Remembering the first "assistant president"
The obscure legacy of Garret A. Hobart
His is not a household name today, but from 1897 to 1899, Garret Augustus Hobart was among the most powerful U.S. politicians of his age. As the vice president under President William McKinley, “Gus” Hobart held an office few people regarded as particularly noteworthy—a later vice president described it with the salty epithet, not even “worth a bucket of warm piss.” Hobart, however, was singularly successful in his handling of the U.S. Senate, over which he presided.
Vice President Garret A. Hobart (right), with
President William McKinley, Long Branch, N.J., ca. 1898.
Courtesy Library of Congress
The U.S. Constitution (Article I, Section 2) gives just that one specific duty, in fact, to the vice president. And while the vice president cannot vote unless there is a tie, how much influence the vice president exerts otherwise is unlimited. In Hobart’s case, President McKinley entrusted him with total authority over the Senate as his personal representative, an unprecedented move which soon produced the unofficial title of “assistant president” for the man so few people outside the government even knew.
The Paterson, New Jersey, native, virtually unknown outside his home state, was a wealthy lawyer, businessman, and former state legislator when McKinley tapped him to run as vice president in 1896. Yet he was well-respected by state and national party leaders, and easily nominated.
I wrote at length about Hobart’s role in the new administration in my 2020 book, Forgotten Legacy: William McKinley, George Henry White, and the Struggle for Black Equality (LSU Press). The two men were not acquainted before the 1896 election, but Hobart soon became McKinley’s closest confidant and adviser, moving his family into a leased house—quickly dubbed the “Cream White House” by journalists—on Lafayette Square just across from the White House, where the President and his reclusive wife, Ida, often spent afternoons socializing with the Hobarts.
Built in 1828, its official name is the Benjamin Ogle Tayloe house, but it was often called “the little White House” for its proximity to the Executive Mansion. While neither as large nor as grand as the President’s residence, it nonetheless held 30 rooms on three floors, and was well suited for dinners and entertaining, with the first floor devoted to office space. Owned by retiring Senator Don Cameron of Pennsylvania, who had renovated and expanded it, in 1896 it had been offered as the official residence of the vice president in the last Congress—approved by the Senate, but not by the House—and was quickly selected by Hobart as a home for his family: wife Jennie and their only surviving child, Garret Jr., who turned 13 in 1897.
The “Cream White House,” Vice President Hobart’s
residence, as it looked in 1886. Public domain photo
No vice president had ever lived this close to the White House—or perhaps even wanted to, because so few were personally close to the President. Some vice presidents, in fact, remained ambitious rivals, and had few dealings with the Chief Executive. In any event, none before Hobart had ever enjoyed such a close working relationship with the man they served alongside, or played any real role except to wait for a sudden quirk of fate that might elevate them.
Unlike many of his less accomplished predecessors, “Gus” Hobart was a man with a magnetic personality, and had long inspired admiration among voters and even the most cynical politicians for his fair, impartial, and adroit leadership skills as leader of the New Jersey state senate—and more recently, for helping turn New Jersey towards Republicans in statewide elections. His younger protege, the state’s governor, John W. Griggs, elected in 1895, would become McKinley’s second Attorney General in early 1898—almost certainly at Hobart’s quiet suggestion.
“I am a businessman; I engage in politics for recreation,” Hobart had once said, according to his biographer, David Magie. And in truth, he was very good at what he seemed to enjoy instinctively: making a dysfunctional group work efficiently. McKinley thus saw in Hobart that rare combination of common sense, good humor, and unfailing supportiveness as the perfect “assistant president,” who ran the Senate like a well-oiled machine but alienated almost no one in the process. At one point, Hobart invited the entire Senate to his house for dinner—and a private, informal dialogue with the President.
He assumed an unprecedented activist’s role in the Senate, as he quickly began ruling on points of procedure and law that had long all but hog-tied the Senate in endless debates and votes—but in a manner so charming, brisk, and sensible that opponents were soon won over. McKinley approved, impressed by Hobart’s skills in the Senate and as a host.
In Magie’s words, “The President saw in the Vice-President a man whose training and experience made him a wise counsellor, and whose sense of humor would prevent him from becoming a rival … a man whose purpose was sincere to do right and serve his country.” The two men, both skilled attorneys, “were both friends and confederates,” Magie noted, blessed with complementary personalities and working styles—a blending which fitted them, uniquely in U.S. history, for working as a team. McKinley was “so certain … of the loyalty and good judgment of his colleague” that he consulted Hobart “in all questions of general policy.”
That Jennie Hobart became fast friends with Ida McKinley was an equally welcomed godsend for the President, who worried incessantly about the delicate health of his wife, and found Jennie’s company like a rare tonic for keeping Ida in good spirits. Jennie, whose only daughter had died suddenly in 1895 while traveling in Europe, sensed a kindred soul, perhaps, and became like another favored sister to the First Lady.
Their own daughters having died as toddlers, both McKinleys seemed to treat “Junior” Hobart as if he were their own. The two couples even began to vacation together.
The McKinleys vacationing with the Hobarts, Lake Champlain,
New York, 1899. Courtesy Library of Congress
* * * * * *
The 1898 elections continued the Republicans’ control of the House of Representatives, with a reduced majority. But as 1898 ended and 1899 opened, a particularly demanding lame-duck session of the Senate on the peace treaty with Spain, required his constant presence during an intense and lengthy debate. During this session, Hobart cast the only tie-breaking vote pf his brief career—defeating an amendment promising independence for the Philippine Islands, opposed by McKinley,
Exhausted by the ordeal, Hobart collapsed after his closing speech to the Senate. When Congress adjourned, he traveled with the McKinleys to Senator Mark Hanna’s winter home in Thomasville, Georgia, for a period of rest. While there, he soon became ill with a severe case of grippe, forcing him to to return to Washington for treatment. The episode apparently aggravated an existing heart condition, and despite careful medical care, he never fully recovered his strength. He soon moved back to New Jersey for a longer period of complete rest.
Even in his weakened condition, he refused to cancel a long-planned summer vacation in Plattsburg, New York, on Lake Champlain, with the McKinleys. But the vacation proved more than his condition could bear, and was cut short by his worsening symptoms. In late August, the Hobarts moved back to New Jersey for what turned out to be the final time. Still, he rallied long enough to fulfill the President’s last official request—to intercede personally with Secretary of War Russell Alger and persuade him to resign, a task McKinley was apparently loath to perform himself.
By October, however, he had deteriorated to the point of being a complete invalid, in nearly constant pain, unable to sleep in a prone position. Just before the end of November, Gus Hobart died at his home in Paterson. He was 55 years of age, and became the youngest of six vice presidents to die so far in office.
His funeral services on November 25, 1899, conducted at his home Church of the Redeemer in Paterson, drew perhaps 50,000 mourners, according to the New York Times. They were led by President McKinley, accompanied by his cabinet, members of the Supreme Court, and a large delegation from both houses of Congress, all aboard a series of special trains from Washington.
Today, few people outside Paterson may remember much more than his name. But tourists do still visit his large mausoleum in Paterson’s Cedar Lawn Cemetery, constructed in 1901 by his widow. And a large statue in front of Paterson’s city hall, erected in 1903, pays eternal tribute to the first “assistant president.”
Statue of Garret A. Hobart, Paterson, N.J. Photo From David Magie, The Life of Garret Augustus Hobart,
Twenty-Fourth Vice President of the United States (1910).
Next time: Secretary of State George Shultz visits Soviet Georgia