

However, McKinley was not dominated by Hanna he condemned the trusts as “dangerous conspiracies against the public good.”

Newspapers caricatured McKinley as a little boy led around by “Nursie” Hanna, the representative of the trusts. In the friendly atmosphere of the McKinley Administration, industrial combinations developed at an unprecedented pace. Deferring action on the money question, he called Congress into special session to enact the highest tariff in history. When McKinley became President, the depression of 1893 had almost run its course and with it the extreme agitation over silver. The next year he was elected Governor of Ohio, serving two terms. was generally on the side of the public and against private interests.”ĭuring his 14 years in the House, he became the leading Republican tariff expert, giving his name to the measure enacted in 1890. La Follette, Sr., who served with him, recalled that he generally “represented the newer view,” and “on the great new questions. He was appointed to the powerful Ways and Means Committee. His attractive personality, exemplary character, and quick intelligence enabled him to rise rapidly. He studied law, opened an office in Canton, Ohio, and married Ida Saxton, daughter of a local banker.Īt 34, McKinley won a seat in Congress. Enlisting as a private in the Union Army, he was mustered out at the end of the war as a brevet major of volunteers. He won by the largest majority of popular votes since 1872.īorn in Niles, Ohio, in 1843, McKinley briefly attended Allegheny College, and was teaching in a country school when the Civil War broke out. While Hanna used large contributions from eastern Republicans frightened by Bryan’s views on silver, McKinley met delegations on his front porch in Canton, Ohio. William McKinley was the 25th President of the United States, serving from March 4, 1897, until his assassination on September 14, 1901, after leading the nation to victory in the Spanish-American War and raising protective tariffs to promote American industry.Īt the 1896 Republican Convention, in time of depression, the wealthy Cleveland businessman Marcus Alonzo Hanna ensured the nomination of his friend William McKinley as “the advance agent of prosperity.” The Democrats, advocating the “free and unlimited coinage of both silver and gold”–which would have mildly inflated the currency–nominated William Jennings Bryan. The biography for President McKinley and past presidents is courtesy of the White House Historical Association.

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