John Sherman

John Sherman

John Sherman was a politician from the U.S. state of Ohio during the American Civil War and into the late nineteenth century. He served as Secretary of the Treasury and Secretary of State. Sherman was the principal author of the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890, which was signed into law by President Benjamin Harrison. He sought the Republican presidential nomination three times, coming closest in 1888, but was never chosen by the party.

About John Sherman in brief

Summary John ShermanJohn Sherman was a politician from the U.S. state of Ohio during the American Civil War and into the late nineteenth century. A member of the Republican Party, he served as Secretary of the Treasury and Secretary of State. Sherman sought the Republican presidential nomination three times, coming closest in 1888, but was never chosen by the party. Sherman was the principal author of the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890, which was signed into law by President Benjamin Harrison. Sherman died at his home in Washington, D. C. in 1900. His brothers included General William Tecumseh Sherman; Charles Taylor Sherman, a federal judge in Ohio; and Hoyt Sherman, an Iowa banker. Sherman’s father died suddenly in 1829, leaving his mother to care for 11 children. He was the eighth of 11 children to be born to Charles Robert Sherman and his wife, Mary Hoyt, a local judge in Lancaster, Ohio. The couple never had any biological children, but never adopted a daughter, but did have two unmarried sisters, Cecilia Stewart and Margaret Stewart, who moved to a house in Mansfield in 1848. In 1844, Sherman married Margaret Stewart; the couple had one daughter, Mary Sherman, who was born in 1852. Sherman later moved to Mansfield, where he began a law career before entering politics. He served three terms in the House of Representatives. He rose in party leadership and was nearly elected Speaker in 1859. As a senator, he was a leader in financial matters, helping to redesign the United States’ monetary system to meet the needs of a nation torn apart by civil war.

After the war, he worked to produce legislation that would restore the nation’s credit abroad and produce a stable, gold-backed currency at home. He returned to the Senate after his term expired, serving there for a further sixteen years. He died in 1898 at the start of the Spanish–American War, and he retired in 1898. His son Charles became a lawyer in Lancaster; his son Charles, newly married to Mary HoyT, moved the family west to Ohio in 1815, and several other Sherman relatives soon followed. By the time of John Sherman’s birth, Charles had just been appointed a justice of the Supreme Court of Ohio. By 1844 he had accumulated 10,000 property and was a partner in several local businesses, and by 1864, Sherman began to take a larger role in political politics. The following year, he joined his brother’s firm, and in 1839 he became a successful property and business owner. He later married the daughter of a local local judge, Margaret Stewart. He had two sons, William and Charles Taylor, and a daughter-in-law, Mary Mary Sherman. He also had a son, William Sherman, Jr., who was elected to the Ohio House of Reps. in 1858. Sherman also served as a member of Congress from Ohio in the 1860s and 1870s, and later as a senator from Ohio from the 1880s.