After Illinois, the Combine had two chances in May to blunt McKinley’s momentum. The machine first tried enlisting Harrison. He disliked McKinley, thinking, among other things, that he was evasive on currency. So the day after Illinois, Benjamin F. Tracy, one of Platt’s closest confidants, reached out to him. “There is only one person who can stop McKinley & that person is yourself,” Harrison’s secretary of the navy wrote his former chief. “If you can prevent your state from instructing for Mck I thing [sic] you can be nominated.”1
But the former president knew it would not be that easy and dismissed the idea. “The favorite son business has been sadly overworked,” Harrison observed. “The bringing into the field of some persons whose candidacy was not regarded as sincere and the apparent attempt to take large blocks of delegates to the convention for the purpose of transferring to somebody else very naturally excited popular resentment and the benefit has accrued to Mr. McKinley.” He was right. Nor did Harrison trust the Combine. He knew what Platt thought of him.2
On the eve of the state convention, the Combine sent a coded telegram through Senator John H. Gear of Iowa to Louis T. Michener, pledging to unite behind Harrison “if Indiana would not instruct for McKinley.” Michener refused to convey the message. He understood Platt hated the former president, knew Quay was no longer for Harrison, and doubted “Allison would agree to anything of the sort” because the Iowa senator still believed he could win.3
The Combine’s scheming proved useless. In Indianapolis on May 7, the eighty-eight-year-old former navy secretary under Hayes, Richard W. Thompson, brought thousands of delegates and guests to their feet screaming, “I know McKinley, I honor McKinley, I am for McKinley.” Indiana’s thirty delegates were instructed for McKinley by almost five to one.4
The machine men’s second chance to slow the Major was in West Virginia nine days later. An uninstructed delegation would boost Senator Elkins’s chances to be VP, but he faced enormous pressure at home, where Albert B. White, a powerful GOP figure and future governor, was leading the Major’s effort. McKinley also lobbied Elkins, writing in April that “I know a simple hint from you would make it easy for the people to do what is in their hearts to do” and instruct. After Illinois, Elkins realized he could not buck the Major, so he grudgingly watched the state convention become a McKinley lovefest. Six other state conventions with 134 delegates fell to McKinley, starting in California on May 5, and including Michigan, Wyoming, and North Carolina.5
STILL, THE COMBINE MEN were given more opportunities when five more Southern and Western conventions produced sets of contesting delegations, each claiming to be the official Republicans of their states. This further scrambled the delegate picture and promised more credentials battles at the national convention.
The largely black South Carolina Republicans instructed for McKinley at their convention in April. On the delegate slate for St. Louis were former representative Robert Smalls and three black Republicans who had run for Congress, all McKinley men. However, dissatisfied Combine men bolted and organized a competing delegation falsely claiming to be McKinleyites. The South Carolina situation got more complicated a week later when the Lily White Republicans overwhelmingly defeated instruction for McKinley but adopted a resolution saying, “Either McKinley, Allison, Morton, Reed or Quay would be acceptable.” By the end, the Palmetto State had three competing delegations. Both Alabama and Arizona emerged from their conventions with two delegations apiece, and a third slate popped up in Louisiana.6
None of these was as acrimonious as the Missouri convention in mid-May, where forces loyal to Richard C. Kerens and Chauncey I. Filley battled for two days. Kerens was an early McKinley supporter and the more reasonable of the two. Filley pretended to favor McKinley even as he conspired with Platt, Quay, and Clarkson. His antics led one Combine operative to complain, “His methods are past my understanding.” McKinley worked at keeping on friendly terms with Filley while Hanna took a dislike to Old Man Filley, which grew into intense hostility.7
Delegates were locked out of St. Joseph’s Opera House for three hours as the factions wrangled behind closed doors over credentials. There was a riot when Filley men smashed their way into the hall with a battering ram. Police were required to restore order. It took until 11 p.m. for the Credentials Committee to finish. Floor fights over the platform and delegates continued until five thirty the next morning. The convention instructed for McKinley, reelected Filley state chairman, and endorsed replacing Kerens as committeeman with the Old Man. Afterward, the McKinley managers had to soothe hurt feelings on both sides, while worrying that Filley’s men on the delegation might drop McKinley and that the split could linger and hurt chances for winning Missouri in the fall.8
The Delaware convention split between a group led by former senator Anthony C. Higgins and a faction led by his archrival and former mentor, J. Edward Addicks. The two men and their followers had hated each other since Addicks conspired in 1895 with the Democratic governor to keep Higgins from winning a second U.S. Senate term. The Addicks faction elected an uninstructed delegation, while the Higgins men picked a McKinley delegation. Unsettled state delegations like Delaware’s played right into the Combine’s preference for chaos.9
McKinley also lost four conventions outright in May, but the Combine—nearly all of whom were gold standard backers—didn’t profit as these losses came in states dominated by silver supporters. Colorado, Idaho, Montana, and Nevada all sent Free Silver delegations to St. Louis, threatening a bolt if they didn’t get an acceptable silver platform or candidate. Idaho senator Fred DuBois warned, “The republicans of Idaho will not vote for any man unless he is a friend of silver,” and Colorado’s senator Henry M. Teller said, “I do not intend to support a candidate on a gold standard platform or on a platform of doubtful construction.”10
Currency was shaping up as a big problem, both for St. Louis and, ominously, the general election. The Western conventions raised the possibility that a dangerous rift was opening within the party over the money issue, which could lead to a bolt of silver Republicans in St. Louis and a broken, divided GOP heading into a tough fall election.
NOW THE FRONT-RUNNER AFTER Illinois, McKinley began taking fire. In early May, the leading Free Silver magazine, the National Bimetallist, hit him on currency for trying to “straddle the issue.” The magazine charged he told “western Republicans that he is their friend on the silver question” while allied with Senator John Sherman, who supported “gold as the standard and silver as small change.” This was a slap at the campaign’s release of a letter from Sherman to the Brooklyn Young Republicans on April 27 that said, “There can be no doubt as to the attitude of Major McKinley on the money question. He is committed in every form . . . to the republican policy of maintaining the present gold coin of the United States.” Silver coinage should be reserved “for the minor transactions of life.”11
Silver Republicans in Congress had been feisty all year, threatening to amend the party’s major tariff bill with a Free Silver provision, stalling Cleveland’s measure authorizing the issuance of gold bonds, and keeping GOP Senate leadership from passing a tariff bill designed to set up protection as the issue in the presidential campaign. Teller took responsibility for the effort, saying, “As this is a political play, we will play politics on our side.” Silver Republicans would oppose any protective tariff bill unless free coinage was included.12
By denying Republicans an election-year legislative package, Teller exposed a serious rift. Free Silver had deprived the GOP of its Senate majority. Teller had already told friends, “The demand is that we shall repudiate our financial views or go out. I will not abandon my views on finance and so I must go out not because I want to go out but because I am to be driven out.”13
The silver men turned their attention from the party at large to McKinley. In March, Senator John P. Jones of Nevada accused him of being “neither flesh, fish, nor fowl” on currency but rather “a straddler, pure and simple.” Silver Republicans, he asserted, wanted a true “gold bug” like Morton so the issue would be resolved.14
The attacks on McKinley’s integrity were so persistent that the Major responded with an open letter in the New-York Tribune on March 14. He referred to his past currency statements in the Congressional Record and said, “My official career is an open book.” This did not stop critics. The Baltimore Sun said it is “impossible to discover exactly where Ohio’s ‘favorite son’ stands in regard to the money issue.” GOP honest-money papers like the Chicago Tribune ridiculed his tangled record. So did Democratic papers like the Austin Statesman, which said, “McKinley’s heart is too big for any one currency. He loves them all, gold, silver and money.”15
In early April, Jones’s Nevada colleague, Senator William Stewart, released a curt letter to McKinley. “Are you for the gold standard . . . or are you for the restoration of the bimetallic laws as they existed in this country previous to 1873?” The senator demanded a response, saying, “Neither silence nor an evasive answer will exonerate you from an attempt to deceive somebody.” The Major did not reply, but the issue was not going away. Later that month, Stewart reiterated his demand and pointed to Sherman’s recent comments that McKinley supported “the present gold coin” while McKinley’s Western supporters “claim that you are in favor of the free and unlimited coinage of silver at the ratio of 16 to 1.” “Will you define your position or will you continue to hold out hopes to both sides one or the other of which you must disappoint after the election?” Again, McKinley ignored him.16
Despite the Major’s silence, the silver issue drew attention at GOP state conventions, and not just the ones held in Western mining states. Free Silver had been raised in Indiana, Michigan, and Washington State, where all three GOP conventions backed a bimetallic currency. Tar Heel Republicans went further, calling for more greenbacks as well. The McKinley managers dropped an honest-money plank in West Virginia so as not to offend the Major’s many local silver supporters. A substantial silver minority in Minnesota led by a popular young Republican, former representative John Lind, had nearly won a platform fight. The Kansas convention had almost split, with a silver man urging delegates to “make a platform of its own, without the aid or consent of the East. . . . We know what we want. Let us say so.”17
Once the state conventions concluded, McKinley’s campaign mailed circulars to anyone who wrote him about currency. It said he was running on his record and making no promises about policy or appointments. A sheet of quotes from speeches and editorials accompanied the letter and declared “McKinley for sound money. His Congressional record and success prove this. The Republican party stands opposed to the unlimited coinage of silver under existing conditions.” It said McKinley believed, “Whatever dollars we have . . . must be good dollars—worth one hundred cents, whether it be gold, silver, or paper.” The circular included endorsements affirming McKinley was for sound money. Doubts lingered among honest-money men, but more troubling, the document’s release hardened silver Republicans’ opposition to McKinley. Silver would soon cause trouble for the GOP.18
DAWES TRAVELED TO CLEVELAND for lunch with Hanna in May. While they were savoring their Illinois win, the papers were filled with a full-scale attack by Platt, who thought he could salvage a victory in St. Louis if he raised enough doubts about McKinley. Platt told the press McKinley “will get the Republican party into turmoil and trouble.” He was not “well-balanced” like Morton; not “great” like Reed; not “trained and educated” like Allison; and not “an astute political leader” like Quay. He was “too amiable and much too impressionable to be safely entrusted with great executive office,” Platt sniffed.19
He belittled McKinley’s signature achievement. McKinley was not responsible for the tariff law that bore his name; Representative Nelson Dingley Jr. and Senator Nelson Aldrich had done the hard work. While Republicans wanted higher tariffs, they didn’t want McKinley’s “radical and extreme view.” Then Platt focused on the currency issue. “If Major McKinley has any real convictions on the subject, they are not revealed in his votes or his speeches.” Platt charged that the Ohio platform plank on currency—which it was rumored McKinley had drafted—showed the Major was unreliable on the financial question for it proposed “another experiment in silver coinage.” Platt was no dummy. As long as the convention was about McKinley versus the field of Reed, Allison, and the remaining favorite sons, the Major was likely to prevail.20
To win, Platt knew he must reframe the debate from one about personalities to one about an idea, in this instance, the gold standard. While McKinley was a straddler who wanted to avoid the issue so as to not offend the silverites, Platt knew that most national convention delegates were gold men. He wanted them to consider who would advance their views. It was a long shot, but Platt would now do everything he could to depict McKinley as untrustworthy on gold and, as a result, unworthy of the loyalty so many delegates felt toward him. Like the Bimetallic DNC men, Platt sought to stress principle first, candidate a distant second.
Three days later, Platt hit hard again at McKinley’s currency views. McKinley was unreliable on gold, the Easy Boss asserted, and prone to “crazy schemes to make money out of all sorts of paper resting on all sorts of security.” He accused the Major’s handlers of using bribes of money and patronage promises to win delegates, ridiculing McKinley’s anti-boss reform stance as “one of the most contemptible humbugs that has characterized his canvass.”
Platt also assaulted McKinley’s character, but tied it to his new strategy, saying the Major handled the financial issue “not from settled principles and convictions, but in accordance with what he considered at the time to be popular.” Platt’s attacks would continue until the convention, and they had the potential to resonate. Many business-oriented Republicans in the East were concerned about the Major’s currency views already.21
Friday, the Sun published a lengthy analysis of McKinley’s congressional record on the money question, accompanied by a front-page poem titled “The Straddle Bug.”
My words have been for silver,
My silence stood for gold,
And Thus I show the teaching
Of some great sage of old.
And if there is a question
As to just what I meant,
I’ll answer that quite fully—
When I am President!22
The Nation feared McKinley’s platform would endorse bimetallism. “No one doubts that McKinley would stand on any kind of a platform offered him,” its editors charged, urging that a gold platform be forced on him in St. Louis. Without it, the Republicans would lose the Northeast. That assumed, however, there would be a gold Democrat nominee.23
Other opponents of McKinley sensed Platt’s attacks were hurting McKinley and could be an opportunity to galvanize opposition to him. Michener reported to Harrison that there was a growing sentiment “that McKinley cannot be trusted on the financial question.”24
Finally engaged, Reed joined the assault, saying that one of McKinley’s slogans, “Advance Agent of Prosperity,” reminded him of circus performers from his childhood. “It never came up to the show-bills,” Reed said, “but there was always at least one first-class acrobat who rode two horses at once.” If that wasn’t clear enough, the Nation’s editors thundered, “The McKinley canvass has been a country-circus advertising dodge from the start.” Reed had a sharper dig, saying, “McKinley isn’t a gold bug, McKinley isn’t a silver-bug. McKinley’s a straddle-bug.”25
PLATT’S ONSLAUGHT, HOWEVER, DID not cause a fellow Combine leader to fight harder. Instead, Matthew S. Quay decided to throw in the towel. McKinley was likely to win and it was time to begin unifying the party. Quay now undercut his Combine partners. He suggested Platt tone down his anti-McKinley rhetoric, and then invited him to Washington so he could tell him in person that he would go at McKinley’s invitation to Canton. There, Quay would make peace.
On May 20, McKinley’s confidant and his campaign’s resident troublemaker, Ohio representative Charles H. Grosvenor, spilled the beans about the meeting, and the press descended on Quay. He was restrained, explained he was going because he had received “a polite invitation,” and refused further comment.26
Though Quay had informed the Combine about McKinley’s invitation, still Clarkson met with Quay and reported to Platt. Hanna was not consulted. Quay thought McKinley would win and saw the invitation as McKinley’s “desire for conference on a friendly line” to the Combine. Clarkson had advised Quay to demand McKinley respect the “interests and rights” of Platt “before anyone’s [sic] else” in New York. Quay agreed and wanted Platt to “understand that he would protect him . . . as he would protect himself.”27
McKinley was waiting on the platform when Quay arrived at 10:26 a.m. on May 22, and personally drove him to his home, where they met for several hours. Then he and Quay returned to the depot in McKinley’s carriage, shook hands, and exchanged good-byes before Quay boarded the 1:21 p.m. eastbound. Reporters groused that neither man would “give an inkling of what was said.” Quay was only slightly less guarded on the ride home, saying, “We have had a very pleasant and satisfactory interview.” To discourage further conversation, he discussed potato prices and refused more questions, saying, “I am corked up tighter than sealing wax.”28
While “details of their meeting were left to speculation,” the Washington Star suggested Quay had visited McKinley to acknowledge “the supremacy of the Ohio man.” Quay had allegedly told party leaders before going to Canton that “I fear we shall have to accept McKinley, not because we want him, but because the people do.” If true, it would make sense that he wanted to make peace with the likely nominee.
One historian says it is reasonable to infer that Quay promised not to make any last-ditch effort against McKinley in return for a promise by the latter not to meddle further in Pennsylvania. Quay’s biographer suggests another goal “was to repair the McKinley-Platt relationship,” but speculates he was unsuccessful, as McKinley parried his advice to summon Platt to Canton, “saying Platt was welcome at any time, but that he would not ask him to come.”29
Reluctant to quit, Platt sent a lieutenant, J. Sloat Fassett, to get the full story from Quay. Fassett reported the senator was satisfied McKinley had at least 470 delegates, more than enough to win, and “was unwilling to divulge what had taken place between himself and McKinley,” Fassett wrote in a letter to the Easy Boss. “He said that no agreement had been entered into which would militate against the agreements which have heretofore been made between you and him.”
Quay’s estimate was conservative: his state-by-state summary shows he underestimated McKinley’s strength in the South (especially Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, and Virginia), overestimated the staying power of favorite sons in New York and Kentucky, and assumed the Combine would still control credentials through the RNC.
Fassett reported that Quay preferred Pennsylvania governor Daniel Hastings to be vice president (which would remove a political rival), but thought McKinley’s team appeared to be leaning to Reed, who Quay believed “would not consent.” Quay had also sought more to place Platt “in touch and in communications with Hanna and McKinley than to accomplish any definite or particular point,” Fassett wrote. Quay’s judgment was “the second place would go pretty nearly wherever the New York delegation wanted it to go.” It was also the Pennsylvanian’s impression that “the attitude of McKinley’s mind toward you was not imbittered [sic] nor hostile; that he appreciated that you were carrying on a game of politics for the nomination of a man closer to you.”30
Fassett’s secondhand account was not enough for Platt. He made a quick trip to Washington on May 30 to visit with Quay personally, and returned to New York the next morning after trying to convince Quay to remain Pennsylvania’s favorite son. Quay agreed but saw no way to beat McKinley. By June 1, he was telling reporters that McKinley had 479 votes, 19 more than needed for the nomination.31
HANNA AND HIS TEAM were already in St. Louis, holding late-night sessions in smoke-filled back rooms dealing with critical issues that would shape the convention’s outcome and, whether they knew it or not, deeply affect the general election. One of those issues was currency. As they did, Roosevelt wrote to Lodge on June 10, hoping the convention would approve a “most vigorous” currency plank that opposed Free Silver and endorsed the gold standard. Teddy believed this was good policy and good politics, writing, “A straddle will gain absolutely nothing . . . If we assume a timid, halting, negative position I fear we shall get whipped.”32
Roosevelt was more candid with his sister. “McKinley, whose firmness I utterly distrust, will undoubtedly be nominated, and this in itself I much regret,” he wrote, “but what I now fear is some effort to straddle the finance issue. Such a move would be bad politically, not to speak of its being disastrous to the nation.” An “open fight should be made against” Free Silver, both for “party expediency and from the standpoint of public morality.”33