Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IIL Career of President McKinley?Raised to Rank of Captain and Brevet-Major in the Army?Romance of Early Life ?Conspicuous Acts of Legislation During His Administration as President. A SSOCIATED with the glorious names and memories of Wash- ington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Jackson, Lincoln and Grant as a man twice chosen in succession by the people to be the Chief Magistrate of the nation, at one of the great epochs in its history, the American who died at Buffialo September 14, had not yet completed the even threescore years of life, though in the fifty- eight years alloted to him in private life and in public place, he had run the whole gamut of human experience, nobly acquitting himself in each stage in a way that gave visible embodiment to American ideals and splendid traditions of things accomplished in all that he set his hands to do. As a studious boy and gall int soldier; then in private life an able lawyer skilled in his profession; a public man whose re-election seven times in succession to Congress represented the confidence and unerring belief of his own neighbors; as Governor and then as President, the broad patriotic statesman whose policies commanded regard at home and respect abroad, the boy born at Niles, O., on January 29, 1843, represented in his struggles and successes the typical American in a Republic which is opportunity lor the humblest. No President came of better stock, and it was to the sturdi- ness of frame and mind, and not to the mere accidents of birth or position, that made William McKinley a marked figure, whether as a boy of eighteen, serving the Union on the field of battle or as a President at fifty-three, planning policies that made it a nation high iu the world's councils. The ancestors of the latest President of th...