McKINLEY AS A SOLDIER IN THE CIVIL WAR.
William McKinley was but eighteen years old when the war of the
rebellion began.
His enlistment was in every way typical of the man, and representative
of the motive and action of the American volunteer. With his cousin,
William McKinley Osborne, now United States Consul General at London, he
drove to Youngstown, Ohio, in the early summer of 1861, to watch a
recently enlisted company of infantrymen at their drill, preparatory to
marching away for the field of battle. William McKinley, Sr., was a
union man, a Republican, and had been a supporter of both Fremont and
Lincoln at the polls. Of course the son had voted for neither, as he
still lacked several years of that age at which American youth may
exercise the elective franchise. But no man, of any age, had taken a
more intense interest in the progress of affairs. He felt the need of
supporting the President, and the necessity of preserving the integrity
of the nation in all its borders. Nothing could exceed the avidity with
which he watched the swiftly accumulating clouds of war and disaster.
The love of human freedom, of personal liberty and loyalty to his
country were cardinal virtues in the young man’s composition. And when
war really began he felt a strong desire to give his labor and even his
life, if necessary, in the cause which he was certain was the right.
The streets of Youngstown were filled with people, who had gathered to
watch the soldiers at their drill, nearly the entire company had been
recruited at Poland, and young McKinley personally knew every one of
them. After the little band of recruits had gone through their
evolutions, and had marched away from Youngstown to the state
rendezvous, young William and his cousin Osborne returned to Poland,
sobered and inspired to a heroic deed.
The former stated, calmly but firmly, that he felt his duty was to
enlist.
“It seems to me the country needs every man who can go,” he said, “and I
can.”
He laid the matter before his mother, and she did not oppose him. That
wise woman understood the nature of her son too well to thwart in this
day of his greatest experience that advance which she herself had so
notably assisted him in making.
So that he, with his cousin Osborne, went to Columbus, as soon as they
could set their little affairs in order, and at Camp Chase—named in
honor of a man whose genius had already made him famous and
powerful—they enlisted in Company E, of the Twenty-third Ohio Volunteer
Infantry. When one reflects how promptly Ohio sprang to arms in response
to President Lincoln’s call for troops, it will be observed that William
McKinley embraced a very early opportunity to serve his country. For he
enlisted July 30, 1861.
W. S. Rosecrans was the first Colonel of that Twenty-third Ohio, and it
had such men as Rutherford B. Hayes and Stanley Matthews on its roster.
Here in the camp, on the march, and in battle young William found the
value of his earlier training. His splendid strength, his calm
self-control—which made him capable of controlling other men; his better
education, and his manly, honorable bearing were all elements in the
guaranty of his advancement. At the very first he was chosen a corporal.
And at the time of the battle of Antietam, Sept. 17, 1862, he had been
promoted to the position of sergeant, and had received the added honor
of selection to have charge of the commissary stores. So high an
authority as General Rutherford B. Hayes, later Governor of Ohio, and
still later President of the United States, has left the following
tribute upon record:
“Young as he was, we soon found that in business, in executive ability,
young McKinley was a man of rare capacity, of unusual and unsurpassed
capacity, especially for a boy of his age. When battles were fought or
service was to be performed in warlike things he always took his place.
The night was never too dark; the weather was never too cold; there was
no sleet, or storm, or hail, or snow, or rain that was in the way of his
prompt and efficient performance of every duty.”
The bloodiest day of the war, the day on which more men were killed or
wounded than on any other one day—was Sept. 17, 1862, in the battle of
Antietam.
The battle began at daylight. Before daylight men were in the ranks and
preparing for it. Without breakfast, without coffee, they went into the
fight, and it continued until after the sun had set. The commissary
department of that brigade was under Sergeant McKinley’s administration
and personal supervision. From his hands every man in the regiment was
served with hot coffee and warm meats, a thing that had never occurred
under similar circumstances in any other army in the world. He passed
under fire and delivered, with his own hands, these things, so essential
for the men for whom he was laboring. General Hayes, then a Lieutenant
Colonel, was himself wounded at Antietam, and went home on sick leave to
recover. While there he related to Governor Tod that circumstance
illustrating the cool courage and genuine heroism, and said to the
Governor: “Let McKinley be promoted from Sergeant to Lieutenant.” And it
was done without a moment’s delay. When Colonel Hayes returned to the
field he assigned Lieutenant McKinley to duty on his staff, and the
young man looked back at eighteen months of active service in the ranks
as of the greatest possible value to him.
McKinley was still on General Hayes’ staff when the battle of Kernstown,
July 24, 1864, was fought. Crook’s corps had been expecting an easy time
when it appeared that the enemy was in force at Kernstown, about four
miles from Winchester, where Crook’s troops were. There had been some
misinformation regarding the Confederate General Early’s movements, and
the force about to be met was that of Early, which outnumbered Crook’s
corps three to one. When the battle began one of the regiments was not
in position, and Lieutenant McKinley was ordered to bring it in. The
road to the regiment needed was through open fields and right in the
enemy’s line of fire. Shells were bursting on his right and left, but
the boy soldier rode on. He reached the regiment, gave the orders to
them, and at his suggestion the regiment fired on the enemy and slowly
withdrew to take the position where they were assigned. It was a gallant
act of the boy soldier, and General Hayes had not expected him to come
back alive.
He distinguished himself for gallantry, for good judgment, and military
skill at the battle of Opequan. He had been ordered to bring General
Duval’s troops to join the first division, which was getting into the
battle. There was a question of which route to take, and upon the choice
depended the very existence of General Duval and his brave men.
Lieutenant McKinley weighed the chances swiftly, decided instantly, and
on his own responsibility pointed out the direction as he gave his
superior officer’s command to move. The troops followed his
instructions, and came up gallantly and in excellent style, with the
smallest possible loss or injury. His own regiment, the Twenty-third
Ohio, was less skillfully directed, and suffered the very severe loss of
150 men and officers.
The work accomplished on that day marked young Lieutenant McKinley as
both modest and brave.
Early in 1863, William McKinley, Jr., was promoted to the rank of first
lieutenant, but was retained on staff duty, as his superior ability,
coolness and rare judgment made him invaluable to the regimental
commander. That year the regiment saw service almost exclusively in West
Virginia, engaged in the scouting duty which alone preserved that
territory from falling into the possession of the enemy. It was a
wearying year, trying on the men without giving them opportunity to
share the glory that more active soldiering would have brought. They
were marched east and west, north and south. It was a year of inaction,
so far as achieving results were concerned. And in this severer test
Lieutenant McKinley proved himself a soldier of the best ability. He
kept up that esprit du corps throughout the regiment, without which it
would have been ill prepared for service when the time for action came.
This hour—this opportunity—came in late midsummer, when Morgan’s raiders
swept that terrifying march to the north of the Ohio river—that raid
which struck the great North with the shock of a war experience which
they had so happily escaped. The Twenty-third was just near enough to
hear the summons and fly to the confronting of Morgan and his men. And
it was his engagement with McKinley’s regiment at Buffington’s Island,
Ohio, which so crippled the raiders as to completely disarrange their
entire plan of campaign, and pave the way for that hopeless march from
which they never returned. In that engagement the young Ohio officer
bore himself with all bravery, and won a generous share in the honor of
crushing the advance of a force which was seriously affecting the moral
tone of the whole loyal North.
In the spring of 1864 the Twenty-third marched to Brownstown, on the
Kanawha river, where it became a part of the force of General Crook, who
was then preparing for his celebrated raid on the Virginia and Tennessee
Railroad. The expedition differed little in experience, in danger and in
hardship from the everyday service in West Virginia through the previous
year. On June 20 the rear of the Union forces, consisting of Hayes’
brigade, held Buford Gap against the enemy’s advance, and then made a
hasty night retreat for the van, supposed to be at Salem. But Hunter was
not at Salem. The enemy had attacked and cut off his trains, and had
forced him beyond the city. Crook’s rear guard was in a manner
surrounded, and it was only by rare strategy and brave fighting that he
extricated his command from the dilemma. There can be no question the
service of Lieutenant William McKinley that day saved the little army,
and prevented, in a time when reverses were costly, the recurrence of a
Confederate victory.
The retreat before a superior force was kept up without opportunity for
rest, and with an insufficient supply of food and ammunition till June
27th, when a safe spot was reached on Big Sewell Mountain. It had been a
continuous fight and march for nearly 180 miles. It need not be recited
here how General Early’s success in the Shenandoah Valley at this time
emboldened him to carry his invasion to the very front of Washington,
and to challenge a fight for the national capital. It was all too plain
that the Union forces under command of Hunter in the valley were unable
to cope with the augmented forces of Early. So General —— sent two corps
from the James River country to the rescue of the capital. And it was on
that trip that William McKinley, Jr., got his first glimpse of the city
of Washington, the capital of the country for which he hoped and prayed,
for which he cheerfully imperiled his life.
But Lee had withdrawn from Early’s support a body of reinforcements, and
the dashing commander of the threatening force was compelled to retreat
southward into farther Virginia. It was Lee’s one mistake, for he had
the capital captured, and might have watched the stars and bars in
temporarily triumphal progress down Pennsylvania avenue had he backed up
the advance on the Potomac. And the glance which Lieutenant McKinley had
of the capitol dome that morning in 1864 would have been the last; for
an army of invasion, checked and forced to retire, finds fighting from
cover and the consequent burning of buildings one of the inescapable
incidents of war.
After the battle of Kernstown—less accurately known as the battle of
Winchester—the young soldier from Poland, Ohio, was again promoted, this
time to the rank of captain. The document dates his advance from July
25, the day after his wise and heroic conduct in delivering orders under
fire, and in piloting the imperiled regiment to its place in the battle
formation.
His last battle of importance, and one in which he fittingly crowned a
career of gallantry and devotion to duty, was that of Cedar Creek,
October 19, 1864. Toward the close of that month the regiment was
ordered to Martinsburg. On its march to that point the men voted at the
Presidential election. The votes were collected by the judges of
election as the column was in march, from among the wagons. It was there
McKinley cast his first vote. An ambulance was used as an election
booth, and an empty candle-box did duty as a ballot-box. At the same
time and place Generals Sheridan, Crook and Hayes cast their ballots,
and it was the first vote ever cast by Sheridan or Crook.
Early the following spring the Twenty-third returned to Camp Cumberland
and on July 26, 1865, a little more than four years from the time of
enlistment, the regiment was mustered out and the scarred veterans who
had experienced four years of dangers and hardships returned to their
homes.
The records show that William McKinley, Jr., enlisted as a private in
Company E of the Twenty-third Ohio Volunteer Infantry on June 11, 1861;
that he was promoted to commissary sergeant on April 15, 1862; that he
was promoted to Second Lieutenant of Company D on September 23, 1862;
that he was promoted to First Lieutenant of Company E on February 7,
1863; that he was promoted to Captain of Company G on July 25, 1864;
that he was detailed as Acting Assistant Adjutant General of the First
Division, First Army Corps, on the staff of General Carroll; that he was
brevetted Major on March 13, 1865, and that he was mustered out of
service on July 26, 1865.
“For gallant and meritorious services at the battles of Opequan, Cedar
Creek and Fisher’s Hill,” reads the document commissioning young
McKinley as Brevet Major, signed “A. Lincoln.”
This is the brief statement of four years of such activity as are hardly
comprehensible by the sedate citizen in these “piping times of peace;”
but they were years which tried and tested the material of which William
McKinley was formed, and years in which that symmetrical development of
his whole being went majestically on. As it ripened and quickened his
judgment, teaching him self-confidence and the power of rallying
resources; as it planted deep in his nature the love of country and the
sense of sacrifice which proves all patriotism; as it brought him into
closer communion with his fellow men in camp and battle, on the march or
in the agonies of the field hospital—so it developed the physical powers
of the vigorous young man. He has since said, looking at some
photographs of himself, taken at the time of his enlistment: “I was,
indeed, a raw recruit.”
And he was. The portrait shows him rather slender, and with features
which indicate a certain delicacy and refinement which were far from the
appearance of the ideal soldier of books—the powerful frame, the
flashing eye, the weather-beaten cheeks “bearded like a pard.” And yet
he stood that day of his enlistment, a raw recruit, as the type of
millions of his countrymen, as the expression of the best that was in
the nation either for peace or war. And the four years of his slow
advance to a major’s commission was the most necessary and the most
valuable process of development that could possibly have come.
And whether for peace or war, it was the work his nature needed for the
service of his nation, for the labors of most value to his people. The
beardless boy, delicate in physique, grew to be a rugged, powerful man.
The outdoor life, the exposure and hardship, the struggles and suffering
and self-control, the planning, the quick decisions, the control of
other men had all worked together for the development of a splendid
citizen. So that he was mustered out of the service at the end of the
war with beard on the lips that had been smooth when he took up the
musket of a private soldier, and called back to President Lincoln, in
the chorus of marching Americans: “We are coming, Father Abraham—three
hundred thousand strong!” And his shoulders were broader, and his
muscles were harder, and his view of the whole world was essentially
that of a man who had been tried by fire and not found wanting.
It is fair and proper in this connection to present the testimony of
those who occupied position above him, and who related in after years
the impressions which young McKinley made upon them in his army days.
For one thing, he was is no sense an ambitious man. Had he been stung
with the asp of ambition he might easily have passed those who commanded
at the beginning. His was the education, the training of the brain and
the body, the judgment and the patriotic zeal out of which great leaders
are made. But he was not a self-seeker. He simply accepted his duty when
it presented, and discharged it perfectly. Nothing was illy done.
Nothing was half accomplished. His task was fully discharged in every
instance, and he was never the man to thirst for power, to maneuver for
promotion. The advances which marked his soldier life came to him
unsought, the well-earned rewards of a merit which none could deny,
coupled with a modesty which all could admire.
General Russell Hastings watched him through a number of battles, and at
Cedar Creek saw him tried beyond all ordinary measure. General Hastings,
then with the rank of captain, was on the same staff with young
Lieutenant McKinley, a member of the same regiment, the Twenty-third
Ohio. They were close friends through the war, and remained so
throughout their later life. They ate at the same mess, slept under the
same blanket, and—when they had a tent—occupied the same tent together.
It was in 1892, when William McKinley loomed large because of his
loyalty to a friend in political life, that General Hastings placed upon
record his recollections—forever stamped upon the pages of his memory—of
an incident from the soldier life of his friend in that battle which
began with “Sheridan twenty miles away.”
On the Union side was only Crook’s corps, some 6,000 strong, while
opposed to it was the full force of Early’s army. The odds were too
great; so, after some severe fighting, Hayes’ brigade, which was
engaged, drew back in the direction of Winchester. “Just at that
moment,” says General Hastings, “it was discovered that one of the
regiments was still in an orchard where it had been posted at the
beginning of the battle. General Hayes, turning to Lieutenant McKinley,
directed him to go forward and bring away that regiment, if it had not
already fallen. McKinley turned his horse and, keenly spurring it,
pushed it at a fierce gallop obliquely toward the advancing enemy.
“A sad look came over Hayes’ face as he saw the young, gallant boy
riding rapidly forward to almost certain death. * * * None of us
expected to see him again, as we watched him push his horse through the
open fields, over fences, through ditches, while a well-directed fire
from the enemy was poured upon him, with shells exploding around, about,
and over him.
“Once he was completely enveloped in the smoke of an exploding shell,
and we thought he had gone down. But no, he was saved for better work
for his country in his future years. Out of this smoke emerged his wiry
little brown horse, with McKinley still firmly seated, and as erect as a
hussar.
“McKinley gave the Colonel the orders from Hayes to fall back, saying,
in addition, ‘He supposed you would have gone to the rear without
orders.’ The Colonel’s reply was, ‘I was about concluding I would retire
without waiting any longer for orders. I am now ready to go wherever you
shall lead, but, Lieutenant, I “pintedly” believe I ought to give those
fellows a volley or two before I go.’ McKinley’s reply was, ‘Then up and
at them as quickly as possible,’ and as the regiment arose to its feet
the enemy came on into full view. Colonel Brown’s boys gave the enemy a
crushing volley, following it up with a rattling fire, and then slowly
retreated toward some woods directly in their rear. At this time the
enemy halted all along Brown’s immediate front and for some distance to
his right and left, no doubt feeling he was touching a secondary line,
which should be approached with all due caution. During this hesitancy
of the enemy McKinley led the regiment through these woods on toward
Winchester.
“As Hayes and Crook saw this regiment safely off, they turned, and,
following the column, with it moved slowly to the rear, down the
Winchester pike. At a point near Winchester, McKinley brought the
regiment to the column and to its place in the brigade. McKinley greeted
us all with a happy, contented smile—no effusion, no gushing palaver of
words, though all of us felt and knew one of the most gallant acts of
the war had been performed.
“As McKinley drew up by the side of Hayes to make his verbal report, I
heard Hayes say to him, ‘I never expected to see you in life again.’”
And when Sheridan galloped along the “good broad highway leading down”
from Winchester, shouting his jubilant order: “Face the other way, boys.
We’re going back!” the whole of Hayes’ brigade, thanks to young
Lieutenant William McKinley, was in position, and ready for that advance
which ended in another splendid Union victory.
Rutherford B. Hayes, once his colonel, then his general and later his
President, has declared of William McKinley: “At once it was found that
he had unusual character for the mere business of war. There is a
quartermaster’s department, which is a very necessary and important
department in every regiment, in every brigade, in every division, in
every army. Young as he was, we soon found that in business, in
executive ability, young McKinley was a man of rare capacity, of unusual
and unsurpassed capacity, especially for a boy of his age. When battles
were fought or service was to be performed in warlike things, he always
took his place. The night was never too dark; the weather was never too
cold; there was no sleet or storm, or hail or snow, or rain that was in
the way of his prompt and efficient performance of every duty.”
In an old note book of the war-time period, kept by General Hayes, is
another interesting entry which was given to the world in the course of
an address at a political meeting in Ohio in 1891. By way of premise it
should be stated that General George Crook in 1862 called Lieutenant
McKinley to service on his staff, where he remained through the
activities of the summer campaign, and until the Union army went into
winter quarters. In the last month of the year General Hayes made that
entry which seemed like a prophecy. Here it is:
“Saturday, December 13, 1862.—Our new Second Lieutenant, McKinley,
returned to-day—an exceedingly bright, intelligent, and gentlemanly
young officer. He promises to be one of the best.”
And he added, while the thousands broke forth in tumultuous applause:
“He has kept the promise in every sense of the word.”
That famous battle of Cedar Creek virtually ended the active military
career of Captain McKinley. On March 13, 1865, he was brevetted major.
In the spring of 1865 the Twenty-third Ohio was ordered to Camp
Cumberland, where it was mustered out of service, July 26, 1865, closing
a four-year career of war with honor, leaving a host of brave comrades
beneath the turf of the battlefields, returning home to receive the
congratulations of loyal friends and to enter once more the occupations
of peace. The soldier boy of eighteen years was now a man of twenty-two.
The private of 1861 was now a major. The education and aspirations of
youth had been supplemented by such an experience in the cause of
country as few could claim at his age, and such as would meet the most
exalted purposes of after life.
[Illustration:
JOHN D. LONG, SECRETARY OF THE NAVY.]
[Illustration:
NEW CONGRESSIONAL LIBRARY BUILDING AT THE CAPITAL.]