William McKinley

McKinley was the seventh of nine children of an Ohio iron founder, and one year at Allegheny College was all the money and health he had for it. He was teaching country school when the war came and enlisted as a private in the 23rd Ohio in June 1861, at 18. At Antietam on September 17, 1862, without orders, he drove a wagon of hot coffee and food through fire to feed his regiment on the line. The army put a monument on that spot 41 years later. His colonel was Rutherford B. Hayes, who became a patron for life. He mustered out a brevet major at 22, sat a few months at Albany Law School, opened a practice in Canton, and married Ida Saxton in 1871.

Prosecuting attorney of Stark County, then 14 years in the House, where he wrote the tariff of 1890 that carried his name and helped cost him his seat. Two terms as governor of Ohio. Then 1896, the gold standard, a campaign run with more money and more organization than anyone had brought to one before, ten weeks of war with Spain, and an American empire in two oceans. BriefHistory has the record and what it did to Cuba and the Philippines. What stays here is the marriage and the money.

Ida Saxton was sharp, well-traveled and working in her father's bank when McKinley met her. Then her mother died in March 1873, she fell at the burial and struck her head, and four months later her infant daughter died of cholera. Katie, the older girl, died in June 1875, not yet four. Ida developed epilepsy and never recovered from any of it. McKinley broke protocol to seat her beside him at state dinners, and when a seizure came he would lay a handkerchief over her face, wait, take it away, and finish the sentence. Money nearly ended him separately: in February 1893, a sitting governor, he was ruined when a friend whose notes he had endorsed defaulted on more than 100,000 dollars. Mark Hanna and a group of businessmen quietly paid it off.

His memory turned into an argument about a mountain. A prospector named the highest peak in North America for him in 1896, having never met him. Alaska called it Denali again in 1975, the Interior Department made that federal on August 28, 2015, and an executive order signed January 20, 2025 sent it back to Mount McKinley three days later. Not one of those decisions was really about him. The Canton memorial was dedicated in 1907, months after Ida died in May, having visited the grave nearly every day. Historians who once filed him as a prologue to Roosevelt increasingly read him as the first modern president — a manager of press, money and message.

William McKinley's life against the full span of the corpus.

• McKinley Tariff law
  The highest peacetime tariff to that date, and a factor in losing his House seat 1890
• Dingley Tariff law
  Raised rates again in his first months in office 1897
• Newlands Resolution law
  Annexed Hawaii by joint resolution rather than treaty 1898
• Treaty of Paris other
  Transferred Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines out of Spanish hands 1898
• Gold Standard Act law
  Settled in law the money question that had defined the 1896 campaign 1900
• Pan-American Exposition speech speech
  Delivered the day before he was shot, arguing for reciprocity over protection 1901

• June 1861 aged 18 Enlists as a private in the 23rd Ohio Infantry at 18
• September 17, 1862 aged 19 Drives hot food and coffee to the firing line at Antietam He did it without orders. A monument marks the spot.
• January 25, 1871 aged 27 Marries Ida Saxton in Canton, Ohio
• June 25, 1875 aged 32 His elder daughter Katie dies before her fourth birthday The younger girl had died at four months in 1873.
• October 1, 1890 aged 47 The tariff bearing his name becomes law Voters turned him out of the House a month later.
• February 1893 aged 50 Faces personal ruin over a friend's defaulted notes More than 100,000 dollars. Mark Hanna organized a fund to cover it.
• July 7, 1898 aged 55 Signs the resolution annexing Hawaii
• September 6, 1901 aged 58 Shot twice at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo
• September 14, 1901 aged 58 Dies of gangrene in the wound

• William Jennings Bryan 1860–1925
  Three-time Democratic nominee and orator who made monetary reform, popular democracy, and moral politics central national issues. defeated
• Emma Goldman 1869–1940
  Anarchist orator and editor whose free-speech and birth-control agitation led to her 1919 deportation. blamed for his assassin
• Mark Twain 1835–1910
  Author of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, often called the father of American literature. opposed by
• Andrew Carnegie 1835–1919
  Steel magnate who built one of the largest steel empires in history and later became a major philanthropist. opposed by
• William Randolph Hearst 1863–1951
  Publisher whose sensational newspapers and national media empire wielded immense cultural and political power. pressured by
• Joseph Pulitzer 1847–1911
  Publisher who transformed mass-circulation journalism and endowed the Pulitzer Prizes. pressured by
• Mark Hanna 1837–1904
  Industrialist and party boss who invented the modern corporate-funded presidential campaign. made president by
• Leon Czolgosz 1873–1901
  Anarchist whose assassination of William McKinley put Theodore Roosevelt in the White House. assassinated by
• John Hay 1838–1905
  Lincoln's young secretary who lived to run American foreign policy and write the Open Door notes. secretary of state