President William McKinley, who was the Commander in Chief when Spain ceded Puerto Rico to the United States, is President Trump’s favorite president. President McKinley was the 25th President of the United States, following service as a congressman and Governor of Ohio.
In his inaugural address, McKinley said, “Our diplomacy should seek nothing more and accept nothing less than is due us. We want no wars of conquest; we must avoid the temptation of territorial aggression. War should never be entered upon until every agency of peace has failed; peace is preferable to war in almost every contingency.” Yet, after the battleship USS Maine exploded in Havana, McKinley took the United States into war with Spain.
It was Theodore Roosevelt, the Assistant Secretary of the Navy, who argued most strongly for the United States to go to war with Spain. It was suggested that Spanish forces had blown the battleship up, killing most of the crew. While it is not certain that Spain was responsible, people in the United States were supportive of Cuba’s attempts to gain independence from Spain. McKinley had been trying to influence Spain’s actions toward Cuba, but was pressured to take up arms against them.
McKinley asked Congress for authorization to take action against Spain and sent the Kingdom of Spain an ultimatum demanding an armistice with Cuba and an end to concentration camps there. Spain did not capitulate, and the United States declared war.
The expansion of the United States
The United States was successful against Spain, and the remaining vestiges of New Spain ended up in U.S. hands. The United States bought the Philippines for $20 million and Spain ceded Guam and Puerto Rico to the U.S. and relinquished Cuba to U.S. protection with the understanding that Cuba would become an independent nation. These additions to the United States were laid out in the 1898 Treaty of Paris. Some Americans disapproved of the imperialism, but others were excited at the idea of the United States becoming an imperial power like Great Britain or Japan.
In the same year, the United States annexed Hawaii. Hawaii was at that time an independent republic, but the government was made up of Hawaiian-born heirs to U.S. business fortunes. The president was Sanford Dole, a cousin of the founder of the Hawaiian Pineapple Company, later the Dole Food Company. Dole and a group of U.S. and European businessmen had, with the help of U.S. marines, overthrown the Queen of Hawaii. They established the Republic of Hawaii and began advocating for U.S. annexation. McKinley obliged.
Assassination
McKinley was also known for protectionist tariffs which led to runaway inflation and global retaliation. Nonetheless, he was reelected for a second term in 1900, largely on the strength of his image as the hero of the Spanish-American War. In his second campaign as in his first, he relied on the financial support of wealthy patrons. The admiration of people who admired his bravery was in conflict with the disdain of those who considered him too strongly influenced by his cronies and unconcerned about the American people.
In his final speech in 1901, McKinley turned away from tariffs and protectionism, but he was shot shortly after by an anarchist, Leon F. Czolgosz. The president instructed his guards not to hurt Czolgosz, who was convicted of his crime and died in the electric chair. The assassin admitted his crime and expressed no remorse, saying that McKinley had been “the enemy of working people.”
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