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The 1900 United States presidential election was the 29th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 6, 1900. In a re-match of the 1896 race, incumbent Republican President William McKinley defeated his Democratic challenger, William Jennings Bryan .
McKinley's reputation and experience, along with Bryan's political inability to craft a message that connected on a personal level with voters, resulted in McKinley easily defeating Bryan. The...
- Overview
- Early life
- Congressman and governor
- Presidency
William McKinley (born January 29, 1843, Niles, Ohio, U.S.—died September 14, 1901, Buffalo, New York) 25th president of the United States (1897–1901). Under McKinley’s leadership, the United States went to war against Spain in 1898 and thereby acquired a global empire, which included Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines.
McKinley was the son of William McKinley, a manager of a charcoal furnace and a small-scale iron founder, and Nancy Allison. Eighteen years old at the start of the Civil War, McKinley enlisted in an Ohio regiment under the command of Rutherford B. Hayes, later the 19th president of the United States (1877–81). Promoted second lieutenant for his bravery in the Battle of Antietam (1862), he was discharged a brevet major in 1865. Returning to Ohio, he studied law, was admitted to the bar in 1867, and opened a law office in Canton, where he resided—except for his years in Washington, D.C.—for the rest of his life.
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Drawn immediately to politics in the Republican Party, McKinley supported Hayes for governor in 1867 and Ulysses S. Grant for president in 1868. The following year he was elected prosecuting attorney for Stark county, and in 1877 he began his long career in Congress as representative from Ohio’s 17th district. McKinley served in the House of Representatives until 1891, failing reelection only twice—in 1882, when he was temporarily unseated in an extremely close election, and in 1890, when Democrats gerrymandered his district.
The issue with which McKinley became most closely identified during his congressional years was the protective tariff, a high tax on imported goods which served to protect American manufacturers from foreign competition. While it was only natural for a Republican from a rapidly industrializing state to favour protection, McKinley’s support reflected more than his party’s pro-business bias. A genuinely compassionate man, McKinley cared about the well-being of American workers, and he always insisted that a high tariff was necessary to assuring high wages. As chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, he was the principal sponsor of the McKinley Tariff of 1890, which raised duties higher than they had been at any previous time. Yet by the end of his presidency McKinley had become a convert to commercial reciprocity among nations, recognizing that Americans must buy products from other countries in order to sustain the sale of American goods abroad.
The presidential campaign of 1896 was one of the most exciting in American history. The central issue was the nation’s money supply. McKinley ran on a Republican platform emphasizing maintenance of the gold standard, while his opponent—William Jennings Bryan, candidate of both the Democratic and Populist parties—called for a bimetallic standard of gold and silver. Bryan campaigned vigorously, traveling thousands of miles and delivering hundreds of speeches in support of an inflated currency that would help poor farmers and other debtors. McKinley remained at home in Canton, greeting visiting delegations of Republicans at his front porch and giving carefully prepared speeches promoting the benefits of a gold-backed currency. For his part, Hanna tapped big businesses for enormous campaign contributions while simultaneously directing a network of Republican speakers who portrayed Bryan as a dangerous radical and McKinley as “the advance agent of prosperity.” McKinley won the election decisively, becoming the first president to achieve a popular majority since 1872 and bettering Bryan 271 to 176 in the electoral vote.
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Inaugurated president March 4, 1897, McKinley promptly called a special session of Congress to revise customs duties upward. On July 24 he signed into law the Dingley Tariff, the highest protective tariff in American history to that time. Yet domestic issues would play only a minor role in the McKinley presidency. Emerging from decades of isolationism in the 1890s, Americans had already shown signs of wanting to play a more assertive role on the world stage. Under McKinley, the United States became an empire.
By the time McKinley took the oath of office as president, many Americans—influenced greatly by the sensationalistic yellow journalism of the Hearst and Pulitzer newspapers—were eager to see the United States intervene in Cuba, where Spain was engaged in brutal repression of an independence movement. Initially, McKinley hoped to avoid American involvement, but in February 1898 two events stiffened his resolve to confront the Spanish. First, a letter written by the Spanish minister to Washington, Enrique Dupuy de Lôme, was intercepted, and on February 9 it was published in American newspapers; the letter described McKinley as weak and too eager for public adulation. Then, six days after the appearance of the Dupuy de Lôme letter, the American battleship USS Maine suddenly exploded and sank as it sat anchored in Havana harbour, carrying 266 enlisted men and officers to their deaths. Although a mid-20th century investigation proved conclusively that the Maine was destroyed by an internal explosion, the yellow press convinced Americans of Spanish responsibility. The public clamoured for armed intervention, and congressional leaders were eager to satisfy the public demand for action.
In March McKinley gave Spain an ultimatum, including demands for an end to the brutality inflicted upon Cubans and the start of negotiations leading toward independence for the island. Spain agreed to most of McKinley’s demands but balked at giving up its last major New World colony. On April 20 Congress authorized the president to use armed force to secure the independence of Cuba, and five days later it passed a formal declaration of war.
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1896 interactive map. << 1892 1900 >> The United States presidential election of November 3, 1896, saw Republican William McKinley defeat Democrat William Jennings Bryan in a campaign considered by historians to be one of the most dramatic and complex in American history.
McKinley, a Republican and former Governor of Ohio, defeated the joint Democratic and Populist nominee, William Jennings Bryan, as well as minor-party candidates. McKinley's decisive victory in what is sometimes seen as a realigning election ended a period of close presidential contests, and ushered in an era of dominance for the Republican Party.
This tradition had begun to erode prior to 1896. James Blaine had spent six weeks campaigning. William Jennings Bryan became the first presidential candidate to spent nearly the entire campaign season on the campaign trail. He did so largely out of necessity, being outspent and out-organized by the Republicans.
May 16, 2023 · Republican incumbent William McKinley defeated Democratic challenger William Jennings Bryan in the 1900 presidential election, a rematch of the 1896 election. McKinley was assassinated in September 1901, and was succeeded by his vice president, Theodore Roosevelt.
