“…every one admires Captain McKinley as one of the bravest and finest young officers in the Army.” This was written by Rutherford Hayes, 19th American president about a smart William McKinley who went on to become the 25th president of the country.
William McKinley was the last president to have served in the American Civil War. He was also the only one to have started the war as an enlisted soldier. He became a brevet major by the time the war ended. He became the Republican Party’s expert on various issues. In 1896, he ran as the Republican Party’s candidate for president and won.
McKinley’s Administration strived to develop and improve foreign policy. It did not care much about the prosperity of the country. It was a time when America was affected by the stalemate between Spanish forces and revolutionaries in Cuba. There was pressure on McKinley to call for a war. Though McKinley tried for a neutral intervention in April 1898, he later had to declare war after the Spanish blew up the U.S. battleship Maine in the harbour of Havana, Cuba.
What followed was a war that lasted 100 days. The United States destroyed the Spanish fleet, seized Manila in the Philippines, and occupied Puerto Rico. The war established the U.S. as a world power. McKinley was elected again in 1900. However, his second term ended tragically in September 1901; he was shot by Leon Czolgosz, a deranged anarchist.
He died eight days later and was succeeded by his vice president, Theodore Roosevelt.
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