Romans the 13th chapter. Let every person be in subjection to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God. Therefore, he who resists authority has opposed the ordinance of God, and they who have opposed will receive condemnation upon themselves. For rulers are not a cause for fear, for good behavior, but for evil. Do you want to have no fear of authority? Do what is good, and you will have praise from the same. For the government is a minister of God to you for good. But if you do what is evil, be afraid. For it does not bear the sword for nothing. For it is a minister of God and avenger of who brings wrath upon the one who practices evil. That is not the case. It should be. To be a legitimate government, a government is supposed to protect the good people from the bad people, and the government, people from the government. And we've been studying the presidency of the United States. And some of the guys really are great, worthy of great praise and honor. Others, you wish you could strangle them. because they're not good. They're not good for the country. They're not good for the people of America. The one we're going to talk about today is a very honest man. His name is William McKinley. He was born January the 29th, 1843, and he died September the 14th, 1901 from the results of an assassin's bullet. He was actually shot two times with a .32 caliber pistol. Once in the stomach and once in the shoulder, they took the bullet out of the shoulder. Later on, he became plagued with infection and died. He was the last president to have served in the Civil War. He was the only president to have started in the Civil War as a private. He was born in Ohio to his father, William McKinley. in 1843 in Niles, Ohio, the seventh of nine children of William McKinley Sr. and Nancy Allison McKinley. The McKinleys were of English and Scots-Irish descent and had settled in western Pennsylvania in the 1700s. Their ancestor was an immigrant, David McKinley, born in Dervock County, Atram, in present-day Northern Ireland. William McKinley Sr. was born in Pennsylvania in the Pine Township in Mercer County. The family moved to Ohio when the Sr. McKinley was a boy, settling in New Lisbon, now Lisbon. He met Nancy Allison there and they later married. The Allison family was mostly of English descent. and they were among Pennsylvania's earliest settlers. The family trade on both sides was ironworkers. Now I'm going to tell you something, ironwork is hard work. They were ironmakers, ironworkers. Operated foundries throughout Ohio and in New Lisbon, Niles, Poland, and finally Canton. The household politically and emotionally and intellectually was steeped in whiggish and abolitionist sentiment. They were staunch Methodists. William McKinley was a staunch Methodist all of his life to the point of his death. He was a great husband and father. Yet his children didn't live very long. The Methodists were very influential in the abolitionist movement. William followed closely to his Methodist upbringing. He was active in Methodist church all his life. He was a very pious. God-fearing man. In 1852, his family moved from Miles to Poland, Ohio. And they did that so their children could go to better schools, because they had better schools there. They believed that education was the key to success. He graduated from Poland Seminary in 1859, and he enrolled the next year in Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania. He was an honorary member of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity. He remained in Allegheny for one year, returning home in 1860 after becoming ill. He studied at Mount Union College in Alliance, Ohio as a board member. And his health did recover, but his family finances declined and William was unable to return to Allegheny. He began working as a postal clerk and took a job as a school teacher near Poland, Ohio. Bear with me as I read my numerous notes and scribblings here. When the Southern states ceded from the Union, he, like thousands of other Ohio men, volunteered for service. And he entered with his cousin William McKinley Osborne. They both enlisted as privates, bottom of the ladder. Nobody opened the door for them. The newly formed Poland Guards in June of 1861, the men left for Columbus where they were consolidated with other units to form the 23rd Ohio Infantry. Colonel William Rosecrans became the commander of the regiment. And they thought that they were just being trained and trained into oblivion. But when they went to battle, they realized that their training paid off. He quickly took to a soldier's life. And he wrote many letters, many series of letters to his hometown newspapers, extolling the Army and the Union cause. Of course, he was an abolitionist. What all of the young soldiers in the North did not realize, many of them were abolitionists, but the Civil War was not over slavery at all. Abraham Lincoln in his inaugural address promised that if the southern states ceded from the Union, that he would invade them and destroy them and bring them back under control of the Union. Now always before this period of time, the Union was a voluntary organization of states. Abraham Lincoln reinterpreted the Constitution to say that it was a deity, that the states could not leave it, basically. That it was not voluntary anymore, but they were going to do that. And it was all over, basically, taxes and tariffs. And, of course, North believed in high tariffs, and the South wanted free trade. And they had had this up until this point, and Abraham Lincoln said, if you don't pay your taxes, I will invade you. That's it. The South offered to pay for all of the military bases, whatever they had to do. They just wanted the North to leave them alone and leave their way of life alone. Abraham Lincoln, basically, after the war was well on its way, he was about to be replaced, because the North did not like him at all. He was not a radical Republican, and he did not believe in equal rights either. So he wrote the Emancipation Proclamation, which meant nothing. All it was was a war measure to satisfy those people in the North. because they wanted to free the slaves. Abraham Lincoln didn't know what to do with them. He thought about shipping them off to some other country and put them in a colony and establishing a colony, a United States colony in some place and just like Monrovia, James Monroe, they always wanted to free the slaves but not turn them back loose in white society to compete with white free labor. They said they will never get along. We'll have problems here from now on, and we are still having problems, aren't we? Even over a hundred years later. Well, many in the North were wanting to get rid of Lincoln, and so Lincoln wrote the Emancipation Proclamation, which they were really happy then. He had to have some reason to fight this war. 3 quarters of a million people died in this war and many, many, many injured. Now he met, he dealt with William Rosecrans, the commander of the regiment, and then he met Major Rutherford B. Hayes. Now, they were being issued guns and things that the men didn't want to accept because they were better guns. Rutherford B. Hayes that told him, man just accept what you got and let's go on and fight the war. And McKinley was very much impressed by Rutherford B. Hayes. And they had a friendship until Hayes died, or until McKinley died. Hayes died in 1893 and McKinley died in 1901. Now they were led by a Colonel Eliakim P. Scammon, and they set out for West Virginia, or Western Virginia, what is today West Virginia. By the way, the United, Lincoln divided the Virginia, the state of Virginia, without Virginia conceding or okaying it. He pretty much did what he wanted to do, regardless of state's rights. He believed that Scammon believed in too much military training again, but when he went into battle, with all the drilling, it really made sense then. He became a quartermaster. In other words, a man that supplied the medicines, the food, the grations, the armament, everything to the different divisions. He was promoted. He was sergeant. He took his sergeant's place that was very ill. That September, his regiment was called east to reinforce General John Pope's Army of Virginia at the Second Battle of Bull Run. They did not arrive in time for the battle but joined the Army of the Potomac as it hurried north to cut off Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia as it advanced into Maryland. You have to realize Maryland is where Washington, D.C. is. The 23rd Regiment was the first one to encounter the Fed Confederates, or what they called the rebels, at the Battle of South Mountain in September the 14th. After tremendous losses, the Union forces drove back to Confederates and continued to Sharksburg, Maryland, where they again engaged Lee's Army of Virginia at the Battle of Antietam. That was one of the bloodiest battles following the war. McKinley came under heavy fire when bringing rations to the men on the line. His regiment suffered many casualties, but the Army of the Pumic was victorious and the Confederates retreated into Virginia. The Shenandoah Valley. His regiment went into winter quarters near Charleston, Virginia. And McKinley was ordered back into Ohio with some sergeants to recruit fresh troops. You have to realize that Sherman and Grant were sacrificing their men by the thousands. They were sending them in to just... Robert E. Lee couldn't believe that they were sacrificing their men for nothing. It made him sick to shoot those men down. Thousands of men lay on the battlefields. He was commissioned again to second lieutenant in recognition of what he had done in Antietam. They didn't see very much action until July of 1863 when the division skirmished with John Hunt Morgan's Calvary at the Battle of Buffington Island. Now going back to the Shadow Dole Valley. The Union forces began to deal in all-out war. All-out war is what they called the horrible raids that went into different places in Kansas, etc. with William Condrell. They burned the sound down. The Union forces went through the Shenandoah Valley and burned every farm, every house, every barn, burned every field, killed every cow and horse and dog and goat and sheep in the whole area. And if any man tried to put his house out when it was set on fire, they shot him. That's all I wore. That's beyond the rules of war. This is when you bring the civilians and begin to punish the civilians. And some of those civilians were not the Southern sympathizers. It was a bad thing. The James family and the Younger family. The Younger family, Mr. Younger was a postal carrier. And he had seven ranches where they sent different stages. The stages were postal. People could ride on the stage, but the stage was for the post office. It carried the mail. He was a northern sympathizer, not a southern sympathizer. The Northern Army caught him on the road, shot him down, took every dime he had, and then went and stole every animal they had in all seven farms and burned them down to the ground. And then the younger boys joined Quantrell's raiders. They talk about William Quantrell and Bloody Bill Anderson. Sherman and Grant were worse than those ever were. I'm speaking from the southern side because my family were there. We went through that. We lived through this. There was a division assigned to George Crook's Army of West Virginia. And they resumed the offensive. They began to attack. They went into Virginia and destroyed all of their mines and all of their factories, all their lead mines, all their salt mines, etc. Anything that they thought that they could support the enemy with, their enemy with, they destroyed. That was farms, buildings, whatever. On May the 9th, the Army engaged Confederate troops at Cloyde's Mountain. They charged enemy entrenchments and drove the rebels from the field. McKinley said later in life that there was as desperate as any witness during the war at that battle. It was desperate. The Union forces destroyed all Confederate supplies. That meant all the farms. They destroyed every farm, every courthouse, every building, every city. They burned them down to the ground. And again, they were successful. They moved on to Shenandoah Valley. Their armies broke for winter quarters to resume hostilities there. and Major General David Hunter's Army of the Shenandoah were soon in contact with the Confederate forces capturing Lexington, Virginia on June the 11th. Again, I said that they went to Shenandoah Valley. They didn't leave any building standing, nothing. No fields. The people were starving to death. The civilians were starving to death. They shot their dogs. because they said they thought it might train the dogs to attack the Union armies. This situation here, hatred went on for over a hundred years because of this. You don't teach this in the average schools. This is what happened, people. And they all say, well, What the dictator said, what they called Lincoln was a dictator, which he was. He was a benevolent dictator. He was a benevolent murderer, so to speak. And talk about insurrection. There was a division in the United States immediately when he was elected because they knew what he was going to do. There was a Confederate jubilee early, drove and raided into Maryland and they were forced to leave that area and go back north. On July 24th, McKinley came under fire and the Army was defeated. They retreated into Maryland and the army was reorganized again under General Philip Sheridan. There is a movie out talking about Sherman and Sheridan when they made Georgia howl. They went in and burned Georgia to the ground. Sheridan replaced Hunter and McKinley who had been promoted to captain now after the battle was transferred to Crook's staff. By August, Early was retreating to the south in the valley with Sheridan's army in pursuit. They had an assault in Berryville where McKinley had a horse shot out from underneath him. They advanced on to Opequon Creek, where they broke the enemy lines and pursued down further south. They engaged again at Cedar Creek in October of 19. And after Cedar Creek, the Army stayed in the vicinity. through election day when McKinley cast his first presidential ballot for the incumbent Republican Abraham Lincoln. If he hadn't had done that Emancipation Proclamation, they would have replaced him. The North wanted to defeat the South and free the slaves. The President didn't care about that. But he had to follow through. We were in a war now that he declared on the South, basically. And it had to be won in any way possible, he thought. General Crook was captured by Confederate soldiers. McKinley had served on the staffs of four different generals. Crook, John D. Stevenson, Samuel Carroll, and Winfield S. Hancock. Then he was finally assigned to Carroll's staff again. Lee and his army surrendered to Jutlicious S. Grant a few days later, effectively ending the war, except for Clontrail's men and Anderson's men, because they had done what Sherman did. There was a lifetime sentence, dead or alive. They couldn't go back in society. And that's why Jesse James began to rob the trains and the banks. The Youngers were going to rob a bank where the president of the bank was one of the men that killed their father and stole all the money, everybody's money, and that bank was their money. But they hadn't robbed any banks. They had the James, the Youngers, and the Daltons all together. The Daltons and the Youngers were together, not the Jameses. The Jameses weren't there at Coffeyville. If you don't believe me, just read Cole Younger by Cole Younger. He wrote that book himself. He said we had never, since we were with Fawn Farrell's Raiders, we'd never worked together at all with the James brothers. They did with the Daltons, and they were cousins. They were first cousins when the Daltons and the Youngers were. Let's go on now, I'm telling you a little bit of other history in here, what really went on. In July, the veterans corps were mustered out of service and McKinley and Carroll were relieved of their duties. They encouraged McKinley to apply for a, in the peacetime army. But he declined and returned to Ohio. He, with another man by the name of Howe, co-authored and published a 12-volume work, Official Roster of the Soldiers of the State of Ohio for the War of the Republic in 1861-66. And it was published in 1886. After 1865, after he was out of the war, he decided to start a career in law and began studying in the office of the attorney, Poland, Ohio. The following year, he continued his studies by attending Albany Law School in New York. After studying there for a little less than a year, he returned home and was admitted to the bar in Warren, Ohio in March 1867. That same year he moved on to Canton, Ohio, the county seat of Stark County, and set up a small office. He started a partnership with George Belden, an experienced lawyer and former judge, and he was successful. a small but consistent income from rental buildings that he had bought. He bought a block of buildings and he began to receive income on that. He invested his money wisely. Then his army friend, Rutherford B. Hayes, was nominated for governor in 1867. McKinley may have made some speeches for him, and Hayes carried it for a statewide victory because of, basically, McKinley's, he was a good speaker. McKinley ran for the prosecuting attorney of Stark County, an office that had been historically held by Democrats. Then he ran for re-election in 1871 and the Democrats nominated William A. Lynch, a prominent local lawyer, and McKinley was defeated by 143 votes. He began to, as his social life and professional life began to increase and he became prominent, he began to court Ida Saxton. the daughter of a prominent Canton family. They were married on January 25, 1871, in the newly built First Presbyterian Church of Canton. Ida soon joined her husband's Methodist church. Their first child was born on Christmas Day in Christmas Day in 1871. The second daughter, Ida, named after her mother, was born in 1873, but both died the same year. McKinley's wife went into deep depression at her baby's death, and her health, which was never super roast, but was declining. Two years later, Katherine died of typhoid fever, their other child. Ida never recovered from her children's deaths, and they had no more children. Mrs. McKinley developed epilepsy around the same time and depended strongly on her husband's presence, and he took care of her. That man took care of his wife. He was a very religious, devout man, and he took care of his wife. You know, a lot of times back then, these prominent men had four or five concubines and maybe half a dozen children out of wedlock, and this man was different. He was a different man. He was devoted. and attended to his wife's medical and emotional needs for the rest of his life. She insisted that her husband continue his career in law and politics. He attended the state Republican convention and nominated Hayes for a third term as governor in 1875 and campaigned again for his old friend in that election that fall, and the next year McKinley's undertook a high-profile case defending a group of striking coal miners. Now, one thing about McKinley, he was elected by big business. I mean, they threatened their workers and everything. If William Jennings Bryan is elected, you are fired the next day. And they saw where Republican and Democrat ballots were in their places of employment. And they threatened their employees to where they had to vote for McKinley. But McKinley stood up for the workers, and he had the working men on his side in many ways. These striking coal workers were arrested for rioting after a clash with the strikebreakers, and the strikebreakers basically would shoot He won the case of almost all the mine workers. He was able to get all of them off except for one miner acquitted. That case where he defended the miners, the workers, really boosted his standing among the laborers. And that was a whole great majority of the county electorate. It also introduced him to a man by the name of Hannah. Hannah would be his right-hand man or else what they called his brain trust the rest of his life. Hannah became his strongest backer in years to come always. And then McKinley's good standing with labor became successful because most of the Republicans didn't care anything about labor at all. The working man. He tried to attract some of the blue-collar workers. And they were delegates. And he ran for Ohio 17th Congressional District. McKinley campaigned for Hayes as president because he believed in a protective tariff. And some of McKinley's arguments for tariff were really convincing. Hayes won a hotly disputed election to reach the presidency. McKinley paid a great financial cost because his income as a congressman would only be half what he earned as a lawyer. In other words, he lost about 50% of his wages becoming a congressman. He took his congressional seat in October 1877 when President Hayes summoned Congress into a special session. Now, McKinley would vote against his best friend if he thought it was the thing to do. He was given an unimportant committee assignment, but he undertook it with great zest and consciousness. I mean, he did what he was going to do. He worked. Whatever he was supposed to do, he worked at. Now remember, Hayes didn't want to, he didn't give jobs to people because they were his friend. He believed that they were doing the civil service reform. The young congressman broke ranks. with Hayes on the question of currency. It didn't affect their friendship, but he believed differently. The United States had effectively been placed on the gold standard by the Coinage Act of 1873. When silver prices dropped significantly, many sought to make silver again legal tender. There wasn't always silver dimes and silver quarters and silver dollars. Everything was backed by gold. Gold, they believed, would not inflate. Many people wanted to coin silver and make it equal with gold. McKinley said that was inflationary, and he didn't believe in it. They believed in the economic benefits of increased money supply would be worth the inflationary problems. He said he believed that the coinage of silver would harm the United States and international trade, because the United States had to pay all their debts to other countries in gold, not silver. McKinley voted for the Bland-Allison Act of 1878, which mandated large government purchases of silver for striking in the money. He also joined the large majorities in each house to override Hayes' veto of the legislation. In doing so, McKinley voted against the position of the House Republican leader, James Garfield, a fellow Ohioan. Remember, I told you, if he thought something was right, he'd vote against them, even if they were his best friend. McKinley was a strong advocate of protective tariffs. And remember, that's what the Civil War was over. It was over tariffs and taxes. He said that he believed that he ought to allow American manufacturing to have an advantage over anyone else in any imports. Give me an advantage. a price advantage over the domestic market, over all foreign competition. And that's what happened when President Trump brought tariffs on the imports of steel from China to protect the steel workers and get the businesses and factories going here again. In many ways it is good. In some ways it isn't also. Canton, Ohio had become a prosperous as a center for manufacture of farm equipment because of the protection to protect a high tariffs. They hired workers, they foundries and factories. McKinley voted every bill that supported bills that raised protected tariffs opposed those that lowered them or imposed tariffs simply to raise revenue. James Garfield was elected president in 1880 and created a vacancy of the House of Ways and Means Committee, and McKinley was selected to fill it, gaining a spot on the most powerful committee. But after only two terms, McKinley increasingly became a significant figure in the nation's politics. In 1880, he served a brief term as Ohio's representative on the Republican National Committee. In 1884, he was elected as delegate to the that year's Republican convention where he served as a chair of committee on resolutions and won plaudits for his handling of conventions when he called upon to preside over the convention. By 1886, McKinley, Senator John Sherman, and Governor Joseph B. Foraker were considered the leaders of the Republican Party in Ohio. Sherman Now this is the brother of William Tecumseh Sherman, helped to found the Republican Party and ran three times for a Republican nomination for president, but was unsuccessful. Now there was a man, this man named Hannah. Hannah wanted to support McKinley. And they were, many of them supporting Sherman. But Hannah was convinced that Sherman couldn't win. And then James G. Blaine, the continental senator from the state of Maine. Blaine, Blaine, James A. Maine, the continental liar from the state of Maine as they called him. He was always out there in the front of politics. Because he did a lot of good things, but he was a crook. Simple as that. But he did a lot of things with foreign policy in America that was good for America. So we can't just write him off. He was unsuccessful as a Republican candidate in 1884. And then they had Benjamin Harrison. And Benjamin Harrison won. And he was elected president. And for the rest of McKinley's life now, we're going to have Hannah supporting him and he's going to be his brain trust, so to speak. Hannah just became to absolutely admire McKinley and became his lifelong friend and close advisor. He supported other Republicans at the same time also, but mainly he cleared a pathway for McKinley. He recognized McKinley's potential. And then he went through a lot of gerrymandering and he lost some races. He said He said, the tariffs was framed for the people as a defense to their industries, as a protection to the labor of their hands, as a safeguard to the happy homes of American working men, and as security to their education and their wages and their investments. It will bring to this country a prosperity unparalleled in our own history and unrivaled in the history of the world. He became governor of Ohio from 1882, or 1892 that is, to 1896. He did a good job doing that, even though the Ohio governor had very little power. introduced some legislature dealing with labor that was for the common working man. He set up an arbitration board to settle work disputes and obtained passage of a law that fined employers for firing workers for belonging to a union. Harrison proved to be unpopular with the people. And again, the aging Blaine, and a man by the name of Reed, and also Sherman, they're all being considered. And then Grover Cleveland was to return to office. He was elected again. And then we have the panic of 1893. And Grover Cleveland was a great man. He believed in the gold standard. He was a great spokesman for the common worker. Now we have a man by the name of Walter Walker had lent money to McKinley in their younger days. In gratitude, McKinley had often guaranteed Walker's borrowings for his business. The governor had never kept track of what we were signing and he believed that Walker a sound businessman. Walker deceived McKinley, telling him that the new notes were exactly renewals of matured ones. Walker was ruined in the recession. McKinley was called upon for repayment on February 1893 and the total owed was $100,000. and McKinley was absolutely desperate. He proposed to resign as governor and earn the money as an attorney and pay it back. Instead of his wealthy employers as Hannah, a Chicago publisher, H.H. Colesoft became trustees of the fund from which the notes would be paid, both William and Ida McKinley, placed their property in the hands of the Fund's trustees, which included Hannah and Colesaw, and the supporters raised and contributed a substantial sum of money, and all the couple's property was returned to them by the end of 1893 when McKinley, who had promised eventual payment, asked for the list of contributors. He was refused to him. Many of the people that suffered in hard times sympathized with McKinley. His popularity continued to grow because of his honesty and his dead-set values on honesty and protection of workers and yet protection of tariffs where the workers would have jobs. He campaigned all over widely for Republicans in 1894 midterm congressional elections, and many party candidates in districts where he spoke were successful. It's kind of like Trump now speaking for people and they win. His political efforts in all of Iowa were rewarded by the re-election in 1895 of a Republican successor as governor. And then the new Senators and other leaders began to think about backing McKinley against Reverber Cleveland for his presidential ambitions. But the Republican Party was in a civil war with each other. He finally made peace with that. And he obtained the nomination. Hannah, on McKinley's behalf, met with the Eastern Republican political bosses such as Senators Thomas Platt of New York and Matthew Quay of Pennsylvania, who were willing to guarantee McKinley's nomination in exchange for promises regarding patronage and office. McKinley was determined to obtain the nomination without making any deals. and Hanna accepted that deal, his decision. Many of his early efforts were focused on the South. Hanna obtained a vacation home in southern Georgia where McKinley visited and met with Republican politicians from the region. He needed 453 and a half delegate votes to gain the nomination, and he gained nearly half of that number from the South and border states. He said, Platt said, Hannah had the South practically solid before some of us weakened or even woke to it. The South and Illinois became crucial battlegrounds for McKinley supporters. Chicago businessman and future Vice President Charles G. Dawes sought to elect delegates, pledged to vote for McKinley at the National Convention at St. Louis, and Coleman proved unable to stand against McKinley despite the support of local Republican machines. McKinley had a near complete sweep of the Illinois delegates. Harrison had been deemed as a possible contender, but he backed out. He said he didn't want to do it. And McKinley took control of Indiana at a great speed. Every place they went they found the states alive and the delegates alive for McKinley. Now, McKinley began to campaign quietly. His front porch campaigns. And the big business, Rockefeller, Carnegie, All of these people began to pour millions of dollars into his campaign. Tremendous amount of money. Now, they're going to support him because he's going to keep in place the laws that they had ensuring their tariffs, and not only that, unknowingly the workers under their thumbs in control. The big businessmen told their workers, if the opposing William Jennings Bryan was elected President of the United States, they would lose their job the next day. And they had the voting boxes in the places of employment, Democrat and Republican. And so you can realize how come Three and a half million dollars were spent on his campaign. Three and a half million dollars when they were campaigning for him in different places. Now remember, he didn't leave his home. He just sat back and let it take place. William Jennings Bryan spent $500,000 campaigning. The other side, three and a half million. All of the railroads were giving people basically free fares when they were going to rallies. Bryan spoke brilliantly. They wanted McKinley to get out and speak against him. McKinley said this. I might as well set up a trapeze on my front lawn and compete with some professional athlete as to go out and speak against Brian. I can't out-think it." He said, I have to think when I speak and I have to think before I say anything. Instead of going to the people, McKinley stayed at home and all of that big money in this campaign and free train rides won him the election. He made himself available to the public every day except Sunday. The railroad subdivised the visitors with low excursion rates and the pro-silver Cleveland plane dealer disgusted stated that going to a canton had been made cheaper than staying at home. The newspapers would not support William Jennings Bryan. The people supported him, but they were afraid to vote. The newspapers were all against him. Now the newspapers were sending out studies and analysis of the election. And people would get it and they would study these analysis on these different positions that they had and they would just be able to answer back and forth and do arguments between their own people. The status of silver and gold standards dominated the campaign in the beginning. William Jennings Bryan believed that the coinage of silver would help the working man. pay off his debts, etc. He was inaugurated in 1897 as President. He won. He was sworn in as President as his wife and mother looked on. He gave a lengthy inaugural address and he urged tariff reform. He stated that the currency issue would have to await the tariff legislation. He warned against foreign interventions. We want no wars of conquest. We must avoid the temptation of territory aggression, he said. looking at my notes. He appointed Sherman and Sherman was actually too mentally unstable and he'd become too old. He had become too old. He had to replace him later on. He appointed many people to different jobs and tried to avoid any scandals as much as possible. Instead, some of the people he trusted became very, very corrupt. And he'd replace them. Now, during his presidency, we had a war with Spain, basically over Cuba. Everything that he did in his expansionism, defamed him about was to help the people in those areas, the Philippines and Guam, Cuba, Hawaii, the acquisition of Hawaii. He wanted the freedom for the Spanish colony in Cuba. Now, several times in the past, Americans especially James G. Blaine, wanted to take Cuba and make it a state. Many people, after the Civil War, wanted to get Cuba and send a lot of the Negroes down there to Cuba and let them form their own colonies and let them elect their own rulers and have their own farms, etc. And Cuba was a real good place for sugarcane or whatever down in that area. They should have done that. Cuba was very important. It's not very far from Florida, you know. There were riots in Havana, and McKinley agreed to send a battleship, USS Maine. On February 15th, Maine exploded and sank with 266 men killed. And the American people were focused on a war with Spain. And they started to investigate what made this ship sink and they found out that it hit a mine. McKinley continued to negotiate for Cuban independence. Spain refused. McKinley's proposals on April the 11th, McKinley turned to the matter over to Congress. He did not ask for war. but Congress declared war anyway on April 20 with addition to the Teller Amendment, which disavowed any intention of annexing Cuba. McKinley's actions were based upon pacifism, humanitarianism, self-restraint, and not by any external pressures at all by anyone. The man was going to do what was right, he believed. The expansion of the telegraph made the development of the war to where he could tell what was going on every day. McKinley found that Alger, an inadequate Secretary of War, did not get along with the Army's Commanding General, Nelson A. Miles. Nelson A. Miles was a crooked man. You study his dealings with Geronimo in the Apache Wars and find out what he did. Lieutenant Charles B. Gatewood said of him, he said, if you gain the whole world, man gain the whole world and lose his soul, what has he got? Nelson Miles was not a man of his word. The war led to a change in McKinley's cabinet, and the President accepted Sherman's recognition as Secretary of State, and William R. Day agreed to serve as Secretary until the war's end. Well, in a short period of time, the Navy had its first victory with the Asian Asiatic squadron led by Commodore George Dewey. He destroyed the Spanish Navy at the Battle of Manila Bay in the Philippines. Dewey's overwhelming victory expanded the scope of the war from one centered in the Caribbean that would determine the fate of all Spanish Pacific colonies. increased the number of troops and sent to the Philippines and granted the forces Commander Major General Wesley Merritt the power to set up legal systems and raise taxes necessary for long occupation. By the time the troops arrived in the Philippines at the end of 1898, June, McKinley had decided that Spain would be required to surrender the archipelago islands to the United States. He said he was viewed to have all views on the subject. He believed that as the war progressed, the public would come to demand a retention of the islands as a prize of war. And that helped us a lot in the future. In the Caribbean theater, the large force of regulars and volunteers gathered near Tampa, Florida for invasion of Cuba. We wouldn't have had the Bay of Pigs or anything if we'd have taken over Cuba basically and made it a state. Exactly what they wanted to so many times. James Garfield and Grover Cleveland stood against that. Then there was a Major General William Rufus Shafter. who sailed from Florida on June 20th landing near San Diego de Cuba two days later following a skirmish on Los Gasamos on June 24th. Sherman's army engaged in the Spanish forces on July 2nd at the Battle of San Juan Hill and of course you know who was there, Teddy Roosevelt. It was a day-long battle, intense day-long battle. The American forces were victorious, even though they suffered heavy losses on both sides. And finally, in the city of Santiago, which surrendered on July 7th, placing Cuba under the effective American control. Miles and McKinley ordered an invasion of Puerto Rico. which met very little resistance in July. The distance from Spain and the introduction of the Spanish Navy made resupply impossible and the Spanish government began to look for a way out of the war. McKinley's cabinet agreed with him that Spain must leave Cuba and Puerto Rico. but they disagreed on the Philippine Islands. Some of them wishing to annex the entire archipelago, and some wishing only to retain a naval base in the area. Some seemed to favor annexation of the Philippines. Several of the leaders, including Brian, William Jennings Brian, in Cleveland, where we're and the newly formed American Anti-Imperialist League made their opposition known. Anti-imperialism. McKinley wanted to open negotiations with Spain on the basis of Cuban liberation. You liberate Cuba and we'll talk. final status of the Philippines and Puerto Rico, the annexation of them, would be subject of further discussion. The occupation of Cuba began to deteriorate when the American army was struck with the owl fever. And Spain finally agreed to a ceasefire by August the 12th. The treaty negotiations began in Paris in September 1898, and the talks continued until December 18, when the Treaty of Paris was signed. The United States acquired, under McKinley, Puerto Rico and the Philippines, as well as the Isle of Guam, and Spain would link its claims to Cuba. In exchange, the United States agreed to pay Spain $20 million. McKinley had difficulty convincing the Senate to approve the treaty by the by the money involved. Eventually it was success. And the Senate voted in favor of it February 6, 1899, 57 to 27. During the war McKinley also pursued to annex the Republic of Hawaii because we needed a base there, a naval base there. This man did a lot of things. The new republic, though, was dominated by business interests, not of those of the indigenous people. And that's why Grover Cleveland didn't annex it. They should have. He should have done it in his time. The Queen wanted to reject a limited role. There was strong American support for annexation and a need for a Pacific bases in wartime became clear after the Battle of Manila. We needed a naval base and we needed to build a navy and this is one of the men that built, made America a dominating world factor, William McKinley. Rockefellers, Carnegies, Morgans, all of these got very rich during his time. Very rich and very powerful. And that's not what he wanted. He wanted them to treat the workers nice, good, fair. Grover Cleveland said, we need Hawaii just as much as a good deal more than we did California in its manifest destiny. We need Hawaii as much as we needed California in manifest destiny, coast to coast. McKinley wanted to have an open door policy with China and all nations. Free trade with China and none would seek to violate the nation's territorial integrity. Then American missionaries were threatened with death in China. And we had the Boxer Rebellion. And it menaced all of the foreigners in China. All the Westerners in Peking were besieged. In cooperation with other Western powers, McKinley ordered 5,000 troops to the city in June of 1900 in the China Relief Expedition. And there are still famous stories of missionaries, Baptist missionaries, that were in this area. They called Rice Christians. because the rice kitchens where they supported these people, the rice Christians. The Southern Baptist Convention made a real bad mistake. They did not train indigenous preachers and workers. Missionary Baptists went over there and they trained indigenous workers and preachers, wherever they went they did. Southern Baptists made big mistakes in this. the city in June 19 of the China Relief Expedition. The Westerners were rescued the next month, but several Congressional Democrats objected to McKinley's dispatching troops without consulting the legislature. And that became a president from that time on. McKinley's actions set a precedent that led most of his successors, exerting similar independent control over the military, by the president and what it did was basically made the presidential office extremely powerful. The tariff issue McKinley tried to get all of the European nations to accept silver as well as gold as a trade payment. But England rejected it with immediate opposition and Britain rejected the proposal. We have a gold strike in Alaska and Australia which increased the gold volume. And the monetary supply began to, gold began to become more plentiful and yet the standard of the dollar without silver coinage. McKinley did everything he could do to support the blacks in the south. and hopefully progress towards equality. He spoke against lynching. The Ku Klux Klan was very powerful and the Ku Klux Klan came into power because of the carpetbaggers and the corruption in the South to protect themselves. It became a mess. The South was a mess because of the carpetbaggers, because of Grant's administration, the corruption that took place in it. There was a lot of racial violence in the South. He wanted to support the black people, but he couldn't do as much as he wanted to do. And so many of the blacks caused him to lose support. When a group of white supremacists violently overthrew the duly elected government of Wilmington, North Carolina on November 10, 1898, an event that came to be recognized as a Wilmington insurrection in 1898, McKinley refused to request by black leaders to send federal marshals and federal troops to protect the black citizens. ignored the city's residents' appeals for help to recover from the widespread destruction of the predominantly black neighborhood of Brooklyn. Before the Spanish-American War, the black people, the Negroes, thought that McKinley was their best friend they ever had. But because of pressure, he began to to back off. He tried to have sectional reconciliation, but the carpet-bagging had done so much harm in the South that the Southerners did not trust anything that was done. They did whatever they did by Ku Klux Klan, by their own vigilantes. And many of them were wrong in what they did. Well, in the re-election, his former vice president had died so he accepted Teddy Roosevelt, or Theodore Roosevelt, as his running mate. Many of the Republicans did not want this, because he had become such a pain in the neck in New York that they sure didn't want him to, they wanted to get rid of him, and they figured if they made him as Vice President, that he would just solely dwindle away. But that's not what happened. They said, you realize that cowboy, blankety blank cowboy, is only one heartbeat away from the President of the United States? And he would go after Big Business immediately, which he did. Again, he ran against William, Johnny, and Brian. And again, Big Business supported McKinley, and McKinley won. He only made one speech. That's all he had to make. Big business took care of the rest of it. Big money. His second term. They undertook a six-week tour of the nation, traveling mostly by rail. They were going to travel through the south, to the southwest, and up the Pacific coast east again to conclude with a visit on June 13, 1901 in the Pan American Expedition in New York. Ida fell very ill in California, and her husband had to put a limit on his public events. And finally he decided to go back into Washington and to campaign in the Buffalo visit, Buffalo, New York that is. McKinley enjoyed very much meeting the public. They were the ones that elected him, he said. There were people in his administration that were very afraid because of all the other people going on. There were people making speeches like Emma Goldman in Cleveland. There was a man there. Leon Soskogos, that took her words literally when she thought that if you have somebody elected that you didn't agree with, you kill them. And he thought that he was going to do a great favor to the American people if he killed this man, just like the man that killed the former president before this, Garfield. They thought they were doing the world a favor. On September 5th, McKinley delivered his address at the fairgrounds before a crowd of 50,000 people at his final speech. McKinley urged recircuitry treaties within the nation to assure American manufacturers access to foreign markets. He intended that this speech would be a keynote to his plans in his second term. hoped to assassinate Kinley and he had managed to get close enough to the presidential podium but did not fire because he didn't think he could accurately kill the president. He was uncertain of his target. After hearing the speech by Emma Goldman on Cleveland, he decided to take action that he believed would advance his cause and the cause of the American people. He waited on September the 5th, he waited for the next day at the Temple of Music on the exposition grounds where the President was to meet the public. He concealed his gun and a handkerchief and when he reached out, the head of the line, McKinley, he shot McKinley twice and Abman actually once in the shoulder and once in the stomach. And by the way, you can watch this man being executed on television. Go to YouTube and you can watch the execution. They electrocuted this man for this act. Thomas Edison video recorded this. A few days after the shooting, McKinley seemed to improve. The doctors were more than hopeful for his recovery. Vice President Teddy Roosevelt was on a camping trip to the Adirondacks. And we have a very religious man, a very honest man as president. And there in his last dying moments, he told them, as his condition deteriorated, Gangrene was setting up inside of his body. He knew that his life was hopeless. He was being poisoned. He was a model patient, they said. And when he was dying, he knew he was dying, he said, it's useless, gentlemen. It is useless, gentlemen. I think we ought to have prayer. That's it. We ought to have prayer. He brought in his relatives and friends and gathered around his deathbed. Ida sobbed terribly over him. She said, I want to go with you, I want to go with you, I want to go with you too. McKinley said, we're all going, we're all going. God's will be done, not ours. And the final, last strength, he put his arm around her. And then she began to sing his favorite hymn, Nearer, My God, to Thee. And as he died, she was singing this hymn. He tried to sing it with her as he expired. At 2.15 a.m. on September the 14th, McKinley died. Teddy Roosevelt rushed back to Buffalo and took the oath of office. So the Loscos put on trial for murder nine days after McKinley's death, was found guilty, sentenced to death on September the 26th, and executed by electric chair on October the 29th, 1901. Like I said, you can watch him being executed if you want to do that. The nation experienced a wave of genuine grief And they began to name all kinds of places after McKinley. They loved him. The American public, during his administration, America, the finances became very stable. The workers were not being treated right, but finances were stable. Everything was stable. No inflation. Everything was rock solid. Because of the gold standard. He was a had several funerals. They took him to the East Room of the Executive Mansion, and they laid him in state at the Capitol before being transported to Canton by train. A hundred thousand people passed by the open caskets in the Capitol Rotunda after having waited for hours in the rain. In Canton, an equal number did the same at Stark County Courthouse on September 18. The following day, a funeral service was held in the First Methodist Church. The casket was next sealed and taken to the McKinley House, where relatives paid their final respects to their loved one. It was transported to the receiving vault at West Lawn Cemetery in Canton to await the construction of the memorial to McKinley. already being built. They believed that Ida McKinley would not last long or survive only days. She loved her husband so much and she depended on him so much. But she lived until 1907. The mausoleum was built and Teddy Roosevelt dedicated it to him. And she was buried with him and her two daughters. They're all buried in that mausoleum. Many other monuments and names were honored him. President Theodore Roosevelt dedicated it in September 30, 1907. William and Ida Kinley were interred there with their daughters atop a hillside overlooking the city of Canton. You can go online and you can watch the funeral of this president. You can even watch him speak. There were many other memorials in honor of McKinley. The William McKinley McKinley Monument stands in front of the Ohio State House in Columbus and a large marble statue of McKinley is situated at the birthplace of Niles. Twenty Ohio schools bear McKinley's name. Several more schools in the United States are named McKinley School. Nearly a million dollars was pledged by contributors to allocate from public funds for the construction of McKinley Memorials in the year after his death. There are a significant number of major memorials to McKinley in Ohio, and they reflect the love for him that Ohio had. Ohioans believed that McKinley would be ranked above the highest presidents because of the things that he did. Statues of him are in more than a dozen states. His name has been bestowed on streets, civic organizations, libraries. In 1896, a gold prospector gave Mount McKinley, or McKinley's name, to Denali, Mount McKinley in Alaska, the tallest mountain in North America at 20,310 feet. He was changed back to Denali by Barack Obama, basically. It's called Mount Denali and the Denali National Park. The name Mount McKinley National Park was changed by legislation signed by President Jimmy Carter also in 1980. He died as one of the most beloved presidents in history. The new president Theodore Roosevelt made very little effort to secure the trade reciprocity that McKinley had intended to negotiate with other nations. Because of Theodore's great energy and public opinion, he just absolutely overshadowed what McKinley had done because of what he did. And he's one of the greatest presidents America ever had, Theodore Roosevelt. He was a forerunner of the modern powerful presidents. We have like dictators now almost, especially now. Even though he didn't look at it, he dispensed military people without asking Congress or whatever else. He did it because he thought it was necessary to protect people. Now they do it because they can. His administration dominated the Republican Party for over a quarter century after his death. William McKinley was one major actor in some of the most important events in American history. His decisions helped shape future policies and politics and public attitudes for decades following, even till now. He is known for his great love, affection, and his protection of his wife. He is known for his dignified demeanor. He did exactly what he thought was necessary for the nation and for the good of all the people, always. He had a life of public service. He began as a private in the Civil War. He believed that, I'm trying to look for his statement, if I can find it quickly in my He believed that under free trade, the trader is the master and producer, and the producer the slave. Protection is but the law of nature, the law of self-preservation, of self-development, of securing the highest and best destiny of the race of man. It is said that protection is immoral. Why, if protection builds up and elevates 63 million U.S. population of people, the influence of over 63 million of people elevates the rest of the world. We cannot take a step in the pathway of progress without benefiting mankind everywhere. Well, they say, buy where you can buy the cheapest. Of course, that applies to labor, as to everything else. Let me give you a maximum that is a thousand times better than that. And it is the protection maximum. Buy where you can pay the easiest. Buy where you can pay the easiest. And the spot of earth is where the labor wins its highest rewards. He believed that the tariffs would protect the American workers. But the American great big business did not share with the American workers. And Teddy Roosevelt would take care of that, the rest of the story. I hope you've enjoyed this lesson. I know it's long. These presidents are a lot of work. I spend two or three weeks of hard study before I do each and every one of them. I hope that you appreciate this man for what he did in America, for America. He made mistakes. Yes, all of them makes mistakes. But he did what he thought was best for you and for me, and for your children and grandchildren. Father, we send this message out for your honor and glory. Father, thank you for all the blessings you give us. Thank you for the history of this man and what he did for our country. Please use it for your honor and glory. In Jesus' name we pray. And I ask you to forgive me where I fell.