Mark Hanna

Marcus Alonzo Hanna (September 24, 1837 – February 15, 1904) was an American businessman and Republican politician who served as a United States Senator from Ohio as well as chairman of the Republican National Committee. A friend and political ally of President William McKinley, Hanna used his wealth and business skills to successfully manage McKinley's presidential campaigns in 1896 and in 1900.

Hanna was born in New Lisbon (today Lisbon), Ohio, in 1837. His family moved to the growing city of Cleveland in his teenage years, where he attended high school with John D. Rockefeller, who became a lifelong friend. He was expelled from college, and entered the family mercantile business. He served briefly during the American Civil War and married Charlotte Rhodes. Her father, Daniel Rhodes, took Hanna into his business after the war. Hanna was soon a partner in the firm, which grew to have interests in many areas, especially coal and iron. He was a millionaire by his 40th birthday, and turned his attention to politics.

Despite Hanna's efforts on his behalf, Ohio Senator John Sherman failed to gain the Republican nomination for president in 1884 and 1888. With Sherman becoming too old to be considered a contender, Hanna worked to elect William McKinley. In 1895, Hanna left his business career to devote himself full-time to McKinley's campaign for president. Hanna paid all expenses to get McKinley the nomination the following year, although he was in any event the frontrunner. The Democrats nominated former Nebraska Congressman William Jennings Bryan, who ran on a bimetallism, or "Free Silver", platform. Hanna's fundraising broke records, and once initial public enthusiasm for Bryan and his program subsided, McKinley was elected comfortably.

Declining a Cabinet position, Hanna secured appointment as senator from Ohio after Sherman was made Secretary of State; he was re-elected by the Ohio General Assembly in 1898 and 1904. After McKinley's assassination in 1901, Hanna worked for the building of a canal in Panama, rather than elsewhere in Central America, as had previously been proposed. He died in 1904, and is remembered for his role in McKinley's election, thanks to savage cartoons by such illustrators as Homer Davenport, who lampooned him as McKinley's political master.

Marcus Alonzo Hanna was born on September 24, 1837, in New Lisbon (in 1895 renamed Lisbon), Ohio, to Dr. Leonard and Samantha Hanna. Leonard's father, Benjamin Hanna, a Quaker of Scotch-Irish descent, was a wealthy store owner in New Lisbon. Dr. Hanna practiced in Columbiana County, where New Lisbon was located, until he suffered a spinal injury while riding. After the accident, he joined the family business, B., L., and T. Hanna, by then a major grocery and goods brokering firm. Samantha, née Converse, and her parents had journeyed west from Vermont when she was 11; she was of English, possibly Irish, and French Huguenot descent.

Mark's uncle Kersey Hanna described Mark as a boy as "short, strong and rugged, with a full round figure". Young Mark attended the local public school, which conducted class in the basement of the Presbyterian church. He competed in the local boys' debating society, and on the question of whether the black man had more cause for complaint than the Indian, carried the day arguing for the blacks.

Members of the Hanna family invested in a canal project to connect New Lisbon, distant from waterways, to the Ohio River. The canal was a failure, and the family lost large sums of money. Most Hanna family members left New Lisbon in the early 1850s. Dr. Hanna went into partnership with his brother Robert, starting a grocery business in Cleveland, and relocated his family there in 1852. In Cleveland, Mark attended several public schools, including Cleveland Central High School, which he went to at the same time as John D. Rockefeller and was one of his classmates. After graduation in 1857, Hanna attended Western Reserve College, but was dismissed for distributing mock programs at a solemn ceremonial. Hanna served in various capacities in the family business, learning it from the bottom up.

By the start of the Civil War, he was a major participant in the business. Dr. Hanna had fallen ill with complications from his spinal injury (he died on December 15, 1862), and Mark Hanna, even before his father's death, was made a partner.

With an ill father and many business responsibilities, Mark Hanna could not be spared by his family to join the Union Army, hiring a substitute to enlist in his place. Instead, he became a member of the Perry Light Infantry, a regiment of National Guard troops consisting mostly of young Cleveland businessmen. In 1864, his regiment was briefly mustered into active service as the 150th Ohio Infantry and sent to be garrison troops at Fort Stevens, part of Washington, D.C.'s defenses. During the time the Perry Light Infantry was in service, it saw brief combat action as Confederate General Jubal Early feigned an attack on Washington. However, Hanna, who had been commissioned a second lieutenant, was absent during that time, having been sent to escort the body of a deceased soldier back to Ohio. The regiment was mustered out in August 1864.

Even before his service during the Civil War, Hanna had fallen in love with Charlotte Augusta Rhodes, whom he met in 1862, shortly after her return from a finishing school. Her father Daniel Rhodes was an ardent Democrat and was distantly related to Illinois Senator Stephen A. Douglas, the unsuccessful Democratic candidate for president in 1860. Rhodes disliked the fact that Hanna had supported the successful Republican candidate, former Illinois Congressman Abraham Lincoln. Daniel Rhodes eventually yielded, and Mark and Charlotte Augusta Hanna were married on September 27, 1864.

The 1850s and 1860s were a time of great expansion for Cleveland, which grew from a small lakeside town to a major player in Great Lakes commerce and a rival to the southern Ohio city of Cincinnati. With peace restored in 1865, Hanna struck out on his own ventures. Foreseeing a demand for petroleum products, he built a refinery, and also invested his own money in the Lac La Belle, a swift Great Lakes steamer. The ship sank and the refinery burned, uninsured. The losses reduced Hanna to near-insolvency. According to Hanna biographer Herbert Croly, "he had gained little from the first nine years of his business life except experience." His father-in-law, appreciating Hanna's potential, took him into his own business in 1867 as a partner and soon retired. The firm, Rhodes and Company (later M.A. Hanna and Company), dealt principally in coal and steel, but under Hanna expanded into many fields. The firm had close dealings with the railroads—especially the Pennsylvania Railroad, which carried much of its freight. Hanna later became director of two railroads, including one of the Pennsylvania's leased lines.

In the 1868 presidential election, Hanna supported the Republican, former Union General Ulysses S. Grant. The flood of inflationary greenback currency issued during the war made Rhodes and Company's dealings in the new confederation of Canada difficult; merchants would accept a dollar in paper money as the equivalent of 35 cents in gold. Hanna hoped that Grant, who was elected, would institute policies which would return full value to the currency. The firm built many vessels and also gained interests in a wide variety of firms, which in turn used the Rhodes steamers. Hanna also purchased Cleveland's opera house, allowing it to remain open at times when it could not pay its full rent.

During Grant's first four-year term, Hanna began to involve himself in politics. At first, his interest was purely local, supporting Republican candidates for municipal and Cuyahoga County offices. In 1869, he was elected to the Cleveland Board of Education, but as he was traveling a good deal for business at the time, was able to attend less than half the meetings. In 1873, disgusted by local scandals and the influence of party bosses, he and other Republicans briefly abandoned the party to elect a Democrat running for mayor of Cleveland on a reform agenda.

In 1880, Hanna added The Cleveland Herald newspaper to his business empire. This was resented by Edwin Cowles, who owned the Republican newspaper in Cleveland, The Cleveland Leader. For the next five years, until Hanna sold the newspaper, he was bitterly attacked by Cowles in his paper. According to Hanna biographer William T. Horner, the episode was the start of the negative image of Hanna in the press which would be further developed by the Hearst newspapers over a decade later. Cowles's paper attacked Hanna personally, dubbing him "Marcus Aurelius". Cowles's choice of nickname was dictated by the coincidence of name, without regard to that emperor's good reputation. The nickname remained with Hanna throughout the remainder of his career.

The incumbent in 1880, President Rutherford Hayes, had no interest in seeking a second term; after 36 ballots, the Republicans nominated Ohio Representative James Garfield. The nominee had gone to the convention as manager of the campaign of his fellow Ohioan, Secretary of the Treasury John Sherman. Garfield had emerged as a candidate after delegates were impressed by his nomination speech of Sherman. Although Hanna did not attend the convention, he was very active in the fall campaign. The industrialist helped found a businessman's fundraising club to raise money for Garfield's personal expenses in the campaign. Garfield, who ran a front porch campaign, often had to entertain politicians and others who came to meet him at his home in Mentor. According to Charles Dick, who succeeded Hanna in the Senate after the latter's death in 1904, "Mr. Hanna had as much to do with the election of Mr. Garfield as any single individual in the country."

Hanna, according to his biographer Croly, was in charge of the arrangements for the campaign visit of former President Grant and New York Senator Roscoe Conkling to the state. Croly credits him with persuading the two men, who were Stalwarts hostile to Garfield's Half-Breed wing of the party, to visit Garfield in Mentor. Having Grant go to Mentor would be an important show of party unity—Grant had sought the presidency again in 1880, but his faction had failed to gain the nomination for him. However, later biographer Horner believes the tale dubious, suggesting that Grant made the decision unaided by Hanna. Garfield favored civil service reform, a position disliked by Hanna, who felt that public jobs should be used to reward campaign workers. Nevertheless, he strongly supported Garfield as a fellow Ohioan, and the Republican candidate defeated his fellow Civil War general Winfield Hancock by a narrow margin in the November election. Hanna did much fundraising work, roaming the state to persuade business owners to contribute to the Garfield campaign.

Hanna sought no position in the Garfield administration, although Horner states that his services to the campaign entitled him to a reward, and speculates that Hanna did not make any request of Garfield because of their political differences. Garfield's short-lived administration ended with his assassination after six months in office. Hanna was in charge of the committee which took charge of the late president's body when it was brought to Cleveland and saw to the funeral arrangements and interment at Lake View Cemetery—where Hanna himself was to be laid to rest over 20 years later.

In 1884, Hanna sought election as a delegate to the Republican National Convention in support of the presidential bid of Senator Sherman (as he was by then)—President Chester A. Arthur, Garfield's successor, was seeking re-nomination, but was opposed by a number of other Republicans. Hanna supported Sherman as the candidate favored the gold standard and worked to solve the problems of business, and because he was from Ohio. The industrialist was successfully opposed by Cowles at the local convention but was elected a delegate-at-large from Ohio at the state convention. At the national convention, Hanna joined forces in support of Sherman with another delegate-at-large from Ohio, former Cincinnati judge Joseph B. Foraker, whose rise in state and national politics over the next 20 years would parallel Hanna's. The Ohio delegation proved bitterly divided between supporters of Sherman and those supporting Maine Senator James G. Blaine. Foraker gained national acclaim with his speech nominating Sherman, and Hanna worked for the senator's nomination, but Blaine won easily. With a non-Ohioan, the nominee, Hanna worked less energetically for the Republicans than he had in 1880. Blaine lost to the Democratic candidate, New York Governor Grover Cleveland.

It is uncertain when William McKinley and Mark Hanna first met—neither man in later life could remember the first meeting. McKinley, in 1896, referred to a friendship with Hanna that had lasted over twenty years; Hanna, in 1903, stated after some thought that he had met McKinley before 1876. McKinley biographer H. Wayne Morgan suggests that the two men may have met as early as 1871, although initially without making much impression on each other.

The two men certainly met in 1876, when McKinley, a lawyer, represented a number of coal miners who had gone on strike following attempts by owners to cut wages. Hanna was one of the mine owners affected by subsequent unrest. The militia, called in by Governor Rutherford Hayes to restore order, had fired on the strikers, and 23 miners were arrested and put on trial in Canton, Ohio, the hometown of Major McKinley (as he was often known, for his Civil War service). McKinley was hired to represent them, and only one was convicted. McKinley's victory won him the gratitude of labor elements in both major parties, and he won election to Congress later that year. Hanna remembered, "I became intimate with him soon after he entered Congress, and our friendship ripened with each succeeding year."

With Cowles's enmity ended by Hanna's sale of the Herald, the latter had little trouble being elected as a district delegate to the 1888 Republican National Convention. Among the delegates, at-large were Governor Foraker and Congressman McKinley. Hanna financed many of the arrangements for the Sherman campaign and was widely regarded as its manager. Sherman, as was customary at the time, remained in Washington and did not attend the convention in Chicago. There was widespread speculation in the press that Governor Foraker, nominally a Sherman supporter, would declare a favorite son candidacy or else support Blaine if he entered the race. The convention deadlocked, with Sherman in the lead but unable to secure the nomination. According to Hanna biographer Thomas Beer,

At the Republican convention of 1888, an accident displayed Major McKinley favorably to Marcus Hanna. A distinct faction, made up of men from every part of the country, approached him with a suggestion that he let himself be nominated. McKinley refused, and bluntly. He had come there pledged to support John Sherman and he would support John Sherman ... Mr. Hanna's admiration of Major McKinley was profuse. He appreciated men who stuck to a losing bargain.

McKinley began to pick up small numbers of votes although not a declared candidate. Hanna became convinced that McKinley was the only Ohioan who could gain the nomination, and by telegram hinted that Sherman should withdraw in the congressman's favor as the only Ohio Republican with a chance at the presidency. Sherman, believing this to be his best chance for election, refused, a decision which Hanna accepted, fighting for Sherman to the end. Hanna was greatly impressed by McKinley's loyal conduct in refusing to begin a run himself. Foraker threw his support to Blaine, though he returned to Sherman when the New Englander did not run. In the end, the nomination fell to former Indiana senator Benjamin Harrison. Hanna never forgave what he saw as Foraker's treason. After 1888, there was a strong dislike between the two men, and the separation split the Ohio Republican Party into two factions, a rupture that did not heal until after Hanna's death in 1904. Foraker stated in his memoirs that the break occurred because Hanna bribed black delegates from the South in 1888. However, Ohio newspaper publisher J. B. Morrow contradicted Foraker's account, stating: "I was at the convention in 1888 and know Senator Foraker [as he later became] brought great scandal to the Ohio people who were there and to the delegates with his secret work with Mr. Blaine's friends ... Mr. Hanna became thoroughly angered at what he thought was Senator Foraker's bad faith." According to Horner, Foraker was the more embittered of the two as the years passed, feeling that if it had not been for that dispute, Foraker, not McKinley, might have become president.

After leaving business, Hanna rented a house in Thomasville, Georgia, expressing a dislike for northern winters. He was joined there by the McKinleys in 1895, even before the governor left office, and also in the winter of 1896. The location was a plausibly nonpolitical vacation spot for McKinley and also permitted him to meet many southern Republicans, including blacks. Although southern Republicans rarely had local electoral success, they elected a substantial number of delegates to the national convention.

During 1895, Hanna journeyed east to meet with political bosses such as Senators Matthew Quay of Pennsylvania and Thomas Platt of New York. When Hanna returned to Canton, he informed McKinley that the bosses would guarantee his nomination in exchange for control of local patronage. McKinley was unwilling to make such a deal, and Hanna duly undertook to gain the former governor's nomination without machine support.

Historian R. Hal Williams summarized the relationship between McKinley and Hanna:

McKinley and Hanna made an effective team. The Major commanded, decided general strategies, selected issues and programs. He stressed ideals ... Hanna organized, built coalitions, performed the rougher work for which McKinley had neither taste nor energy. Importantly, they shared a Hamiltonian faith in the virtue of industrialism, central authority, and expansive capitalism. That faith, triumphant in the 1896 presidential election, became one of the reasons for the vital importance of that election.

Through the months leading up to the Republican convention in June in St. Louis, Hanna built his organization, paying for expenses, and applying the techniques of business to politics. Hanna met with many politicians at his Cleveland home. He paid for thousands of copies of McKinley's speeches to be printed and shipped quantities of McKinley posters, badges, and buttons across the nation. New Hampshire Senator William E. Chandler commented, "If Mr. Hanna has covered every district in the United States, in the same manner, he did those in Alabama, McKinley will be nominated."

In the wake of McKinley's election, according to historian James Ford Rhodes (who was also Hanna's brother-in-law, though a Democrat), "Mark Hanna occupied an enviable position. Had it been usual, the freedom of Cleveland would have been conferred upon him." According to John Hay, who would later become Secretary of State under McKinley, "What a glorious record Mark Hanna has made this year! I never knew him intimately until we went into this fight together, but my esteem and admiration for him have grown every hour."

Hanna stated that he would accept no office in the McKinley administration, as he feared it would be seen as a reward for his political efforts. He had long wished to be a senator, speaking of this desire as early as 1892. Senator Sherman, now aged almost 74, would face a difficult re-election battle with the Democrats and the Foraker faction in 1898. On January 4, 1897, McKinley offered Sherman the office of Secretary of State; he immediately accepted. The poor record Sherman posted prior to his departure from office in 1898 led to attacks on Hanna, suggesting that a senile man had been placed in a key Cabinet position to accommodate him. Foraker, in his memoirs, strongly implied that Sherman was moved out of the way to allow Hanna to have his Senate seat. An embittered Sherman stated in a letter after his departure as secretary, "When [McKinley] urged me to accept the position of Secretary of State, I accepted with some reluctance and largely to promote the wishes of Mark Hanna. The result was that I lost the position both of Senator and Secretary ... They deprived me of the high office of Senator by the temporary appointment as Secretary of State."

Horner argues that the position of Secretary of State was the most important non-elective post in government, then often seen as a stepping stone to the presidency, and though Sherman no longer sought to be president, he was aware of the prestige. According to Rhodes, "Sherman was glad to accept the Secretaryship of State. He exchanged two years in the Senate with a doubtful succession for apparently a four years' tenure of the Cabinet head of the new Republican administration, which was undoubtedly a promotion." Rhodes suggested that Hanna did not give credence to warnings about Sherman's mental capacity in early 1897, though some of those tales must have been told by New York businessmen whom he trusted. The stories were not believed by McKinley either; the President-elect in February 1897 called accounts of Sherman's mental decay "the cheap inventions of sensational writers or other evil-disposed or mistaken people".

Sherman's acceptance of the post of Secretary of State did not assure Hanna of succeeding him as senator. A temporary appointment to the Senate was to be made by Ohio's governor, Republican Asa Bushnell; the legislature would then, in 1898, hold elections both for the final portion of Sherman's term (expiring in March 1899) and for the full six-year term to follow. Bushnell was of the Foraker faction—Foraker was by then a senator-elect, selected by the legislature to fill Ohio's other Senate seat for the term 1897 to 1903. Sherman, who was at that time still grateful for his Cabinet appointment, used his influence on Hanna's behalf; so did McKinley. Governor Bushnell did not want to appoint a leader of the opposing faction and authorized Foraker to offer the place to Representative Theodore E. Burton, who declined it. Rhodes suggests that the difficulty over obtaining a Senate seat for Hanna led McKinley to persist in his offer to make his friend Postmaster General into mid-February 1897. Bushnell was a candidate for renomination and re-election in 1897; without Hanna's support his chances were smaller, and on February 21, Bushnell wrote to Hanna that he would appoint him in Sherman's place. Foraker, in his memoirs, stated that Hanna was given the Senate seat because of McKinley's desires.

The 1897 legislative elections in Ohio would determine who would vote on Hanna's bid for election for a full six-year term, and were seen as a referendum on McKinley's first year in office—the President visited Ohio to give several speeches, as did Bryan. McKinley was active behind the scenes, urging Republicans both inside and outside Ohio to support the senator. The 1897 Ohio Republican convention voted to support Hanna, as did county conventions in 84 of Ohio's 88 counties. The Republicans won the election, with the overwhelming number of Republican victors pledged to vote for Hanna. However, a number of Republicans, most of the Foraker faction, did not want to re-elect Hanna and formed an alliance with the Democrats.