Daniel Brewster

Daniel Brewster
Daniel Baugh Brewster Jr. (November 23, 1923 – August 19, 2007) was an American attorney and politician from the state of Maryland. A Democrat, Brewster represented Maryland in the U.S. Senate from 1963 to 1969. Previously, he served as a member of the Maryland House of Delegates from 1950 to 1958 and as a U.S. representative from the 2nd congressional district of Maryland from 1959 to 1963. After his Senate career, and following a lengthy court battle, Brewster pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge of accepting an illegal gratuity.
Early life, education, and military service
Daniel Baugh Brewster, Jr. was born on November 23, 1923, in Baltimore County, Maryland, in the Green Spring Valley Region. He was the eldest of six children of Ottolie Y. (Wickes) and Daniel Baugh Brewster. Brewster was born into a wealthy family and was "raised in comfort on a beautifully appointed farm in Maryland fox-hunting country". The Washington Post described him as an "inheritor of the Baugh Chemical fortune". His father died when he was 10 years of age.
Brewster was a great-grandson of Benjamin H. Brewster, an attorney and politician from New Jersey who served as United States Attorney General from 1881 to 1885 and was himself a descendant of Mayflower passenger William Brewster. Brewster was also a great-great-great-grandson of Sarah Franklin Bache and Richard Bache and a great-great-great-great-grandson of Benjamin Franklin, one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. He was also related to George Mifflin Dallas (July 10, 1792 – December 31, 1864), a U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania and the 11th Vice President of the United States.
Education
Brewster was educated at the Gilman School in Baltimore City and at St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire. He attended college at Princeton University and Johns Hopkins University before the U.S. entry into World War II.
After the war, Brewster completed his undergraduate education at Johns Hopkins and enrolled at the University of Maryland Law School. He graduated from University of Maryland Law School in 1949 and was admitted to the bar the same year; he began practicing law in Towson, Maryland, soon after.
Military service
In 1942, Brewster enlisted in the United States Marine Corps. He was commissioned from the ranks in 1943. During World War II, he served in the Pacific theatre, including participating in the Battle of Guam and the Battle of Okinawa. For his actions during the war, he received a Bronze Star. He was wounded seven times, receiving a Purple Heart and a Gold Star in lieu of a second award. He left active duty in 1946 but continued in the Reserve until 1972, reaching the rank of colonel.
Political career
Maryland House of Delegates (1950-1958)
Brewster, a Democrat, was elected as to the Maryland House of Delegates in 1950. At age 26, he was one of the youngest members of Maryland's state legislature in history. He served in the House of Delegates until 1958.
U.S. House of Representatives (1959-1963)
In 1958, Brewster was elected to the House of Representatives from the 2nd district of Maryland, defeating the Republican candidate, J. Fife Symington, Jr. He was a member of the House during the Eighty-sixth (1959–1961) and Eighty-seventh Congresses (1961–1963),serving on the House Armed Services Committee and on the subcommittee on Military Personnel, Manpower Utilization, and Emergency Defense Transportation. In the House, Brewster voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1960.
U.S. Senate (1963-1969)
In 1962, Brewster ran for the United States Senate seat vacated by the retiring Republican senator John Marshall Butler. He defeated Congressman Edward Tylor Miller to become the first Democrat elected to the Senate from Maryland since 1946. Brewster served in the Senate from 1963 to 1969. In the Senate, Brewster voted in favor of the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1968, as well as the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the confirmation of Thurgood Marshall to the U.S. Supreme Court. Brewster was instrumental in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Brewster sought re-election to the Senate in 1968. However, "his complicated personal life, his support of the Vietnam War and his increasingly serious problems with alcohol took their toll", and he was defeated by Republican Charles Mathias.
In 1978, Brewster stated that the greatest mistake he made in his public life was his support for the Vietnam War.
1964 presidential election
In 1964, Brewster ran in the Democratic presidential primaries against segregationist George Wallace. As Lyndon Johnson refused to run nationally, "favorite sons" were run in his place against Wallace, such as Matthew E. Welsh of Indiana and John W. Reynolds of Wisconsin. Brewster won his state's primary but was embarrassed by Wallace's showing of 43 percent; he barely carried Baltimore County.
Legal troubles
In 1969, Brewster was indicted on 10 criminal counts of solicitation and acceptance of bribes while a United States Senator, in his role as a member of the Committee on Post Office and Civil Service; as well as two counts of accepting illegal gratuities. This stemmed from a campaign contribution by Spiegel, Inc., a mail-order firm. He contended that he had done nothing wrong.
At trial, the judge dismissed five of the charges, saying that Brewster's actions were protected under the Speech or Debate Clause of the U.S. Constitution. The prosecution appealed directly to the U.S. Supreme Court, which heard the case in 1971 and 1972. In June 1972, the Court held 6 to 3 in United States v. Brewster that the taking of illegal bribes was not protected speech, as taking of a bribe was not part of the "performance of a legislative function."
The charges were reinstated. Brewster stood trial and was found "not guilty" of the bribery charges but was convicted of accepting an unlawful gratuity "without corrupt intent." However, in August 1974, his conviction was overturned on appeal due to the trial judge's improper instructions to the jury. In 1975, he pleaded no contest to a single misdemeanor charge of accepting an illegal gratuity "without corrupt intent" and was fined and allowed to keep his law license. The government dropped the other charges.
Post-Senate career
After leaving the Senate, Brewster took up farming in Glyndon, Maryland.
As of 1978, Brewster operated his farm, worked as an alcoholism counselor at a veterans' hospital, led the Governor's Advisory Council on Alcoholism, and worked at "a quarter-way house in Baltimore".
Personal life and death
Brewster married Carol Leiper DeHavenon of Philadelphia in 1954. The couple had two sons, Daniel Baugh Brewster, Jr. (born 1956) and Gerry Leiper Brewster (born 1958).
In 1967, Brewster "attended the funeral of William Bullitt, the U.S. ambassador to France. There, he became reacquainted with Anne Bullitt, Mr. Bullitt's daughter and Mr. Brewster's first fiancee, who had jilted the senator while he was overseas during the war". Brewster divorced his first wife. On April 29, 1967, he married Anne Bullitt (1924–2007) at Glyndon, Maryland. Brewster's second marriage also ended in divorce.
Brewster was an alcoholic. According to his account, his drinking began to spiral out of control in 1964; by 1969, he was "'drinking with a vengeance'", and he almost died following an "alcoholic collapse". He sought inpatient rehabilitation multiple times, and reportedly became sober in 1973.
In 1976, Brewster married Judy Lynn Aarsand after meeting her at an alcohol treatment facility. The couple had three children, Danielle (born 1977) and twins Jennilie and Dana (born 1979).
Brewster survived large cell lymphoma and leukemia in the 1980s.
Brewster died of liver cancer on August 19, 2007, at age 83. He is buried at Saint Thomas' Episcopal Church Cemetery, Owings Mills, Maryland.
Legacy
Among Brewster's United States Senate staff in the 1960s were intern Nancy D'Alesandro (later Pelosi) of Baltimore, who as a Congresswoman from California would become Democratic leader and, in 2007, Speaker of the House of Representatives, and Steny Hoyer, who served on Senator Brewster's staff for five years from 1962 to 1966 and who served as House Majority Leader under Pelosi.
In 2023, a biography of Brewster, Self-Destruction: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of U.S. Senator Daniel B. Brewster, was published by Loyola University Maryland's Apprentice House Press, written by John W. Frece.
See also
List of American federal politicians convicted of crimes
List of federal political scandals in the United States
References
|-
|-
1923 births
2007 deaths
20th-century American lawyers
20th-century American politicians
Bullitt family
Candidates in the 1964 United States presidential election
Deaths from cancer in Maryland
Deaths from liver cancer
Democratic Party members of the United States House of Representatives from Maryland
Democratic Party United States senators from Maryland
Franklin family
Gilman School alumni
Johns Hopkins University alumni
Lawyers from Baltimore
Democratic Party members of the Maryland House of Delegates
Military personnel from Baltimore
Politicians from Baltimore
United States Marine Corps colonels
United States Marine Corps personnel of World War II
United States Marine Corps reservists
University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law alumni