I haven’t done one of these in quite some time, and I figure I would offer a bit of a different twist to it than you’re all probably used to, and it’s one of the earliest RINOs in the history of the GOP in Pennsylvania’s Senator Edgar Cowan (1815-1885).
Elected to succeed Democrat William Bigler, Cowan initially seemed like the figure for the GOP, being a former Whig and loyalist to Republican boss Simon Cameron. He had also denounced Bigler as a “doughface”, or a Northern politician favorable to Southern interests. However, overtime his independence would prove a hindrance to the GOP. Cowan laid out his five principles regarding the War of the Rebellion, and they were as follows:
“1. The North must not violate the Constitution in coercing the South to remain in the Union.
- The Democratic Party in the Free States and the Union men in the Border States must be conciliated.
- Congress should confine itself to raising revenues and an army.
- The war should be waged according to the rules of civilized warfare.
- The war was to suppress a rebellion and not to conquer the Southern States.” (Pershing, 226-227)
Cowan’s numerous dissents were early into the Lincoln Administration, opposing the National Bank Act and the Legal Tender Act, and opposing expelling Senator Jesse Bright (D-Ind.) for recommending an arms dealer to Jefferson Davis. He opposed the Legal Tender Act as he did not see it within the government’s power to print paper money, rather that only gold and silver coinage were allowed. Cowan opposed the National Bank Act as banks stood from this legislation to make double interest on money invested in government bonds (Pershing, 231). He also opposed the second Confiscation Act, confiscating property of rebels, which included slaves. Like every other Republican, Cowan backed the 13th Amendment ending slavery, but was unwilling to go further than that. After the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, Cowan was the Senate Republican who sided with President Andrew Johnson the most. He was opposed to the 14th Amendment, voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1866, supported Johnson on Reconstruction, and was one of the few American politicians to make an argument against legislation because of Romani (also pejoratively known as “Gypsies”) people, a population of historically negligible impact on the United States. His Republican colleagues came to despise him. Senator Ben Wade (R-Ohio), one of the staunchest of the Radical Republicans, had on separate occasions called him a “dog” and the “watchdog of slavery” (Mr. Lincoln’s White House, Kennedy). Senator Henry Wilson (R-Mass.), in the future Ulysses Grant’s second vice president, denounced his positions on race. He stated, “The Senator from Pennsylvania tells us that he is a friend of the negro. What sir, he a friend of the negro! Why sir, there has hardly been a proposition before the Senate of the United States for the last five years leading to the emancipation of the negro and the protection of his rights that the Senator from Pennsylvania has not sturdily opposed. He has hardly ever uttered a word on this floor the tendency of which was not to degrade and belittle a weak and struggling race. He comes here today and thanks God that they are free, when his vote and his voice for five yeras with hardly an exception have been against making them free. He thnks God, sir, that your work and mine, our work which has saved a country and emancipated a race is secured; while from the word ‘go’ to this time, he has made himself the champion of ‘how not to do it’. If there be a man on the floor of the American Senate who has tortured the Constitution of the country to find powers to arrest the voice of this nation which was endeavoring to make a race free, the Senator from Pennsylvania is the man” (Pershing, 229-230).
Cowan: For Women’s Suffrage?
On December 12, 1866, Cowan, in a rather curious move, proposed women’s suffrage for Washington D.C. during the consideration of the Washington D.C. suffrage bill. This was defeated 9-37, and although he claimed this measure was offered in seriousness, it seems like a bid to hamstring the D.C. suffrage bill, as he opposed it on passage. The few senators who voted for it were curiously a diverse bunch and ranged from Delaware’s George Riddle, who had owned slaves and opposed the 13th Amendment, to Radical Ben Wade. The D.C. suffrage bill extended the vote to all men 21 and older regardless of race.
Untenable for Further Public Office
Among his many dissents, Cowan opposed the enactment of the GOP’s trap card on President Johnson in the Tenure of Office Act. He scored a -0.257 on the DW-Nominate scale, which is unbelievably low for a Republican. This also makes him the most liberal Republican of the 1860s by DW-Nominate’s scale.
In 1867, Cowan lost reelection to the man he had once been loyal to, Simon Cameron, who favored Congressional Reconstruction. Cowan’s supporters now, rather than Republicans, were Democrats. President Johnson subsequently nominated him minister to Austria, but Senate Republicans would not confirm him. Cowan would endorse Democratic candidates for president for the rest of his days, and died in 1885 after a year-long battle with cancer of the mouth and throat.
Although Cowan will probably find few fans today, one figure who sang his praises was none other than John F. Kennedy. As a senator, Kennedy (1956) praised Cowan for his opposition to Radical Republicans, stating, “Edgar Cowan stood firm in his adherence to the Constitution and his own ideals – and, in the turbulent reconstruction period that followed the end of hostilities, he refused to follow those Senate Republican leaders who wanted Andrew Johnson to administer the downtrodden southern states as conquered provinces which had forfeited their rights under the Constitution”.
References
Cowan, Edgar. Voteview.
Retrieved from
https://voteview.com/person/2101/edgar-cowan
Pershing, B.F. (1921, May 31). Senator Edgar A. Cowan 1861-1867. Reading before the Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania.
Retrieved from
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwjo3JK_7omHAxUGvo4IHV8uBjIQFnoECCUQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fjournals.psu.edu%2Fwph%2Farticle%2FviewFile%2F1265%2F1113&usg=AOvVaw3YxQjBQj5wEdnFt063KRiK&opi=89978449
Remarks of Senator John F. Kennedy at the Philadelphia Inquirer Book and Luncheon, Philadelphia, January 10, 1956. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.
Retrieved from
https://www.jfklibrary.org/archives/other-resources/john-f-kennedy-speeches/philadelphia-pa-19560110
Visitors from Congress: Benjamin F. Wade. Mr. Lincoln’s White House.
Retrieved from
http://www.mrlincolnswhitehouse.org/residents-visitors/visitors-from-congress/visitors-congress-benjamin-f-wade-1800-1878/
Mad Politics: The Bizarre, Fascinating, and Unknown of American Political History 