So, good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the kansas city public library. Robert merry, this is his second presentation in the somewhat hallowed halls of the kansas city public library. Five star library this week from the public journal. Thank you. Hes a graduate of the university of washington. He has a masters degree from Columbia University school of journalism. Hes been a reporter for the observer, the wall street journal, managing editor, executive editor and editor in chief of congressional quart ley and more recently, the american conservative. The american conservative, he says its collaborative, but it sounds like robert merry. This is a description of their philosophy. We believe in constitutional government, fiscal prudence, sound monetary policy, clearly delineated borders, authentically free markets and Foreign Policy mixed with diplomatic acuity. We adhere closely to institutional max um, 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, student and joseph alsop. Hes written an analysis a and a lament for american Foreign Policy. And a rehabilitation of president james poke and now, president mckinley, architect of the american century. Both poke and mckinley, he makes the case for the the importance of their expansion in america. In extending their boundaries f further than anyone other than Thomas Jefferson in the louisiana puchls and mckinley in the non colonial imperialism, i quote him, that did bring us gee graphical expansion in hawaii and puerto rico. More importantly, the expansion of American Power as a world power manifested in the war, the battles in cuba and the philippines and control over cuba and the fill foophilippine extended period of time. The open door of china and the american economy. Hope has been called the most successful president , incorporate california, oregon, texas, reduced 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 war, which made part of that program possible. Robert merry sides with the diagnosis of him as a successful politician. With mckinley, he gives us a more subtle case, but perhaps just as Important Program of the president to give the United States a new 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 a hard time diseacerning a Foreign Policy, t merry makes a strong case that he was the guide who gave us empire and it wasnt lodge or roosevelt or hahn or john hay, but the deliberate, very subtle mastery of william mckinley. This book is a continuation of an ongoing effort of merry to reverse the trend of contemporary academics to, i quote him, devour our heritage of moralizing from a safe distance of the ivory tower. Hes created a character study of one of the architects of the american century. Ladies and gentlemen, robert merry. Thank you. Thank you very much. It is a pleasure to be here and 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 five star libraries. So congratulations on that. He didnt mean to. To this volume on mckinley, i was pleased to see that the wall street journal sort of picked up on that in writing a headline over its review of my book, which by the way, was very favorable. Thats my effort to immulate donald trump. I didnt set out to didnt know there was a mystery. I didnt understand mckinley well enough when i started this project. To understand that theres something mysterious about him, two sentences, which was given all the consequential things that happened on his president ial watch. Why does he not rise higher of historical conscious . Given the fact he was a nonflamboyant, undramatic personage, how did all those unconscious gwen skongconscious . The guy started to drive me crazy because i had a hard time getting a handle on him. He was not a forceful man, 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 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 mckinley. An example is a book by allen richtman and ken desell, 13 keys of the presidency. Which i quote a lot. Its about how the presidency works. But they have a chapter on mckinley and they write that he enjoyed quote, one of the more successful incumbencies in American History, but then add that he found himself quote, benefitting in part from circumstances beyond his control. And theres the rub. He was seen as less than the sum of his deeds. What struck me, which i talked about some years ago, that in those poll, he comes in not exactly sort of middle average a, maybe upper average. He comes in at like 60, 50, maybe 14, occasionally. Often, hes below such undistinguished or failed president s as 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 buren, who was a failed president. He presided over a terrible recession, depression, that he couldnt control. Rutherford hayes, who became president on the basis of one of the great election scandals of our history. Grover cleveland, who as we all know, was the only president who served two non consecutive terms. He was rejected by either his party or the voters after each. Thus making him the only twotime oneterm president in our history. And john quincy adams, who was swept away in a populous wave at the behest of andrew jackson. So, the mystery deepens. Im going to urge you not to just tick off bullet poins, but the political drama. He led us into a war with spain in 19 1898. It ended up being a huge success. It was a threemonth war. We destroy ed the spanish empir essentially. In the process, we destroyed two spanish fleets. The atlantic and the pacific fleets. We became an empire by acquiring from spain, puerto rico, guam and the philippines. We liberated cuba many the caribbean. We could have kept it, but we made a commitment that we wouldnt. He kicked spain out of the caribbean and turned it into an american lake. For good measure. Because we noted he acquired hawaii through negotiation and acquisition and annexation. He set in motion the events that led eventually, i saw the display outside, to the panama canal. And tr 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 kcanal and set in motion the studies and the actions and the planning that led to the canal. He brought about the jobs in china. The european and japanese powers. He created a concept with trade reciprocity, which when i was covering trade policy in the 1980s, when it was a hot issue for the wall street journal, reciprocity was really what was then called sort of fair trade. Make it even so we can have this exchange of goods across borders. He created the concept of noncolonial imperialism. It was on his watch that we established a special relationship with britain. Under the cleveland administration, we almost went to war with britain over a sill border dispute in south america, but after a ththat, we never ha anything like that. And he created the gold standard. We tend to look down on gold standards these days, but in those days, it was a big deal. He ran when the currencyish was probably the hottest in our history and he essentially solved that in his first term. So this is a big collection of accomplishments and the question is, to what extent does he deserve the credit. I came to the idea that 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 succeed in that and im happy to do that because you cant decide unless you buy the book, so. So who was this man . Born in 1843, he was the seventh of nine children. Eight of whom lived to adult hood hood. He grew up in ohio. Small town ohio. Imbued with what you might call the ohio culture at the time. Which was a reflection of what people of those times, in those times, considered christian values. Thrift optimism. Mod es thety. Hard toil. His father ran and owned blacks furnaces around ohio. Worked very, very hard. His mother had a strong sense of civic and religious duty. She was a very civic minded. Worked hard for her church and communities. They were in poland for most of the growing up years of william. The mother also was imbued with all those things that i just talked about. Those socalled christian values and one of my favorite stories about her was she took a train to columbus later in her life. To visit her son, the governor of ohio. 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. Didnt feel any need to explain that her son was governor of the state. So at 17, Young William goes off to college in pennsylvania. First year, he developed some kind of an illness, an ailment. It was never quite explained or understood stood what it was, but he had to return to poland where he recuperated, but by the time he recuperated, he couldnt go back to college because economic difficulties had rendered a need for all of the family members to go to work. So he got two jobs. He was a schoolteacher. Like 17 at that time. 18. And he was a postal clerk. And 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 abolitionist. His mother, particularly. She subscribed to Horace Greeleys weekly tribune that you could get in the mail and reenforced that sentiment. So he and his cousin, william osborne, decided within day and a half that they couldnt stay out of that war and they enlisted. He had, i think i can accurately describe as a Pretty Amazing war record. He entered as a 18yearold private. Immediately, his commanding officer, rutherford b. Hayes, later president. Great men r tor of him. But Rutherford Hayes was an officer. Became a general. Was wounded five times in the war. Became a congressman. Became governor then president. And hayes saw that this young man had a remarkable organizational ability. So he made him a sergeant and made him quart maer master sergeant. So he was sort of taking care of simplies. At the battle of antetum, 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, essential ly, in the area of the battle that they couldnt move. Couldnt get out. Couldnt, nobody could get in to help them. And they were starving. And they had, 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 had run out of water well before noon. And Young Mckinley concocted the idea of loading up a wagon with coffee and water and a few other things and getting that wagon to these troops. Hed having to go right through the battle to do it. He gets a friend or some other young soldier to help him load up the wagon and get in the wagon and they head out through the surrounding forest. Encounter two officers who say this is ridiculous. You cant do this, go back. But after they left, mckinley and his associate ignored it and went on. 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 provisions to these troops. God bless the lad, said one of the old veterans. Immediately, as a result of that, was promoted to commission. Became lieutenant. And then he had, i wont go into all of them, but he had other experiences. Somewhat like that, in which he put himself directly in harms way. Almost always voluntarily. And each time, he got another promotion. So he ended the as a major. 22yearold major. So, he goes to poland. Wants to run for Congress Like his mentor, Rutherford Hayes. He sent a starry eyed letter to hayes telling him thats what he wanted to do. I want to do what you did. He gets a letter says yeah, thats pretty good, but you know, frankly, with all this industrialization 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. Well, mckinley carefully preserved the letter, but discarded the advice. He knew what he wanted. So he moves to canton, ohio, where his sister had become a schoolteacher. And 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 join ed 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, of what becomes an element of the mystery of william mckinley. So i write, the civil war transformed Young William mckinley much as his fathers white hot forges transformed crude iron into pig iron ready for more sophisticated uses. He went to r war as an unseasoned teenager with only a vague sense of who he was or what he would do in his life. He left the army an adult who had been severely questioned in intellect, administrative ability, leadership and courage. He passed these tests and that many older men were drawn into roles of solicitous mentorship. Yet this new confidence and sense of self settled upon him softly, yet meshed with a simplicity of temperatufrment t produce a heavy quiet. He left 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 resolved, he didnt seem bothered by it. Thus emerged some of the enigmatic element of his persona. An easy going demeanor shrouded in restless ambition. So he runs for congress. Serves 14 years. Becomes chairman of the ways and Means Committee where hes in position to push his pet issue. Tear i haves. Protectionism. High trade tariffs to protect american fmanufacturing and agriculture at a time when america was burgeoning as a pru productive machine. He even as chairman of ways and means, crafts a very high tariff bill. The mckinley tariff, they called it. 1890. Turned out to be a bad move. Didnt do into effect for quite some time and a lot of businesses took the opportunity to raise prices because they were going to raise any way. 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 an internship coming in, the office is all messed up with posters everywhere and papers and buttons. Hes sitting there smoking a cigar. In walks his good frepd of the ed r tor of the newspaper and he says, jim free, says its all over. Mckinley says nothing. What am i going to say in the newspaper . And mckinley sort of looks up with a pensive look on his face and he says, in the time of d k darkest victory is nearest. What . He couldnt get pessimistic about anything. It was congenitally impossible. He lost his seat. Serves two, twoyear terms and now hes ready to run for the president of the United States. Begins his campaign in 1895. He sends his good friend and his sort of his, the man who serves him so well, mark hannah, very succes successful industrialist from cleveland. Sends him to new york on a very important mission. He wants to find out from tom plat of new york, who basically owned the Republican Party in that state. Matth matth matthew quay and he wanted to know them and the sort of lesser bosses who sort of worked under him if they would support mckinley because if they did, he was a frontrunner any way. Probably would have the nomination sewed up. Probably wouldnt even be a battle. So mckinleys there. They have a nice dinner and go into hannahs study. Lined with books and they settle themselves into overstuffed leather chairs and light up their cigars. Hannahs pretty excited. Well, governor, its all over with the shouting. These guys will all go r for you. There are conditions. He didnt seem particularly disturbed by the conditions. Mckinley says, well, what are they . Well, plat wants the patronage and quay, pennsylvania and manley wants the whole new england and he ticks off a couple of others. Then plat also wants to be treasury secretary. Oh, and he wants it in writing. Seems that eight years earlier at the beginning of the harris administration, he had gotten a similar commitment from harrison for his support, but the treasury secretaryship never materialized so he wanted a promissory note. Mckinley sort of looks ahead. Puffs on his cigar. He gets up, walks a couple of steps back and forth, turns to mark, says some things in life just come at too high a price. If thats the price, its worth less to me and its worth less to the American People. If thats the price, im out of it. Hold on, governor, says hannah. Im just saying that we can sew it up tomorrow, but we dont need to sew it up tomorrow. We can beat these guys and thats what they had to do because quay and plat and these guys were so upu set that they went to other major politicians in various states and got them to try to become favorite sons in 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 pay their price. But he beat him. He beat them and he became the nominee and then he had to go up against William Jennings bryan. You know this story. William Jennings Bryan was 36 years old when he ran for president in 1896. He had two terms in the house. Then lost that seat. He ran for the senate and lost. And he was the, one of the greatest orators of our his ary. We all know that he got himself on this platform, the podium, at the Democratic Convention and gave his famous cross of gold speech. You shall not press cross, the thorn, throne of thereons upon our head and he filtered his fingers 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 extremists. The panic of 1893 was still very much with the country and the south and the west particularly. The rural areas were really suffering. It was not enough liquidity in their view, so what they needed was the free coinage of silver and that was what the rallying cry was. He got in trains, all over the place. 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 the last at 10 00 at night. He had a wife who was infirm. We can talk about that in q a. Im going to keep this thing going. Somewhat infirm and he didnt want to take her on a whistle stop tour and didnt want to leave her in canton or washington, 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 and his, at his, as he stayed on his front porch. They destroyed his yard, by the way, but who cares. And it was amaze iing effort. Mckinley control led the messag. It could be a church group or lainer group or africanamerican organization. Various things wanted to come and sent a letter saying wed like to come and this date works for us and he had all these people working on this. They sent back a letter saying well, what are you going to say . What questions do you have . Whats your point you want to make . So he knew what a they were going to say and all the reporters from all over the country were there taking notes. It was all somewhat quasi orchestrated. Well, it worked. And he became president. So now, im going to step back and try to describe what kind of a man he had, had emerged through these experiences. Starting with the civil war and that sort of sense of self that he developed as a result of his success in the war. So so he seemed on the outside to be a very pleasant person. He didnt seem to be a man of force. 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 lodge. Admiral mahon. These were men of imagination who had this great vision about american greatness and how america could bust out boot world. That wasnt where mckinley was, but turns out he had amazing capacity to see events as they were unfolding with clarity. And find ways to sort of mesh them in ways that would allow him to sort of nudge events in the favored direction. This gave him a great deal of force. That heavy quiet. On top of that, he had an iron will beneath the surface. He always seemed to get his way somehow and sometimes, he did it by convincing people to do what he wanted them to do while thinking that it was their idea. They said he always got his way in part because he always got the credit. Wasnt important the him at all. Unlike tr. He had a close friend that said i dont think mckinley every let anything stand in the way of his own advancement and julia, the wife of a prominent politician, an ally and adversary talked about the masks he wore. 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 w d words from an ohio congressman by the name of ben foreacre. Im sorry, ben butterworth. Butterworth, i came across him on the mark hannah papers. I concluded that butterworth must be part of those politicians in ohio that clustered around hannah and mckinley. But it became kind of clear as i got more and more into these t letters that butterworth, while he loved hannah, was a little leery of mckinley. Then i came across Washington Post article in which butterwort wor butterworth was talking about mckinley and used as kind of an illustration, an idea of how mckinley operated. He said, why, if mckinley and i were walking through an orchard with but one bearing tree and that tree had but two apples, mckinley would walk under that tree, hed pick the two apple ts. Hed put one in his pocket and take a bite of the other one then turn to me and say, ben, you like apples . I think what butter worth was trying to say was he was very congenial, but always seemed to get the apples. And he says he managed by indirection from the shadows. Im going to talk about some of the elements examples of the mckinley resolve that emerged in big ways during his presidency. And one would be a spanish american war. Now, the book on mckinley, about i think he doesnt, what has kept him from having reputation that i believe he deserved, he didnt really want to go to war with 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 understand this isnt what happened at all. When mckinley was elected, there was something going on in cuba and thirddegrs had been going. Claimed 100, maybe 200,000 lives. It was putting americans who were trying to do business in cuba at risk. It was also opening up the possibility that other european po 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 saving power like spain in cuba in the caribbean, which we considered to be our spear of influence. They were there as a legacy imperial power. But to have germany say or some other european power come in would be, thats untenable. And so there was a great deal of anguish and anger in congress and around the country. Most of it based on ed humanit grounds, not geopolitical factors. But that was a factor as well. Mckinley comes in and takes over from grover cleveland. He favored the spanish over the cubaens. Not because he liked the spanish particularly, but because he was a status quo guy. He wanted stability. So his view was as soon as spain could sort of put down this insurrection, we could go back to the stat quo and everything status quo and everything will be fine. Not very realistic. Mckinley rejected that out of hand almost from day one and from day one, he concluded, i think the record is very clear if you study it carefully. He wanted spain out of the caribbean. Out of cuba. But he didnt want to go to war to do. So what did he do . Opened up a negotiation with sort of a program of diplomacy with spain. And they entered into the diplomacy as well, but soon, they could see that mckinley, his diplomacy was behind this affability and the glove, was an iron fist and he was essentially saying ining to them, we want tr to end. We dont care how you do it. You can win it. Or you can negotiate an end to it and probably that means more autonomy if the cubaens could would accept that. They dont seem to want that, thats a possibility. Or you can bug out, but youve got to get this war over because its destabling the region. What he said was the American People are not going to put uwih it for much longer. So spain sort of said he cant talk to us like that. Were a solvereign country. Cuba belongs to us. Doesnt matter how close it is to your shores. No, no, butt out, they essentially said. He kept pushing and got more and more angry. Who knows what would have happened if the main battleship hadnt of blown up in the harbor. The resolve that he was going to make sure that the spanish that were out of the caribbean because he was to protect american that might be at american risk. Then war became inevitable. You have to understand this amazing story about americans, but hawaii had been a stopping off place for decades and for other countries as well, but ultimately, people with america, from america settled there. Mostly run ining in the process. And pretty soon, they had so much financial power they felt they should have political power with it. And they ended up ending the royalty. Presiding over the Hawaiian Islands for decades. Centuries. Cleveland on his second term was very upset about it and he even contemplated going in there and removing those people from the government, but didnt really want a war. He didnt want to have americans fighting essentially americans or former americans. Mckinley reject ed the policy o his pred successor. He liked subterranean diplomacy, that he was very interested in acquiring cuba through annexation and americanins runng cuba wanted that, also. There was ferver even in congress and other places among intellectuals and writers. Mark twain and others. He never waivered. He didnt get it as a treaty. He sent it back to congress as a, to be dealt with by both houses which didnt require twothirds vote. Only required a majority vote in both houses and thats how we got hawaii. Then there was the philippines. When the spanish sued for peace after three months of that war, he basically said okay, fine. Im more than happy to negotiate a peace treaty. But heres the deal. Spain has to leave cuba. Were not going to take, well take it temporarily. But its going to be independent pent. 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. Turned out to be guam. And that has to happen before we enter into negotiations. Thats really tough diplomacy. Took over after george dewey took over. Negotiations are open, well, thank you, mr. Mckinley. They asked the french ambassador to negotiate for them. Said you cant really get anymore glory than youve already gained in this war of yours, so i assume youll be very generous. Found out he wasnt. But then the question was what was he going to do about the fill fien sns while the negotiationsy paris were going on the peace treaty negotiations, he pondered it and concluded ultimately that he had to have a calling station because they were building this big navy, global navy, and you couldnt have a global navy without cooling stations. Couldnt have a cooling station without controlling the best place would be subic baugh but couldnt have it unless he had all of luzon. If we had luzon, the whole rest of the philippines, spain wasnt going to be able to keep the philippines. The people of the philippines hated the spanish. The question was it was going to be the philippine people. Germany was on the prowl for possessions. For colonies. If germany had all these other islands, they wouldnt be secure. That got him into a war, as you know, very much like the vietnam war. It was a sympathetic figure from my view, who ran that. A guy who was ultimately captured and that kind of broke the back of the insurgency, but it went on for years, into teddy rooseve roosevelts administration. So as i say, that seems to be a consequential presidency. And so why doesnt he get more credit . Why does he get no respect . What that guy could do with that brain of his was amazing. But he never shared credit with anybody and he was selfabsorbed. Ooempb his kids said he longed to be the bride at every e wedding and the corps at every funeral. When he was killed, roosevelt became president and said words to the effect of i intend to govern just as my predecessor did and his agenda will be my agenda. Words to that effect. Within two days, he gets to the white house from buffalo, brings in a bunch of reporters and the market didnt swoon so he didnt feel like he had to say those things anymore and he said, i intend to govern just as if the electors had elected me as president and not mckinley, which was a remarkable thing to be said while mckinley was lying in state in the capitol rotunda. Over the decades, his admiring graphic bought the narrative and it didnt work if he said well, tr is doing marvelous, incredible thi incredible things, but the foundation was laid by his predecessor. So, in my view, mckinley gets the short end of the stick in terms of that interpretation. In describing this turn of events and this historical narrative building, i described tr and ill quote a little bit from here. Impetuous, amusing, grandiose, prone to marking his territory with political defiance. Roosevelt stirred the imagination of the American People as mckinley never had. To the major slidty, safety and caution, the rough rider offered a mind that moved by sudden flashes or impulses as William Allen white described him. He took the American People on a political role roller coaster ride and to many, it was thrilling. It was thrilling and it was significant and it was helped define america in the 20th century. Behind him was one william mckinley, who may be mysterious, but was 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. Please come up to the micro phone the you have a question so people at home watching on tv can hear you. Have you changed your ranking of mckinley since your book . Well i dont offer my own ranking. I talk about what president s have done and what constitutes greatness and near greatness or immediate yok mediocrity and wh. But my own estimation of mckinley is higher and when i note those president s that i consider to be either failures or not particularly consequential, i would put him above those people. So i think he would preside in my pantheon, 11th, 12th. Something like that. I havent really focused on whethre id put him directly, b somewhere rnd there. You talk about ida as an invalid and the death of the children . When he moved to canton as a young lawyer, had been in the war, et cetera, he encountered young ida saxton. She was the belle of canton. Daughter of probably the richest man in canton. Her grandfather bought a Printing Press by oxen and started the canton repository. It was a successful newspaper u and her father went into mining and banking and other things and she grew up, she was quite lovely. She was a sparkling personality. She was scintillating in many ways. And she had many, many suitors, but sort of fixated finally on mckinley. They were married. There were 1,000 people at her wedding. At their wedding, according to the resuppository, it was owned by her father, so maybe thats an exaggeration, i dont know. But it was a big, big wedding. Big occasion at the time. He was just about you know, he was moving up into politics. It was kind of a storybook thing. A year after they were married, the first daughter arrives, katy. 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 learns that her mother is dying. Probably of cancer. They were very, very close and it affected her greatly. Whether it affected her pregnancy is not absolutely clear, but she had a troubled pregnancy and her daughter lived only five months. That sent her into a tremendous depression. And it wasnt clear that she was ever going to come out of it. He just coaxed her out of it through a lot of patience and just refusing to let go. And then sometime a after that, her first daughter, katy, died. Then she went back into a terrible depression. During this time, Something Else happenede. Its described as a carriage accident, but nobody knows what happened. I suspect she fell backwards and hurt her spine in some way because she became rather immobile. Sort of intermittent, but she was often confined to a wheelchair. Even when she wasnt, she walked with a cane. In the white house, she walked down the stairs with a cane. They had a new elevator in the white house, but it didnt work much of the time. He would have to carry her up the stairs, which he did. And then on top of all this, she developed epilepsy. Which many those days was considered kind of mental illness. You didnt want anyone to know you were mentally ill. But these seizures would come and so it affected the marriage. Their lives. Ida tremendously. As a young woman in her 20s, she was running a bank, which was unusual in these days. Well, now, shes reduced to sed tear life. She crow shays and does other Little Things and becomes sort of narrow in her outlook. Shes devoted to her husband. But she becomes somewhat peevish, somewhat difficult. He never waivered in his devotion to her and he just basically accept ed that. He just ak cement ed septembere that. When he was emerging as a National Figure politically, it became, became an element of identi identity. The man who took such good care of his wife. There were people who suspect it was manipulated to some extent as a sort of political advantage so thats the story. Yes, sir. Mckinleys first Vice President. What happened to him that tr was able to get on the ticket . Hobart died of cancer in the middle of the first term. I think in the third year of the first term. So the result was that mckinley did not have a Vice President for a significant part of his first term. Tr meanwhile, had been his assistant navy secretary. Mckinley wasnt sure he wanted to give him that job. He didnt know him that well, but he knew that he tended to be sort of impetuous and got into rows as he said to one of trs good friends, who was pushing for him to have that job. And they promised him that no, no, no, trs not going to do that. Hes going to be controllable. Well, he wasnt. But he did an amazing thing. When the war came, he you know, resign ed the office. He put together the rough riders and he did an extremely courageous to the point of maybe insanity. One of the duogreatest heroes from the war. American people loved him. He knew exactly how to play it. So when the Second Convention comes up in 1900, the Convention Goes crazy for teddy. It was a force majeure couldnt be resisted. Mark hannah didnt like tr. Didnt trust him and tried to resist and mckinley had to send a to him saying cease and desist because you cant put me in this position of being against the sentiment of the convention. He said its all fine. You have to add monoib me. Im happy with it. Tough live for the next four years. When he died, hes quote d as saying now that cowboy is going to be president of the United States. Yes, sir. Im curious as how mckinley handled the confederacy. At that time, of course the south was still you know, sort of in and out of the union. And of course that brings up civil rights and things like that, but what was his policies toward the farmer Confederate States . Did he want that them back . Was he a r fforgiving person . Did he want to reconcile with the south and indirectly, how did that approach his civil rights positions . Its a very, very good question and it cant be ignored. So heres what id say about that. You have to go back to his great mentor. Rudd hayes. He became president by making what you might call a deal to end reconstruction. And a lot of recent historians who are giving a revisionist view consider that to be a terrible thing because it kept africanamericans in the south down for the next hundred years. But the deal was look, weve got to stitch this country back together and its not going to be easy. Were probably going to have to sacrifice civil rights for a period of time. Now, rudd hayes and mckinley, they were abolitionists. They were liberal on civil rights, but they cut that deal. So by the time mckinley was president , he was concerned about bringing the sections back together. Spanish american war helped a great deal. Now he, im drawing a blank now, but got one of the Great Southern savillery generals. Wheeler. Yes, thank you. And gave him a command. And when he was in cuba and they got the spanish on the run, he kind of lost sight of where he was and said we got the rebels. Got those yankees on the run. They were spanish, but his, he, his position towards africanamerican toward africanamericans ended up being what i call patronizing. There are worse words you can use and i wouldnt necessarily say those words, but basically, by patronizing, i mean he had a Good Relationship with a lot of good africanamerican organizations and he praised them for working so hard under difficult circumstances. You people are doing wonderful things. Keep at it. But he wasnt lifting his finger for him. And towards the end of his presidency, some of these groups were becoming quite agitated against him. One quick follow quick follo. Was any of his cabinet farmer confederates . No. He wanted to get somebody who was a southerner. He ended up getting the one person that was assumed to be sympathic to the south was from maryland and that was as far south as he got in terms of his cabinetmaking. Who would be the politician in recent times who you would say was most similar to mckinley . I would say d. Eisenhower. I see very significant parallels between eisenhower and mckinley. There was a book about how eisenhower managed from the shadows and who managed by indirection and people thought he was bumbling and when he didnt want to explain something, he would become inarticulate. And they would say this guy cant express himself. But it was all with a purpose. And i think that that was somewhat the way mckinley operated. So i think that those two people were quite similar. Sir . Two unrelated questions. The first is, you mentioned mckinleys relationship to imperilism or empire. In 1898 there was an antiimperialist legal. Can you Say Something about mckinley and how he reacted to that criticism on imperilism, and the other question was about his assassination. Can you say a word about that . Well, yes, indeed, there was a very strong antiimperialist wave of sentiment in america. Mark twain was involved in it. Various other people of prominence. And mckinley was stung, somewhat. Some of these people were friends of him. Not twain. But he never took personally any of the turmoil with politics. And so he also had sort of upped the incidents of the president talking to the American People. He traveled a lot, made a lot of speeches. Some of them designed to be major policy addresses and he would explain what the policy was and why he had done it. So he understood he had this opposition. It was particularly bad when Foreign Affairs got particularly bad with the philippine insurrection and he was on the defensive. But he basically just handled it as part of the Great American debate. Assassination, he went to he was supposed to be at the great pan American Exposition in buffalo in the spring of 1901. But he was traveling to california. He was traveling around giving speeches explaining himself to the American People. He thought that was very important. One of the things that lead one of his academic biographers to suggest that he was the first modern president , among other things. But nevertheless, ida got sick. She developed an infection that got into her blood and she almost died and they went immediately right back to washington. On their way to washington state, but they never made it. And so the his appearance at the exposition was postponed to the fall, to september, and thats when the anarchist concocted the idea of assassinating him. Mckinley was fatalistic about maybe part of that optimism of him, about anybody could possibly harm the president. He would talk openly with people. The secret Service People went crazy. But he didnt worry about it very much. And he had his hand in a bandage and a sling. Mckinley reached for his left and he put the pistol in his chest and fired it pointblank. Mckinley went back on his heel and he fired a second time and it went into his abdomen and lodged there. They couldnt find the bullet. They operated rather quickly. They concluded that looking for the bullet was probably more dangerous than leaving it. And so they did. He was recuperating nicely. But in those days they didnt understand infection and sepsis and those things. And i think he lasted somewhere 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 ] he will be signing the book in the hall. Thank you. Weeknights this month on American History tv, were featuring the contenders, our series that looks at 14 president ial candidates who lost the election but had a lasting effect on u. S. Politics. Tonight we feature eugene debs who was a fivetime president ial candidate for the socialist party. Watch tonight beginning at 8 00 eastern and enjoy American History tv this week and every weekend on cspan3. Every saturday at 8 00 p. M. 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Cspan3, created by americas Cable Television companies as a Public Service and brought to you today by your television provider. Unlectures in history, Robert Chiles of the university of maryland talks about labor and social unrest at the turn of the 20th century as well as the reforms instituted to combat this discontent. He describes the tension between corporations, workers and the government over issues such as working conditions which even times lead to strikes. He begins with an example of period music