What Did the Old Democratic Party Stand For?

It rather goes without saying that the two parties today are strongly ideologically polarized. The most conservative Democrat is more liberal than the most liberal Republican in Congress, and President Trump has zero thoughts of trying to get even a few Democratic politicians on his side. Indeed, all Senate Democrats and all but two House Democrats backed impeaching him in 2020, one who then switched to the GOP. However, the party systems have changed over the years, and in particular changed significantly after the election of President Roosevelt in 1932. He pursued what has been commonly called the pursuing of Jeffersonian ends by Hamiltonian means, an idea spelled out by progressive Herbert Croly in 1909. The Democratic Party as established stood for the policies and principles of Andrew Jackson that were inspired by the policies and principles of Thomas Jefferson. I will also be including the Whig platform here for contrast, but the Democrats are the central focus.

The following language was in all Democratic Party platforms from 1840 to 1856:

“1. Resolved, That the federal government is one of limited powers, derived solely from the constitution, and the grants of power shown therein, ought to be strictly construed by all the departments and agents of the government, and that it is inexpedient and dangerous to exercise doubtful constitutional powers.

2. Resolved, That the constitution does not confer upon the general government the power to commence and carry on, a general system of internal improvements.

3. Resolved, That the constitution does not confer authority upon the federal government, directly or indirectly, to assume the debts of the several states, contracted for local internal improvements, or other state purposes; nor would such assumption be just or expedient.

4. Resolved, That justice and sound policy forbid the federal government to foster one branch of industry to the detriment of another, or to cherish the interests of one portion to the injury of another portion of our common country—that every citizen and every section of the country, has a right to demand and insist upon an equality of rights and privileges, and to complete and ample protection of person and property from domestic violence, or foreign aggression.

5. Resolved, That it is the duty of every branch of the government, to enforce and practice the most rigid economy, in conducting our public affairs, and that no more revenue ought to be raised, than is required to defray the necessary expenses of the government.

6. Resolved, That congress has no power to charter a national bank; that we believe such an institution one of deadly hostility to the best interests of the country, dangerous to our republican institutions and the liberties of the people, and calculated to place the business of the country within the control of a concentrated money power, and above the laws and the will of the people.

7. Resolved, That congress has no power, under the constitution, to interfere with or control the domestic institutions of the several states, and that such states are the sole and proper judges of everything appertaining to their own affairs, not prohibited by the constitution; that all efforts by abolitionists or others, made to induce congress to interfere with questions of slavery, or to take incipient steps in relation thereto, are calculated to lead to the most alarming and dangerous consequences, and that all such efforts have an inevitable tendency to diminish the happiness of the people, and endanger the stability and permanency of the union, and ought not to be countenanced by any friend to our political institutions.

8. Resolved, That the separation of the moneys of the government from banking institutions, is indispensable for the safety of the funds of the government, and the rights of the people.

9. Resolved, That the liberal principles embodied by Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence, and sanctioned in the constitution, which makes ours the land of liberty, and the asylum of the oppressed of every nation, have ever been cardinal principles in the democratic faith; and every attempt to abridge the present privilege of becoming citizens, and the owners of soil among us, ought to be resisted with the same spirit which swept the alien and sedition laws from our statute-book.”

These principles were strongly consistent, as opposed to the Whig Party, which although they had principles (protective tariffs, funding internal improvements), they weren’t spelled out fully until their 1852 platform, and indeed specifics are not spelled out at all in their 1848 platform! The Whigs also sought to completely avoid the issue of slavery, a position which the events of the 1850s proved was untenable. The Democratic Party strikes me as the more programmatic party of the two, and indeed they were the dominant party from its creation until the 1860 election. They stood for concrete principles they placed in every platform, while the Whigs were the collection of opposition to the Democrats, and once its great standard-bearer and founder, Senator Henry Clay of Kentucky, died in 1852, they didn’t last much longer. The language of the Democratic Party indicates a strong belief in the role of states rather than the federal government, although the issues they care about from that perspective are ones that are seen as benefiting the privileged and powerful. The states, thus, were supposed to serve as a check against them per Democratic philosophy. Tariffs assisted the industrial private sector and often did so at the expense of the rural South, which would face retaliatory tariffs on their exported cotton and tobacco. Thus, the language in opposition to sectional legislation and policies benefiting one industry while harming another. The funding of internal improvements (bridges, roads, canals) were for the purpose of advancing commerce, something that Democrats of the time thought should be confined to states. President Andrew Jackson’ veto of the continuing of the Second Bank of the United States was seen as a heroic act by Democrats as a blow against the economically privileged, hence the language of a “concentrated money power”. The language on slavery was for the purpose not only of continued Southern support but also for preservation of the union. Now for the Whigs…

The 1844 Whig Platform

The first Whig platform was mostly non-specific on policy although they did spell out that they supported a protective tariff and spreading out the proceeds of sales of public lands to the states. Democrats did mention and oppose the latter in their 1844 platform.

The 1852 Whig Platform

I skipped to the 1852 platform because I already mentioned the barren 1848 platform. The 1852 platform actually comprehensively spells out what the Whigs believed, and sadly, when they issued the strongest statement of their beliefs they got creamed, only winning the states of Kentucky, Massachusetts, Tennessee, and Vermont. They did embrace the Compromise of 1850, Henry Clay’s last, as it was the hope that this would prevent disunion. The platform they did the best on was the 1848 platform, and this was because of the popularity of General Zachary Taylor, a hero of the Mexican-American War, a war the Whigs had opposed. This, in addition to President Pierce’s signing of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854, was the death of the Whig Party, as opponents of slavery in both the Whig and Democratic parties became galvanized to form a new party…the Republican Party. And did this realignment ever bring together former opponents: Confederate President Jefferson Davis and Vice President Hannibal Hamlin were both Democrats before 1856, and President Abraham Lincoln and Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens were both Whigs before 1850. These are the principles espoused by the Whigs:

“First: The Government of the United States is of a limited character, and it is confined to the exercise of powers expressly granted by the Constitution, and such as may be necessary and proper for carrying the granted powers into full execution, and that all powers not thus granted or necessarily implied are expressly reserved to the States respectively and to the people.

Second: The State Governments should be held secure in their reserved rights, and the General Government sustained on its constitutional powers, and that the Union should be revered and watched over as the palladium of our liberties.

Third: That while struggling freedom everywhere enlists the warmest sympathy of the Whig party, we still adhere to the doctrines of the Father of his Country, as announced in his Farewell Address, of keeping ourselves free from all entangling alliances with foreign countries, and of never quitting our own to stand upon foreign ground, that our mission as a republic is not to propagate our opinions, or impose on other countries our form of government by artifice or force; but to teach, by example, and show by our success, moderation and justice, the blessings of self-government, and the advantages of free institutions.

Fourth: That where the people make and control the Government, they should obey its constitution, laws and treaties, as they would retain their self-respect, and the respect which they claim and will enforce from foreign powers.

Fifth: Government should be conducted upon principles of the strictest economy, and revenue sufficient for the expenses of an economical administration of the Government in time of peace ought to be derived from a duty on imports, and not from direct taxes; and in laying such duties, sound policy requires a just discrimination and protection from fraud by specific duties when practicable, whereby suitable encouragement may be afforded to American industry, equally to all classes, and to all parts of the country.

Sixth: The Constitution vests in Congress the power to open and repair harbors, and remove obstructions from navigable rivers, and it is expedient that Congress shall exercise that power whenever such improvements are for the protection and facility of commerce with foreign nations, or among the States–such improvements being, in every instance, National and general in their character.

Seventh: The Federal and State Governments are parts of one system, alike necessary for the common prosperity, peace and security, and ought to be regarded alike with a cordial, habitual and immovable attachment. Respect for the authority of each and acquiescence in the just constitutional measures of each, are duties required by the plainest considerations of National, State, and individual welfare.

Eighth: That the series of acts of the Thirty-first Congress, commonly known as the Compromise or Adjustment (the act for the recovery of fugitive slaves from labor included,) are received and acquiesced in by the Whigs of the United States as a final settlement, in principle and in substance, of the subjects to which they relate; and, so far as these acts are concerned, we will maintain them, and insist upon their strict enforcement, until time and experience shall demonstrate the necessity of further legislation to guard against the evasion of the law, on one hand, and the abuse of their powers on the other–not impairing their present efficiency to carry out the requirements of the Constitution; and we deprecate all further agitation of the questions thus settled, as dangerous to our peace; and will discountenance all efforts to continue or renew such agitation, whenever, wherever, or however made; and we will maintain this settlement as essential to the nationality of the Whig party and of the Union.” (American Presidency Project).

Although the Whigs died off, many of their policies would be pushed by the Republican Party, which embraced the protective tariff and passed the National Bank Act in 1863, establishing a series of national banks with a unified currency, and contemporary Democrats have fully embraced Hamiltonian means to Jeffersonian ends and some state Democratic parties distance themselves from Jefferson and Jackson by renaming their dinners to “Kennedys-King” (after JFK, RFK, and MLK) dinners, figures who are far more relevant to the thinking of Democrats today than Jefferson and Jackson and whose legacies are unburdened by slavery.

References

1840 Democratic Party Platform. American Presidency Project.

Retrieved from

https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/1840-democratic-party-platform

1844 Democratic Party Platform. American Presidency Project.

Retrieved from

https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/1844-democratic-party-platform

1848 Democratic Party Platform. American Presidency Project.

Retrieved from

https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/1848-democratic-party-platform

1852 Democratic Party Platform. American Presidency Project.

Retrieved from

https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/1852-democratic-party-platform

1856 Democratic Party Platform. American Presidency Project.

Retrieved from

https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/1856-democratic-party-platform

Whig Party Platform of 1844. American Presidency Project.

Retrieved from

https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/whig-party-platform-1844

Whig Party Platform of 1848. American Presidency Project.

Retrieved from

https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/whig-party-platform-1848

Whig Party Platform of 1852. American Presidency Project.

Retrieved from

https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/whig-party-platform-1852

September 17, 2025 Fascinating Politics

Benjamin Wade: The Controversial Radical Republican

One of the most controversial figures of the old Republican Party of Lincoln, if not the most controversial, was Ohio Senator Benjamin “Bluff” Franklin Wade (1800-1878), famous for his reputation as a Radical Republican. This was due to his image as a punitive figure for Reconstruction, his uncompromising attitudes on the rights of freedmen, and a perception that he was but a tool of Northern capitalists.

An attorney by profession, Wade’s career in politics began in 1831 when he formed a legal partnership with Joshua Giddings, a fierce opponent of slavery. From there he was elected prosecutor of Ashtabula County in 1836 and in 1837, he won election to the Ohio State Senate. Although a member of the Whig Party, a party known for its staunch support of business, Wade was a bit too independent of the interests of business for the liking of the Whigs and it cost him a third term. He was out of office, but not for good, as in 1847 he was elected presiding judge of Ohio’s 3^rd judicial district, serving until 1851, when he was elected to the Senate as a Whig. Although he had long been fiercely anti-slavery, he had a sense of strategy in how he voted for president, which was displayed when he voted for Whig Zachary Taylor in 1848 rather than Martin Van Buren of the anti-slavery Free Soil Party. Wade figured that a vote for Taylor, a slaveowner on a party platform that said nothing of slavery, would be preferable to Van Buren because the Free Soil Party had no chance of victory, and he correctly figured that Taylor would not bow to pro-slavery interests. Wade strongly opposed the Compromise of 1850 for its provisions benefiting slavery and in 1854, he voted against the Kansas-Nebraska Act.

In the 1850s with the party system changing given the demise of the Whig Party and the temporary rise of the American (“Know Nothing”) Party, Wade could have capitalized on the issue of nativism to help his 1857 reelection, but being a man of outspoken convictions he rather condemned nativism, and his condemnation was such that he almost got into a brawl with American Party Senator John M. Clayton of Delaware, one of the leading promoters of nativism (Trefousse, 65). Indeed, he was strongly opinionated and often crossed swords rhetorically with his colleagues. Historian Allan G. Bogue wrote of him, “Wade was no orator, and his contributions to debate were usually short and, on occasion, intemperate: he once called [Edgar] Cowan a dog and attacked the President in debate on more than one occasion” (Mr. Lincoln’s White House). He also sometimes publicly had harsh words for President Lincoln, who he believed was blowing the war effort and not going far enough against slavery. In one instance, Wade and a delegation were seeking the removal of Ulysses S. Grant as head of the Union Army at Vicksburg and upon Lincoln’s response which was to start to tell a story, he responded, “Bother your stories, Mr. President. That is the way it is with you, sir. It is all story – story. You are the father of every military blunder that has been made during the war. You are on the road to hell, sir, with this Government, and you are not a mile off this minute” to which Lincoln responded, “Wade, that is about the distance from here to the Capitol” (Mr. Lincoln’s White House). Lincoln, razor sharp and quick-witted, often got the better of Wade in their verbal exchanges. Wade never particularly liked Lincoln even though he would support him and said that his views on slavery “could only come of one born of poor white trash and educated in a slave state” (American Battlefield Trust). However, Wade was also known for making his disagreements strong on politics, but in truth he wasn’t big on making things personal. Indeed, in 1855 he had said of Judah P. Benjamin of Louisiana, who would later join the Confederacy, “I will call him a friend. I have no reason to call him anything else, for I have received nothing but kindness and respect at his hands. He being a southern man, I am the last one to assail him for defending his institutions. I have no doubt that if my habits and education had been like his, our positions would have been reversed to-day. I can understand that very well, and make allowances for it” (Trefousse, 68).

During the War of the Rebellion, Wade chaired the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, which covered issues of the war as well as Indian conflicts. In 1864, he coauthored and cosponsored the Wade-Davis bill setting the policy for readmission of Southern states, which required newly admitted states to abolish slavery, hold conventions for new state constitutions, required a majority of white males to pledge the ironclad oath swearing allegiance to the United States and that they had not supported the Confederacy, and barring from public office Confederate officials and veterans. This measure was pocket-vetoed by President Lincoln, who wanted to implement his own more lenient plan for Reconstruction. This, however, did not come to pass with Lincoln’s assassination. The conflict between President Johnson, who wanted lenient Reconstruction while Congressional Republicans sought Reconstruction on harsher terms as well as on terms that protected the rights of freedmen in the newly admitted states, characterized the rest of his time in office.

In 1867, Wade was elected President Pro Tempore, placing him next in line for the presidency as President Johnson had no vice president. However, his stature in Ohio was deteriorating. Wade bet his political career on a ballot measure in Ohio for universal black male suffrage, which failed. That election also saw a Democratic majority in the Ohio State Legislature, and reelection for Wade was coming up in 1869. This meant that if the Democratic majority stayed, he was going to lose reelection. This could be avoided if Andrew Johnson was convicted on his impeachment charges, thus he was strongly in support. If convicted, Senate Pro Tem Wade would have become president until the end of the term. Indeed, one newspaper wrote of Andrew Johnson’s acquittal, “Andrew Johnson is innocent because Ben Wade is guilty of being his successor” (Bomboy). This was certainly known to be the motive of Maine’s William Pitt Fessenden, the first Republican to vote to acquit Johnson, who was among the moderates who despised Wade. All Wade needed was one more vote to have been president. Worse yet for him, although he had been favored to be selected vice president, instead Speaker of the House Schuyler Colfax of Indiana won the nomination. Wade’s defeat for reelection was certainly a source of jubilation for Democrats, who elected Allen G. Thurman, who was opposed to civil rights, keen on curbing the power and influence of railroads, and opposed to high tariffs. Wade would not run for public office again, but would hold several positions in the private and public sector, including serving on a commission to study the proposed annexation of what is today known as the Dominican Republic, and was an elector for Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876. Wade would die on March 2, 1878 at the age of 77. Senator Carl Schurz praised him as “one of the oldest, most courageous, and most highly respected of the antislavery champions” (Trefousse, 73-74).

What Was Wade Ideologically?

There are some things that suggest to modern readers that Wade was left-wing. These include his belief in racial equality (unusual at the time, although liberalism as we know it hadn’t taken up the mantle of racial equality yet), his early support for women’s suffrage, his concern for the betterment of wealth of the working man, and his support for trade unions. Furthermore, Wade’s position for soft currency after the War of the Rebellion also sparked the ire of the business establishment of his day. However, there are significant issues with considering him left-wing.

These issues include that Wade was in his economic beliefs Hamiltonian, got his start in the business-friendly Whig Party, was a strong supporter of the protective tariff, supported the National Bank Act of 1863 for a uniform national currency well in keeping with the views of the Federalist and Whig parties as opposed to chaotic state banks with their own currencies, repeatedly supported legislation that favored railroads including substantial public land grants, and consistent with his stance on railroads sponsored a bill that granted public land to a mining company in the Montana territory. This indicates a willingness to hand over public land to private businesses, which I would think left-wingers would consider an abomination. Furthermore, after his time in the Senate, Wade would serve as a lobbyist for the Northern Pacific Railroad. Although he was undoubtedly sincere in his commitment to Reconstruction and penalizing the Confederates among the Southerners for rebellion, he was also a supporter of many core policies that spurred the Gilded Age and would thus produce the reaction of progressivism. Biographer Hans Trefousse writes of this mix in his stances, “The final charge against Wade was that he was a mere catspaw for powerful capitalists. While it is true that he always supported tariff protection, and while it is equally true that he pushed through the senate a bill to give a group of capitalists control of mining properties in the Far West, he was by no means beholden to industrial interests. Henry Cooke, the banker, thoroughly distrusted Wade’s radicalism, and although his brother Jay later gave the ex-senator a retainer to represent the Northern Pacific Railroad, conservative spokesmen for business had grave misgivings about the Ohioan’s financial orthodoxy” (71). Something also to consider is that Wade himself had been born into a family of modest means and had been a laborer before he started practicing law. For the issues of slavery and Reconstruction, these are strongly based on partisanship and regionalism as opposed to basic liberal/conservative philosophy as we know them today. In 1867, Wade delivered a speech advocating tariffs, stating, “Labor commands no higher reward than I am glad to see it. I hope to God it never will be any lower than it is; for now the real manual laborer gets but a scanty portion of that which he earns. I hope the time will never be when he will be less rewarded than he is now” (Trefousse, 71). He even spoke out of concern for how little the laboring man had as opposed to the wealthy in 1868, and indeed this was the time in which he was voting for the direction of post-war financial policy to be towards soft currency, perhaps suggesting he was moving a little leftward on economics later in his career. Yet, on the scale of liberalism and conservatism from DW-Nominate, he scores a 0.564, which by this measurement makes him the second most conservative senator in his day, in the sense of his backing Hamiltonian and Whig prescriptions which as I noted, were favorable to business. It is also possible for someone to score high on DW-Nominate but nonetheless show a more liberal side to labor issues, such as a figure I wrote about not too long ago in Runt Bishop of Illinois, who scored a 0.609 despite his consistent opposition to measures that curbed the power of organized labor; he voted extremely conservative on many other issues such as foreign policy. Wade stands, by looking at his voting record, as a conservative on fundamental issues that defined the Federalist and Whig parties as “conservative”, but he was indeed a complicated figure and in some ways far ahead of his time.

References

Benjamin Wade. American Battlefield Trust.

Retrieved from

https://www.battlefields.org/learn/biographies/benjamin-wade

Benjamin Wade: A Featured Biography. U.S. Senate.

Retrieved from

https://www.senate.gov/senators/FeaturedBios/Featured_Bio_Wade.htm

Bishop, Cecil William (Runt). Voteview.

Retrieved from

https://voteview.com/person/731/cecil-william-runt-bishop

Bomboy, S. (2024, August 11). Five little-known men who almost became president. National Constitution Center.

Retrieved from

https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/five-little-known-men-who-almost-became-president

Trefousse, H.L. The Motivation of a Radical Republican. Ohio History Journal.

Retrieved from

https://resources.ohiohistory.org/ohj/search/display.php?page=123&ipp=20&searchterm=crawford&vol=73&pages=63-74,126-127

Visitors from Congress: Benjamin F. Wade. Mr. Lincoln’s White House.

Retrieved from

https://www.mrlincolnswhitehouse.org/residents-visitors/visitors-from-congress/visitors-congress-benjamin-f-wade-1800-1878/index.html

Wade, Benjamin Franklin. Voteview.

Retrieved from

https://voteview.com/person/9698/benjamin-franklin-wade

September 13, 2025 Fascinating Politics

William Sprague: Independent and Flawed Rhode Island Politician

William Sprague IV (1830-1915) was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, as his family had established the A&W Sprague Manufacturing Co. in Cranston, Rhode Island. This business owned a Calico-printing mill in Cranston as well as five textile mills in New England (Musil). Furthermore, it produced numerous products with iron. Being a wealthy businessman proved then as it does now to be a quick path to politics, and in 1860 he was elected governor of Rhode Island at the age of 29 as a Conservative. This meant that he stood in contrast to the Republican candidate and thus he got support from a broad swath of the electorate not willing to go with Radical Republicanism. As governor, Sprague got a law passed weakening protections for escaped slaves from capture by slave catchers. However, he also was a strong unionist and assembled troops to back the effort before President Lincoln even asked (National Governors Association). Sprague also served in the War of the Rebellion as a Brigadier General and was awarded for bravery in 1862 for his conduct during the Battle of Bull Run. Although as governor, Sprague’s policies hadn’t been the friendliest towards blacks, he assembled the state’s first black regiment. His war heroism attracted the attention of Rhode Island political boss Henry B. Anthony, who with Sprague’s father-in-law Salmon P. Chase got him to run for the Senate in 1863 as a Republican.

Senator Sprague

Although initially Sprague voted in line with Republicans, it didn’t take long for him to start getting into conflict with Anthony, who ran what was called the “Journal Ring”, with the prominent Providence Journal, which he owned, backing him, his candidates, and their positions. Although Sprague had staunchly supported the war effort, the Union blockade on trading cotton with the Confederacy placed a substantial burden on his business, and his plea to the federal government to allow him to trade with the Confederacy was denied. Thus, when Texas blockade-runner Henry Hoyt proposed a scheme by which he could sell supplies and arms to the Confederacy in exchange for cotton, he agreed to it (Musil). The scheme involved Confederates providing cotton in Matamoros, Mexico to a British middleman who could transport the cotton from Mexico to the United States under a British flag. However, this scheme was exposed in December 1864 after Union officials got Charles Prescott, who worked as a skipper on one of the ships, to confess the whole scheme (Musil). Sprague quickly wrote a letter denying the scheme to Major General Dix. Secretary of War Edwin Stanton covered this scandal up, but this meant that Sprague was vulnerable to blackmail. Although extremely reluctant to vote to convict President Andrew Johnson as Salmon P. Chase was pushing him to vote against, Senator Anthony, who had been crossed by Johnson in his patronage picks for Rhode Island, threatened Sprague with political oblivion if he did not do so (Warwick History, Part III).

Sprague and President Grant

William Sprague soon came into conflict with President Ulysses S. Grant, and he was often voting against what his party was standing for, resulting in Anthony firing at him with both barrels in the Providence Journal. The Journal portrayed him as an alcoholic (which he was) and a madman and condemned his stances as a Liberal Republican. His DW-Nominate score was a 0.122, on the liberal end of Republicans of the time. In 1872, Sprague backed the candidacy of Horace Greeley. By the next election in 1875, he had no chance of success against Anthony, who had picked former General Ambrose Burnside to succeed him. Sprague’s political career was over.

Personal Life

Although Sprague had been a war hero, he was a deeply flawed man. He was narcissistic, and it negatively impacted every relationship. He talked down to employees at his mills and to anyone he saw as lower than him, his First Rhode Island Regiment got so sick of him they just left, but his wife Kate Chase got the brunt of it (Sullivan). Kate Chase was attracted to him as he came off as debonair and a rogue, but the marriage was a huge mistake. His drinking worsened into alcoholism, and he would spend his great wealth primarily on himself and was stingy with his allowances to Kate and their children, to the point that purchasing necessities for the household was neglected (Sullivan). He also carried on affairs and was abusive, including one incident in which he tried to push Kate out of a window. Sprague would often communicate to his wife in writing in which it was clear that he regarded her as a burden. The alcoholism, abuse, and estrangement led to Kate having an affair of her own with prominent Senator Roscoe Conkling of New York, who in contrast to the ugly and short Sprague was tall, athletic, attractive, and seldom drank. This went on for a few years until Sprague caught them together and chased Conkling out of his home with a shotgun. Despite his alcoholism, he remarried and died one day before his 85^th birthday, but faced the tragedy of having his only son take his life at 25, which Kate blamed him for (Sullivan).

References

Foster, F. S. (2015, June 8). Kate Sprague and Roscoe Conkling: Beauty and the Boss. Presidential History Blog.

Retrieved from

Kate Sprague and Roscoe Conkling: Beauty and the Boss

Henry Bowen Anthony 1815-1884 – A brilliant editor and politician. Warwick Rhode Island Digital History Project.

Retrieved from

https://www.warwickhistory.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=270:henry-bowen-anthony-1815-1884-a-brilliant-editor-and-politician&catid=56&Itemid=125

Musil, M. (2017, December 26). Money Out of Misery. HistoryNet.

Money Out Of Misery

Sprague, William. Voteview.

Retrieved from

https://voteview.com/person/8806/william-sprague

Sullivan, K. (2019, April 10). The narcissism of William Sprague. Warwick Beacon.

Retrieved from

https://warwickonline.com/stories/back-in-the-day-the-narcissism-of-william-sprague,141417

William Sprague. National Governors Association.

Retrieved from

William Sprague

September 10, 2025 Fascinating Politics

Great Conservatives From American History #22: Jessie Sumner

Illinois was one of the first states to have a woman serve in Congress, and that was in Winnifred Mason Huck, who succeeded her late father, William Mason. However, she was a placeholder. The first to be in for a full term was Ruth Hanna McCormick, the daughter of Republican bigwig Mark Hanna. However, her time in office was short as her effort to move up to the Senate in 1930 election proved a flop. The next woman was Jessie Sumner of Illinois. Sumner, a banker and an attorney, was a trailblazer in multiple ways, including being the first woman to study law at Oxford University and being the first to be a county judge in Illinois, having been elected in 1937 by a 2-1 margin even though her Democratic opponent’s slogan, “You don’t want a woman for your county judge!” (Kacich) 1938 was the first bad election year the Democrats had had in ten years, and Judge Sumner was one of the beneficiaries, retaking the typically Republican 18^th district by over 10 points, which had once been represented by the legendary Speaker Joe Cannon. In her time in Congress, she would prove even more conservative than he was. As her niece recounted about her, “She had her own opinions and wasn’t afraid to stand up to anybody. She was a fiery little person” (Kacich).

Congresswoman Sumner

After Sumner was first elected to Congress, she was something of a sensation as journalists could not help but comment on her looks (she was pretty with blonde hair and blue eyes) and were eager to get her opinions because she possessed a sharp wit. When asked about President Roosevelt, she responded, “Don’t ask me to say anything about President Roosevelt. I came to bury Caesar, not to praise him” (Kacich). This was just one of what the press called her “Sumnerisms”. Others were, per Tom Kacich (2013):

“The conservatives are the ‘whys,’ the liberals are the ‘why-nots.” – On the difference between them.

“I’ll be turned out in white and look like another Washington Monument.” – On what she would wear to a Congressional reception.

Sumner’s record was mostly anti-New Deal in her first term and it was hard to find a stronger opponent of FDR’s foreign policy than her, who voted down the line against intervention in World War II. Her motivation for opposition to American involvement in World War II was, according to her niece, “She was in high school when World War I started. Her friends — the guys she played with because she would play baseball with the boys and jacks with the girls and whatever — it’s a small town she was coming from, they lost people in World War I. She thought it was terrible that these people would come home and they had lost an arm or a leg or they had gotten mustard gassed. That impressed her. I think it really got her and stayed with her the rest of her life” (Kacich).

In 1940, she was the first woman to be reelected to Congress from Illinois. Appropriately given her banking background, she was assigned on the House Banking and Currency Committee, where she was a staunch supporter of small businesses. Although staunchly conservative, Sumner wasn’t afraid of dissenting from her party on a few occasions; as a budget hawk she not only voted against high expenditures on domestic and foreign policy, she also voted against Republican-backed tax relief legislation in 1943 and did not back tax relief until voting to override President Roosevelt’s veto in 1944. Another area she dissented from her party on was civil rights. Although Sumner had voted for anti-lynching legislation in 1940 and a bill banning the poll tax in federal elections in 1942, she opposed anti-poll tax measures in 1943 and 1945, the difference being that these two measures covered primaries as well. She was among the most conservative legislators in her day, with her DW-Nominate score being a 0.544, and her record only seemed to get more conservative with time. Despite her being one of the more extreme opponents of the politically durable President Roosevelt, she was tremendously competent at getting her bills and amendments passed, with a record having only one of them fail by early 1943 (Times Herald). Some votes in which was among a small group of conservative dissenters included:

. On March 12, 1940, she was one of 37 representatives to vote against constructing additional naval vessels.

. On March 21, 1941, she was one of 55 representatives to vote against additional appropriations for Lend-Lease.

. On June 11, 1942, she was one of 52 representatives to vote against appropriations for work relief.

. On September 21, 1943, she was one of 29 representatives to vote against the Fulbright Resolution, which expressed Congressional support for the creation of the UN.

. On June 7, 1945, she was one of 18 representatives to vote against US participation in the US participation in the International Monetary Fund and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

. On December 18, 1945, she was one of 15 representatives to vote against US participation in the UN.

. On February 6, 1946, she was one of 84 representatives to vote against the law establishing “maximum employment” as a goal of the federal government, or the maximum employment that can be achieved without spiking inflation.

. On March 7, 1946, she was one of 22 representatives to vote against a bill to address the postwar housing shortage.

. On April 18, 1946, she was one of 42 representatives to vote against extending price control, even though many limiting conservative amendments had been added.

. On May 23, 1946, she was one of 41 representatives to vote against US participation in UNESCO.

Although Sumner would certainly not have been able to run statewide, her constituency liked her well enough, and their farewell greeting to her was “give ‘em hell, Jessie” rather than “goodbye” (Times Herald). A change in president with the death of FDR didn’t mean a change in her mind, if anything, she was stronger against Truman. However, Sumner didn’t have much time to battle with Truman.

Retirement

In 1946, when it seemed she could have had more time in Congress, Sumner chose not to run for reelection. She officially stated, “I’ve been away from home long enough” while denying a rumor that she was leaving to get married, responding, “What – give up 500 men for one man?” (The Sunday News) However, there was a different reason according to her niece. Jessie Sumner believed that she was dying as a doctor had given her a cancer diagnosis (Kacich). She had surgery for it but doctors said no more could be done, so she went to get further treatment at the Battle Creek Sanitarium and resolved to keep herself healthy afterwards. Sumner did not die the next year, nor the year after that, nor the decade after that. She continued her career in banking, serving as the vice president of Sumner National Bank until 1966, when she assumed the presidency and served in that capacity until shortly before her death on August 10, 1994, at the age of 96.

References

Congress to Miss ‘Sumnerisms’. (1946, June 9). The Sunday News (Ridgewood, NJ), 12.

Retrieved from

https://www.newspapers.com/image/632803382/

Kacich, T. (2013, December 18). Tom Kacich: Sumner went from Iroquois County to Oxford to Washington. The News-Gazette (Champaign-Urbana).

Retrieved from

https://www.news-gazette.com/news/tom-kacich-sumner-went-from-iroquois-county-to-oxford-to-washington/article_c1ee6905-b9aa-5980-94b1-62dbdb042da8.html

Sumner, Jessie. Voteview.

Retrieved from

https://voteview.com/person/9086/jessie-sumner

Two Blondes in New Congress, But They’re Poles Apart. (1943, January 12). Times-Herald, 2.

Retrieved from

https://www.newspapers.com/image/1038049162/

September 6, 2025 Fascinating Politics

The Six State Admission Spree

President Benjamin Harrison is often relegated to the forgotten presidents, but a lot happened during his presidency, especially during his first two years in office as the Republicans had united government for the first time since the Grant Administration. During the Harrison Administration, the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, the Sherman Silver Purchase Act, the McKinley Tariff, and the admission of six states occurred among other things.

At the start of Harrison’s presidency in 1889, the United States had numerous western territories, and Republicans sought to make the best use of them that they could in admitting them. The new proposed states were Washington, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming. Democrats had not been keen on admitting new states, believing as Republicans did that such states would be voting Republican and thus for the long term give them control of the Senate. However, after the Republicans won the 1888 election, President Cleveland signed into law the Omnibus Enabling Act, which established a procedure for residents of what would become Montana and Washington to be admitted as states as well as permitted the Dakota Territory to split into North and South and to become states (Washington State Legislature). These places followed through, and North Dakota and South Dakota were admitted on November 2, 1889, Montana on November 8^th, and Washington on November 11^th. However, the process of admitting states was not done yet, and Republicans aimed to add two more.

Idaho and Wyoming

In 1890, Idaho territorial delegate Republican Fred Dubois made an impassioned case to President Harrison for the admission of the territory as a state, and he agreed to support it. Oddly, the statehood vote in the House was 129-1 on April 3^rd, with nearly all Democrats abstaining in the vote; among the Democrats only Charles Buckalew of Pennsylvania voted against and Clarke Lewis of Mississippi voted for. As Republican Representative Abner Taylor of Illinois quipped on the floor, “I was paired with a live man, but as the Democrats are all dead I voted “ay” (Congressional Record, 3006). On June 30th, the Senate passed the legislation by voice vote and on July 3rd, President Harrison signed into law the Idaho Admission Act. Wyoming was not far behind, with territorial delegate Republican Joseph M. Carey introducing statehood. This measure was heavily debated in the House, and Democrats were staunchly opposed to this effort at adding yet more Republican senators and also cited its low population. However, Carey argued that other states had been admitted with even less population only to see growth (U.S. House). The House passed the statehood bill 139-127 on March 26^th with only Republican Mark Dunnell of Minnesota breaking party lines in his vote against. On June 27^th, the Senate followed 29-18 on a party line vote. On July 10th, President Harrison signed the Wyoming Admission Act. This state’s entry was particularly notable as it was now the first state that granted women suffrage, and for this distinction it is to this day known as the “Equality State”.

Short and Long-Term Political Impacts

Although the first senators from all these states were Republicans, whether these states stuck with the Republicans or the Republicans they elected even stuck with the party varied. In 1892, for instance, two (Idaho and North Dakota) of the six states would vote for the Populist Party candidate James B. Weaver rather than to reelect Harrison, and in 1896 only North Dakota would stick with Republican William McKinley, and in 1900 even though the economy was prospering Idaho and Montana would support Democrat William Jennings Bryan. For dissident senators, Idaho’s Fred Dubois and South Dakota’s Richard Pettigrew would have increasingly strong differences with the Republican Party, especially over its policies on currency. After one term in the Senate which he lost to a Populist, Dubois would later return to the Senate for another term as a Democrat. Pettigrew would abandon the Republican Party to become a “Silver Republican” after the party embraced the gold standard rather than bimetallism in the 1896 platform, and he would disagree on many more issues. Montana interestingly had a very long history of Democratic senators; from 1901 to 1905, 1913 to 1947, 1953 to 1989, and 2007 to 2015 both of its senators would be Democrats. Although Wyoming would often elect Republicans, from 1917 to 1977, save for a brief time in 1954, at least one of their senators would be a Democrat. Since 1977, both of its senators have been Republicans. North Dakota and South Dakota frequently elected Republican senators throughout their histories, although North Dakota had two Democratic senators from 1987 to 2011 and South Dakota had two Democratic senators from 1936 to 1939, 1973 to 1979, and 1997 to 2005. Idaho would have for almost its entire history at least one Republican representing it in the Senate, with the only exceptions being 1901 to 1903, 1945 to 1946, and most of 1949. Since 1981, Republicans have held both seats. Washington has been the most successful state for Democrats. Republicans had dominance in its early years in the Senate, indeed until 1933 at least one of the state’s senators would be a Republican. However, with the Great Depression, the state strongly turned to the Democrats and from 1933 to 1947, 1953 to 1981, and 2001 to present, both of its senators would be Democrats.

Interestingly, in 2025, this expansion currently heavily benefits Republicans, as of these states, only Washington has Democratic senators and indeed since 1968 four of the six have only voted for Republican candidates. Washington has voted for Democratic presidential candidates since 1988. Democrats did, however, have more of a balanced situation in the Senate 20 years ago, as the 2004 election produced a Senate with six Democrats and six Republicans representing these states. We cannot know what lies in the future, but given that national and state politics have become increasingly closely aligned, this is a good development for the Republican prospects of holding Senate seats in the five of these states they hold them.

References

Admission of Idaho. (1890, April 3). Congressional Record, 3003-3006. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Retrieved from

https://www.congress.gov/bound-congressional-record/1890/04/03/house-section

Enabling Act. Washington State Legislature.

Retrieved from

https://leg.wa.gov/about-the-legislature/history-of-the-legislature/enabling-act/

Manny, B. (2017, July 3). Idaho’s birthday was supposed to be July 4. So why do we celebrate on July 3? Idaho Statesman.

Retrieved from

https://www.idahostatesman.com/news/local/article159429194.html

Roberts, P. (2014, November 8). Wyoming Becomes a State: The Constitutional Convention and Statehood Debates of 1889 and 1890 and Their Aftermath. WyoHistory.

Retrieved from

https://www.wyohistory.org/encyclopedia/wyoming-statehood

To Pass H.R. 982 [Wyoming Statehood, Senate]. Govtrack.

Retrieved from

https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/51-1/s196

To Pass H.R. 982 (P. 391-20) [Wyoming Statehood, House]. Govtrack.

Retrieved from

https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/51-1/h111

Wyoming Statehood Bill. U.S. House.

Retrieved from

https://history.house.gov/Records-and-Research/Listing/lfp_060/

September 3, 2025 Fascinating Politics

Ralph Flanders: Vermont’s Independent Senator

Although Bernie Sanders is actually an Independent, the truth is that he mostly votes with the Democrats. One of Vermont’s most independent-minded men of yesteryear was Republican Ralph Flanders (1880-1970). Although he did not have the highest education, having only been through public school, he made himself a success in business, specifically the manufacturing of machine tools and even had several patents through his innovations. Thus, Flanders was a prominent citizen of Vermont as well as an active Republican. During the 1930s, he held multiple government positions, including the Business Advisory Council and the industrial advisory board of the National Recovery Administration. In the former post, he opposed the imposition of an excess profits tax as serving to limit investment and in the latter opposed a requirement that businesses cut worker hours by 10% and raise wages by 10% for spreading out employment (Flanders, 179-180, 175-178). He would later be tapped to state positions by Governor George Aiken as well as serve on the boards of multiple corporations.

Flanders at first tried to win the Republican nomination for the Senate in 1940, made vacant by the death of Ernest W. Gibson. His battle was uphill as it was against Governor George Aiken, who was popular. The campaign became rather nasty, with Aiken’s side accusing Flanders of selling arms to Nazi Germany while Flanders’ campaign held that Aiken was excessively influenced by a pretty 24-year-old administrative assistant who was hungry for power (Porter & Terry). However, Flanders made a key mistake when he had a picture taken of himself in a suit holding a piglet. This is the picture:

This picture gave Vermonters, many who were farmers, the impression that Flanders lacked sense as he was wearing his Sunday best, and it contributed to his loss in the primary by about 10 points. From 1941 to 1946, he would serve on the Federal Reserve Board of Boston and from 1944 to 1946, he would be its president. Under his leadership the board would help establish the Boston Port Authority to help revitalize New England’s shipping industry (Flanders, 187). Flanders would get another opportunity at the Senate with the resignation of Warren Austin in 1946 to accept the post of Ambassador to the United Nations. He ran a better campaign this time and was elected. Flanders was in many ways like his predecessor in that he was an internationalist but also, largely domestically conservative particularly fiscally, although he did make some exceptions. For instance, he opposed the Knowland Amendment to the 1950 Social Security legislation which limited federal authority for determining the standards of unemployment compensation and he supported a 1950 measure to make it easier to procure credit for housing co-ops. Nonetheless, Flanders’ more favorable record on issues impacting business, such as his opposition to extending rent control in 1950 and support for legalizing “basing point” pricing (allow firms to charge base price as well as shipping costs) made Vermont businessmen much prefer him to his colleague George Aiken, a maverick who supported a lot of President Truman’s domestic policies. For foreign policy, not only did he support the Marshall Plan and aid to Greece and Turkey but also Point IV aid to poor nations in 1950 and most notably against the Bricker Amendment in 1954, which if adopted would have placed substantial limitations on the president’s ability to make executive agreements.

Ralph Flanders vs. Joseph McCarthy

Although Flanders supported several anti-communist measures and was not one of the Republican senators who joined Margaret Chase Smith (R-Me.) in her 1950 “Declaration of Conscience” against McCarthy’s methods, he increasingly came to regard them as objectionable and made his displeasure known during the Eisenhower Administration. Flanders had developed a great respect for senatorial courtesy, and he saw McCarthy as repeatedly violating the spirit of the rules of such courtesy (U.S. Senate). He came to vote against McCarthy’s pushes, such as his effort against the confirmation of Charles Bohlen as Ambassador to the USSR (the nomination was overwhelmingly approved). Another vote that was indicative of Flanders’ opposition to McCarthy was his pair against the confirmation of McCarthy supporter Robert E. Lee to the Federal Communications Commission in 1954. Among Republicans, only George Aiken of Vermont and Margaret Chase Smith of Maine joined him in his objection. On June 11th, Flanders introduced the resolution to censure Joseph McCarthy on numerous grounds, which would end up including McCarthy’s contempt for the committee looking into censuring him. His effort was quietly supported by President Eisenhower, who was sick of having to deal with McCarthy, and he was censured 67-22, with all present Democrats voting for and Republicans split evenly. He would have likely avoided censure if he had issued an apology for his behavior and not called the Democratic Party the “party of treason”. McCarthy’s influence dwindled after the censure, and although nationally celebrated for his role, the reaction in Vermont was “sour” (Porter & Terry).

Flanders During the Eisenhower Administration

During the Eisenhower Administration, Flanders seemed to move to the right on domestic policy and continued his support for increasing foreign aid. However, he also strongly opposed foreign aid for communist nations, including Yugoslavia and Soviet satellites. On economic issues, he took a market approach, including supporting stripping the Federal Power Commission of the authority to regulate the price of oil and gas and supporting flexible price supports (price floors) for agriculture. Flanders also supported most efforts to curb organized labor’s power in 1958 with revelations of union corruption from the McClellan Committee. On civil rights, Flanders was mostly favorable. He had supported ending debate on fair employment practices legislation in 1950 and opposed a Southern effort to compromise army desegregation as well as voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and against the jury trial amendment added to it. However, Flanders also supported the Aiken-Anderson-Case Amendment, which denied the attorney general authority to initiate lawsuits to enforce the 14th Amendment. By 1958, he was 78 years old and ready to hang up his hat. Flanders was succeeded by Congressman Winston Prouty. The most reliable assessments of him place him from moderate to moderately conservative. He agreed with the liberal Americans for Democratic Action 35% of the time, the conservative Americans for Constitutional Action 77% of the time from 1955 to 1958, and his DW-Nominate score was a 0.175. Flanders wrote and published his memoirs in 1961, titled simply, Senator from Vermont. He died on February 19, 1970, at the age of 89.

References

ADA Voting Records. Americans for Democratic Action.

Retrieved from

ADA Voting Records

Flanders, Ralph Edward. Voteview.

https://voteview.com/person/3206/ralph-edward-flanders

Flanders, R.E. (1961). Senator from Vermont. Boston, MA: Little, Brown.

Idea of the Senate. U.S. Senate.

Retrieved from

https://www.senate.gov/about/origins-foundations/idea-of-the-senate/1961Flanders.htm

Porter, B. & Terry, S.C. (1990, September 9). Down & Dirty – The Aiken-Flanders Primary of 1940. Vermont Sunday Magazine, Rutland Herald and Barre-Montpelier Times Argus.

August 31, 2025August 31, 2025 Fascinating Politics

The Voting Rights Act Debate

This month, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 turned 60; Lyndon B. Johnson signed the bill into law on August 6th. Thus, I am covering the subject of the process of its passage.

Selma

The violence seen on national TV in Selma, with non-violent protestors being beaten by police on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, shocked the nation and increased calls for action on voting rights. Further pushing public opinion was a racist mob beating Reverend James Reeb to death at Selma and the murder of Viola Liuzzo by members of the KKK. Although the previous year’s landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 had a section for voting rights, it was not regarded as sufficiently strong during the 1964 election. Although it was clear that in the Great Society Congress action would be taken, the question was which course would be taken?

A Harsh Bill

After these events that got worldwide press coverage, President Johnson instructed his Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach to craft “the goddamndest, toughest voting rights act that you can” to counter the situation in the South. The Johnson Administration’s measure, backed by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Emanuel Celler (D-N.Y.), contained the following provisions:

. A suspension of literacy tests for five years in areas where less than 50% of the eligible population was registered or voted in the 1964 election.

. Federal examiners to register and enforce the right to vote for all citizens unable to exercise the right.

. Nationwide prohibition on measures that are discriminatory in voting practices.

. Outright ban on the poll tax for voting in state and local elections.

. Language assistance for voters who were not proficient in English.

. A “preclearance” provision requiring covered states and localities to get their election changes approved by the US Attorney General. This was one of the most controversial provisions.

The Senate

The advocacy for a strong Voting Rights Act was led by Senator Phillip Hart (D-Mich.), the bill’s manager, and was aided in efforts to strengthen the bill by Hiram Fong (R-Haw.), Birch Bayh (D-Ind.), Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), Edward Long (D-Mo.), Joseph Tydings (D-Md.), Jacob Javits (R-N.Y.), Quentin Burdick (D-N.D.), and Hugh Scott (R-Penn.). The opposition to the measure would normally be led by Richard Russell (D-Ga.), but he was under the weather so the bulk of the work against came from Allen Ellender (D-La.), with help from Sam Ervin (D-N.C.), James Eastland (D-Miss.), John Stennis (D-Miss.), Herman Talmadge (D-Ga.), Lister Hill (D-Ala.), and John Sparkman (D-Ala.). The Senate’s party leaders, Mike Mansfield (D-Mont.) and Everett Dirksen (R-Ill.), were instrumental in crafting a bill that could get widespread support.

Whither Poll Taxes?

One controversy surrounding the Voting Rights Act was how the law should address poll taxes. The original bill had a provision that outright banned state and local poll taxes, but the bill was changed in the Senate on this count. A key vote on the Voting Rights Act was regarding Senator Ted Kennedy’s (D-Mass.) amendment to retain the bill’s explicit ban on the poll tax for states and localities. This amendment was opposed by President Johnson, Majority Leader Mike Mansfield, and Minority Leader Everett Dirksen. Mansfield and Dirksen crafted a substitute that declared that poll taxes were contrary to the right to vote and directed the U.S. Attorney General to initiate lawsuits against poll taxes in states and localities, believing that courts would act against poll taxes. Kennedy’s amendment failed on May 11^th, 45-49. Courts would act as Mansfield and Dirksen anticipated in striking down poll taxes. The most unusual vote was from Louisiana’s Russell Long, who voted for this amendment but voted against the Voting Rights Act.

Support for the Voting Rights Act:

George McGovern (D-S.D.), future presidential contender, stated, “For more than one hundred years this basic right [voting] has been denied to large segments of the American citizenry, solely because of the color of their skin. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 will secure that right. It will be passed by an overwhelming margin, because there is broad agreement on the part of the American people that to deprive the American Negro of the right to vote is to deprive all of us of the essence of our heritage and democracy” (11750).

Jacob Javits (R-N.Y.), one of the Senate’s leading liberals, justified support of the Voting Rights Act given numerous instances of denials of the vote, stating, “The fundamental basis for the bill is the factual finding of Congress that there have been such widespread denials of the fundamental right to vote in so many broad areas of the Nation as to require the application of remedies in order to implement the 15^th amendment” (11740).

Milward Simpson (R-Wyo.), while acknowledging the bill was a tough measure, he also said, “Time and time again legislation has been before the Congress which is proposed with the view toward bringing the right to vote to all citizens. I am ashamed, and all Americans should be ashamed, that this right has not been one of those cherished rights guaranteed to all citizens, regardless of race or color” (11746). Simpson’s support is a significant development as he had been one of six Republican senators to vote against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 the previous year.

Opposition to the Voting Rights Act:

James Eastland (D-Miss.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee who had made his committee the “graveyard” for civil rights legislation, asserted that with the Voting Rights Act “we are entering an era of absolute government. The bill is a major step in that direction. It will destroy the system of government that we know now. We are destroying it under the whiplash of Martin Luther King and others of that ilk” and cited Article I, section 2 of the Constitution to justify opposition (11735).

John Sparkman (D-Ala.), who was the Democratic Party’s pick for vice president in 1952, opposed the bill on nine counts, including what he found to be unequal protection of the laws, a distortion of the proper relationship between federal, legislative, and judicial functions of government, and that the bill was sectional (11727-11728).

John Tower (R-Tex.) stated his sympathy with the aim of the bill and acknowledged that the federal government does have the authority to enforce the 15^th Amendment, he objected to way it was to be achieved, holding, “Mr. President, the mathematical guilt formula to be so unjustly hung upon several States and counties, is arrived through the highly questionable assumption that literacy tests and lower voter participation always means discrimination. Other objective, basic assumptions that lack of participation in certain elections may be due to a strong one-party system, voter apathy toward one or more candidates, or even bad weather, are completely ignored” (11751).

Whither Literacy Tests?

The Voting Rights Act suspended literacy tests for five years in covered jurisdictions, and literacy tests would later be banned permanently. The core debate surrounded the question of whether literacy should be a consideration or if literacy tests should remain but with standards as to what constitutes literacy. Republicans, such as William McCulloch (R-Ohio), thought that a 6^th grade education was sufficient proof of literacy. This standard would be placed into the Republican substitute of the bill. Another controversial proposal was by Rep. Jacob Gilbert (D-N.Y.), which permitted people to vote if they proved literate in a language other than English that was taught in their school. This amendment, primarily geared towards Puerto Ricans, was rejected 202-216. The bill passed 77-19 on May 26^th, but the measure still had to get through the House.

Proposed Republican Substitute

House Republicans had an alternative voting rights plan, backed by Minority Leader Gerald Ford (R-Mich.) and William McCulloch (R-Ohio), ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee. This substitute aimed to balance out the interests of state’s rights and civil rights, by making enforcement on a by county basis. It established a 6^th grade education as proof of literacy (thus allowing literacy tests for individuals who had not graduated from 6^th grade), retained the ban on poll taxes and would also cover Texas under the Voting Rights Act, which President Johnson, who continued to look out for the interests of his home state, didn’t want. Although not exactly a prince of a state on the subject of voting rights, it was known that the conditions of Texas were not like those of the Deep South. Rep. William McCulloch critiqued the Celler (D-N.Y.) version of the bill, and did so on conservative terms, calling the automatic trigger mechanism in the bill “pure fantasy – a presumption based on a presumption” and considered the committee bill an attack on the ability of the states to determine voter qualifications (Reichardt). This substitute had a key foe in liberal stalwart Frank Thompson (D-N.J.), who argued, “…I oppose the Ford-McCulloch substitute amendment because it does not reach down into the heart of the problems were are trying to eliminate. It is no fiction that “tests and devices,” a key phrase in voting and registration legislation, are being used to restrict the franchise. A serious defect of the Republican leadership substitute is in its requirement that Federal examiners administer tests to applicants with less than six grades of education. This requirement would serve to continue into the present and the future a double standard of testing – the very evil we are attempting to eliminate. Negroes would be tested by the examiners on the basis of the standard set forth in the substitute amendment – completion of six grades or passing of the State literacy test. At the same time, whites would be applying for registration to the State or local registrar, who would presumably do what he has always done – register whites on the basis of their white skin rather than on the basis of any educational achievement or passage of any test” (16228). Most fatal to this proposed substitute, however, was the embrace most Southern Democrats gave this substitute, even if they did not intend to support it on passage. This signaled to the liberal 89^th Congress, already predisposed to support President Johnson on domestic policy, that the Republican substitute was weak. Rep. Harold Collier’s (R-Ill.) effort for the House to adopt the Republican substitute as well as Rep. Robert McClory’s (R-Ill.) amendment failed 171-248. Interestingly, a few opponents of the Voting Rights Act voted against this substitute, including some from Texas, as this version would have covered Texas. One Republican proposed amendment that did pass, however, was the Cramer (R-Fla.) anti-voter fraud proposal, which passed 253-165 with all Republicans in support.

House Supporters:

Ed Roybal (D-Calif.) cited recent violent events as justification for the Voting Rights Act and considered the measure a “clear, practical, effective, and legislatively responsible way to enable citizens to vote without the fear or threat of discrimination” (16280).

Majority Whip Hale Boggs (D-La.) stated, “I wish I could stand here as a man who loves my State, born and reared in the South, who has spent every year of his life in Louisiana since he was 5 years old, and say there has not been discrimination. But unfortunately it is not so” and went on to state, “I shall support this bill because I believe the fundamental right to vote must be part of this great experiment in human progress under freedom which is America” (U.S. House of Representatives). His announcement of support was a big deal given that he had previously opposed all civil rights measures save for the 24^th Amendment.

Jonathan Bingham (D-N.Y.) stated his support for the Celler (D-N.Y.) version, regarding the Ford-McCulloch substitute as much weaker (16273).

Paul Findley (R-Ill.) spoke in support of the bill, citing the Lincolnian heritage of the Republican Party as Lincoln’s Illinois hometown of Springfield being in his district, and praised Gerald Ford’s (R-Mich.) recent appointment of Frank Mitchell, the first black page of the House (16272).

Charles Goodell (R-N.Y.) stated his reserved support for the Celler (D-N.Y.) version of the Voting Rights Act and voiced his preference for the Ford-McCulloch substitute. He regarded the Celler version as “unnecessarily punitive” and critiqued only applying the Voting Rights Act to seven states, noting Texas being absent from coverage, but said he would vote for the Celler bill (16273).

William F. Ryan (D-N.Y.) wanted a measure that did more, and cited deprivations he witnessed as a civil rights activist of freedoms of speech, assembly, and press, but acknowledged that this measure was the furthest the federal government had gone so far (16265).

Frank Annunzio (D-Ill.) praised the bill and also cited the murders of civil rights activists Reverend James J. Reeb and Viola Liuzzo as being bad for the US’s image abroad (16272).

House Opponents:

John Dowdy (D-Tex.) condemned the suspension of certain state laws surrounding election policy and considered suspensions as characteristic of martial law or the tyrannical regimes of Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin, but not America (16268).

Glenn Andrews (R-Ala.) asserted that the Voting Rights Act itself was a form of discrimination against seven states, Alabama being among them, and cited Article II, section 1, clause 2 that states have the right to set voter qualifications (Congressional Record, 16274).

James Broyhill (R-N.C.) stated his opposition to the Celler version of the Voting Rights Act, but said that if the Ford-McCulloch substitute would be adopted that he would vote for the bill on passage (16270).

W.J. Bryan Dorn (D-S.C.) condemned the embrace of the Voting Rights Act as Congress “being forced to bow and subvert itself to the will of the mob” and that the legislation was “punitive”, “vindictive and sectional”, and “evil” (16268).

The House passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 333-85 on July 9^th.

There are a few things to note about the votes on the Voting Rights Act. First, opposition was almost entirely among Southern politicians. There were only seven legislators outside of the South that opposed the Voting Rights Act on both initial passage and the vote on the conference report: Senator Robert Byrd (D-W.V.), Republican Representatives H. Allen Smith of Glendale and James B. Utt of Tustin (Orange County), California, Republican George Hansen of Pocatello, Idaho, Republican H.R. Gross of Waterloo, Iowa, Democrat Paul C. Jones of Kennett, Missouri, and Republican Robert C. McEwen of Ogdensburg, New York. Also of note was the abstention of Democrat Adam Clayton Powell Jr. of Harlem, New York. Although in truth of disputable racial identity as he was of mixed racial origin (he had blue eyes) and thus could have passed for white, Powell identified himself as black, and a radical at that, and abstained as he thought the bill was not strong enough. He held that this as well as the 1966 civil rights bill was a “phony carrot stick” for black middle class (CQ Press). There were also notable differences between the House and Senate versions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, including the House version’s outright ban of state and local poll taxes. The final version hammered out by the conference committee kept the Senate language on state and local poll taxes, thus they would be challenged in court, adopted the Senate’s provision that waived requirements for English literacy to vote in certain cases, and adopted the stronger triggering formula in the House bill as opposed to the Senate bill which allowed certain escape clauses (Reichardt). The net impact of the conference committee’s bill does seem to have been to make the bill stronger. The only senator who switched on the Voting Rights Act’s conference report was Florida’s George Smathers, who went from voting against to voting for, while in the House there were a few new Republican votes against, such as Paul Fino (R-N.Y.) over the English literacy provision but there were also some new Republican votes for, such as all three of Tennessee’s Republican representatives. In the South, there were a few Democrats who flipped from opposition to support, such as A.S. Herlong (D-Fla.) and George Mahon (D-Tex.). Contrary to what GovTrack and Voteview will tell you, one of these switches was not Watkins Abbitt (D-Va.). Through an error they mix up Abbitt’s vote with that of E. Ross Adair (R-Ind.), who voted for both the House and conference version of the Voting Rights Act. The result was a highly effective law that increased black participation in politics in the South, although it would take a few election cycles for the full power of their votes to be realized.

References

Controversies Surround Rep. Adam Clayton Powell. CQ Almanac 1966. Congressional Quarterly Press.

Retrieved from

https://library.cqpress.com/cqalmanac/document.php?id=cqal66-1301925#_=_

Majority Whip Hale Boggs’ Support of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. US House of Representatives.

Retrieved from

https://history.house.gov/HistoricalHighlight/Detail/36267

Reichardt, G. (1975). The Voting Rights Act of 1965 (C): Congress and the Voting Rights Act. Harvard University.

Retrieved from

Click to access the_voting_rights_act_of_1965_-congress_and_the_voting_rights_act.pdf

The Senate Passes the Voting Rights Act. U.S. Senate.

Retrieved from

https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/minute/Senate_Passes_Voting_Rights-Act.htm

Voting Rights Act of 1965. Congressional Record, 11715-11753.

Retrieved from

Click to access GPO-CRECB-1965-pt9-2-2.pdf

Voting Rights Act of 1965. Congressional Record, 16207-16286.

Click to access GPO-CRECB-1965-pt12-3-2.pdf

August 27, 2025 Fascinating Politics

RINOs from American History #25: Jim Jeffords

Vermont today is known as one of the most liberal states in the nation. Indeed, the last Cook Partisan Voting Index figure on the state is a D+17, making it the most Democratic state in the nation. Yet, when the last Republican to represent the state in the Senate, James Merrill Jeffords (1934-2014), was born, Vermont was the exact opposite; it was the only state that never voted for the Democratic Party’s nominee for president. The state stuck with Taft in 1912 when only Utah did so, and it was one of only two states FDR could never win. Vermont was where Calvin Coolidge was born and raised as a rock-ribbed Republican, and one of its senators, Warren Austin, was one of six to vote against Social Security in 1935. This is the furthest thing from the mind of the man who currently holds his Senate seat…Bernie Sanders. Furthermore, Vermont did not vote for a Democratic president until 1964 and did not do so again until 1992, yet its party loyalty for so long is somewhat deceptive as to the truth about the nature of Vermont’s GOP. By the 1950s, the state party was dominated by moderates, with the wing headed by George Aiken and Ernest W. Gibson, Jr. being at the forefront. Aiken was a governor and longtime senator, while Gibson Jr. had been briefly a senator, then governor, then a justice on the Vermont’s district court. It was Gibson Jr. who mentored Jeffords in law and politics while he was his clerk from 1962 to 1963. He once told Jeffords when he questioned focusing on facts of the case as opposed to the letter of the law, “Never let the law get in the way of justice; justice is what counts” (Thomas, 159). Gibson’s words would influence Jeffords greatly in his career, including in his most famous political act, which I will get to later. Jeffords practiced law for a few years before embarking on a political career, winning a seat in the Vermont Senate in 1966. His term was sufficiently impressive for him to be elected the state’s attorney general, serving for two terms. Although Jeffords’ effort at winning the Republican nomination for governor in 1972 failed, his future would be in Congress.

Congressman Jeffords

In 1974, Jeffords was elected to the House in the wake of the Watergate scandal. Although Vermont’s voters proved willing to narrowly elect a Democrat to the Senate for the first time since the creation of the Republican Party that year in Patrick Leahy, they were keeping up their old habits for the House. Jeffords proved to be of the Aiken-Gibson wing while in the House. In 1978, he sponsored a substitute for President Carter’s public service jobs program by placing a $3.2 billion ceiling and instead to increase by $500 million funds for youth and private sector employment programs. The Democratic House adopted this proposal 221-181 on August 9^th. He supported creating a consumer protection agency and voted to override President Ford’s vetoes of surface mining legislation in 1975 as well as bills liberalizing the Hatch Act, establishing a child daycare program, and public works funding in 1976. Of all the causes, Jeffords was most passionate about education, and to this end he voted for the creation of the Department of Education in 1979, a change from the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare that had existed since 1953. In 1981, Jeffords was the only House Republican to vote against the Reagan Administration’s tax cuts, embodied in the House as the Conable-Hance bill. On certain issues regarding business, he was more conservative, such as supporting tort reform. In 1982, Jeffords voted against a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution but would support versions of it in the 1990s.

On social issues, Jeffords was generally liberal. Although he was supportive of the death penalty he was not strongly so, he had a mixed record on gun control, and on the issues of abortion, regulation of online pornography, affirmative action, arts funding, busing, and LGBT rights he was liberal. On the Supreme Court, Jeffords bucked his party in his votes against the confirmations of Robert Bork in 1987 and Clarence Thomas in 1991 to the Supreme Court. He would later vote for the confirmation of John Roberts but against Samuel Alito in 2005.

Jeffords and Bill Clinton

Jeffords backed some key Clinton initiatives, including the Family Medical Leave Act, the Motor Voter Act, the Brady Act, and NAFTA. He also backed increasing the minimum wage as well as being the only Republican in Congress to voice support for Clinton’s proposed healthcare plan. This plan did not pass, but it was a precursor proposal to Obamacare. Jeffords would soon find himself holding a committee chairmanship for the first time.

Jeffords and the Republican Majority

In 1994, the Republicans won both the House and Senate, and this propelled Jeffords to the chairmanship of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. He would be a prominent voice within the party for moderation and advocated for increased education spending, especially for disabled children. However, Jeffords did back some fiscally conservative positions, such as backing reduced taxes as well as opposing food stamp benefits for the children of illegal immigrants. He opposed the impeachment of President Clinton and hoped the 2000 election would bring a new direction for the US as well as the Republican Party, but he would be mistaken on the latter.

The 2001 Switch

Republican George W. Bush had won the presidency in 2000 by the skin of his teeth, and it turns out the Senate Republican majority was much in the same state, as it was 50-50, with Republicans only having a majority based on Vice President Dick Cheney breaking ties. Any defections were serious business, and Jim Jeffords stood as one of the most liberal Senate Republicans. He had his hopes that George W. Bush’s “compassionate conservatism” would prove him to be a closet Rockefeller Republican, but the reality was that he took after Ronald Reagan. He came into conflict with the Bush Administration when he conditioned his support for tax reduction on the administration providing $180 billion for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, a frequently underfunded law. Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) and Minority Whip Harry Reid (D-N.V.) saw a golden opportunity in Jeffords’ dissatisfaction with the trajectory of the Bush presidency and began a quiet campaign of courting him to leave the GOP. Republicans were aware of the rumors that Jeffords would leave, and Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) tried to keep him in the fold. He had put down conservative efforts to try to snatch his committee chairmanship from him and got him a post on the prestigious Finance Committee. However, Lott and other Republicans were not fully aware of how serious Jeffords’ intentions were to leave. What sealed the deal for him moving out of the GOP was the Bush Administration preferring tax reduction over increasing funds for education for disabled children; negotiations between the Bush Administration and Jeffords on the subject in April had ended in a frustrating stalemate. He subsequently visited Senator Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) in his office, complaining that “This doesn’t seem to be working” and that education “is the biggest thing for me. But I’m not sure what to do here” (Waller). After Dodd suggested he could become a Democrat, Jeffords dismissed the possibility. However, he did tell him that he might become an Independent, which was good enough for Dodd and other Democrats (Waller). Jeffords announced his switch from Republican to Independent on May 24, 2001, and would caucus with the Democrats, giving them a 1-seat majority. This incensed the Republicans, with now Senate Minority Leader Lott denouncing the act as “a coup of one” and “the impetuous decision of one man to undermine our democracy” (PBS News). Although Republicans were unhappy about Jeffords’ decision, Vermonters largely agreed with Jeffords. However, his defection only produced a Senate Democratic majority for the rest of the session, as in 2002 Republicans won the majority back. In 2002 and 2004 he campaigned for Democratic candidates and his voting record moved considerably more liberal. For a time, he seemed raring to run again in 2006, if just to prove that Vermont supported him rather than the Republican Party. However, in 2005, Jeffords’ wife was diagnosed with cancer and things weren’t going well for Jeffords himself either. He had stumbled in his words in a radio interview, and he was experiencing memory problems (PBS). That year, Jeffords announced that he would not run for reelection. The following year, he was diagnosed as being in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease. Jeffords’ Republican colleagues were still icy towards him over his 2001 switch, and among their senators, only Iowa’s Chuck Grassley delivered a speech praising him after he delivered his farewell speech. Throughout his career, Jeffords had agreed with the liberal Americans for Democratic Action 67% of the time, while he agreed with the conservative Americans for Constitutional Action 33% of the time from 1975 to 1984, and his DW-Nominate score as a Republican was 0.014 and as an Independent it was -0.277. This made him one of the most liberal Republicans but one of the more moderate figures in the Democratic caucus.

Retirement

Retirement was not kind to Jeffords. In addition to his progressing Alzheimer’s disease, his wife died of cancer in 2007. He would die of complications of Alzheimer’s on August 18, 2014 at the age of 80. Jeffords was the last of

References

ADA Voting Records. Americans for Democratic Action.

Retrieved from

ADA Voting Records

Former Sen. James Jeffords, who reshaped the Senate in 2001, dies at 80. (2014, August 18). PBS News.

Retrieved from

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/sen-james-jeffords-reshaped-senate-2001-dies-80

Jeffords, James Merrill. Voteview.

Retrieved from

https://voteview.com/person/14240/james-merrill-jeffords and https://voteview.com/person/94240/james-merrill-jeffords

Jim Jeffords. On The Issues.

Retrieved from

https://www.ontheissues.org/senate/Jim_Jeffords.htm

O’Connor, K. (2011, May 22). The party’s over. What became of Jeffords’ political switch? The Rutland Herald.

Retrieved from

https://www.rutlandherald.com/news/the-party-s-over-what-became-of-jeffords-political-switch/article_990030d9-c97d-5e46-a99b-45d47fbb4573.html

Thomas, M. (ed.) (2004). The right words at the right time. New York, NY: Atria Books.

Waller, D. (2001, May 28). How Jeffords got away. CNN.

Retrieved from

https://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/time/2001/06/04/jeffords.html

August 24, 2025August 25, 2025 Fascinating Politics

The Controversial Career of Owen Brewster

Among the states, I wouldn’t say that Maine was particularly known for making waves with the politicians its voters have sent to the Senate in the 20^th century…that is, save for Ralph Owen Brewster (1888-1961). Brewster was, to put it bluntly, considered ugly, one of the ugliest men to have made it big in American politics and perhaps the ugliest since Benjamin Butler. Time Magazine (1935) would describe him as “toothy, slack-jawed” and journalist Jack Anderson in 1979 described him as “billiard-bald on top, cheerless-eyed, meaty-lipped, an appearance dark and gloomy” (Simkin). However, what he lacked in looks he made up for in hard work, diligence, and intelligence. Brewster’s success helped him get married to the daughter of one of Maine’s most prominent citizens. Although in his obituary Brewster would be most noted for his conservatism and opposition to FDR, in his earlier career he was more open to reform and change. He backed both Prohibition and women’s suffrage and initially even endorsed public ownership of water power generation in Maine. Brewster would after call for reform and would battle with holding company magnate Samuel Insull.

The 1924 Gubernatorial Election

In 1924, a rising force in American politics that had factions in both parties was the Ku Klux Klan. This was the second incarnation of the “invisible empire” and this one was the most popular. This Klan was in truth many things; it was of course racist, but it was also anti-Catholic, anti-Semitic, nativist, Prohibitionist, and Protestant group that engaged in numerous activities. These included multi-level marketing, summer camps, charity, political lobbying, and most notably in the South, exacting their brand of vigilante justice (usually night whippings) against those they regarded as violating their moral tenets. Unlike the first KKK which was seen only in the South, this Klan was nationwide, and even reached up to Maine, in which their primary prejudice was against French Canadian Catholics. Against what the Republican establishment of the state wanted, a 36-year-old Owen Brewster ran for governor with Klan support. Brewster played a bit of a game on this one; he would maintain a golden silence on the subject of the Klan unless it was to deny he was a member. Indeed, it has never been proven that Brewster was a member. He was supported by the Klan for two reasons: 1. He never condemned them when the press prompted him to do so, and 2. He supported cutting all government aid to parochial schools (which were primarily Catholic). The latter stance Brewster came to independent of the Klan, believing that this was too much government involvement in religion. He had introduced such a measure in the State Senate but it failed as its president, Frank Farrington, was opposed and convinced the Senate to vote it down (Syrett, 218). The GOP establishment of the state, represented most prominently by Governor Percival Baxter, Farrington, Senator Frederick Hale, and Representative Wallace White, were strongly against the Klan for its racial and religious bigotry. However, many white Protestant Americans at the time saw the Klan as a means for social advancement as well as a patriotic and Protestant organization. Although some state Klans had had ugly incidents of vigilantism (particularly in the South), Maine’s was not one of them. Brewster managed to win the nomination narrowly after Governor Baxter found that voter fraud had occurred in an Irish-American ward in Portland (The New York Times). At the time, winning the Republican nomination for a statewide office was tantamount to election in the strongly Republican Maine.

Brewster’s means of rising to power was something of a scarlet letter that could always be used against him. In 1925, he was the second governor to climb Mt. Katahdin (the first was his predecessor). In 1926, ever ambitious, Brewster attempted to win the special election to the Senate after the death of Bert Fernald but lost to the anti-Klan Arthur Gould. In 1928, he again attempted to win a Senate seat by trying to defeat the anti-Klan incumbent Frederick Hale in the primary, but Hale was retained with 63% of the vote. This marked the end of Klan influence in Maine, which had already been declining since the rape and murder conviction of Indiana Klan Grand Dragon D.C. Stephenson. Maine’s Klan leader, DeForest Perkins, resigned in the aftermath of the election. However, the Great Depression, although quite bad for Republican prospects, brought opportunity for Brewster.

Brewster and the Great Depression

In 1932, Brewster defeated Congressman Donald F. Snow for renomination, and this was for the best in truth as Snow would later be sent to the penitentiary for embezzlement. However, he narrowly lost the election to Democrat John Utterback. Brewster would try again in 1934, running on a platform of supporting the Townsend Plan for old age insurance, and this time he would win despite the midterm resulting in net Democratic gains. As a representative, despite his later reputation he would be far from the most conservative of Republicans, and he would support more popular measures such as Social Security and the Fair Labor Standards Act. A few of his diversions from conservatism could be seen as him looking out for his district. For instance, in 1935, he was one of five House Republicans to vote to add potatoes to the crops covered under the Agricultural Adjustment Act. One of the counties in his district, Aroostook, was one of the leading potato growers in the nation, and Brewster called them the “forgotten crop” especially since 36 million pounds of potatoes were in storage and their market value had declined from $1.37 a bushel in 1930 to $0.37 a bushel in 1935, which depressed the county (Hill). Brewster did sustain the party line on certain other subjects, such as housing policy. He also made his displeasure known about Roosevelt’s reciprocal trade policy, which most Republicans opposed, denouncing it as “Alice in Wonderland” economics (Standard-Speaker). In Brewster’s first term, he quickly stirred up controversy when in the aftermath of his conflict with the Roosevelt Administration the Passamaquoddy Tidal Power Project was canceled. He alleged that Maine representatives were pressured by brain truster Thomas Corcoran to support the “Death Sentence” clause of the Public Utilities Holding Company Act in exchange for the Roosevelt Administration’s support of the project; Brewster voted to strike the clause. This was a vote that surprised people given his efforts against holding company baron Samuel Insull as Maine’s governor. Brewster claimed his vote against was a protest against “unethical lobbying” (Hill). However, Corcoran had a witness. His side of the story, in which the “threat” was him telling Brewster that if the administration can’t count on him for the “death sentence” clause of the public utilities bill that they can’t count on him for the Passamaquoddy Tidal Power Project, was backed almost to the exact detail by witness Dr. Ernest Gruening, which made it most likely that Corcoran’s story was the accurate version of events (Time Magazine). Some constituents in Lubec were angry as they regarded Brewster as imperiling funds for the project and hung him in effigy with a sign reading, “our double-crossing Congressman” (Kansas City Journal). Nonetheless, he proved popular in his area of Maine and he was reelected in 1936. Joining him in Congress were Republicans James C. Oliver of the 1^st district and Clyde Smith of the 2^nd, both supporters of the Townsend Plan. Maine was one of the few places in which the 1936 election was good for Republicans.

On to the Senate

In 1940, Senator Frederick Hale opted to retire, and this time Brewster won the nomination and succeeded him. Although generally known as a conservative, in truth, as previously noted, his career was a bit more complicated than that, as demonstrated by his support of the Townsend Plan and his interventionist record on foreign policy. Brewster largely supported FDR’s foreign policy before World War II, voting to end the arms embargo in 1939, voting for the peacetime draft in 1940, and Lend-Lease in 1941, but stopped short of supporting permitting merchant ships to enter belligerent ports. While an observer may look at his support from the KKK as evidence of bigotry, there are aspects of his record that defy this characterization; in 1950 he voted to end debate on the Fair Employment Practices bill and voted to kill a Southern effort to undermine army desegregation. Furthermore, Brewster backed increasing the number of refugees admitted to the United States, and this would include a fair number of Jews. During World War II, he was one of the senators selected by Senator Truman to serve on his committee to investigate wartime expenditures. The committee was non-partisan and won great acclaim for its successes in saving taxpayer money and uncovering corrupt practices, thus elevating Truman’s profile enough for him to be nominated vice president in 1944. In 1943, at the age of 55, Brewster decided that he would change the name he would be known by from “Ralph O. Brewster” to “Owen Brewster”. There were two possible reasons for this change; first, to honor his son who had died ten years earlier of the flu at the age of 15, and second, so that people would no longer think of “R.O.B.” when they thought of him. In 1946, Brewster sat on a joint House-Senate committee investigating the attack on Pearl Harbor. The committee concluded that the Roosevelt Administration had not failed to prepare and rather placed the blame on Admiral Husband E. Kimmel and General Walter Short. Brewster along with Michigan’s Homer Ferguson dissented, with the former writing that the late president “was responsible for the failure to enforce continuous, efficient, and appropriate co-operation” in Washington “in evaluating information and dispatching clear and positive orders to the Hawaiian commanders” (The Journal Herald, 1). Both Brewster and Ferguson believed that the inquiry was incomplete. In 1946, the Senate flipped from Democrat to Republican and Brewster was now chairing this committee.

Brewster vs. Howard Hughes

Owen Brewster has not fared well in the court of historical opinion; he was portrayed by Alan Alda in the Leonardo DiCaprio film The Aviator as a villain. As chairman of the committee, he was investigating Hughes and TWA for alleged misspending in government contracts. Hughes proved a tough opponent for Brewster and although journalist Drew Pearson, a staunch New Deal liberal, was not typically inclined to back businessmen like Hughes, he did back him against Brewster, who along with Wisconsin’s Joseph McCarthy and Tennessee’s hot-tempered Kenneth McKellar ranked among his favorite political targets in the Senate. The mood of the committee on Hughes was that he was going to be easy to deal with as he had not too long ago recovered from a major plane accident that nearly killed him (Watt, 40). However, Hughes effectively played against Brewster by making Brewster himself the issue by accusing him of using this probe to try to pressure him into merging his company with Pan Am, which would be convenient for his community airline bill. Thus, the narrative became that Brewster was corruptly carrying water for Pan Am CEO Juan Trippe rather than him conducting a good government investigation on whether a big businessman had schmoozed his way into securing government contracts during wartime only to waste taxpayer money. Brewster waived his senatorial immunity to testify, and it was a bold move and one to try to convey the message that he was being honest. In the course he did admit that the subject of a potential merger with Pan Am had come up but denied that it was being used as leverage against Hughes. However, if he was the villain in this situation and this was a bluff, it didn’t pay off as he came off worse in the court of public opinion. Both men had testified under oath and thus this was yet another incident of Brewster’s word against another’s. Furthermore, the subcommittee chairman who took Brewster’s place in continuing the Hughes matter, Senator Homer Ferguson of Michigan, was not in the best state to regulate the situation as he had poison ivy all over his feet (Watt, 41). There was also another possible motive to target Hughes…as a means of targeting the Roosevelts. The Republican 80^th Congress was very keen on uncovering anything that possibly went wrong during the Roosevelt Administration and Hughes had a connection to Elliott Roosevelt, thus this was used to attack the old Roosevelt Administration (Watt, 42-43).

Campaign Financing Controversy

Republicans still thought of Brewster highly enough after the Hughes controversy to place him as head of the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee for the 1950 election. The results were good for the GOP, but there was a controversy regarding his neutrality in Republican primaries. Brewster was supposed to be neutral in primaries, and this meant that campaign money could not be used to fund anyone in the primaries. However, Brewster found a way to violate not the letter of the rule but the spirit of the rule by securing a $10,000 loan from the Liberty National bank in Washington and used shadowy middleman Henry Gruenwald to give $5000 each to candidates Richard Nixon of California and Milton Young of North Dakota (Quad-City Times). To his credit, it was Brewster who admitted this so this would not impact Gruenwald. Nixon did not have a contender in the primary who was actually a Republican as California at the time (and now) had an open primary, thus Democratic candidates Helen Gahagan Douglas and Manchester Boddy were also contenders. Young did have a Republican challenger in Thorstein H. Thoresen, formerly North Dakota’s lieutenant governor.

1952 Election

In 1952, Hughes bankrolled Governor Frederick G. Payne’s primary challenge to Brewster. Payne and Brewster represented two different factions of the party. While Brewster was a strong supporter of Senator Joseph McCarthy’s anti-communist crusade and supported nominating Ohio’s conservative standard-bearer Robert Taft in 1952, Payne backed picking the more moderate and internationalist General Dwight Eisenhower. Like Eisenhower defeated Taft, Payne narrowly won the primary. The significance of Payne’s win is that this is the only time in Maine’s history that a Republican incumbent senator was defeated for renomination, further underscoring Brewster’s controversial reputation. Not only did the feud with Hughes harm him but also Drew Pearson’s charge of unseemly lobbying by Francoist Spain’s lobbyist Charles Patrick Clark to convince him as well as Rep. Eugene Keogh (D-N.Y.) to sponsor aid to Spain (Hill). Clark would beat up Pearson in retaliation. However, Brewster may have managed to deal a blow to Payne that would hang over his head as a wine bottler claimed that he paid $12,000 to a political influencer to give to Payne for his product to be placed on the shelves of government liquor stores (Hill). Brewster was alleged to be behind these accusations, but he denied it. Although as noted before, he was considered a staunch conservative, the metrics I use indicate that he had voted with the liberal Americans for Democratic Action from 1947 to 1952 20% of the time while his DW-Nominate score was a 0.271. This indicates overall moderate conservatism in his career with his later career being a bit more conservative. Brewster attempted to secure another position both in the Senate and in the White House, but neither effort was successful. In the former case this was particularly a stinging blow as it constituted a rebuke by his former colleagues. Brewster would spend the rest of his life in semi-retirement, and for the last three years of his life he went around advocating for Americans for Constitutional Action, a newly formed conservative organization that was established as a counterpart to the liberal Americans for Democratic Action. Brewster offered himself as a candidate for the Senate in 1958 should Payne have chosen not to run for reelection (Hill). However, Payne did opt to run for reelection, and he lost by over 20 points to Edmund Muskie for reasons that were described in my post last year about the Sherman Adams controversy.

A member of the Christian Science church, Brewster died suddenly while on a Christian Science retreat in Brookline, Massachusetts, on December 25, 1961. His death was unexpected, although he had been suffering from cancer.

My Opinion on Brewster

Owen Brewster was a figure who in many ways maintained a highly clean appearance. He neither smoked nor drank, no hint of scandal existed with his personal life, and he was strongly religious. However, he also had two incidents in which the issue became his word against someone else’s, and he came out on the wrong side of it, at least in the court of public opinion. Brewster also proved willing to use cunning and tricky methods to get things done, such as his underhanded using of the KKK to win public office and his usage of a shadowy middleman to funnel money to Senate candidates against the spirit of the rules of his position. He was also quite interested in taking advantage of causes that were rising in popularity, such as his surreptitious courting of the votes of KKK members, his public support for the fiscally infeasible Townsend Plan, and his support for Joseph McCarthy. Brewster’s conservatism also strikes me as perhaps a bit overly touted when his record gets examine. In all, he was a complicated figure whose personal morality sometimes contrasted with his political methods.

References

ADA Voting Records. Americans for Democratic Action.

Retrieved from

ADA Voting Records

Brewster Declared Winner in Maine. (1924, August 8). The New York Times.

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Brewster, Ralph Owen. Voteview.

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https://voteview.com/person/1021/ralph-owen-brewster

Former U.S. Senator Dies. (1961, December 26). Standard-Speaker, 1.

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https://www.newspapers.com/image/61225510/

Hill, R. (2024). Owen Brewster of Maine. The Knoxville Focus.

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https://www.knoxfocus.com/archives/this-weeks-focus/owen-brewster-of-maine/

Owen Brewster Dies; Former U.S. Senator. (1961, December 26). The Journal Herald, 1.

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https://www.newspapers.com/image/394350317/

Sen. Brewster Tells Trick in Using ‘Conduit’. (1952, March 21). Quad-City Times, 2.

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https://www.newspapers.com/image/299380913/

Simkin, J. (1997). Owen Brewster. Spartacus Educational.

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https://spartacus-educational.com/JFKbrewsterO.htm

Syrett, J. (2001). Principle and Expediency: The Ku Klux Klan and Ralph Owen Brewster in 1924. Maine History, 39(4).

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https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1221&context=mainehistoryjournal

The Congress: Boomerang and Blackjack. (1935, July 22). Time Magazine.

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https://time.com/archive/6754199/the-congress-boomerang-blackjack/

Unpardonable Sin. (1935, August 17). Kansas City Journal, 11.

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https://www.newspapers.com/image/1024050087/

Watt, R.Y. (1979). Oral History Interview. Washington, D.C. United States Senate Historical Office.

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Click to access watt-ruth-young-full-transcript-with-index.pdf

August 20, 2025 Fascinating Politics

Sam Hobbs: Alabama’s Law and Order Congressman

As a state, Alabama has had a complicated political history even though for a long time it was a one-party state, as the party became split between conservative and liberal factions in the mid-20th century, with the state having one of the most powerful liberal wings in the South until 1964. One figure who straddled both the New Deal and conservative lines of Alabama politics was Sam Hobbs (1887-1952). A lawyer by profession, in 1921, Governor Thomas Kilby appointed him a judge, a post for which he would be reelected. As a judge, Hobbs found the KKK’s vigilante justice objectionable and served as campaign manager for Benjamin Meek Miller, who successfully ran for governor on an anti-Klan platform in 1930. He was an early supporter of FDR and he thanked him for his support by appointing him to Alabama’s National Recovery Administration Committee. The prestige he gained from this role enabled him to make a run for higher office.

In 1934, Hobbs challenged Congressman Lamar Jeffers, who had been serving since 1921, for renomination. Jeffers was a man who was known for his white supremacist views and for his sometimes incendiary rhetoric surrounding race as well as declining to condemn lynchings (Spann). He succeeded in defeating him and this was tantamount to being elected as Alabama was a one-party state at the time. Although many Alabamians at the time were staunchly pro-New Deal, Hobbs, despite having been considered a New Deal supporter, was a bit less enthusiastic about it than some of his colleagues. Indeed, save for Birmingham’s George Huddleston, he was the least supportive of Alabama Democrats of the New Deal at the time. For instance, he voted with Huddleston to strike the controversial “death sentence” clause from the Public Utilities Holding Company Act, a key issue for President Roosevelt. Hobbs also opposed the Bituminous Coal Act in 1935 and minimum wage legislation in 1938. He was supportive of agricultural legislation, the Tennessee Valley Authority, Social Security, and extending the National Industrial Recovery Act. Hobbs was also quite helpful in bringing federal funds to his district to construct the Edmund Pettus Bridge, managed the impeachment of Judge Halsted L. Ritter, and was successful in encouraging Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau to use marble in the construction of federal buildings. However, Hobbs became most known for his expertise in law enforcement issues and his close ties with J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI.

In 1939, Hobbs sponsored a measure that if enacted would have provided for the setup of detention facilities for criminal aliens who were ordered deported, but their countries would not take them back. To win approval and to prevent the measure from potentially being ruled unconstitutional, the bill stipulated that inmates would not be forced to work and that it would only be among aliens that were criminals in other ways. Critics dubbed the measure the “concentration camp bill” and although the House passed this measure overwhelmingly, it was not voted on in the Senate.

As part of his support for law enforcement, Hobbs sponsored legislation to apply the 1934 anti-racketeering law to unions, thus prohibiting robbery and extortion in interstate commerce. This was pushed due to numerous racketeering incidents regarding unions and most notably one in which members of the Teamsters union coerced truck drivers travelling from New Jersey to New York, through beatings and threats of beatings, to pay them wages for work whether they did the work or not. The Supreme Court had ruled that these actions did not constitute a violation of the anti-racketeering statute. After passage in 1943 didn’t result in Senate enactment, the Hobbs Act would ultimately be signed into law in 1946. Hobbs was repeatedly supportive of legislation to limit the power of labor unions, and he was also predictably opposed to civil rights legislation. In 1943, he attempted to strike from the anti-poll tax bill the prohibition on poll taxes for primaries (The Call). Although strongly disliked by left-wing and civil rights groups, Hobbs was far from all right-wing in his views. After all, he had supported a good amount of the New Deal, was an internationalist, supported rent control, and in 1943 he objected to Martin Dies’s (D-Tex.) proposal to deny funds for the payment of three government officials his Un-American Activities Committee had found to be subversive.

Although Hobbs supported the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947 he was largely opposed to the Republican agenda of the 80th Congress and in 1948, Hobbs backed the candidacy of State’s Rights Democrat Strom Thurmond for president. Although he was arguably a better alternative to some Southern politicians of his day, he was nonetheless a firm supporter of the Jim Crow system as were all Alabama elected officials at the time, and he was willing to go up against his party’s nominee over it. Hobbs agreed with the liberal organization Americans for Democratic Action 60% of the time from 1947 to 1950, far from indicative of a solid conservative record, as was his -0.176 from DW-Nominate. By 1950, he was in poor health and his doctors warned him that running for another term was tantamount to suicide (The World-News). He thus opted not to run for reelection, but nonetheless died on May 31, 1952.

References

ADA Voting Records. Americans for Democratic Action.

Retrieved from

ADA Voting Records

Alien Internment is Voted by House. (1939, May 6). The New York Times.

Retrieved from

Former Rep. Hobbs Dies In Alabama. (1952, June 2). The World-News, 2.

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https://www.newspapers.com/image/914365402/

Hobbs, Samuel Francis. Voteview.

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https://voteview.com/person/4471/samuel-francis-hobbs

Neeley, G.R. (2017, November 15). Samuel Francis Hobbs. Encyclopedia of Alabama.

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https://encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/samuel-francis-hobbs/

Spann, K. (2017, November 17). Lamar Jeffers. Encyclopedia of Alabama.

Retrieved from

https://encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/lamar-jeffers/

Words Fly as House Passes Anti-Poll Tax Bill; Gird for Senate. The Call, 36.

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https://www.newspapers.com/image/1032012762/

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