Murdering McKinley: The Making of Theodore Roosevelt's America
This paper examines how the assassination of President William McKinley in 1901 unexpectedly elevated Theodore Roosevelt to the presidency and transformed American political life. Drawing on contemporary magazine and historical sources, the paper surveys Roosevelt's major domestic accomplishments — including trust-busting, consumer-protection legislation, and landmark environmental conservation — alongside the personal biography that shaped his passionate outdoorsmanship. The paper also addresses Roosevelt's expansionist foreign policy, his alignment with naval strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan, and his assertion of U.S. "international police power" in the Western Hemisphere. Together, these threads illustrate how McKinley's death made possible a far more visionary and activist presidency.
- From Assassination to the Oval Office: McKinley shot; Roosevelt sworn in as president
- Domestic Reforms and the Roosevelt Legacy: Trust-busting, food safety, and labor legislation
- Conservation and the Environment: National parks, forests, and wildlife refuges created
- Roosevelt's Personal Life and Outdoorsmanship: Sickly childhood shaped lifelong love of nature
- Foreign Policy and the Western Hemisphere: Expansionism, naval power, and Caribbean policing doctrine
- Conclusion: A Transformative Presidency: Panama Canal and break with congressional dominance
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper uses a clear biographical and thematic structure, moving logically from the circumstances of Roosevelt's accession through his domestic record, personal character, and foreign policy.
- It consistently grounds claims in named sources and direct quotations, giving the argument credibility even in a relatively short survey essay.
- The framing device — that McKinley's tragic death enabled a far more consequential presidency — gives the paper a unifying analytical thread rather than simply listing facts.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates effective use of source synthesis: rather than quoting one author at length, the writer weaves together multiple periodical sources (Lacayo, Dalton, Holmes) to build a rounded portrait of Roosevelt. Each source is introduced with attribution ("Lacayo writes," "Dalton explains"), modeling transparent integration of secondary material into a cohesive argument.
Structure breakdown
The essay opens with the dramatic circumstances of McKinley's shooting and Roosevelt's swift ascension. It then surveys major domestic achievements before pivoting to the environmental legacy. A separate section draws on biographical material to explain Roosevelt's personal motivations as an outdoorsman. The foreign-policy section addresses his expansionism and Caribbean doctrine. A brief conclusion ties the strands together around the Panama Canal and Roosevelt's break with congressional dominance.
From Assassination to the Oval Office
On September 6, 1901, Vice President Theodore Roosevelt was on vacation — on a camping trip in the Adirondacks in New York State. News that President McKinley had been shot in Buffalo reached the vice president, and he rushed to Buffalo and took the oath of office there on September 14 after McKinley died (Benedetto).
According to Richard Cavendish writing in History Today, McKinley was "killed as much by botched surgery as by the bullet, which the surgeons said they were unable to locate in the president's abdomen because he was so fat."
No matter how McKinley actually died, he passed on the presidency to Roosevelt — an active presidency that those who knew "Teddy" Roosevelt were not at all surprised to witness as it unfolded. According to Richard Lacayo writing in Time magazine, "Roosevelt not only remade America," but "he charmed the pants off everybody while he did it."
Lacayo explains that after McKinley died, Roosevelt found himself faced with "the explosion of industrial power" and "the ineluctable impulse to expand." He confronted fundamental questions: "How much influence should the government have over the economy?" and "How much power should the U.S. exert in the wider world?" A third question, less well known, was, according to Lacayo, "What should we do to protect the environment?"
Domestic Reforms and the Roosevelt Legacy
When Roosevelt moved into the White House, the United States was emerging as a powerful economic force in the world. Lacayo notes that the U.S. was "first in the world in its output of timber, steel, coal, iron," and that since 1860 the American population had "doubled" and exports had "tripled." Yet serious problems demanded attention: "poverty, child labor," and "dreadful factory conditions."
Unlike the lumbering, indecisive McKinley, Roosevelt rolled up his sleeves and made things happen. Lacayo writes that Roosevelt helped "break up the monopolies"; he passed the Pure Food and Drug Act; he pushed "meat-inspection and industrial-safety" legislation through Congress; and he worked to make Americans understand that "their new global prominence was a long-term proposition."
Works Cited
Benedetto, Richard. "No Rest for the President." USA Today, 3 August 2006.
Cavendish, Richard. "Assassination of President McKinley." History Today 51 (September 2001).
Dalton, Kathleen. "The Self-Made Man: He Was a Sickly Child. But Through Sheer Will, Muscular Effort — and a Lot of Time in the Great Outdoors — He Became a Powerful, Passionate Adult." Time, 3 July 2006, 168.
Holmes, James R. "Roosevelt's Pursuit of a Temperate Caribbean Policy." Naval History 20 (August 2006): 48–53.
Lacayo, Richard. "The 20th Century Express: At Home and Abroad, Theodore Roosevelt Was the Locomotive President, the Man Who Drew His Flourishing Nation into the Future." Time, 3 July 2006, 168.
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