CHAPTER X.

WILLIAM McKINLEY’S BOYHOOD.

William McKinley was born in Ohio, his ancestors having emigrated to the United States from County Antrim, Ireland. In that ancestry, also, was mingled some of the sterling blood of the Scottish race, and it seems the child who was destined to become twenty-fifth President of the United States combined in his nature the choicest qualities of both races, enriched and broadened by generations of American life. His great-grandfather, David McKinley, was the son of a Revolutionary soldier, and was born in Pennsylvania the year before peace with England was declared.

After the independence of the United States had been achieved, this David McKinley was brought by his soldier father from York to Westmoreland County, Pa., and the lad himself, as he grew to manhood, chose the new State of Ohio as a place of residence, and established there the fortunes and the hopes of the McKinley family.

His grandson, William McKinley, the father of the President, was the second child in a family of thirteen, and was born at New Lisbon, Ohio. He was engaged in the iron and foundry business, and resided successively at New Lisbon, Niles, Poland and finally Canton. It was while engaged in the iron industry, then in a primitive stage of development, at Niles, Ohio, that William McKinley, the elder, met and married Miss Nancy Campbell Allison, daughter of a well-to-do business man in the growing Ohio town. And there was born, on January 29, 1843, William McKinley, subject of this biography, and a third martyr President of the United States. The father was at that time manager and part owner of an iron furnace. But seeing greater possibilities in the newer region about Poland, he disposed of his interests at Niles, and removed thither, where he again established a forge.

Surrounding the rising town of Poland lies a fine agricultural country, and in the healthful environment of rural scenes and labor’s activities the earliest years of the life of William McKinley, Jr., were spent. Through his mother’s family he traced his lineage back to the substantial middle classes of England. And this excellent woman must have possessed in mind and soul and bodily frame the better qualities of the Anglo-Saxon race. Her influence upon this son was pronounced from the beginning; and it seems that an almost prophetic power was given her, for if the whole of the future had been revealed to her she could have guided him no more wisely, could have laid with no more sagacious skill the foundations which his career as statesman and as man required.

And no mother was ever more devotedly loved by son than was this American matron by William McKinley. Throughout her life he made her comfort his own care, and maintained with an increasing tenderness the gentle bearing which, as a child, had been part of his life. In her age, when she had lived to see her son elevated to the chiefest office in the Nation, the beauty of that filial attachment appealed to the people, and untold thousands proved their appreciation when they lovingly bestowed upon her the title, “Mother McKinley.”

One of the reasons for the elder McKinley’s removal to Poland was that his children might have the advantages of the better schools which—oddly enough—flourished in the younger city. An academy had been established there; and when young William passed through the preparatory years, he was admitted to that institution. As he passed from childhood to youth’s estate, he filled the months of vacation in productive labor. At times he worked upon the farms which surrounded the growing, thriving town. At other times he engaged as a clerk in one or other of the stores. But he was never apt at a trade, and really had not the faculty to “buy, and sell, and get gain,” as had his younger brother Abner. And as a consequence he maintained that attitude of balance which left him free in his development, and permitted that ripening and broadening of his mind in all directions which the early adoption of a mercantile life would almost certainly have prevented. And it was proof of still another virtue on the lad’s part that he preferred, of all the industries that came to his hand, the heavy labor of the forge and foundry. Those years of healthful life, when native powers were developed by bodily industry, when regular hours, plain but abundant food, and long hours of restful sleep were adding to brain and brawn, when the wise mother was guiding him so gently in morals and manners—in those years the character of the future President, the statesman, the soldier and the American patriot, was formed.

As he acquired more of the learning which the academy placed within his reach, young William employed portions of his vacations in teaching school. Not only did this occupation furnish him admirable discipline and training in the process of his development, but it provided him with rather more money for the further prosecution of his studies.

For it was one of the characteristics of the “McKinley boys” that they PAID THEIR WAY. Although the father might have provided them with all needful books and clothing, paid all their school expenses and provided them with spending money, thus encouraging them in idleness, the wise plan of the iron founder, and of that “Mother McKinley,” whom a nation has delighted to honor, did not contemplate such a system. They did plan to encourage independence and self-reliance in their children; and they succeeded in achieving that end.

The first term of school taught by William McKinley, Jr., was in the Kerr District, about four miles from Poland, where he presided over the studies of nearly half a hundred pupils through the winter months of 1859–60. With the money secured he not only assisted in defraying the expenses of his sisters and brother at the academy, for which they were by this time prepared, but he was enabled to enter Alexander College, in the autumn of 1860. Two years before that date he had united with the Methodist Church, and had been received into full communion with the society of that denomination in Poland. And through all the years of his life, to the very end, he maintained that relation. In his later years he had been a regular attendant at the forms of worship, a frequent guest at the conferences of his church; and his counsels have been continually at the service of those high in the management of the affairs of Methodism.

It is told of him with a good deal of interest that in the years following the revival at which his conversion was confessed, he was at once a consistent Christian and a happy young man. He delighted in healthful sports, in games which tested muscle, skill and endurance, and took the heartiest possible interest in life. Those were the years under the calm guidance of the wise mother, when stores of power were laying up against the day of need that should come as manhood brought its duties. He was passing through his formative period under the most normal and healthy conditions possible. And that was the best preparation for the broad requirements, the heavy burdens which the future was to lay upon him.

His brother Abner has said that William was a general favorite; that he had no enemies. And one can well believe it, for throughout his adult life he has gone with friends. No one ever hated him. No one ever received an affront at his hands. There is a foolish adage that a man is weak and inconsequential who makes no enemies; that such a character can not be positive, yet that would be a perverse or an ill-informed man who would say William McKinley was either weak or of the negative type of life. And as he has been in manhood, so he was in the early days about the town of Poland. He knew all the workmen in the iron mills, and all the farmers for miles around. He understood them perfectly, and the bond of sympathy for them which was planted in his breast while yet a lad was one of the guides by which he shaped legislation when he came to be a man. His boyish frankness and simplicity and generosity remained permanent traits in his character to the end.

William McKinley, Sr., was a whig, and one of the thousands who marched from that old party into the ranks of the Republicans. Young William had read a great deal. His youthful fancy had been stirred with the stories of California gold, and the Overland Trail. His home was fairly supplied with such reading as is good for a boy, and a part of it dealt with the adventures and the activities of Colonel John C. Fremont. That “Pathfinder,” as his friends called him, was a hero to young William. More impressive far than the stories of wealth in the mines were the reports of Fremont’s expeditions. More attractive than the magnet which drew adventurers to the new Eldorado was the unspoken yearning to become a member of one of Colonel Fremont’s bands of explorers.

And so it is small wonder that his heart glowed with enthusiasm when Fremont was made the nominee of the young Republican party in 1856. He was thirteen years old then, and a stout, healthy boy, with a healthy American boy’s appetite for politics. So he shouted the campaign cries of the party, and sang the songs which lauded Fremont to the skies—as well as those less amiable songs which had for their motive the prophesying of defeat for Buchanan.

The result of the election in 1856 was never much in doubt, except to the sanguine youths who mistook their own earnestness for “indications.” But the defeat of his champion did not weigh heavily on the lad’s heart; and before the next national election came around he was almost man grown, with something of education, with four more years of activity and helpfulness for his family. But it would be impossible for a lad to enter with more earnestness into a cause than he gave to the hosts who were rallying to the support of Lincoln in 1860.

Young William had already taken an active interest in politics. He had “supported” Fremont because that explorer, traveler and soldier had won his honest admiration through many deeds of heroism. But he gave his allegiance to Lincoln because he had read, and because he understood the issues of the day, and believed the “Railsplitter of Illinois” was right. He could not vote for Lincoln that first time, but he could give the aid which politicians know is of value in campaigns. And so he was a member of the circles that marched and sang for the candidate—for freedom’s champion.

And he was given to debating, even in those early days. He was naturally a public speaker. He could arrange his argument, marshal his points and present them; and he could thrill his hearers with the genuine eloquence which is not learned, but comes spontaneous from the lips that have been touched with the wand of genius.

He was a reader at all times. And one of the books that made an indelible impression upon him was “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” It came in his most impressionable years, and did much to fill his soul with a hatred of human slavery—did much to prepare him for the services of those later years, when he seconded to the limit of his powers the work of the Great Liberator. He had followed the fortunes of Uncle Tom and of Eliza, and regarded them as types. And he was quite certain the horrors of human slavery were fairly depicted in the story.

Among the few but excellent books in his father’s possession was one called “Noble Deeds of American Women;” and the reading of it in that period of his youth impressed upon him vividly the struggles and sacrifices of the maids and matrons of the earlier day. The book had not many companions, for libraries were not large in those days; and it will be remembered that the house where William McKinley’s boyhood was spent was the home of a workingman.

It was a foreman of workingmen, to be sure, and one who had from time to time an interest in the modest business which he conducted. But yet it was a home where actual toil was by no means unknown; where the mother was the housekeeper, performing with her own hands much of the domestic labor, and where not one of the family was brought up with a contempt for industry.

In those years of transition from boyhood to youth, young William McKinley passed through a period of ill health. It interfered a good deal with his labors at home, and was the cause of cutting short his attendance at the college in Alexandria. It is by no means an unusual phase of a young man’s life, and it vanished as he advanced to the years of maturity. Throughout his life, with that exception, he has been a healthy person; and the season of delicate health at the threshold of manhood left no harmful consequences.

In 1896, when one of the enterprising publishers was hurrying to issue a “Campaign Life of William McKinley,” he sent a writer into Mahoning and Stark counties, and elsewhere throughout that portion of the Buckeye State, with instructions to find some record of the boyish escapades of young William. The writer found a number of men who had known the nominee in his boyhood, and asked one of them:

“Was he never in mischief—like robbing orchards, or stealing watermelons, or carrying away gates on ‘Hallowe’en?’”

The old man thought for a moment, apparently passed the lad’s life in review before the judge that abided in his memory, and then he said:

“I don’t remember that William was ever in any scrape of any kind.”

Then he waited for a moment, filled his pipe, lighted it reflectively and added as he pinched out the flame before throwing the match away:

“And if I did I wouldn’t tell it.”

The incident proves one of two things. Either young William had all his life the studious regard for the rights of others which has marked his manhood, or he had unconsciously enrolled this staunch old man among the friends who could not possibly be induced to “tell on him.” And either view shows the subject of their conversation in a very creditable light.

From infancy until he had attained the age of ten years, the family lived at Niles. The removal from there to Poland, where the Academy could offer better educational advantages to the children, was the last breaking up of home the boy knew. He retained the latter city as his home until after his return from the army, until after the completion of his law studies, when he cast about for a location that promised best for the life he had planned for himself.

But about the old town of Poland are still resident many men and women who knew him as a child, who watched him grow up to sturdy boyhood, and who learned to love him through the years that were adding to his stature and his wisdom. Those friendships he held to the very end. And there is no place in the United States where the blow that came with the news of his assassination fell more heavily than in the boyhood home of William McKinley.