Abstract
McKinley’s victory was huge, not in popular vote but in having inspired Republican majorities at all levels of government, majorities that were to last for decades. This was as important as any of his actions as president—and he was an extraordinary president. He dominated Congress, was enormously popular, and despite the conventional wisdom that presents him as a dull conservative, he set the scene for the vibrancy of his successor, the dynamic Theodore Roosevelt, who had been his vice president. When Theodore Roosevelt said he intended his presidency to be a continuation of McKinley’s, it appears as though he meant it, and was not engaging merely in public relations.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Samuel Fallows, Life of William McKinley: Our Martyred President, Chicago: Regan Printing House, 1901, pp. 44–57; this volume also includes biographies of the two presidents who had been assassinated previously, Lincoln and Garfield, and of the then sitting president, Theodore Roosevelt.
James W. Loewen and Edward H. Sebesta, eds., The Confederate and Neo-Confederate Reader: The ‘Great Truth’ about the ‘Lost Cause’,” Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2010, p. 296.
Doris Kearns Goodwin, The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism, New York: Simon and Schuster, 2013, p. 714.
James Ford Rhodes, The McKinley and Roosevelt Administrations 1897–1909, New York: Macmillan, 1922, p. 172.
Joan Walsh, U.S. Grant: American Hero, American Myth, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009, p. 297.
Charles W. Calhoun (ed.), “The Political Culture: Public Life and the Conduct of Politics,” in The Gilded Age: Perspectives on the Origins of Modern America, Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield, 2007, pp. 239–264; quotations on p. 259.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2014 Max J. Skidmore
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Skidmore, M.J. (2014). William McKinley. In: Maligned Presidents: The Late 19th Century. The Evolving American Presidency. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137438003_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137438003_8
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-49481-1
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-43800-3
eBook Packages: Palgrave Political Science CollectionPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)