1960 was a very close election year and in some ways reminiscent of 2020: a Catholic Democrat defeated a Republican for the presidency and Republicans made gains in the House. One of these gains was from the traditionally Republican district centered in Springfield, Missouri. In 1956, longtime Representative Dewey Short had lost reelection due to a drought and this came along with Eisenhower losing the state, but in 1960 Republicans won back the district for good and their man was Dr. Durward G. Hall (1910-2001).
Hall quickly became known as one of the most conservative men in Congress, with Senator Barry Goldwater thinking of him as the only person more conservative than himself. He accumulated sky-high yearly scores from Americans for Constitutional Action and bottom-of-the-barrel ones from Americans for Democratic Action. His lifetime MC-Index score is a 99%, while his DW-Nominate score is a 0.796, only being outdone on conservatism on this scale during his time in Congress by H.R. Gross of Iowa and John G. Schmitz of California. In 1971, he was one of only seven representatives to have had a “perfect” voting record by Americans for Constitutional Action’s standards. As he was a doctor by profession, his colleagues called him “Dr. No” for his unwavering opposition to spending bills. Like his ideological ally H.R. Gross of Iowa, Hall was a strong critic of what he deemed “wasteful spending”. On his target list were pork barrel projects and he found no use for government funding of the arts. Hall voted against arts funding and in 1967 he criticized the government for funding a study of comic strips and in response to a defense of such funding he stated that he liked comic strips, and added in a commentary about crime, “If more members of the Supreme Court read Dick Tracy regularly, and became aware of the growing crime rate in America, perhaps we would not have some of the decisions which have created such a flourishing climate for the rising crime rate” (Science 1967). In 1965, he led the opposition to Medicare with fellow Missouri Republican Thomas B. Curtis, with Hall stating, “at no time during the week this bill was drafted, were the Nation’s doctors asked to contribute to the deliberations” and considered this to be “the most brazen act of omission ever committed on a piece of major legislation” (Twight, 331).
On civil rights, Hall backed the 24th Amendment which banned the poll tax, supported the final version of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 after voting against the original version, and voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1967, which was aimed primarily at stopping racial violence. However, in accordance to his limited government views, he opposed measures that covered the private sector, including the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Civil Rights Act of 1968. He voted for the Equal Rights Amendment after voting for an amendment that would exempt sex-specific labor protections from its coverage. Hall also was a strong backer of the Vietnam War and as a member of the Armed Services Committee he sided with hawkish chair Mendel Rivers (D-S.C.) as well as his equally hawkish successor F. Edward Hebert (D-La.).
Hall’s conservatism didn’t let up for President Richard Nixon as it did quite a few Republicans, as he opposed continuations of Great Society programs and opposed the administration’s Family Assistance Plan, which would have provided guaranteed minimum income for working families. He decided not to run for reelection in 1972, but he has successors for the honorary title of “Dr. No” including former Representative Ron Paul of Texas and the late Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma.
References
Bresee, J. (2001). Ashcroft? The Road to Theocracy? Against the Current.
Back on October 23, 2019, I published “The Problems of Interest Group Ratings” and in the process I mentioned a scale called DW-Nominate which is supposed to represent polarization but also ideology. Members who score closest to 1 are “conservative” while members who score closest to -1 are “liberal”. This scale does indeed hold up quite well for contemporary scoring and most certainly for scoring during and after the New Deal. However, this scaling system has some curiosities that make it in some cases not ideal. I present the major examples I have found of when DW-Nominate seems at least a bit off.
Senator Huey P. Long
Huey Long of Louisiana is often thought of as a New Deal critic to FDR’s left, but what if I told you his DW-Nominate score was very high for a Democrat? It is in fact 0.251. There are only six Democrats in the 20th century who pulled off a higher score on this scale. These were Senators Strom Thurmond of South Carolina and Rush Dew Holt of West Virginia as well as Representatives Bob Stump of Arizona, Larry McDonald of Georgia, John Rarick of Louisiana, and Dave Satterfield III of Virginia. Thurmond, Holt, and Stump would eventually switch to the GOP, with Thurmond’s and Stump’s records becoming even more conservative on the scale as Republicans. The plethora of some types of votes may push Long in a “right” direction, such as the sheer volume of votes on the Reciprocal Trade Act in 1934 (he was a protectionist, a position that was held by all conservative Republicans in that time) as well as his non-interventionist views best represented by his complete and utter opposition to US membership in the World Court in 1935. For a more balanced scale, perhaps the Reciprocal Trade Act in its final passage gets a vote along with one or maybe two key votes surrounding amendments to the act. The same goes for the World Court. Long may do well on sheer volume, but if key votes are more balanced for ideology, he still does better than you’d expect given his record, but not as one of the most right-wing Democrats in American history by the MC-Index.
The Socialists
While the members of the Socialist Party did vote independently quite often, this translates into some bizarre outcomes and their true place on the spectrum would likely be better defined by a measurement that emphasizes key ideological issues. Meyer London of New York, for instance, scores a -0.026. This is more liberal than most Republicans, to be sure, but it is also more conservative than most Democrats. It is in fact more conservative than any Democrat currently serving. This goes even more so for Victor Berger of Wisconsin, who scores a 0.176. This is higher than most segregationist Democrats. It is also higher than the following people not commonly thought of as socialists:
Martin Dies Jr., D-Texas, chair of House Un-American Activities Committee, was considerably more conservative in his second go at Congress from 1953 to 1959 than his first, from 1931 to 1945. Focused a lot on anti-communism. – 0.003.
John E. Rankin, D-Miss., notorious bigot who had a dramatic switch from liberalism to conservatism in his career. – 0.006.
Howard W. Smith, D-Va. – Famously obstructive chair of the House Rules Committee, used his post to block liberal and civil rights legislation. – 0.035.
Richard M. Nixon, R-Calif. – You know who he is! – 0.162.
Pat McCarran, D-Nevada – A staunch Senate anti-communist, non-interventionist, and sometimes friend sometimes foe of the New Deal. – 0.06.
Warren R. Austin, R-Vt. – Senator who voted against most of the New Deal, including Social Security. His support for FDR’s foreign policy helps shift his score into the more moderate column, but regarding him as less conservative than Berger is…well…off. – 0.106.
I think this represents one of the problems with counting all the partisan procedural votes, as the socialists of the day could go with Republicans on those. Bear in mind, however, both Berger and London did cast some votes that were legitimately in the conservative direction, but 0.176 and -0.026 respectively seem like odd places for them, and it puts most Democrats in the historically uncomfortable position of being to the left of the members of the Socialist Party!
Jack Edwards of Alabama and Charles Mosher of Ohio
These two are some of the best examples I have seen where interest groups and DW-Nominate depart on scoring protocol, and where a major issues scoring system might be better representative. Republicans Jack Edwards of Alabama and Charles Mosher of Ohio were commonly known as being from different wings of the party…Edwards conservative and Mosher of the liberal wing. Edwards was strongly supportive of the Nixon Administration on Vietnam while Mosher was a critic, Edwards was an opponent of the Great Society while Mosher supported some of those programs and shifted further left during the Nixon years. However, both score a 0.177. This is not only right above Victor Berger of Wisconsin and below Huey Long of Louisiana, but these two are scored exceedingly differently by ACU (American Conservative Union), ACA (Americans for Constitutional Action), ADA (Americans for Democratic Action), and my scoring system. As you can see below:
Edwards
Mosher
ADA
ACU
ACA
MCI
ADA
ACU
ACA
MCI
1961
n/a
20
n/a
74
70
1962
n/a
50
n/a
74
70
1963
n/a
33
n/a
76
73
1964
n/a
15
n/a
67
73
1965
0
n/a
100
100
37
n/a
64
67
1966
0
n/a
100
100
24
n/a
72
67
1967
0
n/a
96
100
43
n/a
58
49
1968
0
n/a
100
100
42
n/a
36
49
1969
7
n/a
86
97
69
n/a
25
26
1970
6
n/a
83
97
83
n/a
31
26
1971
8
100
81
87
83
6
32
22
1972
0
86
78
87
75
20
21
22
1973
16
76
84
86
80
20
23
19
1974
10
78
71
86
83
17
21
19
1975
16
83
92
90
76
37
35
37
1976
0
86
81
90
71
38
30
37
1977
5
71
72
84
1978
20
75
89
84
1979
12
74
79
83
1980
18
87
82
83
1981
21
87
63
78
1982
10
81
n/a
78
1983
10
73
n/a
69
1984
5
58
n/a
69
Life Score
8
80
85
87
55
23
46
45
For ADA scores I have adjusted them to not count non-votes against the legislator. I have written in“The Problems of Interest Group Ratings” why I can’t abide this practice. For the MC-Index, it is counted by legislative session rather than year, thus the same scores two years straight. But as you can see, the conservative scoring systems agree that Edwards is in the 80s (solid conservative) while the ADA holds that he is ultra-conservative based on his low score of 8%. Save for the ACU, which starts counting in 1971, ADA, ACA, and the MC-Index all agree that by life score Mosher is a moderate, with this early career being moderately conservative while moving to moderate liberalism during the Nixon Administration. Edwards only has something of a drop-off in conservatism during the Reagan Administration, which the ADA doesn’t even register. That’s it for tonight. I’m sure there are more examples but these are the ones I can think of for now.
On February 17, 2021, an oak in conservative talk radio fell. Rush Limbaugh died of lung cancer after a year-long battle. His rising influence contributed to the Republican Revolution in 1994 and helped others, such as Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, Michael Medved, and Glenn Beck move into the medium. Limbaugh’s ascendancy, however, may have not been possible had a policy change regarding radio not occurred in 1987, the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine.
During the late 1930s the Federal Communications Commission under chairman Larry Fly grew concerned that with radio business-approved conservative messaging would dominate the radio airwaves. In 1941, they created the Mayflower Doctrine, which required a “full and equal opportunity for the presentation to the public of all sides of public issues” and in the process prohibited editorializing. A justification cited was the limited radio frequencies. This was yet another move the Roosevelt Administration used against conservative critics of the New Deal by politicians who supported it. For instance, Senator Hugo Black of Alabama had previously pushed for curbs on lobbying in 1936 after an extensive campaign against the Public Utilities Holding Company Act but an effort to pass legislation to regulate lobbying ultimately failed. Although there was controversy surrounding First Amendment implications with this rule, the wartime censorship that came with World War II postponed further discussion. In 1948, however, the Mayflower Doctrine was again reviewed and it was replaced the following year with a successor doctrine, what we know as the “Fairness Doctrine” the following year. This required a balance of political perspectives by stations on the air. The goal was to permit political debate on radio while curbing owners who would want to make their stations reflect only their views. In 1969, the Supreme Court upheld the Fairness Doctrine unanimously in Red Lion v. FCC and cited the limited availability of airwaves as a justification for such a rule, whereas such a rule would be unconstitutional with newspapers as there were no such limitations. However, the court also ruled that if the Fairness Doctrine should serve to suppress speech then its constitutionality would have to be reconsidered. Justice Byron White wrote what the Supreme Court was prioritizing in the decision, that it was “the right of the viewers and listeners, not the right of the broadcaster, which is paramount” (McCraw).
In the 1970s, opinions and impacts of the Fairness Doctrine were not always favorable to liberals. The doctrine, for instance, helped kill the Equal Rights Amendment as Phyllis Schlafly and her STOP ERA organization got equal time with the amendment’s advocates, who had started with tremendous momentum. Some conservatives thought it was needed as the only counterweight to the “liberal media”, while others saw it as a way to suppress conservatives. There was indeed a case in 1973 in which a conservative Christian broadcaster, Minister Carl McIntire, was denied a license renewal on Fairness Doctrine grounds. In 1981, President Ronald Reagan appointed Mark S. Fowler to the Federal Communications Commission, an opponent of the Fairness Doctrine. Advances in technology were undermining traditional arguments for the Fairness Doctrine on scarcity grounds and the deregulatory politics of the late 1970s and the 1980s were being applied to radio as well.
In 1987 the FCC voted 4-0 to bring it to an end, an action that President Reagan heartily agreed with. The Democratic Congress, however, did not. Passed in the House and Senate were resolutions overturning the FCC ruling, but Reagan was quick with the veto pen and Congress failed to override. What is striking about the votes is how divided Republican opinion was on the subject. On one hand, you had Dick Armey and Bob Dole siding with the Reagan Administration, but on the other you had Jesse Helms and Newt Gingrich thinking the Fairness Doctrine was worth upholding. The following year, the Rush Limbaugh Show premiered and for a time he was he single most effective voice in conservative media. The incoming Republican Congress in 1995 gave him a lot of credit for having control of the House for the first time in forty years and even unofficially regarded him as an honorary member of the Congress.
The Fairness Doctrine will not return even if the occasional liberal here or there thinks it a good idea. Radio is not the medium it used to be and there’s been a growing attention on cable TV news shows, social media, and podcasts as more prominent mediums of communication, with the latter two growing among the young. With the death of Limbaugh as well as the recent departure of Michael Savage from the radio, it just isn’t the future of what will be prominent. These other mediums wouldn’t have been covered by the Fairness Doctrine in the first place. Its aim made some sense in its time, when radio was of great prominence in the transmission of opinion and there were limited spots, but no longer. Also, there are some disturbing implications about having a Fairness Doctrine return…would the scientists who know the Earth is round have to be counter-balanced by flat-earthers? Would supporters of vaccinations have to be counter-balanced by anti-vaxxers? Under the Fairness Doctrine, such groups may very well win court cases about getting equal representation.
References
McCraw, S.K. (2009). Right to Respond and Right of Reply. The First Amendment Encyclopedia.
Pickard, V. (2018). The Strange Life and Death of the Fairness Doctrine: Tracing the Decline of Positive Freedoms in American Policy Discourse. International Journal of Communication, 12 3434-3453.
On March 11, 1874, Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts lay on his deathbed and he supposedly instructed one of his last visitors thrice, “You must take care of the civil rights bill – my bill, the civil rights bill – don’t let it fail!” (U.S. House of Representatives). This man was his protégé, Congressman George Frisbie Hoar (1826-1904) of Massachusetts, and he would valiantly try to continue Sumner’s legacy and succeed in getting the Civil Rights Act of 1875 passed albeit in a weak form.
Hoar was a grandson of Founding Father Roger Sherman, and saw it as his imperative to stick with the Constitution as Sherman and other founders intended. This included a belief that slavery was meant to be eventually abolished and in the early 1850s he joined the Free Soil Party and he subsequently joined the Republican Party. Elected to Congress in 1868, Hoar was a Radical Republican, strongly supporting Reconstruction efforts. He, like Sumner, maintained a lifelong commitment to opposing racial discrimination. On economics, Hoar was decidedly conservative, opposing inflationary policies such as increasing the money supply, maintaining the use of greenbacks unbacked by gold after the war, and free coinage of silver. Hoar stated on the matter in 1893 that “A sound currency is to the affairs of this life what a pure religion and a sound system of morals are to the affairs of the spiritual life” and regarded silver as an “inferior metal” (Kazin, 73). He also embraced the orthodox Republican position favorable to the protective tariff.
Hoar and Discrimination
In 1877, Hoar was appointed a member of the Electoral Commission to determine the outcome of the election, which narrowly went to Hayes. That same year he was elected to the Senate. As the 19th century progressed, the push for restricting immigration grew and grew. Pressure especially was building up for it in California and Oregon against Chinese immigrants. This resulted in the Chinese Exclusion Act, which although vetoed by Rutherford B. Hayes, a compromise version would be signed by Chester A. Arthur in 1882. Hoar voted against both versions as he regarded America as a land that ought to be free of legal distinctions based on race and color. Yet, he was not the sort we would think of as favoring “open borders” either; in 1897 he voted for the Lodge Immigration Bill that if enacted would have had a literacy test as a prerequisite for immigration. This bill was vetoed by President Cleveland but a literacy test would ultimately be incorporated into the Immigration Act of 1917.
In 1886, he was one of the first members of the Senate to openly call for women’s suffrage and four years later he was the Senate sponsor of the Lodge Federal Elections Bill, which if enacted would have provided for effective enforcement of the 15th Amendment in the South. Unfortunately, Democratic resistance to it, in the North and South, combined with several Republican defections in the Senate resulted in the bill’s demise. The Republican Party would undertake no serious and coordinated efforts for civil rights legislation until 1922.
Maintaining the Senate
For much of Hoar’s Senate tenure, he served as chair of the Judiciary Committee and drafted the Presidential Succession Act in 1886. Given his direct family link to the Founding Fathers, he saw it as his duty to preserve the Senate as Roger Sherman and people like him intended. He thus was a leading opponent of the direct election of senators and in 1897 he wrote an article, “Has the Senate Degenerated?” Most notable in the article was the following, “The Senate . . . was created that the deliberate will, the sober second thought of the people might find expression. It was intended that it should resist the hasty, intemperate, passionate desire of the people. This hasty passion and intemperance is frequently found in the best men as in the worst. But so long as the political management of the country excites eager interest, so long these feelings will be excited; and when they are excited the body whose function it is to resist them will be, for the time being, an object of dislike and attack. It has, therefore, always been true, is true now, and always will be true, that the Senate is an object of bitter denunciation by those persons whose purposes are thwarted or delayed. That will be especially true when the House and Executive, the popular majority, are of one way of thinking and the Senate, representing the will of the majority of the States, is of another way. It is fair, therefore, that the Senate should be judged not by considering its conduct or its composition at the time when the judgment is to be expressed, but by a review of a whole century of its history.
. . . The President represents the majority of the whole people; the House of Representatives, the present and immediate popular desire of the constituencies. But the Senate stands also for the will of the American people. It stands for its deliberate, permanent, settled desire,—its sober, second thought” (United States Senate).
Hoar also feared that the adoption of this amendment would result in other proposals he thought destructive to the constitutional system, including the abolition of the Electoral College and popular election of judges. In 1902, a brawl broke out between Senators Benjamin Tillman and John McLaurin of South Carolina over their increasing political differences. Hoar in response successfully pushed for the adoption of a Senate rule that banned senators from denigrating each other on the floor.
Hoar and Imperialism
In 1870, Senator Charles Sumner had crossed the Grant Administration when his opposition to the annexation of Santo Domingo proved critical in its defeat, and Hoar likewise crossed the McKinley and Roosevelt Administrations in opposition to American imperialism, unlike Henry Cabot Lodge, the junior senator from Massachusetts. On February 6, 1899, he along with Eugene Hale of Maine and Matthew Quay of Pennsylvania were the only three Republican senators to vote against the Treaty of Paris, which ended the Spanish-American War and granted the US control over the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Guam while surrendering control of Cuba. As Republican critics of imperialism, they were later joined by William Mason of Illinois and George Wellington of Maryland. Hoar also called for the independence of the Philippines, which would not happen until 1946. Although he was unpopular with some of the younger Republicans for this, his reputation in Massachusetts was such that he remained politically safe unlike Sumner, who had been penalized for his opposition by loss of his chairmanship of the Foreign Relations Committee.
Hoar wrote a few works, including the introduction to Charles Sumner; His Complete Works and his autobiography, Autobiography of Seventy Years (1903). After enjoying a life of good health, Hoar fell ill in June 1904 and declined until his death on September 30th. His MC-Index life score is an 89%, with his score from 1869 to 1897 being a 96% while his 1897 to 1904 score was 66%, reflecting his increasing dissent with conservative Republican policies. He had been a much revered senator given his direct ties to the Founding Fathers and despite his frequent partisanship he placed the institutional integrity of the Senate above it.
References
Civil Rights Act of 1875. U.S. House of Representatives.
I previously wrote about Richard Nixon suffering the embarrassment of having two justices he nominated in a row be voted down for confirmation to the Supreme Court. He is not alone in having suffered such an embarrassment. It wasn’t liberals that did this president’s nominees in, rather a party rival who was apt at forming political coalitions, in New York and nationally. Grover Cleveland was known as a Bourbon Democrat but above all his focus as a president was on honesty and integrity in government, and this meant opposition to bossism. Tammany Hall in New York, however, sure didn’t appreciate Cleveland’s emphasis on reform. Enter the antagonist of our story, Senator David B. Hill. Hill was a Tammany Hall Democrat through and through and had been lieutenant governor while Cleveland was governor of New York from 1883 to 1885. Although Hill was something of a Bourbon Democrat as well, he had differences with him on currency policy, stressing bimetallism while Cleveland supported the gold standard. Hill was also the only Democratic senator to vote against the Wilson-Gorman Tariff in 1894 and was a royal pain for the president on the Supreme Court as well.
Round One: William B. Hornblower
On September 20, 1893, Cleveland nominated William Butler Hornblower, a prominent corporate attorney from New York, to succeed the late Samuel Blatchford on the Supreme Court. He was a solid pick, but Senator Hill along with his New York colleague Edward Murphy Jr. thought otherwise. Despite Hill having appointed Hornblower to a commission on state constitutional amendments as New York’s governor in 1890, he had crossed Hill when he participated in a committee investigating his ally Deputy Attorney General Isaac H. Maynard for alleged ballot tampering. Hill and Murphy invoked senatorial courtesy, a custom in which the Senate refrains from confirming nominees who are objectionable to the senators of the state they are from. This is especially the case if it is the most senior senator from the president’s party, which Hill was. Hill officially objected because Hornblower was at 42 relatively young for the court. Cleveland chose to proceed with the nomination, but the Senate saw fit to reaffirm custom: the nomination was defeated on January 15, 1894, on a vote of 24-30. Democrats split 18-13 in favor while Republicans voted 6-13 on the matter. The other votes against were from third party members. Cleveland tried again with another person with an even more distinctive name: Wheeler Hazard Peckham.
Round Two: Wheeler Hazard Peckham
Wheeler Hazard Peckham (I love this name) was another prominent New York jurist and as special prosecutor he had successfully prosecuted William M. “Boss” Tweed of Tammany Hall and had unsuccessfully done so for New York City Mayor A. Oakey Hall. However, like Hornblower, Peckham had crossed Hill. In 1888, he had so strongly disliked Hill as a candidate for governor that he voted for the Republican candidate, Warner Miller. He had also been even more responsible than Hornblower for the investigation into Maynard as he had appointed the committee as President of the New York State Bar. He also could be blunt in his feelings towards those he disliked, which didn’t help him politically. Hill and Murphy again invoked senatorial courtesy and again Cleveland proceeded with the nomination. Curiously, Hill suggested a substitute for Peckham: his younger brother, Rufus Wheeler. His brother was not of a different political persuasion but rather was in Hill’s way where he was, on the New York Court of Appeals. Hill wanted to replace Peckham with his own man. Officially, however, Hill found Wheeler Hazard to be too old at 60. His nomination went down 32-41. Democrats voted for 23-15 while Republicans opposed 8-23. In 1895, Justice Howell Jackson died and Cleveland nominated Rufus Wheeler Peckham, who with the support this time of Senator Hill was confirmed unanimously.
Round Three: Edward Douglass White
Since Hill and the Senate were being so truculent, President Cleveland decided to make a pick the Senate couldn’t refuse: one of their own, Edward Douglass White of Louisiana. White, a Democrat who had not offended Senator Hill nor being from his state, was easily confirmed. He would eventually serve as chief justice from 1910 to 1921.
Hill’s career in Washington would end alongside Cleveland’s as he lost the 1897 Senate election to Republican political boss Thomas C. Platt, as Republicans had taken control of the New York State Legislature.
References
William Butler Hornblower. Historical Society of the New York Courts.
The Washburn family of Massachusetts and later Maine made more than their share of contributions to the United States in politics as well as in business. Israel Washburn Sr., a Massachusetts politician and farmer, had a whopping eleven children with his wife Patty, ten of whom survived into adulthood and four who served in elective office. These were Israel Jr. (1813-1883), Elihu (1816-1887), Cadwallader (1818-1882), and William (1831-1912). In addition, Charles (1822-1889) was a diplomat. This family was, despite, Washburn Sr. holding office as a younger man, not wealthy and they worked hard farming the land and running a general store. There was little opportunity for play for the Washburn children. They were raised to be strongly anti-slavery through religious conviction and would carry these convictions into their politics.
In 1850, Washburn Jr. was elected to Congress from Maine as a Whig, serving until 1861. In 1852, Elihu joined his older brother, being elected from Illinois also as a Whig. In 1854, Cadwallader was elected from Wisconsin. On June 2nd, 1854, Israel Jr. delivered a speech in Bangor, Maine, in which he used the term “Republican” regarding the new party, possibly the first member of Congress to do so. All brothers joined the Republican Party upon its formation. While in Congress they fought against slavery and even did so physically. In 1856, Laurence Kiett of South Carolina attacked Galusha Grow of Pennsylvania after an exchange of insults, attempting to choke him, and a brawl erupted in the House. Cadwallader and Elihu participated, with the brawl ending after the former attempted to deck William Barksdale of Mississippi, but had grabbed his hairpiece first and the embarrassed Barksdale put the wig on backwards, resulting in hysterical laughter throughout the House.
Israel Washburn Jr. was elected Governor of Maine in 1860 and served two years in this position. He proved very popular and was effective at raising troops and supplies for the war effort. Opting not to run again in 1863, he was appointed by President Lincoln to be the Collector of the Port of Portland, serving in this post until 1877.
Elihu Washburne (he added an e to his last name) was known for his strong support of President Lincoln as well as his frequent bucking of his party on railroad land grants. He thought of them as corrupt giveaways of public land and regularly voted against them. Washburne was also a supporter of President Grant and served briefly as his Secretary of State and as Ambassador to France from 1869 to 1877. His support continued despite his strong disapproval of the corruption that occurred under his administration. Although he told his supporters not to do so, they put his name up for the presidential nomination in 1880 instead of Ulysses S. Grant, leading Grant to believe that he had sabotaged his effort at the nomination, and this ended their friendship. His MC-Index score is a 59%.
Cadwallader Washburn served as a general in the War of the Rebellion and was unlike other politicians who served in command roles: he proved an excellent administrative leader and was highly recommended by Ulysses S. Grant. He took over the Minneapolis Milling Company along with John Crosby, and in 1866 formed General Mills from it. He served in Congress again from 1867 to 1871, and successfully ran for governor in 1871, serving a single term. His MC-Index score is a 95%.
William Washburn served in the House from Minnesota from 1879 to 1885, having prevailed over former Republican Ignatius Donnelly for the seat and served in the Senate from 1889 to 1895. He had assisted his older brother Cadwallader with General Mills and founded what later became known as the Pillsbury Company. Washburn also formed what would become known as the Soo Line Railroad. In 1895, he was shocked to lose reelection to fellow Republican Knute Nelson, who had been conducting a secret campaign for the seat. He had been coy, even deceptive about his ambitions, not being straightforward with Washburn on his intentions until his announcement to run on January 3, 1895. Nelson even told the state legislature to “elect your Republican legislative ticket, so as to send my friend Washburn back to the United States senate or if you do not like him, send some other good Republican”. He also had assistance from James J. Hill, a rival of Washburn’s in the railroad business who Washburn had recently angered by running his railroad between two of Hill’s. The campaign in the state legislature was bitter and the dejected Washburn called for a popular vote to elect senators. A popular vote may not have made a difference as Nelson was popular with politicians and the public alike and his Scandinavian origins helped him in Minnesota while Washburn’s perceived status as an elite from Maine worked against him. His MC-Index score is an 88%.
References
About the Washburns. Washburn Norlands Living History Center.
The Gilded Age was a period in which although the standard of living rose for Americans industrialists grew more and more powerful. Tycoons such as John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie became household names and although wealth grew overall for the people, a lot of it became concentrated at the top. In the meantime, the Panic of 1873 produced a six-year depression in the United States and further economic troubles in the 1880s caused the price of food to drop: farmers in Kansas burned their corn in 1885 as its value was even less other fuels (Glasner & Cooley). Crop failures compounded this problem and farmers increasingly sought government intervention. The “Crime of ‘73”, or the Fourth Coinage Act, was often brought forth as a grievance and it was charged that those who pushed this law deceived the public into demonetizing silver. That aspect of the law was neither hidden nor emphasized by its proponents. Although the Bland-Allison Act of 1878 had established bimetallism, it was a compromise legislation and pleased neither the deflationary gold standard supporters of the east nor the inflationary free silver proponents of the west. Farmers Alliances were formed to lobby for such intervention, but they ultimately had limited impact. In 1890, these groups sought to be more effective so they gathered to issue the Ocala Demands, which included abolition of national banks, free and unlimited coinage of silver, making all land ownership held by Americans, a progressive income tax, direct election of senators, and government ownership of communication and transportation if strict regulation does not work. That year, the People’s Party (or Populist Party) was born and won eight House seats and one Senate seat in the midterm elections. A newly elected senator, James H. Kyle, would switch parties to Populist during the session.
A major Populist leader to rise in the South was Thomas E. Watson of Georgia, a journalist and one-term representative who initially supported black suffrage to unite poor whites and poor blacks to fight the Southern elites. The masthead of his newspaper in 1894 declared that the paper “is now and will ever be a fearless advocate of the Jeffersonian Theory of Popular Government, and will oppose to the bitter end the Hamiltonian Doctrines of Class Rule, Moneyed Aristocracy, National Banks, High Tariffs, Standing Armies and formidable Navies — all of which go together as a system of oppressing the people” (Watson). He also ran for president for the party three times, 1900, 1904, and 1908.
By 1892, the economy was declining, and many farmers were deep in debt. The party’s first convention was in Omaha, Nebraska, and the platform they crafted included government ownership of railroads, telephones, and telegraphs, strict merit based civil service, free and unlimited coinage of silver, a progressive income tax, and no subsidy or assistance to a corporation under any circumstances. They did shockingly well for their first presidential election, with Iowa’s James B. Weaver winning the electoral votes in six states and contributing to the defeat of Benjamin Harrison as three of the states that turned Populist had voted for him in 1888, with none of the states that had voted for Cleveland then doing so. They also picked up three more seats in the House. The nation’s fortunes fell in 1894 with the economic depression in play and although the Populists gained a Senate seat, they lost four seats in the House to Republicans as Republicans gained 110 total seats.
Populists would have 22 seats after the 1896 election and gain yet another Senate seat. While a presence in the legislature, they supported immigration restrictions and had a mixed record on American imperialism. In 1897 they voted 3-0 in the House and 2-0 in the Senate for a bill that would require immigrants to pass a literacy test to be admitted. In 1898, they split evenly in the House on annexing Hawaii and one Populist senator voted against. On February 3, 1899 Populists voted 3-0 in favor of the Treaty of Paris, which granted the US the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Guam and freed Cuba of Spanish control. However, by the Roosevelt Administration they seem to have turned against such policy.
The successes of the Populists would be short-lived: in the 1898 midterms with William McKinley being satisfactory for many rural people and the economy recovering, the Populists lost 17 House seats and one Senate seat. This midterm they would never recover from and support for the party faded as economic times increasingly improved. The 1900 election would be the last time they won seats in the House or the Senate.
The Conspiracy Theory: Bankers and/or Jews Conspire to Control the Monetary System
Although casual anti-Semitism was not uncommon in the United States, such conspiracy theories, as noted by Ben Macri (2000), “it was the Populist party who used anti-Semitism most distinctively”. One of the party’s leading activists and spokespeople, Mary E. Lease, was most famous for telling Kansas farmers to “raise less corn and more hell”. However, she was also an anti-Semite. Lease was quoted by the New York Times as saying in a speech, “We are paying tribute to the Rothschilds of England, who are but the agents of the Jews” and for her President Cleveland was “the agent of Jewish bankers” (Singer). This went beyond her speeches. In The Problem of Civilization (1895), she wrote “Our commercial system would be sadly disturbed if our government granted a monopoly of gallons, bushels and yards to a company of Jews. Then the man who conducts a wholesale or retail business would be compelled to hire a bushel, gallon or a yardstick from the Hebrew before waiting upon his impatient customers. Hunger, haste and pressing necessity alike would have to wait the pleasure and interest of the Jew” (Singer).
Ignatius Donnelly, a former Minnesota Republican representative who drafted the Omaha Platform, wrote, “A vast conspiracy against mankind has been organized on two continents, and it is rapidly taking possession of the world. If not met and overthrown at once it forebodes terrible social convulsions, the destruction of civilization, or the establishment of an absolute despotism” (Pfaelzer). He also wrote Caesar’s Column (1890), which featured anti-Semitic tropes including a “Shylock” villain and that an upper echelon of Jews controlled the world. However, his protagonist appears to be Jewish as well.
Another prominent populist figure who engaged in anti-Semitism was William Hope “Coin” Harvey, who wrote a popular pamphlet titled “Coin’s Financial School” in 1894, which sold a million copies and advocated for a return to bimetallism and called for free coinage of silver. He also wrote A Tale of Two Nations, in which a London banker, Baron Rothe (a clear stand-in for the Rothschild family) conspires to keep the gold standard and has a Jewish henchman who pursues a Christian girl who has her eyes set on a Nebraska representative who fights against the gold standard (a stand-in for William Jennings Bryan, who served two terms in the House from Nebraska). As Richard Hofstader noted, “While the jocose and rather heavy-handed anti-Semitism that can be found in Henry Adams letters of the 1890’s shows that this prejudice existed outside Populist literature, it was chiefly Populist writers who expressed that identification of the Jew with the usurer and the `international gold ring’ which was the central theme of American anti-Semitism of the age. The omnipresent symbol of Shylock can hardly be taken in itself as evidence of anti-Semitism but the frequent references to the House of Rothschild make it clear that for many silverites the Jew was an organic part of the conspiracy theory of history” (Macri).
It is true, however, that not all Populists were anti-Semites, but the same goes for people who joined up with the American Party in the 1850s and being anti-Catholic: Millard Fillmore accepted the nomination for president despite him not sharing the party’s anti-Catholic views. There were also some among the Populists who embraced anti-Catholicism, including its three-time presidential candidate, Thomas E. Watson.
Consequences
The Democratic Party’s pick of William Jennings Bryan was a victory for the Populist Party as someone who embraced many of their views was nominated by one of the major parties. That year they made the fateful decision to nominate Bryan themselves. While the Democratic Party shifting to the left was a victory for the Populists, their endorsement of Bryan had eliminated their independence and doomed the party to decline. Although in the short run, the Populist Party’s causes failed, numerous ones would be adopted in the future. The income tax amendment was ratified in 1913 as was the direct election of senators amendment. Much of the economy, including railroads, would be temporarily nationalized for World War I but was returned to private ownership on favorable terms for railroads with the Esch-Cummins Act. The New Deal would bring monetary policy in a more inflationary direction and would provide extensive aid to farmers but didn’t adopt “free coinage of silver”.
An averse consequence of the rise of the Populists is that it produced for a short time a Republican-Populist coalition in the South, which freaked out the Democrats as they had proven great threats in Alabama and North Carolina, winning Congressional seats and even in the latter case winning the governorship and legislature. Exclusively white Democratic rule was at risk, and this motivated the adoption of new “Jim Crow” constitutions that were ratified to prevent a recurrence of a multi-racial coalition.
Connections to Later Politics
There are two people who embraced the Populist Party who had input in the politics surrounding fascism and World War II. Milford W. Howard of Alabama, who served in Congress from 1895 to 1899, managed to get an interview with Benito Mussolini in the 1920s, after which he subsequently embraced fascism and wrote Fascism: A Challenge to Democracy in support. Howard would also be one of the founders of The Awakener, a magazine that at least initially was a pro-fascist outlet. Elmer J. Garner, a journalist who headed up a Populist newspaper in Kansas, in his older days blasted FDR for having Jewish advisors and attributed his foreign policy to their influence. He would be indicted at the Great Sedition Trial in 1944 only to die two weeks later. However, unlike Howard, he never explicitly embraced fascism.
Commonalities Between Populist Parties
Of the three parties I covered, they all had the following in common:
Conspiracy theories.
They were short-term as parties, carrying influence between 10-15 years.
Some ideas of theirs were later embraced by at least one of the two major parties.
Anti-elitist.
Many members moved into one of the major parties.
What should this tell us about Trumpism? Trumpism as a phenomenon in the Republican Party (and among some independents) may have a few more years yet, and Trump won’t be worshiped in the long term, but some of the themes and policies that were initially unique to Trump stand a good chance of being seen in a future Republican administration. Look for a sustained hardliner stance on immigration policy.
References
Glasner, D. & Cooley, T.F. (1997). “Depression of 1882-1885”. Business cycles and depressions: An encyclopedia. New York, NY: Garland Pub.
Over 20 years ago an urban legend made its way in the annals of the internet that Alabama legally redefined pi as 3 to please religious groups. This never happened but in this age of misinformation and seemingly increasing scientific literacy problems it probably wouldn’t surprise some if this happened. After all, The Onion and The Babylon Bee seem to have more of a place in reality than in years past. Indeed, something like that urban legend nearly happened 124 years ago.
For over two millennia mathematicians had attempted to “square the circle”, or finding a square with an exact same area as a circle and thus producing a rational value for pi. By the late 1700s most mathematicians had given up on it. The French Academy of Science declared it impossible in 1775 and the Royal Society of Great Britain had followed suit the next year. In 1882, mathematician Ferdinand von Lindemann proved that it was a transcendental irrational number (meaning its digits never repeat) and thus squaring the circle was impossible. This didn’t stop Hoosier physician and amateur mathematician Edward J. Goodwin from giving it a shot.
In 1894, Goodwin had come to believe that he had outdone Archimedes on crafting a formula for the area of a circle and had accomplished the squaring of the circle, which would result in pi being through incorrect rounding 3.2 and also increased the area of the circle by 21%. As a resident of Indiana, he thought that his state ought to be first to benefit from his work and ought to have the unique privilege of doing so for free. In 1897, Goodwin persuaded Representative Taylor I. Record to introduce the bill he wrote to the General Assembly which would have provided the new formula in textbooks without paying royalties, thus making his formula for the area of a circle and therefore the value of pi being 3.2 be regarded as legal fact in Indiana rather than the approximation of 3.14. The measure was initially met with confusion and it was originally proposed to go to the Finance Committee but instead it went to the Committee on Education. A representative speaking in favor stated, “The case is perfectly simple. If we pass this bill which establishes a new and correct value of pi, the author offers our state without cost the use of his discovery and its free publication in our school textbooks, while everyone else must pay him a royalty” (Klein).
Goodwin’s squaring of the circle. As you can see, it isn’t a circle.
The bill shockingly passed unanimously on February 6th, but by the time it had made its way to the Senate, mathematics Professor C.A. Waldo of Purdue University, who was at the capitol that day to ask for funding for the Academy of Sciences, had gotten wind of this and intervened. Although he had brushed up senators on geometry, the measure almost passed the Senate. After a senator pointed out that the legislature could not define mathematical truth, the bill was postponed indefinitely. Waldo later reflected, “My state did not further this monstrosity, and it was probably the Indiana Academy of Science alone which prevented it” (Smith). This story, hilarious as it is, demonstrates the limitations of politics to decide what is right and true, for it is good fortune that Waldo was there to stop it.
P.S.: The next entry on my series for populist parties will be the next post. I have some more research and writing I’d like to do before posting.
References
Alabama’s Slice of Pi. (1998, October 28). Snopes.
Mad Politics: The Bizarre, Fascinating, and Unknown of American Political History 