He had borne his share of detraction. He had known what it was to be wilfully traduced and to face partisan rancor. Το all his fellow-citizens, the last fond tribute laid on his bier was the precious consciousness that he had outlived and overlived all this. He died loved by all, and knowing that he was loved by all that the Union which he had fought as a boy to save he, more than any other President, had made a "more perfect Union" of the hearts of the American people.

CHAPTER V.

Incidents in President McKinley's Career-Gallant Exploits on the Field of Battle-Daring Feat at AntietamAlways True to His Pledge.

THE boy, who afterward became President, was originally in

tended for the ministry, and it was said that his mother confidently looked forward to his becoming a bishop. Probably he would have realized her ambition had not fate willed that he should become a lawyer. He received his first education at the public schools of Niles. When he was nine years old the family removed to Poland, Ohio, a place noted in the State for its educational advantages.

Here William was placed in Union Seminary, where he pursued his studies until he was seventeen, when he entered the junior class, and could easily have graduated the next year, but that unremitting application to study undermined his health, and he was forced to return home. At these institutions he had been especially proficient in mathematics and the languages, and was acknowledged to be the best debater in the literary societies. He had early manifested strong religious traits, had joined the Methodist Church at the age of sixteen and had been notably diligent in Scriptural study.

As soon as he sufficiently recovered his health he became a teacher in the public schools in the Kerr district, near Poland. At the outbreak of the Civil War he was a clerk in the Poland post office. At a war meeting convened in the Sparrow tavern he was one of a number of boys who was so fired by the patriotic enthusiasm of the occasion that they promptly stepped forward and enrolled their names as intended volunteers in the Union army.

Proceeding with them to Columbus, William McKinley listed as a private in Company E, of the Twenty-third Ohio

Volunteer Infantry, June 11, 1861. This company was destined to become one of the most famous in the war. Its field and staff included William S. Rosecrans, Rutherford B. Hayes, Stanley Matthews and others who after ward achieved eminence in military or civil life. It was engaged a nineteen battles and of its total rank and file of 2,095 men, 19 were killed in battle and 107 died of wounds or disease. Des ite the hardships, privations and perils to which he was expos d, his constitution gained in health and strength during his four years' service. He participated in all the early engagements in West Virginia.

His first promotion, to commissary sergeant, occurred April 15, 1862. As Rutherford B. Hayes afterward said: "We soon found that in business and executive ability he was of rare capacity, of unusual and unsurpassing capacity, for a boy of his age. When battles were fought, or a service was to be performed in warlike things, he always took his place. When I became commander of the regiment, he soon came to be on my staff, and he remained on my staff for one or two years, so that I did, literally and in fact, know him like a book and love him like a brother."

HOT WORK AT ANTIETAM.

The company was with McClellan when they drove the enemy out of Frederick, Md., and, on September 14th and 17th, engaged them at South Mountain and at Antietam. In the latter battle Sergeant McKinley, in charge of the commissary department of his brigade, performed a notable deed of daring at the crisis of the battle, when it was uncertain which way victory would turn. McKinley fitted two wagons with necessary supplies and drove them through a storm of shells and bullets to the assistance of his hungry and thirsty fellow soldiers. The mules of one wagon were disabled, but McKinley drove the other safely through and was received with hearty cheers. "From Sergeant McKinley's hand," said President Hayes, "every man in the regiment was served with hot coffee and warm meats, a thing which had never occurred under similar circumstances in any other army in the world."

For this feat he was promoted to lieutenant, September 24, 1862.

A greater exploit was that which he performed at the battle of Kernstown, near Winchester, July 24, 1864, when he rode his horse, on a forlorn hope, through a fierce Confederate fire, to carry Hayes' orders to Colonel William Brown, and thus extricated that officer's command, the Thirteenth West Virginia, from a perilous position.

On July 25th following he was promoted to be captain, and on March 14, 1865, received from the President a document which he valued above all the other papers in his possession. This was a commission as major by brevet in the Volunteer United States Army "for gallant and meritorious services at the battles of Opequan, Cedar Creek and Fisher's Hill," signed "A. Lincoln." This was just a month before the assassination of the latter. On June 26, 1865, he was mustered out with his regiment, and returned to Poland, with the record of having been present and active in every engagement in which his regiment had participated, and in performing with valor and judgment every duty assigned to him.

ADMITTED TO THE BAR.

He at once began the study of the law, first in the office of Glidden & Wilson, at Youngstown, Ohio, and afterward at the Law School in Albany, N. Y. In March, 1867, he was admitted to the bar at Warren, Ohio. He settled at Canton, which ever afterward was his home, and soon attracted attention as a lawyer of diligence, sobriety and eloquence. Though the county was strongly Democratic, and he was an uncompromising Republican, he was elected one term as prosecuting attorney. He threw himself into every political campaign with all the energy of his nature, and his services were so highly valued that he spoke more frequently in his county and district than even the principal candidates on the ticket. When Rutherford B. Hayes ran for the Governorship of Ohio, against the Greenback candidate, Allen, McKinley was an eloquent and passionate advocate f honest money and resumptior

Meanwhile, in 1871, he had married Miss Ida Saxton, a leading belle of Poland, Ohio. It was a love match in its inception; it remained a tender and beautiful idyl to the very end. Indeed, no public man was ever a nobler exponent of all the domestic virtues than McKinley. His mother worshipped him, his wife lized him.

It was in 1876 that he announced himself a candidate for Congress. The sitting Representative, L. D. Woodworth, with Judge Frease, and other prominent Republicans, three of them from his own county, were his opponents for the nomination.

The Stark County delegates to the Congressional Convention were elected by a popular vote. McKinley carried every township in the county but one, and that had but a single delegate. In the other counties he was almost equally successful, and the primaries gave him a majority of the delegates in the district. He was nominated on the first ballot over all the other candidates.

OLD POLITICIANS ASTONISHED.

This sudden rise into prominence and popularity naturally gave the old politicians a shock. Here was a new and unknown factor in the politics of the district. He had been accorded an opportunity which to them had seemed hopeless, had accepted and won recognition. It was soon discovered that he had not only come into the politics of the district, but that he had come to stay. For fourteen years after this event he represented the district of which Stark county was a part; not the same district, for the Democrats did not relish the prominent part he was playing in Congress, and gerrymandered him three times, the last time (in 1890) successfully.

The first attempt to change his district was made as early as 1878 by the Democrats, who, by gerrymandering the county, put him into a district that had 1,800 Democratic majority. McKinley carried it by 1,300 votes. In 1882 he had another narrow escape. It will be recalled that 1882 was a bad year for Republicans. The New York State Convention resented President Arthur using