page_title: John Sherman
section_title: Secretary of the Treasury
hierarchical_section_title: John Sherman / Secretary of the Treasury
caption_attribution_description: English: President Hayes and his cabinet
context_page_description: John 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 in both houses of the U.S. Congress. He also 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. His brothers included General William Tecumseh Sherman; Charles Taylor Sherman, a federal judge in Ohio; and Hoyt Sherman, an Iowa banker.
  Born in Lancaster, Ohio, Sherman later moved to Mansfield, where he began a law career before entering politics. Initially a Whig, Sherman was among those anti-slavery activists who formed what became the Republican Party. He served three terms in the House of Representatives. As a member of the House, Sherman traveled to Kansas to investigate the unrest between pro- and anti-slavery partisans there. He rose in party leadership and was nearly elected Speaker in 1859. Sherman was elevated to the Senate in 1861.
context_section_description: Sherman's financial expertise and his friendship with Hayes made him a natural choice for Treasury Secretary in 1877. Like Grant before him, Hayes had not consulted party leaders about his cabinet appointments, and the Senate took the then-unusual step of referring all of them to committee. Two days later, senators approved Sherman's nomination after an hour of debate, and he began lobbying his former colleagues to approve the other nominations, which they eventually did. Hayes and Sherman became close friends in the next four years, taking regular carriage rides together to discuss matters of state in private. In the Treasury, as in the Senate, Sherman was confronted with two tasks: first, to prepare for specie resumption when it took effect in 1879; second, to deal with the backlash against the diminution of silver coinage.
caption: Hayes's cabinet in 1877
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