Mister McKinley (White House Blues)

DESCRIPTION: "McKinley hollered, McKinley squalled; The doc says, 'McKinley, I can't find the ball.'" Describing McKinley's assassination by Zolgotz, his poor medical treatment, and his funeral. MacKinley is usually said to be "bound to die."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1926 (recording, Charlie Poole)
KEYWORDS: death homicide doctor funeral political humorous
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
Sept 6, 1901 - President William McKinley is shaking hands at an exhibition when he is shot by anarchist Leon Czolgosz, who felt McKinley was receiving too much attention.
MacKinley's wounds should not have been serious, but his inept doctor decided to operate immediately rather than wait for a specialist
Sept 14, 1901 - Death of MacKinley (due more to operative trauma than to his wounds). Theodore Roosevelt becomes President
FOUND IN: US(SE)
REFERENCES (12 citations):
Brown/Schinhan-FrankCBrownCollectionNCFolklore4 337, "Zolgotz" (1 short text, 1 tune)
Jones-MinstrelOfTheAppalachians-Bascom-Lamar-Lunsford, pp. 215-216, "Czolgosz" (1 text, 1 tune)
Cohen-LongSteelRail, pp. 413-425, "Cannonball Blues/Whitehouse Blues" (2 texts, 2 tunes, the first being "Mister McKinley (White House Blues)" and the second the "Cannonball Blues," plus a version of a song called "Mr. McKinley" from _The Week-End Book_, which is so different that I would regard it as a separate though perhaps related song, probably not traditional)
Cohen-AmericanFolkSongsARegionalEncyclopedia1, pp. 118-119 "McKinley" (1 text)
Lomax/Lomax-OurSingingCountry, pp. 256-257, "White House Blues" (1 text, 1 tune)
Lomax-FolkSongsOfNorthAmerica 143, "Mister MacKinley" (sic) (1 text, 1 tune)
Dunson/Raim/Asch-AnthologyOfAmericanFolkMusic, p. 56 "White House Blues" (1 text, 1 tune)
Cohen/Seeger/Wood-NewLostCityRamblersSongbook, p. 228 "White House Blues" (1 text, 1 tune)
Rorrer-RamblingBlues-LifeAndSongsOfCharliePoole, p. 73, "White House Blues" (1 text)
Silber/Silber-FolksingersWordbook, p. 287, "White House Blues" (1 text)
DT, WHITHOU*
ADDITIONAL: Tristram P. Coffin and Hennig Cohen, _Folklore in America: Tales, Songs, Superstitions, Proverbs, Riddles, Games, Folk Drama and Folk Festivals_, Doubleday, 1966, p. 90, "McKinley" (1 text)
Roud #787
RECORDINGS:
Warde Ford, "Buffalo, Buffalo (Death of McKinley)" (AFS 4198 B3, 1938; tr.; in AMMEM/Cowell)
Bill Monroe & his Bluegrass Boys, "Whitehouse Blues" (Decca 29141, 1954)
Charlie Poole and the North Carolina Ramblers, "White House Blues" (Columbia 15099D, 1926; on AAFM1, CPoole01, CPoole05)
Riley Puckett, "McKinley" (Columbia 15448-D, 1929)
Swing Billies, "From Buffalo to Washington" (Bluebird B-7121, 1937)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Battleship of Maine" (tune)
cf. "Delia's Gone [Laws I5] (tune, some versions)
cf. "The Cannonball" (words)
cf. "Joking Henry" (tune)
cf. "White House Blues (II)" (structure, tune, words)
cf. "Huey Long" (lyrics, form)
NOTES [10893 words]: I know of three derivative versions of this song: one collected in Kentucky in the 1930s, talking about Herbert Hoover (in this collection as "White House Blues (II)"), a second recorded by country-and-western singer Tom T. Hall in the 1970s, talking about Richard Nixon. Both share the title "White House Blues." The third is ""Governor Al Smith." - (PJS)
McKinley had been unpopular among farmers, most of whom had supported Democrat William Jennings Bryan, and his passing was not much mourned among country people -- thus the jaunty, humorous tone of this song. - PJS
For more about the 1896 McKinley/Bryan election, see the notes to "Free Silver."
William McKinley was the seventh of nine children. He was born in 1843 in the small town of Niles, Ohio, where his father managed a blast furnace (Miller, pp. 14-15). In 1852, the family moved a short distance to Poland, Ohio, where there was a private academy for the children to attend (Phillips, p. 20).
In a curious parallel to the last president before him to have been assassinated, McKinley was ambidextrous, and in early life made a sort of party trick of shaving with a straight razor which he moved from hand to hand; during the Civil War, soldiers even gambled on his ability to do so (Armstrong, p. 54).
Young McKinley had had a the beginning of a good education, but illness had interrupted his college career in 1859 (Armstrong, p. 5; Phillips, p. 20, says the illness turned to depression). He disliked slavery; the minister who inspired his strong religious sentiments had been an abolitionist (Armstrong, p. 7), a Methodist who held many camp meetings (Phillips, p. 17), even though the McKinley family was historically presbyterian. His mother hoped he would enter the ministry (Miller, p. 15); obviously that did not happen. Unable to afford a return to school when his father's business failed, he briefly became a schoolteacher (Phillips, p. 20).
McKinley's career truly began with and depended on the Civil War. Barely eighteen when the Confederates fired on Fort Sumter, he hastened to enlist in the "Poland Guards," a company raised in his home town of Poland, Ohio (Armstrong, p. 3). More or less by chance, this company became part of the 23 Ohio Regiment, a fact which proved significant in many ways. For starters, it was the first Ohio regiment to be enlisted for a full three years rather than just three months (Armstrong, p. 9). For starters, the regiment spent its first year of service in West Virginia, letting it get properly organized without suffering many battle casualties. It then was sent to Maryland for the Antietam campaign; as part of Jacob D. Cox's Kanawha Division of the IX Corps, it had its single costliest day of the war (44 killed) at South Mountain, and lost another 14 men at Antietam itself. It then went back to West Virginia until it fought in Sheridan's Valley Campaign of 1864 (Fox, p. 317).
Serving in the 23rd did more than just help McKinley grow up. It also brought him to the attention of future president Rutherford B. Hayes, who was initially the major of the 23rd but came to command it as its lieutenant colonel and then colonel (Armstrong, p. 9, 14, 24). Although McKinley initially was just another soldier, he was detailed as a quartermaster's clerk while the army was still in West Virginia (Armstrong, p. 22, who thinks it may have been Hayes who got him the job. Their relationship lasted the rest of their lives, and beyond -- McKinley gave a eulogy after Hayes died in 1893, and when McKinley was dying, Hayes's son Webb was one of the few at his side; Phillips, p. 41).
In December 1861, the commissary sergeant became ill, and McKinley took on the role. On March 1, 1862, the sergeant gave up his post and his ranks, and McKinley was promoted to sergeant and took on the task (Armstrong, pp. 28-29). This took advantage of his clerical skills while letting him avoid most of the drudge work of an infantry soldier. It could have kept him relatively safe from danger as well. Not in McKinley's case. At Antietam, the 23rd Ohio and the Kanawha Division were part of Burnside's IX Corps, and part of the force that tried to force its way across Antietam Creek at that battle. Once across, the troops were pinned down under fire; they had no supplies and had not eaten all day. Few supply officers would have been willing to cross the creek under fire, but McKinley did so, bringing relief to the tired, hungry soldiers (Armstrong, pp. 38-40).
Colonel Hayes continued to patronize McKinley. Antietam had created a vacancy for a 2nd lieutenant in the 23rd, and Hayes recommended that McKinley be given the promotion (Armstrong, pp. 40-41). The promotion came through while McKinley was at home recruiting (Armstrong, pp. 44-45, who says that the arrangement was that, if he managed to recruit nine men, he would be promoted -- but they gave him the promotion even before that). When Hayes, who had been wounded at Antietam, rose to brigade command near the beginning of 1863, he appointed McKinley acting assistant quartermaster to the brigade (Armstrong, p. 48; Phillips, p. 22). He did a good job of this, although the War Department in 1869 sent him a minor complaint about his paperwork which he seemingly ignored (Armstrong, pp. 50-51). McKinley was promoted to first lieutenant on March 30, 1863 (Armstrong, p. 52).
In 1864, after his term expired and he re-enlisted, the division in which McKinley served lost its commander, General Scammon. George Crook was appointed his replacement (Armstrong, pp. 62-63). McKinley was promoted captain not too long after (Armstrong, p. 75). Soon after, General Crook asked McKinley to join his staff as an acting assistant adjutant general, and Hayes regretfully let him go (Armstrong, pp. 76-77). Working with Crook let McKinley meet several important generals, including Phil Sheridan and Winfield Scott Hancock.
Toward the end of the war, he joined the Masons (Armstrong, p. 100), though I can't see that he ever had time to learn their rituals. The war was functionally over by the time he was informed of his final "promotion," to brevet major, although the honor was dated to March 13, 1865 (Armstrong, p. 103. For the rest of his life, McKinley went by that title rather than use his political titles (Representative, Governor, etc.): "Call me Major. I earned that. I am not so sure of the rest" (Phillips, p. 30). Even his wife called him "Major" (Armstrong, p. 112). The irony of this is, of course, that he was not really a major; he was a captain with a brevet. Brevet promotions, in the Civil War army, were like medals today: a recognition but not something that entitled on to either higher pay or seniority,
To be sure, to make it all the way from private to captain was a rare honor. But not many privates had a Rutherford B. Hayes on their side.
In July 1865, McKinley was relieved of his duties; the volunteer army was winding down. McKinley at the time put in a request (as I read it) to transfer to the regular army as a permanent officer. He had recommendations from high officers including Winfield Scott Hancock, and he passed an examination for office -- but then, suddenly, changed his mind and left the army; his parents disapproved of him staying in the service (Armstrong, p. 104).
His experience in the war seems to have broadened McKinley's horizons and made him more ambitious, and being an assistant adjutant general would have given him a feeling for paperwork and detailed instructions. It wasn't much of a stretch to go from there to being a lawyer. He briefly attended Albany Law College, then went back to Ohio to study law under Judge Charles Glidden (Phillips, p. 23. I can't help but think that, by following this course of study, McKinley became a lawyer without having to actually learn much of anything except the narrow details of the law). He was admitted to the bar in March 1867 (Merry, p. 36).
Later in 1867, McKinley finally had a chance to repay some of his debt to Rutherford B. Hayes: Hayes was running for governor of Ohio, and McKinley campaigned for him (Phillips, p. 24) -- and began to learn the secrets of Ohio politics. In 1869, he won office himself for the first time, as Stark County prosecutor (Phillips, p. 25).
In matters of individual rights, he was often progressive, especially in his early years. He supported a change to the Ohio constitution which would have given Blacks the vote, though the amendment failed (Armstrong, p. 109); he also supported pro-Black legislation while in the House (Armstrong, p. 113). He is said to have favored women's suffrage, and he avoided hotels that would not admit Blacks. He didn't take speaking fees or graft. And, as a lawyer, he sometimes defended unpopular defendants such as striking coal miners (Phillips, p. 30). However, Armstrong, pp. 107, 125, notes that he backed off his defense of Blacks once he had to seek Southern votes in the Presidential race, and Phillips, pp. 82-83, says he also backed off some of the tenets of his Methodism to attract voters from other religions. Rauchway, pp. 68-72, describes how he wooed southern segregationists. (He did, at least, appoint more Blacks to federal offices than anyone before him; Armstrong, p. 126. But it was Theodore Roosevelt who invited Booker T. Washington to the White House; Rauchway, p. 72. As Merry, p. 392, comments, when he became president, "he was comfortable accepting the state of racial politics that he had inherited").
(Phillips states, pp. 112-113 and elsewhere, that McKinley changed the Republican party, and Karl Rove and others have agreed. They have a good case. Just as McKinley himself gave up his moral opinions, the Republican party went from being the party of human rights and internal improvements to the party of big business and imperialism. The irony is that it was not good for business -- Republican policies gave us the Panic of 1907 and the Great Depression!.)
McKinley married Ida Saxton (1847-1907) in 1871, but his two daughters, Katie and Ida, both died very young, and Mrs. McKinley was an epileptic and an invalid by the time her husband was elected President.
According to Glad, pp. 21-22, "As a young lawyer in Canton[, Ohio,] the Major [=McKinley] had married the vivacious Ida Saxton, daughter of one of the town's leading bankers and businessmen. Within a year the couple announced the birth of a daughter, Katherine. A few months later the Major and his wife, awaiting the arrival of a second child, experienced a series of crises that would shatter their happiness forever. It began with the death of [Ida's mother] Mrs. Saxton. The young wife underwent labor in a state of extreme grief for her mother, and there were complications. The infant lived less than five months; Ida herself never recovered. Her subsequent periodic convulsions indicated some damage to the brain, and phlebitis crippled her so that she moved about with the greatest difficulty."
Phlebitis, or something else? Merry, p. 43, alone of my sources, claims that she suffered some sort of fall, perhaps from a carriage; instead of phlebitis, he suggests that she damaged her spine. Which makes me wonder if she didn't also suffer a traumatic brain injury in the fall. That might explain why she developed the seizures. It sounds like she also suffered a period of extreme depression (Merry, p. 44, describes her sitting in a dark room clutching her surviving daughter.) Later, she would suffer some loss of muscular control (Merry, p. 97). That sounds more complex than epilepsy and phlebitis.
It seems she never became pregnant again, either; did whatever caused the physical problems affect her fertility, or did she and McKinley stop sleeping together? None of my sources say. I sort of suspect the latter explanation, because she was put on bromides for the epilepsy (Fisher, p. 28), and while bromides can have some effect on seizures, they also cause sedation and can have a lot of other side effects; they are no longer used as a first- or second-line treatment because they are so dangerous. The only hint we have is that a friend wrote "that some details of Ida's infirmity 'can never be told'" (Merry, p. 197).
According to Phillips, p. 25, Ida, "the very pretty but high-strung daughter of one of Canton's most prominent families," was originally a very capable woman; her family believed in women's rights, and she had worked in the family bank before her marriage (Phillips, p. 47; according to Merry, p. 40, she served as acting manager when her father was away). She played piano and taught school (Merry, pp. 40-41). She doesn't seem like the sort to simply give up and turn into an accessory to her husband -- but, somehow, that's what happened. She bore their daughter Katie in December 1871. She was said to look like her father, but she died in 1876 at the age of four. The cause of death was said to be typhoid (Miller, p. 44) -- which, by that time, was pretty well known to be spread by contaminated water though the bacterium had not been identified, but governments weren't in the public-works business back then.
McKinley devoted much effort to caring for his wife during her seizures, but his response would hardly pass muster today: when she started to go into convulsions, he would throw a cloth over her face! (Phillips, p. 26). The descriptions of Ida McKinley's condition are confusing; attempts to identify what was wrong with her are very uncertain (Miller, pp. 44-45). It sounds to me as if there might have been two things: a physical problem (epilepsy or some other seizure disorder) and an emotional one (a trauma disorder, depression, or something).
To his credit, McKinley clearly retained his affection for her, even if he didn't show it very well, and gave her much attention even when her fits did not require it (Miller, p. 45).
Her needs varied over the years, but they seemed to become worse toward the end of his first term as President; according to Merry, pp. 450-453, the became more dependent, more clingy, and much more depressed. I wonder if she might have had a very slight stroke; it could explain all those outcomes. She didn't want him to run for re-election. It can't have made his life easier.
One wonders how much that tragedy contributed to McKinley's later detachment; a journalist, William Allen White, referred to the living McKinley acting and looking like the statue that he seemed to be posing to become -- he was "too polite, too meticulous.... He was unreal." White was unable to find "the real man back of the plaster cast that was his public mask." "He had somewhere back in his youth or young manhood... buttoned himself up, and had become almost unconsciously the figure that now stands in Canton not far from his front door -- William McKinley in bronze" (Armstrong, p. XIII). Even Phillips, whose opinion of McKinley strikes me as so laudatory as to be delusional, admits McKinley's "inscrutability, his tactical avoidance of written or public policy commitment, and his oratorical preference for the blandiloquent." But that can't be the only reason for his reserve, because a Civil War comrade wrote of his "reserve" and his failure to be familiar with others (Armstrong, p. 47); clearly he had been just a bit stand-offish all his life. And yet, he was also good at managing people; Merry, p. 180, says "His closest associates knew he seldom gave as much as he got in any friendship or political alliance. The convivial demeanor masked a calculating political operative who could casually discard people when they no longer had value... and who sent out subtle signals about lines of intimacy that shouldn't be crossed."
He seems to have been a natural-born mid-level bureaucrat, but he aspired higher. Creative he was not: he "possessed a highly absorbent mind but not a facile one. His was a stolid intellect, without imagination but with a potent capacity for mastering masses of intricate detail. Further, he tended to view public policy in simple, binary terms -- the right way to do things and the wrong way" (Merry, pp. 70-71). Everything he did, including his ascent to the Presidency, was methodical, almost calculated. The clear sense I get from every source is that he wanted power, and devoted his energy to earning it, even though he had no real plan for what to do with it.
As McKinley got older, the slender young man who had fought in the Civil War vanished. Miller, p. 7, says "At a scant five feet, six and a half inches -- he made a point of insisting that the last half inch be recorded -- he sometimes seemed that large around." "Rotund" hardly describes it. He never exercised -- even golf was too much work -- so a fast getaway was clearly out of the question.
Shortly after his daughter Katie died, McKinley won a seat in the House of Representatives, joining the House in 1877 -- i.e. during the first year of Rutherford B. Hayes's term as president. McKinley wasn't yet measuring the White House drapes, but he did visit Hayes there on multiple occasions (Phillips, p. 26) and Ida McKinley reportedly cared for the Hayes's children on occasion when the President traveled (Fisher, p. 19).
He and Ida rented a relatively modest apartment in Washington, where McKinley earned a reputation for getting up early and working hard, but also for fine dress. He seems to have been rather vain; although he needed glasses, he rarely let people see him, let alone photograph him, while wearing them (Miller, p. 47).
He worked hard to be liked, rarely saying anything unkind about anyone and trying to calm arguments between factions (Miller, p. 48).
In 1881, he was appointed to the very powerful Ways and Means Committee (Phillips, p. 60).
For the most part, his attitudes on issues were not firm: "McKinley's reputation... centered on his personal qualities far more than on his political views" (Merry, p. 45). His one great issue was the tariff. Philipps, p. 15, thinks it was his history as a boy from the manufacturing state of Ohio, whose industries wanted protection, that caused him to concentrate on this nitpicky issue. He "had devoted his career to tariff protection with a singular concentration. It was literally true that he knew nothing else, that the issues of money and banking, foreign policy, and so on, were largely mysteries to him"; Jones, pp. 105-106. "For him, business was not something distinct from the rest of society that had to be regulated and controlled. Industry was America... it was making the nation great. McKinley chose to promote this agenda by mastering perhaps the most important industrial issue of the 1880s -- tariffs. Though Democrats saw trade barriers as causing higher prices and therefore harmful to the common man [an opinion shared by almost all modern economics], for McKinley they offered a vital means to protect young American companies from the ravages of established European rivals" (Miller, p. 21). (And, to be fair, in 1896, the federal government was running a substantial deficit, and tariffs were the obvious way to close it; Merry, p. 229.)
In 1889, after a dozen years in congress, he came very close to being elected Speaker of the House. He fell a a little short in the contest, but in compensation, he was made chair of the Ways and Means committee, with responsibility for taxes and revenue (Phillips, p. 27). In 1890, he arranged for the passage of the "McKinley Tariff," or the "McKinley Act," which resulted in the highest tariff in American history to that time (Miller, pp. 21-22). Ironically, this happened even as his congressional seat was being gerrymandered away (Phillips, p. 27). In a way, that was a help, since the McKinley Tariffs certainly did not result in good times coming! (Phillips, p. 64). In fact, to get his punitive tariffs passed, McKinley had to give his support to the Sherman Silver Purchase Act (Glad, p. 77; Rauchway, p. 158), and it was that little piece of idiocy that resulted in the Panic of 1893. Not that that hurt McKinley politically; the Panic was blamed on the Democrats, not the Republicans, so it helped get McKinley elected President.
One of the business connections who came to know him was Mark Hanna, who was frequently regarded as McKinley's puppet-master or evil genius, although Miller, p. 23, argues that McKinley pulled most of the strings. What is certain is that McKinley owed Hanna a lot: McKinley had foolishly guaranteed a friend's debts, and the friend went broke to the tune of $100,000 dollars. McKinley didn't have anything like that much money, but Hanna managed to arrange gifts to cover the debt (Miller, p. 23; Phillips. p. 68; Rauchway, p. 163; Merry, pp. 90-91, suggests that he could easily have earned the money as a private lawyer, but that would have ended his political career). Hanna may not have bought and sold McKinley, but he certainly put up enough money to do so!
In 1891, he ran for Governor of Ohio and won easily (Fisher, p. 19; Phillips, p. 65) for a term starting from 1892. He was re-elected in 1893 for a term starting in 1894 (Armstrong, p 119). Apart from giving him another item for his résumé, it kept him out of Washington during the terrible Panic of 1893, so he took no blame for that crisis even though his tariffs may well have worsened it (Fisher, p. 21).
Although McKinley had made pro-worker noises for much of his career, when he was governor and it was time to put his money where his mouth was, he changed his approach. In 1894, there was mine unrest in Ohio, and McKinley sent in the militia (Phillips, pp. 32-33; Armstrong, p. 120, says McKinley called out the National Guard fifteen times in his second term! Yet he also distributed supplies to the people affected by the strikes; Merry, p. 95). This sort of thing is one reason why he gained a reputation for trying to please everyone rather than taking a firm stand (Phillips, p. 34, who of course thinks the description is false) -- a trait which showed itself very much during the Spanish-American War. It is ironic that he had largely avoided foreign policy issues in his campaigning and in his career (Miller, p. 46).
One might almost argue that McKinley's real specialty was not any particular issue; it was organization. Steadily, carefully, during the early 1890s, he built the alliances and made the deals to enable a presidential run. Phillips, p. 60, believes he was thinking about it as early as 1885, and says that "His climb was methodical verging on relentless." In 1892, with the Republicans uncertain about re-nominating President Benjamin Harrison, McKinley received 182 votes on the first convention ballot (Phillips, p. 66) -- only about a third of what Harrison received, but significant for a man who wasn't running and didn't want to run until 1896! Four years later, it was a different matter. McKinley was in, and the Republicans who disapproved of him had no strong alternative; McKinley took the nomination on the first ballot, with eight times as many votes as his nearest rival (Phillips, p. 71; Merry, pp. 128-129). He took as his vice president Garrett Hobart of New Jersey, a non-entity (Merry, p. 129) who met the leading criterion for a vice president: he would "do no harm." Also, McKinley liked him personally; it was perhaps the closest pairing of president and vice president to that time, and McKinley was truly saddened when Hobart died (Merry, pp. 392-393)
Once McKinley was nominated, there was the question of how he should campaign. William Jenning Bryan was barnstorming, but McKinley would have none of it (Miller, p. 26). Although educated enough to have been a good clerk and a practicing lawyer, he developed a "reputation as a non-reading president" (Phillips, p. 18, although the obsequious Phillips on pp. 18-19 tries to argue that this is not correct). He certainly didn't write many things down, so we know very little of his thoughts (Phillips, p. 110). But McKinley did not claim to be quick-witted; in 1896, rather than try to compete with William Jennings Bryan in off-the-cuff speaking, he sat at home and periodically addressed visiting crowds, admitting, "I have to think when I speak" (Merry, pp. 138-139; Miller, p. 14, who on p. 15 describes him in school as "more dedicated and hardworking than brilliant"). Apart from the problem of thinking on his feet, McKinley did not want to leave Ida or force her to travel so much (Merry, p. 138). The railroads helped; they offered a reduced rate for groups that went to Canton, Ohio to hear him (Fisher, p. 22); supposedly some 750,000 people visited during the "Front Porch Campaign" (Merry, p. 140). McKinley was careful to require group leaders submit what they would say in advance, so he could be ready for them (Merry, pp. 139-140).
McKinley also received many endorsements from former Union generals -- though I can't help but notice how many *bad* generals were on the list: Daniel Sickles, Franz Sigel, Oliver O. Howard (Armstrong, p. 122)
Money was no problem, though -- not with Mark Hanna around. And not with Bryan running on a silver platform. That cause some wealthy Democrats, including James J. Hill, to abandon Bryan. Hill then helped Hanna to convince other rich men to support McKinley (Miller, pp. 26-28). Hanna also created a new sort of campaign, much more centralized than the old presidential organizations (Merry, p. 135) and funded to the tune of a then-record three an a half million dollars (Merry, pp. 136-137). That made it easier for McKinley to promote his promise of "the full dinner pail" (Phillips, p. 77), which was fitting given McKinley's interest in industrialization (though I can't see that any of McKinley's policies really did much to ensure a decent wage for workers).
For more about the election of 1896 (which seems to have gotten more "folk" attention than most, perhaps because William Jennings Bryan was a populist) see in particular the notes to "Free Silver." Here we can probably content ourselves by saying that the major issue of the campaign was the currency supply, with Bryan calling for heavy coinage of silver at a fixed ratio of sixteen to one to gold. Conservative business interests wanted to stick with gold currency only. The Bryan forces were right that the country would have benefitted from a larger money supply (the lack of currency was killing farmers who could not repay their loans), but the 16:1 ratio was impossible -- because of large discoveries of silver, silver wasn't worth 16:1. McKinley, rather than being a "gold bug" or a "silver bug," had historically been a "straddle bug", but with Bryan in the field, all the pro-gold forces of course supported him (Phillips, pp. 52-53; cf. Merry, p. 119).
McKinley was easily elected -- so easily that, after it was over, his mother supposedly said, "Oh God, keep him humble" (Fisher, p. 23). Add yet another parallel to James A. Garfield: McKinley's mother was still alive, at 87, and she came to Washington, showing that she still has "sufficient energy and enthusiasm to delight the public and serve as a source of amusement for the press" (Fisher, p. 24). Ida, meanwhile, spent her White House years knitting; in her time in Washington, she had knitted 3500 pairs of slippers for charity (Fisher, p. 24).
McKinley's approach to the Presidency seems to have been a sort of mix of Donald Trump's and Elizabeth I's: work a short day (typically from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 or 5:00 p.m., with a lot of breaks along the way, according to Miller, p. 92 -- although a lot of the rest of his day was devoted to caring for Ida; Fisher, p. 24), and try not to make any big decisions, hoping that delaying the problem until it went away. There were exceptions -- he had arranged the annexation of Hawaii in 1897 (Miller, p. 73, and manage to get the "treaty" passed in the aftermath with the War with Spain, plus of course he went after the Philippines as well as Cuba; Phillips, p. 99), e.g. -- but mostly he seemed to be president "Let-this-Cup-Pass-from-Me."
Despite all that noise about the tariff, and the gold standard, in the 1896 election, the issue that dominated McKinley's presidency was, of course, Cuba, and the issue of relations with Spain. Ironically, it was an area McKinley paid little attention to; he chose 74-year-old John Sherman, half-deaf and losing his mental acuity, as Secretary of State because it would open an Ohio senate seat for Mark Hanna (Miller, p. 49). Most of his other cabinet choices were uncontroversial and highly conventional. It was an administration that, like McKinley itself, would be generally cautious and unoriginal. (Apart, of course, from Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt, who seems to have caused McKinley some concern even before the loss of the Maine; Miller, pp. 49-50.)
Too bad for McKinley, then, that the long-running rebellion in Cuba went from annoyance to festering sore. The on-and-off rebellion there had been "on" since 1893, and both sides were pursuing a scorched-earth policy of making the island uninhabitable for the other side. As early as May 1897, businessmen were appealing to McKinley to do something about the island (Miller, pp. 94-95). He tried to negotiate with the Spanish government, and thought he had an agreement, and he did convince the Spanish to withdraw the iron-hard General Weyler -- but no one in Cuba wanted to calm things down (Miller, pp. 99-101; Phillips, pp. 90-91).
McKinley, of course, eventually sent the Maine to Havana, where it spontaneously blew up on February 16, 1898. (For background, see "My Sweetheart Went Down with the Maine.") McKinley still tried to avoid a war -- he hated fast action, plus he remembered the Civil War! (Miller, p. 121) -- but from that time on, there was no chance. The next few weeks, as McKinley tried to slow the rush to war, were so traumatic for him that he needed sleeping pills at night (Phillips, p. 94); he was so jumpy (Miller, p. 130) that I wonder if he didn't develop post-traumatic stress disorder. He was actually happier after war was declared; he set up a fancy high-tech war headquarters and spent much time organizing his forced (Armstrong, pp. 128-129); in effect, just as he had largely worked around his Secretary of State in the lead-up to war, he now served as his own Secretary of War.
McKinley did arrange with Joe Cannon, chair of the House Appropriations Committee, to set aside $50 million for the war, without committing to spend it (Miller, pp. 126-127; based on Phillips, p. 96, it sounds as if a lot of it was wasted on ships and munitions that could not be used in the fighting). But that delay and that money meant that the American military was as ready as it was possible for it to be (which wasn't very, since the regular army in particular was still tiny). The U.S. military wasn't a strong force, but it was more than Spain could scrape up -- or afford.
And while the cause of the dispute was Cuba, McKinley didn't stop there, attacking the Phillipines and Puerto Rico and setting his sights on Guam. Eventually all would be taken away from Spain, though not all were annexed by the U.S. (A small force was sent to Guam, and occupied it without opposition; the Spanish officials on Guam hadn't even heard that Spain and the United States were at war; Miller, pp. 179-181) McKinley, whom many accused of being to passive, turned out to be the most imperialist president since James K. Polk, and the only one other than Polk to attack the territory of another sovereign state (excluding, of course, the numerous acts of aggression against American Indians).
It perhaps will give you some insight into his thinking that, during the war, he was worried about whether the United States should become a colonial power -- in particular, take over the Philippines. So he prayed about it, and had an insight: "There was nothing left for us to do but take them all, and educate the Filipinos, and uplift and civilize and Christianize them" (Rauchway, p. 7). The Philippines were Spanish territory; they were already Christian (Catholic). I leave it to the reader to decide if McKinley was a religious bigot or simply stupid. To give him what credit we can, he did work hard to restrain the European powers from doing awful things to China during and after the Boxer Rebellion (Merry, pp. 413-430).
In 1900, McKinley stood for re-election. He had an improved economy to run on (Phillips, p. 114, says that enough gold had been mined in recent years to cause the money supply to free up without need for silver, quieting the farmers' agitation), but he needed a new running mate; his original Vice President, Garret Hobart, had died in 1899 (Phillips, p. 111). Against McKinley's better judgment, former Assistant Secretary of the Navy and New York Governor Theodore Roosevelt -- who had done more than almost anyone to cause the Spanish war, and then had gained a reputation as a tin-plate hero -- got the job (Fisher, p. 27. This even though he had once declared McKinley to be "as spineless as a creampuff"; Fisher, p. 26).
The goal of this was actually to get Roosevelt out of the way; when elected governor of New York in 1898, he had made himself a nuisance to state Republican boss Tom Platt. Platt, and many other New York Republicans wanted him out of the way. Nominating him for vice president did the job nicely: it was a "promotion," but it would leave him with no power to do anything (Rauchway, p. 10). There might have been a fight over the vice presidency, but Hobart was dead, so the VP spot was a harmless place to put Roosevelt. At least as long as McKinley was alive.... It was a rare tactical mistake by McKinley; he has not suggested a Vice President, so the nominating convention decided -- and decided on the most colorful man in the party because all the other options were so colorless (Merry, pp. 439-440).
McKinley again faced William Jennings Bryan; the result was even more decisive than it had been in 1896.
There had apparently been a lot of fears of assassination in McKinley's inner circle -- there had been a number of threatening letters, and the White House (which was going to pieces, because there was no budget to maintain it) had no real security (Fisher, pp. 26-27).
McKinley was actually cutting back on his public appearances after his re-election; he took a tour of the west, but Ida had had problems with an infection, and with her heart (there was genuine fear that she would die; Merry, pp. 472-473), and no one wanted to overtax her (Fisher, pp. 28-29; Miller, pp. 290-291). They headed back to Canton, not Washington. (While there, he became the first President to ride in an automobile; Miller, p. 293). But one major out-of-town event stayed on the calendar: He decided to visit the 1901 Pan-American Exhibition, and of course the organizers planned a reception. His security team was worried; he didn't care (Miller, pp. 4-5).
the event, despite planning that went back to 1897 (Fisher, pp. 31-33) and construction that had started on September 1899 (Fisher, p. 35), was staring at "a severe financial loss" (Fisher, p. xi), so they weren't going to do anything that would prevent people from coming. Most of the structures were designed to be temporary -- and the Buffalo weather prevented them from being finished on time (Fisher, p. 41).
One of the temporary buildings was a medical building, which the doctors and nurses of Buffalo took turns manning (Fisher, p. 38).
Theodore Roosevelt opened the event on May 20, 1901, but very little had been finished by then, and the Exposition received bad reviews -- to high a ticket cost for an event with few things to do.
Under the circumstances, the organizers of the Exhibition were desperate for McKinley to appear; they needed the box office revenue! September 5, 1901, was to be "President's Day" in Buffalo (Fisher, p. 45). On September 5, he gave a speech to the assembled crowd, with Ida McKinley in attendance (Fisher, pp. 48-49). Ironically from the man who had legislated extreme tariffs, one of its main subjects was free trade!
One of those waiting when he arrived was Leon Czolgosz (pronounced "shole-gawz"). The crowd was such that he couldn't get close to the President (Fisher, p. 47). But fate would give him another chance.
Leon Czolgosz (pronounced "shole-gawz" or "chol-gosh") was the son of immigrants. His father Paul, who was Polish, had migrated from Prussia in 1872 to seek work, then had brought his family over. Three children had been born in Europe, but little Leon was born a month after his mother arrived (Miller, pp. 38-39) and so was an American citizen by birth, though his family's unpronounceable name and the fact that he was baptized Catholic no doubt brought him some negative attention.
He seems to have been an odd young man. He apparently enjoyed school, where he worked hard to learn and did well. At work, he had been industrious. But he was very reserved -- he spent many months going to a particular diner, and spent all his time reading, not interacting more than he needed to to order his dinner. He seemed to have little sympathy for others' troubles (Miller, pp. 33-34) and no close friends (Miller, p. 41). It probably didn't help that his mother died, in the aftermath of her tenth pregnancy, in 1883, when Leon was ten years old (Miller, pp. 40-41; Fisher, p. 8, says that there were eight children rather than ten).
He went to work in a factory at 14, where he did well, then moved to the Cleveland area at age 17 and took a different job (Miller, p. 56). But the Panic of 1893 led to a financial squeeze; he took part in a strike and was branded a radical (Miller, p. 57); he adopted the name "Fred Nieman" to hide his history (Fisher, p. 8. Rauchway, p. 166, says that "Fred" was a family nickname. The name "Nieman" is a fairly clever choice, since it sounds like the Niemen river in eastern Europe but also means "no man"). Since his old boss had lost his job, he was able to go back to the factory (Miller, p. 75); his industry even earned him a promotion to higher-skilled work (Miller, p. 76). In his last days, some of those who met him actually felt that it was his intelligence that had gotten him into trouble -- with nothing to do with his mind in his menial career, he brooded so much that he turned to anarchism (Rauchway, pp. 86-87). He gave up on his family's Catholicism and began studying the anarchist literature of the time. He didn't really associate with anarchist organizations, though; he just sat around reading the papers. He was friendless, poor, angry, and captivated by the tale of the assassination of Italy's King Umberto I (Fisher, p. 9) -- who had been killed not by one of his citizens but by a man who had migrated to America and gone back to Italy to kill the king (Miller, pp. 262-264).
Eventually he started developing symptoms of what sounds like asthma, though Czolgosz may have thought it was syphilis. (This even though his relatives claimed he never had any relationships with women, and there are other reports that he was too afraid to ask for a date; Rauchway, p. 175. When his body was autopsied, they searched for evidence of syphilis and found none, though there was evidence of chancroid; Rauchway, pp. 178-179. Rauchway, p. 181, hints at homosexual relationships. Rauchway, p. 180, also hints that Czolgosz's respiratory symptoms may have been the effect of the concoctions he was taking for the syphilis he didn't actually have) He went back to the family home, but he didn't work much on the farm; rather, he sat around and brooded (Miller, pp. 231-232); several members of his family, including his stepmother, came to regard him as lazy and a burden on the family (Miller, pp. 273-274). They finally scraped up $70 and, in effect, told him to go away, which he did without even saying goodbye to his father (Miller, p. 285).
Since Czolgosz is widely (and correctly) described as an anarchist, it is important to know that there were a lot of different types of anarchist around at this time, from genteel Kropotkin anarchists whose beliefs approached socialism to the violent nihilists who believed in destroying everything that smacked of social organization. Even Bolsheviks were lumped with anarchists in this period! (Rauchway, p. 90). Czolgosz seems to have been closest to the nihilist type; there was little cooperation in his makeup. He met, among others, the famous anarchist Emma Goldman (MIller, p. 285), though others in the anarchist community thought the earnest but inept young man a spy (Miller, p. 288).
He clearly targeted the Buffalo Exhibition early on. He went to Buffalo in mid-July 1901, and spent six weeks there scouting out the Exposition. At the end of August, he returned briefly to Cleveland, perhaps to gather his remaining money, then went back to Buffalo (Miller, p. 45).
Czolgosz checked into a (slightly better) local hotel as "John Doe." The proprietor let him do it; he paid in advance (Miller, pp. 7-8). Someone else asked him about it; he gave his "NIeman" name and explained that he was a European Jew and didn't want to be discriminated against (Miller, p. 8).
The song is correct in identifying Czolgosz's weapon as an Ivor-Johnson handgun; he chose that -- even though it cost three times as much as many serviceable pistols -- because a similar model had been used by an anarchist against Italian King Umberto I (Miller, p. 8). It was also small and easily hidden in the hand (Fisher, p. 46). The gun was preserved and still exists; Fisher has photographs of it on page 67.
On September 6, the day after his big speech, McKinley and his wife went to Niagara Falls. The day was hot enough that Ida McKinley asked to return to the hotel to rest (Fisher, pp. 53-54). McKinley went alone to a reception at the Expositions "Temple of Music." He and his entourage arrived around 3:30 (Fisher, p. 55).
McKinley met his fate because he so liked "pressing the flesh": "So much time did McKinley spend in receiving lines that he perfected his own handshake, the 'McKinley grip," to prevent cramping. When confronted with a long reception line, he made a point of extending his hand first and clasping the other's fingers so he couldn't be squeezed back. Then he would grab hold of his visitor's elbow with his left hand and deftly move him along, clocking up to fifty people a minute" (Miller, p. 4). He had only one regular bodyguard, although two others were brought in for the Exposition (Fisher, p. 46). And that bodyguard, who usually stood to McKinley's left, where he could grab the right arm of an attempted assassin, was instead forced to stand at McKinley's right so that a local bigwig could tell McKinley the names of local politicians (Fisher, p. 58). At 4:00, they opened the doors to the public (Fisher, p. 58).
Despite it being a hot day, the line to meet McKinley and shake his hand formed well before the President arrived (Miller, p. 9). Czolgosz joined the line early. Observers said he kept his right hand in his pocket the entire time (Miller, p. 10), but he looked otherwise respectable, and the guards, distracted by a more suspicious-looking character right in front of him, did nothing to stop him (Rauchway, pp. 15-16).
The man in front of Czolgosz tried to hang on to the President. "Once extracted, McKinley turned toward Nieman, smiled widely, and extended his right hand. Nieman stepped forward. Standing only a foot away, he withdrew a bulging handkerchief from his pocket and shoved it toward the president's ribs" (Miller, p. 10). It was 4:07 p.m. (Fisher, p. 59). Czolgosz got off two shots before the guards, and the next man in line, seized him (Fisher, p. 60; Miller, p. 301).
In another curious parallel to the assassination of James A. Garfield twenty years earlier, McKinley was hit by two bullets, one of which produced only a minor flesh wound (being stopped by his breastbone) but one of which penetrated deep into the abdomen on his left side, penetrating the walls of the stomach (Fisher, pp. xi-xii; Miller, p. 314). McKinley himself located the bullet that hit his breastbone (Rauchway, p. 11).
Eighteen minutes after the shooting, McKinley arrived at the Exposition's medical facility (Miller, p. 312)
There was no surgeon immediately at hand; the only people present were "interns and a half a dozen nurses" (Miller, p. 312). A call went out for someone competent to operate. The best local surgeon, Dr. Roswell Park, was performing another surgery some distance away and was unavailable. (Park, once he came out of surgery, tried to rush to McKinley's side. But no one had made arrangements for him to get to Buffalo; Fisher, p. 69.) No fewer than six doctors were quickly found (Everett, p. 37). Since McKinley and his staff weren't local, they didn't know who to rely on (Fisher, p. 66).
The doctors on the scene had two choices: to operate on McKinley on-site or take him to a better-equipped hospital, and to operate at once with the surgeons on hand or wait for Dr. Park or another expert. Rather than risk delay, which could be fatal, they decided to do everything on the spot with the medical staff at hand (Fisher, pp. 70-71). This even though it meant operating in a room which had no artificial light, and even the natural light was filtered -- and the surgery took place late in the day, so the light was quite poor. It also meant doing the operation without appropriate surgical instruments, since the medical building did not have any on hand (Fisher, p. 72. On p. 155, Fisher points out that, although they had to improvise a lot, they did complete the surgery successfully by the standards of the time).
It's easy to criticize in hindsight, but it really does sound as if the surgeons made their choices too quickly and unwisely. (In a real tragedy, Dr. Park arrived as they were finishing up; Fisher, p. 79. Had they made serious arrangements to get him there, he could have operated almost as soon, certainly with more equipment, and probably with greater skill.) The surgeons on the spot eventually decided to defer to a gynecologist named Matthew Mann, who was known as a good surgeon but had little relevant experience (Miller, p 313). Mann and the others located and repaired the damage to the walls of McKinley's stomach (Fisher, pp. xii, 75). They did not find and extract the bullet -- Fisher, p. 77, implies that it their lack of surgical instruments made all these tasks difficult. McKinley's bulk didn't help either; there was a lot of fat tissue for the bullet to hide in! It is noteworthy that, although the doctors washed their hands thoroughly, they operated with bare hands (Fisher, p. 75). They did not set up an abdominal drain to remove any fluid that might accumulate after the surgery (Fisher, p. 79).
(Much later, Dr. Park wrote his memoirs. The version published in 1914, around the time of his death, was polite to his colleagues. But in 1945, Park's son donated his father's rough draft to the Buffalo Historical Society -- and it showed that Park thought his colleagues had made several bad mistakes; Fisher, pp. 150-151.)
Once McKinley was transferred to a private home, an army regiment was called out to keep people from getting in and out (Fisher, p. 87).
The surgery seemed to have been a success, and at first all the announcements were positive. One of the many physicians who visited to look things over was Charles McBurney, of appendicitis fame, who issued an optimistic statement and left town (Everett, p. 48). But there were troubling signs. McKinley's pulse rate was and remained very high, and his body was producing very little urine, perhaps hinting at kidney problems (Fisher, p. 95). His temperature was also high (Everett, p. 43). An attempt was made to bring in an x-ray machine, presumably to look for the missing bullet -- but one part failed to arrive, so it could not be used (Fisher, p. 99. According to Rauchway, p. 45, even the autopsy never located the bullet; the people involved sought it for four hours, without success, after which Mrs. McKinley them to stop trying.).
On September 11, five days after the surgery, the first clear signs of infection were noted (Fisher, p. 103), though this was not what killed McKinley (Fisher, p. 155). There were other signs of problems resulting from the absurd methods they had of trying to supply nutrition, which I won't detail. Ironically, even as this was happening (on September 12), some doctors were concluding that the danger was over, and were starting to leave the area (Fisher, p. 104). But McKinley was feeling worse -- and the doctors gave him digitalis, strychnine, and calomel (Fisher, p. 107), so if he wasn't sick before, he certainly would have been after that! The optimistic bulletins about his health turned to dire warnings, and vice president Roosevelt and the cabinet were notified (Fisher, pp. 108-109; Miller, pp. 318-319).
From that point, McKinley sank quickly, One report has him humming "Nearer, My God, to Thee" (Fisher, p. 111), but that song is the Official Song of Made Up Legends About Death; I don't believe it. Dr. Mann reported his last words as "Good-by, all; good-by. It is God's way. His will be done, not ours" (Everett, p. 61). That seems hardly more likely. He died at 2:15 a.m. on September 14, 1901 (Fisher, p. 112). Armstrong, p. 141, points out that this was the 39th anniversary of South Mountain, which for the 23rd Ohio was the bloodiest day of the Civil War.
The autopsy officially listed the cause of death as "gangrene" of the stomach and pancreas (Fisher, p. 114). I suspect today we'd say "necrosis," but neither word really explains much; he certainly died as an effect of his injury, but that doesn't explain exactly what made it fatal. Indeed, the doctors of the time argued about it (Miller, p. 324). (Merry, p. 481, blames the death on pancreatic failure, but based on the notes, he's basing that on the 1901 autopsy, and this is one place where contemporary authority is not what you want! He goes on to quote all the most sentimental stories about McKinley's end rather than the ones that have some authority.)
Interestingly, Fisher does not think infection was the cause of death. Rather, he believes (pp. 152-153) that the wounds caused fluids to accumulate in some places, and the amount of intercellular fluid to decrease in others, resulting in shock and loss of blood volume, and it is this that was the cause of death. More should have been done to supply McKinley with fluids, but no one knew of the need at the time. Many thought that more should have been done to find the missing bullet, but Fisher's conclusion (p. 157) is that this was not necessary and was not the cause of death. He goes on to say that McKinley's treatment conformed to the accepted standards of the time. In other words, while more modern techniques could have saved him, no one trained at the time would have done better than McKinley's actual doctors; he died because medical science (although it had improved greatly over the preceding forty years) was still primitive.
Ida McKinley wanted a simple funeral, but while the final service was quiet, the body traveled home in an incredibly ornate procession. The body lay in state in Buffalo on September 15 (Fisher, pp. 118-119).
On September 16, a train took McKinley's corpse back to Washington (Rauchway, p. 38; FIsher, p. 120). It then was sent to Canton, Ohio for burial, with the Edison Company filming the process (Rauchway, p. 52), so people would have been well aware of its travels. Theodore Roosevelt declared September 19, the day of the final funeral ceremony in Canton, an official Day of Mourning (Fisher, p. 121).
The journalism about the event was about what you would expect; Everett opens his account "On Friday, September 6, 1901, the blackest Friday in American history, the American people were shocked and stunned by the news that their beloved President, William McKinley, had been shot down by a cowardly assassin, while attending the Pan-American Exposition at Buffalo" (Everett, p. 33 -- and, yes, that's where the account begins; the first 32 pages are prefaces and photographs and the like).
When it was learned that Czolgosz was an anarchist, there was a strong reaction. Many other anarchists were taken into custody, or even treated to vigilante justice; no one bothered to check whether he was a lone wolf or not. Police broke into the place where Emma Goldman was staying in order to take her into custody (Miller, pp. 308-309); they even questioned her relatives, who were not part of the movement (FIsher, p. 128). "[I]t's hard to escape the concludion that Czolgos'z attack accomplished little more than to waste his life and to set the cause of anarchism back for years. Rather than inspiring a new generation of social radicals, Czolgosz managed to turn much of the nation, other anarchists included, against him" (Miller, p. 342).
Czolgosz had been roughed up a bit by the people who saw him shoot McKinley, and the crowd was baying for his blood, but the officials on the spot managed to get him to police headquarters (Fisher, pp. 60-64). The question then was what to do with him. Czolgosz, unlike Charles Guiteau who had assassinated James A. Garfield, showed no signs of insanity, and did not seem to be seeking an insanity defense (Rauchway, pp. 14-15). Taken to a cell, he demanded a meal, then -- without asking for or being given a lawyer -- admitted his guilt and said "I done my duty" (Rauchway, pp. 18-19). He later said "I am glad I did it" (Rauchway, p. 26). His general demeanor was such that the alienists sent to examine him decided that he was clearly sane (Rauchway, p. 27).
The Garfield precedent made one thing clear: the trial must not be allowed to become a circus (Rauchway, p. 29). Everything was done at high speed. There was speculation that Czolgosz was roughed up in prison. The authorities hid him from view for a time. He had no lawyer when he was interrogated (Rauchway, pp. 30-31). It was not until shortly before the trial that he obtained representation -- and that by two lawyers who were in effect ordered by the Erie County Bar to take the case, lest it reflect badly on the local legal community (Rauchway, p. 39). Neither had recent trial court experience (Miller, p. 322), and they couldn't get Czolgosz to talk to them (Fisher, p. 130).
The trial started absurdly soon -- September 23, 1901, just 17 days after McKinley was shot, leaving little time for the defense to prepare. When asked how he pled, Czolgosz promptly declared "guilty." The plea was ignored by the judge; you couldn't plead guilty to first degree murder. In any case, he had refused to plead earlier, and that was taken as a "not guilty" plea, which could not be changed (Fisher, p. 130).
It took a mere two hours and twelve minutes to select an all-working-class jury (Miller, p. 322); clearly no serious attempt was made to exclude biased jurors. The jurors all admitted to knowing about and having opinions concerning the case, but Czolgosz made no attempt to have any of them stricken; he didn't even respond when asked if he objected to any of them (Fisher, p. 130).
Czolgosz's lawyers set out on an insanity defense (Rauchway, pp. 41-42) -- what else could they do, when their client had been apprehended in the very act of the murder, and had even confessed to it? They did try to make a case that the medical men had caused McKinley to actually die (Rauchway, p. 45). But that was all they could really do. After a couple of days of testimony, the prosecution rested (Rauchway, p. 47).
The defense knew that there was no point in denying that Czolgosz was the murderer; they didn't try. Nor did they call witnesses. Czolgosz himself refused his lawyers' offer to let him testify (Fisher, p. 132). Instead, they tried an insanity defense. In a sense, they had faked out the prosecution. Everyone who talked to Czolgosz, including the defense experts, agreed that he was sane (Miller, pp. 324-325). So the prosecution had made no preparations to fight an insanity defense. Czolgosz's lawyers, with no evidence other than their own oratory, claimed insanity anyway (Rauchway, pp. 48-49).
Czolgosz was a very strange man, extremely socially isolated, and so reticent that he wouldn't even talk with his own lawyers (Miller, p, 323). His extreme withdrawal makes me wonder about a mental disorder -- perhaps autism, though the controversial diagnosis of schizoid personality disorder seems an even better fit. And I wonder a bit about depression, given his symptoms of lethargy and erratic anger. A later researcher talked to his family and found that none of his relatives were in any way peculiar (Rauchway, pp. 113-115); even they felt that Leon was odd. If the trial took place today, I might have had Czolgosz tested for that and tried for a life sentence rather than death on the basis of diminished capacity. But there is no question but that Czolgosz knew what he was doing and did it anyway. I doubt an argument on diminished capacity would work, even today. Certainly the line of argument Czolgosz's lawyers tried certainly didn't.
The lawyers argued a bit about the jury instructions -- the prosecution wanted them instructed that they shouldn't assume insanity, which violated the law of the time (Rauchway, pp. 50-51) -- and the final instructions were perhaps slightly imperfect. But the jury needed just 33 minutes to return a verdict of guilty (so Miller, p. 325; Rauchway, p. 52, says 25 minutes; Fisher, p. 133, says 30 minutes. I don't know if there were various reports of the time, or if Rauchway is deducting the time the jurors spent discussing whether they should sit around longer to pretend they had seriously deliberated). That was on September 24; the judge passed a sentence of death on September 26. Czolgosz as usual had little to say on his behalf, except to repeat that he committed his act all alone; there were no co-conspirators (Fisher, p. 133, who implies that Czolgosz wouldn't even have said that much, except that he was urged to make it clear that his family was not involved.)
Czolgosz was absolutely impassive when Judge White pronounced the sentence (Fisher, p. 154).
There was no appeal; Czolgosz had no allies with money, and his defense attorneys didn't have the slightest desire to continue a case they hadn't wanted to take in the first place.
Several members of Czolgosz's family came to visit him before the sentencing, but he had very little to say even to them (Miller, p. 326).
Even though he had been sentenced to death, a lynch mob tried to attack him was he was taken to Auburn Prison, where executions were conducted in New York (Miller, pp. 327-328; for another song about an execution, which actually mentions Auburn, see "Grace Brown and Chester Gillette" [Laws F7]). The assault for once broke through Czolgosz's reserve and left him incoherent and raging with terror (Miller, p. 328; Rauchway, p. 86, who mentions accounts of him being tortured before the move, which might explain his shattered state).
Czolgosz was executed in the electric chair, with the process done so hastily that he didn't really get to say all his last words (Rauchway, pp. 53, 87). Fisher, p. 134, says he was the first man executed using alternating current, resulting in a dramatic death spasm. His dead body was autopsied (the surgeons found no brain abnormalities; Fisher, p. 135-136), then dissolved in sulfuric acid in its grave, to prevent tomb raiding (Rauchway, p. 53). This may have been wise; although most people despised Czolgosz, there were apparently a few labor activists and the like who made a hero of him (Rauchway, p. 172). And several people went around and gathered recollections of him from family and acquaintances; they concluded he was insane (Rauchway, pp. 204-205). I don't think this follows; at worst, the information they gathered seems to imply a case of delusional disorder, and that would generally not be considered grounds for an insanity plea today. In any case, I think other diagnoses fit better.
The assassination -- the third time in forty years that a President had been killed -- did cause one change: The Secret Service was given real powers to guard the president (Fisher, p. xvi). McKinley, the first imperial president, did not have his own pretorian guard to separate him from the people and remind them of the rewards that come to those who are willing to do whatever it takes to gain power, but every president since has had that privilege.
Teddy Roosevelt is often viewed as a much more radical president than McKinley. Most of my sources disagree with this, believing that McKinley and Roosevelt were not that different on issues (so, e.g., Rauchway, p. 35). Where they differed was approaches -- Roosevelt was willing to talk to unions, and he was willing to use the courts, in a few cases, to go after companies that were bad actors. TR is known as a trust-buster, but I read somewhere that William Howard Taft, generally accounted a conservative, actually pursued more cases against monopolies. At first, Roosevelt didn't even change McKinley's cabinet; a political operative convinced him to keep them on (Rauchway, p. 37).
Roosevelt was not the first vice president to succeed to the Presidency, nor was he the first to replace an assassinated President. He was, however, the first vice president to win re-election as president. He was also the first President to voluntarily leave office (in 1909) and then turn around and try for a third term (in 1912). There is perhaps some sort of irony in the fact that, while campaigning in 1912, an attempt was made to assassinate TR -- although, stubborn as he was, he actually went on to give a speech before he let them take him to the hospital (Rauchway, pp. 183-184, 191-196). The assassin was one John Shrank, a Bavarian immigrant, who said he shot him because he was seeking a third term, plus he claimed Roosevelt was responsible for the McKinley assassination -- he claimed to have had a dream in which McKinley told him to shoot TR (which caused him to be judged insane; Rauchway, pp. 197-198; Chace, pp. 212-213. I think the correct description is obsessed with preventing third terms, but otherwise sane; as Rauchway, p. 198, points out, he was clever enough to shoot Roosevelt in Wisconsin, which didn't have the death penalty. The irony of that is that he spent almost three decades in an asylum, not dying until 1940, when it was clear that a different Roosevelt, Franklin, was going to seek a third term; Chace, p. 213). This time, the doctors took an X-ray, and found that the bullet had stopped less than an inch from Roosevelt's heart, but the damage was mild ebough that they left it there (Chase, pp. 232-233)
McKinley's assassination probably helped ruin the Buffalo Exhibition. Admissions fell, and souvenir collectors were gutting the place. The event lost millions. The Federal government helped cover the City of Buffalo's losses, but individual investors were out of luck (Fisher, pp. 144-147).
The doctors who operated on McKinley also went to the government for payment, and eventually received it (Fisher, p. 147).
Ida McKinley, after Willilam's death, sold the home she had shared with her husband, moved back to the Saxton Family home, and set up a shrine to her husband next to her bedroom -- a room which she supposedly visited every day for the rest of her life (Fisher, p. 122). She died on May 26, 1907, still grieving her husband.
If we look at the various items in this song, they contain a surprising mix of truth and falsehood:
-- "He shot McKinley with a handkerchief on his hand": True. Czolgosz had a handkerchief on his right hand to conceal his pistol
-- "McKinley hollered, McKinley squalled" (upon being shot): In fact McKinley seems to have been fairly quiet upon being hit by the bullets, asking, "Am I shot?" (Everett, p. 35).
-- "Doc said, 'McKinley, I can't find the ball'": as we saw, the surgeons did not find or extract the bullet from McKinley's ample abdomen.
-- "Roosevelt's in the White House": Roosevelt didn't actually make it to the White House until McKinley was dead, but obviously he did succeed to the Presidency
-- "Look here, you rascal, you see what you've done, Shot my husband with your Ivor-Johnson gun": Ida McKinley never confronted Czolgosz directly, but the gun was indeed an Ivor-Johnson revolver.
-- "Ain't but one thing grieves my mind, That is to die and leave my poor wife behind": McKinley's devotion to his wife was notable, although it is doubtful that he would have said these exact words
-- "Carry him back to Washington.... Yonder comes the train, coming down the line, Throwing a station message, McKinley's dying": There was indeed a train to carry McKinley back to Washington, although only after his death. I wonder if this might not be a very distorted reference to the fact that there were actually two engines sent: One pulled McKinley's train; the other went before the main train as a pilot engine, to make sure the track was clear and people knew what was coming (Everett, p. 345).
-- "Hush, little children, now don't you fret, You'll get a pension on your papa's death": completely unhistorical; while McKinley's wife survived him, his children, as we saw, were long dead. (And would have been in their late twenties anyway, and would surely have left home by 1901). - RBW
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