here to enjoy the cool and pure air and the island’s beautiful scenery, the city is served by the principal steamboat lines on the Great Lakes and by ferry to Mackinaw city (pop. in 1904, 696), which is served by the Michigan Central, the Grand Rapids & Indiana, and the Duluth, South Shore & Atlantic railways. The island is about 3 m. long by 2 m. wide. From the remarkably clear water of Lake Huron its shores rise for the most part in tall white limestone cliffs; inland there are strangely shaped rocks and forests of cedar, pine, fir, spruce, juniper, maple, oak, birch, and beech. Throughout the island there are numerous glens, ravines, and caverns, some of which are rich in associations with Indian legends. The city is an antiquated fishing and trading village with modern hotels, club-houses, and summer villas. Fort Mackinac and its grounds are included in a state reservation which embraces about one-half of the island.
The original name of the island was Michilimackinac (“place of the big lame person” or “place of the big wounded person”); the name was apparently derived from an Algonquian tribe, the Mishinimaki or Mishinimakinagog, now extinct. The island was long occupied by Chippewas, the Hurons had a village here for a short time after their expulsion from the East by the Iroquois, and subsequently there was an Ottawa village here. The first white settlement or station was established by the French in 1670 (abandoned in 1701) at Point Saint Ignace on the north side of the strait. In 1761 a fort on the south side (built in 1712) was surrendered to the British. By the treaty of Paris (1783) the right of the United States to this district was acknowledged; but the fort was held by the British until 1796. In July 1812 a British force surprised the garrison, which had not yet learned that war had been declared. In August 1814 an American force under Colonel George Croghan (1791–1849) attempted to recapture the island but was repulsed with considerable loss. By the treaty of Ghent, however, the island was restored, in July 1815, to the United States; Fort Mackinac was maintained by the Federal government until 1895, when it was ceded to the state. From 1820 to 1840 the village was one of the principal stations of the American Fur Company. A Congregational mission was established among the Chippewas on the island in 1827, but was discontinued before 1845. The city of Mackinac Island was chartered in 1899.
See W. C. Richards, “The Fairy Isle of Mackinac,” in the Magazine of American History (July 1891); and R. G. Thwaites, “The Story of Mackinac,” in vol. 14 of the Collections of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin (Madison, 1898).
McKINLEY, WILLIAM (1843–1901), twenty-fifth president
of the United States, was born in Niles, Trumbull county, Ohio,
on the 29th of January 1843. His ancestors on the paternal
side were Scotch-Irish who lived at Dervock, Co. Antrim, and
spelled the family name “McKinlay.” His great-great-grandfather
settled in York county, Pennsylvania, about 1743,
and from Chester county, Pennsylvania, his great-grandfather,
David McKinley, who served as a private during the War
of Independence, moved to Ohio in 1814. David’s son James
had gone in 1809 to Columbiana county, Ohio. His son William
McKinley (b. 1807), like his father an iron manufacturer, was
married in 1829 to Nancy Campbell Allison, and to them were
born nine children, of whom William, the president, was the
seventh. In 1852 the family removed to Poland, Mahoning
county, where the younger William was placed at school.
At seventeen he entered the junior class of Allegheny College,
at Meadville, Pennsylvania; but he studied beyond his strength,
and returned to Poland, where for a time he taught in a neighbouring
country school. When the Civil War broke out in
1861 he promptly enlisted as a private in the 23rd Ohio
Volunteer Infantry. He saw service in West Virginia, at
South Mountain, where this regiment lost heavily, and at
Antietam, where he brought up hot coffee and provisions to the
fighting line; for this he was promoted second lieutenant on
the 24th of September 1862. McKinley was promoted first
lieutenant in February 1864, and for his services at Winchester
was promoted captain on the 25th of July 1864. He was on
the staff of General George Crook at the battles of Opequan,
Fisher’s Hill, and Cedar Creek in the Shenandoah valley, and
on the 14th of March 1865 was brevetted major of volunteers
for gallant and meritorious services. He also served on the
staff of General Rutherford B. Hayes, who spoke highly of his
soldierly qualities. He was mustered out with his regiment
on the 26th of July 1865. Four years of army life had changed
him from a pale and sickly lad into a man of superb figure
and health.
After the war McKinley returned to Poland, and bent all his energy upon the study of law. He completed his preparatory reading at the Albany (N.Y.) law school, and was admitted to the bar at Warren, Ohio, in March 1867. On the advice of an elder sister, who had been for several years a teacher in Canton, Stark county, Ohio, he began his law practice in that place, which was to be his permanent home. He identified himself immediately with the Republican party, campaigned in the Democratic county of Stark in favour of negro suffrage in 1867, and took part in the campaign work on behalf of Grant’s presidential candidature in 1868. In the following year he was elected prosecuting attorney on the Republican ticket; in 1871 he failed of re-election by 45 votes, and again devoted himself to his profession, while not relaxing his interest in politics.
In 1875 he first became known as an able campaign speaker by his speeches favouring the resumption of specie payments, and in behalf of Rutherford B. Hayes, the Republican candidate for governor of Ohio. In 1876 he was elected by a majority of 3304 to the national House of Representatives. Conditions both in Ohio and in Congress had placed him, and were to keep him for twenty years, in an attitude of aggressive and uncompromising partisanship. His Congressional district was naturally Democratic, and its boundaries were changed two or three times by Democratic legislatures for the purpose of so grouping Democratic strongholds as to cause his defeat. But he overcame what had threatened to be adverse majorities on all occasions from 1876 to 1890, with the single exception of 1882, when, although he received a certificate of election showing that he had been re-elected by a majority of 8, and although he served nearly through the long session of 1883–1884, his seat was contested and taken (May 28, 1884) by his Democratic opponent, Jonathan H. Wallace. McKinley reflected the strong sentiment of his manufacturing constituency in behalf of a high protective tariff, and he soon became known in Congress (where he particularly attracted the attention of James G. Blaine) as one of the most diligent students of industrial policy and question affecting national taxation. In 1878 he took part in the debates over the Wood Tariff Bill, proposing lower import duties; and in the same year he voted for the Bland-Allison Silver Bill. In December 1880 he was appointed a member of the Ways and Means committee, succeeding General James A. Garfield, who had been elected president in the preceding month, and to whose friendship, as to that of Rutherford B. Hayes, McKinley owed much in his earlier years in Congress. He was prominent in the debate which resulted in the defeat of the Democratic Morrison Tariff Bill in 1884, and, as minority leader of the Ways and Means committee, in the defeat of the Mills Bill for the revision of the tariff in 1887–1888. In 1889 he became chairman of the Ways and Means committee and Republican leader in the House of Representatives, after having been defeated by Thomas B. Reed on the third ballot in the Republican caucus for speaker of the House. On the 16th of April 1890 he introduced from the Ways and Means committee the tariff measure known commonly as the McKinley Bill, which passed the House on the 21st of May, passed the Senate (in an amended form, with a reciprocity clause, which McKinley had not been able to get through the House) on the 10th of September, was passed as amended, by the House, and was approved by the president on the 1st of October 1890. The McKinley Bill reduced revenues by its high and in many cases almost prohibitive duties; it
