Some people are born bound to be in politics, and such was the case with John Little McClellan (1896-1977), who his parents named after at-the-time Congressman John S. Little. Some also are born for tragedy, and it was so with McClellan, as his mother died three weeks after giving birth to him, and it would portend numerous personal losses in his life.
McClellan’s professional start was working in his father’s law office in Sheridan and served in the US Army during World War I as a first lieutenant in the aviation section of the Signal Corps. His first marriage to Eula Hicks in 1913 produced two children but ended in divorce in 1921. The divorce was bitter, and Hicks died despising McClellan. While serving as city attorney of Malvern, he would marry Lucille Smith who would love him throughout her life.
Political Career
Elected to Congress in 1934, McClellan started as a loyal New Dealer in his first term, although he made clear from the start that he would not be told how to vote. When a Democratic whip curtly instructed him to vote for a certain measure, McClellan responded, “Look, you don’t know me and I don’t know you, but we’re going to get to know each other pretty darn quick. I vote as I please” (TIME, 3). This foreshadowed his move rightward in the next Congress, and from his dissenting he challenged incumbent Hattie Caraway for her Senate seat. Part of his campaign pitch was that her job needed to be done by a man. This was seen as a referendum on FDR’s policies, and Roosevelt poured all available resources into defending her, and she did win the primary by 8,000 votes.
McClellan would assert that his loss in the primary was due to nearly all the state’s WPA workers voting for her under orders from Washington and that two internal revenue agents came to the state and reviewed the tax returns of prominent McClellan supporters, then announced that Caraway was the candidate to back (TIME, 4). Although out of office, he would not remain so.
Second Time’s a Charm
In 1942, McClellan ran for the Senate nomination against Arkansas Attorney General Jack Holt, and despite the Roosevelt Administration and the state party organization backing the latter, McClellan prevailed by over 50,000 votes. As a senator, he was on the right wing of the Democratic Party. Although McClellan supported Greek-Turkish Aid and the Marshall Plan after World War II, he was usually opposed to foreign aid measures unlike his colleague J. William Fulbright. McClellan frequently voted to limit the power of organized labor, such as with his vote for the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947. However, he had his limits. For instance, on June 16, 1958, he voted against the amendment by Senator Carl Curtis (R-Neb.) prohibiting “hot cargo” contracts, which prohibits an employer with a union from engaging in business with other businesses that the union is currently having a dispute with. He was also often opposed to intervention in the market unless it was on agriculture. McClellan was involved in efforts to deny the presidential nomination to Truman in the 1948 election (Johnson & Johnson, 97). However, the Dixiecrat movement flopped in Arkansas, with Truman winning 61.7% of the vote and even Republican Thomas E. Dewey came out ahead of Thurmond.
McClellan and the Government Operations Subcommittee
With the Republicans winning Congress in 1952, the Senate Republican leadership, albeit being publicly supportive of Senator Joseph McCarthy (R-Wis.), had realized that he was a loose cannon and sought to put him somewhere that they hoped would serve to contain him: the Government Operations Committee, which McClellan had chaired from 1949 to 1953. This committee was in the past committed to exposing waste and corruption in government. McCarthy, however, as chairman, had no intention of continuing the traditional work of the committee. As Roy Cohn recalled McCarthy telling him in December 1952, “You know, I’m going to be the chairman of the investigating committee in the Senate. They’re all trying to push me off the Communist issue…the sensible thing for me to do, they say, is start investigating the agriculture program or find out how many books they’ve got bound upside down at the Library of Congress. They want me to play it safe. I fought this Red issue. I won the primary on it. I won the election on it, and don’t see anyone else around who intends to take it on. You can be sure that as chairman of this committee this is going to be my work” (U.S. Senate, XVI).
McCarthy held new investigations and hearings into his signature subject of communist subversion, and his chairmanship of the committee was such that he was taking up most of the time, with senators on the committee often not even bothering to attend as it was McCarthy’s show. Additionally, he would announce hearings on short notice, with senators sometimes sending their staffers to represent them. Per Harvard Law School Dean Erwin Griswold, McCarthy gave witnesses the impression that they were facing “judge, jury, prosecutor, castigator, and press agent, all in one” (U.S. Senate, XV).
McClellan grew critical of McCarthy’s methods, and in July 1953, he led a walkout of Democrats from the committee over McCarthy’s tactics and they would not return for months. He, along with all other voting Democrats, would vote to censure McCarthy the following year.
McClellan’s Numerous Losses
McClellan’s life had its share of tragedy. His first wife died of spinal meningitis in 1935 and all three of his sons died between 1943 and 1958; the first, Max, also from spinal meningitis while serving in Africa in 1943, the second, John Jr., from injuries in an auto accident in 1949. After the latter, and the third, James, from an airplane crash in 1958. A friend of his once said, “There’s not a man in the world with more excuse to throw up his hands and turn all his problems over to alcohol than John McClellan”, and indeed after the second son’s death he did, albeit for a brief period (TIME, 5). He was, however, spared from further loss as his third wife, Norma Myers, outlived him as did both his daughters, Doris and Mary Alice.
The McClellan Committee
Senator McClellan was well-aware of the issues of Joseph McCarthy’s (R-Wis.) approach on investigations, so he played the role of judge while he let counsel Robert F. Kennedy Jr. play the role of prosecutor. Interestingly, McCarthy was on this committee until his death on May 2, 1957. Other notable names on the committee included John F. Kennedy (D-Mass.), Barry Goldwater (R-Ariz.), and Frank Church (D-Idaho). Despite the team’s wariness of McCarthy’s practices, it still caught the ire of Senator Patrick McNamara (D-Mich.), who resigned in protest of what he saw as unfair treatment of union witnesses from Kennedy and numerous liberals argued that the committee did not try to see any culpability from management, rather just unions (Schlesinger). McNamara was one of the staunchest liberals in the Senate and a supporter of unions without qualification; he was essentially United Automobile Workers’ president Walter Reuther’s man in the Senate. That being said, McClellan had a record to limit the power of organized labor and Kennedy was not an expert interrogator and often lost his cool with unfriendly union witnesses, including insulting and bickering with them (Schlesinger). Nonetheless, testimony presented before the committee was devastating.
Union witness testimony revealed corruption, undemocratic practices in elections, as well as connections to organized crime in the Teamsters Union, the International Longshoremen’s Association, United Mine Workers, and other unions. This resulted in the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959 (“Landrum-Griffin”), which included a slightly modified version of McClellan’s amendment providing for a labor bill of rights. I intend to go into much further detail about the McClellan Committee in a future post.
Hope for Retirement and Political Issues
A profile on McClellan by Time Magazine (1957) held that McClellan dreamed of retiring in 1960 and becoming law partner of his son Jimmy, although rival Sid McMath asserted, “McClellan swears he’ll run again in 1960 just to oppose me, and by God, I’ll be there to oppose” (7). Given Jimmy’s 1958 death and McClellan’s penchant for occupying himself with work in response to tragedy, it seems likely that his death called off any notion of retiring at that point.
McClellan voted against Medicare in 1960, 1962, and 1964, but in 1965 he voted against deleting Medicare from the Social Security Act Amendments. He also voted against the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, the heart of the Great Society’s anti-poverty push. McClellan backed both Minority Leader Everett Dirksen’s (R-Ill.) efforts to amend the Constitution in permitting one house of a state legislature to use factors other than population to determine legislative districts and to permit school prayer. These amendments were in response to Supreme Court decisions Reynolds v. Sims (1964) and Engel v. Vitale (1962) respectively. McClellan voted for both of Nixon’s failed Supreme Court nominees from the South, Clement Haynsworth and G. Harrold Carswell, who McClellan and other conservatives hoped would push back against liberal decisions.
Aside from ideological issues, a clincher for McClellan when it came to getting renominated was his ability to drive federal dollars to Arkansas for public works projects. He sponsored with Senator Robert S. Kerr (D-Okla.) a bill providing for the construction of the McClellan-Kerr Arkansas River Navigation System, which at the time was the largest such project undertaken by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, making the Arkansas River navigable and bringing billions in commerce to the state (Goss).
McClellan on Civil Rights – You Aren’t Surprised, Are You?
I’ve got a confession to make. I’m getting a little tired when writing of every figure from the former Confederacy in a certain period to call them a “segregationist”, as this was the rule rather than the exception with such politicians rendering such designations as redundant unless they were particularly egregious about it. Thus, I’ll say that McClellan voted on civil rights exactly as you would think a man of his time and place did. However, his outspoken opposition became notable in response to President Eisenhower’s order to send the National Guard to Little Rock, Arkansas to enforce desegregation, stating, “I believe it to be without authority of law, I am very apprehensive that such action may precipitate more trouble than it will prevent” (Cobb & Griffee, 237-238). He was in truth a cautious and judicious figure, much like his Mississippi colleague John C. Stennis as opposed to a demagogue like Governor George Wallace of Alabama or Senator James Eastland of Mississippi. In 1972, McClellan voted for the Equal Rights Amendment, although this was a popular proposal at the time and passed 84-8. He did continue voting against civil rights proposals into the 1970s, including being one of 12 senators to vote against extending the Voting Rights Act in 1975.
McClellan: Crime Fighter
Senator McClellan, in addition to investigations into union corruption and organized crime, repeatedly backed “tough on crime” proposals. In 1968, he opposed two amendments by Senator Joseph Tydings (D-Md.) to retain in criminal law that a confession could be rendered inadmissible by delay in arraignment alone and that a confession could be ruled inadmissible even if found to be given voluntarily. While in 1970, many Southern senators followed Senator Ervin (D-N.C.) in opposing “no knock” searches for drugs, McClellan was not among them, voting in accord instead with the Nixon Administration and the majority of Senate Republicans. That year, he also backed RICO.
Later Years
In 1972, McClellan faced a tough primary challenge from the far younger and more liberal Congressman David Pryor. This was the first major challenge he had since his election in 1942, and McClellan was 76 years old by this time. Pryor’s campaign was a fiery populist one, charging McClellan with being too favorable to “greedy corporations, “the big boys”, and “the arrogant rich” while voting against government programs to combat poverty (Reed). However, he pulled through with 52% of the vote. McClellan would go on to easily defeat his Republican opponent. In retrospect, it was quite fortunate for McClellan that his reelection year happened to be 1972 instead of 1974. His colleague, Fulbright, who was more liberal than him on many issues including civil rights, lost renomination badly that year to the even more liberal Governor Dale Bumpers.
In 1976, McClellan coauthored a revision of U.S. copyright laws, which had last been updated in 1909. One project he had put a lot of effort into was rewriting the federal criminal code. The trouble with federal law was explained in the New York Times, “The Federal Criminal Code has built up, bit by bit, over nearly 200 years as Congress felt called upon to impose national criminal sanctions. It has never before been codified and harmonized into a single coherent document with uniform classification of offenses and punishment” (Weaver). This new codification included modernizing language, implementation of some recommendations from the National Commission on Reform of Federal Criminal Laws, and innovations. This process was for a while viewed with suspicion by liberals as it presented opportunities for conservative revisions, which were initially in the legislation including reinstating the death penalty for murder and treason (Weaver). McClellan and his fellow conservatives voted for restoring the federal death penalty in separate legislation in 1974, but it did not become law. By 1977, McClellan had worked out an arrangement with Senator Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) to get agreement on this codification, including maintaining the status quo on the federal death penalty at the time. Although it passed the Senate, it never made it out of the House Judiciary Committee. The U.S. to this day has not achieved a rewrite of its criminal code as such efforts have been bogged down by ideological controversies, although there are federal sentencing guidelines.
The End
McClellan began slowing down in the mid-1970s, having developed a heart condition and in the summer of 1976, he had a pacemaker surgically implanted. Although he remained mentally alert as ever, he grew increasingly tired (Rosenbaum). On November 21, 1977, McClellan announced he would be retiring rather than running for another term in 1978. One week later, he died in his sleep. In 1978, David Pryor won the election to succeed him.
The Washington Post (1977) summed up its view on him after his passing thusly, “In much of this [the issues of his time] we had found ourselves on the opposite side from John McClellan, especially where racial and civil-liberties questions were concerned. But none of that alters our view that Sen. McClellan was a man of personal dignity and fairness, who did not abuse his power in the Senate or seek to close out the views of those who disagreed with him”.
Note: The votes on Joseph Tydings’ (D-Md.) proposed amendments on crime can be found on my post regarding Americans for Constitutional Action on the 90th Congress. Nearly all of the other votes I mentioned can be found on Americans for Democratic Action’s website, search for the corresponding year:
https://adaction.org/
References
Cobb, O. & Griffee, C.M. (1989). Osro Cobb of Arkansas: memoirs of historical significance. Little Rock, AR: Rose Publishing Company.
Executive Sessions of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Committee on Government Operations, Vol. 1, Eighty-Third Congress, First Session. U.S. Senate.
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https://www.senate.gov/about/resources/pdf/mccarthy-hearings-volume1.pdf
Goss, K.C. (2023, August 25). McClellan-Kerr Arkansas River Navigation System. Encyclopedia of Arkansas.
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McClellan-Kerr Arkansas River Navigation System (MKARNS)
John Little McClellan. (1977, November 29). The Washington Post.
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Johnson, B.F. & Johnson, B.F. (2019). Arkansas in modern America since 1930. Fayetteville, AR: University of Arkansas Press.
Reed, R. (1972, May 19). The 1972 Campaign. The New York Times.
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Rosenbaum, D.E. (1977, November 29). John L. McClellan, 35 Years in the Senate, Dead at 81. The New York Times.
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S. 2642. Passage. Govtrack.
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https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/88-1964/s452
S. 3974. Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1958. Amendment to Bar “Hot Cargo” Contracts and to Strengthen Laws Against Secondary Boycotts, and Recognition and Organizational Picketing. Govtrack.
Retrieved from
https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/85-1958/s209
Schlesinger, A.M. (1978). Robert Kennedy and his times. New York, NY: Ballantine Books.
The Senate: Man Behind the Frown. (1957, May 27). TIME Magazine.
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https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,824864-1,00.html
Weaver, W. (1973, January 15). Congress Beginning the Difficult Taks of Putting U.S. Criminal Code in Order. The New York Times.
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Mad Politics: The Bizarre, Fascinating, and Unknown of American Political History 