Major McKinley: William Mckinley & The Civil War - Softcover

Armstrong, William H.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0873386574 ISBN 13: 9780873386579

Publisher: The Kent State University Press, 2000

Synopsis

“The Civil War was a crucial experience in shaping the character and political life of William McKinley. In this engrossing and well-researched study, William H. Armstrong provides the most thorough treatment of McKinley’s military career and shows how his wartime record influenced his emergence as the first modern president. Armstrong is balanced and fair-minded, and his work should become the definitive account of the Civil War years of an important figure of the Gilded Age.” ―Lewis L. Gould, author of The Presidency of William McKinley

Major McKinley is the first complete account of the Civil War service of President William McKinley, the last of the Civil War veterans to reach the White House and the only one who served in the ranks. McKinley enlisted as a private in the 23rd Ohio Volunteer Infantry (Later commanded by another future president, Rutherford B. Hayes) and was the regiment’s commissary sergeant when his bravery at the Battle of Antietam led to a commission and an assignment to Hayes’s military staff.

Drawing on a wide variety of sources, including McKinley’s own paper and the diaries and letters of men who served with him, this book presents a new picture of McKinley as a soldier and provides a fresh appreciation of his later life as a veteran in politics.

About this title

About the Author:

William H. Armstrong is a retired United Church of Christ minister currently living in northeast Ohio. From 1966 to 1968 he served as associate director of the Peace Corps in Ethiopia and from 1968 to 1971 as director of the Peace Corps in Swaziland. His publications include Warrior in Two Camps: Ely S. Parker, Union General and Seneca Chief.

From Publishers Weekly:

Enlisting in the 23rd Ohio Infantry when Abraham Lincoln first called for volunteers, McKinley (1843-1901) was defined for the rest of his life by his experiences there, as Armstrong, a retired minister and independent scholar, shows. McKinley was 18, with no military background, but with a strong commitment to defeating secession accompanied by a principled aversion to slavery. Armstrong reveals how ability and seriousness soon took McKinley out of the ranks to an officer's commission and a series of staff jobs that prefigured his postwar career in law and politics. He bore a full share of the action seen by the 23rd OhioAcommanded by another future president, Col. Rutherford B. HayesAmostly waged in West Virginia. His courage and coolness in the field, his administrative skills and his unassuming, reserved personality, as Armstrong presents them, attracted the attention not only of political soldiers like Hayes, but of fire-eating battle captains like Samuel S. Carroll. The final chapter of five examines McKinley's post-1865 political and civilian life. Armstrong contends that McKinley took advantage of his status as a combat veteran to extend the hand of reconciliation to his Confederate counterparts. He played a central role in the Republican Party's abandonment of the anti-Southern "bloody shirt" policies of the immediate postwar years, and drew on his Civil War experience to shape his role as commander-in-chief during the Spanish-American War. In short, this unpretentious work makes a strong case for McKinley as the archetype of the citizen soldier as president. (June)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: The Kent State University Press
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0873386574
• ISBN 13: 9780873386579
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 208