The Reluctant Warrior and the ‘Rough Rider’

By Tom Morrow

One of the more popular presidents of his day was No. 25: William McKinley. While today he’s barely remembered, showing up as little more than a blip in the history books, McKinley was far more notable post mortem than just being president. He had the highest mountain in North American named in his honor, but even that was taken away in favor a native American moniker – Mt. Denali.
President McKinley was born Jan. 29, 1843. He was a Republican and most famously known for the president who reluctantly led us into the 1898 Spanish-American War.
A native of Ohio, President McKinley was a member of the Ohio Infantry during the Civil War. The four years he spent in the army filled him with a resolve to stay out of future wars. But McKinley found himself caught in a quagmire of politicians, business leaders, and a public clamoring for war with Spain.
The question of war forced its way into the McKinley administration in February 1898, during his first term when the U.S. Navy’s battleship Maine blew up in Cuba’s Havana Harbor killing 260 sailors. The island was under Spanish control and most Americans believed Spain was responsible for the sinking of one of the Navy’s top battleships. To this day, it still hasn’t been fully determined what caused the explosion. It was determined it could have been an accident brought about by its crew, or sabotage by the Spanish, the latter more-or-less dismissed after years of research by Naval archivists.
But, at the time of the explosion, Americans had been clamoring for war with Spain for a number years. The Maine triggered the conflict.
After the explosion, the American public was whipped up into an anti-Spanish hysteria not known since the Civil War. Despite Spain’s desire to avoid war, plus McKinley’s distaste for conflict, the “yellow” press led by publishers William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer continued feeding the public’s appetite for anti-Spanish news. Today, yellow journalism is likened to “Fake News.” War Hawks like Theodore Roosevelt, who at the time was assistant secretary of the Navy, loudly criticized the reluctant McKinley for being “weak and afraid.”
Once war was declared, “T.R.” was instrumental in forming a mounted Army contingent known as the “Rough Riders.” He gave up his Navy secretarial post and rode into history up Cuba’s San Juan Hill. The war quickly ended after a few months with the U.S. taking over Spanish possessions such as the islands of Puerto Rico, the Marianas (Guam and Saipan), the Philippines, and a number of other small Pacific islands.
After only a few months into McKinley’s second term, history took a dramatic turn. On Sept. 6, 1901, the president was shot on the grounds of the Pan-American Exposition at the Temple of Music in Buffalo, New York, barely six months into his second term. He was shaking hands with the public when anarchist Leon Czolgosz shot him twice in the stomach. He died on Sept. 14, 1901, eight days later. Czolgosz’s motive: to advance anarchism.
The popular president’s death dramatically changed U.S. history elevating Vice President Theodore Roosevelt into the White House. How that happened is an interesting piece of history. Roosevelt got himself elected governor of New York, but his radically advances doing away from the “good ol’ boys tactics drove both Republicans and Democrat state lawmakers mad. What to do? With McKinley’s re-election coming up in 1900, the Republicans nominated Roosevelt for vice president to isolate him. As vice president he would be muzzled – they thought. It would be a move that would backfire on both Republican and Democrat politicians who wanted him gone from Albany. “T.R.,” as he was known, became one of our most successful, innovative and most popular presidents in spite of his political detractors.
T.R. became known as the “trust buster,” breaking up monopolistic corporations such as Standard Oil, the many facets of steel, and railroads, to name just a few. He created the National Parks system, naming Yellowstone the first protected wilderness. But one of T.R.’s most important projects was the continuation of the Panama Canal. It would change the world for the 20th century and beyond.
Today, McKinley was mainly remembered as one of our four president to be assassinated (Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley and Kennedy). And, don’t forget that mountain in Alaska, which only us older folks remember as Mt. McKinley.