As Republican delegates gathered in St. Louis, there was still a chance the nomination could slip out of McKinley’s grasp. He had won a series of victories against the Combine—some in unexpected places—and delegates instructed to vote for him outnumbered the delegates of any other candidate. But there were at least two battles left. One was over the many challenges between competing delegations.
To be seated, delegates needed the Republican National Committee to accept their credentials. This year, the RNC faced the largest number of credentials challenges in the party’s history, with at least 141 of the 924 delegates contested. If these challenges were won by the Combine and the delegates added to Platt’s New York and Quay’s Pennsylvania totals, the Combine would have two-thirds of the votes it needed to pick the party’s nominee—even before turning to the bosses’ friends in a dozen other states. Each challenge would be decided by the fifty-one-member RNC. Both sides were eager to find out who really had a majority there.
MCKINLEY’S MANAGERS LEFT LITTLE to chance. Even as Hanna met with key lieutenants in Cleveland and then in Canton with the Major before heading to the convention, former Ohio congressman and Judge Albert C. Thompson and Grosvenor arrived in St. Louis to take the lead on credentials with testimony and affidavits for each challenge.1
The Combine’s credentials defense, however, suddenly became a disaster. Clarkson had been preparing briefs for each contest but became critically ill on the train from New York to St. Louis. Bedridden in a Philadelphia hotel, he would not make the convention on which he had worked more than a year. A ragtag group hastily replaced him, but they were ill-prepared.2
The rest of the McKinley high command arrived in St. Louis on Wednesday, June 10, after working through the night in Hanna’s special train car, reviewing notebooks on each delegate and alternate, whom they were for and whether they were instructed, along with summaries for each credentials contest. Hanna checked into St. Louis’s Southern Hotel and plunged into meetings. The campaign’s suite was decorated with a mural of four reclining female figures with a fifth woman standing, brandishing a drawn sword and a shield labeled “protection.” The painting was an odd choice for a political headquarters.3
GOP national chairman Thomas Carter of Montana presided as the RNC began credentials hearings in the Southern Hotel’s Ladies Parlor. A Catholic bookseller-turned-lawyer, Senator Carter had an impressive long, gray patriarchal beard.4
The first vote, a Combine challenge to the at-large Alabama delegates, was a test vote. After lengthy arguments, Arkansas’s Powell Clayton moved to seat McKinley’s four delegates and Senator John H. Gear, Clarkson’s proxy, offered a substitute to seat the Combine delegation. Idaho senator George Shoup then moved that all eight contestants be given half a vote each. When the vote was tallied, Shoup’s motion lost 38 to 7, a crushing blow to the Combine. The machine men were dumbfounded: McKinley’s men had complete control of the RNC. By the time the meeting adjourned at 10:30 p.m., McKinley’s men had won 14 contests in Alabama and Georgia and Reed, 2.5
The first day’s hearing left Reed’s manager Joseph Manley and Connecticut committeeman and House Speaker Samuel C. Fessenden, both Combine men, bewildered. They had not expected the Major’s men to be so numerous and well prepared. The McKinley men’s control was so complete that they even gave the Combine men the occasional seat, if the merits justified it. After the RNC meeting, a reporter overheard Manley say to Fessenden, “Well, I’ll be jammed if I ever saw anything like this,” to which the Connecticut House Speaker replied, “There never was anything like it.”6
Cornered by the press, Manley blurted out, “The convention will nominate Gov. McKinley on the first ballot for the Presidency. It is useless to attempt to deny this will be the result.” McKinley controlled the RNC and hence credentials and the convention. That was “settled conclusively” by “the overwhelming vote” on Alabama. Reed would decline to run for vice president.7
Word that Reed’s manager had ended his bid without even talking to the candidate spread quickly. When Manley later walked past Fessenden at dinner, the Connecticut Speaker spat at him, “Joe, the Almighty God hates a quitter. I have been a soldier in actual war, and am a faithful soldier of Reed now, but my general has deserted.” After receiving the news of the betrayal, Reed wired Lodge that “Manley’s conduct is too disgusting to characterize.” Others labeled Manley a traitor. He apologized to Reed, saying, “It was a great mistake and I shall regret it the rest of my life,” but the damage was done.8
THE COMBINE COULD STILL make gains, depending on how the rest of the credentials challenges played out. If McKinley’s men were seen as too unfair, the majority of the convention could vote to overrule the RNC. What’s more, most of those vying to win their credentials fights were loyal soldiers in someone’s political army, and many were politically powerful themselves. Ignoring that or callously discarding a bloc of delegates could create problems for McKinley, now or later. So the Combine knew what it was doing Thursday when it accused the Major’s forces of “fraud and bribery” after the RNC decided for McKinley in credentials challenges in Alabama and Kentucky and all but two of nine seats up in Florida and Georgia.9
And the McKinley men knew what they were doing, too, when they let the Combine’s men make their case for being seated. Sometimes no one could undermine the Combine’s credibility better than the machine’s own men. For example, Mississippi’s battle pitted James Hill and John R. Lynch, two veteran black Republican leaders, against each other over four at-large delegate seats. Hill was the state’s committeeman and a McKinley loyalist. With small oval glasses, long flowing hair, and bushy muttonchops, and brandishing a cane, he made a passionate case for his delegation. Things became so heated with shouted slurs and violent threats that Carter threw Hill, Lynch, and state chairman L. B. Moseley out of the room. This was followed by a unanimous vote for Hill and the McKinley men. The Combine was so embarrassed, they did not support the men they had bankrolled.10
The McKinley camp then overreached by trying to reconsider a Florida seat already awarded to Reed. The New York committeeman, William A. Sutherland, protested and Ohio’s Hahn insulted him about “methods employed in New York that were not open and above suspicion.” Cooler heads prevailed and reconsideration was defeated. It was a foolish move that could have jeopardized the Major’s gains.
In many cases, the outcome of a credentials fight depended upon personal considerations. For example, a few days before the convention, Missouri’s Filley forced the McKinley camp into damage control by saying the Major would not win on the first ballot. The remark raised questions about the undependable Old Man. So when a Missouri credentials challenged reached the RNC on Thursday, the committee replaced two Filley men in Missouri’s 12th District with Kerens men. All four contestants were pledged to McKinley, but this gave Kerens a clear majority in the delegation, guaranteeing his reelection as committeeman. Filley was furious.11
By the end of its second day, the RNC had seated twenty-two additional McKinley men and two more Combine delegates. Platt arrived in the city in a bad humor as the committee broke. The Combine leader was painfully aware he had been outorganized, outprepared, and outflanked on credentials. Platt denounced the RNC’s actions as “arbitrary and unfair,” complaining, “The only question which appears to have had weight in the proceedings . . . was whether the contestants were for or against McKinley.” Combine leaders were used to being in charge, not being soundly whipped. Platt threatened that the remaining sixty Empire State delegates would bolt the convention if challenges to twelve New York delegates went against him. Afterward, someone described as “very close to McKinley” dismissed New York’s threats to bolt, saying, “Let them.” It sounded like Hanna, who now intensely disliked Platt. Wyoming’s Carey urged caution. As the biggest battleground state, New York was critical to victory.12
Platt’s angry talk encouraged some of the Combine’s men, but still the machine’s headquarters felt like “a funeral.” The tall, thin, stooped, “sallow-faced” Platt “seemed tired and worn,” and his problems were just beginning. The McKinley camp undercut Morton’s presidential candidacy by floating him as a running mate, leaving Platt sounding rattled when he said he did not regard Morton’s case “as hopeless by any means.”13
Friday, Platt softened his tone after meeting with Quay, saying he was asking only that the New York challenges be decided “upon their merits.” A Platt lieutenant was not as restrained, saying of Hanna, “No iron man from Cleveland can run the Republican party of New York State.”14
By Friday, June 12, with 106 challenges still left to consider, the RNC finally tackled one of the most dramatic, Delaware. The two warring camps, bitter and angry, spilled into the parlor several hours later and sat in a semicircle of chairs facing the committee and went at each other. The group led by former senator Anthony Higgins was for McKinley; the other faction, led by J. Edward Addicks, a wealthy owner of gas utilities and aspiring senator-to-be, was for Quay. Higgins denounced Addicks as the leader of a criminal conspiracy “against law and honor,” and called him “a political bandit” who had used bribery to control the state convention. An ally, Washington Hastings, shook his finger at Addicks while denouncing him as “governed by a base and selfish ambition.”15
Caleb B. Taylor delivered the Combine’s response, insulting Higgins by calling him an ingrate. Addicks also spoke, claiming he had been victimized because he’d busted up the worst criminal ring the GOP had ever seen. “I made Higgins Senator,” he said, “then I whipped him because he was a wart on the Republican body politic.” Neither Taylor nor Addicks denied a bribery charge leveled by the Higgins side.
In his reply, Higgins refused to say Addicks’s name, calling him “that creature” and saying he showed himself to be “the moral idiot that everyone in Delaware knew he was.” Vermont senator Redfield Proctor then accused Addicks of conspiring in 1895 with Delaware’s Democratic governor to stop the Republican legislature from electing a U.S. senator when the GOP was one shy of the majority in the Senate. The seat was still vacant. Neither side looked good, so after two hours, the RNC washed its hands by referring the controversy to the convention by 41 to 9.16
Saturday morning, the committee rapidly seated McKinley men in Tennessee and South Carolina, then took up the three-cornered affair in Texas, immediately ruling out the Lily Whites, leaving their decision between the Reed/Allison group, led by Norris Wright Cuney, and John Grant’s McKinleyites. Cuney’s side argued he was lawfully elected temporary chairman. Grant’s side responded that Cuney won only “by circulating the report that Dr. Grant had said no colored man should be made chairman” and attacked Cuney for refusing to take roll call votes and pointed out that of 901 delegates, 641 had remained amid the debris of the riotous Austin convention after Cuney departed.17
Despite Cuney’s many long-standing friendships on the committee, his claim went down 17 to 23. Fessenden then moved to refer Texas’s statewide delegates to the convention. In a victory for the Combine, he prevailed by 27 to 20, probably because some of Cuney’s longtime friends on the committee felt guilty. Still, all McKinley’s district delegates were seated, in part because Cuney made threats against the committee that weren’t well received.18
With the New York contests coming and tensions rising between Platt and Hanna, Foraker urged the McKinley camp not to confront Platt but to “let him down as easily as possible and not attempt to break up his State.” Hanna refused the good advice, saying, “As Mr. Platt has gone in for a fight, he must take his chances.” Grosvenor called conciliating the Easy Boss “nonsensical.” Since Platt was “honestly defeated,” he should “take the same medicine that he has himself administered to those who opposed him in New York.” Such statements were shortsighted. The McKinley men would need the Easy Boss’s help in the fall.19
The RNC took up the long-anticipated Empire State contests late Saturday night. So many New Yorkers crowded into the parlor that some had to be thrown out. Platt won the first three contests when the anti-Platt men withdrew their challenges or didn’t show up. Hanna was “thunderstruck,” but he shouldn’t have been. The would-be McKinley delegates had to deal with the Easy Boss back home and he could threaten rebelling New Yorkers in ways Hanna might not comprehend. The RNC battled over seven other contests until late into the evening.
It was after midnight by the time New York’s 12th District was taken up. John S. Wise, a brilliant lawyer who had been elected to the U.S. House in his native Virginia in 1884 and served with McKinley, represented the Major’s men, former RNC treasurer Cornelius N. Bliss and New York City park commissioner S. V. R. Cruger. Congressman Lemuel E. Quigg made the case for Platt’s side. He and Wise went at it, with New York’s Sutherland, Senator Thurston, and other RNC members lobbing questions. Pointing at Bliss, Edward Lauterbach warned the GOP must “be on guard against these rich men.” Wise then introduced affidavits from a majority of the district’s delegates affirming they had voted for Bliss and Cruger. Sutherland’s motion to seat the Platt men was defeated. Hahn’s motion to seat all four men with half a vote each—a conciliatory gesture—was adopted 27 to 23. It was now the middle of the night and in between votes RNC committeemen were dozing in corners or sprawled on a table behind Carter.20
After McKinley men were—surprisingly—seated by unanimous vote in New York’s 13th, a Manhattan silk stocking district, the RNC took up a contentious dispute in New York’s 15th District. It was 2:35 a.m. and the McKinley men were seated by 28 to 16 despite Quigg’s best efforts and energetic remarks by Lauterbach. Platt’s cause was not helped by Lauterbach’s comments earlier in the day that the RNC was bent on “grand larceny.”21
After all the personal attacks and vitriol, Platt won six out of the ten New York challenges. Still, he dismissed the national committee’s action as “an outrage on decency.” An ally warned that if McKinley was nominated, “the gentlemen who are now so loud in their declaration that they can do without New-York will be on their knees to Mr. Platt.”22
Well-prepared and with surprising strength on the RNC, the McKinley forces had prevailed in credentials challenges on 120 of their delegates while their opponents won 21. To win now, the Combine would have to overturn the decisions favorable to McKinley on the convention floor or find an issue that would persuade enough of the Major’s men to defect. The former seemed unlikely given the fairness of the credentials process, but the latter was nearer at hand for the Combine than the McKinley men understood.
EVEN AS CREDENTIALS GROUND to a finish, there was a fight brewing over the party’s currency plank that could split the GOP and put at risk the Major’s general election chances. The dispute was not easy to resolve. Both silver and gold men were firing at McKinley, enraged at his desire to focus on protection and ignore the money question. When pressed, McKinley offered platitudes. He was for gold, silver, and paper, all “as sound as the government and as untarnished as its honor,” as he had written in the Ohio platform. He opposed free coinage but backed an international bimetallic agreement—which was unlikely—to set the ratio between gold and silver. In the meantime, he supported “the present standard,” which meant gold. With so many evasions and buzzwords, McKinley looked like a straddler.23
Herrick believed that until the convention, McKinley felt his position was “vague enough to please the Eastern men without offending those from the West.” There was reason for such a strategy. McKinley wanted the votes of states like Michigan and Kansas where silver was popular. As Charles Dick explained, the McKinley managers sensed “a strong silver sentiment” among many Republicans that the Major’s men “did not care to antagonize.” Hanna believed supporting the gold standard could lose McKinley the nomination, and if McKinley didn’t straddle, silver men could revolt. But McKinley wasn’t going to get off that easy, as he had seen while under the attacks of newspapers and Platt following his Illinois win. His gold adversaries in the Combine would no longer let him straddle.24
Platt was correct in thinking there was strong support for gold among the delegates. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that as many as 651 delegates were pro-gold, 87 pro-silver, and 180 with unknown views. Though not many state conventions had endorsed gold, there was a clear gold majority in St. Louis.25
McKinley’s press chief, Perry Heath, downplayed the issue when he arrived in St. Louis, saying that only four states would insist on gold. He was wrong. And Grosvenor was half right when he suggested gold bugs had no place to go, while silver bimetallists might defect if the GOP endorsed gold monometallism.26
Senator Teller weighed in Saturday night, telling reporters that only a clear declaration for silver was acceptable. He would not support a gold candidate on a gold platform or “a platform of doubtful import.” If McKinley were nominated on a straddle, “all the tariff in the world won’t help . . . without free and unlimited coinage of silver.”27
Teller didn’t know that before Hanna left for St. Louis, McKinley had given Hanna a draft currency plank that was a complete straddle. It called for “maintaining all the money of the United States whether gold, silver or paper at par with the best money in the world and up to the standard of the most enlightened governments.” Further, the proposed plank said that while Republicans welcomed “bimetallism based upon an international ratio,” until that treaty could be negotiated, it was the country’s “plain duty” to “maintain our present standard.” Also, the plank opposed “the free and unlimited coinage of silver at sixteen to one.”28
Debate about the currency plank grew heated as more delegates arrived. Silver men preferred using the Ohio or Indiana GOP platform “as a beginning,” then bending its language toward the white metal. But the gold men were beyond compromise. Platt told reporters, “I am for a gold standard platform and opposed to the Ohio idea,” which “may be interpreted one way in the East and another way in the West. It is not satisfactory in the East.” Platt received help on the currency issue as the New York Times called McKinley guilty of “contemptible evasions and cowardly paltering.” Quay also chimed in: “I hope the money plank will be gold in good, strong, cold terms.”29
Although Senator Lodge had been an international bimetallist until a visit to Europe the previous year, when he saw how unlikely a global agreement was, he now strongly favored the gold standard and threw the Reed forces into the fight, telling the Massachusetts RNC committeeman to go to war for a gold plank.30
Yellow metal supporters pressed the McKinley managers all week until Hanna finally admitted “this platform business is the most embarrassing question” he faced. He had fifteen draft currency planks “from free silver to gold monometallism,” prepared by “all kinds of people, from cranks to newspaper editors.” It was now clear to Hanna that a straddle would not do.31
Late Friday, he, Herrick, Merriam, Wisconsin RNC committeeman Henry Payne, Senator Proctor, and Associated Press general manager Melville E. Stone met to discuss language at the McKinley suite at the Southern. Party leaders and supporters of the Major were shuttled in and out all evening. Kohlsaat showed up at ten, uninvited, direct from the depot.32
The McKinley men argued about the word gold until 3 a.m., when they finally agreed to use it. Herrick showed Clay Evans a penciled rough draft with the word in it and Kohlsaat later claimed Hanna said to him, “Are you satisfied now, you damned crank?” Stone then used the long-distance line to McKinley’s home to read the proposed plank to the Major, who asked if his team was in agreement. Told yes, McKinley “reluctantly . . . acquiesced” and requested a phrase pledging the party to work for the international agreement.33
The next morning, Hanna told visitors it would be a clear-cut gold plank. Robert Patterson, manager of the Chicago Tribune and Illinois’s Resolutions Committee member, emerged from a meeting with Hanna and pronounced himself “content.” “I can at least say that the money plank of our platform will declare for the gold standard.”34
Yet all weekend the McKinley leaders continued straddling. Hanna gave Foraker a draft to show Resolutions Committee members who supported “the present standard” and Alger told reporters the platform should “convey to the friends of sound money the conviction that the party is opposed to the free coinage of silver” yet at the same time “not antagonize those who have silver leanings.” But silver men were irreconcilable. On Sunday, Senator Henry M. Teller told the press the mountain West would bolt unless the convention endorsed Free Silver.35
In the face of the McKinley managers’ attempt to straddle and Foraker’s insipid draft, Platt held a meeting Sunday night in his suite with party leaders including Lodge, Manley, Fessenden, and Quay. They agreed on a counterproposal: “We favor the maintenance of the existing gold standard, and are opposed to the free coinage of silver except by international agreement for bimetallism with the leading commercial nations of the world.”36
Lodge and former Massachusetts governor Eben S. Draper then called on Hanna, who was “not prepared to surrender.” He had drafts that had a similar sentiment without using the word gold, but the Combine and its allies insisted on the word. Only silver Republicans would be put off by it and they were lost already. Hanna appeared unconvinced.37
Platt, Lodge, and the Combine prepared for a fight by lining up sound-money delegates from the Northeast plus others from Illinois, Minnesota, Tennessee, Washington State, and Wisconsin. Agents were sent to states that had declared for gold. Filley, for example, worked Maryland, making his dislike of Hanna known there. Within twenty-four hours, Platt had a list of more than 500 delegates supporting gold, a majority of the convention.38
Lodge and Hanna ran into each other Monday morning. “How is the most unreasonable man in St. Louis?” inquired Hanna. “I am not unreasonable,” Lodge replied. “So long as the engine is painted red I do not care what color you paint it.” Lodge took Hanna’s genial tone to mean he understood the gold bugs had the votes on the currency plank. Sometime that day, Representative Lemuel E. Quigg told Grosvenor, Herrick, and Merriam of the coming floor fight and learned “there was a disposition to meet the views” of the gold forces. Monday afternoon, after a majority of delegations declared for a gold plank in their state meetings, Lodge issued a statement: “We have won the fight. Gold is the victor. The Committee on Resolutions will declare for the gold standard, and that declaration will be adopted by the convention.”39
Foraker had named a subcommittee on the currency plank of seven gold and one silver man—Teller. This would not have happened were the McKinley camp still against using the word gold. As the subcommittee began work that night, the McKinley managers publicly capitulated. Merriam called on Platt, and Kohlsaat visited Lodge to officially concede to inserting the word gold into the platform.40
The currency plank subcommittee heard from Teller, who offered several silver planks, all rejected 8 to 1. Then in an empty upstairs hallway of the Planter’s Hotel, away from crowds and prying ears, the subcommittee members tinkered with the McKinley camp’s draft and settled on the language, saying the GOP was “opposed to the free coinage of silver except of international agreement with the leading commercial nations of the world, and until such agreement can be obtained the existing gold standard must be preserved.” Lodge later said it “was not written by any one man,” a view Foraker shared, describing it as “a mere expression of a common sentiment.” Almost as an afterthought, Lodge suggested inserting “which we pledge ourselves to promote” after “international agreement,” unintentionally echoing McKinley’s comment to Stone in the middle of the night Friday. The Resolutions Committee adopted the plank 41 to 10.41
MCKINLEY HAD RUN BY offering a straddle on the money question, but endorsed gold at the convention. If he had done so early in the primary season, it might have cost him delegates, but to endorse gold on the convention’s eve reconciled the Combine’s gold bugs and helped energize the party. Some allies tried to give him the credit, with the New-York Tribune writing, “The platform will be just what everybody who has not been blinded by malignant hate of McKinley has known all along it would be.” But that was not true. McKinley had preferred a straddle and even now he wanted to ignore currency to focus on protection.42
But why did the McKinley men keep pressing for a straddle until Monday night when they had decided on Friday to cave? Perhaps it was Hanna’s pique with Platt. More likely, the McKinley managers knew there would be a fight on something. They would rather spar with the Combine over currency than fight over a running mate or a plank McKinley really cared about, such as protection.
The man who successfully pressured McKinley to accept a gold plank was Platt, who called it “the greatest achievement of my political career.” He was deluged by praise. One businessman wrote that the Easy Boss had won “more glory and honor . . . than if you had named a President.” Even the New York Times, normally critical of Platt, praised “the full great and good work he has done.” Platt was probably pleased when the Times dismissed McKinley as “nerveless” and “timid and weak-kneed.”43