William McKinley

William McKinley may have been the first president who was nominated as the result of an intensive campaign process prior to his party's nominating convention. He was nominated on the first ballot. He won the election and was inaugurated on March 4, 1897.

McKinley swiftly focused on the continuing depression by encouraging Congress to pass the Dingley Tariff Act, which may or may not have deserved the credit it received for motivating economic recovery. But the center-stage issue for the McKinley administration became the Spanish-American War. The U.S. declared war on Spain in the spring of 1898 in response to reports of atrocities by Spanish settlers on Cuban natives. The war ended by late summer, a victory. By the end of the year, Spain freed Cuba and ceded the Phillipines, Puerto Rico, and Guam to the United States. Filipinos, however, soon launched guerilla attacks against the occupying American military personnel in demand for their country's independence. The uprising was quelled in 1902, at a cost of more lives than those lost in the Spanish-American War.

McKinley's successes in annexing Hawaii and establishing free trade with China boosted his popularity, and he was easily reelected--with a new vice president, Teddy Roosevelt, whom many saw as dangerously unpredictable. The "loose cannon" became president when McKinley, shaking hands with citizens after giving a speech in Buffalo, New York, was shot at close range in the chest and stomach, and died a week later from resulting gangrene.

This page was written by Sharon Rasmussen.