John Sherman

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John Sherman (credit: Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.)

(born May 10, 1823, Lancaster, Ohio, U.S. — died Oct. 22, 1900, Washington, D.C.) U.S. politician. A brother of William T. Sherman, he served in the U.S. House of Representatives (1855 – 61). A fiscal expert, he helped establish the national banking system (1863) and supported legislation that returned the U.S. to the gold standard. He served as U.S. secretary of the treasury (1877 – 81). In the U.S. Senate (1861 – 77, 1881 – 97), he proposed the Sherman Antitrust Act and the Sherman Silver Purchase Act (1890). He later served briefly as secretary of state (1897 – 98), resigning the day Congress declared war against Spain.

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John Sherman (1823-1900), American politician, was the most significant congressional figure in the development of American fiscal policy during the "gilded age."

John Sherman was born in Lancaster, Ohio, on May 10, 1823. He participated in the frantic development of his native state, working on canal improvements at the age of 14 and becoming a supervisor of canal construction at 16. He soon turned to the study of law and in 1844 was admitted to the Ohio bar. In 1854, at the age of 31, he was elected to Congress and, until 1898, served without interruption in Federal office.

Sherman maintained a moderate stance in the tense congresses of the 1850s. Although he criticized the Radical Republicans during the Civil War, in the end he voted with them. He served in the Senate after 1861. His knowledge of the complexities of currency and finance helped to make him head of the Senate Finance Committee, where in 1874 he engineered several bills concerned with the retirement of the wartime paper money. A man with presidential ambitions, Sherman found it useful to work with conservative eastern financiers, such as August Belmont, who insisted on a solidly based stable dollar, while still serving moderate financial interests in his home state.

Sherman managed Rutherford B. Hayes's difficult nomination and election to the presidency in 1876. He was instrumental in securing Louisiana's disputed electoral votes for Hayes and fully supported the President's program to establish a conservative, white-dominated Republican party in the South. The program failed, but Sherman became Hayes's secretary of the Treasury and a leading candidate for the Republican nomination in 1880.

In 1880 Sherman's candidacy was passed over in a deadlocked convention, and his own campaign manager, James A. Garfield, was nominated. Sherman's failure to secure the nomination stemmed not from his political philosophy but from his inability to inspire excitement in either prominent politicians or the voters. A small dour man, he was an adequate orator and one of the most accomplished governmental technicians of his day. But in his long career he had made many enemies who also blocked his nomination in succeeding conventions.

In the Senate again (1881-1897), Sherman was best known for his sponsorship of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act and the Sherman Antitrust Act. The latter was not really Sherman's work at all; his name was attached to lend it prestige.

In 1897 William McKinley named Sherman secretary of state as a final honor and in order to create a Senate vacancy for Mark Hanna. Sherman was ill-fitted for the position and soon found himself at odds with McKinley's imperialist policies. Sherman resigned a year later. He died in Washington on Oct. 22, 1900.

Further Reading

Until the biography currently being prepared by Jeannette Nichols is completed, the reader must refer to old and outdated works: Theodore E. Burton, John Sherman (1906), and Winfield S. Kerr, John Sherman (1908). H. Wayne Morgan, From Hayes to McKinley (1969), deals with the era of Sherman's prominence.

John Sherman was an attorney who devoted most of his professional life to public service. He served in the U.S. House of Representatives, the U.S. Senate, and the cabinets of Presidents Rutherford B. Hayes and William McKinley. An unsuccessful candidate for president, Sherman is best known for sponsoring the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890 (15 U.S.C.A. §1 et seq.), the landmark federal legislation that sought to prevent industrial monopolies.

Sherman was born on May 10, 1823, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. His father was a judge and his older brother, William Tecumseh Sherman, became a renowned Union general during the Civil War. Sherman was admitted to the Ohio bar in 1844 and established a successful law practice in Mansfield, Ohio. Soon, however, his interests turned to politics.

Elected to the U.S. House of Representatives as a Republican in 1854, Sherman soon gained a reputation as an expert on government finance. He served as chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, the chief budgetary body, from 1859 to 1861. Sherman was then elected to the Senate, where he served from 1861 to 1877. From 1867 to 1877, he chaired the Senate Finance Committee.

During the 1870s Sherman's fiscal policies drew national attention. As a senator, he helped establish a national banking system, but he aroused the wrath of farmers in 1873 when he secured the passage of a bill that discontinued the coinage of silver dollars. As secretary of the treasury during the Hayes administration (1877-1881), he placed the United States on the gold standard. Ultimately, however, he was forced to compromise and support legislation that restored the silver dollar as legal tender.

Although Sherman was a conservative, he was a master of political compromise, always willing to grant small concessions to his opponents. This skill, however, proved fatal to his higher political ambitions. He lost the Republican presidential nomination in 1880, 1884, and 1888.

Sherman was reelected to the Senate in 1880, serving until 1897. During the late 1880s, public concern mounted about the increasing concentration of economic power in monopolistic businesses. Sherman's 1888 presidential bid had focused on this problem, and in 1890 he became the author of the antitrust act that bears his name. The Sherman Anti-Trust Act deliberately contained general language that required the Supreme Court to define its scope. Though not always an effective tool, the act remains a central part of federal antitrust enforcement.

Sherman continued to be a force in government currency policy. In 1890 he sponsored the Sherman Silver Purchase Act (28 Stat. 4), which required the federal government to increase its purchase of silver by 50 percent. The act was designed as a subsidy for silver miners, but was repealed in 1893 in the aftermath of a financial panic.

President McKinley appointed Sherman secretary of state in 1897, but Sherman soon realized that leaving the Senate had been a mistake. An opponent of U.S. imperial ambitions, he resigned on April 25, 1898, the day Congress declared war against Spain. Two years later, on October 22, 1900, Sherman died in Washington, D.C.

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