Presidential Visits to Antietam Battlefield-- Part 4: William McKinley

Perhaps no other U.S. president, save for possibly Lincoln, is as closely associated with Antietam Battlefield than William McKinley.  He served at Antietam as a sergeant of Company E, 23rd Ohio Infantry, the so-called Presidents Regiment.

Just three days before Antietam, at the Battle of South Mountain, McKinley's regimental commander, Lieutenant Colonel Rutherford B. Hayes, had his left arm shattered by a musket ball and was forced to relinquish command.

As a nineteen-year-old commissary sergeant, McKinley kept the boys of the regiment well-fed at Antietam, even risking his life on the firing line to do so.

After the war, he served many years  in the U.S. House of Representatives, then as a two-term governor of Ohio before being elected president in 1896 and 1900.

--Old Secesh