William McKinley Jr. was the 25th president of the United States from 1897 until his assassination in 1901. He was the last president to have served in the American Civil War and the only one to have started the war as an enlisted soldier. He led the nation to victory in the Spanish–American War, raised protective tariffs to promote American industry, and kept the nation on the gold standard. His presidency is generally considered above average, though his highly positive public perception was soon overshadowed by Theodore Roosevelt.
About William McKinley in brief
William McKinley was the 25th president of the United States from 1897 until his assassination in 1901. He was the last president to have served in the American Civil War and the only one to have started the war as an enlisted soldier. McKinley led the nation to victory in the Spanish–American War, raised protective tariffs to promote American industry, and kept the nation on the gold standard. His legacy was suddenly cut short when he was shot on September 6, 1901 by Leon Czolgosz, a second-generation Polish-American with anarchist leanings. His presidency is generally considered above average, though his highly positive public perception was soon overshadowed by Theodore Roosevelt. William McKinley Jr. was born in 1843 in Niles, Ohio, the seventh of nine children of William McKinly Sr. and Nancy McKinley. The McKinleys were of English and Scots-Irish descent and had settled in western Pennsylvania in the 18th century, tracing back to a David McKinley who was birth in Dervock, County Antrim, in present-day Northern Ireland. William followed in the Methodist tradition, becoming active in the local Methodist church at the age of sixteen. In 1852, the family moved from Niles to Poland, Ohio so that their children could attend the better schools there. He remained at Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania for only one year, returning home after becoming ill and depressed. Among thousands of Ohio men who volunteered for the Civil War, McKinley volunteered for them and was one of the first to seceded from the Union and join the Confederate Army.
He married Ida Saxton in 1876, where he practiced law and later became the Republican Party’s expert on the protective tariff, which he promised would bring prosperity. His 1890 McKinley Tariff was highly controversial and, together with a Democratic redistricting aimed at gerrymandering him out of office, led to his defeat in the Democratic landslide of 1890. In 1896, he defeated his Democratic rival William Jennings Bryan after a front porch campaign in which he advocated sound money and promised that high tariffs would restore prosperity. In 1900, he secured the passage of the Gold Standard Act. The United States annexed the independent Republic of Hawaii in 1898 and it became a United States territory. As part of the peace settlement, Spain turned over to the U.S. its main overseas colonies of Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines while Cuba was promised independence. The family trade on both sides was iron-making, and McKinley senior operated foundries throughout Ohio, in New Lisbon, Niles,. Poland, and finally Canton. He met Nancy Allison there and married her later. The senior McKinley moved to Ohio when the senior McKinly was a boy, settling inNew Lisbon and later took a job at a postal school near Poland. He became an honorary member of the Allegheny Seminary in 1859 and was an honorary president of Allegheny Alpha Epsilon fraternity. He also spent time at Mount Union College, Ohio as a board member.
You want to know more about William McKinley?
This page is based on the article William McKinley published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 06, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
