Hanna, Mark (1837-1904)

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Mark Hanna (1837-1904)

Republican political leader

Changing the G.O.P. Mark Hanna, an Ohio industrialist turned politician, modernized the Republican Party and helped to win the presidency for fellow Ohioan William McKinley in 1896.

Background. Marcus Alonzo Hanna was born on 24 September 1837 in New Lisbon (later Lisbon), Ohio. When he was fifteen Hanna and his family moved to Cleveland, where Hanna entered Western Reserve College in 1857. In spring 1858 he dropped out of school to work in the family’s wholesale-grocery business. During the Civil War Hanna served a few months of 1864 as a lieutenant in an Ohio militia company. In September 1864 a few weeks after he returned to Cleveland, he married C. Augusta Rhodes, daughter of a successful coal and iron merchant and became a partner in the Rhodes family business, Rhodes & Co., which diversified into shipbuilding and became M. A. Hanna & Co. in 1885. Hanna became a wealthy man with civic and commercial interests that included the ownership of streetcar franchises, the Cleveland Opera House, and the Cleveland Herald, directorships of two railroads, and the presidency of the Union National Bank.

Career in Politics. Hanna became involved in local Republican politics in the early 1870s. A fierce supporter of Republican causes such as protective tariffs and the gold standard, he used the Cleveland Herald, which he bought in May 1880, to further the successful campaign of Republican presidential nominee James A. Garfield. In 1884 Hanna was a delegate to the Republican National Convention. He supported Ohio favorite son Sen. John Sherman, who garnered only minimal support at a convention dominated by forces loyal to James G. Blaine, who won the nomination. Though his candidate was unsuccessful, Hanna formed important political associations with fellow Ohio delegates Congressman William McKinley and Joseph B. Foraker, who was elected governor of Ohio in 1885 with Hanna serving on his executive election committee. Although initially closer to Foraker, who supported Sherman, than to McKinley, who supported Blaine, Hanna had a disagreement about political patronage with Foraker in 1887 and eventually drew closer to McKinley. After supporting Sherman’s strong but ultimately unsuccessful bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 1888, Hanna turned to McKinley, who, like Hanna, supported a high tariff and had a friendly view of labor. Hanna’s ability to raise campaign money contributed greatly to McKinley’s election as governor of Ohio in 1891. Hanna and McKinley planned to bring McKinley forward as a presidential candidate if President Benjamin Harrison failed in his bid to run for a second term at the Republican National Convention of 1892, and right after the convention McKinley and Hanna began to set their sights on the White House for 1896. In 1895 Hanna withdrew from active involvement in business to devote himself to politics full time.

The Election of 1896. After demonstrating his ability to attract delegates nationwide to win the presidential nomination for McKinley at the Republican National Convention of 1896, Hanna became chairman of the Republican National Committee, managing fund-raising and propaganda with particular zeal. Under Hanna’s leadership the campaign broke new ground and established a model followed in later presidential bids. He flooded newspapers and journals all over the country with stories about McKinley’s virtues and his heroism in the Civil War, creating an image of McKinley as a solid middle-class man of the people. While McKinley’s oppo-nent, William Jennings Bryan, traveled an unprecedented number of miles to take his message to voters, Hanna arranged for McKinley to conduct his campaign from the front porch of his house in Canton, Ohio; on 18 September alone McKinley received as many as eighty thousand people. Hanna recruited fourteen hundred speakers to extol McKinley’s virtues nationwide, and he was one of the earliest political operatives to use opinion polls to pin-point campaign weak spots. The national campaign committee reported spending about $4 million on McKinley’s campaign, but far more money was actually spent to take the candidate’s message to the voters. Thanks in large part to Hanna’s meticulous campaign organization, McKinley won the election.

The Spanish-American War. Following the election and the appointment of Sen. John Sherman as secretary of state, Hanna was appointed to complete Sherman’s term in the Senate, where he continued to serve until his death in 1904, despite charges that he tried to buy the vote of an Ohio legislator in 1898. When the rebellion in Cuba reached a crisis point in 1898, Hanna, like McKinley and other Republicans, was reluctant to involve the United States in Cuban affairs, fearing that hostilities would disrupt business. Nonetheless, they backed war in April 1898. Like most conflicts, the Spanish-American War (1898) initiated an upsurge of popular support for the president, and, in fact, it proved to be good for business, contributing to the sense that Republicans were indeed the party of prosperity.

The Election of 1900. The good times that followed the war made Republicans confident that the election of 1900 was theirs. Touting “Republican Prosperity” and reusing the theme of the “full dinner pail,” Hanna again ran a massive campaign for McKinley. Hanna would have preferred a more predictable vice-presidential candidate than war hero Theodore Roosevelt, but Roosevelt’s military record and his successful campaign for the New York governorship made him an important asset. McKinley beat Bryan by a wider margin than he had in 1896. The Republicans also strengthened their control over both houses of Congress. Again Hanna had proved himself a master political campaigner.

Later Years. After McKinley’s assassination in September 1901, Hanna maintained close connections to President Roosevelt. To conservative Republicans who viewed Roosevelt as a “radical,” Hanna seemed a logical choice for president. In the midst of speculation about whether he was considering a bid for the Republican presidential nomination; Hanna became ill and died on 15 February 1904 without making his intentions public.