Earl Warren, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and chairman of the Warren Commission
On November 22, 1963, the United States faced one of its greatest tragedies in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Although a controversial president in his day, Kennedy has since become an admired figure for Americans of many stripes. Only two days later, his assassin Lee Harvey Oswald was shot dead in the Dallas Police Garage while being transferred from city to county jail by Jack Ruby. In the wake of these events, President Lyndon B. Johnson issued Executive Order 11130 on November 29th, authorizing the creation of the President’s Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, which would popularly become known as the Warren Commission. Johnson was initially not for doing this, rather this was done to head off potential Senate and House investigations into the matter. The chairman was Chief Justice Earl Warren, whose tenure over the Supreme Court was highly transformative and controversial, and who had resisted multiple lobbying efforts by LBJ to place him on the commission, only being convinced to do so as Johnson foretold catastrophe if he wasn’t there. Also tapped for the committee were:
Senator Richard B. Russell (D-Ga.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and de facto leader of the Southern Democratic bloc of the Senate. He initially refused to be on the committee because he didn’t want to serve with Warren over his desegregation decisions, but the crafty fox LBJ basically voluntold him to be on the committee by publicly stating that Russell was going to be on the committee.
Senator John Sherman Cooper (R-Ky.), formerly Ambassador to India and highly respected on both sides of the aisle, one of the least partisan senators.
Representative Hale Boggs (D-La.), majority whip of the House.
Representative Gerald Ford (R-Mich.), a rising star in the GOP and chairman of the House Republican Conference.
John J. McCloy, chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations. McCloy is quite the figure, and one of the most powerful men in American politics to have never been elected to public office, as he held multiple positions of power in the government throughout his long life. I intend to write an extensive post about him one of these days.
Allen Dulles, director of the CIA, 1953-1961. Dulles was placed on the commission by LBJ to make sure that questions were not asked of CIA operatives that could expose operations.
On December 5th, the Warren Commission met for the first time to formally begin the investigation. 552 witnesses testified before the Warren Commission, including Oswald’s mother and wife, people present on the day of the assassination, President Lyndon B. Johnson and other politicians, police officers, contacts of Oswald and Ruby, CIA director John McCone and FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, and some others. Not all witness testimony proved productive. For instance, Professor Revilo P. Oliver was called to testify before the Warren Commission because of his article titled “Marxmanship in Dallas”, in which he claimed the possibility that Kennedy was assassinated because he was turning away from the communist mission. Oliver’s testimony proved both contradictory and based on speculation. However, more relevant problems would arise with the testimony of others to the committee, which will be covered in the second part. In the process of the investigation, Warren Commission staff member Arlen Specter (who would later have a 30-year career in the Senate) concluded that a single bullet went through both President Kennedy and Governor Connally, and this would become accepted in the report of the committee, although there was a lot more internal controversy than people at the time knew of the report’s release, but that will be for the second part.
On September 24, 1964, the Commission officially released its findings, exactly ten months after Oswald had been killed. The Commission reached the following major conclusions with all members signing the report:
There was no conspiracy, foreign or domestic, to kill JFK.
Lee Harvey Oswald was the sole man responsible for the assassination of JFK.
There was a single bullet fired that went through both Kennedy and Governor Connally.
Oswald had also shot Officer J.D. Tippit 45 minutes later.
Jack Ruby acted alone in murdering Lee Harvey Oswald.
At first, the public seemed to accept this conclusion. However, with time flaws and complications surrounding the committee and its work would come to public attention and the public would increasingly doubt the Warren Commission’s conclusions, as many do to this day. The next post will cover reactions, criticisms, and an overall takeaway from the Warren Commission’s views.
References
Andrews, E. (2024, August 19). 9 Things You May Not Know About the Warren Commission. History Channel.
The state of Georgia has had the benefit of having some political heavy-hitters in the Senate, most notably Richard Russell and Walter Franklin George (1878-1957). George was an attorney by profession, and he reached the prominence of serving on the state’s Supreme Court from 1917 until his resignation in 1922.
George in his early years in the Senate.
On September 26, 1922, Senator Thomas E. Watson, a fiery populist, died suddenly of a cerebral hemorrhage. Governor Thomas Hardwick, an anti-suffragist seeking to improve his political position with women, appointed Rebecca Latimer Felton to serve for a single day when the Senate was out of session, thus she cast no votes and the appointment was only symbolic. The true successor to Watson would be George. In this time, he was considered to be a liberal, and yes, in the more modern sense. The progressive The Searchlight magazine affirms this, “Among the new Senators, Dill, Wheeler, Mayfield, Copeland, and George are reported as fighting liberals, with Ferris and Ralston not far behind” (5). He undoubtedly was compared to the Republican presidents and most of the GOP’s officeholders of the day, opposing most of the policies of the Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover Administrations. This may seem rather strange given George’s historical reputation as a conservative, but there were numerous figures who were considered progressive or liberal in the 1920s who would prove a lot more conservative during the Roosevelt Administration. Indeed, among George’s positions were higher income taxes on the wealthy and backing veterans bonus legislation over President Coolidge’s veto. As a senator, he carried a respectable and dignified demeanor and even his wife, Lucy, would address him as “Senator George” (Hill). Speaking of his wife, she was something of a contrast to him. While George conveyed himself as a man of high dignity, Lucy was more down-to-earth and liked on Capitol Hill, including for her willingness to listen to and tell risqué stories (Hill). Like all other Georgia politicians of his day who won public office, George opposed all civil rights proposals, but he refrained from making race an issue in his campaigns and never promoted race hatred.
George and The New Deal
Although George had not backed FDR in the Democratic primary, he did support his 1932 campaign as well as most of the early New Deal measures, seeing in particular value in regulating the stock market with the Securities and Exchange Act, aid to agriculture through the Agricultural Adjustment Act, and the Tennessee Valley Authority. He also backed the National Industrial Recovery Act in 1933 and the Wagner Act in 1935, the latter being known as the “magna carta” of law protecting organized labor. George also supported veterans’ bonus legislation in 1935 and 1936, but this was in opposition to FDR, who wanted to hold down expenditures.
George vs. FDR
Although when he was first appointed to the Senate in 1922, George had a reputation as a progressive, by 1935 he was beginning to have some reservations about the New Deal, and he crossed FDR in his opposition to the “Death Sentence Clause” of the Public Utilities Holding Company Act and to bituminous coal regulation. He also opposed FDR’s court packing plan and his reorganization plan, the latter which critics dubbed the “dictator bill”. On August 11, 1938, Roosevelt delivered a speech in Barnesville, Georgia with George directly behind him, in which he sought to influence the Democratic primary. He stated after praising George for his intelligence and character, “Here in Georgia, my old friend, the senior Senator from the State, cannot possibly in my judgment be classified as belonging to the liberal school of thought – and, therefore, the argument that he has long served in the Senate falls by the wayside” and finished his assessment of George and politics with, “Therefore, answering the requests that have come to me from many leading citizens of Georgia that I make my position clear, I have no hesitation in saying that if I were able to vote in the September primaries in this State, I most assuredly should cast my ballot for Lawrence Camp” (The American Presidency Project). With this speech, Roosevelt, who was making an early effort at creating ideologically responsible parties, essentially read George out of the party. After the speech, George shook his hand and reportedly said, “I regret that you have taken this occasion to question my democracy. I accept the challenge” (Hill). Roosevelt had miscalculated badly on his purge effort, believing that his personal popularity in Georgia would move the needle in the primary, and George was renominated with FDR’s preferred candidate, Camp, coming in third behind Eugene Talmadge, who FDR wanted in office even less than George. With this victory, George both gained more stature in the Senate, particularly among FDR’s opponents, and subsequently opposed him more on domestic policy. FDR had made things worse for himself with this effort, and he would not attempt to meddle in primaries again. Reportedly, when someone around him remarked that Roosevelt was his own worst enemy, George remarked, “Not while I am still alive!” (Hill)
Committee Chairmanships and Influence
On November 10, 1940, Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Key Pittman (D-Nev.) died as a consequence of his alcoholism and George was next in line. He had come in at a rather critical time, and was chairman when FDR was pushing through Lend-Lease. Unlike on domestic policy, George was supportive of Roosevelt as his foreign policy was consistent with Wilsonian moralism and he was instrumental in pushing the measure through. However, his time on the Foreign Relations Committee would be short, and in 1941 he would reluctantly move to the chairmanship of the Senate Finance Committee, which was and is of similar importance to the Foreign Relations Committee. A confidential intelligence report on him from the British Foreign Office’s Isaiah Berlin read, “an honourable but narrow Southern Conservative, who incurred the displeasure of the New Deal in 1938 when an unsuccessful attempt to “purge” him was made by its then leaders (in particular [Edward] Flynn, [Harry] Hopkins, and [Thomas] Corcoran). This attempt increased his popularity in his State and in the Senate. He left the chairmanship of the Foreign Relations Committee in order to head the equally important Finance Committee, and is an exceedingly influential figure in the Senate, and the hope of Conservatives in many parts of the United States” (Hachey, 141-153). World War II would bring a tragedy to George and his wife, as one of their sons was a casualty. His other son, Heard, would later serve as his administrative assistant.
As chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, taxation was under his purview, and he was supportive of wartime tax relief, which FDR opposed. The final tax relief legislation would pass in 1944 over President Roosevelt’s veto, the first time a revenue bill had ever become law over a president’s veto. George would also support the Republican 80th Congress on income tax reduction, contrary to the position of the Truman Administration. He would also oppose the Roosevelt and Truman Administrations on labor policy, voting to override President Roosevelt’s veto of the Smith-Connally Labor Disputes Act in 1943 and President Truman’s veto of the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947.
Although George’s realm was in the Finance Committee, he remained a respected and influential voice on foreign affairs, and he backed the Truman Administration on Greek-Turkish aid and the Marshall Plan as did most Democrats. He also defended the latter from conservative efforts to cut the program on multiple occasions, but did not support Point IV aid, or foreign aid to poor rather than war-torn nations.
The George Amendment
In 1954, Senator John W. Bricker (R-Ohio) pushed for amending the Constitution for Congress to check the power of the presidency on foreign policy, and such a proposal was proving popular in the South. Minority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson (D-Tex.), however, was privately opposed to this measure, holding that it was “the worst bill I can think of” and asserted that it would be “the bane of every president we elect”, and was of course thinking of himself as well (Caro, 528). He thus courted Senator George to offer a substitute, and offer he did, while opposing a stronger version of the Bricker Amendment that was voted down. The Bricker Amendment as amended by George was adopted as a substitute, but its ratification failed by one vote.
George seemed to lessen in his conservatism a bit during the Eisenhower Administration if Americans for Democratic Action and Americans for Constitutional Action ratings are good measures for judging legislators, and in 1956 he sponsored a proposal to reduce the minimum age of receiving disability benefits under Social Security to 50, which was narrowly adopted 47-45. After all, George was something of a liberal on Social Security, having voted against the Knowland Amendment in 1950 which restricted the ability of the Social Security Administration to place mandatory minimums on unemployment compensation on states. By this time, George was 78 years old and looking at a strong primary challenge from former Governor Herman Talmadge, who was more willing to focus on race than George. He opted not to run for reelection given his heart condition as well as many of his supporters wavering on whether they’d vote for him in the primary (Hill). George’s DW-Nominate score, which covers his entire career, was a -0.064, which is high for a Democrat; from 1947 to 1956 he sided with the ADA position on key votes they counted 38% of the time, but only sided with the ACA position on key votes they counted 18% of the time. However, for the latter, this is a much more limited measure as they only counted votes for 1955 and 1956. George was overall his own man, his vote being one of dignified independence of presidential and party priorities. President Dwight Eisenhower subsequently selected him as the ambassador to NATO. However, it turned out to be just as well that he hadn’t run for reelection as he suffered a fatal heart attack on August 4, 1957. President Eisenhower subsequently ordered all US flags at federal buildings and other properties flown at half-mast in mourning.
References
ADA Voting Records. Americans for Democratic Action.
Hachey, T.E. (1973-1974, Winter). American Profiles on Capitol Hill: A Confidential Study for the British Foreign Office in 1943. Wisconsin Magazine of History, 57(2): 141-153.
In the stead of larger-than-life characters, their key helpers get overlooked, and that is certainly the case with John Holmes Overton (1875-1948), whose time in politics was longer than that of his famous friend, Huey Long.
An attorney by profession, Overton attempted to get into office in 1918 when he ran for the Senate, but lost the primary to Edward Gay, who served only a short time before opting to call it quits. In the meantime, Overton befriended the considerably younger Huey Long of the Louisiana Public Service Commission, which if it was in any part political calculation, it was a highly intelligent one. Although Long’s first bid for governor failed in 1924, four years later he was elected. His methods of using (and abusing) his power resulted in his impeachment in 1929, and in the process, Overton served as his counsel. He defended him thusly, in language that perhaps we find familiar, “I’ve supported every governor that has been elected in Louisiana for twenty-five years, all on promises that they have made to the people. Not one of them has been able or, if able, willing to carry out what was expected of him. The present governor is throwing out of office the clique that all other governors promised to throw out. He is backed to the wall in his efforts to redeem his campaign pledge” (Long, 149). After a round robin statement was issued by a group of state senators that they wouldn’t impeach him under any circumstances, it was clear that Long would remain in office. In 1930, Overton was elected to the House for a single term, and his voting was at that time on the liberal side. As a loyal Long man, Long was sure to throw his weight in support of him in the 1932 Senate election, in which he defeated Edwin Broussard, who was of the Democratic Party’s conservative wing. It sure didn’t help Broussard that he hadn’t supported Long’s run for the Senate two years earlier. From 1933 to 1935, Overton served with Long in the Senate, and Overton mostly voted with Long, although unlike Long he voted for the Reciprocal Trade Act in 1934.
Overton’s political benefactor was assassinated in 1935, but his career survived; he was easily renominated in his own right in 1938. Incidentally, after his reelection, his record began increasingly shifting to the right. Like many Southerners during the Roosevelt Administration, Overton grew more conservative over time despite his initial support of New Deal laws. In 1939, Overton voted against the Neutrality Act Amendments, which repealed the arms embargo, thus permitting the US to trade arms with belligerent nations. However, he would support the Lend-Lease Act in 1941. By 1944, the rotund Overton was in declining health, and he initially announced that he would not run again. However, pleas to reconsider from many of his Senate colleagues as well as Governor James Noe announcing that he would run for the Senate convinced him to reconsider, and he won renomination (which was tantamount to reelection for a Democrat in Louisiana).
Overton vs. Daylight Savings Time
Of all the senators, no one was more opposed to Daylight Savings Time than John Overton. Daylight Savings Time was used inconsistently since World War I, but President Roosevelt reenacted it in 1942, which lasted until September 30, 1945 (national daylight savings time would come long-term with the Uniform Time Act of 1966). Overton in response threatened to place an ad in the lost and found section of the newspaper reading, “Lost — somewhere between sunrise and sunset, one golden hour, set with 60 diamond minutes. No reward is offered; it is lost forever” (Hill). Overton would not even in practice accept it during this time. His office’s schedule ran on what he referred to as “God’s time”, placing a sign on his office that read, “This Office Runs on God’s Time”, and this humorously made coordinating meetings with him a bit of a challenge for his fellow Louisianan Allen Ellender (Hill).
The 80th Congress and the End
In 1947, Overton attempted to have Senator Theodore Bilbo (D-Miss.) seated, which the Republican majority refused to do due to Bilbo’s publicly implying that intimidation and violence should be used to prevent blacks from voting. Although Huey Long was seen as favorable to the working man, Overton came to the conclusion that many Southerners and Republicans had…labor unions had become too powerful. To liberals, his vote for the Taft-Hartley Act was a repudiation of the working man. George S. Long, Huey Long’s brother, wrote to him that “you have quit the people who elected you to office” (Hill). In the 80th Congress, the liberal Americans for Democratic Action found that in 1947 he had voted their way 5 out of 9 times and the following year 5 out of 8 times. His overall DW-Nominate score was -0.053, which is just a hair higher than that of departing Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, and lower than that of Susan Collins. Per that scaling system, Overton is both to the right of all Democrats serving in Congress and to the left of all Republicans serving in Congress. Overton supported Truman’s foreign policy as well as his stance against GOP-pushed tax reductions in the 80th Congress, while opposing public housing and the nomination of David Lilienthal to head the Atomic Energy Commission. His poor health caught up with him in May 1948 when he developed an intestinal obstruction. Although he had emergency surgery, he died on the 14th.
References
Congressional Supplement. (1948). Americans for Democratic Action.
S. Res 1. White Motion That the Oath of Office be Administered to Brewster. Taft Motion to Table Overton Motion to Substitute the Name of Bilbo. Govtrack.
The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is aiming to find waste, inefficiency, and areas to cut government spending. One subject that they have touched on is veterans benefits as has prospective Trump nominee to the post of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. On that one from a historical perspective, they are in for one hell of a fight! Veterans’ benefits have a long history of being politically difficult to resist. In 1949, for instance, the House by only one vote rejected Veterans Affairs Committee chairman John Rankin’s (D-Miss.) measure that would have provided for a massive pension program for World War I and World War II veterans at $90 a month (or $1,193.69 in October 2024 dollars) starting at age 65 that at the same time would have served to fiscally prevent President Truman from expanding Social Security as he planned (Time Magazine). The measure’s defeat was in no small part due to the vocal opposition of certain World War II veterans in Congress, most notably Olin “Tiger” Teague of Texas, the second-highest decorated soldier of the war. Even President Roosevelt at the height of his power struggled with the issue.
Speaker Henry Rainey (D-Ill.) was perfectly willing to let the executive branch write laws and have the House rubber stamp them, but there was a fight in the early New Deal that Roosevelt lost, and not even the opposition of Speaker Rainey could overcome this, and this was on funding New Deal programs in part through cuts in veterans’ benefits.
The first New Deal law to pass, and one that actually got substantial support from conservatives, was the Economy Act, which cut spending for the purposes of making room in the budget for FDR’s New Deal programs and served to effectively repeal all laws passed after the War of the Rebellion for veterans’ pensions, granting FDR the power to restructure veterans’ benefits, and he did so by cutting benefits by over $400 million. This provoked a lot of bipartisan opposition, including from individuals thought of as progressive in this time, such as Senator Burton Wheeler (D-Mont.). On June 14, 1933, the Senate responded to FDR’s veterans’ benefits reduction with the Steiwer (R-Ore.)-Cutting (R-N.M.) amendment 51-39 (D 19-39; R 31-0; P 1-0) to the Independent Offices Appropriations bill, which if enacted into law would have only permitted Roosevelt to cut up to 25% of an individual veteran’s benefits, amounting to a maximum overall reduction between $100-160 million. Interestingly, this vote presaged further opposition to Roosevelt’s agenda in the future, most notably on foreign policy, from certain senators who were at least nominally for the New Deal at this point, including Wheeler, Pat McCarran of Nevada, and Robert R. Reynolds of North Carolina. This was also a point of contention between the flamboyant Huey Long of Louisiana and the president. Roosevelt was prepared to veto the bill if the amendment remained, but the House came to his rescue and refused to adopt Steiwer-Cutting 177-209 (D 79-201; R 93-8; FL 1-0) the following day. However, the battle was far from over on veterans’ benefits, the most hotly contested part of the Economy Act, and the House voted to increase veterans benefits to largely offset Roosevelt’s cuts. Although President Roosevelt vetoed the bill, the House overrode his veto of the bill 310 to 72 (D 209-70; R 97-2; FL 4-0) on March 27, 1934. Among Republicans, only Robert Luce and George Tinkham of Massachusetts, normally opponents of Roosevelt and the New Deal, voted against this effort. Although Majority Leader Robinson (D-Ark.) was more successful at persuading his fellow Democrats to sustain Roosevelt’s veto, his veto was overridden the following day 63-27 (D 29-27; R 33-0; FL 1-0) that same day. This would be predictive of the override of another of President Roosevelt’s vetoes, on the Patman Bonus bill. Like President Hoover before him, Roosevelt opposed the Patman Bonus bill, which permitted veterans to collect their bonuses at any time as opposed to 1945 as established by the 1924 World War Adjusted Compensation Act as a budget-busting measure. Unlike with the appropriations bill, he got some sizeable conservative Republican support for his position. Although the House overrode President Roosevelt’s veto on May 22, 1935, 322-98 (D 248-60; R 64-38; P 7-0; FL 3-0), Majority Leader Joseph Robinson (D-Ark.) was successful in getting the Senate to sustain the veto the following day 54-40 (D 41-28; R 12-12; P 1-0). However, a compromise Patman bill was pressed into 1936. This one managed to pass over President Roosevelt’s veto, with members of Congress feeling more pressure as the next election approached. The House voted to do so on January 24th 326-61 (D 249-32; R 67-29; P 7-0; FL 3-0) and the Senate voted to do so 76-19 (D 57-12; 17-7; P 1-0; FL 1-0) three days later. Although veterans’ organizations advised veterans to wait until 1945 to collect, many chose to do so right away. This measure would essentially serve as a stimulus for veterans. Roosevelt would later do quite well for veterans in his signing of the GI Bill in 1944.
References
Ortiz, S.R. (2009). Beyond the Bonus March and GI Bill: How Veteran Politics Shaped the New Deal Era. New York, NY: NYU Press.
Although there is no royalty in the United States and never can be as a matter of constitutionality (unless we decide to repeal that part of the Constitution for reasons that escape me), there have been political families who have been tremendously influential: the Kennedys, the Bushes, and the Roosevelts. Two of FDR’s sons had political careers of their own in FDR Jr. and James Roosevelt. Today I will be writing about the former, who fell far from the tree of his father in terms of political acumen.
When it came to war service, President Roosevelt was no hypocrite, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt Jr. (1914-1988) served in the war and he did so with honor. In his personal life, however, Roosevelt Jr. had issues, being married a grand total of five times. In 1948, he sought to recruit Dwight Eisenhower for the Democratic nomination, not knowing that his true sympathies lay with the Republicans. His time for public office would come in 1949.
Congressional Career
In 1949, longtime Congressman Sol Bloom, who had been chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, died, and Roosevelt Jr. ran to succeed him, managing to defeat the Tammany Hall picked candidate as the Liberal candidate. Roosevelt Jr., who would win his subsequent reelections as a Democrat, was per Americans for Democratic Action a perfect liberal during his time in Congress, never having voted against a single one of the issues they regarded as a key vote. He supported public housing, price controls, foreign aid, reciprocal trade, public power, more immigration, and opposed the McCarran Internal Security Act. His DW-Nominate score was quite a low -0.619. Although Roosevelt Jr. was a perfect liberal by the standards of Americans for Democratic Action, he proved a poor member of Congress for laziness and general lack of enthusiasm for the job. Speaker Sam Rayburn of Texas would tell his brother James upon his entrance into Congress in 1955 to “not waste our time like your brother did”, and James himself would recount that Jr. “had a dreadful record in Congress. He was smart, but not smart enough. He had good ideas and the power of persuasion, but he did not put them to good use. He coasted instead of working at his job, considering it beneath him, while he aimed for higher positions. He may have had the worst attendance record of any member of those days, and it cost him those higher positions” (Roosevelt, 314). Instead of running for reelection for Congress, Roosevelt Jr. ran for attorney general, but was defeated by fellow Congressman Jacob Javits, thus being the only Democrat to lose a statewide election that year.
In 1960, he served as something of a bulldog for his friend John F. Kennedy’s campaign in the hopes that he could revive his faltering political career, and falsely insinuated during the West Virginia primary that Senator Hubert Humphrey (D-Minn.), who was also running for the nomination, had been a draft-dodger during World War II (Time Magazine). The truth was that Humphrey was not allowed to fight due to a disability, and Roosevelt would subsequently apologize. Kennedy’s win in that race tipped the primary decisively for him. Although Kennedy had initially wanted Roosevelt to be Secretary of the Navy, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara nixed the idea. Roosevelt would instead serve as Under Secretary of Commerce from 1963 to 1965. Any hope Roosevelt Jr. had of further rise died with Kennedy, although he did serve in one more federal position as head of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission from 1965 to 1966. Roosevelt made one last bid for elective office in running for governor on the Liberal Party ticket in 1966, but he didn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell against the powerhouse of incumbent Nelson Rockefeller.
Roosevelt would pursue business ventures for the remainder of his life, including the distribution of imported cars. He died on August 17, 1988, his 74th birthday, of lung cancer.
References
ADA Voting Records. Americans for Democratic Action.
The idea of defiance of the Supreme Court is one that seems remote in the minds of many, although the court is certainly unpopular among liberals right now, an outright defiance of any one decision still seems remote. The closest that a president came to defying the Supreme Court as far as my memory goes was if the Supreme Court had ruled against FDR in the Gold Clause Cases in 1935. They ruled for the Administration 5-4, but Roosevelt had every intention to defy the court if they ruled otherwise, and the Supreme Court had ruled against numerous New Deal laws without FDR defying their verdicts. Andrew Jackson and the state of Georgia, however, did in 1832.
Samuel A. Worcester
One of President Jackson’s priorities, which really appealed to the South at the time, was moving the five civilized tribes out of their ancestral lands to make room for settlers to farm. Although popular in the South, the issue was highly controversial, and the Whig Party was opposed. The vote in the House was exceptionally close at 102 to 97. In the meantime, the tribes had a number of white sympathizers, which included missionaries. One of these missionaries was Samuel A. Worcester, who was helping the Cherokee, and Georgia’s state government didn’t appreciate their efforts. The state in response passed a law that prohibited whites from living in tribal land unless they got a special license from Georgia’s governor and swore an oath to the state. Worcester and his fellow missionaries were subsequently arrested, convicted, and imprisoned. He appealed his imprisonment to the Supreme Court, and in 1832 they ruled 5-1 in Worcester v. Georgia that Georgia had no authority to make laws regarding Cherokee land, and that treating tribal land as separate nations was consistent with the history of treaties by the United States with the tribes. Chief Justice Marshall wrote the opinion of the court, holding that “the nations had always been considered as distinct, independent political communities, retaining their original natural rights as the undisputed possessors of the soil” (31 U.S. 515) Marshall conceded that the Cherokee had surrendered some sovereignty with treaties, that this was not sufficient for enacting such a law.
John Marshall
That was all well and good, except who was going to enforce it? Georgia refused to comply, and President Jackson refused to enforce the ruling. Although Jackson is famously reputed to have said to Brigadier General John Coffee, “John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it”, what he actually said was, “The decision of the supreme court has fell still born, and they find that it cannot coerce Georgia to yield to its mandate” (Garrison). Not as defiant, memorable, or smooth, right? After intense public pressure and criticism, the missionaries were pardoned the following year, and Indian removal would proceed in the coming years in what was infamously known as the Trail of Tears. That subject undoubtedly warrants a separate post. Andrew Jackson would have greater appreciation of the Supreme Court, however, when it came to the Nullification Crisis, another subject that warrants a separate post in which South Carolina nullified two tariff laws as it found them unconstitutional, and Jackson proclaimed that South Carolina had no authority to determine constitutionality of federal legislation and that the Supreme Court had the ultimate authority on constitutionality (Rosen). The full stories of the Trail of Tears and nullification will be written about at a later date. Overall, it would be quite foreign and scandalous to us if a Supreme Court decision was actively defied and the White House would not enforce the ruling, indeed it would produce a Constitutional crisis. However, Worcester was not in vain and remains good law, thus it has served as a precedent for numerous Indian rights cases.
References
Garrison, T.A. (2004, April 27). Worcester v. Georgia. New Georgia Encyclopedia.
In 1930, Senator Frank Greene died during an operation, and selected to succeed him by Governor John E. Weeks was Frank C. Partridge, a personal friend and longtime presence in Vermont politics. The following year, however, there was to be an election to finish out the term, and prominent attorney Warren Austin (1877-1962) of St. Albans was persuaded to challenge Partridge, announcing shortly before the end of 1930. Although incumbency is often an advantage, in Partridge’s case it was not; he had to attend to the Senate while Austin was free to campaign across the state, delivering 60 speeches (Mazuzan, 130). Austin’s age was also to his advantage as he was 15 years younger than the 68-year old Partridge, and he won the Republican nomination for the election to finish the late Greene’s term. In 1931, winning the Republican nomination was tantamount to election, as Vermont was the Wyoming of its day in Republicanism.
Austin became a quick study of the Senate, and he thought there was some room for procedural change, namely that his fellow senators had too much room to bloviate (Mazuzan, 130-131). He voted like a traditional Republican, with a wariness of a largesse in federal government, spending, and the powers of the executive. This translated to a strong opposition to FDR’s New Deal, with him voting against all major “first 100 days” legislation except the Economy Act. As Austin wrote to his mother, “I am very apprehensive of the arbitrary powers which are being placed in the hands of one man” (Mazuzan, 131). Austin was opposed to measures he saw as intruding on states and localities as well as on individuals, and saw this in the New Deal. In particular, Austin strongly opposed the cancellation of air mail contracts based on ultimately unsubstantiated charges of fraud and collusion, writing “However unfortunate may seem the material and intimate results of the cancellations of the air-mail contracts and the acts which have succeeded that, the poignancy of the event was the grave and serious doubt excited in the minds of men and women of the purpose of the “New Deal” which is neither Republican nor Democratic. Is it an emergency policy? Or is it a permanent departure from free institutions and a surreptitious establishment, without the knowledge or consent of the people of ideas of government which are in conflict with the breeding, the traditions, and the settled purpose of the American people” (Mazuzan, 134). However, the politics of old were under increasing fire, even in Vermont. Austin’s opponent for reelection in 1934 was Fred C. Martin, FDR’s IRS collector for the state, who ran as a New Dealer and challenged Austin’s record as well as touted areas of Vermont that were assisted by New Deal programs. In a portend of Vermont’s future, this message got a lot of traction, particularly in the state’s western portion. In response Austin touted Vermont’s traditions, regarded the administration as pushing “foreign doctrines and socialistic ideas”, and asserted that there was a need for an independent voice from that of the Roosevelt Administration (Mazuzan, 138-139). Although the election result of Austin winning reelection was “business as usual”, he only won with 51% of the vote, and three western counties had voted for Martin. He would not change his ways for the most part in his next term on domestic issues and in 1935 he voted against Social Security. Only seven other senators either voted or paired against. In 1937, Austin would participate in the drafting of the Conservative Manifesto, a ten-point document proposing alternative policies to the New Deal that emphasized private enterprise and state as opposed to federal authority (Moore). In 1939, he was elected assistant minority leader and would serve as acting minority leader while Oregon’s Charles McNary was running for vice president.
Foreign Policy
Austin was well-versed in dissent, but this dissent was not confined to the ruling Democratic Party. Unlike most of his Republican colleagues before World War II, Austin was an internationalist. In 1935, he had voted for the US joining the World Court (one of FDR’s few policy defeats in his first term), and this debate largely portended the internationalist/anti-interventionist divide. Austin would vote for repealing the arms embargo in 1939, vote for the peacetime draft, be the Senate’s strongest supporter of Lend-Lease, and support permitting merchant ships to enter belligerent ports. He was even one of two Senate Republicans to oppose an amendment to the Lend-Lease bill striking aid for the USSR. He was interestingly at odds with his new colleague George Aiken both from right and left, as Aiken was significantly more liberal than him on domestic policy but was opposed to FDR’s foreign policy before World War II and more willing to permit age-based deferments to the draft. Austin strongly supported the creation of the United Nations, but kept national sovereignty in mind when he voted for the Connally Reservation, which excludes domestic disputes from the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice. During the 1940s, Austin also moderated somewhat on domestic issues, for instance supporting retaining the National Youth Administration in 1943 and his support (albeit limited) of wartime price control. On August 2, 1946, Austin resigned from the Senate as President Truman announced his appointment as Ambassador to the United Nations. Austin’s DW-Nominate score was a 0.106, which seemed to strongly reflect his internationalism given that his record was mostly oppositional to the New Deal.
UN Ambassador
As Ambassador to the UN, Austin became known as a forceful advocate of the West as a cold warrior. During this time, he allegedly gaffed, “I hope Arabs and Jews will settle their differences in a truly Christian spirit”, but his assistant who was present held that what Austin was communicating was that as a Christian he would be impartial towards Muslims and Jews regarding the creation of Israel (Traveling for History). In 1951, Austin presented to the United Nations Security Council a Soviet submachine gun found in possession of captured North Korean troops to demonstrate that the Soviets were providing arms to them.
He served until two days after the end of the Truman Administration, with President Eisenhower picking another New England internationalist who had served in the Senate to replace him in Henry Cabot Lodge Jr.
Austin retired from public service after and was forced to curb his activities after suffering a stroke in October 1956. He died on December 25, 1962. Times have changed much in Vermont since he left office in 1946. For instance, his old Senate seat is held by none other than Bernie Sanders, a marked contrast to Austin’s anti-New Deal politics.
The 1800 election marked some firsts in American history. For one thing, it was the first time a president lost reelection and the smooth transfer of power in this case was an important precedent in American as well as world history. However, there was a significant complication that could have derailed the public’s will in electing Thomas Jefferson.
Background
When the Constitution was adopted in 1788, the Founding Fathers were largely of the belief that political parties were to be avoided. President George Washington, who never identified with a party, certainly thought so. However, factionalism developed from the beginning with groups we retroactively call the Pro and Anti-Administration factions. The Pro faction of course sided with George Washington and was also supportive of Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton and Vice President John Adams, believing in the use of federal power to grow the nation through the funding of internal improvements to grow commerce and imposing tariffs to finance such developments. The Anti faction sided with Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, who idealized an agrarian society of the people and disliked the Hamiltonian system of government of protective tariffs to fund internal improvements. However, because the Constitution had it that the winner would be president and the runner-up would be vice president, it created a situation in which the president would have a political foe in the vice presidency, as happened with John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. By the 1796 election, America’s first two parties had developed in the Federalist and Republican parties. For the purposes of avoiding confusion, however, historians and others call the latter the Democratic-Republican Party, as today’s Republican Party traces its lineage to the Whigs, which traced their lineage to the Federalists. Despite the wishes of many Founders, the seeds for political parties had been planted from the very beginning. Although both Adams and Jefferson had their picks for vice president, the tickets were not official and the results made it so that under the Constitution Adams was president and Jefferson was vice president, creating a rather awkward situation in the White House. Imagine this applied to recent politics in addition to the greater role of the vice president, and you can imagine how well this would go over. Electors cast two votes each, but there was no distinction as to president and vice president in these votes.
The 1800 Election
In the 1800 election, the Federalist and Democratic-Republican parties officially selected president and vice president. Jefferson’s running mate was New York’s Aaron Burr and Adams’s running mate was South Carolina’s Charles C. Pinckney. In that election, the tides decisively turned against John Adams, with the Administration being unpopular due to numerous factors, including their support of greater relations with Britain, their tariffs, and the Alien and Sedition Acts, now widely regarded as an unconstitutional overreaction to fears about the influence of revolutionary France. Thomas Jefferson won with 60.6% of the vote as opposed to Adams’ 39.4%. The problem was that in the casting of electoral votes, the electors gave Jefferson and Burr 73 electoral votes, and because the electoral votes didn’t distinguish between president and vice president a Burr presidency was now possible! The Adams electors had been careful about this; his VP nominee Charles C. Pinckney received one less electoral vote than Adams, but this didn’t matter as the ticket hadn’t won. The conundrum had to be resolved by Congress, and the Federalists initially sought to make life difficult for Jefferson by voting for Burr and producing a stalemate, resulting in 35 ballots without a winner. Because state delegations were what mattered in the voting for president, this had the result of giving Delaware’s single representative, the staunchly Federalist James A. Bayard, the same power as the considerably more populous Democratic-Republican state of Virginia in determining the president. Burr, ever ambitious and far from the most ethical politician the US has ever had, was during this time accused of campaigning for himself being president as he did not rule himself out as a candidate for president. As a consequence, Burr would be completely frozen out of the Jefferson Administration’s inner circle. However, Alexander Hamilton realized that Jefferson was the preferable president. He didn’t like the idea of Burr being an instrument of the Federalists throughout his career. In 1804, Hamilton’s opinion on Burr reflected his views on him in 1801, asking, “Is he to be used by the Federalists, or is he a two-edged sword, that must not be drawn?” (Thomas Jefferson Monticello) He managed to convince some Federalists to switch their votes to Jefferson, and on the 36th ballot, Delaware’s Bayard cast his vote for Jefferson, thus producing the intended outcome of the people. An election being decided in the House of Representatives is, to say the least, not ideal as Americans would find out in 1824 (the election of the alleged “corrupt bargain”) and 1876, the only time in which a presidential candidate lost who got the majority, as opposed to the plurality, of the popular vote. Thus, Jefferson and his party proposed the 12th Amendment to the Constitution regarding the elections of the president and vice president. This amendment distinguished electoral votes for president and vice president, held whoever should have the greatest number of votes for vice president would be the vice president, and prohibited electors from a state for voting for more than one candidate from their state. The latter has had some relevance in decisions surrounding presidents; in 2000, Dick Cheney had to legally change his residence from Texas to Wyoming to still be Bush’s running mate, and this issue certainly factored in Trump declining to pick Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) as his running mate this year. In a close election year, it is best not to risk loss because Florida’s electors can’t vote for the ticket if there are two Florida residents. The Federalist Party strongly opposed this proposal, as they saw it as a way to benefit Jefferson and his party and to further reduce their influence in politics. Senator Samuel White of Delaware argued that “we have not given it a fair experiment,” that “we should be cautious how we touch it”, and cautioned that the measure had potential to increase corruption, holding that the result would be to “more than double the inducement to those candidates, and their friends, to tamper with the Electors, to exercise intrigue, bribery, and corruption…” (Alder).
However, the Federalist Party was quite weak in representation and the Senate voted for the amendment on December 2, 1803, by a vote of 21-10, with all Federalists opposing and one Democratic-Republican joining them. On December 8, 1803, the House voted to ratify the amendment 84-42, or with 2/3’s of the vote. All Federalists and five Democratic-Republicans voted against, but the Jeffersonian majority was strong enough to ratify. Among the opponents was future President John Quincy Adams.
The 12th Amendment, it is true, did serve Jefferson and the Democratic-Republican Party, but it also adjusted to the reality of the existence of political parties, which with 20/20 hindsight just seems inevitable. That being said, Federalists were understandably self-interested in their opposition to the 12th Amendment, trying to stave off their long-term decline. The 1804 election turned out to be a cakewalk for the popular Jefferson, who had a new running mate in New York’s George Clinton and won in a massive landslide against South Carolina’s Charles C. Pinckney, who only won Connecticut and the staunchly Federalist outpost of Delaware. The Federalist Party would gradually die out, but it would ironically technically outlast the Democratic-Republican Party. The Federalist Party was finally dissolved around 1828 while the Democratic-Republican Party fell victim to its own success as the party’s tent had become far too big and it was split over the candidacy of the populistic General Andrew Jackson, dissolving around 1825. That partisan politics didn’t end with the “Era of Good Feelings” that characterized James Monroe’s administration should be demonstrative that the “end of history” will not come without the end of humanity itself.
References
Alder, C. (2016, March 3). A Far Superior Method – the Original Electoral College. In Search of the American Constitutional Paradigm.
To Concur in the Senate Resolution to Submit for Approval to the Legislatures of the States, an Amendment to the Constitution Regulating the Election of the President and Vice President. (Speaker Voting in the Affirmative). Govtrack.
I will not be covering the election results in this post as the results are not all in yet. Although Trump officially won all seven swing states, there is still one Senate race that is too close to call and there are still House races to be counted before it is determined which party controls the chamber. Although I did not bring up Arizona’s Senate race, by implication of predicting Republicans would get 53 Senate seats I thought Democrat Ruben Gallego would win. Instead of writing about the election, today’s post is about a rather interesting fellow, perhaps Texas’s worst senator of all time.
Born to Southern aristocracy in South Carolina, Lewis Trezevant Wigfall (1816-1874) had all the advantages, save his birth parents, who died when he was young. Although he got a good education and was far from a stupid man, Wigfall was a highly ill-tempered and violent alcoholic who lacked work ethic (Mellon). In 1836, Wigfall served in the Second Seminole War for three months. Although he became a lawyer (it was not that hard to become one in those days), he would preoccupy himself with gambling, frequenting brothels, quarreling with fellow members of South Carolina’s planter aristocracy, and going to taverns and getting in fights. The products of Wigfall’s preoccupations included the failure of his law practice, squandering his inheritance, killing another man in a quarrel under disputed circumstances, and fighting a duel with future Congressman Preston Brooks, with both men seriously wounded and Brooks having to use a cane for the rest of his life as his hip was shattered. Brooks would use this cane to infamously beat Senator Charles Sumner for an anti-slavery speech in which he insulted his uncle. Wigfall would be greatly burdened by guilt over the man he killed, and for years the man would appear in his nightmares (Copperas Cove Leader Press). His belief system was formed not only through the circumstances of his upbringing but also his university education. The college president of South Carolina State, his alma mater, had in 1827 called for South Carolina to secede from the Union (Copperas Cove Leader Press). This was not the only way in which Wigfall was a man of his time and place. He also believed that the society of the planter aristocracy was the peak of civilization, was unapologetically pro-slavery, and believed in the virtues of chivalry (King). In 1841, Wigfall married Charlotte Cross, the marriage producing five children and resulting in him abandoning dueling. However, he still had a positive view of the practice, regarding it as a crucial “factor in the improvement of both the morals and manners of the community” (Wright, 32). By 1846, Wigfall’s money problems caught up to him as in addition to his irresponsible spending, he had to pay medical bills for his dying eldest son. His house and property were sold off at a Sheriff’s auction (McCawley). After his son died, he and his family moved to Texas for a new life. Wigfall also changed the spelling of his first name to Louis in the process.
In Texas, he got serious about practicing law and made for an effective attorney. Wigfall also serves in the state House from 1849 to 1850 as a Democrat where he was an early advocate of secession over the issues of slavery and tariffs. Like many other prominent people of his time and place, he owned slaves. Secession wasn’t popular at the time in Texas, and this stalled his career. However, as the events and tensions that led to the War of the Rebellion were accelerating in the 1850s, more Texans found Wigfall’s secessionist message appealing, and he proved a talented stump speaker. He was elected to the Texas State Senate in 1856, and the following year his speeches on the campaign trail were credited with the election of Hardin Runnels, a secessionist, as Texas’s governor over Senator Sam Houston (Drane).
Senator Wigfall
In 1859, Wigfall is elected to the Senate and is among the chamber’s staunchest fire-eaters, or advocates of secession. After Republican Abraham Lincoln is elected to the presidency in 1860, Southern states begin seceding from the Union, including Texas. Wigfall stayed in Washington until April 1861, gathering intelligence for the Confederacy and recruiting troops from Maryland. He was expelled from the Senate on July 11th for his support of the Confederacy.
Wigfall the Confederate
During the War of the Rebellion, he served as a brigadier general, commanding the Texas Brigade. However, his service was marred by his drinking, being visibly drunk on numerous occasions, including while on duty. In 1862, he was elected to the Confederate Senate.
In the Confederate Senate, Wigfall proved an advocate for state’s rights, including opposing Confederate President Jefferson Davis’s proposal for a Supreme Court. Davis was often frustrated in his efforts to centralize government as numerous Confederates did hold strong to the philosophy of state’s rights, and Wigfall was a frequent antagonist. He declared that Davis’s “pig-headedness and perverseness” were losing the war for the South (Drane). Wigfall was also a strong supporter of Robert E. Lee commanding all Confederate forces and was successful in enacting a conscription law and funding railroad construction. He was also unalterably opposed to conscripting black soldiers as a last-ditch effort, declaring, “Sir, I wish to live in no country where the man who blacks my boots or curries my horse is my equal” (Drane).
Wigfall fled to Britain after the war ended and his family later followed. He never met with the professional success he had in Texas again, and he and his family fell into poverty by 1869 with Wigfall only being able to get odd jobs (Drane). In 1872, Wigfall and his family returned to the United States after it was certain that he would not be tried for treason, and in January 1874 they moved back to Texas, settling in Galveston. Wigfall didn’t have the opportunity to attempt another comeback, becoming seriously ill; his decades of alcoholism had caught up with him and he suffered a fatal stroke on February 18th.
References
Drane, R.E. Louis T. Wigfall. Road to the Civil War.
Although many Americans take “one man, one vote” for granted today as a concept, this was far from always so, and this only changed sixty years ago. One can talk about the lower relative value of a vote in nationwide elections, but that’s not what I am discussing here. And for the record, I for one don’t mind too terribly that my vote as a resident of Washington is regarded as less important than the vote of someone from Nevada. If Washington voters really wanted greater relevance that badly, they would vote less Democratic. What I am discussing is the rough equality in population size of districts, and indeed states used to have full command over legislative apportionment. However, the postwar environment was one for change and for lessening the power of states. In 1947, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the federal government for title U.S. v. California, depriving the state of much revenue over loss of title over offshore oil deposits. In 1946, in his opinion of the decision Colegrove v. Green in which Illinois’ state legislative districts were upheld, Justice Felix Frankfurter, far from regarded as a political conservative, cautioned against the Supreme Court entering the “political thicket” of state legislative reapportionment. This remained the state of affairs during the Vinson Court, but after Chief Justice Fred Vinson’s death in 1953, Earl Warren was confirmed as chief justice. Warren had different ideas about the trajectory of the court in many ways, and in 1956 he was joined on the court by William Brennan, a man who President Eisenhower mistakenly assumed would be a conservative Democrat on the court. The team of Warren as leader and Brennan as the legal brains, the Warren Court, rather than Congress or the White House, took the lead on social policy. And of all the far-reaching decisions made by the Warren Court on civil rights and the rights of criminal defendants, Chief Justice Warren regarded their rulings on legislative reapportionment to be the most important. In 1962, Charles W. Baker and other Tennesseans sued the state, alleging that a 1901 reapportionment law was being ignored by the state, resulting in districts malapportioned by a failure to adjust to population growth and shifts (Oyez, Baker). the Supreme Court ruled in Baker v. Carr 6-2 that redistricting was a justiciable question under the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause. Justice Brennan wrote the opinion and was joined by Chief Justice Warren and Justice Black with Justices Douglas, Clark, and Stewart issuing concurring opinions. Dissenting were Justices Frankfurter and Harlan. Frankfurter was sticking to his guns on refusing to intervene on political questions and Harlan held that the 14th Amendment didn’t apply to voting, as this was the purview of the 15th Amendment. One justice was absent, however. Charles Whittaker, who was struggling to find his own way on the court ideologically, finally suffered a nervous breakdown and his inability to decide broke him. With the stage set for a ruling to rule legislative districts unconstitutional, this happened in Reynolds v. Sims (1964), with the court ruling 8-1 (Frankfurter had retired by this point), when the Supreme Court ruled that Alabama’s legislative districts were unconstitutional. Justice Stewart concurred, but held that only obvious violations of the equal protection clause should be struck down (Oyez, Reynolds). That same year, another case, Wesberry v. Sanders was decided 6-3. This decision held that Georgia’s Congressional districts were a violation of the Equal Protection Clause (Oyez, Wesberry). Joining Harlan in dissent this time were Stewart and Clark.
Congress Responds
The decisions on legislative reapportionment, particularly Reynolds v. Sims (1964), were met with outrage by conservatives in Congress. That year, Congressman William M. Tuck (D-Va.) proposed a bill removing state legislative apportionment from the jurisdiction of federal courts. This measure met with initial success as it passed the House 218-175 (D 96-140, R 122-35) on August 19th. Although the vote fell on largely ideological lines, there were a few interesting details in the vote. For instance, in a few states, the most conservative of its representatives were voting against it. In Oklahoma, Republican Page Belcher and Democrat John Jarman voted against, and they were the only two representatives from the state to vote against the Economic Opportunity Act that year. Same goes for Republican Gene Snyder of Louisville, Kentucky. In Tennessee, Democrats Richard Fulton (Nashville) and Clifford Davis (Memphis) plus Republican Bill Brock (Chattanooga) voted against. A few Republicans it seems had overriding interests in shaking up the Democratic status quo of the states they were representing. In Alabama, the state of the lawsuit, only George Huddleston (Birmingham) voted against, as Birmingham stood to gain in representation from Reynolds. Birmingham had had 41 times the population of one of Alabama’s districts yet still only got one representative as it was contained in one county (Oyez, Reynolds). it faltered in the Senate. This measure attracted a lot of support from Midwestern and Southern states, the conservatives eager to curb the power of growing cities. Senator Everett Dirksen (R-Ill.) was a particularly strong opponent of “one man, one vote” as he feared that Democratic Chicago would come to dominate the state’s politics (was he wrong on that one?) and he proposed an amendment to the Constitution in response that would permit one House of a bicameral legislature to be apportioned on factors other than population, including geography and political subdivisions. Liberal critics condemned the amendment as the “rotten borough amendment”. The amendment was voted on in the Senate both in 1965 and in 1966. In the first vote, the Senate failed to ratify 57-39 (D 28-36, R 29-3) on August 4th, the three Republican dissenters were Cale Boggs of Delaware, Clifford Case of New Jersey, and Jacob Javits of New York. The latter two were the most liberal of the Senate Republicans. The only three senators from the former Confederacy to vote against were Tennessee’s Ross Bass and Albert Gore and Texas’s liberal stalwart Ralph Yarborough. The second time around the vote failed 55-38 (D 26-35, R 29-3) on April 20th. The only senator whose position changed was Montana Democrat Lee Metcalf, who switched from “yea” to “nay” between the first and second votes.
Although the proposal could have potentially been voted on in the next Congress, the Senate’s numbers weren’t much better for conservatives…liberals had a strong bench even for politically popular proposals. The push for curbing the court’s authority on legislative apportionment died down and especially so after Dirksen’s death in 1969. Now state redistricting is a regular subject of judicial review, and multiple cases make their way up to the Supreme Court.
H.R. 11926. Bar the Supreme Court and Lower Federal Courts Jurisdiction Over Matters Dealing with State Legislative Reapportionment. Passage. Govtrack.
To Pass S.J. Res. 66, a Proposal for a Constitutional Amendment Permitting Apportionment of One House of a Bicameral State Legislature Using Population, Geography, and Political Subdivisions as Factors. Govtrack.
To Pass S.J. Res. 103, a Proposed Constitutional Amendment Permitting Apportionment of One House of a Bicameral State Legislature Using Population, Geography, and Political Subdivisions as Factors. Govtrack.
Mad Politics: The Bizarre, Fascinating, and Unknown of American Political History 