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How Did Mckinley's Decision To Become An Imperial Power

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McKinley might not have been able to make it through his second term before his untimely death but during his time in office he still made decisions that had a long term effect on our nation 's’ economy, foreign policy, and presidency itself. During McKinley’s first campaign the decision to keep the gold standard of backing our nation 's currency was a big deal. However, this only lasted until 1933 when our country switched to a fiat money system where the dollars value isn’t linked to an asset. According to a Mental Floss article “Most economists now agree 90 percent of the reason why the U.S. got out of the Great Depression was the break with gold,”. Therefore, it is arguable that McKinley’s decision to keep the gold standard ended up …show more content…

Foreign policy was also a pretty hot topic during his time in office. The Spanish American war is largely seen as almost unavoidable by most historians (Miller) so McKinley’s choice to enter it would have also been made by anyone else in the presidential seat due to public pressure and a need to protect assets. However, the way McKinley chose to act after the war was not unavoidable. After gaining a large amount of territory from spain, McKinley decided to make America an imperial power. This had many consequences especially for the people of the lands we now controlled. McKinley had promised the people of the Philippines independence but later decided to keep their land anyways. According to the US Department of State, this resulted in the Philippine American war during which 4,200 American and over 20,000 Filipino combatants were killed. There were also about 200,000 Filipino civilians who died from a variety of causes such as their villages being burned by US forces, starvation, and disease. Many in the US opposed McKinley’s choice to colonize the Philippines and he definitely could have pulled out of this war at any time over the 3 years it lasted. Another game changing foreign policy move made by his administration was the Open Door

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