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Speech of Hon. John Sherman, of Ohio, in reply to Mr. Stephens, of Georgia, and review of Mr. Oliver's minority report. Before the House of representatives, July 30, 1856
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John Sherman was an American politician, served as Secretary of the Treasury and Secretary of State. He created the Sherman Antitrust Act.
Background
John born on May 10, 1823 at Lancaster, Ohio, United States was the eighth child of Charles Robert and Mary (Hoyt) Sherman, and a younger brother of William Tecumseh Sherman. His father, a descendant of Edmund Sherman who came from England to Massachusetts probably in 1634 or 1635 and later settled in Connecticut, removed from the latter state in 1811 to Ohio, where he practised law.
Charles Robert Sherman rose to the bench of the state supreme court, but his untimely death in 1829 required his widow to share the responsibility of educating some of their eleven children with various friends and relatives. The famous brothers, Tecumseh and John, were bound by rare ties of mutual understanding and affection.
Education
He had a lively, careless disposition, that was trying alike to teachers and foster parents; and his education, divided between Lancaster and Vernon, where he lived for four years with John Sherman, a cousin of his father, gave him little taste for the college life that was planned for him. He developed a liking for mathematics and surveying, left school at fourteen.
In 1840 he set himself studying law under his uncle, Judge Jacob Parker, and his eldest brother, Charles Taylor Sherman, at Mansfield.
Career
Sherman worked on canal improvements, and at sixteen had grown men working under him, constructing a dam. Fortunately for him, defeat of the Whigs by the Democrats in 1839 led to his dismissal. After a few months of roistering, a change came over him.
In the field of law, his father's repute and his wide family connections proved stimulating and useful. Thus Sherman gained an early start on his career. Before formal admission to the bar, May 10, 1844, he was doing much of a full-fledged lawyer's work. Also he launched into business, proving competent as partner in a lumber concern and buying real estate wisely.
Not content with country-town law and business, Sherman entered state politics. Loss of a job at Democratic hands in 1839 had scarcely cooled his ardor for Whiggery in 1840; thereafter he presented himself faithfully at Ohio Whig conclaves, and he attended the national conventions of 1848 and 1852. He ran for no elective office until 1854, when the wave of anti-Nebraska sentiment carried him into the federal House of Representatives, along with many other comparatively unknown young men. However, Sherman of Ohio remained an official part of the Washington scene continuously through nearly a half century; as representative, 1855-61; as senator, 1861-77; as secretary of the treasury, 1877-81; as senator, 1881-97; as secretary of state, 1897-98.
He had been elected in 1854 because he was a compromise candidate on whom warring factions could agree; and, at Washington, his more moderate utterances on slavery, contrasted with those of men like Joshua R. Giddings and Owen Lovejoy, quickly aided his rise. Membership on a House committee investigating unsavory Kansas affairs was exploited; Sherman wrote a report, scoring the Democracy and all its Kansas works, which was used effectively in the 1856 campaign.
At the beginning of his third term (December 5, 1859) he was the caucus nominee for speaker. A forgotten endorsement carelessly given Helper's Impending Crisis deprived him of the coveted honor, and increased thereafter his leaning toward compromise and caution in legislative matters. The successful candidate, William Pennington, adopted Sherman's committee slate and named him chairman of the ways and means committee.
In the din of war, with its necessities, he helped give the greenbacks the status of legal tender; but he never completely forgot that there must be a day of reckoning, that order must be wrought out of a chaotic currency. If Sherman's program of economies and rigorous taxation, especially income taxes, had seemed politically expedient, fewer bond and greenback issues might have sprouted during the war. As it was, he quieted his uneasiness over the greenbacks by reiterating the popular doctrine that the country would "grow up to" the expanded currency. On the reconstruction issue, war between Sherman's personal preferences and popular dicta waged unremittingly, for political rivalries in Ohio, as elsewhere, imposed irrational tests of party loyalty and defined patriotism without humanity.
On post-war finance Sherman dominated national policy, because of his Senate chairmanship, his interest, and his ability. His work on the funding act of July 14, 1870, reduced the burden of public interest and helped restore national credit. While the dollar was still at a premium, he pushed the mint-reform bill which ended the coinage of silver dollars, so that after silver fell he was labeled the arch marplot of the "Crime of '73. "
The House stopped resumption operations temporarily by passing two bills: Bland's for a silver dollar with unlimited legal tender and unlimited coinage, and Ewing's for indefinite postponement of the date of resumption (November 5, 23, 1877). While these bills awaited Senate action, Sherman's Republican successor, Stanley Matthews, fathered a concurrent resolution (which lacks the force of law) declaring government bonds payable in silver; and both Houses passed it, thus humiliating Sherman. However, divisions among inflationists ultimately gave Sherman sufficient support to defeat the more extreme objectives of Bland and Ewing. The Bland-Allison Act (February 28, 1878) stipulated a limited coinage of silver, rather than free coinage; and instead of postponing resumption indefinitely Congress, on May 31, 1878, forbade further retirement of greenbacks. Sherman has been severely criticized for failure to oppose the Matthews resolution originally or to support Hayes's veto of the Bland-Allison bill finally.
After the passage of the silver bill, Sherman helped to rally conservative support behind the administration, and the insurgents were somewhat discredited in the 1878 elections. He carefully protected the final preparations for resumption. He had the New York sub-treasury made a member of the clearing houses at Boston and New York, and made payments to the government receivable in either legal tenders or coin. Consequently, the premium on gold disappeared (December 17, 1878) after nearly seventeen years; and on January 2, 1879, specie payments were smoothly resumed, to the general astonishment.
The law of May 31, 1878, to which he had agreed, not only had stopped cancellation of legal tenders redeemed in gold but also had directed their reissue. Fortunately for him, rainswept Britain and Europe in 1879 had to buy huge quantities of American wheat, corn, and cotton, paying in gold. Trade rebounded beautifully, and specie payments seemed so secure that the Secretary described legal tenders as "the best circulating medium known".
As the end of his cabinet service approached, the United States still stood on the gold standard. Resumption was an admitted success. In 1880, as in 1888 and to a less degree in 1884, Sherman failed of the nomination because he lacked unscrupulousness in the use of patronage, color in personality and appeal, cordial unity in the Ohio delegation, and skill in manipulating politicians, and because he had an abundance of inflationist opposition. In 1888 he reached the exciting total of 249 votes on the second ballot; but the thread of Ohio intrigue, tortuously unwinding through the correspondence of Foraker, Garfield, Hanna, Hayes, McKinley, and Sherman, shows how futile was his dearest hope.
Through his second period of sixteen years in the Senate (1881 - 97) Sherman played the role of prominent politician, so cast by his adaptation to the plot of the play in Ohio and in the nation at large. Ohio gave him Garfield's seat only after a contest and he had to keep watch lest he should be shelved, in 1879 and later, with the governorship. Democrats won the state thrice, but luckily Republicans controlled when he came up for reelection in 1885 and in 1892 he succeeded in postponing the candidacy of Foraker (until 1896).
He functioned most strikingly in connection with the anti-trust and silver-purchase laws of 1890. Republican colleagues honored Sherman with the position of president pro tempore (1885 - 87) and listened deferentially whenever the famous ex-Secretary spoke on finance. Insistence of Ohio wool-growers on protection led him into yeoman's service regimenting Middle-Western Republicans behind a high tariff. His assignment (1886) to the chairmanship of the foreign relations committee proved none too congenial. On minor issues he shifted his position, not always in conformity with popular trends.
After he recovered from his nomination fiasco of 1888, Sherman was content in the familiar Senate environment. In 1879 he had published Selected Speeches and Reports on Finance and Taxation, from 1859 to 1878.
In the unaccustomed place, under stress of Cuban excitements, it became all too evident that Sherman had a growing and humiliating weakness of memory which incapacitated him for functioning out of his usual routine. The fur-seal, Hawaiian, and Spanish negotiations were taken out of his hands. When the cabinet decided for war with Spain he rose to the defense of his anti-expansionist views, and resigned in protest. Two years of unhappy private life ensued before his final release. He died in 1900.
Initially a Whig, later Sherman was among those anti-slavery activists who formed what became the Republican Party. Politically, he understood the radical, debtor psychology that flourished among his constituents during the three major and four minor depressions that punctuated his tenure of office.
He saw in cancellation of greenbacks the most direct route to specie resumption and declared that a beneficial fall in prices must mark resumption; yet on these very grounds he opposed McCulloch's currency contraction policies of 1866 and 1868. The Middle West being then strongly inflationary, he claimed that resumption would speedily come if the government merely met current obligations. The greenbacks outstanding, he thought, were not too much for the condition of the country. He realized that national credit must be safeguarded by resumption as soon as political conditions permitted; and he entertained dreams of financial reforms international in scope, aiding Emperor Napoleon III's scheme for a stable, unified currency among the great trading nations.
He favored general regulation of interstate commerce but questioned the right of Congress to establish maximum and minimum rates and opposed the prohibition of pooling.
Personality
He was a hardworking and effective laborer.
Connections
On August 31, 1848 he married to Margaret Sarah Cecilia, the only child of a prominent Mansfield lawyer, Judge James Stewart. The Shermans had no children, but adopted a daughter.