President William F. McKinley
1843 - 1901
Cause of Death:
Post-Operative Infection and Complications Resulting from Bullet Removal / Negligent Homicide
Likely Suspects:
New World Order
"The best way for the Government to maintain its credit is to pay as it goes--not by resorting to loans, but by keeping out of debt--through an adequate income secured by a system of taxation, external or internal, or both.
It is the settled policy of the Government, pursued from the beginning and practiced by all parties and Administrations, to raise the bulk of our revenue from taxes upon foreign productions entering the United States for sale and consumption, and avoiding, for the most part, every form of direct taxation, except in time of war. The country is clearly opposed to any needless additions to the subject of internal taxation, and is committed by its latest popular utterance to the system of tariff taxation.
There can be no misunderstanding, either, about the principle upon which this tariff taxation shall be levied. Nothing has ever been made plainer at a general election than that the controlling principle in the raising of revenue from duties on imports is zealous care for American interests and American labor.
The people have declared that such legislation should be had as will give ample protection and encouragement to the industries and the development of our country. It is, therefore, earnestly hoped and expected that Congress will, at the earliest practicable moment, enact revenue legislation that shall be fair, reasonable, conservative, and just, and which, while supplying sufficient revenue for public purposes, will still be signally beneficial and helpful to every section and every enterprise of the people.
To this policy we are all, of whatever party, firmly bound by the voice of the people--a power vastly more potential than the expression of any political platform. The paramount duty of Congress is to stop deficiencies by the restoration of that protective legislation which has always been the firmest prop of the Treasury.
The passage of such a law or laws would strengthen the credit of the Government both at home and abroad, and go far toward stopping the drain upon the gold reserve held for the redemption of our currency, which has been heavy and well-nigh constant for several years.
It has been the policy of the United States since the foundation of the Government to cultivate relations of peace and amity with all the nations of the world, and this accords with my conception of our duty now.
We have cherished the policy of non-interference with affairs of foreign governments wisely inaugurated by Washington, keeping ourselves free from entanglement, either as allies or foes, content to leave undisturbed with them the settlement of their own domestic concerns.
It will be our aim to pursue a firm and dignified foreign policy, which shall be just, impartial, ever watchful of our national honor, and always insisting upon the enforcement of the lawful rights of American citizens everywhere. Our diplomacy should seek nothing more and accept nothing less than is due us. We want no wars of conquest; we must avoid the temptation of territorial aggression.
War should never be entered upon until every agency of peace has failed; peace is preferable to war in almost every contingency. Arbitration is the true method of settlement of international as well as local or individual differences.
It was recognized as the best means of adjustment of differences between employers and employees by the Forty-ninth Congress, in 1886, and its application was extended to our diplomatic relations by the unanimous concurrence of the Senate and House of the Fifty-first Congress in 1890. The latter resolution was accepted as the basis of negotiations with us by the British House of Commons in 1893, and upon our invitation a treaty of arbitration between the United States and Great Britain was signed at Washington and transmitted to the Senate for its ratification in January last.
Since this treaty is clearly the result of our own initiative; since it has been recognized as the leading feature of our foreign policy throughout our entire national history--the adjustment of difficulties by judicial methods rather than force of arms--and since it presents to the world the glorious example of reason and peace, not passion and war, controlling the relations between two of the greatest nations in the world, an example certain to be followed by others, I respectfully urge the early action of the Senate thereon, not merely as a matter of policy, but as a duty to mankind.
The importance and moral influence of the ratification of such a treaty can hardly be overestimated in the cause of advancing civilization. It may well engage the best thought of the statesmen and people of every country, and I cannot but consider it fortunate that it was reserved to the United States to have the leadership in so grand a work."
“We want no wars of conquest.
We must avoid the temptation of territorial aggression."
"He defeated his Democratic rival, William Jennings Bryan, after a front-porch campaign in which he advocated “sound money” (the gold standard unless altered by international agreement) and promised that high tariffs would restore prosperity."
The Tariff Act of 1890, commonly called the McKinley Tariff, was an act of the United States Congress framed by Representative William McKinley that became law on October 1, 1890. The tariff raised the average duty on imports to almost fifty percent, an act designed to protect domestic industries from foreign competition.
Protectionism, a tactic supported by Republicans, was fiercely debated by politicians and condemned by Democrats. The McKinley Tariff was replaced with the Wilson-Gorman Tariff in 1894, which promptly lowered tariff rates.
Tariffs, taxes on foreign goods entering a country, served two purposes for the United States in the late 19th century. One was to raise fiscal revenue for the federal government, and the other was to protect domestic manufacturers from foreign competition. This controversial idea was known as protectionism.
In December 1887, President Grover Cleveland, a Democrat, devoted his entire State of the Union Address to the issue of the tariff. He called emphatically for the reduction of duties and the abolition of duties on raw materials.
This speech succeeded in making the tariff, and the idea of protectionism, a true party matter. In the 1888 election, the Republicans were victorious with the election of President Harrison, and majorities in both the Senate and the House. For the sake of holding the party line, the Republicans felt obligated to pass stronger tariff legislation.
Douglas Irwin’s 1998 paper examines the validity of the opposite tariff hypotheses posed by the Republicans and Democrats in 1890. Irwin looked at historical data to estimate import demand elasticities, and export supply elasticities for the United States in the years before 1888.
With this information, he calculated that tariffs had not reached the maximum revenue rate, and therefore a reduction, not an increase, in the tariff would have reduced revenue and the federal surplus.
His findings confirmed the Democrats' hypothesis, and refuted the Republicans'. However, after examining the actual tariff revenue data, it appears that revenue did decrease by about four percent from $225 million to $215 million after the Tariff of 1890 increased rates. Irwin explains that this is due to the Tariff of 1890’s provision that raw sugar be moved to the duty free list.
Sugar, at this time, was the item that raised the most tariff revenue, so making it duty free reduced this revenue. If sugar is excluded from import calculations, the tariff revenue increased by 7.8 percent from $170 million to $183 million.
The tariff was not well received by Americans who suffered a steep increase in the cost of products. In the 1890 election, Republicans House seats went from 166 to only 88.
In the 1892 presidential election, Harrison was soundly defeated by Grover Cleveland, and the Senate, House, and Presidency were all under Democratic control. Lawmakers immediately started drafting new tariff legislation, and in 1894 the Wilson-Gorman Tariff passed which lowered U.S. tariff averages.
The Patsy
The Case Officer
"According to documents found on Schrank after the attempted assassination, Schrank had written that he was advised by the ghost of William McKinley in a dream to avenge his death, pointing to a picture of Theodore Roosevelt."
Schrank was heartbroken not just because he had lost his second set of parents but because his first and only girlfriend Emily Ziegler had died in the General Slocum disaster on New York's East River.
On August 17, 1901, while carrying what was described as 900 intoxicated Paterson anarchists, some of the passengers started a riot on board and attempted to take control of the vessel. However, the crew fought back and maintained control of the ship. The captain docked the ship at the police pier and 17 men were taken into custody by the police.
The 25th President of the United States, William McKinley, was shot and fatally wounded on September 6, 1901, inside the Temple of Music on the grounds of the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. McKinley was shaking hands with the public when he was shot by Leon Czolgosz, an anarchist.
The President died on September 14 from gangrene caused by the bullet wounds.
McKinley had been elected for a second term in 1900. He enjoyed meeting the public, and was reluctant to accept the security available to his office.
The Secretary to the President, George B. Cortelyou, feared an assassination attempt would take place during a visit to the Temple of Music, and twice took it off the schedule.
McKinley restored it each time.
Theodore Roosevelt shortly before John Schrank made an attempt on his life. (Library of Congress)
Theodore Roosevelt’s opening line was hardly remarkable for a presidential campaign speech: “Friends, I shall ask you to be as quiet as possible.” His second line, however, was a bombshell.
“I don’t know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot.”
Clearly, Roosevelt had buried the lede. The horrified audience in the Milwaukee Auditorium on October 14, 1912, gasped as the former president unbuttoned his vest to reveal his bloodstained shirt. “It takes more than that to kill a bull moose,” the wounded candidate assured them. He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a bullet-riddled, 50-page speech. Holding up his prepared remarks, which had two big holes blown through each page, Roosevelt continued. “Fortunately I had my manuscript, so you see I was going to make a long speech, and there is a bullet—there is where the bullet went through—and it probably saved me from it going into my heart. The bullet is in me now, so that I cannot make a very long speech, but I will try my best.”
Only two days before, the editor-in-chief of The Outlook characterized Roosevelt as “an electric battery of inexhaustible energy,” and for the next 90 minutes the 53-year-old former president proved it. “I give you my word, I do not care a rap about being shot; not a rap,” he claimed. Few could doubt him. Although his voice weakened and his breath shortened, Roosevelt glared at his nervous aides whenever they begged him to stop speaking or positioned themselves around the podium to catch him if he collapsed. Only with the speech completed did he agree to visit the hospital.
The damaged eyeglass case that helped slow the trajectory of the bullet that hit Theodore Roosevelt. (National Park Service)
The shooting had occurred just after 8 p.m. as Roosevelt entered his car outside the Gilpatrick Hotel. As he stood up in the open-air automobile and waved his hat with his right hand to the crowd, a flash from a Colt revolver 5 feet away lit up the night. The candidate’s stenographer quickly put the would-be assassin in a half nelson and grabbed the assailant’s right wrist to prevent him from firing a second shot.
The well-wishing crowd morphed into a bloodthirsty pack, raining blows on the shooter and shouting, “Kill him!” According to an eyewitness, one man was “the coolest and least excited of anyone in the frenzied mob”: Roosevelt. The man who had been propelled to the Oval Office after an assassin felled President William McKinley bellowed out, “Don’t hurt him. Bring him here. I want to see him.” Roosevelt asked the shooter, “What did you do it for?” With no answer forthcoming, he said, “Oh, what’s the use? Turn him over to the police.”
Although there were no outward signs of blood, the former president reached inside his heavy overcoat and felt a dime-sized bullet hole on the right side of his chest. “He pinked me,” Roosevelt told a party official. He coughed into his hand three times. Not seeing any telltale blood, he determined that the bullet hadn’t penetrated his lungs. An accompanying doctor naturally told the driver to head directly to the hospital, but Colonel Roosevelt gave different marching orders: “You get me to that speech.”
X-rays taken after the campaign event showed the bullet lodged against Roosevelt’s fourth right rib on an upward path to his heart. Fortunately, the projectile had been slowed by his dense overcoat, steel-reinforced eyeglass case and hefty speech squeezed into his inner right jacket pocket. Roosevelt dictated a telegram to his wife that said he was “in excellent shape” and that the “trivial” wound wasn’t “a particle more serious than one of the injuries any of the boys used continually to be having.”
John Schrank after his arrest. (Library of Congress)
Even before the shooting, the 1912 presidential campaign had been a raucous one, with the former Republican president challenging his party’s standard-bearer (and his handpicked successor), incumbent William Howard Taft. The internecine fight, so fierce that barbed wire concealed by patriotic bunting defended the podium at the Republican Convention, tore the Grand Old Party apart. Roosevelt went rogue and ran under the banner of the Progressive Party, nicknamed the “Bull Moose Party.” Blasted by political opponents and elements of the press for being a power-hungry traitor willing to break the tradition of two-term presidencies, Roosevelt told the Milwaukee audience that the campaign’s inflamed political rhetoric contributed to the shooting. “It is a very natural thing,” he said, “that weak and vicious minds should be inflamed to acts of violence by the kind of awful mendacity and abuse that have been heaped upon me for the last three months by the papers.”
The “weak” mind responsible for the assassination attempt belonged to 36-year-old John Schrank, an unemployed New York City saloonkeeper who had stalked his prey around the country for weeks. A handwritten screed found in his pockets reflected the troubled thoughts of a paranoid schizophrenic. “To the people of the United States,” Schrank had written. “In a dream I saw President McKinley sit up in his coffin pointing at a man in a monk’s attire in whom I recognized Theodore Roosevelt. The dead president said—This is my murderer—avenge my death.” Schrank also claimed he acted to defend the two-term tradition of American presidents. “I did not intend to kill the citizen Roosevelt,” the shooter said at his trial. “I intended to kill Theodore Roosevelt, the third termer.” Schrank pled guilty, was determined to be insane and was confined for life in a Wisconsin state asylum.
Doctors determined it was safer to leave the bullet embedded deep in Roosevelt’s chest than to operate, although the shooting exacerbated his chronic rheumatoid arthritis for the rest of his life. Even though the attempted assassination unleashed a wave of sympathy for Roosevelt, the Republican split led to an easy victory by Democrat Woodrow Wilson on Election Day. Roosevelt came in second with 27 percent of the vote, the highest percentage of any third-party candidate in American history.
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