The Panic of 1893, and the resulting depression, the nastiest the nation had yet suffered, doomed President Grover Cleveland's hopes of winning a 3rd term. But Bryan, at 36 the youngest major-party nominee ever, favored the free coinage of silver, as a means of ending the depression, rather than sticking to the gold standard.
At the Democratic Convention at the Chicago Coliseum, he said, "You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns. You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold." Effectively, he was the Bernie Sanders of his time.
But that scared a lot of people, including a lot of Democrats. Cleveland refused to use whatever political capital he had left to endorse him, and a lot of "Gold Democrats" supported McKinley, who promised "a return to the full dinner pail." (The expression "a chicken in every pot" had been in existence for about 300 years.)
In addition, in the inner cities, and in smaller mill and mining towns, where lots of Catholics, many of them the sons of immigrants, worked in factories, many of them were told by their bosses, "If Bryan wins on Tuesday, don't come in on Wednesday" -- not that they would be fired, but that the factory would have to close.
McKinley's running mate was Garret Hobart, who had led both houses of the New Jersey legislature: Speaker of the Assembly, and President of the Senate. He had gained more popularity among American conservatives as a corporate lawyer, and, while hardly qualified for the Presidency, he was nominated for the Vice Presidency. Arthur Sewall, a member of the Democratic National Committee from Maine, was nominated for Vice President.
Hobart died on November 21, 1899, of heart disease at age 55. So when McKinley ran for re-election in 1900, he needed a new running mate. He chose the Governor of New York, and a hero of the recent Spanish-American War: Theodore Roosevelt. McKinley defeated Bryan again, but was assassinated a few months into his 2nd term, and Roosevelt became President.
McKinley has a statue in front of the Ohio State Capitol in Columbus. The McKinley Monument in Buffalo is an obelisk in Niagara Square, in front of City Hall. The William McKinley Presidential Library opened in Canton on September 29, 1992.
The fictional high school on the TV show The Wonder Years was McKinley High School. In 1928 and 1934, gold certificates standing in for $500 bills with McKinley's portrait were issued. Ever since, the U.S. government has issued no bill with a value higher than $100.
State House, Columbus
McKinley has been played by Dell Henderson in A Message to Garcia in 1936, Frank Conroy in This Is My Affair in 1937, Douglas Wood in Teddy, the Rough Rider in 1940, Stephen Coit in Captains and the Kings in 1976, and Brian Keith in Rough Riders in 1997.
The last surviving member of McKinley's Cabinet was Elihu Root, who served as Secretary of War under McKinley and TR, and then as Secretary of State in TR's 2nd term. He lived until 1937.
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November 3, 1896 was a Tuesday. The baseball season was over. Saturday had been standardized as the day for college football. And basketball and hockey were still all-amateur. So there were no scores on this historic day.
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