put sugar on the free list with a discriminating duty of 110th of one cent a pound on sugar imported from countries giving a bounty for sugar exported, and it gave bounties to American sugar growers; it attempted to protect many “infant” industries such as the manufacture of tin-plate; under its provision for reciprocal trade agreements (a favourite project of James G. Blaine, who opposed many of the “protective” features of the Bill) reciprocity treaties were made with Germany, France, Italy, and Belgium, which secured a market in those countries for American pork. Abroad, where the Bill made McKinley’s name known everywhere, there was bitter opposition to it and reprisals were threatened by several European states. In the United States the McKinley Tariff Bill was one of the main causes of the Democratic victory in the Congressional elections of 1890, in which McKinley himself was defeated by an extraordinary Democratic gerrymander of his Congressional district. In November 1891 he was elected governor of Ohio with a plurality of more than 21,000 votes in a total of 795,000 votes cast. He was governor of Ohio in 1892–1895, being re-elected in 1893. His administration was marked by no important events, except that he had on several occasions in his second term to call out the militia of the state to preserve order; but it may be considered important because of the training it gave him in executive as distinguished from legislative work.
McKinley had been prominent in national politics even before the passage of the tariff measure bearing his name. In 1888 in the National Republican Convention in Chicago he was chairman of the committee on resolutions (i.e. the platform committee) and was leader of the delegation from Ohio, which had been instructed for John Sherman; after James G. Blaine withdrew his name there was a movement, begun by Republican congressmen, to nominate McKinley, who received 16 votes on the seventh ballot, but passionately refused to be a candidate, considering that his acquiescence would be a breach of faith toward Sherman. In 1892 McKinley was the permanent president of the National Republican Convention which met in Minneapolis and which renominated Benjamin Harrison on the first ballot, on which James G. Blaine received 182 56 votes, and McKinley, in spite of his efforts to the contrary, received 182 votes. In 1894 he made an extended campaign tour before the Congressional elections, and spoke even in the South. In 1896 he seemed for many reasons the most “available” candidate of his party for the presidency: he had no personal enemies in the party; he had carried the crucial state of Ohio by a large majority in 1893; his attitude on the coinage question had never been so pronounced as to make him unpopular either with the radical silver wing or with the conservative “gold-standard” members of the party. The campaign for his nomination was conducted with the greatest adroitness by his friend, Marcus A. Hanna, and in the National Republican Convention held in St Louis in June he was nominated for the presidency on the first ballot by 661 12 out of a total of 906 votes. The convention adopted a tariff plank drafted by McKinley, and, of far greater immediate importance, a plank, which declared that the Republican party was “opposed to the free coinage of silver, except by international agreement with the leading commercial nations of the world, which we pledge ourselves to promote, and until such agreement can be obtained the existing gold standard must be preserved.” This “gold standard” plank drove out of the Republican party the Silver Republicans of the West, headed by Senator Henry M. Teller of Colorado. The Republican convention nominated for the vice-presidency Garrett A. Hobart of New Jersey. The National Democratic Convention declared for the immediate opening of the mints to the free and unlimited coinage of silver at the ratio with gold of 16 to 1; and it nominated for the presidency William Jennings Bryan of Nebraska, who also received the nomination of the People’s party and of the National Silver party. There was a secession from the Democratic party of conservatives who called themselves the National Democratic party, who were commonly called Gold Democrats, and who nominated John M. Palmer (1817–1900) of Illinois for president. In this re-alignment of parties McKinley, who had expected to make the campaign on the issue of a high protective tariff, was diverted to the defence of the gold standard as the main issue. While his opponent travelled throughout the country making speeches, McKinley remained in Canton, where he was visited by and addressed many Republican delegations. The campaign was enthusiastic: the Republican candidate was called the “advance agent of prosperity”; “Bill McKinley and the McKinley Bill” became a campaign cry; the panic of 1893 was charged to the repeal of the McKinley tariff measure; and “business men” throughout the states were enlisted in the cause of “sound money” to support McKinley, who was elected in November by a popular vote of 7,106,779 to 6,502,925 for Bryan, and by an electoral vote of 271 to 176.
McKinley was inaugurated president of the United States on the 4th of March 1897. The members of his cabinet were: secretary of state, John Sherman (whose appointment created a vacancy in the Senate to which Marcus A. Hanna was elected), who was succeeded in April 1898 by William R. Day, who in turn was followed in September 1898 by John Hay; secretary of the treasury, Lyman J. Gage, a Gold Democrat; secretary of war, Russell A. Alger, who was succeeded in 1899 by Elihu Root; secretary of the navy, John D. Long; attorney-general, Joseph McKenna, succeeded in January 1898 by John William Griggs; postmaster-general, James A. Gary, succeeded in April 1898 by Charles Emory Smith; secretary of the interior, Cornelius N. Bliss, succeeded in February 1899 by Ethan Allen Hitchcock; and secretary of agriculture, James Wilson. (For the political history of McKinley’s administration see United States: History). Immediately after his inauguration the president summoned Congress to assemble in an extra session on the 15th of March. The Democratic tariff in 1893 had been enacted as part of the general revenue measure, which included an income-tax. The income-tax having been declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, the measure had failed to produce a sufficient revenue, and it had been necessary to increase the public debt. McKinley’s message to the new Congress dwelt upon the necessity of an immediate revision of the tariff and revenue system of the country, and the so-called Dingley Tariff Bill was accordingly passed through both houses, and was approved by the president on the 24th of July.
The regular session of Congress which opened in December was occupied chiefly with the situation in Cuba. President McKinley showed himself singularly patient and self-controlled in the midst of the popular excitement against Spain and the clamour for intervention by the United States in behalf of the Cubans; but finally, on the 23rd of March, he presented an ultimatum to the Spanish government, and on the 25th of April, on his recommendation, Congress declared war upon Spain. During the war itself he devoted himself with great energy to the mastery of military details; but there was bitter criticism of the war department resulting in the resignation of the secretary of war, Russell A. Alger (q.v.). The signing of a peace protocol on the 12th of August was followed by the signature at Paris on the 10th of December of articles of peace between the United States and Spain. After a long discussion the peace treaty was ratified by the United States Senate on the 6th of February 1899; and in accordance with its terms Porto Rico, the Philippine Archipelago, and Guam were transferred by Spain to the United States, and Cuba came under American jurisdiction pending the establishment there of an independent government. Two days before the ratification of the peace treaty, a conflict took place between armed Filipinos under the leadership of Emilio Aguinaldo and the American forces that were in possession of Manila. The six months that had elapsed between the signing of the peace protocol and the ratification of the treaty had constituted a virtual interregnum, Spain’s authority having been practically destroyed in the Philippines and that of the United States
