Presidency of William McKinley
US presidential administration from 1897 to 1901
William McKinley served as the 25th president of the United States from March 4, 1897, until his assassination on September 14, 1901. McKinley is best known for conducting the successful Spanish–American War (1898); taking ownership of the Republic of Hawaii; and purchasing the Philippines, Guam and Puerto Rico. It includes the 1897 Dingley Tariff which raised rates to protect manufacturers and factory workers from foreign competition, and the Gold Standard Act of 1900 that rejected free silver inflationary proposals. Rapid economic growth and a decline in labor conflict marked the presidency and he was easily reelected. He was succeeded by his vice president, Theodore Roosevelt.
A member of the Republican Party, McKinley took office following the 1896 presidential election, in which he defeated Democrat William Jennings Bryan. In the campaign, McKinley advocated "sound money", promised that high tariffs would restore prosperity, and denounced Bryan as a radical who promoted class warfare. He defeated Bryan again in the 1900 presidential election, in a campaign focused on imperialism in the Philippines, high tariffs, and free silver. McKinley's presidency marked the beginning of an era in American political history, called the "Fourth Party System" or "Progressive Era", which lasted to the early 1930s. On the national level, this period was generally dominated by the Republican Party.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Presidency of William McKinley” as uS presidential administration from 1897 to 1901. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1720135. The Library of Congress control number is sh85140453. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1897, 1901, 1898 and 1900.
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This entry incorporates text from “Presidency of William McKinley” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.