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The Cabinet position which Mr. McKinley had in mind when he wrote this letter was that of Postmaster-General. Mr. Hanna refused it. During the next few months the two friends were constantly consulting about the make-up of the new administration and the selections for the higher offices within the gift of the President. There is evidence that at least for a while Mr. McKinley continued to urge Mr. Hanna to accept a position in his Cabinet. On Feb. 18, 1897, when the work of Cabinetmaking was coming to an end, the President-elect wrote to Mr. Hanna: "It has been my dearest wish ever since I was elected to the presidency to have you accept a place in my Cabinet. This you have known for months and are already in receipt of a letter from me, urging you to accept a position in the administration, written a few days after the election. You then stated to me that you could under no circumstances accept a Cabinet place, and have many times declined both publicly and personally to have your name considered in that connection. As from time to time I have determined upon various distinguished gentlemen for the several departments, I have hoped and so stated to you at every convenient opportunity that you would yet conclude to accept the Postmaster-Generalship. You have as often declined, and since our conversation on Tuesday last, I have reluctantly concluded that I cannot induce you to take this or any other Cabinet position. You know how deeply I regret this determination and how highly I appreciate your life-long devotion to me. You have said that if you could not enter the Senate, you would not enter public life at all. No one, I am sure, is more desirous of your success than myself, and no one appreciates more deeply how helpful and influential you could be in that position." There follows a statement of Mr. McKinley's decision to appoint James A. Gary of Baltimore to the Postmaster-Generalship.

The reasons for Mark Hanna's persistent refusal of a Cabinet position are sufficiently obvious. If he did so, he would apparently be accepting compensation for his services in contributing to his friend's nomination and election. He was willing to compensate all the other leading contributors to that result, but he refused to compromise his independence by accepting a reward for his services from the man he had served. A

Cabinet office would constitute a recognition of the past, but it would open up only a restricted vista of future accomplishment. If he was going to become anything more than a political manager, he must seek and obtain an elective office of some dignity and distinction. Only by express popular approval could his prominence in American public life become authentic.

There resulted from this sound and proper decision one interesting consequence. His peculiar abilities and his life-long training adapted him above all to an administrative position. He was one of the most capable organizers and executives in American public life. He possessed in unusual measure the gift, so rare in public officers, of infusing the energy and momentum of his own will and plans unto his subordinates. Yet he never occupied an important executive office in the American government. His peculiar gifts and training were exercised for the benefit of his friends and his party, but they were never exercised directly in the interests of efficient public administration. The reason undoubtedly was that he was not the man to take orders from anybody else. As an executive he could not be a subordinate, and probably he would never have accepted a Cabinet position even from a President, to whose election he had not himself essentially contributed.

But, as is intimated in Mr. McKinley's letter, there was an office, within the gift not of the President but of the General Assembly of his own state, which he undoubtedly wanted very much, the position of Senator. That was the one Federal office which carried with it enough political and social prestige and gave him enough official leverage to authenticate his peculiar unofficial personal influence. Neither was his desire to be Senator the result merely of his recent success. For years a Senatorship seemed to him, as it has seemed to many of his fellow-countrymen, the prize in American politics best worth having, the Presidency of course, excepted.

There is some interesting testimony as to Mr. Hanna's attitude towards a seat in the Senate. In January, 1892, Mr. James H. Dempsey, of the firm of Squire, Sanders and Dempsey, who had long been Mr. Hanna's attorneys, chanced to be in Columbus during the thick of the fight, which Mr. Hanna was

conducting for the purpose of reëlecting Mr. Sherman to the Senate. On the Sunday preceding the nominating caucus, the politicians had for the most part gone home, and the day was comparatively quiet. Mr. Dempsey spent most of it in Mr. Hanna's room at the hotel. They talked confidentially about many things, such as Sherman's lively and persistent ambition to be President and of his career in the Senate. During their conversation Mr. Hanna said, "Jim, there is one thing I should like to have, but it is the thing I can never get." When asked what it was, he replied, "I would rather be Senator in Congress than have any other office on earth." He said this with great feeling, adding that he had never betrayed his ambition to any other person. Mr. Dempsey inquired why, if he felt that way, he did not seek an election. Sherman was an old man, and could not well be a candidate again. With his position in the Republican party in Ohio, he would have as good a chance as any one else of taking Mr. Sherman's place. Mr. Hanna replied, "Jim, I could no more be elected Senator than I could fly."

Mr. Hanna's reluctance to offer himself as candidate for Senator in 1892 may be easily explained. The Senatorship was a peculiarly important and responsible office. He had done nothing to qualify himself for such a distinction. If he tried to get it, he might have been obliged to use methods, similar to those which other business men had used, to secure the necessary legislative votes. His strength in politics consisted in the fact that he was working hard, not for himself, but for friends who had a valid claim upon public recognition; and he still sincerely believed that his best chance of shining in public life was by means of reflected light. Yet when President-elect McKinley offered him the job of becoming one of the official reflectors of the light radiated by the highest office in the land, he refused, and hankered after the position which, five years before, had seemed beyond his reach. A Senatorship need no longer be considered an impossibility, and he might not unreasonably believe that his services to his party and his country had given him a sufficiently valid claim even upon so important an office.

But how was he to become Senator? His old political friend and associate, Mr. Sherman, occupied one of Ohio's seats in the

Senate. His term expired on March 4, 1899. The other seat was or would be filled by his former friend, Mr. James B. Foraker, who had been elected in January, 1896, and would take office on March 4, 1897. The election of Mr. Foraker's successor was still five years away, so that the realization of his ambition had to be postponed for a long time, unless he could occupy Mr. Sherman's place.

The facts that Senator Sherman did resign his seat in order to accept the Secretaryship of State and that Mark Hanna was appointed his successor have resulted in certain ugly charges against Mr. Hanna and Mr. McKinley. They have been reproached with appointing an unfit man to the Secretaryship of State at a critical moment in the foreign relations of the country in order to make room for Mr. Hanna in the Senate, and they have also been reproached with sacrificing Mr. Sherman's personal interests for Mr. Hanna's benefit. These charges have not been made by irresponsible newspapers or political enemies, but by serious biographers and historians. Mr. Sherman himself finally came to believe that he had been ill-treated. His life, by Senator Theodore E. Burton (p. 415), contains the following passage: "It cannot be denied, however, that he left the Cabinet with a degree of bitterness towards President McKinley, more by reason of his practical supersession than for any other reason, but also with the belief that he had been transferred to the Cabinet to make room for another in the Senate."

The facts in relation to Mr. Sherman's appointment of Secretary of State, in so far as they are now accessible, do not support the claim that Mr. Sherman had any grievance on that score. It would, of course, be absurd to insist that Mr. Sherman's transferral to the State Department was made without any consideration of the desirable vacancy thereby created; but whatever Mr. Sherman's later attitude in the matter, he was glad at the time that his Secretaryship might mean Mr. Hanna's Senatorship. If he had any reluctance in resigning, it was because he feared Mr. Hanna would not succeed him. These statements are all established by Senator Sherman's own correspondence.

On Nov. 13, 1896, Mr. Sherman wrote the following letter to Mr. Hanna:

"MY DEAR HANNA:

"I was very much disappointed in not meeting you in New York. I went there on railroad business and remained down town so long that when I received your card at the hotel you had gone from the city. You have got the reputation of being a 'King-maker,' and I want to see you, not to help me to be a King, a President, a Senator or a Cabinet Officer, but as an old and valued friend, whom I would be glad to help and encourage, if, indeed, he is not already so well situated that offers and public honors will not tempt him to exchange his position as a private citizen of greatest influence in the United States. I know well enough that your 'head is level,' and if you wish to enter political life, I would like to be one of your backers. Whether you do or not, I would like very much to have a talk with you. Can't you, when next you visit New York, come to Washington and stay a day or two at my house? Mrs. Sherman will take good care of you.

"Very sincerely yours,

"JOHN SHERMAN."

The foregoing letter contains a plain intimation that soon after the election Mr. Sherman had some specific question to discuss with Mr. Hanna relating to the latter's embarkation on an official public career. Early in December Mr. Hanna went to Washington, immediately after a visit of several days with the President-elect, and while there he dined with Senator Sherman. As soon as he returned West he had another long conference with Mr. McKinley. We can only surmise what happened at these interviews, but one of Mr. Sherman's friends throws some light upon Mr. Sherman's own attitude both towards his transferal to the State Department and the consequences of such a transferal. Captain J. C. Donaldson was Mr. Sherman's closest political aide. He had repeatedly rendered loyal service to Mr. Sherman during the latter's Senatorial campaigns. The position he occupied for many years as Secretary of the Ohio State Committee with particular charge of the election of candidates to the Legislature made his services during a Senatorial canvass particularly valuable. His helpful participation in the close fight for Mr. Sherman's reëlection in 1892 has been

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