President McKinley

by Robert W. Merry

  Shortly thereafter Belden sauntered into McKinley’s office late one afternoon and dropped upon his desk a sheaf of papers. He wasn’t feeling well, he said, and likely wouldn’t be able to undertake a case scheduled for trial the next morning. He wanted McKinley to take over. The young man protested that he didn’t have sufficient experience for such an assignment and couldn’t possibly prepare in the short time before trial.

  “If you don’t try this case, it won’t be tried,” said Belden, and walked out.

  McKinley pored over the material throughout the night and appeared in court the next morning. He won the case—but was taken aback to see Belden watching the proceeding from a seat under the balcony at the rear of the courtroom. A few days later Belden entered McKinley’s office and handed him twenty-five dollars for his efforts.

  “I can’t take so much,” protested the conscientious young lawyer. “What I did wasn’t worth it, and, besides, I only took the case because you insisted.”

  “It’s all right, Mac,” replied Belden airily, “I got a hundred.” Then he added, “Now, the fact of the matter is, Frease has just been elected to the bench and I’m looking for another partner.” McKinley accepted on the spot, and his career took off.

  Avoiding courtroom flamboyance, McKinley employed plain language and sturdy logic that cut through the complexities of his cases and deciphered their essential elements. William Day, another Canton lawyer and later a judge, said McKinley possessed “the same power of epigrammatic expression” that served him later in politics. Displaying courtesy and fairness, combined with his consistently thorough preparation, he impressed both judges and juries. Charles Fairbanks, a senator from Indiana and later vice president, once said McKinley’s impressive bearing, always powerfully erect and self-assured, gave him the look of a statesman.

  To cement himself to the community, he plunged into civic and fraternal activities—and always seemed to rise to leadership positions in whatever realm he entered. Taking an active part in veterans’ organizations, he displayed proudly the bronze badge of the Grand Army of the Republic and the red, white, and blue ribbon of the Loyal Legion. He joined the Knights of Pythias and the local Masonic lodge, eventually becoming a Masonic Knight Templar. He became active in the local YMCA, rising to president. He joined the First Methodist Church and became superintendent of its Sunday school. He aligned himself with the county Republican committee and rose to its chairmanship. Through such activities he acquired a warm following of adherents who saw him as a town pillar and referred to him fondly as “the Major.”

  When Rutherford Hayes ran for governor the year of McKinley’s Canton arrival, the Major campaigned vigorously for his erstwhile commander and helped him carry Stark County on his way to a narrow statewide victory. In the process McKinley earned a reputation as an effective campaigner and also gained an ear in the governor’s office on patronage matters of interest to Canton’s political elite. The next year he energetically supported the presidential campaign of General Ulysses Grant, organizing Grant clubs, spearheading rallies, and earnestly praising his candidate at demonstrations. He cheered Grant’s 1868 presidential victory and enjoyed the attention his political activities brought. The local paper, the Evening Repository, adopted him as a political favorite.

  The following year McKinley received the Republican nomination for county prosecuting attorney, an honor widely considered merely ceremonial since the office had been a Democratic fiefdom for years. But the Repository endorsed him as “a good lawyer and a fine orator,” and the Major’s relentless campaigning carried the day against a complacent opponent who hadn’t perceived the force of McKinley’s political persona. As prosecutor, McKinley went after illicit liquor sales, particularly in the town of Alliance, where saloons routinely served alcohol to underage boys from nearby Mount Union College. When McKinley sought reelection in 1871, his Democratic opponent avoided complacency and won—by just 143 votes.

  McKinley’s law practice flourished under Belden and expanded further when the senior partner retired shortly after the Major entered the partnership. This opened the way for him to take on some of the county’s most important and lucrative cases, and by the mid-1870s he was earning a solid income of nearly $10,000 a year. He bought a small frame house near the city center and socked away savings equal to his annual income. William Sr. was impressed. “I am pleased to hear that your business is good,” he wrote to his son.

  In just four years young McKinley had carved out an impressive station for himself—not rich but financially secure, highly respected as a community leader, blessed with abundant friends, recognized as a man of notable political talents. His short, bulky frame cut an imposing figure, and people responded avidly to his personal traits—a broad, handsome face featuring candescent gray eyes (he long since had lost the scraggly beard); a deep, resonating voice; a ready smile and hearty laugh that betokened warmth and confidence; moral rectitude devoid of sanctimony. Townsfolk perceived another characteristic that stirred confidence: a natural caution leading him to ruminate on a problem before action. In Ohio’s rough-hewn nineteenth-century society, a favorite word describing impressive figures was “manly,” meaning a willingness to confront tough decisions and take the consequences. McKinley was manly but never rash.

  He also never tried to be what he wasn’t. He joined others in laughing at himself after a slightly embarrassing social episode during his law school days when, upon tasting ice-cream for the first time, he expressed concern that his hostess had somehow allowed the custard to freeze. “You know,” he said later in recounting the incident, “I was a simple country boy.” In Canton, the simple country boy was gaining a degree of sophistication, which he always managed, however, to keep encased in a demeanor of good humor and naturalness. Behind that pleasant exterior was a sturdy ambition, invisible except to his closest and most discerning friends.

  Canton proved so hospitable to Will and Anna McKinley that soon other family members were moving there also. Anna refurbished her brother’s frame house for the subsequent arrival of their parents, and brother Abner settled there around the same time with his new bride. The senior McKinley, a relentless foe of idleness, bought a blast furnace in Michigan to satisfy his appetite for hard work, while Nancy devoted herself to the Methodist Church. Her irrepressible nature, organizational efficiency, and pleasant manner soon captured attention, and townsfolk began referring to her affectionately as “Mother McKinley.” The family arrival cemented Will’s satisfaction with his Canton life. The only thing missing was a wife and family.

  Enter Ida Saxton, the belle of Canton and leading light of one of the town’s premier families. Her grandfather, a Pennsylvania printer named John Saxton, arrived soon after service in the War of 1812 and quickly perceived an opportunity in local newspapering. He transported a printing press from the East by oxen and in 1815 established the Ohio Repository as a weekly paper. He gave it a strong liberal voice—abolitionist, champion of the underdog—and recruited the best talent he could find. One reporter was Joseph Medill, later co-owner and editor of the Chicago Tribune; a close family friend was Horace Greeley of the New York Tribune.

  Although the newspaper thrived and remained in the family for decades, Ida’s father, James Saxton, ventured into other pursuits—merchandising, banking, mining—and built considerably upon the family fortune. Ida, the first of three children, grew up in luxury and ease in the town’s largest home, with three live-in servants. She took avidly to education, which her father ensured was as good as could be obtained, including a local private school, boarding schools in New York and Cleveland, and the Brooke Hall Female Seminary at Media, Pennsylvania. Believing that women could perform in business as effectively as men, James Saxton insisted that his daughter’s education be “more practical than ornamental,” as he put it in a letter to a school mistress. As Ida got older he had her working in his Stark County Bank, first as teller and eventually as manager when he was away tending to his other enterprises. She th
rived in all roles assigned to her.

  At Brooke Hall, she embraced the school’s emphasis on developing physical strength through strenuous hikes and multiple-mile walks. Unlike others in Ohio society (including the elder McKinleys), she saw no harm in dancing or card games, and she loved shopping, opera, theater, and concerts. Accomplished at the piano and the leading student in any class, she also was a natural leader of other young women, sometimes leading them in what one contemporary called “mischievous” directions. But she never directed her sharp wit against her peers or lapsed from her natural congeniality.

  Ida presented a figure and persona that turned heads: petite, fit, self-assured, full of wholesome laughter, with rosy cheeks, large deep-blue eyes, and abundant chestnut-colored hair. As a local reporter put it, whether she was engaging in political conversation, playing cards, walking briskly through town, or questioning prominent speakers on lecture tours, Ida Saxton “left the stamp of her personality.” She certainly left her mark at her father’s bank, where her increasing responsibilities caused some in town to cast a jaundiced eye. But one local reporter wrote, “Through all the flutter that her presence caused . . . Miss Saxton preserved a businesslike calm. She worked diligently and learned the business thoroughly.”

  Beset by many suitors jockeying for sessions in the Saxton parlor, she learned to combine coquettish banter with a certain dexterous reserve. Eventually she set her sights on a young lawyer from Maryland named John Wright. When it was revealed that he had fought on the Confederate side during the war, James Saxton manifested considerable chagrin, but it didn’t bother Ida. Soon the two were seen together frequently at picnics and dances, and it was generally assumed that they would marry upon her return from a scheduled European tour during the latter half of 1869. Shortly before her departure, she and Wright were enjoying the signature dish of a nearby lakeside inn, creamed chicken on waffles, when Anna McKinley approached to introduce her brother, the lawyer. The encounter didn’t seem to leave much of an impression on Ida, but Will McKinley was struck by what he saw—first, her somewhat unladylike zest in devouring her chicken on waffles; then, her beauty, charm, and piquant personality. He lodged every detail in his memory, to be recalled later at the slightest provocation.

  Ida’s European trip unfolded as so many others of the time: rising at around six each morning to devour guidebooks on the day’s tour; tensions with the chaperone; getting her ears pierced and drinking wine for the first time; shock at the hardships of peasant life on the Continent; new musings on the meaning of life. But arriving at Geneva on September 25, she learned that her life would not be what she had anticipated. A letter from home informed her that John Wright had died—of meningitis, she later learned. Her sister Mary, known as Pina, who was traveling with her, wrote home the next morning, “Ida looked pale and feels very badly. She did not eat any breakfast. . . . It was a fearful shock to her.” Struggling to ward off depression, she continued with the tour but without much enthusiasm. “How different things [will] look when I get home,” she wrote shortly before sailing for New York on December 9.

  Back in Canton, she threw herself into bank responsibilities and renewed her position as leading lady of the town’s eligible young set. She encountered McKinley again when he entered the bank to complete some business with James Saxton, and she discerned that her father favored this serious young man. She found herself warming to him too. He impressed her particularly as the local YMCA president when he eloquently introduced Horace Greeley at an event sponsored by the organization. Soon they were seen together around town and at the famous dance parties frequently held in the third-floor ballroom of what became known as “Saxton House.”

  By fall 1870 he had overcome his fear of rejection and proposed marriage during a buggy ride outside Canton. She accepted. When he sought James Saxton’s blessing, the father exclaimed with misty eyes, “You are the only man I have ever known to whom I would entrust my daughter.” Others, though, considered it an unlikely match. On one side was a sober, excessively polite, somewhat prudish lawyer who kept his emotions always in check. On the other was an impulsive, witty, flirtatious young woman with an appetite for adventure and rollicking times. But he was thoroughly captivated by her lively wholesomeness, expansive intellect, and underlying sound judgment, and she appreciated his rectitude, kind regard for others, and smoldering ambition. Physically, they combined into a lovely couple that gained notice when they walked into a room.

  “It is now settled that Miss Saxton and I will unite our fortunes,” McKinley wrote to Hayes and his wife, Lucy, expressing hopes they would attend the wedding. “I think I am doing a good thing. Miss S— is everything I could hope for.” The wedding took place on January 25 in the newly constructed Stone Presbyterian Church. Nearly 1,000 guests witnessed Ida stroll down the aisle in an ivory satin gown, with bridesmaids wearing dresses described by the Repository as “faultless in taste and exceedingly rich and beautiful.” McKinley stretched his finances to give her a ring of California gold, with diamonds around a ruby. After the ceremony and lavish reception at Saxton House, the couple boarded a ten o’clock eastbound train for a three-week honeymoon in New York and other major cities. Upon hearing McKinley talk extensively of his political plans, Ida became convinced her husband would someday become president of the United States.

  Will and Ida settled into a wood-frame house, just twelve blocks from Saxton House, purchased for them by James Saxton for $7,800. There they began an idyllic life. On Christmas Day Ida gave birth to a baby girl they named Catherine, after Ida’s mother. They called her Katie. In fall 1872 it seemed the fates continued to smile upon the seemingly favored couple: Ida learned she was once again pregnant.

  Then the fates stopped smiling. A series of developments—some related, some not—cast a pall upon Will and Ida. First, Ida learned that her mother, probably her closest friend, was dying of a mysterious and painful disease (probably cancer) that would claim her before the birth of Ida’s second child. Wracked by anxiety, Ida struggled through her pregnancy. Her sister noted that her “nervous system was nearly wrecked.” She apparently also suffered a blow to her immune system. It is impossible to know if these developments affected the health of the second child, but little Ida, born April 1, 1873, was “sickly” from birth and died of cholera within five months. This dealt another powerful blow to the psychological health of the mother.

  It seems that around this time Ida also suffered a serious accident, possibly a fall from a carriage, that damaged her lower spine and affected her ability to walk. For months she was frequently bedridden, and McKinley often had to carry her to a waiting carriage for any trips they wished to undertake. She subsequently gained some mobility but never was able to walk long distances or carry on any serious exercise routines of the kind she had so loved in earlier times. On top of this, she began experiencing neurological fits described as “paroxysms” or “convulsions.” Her doctors knew what family members steadfastly kept shrouded in secrecy: she had epilepsy, considered at the time a psychiatric disorder, a form of insanity. Many epileptics of the day were shunted away in horrendous institutions, but McKinley had no intention of letting that be his wife’s fate. He resolved to nurture her through life and through the matrix of maladies that had descended upon her with such menace.

  Saxton invited Will and Ida, with daughter Katie, to move in with him at Saxton House, and six months of rest there brought about a welcome recuperation for Ida—although, as her sister later noted, she “never entirely recovered.” Saxton also assisted McKinley financially by retaining him for legal work and referring friends to him. He invited McKinley into Canton commercial real estate ventures that provided a modest but steady supplemental income.

  Slowly the young family returned to something approaching a normal life, although punctured by Ida’s intermittent seizures and other physical and psychological difficulties. By spring 1874 Ida was able to venture out to social events around town, and Will once again accepted out-of-tow
n legal cases and pursued his political activities. But Ida was riddled with fears that daughter Katie remained vulnerable, as little Ida had been. Abner McKinley told a friend, “She would sit for hours in a darkened room, holding Katie on her lap, weeping in silence.” She seldom let Katie out of her sight.

  Then in June 1875 the fates delivered another blow. Katie developed scarlet fever and died on June 25. Ida nearly died herself of a broken heart. An early McKinley biographer learned from sister Pina that “the black pall of grief” led to another nervous breakdown. She refused to eat and slipped into ennui and despair. “Ida would have died,” a friend said later, “. . . but William would just not let her go.” The husband never let up on his solicitousness toward his troubled wife and never showed impatience or frustration. Slowly, he coaxed her out of her despair and fostered in her a renewed “interest in existence.” He even offered to discard his political ambitions.

  “If you would suffer by the circumstances surrounding me in a competition for public station,” he wrote to her, “I will devote my ambition to success in private life.” She summarily rejected such a course with the idea of devoting her nurturing impulses now to his budding political career. “I have no fear that your choice in life will leave you as you are in the things that make you dear to me,” she replied. Thus, while he continued to devote himself to her health and comfort, he also salved his own grief through political activity, with the idea of getting elected to Congress the following year, the same year Hayes planned to run for president.