William McKinley served in the U.S. Congress and as governor of Ohio before running for the presidency in 1896. As a longtime champion of protective tariffs, the Republican McKinley ran on a platform of promoting American prosperity and won a landslide victory over Democrat William Jennings Bryan to become the 25th president of the United States. In 1898, McKinley led the nation into war with Spain over the issue of Cuban independence; the brief and decisive conflict ended with the U.S. in possession of Puerto Rico, the Philippines and Guam. McKinley was reelected in 1900. On September 6, 1901, he was shot on the grounds of the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. He was shaking hands with the public when Leon Czolgosz, an anarchist, shot him twice in the abdomen. McKinley died eight days later on September 14th of gangrene caused by the gunshot wounds. He was the third American president to have been assassinated, following Abraham Lincoln in 1865 and James A. Garfield in 1881. White House Blues is an American folk song, and is a standard in string bands. Its first known recording dates back to 1926, when Charlie Poole and the North Carolina Ramblers cut it for Columbia Records in New York City. This recording is included in the Anthology of American Folksongs. It was also recorded by Bascom Lamar Lunsford, Bill Monroe, Doc Watson, Merle Travis, the Dillards, the Stanley Brothers, The New Lost City Ramblers and others. The tune is used for a number of songs including "Battleship of Maine" (about the Spanish-American War) and "That Crazy War" (about World War I). A version is printed in Alan Lomax's The Folksongs of North America.