8. William McKinley
Born in 1843 in Niles, Ohio, over the course of his life William McKinley would become a war hero who led America out of a recession, won a war and re-election, defined modern election campaigns, and died after he was fatally shot on September 6, 1901, at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo by anarchist Leon Czolgosz. So you would think he would be more fondly remembered by history. Sadly for him, that’s not the case.
Instead, McKinley is seen as a weak President pressured into the war with Spain in 1898, pressured by the rise in anti-Spanish feelings stoked by Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst’s “yellow journalism” and a nationalistic press. Many observers considered his tenure as President to be a managed one, suggesting that McKinley was more of a chief executive handled by political cronies than an assertive and powerful leader.
Despite his 1896 election victory ushering in a period of Republican dominance and his presidency seeing rapid economic growth, his legacy would be overshadowed by his more popular Vice President, Theodore Roosevelt, when he took office following McKinley’s untimely death.
