Part 23 (2/2)
The McKinley campaign was one of the most interesting and quite the liveliest in which I have ever partic.i.p.ated. It was a campaign of education from beginning to end. At first the Republicans tried to make the tariff the issue, and in a sense it remained one of the most important; but we were soon compelled to accept silver as the issue, and fight it out on that line. Silver was comparatively a new question; the people did not understand it, and they attended the meetings, listening attentively to the campaign speeches.
There was considerable satisfaction in speaking during the campaign of 1896: one was always a.s.sured of a large and interested audience.
In addition to this, the prevailing sentiment was one of cheerful good-feeling; and while there had been several candidates before the St. Louis Convention, including Speaker Reed, Senator Allison, and Levi P. Morton, the convention left no bitterness--the party was united, and every Republican did his full duty. Southern Illinois was a little uncertain; but it finally came around, and the full Republican vote was cast for McKinley and Hobart.
I took a very active part in this campaign. Mr. McKinley was exceedingly polite to me and invited Senator Thurston and me to open the campaign in Canton, which invitation I accepted, addressing there a vast audience. It was said that some fifty or seventy-five thousand people were a.s.sembled there that day. Subsequently I spoke in Kentucky and Michigan, and made a thorough campaign in my own State.
While the Republicans were united, the Democrats were hopelessly divided. The so-called Gold Democrats held a convention and nominated my colleague, Senator Palmer, and General Buckner as its candidates for President and Vice-President respectively. They did not receive a very large vote, because I believe they advised the Gold Democrats to vote for McKinley. The Gold Democrats had great influence in the election. General Palmer was thoroughly in earnest on the silver question, more so perhaps than any Democrat whom I knew. He believed strongly in the Democratic doctrine on the tariff, and was a Democrat on every other issue; but he could not follow his party in espousing free silver.
There was doubt all the time over the result of the election.
After the Democratic convention was held in Chicago, and in the early Summer and Fall, the Democrats certainly seemed to have the best of it; but later in the campaign, as the people became educated, it began to look brighter. I was very much surprised at the result, however. McKinley carried the election by a vote of 7,111,000 as against 6,509,000 for Mr. Bryan, and the electoral vote by 271 as against 176 for Mr. Bryan.
When Mr. McKinley was inaugurated I cannot forget the expression of apparent relief in President Cleveland's face, as he accompanied his successor to the ceremony. He seemed rejoiced that he was turning his great office over to Mr. McKinley. The last days of his Administration had been troublesome ones. Estranged from his own party, war clouds appearing in the near distance,--I do not wonder that he gladly relinquished the office.
Mr. McKinley came into office under the most favorable circ.u.mstances.
A Congress was elected fully in harmony with him, whose members gladly acknowledged him as not only the t.i.tular, but the real head of the Republican party. We never had a President who had more influence with Congress than Mr. McKinley. Even President Lincoln had difficulties with the leaders of Congress in his day, but I have never heard of even the slightest friction between Mr. McKinley and the party leaders in Senate and House.
In many respects, President McKinley was a very great man. He looked and acted the ideal President. He was always thoroughly self-poised and deliberate; nothing ever seemed to excite him, and he always maintained a proper dignity. He had the natural talent and make-up to be successful to a marked degree in dealing with people with whom he came into contact. He grew in popular favor from the day of his election until his death, and I have always maintained that he would go down in history as our most popular President among all cla.s.ses of people in all sections of the country.
His long training in public life--his service as a member of the House and Governor of Ohio--had well fitted him for the high office of President. He had many favorites whom he desired to get into office; and on many occasions, instead of going ahead and appointing his friends without consulting any one, he asked me if I would have any objection to his appointing some personal friend living in Illinois to one office or another in or out of the State. I always yielded; in fact it was impossible to resist him.
Ill.u.s.trating this, there happened to be a vacancy in a Federal Judges.h.i.+p in Chicago. Presidents usually have selected their own judges regardless of Senatorial recommendation, and McKinley selected his; but he managed to secure Senatorial recommendation at the same time. I was in favor of the appointment of a certain lawyer in Chicago whom I regarded as thoroughly well qualified for the place, and the President wanted to appoint Judge Christian C. Kohlsaat.
My colleague and I insisted for a long time on our recommendation.
The President and I debated the question frequently, he always listening to me and seeming impressed with what I had to say, at the same time remaining fully determined to have his own way in the end. Finally, when I was in the executive office one day, he came over to where I was and, putting his arm on my shoulder, said: ”Senator, you won't get mad at me if I appoint Judge Kohlsaat, will you?” I replied: ”Mr. President, I could not get mad at you if I were to try.” He sent the nomination in; Judge Kohlsaat was confirmed, and is now serving on the United States Circuit Bench.
Mr. McKinley wanted to appoint his old friend and commander, General Powell, as Collector of Internal Revenue at East St. Louis. I did not want General Powell to have the office, as I did not believe he had rendered any service to the party sufficient to justify giving him one of the general Federal offices in the State. State Senator P. T. Chapman, who has since been elected to Congress several times, and Hon. James A. Willoughby, then a member of the Illinois State Senate, were both candidates, and I should have been very glad to have had either one of them appointed.
Chapman came to Was.h.i.+ngton to my office, where he waited while I went to the White House to attempt to have the matter of the appointment settled. I saw the President, to whom I expressed a willingness to have the post of Collector of Internal Revenue for the East St. Louis District to go either to Chapman or Willoughby.
”Cullom,” returned the President, ”if you had come to me this way in the first place, and urged me to appoint one of them, I would have done it; but you have waited until everything is filled, and now I must either appoint Powell to this place, or turn him out to gra.s.s.” He continued: ”I was a boy when I entered the army, and General Powell took me under his wing; he looked after me, and I became very much attached to him. I was standing only a little way off and saw him shot through.” The tears came to the President's eyes and ran down his cheeks. When I saw with what feeling he regarded the matter, I threw up my hands.
”I am through,” said I; ”I have nothing more to say.”
General Powell was given the office. This ill.u.s.trates the manner in which Mr. McKinley always managed to get his own way in the matter of appointments without the slightest friction with Senators and Representatives.
During the early days of his Administration I did not feel so close to him as I had felt toward some of his predecessors. I did not feel that he quite forgave my not yielding to him, and declining to become a candidate for President in 1896. He was always polite to me, as he was to every one, yet I could not but feel that he was holding me at arm's length. My colleague, Senator Mason, who was an old friend of his, had secured a number of appointments, and the President himself was constantly asking me to yield to the appointment of this or that ”original McKinley man,” mostly either my enemies or men of whom I knew nothing. I was much out of humor about it, and several consular appointments having been made about that time, I wrote some one in the State a letter setting forth that those appointments were but the carrying out of promises made in advance of McKinley's nomination. This letter, or a copy of it, was sent to the President. I called at the White House one day concerning the appointment of some man, whose name I do not remember, but whom I regarded as my personal enemy. I told him I had no objection, but that I regarded the man as a jacka.s.s. McKinley evidently did not like my remark very well; he reached back on his table, pulled out this letter, or a copy of it, and asked me if I had written it. I replied that I did not know whether I had or not, but that it sounded very much as I felt at the moment. He said that he had not expected an expression of that sort from me.
Whereupon we had a general overhauling, in the course of which I told him with considerable feeling that I had been more or less intimate with every President since, and including, Mr. Lincoln, and had always been treated frankly and not held at arm's length; but with himself that I had been constantly made to feel that he was reserved with me. We quarrelled about it a little, and finally he asked me what I wanted done. I told him. He promptly promised to do it, and did.
That quarrel cleared the atmosphere, and we remained devoted friends from that day until his death.
Had it not been for the Hon. Marcus A. Hanna, Mr. McKinley would probably never have been nominated or elected President of the United States.
I knew Mr. Hanna very many years before he became identified with the late President McKinley. He always took an interest in Republican politics, particularly in Ohio politics; and when Mr. Blaine was a candidate for the Presidency, and I was campaigning in Ohio, I rode with Mr. Hanna from Canton to Ma.s.sillon, some seven or eight miles distant, where a great meeting was held, with Mr. Blaine as the central figure. I was even then very much impressed with Mr.
Hanna as a man of the very soundest judgment and common sense.
But it was not until Mr. McKinley became a candidate for President that Hanna took a very great interest in national political affairs.
He had the deepest affection for the late President, and was determined that he should be nominated and elected President of the United States, at whatever cost. Mr. Hanna took hold of Mr.
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