President McKinley

by Robert W. Merry

  Another pressing issue was the proposed American canal across Nicaragua. In late December 1898 the president’s Walker Commission issued a preliminary report based on a thorough on-site examination by some seventy engineers and scores of other workers. It pronounced such a Nicaraguan canal “entirely feasible” and added that the likely cost would be about $124 million.

  America welcomed the news. “One thing is clearly indicated by the developments of the war” against Spain, a newspaper called the Independent had declared in May. “We must make haste and build and open the Nicaragua Canal.” But a lingering problem was that nettlesome U.S.-British treaty calling for cooperation in the construction and maintenance of any isthmian canal and proscribing either nation from fortifying or exercising exclusive control over the waterway. McKinley, believing it was time to scuttle the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, informed the British government through a private emissary that he favored a unilateral canal initiative and hoped to negotiate an abrogation of Clayton-Bulwer. Britain agreed to pursue it but wanted concessions on a lingering Canada-Alaska border dispute. As these private discussions proceeded, the president used his Annual Message of December 5, 1898, to declare an isthmian canal “indispensable” to U.S. interests and argue that America’s new global standing “more imperatively than ever calls for [the canal’s] control by this Government.” He expressed confidence that Congress would “duly appreciate and wisely act upon” this imperative.

  Congress needed no cajolery. A week after Walker’s report was released, Iowa’s William Hepburn, chairman of the House Interstate Commerce Committee, announced plans to expedite the matter in his committee and get “an early report to the [full] House” authorizing construction. Newspaper dispatches indicated only a single member opposed the idea. A week later the Senate also moved to limit debate and set an early vote on the issue.

  On January 21 the Senate passed legislation, 48 to 6, authorizing construction of a canal large enough “for the use of the largest seagoing vessels,” at a cost of no more than $115 million. It called for a negotiated abrogation of the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty. All eyes turned to the House, where Hepburn’s committee cleared its own measure on February 3. Then a snag developed. Thomas Reed, who hadn’t yet relinquished his speakership and who opposed the bill as another unnecessary thrust into expansionism, maneuvered to keep the measure off the House floor. To circumvent the speaker’s parliamentary powers, the bill’s sponsors developed a “flank movement” to get it to the floor as an amendment to a must-pass appropriations bill. But the speaker’s trusty ally, Appropriations Committee chairman Joe Cannon, had that ploy ruled out of order.

  An enraged Grosvenor, ever ready to fight administration battles, once again jumped into the fray, arguing that Chairman Cannon’s parliamentary maneuver would kill the canal project for a generation. Then the canal’s chief Senate advocate, John Morgan of Alabama, hatched a plan to have Hepburn’s canal bill attached to that chamber’s River and Harbor appropriation, a crucial measure, as a way of getting it onto the House floor following Senate passage. When it reached the House, though, even some pro-canal members balked at the procedural circumvention. Such momentous legislation, argued Theodore Burton of Ohio, chairman of the House River and Harbor Committee, should be “approached with due deliberation and not carried along as a rider, with perhaps only a few minutes’ consideration.”

  In the meantime proponents of a competing canal route through Panama began to influence congressional thinking. Officials of the New Panama Canal Company, offspring of a previous French company that had failed spectacularly in a previous effort to build a canal, argued that nearly half of the excavation had been completed, the harbors at either end could accommodate the largest ships, and work was facilitated by a rail line running parallel to the canal route. Panama would be quicker, less troublesome, and cheaper, argued the new company’s irrepressible lobbyist, William Nelson Cromwell.

  By March 3, just before adjournment, House-Senate conferees decided to pull back on the Nicaraguan initiative and appropriate $1 million for the president to investigate the relative merits of the two canal routes. In response, McKinley expanded the Walker Commission and gave it the added mandate of studying the Panama route and determining the most favorable waterway location. That would quiet the canal debate for the better part of a year while keeping the country moving toward eventual construction.

  * * *

  AT NOON ON January 1, 1899, in Havana, the Spanish flag atop the government palace was hauled down, and the U.S. flag went up. The heavy guns of nearby forts and warships fired off salutes as Americans and locals in nearby streets and plazas cheered. Spain’s Cuban sovereignty, stretching back 400 years, passed to the United States. As with the Philippines, McKinley made clear he wouldn’t share sovereignty in Cuba or recognize any governmental status for the island’s premier rebel leader, Máximo Gómez, and his army. Bent on avoiding the kind of hostilities he faced in the Philippines, the president installed as military governor Major General John R. Brooke and increased the U.S. troop strength on the island to 45,000 in March from 24,000 at war’s end.

  In a written instruction to Brooke, McKinley said America’s mandate over the island was “the law of belligerent right over conquered territory,” and the only lawful authority capable of administering law in Cuba was the president of the United States, “exercising . . . his constitutional function of Commander-in-Chief.” This authority, he added, would continue until Congress intervened or until the Cuban people established a government sufficiently stable that the president could withdraw U.S. forces. “The people of Cuba, without regard to previous affiliations, should be invited and urged to cooperate in these objects by the exercise of moderation, conciliation, and prudent industry, and a quick and hearty acquiescence in the system of government which we shall maintain.”

  Brooke set out to repair Cuba’s broken society by providing food, medical care, sanitation, and schools. In the first eleven months of 1899, he handed out 5.5 million daily rations. McKinley sent a personal envoy, Robert P. Porter, to confer with Gómez and secure his cooperation, helped along with the promise of $3 million to be distributed to Cuban rebels willing to lay down their arms and enter civilian society. On February 1, Gómez succumbed to Porter’s entreaties and wired McKinley, “I am now aware of your wishes. . . . Following your advice, I willingly co-operate in the work of reconstructing Cuba.” In the end, 40,000 Gómez troops received compensation.

  Easing the way for this cooperation was the weighty Teller Amendment of the previous April, disclaiming any U.S. “intention to exercise sovereignty, jurisdiction, or control” over Cuba following its liberation. Not everyone in America embraced the stricture. Some prominent officials hoped Teller’s disavowal would fade and that Cubans would seek U.S. annexation of the island. These included Senators Foraker and Chandler, as well as New York’s Governor Theodore Roosevelt. Many of Cuba’s ethnic Spaniards, about a third of the island’s million inhabitants but holding two-thirds of its wealth, expressed the same hope. One prominent Havana newspaper editor suggested, according to the New York Times, that “between the independence of the Cubans and annexation . . . the resident Spanish would unanimously prefer annexation.”

  McKinley wouldn’t hear of it. He viewed the Teller Amendment as an “honorable obligation” that must be “sacredly kept,” as he would put it in his next Annual Message. But he also felt serious steps toward independence must wait until after April 1900, when Cubans would have to decide between Cuban and Spanish citizenship. Besides, Brooke wasn’t exercising the level of civilian authority required of his position. He seemed passive and halting, reluctant to interject himself into nonmilitary matters. That situation would have to be corrected before serious actions could be taken to move Cuba toward independence. But by midyear it appeared a foundation had been laid for a smooth transition over the next two years.

  On domestic policy, the president stumbled upon a hornets’ nest when he sought in May to refashion
Civil Service policy through executive action. Though he had won plaudits from reform-minded Republicans in June 1897 by protecting a large number of federal employees from arbitrary removal, he now felt a more balanced approach was needed to address Grover Cleveland’s overly expansive policies. Specifically he wanted to exempt from Civil Service protections private secretaries and confidential clerks, among others, whose duties needed to be aligned with the particular needs and desires of their bosses. He promulgated the change on May 29, 1899.

  This time the reformers went after him with a vengeance. Schurz, already livid at McKinley’s foreign policy, said he “suffered immensely by that characteristic demonstration of mental and moral weakness.” An official of the Civil Service Reform Association characterized the action as not only “mischievous” but also “a direct violation of the law.” When Treasury Secretary Gage, defending the new policy, said it would affect no more than 4,000 federal employees, the reformers countered that the number was closer to 10,000. Succumbing to a rare bout of irritation and convinced that Cleveland’s policies were unjustified and counterproductive, the president fought back. When Gage sent him the draft of an article to be published in the magazine Forum, the president affixed his own conclusion to the piece. “Indeed,” the president wrote about himself for distribution under Gage’s name, “the conduct of the public business by President McKinley and his counsellors and associates has been always characterized by freedom from partisanship and by devotion to the public interests.” For further emphasis he added, “With deliberation and high purpose to benefit the Service, he has issued an order which men familiar with public administration approve, and which those who condemn will, with greater knowledge easily acquired, commend.” Given his high standing with his countrymen, the president wasn’t in a mood to retreat on any favored initiative.

  — 24 —

  Second-Term Question

  “I HAVE HAD RESPONSIBILITIES ENOUGH TO KILL ANY MAN”

  However busy he might be, President McKinley never foreclosed any opportunity to educate himself on Ohio politics. And so he took delight one Sunday evening in September 1899 when a friend named James Boyle arrived at the White House. A former Ohio newspaperman and the Major’s private secretary during his gubernatorial days, Boyle now was U.S. consul at Liverpool, a sinecure obtained in recompense for his longtime McKinley loyalty. He was returning to England following a home-leave visit to Ohio, and he had much to impart about the state’s political condition.

  The president invited Boyle into the Cabinet Room, where he was enjoying cigars and casual conversation with Charles Dawes and George Cortelyou. As Boyle digressed on Ohio’s unfolding gubernatorial campaign and the attitude of various newspapers toward the president, Dawes occasionally interjected a thought or two. When Boyle’s musings veered into national politics, he and Dawes dropped remarks that reflected an implicit assumption that McKinley soon would initiate a second-term campaign. As soon as the president picked up on the remarks, he straightened in his chair and spoke with quiet firmness:

  If what you gentlemen are saying implies that I am a candidate for renomination next year, I want to say to you that I would be the happiest man in America if I could go out of office in 1901, of course with the feeling that I had reasonably met the expectations of the people. I have had enough of it, Heaven knows! I have had all the honor there is in the place, and have had responsibilities enough to kill any man. You [turning to Dawes] have heard me say this repeatedly, as have you [to Cortelyou]. There is only one condition upon which I would listen to such a suggestion, and that is, a perfectly clear and imperative call of duty. . . . I would be perfectly willing to have any good Republican, holding of course my views on the great questions that have come before the administration . . . to occupy this place; and I repeat that when the time comes the question of my acquiescence will be based absolutely upon whether the call of duty appears to me clear and well defined.

  The younger men, sitting in rapt silence, didn’t know what to make of the president’s digression. They considered McKinley one of the greatest Americans of his generation and hoped to see him ascend to a hallowed place in the country’s history. A successful two-term presidency likely would give him that. Boyle quickly assured McKinley that he had discovered during his travels in Ohio and elsewhere a high regard for him, even among Democrats. Citizens believed McKinley’s war had transformed America into a nation that commanded world respect.

  “Yes,” said the president, “from the time of the Mexican War up to 1898 we had lived by ourselves in a spirit of isolation.” Then he unfurled a narrative of the late war that gave full credit to himself for such crucial decisions as the refusal to recognize Cuban independence; the “exceedingly effective blockade”; the order for Dewey’s destruction of Spain’s Asian fleet; the decision to take the Philippines, “one of the best things we ever did,” because taking just a coaling station or an island would have rendered America “the laughing stock of the world.” He added, “And so it has come to pass that in a few short months we have become a world power; and I know, sitting here in this chair, with what added respect the nations of the world now deal with the United States, and it is vastly different from the conditions I found when I was inaugurated.”

  This was a rare immodest moment for McKinley—unabashedly crediting himself for America’s transformation. But as Cortelyou and Dawes had sensed even before his second-term remarks, the president also was tired. The pressures and anxieties of 1898 had taken a toll on him—and an even greater toll on Ida, whose health recently had deteriorated. Thus it wasn’t surprising that the president harbored genuine ambivalence about a second term. Some weeks before, William Osborne had written to say he had heard that McKinley’s face had new lines of care and anxiety, and he hoped his cousin would give himself ample vacation time.

  Osborne needn’t have worried. The president’s summer schedule had included five weeks of serenity at Plattsburgh, New York, situated along the western shore of Lake Champlain, surrounded by the Green Mountains of Vermont and the Adirondacks of New York. The Hotel Champlain and its expansive grounds offered walking trails and carriage routes cutting through lush forests and hugging the picturesque lakeside. Sailing excursions were readily available. So intent on escaping Washington’s bustle was the president that he barred newsmen from his train and conducted only business that required immediate attention. “In view of Mrs. McKinley’s ill-health,” reported the Washington Post, “the President hopes to be able to spend his time while here in absolute rest and quiet.” He devoted mornings to solitary walks through the woods and along the lake and sought to bolster Ida’s strength with carriage rides on the hotel grounds. One early drive proved so taxing for the first lady that it had to be cut short. But the tranquility of the place buoyed Ida, and soon her stamina permitted two carriage rides in a single day.

  From Plattsburgh the presidential entourage traveled to Long Branch, New Jersey, a “Mecca of the fashionables,” as the New York Times described it, which never before had been “so thoroughly enlivened . . . and so awake with the roar of saluting artillery, the clatter of parading cavalry, and the music of bands.” Later in Pittsburgh, helping celebrate the return of Pennsylvania volunteers from the Philippines, the president led a procession that drew 500,000 cheering citizens along a five-mile parade route. McKinley saluted the war dead by saying “There is no nobler death” and slyly interjected a polemical note into his patriotic expressions. “They did not stack arms,” he said of the returning soldiers. “. . . They were not serving the insurgents in the Philippines or their sympathizers at home. They had no part or patience with the men, few in number, happily, who would have rejoiced to have seen them lay down their arms in the presence of an enemy whom they had just emancipated from Spanish rule and who should have been our firmest friends.”

  The speech predictably stirred reactions, pro and con. The Brooklyn Citizen, while noting the president’s “boldness and ardor,” denounced his effort t
o establish a Philippine government “without the consent of the governed.” But Kohlsaat’s Chicago Times-Herald praised the president’s “note of leadership and defiance” and assaulted anti-imperialist agitators “who are filling the mails daily with pamphlets lauding Aguinaldo, calling our soldiers in the Philippines ‘butchers’ and ‘murderers’ and invoking the wrath of heaven on America’s arms and cause.”

  Hardly had the president returned to Washington than he set out again on an extended tour of appearances and speeches in Chicago and other parts of the Midwest. In early November he delivered a major address at Richmond, then headed to Canton to cast his vote for governor. During August, while at Lake Champlain, he bought the McKinley home on Canton’s North Market Avenue for $14,500. With its storied past—once owned by the McKinleys and more recently rented by them as a hometown retreat—it seemed ideal for retirement, whenever it might come.

  * * *

  THOUGH MCKINLEY ENJOYED his retreats from Washington, the imperatives of office pursued him relentlessly. In July Jacob Schurman reported to the president on his travels through the central and southern Philippine islands to assess native sentiment there. In the central Visayas, including Cebu, Panay, and Negros, he discovered that most Visayans wanted peace and seemed inclined to accept U.S. sovereignty—but studiously remained neutral pending the war’s outcome. The only active insurgents in these islands, Schurman told Hay in a memo that quickly reached the president, were Tagalogs, who controlled much of the population through arms and intimidation. “Visayans are opposed to fighting,” wrote Schurman. In the Mindanao islands farther south, where Muslim Moros dominated, Schurman sought to gain sway by assuring leaders there that the United States would “inviolably respect Moros customs and religion.” He urged an effort “to reverse Spanish policy of distrust, non-intercourse and hostility.”