IV.

President of the United States

When McKinley entered Washington, D.C., for his inauguration, he was a handsome, vigorous man of 54 years. With him was his wife, who, despite her poor health, took part in many of the social activities at the White House.

McKinley devoted much of his inaugural address to foreign affairs. “We want no wars of conquest,” he said. “We must avoid the temptation of territorial aggression.” His original Cabinet, his group of advisers and department heads, consisted of businessmen and aged politicians. But the appointment of the writer and diplomat John M. Hay as secretary of state in 1898 and New York district attorney Elihu Root as secretary of war in 1899 gave stature to his administration and greatly aided its conduct of foreign and internal affairs. Many of McKinley’s detractors believed that Hanna, who was now a United States senator, would be the real power in the administration. However, McKinley, though often vacillating, proved to be his own man and exercised strong control over his advisers.

A.

Return of Prosperity

McKinley’s election victory gave the business world renewed confidence, and in 1897 prosperity returned, taking much of the steam out of the demands for economic reform. That year, McKinley pushed the Dingley Tariff Act through Congress, which levied even higher duties than had his own tariff of 1890. The Dingley Tariff also recognized the increasing importance of world trade to large U.S. industries. It allowed the president to negotiate reciprocal trade agreements with other countries, under which the two countries would agree to lower tariffs on specific goods that they traded with each other.

The demand for silver money also decreased because the discovery of gold in the Yukon Territories, Canada, near the Alaskan border, increased the amount of money in circulation. In addition, agricultural prices rose. In 1900 Congress passed the Gold Standard Act, which placed the United States on a single gold standard, with only a few protests from the bimetallists in the West. The United States remained on the gold standard until President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal program in 1933. Because McKinley openly represented large business interests, he sponsored no reform legislation and ignored existing laws such as the Interstate Commerce Act and the Sherman Antitrust Act, which were designed to regulate big business.

B.

Calls for United States Intervention Abroad

McKinley’s first term also coincided with a movement away from traditional isolationism, which advocated avoiding alliances with other nations. Many in business began to favor expanded foreign trade to obtain new markets for their products. As foreign trade grew, so did demands for territorial expansion, so that markets could more easily be developed and controlled. Some people believed that the United States had a moral duty to use its power to help oppressed nations free themselves and construct democratic nations like the United States. Many people came to believe that the United States had a Manifest Destiny, or God-given right, to rule the western hemisphere. Although McKinley wanted peace, he made little effort to curb the growing sentiment for territorial expansion.

A revolution in Cuba encouraged these groups. Revolts and conspiracies against the Spanish regime had dominated Cuban political life throughout the 19th century, and the Cuban struggle for independence became an active revolution in 1895 after Spain failed to institute reforms promised to the Cuban people in 1878. In response to the fighting Spanish troops drove much of the population into confinement camps, and thousands died of disease and malnutrition (see Cuba: History). The reports of Spanish cruelties shocked the United States, and many Americans sympathized with the Cuban cause.

Sensational journalism, especially in New York newspapers owned by the competing publishers Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst, was enormously successful in creating demand for U.S. intervention. Theodore Roosevelt, McKinley’s assistant secretary of the navy, also supported intervention. As a disciple of the influential naval strategist Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan, Roosevelt advocated the use of naval power to assert U.S. influence throughout the world.

B.1.

Spanish-American War

On February 15, 1898, the American battleship Maine exploded in the harbor at Havana, Cuba, and 266 men died. The cause of the explosion was not known, but most Americans were certain that it was the work of Spain. (A study by the U.S. Navy, published in 1976, suggested that spontaneous combustion in the Maine’s coal bunkers caused the explosion.) Congress, on April 25, enacted a resolution declaring war on Spain.

The Spanish-American War lasted less than four months, from April to August 1898. Two American victories, one by Admiral George Dewey at Manila Bay in the Philippines and the other by Admiral William Sampson at Santiago Bay in Cuba, showed the world that the United States was a power to be reckoned with. However, U.S. conduct of the war was largely characterized by bungling and scandalous inefficiency. Food, clothing, equipment, medical care, and sanitation were woefully inadequate, and for every man killed by the enemy, ten died as a result of disease.

B.2.

Imperialistic Ventures

Successful conclusion of the war with Spain brought peace to Cuba and economic concessions to American business. Many politicians and intellectuals also accused McKinley of imperialism, the practice by which powerful nations or peoples seek to extend and maintain control or influence over weaker nations or peoples. Much of the support for military action in the Spanish-American War had come from those who saw the newly freed countries as new markets in which U.S. businesses could sell their goods, but the victories also created many new military problems.

As part of the peace settlement, for example, the United States also acquired Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines. However, the people of the Philippines wanted American domination no more than they wanted Spanish domination, and McKinley had to suppress their insurrection against American occupation. From 1899 to 1902, 70,000 U.S. troops and perhaps as much as $175 million were used to crush the resistance, which was led by Emilio Aguinaldo.

Aguinaldo’s rebels fought using guerrilla warfare, in which small bands of soldiers attacked suddenly and then vanished into the mountain jungles afterward. United States soldiers, finding it difficult to stop Aguinaldo’s ambushes and seeing the civilian population as the enemy, burned entire villages and killed many innocent villagers in retaliation.

McKinley also supported the annexation of Hawaii in 1898. In 1893 American businessmen had overthrown Hawaiian Queen Liliuokalani with help from U.S. troops. Democratic President Grover Cleveland (1885-1889; 1893-1897) had found the rebellion dishonorable and refused to annex the islands. McKinley saw the issue differently. “We need Hawaii just as much and a good deal more than we did California,” he said. “It is manifest destiny.”

In 1899, by agreement with Britain and Germany, the United States also acquired the island of Tutuila in Samoa Islands (see American Samoa). Its excellent harbor at Pago Pago became an important American naval station.

McKinley further consolidated the nation’s position in East Asia with the Open Door Policy, which announced that all nations should have equal access to China’s markets. In China, a group known in the West as the Boxers opposed European and Japanese influence in that country. In 1900 these Chinese nationalists launched the Boxer Uprising, an attack upon foreigners living in Beijing. McKinley sent 5000 troops to help European countries crush the rebellion and hunt down those responsible.

C.

Election of 1900

In the presidential election of 1900 McKinley ran against Bryan once again. Bryan, having lost the previous election with a reform platform, based his campaign on the question of imperialism. In opposing McKinley’s policies, Bryan argued that no nation could endure as half republic, a form of government in which all citizens had the same representation, and half empire, a form under which many people might have no voice at all.

McKinley’s running mate was the ardent interventionist and reformer Theodore Roosevelt, who had returned a hero from the Spanish-American War to become governor of New York. McKinley based his campaign on the issue of prosperity, promising to maintain a “full dinner pail” for the next four years. He was reelected with the largest popular victory in a presidential election to that date, 7,218,491 votes to Bryan’s 6,356,734. He took 28 states and won 292 electoral votes out of a total of 447, leaving Bryan only the South and four silver-mining states.