President-elect Rutherford B. Hayes Offers Sen. John Sherman the Post of Secretary of the Treasury, Amidst the Constitutional Crisis of the Election of 1876 and His Own Uncertainty

An extreme rarity: the offer of a major cabinet position, one of just a small handful we have ever had

On March 21, 1861, less than a month before the Civil War began, Representative John Sherman of Ohio was elevated to the U.S. Senate. Less than two months later, his brother William T. Sherman was commissioned in his first command – colonel of the 13th U.S. Infantry. Thus did the noted brothers embark on important careers at the same time.

The presidential election of 1876 was one of the closest in history, and with it Sherman rose to national prominence. Democrat Samuel Tilden won the popular vote against Republican Rutherford B. Hayes, but fell just short in the electoral vote tally, with Florida’s 4 votes in doubt. The Republican Party decided to challenge the reported results in Florida and three other states that had ostensively gone for Tilden: Louisiana, Oregon, and South Carolina. Both political parties sent representatives to these states to line up support for their side. John Sherman went to New Orleans with James A. Garfield to work with the Republican-controlled state Vote Returning Board there, and succeeded in getting the electoral votes switched to Hayes by the board. The outgoing Louisiana governor who signed the electoral returns sent to Washington was moved up to the U. S. Senate, in a deal arranged by Sherman.

In the end, however, the entire electoral vote matter was referred to a 15-man Congressional Electoral Commission, which on February 1, 1877, awarded all of the disputed votes to Hayes in party line votes of 8-7 each, making Hayes the president-elect. Democrats were outraged, violence was threatened, and the country was on the verge of being pulled apart. It was a true constitutional crisis. Realizing that there were no legal mechanisms in place to avert the potentially chaotic result, meetings among interested parties seeking a way out of the controversy took place in February, between powerful businessmen, Congressmen and Senators, leaders of both parties, and representatives of Tilden and Hayes.

The culmination of these came on February 26, when some of Hayes chief supporters, including Sherman and Garfield, met with Southern supporters of Tilden at the Wormley Hotel in Washington and brokered what became known as the “Compromise of 1877”. At the meeting, Democratic leaders accepted Hayes’s election in exchange for Republican promises to withdraw Federal troops from the South, provide federal funding for internal improvements in the South, and name a prominent Southerner to the President’s cabinet. With the inauguration delayed until Monday, March 5, Hayes took the oath privately on March 4, 1877. When the Federal troops were withdrawn by President Hayes pursuant to this compromise, the Republican governments in Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina collapsed, bringing Reconstruction to a formal end. Hayes’s cabinet appointee was Democrat David M. Key of Tennessee.

Even as Sherman was maneuvering to engineer the compromise, Hayes wrote offering him the post of Secretary of the Treasury. He also states that it is impossible for him to make arrangements to leave Ohio and come to Washington until the final result is known, meaning that he felt a hint of uncertainty about whether he would even be inaugurated.

Autograph Letter Signed, Columbus, Ohio, February 19, 1877, marked confidential and addressed familiarly “My Dear Sir”, to Sherman, offering him the post, refusing in advance to take no for an answer, and seemingly unsure about the final result. “The more I think of it the more difficult it seems for me to get ready to come to W[ashington] before Wednesday or Thursday of next week. I must fix affairs at Fremont, and can’t begin it until I know the result. Why can’t friends be sent or come here?”

“It seems to me proper now to say that I am extremely desirous that you should take the Treasury Department. Aside from my own personal preferences, there are many and controlling reasons why I should ask you to do this. It will satisfy friends here in Ohio. I understand Gen. Morton and our friends at Washington like it. The Country will approve it. You are by all odds the best fitted for it of any man in the Nation. Your resignation from the Senate will be a great loss to that body, but it will cause no serious dissensions or difficulty in Ohio. Do not say no until I have had a full conference with you. There is no reason why you should not visit Ohio as soon as you can be spared from W[ashington]. Of course the public will know of our meeting, but they will be grateful to know it. No possible harm can come of it. I should have said all this before, but I did not want to embarrass you in your actions on the Presidential question. Sincerely, R.B. Hayes.” The Morton referred to was likely O.P. Morton, then a U.S. Senator and previously the wartime Governor of Indiana. He was a Hayes man on the Congressional Electoral Commission.

Sherman accepted the position of Secretary of the Treasury, and there acted to promote financial stability and solvency, oversaw an end to wartime inflationary measures and a return to gold-backed money. He returned to the Senate after his term expired, serving there for a further sixteen years. During that time he continued his work on financial legislation, and in 1890 the author of the landmark Sherman Antitrust Act, the first great antitrust measure.