William McKinley, Jr. (January 29, 1843 – September 14, 1901) was the 25th President of the United States, and the last veteran of the American Civil War to be elected.
By the 1880s, McKinley was a national Republican leader; his signature issue was high tariffs on imports as a formula for prosperity, as typified by his McKinley Tariff of 1890. As the Republican candidate in the 1896 presidential election, he upheld the gold standard, and promoted pluralism among ethnic groups. His campaign, designed by Mark Hanna, introduced new advertising-style campaign techniques that revolutionized campaign practices and beat back the crusading of his arch-rival, William Jennings Bryan. The 1896 election is often considered a realigning election that marked the beginning of the Progressive Era.
McKinley presided over a return to prosperity after the Panic of 1893. The Spanish-American War was fought during McKinley's presidency. For months he resisted the public demand for war, which was based on news of Spanish atrocities in Cuba, but he was unable to get Spain to agree to implement reforms immediately. Later he annexed the former Spanish territories of the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Guam, and set up a protectorate over Cuba. He also presided over the annexation of the formerly independent Kingdom of Hawaii. McKinley was reelected in the 1900 presidential election after another intense campaign against Bryan, this one focused on foreign policy. After McKinley's assassination in 1901 by Leon Czolgosz, an American anarchist of Polish descent, he was succeeded by Vice President Theodore Roosevelt.
Image & Text:wikipedia.com
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