To learn more or opt-out, read our Cookie Policy. President Obama's decision to return the former Mount McKinley to its original name, Denali , has the McKinley administration of to back in the news for the first time in more than a century.
William McKinley, according to House Speaker John Boehner, "led this nation to prosperity and victory in the Spanish-American War as the 25th President of the United States," a record that allegedly amounts to a "great" legacy. The truth, however, is that pilfering Spanish colonies aside, McKinley was much more a lucky president than a great one — a case study in the heavy role of contingency in shaping political events. McKinley ran for office at a time when the country desperately needed a stimulative monetary policy, and he ran on a platform opposing the adoption of the kind of policy the country needed.
Yet he arrived on the scene just in time for the country to experience exactly the kind of inflation burst he'd campaigned against — and he rode the benefits of that inflation to a landslide reelection. The election of brought moderate Democrat Grover Cleveland, who had been elected in and who failed to secure reelection in despite winning the popular vote, back into office.
Cleveland was almost immediately greeted with a gigantic financial crisis known as the Panic of In broad structural terms this crisis was somewhat similar to the housing meltdown of '08 except instead of loans to finance a housing price boom you had loans to finance a railroad construction boom.
The railroad bankruptcies set off a downward spiral of bank failures, declining money supply, and falling commodity prices that made it harder for farmers to pay off old debts, which further worsened the banking situation. According to Christina Romer's calculations , unemployment surged to 12 percent in and essentially stayed stuck there throughout Cleveland's term in office.
Under the circumstances, support for the mainstream Democratic Party began to collapse, and the GOP scored huge wins in the midterms. In response, Democrats turned toward coopting a key policy agenda item from the left-wing Populist Party and nominated William Jennings Bryan in on a platform of essentially devaluing the dollar by beginning to accept silver as well as gold as a basis for legal tender.
William McKinley, who earlier in his career had been a monetary moderate but who saw the massive fundraising potential in running as the candidate of the gold standard. Devaluing the currency was popular among Southern and Western farmers because it reduced the real value of their debts, but was anathema among bankers for much the same reason.
The bad economy powered McKinley to victory on the strength of an electoral map that looks a lot like an opposite-day version of 21st-century politics. The unemployment rate averaged So McKinley really did deliver prosperity.
But does he deserve credit? Not really. As Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz explain in their landmark Monetary History of the United States , had the silver policy been adopted, the whole recession could have been greatly mitigated if not avoided altogether:. For the period before , therefore, the choice between silver and gold hinged mainly on one's judgment about the desirable price trends.
If one regards the deflationary price trend as an evil and a horizontal price trend as preferable, as we do, though with some doubts, silver would on this account and for that period have been preferable to gold. The only other effect of any importance for the period was on the system of international exchange rates.
The adoption of silver by the US would have meant rigid exchange rates between it and the other silver countries, but flexible rates between that group and the gold-standard countries. This effect too we are inclined to regard as an advantage of silver rather than a disadvantage.
So what happened after ? A second daughter, Ida, was born in , but died four months later. During their time in the White House, Ida often needed sedation to enable her to sit through official functions as First Lady, and McKinley would throw a handkerchief over her face when she suffered an epileptic seizure. McKinley reversed the policy of his predecessor, Grover Cleveland, and advocated for Hawaii to become a U. The episode marked an end to a lengthy battle between native Hawaiians and white American businessmen for control of the local government.
But Grover Cleveland became president before it was passed, and he withdrew the bill. When McKinley became president, he tried to reintroduce the bill, but was stymied by the Hawaiian Patriotic League, who kept the U. Instead, his health declined as gangrene set in around the path of the bullet. McKinley died on September 14, , eight days after being shot and just six months into his second term as President.
McKinley never set foot in Alaska and never saw the peak named for him by prospector William Dickey, a designation that was made official by President Woodrow Wilson in Columbus Day is a good day to consider American exceptionalism.
Columbus embraced the doctrine from the start, writing about the Arawak Indians in Haiti: "Great multitudes of men came to the shore, all young and of fine shapes and very handsome I could conquer the whole of them with fifty men and govern them as I pleased. Conquer them he did, forcing them to find gold for the Spanish explorers, cutting off their hands if they failed.
In the s the Puritans also deemed themselves exceptional, justifying their beliefs with a quote from the Psalms: "Ask of me, and I shall give thee, the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession. Equality would be forthcoming, it seems, with the words of the Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.
George Washington's intentions for the Iroquois Indians in were to "extirpate them from the country. Harding, Andrew Johnson, Franklin Pierce. US News and Wikipedia , both of which use a consensus of experts, agree on these four, and both have Millard Fillmore, U. It seems reasonable to discredit an individual who is hateful toward another race or class of people. Based on this guideline, Civil Liberties sheds some light on the expert choices. Buchanan, Fillmore, and Andrew Johnson all supported slavery, and all deserve to be near the bottom of any 'worst' list.
But this doesn't explain it all. Woodrow Wilson was a racist , and Andy Jackson an oppressor of Native Americans , but both are near the top of the expert consensus list.
According to Princeton political scientist Fred Greenstein , "If there is a common denominator in presidential assessments, it is a bias toward activism, unless the activism is viewed as misplaced, as in the instances of Lyndon Johnson and Vietnam and Nixon and Watergate. Even the two most highly rated Presidents, Lincoln and FDR, are heralded in part for their activism in wars considered necessary and just. But expansionism and intervention are oppressive forms of activism.
From that perspective, it's easier to arrive at the four worst Presidents. As a hero of the War of and an advocate for the common white man, it's easy to understand how our seventh President was so admired. But in Native Americans he saw only 'savages' standing in the way of progress. For ten years Jackson arranged 'treaties' with Indians in the American southeast, setting up his own friends as land agents, traders, and surveyors while encouraging white squatters to take over the land.
Eventually recognizing Florida as vital to "national security," he initiated raids on Seminole villages, burning down homes and forcing out residents, all in the name of the "immutable laws of self-defense. Indian removal , according to Jackson, would help the Native Americans to "cast off their savage habits and become an interesting, civilized, and Christian community. A few Americans, including Henry Clay and Ralph Waldo Emerson, tried to defend the rights of the land's original inhabitants.
But a great many more believed it was their country's right to take what it wanted. Even today textbooks rely on euphemisms like "Florida Purchase " rather than acknowledge the military massacres of Seminole villagers. Best remembered is the Trail of Tears that led thousands of sick and starving Cherokees across the Mississippi in the middle of winter to unfamiliar and unproductive land far from their home.
By President Van Buren was proclaiming, "It affords sincere pleasure to apprise the Congress of the entire removal of the Cherokee nation of Indians to their new homes. Our eleventh President campaigned on an expansionist platform. The media reflected his sentiments , with the Democratic Review promoting the Mexican-American War, arguing that it was "Our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions.
In his inauguration speech, Polk proclaimed, "Foreign powers do not seem to appreciate the true character of our Government. To enlarge [our Union's] limits is to extend the dominions of peace over additional territories and increasing millions. The world has nothing to fear from military ambition in our Government.
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