February 4-6, 2017
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| William McKinley (Source: Smith, 2005) |
Granted, not as cold as
some years (like last President’s Day when we visited Grover Cleveland’s
birthplace in New Jersey in maybe single-digit windchills). But still, it’s not
exactly warm.
We could go to Canton,
Ohio, home of the William McKinley Presidential Library and Museum. But, like
we said, it’s February.
Fortunately, Tom wants
to visit a Spanish-American War site for McKinley, since the relatively quick
war – dubbed “this splendid little war” – broke out during McKinley’s tenure.
Hello, Puerto Rico!
Sunny, balmy, even humid. Eighty-five degrees during the day, mid-70s at night.
Water temperature in the Atlantic Ocean around 80. Perfect!
And more importantly,
Old San Juan features El Morro – formally called Castillo San Felipe del
Morro – which the American ships shelled in the fight with the Spanish.
Cuba was the instigator
of the Spanish-American War, wanting to break off from long-time Spanish rule.
And the Cubans really wanted the Americans’ help. Unfortunately for Tom and me,
however, the human rights situation in the communist nation is still too
appalling for us to justify spending our money there. In fact, it was reported
that the Cuban government is diverting the highest quality food to the tourist restaurants,
leaving the Cuban people to struggle even more to find food. And besides, the Castros are obviously not
going to hang up any memorials to the U.S.
So off to Puerto Rico we
went. It’s an easy four-hour, nonstop flight from BWI. And because it’s a U.S.
territory, we don’t need a passport. The taxi drive from the airport to Condado
Beach, outside Old San Juan, is a quick, 15-minute trip on a major highway and
$20.
After checking into our
hotel, we taxied immediately to El Morro to make sure we saw it the first day
of our three-day journey. Puerto Rico has a bus system that is super-cheap and
apparently easy to use, but we saw a grand total of one bus the entire
three-day weekend. So taxi it was. And one tired 3.5-mile walk / slog back to
the hotel after dinner.
A good thing to realize
about San Juan is that there is A LOT of traffic. So the taxi took a while,
since we sat in lines of cars for quite some time. Fortunately, rates are based
on where you’re going and not on time.
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| El Campo |
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| The spectacular view from the bathroom. |
Construction of the fort
started in the 1500s. Overlooking the San Juan harbor and the Atlantic Ocean,
the massive, complex fort is six levels with thick, tall stone walls and many
garitas, or sentry boxes. It also has a cistern system for water, which is
still working.
The views are amazing,
even from the bathrooms! This is probably the best view from a public restroom
you are ever going to see. Walk past the stalls, under the arch to the balcony,
and admire the garita, dark gray rocks and ocean waves below. And maybe a
pelican or two winging by.
Also worth noting, there
is a path from the harbor past the fort. It’s a lovely walk, and you can see
the fort from a different angle – the daunting angle that foreign adversaries
confronted as they planned their (usually unsuccessful) attacks.
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| The formidable walls of El Morro from the path. around the fort. |
Hence, El Morro and a
smaller fort a half-mile away on the other side of the channel leading to the
harbor. Good luck getting past all those cannons!
Back to the war.
In the late1800s, Spain
still held the vestiges of empire. It
ruled Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines. The Cubans had been trying
to shake the shackles of Spanish rule since the 1860s. As unrest increased in Cuba, the Spanish government
sent several hundred thousand soldiers to Cuba.
The Spanish army led by General Valeriano Weyler y Nicolau – known as
“The Butcher” – burned crops and moved civilians to “safe” zones to separate
them from the militants. But with poor
food and sanitation these zones were really no better than concentration
camps. The American press, which lately
had been sensationalizing stories to sell more papers, played up the
atrocities. This was known as Yellow
Journalism because the two main sensationalist newspapers: Joseph Pulitzer's New
York World and William Randolph Hearst's New
York Journal were
printed on yellow paper. The papers
featured thinly sourced articles topped by scare headlines. But President William McKinley did not want war.
* * *
Known
as a pious, righteous and puritanical man (Rauchway, 2003), William McKinley, a
former congressman and two-term Ohio governor, became President in 1896 by beating
a 36-year-old, rising Democratic congressman named William Jennings Bryan, 271
to 176 electoral votes. While McKinley campaigned
mostly off his porch in Canton, Ohio (he was reported to have given speeches to
750,000 people), Bryan traveled the country giving fiery orations. Bryan had pushed for a national income tax as
well as a loose money policy. McKinley
preferred tariffs to raise money and protect American jobs. He said, “I am a tariff man standing on a
tariff platform.” (Smith, 2004) McKinley also pushed for a sound money gold
standard rather than the silver coinage pushed by Bryan. Bryan made one of the most famous speeches in
political history in defense of a silver to gold ratio of 16:1. It is called the “Cross of Gold” speech and
was delivered at the Democratic National Convention on July 9, 1896. Bryan
concluded his speech by stating, “You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of
gold.”
But
McKinley was backed by big political money and the Republicans outspent the
Democrats by10 or even 20 times as much (Current, et al., 1975). McKinley won the election and became the last
Civil War soldier to hold the Presidency.
And the Republican majority congress quickly passed tariffs that averaged
57 percent higher.
***
In
February 1898, Spanish Ambassador Dupuy de Lôm wrote a letter that said McKinley was “weak and a bidder for the admiration of
the crowd” (Moore, 2007). This was
private correspondence but it made its way into the New York Journal, which didn’t hesitate in printing it. The story resulted in anti-Spanish feeling.
But
McKinley had seen the horrors of the Civil War and did not want a fight. (He had served as a cook – the soldiers were
fond of McKinley because he would bring coffee and food to the front lines.) McKinley said: “I have been
through one war; I have seen the dead piled up.” (Moore, 2007).
To
show strength and also to be prepared to evacuate Americans, McKinley sent the
battleship Maine to Cuba. On February
16, 1898, while the Maine rocked at anchor in Havana Bay, the ship exploded. 286 sailors were killed. Nobody knew for sure why the blast had
occurred. The newspapers blamed the
sinking on the Spanish even though no evidence of Spanish involvement was
found.
Still
McKinley persisted with diplomacy. But
the pressure on McKinley was
relentless. “Remember the Maine, to
hell with Spain” became a popular patriotic rallying cry. Teddy Roosevelt, McKinley’s Assistant
Secretary of Navy, wanted the U.S. to use force against the Spanish. Finally on April 11, McKinley asked Congress to declare war on Spain, which it
did on April
25.
And so the war
began. Secretary of State John Hay, once
Abraham Lincoln’s young secretary, called it “this splendid little war.” The New
York Journal’s headline asked, “How Do You Like the Journal’s War?” (Bailey, 1958). The war was short with
action taking place in the Philippines (Commodore George Dewey defeated Spanish
fleet in Manila Bay within five days of the declaration of war), Cuba, and
finally Puerto Rico.
The
fight for Puerto Rico began in May 1898 when a fleet under the command of Admiral William Sampson shelled El Morro. El Morro’s guns returned fire but inflicted only minor damage. Rough seas made the fleet’s shots go off course and many fell on
San Juan. Total deaths were in the single digits on both sides.
An important note is that
El Morro has never been successfully taken by sea. It was taken once by land by
the Danish, but they bailed out after hundreds of troops died of dysentery.
In
July, the Americans landed on the Caribbean side in Guanica near Ponce and
marched through the countryside. The
Americans were joyfully welcomed by the locals.
The
Spanish American war ended with the Treaty of Paris. Most of the U.S. lives lost were to typhoid
(approximately 2,500) and 280 died in battle.
Puerto
Rico and Guam came into U.S. possession.
The U.S. bought the Philippines from Spain for $20 million. McKinley justified the purchase of the
Philippines by reaching to his religious roots – he reportedly prayed for
guidance – and wanting to help the Filipinos. He said, “there was nothing left
for us to do but to take them all and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and
civilize and Christianize them…” (Baily,
1958)
And the war was done.
McKinley went on to win
re-election in 1900 – again against William Jennings Bryan. It was an overwhelming victory, 292 to 155, and
included the GOP now holding all branches of national government. But his
second term would last only seven months.
On September 6, 1901, at
the Pan American Exhibit in Buffalo, New York. he came face to face with Leon
Czolgos, a 28-year-old self-proclaimed “anarchist.”
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| Leon Czolgos |
Leon did not associate
closely with the anarchist movement and only attended a few meetings – yes, we
realize that an anarchist meeting is an oxymoron. Rather than being swayed by the anarchists, Leon
was found to have been more strongly influenced by a best-selling utopian novel
called Looking Backward, 2000-1887 by Edward Bellamy. This futuristic novel showed how industrial
society alienated people. (The book was
a huge best-seller at the time, selling the third largest number of books after
Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Ben-Hur.)
Bellamy
described 1890s society as a stage coach with a privileged few sitting atop the
coach while the rest pulled the coach in lieu of horses. He described “the desperate straining of the
team, their agonized leaping and plunging under the pitiless lashing of hunger,
the many who fainted at the rope and were trampled in the mire…” “At such times the passengers would call down
encouragingly to the toilers of the rope, exhorting them to patience, and
holding out hopes of possible compensation in another world for the hardness of
their lot, while others contributed to buy salves and liniments for the
crippled and injured.”
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| McKinley giving a speech at the Exposition the day before he was shot.
http://library.buffalo.edu/pan-am/img/
buffaloaddress.jpg
|
(In
his mostly plotless novel, Bellamy cleverly predicted the mega retailer Amazon
– except that orders are made and received through a system of pneumatic tubes
– as well as a nationalized Spotify-like music service – providing music of the
late 1800s through a multi-channel telephone-like system.)
 |
| The shooting.
September 21, 1901 issue of Leslie's Weekly
by T.
Dart Walker
|
Czolgos
was tackled and was unable to get off a third shot.
McKinley
immediately underwent surgery at the Exposition's Emergency Hospital under poor
lighting. The doctor found one bullet
but could not locate the bullet in his abdomen, so they sewed him up. They had learned from the Garfield debacle,
not to create needless suffering and introduce possible contamination into a
wound by endless probings for a bullet.
However, their antiseptic practices were weak.
Even
so, McKinley was alert the next day.
McKinley
gained strength in the days following the shooting and there was optimism. But sadly, like Garfield, his wound became
infected and gangrene developed. On
September 14, he died.
Czolgos’s trial did not
take long. He told the court,
"There was no one else but me. No one
else told me to do it, and no one paid me to do it." He was easily found guilty…and sane. On October 29, he was electrocuted at the
penitentiary in Auburn, New York. Just
before the current was turned on, Czologos exclaimed: "I killed the President because he was
the enemy of the good people! I did it for the help of the good people, the
working men of all countries!"
* * *
Other
noteworthy items in the life of William McKinley include:
McKinley
was married to Ida Saxton and was a devoted husband. They had two daughters but both died very young: one at 3-1/2 years from scarlet fever and one
after five months. Ida was private and
sickly and was not often seen.
Following
the Spanish American War, the Americans
became mired in a war against the Filipino locals who didn’t take kindly to a new
master. The Filipinos “perceived that
they were merely going to exchange Spanish for American overlords, they arose
in revolt on February 4, 1899. In
annexing an empire, the United States annexed a war.” (Baily, 1958). The U.S. sent 70,000 soldiers to the
Philippines. The Philippine-American War
would last into Teddy Roosevelt’s administration.
In
China, a group of fanatical
Chinese called “Boxers” wanted to push foreigners out of China. Killings ensued and the foreigners in Peking
(today Beijing) retreated to their embassies.
An 18,000-strong international rescue force—including 2,500 American
troops—was sent to rescue foreigners trapped by the Boxer Rebellion.
Unlike
Grover Cleveland, William McKinley supported annexation of Hawaii. Hawaii proved to be a valuable stopover for
the U.S. Navy during transit to the Philippines. In the summer of 1898, McKinley signed a bill
annexing Hawaii.
McKinley’s
piousness did not extend to helping African Americans. Jim Crow America of the 1890s was not a friendly place to be if
you were black. A lynching took place somewhere
in the United States – mostly, but not exclusively, in the South – on average
once every three days. Participation of
eligible black Americans in the voting process fell from 85 percent during
Reconstruction (1865-1876) to less than 10 percent in the 1890s – much of this
the result of the populism of the time and the resulting repression of
blacks. Although he once dined with
Booker T. Washington, McKinley did nothing for African Americans. He did not speak out against lynching but rather asked blacks to be patient with reforms.
Directions
Castillo San Felipe
del Morro is located on the west side of Old San Juan. It is operated by the National Park Service
and the entrance fee is $5.
References
Baily, T. 1958. A Diplomatic History of the American People.
Appleton-Century-Crofts, Inc. New York, NY.
Bellamy,
E. 1888.
Looking Backward: 2000-1887.
Freidel,
Frank. 1958. The
Splendid Little War. Little, Brown
and Company. Boston.
KIngseed, W.
2001.
Lee, S.P. and P. Passell. 1979. A New Economic View of American History. W.W. Norton & Company. New York, NY.
Moore, K. 2007. The American President. Fall River Press. New York, New York.
Music at the White House: Army Navy Reception, 1900.
2010. The White House Historical
Association.
Rauchway, E. 2003. Murdering McKinley: The Making of Theodore Roosevelt’s America. Hill and Want, New York, NY.
Riccards, M.P. 1995. The Ferocious Engine of Democracy. Madison Books. Lanham, MD
Smith,
C. 2004.
Presidents: Every Question
Answered. Hylas Publishing. New York, NY.
Videos
History
Channel. 2005. The
Presidents: The Lives and Legacies of
the 43 Leaders of the United States.
Websites
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombardment_of_San_Juan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaii#Overthrow_of_1893_.E2.80.93_the_Republic_of_Hawaii_.281894.E2.80.931898.29
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looking_Backward
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism
http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5354/
https://history.state.gov/milestones/1899-1913/hay-and-china
http://library.buffalo.edu/pan-am/exposition/law/mckinley.html
http://www.buffalohistoryworks.com/panamex/assassination/executon.htm
http://www.firstladies.org/biographies/firstladies.aspx?biography=25
https://www.loc.gov/rr/hispanic/1898/weyler.html
http://www.ushistory.org/us/44b.asp
