Indeed Republicans were the progressive party, comfortable with the application of federal power in behalf of major national goals: protecting the voting rights of blacks, curbing antitrust abuses, bolstering domestic industry through intrusive and complex tariff schedules. All this outraged Democrats, who harked back to the states’ rights and strict construction ideals of Jefferson and Jackson. “The Democratic party can not, will not, dare not, leave the high road of constitutional obligation, of governmental limitations,” declared Michigan congressman John L. Chipman on the House floor in 1890. “The paternal idea of ruling men is the autocratic idea.”
But now the settled politics of the postwar era was challenged by a new wave of political anger swelling across the nation. It began with the recession in the Western farm sector, which seemed to have no end, and ballooned into a national movement when the Panic of 1893 brought on the great economic cataclysm of President Cleveland’s second term. By the end of his tenure, some 15,000 businesses had gone under, along with 600 banks and seventy-four railroads. Unemployment remained high for years, approaching or exceeding 15 percent.
These economic woes soon generated powerful political currents. In the rural West and South, where millions could barely subsist as money evaporated and farms went idle, people saw the crisis as one of financial liquidity. The reason they couldn’t get loans to tide them over, they believed, was because heartless Eastern money men were hoarding the nation’s money for their own purposes. And the Republicans’ tariff barriers slammed them further by placing higher prices on necessities they could hardly afford in the first place while constricting foreign markets for their goods. “The farmers of the West,” declared Georgia’s Democratic representative Henry G. Turner on the House floor, “have mortgaged their lands to the East,” the dominant region in a Republican Party that “has made the laws under which all the trusts that oppress [my constituents] have had their origin . . . that has devised our bad fiscal system, that outlawed silver, that has contracted the currency to the verge of bankruptcy.”
Thus there emerged throughout the South and West a full-throated, populist cry for the free coinage of silver to expand the money supply and ease the plight of hapless farmers and other rural folk. Easterners naturally viewed this as an irresponsible call for the debasement of the nation’s currency. A new political fault line had opened up in the land.
With his tariff preoccupation and penchant for consistency, the stolid-minded McKinley resisted the idea of adjusting his campaign to address this development. In August 1895 he met with a number of campaign advisers—including former governors William Merriam of Minnesota and Michigan’s Russell Alger—at Hanna’s Cleveland home. The question was what should be the principal issue of the forthcoming campaign. McKinley, noting the political devastation recently visited upon Democrats, urged an ongoing embrace of protectionism as the primary antidote to the nation’s economic travails. Republicans were united on that issue, he argued, but seriously divided on currency matters. Favoring party coalescence over unnecessary disruptions, he preferred his traditional studied ambiguity on the high-voltage currency issue.
Others weren’t so sure. Hanna, steeped in the arcana of finance and the principles of hard currency, favored a GOP commitment to a single gold standard, “and he was anxious and willing to lend his aid to the furtherance of this policy,” Merriam recalled. But the campaign executive wasn’t about to resist his boss’s wishes, particularly with others present. He expressed his views gently and then retreated. The campaign would hew to the candidate’s signature embrace of protectionism under the slogan “The Advance Agent of Prosperity.” Hanna would wait for later opportunities to press the currency matter.
Meanwhile, as the campaign year began, so did the war of attrition over delegate selection. The South remained relatively solid, despite desperate measures by Platt and his allies to help local officials break up McKinley’s Southern organizations. They funneled abundant cash into those contests, fostered ploys such as calling “snap” conventions at the county level to catch the McKinley men flat-footed and roll over them. But as the process unfolded, Hanna’s Thomasville strategy held up. Reed managed to get only fourteen and a half delegates from Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina, Virginia, and Texas. Morton picked up one delegate from Alabama and two from Florida, while Quay captured two in Georgia and one in Mississippi and divided a Louisiana slot with Allison, who cadged another three in Texas. Against McKinley’s far more robust pickings in the region, these didn’t amount to much. Some Northern states also slipped into line, including Wisconsin in mid-March and Oregon three weeks later.
But the governor could get the nomination only by generating a sense of his own inevitability. To do that he needed to demonstrate that he could bust up at least a couple of the Northern favorite-son organizations. He snapped into action when he got word on February 4 that Harrison had told Indiana’s GOP chairman, John Gowdy, that he wouldn’t run. That evening, as Charles Dick was eating dinner at his home in Akron, the phone rang. It was McKinley, calling from Canton.
“Can you come down here at once?” he asked. “I want to talk with you.” Dick got the first train out of Akron, arriving at Canton around nine.
“I want you to go and see Gowdy, with Mr. Hanna’s consent,” said the governor, “and take up the Indiana situation.” Dick got the first train for Cleveland the next morning and conferred with Hanna, who warned him to operate by stealth. “Don’t stir up . . . speculations of the newspapers,” said the industrialist. Dick rushed to Indianapolis and enlisted Gowdy’s support in an effort to canvass state party officials and pull local leaders to the McKinley cause. By the time he left, Indiana was in the bag, and hardly anyone knew the effort had been orchestrated at McKinley headquarters.
One big question facing the campaign was whether to go for delegates in the highly controlled states of New York and Pennsylvania, where Platt and Quay ruled supreme. There were opportunities to pull in a few antimachine delegates there, but McKinley supporters in both states feared that, if they took on the machines in their states, their rebellious efforts might be repudiated by the McKinley campaign in order to mollify the powerful bosses. At a Canton strategy meeting, McKinley suggested they wave off their supporters in those hostile states on the theory that the few delegates available there weren’t worth the hassle.
“No,” said Hanna, “we shall get a delegate wherever we can.”
It was a sound judgment. Though the New York and Pennsylvania pickings remained slim, the effort placed Platt and Quay on the defensive and undermined their argument that their favorite-son strategy would destroy McKinley’s candidacy. Meanwhile McKinley’s popularity proved nettlesome for other potential favorite sons. In Minnesota in late March, Cushman Davis abandoned his candidacy after three of the state’s five district conventions refused to endorse him. That gave Minnesota to McKinley. Around the same time Manderson’s Nebraska effort also collapsed.
But McKinley still needed delegates, and the best place to get them, Hanna concluded, was Illinois, which might ensure McKinley’s nomination victory if he could capture it. As the Washington Post explained, referring to the McKinley men, “If they can capture the State they think they will have delegates enough to hold firm against any combination of the wicked plotters—Platt, Quay, Clarkson, et al. If they fail to capture it the combined opposition will have strong intrenchments from which to go out and make the fighting.” The man they chose to lead the fight was Charles G. Dawes, just twenty-nine when he approached Hanna to offer his services to McKinley. Kohlsaat was there when they met. After the young man’s departure, Hanna looked at Kohlsaat and, contemplating the man’s youthful appearance and lack of political experience, said, “He doesn’t look much, does he?”
“Any man who will work for nothing and pay his own expenses looks good to me,” replied the publisher.
For his part, Dawes had found his candidate. “McKinley seems to be the coming man,” he wrote in his diary.
The rangy Dawes was a fresh-faced young man with bright eyes and a ready smile who projected a self-confidence beyond his years. As it turned out, he was not only a brilliant man of multiple talents but also one to stir the heart of William McKinley, twenty-eight years his senior. The governor developed with the younger man what became the closest thing in McKinley’s life to a father-son relationship. Dawes’s actual father was a prosperous Marietta, Ohio, lumber dealer who rose to the rank of general during the Civil War and served a term in the U.S. House. Upon graduation from Marietta College, young Dawes moved to Lincoln, Nebraska, where he got into business and entered the law. He specialized in railroad-rate cases, became a bank director, and made serious money with a utility company investment in LaCrosse, Wisconsin. Preoccupied with the complexities of the currency issue, he mastered them sufficiently to write a book on the subject. He also was an accomplished musician, the composer of musical scores that earned national popularity.
In January 1895, seeking to maneuver through the recession, he bought the Northwestern Gas Light and Coke Company in Evanston, Illinois, and moved his young family to Chicago. A master of organization and time management in the mold of Hanna, he combined his business responsibilities with a tireless commitment to McKinley’s Illinois effort. As the young operative wrote in his diary, “Cullom is furious at McKinley’s ‘invasion’ of Illinois, which he considers his own particular and personal property.”
Dawes fanned out through the state, making contacts, identifying McKinley sympathizers, organizing local efforts in behalf of the governor. He encountered plenty of McKinley support but also a widespread fear of bucking the well-entrenched senator. “It is McKinley against the field,” wrote Dawes, “against the bosses, against everything that the bosses can bring to bear.” The Cullom forces organized a number of snap conventions in crucial districts to outmaneuver Dawes before he could marshal sufficient strength to threaten the senator. “It is not fighting fair,” wrote Dawes in his diary. He organized an “indignation meeting” to protest the tactics.
Slowly Dawes’s relentless efforts paid off. He went after Cullom in his own district, picking off various counties in late March. “We have them beaten in Logan County,” he wrote to McKinley on March 19, two days before Logan Republicans voted in convention to “instruct” delegates to vote for McKinley. By March 29 two more counties in Cullom’s district had endorsed the Ohio man. Three days later, the full district convention rebuffed its native senator and instructed delegates to vote for McKinley. Amid rumors that Cullom had ended his campaign, the senator wired a friendly delegate, “I have not withdrawn, and do not intend to withdraw.” Three days later he wrote to a friend, “I do not hesitate to say to you that appearances indicate that the Governor will be nominated.” But Cullom still wanted to be positioned should a convention deadlock materialize. If that happened, he added, “I believe now that my chances are not the worst.”
Thus the battle would come down to the state GOP convention on April 30 in Springfield. No one doubted that McKinley would garner a big bloc of delegates, particularly after April 23, when three district conventions voted to instruct for him, while a fourth endorsed his candidacy without instructions. But the question was whether his forces would seek a state convention resolution instructing at-large delegates to vote for the governor at the national convention in St. Louis. At a Canton meeting with McKinley and Hanna, Dawes got the go-ahead to push for instructions.
When the young political director arrived in Springfield with elaborate procedural plans on how to get the favored convention outcome, he encountered a cluster of state party pros, McKinley men but bent on upending Dawes’s plans in favor of their own personal interests. At a crucial meeting Chicago mayor George Swift attacked Dawes directly, questioning his maturity and knowledge of Illinois politics. He urged that all tactical decisions be postponed several days. The articulate and self-assured Dawes rose to his feet and issued a fifteen-minute rebuttal, explaining with considerable rigor why his approach was necessary. “It was a question of my life or death as a political manager,” Dawes recalled later. He prevailed.
Then, a day before the Illinois convention was set to begin, a political detonation occurred 750 miles to the east that had a potent impact on events in Springfield. Vermont Republicans, meeting in convention at Montpelier, surprised everyone by voting “in a perfect furor of enthusiasm” to endorse McKinley’s candidacy over that of Thomas Reed, who had been considered New England’s dominant politician. The McKinley forces emerged in the final days, Vermont senator Redfield Proctor told reporters, like “a tidal wave, ground swell, cyclone, avalanche, you can take your choice of expression.” This followed a dramatic development in New Hampshire in which the state convention adopted a resolution that mentioned both Reed and McKinley with equal favor. These twin New England actions seemed to spell the demise of the Reed candidacy.
That provided a big boost to Dawes’s Illinois push. Until the final vote, the outcome was unclear, although Dawes never doubted it. A series of Washington Post headlines between April 28 and May 1 tells the story: “Cullom Forces Well Organized”; “Cullom Gains Ground”; “Cullom Hopes to Win”; “Cullom Bowled Over.” The convention gave McKinley four instructed at-large delegates along with the twenty district delegates already instructed. In addition, the governor clearly would get most of the uninstructed delegates.
The governor was thrilled—and brimming with pride toward his young protégé. He wrote to Dawes:
My Dear Mr. Dawes:
I can not close the day without sending you a message of appreciation and congratulation. There is nothing in all of this long campaign so signal and significant as the triumph at Springfield.
I can not find words to express my admiration for your high qualities of leadership. You have won exceptional honor. You had long ago won my heart. . . .
My concern has been about you all week lest under the great strain you would break down. I pray you take care of yourself and now get a good rest, you have earned it. I hope you can run over here—bring your wife and we will have a restful time. How relieved you must feel!
Accept my heartfelt thanks and tell all of your associates how grateful I am at their unselfish devotion. Please convey to Mrs. Dawes and the children the sincere regard of Mrs. McKinley and myself, and believe me,
Faithfully yours
The Illinois outcome sent a clear signal of McKinley’s commanding position in the nomination fight. Ohio congressman Charles H. Grosvenor, a close McKinley ally who made a name for himself by calculating the governor’s delegate totals at various points throughout the spring, now said his candidate had 488 committed delegates, with another sixty in the “likely” category. With 456 convention votes needed for nomination, it appeared that McKinley couldn’t lose. Stated Grosvenor, “Everybody who has knowledge enough to be significant and candor enough to be manly knows that this contest is over.”
One politician who fit Grosvenor’s definition of significant and manly was Pennsylvania’s Matthew Quay, who issued a statement on May 19 that he planned to meet with McKinley in Canton as soon as he could escape his Senate duties. The announcement “set the tongues of statesmen a-wagging,” as one newspaper reported. Quay was beset by reporters demanding to know why he wanted to meet with his presidential adversary.
“Well, you see,” replied Quay, lighting a fresh cigar and displaying the smile of a sly politician, “there has been a great deal of talk about McKinley being unsound on the money question, and it occurred that it would not be a bad idea for me to run over to Canton and ask him about it. . . . That is my sole object in going.”
But the announcement raised a big question about the solidarity of the bosses. On May 22 Quay took a train to Canton, where McKinley met him at the station in his modest family carriage. The two men lunched together at the governor’s home, and then McKinley drove him back to the station for his return trip. Reporters observed plenty of cordiality and warmth in the demeanor of bo
th men. Later that afternoon, McKinley took a train to Cleveland for consultations with Hanna. Neither man would discuss publicly the nature of the conversation, but within a week Quay said outside the Senate chamber, “Maj. McKinley is sound on the money question.” Soon the papers were reporting that, while Quay officially remained a presidential candidate (because of political commitments he had made), he now would be working with Hanna to smooth the way for McKinley’s nomination—and to get whatever he could for himself in return for hoisting his surrender flag. Given the Ohioan’s commanding position, it wouldn’t be much.
Whatever the details of McKinley’s private accommodation with Quay, it represented a victory for his brand of politics. He had begun the nomination fight by rejecting the demands of the Eastern bosses, including Quay, with a sense of principle that helped define his candidacy. The story got into the public consciousness when the Washington Post revealed its outlines in a March 26 article that received wide attention. The reporter got many of the details wrong, but he captured the gist. The tale shows, he wrote, “that the big three of the Republican Party—Quay, Platt, and Clarkson—hoped to find McKinley as putty in their hands. When they failed, they vowed war on him.” Already by late March, the reporter noted, their war was sputtering. “And over in the Ohio city by the lake, one Mark Hanna is laughing in his sleeve.”
— 8 —
St. Louis Triumph
TAKING COMMAND OF THE NATIONAL PARTY
On Sunday, June 7, 1896, nine days before the scheduled start of the Republican National Convention in St. Louis, Herman Kohlsaat traveled to Canton and lingered for eight hours at the McKinleys’ North Market home. He spent much of that time urging the governor to take a political stand his friend considered distasteful. Kohlsaat was a sound-currency man who wanted the country’s money to be backed by a single gold standard. He wanted the Republican platform to embrace that standard and explicitly reject the movement for free and unlimited silver coinage.
President McKinley Page 13
