 
 
8 William McKinley 
 
 value of £220, or $1,100, besides the planta- 
 tion, which was divided. Later, however, the 
 son John (who, with his mother, was the ex- 
 ecutor) purchased the entire estate. 
 
 *This leads us to the consideration of the 
 second generation, viz., John McKinley, eldest 
 son of the immigrant. Before entering upon 
 details, we here throw out the precautionary 
 statement that the names McKinley and Mc- 
 Ginley are both contemporaneous and inter- 
 changeable in our early records, owing to the 
 carelessness of scribes. They were, however, 
 separate families in York County. The Mc- 
 Ginleys proper came from James McGinley, 
 who died in York County in 1755, leaving an 
 only son, John. No relationship is known to 
 have existed between the families, although 
 remotely it might have been the case. The 
 President's ancestors, so far as we have ascer- 
 tained, always wrote their name as now. 
 
 ^'Resuming our narrative of the McKinleys; 
 John, son of the immigrant, was born about 
 1728, and in his day was one of the foremost 
 men of York County. He became a large 
 land-owner, and frequently figures in impor- 
 tant business transactions. When hostilities 
 broke out with the Mother Country he stanchly 
 supported the revolution, and was made Wag- 
 on Master for Chanceford Township by the 
 Committee of Safety. He died on his estate 
 February 18, 1779, being survived by his 
 
'A Biographical Study 
 
 widow, Margaret, an only son, David, great- 
 grandfather of the President, and daughters, 
 Esther, Jean, EHzabeth and Susan. The 
 widow subsequently married Thomas McCul- 
 loch. She died in the winter of 1781. 
 
 ''This leads us down to David McKinley, 
 grandson of the emigrant and great-grand- 
 father of the President. He was born on the 
 old homestead in Chancefield Township, May 
 16, 1755. In 1776 he enlisted in Captain 
 Reed's Company of Ferrymen in the War of 
 the Revolution. This was the Seventh Com- 
 pany of the Eighth Battalion of York County 
 Militia. The Militia-men, it should be remem- 
 bered, were called out in emergencies, and were 
 drafted in sections for active service, making 
 what were then called tours of service. In this 
 way nearly all the Militia of Pennsylvania saw 
 many tours of service, much hard fighting and 
 the most perilous kind of military life." 
 
 This David McKinley, who was a Revolu- 
 tionary soldier, was not a distinguished officer, 
 but came from that grand class of privates. 
 On the President's grandmother's side he came 
 from equally good stock. Mary Rose, who 
 married James McKinley, the second, came 
 from Holland, where her ancestors had fled 
 from religious persecution in England. An- 
 drew Rose was the first to see these shores. 
 He came over with William Penn, and became 
 one of the representatives of the thirteen Colo- 
 
lo William McKinley 
 
 nies prior to the Revolutionary War. His son, 
 Andrew, was the father of Mary Rose, the 
 mother of WilHam McKinley, the father of 
 the President. 
 
 In the year 1829, at New Lisbon, Ohio, Will- 
 iam McKinley, Sr., married Nancy Campbell 
 Allison, whose descendants came from Eng- 
 land and settled in Virginia. Mrs. William 
 McKinley, Sr.'s, branch, however, emigrated 
 to Pennsylvania. Her grandfather not only 
 fought in the American Revolution, but made 
 bullets and cannon. William McKinley, Sr., 
 took his wife to the small town of Fairfield, 
 Ohio, in order that he might be near his iron 
 foundry, located in New Wilmington. For 
 nearly twenty years he was engaged in this 
 business. From Fairfield they moved to Niles, 
 Trumbull County, another small town. In this 
 town, in a plain, wooden dwelling, close to the 
 road, adjourning a field, as it has been de- 
 scribed, the William McKinley was born 
 on January 29, 1843. His birthplace was 
 standing until the year 1895, although previ- 
 ous to that period the ground floor had been 
 converted into a store. In 1896, when Mc- 
 Kinley was running for the Presidency, the 
 house was divided and part of it removed. 
 Some of the wood of the building at this time 
 was made into canes and used in the campaign 
 for parade purposes. 
 
 William was the seventh child, and after him 
 
A Biographical Study it 
 
 came a boy and a girl. His parents were not 
 what would be called well-to-do people, but 
 they were by no means as poor as Lincoln's 
 family. In his youth the boy William was a 
 manly little fellow. He possessed pluck, de- 
 termination and will power, and, it is said, 
 used them right. Although inclined to be 
 studious and thoughtful, he was a real boy, 
 nevertheless, enjoyed skating, fishing and 
 sports of all kinds. As to his skating, an old 
 chum has said : *'He couldn't do much at fan- 
 cy figures, but he could beat lots of the boys 
 when it come to a straight-out race. He'd 
 swing along like a steam engine, often with a 
 stick in both hands and tippet flying from 
 around his neck and under his arms." 
 
 William was very popular with the rest of 
 the boys; they liked him and sought his com- 
 panionship. 
 
 A story is told of his fishing that shows his 
 patience. It is said that he would sit for hours 
 waiting for a bite. One day he came home 
 after dark, and his mother inquired where he 
 had been. "I was fishing, mother," he replied. 
 
 ^'Fishing?" said his mother. "I don't see 
 any fish." 
 
 "I didn't catch any to-day. But I located 
 a big fellow, and I'll get him to-morrow." 
 
 McKinley was blessed with a good, Chris- 
 tian mother. She was a hard worker, but she 
 found time to help her children develop noble 
 
12 William McKinley 
 
 characteristics and teach them to be thoughtful 
 for others. In his early days we find him 
 leading the same kind of a life as the boys of 
 his neighborhood. He said of himself on one 
 occasion that "he did anything a boy would do 
 around the house ; that money was very scarce, 
 and one had to work hard for what little money 
 one had." 
 
 A gentleman well acquainted with the fam- 
 ily said, in speaking of McKinley's boyhood 
 days: "I can still see him in my mind's eye, 
 the bright little chap in swaddling clothes that 
 I used to give hobby-horse rides on my knee. 
 Little Willie was an exceptionally bright child, 
 and I always predicted great things for him, 
 but little did I then dream that he would be- 
 come the Chief Magistrate of the greatest gov- 
 ernment on earth. I never heard him say an 
 unkind word to his parents. He was a good 
 boy to his mother." 
 
 And this statement is borne out by the words 
 of his own mother when her son became Presi- 
 dent. **William was always a good boy. I 
 could always depend upon him. He never 
 gave me a cross word, and I don^t believe he 
 ever told me a lie. I'm glad that he is Presi- 
 dent, for his sake, even though I did used to 
 think he'd make a fine minister." 
 
 On the day of his inauguration no one was 
 happier than the little mother who had come 
 on from Canton to see her son made President 
 
' A Biographical Study 13 
 
 of the United States. As McKinley took the 
 oath of office the tears that fell from her eyes 
 were tears of pride and joy. 
 
 She remained a short time at the White 
 House, and then went back to her modest little 
 home in Ohio. Every day she received a let- 
 ter from *'my William," as she called him, and 
 her only regret was that her husband had not 
 lived to see their son made President. 
 
 During the days of stress and worry and re- 
 sponsibility these letters never failed to go 
 from the White House to the little woman in 
 Canton, but one day came when the President 
 was summoned to the bedside of his dying 
 mother. There he sat, hour after hour, until 
 the end came, on December 12th, 1897. He 
 and his brother Abner made the arrangements 
 for the funeral, and then, after all was over, 
 he returned to Washington, a sad and heavy- 
 hearted man. When he was running for the 
 Presidency he once granted an interview to a 
 youth, who asked: "Can a boy neglect his 
 mother and get along and be great, Mr. Mc- 
 Kinley?" "Harry," said the President-elect, 
 "a boy should always be good to his mother, 
 and do everything in the world he can and love 
 her. He must comfort her, be kind and gentle 
 to her, and not only do all he can to make her 
 happy, but he should make opportunities to 
 try and do everything he can do. A boy can- 
 not expect to succeed if he isn't good to his 
 
14 William McKinley 
 
 mother. A boy should do all the work for her, 
 because when the time comes that she has got 
 to leave for a greater world than this, and if 
 he has done what is right towards her, all the 
 time, then when the time comes for her to go 
 he will never regret the good he has done 
 towards her." 
 
 William McKinley learned to read at an 
 early age. He was taught by his older sis- 
 ters and brothers before he went to school. 
 At the age of six he was sent to the village 
 school at Niles. Here he was instructed in the 
 first rudiments of education. The father wish- 
 ing to provide the best training for his chil- 
 dren, decided that Niles was too small a place ; 
 that it was deficient in many ways. He there- 
 fore moved his family to Poland when William 
 was nine years old. This town was an agri- 
 cultural and mining village, situated about 
 eight miles south from the city of Youngstown. 
 It is said that Poland never grew much, for it 
 was too near Youngstown, but it was a patri- 
 otic little village, for ''there were always more 
 volunteers than Poland's quota justified." 
 
 When McKinley's time was not occupied in 
 study or at work doing the chores around the 
 house, he would be listening to the men of the 
 neighborhood talk politics and discuss State 
 rights, and very often would he go over to 
 Youngstown to hear some fine speaker who 
 was scheduled to address a political meeting. 
 
A Biographical Study 15 
 
 After hearing some of these big politicians, as 
 they were called, William and the other school- 
 boys thought they would like to learn how to 
 speak, so McKinley said, "I'll tell you what 
 we can do." "What?" repHed the boys. "We 
 can organize a debating society." The subject 
 was suggested to others, and every one seemed 
 to fall in with the idea. The society was 
 formed. It was known as the "Everett Soci- 
 ety," in honor of Edward Everett. 
 
 William McKinley became its first president, 
 and the subjects that were taken up were 
 most interesting. The members soon saved 
 money enough to buy a carpet for the floor of 
 the hall, and at the first meeting after the car- 
 pet had been placed down a rainstorm came up. 
 The members came, however, but did not dare 
 to venture inside the room with their muddy 
 feet. One boy suggested that they all take off 
 their shoes. This was done at once, and the 
 president took the chair and the debate pro- 
 ceeded. 
 
 Even as a child McKinley had a good deal 
 of sentiment. A lady in Ohio is in possession 
 of a souvenir given her by Mr. McKinley, of 
 which she is very fond. It is a stanza written 
 when he was only twelve years old. She was 
 a schoolgirl at the time : 
 
1 6 William McKinley 
 
 **Friend Lucy : 
 
 "A heart of heavenly purity 
 Is laid within thy breast, 
 And ever for the weary soul 
 It breathes some time of rest. 
 
 "Nov. I2th, 1855, Poland, Ohio. 
 
 "Wm. McKinley." 
 
 John Hay, in his address on McKinley be- 
 fore the two houses of Congress, said : 
 
 "He grew up in the company of boys like 
 himself, wholesome, honest, self-respecting. 
 They looked down on nobody; they never felt 
 it possible they could be looked down upon. 
 Their houses were the houses of probity, piety, 
 patriotism. They learned in the admirable 
 school readers of fifty years ago the lessons of 
 heroic and splendid life which have come down 
 from the past. They read in their weekly 
 newspapers the story of the world's progress, 
 in which they were eager to take part, and of 
 the sins and wrongs of civilization with which 
 they burned to do battle. It was a serious and 
 thoughtful time. The boys of that day felt 
 dimly, but deeply, that days of sharp struggle 
 and high achievement were before them. They 
 looked at life with the wondering yet resolute 
 eyes of a young esquire in his vigil of arms. 
 They felt a time was coming when to them 
 should be addressed the stern admonition of 
 
^ Biographical Study i^ 
 
 the apostle : "Quit you like men ; be strong." 
 The lessons of honesty, of faithfulness and 
 of gentleness which William McKinley learned 
 from his Christian mother were abiding ele- 
 ments of character during his entire life. In 
 later years President McKinley often said that 
 his mother was an inspiration to him. Mr. 
 McKinley, Sr., had been a great reader, and 
 would often discuss the questions of the day 
 with his children, and doubtless Wiliam, Jr., 
 inherited his love of reading. 
 
 When the McKinley family moved to Po- 
 land, William entered the Academy. From 
 the Academy he was sent to Allegheny Col- 
 lege, at Meadville, Pa. He had done so well 
 at school that when he was examined for ad- 
 mission he was placed in the junior class. This 
 cut off one year of the regular course, and it 
 helped young McKinley greatly, for he knew 
 the sacrifices of his parents, so that he might 
 secure a good education. He therefore pur- 
 sued his work in such zealous fashion that be- 
 fore he had been at college a year his health 
 broke down, and he was compelled to discon- 
 tinue his studies. It is said that he expected 
 to return to school, but just at that time wages 
 fell, throwing many out of employment. The 
 McKinleys suffered with the rest, although the 
 father still retained his position as iron manu- 
 facturer. Young McKinley, seeing all hopes 
 
1 8 William McKinley 
 
 of returning to college gone, then sought em- 
 ployment. 
 
 He applied for the position of teacher at the 
 Kerr district school and secured the place. 
 The school was about two and a half miles 
 from his home, and McKinley used to walk 
 over in the morning and back again in the 
 afternoon. Some of the students were quite 
 as old as the young instructor, but he got along 
 admirably. The salary was not large, only 
 $25 a month, but "it was better than nothing." 
 It was the custom for the teacher to ''board 
 round" with the directors of the school, but he 
 lived at home principally. 
 
 After the school term closed young McKin- 
 ley became assistant postmaster in the Poland 
 post office, and here is where we find him when 
 Fort Sumter was fired on. The news of Fort 
 Sumter's surrender stirred McKinley, for "the 
 fighting blood of many generations flowed in 
 his veins." 
 
 To speak again of his schooling, it may be 
 said that he was diligent and faithful, though 
 perhaps not a brilliant scholar. He loved to 
 gain a general knowledge. In later years he" 
 took private lessons in Greek and Hebrew. 
 To him education meant the secret of success. 
 Speaking once of his student days, he said : 
 
 *'Exact knowledge is the requirement of the 
 hour. You will be crippled without it. Luck 
 will not last. It may help you once, but you 
 
WILLIAM McKINLEY AT THE AGE OF FIFTEEN 
 Reproduced by courtesy of Collier's Weekly. 
 
"A Biographical Study 19 
 
 cannot count on it. Labor is the only key to 
 opportunity." 
 
 His life was full of hours of study and 
 thought. To him a life well spent meant 
 ceaseless activity, a higher ideal for self and a 
 striving to uplift our fellow-men. By this 
 splendid discipline McKinley created a mind 
 that was alert, clear, sagacious and comprehen- 
 sive. 
 
 His years of training were everything in a 
 life that was destined to play so important a 
 part in the world's work. The superstructure 
 that he built in those early days helped in a 
 marked degree toward the life of the later full- 
 grown man of stainless honor, of wholl'-heart- 
 ed friendliness and kindliness, *'in its simplicity 
 sublime." 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 A SOLDIER AND HIS WAR RECORD 
 
 THE most inspiring feature of the world's 
 civilization is character. It is the com- 
 posite element of the best traditions of 
 the human race. But in a literal sense, 
 character means more than goodness, purity 
 and honesty; it means bravery and courage as 
 well. 
 
 The stern admonition of the apostle when he 
 said, ''Quit you like men ; be strong," meant all 
 these; strong in body, strong in uprightness, 
 strong in faith and strong when duty calls. 
 
 It is very difficult for us to-day to realize the 
 vital dissensions which prevailed about the 
 days of '6i, when the guns of Fort Moultrie 
 thundered forth their attack upon Fort Sum- 
 ter. In an instant, as it were, a million men 
 stood eager to sacrifice themselves, their homes 
 and kindred for duty's sake; ready to die, if 
 need be, for the saving of their country. Love 
 of country was deeply written in the hearts of 
 the Boys in Blue and the Boys in Grey. This 
 manifestation of heroism and devotion has 
 never been equalled in the world's history, for 
 brother was arrayed against brother. 
 
^A Biographical Study 2ii 
 
 As Lincoln said, ''the prayers of both could 
 not be answered." But to-day all prejudices 
 have mellowed and softened into real bonds of 
 kinship. A reunited country is the fruit that 
 was born from the mighty conflict. We glory 
 in the fact that human slavery was swept for- 
 ever from American soil, and that a mighty 
 nation was again restored to itself, "save for 
 the thousands who were left lying dead on the 
 field of honor!" 
 
 William McKinley was the kind of youth 
 ioT whom war had little attraction. But when 
 the call came he was not found wanting. The 
 love of liberty burned in his heart. It has been 
 said that it was to him a Crusade for liberty, 
 and, like a knight of the Holy Cross, he en- 
 listed in the ranks. 
 
 William McKinley's perhaps greatest desire 
 when he became President was, like Lincoln's, 
 to know no North, no South, no East, no West. 
 And with candor, it may be said, that no Pres- 
 ident since Lincoln did so much to reunite the 
 South again into the friendly counsels of the 
 nation. 
 
 At Atlanta, Ga., he said : "The time has 
 now come in the evolution of sentiment and 
 feeling under the Providence of God when in 
 the spirit of fraternity we should share with 
 you in the care of the graves of the Confed- 
 erate soldiers. 
 
 "The cordial feeling now happily existing 
 
.22 William McKinley 
 
 between the North and the South prompts this 
 gracious act, and if it needs further justifica- 
 tion, it is found in the gallant loyalty to the 
 Union and the Flag, so conspicuously shown in 
 the year just past by the sons and grandsons 
 of these heroic dead." 
 
 He concluded that remarkable speech with 
 these eloquent words : 
 
 ''Reunited! One Country again and one 
 Country forever! Proclaim it from the press 
 and pulpit, teach it in the schools, write it 
 across the skies. The world sees and feels it, 
 it cheers every heart in North and South, and 
 brightens the life of every American home. 
 Let nothing ever stain it again. At peace with 
 all the world and with each other. What can 
 -Stand in the pathway of our peace and pros- 
 perity?'' 
 
 One day, in the early part of June, 1861, a 
 meeting was called at the old Sparrow Tavern 
 in the town of Poland, to consider the great 
 question of the hour. 
 
 There was speechmaking and beating of 
 drums, and a general appeal for volunteers to 
 enlist to protect the flag. McKinley with the 
 rest of the young men of Poland walked over 
 to the Tavern. The hall was decorated with 
 red, white and blue. There was a recruiting 
 agent, and he was speaking to the gathering 
 and urging enlistment in the ser\'ice. 
 
 "Our country's flag has been fired upon," he 
 
"A Biographical Study 23 
 
 said, as he pointed to the starry banner above 
 his head. "It has been trailed in the dust by 
 those who should have cherished and loved it. 
 And for what? That this free government 
 may keep a race in the bondage of Slavery! 
 Who will be the first to defend the glorious 
 Stars and Stripes?" "I expect to go," Mc- 
 Kinley said, *'but wish first to consult my 
 mother," which he did. After much persua- 
 sion, the mother consented. Back to the old 
 Tavern he went, and proudly signed his name 
 on the list of volunteers. 
 
 On June 7th, 1861, the volunteers gathered 
 on the village green, ready to start for Youngs- 
 town, thence to Columbus, the State capital. 
 The whole town came out to bid them good- 
 by. It was a holiday in Poland, and some that 
 marched away that day never returned. 
 
 McKinley's mother was there, and with a 
 **God bless you, my boy !" she stood in tears as 
 the last of the volunteers faded from sight. 
 Upon reaching Columbus the recruits marched 
 to Camp Chase, a beautiful spot near the Cap- 
 ital. Here it was that each recruit was ex- 
 amined physically by General John C. Fremont, 
 known as the ''Pathfinder of the West." 
 
 When young McKinley's turn came he was 
 a bit anxious as to the result. The General 
 looked him over, thumped on his chest, and re- 
 marked, ''You'll do." Naturally, the young 
 man was very much pleased as to the outcome, 
 
24 William McKinley 
 
 for it is said he returned to his fellows full of 
 smiles, at which they remarked : "I guess 
 you're goinsf, Will. He didn't turn you down, 
 . did he?" "No," said McKinley, "he said I'd 
 I do. And I'm going to do the very best I can." 
 In those days some thought the war would 
 be short, while others anticipated a long strug- 
 gle. But no one expected it to last four years. 
 McKinley fully realized the importance of the 
 conflict, and expected that time and hard fight- 
 ing alone would cement the opposing forces. 
 
 The Poland recruits became Company E of 
 the Twenty-third Ohio Volunteer Infantry. It 
 was mustered into service for a period of three 
 years on June ii, 1861. And in this regiment 
 McKinley belonged to that grand classification 
 known as privates. 
 
 McKinley in later life seldom spoke of his 
 war record, but one day he was talking with 
 a friend in the Governor's office at Columbfis, 
 and the subject of the war came up. The 
 friend spoke of the Governor's enlistment and 
 service in that conflict. Mr. McKinley leaned 
 back in his chair, and with the pleasant mem- 
 ories of those days long passed said : 
 
 *'I always look back with pleasure upon those 
 fourteen months during which I served in the 
 ranks. They taught me a great deal. I was 
 but a schoolboy when I went into the army, 
 and that first year was a formative period in 
 my life, during which I learned much of men 
 
^A Biographical Study 25 , 
 
 J 
 
 and facts. I have always been glad that I en- 
 tered the service as a private, and served those 
 months in that capacity." 
 
 The Twenty-third Ohio was one of the most 
 conspicuous and celebrated in that it had 
 among its ranks and its officers men who dur- 
 ing their lifetime became famous in different 
 lines. 
 
 The first Colonel of the regiment was Will- 
 iam S. Rosecrans, a graduate of the Military 
 Academy, and one that rose to be a well-known 
 general of the Union army. He was after the 
 war an officer of high rank in the Regular 
 Army. The first Lieutenant-Colonel of the 
 regiment was Stanley Matthews, who, after 
 he retired from service, became United States 
 Senator from Ohio, and still later was appoint- 
 ed an Associate Justice of the United States 
 Supreme Court. 
 
 Its first Major was Rutherford B. Hayes, 
 who won rapid promotion for his gallantry and 
 steadfastness. He became a general, and in 
 1876 was chosen President of the United 
 States. The regiment also produced others 
 that rose to eminence and distinction. 
 
 The statistics of the regiment show that from 
 the time of its formation until it was mustered 
 out of service, in 1865, there were 2,230 men 
 enrolled as members. And it goes on to state 
 t'hat 5 officers and 154 men were killed or died 
 from wounds, and in all there were 567 who 
 
26 JVilliam McKitilcv 
 
 were killed or wounded. Thirty-nine of that 
 nnniK^r died in C\^n federate prisons and from 
 disease, result in*;" from inclement weather and 
 hardships. 
 
 Like Mayes and Gartield. his noted prede- 
 cessors in army hfe, MeKinley was always ob- 
 servant, persistent and ardently desirous of do- 
 ing- the rii^ht thin^- and doinj;- it well. He was 
 ever on hand and ready to perform any service 
 that came within his reach. President Hayes 
 on one occasion, when speakinq^ of McKinley's 
 connection with the Twenty-third Ohio, saiil : 
 
 **At once it was found that he had unusual 
 character for the mere business of war. There 
 is a quartermaster's department in every regi- 
 ment, in every brigade, in every division, in 
 every army. Young as he was. he soon found 
 that in business, in executive ability, young Mc- 
 Kinley was a man of rare capacity, of utuisual 
 and unsurpassed sag-acity : especially for a hoy 
 of his age. When battles were fought or ser- 
 vice was to be performed in warlike things, he 
 always took his place. The night was never 
 too dark : the weather w'as never too cold ; there 
 was no sleet or storm or hail or snow or rain 
 that was in the way of his prompt and efhcient 
 performance of every duty. When I became 
 commander of the regiment he scx^n came to be 
 on my statY, where he remained for one or two 
 years, so that I did literally and in fact know 
 iiim like a book and love him like a brother." 
 
^A Ijiographkai Study 2J 
 
 Xy\xr\n\r the time that young McKinley was 
 on General Hayes's stafY they learned tr^ love 
 each other like brothers. And it is stated that 
 the friendship continued until death calle^l ex- 
 lYesident Hayes. 
 
 Mural HaJsUrad, the famous journalist and 
 author, tells us that at the funeral of the ex- 
 I^resident, in 1892, Governor McKinley and 
 his staff were present, and that McKinley cried 
 like a child when he ^xjked for the last time on 
 the face of his dead comrade and p^r'orj;J 
 friend. 
 
 Durinj^ the war days youn^ McKinley -,tood 
 firm as a r''x:k, in that he did not yield to the 
 terrible temptations that so often lxr->et a man 
 in the rouj^h and ru^j^ed life of the army. He 
 always remained true to his early moral in- 
 struction and religious training received around 
 the home hearthstone. 
 
 Dr. Nardyz, a retired army surgeon, who 
 was McKinley's intimate friend for three years, 
 said some years ago : 
 
 "The young Major seemed to be very re- 
 ligious, 'i'his fact impressed me very much, 
 as well as the deference shown him by the men 
 on this accr/unt. In the three years we were 
 together I never saw Major McKinley drink 
 a drop of hVjuor, nor heard him use a profane 
 word, 'i'hat is wonderful to record of a man 
 thrown into the rough life of the army. It 
 
28 William Mc Kinky 
 
 was not at Antietam that President McKinley 
 distinguished himself, for his regiment had no 
 chance to do anything there. It was at Get- 
 tysburg. His name is always associated in 
 my mind with Gettysburg and a magnificent 
 charge on a stone wall in a hollow before Cem- 
 etery Hill. There is where the young, smooth 
 Major showed the true qualities of a soldier, 
 and the men who were alive after that charge 
 felt a new regard and increased respect for 
 the man who did not swear or drink, but was 
 as cool and collected as the oldest veteran." 
 
 It was said after the war that William Mc- 
 Kinley learned his tactics and duties as a sol- 
 dier very readily. From Camp Chase the regi- 
 ment was ordered to Clarksburg, W. Va., and 
 toward the close of the month it left Clarks- 
 burg and went to Weston. There, it is said, 
 it rained constantly, making it necessary for 
 the soldiers to often sleep on wet blankets. 
 
 The guns that were used in those days were 
 the old-fashioned "smooth-bores." The one 
 that Private McKinley carried during the four- 
 teen months he served in the ranks is still in 
 existence, and is owned by a friend of McKin- 
 ley's in Canton, who, it is needless to say, 
 greatly treasures it. When McKinley was 
 Governor of Ohio he delivered an address in 
 memory of Rutheford B. Hayes. During the 
 speech he spoke a little about his army life and 
 
A Biographical Study 29 
 
 of his first meeting Major Hayes at Camp 
 Chase. Concerning the army, he said: 
 
 'The State could furnish only the most in- 
 ferior guns, and these we positively and proud- 
 ly refused to accept. We would accept noth- 
 ing but the best. The officers spent most of 
 the day in trying to persaude us to receive the 
 guns for a few weeks, if only for the purpose 
 of drill. None of us knew how to use any 
 kind of a musket at that time, but we thought 
 we knew our rights, and were all conscious of 
 our importance. They assured us that more 
 modern guns would soon be supplied. Major 
 Hayes did the talking to our company, and I 
 shall never forget the impression of his speech. 
 He said that many of the most decisive battles 
 in history had been won with the rudest wea- 
 pons. At Lexington, Bunker Hill and many 
 other engagements of the Revolution our fore- 
 fathers had triumphed over the well-equipped 
 English army, with the very poorest firearms, 
 and that even pikes and scythes had done good 
 work in that glorious conflict. Should we be 
 less patriotic than our brave ancestors ? Should 
 we hesitate at the very start of another strug- 
 gle for liberty and union, for the best and 
 freest government on the face of the earth, be- 
 cause we were not pleased with the pattern of 
 our muskets, or with the calibre of our rifles? 
 I cannot at this late day recall his words, but 
 I shall never forget his warmth of patriotic 
 
30 William McKinley 
 
 feeling and the sound sense with which he ap- 
 pealed to us. That was our first and last mu- 
 tiny. We accepted the old-fashioned guns, 
 took cheerfully what was offered, and Hayes 
 held us captive from that hour." 
 
 Previous to September ist the regiment had 
 been divided, but at this date they came to- 
 gether at BuUtown, joined the forces under 
 command of General Rosecrans and moved to 
 Carnifex Ferry on September loth. At this 
 point a small battle ensued, resulting in victory 
 for the Union side. The Confederates were 
 under command of General Floyd. After be- 
 ing driven back they retreated across the Gua- 
 ley River. 
 
 After this fight the regiment having little to 
 do, and the winter weather coming on, went 
 into winter quarters. Some of the hardest ex- 
 periences and most trying times of the war 
 were encountered at this time. The historian 
 of "Ohio in the War" gives us an account of 
 this period. He says : 
 
 *Trom this point the regiment operated 
 against the numerous guerillas infesting the 
 country in that quarter, performing many days 
 and nights of excessively hard duty, marching 
 and counter-marching over the rugged spurs 
 of the Rich Mountain range, and drenched by 
 the almost continual rains of that season. Thus 
 we find the boys who had left their peaceful 
 occupations and happy homes but a few months 
 
'A Biographical Study 31' 
 
 previously suddenly plunged into an actual ser- 
 vice that put to a severe test both their fighting 
 qualities and powers of endurance." 
 
 The hard winter did not break down McKin- 
 ley's health, but seemed to build him up and 
 make him more rugged in stature. He was 
 very fortunate, only suffering one serious ill- 
 ness and being absent once on furlough in his 
 entire service. 
 
 Throughout the war no one showed a better 
 record than he did. During the winter he 
 ministered to the sick in the hospital, and 
 often, it is said, went without his own blanket 
 so he might loan it to another comrade less 
 fortunate than himself. 
 
 In April Private McKinley won his first pro- 
 motion, to that of Commanding Sergeant. The 
 way in which he had borne his part as a pri- 
 vate attracted the attention of his superiors. 
 They recognized in him a person possessing 
 more than the average of courage, steadfast- 
 ness, executive ability and capacity for hard 
 work. He entered upon his new duties on 
 April 15th, 1862. Two days later the regi- 
 ment was ordered to leave winter quarters and 
 pursue the enemy, which they did, encounter- 
 ing the Confederate troops at Clark's Hollow. 
 
 After a slight skirmish, which was of little 
 importance, the Twenty-third proceeded to 
 Princeton, in West Virginia. McKinley's 
 regiment expected a big battle at Princeton, 
 
32 William McKinley 
 
 but fearing that they were not strong enough 
 to hold the place, set fire to it and evacuated 
 it. The Union troops entered the town, put 
 out the fire, and thereby saved the inhabitants. 
 After this Colonel Hayes, who had received a 
 promotion, decided to leave the town and go to 
 Flat Top Mountain, which he did, and he re- 
 mained there until July 13th, when he marched 
 the regiment to Camp Piatt, where they took 
 transport to Parkersburg, and thence to Wash- 
 ington, the Capitol City. This was McKin- 
 ley's first trip to the Capital, and, it is said that 
 he enjoyed viewing the public buildings and 
 the White House. He little thought in those 
 days that later in life he would spend so much 
 of his time as a public servant in that city. 
 
 After the regiment left Washington they 
 were ordered to Frederick, Md., where it was 
 expected a great battle would be fought, but 
 upon the entrance of the Union army the Con- 
 federates departed and took up a strong posi- 
 tion at South Mountain. McKinley himself 
 briefly described this battle in an oration before 
 the Ohio Wesleyan University at Delaware, 
 Ohio, in 1893. He was Governor at the time. 
 He said: 
 
 "It was a lovely September day, an ideal 
 Sunday morning. McClellan's army, with 
 Burnside's corps in front, was passing up the 
 mountain by the national road. General Cox's 
 Ohio division led Burnside's corps and the 
 
A Biographical Study 33 
 
 Twenty-third Ohio was in the lead of that di- 
 vision. Hayes was ordered to take one of the 
 mountain paths, and move to the right of the 
 rebels. At 9 o'clock the rebel picket was driv- 
 en back, and on our pushing forward the rebels 
 advanced upon us in strong force. Our regi- 
 ment was quickly formed in the woods, and 
 charged over rocks and broken ground, through 
 deep underbrush, under the heavy fire of the 
 enemy at short range, and after one of the hot- 
 test fights of the w^ar we drove them out of the 
 woods into an open field near the hill top. An- 
 other charge was ordered by Hayes. No soon- 
 er had he given the word of command than a 
 ball from the enemy's ranks shattered his arm 
 above the elbow, crushing the bone to frag- 
 ments. He called to a soldier to tie his hand- 
 kerchief about the wound, but, turning faint, 
 he fell, his men passing over and beyond him 
 into the fight, where he had ordered them. 
 \yhen he regained consciousness Hayes found 
 himself under a heavy fire, with the bullets pelt- 
 ing the ground all about him. He feared that 
 his men were retreating, but he was soon re- 
 assured, when, on calling out, he was carried 
 safely into friendly cover." 
 
 The battle of Antietam followed shortly 
 after the fight at South Mountain. Here it 
 was that young McKinley distinguished him- 
 self again for bravery. 
 
 The valor of McKinley during the battle of 
 
34 William McKinley 
 
 Antietam has been described by General J. L. 
 Botsford, of Youngstown, Ohio, who was the 
 Quartermaster of the Twenty-third Ohio. He 
 was present, and he says : 
 
 ''At the battle of Antietam McKinley was 
 the Commissary Sergeant of the Twenty-third 
 Regiment O. V. I., and his duty was, of course, 
 with the commissary supplies, which were at 
 least two miles from the battle-field proper. 
 As you, no doubt, are aware, on all battles, 
 whether large or small, there are numerous 
 stragglers, who easily find their way back to 
 where the commissary supplies are. This was 
 the case at Antietam, and McKinley conceived 
 and put into execution the idea of using some 
 of these stragglers to make coffee and carry it 
 to the boys in front. It was nearly dark when 
 we heard tremendous cheering from the left of 
 our regiment. As we had been having heavy 
 fighting right up to this time, our division com- 
 mander, General Scammon, sent to me to find 
 out the cause, which I very soon found to be 
 cheers for McKinley and his hot coffee. You 
 can readily imagine the rousing welcome he 
 received from both officers and men. 
 
 When you consider the fact of his leaving his 
 post of security and driving into the middle 
 of a bloody battle with a team of mules, it needs 
 no words of mine to show the character and 
 determiniation of McKinley, a boy at this time 
 of about 20 years of age. McKinley loaded up 
 
A Biographical Study 35 
 
 two wagons with supplies, but the mules of 
 one wagon were disabled. He was ordered 
 back time and again, but he pushed on. As 
 he gave a can of hot coffee and "hard tack" 
 to one soldier, who had been shot, the comrade 
 muttered, ''God bless the lad!" And McKin- 
 ley afterward said that that alone had repaid 
 him for the tireless energy and danger which 
 he passed through. 
 
 The result of this act of thoughtfulness on 
 the part of McKinley had a tremendous effect 
 on the lines. It made them like a new regi- 
 ment, and when, later, the final order came to 
 charge they did it with renewed vigor and en- 
 ergy. 
 
 At the close of the battle, perhaps the bloodi- 
 est of the war, the Union men had the advan- 
 tage of many points, although the victory, as 
 a whole, is placed in the ''indecisive class." 
 One point was that Lee retreated to the left 
 bank of the Potomac, thereby preventing an 
 attack upon the capital city. 
 
 Upon hearing of Sergeant McKinley's devo- 
 tion to duty and his bravery during the battle 
 of Antietam Colonel Hayes was much im- 
 pressed, and when in Ohio called on Governor 
 Todd and told him of the incident. The Gov- 
 ernor is reported as saying: 
 
 "Such a fellow deserves promotion," and the 
 latter at once wrote to headquarters and re- 
 
^6 William McKinley 
 
 quested that Sergeant McKinley be promoted 
 to Second Lieutenant. 
 
 Directly after the battle of Antietam Mc- 
 Kinley's regiment, a part of the Kanawha di- 
 vision, was ordered back to West Virginia, and 
 there went into winter quarters alongside the 
 falls of the great Kanawha. Here Hayes 
 joined his regiment after a short absence. He 
 was well received by his command, for they all 
 loved him. The camp that winter was named 
 "Camp Lucy Hayes," in honor of the Colonel's 
 wife. 
 
 The regiment remained in winter quarters 
 from October, 1862, to July, 1863. During 
 this time McKinley received his third promo- 
 tion, to that of First Lieutenant, and was as- 
 signed to his old company, in which he had en- 
 listed as a private at the outbreak of the war. 
 
 The Lieutenant passed a good portion of his 
 time drilling his company, but the remainder 
 was spent in reading and studying. Even 
 while in the army, every chance he got would 
 be taken up in studying the lives of great men 
 and the history of his country. 
 
 In July the regiment moved upon John Mor- 
 gan, the raider. Morgan had started with 
 about 2,500 men to raid the country through 
 Kentucky and Indiana ; most of his men were 
 mounted, and when their poor horses became 
 exhausted they would take others from the 
 natives. Morgan soon reached the Ohio River, 
 
McKIXLEY IX FRATERNITY COSTUME. 
 Courtesy of Roller Pub. Co., Canton, Ohio. 
 
A Biographical Study 37 
 
 for his speed was about sixty miles a day. 
 Within about seventy miles from Louisville, he 
 crossed the river into Indiana, and so rapid 
 was his march that on July 14th, he came with- 
 in twenty-eight miles of Cincinnati. Colonel 
 Hayes then started to stop his raid. Morgan 
 did not wish to fight and retreated, but Hayes 
 pursued him, and within the next few days 
 caught him and captured all his men. The 
 raider was taken to the Ohio penitentiary and 
 the Twenty-third Ohio went into winter quar- 
 ters at the same camp again. 
 
 During the ensuing winter Lieutenant Mc- 
 Kinley was placed on Hayes's staff. 
 
 General Hastings, in speaking of McKinley's 
 war services, said : 
 
 "McKinley was always keen, quick and 
 alert, and so was naturally fitted for staff ser- 
 vice, a fact his superiors soon realized and took 
 advantage of, so that during the greater part 
 of the war he served on the staff of the gen- 
 eral officers, one of the most dangerous posi- 
 tions in the army, one which required the ut- 
 most readiness of resource and bravery of the 
 highest order." 
 
 This winter was not so severe as the previous 
 one, but still there was considerable suffering 
 in the camp. The Twenty-third left camp on 
 April 29th, and marched to a position a few 
 miles above Brownstown, and there joined 
 the division commanded by General George 
 
38 William McKinley 
 
 Crook, who was preparing to cut the principal 
 lines of communication between the Southwest 
 and the city of Richmond. McKinley on one 
 occasion spoke of this expedition in the follow- 
 ing words: 
 
 "It was a rough and trying march over 
 mountains and through deep ravines and dense 
 woods, with snows and rains that would have 
 checked the advance of any but the most de- 
 termined. Daily we were brought in contact 
 with the enemy. We penetrated a country 
 where guerillas were abundant, and where it 
 w^as not an unusual thing for our men to be 
 shot from the underbrush — murdered in cold 
 blood. 
 
 "At Cloyd Mountain the regiment encoun- 
 tered the enemy, and there was a fierce and 
 desperate engagement. The advance across 
 the meadow, in full sight of the enemy and 
 in range of their gims, through the creek and 
 up over the works on the ridge, was magnifi- 
 cently executed, and the hand-to-hand combat 
 in the fort was as desperate as any witnessed 
 during the war. Still another charge was 
 made, and the rebels again driven back. On 
 we hurried to Dublin Depot, on the Virginia 
 and Tennessee Railroad, burning the bridges 
 there, tearing up the track and rendering the 
 railroad useless for the transportation of the 
 soldiers or supplies. Then the new river 
 bridge was destroyed, and then with frequent 
 
"A Biographical Study 39 
 
 encounters we went on to Staunton, Va. We 
 entered Lexington, the seat of the Confederate 
 MiUtary Institute, after a sharp engagement, 
 Hayes's brigade in the lead and sustaining all 
 the casualties which occurred. Then on to 
 Lynchburg, where, overcome by superior num- 
 bers, constantly augmented by fast arriving 
 reinforcements from Richmond, the whole di- 
 vision was compelled to retreat. All commis- 
 sary supplies were consumed, and, almost with- 
 out food, we marched and fought our way back, 
 closely pursued by the enemy. 
 
 " 'After we reached our supply train,' to 
 quote General Hayes, Sve stopped and ate, 
 marched and ate, camped about dark, and ate 
 all night. We had marched almost continu- 
 ously for about two months, fighting often 
 with little food and sleep, crossing three ranges 
 of the Alleghanies four times, then ranges of 
 the Blue Ridge twice, and marching several 
 times all day and all night without sleeping.' " 
 
 By those who participated in that march, 
 which occupied a good part of a week, many 
 tales are told. It was one of hardship and 
 suffering. One veteran had said, in speaking 
 of it : *T was used up by it. It was so cold 
 at times I couldn't tell whether I had my nose 
 or feet left, or not. When we laid down to 
 sleep our blankets would often freeze fast dur- 
 ing the night, so that we'd have to take an 
 axe and chop them loose in the morning." 
 
40 Williami McKinley 
 
 "I remember McKinley well on that march. 
 He had just been made a First Lieutenant, and 
 I imagine he had his eye on a captaincy — any- 
 way, he did his full share toward hustling us 
 along and helping stragglers. There was one 
 poor chap who got dead beat out, and in climb- 
 ing the mountainside he slipped and rolled in- 
 to a hollow at least two hundred feet out of 
 the way. There was no ambulance corps 
 around, and no doctor within call, and the 
 Sergeant detailed to look after stragglers, was 
 about as fagged out as the man who took the 
 tumble. I was looking at the poor chap when 
 McKinley rushes up to me, and cries : 'Come 
 on; let's help him up!' And away he goes, 
 and me after him. I can tell you, it was a 
 tough climb down into the hole, and a worse 
 climb back. But we got him on his feet, and 
 then two or three others joined hands with 
 us, and in that way we got him up to the path. 
 We made some hot coffee for him and gave 
 him some liquor, and helped him along, and 
 by and by he was all right again. But he 
 didn't forget what we did for him, and since 
 then he's voted for McKinley six or seven 
 times." 
 
 This great march, as described above, oc- 
 curred in June, 1864. Hayes with his brigade 
 stayed at Charleston until July 18, when they 
 were ordered to attack the Confederates under 
 Early, some ten miles beyond Harper's Ferry. 
 
A Biographical Study 411 
 
 Under the large body of men undef Early the 
 regiment found themselves completely sur- 
 rounded. They bored their way out, however, 
 and after hard fighting were able to join the 
 main body of the troops under command of 
 General Crook, near Winchester. During 
 the next three or four months McKinley's 
 regiment went through hard and desperate 
 fighting. Finally the Southern troops were 
 driven out of the valley of the Shenandoah. 
 At this time General Grant, in command of 
 the Union forces, received information that 
 General Lee had ordered Early to proceed to 
 Richmond. So, upon the reception of this 
 news, Grant withdrew two corps from the 
 valley to assist in the work before him at the 
 capital of the Confederacy. This movement 
 left Crook with only eight corps, or, in round 
 numbers, about 6,000 men. Early, however, 
 had deferred his visit to Richmond, and had 
 taken his place at Strasburg. He there 
 learned that Grant had taken two of Crook's 
 corps, and he at once determined to return 
 and overwhelm Crook, who, not being in- 
 formed of the real condition of affairs, was 
 peaceful at Winchester. 
 
 Early arrived on Sunday morning, July 
 24th. Crook, not believing that Early had 
 come back with his entire force, sent only two 
 small brigades under command of Hayes and 
 Colonel Mulligan to check the advancing of the 
 
42 William McKinley 
 
 enemy, who, it is said, had about twenty thou- 
 sand soldiers. Hayes was badly equipped, 
 having no cavalry and only a small number of 
 men. At once he knew that his men must 
 fight desperately if they expected to escape. 
 
 In a few moments they found themselves 
 surrounded by the cavalry of General Early, 
 and at the moment it looked very much as if 
 they would be compelled to surrender, or, if 
 they attempted to fight, suffer a heavy loss of 
 men. McKinley was still on Hayes's staff, 
 and he with the rest of the regiment had a most 
 trying ordeal before them. Hayes was confi- 
 dent that there would be some way in which to 
 act that would prove advantageous for his 
 regiment. Just then he noticed that Brown's 
 West Virginia regiment, which was in' aii> 
 orchard near by, was holding its ground, and, 
 fearing that it would not surrender until given 
 orders to that effect and that it would be cap- 
 tured, said : *They must be informed that 
 the retreat has sounded." Just then Lieuten- 
 ant McKinley passed by. "Lieutenant, do you 
 see, yonder, Brown's regiment?" Hayes asked. 
 The young officer saluted and said: *'I do, 
 General." "It seems that the Colonel did not 
 hear the retreat; he does not seem to realize 
 that he alone is fighting a body of men ten 
 times his own. He must be given an order to 
 withdraw. Will you carry that order to 
 him?" 
 
A Biographical Study 43 
 
 "I will, General." 
 
 "Understand, it is a very perilous journey." 
 
 "I know that. General, but I will go." 
 
 And before another word was spoken he 
 was off, advancing toward the disabled regi- 
 ment. 
 
 The course compelled him to go before the 
 fire of the enemy. Bullets flew around him 
 on all sides, and once, just as he was reaching 
 his destination, a shell burst almost under the 
 feet of his horse and completely inwrapped 
 him in the smoke. 
 
 "He can't get through. We have even lost 
 sight of him," said one. 
 
 "He'll never come back alive," murmured 
 one of the captains. 
 
 On, and still on he went, all obstacles, en- 
 countering bullets in front and behind him, 
 until at last he arrived unhurt, and safe in the 
 presence of Colonel Brown. 
 
 "I should have thought you would have re- 
 tired without waiting for orders," McKinley 
 said. 
 
 "I was thinking I would retire without wait- 
 ing any longer," the Colonel answered, "and 
 now I am ready to go wherever you lead; but 
 before I go I want to give those fellows just 
 one or two more volleys." 
 
 "Then let 'em have it quickly," McKinley 
 replied. At once the volleys were given and, 
 following under the leadership of Lieutenant 
 
44 William McKinley 
 
 McKinley, Brown's men started for the rear. 
 Some of them were bewildered ; they knew not 
 what to do. One body turned in the direction 
 of the enemy, but with a shout from McKinley 
 they about-faced and went in the right direc- 
 tion. 
 
 Lieutenant McKinley brought the regiment 
 back to Winchester, where it took its place in 
 the brigade. The first one to greet the young 
 officer as he dismounted was Hayes, who said : 
 ''I never expected to see you again alive. You 
 did your duty well." 
 
 During that struggle the loss of officers and 
 men was great. A Captain's rank was va- 
 cant, and the records show that the day follow- 
 ing after the siege William McKinley, for 
 bravery and devotion to duty, won the vacant 
 post. His assignment was to command Com- 
 pany G of the Twenty-third Ohio. 
 
 Another incident is told of McKinley at this 
 time, which shows his kindness of heart. 
 
 It seems that many of the inhabitants of the 
 town came out into the streets to see the sol- 
 diers go by, and some were affected at the 
 sudden turn of affairs. And it is said that, in 
 particular, there was one old lady in Quaker 
 dress who stood crying at her gate. McKin- 
 ley rode up and, saluting her, remarked : 
 
 "Don't worry, madam, we are not hurt as 
 much as it seems. We shall be back again in 
 a few days." 
 
A Biographical Study 45 
 
 The retreat was one which lasted until mid- 
 night. The line of march was one continuous 
 destruction of property. After marching up 
 and down the Shenandoah Valley for a period 
 of some length McKinley's regiment came to 
 Berryville. 
 
 One night, while the regiment was in this 
 locality, Captain McKinley was ordered to 
 take some directions from a Colonel who had 
 misunderstood his orders. It was a very dark 
 night, and McKinley was obliged to go by a 
 dense underbrush. 
 
 In speaking of it afterward, he said: **I 
 scarcely knew what to do. I walked on a 
 short distance, when a voice out of the dark- 
 ness called *Who goes dar?' That was a 
 Southern voice, and without reply I stepped 
 back and took another course. Then came an- 
 other voice, *Who comes there?' and I knew 
 I was once more on the right side. I soon 
 reached the regiment I was seeking, and then 
 there was no more trouble." 
 
 It was a most perilous journey, and had the 
 Southerner Jcnew he was a captain from the 
 Union ranks he would have been shot at once. 
 
 Soon after this came the battle of Opequan, 
 and here McKinley again distinguished him- 
 self by his good judgment and quick percep- 
 tion. 
 
 Captain McKinley was at this time on the 
 staff of General Crook, and at the start of the 
 
 <. 
 
46 William McKinley 
 
 battle he went to Colonel Duvall with a verbal 
 order from General Crook. Duvall did not 
 know the best way to move his division. Mc- 
 Kinley was no more familiar with the country, 
 but he had observed the country closely, as was 
 his wont. "By what route shall I move my 
 command?" inquired Colonel Duvall. Mc- 
 Kinley replied by saying, *'I would move along 
 this creek." 
 
 Duvall, wanting to be more certain, said 
 that he would not move at all without orders. 
 Quick as a flash McKinley, realizing it as a 
 matter of grave importance to move immedi- 
 ately, said, unhesitatingly: "I order you, by 
 command of General Crook, to move your 
 command up this ravine to a position on the 
 right of the army." 
 
 Duvall obeyed at once. 
 
 It was a daring move, but it showed Mc- 
 Kinley's power of decision. He shouldered 
 the whole responsibility. Long after, General 
 Sheridan said to McKinley : ''That order of 
 yours was all right because it turned out all 
 right! But if it had turned out wrong, why, 
 then, it would have been very wrong!" 
 
 A short time after came the capture on Fish- 
 er's Hill. 
 
 McKinley himself said, concerning this cap- 
 ture: ''This was one of the most brilliant of 
 the many brilliant achievements of General 
 George Crook. It was a flank movement 
 
^A Biographical Study 47 
 
 through the woods and mountains to the en- 
 emy's right. Never did troops advance with 
 greater difficulty, on what appeared to be an 
 impossible route over the mountainside, where 
 it seemed the foot of man had never trod. 
 Nothing was more brilliant or decisive during 
 the entire war." 
 
 After the enemy retreated, after being pur- 
 sued for ten miles, the valley seemed to be so 
 much cleared that Sheridan did not think it 
 advisable to make another attack. But Early 
 did not mean to give up his position in the 
 Shenandoah unless forced to. Sheridan left 
 for Washington, and placed in command Gen- 
 eral Wright. Then came the famous fight, 
 known to every reader of history. It has been 
 beautifully portrayed by T. Buchanan Read in 
 his poem, entitled "Sheridan's Ride." 
 
 After consulting with the President and 
 Secretary of War, Sheridan started back to 
 Winchester, nearly twelve miles from his 
 army. He arrived at Winchester on October 
 1 8th, spent the night there, and at daybreak 
 started for Cedar Creek. The sound of boom- 
 ing guns startled him. ''What!" he said, 
 *'the battle can't be on!" He at once hurried 
 in the direction of the sounds. As he rode on 
 he met baggage-wagons and wounded men 
 along the path. He spurred up his horse and 
 rode rapidly on. The route became clogged 
 up more and more, until finally he was com- 
 
48 William McKinley 
 
 pelled to take the field that he might quicken 
 his speed. 
 
 Upon arriving he was informed that Early 
 had attacked them at 5 o'clock in the morning, 
 taking Wright by surprise. Now Wright was 
 in a better position, and as Sheridan came on 
 the field of action a mighty cry went up : *'It's 
 Sheridan! He will tell us what to do." 
 
 General Sheridan rode up to McKinley, who 
 had been earnestly working to keep the enemy 
 from advancing, and asked him where Crook 
 was. 
 
 "I left him over there," replied McKinley, 
 as he pointed toward the place. 
 
 "Come on, boys !" shouted Sheridan, and he 
 and McKinley rode off together, inspiring the 
 men by their words to follow. It is a matter 
 of history and well known how the Union 
 army, inspired by the gallant leadership of the 
 great General as he dashed down the Shenan- 
 doah, drove out Early and his rebel host. 
 
 With the defeat of Early the campaign in 
 the Shenandoah came to an end. Sheridan 
 now led his forces to Kernstown, and there 
 established a camp. McKinley's regiment was 
 located first at one place and then at another 
 until the first of January, 1865, when it went 
 to Cumberland. On that day Colonel Hayes 
 received his appointment as Brigadier-General. 
 During the time the regiment was at Cumber- 
 land the weather was bitter cold. It rained a 
 
A Biographical Study 49 
 
 good deal of the time, and food was very- 
 scarce. The poor soldiers had a hard time of 
 it, and the officers fared no better than the 
 privates. In some cases the privates were bet- 
 ter off, in that most of them had tents, while 
 some of the officers slept on the ground with- 
 out shelter. 
 
 At this time Captain McKinley was serving 
 on the staff of General Crook, and he went 
 with him back to West Virginia. Hancock 
 soon took command, and then McKinley 
 served as a member of his staff. During the 
 winter McKinley was assigned a place on Gen- 
 eral S. S. Carroll's staff in Washington. He 
 was made Adjutant-General, remaining at this 
 point until the close of the war. 
 
 General Sheridan had not forgotten McKin- 
 ley's brave and ceaseless work during the raid 
 in the valley of the Shenandoah, so he recom- 
 mended his promotion. It came on March 
 14th, 1865, when he was elevated to the rank 
 of brevet-major. 
 
 His commission read: "For gallant and 
 meritorious services at the battle of Opequan, 
 Cedar Creek, and Fisher's Hill," and was 
 signed by A. Lincoln. 
 
 The Twenty-third Ohio was mustered out 
 of service on July 26th, 1865. In those four 
 long years of war no one bore his part with 
 greater fidelity to duty, with greater courage 
 or steadiness than William McKinley, who en- 
 
50 William McKinley 
 
 tered, a mere youth, as a private and came out, 
 at the age of twenty-two, a Major. There are 
 other records perhaps more brilHant, others 
 that gained higher place on their country's 
 roll, but none more faithful, more courageous 
 and more alert in every emergency that Will- 
 iam McKinley. He was fortunate in not re- 
 ceiving any wound. Once, at Berryville, his 
 horse was shot from under him, but he was 
 unhurt. The records fail to show that he had 
 more than one furlough. He was never ab- 
 sent from duty on account of illness. It was 
 a record that attracted the attention of many 
 of his superiors, so much so, that General Car- 
 roll and others, it is said, urged him to accept 
 a commission in the regular United States 
 Army. It was a tempting offer. Upon the 
 advice and protests of his mother and family, 
 he gave up army life when the war closed. 
 
 In narrating McKinley's war record it has 
 been the aim of the author to speak of only the 
 most important engagements in which McKin- 
 ley took part. To give the record complete 
 it would be necessary to relate a main portion 
 of the history of the Civil War, and that was 
 not the purpose in this chapter. Tlie author 
 has endeavored as often as possible to quote 
 either the words of McKinley himself concern- 
 ing an engagement, or those of some officer 
 or private on the scene of action who knew 
 exactly what took place. 
 
^A Biographica l Study 5^ 
 
 Military life is hard, even when the best of 
 conditions prevail. But through all those 
 years, which ''tried men's souls," through the 
 temptations and rough environments which 
 exist in army life, it can be said truly that dur- 
 ing the entire struggle he did not lose his viril- 
 ity, but rather grew stronger in nobility of 
 character. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 LAWYER AND OFFICEHOLDER. 
 
 THE war having closed, and McKinley 
 having declined a commission in the 
 regular United States Army, he now 
 diverted his attention toward the selec- 
 tion of his lifework. It was soon observed 
 that he had a yearning for legal science. The 
 love of study and reading was still a predom- 
 inant trait, and with his love of public matters 
 and powers of oratory, his mind naturally 
 tended to the study of the law. 
 
 In his youth and young manhood he had the 
 virility and seriousness of a man, and this at- 
 tracted the professional men who came in con- 
 tact with him. On one occasion his brother 
 Abner said that ^'William was just as much a 
 President in his bearing when he was a lad 
 as he was when he took the oath of office." 
 He was always very thoughtful, and formed 
 readily his own conclusions. Some of his 
 chums spoke of him as "the Studious Will- 
 iam.'* He rather enjoyed this distinction. 
 
 The story is told that, after he had listened 
 very attentively to a case as it was being pre- 
 sented in court one day, a lawyer said to him : 
 
^A Biographical Study 53 
 
 "Well, Mac, what did you think of the case?" 
 "I thought it went through the wrong way," 
 he replied. "Why do you think so?" con- 
 tinued the lawyer. "The defendant didn't 
 bring out his evidence strong enough. He had 
 a good case, it seemed to me. The goods he 
 bought were not as good as they were repre- 
 sented to be, and it wasn't fair to make him 
 pay the full price for them." 
 
 The lawyer expressed the same opinion, and 
 lemarked that the case would likely be ap- 
 pealed. And, strange to say, the case was ap- 
 pealed; taken to a higher court, and there tried, 
 and the verdict proved to be just as McKinley 
 said it ought to be — for the defendant. 
 
 The story is fitting, inasmuch as it shows 
 very readily the judicial mind that young Mc- 
 Kinley had at that early stage of his career. 
 
 The young student commenced his study of 
 the law in the office of a well-known member 
 of the Ohio bar in those days, Judge Charles 
 E. Glidden. The Judge had two offices, one 
 in Youngstown, the other at Canton. It was 
 to the former that young McKinley journeyed 
 to study his chosen profession. It is related 
 that he was then a tireless student, reaching 
 the office early in the morning and paying no 
 attention to lateness of hours. On one occa- 
 sion, the Judge, having forgotten some impor- 
 tant papers that he wished to take home, re- 
 
54 William McKinley 
 
 turned about midnight. There McKinley sat, 
 absorbed in a huge law volume. 
 
 "Don't you ever expect to stop and go home 
 and go to bed, young man?" inquired the 
 Judge. 
 
 ''Oh, yes, Judge, after I master this insur- 
 ance case!" The Judge investigated the case 
 a little, and he, too, became interested. To- 
 gether they sat down and studied the case for 
 an hour. And when the Judge came to a cer- 
 tain part he said: **What do you think of 
 that?" 
 
 *Tt doesn't seem to me to be right," an- 
 swered McKinley. 
 
 "And it is not right," said the Judge, em- 
 phatically. "That decision can never stand as 
 it is." 
 
 Two years later, it is said, the decision which 
 both decided to be incorrect was reversed. 
 
 After remaining with Judge Glidden for a 
 year and a half, in every available moment of 
 which the young student was employed assid- 
 uously in the pursuit of legal knowledge, he 
 left Ohio and entered the celebrated Law 
 School at Albany, N. Y. 
 
 A former friend of the author's, now passed 
 beyond the veil, who was McKinley's fellow- 
 student at Albany, said that he did not impress 
 him so much as a brilliant, as he did a thor- 
 ough, student. He went at the bottom of 
 everything, and got as much out of it as pos- 
 
A Biographical Study 55 
 
 sible. He was earnest, resourceful and dili- 
 gent throughout his entire course. McKinley 
 would often be found listening to the cases as 
 they were tried before the illustrious bar of 
 the New York Court of Appeals. 
 
 Upon graduating from the Albany Law 
 School the young student journeyed to War- 
 ren, Ohio, where he was to take his bar exam- 
 inations. After passing creditably, he located 
 in Canton, Ohio, partly because it was an en- 
 terprising and growing town, thereby offering 
 a larger opportunity for his labors, and partly 
 because his sister Anna, the one who had be- 
 friended him lovingly in all his undertakings, 
 was teaching school there. McKinley opened 
 a small office on the main street of the town. 
 It might be added that, since those days, the 
 office building has been torn down, and the 
 Stark County court house erected in its place. 
 The young lawyer was not pressed for time 
 professionally in those days, but now and then 
 a little work would come his way. 
 
 One day Judge Belden, of Canton, whose 
 office was in the same building as McKinley's, 
 came in and handed the young attorney a bun- 
 dle of papers, saying: ''Mac, here are the 
 papers in a case which is coming up to-mor- 
 row. I've got to be out of town, and I want 
 you to try it.'* 
 
 "I have never tried a case, you know, 
 
56 William McKinley 
 
 Judge/' McKinley meekly replied. "Begin on 
 t^is one, then," answered Belden. 
 
 McKinley at once took the papers, and set 
 to work on the case. He sat up all night and 
 studied it. The next day he went to court 
 and won it. While he was pleading the Judge 
 came in the room, with a twinkle in his eye, 
 and sat down. McKinley did not see him for 
 a few days after he had won the case. Finally 
 one day the Judge came in McKinley's office 
 and handed the young lawyer $25, which Mc- 
 Kinley refused to accept, saying: "It is too 
 much, Judge, for one day's pay." "Nonsense, 
 Mac," said Judge Belden. "Don't let that 
 worry you. I charged them $100, and can 
 easily afford to give you a quarter of it." 
 From that day on McKinley's law practice be- 
 gan to increase, until he became one of the 
 most prominent lawyers in Canton. 
 
 In McKinley's law pleading he indulged in 
 cogent elucidation of facts, and placed them 
 in logical order. His gift of oratory and most 
 pleasing personality helped him in arguing be- 
 fore a jury. He took no mean advantages 
 over his colleague. He always played fair; 
 content to be right, whether he was praised 
 or blamed. He was more anxious to be just 
 than famous. He soon became a leader of 
 the Ohio bar. His early success as a lawyer 
 cannot be better proved than by the fact that 
 in two years from the time he entered upon 
 
A Biographical Study 57 
 
 his profession he was elected prosecuting at- 
 torney of his county, a distinction rarely con- 
 ferred upon so young a man. Shortly before 
 this appointment he formed a partnership with 
 George W. Belden, then Federal District-At- 
 torney for the Ohio district, the gentleman 
 who had given him his first case. And this 
 partnership lasted until the Judge's death. 
 
 In preparing his cases, it is said that Mc- 
 Kinley took nothing for granted. He studied 
 the evidence thoroughly, and arranged his facts 
 in a logical manner, so he could give the points 
 of an argument in such a way as to convince 
 and impress. He would take as much pains 
 with an easy case as he would with one that 
 was complicated. He was conscientious in 
 accepting retainers. When starting as a law- 
 yer he promised his mother that he would 
 never take a case that he did not think was 
 right, and he never allowed that promise to 
 be obliterated from his memory. It is said 
 that he would often do more in the interest of 
 a client than was required. Said a gentleman 
 in later years: "During his law career Mc- 
 Kinley and his partner took up three cases for 
 our firm. They won two and lost the other. 
 At first we were angry at losing that last case, 
 but, looking back, I am satisfied that McKinley 
 did all that any lawyer could do, and more 
 than many would do. A similar case was 
 tried in Philadelphia by the leading lawyers of 
 
58 William McKinley 
 
 that city, and fell through, just as ours did." 
 
 McKinley soon became very popular. The 
 people saw in him a large, warm-hearted char- 
 acter. The community in which he lived 
 strove to help his progress. The young man 
 had enemies, as all who rise up in the world do, 
 many tried to put him backward, but the ma- 
 jority loved him for his kindness of heart and 
 affability. 
 
 There was another case which will bear men- 
 tion, as it showed McKinley's honesty and 
 fairness perhaps more than any other which he 
 ever tried. He had been engaged as counsel in 
 a very important case, one that involved thou- 
 sands of dollars. As he was about to open it 
 he received a notice from his legal opponent 
 asking for a delay. "I am ready to proceed," 
 said McKinley. "Why does my opponent ask 
 for a delay? Everything is in readiness. I 
 cannot grant one unless there is a good reason 
 for it." 
 
 He then learned that some valuable papers 
 of his opponent's had been lost. McKinley 
 granted the request for a delay. A few hours 
 later he was found in the law library, studying 
 the case further, w^hen he came across the lost 
 documents. He took them up; handed them 
 to the librarian, requesting him to give them 
 to Mr. Blank, the lawyer who had asked for 
 the delay. The case came up the next day, 
 and by the trend of McKinley's argument it 
 
A Biographical Study 59 
 
 showed that the honest young lawyer had not 
 looked at the papers. McKinley lost the case, 
 but put in at once a notice of appeal. Mr. 
 Blank said afterwards to some friends that 
 McKinley would have won if he had read the 
 lost documents. When the case came up the 
 second time McKinley won, and ever after- 
 wards it is said the two opposing lawyers were 
 warm friends. 
 
 McKinley's legal knowledge came into ser- . 
 viceable play in not a few of the many public ' 
 positions that were given him to fill. 
 
 In Congress he was first put on the Com- 
 mittee on the Revision of Laws of Judiciary. 
 
 And it is said that his legal views while in 
 Congress, except perhaps on political questions, 
 were never assailed. During his long Con- 
 gressional service the librarian often found 
 him in the section of the Congressional Libra- 
 ry devoted to jurisprudence, consulting au- 
 thorities. Lawyers and judges of the Ohio 
 courts, it is said, often remarked that: "If 
 McKinley stated a proposition it was dif^cult 
 to gainsay it, so thorough had been his exam- 
 inations, and so ethically accurate were his 
 comments." 
 
 Some of the volumes of Critchfield's Ohio 
 Reports show that Mr. McKinley practised 
 his chosen profession during the Congressional 
 recesses. But it is said that "he declined prac- 
 tice in pension cases and before the Court of 
 
6o William McKinley 
 
 Claims, because he was unwilling to incur the 
 suspicion of bartering subsequent votes as to 
 claims through counsel fees." And it is also 
 said that "he would not appear as private coun- 
 sel before committees of the House or Senate, 
 or among the departments of the government." 
 
 Although McKinley had acquired a good ed- 
 ucation, he never ceased to be a student. He 
 recognized that knowledge was the door that 
 unlocks opportunity and advancement to the 
 individual. Up to the very day of his un- 
 timely death he was eager to learn something 
 that he had never known before. It was re- 
 lated in Civil War times that Attorney-General 
 Bates once said : "Confound the President, 
 Lincoln is so excellent a lawyer under the max- 
 im, ladcni ratio ibidem lex, that he is apt to 
 advise himself offhand in matters that apper- 
 tain to the Department of Justice, and does not 
 call for an official opinion." 
 
 The same case existed with the Ohio Attor- 
 ney-General and McKinley, when the latter 
 was Governor of Ohio. The Governor was so 
 familiar with the laws of Ohio, and was so 
 used to being his own legal adviser, that he 
 would often without thinking advise himself 
 offhand in matters relating to the Department 
 of Justice, as Lincoln did in a national sphere. 
 And when McKinley became the Chief Execu- 
 tive of the nation his leeal knowledge again 
 came into play. As an officeholder, McKinley 
 
'A Biographical Study 8ll 
 
 was faithful to every trust. His personal pop- 
 ularity exceeded that of any man of his genera- 
 tion. 
 
 His friendly, loyal and unselfish disposition 
 won him lasting friends. He was generous 
 to a fault. Indeed, his generosity knew no 
 bounds. He never permitted small things to 
 worry him, and it is said that defeat never 
 made him gloomy. His campaigns were con- 
 ducted on a high plane. He never spoke ill 
 of any one, and none could truthfully speak ill 
 of him. 
 
 In the fall after his marriage, in 1871, Mc- 
 Kinley was defeated by a very narrow margin 
 of 45 votes for re-election as Prosecuting At- 
 torney of Stark County. After his defeat 
 he resumed the practice of the law for five 
 years. During this period he was an ardent 
 Republican, but had no personal interests in 
 the results of the elections, except in wishing 
 for party success. He always took an active 
 part, however, in each campaign as a stump 
 speaker. 
 
 Party bosses and political veterans are not 
 inclined to recognize, if they can help it, young 
 blood that seeks political preferment, unless it 
 does not affect their plans of leadership. 
 
 McKinley was no exception to the rule. His 
 friends had urged him to seek the nomina- 
 tion for Congress. He, being ambitious in 
 that direction, accepted their proposal, and an- 
 
62 William McKinley 
 
 tiounced himself as a candidate. It is said 
 the party managers of his district did not take 
 much notice of his candidacy, and Httle thought 
 that McKinley would win. He went into the 
 canvass in his usual vigorous style, being 
 known at that time only as a young lawyer of 
 Canton and former Prosecuting Attorney of 
 Stark County. The good work which McKin- 
 ley rendered the party in the preceding cam- 
 paign, when he assisted his old commander, 
 General Hayes, in his contest for the Govern- 
 orship, won him many votes. A friend has 
 told the author, when speaking of those days, 
 how McKinley and he hired a horse and buggy 
 and drove around the country, meeting per- 
 sonally the voters of the various towns and 
 villages. Although his first nomination was 
 (hard to secure, the election resulted in a vic- 
 tory for McKinley of a plurality of more than 
 thirty-three hundred. It is not strange that 
 the old political war-horses were surprised at 
 the rise of this young man, who was only thir- 
 ty-three, but ever afterwards his party leaders 
 and constituents were proud of him as their 
 representative. When his opponents raised 
 the question of his youth, as some did, they 
 did not remember that Jefferson wrote the 
 Declaration of Independence when he was but 
 thirty-three, that Henry Clay became Senator 
 at twenty-nine, that Madison went to Congress 
 when he was twenty-nine, or that Webster 
 
A Biographical Study 63 
 
 and Blaine entered Congress at thirty-one and 
 thirty-two, respectively. 
 
 McKinley was put at the bottom of the 
 Committee on the Revision of Laws by Speak- 
 er Randall. A committee of not much impor- 
 tance, still it gave the young Congressman 
 time for study and research. In his first 
 years in Congress he was modest, contenting 
 himself to be a silent listener, rather than 
 speaking upon every subject that came up. But 
 it is said that when he did speak he had some- 
 thing to say that was worth hearing. The 
 young Congressman grew day by day in men- 
 tal strength, and soon became a persistent 
 worker. After the day's work at the Capitol 
 he went straight to his hotel and his invalid 
 wife. Tom Murray, who was the manager 
 of the House restaurant for years, tells us that 
 he watched McKinley's daily coming for a 
 bowl of crackers and milk, which, consumed, 
 he returned to his work, while his colleagues 
 "regaled upon terrapin and champagne." Yet 
 it is said that McKinley was very popular with 
 his fellov\^-members on both sides of the House. 
 
 His colleague from Ohio, Hon. John A. 
 Kasson, in speaking of McKinley's Congres- 
 sional career, has said : "I well remember his 
 courteous manner, his flow of candid speech, 
 his patience under interruption by more excit- 
 able members. He always answ^ered by truth- 
 ful statement or conscientious argument, not 
 
64 William McKinley 
 
 by sharp and impatient repartee, as was our 
 more common custom in that numerous assem- 
 bly. Candor and kindness appeared to be in- 
 stinct of his nature. His breast gave no shel- 
 ter to malice or anger. In return, neither wrath 
 nor antipathy ever found expression against 
 that patient and courteous gentleman ; for gen- 
 tleman he was in manner and in every impulse 
 of mind and heart." 
 
 His real Congressional prominence began in 
 his second term in Congress or upon the retire- 
 ment of General Garfield from the Ways and 
 Means Committee after election to the Presi- 
 dency, in 1880. From the day he entered 
 Congress McKinley was a protectionist. His 
 district was a manufacturing one, and this, 
 naturally, led him to consider industrial prob- 
 lems. In his own mind he saw where protec- 
 tion was a benefit, and then and there proposed 
 to stand by that, cause. He faltered not, but 
 sought with all his energy and intellectual vig- 
 or to impress Congress with his views. In a 
 very brief period, when measured by the course 
 of others, he won unusual distinction by his 
 judgment and sagacity. When we remember 
 that he began at the foot of the ladder in com- 
 mittee appointment and steadily worked his 
 way to the front, it is all the more praise- 
 worthy. In his book, 'Twenty Years in Con- 
 gress," James G. Blaine speaks of McKinley, 
 in reviewing the Forty-fifth Congress, in the 
 
A Biographical Study 65 
 
 following words: "The interests of his con- 
 stituency and his own bend of mind led him 
 to the study of industrial questions, and he 
 was soon recognized in the House as one of 
 the most thorough statisticians and one of the 
 ablest defenders of the doctrine of protection." 
 
 McKinley's greatest work in Congress was, 
 of course, on the tariff question. He became 
 a past master in every phase of that subject. 
 A perusal of the "Congressional Record" dur- 
 ing the time in which he was a member of the 
 House will show no better exponent of it than 
 William McKinley. Some one has said that 
 "he was a thorough master of all the intricacies 
 of commercial history and commercial theory 
 which the work of handling such a law in the 
 passage through Congress demanded. He did 
 the work with consummate ability, and entirely 
 earned his right to be known as the father of 
 the McKinley bill, and henceforward as the 
 leading exponent of the protective doctrine in 
 the Republican party." The tariff question is 
 generally regarded as dry and uninteresting to 
 the average person, but McKinley had a way 
 of presenting facts and theories and clothing 
 them in such interesting language that his ad- 
 dresses on that subject were noteworthy. 
 
 The bill which bore his name was signed by 
 the President and became a law on October 6, 
 1890. For the success of this measure Mc- 
 Kinley labored early and late. He never 
 
(id William McKinley 
 
 swerved. No duties were fixed until every 
 condition that was worthy of consideration 
 had been heard. The work was carefully 
 done, and when it was finished, it was said to 
 be *'the best, the most complete bill ever pro- 
 duced." The Hon. John Sherman said of the 
 bill, in a letter to W. C. Harding, of Boston, 
 that, "on the whole, it is the fairest and best 
 tariff, not only for revenue, but for protec- 
 tion, that has had a place on our statute book." 
 In closing his speech on the bill before its 
 passage, and after he had explained its pro- 
 visions and had spoken upon the tariff ques- 
 
 „ tion as a whole, McKinley said : 
 
 /^ "Experience has demonstrated that for U9 
 and ours, and for the present and the future, 
 the protective system meets our wants, our 
 conditions, promotes the national design, and 
 will work out our destiny better than any 
 other. 
 
 "With me this position is a deep conviction, 
 not a theory. I believe in it and thus warmly 
 advocate it, because enveloped in it are my 
 country's highest development and greatest 
 prosperity ; out of it come the greatest gains to 
 the people, the greatest comforts to the masses, 
 the widest encouragement for manly aspira- 
 tions, with the largest rewards, dignifying and 
 elevating our citizenship, upon which the safety 
 and purity and permanence of our political 
 system depend." 
 
? 5 
 
^ Biographical Study Sy 
 
 While it is not the aim to go into McKin- 
 ley's Congressional work as a whole, for it 
 would be impossible in this chapter, still the 
 above was given to show how deepy he felt in 
 regard to the passage of the bill in which he had 
 worked so earnestly and so long. 
 
 It will be remembered that the incoming ad- 
 ministration under Cleveland placed upon the 
 statute books the Wilson-Gorman tariff, which 
 took the place of the McKinley bill. And 
 when it was remarked that the McKinley bill 
 caused the defeat at the polls of the Republican 
 party, the next year after its passage, William 
 McKinley said to Mark Hanna the following: 
 "That may have been so, but the bill was 
 passed so short a time prior to election that it 
 was easy for our opponents to make charges, 
 and there was no time for us to combat them ; 
 but wait and see, Mark; wait and see. The 
 principles and policies of that bill will yet win 
 a greater victory for our party than we have 
 ever had before. This misunderstanding will 
 yet contribute to overwhelming Republican 
 success." 
 
 McKinley served fourteen years in the 
 House, and when he came up for the eighth 
 nomination he found himself facing, as it has 
 been said, a difficult campaign, inasmuch as 
 the Democrats had obtained control of the 
 Ohio Legislature and had gerrymandered his 
 district. This was the second time that this 
 
68 William McKinley 
 
 had been done. McKinley's opponent was the 
 Hon. John G. Warwick, a gentleman who had 
 previously served as Lieutenant-Governor of 
 the State. Nevertheless, the Major, as Mc- 
 Kinley 's friends called him, went into the con- 
 test with as much spirit as in former cam- 
 paign^, and worked hard for his re-election. 
 He came within 300 votes of winning. It 
 was the second and last time that McKinley 
 lost an election. 
 
 After it was known that he had been de- 
 feated he was asked to make a sts.tement in 
 regard to the result, and, taking up a ''Con- 
 gressional Record," he wrote on the back page 
 these words : 
 
 ''Protection was never stronger than it is 
 at this hour, and it will grow in strength and 
 in the hearts of the people. It has won in 
 every contest before the people from the be- 
 ginning of the government. The elections 
 this year were determined upon a false issue. 
 A conspiracy between importers and the free 
 traders of this country to raise prices and 
 charge it upon the McKinley bill was success- 
 ful. But conspiracies are short-lived and soon 
 expire. This one has already been laid bare, 
 and the infamy of it will still further appear. 
 Increased prosperity, which is sure to come, 
 will outrun the maligner and vilifier. Keep up 
 your courage. Strengthen your organizations 
 and be ready for the great battle in Ohio in 
 
A Biographical Study 69 
 
 1891, and the still greater in 1892. Home and 
 country will triumph in the end. Their ene- 
 mies, whether here or abroad, will never be 
 placed in permanent control of the Government 
 of Washington, of Lincoln, and of Grant." 
 
 His defeat for re-election to Congress 
 brought him forth as the candidate for Govern- 
 or of Ohio. Even before he left Congress he 
 was looked upon as candidate. When the con- 
 vention convened no other name was presented, 
 and McKinley was nominated on the first bal- 
 lot. The Major spoke during the campaign 
 which followed in eighty-five counties of the 
 State, and made one hundred and thirty-four 
 speeches. At the polls in November he won 
 a decisive victory over his opponent, Governor 
 Campbell, who had been renominated by the 
 Democratic Convention. McKinley's first 
 term as Governor was a quiet administration. 
 In the summer of 1893 he was renominated, 
 and was elected by a still larger majority than 
 in the first contest, receiving at the time the 
 largest vote that the State of Ohio had ever 
 given a candidate for Governor. His second 
 administration was a far more difficult one. 
 In the first year alone McKinley was com- 
 pelled to call out the militia some fifteen times 
 to maintain peace. 
 
 It was on one of these occasions that a poli- 
 tician called to see the Governor. Mr. Mc- 
 Kinley was engaged at the time and could not 
 
(70 William McKinley 
 
 be interrupted, and this was reported to the 
 gentleman. After Governor McKinley's sec- 
 retary informed the man that the Governor 
 was busy, the man said : **Tell him that, in 
 my opinion, if he calls out the State militia, he 
 w^ill never become President of the United 
 States." Quick as a flash, with the delivery 
 of the message, Governor McKinley turned to 
 his secretary and said: "You return to that 
 man and tell him that we will take care of the 
 strike first and the Presidency afterwards." 
 
 Just about this time occurred the unfortunate 
 affair of the failure of Mr. Robert L. Walker, 
 capitalist, banker and boyhood friend of Gov- 
 ernor McKinley's. When McKinley ran for 
 the first time for Congress Mr. Walker had 
 helped him financially. He had also loaned 
 McKinley money at other periods of the Ma- 
 jor's life; but these debts had all been paid. 
 Mr. Walker came to IMcKinley one day and 
 asked him to endorse some notes for him, say- 
 ing that he was pressed for money. McKin- 
 ley, trusting his old friend, gladly did as re- 
 quested, remembering how Mr. Waker had 
 helped him. The Governor also endorsed 
 other notes from time to time to help his friend 
 out only. He felt confident in doing this, as 
 Mr. Walker was a prominent man of Youngs- 
 town, enjoyed the friendship of the communi- 
 ty, and was said to be rated at $250,000. The 
 notes were made payable in thirty, sixty and 
 
A Biographical Study 71 
 
 ninety days. And, to quote Mr. Murat Hal- 
 stead, *'Major McKinley endorsed, as he sup- 
 posed, about $15,000 worth. They were dis- 
 counted as Walker planned, and Major Mc- 
 Kinley thought no more of the matter until 
 February 17th, 1893. On that day Youngs- 
 town and Mahoning Valley was startled by 
 the assignment of Robert L. Walker, a judg- 
 ment of $12,000 against the Youngstown 
 Stamping Company causing the failure. The 
 stove company, the coal mines and the other 
 enterprises of Mr. Walker's went down by the 
 next day. Then the banks which held the 
 Walker paper began to figure. Major McKin- 
 ley was leaving his home to go to the banquet 
 of the Ohio Society in New York when he was 
 informed of the disaster. He cancelled his 
 New York engagement, and took the first train 
 to Youngstown. There he learned that in- 
 stead of being on the Walker paper for 
 $15,000, his liability in that direction was over 
 $100,000. He could not understand it. Banks 
 all over the State telegraphed him they had 
 some of the paper. He was under the im- 
 pression the paper had been discounted in but 
 three banks. He had a conference with his 
 friends. He told them he had endorsed a 
 number of notes, but he understood that fully 
 half of them were made out to take up notes 
 which he had first endorsed, and which had 
 fallen due. A little investigation showed that 
 
*J2 William McKinley 
 
 the old notes were still unpaid, and the new 
 notes had doubled, trebled, quadrupled the 
 debt. The Walker liabilities were about 
 $200,000, and the assets not half that sum. 
 
 After the conference with his Youngstown 
 friends. Major McKinley said: *T can hard- 
 ly believe this, but it appears to be true. I 
 don't know what my liabilities are, but what- 
 ever I owe shall be paid, dollar for dollar." 
 
 McKinley was not interested in any of 
 Walker's business enterprises. The connec- 
 tion was simply one of friendship. 
 
 McKinley bore up under the strain nobly. 
 "He was again among the ranks of the poor 
 where he started," but he still retained his 
 honesty and untarnished name. Subscriptions 
 began to pour in from all over the State and 
 elsewhere, and although McKinley sent many 
 back, refusing their acceptance, he was, how- 
 ever finally compelled to allow friends to ac- 
 cept the money and pay every endorsement in 
 full. One old colored woman saved up a few 
 dollars from her hard earnings, and that was 
 received among the other gifts of money. On 
 February, 1894, every cent was paid, and the 
 trustees deeded back to the Governor and Mrs. 
 McKinley their original property. 
 
 It will be seen that after all the years of 
 preparation, as a lawyer, prosecuting attorney, 
 Congressman and Governor he was well 
 equipped for the Presidency when he was 
 
'A Biographical Study '73 
 
 nominated for that exalted office. He had 
 twice put the opportunity aside; now he was 
 the logical candidate, and he felt that he could 
 accept the offer without infringing on the 
 right of others more entitled to the honor. 
 We have elsewhere spoken of McKinley in the 
 Cabinet room and as Commander-in-Chief. 
 Suffice it to say that he was a statesman and 
 a diplomat of a high order. His administra- 
 tion is yet too near to call forth any comments. 
 That will be done by future writers. It is 
 rather the purpose of this book, as has already 
 been said, to sketch the man, his character and 
 his ways, more than his official acts as a ruler. 
 William McKinley never held himself above 
 the rank and file. He was as kind and as 
 cordial to the laboring people as he was to 
 those in more exalted positions. One day, in 
 the summer of 1901, he was sitting on his 
 porch at Canton, when an old colored man 
 passed by. The old man saw the President on 
 the porch, and cried out: "Hello, Major!" 
 "Hello, Tom!" said McKinley, "come here and 
 let me shake hands with you. How are you, 
 Tom? How is business?" It is needless to 
 say how much it delighted the old man. 
 
 McKinley has left us no anecdotes such as 
 Lincoln, but the following story was much en- 
 joyed at McKinley's expense for some time: 
 
 On one occasion Mr. McKinley and a law- 
 yer of Canton named Manderson, afterwards 
 
[74 William McKinley 
 
 Senator of Nebraska, were to address a meet- 
 ing at a certain place. McKinley was always 
 very careful in preparing speeches, and this 
 same careful preparation he displayed through- 
 out his entire life. On the appointed day Mc- 
 Kinley and Manderson drove over to the town 
 where they were to speak together, and during 
 the course of the drive Manderson said : "Ma- 
 jor, what points are you going to bring out 
 mostly in your address to-day? I have not 
 prepared any speech." 
 
 "What!" said McKinley, "you going to 
 make a speech and don't know at this late hour 
 what you are goin to say?" "No," said Man- 
 derson. 
 
 McKinley then commenced to give Mander- 
 son a few ideas regarding his address, and the 
 Major, so enviewed and absorbed with his 
 subject, found at the end of the journey that 
 he had simply recited his whole address, and 
 also had produced documents and shown them 
 to his friend to prove his statements. 
 
 Manderson suggested that he should speak 
 first, making a few remarks, and then yield 
 over his time to McKinley. So, as agreed, 
 Manderson spoke first, and, having a good 
 memory, simply gave McKinley's speech near- 
 ly word for word, and when he had finished 
 said that Major McKinley had documents to 
 prove all the statements that he had made, and, 
 turning to McKinley, said : "J^st let me have 
 
A Biographical Study 7S 
 
 the documents," and there was nothing else to 
 do but to hand them over to him. McKinley's 
 turn came ; he spoke briefly and retired. That 
 was the first and only time McKinley was 
 caught unawares or allowed another to get the 
 better of him. Justice Day, of the Supreme 
 Court, McKinley's Secretary of State, who 
 told the author this story, said that it was a 
 standing joke on McKinley for a long time 
 around Ohio. 
 
 It is often asked, especially by the young, 
 if the great men of our history, those who at- 
 tained the Presidency, ever wished or thought 
 in their boyhood or young manhood that they 
 would some day become President of the 
 United States. 
 
 We know that many did. Take Lincoln, 
 for instance. One day, in answer to a lady's 
 question of what he was going to make out of 
 himself, said, ''Oh, I will work and study, and 
 some day become President.'' When the au- 
 thor asked a friend of McKinley's whether the 
 President ever thought about those things in 
 his youth, he replied that he did. He said 
 that McKinley had promised a fellow-lawyer, 
 that when he became President he (McKinley) 
 woud appoint his friend to the Supreme Court 
 bench. The President did not forget his 
 promise, and the place was duly offered to the 
 gentleman, but the latter, for certain reasons, 
 declined the honor. It is also said that when 
 
\y6 William McKinley 
 
 McKinley first entered Congress he had the 
 Presidency in view. 
 
 Having been so long in the legislative depart- 
 ment of the government, he understood the re- 
 lation between Congress and the Executive 
 when he became President. He never antago- 
 nized Congress, but he was none the less strong 
 in advocating the views which he wanted the 
 Congress to consider. His methods with Con- 
 gress resembled those of Garfield's. 
 
 Senator Hoar has said that: "President 
 McKinley, with his great wisdom and tact, and 
 his delightful individual quality, succeeded in 
 establishing an influence over the members of 
 the Senate, not, I think, equalled from the be- 
 ginning of the Government, except possibly by 
 Andrew Jackson." 
 
 On the 19th of January, 1886, Congress- 
 man McKinley delivered a speech in the House 
 of Representatives in accepting the statue of 
 General Garfield, which was presented by the 
 State of Ohio and placed in Statuary Hall. 
 
 It was so singularly like his own life and 
 death that we could not close this chapter more 
 fittingly in summing up McKinley's public 
 career than to quote in part from its text: 
 
 "In life his great character and commanding 
 qualities earned the admiration of the citizens 
 of his own State and the nation at large, while 
 the lessons of his life and the teachings of his 
 broad mind will be cherished and remembered 
 
^ Biographical Study yy 
 
 when marbles and statues have crumbled to 
 decay. 
 
 **He was brave and sagacious. He filled 
 every part with intelligence and fidelity. Dis- 
 tinguished as was his milit?ry career, his most 
 enduring fame, his highest renown, was earned 
 in this House as a Representative of the peo- 
 ple. Here he grew with gradual but increasing 
 strength. Here he won his richest laurels. 
 Here he was leader and master, not by com- 
 bination or scheming, not by chicanery, or cau- 
 cus, but by the force of his cultivated mind, his 
 keen and far-seeing judgment, hie unanswer- 
 able logic, his strength and power of speech, 
 his thorough comprehension of the subjects of 
 legislation. 
 
 "In personal character he was clean and 
 without reproach. As a citizen he loved his 
 country and her institutions, and was proud 
 of her progress and prosperity. « As an ora- 
 tor he was exceptionally strong and gifted. 
 As a soldier he stood abreast with the bravest 
 and best of the citizen soldiery of the Repub- 
 lic. As a legislator his most enduring testi- 
 monial will be found in the records of Congress 
 and the statutes of his country. As President 
 he displayed moderation and wisdom." 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 AN ORATOR AND HIS SPEECHES. 
 
 FRANKLIN said of Lord Chatham : "I 
 have sometimes seen eloquence without 
 wisdom, and often wisdom without elo- 
 quence; but in him I have seen them 
 united in the highest possible degree." What 
 FrankHn'said of Lord Chatham may be said of 
 William McKinley. In his eloquence there 
 was logic, courageous thought, sincerity and 
 ^ truth. His earnestness and forcible way of 
 / putting arguments and his deep sympathy with 
 the common heart of humanity made him not 
 only an orator of the first magnitude, but won 
 for him the admiration and friendship of the 
 masses of his fellow-countrymen. 
 
 He was gifted in the making of striking 
 phrases, and often in these he looked with pro- 
 phetic vision into the future. 
 
 The way in which he set forth facts and 
 theories, embodied as they were in a single 
 phrase, and the numerous subjects which he 
 handled gave proof, more than anything else, 
 of the fertility of resource and the flexibility 
 of his mind. 
 
 He was always very careful in preparing 
 
'A Biographical Study 79 
 
 his letters, messages and speeches. Through 
 them all is found running his characteristic 
 style of thought, and his foresight, courage and 
 common sense. No American orator ever pro- 
 duced purer rhetoric or exhibited more enthusi- 
 astic earnestness or more beautiful sentiment. 
 
 John Hay said : ''He became from year to 
 year the most prominent politician and orator 
 in the country. Passionately devoted to the 
 principles of his party, he was alv^ays ready to 
 do anthing, to go anyv^^here, to proclaim its 
 ideas, and to support its candidates. His face 
 and his voice became familiar to millions of 
 our people, and wherever they were seen and 
 heard men became his partisans. His face 
 was cast in a classic mould; you see faces like 
 it in antique marble in the galleries of the 
 Vatican and in portraits of the great Cardinal- 
 statesmen of Italy; his voice was the voice of 
 the perfect orator — ringing, vibrating, tireless, 
 persuading by its very sound, by its accent of 
 sincere conviction. So prudent and so guard- 
 ed were all his utterances, so lofty his courtesy, 
 that he never embarrassed his friends, and 
 never offended his opponents." 
 
 Such was John Hay's opinion of William 
 McKinley, the orator. Men who had heard 
 McKinley's first speech say that it was strong 
 and logical, and insist that at that early day 
 they foresaw a great career in public life for 
 the young speaker. 
 
8o William McKinley 
 
 I According as the story goes, McKinley did 
 
 / not make his maiden speech as a political 
 
 ''spellbinder" on a finely arranged platform, 
 but on a drygoods box, in the little town of 
 New Berlin, Ohio. It seems that he was in- 
 vited over from Canton on that occasion to fill 
 a vacancy caused by a speaker who was unable, 
 at the last moment, to be present. 
 
 The drygoods box was placed in front of the 
 village post office. Mr. Michael Bitzer, who 
 was still living a few years ago at the age of 
 eighty-six, was chairman of the meeting, and 
 when McKinley, a mere youth in appearance, 
 stepped upon the platform the first question 
 of the presiding officer was, addressing the 
 young man, "Can you make a speech?" The 
 rest of the story may be told by Mr. Bitzer 
 himself : 
 
 "Could he speak? Well, I should say he 
 could. Everybody was simply dumfounded. 
 For nearly an hour he talked as never a young 
 man in Stark County had talked before. I 
 told Judge Underbill, who accompanied him, 
 after the meeting that McKinley did a blamed 
 sight better than he did, and the Judge, too, 
 pronounced him a coming politician. 
 
 "I really was surprised when Judge Under- 
 bill introduced that young stripling of a boy 
 to me, saying that he had come to m.ake a 
 speech in place of another Judge, who was 
 unable to be present. Of course, I only asked 
 
^A Biographical Study 8il 
 
 McKinley in a joke if he could make a speech. 
 I spoke to him much as I would to a boy, but 
 I really did have my doubts about such a young 
 man doing justice to the occasion." 
 
 Mr. Bitzer introduced him as William Mc- 
 Kinley, of Canton. It is said that McKinley 
 arose and looked over his audience in a way 
 as though accustomed all his life to making 
 speeches. There was not a sign of the per- 
 turbation which generally accompanies the 
 maiden effort of a speaker. ''But," says Mr. 
 Bitzer, "as I remember him, the same strong 
 characteristics which have been so notable in 
 his public life within the last few years stood 
 out forcibly on that night." 
 
 Ever after that first speech he was in con- 
 stant demand as a campaigner. In the Presi- 
 dential campaign of 1868 he spoke at town 
 halls and schoolhouses throughout the country, 
 so by the time his own campaign in 1869 ^^^ 
 Prosecuting Attorney came along he was equal 
 to the task. It has been said that "he was 
 assiduous in his campaigning and persuasive, 
 not antagonistic, in his arguments." 
 
 When McKinley entered Congress Ruther- 
 ford B. Hayes, his old military commander and 
 personal friend, was President. The Chief 
 Magistrate was closely watching the career of 
 his former comrade, and one day he said to 
 McKinley : "To achieve success and fame 
 you must pursue a special line. You must not 
 
82 William McKinley 
 
 make a speech on every motion offered or bill 
 introduced. You must confine yourself to one 
 particular thing; become a specialist. Take 
 up some branch of legislation and make that 
 your study. Why not take up the subject of 
 the tariff? Being a subject that will not be 
 settled for years to come, it offers a great field 
 for study and a chance for ultimate fame." 
 
 With these words ringing, as it were, in his 
 ears, McKinley at once set to work on the 
 study of the tariff question. He saw where 
 protection was a benefit, and then and there 
 proposed with unconquering zeal to stand by 
 that cause. He never faltered. It was a 
 recognized fact that McKinley had a thorough 
 and complete knowledge of the tariff. He be- 
 lieved in protection, because he was convinced 
 it was necessary for the prosperity of the coun- 
 try. It was not a theory with him, but a 
 sound, settled conviction. 
 
 McKinley, in speaking, never indulged in 
 
 : any flights of oratory ; he never told any anec- 
 
 / dotes; he went straight to the subject of his 
 
 / theme, and used argument and illustration to 
 
 / convince his hearers. 
 
 One of his leading opponents in the House 
 used to say that he had to brace himself mental- 
 ly not to be carried away by the strong under- 
 current of McKinley's irresistibly persuasive 
 talk. 
 
 His first speech in Congress, which was de- 
 
^A Biographical Study 83 
 
 livered at a night session, was in opposition 
 to Fernando Wood's non-protective bill, which 
 was introduced in the House during the sea- 
 son of 1878. 
 
 Like Lincoln, he could state the argument of 
 his adversary as justly and as impetuous as his 
 own. 
 
 Old politicians soon discovered that a new 
 force was arising on the political horizon; and 
 when the day came upon which McKinley re- 
 ported and opened the debate on the tariff bill 
 which bears his name, it won for him lasting 
 renown as a debater and orator. 
 
 It has been said that *'his contrast between 
 protection and free trade, which closed that 
 famous utterance, points at once a picture and 
 a prophecy." 
 
 *'VVe have now," he said, in closing, "en- 
 joyed twenty-nine years continuously of pro- 
 tective tariff laws — the longest uninterrupted 
 period in which that policy has prevailed since 
 the formation of the Federal Government, and 
 we find ourselves at the end of that period in 
 a condition of independence and prosperity, the 
 like of which has no parallel in the recorded 
 history of the world. In all that goes to make 
 a nation great and strong and independent, we 
 have made extraordinary strides. We have a 
 surplus revenue and a spotless credit. 
 
 **To reverse this system means to stop the 
 progress of this Republic. It means to turn 
 
84 William McKinley 
 
 the masses from ambition, courage and hope 
 to dependence, degradation and despair. 
 
 ''Talk about depression ! We would have it 
 then in its fulness. Everything would indeed 
 be cheap, but how costly when measured by the 
 degradation that would ensue! When mer- 
 chandise is cheapest, men are poorest, and the 
 most distressing experiences of our country — 
 aye, of all history — have been when every- 
 thing was lowest and cheapest, measured in 
 gold, and everything was highest and dearest, 
 measured by labor." 
 
 It is singular that McKinley's first speech in 
 the halls of Congress was on the protective 
 tariff question and his last speech was also on 
 that subject. How eloquent McKinley could 
 make his speeches on the supposedly dry sub- 
 ject of the tariff is well illustrated by an anec- 
 dote told by one of the noted judges of that 
 time: 
 
 A bill was pending in the House, and a num- 
 ber of speakers were to talk on either side be- 
 fore a final vote was taken. McKinley, who 
 was put on the list was next to the last speaker 
 on his side. When his turn came, his hearers 
 became tired out and were getting anxious to 
 retire from the chamber. But as McKinley 
 proceeded one after another turned to /isten 
 attentively, until the whole House was follow- 
 ing every word he said. When he concluded 
 there was a burst of applause, and the Hon. 
 
COPYRIGHT BY J. C. HEMMENT 
 
 A CHARACTERISTIC POSE 
 Reproduced by courtesy of Collier's Weekly. 
 
A Biographical Study 85 
 
 D. C. Haskill, who spoke last pressed forward, 
 shook McKinley's hand cordially and said: 
 ''Major McKinley," with real earnestness, "I 
 shall speak last; but you, sir, have closed the 
 debate." 
 
 Critics have said that President McKinley 
 was a man of one idea. Because of his vast 
 and manifold study of the tariff question and 
 because he was identified so closely with that 
 subject, they presumingly supposed he was lack- 
 ing in knowledge upon other subjects. Noth- 
 ing could be farther from the truth than that 
 supposition. 
 
 General Grosvener, who served long witK 
 McKinley in Congress, and who knew him in- 
 timately in private and public life, says, regard- 
 ing McKinley as a man of one idea : 
 
 ^'During Governor McKinley's long service 
 in Congress he gave special attention to the 
 subject of the tariff, and as a member of the 
 Ways and Means Committee devoted much of 
 his time to revenue legislation ; but it must not 
 be understood that Governor McKinley is a 
 man of power and a man of knowledge upon a 
 single subject. It has been said of him in- 
 cidentally that he is a statesman upon a single 
 question and a man of learning with a single 
 idea. No greater error could possibly be sug- 
 gested. 
 
 "Since the expiration of his term in Con- 
 gress and during his four years in the admin- 
 
S6 William McKinley 
 
 istration, as Governor of Ohio, he has delivered 
 addresses upon a great variety of questions, 
 and discussed a large number of subjects, all 
 outside of his specialty in national politics. He 
 has made many notable speeches upon questions 
 wholly independent and differing from mere 
 political considerations. Among the notable 
 speeches which he made in Congress other than 
 upon the tariff question were : upon the contest 
 against Judge Taylor in the Forty-fourth Con- 
 gress; the subject of free and fair elections in 
 the same Congress ; a memorial address on the 
 death of Garfield; payment of pensions in the 
 Forty-ninth Congress; the Dependent Pension 
 bill in the same Congress ; the purchase of Gov- 
 ernment bonds in the Fiftieth Conress; memor- 
 ial adress on the death of John A. Logan ; the 
 question of a quorum in the Fifty-first Con- 
 gress; civil service reform in the Fifty-first 
 Congress; the Direct Tax Refunding Bill; the 
 Hawaiian Treaty ; the eight-hour law ; and the 
 Silver bill. These speeches, which are of the 
 highest order of excellence, covered a wide 
 lange of subjects. 
 
 "Outside of Congress his speeches and public 
 utterances have covered a still wider range. 
 Among those that might be noted as of special 
 interest are his address at Atlanta, Ga., before 
 the Piedmont Chautauqua Association; the 
 'American Volunteer Soldier,' Memorial Day 
 address at New York City; * Prospect and 
 
'A Biographical Study 87 
 
 Retrospect,' an address to the pioneers of the 
 Mahoning Valley ; 'The American Farmer,' an 
 address before the Ohio State Grange; 'Our 
 Public Schools,' an address at the dedication 
 of a public school building ; 'New England and 
 the Future,' an address before the Pennsylvania 
 New England Society ; 'The Tribune's Jubilee,' 
 an address at the fiftieth anniversary of the 
 founding of the Neiv York Tribune; 'Pensions 
 and the Public Debt,' a Memorial Day address 
 at Canton, Ohio; 'No Compromise with the 
 Demagogue,' at the Ohio Republican State 
 Convention of 189 1 ; a Fourth of July address, 
 at Woodstock, Conn., 'The American Working 
 Man ;' a Labor Day address at Cincinnati ; the 
 *State of Ohio,' an address before the Ohio 
 State Republican League ; 'Oberlin College,' an 
 address before the Cleveland Aumni; 'Issues 
 Make Parties,' an address to the Republican 
 College Clubs of Ann Arbor, Mich; his noti- 
 fication address to Mr. Harrison; a Fourth of 
 July oration at Lakeside; 'The Triumphs of 
 Protection,' an address before the Chautauqua 
 Association, at Beatrice, Neb.; 'An AuxiHary 
 to Religion,' an address at the dedication of the 
 Young Men's Christian Association at Youns- 
 town, Ohio ; an oration at the dedication of the 
 Ohio Building at the World's Fair at Chicago; 
 a memorial address upon the life and character 
 of Rutherford B. Hayes; a speech at Minne- 
 apolis upon questions of national import; an 
 
88 William McKinley 
 
 address on Washington before the Union 
 League Club, of Chicago, February 22nd, 
 1893 ; an address to the students of the North- 
 western University at Chicago on 'Citizenship 
 and Education/ 'Law, Labor and Liberty,' a 
 Fourth of July oration before the labor organ- 
 izations of Chicago, addresses before the Na- 
 tional Jewish Association at Cleveland, before 
 the National Sangerfest at Cleveland; Grant 
 memorial address at New York ; an address at 
 the dedication of the Grant Monument at Ga- 
 lena, 111. ; an address before the Epworth League 
 of the United States at Cleveland ; an address 
 before the Christian Endeavorers of the Baptist 
 Union, and before the Christian Endeavor 
 Association of the United Presbyterian Church 
 at Columbus ; an address at Albany, N. Y., on 
 Abraham Lincoln ; an address before the Cham- 
 ber of Commerce at Rochester, N. Y., on *Busi- 
 iness and Politics,' before the State (Ohio) 
 Chamber of Commerce on 'Business and Citi- 
 zenship,' before the German Veterans of the 
 United States, at Columbus; a Memorial Day 
 address at Indianapolis; an address before the 
 Grand Army of the Republic; an address be- 
 fore the Grand Army of the Republic at Pitts- 
 burg, and most notably, his splendid oration 
 at the dedication of Chicamauga and Chatta- 
 nooga Park, and at the Atlanta exposition his 
 speech upon 'Blue and Gray.' 
 
 "A careful perusal of these speeches, ora- 
 
A Biographical Study 89 
 
 tions, and addresses, will show that Governor 
 McKinley, while an absolute master of all that 
 relates to the tariff and all phases of govern- 
 mental revenue, had yet distinguished himself 
 in these other fields of oratory by the same 
 thoroughness of, knowledge and the same 
 beauty of oratorical effect. His oratory is of 
 the choicest character; phrases and sentences 
 came tripping and bubbling forth from him 
 apparently without preparation, apparently 
 without effort, forming the most beautiful con- 
 stellations of oratorical effect and oratorical 
 beauty." 
 
 Although McKinley's voice had a wonderful 
 carrying power, it is said that the impress of 
 conviction it carried rather than the mere voice 
 therof exerted a far-reaching effect on his audi- 
 ences. 
 
 His attitude in regard to his convictions is 
 aptly illustrated by the following anecdote. It 
 occurred in his congressional campaign of 
 1882, when on account of the Democratic tidal 
 wave, he was returned by a very small major- 
 ity. Referring to this one day, Congressman 
 Springer said in rather a derisive manner: 
 "Your constituents do not seem to support you, 
 Mr. McKinley." Mr. McKinley's reply was 
 worthy of a Roman tribune. *'My fidelity to 
 my constituents," he said, ''is not measured by 
 the support they give me. I have convictions 
 
90 William McKinley 
 
 I would not surrender if 10,000 majority were 
 entered against me." 
 
 As an orator, he did not belong to that class 
 of public speakers who tried to win, through 
 sensations or mock pathos ; but what he had to 
 say, was said in the most earnest and unaf- 
 fected style. It never failed, however, in its 
 effectiveness. 
 
 The great words which he uttered in the 
 Oiicago convention of 1888, when his name 
 was before the House as a candidate for the 
 Presidency, have been called "literary gems." 
 He had gone as a delegate from Ohio, and was 
 pledged for John Sherman. 
 
 This speech throws an admirable light on 
 McKinley's character and political integrity. 
 Shaking his head vigorously, said: *'Mr. 
 Chairman and Gentlemen of the Convention: 
 I am here as one of the chosen representatives 
 of my state; I am here by a resolution of the 
 Republican convention, passed without one dis- 
 senting voice, commanding me to cast my vote 
 for John Sherman and use every worthy en- 
 deavor for his nomination. I accepted the trust 
 because my heart and judgment were in accord 
 with the letter and spirit of that resolution. It 
 has pleased certain delegates to vote for me. I 
 am not insensible to the honor they would do 
 me, but in the presence of the duty resting upon 
 me I cannot remain silent with honor. I can- 
 not consistently with the credit of the state 
 
A Biographical Study 91 
 
 whose credentials I bear, and which has trusted 
 me; I cannot with honorable fidelity to John 
 Sherman, who has trusted me in his cause and 
 with his confidence; I cannot consistently with 
 my own views of personal integrity, consent, 
 or seem to consent, to permit my name to be 
 used as a candidate before this convention. I 
 would not respect myself if I could find it in 
 my heart to do so, to pay or to permit that to 
 be done which could even be ground for any 
 one to suspect that I wavered in my loyalty to 
 the chief of her choice and the chief of mine. I 
 do not request — I demand — that no delegate 
 who would not cast reflection upon me, shall 
 cast a ballot for me." , 
 
 As the Lincoln-Douglas debate brought Lin- 
 coln before the eyes of the country, so McKin- 
 ley's continued campaigning made him the cen- 
 tral figure of the political world. Beginning 
 with his campaign for Congress in 1890, which 
 resulted in his defeat, and the Gubernatorial 
 canvass of 189 1, the congressional campaign 
 of 1892, the second fight for the Governorship 
 in 1893, the great "congressional contest of 
 1894, the Ohio campaign of 1895, and the 
 great struggle for the Presidency in 1896. Mc- 
 Kinley was constantly in battle; never ceasing 
 in his work of advocacy and loyalty to party 
 principles. His voice seemed to gain in power 
 and strength, instead of breaking down under 
 the constant strain. As a campaigner and his 
 
92i William McKinley 
 
 appearance on the public rostrum, Murat Hal- 
 stead gives us a vivid and lucid description in 
 his "Life and Distinguished Services of Wil- 
 liam McKinley," as published by the author in 
 1900; he says: 
 
 "It is interesting to note the way McKinley 
 begins a speech. The hall is always filled when 
 he is booked to talk. It usually happens that it 
 is difficult to get him into the hall, because of 
 the crowds on the outside. The moment he 
 appears on the platform is a signal for a pro- 
 longed and vehement cheering. His face flushes 
 a little and his eyes flash. He breathes quickly 
 and compresses his lips, the lines around the 
 mouth taking prominence. He brushes the hair 
 back from his forehead with a nervous hand. 
 Though outwardly composed, it appears to 
 those who know him that he is a little anxious 
 and a bit apprehensive, possibly almost 
 alarmed. It is worthy of note when he steps 
 on a platform and is greeted with enthusiasm, 
 he bows low and waves his hands from side to 
 side. The silk hat is always in the right hand, 
 the brim firmly gripped. This is generally 
 ruffed, for at the moment he forgets that it 
 gets pressed. The bowing continues until the 
 fury of the reception shows a sign of abate- 
 ment. For the last four years almost every 
 chairman of a meeting has introduced him as 
 "the next President." To those who cam- 
 paigned with him, this became somewhat of a 
 
^A Biographical Study 93 
 
 joke, and there were bets made, the odds being 
 always two to one that would be the introduc- 
 tion. Now the chairman of a political meeting 
 is generally a man of consequence in the neigh- 
 borhood where the meeting is held. The op- 
 portunity of introducing such an orator as Mc- 
 Kinley does not come often, and every chair- 
 man takes advantage of it. It is amusing to 
 note the expression of McKinley's face when 
 the introduction is prolonged. He frowns 
 almost imperceptibly. Only one who has stud- 
 ied his countenace would notice it. There fol- 
 lows a look of weariness and then of impa- 
 tience. He moves his feet a little and is rest- 
 less. The strain is becomng painful to hear 
 and the compliments dreary. They have been 
 repeated probaby twice before on the same day, 
 and it is not often that anything of keen inter- 
 est is said. When the inevitable "next Presi- 
 dent'' comes the Major's face is impassive. One 
 would not know from his attitude that the ref- 
 erence was to him. He does not seem to hate 
 it, but would as leave it was omitted. 
 
 Finally the chairman has come to the "Fel- 
 low citizens, I have the great pleasure, etc.," 
 and McKinley steps forward and there are 
 cheers. The speaker clasps his hands behind 
 him and bows right and left, to the pit and to 
 the gallery. He moves his hand to still the en- 
 thusiasts and begins. He has discovered 
 whether there are women present and then in 
 
94 William McKinley 
 
 a voice almost inaudible says, "Ladies and 
 Gentlemen, my fellow citizens." The opening 
 sentence is always a striking one. It is spoken 
 in a low tone. Some one in the rear of the hall 
 or at the edge of the crowd says ^'Louder !" and 
 there are many sounds of ''Shu!" McKinley 
 pays no attention to the interruption except 
 to wave one hand again. The voice of the ora- 
 tor becomes stronger and in ten sentences the 
 words ring and reach every corner of the hall. 
 The audience is leaning forward, eager to catch 
 every word. As he proceeds the Major warms. 
 He gesticulates with both hands. He hits the 
 air a little to emphasize a point and while his 
 attitude is unstudied it is graceful. He owns 
 the crowd now. It is hypnotized by his elo- 
 quence. His hair grows damp with perspira- 
 tion. Possibly a dark lock will stray over his 
 forehead. It is impatiently brushed back and 
 the sweep of a handkerchief cools the brow. 
 His eyes are flashing fire. His breast heaves 
 with the storm. His voice rushes from between 
 his teeth and his lips are compressed as he fin- 
 ishes a word. His tones are pitched in a higher 
 key. There is a metallic tone in the voice and 
 yet it is musical. His bearing is impassioned. 
 He has forgotten self and is regardless of 
 everything, but his subject. One perceives that 
 he is sincere in what he says. Every one sees 
 that he is in dead earnest, that this is no sham 
 passion but the real thing. His words pierce 
 
^A Biographical Study 95 
 
 the air defiantly and it is astonishing any crea- 
 ture can fail of conviction. The audience has 
 grown intense in its interest. Many forget to 
 cough or move. They are absorbed and their 
 little selfishnesses are neglected. Every now 
 and then some deep voice says **That is so!" 
 or utters an "Amen." His companions, who 
 have heard him a hundred times are as inter- 
 ested as those who are hearing him for the first 
 time. There is no resisting the earnestness of 
 the orator, for all his soul and strength are in 
 the speech. There will be nothing more seri- 
 ous in the sound of the last trumpet. Some 
 one may interrupt to ask a question, to try to 
 *'stump him," to catch him unawares. Mc- 
 Kinley is so discussing his subject that he fails 
 to hear what is said. He stops and looks in the 
 direction of the ground and then says sharply, 
 *'What's that?" The audience cries, 'Tut him 
 out" Probably the question is repeated. There 
 is no hesitancy in the answer. The Major is 
 ready. He turns a laugh on the questioner, by 
 his flashing reply. He takes no mean advan- 
 tage, but answers the question frankly. Gener- 
 ally his reply is epigrammatic. It always is 
 complete. Major McKinley has dramatic 
 power and a magnetism as a speaker. In des- 
 cribing scenes he pictures realistically. The old 
 soldiers are always impressed when he refers 
 to them. Again and again he has brought 
 tears to the eyes of the veterans when he has 
 
g6 William McKinley 
 
 told of the horrors of war. Old men sob 
 like children and there is scarcely a dry eye in 
 the multitude. There is a sincerity in his trib- 
 utes to soldiers that is convincing. He has 
 been there. He knows what he is talking 
 about. Though of any one else, his talk of the 
 war might be called stagey; that criticism is 
 never made of McKinley. It would be impos- 
 sible to find a speaker who has a better grasp 
 of the subject, whether finance, protection, ar- 
 bitration or foreign affairs. His talk is always 
 illustrative and comprehensible and instructive. 
 It is serious. There are not anecdotes to amuse. 
 The orator does not convince by raising laughs, 
 but rather by the indisputability of statements. 
 It is a grave matter, this campaigning with 
 him. It is a mission, not a jest; an attempt to 
 convert, not to please. Neither does he arouse 
 passion or opposition by assaults or trivial per- 
 sonalities. He assumes that those who disagree 
 with him are sincere, as he is, and seeks to 
 relieve them of their error.'* 
 
 President McKinley believed in sounding 
 public sentiment. No other President, while 
 performing the duties of his office, ever did so 
 much travelling through the United States as 
 he did; unless it is President Roosevelt. 
 
 This was the method by which McKinley 
 became acquainted with the masses, and 
 learned to feel the pulse of the people and sat- 
 isfy himself in regard to their desires. These 
 
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A Biographical Study 97 
 
 trips brought forth the greatest enthusiasm 
 for him, and the greetings and cordial recep- 
 tions, were marked on the part of the hosts, 
 with the most hearty and genuine demonstra- 
 tions. All his addresses were carefully worded 
 and because of their good will and fraternal 
 spirit they were received with as much enthus- 
 iasm in the South as they were among his own 
 people in the North. 
 
 The President began these trips to different 
 parts of the country soon after his inauguration 
 in 1897. The first of these was his visit to 
 New York to make an address at the dedication 
 of the great monument on Riverside Drive, 
 April 2y, 1897. That address reveals McKin- 
 ley's style as a eulogist. The following extract 
 will show its style and sentiment : 
 
 "A great life, dedicated to the welfare of the 
 nation, here finds its earthly coronation. Even 
 it this day lacked the impressiveness of cere- 
 mony and was devoid of pageantry, it would 
 still be memorable, becauuse it is the annivers- 
 ary of the birth of the most famous and best 
 beloved of American soldiers .... 
 
 "With Washington and Lincoln, Grant had 
 an exalted place in the history and the affec- 
 tions of the people. To-day his memory is held 
 in equal esteem by those whom he led to vic- 
 tory, and by those who accepted his generous 
 terms of epace. The veteran leaders of the 
 Blue and Gray here meet not only to honor the 
 
gS William McKinley 
 
 name of Grant, but to testify to the living real- 
 ity of a fraternal national spirit which has tri- 
 umphed over the differences of the past and 
 transcends the limitations of sectional lines. Its 
 completion — which we pray God to speed — 
 will be the Nation's greatest glory. It is right 
 that General Grant should have a memorial com- 
 mensurate with his greatness .and that his last 
 resting place should be in the city of his choice, 
 to which he was so attached, and of whose ties 
 he was not forgetful even in death. Fitting, 
 too, is it that the great soldier should sleep be- 
 side the noble river on whose banks he first 
 learned the art of war, of which he became 
 master without a rival. But let us not forget 
 the glorious distinction with which the metrop- 
 olis among the fair sisterhood of American cit- 
 ies has honored his life and memory. With all 
 that riches and sculpture can do to render the 
 edifice worthy of the man, upon a site unsur- 
 passed for magnificence, has this monument 
 been reared by New York as a perpetual record 
 of his illustrious deeds, in the certainty that, 
 as time passes, around it will assemble, with 
 gratitude and veneration, men of all climes, 
 races and nationalities. 
 
 *'New York holds in its keeping the precious 
 dust of the silent soldier, but his achievement 
 — what he and his brave comrades wrought 
 for mankind — are in the keeping of seventy 
 millions of American citizens, who will guard 
 
A Jio graphical Study 99 
 
 the sacred heritage forever and forevermore." 
 
 He made short trips afterward to attend the 
 unveihng of the Washington statue, at Phila- 
 delphia, May 15th, 1897; and to deliver an 
 address before the American Medical Associ- 
 ation, at Philadelphia, June 21st, 1897. But 
 his first extended tour was to attend the Ten- 
 nessee Centennial Exposition, at Nashville, 
 June nth, 1897, and other cities in the South. 
 He made other brief trips out of Washington 
 during that year and in the early part of 1898, 
 but during the progress of the Spanish War, 
 he was unable to leave the seat of government 
 for a long time. 
 
 But as soon as hostilities were over and the 
 treaty of peace signed, he took up his tours of 
 the country again. 
 
 The immediate trips after the close of the 
 war were diplomatically used by the President 
 to ascertain the true sentiment of the people 
 toward the Philippines question. 
 N^ In his speech at the auditorium in Atlantic 
 on December 15th, 1898, speaking of the war 
 and its results and in regard to the flag, he 
 said : ''That flag has been planted in two hemi- 
 spheres, and there it remains the symbol of lib- 
 erty and law, of peace and progress. Who will 
 withdraw from the people over whom it floats 
 its potecting folds? Who will haul it down? 
 Answer me, ye men of the South, who is there 
 in Dixie who will haul it down?" 
 
 tore, ^^ 
 
 / 
 
100 William McKinley 
 
 It is said that the cheering and applause 
 which followed was tremendous. 
 
 The most extended tour during his Presi- 
 dency, of course, was his trip to the Pacific 
 coast, in 1901, which terminated in the serious 
 illness of Mrs. McKinley at San Francisco. 
 
 The declaration of love, veneration, and es- 
 teem for a President, was never more manifest 
 in any tour before. He made many notable 
 speeches and was received with the utmost cor- 
 diality. 
 
 More than forty trips out of Washington 
 were made by President McKinley during the 
 four and a half years of his incumbency as the 
 Chief Escecutive of the Nation. Although he 
 had traveled many thousands of miles prior to 
 his elevation to the Presidency, yet it is said 
 that he covered more territory in the four and 
 a half years than in all the years preceding. 
 
 As this chapter deals with his speeches I am 
 going to give a few extracts from some of his 
 most important addresses. 
 
 From an address delivered at the dedication 
 of the Cuyahoga County Soldiers* Monument 
 at Cleveland, Ohio, 4th July, 1894, he said: 
 
 "The unity of the Republic is secure so long 
 as we continue to honor the memory of the 
 men who died by the tens of thousands to pre- 
 serve it. The dissolution of the Union is im- 
 possible so long as we continue to inculcate les- 
 sons of fraternity, unity, and patriotism, and 
 
A Biographical Study loi 
 
 erect monuments to perpetuate these senti- 
 ments. 
 
 "Such moments as these have another mean- 
 ing which is one dear to the hearts of many 
 who stand by me. 
 
 "It is, as Mr. Lincoln said at Gettysburg, 
 that the dead shall not have died in vain ; that 
 the Nation's later birth of freedom and the 
 peoples' gain of their own sovereignty shall 
 not perish from the earth. That is what this 
 monument means. That is the lesson of true 
 patriotism; that which was won in war shall 
 be won in peace. 
 
 "But we must not forget, my fellow country- 
 men, that the Union which these brave men pre- 
 served, and the liberties which they secured, 
 places upon us, the living, the grandest respon- 
 sibility. We are the freest government on the 
 face of the earth. Our strength rests in our 
 patriotism. Peace and order and security and 
 liberty are safe so long as love of country burns 
 in the hearts of the people. It shall not be for- 
 gotten, however, that liberty does not mean 
 lawlessness. Liberty to make our own laws 
 does not give us license to break them. Lib- \ 
 erty to make our own laws commands a duty \ 
 to observe them ourselves and enforce obedi- \ 
 ence among all others within their jurisdiction. I 
 Liberty, my fellow citizens, is responsibility, ■ 
 and responsibility is duty, and that duty is to 
 preserve the exceptional libety we enjoy within ' 
 
I lA 
 
 102 William McKinley 
 
 the law and for the law and by the law." 
 
 And in the House of Representatives on 
 April 2nd, 1886, he had this to say on Arbitra- 
 tion: 
 
 "I believe, Mr. Chairman, in arbitration as 
 in principle: I believe it should prevail in the 
 settlement of international differences. It rep- 
 resents a higher civilization than the arbitra- 
 ment of war. I believe it is in close accord with 
 the best thought and sentiment of mankind; 
 I believe it is the true way of settling differ- 
 ences between labor and capital ; I believe it will 
 bring both to a better understanding, uniting 
 them closer in interest, and promoting better 
 relations, avoiding force, avoiding unjust ex- 
 actions and oppession, avoiding the loss of 
 earnings to labor, avoiding disturbances to 
 trade, and transportation, and if this House 
 can contribute in the smallest measure, by leg- 
 islative expression or otherwise, to these ends, 
 it will deserve and receive the gratitude of all 
 men who love peace, good order, justice and 
 fair play." 
 
 At the eleventh annual banquet of the Home 
 Market Club, of Boston, Mass., on the i8th of 
 February, 1899, McKinley spoke on the future 
 of the Philippines. In closing that speech he 
 said: 
 
 "No imperial designs lurk in the American 
 mind. They are alien to American sentiment, 
 thought and purpose. Our prices as principles 
 
A iBio graphical Study 103 
 
 undergo no change under a tropical sun. They 
 go with the flag. They are wrought in every 
 one of its sacred folds and are inextinguishable 
 in its shining stars. 
 
 *' 'Why read ye not the changeless truth, 
 The free can conquer but to save/ 
 
 "If we can benefit these remote peoples, who 
 will object? If in the years of the future they 
 are established in government under law and 
 liberty, who will regret our perils and saci- 
 fices? Who will not rejoice in our heroism and 
 humanity ? 
 
 "Always perils, and always after them 
 safety; always darkness and clouds, but always 
 shining through them the light and the sun- 
 shine; always cost and sacrifice, but always 
 after them the fruition of liberty, education 
 and civilization. 
 
 *T have no light or knowledge not common 
 to my countrymen. I do not prophesy. The 
 present is all-absorbing to me, but I cannot 
 bound my vision by the bloodstained trenches 
 around Manila, where every red drop, whether 
 from the veins of an American soldier or a 
 misguided Filipino, is anguish to my heart; but 
 by the broad range of future years, when that 
 group of islands, under the impulse of the year 
 just passed, shall become the gems and glories 
 of those tropical seas; a land of plenty and of 
 
104 William McKinley 
 
 increasing possibilities; a people redeemed 
 from savage indolence and habits, devoted to 
 the arts of peace, in touch with the commerce 
 and trade of all nations, enjoying the blessings 
 of freedom, of civil and religious liberty, of 
 education and of homes, and whose children 
 and children's children shall for ages hence 
 bless the American Republic because it emanci- 
 pated and redeemed their fatherland and set 
 them in the pathway of the world's best civ- 
 1^ ilization." 
 
 "And on April 2ist, 1900, his missionary ad- 
 (dress at Carnegie Hall, New York City, is 
 worth quoting: 
 
 *'I am glad of the opportunity to offer with- 
 out stint my tribute of praise and respect to 
 the missionary effort which has wrought such 
 wonderful triumphs for civilization. 
 
 *The story of the Christian missions is one 
 of thrilling interest and marvelous results. The 
 services and sacrifices of the missionaries for 
 their fellowmen constitute one of the most 
 glorious pages of the world's history. The mis- 
 sionary of whatever church or ecclesiastical 
 body, who devotes his life to the service of the 
 Master and of men, carrying the torch of truth 
 and enlightenment, deserves the gratitude, the 
 support and the homage of mankind. 
 
 "The noble, self-sacrificing, willing minis- 
 ters of peace and good-will should be classed 
 with the world's heroes. Wielding the sword 
 
A Biographical Study 105 
 
 of the spirit, they have conquered ignorance 
 and prejudice. They have been among the 
 pioneers of civilization. They have illumined 
 the darkness of idolatry and superstititon with 
 the light of intelligence and trust. They have 
 been messengers of righteousness and love. 
 They have braved disease and danger and 
 death, and in their exile have suffered unspeak^ 
 able hardships; but their noble spirits have 
 never wavered. They count their labor no 
 sacrifice; 'away with the word in such a view 
 and with such a thought!' says David Liv- 
 ingstone; 'it is emphatically no sacrifice; say, 
 rather, it is a privilege.' They furnish us ex- 
 amples of forbearance, fortitude, of patience 
 and unyielding purpose, and of spirit which 
 triumphs not by force of might, but by the 
 persuasive majesty of right. They are placing 
 in the hands of their brothers less fortunate 
 than themselves the keys which unlock the 
 treasures of knowledge and open the mind to 
 noble aspirations for better conditions. 
 
 "Education is one of the indispensable steps 
 of mission enterprise, and in some form must 
 precede all successful work. Who can esti- 
 mate their value to the progress of nations? 
 Their contribution to the onward and upward 
 march of humanity is beyond all calculation. 
 They have inculcated industry and taught the 
 various trades. They have promoted concord 
 and amity and have brought nations and races 
 
iio6 William McKinley 
 
 closer together. They have made men better. 
 They have increased the regard for home ; have 
 strengthened the sacred ties of family; have 
 made the community well-ordered, and their 
 work has been a potent influence in the devel- 
 opment of law and the establishment of gov- 
 ernment. May this great meeting rekindle the 
 spirit of missionary ardor and enthusiasm to 
 go teach all nations, and may the field never 
 lack a succession of heralds who shall carry on 
 the task — the continuous proclamation of His 
 gospel to the end of time." 
 
 It was a great convention of missionary 
 workers. The evening meeting at which Pres- 
 ident McKinley made the above address was 
 presided over iDy ex-President Benjamin Har- 
 rison. President Roosevelt, then Governor of 
 the State of New York, also made an address. 
 McKinley's address made a deep impression 
 on the audience, and was heartily applauded. 
 
 McKinley's second inaugural address was 
 considered one of the most inspiring, lucid and 
 capable of his many State papers. 
 
 The part which brought forth the most ap- 
 plause and which the President himself was 
 most eloquent at was the closing, when he said : 
 ''Our countrymen should not be deceived. We 
 are now waging war against the inhabitants 
 of the Philippine Islands. A portion of them 
 are making war against the United States. 
 
 **By far the greater portion of the inhabi- 
 
COPYRIGHT BY J. C. HEMMENl 
 
 PRESIDENT McKINLEY DELIVERING HIS FIRST INAUGURAL SPEECH 
 Reproduced by courtesy of Collier's Weekly. 
 
A Biographical Study 107 
 
 tants recognize American sovereignty, and 
 welcome it as a guaranty of order and of se- 
 curity for life, property, liberty, freedom of 
 conscience and the pursuit of happiness. To 
 them full protection will be given. They shall 
 not be abandoned. We will not leave the des- 
 tiny of the loyal millions in the islands to the 
 disloyal thousands who are against the United 
 States. Order under civil institutions will 
 come as soon as those who now break the peace 
 shall keep it. Force will not be needed or used 
 when those who make war against us shall 
 make it no more. 
 
 *'May it end without further bloodshed, and 
 there be ushered in the reign of peace to be 
 made permanent by a government of liberty 
 under law !'' 
 
 President McKinley's last speech was his 
 greatest. As he stood there, on the platform 
 at the Pan-American Exposition, in the city 
 of Buffalo, it was a supreme hour of a life 
 which was in every way triumphant. 
 
 The closing words of that last public speech 
 on earth outlined his national policy for the 
 great nation which he was so soon to leave. 
 The words of sentiment and patriotic aspira- 
 tion were in accord with the nation's history, 
 and it duly marked the culmination of his de- 
 velopment and power in statesmanship. 
 
 *'Let us ever remember that our interest is 
 in concord, not conflict; and that our real em- 
 
io8 William McKinley 
 
 inence rests in the victories of peace, not those 
 of war. We hope that all who are represented 
 here may be moved to higher and nobler efforts 
 for their own and the world's good, and that 
 out of this city may come not only greater 
 commerce and trade for us all, but more essen- 
 tial than these, relations of mutual respect, con- 
 fidence and friendship which will deepen and 
 endure. 
 
 ''Our earnest prayer is that God will gra- 
 ciously vouchsafe prosperity, happiness and 
 peace to all our neighbors, and like blessings 
 to all the people and powers of earth.'* 
 
 Such was McKinley the orator. His pub- 
 lic addresses not only showed an insight into 
 governmental affairs which equalled few 
 statesmen of his age, but they were sparkling 
 word-gems, revealing alike his rhetorical brill- 
 iancy and his love for all humanity. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 A PRESIDENT AND HIS CABINET. 
 
 DURING the days intervening between a 
 Presidential election and the inaugu- 
 ration, the man who has been exalted 
 by his countrymen to the highest 
 post of honor in the land is besieged by many 
 persons, with all kinds of wants, and many 
 other duties are required of him; but if he 
 wishes the future administration to be a suc- 
 cessful one, the question which most perplexes 
 him and for which all his energy, tact and 
 adroitness must be manifested, is the choice of 
 his Cabinet. 
 
 That body of men constitutes the most im- 
 portant part of any administration. It is im- 
 perative that its choice should be so made that 
 all sections of the country be represented. It 
 is even more necessary that the gentlemen 
 chosen should be not only men of high rank 
 as statesmen, but that they be eminently fitted 
 for the respective departments for which they 
 are selected. It is, indeed, a most difficult task 
 and one not to be envied. All of our Presi- 
 dents have taken great care in the selection of 
 their cabinets. 
 
no William McKinley 
 
 It is said that when President McKinley 
 was inaugurated John Hay was his first choice 
 for the office of Secretary of State, but cir- 
 cumstances, however, required another ap- 
 pointment. It fell to the Hon. John Sher- 
 man, ex-Secretary of the Treasury in General 
 Harrison's Cabinet, and at the time United 
 States Senator from Ohio. Mr. Sherman was 
 a statesman of high rank, a man whose views 
 were sought; one who was a loyal Repub- 
 lican and an upright and honest citizen. But 
 tMr. Sherman, when he took up the cares of 
 the office, was by no means a young man, and 
 its responsibilities weighed on him, and ere 
 long he was compelled to relinquish the office 
 and retire to private life. The President's 
 bosom friend and his neighbor in Canton, the 
 Hon. William R. Day, then Assistant Secre- 
 tary of State, succeeded him. Judge Day was 
 and is a modest, unassuming gentleman, but he 
 is a man of profound judgment and of vast 
 capabilities. A man who had rendered excel- 
 lent service as Assistant Secretary of State and 
 was well qualified to be elevated to the premier- 
 ship. 
 
 Just here it might be of interest to quote an 
 incident told by Charles Emory Smith, illus- 
 trating the President's sense of humor. 
 
 Says Mr. Smith : 
 
 "In the higher and gayer humor he had a 
 deft touch. Judge Day, after his splendid ser- 
 
^ Biographical Study iii 
 
 vice as Assistant Secretary and Secretary of 
 State, had been appointed President of the 
 Peace Commission that was about to leave for 
 Paris, and was attending his last Cabinet ses- 
 son. 
 
 "For eighteen months he had really managed 
 the State Department under trying conditions 
 with signal skill and judgment. He had been 
 the lifelong friend and neighbor of the Presi- 
 dent, who knew his great capabilities, and had 
 called him from his vicinage to high respon- 
 sibilities. 
 
 "In that closing hour of his Cabinet service 
 there were mutual expressions of good-will 
 and of regret at the coming separation. ^ Judge 
 Bay was not without his facetious vein. In 
 a playful spirit he proffered his sympathies to 
 his associates, who were about to lose his coun- 
 sel, and, the most modest of men as he was 
 and is, remarked that he didn't know how they 
 were going to get along without him. 'Well/ 
 said the President, with that most serious as- 
 pect which he put on when he was most in 
 fun, 'as every change in the Cabinet had been 
 an improvement, perhaps we can stand it.' 
 
 "The tables were turned on Judge Day, and 
 no one joined in the laugh more heartily than 
 he did. The two devoted and admirmg friends 
 could safely chaff each other." , ^ , 
 
 Upon Judge Day's departure from the Cab- 
 inet, and after Colonel John Hay had served 
 
112 William McKinley 
 
 eighteen months as Ambassador to the Court 
 of St. James, he was recalled and placed at the 
 head of the State portfolio. Of all Secretaries 
 of State, perhaps in John Hay was combined 
 the genius of the diplomat and the statesman 
 to a greater degree than any of his predeces- 
 sors with the exception of Webster and Blaine. 
 
 On one occasion an Ambassador of a Euro- 
 pean power, when asked to name the Minister 
 for Foreign Affairs who administered his office 
 with the greatest ability, replied, without a 
 moment's hesitation, ''I should say Mr. John 
 Hay, your Secretary of State.'' 
 
 At the time of Mr. McKinley's election the 
 country was at large more interested and anx- 
 ious as to the appointment of Secretary of the 
 Treasury than any other. The condition of 
 the national resources were such that the selec- 
 tion of this appointment was far from an easy 
 one, and yet with that skill of his judgment of 
 men, which was one of his most striking char- 
 acteristics, the President soon solved the diffi- 
 cult problem. He was anxious to find a man 
 with broad and catholic views, who was well 
 versed in business affairs as well as familiar 
 with financial questions ; a man of strong ideas 
 and who had the courage of his convictions ; a 
 man who did not represent any particular sec- 
 tion of the country, who had no prejudices, and 
 whose one ambition or aim was to serve the 
 whole country, irrespective of party ; a man of 
 
A Biographical Study 113 
 
 culture, high and lofty integrity and of intel- 
 lectual powers of the first order. 
 
 To find a man with those qualifications was 
 no easy matter ; yet all these requirements were 
 met in the Chicago banker, the Hon. Lyman J. 
 Gage. 
 
 Mr. Gage made a most admirable official, 
 and he will go down in history alongside our 
 greatest Secretary of the Treasury. 
 
 The next thing in order is the Secretary of 
 War. When Mr. McKinley made this choice, 
 he little thought that part of his administration 
 would be taken up with the problems of war. 
 
 This department was intrusted to Russell A. 
 Alger, of Michigan, a man of fine personalty 
 and winsome manner ; a true and loyal friend, 
 and a man fully capable of the arduous duties 
 of the office. 
 
 Like Lincoln, President McKinley was a 
 student of men. No man during his genera- 
 tion so well knew the lives of the public men 
 as he did. He could intuitively perceive the 
 latent genius of a man long before others, and 
 if he were convinced in his own mind that the 
 man was all right no power on earth could 
 change his conviction for a moment. This 
 was admirably shown in the case of his Secre- 
 tary of War. At a time when all the country 
 was crying for the dismissal of that officer the 
 President remained firm, and would not yield 
 to the pressure. Even the Secreary himself 
 
114 William McKinley 
 
 besought the President to allow him to resign 
 to protect the party ; but no, the President was 
 satisfied, and he would not consider the propo- 
 sition under any circumstances. 
 
 On August I, 1899, after the close of the 
 war, Secretary Alger did resign, and was re- 
 placed by Mr. Elihu Root, of New York City. 
 
 At first this appointment did not meet with 
 entire approval. "Who is this Root ?'' was the 
 question asked. "What has he done?'* etc. 
 But the President again knew his man, and a 
 few months after the President's selection was 
 applauded by all, and it is now conceded that 
 Elihu Root, at present our Secretary of State, 
 made one of the most efficient of Secretaries 
 that the War Department has had in years. 
 
 As to the Attorney-Generalship, McKinley 
 gave the place to Joseph McKenna, of Califor- 
 nia. He was a lawyer of marked ability. He 
 was admitted to the bar in 1865. He was twice 
 elected District-Attorney for Solano County, 
 then served two terms in the lower house of 
 the Legislature of his State, then four terms 
 in Congress, resigning from the latter body to 
 accept the position of United States Circuit 
 Judge, to which he was appointed by President 
 Harrison in 1893. That was his record when 
 President McKinley tendered him the Attor- 
 ney-Generalship in his Cabinet. On January 
 26th, 1898, he retired from the Cabinet to ac- 
 cept at the hands of his Chief a seat on the 
 
A Biographical Study 115 
 
 Supreme Court bench. He in turn was suc- 
 ceeded by John W. Griggs, of New Jersey, 
 who resigned the Governorship of that State 
 to enter the Cabinet. After a little more than 
 three years of excellent service in the Cabinet 
 business interests made it imperative that he 
 should resign, so on April 9th, 1 901, Mr. Phil- 
 ander C. Knox, of Pennsylvania, was sworn 
 into office as Attorney-General. He retained 
 the post until after President McKinley's 
 death. 
 
 James A. Gary, of Indiana, was made Post- 
 master-General. He was a gentleman of fine 
 qualities, and possessed a keen mind. He was 
 succeeded in 1898 by the Hon. Charles Emory 
 Smith, of Philadelphia. This appointment at 
 once gave universal satisfaction. Mr. Smith 
 had a wide acquaintance with public men and 
 affairs, was a personal friend of the Presi- 
 dent's, having stumped the State of Ohio with 
 Mr. McKinley when the latter ran for Gov- 
 ernor of that State. In 1898 President Har- 
 rison appointed Mr. Smith Minister to Russia, 
 which office he resigned after having served 
 two years. While he was in that country he 
 was extremely active in the relief work of the 
 great famine in 1891 and 1892, and had sole 
 charge of contributions that came from Ameri- 
 ca of over $100,000 in money and several ship- 
 loads of goods. 
 
 Mr. Smith is a most genial and courteous 
 
Ii6 William McKinley 
 
 man to meet. He possesses many of the qual- 
 ities of his Chief. He made a most popular 
 Postmaster-General, and was invariably con- 
 sulted on many questions of great importance 
 which did not relate to his department. His 
 vast experience as a teacher, editor, diplomat 
 and man of affairs entitled him to rank as one 
 of our best known public men. 
 
 The Secretaryship of the Navy was allotted 
 to the ex-Congressman and ex-Governor of 
 Massachusetts, the Hon. John D. Long. 
 
 This appointment proved to be one of Mc- 
 Kinley's best. Mr. Long conducted the affairs 
 of our Navy Department during a most trying 
 time. Through his labors the service was 
 brought up to a standard of efficiency second to 
 none in the world. No man had better right 
 to feel proud of his work when he laid down 
 the cares of office than John D. Long. He 
 served throughout President McKinley's entire 
 term of office. 
 
 President McKinley appointed as his Secre- 
 tary of the Interior the Hon. Cornelius N. 
 Bliss, of New York. Mr. Bliss was a thor- 
 ough business man, and well fitted for the head 
 of the Interior Department. On February 
 20th, 1899, he was succeeded by Ethan Allen 
 Hitchcock, of Missouri, another man of wide 
 business interests, and one who had discharged 
 the duties of his office in a most satisfactory 
 manner. 
 
A Biographical Study 117 
 
 And for Secretary of Agriculture the Hon. 
 James Wilson, of Iowa, was selected, a man 
 who had been engaged in practical farming; 
 who had been in the State Legislature as well 
 as the national House of Representatives. For 
 six years prior to his elevation in President 
 McKinley's Cabinet he was director of the 
 Agricultural Experiment Station and professor 
 of agriculture at the Iowa Agricultural College 
 at Ames. This brief biographical sketch will 
 show that the choice of Mr. Wilson to head the 
 Agricultural Department was a good one. It 
 is a singular coincidence that Mr. Wilson is 
 still retained in the Cabinet by President 
 Roosevelt, and that the men who entered with 
 him have either passed away or resigned. 
 
 The wisdom of his appointment was re- 
 vealed in the fact that President Roosevelt 
 stiU wishes him to remain at his council board. 
 
 (When one scans the names of men whom 
 President McKinley appointed to his Cabinet 
 table he will see that those selected were men 
 of brains and of eminence in their respective 
 lines. When everything is taken into consid- 
 eration, no President had a better or more effi- 
 cient Cabinet than he. It has been said by one 
 of the President's closest friends that "there 
 was not a detail or a situation in any branch 
 of the government with which he came in con- 
 tact that he did not fully fathom and master." 
 
 The President was an attentive listener and 
 
Ii8 William McKinley 
 
 an earnest seeker after the truth of any sub- 
 ject. He had strong opinions of his own, but 
 his course at the Cabinet meetings would be 
 to seek his advisors' opinions first, so that he 
 could ascertain their individual feelings before 
 expressing his own. 
 
 His Postmaster-General, Charles E. Smith, 
 has given us a near view of McKinley in re- 
 gard to his manner at Cabinet meetings when 
 he says that McKinley "at the Cabinet table 
 was suggestive, fertile and wise. Sometimes 
 he led discussion, quite as often he first elicited 
 the views of his counselors. He recognized 
 and treated his Cabinet as advisers in the full- 
 est sense of the word, not as mere recorders 
 and executives of his will. He sought and re- 
 spected their independent judgment. It was 
 quite his habit with them, as with others, to 
 draw out their opinion before he had indicated 
 his own, so that he secured their unbiased ex- 
 pression. He was receptive and responsive, 
 but not pliant. He acorded full weight to all 
 that was said, but he formed his own convic- 
 tions. No man was more judicial and sane in 
 summing varied views and deducing the wisest 
 conclusion. His pre-eminence in the council 
 was unchallenged." 
 
 Although eminent counselors may surround 
 a President at his Cabinet table, men in some 
 hues perhaps greater than the President him- 
 self ; that is, finer statesmen, men better skilled 
 
A Biographical Study 119 
 
 in public affairs, or perhaps as lawyers whose 
 minds were keener or more adroit than their 
 Chief, or statesmen whose greatness is innate. 
 Yet the President, and he alone, is responsible 
 for the success or failure of the administra- 
 tion. The public always looks and expects the 
 President to guide and direct the destiny of the 
 nation while he is at the head of government. 
 
 President McKinley well understood the im- 
 portance of his position, and he was not 
 weighed down by its cares; on the contrary, 
 the more he had to do the kinder would be his 
 manner and the more gracious his attitude. 
 As Lincoln was the dominating spirit in his 
 Cabinet, so was McKinley the magnetic leader 
 and gallant defender of American interests in 
 his Cabinet. 
 
 He always espoused the cause wherein he 
 believed his duty lay, and I do not hesitate to 
 express the opinion as a deliberate judgment 
 that his sole purpose in life was to do the thing 
 that was right as it was given him to see the 
 right. Political ambition which he possessed 
 never sprang from selfish motives, but his life- 
 long aim was the best good of his country and 
 of all humanity. 
 
 On one occasion he remarked to his friend, 
 Senator Hanna: "There are some things, 
 Mark, I would not do and cannot do, even to 
 become President of the United States." 
 
 The question whether the Philippines should 
 
120 William McKinley 
 
 be kept or allowed to pass from our jurisdiction 
 was one of the most perplexing problems on 
 which the President and his Cabinet had to 
 meet. I will again quote from Charles Em- 
 ory Smith, who has written very clearly and 
 vividly on this matter. He says : 
 
 *'When did President McKinley decide to 
 keep the whole Philippine archipelago? Was 
 this his original determination, or did he grow 
 up to it with the progress of events and the 
 development of discussion? What were the 
 controlling considerations which influenced his 
 final judgment? What was his own personal 
 feeling? These questions are often asked, and 
 the answer is full of historic interest and per- 
 sonal illumination. 
 
 "The protocol, which was signed August 
 1 2th, 1898, left the future of the Philippines 
 open and undetermined. The language was 
 chosen with deliberation and care. The fifth 
 stipulation provided for the ocupation by the 
 United States of the city and harbor of Ma- 
 nila pending the conclusion of a treaty of peace 
 which should determine the control, disposition 
 and government of the Philippines. Every 
 word was studied and weighed. To leave the 
 'control' and 'disposition' of the Philippines 
 for the final determination of the treaty was 
 to leave their fate unsettled till then. This was 
 done advisedly. 
 
 "The President had not at that time reached 
 
A Biographical Study 121 
 
 a definite conclusion, and he deemed it prudent 
 to reserve freedom of action. Three Hues of 
 action were possible. The first was the estab- 
 lishment simply of a naval and military sta- 
 tion. The second was the retention of the 
 single island of Luzon. The third was the 
 acquisition of the whole archipelago. No one 
 proposed to abandon the opportunity we had 
 gained in the Philippines without at least re- 
 serving a base for naval necessities. There 
 were a few who suggested some such location 
 as the Subig Bay, where a new American es- 
 tablishment could be created, and deprecated 
 the absorption of any old town with its popu- 
 lation and connections; but they were very 
 limited in number. It was generally recog- 
 nized that, as we were in full possession of the 
 city and bay of Manila, that foothold should 
 at least be held. 
 
 "With what justification, indeed, could it 
 be turned back to the domination and oppres- 
 sion of Spain? If the United States withdrew 
 from Manila, Spanish authority must be reas- 
 serted. There was no other. That would 
 mean not only the characteristics of Spanish 
 rule, but the reopening of revolt and war. 
 
 'The knowledge of that inevitable conse- 
 quence brought a general perception and ac- 
 knowledgment that nothing less than the re- 
 tention of Manila was admissible. But when 
 so much was granted, it immediately faced an- 
 
122 William McKinley 
 
 other question. How could Manila be wisely 
 separated from the island of which it was the 
 heart and life? How could London be politi- 
 cally and commercially dissevered from Eng- 
 land? or Brooklyn from Long Island? Must 
 not the city have its hinterland ? Must not the 
 country have its outlet? Was not the connec- 
 tion of so close a character that the interests 
 of both demanded that they should be to- 
 gether ? 
 
 *That argument led to the conclusion that 
 the United States must take Luzon. But be- 
 tween the adoption of Luzon and that of the 
 whole archipelago there was apparently a mar- 
 gin for difference of opinion. Necessity 
 seemed to compel the first, but moderation 
 prompted that the demand should be bounded 
 by those limits, if the line could be logically 
 drawn. Accordingly, in the general letter of 
 instructions with which the President sent the 
 Peace Commissioners on their momentous er- 
 rand, he said that the United States cannot ac- 
 cept less than the cession of Luzon. Whether 
 more should be taken was left for develop- 
 ments. 
 
 "Nearly six weeks intervened from the first 
 instruction before the final issue of the Philip- 
 pines was reached. It was a time of investiga- 
 tion, reflection and discussion. A majority of 
 the Peace Commissioners in Paris came to the 
 decided conviction that it would be a naval, po- 
 
A Biographical Study 123 
 
 litical and commercial mistake to divide the 
 archipelago, and made a strong representation 
 to the President to that effect. The informa- 
 tion which came to him from the officers in 
 command pointed to the same conclusion. The 
 more the question was studied the greater ap- 
 peared the difficulties of division and the more 
 imperative the reasons for limiting the choice 
 to the whole of the archipelago or none. 
 
 "The group is naturally a geographical and 
 political unit. The islands are close together, 
 and for the most part interdependent. Manila 
 is the commercial centre of all. It would be 
 as easy to hold the whole as a part. If we 
 took Luzon and turned the other islands back 
 to Spain they would immediately flame with 
 revolt against which Spain would be impotent, 
 and we should be compelled, in self-protection 
 and on grounds of humanity, to intervene. It 
 was morally certain, moreover, that if the title 
 were left with Spain she would sell and trans- 
 fer her islands to another and stronger Euro- 
 pean nation, and we should be confronted with 
 a powerful rival side by side in the same group 
 dividing authority and responsibility. The 
 dangers of such a divided control among a 
 people naturally related were manifest and in- 
 admissible. 
 
 *These considerations finally decided the 
 President to require the cession of the whole 
 archipelago. When he reached that conclu- 
 
124 William McKinley 
 
 sion he was clear and unwavering. There 
 were critical moments in the negotiations at 
 Paris — moments when even our Commission- 
 ers feared that the conference would break up 
 and the treaty fail. The tension of those hours 
 was extreme, and was calculated to make even 
 the strongest men quiver and ask themselves 
 whether some concession should not be sought. 
 But again, as in the crisis of the Santiago cam- 
 paign, the President was firm and unfaltering. 
 He was wilKng that a reasonable pecuniary al- 
 lowance should be made for any fair claim that 
 compromised no principle; but once convinced 
 that safety required our control of the whole 
 of the Philippines, he held fast to that ground. 
 ''There can be no doubt that he came to this 
 view with great reluctance. It was against his 
 personal feeling and predisposition. He had 
 no ambition, so far as his frankest talk in the 
 innermost circle of friendship revealed, for 
 more territorial acquisition. 
 
 3f» -fC ^ 2|? SfC ]^ 
 
 "Besides his freedom from territorial greed, 
 he saw that the acquisition of the Philippines 
 would open difficult and perplexing problems. 
 He thus approached it with real hesitation, and 
 if he could have seen a way of avoiding it com- 
 patible with honor and duty, he would have 
 been glad to do so. He knew that popular 
 sentiment was for expansion over the Philip- 
 pines. This became plain during his Western 
 
A Biographical Study 125 
 
 tour while the issue was unsettled. It has 
 some times been said, indeed, that he made 
 that journey among the people to ascertain 
 their feeling, and that their demonstration de- 
 termined his course. What is much nearer the 
 truth is that he led public sentiment quite as 
 much as public sentiment led him, and the pop- 
 ular manifesations on that journey were in re- 
 sponse to the keynotes he struck. 
 
 *'He realized the vital importance of popular 
 support, especially in a new departure on a 
 great national experiment. 
 
 "Coming to the conclusion that it was a ne- 
 cessity, he touched the popular chords, and was 
 undoubtedly encouraged and strengthened in 
 his course by the public approval. But it is 
 equally true that a popular sentiment in favor 
 of holding the Philippines would not have car- 
 ried him for that policy unless he had felt it 
 to be a duty. Thoroughly man of the people 
 as he was, few men were less swayed by mere 
 momentary and ephemeral currents. He could 
 look beyond the fleeting and superficial im- 
 pulses of the hour to the calm judgment of the 
 future. And thus his conclusion to hold the 
 Philippines was not moulded by popular opin- 
 ion, but was his final conviction as a statesman 
 and rather against his personal preposses- 
 sions." 
 
 There was never a more fearless man than 
 William McKinley after he had proven in his 
 
126 William McKinley 
 
 own mind that his course was right ; but even 
 so, he would give the pubHc a chance to be 
 heard even after his mind had been made up. 
 It was just this phase of his character that was 
 so much misunderstood. He was not blunt in 
 his manner, but he was none the less strong 
 and fearless because he was gentle in his deal- 
 ings with men. ^ Just here I desire to quote 
 from an address delivered by President Schur- 
 man, of Cornell University, at Ithaca, N. y. 
 He says: "Strong as he was, and firm to 
 the point of obstinacy, yet he was so deferen- 
 tial to the judgment of others, so willing to lis- 
 ten to everybody, so truly democratic in his 
 search for truth and wisdom, that his very lack 
 of dogmatic self-conceit and even the delib- 
 erateness of his method were at first construed 
 as signs of weakness, and in the early days of 
 his Presidency it was not uncommon criticism 
 that he had no mind of his own." 
 
 "Never was there a greater mistake, as the 
 men who came closest to him will universally 
 testify. His Cabinet was made up of strong 
 men, but the President dominated the Cabinet. 
 He saw everybody, heard everybody, but fol- 
 lowed nobody. 
 
 "Yet, somehow, he was the leader of all, and 
 all fell into line and marched behind or beside 
 him. He acquainted himself with all the facts 
 of a given case, listened to all manner of ad- 
 vice from those who might be supposed to 
 
A Biographical Study 127 
 
 know all about it, even suffering fools gladly, 
 and then reached a decision or adopted a policy 
 of his own, which, being well considered, was 
 sure to command general assent. It was his 
 own views, yet it was the quintessence of the 
 public mind. He was the greatest inductive 
 philosopher who ever experimented with 
 American politics, and it did not take the 
 American people long to discover his method, 
 or to show their appreciation of it. Even be- 
 fore his re-election, the talk that he lacked in- 
 dependence of judgment had entirely ceased 
 I have dwelt on this point because it is here 
 that MciKnley suffered most injustice at 
 hands of his critics." 
 
 On the great public questions the President 
 would be more deliberate, more cautious in the 
 way in which he arrived at his conclusions. 
 He used to say, to quote again from Mr. 
 Smith, ''that when all the members who com- 
 prised his Cabinet had reached a conclusion on 
 any subject, it was most generally sure to be 
 the right conclusion." 
 
 As has already been stated, Mr. McKinley 
 was unusually careful in the selection of ap- 
 pointments. He took the greatest pains to 
 avail himself of the right man for the right 
 place. 
 
 On one occasion a gentleman who had re- 
 ceived an important appointment came hurry- 
 ingly to the White House to explain to the 
 
 ; here lu 
 It the j II 
 
128 William McKinley ^ 
 
 President that he did not agree on some of the 
 President's poHcies, and said that he no doubt 
 would want to appoint another man who 
 thought as the President did. "You are just 
 the man I want," replied the President. It 
 did not matter with him whether the man was 
 for or against the policies of the administra- 
 tion. He was only looking for the best man 
 for the place. 
 
 In speaking of the President's appointments, 
 Mr. Charles K Smith says : *'The great body 
 of appointments are not brought before the 
 Cabinet, but are considered and determined be- 
 tween the President and the particular member 
 in charge. But the important appointments 
 of a really national character are often the sub- 
 ject of general conference and careful discus- 
 sion by the whole Cabinet. President McKin- 
 ley, who had an unusually large number of 
 such selections to make, like the Paris Peace 
 Commission, deliberately canvassed every 
 name with all his advisers. And it is worthy 
 of note how little, when they are thus treated, 
 mere political or personal considerations weigh 
 £ind how the single question of fitness becomes 
 decisive." 
 
 There were strong minds in President Mc- 
 Kinley's Cabinet — minds that were different 
 from the President's, and minds that would 
 naturally reach different conclusions — but there 
 
A Biographical Study 129 
 
 was not that divided sentiment which charac- 
 terized the Cabinet of Mr. Lincoln. 
 
 McKinley's Cabinet always respected the 
 President's judgment, while at first Mr. Lin- 
 coln's advisers were unmindful of Lincoln's 
 logical perceptions and moral leadership, al- 
 though they soon realized that his rugged and 
 uncouth exterior was only the outward man- 
 tle, and within there existed a mentality 
 equalled by none of his day and generation. 
 
 We learn from the records now that Presi- 
 dent McKinley's Cabinet was divided just 
 prior to the Spanish-American War; that some 
 of its members sympathized with the war 
 party, while the others were opposed to the 
 war. And says Mr. Smith : "The Presi- 
 dent's policy in that crisis was his own, guided, 
 first of all, by his own strong convictions, and 
 then moulded by events which controlled him. 
 Again, at a crucial point, he had to decide 
 whether the Philippines should be retained or 
 not. With some division at first, his Cabinet 
 came to concur in his conclusion; but in such 
 a transcendent issue he knew that conscience 
 and history would hold him to his own per- 
 sonal responsibility, and however much he may 
 have felt strengthened by the concurrence of 
 his advisers, he had in the last resort to rely 
 on his own independent insight and judg- 
 ment." 
 
 William McKinley was by far a greater and 
 
130 William McKinley 
 
 wiser man than some of his critics will ad- 
 mit. It is not claimed that he was a second 
 Webster or Clay or Calhoun, but it is main- 
 tained that he was a statesman and political 
 leader of high rank. 
 
 The popular appreciation of his career was 
 at first slow in its growth, but after he became 
 President his countrymen and the world looked 
 upon him with more favor and with less re- 
 luctance. His commanding influence and 
 power over the people's minds and hearts grew 
 steadily day by day ; from the hour he took the 
 oath of office as President until the assassin's 
 bullet ended his noble and beloved career. 
 
 In closing this chapter let us consider for a 
 moment one of the President's most predom- 
 inating characteristics. It was patience ; never 
 has an Executive showed it in a more marked 
 way than William McKinley. 
 
 He carried this virtue with him wherever 
 he went, and it was his up to the day he re- 
 ceived his **crown of martyrdom." Says a 
 friend: *'If you ask the hundred of notable 
 men who were frequent and solicitous visitors 
 at the official mansion what quality of his char- 
 acter was the most remarkable in a man of his 
 many cares and anxieties, the large majority 
 will answer patience — an indomitable, unvary- 
 ing patience." 
 
 *'In all the various demands for the exercise 
 of his many constitutional powers, in the pres- 
 
A Biographical Study 131 
 
 ence of conflicting interests and urgent repre- 
 sentations, he preserved his serenity of man- 
 ner and gave a patient audience outside his 
 own official household. Only members of the 
 Cabinet had the right of immediate admission 
 to the audience chamber. Waiting Represen- 
 tatives, Senators and others in official and pri- 
 vate life must await their turn. The waiting 
 numbers were often so large that impatience 
 and nervous irritation seized them in the long 
 delay, and when they were summoned they en- 
 tered in a mood far from amiable. But when 
 the President turned to them with his kindly 
 face and tranquil manner, as if he had no bur- 
 dens on his mind, and no other duty than to 
 listen to his visitor, there was such a soothing 
 charm in his bearing that all this irritability 
 disappeared as by magic. 
 
 "On one occasion, when a certain line of Ex- 
 ecutive action was supposed to affect injurious- 
 ly the interests of some constituents of a cer- 
 tain Senator, the latter entered the room of 
 audience with denunciatory remonstrances on 
 his lips, and sv/elling with inward excitement. 
 The President listened to his extravagant 
 words, and advancing a step put a hand on his 
 shoulder, and said, in a tone that a gentle nurse 
 might use to a fretful invalid : ''Oh, no, no ; 
 not so bad as that ; not so bad as that !" And 
 soon reason resumed its throne. Far beyond 
 any precedent this last administration had fur- 
 
132 William McKinley 
 
 nished a volume of proof that "a soft answer 
 turns away wrath." 
 
 All who perchance came within his presence 
 admired him at first sight. His Cabinet min- 
 isters, when speaking of him to-day, refer to 
 him with loving recollections. Let it be said 
 that no man in the history of America was so 
 universally beloved as William McKinley. His 
 whole life is a theme of inspiration to the 
 youth of our land. And God grant that they, 
 may take pattern after him. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Mckinley in the home and as commander- 
 in-chief. 
 
 THE home — which has been called the 
 most imposing and magnificent temple 
 of civilization, is the very essence of 
 the foundation of the Republic. When 
 all the achievements and aims of man have 
 crumbled into dust, the purity and the exam- 
 ple of the home w411 be more renowned, more 
 significant, and more far-reaching in its mis- 
 sion than any other power in the annals of the 
 world. The moral and material teaching of 
 the home appeals to the reason of man; and 
 wields his good judgment and determining 
 powers for the right more than any other force 
 that can be exerted. It has been said that "the 
 nationalism of the world rests upon the hearth- 
 stone." 
 
 There is nothing on earth sweeter or dearer 
 than an ideal home. "Be it ever so humble, 
 there's no place like home." We know not 
 what rank McKinley may be accorded in his- 
 tory. Time alone shall determine. But there 
 is one thing certain, with which all must agree, 
 that his home life and his unselfish devotion 
 
134 William McKinley 
 
 to his wife stood out perhaps pre-eminently 
 among his other characteristics, and were 
 worthy of the emulation of all. 
 j McKniley's devotion to his wife was so tefi- 
 der, so true, so sincere, that the story of it will 
 be told for years to come. Amid the deep 
 cares of public life, amid the strenuous activity 
 of daily duties; in the thick of his personal 
 duties and achievements, and they were many, 
 he never relaxed his tender care, his sympa- 
 thy and his untiring thought for her comfort 
 and happiness. 
 
 Senator Hanna once said, in regard to Mc- 
 Kinley's home life, "an ideal home-body was 
 William McKinley, and the American fireside 
 was a shrine of worship with him." 
 
 At his fireside, with his wife and children 
 about him, the man is seen at his best. He is 
 no longer the active centre of affairs; he un- 
 bends from the dignified demeanor which is 
 characteristic of men in their relations with 
 men, and he is the devoted husband, the kind 
 and affectionate father. Such was William 
 McKinley. 
 
 After Major McKinley returned from the 
 war and moved to Canton, the acquaintance 
 with Miss Ida Saxton, whom he had corre- 
 sponded with while in the army and met on a 
 former visit to Canton before the war, ripened 
 into love. She was the belle of that city, and 
 her father was a prominent banker and a man 
 

 ^) -^BBB 
 
 III 1 
 
 LLl^-^^ 
 
 .^^^S^ ',j-j- Ml 
 
 '^-nnmn) ^iMMJlS ttnnnnnnTOCT^mj^^^^ji 
 
 -^^al 
 
 Hllllltei::'^''^^ 
 
 THE HOME OF WILLIAM McKINLEY, CANTON, OHIO 
 Reproduced by courtesy of Collier's Weekly. 
 
A Biographical Study 135 
 
 of considerable literary ability, being editor of 
 the Canton Repository, which is still in exist- 
 ence. 
 
 Miss Saxton was thoroughly educated, hav- 
 ing graduated from the Brook Hall Seminary 
 at Media, Pa. Her father sent her abroad 
 with her younger sister, so as to enable her to 
 receive a broader view of life. Upon her re- 
 turn from the foreign tour she entered her 
 father's bank as cashier. 
 
 Although Mr. Saxton was a man of con- 
 siderable wealth, he had a theory that young 
 girls should be taught a business that would 
 make them independent, and enable them to 
 support themselves if necessary. 
 
 It has been said that the courtship of Major 
 McKinley w^as very unique. He was a Meth- 
 odist Sunday-school teacher and Miss Saxton 
 a Bible class teacher in a Presbyterian church. 
 On a street corner each Sunday they met to 
 chat about their work. This continued for 
 some time. One afternoon he said to her: 
 "This separation each Sunday I don't like at 
 all — your going one way and I another. Sup- 
 pose after this we always go the same way. 
 What do you think?'' 
 
 "I think so, too," was her quick reply. 
 
 Mr. Saxton had hoped that his daughter 
 would not soon fall in love, for he wanted her 
 to remain at home to brighten his declining 
 years, but he said "that Major McKinley was 
 
1^6 William McKinley 
 
 the only man he was willing that she should 
 marry.'' Many incidents of their devotion 
 during their courtship have been told by old 
 friends. 
 
 The wedding took place in the New First 
 Presbyterian Church, which was hurried to 
 completion for the Saxton-McKinley wedding, 
 on January 25th, 187 1. 
 
 A fac-simile of the wedding invitation fol- 
 lows: 
 
 Mr. and Mrs. James A. Saltan 
 
 will he pleased to have you present 
 
 at the marriage of their daughter 
 
 Ida 
 
 to 
 
 William McKinley, Jr., 
 
 Wednesday evening, January 2$th, 1871, at 
 
 "jYi o'clock. 
 
 First Presbyterian Church, 
 
 Canton, Ohio. 
 
A Biographical Study 137 
 
 Major McKinley's brother Abner was best 
 man, and Miss Saxton's sister was maid of 
 honor. The bride and groom went East on 
 their wedding tour, stopping at Washington 
 on their return home. 
 
 Two Httle girls were born to them — Kate, 
 on Christmas Day, 1871, and Ida, April ist, 
 1873. The latter died in babyhood, and Kate 
 died when she was three years and six months 
 old, both keenly mourned. 
 
 Mrs. McKinley was naturally a strong 
 young woman, but the cares of motherhood 
 and the death of her mother, with those of her 
 little ones, brought on an illness from which 
 she has never completely recovered, although 
 she is ever patient, kind and good to every- 
 body. She tried to be always cheerful for her 
 husband's sake, and he to be happy and cheer- 
 ful for her sake. What a beautiful picture 
 of wedded life! 
 
 It is said that while on his way to the inau- 
 guration at Washington, the comfort of his 
 wife during the journey was more to him than 
 all the honors of the people who met and 
 cheered him at every railroad station. To 
 him she was as precious as the most costly 
 jewel that ever a monarch boasted. 
 
 He would always appeal to her. In the 
 evening, when they were sitting alone in the 
 Red Room at the White House, she with her 
 knitting and he reading to her, and a card 
 
138 William McKinley 
 
 would be brought in, the President would say, 
 *'Ida, shall we see them?" 
 
 When Major McKinley was in Congress he 
 would work at the Capitol all day, and when 
 closing hours came would return to his hotel, 
 the Ebbitt House in Washington, and draw 
 a chair beside Mrs. McKinley's, and relate to 
 her what had gone on during the day. When 
 dinner was announced, they would regularly 
 proceed together to the dining-room. This 
 was told by an eye-witness, who said that it 
 was repeated day after day. It has been said 
 by those who knew them well that they were 
 ''a pair of old-fashioned lovers from first to 
 last." 
 
 A story is told of how one day an autograph 
 album was laid before the President for his sig- 
 nature. Many of these albums came to the 
 President daily, and he was supposed to place 
 his name on the first page. In this particular 
 case, it is said, the President noticed the pic- 
 ture of a flower on every page, and just be- 
 neath each picture was a verse. He turned 
 over the pages until he came to the one which 
 had a pansy on it. The pansy is Mrs. Mc- 
 Kinley's favorite flower, and on this page read 
 the sentiment: 
 
 *'You cannot guess the power 
 Of a little simple flower/' 
 
KATIE Mckinley, the president's daughter, who died at the 
 
 AGE OF THREE AND A HALF 
 
 Reproduced by courtesy of Collier's Weekly. 
 
A Biographical Study 139 
 
 The President took up his pen and wrote 
 beneath the verse ^'William McKinley," and 
 sent the album back to its owner. 
 
 While Governor of Ohio McKinley had 
 rooms in the Chittenden House, in Columbus, 
 directly opposite the State House. He always 
 left the hotel by a side entrance to avoid no- 
 tice, and cross the street, after which he would 
 lift his hat, and a handkerchief would flutter 
 from his window at the hotel. This was re- 
 peated every evening as well. 
 
 On Sunday the Governor would take the 
 train to Canton and a®company his mother to 
 the First Methodist Episcopal Church. 
 
 Although McKinley had no training, he 
 nevertheless loved music. It is said that "any- 
 thing from a hurdy-gurdy to a grand opera 
 would please him; he would keep time with 
 his hands and enjoy every bit of it.'* 
 
 Senator Hanna wrote of McKinley's gen- 
 erosity in these words : "A man of more gen- 
 erous impulses than McKinley never lived. 
 When cases were presented to him for relief 
 that were beyond his ability to meet he would 
 apply to me or some of his friends for some 
 assistance in aiding worthy persons, and his 
 friends were always glad to respond to these 
 appeals. He was liberal without stint. It 
 gave him actual physical pain to see any one 
 suffering or in distress, and on such occasions 
 showed his great faith in friendship, never hes- 
 
140 William McKinley 
 
 itating to go to any bounds in an appeal for 
 others." 
 
 A story is told that he was traveHng on one 
 occasion when a man approached him and a 
 wealthy friend sitting by his side for money 
 for a worthy cause. McKinley pulled out 
 from his pocket a fifty-dollar bill and a five; 
 he gave the fifty-dollar bill to the man, and 
 placed back in his pocket the five, while the 
 millionaire gave a ten-dollar bill. 
 
 An act which occurred during his last and 
 tragic visit to Buffalo will illustrate the simple 
 manner and graciousness of the man. On the 
 day before the assassination the President 
 started out of the Milburn House for an early 
 morning stroll; the weather was very bright 
 and beautiful. As he turned out from Dela- 
 ware Avenue into a side street he stopped in 
 front of a house where a laborer was cutting 
 the grass with a lawn mower. He engaged the 
 man in conversation. The President asked 
 him the cost and workmanship of the different 
 kinds of mowers and other little details of the 
 man's calling. While he stood there talking 
 a street sweeper came along, and he, too, was 
 stopped by the President and drawn into the 
 conversation, all of which had reference to the 
 work in which the men were engaged. Just 
 as he was about to leave he put his hand into 
 his pocket, and, pulling out two one-dollar 
 bills, presented one to each of the men, asking 
 
A Biographical Study 141 
 
 them to accept them as a token of the good- 
 will of the President of the United States. 
 
 This little deed of kindness and pathos was 
 the last that President McKinley did in his 
 capacity as a private citizen. The two men 
 were much touched when they related this sim- 
 ple story of the great and kind-hearted man 
 who was so soon to go home to his reward. 
 
 Even the little children loved him. It is re- 
 lated of a little boy that on the night before 
 Mr. McKinley died he said to his mother: 
 "You needn't wake me, mama, if President 
 McKinley dies. I don't want to see any *Ex- 
 tras,' for I never loved any other President 
 half so well as I love him." The newsboys 
 loved him, for they knew he was their friend. 
 When he met them on the street he would al- 
 most always stop and buy papers from them. 
 
 Another of those acts of his illustrating the 
 kindly and gracious side of his nature, that 
 never could be concealed, occurred on the fate- 
 ful day when he made the rounds of the Ex-« 
 position Buildings at Buffalo. While passing 
 one of the booths in the Agricultural Building 
 the young lady in charge, Miss Antoinette Witt, 
 attracted his attention. He stopped, shook her 
 hand, spoke with his charming smile a few 
 words of well-wishing, and presented to her a 
 rich bouquet of American Beauties, which had 
 been given him shortly before. Then he passed 
 rapidly on, but the young lady was the hero of 
 
1.42 William McKinley 
 
 the day, and cherishes the recollection fondly. 
 
 Another incident occurred on the day of his 
 funeral which is so pathetic and so beautiful 
 a picture that it cannot be too often told. 
 
 It was that incident of the little girl of un- 
 known name who on the day when the remains 
 of William McKinley were laid at rest in Can- 
 ton was found just at dusk at the entrance 
 gate of the cemetery in Atlanta, Ga. She had 
 been waiting there for some time, for in her 
 hands were tightly clutched a bunch of waited 
 wild flowers. She had heard that her beloved 
 President, whom all loved, was to be buried 
 that afternoon, and she had come to the only 
 burial place of which she knew to place on 
 his bier a tender token of her love and esteem. 
 
 As Antony said of Brutus, so of him : ''His 
 life was gentle, and the elements so mixed in 
 him that Nature might stand up and say to 
 all the world, 'This is a man !' " 
 
 Nothing would delight the President better 
 after the hours of work than to have a number 
 of his close friends to dinner. After dinner 
 he and his friends would talk into the early 
 hours of the morning. McKinley loved a 
 good joke, and when he laughed he would 
 laugh heartily all over. It is said that he was 
 a perfect boy in his capacity for merriment. 
 
 He liked to go to the theatre, and would al- 
 ways avail himself of the opportunity if there 
 was a good play on. His favorite dramas 
 
A Biographical Study 143 
 
 were "Rip Van Winkle" and the "Cricket on 
 the Hearth." He enjoyed meeting all the 
 prominent actors, and was especially fond of 
 Mr. Joseph Jefferson. The noted actors would 
 always call at the White House when in Wash- 
 ington. McKinley also enjoyed Shakespeare- 
 an plays. He said he received a great deal 
 of good from a good play, and to attend the 
 theatre was a relaxation from his public cares. 
 
 President McKinley was not what is called 
 an athlete. He enjoyed recreation, however, 
 being a good walker, and taking daily drives 
 with Mrs. McKinley. He had no taste for 
 fishing or hunting in after-life, although he 
 engaged in these sports when a boy. He en- 
 joyed the saddle and was a good rider, and 
 often would he be seen on the outskirts of 
 Washington on horseback, accompanied by a 
 member of his Cabinet. 
 
 He was not a brilliant man like Webster, 
 nor had he the rugged strength or humor of 
 Lincoln; but it is said that ''he rarely spoke 
 an idle or foolish word." He did not show 
 any real native wit; he left us no real anec- 
 dotes such as Lincoln, but he has left behind 
 him the record of a great career, a career which 
 will shine with more lustre as time advances. 
 William McKinley was a man, he was human 
 like the rest of mankind, and he made mis- 
 takes like every one. His judgment was not 
 infallible, but he was a man possessed of more 
 
144 William McKinley 
 
 than the average of patience, of goodness, of 
 fortitude and of fidelity to duty. He believed 
 that life was all too short to treasure up any 
 animosities toward his fellow-men. He be- 
 lieved in the martyred words, ^'With malice 
 toward none, with charity for all." 
 
 Sensitive to criticism, yet no one overheard 
 him speak unkindly about any one. He never 
 consciously wronged a fellow-being. He 
 would turn from the cares of State to give a 
 flower to a little child or to say a kindly word 
 to some visitor for whom he could do no more. 
 His beginning was that of the average Ameri- 
 can bey, and he won every step of his noble 
 and brilliant career because he was a true, 
 patriotic, kind and courageous man. No mat- 
 ter what came up in his official duties, he al- 
 ways remained true to his character and con- 
 victions as a Christian gentleman. He was so 
 upright in nature, so tolerant in temper, so 
 grand in bearing and so kind and considerate 
 of others, that he proved by his acts and words 
 that "the bravest are the tenderest, the loving 
 are the daring." In regard to this side of his 
 character, Mark Hanna has written of his 
 friend : 
 
 *'He seems to have met every emergency and 
 the unusual problems and annoying complica- 
 tions of the times in a masterful way. These 
 conditions furnished the opportunity for him 
 to demonstrate his enormous talent and ability 
 
A Biographical Study T45 
 
 for successfully solving every problem, rising 
 to the full measure of every situation and over- 
 coming all obstacles." And he goes on to say 
 that: "In all those thirty years of close rela- 
 tions I never heard him utter one word of what 
 I would call resentment, tinged with bitterness, 
 toward any living person." This was again 
 reflected in the story of the assassination told 
 by Mr. Milburn, who said that he could ''never 
 forget the picture in the expression of his coun- 
 tenance as he glanced toward the dastard as- 
 sassin. In his eyes read the words as plain 
 as language could express it, *Why should you 
 do this?' And then, when the assassin was 
 hurled to the ground when the fury and indig- 
 nation of the people had begun to assert it- 
 self, he said, with almost saintly compassion, 
 'Don't let them hurt him.' I know of noth- 
 ing in all history that can compare with the 
 splendid climax and enduring of this noble 
 life." 
 
 William McKinley consecrated his whole 
 career to his country and his fellow-men. He 
 often said that he got more out of people by 
 meeting them than they got out of him. Mc- 
 Kinley was very proud of the bronze button 
 of the G. A. R. 
 
 Edward Stratemeyer, in his "Boy's Life of 
 McKinley," relates the following story: 
 "One day an old Grand Army man presented 
 himself at the door of the White House and 
 
146 William McKinley 
 
 asked to see the President. The doorkeeper 
 said, He cannot receive you, sir ; he has called 
 a Cabinet meeting for 10 o'clock, and it is now 
 five minutes of ten/ 'But he told me I could 
 come and see him,* responded the old soldier. 
 *When did he tell you?' 'About six months 
 ago, when he was in our town in Ohio.' 'Oh, 
 well, you had better come in when he receives 
 visitors.' 'I can't come in then,' said the man, 
 with tears in his eyes. 'I'm going back home 
 this afternoon. Can't you please take in my 
 name to him?' After some hesitation, the old 
 soldier's name was taken in to the President, 
 who was busy with some important public doc- 
 ument. After waiting in the hallway for a 
 moment or two the old veteran saw the Presi- 
 dent coming toward him with outstretched 
 hands. 'I am glad to see you, Sergeant,' he 
 said, calling him by name. 'Come in and tell 
 me how you have been.' He led him into a 
 side apartment, where they could talk without 
 interruption. Here the soldier was offered a 
 chair and a cigar, and the President asked him 
 all about his family, his brother who had gone 
 to California, and a number of other personal 
 affairs. He spent some time with him. After 
 the old veteran had left the White House he 
 said: 'e's a gentleman, every inch of him/ 
 and in speaking of his visit later to his friends 
 he said: 'I thought the interview was going 
 to be downright straight-laced ; but I soon got 
 
O ~ 
 
A Biographical Study M7 
 
 that knocked out of me. He talked to me like 
 a brother, and he hasn't forgotten a one of us, 
 even if he is President. He talked to me al- 
 most half an hour, and if that Cabinet got to- 
 gether it had to wait, that's all.' " 
 
 Those who knew the White House best m 
 its relation to the public during the incumbency 
 of different Presidents have told many mci- 
 dents concerning their chiefs, but for McKm- 
 ley they have nothing to relate except kmdly 
 acts and genial ways in his dealings with the 
 
 public. . , . . . 
 
 It is said that he left a Cabinet meeting to 
 receive the secretary of the Anti-Imperiahst 
 Lea^ie when that gentleman visited Washing- 
 ton for the first time. It was a very unusual 
 
 courtesy. , . r i i. 
 
 There is another story which has been re- 
 lated by Mr. Stratemeyer, of the old colored 
 woman who had moved to Washington from 
 Ohio just before McKinley became President. 
 Her husband had died, and her son, who was 
 then out of a position, was the only person 
 whom she depended upon for support. Soon 
 after McKinley became President she resolved 
 to call on him and see if she could not have 
 her son given a government position. ^ ^ 
 
 After many attempts to gain admission, for 
 no one knew exactly what she wanted as she 
 could not make herself understood, she went 
 and joined the long line on visitor's day and 
 
148 William McKinley 
 
 stood for nearly an hour waiting for her turn 
 to meet the President of the United States. 
 So nervous was she that when she actually 
 stood in front of McKinley she could hardly 
 raise her hand to greet him, much less say 
 what she wanted. In speaking of the occa- 
 sion afterwards she remarked : *'I dun stood 
 dar jest like a fool. He seemed to be sech a 
 big man, I couldn't say nuffin, nohow. He 
 looked at me cu'rus like, an' all to once he 
 says: *Ain't dis Mammy Tucker?' Den I 
 most gasp fo' bref, an' I says : 'Yes, dis is 
 Mammy Tucker, Mister Presiden(t,' an' he 
 give my hand a hot squeeze an' says 'Glad to 
 see you, Mrs. Tucker. I hope you are well!' 
 Dat flustered me mightily, but I braces up an' 
 I says : Tse putty well, sah, but mighty poor, 
 sah — wid de old man gone, an' Washington 
 out o' wuk. Wisht Washington cud git some- 
 t'ing to do around yeah, sah.' By dat time 
 de crowd behin' was pushin' up an' he sayd: 
 *Come an' see me to-morrow at 9 o'clock; an' 
 den I had to pass on wid everybody a-lookin' 
 an' a-starin' at me, 'cause de blessed President 
 had stopped to talk to a poor old colored pus- 
 son like me.' " 
 
 The next morning at 9 o'clock the old col- 
 ored woman was at the AVhite House; the 
 President saw her, and gave her some money 
 to keep her from distress until her son secured 
 a position. Presently the son was given a po- 
 
A Biographical Study 149 
 
 sition as a cleaner in one of the public build- 
 ings, with a salary sufficient for the old mother 
 and son to live comfortably. 
 
 The lapse of time will never dim or dull the 
 affection which the American people will for- 
 ever have for the memory of William McKin- 
 ley. His domestic life will ever be a precious 
 legacy to our people. His beauty of disposi- 
 tion and his unerring tenderness towards his 
 wife will be an inspiration to future generations 
 and spur men on to higher and nobler endeavor 
 for their own and the world's well-being. 
 
 McKinley's career was a remarkable process 
 of evolution. Each day of his long training, 
 both in Congress and as Governor, revealed 
 his intellectual powers and administrative abil- 
 ity. 
 
 When the call to the Presidency came he was 
 ready to take the command and show his abil- 
 ity to govern and be the commander-in-chief. 
 For that is what he really was, notwithstand- 
 ing his opponents' opinion to the contrary. 
 
 Many have said that McKinley was a yield- 
 ing person, without convictions or opinions; 
 that he was swayed to and fro at the command 
 of such men as Mark Hanna and others, but 
 nothing could be more false than such a state- 
 ment. It would be truer to say that he tow- 
 ered above all others, throughout his term of 
 office, "as a mighty oak towers the lesser trees 
 of a forest." 
 
150 William McKinley 
 
 His friends knew his capabilities, and they 
 well understood from the time he entered Con- 
 gress that he was a coming man. 
 
 At a time when McKinley had to work and 
 wait, ten years before he became leader of the 
 House of Representatives, James G. Blaine pre- 
 dicted most emphatically that he would become 
 President of the United States. 
 
 It was a deal harder to take command when 
 he came to Washington as President of men 
 who had been his commanders when he first 
 made his appearance in public life, than it 
 would have been if he had come without any 
 special acquaintance as President-elect; but he 
 soon lived down the familiarity. It has been 
 said that his "suaviter et fortiter" was one of 
 the secrets of his success in obtaining the chief 
 place of his party. 
 
 The President had keen critical faculty, he 
 was quick to perceive the "flaw of logic or of 
 rhetoric" in another's composition. It is said 
 that no paper which was shown to him ever left 
 his hands without some revision, either in 
 matter or style. Sometimes he would merely 
 give suggestions. Again, like Lincoln, his 
 keen sense of detection was not so much due 
 to his training as it was to his natural sense of 
 harmony. During the Spanish War the Pres- 
 ident was the real commander-in-chief. Noth- 
 ing hardly escaped his notice. No President 
 so absolutely directed the fighting forces of the 
 
A Biographical Study 151 
 
 United States as did William McKinley. He 
 was the leader and commander, and he well 
 knew that history would hold him responsible 
 for the acts of his administration. He felt an 
 overwhelming sense of his cares, but he was 
 not oppressed by them. He approached them 
 with hopeful temperament ; with a spirit due to 
 their gravity, and he met them with full con- 
 sideration as to his own honor and the honor 
 and welfare of the great nation in his care. He 
 could think fast and act quickly if it was neces- 
 sary, but he held the balance of his intellect 
 and was impulsive to the smallest degree. He 
 was always desirous like his Secretary of State, 
 John Hay, of giving others more than their 
 share of the credit in any transaction, when he 
 had been the prime mover and the master mind. 
 While administering his office, as President, 
 he stood firm and with untiring energy he set 
 himself to the task of duty. It would often 
 be two or three o'clock in the morning before 
 he would leave the war room at Washington. 
 He held conference with members of his Cabi- 
 net and other officials every evening when the 
 war was in progress. Those to whom he con- 
 sulted with most were Secretary of War, 
 Alger, Secretary of the Navy, Long, and Gen- 
 eral Corbin, the adjutant-general of the Army. 
 The President requested that all orders of a 
 military character be submitted to him person- 
 ally before being issued and many of them, it 
 
152 William McKinley 
 
 is said to-day, bear his corrections in pencil. 
 But with all these arduous duties which re- 
 quired his constant attention, he was as calm 
 and tranquil as if he was going through the 
 simple and ordinary routine of every day life. 
 He was never ruffled or excited on even the 
 most trying moments of the contest. Often 
 would he be seen in the Telegraph Bureau read- 
 ing the messages, sheet by sheet, as they came 
 over the wires. 
 
 To show how thoroughly McKinley was in 
 command, the following might be cited : 
 
 Colonel Aliller's command sailed from Man- 
 ila to Iloilo in December, 1898. General Otis 
 reported this fact, and said that the soldiers 
 wxre suffering greatly from the transport. The 
 message was written on New Year's Day of 
 1898, and was as follows: "It is of first im- 
 portance that conflict be avoided at this time, 
 if possible. Can not Miller get into communi- 
 cation with insurgents giving them the Presi- 
 dent's Proclamation and informing them of 
 the purposes of this Government, that there is 
 no other purpose than to give the peace, pros- 
 perity and protection in all their civic rights?" 
 
 The President inserted in the dispatch fol- 
 lowing the word conflict the phrase : "Brought 
 on by you," and amended the concluding lines 
 to read, "that its purpose is to give them a good 
 Government and security in their personal 
 rights." He also added this to the despatch: 
 
A Biographical Study 153 
 
 "It is most desirable that Miller should hold 
 his ground and as health of the soldiers may 
 not permit of their remaining on transports, 
 could not a landing at some healthful place 
 convenient be effected without a conflict?' 
 
 "The report of excited conditions in Manila 
 makes it incumbent upon you not to weaken 
 your forces at that point." 
 
 Upon the same day word was received from 
 General Brooke that the United States flag had 
 been raised over the island of Cuba. Secretary 
 Alger at once prepared a dispatch of congratu- 
 lation. It was as follows: "January ist, 1899. 
 Brooke, Major General, the President instructs 
 me to send to you and your command his best 
 congratulations upon the successful and peace- 
 ful turning over of the island of Cuba by the 
 Government of Spain to your forces." The 
 President corrected the dispatch to read, fol- 
 lowing the word "peaceful" "events of the 
 day," and by striking out best before congratu- 
 lations. The next order we find that President 
 McKinley at times named the regiments for 
 active service: 
 
 "Washington, D. C, General Corbin. If we 
 need more troops for Manila after the force 
 now at S. F. has gone, I direct that you will 
 order the 12th N. Y. Col, Leonard, Comdg. 
 August nth, 1898. 
 
 William McKinley." 
 
154 William McKinley 
 
 William McKinley saw more clearly than 
 the Generals in the fields the disastrous effect 
 of allowing the evacuation of Santiago and the 
 retreat of the Spanish army from that place. 
 He realized that it would greatly encourage the 
 Government of Spain; that it would break the 
 complete destruction of the Spanish fleet, and 
 would naturally affect public sentiment in this 
 country as well as in Europe. So the President 
 believed that unconditional surrender was the 
 only alternative. He felt that to fight was 
 better than to concede ; so with unflinching de- 
 termination, he stood by his decision. So im- 
 mediately after the last battle around Santiago, 
 when General Shafter reported to the Adju- 
 tant General that the Spanish Commander de- 
 sired that his troops be allowed to retain their 
 arms, the Secretary of War answered at once 
 under the direction of the President, as follows : 
 
 "Executive Mansion, 
 Washington, D. C. 
 "Major General Shafter: 
 
 "Your dispatch is a surprise to the President 
 and me. What you went to Santiago for was 
 the Spanish army. If you allow it to evacuate 
 with its arms, you must meet it somewhere else. 
 This is not war. If the Spanish Commander 
 desires to leave the city and its people, let him 
 surrender, and we will then discuss the ques- 
 tion as to what shall be done with them." 
 
A Biographical Study 155 
 
 In writing on this subject, Postmaster 
 Charles E. Smith has said : "The Spanish prop- 
 osition of evacuation was made on July 8th, 
 1898. The surrender was yielded on the fif- 
 teenth and arranged on the sixteenth. That 
 was a week of intense anxiety in the Cabinet 
 room. The meetings were frequent and the 
 consultations most serious. Every successive 
 dispatch was awaited with the deepest expect- 
 ancy. The Cabinet was unanimous in sustain- 
 ing the President's determination, but, however 
 helpful and strengthening this unanimity was 
 the decision was and must be his. It was no 
 light responsibility to overrule the Generals in 
 the field with all the possibilities that were in- 
 volved. It required moral courage and resolu- 
 tion. The result vindicated the President's 
 judgment and firmness and it naturally brought 
 great relief and joy to those who had known 
 the strain. The dispatches had not been made 
 public ; the real issues in the negotiations were 
 understood only by those who had participated. 
 When on a hot summer evening they gathered 
 on the south porch of the White House, to 
 mingle their rejoicings, some of them felt that 
 the events of the week should be made known 
 and that the President should have the credit 
 with the country that was justly his. 
 
 ''Not a word," he answered. His generous 
 and unselfish spirit was unwilling that a single 
 leaf shoud be plucked from its well-won laurels 
 
156 William McKinley 
 
 of his Generals, and not a word of this did 
 appear until the official records afterward pub- 
 lished disclosed it in part. 
 
 The following order to General Miles was 
 written by President McKinley as soon as he 
 reached Porto Rico. 
 
 "How many troops will you require for the 
 campaign in Porto Rico? After being on the 
 ground, do you revise your original figure of 
 40,000?" 
 
 The above order shows his personal knowl- 
 edge that he possessed in every detail. Shortly 
 after the inception of his administration, when 
 war clouds were gathering, he used all his 
 energy and influence in trying to avert war, but 
 when it was thrust upon him, he resolved to 
 bring it to a conclusion as soon as possible and 
 to this end he bent all his efforts. 
 
 One who was near to the administration in 
 those days spoke thus of the President : 
 
 *Tt seemed to me the President hardly 
 allowed himself time to eat or sleep in those 
 exciting days. He was up by sunrise and I 
 known he was often up until after midnight. He 
 had a wonderful memory for facts and figures, 
 and whenever anything was told him about the 
 army or navy affairs, he never forgot it. I re- 
 member once something was said about sup- 
 
A Biographical Study 157 
 
 plies at a certain fort along the coast. Nobody 
 seemed to be able to tell what the fort had, 
 and they were going to consult some papers, 
 when the President spoke up and told exactly 
 what the fort had to draw on. Afterward the 
 figures were verified by the Secretary of War." 
 
 Of course McKinley was not ignorant of 
 military affairs when he came to the Presi- 
 dency. His four years spent in the Civil War 
 gave him vast experience in the science of war- 
 fare, but he was accustomed to consult every 
 person in whom he confided and he understood 
 military questions, but his quick perceptions, 
 combined with is reasoning powers, gave him 
 greater knowledge of the right course to pur- 
 sue than any of his generals that were on the 
 field of action. 
 
 We have thus seen in the foregoing papers 
 that William McKinley was not only President 
 in name but he was the real commander-in- 
 chief. He was glad w^hen the war closed and 
 the laurel wreath of victory was placed on the 
 fair head of Columbia. It was a war against 
 oppression, a war of humanity. He brought 
 the moral quality of public action to a higher 
 level during his administration, than had 
 existed in any period before in our history. 
 
 Although he gloried in the victories which 
 were wrought on land and sea, and in the ex- 
 tension of our boundaries, yet his greatest sat- 
 
158 William McKinley 
 
 isfaction rested in the fact that under God, to 
 use his reverenljial words, ''the barriers of 
 sectionaHsm had finally and completely disap- 
 peared during his administration." 
 
 That he computed was the greatest victory, 
 that the lines of North and South were no 
 more; but a re-united country stood in place 
 of a once divided nation. 
 
 The love of the flag was the symbol which 
 made it possible to join hands and forget the 
 differences of other years. 
 
 ''So with an equal splendor, the morning sun 
 rays fall, 
 
 With a touch impartially tender on the blos- 
 soms blooming for all. 
 
 Under the sod and the dezv, waiting the judg- 
 ment day; 
 
 Under the one the Blue, under the other the 
 Gray. 
 
 From the silence of the sorrowfid hours, the 
 desolate mourners go, 
 
 Lovingly laden zvith flowers alike for the 
 friend and the foe 
 
 Under the sod and the dew, waiting the judg- 
 ment day; 
 
 Under the roses the Blue, under the lilies the 
 Gray. 
 
 Sadly, but not the upbraiding, the generous 
 deed was done, 
 
A Biographical Study 159 
 
 In the storms of the years that are fading no 
 braver battle was won 
 
 Under the sod and the dew, waiting the judg- 
 ment day; 
 
 Love and tears for the Blue, tears and love for. 
 the Gray/' 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 m'kinley's diplomacy, morals and 
 
 /T 
 
 RELIGION. 
 
 HE peculiar faculty or skill of conduct, 
 which is known as tact, is certainly a 
 / •*• rare gift. 
 
 In the every day affairs of life this 
 gift is termed tact; in governmental affairs, it 
 is known as diplomacy. The employment of 
 diplomatic methods has wrought good results 
 out of entangled controversies, has averted 
 wars, and has been the means whereby treaties 
 oi^ peace have been more rapidly enacted. 
 
 I WilHam McKinley possessed rare diplomatic 
 slcill. More than most rulers of his day, he un- 
 derstood the impulse and sentiments which 
 moved mankind; and he acted in accordance 
 in dealing with men and measures. He never 
 allowed one to go away after a conference feel- 
 ing in any way displeased should the inter- 
 viewer have failed to receive what he wanted; 
 but, rather, he would dismiss him in such a 
 manner as to leave the most agreeable im- 
 pression. Before long the caller would be think- 
 ing how exceedingly kind and courteous the 
 President had been to him. Like Lincoln, al- 
 
A Biographical Study i6i 
 
 though naturally diplomatic, his constant con- 
 tact with people widened and enabled him 
 to deal, as time went on, more satisfactorily 
 with the masses. His faith in American insti- 
 tutions, and American people, helped in no 
 small degree in discharging the duties and re- 
 sponsibilities of his office. His character and 
 the influence of his life, swayed the sceptor of 
 his power, in shaping and in dealing with the 
 problems that confronted him. "If genius he 
 had, it was of common sense, enriched by long 
 experience and unhindered by fear." 
 
 His training, his wisdom and his kindness of 
 heart developed the diplomatic side of his char- 
 acter. Now, in regard to McKinley the diplo- 
 mat in a national sense, let us see what John 
 Hay, the greatest diplomat of his day said of 
 McKinley's skill : 
 
 *'In dealing with foreign powers he will take 
 rank with the greatest of our diplomatists. It 
 was a world of which he had little special 
 knowledge before coming to the presidency. 
 But his marvelous adaptability was in nothing 
 more remarkable than in the firm grasp he im- 
 mediately displayed in international relations. 
 In preparing for war and in the restoration of 
 peace he was alike adroit, courteous and far- 
 sighted. When a sudden emergency declared 
 itself, as in China, in a state of things of which 
 our history furnished no precedent and inter- 
 national law no safe and certain precept, he 
 
1 62 William McKinley 
 
 hesitated not a moment to take the course 
 marked out for him by considerations of hu- 
 manity and the national interests. Even while 
 the legations were fighting for their lives 
 against bands of infuriated fanatics, he decided 
 that we were at peace with China; and while 
 that conclusion did not hinder him from taking 
 the most energetic measures to rescue our im- 
 perilled citizens, it enabled him to maintain 
 close and friendly relations with the wise and 
 heroic Viceroys of the South, whose resolute 
 stand saved that ancient empire from anarchy 
 and spoliation. 
 
 He disposed of every question as it arose 
 wath a promptness and clarity of vision that 
 astonished his advisers, and he never had occa- 
 sion to review a judgment or reverse a decis- 
 ion. 
 
 By patience, by firmness, by sheer reasonable- 
 ness, he improved our understanding, with all 
 the great Powers of the world, and rightly 
 gained the blessing which belongs to the peace- 
 makers." 
 
 After McKinley came to the Presidency, 
 those nearest to him in an official sense, said 
 that they could see him grow day by day. He 
 possessed the capacity for growth and that was 
 the secret of his greatness. 
 
 McKinley, like Lincoln, learned more by his 
 close association with the masses and from the 
 school of experience than from any other 
 
A Biographical Study 163 
 
 source. He was a man who sprang from the 
 common people and naturally he loved and 
 trusted the toiler who earns his daily bread by 
 the sweat of his brow. And as Dr. Bristol 
 of Washington puts it, *'He believed in well- 
 paid labor, well-paid capital and well-paid 
 brains." 
 
 Though very tactful, his will power, when he 
 believed a thing to be right, was immovable, 
 and his associates said that he could say "No," 
 as positively as he could say it pleasantly, but 
 he preferred the kind to the unkind way of 
 dealing with his fellowmen. 
 
 His flexibility and tact always showed them- 
 selves at the right time. For he believed in let- 
 tmg the people know the policy of the govern- 
 ment. He was always honest with himself, 
 with his fellows, with is country and with his 
 God. And there is nothing more worthy of re- 
 spect and reverence in a public official than hon- 
 esty and sincerity of purpose. 
 
 His patience was manifested in many ways. 
 There is a story told of a manufacturer of 
 chemicals which reveals in a marked degree his 
 profound patience. 
 
 When the McKinley tariff bill was pending, 
 a manufacturer appealed for a hearing to every 
 member of the committee, but each in turn re- 
 fused him consideration. At last he went to 
 McKinley who happened to be the only mem- 
 ber of the committee he had not approached, 
 
CI 
 
 i 
 
 164 William McKinley 
 
 and the Major at once sat down and listened 
 attentively for three hours to the man's argu- 
 ment, full as it was with technical data. 
 
 This same consideration was always a pre- 
 dominant characteristic of his ; it followed him 
 to the White House and indeed it was there, 
 that it was more noticeable than ever. ''I ran 
 into a bank of roses," said a Senator who went 
 to the White House for the specific purpose 
 to ask the removal of a Cabinet officer and who 
 came away smiling without having been suc- 
 essful. 
 
 Throughout the Spanish War he was the 
 director of our diplomacy, although he praised 
 and gave more credit to others than he took 
 himself; nevertheless, in reality he was the 
 prime mover and promoter. It has been said 
 that in McKinley's administration, the achieve- 
 ments in diplomacy were more remarkable 
 than its achievements on land or sea, and it 
 was through this diplomacy guided by the hand 
 and brain of William McKinley that the war 
 was brought so speedily to an end; and that 
 peace was wrought in such a courteous and 
 clement a fashion that it achieved for the 
 United States a pre-eminent place among the 
 nations of the earth. He did not indulge in 
 complaining recriminations or in declamations 
 of command. But he got things done never- 
 theless. Some one has said that: "He cared 
 more for real success than for making people 
 
 i 
 
A Biographical Study 165 
 
 think that he would have it or had won it." 
 
 Charles Emory Smith, Mcl^inley's Post- 
 master General, wrote on one occasion that 
 "President McKinley was a natural diplomat. 
 If he had training it was not in the professional 
 school of diplomacy but in the experience of an 
 habitual method in all affairs which was essen- 
 tially diplomatic. He made sure that the un- 
 derlying strength of his case should be its 
 right and reason, but no man could excel him 
 in the art and force with which it was stated 
 or in the persuasiveness with which it was 
 urged. He was quick in perception and could 
 turn a point with great dexterity. His skill 
 in thrust and parry was unsurapssed, and he 
 could veil the most resolute determination, with 
 the utmost suavity." 
 
 When Cambon suggested that the terms of 
 the treaty were harsh, and that the President 
 was too severe, McKinley replied with a smile 
 that he was spoken of as "amiable" and to a 
 degree yielding, and with a quick response 
 Cambon answered, "Mr. President, you are .as 
 firm as a rock." It was his sagacity and dip- 
 lomacy that enabled him to triumph in the 
 end. 
 
 It is a fine thing to know a statesman or a 
 genius or a scholar or a philosopher, but it is 
 a still nobler and grander thing to know a 
 man — a true, brave and honest man, and here, 
 my readers, we have one personified. For 
 
 1/ 
 
1 66 William McKinley 
 
 herein lies William McKinley's greatest leg- 
 acy to us — that his was one of the most beauti- 
 ful characters that has ever adorned public or 
 private life. 
 
 It is said that, "he lived a life as nearly 
 blameless as that of any public man of our his- 
 tory." 
 
 His high ideals, his unwavering loyalty to 
 the right, his honesty and his moral attributes 
 won for him, not only the affection and love, 
 but stamped him as one of the greatest and 
 best men of our history. 
 
 It is becoming more and more prevalent in 
 this country to make the final mearurement 
 not what a man was as a statesman, or soldier 
 or lawyer, but what was he as a man? What 
 were his sentiments, his thoughts, his abiding 
 faith in the cause of humanity, of civilization, 
 or of religion. And here is where McKinley 
 revealed himself the strongest, namely, in his 
 sturdy and upright and Christian manliness. 
 His Washington pastor. Dr. Bristol, had this 
 to say concerning McKinley, the man, shortly 
 after his death at a dinner in New York : "Wil- 
 liam McKinley was an ideal character. In 
 that high-minded quality of power which we 
 call character, and in the honor to which his 
 country exalted him, he was the envy of 
 kings, the idol of the common people, the model 
 and pattern of aspiring youth, and to the 
 world's pure womanhood the embodiment and 
 
 y 
 
A Biographical Study 167 
 
 exemplar of holy love, fidelity, honor and chiv- / 
 airy. He was the chevalier Bayard of Ameri- 
 can statesmen. No mantle of charity is needed 
 to hide from the purest eyes any part of that 
 character or career. The mantle of his own 
 chaste, unstained and Christian manhood, 
 which he wore with such grace among us, he 
 has fearlessly worn to the throne of the judg- 
 ment of history and to the throne of the judg- 
 ment of God." There was always such a gener- 
 osity of spirit which attached itself to all his ac- 
 tions, that men never wearied in being in his 
 company, but rather they were glad to know him 
 and be counted one of his friends. His charm- 
 ing manner was an inspiration. He never re- 
 pulsed people, but rather drew them to him by 
 his personal magnetism and sunnyness of dis- 
 position. He always wanted to do his duty. 
 He regarded that word as did Robert Lee, as 
 the "sublimest word," in the English lan- 
 guage." 
 
 There are always enough men of intellect 
 in politics, but too few who have the courage 
 of their convictions and who will stand for the 
 right, no matter what the cost. 
 
 Mr. McKinley could read the minds of men 
 as easily as he could read the printed page. He 
 could perceive the latent genius of a man long 
 before others. He took great delight in the 
 study of human nature. Some one has said 
 *'that he was trustful where he had confidence, 
 
1 68 William McKinley 
 
 but he was wary and watchful where he had 
 doubt or suspicion." 
 
 There are few men in our history of whom it 
 can be said that their whole life was an exam- 
 ple to their countrymen. But in William Mc- 
 Kinley I think all will agree that his greatest 
 gift to the world and to humanity was the 
 manner in which he lived his life and met his 
 death. 
 
 When McKinley was in Congress, there was 
 a page in the House, who was a very unruly 
 boy. He was a bright little fellow, but very 
 impertinent, and was continually concocting 
 schemes and putting them in execution. He 
 sort of took the initiative and was the leader 
 among the pages. 
 
 "This won't do," said one of the Congress- 
 men, who had been made the subject of a trick, 
 "We must get rid of that boy or he will de- 
 moralize all the rest." "That is true, said 
 another and after holding a consultation, they 
 decided to dismiss the boy. 
 
 The lad had been told, however, that he had 
 to go if he did not reform. McKinley had 
 taken a real liking to the boy in spite of his 
 actions, so he sent for him. The fellow came, 
 hanging his head in shame. "You were dis- 
 missed, and you know you deserve it," said 
 McKinley mildly, "but I want to give you 
 another chance. If I speak for you, what will 
 you do?" 
 
A Biographical Study 169 
 
 ''Oh, sir, ril do my best!" cried the boy, 
 earnestly. "I won't be tricky any more, I'll 
 promise you. Just give me another chance." 
 
 McKinley sat down and talked to the boy for 
 about an hour, and then said that he would see 
 what could be done in the boy's interest. At 
 first no one wanted the lad back ; they said he 
 would never be better, but McKinley won them 
 over to giving the boy a chance. When he 
 came back, McKinley watched him continually 
 and encouraged him and gave him advice. At 
 once, he began to reform, he became a model 
 youth, joined the church and comenced to edu- 
 cate himself. When William McKinley be- 
 came President of the United States that same 
 boy, who in his youth was going to ruin, be- 
 came a preacher of the Gospel. 
 
 Little deeds, such as that count so much in a 
 man's life. They go to make up the qualities 
 of greatness in a career. Mr. McKinley's per- 
 sonality was charming. His presence was pre- 
 possessing. He was dignified, yet kind and 
 affable. He looked somewhat like the great 
 Napoleon, although a much better looking man 
 was he, than the ^Tittle Corporal." He was 
 about five feet, seven inches in height, and very 
 straight in statue, with a fine, large, intellect- 
 ual head. He impressed one as a man of great 
 physical and mental power. 
 
 Dr. David J. Hill, Assistant Secretary of 
 State under McKinley and now minister to 
 
170 William McKinley 
 
 the Netherlands, once remarked to a friend 
 when Mr. McKinley's personahty was under 
 discussion, "that if the Lord had ever breathed 
 the breath of Hfe into a more gracious and 
 amiable man than Mr. McKinley, he had yet to 
 find it out." And Senator Tillman, who once 
 declared that McKinley was gradually becom- 
 ing a dictator, said afterwards, that in his 
 opinion no finer gentleman from George Wash- 
 ington's time to the present had ever occupied 
 the presidential chair. 
 
 We have thus seen how his morals, his kind- 
 ness of heart and his goodness as a man 
 blended. Now, let us look on the religious side 
 of his character. William McKinley from his 
 youth up was a man of God. He was intensely 
 religious. On one occasion the President said 
 that no man would gain the highest place in the 
 gift of his countrymen — the Presidency, unless 
 he were a moral and spiritual man; that no 
 man would occupy the presidential chair who 
 did not believe in the living and true God. 
 
 We know that our Presidents have been 
 God-fearing men. That, for example, Wash- 
 ington and Lincoln received strength and com- 
 fort through the medium of prayer. But I be- 
 lieve that the following incidents will bear out 
 my contention that of all our Presidents, none 
 was a better Christian or considered himself 
 more directly under Providential destiny as the 
 
A Biographical Study 171 
 
 ruler of a great country than William McKin- 
 Icy. 
 
 Christianity is based upon the ethics of Holy 
 Writ. To be a Christian, one must have the 
 spirit, the tone, the temper, the character of 
 Christ or else you are none of his. That is 
 the final test of Christianity. McKinley once 
 stated that his ''belief embraced the Divinity of 
 Christ and a recognition of Christianity as the 
 mightiest factor in the v^orld's civilization." 
 
 In the November Chautauquan of 190 1, Mr. 
 Barton wrote an admirable paper entitled "A 
 Christian Gentleman : William McKinley," 
 from which I will frequently quote. He says : 
 *'I had a conversation with Rev. A. D. Morton, 
 under whose preaching the late President was 
 converted. He said that McKinley's mother 
 and his sister Anna were very' earnest Christ- 
 ians. They would not have been satisfied with 
 anything else than a definite spiritual experi- 
 ence. The fact of his merely joining the 
 Church would not have satisfied them, and 
 they gave expression to their satisfaction on 
 this subject many times. His devoted mother 
 was not altogether pleased, however, that he 
 did not enter the ministry. She said several 
 times that if she could have had her wish Wil- 
 liam would have been a Bishop." 
 
 Mr. Barton goes on to say that, "The Rev. 
 A. D. Morton (now retired from the ministry, 
 and engaged until recently in business in Cleve- 
 
172 William McKinley 
 
 land) said that he was pastor at Poland, Ohio, 
 in 1856, and became quite well acquainted with 
 the McKinley family. At that time William 
 was attending school, and was a scholar in the 
 Sunday-school. A series of revival meetings 
 were held during the winter, and among those 
 who gathered almost nightly was the Sunday- 
 school scholar, who, no doubt, as a result of his 
 mother's teaching, was an attentive and 
 thoughtful listener. He made a decision, and 
 at an evening meeting of young people, arose 
 and said: 'I have not done my duty. I have 
 sinned. I want co be a Christian, for I believe 
 that religion is the best thing in the world. I 
 give myself to my Saviour, who has done so 
 much for me.' A few evenings after, he gave 
 his testimony with others, saying: *I have 
 found the pearl of great price and am happy. 
 I love God.' 
 
 *'It was related to Rev. C. E. Manchester, 
 D.D., the President's Pastor at Canton, Ohio, 
 and also a member of his regiment, the Twen- 
 ty-third O. V. I., by W. K. Miller, an old resi- 
 dent of Canton, who died several years since, 
 but who accompanied the politician on most of 
 his campaigns, excepting the Presidential 
 Campaign. He said : 'Major McKinley is a 
 quiet man upon religious subjects, but he is a 
 religious man. I have been with him many 
 times during all of his campaigns. We have 
 frequently attended political meetings, and 
 
?5 
 
 • C 
 
A Biographical Study y^ 
 
 banquets, and have often retired at a late hour, 
 but I have never known him to go to his bed 
 until he had read from his Bible, and had knelt 
 in prayer.' " 
 
 It proved that his religion was as dear to 
 him as his birthright, when he practiced it dur- 
 ing the heat of a political campaign. It was 
 not only confined to his early days but was his 
 comfort and sweet environment throughout his 
 entire life. 
 
 Mr.' Barton goes on by telling of two incidents 
 related by Dr. Manchester : "During the first 
 campaign for the Presidency, when thousands 
 were visiting him at his North Market Street 
 home in Canton, a company of a hundred or 
 more influential young men from Detroit 
 arrived on Sunday, and sent word that they 
 would call on him. He replied at once : 'This 
 is the Sabbath day, and I cannot receive dele- 
 gations, much less would I have you come to 
 me with a band of music on the Sabbath. I 
 cannot, in any event, see you this morning for 
 I must go to church. I attend the First M. E. 
 Church, and would advise you to be present.' 
 He added that if one or two at a time cared to 
 call for a friendly greeting, he had no objec- 
 tion. Those young men attended church in a 
 body. It is doubtful if any of them ever had a 
 stronger appeal to consider the Christian life, 
 and not one of them had room for doubt as to 
 the reality of the religion of the man who was 
 
174 William McKinley 
 
 a candidate for the highest office in the land. 
 It was not poHtic, for such things are magnified 
 into mountains in the heat of the campaign. 
 He was a Christian first. He placed the cross 
 higher than the flag, which Gen 'Bill' Gibson 
 used to say was high enough for the flag, al- 
 though he loved it as much as any one. This man 
 preferred to be right with God rather than be 
 President ; he has told intimate friends that he 
 regarded the Presidency as a God-entrusted re- 
 sponsibility. The other incident occurred the 
 Sunday before he went to Washington to be 
 inaugurated. He wished his regular pastor to 
 preach, and added that if he, or any other 
 preacher, should begin to gush over him, he 
 would get up and leave the church. He once 
 said, *I like to hear the minister preach a plain, 
 simple gospel — Christ and Him Crucified.' 
 Appreciation was kindly received by him, but 
 he rightly judged that the pulpit was not the 
 place for it. The text that day was: 'If any 
 man say ought unto you, ye shall say, The 
 Lord hath need of them' (Matt. 21 :3). One 
 of the hymns sung was No. 602 in the Metho- 
 dist collection, the words being written by John 
 G. Whittier: 
 
 '7/ may not be our lot to zvield 
 The sickle in the ripened Held; 
 Nor ours to hear, on summer eves 
 The reapers' song among the sheaves. 
 
A Biographical Study 175 
 
 ''Yet where our duty's task is wrought 
 In unison with God's great thought, 
 The near and future blend in one. 
 And what s o'er is willed, is done. 
 
 ''And ours the grateful service whence 
 Comes, day by day, the recompense ; 
 The hope, the trust, the purpose stayed, 
 The fountain, and the noonday shade. 
 
 "And were this life the utmost span 
 The only end and aim of man. 
 Better the toil of fields like these 
 Than waking dream and slothful ease. 
 
 "But life, though falling like our grain. 
 Like that revives and springs again; 
 And, early called, how blest are they 
 Who wait in heaven, their harvest day!" 
 
 "Next day when the board of trustees^ called 
 upon him, to bid him farewell, he asked as a 
 special favor that they give him the copy of the 
 book from which he sang the day before, say- 
 ing that he had marked that hymn and would 
 like to have the book. 
 
 **It was given to him and was carefully pre- 
 served. Read now it seems almost prophetic." 
 
 When McKinley was asked one time 
 whether he was ever a local preacher, he re- 
 marked that he had been everything else — 
 
176 William McKinley 
 
 Sunday - school superintendent, trustee and 
 everything, but somehow, was never a local 
 preacher. When he went to Washington, he 
 did not take his letter from his church in Can- 
 ton, but he never missed attending divine wor- 
 ship Sunday morning at Dr. Bristol's Church 
 save for once or twice, said Dr. Bristol, during 
 the Spanish War. 
 
 When making his canvass for governor of 
 Ohio he said : ''I pray to God every day to give 
 me strength to do this work, and I believe he 
 will do it !" And after his election as President 
 he expressea his profound faith in God many 
 times. *'Mr. Grosvenor once asked him if he 
 was not inflated with so much praise. He re- 
 plied : 'I am rather humbled, and pray to God 
 to guide my steps aright.' 
 
 ''His humility," continues Mr. Barton, "and 
 desire for wisdom for the task he undertook is 
 also shown by the selection of the scripture at 
 his first presidential inauguration. When he 
 took the oath of office as President of the 
 United States, he placed his lips on these 
 words : 'Give me now wisdom and knowledge, 
 that I may go out and come in before this 
 people; for who can judge this thy people that 
 is so great?' 
 
 "Soon after the inauguration the Rev. W. 
 \. Morrison of New England, who had been 
 one of Mr. McKinley's teabhers when a boy, 
 called upon the President. When leaving Mr. 
 
A Biographical Study 177 
 
 Morrison said : 'You have a great responsibil- 
 ity devolving upon you, but the love and confi- 
 dence of the American people are behind you/ 
 The President replied : *I hope I shall have the 
 sympathy and prayers of yourself and all good 
 people.' " 
 
 Mrs. McKinley had this to say in an inter- 
 view on her journey to California: ''Do you 
 know Major McKinley? No one can know 
 him, because to appreciate him one must know 
 him as I do. And I am not speaking now of 
 Major McKinley as the President. I am speak- 
 ing of him as my husband. If any one could 
 know what it is to have a wife sick, complain- 
 ing, always, an invalid for twenty-five years, 
 seldom a day well, he knows, and yet never a 
 word of unkindness has ever passed his lips. 
 He is just the same tender, thoughtful, kind 
 gentleman I knew when first he came and 
 sought my hand. I know him because I am his 
 wife, and it is my proudest pleasure to say this, 
 not because he is the President but because he 
 is my husband.'' 
 
 Referring again to McKinley, the Christian, 
 it is said that he spoke thus to a number of 
 ministers and friends who called upon him at 
 the White House, and when discussing the 
 Philippines : "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 for light 
 
178 William McKinley 
 
 and guidance more than one night before the 
 answer came, but when it came I was satisfied." 
 And on that same occasion he said : ''I am a 
 Methodist, nothing but a Methodist, a Christ- 
 ian and nothing but a Christian, and by the 
 blessing of heaven I mean to hve and die, 
 please God, in the faith of my mother." 
 
 He was always very reverent and prompt in 
 recognizing the guiding hand and omnipotent 
 power of Divine Providence. Again and again 
 — in his state papers, his letters and formal ad- 
 dresses —we find him quoting from the Holy 
 Scriptures. Upon returning home from church 
 and on week days as well, he would often be 
 humming hymns to himself. 
 
 On Sunday afternoons when he was in Con- 
 gress and also when President, he would invite 
 all his guests to come in the music room and 
 there they would participate in singing church 
 hymns. 
 
 It can be said most emphatically that his 
 supremely religious life made him an ideal 
 President and placed him on a plane with 
 Washington and Lincoln, whose religious 
 views are so well known. 
 
 An eminent churchman has said: "Religion 
 is the stronger in America to-day for William 
 McKinley's life and death." To a neighbor, 
 who regretted his departure from Buffalo, he 
 said before leaving Canton. "If anything hap- 
 
^ Biographical Study 179 
 
 pens to me, I want you to know that I am pre- 
 pared to meet my God." 
 
 We recall the words in part of President 
 McKinley which were delivered in San Fran- 
 cisco on his last tour to the Pacific coast. It 
 was delivered at an impromptu reception given 
 him by the Epworth League and Christian En- 
 deavor Society at the California Street Metho- 
 dist Episcopal Church : 
 
 *'It gives me great pleasure on this, the last 
 evening of my stay in your hospital city, to 
 meet with the young men and the young women 
 of the Epworth League and the Christian En- 
 deavor, and the union of the Baptist Church 
 and the Christian young people generally who 
 have dedicated themselves to the holy cause of 
 Christian teaching. I congratulate you that 
 you are to be the host of the great international 
 Epworth League Convention, to be held in 
 your city in the month of July, for the success 
 of which you have my best wishes. I congrat- 
 ulate you upon the noble work in which you are 
 engaged, and the great results which have fol- 
 lowed your efforts. He who serves the Master 
 best, serves man best, and he who serves truth 
 serves civilization. There is nothing that lasts 
 so long or wears so well and is of such inesti- 
 mable advantage to the possessor as high char- 
 acter and an upright life, and that is what you 
 teach by example and by instruction. And 
 when you are serving man by helping him to 
 
i8o William McKinley 
 
 be better and nobler, you are serving your 
 country. I do not know whether it is true that 
 every man is the architect of his own future, 
 but surely every man is the architect of his own 
 character, and he is the builder of his own 
 character. It is what he makes it, and it is 
 growing all the time easier both to do right 
 and to be right." 
 
 On the day of President McKinley's funeral, 
 there were a few moments when everything as 
 nearly as possible became silent. Electric wires 
 were still, trains ceased to move and people 
 with uncovered heads stood silent in the streets. 
 Never was such a scene witnesed before in 
 America. 
 
 Dr. Iglehart in speaking of this incident says 
 that, 'There is a legend that at the birth of 
 Jesus Christ everything stopped still. That 
 night birds flying in the mid-air became mo- 
 tionless, that the shepherd reaching his crook 
 toward the sheep held it still; that people eat- 
 ing a meal held their hands midway between 
 the dish and the mouth, and that everyone 
 awake had a sudden inclination to be still. His- 
 torically this legend is very far from the truth, 
 for there was almost nothing that the world 
 thought less about, and paid less attention to, 
 than the Babe that was born in Bethlehem, and 
 yet in a deeper sense the fiction was fact. The 
 world did stop still at the birth of the Babe and 
 began its thoughts and acts anew from the 
 
 I 
 
'A Biographical Study i8i 
 
 impulse of His life and love. And whatever it 
 has of goodness or greatness to-day, it has de- 
 rived from Him. 
 
 It was largely because William McKinley 
 took this Babe of Bethlehem as his model, his 
 Master and his Saviour ; because he was Christ- 
 like in his spirit and his life that the people 
 of America stopped still to think and to mourn 
 when he was laid in the tomb." 
 
 In his last public speech, but a few hours 
 before he was stricken down by the assassin, 
 he had raised his hand in benediction over his 
 people and had closed that speech by saying : 
 
 *'Our earnest prayer is that God will gra- 
 ciously vouchsafe prosperity, happiness, and 
 peace to all our neighbors, and like blessings 
 to all the people and powers of earth." 
 
 His beautiful Christian faith and his readi- 
 ness to leave this world when he found it was 
 the will of Providence, was exemplified in his 
 almost sublime death, murmuring with his la- 
 test breath those incomparably touching 
 words: ''Nearer, My God To Thee." What- 
 ever else history may say of William McKin- 
 ley, one thing we know, and that is, that the 
 crown of his life which set him apart from all 
 other American statesmen, was his Christian 
 character, his beautiful life exemplifying it, 
 and his unwavering devotion to the cherished 
 wife of his youth. 
 
 He lived and died an Am.erican. He also 
 
1 82 William McKinley 
 
 lived and died a Christian and his parting 
 words will be remembered, long after the gen- 
 erations coincident with his time, shall have 
 been but a memory. "Good-bye, all. It is 
 God's way. His will, not ours, be done." 
 
 May the inspiration of his life and the glory 
 of his death live on down through the ages, 
 strengthening the hopes and the aspirations of 
 man. And may the deep and beneficent influ- 
 ence on the nation's history and on the whole 
 world's progress, which he spread so lavishly 
 anvi so sweetly, never perish from the earth 
 while time and life shall last. 
 
 The End. 
 
THE Mckinley chronology 
 
 Born at Niles, Trumbull County, Ohio, January 29, 
 
 1843. 
 Became a student at the district school at Niles, 1849. 
 Removed to Poland, Mahoning County, Ohio, 1852. 
 Entered the Union Seminary of Poland, 1852. 
 Joined the Methodist Episcopal Church of Poland, 
 
 1859. 
 Entered Allegheny College, Meadville, Pennsylvania, 
 
 i860. 
 Left college on account of illness and same year taught 
 
 at the Kerr District School near Poland, i860. 
 Assistant Postmaster in the Poland Post Office, 1861. 
 Enlisted as a private in Company E of the Twenty- 
 third Ohio Volunteer Infantry, June 11, 1861. 
 Promoted to commissary sergeant, April 15, 1862. 
 Promoted to first lieutenant, September 24, 1862. 
 Promoted to second lieutenant, February 7, 1863. 
 Promoted to captain of Company G, July 25, 1864. 
 First vote for president cast, while on march, for Abra- 
 ham Lincoln, October 11, 1864. 
 Commissioned major by brevet in the Volunteer United 
 
 States Army by President Lincoln, March 13, 
 
 1865. 
 Mustered out of army, July 26, 1865. 
 Entered the Albany Law School, 1866. 
 Admitted to the Bar at Warren, Ohio, in March, 1867. 
 Elected Prosecuting Attorney, 1869. 
 Married January 25, 1871. 
 Elected to Congress, 1876. 
 Re-elected to Congress, 1878, 1880, 1882, 1884, 1880, 
 
 1888. 
 
APR 2Q mi 
 
 M KINLEY CHRONOLOGY 
 
 Delegate-at-Large, Chicago Convention, 1888. 
 Defeated for Congress, 1890. 
 Elected Governor of Ohio, November 3, 1891. 
 Delegate to Minneapolis Convention, 1892. 
 Re-elected Governor of Ohio. 1893. 
 Nominated for President, June 18, 1896. 
 Elected President, November 3, 1896. 
 Inaugurated President, March 4, 1897. 
 Renominated President, June 21, 1900. 
 Re-elected President, November 6, 1900. 
 Second inauguration, March 4, 1901. 
 Assassinated, September 6, 1901, 
 
 Died at the Milburn House, Buffalo, New York, at 
 2.15 A. M., September 14. IQOI. 
 

 
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