it's good to see you here today.

today, we've been talking we're going to be talking about the ohio dynasty of us presidents and as we've already discussed, ohio had been moving from the periphery to the center of u.s. politic before the civil war and then, of course, played central leadership role in that war itself. and this trend is going to continue. the war in one of the most remarked about political dynasties in u.s. history, one that's often been compared to the virginia dynasty of the early republic. both virginia and ohio laid claim to the mother presidents title, even to the point of fighting over poor old william harrison in all of his 30 days in office. but even taking old tippecanoe out of the equation. i'm not really sure it's a fair fight i mean, for example, the virginia dynasty has some of the most famous and influential

presidents in u.s. history, including the likes of washington and jefferson, madison, ohio. on the other hand, has a bunch of bearded that no one seems to remember or know much. seriously, anyone here want to picking these guys out of a lineup? then i see. yeah. you've got. i think we got a can we? nope. see, this is what i'm talking about. this is what i'm talking about. and that's fine. i that's the way it is. and so for that reason, i don't think it's productive or instructive to fight some unofficial title of the mother of presidents, rather, i think the ohio dynasty of presidents, some much more meaningful things to say about ohio and its role in u.s. history that is not really in just counting the number of president s. in fact, as we'll see, it goes far beyond just the presidents as we've discussed, historians tend to be much more interested in the whys history than the watts of history.

and i think that's where the more meaningful importance lies. so for right off the bat, we should examine how historians have viewed the presidents every few years or so, historians engage in a kind of navel gazing where they rank the us presidents from best to worst. and while these rankings often say as much or more the historians doing the ranking than they do about the presidents, they rank, they can be quite indicative the way people perceive the president. so, for example, here you have the rankings of the virginia dynasty and the ohio, the heart of the ohio dynasty. you can see virginia does very well. blue means the top 25% green is the next 25%. yellow is, the below average, 25% and orange. you don't want to be orange. all right. so look at virginia. lots and lots and blue. a greens, ohio, not much.

there's a lot of yellow and orange in there for most of them. and there are some reasons for this. and we'll see them. but there are other factors at play here that go beyond the specific actions of these. so, for example, what we consider to be the standards of a good president changed over the years. nowadays as we tend to look at our presence to be who are strong and forceful. but back in the days right after the civil war, there was a consensus among many people that people like abraham and andrew jackson had overstepped their bounds. they had gone too far, and that the proper role of a president was to execute the laws, but not tread on the purview of the legislative branch. and so by those standards the standards of that time, most of these guys were doing exactly what they should have been doing. according to that line of thought, by not being too forceful and respecting the boundaries of the executive and legislative branches.

so this might help explain way of ohio presidents have fared in historical rankings, but as we'll see some of those rankings change over time. so let's talk about ohio national politics and the post-civil war, starting with the white house. it is truly an era of political influence almost unprecedented in u.s. by any objective standard, from 1868 to 1900, there were nine presidential elections, 68, 72, 76, 80, 84, 88, 92, 96, 1900. ohio was one of the two major candidates in all but one of those elections. the sole exception was the election of 1884. the two candidates were from new york and maine but even in that one, the guy who won was named cleveland. so there's kind of an ohio connection, right now. not really. in any case, going eight for

nine and electing five different men to the presidency is an extraordinary streak matched only by virginia from washington to monroe in the early days of the republic. add to this the fact that alternated among the next presidents with william howard taft following teddy roosevelt and warren harding following woodrow wilson. this makes seven presidents over a little than 50 years. and in 1920. you had no choice. you had to vote for ohio. you could vote either for harding or for ohio. democrat james cox, pictured here with running mate that year, some guy named roosevelt. so to a appreciate these presence. we first need to understand what the main political issues were at the time. and these are mostly very different than the issues that animate current political discourse. for example, there were still issues from the civil war during

most of this period. one of the main ones had to do with the question of to protect, protect the civil rights of the freedmen in the south even as southern state governments, vigilante groups like the ku klux klan to strip them away. also union veterans during this period were constantly lobbying for the expansion of pensions for themselves and their and in general, republi tended to advocate for these measures, often engaging in something called waving the bloody shirt, painting their democratic opponents as being the party of rebellion and war. brutal polity. another huge issue of the time was what to do with the us currency during, the war. the us issued paper money, but many pro-business people wanted to enshrine the gold standard as the only basis us money. others advocated for the continued use of paper or the addition of silver to gold would expand the money supply and make it easier for people to get credit. while republicans tended to

favor gold standard and democrats tended to favor silver, there were minorities of gold democrats and silver republicans throughout most. of the 1800s, there had been a conscious tint debate over how high or low should be businessmen, and factory owners and often factory workers liked high tariffs because protected american industry and from foreign competition farmers and rural people tended to favor lower tariffs because tariffs made manufactured goods more and reduced foreign demand for agricultural products. as such, the republicans tended to favor high tariffs. democrats tended to want them low low, something that seemed to be increasing only a big problem in the late 1800s was the effect that the spoils system of political patronage was on government. many people began advocating for service reform that would give government jobs to people based on merit, rather than which

politician doling out the favors. although this was a very popular, the system was so deeply entrenched, both parties, it would take a major disruptive event to get meaningful reform here. lastly, in part because the politicians of both parties seem to wedded to this system and averse to reform, some people began create more grassroots movements to try to force change through popular action. this flourished in the late hundreds as the populist movement, which eventually formed a national party and ran presidential candidates in 92 and endorsed candidate in 1896. it also took the form of things like the so-called cox's army, a march on washington by hundreds of unemployed people led by a massillon ohio businessman named jacob toxie in 1894 during a severe depression started the previous year. they were demanding that the government ease employment by hiring men for public works projects and paying them in

paper currency to expand the money supply. although the protest actually end up fizzling when reached washington. they got to the capital and they were arrested for walking on the grass. that's a kind of ignominious end for this. the march was emblematic, the discontent of the period and with significant for being the first major popular protest march on washington in u.s. history now, i know it is really for us to imagine nowadays people arguing till they're blue in the face with veins bulging out of their foreign heads over free coinage of or lower the tariff. but you got to understand, these were the hot button issues the day and they could win lose elections. so let's talk how the ohio presidents fit into this context and actually help advance some of these issues. the first of these presidents

from this this period of time is, of course, ulysses. and we've already discussed his background when we we talked about him in the civil war. we learned, of course, that he was a really great general. not really such a great president, though. in fact, he ended up running is objectively one of the most corrupt administrations in u.s. history. now, i want to make it very clear grant himself was not corrupt. grant was not on the take grant, was not profiting from this. grant's fault. is that he had terrible taste in friends he would appoint his friends to office and his friends took advantage of his trust and got into all kinds trouble. and there were a number of scandals during the grant administration. and one of the most famous was the whiskey ring, where whiskey producers bribed government officials to evade liquor taxes. there's the new york customs

house scandal, the new york customs was by far the most important and profitable from the port of york in in the united states and government appointees who ran this were skimming money from merchants and getting number money under the table. the star route the government gave out western mail routes to subcontractor who in turn made money by charging fees or charging for routes they just made up, just routes that didn't exist. do you have a question for the teapot dome scandal? oh, yeah. that's. that's harding. yeah. harding also ran a very corrupt administration and also for the same reason he had very, very bad taste in friends did grant bring a lot of military friends or was mostly he went to dc and dc of. well yeah i think part of it was that it wasn't so much like harding harding had the ohio gang he he made a lot of friends through his role as a general and so these friends were outside necessary ohio.

but yes, he, he, he did. and he stood by them until. they really, really screwed him for this. so and these just a few of the scandals there were many more are. and as a result of this, for many years, grant was ranked among the very worst presidents ever. however, funny thing has happened to grant in in the eyes of historians. more recently, there has been a reappraisal of the significance. his presidency. yes, it was the most scandal ridden to that point in history, but there were also some of his actions that loomed large in better way. he helped create national park, the first official national. he oversaw the pass and enactment of the 15th amendment, which the right to vote to african-americans. he implemented the enforcement acts which congress passed to enforce the 15th amendment and protect from actions groups like

the ku klux klan. and he vigorous fully enforce these laws and effectively disrupt. did the klan in the south with this and with his enforcement of the 14th and 15th amendments grant more to protect and defend civil rights of african-americans than any other president for almost a century until you get to the presidency of lyndon. he was also a genuine only nice guy. he was an amiable man who was willing to admit his mistakes. in fact, despite what you may have heard recently, us grant was the first u.s. president to be arrested. he was arrested for speeding. he loved horses. he loved to race his carriage. and a cop literally pulled him over. in 1872. now, what does he do does he say, do you know who i am? no, he said, no, you got me fair and square. he laughs. he smiles. he pays fine. he acknowledged his fault. and it's not to like someone who does that in fact, he at the very end of his, he publicly

apologized for his administration. some historians think every president should publicly apologize for their administration, but he's the only one to actually do it. so taking all this into consideration, look at what has happened to his view in the eye of historians. he orange. he's very, very orange. but then about 20 years ago, opinion seems to shift. and more recent ones, including a couple that were commissioned by in 2017 and 2021 have moved him up from terrible all the way right up to men and, you know, okay, maybe that's nothing to brag about, but it is an unprecedented reappear appraisal among presidents. while a number of presidents have moved up or down a quartile or so only grant among, all u.s. presence has moved from being consistently the worst category to being regularly put into above average category. do you think recent documentaries had an effect on this rating?

yeah, and also a recent biographies of of him and. this is again a shift of opinion. people realize that yeah, he had scandals but here's a guy who was actually standing up for civil rights, you know 100 years before it became really. something that most people were on board with. okay, so there's grant. grant leaves office. the republicans that they are tainted by scandal. they need to elect somebody or nominate somebody who is reproach and they find that guy with this guy rutherford birchard hayes hayes was born in southern ohio. he went to kenyon college. he graduated from harvard law, became a lawyer in what is now fremont, ohio. he was a reformer. his wife was a reformer. and when the civil war started, he joined up as a major of the 23rd ohio volunteer infantry. he saw a lot of action. he was wounded five times, but

kept returning and ended the war as abbreviated major general. he was nominated to congress. the war was still going on, but he refused to campaign, saying and he is quoting him, an officer fit for duty at this crisis would abandon post to election year for a seat in congress. ought to be scalped. and that was all the he did. and that was all the campaigning he needed to do. he was elected, but didn't really like congress that much. and he returned to ohio and served as a very popular governor for three terms. he's the first ohio governor to be elected three times, and he gets elected as a republican at times when democrats actually end up taking the state house. this is his popularity transcended. just the his republican base. so he and he again, he's very scrupulous, is beyond reproach. there are no skeletons in his closet, unfortunately, his

presidency was limited even before he took the oath of office. a lot of that had to do with the way he became the infamous election of 1876. this is despite you may have heard the most controversial election in us history. the election happens in november. samuel tilden, the new york democrat, looks like he's won he's won the popular vote by a quarter of a million votes. he has all one of the electoral votes he needs to become president. but there are 19 contested electoral votes in louisiana, florida, south carolina and georgia. and so these contested votes are they're debating over this november turns to december, turns to january, turns to february, finally, this big electoral commission. and then they vote along party lines to award each and every single one of the contested

electoral votes to hayes. and so a lot of people cried foul. a lot of people said he was unfairly put into the office. and again, this is right up until they took the oath of office in march in those days, right up until early march, they weren't 100% sure who was going to take the oath office. so his presidency is already tainted by this. and they kept referring to him as a fraud by hayes or his fraudulent posse. and this is really going to limit his effectiveness. another thing that limits his effectiveness is that he says pretty much early on that he's not to run for reelection. he's only going to serve one term. and he does this for a very admirable reasons. he says this way i can do what i feel is right. i don't have to make plan to do something thinking about whether it will help or hurt me in the next election. and that's very noble. but the same time it means he enters office as a lame duck. everybody. he's not going to run again and therefore don't really feel they

need to play ball with him and then in his first year, there's a nationwide rail. he comes down on the side of management by sending in federal troops to to to police this strike. and this makes them very unpopular with a lot of people. so, again, all of these things are happening even before he's president and he really does not look like he's going to be a very effective president. and this is not to say he doesn't do good stuff. he does appoint people based on merit to governor government offices. he appoints reformers to his cabinet. he tries to clean up the new york house. in fact, he nominates, a young man named theodore roosevelt to to replace chester arthur, who was kind of the corrupt head of the customs house. he blocks roscoe conkling, who was a big republican boss in new york. he he does things which he

thinks are the right thing to do. but again, he's tainted all this other stuff. and so he when leaves office, it's it's kind of under a cloud. on the other hand, rather behaves is the second most famous us president in paraguay paraguay and i'm not making this up paraguay was in the middle of a war with argentina and they decided to stop and have the united states president arbitrate the dispute. and hayes's administration arbitrate this this dispute in the favor of paraguay awards a whole bunch of land to paraguay. and they love him for it. in fact they name a city after him, they name one of their state. so they they they they call it a department. there is the state of president hayes. and in paraguay, even a major

soccer club. club president hayes is named after him. so, i mean, he's got that going him right? of course, hayes isn't going run. the republicans have to find someone else. they go back to the well by nominating james abraham garfield and i think garfield is one of the great what ifs if in us presidential history he very smart. he was a strong leader. he was our nation's only ambidextrous president. he could write equally well with the and left hand he comes. he's like a story out of a book yeah a very humble beginnings raised in poverty. his father dies when he's very young for a while, at age 16, he drives a mule on the ohio and erie canal. his life a literal rags to story. and i mean that a horatio alger who's famous for writing all these rags to riches stories in the 1800s, wrote garfield's campaign from canal boy to

president. this is a guy even though he is comes very poor family he enrolls in the western reserve eclectic institute this eventually becomes what we know as hiram university over here in county. he actually started out supporting his studies by serving as a janitor there. but within two years he himself is actually teaching some of the students there and then he goes on, graduates williams college out east, but comes and serves as principal, gets involved in politics when the civil war along, he ends serving actually starting actually his own unit the 42nd ohio volunteer infantry rises up to major general before comes back to serve in congress. he became a major figure in the republic delegation. he befriends ohio, a very influential ohio senator, john sherman. and so when hayes refused to run again, garfield went to the republican in chicago to try to

get nomination for sherman. he's out there, advocate for sherman, but he gets up and he gives a stem winder of a speech and people say, ooh, i like the cut of his jib, i like this guy. and they start voting for garfield garvey, the no no, no, no, i'm not running. and he's gaveled of order and his friends are just kind of trying to hold him down. the thing is, you have the stalwart stalwarts like the old spoils. they like the corrupt system, and they want it to nominate grant again. and the republicans. that was probably a bad idea. garfield actually had a better reputation. the since the convention was deadlocked one by one, people started flocking him and he ends up getting the nomination, but they end up putting his running as chester alan arthur, who had been kicked out of the new customs house because he was a stalwart. they wanted to placate the stalwart faction and that would be a fateful choice. unfortunately, there's not much to say about his presidency because it was short he did appoint a lot of

african-american cons to office, which is something that was part of that idea of advancing civil rights for african-americans, including frederick douglass, he gives frederick a federal job. he advocates for civil service reform. in fact, he up to roscoe conkling, roscoe conkling. actually, there's this big corrupt republican boss in new york. he ends up falling as a result of the actions of garfield. and in the end, he was probably the president most to credit for meaningful civil service, but not in the way he would have chosen in a train on the way to a college reunion, garfield is going to the platform and an insane man who was a disappoint at office seeker, a guy named charles guiteau, shoots him twice from behind and garfield probably would have been okay if the doctor suggests left him alone. but they kept poking and prodding him with unsterilized

instruments, even their fingers, trying to find out where the is. and so he gets badly infected. and he lingers months before dying. and although this of course, is undeniably tragic, garfield's death may actually have been his biggest contribution to american politics. it's the shocking nature of a presidential assassination. a disappointed office seeker built groundswell of support for civil service reform and in its wake, democrat george pendleton, the pendleton civil service act creates the modern us civil service. the next election was 1884, the only one that didn't feature an ohioan. but even this was instructive. the republicans, a guy named james g. blaine, who was not from ohio and did not serve in the civil and they lost to cleveland. the gop would not make that mistake for the rest of the century. so next, the election of 1888, they settle. benjamin harrison. he's born and in ohio, he is the

grandson son of william henry harrison. he graduated from miami in oxford, set up a practice and a law practice in indianapolis. then he joins the civil war as captain finishes as a brevet brigadier general. rise is in national politics. in the 1888 republican convention, he checked all the requisite boxes. are you from ohio? check. did you serve the civil war? check? okay. you're our guy. he also had the advantage of his pedigree. and in the subsequent, the republicans sold him as much or more as the firm. his relationship to his grandpa, william henry harrison, as they did for his own merits. and although like hayes, he lost the popular vote he did win the electoral. and for the first time since 1875, the republican party, both houses of congress and the presidency, and they set to work passing an ambitious agenda

which included a lot of spending. he inherited a surplus, cleveland. but upon his election, one of his supporters cried. harrison, president and god help the surplus. and he was absolutely right. he oversaw a dramatic increase in pension spending, $160 million a year just for those pensions. he also greatly expanded us navy, paving the way for us navy, true to ocean. and because of this, another things he presided over what became known as the billion dollar congress. first time congress had spent that much in peacetime. and although he claimed to support civil service reform, there were too many political debts he had pay for such a narrow victory. so right after he gets into office, they end up firing 35,000 democrat ads from their civil service jobs. replace them with republicans and then slap civil service protections in, which is exactly the opposite of the way civil service is supposed to work. nevertheless, he preside over

the passage, some really important legislation, the mckinley tariff of 1890, by a pen by william mckinley, also from ohio. we'll talk about him in a minute. raises protective tariffs to their rate to that point. the sherman antitrust at, the anti-monopoly legislation, which is still the law of the land today, was passed under him and he signed that the sherman silver purchase act, which was an attempt to expand the currency, was also under harrison. and both of those laws were drafted by john sherman, ohio, one of the biggest, most lasting effects of harrison's presidency. the admission of a whole bunch of new state. it's north dakota, south dakota, montana. washington, idaho. wyoming all of these states were brought by the republicans in ways to counter the fact that the south could reliably count on the solid to vote democratic. they were hoping to admit a

whole bunch of states from the northwest that would help be reliably republican and help balance that solid south. still when it comes time for his reelection. some of his political rivals in the gop didn't really like him because he didn't play ball with them. they didn't support him. the economy slowed down and the massive spending that happened during his term was a big turnoff for a lot of voters. here's a cartoon from the time here. he inherits a $100 million surplus. he's he's kind of shabby there. and when he leaves years later, he's all spiffy with spats and a nice walking cane. and of course, the us treasury has no surplus anymore. and he loses in that rematch with cleveland. also 1892, the governor of ohio, william mckinley writes down that he intends to be elected

president in 1896 and it was prophetic. william mckinley was elected. 1896 and may be, i think, the most of all, the ohio dynasty of presidents. how you feel about william mckinley as a president, probably in part on how you feel about imperial wisdom, because he presided the spanish-american war and the beginnings of american empire. and this going to be his legacy for for better or for worse. but his legacy goes beyond that. william mckinley was born in northeast ohio, in niles, ohio. he joins the civil war right up at age 18, actually in the 23rd ohio volunteer infantry, which rutherford hayes commanded. and he served with distinction, the civil war rising all the way

from private to major, which is a pretty big promotion that a promotion wins. and he serves with distinction. he serves under heavy fire. he is there at. antietam. in fact, if you go to the antietam battlefield, you will see a monument to mckinley and the park ranger who was taking me around when i took this picture, pointed to that monument and said, you know, this is probably the only monument on any battlefield anywhere. the world that is dedicated to a commissary officer. what's a commissary officer? oh, food. yeah. provides coffee. so he he was in of getting supplies to the soldiers. and now i'm not saying that this discounts his bravery. he was doing that under heavy fire, but that's what he was doing. he was getting coffee to the front lines and he could a very easily been hurt by this so so

there you have it. now, of course, this is put up later, but yeah. this does show his how much people admired him at the time. it was a major role throughout war and how he ranked up well, he ranked up. he eventually ended up being an aide to some of the officers. he he i'm not saying he he spent the whole whole, whole war serving coffee. no, i think you answered my question. but you said that was put up after. he became president. yeah. okay. yeah. so yeah, a lot of monuments were put up for him after. he became president because he as well as to find out he was probably the most popular ohio president of all because of a lot of things that happened during his administration. and so we'll talk about those. but you can argue too that mckinley is as important for the presidency by things he did before he became president as he

is for what happened after he became president. that's because the election 1896 is one that historians point to as being really the first modern in u.s. presidential election. electioneering back in the 1800s, very different than it is today. in fact, you didn't really even one national campaign the the party in each state essentially ran the campaign. so there would be an ohio campaign for the republican nominee or a new york campaign for the republican nominee. the mckinley campaign, thanks to his close friendship with a financier industrialist up in cleveland, marcus hannah really brought modern campaign politics to united states. they they used polling for the first time. they pulled messages and tailored their messages to different communities. so in one area, he's going to

sell this and this another area he's to sell this idea direct. they sent out mills millions and millions of pieces of direct. this was new. no one had ever done this before. they also spent a ton of money. if you want to look at the election that really started, the trends are spending of money on presidential. the mckinley election of 1896 was the big election in this that set that precedent now. i seem to remember reading about it was still sort of frowned upon like you were too much of a try hard if you were campaigning everywhere right so he was on his front porch in canton, essentially. right. and here's the thing. the person who really broke that was his opponent william jennings bryan. william jennings bryan ran first whistle stop campaign where actually went out to the people traveled thousands and thousands of miles across the united states. that's also part of the first modern presidential campaign. a candidate actually going out

mckinley, want to do this? first of all, his wife had health issues. he did not want to leave her. he was such a good doting husband on his wife. so he didn't want leave her. also, william jennings bryan was known as a very, very good orator he felt he would suffer by comparison. so what happens is they set up this front porch campaign where were if he can't go to the voters, they're going to bring the voters to him. they load hundreds of thousands of people on special trains come into canton. they get off the train, marched to his front porch. he comes on the front porch. he's already been briefed on who these people are, where they're from what their main issues are is, oh, well look, we have these people here. oh, well, by the way, let me to you about tariffs. you know, and that was how he his message across and this was a very, very effective. you can do that when you have a lot of money to spend. and so when the election is actually and he really sells the idea of gold, he is a gold bug. he really believes in gold standard. and william jennings bryan, a

big advocate of the free coinage of silver. and again, this is where people were literally getting knocked down, drag out fights, gold, silver, gold. he is a really, really big on the tariff that that is what he really want. but he is the the gold faction in the republican party say you got to you got to sell gold and say okay, i'm going to sell gold. but he's really into tariffs. that's his that's his jam. you and so when votes are counted on mckinley wins by a relatively comfortable margin, which is very, very unusual the time. and that's why and this is another significance of mckinley before even takes the oath of office, the election 1896 is called by many historians. one of the few realignment elections in u.s. history where things have been going along for a while and then one candidate or the other shift a significant number of people to that party and breaks that cycle.

that's mckinley did mckinley was able peel away a lot of immigrant working class voters from the democrat party. democrats had a big base of immigrant working class voters. mckinley is able to sell things like the tariffs. hey, this if, we have high tariffs. that's going to mean you get you have better jobs. you were protecting american labor. and so this really did shift the balance whereas previous elections all the elections we will see were really close solely contested from the mid 1800s to 1890 to 1896 breaks that trend and then when he runs for reelection four years later, it is an even bigger majority. what are some of the realignment campaigns? oh 1830 and i'm sorry, 1932, the new deal franklin roosevelt. yeah, that's a that's a big one. the reagan election, 1980 starts this with a reagan coming over

things like. but this is one of the more important. so he he has already made history before he takes the oath of office. if he did nothing other than those things, he would be considered to be a significant figure in presidential. but of course he did other things as well. he was president and so he is is someone, again, like i said, who presides over the creation of american empire. he is the person who annexes hawaii. this is the reason why we have hawaii. he annexed hawaii. he was the one who presided over the spanish-american war. and it should be said he was in many ways a really ardent imperialist. he wasn't he was kind of on the fence about this. there are a lot of people in his own party were pushing him, go to war with spain, go to war with spain. and he was actually kind of holding back for a while. he wanted all the facts get in. eventually he decides he will go

to war with spain. and as teddy roosevelt said, the spanish-american war, at least from the american perspective, was a splendid little didn't last too long. american casualties were relatively few. and of course, the united states gets an empire. it gets puerto rico gets the philippines, it gets guam. and now ohio, ohio, now the united states is an imperial power along countries like great and france and and germany. and so when he runs for reelection, 1900, the economy rebounded. the the united states has won a war the the, uh, the the the the us is now a major player in international politics here is this prosperity at home prestige abroad. and he has a rematch with william jennings bryan and

creams him just crushes it is a it's a landslide victory and again shows this shift this realignment that had happened and so he is again super popular as. he takes office in 1901, but he doesn't get to enjoy it very long as you probably play a spoiler alert. there's there's going to be some bloodshed because he goes to the pan-american exposition in buffalo, new york a fellow ohio, one guy named leon czolgosz, an anarchist who a industrial worker in cleveland, he has a heavily bandaged hand, goes up to shea, and he and mckinley love shaking that he would do that all day. he love shaking hands, but he doesn't know what to do with this guy. has this heavily bandaged hand. well, it's heavily bandaged because he's concealing a gun and at close range, he pumps two bullets into him and mckinley

falls back mortally wounded. but again to show just how much nice guy he was. people loved for the way he treated his wife, people him just for the way he treated other people. and so here he is. he's mortally wounded the people, the secret service agents, other people grab on shore and they're just the -- out of him. and here is the president of the united states mortally wounded by this guy yells out to the guys, go easy him fellas. how what a nice guy right again if they had just frickin left him alone, he probably would have been okay. but no, they're still trying to poke and prod and and in end, he ends up dying of an infection and he dies as probably the most popular assassinated president ever. people forget that kennedy was not super popular when he is assassinated. lincoln was not super popular when he was assassinated.

mckinley was had just won in a landslide, which helps explain, i think, the way he gets memorialized they the children from over the country literally contribute their pennies to build mckinley memorial down in canton schools are named after him and this is again probably the high point of the ohio dynasty. presidents. so okay, so that takes us from 1868 to 1900. is spanish-american war kind of on the same as manifest destiny is like that the certainly there were some of that rationale on there. so when we were talking about ohio, when it was first getting started, there was like not a lot of money, not a lot of currency. i'm surprised that the gold standard idea had enough sway compared to silver. there are a lot more, certainly rural ohioans supported silver, but ohio also a major industrial

state at this time. the currency issues of the early 1800s really weren't a factor by late 1880s, i'm talking more like nationwide. it's just interesting to me that gold kind of won the argument over silver like i would have expected silver i guess so, yeah. again, it depends on who you are. if you're an worker, you want gold because that protects your job. and of course industrial workers were more and more of the populace. and as time went on so if it were those ohio presidents, that would be an impressive dynasty for ohio. but it wasn't presidents, was it ohioans? played a major role in all branches of they served in a number of important cabinet positions. these are just the cabinet positions just from lincoln to mckinley. all these major at treasury and attorney general, state and war. all these people from ohio, also

the supreme court and chase was chief justice until 1873. and then he's by a toledo lawyer named morrison waite, who then served for another 14 years. so the chief justice of the united states, for most of this period is from ohio. and of course, some of the associate, as you can read in your are also from ohio as well. so the executive branch check judicial branch check legislative branch john sherman ben wade were some of the most influential senators leading the reconstruction efforts and leading the country to the war. john bingham from ohio actually wrote the 14th amendment. george pendleton as we've seen a democrat from cincinnati he ends up writing the civil service act. so the question though is not okay, so there's a whole bunch of guys from ohio. so what? well, the question is really why?

why ohio? and that is a really important question. the one i really want you to take away from this, not that there are a bunch of ohio presidents, but why ohio and? we've already talked about a lot of these issues that are probably responsive before this first demographics. we've already talked about this. we've seen how ohio rose become the third largest state in the country by the 1840s. so just by sheer force of numbers, the state would have a leg up. but this alone explain it all new york and pennsylvania had more people but they didn't the same record. what else is true ohio's politic population it comes from. it's not just how it's where they're as we've seen ohio the first state carved out of the public system and ohio drew its population from all over the country. mid-atlantic southerners. they funneled into the state and also drew overseas immigrants from places like germany and ireland. so as one historian has said, ohio was as near a microcosm of

america as one could find in the late 19th century. and as such, it becomes important swing state whose state and congressional delegation could flip between democratically controlled and republican controlled in any given election. now, the thing ohio has going for it is its economic. ohio is also a microcosm of the country as a whole. economic already a major agriculture state by the 1800s. ohio also became a major industrial state by mid-century, as we've already seen. so coming a state with such a diverse representative population. andy economy, a successful politician from ohio would need to be able to relate to and speak the interests of multiple constituencies, including multiple ethnic groups, labor management, farmers, voters, urban voters, and more in other words, the same. a politician would need to be successful in the nation as a

whole. another factor is the of the civil war. as we've seen, ohio had moved from the periphery to the center of the us economically and politically in the years before the civil war. but the war itself reinforced these developed means. and as we've also seen, ohio played, a critical war role in war, both in terms of military and political leadership. so it's no coincidence that all five of these five u.s. ohio in the 1800s served in the war because is so actively involved in the civil war. did they have a lot of like hard liners, like reconstruction? yeah, people like ben wade were some of the hardest hard liners. the radical. yeah, absolutely. and bingham, too, as we talked about. so there's another factor that explains it. another factor anyone. and guess what? that other factor is is location, location, location, location, where? thank you. yes, as we've discussed, ohio

occupied an important and unique geographical location in country. it bordered the south, the butternut regions, and near the ohio river shared many things in common with states of the south and also, while it may have been as populous and as developed as major eastern states, it was at the same time considered to be a western state, benefited from the solidarity it shared with other western states. so one historian remarked ohio, at least culturally, was the southern northern state, the northernmost southern, the western most eastern state and the eastern most western state. another factor in this equation is, the role ohio played in the republican party. we've seen ohio played a major in the formation of the republican party in the 1850s, supplied some of its most important national leaders and in the late 1800s were extremely close. the average margin of victory from 1876 to 1892 was only 1.4%. and while the democratic could

count on the solid south to vote and win elections without out ohio, ohio much more important in the calculus of. the republican party starting the late 1860s and continuing more than 160 years to this very day no republican candidate has won the presidency without taking ohio. never not once it still crucially important to the republican party and their electoral calculus. so with things on a knife's edge, extremely close elections and with ohio potential swing state it behooved the gop strategically to choose candidates from ohio in hopes by carrying the state, they could also carry party over the finish line. so this being the case, this also explains the so many cabinet members and supreme court justices from ohio because ohio presidents will appoint ohio appointees to this office expanding the dynasty further.

so where does that leave? well, for better and sometimes for worse, the ohio of presidents actually proved to be pretty important. from overseeing and implementing the 14th and 15th amendments to creating modern u.s. civil service to, passing anti-monopoly legislation that still the law today to expanding the united states to overseeing the expansion of the united states as a geopolitical power. the ohio presidents bridge was the period of the post-civil war into the beginning of historians have called the americans of the 1900s, and they played a key role in changing the presidency, changing american and changing the us in world affairs, which i think you have to admit, is not bad for a bunch of bearded guys that no one remembers. questions. so during this stretch in the postwar era, we see that it's all essentially republican. which is the first democrat

president to like rip ohio away from the republican vote. woodrow wilson that during the progressive era. yeah. and then of course franklin roosevelt does gets elected three times wilson do it because of a split ticket though. yeah. well wilson the first wilson election a split ticket because teddy roosevelt's running as a progressive. but the 1916 election is not split. and so significantly ohio begins swing back. republicans we talked about bricker, the of ohio is the republican vice presidential nominee in, 44. so ohio actually does swing the republic. that's one of the two elections that ohio does not vote for the winner during this big, long stretch from. 1896 to 2016. other questions. all right. your final projects are due friday, so don't forget that we will meet in our usual room next

time if there are no questions. i'll see you friday. thank you.