February 15, 1904: Senator Mark Hanna of Ohio dies in Washington. He was 66 years old. His death changed history in ways we can only imagine.
You've never heard of Mark Hanna? You've heard of his arch-enemy, Theodore Roosevelt.
Marcus Alonzo Hanna was born on September 24, 1837 in Lisbon, Ohio. He was a classmate of John D. Rockefeller Sr. at Cleveland Central High School. He served in the Union Army during the Civil War, and then, like Rockefeller, made a fortune, if not nearly as big of one, in oil.
In 1880, he bought a newspaper, The Cleveland Herald, and used it to push the Presidential campaign of Representative James Garfield, a Cleveland native. Hanna helped to unite a divided Republican Party by arranging a meeting between Garfield, the leader of the "Half-Breed" faction, and the leaders of the "Stalwart" faction, former President Ulysses S. Grant and Senator Roscoe Conkling of New York.
Grant didn't like Garfield -- he once said, "Garfield has shown that he is not possessed of the backbone of an angle-worm" -- but, as would be said today, the optics were great. Charles Dick, who went on to win Hanna's Senate seat, said, "Mr. Hanna had as much to do with the election of Mr. Garfield as any single individual in the country."
In 1884, with Garfield assassinated and new President Chester Arthur not running for a full term due to illness, Hanna wanted another Ohioan, Senator John Sherman, nominated for President. Instead, Senator James G. Blaine of Maine was nominated, Hanna didn't try all that hard to help him, and Blaine lost a squeaker to Governor Grover Cleveland of New York.
Hanna stuck to Ohio politics for a while, getting Joseph Foraker elected Governor in 1885 and 1887. After losing a seat in Congress for having his name attached to a harmful tariff bill, William McKinley enlisted Hanna's help in getting elected Governor in 1891, getting the keynote address to the 1892 Republican National Convention, and getting re-elected in 1893 and 1895.
He then managed McKinley's "front porch" campaign for President in 1896. Like Garfield had in 1880, and Warren Harding later would in 1920, instead of going out to meet the people -- a Presidential candidate actually going out to campaign for the job was seen as beneath him -- people were brought to the candidate, to hear him speak on his own turf -- or, rather, his own porch. As a railroad executive, Hanna was able to arrange "McKinley Special" trains, so the McKinley "front porch campaign" became better remembered than either the Garfield or the Harding version.
McKinley won, defeating the Democratic nominee, former Representative William Jennings Bryan of Nebraska. Garret Hobart, who had served in both houses of the New Jersey legislature and was a major party official there, was elected Vice President.
Hanna knew that if he got a Cabinet post, it would look bad. So he convinced McKinley to nominate old friend John Sherman for Secretary of State, which he accepted -- but ended up holding the post for only a little over a year, resigning due to ill health. (He died in 1900.) Until the 17th Amendment to the Constitution, U.S. Senators were elected by State legislatures, and Hanna got what he really wanted: Sherman's Senate seat. Hanna now had all the power he wanted, and little of the responsibility.
The worst thing that could have happened to Hanna was McKinley dying. The 2nd-worst was Hobart dying. In 1898, Hobart began suffering heart trouble. In April 1899, Hanna assured the newspapers that Hobart would be on the ticket in 1900: "Nothing but death or an earthquake can stop the re-nomination of Vice President Hobart." But by Autumn, his health had deteriorated, and he died on November 21, 1899, only 55 years old.
Senator Thomas Platt, who had succeeded Conkling as the Republican boss of New York State, didn't like the progressive reforms of Theodore Roosevelt, who was elected Governor in 1898 on the back of his heroism in the Spanish-American War, not his varied service before that. Platt thought the best way to get him out of Albany, and render him powerless, was to get him nominated for Vice President at the 1900 Republican Convention. Matthew Quay, Republican boss of Pennsylvania, who had stolen the 1888 election for Benjamin Harrison, was also on board with kicking TR upstairs.
McKinley said he would be fine with whoever the Convention nominated. Hanna was not: He hated Roosevelt for the same policies that Platt hated. He said to Convention officials, "What is the matter with all of you? Here's this Convention, going headlong for Roosevelt for Vice President. Don't any of you realize that there's only one life between that madman and the Presidency? Platt and Quay are no better than idiots! What harm can he do as Governor of New York, compared to the damage he will do as President if McKinley should die?"
But Roosevelt was nominated, and McKinley won a 2nd straight landslide over Bryan. On March 4, 1901, the Inauguration was held, and Platt was tickled to "see Teddy take the veil." After all, for a long time, there was a joke: "Once, there were two men. One went out to sea. The other became the Vice President of the United States. Neither was ever heard from again."
On September 6, 1901, McKinley was shot in Buffalo, New York. On September 14, he died. Hanna had lost not just his President, but a close friend. And Roosevelt was sworn in, and Hanna was heard to say, "That damned cowboy is President now!"
The two men managed a truce, and Hanna happily supported Roosevelt on the Panama Canal. But Roosevelt was too progressive for Hanna. Roosevelt thought he could avoid a split in the party by asking Hanna, in November 1903, to run his re-election campaign. Hanna dragged his feet on an answer. Financier J.P. Morgan also hated TR, and offered to fund a Presidential campaign for Hanna.
Roosevelt and Hanna met again in December, and Hanna admitted that he didn't feel up to running for President. On January 30, 1904, Hanna attended the annual Gridiron Club dinner, and admitted his health was not good. He was diagnosed with typhoid fever, and died on February 15.
Had he kept his health, what might have changed? Could he have put up a challenger to Roosevelt for the 1904 Republican nomination for President? Certainly, he could have. But would that challenger have had a chance at the Convention? Probably not: TR was already too popular.
What Hanna could have done, had he lived until 1908, was do what TR ended up doing himself: Select his successor. But then, given that TR chose his Secretary of War, William Howard Taft, who was both from Ohio and more conservative, Hanna might have gone along with it.
But if, somehow, he had managed to outflank TR in 1904? There might not have been a Food & Drug Administration until the New Deal. There might not have been a President willing to step in and negotiate a settlement for the Russo-Japanese War, as TR did. The "trust-busting" would have stopped, and maybe big business would have had a tighter control over America. And, of course, TR would not have become quite the legend he became. There might still have been a Mount Rushmore, but his face would not be on it.
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February 15, 1904 was a Monday. Baseball and football were out of season. Professional basketball barely even existed. And hockey was still all-amateur. So there were no scores on this historic day.
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