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Background
William McKinley was another in a series of Republican
presidents who came from Ohio, reflecting the
growing political clout of the American Midwest.
He was a congressman and then governor of the
state, and even had a distinguished Civil War
record, which was still a political asset more
than three decades after the war had ended. McKinley
had a friendly demeanor, was a devout Methodist,
and what seemed a strong and sincere sense of
morality. One of the most powerful political themes of
the late-nineteenth century Republican Party
was American nationalism. For some Republicans,
nationalism was best expressed by continuing
to push the moral high ground of the Civil War
era, or to raise fears about Papists or immigrants,
or the social calamities caused by alcohol consumption.
McKinley, however, was able to focus the Republican
Party's nationalist creed on the need for protective
tariffs. Though McKinley had suffered politically
in the early 90s for this stance, by 1896 the
Republican Party was ready to present itself
as standing behind the farmer, and rising middle
class, and the Protestant industrial worker
through high taxes on foreign imports. |
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The economic troubles
of the early 1890s had taken an especially big
toll on the American farmer. That agrarian discontent
inspired the populist movement and enabled Democrats
to nominate William Jennings Bryan. These "free
silver" Democrats wanted unlimited coinage
of silver and to standardize the value of the
dollar to silver and opposed pegging the value
of the United States dollar to a gold standard.
The Democrats wanted the inflation that would
result from the silver standard. They believed
higher inflation would make it easier for farmers
and other debtors to pay off their debts by
increasing their revenue dollars. It would also
reverse the deflation which the U.S. experienced
from 1873-1896. At the 1896 Democratic National
Convention in Chicago, William Jennings Bryan
delivered what became known as The Cross of
Gold speech, which gets its popular name
from its triumphant ending:
Having behind us the producing masses of
this nation and the world, supported by the
commercial interests, the laboring interests
and the toilers everywhere, we will answer their
demand for a gold standard by saying to them:
You shall not press down upon the brow of labor
this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify
mankind upon a cross of gold. |
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Bryan's speech places
him in the camp of Western interests (largely farmers
and other borrowers) against Eastern interests (moneylenders),
in the camp of rural interests against urban interests,
and in the camp of economic nationalists against internationalists
who were concerned about the U.S. abandoning the internationally
recognized gold standard. Bryan's speech cemented his
role as a leading voice for economic populism.
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| The Republican Party
nominated McKinley. They believed that pegging the dollar
to the gold standard would prevent runaway inflation.
Uncontrollable inflation, they argued, would put a burden
on creditors such as banks whose loans' interest rates
would then fall under the inflation rate and garner
a loss for the creditor. Some of McKinley's critics
accused him of being too much a puppet of Marcus A.
Hanna, and Ohio businessman who ran McKinley's campaign.
Hanna engineered a masterful response to Bryan's Cross
of Gold Speech. They combined the bimetallism issue
with the tariff question and promised a return to prosperity,
social order, and morality. They argued that free coinage
of silver would create a "53-cent dollar"
that robbed the workingman of his buying power. |
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Bryan campaigned across
the country as no candidate had done before.
By contrast, McKinley conducted a "front
porch campaign," receiving visitors at
his home in Canton, Ohio. Hanna meanwhile frightened
American businessmen into donating millions
of dollars to the campaign, which was pumped
quite effectively into a propaganda campaign.
Evoking the attitudes of the time toward gimmicky
quack medicine, Theodore Roosevelt said of Hanna's
efforts, "He has advertised McKinley as
if he were a patent medicine!" Just as
McKinley's presidency can be seen as the beginning
of the America century, the 1896 election was
the first truly modern presidential contest.
McKinley defeated Bryan in the largest Republican
victory since 1872. [1897
inaugural address]. Once in office, McKinley followed through on his proposed
economic policy, carefully moving the country
toward the gold standard while establishing
a protective trade policy. By 1898, renewed
economic prosperity would be threatened by the
greatest foreign policy crisis since the War
of 1812, a war with Spain. |
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The Spanish-American
War
The Spanish-American War (1898) was ostensibly fought over the issue of the liberation
of Cuba. The background and details of the war are more
thoroughly discussed in the Authentic History Center's
section on The
Spanish-American War. The United States easily defeated
Spain. Cuba was eventually granted independence, as required by the Teller Amendment to the war declaration, and
Spain ceded to the United States the Philippine
Islands, Guam, and Puerto Rico. President McKinley was able to
rationalize the war and the subsequent annexation of
the Philippines as an opportunity for religious and
economic expansion. His missionary zeal to bring Christianity
to the Philippines, never mind that the vast majority
of Filipinos were Catholics under Spanish rule, made
it easier to assauge Republican Party concerns over
the pitfalls of imperialism.
1900 Election
American expansion into the Pacific was denounced
as imperialism by the Democratic Party, and became the
principal issue of the 1900 presidential campaign. Despite
the hypocricy of a war in the Philippines to prevent
Filipino independence, the voters supported the policy
of expansion as carried out by the McKinley administration;
in the election McKinley again defeated Bryan, this
time by a popular majority of almost 1 million votes
and by 292 electoral votes to 155. [1901 inaugural address] |
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Assassination
Following his easy win, President McKinley went
on a victory tour of the West. Then, in September,
he visted the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo,
New York. On September 6, 1901 McKinley was shot
by an anarchist, Leon F. Czolgosz, at the Temple
of Music. Czolgosz was representative of a the
class struggle that suffused the urban-industrial
world at the turn of the century. An unemployed
millworker, he drifted around the midwest reading
anarchist newspaper, and he took on the alias
of Fred Nieman, meaning "nobody." When
he learned that McKinley, whom he regarded as
the embodiment of privilge, |
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would be attending the Exposition, he joined the reception
line along with other citizens who waited to shake the
president's hand. Once before McKinely, Czolgosz shot
him twice and point-blank range. The President underwent
surgery but ultimately died from his injuries nine days
later. Vice President Theodore Roosevelt became president. |
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