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Mr. Sherman's interest, on the other hand, required personal direction, and Mr. Hanna assumed a large part of the work. His correspondence during these months is filled far more with the details of the Sherman, than with those of the McKinley, campaign.

He went, indeed, to unusual personal exertions to secure for McKinley a large campaign fund. He solicited contributions over his own personal signature, not merely in Ohio, but from manufacturers in Chicago and Pittsburgh, on the ground that the defeat of McKinley would be interpreted as a further disaster to the general cause of protection. While frequently rebuffed on the ground that Ohio ought to take care of her own protectionists, he obtained some little money from these irregular sources. He seems to have been unusually successful in collecting money in Cleveland, some of which went to the candidate himself for personal expenses. On August 30, 1891, he wrote to Mr. Hanna: "I am a thousand times obliged for your letter with enclosure. I will forward it at once to the State Committee. I beg you will give to all of my friends who participated my sincere thanks. It was most generous of you and others; and I have to thank you most of all." Two weeks later he writes: "Your favor of September 7 I find here upon my return home to-day. Please receive my sincere thanks for your goodness, and now I beg to suggest that you forward direct to the Committee any other contributions that may be placed in your hands. I have sufficient to defray my personal expenses." The payment of the personal expenses of a candidate had long been customary. Garfield received an allowance for his entertaining at Mentor during the campaign of 1880, and later in 1896 the National Committee allowed McKinley $10,000 for personal expenses.

In the case of Mr. Sherman's candidacy, Mr. Hanna's efforts were not confined to raising money. A good many thousand dollars were indeed contributed partly by Senator Sherassisting legislative candi

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man himself for the purpose of dates in doubtful districts; and this money was placed in the hands of the chairman of the State Executive Committee, Mr. W. M. Hahn, who was favorable to Mr. Sherman's reëlection. But in addition special efforts had to be made to pledge

legislative candidates to Sherman rather than to Foraker, and in case a pledge was refused to bring the pressure of local public opinion upon an adverse or doubtful nominee. Agents were sent all over the state to carry on this work. Not a district was neglected which offered any promise of a fruitful return. In the beginning Senator Sherman had not taken very seriously the threatened opposition. Later, however, Captain Donaldson, a state committeeman who for years had made a specialty of looking after the legislative districts, and who was an ardent supporter of Mr. Sherman, was placed in charge of the details of the canvass. He calculated on being able to secure some fifty-three votes for Sherman in the caucus; but in order to do so he needed some $10,000 to spend in the doubtful counties. He went to Cleveland, and explained the situation to Mr. Hanna, who promised him the money. Senator Sherman himself selected the man to whom the disbursement of this fund was intrusted. They did not count upon any votes from Hamilton County, in spite of Mr. Sherman's expectations to the contrary, but a unanimous delegation from Cleveland was considered indispensable. Mr. Hanna took personal charge of his own county the importance of which may be judged from the following extract from a letter of Senator Sherman to Mr. Hanna, dated Sept. 22, 1891. "I am assured," he writes, "from Columbus that if the nominees for the Legislature from Cuyahoga County are substantially solid for me, it will settle the senatorial contest and greatly relieve the canvass. So I feel that you are fighting the battle for the state." A week later, after the local primaries had been held, he writes: "You made a glorious fight in Cleveland, for which I am under a thousand obligations to you. The result is extremely gratifying, and I agree with you that without the active support you and others have rendered, we might have been defeated by superior organization."

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On election day Mr. Hanna and his friends won a decisive victory. In a year of general Republican defeat, Mr. McKinley was elected governor by an unusually large majority. Immediately thereafter, Thomas B. Reed, the former Speaker, who had stumped Ohio during the campaign, wrote to Mr. McKinley, "I am much rejoiced over your victory, which is the

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only bright spot in the last elections. Your State Committee gave me a hard season, but it was wound up so delightfully at Mark Hanna's that if you ever want to coax me to do anything you had better send Hanna." The Legislature was Republican by a good majority.

Senator Sherman's friends calculated on the face of the returns that he would beat Foraker in the caucus, and they were surprised to find shortly after the election that the most confident claims were made from the Foraker headquarters of a Foraker victory. Certain members of the Legislature, including three from Cleveland, who were either pledged to Sherman or were counted upon by his managers were threatening to backslide. A week before the caucus Mr. Hanna went to Columbus and took personal charge of the Sherman campaign. The situation looked desperate; but it was saved, so Mr. Sherman himself stated to his friends, by Mr. Hanna's energy, enthusiasm and ability to bend other men to his will. Three of the Cleveland representatives, who had gone into hiding, were unearthed and forced into line. When the caucus was held, Senator Sherman received fifty-three votes to thirtyeight for Foraker.

On January 9 Senator Sherman wrote to Mr. Hanna the following letter:

"MY DEAR SIR:

"Now, after the smoke of battle is cleared away, I wish first of all and above all to express to you my profound gratitude and sincere respects for the part you have taken in the recent Senatorial canvass. I feel that without you I would have been beaten. It was your foresight in securing the Cleveland delegation that gave us the strongest support and made it possible to counteract the evil influence of the Hamilton County delegation.

"You have been a true friend, liberal, earnest and sincere, without any personal selfish motive, but only guided by a sense of what is best for the people of Ohio and of the country. I wish you to know that I appreciate all this and will treasure it as long as I live and only wish the time may come when I may in some way show that I am deserving of all your kindness.

"When I was about to pay the bills, Hahn said you had assumed some or had provided means for the payment of certain expenses. It is not right that you should bear this burden, and I hope you will frankly state to me what amount you have expended and what obligations you have incurred, so that I may at least share it with you. I have so written to Hahn. It is a source of great satisfaction to me that our canvass was made without the expenditure of a single dollar for boodle, with no bitterness to our adversaries, and with no appeals for our candidate to the interested cupidity or ambition of the Senators and members.

"Please give my kindly greetings to your wife and tell her for me that she is lucky to have so good a husband, the soul of honor. "Very sincerely yours,

"JOHN SHERMAN."

The foregoing letter speaks for itself, and calls for only one comment. In spite of Senator Sherman's professions of gratitude he never mentions Mr. Hanna's name in the lengthy account of his final election to the Senate, which appears in his "Reminiscences." Indeed, Mr. Hanna's name never appears in the entire book. The volume was published in 1895 and 1896, so that Mr. Sherman's later grievance against Mr. Hanna, if grievance it was, could have had nothing to do with the omission.

CHAPTER XIV

THE MAKING OF A PRESIDENT

THE victory in Ohio in the fall of 1891 was the first substantial triumph of Mark Hanna's political career. Theretofore the candidates in whose election he was most interested had usually been beaten; and these frequent failures must have been trying to a man who was accustomed to succeed, and whose cherished political purposes were all related to the election to office of certain friends and associates. The victories of McKinley and Sherman must, consequently, have been all the more gratifying. The first constituted an important step towards the realization of Mr. Hanna's dearest ambition. The second was a blow to the prestige of his irreconcilable opponent, and made it easier to keep control of the state organization in McKinley's interest. Thus the elections of 1891 had done much to repair the damage caused by the disaster of the previous fall. Mr. McKinley's prestige would be considerably enhanced by his selection during a year of Republican defeat to an office from which one Republican had already graduated to the presidency. McKinley had become personally more than ever a presidential possibility.

The question immediately to be considered was whether anything could or should be done to push the candidacy at the coming National Convention. The situation was difficult and complicated. The most prominent candidate for the nomination was, of course, President Benjamin Harrison. It is always a dangerous matter to oppose the renomination of a President who has done nothing to disqualify himself for a second term. A strong anti-administration sentiment is necessary to overcome the initial advantage which a President can derive from the prestige and patronage of his office; and an opponent is further handicapped because his candidacy must be based partly on a criticism of a President derived from his.

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