John Sherman

John Sherman (1823-1900), U.S. legislator and cabinet officer, born in Lancaster, Ohio, and admitted to the Ohio bar in 1844. He was a member of the U.S. Congress from 1855 to 1877, first in the House of Representatives and after 1861 in the Senate, from which he resigned to become secretary of the treasury under President Rutherford B. Hayes. In 1881, Sherman returned to the Senate, where he served until 1897. He was author of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act of 1890, which provided for the monthly purchase of silver bullion by the government and the issuing of treasury notes based on it, and the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890, which forbade combinations, or monopolies, in restraint of trade. In 1897 he became secretary of state under President William McKinley, but he resigned shortly after the outbreak of the Spanish-American War because of ill health. He was the author of Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate, and Cabinet (2 volumes, 1895).