50 Fun Facts About William McKinley

Which president did William McKinley succeed in 1897?

Grover Cleveland, whose two separate terms make him both the 22nd and the 24th president. That quirk is why McKinley is counted as the 25th president although he was only the 24th man to hold the job.

In which Ohio town was McKinley born in 1843?

Niles. He left as a boy when his parents moved to nearby Poland, Ohio, for the sake of its better schools; the town now marks his birthplace with a marble memorial.

What trade did McKinley's father follow while the future president was growing up in Ohio?

Iron making. William McKinley Sr. managed iron furnaces, work that kept him miles from the family home, so for years he saw his family only at weekends.

McKinley was a lifelong member of which Christian denomination?

Methodist. He joined the church at sixteen and as a young man meant to become a minister; his bride, married in a brand-new Presbyterian church, soon moved over to his.

Which flower did William McKinley always wear in his buttonhole as a good-luck charm?

A carnation. He liked to give it away as a keepsake, and in the receiving line on the day he was shot he had just handed it to a twelve-year-old girl.

Which future president served as McKinley's superior officer and became a lifelong friend?

Rutherford B. Hayes. McKinley served on his staff in the war, stumped Ohio for him afterwards, and won his own first seat in Congress in the very election that made Hayes president.

At which 1862 battle did McKinley come under heavy fire while bringing rations to the front line?

Antietam. As a 19-year-old commissary sergeant he took hot coffee and food up to his regiment under fire, without orders, and Ohio's governor made him a lieutenant for it.

What rank had McKinley reached by the end of the Civil War?

Brevet major. He had enlisted as an 18-year-old private, and the rank stuck for good: through decades in politics he was known as Major McKinley.

For whom did McKinley cast his first presidential ballot, in 1864?

Abraham Lincoln. McKinley, then 21, voted as a soldier in the field, with his army still camped in the Shenandoah Valley after the battle of Cedar Creek.

In which Ohio city did McKinley set up his law practice and make his home?

He bought a block of buildings on Main Street that paid him rent for decades.

Before she married McKinley, Ida Saxton worked in her father's what?

Bank. She worked there as a cashier and sometimes ran it in her father's absence, and a young lawyer named McKinley was among the customers.

Which local office, the first he ever held, did William McKinley win against expectations in 1869?

County prosecutor. Voters in Stark County, Ohio, usually gave the job to a Democrat, and the upset did not last: he was beaten when he stood again two years later.

McKinley's pro bono 1876 defence of striking coal miners put him opposite which future backer?

Mark Hanna. The Ohio industrialist was one of the mine owners on the other side of the case; he went on to become McKinley's chief backer and the manager of his run for the White House.

Which anarchist, an unemployed mill worker, shot President McKinley at point-blank range in September 1901?

Leon Czolgosz. He called the president an enemy of 'the good working people' and showed no remorse; he was tried, convicted and executed within eight weeks of the shooting.

Which Speaker of the House made McKinley chairman of the Ways and Means Committee in 1889?

Thomas B. Reed. He had just beaten McKinley for the Speaker's chair and handed his rival the House's most powerful committee; in 1896 it was McKinley who beat Reed, for the presidential nomination.

In 1900 McKinley sent American troops to China, without asking Congress, to help put down which uprising?

The Boxer Rebellion. The troops joined an international force that rescued the foreigners besieged in Peking, and later presidents treated the unasked-for deployment as a precedent.

Which office did McKinley win in 1891 and again in 1893?

Governor of Ohio. He set up a state board to arbitrate labour disputes, and when a friend's bankruptcy left him liable for huge debts, public sympathy helped carry him to an easy re-election.

McKinley was not at the 1896 convention, so how did he hear part of the speech nominating him?

Telephone. He listened down a long-distance line from Ohio, and when his own state's votes put him over the top he went straight to Ida and his mother with the news.

Before Theodore Roosevelt joined the ticket in 1900, who was McKinley's first running mate and vice president?

Garret Hobart. The New Jersey lawyer died in office in November 1899, and the vacancy he left is what put Theodore Roosevelt on the 1900 ticket, and so within reach of the presidency.

McKinley's 1896 campaign is remembered by what nickname?

Front Porch. Rather than tour the country he stayed at home and let delegations come to him by the trainload, answering each one with a carefully scripted speech from his own steps.

Whom did McKinley defeat in both the 1896 and 1900 presidential elections?

William Jennings Bryan. The Democrats' great orator made overseas empire his issue in the 1900 rematch, lost again, and went on to lose a third presidential race eight years after that.

The millions raised for McKinley's 1896 campaign went mostly on printing some 200 million of what?

Pamphlets. Bankers alarmed by the Democratic platform filled the Republican war chest, and it paid for enough leaflets on money and tariffs to reach every voter many times over.

Which Pacific island did Spain cede to the United States, along with Puerto Rico, in the 1898 peace treaty?

Guam. An American cruiser had taken the island that June without a fight: its small Spanish garrison had not yet heard that the two countries were at war.

Which ageing Ohio senator was McKinley's controversial choice for Secretary of State?

John Sherman. Promoting the 73-year-old, whose memory was already failing, emptied a Senate seat for McKinley's campaign manager; Sherman resigned on the day war with Spain was declared.

At state dinners President McKinley broke with protocol by insisting that who be seated beside him?

His wife, Ida. She suffered epileptic seizures, and from the next chair he could cover her face for a moment until one passed, then carry on as if nothing had happened.

To which post did McKinley appoint Theodore Roosevelt in 1897, a year before the war with Spain?

Assistant Secretary of the Navy. Roosevelt held the job for barely a year before resigning to raise the cavalry regiment that went to Cuba and is remembered as the Rough Riders.

Which 1897 tariff law, raising duties on wool and sugar, did McKinley sign in his first months as president?

The Dingley Tariff. Congressman Nelson Dingley wrote it as chairman of Ways and Means, the post from which McKinley had written the 1890 tariff that bore his own name and helped cost him his seat.

On 14 March 1900 McKinley signed a landmark currency law using a pen made of what?

Gold, fittingly, for the measure was the Gold Standard Act. He had spent 1897 seeking a deal with Europe that would keep silver money as well, and backed gold alone once those talks failed.

Which battleship's explosion in Havana harbour in 1898 pushed McKinley toward war with Spain?

USS Maine. McKinley insisted on a naval inquiry before he would act, but 'Remember the Maine!' had already become a war cry, and by late April the two countries were at war.

Which senator's amendment to the 1898 war resolution pledged that the United States would not annex Cuba?

Teller. Colorado's Henry Teller wrote the pledge into the war resolution itself, which is why the island the war was fought over became a republic instead of an American possession.

Which commodore destroyed the Spanish fleet at Manila Bay in 1898?

George Dewey. His one-morning victory on the far side of the world turned a war that had begun over Cuba into one that would also settle the fate of Spain's colonies in the Pacific.

General Shafter's army landed in Cuba in June 1898 and won which battle that made the Rough Riders famous?

San Juan Hill. Shafter's men stormed the heights above Santiago at heavy cost, and the besieged city surrendered a little over two weeks later.

Under the 1898 Treaty of Paris, the United States paid Spain $20 million for which islands?

The Philippines. The purchase brought no peace: Filipino revolutionaries proclaimed a republic of their own, and by 1899 they were fighting the American army in a war that lasted until 1902.

The Senate approved McKinley's 1898 peace treaty with Spain with one vote to spare beyond which required majority?

Two-thirds, the bar the Constitution sets for every treaty. The vote was 57 to 27 when 56 were needed, and it took hard lobbying of wavering senators by McKinley and his vice president.

The 1898 annexation of Hawaii was carried through Congress by whose joint resolution?

Newlands. A treaty of annexation had stalled in the Senate, so McKinley backed Nevada congressman Francis Newlands's resolution instead, which needed only an ordinary majority in each house.

McKinley's assassin walked up the receiving line in 1901 with his revolver hidden under what?

A handkerchief. He had wrapped it round his right hand like a bandage, so the president reached for the man's left hand to shake instead.

Which policy, proclaimed under McKinley, held that every nation should be free to trade with China on equal terms?

The Open Door Policy. Secretary of State John Hay set it out in 1899 in notes to the great powers, asking each not to shut the others out of the slice of China it controlled.

McKinley reopened an 1850 treaty with Britain so America alone could build what?

A canal, across Central America. The Senate would not accept the first deal's ban on fortifications; a second was signed two months after McKinley's death, and America began building in Panama under his successor.

Which New York office did Theodore Roosevelt hold when bosses pushed him onto McKinley's 1900 ticket?

Governor of New York. Party boss Thomas Platt wanted the reforming governor out of the state and steered him into the vice presidency, the job that made Roosevelt president within months of his taking it.

Which state, the home of his Democratic opponent, did McKinley manage to carry in the 1900 election?

Nebraska. Better farm prices had taken the anger out of the prairie states, and the Democrat lost his own along with several other western states he had carried four years earlier.

McKinley was shot at which event in September 1901?

The Pan-American Exposition. Fearing an attack, his secretary twice struck the public handshaking session from the programme, and twice McKinley put it back.

In which city was McKinley shot?

Buffalo, New York. An early X-ray machine was on show at the fair where he was shot, yet his surgeons never used it, and the bullet they were hunting for was never found.

The man who shot McKinley had been inspired by a speech from which anarchist?

Emma Goldman. The assassin had heard her lecture in Ohio that May; she was arrested after the shooting, then released for lack of any evidence that she had a hand in it.

In which building on the exposition grounds was President McKinley shot in September 1901?

The Temple of Music. As he was held up, wounded, McKinley told his aides to break the news gently to Ida and to stop the crowd from beating the man who had shot him.

Where was Vice President Roosevelt when McKinley's condition collapsed on 13 September 1901?

Camping in the Adirondacks. The doctors had sounded so sure of a recovery that the vice president went on holiday, and a messenger had to be sent into the wilderness to find him.

Which hymn, McKinley's favourite, was reportedly sung at his deathbed?

Nearer, My God, to Thee. Accounts differ on whether the dying president murmured the words himself or the first lady sang them to him; bands across the country played the hymn in his memory.

Which federal agency took on presidential protection after McKinley's assassination?

The Secret Service. It had been set up in 1865 to hunt counterfeiters; after a third president was murdered in 36 years, Congress asked it to guard the president as well.

A prospector named which mountain after McKinley around the time of his first election as president?

Denali. Alaska asked for the peak's Native name back in 1975 and Washington agreed in 2015, before a 2025 executive order restored Mount McKinley as the federal name.

Which future president did McKinley send across the Pacific in 1900 to set up civilian rule in America's new colony?

William Howard Taft. The Ohio judge had gone to see McKinley hoping for a seat on the Supreme Court; he got one in the end, as Chief Justice, eight years after leaving the White House.

McKinley's War Secretary Russell Alger resigned under fire in 1899 after a scandal over which army supplies?

Tainted beef. It went down as 'embalmed beef' after the army's commanding general told an inquiry that the meat smelled like an embalmed body, and Alger resigned under charges of mismanagement.