President McKinley

by Robert W. Merry

  It was getting increasingly difficult for Hanna to remain neutral, however. When Foraker heard rumors that he wouldn’t be called upon to make Sherman’s nominating speech at the Republicans’ national convention in Chicago, he seethed. After being excluded from Sherman’s strategy sessions, Foraker complained to Hanna. “I am wholly ignorant as to Mr. Sherman’s plans and wishes, hopes and prospects,” he wrote on May 10. Hanna implored the senator to invite Foraker to a forthcoming Washington meeting of Sherman managers. Sherman did so, but Foraker was unable to attend. He assured the senator, though, that upon being briefed on the campaign plans by Hanna or former governor Foster he would cooperate fully. He already had warned Sherman that the Blaine movement in Ohio “seems to be developing so strongly that I am getting somewhat uneasy.” Blaine remained officially out of the race, however, and Ohio was coming around to a unified front in behalf of Sherman.

  Corporate business kept Hanna on the road throughout the weeks before the convention, and thus he couldn’t get to Columbus to brief the governor on Sherman’s campaign strategy. Foraker’s anger exploded onto a letter he dashed off to Hanna on May 25, protesting not only the industrialist’s absence from Columbus but also a change in Foraker’s assignment of rooms at the Sherman headquarters hotel, the Grand Pacific, during the Chicago convention. After quoting from several letters assuring him he would be briefed by Hanna, Foraker wrote,

  With these letters before me, I was surprised to receive your letter in which you do not speak of any arrangement having been made according to which you were to see me, or of any information with which you were charged with the duty of imparting to me, or of any plan in accordance with which we are to work or of any organization of the delegation that had been determined upon or suggested, but which is chiefly an assignment of reasons why I should surrender the rooms in the vicinity of our headquarters that I have had engaged for more than three months. . . .

  These letters appear . . . “out of joint” with one another, and . . . satisfy me that the so-called “fool-friends” are not all killed off yet, as I supposed, and induce me to say that I prefer to retain my rooms.

  Hanna replied meekly that the suite assignment had been motivated only by a concern for Foraker’s comfort and convenience. “They will be left as they were,” he assured Foraker. But Foraker then said no, he would accept the change after all. Hanna patiently replied that he would reverse course yet again and take care of it. He never suggested to Foraker or anyone else how he felt to be addressed by the governor as if he were hired help who needed stern correction rather than the loyal benefactor that he had been for four years. Hanna sought to end his reply on a jaunty note: “Adieu, until we meet on the battlefield and my Ohio comes out victorious.”

  As the convention’s June 19 opening session approached, Hanna told reporters that Sherman would garner 300 delegates in early balloting and build from there to the nomination. “The Sherman men have probably the best organized working force on the ground,” declared McKinley’s hometown paper, the Evening Repository. “They . . . confidently claim their three hundred or more certain delegates will receive additions on every ballot.” Still, the ghost of James G. Blaine hovered over the convention like a thundercloud, threatening a bolt of political lightning at any moment. Despite Blaine’s disavowal of interest in the nomination and his removal to the distant shores of Scotland, Blaine partisans worked furiously behind the scenes to generate a sudden Blaine rally at just the right moment.

  Beyond Sherman and Blaine stood numerous “favorite son” aspirants—Walter Gresham of Illinois, Benjamin Harrison of Indiana, Chauncey Depew of New York, Russell Alger of Michigan, William Allison of Iowa—hoping a convention deadlock might open the way for them. Fueling this hope was a perception that even Sherman’s supporters weren’t sure they liked him very much. “Sherman won’t do; he’s too cold,” one skeptic remarked to an Ohio delegate. When rumors filtered through the convention that Sherman’s Ohio support was shallow, Sherman partisans saw Foraker as the rumormonger. Foraker denied it, but some of his convention behavior—particularly his seconding speech for Sherman, which seemed designed primarily to stir his own convention enthusiasts—generated skepticism. The Repository wrote that the demonstration following Foraker’s speech seemed to be “more of a Foraker boom than a Sherman boom.”

  When the balloting began on Friday, June 22, Sherman pulled 229 votes, more than double the tally of his nearest competitor, Gresham of Illinois. On the second ballot, the senator’s vote crept up to 249, still a far cry from the 300 predicted by Hanna and even further from the 417 needed for nomination. Worse, aside from Ohio and Pennsylvania, Sherman’s support came almost entirely from the solidly Democratic South, which provided almost no general election support to Republicans. Sherman needed a broader display of support to avoid the decline now presaged by the third ballot, which was taken just before adjournment for the day, when his tally dropped to 244.

  By nightfall some Ohio delegates were concluding that, if Ohio wanted to send a president to Washington, it would have to be someone other than Sherman. A self-appointed delegation of five Ohio men went to see McKinley at the Grand Pacific suite of the former general Green B. Raum, who ran the Sherman literary bureau. With hats in hand, they paced the floor before a seated McKinley and importuned him to embrace their effort to build a fire of support for him. One witness later characterized the entreaty: “Everything is arranged. . . . It will not start in Ohio. You need not say a single word. You cannot stop it, either. . . . You owe it to the state, you can’t hold the state solid for Sherman.”

  McKinley rose from his chair and with friendly but firm demeanor pronounced his utter opposition. One petitioner said it would be done anyway. “It must not be,” replied McKinley. When they protested further, the Major showed them to the door as he declared, “It shall never be so. If you do that I will rise in the convention and denounce it.”

  When the balloting resumed the next morning, Sherman slipped further. He now had 235 votes, just nineteen more than Indiana’s former senator Harrison. But Harrison’s number remained far short of the nomination number, and many delegates felt the convention needed a new face—perhaps McKinley’s. When a Connecticut delegate called McKinley’s name from the floor, the congressman climbed upon a chair and interrupted the roll call with his stentorian voice:

  Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Convention: I am here as one of the chosen representatives of my State. I am here by resolution of the Republican State Convention, passed without a single dissenting voice, commanding me to cast my vote for John Sherman for President, and to use every worthy endeavor for his nomination. I accepted the trust because my heart and judgment were in accord with the letter and spirit and purpose of that resolution. It has pleased certain delegates to cast their votes for me for President. I am not insensible to the honor they would do me, but in the presence of the duty resting upon me I can not remain silent with honor. I can not, consistently with the wish of the State whose credentials I bear, and which has trusted me; I can not with honorable fidelity to John Sherman, who has trusted me in his cause and with his confidence; I can not, consistently with my own views of personal integrity, consent, or seem to consent, to permit my name to be used as a candidate before this Convention. I would not respect myself if I could find it in my heart to do so, or permit to be done that which could even be ground for any one to suspect that I wavered in my loyalty to Ohio, or my devotion to the chief of her choice and the chief of mine. I do not request—I demand, that no delegate who would not cast reflection upon me shall cast a ballot for me.

  It proved to be one of the most dramatic moments of the convention. No one questioned McKinley’s sincerity or suspected a double game of any kind. But the Major’s selfless action raised his stature instantly in the convention, and many attendees concluded that he might be an attractive candidate if Sherman could be persuaded to yield. After the senator’s vote total declined to 224 on the fifth ballot, even Hanna beg
an to wonder if Sherman should hold on. Late on Saturday, he wired Sherman that a sudden move to Blaine seemed imminent: “Many of your best friends say that the only way to prevent a Blaine nomination is to wire me to announce your withdrawal and let McKinley come in. . . . I do not advise this and it should only be done as a last resort.” Later in the day, Hanna put a little more starch into his reporting: “The Blaine move is to be made on the next ballot. We think McKinley the only man who can defeat him. . . . I regret the situation but fear I am right.”

  Sherman couldn’t bring himself to relinquish his lifelong presidential ambition, however, and Hanna set about to keep his delegation together. McKinley remained ironclad in his Sherman support, even going to the New Jersey delegation after midnight to thwart plans there to place his name in nomination. “To accept a nomination, if one were possible, under these circumstances, would inevitably lead to my defeat,” he told the delegation chairman. Drawing out his words for emphasis, he added, “And . . . it . . . ought . . . to . . . lead . . . to . . . my . . . defeat!” The chairman said he would honor the congressman’s wishes.

  Meanwhile Foraker took a different tack. On Saturday he stated through the Associated Press that he had been “faithful and true to Mr. Sherman” and could not “be accused of unfaithfulness or treachery.” But the senator’s case had become “hopeless,” and he now supported Blaine. Although Foraker later disavowed the statement, it unleashed shock and dismay throughout the Sherman forces as their convention standing withered. Murat Halstead, the influential editor of the Cincinnati Commercial Gazette and a McKinley admirer, wired to Sherman, “The Ohio delegation is already broken.” Blaine couldn’t be stopped, he added, unless Sherman withdrew in favor of McKinley. “Give us a word, and we believe we can pull McKinley through.” It didn’t take long for Sherman to wire his response: “Let my name stand. I prefer defeat to retreat.”

  Then word arrived from Scotland that Blaine absolutely renounced any candidacy irrespective of what the delegates did. Without the Plumed Knight exercising his magnetic pull, the dynamics of the convention changed in ways that could have posed a renewed opportunity for Sherman. A new round of negotiations might have pulled a favorite-son delegation or two to his banner, reversing his decline and boosting him to victory. But that wasn’t possible now because Ohio’s own governor had abandoned him, and the senator’s position within the Ohio delegation had become untenable. When voting resumed on Monday, Harrison crept up to 231 votes on the sixth ballot and captured the prize with 544 on the eighth.

  * * *

  THE DRAMATIC EVENTS of Chicago in June 1888 divided Ohio Republicans into two factions and destroyed the state party’s internal harmony. On one side were the Sherman partisans who stayed with the fight to the end and took pride in their political fidelity. This group included Sherman, McKinley, former governor Foster, a jaunty congressman named Benjamin Butterworth, and that rising master of political organization, Mark Hanna. Nobody personified this group’s political ethos more distinctly than McKinley, who stood on a chair to renounce presidential ambition at the very moment when the office may have been coming his way. “Guided by a fine sense of honor,” wrote Halstead in the Commercial Gazette, “he has made no mistake, and has done his duty thoroughly.”

  On the other side was Foraker, who never again would be able to work with his former comrades. He probably was never as devious or treacherous as his most bitter critics alleged, but he had allowed his actions to place upon him a stamp of opprobrium. Given his brilliance and resourcefulness, he was destined to play a major role in Ohio politics, forging alliances as needed and projecting power throughout the state well into the next century. But the cloud of controversy would hover over him for the remainder of his career, curtailing his range of maneuver.

  As for Hanna, his devotion to Foraker was torn asunder upon the rocks of disillusion. A Cleveland lawyer named James Dempsey, who knew Hanna well, once said of him, “Mr. Hanna despised treachery. I think his greatest characteristic was his fidelity to friends.” Hanna himself liked to say, “I stand by my friends, whether they deserve it or not.” Foraker didn’t stand by his friend and forfeited Hanna’s friendship in the bargain. For that, Foraker would pay a price. He said years later that he never again had a political ally as closely associated with him as Hanna.

  The disruption of the Hanna-Foraker alliance led inevitably to a Hanna-McKinley combine. If Sherman couldn’t make it to the presidency and Foraker wasn’t worthy of it, then Hanna would devote his considerable skills and resources to the career of William McKinley, a man on the rise, with all the talents, ambitions, and virtues that Hanna was looking for. Besides, McKinley wasn’t the kind of man who would treat him like a hired hand. If Hanna seemed at times given to a kind of political hero worship, McKinley would make an ideal hero.

  The Major was becoming a man of stature, hailed for his strong character, devotion to Republican ideals, and quiet magnetism. And he had good reason to believe that, by renouncing a path to the White House, he quite possibly had opened up a wider avenue later toward the same destination. As his mentor and friend Rutherford Hayes wrote to him following the convention, “You gained gloriously. The test was a severe one, but you stood it manfully. . . . A better crown than to have been nominated.” He added a fragment of sound advice for future reference: “Men in political life must be ambitious. But the surest path to the White House is his who never allows his ambition . . . [to] stand in the way of any duty, large or small.”

  — 5 —

  Steadfast Protectionist

  “IN THE TIME OF DARKEST DEFEAT, VICTORY MAY BE NEAREST”

  Back in 1877, at the beginning of William McKinley’s career as an Ohio congressman, he received a bit of advice from the man he admired most. “To achieve success,” said Rutherford Hayes, who himself had just achieved his country’s highest level of political success, “you must not make a speech on every motion offered or every bill introduced. You must confine yourself to one thing in particular. Become a specialist.” Then he turned specific: “Why not choose the tariff?”

  It was good advice, and the new congressman embraced it. A man of conventional sensibilities, McKinley wasn’t the type to blaze new trails in pursuit of success. His inclination was to follow the counsel and example of men who already had paved the way. Because such men often perceived him as a worthy protégé, he never lacked for advice on how to reach attainment. But no one influenced him more powerfully than Hayes—leaving aside, of course, the younger man’s early rejection of a lucrative industrial career in favor of the law and public service.

  As for the tariff, it was an ideal area of concentration for the young congressman, who possessed a highly absorbent mind but not a facile one. His was a stolid intellect, without imagination but with a potent capacity for mastering masses of intricate detail. Further, he tended to view public policy in simple, binary terms—the right way to do things and the wrong way. For him, the right tariff policy was protectionism. High tariffs, he once said on the House floor, helped shape America as a country “without a superior in industrial arts, without an equal in commercial prosperity, with a sound financial system, with an overflowing Treasury, blessed at home and at peace with all mankind.”

  By the late 1880s, McKinley had become a leading congressional expert on the country’s multifarious tariff structure, which at one point encompassed some 1,524 separate tariffs on as many items, including iron and steel products, wool and woolens, various paint products, wallpaper, crockery, cutlery, glass and glassware, linens, soaps, starch, sugar, and many more. McKinley knew them all, and so now, some twelve years after embracing Hayes’s wise counsel, he was reaping the benefit of his years-long tariff preoccupation.

  But McKinley faced a difficult challenge in balancing his political endeavors with a delicate personal life weighted down by the needs and whims of the truly sad woman who was his wife. Ida McKinley long since had abandoned hope of capturing the kind of life that seemed in prospect wh
en she was a vibrant young woman of stunning beauty, sharp intellect, and scintillating persona. Now she was brittle and sedentary, preoccupied with small matters of everyday existence, embroidering or crocheting for hours as she sat in her wooden, ornately carved rocking chair.

  Over the years the McKinleys came to expect both good times and bad in regard to Ida’s health. Sometimes there would be no seizures for extended periods, and her strength would return sufficiently for short walks or longer carriage rides. McKinley even took her on two trips to California, much to her delight. But only rarely was she allowed to travel alone from Washington to Canton; more often her lack of physical strength and prospects for seizures necessitated that she travel with a watchful companion.

  She dealt with her plight by clinging to her husband and demanding as much attention and affection as he could possibly give. In Washington, during late-night strategy sessions in the Major’s Ebbitt House study, across the hall from the couple’s residential suite, she frequently summoned him on trivial pretexts. He always interrupted the discussion, accepting his colleagues’ raised eyebrows as the price to be paid for the balance he sought in his life. He knew her best health came at times of serenity, and the key to her serenity was himself.