LEWIS L. GOULD
William McKinley and the
Expansion of Presidential Power
In the wake of the Vietnam War and
Watergate, much attention,
both scholarly and popular, has been
devoted to the rise of the "Im-
perial Presidency" in this
century.1 Those who have traced the evolu-
tion of this concept of presidential
power appear to date its modern
emergence from the accession of Theodore
Roosevelt to the office in
September 1901. Writing in the mid-1950s
in his influential The Amer-
ican Presidency, Clinton Rossiter described Roosevelt as "a
brilliant
molder and interpreter of public
opinion" who "scored several genu-
ine triumphs as leader of Congress"
and "conducted our diplomacy
with unusual vigor." Loren P. Beth
concluded in 1971 that "the out-
lines of the modern presidency were
clearly discernible" when Roose-
velt left office. In a recent
three-volume examination of the growth of
presidential power, William M. Goldsmith
said that Roosevelt pro-
vided "an irrevocable model for
dynamic presidential leadership which
would serve as a paradigm for the
presidency in the twentieth century."
A new survey of the American past
likewise asserted that Roosevelt
"had raised his office to its
twentieth-century position of dominance."2
The popular impression is that Roosevelt
wrote on a clean slate,
and that the earlier Republican
administration had left only a slim
Lewis L. Gould is Professor of History
at the University of Texas at Austin. An
earlier draft of this essay was
presented at the Organization of American Historians
meeting in St. Louis in April 1976.
Professor Gould wishes to acknowledge the assis-
tance of the National Endowment for the
Humanities and the University Research In-
stitute, University of Texas at Austin.
He also wishes to thank Joan Hoff Wilson, Paul
Holbo, and R. Hal Williams for their
suggestions and criticisms.
1. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The
Imperial Presidency (Boston, 1973) is the most
noteworthy example of the growing
literature. For others, see Dale Vinyard, The Presi-
dency (New York, 1971); James David Barber, The
Presidential Character: Predicting
Presidential Performance in the White
House (Englewood Cliffs, 1972); Erwin
C. Har-
grove, The Power of the Modern
Presidency (Philadelphia, 1974); Rexford G. Tugwell
and Thomas E. Cronin, eds., The
Presidency Reappraised (New York, 1974); Philip C.
Dolce and George H. Skau, eds., Power
and the Presidency (New York, 1976).
2. Clinton Rossiter, The American
Presidency (New York, 1963), 104; Loren P.
Beth, The Development of the American
Constitution, 1877-1917 (New York, 1971),
20; William M. Goldsmith, ed., The
Growth of Presidential Power: A Documented
History (3 vols., New York, 1974), III, 1281; Bernard Bailyn et
al., The Great Republic
(2 vols., Lexington, MA, 1977), 934.
6 OHIO
HISTORY
legacy of examples and programs on which
the new president could
draw. Such judgments are familiar, and
could be multiplied, but they
are rarely based on an explicit
comparison with what Roosevelt's prede-
cessor, William McKinley, did to
strengthen the presidential office in
the four and a half years before the
Rough Rider occupied the White
House.3 Over the last decade
and a half, a body of McKinley scholar-
ship has been accumulating, the effect
of which has been to push the
origins of expanding presidential power
back to McKinley's terms of
office. It is apparent now that the
institutional roots of enhanced execu-
tive power in the twentieth century lie
in the events that transpired
between March 4, 1897, and September 14,
1901. The continuities be-
tween the Roosevelt and McKinley
administrations on this subject
are as impressive as Roosevelt's
innovation and new departures.
Appraisals of the way Roosevelt
buttressed the power of the presi-
dency vary, and there is no single
comprehensive treatment of the
question.4 The scholarly
consensus, however, identifies three key areas
of increasing presidential strength
between 1901 and 1909. Roosevelt,
these students agree, laid down the
foundations for the modern struc-
ture of his office in his relations with
Congress, mastery of public opin-
ion, and use of experts and academics to
shape policy. An examina-
tion of McKinley's performance in these
matters, as well as his exer-
cise of the war powers, shows that
McKinley's contributions to the
broadening of executive power
anticipated the achievements usually
credited to Roosevelt.
Any analysis of McKinley as president
must at the outset take a
position on the question of his
leadership within his own administra-
3. Edwin C. Rozwenc, The Making of
American Society (2 vols., Boston, 1973),
II, 67, is an exception among recent
textbooks in his judgment that McKinley "began
to tip the balance in favor of
presidential leadership and possibly paved the way for
an extraordinary revival of executive
power and leadership in the twentieth century."
Richard Harmond, "The Presidency in
the Gilded Age: From Rutherford B. Hayes to
William McKinley," Power and the
Presidency, ed. Dolce and Skau, 61, says that
McKinley "quite
unintentionally" changed the balance between President and Con-
gress as a result of the
Spanish-American War. Marcus Cunliffe, American Presidents
and the Presidency (New York, 1976), 248-50, also credits the war more
than McKinley
for increased executive power. The
conventional opinions appear in Walter LaFeber
and Richard Polenberg, The American
Century (New York, 1975), 21-29, 48-49; Robert
Kelley, The Shaping of the American
Past (2 vols., Englewood Cliffs, 1975), 552-53;
Henry F. Bedford and Trevor Colburn, The
Americans: A Brief History (New York,
1976), 347-50, 371.
4. John M. Blum, The Republican
Roosevelt (Cambridge, 1954), and William H.
Harbaugh, Power and Responsibility:
The Life and Times of Theodore Roosevelt
(New York, 1961), have been the two most
influential studies in shaping the accepted
view of Roosevelt as president. There
is, however, still no comprehensive account of
his presidency that uses the available
lode of manuscript sources. Professor Harbaugh's
volume in the Kansas series on "The
American Presidency" should provide such a
treatment for the Roosevelt
Administration.
Expansion of Presidential Power 7
tion. Faced with a paucity of written
evidence about the president's
reasoning and intentions, scholars have
been forced to assume either
that McKinley was a negligible, passive
chief executive who re-
sponded to events, or alternatively,
that he was, as Richard H. Miller
wrote in 1970, "an adroit political
tactician who, in some respects,
possessed almost Byzantine qualities in
the circuitous pursuit of his
policy aims."5 The
latter conclusion is the more plausible and con-
vincing, and the growing weight of the
record buttresses it each year.
Like most administrations the McKinley
presidency had its successes
and failures, but there was throughout a
hard-working, shrewd, and
perceptive intelligence at the head of
the American government.6
When McKinley took office, the
presidency still stood, as it had since
Abraham Lincoln, in the shadow of
congressional supremacy. The
political disasters of Grover
Cleveland's second term, especially his
debacles on Capitol Hill over silver and
the tariff, had not enhanced
the stature of the chief executive
relative to Congress, and his aloof-
ness and isolation had further
accelerated the decline of White House
influence. Over the next four years
McKinley enjoyed unusually warm
and cordial relations with Congress, but
some historians have found
this condition unimpressive. The
president, says William H. Harbaugh,
yielded "programmatic control"
to the G.O.P. legislative leadership,
and Gerald F. Linderman observes that
McKinley's presidency "was
not one of vigorous executive
action."7
Closer examination of the course of
McKinley's handling of Con-
gress supports the opposite conclusion.
In their biographies of McKin-
ley more than a decade ago, both
Margaret Leech and H. Wayne
Morgan provided evidence that the
president led rather than followed
Congress. In several articles on the
legislative struggle over the an-
nexation of the Philippines, Paolo
Coletta decided that "the stereo-
typed image of McKinley as 'an unsure
president of intellectual pov-
5. Richard H. Miller, ed., American
Imperialism in 1898: The Quest for National
Fulfillment (New York, 1970), 10-11.
6. Richard Jensen, The Winning of the
Midwest: Social and Political Conflict,
1888-1896 (Chicago, 1971), 286-306, and Paul Kleppner, The
Cross of Culture: A So-
cial Analysis of Midwestern Politics,
1850-1900 (New York, 1970), 347-52,
have both
suggested that McKinley's political
skills and appeals in 1896 were more subtle and
persuasive than had previously been
supposed.
7. Williams H. Harbaugh, "The
Republican Party, 1893-1932," History of U.S.
Political Parties, ed. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. (4 vols., New York,
1973), III, 2078;
Gerald F. Linderman, The Mirror of
War: American Society and the Spanish-Ameri-
can War (Ann Arbor, 1974), 16. Vincent P. De Santis,
"Grover Cleveland: Revitaliza-
tion of the Presidency," Six
Presidents From the Empire State, ed. Harry J. Sievers
(Tarrytown, 1974), 84-100, makes it
clear that Cleveland contributed nothing to strength-
ening the institutional machinery of the
office, had abominable relations with Congress,
and was almost entirely a negative
force.
8 OHIO
HISTORY
erty and moral weakness' does not fit
his handling of the peace nego-
tiations and the acquisition of the
Philippines."8 Paul Holbo faced the
issue of McKinley's presidential
leadership directly in 1965. Studying
the battle over the Turpie-Foraker
amendment in April 1898 on the
eve of the war with Spain, he wrote that
in this episode McKinley's in-
sistence on "the primacy of the
President in foreign affairs" made a
substantial contribution "to
strengthening the institution of the presi-
dency."9
Since Holbo's essay, two dissertations,
an influential study of Amer-
ican foreign policy in this period, and
several articles and monographs
have underscored Holbo's point for other
aspects of McKinley's presi-
dency. Cornelius Vahle's 1967 doctoral
thesis on "Congress, the Presi-
dent, and Overseas Expansion,
1897-1901," looked at how the foreign
policy issues arising out of expansion
fared in Congress. Vahle de-
cided that on balance McKinley "was
a successful practitioner of the
art of presidential leadership."
Similarly, Phil Lyman Snyder's exam-
ination, completed in 1972, of
McKinley's decision to annex the Philip-
pines, while critical of the outcome,
acknowledged that "the Presi-
dent, not force of circumstances,
dominated." The work of J. A. S.
Grenville and George Berkeley Young on
the onset of the Spanish-
American War, Edward Ranson's essay on
the president's handling of
the Dodge investigation into the conduct
of the war, and even Philip
S. Foner's critical view of McKinley, in
his study of the Spanish-Cuban-
American War, come to comparable
conclusions.10
8. Margaret Leech, In the Days of
McKinley (New York, 1959), 349-60, 568-71; H.
Wayne Morgan, William McKinley and
His America (Syracuse, 1963), 437, 448-49,
480-85. See also, Idem., Americas
Road to Empire (New York, 1965), 85-115, and
"William McKinley as a Political
Leader," Review of Politics, XXVIII (1966), 417-32.
Paolo E. Coletta, "McKinley, the
Peace Negotiations, and the Acquisition of the Philip-
pines," Pacific Historical
Review, XXX (November 1961), 341; Idem., "Bryan, McKin-
ley and the Treaty of Paris," Pacific
Historical Review, XXVI (1957), 131-46; "The
Peace Negotiations and the Treaty of
Paris," Threshold to American Internationalism:
Essays on the Foreign Policies of
William McKinley, ed. Paolo E. Coletta
(New York,
1970), 121-75.
9. Paul S. Holbo, "Presidential
Leadership in Foreign Affairs: William McKinley
and the Turpie-Foraker Amendment," American
Historical Review, LXXII (July 1967),
1321-35.
10. Cornelius Vahle, "Congress, the
President, and Overseas Expansion, 1897-1901"
(Ph.D. dissertation, Georgetown
University, 1967), 267; Phil Lyman Snyder, "Mission,
Empire, or Force of Circumstances? A
Study of the American Decision to Annex the
Philippine Islands" (Ph.D.
dissertation, Stanford University, 1972), 240; Edward Ran-
son, "The Investigation of the War
Department, 1898-1899," The Historian, XXXIV
(1971), 78-99; John A. S. Grenville and
George Berkeley Young, Politics, Strategy,
and American Diplomacy: Studies in
Foreign Policy, 1873-1917 (New Haven,
1966),
239-66; Philip S. Foner, The
Spanish-Cuban American War and the Birth of American
Imperialism, 1895-1902 (2 vols., New York, 1972), 1, 307-10. Walter LaFeber, The
New
Empire: An Interpretation of American
Expansion, 1860-1898 (Ithaca, 1963),
379-406,
Expansion of Presidential Power 9
Several reasons account for the failure
to recognize McKinley's
success with Congress. Historians expect
relations between the presi-
dent and Capitol Hill to consist of
confrontation. When a chief execu-
tive faces and overcomes congressional
opposition, or tries but fails
to win his way, that is visible, obvious
leadership. McKinley's tactics
of conciliation, harmony, and subtle
guidance were less glamorous
but equally effective. Moreover,
scholars have played down the legis-
lative victories that he did achieve,
since they generally do not share
McKinley's priorities, or understand his
milieu. The Dingley Tariff
provides an illustration. A
protectionist bill to be sure, it was passed
without a secure Republican majority in
the Senate more quickly
than comparable major tariff bills in
the administrations of Benjamin
Harrison, Grover Cleveland, William
Howard Taft, and Woodrow
Wilson. When the president pushed
through legislation on the Philip-
pines and the Platt Amendment on Cuba
during the short session of
1900-1901, using the difficult technique
of amendments to appropriation
bills, a Republican newspaper announced:
"No executive in the his-
tory of the country has given a greater
exhibition of his influence
over Congress than President
McKinley."11
McKinley's dealings with Congress
disclosed frequent presidential
use of a variety of devices commonly
associated with vigorous execu-
tive leadership. His annual messages
contained suggestions about the
legislative agenda and prodded Congress
for action on a number of
subjects. In the Turpie-Foraker fight a
veto threat helped defeat a
resolution the president found to be a
challenge to his supremacy in
foreign affairs. To achieve Hawaiian
annexation the White House em-
ployed direct persuasion with lawmakers
and pressure in the press to
overcome the opposition of Speaker of
the House Thomas B. Reed.
The executive branch drafted the Platt
Amendment and other colonial
legislation, and McKinley invoked the
threat of a special session to
depicts McKinley in greater control of
events in the spring of 1898, and even Ernest
May, Imperial Democracy: The Emergence
of America as a Great Power (New York,
1961), 148-59, if read carefully,
suggests a more purposeful president than May real-
izes. Charles S. Campbell, The
Transformation of American Foreign Relations, 1865-
1900 (New York, 1976), 258-78, grasps some of the
complexities of McKinley's posi-
tion on the eve of the Spanish-American
War.
11. "Reflections on the Fifty-Sixth
Congress," Literary Digest, XXII (March 9,
1901), 278. For the Dingley Tariff, see
Lewis L. Gould, "Diplomats in the Lobby: Franco-
American Relations and the Dingley
Tariff of 1897," The Historian, XXXIX (August
1977), 659-80. On the general subject of
the McKinley Administration's relations
with Congress, David W. Brady, Congressional
Voting in a Partisan Era: A Study of
the McKinley Houses and a Comparison
to the Modem House of Representatives
(Lawrence, 1973), provides a good deal
of information on voting, but is weak on the
history of the period and uses no
manuscript sources of any kind.
10 OHIO HISTORY
hurry action on army legislation in 1899
and the Platt Amendment in
1901.12
The campaign to secure ratification of
the Peace of Paris in 1898-
1899 offers the most comprehensive
example of McKinley's willingness
to use the full arsenal of weapons open
to an active chief executive.
He wielded his power as
commander-in-chief to confront Capitol Hill
with a series of accomplished facts
regarding the Philippines between
May and December 1898. Unlike Woodrow
Wilson, he appointed sen-
ators to the peace commission in an
effort to involve the Senate in
the treaty-making process and to build a
core of support in the up-
per house. In two presidential tours in
the autumn and winter of 1898
McKinley guided public opinion toward
expansion. The second of these
junkets was through the South, just
before the Senate debate began in
which Southern Democrats were a key
voting bloc. McKinley struck
just the right note for his audiences:
"Who will haul the flag down?"13
Finally, the administration dispensed
and withheld patronage to sway
votes and used informal lobbyists and
other inducements to bring
wavering senators over to the White
House side. McKinley understood
well the president's role as chief
legislator and, as the contemporary
judgment held, "had more power of
getting measures through Con-
gress than any president since
Lincoln."14
A second area in which McKinley, like
Roosevelt, functioned as a
strong president was in his relations
with the press and public opin-
ion. Roosevelt succeeded, says Rossiter,
in putting "the Presidency on
the front page of every newspaper in
America." As a personality and
celebrity, Roosevelt surely made for
better copy than McKinley, but it
is less clear that Roosevelt's relations
with the press or his handling of
12. For example, McKinley raised the
trust issue with Congress in 1899 in his an-
nual message; a year later he prodded
the Senate to act on his reciprocity treaties.
George R. Devitt, A Supplement to a
Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the
Presidents, 1789-1902 (Washington, 1903), 57-60, 132-33; Holbo,
"Presidential Leader-
ship in Foreign Affairs," 1331-32;
Vahle, "Congress, the President, and Overseas Ex-
pansion," 20-23; Graham A. Cosmas,
"Military Reform after the Spanish-American
War: The Army Reorganization Fight of
1898-1899," Military Affairs, XXXV (1971),
12-18; James H. Hitchman, Leonard
Wood and Cuban Independence, 1898-1902 (The
Hague, 1971), 115-34.
13. Washington Post, December 16,
1898. In addition to the material already cited
for this episode, see Richard E. Welch,
Jr., George Frisbie Hoar and the Half-Breed
Republicans (Cambridge, 1971), 242-46, and Robert L. Beisner, From
the Old Diplo-
macy to the New, 1865-1900 (New York, 1975), 119-24.
14. For lobbying through journalists,
see Memorandum, January 28, 1899, The
Papers of George B. Cortelyou, Library
of Congress, and for other traces of the admin-
istration effort, Washington Post, December
6, 9, 10, 20, 1898, January 1, 3, 5, 6, 20, 27,
1899, and Arthur Wallace Dunn, From
Harrison to Harding (2 vols., New York, 1922),
I, 282: Rossiter, The American
Presidency, 16-19; M. A. DeWolfe Howe, James Ford
Rhodes: American Historian (New York, 1929), 175.
Expansion of Presidential Power 11
public opinion represented a significant
departure from what McKin-
ley had done. In evaluating McKinley's
dealings with journalists, his-
torians have followed uncritically the
conclusion of James E. Pollard
that McKinley "had no special sense
of publicity nor did he feel any
need of it." White House relations
with the press, Pollard contended,
"were left largely to
chance."15
At the outset of McKinley's presidency
mutual suspicion character-
ized the atmosphere between reporters
and the executive. Gathering
information from Cleveland's
administration, recalled one journalist,
was done "much after the fashion in
which highwaymen rob a stage
coach."16 Though
McKinley gave few formal interviews, his adminis-
tration sought to place the status of
the press on an orderly and har-
monious basis. Reporters were given a
portion of a reception room in
the White House, soon called
"Newspaper Row," to conduct inter-
views and prepare stories. First under
John Addison Porter and more
systematically under George B.
Cortelyou, the position of correspon-
dents was regularized. They developed a
procedure for managing the
release of major presidential speeches
and messages and evolved ar-
rangements to have reporters accompany
the president on his frequent
tours. Cortelyou supervised the press
details of these trips-providing
stenographic reports of speeches, making
daily itineraries available,
supplying transmission facilities for
filing stories-with an efficiency
that converted a "railroad train
into an executive office." Daily consul-
tations with the president's secretary
provided the first "germ" of
"the regular White House press
conference." In his ability to serve the
needs of the press, and in using them in
turn to publicize McKinley,
Cortelyou, an important institutional
figure in both the McKinley
and Roosevelt years, became a prototype
of the modern press secre-
tary and presidential staffer.17
15. Rossiter, The American
Presidency, 104; James E. Pollard, The Presidents
and the Press (New York, 1947), 552.
16. David S. Barry, "News-Getting
at the Capitol," Chautauquan, XXVI (Decem-
ber 1897), 283.
17. Ida M. Tarbell, "President
McKinley in War Times," McClure's Magazine, XI
(July 1898), 209-24; Pollard, Presidents
and the Press, 558; David S. Barry, "George
Bruce Cortelyou," World's Work, V
(April 1903), 3337-40. For Cortelyou's work with
releasing statements, see Melville E.
Stone to William McKinley, December 3, 1899,
signed statement of David S. Barry,
December 1, 1900, and for the arrangement of cov-
erage of trips, Cortelyou to C. A.
Moore, March 1, 1901, The Papers of William McKin-
ley, Library of Congress (hereafter
cited McKinley Papers). Benjamin Temple Ford,
"A Duty to Serve: The Governmental
Career of George B. Cortelyou" (Ph.D. disser-
tation, Columbia University, 1963),
47-57, does not explore what Cortelyou did for the
management of the White House
administrative routine. On this point, see G. M. J.,
"Handling the White House
Mail," Leslie's Weekly, XCIII (August 10, 1901), 118-19,
and Albert Halstead, "The President
at Work-A Character Sketch," The Independent,
LIII (September 5, 1901), 2080-86.
12 OHIO
HISTORY
McKinley was receptive to the changes
that were taking place in
news coverage, and by the end of the
first term it was customary for
at least one press photographer to be
with the presidential party on
speaking trips. The resulting
photographs from such photojournalists
as James H. Hare of Collier's were
supplied to the White House for
subsequent distribution. If Roosevelt
was adept at the timely leak and
trial balloon, McKinley was no less so,
and reporters conceded that
the president himself often released
stories to consider their effect
upon public opinion. "While
apparently not courting publicity," wrote
a newsman about McKinley in 1913, he
"contrived to put out, by vari-
ous shrewd processes of indirection,
whatever news would best serve
the ends of the administration."18
When Roosevelt came to the presidency,
the coverage of his activ-
ities grew in response to his
personality and color. Journalists received
a separate room when the executive
mansion was refurbished in 1902,
a logical extension of the invitation
that had occurred five years earlier.
Roosevelt's relationship with the press
possessed an excitement, per-
sonalism, and periodically a vindictive
quality absent from McKin-
ley's time, but institutionally it built
upon the McKinley-Cortelyou
heritage. 19
In dealing with public opinion Roosevelt
relied extensively on per-
sonal tours and speeches to explain his
policies and make his personal
case to the voters. His bully pulpit was
a mobile and busy platform
and, says one student, he employed the
"presidential junket as a cal-
culated publicity device." So
widespread were Roosevelt's travels that
McKinley's own contributions in this
area have been forgotten. A con-
temporary account listed over forty
presidential trips outside Washing-
ton and decided in 1903 that "No
President, while performing the
duties of Chief Executive, ever did half
as much traveling through the
United States as the late President
McKinley."20
18. For the White House interest in
photographic coverage, see Cortelyou to
George G. Bain, October 2, 1899, John A.
Sleicher to Cortelyou, October 3, 1899,
H. A. Strohmeyer to Cortelyou, October
26, 1899, McKinley Papers. Lewis L. Gould
and Richard Greffe, Photojournalist:
The Career of Jimmy Hare (Austin, 1977), 31.
McKinley was the first presidential
candidate to be filmed, and the Republicans used
the crude movie as a campaign document
in 1896. Gordon Hendricks, Beginnings of the
Biograph: The Story of the Invention
of the Mutoscope and the Biograph and Their
Supplying Camera (New York, 1964), 41-43, 48-49, 51. On McKinley and
leaks, see
Francis E. Leupp, "The
President-And Mr. Wilson," The Independent, LXXVI (No-
vember 27, 1913), 390-95; London
Times, October 8, 1901.
19. Pollard, Presidents and the
Press, 574; J. Frederick Essary, Covering Washing-
ton: Government Reflected to the
Public in the Press, 1822-1926 (Boston,
1927), 87-88;
Harry H. Stein, "Theodore Roosevelt
and the Press: Lincoln Steffens," Mid-America,
LIV (April 1972), 94-107.
20. Elmer E. Cornwell, Jr., Presidential
Leadership of Public Opinion (Bloomington,
Expansion of Presidential Power 13
With the exception of one or two
speeches in the last years of his
second term, Grover Cleveland had always
stayed in Washington or
at his vacation retreat. After March
1897 McKinley made thirty-seven
public addresses or short remarks in his
first year in office, seventy-
four in 1898, and 108 in 1899. During
1900, an election year when
sitting presidents did not campaign, his
speaking activities ebbed, but
in 1901 he made a national tour in the
spring and, of course, was assas-
sinated in Buffalo, New York, while
fulfilling a speaking commitment.
As McKinley told a British diplomat in
1899, "each trip he made from
Washington enabled him to carry out what
he considered an important
function of his office, viz: that the
President and the people should be
brought closely together."21
McKinley also realized the partisan and
legislative impact of his
travels. His autumn trip in 1898,
"discussing current events connected
with the administration," assisted
the Republicans through the con-
gressional elections and helped to limit
their off-year losses. At the
same time it crystallized Midwestern
public opinion behind his evolv-
ing Philippine policy. "He led
public sentiment quite as much as
public sentiment led him" recalled
a Cabinet officer, "and the popular
manifestations on that journey were in
response to the keynotes he
struck." In 1901 his spring tour
and Buffalo speech were the opening
shots in a campaign on behalf of his
tariff reciprocity treaties then
"hung up" in the Senate.22
After criss-crossing the United States
in his first term, McKinley
had more ambitious travel plans for his
second. In July 1901 the
French ambassador, Jules Cambon, called
on the president before the
two men began their summer vacations.
Cambon asked if McKinley
might escape the heat of a Washington
summer with an ocean voyage
to Europe. McKinley discussed the
tradition that prevented an in-
1965), 23; W. W. Price, "President
McKinley's Tours," The Cosmopolitan, XXXIV (Feb-
ruary 1903), 383. See also, Joe Mitchel
Chapple, "Presidential Trips," National Maga-
zine, XXXIV (May 1911), 165-69.
21. Reginald Tower to Lord Salisbury,
June 29, 1899, F05/2391, Public Record
Office, London (Quotations of
Crown-copyright records in the Public Record Office ap-
pear by permission of the Controller of
H. M. Stationery Office); Speeches and Ad-
dresses of William McKinley From
March 1, 1897 to May 30, 1900 (New
York, 1900),
vii-xv.
22. On the 1898 trip, William P. Hepburn
to John F. Lacey, September 12, 1898,
The Papers of John F. Lacey, Iowa State
Department of History and Archives, Des
Moines, for the first quotation, and
Charles Emory Smith, "McKinley in the Cabinet
Room," The Saturday Evening
Post, CLXXV (October 11, 1902), 7, for the second.
The quotation about 1901 is from Gerard
Lowther to Lord Lansdowne, August 9, 1901,
F05/2463, Public Record Office, London.
See also, Julian Pauncefote to Lord Lans-
downe, May 10, 1901, The Papers of Lord
Lansdowne, F0800/144, and Pauncefote to
Lansdowne, May 31, 1901, F05/2457,
Public Record Office.
14 OHIO HISTORY
cumbent president from leaving the
country during his term of office,
but noted that the telegraph and other
inventions made travel more
feasible. He told Cambon that he
intended to visit Hawaii in the win-
ter of 1902, and had plans for trips to
Puerto Rico and to Cuba where
the "slightly mixed character"
of the Cuban government "would be a
step made on the path which would allow
the President to leave the
soil of the United States." Had he
lived McKinley would have made his
travels the occasion, before Roosevelt
or Wilson, for breaking the
precedent that confined presidents to
the continental United States.
To McKinley, rather than Roosevelt,
belongs the responsibility for
developing the modern custom of
peripatetic presidents.23
In his autobiography Roosevelt observed
that "One of the ways in
which by independent action of the
executive we were able to ac-
complish an immense amount of work for
the public was through
volunteer unpaid commissions appointed
by the President."24 The work
of the Keep Commission on Departmental
Methods, the commissions
on Public Lands, Inland Waterways,
National Conservation, and
Country Life, served as means by which,
as John M. Blum has written,
"Roosevelt sought and heeded the
advice of intellectuals, experts on
the various areas of his concern."25
A recent study of modern presi-
dential commissions notes that "the
extensive use of commissions
for substantive policy guidance began
with Theodore Roosevelt."26
In his employment of unpaid commissions,
however, Roosevelt was
merely building on McKinley's eclectic
use of formal and informal
commissions in administering the federal
government and his involve-
ment of legislators, the professions,
and academic experts in shaping
executive policy.
The number and variety of governmental
commissions during the
McKinley years was striking. Among the
more notable were the
Wolcott Bimetallic Commission (1897),
the Reciprocity Commission
(1897-1901), the Nicaraguan Commission
and its successor the Isth-
mian Canal Commission (1897-1902), the
Industrial Commission (1898-
1902), the Anglo-American Joint High
Commission (1898-1899), the
Dodge Commission on the conduct of the
Spanish-American War
(1898-1899), the Peace Commission
(1898), the Hawaiian Commis-
sion (1898), and the two Philippine
commissions (1899-1902). Whether
the subject was reform of the monetary
system, the extermination of
23. Jules Cambon to Theophile Delcasse,
July 13, 1901, Etats-Unis, Volume 8,
Archives du Ministere des Affaires
Estrangeres, Paris.
24. The Works of Theodore Roosevelt:
An Autobiography (20 vols., New York, 1926),
XX, 356.
25. John M. Blum, The Republican
Roosevelt (New York, 1972), ix.
26. Frank Popper, The President's
Commissions (New York, 1970), 7-8.
Expansion of Presidential Power 15
yellow fever, or commercial conditions
in the Chinese Empire, Mc-
Kinley turned time and again to the
commission procedure. In most
cases the president sought congressional
authorization and funding
for the commissioners or appointed
members in response to legisla-
tive action. For the Dodge Commission
and the Philippine commis-
sions he employed the "independent
action of the executive" and
paid the Philippine commissions from
funds available to the executive
branch. As one critical newspaper
remarked: "President McKinley
is much given to administering the
government by commission, and
in this way is enabled to escape direct
responsibility and reward
friends. Very few of his commissions
were created by authority of law,
but were made up under what is claimed
to be the war power of the
President."27
With his customary absence of animosity
toward the Congress and
his preference for results over credit,
McKinley readily named legisla-
tors to serve on these commissions. For
the Peace Commission, the
Joint High Commission, and the Hawaiian
Commission, the president
selected senators and representatives
who could then direct the
resulting legislation on Capitol Hill.
McKinley's flexible attitude
toward congressional service on
commissions roused some opposi-
tion among the lawmakers, and there was
suspicion within Congress
about the impact of the president's use
of commissions generally.28
Did these ad hoc bodies serve an
educational and policy-making
function? The historian of the Dodge
Commission suggests that its
work paved the way for the Army reforms
of Elihu Root, and the
results of the Industrial Commission
investigations influenced popular
and governmental attitudes toward
business consolidation and regula-
27. Pittsburgh Post, March 8,
1900 [clipping in The Papers of Bernard Moses, Ban-
croft Library, University of California,
Berkeley]. Carl Marcy, Presidential Commis-
sions (New York, 1945), is the standard work, which
emphasizes the twentieth century,
but has some discussion of earlier
developments. For treatments of some of the McKin-
ley-era commissions, James H. Eckels,
"The Wolcott Commission and Its Results,"
The Forum, XXIV (December 1897), 396-401; S. N. D. North,
"The Industrial Com-
mission," North American Review,
CLXVIII (May 1899), 708-19; Aldace F. Walker,
"The Preliminary Report of the
Isthmian Canal Commission," The Forum, XXXI
(April 1901), 131-46; William Z. Ripley,
"The Work of Trained Economists in the In-
dustrial Commission," Quarterly
Journal of Economics, XVI (November 1901), 121-22;
E. D. Durand, "The United States
Industrial Commission: Methods of Government In-
vestigation," Quarterly Journal
of Economics, XVI (August 1902), 564-86; Ranson,
"The Investigation of the War
Department," 78-99. Devitt, A Supplement to a Compila-
tion of the Messages and Papers of
the Presidents, 21-22, 35-36, 64;
"Expenses of the
Philippine Commission, Etc.",
Senate Document 293, 56th Congress, 1st session, 1900.
28. William E. Chandler to McKinley,
August 17, 1898, McKinley Papers, described
the appointment of senators to the peace
commission as unconstitutional. For other evi-
dence of Congressional unhappiness, see Congressional
Record, 56th Congress, 1st
session (April 21, 1900), 4509; Congressional
Record, 57th Congress, 2nd session (Feb-
ruary 26, 1903), 2695-700.
16 OHIO
HISTORY
tion after 1900. The Industrial
Commission also acted as a means of
bringing the talents of members of the
academic community into the
service of the government. It employed
such experts as Jeremiah W.
Jenks to investigate the trust problem,
John R. Commons to explore
"sweat shops and labor
questions," and William Z. Ripley to examine
transportation questions.29
Of all the commissions of the McKinley
era, the two Philippine
commissions best illustrate the
president's use of this device as an
information-seeking and
policy-formulating tool. In his study of Jacob
Gould Schurman and the first Philippine
Commission, Kenneth E.
Hendrickson observed that Cornell
University President Schurman
and his colleagues assembled a good deal
of information about the
islands, but also made "a number of
highly significant recommenda-
tions" that affected the subsequent
action of the administration toward
the Philippines. The second commission,
headed by William Howard
Taft, and with two academics among its
members, acted as a civil
arm of the president in the Philippines,
providing a machinery of
government and promulgating laws under
executive authority until
Congress ratified its work.30
The result of this extensive employment
of commissions was a
marked increase in presidential
authority. The commissions provided
the executive with an independent source
of information, helped to
thwart or diffuse political criticism,
and shaped or validated adminis-
tration policies. At a time when
executive agencies like the State
Department or War Department were
understaffed,31 poorly funded,
and inadequate to the purposes of the
president, such instrumentalities
as the Philippine Commission preempted
congressional action and
served as primitive surrogates for the
more elaborate and formal
bureaucracy and White House staff of
modern times.
War is the great incubator of strong
presidents. Until the Vietnam
29. "List of Experts of the
Industrial Commission Now in the Employ of the Com-
mission," 1901, The Papers of
Daniel Augustus Tompkins, University of North Caro-
lina Library; Ranson,
"Investigation of the War Department," 99; John Waksmundski,
"McKinley Politics and the Changing
Attitudes Toward American Labor, 1870-1900"
(Ph.D. dissertation, Ohio State
University, 1972), 160-66, touches on some of the work of
the Industrial Commission.
30. Kenneth E. Hendrickson, Jr.,
"Reluctant Expansionist-Jacob Gould Schurman
and the Philippine Question," Pacific
Historical Review, XXXVI (1967), 405-21, 420
for the quotation. Ralph Eldin Minger, William
Howard Taft and United States Foreign
Policy: The Apprenticeship Years,
1900-1908 (Urbana, 1975), 28-54. See
also, Usha
Mahajani, Philippine Nationalism:
External Challenge and Filipino Response, 1565-
1946 (St. Lucia, Queensland, 1971), 207-38, and Peter W.
Stanley, A Nation in the
Making: The Philippines and the
United States, 1899-1921 (Cambridge,
1974), 55-80.
31. New York Tribune, October 15,
1897, mentioned the understaffed nature of the
State Department as one reason for the
creation of the Reciprocity Commission.
Expansion of Presidential Power 17
conflict renewed interest in the
question of presidential war power,
there was little scholarly investigation
of the long-range implications
of McKinley's performance as
Commander-in-Chief. In the last ten
years, however, students of the growth
of the executive's war powers
have realized that McKinley had a very
expansive view of what the
president could do in this field.
Conducting the Spanish-American War,
McKinley, in the words of a Cabinet
member, "assumed a close per-
sonal direction, not only of the
organization of the forces but of the
general plan of operations. He was
Commander-in-Chief not merely in
name but in fact." To govern Puerto
Rico, Cuba, the Philippines and
the Pacific dependencies, and to send
troops to China in 1900 to meet
the Boxer Rebellion, the McKinley
Administration invoked what
Elihu Root called "a military power
derived from his authority under
the Constitution as Commander-in-Chief
of the Army and Navy."32
The governments that were created under
this power ruled directly,
without explicit congressional action,
after hostilities with Spain were
over. They lasted a year and a half in
Puerto Rico, more than two years
in the Philippines, and three and a half
years in Cuba. The army
officers, such as Leonard Wood, and the
civil administrators, such as
William Howard Taft, who acted as agents
for the president, possessed
broad and diverse powers over political,
economic, and social institu-
tions. Their work of economic rebuilding
and political reconstruction
rested on the military authority of the
chief executive. In the Philip-
pines more than 400 statutes were
promulgated on the basis of presi-
dential instructions to the Commission
and "by the authority of the
President of the United States."
After surveying the range of what
had been done-laws made, institutions of
government established,
taxes collected and revenue disbursed-a
scholar of military govern-
ment concluded in 1904: "In America
we were supposed to have
started out with an Executive with
carefully defined powers, but we
are now developing one with prerogatives
which must be the envy of
crowned heads."33
32. Charles Emory Smith to Elihu Root,
August 12, 1903, The Papers of Henry C.
Corbin, Library of Congress; Robert
Bacon and James Brown Scott, eds., The Military
and Colonial Policy of the United
States: Addresses and Reports by Elihu Root (Cam-
bridge, 1916), 252. For treatments of
McKinley as commander-in-chief, see De B. Ran-
dolph Keim, "The President's
War," Frank Leslie's Popular Monthly, L (June 1900),
107-22; David Healy, "McKinley as
Commander-in-Chief," Threshold to American In-
ternationalism, ed. Coletta, 77-120; Graham A. Cosmas, An Army for
Empire: The
United States Army in the
Spanish-American War (Columbia, 1971).
33. David Yancey Thomas, A History of
Military Government in Newly Acquired
Territory of the United States (New York, 1904), 320. For additional information on
the military governments of the McKinley
Administration, see Charles E. Magoon,
Reports on the Law of Civil
Government in Territory Subject to Military Occupation
by the Military Forces of the United
States (Washington, D.C., 1902); David
Healy,
18 OHIO
HISTORY
The president's actions in the
Philippines provide, once again, the
most striking example of his use of the
war power. In December 1898,
when the treaty of peace with Spain was
signed but not ratified, he
instructed the army commander that the
capture of Manila and the
surrender of the Spanish forces had
"practically effected" the con-
quest of all the islands, and ordered
the extension of a military gov-
ernment "with all possible dispatch
to the whole of the ceded terri-
tory."34 By the time the
Senate had ratified the treaty, fighting be-
tween the Americans and Filipinos had
erupted. "A domestic war took
the place of a foreign one," and the
president continued to exercise
his military power. In December 1899
McKinley informed Congress,
after he had governed the Philippines
for ten months, "It does not
seem desirable that I should recommend
at this time a specific and
final form of government for these
islands." While the Filipinos were
in revolt, the executive, acting through
the military, would be supreme.
When the insurrection ended, a condition
that the president would
proclaim, Congress could act. Meanwhile,
said McKinley, "I shall use
the authority vested in me by the
Constitution and the statutes to
uphold the sovereignty of the United
States in those distant islands
as in all other places where our flag
rightfully floats."35 Another year
went by before Congress, with the
blessing of the administration,
passed the Spooner Amendment. It
substituted legislative authoriza-
tion for the war power as McKinley's
justification for his actions in
the Philippines, but left the president
with "all military, civil and
judicial powers necessary to govern the
Philippine Islands." As a
scholar of presidential commissions
noted thirty years ago, "the first
and second Philippine Commissions show
rather well the lengths to
which the President can go under the
inherent powers which he de-
rives from the fact that he is Commander
in Chief."36
A further example of McKinley's use of
such powers occurred in
the summer of 1900 when Boxer rebels and
Chinese troops sur-
rounded the foreign legations in Peking.
The United States sent 5,000
The United States in Cuba: Generals,
Politicians, and the Search for Policy (Madison,
1963); Whitney T. Perkins, "The New
Dependencies Under McKinley," Threshold to
American Internationalism, ed. Coletta, 258-313; Hitchman, Leonard Wood and
Cuban
Independence; John Morgan Gates, School Books and Krags: The
United States Army
in the Philippines, 1898-1902 (Westport, 1973).
34. William McKinley to the Secretary of
War, December 21, 1898, in James D.
Richardson, comp., A Compilation of
the Messages and Papers of the Presidents,
1789-1897 (10 vols., Washington, D.C., 1900), X, 219.
35. Thomas, A History of Military
Government, 320; Devitt, A Supplement to a
Compilation, 95.
36. Congressional Record, 56th
Congress, 2nd session (March 1, 1901), 3346; Marcy,
Presidential Commissions, 60; Clarence A. Berdahl, War Powers of the Executive
in the
United States (Urbana, 1921), 260-61.
Expansion of Presidential Power 19
troops into China as part of the
international relief expedition. With
Congress out of Washington and an
election campaign imminent,
McKinley "on his own sole authority
as Commander-in-Chief" dis-
patched American forces from the
Philippines and the United States.
The administration carefully said that
the country was not at war with
China. Its aims were to rescue "the
imperiled legation," obtain
"redress for wrongs already
suffered," and protect "wherever possible
the safety of American life and property
in China." Arthur Schle-
singer, Jr., has correctly remarked that
this episode was an early
example of the use of force without
congressional sanction against a
sovereign state. Accordingly, "the
intervention in China marked a
crucial shift in the presidential
employment of armed force overseas."
Viewed as a whole, McKinley's reliance
on the war power for his
colonial policy and as a rationale for
his intervention in China indicate
how large a part his administration
played in what Edward S. Corwin
described as a transformation of the war
power "from a simple power
of military command to a vast reservoir
of indeterminate powers in
time of emergency."37
Writing in January 1899 journalist Henry
Loomis Nelson argued
that the presidency needed immediate
strengthening to counteract
the legislative supremacy of the last
quarter of the nineteenth century.
"In order that our democratic
government may efficiently perform the
services and duties promised and
commanded by the laws," he wrote,
"it will be necessary to free the
executive, and to make the adminis-
trative power more effective."38
A year later Perry Belmont, a Demo-
cratic observer, commented that
"Since the inauguration of President
McKinley there has been an enormous
extension of Executive power."
Six months before McKinley's death,
Henry L. West, who covered
American politics for The Forum, analyzed
"The Growing Powers of
the President" and contended that
"In the legislative branch of the
government it is the executive which
influences, if it does not control,
the action of Congress, while the power
originally vested in the execu-
tive alone has increased to an extent of
which the framers of the
Constitution had no prophetic
vision."39
37. Schlesinger, The Imperial
Presidency, 88-89; Devitt, A Supplement to a Compila-
tion, 120; Edward S. Corwin, The President: Office and
Powers, 1787-1957 (New York,
1957), 212-13. Raoul Berger, Executive
Privilege: A Constitutional Myth (Cambridge,
1974), 82-83, attaches less significance
to McKinley's action than Schlesinger.
38. Henry Loomis Nelson, "The
Weakness of the Executive Power in Democracy,"
Harper's Monthly, XCVIII (January 1899), 210-18.
39. Perry Belmont, "The President's War Power and an Imperial
Tariff," North
American Review, CLXX (March 1900), 433-45; Henry L. West,
"The Growing Powers
of the President," The Forum, XXXI
(March 1901), 25.
20 OHIO HISTORY
If the power of the presidency did
increase under McKinley, the
question remains why this contribution
has been submerged and over-
looked. Corwin's suggestion that
McKinley "worked for the wrong
people" seems one plausible answer.40
As a Republican and architect
of the Spanish-American War, McKinley
appeared an unlikely candi-
date for a strong president. It was far
more attractive to see Roose-
velt, with his bully pulpit, the
trustbuster and steward of the people,
as the first of the modern presidents.
As the example of recent
presidents has shown, however, strength
is a morally neutral quality.
The assumption that strong presidents usually
exercise authority for
laudable ends is incorrect.41 To
say that a president, whether McKinley
or Roosevelt, was strong is not to make
an ethical judgment on his
performance but simply to describe his
relation to the powers of his
office.
The contention that McKinley made
significant contributions to the
expansion of presidential power does not
imply any denigration of
what Roosevelt brought to this important
change in the balance of
American governmental institutions. A
process that embraced at least
three, and probably four, of the
presidents between 1897 and 1921
(for Taft strengthened the office too)
requires a more sophisticated
analysis than simply saying that
Roosevelt "revolutionized" the office
after 1901.42 It is too easy to attribute
changes in the presidency to
the accident of an assassin's bullet or
to the character of a single
incumbent. When historians examine more
closely the institutional,
cultural, and political forces that
shifted power toward the White House
in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth century, they will probably
conclude that the strength of the
presidency grew because it had to
meet the demands that international
changes and domestic pressures
were placing on the American government.
As the first chief execu-
tive to encounter these forces in
something like their modern form,
McKinley was indeed a
"transitional" president. The weight of his
example, the methods he employed, and
his impact on his office indi-
cate, however, that the transition that
took place on September 14,
1901, was not "a dramatic
shift" but the continuation of a tradition
of strong executive leadership that
spanned both the McKinley and
Roosevelt administrations.43
40. Corwin, The President, 466.
41. William H. Harbaugh, "A
Biographer Looks Back on Theodore Roosevelt,"
Six Presidents from the Empire State,
ed. Sievers, 115, makes this point in
a slightly
different context.
42. Goldsmith, ed., The Growth of
Presidential Power, II, 1176.
43. Morgan, William McKinley, 527;
Robert H. Wiebe, "The Progressive Years, 1900-
1917," The Reinterpretation of
American History and Culture, eds. William H. Cart-
wright and Richard L. Watson
(Washington, D.C., 1973), 436.