William McKinley
William McKinley enters American history with the light behind him rather than in his face: a small-town son with a soldier’s steadiness, a lawyer’s patience, and a politician’s ear tuned not for applause but for the faint crackle that runs through a country when prosperity is possible again. He is born in Niles, Ohio, in 1843, into a household that believes work is a sacrament and education the shortest road between a wish and its fulfillment. He is not a prodigy; he is dependable. At Poland Seminary he learns the grammar of argument, the usefulness of quiet, and the art of listening long enough to hear what people actually mean beneath what they say. When the war comes he enlists without embroidery, a private in the 23rd Ohio, and discovers in the field that courage often looks like carrying hot coffee to a forward post under fire because men fight better when they are warm. Antietam imprints him; so does the winter that follows; so do the promotions earned not by brilliance but by being where he is supposed to be, doing the thing that needs doing. By the end he wears an officer’s straps and the settled look of someone who has watched chaos and decided never again to make a mess where order will suffice.
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