ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the elements of the history produced by the Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard and continued in the work of their many successors. It explores whether the accounts of McKinley's career and of the 1896 presidential campaign accurate. The chapter also explores whether the portrait of the McKinley presidency accurate. It discusses whether the causes of the war with Spain were accurately depicted. The chapter also discusses whether the war's outcome, the acquisition of the "new empire", was accurately depicted. It focuses on three complex events beginning with William McKinley's presidential campaign in 1896. The concern with the "who rules" questions in 1896–1900 might be viewed as "narrow" empirical issues. For Marxism, both in its original formulation and in all later variants, the answer to the question of who rules is simple: In the capitalist era, the capitalists rule. Those who have economic power, so it is said, have political power.
