The eighth child of Judge Charles Robert Sherman
and his wife, Mary Hoyt, John studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1844,
moving to Cleveland. Entering politics, he was a delegate to the Whig National
Conventions of 1848 and 1852. Following the Whig party's collapse, Sherman
was one of the early organizers of the new Republican party, chairing the
first Ohio Republican Convention in 1855. The previous November, he had been
elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, serving from March 4, 1855
to March 21, 1861, and rising to chair the powerful Ways and Means Committee.
In 1861, the Ohio legislature elected Sherman to the U.S. Senate following
the resignation of Salmon P. Chase, who had joined Abraham Lincoln's cabinet.
Sherman was appointed Secretary of the Treasury by President Rutherford B.
Hayes in 1877. In 1880, Sherman sought the Republican presidential nomination
but was passed over by the Convention in favor of his campaign manager, James
Garfield. With Garfield's election as president, Sherman returned to the Senate,
where he remained until March of 1897, becoming the driving force behind
the Sherman Anti-Trust Act and the Sherman Silver Act. He allowed his name
to go forward for the presidential nomination in 1884 and 1888, but his candidacies
failed both times. In 1897, President William McKinley appointed Sherman
Secretary of State. Sherman held this post until he retired from public life
in November of 1898.
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