Persons of Interest: John Sherman
John Sherman was the younger brother of Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman. While his brother is famous, among other things, for declining the presidency (with the famous line "I will not accept if nominated and will not serve if elected"), John Sherman had no such reservations about getting the job. He ran for his party's nomination several times, but was never successful, though he did have a distinguished career both in Congress and in the Cabinet.
John Sherman was born in Lancaster, Ohio on May 10, 1823. His parents were Charles Robert Sherman and Mary Hoyt Sherman. John was the eighth of their eleven children. Charles was a lawyer in Lancaster who was appointed a justice of the Supreme Court of Ohio just before John's birth. Charles Sherman's father died suddenly in 1829, leaving his mother to care for her eleven children. Several of the oldest children, including William, were fostered with nearby relatives, but John stayed with his mother in Lancaster until 1831, when his father's cousin (also named John Sherman) took Sherman into his home in Mount Vernon, Ohio. Sherman disliked school and in 1835, he returned to his mother's home in Lancaster where he continued his education there. He was a troublesome student who was once expelled for punching a teacher.
In 1837, Sherman left school and worked as a surveyor, a job obtained through Whig Party patronage. In 1840 he moved to Mansfield, Ohio to study law in the office of his older brother, Charles Taylor Sherman. He was admitted to the bar in 1844 and joined his brother's firm. He was successful at the practice of law, and by 1847 had become a wealthy man. By that time, Sherman and his brother Charles were able to support their mother and two unmarried sisters. They moved to a house Sherman purchased in Mansfield.
In 1848, John Sherman married Margaret Cecelia Stewart, the daughter of a local judge. The couple never had any biological children, but they adopted a daughter named Mary, in 1864. That same year, Sherman, who had become active in the Whig Party, attended the Whig National Convention as a delegate. He also attended the 1852 convention. In 1853 he moved to Cleveland and established a law office there with two partners.
The passage of the Kansas–Nebraska Act in 1854 motivated him to become more involved politically and he became a candidate for Ohio's thirteenth district in the House of Representatives for what was then called the Opposition Party (later to become the Republican Party.) In the general election Sherman was elected by 2823 votes. When the 34th United States Congress convened in December 1855, opponents of President Franklin Pierce held a majority in the House, while the Democrats controlled the Senate. The House resolved to send three members to Kansas investigate the situation in that territory, one of which was Sherman. He spent two months there and was the main author of the 1,188-page report of the investigators. He informed the House that local control was being undermined by the invasion of Missourians who used violence to coerce the Kansans to elect pro-slavery members to the territorial legislature. The House took no action on the reports. Sherman proposed an amendment to an army appropriation act to bar use of federal troops to enforce the acts of the Kansas territorial legislature. The amendment narrowly passed the House, but was removed by the Senate. Despite of this defeat, Sherman had achieved considerable notoriety.
Sherman was reelected in 1856, defeating his Democratic opponent, Herman J. Brumback, by 2861 votes. The Republican candidate for president, John C. Frémont carried Ohio, but lost the election to James Buchanan. The Republicans—had lost control of the House, and Sherman found himself in the minority. In December of that year, Kansas adopted the pro-slavery Lecompton Constitution and petitioned Congress to be admitted as a slave state. Sherman spoke against the Kansas bill in the House, pointing out the evidence of fraud in the elections. The bill was defeated. Congress agreed to a compromise by which Kansas would be admitted after another referendum on the Lecompton constitution. This time the electorate rejected slavery.
The voters returned Sherman to office for a third term in 1858. When Congress adjourned Sherman and his wife went on vacation to Europe. When they returned that December, sectional tension had increased while Congress was in recess, due to John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia. Sherman ran unsuccessfully for Speaker of the House. He was chosen as chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means, where he spent much of his time on appropriations bills. Sherman supported a bill admitting Kansas as a free state that passed in 1861.
Sherman was renominated for Congress in 1860 and was active in Abraham Lincoln's campaign for President, giving speeches on his behalf in several states. Both were elected. By February 1861, seven states had seceded from the Union. Lincoln took office on March 4, 1861. He nominated Senator Salmon P. Chase of Ohio to be Secretary of the Treasury. Chase resigned his Senate seat on March 7, and two weeks later the Ohio Legislature elected Sherman to the vacant senate seat. Sherman took his seat on March 23, 1861. In April, Sherman's brother William visited Washington to rejoin the army, and the brothers went together to the White House to meet Lincoln. Lincoln soon called for 75,000 men to enlist for three months to put down the rebellion. William Sherman thought too weak of a response. William's thoughts on the war greatly influenced his brother, and John Sherman returned home to Ohio to encourage enlistment, briefly serving as an unpaid colonel of Ohio Volunteers.
During the war John Sherman was assigned to the Senate Finance Committee, was involved in the process of increasing the revenue. Chase asked for and Congress authorized the issuance of $150 million in bonds, which replenished the treasury. Congress also sought to increase revenue when they passed the Revenue Act of 1861, which imposed the first federal income tax in American history. Sherman endorsed the measure and wanted a steeper tax than the one imposed. The financial situation had continued to worsen as gold began to disappear from circulation. Congress passed the First Legal Tender which created paper money (known as "greenbacks"). This was a controversial idea, but Sherman spoke in favor of the idea. He also introduced the National Banking Act of 1863. This Act established a series of nationally chartered private banks that would issue banknotes in coordination with the Treasury.
In 1864, Sherman voted for the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, abolishing slavery. It passed Congress and was ratified by the states the next year. He campaigned in Indiana and Ohio for Lincoln's reelection and in 1865, he attended Lincoln's second inauguration, before traveling to Savannah, Georgia to meet with his brother William, who had arrived there after his army's march to the sea. He then returned home to Mansfield in April, where he learned of Lincoln's assassination.
Sherman had been friendly with Andrew Johnson, and some hoped that Sherman could serve as a buffer between Johnson and the party's "Radical" wing. But this was not to be, and when Johnson vetoed the proposed Civil Rights Act of 1866, Sherman joined in re-passing the bill over Johnson's veto. That same year, Sherman voted for the Fourteenth Amendment, which guaranteed equal protection of the laws to the freedmen.
Though considered to be a moderate, Sherman joined with the Radicals in voting for the Tenure of Office Act, which passed over Johnson's veto in 1867. In Johnson's impeachment trial in the Senate, Sherman voted to convict, but the total vote was one short of the required two-thirds majority, and Johnson continued in office. Sherman later said that he "liked the President personally and harbored against him none of the prejudice and animosity of some others," but he believed Johnson had violated the Tenure of Office Act, meriting his removal from office.
When Ulysses S. Grant was elected to the Presidency in 1868, Congress had a more willing partner in Reconstruction. The 41st Congress passed the Enforcement Act of 1870 in an effort to enforce its civil rights Amendments among a hostile Southern population. The next year, Congress passed the Ku Klux Klan Act, which strengthened the Enforcement Act by allowing federal trials and federal troops to be used. Sherman voted in favor of both Acts.
With the war over, many in Congress wanted the greenbacks to be withdrawn from circulation. Most Senate Finance Committee members had no objection, but Sherman believed that withdrawing greenbacks from circulation would contract the money supply and harm the economy. He was right and this was a contributing factor to the Panic of 1873 that followed.
The Ohio Legislature elected Sherman to a third term in 1872. Sherman returned to his leadership of the Finance Committee. During Grant's second term the United States switched to what was essentially a gold standard, joining many nations around the world that based their currencies on gold alone. This drove the cost of gold up and silver down. The deflation made the effects of the Panic of 1873 worse, making it more expensive for debtors to pay debts they had contracted when currency was less valuable. The Panic of 1873 made it even more clear that shrinking the money supply would be harmful to the average American. Sherman opposed printing additional greenbacks, but he supported keeping existing greenbacks backed by bonds in circulation. He developed the Specie Payment Resumption Act, which required gradual reduction of the maximum value of greenbacks allowed to circulate to $300 million. The bill passed on a party-line vote in the lame duck session of the 43rd Congress, and President Grant signed it into law on January 14, 1875.
Sherman returned to Ohio to campaign for the Republican nominee for governor, former governor Rutherford B. Hayes. Hayes won a narrow victory, and was soon mentioned as a possible presidential candidate in 1876. The Republicans nominated Hayes and the election of 1876 was very close and the electoral votes of several states were ardently disputed until mere days before the new president was to be inaugurated. Sherman was part of a delegation sent by President Grant to Louisiana to represent Republican interests concerning disputed votes there. The two sides met to observe the elections return board arrive at its decision that Hayes should be awarded their state's electoral votes. The dispute carried over until a bipartisan election commission was convened in the capital. The commission narrowly decided in Hayes's favor.
Sherman was selected as Hayes' Treasury Secretary in 1877. Hayes and Sherman became close friends. They agreed that the nation should stockpile gold in preparation for the exchange of greenbacks for specie. Once the public was confident that they could redeem greenbacks for gold, few actually did so.
During the Panic of 1873. Democratic Representative Richard P. Bland of Missouri proposed a bill that would require the United States buy as much silver. William B. Allison, a Republican from Iowa led the effort in the Senate. The resulting Bland–Allison Act passed both houses of Congress in 1878. Hayes and Sherman worried that the act would cause inflation through the expansion of the money supply that would be harmful to business. Sherman lobbied his friends in the Senate to defeat the bill, but his efforts were unsuccessful. The President vetoed the bill but Congress overrode Hayes's veto and the bill became law.
Hayes had pledged himself to a one-term presidency, and Sherman decided to seek the Republican nomination in 1880. Hayes hoped that Sherman would succeed him, but he made no official endorsement. Candidates for the nomination were former President Grant, Senator James G. Blaine of Maine, and Senator George F. Edmunds of Vermont. When the convention met in Chicago in June 1880, they instantly divided the delegates into Grant and anti-Grant factions, with Blaine the most popular choice of the latter group. After Grant and Blaine were nominated, James Garfield nominated Sherman with an eloquent speech.
Grant led on the first ballot with 304 votes and Blaine in second with 284. Sherman was a distant third with 93 votes. Sherman's delegates could swing the nomination to either Grant or Blaine, but he refused to release them through twenty-eight ballots, hoping that the anti-Grant forces would desert Blaine and come to him. After several days of balloting, Blaine's men found their compromise candidate and shifted their votes to James Garfield. By the thirty-sixth ballot, Garfield had 399 votes, enough for victory.
Garfield eked out a narrow victory over the Democratic nominee Winfield Scott Hancock. Sherman continued at the Treasury for the rest of Hayes's term, leaving office March 3, 1881. The Ohio legislature had elected Garfield to the Senate in 1880, and when Garfield was elected President, the legislature elected Sherman in his place. Sherman rejoined the Finance Committee, but the Republicans were not in the majority.
Sherman was back in Ohio when he learned that Garfield had been shot in Washington. Sherman voted in favor of the Pendleton Act (for civil service reform).
In 1884, Sherman again ran for the Republican nomination, but his campaign never gained much support. Blaine was considered the favorite and President Arthur also mounted a lackluster attempt to win the a term in his own right. The Ohio delegation failed to unite behind Sherman, and he entered the convention with only 30 total delegates pledged to him. He withdrew after the fourth ballot. Blaine was duly nominated, and went on to lose the election to Democrat Grover Cleveland of New York. Sherman returned to the Senate where, in 1885, he was elected President pro tempore of the Senate. After the death of Vice President Thomas A. Hendricks later that year, Sherman was next in line to the presidency until February 26, 1887, when he resigned the position.
In 1886, the Ohio legislature elected Sherman to a fifth term. He considered another run for the presidency. He traveled to Nashville to give a speech encouraging fairness in the treatment of African-Americans and denounced their mistreatment at the hands of the "redeemed" Southern state governments. The early favorite for the nomination was again Blaine, but after Blaine wrote several letters denying any interest in the nomination, his supporters divided among other candidates, including Sherman. At the 1888 Republican convention, Sherman led on the first ballot with 229 votes, more than double his nearest competitor, but short of the 416 needed for nomination. He gained votes on the second ballot, but plateaued there and by the fifth ballot, it was clear that he would gain no more delegates. He refused to withdraw, but his supporters began to abandon him. Eventually the delegates selected Benjamin Harrison of Indiana as their candidate. Sherman gave speeches for Harrison in Ohio and Indiana and was pleased with his victory over Cleveland that November. After 1888, Sherman did not run for president again.
By the late 19th century, businesses began to form combinations, known as trusts, which claimed a larger and larger share of the market, large enough to control prices. To combat this, Sherman proposed what would become the Sherman Antitrust Act. The bill declared trusts to be illegal and prescribed criminal penalties for violators. The bill passed the Senate by an overwhelming 52–1 vote, and passed the House without dissent. President Harrison signed the bill into law on July 2, 1890.
With the issue of what metal would back currency still a live one, Sherman sponsored a compromise bill called the Sherman Silver Purchase Act, that was passed in July. The Treasury would buy 4.5 million oz. of silver, and would issue Treasury Notes to pay for it, which would be redeemable in gold or silver. The law also provided that the Treasury could coin more silver dollars if the Secretary believed it necessary to redeem the new notes. Harrison believed it would end the controversy, and he signed it into law. However the bill led to increased depletion of the nation's gold supply. In 1893, a financial panic struck the stock market, and the nation soon faced an acute economic depression. The panic was worsened by the acute shortage of gold that resulted from the increased coinage of silver, and President Cleveland, who had replaced Harrison that March, called Congress into session and demanded repeal of the part of the Act. The House debated for fifteen weeks before passing the repeal. It also passed in the Senate. Sherman voted for repeal of "his" bill.
Sherman was elected in 1892 to a sixth term, easily defeating the Democratic candidate in the state legislature. In 1894, Sherman surpassed Thomas Hart Benton's record for longest tenure in the Senate. His memoirs, called Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet, were published the following year. In 1896, he gave speeches on behalf of fellow Ohioan William McKinley in his campaign for the presidency. McKinley was elected over Democrat William Jennings Bryan. Wishing to see the appointment of Hanna, his friend and political manager, to the Senate, McKinley created a vacancy by appointing Sherman to his cabinet as Secretary of State.
Sherman's appointment was swiftly confirmed, but many in Washington soon began to question whether Sherman, at age 73, was up to the job. When the crisis arose in Cuba and many in the nation were clamoring for war, Sherman and McKinley sought a peaceful resolution, preferably involving an independent Cuba without American intervention. The United States and Spain began negotiations on the subject in 1897, but it became clear that Spain would never concede Cuban independence, while the rebels would never settle for anything less. In January 1898, Spain promised some concessions to the rebels, but when American consul Fitzhugh Lee reported riots in Havana, McKinley agreed to send the battleship USS Maine there to protect American lives and property. On February 15, the Maine exploded and sank with 266 men killed. War fever ran high, and in April, Congress declared war. By this time, McKinley had begun to rely on Assistant Secretary of State William R. Day for day-to-day management of the State Department, and was even inviting him to cabinet meetings. Sherman, recognizing his declining health and memory, resigned his office on April 25, 1898.
Sherman retired from public life. He gave a few interviews in which he disagreed with the administration's policy of annexing Puerto Rico and the Philippines. Later that year, his wife, Margaret, had a stroke and she died two years later on June 5, 1900. Sherman remained out of politics for the most part. He died at his Washington home on October 22, 1900, in the company of his daughter, and some relatives and friends. After a funeral at St. John's Episcopal Church in Washington, he was interred in Mansfield City Cemetery with his wife.
John Sherman was born in Lancaster, Ohio on May 10, 1823. His parents were Charles Robert Sherman and Mary Hoyt Sherman. John was the eighth of their eleven children. Charles was a lawyer in Lancaster who was appointed a justice of the Supreme Court of Ohio just before John's birth. Charles Sherman's father died suddenly in 1829, leaving his mother to care for her eleven children. Several of the oldest children, including William, were fostered with nearby relatives, but John stayed with his mother in Lancaster until 1831, when his father's cousin (also named John Sherman) took Sherman into his home in Mount Vernon, Ohio. Sherman disliked school and in 1835, he returned to his mother's home in Lancaster where he continued his education there. He was a troublesome student who was once expelled for punching a teacher.
In 1837, Sherman left school and worked as a surveyor, a job obtained through Whig Party patronage. In 1840 he moved to Mansfield, Ohio to study law in the office of his older brother, Charles Taylor Sherman. He was admitted to the bar in 1844 and joined his brother's firm. He was successful at the practice of law, and by 1847 had become a wealthy man. By that time, Sherman and his brother Charles were able to support their mother and two unmarried sisters. They moved to a house Sherman purchased in Mansfield.
In 1848, John Sherman married Margaret Cecelia Stewart, the daughter of a local judge. The couple never had any biological children, but they adopted a daughter named Mary, in 1864. That same year, Sherman, who had become active in the Whig Party, attended the Whig National Convention as a delegate. He also attended the 1852 convention. In 1853 he moved to Cleveland and established a law office there with two partners.
The passage of the Kansas–Nebraska Act in 1854 motivated him to become more involved politically and he became a candidate for Ohio's thirteenth district in the House of Representatives for what was then called the Opposition Party (later to become the Republican Party.) In the general election Sherman was elected by 2823 votes. When the 34th United States Congress convened in December 1855, opponents of President Franklin Pierce held a majority in the House, while the Democrats controlled the Senate. The House resolved to send three members to Kansas investigate the situation in that territory, one of which was Sherman. He spent two months there and was the main author of the 1,188-page report of the investigators. He informed the House that local control was being undermined by the invasion of Missourians who used violence to coerce the Kansans to elect pro-slavery members to the territorial legislature. The House took no action on the reports. Sherman proposed an amendment to an army appropriation act to bar use of federal troops to enforce the acts of the Kansas territorial legislature. The amendment narrowly passed the House, but was removed by the Senate. Despite of this defeat, Sherman had achieved considerable notoriety.
Sherman was reelected in 1856, defeating his Democratic opponent, Herman J. Brumback, by 2861 votes. The Republican candidate for president, John C. Frémont carried Ohio, but lost the election to James Buchanan. The Republicans—had lost control of the House, and Sherman found himself in the minority. In December of that year, Kansas adopted the pro-slavery Lecompton Constitution and petitioned Congress to be admitted as a slave state. Sherman spoke against the Kansas bill in the House, pointing out the evidence of fraud in the elections. The bill was defeated. Congress agreed to a compromise by which Kansas would be admitted after another referendum on the Lecompton constitution. This time the electorate rejected slavery.
The voters returned Sherman to office for a third term in 1858. When Congress adjourned Sherman and his wife went on vacation to Europe. When they returned that December, sectional tension had increased while Congress was in recess, due to John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia. Sherman ran unsuccessfully for Speaker of the House. He was chosen as chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means, where he spent much of his time on appropriations bills. Sherman supported a bill admitting Kansas as a free state that passed in 1861.
Sherman was renominated for Congress in 1860 and was active in Abraham Lincoln's campaign for President, giving speeches on his behalf in several states. Both were elected. By February 1861, seven states had seceded from the Union. Lincoln took office on March 4, 1861. He nominated Senator Salmon P. Chase of Ohio to be Secretary of the Treasury. Chase resigned his Senate seat on March 7, and two weeks later the Ohio Legislature elected Sherman to the vacant senate seat. Sherman took his seat on March 23, 1861. In April, Sherman's brother William visited Washington to rejoin the army, and the brothers went together to the White House to meet Lincoln. Lincoln soon called for 75,000 men to enlist for three months to put down the rebellion. William Sherman thought too weak of a response. William's thoughts on the war greatly influenced his brother, and John Sherman returned home to Ohio to encourage enlistment, briefly serving as an unpaid colonel of Ohio Volunteers.
During the war John Sherman was assigned to the Senate Finance Committee, was involved in the process of increasing the revenue. Chase asked for and Congress authorized the issuance of $150 million in bonds, which replenished the treasury. Congress also sought to increase revenue when they passed the Revenue Act of 1861, which imposed the first federal income tax in American history. Sherman endorsed the measure and wanted a steeper tax than the one imposed. The financial situation had continued to worsen as gold began to disappear from circulation. Congress passed the First Legal Tender which created paper money (known as "greenbacks"). This was a controversial idea, but Sherman spoke in favor of the idea. He also introduced the National Banking Act of 1863. This Act established a series of nationally chartered private banks that would issue banknotes in coordination with the Treasury.
In 1864, Sherman voted for the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, abolishing slavery. It passed Congress and was ratified by the states the next year. He campaigned in Indiana and Ohio for Lincoln's reelection and in 1865, he attended Lincoln's second inauguration, before traveling to Savannah, Georgia to meet with his brother William, who had arrived there after his army's march to the sea. He then returned home to Mansfield in April, where he learned of Lincoln's assassination.
Sherman had been friendly with Andrew Johnson, and some hoped that Sherman could serve as a buffer between Johnson and the party's "Radical" wing. But this was not to be, and when Johnson vetoed the proposed Civil Rights Act of 1866, Sherman joined in re-passing the bill over Johnson's veto. That same year, Sherman voted for the Fourteenth Amendment, which guaranteed equal protection of the laws to the freedmen.
Though considered to be a moderate, Sherman joined with the Radicals in voting for the Tenure of Office Act, which passed over Johnson's veto in 1867. In Johnson's impeachment trial in the Senate, Sherman voted to convict, but the total vote was one short of the required two-thirds majority, and Johnson continued in office. Sherman later said that he "liked the President personally and harbored against him none of the prejudice and animosity of some others," but he believed Johnson had violated the Tenure of Office Act, meriting his removal from office.
When Ulysses S. Grant was elected to the Presidency in 1868, Congress had a more willing partner in Reconstruction. The 41st Congress passed the Enforcement Act of 1870 in an effort to enforce its civil rights Amendments among a hostile Southern population. The next year, Congress passed the Ku Klux Klan Act, which strengthened the Enforcement Act by allowing federal trials and federal troops to be used. Sherman voted in favor of both Acts.
With the war over, many in Congress wanted the greenbacks to be withdrawn from circulation. Most Senate Finance Committee members had no objection, but Sherman believed that withdrawing greenbacks from circulation would contract the money supply and harm the economy. He was right and this was a contributing factor to the Panic of 1873 that followed.
The Ohio Legislature elected Sherman to a third term in 1872. Sherman returned to his leadership of the Finance Committee. During Grant's second term the United States switched to what was essentially a gold standard, joining many nations around the world that based their currencies on gold alone. This drove the cost of gold up and silver down. The deflation made the effects of the Panic of 1873 worse, making it more expensive for debtors to pay debts they had contracted when currency was less valuable. The Panic of 1873 made it even more clear that shrinking the money supply would be harmful to the average American. Sherman opposed printing additional greenbacks, but he supported keeping existing greenbacks backed by bonds in circulation. He developed the Specie Payment Resumption Act, which required gradual reduction of the maximum value of greenbacks allowed to circulate to $300 million. The bill passed on a party-line vote in the lame duck session of the 43rd Congress, and President Grant signed it into law on January 14, 1875.
Sherman returned to Ohio to campaign for the Republican nominee for governor, former governor Rutherford B. Hayes. Hayes won a narrow victory, and was soon mentioned as a possible presidential candidate in 1876. The Republicans nominated Hayes and the election of 1876 was very close and the electoral votes of several states were ardently disputed until mere days before the new president was to be inaugurated. Sherman was part of a delegation sent by President Grant to Louisiana to represent Republican interests concerning disputed votes there. The two sides met to observe the elections return board arrive at its decision that Hayes should be awarded their state's electoral votes. The dispute carried over until a bipartisan election commission was convened in the capital. The commission narrowly decided in Hayes's favor.
Sherman was selected as Hayes' Treasury Secretary in 1877. Hayes and Sherman became close friends. They agreed that the nation should stockpile gold in preparation for the exchange of greenbacks for specie. Once the public was confident that they could redeem greenbacks for gold, few actually did so.
During the Panic of 1873. Democratic Representative Richard P. Bland of Missouri proposed a bill that would require the United States buy as much silver. William B. Allison, a Republican from Iowa led the effort in the Senate. The resulting Bland–Allison Act passed both houses of Congress in 1878. Hayes and Sherman worried that the act would cause inflation through the expansion of the money supply that would be harmful to business. Sherman lobbied his friends in the Senate to defeat the bill, but his efforts were unsuccessful. The President vetoed the bill but Congress overrode Hayes's veto and the bill became law.
Hayes had pledged himself to a one-term presidency, and Sherman decided to seek the Republican nomination in 1880. Hayes hoped that Sherman would succeed him, but he made no official endorsement. Candidates for the nomination were former President Grant, Senator James G. Blaine of Maine, and Senator George F. Edmunds of Vermont. When the convention met in Chicago in June 1880, they instantly divided the delegates into Grant and anti-Grant factions, with Blaine the most popular choice of the latter group. After Grant and Blaine were nominated, James Garfield nominated Sherman with an eloquent speech.
Grant led on the first ballot with 304 votes and Blaine in second with 284. Sherman was a distant third with 93 votes. Sherman's delegates could swing the nomination to either Grant or Blaine, but he refused to release them through twenty-eight ballots, hoping that the anti-Grant forces would desert Blaine and come to him. After several days of balloting, Blaine's men found their compromise candidate and shifted their votes to James Garfield. By the thirty-sixth ballot, Garfield had 399 votes, enough for victory.
Garfield eked out a narrow victory over the Democratic nominee Winfield Scott Hancock. Sherman continued at the Treasury for the rest of Hayes's term, leaving office March 3, 1881. The Ohio legislature had elected Garfield to the Senate in 1880, and when Garfield was elected President, the legislature elected Sherman in his place. Sherman rejoined the Finance Committee, but the Republicans were not in the majority.
Sherman was back in Ohio when he learned that Garfield had been shot in Washington. Sherman voted in favor of the Pendleton Act (for civil service reform).
In 1884, Sherman again ran for the Republican nomination, but his campaign never gained much support. Blaine was considered the favorite and President Arthur also mounted a lackluster attempt to win the a term in his own right. The Ohio delegation failed to unite behind Sherman, and he entered the convention with only 30 total delegates pledged to him. He withdrew after the fourth ballot. Blaine was duly nominated, and went on to lose the election to Democrat Grover Cleveland of New York. Sherman returned to the Senate where, in 1885, he was elected President pro tempore of the Senate. After the death of Vice President Thomas A. Hendricks later that year, Sherman was next in line to the presidency until February 26, 1887, when he resigned the position.
In 1886, the Ohio legislature elected Sherman to a fifth term. He considered another run for the presidency. He traveled to Nashville to give a speech encouraging fairness in the treatment of African-Americans and denounced their mistreatment at the hands of the "redeemed" Southern state governments. The early favorite for the nomination was again Blaine, but after Blaine wrote several letters denying any interest in the nomination, his supporters divided among other candidates, including Sherman. At the 1888 Republican convention, Sherman led on the first ballot with 229 votes, more than double his nearest competitor, but short of the 416 needed for nomination. He gained votes on the second ballot, but plateaued there and by the fifth ballot, it was clear that he would gain no more delegates. He refused to withdraw, but his supporters began to abandon him. Eventually the delegates selected Benjamin Harrison of Indiana as their candidate. Sherman gave speeches for Harrison in Ohio and Indiana and was pleased with his victory over Cleveland that November. After 1888, Sherman did not run for president again.
By the late 19th century, businesses began to form combinations, known as trusts, which claimed a larger and larger share of the market, large enough to control prices. To combat this, Sherman proposed what would become the Sherman Antitrust Act. The bill declared trusts to be illegal and prescribed criminal penalties for violators. The bill passed the Senate by an overwhelming 52–1 vote, and passed the House without dissent. President Harrison signed the bill into law on July 2, 1890.
With the issue of what metal would back currency still a live one, Sherman sponsored a compromise bill called the Sherman Silver Purchase Act, that was passed in July. The Treasury would buy 4.5 million oz. of silver, and would issue Treasury Notes to pay for it, which would be redeemable in gold or silver. The law also provided that the Treasury could coin more silver dollars if the Secretary believed it necessary to redeem the new notes. Harrison believed it would end the controversy, and he signed it into law. However the bill led to increased depletion of the nation's gold supply. In 1893, a financial panic struck the stock market, and the nation soon faced an acute economic depression. The panic was worsened by the acute shortage of gold that resulted from the increased coinage of silver, and President Cleveland, who had replaced Harrison that March, called Congress into session and demanded repeal of the part of the Act. The House debated for fifteen weeks before passing the repeal. It also passed in the Senate. Sherman voted for repeal of "his" bill.
Sherman was elected in 1892 to a sixth term, easily defeating the Democratic candidate in the state legislature. In 1894, Sherman surpassed Thomas Hart Benton's record for longest tenure in the Senate. His memoirs, called Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet, were published the following year. In 1896, he gave speeches on behalf of fellow Ohioan William McKinley in his campaign for the presidency. McKinley was elected over Democrat William Jennings Bryan. Wishing to see the appointment of Hanna, his friend and political manager, to the Senate, McKinley created a vacancy by appointing Sherman to his cabinet as Secretary of State.
Sherman's appointment was swiftly confirmed, but many in Washington soon began to question whether Sherman, at age 73, was up to the job. When the crisis arose in Cuba and many in the nation were clamoring for war, Sherman and McKinley sought a peaceful resolution, preferably involving an independent Cuba without American intervention. The United States and Spain began negotiations on the subject in 1897, but it became clear that Spain would never concede Cuban independence, while the rebels would never settle for anything less. In January 1898, Spain promised some concessions to the rebels, but when American consul Fitzhugh Lee reported riots in Havana, McKinley agreed to send the battleship USS Maine there to protect American lives and property. On February 15, the Maine exploded and sank with 266 men killed. War fever ran high, and in April, Congress declared war. By this time, McKinley had begun to rely on Assistant Secretary of State William R. Day for day-to-day management of the State Department, and was even inviting him to cabinet meetings. Sherman, recognizing his declining health and memory, resigned his office on April 25, 1898.
Sherman retired from public life. He gave a few interviews in which he disagreed with the administration's policy of annexing Puerto Rico and the Philippines. Later that year, his wife, Margaret, had a stroke and she died two years later on June 5, 1900. Sherman remained out of politics for the most part. He died at his Washington home on October 22, 1900, in the company of his daughter, and some relatives and friends. After a funeral at St. John's Episcopal Church in Washington, he was interred in Mansfield City Cemetery with his wife.