William McKinley

Like other presidents elected during the post–Civil War era, William McKinley served in the Union army, where he rose from private to major. He then progressed from U.S. representative to governor of Ohio, and finally, to president. In the 1896 election, he defeated the populist Democrat William Jennings Bryan in a landslide victory, thereby cementing the Republican Party’s conservative pro-business platform. The Spanish-American War, which lasted from April to August of 1898, was conducted under the pretext of freeing Cuba. The war guided much of McKinley’s foreign policy and resulted in the United States acquiring the territories of Guam, the Philippines, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico—marking the young nation as a budding global power.

After his reelection in 1900, McKinley was assassinated by an anarchist at the 1901 Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York, underscoring the unending social and political unrest of the 1890s. McKinley is remembered for his patience and kindness, and for the dedication he showed his wife, Ida, who struggled with epilepsy and the deaths of their infant daughters.