[ applause ] so, good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Well m coto the kansas city public library. Robert merry, this is his second presentation in the somewhat hallowed halls of the library, five star library this week from library journal. Thank you. He has a masters degree from Columbia University school of journalism. Hes been a reporter from the observe, the walt walt journal, managing editor and editor in chief of Congressional Quarterly and more recently the american conservative. He says its collab la tif but it sounds like robert merry. We believe in constitutional government, fiscal prudence, sound monetary patrol si, delineated borders, authentically free markets, and restraint in Foreign Policy mixed with diplomatic acuity. We adhere to ideas over eidology, principles over party. One could wish there were more of that kind of true conservatism wandering around the beltway than some who profess to be conservatives. Hes also the author of books on those ultimate journalistic insiders stewart and joseph. Hes written the sans and empire of analysis and lament for american Foreign Policy. And laterally a country of vast designs, a rehabilitation of james polk, and now president mckinley, architect of the century. He makes the case for importance of expansion of america, poke in the pure geographical sense of extending boundaries further than anyone other than tom Brady Jefferson and the louisiana purchase. And mckinley in the nonclone ral imperialism i quote him that did bring Us Geographical expansion with the annexation of hawaii with the acquisition of puerto rico. But more importantly the expansion of american power, concern, and engagement as a world power manifested in the spanish american war, the battles in cuba and the battles in the philippines and the control over the philippines for an extended period of time, the open door for china and the vast expansion of the american economy. Poke has been called the most successful president in that he proposed to incorporate california, oregon, texas, reduce the tariff and reinstate the independent treasury. You can see me after class to explain that one. Were all accomplished. Hes the only president who saw his entire Program Written into law. Hes also called one of our most morally degraded because of the shenanigans associated with the mexicoen war which made part of that possible. Robert merry sides with the diagnosis of him as a successful poll situation. With mckinley he gives a subtle gase there was lay less overt program to give the United States a place in the international stage. The only stated program of the mckinley campaign for president was on the tariff with which he was more than anyone else identified the high tariff. Historians have had had a hard time discerning a Foreign Policy in his plan, but he was the guide who gave us empire, and it wasnt lodge or roosevelt or john hay but the deliberate and subtle mastery of William Mckinley. This book is a continuation of robert merry to reverse the trend of contemporary academics to devour our heritage through moralizing through a safe distance of the rooif ivory tow. Ladies and gentlemen, robert merry. Thank you. Thank you. Crosby, thank you very much. It is a pleasure to be here, and its a great pleasure to see all of you here. This is actually my third time at this library. And ive spoken at a number of libraries, not a lot of fivestar libraries. So, congratulations on that. Yes, thank you. He didnt mean to. So, i entitled my introduction to this volume on mckinley the mystery of William Mckinley and i was pleased to see that the wall street journal picked that up in my review of the book, which by the way was very favorable. Thats my effort to immolate donald trump. Now, i have to say that i didnt set out to solve the mystery of willi William Mckinley for the simple reason i didnt know there was a mystery. I didnt understand mckinley enough when i started this project to understand theres something strange, theres something mysterious about him. It can be explained in perhaps two sentences, which is given all the consequential things that happened on his president ial watch, why does he not rise higher in americas historical consciousness of today . Or put another way, given the fact that he was such a sort of nonflamboyant, undramatic person, how did all those consequential things happen on his presidency . So, as i guided the project, i have to say that the guy started to drive me crazy because i had a hard time getting a handle on him. He was not a forceful man, and yet all these things happened on his presidency. And i was having a hard time sort of bringing this to life. The historical consensus on him was that yeah, yeah, okay, big things happen on his watch, yeah, fine. But he had didnt have anything to do with it. He was just president. And that didnt really strike me as being totally credible. Thats what i called the leaf in the wind theory of William Mckin leechlt an example is a book by allen lickman and ken 13 keys to the presidency which i quote a lot. Its not just about mckinley. Its about how the presidency work. But they have a chapter on mckinley. They write he enjoyed one of the more successful incumbencies in history. But then they add he found himself, quote, benefitting in part from circumstances beyond his control. And theres the rub. Beyond his control. He was seen as less than the sum of husband his deeds. What struck me also in the academic polls which ive written about and talked about in this hall some years ago, that in those polls he comes in not exactly middle average, maybe upper average. He comes in at 16th, 15th, maybe 14th occasionally. Often hes below such undistinguished or failed president s Chester Arthur who was a caretaker president , pretty good one given his background with the machine of new york. But nevertheless a caretaker president. Martin van burn who was a failed president who presided over a terrible recession, depression that he couldnt control. Rutherford hayes, who became president on the basis of one of the great stolen election scandals of our history. Grover cleveland, who, as we all know, was the only president who served two nonconsecutive terms. He was rejected by his party or the voters after each, thus making him the only twotime oneterm president in our history. And john quincy adams, who was sluped away at the behest of andrew jackson. So, the mystery deepens when we think about what happened on his watch. And im going to urge you to not think of what im about to tick off as just bullet points on a piece of paper. But think about the Political Drama likely to attend many of these things. Well, he led us into a war with spain in 1898. It ended up being a huge success. It was a threemonth war. We destroyed the spanish empire essentially. In the process, we destroyed two spanish fleets, the atlantic and pacific fleets. We became an empire by acquiring from spain, puerto rico, guam, and the philippines. We liberated cuba in the caribbean. We could have kept it also, but we had already made a commitment that we wouldnt. He kicked spain out of the caribbean and turned the caribbean into an american lake. For good measure, he acquired hawaii through negotiation and annexation. He set in motion the events that led eventually i saw the display outside to the panama canal. And t. R. Gets an awful lot of credit for that, and he deserves it. But it was really mckinley who reversed the policy of his predecessor, cleveland, who was an antiexpansionist and said, no, no, were going to move on this canal and set it in motions, the studies and the actions and the planning that led to the canal. He brought about the open door to china, which basically saved china from being carved up by the industrial powers, european and japanese powers. He created the concept of trade reciprocity, which when i was covering trade policy in the 1980s when it was a hot issue for the wall street journal, reciprocity what was then called fair trade, make it even so that we can have these exchange of goods back and forth across borders. He crafted the concept of noncolonial imperialism, which i believe, ultimately was picked up by Franklin Roosevelt when he was transforming the world through world war ii and putting america at the center of it. It was on his watch that we established the special relationship with britain. Just the previous couple of years earlier under the cleveland administration, we almost left war with britain over a silly border dispute in south america, but after that, we never had anything like that in terms of tension with Great Britain because of this special relationship. And he created the gold standard. We tend to look down on gold standards these days. But in those days it was a very, very big deal. And he ran when the currency issue was probably the hottest in our history, and he essentially solved that in his first term. So, this is a big collection of accomplishments, or developments,that occurred on his watch. And the question is to what extent does he deserve the credit . I, myself, came to conclude that the idea the leaf in the wind theory was a myth. And i set out to explode that myth in this book. Ill let you decide whether i succeeded, and im happy to do that because you cant decide unless you buy the book. So, who was this man . Born in the 1843, he was the 7th of 9 children, 8 of whom lived to adulthood. He grew up in ohio, small town ohio. Inbued with the ohio culture of the time, which was a reflection of what people of those times considered christian values of thrift optimism, modesty, hard toil. His father ran and owned blast furnaces around ohio, worked very, very hard. His mother had a strong sense of civic and religious duty. She was very civicminded. She worked very hard for her church and her communities, wherever they happened to be. They were in poland for most of the growing up years of william. The mother was also endued with the things i just talked about, the socalled christian values. One of my favorite things about her was she was taking a train to columbus later in her life to visit her son, the governor of ohio. The lady next to her struck up a conversation, are you going to columbus . Yes, i am, she said. Oh, do you have family there . I have a son there. Thats all she said. She didnt feel any need to explain that her son was governor of the state. So, young William Mckinley goes off to college in pennsylvania. First year he developed some kind of illness, an ailment. It never was quite explained or understood what it was, but he had to return to poland where he recooperated. But by the time he recooperated, he couldnt go back to college because economic difficulties had rendered a need for all of the family members to go to work. He got two jobs. He was a schoolteacher. He was 17 at that time, 18. And then he was a postal clerk. Then comes the civil war. I cant say that he enlisted immediately. He gave himself two days to think it over and sort of try to figure out with his cousin whether this was the right thing to do. His family was very, very strong abolitionists. His mother, particularly. She subscribed to horace greenlys weekly tribune she could get in the mail which reinforced that sentiment. So, he and his cousin decided they couldnt stay out of that war, and they enlisted. He had i think i can accurately describe a Pretty Amazing war record. He entered as an 18yearold private. Immediately, his commanding officer, rutherford b. Hayes, later president , great men tofr him. Ruther hayes was an officer, became a general, was wounded five times in the war, became congressman, became governor, then became president. And hayes saw that this young man had remarkable organizational ability, so he made him a sergeant and made him Quarter Master sergeant. He was taking care of supplies. At the battle of ante tum, the single most bloody day of battle in our history, he was two miles behind the lines because his job was to provide provisions. And he heard about a unit that had gotten caught, trapped essentially, in the area of the battle. They couldnt move. They couldnt get out. Nobody could get in to help them. And they were starving. And they had they had run out of water. The battle began very early in the morning, so they hadnt had breakfast. Now its late afternoon. They hadnt had lunch, and they ran out of water well before noon. And Young Mckinley concocted the idea of loading up a wagon with bread and coffee and water and a few other things and getting that wagon to these troops. Well, he would have to go right through the battle to do it. He gets a friend or some other young soldier to help them load up the wagon and get in the wagon. And they head out through the surrounding forest. They encounter two officers who say this is ridiculous, you cant do this, go back. After they left, mckinley and his asesh yacht ignored it and went op. They got to the clearing, and then they made a run for it. Bullets were whizzing by, cannon balls overhead. And the back of the wagon was shot away, but they managed to get the provisions to these troops. God bless the lads, said one of the old veterans. He immediately, as a result of that, was promoted to commission. He became lieutenant. And then he had i wont go into all of them, but he had other experience, some like that, in which he put himself very directly in harms way, almost always voluntarily. And each time, he got another promotion. So, he ended the war as a brefit major, 22yearold major. So, he goes back to poland. He decides he wants to run for lawyer and run for Congress Like his hen mentor rutherford hayes. And he sends this starryeyed letter to hayes telling him, im going to do what you did. Hayes writes him back a letter and says, yeah, thats pretty good, but you know, frankly, with all this industrilization going on, i think maybe you should go into business. You could get yourself you could become a wealthy man by age 40 and really take care of your life. Mckinley carefully preserved the letter but discarded the advice. He knew what he wanted. He moved to canton, ohio, where his sister had become a schoolteacher after he becomes a lawyer and hangs out a shingle and becomes a civic leader in canton. He joined everything. He joined veterans groups. He joined the church. He joined the chamber of commerce. And immediately he was pulled up into positions of leadership. So, there was Something Special about this guy that led people to turn to him for leadership, even though he was not a flamboyant person. And i have a little passage in my book here describing him after his civil war experience. And i think we see here in the book the first hint of what becomes an element of the mystery of William Mckinley. So, i write, the civil war transformed young William Mckinley much like his fathers white hot forges. He went to war as an unseasoned teen ager with only a vague sense of who he was or what he would do with his life. He left the army an adult who had been severely tested in questions of intellect, administrative ability, leadership and courage. He had passed these tests and demonstrated that men gravitated naturally to his side, and that many older men were drawn into roles of mentorship. Yet this new confidence and sense of self settled upon him softly without os stenation or bravado. He learned the power of mystique, of leaving unsaid that which didnt need explicit expression, of keeping people guessing as to his intentions or motives. If this led some to underestimate his intellect or resolve, he didnt seem bothered by it. Thus emerged some elements of his persona, a congenial and easy going demeanor, shrouded in increasingly restless ambition. He does run for congress, serves 14 years, beens chairman of the ways and Means Committee where hes in position to push his pet issue, tariffs, protectionism, high trade tariffs to protect American Manufacturing and agriculture eventually at a time when america was burgeoning as a productive machine. And he even, as chairman of ways and means crafts a bill, a very high tariff bill, the mckinley tariff, they called it of 1890. Turned out to be a bad move. The tariff didnt go into effect for quite some time, and a lot of businesses took the opportunity to raise prices because they were going to raise anyway, everyone figured. The American People didnt like that very much. And the result was a disaster for republicans in the 1890 elections. And poor mckinley is sitting in his office as returns are coming in disheveled and office all messed up with posters everywhere and paper rs and buttons. Hes sitting there smoking a cigar. In walks his good friend, the editor of the newspaper, and the editor says its all over. Mckinley says nothing. Says, what am i going to say in the newspaper . And mckinley looks up with a pensive look on his face, and he says in the time of darkest travail, victory is nearest. What . He just he just he couldnt get pessimistic about anything. It was congenitally impossible for him. So, hes lost his seat, but a year later he runs for governor. He serves two twoyear terms, and now hes ready to run for president of the United States. Begins his campaign in 1895. He sends his good friend and his the man who serves him so well, mark hannah, very successful industrialist of ohio from cleveland. He sends him to new york on a very important mission. He wants to find out from the big bosses, from tom platt of new york who owned the Republican Party in that state, matthew vai in pennsylvania, owned that state, had all the patronage. And he wanted to know them and the lesser bosses who worked under them if they would support mckinley, because if they did, he was a front runner anyway. He probably would have the nomination sewed up. It wouldnt even be a battle. So, hannah comes back to cleveland and mckinleys there and they have a nice dinner and go into hannahs study lined with books. They settle themselves into overstuffed leather chairs and light up their cigars. Hannah is pretty excited, says its all over but the shouting. These guys are all go for you. There are conditions. You didnt seem particularly disturbed by the conditions. Mckinley says, well, what are they . Well, platt wants the patronage in new york and new england and ticks off a couple others and then platt also wants to be treasury secretary. Oh, and he wants it in writing. It seems that 8 years earlier at the beginning of the Harrison Administration he had gotten a similar commitment from harrison for his support. But the treasury secretary never materialized. So, he wanted a promissory note. Mckinley looks ahead, puffs on his cigar, turns to mark, says there are some things in life that come at too high a price. If thats the price, its worth nothing to me and its north nothing to the American People. Hold on, hold on, says hannah. Im just saying we could sew it up tomorrow. But we dont need to sew it up tomorrow. We can beat these guys. Thats what they had to do. They were so upset that they went to other politicians in various states and tried to get them to become a favorite son to those states so they could deny mckinley a first ballot nomination, in which case they thought maybe they could pull up somebody else who would play their game and play their price. But he beat him. He beat him and he became the nominee, and he had to go up against William Jennings brian. You know this story. I didnt realize this was, he was 36 years old when he ran for president in 1896. He had two terms in the house and lost that seat. Ran for the senate and lost. He was one of the greatest orator of our history. We all know that he got himself on this platform, the podium at the Democratic Convention and gave his famous cross of gold speech. Ye shall not press that throne of thorns upon our head, and he filtered his filters down across his face like blood trickling down, you shall not crucify us on a cross of gold. And the convention went wild. And the reason was the country was in extrimis. The panic was really with the country. The rural areas were really suffering. There was not enough liquidity in their view. So, they needed the free coinage of silver. Thats what their rallying cry was. And hannah became the man who was going to read that charge, and he did. He got on trains and crisscrossed the country and he was all over the place. He was spending amazing amounts of time. He would have days in which he would get up and his first speech would be at 7 00 in the morning and his last speech would be 10 00 at night. Mckinley couldnt compete with that. He had a wife who was infirm. We could talk about that q a. Its interesting but im going to try to keep this thing going. He was infirm. He didnt want to take her on whistle stop tour and didnt want to leave her in canton or in washington. So, he so, he concocted this famous front porch strategy. 750,000 americans came to canton, ohio, and lined up and came and spoke with the governor as he stayed on his front porch. They destroyed his yard by the way, but who cares. And it was amazing effort. You know what we say in Politics Today . Control the message. Well, mckinley controlled the message because these various groups it could be a church group or a labor group or an africanamerican organization or various things would want to come and send a letter and say we want to come and this day works for us if it works for you and he had people working on this. He sent back a letter saying what are you going to say . What questions do you have . Whats your point you want to make . So, he knew exactly what they were going to say . And all the reporters all over the country were there taking notes. And it was all somewhat orchestrated. Well, it worked. And he became president. So, now im going to step back and im going to try to describe what kind of a man he merged through these experiences starting with the civil war and that sort of sense of self that he developed as a result of success in the war. So, he seems on the outside to be a very pleasant person, congenial. He didnt seem to be a man of force. And a lot of people wondered whether he was really a leader. He was an incrementalist in terms of the way he managed things. He didnt try to push too hard, and i will say that he was not a visionary. He was not a man of imagination. In his day, Theodore Roosevelt was a man of imagination. Henry cabot lodge, admiral mayhan, these were men of imagination who had a great vision about american greatness and how america can bust out into the world. That wasnt where mckinley was, but it turned out he had amazing capacity to see events as they were unfolding with clarity and find ways to mesh them in ways that would allow him to sort of nudge events in the favored direction. And this gave him a great deal of subterrain force. He had an iron will deundernebet surface. He always got his way somehow. He did it by convincing people to do what he wanted to do while thinking it was their idea. One of the great lawyers of his time and who was his war secretary, also t. R. s leader, said that he always got his way in part because he didnt care who got the credit. That just wasnt important to him at all, unlike t. R. And he had a close friend who said i dont think mckinley ever let anything stand in the way of his own advancement. And julia foreacre who was a wife of a prominent politician at that time and ally and adversary of mckinleys, more often an adversary, talked about the masks he wore. The masks arent phony. He was an affable man. He was a pleasant fellow. He was generous spirited. But behind those masks was this iron will and this desire to succeed. My favorite example of this is words from the congressman from that period by the name of ben foreacre im sorry. Ben butterworth. Butterworth i came across him in the mark hannah papers because they were very, very Close Friends and there were a lot of letters going back and forth. And i could see they were very close and i could conclude butterworth must have been part of the politicians in ohio that clus erd around mckinley and hannah. It became more and more clear that butterworth while he loved hannah, was a little wary of mckinley. And then it came across a Washington Post article which in butter worth was talking about mckinley and he used as a kind of illustration an idea of how mckinley operated. He said, if mckinley and i were walking through an orchard with but one barron tree and that tree had but two apples, mckinley would walk under that tree, hed pick the two apples, he would take a bite out of the other one. Then he would turn to me and say, ben, do you like apples . I think what butterworth was trying to say was he was always congenial, but he always seemed to get the apples, as he managed by indirection from the shadows. So, im going to talk a little bit about some of the elements, examples, of the mckinley resolve that emerged in big ways during his presidency. And one would be the spanish american war. Now, the book on mckinley and im going to talk briefly later about why i think he doesnt what has kept him from having the reputation i believe he deserved. But the book on mckinley is that he didnt really want to go to war on spain. And the American People and congress basically thrust him against his will towards a war that he didnt want. My view is that if you study this carefully and you understand mckinley, you realize that this isnt what happened at all. When mckinley was elected, it was a terrible, very bloody, very awful insurrection going on in cuba. The indigenous folks wanted independence from the spanish. And this had been going on there had been a previous tenyear insurrection that had claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, i cant remember exactly. And they had settled finally. But now it had sort of reemerged. And it was destabilizing the caribbean. It was putting americans who were trying to do business in cue b cuba at risk. It was also opening up the possibility that other european powers could see the chaos and come in and take over cuba, which would be the last thing the United States would want. It was one thing to have a fading power like spain in cuba in the caribbean, which we considered to be our sphere of influence, they were there as i legacy imperial power. But to have germany say, or some other european power come in, would be thats untenable. So, there was a great deal of anguish and anger in congress and around the country. Most of it based on humanitarian grounds, not geopolitical factors. But that was a factor as well. And mckinley comes into the presidency and well. And mckinley comes into the presidency and takes over from grover cleveland. Grover cleveland had essentially favored the spanish over the cubans. Not because he liked the spanish particularly, but because he was a status quo guy and wanted stability. So his view was as soon as spain can sort of put down this insurrection, we can go back to the status quo and everything will be stable and we will be fine. Not very realistic. Mckinley rejected that out of hand from almost day one. And from day one, he concluded, i think the record is clear if you study it carefully, he wanted spain out of the caribbean. He wanted spain out of cuba, but he didnt want to go to war and do it if he could avoid that war. So what did he do . He opened up negotiations with a program of diplomacy with spain. Spain realized that america is becoming a pretty powerful country and this is our neighborhood and it would be very difficult if they went to war with us. They did not want a war with us. So they entered into the diplomacy as well. Pretty soon, they could see that mckinley, his diplomacy was behind this affability and the velvet glove was an iron fist. It was essentially saying to them, we want this war to end. We dont care how you do it. You can win it. Or you can negotiate an end to it and that probably means more autonomy for the insurrection this, the cubans might accept that, but they dont seem to want that, but thats a possibility. Or you can bud out, but you have to get this war over because it is destabilizing the region and it is untenable and unsaid was the American People are not going to put up with it for much longer. So spain finally sort of said, he cant talk to us like that. We are a sovereign country. He will belongs to us. It doesnt matter how close it is to your shores. But out they centrally said. And mckinley never wavered. He just kept pushing and gotten more and more angry. Who knows what would have happened if the main battleship had not blown up in the havana harbor . The fact that that battleship was theirs is testament also to mckinleys resolve. That he was going to make sure that the spanish were out of the caribbean because, ostensibly, it was to protect american lives that might be at risk as a result of the insurrection. That is because the spanish people in cuba were getting increasingly angry at america. Nevertheless, it did blow up and the war became inevitable. Another example is hawaii. We have to understand its an amazing story and its not a particularly entirely savory story about americans. But hawaii had been a stopping off place for americans for decades, and for other countries as well. But ultimately, people from america settled there and they were there for generations, mostly running sugar plantations. Getting fabulously wealthy in the process. Pretty soon, they had so much financial power that they felt they should have political power and go with it. They ended up up ending the royalty, the polynesian royalty, that had been governing and presiding over the Hawaiian Islands for decades, centuries. And that happened under Benjamin Harrisons watch. Cleveland in his second term was very upset about it and he even contemplated going in there and removing those people from the government. But he did not really want a war, he did not want to have americans fighting essentially americans, or former americans. So that was the state of play. Mckinley, again, rejected the policy of his predecessor and made it very clear through subterranean diplomacy. He liked subterranean diplomacy. That he was very interested in acquiring cuba through annexation. The americans now running cute wanted that also. But it generated a lot of anti expansionist sentiment and forever even in congress and other places among the intellectuals and writers, mark twain and others. But he never wavered. He got the negotiation. He sent it to congress. He could not get it through the senate as a treaty. He did not give up and send it back to congress as a. To be dealt with by both houses which did not require two thirds vote, it only required a majority vote in both houses. That is how we got hawaii. Then there is the philippines. When the spanish suit for peace after three months of that war, he basically said fine, im more than happy to negotiate a peace treaty. But heres the deal, spain has to leave cuba. We will take a temporarily, but it is going to be independent. Spain has to leave puerto rico, that came out of nowhere, but we had conquered puerto rico. And spain has to give us an island in the pacific, that turned out to be guam. And that has to happen before we leave during negotiations. Thats really tough diplomacy. He basically said, as for the philippines which we had basically acquired, we took over luzon after admiral duly, george dewy, destroy the spanish fleet in manila bay. He said the disposition of the philippines is open to negotiation. Well thank you mr. Mckinley, the spanish were saying. They asked the french ambassador to the United States to operate on their behalf to negotiate for them. He said to mckinley, you cant really get any more glory than youve already gained in this war of yours. So i am assuming that you will be very generous. We found out that mckinley wasnt generous at all. But then the question was, what was he going to do about the philippines . While the negotiations in paris were going on, the peace treaty negotiations, he pondered it. He kind of concluded, ultimately, that he had to have a calling station. Because we were building this big navy, this global navy, and you could not have a global navy without calling stations. You could not have calling stations without controlling territory around the globe, and so he had to have a cooling station. He could not control the bay unless he had all of luzon, the island. If we had luzon, the whole rest of the philippines s pain wasnt going to be able to keep the philippines at all. The people of the philippines hated the spanish. Now that they had been defeated, they would not be able to go back and there. So the question was who is going to have the philippines . It wasnt going to be the filipino people, unfortunately, so it was going to have to be either us or germany or some other european power. Most likely germany. Germany was on the prowl for possessions, for colonies. And if germany had all these other islands, then luzon would not be secured. So he basically decided im taking the hold thing. That got him into a war, as you know, very much like the vietnam war. There was an insurrection and it was guerrilla warfare and it was very difficult. There was a very sympathetic figure, from my view, who ran that insurrection. Ultimately, he was captured and that kind of broke the back of the insurgency, but it went on for years into Teddy Roosevelt administration. So. On. As i say, that seems to be a consequential presidency. So why doesnt he get more credit . Why does he get no respect . One reason has to do with his successor, Teddy Roosevelt. You read my book and you will see, im a great admirer of roosevelt. I think hes a great genius. He might be the greatest genius who became president. What that guy could do with his brain of his was Pretty Amazing. But he never shared credit with anybody and he was self absorbed. Even his kids said, that he longed to be the bride at every wedding and the corpse at every funeral. When mckinley was killed in buffalo, six months into his second term, Teddy Roosevelt immediately, when he became president , words the fact of, i intend to govern just as my predecessor did and his agenda will be my agenda, or words to that effect. Within two days, he gets to the white house from buffalo and brings in a bunch of reporters and the market did not swoon so he did not feel like he had to say those things anymore. So he said, i intend to govern as if the electors had elected me as president and not mckinley. That was a remarkable thing to be said while mckinley was lying in state in the capital rotunda. But roosevelt was always conscious of the narrative and he always put himself at the center of the narrative. Orbit the succeeding decades, his admiring geographic adoring biographer is basically bought the narrative. The narrative did not quite work if they sort of said, well t. R. Did these marvelous incredible things, but the foundation was laid by his predecessor. So in my view, mckinley gets kind of the short end of the stick in terms of that interpretation. In describing this term of events and this historical narrative building, i describe t. R. And i will quote a little bit from here. Impetuous, valuable, im using, grandiose, prone to marking his territory with political defiance, roosevelt stirred the imagination of the American People as mckinley never had. To the major solidity, safety and caution, the rough rider offered a mind that moved by flashes or winds or some impulses, as william errand white described him. He took the American People on a political rollercoaster ride, and too many, it was thrilling. It was thrilling and it was significant and it helped define america in the 20th century. But behind him was one William Mckinley who maybe mysterious, but it is a consequential president and i think perhaps he was even worth the three years of toil that i put in on his behalf. Thank you very much. I think we can have some questions. applause if you could please come up to the microphone if you have a question so people at home and watching on tv can hear you. Have you changed your ranking of mckinley since your book . There is not actually i dont offer my own ranking. I talk about what president s have done and what constitutes greatness or near greatness or mediocrity or whatever. But the answer to that, sir, in my own estimation mckinley is higher. When i know those president s that i consider to be either failures or not particularly consequential, i would certainly put him above those people. So i think he would preside in my pantheon, 11th or 12th, Something Like that maybe. I have not really focused on where i put him directly, but some were among their. No more questions. Oh, here we go. Can you talk about the idea as an invalid and how that shaped mckinleys publics compassion for him and the death of the children. Its a poignant story. When mckinley moved as along young lawyer, after he had been in the war and etc, he encountered young ida saxton. She was the daughter of probably the richest man in canton. Her grandfather had bought a train press from the pennsylvania by oxen and started the canton repository. It was a successful newspaper. Then her father went into mining and banking and other things. She grew up and she was quite lovely. She was a sparkling personality. She was scintillating in many ways and she had many suitors, but she sort of fixated on finding, on mckinley. They were married, there was 1000 people at her at their wedding according to the repository, it was owned by her father so maybe it was an exaggeration. Nevertheless, it was a big wedding education at the time and he was moving up into politics. It was kind of a storybook thing. So a year after they were married, their first daughters arrive. About a year later, a little bit more than a year after that, their second daughter arrives. She becomes pregnant for the second time. During that pregnancy, she learned that her mother is dying, probably of cancer, they were very very close and it affected her greatly. But whether it affected her pregnancy isnt absolutely clear, but you had a troubled pregnancy and her daughter lived only five months. That sent her into a tremendous depression. It wasnt clear that she was not ever going to be able to come out of it. He kind of coaxed her out of it with a lot of patience and just refusing to let go. And then, sometime after that, her first daughter, katie, died. Then she went back into a terrible depression. During this time, Something Else happened. Something described as a carriage accident, but no one really knows what happened. I suspect she fell backwards and hurt her spine in some way because she became rather a mobile. It was sort of intermittent, but she was often confined to wheelchairs. Even when she wasnt, she would walk with a cane. She could walk down the stairs with hurricane in the white house. They had an elevator, but it didnt work. So she could walk down the stairs, but he had to carry up the stairs. During all of this, she developed epilepsy which was considered a sort of Mental Illness in those days. These seizures would come, so it affected the marriage, it affected their lives, it affected ida tremendously. Her father let her run the bank when he was traveling around on his other business duties. As a young woman in her twenties, she was running this bank and it was very unusual in those days. Well now, she was sort of reduced to sedentary life. She crochets and it does other Little Things like that and becomes rather narrow in her outlook. Very devoted to her husband. She thinks her husband is the greatest politician in the history of america. But she becomes somewhat peevish. Somewhat difficult. He never wavered in his devotion to her, and just basically accepted that as just, sort of, part of life. So when this became known as he was emerging as a National Figure politically, it became an element of identity for mckinley. The man who took such good care of his troubled wife. And there are some people, and i dont gain say this who i suspect was manipulated to some extent as a sort of political advantage. So that is the story. Yes sir. What happened to him that t. R. Was able to get on the ticket . Garrett hobart died of cancer in the middle of the first term. I think in the third year of the first term. The result was that mckinley did not have a Vice President for a significant part of his first term. T. R. Meanwhile, t. R. Had been his assistant navy secretary. Mckinley wasnt sure he wanted to give t. R. That job. He did not know t. R. All that well, but he knew that he tended to be sort of impetuous and got into rows. I want to have t. R. Good friends was pushing for him to get that job and they promised him that t. R. Is not going to do that. He will be controllable, while he wasnt. But he did an amazing thing. When the war came, he resigned the office. He put together the rough riders and he was extremely courageous, maybe to the point of insanity. When you ran up called sand juan hill on the san juan bridge. Along with george do we, he becomes one of the two greatest heroes from that war. The American People loved him and he knew exactly out to play it. So when the convention, the Second Convention comes up in 1900, the Convention Just goes crazy for petty. It was a force mature, he could not be resisted. Hannah did not like t. R. And tried to resist. They sent a note saying cease and desist because you cant put me in this position of being against the sentiment of the convention. So he becomes Vice President. Mark hanna sends a note to mckinley after the convention saying, it all came out fine. He had to admonish me but im happy with it. Your job now is to live for the next four years. And when he died, mark hanna is quoted as saying, now that cowboy is going to be president of the United States. Yes sir. Yes sir. Im curious as to how mckinley handed the confederacy handled the confederacy at that time. Of course, the south was still sort of in and out of the union. That brings up civil rights of course. But what was his policy towards the former Confederate States . Did he want them back . Was he for giving . Did he want to reconcile but the south . And indirectly, how did that affect his civil rights positions . Its a very very good question and it cannot be ignored. This is what i would say about that. You really have to go back to his great mentor, rutherford be hayes. Rutherford hayes became president by making what you might call a deal to end reconstruction. A lot of recent historians who are sort of giving a revisionist view of reconstruction consider that to have been a terrible thing because it kept African Americans in the south down for the next 100 years. But the deal was essentially look, we need to stage this country back together. Its not going to be easy. So we are probably going to have to sacrifice civil rights for a period of time. Rutherford hayes and mckinley were abolitionists. They were liberal on civil rights, but they cut that deal. So by the time mckinley was president , he still was concerned about bringing the sections back together. The spanish american war helped a great deal. Im drawing a blank, but he got one of these southern Great Southern cavalry generals wheeler yes, wheeler, thank you. He gave him a command while they were in cuba, they got the spanish on the run and he gets to kind of lost sight of where he was. He said we have those yankees on the run. Well, they werent yankees, they were spanish, but his position toward African Americans ended up being, what i would call patronizing. There are worse words that you could use, but basically by patronizing i mean that he had a Good Relationship with a lot of African American organizations and he praised them for working so hard under difficult circumstances. You people are doing wonderful things, you know, keep at it, but he wasnt lifting his finger for them. And ultimately, towards the end of his presidency, some of these groups were becoming quite agitated against him. One quick followup. Was any of his cabinet former confederates . No. He wanted to get somebody who was a southerner and ended up getting the one person who was assumed to be sympathetic to the south, who is from maryland, and thats as far south as he got for his cabinet. Yes, sir. Who would be the politician in recent times who you would say is most similar to mckinley . I would say eisenhower. In fact, i see very significant parallels between eisenhower and mckinley. Theres a book called the hidden hand presidency about how eisenhower managed from the shadows, by indirection, and they thought he was sort of bumbling. When he didnt want to explain something, he would become inarticulate. People would say, this guy cant even express himself, but it was all with a purpose. And i think that was somewhat the way mckinley operated. So i think those two people are really quite similar. Sir. Two unrelated questions. The first is, you mentioned mckinleys relationship to imperialism. In 1898, there was an anti imperialist league. William james, a harvard professor, was strongly against imperialism. Can you Say Something about mckinley and how he reacted to that criticism on imperialism . And then the other question. Its about his assassination. Could you say a word about that . Yes. Well, yes indeed there was a very strong anti imperialist wave of sentiment that emerged in america. Mark twain was involved in it. Various other people of prominence. Carl shirts. And mckinley was stung somewhat, some of these peoples were friends of his, not mark twain, but others. He never took personally any of the turmoil of politics. So he also had sort of upped the incidents of the president talking to the American People. He traveled a lot and made a lot of speeches. Some of them designed to be major policy addresses. He would explain what the policy was and why he had done it. So he understood that he had this opposition. It was particularly bad when Foreign Affairs got particularly bed with the philippine insurrection. He was on the defensive. But he basically just handled it as the great wall as part of the Great American debate. Assassination. He was supposed to be at the great pan American Exposition in buffalo in the spring of 1901. But he was traveling in california. Part of that policy he had, or practice, traveling around giving speeches and explaining himself to the American People. He thought that was very important. One of the things that led one of his academic biographer to suggest that he was the first modern president , among other things. But nevertheless, ida got sick. She developed an infection they got into her blood and almost died. They immediately went right back to washington. They were in San Francisco on their way to washington state, but they never made it. So his appearance at the exposition was postponed to the fall, to september, and that is when the anarchists, leon czolgosz, concocted the idea of assassinating him. Mckinley was very fatalistic about. Perhaps part of that optimism of his about the prospect that anybody could possibly harm the president. So he would talk openly with people. Secret Service People went crazy, but he did not worry about it very much. Czolgosz had his hand in a kind of bandage or sling as if he had been injured. He reached for his left hand and put the pistol in his chest and fired it right point blank. It did not penetrate very much, but mckinley went back on his heel and czolgosz fired a second time. It went into his abdomen and lodged there. They could not find the bullet. They operated rather quickly, but they could not find the bullet, but concluded that looking for it was probably more dangerous than leaving it. So they did. And he was recuperating nicely, but in those days you did not really understand infection and sepsis and those things. That emerged and that took him down. I think he lasted something in the neighborhood of less than two weeks after the assassination before he died. I believe thats it. Yeah. Thank you very very much. Thank you. applause mr. Mary will be signing his book in the hall. Thank you. Up next on history bookshelf. Jan van meter explores the Historical Context of several catch phrases and slogans that have been used