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History of the Treasury
Secretaries of the Treasury
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Daniel Manning
(1885 - 1887)
President Grover Cleveland appointed Daniel Manning (1831-1887)
Secretary of the Treasury in 1885. The pressing issue of the period was
government currency, specifically, how much currency should be in circulation
and whether it  should be backed by gold or silver. Conservative
Eastern financiers urged a currency backed by gold, while Western speculators,
in need of a large, more plentiful money supply to build railroads and businesses
on the frontier, wanted a currency backed by readily available silver.
Manning advocated a compromise currency based on
both gold and silver which would be redeemable in gold. He stated that
"every dollar note shall be the representative certificate of a coin dollar
actually in the Treasury and payable on demand; a currency in which our
monetary unit coined in gold ... and its equivalent coined in silver-shall
not be suffered to part company." In the international arena, Manning
began work on what eventually became the McKinley Tariff of 1890, which
significantly lowered customs duties. He resigned from the cabinet in
1887 due to ill health.
About the Artist
Robert Hinckley was born in Northampton, Massachusetts
in 1853 and studied art in Paris with Carolus Duran at the time John Singer
Sargent was working in Paris. He also studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts,
spending a total of seventeen years in France before returning to the
United States. He settled in Washington, D.C., painting commissioned portraits
for the federal government and teaching for a while at the Corcoran School
of Art. His portrait of Daniel Manning was most likely painted from life
during the 1880s.
Office of the Curator
All rights reserved. 2001
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