President McKinley

by Robert W. Merry

  He thrived, though the rebellious impulse never fully dissipated. Outraged by the slaveholder grip on 1850s America, he ran for Congress and won. He served six years in the House, then sixteen in the Senate. Beginning in 1877 he served four years as Treasury secretary under Hayes, then returned to the Senate. He played pivotal roles in the slavery issue before the war, in the government’s efforts to finance the war, in Reconstruction after the war, in currency issues, civil service reform, tariff policy. He served as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, the Senate Finance Committee, and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Throughout these assignments and endeavors, his organizational skill and leadership capacity propelled him to the forefront of American politics.

  Now he hungered for the presidency. The Republican nominating conventions of 1880 and 1884 had seen squibs of support for him, but these bids had fizzled. He would be sixty-five in 1888, so that had to be his year. But Sherman had liabilities. He lacked magnetism and rhetorical flair. Worse, he displayed a distant, unfriendly manner. They called him “the Ohio icicle” based upon a frosty persona visible in his thin, unsmiling lips and abrupt nature. Increasingly self-absorbed, he returned to the Senate, after his stint at Treasury, insisting that the body waive its traditional rules and restore him to his previous seniority, including his Finance Committee chairmanship. When his successor as chairman, Justin Morrill of Vermont, refused to yield, Sherman responded in “bad grace,” as one journalist put it. Colleagues respected him but didn’t much like him, and voters greeted his standoffishness with wariness.

  Then there was Joseph Benson Foraker, known as Ben, born three years after McKinley, the son of an Ohio farmer and miller. His early life paralleled McKinley’s: brought up in the Methodist Episcopal Church; manifested what one teacher called an “aptitude for declamation”; early and fervent adherent of the fledgling Republican Party; army sergeant at sixteen and brevet captain by war’s end. He saw extensive action at Chickamauga and Missionary Ridge, then marched with General Sherman through Georgia.

  After the war he received a bachelor’s degree from Cornell University, moved to Cincinnati, married a congressman’s daughter, and entered the law. In his thirties he enjoyed legal and social prominence fueled in part by his imposing persona; he was tall, well-proportioned, with a large, droopy mustache, and “a voice like a fire-alarm,” as the Washington Post described it. He also seemed at times somewhat imperious, and some felt he displayed his ambition a bit too nakedly.

  He craved political success, but when he captured his party’s nomination for a local judgeship, he lost the general election to a Democratic rival. Two years later, nominated for county solicitor, he lost again. But in 1879 he was elected to the Cincinnati Superior Court, and then a big break arrived in 1883 when the state’s two-term Republican governor, Charles Foster, designated him to be the party’s next gubernatorial candidate. Foster needed a stand-in in a year when a Republican split—a result of Foster’s controversial effort to regulate liquor distribution—undermined party prospects. “The Republicans are demoralized,” the Democratic Cincinnati Enquirer crowed, adding that the party’s leaders “determined to sacrifice as little as possible so they sacrificed Foraker.” But his exemplary campaign gave Foraker a statewide profile and much goodwill among prominent Republicans, reflected in McKinley’s carefully phrased letter to Robert Kennedy. In a letter to Foraker after the election, McKinley wrote, “No candidate for Governor ever made a more brilliant canvas, and the friends you made will stick to you through life.”

  That sentiment was shared by Ohio’s third major GOP figure, Marcus Alonzo Hanna of Cleveland, one of the state’s most successful industrialists. His grandfather established himself as a New Lisbon farmer and grocer in 1814, and Mark’s father, Leonard, expanded the business into a broad network of merchandising enterprises. Young Mark grew up in considerable luxury. “The table was abundant, the food well-cooked, the linen of excellent quality, and the children well-clothed,” wrote one biographer. A schoolmate remembered young Hanna as “a pleasant, wholesome fellow, clean of tongue and with more polish of manners than many of his playmates.”

  The family fortune was devastated when Leonard and his brothers invested $200,000 in a canal project that failed. When Mark was fifteen, members of the extended family migrated to Cleveland and set out to reestablish their financial standing in the wholesale grocery business. Then they got into Great Lakes shipping to deliver goods to emerging transit points in Wisconsin and Minnesota. After his schooling, young Mark set about to learn the business and eventually moved into executive positions. In 1864 he married Augusta Rhodes, whose father, a strong Democrat, had extensive coal and iron interests. Daniel Rhodes initially tried to keep the two love-struck youngsters apart because he despised Hanna’s politics, but on the wedding day he finally came around.

  “It’s all over now, Mark,” he said to his new son-in-law, “but a month ago I would liked to have seen you at the bottom of Lake Erie.”

  Now he said he wanted the young couple to move into his Cleveland mansion and Mark to take over his business. Mark demurred. He hungered for success in the emerging oil-refining business. But when his refinery burned down, as his father-in-law had predicted, he concluded the Rhodes company and the Rhodes mansion constituted his best option for financial recovery.

  “Your money is gone now, Mark,” said the father-in-law when he heard about the fire, “and I’m damned glad of it.”

  Hanna turned out to be a business visionary of rare brilliance. With more and more coal being shipped to more and more blast furnaces turning out more and more iron and steel, Rhodes & Co. was positioned to expand its enterprise. But Hanna perceived that he could expand far more quickly, and with far less capital investment, by creating a sales agency, brokering deals among mining companies, iron and steel producers, and manufacturers. Thus the company took a cut in a large proportion of the burgeoning transactions that kept the industrial expansion humming. Rhodes & Co. still mined coal and ran blast furnaces, and it invested in other companies that did also, but that became a foundation for building the sales agency business and cementing long-term brokerage relationships. Later, by investing in railroad companies, developing a shipping line, and getting into shipbuilding, Hanna expanded his company’s reach throughout the Great Lakes region.

  Soon Rhodes & Co. (later Hanna & Co.) was one of the great industrial enterprises of the nation, and Hanna was one of the richest men in Ohio. His complex network of contractual relationships required a solid reputation, and Hanna’s business persona was one of “absolute accuracy, honesty and integrity,” recalled his corporate lawyer, Andrew Squire. “His early business associates were his late business associates.” When economic downturns undercut the value of his contracts, he never sought to wriggle out of his obligations.

  Hanna expanded his business interests to include a city transit line, a local newspaper, and a downtown theater. The transit line and theater thrived, but the newspaper, the Cleveland Herald, lost money. Worse, in attempting to lure away star reporters from a competitor, the Cleveland Leader, Hanna ran afoul of Leader owner Edwin Cowles. The outraged Cowles unleashed a newspaper attack on Hanna so vitriolic that it damaged his reputation for the rest of his life. Cowles’s newspaper consistently portrayed Hanna as heartless, greedy, obsessed with self-aggrandizement. When Hanna finally decided to sell his paper, including major assets to Cowles, the triumphant publisher celebrated with an editorial that described Hanna as a picture of fair-mindedness and rectitude. But others picked up the Cowles cudgel as Hanna gained statewide and national attention.

  Hanna seldom paid much heed to the attacks. A jaunty fellow with luminous brown eyes and a generosity of spirit, he loved to mix with interesting people, including the actors and musicians who performed at his theater and Republican politicians dedicated to business interests. “Mr. Hanna wanted company all the time,” recalled Elmer Dover, a political associate. “He was always drawn to men who did things,
who accomplished things.”

  Increasingly he was drawn to Republican politicians. He saw business as the vehicle of prosperity and prosperity as the goal of politics, and thus he fancied political figures who equated business success with the national interest. With more leisure now and plenty of money, he established himself as a Republican political operative, a man who could funnel cash to favored politicians, lend his well-honed organizational acumen to political campaigns, and muster the various talents needed for a smooth-running political operation. His ultimate goal: to usher an Ohio man into the White House.

  The fourth man in the vortex of Ohio Republican competition was William McKinley. The criticism of that anonymous observer in the New York Times contained an element of truth, for he hadn’t quite emerged as a truly potent leader either in Congress or in Ohio. But within Republican circles, both in Washington and at home, he was gaining notice and respect for his congenial disposition and professional solidity. For several years running he was a regular on the Resolutions Committee of state Republican conventions. As keynote speaker at the 1880 state convention, he stirred a hearty response with a rousing testimonial to John Sherman. Also in 1880, he was elected as an Ohio delegate to the Republican National Convention.

  And in Congress he was positioned for advancement through his membership on the high-profile Ways and Means Committee, which had jurisdiction over the hot tariff issue. When a friend wrote to say he had heard McKinley would relinquish his Ways and Means seat to become chairman of Judiciary, the congressman scotched the rumor. “A place on [Ways and Means] is of far more value to my district, and has more to do with its material interest than any other committee,” he wrote. What’s more, he was emerging as the committee’s leading voice for protectionism, the panel protégé of Chairman William (“Pig Iron”) Kelley of Pennsylvania, himself a vigorous advocate of high tariffs.

  Inevitably McKinley’s unyielding high-tariff advocacy, coupled with his often elaborate earnestness, stirred some free-trade adherents to ridicule. Journalist Ida Tarbell would write that McKinley had “an advantage . . . which few of his colleagues enjoyed, —that of believing with childlike faith that all he claimed for protection was true.” But among the Major’s Republican colleagues in Congress, and increasingly among protectionist leaders and voters around the country, his sober genuineness on the issue generated respect and admiration. Clearly protectionism represented his ticket to national attention.

  * * *

  THE STORY OF the momentous interaction among these four men begins in 1884, when Sherman went up against the popular and flamboyant James G. Blaine, known as the Plumed Knight of Maine, for the GOP presidential nomination. Ohio Republicans were split on the matter, but without rancor. Most Blaine men embraced Sherman as their second choice, while Sherman’s adherents designated Blaine their backup candidate. McKinley was a Blaine man, while Hanna and Foraker favored Sherman.

  The state convention that year elected McKinley its permanent chairman, and the Canton congressman responded with a highly partisan speech. “The difference between the Republican and Democratic party,” he declared, “is this—the Republican party never made a promise which it has not kept, and the Democratic party never made a promise which it has kept.” When floor nominations opened for at-large delegates to the national convention, Foraker nabbed the first slot, given the stature he had gained from his recent gubernatorial campaign. Other names then emerged from the floor.

  When McKinley’s name was called out, the Major, from his chairman’s podium, politely demurred based on promises to other candidates that he wouldn’t let his name go forward while their fate remained undetermined. Given the man’s growing popularity, the delegates wouldn’t hear of it. Pandemonium ensued as motions were made and voted on to give McKinley the slot by acclamation while the chairman banged his gavel and declared the actions out of order. Ultimately the delegates overwhelmed the chairman, who reluctantly accepted the outcome. Hanna, drawing on support from Sherman delegates and others who appreciated his party benefactions, also garnered an at-large slot and became a national convention delegate.

  At the national convention, held in Chicago, Blaine won the nomination on the fourth ballot, while Sherman never garnered any appreciable support beyond his partial tally from the Ohio delegation. McKinley added to his political luster by serving as chairman of the Resolutions Committee and, at one crucial point, executing a deft parliamentary maneuver that thwarted the Sherman forces from interrupting a roll-call vote that favored Blaine. Though no one knew it at the time, the big development was Hanna’s opportunity to get to know McKinley and Foraker. He appreciated both but developed an emotional, almost sycophantic attachment to Foraker.

  “Among the few pleasures I found at the convention,” Hanna wrote to Foraker just before leaving Chicago, “was meeting and working with you.” He added, “I hear nothing but praise for you on all sides, all of which I heartily endorse and will hope to be considered among your sincere friends.” Returning to Cleveland, he wrote again: “I assure you, my dear fellow, that it will not be my fault if our acquaintance does not ripen, for I shall certainly go for you whenever you are within reach.”

  In succeeding months, Hanna showered Foraker with solicitousness, inviting him and his wife to Cleveland for extended weekends, expressing fealty to his gubernatorial ambitions, assuring him that he sought no rewards for his dedication. He projected just two ambitions: to help get Foraker into the governor’s office and Sherman into the White House. For his part, Foraker expressed appreciation for Hanna’s support but maintained a certain distance. He rarely accepted Hanna’s proffered hospitality in Cleveland and never responded in kind to his effusive tone.

  When Foraker was elected governor in late 1885, with considerable financial and organizational help from Hanna, the Cleveland industrialist assumed he would be consulted on significant patronage jobs. It didn’t happen. When Foraker passed over Hanna’s candidate for the lucrative position of state oil inspector in favor of McKinley’s candidate, Louis Smithnight, Hanna uncharacteristically assumed a martyr pose. “The Major is never behind hand with his claims,” he wrote to Foraker. “I tell him he ‘wants the earth’ and it looks as if I was getting about where I generally do in politics—left with only my reputation of being a good fellow, always accomodating [sic], etc., etc.”

  The episode didn’t diminish Hanna’s devotion to Foraker. “I told McKinley,” the industrialist wrote in the same letter, “that I only cared for you in this matter.” When Foraker was inaugurated, Hanna sent him another letter: “I tell you my dear friend I felt proud when you stood before the people of this great State, its chosen executive. . . . I feel that you will mount the ladder rapidly and I will always be glad to stand at the bottom to help keep it from slipping.”

  Meanwhile tensions emerged between Foraker and Sherman. Always alert to potential threats from rivals, the venerable senator recoiled when Republican newspapers began touting Foraker as a possible vice presidential candidate in 1888. Sherman’s people quickly grasped that Foraker’s vice presidential ambitions, if he had any, would undermine his support for Sherman’s presidential bid, given that the Constitution prohibited men from the same state from running for president and vice president on the same ticket. As the well-spoken and attractive Foraker gained national attention within Republican ranks, Sherman’s men even speculated that Foraker might actually covet the presidency.

  Irritations mounted when the Sherman forces sought a state convention resolution declaring party unity on behalf of the senator’s presidential candidacy. One aim was to smoke out Foraker. If he opposed the resolution, he would reveal his true colors. The governor took the bait, justifying his opposition by arguing that it could harm Sherman’s standing by exposing fissures within the Ohio GOP left over from the 1884 Sherman-Blaine rivalry. “I am keeping out of the fight,” Foraker wrote to Hanna, “rather because I do not want to fight Sherman and I cannot conscientiously or consistently fight for him in this
respect.”

  Relations deteriorated further when Foraker took umbrage at being excluded from a secret meeting in Canton at which Sherman’s top men discussed campaign strategy. Both men were embarrassed when the Cleveland Plain Dealer revealed the meeting and played up the Sherman-Foraker feud. More tensions emerged when the Cincinnati Commercial Gazette, a stalwart Republican paper, blasted Foraker for withholding his full support from Sherman and presented a Sherman interpretation of the feud that Foraker considered distorted. In a letter to Sherman, Foraker suggested the senator’s actions constituted a “strain” upon their friendship, and he told a Sherman partisan that the senator’s correspondence had left him “very mad.”

  Foraker seemed bent on having it both ways: maintaining his relationship with Sherman in the early phase of his presidential campaign while keeping his options open should the senator fade along the way. Given Sherman’s temperament and ambition, he would never accept that. Realizing the tensions could harm their careers, both men sought to rise above the squabble as Foraker won reelection and Sherman got his party’s endorsement. But the tensions were never far from the surface.

  Hanna struggled to remain neutral, working assiduously for Sherman’s presidential bid, even getting designated the senator’s campaign manager and personal representative at the nominating convention, while also supporting Foraker whenever he could. But once reelected, the governor rebuffed Hanna once again on his renewed effort to get his man appointed oil inspector—or, barring that, to get him a secondary position. When Hanna suggested obliquely that perhaps Foraker’s home city of Cincinnati and surrounding Hamilton County were getting an outsized share of the governor’s patronage, Foraker shot back, “No one will make any headway for himself by talking about Hamilton county having more than her share, for that is exceedingly unjust.” Nevertheless Hanna continued to emphasize his special regard for the governor. “How glad I am,” he wrote Foraker at one point, “that I don’t know enough to be a governor or even President. . . . Consider me in this matter only as to how I can help you.”