One fall evening in 1867, William McKinley stepped onto an empty dry goods box to make his first impression in politics. His audience stood in the front yard of a home in New Berlin, Ohio, or sat on benches in front of a post office next door. As men held torches to illuminate the scene, the event’s organizer—George Bitzer—asked the evening’s principal speaker—Judge James Underhill—if the “young strip of a boy” was up to the task of promoting the GOP candidate for governor, Rutherford B. Hayes.
McKinley, then just twenty-four years old, quickly dispelled any concerns about his abilities. He spoke for an hour without notes in support of his old commander and left Bitzer stunned. “I just wondered where he got all of those words and ideas,” he said later. The old German was also taken by the Major’s “kindly manner” and “hearty handshakes.” McKinley’s political debut had been a success.1
Still, while it was an indication that McKinley had a future in politics, he had much to learn. He would spend the next several years being trained the old-fashioned way. Through hard work, he became conversant with the issues, gained a feel for how voters reacted, built important friendships, and turned himself into a powerful orator. He would absorb lessons from failures as well as successes and came to understand he would help himself in the long run by helping others.
While McKinley had a talent for speaking and grew up steeped in the ideals that made the GOP the party that saved the Union, freed the slaves, and stood for the expansion of American commerce, he still had to translate those beliefs into effective arguments. So he studied what other Republicans said in newspapers, speeches, pamphlets, and party platforms. He refined their ideas and converted them into his own words, leavened by the values of his faith and upbringing. His habit of hard, diligent work helped prepare him.
Politics in the latter half of the nineteenth century was a contact sport. The Major himself understood this from the start. That night in New Berlin he offered a blistering attack on Hayes’s gubernatorial opponent, Democrat Allen G. Thurman. McKinley’s main argument was that Democrats who had opposed the war couldn’t be trusted with high office. He questioned Thurman’s patriotism. “Every energy of his mind was directed against the war measures of the Union party,” McKinley said. “This nation for the present must be confined to none but its preservers, its enemies must be kept out of the council chambers.” If this sounds harsh today, it was common at the time. In elections after Appomattox, Republicans turned Clausewitz’s dictum that war is “the continuation of politics by other means” on its head, treating politics as a continuation of the Civil War by other means.2
Democrats also engaged in scorched-earth tactics. By the time McKinley stepped on that dry goods box, Ohio Democrats had already launched racially charged attacks. They claimed that GOP support of black suffrage would “foment discord and disorder.” Democrats argued that Republican efforts to guarantee black voting rights through the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and a proposed state constitutional amendment would impair the country’s “material prosperity.” The Ohio Democratic platform declared that allowing blacks to vote would “produce a disastrous conflict of races.” Thurman also attacked Hayes for the GOP’s treatment of the Civil War paper money. Republicans worried that leaving all the “greenbacks” in circulation would spark a destructive period of inflation, so they withdrew some of them, which reduced the money supply. Democrats took the opposing view, believing that putting more currency in the hands of people was necessary for prosperity. This argument would continue to play out in the nation’s politics for decades.3
Since the state was narrowly divided between the two parties, Ohio’s election results that year were a mixed bag. Hayes won, but by just 2,983 votes out of 484,227 cast. Still, he carried the rest of the state GOP ticket with him and took Stark County (a boost for McKinley). But Republicans lost the argument on the state’s voting rights amendment, which failed 45 percent to 55 percent. The election also saw many black voters being kept from casting ballots.4
The election results taught McKinley three lessons. The first was that many Ohioans trusted Hayes’s character and record and agreed with him on one major issue—currency—which mattered more than their disagreement with him on another issue less important to them—black voting rights. The second was that because Ohio was narrowly divided, its elections would always be hard fought. In the Buckeye State, the quality of candidates and their campaigns mattered a great deal. The third was the importance of perseverance when fundamental questions were involved. The state constitutional amendment failed, but McKinley would never stop fighting to protect black voting rights.
McKinley also learned a few smaller tactical lessons. One was to not let yourself get upstaged. Charles F. Manderson, then Stark County attorney and later U.S. senator from Nebraska, rode with McKinley to a joint speaking appearance and got the Major to tell him what he planned to say. Taking the podium first, Manderson proceeded to deliver McKinley’s speech. Manderson even had the gall to ask from the podium if the Major would kindly hand over the statistics he had in his pocket. McKinley was shocked that someone would steal his speech, but he never again shared his remarks in advance.5
Another element of McKinley’s political education was subtler and illustrated a larger trend. In 1868, McKinley was an early supporter of Ulysses S. Grant for president. The Major organized clubs of young men throughout Stark County to boost the former general for the Republican nomination. McKinley was gratified at the enthusiastic response Grant received as the GOP underwent a generational change. During the Civil War, older Republicans—almost all former Whigs or Democrats—governed, while younger men who had never experienced a time without a Republican Party went to war. Energized by Grant, Hayes, and other wartime commanders, young Republicans like McKinley were now increasingly being drawn into politics.
In a surprise recognition of his talents and possibly because of the generational shift, the Major was elected Stark County Republican chairman, a job that normally went to a longtime workhorse. The political novice drew on his military training and managerial skills to arrange a canvass of every voter in the county, learning in the process the importance of an efficient organization.
That fall, McKinley demonstrated his speaking abilities when he shared a stage with New York’s lieutenant governor Stewart L. Woodford. Woodford later praised the Major’s oratorical abilities at the GOP state headquarters in Columbus, prompting party leaders to invite McKinley to make more campaign appearances. The Major was one of many speakers in the effort, but Grant handily carried Ohio as well as Stark County—an indication that McKinley was an effective and rising party leader.6
That success led to McKinley’s first race for office. In July 1869, the now-twenty-six-year-old was given the Republican nomination for Stark County prosecutor, considered an empty honor because Stark leaned decidedly Democratic. But McKinley threw himself into the race. He spoke virtually every day through mid-October, appearing in every hamlet and neighborhood. He also made “raids upon the ranks of the foe” by soliciting support from Democratic friends from church, YMCA, Masons, and other groups he had joined. These relationships paid off. He won the October election while most of the GOP county ticket lost. McKinley’s victory taught him that in a closely divided electorate, even a small number of defections could have big consequences because each defection takes one vote away from your opponent while adding one to your column.7
Two years later, McKinley learned the consequences of a candidate losing key swing voters. Democrats made the Major’s prosecution of saloon owners an issue. German and Irish friends who had voted for McKinley in 1869 turned against him in 1871 because he had strictly enforced liquor laws. The Major lost by 143 votes.
However, the defeat was just a speed bump for McKinley’s political career. He now had a reputation as a diligent officeholder and vigorous campaigner, and, it turns out, a desire to aim higher. He had his eye on the 17th Congressional District. So he remained politically active. He campaigned for Grant and the GOP ticket in 1872 by speaking around the state, joining in the celebrations when the president carried Ohio with 53 percent of the vote, and Stark County with 62 percent, and won reelection.8
THE FOLLOWING YEAR WOULD profoundly change the Major personally and shape the politics of the nation for years to come. At home, McKinley would watch his family fall apart as Ida suffered through a terrible pregnancy, the troubled birth of baby Ida in April, and the infant’s death in August. The Major could do little but watch in anguish as his mother-in-law died, his daughter slipped away, and his wife turned into an invalid.
Across the country, a sudden stock market collapse in September caused millions of Americans to lose their jobs, paychecks, and homes and forced many to face terrible deprivation, even starvation and death, ending the country’s postwar prosperity. The Panic of 1873 started when a prominent Wall Street investor committed suicide after learning that one of his holdings, the Warehouse & Security Company, would declare bankruptcy and drag down two large sugar importers with it. A major brokerage failed on September 13. Things spiraled out of control six days later when Jay Cooke’s firm collapsed. Cooke had helped finance the war effort but was now ruined by the failure of his firm’s Northern Pacific Railroad stock offering, which he was building to tap the Plains’ rich farmland. Police dispersed anxious investors who stormed his offices, but couldn’t stop a run on banks and brokerages. The New York Stock Exchange soon suspended trading for ten days. Grant had stayed with Cooke the night before his firm went bankrupt, but the financier never mentioned his difficulties.9
The Panic of 1873 spread rapidly. Banks closed, companies failed, and commerce seized up. On October 28, ten thousand factory workers were laid off in one day in Dutchess County, New York, alone. A month later, the New York Times warned, “financial convulsion will throw multitudes out of employment at the most critical period of the year” and charity “will hardly meet the most pressing necessities.” By November 1874, an estimated 25,000 men were unemployed in St. Louis, almost 20 percent of adult males, while 10,000 were out of work in New York and in need of a “crust of bread” and “place to sleep.”10
By Christmas, hundreds of thousands of people were out of work, leading to mass meetings in Chicago, where agitators demanded starving laborers “combine against capital” and “resort to force.” Things were worse in rural areas that lacked soup kitchens and charities. Some Nebraskans “had nothing to eat but baked squash and pumpkin,” while others had “one meal a day, for weeks.” An estimated 10,000 Cornhuskers faced starvation. In Washington, D.C., there were reports of families living “where no food has been tasted in three or four days.” In late 1874, farmers in Piatt County, Illinois, sent four train cars of provisions to north-central Kansas, racked not only by the panic, but also by drought. Even then there was not enough food to last two weeks. “The condition of the people is fearful to contemplate,” a relief worker wrote. While the economy gradually improved, the panic did not end until 1879. It was the nation’s longest contraction, even longer than the Great Depression.11
There were many causes of the Panic of 1873, most of which had been building for years. The economy was highly leveraged. Wall Street experienced a speculative boom. Banks made too many loans to shaky ventures. Manufacturing expanded too fast, outpacing demand and creating a problem of overcapacity. Insurance companies were stretched thin with claims from large fires in Chicago (1871) and Boston (1872). A surge in railroad construction resulted in too many miles of track for too few passengers and too little cargo. World grain prices had been falling since the end of the Franco-Prussian War, for with peace came an increase in European agricultural production that ended export sales for many U.S. farmers.12
The Panic of 1873 had political repercussions. Suddenly the value and volume of money became red-hot political issues, and, as they did, new political lines and alliances were formed. Congressmen in both parties blamed the panic on deflation caused by the withdrawal of the greenbacks, which contracted the money supply. They believed more money in circulation was necessary to restore prosperity, even if that meant inflation. So in April 1874, Congress passed the Inflation Act, approving $44 million in new greenbacks. President Grant drafted a message for signing the bill, but then realized he disagreed with all he had written. To his cabinet’s surprise, he vetoed the measure. He believed one of government’s highest responsibilities was to provide a currency that held its value. That meant one that was gold-backed. The president did acknowledge that a sudden return to using only currency supported by gold “would bring bankruptcy and ruin” to debtors, and therefore he favored a gradual withdrawal of Civil War paper money. Midwest and Plains Republicans warned his veto had damaged the GOP in their increasingly soft-money regions.13
Grant’s veto also made it difficult for Republicans to avoid blame for the depression. That, along with charges of administration corruption, cost the GOP its House majority in the 1874 midterms. This led to another setback for inflationists. During the lame-duck session after the election, Republicans passed the Resumption Act, requiring the Treasury to redeem up to $300 million in greenbacks with gold starting in January 1879. This would further shrink the money supply and strengthen the dollar’s value. In a sop to inflationists, the measure also replaced the 10¢, 25¢, and 50¢ paper notes with silver coins. Grant signed it in January 1875, before Democrats took control of the House for the first time since 1858. It was now impossible for the new Democratic House to expand the money supply with greenbacks if there was a Republican president or Senate.14
In response, soft-money advocates moved away from greenbacks and toward a ready alternative. Western silver production was increasing rapidly, which made it possible to expand the money supply by coining silver dollars. This would also depreciate the currency by putting even more money in circulation, especially if the government paid for the silver by printing paper money.
This was a significant and sudden reversal in the political landscape. Before the panic, silver men had supported the 1873 Coinage Act, which demonetized the white metal. This seemingly uncontroversial reform was approved in the House by 110 to 13 and in the Senate by 36 to 14 in February, after three years of discussion. Among other provisions, it formally ended the Treasury Department’s silver purchases and silver dollar production, which had actually ceased years earlier since the white metal was scarcer and worth more than gold. Even members from Western mining states supported the bill’s passage, though it put the United States on the de facto gold standard.15
With the legislative ground shifting under them, silver advocates now had to explain their past support for the Coinage Act and, in the process, create a useful public enemy for their cause. They took to calling the Coinage Act the “Crime of ’73,” depicting it as a nefarious plot to hand control of America’s economy to British financiers and European financial houses. They argued that repealing the Coinage Act and requiring the Treasury to mint large volumes of silver dollars would expand the money supply, make cheaper money widely available, and break the money power’s grip on the economy. The Free Silver men’s arguments reflected their constituents’ anger. Typical of their rhetorical excess was Texas congressman John H. Reagan’s denunciation of the Coinage Act as “the greatest legislative crime and the most stupendous conspiracy against the welfare of the people.”16
The Major heard these charges, as Ohio quickly became a center of silver agitation. For the moment, he was personally insulated against the panic’s worst features. His family had moved into the Saxton home shortly after baby Ida’s death and he had steady rents from the office building while his law practice also grew. His father-in-law’s bank and friends needed a good lawyer in bad times.17
McKinley, now thirty-two, began a new phase of his political education, learning the politics within his own party and stepping onto a statewide stage in the 1875 Ohio governor’s race, a campaign with national implications. Democrats seized on the GOP’s last-minute passage of the Resumption Act to depict Republicans as tools of a foreign money power, indifferent to the people’s suffering. Nowhere was the battle fiercer than in Ohio, where Democrats held the governorship. Republicans were afraid that if the GOP did not win it back, the 1876 presidential race would be lost.
McKinley played a significant role in this fight as Buckeye Republicans wrote their platform and picked their gubernatorial candidate. Stark County Republicans made the Major a delegate to the state convention for the first time, and surprisingly, 17th Congressional District delegates named him their Resolutions Committee representative to help draw up the state platform.
In the Gilded Age, platforms were each party’s key election document, a formal summary of policies drafted by senior party leaders. This is what made young Mr. McKinley’s selection surprising. He was practically a kid. His presence was a sign of his growing stature in state politics and the generational change under way in the GOP.18
The famed Kansas editor and Republican activist William Allen White once observed that Ohio Republican politics “combined the virtues of the serpent, the shark and the cooing dove.” It was often fractured, rural versus urban, or between regions, sometimes over philosophical differences. The GOP front-runner for governor, Cincinnati judge Alphonso Taft, found himself with these problems as McKinley and other delegates arrived in Columbus on June 2 for their convention. Rural Republicans distrusted the big-city judge. Other delegates disliked his opposition to a court decision restoring Bible reading in public schools.19
These men clamored for Hayes. But after two terms as governor, from 1867 to 1871, Hayes understood it would be tough to win a third term and declined to run against Taft. That did not matter to McKinley and Hayes’s other friends. They were determined to nominate him anyway and did. With McKinley and his fellow Stark County delegates whipping up support, Hayes won by better than 2:1 on the first ballot.20
In his first look at statewide politics, McKinley saw how a candidate’s natural popularity was critical to victory, how party leaders paid close attention to ordinary voters’ concerns as they considered candidates and platform planks, and how, in an era of intense political competition, even state elections were fought over national issues.21
McKinley returned to Canton with increased confidence in his political skills, having impressed many new friends across the state with his customary thoroughness in helping draft the platform. It was also good to be a friend of Hayes. Soon after the Major arrived home, however, his beloved Katie developed scarlet fever and died on June 25, deepening Ida’s depression and bringing on a round of seizures. For a time, politics was not a top priority for McKinley, even as the state race heated up.22
Though governors had nothing to do with the issue, the Resumption Act dominated the campaign nationally and in Ohio. The incumbent Democrat governor, William Allen, was renominated on a platform that devoted four planks to pummeling “forced resumption” as having already “brought disaster to the business of the country,” though it would not happen until 1879. Instead of retiring greenbacks, Democrats demanded they be made legal tender for all transactions except where gold was required by contract.
On the stump, Allen blamed Republican tight-money policies for the Panic of 1873 and called for expanding the money supply for farmers, laborers, and merchants. Democratic papers joined the assault, claiming GOP hard-money policies enjoyed the “great satisfaction of the bond-holders and the moneyed classes” and denouncing Hayes as a tool of “the money power.” Banners reading NO FORCED RESUMPTION appeared at Democratic rallies.23
Hayes tackled the issue straight on, making an unapologetic case for sound money, a currency backed by gold that could be redeemed for specie upon demand. He formally opened his campaign July 31 by attacking Democrats for backing “a depreciated currency” and warned that “an inflated and irredeemable paper currency” was “the parent of panics.” Only resumption could save America’s credit. Given public sentiment and the poor economy, it was a difficult argument to make. So despite McKinley’s personal difficulties, party bigwigs pressed him to help sell the GOP’s case. The Major agreed to some appearances and spoke locally before attending rallies in battleground counties across Ohio.24
Hayes won by 5,544 votes that October, carrying Stark County in the process and teaching the Major the value of directly taking on a campaign’s big issue, something that would make the difference in his own battles. The campaign also deepened McKinley’s friendship with Hayes, who as Ohio governor was immediately the front-runner for the GOP presidential nomination the following year, which he won.25
Because McKinley had impressed party leaders with his Resolutions Committee service, made new friends, and honed his political skills, he improved his chances for the next political step—winning the GOP nomination for Congress. Despite the tragedies at home, 1876 seemed right for him to run, especially with Hayes at the top of the ticket. There was some feeling in the 17th District that the incumbent Republican congressman, Laurin D. Woodworth from Mahoning County, should not seek a third term and that after twenty years without a congressman from Stark, it was Canton’s turn.
But it was still an uphill climb for McKinley. The incumbent was a former state senator, Civil War veteran, and lawyer. Three other Canton men were running: Judge Joseph Frease, former state senator H. S. Martin, and, awkwardly, Dr. Josiah Hartzell, until recently the editor of the Repository, owned by McKinley’s father-in-law. McKinley was the youngest.26
Leaving nothing to chance, McKinley stumped in two rural counties that didn’t have a hometown favorite in the race—Columbiana and Carroll—and then gently invaded his chief opponent’s home turf. The Major demonstrated that sometimes in politics the softer sell is more powerful: he made the case for himself without attacking his fellow Republican directly. The final step to securing the nomination was building support in Stark County, which would pick its delegates to the district’s convention by popular vote. It became clear that the race was now down to two men: McKinley and Woodworth. So, as the Repository pointed out, if people wanted a “candidate from Stark County they must vote for McKinley.” When Stark voters went to the polls on August 13, McKinley carried every township except one.27
McKinley was soon nominated by acclamation at the district convention after his opponents—realizing the result was a foregone conclusion—withdrew. Most delegates departed after McKinley was nominated, but the few who remained considered a resolution urging the “restoration of the old silver dollar.” Many seemed supportive but uneasy about endorsing it, so the idea was dropped. McKinley would soon find he couldn’t ignore the silver issue so easily.28
Two weeks later, McKinley kicked off his general election campaign. In the Gilded Age, congressional contests were short, lasting from late summer through mid-October in Ohio, or through the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November for most other states. This made for busy, faster-paced campaigns. McKinley worked nearly every day but Sunday mornings. He covered the district for nearly forty days straight by train, horse, and carriage in all kinds of weather.29
His campaign—like others of the time—revolved around speeches by the candidate and surrogates, delivered at outdoor rallies, in auditoriums, or from the steps of houses, saloons, courthouses, and bandstands. Before radio or television, speeches were the main way voters judged candidates. Could they educate, inform, persuade, and even entertain? Brevity was no virtue. McKinley’s stump speech lasted an hour at the campaign’s start but grew to two hours by the end as he wove in new attacks, rebuttals, and jokes. The Major had to keep the material fresh because he spoke in most of his district’s communities several times. If he repeated his speech, voters would know.30
Party leaders focused on towns and neighborhoods with more swing voters or where turnout would drop without special attention, giving these areas more rallies and speakers targeted to local groups. German-speaking orators, for example, were a staple for both parties in the 17th District’s Dunker and Pennsylvania Dutch communities, especially since McKinley didn’t speak German and some German-Americans spoke no English.
Many people from both parties turned out when a candidate came to town, so the Major expected to be interrupted or heckled by Democrats. His response was a test. At McKinley’s first Youngstown appearance on September 21, he praised Hayes for over an hour and mauled the Democratic Party for being split over currency. New York governor Samuel J. Tilden, a hard-money man, was the Democratic presidential pick, while Indiana governor William Hendricks, a soft-money inflationist, was his running mate. Their differences had been papered over during their convention but became clear after Hendricks made indiscreet comments to reporters. After highlighting them and trashing Tilden’s record, McKinley asked the crowd, “Would you have such a man for President?” When a Democrat yelled back, “yes!” McKinley provoked laughter by genially responding that the heckler “must need reformation.”31
Campaign rallies were spectacles, a form of political fun that lasted for hours. They included rituals—parades, bands, and picnics, even glee clubs that serenaded the crowds—that involved entire communities and strengthened the link between the party and its partisans. Consider the Major’s kickoff rally September 1 in East Liverpool, an Ohio River town known for its potteries. It was in “The Wigwam,” a temporary wooden meeting hall whose sole purpose was to host political events that fall. The Hayes Club brass band paraded into the hall and played for the thousand attendees before McKinley spoke.32
Rallies often featured clubs of local party activists or supporters of a candidate who marched in homemade uniforms with handsome cloaks, hats, and insignia, carrying colorful banners with slogans or pithy insults. It was quite a sight near the 1876 campaign’s end when the two hundred uniformed men of the Salineville Hayes and Wheeler Guard escorted McKinley through town to an evening rally with flaming torches. The enthusiasm of these clubs and the vigor of their activities were important measures of the campaign’s strength. When Republican marching clubs traveled miles to hear McKinley speak in Columbiana County, a local paper admitted that “such enthusiasm has not been manifested” since the Civil War.33
Sometimes there were debates. That first election, McKinley faced his Democratic rival, Levi L. Lamborn, a physician and amateur horticulturalist. The two were friends: Lamborn would later write the definitive study of carnations. Carnations became McKinley’s favorite flower, which he took to wearing in his lapel every day.
In their one and only debate, Lamborn pummeled Republicans over currency while McKinley pled ignorance about the Free Silver resolution at the GOP district convention. The Major disliked discussing currency because he knew that the issue increasingly split his own party. Many Republican farmers with mortgages and bank loans wanted a mildly inflationary currency so they could repay their debts with depreciated dollars. So McKinley tried appeasing them by straddling the issue. This allowed Democrats to charge he was trying to appear pro-silver in front of silver men and an honest-money man when in front of gold standard supporters. They were right.34
One of the campaign’s most important activities was the canvass. Today’s campaigns use sophisticated computer microtargeting to pair the right volunteers with prospective supporters and then find out their preference by phone, online, or knocking on their front door. In 2012, both the Obama and Romney campaigns used these techniques to contact nearly a third of voters. In the Gilded Age, local party activists tallied the candidate preferences of every adult male in their neighborhood and town and reported the information to the county party, which then endeavored to have undecided or doubtful voters talked to by someone they held in confidence. Patronage employees provided some of the labor to do this, but in McKinley’s district, most campaign workers were simply volunteers who felt passionately about the GOP’s success. Many were wartime comrades from the 23rd who had returned to northeast Ohio.35
Still, the candidate’s personal character and ability to bond with voters deeply affected the outcome. McKinley’s pleasant manner, firm handshake, willingness to look everyone in the eye, respectful bearing, and approachable nature were assets in his one-on-one campaigning. While the Major spoke several times a day, he also stopped by each town’s post office and most newspaper offices, visited barbershops, mills, shops, and factories, walked up and down main streets and popped into stores, and once even accompanied a doctor on his house calls. In an election in which just over thirty thousand men voted, McKinley was seen or met by thousands of them.
On Election Day, October 10, the Major’s charm and hard work paid off as the political apprentice won the 17th Congressional District seat by a healthy margin of 3,304 votes, 51 percent to 41 percent. But his work was not finished. His reputation as a fine orator and friendship with Hayes had netted him an unusual invitation for a freshman congressman and, at thirty-four, the youngest member of Congress. The GOP’s campaign managers wanted him to open for Senator James G. Blaine at a big unity rally in Philadelphia.36
WHEN THE NEW 45TH Congress met in October 1877, McKinley was immediately thrown into a bitter two-year-old fight over currency. He would soon learn that straddling an important issue could cost him. In this instance, he let himself get into a position of being disloyal to a close friend who just happened to be the newly elected president of the United States.
Hayes (like Grant before him) faced pressure to abandon the government’s policy of using gold to withdraw greenbacks from the money supply. Also like Grant, Hayes was willing to use his veto to block legislation that would force the Treasury to stop redeeming greenbacks. So soft-money Democrats pressed the case for silver to inflate the currency. On behalf of Americans who felt crushed by hard-money policies, the silver men sought to put the United States on a bimetallic standard that used gold but also used silver in the form of new silver dollar coins.
This was a fight over fundamental principles. Both sides saw the struggle over the money supply as a fight over the nature of the country’s economy. The silver men believed this was about how to create economic opportunity for ordinary Americans struggling on farms and in factories. The gold men saw it as an existential battle over whether the country would have a strong currency of stable value, which they believed essential to growth and prosperity. The fact that this fight started in earnest during a period of prolonged economic suffering only heightened tempers of many partisans on both sides who were deeply passionate in their beliefs. There would be fire as they grappled with each other.37
At the center of this fight was the silver cause’s greatest congressional advocate. Orphaned at fourteen, Richard Parks Bland was a country lawyer in Lebanon, Missouri, who farmed and raised apples on the side. He had spent time in California, then Nevada, where he prospected and took up law and politics before returning east. Soon after his election in 1872, he became the leader of the Free Silver forces in Congress. So strong was his identification with the movement that Bland’s nickname became “Silver Dick.”38
As Mines and Mining Committee chairman, Bland introduced assorted bills putting the United States on a bimetallic standard of gold and silver, finally settling on a version providing for a silver dollar legal for all debts and transactions. Recent declines in silver prices meant these dollars would each contain 82¢ of the white metal. For two years, his bill was stalled by filibusters, forcing Bland to agree in August 1876 to a commission to study the currency issue. When the House returned in December for a lame-duck session, Bland introduced his silver dollar bill again. After hours of wrangling, the Speaker allowed a vote and it passed. It was a symbolic victory. The Senate refused to consider it before adjourning. Bland would have to start fresh in the new Congress.39
That is where matters stood when McKinley was sworn in on March 4, 1877, days after the currency committee, now dubbed the “Silver Commission,” issued its report, arguing silver’s low price resulted not from overproduction, but lack of demand from Germany dropping its silver money. Silver’s value would rise if the United States minted silver dollars. The report blamed the gold standard for “failing prices of commodities and real estate, diminishing public revenue, starving, poorly-paid, and unemployed laborers, and rapidly multiplying bankruptcies.” Prosperity required unrestricted use of silver on the same basis as gold.40
After the House reconvened in October 1877, Bland reintroduced his Free Silver bill—much to the dismay of those, such as McKinley, who preferred starting their careers on a less contentious issue. The House passed the bill in weeks by a wide bipartisan margin.41
McKinley—who in 1875 had campaigned for Hayes as a hard-money man and defended resumption and then ducked and weaved when Free Silver was raised in his own 1876 campaign—said nothing during congressional debate, then voted for Bland’s bill. So did most Ohio Republicans, including Hayes’s own congressman.42
Two weeks later, the Senate Finance Committee reported its version, amended by Iowa Republican William B. Allison, a distant cousin of the Major’s mother. Though a hard-money resumptionist, Allison was eager for a compromise that would appease the silver men without alienating currency moderates like himself.
Allison was concerned that requiring mints to purchase all the silver presented to them as Free Silver advocates demanded would transfer control of the money supply to domestic and foreign silver suppliers. So instead he proposed mints would purchase no less than $2 million and no more than $4 million of silver a month, most of America’s silver production, which would then be made into silver dollars. This would mildly inflate the currency through the paper money printed to purchase the silver. After a seventeen-hour, often-drunken debate, the Senate approved Allison’s measure on February 16, 1878, by 48 to 21, with both parties split.43
Five days later, after debating an hour, the House—including McKinley—voted 204 to 72 to concur with Allison’s compromise. Bland reluctantly accepted it but pledged, “This war shall never cease . . . until the rights of the people are fully restored and the silver dollar shall take its place alongside the gold dollar.”44
Hayes vetoed the newly christened Bland-Allison bill seven days later, arguing that using a 4121/2 grain silver dollar worth 90¢ to 92¢ as legal tender on the same basis as a gold dollar would damage America’s credit and discourage the foreign investment the United States needed to finance its debt and economy.45
The House and Senate immediately overrode Hayes’s veto. The same day it was vetoed, Bland-Allison was law. The country was on a bimetallic standard. McKinley voted to overturn his former chief’s veto, as did nine of ten Ohio Republicans. James A. Garfield—the only one to sustain Hayes—described the situation as “an epoch of madness.”46
Still, resumption went forward successfully in January 1879, as the New York offices of the U.S. Treasury paid out $135,000 in gold for notes the first day while taking in $400,000 of gold for notes, adding $265,000 to the nation’s gold reserve. The Treasury had made bankers and the public confident paper and gold were worth the same by amassing a $142 million gold reserve to buy back greenbacks.47
The combination of Bland-Allison’s passage, resumption’s success, and a recovering economy temporarily put the Free Silver issue on the congressional backburner. Until the next economic downturn, currency moderates could argue silver had been given a role, albeit as the junior partner to gold. Given their leadership on the silver issue, observers speculated that Bland and Allison would both be contenders for higher office in the future.
The same could not be said for McKinley. By voting for Bland-Allison and supporting the override of President Hayes’s veto, freshman congressman McKinley had deserted his friend and wartime commander and backed a bimetallic currency he refused to endorse in his campaign. The Major was straddling the currency issue, or worse, demonstrating he had few convictions on the subject. If he were to rise within the GOP and Congress, McKinley would have to find other issues of national importance on which to make a reputation for leadership and consistency.