The streets of Youngstown were filled with people, who had gathered to watch the soldiers at their drill, nearly the entire company had been recruited at Poland, and young McKinley personally knew every one of them. After the little band of recruits had gone through their evolutions, and had marched away from Youngstown to the state rendezvous, young William and his cousin Osborne returned to Poland, sobered and inspired to a heroic deed.
The former stated, calmly but firmly, that he felt his duty was to enlist.
“It seems to me the country needs every man who can go,” he said, “and I can.”
He laid the matter before his mother, and she did not oppose him. That wise woman understood the nature of her son too well to thwart in this day of his greatest experience that advance which she herself had so notably assisted him in making.
So that he, with his cousin Osborne, went to Columbus, as soon as they could set their little affairs in order, and at Camp Chase—named in honor of a man whose genius had already made him famous and powerful—they enlisted in Company E, of the Twenty-third Ohio Volunteer Infantry. When one reflects how promptly Ohio sprang to arms in response to President Lincoln’s call for troops, it will be observed that William McKinley embraced a very early opportunity to serve his country. For he enlisted July 30, 1861.
W. S. Rosecrans was the first Colonel of that Twenty-third Ohio, and it had such men as Rutherford B. Hayes and Stanley Matthews on its roster.
Here in the camp, on the march, and in battle young William found the value of his earlier training. His splendid strength, his calm self-control—which made him capable of controlling other men; his better education, and his manly, honorable bearing were all elements in the guaranty of his advancement. At the very first he was chosen a corporal. And at the time of the battle of Antietam, Sept. 17, 1862, he had been promoted to the position of sergeant, and had received the added honor of selection to have charge of the commissary stores. So high an authority as General Rutherford B. Hayes, later Governor of Ohio, and still later President of the United States, has left the following tribute upon record:
“Young as he was, we soon found that in business, in executive ability, young McKinley was a man of rare capacity, of unusual and unsurpassed capacity, especially for a boy of his age. When battles were fought or service was to be performed in warlike things he always took his place. The night was never too dark; the weather was never too cold; there was no sleet, or storm, or hail, or snow, or rain that was in the way of his prompt and efficient performance of every duty.”
The bloodiest day of the war, the day on which more men were killed or wounded than on any other one day—was Sept. 17, 1862, in the battle of Antietam.
The battle began at daylight. Before daylight men were in the ranks and preparing for it. Without breakfast, without coffee, they went into the fight, and it continued until after the sun had set. The commissary department of that brigade was under Sergeant McKinley’s administration and personal supervision. From his hands every man in the regiment was served with hot coffee and warm meats, a thing that had never occurred under similar circumstances in any other army in the world. He passed under fire and delivered, with his own hands, these things, so essential for the men for whom he was laboring. General Hayes, then a Lieutenant Colonel, was himself wounded at Antietam, and went home on sick leave to recover. While there he related to Governor Tod that circumstance illustrating the cool courage and genuine heroism, and said to the Governor: “Let McKinley be promoted from Sergeant to Lieutenant.” And it was done without a moment’s delay. When Colonel Hayes returned to the field he assigned Lieutenant McKinley to duty on his staff, and the young man looked back at eighteen months of active service in the ranks as of the greatest possible value to him.