Edward Stratemeyer
The Life of William McKinley
Biography of the 25th President of the United States
Madison & Adams Press, 2018
Contact [email protected]
ISBN 978-80-268-9893-1
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Table of Contents
APPENDIX A WILLIAM McKINLEY'S LAST PUBLIC ADDRESS
APPENDIX B CHRONOLOGY OF THE LIFE OF WILLIAM McKINLEY
PREFACE
The life of William McKinley affords a shining example to all American boys of what honesty, perseverance, and a strict attention to duty can accomplish.
The twenty-fifth President of our Nation was born in a humble home, of humble parentage, and had to make his own way in life at an early age. When little more than a boy he taught school for a living, and at the age of eighteen he became a private in the army. He served through the whole of the great Civil War, and so faithful was he and so heroic that he became first a commissary sergeant, next a lieutenant, then a captain, and, finally, left the army a full-fledged major, twenty-two years old.
William McKinley could have remained in the army, and would undoubtedly have risen to a much higher rank had he done so. But this was against his mother's wish, and to please her then, as he had always tried to please her before, he gave up that hope and took to the law. Poor, but persevering, he studied until able to pass his examination, and then set up for himself, in a very humble way, in Canton, Ohio, which from that time on became his home. Here, as a lawyer, he served a term of two years as prosecutor of Stark County, and was a few years later nominated for Congress and elected to that honorable office.
As a congressman McKinley served his State and his Nation well for nearly fourteen years. At the conclusion of that time Ohio wanted a new governor, and McKinley was made such by a large majority of votes. So popular was he that, despite the loss of his private fortune through a friend whom he had endeavored to help, when he came up for reëlection he was kept in the gubernatorial chair by a majority which was as astonishing as it was pleasing to him.
In all his long political career
