Still, with his party endorsement and ties to the increasingly popular McKinley, Hanna appeared headed to victory in January. At a party rally kicking off the Ohio campaign in mid-September, Foraker even praised the incumbent senator, saying Ohio could not afford to lose his leadership or tamper with the McKinley administration’s national standing. Besides, Republicans enjoyed a 30,000-vote edge over Democrats in party registration. Yet a feeling emerged within both parties that somehow the Republicans could lose legislative seats in November. Chairman Daniel McConville of the state Democratic Party told reporters on October 30, “Our position has greatly improved within the last week, and we have every reason to feel confident.” McKinley wrote to Hanna, “I sympathize with you in the hard work you have before you. Be of good courage, I am sure you must win.” The president announced he had invited Hanna to join him in Canton during his scheduled visit there to vote. While administration officials took pains to persuade the press that the Canton meeting wasn’t intended to have any political significance, no one believed it. As the Washington Post reported, “There was quite a smile on the face of Chairman Nash, of the Republican State Committee, this afternoon when this remark was repeated to him.”
When the first votes were counted in November, it became clear the Republicans had taken a drubbing in Hamilton County, surrounding Cincinnati; Democrats registered gains in numerous regions of the state, including McKinley’s own Stark County. It appeared initially that Hanna might go down, although Governor Bushnell captured an easy reelection victory. But final returns gave Republicans a five-vote legislative majority for a balloting that combined the votes of both houses. Though Democrats held a two-vote majority in the Senate, the GOP enjoyed a seven-vote advantage in the House. “Am just home and hasten to tell you how relieved I am with the latest Ohio news,” McKinley wrote to Hanna. “You measured up to the requirement of the situation to the delight of your friends and the disappointment of your foes.”
The congratulatory words proved premature. “The Foraker men have knives up their sleeves,” wrote the Washington Post. Rumors filtered through Columbus that the anti-Hanna forces would put up McKisson or Kurtz for the short term and push Bushnell for the subsequent six-year term. On November 9, press reports said Dick had surveyed every Republican member-elect of the next General Assembly and discovered that fully thirty of them wouldn’t pledge their votes to Hanna. C. V. Harris, secretary of the state Democratic Party, told reporters, “We have decided to throw the Democratic vote . . . to Gov. Bushnell, on condition that he can get votes enough from the Republican side of the House to elect him. . . . The deal is all arranged.”
Then, on November 10, came a remarkable broadside in a newspaper interview. “The days of Hanna’s bossism are over,” declared Kurtz. “The people here are against him, and that settles it.” He was asked if he felt at all bound by the party’s unanimous resolution for Hanna at the Toledo convention. “That meant nothing,” he replied. “It was adopted by a convention controlled by the paid agents of Mr. Hanna.” Asked if dissident Republicans would need Democratic votes to unseat Hanna, Kurz answered, “There are a number of Republicans in the new Legislature that cannot be bulldozed or bought for Mr. Hanna, amply sufficient to secure his defeat.”
The interview continued in a similar vein. Kurtz expressed no concerns about the impact of a Hanna defeat on President McKinley because the president “is weary of Hanna posing as his political creator.” Bushnell was “treated like a dog” by Hanna after Toledo. Hanna’s defeat would please nearly all Republicans, “who are kept dancing in attendance upon him for any favor they may desire.”
Foraker revealed that same day that he had no intention of helping Hanna through the coming travail that his longtime allies were engineering. “So far as I can now foresee,” he said, “I shall not have anything to do with the matter.” The senator raised eyebrows when he abruptly canceled a New York trip and rushed to Ohio. Bushnell meanwhile testily declined to say anything but “I do not care to talk on the subject.”
Following all this from Washington, McKinley became alarmed and implored friends to do all they could to bolster Hanna’s cause. When Charles Grosvenor called at the White House one morning for a chat, the president found he didn’t have sufficient time to debrief the congressman on Ohio developments as much as he wanted. He asked Grosvenor to return for lunch and retained him on the subject until after three o’clock.
Throughout the remainder of November and into December, Ohio’s political percolation over Hanna’s fate intensified. The Washington Post, which led most other papers on the story, reported on November 13, based on background interviews with Foraker intimates, that behind the senator’s coy silence lurked a ferocious combatant bent on getting rid of Hanna once and for all. “Along the whole line of Foraker men,” reported the paper, “the word has gone forth that Mr. Hanna is to receive his political quietus, if it can be accomplished through their instrumentality.” Rising from the depth of the intraparty rivalry going back to 1888 came all the accumulated venom that Ohio party officials had managed to keep under control for years. Every slight inflicted by Hanna as he emerged as a party power now rose to the surface.
But the battle was about more than just Hanna’s fate. Political analysts began spinning scenarios on the broader implications of a victory for the Foraker forces. First, Hanna’s patronage power would disintegrate and government jobs formerly controlled by him would fall under the sway of Foraker. Next, Bushnell would go after the long senatorial term in hopes of further strengthening the Foraker faction. A fill-in candidate would be put up for the short term. Third, these developments would strengthen Foraker’s political position so powerfully that he likely could position himself to run for president—against McKinley in 1900 if his rival faltered in the meantime; if not, in 1904.
On December 1 a Democratic state senator from Columbus named Pugh reiterated that legislative Democrats were seeking to combine with GOP dissidents to defeat Hanna with a GOP alternative candidate. “I have had an extensive correspondence with the Democratic members . . . on this subject,” said Pugh. “They all feel . . . that we, as Democrats, should do all that is possible to defeat Mr. Hanna.” He said that if just three Republicans joined united Democrats on this maneuver, Hanna would be broken. If true, this was a remarkable development because no one had believed that any significant number of legislative Democrats would ever vote for a Republican.
In Washington, emotions ran high. A December 19 dispatch in the St. Louis Republic reported that Vice President Hobart summoned Foraker to a Capitol Hill meeting with top congressional Republicans and expressed concern about what the senator’s friends were doing. Said the vice president, “Senator Foraker, Mr. Hanna must be returned to the Senate. . . . And now on behalf of Senator Hanna and the party at large, I ask you to call these friends off.”
Foraker unleashed a strong peroration disavowing any involvement in the fight and refusing to interfere in the legitimate political activities of his associates. “I have not attained to that position in bossism,” he intoned, “where I can telegraph my friends to put their private feelings in their pocket at a word from me.” According to the Republic, Hobart then threatened Foraker with a concerted campaign to destroy Foraker’s reelection prospects, whereupon Foraker issued his own threat. “I will in turn guarantee,” he said, “that there will not be a single Republican Congressman elected in Ohio next fall, and that President McKinley will not receive the vote of the Ohio delegation nor any considerable part of it in the next Republican National Convention.”
At the White House, McKinley’s alarm intensified. After reading an article in a Cincinnati newspaper suggesting a state senator named J. L. Carpenter might bolt the Hanna cause, he asked Grosvenor to get him back in line. After Grosvenor complied, Carpenter sent a testy letter to McKinley saying he never contemplated voting for anyone but Hanna. A similar letter from state representative J. J. Snider to Hanna allies in Ohio was promptly forwarded to McKinle
y to assuage his concerns.
By January 1, just eleven days before the balloting, things looked bad for Hanna. In the legislature were seventy-five Republicans, sixty-five Democrats, and five pro-silver “Fusionist” Republicans. When House Republicans caucused on matters related to the organization of the chamber—elections for House speaker and lesser offices, among other things—ten Republicans and Fusionists didn’t show up. That seemed to signal a Democratic victory in House organizational matters. In the Senate a single Republican boycotted the party caucus, suggesting Democrats likely would dominate that chamber as well.
Two days later, the auguries proved true, as Kurtz Republicans joined the opposition to give control of both houses to the Democrats. “Unless there is a material change in the political situation in Ohio within the next twenty-four hours,” predicted the Post, “Senator Hanna is defeated.” The paper added that the outcome “has stunned the Republicans of the State, and telegrams of earnest protest and threatened vengeance have been pouring in upon the nine Republican members of the House who joined the combine to defeat Senator Hanna.” Some defectors were threatened with personal violence if they dared show their faces publicly.
Following the furious efforts to corral wavering legislators, political and journalistic vote counters concluded on January 4 that Hanna needed at least three House votes to secure the seventy-three joint ballots he needed for election. Hanna, in Columbus, worked the holdouts assiduously. A Cincinnati banker named J. G. Schmidlapp wrote McKinley that he had called on Hanna and sensed that the ordeal “is wearing on him.” He added, “My heart really bled for him in the position he has been unfortunately placed in.” McKinley promptly wrote Hanna, “I cannot tell you how much I feel for you under the great strain you are subjected to. . . . I need not tell you . . . how anxious I am that you shall be returned to the Senate.”
As the January 12 vote neared, it appeared that the political atmosphere in Columbus was beginning to shift toward Hanna. A gathering wave of anger now rose up against the Bushnell-Kurtz offensive, which was faulted for needlessly driving a wedge through the state party. The New York Press described developments with a certain asperity, claiming the “voters of Ohio arose against the conspirators. They held mass meetings all over the State, they burned the traitors in effigy, warned them with letters and telegrams that their political judgment day was come, and on the day that Bushnell . . . was inaugurated as Governor shamed him beyond all precedent.” Indeed Bushnell’s second inauguration turned out to be a bust—or “frost,” as it was quickly dubbed. Fearing he might incite an angry civic protest, the governor refrained from riding in the inaugural procession, which was a failure anyway as only one political organization joined in. The parade was mostly military units, whose soldiers shattered custom by refusing to salute the governor as they marched by his reviewing stand. During this time Hanna supporters flocked to the capital by the thousands to attend an enormous rally for their candidate.
The Bushnell-Kurtz forces were experiencing difficulty in finding a candidate equally acceptable to Democrats, maverick Republicans, and Fusionists. Democrats, caucusing all night in an effort to find an acceptable free-silver man, rejected both Bushnell and Kurtz before finally summoning McKisson. The Cleveland mayor, according to those present, promised if elected to embrace the free-silver platform plank approved at the Democrats’ 1896 Chicago convention. That inevitably rankled some wavering Republicans.
But when the ballot was taken, McKisson failed to get enough Democrats to augment the seven Republicans who ultimately bolted their party to thwart Hanna. The result was that Hanna, though beleaguered and battered, squeezed out a one-vote victory. McKinley was elated when he got Hanna’s telegram: “God reigns and the Republican Party still lives.”
Inevitably Hanna’s foes cried foul, tossing out allegations that he had purchased the election through underhanded payments to wavering legislators. Legislative Democrats impaneled a special investigative committee, comprising all Democrats save a single Republican who declined to participate in what he considered a loaded inquiry. It concluded that laws were broken and sent a damning report to the U.S. Senate, which undertook its own investigation, pursued by a committee dominated this time by Republicans. It exonerated Hanna. The public at large never knew what to make of the allegations, which dogged Hanna for the remainder of his life and beyond, although no substantive proof of wrongdoing ever surfaced.
In any event, the battle and its outcome generated plenty of excitement among Republicans, and even some Democrats outraged by the Bushnell-Kurtz ambush. Newspapers throughout the country issued commentary on what the St. Louis Globe-Democrat called “one of the most sensational senatorial contests ever waged anywhere in the country.” Many papers took on a scolding tone. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle intoned, “Believers in fair play in politics and in good faith in dealings between man and man must regret that there has been treachery in Ohio.” The New York Mail and Express added, “There has never been in the history of American politics . . . another conspiracy to defeat the will of the people so utterly without principle, so wholly founded in jealous malignity and so marked by the personal ambitions of small men.” But however treacherous Hanna’s opponents might have been, observed Whitelaw Reid’s Tribune, the episode left Ohio’s Republican Party “in a maimed and enfeebled condition,” though it expected the party ultimately to gain strength from the ordeal.
The Tribune had it about right. For years Ohio Republicans, fixated behind the scenes on the ongoing internecine battles between the two tenacious party factions, had labored sedulously to keep the feuding from exploding into public view. The aim was to outmaneuver the opposition, not destroy it. All that changed with the Bushnell-Kurtz assault on Hanna, designed to shatter the party’s McKinley wing, leaving it wounded upon the floor of politics, humiliated and moribund. The anti-Hanna faction had placed an all-or-nothing bet and lost. Had the vote gone the other way, it would have been a devastating blow to McKinley, sapping his civic standing, disturbing his political base, and snatching away much of his Ohio patronage power. It might even have set back his prospects for reelection. But now, in the wake of the Ohio imbroglio, the McKinley-Hanna combine appeared invincible, ready for the next battle, a political force to be reckoned with. As the Tribune put it, “The difficult task of reuniting Ohio Republicans in an impregnable majority will test . . . [Hanna’s] wisdom, patriotism and magnanimity. And yet the advantage of position which was his in the struggle so hardly won is still his in even greater degree in the hour of victory.”
— 16 —
America and Spain
A CLASH OF INTERESTS AND A TEST OF WILLS
On Saturday, January 15, 1898, in Madrid, Minister Woodford presented his young daughters to the queen regent. After the customary desultory exchange, as the Woodford family began to back away toward the door, Maria Cristina asked the minister to remain. He quickly perceived that she harbored a serious agenda. She asked if the conversation could be kept secret from all but herself, Woodford, President McKinley, and her colonial minister, Moret y Prendergast. Woodford said yes, except that the exchange would have to become known to his trusted private secretary.
Nodding her assent, the queen pronounced her commitment to peace for her unhappy land and credited McKinley with wanting peace also. She expressed appreciation for the president’s efforts to help end hostilities.
“I have done all that you have asked or suggested,” said the queen, citing the change in ministries, the promise of autonomy, and General Blanco’s softer war strategy, designed to relieve the suffering in Cuba. “The suffering is horrible and makes me sick at heart,” she said, adding she would “persevere in these paths to the end.” But if President McKinley was her friend, he should help her by taking two actions. First, issue a proclamation calling on U.S. citizens to stop supporting the Cuban rebels; second, break up the New York Junta, the rebel venture operating out of Manhattan.
Recognizing immediately the delicacy of
his position, Woodford explained that his government was “a representative popular government and our Executive must in very large degree do what the majority of our citizens . . . wish and decree.” He said Americans wanted their executive to stop the war at once.
The queen interrupted: “The president can do this, and if he does it the people in your country will stop giving money, and the insurgents will know that they cannot get help; and their chiefs will accept autonomy and surrender; and this will stop the war; and the rebellion will be over and I shall have peace.”
Woodford noted respectfully that a recent rebellion within Blanco’s army raised questions about his ability to crush the rebels. And recurrent rumors about antigovernment conspiracies in Madrid further undermined her regime’s credibility. Drawing herself up and looking “every inch a Queen,” Maria Cristina said, “I will crush any conspiracy in Spain.” But in the meantime she wanted the president to give her initiatives a chance to succeed. She asked if Woodford, as her friend, would ask McKinley to accede to her wishes. “I am sure from what I am told that he will listen to you.”
Woodford thanked her for her good opinion and said he would relay the conversation to the president in detail. But he wouldn’t advise him on what to do. The president, he said, “will certainly do what he shall . . . think right and just towards Spain and Cuba and the United States.”
The monarch dismissed the envoy with a cordial but “very sad” demeanor.
The next day, Colonial Minister Moret described to Woodford the pressures on his government from fiery conservatives demanding, among other things, Weyler’s reinstatement.
President McKinley Page 28