Enlisting in the 23rd Ohio Infantry when Abraham Lincoln first called for volunteers, McKinley (1843-1901) was defined for the rest of his life by his experiences there, as Armstrong, a retired minister and independent scholar, shows. McKinley was 18, with no military background, but with a strong commitment to defeating secession accompanied by a principled aversion to slavery. Armstrong reveals how ability and seriousness soon took McKinley out of the ranks to an officer's commission and a series of staff jobs that prefigured his postwar career in law and politics. He bore a full share of the action seen by the 23rd OhioAcommanded by another future president, Col. Rutherford B. HayesAmostly waged in West Virginia. His courage and coolness in the field, his administrative skills and his unassuming, reserved personality, as Armstrong presents them, attracted the attention not only of political soldiers like Hayes, but of fire-eating battle captains like Samuel S. Carroll. The final chapter of five examines McKinley's post-1865 political and civilian life. Armstrong contends that McKinley took advantage of his status as a combat veteran to extend the hand of reconciliation to his Confederate counterparts. He played a central role in the Republican Party's abandonment of the anti-Southern "bloody shirt" policies of the immediate postwar years, and drew on his Civil War experience to shape his role as commander-in-chief during the Spanish-American War. In short, this unpretentious work makes a strong case for McKinley as the archetype of the citizen soldier as president. (June)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Book Description
Major McKinley is the first complete account of the Civil War service of President William McKinley, the last of the Civil War veterans to reach the White House and the only one who served in the ranks. McKinley enlisted as a private in the 23rd Ohio Volunteer Infantry (later commanded by another future president, Rutherford B. Hayes) and was the regiment’s commissary sergeant when his bravery at the Battle of Antietam led to a commission and an assignment to Hayes’s military staff.
McKinley regarded the end of slavery as the significant outcome of the war and valued the contributions of the black soldiers in the Union army. After the war, as a young lawyer and congressman, he defended the rights of freedmen and did so long after others had tired of the cause. He also reached out to former Confederate soldiers in an effort to help restore unity to a divided country. This initiative eventually overshadowed and diminished his advocacy of civil rights.
Drawing on a wide variety of sources, including McKinley’s own papers and the diaries and letters of men who served with him, this book presents a new picture of McKinley as a soldier and provides a fresh appreciation of his later life as a veteran in politics.
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