William McKinley; a biographical study

Front matter

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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 generation, 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 leadership 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 fellowcitizens, ability to understand them, keen sympathy with even their innermost feelings, and yet power to lead them, together 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 possessed 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 restored 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 Congress, 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 accidental. 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 admiration. 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 actually 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 friendship which he had the faculty to inspire in so marked a degree among the ablest and most influential leaders; this leadership 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 nomination 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 theories which have always marked our periods of greatest prosperity. The promises were kept, and following their keeping came the prosperity which we now enjoy. All that was foretold concerning the well-being which would follow the election 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 become 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 possible. 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 experience, 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 economic 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 mainly 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 independence, 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, selected in General Leonard Wood the man of all others best fit to bring the island through its uncertain period of preparation 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 misrepresentation 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 sedulously 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 friendly 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 liberty 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 administration, 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 overwhelming than it had been before.

No other President in our history has seen high and honorable 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 mankind 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 exercise of the most skilful and cautious judgment, but with fearless 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 because he treated each triumph as opening the road to fresh effort, not as an excuse for ceasing from effort. He undertook 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 inheritors 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

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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

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 noblest literature. And since the individual human 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 portrayal of William McKinley, not so much in an historical sense as in that of his personality. 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 leisure; 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 public, 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 rightly determine his full stature. But it is believed 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 appreciation of the character of William McKinley. What we say, then, of his character and 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 striking 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 accomplished for the good of humanity. They incarnated the spirit of the times in which they lived, and they were the embodiment of the mental and moral forces of their period. Such was Washington at the beginning of American history. Such was Lincoln during the greatest 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 history 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 during 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 dealings 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, industrious, high-minded, public-spirited and frugal. 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 upon as being correct, prepared by the Rev. A. Stapleton.

''The ancestors of President McKinley belonged 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 until eventually the Scotch-Irish element predominated in this region. They were stanch Presbyterians in faith, and in course of time developed 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 failure 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 emigration became very extensive, the chief port of arrival being New Castle, on the Delaware, below 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 foreigners in the colonial records, and were required to subscribe to an oath of allegiance upon arrival, besides a subsequent naturalization. Hence it follows that citizens of the realm are more difficult to identify than foreigners 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 Westmoreland County after the Revolution, and in 1814 to Ohio, where he died. In the cemetery of the Chatfield Lutheran Church, in Crawford County, Ohio, may be seen two modest granite markers with the following inscription :

" *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 Canton, 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 David, the soldier, we must rely on the courthouse records at Lancaster, and York, Pa. From various documents and entries we think 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 immigrant 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 honorable way, showing him to have been a man of unusual probity and worth as a citizen.

"David McKinley, the immigrant, died intestate in 1757, leaving his wife and children as already named. His daughter was intermarried with Samuel Gordon. The settlement of the estate shows personal prosperity to the value of £220, or $1,100, besides the plantation, which was divided. Later, however, the son John (who, with his mother, was the executor) 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 interchangeable 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 ascertained, 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 important business transactions. When hostilities broke out with the Mother Country he stanchly supported the revolution, and was made Wagon Master for Chanceford Township by the Committee of Safety. He died on his estate February 18, 1779, being survived by his widow, Margaret, an only son, David, great-grandfather of the President, and daughters, Esther, Jean, EHzabeth and Susan. The widow subsequently married Thomas McCulloch. She died in the winter of 1781.

''This leads us down to David McKinley, grandson of the emigrant and great-grandfather 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 Company of the Eighth Battalion of York County Militia. The Militia-men, it should be remembered, 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 Revolutionary 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. Andrew Rose was the first to see these shores. He came over with William Penn, and became one of the representatives of the thirteen Cololo 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, William McKinley, Sr., married Nancy Campbell Allison, whose descendants came from England 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 described, the William McKinley was born on January 29, 1843. His birthplace was standing until the year 1895, although previous 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, determination 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 fancy 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."