Background
Marcus Alonzo Hanna was born on September 24, 1837, in New Lisbon, Ohio, to Dr. Leonard and Samantha Hanna.
Hanna as a boy
Hanna's birthplace
Marcus
Marcus Alonzo Hanna was born on September 24, 1837, in New Lisbon, Ohio, to Dr. Leonard and Samantha Hanna.
Young Mark attended the local public school, which conducted class in the basement of the Presbyterian church. He competed in the local boys' debating society, and on the question of whether the black man had more cause for complaint than the Indian, carried the day arguing for the blacks.
Members of the Hanna family invested in a canal project to connect New Lisbon, distant from waterways, to the Ohio River. The canal was a failure, and the family lost large sums of money. Most Hanna family members left New Lisbon in the early 1850s. Dr. Hanna went into partnership with his brother Robert, starting a grocery business in Cleveland, and relocated his family there in 1852.
In Cleveland, Mark attended several public schools, including Cleveland Central High School, which he went to at the same time as John D. Rockefeller. After graduation in 1857, Hanna attended Western Reserve College, but was dismissed for distributing mock programs at a solemn ceremonial.
With peace restored in 1865, Hanna struck out on his own ventures. He built a refinery, and also invested his own money in the Lac La Belle, a swift Great Lakes steamer. The ship sank and the refinery burned, uninsured. The losses reduced Hanna to near-insolvency. His father-in-law, appreciating Hanna's potential, took him into his own business in 1867 as a partner, and soon retired. The firm, Rhodes and Company (later M.A. Hanna and Company), dealt principally in coal and steel, but under Hanna expanded into many fields. Hanna later became director of two railroads.
In the 1868 presidential election, Hanna supported the Republican, former Union General Ulysses S. Grant. Hanna hoped that Grant, who was elected, would institute policies which would return full value to the currency. The firm built many vessels and also gained interests in a wide variety of firms, which in turn used the Rhodes steamers. Hanna also purchased Cleveland's opera house, allowing it to remain open at times when it could not pay its full rent.
During Grant's first four-year term, Hanna began to involve himself in politics. At first his interest was purely local, supporting Republican candidates for municipal and Cuyahoga County offices. In 1869, he was elected to the Cleveland Board of Education, but as he was traveling a good deal for business at the time, was able to attend less than half the meetings. In 1873, disgusted by local scandals and the influence of party bosses, he and other Republicans briefly abandoned the party to elect a Democrat running for mayor of Cleveland on a reform agenda.
He successfully promoted the presidential candidacy of William McKinley in the election of 1896 and personified the growing influence of big business in American politics.
The prosperous owner of a Cleveland coal and iron enterprise, Hanna soon expanded his interests to include banking, transportation, and publishing. Convinced that the welfare of business (and consequently the prosperity of the nation) was dependent upon the success of the Republican Party, he began as early as 1880 to work among industrialists to ensure the financial support of likely candidates for office. He was especially impressed by Ohio congressman William McKinley’s successful sponsorship in 1890 of a high protective tariff, and thenceforth he devoted all his energies to McKinley’s political advancement, first as governor (1892-1896) and then as president (1897-1901). In preparation for the 1896 contest with the Democrat-Populist candidate, William Jennings Bryan, Hanna was reputed to have poured more than $100,000 of his own money into preconvention expenses alone. Raising an unprecedented fund from wealthy individuals and corporations, the dynamic Hanna skillfully directed the $3,500,000 campaign - the costliest and best organized the nation had ever witnessed. At a rate of spending exceeding his opponents by 20 to 1, his 1,400 paid workers inundated the country with millions of pamphlets promising continuing prosperity with McKinley. Hanna succeeded in stunting Bryan’s grass-roots appeal with a continual barrage of posters and propaganda that preceded and followed Bryan at every whistle-stop of his campaign train.
Once in office, McKinley helped to fulfill Hanna’s lifelong ambition by appointing Sen. John Sherman secretary of state, thus creating a vacancy in the U.S. Senate. Hanna was elected to fill the vacancy (March 1897) and remained in the Senate until his death.
Hanna became active in politics, supporting city council candidates favorable to his street railway interests, organizing Cleveland businessmen for James A. Garfield in the 1880 presidential campaign, and serving on the Republican state committee. In 1888 he backed John Sherman for the Republican presidential nomination, and his rivalry with Governor Joseph B. Foraker caused a lasting rift in Ohio Republican ranks.
Hanna became impressed with the presidential possibilities of Ohio Congressman William McKinley. He supported McKinley as gubernatorial candidate in 1891 and 1893 and rescued him from financial embarrassment during the 1893 panic.
Giving up active direction of his own business interests late in 1894, Hanna conducted a skillful and intensive preconvention campaign which resulted in McKinley's nomination for president on the first ballot in 1896. Hanna was made chairman of the Republican National Committee and was successful in raising a large campaign fund, much of it through regular assessments on banks and business corporations.
Hanna is often credited with the invention of the modern presidential campaign. His campaign for McKinley in 1896 broke new ground because of its highly systematized and centralized nature, as well as for its fundraising success.
Although Hanna has been depicted as the first national political boss, historians agree that McKinley dominated the relationship between the two.
Ohio Congressman William McKinley
Hanna had fallen in love with Charlotte Augusta Rhodes, whom he met in 1862, shortly after her return from a finishing school.