McKinley enlisted as a private and left office with an overseas empire
William McKinley joined the Union army as a private in 1861 and ended the Civil War a brevet major, the last president to have fought in it. Three decades later he campaigned from his front porch, won the White House, and within two years had acquired Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines.
Born in 1843 in Niles, Ohio, McKinley was the seventh of nine children in a family of iron-founders and a devout Methodist all his life. Illness and low spirits cut short his year at Allegheny College. When war came he and a cousin signed up with the Poland Guards, which became part of the 23rd Ohio Infantry. Ohio's governor handed him a commission as second lieutenant for his conduct at Antietam, and he rose to captain after coming under heavy fire in the defeat at Kernstown.
After the war he practised law in Canton and married Ida Saxton. Elected to Congress in 1876, he became the Republicans' leading champion of protective tariffs, convinced they brought prosperity. His 1890 McKinley Tariff proved so controversial that, combined with a Democratic redistricting designed to push him out, it cost him his seat. Ohio voters then made him governor in 1891 and again in 1893.
In 1896, with the country deep in depression, he defeated William Jennings Bryan without touring, receiving delegations at home while promising sound money backed by gold and high tariffs to restore good times. The economy grew quickly; he signed the Dingley Tariff in 1897 and the Gold Standard Act in 1900. Abroad, the United States annexed Hawaii in 1898. McKinley hoped to talk Spain into freeing Cuba, but when that failed he signed the declaration of war. The swift victory brought Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines under American control, where an independence rebellion was eventually crushed, and a deal with Britain and Germany added what is now American Samoa.
He beat Bryan again in 1900. On September 6, 1901, the anarchist Leon Czolgosz shot him, and he died eight days later, leaving the presidency to Theodore Roosevelt, whose fame eclipsed his own. Historians see the 1896 election as a turning point that ushered in decades of Republican dominance, and they usually rank McKinley in the middle tier of presidents.
Source: William McKinley
