The Admiral and the Ambassador (5 page)

Hoping to drive a final spike into Bryan's campaign, Hanna ordered up a series of parades in different cities for the days before the election. Porter organized the New York City “business men's parade,” or “sound money parade,” on October 31 as an over-the-top signal of the support by American business for McKinley. Porter pulled strings, called in favors, and micro-managed to a surprising level. Noting that there was construction on Fifth Avenue, he beseeched city officials, from the city streets department all the way to the mayor's office, to get the projects either finished or covered over in time for the parade. “The great howl is over the construction at Fifth Avenue between 30th and 34th Streets,” he wrote to Mayor William L. Strong, a single-term mayor whose biggest impact on New York and American politics was appointing Theodore Roosevelt police commissioner.

Mrs. Hanna and her party and lots of people have engaged every room of the Waldorf, and this will prevent the procession from going past that building. I believe the contractor would be patriotic enough in such an emergency (like the cable car company and all others concerned) to move his stone and earth onto the sidewalk and board over the ditch for the 31st. Won't you please see if this cannot be accomplished, then the parade will go off without a hitch, and we can have the greatest parade that was ever known.
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A week later, in a separate letter, Porter sought to put words in the mayor's mouth, suggesting Strong issue this statement: “As the parade on the 31st instant will continue for some hours after night-fall, the occupants of houses along the line of the march are earnestly requested to light as brilliantly as possible the front rooms of their buildings and raise the window shades in order to assist in illuminating the streets along which the parade
will pass.” Porter told the mayor he could have issued the statement himself “but I think it would be more appropriate to have you take this action,” using the tone of a man accustomed to having his way.
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The attention to detail paid off. On Halloween, some one hundred thousand people marched for McKinley and “sound money,” none of them under overt political banners but as members of different industrial and trade groups. The idea was to portray the parade as an act of nonpartisan solidarity, and the impressive display drew some 750,000 spectators, far exceeding expectations and setting records. “Never before in this nation's history have so many flags been waved as were waved by the army that mustered in the streets of New-York City yesterday,” reported the pro-McKinley
New York Times.
“No such political demonstration has ever been seen on the continent. The city kept holiday. Adorned with the red, white, and blue, resounding to the music of patriotic arts, echoing with the cheers of hundreds of thousands of throats, and blessed with the brightest, most genial sunshine, New-York City never before saw such a day.”
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The credit belonged to Porter. On election night, Porter joined hundreds of fellow Republicans at the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company building on Madison Square to await the returns, which came in fits and spurts via telephone from the national headquarters in Chicago and party boiler rooms in Baltimore, Boston, Des Moines, and other cities. By eight o'clock it was clear McKinley had won enough states to take the Electoral College, and the celebrating began, capped by a dinner for two hundred on the building's tenth floor.
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The victory was definitive. McKinley won the general vote by 51 percent to 47 percent and the Electoral College with 271 votes to Bryan's 176 votes. McKinley took a day or two for rest but was already contemplating political appointees and developing plans for the inauguration itself, some four months away. Given the historic heft of the New York “sound money” parade on Halloween, the logical choice of an organizer for the inaugural parade was Porter, a duty the former general shouldered with equanimity. “I have not much liking for the expenditure of time I shall have to put on the preparations for the inaugural ceremonies at Washington, but Governor McKinley invited me to his house in Canton and made the request, and, of course, I had to reply,” he wrote to a friend in late December. “If
we have good weather, we will have a fine show.”
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Speculation also swirled about a possible role for Porter in the McKinley administration. Given Porter's Civil War record, his work in the Grant administration as a military liaison, and his history of support for fellow veterans, secretary of war was the post most often mentioned.

Porter, though, had had his fill of the hornet's nest of Washington politics during the Grant years. Porter told friends that the widely traveled and well-connected president-elect knew who the best appointees might be and would have his own ideas about who he could count on in his cabinet, a selection “so personal, being a good deal like the selection of a personal staff, that all persons naturally hesitate to make suggestions upon this subject to a president-elect.”

Yet Porter didn't hesitate for long. He pushed for his friend, neighbor, and fellow Republican fundraiser Cornelius Bliss—like himself, a figure outside the Platt political machine, which was pressing for some high-level job to go to a New Yorker. “I would really rather see Cornelius Bliss there than anyone else,” Porter wrote to a friend.

He has done splendid work in the campaign, and a high position in Washington would be rather a novelty for him, and perhaps be attractive, whereas I served there as assistant secretary of war and for a short time was acting secretary of war, in charge of the department, so that I have tasted of all the sweets, if there are any in such places. Of course, any citizen would be glad to be identified with Governor McKinley's administration in a prominent capacity, but so far as a Cabinet officer from New York is concerned, I should really, as I have said, rather see Bliss there.”
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It's unclear when Porter and McKinley first discussed a role for the former general in the new administration, but it was probably during a trip by Porter to Canton in early December to confer on the plans for the inaugural parade. “The Governor has had very full and frank talks with me about all his preparations for the future, Cabinet, etc.,” Porter wrote to a friend.

I told him at the outset that nothing could induce me to camp in Washington and undertake the African slavery of running a Department of the Government; that I was trying to get rest in these days rather than
confining work. He is all adrift as to a secretary of war, but he will no doubt be able to get a good man before the 4th of March. As you say, it is more important than ever that there should be a proper head to the Military Department of the Government, particularly if we should have more domestic insurrections or a foreign war.”
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Porter was a bit of a Francophile. Over the years, he worked at his French, occasionally hiring a private tutor, and made a near-daily ritual of reading aloud in French. While working for Pullman, he had made at least one trip to Paris and found the city fascinating.

By mid-February, word was circulating that Porter would become McKinley's ambassador to France, speculation that Porter seemed to confirm while trying to be nonresponsive. “I have your letter and note what you say about my going to France,” he replied to a friend. “This, as well as some other matters pending, will not take definite shape and be announced until after the 4th of March, and whatever announcement will be made will come from Washington. If the matter takes such shape that it can be announced earlier, I will most gladly communicate with you at once.”
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McKinley, in fact, worked hard to incorporate his political friends into his new administration, while also trying to shore up support within the party. His pick for secretary of war was a questionable call: Russell A. Alger, a former lumber baron and governor of Michigan, who despite his Civil War experience (more than sixty battles and twice wounded) was an inept planner and leader of military forces. “Alger's appointment is unfavorably received in many quarters,” Porter wrote. “I think it will probably be more popular in the West than here. Only future events can tell how successfully he will serve.”
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McKinley also struggled to find a place for Hanna, who was not an easy man to fit in, given the reputation the Democrats had bestowed on him as a greedy string-puller. McKinley eventually appointed Ohio senator John Sherman—a nephew of General William Tecumseh Sherman—as his secretary of state, despite the aging senator's clear onset of senility. Ohio's governor then appointed Hanna to the vacated US senate seat. Bliss, as Porter had hoped and lobbied, was named secretary of the interior. And Porter, as rumored, was named the new ambassador to France.

So the cabinet and the new administration slowly came together. Before any of it could become official, though, McKinley had to be sworn in as president.

McKinley and his small entourage left his home in Canton around 7 P
M
on March 1 aboard a private train that consisted of a baggage car, a dining car, two Pullmans, and two private cars. The McKinleys traveled in car “No. 38,” a rolling piece of luxury with white oak plank walls and floor, a steel ceiling, two “palatial bedrooms” with a connecting bathroom, and, to fight off the chill, a roaring fireplace in the sitting room. The train arrived in Washington around eleven o'clock the next morning, and McKinley and his fellow travelers were ferried by carriage to the Ebbitt House hotel at the corner of F and Fourteenth Streets, where they were to spend the night before McKinley's inauguration.

The president-elect had barely settled in before he left again for a luncheon Cleveland was hosting at the White House, just a couple of blocks away. It was McKinley's first visit as president-elect to his future home and office. Porter and several other political intimates of Cleveland and McKinley, as well as their wives, gathered at the table before the presidents, current and future, split off for a quiet, private conversation. No records detail what was said, but one imagines a discussion of the pressing matters facing the country, from the moribund economy to political pressure on the United States to intervene in Cuba, where insurrectionists were trying to overthrow their Spanish colonial overlords. Neither Cleveland nor McKinley wanted to involve the United States, but Cleveland was growing increasingly certain that war was on the horizon.

The next morning, McKinley returned to the White House in a carriage accompanied by five other men, including his two official ushers, senators James S. Sherman of New York and John L. Mitchell of Wisconsin. The other three men were a detachment from the US Secret Service, a practice begun three years earlier by Cleveland, mindful that two of his predecessors, Lincoln and Garfield, had been killed on the job and that he himself had become a reviled political figure through the 1893 depression.
Two agents rode alongside the carriage while the third sat in the cab with McKinley and scanned the crowd as the carriage rattled along the streets.

At the White House, McKinley and his entourage had to wait a few minutes in the oval-shaped Blue Room as Cleveland signed some last-minute papers in a second-floor office. Around quarter after ten, Cleveland finally descended the stairs, slowed by his weight—some three hundred pounds—and a gouty foot swaddled in a cloth shoe, and hobbled into the Blue Room, using an umbrella as a cane. He greeted the man who was about to succeed him, and in a few minutes, the entourage slowly left the building, climbed into a carriage, and, in a clatter, arrived at the gate. Porter, at the cue, spurred his horse to start the procession down bunting-draped Pennsylvania Avenue to the white-domed Capitol, where members of Congress and the Supreme Court awaited. Supporters who had already begun gathering for the post-inaugural parade cheered and hollered and waved flags as the carriages passed, Porter prancing at the vanguard. McKinley beamed and waved, an excited display for the usually subdued politician, while Cleveland sat emotionless at his side.
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