How William McKinley Became President
William McKinley, Jr. was the seventh child of William and Nancy. The family business was iron-making and McKinley's father operated foundries throughout Ohio. His family were staunch Methodists and therefore strong abolitionists. McKinley himself was a lifelong pious Methodist.
In 1860 William McKinley enrolled at Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania, but he only stayed at school for one year, returning home after becoming ill and depressed. Although he recovered, the family finances were hurting and he was unable to return to Allegheny. He took a job as a postal clerk and later taught school near Poland, Ohio. When the Civil War began, McKinley and his cousin William McKinley Osbourne, enlisted as privates in the newly formed Poland Guards in July 1861. They left for Columbus where their unit joined others to form the 23rd Ohio Infantry. Colonel William Rosecrans was their commander. While in the army, McKinley wrote a series of letters to his hometown newspaper about army life, and about his support for the Union cause. It was in the 23rd Ohio that McKinley met Major Rutherford B. Hayes, beginning a lifelong association and friendship.
After a month of training, the 23rd Ohio went for western Virginia (today part of West Virginia) in June 1861 as a part of the Kanawha Division. They first met with the enemy in September when they drove back Confederate troops at Carnifex Ferry in present-day West Virginia. Three days after the battle, McKinley was assigned to the brigade quartermaster office. He spent the winter filling in for a commissary sergeant who was ill, and in April 1862 he was promoted to that rank.
In September of 1862, McKinley’s regiment was called east to reinforce General John Pope’s Army of Virginia at the Second Battle of Bull Run. They did not arrive in time for the battle, but joined the Army of the Potomac as it hurried north to cut off Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia as it advanced into Maryland. The 23rd was the first regiment to encounter the Confederates at the Battle of South Mountain on September 14. After severe losses, Union forces drove back the Confederates and continued to Sharpsburg, Maryland, where they engaged Lee’s army at the Battle of Antietam. The 23rd was in the thick of the fighting at Antietam, and McKinley came under heavy fire when bringing rations to the men on the line. McKinley’s regiment again suffered many casualties in the Union victory.
After the battke the regiment went into winter quarters near Charleston, Virginia, but McKinley was ordered back to Ohio to recruit fresh troops. When he arrived in Columbus, Governor David Tod promoted McKinley to second lieutenant in recognition of his service at Antietam. McKinley saw little action until July 1863, when his division skirmished with John Hunt Morgan’s cavalry at the Battle of Buffington Island. In 1864, his division was assigned to George Crook’s Army of West Virginia. They were sent into southwestern Virginia to destroy salt and lead mines used by the enemy. On May 9, the army battled Confederate troops at Cloyd’s Mountain, where they charged enemy entrenchments and drove them from the field. Following the victory, Union forces destroyed Confederate supplies. McKinley and his regiment moved to the Shenandoah Valley and joined Major General David Hunter’s Army of the Shenandoah. This army captured Lexington, Virginia, on June 11 and continued south toward Lynchburg, tearing up railroad track as they advanced. Hunter believed the troops at Lynchburg were too powerful, however, and the brigade returned to West Virginia.
Confederate General Jubal Early’s raid into Maryland resulted in Hunter's army heading north. They were surprised by Early’s army at Kernstown on July 24, where McKinley personally came under heavy fire. The Union army was defeated and it retreated into Maryland. The army was reorganized and Major General Philip Sheridan replaced Hunter. McKinley was promoted to captain and was transferred to General Crook’s staff. By August, Early was retreating south in the valley, with Sheridan’s army in pursuit. They fought the Confederates at Berryville, where McKinley had a horse shot out from under him. Sheridan's army advanced to Opequon Creek. They broke the enemy lines and pursued the Confederates farther south. They followed up the victory with another at Fisher’s Hill on September 22, and again at Cedar Creek on October 19. After Cedar Creek, the army stayed in the vicinity through election day, when McKinley cast his first presidential ballot, for the incumbent Republican, Abraham Lincoln.
In February 1865, General Crook was captured by Confederate raiders. McKinley was assigned to General Carroll’s staff. In April, when Robert E. Lee and his army surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant, McKinley had justreceived his final promotion, a brevet commission as major. In July, with the war ended, McKinley left the service.
After the war ended in 1865, McKinley decided on a career in the law and began studying in the office of an attorney in Poland, Ohio. he continued his studies by attending Albany Law School in New York. After studying there for less than a year, McKinley returned home and was admitted to the bar in Warren, Ohio, in March 1867. He moved to Canton, the county seat of Stark County, and set up a small office, forming a partnership with George W. Belden, an experienced lawyer and former judge. McKinley's law practice was successful enough for him to buy a block of buildings on Main Street in Canton, which provided him with rental income for decades to come. When his Army friend Rutherford B. Hayes was nominated for governor in 1867, McKinley campaigned on his behalf in Stark County.
In 1869, McKinley ran for the office of prosecuting attorney of Stark County. In spite of the fact that the Democrats usually won the race, he won his election, serving only one term before being defeated in 1871. That year he married Ida Saxon and their first child, Katherine, was born on Christmas Day 1871. A second daughter, Ida, followed in 1873, but the child died the same year. Two years later, in 1875, their oldest child Katherine also died, from typhoid fever. The McKinleys had no more children. Ida McKinley developed epilepsy around the same time and continued to have serious health problems for the rest of her life.
McKinley continued his career in law and politics. In 1876 he took on a high-profile case defending a group of coal miners arrested for rioting after a clash with strikebreakers. The mine owners included Mark Hanna, a Cleveland businessman. McKinley defended the case pro bono, and was successful in getting all but one of the miners acquitted. The case raised McKinley’s standing among laborers, a key sector of the Stark County electorate. It also introduced him to Mark Hanna, who would become his strongest supporter in years to come.
McKinley’s good standing with labor helped him that year as he campaigned for the Republican nomination for Ohio's 17th congressional district. In August 1876, McKinley was nominated. Rutherford Hayes had been nominated for President, and McKinley campaigned for him while running his own congressional campaign. Both men won their election, though Hayes won a hotly disputed election to reach the presidency.
McKinley first sat in Congress in October 1877, when President Hayes called a special session. He broke with Hayes on the question of the currency. The United States had been operating on the gold standard by the Coinage Act of 1873. When silver prices dropped significantly, many sought to make silver a legal tender on par with gold. Politicians knew that this would result in inflation, but many believed that the economic benefits of the increased money supply would be worth the inflation. McKinley voted for the Bland-Allison Act of 1878, which called for large government purchases of silver for striking into money. He also voted to override Hayes’ veto of the legislation.
McKinley was always a strong advocate of protective tariffs. The purpose of tariffs was to allow American manufacturing to develop by giving it a price advantage in the domestic market over foreign competitors. Canton, Ohio had become prosperous as a center for the manufacture of farm equipment because of protection, so McKinley's position was important to his home district. McKinley introduced and supported bills that raised protective tariffs.
In 1880, James Garfield’s election as president created a vacancy on the House Ways and Means Committee and McKinley was selected to fill it. In 1889, with the Republicans in the majority, McKinley sought election as Speaker of the House. He lost to Thomas B. Reed of Maine, but Speaker Reed appointed McKinley chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. McKinley sponsored a bill known as the McKinley Tariff of 1890 which imposed a number of protective tariffs on foreign goods.
Democrats gained control of the Ohio legislature and tried to gerrymander or redistrict McKinley out of office. They tried and failed in 1878. He lost his seat in the 1882 election, but was able to overcome the problem, winning his seat back in the 1884 election. In 1890, the Democrats gerrymandered McKinley one final time, placing Stark County in the same district as one of the strongest pro-Democrat counties, Holmes, populated by solidly Democratic Pennsylvania Dutch. The election for the seat was hotly contested with both parties sending in high profile speakers, including President Benjamin Harrison. In the end, McKinley lost by 300 votes.
McKinley was urged to for Governor of Ohio in the election of 1891. He was nominated by acclamation by his party. He won the 1891 election by 20,000 votes. Ohio’s governor had relatively little power. He could recommend legislation, but not veto it. But Ohio a key swing state, so as governor, McKinley became a major figure in national politics. He was able to garner support both from business and labor. He supported legislation that set up an arbitration board to settle work disputes and obtained passage of a law that fined employers who fired workers for belonging to a union.
When President Harrison sought re-election in 1892, many Republicans were ready to dump the President from the ticket. McKinley objected to delegate votes being cast for him at the Republican Convention, but he nevertheless finished third in balloting. McKinley campaigned loyally for the Republican ticket, but Harrison was defeated by former President Cleveland in the November election. In the wake of Harrison's defeat, McKinley was seen by some as the likely Republican candidate in 1896.
Soon after Cleveland’s return to office, hard times struck the nation with the Panic of 1893. A businessman in Youngstown, Robert Walker, had lent money to McKinley and when Walker was ruined by the recession, he called in his loans to McKinley. The total owed was over $100,000. McKinley initially proposed to resign as governor and earn the money as an attorney, but instead, McKinley’s wealthy supporters, including Mark Hanna and Chicago publisher H. H. Kohlsaat, became trustees of a fund from which the notes would be paid. William and Ida McKinley placed their property in the hands of the fund’s trustees and the supporters raised and contributed a substantial sum of money. All of the couple’s property was returned to them by the end of 1893. McKinley asked for the list of contributors, to repay them, but Hanna refused to provide it to him. Many who had suffered in the hard times sympathized with McKinley, whose popularity grew. He was easily re-elected in November 1893, receiving the largest percentage of the vote of any Ohio governor since the Civil War.
McKinley campaigned widely for Republicans in the 1894 midterm congressional elections.He did not seek re-election as governor, campaigning instead for his Republican successor, Asa Bushnell. Backed by Hanna’s money and organizational skills, McKinley built support for a presidential bid through 1895 and early 1896. Hanna, on McKinley's behalf, met with the eastern Republican political bosses, to gain support for McKinley’s nomination. Mark Hanna had a vacation home in southern Georgia where McKinley visited and met with Republican politicians from the region. McKinley was able to gain of the votes needed for his nomination from South and border states
By the time the national convention began in St. Louis on June 16, 1896, McKinley had a sufficient majority of delegates. He remained in Canton, but followed events at the convention closely by telephone. He won the nomination on the first ballot and addressed thousands of supporters that evening, speaking from his front porch. The convention nominated Republican National Committee vice chairman Garret Hobart of New Jersey for vice president.
On the key campaign issue of currency, McKinley decided to endorse the gold standard. Adoption of the platform caused some dissent from western delegates, but the Republicans were not as badly divided as the Democrats on the issue. President Cleveland firmly supported the gold standard, but an increasing number of rural Democrats wanted silver, especially in the South and West. The silverites took control of the 1896 Democratic National Convention and chose William Jennings Bryan as their candidate for president. Bryan’s financial radicalism shocked financiers. They believed that his inflationary program would bankrupt the railroads and ruin the economy. Hanna approached them for support and they contributed $3.5 million to McKinley's campaign. Bryan’s campaign had at most an estimated $500,000.
Bryan decided on a whistle-stop political tour by train, an unprecedented strategy at the time. Hanna urged McKinley to match Bryan’s tour with one of his own, but McKinley declined because he believed that Bryan was a better stump speaker. He said: “I might just as well set up a trapeze on my front lawn and compete with some professional athlete as go out speaking against Bryan. I have to think when I speak.” Instead of going to the people, McKinley remained at home in Canton and let the people to come to him. McKinley’s ‘Front Porch Campaign’ proved successful. He made himself available to the public every day except Sunday, receiving delegations from the front porch of his home. The railroads subsidized the visitors with low rates. Delegations marched through the streets from the railroad station to McKinley’s home on North Market Street. McKinley in turn would speak on campaign issues in speeches carefully composed to prevent gaffes.
The battleground in the election proved to be the Midwest. The South and most of the West were conceded to Bryan while the Northeast was considered safe for McKinley. Public support for silver had receded, and McKinley began to emphasize the tariff issue. On election day on November 3, 1896, McKinley won the entire Northeast and Midwest. He won 51% of the vote and a majority in the Electoral College (271 to 176). Bryan had concentrated entirely on the silver issue, and had failed to appeal to urban workers. Voters in cities supported McKinley because of his protectionist stance for American jobs through a strong tariff.
McKinley's presidency would enjoy rapid economic growth. He supported the 1897 Dingley Tariff to protect manufacturers and factory workers from foreign competition, and in 1900, he secured the passage of the Gold Standard Act. McKinley hoped to persuade Spain to grant independence to Cuba without conflict, but when negotiation failed, he led the nation in the Spanish–American War of 1898. The U.S. victory was quick and decisive. As part of the peace settlement, Spain turned over to the United States its main overseas colonies of Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines.
McKinley defeated Bryan again in the 1900 presidential election, in a campaign focused on imperialism, protectionism, and free silver. However, his legacy was quickly cut short by his assassination on September 6, 1901 by Leon Czolgosz.
In 1860 William McKinley enrolled at Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania, but he only stayed at school for one year, returning home after becoming ill and depressed. Although he recovered, the family finances were hurting and he was unable to return to Allegheny. He took a job as a postal clerk and later taught school near Poland, Ohio. When the Civil War began, McKinley and his cousin William McKinley Osbourne, enlisted as privates in the newly formed Poland Guards in July 1861. They left for Columbus where their unit joined others to form the 23rd Ohio Infantry. Colonel William Rosecrans was their commander. While in the army, McKinley wrote a series of letters to his hometown newspaper about army life, and about his support for the Union cause. It was in the 23rd Ohio that McKinley met Major Rutherford B. Hayes, beginning a lifelong association and friendship.
After a month of training, the 23rd Ohio went for western Virginia (today part of West Virginia) in June 1861 as a part of the Kanawha Division. They first met with the enemy in September when they drove back Confederate troops at Carnifex Ferry in present-day West Virginia. Three days after the battle, McKinley was assigned to the brigade quartermaster office. He spent the winter filling in for a commissary sergeant who was ill, and in April 1862 he was promoted to that rank.
In September of 1862, McKinley’s regiment was called east to reinforce General John Pope’s Army of Virginia at the Second Battle of Bull Run. They did not arrive in time for the battle, but joined the Army of the Potomac as it hurried north to cut off Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia as it advanced into Maryland. The 23rd was the first regiment to encounter the Confederates at the Battle of South Mountain on September 14. After severe losses, Union forces drove back the Confederates and continued to Sharpsburg, Maryland, where they engaged Lee’s army at the Battle of Antietam. The 23rd was in the thick of the fighting at Antietam, and McKinley came under heavy fire when bringing rations to the men on the line. McKinley’s regiment again suffered many casualties in the Union victory.
After the battke the regiment went into winter quarters near Charleston, Virginia, but McKinley was ordered back to Ohio to recruit fresh troops. When he arrived in Columbus, Governor David Tod promoted McKinley to second lieutenant in recognition of his service at Antietam. McKinley saw little action until July 1863, when his division skirmished with John Hunt Morgan’s cavalry at the Battle of Buffington Island. In 1864, his division was assigned to George Crook’s Army of West Virginia. They were sent into southwestern Virginia to destroy salt and lead mines used by the enemy. On May 9, the army battled Confederate troops at Cloyd’s Mountain, where they charged enemy entrenchments and drove them from the field. Following the victory, Union forces destroyed Confederate supplies. McKinley and his regiment moved to the Shenandoah Valley and joined Major General David Hunter’s Army of the Shenandoah. This army captured Lexington, Virginia, on June 11 and continued south toward Lynchburg, tearing up railroad track as they advanced. Hunter believed the troops at Lynchburg were too powerful, however, and the brigade returned to West Virginia.
Confederate General Jubal Early’s raid into Maryland resulted in Hunter's army heading north. They were surprised by Early’s army at Kernstown on July 24, where McKinley personally came under heavy fire. The Union army was defeated and it retreated into Maryland. The army was reorganized and Major General Philip Sheridan replaced Hunter. McKinley was promoted to captain and was transferred to General Crook’s staff. By August, Early was retreating south in the valley, with Sheridan’s army in pursuit. They fought the Confederates at Berryville, where McKinley had a horse shot out from under him. Sheridan's army advanced to Opequon Creek. They broke the enemy lines and pursued the Confederates farther south. They followed up the victory with another at Fisher’s Hill on September 22, and again at Cedar Creek on October 19. After Cedar Creek, the army stayed in the vicinity through election day, when McKinley cast his first presidential ballot, for the incumbent Republican, Abraham Lincoln.
In February 1865, General Crook was captured by Confederate raiders. McKinley was assigned to General Carroll’s staff. In April, when Robert E. Lee and his army surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant, McKinley had justreceived his final promotion, a brevet commission as major. In July, with the war ended, McKinley left the service.
After the war ended in 1865, McKinley decided on a career in the law and began studying in the office of an attorney in Poland, Ohio. he continued his studies by attending Albany Law School in New York. After studying there for less than a year, McKinley returned home and was admitted to the bar in Warren, Ohio, in March 1867. He moved to Canton, the county seat of Stark County, and set up a small office, forming a partnership with George W. Belden, an experienced lawyer and former judge. McKinley's law practice was successful enough for him to buy a block of buildings on Main Street in Canton, which provided him with rental income for decades to come. When his Army friend Rutherford B. Hayes was nominated for governor in 1867, McKinley campaigned on his behalf in Stark County.
In 1869, McKinley ran for the office of prosecuting attorney of Stark County. In spite of the fact that the Democrats usually won the race, he won his election, serving only one term before being defeated in 1871. That year he married Ida Saxon and their first child, Katherine, was born on Christmas Day 1871. A second daughter, Ida, followed in 1873, but the child died the same year. Two years later, in 1875, their oldest child Katherine also died, from typhoid fever. The McKinleys had no more children. Ida McKinley developed epilepsy around the same time and continued to have serious health problems for the rest of her life.
McKinley continued his career in law and politics. In 1876 he took on a high-profile case defending a group of coal miners arrested for rioting after a clash with strikebreakers. The mine owners included Mark Hanna, a Cleveland businessman. McKinley defended the case pro bono, and was successful in getting all but one of the miners acquitted. The case raised McKinley’s standing among laborers, a key sector of the Stark County electorate. It also introduced him to Mark Hanna, who would become his strongest supporter in years to come.
McKinley’s good standing with labor helped him that year as he campaigned for the Republican nomination for Ohio's 17th congressional district. In August 1876, McKinley was nominated. Rutherford Hayes had been nominated for President, and McKinley campaigned for him while running his own congressional campaign. Both men won their election, though Hayes won a hotly disputed election to reach the presidency.
McKinley first sat in Congress in October 1877, when President Hayes called a special session. He broke with Hayes on the question of the currency. The United States had been operating on the gold standard by the Coinage Act of 1873. When silver prices dropped significantly, many sought to make silver a legal tender on par with gold. Politicians knew that this would result in inflation, but many believed that the economic benefits of the increased money supply would be worth the inflation. McKinley voted for the Bland-Allison Act of 1878, which called for large government purchases of silver for striking into money. He also voted to override Hayes’ veto of the legislation.
McKinley was always a strong advocate of protective tariffs. The purpose of tariffs was to allow American manufacturing to develop by giving it a price advantage in the domestic market over foreign competitors. Canton, Ohio had become prosperous as a center for the manufacture of farm equipment because of protection, so McKinley's position was important to his home district. McKinley introduced and supported bills that raised protective tariffs.
In 1880, James Garfield’s election as president created a vacancy on the House Ways and Means Committee and McKinley was selected to fill it. In 1889, with the Republicans in the majority, McKinley sought election as Speaker of the House. He lost to Thomas B. Reed of Maine, but Speaker Reed appointed McKinley chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. McKinley sponsored a bill known as the McKinley Tariff of 1890 which imposed a number of protective tariffs on foreign goods.
Democrats gained control of the Ohio legislature and tried to gerrymander or redistrict McKinley out of office. They tried and failed in 1878. He lost his seat in the 1882 election, but was able to overcome the problem, winning his seat back in the 1884 election. In 1890, the Democrats gerrymandered McKinley one final time, placing Stark County in the same district as one of the strongest pro-Democrat counties, Holmes, populated by solidly Democratic Pennsylvania Dutch. The election for the seat was hotly contested with both parties sending in high profile speakers, including President Benjamin Harrison. In the end, McKinley lost by 300 votes.
McKinley was urged to for Governor of Ohio in the election of 1891. He was nominated by acclamation by his party. He won the 1891 election by 20,000 votes. Ohio’s governor had relatively little power. He could recommend legislation, but not veto it. But Ohio a key swing state, so as governor, McKinley became a major figure in national politics. He was able to garner support both from business and labor. He supported legislation that set up an arbitration board to settle work disputes and obtained passage of a law that fined employers who fired workers for belonging to a union.
When President Harrison sought re-election in 1892, many Republicans were ready to dump the President from the ticket. McKinley objected to delegate votes being cast for him at the Republican Convention, but he nevertheless finished third in balloting. McKinley campaigned loyally for the Republican ticket, but Harrison was defeated by former President Cleveland in the November election. In the wake of Harrison's defeat, McKinley was seen by some as the likely Republican candidate in 1896.
Soon after Cleveland’s return to office, hard times struck the nation with the Panic of 1893. A businessman in Youngstown, Robert Walker, had lent money to McKinley and when Walker was ruined by the recession, he called in his loans to McKinley. The total owed was over $100,000. McKinley initially proposed to resign as governor and earn the money as an attorney, but instead, McKinley’s wealthy supporters, including Mark Hanna and Chicago publisher H. H. Kohlsaat, became trustees of a fund from which the notes would be paid. William and Ida McKinley placed their property in the hands of the fund’s trustees and the supporters raised and contributed a substantial sum of money. All of the couple’s property was returned to them by the end of 1893. McKinley asked for the list of contributors, to repay them, but Hanna refused to provide it to him. Many who had suffered in the hard times sympathized with McKinley, whose popularity grew. He was easily re-elected in November 1893, receiving the largest percentage of the vote of any Ohio governor since the Civil War.
McKinley campaigned widely for Republicans in the 1894 midterm congressional elections.He did not seek re-election as governor, campaigning instead for his Republican successor, Asa Bushnell. Backed by Hanna’s money and organizational skills, McKinley built support for a presidential bid through 1895 and early 1896. Hanna, on McKinley's behalf, met with the eastern Republican political bosses, to gain support for McKinley’s nomination. Mark Hanna had a vacation home in southern Georgia where McKinley visited and met with Republican politicians from the region. McKinley was able to gain of the votes needed for his nomination from South and border states
By the time the national convention began in St. Louis on June 16, 1896, McKinley had a sufficient majority of delegates. He remained in Canton, but followed events at the convention closely by telephone. He won the nomination on the first ballot and addressed thousands of supporters that evening, speaking from his front porch. The convention nominated Republican National Committee vice chairman Garret Hobart of New Jersey for vice president.
On the key campaign issue of currency, McKinley decided to endorse the gold standard. Adoption of the platform caused some dissent from western delegates, but the Republicans were not as badly divided as the Democrats on the issue. President Cleveland firmly supported the gold standard, but an increasing number of rural Democrats wanted silver, especially in the South and West. The silverites took control of the 1896 Democratic National Convention and chose William Jennings Bryan as their candidate for president. Bryan’s financial radicalism shocked financiers. They believed that his inflationary program would bankrupt the railroads and ruin the economy. Hanna approached them for support and they contributed $3.5 million to McKinley's campaign. Bryan’s campaign had at most an estimated $500,000.
Bryan decided on a whistle-stop political tour by train, an unprecedented strategy at the time. Hanna urged McKinley to match Bryan’s tour with one of his own, but McKinley declined because he believed that Bryan was a better stump speaker. He said: “I might just as well set up a trapeze on my front lawn and compete with some professional athlete as go out speaking against Bryan. I have to think when I speak.” Instead of going to the people, McKinley remained at home in Canton and let the people to come to him. McKinley’s ‘Front Porch Campaign’ proved successful. He made himself available to the public every day except Sunday, receiving delegations from the front porch of his home. The railroads subsidized the visitors with low rates. Delegations marched through the streets from the railroad station to McKinley’s home on North Market Street. McKinley in turn would speak on campaign issues in speeches carefully composed to prevent gaffes.
The battleground in the election proved to be the Midwest. The South and most of the West were conceded to Bryan while the Northeast was considered safe for McKinley. Public support for silver had receded, and McKinley began to emphasize the tariff issue. On election day on November 3, 1896, McKinley won the entire Northeast and Midwest. He won 51% of the vote and a majority in the Electoral College (271 to 176). Bryan had concentrated entirely on the silver issue, and had failed to appeal to urban workers. Voters in cities supported McKinley because of his protectionist stance for American jobs through a strong tariff.
McKinley's presidency would enjoy rapid economic growth. He supported the 1897 Dingley Tariff to protect manufacturers and factory workers from foreign competition, and in 1900, he secured the passage of the Gold Standard Act. McKinley hoped to persuade Spain to grant independence to Cuba without conflict, but when negotiation failed, he led the nation in the Spanish–American War of 1898. The U.S. victory was quick and decisive. As part of the peace settlement, Spain turned over to the United States its main overseas colonies of Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines.
McKinley defeated Bryan again in the 1900 presidential election, in a campaign focused on imperialism, protectionism, and free silver. However, his legacy was quickly cut short by his assassination on September 6, 1901 by Leon Czolgosz.