Although there were many people who contributed to the legal environment of Jim Crow in the South, there is one particular person who was most influential in the adoption of such systems in James Zachariah George (1826-1897).
George was an attorney by profession and had served as a private in the Mexican-American War. He also served as a reporter on the proceedings of the Mississippi Supreme Court, and like other prominent Southerners, he was a slaveowner. In 1861, George participated in the Mississippi Secession Convention and signed the Secession Ordinance. The conventioneers held that “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery – the greatest material interest of the world” (National Park Service). In the War of the Rebellion, he would rise in the Confederate army to the rank of brigadier general.
Reconstruction
During Reconstruction, George would be active in the Democratic Party and would push to restore white supremacy in the state. In 1875, he convinced Governor Adelbert Ames not to arm black militias as he promised to do all in his power to make the election peaceful. What actually happened was that the Mississippi Plan was put into effect, in which numerous Democrats threatened violence, suppressed, or bought black votes.
In 1881, George was elected to the Senate, in which he garnered a good reputation among his colleagues for his debating ability and was viewed positively by many white Mississippians, who called him the “Great Commoner”. His record in the Senate was one of support for stronger regulations on railroads, support for anti-trust laws, and support for free coinage of silver. His DW-Nominate score is a -0.482. However, George’s sort of progressivism was for “whites only” and it is on the subject of race that George gained his greatest fame.
In 1890, George led the push for the adoption of a new constitution in Mississippi. Since the 15th Amendment, the status of blacks in Southern politics was in flux, especially after the departure of U.S. troops in 1877. Although blacks did vote, fraud, intimidation, and violence were frequent, and their turnout lessened overtime, or they were coerced into voting Democratic. Unlike today, Mississippi was a majority-black state in 1890, making up 58% of the population (Hanna, 3). The last Republican to be elected to Congress from Mississippi at the time, Elza Jeffords, was white and had served as single term from 1883 to 1885.
George’s proposal, in response to the potential of federal intervention through the Lodge Federal Elections Bill, aimed to kill two birds with one stone: disenfranchise black voters and curb election violence. The constitutional convention that adopted this amendment had 133 white delegates and one black delegate, Isaiah Montgomery, despite the state being majority black (Hannah, 3). Montgomery, by the way, was no spokesman for black suffrage. He had previously been a slave of Jefferson Davis’s brother and voted for disenfranchising black and some white voters (Mississippi History Timeline). George’s amendment succeeded in getting around constitutional concerns by instead of placing decisions of who gets to vote on the state, it became up to the local registrar, who would most of the time in practice reject the black applicant.
George’s constitution included some other provisions to deter black voting and curb whatever remaining political power they had:
. A literacy test requiring the voter to read a portion of Mississippi’s Constitution, which could be waived by a registrar if the voter simply “understood” the clause, a way for more poorly educated whites to get through as opposed to poorly educated blacks. 61% of Southern blacks in 1890 were illiterate (Margo, 8). . An annual $2 poll tax. Although I was unable to find a figure for equivalency for 1890, in 1913, $2 was the equivalent of $62.18 in today’s currency. . A secret ballot, which meant voters had to be literate. . Disenfranchisement for numerous criminal offenses that its drafters believed blacks committed at a higher rate than whites. . A crackdown on black firearm ownership, namely by changing right to bear arms from “all persons” to “citizens” and permitted the Legislature to prohibit carrying concealed weapons (Pettus).
Other provisions in the Constitution included mandated segregated schools and a ban on interracial relations.
The first Congressional election to occur after the enactment of George’s constitution, 1892, demonstrated that the law was effective in its purpose: 69,905 whites and 9,036 blacks voted. Despite blacks being 58% of the population, they were only 11% of the voters, and the suffrage situation would worsen over the years. In 1964, the year before the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, only 6.7% of Mississippi’s black population eligible to vote was registered (Lopez). Although this law faced a challenge in the Supreme Court, George successfully defended it. Other former Confederate states followed his lead in adopting Jim Crow Constitutions between 1890 and 1908. He died in office on August 14, 1897.
To this day, George is one of the two Mississippi figures whose statue is in the Hall of Statues at the U.S. Capitol. The other is Jefferson Davis.
References
Hannah, J.A. et. al. (1965, May 18). Voting in Mississippi. A Report of the United States Commission on Civil Rights.
Idaho’s 1st district, which consists of the Northern part of the state including Coeur d’Alene, I find an enjoyable place to visit in the summer. The area itself has had a fascinating political transformation over time, and its politics helped inform the pull of the state. Although Idaho has for way longer been a Republican state than anything else, its politics weren’t always uniformly to the right. One of its first two senators, Fred Dubois, was a Republican who became increasingly progressive and in his second term as senator served as a Democrat. One of its most prominent senators was William Borah, an incredibly independent-minded Republican who took some positions that would strike people today as progressive (his embrace of parts of the New Deal) and others that would appear extremely conservative (opposition to Sheppard-Towner maternity aid). Democrat Glen Taylor, who served from 1945 to 1951, was extremely left-wing and was Henry Wallace’s Progressive Party running mate in 1948. From 1957 to 1981, Democrat Frank Church was one of the state’s senators, and he was no conservative. Although the state’s 2nd district has had a much longer history as a conservative district, the 1st by the 1930s became the Democratic stronghold of the state thanks to its high rates of unionization. From 1933 to 1967, Democrats held the seat for all but four years. This changed dramatically in the 1966 midterms, and the man who represented this change was James Albertus McClure (1924-2011).
Although in 1964, President Lyndon Johnson won a full term in a landslide and all states but Arizona and five Deep South states, Idaho was the state he had the worst performance in while still winning, and he did lose in the 2nd district, which was one of the few seats above the Mason-Dixon line to go from Democratic to Republican representation in Congress. Congressman Compton I. White Jr. in the 1st only won reelection with 51.7% in an excellent year for Democrats nationwide. This left him vulnerable to a challenge in a better year, a challenge by McClure, who had served as a state senator since 1961. The results would be pretty much the inverse in 1966 with McClure defeating White.
In his first term in Congress, McClure established a staunchly conservative record in opposition to the Great Society, with Americans for Constitutional Action giving him a 100% in 1967 and a 90% in 1968. His advocacy for limited government and his staunch opposition to gun control resounded well with the people of the 1st, and he easily beat back former Congressman White in a rematch in 1968 with 59.4% of the vote. Although a conservative, McClure had a sense of pragmatism and could from time-to-time vote against party line, such as his opposition to Nixon’s executive order expanding the functions of the Subversive Activities Control Board in 1971.
In 1972, Senator Leonard Jordan, at this time 73 years old, decided to call it quits. McClure ran in the primary but faced three opponents, with the toughest of them being former Congressman George Hansen, a flamboyant and even more conservative guy than McClure. However, he prevailed and in the general election faced a considerable opponent in Idaho State University President Bud Davis but prevailed by nearly 7 points. This would be his closest race in the Senate. McClure established himself as an expert in natural resources and would favor policies that encouraged a diverse range of energy production in the United States, including oil and nuclear energy. This placed him at odds with conservation groups, and Senator Gaylord Nelson (D-Wis.), a founder of Earth Day, stated, “As a general proposition, the environmental community disagreed with him about 100 percent of the time” (Brown). Indeed, McClure supported development in the west, much to the consternation of conservationists, and opposed the River of No Return Wilderness in 1980. His lifetime score from the League of Conservation Voters was an 11%. He also supported the development of electric cars and oil deregulation. As part of McClure’s focus on energy, he sought to balance out how the United States regarded the Middle East, with maintaining support of Israel while giving support to other nations in the region, including with weapons sales as pushed by both President Carter and President Reagan. He also served as something of a goodwill ambassador to the Middle East, visiting leaders at least nine times for discussions on the issues of energy and matters impacting the region, aiding the U.S. in improving relations (Woods-Davis).
On Civil Rights
McClure’s record on civil rights issues is mixed. During the Johnson Administration, he voted for the first version of the Civil Rights Act of 1968 (a measure primarily aimed at prohibiting racially motivated violence, before fair housing was added) and supported the Jury Selection and Service Act, prohibiting racial discrimination in federal jury selection. However, McClure voted against the second version of the Civil Rights Act of 1968 for its inclusion of fair housing (many Republicans opposed on grounds of freedom of contract). He would vote against the extension of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in 1970 for its inclusion of an 18-year-old vote (this portion was struck down by the Supreme Court, resulting in the 26th Amendment) but vote to extend the act in 1975. McClure would be one of the only members of Congress to vote to extend in 1975 and vote against extending in 1982. McClure would vote against the Civil Rights Restoration Act in 1988 but also for the Fair Housing Act Amendments in 1988, which strengthened fair housing laws. He did subscribe to the conservative positions against busing as a means of desegregation and opposed affirmative action and racial quotas.
The Reagan Administration: Leading the Conservatives
In 1980, not only did Ronald Reagan win the presidency but the Republicans also won the Senate and McClure got the chairmanship of the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. Along with Jesse Helms of North Carolina, he took the lead for the agenda for the conservative wing of the party. Peter Range (1981) described this group thusly, “They are bound by broad agreement on the so-called “profamily issues” – anti-abortion, anti-equal-rights amendment, anti-busing, pro-prayer in schools – and a free-market conservatism on economic issues. They favor limited Government spending on social programs but more for defense. They share a hawkish view of the world that favors a more assertive resistance to Soviet expansion and accepts limited human-rights abuses in the interest of supporting staunch military allies”. Curiously, 1981 and 1982 turned out to be McClure’s weakest years per ACA, scoring a 74% and a 59% respectively. This was a significant departure from the 100% he had received in 1967, 1974, and 1976. However, his 1983 and 1984 scores would be 89% and 96% respectively. Americans for Democratic Action’s lifetime average for McClure, with absences not counted against him, is a 6%. His DW-Nominate score is 0.492.
In 1984, McClure ran to replace the retiring Howard Baker Jr. of Tennessee as majority leader, but the more moderate Bob Dole (R-Kan.) won the post. That year, as he had in his last reelection, he won all counties. In 1986, McClure sponsored the Firearm Owners Protection Act with Rep. Harold Volkmer (D-Mo.), which partially rolled back the Gun Control Act of 1968 in response to criticisms by the firearms industry that enforcement methods and frequency by Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms amounted to harassment and hampered their ability to do business. President Reagan signed the bill into law. That year, McClure persuaded Reagan to abandon adherence to the unratified SALT II agreement as Soviets were violating it (Associated Press).
In 1990, McClure opted not to run for another term, not wanting to stick around into his seventies and his growing disdain for what he called “wet-finger politics”, using public opinion polling rather than principles to determine political positions, and stated that it served as an “instrument of response not an instrument of leadership” (Brown, Associated Press). After his Senatorial career, McClure did what many former legislators do…lobbying! He represented Idaho interests including Idaho Power Co. and Coeur d’Alene Mine as well as supervise citizens’ committees to study deregulatory policy (Associated Press). McClure’s health began to decline when he suffered a stroke in December 2008, and he died on February 26, 2011. He was one of those figures who helped in Idaho’s move increasingly towards the Republicans and since his first election to Congress in 1966, the 1st district has only been represented by Democrats for a total of six years. The federal building and courthouse in Boise is named after McClure.
References
ADA Voting Records. Americans for Democratic Action.
Woods-Davis, W. (2005). Portrait of a pragmatic conservative: Senator James A. McClure of Idaho and the politics of United States energy and Middle Eastern affairs, 1967-1990. University of Idaho.
When considering what to do for the 60th anniversary of JFK’s assassination, I originally thought writing about the Warren Commission would be interesting, and while it would be interesting, it would be in truth better to talk about what he stood for and did rather than the aftermath of his demise. The Warren Commission article can wait until the 60th anniversary of the Warren Commission report. Bear in mind, given the biweekly format of my writing, there are limits to how much I can write, and Kennedy himself is such a comprehensive subject that I cannot possibly hope to match the major historical books on him. So, I thought I would write not some big biography of him, but rather a review of what John F. Kennedy stood for as a politician. This is particularly important in my mind as Kennedy is one of those presidents, like Washington, Jefferson, or Lincoln, that people like to tie in their philosophy to, to say in essence that JFK would be on my side on *insert issue here*. Something that must be kept in mind with Kennedy is that he is a man who is forever crystallized in the politics of 60 years ago. As a Catholic, he undoubtedly opposed abortion on a personal level, but the Kennedy family became pro-choice in the 1970s thanks in good part to the influence of ultra-liberal Congressman and Father Robert F. Drinan of Massachusetts. Who is to say that if Kennedy had lived into the 1970s that he would have been the black sheep of the family on the issue?
A Career in Congress
Although Kennedy had political influence from both sides of his family, the man who mentored him most was his maternal grandfather, John F. “Honey” Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald had served both as mayor of Boston and one of its representatives. Initially it was Joseph Kennedy Jr. who was supposed to be the great politician and running for Congress in 1946, but he was killed in World War II, while JFK was a bona fide war hero for his rescuing ten sailors. Thanks to some political maneuvering by Fitzgerald to get the seat’s current occupant, Jim Curley, to bow out and run for mayor of Boston once again, Kennedy was able to run in a safely Democratic district and thanks to his charisma, background, and Fitzgerald’s support, he was able to win the election. However, he did not enter Congress at the easiest time for the Democrats.
The 80th Congress
Although we know the Bay State today as an iconic place of American liberalism, indeed it sends an entirely Democratic delegation to Congress, this isn’t how it was at the start of Kennedy’s political career. Although the last time Republicans had won Massachusetts was with Calvin Coolidge (who had previously served as the state’s governor), they held 9 of 14 of its Congressional districts and both of its Senate seats. Joe Martin of the 14th district was the House speaker, and the agenda of the 80th Congress was, at least on domestic questions, distinctly conservative.
Kennedy, contrary to his contemporary reputation as a tax cutter, opposed GOP-pushed tax reduction legislation in 1947. He was also consistently supportive of organized labor, and voted against the Taft-Hartley Act that same year, its most controversial provision being allowing states to choose whether to be “right to work” or not. Kennedy was a strong supporter of President Truman’s foreign policy, supporting the Greek-Turkish Aid Act in 1947 and the Marshall Plan in 1948. The 1948 election reelected Truman and brought Democrats back to majorities in both the House and Senate.
Kennedy would in his next two terms in Congress support banning the poll tax, the Housing Act of 1949 (a major public housing measure), retaining middle income housing aid in housing legislation, Point Four foreign aid (aid for poor nations as opposed to war-torn ones), price and rent controls, maintaining the Federal Power Commission’s ability to regulate oil prices, limiting the power of the Rules Committee to block legislation from the floor, a Republican substitute for reciprocal trade legislation, federal title over offshore oil deposits, and the McCarran Internal Security Act, which contained a requirement that communists register with the Justice Department. Kennedy was, however, often supported more regulation of the economy, including backing price and rent controls after World War II as well as during the Korean War. His modified (absences are not counted against) Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) scores during his time in the House were as follows:
1947 – 100
1948 – 92
1949 – 90
1950 – 85
1951 – 91
1952 – 100
Overall, out of 65 votes in which he took a position, he sided with what ADA regarded as the liberal position on 60 of them.
In 1952, Kennedy challenged Senator Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. for reelection. This year was a bit of a watershed moment in Massachusetts political history, as Kennedy’s maternal grandfather, “Honey” Fitzgerald, had tried but failed to defeat Henry Cabot Lodge Sr. for reelection in 1916. This time, however, a Lodge was defeated, by 3 points. Lodge had been distracted running Dwight Eisenhower’s election campaign but also had caught the ire of some conservative voters in the state for his role in defeating the nomination of conservative standard-bearer Robert Taft in the Republican primary, thus they declined to vote for him.
As a senator, Kennedy seemed a bit less liberal than as a representative. He supported a few foreign aid cuts, Senator Joseph McCarthy’s (R-Wis.) 1953 proposal to cut foreign aid to nations trading with Communist China and opposed Democratic farm legislation in 1956. Some, like Senator Wayne Morse (D-Ore.), questioned his commitment to liberalism. He would try to run for president in 1960 on this theme, but to little success. This is probably because Kennedy’s record was mostly still favorable to liberalism, although it seemed to grow more so as he increasingly thought about his presidential ambitions. On civil rights, Kennedy was mostly in favor of such proposals. This included his vote against the Anderson-Aiken Amendment, which stripped the Civil Rights Act of 1957 of its 14th Amendment implementation, but he also voted for the weakening jury trial amendment to the bill. Kennedy’s most known work was the Pulitzer Prize winning Profiles in Courage (most of it was ghostwritten by speechwriter Ted Sorensen), and it is here that I must comment that he had a moment that reflected courage and another, not so much, and both occurred in 1954.
The Eisenhower Administration in 1954 was finally pushing through with the St. Lawrence Seaway through its support of the Wiley-Dondero bill, which authorized U.S. participation in the construction of the seaway. This was quite unpopular in the New England area, among Democrats and Republicans alike, as sea traffic would be directed away from the region and to the Midwest. It was the one issue that House Speaker Joe Martin (R-Mass.) told President Eisenhower he couldn’t assist him on. Not even House Minority Whip John W. McCormack (D-Mass.), typically a loyalist to national Democratic and liberal positions, could be swayed for. But Senator Kennedy voted for it. Of Massachusetts elected officials, only Republican John Heselton and Democrat Edward Boland also supported the Seaway. He voted for it as he saw it as helping the nation overall, even if at the cost of New England. He stated publicly on the matter on January 14, 1954, “1) I am frank to admit that few issues during my service in the House of Representatives or the Senate have troubled me as much as the pending bill authorizing participation by the United States in the construction and operation of the St. Lawrence Seaway. As you may know, on 6 different occasions over a period of 20 years, no Massachusetts Senator or Representative has ever voted in favor of the Seaway; and such opposition on the part of many of our citizens and officials continues to this day. I shall discuss the bases of that opposition subsequently; but in initiating a comprehensive study on this issue, I limited myself primarily to two questions which have not previously been before those Massachusetts Senators and Representatives opposing the Seaway, two questions which are indeed facing all Members of the Congress on this issue:
First, is the St. Lawrence Seaway going to be built, regardless of the action taken in the United States Senate on this bill? and Secondly, If so, is it in the national interest that the United States participate in the construction, operation and administration of the Seaway?
A careful, and I believe thorough and objective, study of this issue has fully satisfied me that both of these questions must be answered in the affirmative” (JFK Library). Such a stance is, in this writer’s opinion, what is meant when the term “statesman” is used. One subject, however, that Kennedy could not take a stand on for years was on the influence of Senator Joseph McCarthy (R-Wis.). Although Kennedy no doubt privately opposed McCarthy’s methods, he was a friend of the Kennedy family, had dated two of the Kennedy daughters, and had pointedly not campaigned for Lodge’s reelection in 1952. Kennedy himself scheduled his back surgery to occur on the day his censure vote (Goodman, 18). He was the only Democrat to not vote or cast a pair on the censure. Kennedy would not denounce McCarthy until after his death on May 2, 1957, and he had a presidential run on the mind. In 1956, Kennedy made a strong bid for the Democratic nomination for vice president and although he lost to Estes Kefauver of Tennessee, he came in second, making him a favorite for a presidential run in 1960 after the ticket’s defeat. In 1958, Kennedy won reelection with 73% of the vote, as not only was it a great year for Democrats, Republicans also were unable to recruit a formidable candidate to run against him.
Kennedy ran on for president on a platform of liberalism, including support for anti-poverty programs for rural America, increased minimum wage, the creation of the Peace Corps, federal aid to education, and other domestic priorities that would become the New Frontier. This largely reflected his Senate record, which was by ADA modified scores:
1953 – 77
1954 – 85
1955 – 67
1956 – 86
1957 – 83
1958 – 100
1959 – 100
1960 – 100
Out of 93 votes in the Senate that Kennedy registered a position, he voted with ADA 82 times.
Kennedy’s overall modified ADA score averaged a 90. Americans for Constitutional Action, ADA’s conservative counterpart, thought similarly, giving Kennedy an 11% for his record from 1955 to 1959. His DW-Nominate score for his Congressional career overall stands at a -0.311. If it isn’t clear by this point, I want to demolish the myth of “Kennedy the conservative” for all time. It is not consistent with how his supporters and opponents viewed him at the time. His chief challenger in the Democratic primary was Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota, who was to Kennedy’s left. His victory over Humphrey in the strongly Protestant state of West Virginia provided proof that the Democratic Party was ready to accept a Catholic nominee for president. His victory over Republican Richard Nixon represented a victory for New Deal liberalism but also a triumph for Catholics as being fully accepted as part of mainstream America, as the last Catholic nominee, Al Smith in 1928, was defeated in part because of his religion.
The New Frontier
John F. Kennedy’s New Frontier program was a distinctly liberal one, but in order for it to have a chance, it needed to overcome a key obstacle: the House Rules Committee. This committee was chaired by Howard W. “Judge” Smith (D-Va.), a man who opposed most of the national Democratic Party’s platform, collaborated with House Minority Leader Charles Halleck (R-Ind.), and had no qualms about bottling up legislation in his committee that he disagreed with. On January 31, 1961, Speaker Sam Rayburn’s (D-Tex.) proposal, openly backed by Kennedy, to expand the committee by two Democrats and one Republican passed by five votes, giving the new president’s agenda a chance to pass. And some measures did pass; a raise and expansion in minimum wage coverage, the Housing Act of 1961, the creation of the Peace Corps, an accelerated public works program, and anti-poverty aid to rural areas. His administration also negotiated and succeeded in getting the Senate to ratify the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1963, which banned for the US and USSR above-ground nuclear testing. Kennedy also got through a now widely misunderstood in context tax reduction in 1963, which was in fact opposed by many conservatives as they saw the Administration’s failure to reduce spending as well as inflationary. Not all efforts of the Kennedy Administration, however, were successful. For instance, federal aid to education went down to defeat in the House in 1961 as did the proposed Department of Urban Affairs and the Administration’s wheat-grain bill in 1962.
On November 22, 1963, America in multiple generations lost a sense of national innocence with JFK’s assassination. I phrase it this way because the United States has had many traumatic events, including the War of the Rebellion (yes, I’m sticking to calling the Civil War this in writing) as well as three presidential assassinations before. I suppose Kennedy’s assassination was the first to happen in a time of modern media and of course, still within the living memories of millions of Americans. May he be the last president to be assassinated.
I suppose this blog’s subtitle could be, “You think THAT’S BAD…”, given how few things that happen in politics lack some sort of precedent. The most recent news is that Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) alleged that former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) deliberately elbowed him while walking past as a form of retaliation against his vote to declare the speaker’s office vacant. If what Burchett alleges happened did happen, it is in truth small fries compared to the history of legislative violence in the U.S. Congress. In this post, I will detail some of the incidents that were more serious than this alleged occurrence.
Griswold vs. Lyon
Cartoon portraying the scuffle between Matthew Lyon (left) and Roger Griswold (right).
There was a good deal of bad blood between Federalist Congressman Roger Griswold of Connecticut and Democratic-Republican Congressman Matthew Lyon of Vermont. Two weeks before this incident, Lyon had declared himself a champion of the common man and told Griswold that Connecticut Federalists didn’t represent 90% of their constituents (would be similar today to a Democrat telling a Republican he or she only represented the wealthy) and that if he lived in Connecticut and had a printing press he would start a revolution, and in response Griswold asked if he would be fighting for his constituents with a wooden sword (New England Historical Society). This was a reference to Lyon’s court-martial and dishonorable discharge by General Horatio Gates during the Revolutionary War, which his opponents alleged was for cowardice and as punishment he had to wear a wooden sword. Lyon in response spat tobacco juice in Griswold’s face. For this act he was denounced, and Federalists had all sorts of insults for him, including that he was “a kennel of filth” and a “nasty, brutish, spitting animal” (New England Historical Society). A vote to expel Lyon for this act had failed, and this conflict of personalities reached a boiling point on February 15, 1798, when Griswold attacked Lyon with a hickory stick in retaliation for the spitting, hitting him about the head and shoulders, with Lyon brandishing a pair of tongs to defend himself. The conflict was broken up by other representatives. Lyon would later be convicted under the Alien and Sedition Acts, but his constituents would reelect him from jail, and he would cast the deciding vote for Thomas Jefferson in the 1800 election, which had gone to the House of Representatives.
Foote vs. Benton
Cartoon portraying the 1850 incident between Foote (left) and Benton (right).
The year is 1850 and the debate on the Compromise of 1850, a series of bills designed to provide peace on the question of free vs. slave states, is in full heat. Senator Thomas Hart Benton (D-Mo.), one of the founders of the Democratic Party known for his hot temper, has recently turned against slavery, against the wishes of his state and party, and opposes the Compromise as it in his view furthers slavery too much. Senator Henry Foote (D-Miss.) is on the opposite side; he supports the Compromise and is a staunch supporter of slavery. Foote is actually unique on this question from his state, as fellow Senator Jefferson Davis (D-Miss.) opposes this compromise as too limiting on slavery and the Mississippi delegation to Congress opposes it. Benton and Foote despise each other, and Foote, an obnoxious man with a history of getting into duels and fistfights, insults and rails against Benton relentlessly in his speeches for weeks. On April 17, 1850, he accuses Benton, a man who prides himself on his ethics, of taking a bribe, and this is the last straw. He storms over to Foote, who draws a pistol, cocks it, and points it at him. Although Foote at 46 has an age advantage on the 68-year-old Benton, Benton has a major size advantage on the rail-skinny Foote. Benton proceeds to open his jacket to bear his chest and shouts, “I have no pistols! Let him fire! Stand out of the way and let the assassin fire!” (Langeveld, 2016) Foote is wrestled to the floor and disarmed by fellow senators. To this day it is the only time in which a senator has pointed a gun at another senator on the Senate floor.
The Caning of Charles Sumner
In 1856, Senator Charles Sumner (R-Mass.) delivered a speech before the Senate regarding Kansas as a free or slave state and identified two senators he found responsible for the outbreak of violence in Kansas among pro and anti-slavery settlers in Stephen Douglas (D-Ill.) and Andrew Butler (D-S.C.). He condemned Douglas as a “noise-some, squat, and nameless animal…not a proper model for an American senator” while accusing Butler of taking “a mistress…who, though ugly to others, is always lovely to him; though polluted in the sight of the world, is chaste in his sight – I mean, the harlot, Slavery” (U.S. Senate). While the speech offended many Southerners, one who was particularly strongly so was Butler’s cousin, Representative Preston Brooks of South Carolina. Brooks thought that because of his speech Sumner was not a gentleman and thus the Code Duello didn’t apply to him, so he outright decided to beat him with his cane, and that is what he did on the floor of the Senate on May 22, 1856, with Rep. Laurence Kiett (D-S.C.) holding off other senators with a gun. Brooks proceeded to beat Sumner until he broke his cane. Brooks would not be expelled but he would resign and run again, being elected. He would be convicted of assault and fined $300. Northern voters widely regarded Sumner as a martyr while Brooks was widely regarded as a hero by Southern voters. Brooks would die of croup at the age of 37 on January 27, 1857, before he could take his seat in the new Congress. Sumner would take three years to recover and served in the Senate until his death on March 11, 1874, aged 63.
The House Brawl of 1858
The cause of this incident was once again the issue of slavery. This matter surrounded the proposed LeCompton Constitution, which was supported by President James Buchanan and was pro-slavery. The debate got heated as Representatives Laurence Keitt (D-S.C.) and Galusha Grow (R-Penn.) dished out insults. When Grow went to sit on the Democratic side of the chamber next to Keitt, he told him to sit down on the Republican side and called him a “black Republican puppy”, to which Grow responded, “No negro-driver shall crack his whip over me”, which resulted in Keitt shouting, “I’ll choke you for that” (Damon). Keitt proceeded to attempt to choke him and this started a brawl among around 50 representatives. This fight ended in about two minutes when Cadwallader Washburn (R-Wis.) grabbed William Barksdale (D-Miss.) by his “hair” and threw a punch, only to miss and find in his left hand a wig (Damon). No one knew that Barksdale was bald, and in embarrassment, he put his wig on backwards to the laughter of the House, instantly ending the brawl.
1902: South Carolina Senators Don’t Get Along, Cause a New Senate Rule
Although Senators Benjamin Tillman and John McLaurin are both Democrats and both represent South Carolina, the latter has been increasingly voting with Republicans on major issues, and this royally ticks off Tillman, especially his support for annexing the Philippines. On February 22, 1902, McLaurin bursts into the Senate and accuses Senator Tillman of perpetrating “a willful, malicious, and deliberate lie” (Goodwin). Tillman promptly socks McLaurin in the jaw and the two men fought, and some senators got hit with missed punches as they tried to break up the fight. Tillman was able to hit McLaurin with a series of punches in the process, and both Tillman and McLaurin were censured by the Senate for this incident. In response, Senator George Frisbie Hoar (R-Mass.) got a provision into the Senate rules that states, “No senator in debate shall, directly or indirectly, by any form of words impute to another Senator or to other Senators any conduct or motive unworthy or unbecoming of a Senator” (Goodwin).
Clarence Cannon – Victim and Aggressor
In 1933, Representative Clarence Cannon (D-Mo.), a pugnacious and independent-minded figure, got into two incidents with fellow Missouri Democrat Andy Romjue, the two who had a mutual dislike. In the first incident, Romjue, a significantly taller man, called him a “double-crosser” and a “liar”, possibly over not getting a coveted spot on a committee, and slapped him across the face, to which Cannon responded the next day in a second incident in which after he asked for a check for the Democratic campaign fund, he followed up with, “You made an unprovoked assault on me yesterday” and punched him in the face (Hill). Another scrap he got into was with his Republican counterpart, John Taber of New York. In 1945, his argument with Taber boiled over and he punched him in the face (Henry). Cannon would remain in the House until his death in 1964, at which time he had still held the chairmanship of the Appropriations Committee.
1940: Vincent vs. Sweeney
Although Beverly Vincent (D-Ky.) and Martin Sweeney (D-Ohio) are in the same party, they are on the opposite sides of the question of FDR’s peacetime draft. After Sweeney delivers a speech hotly condemning the peacetime draft as a British plot in September 1940, he sits next to Vincent. Vincent said to him, “I’d rather you would sit somewhere else” and after Sweeney bristled, he added, “You are a traitor” and went on to call him a “son of a bitch” (Time). Sweeney then took a swing at him, after which Vincent landed a hard right on him.
1949: Cox vs. Sabath
Although 69-year-old Gene Cox of Georgia and 83-year-old Adolph Sabath of Illinois are both Democrats, their differences are many and have been heightened by the politics of the New Deal and the Fair Deal. Cox is a prominent member of the House Rules Committee and a leader in the Conservative Coalition while Sabath is the staunchly liberal chairman of said committee. Among their many differences is over housing policy, and in 1949 Cox demanded Sabath grant 10 minutes of speaking time for opposition to the Truman Administration’s public housing bill. Sabath refused, holding that seven minutes was the maximum he could grant. Cox angrily called Sabath a “liar” and punched him on the side of the head. Sabath, although an octogenarian, responded with “a short left to the jaw, then a short right cross with real steam behind it” (Time, 1949). The scuffle was then broken up and the two made up afterwards.
1955: Frustration on Education Bill Boils Over
Democrat Cleve Bailey of West Virginia is a staunch supporter of federal aid for school construction and is enraged that once again Democrat Adam Clayton Powell of New York, a man who identified as black (he was mixed-race and could have passed for white had he chosen to), has introduced an amendment to the education bill barring aid funds to segregated schools. This amendment was a regular measure that Powell introduced to education bills and such an amendment was either watered-down to meaninglessness in conference or it would kill such legislation. The adoption of such an amendment would guarantee unified opposition to the measure from Southern Democrats. Bailey punches Powell in the jaw, but the two make up, and Powell said of the matter, “Cleve Bailey and I smoke cigars together, and are old friends” (O’Hea, 45).
References
Damon (1975, December). Filibuster: A Look at the Record. American Heritage, 27(1).
Goodwin, G.E. (2023, November 15). The last time there was a fight in the Senate, they changed the rules to ban calling each other corrupt. Business Insider.
O’Hea, O. (2022). Earl Warren’s Last Stand: Powell v. McCormack, Race, and the Political Question Doctrine. Journal of Supreme Court History, 47(1), 44-64.
The Federalists are often overlooked as a part of the founding of America, with Thomas Jefferson’s Democratic-Republicans (they were technically called “Republicans”, but they are retroactively labeled “Democratic-Republicans” to avoid confusion with modern Republicans) figuring much greater, and why shouldn’t they? They became the dominant party after the 1800 election up until the end of James Monroe’s presidency. However, the Federalists had a great deal of influence in politics nonetheless, and the dominant Democratic-Republicans ended up adopting numerous Federalist policies themselves, making them a massive-tent party. One of the major figures from the Federalist Party who is usually a mere footnote in history is Rufus King (1755-1827).
Although his father, Richard, had been a Loyalist, Rufus was a Patriot, and during the Revolutionary War he would divide his time between his studies and fighting. However, what happened to his father impacted the young King greatly: after the passage of the deeply unpopular Stamp Act of 1765, a mob, resentful of his Loyalist position as well as his wealth as a merchant, ransacked his home and destroyed most of the furniture, an act for which no one faced consequences, and the next year a mob burned down his barn (Ernst, 1-5, 209, 263, 377-78). He came to fear the possibility of mob rule greatly in his political thinking.
Elected to the Massachusetts General Court in 1783, King would in 1784 be sent to the Confederation Congress. However, it was soon apparent that the United States under the Articles of Confederation was too weak, and in 1787 he attended the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, where he was one of the most persuasive speakers for the adoption of the Constitution and was one of its drafters. The Constitution was ratified 187-168 by the convention. King had lived throughout his life in Massachusetts (although his neck of the woods, Scarborough, would become part of Maine), but was persuaded to move to New York, and this is where his career would continue, and he would, shortly after being elected to the New York State Assembly in 1789, be elected to the U.S. Senate.
He was a strong supporter of President George Washington, being in the Pro-Administration faction. King would join the Federalist Party upon its creation. King was strongly supportive of Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton’s economic policies and backed the establishment of the First Bank of the United States, based on the Bank of England, a private corporation that both held the government’s money and operated for businesses and individuals. King would be one of the directors of this bank. The DW-Nominate scoring system puts him at a 0.575 based on his Senate voting record.
King also supported the highly unpopular Jay Treaty, and Jeffersonian critics condemned portions of the treaty as humiliating, but the Washington Administration saw this as the best arrangement they could get and the young nation had to avoid war with Britain. The Jay Treaty would be ratified with 2/3’s vote on a party-line vote. Both he and Alexander Hamilton would write defenses of the Jay Treaty under the pseudonym “Camillus” in New York newspapers (Muchowski). In 1796, he would resign the Senate to accept the post of envoy to Great Britain, a role he would serve in until 1803.
King saw the potential for an influx of Irish immigrants in the wake of the 1798 Irish Rebellion as dangerous, seeing the rebellion as inspired by the Jacobins in France. He opposed their entry on the grounds of protecting the United States from radicalism; there was a great fear at the time among Federalists that Jacobin ideology could spread to the nation and cause the same sort of disorder and bloodshed as seen in France. As envoy to Britain, he regarded the Irish as “ignorant, ill governed, oppressed, and wretched” (Sullivan, 31).
In 1804 and again in 1808, the Federalist Party would run Charles C. Pinckney and King for president and vice president respectively. And both times Pinckney-King got clobbered: they only won Connecticut and Delaware in 1804 and added Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island in 1808, but even this degree of success was due to the unpopularity of the Embargo Act of 1807 in New England, a region hit particularly hard by the loss of trade with Britain and France.
On Slavery and Racial Discrimination
Although Rufus King had owned a slave as a young man, he came to strongly oppose the practice and was consistently opposed to expanding slavery. King was successful in adding to the Northwest Ordinance a prohibition on slavery in the Northwest Territories. He did accept the three-fifths compromise as necessary to secure adoption of the Constitution but came to back its repeal after the Louisiana Purchase, seeing in this acquisition high potential for spread of slavery. In 1820, King argued forcefully against the Compromise of 1820 because of Missouri’s admission as a slave state. The following year, he opposed eliminating the property requirement for voting but also opposed any difference in voting eligibility by race in New York, and on both points, he lost as although blacks could technically vote, they had to meet a high property ownership requirement that whites did not (Field, 35-36). I must comment that by today’s standards numerous people whose minds focus on equity and social justice would regard the property requirement itself as racially discriminatory as substantially more whites owned property than blacks. King’s belief was that slavery should be gradually ended by the states. In his state of New York, it would finally be completely ended in 1827.
Back to the Senate….and to Great Britain
In 1813, King was again elected to the Senate from New York, and unlike many Federalists, he supported the War of 1812, and he was not involved in the Hartford Convention that sent the Federalist Party into a death spiral. King was the last Federalist candidate for president in 1816 but didn’t actively campaign and only won 34 electoral votes from Connecticut, Delaware, and Massachusetts. Despite the Federalist Party being a dying entity federally and merely a party that had prominence in a few states, he won reelection as a Federalist in 1819.
King was the last framer of the Constitution to remain in politics, opting to leave the Senate in 1825. He was nominated Minister to Great Britain again by President John Quincy Adams, but his health permitted no more than several months of service. King’s poor health continued until his death in 1827.
P.S.: I will within a week be archiving 2019 and 2020 posts. Souped up versions have been and will be making it on to:
Morrison Waite, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court at the time of the “corporate personhood” ruling.
One decision that has been rather unpopular over the past twenty years from the Supreme Court was Citizens United v. FEC (2010). Justice John Paul Stevens, who was in dissent, went as far as to call it one of the three worst decisions during his time on the bench. Numerous people have thought that this decision established that corporations are people. The truth is that Citizens United didn’t do this at all, and the concept has existed for much longer than that. What Citizens United did was it eliminated any spending limitations on corporations and unions on the grounds that such entities constituted a group of individuals, thus resulting in an avalanche of campaign spending from these entities using Political Action Committees. There are still limits to how much can be contributed to candidates per election, but this means that these committees can expand their reach of candidates they fund.
Background
The concept of corporations as people has a history that dates back to English common law in William Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England, in which Blackstone holds that corporations exist as “artificial persons” under the law “for the advantage of the public” (Holloway). This applies to for-profit and non-profit entities. The first corporation chartered in the history of the American colonies was none other than Harvard University. However, the legal foundation through the Supreme Court for corporate personhood came with the rise of the corporation.
In Dartmouth College v. Woodward (1819), the Supreme Court ruled 5-1 that the Contracts Clause of the U.S. Constitution applied to private corporations. The Contracts Clause prohibits state governments from abrogating private contracts but allows prohibiting contracts violating public policy (example in present-day: you contract someone to be a slave). This began the growth of the corporation in the United States as well as the free enterprise system (Newmyer).
In 1873, the Supreme Court rejected on a 5-4 vote a 14th Amendment defense applying to business in The Slaughter-House Cases, holding that the 14th Amendment did not protect the defendants against interference by state law. Justice Samuel F. Miller ruled that the 14th Amendment didn’t restrict state police powers, substantially limiting the Privileges and Immunities Clause. Justice Stephen J. Field condemned the decision as rendering the 14th a “vain and idle enactment” (Constitutional Law Reporter).
Gradually in the United States, states were doing away with limited terms for corporations to attract more business, allowing corporations to theoretically exist in perpetuity as long as they file for renewal and if the market supports their existence, growing the power of corporations in the United States further.
1886: An Inadvertent (?) Watershed Decision
The decision in which corporate personhood became a concept did not even have the matter of corporate personhood as its central issue. In Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Co., the Supreme Court ruled that the state had wrongfully assessed taxes to the railroad, and in this decision the court reporter added a headnote, quoting Chief Justice Morrison Waite stating, “The Court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the constitution which forbids a state to deny any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws applies to these corporations. We are all of opinion that it does” (Syllabus in United States Reports). Interestingly, the court reporter was Bancroft Davis, a man who was at one time the president of Newburgh and New York Railway. This fact has caused a good deal of controversy given Davis’s past involvement in an industry that was directly impacted by this decision. However, Davis’s account is bolstered by a written exchange between him and Waite on May 26, 1886, to clarify his words. This read,
“Dear Chief Justice,
I have a memorandum in the California Cases Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific &c As follows. In opening the Court stated that it did not wish to hear argument on the question whether the Fourteenth Amendment applies to such corporations as are parties in these suits. All the Judges were of the opinion that it does” (Beatty, 172).
Waite affirmed his account,
“I think your mem. in the California Railroad Tax cases expresses with sufficient accuracy what was said before the argument began. I leave it with you to determine whether anything need be said about it in the report inasmuch as we avoided meeting the constitutional question in the decision” (Beatty, 172).
Although this was a note in a court decision, it became the first basis for corporate personhood. Author Jack Beatty (2007) found numerous questions about this occurrence, “Why did the chief justice issue his dictum? Why did he leave it up to Davis to include it in the headnotes? After Waite told him that the Court ‘avoided’ the issue of corporate personhood, why did Davis include it? Why, indeed, does he begin his headnote with it? The opinion made plain that the Court did not decide the corporate personality issue and the subsidiary equal protection issue” (173). However, in 1888, a more solid ruling was in Pembina Consolidated Silver Mining Co. v. Pennsylvania, in which the court explicitly found that corporations were protected by the Fourteenth Amendment as “legal persons”. However, legal personhood has limits for corporations. For instance, in Braswell v. United States (1988), the court ruled 5-4 that corporations have no 5th Amendment privilege against self-incrimination.
References
According to the official court Syllabus in the United States Reports, Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company 118 U.S. 394, 396 (1886).
Beatty, J. (2007). Age of betrayal: the triumph of money in America, 1865-1900. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf.
Mike Johnson, despite some people’s thinking, is not the most conservative guy the Republican Party has ever elected speaker, with his DW-Nominate score at 0.566. That would be Frederick Gillett (1851-1935) of Massachusetts, who has a DW-Nominate score of 0.662. Although in 1892, Republican President Benjamin Harrison lost reelection, he did win in the state of Massachusetts, and this was the backdrop in which Gillett was first elected to Congress. During the Cleveland years, Gillett supported repealing the Sherman Silver Purchase Act, opposed tariff reduction, supported growth of the navy, and supported a literacy test for immigration for people 16 and older. He developed a respectable reputation among his colleagues.
During the McKinley, Roosevelt, and Taft years he proved a strong supporter of the dominant conservative wing of the Congressional party, and backed Joe Cannon’s (R-Ill.) rule of the House, including opposing the successful effort in 1910 to limit the powers of the speaker. With the fall of the Republicans in 1912, Gillett found a president whose policies were most contrary to his own.
He was a staunch opponent of President Wilson, voting against the Federal Reserve Act and the Clayton Anti-Trust Act in 1914. In the leadup to American participation in World War I, Gillett voted for preparedness measures, including the “Big Navy” bill on June 2, 1916, and voted against an anti-trust investigation into foodstuff producers on February 28, 1917. Other votes he cast that placed him in a strongly conservative category included voting against raising the income tax to fund the World War I effort on May 23, 1917, and voting against an income tax for Washington D.C. on March 12, 1918. Gillett also voted against Prohibition, women’s suffrage, and criminalizing interracial relations in Washington D.C.
In 1918, the Republicans won control of the House in the midterms, and while House Minority Leader James R. Mann (R-Ill.) looked like the natural speaker in the upcoming session, he was found to have too close connections to Chicago meat packers, having received gifts including choice cuts of beef and a horse (Haines, 1). He was thus unable to get sufficient support for speaker after the midterms, so it went to the quiet, reserved, but respected Gillett. Although Gillett won, many Mann supporters remained in control of key committees, so Mann’s organization remained intact (Haines, 4). He would remain essentially the major power in the House until his death on November 30, 1922.
As Speaker, Gillett was strongly supportive of Presidents Harding and Coolidge. He faced a minor revolt in 1923 from the progressive wing of the Republican Party, which I have written about before and required multiple ballots to elect him speaker. In 1924, Gillett ran for the Senate at the behest of President Coolidge, who thought him best able to defeat Democratic Senator David I. Walsh, and Coolidge’s coattails brought him over the top. As a senator, Gillett voted his conservative line, and opposed continuing the Sheppard-Towner Maternity Act. By 1930, he was nearly 80 years old, facing competition in the Republican primary, and facing a bad election year, so he opted to retire.
References
Haines, L. (Ed.). (1919, May). Mann and Gillett. The Searchlight, 4(1).
1964 saw the loss of Barry Goldwater for the presidency, and that was the same year that Robert Bauman (1937- ) both was admitted to the bar in Maryland and attended his first Republican National Convention. His career gradually took off and the image he presented was as a model: a successful married father of four. Bauman was a conservative activist and had taken part in the founding of Young Americans for Freedom and the American Conservative Union.
In 1973, Congressman William Mills of Maryland’s 1st district committed suicide over the belief that he had run afoul of the law (he likely did not). This opened the door to Bauman’s run, and in Congress he became a star among conservatives, since with John Rousselot (R-Calif.) he became a master of parliamentary procedure as well as a compelling advocate for conservative positions and values. In terms of policing the Democrats for rules, he was essentially a successor to the legendary skinflint H.R. Gross (R-Iowa). On his conservatism, his modified Americans for Constitutional Action average score was a 94%. Conservative fundraiser Richard Viguerie regarded him as one of the top 10 conservatives of Congress (Polman). He was close with Ronald Reagan and National Review’s William F. Buckley Jr. Bauman was also known for his jabs: when Congressman Wayne Hays (D-Ohio), who was found to be having an affair with his secretary who he paid for doing no work, accused Bauman of knowing nothing about foreign affairs, he snapped back that Hays “had problems with affairs himself” (Polman). In 1979, he was one of the leaders of the House opposition to implementing the Panama Canal Treaty. The unpopularity of the Panama Canal Treaty would be one of the issues that would help Ronald Reagan’s 1980 campaign. By that year, he not only looked golden for reelection, but he also had plans to run for the Senate in 1982. However, Bauman had for many years been living a secret life.
Bauman’s first sexual experience he reported as being before the age of six with a 12-year-old neighbor (Romano). His sexual experiences were exclusively same-sex until he met his to-be wife, Carol. Bauman’s secret life would continue after marriage, and in one 1963 incident at Georgetown University, he was perusing for men and after picking up two muscular guys, they mugged and beat him. After Bauman would drive the babysitter for his young children home, he would go looking for men and was a known figure among the gay community in Washington D.C. Bauman wanted to maintain the lifestyle of a married man with four children, but his sexual tendencies were elsewhere.
Bauman Gets Caught
On October 3, 1980, Bauman was arrested for soliciting sex from a 16-year-old nude dancer in a Washington D.C. gay bar (Romano). He would before his election claim alcoholism as responsible for his behavior. Bauman would, however, also state that he had “homosexual tendencies” while denying he was a homosexual (Haskett). He was one of the few Republicans to lose reelection that year, and he would later admit that he was gay. Bauman stated on his realization, “Until 1980, I had never read extensively about homosexuality. I avoided it. I didn’t want to know. I was quite certain that it couldn’t include me in that category” (Romano) In June 1981, he and Carol would divorce.
Bauman would, years later, reflect on his experience, “What happened to me, stems from our society’s widespread ignorance. When someone like me, someone who got through Georgetown Law School, who got married and had four children, and attained the status of congressman, doesn’t know what he’s been confronting his whole life – there’s a lot of ignorance. We have to understand the suffering that flows from that. I still don’t like being gay. If I had my druthers, I wouldn’t be gay” (Polman). Although many would keep their distance from him, he still had some help from friends. Edward Derwinski, who served as secretary of veterans’ affairs during George H.W. Bush’s presidency and was a former colleague of his in Congress, hired him for legal work. He has post-Congress mostly retained his conservative viewpoints although he did call for an anti-discrimination law for sexual orientation. Bauman’s specialty has been in offshore tax havens and has authored multiple books on the subject.
References
Haskett, M.E. (1980, October 24). Maryland Rep. Robert Bauman, charged with soliciting sex from… UPI.
Polman, D. (1986, August 14). Out Of The Closet And Into An Abyss: Once A Darling Of The Political Right, Robert Bauman Fell Hard From Congress When It Was Revealed That He Was Gay. Philadelphia Inquirer.
Mad Politics: The Bizarre, Fascinating, and Unknown of American Political History 