Mark Hanna

Mark Hanna (Marcus Alonzo Hanna) (September 2], 1837 – February 15, 1904) was a leader of the Republican party who rose to fame as the campaign manager of the successful Republican Presidential candidate William McKinley in the realigning Presidential election of 1896, in the first modern political campaign. He became one of the most powerful members of the U.S. Senate, supporting McKinley and harnony between capital and labor.

Early life

Hanna was born of Scotch-Irish Quaker stock in New Lisbon, Ohio, where his father Leonard was a country physician, Leonard Hanna who brought the family to the boom town of Cleveland, Ohio in 1852 and prospered in the grocery business. Mark attended the Cleveland Central High School, where he knew the young John D. Rockefeller and briefly attended Western Reserve College. After working for his father's grocery business, the young Hanna tried his hand in numerous business ventures, mostly without luck. He served briefly as a quartermaster in the U.S. Army during the Civil War; he remained a lifelong activist in veterans' organizations. (It is not true that he was awarded the Medal of Honor--that was an unrelated Marcus Hanna.) After 1867 he became rich as a shipper and broker serving the coal and iron industries. Cleveland was emerging as a major transhipping point between the Great Lakes ore deposits and the mills of eastern Ohio and western Pennsylvania, and Hanna loved making deals and bargains on a daily basis over a wide range of products and services. Hanna was one of the few industrialists fascinated less by profits than by the outdoor spectacle and indoor bargaining of politics.

He was a long time member of St. John's Episcopal Church in Cleveland.

Manager of campaigns

Shoemaker (1992) shows during the 1870s and 1880s Hanna was one of several Midwestern Republicans who shifted their local and state parties from a focus on social issues like prohibition to economic issues. Hanna made the Ohio GOP an instrument for government promotion and protection of business in the 1890s. Hanna was a major advocate of the "Commonwealth Idea," a Hamiltonian Whiggish political philosophy which encouraged direct government action to speed up economic modernization and benefit the general interest.

Hanna made a transition into politics during the 1880s and in 1888, he managed Ohio Senator John Sherman's unsuccessful effort to gain the Republican presidential nomination. Rep. William McKinley had tried unsuccessfully to win the position of Speaker of the House in 1891, losing to Maine Rep. Thomas B. Reed who was backed by Theodore Roosevelt. McKinley then turned his attentions to running for Governor of Ohio. Hanna helped McKinley win the 1891 and 1893 elections for Governor of Ohio and became his chief advisor.

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1896 Davenport cartoon of Mark Hanna as slave driver, from William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal

McKinley's only competition for the Republican nomination in 1896 was Speaker Reed. After Hanna attended a speech Reed gave in Washington, he realized that Reed lacked the presidential appearance or stature McKinley possessed. McKinley won the 1896 Republican nomination for president, Hanna, as Chairman of the Republican National Committee, raised an unprecedented $3.5 million for McKinley's campaign for the gold standard, high tariffs, high wages, pluralism and renewed prosperity. Most of the money came from corporations who feared that William Jennings Bryan's more radical Free Silver policy would ruin the entire economy. By October the Democrats realized they were losing on the money issue and targeted Hanna as the arch-villain who threatened to put corporate interests ahead of the national interest. As McKinley was highly likeable, Hanna became a target of Bryanites, especially William Randolph Hearst and his New York Journal.

Hanna's campaign employed 1,400 people, who concentrated a flood of pamphlets, leaflets, posters, and stump speakers. McKinley defeated Bryan by an electoral vote of 271 to 176. At the time, it was the most expensive campaign ever in U.S. politics, with the McKinley campaign outspending Bryan's by nearly 12 to 1. Today it is considered the forerunner of the modern political campaign for its adroit use of publicity, its overall national plan, its strategic use of issues, and especially the candidate's own speech making.

Election to U.S. Senate

Once elected, McKinley appointed Senator Sherman to his Cabinet, and Hanna was elected by the Ohio legislature in March of 1897 to fill the remainder of that term, and then re-elected to the subsequent term. As the economy recovered and the triumph of the Spanish-American War bolstered McKinley's popularity, the 1900 rematch was an easy victory for Hanna to manage.

Moving to the U.S. Senate Hanna became a leader in policy formation. Emerging from McKinley's shadow he played an key role in selecting the Panama route for the trans-oceanic canal. Senator Hanna was, however, disappointed at his failure to resurrect the Commonwealth Idea in support of granting governmental subsidies to the merchant marine.

Hanna's role as president of the National Civic Federation, a major national interest group dedicated to arbitrating labor disputes outside of politics or the courts, demonstrated that Hanna anticipated the key policymaking role extra-party bureaucracies would assume in the emerging administrative state of the twentieth century. He succeeded to a considerable extent in attracting labor unions into the Republican coalition and heading off major strikes that would be not only economically damaging but politically and socially divisive.

Hanna and Roosevelt

Hanna and Theodore Roosevelt had been allies in the 1890s, but they became rivals, initially due to their disagreement about the Spanish-American War. Roosevelt strongly favored war with Spain; Hanna resisted war until public opinion demanded it. In 1900, New York politicians wanted Governor Roosevelt to become vice president. Hanna was dubious but had no alternative candidate to stop it. One of the leading powers in the conservative faction of the Republican party, Hanna lost influence when McKinley was assassinated. Upon hearing the news, Hanna reputedly remarked that "Now that damn cowboy is president." Hanna and Roosevelt worked together (particularly on the Panama Canal) and although they remained personally cordial, they considered each other political rivals.

Death and legacy

Hanna was expected to run against Roosevelt for the Republican nomination for president in 1904 election, but Roosevelt's popularity and Hanna's ill health caused him to drop out of the contest in 1902. The rivalry was cut short by Hanna's death of typhoid fever, at the peak of his power.

Hanna was the father of Ruth Hanna McCormick, who married a U.S. Representative and Senator, and herself served in the United States House of Representatives.

Bibliography

• Cole, Arthur C. "Hanna, Marcus Alonzo," Dictionary of American Biography (1932), Volume 4
• Croly, Herbert. Marcus Alonzo Hanna: His Life and Work (New York, 1912), still the leading biography online edition
• Dick, Charles N. W. "Marcus A. Hanna" Ohio Archaeological and Historical Collections (1904) v 13 pp 355-74 online edition
• Morris, Edmund Theodore Rex 1901-1909. (2001); Biography of Roosevelt.
• Rhodes, James Ford. The McKinley and Roosevelt Administrations, 1897-1909 (1922), Rhodes was Hanna's brother-in-law
• Shoemaker, Fred Chester. "Mark Hanna and the Transformation of the Republican Party." (Vol. 1-2) PhD dissertation, Ohio State U. 1992. 451 pp. DAI 1992 53(5): 1644-A. DA9227379

External links

• McKinley and Hanna
• The American Experience: Mark Hanna
• Roosevelt and Hanna