President s role in the spanish american war acquiring hawaii and the philippines and liberating cuba from spain, and implementing an open door policy with china. This was recorded at the kansas city public library, in kansas city, missouri in 2017. Its just a learn our. Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to kansas city public library. Robert mary, this is his second presentation in this somewhat halls of the kansas city public library. Five star library, from the library journal. [applause] hes a graduate of the university of washington, has a masters degree from Columbia University school of journalism, hes been a reporter for the observer the wall street journal, managing editor and executive editor and editor in chief of congressional quarterly, and more recently, editor of the National Interest in the american conservative. American conservative has been about this passage, he said its collaborative, it sounds a lot like robert mary. This is a description of their philosophy, we believe in constitutional government, fiscal prudence, sound monetary policies, clearly delineated borders, protection civil liberties, authentic free markets, and restraint and in Foreign Policy mixed with diplomatic acuity. We appear closely to our institutional maxim, he has a radiology principles over the party. One could wish that there were more of that kind of true conservatives and wandering around, then some who profess to be conservative. Hes also the author of books on those ultimate journalistic insiders, hes written in the stands of empire, and analysis, and also something that we implemented for american Foreign Policy. Unilaterally, a country with best designs, rehabilitation of james poll, president james poke, and now president mckinley, architect for the american century. Both polk and mckinley he makes the case for their importance in the expansion of the american poke, in the geographical sense of extending our boundaries further than anyone other than Thomas Jefferson in the louisiana approaches. And mckinley, the non colonial imperialism i quote, that did bring Us Geographical expansion in the annexation of hawaii, in the acquisition of puerto rico but more importantly, the extension 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. With the control over cuba in the philippines, for a very good time. The overboard in china and the vast expansion of the american economy. Polk has been called a most successful president , he incorporated california, oregon, texas, and reinstated the independent treasury, you can see me after class to explain that one. Were all accomplished, hes the only president who sees entire Program Within the law. Hes also called one of her most morally degrading because of the shenanigans associated with the mexican war, which made part of that program possible. Robert marry sides with the diagnosis of success for politician. With mckinley he gives us a more subtle place, just perhaps as important, to get the United States a new place in the international stage. The only stated program for the mckinley campaign for president , was on tariff. With which he was more than anyone else identified the high tariff historians have had a hard time concerning the foreign policies, but he makes a strong case that he was a guy who won empire. And it wasnt, large or roosevelt or, john hey but the deliberately. This book is a continuation of ongoing effort of robert married to adverse to trend of contemporary academics to, i quote him, devour our heritage through anachronistic moralizing from the safe distance of your tower. As such he was an architect of the american century, ladies and gentlemen, rubber mary. 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 that ive spoken and ive spoken out a lemmer of libraries. Not my first time i heard, some recognitions on that he didnt mean to. So i entitled my introduction, to this volume on mckinley the mystery of mckinley. And i was pleased to see the lawsuit journal pick up on that in writing a headline over ancient view of my book, which by the way was very favorable, thats my effort to emulate donald trump. And i have to say that i didnt set out to solve the mystery of ron mckinley that i didnt really know that there was a mystery, i didnt understand mckinley well enough when i started this project. So i understand that theres something strange, something mysterious about him, and it can be explain perhaps into sentences. Which has given all the consequential things that happened, on this president ial watch, why does he know ride as high in americas historical consciousness of today . To put another way, given the fact that he was such a non flamboyant, undramatic personage, how did all those consequential things happen . On this presidency . So as i got into the project, i have to say that the guy started driving crazy, because i had a hard time getting a handle on him . He was not a forceful man, and yet all of these things happened, i had a hard time bringing this to life. The historical consensus on him was yeah, ok, big things happened on his, watch but he didnt have anything to do with it, he is just president. And that didnt strike me as being totally credible, thats what i call a lymph in the wind theory, of mckinley. An example is a book by Alan Lichtman and canada cell, 13 keys of the presidency which is not a very good book, its not just about mckinley, but about his works. They have a chapter on mckinley, and they write that he enjoyed, quote, one of the most successful incumbent sees in American History. But then the ad that he found himself, quote, benefiting in part from circumstances beyond his control. Beyond his control, he was seen as a less than the sum of his deeds. What struck me also, was in the economic polls, which i have written about and talked about here in this hall, some years ago. That, in those polls he comes in, not exactly in sort of middle average, maybe upper average. He comes in at 16, 15, maybe 14th occasionally. Often, hes below an distinguished or failed president s, just like arthur, whos a caretaker president. Ill wait to get, and given his broad crown with the machine in new york, but nevertheless take care caretaker president. A president who is a failed president , who presided over a terrible recession, depression, that he could not control. Rutherford hage, who became president on the basis of one of the great storm elections of our history. Cleveland, who was one of the only president s who serve two consecutive terms, he was rejected by his party, after it. Thus making him the only two time one term president in our history. And john quincy adams, who was swept away, in the populist wave at the behest of andrew jackson. So, the mystery deepens when you think about, what happened on his watch. And i urge you, to not think about what im about to take off, to just bullet points on a piece of paper. But think about the political drama, many of these things. Well, he led the world in 1998, and then of being a huge success, it was a threemonth war. Would destroy the spanish empire, essentially, in the process we destroyed two spanish fleets, the atlantic in the pacific fleets. We became an empire, by acquiring from spain, puerto rico, guam and the philippines. We liberated cuba in the caribbean. We couldve kept it also, but we had committed that we wouldnt. He kicked spain out of the caribbean and turned the caribbean into an american like. For good measure, he acquired hawaii through nugget negotiation and annexation. He set in motion the events that led eventually, i saw the display outside, to the panama canal. And pr 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 anti expansionist and said no, were going to move on this canal and set in motion the studies in the actions and the planning that led to the canal. You 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 reciprocity in the 19 eighties when it was a hot issue for the boston journal, reciprocity was really what was then called sort of fair trade. Make it even so that we can have these exchange of goods back and forth across the borders. He crafted the concept of non colonial 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. There was under his watch that we established a special relationship with britain. Just a previous couple of years earlier under the cleveland administration, we almost went to war with britain over a silly border dispute in south america. But after that, we never ever had anything like that in terms of tensions with Great Britain because of the special relationship. He created the strict Gold Standard. We tend to look down on the Gold Standard these days, but in those days it was a very big deal and he ran when the currency issue was probably the hottest in our history. He essentially solved that in his first term. This is a big collection of accomplishments, or a developments, that occurred under his watch. 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. I set out to expose that mitt in this book. I will let you decide whether i succeed in that and im happy to do that because you cant decide unless you buy the book. So who was this man . Born in 1843, he was the seventh of nine children, eight of whom lived to adulthood. He grew up in ohio, a small town in ohio. Imbued with what you might call the ohio culture of the time, which was a reflection of what people of those times considered christian values. Modesty, hoyle. His father ran and own blast furnaces. He worked very hard. His mother had a strong sense of civic and religious duty. She was a very civic minded she worked very hard for her church and her community. They were in poland for the most of the growing appears of william. The mother also was imbued with all of those things that ive just talked about, those socalled christian values. 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, a lady next to her struck up a conversation, are you going to columbus . Yes, i am, she said. Oh, do you have family their . I have a son there. Thats all she said. She did not feel any need to explain that her son was the governor of the state. So at 17, Young William mckinley goes off to college in pennsylvania. In the first year, he developed some kind of been illness, and ailment that was never quite explained or understood what it was. But he had to return to poland where he recuperated, but by the time he recuperated he could not 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, 17 and a timer 18, and 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 to sort of think figure out with his cousin whether this was the right thing to do. His family was very, very strong abolitionists, his mother particularly. She subscribe to lure us gurleys weekly tribune which you could get in the mail and in reinforcement that sentiment. He and his cousin, william osborne, decided in about a day and a half that they could not stay out of the war in the enlisted. He had, i think i could accurately described as a Pretty Amazing war record. He entered as a 18yearold private. Immediately, his commanding officer, rutherford behaves, later president , and a great mentor of him, but rather for pace was an officer and became a general and was wounded five times in the war. He became a congressman and became governor and then became president. Hayes saw that this young man had a remarkable organizational ability. So he made him a sergeant and made him quartermaster sergeant. So he was sort of taking care of supplies. At the battle of antietam, the single most bloody they a 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 that they couldnt, they could move, they can get out, nobody could get in to help them. They were starving and they had run out of water. The battle began very early in the morning, so they had not had breakfast. Now its late afternoon, they had not had lunch, and they had run out of water well before noon. So these troops were in extremists. Young mckinley concocted the idea of loading up a wagon with hard tack and some bread and some coffee and water and a few other things and getting that wag into these troops. Well, hed have 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. They 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, cannonballs overhead and the back of the wagon was shut away, but they managed to get the provisions to these troops. God bless the lads, said one of the old grisly veterans. He immediately, as a result of that, was promoted to a commission. He became lieutenant. Then, i wont go into all of them, but he had other expenses somewhat 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 major, but 22yearold rabbit major. So he goes back to poland and decides he wants to become a lawyer and he wants to run for Congress Like his mentor, rutherford hayes. But he sends a letter. A kind of starryeyed letter to hayes telling him this is what he wants to do. Basically what you did, sir. Hayes writes him back and 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 become a wealthy man by age 40 and really take care of your life. Mckinley carefully preserved a letter, but he discarded the advice. He knew what he wanted. So he moves 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. 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. 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. I write, the civil war transformed Young William akin lee much as his fathers white hot for just transformed true iron into and gets a pick arent ready for more sophisticated uses. He went to war as an unseasoned teenager with only a vague sense of who he was or what he would do with his life. He left the army after being severely questioned in questions of intellect, administrative ability, leadership encourage. He had passed these tests and demonstrated that men gravitated naturally to his side and that many older women were drawn into roles of salute this mentorship. And yet this new confidence and sense of self settled upon him softly, without obstetrician or bravado. It messed with the simplicity of temperament to produce a demeanor of heavy quite. He learned the power of mystique, of leaving and said that which did not need explicit expression, as to keeping people guessing as to his intentions or motive. If this lets some to underestimate his intellect or resolve, he did not seem bothered by it. Lets emerged some of the enigmatic elements of his persona, a congenial and easygoing demeanor shrouding in increasingly restless ambition. So he does run for congress. He becomes a congressman inserts 14 years. He becomes chairman of the ways and Means Committee where he is in position to push his pet issue, tariffs. Protectionism. High trade tariffs to protect American Manufacturing and agricultural eventually at a time when america was burgeoning as a productive machine. As chairman of the ways and means, he even craft a bill, a very high tariff bill, the mckinley tariff they called it, of 1890. It 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 them anyway everyone figured. The American People did not like that very much and the result was a disaster for republicans in the 1890 elections. Poor mckinley is sitting in his office as the returns are coming in, disheveled with the office messed up with postage everywhere in papers and buttons. Hes sitting there smoking a cigar and in walks his good friend the editor of the newspaper. Editors says, its all over. It can lee says nothing. What am i going to say the newspaper . Mckinley sort of looked up and says, in the time of darkest travel, victory is nearest. He just cannot get pessimistic about anything. It was impossible for him. He lost his seat, but then a year later he runs for governor and serves to two year terms. Now he is ready to run for president of the United States. He begins his campaign in 1895. He sends his good friend and a man who served him so well, mark hanna, a very successful industrialist of ohio from cleveland. He sent him to new york on a very important mission. He wants to find out from the big bosses, from tom plaid of new york who basically owned. They had all the patronage. He wanted to know if them and their lesser bosses who worked under them, if they would support mckinley. Because if they did, he was a front runner anyway. He probably had the nomination sewed up. It would not even be a battle. So hannah comes back to cleveland and mckinleys there and they have a nice dinner. Then they go into hannas study lined with books and they settled themselves into over stuffed letter chairs and light of their cigars. Hannahs break cited. He says, well governor, these guys are all go for you. There are conditions. He did not seem particularly disturbed by the conditions. Mckinley says, what are they . Well, pat wants the patronage in new york. Clay of pennsylvania. Mandy wants the whole of new england and he takes off a couple of others. And he says, oh yeah, plaid also wants to be treasury secretary. And he wants it in writing. It seems that eight years earlier at the beginning of the harrison ministration, he had gotten a similar commitment from harrison for his support, but the treasury secretary ship never materialized. Mckinley looks at him, pops on as a guard, stands up and walks a couple of steps back and forth and turns to mark and says, some things in life commit to high price. If thats the price, its worth nothing to me and its worth less to the American People. If thats the price, im out of it. Hold on, governor. Hold on, says hannah. Im just saying we could sew it up tomorrow, but we dont need to sort up tomorrow. We can beat these guys. That is what they had to do. Because clay and plaid were so upset that they went to other major politicians in various states and try to become the favorite sons in those states so they could deny mckinley a first ballot nomination, in which case they thought they could pull up somebody else to play their game and pay their price. But he beat them. He beat them and he became the nominee. Then he had to go up against William Jennings brian. You know the story. William jennings brian, i did not realize he was 36 years old in 1896. He had two terms in the house and then he lost that seat. He ran for the senate and lost. He was one of the greatest orators of our history. We all know that he got himself on this platform, the podium at the democratic convention, and gave his famous cross gold speech. You shall not press the throne of thorns upon our head. He filtered his fingers across his face like blood trickling down. You shall not crucify us on a cross of gold. The convention went wild. The reason was the country was an extremist. The panic of 1893 was still very much with the country. The south in the west particularly, the rural areas were really suffering. There was not enough liquidity. So what they needed was the free coinage of silver. That was what the rallying cry was. Hannah became the man who is going to lead that charge and he did. He got on trains and was crisscrossing the country. He was all over the place. He was spending amazing amounts of time. He would have times where his first speech would be at seven in the morning and his last speech was at seven at night. Mckinley cannot compete with that. For one, he had a wife was in firm. We could talk about this in the q as. He she was somewhat in firm and did not want to take her on a tour and did not want to leave her in canton or in 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. He stayed on his front porch. They destroyed his yard by the way, but who cares. It was amazing effort. You know what we say in politics. If you control the message. Well, mckinley control the message because these various groups they could be a Church Groups or a labor group or an African American organization and various things wanted to come and they sent a letter. We want to come over on this day if it works for you. They would come and he would say what questions do you have . He knew exactly what they were going to say. All the reporters from all over the country where theyre taking notes. He basically quasiorchestrated it. Well, it worked. He became president. So now, im going to step back and im going to try to describe what kind of a man that 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 he seemed 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 in incrementalist in terms of the way he managed things. He didnt try to push too hard. And i will say he was not a visionary. He was not a man of imagination. In his day, Theodore Roosevelt was a man of imagination. These were men of imagination and had this vision of american greatness and how america could best out into the world. That was not where mckinley was, but it 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 favorite direction. This gave him a great deal of subterranean for us. That heavy quiet that i was talking about. On top of that, he had an iron will beneath that surface affability. He always seemed to get his way somehow. And sometimes he did it guy convincing people to do what he wanted them to do while thinking it was their idea. His worst said that he always got his way in part because he didnt care who got the credit. It just wasnt important to him at all, unlike t. R. He had a close friend who said, i dont think mckinley ever let anything stand in the way of his own advancement. The wife of a very prominent ohio politician at that time, intermittently and ally and adversary, more often in an adversary, talk about the masks that he wore. The masks werent 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 a congressman from that period, and ohio congressman by the name of ben butter worth. I came across him in the mark hanna papers. They were very Close Friends and there were a lot of letters going back and forth. I saw they were close and i thought that butter worth was part of those politicians that clustered around mckinley and hannah. It was clear as i got into these letters that but are worth, while he left hannah, was a little weary of mckinley. Then i came across a Washington Post article in which he was talking about mckinley. He cut used as a kind of illustration a sort of idea of how mckinley operated. He said, if mckinley and i were walking through in orchard with but one bearing tree and that tree had but two apples, mckinley would walk under that tree, he would pick the two apples, he would put one in his pocket and take a bite out of the other one and then would turn to me and say, ben, do you like apples . I think what butterworth was trying to say she was very congenial, what he always seemed to get the apples. He says he managed by indirection from the shadow. So im going to talk a little bit about some of the elements, examples of the mckinley resolve that emerged in a big ways during his presidency. One would be the spanish american war. The book on mckinley, and i will talk briefly later about why i think he doesnt what has kept him from having the reputation that i believe he deserves. But the book on mckinley is that he didnt really want to go to war with spring. The American People and congress basically thrust him against his will towards a war that he did not 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 a neck elected, it was a terrible and very bloody and 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 claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, i cant remember exactly, but maybe 100,000 or 200,000. They hads leveled finally, but it had sort of reemerged now. It was destabilizing the caribbean. It was putting americans were trying to do business in 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 the fading power like spain and cuba and the caribbean, which we consider to be our sphere of influence. They were there is a legacy of imperial power, but you have germany say, or some other european power come in, that is 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. Mckinley comes into the presidency and it takes over from grover cleveland. Grover cleveland had essentially favored the spanish over the cubans. That wasnt because you like the spanish particularly, but because he was a status quo guy and want to stability. His view was as soon as spain can sort of put down its insurrection, it 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 they won. 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. However, he did not want to go to war to do it if you could avoid that. So what did he do . He opened up negotiation with a sort of program of diplomacy in spain and spain realized that america is becoming a pretty powerful country. This is our neighborhood and it would be very difficult if they went to war with us. They did not want to war with us. So they entered into diplomacy as well. Pretty soon they could see that mckinley, his diplomacy was behind the affability and the velvet glove was an iron fist. He 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. That probably means more autonomy if the insurrection its would accept that, but they do not seem to accept that. Or you can bud out, but you need to get this war over because its destabilizing the region and its untenable and an said is the American People are not going to put up with it for much longer. So spain finally kind 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 essentially said. Mckinley never wavered. He just kept pushing and he got more and more angry. Who knows what would have happened if the name the main battleship had not blown up in the harbor. But the fact that their battleship was also testament to mckinleys resolve that he was going to make sure that the spanish were out of the caribbean. Ostensibly, it was to protect american lives that might be at risk as a result of the insurrection because the spanish people in cuba were getting increasingly angry with america. Nevertheless, it did blow up and then war became inevitable. Another example is hawaii. We have to understand, its an amazing story and not a particularly entirely savory story about americans. 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 and getting fabulously wealthy in the process. Pretty soon they had so much financial power that they felt they should have political power to go with it. They ended up upending the royalty, the polynesian royalty that had been governing and presiding over the Hawaiian Islands for decades, centuries. That happened under Benjamin Harrisons watch. Cleveland in his second term was very upset about it. He even contemplated going in there and removing those people from the government, but he didnt really want a war. He did not want to have americans fighting essentially americans, former americans. So that was a state of play. Mckinley, again, rejected the policy of his predecessor. He made it very clear through subterranean diplomacy, he liked subterranean to promise. He was very interested in acquiring cuba through annexation. Americans were now running cuba who were now running cuba wanted that also. It generated a lot of antiexpansionist sentiment and fervor in congress and other places, among intellectuals and writers, mark twain and others. But he never wavered. He got the negotiation, he sent it to congress and could not get it through the congress through a treaty. He didnt give up. He sent it back to congress as a to be dealt with by two houses which did not require two thirds vote. It only required a majority vote in both houses and that is how we got hawaii. Then there is the philippines. When the spanish sued 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 its going to be independent. Spain has to leave puerto rico, that came out of nowhere, but we had conquered puerto rico. Spain has to give us an island in the pacific, that turned out to be guam. And that has to happen before we move further in negotiations. Thats really tough diplomacy. Then he basically said, as for the philippines, which we had essentially acquired. We took over luzon after 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 are saying. They asked the french ambassador to the United States to operate on their behalf and negotiate for them. He said to mckinley, you cant really get any more glory then youve already gained in this war viewers. So im assuming youll be very generous. We found of the 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 you had to have a cooling station because we were building this big Global Global navy. You couldnt have a global navy without coaling stations and you could not have stations without having places around the globe. However, he could not control the bait without controlling all of luzon, the island. If we had luzon, the whole rest of the philippines, i mean spain was not 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 were not going to be able to go back in their. 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 it was going to be germany or some other european power, most likely germany. Germany was on the prowl for possessions for colonies. If germany had all these other islands, then luzon who not be secured. They basically decided im taking the whole thing. That got him into a war. It was very much like vietnam war. There was an insurrection and there was guerrilla warfare and was very difficult. It was a very sympathetic figure, from my view, who ran that insurrection. He was ultimately captured and that kind of broke the back of the insurgency, but it went on for years into Teddy Roosevelts administration. So 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 succession, Teddy Roosevelt. If you read my book, you will see emigrated mayor of Teddy Roosevelt, he was a great genius. He might have been the greatest genius that ever became president. What that i could do with his brain of his was amazing. He never shared credit with anybody though. 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 the second term, Teddy Roosevelt immediately when he became president said words the effect of, i intend to govern just as my predecessor did and his agenda will be my agenda and words that affect. Within two days, he gets to the white house from buffalo and greece reporters and the market did not swoon and felt he did not have to say those things anymore. He said i intend to govern just as if the voters 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. Roosevelt was always conscious of the narrative. He always put himself at the center of the narrative. Over the succeeding decades, his adoring biographers basically bought the narrative. The narrative would probably work if he sort of said, well t. R. Did these amazing incredible things, but the foundation was laid by his predecessor. So in my view, mckinley gets the kind of shorten the stake in terms of that interpretation. And describing these turn of events and this historical narrative building, i describe t. R. And i will quote a little bit. Impetuous, valuable, im using, grandiose, prone to marking his territory with political defiance, roosevelt stir the imagination of the American People as mckinley never had. Through the major solidity, safety and caution, the rough rider offered a mind that moved by flashes or winds or son impulses as it was described. He took the American People on a political rollercoaster ride, and too many, it was thrilling. It was thrilling and it was significant. It helped define america in the 20th century. But behind him was one william conley, who may be mysterious, what is a consequential president. 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 you can have some questions. If you could please come up to the microphone if you have questions so people at home watching on tv can hear you. Have you changed your ranking of mckinley since your book . Theres i dont offer my own ranking. I talk about what president s have done and what constitutes greatness or mediocrity or whatever. The answer to that sir, in my own estimation of mckinley, is yes it is higher. When i know those president s that i consider to have been either failures or not particularly consequential, i would certainly put him above those people. So i think he would preside in my pantheon in 11th or 12th, Something Like that maybe. I havent really focused on where i put him directly, what somewhere around there. Other questions . There we go. Can you talk about his wife as an invalid and how that shaped mckinleys american publics compassion for him in the death of the children. Its a very poignant story. When mckinley moved to canton as a young lawyer, he encountered young ida saxton. She was the bell of canton. She was the daughter probably the richest man in canton. Her grandfather bought a train press from pennsylvania by auction and started the canton repository. It was a successful newspaper. Then her father went into mining and banking and other things. She was quite lovely. She was a sparkly personality. She was scintillating in many ways. She had many many suitors, what she sort of fixated on mckinley. They were married. There were 1000 people at their wedding according to the repository, who was owned by their father, so maybe thats an exaggeration, i dont know. Nevertheless, it was a big wedding and a big occasion at the time. He was moving up into politics. It was kind of a storybook thing. A year after they were married, the first daughter arrives, katie. About a year later, 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 close and effected her greatly. But it affected whether it affected her pregnancy is not absolutely clear, but she had a troubled pregnancy and her daughter lived only five months. That center into a tremendous depression and it wasnt clear that she was ever going to be able to come out of it. He just coasted out of it with a lot of patience and just refusing to let go. Then sometime after that, her first daughter katie died. And she went back into a terrible depression. During this time, Something Else happened, some kind of an accident. No one really knows what happened. I suspect she fell backwards and hurt her spine in some white because she became rather immobile. It was 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 could walk down the stairs with a cane. They had a new elevator, but it did not really work. She could walk down the stairs, but he would have to carry her up the stairs, which he did. On top of all of this, she developed epilepsy, which in those days was considered a sort of mental illness. You didnt want anyone to know that you are mentally ill. The seizures would come and so it affected the marriage, it affected their rise, it affected ida tremendously. But 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 just very unusual in those days. While now, shes sort of reduced to sort of sedentary life. She crochets and does other Little Things like that and she becomes rather sort of narrow in her outlook. Very devoted to her husband and thinks her husband is the greatest politician in the history of america. But she becomes somewhat peevish and somewhat difficult. He never wavered in his devotion to her and just basically accepted that as just part of life. So when this became kind of known as he was emerging as a National Figure politically, it became an element of identity port mckinley. The man who took such good care of his troubled wife. There are some people, and i dont gain say this at all, we suspect that it was manipulated to some extent as a sort of political advantage. Thats the story. Yes, sir. What happened to him that t. R. 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. And 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 him all that will, but he knew he tended to be sort of impetuous and get into rows. One of his good friends pushing for him to get that job. They promised him that t. R. Wont do that. He will be controllable. Well, he wasnt. But he did in amazing thing. When the war came, he resigned the office. He put together the rough riders and he did an extremely courageous, to the point of maybe insanity, when he ran up on the San Juan Ridge and becomes, along with george dewy, one of the two greatest heroes from that war. American people loved him, so when the convention, second convention, comes up in the 1900s, the Convention Just goes crazy for kennedy. And it was a forced major, he could not be resisted. They didnt trust him, and try to resist, and mckinley had to send a note to him saying season desist, because you cant put me in this position of being against the senate of the convention. So he becomes Vice President , sends a note to mckinley after the convention, saying you know im fine, im happy with it. Your job now ways to live for the next four years, and when he died marc hanna is quoted saying that hes gonna be the president of United States, that call. Im curious as to how mckinley and 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 this, but what was his policies towards the farmer and the Confederate States . Did he want them back . Was he a forgiving person . Did he want to reconcile with the south . And indirectly how did he approach the civil rights position . Its a very, very good question. And it can be ignored, so what i would say about it. I have to go back to this great mentor, rod hayes, became president by making what you might call a deal to end the reconstruction. And a lot of recent historians, who are sort of giving a revision of this reconstruction, given that to be a terrible thing. Because it kept African Americans down for the next hundred years. But the deal was essentially, look, weve got to stitch this country back together. And its not gonna be easy, so were just gonna have to probably sacrifice civil rights for a period of time. Red haze and mckinney were abolitionists, they were liberal on civil rights, but they cut that deal. So, by the time kenny was president , he still was concerned about this, especially the American Health deal. I have a blank, now but he had one of the Great Southern cavalry generals, lee, yes, thank you, and he gave him a command and when he was in cuba, and they got the spanish on the run he gets to lose, kind of law side where he was, and he said we got those yankees on the run. Well they werent yankees, they were spanish. His position towards African Americans, is what i would call patronizing, and there are worse words you can use, and on the trick and say those words. The patronizing, i mean he had a Good Relationship with a lot of African American organizations, and he praised them for working so hard on difficult circumstances. You people are doing wonderful things, 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, whats one of the, was any of his cabinet far confederate farmers for the southern . No, he wanted to get somebody who was a southerner, he ended up getting the one person that was assumed to be sympathetic in the south, which ones from maryland, and i was as far south as he got in terms of his cabinet. Yes sir . Who would be the politician in recent times who you would say was most similar to mckinley . I would say the eisenhower, in fact i see very significant parallels between eisenhower and mckinney. My friend wrote the book called the presidency, about how eisenhower managed from the shadows, managed by indirection and people thought he was just bumbling when he didnt want to explain something, he would become inarticulate. Specially stevenson, which they will this guy cant even express himself. But it was all with a purpose. And i think that was somewhat the way mckinney up unaided operated. So i think these two would be quite similar. Sir . Two questions. The first as you mentioned mckinleys relationship to imperialism, in the empire. In 1898 it was anti imperialist lead, William James 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, it was about his assassination, can you say just a word about that . Well, yes indeed, there was a very strong anti imperialist wave of sentiment that emerged in america. Mark twain was involved in it, very people of prominence, and mckinley was stung somewhat. So many people offended his friends. But he never took personally any of the turmoil politics. And, 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 address years. And he would explain what the policy was, and why he had done it. So, he understood that he had this opposition. I was particularly back, when Foreign Affairs meddled with the korean philippine interaction, and he was on the defensive, but he basically just handled it as part of the greater american dream. Assassination . He was supposed to be at the Great American exposition in buffalo in the spraying, of 19 alone. But he was traveling in california, part of that policy he had was traveling around giving speeches and explaining to the American People always very important. One of the things when academic bag refers to suggest that he was the first modern president amongst other things, nevertheless he got sick developed an infection that going into his blood, and he almost died. Immediately, went back to washington and soon they werent, San Francisco on the way to Washington State but they never made it. So his appearance at the exposition was postponed, to the fall of september and thats when the anarchist czolgosz concocted the idea of assassinating him. He was very realistic about part of that optimism of him, about the prospect of anybody who could possibly harm to president , and so he would talk openly with people, secret Service People were crazy. But you know everybody very much. He had his hand in a bandage bandage, from when he was injured, mckinley reached for his left hand, put the pistol in his chest, and fire it right there. It did not penetrate very much, but mckinney went back in his heel, and czolgosz fired a second time, when into his abdomen, launch there. They couldnt find the bullet, who operated it rather quickly, we couldnt find a bullet and concluded looking for was probably more dangerous than leaving it. Until he did, and he was recuperating nicely. But in those days are gonna really understand infection, and those things, and that took him down. I think you lasted some Something Like two weeks after the assassination, before he died. I believe outfit . Yeah. Thank you, very much. [applause] he will be signing the book in the hall, thank you. Weeknights this month on American History tv we are featuring the contenders. Series that looks at 14 president ial candidates who lost the election, but had a lasting effect on u. S. Politics. On thursday night, we will feature eugene dads who was a fivetime president ial candidate for the socialist party. Watch thursday beginning at eight eastern, and enjoy American History tv this week and every weekend on cspan 3. Every saturday at 8 pm eastern on American History tv on cspan 3 go inside a Different College classroom, and care about topics ranging from the american revolution, civil rights and u. S. President s. To 9 11. Thanks for your patience, and for logging into class. With most College Campuses closed due to the impact of the coronavirus, watch professors transfer teaching to overrule setting to engage with their students. Gorbachev did most of the work to change the soviet union. But reagan met him halfway, reagan encouraged him reagan supported him. Freedom of the press, which will get to, later i should mention madison and coats to freedom of the use of the press, and it is in the freedom to print things and publish things, it is not a freedom for what we powerful ian cetacean as a. Press elections in history, on American History tv, on cspan 3. Every saturday, at 8 pm eastern. Lectures in history is also available as a podcast. Find it where you listen to podcasts
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