In 1896, William McKinley was elected President of the United States. 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.
McKinley was born in 1843 in Niles, Ohio. After service as an Army officer in the Civil War, he became a lawyer and settled in Canton, Ohio. In 1876 he was elected to Congress, and he remained there most of the time until 1890, when he was defeated for re-election in a gerrymandered district. By this time he was considered a likely presidential candidate, especially after being elected governor in 1891 and 1893. McKinley had incautiously co-signed the loans of a friend, and demands for repayment were made on him when his friend went bankrupt in the Panic of 1893. Personal insolvency would have removed McKinley as a factor in the 1896 campaign, but he was rescued from this by businessmen who supported him, led by his friend and political manager, Mark Hanna. With that obstacle removed, Hanna built McKinley's campaign organization through 1895 and 1896. McKinley refused to deal with the eastern bosses such as Thomas Platt and Matthew Quay, and they tried to block his nomination by encouraging state favorite son candidates to run and prevent McKinley from getting a majority of delegate votes at the Republican National Convention, which might force him to make deals on political patronage. Their efforts were in vain, as the large, efficient McKinley organization swept him to a first ballot victory at the convention, with New Jersey's Garret Hobart as his running mate.
McKinley was a noted protectionist, and was confident of winning an election fought on that question. But it was free silver that became the issue of the day, with Bryan capturing the Democratic nomination as a foe of the gold standard. Hanna raised millions for a campaign of education with trainloads of pamphlets to convince the voters that free silver would be harmful, and once that had its effect, even more were printed on protectionism. McKinley stayed at home in Canton, running a front porch campaign and reaching millions through newspaper coverage of the speeches he gave to organized groups of people. This contrasted with Bryan, who toured the nation by rail in his campaign. Supported by the well-to-do, urban dwellers, and prosperous farmers, McKinley won a majority of the popular vote and an easy victory in the Electoral College. McKinley's systemized approach to gaining the presidency laid the groundwork for modern campaigns, and he forged an electoral coalition that would keep the Republicans in power most of the time until 1932.
Background
William McKinley was born in Niles, Ohio in 1843. He left college to work as a teacher, and enlisted in the Union Army when the American Civil War broke out in 1861. He served throughout the war, ending it as a brevet major. Afterwards, he attended Albany Law School in New York state, and was admitted to the bar in Ohio. He settled in Canton, Ohio; after practicing law there, he was elected to Congress in 1876, and except for short periods served there until 1891. In 1890 he was defeated for re-election, but he was elected governor the following year, serving two two-year terms.
In the latter part of the 19th century, Ohio was deemed a crucial battleground state; taking its electoral votes was thought essential for a Republican to win the White House. One way of, hopefully, assuring victory there was to nominate a son of Ohio. Between 1865 and 1929, every Republican president who first gained his office by election (that is, rather than succeeding on the death of his predecessor) was born in Ohio. Deadlocked Republican conventions in 1876, 1880, and 1888 turned to men born in Ohio, and in each case the nominee won the presidency. Thus, any successful Ohio Republican was a plausible president. One of McKinley's rivals among the Ohio contenders was Governor Joseph B. Foraker, but Foraker's light dimmed when he was defeated for a third two-year term in 1889.
There were strong factional conflicts within the Ohio Republican party; one source of bitterness was the 1888 Republican National Convention. Ohio Republicans had endorsed the state's senior senator, John Sherman, for president. This was Sherman's third attempt at the Republican nomination; among his supporters were Cleveland industrialist Mark Hanna, and Governor Foraker, whom Hanna had to that point strongly supported. After repeated balloting, Sherman did not get close to the number of delegate votes needed to nominate, and when rumors swept the convention that the party's 1884 nominee, former Maine senator James G. Blaine, might enter the race, Foraker expressed willingness to support Blaine. This dealt a serious blow to Sherman's candidacy by showing division in his home state, and the nomination went to former Indiana senator Benjamin Harrison, who was Ohio-born and went on to be elected. McKinley had received some delegate votes, and his action in refusing to consider a candidacy while pledged to support Sherman impressed Mark Hanna. The industrialist was outraged at Foraker and abandoned him. McKinley and Hanna shared similar political views, including support for a tariff to protect and encourage American industry, and in the years following 1888, Hanna became a strong supporter of McKinley.
Revenue from tariffs was then a major source of income for the federal government. There was no federal income tax, and tariff debates were passionate; the 1888 presidential election had them as a major issue. Many Democrats supported a tariff for revenue only—that is, the purpose of tariffs should be to finance government, not to encourage American manufacturers. McKinley disagreed with that and sponsored the McKinley Tariff of 1890. This act, passed by the Republican-dominated Congress, raised rates on imports to protect American industry. McKinley's tariff proved unpopular among many people who had to pay the increased prices, and was seen as a reason not only for his defeat for re-election to Congress in 1890, but also for the Republicans losing control of both House and Senate in that year's midterm elections. Nevertheless, McKinley's defeat did not, in the end, damage his political prospects, as the Democrats were blamed for gerrymandering him out of his seat.
Sometime between 1888 and 1890, McKinley decided to run for president, but to have a realistic chance of attaining that goal, he needed to regain office. Foraker's ambition then was the Senate—he planned to challenge Sherman in the legislative election to be held in January 1892—and he agreed to nominate McKinley for governor at the state convention in Columbus. McKinley was elected, and Sherman narrowly turned back Foraker's challenge with considerable help from Hanna.
Harrison had proven unpopular even in his own party, and by the start of 1892, McKinley was talked about as a potential presidential candidate. McKinley's name was not offered in nomination at the 1892 Republican National Convention, where he served as permanent chairman, but some delegates voted for him anyway, and he finished third behind Harrison (who won a first ballot victory) and Blaine. Hanna had sought support from delegates, but his and McKinley's strategy is uncertain, due to lack of surviving documents. According to Hanna biographer William T. Horner, "McKinley's behavior at the convention supports the idea that he liked the attention but was not ready for a campaign". According to McKinley biographer H. Wayne Morgan, many delegates "saw in [McKinley] their nominee for 1896".
Gaining the nomination
Preparing for a run
Harrison was defeated in the November 1892 election by former president Grover Cleveland, a Democrat, who returned to the White House in March 1893. President Harrison left office proclaiming the nation's prosperity, but in May, amid economic uncertainty that caused many people to convert assets into gold, the stock market crashed, and many firms went bankrupt. The depression that ensued became known as the Panic of 1893. Among those who became insolvent in 1893 was a McKinley friend, Robert Walker. McKinley had co-signed promissory notes for Walker, and thought the total to be $17,000. Walker had deceived McKinley, telling the governor that fresh loans were renewals of old ones, and the total indebtedness, for which McKinley had made himself liable, was over $130,000. That sum was beyond McKinley's means, and he planned to resign and earn the money as a lawyer. He was rescued by Hanna and other wealthy supporters, who raised the money to pay the loans. According to McKinley biographer Kevin Phillips, the governor's backers "paid off the cosigned notes so that McKinley—by now, the probable next president—did not need to go back to practicing law".
The public sympathized with McKinley for his financial trouble, and he was easily re-elected as governor in late 1893. At that time, the United States, for all practical purposes, was on the gold standard. Many Democrats, and some Republicans, felt that the gold standard limited economic growth, and supported bimetallism, making silver legal tender, as it had been until the passage of the Coinage Act of 1873. Doing so would likely be inflationary, permitting holders of silver to deposit bullion at the mints, and receive payment for about twice the silver's 1896 market value. Many farmers, faced with the long decline in agricultural prices that persisted through the first half of the 1890s, felt that bimetallism would expand the money supply and make it easier to pay their debts. Cleveland was a firm supporter of the gold standard, and believed the massive amounts of silver-backed currency issued pursuant to the Sherman Silver Purchase Act of 1890 had helped crash the economy. In 1893 he forced through the act's repeal, outraging western Democrats such as Nebraska Congressman William Jennings Bryan. The Democratic Congress in 1894 passed the Wilson–Gorman Tariff, significantly lowering many rates from the McKinley Tariff of 1890. The economy did not improve in 1894, and other Cleveland actions, such as federal intervention to halt the Pullman strike, further split his party,
The 1894 election campaign saw the Democrats divided, and the electorate further split by the new People's Party (or Populists), which had emerged from the agricultural discontent. There were more demands for McKinley to speak than he could possibly fulfill. Campaigning throughout the eastern half of the country on behalf of Republican candidates, and venturing even to New Orleans in the Democratic Solid South, McKinley spoke to large, enthusiastic crowds as often as 23 times in a day. According to his biographer Margaret Leech, "McKinley's fervor was irresistible to his audiences. He was better than a spellbinder. He was a vote-getter. The whirlwind campaign of the Governor of Ohio was a sensation of the autumn." The 1894 elections saw the Democrats suffer the greatest losses by a majority party in congressional history, as the Republicans again took control of both houses.
First modern primary campaign
The outcome of the 1894 elections made it increasingly likely that a Republican would be the next president. At the time, the presidential nominating process started much later than it subsequently would, and McKinley, in quietly organizing his campaign with Hanna's aid in the early months of 1895, was alone among the candidates in acting so early. Other potential Republican candidates were former president Harrison, incoming Speaker of the House Thomas Brackett Reed of Maine, Iowa Senator William B. Allison, and several state favorite sons, such as Illinois Senator Shelby Cullom. If former president Harrison entered the race, he would immediately become a major contender, and uncertainty over his status hung over the race in 1895. At the time, unless there was an incumbent elected Republican president, the nomination was generally not decided until the convention, with state political bosses and delegates exacting a price for their support. A candidate's efforts to gain the nomination did not begin until shortly before the state delegate conventions in the spring of the election year, where fights over the makeup of the delegation often focused on who would be on it, rather than who delegates would support. McKinley and Hanna decided on a systematic nationwide effort to gain the nomination, employing what onetime presidential adviser Karl Rove—author of a 2015 book on the 1896 race—called "the first modern primary campaign".
To devote himself full-time to McKinley's presidential campaign, Hanna in 1895 turned over management of his companies to his brother Leonard, and rented a house in Thomasville, Georgia, expressing a dislike for Cleveland's winters. He was joined there by William and Ida McKinley in early 1895. The location was a plausibly nonpolitical vacation spot for McKinley, and also permitted him to meet many southern Republicans, including blacks. Although southern Republicans rarely had local electoral success, they elected a substantial number of delegates to the national convention. McKinley and Hanna hosted many southern Republican leaders in Thomasville, subsidizing those who did not have the money to come, and made many converts. The governor also traveled in the South; in Savannah at the end of March 1895, he became the first presidential hopeful in American history to address an audience of blacks when he spoke at an African American church. By the time he left Thomasville, he had gained the support of the majority of likely southern delegates; Platt wrote mournfully in his autobiography that Hanna "had the South practically solid before some of us awakened".