[From Index to the William McKinley Papers. (Washington, D.C.: 1963), pp. v-vi]

"Generally speaking, President McKinley did not write letters on important government matters. When occasion arose, members of Congress or others interested were asked to call at The White House, where the matter would be discussed." This was the comment of George B. Cortelyou in a letter written on October 21, 1935, to J. Franklin Jameson, Chief of the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress, a few weeks after the McKinley Papers were sent to the Library. [1] Cortelyou, as a young man, had been stenographer to President Grover Cleveland; he became McKinley's assistant secretary in March 1897 and a year later his secretary. Upon the President's death, Cortelyou found himself in charge of the files in the White House. McKinley's will, dated October 22, 1897, was devoted entirely to provisions for the welfare of Mrs. McKinley and the President's mother and sisters [2] and contained no directive to the executors on the disposition of the President's papers. Cortelyou served as an executor of McKinley's estate with William R. Day, who was an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, a long-time friend of McKinley, and Cortelyou's senior by a number of years; but Cortelyou took the responsibility for most matters relating to the McKinleys' literary remains.

Cortelyou was devoted to the memory of the martyred President and intended to write a biography of McKinley, but a busy and distinguished career left no time for this task. Cortelyou served in three cabinet posts under President Theodore Roosevelt and as chairman of the Republican National Committee before becoming president of a large business firm in New York, in which capacity he served from 1909 until 1935. Early in those years the McKinley Papers were placed at the disposal of Charles S. Olcott, author of the official biography, The Life of William McKinley, which was published in two volumes in 1916. While Olcott conducted his research and for nearly 20 years thereafter, the papers remained in Cortelyou's possession.

For a generation the Library of Congress corresponded with Mr. Cortelyou about the McKinley Papers. In March 1905 Worthington C. Ford, then Chief of the Manuscript Division, first wrote to Mr. Cortelyou about the papers. In reply, Cortelyou declared his intention to present the papers to the Library but deferred action. [3] Other officers of the Library communicated with Mr. Cortelyou from time to time until the year 1935 when he retired and sent the papers to the library.

The papers were then organized and the more important manuscripts were bound in a series of 86 volumes. Some years later, the press copies of outgoing letters were rebound into 99 volumes and the remaining manuscripts were also prepared for service to the public. Mr. Cortelyou controlled access to the papers until his death in 1940, after which his son, George B. Cortelyou, Jr., continued to exercise such control until 1954. For a time during the second World War, the papers were evacuated for safety. [4] In 1960-62 the papers were re-examined, microfilmed, and indexed. The microfilm reproduction on 98 reels became available in 1963 at the time this index was published. The number of manuscripts is 105,832.

Besides the records created during the years when McKinley was Governor of Ohio, which are now in the custody of the Ohio Historical Society at Columbus, no other large group of McKinley manuscripts is known to exist. A small but important collection pertaining to McKinley's early years is housed at the Western Reserve Historical Society in Cleveland, and the Rutherford B. Hayes Library in Fremont, Ohio, has seven volumes of White House telegraphers' diaries. The Starke County (Ohio) Historical Society is assembling material relating to McKinley's early years from local newspapers, unpublished county records (especially those for the years during which McKinley served as County Attorney), and other local sources. The National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections, now being published by the Library of Congress (Volume 1, 1962), may eventually reveal the whereabouts of other McKinley manuscripts.

The description of the McKinley Papers and the reel list indicate that very few documents dated before 1896 are available in the Library's collection. A few records relating to McKinley's Civil War service survive, but almost nothing exists for the period of his law practice in Canton, Ohio, or for his service as a Member of Congress from Ohio, 1877-91. [5] His Civil War diary is now in the possession of the Ohio Historical Society. [6] The above-mentioned official files for the period of governorship, 1892-96, consist of three volumes of press copies and about four and a half cubic feet of incoming correspondence. [7]

The paucity of McKinley Papers is explained in part by his personality and his habits. He excelled in private conference and personal interview but avoided letterwriting whenever possible, and when letters had to be written he wrote them with great caution and circumspection. His official biographer explained that ". . . as a rule, McKinley did not commit to paper his plans and purposes, nor his inmost thoughts and aspirations. He much preferred a meeting, face to face, and a confidential talk." [8] As a Member of Congress in the late nineteenth century, he had neither office space nor a secretary. His Washington office was no more than an extra room adjoining a small suite at the Ebbitt House. [9] Only in his last term, while writing the tariff bill, did he have the regular services of a stenographer. It may be that McKinley, like many Members of Congress of this period, discarded at the close of a term of Congress most of the files accumulated in the preceding two years, for there is no evidence of any deliberate destruction of any of McKinley's papers after his death.

Note: Grateful acknowledgement is made to Miss Margaret Leech, author of In the Days of McKinley (New York, 1959), and to Dr. H. Wayne Morgan of the University of Texas, whose biography of McKinley is scheduled for early publication, each of whom read and commented on a draft of this essay.

1. Manuscript Division files.

2. Photostat in John B. Murphy Collection of Presidential Wills, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.

3. Draft dated March 22 and reply of March 25, 1905, Manuscript Division files.

4. The McKinley Papers were evacuated from the Library of Congress late in 1941 to the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. Three years later, when the war danger was past, the papers were returned to Washington. A statement concerning the evacuation appears in the Annual Report of the Librarian of Congress for . . . 1945, p. 59.

5. A break occurred in McKinley's Congressional service in 1884 in a disputed election.

6. "A Civil War Diary of William McKinley," edited by H. Wayne Morgan, Ohio Historical Quarterly, 69 (July 1960), 272-290. The diary is now owned by the Ohio Historical Society.

7. Kenneth W. Duckett to David C. Mearns, June 1, 1962, Manuscript Division files.

8. Olcott, op. cit., I, xi-xii.

9. Leech, Margaret, In the Days of McKinley (New York, 1959), pp. 21-22.