[ i ]

VICE PRESIDENTS OF THE

UNITED STATES

1789–1993
[ ii ]

President Gerald R. Ford congratulating Vice President Nelson

Rockefeller after his swearing in on December 19, 1974
[ iii ]

VICE PRESIDENTS

OF THE UNITED STATES

1789–1993

Mark O. Hatfield

United States Senator

Donald A. Ritchie

Jo Anne McCormick Quatannens

Richard A. Baker

William T. Hull

U.S. Senate Historical Office

Edited by

Wendy Wolff U.S. Senate Historical Office

U.S. Government Printing Office

Washington
[ iv ]

104th Congress, 2d Session

S. Con. Res. 34

Senate Document 104–26

U.S. Government Printing Office

Washington: 1997

Supt. of Docs. No.: 052–071–01227–3

Much of the material in this volume is protected by copyright. Photographs have been used with the consent of their respective owners. No republication of copyrighted material may be made without permission in writing from the copyright holder.

Cover illustration: Vice President Henry A. Wallace (center); Senator Harry S. Truman (right), who had recently won the

Democratic nomination for vice president; and Senate Majority Leader Alben W. Barkley (left) in August 1944.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Vice Presidents of the United States, 1789–1993 / Mark O. Hatfield . . .

[et al.] ; edited by Wendy Wolff.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Vice-Presidents—United States—Biography. I. Hatfield, Mark O.,

1922– . II. Wolff, Wendy.

E176.49.V53 1997

973’ .09’9

[B]—DC21 96–51492

CIP

For sale by the U.S. Government Printing Office, Superintendent of Documents,

Mail Stop; SSOP, Washington, DC 20402–9328
[ v ]

To Gerald W. Frank

An exemplary citizen and leader in many civic causes.

A longtime friend, chief of staff, and confidant.

MOH

[ vii ]

CONTENTS

Alphabetical List of Vice Presidents ..................................................................................................... ix

Introduction ........................................................................................................................................... xi

1 John Adams

(George Washington, 1789-1797) .................................................................................... 1

2 Thomas Jefferson

(John Adams, 1797-1801) .................................................................................................. 15

3 Aaron Burr

(Thomas Jefferson, 1801-1805) ......................................................................................... 29

4 George Clinton (died in office, April 12, 1812)

(Thomas Jefferson, 1805-1809; James Madison, 1809-1812) ....................................... 47

5 Elbridge Gerry (died in office November 23, 1814)

(James Madison, 1813-1814) ............................................................................................ 61

6 Daniel D. Tompkins

(James Monroe, 1817-1825) .............................................................................................. 71

7 John Caldwell Calhoun (resigned December 28, 1832)

(John Quincy Adams, 1825-1829; Andrew Jackson, 1829-1832) ................................ 81

8 Martin Van Buren

(Andrew Jackson, 1833-1837) .......................................................................................... 103

9 Richard Mentor Johnson

(Martin Van Buren, 1837-1841) ....................................................................................... 119

10 John Tyler (succeeded to presidency, April 6, 1841)

(William Henry Harrison, 1841) ..................................................................................... 135

11 George Mifflin Dallas

(James K. Polk, 1845-1849) ............................................................................................... 149

12 Millard Fillmore (succeeded to presidency, July 10, 1850)

(Zachary Taylor, 1849-1850) ............................................................................................ 165

13 William Rufus King (died April 18, 1853)

(Franklin Pierce, 1853) ...................................................................................................... 179

14 John Cabell Breckinridge

(James Buchanan, 1857-1861) .......................................................................................... 191

15 Hannibal Hamlin

(Abraham Lincoln, 1861-1865) ........................................................................................ 201
[ viii ]

16 Andrew Johnson (succeeded to presidency, April 15, 1865)

(Abraham Lincoln, 1865) .................................................................................................. 211

17 Schuyler Colfax

(Ulysses S. Grant, 1869-1873) .......................................................................................... 221

18 Henry Wilson (died in office, November 22, 1875)

(Ulysses S. Grant, 1873-1875) .......................................................................................... 231

19 William Almon Wheeler

(Rutherford B. Hayes, 1877-1881) ................................................................................... 241

20 Chester Alan Arthur (succeeded to presidency, September 20, 1881)

(James A. Garfield, 1881) ................................................................................................. 249

21 Thomas Andrews Hendricks (died in office, November 25, 1885)

(Grover Cleveland, 1885) ................................................................................................. 259

22 Levi Parsons Morton

(Benjamin Harrison, 1889-1893) ...................................................................................... 267

23 Adlai Ewing Stevenson

(Grover Cleveland, 1893-1897) ........................................................................................ 277

24 Garret Augustus Hobart (died in office, November 21, 1899)

(William McKinley, 1897-1899) ....................................................................................... 287

25 Theodore Roosevelt (succeeded to presidency, September 14, 1901)

(William McKinley, 1901) ................................................................................................ 295

26 Charles Warren Fairbanks

(Theodore Roosevelt, 1905-1909) .................................................................................... 311

27 James Schoolcraft Sherman (died in office, October 30, 1912)

(William H. Taft, 1909-1912) ............................................................................................ 323

28 Thomas Riley Marshall

(Woodrow Wilson, 1913-1921) ........................................................................................ 335

29 Calvin Coolidge (succeeded to presidency, August 3, 1923)

(Warren G. Harding, 1921-1923) ..................................................................................... 345

30 Charles Gates Dawes

(Calvin Coolidge, 1925-1929) ........................................................................................... 357

31 Charles Curtis

(Herbert C. Hoover, 1929-1933) ...................................................................................... 371

32 John Nance Garner

(Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1933-1941) ................................................................................. 383

33 Henry Agard Wallace

(Frankin D. Roosevelt, 1941-1945) .................................................................................. 397

34 Harry S. Truman (succeeded to presidency, April 12, 1945)

(Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1945) .......................................................................................... 409
[ ix ]

35 Alben W. Barkley

(Harry S. Truman, 1949-1953) ......................................................................................... 421

36 Richard Milhous Nixon

(Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1953-1961) ............................................................................... 431

37 Lyndon Baines Johnson (succeeded to presidency, November 22, 1963)

(John F. Kennedy, 1961-1963) .......................................................................................... 451

38 Hubert Horatio Humphrey

(Lyndon B. Johnson, 1965-1969) ..................................................................................... 463

39 Spiro Theodore Agnew (resigned October 10, 1973)

(Richard M. Nixon, 1969-1973) ....................................................................................... 479

40 Gerald Rudolph Ford (succeeded to presidency, August 9, 1974)

(Richard M. Nixon, 1973-1974) ....................................................................................... 491

41 Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller

(Gerald R. Ford, 1974-1977) ............................................................................................. 503

42 Walter Frederick Mondale

(James E. (Jimmy) Carter, 1977-1981) ............................................................................ 515

43 George H.W. Bush

(Ronald Reagan, 1981-1989) ............................................................................................. 527

44 J. Danforth Quayle

(George H.W. Bush, 1989-1993) ...................................................................................... 541

Appendix: Major Party Presidential and Vice-Presidential Candidates, 1788-1992 ......................... 555

Bibliography ........................................................................................................................................... 559

Credits for illustrations ......................................................................................................................... 571

Index ....................................................................................................................................................... 573

[ xi ]

VICE PRESIDENTS

(Alphabetical)

Vice President Chapter Page

Adams, John 1 1

Agnew, Spiro Theodore 39 479

Arthur, Chester Alan 20 249

Barkley, Alben W. 35 421

Breckinridge, John Cabell 14 191

Burr, Aaron 3 29

Bush, George H. W. 43 527

Calhoun, John Caldwell 7 81

Clinton, George 4 47

Colfax, Schuyler 17 221

Coolidge, Calvin 29 345

Curtis, Charles 31 371

Dallas, George Mifflin 11 149

Dawes, Charles Gates 30 357

Fairbanks, Charles Warren 26 311

Fillmore, Millard 12 165

Ford, Gerald Rudolph 40 491

Garner, John Nance 32 383

Gerry, Elbridge 5 61

Hamlin, Hannibal 15 201

Hendricks, Thomas Andrews 21 259

Hobart, Garret Augustus 24 287

Humphrey, Hubert Horatio 38 463

Jefferson, Thomas 2 15

Johnson, Andrew 16 211

Johnson, Lyndon Baines 37 451

Johnson, Richard Mentor 9 119

King, William Rufus 13 179

Marshall, Thomas Riley 28 335

Mondale, Walter Frederick 42 515

Morton, Levi Parsons 22 267

Nixon, Richard Milhous 36 431

Quayle, J. Danforth 44 541

Rockefeller, Nelson Aldrich 41 503

Roosevelt, Theodore 25 295

Sherman, James Schoolcraft 27 323

Stevenson, Adlai Ewing 23 277

Tompkins, Daniel D. 6 71

Truman, Harry S. 34 409
[ xii ]

Vice President Chapter Page

Tyler, John 10 135

Van Buren, Martin 8 103

Wallace, Henry Agard 33 397

Wheeler, William Almon 19 241

Wilson, Henry 18 231
[ xiii ]

INTRODUCTION

Holding the least understood, most ridiculed, and most often ignored constitutional office in the federal government, American vice presidents have included some remarkable individuals. Fourteen of the forty-four former vice presidents became president of the United States—more than half of them after a

president had died. One defeated the sitting president with whom he served. One

murdered a man and became a fugitive. One joined the Confederate army and

led an invasion of Washington, D.C. One was the wealthiest banker of his era.

One received the Nobel Peace Prize and composed a popular melody. One served

as a corporal in the Coast Guard while vice president. One had cities in Oregon

and Texas named after him. Two resigned the office. Two were never elected by

the people. One was the target of a failed assassination plot. One was mobbed

in his car while on a goodwill mission. Seven died in office—one in his room

in the U.S. Capitol and two fatally stricken while on their way to preside over

the Senate. And one piano-playing vice president suffered political repercussions

from a photograph showing him playing that instrument while famous movie actress Lauren Bacall posed seductively on top of it.

I have encountered these and many other stories over the past four years

in the course of my inquiry into the history of the American vice-presidency. As

is apparent from such examples, the men who served as vice president of the

United States varied greatly in their talents and aptitude for the post. What they

generally had in common was political ambition and experience in public office.

Most hoped the position would prove a stepping stone to the presidency, but

some—old and tired near the close of their careers—simply hoped that it would

offer a quiet refuge from political pressures and turmoil.

The stories of these diverse individuals attempt to sketch the development

of the vice presidency itself—that colorful, important, and routinely disparaged

American political institution.

I. Constitutional Origins and Structural Changes

Electoral system

Our Constitution’s framers created the vice-presidency almost as an afterthought. In setting up a system for electing presidents, they devised an electoral

college and provided that each of its members was to vote for two persons, ‘‘of

whom one at least shall not be an Inhabitant of the same State with themselves.’’

In those days when loyalty to one’s state was stronger than to the new nation,

the framers recognized that individual electors might be inclined to choose a

leader from their own immediate political circle, creating the danger of a crippling deadlock, as no one candidate would win a plurality of all votes cast. By

being required to select one candidate from outside their own states, electors

would be compelled to look for individuals of national stature. Under the system
[ xiv ]

the framers created, the candidate receiving the most electoral votes would be

president. The one coming in second would be vice president.

In the election of 1800, however, the constitutional system for electing presidents broke down, as both Jefferson and Aaron Burr received the same number

of electoral votes. This impasse threw the contest into the House of Representatives, where for thirty-five separate ballots, neither candidate was able to gain a

majority. When the stalemate was finally broken, the House elected Jefferson

president, thus making Aaron Burr our third vice president. Within four years

of this deadlocked election, Congress had passed, and the necessary number of

states had ratified, the Twelfth Amendment to the Constitution, instituting the

present system wherein electors cast separate ballots for president and for vice

president.

Presidential succession

Although the office of vice president did not exist under the Continental

congresses or the Articles of Confederation, the concept of a concurrently elected

successor to the executive was not without precedent for the framers of the Constitution in 1787. Prior to the Revolution, lieutenant governors presided over the

governors’ councils of the royal colonies—which, in their legislative capacities,

functioned as upper houses. John Adams was certainly familiar with this arrangement, since the lieutenant governor presided over the upper house in his own

state of Massachusetts. After the states declared their independence, they adopted

new constitutions, retaining, in some instances, earlier forms recast to meet current needs. As Alexander Hamilton noted in The Federalist No. 68, New York’s

1777 constitution provided for ‘‘a Lieutenant Governor chosen by the people at

large, who presides in the senate, and is the constitutional substitute for the Governor in casualties similar to those, which would authorise the vice-president to

exercise the authorities and discharge the duties of the president.’’ The Constitution established the office of vice president primarily to provide a successor in

the event of the president’s death, disability, or resignation.

The document, however, was vague about the way the presidential succession would work, stating only that, in cases of presidential death or disability,

the ‘‘Powers and Duties of the said Office . . . shall devolve on the Vice President’’ (Article II, section 1). What did ‘‘devolve’’ mean? Would the vice president

become acting president until another was chosen, or would he become president

in his own right? A half-century would pass before the nation would have to address that murky constitutional language. Although the Constitution’s framers

kept their intentions about presidential succession shrouded in ambiguity, they

left no doubt about vice-presidential succession. There was to be none. ‘‘[I]n the

absence of the Vice President, or when he shall exercise the Office of the President of the United States’’ the Senate would simply choose a president pro

tempore.

The framers’ failure to provide a method for filling a vice-presidential vacancy continued to plague the nation. In 1792 Congress made a first stab at addressing the problem by adopting the Presidential Succession Act, providing that,

if a president should die when there was no vice president, the Senate president

pro tempore and the Speaker of the House of Representatives, in that order,

would succeed to the office. In 1886, responding to a concern that few presidents
[ xv ]

pro tempore had executive branch experience, Congress altered the line of succession to substitute for the congressional officials cabinet officers in order of rank,

starting with the secretary of state. In 1947, after the vice-presidency had been

vacant for most of a presidential term, Congress again changed the line of succession. Concerned that cabinet officers had not been elected, it named the House

Speaker as the first official to succeed if a president died during a vacancy in

the vice-presidency, followed by the president pro tempore.

Finally, after the death of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 and the resulting vice-presidential vacancy, Congress debated what became the second constitutional amendment related to the structure of the vice-presidency. In 1967, the

Twenty-fifth Amendment, addressing presidential vacancy and disability, became

part of our Constitution. The absence of any provision for filling a vice-presidential vacancy had become intolerable in the nuclear age. Added impetus for

the change came from a growing public concern at the time about the advanced

ages of President pro tempore Carl Hayden, who was eighty, and House Speaker

John W. McCormack, who was seventy-six. The amendment states that the president may appoint a vice president to fill a vacancy in that office, subject to approval by both houses of Congress. Before a decade had passed, the provision

was used twice, first in 1973 when President Nixon appointed Gerald R. Ford to

replace Spiro Agnew, who had resigned, and again in 1974, with the appointment

of Nelson Rockefeller after Nixon himself resigned and Ford became president.

The amendment also sets forth very specifically the steps that would permit the

vice president to serve as acting president if a president becomes ‘‘unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.’’ Each of these changes further reflected the increased importance of the office.

Vice-presidential duties

The framers also devoted scant attention to the vice president’s duties, providing only that he ‘‘shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no Vote, unless they be evenly divided’’ (Article I, section 3). In practice, the number of times

vice presidents have exercised this right has varied greatly. More than half the

total number of 233 tie-breaking votes occurred before 1850, with John Adams

holding the record at 29 votes, followed closely by John C. Calhoun with 28.

Since the 1870s, no vice president has cast as many as 10 tie-breaking votes.

While vice presidents have used their votes chiefly on legislative issues, they

have also broken ties on the election of Senate officers, as well as on the appointment of committees in 1881 when the parties were evenly represented in the

Senate.

The vice president’s other constitutionally mandated duty was to receive

from the states the tally of electoral ballots cast for president and vice president

and to open the certificates ‘‘in the Presence of the Senate and House of Representatives,’’ so that the total votes could be counted (Article II, section 1). Only

a few happy vice presidents—John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Martin Van Buren,

and George Bush—had the pleasure of announcing their own election as president. Many more were chagrined to announce the choice of some rival for the

office.

Several framers ultimately refused to sign the Constitution, in part because

they viewed the vice president’s legislative role as a violation of the separation
[ xvi ]

of powers doctrine. Elbridge Gerry, who would later serve as vice president, declared that the framers ‘‘might as well put the President himself as head of the

legislature.’’ Others thought the office unnecessary but agreed with Connecticut

delegate Roger Sherman that ‘‘if the vice-President were not to be President of

the Senate, he would be without employment, and some member [of the Senate,

acting as presiding officer] must be deprived of his vote.’’

Under the original code of Senate rules, the presiding officer exercised great

power over the conduct of the body’s proceedings. Rule XVI provided that

‘‘every question of order shall be decided by the President [of the Senate], without debate; but if there be a doubt in his mind, he may call for a sense of the

Senate.’’ Thus, contrary to later practice, the presiding officer was the sole judge

of proper procedure and his rulings could not be turned aside by the full Senate

without his assent.

The first two vice presidents, Adams and Jefferson, did much to shape the

nature of the office, setting precedents that were followed by others. During most

of the nineteenth century, the degree of influence and the role played within the

Senate depended chiefly on the personality and inclinations of the individual involved. Some had great parliamentary skill and presided well, while others found

the task boring, were incapable of maintaining order, or chose to spend most of

their time away from Washington, leaving the duty to a president pro tempore.

Some made an effort to preside fairly, while others used their position to promote

the political agenda of the administration.

During the twentieth century, the role of the vice president has evolved into

more of an executive branch position. Now, the vice president is usually seen as

an integral part of a president’s administration and presides over the Senate only

on ceremonial occasions or when a tie-breaking vote may be needed. Yet, even

though the nature of the job has changed, it is still greatly affected by the personality and skills of the individual incumbent.

II. The Individuals

Political Experience

Most of our former vice presidents have brought to that office significant

public service experience. Thirty-one of the forty-four served in Congress, and fifteen had been state or territorial governors. Five—Schuyler Colfax, Charles Curtis, John Garner, Alben Barkley, and Lyndon Johnson—gave up powerful congressional leadership posts to run for that much-derided office. Another, House

Minority Leader Gerald Ford, observed that he had been trying for twenty-five

years to become Speaker of the House. ‘‘Suddenly, I am a candidate for the President of the Senate, where I can hardly ever vote, and where I will never get a

chance to speak.’’

Nineteen former vice presidents came to their role as president of the Senate

already familiar with the body, having served as U.S. senators. Several vice presidents later returned to serve again in the Senate, among them former President

Andrew Johnson. Nine vice presidents won renomination and election to a second term. Two of these, George Clinton and John C. Calhoun, held the office

under two different presidents.
[ xvii ]

Of the fourteen vice presidents who fulfilled their ambition by achieving the

presidency, eight succeeded to the office on the death of a president. Three of

these and six other former vice presidents were later elected president. Four

former vice presidents ran unsuccessfully for president. Two unlucky vice presidents, Hannibal Hamlin and Henry Wallace, were dropped from the ticket after

their first term, only to see their successors become president months after taking

office, when the assassination of Abraham Lincoln made Andrew Johnson president and the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt raised Harry Truman to the presidency. Similarly, when Spiro Agnew resigned, he was replaced under the Twenty-fifth Amendment by Gerald R. Ford, who became president when Richard M.

Nixon resigned less than a year later.

The vice-presidency was generally held by men of mature years—thirty-two

of them were in their fifties or sixties when they took office—but ten were in

their forties, and the youngest, John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky, was thirty-six

at the beginning of his term. At seventy-two, Alben Barkley, another Kentuckian,

was the oldest when his term began.

The earliest vice presidents: Adams and Jefferson

The nation’s first vice presidents were men of extraordinary ability. Both

John Adams and Thomas Jefferson gained the office as runners-up in presidential

contests, with the support of those who believed they were amply qualified to

hold the top office. Each recognized, in assuming this new and as yet loosely defined position, that his actions would set precedents for future vice presidents.

But one precedent established by Adams and Jefferson would not be repeated for

over three decades; although both men won election as president immediately

following their terms as vice president, no sitting vice president would repeat this

pattern until 1836, when Martin Van Buren succeeded Andrew Jackson. (The gap

thereafter was even longer. More than 150 years elapsed before George Bush won

the presidency in 1988 at the conclusion of his eight years as Ronald Reagan’s

vice president.)

During his two vice-presidential terms, Adams maintained a cordial, but distant, relationship with the president, who sought his advice only occasionally. In

the Senate, Adams played a more active role, particularly during his first term.

On at least one occasion, he persuaded senators to vote against legislation he opposed, and he frequently lectured the body on procedural and policy matters. He

supported Washington’s policies by casting the twenty-nine tie-breaking votes

that no successor has equalled.

Thomas Jefferson, learning in 1797 that he had been elected vice president,

and always happy to return to his beloved Monticello, expressed his pleasure. ‘‘A

more tranquil and unoffending station could not have been found for me. It will

give me philosophical evenings in the winter [while at the Senate] and rural days

in the summer [at Monticello].’’ Unlike Adams, who shared the political beliefs

of the president with whom he served, Jefferson and his president belonged to

different political parties. Although two later vice presidents, George Clinton and

John C. Calhoun, joined with anti-administration forces in their efforts to prevent

the reelection of the presidents with whom they served, Jefferson’s situation

would prove to be unique in all the nation’s history. No one expected Jefferson

to be President Adams’ principal assistant. Instead he devoted his four-year term
[ xviii ]

to preparing himself for the next presidential election and to drafting a guidebook

on legislative procedure. Jefferson hoped that his Manual of Parliamentary Practice

would allow him and his successors to preside over the Senate with fairness, intelligence, and consistency. That classic guide has retained its usefulness to both

the Senate and the House of Representatives through the intervening two

centuries.

Nineteenth-century vice presidents

Adoption of the Twelfth Amendment, together with the strategy employed

by the Republicans in their successful effort to capture the presidency in 1800—

and to retain it for the next quarter century—proved to have a serious impact

on the overall quality of individuals drawn to the vice-presidency.

Aaron Burr, whose refusal to defer to Jefferson had precipitated the electoral

crisis of 1800, became one of the most maligned and mistrusted figures of his era

and, without question, the most controversial vice president of the early republic.

He was also a man of extraordinary ability, and a key player in New York politics—a consideration of overriding importance for Republicans, given the fact that

New York’s electoral votes accounted for over 15 percent of the total needed to

achieve an electoral majority. Burr was the first of a series of vice presidents who

hailed from the northern states, chosen more for their ability to bring geographical balance to presidential tickets headed by Virginia Republicans than for their

capacity to serve as president. During the quarter century that the ‘‘Virginia dynasty’’ presidents (Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe) held sway, the

vice-presidency was the province of men widely regarded as party hacks or men

in the twilight of illustrious careers. Much of the scholarship on the vice-presidency makes but passing mention of these individuals, or focuses on their obvious shortcomings. But these vice presidents (Burr, George Clinton, Elbridge

Gerry, and Daniel D. Tompkins)—all of them New Yorkers, with the single exception of Elbridge Gerry, a Massachusetts man—helped cement the ‘‘VirginiaNew York’’ alliance that enabled the Republicans to control the presidency for

six consecutive terms. Their ties to local and state party organizations, which they

maintained during their vice-presidential terms, helped ensure the continued allegiance of northern Republicans. For the most part, these vice presidents presided

over the Senate with an easy or indifferent hand, while a series of presidents pro

tempore attended to administrative matters at the beginning and end of each legislative session.

John C. Calhoun’s vice-presidency stands in vivid contrast to the experience

of his immediate predecessors. He accepted the second office, under John Quincy

Adams, after his 1824 presidential bid failed, offering himself as Andrew Jackson’s running mate four years later in hopes of eventually succeeding Jackson.

A man of formidable intellect and energy, Calhoun approached his legislative duties with a gravity, dedication, and concern for maintaining order not seen since

the time of Adams and Jefferson. A scrupulous guardian of the Senate’s written

rules, he disdained its unwritten customs and practices. After a quarter century

of ineffective or incapacitated vice presidents, the Senate chafed under Calhoun’s

tutelage and began a lengthy examination of the role of its presiding officer. Calhoun’s endorsement of nullification effectively killed his chances of becoming
[ xix ]

president. In 1836, his successor and rival, Martin Van Buren, became the first

vice president since Jefferson to win the presidency.

Richard Mentor Johnson, Martin Van Buren’s vice president, came to the office along a unique path not yet followed by any subsequent vice president. The

Twelfth Amendment provides that if no vice-presidential candidate receives a

majority, the Senate shall decide between the two highest vote getters. A controversial figure who had openly acknowledged his slave mistress and mulatto

daughters and devoted himself more to the customers of his tavern than to his

Senate duties, Johnson received one electoral vote less than the majority needed

to elect. The Senate therefore met on February 8, 1837, and elected Johnson by

a vote of 33 to 16 over the runner-up.

Johnson’s successor, John Tyler, wrote an important chapter in American

presidential and vice-presidential history in 1841 when William Henry Harrison

became the first president to die in office. Interpreting the Constitution in a way

that might have surprised its framers, Vice President Tyler refused to consider

himself as acting president. What ‘‘devolved’’ on him at Harrison’s death were

not the ‘‘powers and duties’’ of the presidential office, he contended, but the office itself. Tyler boldly claimed the presidency, its full $25,000 salary (vice presidents were paid 20 percent of that amount—$5,000), and all its prerogatives. Congressional leaders and members of Harrison’s cabinet who were inclined to challenge Tyler eventually set aside their concerns in the face of the accomplished

fact. Nine years later, when Vice President Millard Fillmore succeeded to the

presidency after Zachary Taylor’s death, no serious question was raised about the

propriety of such a move.

During the nineteenth century, the vice-presidency remained essentially a

legislative position. Those who held it rarely attended cabinet meetings or otherwise involved themselves in executive branch business. Their usefulness to the

president generally ended with the election. While those who had served in Congress might offer helpful political information and connections to a presidential

candidate, or might attract electoral votes in marginal states, their status and

value evaporated after inauguration day. In fact, as political circumstances altered

during their first term, some presidents began considering a new running mate

for the reelection campaign. Abraham Lincoln, for example, had no need of Vice

President Hannibal Hamlin of Maine for a second term, since his state was certain to vote to reelect Lincoln in 1864. Success being less assured in the border

state of Tennessee, party leaders chose Senator Andrew Johnson to replace Hamlin in the second position.

Relegated to presiding over the Senate, a few nineteenth-century vice presidents took that task seriously. Men such as George Dallas, Levi Morton, and Garret Hobart studied the Senate’s rules and precedents and presided most effectively. Others, such as Henry Wilson—Grant’s second vice president—spent their

time as they pleased. As vice president, Wilson wrote a three-volume history of

slavery before dying in his Capitol office.

The vice-presidency in the nineteenth century seldom led to the White

House, because vice presidents of the era were rarely men of presidential stature.

Of the twenty-one individuals who held that office from 1805 to 1899, only Martin Van Buren managed to be elected president. Four others achieved the presi-
[ xx ]

dency only because the incumbent died, and none of those four accidental presidents subsequently won election in his own right.

Twentieth-century vice presidents

The twentieth century opened without a vice president. Vice President Garret Augustus Hobart had died in November 1899, leaving the office vacant, as

it had been on ten previous occasions for periods ranging from a few months to

nearly four years. The nation had gotten along just fine. No one much noticed.

People noticed the next vice president. Cowboy, scholar, naturalist, impetuous enthusiast for numerous ideas and causes, Theodore Roosevelt owed his

nomination to the desire of New York state political bosses to get him out of the

state’s politics. The former Rough Rider held presidential ambitions and worried

that the job could be ‘‘a steppingstone to . . . oblivion.’’ He also felt that he lacked

the financial resources needed to entertain on the grand scale expected of his immediate predecessors. Roosevelt argued in vain that the party should find someone else, but Republican leaders wanted him, believing he would bring a new

kind of glamour and excitement to President McKinley’s candidacy. When his

magnetic presence at the national convention fired the enthusiasm of his partisans, the nomination was his. Roosevelt then defied conventional practice by

waging an active national campaign for the ticket, publicizing the Republican

cause in a way that President McKinley could not. Had not an assassin’s bullet

in September 1901 propelled Roosevelt to the White House, his impact on the

vice-presidency during a four-year term would most likely have been profound.

In 1904, Theodore Roosevelt became the first vice president who succeeded to the

presidency to be elected president in his own right.

For the next forty years, the role of the office grew slowly but perceptibly.

Party leaders rather than presidential candidates continued to make vice-presidential selections to balance the ticket, often choosing someone from a different

party faction who was not personally close to the presidential nominee. In fact,

Presidents Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and Herbert Hoover protested the individuals selected to be their running mates. The feeling was often

mutual. When Charles Curtis gave the customary vice-presidential inaugural address in the Senate chamber, he omitted any reference to his running mate, President Hoover. A few minutes later, Hoover returned the favor by neglecting to

mention Curtis in his official remarks on the Capitol’s east portico.

The principal twentieth-century growth in the vice president’s role occurred

when the national government assumed a greater presence in American life, beginning with the New Deal era and extending through the cold war years. That

era brought to the vice-presidency such major political leaders as House Speaker

John ‘‘Cactus Jack’’ Garner and Senate Majority Leaders Alben Barkley and Lyndon Johnson. This distinguished cast of elected vice presidents also included Senators Harry Truman, Richard Nixon, Hubert Humphrey, Walter Mondale, and Al

Gore (who is serving as vice president at this writing and is therefore not included in this book). The group also includes George Bush, whose previous experience ranged from the House of Representatives to the Central Intelligence Agency. With the exception of Garner and possibly Truman, these men were selected

not by party wheelhorses but by the presidential candidates themselves. Competence and compatibility became the most sought-after qualities in a running
[ xxi ]

mate. These characteristics were especially evident in the Truman-Barkley and

Clinton-Gore tickets, both of which set aside the traditional selection considerations of geographical and ideological balance.

During the twentieth century, the focus of the vice-presidency has shifted

dramatically from being mainly a legislative position to a predominately executive post. As modern-era presidents began playing an increasing role as legislative agenda setters, their vice presidents regularly attended cabinet meetings and

received executive assignments. Vice presidents represented their presidents’ administrations on Capitol Hill, served on the National Security Council, chaired

special commissions, acted as high level representatives of the government to foreign heads of state, and assumed countless other chores—great and trivial—at the

president’s direction. Beginning with Richard Nixon, they have occupied spacious

quarters in the Executive Office Building and assembled staffs of specialists to extend their reach and influence. From fewer than 20 staff members at the end of

Nixon’s vice-presidency, the number increased to 60 during the 1970s, with the

addition of not only political and support staff but advisers on domestic policy

and national security. Walter Mondale expanded the vice president’s role as presidential adviser, establishing the tradition of weekly lunches with the president,

and subsequent vice presidents have continued to be active participants in their

administrations.

Expansion of the office did not come without a cost, however. In assuming

substantive policy responsibilities, vice presidents often ran afoul of cabinet secretaries whose territories they invaded. As administration lobbyists, they also irritated members of Congress. My favorite example of this problem occurred in

1969. President Nixon had pledged to give his vice president a significant policymaking role and—for the first time—an office in the White House itself. Spiro

Agnew was determined to make the most of that role and to expand his legislative functions as well. Since he lacked previous legislative experience, he had the

Senate parliamentarian tutor him on the intricacies of Senate floor procedure.

Soon he began to inject himself into the course of Senate proceedings, contrary

to the well-worn practice that constrained his predecessors. During the debate

over the Anti-Ballistic-Missile Treaty, Agnew approached Idaho Republican Senator Len Jordan and asked how he was going to vote. ‘‘You can’t tell me how

to vote!’’ said the shocked senator. ‘‘You can’t twist my arm!’’ At the next regular

luncheon of Republican senators, Jordan accused Agnew of breaking the separation of powers by lobbying on the Senate floor, and announced the ‘‘Jordan

Rule.’’ Under his rule, if the vice president tried to lobby him on anything, the

senator would automatically vote the other way. Agnew concluded from this experience, ‘‘after trying for a while to get along with the Senate, I decided I would

go down to the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue and try playing the executive

game.’’

In 1886 the Senate initiated the practice of honoring former vice presidents

by acquiring marble busts of those who had held the office, with the expenses

paid from the contingent fund of the Senate. The previous year, in 1885, the Senate had placed in the Vice President’s Room a bust of Henry Wilson, who had

died in that room a decade earlier. Under the 1886 resolution, busts of former

vice presidents, beginning with those of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, were

placed in the niches around the gallery level of the Senate chamber. Once those
[ xxii ]

twenty spaces were filled, the Senate adopted an amended resolution in 1898 to

place future vice-presidential busts elsewhere in the Senate wing of the Capitol.

The practice continues today.

III. Goals and Execution of the Project

During the commemoration of the bicentennials of the U.S. Constitution and

the U.S. Congress in the late 1980s, I realized that the vice-presidency and those

who have held the office were largely neglected in the various two-hundred-year

celebrations. Clearly, there was a need to look more closely at both the institution

and the individuals. Although the debate over the Twenty-fifth Amendment in

the 1960s had inspired a number of books on the history and operations of the

vice-presidency, most of those works were narrowly drawn, serving only to make

a case for or against the amendment. The ones that took a biographical approach

focused on just the most ‘‘significant’’ vice presidents.

Yet, obscure as many of those who have held this office may be today, most

were active in public service at both the state and federal levels, often reaching

the vice-presidency after long and valuable careers in both Congress and the executive branch. Studying the lives of even the men of less than presidential stature and the reasons they were selected for the post—as well as the reasons they

failed to reach the White House—provides useful insights into the history of our

nation’s political process. Examining the successive stories of the former vice

presidents in chronological order illuminates the way in which their strengths

and personalities helped to shape the evolution of this office that was so vaguely

defined by the framers. The changes in the vice-presidency, in turn, shed light

on the nation’s political development; for example, the growing importance of the

office in the decades since World War II mirrors the expansion of the role of the

federal government during that period.

Having conceived the idea for this project, I met in the summer of 1991 with

the director of the Senate Historical Office. We discussed a plan that would focus

on the role of all our former vice presidents within the institutional context of

the United States Senate. We agreed that the resulting book should include for

each vice president: brief biographical background, the circumstances surrounding his selection, a summary of the major issues confronting the nation during

his service, the nature of his relations with the president, his broader national and

international role, and his contributions to the office and the nation. Such a study

had never before been undertaken. In the course of our work, we conducted a

major search for source materials and consulted all significant book- and articlelength biographies of these forty-four men, as well as appropriate Senate records.

Acknowledgements

When I proposed this book to Dr. Richard A. Baker, the Senate historian, he

expressed great interest, sharing my view that this topic had received too little

attention. The staff of the Senate Historical Office prepared the forty-four chapters

discussing each of the former vice presidents, under the direction of Secretary of

the Senate Kelly D. Johnston and his predecessors, Walter J. Stewart, Martha

Pope, and Sheila Burke. I carefully reviewed and critiqued each of these chapters

in draft and have reviewed them again in proofs. I believe that, collectively, these
[ xxiii ]

essays make the case that the institution of the vice-presidency and those who

have held the office have made a substantial contribution to our nation.

I would particularly like to thank Dr. Baker for his crucial role in shaping

the concept and content of this book. He and his colleagues, Dr. Donald A. Ritchie and Dr. Jo Anne McCormick Quatannens, wrote the bulk of the chapters,

drawing upon their deep understanding of the nation’s political history, as well

as the extensive professional expertise that each has in a particular period of the

Senate’s history. Others who participated by writing one or more chapters were

Mark Clifford, Richard Hill, Jonathan Marcus, and the late William T. Hull. Mr.

Hull, a gifted historian whose promising career was tragically cut short by cancer

in the fall of 1995, contributed the chapters on Theodore Roosevelt, Charles Fairbanks, and Richard Nixon, as well as offering insights into his particular interest,

the Republican party in the period between the New Deal and the Eisenhower

administration.

Others in the Senate Historical Office who contributed to this project were

Wendy Wolff, who prepared the appendix and index and edited the text for publication, and Matthew T. Cook, who researched and assisted me in selecting the

illustrations.

As one who has greatly enjoyed and profited from the study of American

presidential history, I relish this project and trust that it will add new color to

the rich mosaic of our nation’s political development. Statesmen and murderers;

scholars and scoundrels; piano players and composers; military heroes and invading generals—what a fascinating lot!

MARK O. HATFIELD
[ 1 ]

Chapter 1

JOHN ADAMS

1789–1797
JOHN ADAMS
[ 3 ]

Chapter 1

JOHN ADAMS

1st Vice President: 1789–1797

It is not for me to interrupt your deliberations by any general observations on the state of the nation,

or by recommending, or proposing any particular measures.

—JOHN ADAMS

On April 21, 1789, John Adams, the first vice

president of the United States, began his duties

as president of the Senate.

Adams’ role in the administration of George

Washington was sharply constrained by the constitutional limits on the vice-presidency and his

own reluctance to encroach upon executive prerogative. He enjoyed a cordial but distant relationship with President Washington, who sought

his advice on occasion but relied primarily on the

cabinet. Adams played a more active role in the

Senate, however, particularly during his first

term.

As president of the Senate, Adams cast twentynine tie-breaking votes—a record that no successor has ever threatened.1 His votes protected the

president’s sole authority over the removal of appointees, influenced the location of the national

capital, and prevented war with Great Britain.

On at least one occasion he persuaded senators

to vote against legislation that he opposed, and

he frequently lectured the Senate on procedural

and policy matters. Adams’ political views and

his active role in the Senate made him a natural

target for critics of the Washington administration. Toward the end of his first term, he began

to exercise more restraint in the hope of realizing

the goal shared by many of his successors: election in his own right as president of the United

States.

A Family Tradition of Public Service

John Adams was born in Braintree, Massachusetts, on October 19, 1735, into a family with an

established tradition of public service. As a child,

he attended town meetings with his father, who

was at various times a militia officer, a deacon

and tithe collector of the local congregation, and

selectman for the town of Braintree. Determined

that his namesake attend Harvard College, the

elder Adams sent young John to a local ‘‘dame’’

school and later to Joseph Cleverly’s Latin

school. Adams was an indifferent student until

the age of fourteen, when he withdrew from the

Latin school to prepare for college with a private

tutor, ‘‘Mr. Marsh.’’ 2 Adams entered Harvard

College in 1751, and plunged into a rigorous

course of study. After his graduation in 1755, he

accepted a position as Latin master of the

Worcester, Massachusetts, Grammar School. The

following year, finding himself ‘‘irresistibly impelled’’ toward a legal career, Adams apprenticed himself to James Putnam, a local attorney.

He continued to teach school while reading law

at night until his admission to the Boston Superior Court bar on November 6, 1758.3

His legal studies completed, Adams returned

to Braintree to establish his legal practice, which

grew slowly. In the spring of 1761, on the death

of his father, Adams inherited the family farm—

a bequest that enabled him, as a ‘‘freeholder’’
[ 4 ]

JOHN ADAMS

with a tangible interest in the community, to take

an active part in town meetings. He served on

several local committees and led a crusade to require professional certification of practitioners

before the local courts. In February 1761, on one

of his regular trips to Boston to attend the Court

of Common Pleas, Adams observed James Otis’

arguments against the writs of assistance before

the Massachusetts Supreme Court. Adams recalled in later years that Otis’ impassioned oratory against these general search and seizure

warrants convinced Adams that England and the

colonies had been ‘‘brought to a Collision,’’ and

left him ‘‘ready to take arms’’ against the writs.

However, Adams’ political career remained limited to local concerns for several more years until

1765, when he played a crucial role in formulating Massachusetts’ response to the Stamp Act.4

A Lawyer and a Legislator

As a member of the town meeting, Adams

drafted instructions for the Braintree delegate to

the Massachusetts provincial assembly, known

as the General Court, which met in October 1765

to formulate the colony’s response to the Stamp

Act. Adams’ rationale, that the colonies could not

be taxed by a parliament in which they were not

represented, and that the stamp tax was ‘‘inconsistent with the spirit of the common law and of

the essential fundamental principles of the British constitution,’’ soon appeared in the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston News Letter. His cousin,

Samuel Adams, incorporated John’s argument in

the instructions that he drafted for the Boston

delegates, and other towns adopted the same

stance.5

With the repeal of the Stamp Act, Adams focused his energies on building his law practice

and attending to the demands of the growing

family that followed from his marriage to Abigail Smith in 1764. Finding few opportunities for

a struggling young attorney in Braintree, the

young family moved in 1768 to Boston, where

John’s practice flourished. Adams soon found

himself an active participant in the local resistance to British authority as a consequence of his

defense of John Hancock before the vice admiralty court for customs duty violations. He argued in Hancock’s defense that the Parliament

could not tax the colonies without their express

consent and added the charge, soon to become

a part of the revolutionary rhetoric, that the viceadmiralty courts violated the colonists’ rights as

Englishmen to trial by jury. Although the crown

eventually withdrew the charges against Hancock, Adams continued his assault on the viceadmiralty courts in the instructions he wrote for

the Boston general court representatives in 1768

and 1769.6

Adams subsequently agreed to defend the British soldiers who fired upon the Boston mob during the spring of 1770. His able and dispassionate

argument on behalf of the defendants in the Boston massacre case won his clients’ acquittal, as

well as his election to a brief term in the Massachusetts assembly, where he was one of Governor Thomas Hutchinson’s most vocal opponents. The enmity was mutual; when the general

court elected Adams to the Massachusetts council, or upper house, in 1773, the governor denied

Adams his seat. The general court reelected

Adams the following year, but Hutchinson’s successor, Thomas Gage, again prevented him from

serving on the council. The general court subsequently elected Adams to the first and second

Continental congresses. Although initially reluctant to press for immediate armed resistance,

Adams consistently denied Parliament’s right to

regulate the internal affairs of the colonies, a position he elaborated in a series of thirteen newspaper essays published under the name

‘‘Novanglus’’ during the winter and spring of

1775. Like Adams’ other political writings, the

Novanglus essays set forth his tenets in rambling

and disjointed fashion, but their primary focus—

the fundamental rights of the colonists—was

clear.7

An Architect of Independence

An avowed supporter of independence in the

second Continental Congress, Adams was a

member of the committee that prepared the Declaration of Independence. Although Thomas Jefferson of Virginia composed the committee draft,

Adams’ contribution was no less important. As

Jefferson later acknowledged, Adams was the

Declaration’s ‘‘pillar of support on the floor of

Congress, its ablest advocate and defender.’’
[ 5 ]

JOHN ADAMS

New Jersey delegate Richard Stockton and others

styled Adams ‘‘the ‘Atlas’ of independence.’’ 8

Adams further served the cause of independence

as chairman of the Board of War and Ordnance.

Congress assigned to the board the onerous tasks

of recruiting, provisioning, and dispatching a

continental army; as chairman, Adams coordinated this Herculean effort until the winter of

1777, when Congress appointed him to replace

Silas Deane as commissioner to the Court of

Paris.9

Adams served as commissioner until the

spring of 1779. On his return to Massachusetts,

he represented Braintree in the state constitutional convention. The convention asked him to

draft a model constitution, which it adopted with

amendments in 1780. Adams’ model provided

for the three branches of government—executive, legislative, and judicial—that were ultimately incorporated into the United States Constitution, and it vested strong powers in the executive. ‘‘His Excellency,’’ as the governor was to

be addressed, was given an absolute veto over

the legislature and sole power to appoint officers

of the militia.10 Throughout his life, Adams was

an advocate of a strong executive. He believed

that only a stable government could preserve social order and protect the liberties of the people.

His studies of classical antiquity convinced him

that republican government was inherently vulnerable to corruption and inevitably harbored ‘‘a

never-failing passion for tyranny’’ unless balanced by a stabilizing force.11 In 1780, Adams

considered a strong executive sufficient to

achieve this end. In later years, he grew so fearful

of the ‘‘corruption’’ he discerned in popular elections that he suggested more drastic alternatives—a hereditary senate and a hereditary executive—which his opponents saw as evidence

of his antidemocratic, ‘‘monarchist’’ intent.

Before the Massachusetts convention began its

deliberations over Adams’ draft, Congress appointed him minister plenipotentiary to negotiate peace and commerce treaties with Great

Britain and subsequently authorized him to negotiate an alliance with the Netherlands, as well.

Although Adams’ attempts to negotiate treaties

with the British proved unavailing, in 1782 he finally persuaded the Netherlands to recognize

American independence—‘‘the happiest event

and the greatest action of my life, past or future.’’ 12 Adams remained abroad as a member

of the peace commission and ambassador to the

Court of St. James until 1788. On his return to

the United States, he found to his surprise that

he was widely mentioned as a possible candidate

for the office of vice president of the United

States.13

1788 Election

Although George Washington was the inevitable and unanimous choice for president, there

were several contenders for the second office. At

the time of the first federal elections, political

sentiment was divided between the ‘‘Federalists,’’ who supported a strong central government and toward that end had worked to secure

the ratification of the Constitution, and the

‘‘Antifederalist’’ advocates of a more limited national government. Adams was the leading Federalist candidate for vice president. The New

England Federalists strongly supported him, and

he also commanded the allegiance of a few key

Antifederalists, including Arthur Lee and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia. Benjamin Rush and

William Maclay of Pennsylvania also backed

Adams, hinting that he could assure his election

by supporting their efforts to locate the national

capital in Philadelphia. Other contenders were

John Hancock of Massachusetts, whose support

for the new Constitution was predicated on his

assumption that he would assume the second office, and George Clinton, a New York Antifederalist who later served as vice president

under Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.14

As much as he coveted the vice-presidency,

Adams did not actively campaign for the office,

refusing the deal proffered by Rush and Maclay.

Maclay later explained that the Pennsylvanians

played to Adams’ ‘‘Vanity, and hoped by laying

hold of it to render him Useful.’’ They failed to

take into account the strong Puritan sense of

moral rectitude that prevented Adams from

striking such a bargain, even to achieve an office

to which he clearly felt entitled. Maclay, who

served in the Senate for the first two years of

Adams’ initial vice-presidential term, never forgave Adams and petulantly noted in his diary
[ 6 ]

JOHN ADAMS

that the vice president’s ‘‘Pride Obstinacy And

Folly’’ were ‘‘equal to his Vanity.’’ 15

The principal threat to Adams came from Federalist leader Alexander Hamilton, who perceived in the New Englander’s popularity and

uncompromising nature a threat to his own career aspirations. Acting secretly at Hamilton’s

behest, General Henry Knox tried but failed to

persuade Adams that he was too prominent a

figure in his own right to serve as Washington’s

subordinate. When Hamilton realized that

Adams commanded the overwhelming support

of the New England Federalists and could not be

dissuaded, he grudgingly backed his rival but resolved that Adams would not enjoy an overwhelming electoral victory.16

Hamilton exploited to his advantage the constitutional provision governing the election of

the president and vice president. Article II, section 1 of the Constitution authorized each presidential elector to cast votes ‘‘for two Persons, of

whom one at least shall not be an Inhabitant of

the same State with themselves.’’ The candidate

with the greatest number of electoral votes

would become president and the candidate with

the next-highest number would become vice

president. The Constitution’s framers created the

vice-presidency, in part, to keep presidential

electors from voting only for state or regional favorites, thus ensuring deadlocks with no candidate receiving a majority vote. By giving each

presidential elector two ballots, the framers

made it possible to vote for a favorite-son candidate as well as for a more nationally acceptable

individual. In the event that no candidate received a majority, as some expected would be the

case after George Washington passed from the

national stage, the House of Representatives

would decide the election from among the five

largest vote getters, with each state casting one

vote.

The framers, however, had not foreseen the potential complications inherent in this ‘‘doubleballoting’’ scheme. Hamilton realized that if each

Federalist elector cast one vote for Washington

and one for Adams, the resulting tied vote would

throw the election into the House of Representatives. Hamilton persuaded several electors to

withhold their votes from Adams, ostensibly to

ensure Washington a unanimous electoral victory. Adams was bitterly disappointed when he

learned that he had received only thirty-four

electoral votes to Washington’s sixty-nine, and

called his election, ‘‘in the scurvy manner in

which it was done, a curse rather than a

blessing.’’ 17

Hamilton’s duplicity had a more lasting effect

on the new vice president’s political fortunes: the

election confirmed his fear that popular elections

in ‘‘a populous, oppulent, and commercial nation’’ would eventually lead to ‘‘corruption Sedition and civil war.’’ The remedies he suggested—

a hereditary senate and an executive appointed

for life 18—prompted charges by his opponents

that the vice president was the ‘‘monarchist’’

enemy of republican government and popular

liberties.

The First Vice President

Adams took office as vice president on April

21, 1789.19 Apart from his legislative and ceremonial responsibilities, he did not assume an active

role in the Washington administration. Although

relations between the two men were cordial, if

somewhat restrained, a combination of personality, circumstance, and principle limited Adams’

influence. Adams attended few cabinet meetings,

and the president sought his counsel only infrequently.20 Hesitant to take any action that might

be construed as usurping the president’s prerogative, he generally forwarded applications for offices in the new government to Washington. As

president of the Senate, Adams had no reservations about recommending his friend Samuel

Allyne Otis for the position of secretary of the

Senate, but declined to assist Otis’ brother-inlaw, General Joseph Warren, and Abigail’s brother-in-law, Richard Cranch, in obtaining muchneeded sinecures. Adams was similarly hesitant

when Washington solicited his advice regarding

Supreme Court nominations.21

Although Washington rarely consulted Adams

on domestic or foreign policy matters, the two

men, according to Adams’ most recent biographer, John Ferling, ‘‘jointly executed many

more of the executive branch’s ceremonial undertakings than would be likely for a contemporary president and vice-president.’’ 22 Wash-
[ 7 ]

JOHN ADAMS

ington invited the vice president to accompany

him on his fall 1789 tour of New England—an

invitation that Adams declined, although he met

the president in Boston—and to several official

dinners. The Washingtons routinely extended

their hospitality to John, and to Abigail when she

was in the capital, and Adams frequently accompanied the president to the theater.23

For his own part, Adams professed a narrow

interpretation of the vice president’s role in the

new government. Shortly after taking office, he

wrote to his friend and supporter Benjamin Lincoln, ‘‘The Constitution has instituted two great

offices . . . and the nation at large has created

two officers: one who is the first of the two

. . . is placed at the Head of the Executive, the

other at the Head of the Legislative.’’ The following year, he informed another correspondent

that the office of vice president ‘‘is totally detached from the executive authority and confined to the legislative.’’24

But Adams never really considered himself

‘‘totally detached’’ from the executive branch, as

the Senate discovered when he began signing

legislative documents as ‘‘John Adams, Vice

President of the United States.’’ Speaking for a

majority of the senators, William Maclay of

Pennsylvania quickly called Adams to account.

‘‘[A]s President of the Senate only can [y]ou sign

or authenticate any Act of that body,’’ he lectured the vice president. Uneasy as some senators were at the prospect of having a member

of the executive branch preside over their deliberations, they would permit Adams to certify

legislation as president of the Senate, but not as vice

president. Never one to acquiesce cheerfully

when he believed that important principles were

at stake, Adams struck an awkward compromise, signing Senate documents as ‘‘John

Adams, Vice President of the United States and

President of the Senate.’’ 25

To the extent that Adams remained aloof from

the administration, his stance was as much the

result of personality and prudence as of principle. He held the president in high personal esteem and generally deferred to the more forceful

Washington as a matter of course.26 Also, as his

biographer Page Smith has explained, the vice

president always feared that he would become

a ‘‘scapegoat for all of Washington’s unpopular

decisions.’’ During the furor over Washington’s

1793 proclamation of American neutrality, a

weary Adams confided to his wife that he had

‘‘held the office of Libellee General long

enough.’’ 27

In the Senate, Adams brought energy and

dedication to the presiding officer’s chair, but

found the task ‘‘not quite adapted to my character.’’ 28 Addressing the Senate for the first time

on April 21, 1789, he offered the caveat that although ‘‘not wholly without experience in public

assemblies,’’ he was ‘‘more accustomed to take

a share in their debates, than to preside in their

deliberations.’’ Notwithstanding his lack of experience as a presiding officer, Adams had definite notions regarding the limitations of his office. ‘‘It is not for me,’’ he assured the Senate, ‘‘to

interrupt your deliberations by any general observations on the state of the nation, or by recommending, or proposing any particular

measures.’’ 29

President of the Senate

Adams’ resolve was short-lived. His first incursion into the legislative realm occurred shortly after he assumed office, during the Senate debates over titles for the president and executive

officers of the new government. Although the

House of Representatives agreed in short order

that the president should be addressed simply as

‘‘George Washington, President of the United

States,’’ the Senate debated the issue at some

length. Adams repeatedly lectured the Senate

that titles were necessary to ensure proper respect for the new government and its officers.

Pennsylvania Senator William Maclay complained that when the Senate considered the

matter on May 8, 1789, the vice president ‘‘repeatedly helped the speakers for Titles.’’ The following day, Adams ‘‘harangued’’ the Senate for

forty minutes. ‘‘What will the common people of

foreign countries, what will the sailors and soldiers say,’’ he argued, ‘‘George Washington

president of the United States, they will despise

him to all eternity.’’ The Senate ultimately deferred to the House on the question of titles, but

not before Adams incurred the lasting enmity of

the Antifederalists, who saw in his support for
[ 8 ]

JOHN ADAMS

titles and ceremony distressing evidence of his

‘‘monarchist’’ leanings.30

Adams was more successful in preventing the

Senate from asserting a role in the removal of

presidential appointees. In the July 14, 1789, debates over the organization of executive departments, several senators agreed with William

Maclay that removals of cabinet officers by the

president, as well as appointments, should be

subject to the advice and consent of the Senate.

Adams and his Federalist allies viewed the proposal as an attempt by Antifederalists to enhance

the Senate’s powers at the expense of the executive. After a series of meetings with individual

senators, Adams finally convinced Tristram Dalton of Massachusetts to withdraw his support for

Maclay’s proposal. Richard Bassett of Delaware

followed suit. When the Senate decided the question on July 18 in a 9-to-9 vote, Adams performed

his sole legislative function by casting a tiebreaking vote against Maclay’s proposal.31 His

action was purely symbolic in this instance, however, as a tie vote automatically defeats a

measure.

During the protracted debates over the Residence bill to determine the location of the capital,

Adams thwarted another initiative dear to

Maclay’s heart: a provision to establish the permanent capital ‘‘along the banks of the

Susquehannah’’ in convenient proximity to the

Pennsylvania senator’s extensive landholdings.

The disgruntled speculator attributed his defeat

to the vice president’s tie-breaking votes and the

‘‘barefaced partiality’’ of Adams’ rulings from

the chair. Maclay was enraged that Adams allowed frequent delays in the September 24, 1789,

debates, which permitted Pennsylvania Senator

Robert Morris, whose sympathies lay with Philadelphia, to lobby other senators against the

Susquehannah site. After Morris’ motion to

strike the provision failed, Adams granted his

motion to reconsider over Maclay’s strenuous

objection that ‘‘no business ever could have a decision, if minority members, were permitted to

move reconsiderations under every pretense of

new argument.’’ Adams ultimately cast the deciding vote in favor of Morris’ motion.32

The vice president’s frequent and pedantic lectures from the chair earned him the resentment

of other senators, as well. Shortly after the second session of the First Congress convened in

January 1790, John Trumbull warned his friend

that he faced growing opposition in the Senate,

particularly among the southern senators.

Adams’ enemies resented his propensity for joining in Senate debates and suspected him of

‘‘monarchist’’ sentiments. Trumbull cautioned

that ‘‘he who mingles in debate subjects himself

to frequent retorts from his opposers, places himself on the same ground with his inferiors in

rank, appears too much like the leader of a party,

and renders it more difficult for him to support

the dignity of the chair and preserve order and

regularity in the debate.’’ Although Adams denied that he had ever exceeded the limits of his

authority in the Senate, he must have seen the

truth in Trumbull’s observations, for he assured

his confidant that he had ‘‘no desire ever to open

my mouth again upon any question.’’ Acutely

aware of the controversy over his views and behavior, Adams became less an active participant

and more an impartial moderator of Senate

debates.33

Although stung by Trumbull’s comments and

the censure of less tactful critics, Adams continued to devote a considerable portion of his time

and energy to presiding over the Senate; Abigail

Adams observed that her husband’s schedule

‘‘five hours constant sitting in a day for six

months together (for he cannot leave his Chair)

is pretty tight service.’’ 34

In the absence of a manual governing Senate

debates, Adams looked to British parliamentary

procedures for guidance in deciding questions of

order.35 Despite complaints by some senators

that Adams demonstrated inconsistency in his

rulings, Delaware Senator George Read in 1792

praised his ‘‘attentive, upright, fair, and

unexceptionable’’ performance as presiding officer, and his ‘‘uncommonly exact’’ attendance in

the Senate.36

Still, as a national figure and Washington’s

probable successor, Adams remained controversial, particularly as legislative political parties

emerged in the 1790s. Although sectional differences had in large part shaped the debates of

the First Congress, two distinct parties began to

develop during the Second Congress in 1791 to
[ 9 ]

JOHN ADAMS

1793. The Federalists, adopting the name earlier

used by supporters of the Constitution, were the

conservative, prosperous advocates of a strong

central government. They supported Treasury

Secretary Alexander Hamilton’s proposals to assume and fund the states’ revolutionary debts,

encourage manufactures, and establish a Bank of

the United States. Hamilton’s fiscal program appealed to the mercantile, financial, and artisan

segments of the population but sparked the

growth of an agrarian-based opposition party—

initially known as Antifederalists and later as

‘‘Republicans’’—led by Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson.37 Adams supported Hamilton’s fiscal proposals and, with the Federalists still firmly

in command of the Senate and the controversy

over public finance largely confined to the House

of Representatives, 38 he emerged unscathed

from the partisan battles over fiscal policy.

The outbreak of the French Revolution

prompted a more divisive debate. Republicans

greeted the overthrow of the French monarchy

with enthusiasm while the Federalists heard in

the revolutionaries’ egalitarian rhetoric a threat

to the order and stability of Europe and America.

France’s 1793 declaration of war on Great Britain

further polarized the argument, with the Republicans celebrating each British defeat, the Federalists dreading the consequences of a French

victory, and both belligerents preying on American shipping at will. While Washington attempted to hold the United States to a neutral

course, his vice president—who considered political parties ‘‘the greatest political evil under

our Constitution,’’ and whose greatest fear was

‘‘a division of the republic into two great parties,

each arranged under its leader, and concerting

measures in opposition to each other’’—became,

as he had anticipated, the target of concerted Republican opposition.39

Adams articulated his thoughts on the French

Revolution and its implications for the United

States in a series of newspaper essays, the Discourses on Davila. He predicted that the revolution, having abolished the aristocratic institutions necessary to preserve stability and order,

was doomed to failure. He warned that the United States would share a similar fate if it failed

to honor and encourage with titles and appropriate ceremony its own ‘‘natural aristocracy’’ of

talented and propertied public men. Adams even

went so far as to predict that a hereditary American aristocracy would be necessary in the event

that the ‘‘natural’’ variety failed to emerge. The

Davila essays were consistent with Adams’ longstanding belief that a strong stabilizing force—

a strong executive, a hereditary senate, or a natural aristocracy—was an essential bulwark of

popular liberties. They also reflected his recent

humiliation at the hands of Alexander Hamilton.

Still smarting from his low electoral count in the

1788 presidential election, Adams observed in

the thirty-second essay that ‘‘hereditary succession was attended with fewer evils than frequent

elections.’’ As Peter Shaw has noted in his study

of Adams’ character, ‘‘it would be difficult to

imagine . . . a more impolitic act.’’ The Discourses

on Davila, together with Adams’ earlier support

for titles and ceremony, convinced his Republican opponents that he was an enemy of republican government. Rumors that Washington

would resign his office once the government was

established on a secure footing, and his near

death from influenza in the spring of 1790, added

to the Republicans’ anxiety. In response, they

mounted an intense but unsuccessful campaign

to unseat Adams in the 1792 presidential

election.40

Second Term

Persuaded by Hamilton, Jefferson, and Madison to run for a second term, George Washington

was again the obvious and unanimous choice for

president. Adams was still the preferred vicepresidential candidate of the New England Federalists, but he faced a serious challenge from Republican candidate George Clinton of New York.

Although many of his earlier supporters, including Benjamin Rush, joined the opposition in support of Clinton, Adams won reelection with 77

electoral votes to 50 for Clinton.41 On March 4,

1793, in the Senate chamber, Washington took

the oath of office for a second time. Adams, as

always, followed Washington’s example but

waited until the Third Congress convened on

December 2, 1793, to take his second oath of office. No one, apparently, gave much thought to

the question of whether or not the nation had a
[ 10 ]

JOHN ADAMS

vice president—and a successor to Washington,

should he die in office or become incapacitated—

during the nine-month interval between these

two inaugurations.42

Early in Adams’ second vice-presidential term,

France declared war on Great Britain. Washington’s cabinet supported the president’s policy of

neutrality, but its members disagreed over the

implementation of that policy. Hamilton urged

the president to issue an immediate proclamation of American neutrality; Jefferson warned

that only Congress could issue such a declaration

and counseled that delaying the proclamation

would force concessions from France and England. Recognizing the United States’ commercial

dependence on Great Britain, Hamilton proposed that the nation conditionally suspend the

treaties that granted France access to U. S. ports

and guaranteed French possession of the West

Indies. Secretary of State Jefferson insisted that

the United States honor its treaty obligations.

The secretaries similarly disagreed over extending recognition to the emissary of the French republic, ‘‘Citizen’’ Edmond Geneˆt.

Adams considered absolute neutrality the only

prudent course. As a Federalist, he was no supporter of France, but his reluctance to offend a

former ally led him to take a more cautious

stance than Hamilton. Although Washington

sought his advice, Adams scrupulously avoided

public comment; he had ‘‘no constitutional vote’’

in the matter and no intention of ‘‘taking any

side in it or having my name or opinion quoted

about it.’’ 43 After the president decided to recognize Geneˆt, Adams reluctantly received the controversial Frenchman but predicted that ‘‘a little

more of this indelicacy and indecency may involve us in a war with all the world.’’ 44

Although Adams, as vice president, had ‘‘no

constitutional vote’’ in the administration’s foreign policy, he cast two important tie-breaking

foreign policy votes in the Senate, where Republican gains in the 1792 elections had eroded the

Federalist majority. In both cases, Adams voted

to prevent war with Great Britain and its allies.

On March 12, 1794, he voted in favor of an embargo on the domestic sale of vessels and goods

seized from friendly nations. The following

month, he voted against a bill to suspend American trade with Great Britain.45 Despite these

votes, Adams made every effort to stay aloof

from the bitter controversy over foreign policy,

remaining silent during the Senate’s 1795 debates over the controversial Jay Treaty. Privately,

Adams considered the Jay Treaty essential to

avert war with Great Britain, but the Federalists

still commanded sufficient votes to ratify the

treaty without the vice president’s assistance.46

1796 Election

The popular outcry against the Jay Treaty

strengthened Washington’s resolve to retire at

the end of his second term, and he announced

his intentions in September 1796. Although the

majority of the Federalists considered Adams the

logical choice to succeed Washington, Hamilton

preferred their more pliant vice-presidential candidate, former minister to Great Britain Thomas

Pinckney. The Republican candidates were

Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr. Once again

Hamilton proved a greater threat to Adams than

the opposition candidates. The Federalists lost

the vice-presidency because of Hamilton’s

scheming and came dangerously close to losing

the presidency as well. Repeating the tactics he

had used to diminish Adams’ electoral count in

the 1788 election, Hamilton tried to persuade

South Carolina’s Federalist electors to withhold

enough votes from Adams to ensure Thomas

Pinckney’s election to the presidency. This time,

however, the New England Federalist electors

learned of Hamilton’s plot and withheld sufficient votes from Pinckney to compensate for the

lost South Carolina votes. These intrigues resulted in the election of a president and vice

president from opposing parties, with presidentelect Adams receiving 71 electoral votes to 68 for

Thomas Jefferson.47

Vice president Adams addressed the Senate for

the last time on February 15, 1797. He thanked

current and former members for the ‘‘candor and

favor’’ they had extended to him during his eight

years as presiding officer. Despite the frustrations and difficulties he had experienced as vice

president, Adams left the presiding officer’s

chair with a genuine regard for the Senate that

was in large part mutual. He expressed gratitude

to the body for the ‘‘uniform politeness’’ ac-
[ 11 ]

JOHN ADAMS

corded him ‘‘from every quarter,’’ and declared

that he had ‘‘never had the smallest misunderstanding with any member of the Senate.’’ Notwithstanding his earlier pronouncements in

favor of a hereditary Senate, Adams assured the

members that the ‘‘eloquence, patriotism, and

independence’’ that he had witnessed had convinced him that ‘‘no council more permanent

than this . . . will be necessary, to defend the

rights, liberties, and properties of the people, and

to protect the Constitution of the United States.’’

The Senate’s February 22 message expressing

‘‘gratitude and affection’’ and praising his ‘‘abilities and undeviating impartiality’’ evoked a

frank and emotional response from Adams the

following day. The Senate’s ‘‘generous approbation’’ of his ‘‘undeviating impartiality’’ had

served to ‘‘soften asperities, and conciliate animosities, wherever such may unhappily exist,’’

for which the departing vice president offered

his ‘‘sincere thanks.’’ 48

President

Adams served as president from 1797 to 1801.

He failed to win a second term due to the popular outcry against the repressive Alien and Sedition Acts, which he had reluctantly approved as

necessary wartime measures, as well as the rupture in the Federalist party over the end of hostilities with France. Hamilton was determined to

defeat Adams after the president responded favorably to French overtures for peace in 1799,

and he was further outraged when Adams

purged two of his sympathizers from the cabinet

in May 1800. In a letter to Federalist leaders,

Hamilton detailed his charges that Adams’ ‘‘ungovernable indiscretion’’ and ‘‘distempered jealousy’’ made him unfit for office. With the Federalist party split between the Hamilton and

Adams factions, Adams lost the election. After

thirty-five ballots, the House of Representatives

broke the tied vote between Republican presidential candidate Thomas Jefferson and vicepresidential candidate Aaron Burr in Jefferson’s

favor.49

Adams spent the remainder of his life in retirement at his farm in Quincy, Massachusetts. In an

attempt to vindicate himself from past charges

that he was an enemy of American liberties,

Adams in 1804 began his Autobiography, which

he never finished. He also wrote voluminous letters to friends and former colleagues toward the

same end. In 1811, Adams resumed his friendship with Jefferson, and the two old patriots

began a lively correspondence that continued for

fifteen years. Although largely content to observe political events from the seclusion of Quincy and to follow the promising career of his eldest son, John Quincy, Adams briefly resumed his

own public career in 1820, when he represented

the town of Quincy in the Massachusetts constitutional convention. Adams died at Quincy on

July 4, 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of American

independence.50
[ 12 ]

NOTES 1Linda Dudik Guerrero, in her study of Adams’ vice

presidency, found that Adams cast ‘‘at least’’ thirty-one

votes, a figure accepted by Adams’ most recent biographer.

The Senate Historical Office has been able to verify only

twenty-nine tie-breaking votes by Adams—still a record, although George Dallas claimed that he cast thirty tie-breaking votes during his vice-presidency (See Chapter 11, page

158 and note 35). Linda Dudik Guerrero, John Adams’ Vice

Presidency, 1789–1797: The Neglected Man in the Forgotten Office (New York, 1982), p. 128; U.S., Congress, Senate, The

Senate 1789–1989, by Robert C. Byrd, S. Doc. 100–20, 100th

Cong., 1st sess., vol. 4, Historical Statistics, 1789–1992, 1993,

p. 640; John Ferling, John Adams: A Life (Knoxville, 1992),

p. 311. 2 Peter Shaw, The Character of John Adams (Chapel Hill,

1976), pp.1–6; Page Smith, John Adams (Westport, CT, 1969,

reprint of 1962–1963 ed.), 1:1–14. 3Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, ed. L.H.

Butterfield, The Adams Papers, Series I (Cambridge, 1962),

pp. 263–64; Smith, 1:27–43. 4 Shaw, pp. 43–46; Smith, 1:54–80; Theodore Draper, A

Struggle for Power: The American Revolution (New York,

1996), pp. 184–89. 5 Smith, 1:80–81.

6 Shaw, p. 57; Smith, 1:94–104.

7 Shaw, pp. 58–85; Smith, 1:121–26.

8 Shaw, pp. 94–98; Ferling, pp. 149–50.

9 Shaw, pp. 106–7; Smith, 1:266–67, 285–350.

10 Shaw, pp. 128–30; Smith, 1:438–44.

11 Shaw, pp. 218–22.

12 Ibid., pp. 131–63; Smith, 1:444–535.

13 Shaw, pp. 157–225.

14 Kenneth R. Bowling and Helen E. Veit, eds., The Diary

of William Maclay and Other Notes On Senate Debates, Documentary History of the First Federal Congress of the United

States of America, vol. 9 (Baltimore, 1988), pp. 85–86; Smith,

2:734–37. 15Diary of William Maclay, pp. 85–86; Shaw, p. 225, Smith,

2:737–39. 16 Smith, 2:739–41.

17 Ibid., 2:739–42.

18 Shaw, pp. 231–32.

19Linda Grant De Pauw, Charlene Bangs Bickford, and

LaVonne Marlene Siegel, eds., Senate Legislative Journal, Documentary History of the First Federal Congress of the United

States of America, vol. 1 (Baltimore, 1972), pp. 21–23. 20 Shaw, p. 226; Guerrero, pp. 169–83.

21 John R. Howe, Jr., The Changing Political Thought of John

Adams (Princeton, 1966), pp. 212–13; Shaw, p. 288; Smith,

2:761–63; ‘‘Biographical Sketches of the Twenty-Two Secretaries of the United States Senate,’’ undated report prepared by the U.S. Senate Historical Office. In 1789, Adams

asked Washington to appoint his improvident son-in-law,

Colonel William Smith, federal marshal for New York—a

request that the president obliged. In 1791, Adams sought

Smith’s appointment as minister to Great Britain. Although

the president did not send Smith to the Court of St. James,

he subsequently named Smith supervisor of revenue for

New York. Adams’ concern for his daughter ‘‘Nabby’’ and

her children prompted these rare departures from his customary practice. Ferling, pp. 323–24; Guerrero, p. 82, fn. 41. 22 Ferling, p. 310.

23 Ibid.; Guerrero, pp. 166–69.

24 John Adams to Lincoln, May 26, 1789, and John Adams

to Hurd, April 5, 1790, quoted in Guerrero, p. 185. 25David P. Currie, ‘‘The Constitution in Congress: The

First Congress and the Structure of Government, 1789–

1791,’’ University of Chicago Law School Roundtable 2 (1995):

161. 26 Howe, p. 212; Ferling, p. 310.

27 Smith, 2:763, 842–43.

28 Ibid., 2:769.

29 Senate Legislative Journal, pp. 21–23. 30 Senate Legislative Journal, pp. 44–45; Howe, 176–79;

Diary of William Maclay, pp. 27–32; Shaw, pp. 227–30. 31 Senate Legislative Journal, pp. 83–87; Smith, 2:774–76;

Diary of William Maclay, pp. 109–19. 32Diary of William Maclay, pp. 132–35, 152–64. 33 Smith, 2:788–91.

34Quoted in U.S., Congress, Senate, The United States Senate, 1787–1801: A Dissertation on the First Fourteen Years of

the Upper Legislative Body, by Roy Swanstrom, S. Doc. 100–

31, 100th Cong., 1st sess., 1988, p. 254. 35Richard Allan Baker, ‘‘The Senate of the United States:

‘Supreme Executive Council of the Nation,’ 1787–1800,’’ in

The Congress of the United States, 1789–1989, vol. 1, ed. Joel

Silbey (Brooklyn, NY, 1991), p. 148, originally published in

Prologue 21 (Winter 1989): 299–313; Diary of William Maclay,

p. 36. 36George Read to Gunning Bedford, quoted in

Swanstrom, p. 254. 37 John C. Miller, The Federalist Era, 1789–1801 (New York,

1963; reprint of 1960 ed.), pp. 99–125. 38 Howe, p. 197; Swanstrom, pp. 274–76.

39 Howe, 193–97; Miller, pp. 126–54.

40 Howe, pp. 133–49; Shaw, pp. 229–37; Smith, 2:794, 826–

33.41Miller, p. 96; Smith, 2:826–33.

42 Stephen W. Stathis and Ronald C. Moe, ‘‘America’s

Other Inauguration,’’ Presidential Studies Quarterly 10 (Fall

1980): 552. 43Miller, pp. 128–30; Smith, 2:838–44.
[ 13 ]

JOHN ADAMS

44 Smith, 2:845.

45Miller, p. 154; Smith, 2:853; U.S., Congress, Senate, Annals of Congress, 3d Cong., 1st sess., pp. 66, 90. 46 Smith, 2:873–75; Swanstrom, pp. 120–23.

47Miller, pp. 198–202; Smith, 2:898–910.

48U.S., Congress, Senate, Annals of Congress, 4th Cong.,

2d sess., pp. 1549–58. 49Miller, pp. 251–77; Smith, 2:1056–62.

50 Smith, 2:1067–1138.

[ 15 ]

Chapter 2

THOMAS JEFFERSON

1797–1801
THOMAS JEFFERSON
[ 17 ]

Chapter 2

THOMAS JEFFERSON

2nd Vice President: 1797–1801

. . . a more tranquil & unoffending station could not have been found for me. . . . It will give

me philosophical evenings in the winter, & rural days in the summer.

—THOMAS JEFFERSON TO BENJAMIN RUSH, JANUARY 22, 1797 1

Thomas Jefferson entered an ill-defined vicepresidency on March 4, 1797. For guidance on

how to conduct himself, he had to rely on a brief

reference in the U.S. Constitution, the eight-year

experience of John Adams, and his own common

sense. Of a profoundly different political and

personal temperament from his predecessor, Jefferson knew his performance in that relatively

new office would influence its operations well

into the future. Unlike Adams, who shared the

political beliefs of the president with whom he

served, Jefferson and his president belonged to

different political parties—a situation that would

prove to be unique in all the nation’s history. No

one who knew the two men expected that Vice

President Jefferson would be inclined to serve as

President Adams’ principal assistant. More likely, he would confine his duties to presiding over

the Senate and offering leadership to his anti-administration Republican party in quiet preparation for the election of 1800.2

Scholar and Legislator

Thomas Jefferson was born on April 13, 1743,

in what is now Albemarle County, Virginia. He

was the third child of Peter Jefferson, a surveyor,

and Jane Randolph, daughter of a distinguished

Virginia family. Classical languages formed the

base of his early formal education. A thorough

and diligent student, inspired by the

Enlightenment’s belief in the power of reason to

govern human behavior, Jefferson graduated

from the College of William and Mary after only

two years, at the age of nineteen. Dr. William

Small, the chair of mathematics at the college,

helped cultivate Jefferson’s intellectual interests,

especially in science. In addition to his academic

pursuits, young Thomas excelled as a horseman

and violinist. He studied law under George

Wythe, Virginia’s most eminent legal scholar of

that era. Admitted to the Virginia bar in 1767, Jefferson maintained a successful practice until

abandoning the legal profession at the start of the

American Revolution.3

Jefferson’s political career began in May 1769

when he became a member of the Virginia house

of burgesses. He served there until the body was

dissolved in 1775. While not considered an effective public speaker, Jefferson gained a reputation

as a gifted writer. Unable to attend the Virginia

convention of 1774, he sent instructions for the

Virginia delegates to the first Continental Congress. These proposals, eventually published as

A Summary View of the Rights of British America,

asserted that the American colonies’ only legitimate political connection to Great Britain was

through the king, to whom they had submitted

voluntarily, and not to Parliament.

In 1775, the thirty-two-year-old Jefferson

gained a seat in the Continental Congress, where

he was appointed to a committee to draft a declaration of independence from the mother country. He became the declaration’s principal author

and later counted it, along with establishment of
[ 18 ]

THOMAS JEFFERSON

the University of Virginia and creation of the Virginia statute for Religious Freedom, among his

three proudest lifetime accomplishments. The

Declaration of Independence and the Summary

View ensured Jefferson’s standing in the mid1770s as the American Revolution’s most significant literary theorist.

After spending less than a year in the Continental Congress, Jefferson resigned that post

and entered the Virginia house of delegates.

While he produced an admirable legislative

record during his service from October 1776 to

June 1779, his tenure as Virginia’s governor from

1779 to mid-1781 was less successful. Although

the Virginia assembly had made sizeable contributions to the Continental effort, it failed to

make adequate provision for local defenses, and

the state offered only token resistance to the British invasion in early 1781. Jefferson narrowly escaped capture, fleeing on horseback as Lt. Col.

Banastre Tarleton’s forces ascended Carter’s

Mountain toward Monticello, two days after his

gubernatorial term expired but before the Virginia legislature could designate a successor. Jefferson had already decided not to seek reelection

to a third term, but his perceived abdication at

this critical juncture earned him considerable

scorn. The Virginia house of delegates immediately ordered an investigation of his conduct,

only to join with the state Senate in exonerating

the former governor after he appeared before

both houses six months later to explain his actions. Deeply mortified by the public scrutiny

and increasingly alarmed by his wife’s serious

illness, Jefferson retreated to Monticello.4

In what proved to be a temporary retirement

from public life, Jefferson turned his attention to

farming and scientific endeavors—pursuits that

he found more enjoyable. During this time, he

organized and published his Notes on the State of

Virginia, which his preeminent biographer,

Dumas Malone, believed ‘‘laid the foundations

of Jefferson’s high contemporary reputation as a

universal scholar and of his enduring fame as a

pioneer American scientist.’’ 5

On the death of his wife Martha in September

1782, Jefferson returned to public life. In June of

the following year he became a delegate to the

Congress under the Articles of Confederation

and served on several major committees. During

his service, he prepared various influential committee papers, including a report of March 22,

1784, calling for prohibition of slavery in the

western territory after the year 1800. The report

also declared illegal any western regional secession. Although Congress did not adopt the report as presented, Jefferson’s language subsequently influenced the drafting of the 1787

Northwest Ordinance with its highly significant

slavery restrictions.

Diplomacy and the Cabinet

Jefferson prepared a report in December 1783

on the procedure for negotiating commercial

treaties. His recommendations became general

practice, and in May 1784 Congress appointed

him to assist Benjamin Franklin in arranging

commercial agreements with France. Within a

year he succeeded Franklin as minister to that

country. While Jefferson would later make light

of his accomplishments during his ministerial

tenure, he proved to be a talented diplomat. Following his own pro-French leanings, and his belief that France could serve to counter Britain’s

threat to American interests, Jefferson worked

hard for improved relations.

On returning home in December 1789, Jefferson accepted President George Washington’s appointment to be the nation’s first secretary of

state. Progressively harsher disputes with Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton troubled his

tenure in that office. Their differences extended

from financial policy to foreign affairs and grew

out of fundamentally conflicting interpretations

of the Constitution and the scope of federal

power.

The rise of two rudimentary political

groupings during the early 1790s reflected Hamilton’s and Jefferson’s differing philosophical

views. Formed generally along sectional lines,

these early parties were known as Federalists

(with strong support in the North and East) and

Republicans (with a southern base). In later years

the Republicans would come to be called

‘‘Democrats,’’ but in the 1790s, that term carried

a negative connotation associated with mob

rule.6
[ 19 ]

THOMAS JEFFERSON

In May 1790, Pennsylvania Senator William

Maclay, with his customarily acerbic pen, recorded the following physical description of the

secretary of state:

When I came to the Hall Jefferson and the rest

of the Committee were there. Jefferson is a slender Man [and] has rather the Air of Stiffness in

his Manner. His cloaths seem too small for him.

He sits in a lounging Manner on One hip, commonly, and with one of his shoulders elevated

much above the other. His face has a scrany aspect. His Whole figure has a loose shackling Air.

He had a rambling Vacant look & nothing of that

firm collected deportment which I expected

would dignify the presence of a Secretary or Minister. I looked for gravity, but a laxity of Manner,

seemed shed about him. He spoke almost without ceasing, but even his discourse partook of his

personal demeanor. It was lax & rambling and

Yet he scattered information wherever he went,

and some even brilliant sentiments sparkled from

him.7

Worn out from his battles with Hamilton, Jefferson resigned as secretary of state at the end

of 1793 and handed leadership of the emerging

Republican party to his fellow Virginian James

Madison. For the next three years, Madison

worked to strengthen the party in Congress,

transforming it from a reactive faction to a positive political force with its own distinctive programs and, by April 1796, a congressional party

caucus to establish legislative priorities.8

The 1796 Election

When President Washington announced in

September 1796 that he would not run for a third

term, a caucus of Federalists in Congress selected

Vice President Adams as their presidential candidate. Congressional Republicans turned to Jefferson as the only person capable of defeating

Adams, who enjoyed a strong following in New

England and was closely associated with the success of the American Revolution.9 Jefferson had

told friends in 1793 that his ‘‘retirement from office had meant from all office, high or low, without exception.’’ 10 While he continued to hold

those views in 1796, he reluctantly allowed Republican leader Madison to advance his candidacy—in part to block the ambitions of his

archrival, Alexander Hamilton. Jefferson confided to Madison that he hoped he would receive

either the second- or third-largest number of

electoral votes. A third-place finish would allow

him to remain home the entire year, while a second-place result—making him the vice president—would permit him to stay home twothirds of the year.11 Jefferson made no effort to

influence the outcome. He believed that Madison, as an active party leader, would have been

a more suitable candidate. But even though Jefferson had left the political stage more than two

years earlier, he remained the symbol of Republican values—in no small part due to Hamilton’s

unremitting attacks.

In devising the constitutional system that obligated each presidential elector to cast two ballots, the framers intended to produce a winning

candidate for president who enjoyed a broad national consensus and, in second place, a vice

president with at least strong regional support.

They assumed that electors would give one vote

to a home state favorite, reserving the second for

a person of national reputation, but this view

failed to anticipate the development of political

parties. Thus the framers apparently gave little

consideration to the potential for competing

slates of candidates—seen for the first time in the

1796 presidential contest.

As part of a strategy to erode Jefferson’s southern support, the Federalists selected as Adams’

running mate Thomas Pinckney of South Carolina, author of the popular 1795 treaty with

Spain.12 Hamilton, Adams’ bitter rival within the

Federalist party, encouraged Federalist electors

in the North to give both their votes to Adams

and Pinckney. On the safe assumption that

Pinckney would draw more votes than Adams

from the other regions, and recognizing that Jefferson lacked support north and east of the Delaware River, Hamilton mistakenly concluded this

tactic would assure Pinckney’s election.13

Adams’ supporters countered Hamilton’s plan

by convincing a number of their party’s electors

to vote for someone other than Pinckney. As a

result, Adams won the presidency with 71 of a

possible 138 electoral votes. But Jefferson with 68

votes, rather than Pinckney with 59 votes, became vice president. Aaron Burr, the Republican

vice-presidential contender, received only 30
[ 20 ]

THOMAS JEFFERSON

votes, while 48 other votes were scattered among

nine minor candidates.14 This election produced

the first and only mixed-party presidential team

in the nation’s history.

Not looking forward to reentering the political

fray and feeling unprepared to assume presidential responsibilities for foreign policy at a

time when relations with European nations were

strained, Jefferson may have been the only person in the history of American politics to celebrate the fact that he lost a presidential election.

He preferred the quietness of the vice-presidency. He wrote Benjamin Rush, ‘‘a more tranquil & unoffending station could not have been

found for me.’’ And he told James Madison, ‘‘I

think they [foreign affairs] never wore so gloomy

an aspect since the year 83. Let those come to the

helm who think they can steer clear of the difficulties. I have no confidence in myself for the

undertaking.’’ 15 In a classic assessment of the

presidency’s thankless nature, Jefferson wrote

Edward Rutledge, ‘‘I know well that no man will

ever bring out of that office the reputation which

carries him into it. The honey moon would be

as short in that case as in any other, & its moments of extasy would be ransomed by years of

torment & hatred.’’ 16

Vice President

On February 8, 1797, Vice President Adams, as

one of his final official duties, presided over a

joint session of Congress in the Senate chamber

to tally electoral votes for the nation’s two highest offices. To his obvious satisfaction, he announced his own victory for the first office and

that of Thomas Jefferson for the second.17 When

the confirming news of his election reached Jefferson in Virginia, he initially hoped to avoid the

trip to Philadelphia by seeking a senator who

would administer the oath of office at his

home.18 But rumors were beginning to spread

that Jefferson considered the vice-presidency beneath his dignity. To quash that mistaken notion,

the Virginian decided to attend the inauguration;

but he requested that local officials downplay his

arrival at the capital. Despite these wishes, an artillery company and a sixteen-gun salute greeted

Jefferson on March 2 at the completion of his arduous ten-day journey by horseback and stage

coach. He stayed the first night with James Madison and then moved to a nearby hotel for the remainder of his week-and-a-half visit.

The Senate convened at 10 a.m. on Saturday,

March 4, in its ornate chamber on the second

floor of Congress Hall at the corner of Sixth and

Chestnut Streets. As the first order of business,

Senate President Pro Tempore William Bingham

administered the brief oath to the new vice president. Over six feet tall, with reddish hair and

hazel eyes, and attired in a single-breasted long

blue frock coat, Jefferson established a commanding presence as he in turn swore in the

eight newly elected members among the twentyseven senators who were present that day. He

then read a brief inaugural address.

In that address Jefferson apologized in advance for any shortcomings members might perceive in the conduct of his duties. Anticipating

the role that would most define his vice-presidential legacy, Jefferson promised that he would

approach his duties as presiding officer with

‘‘more confidence because it will depend on my

will and not my capacity.’’ He continued:

The rules which are to govern the proceedings

of this House, so far as they shall depend on me

for their application, shall be applied with the

most rigorous and inflexible impartiality, regarding neither persons, their views, nor principles,

and seeing only the abstract proposition subject

to my decision. If in forming that decision, I concur with some and differ from others, as must of

necessity happen, I shall rely on the liberality and

candor of those from whom I differ, to believe

that I do it on pure motives.

Having devoted half of his less than threeminute speech to his role as presiding officer, Jefferson briefly referred to the Constitution and its

defense. But he quickly returned to his own more

limited station, supposing that ‘‘these declarations [are] not pertinent to the occasion of entering into an office whose primary business is

merely to preside over the forms of this

House.’’ 19 Concluding his remarks, Jefferson led

the Senate downstairs to the House of Representatives’ chamber to attend President-elect Adams’

inaugural address and subsequent oath-taking.

Three potential roles awaited the new vice

president in his as yet only marginally defined
[ 21 ]

THOMAS JEFFERSON

office. He could serve as an assistant to the president; he could concentrate on his constitutional

duties as the Senate’s presiding officer; or he

could become an active leader of the Republican

party. Jefferson had no interest in being an assistant to the chief executive. He told Elbridge Gerry

that he considered his office ‘‘constitutionally

confined to legislative functions,’’ 20 and he

hoped those functions would not keep him away

from his cherished Monticello. In any event, the

job provided a comfortable and needed regular

salary—$5,000 paid in quarterly installments.21

Adams and Jefferson started off cordially. The

Virginian, having enjoyed Adams’ friendship in

the second Continental Congress and while in retirement at Monticello, set out to forge a good

public relationship with him as his vice president. Although he realized that they would

probably disagree on many issues, Jefferson

deeply respected Adams’ prior service to the

nation.22

On the eve of their inaugurations, Adams and

Jefferson met briefly to discuss the possibility of

sending Jefferson to France as part of a threemember delegation to calm the increasingly turbulent relations between the two countries.

When the two men concluded that this would be

an improper role for the vice president, they

agreed on substituting Jefferson’s political ally,

James Madison. The bond between president

and vice president seemed—for the moment—

particularly close.

Several days after the inauguration, Jefferson

encountered the president at a dinner party. He

took the opportunity to report that Madison was

not interested in the diplomatic mission to

France. Adams replied that, in any event, he

would not have been able to select Madison because of pressure from within his cabinet to appoint a Federalist. This confirmed Jefferson’s

view that the new president lacked his own political compass and was too easily swayed by

partisan advisers. Thereafter, Adams never consulted Jefferson on an issue of national significance.23 For his part, the vice president turned

exclusively to his political role as leader of the

Republicans and to his governmental duty as the

Senate’s presiding officer.

While in Philadelphia to commence his vicepresidential duties, Jefferson acceded to a second

leadership position—the presidency of the

American Philosophical Society. Conveniently

located near Congress Hall, this august scientific

and philosophical body counted among its previous leaders Benjamin Franklin and mathematician David Rittenhouse. Jefferson attained the

post on the strength of his Notes on the State of

Virginia (first English edition, 1787), which secured his reputation as a preeminent scholar and

scientist and is today considered ‘‘the most important scientific work published in America in

the eighteenth century.’’ 24 Within days of his inaugural address to the Senate, Jefferson delivered his presidential address to the society—a

task that he found considerably more gratifying.

His subject: the recently discovered fossil remains of a large animal, found in western Virginia, that he called the ‘‘Megalonyx’’ or ‘‘Great

Claw.’’ 25 Jefferson would preside over the society until 1815. He considered his contributions

to its proceedings among his proudest

endeavors.

A Republican Leader

After his inauguration, Jefferson had written to

Aaron Burr (the former New York senator and

intended vice-presidential candidate on the Republican ticket) to complain about the partisan

direction of the new Federalist administration

and seek his aid in building Republican support

in the northeast. This move signalled Jefferson’s

intention to play an active political role during

his vice-presidency. With James Madison retired

from the House of Representatives and the new

House leader, Albert Gallatin, preoccupied with

the nation’s financial problems, Jefferson stood

as the country’s preeminent Republican leader.

Considering himself separate from the executive

branch, he felt free to criticize the Adams administration. Yet, to avoid public controversy, he

limited his criticism to private communications

with political allies, particularly after the distortion of a letter he had written in April 1796 to

the Italian intellectual Philip Mazzei.

In that letter, composed as Federalists and Republicans battled over the pro-British Jay Treaty,

Jefferson had complained about the Federalists
[ 22 ]

THOMAS JEFFERSON

as ‘‘an Anglican monarchical, and aristocratical

party’’ whose intention was to impose the substance of British government, as well as its forms,

on the United States. Federalists in high government posts were ‘‘timid men who prefer the calm

of despotism to the boisterous sea of liberty.’’ 26

A translated version of his strongly worded communication appeared in several European newspapers and in a May 1797 edition of the New

York Minerva. Liberties taken in translation

served only to increase the letter’s tone of partisan intemperance. Federalists offered the letter

as evidence of the vice president’s demagoguery,

and the affair increased animosity between the

political parties. Unhappy with the consequences

of the Mazzei letter, Jefferson cautioned all future correspondents to ‘‘[t]ake care that nothing

from my letters gets into the newspapers.’’ 27

Although Jefferson greatly respected the institution of the Senate, he had little affection for the

Federalist senators over whom he presided. The

Federalists enjoyed a 22-to-10 majority in 1797

and Jefferson expected the worst. Fearing that

the majority might routinely employ the Senate’s

power to try impeachments to quiet senators

who harbored contrary views, Jefferson took

more than a passing interest in the impeachment

proceedings against his fellow Republican,

former Tennessee senator William Blount, whose

trial he presided over in December 1798. Almost

a year earlier, as the Senate worked to establish

rules and procedures for the first impeachment

trial, the vice president had secretly reinforced

Virginia Senator Henry Tazewell’s argument

that Blount had a Sixth Amendment right to a

jury trial, providing precedents he extracted

from the parliamentary writings of William

Blackstone and Richard Woddeson. ‘‘The object

in supporting this engraftment into impeachments,’’ he wrote Tazewell on January 27, 1798,

‘‘is to lessen the dangers of the court of impeachment under its present form & to induce dispositions in all parties in favor of a better constituted

court of impeachment, which I own I consider

as an useful thing, if so composed as to be clear

of the spirit of faction.’’ Anxious to conceal his

role in the Republican effort to circumscribe the

impeachment power, he cautioned Tazewell,

‘‘Do not let the enclosed paper be seen in my

handwriting.’’ 28 A month later, after Tazewell’s

effort failed, Jefferson confided to Madison that

the Federalists ‘‘consider themselves as the bulwarks of the government, and will be rendering

that the more secure, in proportion as they can

assume greater powers.’’ 29

Alien and Sedition Acts

Deteriorating relations with France preoccupied the government during Jefferson’s

vice-presidency and fostered anti-French sentiment at home. No one event caused the conflict,

but a decree of the ruling Directory and a series

of French proposals fueled the spreading fire.

The decree declared that neutral ships with English merchandise or commodities could be

seized. Congress, in turn, sought to protect

American commerce by authorizing the arming

of private vessels.

In what proved to be a futile attempt to improve relations, President Adams sent three envoys to France. When they reached Paris in October 1797, however, the French government refused to receive them until they satisfied requirements that the Americans considered insulting.

Minor French officials—publicly labeled ‘‘X, Y,

and Z’’—met with the envoys and presented

proposals that included a request for a $12 million loan and a $250,000 bribe in exchange for

recognition of the United States and the establishment of formal ties. Despite his sympathies

for France, Jefferson viewed the proposals as a

supreme insult, yet he understood that a war

could undermine the nation’s newly set constitutional foundations and strengthen the pro-British

Federalist leadership.

The publication in April 1798 of what became

known as the ‘‘XYZ papers’’ produced widespread anger and created a frenzied atmosphere

in which overzealous patriotism flourished. In

an effort to restore their party’s popularity, Federalist legislators—recently the targets of public

scorn for their support of the unpopular Jay treaty with England—seized on the anti-French hostility that the XYZ affair had generated. Federalists in Congress, their numbers expanded in response to public anger against France, quickly

passed a series of tough measures to set the na-
[ 23 ]

THOMAS JEFFERSON

tion on a war footing. Most notorious of these

statutes were the Sedition Act, the Naturalization

Act, and the Alien Act, all viewed by their Republican opponents as distinctly partisan measures to curtail individual rights.30

The Senate approved the Sedition Act on July

4, 1798, in the final days of the Fifth Congress

after Jefferson had left for Virginia. The statute

curtailed the rights of Americans to criticize their

government and provided punishment for any

person writing, uttering, or publishing ‘‘any

false, scandalous and malicious writing’’ against

the president or Congress with the intent of inflaming public passions against them.31 The Federalists immediately invoked the law’s provisions to suppress Republican criticism.

The Naturalization Act was also a decidedly

partisan measure in that it targeted immigrants,

who tended to support the Republican party, by

lengthening the residency requirements for U.S.

citizenship from five to fourteen years.32 Finally,

President Adams, on June 25, 1798, signed a

third repressive law passed by the Federalist

Congress. The Alien Act, which Jefferson called

‘‘a most detestable thing,’’ authorized the president, acting unilaterally, to deport any noncitizen whom he viewed as ‘‘dangerous to the peace

and safety of the United States.’’ 33 Adams never

exercised this power, but the Act inflamed the

dispute over the scope of presidential power in

the young nation.

Jefferson recognized that these measures

raised fundamental questions regarding the division of sovereignty between the national and

state governments and the means for settling disputes between the two levels of government. As

vice president and head of the party that this legislation was designed to restrain, Jefferson found

himself powerless at the national level to combat

these measures that he believed were ‘‘so palpably in the teeth of the Constitution as to shew

they mean to pay no respect to it.’’ 34

Looking to the states to provide an arena for

constructive action, Jefferson drafted a set of resolutions assailing these acts as unconstitutional

violations of human rights.35 He sent them to

Wilson Nicholas, a member of the Virginia assembly, with a request that he arrange for their

introduction in the North Carolina legislature.

By chance, Nicholas encountered John Breckinridge, a member of the Kentucky house of representatives, many of whose members strongly

opposed these repressive laws. Breckinridge

agreed to introduce Jefferson’s resolutions in his

legislature while keeping their author’s identity

secret.

The first sentence of Jefferson’s ‘‘Kentucky

Resolutions’’ asserted:

That the several states composing the United

States of America are not united on the principle

of unlimited submission to their general government, but that, by a compact under the style and

title of a Constitution for the United States, and

of amendments thereto, they constituted a general government for special purposes,—delegated to that government certain definite powers,

reserving, each State to itself, the residuary mass

of right to their own self-government; and that

whensoever the general government assumes

undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative,

void, and of no force.36

Although the vice president had no desire to

subvert the Union, his suggestion that any state

had the power to nullify a federal law if it determined the legislation to be unconstitutional

harbored grave consequences for the nation’s

stability. He also argued that the federal judiciary should not decide issues of constitutionality

because it was a partisan arm of the federal government. Jefferson did not specifically call for the

nullification of the Alien and Sedition acts, but

he did use the word ‘‘nullify,’’ which was subsequently dropped from the version of the resolution that the Kentucky legislature adopted in November 1798.

The Virginia legislature passed similar measures prepared in a less strident form by James

Madison who, like Jefferson, found the Sedition

and Alien laws to be constitutionally flawed and

dangerous to individual freedom. To Jefferson’s

chagrin, no other states joined in this action, as

most legislatures thought Jefferson’s ideas too

extreme. The resolutions as passed in Kentucky

and Virginia simply called on states to seek repeal of the odious statutes through their representatives at the next session of Congress.37

The Kentucky legislature passed additional resolutions in 1799—specifically calling for nullifica-
[ 24 ]

THOMAS JEFFERSON

tion of objectionable laws. Although Jefferson

sympathized with their aim, he had no part in

their drafting. Congress did not renew the Alien

and Sedition acts in 1801 when they expired.

Thomas Jefferson’s involvement with the Kentucky Resolutions reflected his passion for protecting civil liberties from repressive measures

by omnipotent government. He favored a governmental system that would resist tyranny and

corruption. He found republicanism to be closest

to his ideal of a balanced and strong yet nonintrusive form of government. ‘‘The legitimate

powers of government,’’ he wrote, ‘‘extend to

such acts only as are injurious to others.’’ 38 Yet

his philosophy did allow for a distinction between the relative powers of the state and federal

governments.

Conditioned by his overriding fear of centralized power, Jefferson argued that the federal

government could not infringe on the freedom

of the press. He vehemently opposed the Sedition Act, but he believed the states had the right

to restrict the press to some degree. The possibility that states might abuse this power did not

concern Jefferson. On the contrary, he saw the

states as the bulwarks of freedom, as his involvement with the Kentucky Resolutions demonstrated. Years later, he would write, ‘‘the true

barriers of our liberty in this country are our

State governments; and the wisest conservative

power ever contrived by man, is that of which

our Revolution and present government found

us possessed.’’ 39

Jefferson sought to enhance the authority of

the states only to further the cause of individual

rights. But when a foreign nation posed a threat

to the country, Jefferson was quick to underscore

the importance of the Union, which he described

as ‘‘the last anchor of our hope.’’ Though he

would eschew war at all costs, Jefferson believed

the states had an obligation to support the

Union, even if it blundered into war.

Jefferson’s Manual

Thomas Jefferson’s Manual of Parliamentary

Practice is, without question, the distinguishing

feature of his vice-presidency. The single greatest

contribution to the Senate by any person to serve

as vice president, it is as relevant to the Senate

of the late twentieth century as it was to the Senate of the late eighteenth century. Reflecting the

Manual’s continuing value, the Senate in 1993

provided for its publication in a special edition

to commemorate the 250th anniversary of Jefferson’s birth.

Jefferson had conceived the idea of a parliamentary manual as he prepared to assume the

duties of the vice-presidency early in 1797. John

Adams offered an inadequate model for the role

of presiding officer, for he had earned a reputation for officious behavior in the Senate president’s chair. To avoid the criticism that attended

Adams’ performance, Jefferson believed the Senate’s presiding officer needed to follow ‘‘some

known system of rules, that he may neither leave

himself free to indulge caprice or passion, nor

open to the imputation of them.’’ 40 The lack of

carefully delineated rules, he feared, would

make the Senate prone to the extremes of chaos

and tyranny. He was particularly concerned

about the operation of Senate Rule 16, which provided that the presiding officer was to be solely

responsible for deciding all questions of order,

‘‘without debate and without appeal.’’ 41

Before leaving Virginia to take up his new duties, Jefferson had contacted his old mentor,

George Wythe. Acknowledging that he had not

concerned himself about legislative matters for

many years, Jefferson asked Wythe to help refresh his memory by loaning him notes on parliamentary procedure that Wythe had made

years earlier. To Jefferson’s disappointment, the

eminent jurist reported that he had lost track of

his notes and that his memory no longer served

him well. Jefferson then consulted his ‘‘Parliamentary Pocketbook,’’ which included notes

on parliamentary procedure he had taken when

he studied under Wythe and during his service

as a member of the Virginia house of burgesses.

Although he considered these notes his ‘‘pillar,’’

he realized they would be of little direct assistance in resolving Senate procedural disputes.

The new vice president admired the British

House of Commons’ rules of procedure because,

in the words of a former Speaker, they provided

‘‘a shelter and protection to the minority, against

the attempts of power.’’ 42 ‘‘Its rules are probably

as wisely constructed for governing the debates
[ 25 ]

THOMAS JEFFERSON

of a deliberative body, and obtaining its true

sense, as any which can become known to us.’’ 43

A Senate in which the Federalists had a two-toone majority over the Republicans accentuated

Jefferson’s fears and made him particularly sensitive to the preservation of minority rights. Distrusting the process in which small committees

under majority party control made key decisions,

the vice president wished to protect minority interests by emphasizing those procedures that

permitted each senator to have a say in important matters.

Jefferson compiled his Manual of Parliamentary

Practice during the course of his four-year vicepresidency. He designed it to contain guidance

for the Senate drawn from ‘‘the precepts of the

Constitution, the regulations of the Senate, and

where these are silent, the rules of Parliament.’’

To broaden his understanding of legislative procedure, Jefferson studied noteworthy works on

the British Parliament such as John Hatsell’s

three-volume Precedents of Proceedings in the

House of Commons (1785), Anchitell Grey’s tenvolume edition of Debates in the House of Commons (1769), and Richard Wooddeson’s threevolume A Systematical View of the Laws of England

(1792, 1794). The resulting Manual, loaded with

references to these British parliamentary authorities, contained fifty-three sections devoted to

such topics as privileges, petitions, motions, resolutions, bills, treaties, conferences, and impeachments.

Jefferson’s Manual was first published in 1801,

shortly after he became president. A second edition followed in 1812, and in 1837 the House of

Representatives established that the rules listed

in the Manual would ‘‘govern the House in all

cases to which they are applicable and in which

they are not inconsistent with the standing rules

and orders of the House and the joint rules of

the Senate.’’ 44 Although the Manual has not been

treated as ‘‘a direct authority on parliamentary

procedure in the Senate,’’ 45 it is the Senate that

today more closely captures Jefferson’s ideal of

a genuinely deliberative body. His emphasis on

order and decorum changed the way the Senate

of his day operated. In the assessment of Dumas

Malone, Jefferson ‘‘exercised his limited functions [as presiding officer] with greater care than

his predecessor and left every successor his

debtor.’’ 46

President

On February 17, 1801, after thirty-six ballots,

the House of Representatives elected Thomas Jefferson president of the United States.47 Following the precedent that Vice President Adams set

in February 1797, Jefferson delivered a brief farewell address to the Senate on February 28, 1801.

He thanked members for their indulgence of his

weaknesses.

In the discharge of my functions here, it has

been my conscientious endeavor to observe impartial justice without regard to persons or subjects; and if I have failed of impressing this on

the mind of the Senate, it will be to me a circumstance of the deepest regret. . . . I owe to truth

and justice, at the same time, to declare, that the

habits of order and decorum, which so strongly

characterize the proceedings of the Senate, have

rendered the umpirage of their President an office of little difficulty; that, in times and on questions which have severely tried the sensibilities

of the House, calm and temperate discussion has

rarely been disturbed by departures from

order.48

After completing these remarks, Jefferson followed another Adams precedent by stepping

aside a few days prior to the end of the session.

This action allowed the Senate to appoint a president pro tempore, a post filled only when the

vice president was absent from the capital. Next

to the vice president in the line of presidential

succession at that time, the president pro tempore would serve until the swearing in of a new

vice president at the start of the next session.

On March 4, 1801, Jefferson took the oath of

office as president of the United States, thereby

successfully accomplishing the nation’s first

transfer of presidential power between the two

major political parties. He served two terms as

president, retiring at last from public life in 1809.

He renewed his friendship with John Adams,

and the two men corresponded regularly until

their deaths—both dying on July 4, 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of Jefferson’s Declaration of

Independence.
[ 26 ]

THOMAS JEFFERSON

Jefferson’s Contributions

Thomas Jefferson infused the vice-presidency

with his genius through the contribution of his

Manual of Parliamentary Practice—a magisterial

guide to legislative procedure that has retained

its broad utility through two centuries. He also

contributed to the office his example of skillful

behind-the-scenes legislative leadership, and he

offered a philosophical compass on the issues of

constitutionalism and individual rights. Biographer Dumas Malone provides a final analysis

of Jefferson’s style as party leader during his

vice-presidential tenure:

His popular success was due in considerable

part to his identification of himself with causes

for which time was fighting—notably the broadening of the political base—and to his remarkable

sensitivity to fluctuations in public opinion. As

a practical politician, he worked through other

men, whom he energized and who gave him to

an extraordinary degree their devoted cooperation. His leadership was due not to self-assertiveness and imperiousness of will but to the fact that

circumstances had made him a symbolic figure

and that to an acute intelligence and unceasing

industry he joined a dauntless and contagious

faith. 48
[ 27 ]

NOTES 1 Paul Leicester Ford, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson

(New York, 1892–1899), vol. 7, p. 114. 2Biographical accounts of Jefferson’s life are plentiful and

rich. The definitive modern study is Dumas Malone, Jefferson and His Time, 6 vols. (Boston, 1948–1981). The volume

in that series that covers the years of his vice-presidency

is Jefferson and the Ordeal of Liberty (Boston, 1962). A firstrate single-volume biography is Noble E. Cunningham, Jr.,

In Pursuit of Reason: The Life of Thomas Jefferson (Baton Rouge,

1987). For the period of Jefferson’s vice-presidency, see

Noble E. Cunningham, Jr., The Jeffersonian Republicans: The

Formation of Party Organization, 1789–1801 (Chapel Hill,

1957). For a series of twenty-five excellent essays that focus

on each of Jefferson’s ‘‘extraordinary collection of talents,’’

see Merrill D. Peterson, ed., Thomas Jefferson: A Reference Biography (New York, 1986). This work also contains a comprehensive bibliography. There are several major collections

of Jefferson’s writings, including Paul Leicester Ford, The

Writings of Thomas Jefferson, 10 vols. (New York, 1892–1899)

and the more comprehensive, but as yet incomplete, Julian

P. Boyd, et al., eds., The Papers of Thomas Jefferson

(1950–). The latter work has appeared to date only to the

mid-1790s and thus is of no assistance for the vice-presidential period. One volume associated with this massive

project, however, is of direct value; appearing as part of the

project’s ‘‘Second Series’’ is Wilbur Samuel Howell, ed., Jefferson’s Parliamentary Writings: ‘Parliamentary Pocket-Book’

and A Manual of Parliamentary Practice (Princeton, 1988). 3 For a thorough study of Jefferson’s early years see Marie

Kimball, Jefferson: The Road to Glory, 1743 to 1776 (New York,

1943) and Dumas Malone, Jefferson the Virginian (Boston,

1948). 4 Cunningham, In Pursuit of Reason, pp. 64–75. 5Dumas Malone, ‘‘The Life of Thomas Jefferson,’’ in Peterson, ed., p. 7. 6 Noble E. Cunningham, Jr., ‘‘The Jeffersonian Republican

Party,’’ in History of U.S. Political Parties, ed. Arthur M.

Schlesinger, Jr. (New York, 1973), 1:240. 7 Kenneth R. Bowling and Helen E. Veit, eds., The Diary

of William Maclay and Other Notes on Senate Debates, Documentary History of the First Federal Congress of the United

States of America, vol. 9 (Baltimore, 1988), p. 275. 8 Cunningham, ‘‘The Jeffersonian Republican Party,’’ pp.

246–47. 9Malone, Jefferson and the Ordeal of Liberty, pp. 274–75. 10Quoted in Cunningham, ‘‘The Jeffersonian Republican

Party,’’ p. 249. 11Malone, Jefferson and the Ordeal of Liberty, p. 291. 12 Ibid., p. 274.

13 Ibid., p. 278.

14Congressional Quarterly’s Guide to U.S. Elections, 3d ed.

(Washington, 1994), p. 361.

15 Jefferson to Rush, January 22, 1797, in Ford, 7:114; Malone, Jefferson and the Ordeal of Liberty, p. 292. 16 Ford, 7:93–94.

17Only two other vice presidents subsequently shared

Adams’ pleasant task: Martin Van Buren in 1837 and

George Bush in 1989. 18Malone, Jefferson and the Ordeal of Liberty, p. 295. 19U.S., Congress, Annals of Congress, March 4, 1797, pp.

1580–82. 20 Jefferson to Gerry, May 13, 1797, in Ford, 7:120.

21Malone, Jefferson and the Ordeal of Liberty, p. 300. 22 Ibid., p. 293; Cunningham, In Pursuit of Reason, pp. 206–

7; John Ferling, John Adams: A Life (Knoxville, 1992), pp. 332–

34.23Malone, Jefferson and the Ordeal of Liberty, p. 299. 24 Silvio A. Bedini, ‘‘Man of Science,’’ in Peterson, ed., p.

257. 25 Cunningham, In Pursuit of Reason, 206–7; Malone, Jefferson and the Ordeal of Liberty, chapter XXII; Bedini, in Peterson, ed., pp. 253–76. 26 Ford, 7: 76; Cunningham, The Jeffersonian Republicans,

p. 119. 27 Jefferson to Colonel Bell, May 18, 1797, in Andrew A.

Lipscomb and Albert Ellery Bergh, ed., The Writings of

Thomas Jefferson (Washington, 1903), 9:387; Cunningham,

The Jeffersonian Republicans, pp. 118–19. 28Thomas Jefferson to Henry Tazewell, January 27, 1798,

in Ford, 7:194–95. 29Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, February 22, 1798,

in Ford, 7:206–8. 30Malone, Jefferson and the Ordeal of Liberty, chapter XXIV. 31 1 Stat. 596–597. 32 1 Stat. 566–569. 33 1 Stat. 570–572. 34 Jefferson to James Madison, June 7, 1798, in Ford, 7:267.

35This issue is treated in full detail in Malone, Jefferson

and the Ordeal of Liberty, chapter XXV. 36 Ford, 8:458–61.

37 Cunningham, In Pursuit of Reason, pp. 217–18. 38Quoted in Malone, Jefferson and the Ordeal of Liberty, p.

393. 39 Jefferson to Destutt de Tracy, January 16, 1888, in Ford,

9:308–10; Malone, Jefferson and the Ordeal of Liberty, p. 394. 40Thomas Jefferson, A Manual of Parliamentary Practice for

the Use of the Senate of the United States, in The Papers of

Thomas Jefferson, Second Series, Jefferson’s Parliamentary

Writings, Wilbur Samuel Howell, ed., p. 355. Howell has

produced the definitive scholarly edition of Jefferson’s Manual (pp. 339–444).

41U.S., Congress, Senate, History of the Committee on Rules

and Administration, United States Senate, S. Doc. 96–27, 96th

Cong., 1st sess., p. 6.
[ 28 ]

THOMAS JEFFERSON

42 Speaker Arthur Onslow quoted in Section I of Jefferson’s Manual of Parliamentary Practice, Howell ed., p. 357. 43 Howell, ed., p. 355.

44The Senate has regularly published that work as a companion to the body’s formal rules. The Manual was included

as a section within the Senate Manual from 1886 to 1975 and

was republished in 1993, on the occasion of the 250th anniversary of Jefferson’s birth, in the original 1801 edition.

Some practices discussed in Jefferson’s Manual set core

precedents that the Senate has followed ever since, although

the work is not considered a direct authority on procedure.

The Manual’s influence quickly extended beyond domestic

legislatures, as editors translated the work into other languages. At least 143 editions have been printed. The work

has abetted self-government in countries as far away as the

Philippines, where over one-hundred years later it was

adopted as a supplementary guide in that nation’s senate

and house of representatives. 45U.S., Congress, Senate, Riddick’s Senate Procedure: Precedents and Practices, by Floyd M. Riddick and Alan S. Frumin,

S. Doc. 101–28, 101st Cong., 1st sess., p. 754. 46Malone, Jefferson and the Ordeal of Liberty, pp. 452–53. 47A description of this election and the resulting Twelfth

Amendment to the Constitution appears in Chapter 3 of this

volume, ‘‘Aaron Burr.’’ 48 Annals of Congress, 6th Cong., 1st sess., pp. 753–54. 48Malone, ‘‘The Life of Thomas Jefferson,’’ in Peterson,

ed., p. 15.
[ 29 ]

Chapter 3

AARON BURR

1801–1805
AARON BURR
[ 31 ]

Chapter 3

AARON BURR

3rd Vice President: 1801–1805

Was there in Greece or Rome a man of virtue and independence, and supposed to possess great talents, who was not the subject of vindictive and unrelenting persecution?

—AARON BURR TO THEODOSIA BURR ALSTON 1

I never, indeed thought him an honest, frank-dealing man, but considered him as a crooked gun,

or other perverted machine, whose aim or stroke you could never be sure of.

—THOMAS JEFFERSON 2

Col. Burr . . . [is] Not by any means a model man . . . but not so bad as it is the fashion to

paint him.

—GEORGE W. JOHNSON 3

Congressional Republicans were in a festive

mood on January 24, 1804, as they gathered at

Stelle’s Hotel on Capitol Hill for a banquet celebrating the transfer of the Louisiana Territory to

the United States. The festivities began at noon

with the discharge of ‘‘three pieces of cannon.’’

President Thomas Jefferson and Vice President

Aaron Burr were among the honored guests;

they departed after the banquet, but the revelry

continued until nightfall. ‘‘A number of the

guests drank so many toasts that in the night

they returned to their houses without their hats,’’

one contemporary reported. But when one celebrant offered a toast to Vice President Burr, the

effect was pronounced and chilling: ‘‘few

cheered him,’’ the chronicler observed, ‘‘& many

declined drinking it.’’ 4

None of Aaron Burr’s contemporaries knew

quite what to make of this complex and fascinating individual. As Senator Robert C. Byrd observed in his November 13, 1987, address on the

life and career of this controversial vice president, ‘‘there is much that we will never know

about the man.’’ Much of Burr’s early correspondence, entrusted to his daughter for safekeeping, was lost in 1812, when the ship carrying

Theodosia Burr Alston from South Carolina to

New York for a long-awaited reunion with her

father disappeared off the North Carolina

Coast.5

Burr was one of the most maligned and mistrusted public figures of his era—and, without

question, the most controversial vice president of

the early republic—but he never attempted to

justify or explain his actions to his friends or to

his enemies. One editor of Burr’s papers has lamented, ‘‘Almost alone among the men who

held high office in the early decades of this nation, Burr left behind no lengthy recriminations

against his enemies . . . no explanations and justifications for his actions.’’ He seems to have

cared very little what his contemporaries

thought of him, or how historians would judge

him.6 Few figures in American history have been

as vilified, or as romanticized, by modern writers.7 Urbane and charming, generous beyond

prudence, proud, shrewd, and ambitious, he

stood apart from other public figures of his day.
[ 32 ]

AARON BURR

An anomaly in an era when public office was a

duty to be gravely and solemnly accepted but

never pursued with unseemly enthusiasm, Burr

enjoyed the ‘‘game’’ of politics. His zest for politics enabled him to endure the setbacks and defeats he experienced throughout his checkered

career, but, as Mary-Jo Kline, the editor of Burr’s

papers suggests, it also gave him the ‘‘spectacular ability to inspire suspicion—even fear—

among the more conventional Founding

Fathers.’’ 8

Early Years

Aaron Burr was born at Newark, New Jersey,

on February 6, 1756. His father, Aaron Burr, Sr.,

was a highly respected clerical scholar who

served as pastor of the Newark First Presbyterian Church and as president of the College

of New Jersey (now Princeton University). His

mother, Esther Edwards Burr, was the daughter

of the noted Puritan theologian and scholar, Jonathan Edwards, who is most often remembered

for his passionate and fiery sermons. The family

moved to Princeton when the college relocated

there soon after the future vice president’s birth,

but Burr did not remain there long. His father

contracted a fever and died when young Aaron

was only a year-and-a-half old. His mother and

her parents died soon thereafter. An orphan by

the age of two, Burr and his older sister, Sally,

moved to Philadelphia, where they lived with

family friends until 1759, when their uncle, Timothy Edwards of Stockbridge, Massachusetts, became their legal guardian.

Edwards and his young wards moved to Elizabeth Town, New Jersey, the following year.

Uncle Timothy soon discovered that Esther’s

‘‘Little dirty Noisy Boy’’ had inherited much of

the Edwards family’s renowned intellect but little of their piety. High-spirited, independent,

precocious and self-confident, young Aaron at

first studied with a private tutor. In 1769 he

began his studies at the College of New Jersey,

graduating in 1772. In 1773, he enrolled in the

Reverend Joseph Bellamy’s school at Bethlehem,

Connecticut, to prepare for the ministry but soon

realized that he could neither wholly accept the

Calvinist discipline of his forebears nor forgo the

distractions of the town.9 He had, his authorized

biographer relates, ‘‘come to the conclusion that

the road to Heaven was open to all alike.’’ 10 In

May 1774, he moved to Litchfield, Connecticut,

to study law under his brother-in-law, Tapping

Reeve, but the outbreak of the American Revolution interrupted his studies.

Burr joined the march on Quebec as an uncompensated ‘‘gentleman volunteer’’ in the summer

of 1775. His bravery under fire during the illfated assault on that heavily fortified city on December 31, 1775, won him a coveted appointment as an aide to the American commander in

chief, General George Washington, but he was

almost immediately reassigned to General Israel

Putnam. Burr served as Putnam’s aide until 1777,

when he finally received a commission as a lieutenant colonel and command of his own regiment. Washington seems to have taken an immediate dislike to his ambitious young aide, and

Burr appears to have reciprocated this sentiment.

When Washington ordered the court-martial of

General Charles Lee for dilatory conduct at the

battle of Monmouth Courthouse, New Jersey, in

June 1778, Burr sided with Lee. His own regiment had suffered heavy losses during the engagement after Washington ordered Burr to hold

an exposed position in the blazing ninety-six-degree heat. But notwithstanding his dislike for

Colonel Burr, Washington respected his abilities,

assigning him the difficult but crucial task of determining the future movements of the British

forces in New York. Burr later commanded the

troops stationed at Westchester, New York, imposing a rigid but effective discipline that

brought order to the frontier outpost where unruly soldiers and footloose marauders had formerly terrorized the nearby settlers. Burr resigned his commission in early 1779, his health

broken by the accumulated stresses of several exhausting campaigns. He always took pride in his

military record, and for the remainder of his long

life, admirers referred to him as ‘‘Colonel

Burr.’’ 11 Of his many accomplishments, only

two are memorialized on the stone that marks

his grave: Colonel in the Army of the Revolution,

and Vice President of the United States.12

Aaron Burr lived an unsettled existence after

leaving the army, travelling about the countryside, visiting friends and family, and studying
[ 33 ]

AARON BURR

law as his health permitted. In 1782, he began

his legal practice and married Theodosia Bartow

Prevost, the widow of a British army officer. In

November 1783, the Burr family—which included his wife’s two sons by her first husband

and an infant daughter, named Theodosia for her

mother—moved to New York after British forces

evacuated the city. Burr lavished special attention on his only child, carefully supervising her

education and cultivating her intellect. Young

‘‘Theo,’’ in turn, idolized her father, and she became his closest confidante after her mother died

in 1794.13

Early Political Career

Burr was an able lawyer. A New York law barring non-Whigs from the legal profession

worked to his advantage as he rose to prominence in that calling. At this stage in his career,

he was not, apparently, an adherent of any particular political persuasion. Despite his alacrity

in responding to the call for volunteers at the

outbreak of the Revolution, he seems to have

been curiously detached from the political ferment that brought it about. Once Burr began his

political career, he served a single term in the

New York assembly during the 1784–1785 session, 14 not returning to public life until 1788.

Then, as the editors of his papers suggest, he

‘‘appears to have played a minor and equivocal

role’’ in the New York debate over ratification

of the proposed federal constitution. The radical

Sons of Liberty touted Burr as a possible delegate

to the ratification convention, but, for reasons he

never elaborated, he declined to serve.15 Before

long, however, he abandoned whatever reservations he may have had with respect to the new

Constitution. ‘‘After adoption by ten states,’’ he

advised one correspondent, ‘‘I think it became

both politic and necessary to adopt it.’’ 16

Burr was soon actively involved in New York

politics. Joining forces with his future rival, Alexander Hamilton, he supported Richard Yates—

a moderate Antifederalist and a longstanding

friend who had helped him win admission to the

bar—in the 1789 gubernatorial election. Yates

lost to George Clinton, a more ardent Antifederalist who had served as governor of New

York since 1777. Governor Clinton, either willing

to forgive Burr or shrewd enough to realize that

the brilliant young newcomer would soon

emerge as a key player in New York politics, appointed him attorney general in 1789. In 1791,

Clinton helped orchestrate Burr’s election to the

U. S. Senate, unseating Senator Philip Schuyler

and making a lifelong enemy of Schuyler’s sonin-law, Alexander Hamilton.17

Senator Burr had acquired a taste for politics—

a profession that, he would later advise an aspiring candidate, he found ‘‘a great deal of fun.’’ 18

In 1792, he entered the New York gubernatorial

race but soon withdrew in Clinton’s favor.

Northern Republicans mentioned him as a prospective vice-presidential candidate in 1792, but

Burr deferred to Clinton again after southern Republicans refused to support the ambitious

young senator. Better to select ‘‘a person of more

advanced life and longer standing in publick

trust,’’ James Monroe of Virginia cautioned,

‘‘particularly one who in consequence of such

service had given unequivocal proofs of what his

principles really were.’’ 19

Burr was a vehement partisan in the Senate,

siding with the anti-administration forces who

opposed Hamilton’s financial system and Washington’s foreign policy. He mounted a spirited,

though unsuccessful, defense of Pennsylvania

Senator Albert Gallatin, the Swiss-born Republican who was unseated in 1794 after the Federalist majority determined that he did not meet the

Constitution’s nine-year citizenship requirement

for senators. He voted against Washington’s

nomination of John Jay as an envoy to Great Britain in 1794, on the grounds that it would be

‘‘mischievous and impolitic’’ to appoint Jay, the

chief justice of the United States, to ‘‘any other

office or employment emanating from, and holden at the pleasure of, the executive.’’ Burr was

also one of the most outspoken opponents of the

unpopular ‘‘Jay Treaty,’’ which the Federalistdominated Senate approved in 1795.20

In 1796, the determined senator again set his

sights on the vice-presidency, and—in a striking

departure from eighteenth-century electoral etiquette—began an energetic campaign to secure

the support of his fellow Republicans. On June

26, 1796, the Republican caucus endorsed him as

their vice-presidential candidate, although, as
[ 34 ]

AARON BURR

Burr’s biographers have noted, ‘‘For their party’s

vice-presidential nomination, the Republicans

were less unified than in their determination that

[Thomas Jefferson] was the man to head their

party’s drive to oust the ‘aristocrats.’’’ Republicans concentrated on capturing the presidency

but succeeded only in electing Thomas Jefferson

vice president. Over half of the electors who

voted for Jefferson failed to cast their second

votes for Burr, who finished a disappointing

fourth with only thirty electoral votes.21

Burr retired from the Senate in 1797. The following year, he returned to the New York assembly, making several enemies during his brief and

troubled term. He advocated defensive measures

to protect New York harbor as relations with

France worsened in the wake of the ‘‘X,Y,Z affair’’—a prudent stance, given New York’s strategic importance and vulnerable location, but

one that prompted accusations from more doctrinaire Republicans that Burr had joined the

Federalist camp. He became vulnerable to

charges that he had abused the public trust for

his personal benefit when he participated in a

private land speculation venture in western New

York and then sought to enact legislation removing restrictions on land ownership by noncitizens—a measure that would increase the value

of his western lands. Working in concert with

Hamilton, Burr helped secure a charter and raise

subscriptions for a private company to improve

the water supply of pestilence-ridden Manhattan, but New Yorkers were shocked to learn that

the surplus capital from the venture had been

used to establish the Bank of Manhattan. Although Federalists were heavily involved in the

enterprise, the bank was controlled by Republicans. New York voters, suspicious as they were

of banks, deserted the party in droves in the 1799

state election, and Burr was turned out of office.22 One observer commented in disgust that

the Republicans ‘‘had such a damn’d ticket that

no decent man could hold up his head to support

it.’’ 23

But although some Republicans were increasingly uncomfortable with Burr’s questionable financial dealings and his willingness to cooperate

with Federalists to achieve his ends, he remained

a valuable asset. He had, one Federalist admitted, ‘‘by his arts & intrigues . . . done a great deal

towards revolutionizing the State,’’ 24 building a

political base that would help launch his national

career. Burr’s vehement opposition to the Alien

and Sedition Acts in the New York assembly had

won Republicans the support of New York’s

large and rapidly growing immigrant community. In a feat one admirer attributed to ‘‘the

intervention of a Supreme Power and our friend

Burr the agent,’’ he ensured that New York City

elected a Republican delegation to the state legislature in 1800, laying the groundwork for a Republican victory in the presidential contest later

that year. New York was one of the states in

which the legislature selected presidential electors, and its 12 electors comprised over 15 percent of the 70 votes necessary to achieve an electoral majority. Republican control of the New

York legislature was crucial, and New York

City’s thirteen-member delegation gave the

party a majority.25

The Election of 1800

In 1800, Republican strategists hoped to cement their fledgling coalition by seeking, for geographical balance, a New Yorker as their vicepresidential candidate. One obvious choice was

New York’s elder statesman, George Clinton, but

his reluctance to enter the race 26 cleared the way

for Burr’s unanimous nomination by the Republican caucus on May 11, 1800. Although Jefferson

would later claim—after Burr discredited himself by his behavior during the election and in

office—that he had harbored reservations about

his New York lieutenant from the time of their

first meeting in 1791 or 1792, contemporary correspondence suggests that their relationship was

cordial during the 1790s. If Jefferson had reservations about Burr in 1800, he laid them aside to

secure a Republican victory, using his influence

to ensure that all of Virginia’s twenty-one electors would cast their second votes for his running mate.27

Jefferson waged a behind-the-scenes campaign, writing letters to his political lieutenants

and encouraging the preparation and dissemination of pamphlets and press accounts critical of

John Adams’ administration, which had supported the Alien and Sedition Acts and increased
[ 35 ]

AARON BURR

the military establishment. Burr was an active

campaigner, visiting Rhode Island and Connecticut in late August to shore up Republican support. ‘‘The Matter of V.P—is of very little comparative Consequence,’’ he informed one correspondent as he speculated that the election

might result in the election of Jefferson as president and Adams as vice president, ‘‘and any Sacrifice on that head ought to be made to obtain

a single vote for J————.’’ 28 Surprising as it

might appear to modern observers, Burr’s clearly

successful political prowess in the 1800 election

only raised suspicions among his rivals and allies that he was not to be trusted. He did not fit

the mold of the dispassionate statesmen who remained aloof from the fray of politics while their

supporters worked to secure their election. But

‘‘the creation of nationwide, popularly based political parties,’’ one Burr scholar explains, ‘‘demanded men who were willing to . . . bargain

regional alliances, men able to climb the ladder

of popular support and to convey their own enjoyment of the ‘fun’ of politics.’’ In this respect,

she suggests, Burr was ‘‘The Ghost of Politics Yet

to Come.’’ 29

Jefferson soon had ample reason to distrust

Burr. In 1800, as in the three previous presidential elections, each elector cast two votes

without distinguishing between presidential and

vice-presidential candidates. Republican strategists expected that all of their electors would cast

one vote for Jefferson and that most—enough to

guarantee that Burr would receive the second

highest number of votes but not enough to jeopardize Jefferson’s margin—would cast their second votes for Burr. Jefferson and his lieutenants

left the implementation of this scheme to chance,

never asking even a single elector to withhold a

vote from Burr, although Jefferson’s friend and

adviser, James Madison, would later allege that

Republicans had been lulled by ‘‘false assurances

dispatched at the critical moment to the electors

of one state, that the votes of another would be

different from what they proved to be.’’

Increasingly confident of victory as the news

of the election filtered in from the states, Republicans were stunned to learn by mid-December

that, although they had clearly defeated Adams

and his running mate, Charles Cotesworth

Pinckney of South Carolina, they had failed to

elect a president. Jefferson and Burr, whether by

neglect or miscalculation, would each receive 73

electoral votes. The election would be decided by

the House of Representatives, as provided in Article II, section 1, of the Constitution, which directed that ‘‘if there be more that one [candidate]

who have such a majority, and have an equal

Number of Votes, then the House of Representatives shall immediately chuse by Ballot one of

them for President,’’ with ‘‘each State having one

Vote.’’ 30 The representatives from each state

would poll their delegation to determine how

their state would cast its single vote, with deadlocked states abstaining.

As soon as the outcome of the election became

apparent, but before Congress met to count the

electoral votes on February 11, 1801, the Federalists began a last-ditch effort to defeat Jefferson.

Some, while resigned to a Republican victory, believed that the less partisan and more flexible

Burr was by far the lesser of two evils. Others

supported Burr in the hope that, if a deadlock

could be prolonged indefinitely, the Federalistdominated Congress could resolve the impasse

with legislation authorizing the Senate to elect a

Federalist president—a hope that had no constitutional basis but demonstrated the uncertain

temper of the times. Alexander Hamilton, a

prominent New York Federalist, actively opposed Burr, repeatedly attempting to convince

his colleagues that Burr was a man whose ‘‘public principles have no other spring or aim than

his own aggrandisement.’’ 31

Burr never explained his role in the drama that

subsequently unfolded in the House of Representatives, which cast thirty-six ballots before

finally declaring Jefferson the winner on February 17, 1801. The few comments he ventured

at the time were guarded, evasive, and contradictory. Professing indignation at rumors that he

was soliciting Federalist support in an attempt

to wrest the presidency from Jefferson, Burr initially denied ‘‘that I could submit to be instrumental in counteracting the wishes & expectations of the U. S.,’’ instructing his friend Samuel

Smith ‘‘to declare these sentiments if the occasion shall require.’’ One prominent Federalist,

Robert Goodloe Harper of South Carolina, ad-
[ 36 ]

AARON BURR

vised Burr against withdrawing from the presidential contest, urging that he ‘‘take no step

whatsoever, by which the choice of the House of

Representatives can be impeded or embarassed,’’

and instead ‘‘keep the game perfectly in your

own hand.’’ Burr appears to have followed

Harper’s advice to the letter during the tense and

confused days that followed. He never actively

solicited Federalist votes but seemed willing

enough to accept them. In late December, he informed Samuel Smith that, if the House elected

him president, he would not step aside for

Jefferson.32

Rumors of Burr’s change of heart soon appeared in the press. Tempers flared and reports

of impending armed conflict spread, but Burr remained silent. When the House cast the first ballot on February 11, eight of the sixteen states—

one less than the simple majority required to

elect the president—voted for Jefferson. Six

states voted for Burr, with two states divided

and not voting. This ratio remained constant

through thirty-four subsequent ballots taken

over the course of a week. The deadlock was not

resolved until February 17, when Jefferson received the votes of ten states on the thirty-sixth

ballot. Representative James A. Bayard (F-DE)

and Burr himself finally resolved the impasse. As

Delaware’s only representative, Bayard controlled his state’s vote. He voted for Burr on the

first several ballots, but was under considerable

pressure from Hamilton to change his vote and

resolve the contest in Jefferson’s favor. (In thus

throwing his support to Jefferson, Hamilton rose

above partisan interests and helped to save the

nation.) Concluding that Burr could not muster

enough Republican support to win the election

(and having received assurances with respect to

Jefferson’s fiscal and appointments policies),

Bayard finally informed his fellow Federalists

that he could not ‘‘exclude Jefferson at the expense of the Constitution.’’ 33 Correspondence

from Burr, who was awaiting the outcome of the

election in New York, had arrived on February

15; these letters, now lost, revealed that he had

abandoned any hope of winning the presidency.34 His supporters finally agreed that,

when the state delegations were polled before

the House cast its thirty-sixth ballot on February

17, Vermont and Maryland Federalists would

withhold their votes, a move that freed their previously deadlocked delegations to vote for Jefferson. Bayard and the South Carolina representatives would cast blank ballots, further eroding

Burr’s margin. Jefferson, with ten votes, would

become president, while Burr, with four, would

become vice president.35

The election, and the confusion that followed,

exposed a critical flaw in the constitutional provision governing the election of the president

and the vice president. The Twelfth Amendment,

which passed both houses during the fall of 1803

and was ratified by the requisite number of states

in time for the 1804 election, changed the method

of election by requiring electors to designate one

vote for a presidential candidate and the other

for a vice-presidential candidate. Intended to

prevent an unscrupulous vice-presidential candidate (or his supporters) from subverting the

electoral process, the amendment was a Republican initiative, sponsored in the House of Representatives by John Dawson (R-VA) and in the

Senate by Burr’s rival De Witt Clinton (R-NY).36

Vice President Aaron Burr

If Burr was at all chagrined by the outcome of

the election, or by the taint he had acquired from

not emphatically renouncing his widely rumored

presidential aspirations, he gave no sign of it. ‘‘I

join my hearty Congratulations on the Auspicious events of the 17th:,’’ he wrote to Albert Gallatin while en route to Washington for the March

4 inauguration; ‘‘as to the infamous slanders

which have been so industriously circulated—

they are now of little Consequence & those who

believed them will doubtless blush at their own

Weakness.’’ 37 Burr arrived in Washington three

days before the inauguration and found accommodations in nearby Georgetown.

On March 4, 1801, Senate President pro tempore James Hillhouse (F-CT) administered the

oath of office to Burr in the Senate chamber on

the ground floor of the new Capitol in Washington. The new vice president offered a brief extemporaneous address of ‘‘about three sentences,’’ which the press ignored in favor of Jefferson’s elegant and conciliatory inaugural ad-
[ 37 ]

AARON BURR

dress. Burr assumed the president’s chair and

administered the oath of office to the newly elected senators who presented their credentials.

When Jefferson and the presidential party arrived in the Senate chamber, Burr left the Senate

president’s seat and joined Chief Justice John

Marshall to listen to Jefferson’s inaugural address. He later described the day as ‘‘serene &

temperate—The Concourse of people immense—all passed off handsomely—great joy

but no riot.’’ 38

The new vice president soon received a flood

of letters from friends, political allies and relatives, seeking appointments in the new administration or demanding the removal of Adams’

Federalist appointees. Burr, who could never

refuse a friend and considered patronage a

means of cementing alliances and paying political debts, passed a number of these requests

along to Jefferson. The president, however, became increasingly uncomfortable with each new

recommendation. Most damning, as historian

Mary-Jo Kline has explained, were the ‘‘repeated

requests for consideration of the claims of the

‘faithful’ from other states and territories.’’ Jefferson was perfectly willing to replace Adams’

‘‘midnight appointments’’ with marshals and

court officers who were loyal Republicans, as

well as to remove Federalists who displayed

‘‘malversation or inherent disqualification’’ for

office, appointing Republicans to the vacant

posts. Still, mindful of the charges of nepotism

and cronyism he had levelled against the Adams

administration, he hesitated to dismiss civil servants solely for political reasons. Nor did he think

it appropriate for the ambitious New Yorker to

concern himself with appointments to federal offices in other states. The final insult appears to

have occurred in the fall of 1801 with Burr’s campaign to secure an appointment for his ally, Matthew L. Davis, to a naval post in New York. The

president, already suspicious of the enterprising

vice president who had jeopardized his election,

soon began to distance himself from Burr.39

Thereafter, in making federal appointments in

New York, he relied on George Clinton or Clinton’s nephew De Witt.

After the Clintons replaced Burr as the administration’s liaison to the New York Republican

party, De Witt spared no effort to discredit the

vice president in his home state. Assisted by

[New York] American Citizen editor James

Cheetham, he waged a savage war against the

vice president in the local press.40 ‘‘The handbills

were numerous, of various descriptions, uniform

however in Virulent and indecent abuse,’’ Burr

reported. ‘‘[T]o Vilify A.B. was deemed of so

much consequence, that packages of them were

sent to Various parts of the country.’’ It was becoming painfully apparent, one of his allies observed, that the vice president’s ‘‘influence and

weight with the Administration is in my opinion

not such as I could wish.’’ 41 Bereft of the political

base that had made him a formidable force in

New York politics and an attractive vice-presidential prospect, he was now a liability to the administration. During Burr’s single term in office,

whatever influence or status he enjoyed would

derive solely from his position as president of the

Senate.42

President of the Senate

Burr was one of the most skilled parliamentarians to serve as president of the Senate, a striking

contrast to Adams and a worthy successor to Jefferson. ‘‘Mr. Burr, the Vice President, presides in

the Senate with great ease, dignity & propriety,’’

Senator William Plumer (F-NH) observed. ‘‘He

preserves good order, silence—& decorum in debate—he confines the speaker to the point. He

has excluded all spectators from the area of the

Senate chamber, except the members from the

other House. A measure which contributes much

to good order.’’ 43

But, although Burr was universally respected

for his parliamentary skills and his impartial rulings, Senate Republicans noted with mounting

concern his easy familiarity with his many Federalist friends. Alienated from his own party,

pragmatic at the expense of principle, and beset

by the chronic financial difficulties that dogged

him throughout his career, Burr was increasingly

regarded by his fellow Republicans as an unprincipled opportunist who would stop at nothing to

rebuild his shattered political and personal fortunes.44 They found ample evidence of the vice

president’s apostasy on January 27, 1802, when

Burr cast a tie-breaking vote that undercut the
[ 38 ]

AARON BURR

Republican effort to repeal the Judiciary Act of

1801.

That act, signed into law less than a week before Jefferson’s election, enacted badly needed

reforms, providing circuit court judges to relieve

the Supreme Court justices from the burdensome

and exhausting chore of riding circuit, and reducing the number of justices from six to five,

effective with the next vacancy. The act became

effective in time to allow John Adams to appoint

Federalist judges to the new circuit courts, a development that heightened Republican fears of

a Federalist-controlled judiciary. And, with one

less Supreme Court justice, it appeared unlikely

that Jefferson would ever have an opportunity

to appoint a Republican nominee to the Supreme

Court. On January 6, 1802, Senator John Breckinridge (R-KY) introduced a bill to repeal the Judiciary Act. Burr’s vote would prove crucial in the

Senate, where the absence of one Republican and

the resignation of another had eroded the administration’s already slim majority. Republicans

were greatly relieved when the Senate deadlocked on a vote to proceed to a third reading

of the repeal bill on January 26, and Burr resolved the tie in favor of the repealers. But he

had secretly informed Federalists that he would

support their attempts to block repeal by adding

amendments that would make the Judiciary Act

acceptable to moderate Republicans. Thus, the

next day, when his friend Jonathan Dayton (FNJ) moved to refer the bill to ‘‘a select committee,

with instructions to consider and report the alterations which may be proper in the Judiciary system of the United States,’’ Burr resolved the tie

in favor of the Federalists.45 Burr explained that

he had voted for referral in hopes of reaching a

compromise:

I am for the affirmative, because I never can

resist the reference of a measure where the senate

is so nicely balanced, when the object is to effect

amendment, that may accommodate it to the

opinions of a larger majority; and particularly

when I can believe that gentlemen are sincere in

wishing a reference for this purpose. Should it,

however, at any time appear that delay only is

intended, my conduct will be different.46

Republicans who resented Burr’s treachery

were outraged when he announced the members

of the select committee. During the early 1800s,

senators voted to choose members of these temporary committees, which normally consisted of

three members, but on this occasion two senators

tied for first place and three for second place. The

committee would therefore, Burr announced, be

comprised of five members: two Republicans

who favored repeal; two Federalists who had

voted against repeal and subsequently voted to

refer the bill to committee in hopes of effecting

a compromise; and one Republican moderate,

John Ewing Colhoun (R-SC), who had sided with

the Federalists.47 An account of the proceedings

in the New York Evening Post reveals that Burr

answered Republican challenges to this unexpected development with his customary ease

and composure:

. . . The Democratic [Republican] members appeared extremely discontented at the apparent

result; and before the vote was finally declared

by the Vice President, General [James] Jackson

[R-GA] rose and proposed, that the Senate

should ballot again for the committee. This dashing proposition did not materially interrupt the

regularity of the scrutiny.

The Vice President was very deliberate. He

took the ballots of the respective Senators, examined them attentively, stated the number of them,

and holding them up in his hand, mentioned that

gentlemen, if they chose, might come and examine them. Mr. G[ouverneur] Morris [F-NY] hoped

never to see, in the Senate a proceeding implying

so much distrust.

After a pause, the Vice President declared his

opinion, that the ballots were truly counted. Of

course, the committee was composed as stated

above, to the no small chagrin of some of the

Democratic members of Congress, in both

Houses.48

Although Burr had substantive objections to

the repeal bill, 49 and told one correspondent that

he was troubled at the prospect ‘‘of depriving the

twenty-six judges of office and pay,’’ 50 his growing estrangement from the administration was

also a factor. He may, as one scholar of the early

judiciary suggests, have hoped to ‘‘enhance his

stature not only with moderates of his own party
[ 39 ]

AARON BURR

but also with Federalists, and perhaps even pave

the way for the eventual formation of a third

party under his leadership,’’ 51 but the immediate result of Burr’s abortive attempt to reach

a compromise was his further isolation from his

party. He had, as Jefferson’s biographer has

noted, ‘‘offended one side without satisfying the

other.’’ 52 Among the advisers who comprised

Jefferson’s inner circle, only Treasury Secretary

Albert Gallatin continued to support the increasingly troublesome vice president.53

Burr soon abandoned any hope of winning renomination to a second term. In early 1804, he

called on Jefferson to inform him that he recognized ‘‘it would be for the interest of the republican cause for him to retire; that a disadvantageous schism would otherwise take place,’’ but

he was concerned that ‘‘were he to retire, it

would be said that he shrunk from the public

sentence.’’ He would need, Burr suggested,

‘‘some mark of favor . . . which would declare

to the world that he retired with [Jefferson’s]

confidence.’’ Jefferson replied that he had not attempted to influence the 1800 election on his own

or Burr’s behalf, nor would he do so in the next

election—a cool rejoinder that masked his now

considerable resentment of the man whom, he

claimed, he had ‘‘habitually cautioned Mr. Madison against trusting too much.’’ 54

The Republicans ultimately settled on George

Clinton as their new vice-presidential candidate.

Burr retired from national politics, without Jefferson’s ‘‘mark of favor,’’ entering the 1804 New

York gubernatorial race in a desperate attempt

to restore his rapidly failing career.

The Burr-Hamilton Duel

Burr no longer commanded the respect and

support from New York Republicans that he had

once enjoyed. He entered the gubernatorial race

as an independent and actively sought Federalist

support when it became apparent that the Federalists would not offer a candidate of their own.

But Alexander Hamilton was soon ‘‘intriguing

for any candidate who can have a chance of success against A.B.’’ Burr plunged enthusiastically

into the campaign, delivering speeches and distributing campaign literature, but he could not

overcome the liabilities he had acquired since

1800. He lost the election by an overwhelming

8,000-vote margin.55

Burr’s defeat left him bitter and disillusioned.

He blamed Hamilton for his predicament, and

when he learned that his rival and former ally

had referred to him, at a private dinner party,

as a ‘‘dangerous man, and who ought not to be

trusted,’’ he demanded an explanation. The conflict escalated, as Burr and Hamilton exchanged

a series of letters, and finally came to a head on

June 27, 1804, when Burr challenged Hamilton

to a duel. The grim engagement took place on

July 11 at Weehawken, New Jersey, and resulted

in Hamilton’s death the following day.56

Burr’s opponents called for his arrest, but the

outcry against him was by no means universal.

Duelling was expressly prohibited by law in

most states, and murder was a crime in every

state. But encounters on the ‘‘field of honor’’ still

took place during the early nineteenth century,

particularly in the southern states. Burr had previously challenged Hamilton’s brother-in-law,

John Church, to a duel—a bloodless encounter

that enabled them to confront and then forget

their differences—and Hamilton’s son, Philip,

had incurred a mortal wound on the duelling

ground the previous year. Henry Clay, Andrew

Jackson, and others of similar stature subscribed

to the Code Duello, but few suffered the stigma

that Burr carried after that fatal morning at

Weehawken. He left New York a month after

Hamilton’s death to allow ‘‘public opinion’’ to

‘‘take its proper course,’’ travelling south in

hopes of a reunion with his daughter Theodosia,

now the wife of Joseph Alston, a South Carolina

planter with impeccable Republican credentials,

and his young grandson, Aaron Burr Alston. He

was eventually indicted in New York and New

Jersey, but never stood trial in either

jurisdiction.57

Burr returned to the Senate in early November,

in time for the second session of the Eighth Congress. It was, as Senator Plumer noted, an awkward occasion:

Nov. 7, 1804

This day the Senate made a quorum for the

first time this session [which began two days earlier]. Mr. Burr, the Vice President, appeared and
[ 40 ]

AARON BURR

took his seat in the Senate the very first day of

the session. It has been unusual for the Vice President to take his seat the first day of the session.

But this man, though indicted in New York &

New Jersey for the murder of the illustrious

Hamilton, is determined to brave public opinion.

What a humiliating circumstance that a man Who

for months has fled from Justice—& who by the

legal authorities is now accused of murder,

should preside over the first branch of the National Legislature!

I have avoided him—his presence to me is odious—I have merely bowed & spoken to him—

Federalists appear to despise neglect & abhor

him. The democrats [Republicans], at least many

of them, appear attentive to him—& he is very

familiar with them—What line of conduct they

will generally observe to him is yet uncertain.58

Republicans had indeed become ‘‘more attentive’’ to Burr; even Jefferson seemed anxious to

mend fences with his errant vice president. ‘‘Mr.

Jefferson has shewn more attention & invited Mr.

Burr oftener to his house within this three weeks

than ever he did in the course of the same time

before,’’ Plumer marvelled. ‘‘Mr. Gallatin, the

Secy of the Treasury, has waited upon him often

at his (Burr’s) lodging—& on one day was closeted with him more than two hours. The Secretary of State, Mr. Madison, formerly the intimate friend of Genl. Hamilton, had taken his

murderer into his carriage rode with him—accompanied him on a visit to M. Terreau the

French Minister.’’ 59 United States Attorney Alexander Dallas wrote to New Jersey Governor Joseph Bloomfield, urging him to grant clemency

to the vice president.60

Republicans in Congress, particularly in the

Senate, were equally solicitous of Burr. ‘‘The proceedings in New York in consequence of the duel

are deemed by a number of the Senators to be

harsh and unprecedented,’’ Senator Samuel L.

Mitchill (R-NY) explained to his wife. ‘‘They believe it very unfair and partial to make him the

victim of justice, while several other persons who

have killed their opponents in duels at Hoboken

are suffered to go at large without molestation.

Under these impressions an address has been

drawn up to Governor Bloomfield for the purpose of inducing him to quash or suspend the

proceedings against the Vice President.’’ 61 Federalists were stunned by the Republicans’ newfound respect for Burr, which Plumer attributed

to ‘‘their joy for the death of Hamilton.’’ 62 But

the real reason for Republicans’ apparent change

of heart, as Burr’s biographers Herbert Parmet

and Marie Hecht have suggested, was the impending impeachment trial of Supreme Court

Justice Samuel Chase.63

The Impeachment Trials of John Pickering and

Samuel Chase

Burr had earlier presided over the impeachment trial of New Hampshire Judge John Pickering, a revered patriot and the author of his state’s

1784 constitution, who by 1803 had become insane and an alcoholic. The House of Representatives impeached Pickering on March 2, 1803, for

conduct ‘‘contrary to his trust and duty as

judge,’’ and the trial in the Senate was held a

year later. Even the judge’s Federalist supporters

were embarrassed by his ravings from the bench,

but they saw in the charges against him the

opening salvo in the Republicans’ assault on the

federal judiciary. They would defend him at all

costs, maintaining throughout his trial that insanity did not constitute grounds for removal.

Republicans were forced to counter that the

judge was perfectly sane, but guilty of misconduct that justified his removal from office, although Jefferson and some moderate Republicans were uneasy at the thought of subjecting

a man so obviously tormented to the ordeal of

an impeachment trial.64

The trial was a highly partisan proceeding, and

on March 12, 1804, the final vote that removed

Pickering from office split along party lines. The

vice president made ‘‘very formal arrangements’’ for the trial, Representative Manasseh

Cutler, a Federalist from Massachusetts, informed a correspondent, ‘‘and the court was

opened with a dignified solemnity.’’ 65 Burr presided over the preliminary proceedings and

most of the trial with his customary tact and skill,

deferring to the Senate to resolve the difficult

procedural issues that arose after Pickering failed

to appear and his son’s attorney, Robert Goodloe

Harper, informed the court that the judge,

‘‘being in a state of absolute and long continued

insanity,’’ could ‘‘neither appear nor authorize
[ 41 ]

AARON BURR

another to appear for him.’’ But on March 10,

Burr, concerned about his gubernatorial campaign in New York, ‘‘abruptly left the Senate,’’

departing in the midst of a heated debate over

Connecticut Federalist Uriah Tracy’s motion to

postpone the trial until the following session.

President pro tempore Jesse Franklin, a North

Carolina Republican, presided for the remainder

of the trial, and Burr’s unexpected departure

made no apparent difference in the outcome of

the proceedings.66 Pickering’s trial, as Jefferson’s

biographer has stressed, was a ‘‘confused and

tragic episode.’’ 67 The participants in this sorry

spectacle all realized that Pickering was a deeply

disturbed man and were greatly relieved when

the trial ended with his removal from office.

But the impending trial of Associate Supreme

Court Justice Samuel Chase, impeached for judicial misconduct by the House of Representatives

on March 12, 1804—the day Pickering’s trial

ended—was another matter. Appointed to the

court by President Washington and confirmed

by a narrow margin, Chase was an inveterate

Federalist, known for his intemperate and partisan harangues from the bench and for his flagrant prejudice against defendants accused of

violating the Sedition Act. For many Republicans, Chase personified all the evils inherent in

the Federalist-controlled judiciary. As his impeachment trial approached, these Republicans

were painfully aware that they could ill afford

to offend the man whose rulings would govern

the proceedings, and they thus treated Burr with

studied deference.68

But it was an uneasy truce, at best. Burr was

noticeably uncomfortable in the Senate chamber.

‘‘After the minutes of the preceding day have

been read—the little business before us dispatched,’’ Plumer observed, the vice president

would ‘‘leave the chair—come to some one Senator, & intimate in strong terms that it was best

to adjourn—& sometimes request a senator to

move an adjournment—& in a few minutes he

was gone.’’ He seemed to have ‘‘lost those easy

graceful manners that beguiled the hours away

the last session—He is now uneasy, discontented, & hurried.’’ 69 Plumer also sensed ‘‘an

unusual concern & anxiety in the leading democratic members of the senate,’’ who feared ‘‘the

talents of Burr.’’ The vice president appeared

‘‘friendly to them,’’ he reflected, but ‘‘[s]ome office must be given him—what office can that be,

that he will accept, & not injure them?’’ 70

Burr imposed a rigid discipline on the conduct

of the Chase impeachment trial, conducting the

proceedings, as one reporter observed, ‘‘with the

dignity and impartiality of an angel, but with the

rigor of a devil.’’ 71 Manasseh Cutler reported

that the trial was ‘‘conducted with a propriety

and solemnity throughout which reflects honor

upon the Senate. It must be acknowledged that

Burr has displayed much ability, and since the

first day I have seen nothing of partiality.’’ 72 Although the managers appointed by the House of

Representatives and led by Republican Representative John Randolph of Virginia were responsible for trying the case, Burr would occasionally intervene, posing questions of his own

to a witness when the irrational and ineffective

Randolph (or another interrogator) failed to pursue a particular line of questioning, or seeking

clarification of an incomplete or ambiguous response. When either side objected to a question

posed by the other, Burr took careful note of the

objection, ordering that the offending question

be ‘‘reduced to writing’’ and put to the Senate

for a determination.73

But at times Burr’s rigid insistence on absolute

decorum only increased the tensions that simmered in the Senate chamber, elaborately redecorated for the occasion under his careful supervision. Although Senator Plumer would conclude by the end of the trial that Burr had ‘‘certainly, on the whole, done himself, the Senate &

the nation honor by the dignified manner in

which he has presided over this high & numerous Court,’’ he was outraged at Burr’s treatment

of Chase on January 2, 1805, when the judge appeared before the Senate to enter his plea. Before

the court opened, Plumer had overheard the vice

president’s caustic comment as he ordered Sergeant at Arms James Mathers to remove the chair

set aside for the aged justice: ‘‘Let the Judge take

care to find a seat for himself.’’ Mathers replaced

the chair, after Chase ‘‘moved that a seat be assigned him,’’ and the vice president ‘‘in a very

cold formal insolent manner replied he presumed the Court would not object to taking a
[ 42 ]

AARON BURR

seat,’’ but Burr would not permit Mathers to provide a table for the judge’s convenience. Burr repeatedly interrupted the aged and frail judge as

Chase, at times breaking into tears, requested additional time to prepare his answer to the impeachment.74

Burr’s ‘‘peevishness’’ continued as the proceedings unfolded; on one occasion, he notified

one of Chase’s attorneys, Philip Barton Key,

‘‘that he must not appear as counsel in his loose

coat’’ [‘‘greatcoat,’’ or overcoat], a proviso that

senators criticized and Key ignored. By the first

week of February, the Senate’s now ‘‘remarkably

testy’’ president was ‘‘in a rage because we do

not sit longer.’’ 75 Unruly senators on both sides

of the aisle bristled, Plumer observed, when Burr

lectured them on judicial etiquette after the high

court of impeachment had adjourned for the day

on February 12:

Just as the time for adjourning to tomorrow

was to be put in the Secretary’s office—Mr. Burr

said he wished to inform the Senate of some

irregularities that he had observed in the Court.

Some of the senators as he said during the trial

& while a witness was under examination

walked between him & the Managers—Others

eat apples—& some eat cake in their seats.

Mr. [Timothy] Pickering [F-MA] said he [did]

eat an apple—but it was at a time when the President had retired from the chair. Burr replied he

did not mean him—he did not see him.

Mr. [Robert] Wright [R-MD] said he did eat

cake—he had a just right so to do—he was faint—

but he disturbed nobody—He never would submit to be schooled & catechised in this manner.

At this instance a motion was made by Mr.

[Stephen Row] Bradley [R-VT], who also had

eaten cake, for an adjournment—Burr told

Wright he was not in order—sit down—The Senate adjourned—& I left Wright & Burr scolding.76

Although rightfully concerned about maintaining an atmosphere of judicial decorum, Burr had

obviously lost much of the ‘‘easy grace’’ and consummate tact that had made him such an effective presiding officer. The ordeal ended on

March 1, when Burr announced, after a separate

vote on each article of impeachment, ‘‘that there

is not a Constitutional majority of votes finding

Samuel Chase, Esq., guilty, on any one article.’’ 77

Burr’s Final Days in the Senate

Burr’s final days in the Senate would have

been unpleasant even without the strain of presiding over a taxing and bitterly contested impeachment trial. He presided over the February

13, 1805 joint session of Congress, counting the

electoral returns. In that capacity, he announced

that Jefferson had been reelected and that his old

rival, George Clinton, would succeed him as vice

president. Senator Samuel Mitchill reported that

Burr performed this ‘‘painful duty’’ with ‘‘so

much regularity and composure that you would

not have seen the least deviation from his common manner, or heard the smallest departure

from his usual tone.’’ But, Mitchill observed, the

always impeccably attired vice president ‘‘appeared rather more carefully dressed than

usual’’ for the occasion.78

A week later, Republican Senator John Smith

of New York introduced a bill ‘‘freeing from

postage all letters and packets to and from Aaron

Burr,’’ and Burr found himself in the unenviable

position of listening as senators questioned the

propriety of granting him the franking privilege.

Although surviving accounts of the debate do

not indicate that the issue of Burr’s character was

ever raised in his presence, it was certainly an

unspoken consideration. The debate was particularly intense on February 27. Senator John Quincy Adams, a Massachusetts Federalist, proposed

an amendment to extend the frank to all former

vice presidents (omitting the explicit reference to

Burr), and Republican James Jackson of Georgia

cautioned in response that ‘‘We might hereafter

have a Vice President to whom it would be improper to grant the privilege.’’ After Federalist

Senators Timothy Pickering of Massachusetts

and James Hillhouse of Connecticut finally ‘‘advocated the indelicacy of the situation of having

Mr. Burr in the chair,’’ the vice president volunteered that ‘‘he was apprehensive that tomorrow

he should be afflicted with pain in the head &

should be unable to attend.’’ With Burr absent

from the chamber, his opponents were free to

speak their minds. The debate was bitter and intense; Senator Hillhouse was resolutely opposed

to giving Burr such a dangerous privilege. ‘‘The

Vice President is an ambitious man,’’ he warned
[ 43 ]

AARON BURR

his colleagues. ‘‘[H]e aspired to the Presidency—

disappointed ambition will be restless. You put

arms into his hands to attack your government—

He may disseminate seditious pamphlets, news

papers & letters at the expence of the very government he is destroying.’’ Senator Pickering

feared that Burr would ‘‘sell the right of franking

to commercial houses—And in the city of New

York alone it might give him a fortune.’’ But

Burr’s supporters countered, ‘‘The reason why

gentlemen oppose this bill is because Mr. Burr

has fought a duel and killed a man.’’ Although

the bill passed by a vote of 18 to 13, with all but

three of the New England senators voting

against it, the House subsequently postponed the

measure.79

Burr’s Farewell Address

Burr left the Senate the day after the Chase trial

concluded and just two days before George Clinton took office as the nation’s fourth vice president. Federalists and Republicans alike were

deeply moved by his March 2, 1805, farewell address, still one of the most celebrated speeches

in the history of the early Republic. His remarks

were intended for the senators alone, unexpectedly delivered at the conclusion of a closed-door

executive session.

Burr began his twenty-minute address with an

acknowledgement that ‘‘he must at times have

wounded the feelings of individual members.’’

But he had ‘‘avoided entering into explanations

at the time,’’ he explained, ‘‘because a moment

of irritation was not a moment for explanation;

because his position (being in the chair) rendered

it impossible to enter into explanations without

obvious danger of consequences which must injure the dignity of the Senate, or prove disagreeable and injurious in more than one point of

view.’’ Only ‘‘the ignorant and unthinking,’’ he

continued, ‘‘affected to treat as unnecessary and

fastidious a rigid attention to rules and decorum.’’ But Burr ‘‘thought nothing trivial which

touched, however remotely, the dignity’’ of the

Senate, and he cautioned senators ‘‘to avoid the

smallest relaxation of the habits which he had endeavored to inculcate and establish.’’ Likening

the Senate to ‘‘a sanctuary, a citadel of law, of

order, and of liberty,’’ Burr predicted that ‘‘if the

Constitution be destined ever to perish by the

sacrilegious hands of the demagogue or the

usurper, which God avert, its expiring agonies

will be witnessed on this floor.’’

Concluding his remarks with the customary

expressions of respect and good will, Burr left

the Senate chamber, closing the door behind him,

Senator Mitchill noted, ‘‘with some force.’’ ‘‘[A]

solemn and silent weeping’’ filled the Senate

chamber ‘‘for perhaps five minutes.’’ Mitchill, for

one, had ‘‘never experienced any thing of the

kind so affecting,’’ and New York Republican

John Smith, ‘‘stout and manly as he is . . . laid

his head upon his table and did not recover from

his emotion for a quarter of an hour or more.’’ 80

But De Witt Clinton’s ally, [New York] American

Citizen editor James Cheetham, and others who

suspected that Burr’s ‘‘melodio, harmonico pathos’’ was merely an effort to restore his political

fortunes, doubted that ‘‘the flowing tear’’ could

‘‘wash away the dingy stains’’ of Burr’s ‘‘political

degeneracy.’’ 81

The ‘‘Burr Conspiracy’’

The forty-nine-year-old former vice president

was heavily in debt at the time of his forced retirement from politics. He had been involved in

a number of speculative ventures throughout his

career, many of which had resulted in substantial

losses. Generous beyond prudence, Burr could

never refuse a relative or a friend in need, even

if it meant going further into debt. He had assumed responsibility for a number of young

wards throughout the years—some of them the

children of clients, others rumored to have been

his own offspring—and his generosity to his

charges further strained his always precarious finances. Burr had always lived, dressed and entertained well, even when he could ill afford to

do so.82 Surveying his limited prospects, the optimistic and always enterprising former vice

president now looked to the West.

The full extent of Burr’s business and other

ventures in the West will probably never be

known, but his first undertaking appears to have

been the Indiana Canal Company. Burr and his

fellow investors intended to construct a canal to

circumvent the Ohio River rapids at Louisville,

but, as his biographers have explained, the re-
[ 44 ]

AARON BURR

sourceful vice president had ‘‘more than one

plan for the future but several alternate ones depending on change and history.’’ His most ambitious scheme was contingent upon the outbreak

of war with Spain, which was still in possession

of West Florida and Mexico and increasingly

hostile toward the burgeoning new nation that

pressed along its eastern border. Burr planned an

assault on Mexico and anticipated that the western states would leave the Union to join in a

southeastern confederacy under his leadership.

One of Burr’s accomplices, Louisiana Governor

James Wilkinson, betrayed the conspiracy before

Burr could begin his expedition, and the former

vice president was arrested on charges of treason. Chief Justice John Marshall presided over

Burr’s trial, which opened on August 3, 1807, in

Richmond, Virginia. The jury, guided by Marshall’s written opinion that two witnesses must

testify to a specific, overt act to establish treason—a standard that the prosecution failed to

meet—ultimately found ‘‘that Aaron Burr is not

proved to be guilty under this indictment.’’

Pressed by debts and fearful of further prosecution, Burr departed for Europe under an assumed name in June 1808.83

Burr’s Later Years

Burr spent the next four years in self-imposed

exile. He travelled throughout England and the

continent, sightseeing, reading, entertaining the

ladies, who found him an attractive companion,

and seeking support for another southwestern

expedition. His overtures to the British and

French courts failed miserably. In the spring of

1812, convinced that a war between the United

States and Great Britain was imminent, Burr returned home under the alias, ‘‘M. Arnot.’’ He

took a room near the Boston waterfront—a far

cry from the handsome and well-furnished New

York mansion, Richmond Hill, that he maintained in better times—while testing the waters

to determine whether he could safely return to

New York.84

Burr reappeared in New York in June 1812,

ready to resume his legal career. He eagerly

looked forward to a reunion with his beloved

‘‘Theo’’ and his grandson Aaron Burr Alston but

soon learned that young ‘‘Gampy,’’ as Burr

called his namesake, had died. In late December

1812, the grief-stricken Theo set out from her

home in Georgetown, South Carolina, to visit her

father in New York and was never seen again.

The schooner that carried Theodosia Burr Alston

and her escort probably sank in a storm off Cape

Hatteras, North Carolina, but the mysterious circumstances of her disappearance, and the controversy and mystery that always dogged Burr’s

career, spawned legends that the unfortunate

Mrs. Alston had been forced to walk the plank

by pirates or mutineers, or was still alive as a

prisoner in the West Indies.85

Although devastated by his daughter’s death,

Burr continued to practice law and to supervise

the education of his young wards. Snubbed by

many of his former acquaintances and wholly removed from the ‘‘game of politics’’ that had once

been his joy and delight, Burr followed the independence movements that were changing the

face of Latin America with a lively but cautious

interest. In 1829, he petitioned the government

for a pension based on his military service during the Revolution, a crusade that continued

until his plea was finally granted in 1834. He became progressively more eccentric and impoverished as the years passed. In 1831, William Seward found him living in a dirty garret, shabbily

dressed but optimistic as ever.

In 1833, Aaron Burr married a second time. His

new bride, a wealthy widow with a past almost

as controversial as his own, soon became disenchanted with her husband when she discovered that he had mismanaged her assets, and she

divorced him the following year. Incapacitated

by a series of strokes in 1834, Burr lived on the

charity of friends and relatives until his death at

Port Richmond, Staten Island, on September 14,

1836. During his final hours, a clergyman inquired about his prospects for salvation. Evasive

and cryptic to the end, Burr only replied, ‘‘On

that subject I am coy.’’ Aaron Burr was buried

with military honors at Princeton, New Jersey,

on September 16, 1836.86
[ 45 ]

NOTES 1 Herbert S. Parmet and Marie B. Hecht, Aaron Burr: Portrait of an Ambitious Man (New York, 1967), p. 285. 2 Paul L. Ford, ed., The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (New

York, 1905) 10:387, quoted in Parmet and Hecht, p. 287. 3Milton Lomask, Aaron Burr, vol. 2 (New York, 1982), pp.

372–73. 4Everett Somerville Brown, ed., William Plumer’s Memorandum of Proceedings in the United States Senate, 1803–1807

(New York, 1923), p. 123. 5Remarks of Senator Robert C. Byrd, ‘‘Profile of ’That

Great Enigma’: Aaron Burr,’’ U.S., Congress, Senate, Congressional Record, 100th Cong., 1st sess., p. 31910. 6Mary-Jo Kline, ‘‘Aaron Burr as a Symbol of Corruption

in the New Republic,’’ in Before Watergate: Problems of Corruption in American Society, ed. Abraham S. Eisenstadt, Ari

Hoogenboom and Hans L. Trefousse (Brooklyn, NY, 1978),

p. 74. Mary-Jo Kline and Joanne Wood Ryan’s two-volume

letterpress edition of Burr’s public papers, published by

Princeton University Press in 1983, is an invaluable resource

for scholars. 7 See, for example, Samuel H. Wandell, Aaron Burr in Literature: Books, Pamphlets, Periodicals, and Miscellany Relating

to Aaron Burr and His Leading Political Contemporaries (Port

Washington, NY, 1972; reprint of 1936 edition). 8 Kline, ‘‘Aaron Burr as a Symbol of Corruption in the

New Republic,’’ p. 70. 9 Parmet and Hecht, pp. 1–16.

10Matthew L. Davis, Memoirs of Aaron Burr (Freeport, NY,

1970; reprint of 1836 edition), 1:45. 11 Parmet and Hecht, pp. 17–51.

12Byrd, p. 31910.

13 Parmet and Hecht, pp. 52–58, 64–65. A second daughter, Sally Reeve Burr, was born in 1785 and died in February

1789. 14 Parmet and Hecht, pp. 58–62.

15 Kline, Mary-Jo, and Joanne Wood Ryan, eds., Political

Correspondence and Public Papers of Aaron Burr, vol. 1 (Princeton, 1983), p. 46. 16Aaron Burr to Richard Oliver, July 29, 1788, in Kline

and Ryan, 1:33. 17 Parmet and Hecht, pp. 65–66.

18 Kline, ‘‘Aaron Burr as a Symbol of Corruption in the

New Republic,’’ p. 74. 19 Parmet and Hecht, p. 84.

20 Ibid., pp. 68–110.

21 Ibid., pp. 108–10.

22 Ibid., pp. 112–43.

23 [New York] Commercial Advertiser, May 4, 1799, quoted

in Kline and Ryan, 1:402. 24Robert Troup to Rufus King, May 6, 1799, quoted in

Kline and Ryan, 1:420.

25 Noble E. Cunningham, Jr., ‘‘Election of 1800,’’ in History

of American Presidential Elections, 1789–1968, vol. 1, ed. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., and Fred L. Israel (New York, 1985),

pp. 108–10; Dumas Malone, Jefferson and the Ordeal of Liberty

(Boston, 1962), pp. 473–74; Parmet and Hecht, pp. 131–48. 26 See Chapter 4 of this volume, ‘‘George Clinton,’’ p. 53.

27Malone, Jefferson and the Ordeal of Liberty, p. 474; Kline

and Ryan, 1:389–90, 430–34; Kline, ‘‘Aaron Burr as a Symbol

of Corruption in the New Republic, p. 70; Cunningham,

’’Election of 1800,’’ p. 110. 28 Cunningham, ‘‘Election of 1800,’’ pp. 104, 113–15; Kline

and Ryan, 1:443–49; Malone, Jefferson and the Ordeal of Liberty, pp. 473–83.

29 Kline, ‘‘Aaron Burr as a Symbol of Corruption in the

New Republic,’’ p. 75. 30Malone, Jefferson and the Ordeal of Liberty, pp. 489–94;

Thomas Jefferson to Aaron Burr, December 15, 1800, in

Kline and Ryan, 1:469–70. 31Malone, Jefferson and the Ordeal of Liberty, pp. 489–96;

Parmet and Hecht, pp. 158–60; Cunningham, ‘‘Election of

1800,’’ pp. 131–32. 32 Kline and Ryan, 1:469–87, see especially Aaron Burr to

Samuel Smith, December 16, 1800, p. 471, and Aaron Burr

to Samuel Smith, December 29, 1800, pp. 478–79; Malone,

Jefferson and the Ordeal of Liberty, pp. 499–505; Parmet and

Hecht, pp. 144–67. 33 Kline and Ryan, 1:486–87; Malone, Jefferson and the Ordeal of Liberty, pp. 502–5; Cunningham, ‘‘Election of 1800,’’

pp. 131–34; Parmet and Hecht, pp. 162–67; Richard E. Ellis,

The Jeffersonian Crisis: Courts and Politics in the Young Republic (New York, 1974; reprint of 1971 edition), p. 28; Forrest

McDonald, Alexander Hamilton: A Biography (New York,

1979), pp. 352–53. 34 Kline and Ryan, 1:486.

35 Ibid., 1:486–87; Malone, Jefferson and the Ordeal of Liberty,

pp. 502–5; Cunningham, ‘‘Election of 1800,’’ pp. 131–34;

Parmet and Hecht, pp. 162–67; Ellis, p. 28. 36U.S., Congress, House, Annals of Congress, 8th Cong.,

1st sess., pp. 372–77; U.S., Congress, Senate, Annals of Congress, 8th Cong., 1st sess., pp. 21–25, 81–210; Dennis J.

Mahoney, ‘‘Twelfth Amendment,’’ Encyclopedia of the American Constitution, vol. 4 (New York, 1986), p. 1927; Tadahisa

Kuroda, The Origins of the Twelfth Amendment: The Electoral

College in the Early Republic, 1787–1804 (Westport, CT, 1994). 37Aaron Burr to Albert Gallatin, February 25, 1801, in

Kline and Ryan, 1:509. 38Aaron Burr to Caesar A. Rodney, March 3, 1801 (with

March 4 postscript), in Kline and Ryan, 1:517–19; Annals of

Congress, 6th Cong., 2d sess., pp. 762–63. 39 Kline and Ryan, 1:519–45; Dumas Malone, Jefferson the

President: First Term, 1801–1805 (Boston, 1970), pp. 69–89;
[ 46 ]

AARON BURR

Kline, ‘‘Aaron Burr as a Symbol of Corruption in the New

Republic,’’ pp. 70–71; Noble E. Cunningham, Jr., The Jeffersonian Republicans in Power (Chapel Hill, NC, 1963), pp. 38–

44.40 Kline and Ryan, 2:641–46, 724–28.

41 Cunningham, Jeffersonian Republicans in Power, pp. 38–

44; Parmet and Hecht, pp. 172–77. 42 Noble E. Cunningham, Jr., The Process of Government

Under Jefferson (Princeton, 1978), p. 16. 43Brown, pp. 74–75.

44 Kline, ‘‘Aaron Burr as a Symbol of Corruption in the

New Republic,’’ pp. 69–76; Parmet and Hecht, pp. 168–93. 45 Parmet and Hecht, p. 184; Ellis, pp. 15–16, 36–52; Kline

and Ryan, 2:653–73; Malone, Jefferson the President, First

Term, 121–30. 46Aaron Burr, ‘‘Comment on a Motion to Repeal the Judiciary Act,’’ [New York] American Citizen, February 3, 1802,

in Kline and Ryan, 2:656. According to Kline and Ryan, this

version of Burr’s remarks, which differs slightly from the

version printed in the Annals (Annals of Congress, 7th Cong.,

1st sess., p. 150), is ‘‘the version closest to a direct quotation

that survives among contemporary accounts.’’ Ibid., p. 655. 47 Annals of Congress, 7th Cong., 1st sess., p. 150. 48 New York Evening Post, February 2, 1801; Kline and

Ryan, 2:655. 49 Parmet and Hecht, p. 179.

50 Ibid., p. 179.

51Ellis, p. 48.

52Malone, Jefferson the President, First Term, pp. 123–24. 53 Ibid., pp. 395–98.

54Thomas Jefferson, Memorandum of a Conversation

with Burr, January 26, 1804, Kline and Ryan, 2:819–22. 55 Parmet and Hecht, pp. 194–201; Kline, ‘‘Aaron Burr as

a Symbol of Corruption in the New Republic,’’ pp. 72–73. 56 Parmet and Hecht, pp. 194–215.

57 Ibid., pp. 210–23; Samuel L. Mitchill to Mrs. Mitchill,

November 20, 1804, ‘‘Dr. Mitchill’s Letters from Washington: 1801–1813,’’ Harper’s New Monthly Magazine 58 (April

1879): 748; W.J. Rorabaugh, ‘‘The Political Duel in the Early

Republic: Burr v. Hamilton,’’ Journal of the Early Republic 15

(Spring 1995): 14. 58Brown, p. 185.

59 Ibid., pp. 203–4.

60 Parmet and Hecht, p. 224.

61 Samuel L. Mitchill to Mrs. Mitchill, November 30, 1804,

‘‘Dr. Mitchill’s Letters from Washington,’’ p. 748.

62Brown, p. 203.

63 Parmet and Hecht, p. 224.

64Ellis, pp. 69–75; Malone, Jefferson the President, First

Term, pp. 460–64, 469; Annals of Congress, 8th Cong., 1st

sess., pp. 315–68. 65Manasseh Cutler to the Rev. Dr. Dana, March 3, 1804,

in Life, Journals and Correspondence of Rev. Manasseh Cutler,

LL.D., by William Parker Cutler and Julia Perkins Cutler,

vol. 2 (Cincinnati, 1888), pp. 164–66. 66Brown, pp. 97–177; Ellis, pp., 69–75; Manasseh Cutler

to Dr. Torrey, March 13, 1804, Life, Journals and Correspondence of Rev. Manasseh Cutler 2:166–68; Annals of Congress, 8th

Cong., 1st sess., pp. 315–68; Peter Charles Hoffer and N.E.H.

Hull, Impeachment in America, 1635–1805 (New Haven,

1984), pp. 206–20. 67Malone, Jefferson the President, First Term, p. 464. 68 Parmet and Hecht, p. 224; Malone, Jefferson the President,

First Term, pp. 464–69; Ellis, pp. 76–79. 69Brown, p. 213.

70 Ibid., pp. 218–19.

71Quoted in Byrd, p. 31914.

72Manasseh Cutler to Dr. Torrey, March 1, 1805, Life, Journals and Correspondence of Manasseh Cutler 2:192–94. 73Report of the Trial of Samuel Chase, Annals of Congress,

8th Cong., 2d sess., pp. 81–676. 74 Ibid., pp. 92–98; Brown, pp. 235–39; Ellis, p. 96; Hoffer

and Hull, p. 238. 75Brown, pp. 239–311.

76 Ibid., p. 285.

77 Annals of Congress, 8th Cong., 2d sess., p. 669. 78 Ibid., pp. 55–57; Samuel L. Mitchill to Mrs. Mitchill,

February 14, 1805, ‘‘Dr. Mitchill’s Letters from Washington,’’ p. 749. 79Brown, pp. 302–7; Annals of Congress, 8th Cong., 2d

sess., pp. 63–66; Kline and Ryan, 2:910. 80 Annals of Congress, 8th Cong., 2d sess., pp. 71–72; Dr.

Mitchill to Mrs. Mitchill, March 2, 1805, ‘‘Dr. Mitchill’s Letters from Washington,’’ p. 750; Kline and Ryan, 2:909–17. 81 Kline and Ryan, 2:911–12.

82 Parmet and Hecht, passim; Lomask, vols. 1 and 2,

passim; Kline and Ryan, vols. 1 and 2, passim. 83 Parmet and Hecht, pp. 233–310.

84 Ibid., pp. 305–26.

85 Ibid., pp. 326–31.

86 Ibid., pp. 332–41; Kline and Ryan, 2:1169–1229.
[ 47 ]

Chapter 4

GEORGE CLINTON

1805–1812
GEORGE CLINTON
[ 49 ]

Chapter 4

GEORGE CLINTON

4th Vice President: 1805–1812

George Clinton the Vice President . . . is an feeble old man . . . What a vast difference between

him & Aaron Burr! One would think that the office was made for Clinton, & not he for the office.

—SENATOR WILLIAM PLUMER (F-NH), DECEMBER 16, 1805.1

George Clinton took office as the nation’s

fourth vice president on March 4, 1805. He was

the second vice president to serve under Thomas

Jefferson, having replaced fellow New Yorker

Aaron Burr whose intransigence in 1800 had

nearly cost Jefferson the presidency. A Revolutionary War hero who had served as governor

of New York for two decades, Clinton seemed

an ideal choice to supplant Burr while preserving

the New York-Virginia alliance that formed the

backbone of the Republican coalition.

Even though Republican senators may have

been relieved to be rid of Burr, the contrast between their new presiding officer and his urbane,

elegant predecessor must have been painfully

apparent when Chief Justice John Marshall administered the oath of office to Jefferson and

Clinton in the Senate chamber. Jefferson offered

a lengthy inaugural speech celebrating the accomplishments of his first term, but Clinton declined to address the members of Congress and

the ‘‘large concourse of citizens’’ present.2 Two

days earlier, on March 2, 1805, Burr had regaled

the Senate with a ‘‘correct and elegant’’ farewell

oration so laden with emotion that even Clinton’s friend, Senator Samuel L. Mitchill (R-NY),

pronounced the scene ‘‘one of the most affecting

. . . of my life.’’ 3 But when Clinton assumed the

presiding officer’s chair on December 16, 1805,

two weeks into the first session of the Ninth Congress, he was so ‘‘weak & feeble’’ of voice that,

according to Senator William Plumer (F-NH), the

senators could not ‘‘hear the one half of what he

says.’’ 4

Clinton’s age and infirmity had, if anything,

enhanced his value to the president, because Jefferson intended to pass his party’s mantle to Secretary of State James Madison when he retired

after his second term, yet he needed an honest,

‘‘plain’’ Republican vice president in the meantime. Clinton would be sixty-nine in 1808, too

old, Jefferson anticipated, to challenge Madison

for the Republican presidential nomination. Clinton had already retired once from public life, in

1795, pleading ill health.5 But, for all Clinton’s

apparent frailty, he was still a force to be reckoned with. His earlier decision to retire owed as

much to the political climate in New York, and

to his own political misfortunes, as to his chronic

rheumatism. He had been an actual or prospective vice-presidential candidate in every election

since the first one in 1788, and later capped his

elective career with a successful run for the office

in 1808.

Clinton was, in the words of a recent biographer, ‘‘an enigma.’’ The British forces that

torched Kingston, New York, during the Revolution, as well as the 1911 conflagration that destroyed most of Clinton’s papers at the New

York Public Library, have deprived modern researchers of sources that might have illuminated

his personality and explained his motives.6

Much of the surviving evidence, however, coupled with the observations of Clinton’s contem-
[ 50 ]

GEORGE CLINTON

poraries, support historian Alan Taylor’s assessment that ‘‘Clinton crafted a masterful, compelling public persona . . . [T]hat . . . masked and

permitted an array of contradictions that would

have ruined a lesser, more transparent politician.’’ 7 He was, in Taylor’s view, ‘‘The astutest

politician in Revolutionary New York,’’ a man

who ‘‘understood the power of symbolism and

the new popularity of a plain style especially

when practiced by a man with the means and

accomplishments to set himself above the common people.’’ 8

War and Politics

George Clinton’s parents were Presbyterian

immigrants who left Longford County, Ireland,

in 1729 to escape an intolerant Anglican regime

that imposed severe disabilities on religious dissenters. Charles and Elizabeth Denniston Clinton

settled in Ulster County, New York, where the

future vice president was born on July 26, 1739.

Charles Clinton was a farmer, surveyor, and land

speculator, whose survey of the New York frontier so impressed the governor that he was offered a position as sheriff of New York City and

the surrounding county in 1748. After the elder

Clinton declined the honor, the governor designated young George as successor to the clerk

of the Ulster County Court of Common Pleas, a

position he would assume in 1759 and hold for

the rest of his life.

George Clinton studied under a Scottish clergyman to prepare for his future responsibilities,

interrupting his education at the age of eighteen

in 1757 to serve in the French and Indian War.

After the war, he read law in New York City

under the renowned attorney William Smith. He

began his legal practice in 1764 and became district attorney the following year. Clinton’s aptitude for surveying and his penchant for land

speculation eventually made him one of the

wealthier residents of Ulster County, 9 but, despite his considerable fortune, he was a man of

frugal habits and congenial, unassuming manners. Even in later life, when chronic ill health

made it difficult for him to perform his public

duties, observers remarked on his ‘‘pleasing

cheerfulness’’ and ‘‘flow of good humor.’’ 10

Large-boned and coarse-featured, 11 he was, one

scholar relates, ‘‘a man of powerful physique,

whose mere presence commanded respect.’’ 12

In 1768, the twenty-nine-year-old Clinton was

elected to the New York assembly, where he supported the ‘‘Livingston’’ faction, an alliance that

he cemented two years later with his marriage

to Cornelia Tappan, a Livingston relative. The

Livingstons and their allies, who represented the

wealthy, predominantly Presbyterian landowners of the Hudson Valley, assumed a vehemently anti-British posture as relations between

England and her North American colonies deteriorated during the early 1770s. Clinton emerged

as their leader in 1770, when he defended a

member of the Sons of Liberty imprisoned for

‘‘seditious libel’’ by the royalist majority that still

controlled the New York assembly. He was a delegate to the second Continental Congress in

1775, where a fellow delegate observed that

‘‘Clinton has Abilities but is silent in general, and

wants (when he does speak) that Influence to

which he is intitled.’’ Clinton disliked legislative

service, because, as he explained, ‘‘the duty of

looking out for danger makes men cowards,’’

and he soon resigned his seat to accept an appointment as a brigadier general in the New

York militia. He was assigned to protect the New

York frontier, where his efforts to prevent the

British from gaining control of the Hudson River

and splitting New England from the rest of the

struggling confederacy earned him a brigadier

general’s commission in the Continental army

and made him a hero among the farmers of the

western counties.13

The social and political changes that the Revolution precipitated worked to Clinton’s advantage, and he made the most of his opportunities.

As Edward Countryman so forcefully demonstrated in his study of revolutionary New

York, ‘‘the independence crisis . . . shattered old

New York, both politically and socially.’’ 14 The

state’s new constitution greatly expanded the

suffrage and increased the size of the state legislature. The ‘‘yeoman’’ farmers of small and middling means, who had previously deferred to the

Livingstons and their royalist rivals, the

DeLanceys, emerged as a powerful political entity in their own right, and George Clinton became their champion and spokesman. Their sup-
[ 51 ]

GEORGE CLINTON

port proved crucial in the 1777 gubernatorial

election, when Clinton defeated Edward Livingston in a stunning upset that ‘‘signalled the dismemberment of the old Livingston party.’’ 15 The

election also signalled Clinton’s emergence as a

dominant figure in New York politics; he served

as governor from 1777 until 1795 and again from

1801 until 1804, exercising considerable influence

over the state legislature.16

Before leaving the battlefield to assume his

new responsibilities, Clinton promised his commander in chief, General George Washington,

that he would resume his military duties ‘‘sh’d

the Business of my new appointm’t admit of it.’’

True to his word, he soon returned to the field

to help defend the New York frontier. There,

American troops under his command prevented

Sir Henry Clinton (said to have been a ‘‘distant

cousin’’) from relieving the main British force

under General John Burgoyne, precipitating

Burgoyne’s surrender at Saratoga on October 17,

1777.17 The Saratoga victory, which helped convince the French that the struggling colonies

were worthy of the aid that proved so crucial to

the revolutionary effort, marked a turning point

in the war.

Governor Clinton’s civilian labors were equally impressive. Like other wartime governors, he

was responsible for coordinating his state’s war

effort. New York’s strategic importance and

large Loyalist population, coupled with Vermont’s secession in 1777, posed special problems

for the beleaguered governor, but he proved an

able administrator. He was increasingly frustrated, however, as war expenses mounted, and

as the Continental Congress, which lacked the

power to raise revenues and relied on state contributions, looked to New York to make up the

shortfall that resulted when other states failed to

meet their quotas. He supported Alexander

Hamilton’s call for a stronger Congress with

independent revenue-raising powers, warning

Continental Congress President John Hanson in

1781 that ‘‘we shall not be able without a Change

in our Circumstances, long to maintain our civil

Government.’’ 18

Clinton’s perspective changed in 1783, after

Congress asked the states to approve a national

tariff that would deprive New York of its most

lucrative source of income. He had long believed

that Congress should facilitate and protect the

foreign commerce that was so important to New

York. Toward that end, he had supported Hamilton’s efforts to strengthen the Articles of Confederation during the war. But the specter of a national tariff helped convince him that a national

government with vastly enlarged powers might

overwhelm the states and subvert individual liberties. ‘‘[W]hen stronger powers for Congress

would benefit New York,’’ his biographer explains, ‘‘Clinton would endorse such measures.

In purely domestic matters, the governor would

put New York concerns above all others.’’ 19 The

governor’s primary concern, according to another scholar, ‘‘was to avoid any measure which

might burden his agrarian constituents with

taxes.’’ The tariff had supplied nearly a third of

New York’s revenue during the 1780s, and Clinton feared that if this critical source of income

was diverted to national coffers, the state legislature would be forced to raise real estate and personal property taxes.20

A Perennial Candidate for Vice President

Clinton emerged as one of the most prominent

opponents of the new Constitution. He was a

delegate to the New York ratification convention,

where an Antifederalist majority elected him

presiding officer. But with the establishment of

the federal union almost a foregone conclusion

by the time the convention assembled at Poughkeepsie on June 17, 1788 (eight states had already

ratified, with the enabling ninth expected to follow) Clinton’s options were sharply limited. He

had initially hoped to secure a conditional ratification, contingent upon the adoption of ‘‘amendments calculated to abridge and limit’’ federal

power, but after the Antifederalists failed to

agree on a common strategy and popular sentiment shifted in favor of unconditional ratification, there was little he could do to accomplish

even this limited objective. Bowing to the inevitable, he finally signalled his allies that, if their

constituents had come to favor unconditional

ratification, they should vote accordingly. He did

so, as biographer John Kaminski suggests, because he ‘‘sensed that he might make the perfect

vice presidential candidate. . . . Once elected,
[ 52 ]

GEORGE CLINTON

Vice President Clinton could advise Washington,

support constitutional amendments as he presided over the first United States Senate, and perhaps be heir apparent when Washington decided

to retire.’’ 21

Friends of the new Constitution were much

alarmed when New York and Virginia Antifederalists proposed Clinton as a vice-presidential candidate in 1788.22 James Madison was

horrified that ‘‘the enemies to the Government

. . . are laying a train for the election of Governor

Clinton,’’ 23 and Alexander Hamilton worked to

unite Federalists behind John Adams.24 Wellplaced rumors tainted Clinton’s candidacy by indicating that Antifederalist electors intended to

cast one of their two electoral votes for Richard

Henry Lee or Patrick Henry for president and the

other vote for the New York governor. Prior to

the ratification of the Twelfth Amendment in

1804, electors cast two votes in presidential elections without distinguishing between presidential and vice-presidential candidates, and the

runner-up in the presidential race simply became

vice president. Each elector, however, voted with

the clear intent of electing one individual as

president and the other as vice president. In the

charged and expectant atmosphere surrounding

the first election under the new Constitution,

Federalists who learned of the rumored conspiracy to elect Lee or Henry president feared that

a vote for Clinton would be tantamount to a vote

against George Washington. Popular enthusiasm

for the new government and Clinton’s wellknown opposition to the Constitution also

worked against him. John Adams won the vicepresidency with 34 electoral votes; Clinton received 3 of the 35 remaining electoral votes that

were distributed among a field of ten ‘‘favorite

son’’ candidates.25

Clinton fared better in the 1792 election. By the

end of Washington’s first term, the cabinet was

seriously divided over Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton’s financial system, and all parties agreed that Washington’s reelection was essential to the survival of the infant republic. In

spite of their earlier reservations about Clinton,

Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson and his Virginia allies, Madison and James Monroe, were

determined to replace the ‘‘monarchist’’ and abrasive Vice President Adams. They considered

the ‘‘yeoman politician’’ from New York the candidate most likely to unseat him.26

Clinton’s candidacy faced several obstacles. He

was still widely suspect as an opponent of the

Constitution, and the circumstances of his reelection as governor earlier in the year had aroused

the consternation of even his most steadfast supporters. John Jay, the Federalist candidate, had

received a majority of the votes in the gubernatorial race, but the destruction of ballots from

Federalist-dominated Otsego County on highly

suspicious technical grounds by Antifederalist

canvassers had tipped the balance in Clinton’s

favor. Jefferson worried that the New York election would jeopardize ‘‘the cause of republicanism,’’ and Madison went so far as to suggest that

Clinton should resign the governorship if he believed that he had been fraudulently elected.27

Even though Adams was reelected vice president with 77 electoral votes, Clinton managed to

garner a respectable 50 votes, carrying Virginia,

Georgia, New York, and North Carolina.28 The

election provided a limited measure of comfort

to Jefferson and Madison, who saw in the returns

a portent of future success for the emerging Republican coalition.29

Despite his strong showing in the national

election, Governor Clinton found it increasingly

difficult to maintain his power base in New

York. Pleading exhaustion and poor health, he

announced his retirement in 1795. Although his

rheumatism was by that time so severe that he

could no longer travel to Albany to convene the

state legislature, other factors influenced his decision. The circumstances of his 1792 reelection

remained a serious liability, and his effectiveness

had been greatly diminished when the Federalists gained control of the state legislature in 1793.

Clinton was further compromised when his

daughter Cornelia married the flamboyant and

highly suspect French emissary, ‘‘Citizen’’ Edmond Geneˆt, in 1794.30

Clinton remained an attractive vice-presidential prospect for Republican leaders hoping

to preserve the Virginia-New York nexus so crucial to their strategy, although he was never entirely comfortable with the southern wing of the

party. Party strategists tried to enlist Clinton as
[ 53 ]

GEORGE CLINTON

their vice-presidential candidate to balance the

ticket headed by Thomas Jefferson in 1796, but

he refused to run. He soon found himself at odds

with Jefferson, who became vice president in

1797 after receiving the second highest number

of electoral votes. In his March 4, 1797, inaugural

address to the Senate, Jefferson praised his predecessor, President John Adams, as a man of ‘‘talents and integrity.’’ Clinton was quick to voice

his outrage at this apparent ‘‘public contradiction of the Objections offered by his Friends

against Mr. Adams’s Election.’’ In 1800, however, when approached by an emissary from

Representative Albert Gallatin (R-PA), Clinton

did agree to become Jefferson’s running mate, although he seemed noticeably relieved when Republicans finally chose his fellow New Yorker,

Aaron Burr, to balance the ticket.31

Governor Once More

Clinton ended his retirement in 1800, when he

was elected to a seat in the New York legislature.

He had entered the contest at Burr’s urging, to

ensure the selection of Republican presidential

electors, and probably intended to retire when

his term expired. But when New York Republicans, anticipating Jefferson’s victory in the national election and hoping to consolidate their

gains on the local level, asked him to enter the

1801 gubernatorial election, he agreed. He was

at first reluctant to seek the nomination—his acceptance was subject to the caveat that he would

resign the governorship if the office proved too

much for him—but Burr soon provided him with

a compelling reason to remain in the contest.32

Eleven years earlier, Governor Clinton had appointed Aaron Burr attorney general of New

York. In 1789, with Federalists in control of the

state legislature, he had been anxious to add Burr

and his allies to the Clinton coalition. But he

never completely trusted Burr, and his suspicions were confirmed when Burr refused to

defer to Thomas Jefferson after the two candidates received an equal number of electoral

votes in the 1800 presidential contest. After the

furor subsided, and after the House of Representatives finally declared Jefferson the winner

on the thirty-sixth ballot, Clinton’s nephew and

political heir, De Witt Clinton, predicted that

Burr would resign the vice-presidency and try to

recoup his shattered fortunes by running for

governor of New York. De Witt apparently persuaded his uncle that he was the only prospective candidate who could prevent Burr from taking control of the state Republican party. George

Clinton was elected governor by an overwhelming margin, carrying traditionally Federalist

New York City and all but six counties.33

During his last term as governor, Clinton was

overshadowed by his increasingly powerful and

ambitious nephew. Still, although De Witt was

now ‘‘the real power in New York politics,’’

George Clinton was much revered by New York

voters. Anxious to preserve the Virginia-New

York coalition, but determined to limit Burr’s

role in his administration, Jefferson turned to

Clinton for advice in making federal appointments in New York. ‘‘[T]here is no one,’’ he assured Clinton, ‘‘whose opinion would command

me with greater respect than yours, if you would

be so good as to advise me.’’ 34 Jefferson was, in

practical effect, repudiating Burr, although he

never publicly disavowed or openly criticized

his errant vice president.35 One Federalist observer soon noted that ‘‘Burr is completely an insulated man in Washington.’’ 36 As the 1804 election approached, De Witt wrote to members of

the Republican caucus suggesting his uncle

George as a replacement for Burr.37

Vice President at Last

Widely respected for his heroism during the

war and for his devotion to Republican principles, George Clinton was a candidate who

could replace Burr without alienating New York

voters. His age and precarious health were important considerations for Jefferson, who calculated that in 1808 the sixty-five-year-old hero

would be too old to challenge his intended successor, Secretary of State James Madison, for the

Republican presidential nomination.38 But Clinton had no intention of deferring to Madison in

1808. As Madison’s biographer, Ralph Ketcham,

has explained, New York Republicans were

deeply jealous of the Virginians who had dominated their party’s councils since 1792. ‘‘George

Clinton’s replacement of Burr as Vice President

in 1804 was not so much a reconciliation with the
[ 54 ]

GEORGE CLINTON

Virginians,’’ he suggests, ‘‘as a play for better leverage to oust [the Virginians] in 1808.’’ 39

After the election, Clinton was all but shunted

aside by a president who had no wish to enhance

his vice president’s stature in the administration

or encourage his presidential ambitions. Jefferson no longer asked Clinton’s advice in making

political appointments in New York or elsewhere, or on any other matter of substance, 40 relying instead on the counsel of Madison and

Treasury Secretary Albert Gallatin. When he felt

it necessary to consult Republican legislators, he

did so in person 41 or through Gallatin, whose

Capitol Hill residence served as the meeting

place for the Republican caucus.42 (Now known

as the Sewell-Belmont House, this building still

stands, adjacent to the Hart Senate Office

Building.)

Clinton also took little part in the social life of

the administration.43 Washington society had a

distinctly southern flavor, and, as the vice president confided to Senator Plumer, he found the

‘‘habits, manners, costoms, laws & country’’ of

New England ‘‘much preferable to the southern

States.’’ 44 A widower for four years at the time

of his election, Clinton and his daughter Maria

lived frugally with House of Representatives

Clerk John Beckley and seldom entertained.45

Even in an administration that consciously

avoided ceremony and ostentatious display in

favor of the simple, republican style that shocked

foreign visitors and scandalized Federalists,

Clinton’s parsimony was legend. ‘‘Mr. Clinton,

always comes to the city in his own carriage,’’

Plumer noted. ‘‘He is immensely rich—but lives

out at board like a common member—keeps no

table—or invites anybody to dine. A style of living unworthy of the 2d officer in our government.’’ 46 Another senator observed that ‘‘Mr.

Clinton . . . lives snug at his lodgings, and keeps

aloof from . . . exhibitions.’’ 47 Clinton’s sole function was to preside over the Senate.

An Ineffectual Presiding Officer

Nor was he an effective presiding officer. Senator Plumer observed, when Clinton assumed

the presiding officer’s chair on December 16,

1805, that he seemed ‘‘altogether unacquainted’’

with the Senate’s rules, had a ‘‘clumsey awkward way of putting a question,’’ and ‘‘Preserves

little or no order.’’ 48 Senator John Quincy

Adams (F-MA) shared Plumer’s concern. The

Senate’s new president was ‘‘totally ignorant of

all the most common forms of proceeding in the

Senate,’’ he wrote in his diary. ‘‘His judgement

is neither quick nor strong: so there is no more

dependence upon the correctness of his determination from his understanding than from his

experience . . . a worse choice than Mr. Clinton

could scarcely have been made.’’ 49 Clinton’s

parliamentary skills failed to improve with experience, as Plumer observed a year later:

The Vice President preserves very little order

in the Senate. If he ever had, he certainly has not

now, the requisite qualifications of a presiding officer. Age has impaired his mental powers. The

conversation & noise to day in our lobby was

greater than I ever suffered when moderator of

a town meeting. It prevented us from hearing the

arguments of the Speaker. He frequently, at least

he has more than once, declared bills at the third

reading when they had been read but once—Puts

questions without any motion being made—

Sometimes declares it a vote before any vote has

been taken. And sometimes before one bill is decided proceeds to another. From want of authority, & attention to order he has prostrated the dignity of the Senate. His disposition appears

good,—but he wants mind & nerve.50

Although Plumer and others attributed the

vice president’s ineptitude to his advanced age

and feeble health, Clinton’s longstanding ‘‘aversion to councils’’ 51 probably compounded his

difficulties. He had little patience with longwinded senators, as a chagrined John Quincy

Adams discovered after an extended discourse

that was, by his own admission, ‘‘a very tedious

one to all my hearers.’’ ‘‘The Vice-President,’’ he

concluded, ‘‘does not love long speeches.’’ Clinton could do little to alleviate his discomfort,

given the fact that the Senate’s rules permitted

extended debate, but on at least one occasion he

asked a special favor: ‘‘that when we were about

to make such we should give him notice; that he

might take the opportunity to warm himself at

the fire.’’ 52

Clinton was frequently absent from the Senate,

but he apparently summoned the strength to at-
[ 55 ]

GEORGE CLINTON

tend when he found a compelling reason to do

so. A case in point was his tie-breaking vote to

approve the nomination of John Armstrong, Jr.,

a childhood friend and political ally, as a commissioner to Spain. Federalist senators, and

many of their Republican colleagues, vehemently opposed Armstrong’s nomination, alleging that he had mishandled claims relating to the

ship New Jersey while serving as minister to

France. At issue was Armstrong’s finding that

the 1800 convention with France indemnified

only the original owners of captured vessels, a

position he abandoned after Jefferson insisted

that insurers should also receive compensation.

Senator Samuel Smith (R-MD), a member of Jefferson’s own party and the brother of Navy Secretary Robert Smith, so effectively mustered the

opposition forces that, by Adams’ account, no

senator spoke on Armstrong’s behalf when the

Senate debated his nomination on March 17,

1806. After Senator John Adair (R-KY) ‘‘left his

seat to avoid voting,’’ the vice president, who

had earlier informed Plumer ‘‘that he had intended not to take his seat in the Senate this session,’’ resolved the resulting 15-to-15 tied vote in

Armstrong’s favor. ‘‘I apprehended,’’ Plumer

surmised, that ‘‘they found it necessary & prevailed on him to attend.’’ Clinton was absent for

the remainder of the session.53

Clinton’s only known attempt to influence legislation as vice president occurred in early 1807,

when he asked John Quincy Adams to sponsor

a bill to compensate settlers who had purchased

western Georgia lands from the Yazoo land companies. In 1795, the Georgia legislature had sold

thirty-five million acres of land to four land speculation companies, which resold the properties

to other land jobbers and to individual investors

before the legislature canceled the sale and ceded

the lands to the United States. A commission appointed to effect the transfer to the United States

proposed that five million acres be earmarked to

indemnify innocent parties, but Representative

John Randolph (R-VA) charged that congressional approval of the arrangement would

‘‘countenance the fraud a little further’’ and

blocked a final settlement. In March 1806, the

Senate passed a bill to compensate the Yazoo settlers, but the House rejected the measure.54 With

sentiment against compensation steadily mounting, the Senate on February 11, 1807, enacted a

bill ‘‘to prevent settlements on lands ceded to the

United States unless authorized by law.’’ The following day, Adams recorded in his diary that

‘‘The Vice-President this morning took [Adams]

apart and advised [him] to ask leave to bring in

a bill on behalf of the Yazoo claimants, like that

which passed the Senate at the last session, to remove the effect of the bill passed yesterday.’’

Clinton apparently abandoned the effort after

Adams responded that he did ‘‘not think it

would answer any such purpose.’’ 55

Clinton’s always tenuous relationship with Jefferson became increasingly strained as the president responded to English and French assaults

on American shipping with a strategy of diplomatic maneuvering and economic coercion. Clinton viewed the escalating conflict between England and France with alarm. He believed that

war with one or both nations was inevitable and

became increasingly frustrated with Jefferson’s

seeming reluctance to arm the nation for battle.

The vice president’s own state was particularly

vulnerable, because New York shippers and

merchants suffered heavily from British raids,

yet Jefferson’s proposed solution of an embargo

on foreign trade would have a devastating impact on the state’s economy. New York’s limited

coastal defenses, Clinton feared, would prove

painfully inadequate in the event that the president’s strategy failed to prevent war.56

The Election of 1808

Congress approved the Embargo Act, closing

United States ports to foreign trade, in December

1807. When the Republican congressional caucus

met the following month to select the party’s

1808 presidential candidate, the vice president’s

supporters were conspicuously absent. Clinton

knew that the caucus would choose Madison, the

architect of Jefferson’s foreign policy, as their

presidential candidate but apparently believed

that he could win the presidency without the

support of the caucus. ‘‘[O]ur venerable friend

the Vice-President,’’ Senator Mitchill observed,

‘‘considers himself as fully entitled to the first

place in the nation.’’ Clinton was so ‘‘self-com-
[ 56 ]

GEORGE CLINTON

placent,’’ Mitchill marvelled, that he failed to

‘‘discern what was as plain as daylight to any

body else,’’ that there was not ‘‘the remotest

probability of his success as President.’’ But Clinton still commanded a substantial following

among disaffected Republicans from the Middle

Atlantic states. Because New Yorkers, in particular, resented Virginia’s near-monopoly of the

presidency since 1789, Madison’s campaign

managers considered Clinton enough of a threat

to suggest him as a possible running mate.57

Much to Clinton’s chagrin, the caucus renominated him to a second term as vice president. His

only public response was a letter to De Witt—

subsequently edited for maximum effect and released to the press by the calculating nephew—

denying that he had ‘‘been directly or indirectly

consulted on the subject’’ or ‘‘apprised of the

meeting held for the purpose, otherwise, than by

having accidentally seen a notice.’’ 58 George

Clinton neither accepted nor expressly refused

the vice-presidential nomination, a posture that

caused considerable consternation among Republican strategists. When caucus representatives called on him to discuss the matter, his

‘‘tart, severe, and puzzling reply’’ left them ‘‘as

much in a quandary as ever what to do with their

nomination of him.’’ He was, Senator Mitchill

theorized, ‘‘as much a candidate for the Presidency . . . as for the Vice Presidency.’’ 59

As far as Clinton was concerned, he remained

a presidential candidate. While he affected the

disinterested posture that early nineteenth-century electoral etiquette demanded of candidates

for elective office, his supporters mounted a vigorous attack on Jefferson’s foreign policy, warning that Madison, the president’s ‘‘mere organ or

mouth piece,’’ would continue along the same

perilous course. But Clinton, one pamphleteer

promised voters, would ‘‘protect you from foreign and domestic foes.’’ 60 Writing under the

pseudonym, ‘‘A Citizen of New-York,’’ the vice

president’s son-in-law, Edmond Geneˆt, promised that Clinton would substitute ‘‘a dignified

plan of neutrality’’ for the hated embargo.61

Turning their candidate’s most obvious liability

to their advantage, Clintonians portrayed the

vice president as a seasoned elder statesman, ‘‘a

repository of experimental knowledge.’’ 62

The tension between Jefferson and his refractory vice president flared into open hostility after

Clinton read confidential diplomatic dispatches

from London and Paris before an open session

of the Senate on February 26, 1808. The president

had transmitted the reports to the Senate with

a letter expressly warning that ‘‘the publication

of papers of this description would restrain injuriously the freedom of our foreign correspondence.’’ But, as John Quincy Adams recorded,

‘‘The Vice-President, not remarking that the first

message was marked on the cover, confidential,

suffered all the papers to be read without closing

the doors.’’ Clinton claimed that the disclosure

was inadvertent, but the dispatches had seemed

to affirm his own conviction that ‘‘war with

Great Britain appears inevitable.’’ 63 Much to his

embarrassment, the blunder was widely reported in the press. Entering the Senate chamber

‘‘rather late than usual’’ one morning, Adams

witnessed an unusual display of temper:

The Vice President had been formally complaining of the President for a mistake which was

really his own. The message of the twenty-sixth

of February was read in public because the VicePresident on receiving it had not noticed the

word ‘‘confidential’’ written on the outside cover.

This had been told in the newspapers, and commented on as evidence of Mr. Clinton’s declining

years. He thinks it was designedly done by the

President to ensnare him and expose him to derision. This morning he asked [Secretary of the

Senate Samuel] Otis for a certificate that the message was received in Senate without the word

‘‘confidential;’’ which Otis declining to do, he

was much incensed with him, and spoke to the

Senate in anger, concluding by saying that he

thought the Executive would have had more magnanimity than to have treated him thus.64

Support for Clinton’s presidential bid steadily

eroded as the election approached and even the

most ardent Clintonians realized that their candidate had no chance of winning. Some bowed

to the will of the caucus as a matter of course, 65

while the prospect of a Federalist victory eventually drove others into the Madison camp.66 New

England Federalists, energized by their opposition to the embargo, briefly considered endorsing Clinton as their presidential candidate but ul-
[ 57 ]

GEORGE CLINTON

timately nominated Charles Cotesworth Pinckney of South Carolina after intelligence reports

from New York indicated that Republicans there

‘‘were disposed to unite in the abandonment of

Clinton.’’ 67 Madison won an easy victory with

122 electoral votes; Clinton finished a distant

third with only six electoral votes—a face-saving

gesture by sympathetic New York Republicans,

who cast the state’s thirteen remaining votes for

Madison.68

The vice-presidential contest posed a unique

problem for Republican electors.69 Clinton was

still the Republican vice-presidential candidate,

notwithstanding the fact that, as Senator Wilson

Cary Nicholas (R-VA) observed, his conduct had

‘‘alienated [him] from the republicans.’’ Although painfully aware that ‘‘among the warm

friends of Mr. Clinton are to be found the

bitterest enemies of the administration,’’ they ultimately elected him vice president because they

feared that repudiating the caucus nomination

would set a dangerous precedent. ‘‘[I]f he is not

elected,’’ Nicholas argued, ‘‘there will not in future be any reliance upon such nominations, all

confidence will be lost and there can not be the

necessary concert.’’ 70 As Virginia Republican

General Committee Chairman Philip Norborne

Nicholas stressed, it would be impossible to reject Clinton ‘‘without injury to the Republican

cause.’’ 71

The Final Term

Clinton left for New York before Congress assembled in the House of Representatives chamber to count the electoral votes on February 8,

1809, thus avoiding the unpleasant task of proclaiming Madison’s election as president and his

own reelection as vice president. He did not return in time to witness Madison’s inauguration

on March 4 (and surviving records do not indicate where or when he took his own oath).72 In

the meantime, his supporters had already joined

forces with disaffected Republican Senators Samuel Smith of Maryland, William B. Giles of Virginia, and Michael Leib of Pennsylvania in a successful attempt to prevent Madison from nominating Albert Gallatin as secretary of state.73

Clinton opposed Madison’s foreign and domestic policies throughout his second vice-presidential term, but he lacked the support and the

vitality to muster an effective opposition. Still, he

dealt the administration a severe blow when he

cast the deciding vote in favor of a measure to

prevent the recharter of the Bank of the United

States. Madison had once opposed Hamilton’s

proposal to establish a national bank, but by

1811, ‘‘twenty years of usefulness and public approval’’ had mooted his objections. Treasury Secretary Gallatin considered the bank an essential

component of the nation’s financial and credit

system, but Clinton and other ‘‘Old Republicans’’ still considered the institution an unconstitutional aggrandizement of federal power. The

Senate debated Republican Senator William H.

Crawford of Georgia’s recharter bill at great

length before voting on a motion to kill it on February 20, 1811. Clinton voted in favor of the motion after the Senate deadlocked by a vote of 17

to 17. His vote did not in itself defeat the bank,

since the recharter bill had already failed in the

House of Representatives, 74 but this last act of

defiance dealt a humiliating blow to the administration and particularly to Gallatin, who observed many years later that ‘‘nothing can be

more injurious to an Administration than to have

in that office a man in hostility with that Administration, as he will always become the most formidable rallying point for the opposition.’’ 75

In a brief and dignified address to the Senate,

Clinton explained his vote, declaring his longstanding conviction that ‘‘Government is not to

be strengthened by an assumption of doubtful

powers.’’ Could Congress, he asked, ‘‘create a

body politic and corporate, not constituting a

part of the Government, nor otherwise responsible to it by forfeiture of charter, and bestow on

its members privileges, immunities, and exemptions not recognised by the laws of the States, nor

enjoyed by the citizens generally? . . . The power

to create corporations is not expressly granted

[by the Constitution],’’ he reasoned, but ‘‘[i]f . .

. the powers vested in the Government shall be

found incompetent to the attainment of the objects for which it was instituted, the Constitution

happily furnishes the means for remedying the

evil by amendment.’’ 76 Then-Senator Henry

Clay, a Kentucky Republican, later claimed that
[ 58 ]

GEORGE CLINTON

he was the author of the vice president’s remarks. Long after Clinton’s death, but before

Clay reversed his own position to become one

of the bank’s leading advocates during the 1830s,

the ever-boastful Clay asserted that the speech

‘‘was perhaps the thing that had gained the old

man more credit than anything else that he ever

did.’’ Clay, however, admitted that ‘‘he had written it . . . under Mr. Clinton’s dictation, and he

never should think of claiming it as his

composition.’’ 77

Clinton’s February 20, 1811, speech was his

first and last formal address to the Senate. Two

days later, he notified the senators that he would

be absent for the remainder of the session.78 He

returned for the opening session of the Twelfth

Congress on November 4, 1811, and faithfully

presided over the Senate throughout the winter,

but by the end of March 1812 he was too ill to

continue. President pro tempore William

Crawford presided for the remainder of the session, while Clinton’s would-be successors engaged in ‘‘[e]lectioneering . . . beyond description’’ for the 1812 vice-presidential nomination.

On April 20, 1812, Crawford informed the Senate

of ‘‘the death of our venerable fellow-citizen,

GEORGE CLINTON, Vice President of the United States.’’ 79

The following afternoon, a joint delegation

from the Senate and the House of Representatives accompanied Clinton’s body to the Senate

chamber. He was the first person to lie in state

in the Capitol, for a brief two-hour period, before

the funeral procession escorted his remains to

nearby Congressional Cemetery. President

Madison was among the official mourners, although he and the first lady held their customary

reception at the Executive Mansion the following

day. In the Senate chamber, black crepe adorned

the presiding officer’s chair for the remainder of

the session, and each senator wore a black arm

band for thirty days ‘‘from an unfeigned respect’’

for their departed president.80 Clinton’s former

rival, Gouverneur Morris, later offered a moving—if brutally frank—tribute to the fallen ‘‘soldier of the Revolution.’’ Clinton had rendered a

lifetime of service to New York and the nation,

Morris reminded his audience, but ‘‘to share in

the measures of the administration was not his

part. To influence them was not in his power.’’ 81
[ 59 ]

NOTES 1Everett Somerville Brown, ed., William Plumer’s Memorandum of Proceedings in the United States Senate, 1803–1807

(New York, 1923), pp. 352–53. 2U.S., Congress, Senate, Annals of Congress, 8th Cong., 2d

sess., pp. 77–80; Stephen W. Stathis and Ronald C. Moe,

‘‘America’s Other Inauguration,’’ Presidential Studies Quarterly 10 (Fall 1980): 561. 3Brown, pp. 312–13; Samuel L. Mitchill to Mrs. Mitchill,

March 2, 1805, ‘‘Dr. Mitchill’s Letters from Washington:

1801–1818,’’ Harper’s New Monthly Magazine 58 (April 1879):

749. 4Brown, pp. 353–53.

5 John Kaminski, George Clinton: Yeoman Politician of the

New Republic (Madison, WI, 1993), pp. 247, 255–56, 274. 6 Kaminski, p. 1.

7Alan Taylor, review of Kaminski, George Clinton, in

Journal of the Early Republic 13 (Fall 1993): 414–15. 8Alan Taylor, William Cooper’s Town: Power and Persuasion

on the Frontier of the Early American Republic (New York,

1995), p. 156. 9 Kaminski, pp. 11–14; U.S., Congress, Senate, Biographical

Directory of the United States Congress, 1774–1989, S. Doc.

100–34, 100th Cong., 2d sess., 1989, p. 795. 10Brown, pp. 450, 635.

11 Several portraits of Clinton, at various stages of his career, are reproduced in Kaminski, pp. 22, 58, 112, 190, 228. 12Manning Dauer, ‘‘Election of 1804,’’ in History of American Presidential Elections, 1789–1968, ed. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., and Fred L. Israel, vol. 1 (New York, 1971), p. 161. 13 Kaminski, pp. 14–25, 251, 293.

14Edward Countryman, A People in Revolution: The American Revolution and Political Society in New York, 1760–1790

(New York, 1989; reprint of 1981 edition), p. 162. 15 Kaminski, pp. 19–25; Countryman, pp. 161–202.

16As Countryman has noted, during the Confederation

period alone, ‘‘some 170 laws were passed and 40 other actions taken . . . in response to the governor’s suggestions.’’

Countryman, p. 210. 17 Kaminski, pp. 26–36; Robert Middlekauff, The Glorious

Cause: The American Revolution, 1763–1789 (New York, 1982),

pp. 382–84; Countryman, p. 211. 18 Kaminski, pp. 23–57.

19 Ibid., pp. 60–63, 85–96, 115–21.

20Alfred F. Young, The Democratic Republicans of New

York: The Origins, 1763–1791 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1967), pp. 56–

57.21 Kaminski, pp. 113–69.

22Marcus Cunliffe, ‘‘The Elections of 1789 and 1792,’’ in

Schlesinger and Israel, ed., 1:15. 23 Kaminski, p. 171.

24As noted in Chapter 1 of this volume, ‘‘John Adams,’’

p. 6, Hamilton perceived Adams as a threat to his own ambitions and schemed—successfully—to erode his electoral

count in 1788. Yet, even though, as Kaminski acknowledges,

‘‘Hamilton did not particularly care for Adams,’’ Adams’

support for the Constitution made him infinitely preferable,

in Hamilton’s estimation, to Clinton. Kaminski, pp. 173–74. 25 Cunliffe, p. 18; Annals of Congress, 1st Cong., 1st sess.,

p. 17. 26 Kaminski, p. 231.

27 Ibid., pp. 211–27; Stanley Elkins and Eric McKitrick, The

Age of Federalism (New York, 1993), p. 288. 28 Clinton also received one of Pennsylvania’s 15 electoral

votes. 29Ralph Ketcham, James Madison: A Biography (Charlottesville, VA, 1992; reprint of 1971 edition), p. 336. 30Young, p. 430; Kaminski, p. 237–49.

31 Kaminski, pp. 249–55; Annals of Congress, 5th Cong.,

special sess., March 4, 1797, pp. 1581–82. 32 Kaminski, pp. 249–56; Annals of Congress, 5th Cong.,

special sess., March 4, 1797, pp. 1581–82. 33 Kaminski, pp. 192, 256–60.

34 Noble E. Cunningham, Jr., The Jeffersonian Republicans

in Power: Party Operations, 1801–1809 (Chapel Hill, NC,

1963), p. 39; Dumas Malone, Jefferson the President: First

Term, 1801–1805 (Boston, 1970), p. 88; Noble E.

Cunningham, Jr., The Process of Government under Jefferson

(Princeton, NJ, 1978), p. 16; Kaminski, p. 261. 35 Cunningham, Jeffersonian Republicans in Power, pp. 42–

43, 205–13; Noble E. Cunningham, Jr., In Pursuit of Reason:

The Life of Thomas Jefferson (Baton Rouge, LA, 1987), p. 271;

Malone, Jefferson the President: First Term, pp. 123–24, 141,

432; Kaminski, pp. 261–64. 36 Cunningham, Jeffersonian Republicans in Power, p. 205. 37 Kaminski, pp. 262–73.

38Dauer, pp. 159–69; Kaminski, p. 274.

39 Ketcham, p. 466.

40 Kaminski, p. 279; Cunningham, The Process of Government Under Jefferson, p. 16; Cunningham, Jeffersonian Republicans in Power, passim; and Dumas Malone, Jefferson the

President: Second Term, 1805–1809 (Boston, 1974), passim.

41 Cunningham, The Process of Government Under Jefferson,

pp. 188–93; Alexander B. Lacy, Jr., ‘‘Jefferson and Congress:

Congressional Method and Politics, 1801–1809,’’ Ph.D. dissertation (University of Virginia, 1964), pp. 97–101.

42Lacy, p. 102; Leonard D. White, The Jeffersonians: A

Study in Administrative History, 1801–1809 (New York, 1951),

p. 50. 43 Kaminski, pp. 274–75.
[ 60 ]

GEORGE CLINTON

44Brown, pp. 348–49.

45 Kaminski, p. 275.

46Brown, pp. 634–35.

47 Samuel L. Mitchill to Mrs. Mitchill, November 23, 1807,

‘‘Dr. Mitchill’s Letters from Washington,’’ p. 748. 48Brown, pp. 352–53.

49Adams’ criticism followed his account of a debate in

which Clinton ruled his motion to amend a resolution out

of order. Charles F. Adams, ed., Memoirs of John Quincy

Adams (12 vols., Philadelphia, 1874–1877), 1:382–85. 50Brown, p. 593.

51 Kaminski, p. 292.

52Adams, 1:400.

53 Ibid., 1:421; Brown, pp. 452, 455–57; Malone, Jefferson

the President: Second Term, pp. 88–89. 54 Cunningham, In Pursuit of Reason, pp. 281–82; Annals

of Congress, 9th Cong., 1st sess., p. 208; U.S., Congress,

House, Annals of Congress, 9th Cong., 1st sess., pp. 906–21. 55Adams, 1:452–53. The controversy was eventually settled by the Supreme Court’s 1810 ruling in Fletcher v. Peck. 56 Kaminski, pp. 278–79; Malone, Jefferson the President:

Second Term, pp. 469–506. 57 Samuel L. Mitchill to Mrs. Mitchill, January 25, 1808,

‘‘Dr. Mitchill’s Letters to Washington,’’ p. 752; Irving Brant,

‘‘Election of 1808,’’ in Schlesinger and Israel, 1:185–221;

Ketcham, pp. 466–67. 58 ‘‘Letter from Vice-President George Clinton to De Witt

Clinton, March 5, 1808,’’ in Schlesinger and Israel, 1:228;

Brant, 1:202; Kaminski, pp. 280–81, 332n. 59 Samuel L. Mitchell to Mrs. Mitchell, April 1, 1808, ‘‘Dr.

Mitchell’s Letters from Washington,’’ p. 753. 60 Kaminski, pp. 285–86.

61 ‘‘A Citizen of New-York,’’ quoted in Kaminski, pp.

286–87. 62 Kaminski, p. 284.

63Adams, 1:516; Annals of Congress, 10th Cong., 1st sess.,

p. 150. 64Adams, 1:529.

65 Cunningham, Jeffersonian Republicans in Power, pp. 118–

21.66Brant, 1:218.

67 Kaminski, p. 283.

68 Ibid., p. 288; Brant, 1:202; Ketcham, pp. 466–69. Pinckney carried the New England states with 76 electoral votes. 69The Twelfth Amendment, which provides that electors

‘‘shall name in their ballots the person voted for as President, and in distinct ballots the person voted for as VicePresident,’’ was ratified on June 15, 1804. This procedure—

designed to prevent a recurrence of the situation that occurred in 1800, when the Republican presidential and vicepresidential candidates received an equal number of electoral votes—was first employed during the 1804 election. 70 Cunningham, Jeffersonian Republicans in Power, pp. 122–

23.71 Ibid., p. 123. 72 Annals of Congress, 10th Cong., 2d sess., pp. 337, 344–

45; U.S., Congress, Senate, Journal, 10th Cong., special session, March 4–March 7, 1809, pp. 365–68; and Journal, 11th

Cong., 1st sess., pp. 373–74; Stathis and Moe, pp. 561, 566n.

Neither the Annals nor the Senate Journal indicates where,

or on what date, Clinton took his oath of office. He was

not present for the special session of March 4–March 7, 1809.

The Senate Journal notes that ‘‘[t]he Honorable George Clinton, Vice President of the United States and President of

the Senate,’’ was present when the Eleventh Congress convened on May 22, 1809, but does not indicate that he took

the oath of office at that time. 73 Ketcham, pp. 481–82. Gallatin continued to serve as secretary of the treasury until 1814. 74 Ketcham, pp. 506; Annals of Congress, 11th Cong., 3d

sess., pp. 121–347; Kaminski, pp. 289–90; Chase C. Mooney,

William H. Crawford, 1772–1834 (Lexington, KY, 1974), pp.

17–26; Robert V. Remini, Henry Clay: Statesman for the Union

(New York, 1991), pp. 68–71. 75 Kaminski, p. 289.

76 Annals of Congress, 11th Cong., 3d sess., pp. 346–47. 77Adams, 7:64; Remini, pp. 68–71, 379, and passim.

78 Annals of Congress, 11th Cong., 3d sess., pp. 350–70. 79 Ibid., pp. 9, 177, 205–6. The ‘‘electioneering’’ for Clinton’s office was mentioned in correspondence from First

Lady Dolley Madison to Anna Cutts, quoted in Ketcham,

p. 521. 80 Kaminski, p. 291; Annals of Congress, 12th Cong., 1st

sess., p. 206; Ketcham, p. 520. 81 Kaminski, pp. 292–93.
[ 61 ]

Chapter 5

ELBRIDGE GERRY

1813–1814
ELBRIDGE GERRY
[ 63 ]

Chapter 5

ELBRIDGE GERRY

5th Vice President: 1813–1814

It is the duty of every man, though he may have but one day to live, to devote that day to the

good of his country.

—ELBRIDGE GERRY 1

The vice-presidency had been vacant for nearly a year by the time Elbridge Gerry took office

as the nation’s fifth vice president on March 4,

1813. His predecessor, George Clinton, an uncompromising ‘‘Old Republican’’ with frustrated

presidential ambitions, had died in office on

April 20, 1812. Clinton’s constant carping about

President James Madison’s foreign policy had

put him at odds with the administration. Gerry,

who replaced Clinton as the Republican vicepresidential nominee in the 1812 election, was a

vice president more to Madison’s liking. An enthusiastic supporter of Jefferson’s embargo and

Madison’s foreign policy, he offered a welcome

contrast to the independent-minded and cantankerous New Yorker who had proved so troublesome during the president’s first term. But, like

Clinton, Gerry would die in office before the end

of his term, leaving Madison—and the nation—

once again without a vice president.

Early Career

Elbridge Gerry was born in Marblehead, Massachusetts, on July 17, 1744, one of Thomas and

Elizabeth Greenleaf Gerry’s eleven children. A

former ship’s captain who emigrated from England in 1730, Thomas Gerry was a pillar of the

Marblehead community, serving as a justice of

the peace and selectman and as moderator of the

town meeting. The family was prosperous,

thanks to a thriving mercantile and shipping

business and an inheritance from Elizabeth

Gerry’s side of the family. The Gerrys were also

pious, faithfully attending the First Congregational Church and avoiding ostentatious display.

Young Elbridge was probably educated by a private tutor before his admission to Harvard College in 1758. Like many of his fellow scholars,

he paid careful attention to the imperial crisis

that would eventually precipitate the American

Revolution, arguing in his master’s thesis that

the colonists were justified in their resistance to

‘‘the new Prohibitory Duties, which make it useless for the People to engage in Commerce.’’ 2

Gerry returned home after graduation to join

the family business. A thriving port and commercial center, Marblehead was a hotbed of antiBritish activity during the 1760s and 1770s. The

future vice president played a limited role in the

resistance movement until the spring of 1770,

when he served on a local committee to enforce

the ban on the sale and consumption of tea. He

was elected to the Massachusetts legislature in

1772, and later to its successor body, the Provincial Congress, serving as chairman of the committee on supplies during the fall and winter of

1774–1775.3 The historian Mercy Otis Warren—

a contemporary—later recalled that Gerry coordinated the procurement and distribution of

arms and provisions with ‘‘punctuality and indefatigable industry,’’ 4 an effort he would continue

while serving in the Continental Congress. Following a practice that was neither unusual nor

illegal at the time, Gerry awarded several supply
[ 64 ]

ELBRIDGE GERRY

contracts to his family’s business. But, unlike

many of his fellow merchants, he refused to take

excessive profits from wartime commerce, explaining that he would ‘‘prefer any Loss to the

least Misunderstanding with the public relative

of Interest.’’ 5

Gerry was elected to the second Continental

Congress in December 1775, serving until 1780

and again from 1783 to 1785. If he was, as his

biographer George Athan Billias admits, a ‘‘second rank figure’’ in a body that included such

luminaries as Thomas Jefferson and John and

Samuel Adams, he was also a diligent legislator.

His efforts to persuade wavering middle colony

delegates to support independence during the

summer of 1776 evoked paeans of praise from

John Adams. ‘‘If every Man here was a Gerry,’’

Adams claimed, ‘‘the Liberties of America would

be safe against the Gates of Earth and Hell.’’ 6

But, like Adams, Gerry could also be trying

and impractical—even Adams despaired of his

friend’s ‘‘obstinacy that will risk great things to

secure small ones.’’ 7 He was ‘‘of so peculiar a

cast of mind,’’ Continental Congress Secretary

Charles Thomson marvelled, ‘‘that his pleasure

seems proportioned to the absurdity of his

schemes.’’ 8 Modern scholars agree that ‘‘his

work in Congress was remembered most for its

capriciousness and contrariness,’’ citing the

‘‘phobias against sword, purse, and centralized

power’’ that ‘‘drove him to oppose any kind of

peacetime army and any taxing scheme to raise

revenue for the central government.’’ 9 But

Gerry’s biographer discerns a fundamental logic

in his seemingly erratic career. The Revolution

was Gerry’s defining moment, Billias emphasizes, and the future vice president considered

‘‘the signing of the Declaration of Independence

. . . the greatest single act of his entire life.’’ 10

All of his subsequent actions, inconsistent and

idiosyncratic as they may have appeared to others, were driven by his single-minded goal of

preserving the hard-won gains of the Revolution.

For all his commitment to Revolutionary principles, however, Gerry was no egalitarian. He believed that a ‘‘natural elite’’ of able and talented

individuals should govern the new nation. As a

member of that favored class, he considered public service a responsibility, not an opportunity for

personal or financial gain. Like many of his contemporaries, he believed that the ideal form of

government was a ‘‘mixed’’ constitution, incorporating in a delicately balanced equilibrium the

best features of a monarchy, an aristocracy, and

a democracy. A constitution that inclined too

much toward any of the three would, Gerry

feared, threaten the stability of the government

or jeopardize the liberties of the people. This

stance accounts for his seemingly inconsistent

behavior during the Constitutional Convention

and the ensuing ratification debate.11

Constitutional Convention

One of four delegates chosen by the Massachusetts legislature to attend the 1787 Constitutional

Convention, Gerry was, in his biographer’s

words, ‘‘one of the most active participants in the

entire Convention.’’ 12 A member of the moderate bloc—he was neither an extreme nationalist

nor a committed states’ rights advocate—he

acted as a conciliator during the first phases of

the convention. As chair of the committee that

resolved the impasse between the large and

small states over representation in the national

legislature, Gerry made several impassioned

speeches in support of the ‘‘Great Compromise,’’

which provided for equal representation of the

states in the Senate and proportional representation in the House of Representatives.13

Soon after the convention adopted the compromise, Gerry began to worry that the constitution that was slowly emerging during those hot

and tense days in Philadelphia would create a

powerful national legislature capable of jeopardizing the people’s liberties and overshadowing

the states. Although the convention adopted several of his proposals to limit congressional

power, including the prohibition against bills of

attainder and ex post facto laws, these provisions

failed to satisfy his apprehensions. Struggling to

save a document that he now considered seriously flawed, Gerry offered a motion to include

a bill of rights and several specific proposals to

safeguard popular liberties. The convention’s

majority disagreed with this approach and defeated each of these initiatives. On September 15,

1787, a dispirited Gerry stated ‘‘the objections

which determined him to withhold his name
[ 65 ]

ELBRIDGE GERRY

from the Constitution,’’ concluding that ‘‘the best

that could be done . . . was to provide for a second general Convention.’’ Two days later, as his

more optimistic colleagues prepared to sign the

new Constitution, Gerry explained his change of

heart. James Madison, whose notes of the convention provide the only authoritative account of

its proceedings, recorded the awkward scene:

Mr. Gerry described the painful feelings of his

situation, and the embarrassment under which

he rose to offer any further observations on the

subject which had finally been decided. Whilst

the plan was depending, he had treated it with

all the freedom he thought it deserved. He now

felt himself bound as he was disposed to treat it

with the respect due to the Act of the Convention.

He hoped he should not violate that respect in

declaring on this occasion his fears that a Civil

war may result from the present crisis of the

U.S.14

Gerry objected to several provisions in the new

Constitution, including the language in Article I,

section 3, specifying that ‘‘The Vice President of

the United States shall be President of the Senate.’’ During the September 7 debate over the

‘‘mode of constituting the Executive,’’ he had

voiced his reservations about assigning legislative responsibilities to the vice president. ‘‘We

might as well put the President himself at the

head of the Legislature,’’ he had argued. ‘‘The

close intimacy that must subsist between the

President & vice-president makes it absolutely

improper.’’ But, he now admitted, he could have

accepted this provision and others that he found

troubling had the Constitution not granted Congress such sweeping powers.15

Fearful as he was about the new Constitution,

Gerry was equally worried that ‘‘anarchy may

ensue’’ if the states failed to ratify it. He did not,

therefore, reject it outright during the ratification

struggle. Abandoning his earlier call for a second

convention, he worked to build support for

amendments ‘‘adapted to the ‘exigencies of Government’ & the preservation of Liberty.’’ Reviled

as a traitor to his class by elites who strongly favored ratification, Gerry suffered an overwhelming defeat in the 1788 Massachusetts gubernatorial election. Still, he noted with some satisfaction that his state and four others ratified the

Constitution with recommendations for

amendments.16

The New Nation

Gerry served in the United States House of

Representatives during the First and Second congresses (1789–1793). A conciliatory and moderate

legislator, he supported Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton’s proposals to fund the Revolutionary War debt and to establish a national

bank. Disillusioned by the increasingly partisan

nature of the debate that Hamilton’s proposals

generated, Gerry retired at the end of his second

term, returning to Elmwood, his Cambridge,

Massachusetts, estate, to attend to his business

affairs and to care for his large and growing family. He had remained a bachelor until the age of

forty-one, marrying Ann Thompson, the European-educated daughter of a wealthy New York

merchant, in 1786. Ann Gerry’s frequent pregnancies—ten children arrived between 1787 and

1801—placed a severe strain on her health, and

Elbridge was needed at home.17

Gerry’s brief retirement ended in 1796, when

he served as a presidential elector, supporting

his friend and former colleague, John Adams. In

1797, with relations between the United States

and France steadily worsening after the adoption

of the Jay Treaty, President Adams appointed

Gerry an envoy to France. The mission failed

after representatives of the French government

demanded a bribe before they would begin negotiations. Gerry’s fellow commissioners left Paris,

but Gerry, who had been meeting privately with

the French in an effort to facilitate negotiations,

remained behind, believing that accommodation

was possible. Eventually, he left France emptyhanded but convinced that his efforts had averted war. Attacks on American shipping continued, however, and Gerry was widely criticized

for the failure of the mission.18

Maligned by Federalists who believed him

partial to France, and courted by Republicans for

the same reason, Gerry tried to remain aloof

from the partisan warfare of the late 1790s. Then,

in 1800, energized by President John Adams’

warning that Hamilton would use the army to

gain control of the government, he aligned himself with the moderate wing of the Jeffersonian
[ 66 ]

ELBRIDGE GERRY

coalition, eventually emerging as the leader of

the Massachusetts Republicans. After a brief second retirement from politics between 1804 and

1809, Gerry was elected governor of Massachusetts in 1810. The success of his efforts to reconcile Federalists and Republicans, who were

bitterly divided over foreign policy issues, led to

his reelection the following year. During his second term, however, Governor Gerry adopted a

more ‘‘hard-line’’ approach, as Massachusetts

Federalists became increasingly outspoken in

their opposition to Madison’s foreign policy. He

prosecuted Federalist editors for libel, appointed

family members to state office, and approved a

controversial redistricting plan crafted to give

Republicans an advantage in the state senatorial

elections. The Federalist press responded to this

plan with cartoon figures of a salamandershaped election district—the ‘‘Gerrymander’’—

adding to the American political lexicon a term

that is still used to connote an irregularly shaped

district created by legislative fiat to benefit a particular party, politician, or other group. Governor Gerry’s highly partisan agenda led to his

defeat in the April 1812 gubernatorial election.

Heavily in debt after cosigning a note for a brother who defaulted on his obligation, and saddled

with the expenses of a large family, Gerry asked

President James Madison to appoint him collector of customs at Boston.19

Vice-Presidential Career

Madison had other plans for Gerry. With the

1812 presidential election fast approaching and

the vice-presidency vacant since George Clinton’s death in April, Madison was more anxious

to find a suitable running mate than to fill a customs post. He preferred a candidate who would

attract votes in the New England states yet

would not threaten the succession of the ‘‘Virginia dynasty’’ in the 1816 election. Former Senator John Langdon of New Hampshire, the party’s first choice, was too old and too ill to accept

the nomination. After he declined, the Republican caucus turned to the sixty-seven-year-old

Gerry, a choice that Madison approved despite

Albert Gallatin’s prediction that the Massachusetts patriot ‘‘would give us as much trouble as

our late Vice-President.’’ 20 Gerry had supported

Jefferson’s embargo and Madison’s foreign policy, remaining steadfast after the United States

declared war against Great Britain in June 1812.

Like Madison, he believed that the war was necessary to protect the liberties that both men had

labored so hard to secure during the

Revolution.21

Although Gerry was certainly no liability, he

turned out not to be as valuable an asset as the

Republicans had hoped. Of Massachusetts’ 22

electors, only 2 voted for Gerry and none voted

for Madison. In an election that was, as one

scholar has observed, ‘‘a virtual referendum’’ on

the War of 1812, editors and electioneers paid

relatively little attention to the vice-presidential

candidates. By a margin of 39 electoral votes,

Madison defeated opposition candidate De Witt

Clinton, and Gerry triumphed over Jared Ingersoll of Pennsylvania.22

Gerry remained at home in Massachusetts on

inauguration day, March 4, 1813, taking his oath

of office there from U.S. District Judge John

Davis.23 When the Senate convened at the beginning of the Thirteenth Congress on May 24, 1813,

he appeared in the chamber with a certificate attesting to the fact that he had taken the oath of

office. Gerry’s inaugural address, an extended

oration condemning the British and praising

Madison, was unusual in content and length. He

explained that ‘‘to have concealed’’ his ‘‘political

principles and opinions’’ during ‘‘a crisis like

this might have savored too much of a deficiency

of candor.’’ 24 He was now on record as a supporter of the war effort and a loyal ally of the

president.

Gerry’s early hopes that ‘‘unanimity should

prevail’’ in the Senate 25 soon faded, as the war

deepened the divisions between the parties and

threatened to split the Republican coalition. Republicans far outnumbered Federalists in the

Senate, but mounting opposition to the war effort among disaffected Republicans steadily

eroded the administration’s 28-to-8 majority. The

president was such an inept commander in chief

that even his loyal ally, House Speaker Henry

Clay of Kentucky, considered him ‘‘wholly unfit

for the storms of War.’’ 26 As anti-administration

sentiment reached a fever pitch after American

forces suffered humiliating defeats in Canada
[ 67 ]

ELBRIDGE GERRY

and at sea, 27 several members of the president’s

party balked at the nomination of Treasury Secretary Albert Gallatin as envoy to Great Britain

and Russia. Instead, they supported a resolution

ordering Madison to inform the Senate whether

Gallatin would retain his cabinet post (and, if so,

who would serve in his absence). Ultimately,

these Republicans joined with Federalists to defeat the nomination by a vote of 18 to 17.28

Elbridge Gerry found it increasingly difficult

to remain impartial in such a highly charged atmosphere, especially after Madison became seriously ill in mid-June 1813. Gerry, himself, was

in poor health. He had recently suffered a

‘‘stroke,’’ and old age had so withered his slight

physique that one observer likened his appearance to that of a ‘‘scant-patterned old skeleton

of a French Barber.’’ The March 1, 1792, act

which at that time governed the presidential succession provided that if the president and the

vice president died in office—a development

that many considered possible, if not imminent,

during the summer of 1813—the president pro

tempore of the Senate would serve as president.

And if Gerry left the Senate before Congress adjourned, as all of his predecessors had done to

allow election of a president pro tempore, antiadministration forces might combine to elect an

individual hostile to Madison’s agenda. One

Federalist editor had already suggested New

York Federalist Senator Rufus King as a possible

successor, while Secretary of State James Monroe

warned that disaffected Senate Republicans had

‘‘begun to make calculations, and plans, founded

on the presumed death of the President and

Vice-President, and it has been suggested to me

that [Virginia Senator William Branch] Giles is

thought of to take the place of the President of

the Senate.’’ 29

But if Gerry remained in the chair, and if he

survived until the end of the session, the person

next in the line of succession would be Speaker

of the House Henry Clay, an outspoken

‘‘warhawk.’’ Breaking with the precedent established by John Adams, Gerry therefore refused

to vacate the chair, presiding over the Senate

until the first session of the Thirteenth Congress

adjourned on August 2, 1813. ‘‘[S]everal gentlemen of the Senate had intimated a wish that he

would retire from the Chair two or three weeks

before the time of adjournment, and would thus

give to the Senate an opportunity for choosing

a President pro tempore,’’ he later explained, but

‘‘other gentlemen expressed a contrary desire,

and thought that the President should remain in

the Chair, and adjourn the Senate.’’ Gerry ultimately decided that, as ‘‘a war existed and had

produced a special session of Congress,’’ he was

‘‘differently circumstanced from any of his predecessors, and was under an obligation to remain

in the Chair until the important business of the

session was finished.’’ 30 (Decades later, in March

1890, the Senate established the current practice

of having presidents pro tempore hold office

continuously until the election of another president pro tempore, rather than serving only during the absence of a vice president.)

With the presidential succession safe and

Madison’s physical condition much improved by

the time the Senate adjourned, Gerry was free to

return home. He was absent when the second

session of the Thirteenth Congress convened in

December and did not return to Washington

until early February 1814.31 Partisan sentiments

remained strong in the Senate, he soon discovered. By one observer’s count, the administration’s opponents outnumbered its supporters by

a margin of 20 to 16. The vice president suspected that a Senate stenographer was the source

of recent anti-administration articles in the local

press, but with opposition forces now in the majority he was reluctant to ‘‘meddle with serpents,’’ and he let the matter drop.32

Unpleasant as his Senate duties had become,

Gerry still enjoyed the endless round of dinners,

receptions, and entertainments that crowded his

calendar. With his elegant manners and personal

charm, the vice president was a favorite guest of

Washington’s Republican hostesses, including

first lady Dolley Madison. He maintained an active social schedule that belied his advanced

years and failing health, visiting friends from his

earlier days, who were now serving as members

of Congress or administration appointees, and

paying special attention to Betsy Patterson Bonaparte, the American-born sister-in-law of Napoleon, whose revealing attire caused a stir wherever she went.33
[ 68 ]

ELBRIDGE GERRY

Gerry remained in Washington until the second session of the Thirteenth Congress adjourned on April 18, 1814, leaving the Senate

chamber only a few moments before adjournment to permit the election of South Carolina Republican John Gaillard as president pro tempore.

Mindful that the war had ‘‘increased his responsibility,’’ and apprehensive of ‘‘the tendency of

contrary conduct to prostrate the laws and Government,’’ however, he had refused to relinquish

the chair ‘‘whilst any important bill or measure

was pending, and was to be finished at that

session.’’ 34

Gerry spent the summer of 1814 in Massachusetts, awaiting news of the war effort from Madison.35 He found the capital much changed when

he returned in the fall; British troops had burned

most of the city’s public buildings, including the

Capitol, and the Senate would meet in temporary

quarters for the remainder of his term. He was

outraged to learn that Massachusetts Federalists

had called for a convention of the New England

states to consider defensive measures and to propose constitutional amendments. In the fall of

1814, the Hartford Convention, which would not

issue its recommendations until after Gerry’s

death, was widely rumored to be a secessionist

initiative. The vice president therefore urged

Madison to counter with a ‘‘spirited manifesto’’

against the proceedings.36

Gerry was still an energetic defender of the administration and of the war, but, by that autumn,

his public responsibilities, coupled with his relentless socializing, had sapped his strength. He

became seriously ill in late November 1814, retiring early on the evening of November 22 and

complaining of chest pains the next morning. Determined to perform his public responsibilities,

he arrived at the temporary capitol in the Patent

Office Building later that morning. Then, realizing that he was in no condition to preside over

the Senate, he returned to his boardinghouse.

Members of the Senate, assembling in the chamber at their customary hour and hearing reports

of Gerry’s death, sent Massachusetts Senators Joseph Varnum and Christopher Gore to the vice

president’s lodgings ‘‘to ascertain the fact.’’

When they returned with confirmation that the

reports were true, the Senate appointed five senators to a joint committee ‘‘to consider and report

measures most proper to manifest the public respect for the memory of the deceased.’’ The body

then adjourned as a mark of respect to its departed president. On the following day, the Senate ordered that the president’s chair ‘‘be

shrouded with black during the present session;

and as a further testimony of respect for the deceased, the members of the Senate will go into

mourning, and wear black crape round the left

arm for thirty days.’’ 37 Although the Senate

passed legislation providing for payment of

Gerry’s vice-presidential salary to his financially

strapped widow for the remainder of his term,

the House rejected the plan.

Not long after Gerry’s interment at Congressional Cemetery, the United States claimed victory over Great Britain. The young nation received few tangible concessions from the British

under the Treaty of Ghent, 38 but a new generation of leaders viewed America’s ‘‘victory’’ in the

War of 1812 as a reaffirmation of the ideals that

had animated and sustained Elbridge Gerry

since the summer of 1776.
[ 69 ]

NOTES 1 Inscription on the Elbridge Gerry monument, Congressional Cemetery, Washington, D.C., reproduced in James T.

Austin, The Life of Elbridge Gerry, vol. 2 (New York, 1970;

reprint of 1829 edition), p. 403. 2George Athan Billias, Elbridge Gerry, Founding Father and

Republican Statesman (New York, 1976), pp. 1–7. 3 Ibid., pp. 7–54.

4Quoted in ibid., p. 53.

5 Ibid., pp. 73–75.

6Quoted in ibid., p. 70.

7Quoted in Samuel Eliot Morison, ‘‘Elbridge Gerry, Gentleman-Democrat,’’ New England Quarterly 2 (1929), reprinted in By Land and By Sea: Essays and Addresses (New

York, 1953), p. 190. 8Quoted in Stanley Elkins and Eric McKitrick, The Age

of Federalism: The Early American Republic, 1788–1800 (New

York, 1993), p. 557. 9Elkins and McKitrick, p. 557.

10Billias, p. 70.

11 Ibid., pp. xiii-xvii and passim; Jackson Turner Main, The

Antifederalists: Critics of the Constitution, 1781–1788 (Chapel

Hill, NC, 1961). p. 171. 12Billias, p. 158; Ralph Ketcham, James Madison: A Biography (Charlottesville, VA, 1992; reprint of 1971 edition), p.

194. 13Billias, pp. 153–84.

14 Ibid., pp. 185–205; Notes of Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787 Reported By James Madison (New York, 1987; reprint of 1966 edition), pp. 652–58. 15Notes of Debates in the Federal Convention, pp. 594–97,

652. 16Billias, pp. 206–17.

17 Ibid., pp. 147, 218–35.

18 Ibid., pp. 245–86.

19 Ibid., pp. 287–325.

20 Ketcham, p. 523; Norman K. Risjord, ‘‘Election of 1812,’’

in History of American Presidential Elections, 1789–1968,

edited by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. and Fred L. Israel, vol.

1 (New York, 1971). p. 252. 21According to Madison scholar Robert Allen Rutland,

the president believed that ‘‘war with Britain would reaffirm the commitment of 1776.’’ Robert Allen Rutland, The

Presidency of James Madison (Lawrence, KS, 1990), p. 97.

Gerry elaborated his sentiments in his May 24, 1813, inaugural address. U.S., Congress, Senate, Annals of Congress,

13th Cong., 2d sess., pp. 10–13. 22Risjord, ‘‘Election of 1812,’’ pp. 249–72; Norman K.

Risjord, ‘‘1812,’’ in Running for President: The Candidates and

Their Images, ed. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., vol. 1, 1789–1896

(New York, 1994), pp. 67–72. 23 Stephen W. Stathis and Ronald C. Moe, ‘‘America’s

Other Inauguration,’’ Presidential Studies Quarterly 10 (Fall

1980), p. 561. Gerry’s legislative duties would not commence until the Thirteenth Congress convened two months

later, which may account for his decision to remain in Cambridge until that time. Samuel Eliot Morison speculates that

Ann Gerry’s illness may have prevented her from accompanying her husband to Washington in 1813; her condition

might also have delayed her husband’s departure. Morison,

‘‘Elbridge Gerry,’’ pp. 197–98. 24 Annals of Congress, 13th Cong., 1st sess., pp. 9–13. 25 Ibid., p. 10.

26Robert V. Remini, Henry Clay: Statesman for the Union

(New York, 1991), p. 97. 27 Ibid., pp. 94–97.

28 Ketcham, p. 560; Robert Ernst, Rufus King: American

Federalist (Chapel Hill, NC, 1968), pp. 324–25; Annals of Congress, 13th Cong., 1st sess., pp. 84–90. 29The vice president’s social life is chronicled in the diary

of his son, Elbridge Gerry, Jr., who visited his father in

Washington during the summer of 1813. Elbridge, Jr.’s diary

makes no mention of his father’s health, but the vice president’s most recent biographer notes that the elder Gerry

suffered a ‘‘stroke’’ while Madison was ill. Claude Bowers,

ed., The Diary of Elbridge Gerry, Jr. (New York, 1927), passim;

Ketcham, pp. 560–62; Billias, pp. 326–29. 30 Annals of Congress, 13th Cong., 2d sess., pp. 776–78. 31 Ketcham, p. 562; Annals of Congress, 13th Cong., 2d

sess., pp. 537–622. 32Billias, p. 327.

33 Ibid., pp. 327–28.

34 Annals of Congress, 13th Cong., 2d sess., pp. 622–778. 35Rutland, p. 151.

36Billias, p. 326; Marshall Smelser, The Democratic Republic, 1801–1815 (New York, 1968), pp. 296–99. 37Billias, pp. 328–29; Annals of Congress, 13th Cong., 3d

sess., pp. 109–110. 38 Smelser, pp. 308–11.

[ 71 ]

Chapter 6

DANIEL D. TOMPKINS

1817–1825
DANIEL D. TOMPKINS
[ 73 ]

Chapter 6

DANIEL D. TOMPKINS

6th Vice President: 1817–1825

The name of Daniel Tompkins deserves to be more kindly remembered than it has been.

—New York Herald-Tribune EDITORIAL, JUNE 21, 1932 1

Daniel D. Tompkins was by all accounts an exceptionally handsome individual. He had a ‘‘face

of singular masculine beauty,’’ one essayist

noted, and a ‘‘gentle, polished and unpretentious’’ demeanor. Tompkins’ biographer discovered that ‘‘almost every noted American artist’’ of the time painted the handsome New York

Republican, 2 and the images reproduced in Raymond Irwin’s study of Tompkins’ career depict

an attractive and obviously self-confident young

politician. John Trumbull’s 1809 portrait, for example, shows Tompkins as he appeared during

his first term as governor of New York: a carefully dressed, poised, and seemingly contented

public man, his dark hair framing an even-featured and not-yet-careworn face.3

But had Trumbull painted Tompkins in 1825,

the year he retired from public life after two

terms as vice president during James Monroe’s

administration, he would have captured a vastly

different likeness. A decade of financial privation

and heavy drinking, coupled with accusations

that he had mishandled state and federal funds

while serving as governor of New York during

the War of 1812, had prematurely aged Tompkins. He was, at the age of fifty, an embittered

and tortured old man, his once-promising career

brought to an untimely end. ‘‘There was a time

when no man in the state dared compete with

him for any office in the gift of the people,’’ a

contemporary reflected after Tompkins’ death on

June 11, 1825, ‘‘and his habits of intemperance

alone prevented him from becoming President of

the United States.’’ 4

Tompkins’ Early Years

Daniel D. Tompkins was born in Westchester

County, New York, on June 21, 1774, one of eleven children of Jonathan Griffin Tompkins and

Sarah Ann Hyatt Tompkins. His parents were

tenant farmers, who acquired middle-class status

only shortly before his birth when they purchased a farm near Scarsdale. Jonathan Griffin

Tompkins joined several local resistance committees during the Revolution, serving as an adjutant in the county militia. After the war, he

served several years as a town supervisor and

as a delegate to the state legislature. A self-educated man, the elder Tompkins was determined

to provide young Daniel with a classical

education.

The future vice president began his education

at a New York City grammar school, later transferring to the Academy of North Salem and entering Columbia University in 1792. An exceptional scholar and a gifted essayist, Tompkins

graduated first in his class in 1795, intent on pursuing a political career. In 1797, he was admitted

to the New York bar and married Hannah

Minthorne, the daughter of a well-connected Republican merchant. Tompkins’ father-in-law was

a prominent member of the Tammany Society,

a militant, unabashedly democratic political organization that would one day challenge the

Clinton dynasty for control of the New York Re-
[ 74 ]

DANIEL D. TOMPKINS

publican party. Also known as ‘‘Bucktails,’’ after

the distinctive plumes worn at official and ceremonial gatherings, the Tammanyites were a diverse lot. As Tompkins’ biographer has noted,

the society was comprised of ‘‘laborers . . . Revolutionary War veterans . . . who admired republican France and hated monarchical England;

more than a sprinkling of immigrants . . . befriended by the Society . . . and, of course, hopeful politicians.’’ 5

Tompkins began his political career in 1800,

canvassing his father-in-law’s precinct on behalf

of candidates for the state legislature who would,

if elected, choose Republican electors in the

forthcoming presidential contest. He was a

skilled and personable campaigner, never forgetting a name or a face; by the time the election

was over, he knew nearly every voter in the Seventh Ward. Resourceful and energetic, he managed to circumvent New York’s highly restrictive

voter-qualification laws by pooling resources

with other young men of modest means to purchase enough property to qualify for the franchise. The engaging and tactful Tompkins never

allowed politics to interfere with personal friendships—an enormous asset for a New York politician, given the proliferation of factions in the

Empire State during the early 1800s. Tompkins

served as a New York City delegate to the 1801

state constitutional convention and was elected

to the New York assembly in 1803. In 1804 he

won a seat in the United States House of Representatives, but he resigned before Congress

convened to accept an appointment as an associate justice of the New York Supreme Court.6

War Governor

Tompkins was a popular and fair-minded jurist, well respected by members of the several

factions that were struggling for control of the

state Republican party during the early 1800s. He

was also a close associate of De Witt Clinton,

who supported him in the 1807 gubernatorial

race in an effort to unseat Morgan Lewis. Lewis

was a ‘‘Livingston’’ Republican, supported by

the landed aristocracy who sided with the Livingston clan, wealthy landlords whose extensive

holdings had assured them of a prominent role

in New York politics. In contrast, the Clintonians

stressed their candidate’s humble origins—

Tompkins was the ‘‘the Farmer’s Boy,’’ with not

a drop of ‘‘aristocratical or oligarchical blood’’ in

his veins—and won a solid victory. During his

first months in office, the new governor apparently took his marching orders from Clinton,

sending him advance copies of his official addresses for review and comment. But he soon asserted his independence by supporting President

Thomas Jefferson’s foreign policy and backing

Clinton’s rival, James Madison, in the 1808 presidential election.7

Reelected governor in 1810, Tompkins was a

loyal supporter of the Madison administration.

He advised Treasury Secretary Albert Gallatin

about patronage appointments in New York and,

after the United States declared war on Great

Britain in the summer of 1812, did his best to

comply with War Department directives and

requisitions. With Federalists in control of the

state legislature and the Clintonians resolutely

opposed to the war, Tompkins was hard pressed

to comply with the constant stream of requests

for men and materiel. He used his own funds to

pay and arm the militia and personally endorsed

a series of loans from local banks in a desperate

effort to buttress the state’s defenses. It was a risk

Tompkins could ill afford to take; he had already

made substantial contributions to the war effort

and had borrowed heavily to finance several

large purchases of land on Staten Island. When

President Madison offered him a cabinet appointment in the fall of 1814, Tompkins protested

that he would be more useful to the administration as governor of New York. But, he later confessed, ‘‘One of the reasons was the inadequacy

of my circumstances to remove to Washington

& support so large and expensive family as mine

is, on the salary of that office.’’ 8

The Election of 1816

Tompkins’ able and energetic leadership during the war made him one of the best-loved men

in his state. One of his aides, novelist Washington Irving, pronounced him ‘‘absolutely one of

the worthiest men I ever knew . . . honest, candid, prompt, indefatigable,’’ 9 a sentiment that

many shared. The editor of the Albany Argus suggested in January 1816 that ‘‘if private worth—
[ 75 ]

DANIEL D. TOMPKINS

if public service—if fervent patriotism and practical talents are to be regarded in selecting a

President then Governor Tompkins stands forth

to the nation with unrivalled pretensions.’’ 10 Republicans in the state legislature endorsed him

as their presidential candidate on February 14,

1816, and a week later he was renominated as

the party’s gubernatorial candidate. Tompkins

defeated Federalist Rufus King by a comfortable

margin in the gubernatorial race after an intensely partisan campaign focusing on the candidates’ wartime records. But the victory was

marred by Federalist accusations that Governor

Tompkins had misused public monies during the

war, charges that would haunt him for the remainder of his life.11

Encouraged by Tompkins’ victory, his supporters redoubled their efforts to secure his presidential nomination. Outside of New York, however, few Americans had ever heard of Tompkins, and few Republicans believed him capable

of winning the presidency. Not even all New

York Republicans backed Tompkins; some, like

Albany Postmaster Samuel Southwick, a Madison appointee and the editor of the Albany Register, declared for Republican ‘‘heir apparent’’

James Monroe, who received the Republican

presidential nomination on March 16, 1816. In a

concession to New York Republicans, who were

crucial to the party’s national strategy, Daniel

Tompkins did receive the vice-presidential nomination. Tompkins, like many New Yorkers, believed that Virginians had monopolized the presidency long enough, but, he assured one supporter, he had ‘‘no objection to being vice President under Mr. Munro.’’ He declared, however,

that he could not accept a cabinet post in the

Monroe administration because ‘‘the emoluments . . . would not save his private fortune

from encroachment . . . the vice Presidency in

that respect would be more eligible to him—as

he could discharge the Duties of that office and

suffer his family to remain at home & probably

save something for the support of his family.’’

The end of the war, by then popularly acclaimed as an American triumph, brought a resurgence in popularity for the Republicans and

marked the beginning of the end for the Federalists, who had become suspect because of their

opposition to the war. In this euphoric atmosphere, Monroe and Tompkins won an easy victory over Federalist presidential candidate Rufus

King and an array of vice-presidential candidates.12

Absentee Vice President

Tompkins’ first term began auspiciously. He

returned to his Staten Island home soon after taking the oath of office on March 4, 1817. There he

welcomed President Monroe, who began the

term with a tour of the northern states in the

summer of 1817. A gesture reminiscent of President Washington’s 1789 New England tour, the

trip was intended to quell the partisan

resentments that had so bitterly divided the

country during the Jefferson and Madison administrations. After the president’s brief visit to

Staten Island, Tompkins accompanied him to

Manhattan, where they attended a military review and a reception at City Hall and toured

New York’s military installations. When Monroe

was made an honorary member of the Society for

Encouragement of American Manufactures on

June 13, 1817, Tompkins, the society’s president,

chaired the proceedings.13

But Tompkins paid only sporadic attention to

his vice-presidential duties after Monroe left

New York to continue his tour. The vice president was in poor health, the result of a fall from

his horse during an inspection tour of Fort

Greene in 1814. By the fall of 1817, Tompkins was

complaining that his injuries had ‘‘increased

upon me for several years until finally, for the

last six weeks, they have confined me to my

house and . . . sometimes to my bed. . . . My

present prospect is that kind of affliction and

confinement for the residue of my life.’’ The

problem was so severe that he expected to ‘‘resign the office of Vice President at the next session, if not sooner, as there is very little hope of

my ever being able to perform its duties

hereafter.’’ 14

Tompkins’ health eventually improved

enough to permit his return to public life, but his

financial affairs were in such a chaotic state by

1817 that he found little time to attend the Senate. In his haste to raise and spend the huge sums

required for New York’s wartime defense, he
[ 76 ]

DANIEL D. TOMPKINS

had failed to document his transactions, commingling his own monies with state and federal

funds. An 1816 audit by the New York comptroller had revealed a $120,000 shortfall in the state

treasury, the rough equivalent of $1.2 million

1991 dollars.15 A state commission appointed to

investigate the matter indicated that Tompkins

had apparently used the funds to make interest

payments on an 1814 loan incurred ‘‘on the

pledge of the United States stock and Treasury

notes, and on his personal responsibility, for defraying the expenses of carrying on the war.’’ In

1819 the New York legislature awarded him a

premium of $120,000, but currency values had

plummeted since 1814. Tompkins maintained

that the state now owed him $130,000, setting the

stage for a long and bitter battle that continued

through his first term as vice president.16

Tompkins’ efforts to settle accounts with the

federal treasury proved equally frustrating. Perplexed by the intricacies of the government’s rudimentary accounting system and lacking adequate documentation of his claims, he received

no acknowledgement of the government’s indebtedness to him until late 1822 and no actual

compensation until 1824. In the meantime,

Tompkins could neither make mortgage payments on his properties nor satisfy the judgments that several creditors, including his fatherin-law and a former law tutor, obtained against

him. Tompkins slid deeper into debt and began

to drink heavily.17

The vice president’s financial troubles, and his

continuing involvement in New York politics,

kept him away from Washington for extended

periods. He spent much of his first term in New

York, trying to develop his Staten Island properties and negotiating with Comptroller Archibald McIntyre to settle his wartime accounts—

a nearly impossible task, given the political climate in the state. De Witt Clinton had succeeded

Tompkins as governor, and Comptroller McIntyre was Clinton’s staunch ally. Governor Clinton’s resentment of the ‘‘Virginia dynasty’’ knew

no bounds, and with Tompkins now on record

as a supporter of the Monroe administration, the

long-simmering rivalry between the vice president and his former mentor finally came to a

head. ‘‘[B]oth parties thought they could make

political capital’’ out of Tompkins’ financial embarrassments, one contemporary observed, ‘‘and

each party thought it could make more than the

other.’’ 18 In the spring of 1820, the New York

Senate voted to award Tompkins $11,870.50 to

settle his accounts, but Clinton’s allies in the state

assembly blocked a final settlement and affirmed

the comptroller’s contention that Tompkins was

still in arrears.19

Tompkins grew increasingly bitter with each

new assault on his integrity, but many New

Yorkers, having themselves suffered severe financial reverses during the panic of 1819, sympathized with his plight, and continued to hold

him in high regard. In 1820, the Bucktails nominated Tompkins as their candidate to oppose

Clinton in the gubernatorial race—a move that

heightened public scrutiny of the charges against

him while foreclosing any possibility of reaching

a settlement before the election. Some questioned

the wisdom of nominating Tompkins. Republican strategist Martin Van Buren tried, without

success, to replace him with a less controversial

candidate. But Tompkins, fearful that his withdrawal would only lend credence to the charges

against him, refused to step aside. Although

Clinton ultimately won reelection by a narrow

margin, Tompkins achieved a personal victory

when the state legislature finally approved a

compromise settlement of his accounts in November 1820.20

When Tompkins did find time to attend the

Senate, he was an inept presiding officer. His

shortcomings were painfully apparent during

the debates over the admission of Missouri into

the Union, a critically important contest that became, in the words of historian Glover Moore,

‘‘a struggle for political power between the

North and South.’’ 21 New York Representative

James Tallmadge, Jr. had sparked the debate

when he offered an amendment to the Missouri

statehood bill prohibiting ‘‘the further introduction of slavery or involuntary servitude’’ in the

prospective state and requiring the emancipation, at the age of twenty-five, of all slave children born after Missouri’s admission into the

Union. The Senate took up the Missouri question

in February 1819, with Senator Rufus King of

New York leading the restrictionist charge and
[ 77 ]

DANIEL D. TOMPKINS

southern Republicans opposing the effort to restrict the spread of slavery. The debates continued through the spring of 1820, when Congress

finally approved the Missouri Compromise.22

In this contentious atmosphere, Tompkins

found it difficult to maintain order. Mrs. William

A. Seaton, who followed the debate with avid interest from the Senate gallery, recounted one particularly chaotic session that took place in January 1820:

. . . There have been not less than a hundred

ladies on the floor of the Senate every day on

which it was anticipated that Mr. Pinckney 23

would speak . . . Governor Tompkins, a very gallant man, had invited a party of ladies who he

met at Senator Brown’s, 24 to take seats on the

floor of the Senate, having, as President of the

Senate, unlimited power, and thinking proper to

use it, contrary to all former precedent. I was one

of the select, and gladly availed myself of the invitation, with my good friend Mrs. Lowndes, of

South Carolina, and half a dozen others. The

company in the gallery seeing a few ladies very

comfortably seated on the sofas, with warm footstools and other luxuries, did as they had a right

to do,—deserted the gallery; and every one, old

and young, flocked into the Senate. ’Twas then

that our Vice-President began to look alarmed,

and did not attend strictly to the member addressing the chair. The Senators (some of them)

frowned indignantly, and were heard to mutter

audibly, ’Too many women here for business to

be transacted properly!’ Governor Tompkins

found it necessary the next morning to affix a

note to the door, excluding all ladies not introduced by one of the Senators.25

Tompkins left for New York shortly after this

embarrassing incident, turning his attention to

the gubernatorial race while the Missouri debate

dragged on. His abrupt departure angered antislavery senators, who were thus deprived of the

vice president’s tie-breaking vote in the event of

a deadlock between the free states and the slave

states. There is little evidence to suggest that

Tompkins’ absence had any effect on the ultimate outcome of the Missouri debate, since his

vote was never needed to resolve an impasse, but

restrictionists reviled him as a ‘‘miserable Sycophant who betrayed us to the lords of the South

. . . that smallest of small men Daniel D. Tompkins.’’ In one his last official acts as governor,

Tompkins had petitioned the New York legislature to set a date certain for emancipation, and

northern senators apparently expected some

type of support from his quarter during the Missouri debate. They were bitterly disappointed.

Rufus King, for one, lamented that Tompkins

had ‘‘fled the field on the day of battle.’’ 26

The vice president was, admittedly, distracted

by the New York election and obsessed with

clearing his name, but in ‘‘fleeing the field,’’ he

had also avoided taking a public stand that

would certainly have alienated the president, an

important consideration since Tompkins had

every intention of remaining on the ticket as

Monroe’s running mate in 1820. Monroe never

commented publicly on the Missouri controversy, although he privately informed some

advisers that he would veto any statehood bill

incorporating a restrictionist proviso. Because

his overriding concern had been to resolve the

crisis before the 1820 election, he had worked

quietly behind the scenes to help fashion a compromise acceptable to northern and southern Republicans. Monroe’s biographer has suggested

that, given the controversy over his unsettled accounts, Tompkins knew that he had little chance

of winning the New York gubernatorial election

and ‘‘intended to protect his career by remaining

on the national ticket as Vice-President.’’ 27

Whatever his motives, the vice president was

by 1820 a bitter and desperate man, his judgment

and once-considerable abilities severely impaired both by the strain of his ordeal and by

his heavy drinking. Still, even though some Republicans attempted to block his renomination,

most remained faithful to ‘‘the Farmer’s Boy.’’

The 1820 presidential contest generated surprisingly little interest, given the problems then facing the nation. The country was suffering from

a severe depression, and the American occupation of Spanish Florida had unleashed a torrent

of anti-administration criticism from House

Speaker Henry Clay of Kentucky. Although the

Missouri controversy had been resolved for the

moment, the truce between North and South was

still perilously fragile. Historian Lynn W. Turner

has suggested that the reelection of Monroe and

Tompkins in 1820 can perhaps be attributed to
[ 78 ]

DANIEL D. TOMPKINS

‘‘the nineteenth-century time-lapse between the

perception of political pain and the physical reaction to it.’’ Monroe ran virtually unopposed,

winning all but one of the electoral votes cast—

a ‘‘unanimity of indifference, not of approbation,’’ according to John Randolph of Roanoke.28

Some of the electors who were willing to grant

Monroe another term balked at casting their second votes for Tompkins. Among these was Federalist elector Daniel Webster of Massachusetts,

who predicted that ‘‘[t]here will be a number of

us . . . in this state, who will not vote for Mr.

Tompkins, and we must therefore look up somebody to vote for.’’ Federalist elector and former

Senator William Plumer of New Hampshire felt

‘‘compelled to withhold my vote from . . . Tompkins . . . because he grossly neglected his

duty.’’ 29 The vice president’s only official function, Plumer maintained, was to preside over the

Senate, ‘‘for which he receives annually a salary

of five thousand dollars.’’ But ‘‘during the last

three years he was absent from the Senate nearly

three fourths of the time, & thereby occasioned

an extra expense to the nation of nearly twenty

five hundred dollars. He has not that weight of

character which his office requires—the fact is he

is grossly intemperate.’’ 30 But Tompkins, like

Monroe, ran virtually unopposed. He was easily

reelected with 218 electoral votes.

Vindication

Tompkins’ second term was, in his biographer’s words, a time of ‘‘intensifying personal

trial, and even of crushing misfortune.’’ 31 In

1821, he attended the New York constitutional

convention and was deeply honored when his

fellow delegates chose him to chair the proceedings. But his detractors complained that ‘‘Mr.

Tompkins’’—now ‘‘a degraded sot’’—owed his

election only to ‘‘the madness of party.’’ 32

Tompkins missed the opening session of the

Seventeenth Congress on December 3, 1821, but

he was back in the Senate by December 28. He

attended regularly until January 25, 1822, when

the Senate was forced to adjourn until the following day, ‘‘the Vice President being absent, from

indisposition.’’ Less than a week later, Senator

King arrived with a letter from Tompkins informing the Senate that, his health having ‘‘suffered so much on my journey’’ and since his arrival in town, he intended, ‘‘as soon as the

weather and the state of the roads permit, to return to my family.’’ 33

Tompkins was clearly losing control. During

his brief stay in Washington, he had managed to

alienate Monroe, having severely criticized the

president during a meeting with Postmaster

General Return J. Meigs and others.34 Not long

after his departure, one observer ventured that

Tompkins had never been ‘‘perfectly sober during his stay here. He was several times so drunk

in the chair,’’ Dr. James Bronaugh informed Andrew Jackson, ‘‘that he could with difficulty put

the question.’’ 35 Tompkins would spend the next

several months trying to settle his accounts with

the federal treasury. Before leaving Washington,

he assigned what property he still owned, including his Staten Island home, to a group of

trustees, and on his return to New York he

moved into a run-down boardinghouse in

Manhattan.36

Tompkins’ absence spared him the humiliation

of presiding over the Senate as it considered a

provision in the 1822 General Appropriation bill

to withhold the salaries of government officials

who owned money to, or had failed to settle their

accounts with, the Treasury. The provision, part

of a continuing effort to reform the government’s

auditing process and to insure greater accountability in public administration, prompted extensive debate.37 The April 19 session would have

been particularly difficult for Tompkins, with

New York Senator Martin Van Buren asking

whether ‘‘gallant and heroic men, who had sustained the honor of their country in the hour of

danger, should be kept out of their just dues’’—

an oblique reference, perhaps, to the vice president’s plight—and South Carolina Senator William Smith exhibiting ‘‘voluminous lists of those

who had been reported public debtors of more

than three years’ standing,’’ lists that included

the name of Daniel Tompkins.38

The General Appropriation Act became law on

April 30, 1822, depriving Tompkins of his last remaining source of funds.39 In a desperate attempt to settle his accounts, Tompkins petitioned

the United States District Court for the District

of New York to bring suit against him for the
[ 79 ]

DANIEL D. TOMPKINS

‘‘supposed balance for which I have been reported among the defaulters.’’ His trial began on

June 3, 1822, with the U.S. district attorney seeking a judgment of over $11,000 and the defendant coordinating his own defense. For three days,

the jurors heard accounts of Tompkins’ wartime

sacrifices: bankers who had lent him funds to

pay and arm the militia testified in his behalf,

and Senator Rufus King recounted that he had

urged his friend to take out personal loans for

the common defense. Another witness gave a detailed accounting of Tompkins’ transactions. But

the high point of the trial was Tompkins’ highly

emotional summation to the jury, a detailed

chronicle of ‘‘long ten years’ . . . accumulated and

protracted wrongs.’’ After deliberating for several hours, the jury finally decided in favor of

Tompkins. Although the court could by law deliver only a general verdict, the jurors proclaimed that ‘‘there is moreover due from the

United States of America to the Defendant Daniel D. Tompkins the sum of One hundred and

thirty six thousand seven hundred and ninety

nine dollars and ninety seven cents.’’ 40

Tompkins returned to Washington by December 3, 1822, to resume his duties in the Senate.

Finally exonerated after a decade-long struggle,

Tompkins seemed a changed man. ‘‘[T]he verdict . . . had an evident effect on his spirits,’’

Niles’ Weekly Register reported. ‘‘His mind appeared to resume all its former strength, and,

during the last session, in his attention to the duties of his office as president of the senate, it is

the opinion of many of the older members, that

no one ever conducted himself more satisfactorily, or with greater dignity filled the chair.’’

He remained until February 18, 1823; two days

later, the Senate approved a bill to ‘‘adjust and

settle the accounts and claims of Daniel D.

Tompkins’’ and to restore his salary.41

Tompkins received no actual remuneration

until much later, however. Government accountants ultimately recommended a settlement of

just over $35,000, a finding that Monroe, convinced that ‘‘a larger sum ought to be allowed

him,’’ delayed transmitting to Congress. But

Tompkins and his family were in dire straits, although rumors of his confinement to a New York

debtors’ prison ultimately proved false. On December 7, 1823, Monroe asked Congress for a

$35,000 interim appropriation to provide the vice

president with ‘‘an essential accommodation.’’

Congress approved the request in late

December.42

On January 21, 1824, Tompkins returned to the

Senate. He was ‘‘determined to take no part in

the approaching election,’’ he informed John

Quincy Adams, ‘‘and wished for nothing thereafter but quiet and retirement.’’ He still suffered

from bouts of insomnia but was finally ‘‘relieved

of all his embarrassments.’’ He remained in

Washington until the end of the session, taking

his final leave from the Senate on May 20 with

‘‘a few brief remarks’’ expressing ‘‘his sense of

the kind and courteous treatment he had experienced from the members, collectively and individually.’’ On May 26, the Senate approved

Monroe’s request for an additional appropriation

of just over $60,000 ‘‘for the payment of the

claims of Daniel D. Tompkins.’’ 43

The 1823 and 1824 appropriations came too

late to be of much use to the impoverished vice

president. He continued to drink heavily, and

after years of indebtedness his business affairs

were convoluted beyond resolution. Daniel

Tompkins died intestate on June 11, 1825, and

was interred in St. Mark’s Church in New York

City. After his death, his creditors squabbled

over his once-magnificent Staten Island estate,

until it was finally disposed of in a series of sheriff’s sales. In 1847, Congress approved a payment

of close to $50,000 to Tompkins’s heirs.44 But

even this amount, one scholar noted long after

the fact, ‘‘was only part of what was due him as

generally admitted.’’ 45
[ 80 ]

NOTES 1Quoted in Ray W. Irwin, Daniel D. Tompkins: Governor

of New York and Vice President of the United States (New York,

1968), p. 309, n. 55. 2 Irwin, pp. 59, 227.

3Reproduced in ibid., facing p. 66.

4 Philip Hone, quoted in ibid., p. 309.

5 Ibid., pp. 1–36.

6 Ibid., pp. 25–50.

7 Ibid., pp. 51–75.

8 Ibid., pp. 83–84, 145–213; Harry Ammon, James Monroe:

The Quest for National Identity (Charlottesville, Va., 1990; reprint of 1971 edition), pp. 314–37. 9Washington Irving to William Irving, October 14, 1814,

quoted in Pierre M. Irving, ed., The Life and Letters of Washington Irving, vol. 1 (Detroit, 1967; reprint of 1863 edition),

pp. 320–21. 10Quoted in Irwin, pp. 197–98.

11 Ibid., pp. 197–205.

12Donald B. Cole, Martin Van Buren and the American Political System (Princeton, NJ, 1984), pp. 46–47; Irwin, pp. 206–

11; Lynn W. Turner, ‘‘Elections of 1816 and 1820,’’ in History

of American Presidential Elections, 1789–1968, ed., Arthur M.

Schlesinger, Jr., and Fred L. Israel, vol. 1 (New York, 1985),

pp. 299–321. 13 Irwin, pp. 221–23; Ammon, pp. 371–79.

14 Irwin, pp. 185, 223.

15Based on 1860 Composite Consumer Price Index, in

John J. McCusker, How Much Is That in Real Money? A Historical Price Index for Use as a Deflator of Money Values in the

Economy of the United States (Worcester, MA, 1992; reprint

of 1991 edition), pp. 326–32. 16 Irwin, pp. 231–32, and passim. 17 Ibid., pp. 279–305, and passim. 18 Jabez Hammond, quoted in ibid., p. 234.

19 Ibid., pp. 220–63.

20 Ibid., pp. 243–63; Cole, Martin Van Buren and the American Political System, pp. 61–62.

21Glover Moore, The Missouri Controversy, 1819–1821

(Gloucester, MA, 1967; reprint of 1953 edition), p. 126. 22Moore, passim; Robert Ernst, Rufus King: American Federalist (Chapel Hill, NC, 1968), pp. 369–74; Ammon, pp. 449–

57.23Maryland Senator William Pinkney.

24Louisiana Senator James Brown.

25 Josephine Seaton, William Winston Seaton of The ‘‘National Intelligencer’’ (New York, 1970; reprint of 1871 edition), pp. 146–47. 26 Irwin, pp. 211–12, 249–50; Moore, p. 182 and passim. 27Ammon, pp. 450–58.

28Turner, pp. 312–21.

29 Ibid., pp. 312–18.

30 Irwin, p. 262.

31 Ibid., p. 279.

32 Ibid., pp. 264–80.

33U.S., Congress, Senate, Annals of Congress, 17th Cong.,

1st sess., pp. 9–43, 157, 174. 34 Irwin, p. 282.

35Dr. James Bronaugh to Andrew Jackson, February 8,

1822, quoted in Irwin, p. 283, n. 9. 36 Irwin, pp. 280–84.

37Leonard D. White, The Jeffersonians: A Study in Administrative History, 1801–1829 (New York, 1961), pp. 162–79. 38 Annals of Congress, 17th Cong., 1st sess., pp. 391–408. 39 Irwin, p. 284; White, p. 179.

40 Irwin, pp. 286–94.

41Niles’ Weekly Register, quoted in Irwin, p. 295; Annals

of Congress, 17th Cong., 2d sess., pp. 10–260. 42 Annals of Congress, 18th Cong., 1st sess., p. 26; Irwin,

pp. 297–99. 43 Annals of Congress, 18th Cong., 1st sess., pp. 127, 766,

788; Irwin, pp. 273, 300. 44 Irwin, pp. 300–311.

45 Henry A. Holmes, quoted in ibid., p. 301, n.43.
[ 81 ]

Chapter 7

JOHN C. CALHOUN

1825–1832
JOHN C. CALHOUN
[ 83 ]

Chapter 7

JOHN C. CALHOUN

7th Vice President: 1825–1832

. . . There are no two events in my life, in which I take greater pride, than those to which you

have so kindly alluded. My first public act was to contribute . . . to the maintenance of our national

rights against foreign aggressions, and my last had been to preserve in their integrity, as far as it depended on men, those principles of presiding in the Senate, which are essentially the most vital of political

rights, the freedom of debate . . . it will ever to me be a proud reflection, that I have been thought worthy

of suffering in a great cause, . . . the freedom of debate, a cause more sacred than even the liberty of

the press.

—JOHN C. CALHOUN, SEPTEMBER 7, 1826 1

John C. Calhoun assumed office as the nation’s

seventh vice president on March 4, 1825, during

a period of extraordinary political ferment. The

demise of the Federalist party after the War of

1812 had not, as former President James Monroe

had hoped, ushered in an ‘‘Era of Good Feelings,’’ free from party divisions. Contrary to

Monroe’s expectations, the partisan strife of earlier years had not abated during his two terms

as president but had, instead, infected the Republican party, which had declined into a broadbased but rapidly disintegrating coalition of disparate elements. Five individuals, all of them Republicans, had entered the 1824 presidential contest, one of the most controversial and bitterly

contested races in the nation’s history. The ‘‘National Republicans,’’ a group that included Calhoun, House Speaker Henry Clay, and Secretary

of State John Quincy Adams, supported an expansive, nationalist agenda; the ‘‘Radicals,’’ allies of Treasury Secretary William Crawford,

were strict constructionists and advocates of limited government. Other Republicans had rallied

to the standard of Andrew Jackson, a former

Tennessee senator and the military hero whose

stunning victory at the Battle of New Orleans

had salvaged the nation’s pride during the War

of 1812.

In this momentous contest, John Quincy

Adams had emerged the winner, but his victory

came at great cost to his administration and to

the nation. The election was decided in the

House of Representatives, where Clay had used

his influence as leader of the western bloc and

as Speaker to secure Adams’ election. Adams, in

turn, had appointed Clay secretary of state, a

nomination that stunned Jackson supporters,

strict constructionists, and particularly Vice

President Calhoun. The ‘‘corrupt bargain’’ deeply offended Calhoun’s strict sense of honor and

propriety, pushing him toward the opposition

camp, a fragmented assortment of Radicals,

southern agriculturalists, and men of conscience

who shared the vice president’s conviction that

Adams and Clay had subverted the popular will.

These diverse elements, which were frequently

at odds with one another, would eventually coalesce to form the Democratic party. But the nation would first pass through a chaotic and turbulent period of political realignment, which

Calhoun described for his friend and mentor,

Monroe, in the summer of 1826:

. . . Never in any country . . . was there in so

short a period, so complete an anarchy of political relations. Every prominent publick man feels,
[ 84 ]

JOHN C. CALHOUN

that he has been thrown into a new attitude, and

has to reexamine his position, and reapply principles to the situation, into which he was so unexpectedly and suddenly thrown, as if by some

might[y] political revolution . . . Was he of the

old Republican party? He finds his prominent

political companions, who claim and take the

lead, to be the very men, against who, he had

been violently arrayed till the close of the late

war; and sees in the opposite rank, as enemies,

those with whom he was proud to rank . . .

Taking it altogether, a new and dangerous

state of things has suddenly occurred, of which

no one can see the result. It is, in my opinion,

more critical and perilous, than any I have ever

seen.2

Congress was changing, as well. The Senate,

as Senator Robert C. Byrd has noted in his authoritative history, was ‘‘beginning to challenge

the House as the principal legislative forum of

the nation.’’ Before the 1820s, the press and public had paid relatively little attention to the Senate’s deliberations, being drawn instead to the

livelier and more entertaining theater in the

House of Representatives. By 1825, the House

had become too large to permit the lengthy

speeches and extended debates that had drawn

observers to its galleries, while in the Senate,

growth had brought increased influence. ‘‘At the

formation of the Government,’’ Calhoun observed in his inaugural remarks, ‘‘the members

of the Senate were, probably, too small to attract

the full confidence of the people, and thereby

give to it that weight in the system which the

Constitution intended. This defect has, however,

been happily removed by an extraordinary

growth’’—eleven new states, and twenty-two

senators, in a thirty-six-year period. The 1819–

1820 debate over the extension of slavery into the

Missouri territory signalled that an era of increasingly virulent sectional discord had arrived.

The Senate, with its equality of representation

among states and rules permitting extended debate, would become the forum where sectional

concerns were aired, debated, and reconciled

during the next quarter century, a momentous

era known to scholars as ‘‘The Golden Age of the

Senate.’’ 3

Calhoun, who presided over the Senate at the

dawning of its Golden Age, had reached the

height of his career. Given his meteoritic rise to

national prominence as a talented young congressman during the War of 1812 and his solid

record of accomplishment as secretary of war

during Monroe’s administration, he had every

reason to assume that he would one day become

president.

Calhoun’s Early Life and Career

John Caldwell Calhoun was born on March 18,

1782, near Long Canes Creek, an area later

known as the Abbeville District, located in

present-day McCormick County, South Carolina.

His parents, Patrick and Martha Caldwell Calhoun, were of Scotch-Irish ancestry. The Calhouns had immigrated to Pennsylvania during

the 1730s and moved steadily southward until

1756, when Patrick reached the South Carolina

backcountry.4 One of the most prosperous planters (and one of the largest slaveowners) in his

district, Patrick Calhoun was a leader in local

politics; he served in the South Carolina legislature from 1768 to 1774. During the late 1760s, he

was a Regulator, one of the self-appointed vigilantes whose well-intentioned but rough efforts

to impose justice on a crime-racked frontier

wholly lacking in judicial institutions finally

prompted the South Carolina legislature to establish circuit courts in the backcountry. During

the Revolution, he sided with the patriot cause.5

Young John received only a sporadic education

during his early years, attending a ‘‘field school’’

for a few months each year. In 1795, he entered

a private academy in Appling, Georgia, but the

school closed after a few months. The boy

plunged into an exhausting course of self-study,

but his father’s death soon forced him to return

to Abbeville to manage the family farm. The disappointed young scholar remained at home until

1800, when his mother and brothers, having recognized his formidable intellectual abilities, returned him to the academy, which had since reopened. He was a diligent student, qualifying for

admission to Yale College in 1802.

Calhoun completed his studies at Yale in 1804.

After graduation, he spent a month at the Newport, Rhode Island, summer retreat of Floride
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JOHN C. CALHOUN

Bonneau Colhoun.6 Mrs. Colhoun was the

widow of the future vice president’s cousin, Senator John Ewing Colhoun; her daughter, also

named Floride, was attractive, well-connected in

South Carolina lowcountry circles, and socially

accomplished. John C. Calhoun married his

young cousin in 1811. The union conferred

wealth and social prestige on the earnest young

upcountry lawyer, but Calhoun was also attracted to Floride’s ‘‘beauty of mind . . . soft and

sweet disposition,’’ and ‘‘amiable and lovable

character.’’ 7 Not until later would he experience

her stubborn will and unwavering sense of

moral rectitude, so like his own.

Calhoun began his legal education in 1804

soon after leaving Newport, studying first in

Charleston and later at the Litchfield, Connecticut, school of Tapping Reeve, a distinguished

scholar who counted among his former students

such notables as James Madison and Aaron Burr.

He returned to South Carolina in 1806 and

served brief apprenticeships at Charleston and

Abbeville. Admitted to the bar in Abbeville in

1807, Calhoun soon found another calling. In the

summer of 1807, he helped organize a town

meeting to protest the British attack on the

American vessel Chesapeake off the Virginia coast.

His speech recommending an embargo and an

enhanced defense posture electrified the militantly nationalistic crowd assembled at the

Abbeville courthouse, winning him immediate

acclaim. He was elected to the South Carolina

legislature, where he served two terms, and in

1810 he won a seat in the United States House

of Representatives.8

Congressman Calhoun

Calhoun arrived in Washington shortly after

the Twelfth Congress convened on November 4,

1811, taking quarters in a boardinghouse soon to

be known as the ‘‘War Mess.’’ The nation’s capital boasted few amenities during the early nineteenth century, and members of Congress rarely

brought their families to town. They lodged instead with colleagues from their own states or

regions and, as one student of early Washington

discovered, ‘‘the members who lived together,

took their meals together, and spent most of their

leisure hours together also voted together with

a very high degree of regularity.’’ 9 Calhoun’s

mess mates included two members of the South

Carolina delegation, Langdon Cheves and William Lowndes; Felix Grundy of Tennessee; and

the newly elected Speaker of the House of Representatives, Henry Clay of Kentucky.10 They,

and other like-minded young congressmen

known as the ‘‘warhawks,’’ believed that nothing short of war would stop British raids on

American shipping and restore the young nation’s honor.

Calhoun, who had been appointed to the Foreign Affairs Committee 11 at the beginning of his

first term and became its chairman in the spring

of 1812, played a leading role in the effort, supporting legislation to strengthen the nation’s defenses. Working in concert with Secretary of

State James Monroe, he introduced the war bill

that Congress approved in June 1812.12 Although

Calhoun soon realized that Madison was ‘‘wholly unfit for the storms of war,’’ he labored so diligently to defend the administration and to assist

in the war effort that he became known as ‘‘the

young Hercules who carried the war on his

shoulders.’’ He was, as a historian of the period

has noted, ‘‘an administration leader second only

to Clay.’’ 13

Calhoun served in the House until 1817. Sobered by the nation’s near-defeat during the War

of 1812, he continued his interest in military affairs, opposing troop reductions and advocating

the establishment of two additional service academies. As his modern biographer has observed,

Calhoun ‘‘equated defense with national self-sufficiency.’’ Toward that end, he accepted protective tariffs and helped draft legislation to establish the Second Bank of the United States in 1816.

Concerned that the nation’s interior settlements

lacked the roads and other improvements that he

believed essential to economic development and

national security, he proposed legislation to earmark for internal improvements the $1.5 million

charter fee the bank paid to the federal government, as well as the yields of government-owned

bank stocks.14

Secretary of War

Calhoun resigned from the House in November 1817 to accept an appointment as secretary
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JOHN C. CALHOUN

of war in President James Monroe’s cabinet, a

post he would hold for more than seven years.

Calhoun was not the president’s first choice;

Monroe had approached several others, but all

had declined. With the nation’s military establishment in complete disarray after the war, reforming a badly managed department with over

$45 million in outstanding accounts (at a time

when the government’s annual budget amounted to less than $26 million) seemed to most a

near-impossible task. But Calhoun believed that

a strong defense establishment was essential to

maintaining the nation’s honor and security, and

he welcomed the chance to reform the troubled

department. The thirty-two-year-old cabinet officer was also ambitious and well aware that, as

another biographer has noted, ‘‘no man had yet

held the presidency . . . who had not proved his

worth in some executive capacity.’’ 15

President Monroe relied heavily on his cabinet

and submitted all matters of consequence to his

department heads before deciding upon a course

of action, a practice that assured the gifted young

war secretary a prominent role in the new administration.16 Monroe seems to have felt a special fondness for Calhoun—and for Floride, who

moved to Washington and soon became one of

the capital’s most popular hostesses. Official protocol during the early nineteenth century dictated that the president refrain from ‘‘going

abroad into any private companies,’’ but when

the Calhouns’ infant daughter contracted a fatal

illness in the spring of 1820, Monroe visited their

residence every day to check on her condition.17

Calhoun began his first term as secretary of

war with an exhaustive review and audit of the

department’s operations and accounts.18 Acting

on his recommendations, Congress reorganized

the army’s command and general staff structure,

revamped the accounting and procurement systems, and voted annual appropriations to construct fortifications and pay down the war debt.

By the end of Calhoun’s second term as secretary, outstanding accounts had been reduced

from $45 to $3 million.19 Congress, however, refused to approve Calhoun’s proposals for a network of coastal and frontier fortifications and

military roads, imposing steep cuts in the defense budget after Treasury Secretary William

Crawford’s 1819 annual report projected a budget deficit for 1820 of $7 million (later adjusted to

$5 million). Postwar economic expansion had

given way to a depression of unprecedented severity, and the panic of 1819 had left hundreds

of speculators impoverished and in debt. These

conditions, and Crawford’s dire forecast,

prompted calls for sharp reductions in government expenditures. The war department came

under immediate attack, which intensified when

the press reported that one of Calhoun’s pet

projects, an expedition to plant a military outpost

on the Yellowstone River, had run significantly

over budget.20

Some scholars have suggested that Crawford

timed the release of his report both to embarrass

Monroe and Calhoun and to enhance his own

presidential prospects. Shortly afterwards, the

president received an anonymous letter alleging

that Calhoun’s chief secretary had realized substantial profits from an interest in a materials

contract. The transaction was not illegal, for war

department officials enjoyed considerable latitude in awarding government contracts, and the

primary contractor had submitted the lowest bid,

but the appearance of impropriety gave

Crawford additional ammunition. Congress

began an exhaustive review of the war department, with the ‘‘Radicals’’ taking the lead. Although the investigation found no evidence of

malfeasance on Calhoun’s part, Republicans

were inherently suspicious of standing armies,

and even the National Republicans were reluctant to fund a peacetime army on the scale envisioned by Calhoun. Congress ultimately reduced

the war department budget by close to 50

percent.21

The 1824 Presidential Election

Calhoun declared himself a candidate for the

presidency in December 1821, much to the surprise of Secretary of State John Quincy Adams,

widely considered to be Monroe’s heir apparent

by virtue of his office. Calhoun and Adams were

friends; both avid nationalists, they had also

been political allies until the Missouri crisis in

1820 exposed their profound disagreement over

slavery. Calhoun, however, became convinced

that Adams was too weak a candidate to defeat
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JOHN C. CALHOUN

Crawford, who enjoyed a significant following

within the congressional nominating caucus. The

South Carolinian, determined to prevent

Crawford’s election at any cost, therefore decided to become a candidate himself.

In addition to Calhoun, Adams, and Crawford,

the crowded field of prospective candidates for

1824 soon included House Speaker Henry Clay

and the revered hero of New Orleans, Andrew

Jackson—all Republicans. Calhoun believed that

he was the only candidate who could command

a national following; he had been warmly received during a visit to the northern and middle

states in 1820, and his efforts to strengthen the

nation’s defenses had won him a following in the

West, as well. His quest, however, lost momentum after the South Carolina legislature voted to

endorse another favorite son, William Lowndes.

Not only did Calhoun face formidable opposition from Crawford’s supporters, now ably led

by New York Senator Martin Van Buren, but, to

the amazement of many, Jackson soon emerged

as a leading contender. Calhoun’s Pennsylvania

supporters eventually declared for Jackson, endorsing Calhoun as their vice-presidential candidate. As other states followed suit, the ambitious young secretary of war was, in one scholar’s words, ‘‘everybody’s ’second choice.’’’ Thus,

in the general election, Calhoun was overwhelmingly elected vice president, with support from

both the Jackson and Adams camps.

None of the presidential candidates, however,

achieved an electoral majority—although Jackson received a plurality. The election was therefore thrown into the House of Representatives,

where each state delegation had a single vote.

Having come in fourth in the general election,

Clay was not a contender in the House balloting,

but he played a pivotal part in determining the

outcome by persuading the delegations of the

three states he had carried (Ohio, Kentucky and

Missouri) to vote for Adams. These three western states, as well as New York, after heavy lobbying by Clay and Massachusetts Representative

Daniel Webster, gave Adams the margin he

needed to defeat Jackson.

Clay’s maneuvering and his subsequent appointment as Adams’ secretary of state deeply

offended Calhoun, nudging him toward the

Jackson camp.22 He ‘‘would probably have coalesced with the Jacksonians in any event,’’ one

scholar of the period has surmised, since South

Carolina and Pennsylvania, the two states crucial

to Calhoun’s abortive presidential strategy, had

gone for Jackson.23 But politics alone could not

fully account for Calhoun’s shift. He knew that

the Kentucky legislature had expressly instructed its delegation to vote for Jackson, who

had run second to Clay in the general election.

Yet, at Clay’s urging, the Kentuckians had cast

their state’s vote for Adams, who had received

few, if any, popular votes in the state. ‘‘Mr. Clay

has made the Prest [President] against the voice

of his constituents,’’ Calhoun confided to a

friend, ‘‘and has been rewarded by the man elevated by him by the first office in his gift, the

most dangerous stab, which the liberty of this

country has ever received.’’ 24

The Senate Examines the Role of the Presiding

Officer

Wholly lacking in experience as a presiding officer, Calhoun prepared himself for his new responsibilities by studying Jefferson’s Manual of

Parliamentary Practice and other parliamentary

authorities.25 But even this rigorous course of

study could not adequately prepare him for the

challenges he would face. The Senate, experiencing ‘‘growing pains’’ as it completed its transformation from the ‘‘chamber of revision’’ envisioned by the Constitution’s framers to a fullfledged legislative body in its own right, was beginning to reconsider rules and procedures that

seemed outdated or impractical. As the Senate’s

debates became increasingly contentious, the

body began rethinking the role of its presiding

officer, as well.

Calhoun’s difficulties began shortly after the

Nineteenth Congress convened in December

1825, when he announced appointments to the

Senate’s standing committees. Prior to 1823, the

Senate had elected committee members by ballot,

an awkward and time-consuming process. The

rule was revised during the Eighteenth Congress

to provide that ‘‘all committees shall be appointed by the presiding officer of this House,

unless specially ordered otherwise by the Senate.’’ Before Calhoun became vice president, the
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JOHN C. CALHOUN

new procedure had been used only once, on December 9, 1823, the day the Senate adopted the

revised rule. On that occasion, Vice President

Daniel Tompkins was absent, a frequent occurrence during his troubled tenure, and President

pro tempore John Gaillard of South Carolina had

appointed the chairmen and members of the Senate’s standing committees.

As one scholar of the period has noted, Calhoun made ‘‘an honest effort to divide control

of the committees between friends and enemies

of the administration.’’ 26 An analysis of his appointments suggests that he took into account a

senator’s experience. He reappointed nine of the

fifteen standing committee chairmen whom

Gaillard had chosen two years earlier. The two

chairmen who had left the Senate he replaced

with individuals who had previously served on

their respective committees. Of the four remaining committees, three were chaired by senators

friendly to the administration. After Military Affairs Committee Chairman Andrew Jackson resigned his seat in October 1825, Calhoun chose

as his replacement the only member of the Senate

whose military record could match Jackson’s—

Senator William Henry Harrison, the hero of the

Battle of Tippecanoe.27

As a result of Calhoun’s appointments, senators hostile to the administration retained or

gained control of several important committees:

Maryland Senator Samuel Smith, a Crawford Republican who would eventually join the Jackson

camp, remained in charge of the influential Finance Committee, while New York Senator Martin Van Buren, who would soon unite the opposition forces behind Andrew Jackson, continued to

chair the Judiciary Committee. Administration

supporters were outraged to learn that the Foreign Relations Committee included only one

Adams-Clay man and that its new chairman was

Nathaniel Macon of North Carolina, who had

voted against confirming Clay as secretary of

state.28 Bitter divisions between administration

supporters and the opposition forces were beginning to infect the Senate, and Calhoun, in his attempt to please everyone, had satisfied no one.

The pro-administration Philadelphia Democratic

Press and several other papers vehemently criticized Calhoun, publishing unfounded allegations that he had made the offending appointments after Adams ignored Calhoun’s demand

to dissociate himself from Henry Clay.29

In the meantime, Senator Van Buren had enlisted Calhoun’s support for a concerted challenge to the expansive agenda that President

Adams outlined in his December 6, 1825, annual

message to Congress. Adams had proposed a national university, a national observatory, and a

network of internal improvements unprecedented in the nation’s history, as well as foreign

policy initiatives. In particular, Calhoun, not yet

the strict constructionist he would later become,

was concerned that Adams’ plan to send observers to a conference of South and Central American ministers scheduled to meet in Panama the

following year would reinvigorate the sectional

tensions that had emerged during the Missouri

crisis. Calhoun saw United States participation in

the Panama Congress as a perilous first step toward extending diplomatic recognition to Haiti,

a nation of former slaves. He had cautioned

Adams, through an intermediary, that the initiative would ‘‘in the present tone of feelings in the

south lead to great mischief.’’ But Clay, an early

and enthusiastic supporter of the Latin American

independence movements, had prevailed.30

The president sent the names of prospective

delegates to Panama to the Senate for approval

in late December 1825, touching off a protracted

and contentious debate that continued through

March 14, 1826, when the Senate approved the

mission by a narrow margin. Missouri Senator

Thomas Hart Benton later reflected that ‘‘no

question, in its day, excited more heat and intemperate discussion, or more feeling between a

President and Senate, than this proposed mission.’’ Although the vice president had ‘‘no vote,

the constitutional contingency to authorize it not

having occurred,’’ Benton recalled, Calhoun had

been ‘‘full and free in the expression of his opinion against the mission.’’ 31 It was a costly victory

for the administration. The United States delegation arrived too late to have any impact on the

deliberations, and all but one of the Latin American republics failed to ratify the accords approved at the convention. The president had

wasted a great deal of political capital in a confrontation that hardened the party divisions in
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JOHN C. CALHOUN

the Senate, and Calhoun and Van Buren had

taken the first tentative steps toward an alliance

that would drive Adams from office in the next

election.

Calhoun also endorsed the opposition’s efforts

to curtail the powers of the executive, through

constitutional amendments to abolish the electoral college and to limit the president to two

terms. Although the Senate had considered similar amendments in previous sessions, the move

acquired a new urgency after the 1824 election.

Thomas Hart Benton renewed the initiative on

December 15, 1825, with a resolution to appoint

a select committee ‘‘to inquire into the expediency’’ of choosing the president and vice president ‘‘by a direct vote of the People, in districts.’’

Other senators suggested amendments to provide for the election of the president and vice

president ‘‘without the intervention of the Senate

or House of Representatives’’ and to ‘‘prohibit

the appointment of any Member of Congress to

any office of honor or trust under the United

States during the term for which such Senator or

Representative should have been elected.’’ The

latter proposal represented an obvious slap at

Secretary of State Henry Clay, who had resigned

from the House to take the executive post.

Calhoun appointed Benton chairman of the select committee, which the Senate directed to determine ‘‘the best, most preferable, and safest

mode in regard to such elections.’’ Benton was

pleased that the other members of the nine-man

select committee ‘‘were . . . carefully selected,

both geographically as coming from different

sections of the Union, and personally and politically as being friendly to the object.’’ Only one,

Senator John Holmes of Maine, was an Adams

man. Calhoun had appointed the administration’s most vocal critics to the committee, which

reported to the Senate on January 19, 1826, a constitutional amendment calling for the direct election of the president and vice president. Calhoun

confided to a correspondent that he expected the

administration to resist ‘‘all attempts that can

limit or counteract the effects of patronage. They

will in particular resist any amendment of the

Constitution,’’ he predicted, ‘‘which will place

the Presl [Presidential] election in the hands of

the voters, where patronage can have little, or no

effect.’’ As for Calhoun, he promised that ‘‘no

one who knows me, can doubt where I will be

found.’’ 32

The constitutional debate over the select committee’s report took an unexpected turn on

March 30, 1826, when Virginia Senator John Randolph rose to address the Senate after North

Carolina Senator John Branch offered a resolution protesting the president’s appointment of

ministers to the Panama Congress ‘‘without the

advice and consent of the Senate.’’ Randolph was

a diehard ‘‘Old Republican,’’ a strict constructionist and a resolute opponent of change in any

form. Stubbornly clinging to the customs, attire,

and rhetoric of a bygone era, he regarded any

departure from the dicta of the Founding Fathers

as tantamount to heresy. Calhoun thought him

‘‘highly talented, eloquent, severe and eccentric,’’ while others, alternately amused and offended by his rambling and caustic speeches, his

eighteenth-century dress and manners, and his

bizarre behavior, dismissed him as thoroughly

insane. His March 30 address was vintage Randolph: a disjointed litany of personal grievances

interspersed with his objections to the administration, the Panama Congress, and the ‘‘practice

. . . that the Secretary of State shall succeed the

President.’’ Calhoun remained silent as the agitated Virginian took Adams to task for elevating

patronage above patriotism—‘‘buying us up

with our own money’’—and suggested that Clay

had ‘‘manufactured’’ the invitation to the Panama Congress. Even Randolph’s likening of

Adams and Clay to ‘‘Bliful and Black George,’’

two unsavory characters from the popular novel,

Tom Jones, brought no rebuke from the chair.33

After Randolph ended his harangue, the Senate turned to the select committee report. Randolph, trumpeting his opposition ‘‘to all amendments to the Constitution,’’ moved to table the

report. New Jersey Senator Mahlon Dickerson,

who had spoken at great length the previous day

in support of his own proposal to limit the president to two terms in office, prepared to speak

in opposition to Randolph’s motion. He had just

started to explain his position when Calhoun cut

him short, ruling him out of order on the

grounds that ‘‘the motion now pending . . . did

not admit of debate.’’ Randolph added that ‘‘it
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JOHN C. CALHOUN

is unreasonable, after having spoken an hour and

thirty-five minutes [the previous day], to speak

again to-day’’ and explained that he would oppose any effort to amend the Constitution. When

Dickerson attempted to respond to Randolph’s

remarks, Calhoun ruled him out of order a second time. Randolph finally agreed to Dickerson’s

request to postpone the discussion until the next

day, bringing the awkward exchange to an end.

On April 3, 1826, the Senate approved the select

committee’s amendment providing for the direct

election of the president and vice president.34

Fallout from the explosive session of March 30,

1826, would haunt Calhoun for the remainder of

his term. Deeply offended at Randolph’s

charges, Clay demanded a duel with the Virginian. The resulting nerve-wracking but bloodless encounter ended with a handshake after two

exchanges of fire. Those who had expressed

amusement at Randolph’s March 30 performance, or agreed with him in principle, were suddenly sobered at the thought that the vice president’s failure to restrain an intemperate senator

had resulted in a near-tragedy.35 Calhoun’s enemies criticized him for twice calling the sedate

and congenial Dickerson to order while permitting Randolph to vent his spleen at will. In the

following weeks the Senate, for the first time in

its history, attempted to define the vice president’s legislative duties and responsibilities.

In the decade prior to 1826, the Senate had paid

increasing attention to organizational matters, a

clear indication of its increased workload, enlarged membership, and heightened importance

as a national forum. It had established standing

committees in 1816, revised its rules in 1820, and

required the publication of regular financial reports by the secretary of the Senate after 1823.

The body also enhanced the powers of the chair.

Not only had it authorized the presiding officer

in 1823 to appoint members of standing and select committees, but in 1824 it also directed the

presiding officer to ‘‘examine and correct the

Journals, before they are read,’’ and to ‘‘have the

regulation of such parts of the Capitol . . . as are

. . . set apart for the use of the Senate and its officers.’’ 36 These changes reflect an institution in

transition, conscious of its changing role in a rapidly altering political environment. After the

March 30, 1826, spectacle, however, any discussion of Senate rules inevitably invited comment

on the vice president’s legislative duties and on

Calhoun’s conduct as president of the Senate.

On April 13, 1826, John Randolph offered a

motion to rescind ‘‘so much of the new rules of

this House, which give to the presiding officer

of this body the appointment of its committees,

and the control over the Journal of its proceedings.’’ The debate continued on April 15, as several Calhoun supporters, including Van Buren,

reviewed ‘‘the considerations that had led the

Senate’’ to change its rules in 1823 and 1824. The

fragmentary published accounts in the Register of

Debates suggest that, when the Senate vested in

the presiding officer the power to appoint committees, it had done so assuming that the president pro tempore would actually make the selections—a reasonable assumption when the debilitated Daniel D. Tompkins served as vice president. Randolph’s cryptic remarks on April 12,

when he notified the Senate that he would propose the rules changes on the following day, also

hint that the Senate had given the presiding officer the responsibility of supervising the Journal

because the secretary of the Senate had been negligent in performing this important task.

The reporter who followed the April 15 debate

was careful to note that ‘‘the gentlemen who favored the present motion, as well as the one who

offered it, disclaimed the remotest intention to

impute to the Vice President an improper exercise of the duties devolved on him by the rules.’’

But the debate took a personal turn after Randolph, sensitive to mounting and widespread

criticism of Calhoun for failing to stifle his recent

outburst, asserted that ‘‘it is not the duty, nor the

right, of the President of the Senate to call a

member to order.’’ That right, Randolph argued,

was reserved to members of the Senate. At the

conclusion of the debate, the Senate voted, by

overwhelming margins, to resume its former

practice of selecting committee members by ballot, and ‘‘to take from the President of the Senate,

the control over the Journal of the

Proceedings.’’ 37

Some contemporary observers, as well as modern day scholars, have interpreted the April 15

vote as a pointed rebuke of a vice president who
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JOHN C. CALHOUN

had exceeded his authority and offended the

Senate. On the other hand, the caveats of Van

Buren and opposition senators suggest that, although some senators may well have intended

to curtail Calhoun’s authority, others were animated by concern for maintaining the Senate’s

institutional prerogatives. Calhoun, edging toward the strict constructionist stance he would

champion in later years, seems to have approved

of the changes, or at least to have accepted them

with his customary grace. ‘‘[N]o power ought to

be delegated which can be fairly exercised by the

constituent body,’’ he agreed shortly after the

vote, ‘‘and . . . none ought ever to be delegated,

but to responsible agents . . . and I should be inconsistent with myself, if I did not give my entire

assent to the principles on which the rules in

question have been rescinded.’’ Calhoun did

bristle, however, at the suggestion that he had

been negligent in not calling Randolph to order.

He had diligently studied the Senate’s rules, he

informed the senators, and had concluded that,

although the chair could issue rulings on procedural matters, ‘‘the right to call to order, on questions touching the latitude or freedom of debate,

belongs exclusively to the members of this body,

and not to the Chair. The power of the presiding

officer . . . is an appellate power only; and . . .

the duties of the Chair commence when a Senator is called to order by a Senator.’’ He had been

elected vice president by ‘‘the People,’’ he reminded the Senate, and ‘‘he had laid it down as

an invariable rule, to assume no power in the

least degree doubtful.’’ 38

The debate over the vice president’s role in the

Senate continued a month later on May 18. A select committee chaired by Randolph that had

been appointed ‘‘to take into consideration the

present arrangement of the Senate chamber,’’ reported a resolution that would make access to

the Senate floor by anyone other than past and

current members of Congress and certain members of the executive and judicial branches contingent upon written authorization by the vice

president. The resolution also specified that the

officers of the Senate would be responsible to the

vice president and that all, except for the secretary of the Senate, would be subject to immediate removal ‘‘for any neglect of duty.’’ The Senate chamber would ‘‘be arranged under the direction of the Vice President, . . . so as to keep

order more effectually in the lobby and the gallery,’’ a change intended to regulate the crowds

who were flocking to the Senate galleries in increasing numbers.

As this first session of the Nineteenth Congress

neared its end, Senator John Holmes submitted

a resolution, for consideration in the next session, to appoint a committee that would consider

rules to clarify and enhance the powers of the

chair. Randolph moved to take up the Holmes

resolution immediately, but Calhoun ruled him

out of order on the grounds that ‘‘when a member offered a resolution, if he did not desire its

consideration, it would lie one day on the table.’’

Undaunted, Randolph moved to instruct the

committee that it would be ‘‘inconsistent with

the rights and privileges of the States’’ to authorize the chair to call a member. He then proceeded

to castigate a Massachusetts editor for his alleged

misconduct in the chamber. The debate degenerated into a shouting match after Massachusetts

Senator James Lloyd rose to defend his constituent, but Calhoun remained impassive until Alabama Senator William R. King intervened with

a call to order. Rigidly adhering to the Senate’s

rule governing the conduct of debate, Calhoun

instructed King ‘‘to reduce the exceptionable

words to writing.’’ King responded that ‘‘it was

not necessary to reduce the words to writing,’’

since he had merely intended to ‘‘check the gentlemen when they were giving way to effervescence of feeling.’’ Calhoun explained that he

had ‘‘no power beyond the rules of the Senate;’’

if King would not comply, Randolph was free to

continue. After Randolph finished his diatribe,

Calhoun again reminded the Senate that ‘‘The

Chair . . . would never assume any power not

vested in it.’’ 39

A weary Calhoun left the chair on May 20,

1826, two days before the Nineteenth Congress

adjourned, in order to allow for the election of

a president pro tempore, but the controversy

over his conduct in the Senate continued

throughout the spring and summer and into fall.

On April 24, the National Intelligencer had published a letter from Senator Dickerson, who
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JOHN C. CALHOUN

maintained that Calhoun had treated him with

appropriate courtesy and respect during the

March 30 debate, 40 as well as a submission from

an anonymous ‘‘Western Senator’’ defending the

vice president. On May 1, the pro-administration

National Journal published the first in a series of

five articles by ‘‘Patrick Henry,’’ an anonymous

writer friendly to the administration, charging

that Calhoun had abused his office. These essays,

which continued through August 8, cited an impressive array of parliamentary scholarship to

support the author’s contention that Calhoun

had been negligent in permitting the ‘‘irrelative

rhapsodies of a once powerful mind’’ to disturb

the Senate ‘‘without one effort of authority, or

one hint of disapprobation from its president.’’

The vice president had also allowed ‘‘selfish considerations’’ to influence his committee appointments, ‘‘Henry’’ charged. ‘‘From the commencement of the Government until the last session of

Congress,’’ the essayist scolded Calhoun in his

August 4 installment:

order had been preserved in the Senate under

every Vice-President, and decorum, almost rising

to solemnity, had been a distinctive feature of its

proceedings. But no sooner were you sent to preside over it, than its hall became, as if by some

magic agency, transformed into an arena where

political disappointment rioted in its madness.

Modern scholars have never conclusively established the identity of ‘‘Patrick Henry,’’ although Calhoun and many others believed him

to be President Adams. The vice president responded in his own series of essays, published

in the National Intelligencer between May 20 and

October 12, 1826, under the pseudonym

‘‘Onslow,’’ in honor of a distinguished eighteenth-century Speaker of the British House of

Commons. Echoing Calhoun’s pronouncements

in the Senate, the writer’s opening salvo offered

a forceful defense of the vice president’s refusal

to restrain ‘‘the latitude or freedom of debate.’’

The decision to rule Dickerson out of order had

involved a procedural matter, well within the

scope of the vice president’s authority; silencing

Randolph’s outburst would have required ‘‘a

despotic Power, worse than the sedition law.’’ As

for the vice president’s committee appointments,

‘‘Onslow’’ maintained in his October 12 epistle,

‘‘The only correct rule is, to appoint the able, experienced, and independent, without regard to

their feelings towards the Executive.’’ To appoint

only pro-administration partisans, he argued,

would have drastically expanded the power of

an executive who already had ‘‘the whole patronage of the Government’’ at his disposal.41

These arguments, the modern-era editors of Calhoun’s papers have stressed, reveal ‘‘the ground

principles of all Calhoun’s later thinking,’’ and

mark ‘‘the ‘turning point’ in Calhoun’s career

from nationalist and latitudinarian to sectionalist

and strict constructionist.’’ 42

Not until 1828 did the Senate finally revise the

rule governing debate to authorize the presiding

officer, or any senator, to call a member to order.

After this revision was adopted, Calhoun stubbornly remarked that ‘‘it was not for him’’ to

comment on the change, assuring the Senate

‘‘that he should always endeavor to exercise it

with strict impartiality.’’ He did heartily approve

of another change adopted in 1828, a revision

that made rulings of the chair subject to appeal.

‘‘It was not only according to strict principle,’’

he informed the Senate, ‘‘but would relieve the

Chair from a most delicate duty.’’ 43

The Calhoun-Jackson Alliance

On June 4, 1826, Calhoun notified Andrew

Jackson that he would support his 1828 presidential bid. Calhoun, with his disciplined intellect and rigid sense of propriety, presented a

striking contrast to the popular and dashing military hero. The two were never close, and Calhoun never completely trusted Jackson. In fact,

several years earlier, while serving in Monroe’s

cabinet, the South Carolinian had urged the

president to discipline Jackson for his unauthorized invasion of Spanish Florida during the Seminole War.44 But Calhoun needed time to recoup

his political fortunes, and Jackson had vowed to

serve but a single term if elected president. The

old hero welcomed Calhoun’s support, assuring

him that they would ‘‘march hand in hand in

their [the people’s] cause,’’ cementing one of the

most ill-starred partnerships in the history of the

vice-presidency.45
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JOHN C. CALHOUN

When Calhoun returned to the Senate for the

second session of the Nineteenth Congress in

early December, he was relieved to find that he

was not ‘‘the object of the malignant attack of

those in power.’’ He did observe, however, that

in the Senate ‘‘the line of separation is better

drawn, and the feelings on both sides higher

than in the last session.’’ 46 Calhoun’s respite

came to an abrupt halt on December 28, when

the Alexandria, Virginia, Phoenix Gazette, an administration mouthpiece, resurrected the old

charges that Calhoun’s chief secretary at the War

Department had improperly profited from his interest in a materials contract.47 On the following

day, Calhoun notified Secretary of the Senate

Walter Lowrie that he had asked the House of

Representatives to investigate the charges and

would not preside over the Senate until the matter was resolved. ‘‘[A] sense of propriety forbids

me from resuming my station till the House has

disposed of this subject,’’ he explained.48

On January 2, 1827, the Senate chose Nathaniel

Macon of North Carolina to preside over its deliberations while a House select committee pursued the allegations. Henry Clay, who still commanded enormous influence in the House of

Representatives, played a silent role in the appointment of the House select committee, which

was heavily weighted against Calhoun. Even

though the committee cleared Calhoun after six

weeks of hearings, press accounts of the investigation, combined with the muddled language

that Clay had persuaded his allies to insert in the

select committee’s February 13, 1827, report, contributed to the widespread perception that the

vice president had done something wrong while

serving as secretary of war.49 Some Jacksonians

would have gladly withdrawn their support for

Calhoun’s vice-presidential bid at that point. But

Jackson’s chief strategist, Martin Van Buren, insisted that Calhoun was essential to his strategy

of forging a coalition of ‘‘planters of the South

and the plain Republicans of the North’’ to drive

Adams from the White House.50

The vice president, for his part, was increasingly disturbed at the concessions that Van

Buren seemed willing to make to secure Jackson’s election, particularly with respect to the

tariff. Van Buren and New York Senator Silas

Wright had finessed a protective tariff through

the Senate in the spring of 1828. This so-called

‘‘Tariff of Abominations’’ included no concessions to southern agricultural interests, as had

previous tariffs, and imposed severe hardships

on the region. Still, Calhoun convinced the South

Carolina delegation to hold its fire, fearing that

the backlash might cost Jackson the election and

hoping that Jackson would, if elected, reform the

tariff schedules.51 ‘‘[T]he Tariff of the last session

excites much feelings in this and the other Southern atlantick states,’’ he wrote to Jackson from

South Carolina in July, continuing,

The belief that those now in power will be displaced shortly, and that under an administration

formed under your auspices, a better order will

commence, in which an equal distribution of the

burden and benefit of government . . . and finally

the removal of oppressive duties will be the primary objects of policy is what mainly consoles

this quarter of the Union under existing embarrassment.52

Jackson and Calhoun won 56 percent of the

popular vote in 1828—a sweeping victory widely

acclaimed as a triumph for ‘‘the common man.’’

The ‘‘Jacksonians’’ boasted an organization vastly more efficient than that of Adams’ National

Republicans, a factor that had helped them gain

control of both houses in the 1827 congressional

elections. The presidential campaign was one of

the most bitterly contested in the nation’s history. Adams’ supporters charged Jackson and his

wife with immoral conduct (the two had married

before Rachel’s divorce from her first husband)

and Jacksonians countered by reminding the

electorate of the ‘‘corrupt bargain.’’ Calhoun and

the National Republican vice-presidential candidate Richard Rush were barely noticed in the

fray.53

Candidate Calhoun had spent most of the election year at ‘‘Fort Hill,’’ his Pendleton, South

Carolina estate, supervising farm operations

and, at the request of the South Carolina legislature, preparing a critique of the tariff. His point

of departure for the resulting South Carolina

‘‘Exposition’’ was an argument that Jefferson

had marshalled three decades earlier in his crusade against the Alien and Sedition Acts: that the
[ 94 ]

JOHN C. CALHOUN

Union was a compact between states, which retained certain rights under the Constitution. But

Calhoun carried the argument several steps farther, asserting that a state could veto, or ‘‘nullify,’’ any act by the federal government that encroached on its sovereignty or otherwise violated

the Constitution. The ‘‘Exposition’’ and an accompanying set of ‘‘Protest’’ resolutions were

widely circulated by the South Carolina legislature. Calhoun, wary of jeopardizing his national

standing, was careful not to claim authorship,

but Jackson and Van Buren soon suspected that

the vice president had written the controversial

tract.54

The Senate Debates Nullification

Calhoun’s second vice-presidential term was

even more of an ordeal than his first. His suspicions that Jackson might pose as great a threat

to popular liberties as his predecessor were soon

confirmed. The president failed to repudiate the

tariff—clear evidence that he had fallen under

Van Buren’s spell—and his appointment of the

‘‘Little Magician’’ as secretary of state boded ill

for Calhoun. The vice president was soon isolated within an administration where Van Buren

and his protectionist allies appeared to be gaining the upper hand.55

Calhoun’s novel theory came under attack in

the Senate early in his second term, during a debate over the disposition of western lands, a

lengthy exchange that one historian has termed

‘‘the greatest debate in the history of the Senate.’’ 56 The debate began on December 29, when

Connecticut Senator Samuel Foot offered a resolution to curtail the sale of public lands in the

West. South Carolina Senator Robert Y. Hayne

changed the tone of the debate on January 19,

1830, when he argued that the federal government should leave land policy to the states and

that individual states could nullify federal legislation. The remainder of the debate, which lasted

through January 27, consisted of a spirited exchange between Hayne and Massachusetts Senator Daniel Webster, who summoned all of his

formidable oratorical talents in a passionate defense of the Union.

But the Webster-Hayne debate was, in fact, a

confrontation between Webster and Calhoun.

Hayne received a steady stream of handwritten

notes from the chair as he articulated Calhoun’s

doctrines for several hours on January 21, and

Webster clearly directed at the vice president his

second reply to Hayne of January 26–27. His

charge that ‘‘leading and distinguished gentlemen from South Carolina’’ had reversed their

stand on internal improvements brought an immediate and pointed inquiry from the vice president: ‘‘Does the chair understand the gentleman

from Massachusetts to say that the person now

occupying the chair of the Senate had changed

his opinions on the subject of internal improvements?’’ Webster responded: ‘‘If such change has

taken place, I regret it. I speak generally of the

State of South Carolina.’’ 57

The president, although not directly involved

in the debate, was clearly interested in the outcome. Jackson sympathized with advocates of

states’ rights, but, as a passionate defender of the

Union, he regarded nullification as tantamount

to treason. When his friend and adviser, William

B. Lewis, having witnessed the sparring between

Hayne and Webster from the Senate gallery, reported that Webster was ‘‘demolishing our

friend Hayne,’’ the president responded with a

succinct ‘‘I expected it.’’ 58 An open confrontation

between Jackson and Calhoun soon followed, at

the April 13, 1830, banquet commemorating Jefferson’s birthday. The event was a longstanding

tradition among congressional Republicans, but

the recent use of Jefferson’s writings to justify

nullification imbued the 1830 celebration with

particular significance. Warned in advance by

Van Buren that several ‘‘nullifiers’’ were expected to attend, the president and his advisers

carefully scripted his remarks. After the meal,

and an interminable series of toasts, Jackson rose

to offer his own: ‘‘Our Union. It must be preserved.’’ Calhoun was well prepared with an explosive rejoinder: ‘‘The Union. Next to our liberty, the most dear.’’ Jackson had the last word

a few days later, when he asked a South Carolina

congressman about to depart for home to ‘‘give

my compliments to my friends in your State, and

say to them, that if a single drop of blood shall

be shed there in opposition to the laws of the

United States, I will hang the first man I can lay
[ 95 ]

JOHN C. CALHOUN

my hand on engaged in such treasonable conduct, upon the first tree I can reach.’’ 59

Jackson Repudiates Calhoun

Even without Calhoun’s intransigence on the

tariff and nullification, Jackson had ample reason

to dislike his vice president. In May 1830, the

president finally received incontrovertible proof

that Calhoun, as he had long suspected, had

urged Monroe’s cabinet to censure him for his

invasion of Spanish Florida during the Seminole

War. Demanding an explanation from Calhoun,

Jackson was stunned when the vice president responded that he could not ‘‘recognize the right

on your part to call in question my conduct.’’

Calhoun went on to explain that neither he, as

secretary of war, nor President Monroe had authorized the occupation of the Spanish posts in

Florida, and that ‘‘when orders were transcended, investigation, as a matter of course,

ought to follow.’’ His opponents had resurrected

a long-forgotten incident to discredit him in Jackson’s eyes, the vice president warned. ‘‘I should

be blind not to see, that this whole affair is a political manoeuvre.’’ Thus began a lengthy and

strident correspondence, which concluded only

after Jackson wrote from his Tennessee home in

mid-July that ‘‘I feel no interest in this altercation

. . . and now close this correspondence forever,’’

and Calhoun concurred that the correspondence

‘‘is far from being agreeable at this critical juncture of our affairs.’’ Anxious to contradict inaccurate press accounts of his quarrel with the

president, Calhoun published the correspondence in the United States’ Telegraph of February

17 and 25, 1831, prefaced with a lengthy explanation addressed ‘‘To the People of the United

States.’’ His break with Jackson, so long in the

making, was now complete.60

Calhoun soon found himself completely

eclipsed by Van Buren. After a longstanding dispute over official protocol had culminated in the

resignation of the entire cabinet in April 1831, all

of Jackson’s new secretaries were Van Buren

men. Calhoun had his wife Floride to thank for

this unfortunate development. Mrs. Calhoun, the

unofficial arbiter of Washington society, had

thrown the capital into turmoil with her deliberate snub of Secretary of War John Eaton and

his wife, Peggy. Peggy Eaton was a lively and

attractive woman of dubious reputation and a

special favorite of the president. The daughter of

an innkeeper, she was clearly not the social equal

of the haughty and highly critical Floride. She

had married Eaton, a boarder at her father’s

hotel, soon after her first husband had died at

sea—Washington scandalmongers hinted that he

had taken his life in despair after learning of Peggy’s affair with Eaton. Floride’s reputation as an

accomplished hostess, her husband’s position,

and the fact that both the president and Van

Buren were widowers gave her enormous influence in Washington society. When she refused

to return Peggy Eaton’s calls, several of the cabinet wives followed suit.

Floride’s actions put her husband in an awkward position, but he acquiesced in her decision

because he regarded social protocol as her rightful sphere of authority and because he knew that

nothing he did or said would shake her resolve.

The president, who considered Eaton ‘‘more like

a son to me than anything else’’—and later pronounced Peggy ‘‘chaste as a virgin’’—was sorely

offended. His outrage was compounded by

memories of his late wife, Rachel, who had suffered a fatal heart attack after hearing the vicious

attacks on her character that the Adams camp

had circulated during the presidential campaign.

The ‘‘Petticoat War’’ split the cabinet for well

over a year, with Van Buren emerging the winner. The shrewd and gallant widower had conspicuously entertained the Eatons and orchestrated the cabinet’s resignation to resolve the impasse. Jackson was profoundly grateful to Van

Buren for the opportunity to purge his cabinet

of Calhoun’s supporters, and rewarded him with

an appointment as ambassador to Great

Britain.61

Nullification Leader

Calhoun initially believed that his break with

Jackson would only enhance his chances of winning the presidency in 1832. He still enjoyed considerable support in the South and believed he

might be able to reconcile southern

agriculturalists and northern manufacturers with

selective modifications in the tariff schedules.

But events in South Carolina soon forced him to
[ 96 ]

JOHN C. CALHOUN

make public his position on the tariff and nullification, a move that effectively killed his

chances of ever becoming president. In the summer of 1831, Calhoun prote ́ge ́ George McDuffie

electrified a Charleston, South Carolina, audience with a fiery declamation advocating nullification and secession. Calhoun was horrified at

this development, as well as by accounts that

South Carolina merchants were refusing to pay

duties that they considered unconstitutional.

Calhoun had advanced the doctrine of nullification to provide southern states with a peaceful

mechanism for obtaining redress of their grievances, never contemplating the possibility of disunion. He had not endorsed secession in his 1828

‘‘Exposition,’’ arguing that a state could veto and

refuse to enforce any law it considered unconstitutional, but, if three fourths of the states subsequently affirmed the law, the nullifying state

must defer to the collective will.

Until this point, Calhoun had never publicly

claimed authorship of his controversial doctrine,

but now he felt compelled to assume control of

the nullification movement to minimize its destructive potential. He published in the July 26,

1831, issue of the Pendleton, South Carolina,

Messenger his first public statement on nullification, the ‘‘Rock Hill Address,’’ a forceful restatement of the principles first articulated in the

South Carolina ‘‘Exposition.’’ Calhoun was well

aware of the risk he had assumed. ‘‘I can scarcely

dare hope,’’ he conceded shortly after the ‘‘Rock

Hill Address’’ appeared in print, ‘‘that my

friends to the North will sustain me in the positions I have taken, tho’ I have the most thorough

conviction that the doctrines I advanced, must

ultimately become those of the Union; or that it

will be impossible to preserve the Union.’’ Once

the most ardent of nationalists, Calhoun would

henceforth be known as the South’s advocate

and, by Jackson supporters, as a traitor.62

Calhoun ‘‘Elects’’ a Vice President

Calhoun returned to Washington after a

lengthy absence in time for the opening of the

Twenty-second Congress in December 1831. He

had devoted the time since the Twenty-first Congress had adjourned on March 3 to nullification

and to his anticipated presidential campaign.

One of the first items on the Senate’s agenda was

the confirmation of Jackson’s reconstituted cabinet. The Senate approved these nominations

without incident, but Jackson’s appointment of

former Secretary of State Martin Van Buren as

ambassador to Great Britain aroused a firestorm

of controversy. Henry Clay, leading the antiJackson forces in the Senate, blamed Van Buren

for the ‘‘pernicious system of party politics

adopted by the present administration,’’ 63 a sentiment shared by many disaffected Jacksonians

and Calhoun supporters, as well.

Tempers flared as the Senate debated the controversial nomination on January 24 and 25,

1832, with several senators venting their anger

at the administration. Massachusetts Senator

Daniel Webster took Van Buren to task for his

trade policies, while his southern colleagues,

Senators Stephen Miller of South Carolina and

George Poindexter of Mississippi, took aim at

Van Buren’s personal life. When Missouri’s Alexander Buckner rose to Van Buren’s defense, asserting that only a ‘‘liar’’ would accuse Van

Buren of malfeasance or misconduct, Vice President Calhoun ruled him out of order. Georgia

Senator John Forsyth, a staunch Jackson man,

pointedly reminded the vice president, ‘‘[I]f you

remember your own decisions you must know

that you are grossly out of order for this interference.’’ Forsyth clearly intended to taunt Calhoun, not to raise a substantive objection, since

the Senate had, four years earlier, revised its

rules to authorize the presiding officer to call a

member to order.

The debate over Van Buren’s appointment

ended in a tied vote—orchestrated, one scholar

suggests, to give the vice president the ‘‘distinction and honor of defeating Van Buren’s nomination.’’ Calhoun, as expected, cast his vote against

the nomination, a decision that, Missouri Senator

Thomas Hart Benton predicted, ‘‘elected a Vice

President.’’ 64 But Benton was only partially correct. Rigid in defense of his principles, but wholly lacking the abundant political skills of the

‘‘Little Magician,’’ Calhoun had played into Van

Buren’s hands throughout his second term as

vice president. His decision to assume control of

the South Carolina nullification movement had

already killed his presidential prospects. Van
[ 97 ]

JOHN C. CALHOUN

Buren would become the Democratic vice-presidential candidate in 1832 and would succeed

Jackson as president four years later.

Calhoun spent the remainder of the year in the

Senate disheartened by the enactment of the 1832

tariff. That measure was intended to reconcile

northern manufacturers and all but the most diehard free traders, but, in one scholar’s assessment, it ‘‘satisfied neither protectionists nor free

traders.’’ 65 ‘‘It is, in truth,’’ Calhoun wrote to a

kinsman as the Senate labored over the tariff in

early March 1832, ‘‘hard to find a midle [sic] position, where the principle of protection is asserted to be essential on one side, and fatal on

the other. It involves not the question of concession, but surrender.’’ 66 In early July, a despairing

Calhoun offered a gloomy pre ́cis of the Senate’s

action on the tariff:

We have spent a long & fruitless season. The

Tariff Bill was late last evening ordered to the 3d.

reading in the senate with many amendments all

going to increase the burden on us. Every southern member voted against it including the South

West, with the exception of the Senators from

Louisiana. The question is no longer one of free

trade, but liberty and despotism. The hope of the

country now rests on our gallant little State. Let

every Carolinian do his duty. Those who do not

join us now intend unqualified submission.67

Senator Calhoun

In South Carolina, where antitariff sentiments

had reached a fever pitch, Calhoun found it increasingly difficult to contain the deadly forces

that he had unwittingly unleashed. Nullifiers

gained control of the state legislature in the fall

1832 election. The new legislature promptly

called for a nullification convention, which

passed an ordinance declaring the 1828 and 1832

tariffs void as of February 1, 1833. The Ordinance

of Nullification also warned that, if the administration resorted to coercion to collect the offensive duties, South Carolina would ‘‘proceed to

organize a separate government.’’ An irate Jackson ordered reinforcements to the federal installations surrounding Charleston Harbor but soon

announced his support for a revised tariff. On

December 10, he proclaimed nullification ‘‘incompatible with the existence of the Union.’’

Calhoun would help defuse this explosive situation, but not as vice president. Elected to the

Senate to replace Robert Hayne, he resigned the

vice-presidency on December 28, 1832, more

than two months before his term was up. Except

for a brief stint as secretary of state during John

Tyler’s administration, he spent the rest of his

life in the Senate, valiantly defending his state

and attempting to reconcile its interests with

those of the nation at large. Undaunted by rumors that Jackson intended to try him for treason

if the impasse over nullification resulted in an

armed confrontation, Calhoun joined forces with

Henry Clay to help guide through the Senate a

revised tariff, acceptable to the southern states.

The nullifiers, encouraged by the prospect of a

more equitable tariff, and counseled by coolheaded emissaries from Virginia to show restraint, postponed the effective date of the ordinance until March 4. Jackson’s supporters had,

in the meantime, introduced a measure to force

South Carolina’s compliance with the old tariff,

which passed the Senate by overwhelming margins. Calhoun and eight of his fellow senators

stalked out of the chamber in protest when the

Senate adopted the ‘‘Force bill,’’ but Jackson

never had occasion to employ its provisions

against the nullifiers. The crisis passed after Congress approved both the revised tariff and the

Force bill shortly before adjourning on March 3,

1833. Calhoun returned to South Carolina firmly

convinced that nullification had ‘‘dealt the fatal

blow’’ to the tariff.68

For the next several years, Calhoun remained

aloof from the Jacksonian coalition, which had

become known as the Democratic party. But during Van Buren’s administration, from 1837 to

1841, he set aside his longstanding aversion to

‘‘the Little Magician’’ and risked the wrath of his

fellow South Carolinians to support the independent treasury plan, Van Buren’s solution to

the credit and currency problems that he and

Calhoun believed responsible for the 1837 depression. Alarmed at the prospect that Whig

presidential candidate William Henry Harrison

would back tariff concessions for special interests, Calhoun rejoined the Democrats in 1840 and
[ 98 ]

JOHN C. CALHOUN

began making plans to enter the 1844 presidential race.69

Hoping to present himself as an independent

candidate with no institutional affiliation, Calhoun resigned from the Senate on March 3, 1843.

His campaign faltered, however, when several

prominent Virginia Democrats backed Van

Buren and the New York City convention followed suit. Calhoun consoled himself by focusing his attention on his farm, badly in debt after

several years of depressed cotton prices, and his

family, torn by a protracted financial disputes

between Calhoun’s son, Andrew Pickens Calhoun, and his son-in-law, Thomas Green

Clemson. In mid-March 1844, he accepted President John Tyler’s offer of an appointment to succeed Secretary of State Abel Upshur, who had

been killed by an exploding cannon during an

outing on the ship Princeton. Calhoun remained

at the State Department until Tyler’s term ended

on March 3, 1845, participating in the final stages

of the negotiations for the Texas Annexation

Treaty.70

Calhoun returned to the Senate in November

1845 and remained there for the rest of his life.

Increasingly defensive about the institution of

slavery as the abolition movement gained momentum, and agitated at the growing discord between the slaveholding and free states, he spoke,

as he informed the Senate in 1847, as ‘‘a Southern

man and a slaveholder.’’ As secretary of state

Calhoun had strongly supported the annexation

of Texas. After Pennsylvania Representative

David Wilmot offered his famous proviso as an

amendment to an administration war bill, however, the South Carolina senator realized that the

acquisition of additional territory would inevitably heighten the sectional conflict over slavery.

The Wilmot Proviso, which would have barred

slavery from all lands acquired from Mexico,

pushed Calhoun into the anti-administration

camp. He vehemently opposed the war policy of

President James K. Polk, warning that the acquisition of Mexican territory, with its population

of ‘‘pure Indians and by far the larger portion

of the residue mixed blood,’’ would corrupt the

nation’s culture and institutions.71

By 1850, the precarious balance between the

slaveholding and free states was again at risk.

California’s petition to enter the Union as a free

state threatened to upset the delicate equilibrium. Other unresolved issues, too, including

slavery in the District of Columbia and the enforcement of fugitive slave laws, loomed large on

the horizon during the final weeks of Calhoun’s

life. To resolve the impasse, Calhoun’s old friend

and rival, Henry Clay, on January 29, 1850, offered a series of proposals, collectively known as

the Compromise of 1850. Clay proposed that

California enter the Union as a free state and that

Congress agree to impose no restrictions on slavery in the New Mexico and Utah territories. The

compromise also provided that Congress would

not prohibit or regulate slavery in the District of

Columbia, would abolish the slave trade in the

District, and would require northern states to

comply with fugitive slave laws. Massachusetts

Senator Daniel Webster sought Calhoun’s support for the compromise, but the South Carolinian, vehemently opposed to abolishing the

slave trade in the nation’s capital and admitting

California as a free state, refused to endorse the

plan.

On March 4, a dispirited and emaciated Calhoun, his body so ravaged by tuberculosis that

he could no longer walk unassisted and his once

penetrating voice so weak that he could no

longer speak, presented his final address to the

Senate. Virginia Senator James Mason spoke for

Calhoun, who sat nearby, his pitiful frame

huddled in his chair. Only an immediate halt to

antislavery agitation and a constitutional amendment to preserve the balance between North and

South would save the Union, Calhoun warned.

Even senators who had long considered Calhoun

a disunionist were shocked when Mason pronounced his ultimatum: if the northern states

were unwilling to reconcile their differences with

the South ‘‘on the broad principle of justice and

duty, say so; and let the States we both represent

agree to separate and part in peace.’’ Three days

later, Senator Webster delivered his famous

‘‘Seventh of March’’ speech, a ringing plea for

compromise and Union that Calhoun interrupted with a resolute, ‘‘No sir! the Union can

be broken’’—one of his last utterances in the

Senate.72
[ 99 ]

JOHN C. CALHOUN

The Senate ultimately approved Clay’s compromise, not as a package, but as separate items.

Calhoun died on March 31, 1850, convinced that

his beloved South would one day withdraw from

the Union he had labored so long and hard to

strengthen and preserve. Even in death, he was

a controversial figure. Senator Thomas Hart Benton refused to speak at the April 5 memorial

service in the Senate chamber; Calhoun was ‘‘not

dead,’’ he maintained. ‘‘There may be no vitality

in his body, but there is in his doctrines.’’ Senator

Daniel Webster, one of the official mourners chosen by the Senate to accompany Calhoun’s body

to South Carolina, could not bring himself to perform this awkward and painful task. He took his

leave from Calhoun at the Virginia landing as the

funeral party departed for the South. Calhoun

was buried in Charleston, in a crypt in St. Philip’s churchyard.73
[ 100 ]

NOTES 1 Clyde N. Wilson and W. Edwin Hemphill, eds., The Papers of John C. Calhoun, vol. 10 (Columbia, SC, 1977), pp. 199–

203. 2 John C. Calhoun to James Monroe, June 23, 1826, Calhoun Papers, 10:132–35. 3U.S., Congress, Senate, The Senate, 1789–1989: Addresses

on the History of the United States Senate, by Robert C. Byrd,

S. Doc. 100–20, 100th Cong., 1st sess., vol. 1, 1988, p. 88; U.S.,

Congress, Senate, Journal, 18th Cong., special session of

March 4, 1825, pp. 271–74. 4 John Niven, John C. Calhoun and the Price of Union (Baton

Rouge, LA, 1988), p. 10. 5 Niven, pp. 1–12; for an account of the Regulator movement, see Richard Maxwell Brown, The South Carolina Regulators (Cambridge, 1963). 6By the eighteenth century, the family had changed the

spelling of their name, originally ‘‘Colquhoun’’ (after the

Scottish clan of that name), with one branch of the family

adopting the most commonly known spelling, ‘‘Calhoun,’’

and the other spelling the name ‘‘Colhoun.’’ Charles M.

Wiltse, John C. Calhoun, vol. 1, Nationalist, 1782–1828 (New

York, 1968; reprint of 1944 ed.), p. 12; Niven, p. 20. 7Wiltse, John C. Calhoun: Nationalist, p. 50. 8 Niven, pp. 21–34; Merrill D. Peterson, The Great Triumvirate: Webster, Clay, and Calhoun (New York, 1987), pp. 23–

27.9 James Sterling Young, The Washington Community, 1800–

1828 (New York, 1966), pp. 97–102. 10 Niven, pp. 34–35; Peterson, p. 23.

11The Committee on Foreign Affairs did not become a

standing committee of the House of Representatives until

1822. U.S., Congress, House of Representatives, Guide to the

Records of the United States House of Representatives at the National Archives, 1789–1989, 100th Cong., 2d sess. (Washington, 1989), p. 135. 12 Peterson, p. 18; Niven, pp. 41–52; Harry Ammon, James

Monroe: The Quest for National Identity (Charlottesville, VA,

1990; reprint of 1971 edition), p. 309; James F. Hopkins,

‘‘Election of 1824,’’ in History of American Presidential

Elections, 1789–1968, ed. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., and

Fred L. Israel, vol. 1 (New York, 1971), p. 354. 13 Peterson, pp. 18, 39.

14 Charles Sellers, The Market Revolution: Jacksonian

America, 1815–1846 (New York, 1991), pp. 76–79; Peterson,

p. 49; Niven, pp. 51–57. President James Madison vetoed

the ‘‘Bonus Bill’’ on Constitutional grounds. 15 Niven, pp. 58–60; Ammon, pp. 357–60, 470; Richard W.

Barsness, ‘‘John C. Calhoun and the Military Establishment,

1817–1825,’’ Wisconsin Magazine of History 50 (Autumn

1966), pp. 43–53; Wiltse, John C. Calhoun: Nationalist, p. 140. 16Young, pp. 230–31.

17Allan Nevins, ed., The Diary of John Quincy Adams,

1794–1845 (New York, 1951), p. 354; Wiltse, John C. Calhoun:

Nationalist, pp. 208–209. 18 Peterson, pp. 87–88.

19Barsness, pp. 43–53; Ammon, p. 470.

20Ammon, pp. 470–72; Peterson, pp. 88–89, 93; Niven, pp.

78–79. See also Chapter 9 of this volume, ‘‘Richard Mentor

Johnson,’’ pp. 123–24. 21Barsness, pp. 43–53; Niven, pp. 86–93.

22 Peterson, pp. 116–31; Hopkins, pp. 349–81; Niven, pp.

93–109. 23 Peterson, p. 130.

24 John C. Calhoun to J.G. Swift, in Calhoun Papers, 10:9–

10.25 Niven, p. 116; for Calhoun’s caveat that he was ‘‘without experience, which only can give the requisite skill in

presiding,’’ see his March 4, 1825, inaugural address, U.S.,

Congress, Senate, Journal, 18th Cong., special sess. of March

4, 1825, pp. 272–73. 26 Peterson, p. 136.

27 For a list of committee chairmen during the 18th Congress, see U.S., Congress, Senate, Annals of Congress, 18th

Cong., 1st sess., p. 27; a comprehensive list of committee

chairs from 1789 through 1992 appears in Byrd, The Senate,

1789–1989, vol. 4, Historical Statistics, 1789–1992 (Washington, 1993), pp. 522–81. 28 Peterson, p. 136; Niven, p. 114. Macon had served as

a member of the Foreign Relations Committee in the 18th

Congress; Virginia Senator James Barbour, a Crawford Republican who served as the committee’s chairman during

that Congress, had resigned in March 1825, to accept an appointment as secretary of war. Annals of Congress, 18th

Cong., 1st sess., p. 27; U.S., Congress, Senate, Biographical

Directory of the United States Congress, 1771–1989, S. Doc.

100–34, 100th Cong., 2d sess., 1989, pp. 574–75. 29 Peterson, p. 136.

30 Niven, pp. 113–15; Peterson, pp. 136–40; Robert V.

Remini, Martin Van Buren and the Making of the Democratic

Party (New York, 1959), pp. 105–13. 31Thomas Hart Benton, Thirty Years View; or, A History

of the Working of the American Government for Thirty Years,

from 1820 to 1850 (New York, 1871; reprint of 1854 edition),

vol. 1, pp. 65–69; Remini, Martin Van Buren and the Making

of the Democratic Party, pp. 105–13. The Senate confirmed

the appointments of John Sergeant and Richard Clark

Adams as delegates to the Panama Congress by a vote of

24 to 20. 32U.S., Congress, Register of Debates in Congress, 19th

Cong., 1st sess., pp. 384–406; Benton, 1:78; John C. Calhoun

to Micah Sterling, February 4, 1826, in Calhoun Papers, 10:72–

73.
[ 101 ]

JOHN C. CALHOUN

33Robert V. Remini, Henry Clay: Statesman for the Union

(New York, 1991), pp. 292–93; Niven, pp. 114–16; Peterson,

pp. 140–41; Register of Debates in Congress, 19th Cong., 1st

sess., pp. 384–406. 34Register of Debates in Congress, 19th Cong., 1st sess., pp.

384–407. The amendment was sent to the House of Representatives, where it died in committee. 35Remini, Henry Clay, pp. 293–95; Peterson, pp. 140–42. 36 Annals of Congress, 18th Cong., 1st sess., pp. 114–17;

U.S., Congress, Senate, Journal, 18th Cong., 1st sess., pp. 106,

114, 125. 37Register of Debates in Congress, 19th Cong., 1st sess., pp.

525–26, 571–73. 38 Senator John Holmes of Maine noted, in his April 15,

1826 remarks, that proposed rules changes ‘‘had proceeded

from an intimate personal friend of the Vice President,

which will itself contradict the presumption that any conduct’’ of Calhoun’s ‘‘had induced the proposition.’’ His remarks brought an immediate disclaimer from the ever-erratic Randolph that he had ‘‘offered the resolution in no

such character . . . of the personal friend or enemy of any

gentleman on this floor with one exception.’’ Register of Debates in Congress, 19th Cong., 1st sess., pp. 571–74. 39Register of Debates in Congress, pp. 754–59. 40 Editorial note and summary, Calhoun Papers, 10:91. 41The essays of ‘‘Patrick Henry’’ appear in Calhoun Papers, 10:91–96; 113–27; 165–75; 175–87; 188–97; for the

‘‘Onslow’’ essays, see pp. 99–104; 135–47; 147–155; 208–215;

215–21; 223–33. See also the editors’ introduction, xix-xxx. 42Calhoun Papers, 10:xxi. 43Register of Debates in Congress, 20th Cong., 1st sess., pp.

278–341 (‘‘Powers of the Vice President’’). 44 John C. Calhoun to Andrew Jackson, June 4, 1826, Calhoun Papers, 10:110–11; Peterson, pp. 151–52; Niven, pp. 68–

71, 119–21. 45 Harry L. Watson, Liberty and Power: The Politics of Jacksonian America (New York, 1990), pp. 73–74. 46 John C. Calhoun to Lt. James Edward Colhoun, December 24, 1826, Calhoun Papers, 10:238–40. 47Alexandria Phoenix Gazette, December 28, 1826, Calhoun

Papers, 10:241–42. 48 John C. Calhoun to the secretary of the Senate, December 29, 1826, Calhoun Papers, 10:243. 49 Niven, pp. 124–26; editorial note, Calhoun Papers,

10:246. 50 John C. Calhoun to the Rev. Moses Waddel, February

24, 1827, Calhoun Papers, 10: 266–67; Niven, pp. 125–26. 51 Niven, pp. 131–37; Peterson, pp. 159–61.

52 John C. Calhoun to Andrew Jackson, July 10, 1828, Calhoun Papers, 10:395–97. 53Robert V. Remini, ‘‘Election of 1828,’’ in Schlesinger

and Israel, eds., pp. 413–33. 54 Niven, pp. 154–78; Peterson, pp. 169–70.

55 Niven, pp. 165–69.

56 Peterson, p. 170.

57Byrd, The Senate, 1789–1989, vol. 3, Classic Speeches,

1830–1993 (Washington, 1994), pp. 1–77; Robert V. Remini,

Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Freedom, 1822–

1832 (New York, 1981), pp. 232–33; Peterson, pp. 170–83;

Niven, pp. 169–72. 58Remini, Jackson and the Course of American Freedom, p.

233. 59 Ibid., pp. 185–86; Peterson, pp. 233–37.

60Remini, Jackson and the Course of American Freedom, pp.

240–47; Peterson, pp. 187–89; Niven, pp. 174–75. For the Calhoun-Jackson correspondence regarding the Seminole War

investigation, and an account of Calhoun’s subsequent publication of the exchange, see Clyde N. Wilson, ed., The Papers

of John C. Calhoun, vol. 11 (Columbia, SC, 1978), pp. 94–96,

159–225, 285, 334–38. 61Remini, Jackson and the Course of American Freedom, pp.

161–63, 320–21; Peterson, pp. 183–85; Niven, pp. 167–69,

174. For further discussion of this incident, see Chapter 8

of this volume, ‘‘Martin Van Buren,’’ p. 108. 62 Niven, pp. 180–84; Charles M. Wiltse, John C. Calhoun,

vol. 2, Nullifier, 1829–1839 (New York, 1968; reprint of 1949

ed.), pp. 110–20; John C. Calhoun to Samuel D. Ingham, July

31, 1831, Calhoun Papers, 11:441–45. 63Remini, Jackson and the Course of American Democracy,

p. 347. 64 Ibid., pp. 347–49; Niven, pp. 185–87; Peterson, p. 203;

Register of Debates in Congress, 20th Cong., 1st sess., pp. 278–

341. 65 Peterson, pp. 203–9.

66 John C. Calhoun to Francis W. Pickens, March 2, 1832,

Calhoun Papers, 11:558–59. 67 John C. Calhoun to Samuel D. Ingham, July 8, 1832, Calhoun Papers, 11:602–3. 68 Niven, pp. 189–99; Richard E. Ellis, The Union at Risk:

Jacksonian Democracy, States’ Rights, and the Nullification Crisis (New York, 1987), pp. 74–91, and passim. 69 Niven, pp. 200–58.

70 Ibid., pp. 259–82.

71 Ibid., pp. 295–313.

72 Ibid., pp. 339–45; Peterson, pp. 449–66.

73 Peterson, pp. 467–68; Niven, pp. 343–45.

[ 103 ]

Chapter 8

MARTIN VAN BUREN

1833–1837
MARTIN VAN BUREN
[ 105 ]

Chapter 8

MARTIN VAN BUREN

8th Vice President: 1833–1837

a true man with no guile

—ANDREW JACKSON ON MARTIN VAN BUREN 1

you were a great intriguer—the author of sundry plots

—WILLIAM L. MARCY TO MARTIN VAN BUREN 2

Few people ever really knew Martin Van

Buren. The impeccable attire, ready wit, and unfailing tact that set him apart from his contemporaries masked a nagging sense of insecurity

that dogged him throughout his political career.

His father, a tavern keeper of modest means, had

been able to provide him with only a rudimentary education. One of Van Buren’s bettereducated associates observed that his ‘‘knowledge of books outside of his profession was more

limited than that of any other public man’’ he

had ever known and that Van Buren never prepared a state paper without asking a friend to

‘‘revise and correct that document.’’

Van Buren received his real education in the

turbulent and factious world of New York politics, and he was an apt pupil. He learned to hold

his counsel as others debated the hotly contested

issues of the day, carefully observing the course

of a debate and weighing all of the issues before

staking out a position of his own. ‘‘Even after deciding on a course of action,’’ one scholar has observed, ‘‘Van Buren might move with an air of

evasiveness.’’ Circumspect to a fault, he ‘‘enjoyed a name for noncommittalism that survived

when most other things about him were

forgotten.’’ 3

Reviled as a ‘‘schemer’’ and a master ‘‘manipulator’’ by contemporaries who lacked (and probably envied) his uncanny political acumen, he

was known throughout his career by an unparalleled assortment of nicknames, none of them entirely favorable. But ‘‘the Little Magician’’ (also

known as ‘‘the American Talleyrand,’’ ‘‘the Red

Fox of Kinderhook,’’ the ‘‘Mistletoe Politician,’’

and by a variety of other sobriquets) 4 left a solid

record of accomplishment that few of his betterknown fellows could rival. More than any other

individual of his time, Van Buren realized the

importance of party organization, discipline, and

political patronage. He engineered Andrew Jackson’s victory in the 1828 presidential election and

later became a trusted confidant and adviser to

‘‘Old Hickory,’’ a relationship that continued

after Van Buren became vice president in 1833.

No previous vice president enjoyed a greater

measure of influence than Van Buren, and no

vice president, in over three decades, had assumed that office as the ‘‘heir apparent.’’

Van Buren’s Early Years

Martin Van Buren was born on December 5,

1782, in the predominantly Dutch community of

Kinderhook, New York. His father, Abraham,

was a tavern keeper and farmer of modest

means; his mother, Maria Goes 5 Van Alen, was

a widow with two sons from her first marriage.

Both were of undiluted Dutch ancestry, a fact

that Van Buren took care to note in his Autobiog-
[ 106 ]

MARTIN VAN BUREN

raphy. One of the six children born to Abraham

and Maria, Martin grew up in a crowded household, lodged above his father’s tavern. From his

father, a resolute opponent of Federalism, he inherited his genial manners and political creed

but very little else. Dilatory about collecting his

debts and generous beyond his means, Abraham

barely supported his large family. Young Martin

inherited his ambition from his mother, who insisted that her sons receive the best education

possible, given their limited resources. He attended a local school until the age of fifteen, then

served as an apprentice to Francis Sylvester, a

local lawyer. During his apprenticeship, Van

Buren became involved in local politics, attending his district’s 1800 Republican convention and

helping to elect John Peter Van Ness to the United States House of Representatives in 1801.

These activities strained his relationship with

Sylvester, a prominent Federalist, and Van Buren

terminated their arrangement after the election.

Van Ness, grateful for Van Buren’s efforts on his

behalf, paid his young supporter’s travel and expenses while he finished his legal studies in New

York City, clerking for the congressman’s brother, William.

New York City politics fascinated Van Buren,

but he returned to Kinderhook shortly after his

admission to the bar in 1803 to establish a legal

practice with his half brother, James Van Alen.

In leaving the city he also sought to distance himself from the intraparty warfare that infected the

New York Republican coalition after the 1800

presidential election. In Kinderhook, much of

Van Buren’s time was spent defending tenants

and small landholders in suits against the powerful Livingston clan. The Livingstons, landed gentry whose control of the New York legislature

had helped them expand their extensive holdings by questionable means, had retained the

best legal minds in the state. Rigorous and careful preparation on Van Buren’s part helped him

prevail against these notable attorneys and won

him the respect of De Witt Clinton, Governor

George Clinton’s nephew and political heir. Van

Buren backed Clinton’s candidate, future Vice

President Daniel D. Tompkins, in the 1807 gubernatorial race and received for his efforts an appointment as Columbia County surrogate on

March 20, 1808.6

In 1808, Van Buren married Hannah Hoes, a

distant relative, and settled in Hudson, the Columbia County seat. The marriage was a happy

one, notwithstanding the frequent absences imposed by the demands of Martin’s career, but by

the time their fifth son was born in 1817, Hannah

had contracted a fatal case of tuberculosis. Van

Buren was profoundly affected by her death in

1819; although much in demand as an escort and

dinner companion, particularly during the years

that he lived in Washington, he never

remarried.7

Van Buren served as Columbia County surrogate from 1808 until 1812, when he was elected

to the New York senate. During the War of 1812,

he was an avid supporter of the administration’s

war effort, offering legislation to facilitate mobilization of the state’s defenses. He opposed the

Federalists’ antiwar stance and broke with his

mentor, De Witt Clinton, after learning that Clinton had solicited Federalist support for his 1812

presidential bid. In 1815, Van Buren became state

attorney general and moved his family to Albany. He held that office until 1819 and continued to serve in the state senate until 1820, delegating his growing legal practice to his junior

partner, Benjamin F. Butler.8

Van Buren soon emerged as the guiding force

of the ‘‘Bucktail’’ faction, one of several groups

jockeying for control of the New York Republican party. The Bucktails, opponents of De Witt

Clinton who took their name from the distinctive

plumes they affixed to their hats, rapidly gained

in influence under Van Buren’s tutelage. A

Bucktail-controlled convention made major revisions in New York’s constitution in 1821–1822,

expanding the suffrage and curbing aristocratic

influence, reforms that helped break De Witt

Clinton’s hold on the state Republican party. In

1821, Van Buren won election to the United

States Senate, leaving behind a formidable political organization, popularly known as the ‘‘Albany Regency,’’ that would manage the New

York Republican party—and through it, the

state—while he was away. The Regency maintained rigid discipline, rewarding loyalty with

patronage appointments and disciplining errant
[ 107 ]

MARTIN VAN BUREN

members. Although centered in Albany, the organization’s control also extended to local political organizations and clubs. Powerful as Van

Buren’s apparatus became, ‘‘It was not,’’ one

scholar of the period emphasizes, ‘‘so much the

rewarding of partisans and the mass lopping off

of rebellious heads that explained the Regency

success as it was the skilful, highly judicious

manner in which the power was exercised.’’ Regency leaders took ‘‘the prejudices and feelings

of local communities’’ into account in making

their appointments and exercised equal care in

making removals.9

Senator Van Buren: The ‘‘Little Magician’’

Once in Washington, Van Buren set about organizing the New York congressional delegation,

a difficult undertaking in light of the fact that

John Taylor, the unofficial dean of the delegation

and Speaker of the House of Representatives,

was firmly in the Clinton camp. In an effort to

curb Taylor’s influence, Van Buren helped orchestrate the election of Virginia Representative

Philip Barbour as House Speaker during the Seventeenth Congress, a narrow victory that increased his own influence while cementing his

ties to Virginia Republicans. He tried but failed

to block the appointment of a Federalist as postmaster of Albany, but his effort to derail the

nomination, chronicled at length by the press,

enhanced his reputation.10

In the 1824 presidential election, Van Buren

backed the Republican caucus nominee, Treasury Secretary William H. Crawford. The two had

a great deal in common: Crawford was a states’

rights advocate, a strict constructionist, and—a

consideration of overriding importance to Van

Buren—a dedicated party man. But the Republican coalition was rapidly splintering, and many

Republicans, calling for reform of the nominating process, refused to heed the will of the caucus. Four other candidates ultimately entered the

race, all claiming membership in the party of Jefferson: Secretary of State John Quincy Adams,

Secretary of War John C. Calhoun, Henry Clay,

and Tennessee Senator Andrew Jackson.

Consumed by his single-minded effort to secure

Crawford’s election, even after his candidate became so seriously ill that he could neither see,

hear, nor walk, Van Buren was bitterly disappointed when the House of Representatives

elected Adams president.11

After the election, Van Buren, as the new acknowledged leader of the ‘‘Crawford’’ Republicans, also known as ‘‘Radicals,’’ kept his peace

while others denounced the ‘‘corrupt bargain’’

with Henry Clay that many suspected had elevated Adams to the White House. He voted to

confirm Clay as secretary of state, but he broke

his silence after Adams outlined an ambitious

domestic and foreign policy agenda in his first

annual address. Van Buren particularly objected

to the president’s plan to send representatives to

a conference of South and Central American delegates in Panama and enlisted the aid of Vice

President John C. Calhoun and his allies in an

effort to prevent the confirmation of delegates to

the conference. The Senate ultimately confirmed

the nominees, but the debate over the Panama

mission had helped forge a tentative coalition of

‘‘Radicals’’ and Calhoun supporters under Van

Buren’s leadership.12

In December 1826, the Little Magician formalized his alliance with Calhoun, who had already

pledged his support for Andrew Jackson in the

forthcoming presidential race. Each man had his

own agenda: Calhoun intended to succeed Jackson, after serving a second term as vice president; Van Buren, alarmed by Adams’ grandiose

agenda and convinced that Republicans had

strayed from the Jeffersonian creed, intended to

restore the party to its ‘‘first principles.’’ Jackson,

he was convinced, should carry the reinvigorated party’s standard in 1828. ‘‘If Gen Jackson

. . . will put his election on old party grounds,

preserve the old systems, avoid if not condemn

the practices of the last campaign,’’ he predicted,

‘‘we can by adding his personal popularity to the

yet remaining force of old party feeling, not only

succeed in electing him but our success when

achieved will be worth something.’’ 13

By December 1827, Van Buren had assumed

control of the Jackson campaign. The candidate

remained in the background while the Little Magician orchestrated a battle plan of unprecedented energy and vigor. His campaigning was,

in the words of one scholar, ‘‘little short of brilliant.’’ Van Buren plunged wholeheartedly into
[ 108 ]

MARTIN VAN BUREN

the contest, serving as fund raiser, strategist,

publicist, and counselor. Several states had, prior

to the election, revised their election laws to expand the franchise. With parades, rallies, speeches, and calls for ‘‘reform,’’ Van Buren and his

lieutenants mesmerized these first-time voters,

as well as others who had become disenchanted

with the administration. ‘‘[T]he American people,’’ a Jackson scholar concluded, ‘‘loved the

performance put on for them.’’ 14

Keeping his fragile coalition together represented Van Buren’s most difficult challenge,

apart from persuading the candidate to suffer in

dignified silence as the Adams camp levelled increasingly virulent attacks on his character. The

growing protectionist sentiment in the West and

in the Northeast posed particular problems for

Van Buren, who could not afford to alienate

southern free-trade advocates. Courting both

camps, he studiously avoided making a definitive pronouncement on the tariff, even as he deftly guided a protectionist bill through the Senate.

The 1828 tariff, known in the South as the ‘‘Tariff

of Abominations,’’ reassured westerners, who

might otherwise have remained in the ‘‘AdamsClay’’ fold, that a Jackson administration would

take their interests into account. Van Buren realized that protectionism was anathema to southern agriculturalists, but he also realized that

most southerners regarded Jackson as the lesser

of two evils. As one scholar has conceded, during

the tariff debate Van Buren ‘‘said some very

equivocal things to Southerners,’’ helping them

convince themselves that, once elected, Old

Hickory would support tariff reform.15

Secretary of State Van Buren

Jackson won an impressive victory in 1828,

widely heralded as a triumph of the ‘‘common

man.’’ Writing his Autobiography many years

after the fact, Van Buren attributed the outcome

of this historic election to the ‘‘zealous union between that portion of the republican party who

. . . had shown themselves willing to sacrifice

personal preferences to its harmony, the numerous supporters of Gen. Jackson . . . and the

friends of Mr. Calhoun . . . strengthened by the

mismanagement of the administration.’’ Van

Buren achieved a personal victory as well, winning election as governor of New York. But he

served less than two months in this position, resigning to accept an appointment as secretary of

state in the new administration.16

Van Buren was easily the most capable individual in Jackson’s cabinet, an assortment of second-rank appointees chosen to achieve sectional

and ideological balance.17 During his two years

as secretary of state from 1829 to 1831, he became

one of the president’s most trusted advisers. He

arrived in the capital shortly after Jackson’s inauguration to find the cabinet—and Washington

society—at odds over Mrs. John C. Calhoun’s adamant refusal to socialize with the wife of Secretary of War John Eaton, a woman with a spirited disposition and a notorious reputation. Several cabinet wives had followed suit, avoiding

official functions for fear of encountering the

tainted couple. The ‘‘Petticoat War’’ was, as Van

Buren realized, much more than a dispute over

protocol or public morals; it was a symptom of

the deep divisions in an administration that included both free-trade advocates and protectionists. The tension became even more pronounced

after Jackson delivered his first annual message.

His speech, prepared with Van Buren’s assistance, convinced Vice President Calhoun and his

allies that they would obtain no relief from the

Tariff of Abominations. As for Van Buren, he

suspected—correctly, as it turned out—that Calhoun was somehow behind the talk of ‘‘nullification’’ emanating from South Carolina.

Van Buren at first tried to cure what he called

‘‘the Eaton malaria,’’ the malaise that threatened

to paralyze the administration, by entertaining

the Eatons. As a widower with no wife to object

if he showed courtesy to a woman of questionable repute, he had nothing to lose by entertaining Mrs. Eaton and everything to gain, given the

high regard that Jackson felt for Peggy and her

husband. He was no match for the formidable

Floride Calhoun, however, and he soon became

persona non grata among the Calhoun set, but his

gallantry endeared him to the president.18 Accompanying Jackson on horseback for their customary rides throughout the countryside surrounding Washington, Van Buren became the

president’s sounding board and friend, offering

well-timed and perceptive counsel to the care-
[ 109 ]

MARTIN VAN BUREN

burdened and lonely old hero. He helped craft

the president’s memorable toast: ‘‘The Union: It

must be preserved’’ that electrified the April 13,

1830, banquet commemorating Jefferson’s birthday, and he helped persuade Jackson to run for

a second term.

Calhoun simmered with resentment as the

man he considered a ‘‘weasel’’ gained the upper

hand in a rivalry that was becoming increasingly

bitter. Van Buren, although every bit as ambitious as Calhoun, became increasingly

discomfited at the widespread speculation that

he, and not Calhoun, would succeed Jackson as

president. Recoiling at the thought that his opponents might interpret his labors on Jackson’s behalf as a crude form of electioneering, he informed the president in late March of 1831 that

‘‘there is but one thing’’ that would bring peace

to Jackson’s troubled administration: ‘‘my resignation.’’ Old Hickory was at first reluctant to

accept Van Buren’s resignation, but eventually

realized that the gesture offered him the opportunity to purge his cabinet of Calhoun partisans.

Van Buren’s departure precipitated the mass resignation of the entire cabinet, except for Postmaster General William Barry. The new cabinet

was distinctly more sympathetic to Jackson—

and to Van Buren. As a reward for his ‘‘highly

patriotic’’ sacrifice, the Little Magician received

an appointment as minister to England.19

Van Buren sailed for England before the Senate

confirmed his nomination. His easy, elegant

manners made him an instant hit in London. Almost immediately, he received the British foreign

minister’s pledge to respect the rulings of the

panel arbitrating the longstanding boundary dispute between Maine and New Brunswick. Jackson had predicted that Van Buren’s enemies

would not dare oppose this appointment, for fear

that ‘‘the people in mass would take you up and

elect you vice Pres.,’’ but, in late February 1832,

Van Buren learned that the Senate had in fact rejected his nomination, with Vice President Calhoun casting the deciding vote. Jackson was furious when he heard the news but, after sober reflection, realized that he now had ample justification for removing Calhoun from the ticket in the

coming election. He had already settled on Van

Buren as his next vice president, but Calhoun’s

effrontery strengthened his resolve. ‘‘The people

will properly resent the insult offered to the Executive, and the injury intended to our foreign

relations, in your rejection,’’ he consoled Van

Buren in mid-February, ‘‘by placing you in the

chair of the very man whose casting vote rejected

you.’’ 20 Calhoun, his presidential prospects rapidly dimming as a consequence of his role in the

nullification controversy, resigned before the end

of his term—the first vice president to do so—

to take a seat in the Senate. Once Van Buren’s

most formidable rival for the soul of the organization soon to be known as the Democratic party,

he had become a sectional leader and would remain a sectional leader for the rest of his life.

The Election of 1832

Van Buren found every reason imaginable to

remain abroad after learning of his rejection by

the Senate. He could not break his lease or

abruptly discharge his servants, he protested,

nor could he pack up his household on such

short notice. But his biographer suggests that he

delayed his departure because he believed that

the ‘‘opposition would splinter . . . if left alone;

it stood a good chance of coalescing if he returned with undue haste for vindication.’’ 21

Touring the Continent with his son John, Van

Buren was still abroad when Democratic delegates assembled at Baltimore on May 21, 1832,

to choose a vice-presidential candidate. Although antitariff southern Democrats had serious reservations about Van Buren, Jackson’s sentiments prevailed. By an overwhelming margin,

the convention chose Van Buren on the first

ballot.22

Finally returning home in July 1832, the Little

Magician was immediately summoned to Washington. Jackson needed his help in drafting a

message to Congress explaining his impending

veto of a bill to recharter the Second Bank of the

United States. Van Buren approved of the veto

message, a ringing denunciation of the bank as

an instrument of privilege. At Jackson’s request,

he attended the Senate and the House of Representatives on July 10, in order to lobby against

the inevitable attempt to override the veto. Also

at Jackson’s request, he lobbied for a compromise

tariff designed to keep would-be nullifiers in the
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MARTIN VAN BUREN

Jacksonian camp. Successful in both efforts, he

departed for New York after Congress adjourned. He remained in New York until shortly

before the inauguration, attempting to reconcile

die-hard New York protectionists to the compromise tariff.23

The 1832 election was, as one scholar of the period has observed, a referendum on the Second

Bank of the United States, the first presidential

election in which the candidates submitted a single, specific question to the electorate. Jackson

was a ‘‘hard-money’’ man, deeply suspicious of

banks, credit, and paper money after suffering

near ruin in an early land speculation venture.

Regarding the Second Bank of the United States,

a government-chartered but privately owned institution, as an instrument of aristocratic, monied

interests, he would have announced his intention

to destroy the bank in his first annual message

had his advisers not counseled restraint. Fully

confident that the voters would signal their assent by electing him to a second term, Jackson

had vetoed the bank recharter bill before the

election. National Republican candidate Henry

Clay, who considered the bank essential to the

nation’s fiscal stability, was quick to make an

issue of the veto. Clay’s partisans took aim at the

Little Magician, as well, charging that his feats

of legerdemain had secured the throne for a

president who had abused his office. Political

cartoons showed Jackson, Van Buren, and their

cronies assaulting the bank with a battering ram,

Van Buren crowning Jackson, and ‘‘King Andrew the First’’ brandishing the ‘‘veto.’’ These

and similar images helped make the contest one

of the liveliest, if not the best illustrated, in the

nation’s history.

But the National Republicans were no match

for the well-organized party that Van Buren had

helped create. One scholar has suggested that the

majority of American voters still regarded Jackson as their champion, even though they may

well have approved of the bank, which provided

the nation with the stable currency so essential

to its prosperity. The Democrats, now a fullfledged political party, won a solid victory, although by a somewhat smaller margin than in

1828. Jackson was easily reelected, and Van

Buren won a substantial victory over Clay’s running mate, John Sergeant.24

Vice President Van Buren

Jackson had every reason to rejoice at the outcome of the election. The voters had, he believed,

given him a mandate to destroy the bank, and

he was rid of Calhoun. In Van Buren, Jackson

had a vice president more to his liking. Old Hickory respected his second vice president and

seems to have felt sincere affection for him, as

well. Some longtime Jackson cronies were deeply

jealous of the New Yorker, who, as one critic put

it, stuck ‘‘close to the President as a blistering

plaster.’’ 25 But Van Buren was not, as critics of

both men so frequently alleged, the ‘‘powerbehind-the-throne.’’ Jackson was a formidable

tactician in his own right and a man of resolute

convictions, fully capable of determining his

own course of action. Van Buren was not his only

confidant; throughout his two terms as president, Jackson also relied on his ‘‘Kitchen Cabinet,’’ an informal group of trusted friends, supporters, kinsmen, and hangers-on, for advice and

moral support.

In orchestrating the transfer of government deposits from the Bank of the United States to state

depositories, for example, Jackson rejected the

cautious course that Van Buren proposed in

favor of the more precipitate approach advocated by Amos Kendall, the fourth auditor of the

treasury. After Jackson informed his advisers

early in his first term that he intended to remove

the deposits, Kendall urged immediate action.

Van Buren, sensitive to the political and financial

repercussions of a hasty withdrawal but reluctant to challenge the president, advised Jackson

to wait at least until the Twenty-third Congress

convened in December 1833. Apprehensive—

with good reason, as it turned out—that he

would be regarded both as the author of this controversial move and as the pawn of Wall Street

bankers who expected to benefit from the Philadelphia-based bank’s demise, Van Buren was

conspicuously absent from Washington that fall.

The opposition would inevitably ‘‘relieve the

question . . . from the influence of your well deserved popularity with the people,’’ he wrote

Jackson from New York in September, ‘‘by attrib-
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MARTIN VAN BUREN

uting the removal of the deposits to the

solicitat[i]ons of myself and the monied junto in

N. York, and as it is not your habit to play into

the enemies hands you will not I know request

me to come down unless there is some adequate

inducement for my so doing.’’ 26

Van Buren did, however, enjoy a greater measure of influence in the administration than any

previous vice president. He helped Treasury Secretary Roger B. Taney coax the president into a

less belligerent posture when Jackson, outraged

at France’s failure to comply with the 1832 treaty

for the payment of U.S. claims against France,

threatened to seek congressional authorization to

issue letters of marque, a move that Taney feared

might lead to war. Upset that Jackson failed to

follow his advice about France, Secretary of State

Louis McLane resigned in protest. Van Buren

then helped Jackson draft a reply to McLane’s

letter of resignation and suggested his longtime

ally Senator John Forsyth of Georgia to fill the

position. Van Buren shouldered a workload that,

in the words of a biographer, ‘‘would have

crushed lesser men.’’ In addition to his labors in

the Senate, he spent a considerable amount of

time ‘‘advising members of the cabinet, ghosting

significant parts of Jackson’s messages, acting as

the president’s chief advisor on patronage and

foreign affairs, feeling his way around the Kitchen Cabinet, while always keeping his eye on

New York.’’ 27

Senate Committee Elections

Presiding over the Senate was easily Van

Buren’s most challenging and frustrating task,

one that demanded all of his legendary tact and

good humor. Jackson faced sustained opposition

during his second term from an opposition coalition of National Republicans, nullifiers, states’

rights advocates, and eventually from disaffected Democrats who came to regard him as

an overreaching despot. By 1834, these disparate

elements would unite to form a new party, calling themselves ‘‘Whigs’’ to signal their opposition to a chief executive they called King Andrew. The rhetoric was particularly heated in the

Senate, where the opposition commanded a slim

majority after the 1832 election. The coalition’s

ranks included such luminaries as Henry Clay,

the bank’s most avid defender; Massachusetts

Senator Daniel Webster, like Jackson a staunch

unionist but also a defender of the bank; and Calhoun, the author of nullification.28

Van Buren began his duties in the Senate on

December 16, 1833, two weeks after the Twentythird Congress convened. Having served there

from 1821 to 1828, he was familiar with the

body’s customs and procedures. He knew that

the vice president was not expected to attend the

Senate for several days at the beginning of each

Congress, a practice that allowed the Senate to

attend to organizational matters and appoint

committees without interference from the executive branch. But in 1833 a unique combination of

events prevented the Senate from attending to

this important task before Van Buren arrived.

Under normal circumstances, President pro

tempore Hugh Lawson White would have appointed the committee members and chairmen at

the start of the Twenty-third Congress. The rule

adopted in December 1828 governing the appointment of committees directed that ‘‘[t]he

President pro tempore . . . shall appoint the committees of the Senate; but if there be no President

pro tempore, the Senate . . . will proceed, by ballot,’’ with a majority required to elect a committee chairman and a plurality required to elect the

remaining members.29 But White found himself

in a ‘‘delicate’’ position. Although he was a longstanding friend and supporter of the president,

he was becoming disillusioned with the administration, and he particularly resented Jackson’s

designation of Van Buren as his political heir. A

firm defender of the Senate’s prerogatives, he

had refused to let Jackson dictate the composition of a select committee appointed to consider

Clay’s compromise tariff during the previous

Congress, a stand that had deeply offended the

president. White would eventually become a

Whig, but at the start of the Twenty-third Congress, Clay and the rest of the opposition still regarded him as a Jackson man.30

On December 9, White stated that ‘‘he should

have announced the standing committees this

morning . . . had it not been that a resolution was

offered by a Senator [Peleg Sprague] from Maine

. . . which proposed to take away from the presiding officer the power of appointing any com-
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MARTIN VAN BUREN

mittees whatsoever.’’ The Senate adopted the

resolution the following day, returning to its earlier practice of choosing committees by ballot,

with nearly all of the Jacksonians opposing the

change.31

Van Buren finally arrived in Washington on

the evening of December 14 and met with the

president and Tennessee Senator Felix Grundy

the following morning. He learned that Grundy,

painfully aware that his party could no longer

count on a majority in the Senate and reluctant

to proceed with the selection of committees until

Van Buren could provide advice, had offered a

motion to postpone the elections until December

16. Webster had voted in favor of that motion,

along with five other New England senators—

a gesture that Grundy, rightly or wrongly, interpreted as an overture toward the administration.

Webster’s biographer discounts this possibility

but admits that the Massachusetts senator’s support for the administration during the nullification battle, and his differences with Clay over the

tariff issue, had led to widespread speculation

that he intended to form an alliance with the

Jacksonians.

During his December 15 meeting with Van

Buren, therefore, Grundy raised the possibility of

an alliance with Webster, at least for the purposes of electing the Senate’s committees. The

vice president, however, refused to consider collaboration with Webster, the one individual he

genuinely disliked and took pains to avoid. Such

an arrangement would blur the very real differences between the administration and the

New England opposition, he lectured, and

would leave Jackson open to charges that he had

placed politics above principle. Persuaded by the

force of Van Buren’s argument, Grundy deferred

to the vice president. The Senate began the balloting to elect chairmen and members of its

standing committees on December 16, Van

Buren’s first day in the chair. With only a slight

majority, the Anti-Jackson forces did not win

complete control of the committees. Jackson’s

ally, Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri, was reelected chairman of the Military Affairs Committee, and William Wilkins of Pennsylvania was

elected chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. But other coveted chairmanships went to

opposition senators: the Finance Committee to

Webster, the Judiciary Committee to John Clayton of Delaware, and the Committee on Public

Lands to one of Jackson’s most outspoken critics,

George Poindexter of Mississippi.32

The Senate Censures Jackson: Van Buren Versus

Clay

During the four years that Van Buren served

as vice president, the president’s war on the

Bank of the United States was one of the most

important and controversial subjects on the Senate’s agenda. Anticipating Jackson’s order to

withdraw the government deposits, bank president Nicholas Biddle had persuaded the bank’s

directors to order sharp reductions in credit. The

directors subsequently decreed that the bank

would accept only hard currency from state

banks with loans outstanding, a move that

forced state banks to adopt similar measures and

wreaked havoc in the credit-dependent West and

in the nation’s financial markets.33

When Van Buren assumed the chair on December 16, 1833, he found the Senate in a state of

turmoil. The Senate’s December 11 request that

Jackson provide a copy of his withdrawal directive had been met with a curt response that infuriated opposition senators. ‘‘I have yet to learn,’’

Jackson had notified the Senate on December 12,

‘‘under what constitutional authority that branch

of the Legislature has a right to require of me

an account of any communication.’’ On December 27, Clay retaliated with two resolutions to

censure Jackson, which the Senate adopted after

three months of intense and heated debate. Van

Buren’s legendary poise served him well as Clay

and his lieutenants began their attack, dropping

not-so-thinly-veiled hints that the vice president

was also to blame for the wave of bank and business failures sweeping the nation. Smiling and

genial, he took care to maintain order in the

chamber, ordering the galleries cleared when

necessary. To all outward appearances, he

seemed oddly unperturbed at the opprobrium

that Clay and his allies heaped on the

administration.34

Early in the debate, however, Van Buren had

orchestrated a spirited rejoinder to Clay’s attacks. Unable to join in the debate himself, he
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MARTIN VAN BUREN

had persuaded Silas Wright, the New York senator widely regarded as his spokesman in the

Senate, to deliver the administration’s response.

Unmoved by Wright’s plea that ‘‘[t]he administration had several friends in the Senate more

competent for the task than myself,’’ Van Buren

offered to ‘‘reduce all we want to have said to

writing.’’ On January 30, Wright presented an

impassioned defense of Jackson’s conduct and a

ringing condemnation of the bank. His lengthy

address—the product of Van Buren’s pen—emphasized that the question before the public was

‘‘Bank or no Bank, . . . not the disposition of the

Government deposits.’’ The president, he argued, had been ‘‘instrumental in restoring the

constitution of the country to what it was intended to be by those who formed it . . . relieving

that sacred instrument from those constructive

and implied additions under which Congress

have claimed the right to place beyond the reach

of the people, and without responsibility, a

moneyed power.’’ Wright concluded his remarks

with an argument that Jackson partisans would

use to good advantage in the months that followed. ‘‘The country . . . has approved the course

of the Executive, in his attempts to relieve us

from the corrupt and corrupting power and influence of a national bank,’’ the New York senator stressed, ‘‘and it will sustain him in the experiment now making to substitute State institutions for such a fiscal agent.’’

Notwithstanding Wright’s disclaimer that ‘‘he

had given his opinion as an individual,’’ everyone present realized the truth of Daniel Webster’s observation that, knowing the senator’s

‘‘political connexions, his station, and his relations,’’ it was obvious that he had not ‘‘spoken

one word which has not been deliberately

weighed and considered by others.’’ Van Buren’s

words, ably articulated by a senator generally regarded as the ‘‘clearest logician’’ of his day, provided a forceful rebuttal to Clay’s charges. One

senator pronounced the speech ‘‘a hit,’’ while

Webster fretted about the ‘‘effect which the recent debate in the Senate . . . may produce at the

north.’’ 35

But even this triumph of sorts could not alleviate Van Buren’s mounting discomfort as the

lengthy debate dragged on. During one particularly heated March session, Clay addressed him

directly, pleading with him to tell Jackson ‘‘in the

language of truth and sincerity, the actual condition of his bleeding country.’’ Van Buren listened

politely as Clay, obviously playing to the galleries, reminded him of his ‘‘well-known influence’’ in the administration. At the conclusion of

Clay’s remarks, Van Buren handed the gavel to

Hugh Lawson White and stepped down from the

dais. Clay rose to his feet as the vice president

deliberately approached his desk, and the

crowds in the galleries fell silent. Then, with a

deep bow, and a voice dripping with sarcasm,

Van Buren returned fire: ‘‘Mr. Senator, allow me

to be indebted to you for another pinch of your

aromatic Maccoboy.’’ The galleries erupted in a

wave of laughter as Clay, speechless and humiliated, gestured helplessly at the snuff on his desk.

Van Buren helped himself and returned to the

chair, all the while maintaining his studied

composure.36

When the Senate finally voted to censure the

president on March 28, 1834, Van Buren was not

unduly alarmed, convinced that the American

people would not take kindly to this dramatic assault on their hero and champion. But he was

deeply disturbed by the response that Jackson

sent to the Senate in mid-April. The president’s

critics, and even some of his allies, were shocked

to learn that Jackson, as he explained in his infamous ‘‘Protest,’’ considered himself the direct

representative of the American people—responsible, along with his appointees, for ‘‘every species of property belonging to the United States.’’

Worried about the constitutional ramifications of

this novel interpretation of presidential power

and about the effect that the controversial pronouncement might have on his own prospects in

the coming election, Van Buren persuaded Jackson to soften his rhetoric. He was greatly relieved

when the 1834 midterm elections affirmed that

the American people approved of the war that

Jackson waged against the bank on their behalf.

Jackson ultimately killed the bank, as he had predicted he would, but the struggle took its toll on

Van Buren, who eventually came to regard his

duties as president of the opposition-controlled

Senate as ‘‘so distasteful and so wearing’’ that,
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MARTIN VAN BUREN

according to a modern biographer, he suffered

‘‘more than his share of colds and debilitating

upsets.’’ 37

The ‘‘Weasel’’

Other issues before the Senate were equally

troublesome for Van Buren, who was well aware

that opposition senators, as well as some

Jacksonians resentful of his influence, would exploit any apparent failing on his part in the coming election. The abolition movement, which sent

scores of antislavery petitions to Congress during the 1830s, posed particular difficulties for a

northern politician who had supported emancipation in his own state but was anxious to remain on good terms with southern voters and regarded slavery as a matter best left to the states.

Like many northern voters at the time, Van

Buren had little use for the abolitionists, dismissing their 1835–1836 crusade for emancipation in

the District of Columbia as an attempt to ‘‘distract Congress and the country . . . in the midst

of a Presidential canvas.’’

Van Buren’s disclaimers failed to satisfy many

southerners who considered him an abolitionist

at heart, but some were heartened by his June

2, 1836, tie-breaking vote to proceed to the third

and final reading of Calhoun’s bill authorizing

local postal officials to confiscate mailings prohibited by state law. The bill was similar to one

that Jackson had proposed after a mass mailing

of abolitionist literature to Charleston, South

Carolina, caused a near-riot there the previous

summer. But the administration proposal would

have authorized the federal government to determine which materials should be embargoed,

while Calhoun’s would have delegated this function to the states. Calhoun engineered a tied vote

on the motion to proceed to the third reading of

his bill. If he did so to embarrass Van Buren, as

one scholar of the period has suggested, he miscalculated. ‘‘The Vice President promptly voted

yea, thus preventing Southerners from blaming

him when the bill was finally defeated.’’ 38 In

fact, when the measure came up for the final vote

less that a week later, 39 the Senate rejected it, a

development that Van Buren, a shrewd judge of

men and events, may well have anticipated. The

‘‘weasel,’’ as Calhoun now disparagingly referred to Van Buren, 40 had once again outmaneuvered his rival.

A ‘‘Third-Rate Man’’

On May 20, 1835, the Democratic nominating

convention chose Van Buren as the party’s 1836

presidential candidate. The unanimous vote of

the delegates present belied serious divisions in

a party that was, in the words of a contemporary

journalist, comprised of ‘‘the Jackson party,

proper; the Jackson-Van Buren party; the Jackson-anti-Van Buren party.’’ More than a few disaffected Democrats, alarmed at the growth of

presidential power during Jackson’s two terms

and reluctant to countenance more of the same

under Van Buren, had grave reservations about

the Little Magician. But Jackson had made his

preference known. The president was equally

adamant that Richard Mentor Johnson, a Kentucky Democrat and military hero who had

served in both houses of Congress, should be

Van Buren’s running mate, a legacy that cost the

ticket support among southern voters who regarded Johnson as an ‘‘amalgamator’’ because of

his relationship with his slave mistress.

Van Buren was opposed by a field of regional

opposition candidates endorsed by state and

local Whig organizations. The Whigs, still more

a coalition than a party, with no candidate capable of defeating Van Buren outright, hoped that

each regional candidate would so weaken the

Democratic ticket in his own section that the election would be thrown into the House of Representatives. During the campaign, opposition

strategists reviled Van Buren as an abolitionist,

a manipulator, and a trimmer—a ‘‘third-rate

man,’’ in the words of one detractor. David

Crockett, formerly a member of the anti-Jackson

coalition in the House and one of ‘‘Aunt

Matty’s’’ sharpest critics, ridiculed the vice president’s appearance as he presided over the Senate, ‘‘laced up in corsets, such as women in a

town wear, and, if possible, tighter than the best

of them.’’ Cartoonists portrayed Van Buren

clutching the president’s coattails, or donning

Jackson’s too-large greatcoat. More serious detractors warned that Van Buren would continue

the aggrandizement of executive power that

Jackson had begun. Democrats countered with
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MARTIN VAN BUREN

pointed allusions to the Federalists, who had

supported the First Bank of the United States,

they reminded voters, as well as such equally repugnant measures as the Alien and Sedition

Acts. They coupled these attacks with paeans of

praise for the president who had slain the ‘‘monster bank.’’

Van Buren won the election, a triumph that

owed more to the fragmented and poorly coordinated campaigns mounted by the opposition and

to Jackson’s continued popularity than to his

own prestige. He assumed office under a cloud,

overshadowed at his presidential inauguration

by the crowds that flocked to catch a final

glimpse of Old Hickory. He would never be as

beloved or as respected as his predecessor. Richard Mentor Johnson had failed to receive an electoral majority after Virginia’s electors withheld

their votes in protest, forcing the vice-presidential election into the Senate for the first and

only time in the nation’s history. With his controversial personal history and complete disdain

for prevailing norms of social discourse and personal hygiene, Johnson would remain a source

of continuing embarrassment for Van Buren.41

‘‘Martin Van Ruin’’

The nation’s worsening relations with Mexico

posed a serious problem for the new president.

American settlers in Texas had declared their

independence in 1836, precipitating a war with

Mexico, and a request for annexation by the

United States was pending at the time of Van

Buren’s inauguration. Reluctant to involve the

nation in a war that northern antislavery interests would inevitably characterize as a war to extend slavery, but equally reluctant to offend

southern expansionists, he pursued a dilatory

and evasive course until Texas ultimately withdrew its petition.42

Van Buren could not, however, afford to remain equally indecisive with respect to the economic maladies besetting the nation. On the day

that he assumed office, one of the nation’s most

prominent trading houses suspended payments,

the first in a wave of brokerage house failures

that swept the nation during the panic of 1837.

Jackson’s ‘‘hard money’’ fiscal policies were only

partly to blame for the panic. A trade imbalance

and a sharp decline in the price of American cotton had also contributed to the crisis, which was

international in scope. But Whigs were quick to

blame the nation’s economic woes on Jackson

and, by extension, on Van Buren, sometimes

dubbed ‘‘Martin Van Ruin’’ during this period.

He had inherited a situation that one scholar has

characterized as a ‘‘potentially devastating emergency, probably the worst facing any new President on taking office until James Buchanan had

to cope with slavery and the Dred Scott decision

in 1837.’’ Van Buren’s solution was to ‘‘divorce’’

the government from the banking sector by establishing a treasury independent of the state

bank-based system that, contrary to Jackson’s expectations, had fuelled the speculative frenzy of

the mid 1830s. Whigs succeeded in blocking this

initiative until 1840, when Congress finally

passed an independent treasury bill. In the

meantime, the panic gave way to a depression

of unprecedented severity. Up to one third of the

factory workers in some northeastern towns

were thrown out of work; in the South, vast expanses of once productive farmland went

untilled. Prices of food and other necessities skyrocketed, with soup kitchens the only source of

sustenance for many destitute residents of Washington, D.C., and other cities.43

Van Buren lost his 1840 bid for reelection to

William Henry Harrison, a military hero touted

as a ‘‘common man’’ by the Whig strategists who

ran an extraordinarily effective campaign on his

behalf. After one Democrat made the mistake of

dismissing ‘‘Old Tippecanoe’’ as a cider-swilling

rustic content to live in a log cabin, Whigs appropriated these symbols to their advantage. The log

cabin and the cider barrel were powerful images

during the depression, images that contrasted

sharply with the picture that Whigs painted of

Van Buren as a nattily attired, high-living schemer, a ‘‘used-up man’’ hopelessly out of touch

with the American electorate. Out-maneuvered

and out-campaigned, Van Buren’s party lost not

only the White House, but control of both houses

of Congress, as well.44

A ‘‘Used-Up Man’’

Van Buren was staggered by his humiliating

defeat. He had received a mere 60 electoral votes,
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MARTIN VAN BUREN

a dismal showing compared with Harrison’s 234

electoral votes, and a defeat made even more

galling by his failure to carry New York. He gave

little outward sign of his disappointment and extended more than the customary courtesies to

Harrison when ‘‘Old Tip’’ arrived in Washington

shortly before the inauguration. Van Buren was

anxious to return to private life, he cheerfully informed friends, and seemed to enjoy the rousing

welcome that awaited him in New York City.

(He had, of course, conveniently informed

friends that he would arrive in the city on March

23, allowing them plenty of time to prepare a

‘‘surprise’’ in his honor.) But he was deeply

shaken at the outcome of the election, and would

have announced his retirement from politics had

Silas Wright not intervened with a timely lecture

about his responsibilities to the Democratic

party.45

Van Buren retired to Lindenwald, his

Kinderhook estate, cautiously pondering his

prospects for 1844 while maintaining that ‘‘his

ambition had been fully satisfied.’’ But he made

an extensive tour of the southern and western

states in the spring and summer of 1842, drawing

large crowds wherever he went. The voters who

had turned him out of office were amazed to discover that the man demonized by Whigs as an

insensitive dandy and a shrewd, cunning schemer was merely a plain-spoken, unassuming, and

quite ordinary man. ‘‘Instead of a dwarf Dutchman, a little dandy who you might lift in a bandbox,’’ Jackson observed, ‘‘the people found him

a plain man of middle size, plain and affable.’’

Cautiously and discreetly, Van Buren began laying the groundwork for another attempt at the

presidency. The leading contender after the first

ballot at the 1844 Democratic convention, he ultimately lost the nomination to James K. Polk, a

darkhorse candidate who supported the immediate annexation of Texas. Resolved never again

to seek elective office, he focused his energies on

securing New York for Polk.46

After Polk’s inauguration, Van Buren watched

with mounting alarm as disagreement over the

extension of slavery into the territory acquired

from Mexico began to split his increasingly fragile party. He was deeply troubled by southern

Democrats’ claims that Congress could not bar

slavery from the new territories; he had always

believed that the institution, where it already existed, was a matter best left to the individual

states. But when events in Texas offered southern slaveholders the opportunity to extend their

reach toward the Southwest, Van Buren decided

that he could not support the expansion of a

practice that he regarded as evil. In 1848, the Free

Soil party—a coalition of antislavery Democrats,

antislavery Whigs and disaffected Whigs—nominated Van Buren as their presidential candidate.

In this last attempt at elective office, he lost to

Whig candidate Zachary Taylor, having received

a mere 10 percent of the popular vote and no

electoral votes.47

Van Buren died at Lindenwald on July 24,

1862. He had lived long enough to see the southern states secede from the Union, a bitter disappointment for the man who had forged a onceformidable coalition that had transcended sectional lines. His last public statement, made the

year before his death, was a declaration of his

‘‘earnest and vigorous support to the Lincoln

Administration for . . . the maintenance of the

Union and the Constitution’’ in response to

President Lincoln’s call for troops to suppress the

rebellion. Lincoln reciprocated with a stilted

posthumous tribute: ‘‘The grief of his patriotic

friends, will measurably be assuaged by the consciousness that while . . . seeing his end approaching, his prayers were for the restoration

of the authority of the government of which he

had been head, and for peace and good will

among his fellow citizens.’’ 48
[ 117 ]

NOTES 1Donald B. Cole, Martin Van Buren and the American Political System (Princeton, NJ, 1984), p. 188. 2 John Niven, Martin Van Buren: The Romantic Age of American Politics (New York, 1983), p. 298. 3 James A. Hamilton, Reminiscences of James A. Hamilton;

or, Men and Events, at Home and Abroad, During Three Quarters of a Century (New York, 1869), pp. 42, 97; Arthur M.

Schlesinger, Jr., The Age of Jackson (Boston, 1945), pp. 47–

50; Robert V. Remini, Martin Van Buren and the Making of

the Democratic Party (New York, 1959; reprint of 1951 edition), pp. 2–3; Niven, pp. 7–8. 4 Schlesinger, p. 49; Carl Sifakis, The Dictionary of Historic

Nicknames (New York, 1984), p. 508. 5Also spelled Hoes.

6 Niven, pp. 1–22; John C. Fitzpatrick, ed., The Autobiography of Martin Van Buren (New York, 1973; reprint of 1920

edition), 1:9–10. 7 Niven, pp. 23–25, 60, 72, 162–63. Four of the five sons

born to Martin and Hannah Van Buren survived infancy. 8 Ibid., pp. 26–52.

9Remini, Martin Van Buren, pp. 5–11; Niven, p. 88. 10 Niven, pp. 102–17.

11Remini, Martin Van Buren, pp. 36–92. For more on the

1824 election, see also Chapter 7, ‘‘John C. Calhoun,’’ pp.

86–87. 12Remini, Martin Van Buren, pp. 91–113. For more about

the Panama mission, see Chapter 7 of this volume, ‘‘John

C. Calhoun,’’ pp. 88–89. 13 Ibid., pp. 120–32; Robert V. Remini, Andrew Jackson and

the Course of American Freedom, 1822–1832 (New York, 1981),

pp. 113–15. 14Remini, Martin Van Buren, pp. 192–93; Remini, Jackson

and the Course of American Freedom, pp. 116–42. 15Remini, Martin Van Buren, pp. 170–85. See also Chapter

7, ‘‘John C. Calhoun,’’ p. 93. 16 Fitzpatrick, ed., 1:220–24.

17Remini, Jackson and the Course of American Freedom, pp.

159–66. 18This incident is also discussed in Chapter 7, ‘‘John C.

Calhoun,’’ p. 95. 19 Niven, pp. 232–71; Remini, Jackson and the Course of

American Freedom, pp. 291–320. 20 Niven, pp. 272–95; Remini, Jackson and the Course of

American Freedom, pp. 345–55. 21 Niven, pp. 295–98.

22Remini, Jackson and the Course of American Freedom, pp.

355–58; Niven, pp. 298–301. 23 Niven, pp. 301–29. For a more detailed account of the

nullification crisis, see Chapter 7 of this volume, ‘‘John C.

Calhoun,’’ pp. 94–96. 24Robert V. Remini, Andrew Jackson and the Course of

American Democracy, 1833–1845 (New York, 1984), pp. 374–

92; Robert V. Remini, Andrew Jackson and the Bank War: A

Study in the Growth of Presidential Power (New York, 1967),

pp. 1–108. 25Remini, Jackson and the Course of American Democracy,

p. 46. 26Remini, Jackson and the Bank War, passim; Niven, pp. 304,

330–47. 27 Niven, pp. 368–72, 402; Remini, Jackson and the Course

of American Democracy, pp. 201–18. 28At the beginning of the Twenty-second Congress, 20 of

the Senate’s 48 members belonged to the Jackson coalition;

of the remainder, 26 belonged to the Anti-Jackson party and

2 were Nullifiers. U.S., Congress, Senate, The Senate, 1789–

1989, by Robert C. Byrd, S. Doc., 100–20, 100th Cong., 1st

sess., vol. 4, Historical Statistics, 1789–1992, 1993, p. 416. 29U.S., Congress, Senate, Journal, 20th Cong., 2d sess., p.

51.30 Nancy N. Scott, ed., A Memoir of Hugh Lawson White,

Judge of the Supreme Court of Tennessee, Member of the Senate

of the United States . . . With Selections from His Speeches and

Correspondence (Philadelphia, 1856), pp. 265–300; Remini,

Jackson and the Course of American Democracy, p. 39; Niven,

p. 356. 31U.S., Congress, Senate, Register of Debates in Congress,

23d Cong., 1st sess., pp. 19–29; Senate Journal, 23d Cong.,

1st sess., p. 39. 32 Niven, pp. 356–58; Remini, Jackson and the Course of

American Democracy, pp. 116–18; Register of Debates in Congress, 23d Cong., 1st sess., pp. 39–44; Senate Journal, 23d

Cong., 1st sess., pp. 39–43; Maurice G. Baxter, One and Inseparable: Daniel Webster and the Union (Cambridge, 1984),

pp. 224–28. 33 Niven, pp. 333–54; Remini, Jackson and the Bank War, pp.

109–53. 34U.S., Congress, Senate, The Senate, 1789–1989: Addresses

on the History of the United States Senate, by Robert C. Byrd,

S. Doc. 100–20, 100th Cong., 1st sess., vol. 1, 1989, pp. 127–

32; Niven, p. 354.
[ 118 ]

MARTIN VAN BUREN

35 John A. Garraty, Silas Wright (New York, 1970; reprint

of 1949 edition), pp. 114–18; Register of Debates in Congress,

23d Cong., 1st sess., pp. 397–405. 36Robert V. Remini, Henry Clay: Statesman for the Union

(New York, 1991), pp. 452–53; Niven, pp. 354–55. 37Byrd, The Senate, 1:127–41, 145–47; Niven, pp. 365–66;

Remini, Jackson and the Course of American Democracy, pp.

150–60; Remini, Jackson and the Bank War, pp. 152–53. 38 Niven, pp. 384–85, 390; Glyndon G. Van Deusen, The

Jacksonian Era (New York, 1959), p. 107–9; Cole, pp. 269–

72; Senate Journal, 24th Cong., 1st sess., pp. 396–400. 39 Senate Journal, 24th Cong., 1st sess., pp. 414–16.

40 Cole, p. 264.

41 Ibid., pp. 256–90; Niven, pp. 386–402. For a more detailed account of the 1836 election, see Chapter 9 of this volume, ‘‘Richard Mentor Johnson,’’ pp. 126–27. 42 Cole, pp. 317–21.

43 Ibid., pp. 285–360; Sifakis, p. 508; Niven, pp. 412–61.

44 Cole, pp. 368–73.

45 Ibid., pp. 372–75; Niven, pp. 471–83.

46 Niven, pp. 484–548.

47 Ibid., pp. 542–90; Cole, pp. 407–18.

48 Niven, pp. 611–12.
[ 119 ]

Chapter 9

RICHARD MENTOR JOHNSON

1837–1841
RICHARD MENTOR JOHNSON
[ 121 ]

Chapter 9

RICHARD MENTOR JOHNSON

9th Vice President: 1837–1841

. . . I pray you to assure our friends that the humblest of us do not believe that a lucky random

shot, even if it did hit Tecumseh, qualifies a man for the Vice Presidency.

—TENNESSEE SUPREME COURT CHIEF JUSTICE JOHN CATRON TO ANDREW JACKSON,

MARCH 21, 1835.1

The United States Senate elected Richard Mentor Johnson of Kentucky the nation’s ninth vice

president on February 8, 1837. His selection

marked the first and only time the Senate has exercised its prerogative under the U.S. Constitution’s Twelfth Amendment, which provides, ‘‘if

no person have a majority, then from the two

highest numbers on the list, the Senate shall

choose the Vice-President.’’ Johnson became

Martin Van Buren’s running mate after three

decades in the House and Senate, a congressional

career spanning the administrations of five presidents from Thomas Jefferson through Andrew

Jackson. Detractors alleged, however, that he

owed his nomination solely to the dubious claim

that he killed the Shawnee chieftain Tecumseh

in 1813 at the Battle of the Thames.

Johnson wielded substantial power in the

House of Representatives during Jackson’s two

administrations, and his successful decade-long

campaign to end imprisonment for debt won

him a national following. For most of his career,

the voters of his district held him in great esteem.

They forgave him when he sponsored the 1816

Compensation Act, one of the most unpopular

laws ever enacted by Congress, as well as on

more than one occasion when he lined his own

pockets with government funds.

During the 1836 presidential campaign and

Johnson’s single term as vice president, however,

his popularity dissipated. The plain manners and

habits that had once endeared him to his constituents and supporters, combined with his controversial personal life and unfortunate penchant

for lending his influence in support of questionable undertakings, proved serious liabilities. A

campaign to remove him from the Democratic

ticket in 1840 failed only because Van Buren,

while no Johnson enthusiast, was unwilling to alienate the eastern labor vote and because party

leaders were reluctant to force a potentially divisive confrontation. The 1840 election, resulting in

a decisive victory for the Whig ticket headed by

Johnson’s former comrade-in-arms, William

Henry Harrison, signalled the end of the Kentuckian’s long and often controversial career.

A Frontier Youth

Little is known of Richard Mentor Johnson’s

early years. Nineteenth-century campaign biographies and a modern study based on these earlier accounts are heavily colored by the heroic

rhetoric that Johnson and his supporters employed throughout his career.2 Although he was,

as he later claimed, ‘‘born in a cane-brake and

cradled in a sap trough,’’ 3 the Johnsons were a

powerful family of substantial means. The future

vice president was born on October 17, 1780, at

Beargrass, a Virginia frontier outpost near the

site of present-day Louisville, Kentucky.4 His father, Robert Johnson, had migrated from Orange

County, Virginia, with his wife, Jemima Suggett
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RICHARD MENTOR JOHNSON

Johnson, in 1779. By 1812 Robert Johnson was

one of the largest landholders in Kentucky. He

served in the Virginia house of burgesses, attended both the 1785 convention that petitioned

the Virginia legislature for Kentucky statehood

and the 1792 Kentucky constitutional convention, and represented his district in the state legislature for several years after Kentucky’s admission to the Union. After three of Richard Mentor

Johnson’s brothers achieved national office—

James and John Telemachus served in the House

of Representatives and Benjamin was a federal

district judge—critics charged that the family

sought ‘‘power in every hole and corner of the

state.’’ The Johnsons proved remarkably effective in obtaining government contracts and other

favors for family members and allies, and their

financial interests in local newspapers such as

Amos Kendall’s Georgetown Minerva and the

Georgetown Patriot added to their considerable

influence.5

Richard Mentor Johnson received enough of an

early education to qualify him for apprenticeships reading law under Kentucky jurists George

Nicholas and James Brown, 6 both former students of Thomas Jefferson’s legendary teacher

George Wythe.7 The allusions that flavor his letters and speeches suggest at least a passing familiarity with the classics.8 After his admission

to the bar in 1802, he returned to the family’s

home near Great Crossings, Kentucky, to practice law.9 He later operated a retail store at Great

Crossings and engaged in other business and

speculative ventures with brothers James, Benjamin, and Joel. These efforts, together with a

sizeable bequest of land and slaves from his father, eventually made Johnson a wealthy man,

although he never identified with the privileged

classes. He routinely waived legal fees for the indigent land claimants he represented in suits

against wealthy speculators, 10 and his home was

a mecca for disabled veterans, widows, and orphans seeking his assistance. No one was refused

hospitality at Blue Spring Farm, his estate near

Great Crossings. An acquaintance ‘‘heard men

say they were treated so well by Col. Johnson

when they went out there, they loved to go.’’ 11

Early accounts describe the future vice president as a gentle and personable man, with a

pleasant, if nondescript, appearance. Washington socialite Margaret Bayard Smith found him

‘‘[t]he most tender hearted, mild, affectionate

and benevolent of men . . . whose countenance

beams with good will to all, whose soul seems

to feed on the milk of human kindness.’’ He

‘‘might have been a fashionable man,’’ she speculated, if not for his retiring nature and ‘‘plain

. . . dress and manners.’’ 12 He possessed, in the

words of John C. Calhoun’s biographer Charles

M. Wiltse, ‘‘the rare quality of being personally

liked by everyone.’’ 13

Soldier and Legislator

From 1804 to 1806, Johnson served as a delegate from Scott County in the Kentucky house

of representatives, where he supported legislation to protect settlers from land speculators.14

Elected to the United States House of Representatives from the district encompassing Shelby,

Scott, and Franklin counties in 1806, he served

six consecutive terms, retiring from the House in

1819 to seek election to the Senate.15 Throughout

his career, Johnson professed allegiance to the

principles of ‘‘Thomas Jefferson, the patriarch of

republicanism,’’ and correspondence from his

early years in Congress suggests that he enjoyed

a cordial acquaintance with Jefferson.16 In a rambling letter of February 1808, Johnson recommended a candidate for federal office and assured the president that ‘‘I feel in you a confidence, & attachment which is indescribable &

can never be excelled.’’ ‘‘Having procured the

Books mentioned in the memorandum from

you,’’ the young congressman suggested, ‘‘a

course of Historical reading would be gratefully

received.’’ 17 The acquaintance continued after

Jefferson’s retirement. In 1813, Johnson wrote

that he ‘‘constantly recollected how much mankind are indebted to you,’’ adding somewhat

self-consciously that ‘‘I make no apologies for indulging feelings which I really feel.’’ 18 During

the War of 1812, he apprised the retired president of military developments and solicited his

counsel ‘‘as to the manner of reading, & the

Books to read, particularly as it respects Military

history.’’ 19

As the representative of a frontier, predominantly agrarian district, Johnson shared his con-
[ 123 ]

RICHARD MENTOR JOHNSON

stituents’ concern for the security of the interior

settlements, as well as their inherent distrust of

bankers, speculators, and other monied interests.

An ‘‘administration man’’ with respect to defense and foreign policy matters, he voted

against Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin’s proposal to recharter the Bank of the United States during the Madison administration.20

‘‘Great monied monopolies,’’ he explained much

later, ‘‘controlled by persons, irresponsible to the

people, are liable to exercise a dangerous influence, and corporate bodies generally, especially

when they have the power to effect the circulating medium of the country, do not well comport

with genius of a republic.’’ 21 He was a hardworking representative, popular among the voters of his district but otherwise undistinguished,

until his heroism in the War of 1812 brought him

national acclaim.22

Johnson was one of the vociferous young congressmen, led by his fellow Kentuckian House

Speaker Henry Clay, known collectively as the

‘‘warhawks.’’ During the Twelfth Congress, this

group urged military redress for British violations of American frontiers and shipping

rights, 23 and in June 1812 they voted to declare

war against Great Britain.24 Not wishing ‘‘to be

idle during the recess of Congress,’’ 25 Johnson

raised and led two mounted regiments that

joined the northwestern army under the command of his future rival, General William Henry

Harrison, in the fall of 1813. Johnson’s Kentucky

volunteers crossed the Canadian border in pursuit of a combined British and Shawnee force led

by General Henry Proctor and overran the

enemy position at the Thames River on October

5, 1813. A heroic cavalry charge led by Johnson

and his brother James ensured a decisive American victory, in which Tecumseh, the Shawnee

leader who had preyed upon American settlements in the Northwest since 1806, was among

the presumed casualties. Although his remains

were never identified, some witnesses claimed

after the fact that Johnson had killed Tecumseh.26

Johnson returned to Congress a hero on March

7, 1814, still suffering from the extensive wounds

that plagued him for the rest of his life. He

turned his attention to war-related matters: the

relief of veterans, widows and orphans; the compensation of veterans for service-related property losses; and the improvement of the young

nation’s military establishment.27 Johnson’s newfound popularity and his characteristic willingness to accede to his constituents’ demands ensured his political survival through the furor

over the 1816 Compensation Act, which for the

first time granted members of Congress an annual salary, rather than paying them only for the

days Congress was in session. The measure became controversial when a newspaper estimated

that the new system would cost the government

an additional $400,000 annually, and Congress

repealed the law the next year. Although Johnson sponsored the bill, he quickly repudiated the

measure after the public outcry cost many of his

colleagues their seats.28

His nationalist perspective heightened by the

war, Johnson joined with Henry Clay in advocating protection for frontier products and federal

funding for internal improvements to give western producers readier access to eastern markets.29 In 1817, he voted to override Madison’s

veto of the bonus bill, a proposal to fund internal

improvements from the bonus and dividends

from the Bank of the United States.30 Widely regarded as an expert in military affairs as a consequence of his valor under fire, Johnson was

one of several westerners whom President James

Monroe considered to head the War Department

after Henry Clay declined the post in 1817.31 The

nomination ultimately went to John C. Calhoun

of South Carolina, but Johnson enjoyed considerable leverage over the department as chairman

from 1817 to 1819 of the House Committee on

Expenditures in the Department of War.32 In

1818, Calhoun authorized an expedition to plant

a military outpost at the mouth of the Yellowstone River, near the current site of Bismarck,

North Dakota, and awarded the transportation

and supply contract to the chairman’s brother

and partner, James Johnson.

The Yellowstone expedition departed from St.

Louis just as the panic of 1819 brought postwar

economic expansion to a halt and shortly before

Treasury Secretary William H. Crawford issued

a December 1819 report projecting a $5 million

budget deficit. The venture grossly exceeded anticipated costs (in large part because of James
[ 124 ]

RICHARD MENTOR JOHNSON

Johnson’s malfeasance and Richard Mentor

Johnson’s repeated pleas for further advances).

As a result, the expedition provided Calhoun’s

enemies in Congress with potent ammunition for

an attack that ultimately led to drastic reductions

in the War Department budget.33 After Johnson

requested yet another contract for James in the

summer of 1820, Calhoun finally advised the

president that, ‘‘to avoid all censure, the contracts ought to be made on public proposals.’’ 34

Johnson retired from the House long before the

Yellowstone expedition stalled at Council Bluffs,

Iowa, but the eventual outcry over the venture

failed to diminish his stature in Kentucky.35 As

Monroe had earlier acknowledged, ‘‘the people

of the whole western country’’ considered the expedition ‘‘a measure . . . to preserve the peace

of the frontier.’’ 36 The local press celebrated ‘‘the

Herculean undertakings of the Johnsons,’’ while

accusing their critics of ‘‘political animosity.’’ 37

On December 10, 1819, the Kentucky legislature

elected Johnson to fill the unexpired portion of

John J. Crittenden’s Senate term.38

Relief for Debtors

Johnson began his Senate career heavily in

debt. He mortgaged several properties to the

Bank of the United States to settle accounts outstanding from the Yellowstone expedition and

other speculative ventures. In 1822 Bank counsel

Henry Clay won a substantial judgment against

the Johnson brothers.39 Still, Johnson weathered

the depression better than many of his constituents and others who were left destitute after the

panic of 1819 severely depressed credit and agricultural prices. Thousands of overextended

farmers and laborers found themselves pressed

by increasingly frantic creditors during the depression that followed the panic. Imprisonment

for debt was a common punishment in state and

local courts during the early nineteenth century,

although few debtors were incarcerated for outstanding federal obligations.40

Both Johnson’s own experience and the suffering in his district and elsewhere convinced him

that ‘‘the principle is deemed too dangerous to

be tolerated in a free government, to permit a

man for any pecuniary consideration, to dispose

of the liberty of his equal.’’ 41 The movement to

end debt imprisonment began long before Johnson, on December 10, 1822, introduced a Senate

bill to abolish use of the punishment by federal

courts. He did, however, become one of the acknowledged leaders of the effort, first through

his success in persuading the Kentucky legislature to abolish the practice in 1821 and then with

his decade-long campaign in Congress that in

1832 achieved enactment of a federal statute.42

Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri later

explained that the impact of the 1832 law extended far beyond the federal courts ‘‘in the force

of example and influence.’’ The statute ‘‘led to

the cessation of the practice of imprisoning debtors, in all, or nearly all, of the States and Territories of the Union.’’ 43

A second legislative accomplishment that

brought Johnson national distinction was a report that he prepared during his final Senate

term, as chairman of the Committee on Post Offices and Post Roads, in response to a flood of

petitions from religious congregations in the East

demanding the suspension of Sunday mail deliveries. The January 19, 1829, report, widely reprinted in the press, argued that, as ‘‘a civil, and

not a religious institution,’’ the government

could take no action sanctioning the religious

convictions or practices of any denomination.

After leaving the Senate, Johnson continued his

crusade as a member of the House of Representatives. In 1830, as chairman of the House Committee on Post Offices and Post Roads, he submitted

a second report. This, like the earlier Senate report, brought him widespread acclaim in the

labor press as a champion of religious liberty.

Some contemporaries doubted Johnson’s authorship of the second report, however; and his biographer has conceded that Johnson’s friends in the

Post Office Department, including his landlord

O.B. Brown, may have influenced his stance.44

During his ten years in the Senate from 1819

to 1829, Johnson gravitated toward the coalition,

then emerging under the skilled leadership of

Martin Van Buren, that eventually became the

Democratic party, as well as toward the party’s

future standard bearer, Andrew Jackson.45 The

acquaintance dated at least from 1814, when

Johnson wrote to Jackson at New Orleans to recommend a supply contractor.46 He was Jackson’s
[ 125 ]

RICHARD MENTOR JOHNSON

impassioned, if ineffective, defender in 1819

when Clay urged the House of Representatives

to censure the general for his execution of two

British subjects during the Seminole War.47 Senator Johnson declared for Jackson after the 1824

presidential election was thrown into the House

of Representatives 48—and, by some accounts,

after the candidate hinted that, if elected, he intended to name Johnson secretary of war.49

When the House elected John Quincy Adams

president, Johnson broke the news to Jackson

that the new president had named as secretary

of state Henry Clay, who had voted for Adams

in spite of the Kentucky voters’ clear preference

for Jackson.50 Johnson was absent when the Senate approved Clay’s nomination on March 7,

1825.51 A Washington journalist later reported

that, after the election, Johnson ‘‘determined to

enter the ranks of the opposition.’’ 52 He had become, and would remain for the rest of his life,

a steadfast ‘‘Jacksonian.’’

Johnson was reelected to a full Senate term in

1822 but in 1828 lost his reelection bid because

Kentucky Democrats feared that controversy

over his domestic life would jeopardize Jackson’s

chances in the national election. Johnson never

married. Family tradition recounts that he ended

an early romance, vowing revenge for his mother’s interference, after Jemima Johnson pronounced his intended bride unworthy of the

family.53 He later lived openly with Julia Chinn,

a mulatto slave raised by his mother and inherited from his father, until her death from cholera

in 1833. Johnson freely acknowledged the relationship, as well as the two daughters born to

the union, and entrusted Julia with full authority

over his business affairs during his absences

from Blue Spring Farm.54

The relationship provoked little comment in

Johnson’s congressional district, but as a member

of the Senate, with an expanded constituency, he

was vulnerable to criticism by large slaveholders

and others who disapproved of open miscegenation. Threatened press exposure of the senator’s

personal life during the 1828 campaign unnerved

Jackson supporters in the Kentucky legislature.

They therefore attempted to dissociate the national candidate from the now-controversial

Johnson, joining forces with the Adams faction

to oppose Johnson’s reelection and ultimately

forcing state legislator John Telemachus Johnson

to withdraw his brother’s name from the contest.55 The defeat ended Johnson’s Senate career.

In his three later attempts to return to the Senate,

he lost to Henry Clay in 1831 and 1848 and to

John J. Crittenden in 1842.56

In the House Again

In 1829 the voters in Johnson’s old district returned him to the House of Representatives, 57

where he remained during Jackson’s two administrations. After chairing the Committee on Post

Offices and Post Roads from 1829 to 1833, he

served as chairman of the Committee on Military

Affairs from 1833 to 1837.58 An acknowledged

power in the House, Johnson offered his services

and advice to the administration on several occasions, albeit with noticeably less success than the

more politically astute Martin Van Buren.59

Johnson was, by nature, a conciliator, whose

vehement rhetoric belied a tendency to avoid politically risky confrontations. In 1830 he urged

Jackson to sign a bill to fund an extension of the

national road from Lexington to Maysville, Kentucky, warning in emphatic terms that ‘‘you will

crush your friends in Kentucky if you veto that

Bill.’’ When the president proved intransigent,

he conceded that a tax to fund the Maysville

Road ‘‘would be worse than a veto.’’ He failed

to vote when the House sustained the veto on

May 18, 1830.60

An early aspirant for the 1832 Democratic presidential nomination, Johnson refocused his

sights on the vice-presidency after Jackson announced that he would seek a second term.61

New York labor leader Ely Moore and members

of the Workingmen’s party supported Johnson

for vice president, 62 but Democratic strategists

questioned the wisdom of adding him to the ticket. A correspondent of Navy Secretary John

McLean noted that ‘‘Gen. Jackson . . . is in feeble

health; and may not live to the end of his second

term’’ and questioned whether ‘‘Colo. Johnson’s

calibre will answer for so high a station.’’ 63 Despite clear indications that Van Buren would replace Calhoun as the vice-presidential candidate,

however, Johnson abandoned his campaign only

after Jackson’s adviser William B. Lewis con-
[ 126 ]

RICHARD MENTOR JOHNSON

vinced him to do so.64 When, on May 22, 1832,

the Democratic convention tapped Van Buren as

Jackson’s running mate on the first ballot, Johnson received only 26 votes from the Kentucky,

Indiana, and Illinois delegations—a poor showing compared to Van Buren’s 208 votes and the

49 votes of former House Speaker and Calhoun

ally Philip P. Barbour. Jackson and Van Buren

then went on to win an easy victory in the general election.65

As early as April 1833, shortly after Jackson’s

new term began, Duff Green’s Political Register

reported that ‘‘the western States are flooded

with handbills nominating Col. Richard M. Johnson, of Kentucky, as a candidate for the Presidency in 1836.’’ Johnson’s friend William

Emmons published The Authentic Biography of

Colonel Richard M. Johnson in 1833, and Richard

Emmons’ play, Tecumseh, of the Battle of the

Thames, soon followed. A poem by Richard

Emmons supplied the slogan that Johnson enthusiasts trumpeted in the 1836 and 1840 campaigns: ‘‘Rumpsey, Dumpsey, Colonel Johnson

killed Tecumseh!’’

The candidate delighted in these overblown

celebrations of his military prowess, boasting

after a well-attended and well-received performance of Tecumseh that he had ‘‘more friends than

ever.’’ 66 But Johnson’s following was based

upon more than his military accomplishments,

exaggerated though they were by his eager promoters. His efforts to abolish imprisonment for

debt and to continue Sunday mail deliveries ensured him the support of the workingmen’s

movement in the urban centers, and his ‘‘hardmoney,’’ antibank fiscal policy appealed to the

party’s ‘‘radical’’ faction. He also enjoyed a

strong following in the West, where Jackson’s

‘‘Kitchen Cabinet’’ advisers Amos Kendall and

Francis P. Blair considered him the only candidate who could neutralize Clay’s overwhelming appeal.67 Party regulars understood, however, that in selecting Van Buren as his running

mate in 1832, Jackson had named the diminutive

New Yorker his successor. Johnson eventually

acceded to the president’s wishes with his usual

equanimity, refusing to run as an opposition candidate when approached in 1834 by a coalition

of disaffected Tennesseans led by David Crockett

and John Bell.68 Blair and Kendall quietly

changed their tactics in hopes of securing the

vice-presidential nomination for ‘‘Old Dick.’’ 69

Perhaps they hoped that Johnson would thus become the ‘‘heir apparent’’ to succeed Van Buren,

or perhaps they merely recognized the futility of

opposing Old Hickory’s will. Van Buren served

as Jackson’s ‘‘right hand’’ during his term as vice

president, but this arrangement resulted more

from his longstanding relationship with the

president than from any commonly held assumptions regarding the role of the vice

president.

1836 Election

When the Democratic convention met at Baltimore on May 22, 1835, to ratify Van Buren’s

nomination and select his running mate, Johnson’s only serious opponent for the vice-presidential nomination was former senator William

Cabell Rives of Virginia, who had served as minister to France during Jackson’s first administration. Southern Democrats, and Van Buren himself, strongly preferred Rives. Although he

counted ‘‘the gallant Colonel . . . among the bravest of the brave,’’ Van Buren also feared that

Johnson could not ‘‘be relied upon to check the

cupidity of his friends.’’ Jackson, however, concerned about the threat that opposition candidate Hugh Lawson White posed among western voters, strongly preferred his Kentucky lieutenant. His anger over Rives’ diplomatic failures

and his gratitude for Johnson’s longstanding loyalty and support also weighed heavily in his decision. In spite of the president’s considerable influence, however, Johnson received the required

two-thirds vote only after New York Senator

Silas Wright prevailed upon nondelegate Edward Rucker to cast the fifteen votes of the absent Tennessee delegation in his favor.70

The choice provoked bitter dissention in

Democratic ranks. Virginia delegate Dr. R.C.

Mason questioned Johnson’s fidelity to the party’s ‘‘great republican principles’’ and announced that his delegation would not support

the nomination.71 Johnson’s letter of acceptance,

explaining that ‘‘I consider the views of president Jackson, on the tariff and internal improvements, as founded in true wisdom,’’ failed to
[ 127 ]

RICHARD MENTOR JOHNSON

mollify the Virginians.72 Van Buren’s ally Albert

Balch had previously warned Jackson that ‘‘I do

not think from what I hear daily that the nomination of Johnson for the Vice Presidency will be

popular in any of the slave holding states except

Ky. on account of his former domestic relations,’’ 73 and a Van Buren correspondent later

predicted that ‘‘Col. Johnson’s . . . weight would

absolutely sink the whole party in Virginia.’’ 74

Tennessee Supreme Court Chief Justice John

Catron warned Jackson that Johnson was ‘‘not

only positively unpopular in Tennessee . . . but

affirmatively odious’’ and begged the president

‘‘to assure our friends that the humblest of us do

not believe that a lucky random shot, even if it

did hit Tecumseh, qualifies a man for the Vice

Presidency.’’ He predicted that ‘‘the very moment Col. J. is announced, the newspapers will

open upon him with facts, that he had endeavored often to force his daughters into society,

that the mother in her life time, and they now,

rode in carriages, and claimed equality.’’ 75

The Whigs still formed a loose coalition bound

by mutual opposition to Jackson’s antibank policies but lacked the party unity or organizational

strength to field a single ticket or define a coherent platform. Instead of a single nominee, they

offered a series of sectional candidates nominated by local caucuses in hopes of defeating

Van Buren in each region and throwing the election into the House of Representatives. The Whig

presidential candidates were Daniel Webster,

Tennessee Senator and former Jacksonian Hugh

Lawson White, and Johnson’s former commander, General William Henry Harrison. For

vice president, opposition caucuses nominated

New York Anti-Mason Francis Granger and

former Democrat John Tyler of Virginia.76

In the bitter campaign that followed, Whigs attempted to attract disaffected Democrats by focusing on personalities rather than issues. In the

South, opposition strategists raised the specter of

abolition against Van Buren, 77 while attacking

Johnson as a ‘‘great amalgamator,’’ who had

‘‘habitually and practically illustrated’’ abolitionist principles in his own home.78 Johnson not

only cost his party southern votes, but he also

failed to attract western votes as anticipated. His

own state went for Harrison and Granger. In

spite of these disappointments, however, Van

Buren still managed a narrow victory with just

over fifty percent of the popular vote.79

On February 8, 1837, President pro tempore of

the Senate William R. King of Alabama proclaimed to the members of Congress assembled

in the House chamber to tally the electoral returns that Martin Van Buren, with 170 electoral

votes, was the ‘‘duly elected President of the

United States.’’ Johnson, however, received only

147 electoral votes, 70 more than his closest contender, Francis Granger, but one less than the

number required to elect. The Virginia electors

had remained loyal to Van Buren, who carried

the state by a close margin, but cast their votes

in the vice-presidential contest for William Smith

of Alabama. After King announced that ‘‘it devolved on the Senate of the United States . . . to

choose . . . a Vice President of the United States,’’

the Senate retired to its own chamber.80

After reassembling to elect the vice president,

the Senate approved Tennessee Senator Felix

Grundy’s resolution to establish the voting procedure:

[T]he Secretary of the Senate shall call the names

of Senators in alphabetical order; and each Senator will, when his name is called, name the person for whom he votes; and if a majority of the

whole number of Senators shall vote for either

the said Richard M. Johnson or Francis Granger,

he shall be declared by the presiding officer of

the Senate constitutionally elected Vice President

of the United States.

Secretary of the Senate Asbury Dickins called the

roll, with 49 of the 52 senators present voting

along strict party lines: 33 for Johnson, 16 for

Granger. President pro tempore King then announced that Johnson had been ‘‘constitutionally

elected Vice President of the United States for

four years, commencing on the fourth day of

March, 1837.’’ 81

Vice President

Notified of his election, 82 Johnson responded

that his ‘‘gratification was heightened from the

conviction that the Senate, in the exercise of their

constitutional prerogative, concurred with and

confirmed the wishes of both the States and the

people.’’ He explained that he had never paid
[ 128 ]

RICHARD MENTOR JOHNSON

‘‘special regard to the minuteness of rules and

orders, so necessary to the progress of business,

and so important to the observance of the presiding officer’’ during his three decades in Congress. He was nonetheless confident—in words

reminiscent of Jefferson’s forty years earlier—

that ‘‘the intelligence of the Senate will guard the

country from any injury that might result from

the imperfections of the presiding officer.’’ While

he hoped ‘‘that there may be always sufficient

unanimity’’ to prevent equal divisions in the

Senate, he would perform his duty ‘‘without embarrassment’’ in the event that he was called

upon to cast a tie-breaking vote.83

President pro tempore King administered the

oath of office to Johnson in the Senate chamber

at 10:00 a.m. on March 4, 1837. In a brief address

to the Senate, the new vice president observed

that ‘‘there is not, perhaps, a deliberative assembly existing, where the presiding officer has less

difficulty in preserving order.’’ He attributed this

characteristic to ‘‘the intelligence and patriotism

of the members who compose the body, and that

personal respect and courtesy which have always been extended from one member to another in its deliberations.’’ At the conclusion of

his remarks, the ceremony of newly elected senators presenting their credentials to the Senate

and taking the oath of office was temporarily interrupted by the arrival of President-elect Van

Buren and his party. The senators therefore

joined the procession to the east portico of the

Capitol for the presidential inauguration.84

Contemporary witnesses and scholarly accounts of the day’s festivities mention Richard

Mentor Johnson only in passing, if at all. The outgoing president, worn and emaciated from two

terms in office and a recent debilitating illness

but still towering over his immaculately attired

successor, was clearly the focus of attention.

Thomas Hart Benton, a dedicated Jackson supporter, later recounted the ‘‘acclamations and

cheers bursting from the heart and filling the air’’

that erupted from the crowd as Jackson took his

leave of the ceremony. From Benton’s perspective, ‘‘the rising was eclipsed by the setting

sun.’’ 85

Johnson’s friendship with Jackson and his stature in the House had assured him access to the

president and some measure of influence during

Jackson’s administrations. The controversy surrounding his nomination, however, together

with his disappointing showing in the 1836 election, his longstanding rivalry with Van Buren,

and the constitutional limitations of his new office severely curtailed his role in the Van Buren

administration. Histories of Van Buren’s presidency do not indicate that he ever sought his vice

president’s counsel.86 Johnson’s duties were confined to the Senate chamber, where he watched

from the presiding officer’s chair as Senate Finance Committee Chairman Silas Wright of New

York introduced Van Buren’s economic

program.87

Johnson was, however, willing to use on behalf

of his friends and cronies the limited influence

he still commanded. When Lewis Tappan asked

the vice president to present an abolition petition

to the Senate, Johnson, who owned several

slaves, averred that ‘‘considerations of a moral

and political, as well as of a constitutional nature’’ prevented him from presenting ‘‘petitions

of a character evidently hostile to the union, and

destructive of the principles on which it is founded.’’ 88 ‘‘Constitutional considerations’’ did not,

however, prevent him from lobbying Congress

on behalf of Indian subagent Samuel Milroy

when Milroy, an Indiana Democrat who performed ‘‘special favors’’ for the vice president,

sought the more lucrative position of Indian

agent.89

Johnson was a competent presiding officer, 90

although not an accomplished parliamentarian.

In keeping with Senate practice during the 1830s,

he appointed senators to standing and select

committees, a duty that President pro tempore

William R. King performed when he was

absent.91

Although he had hoped for ‘‘equanimity’’ in

the Senate, Johnson was called upon to cast his

tie-breaking vote fourteen times during his single term in office, more frequently than any previous vice president except John Adams and

John C. Calhoun.92 Three of his predecessors—

Adams, George Clinton, and Daniel D. Tompkins—had addressed the Senate on occasion to

explain their tie-breaking votes, but Johnson declined to do so.93 In at least one instance, how-
[ 129 ]

RICHARD MENTOR JOHNSON

ever, he did explain a vote to readers of the Kentucky Gazette. Justifying his support for a bill

granting relief to the daughter of a veteran, Johnson reminded his former constituents that he had

always ‘‘used my humble abilities in favor of

those laws which have extended compensation

to the officers and soldiers who have bravely

fought, and freely bled, in their country’s cause,

and to widows and orphans of those who perished.’’ 94 In other instances, however, Johnson

voted with Democratic senators in support of administration policy.95

Notwithstanding his steady, if lackluster, service in the Senate, Johnson from the outset represented a liability to Van Buren. Still heavily in

debt when he assumed office, he hoped to recoup his fortunes through the Choctaw Academy, a school he established at Blue Spring Farm

during the 1820s that became the focus of the

Jackson administration’s efforts to ‘‘socialize’’

and ‘‘civilize’’ the Native American population.

He received federal funds for each student from

tribal annuities and the ‘‘Civilization Fund’’ established by Congress during the Monroe administration, 96 but revenues from the school

failed to satisfy his mounting obligations. By the

spring of 1839, Amos Kendall reported to Van

Buren on the vice president’s latest venture: a

hotel and tavern at White Sulphur Spring, Kentucky. He enclosed a letter from a friend who

had visited ‘‘Col. Johnson’s Watering establishment’’ and found the vice president ‘‘happy in

the inglorious pursuit of tavern keeping—even

giving his personal superintendence to the chicken and egg purchasing and water-melon selling

department.’’ 97 Kendall wrote with consternation that Johnson’s companion, ‘‘a young Delilah

of about the complexion of Shakespears swarthy

Othello,’’ was ‘‘said to be his third wife; his second, which he sold for her infidelity, having been

the sister of the present lady.’’ 98 Although one

of the most fashionable in Kentucky, 99 Johnson’s

resort also formed a source of considerable embarrassment for the administration.

As debts, disappointments, and the chronic

pain he had suffered since 1813 took their toll,

Johnson’s once-pleasing appearance became dishevelled, and the plain republican manners that

had in earlier days so charmed Margaret Bayard

Smith now struck observers as vulgar and

crude, 100 especially compared to the impeccably

clad and consummately tactful Van Buren.

Henry Stanton observed Johnson presiding over

the Senate in 1838 and pronounced him ‘‘shabbily dressed, and to the last degree clumsy,’’ a

striking contrast with his ‘‘urbane, elegant predecessor.’’ 101 English author Harriett Martineau

sat opposite the vice president at a dinner party,

and predicted that ‘‘if he should become President, he will be as strange-looking a potentate

as ever ruled. His countenance is wild, though

with much cleverness in it; his hair wanders all

abroad, and he wears no cravat. But there is no

telling how he might look if he dressed like other

people.’’ 102 The trademark scarlet vest that Johnson affected while vice president (after he and

stagecoach line operator James Reeside agreed to

don vests to match Reeside’s red coaches) 103

only accentuated his unkempt appearance and

eccentric habits.

Van Buren and Johnson took office just as

weakened demand for American products

abroad and credit restrictions imposed by British

banks and trading houses combined to produce

a massive contraction in the economy. Critics focused their wrath on Jackson’s fiscal policies,

which were in part responsible for the panic of

1837, but Van Buren would not abandon his

predecessor’s ‘‘hard money’’ stance. He refused

mounting demands to rescind the 1836 Specie

Circular, Jackson’s directive to end speculation

and inflation by requiring purchasers of public

land to pay in specie. During the September 1837

special session of Congress that Van Buren called

to address the crisis, Senate Finance Committee

Chairman Silas Wright of New York introduced

the new administration’s remedy, a proposal to

end government reliance on the banking system.

Congress finally approved Van Buren’s independent treasury plan in the summer of 1840, but

not before bitter debate and the worsening economy galvanized the Whig opposition.104 Adding

to Van Buren’s considerable difficulties, and contributing to Democratic losses in the 1837 and

1838 local elections, were a border dispute with

Canada, armed resistance to removal by the

Seminole tribe in Florida, heightened sectional
[ 130 ]

RICHARD MENTOR JOHNSON

antagonism over slavery in Congress, and flagrant misconduct on the part of several administration appointees.105

1840 Campaign

Although Van Buren’s renomination was

never in doubt, Democratic strategists began to

question the wisdom of keeping Johnson on the

ticket in 1840. They feared, as Harriett Martineau

had predicted, that ‘‘the slavery question . . . may

again be to the disadvantage of the Colonel.’’ 106

Even Jackson finally conceded that Johnson was

a liability and insisted on former House Speaker

James K. Polk of Tennessee as Van Buren’s new

running mate.107 ‘‘I like Col. Johnson but I like

my country more,’’ he wrote Francis P. Blair

shortly before the Democratic convention, ‘‘and

I allway go for my Country first, and then for

my friend.’’ 108

In spite of the entreaties of several southern

Democrats, anonymous hints in the Democratic

press that Johnson would not stand for reelection, and his own half-hearted offer to withdraw

from the contest if asked to do so, he remained

a candidate.109 With William Henry Harrison,

Johnson’s former commander and comrade-inarms and the ‘‘Hero of Tippecanoe,’’ emerging

as a likely Whig presidential contender, Van

Buren was reluctant to drop the Democrats’ own

hero from the ticket. He was also well aware of

‘‘Old Dick’s’’ following among ‘‘hard-money’’

Democrats in the Northeast.110 Party leaders, unwilling to risk an open confrontation, approved

Van Buren’s compromise proposal that the 1840

convention would leave the selection of the vicepresidential candidate to the state party organizations, but they ultimately backed Johnson after

two crucial states—New York and Pennsylvania—rallied behind him and other prospective

candidates declined to run.111

Eastern Whigs’ fear that Clay could not win

the presidency, as well as Harrison’s surprising

showing in the 1836 contest, assured Harrison

the 1840 Whig nomination. To balance his

strength in the North and West, Whigs chose

former Virginia Senator John Tyler as their vicepresidential candidate. Whigs portrayed Harrison as a champion of the people and a welcome

corrective to the New York dandy whose economic policies had failed to relieve widespread

suffering among ordinary folk.112

Van Buren remained aloof from the popular

hoopla that distinguished the 1840 campaign

from earlier contests, despite Johnson’s warning

that the campaign ‘‘would be hard run, and that

he ought to go out among the voters as I intended doing.’’ 113 The vice president plunged

headlong into the fray, opening his shirt to display battle scars before an Ohio audience, revisiting the Battle of the Thames in progressively

more lurid detail with each retelling, and delivering ‘‘rambling’’ diatribes on several occasions.

He always also took care to remind western audiences that Van Buren had ‘‘raised himself from

a poor Dutch orphan boy to the highest station

in the world.’’ During an Ohio campaign tour

with Governor Wilson Shannon and Senator William Allen, the trio’s inflammatory charges

against Harrison touched off a riot in Cleveland.114 Still, as Robert Gray Gunderson concluded in his study of the ‘‘log-cabin campaign,’’

‘‘Old Rumpsey Dumpsey conducted a more effective campaign than any other Democrat in

1840.’’ 115

Unprecedented public interest aroused by the

campaign, coupled with broadened suffrage requirements in several states, ensured a record

voter turnout. Harrison defeated Van Buren with

52.9 percent of the popular vote and 234 electoral

votes to Van Buren’s 60, and Whigs won majorities for the first time in both the House and the

Senate.116 Johnson’s showing was particularly

embarrassing: Kentucky voters again backed the

opposing ticket, but this time the Whigs carried

the vice president’s own district as well.117 One

of the 23 Virginia electors, and all of South Carolina’s 11 electors, voted for Van Buren but defected to James K. Polk and Littleton W. Tazewell

of Virginia, respectively, in the vice-presidential

contest.118

Johnson had the painful duty of presiding over

the joint session of Congress that met in the

House chamber on February 10, 1841, to count

the electoral votes. After proclaiming Harrison’s

election, he announced that John Tyler ‘‘was

duly elected Vice President of the United States

for four years, commencing with the 4th day of

March, 1841.’’ He then appointed Whig Senator
[ 131 ]

RICHARD MENTOR JOHNSON

William C. Preston of South Carolina to a joint

committee to notify Tyler of his election, 119 and

nine days later, he reported Tyler’s acknowledgement of the message.120

Farewell

Johnson took his leave of the Senate on March

2, 1841, the day before the Twenty-sixth Congress adjourned, to allow the Senate ‘‘an opportunity of selecting a presiding officer, for the convenience of organization’’ when the next Congress convened two days later. Recalling his association with ‘‘a very great majority of the members of the Senate . . . for many years, in the councils of our common country,’’ he reflected that

his ‘‘personal relations’’ with them had ‘‘ever

been kind and tender,’’ notwithstanding ‘‘diversity of opinion . . . on minor points, or . . . points

of greater magnitude.’’ The ‘‘generous, the magnanimous course’’ of individual senators, and

particularly ‘‘their indulgence’’ of a presiding officer ‘‘who never studied the rules of order technically,’’ had rendered his service in the Senate

‘‘pleasant and agreeable’’ despite ‘‘momentary

agitation and excitement in debate.’’ As the Senate’s presiding officer, he had tried to ‘‘act with

perfect impartiality’’ and to treat ‘‘each Senator

as the representative of a sovereign and independent State, and as entitled to equal consideration of me.’’

Johnson claimed that he retired ‘‘without the

least dissatisfaction,’’ obedient to ‘‘the great radical and fundamental principle of submission to

the voice of the people, when constitutionally expressed.’’ But his parting comments betrayed a

sense of regret:

[A]nd when I am far distant from you—as time

must separate us all even here, not to speak of

hereafter—as long as I shall have my recollection

to remember the associations which I have had

with this body, I shall always be animated by the

sentiment of kindness and friendship with which

I take my final leave of the Senate.121

Later Years

Johnson’s 1840 defeat effectively ended his political career. He was a candidate for the Senate

in 1842 but lost to John J. Crittenden. Early efforts

by Kentucky Democrats to secure the 1844

Democratic presidential nomination for ‘‘Colonel

Dick,’’ and his own tours of the northern states

and the Mississippi Valley toward that end, met

with polite but condescending resistance from

Democrats who shared William L. Marcy’s view

that ‘‘he is not now even what he formally was.

It may be there was never so much of him as

many of us were led to suppose.’’ 122 Jackson was

characteristically blunt. Johnson, he warned Van

Buren, would be ‘‘dead weight’’ in the forthcoming election.123 An observer noted the old hero’s

mounting frustration: ‘‘Colonel Dick Johnson

. . . seems to understand very well Mr. V Buren

is stacking the cards . . . Dick . . . will be bamboozled as sure as a gun. . . . You never saw a

more restless dissatisfied man in your life, than

Dick is.’’ 124 By 1843, Johnson partisans conceded

that he had no chance of winning the presidential nomination, and a Kentucky Democrat

assured Van Buren that ‘‘the friends of Col. Johnson do not ask anything more than a vote on the

first ballot in his favor.’’ 125 Several Democrats

speculated that Johnson’s real objective was the

vice-presidential nomination, although he never

formally declared himself a candidate.126 But by

early 1844 he realized that ‘‘his party doesn’t

even intend to place him upon the Vice Presidents ticket.’’ 127

Johnson made a final attempt to return to the

Senate in 1848, but the Kentucky legislature sent

his old colleague and adversary, Henry Clay, to

Washington. Scott County voters elected Johnson to the state legislature two years later, but

he was gravely ill when he took his seat on November 8, 1850. Shortly after the Louisville Daily

Journal reported that ‘‘it is painful to see him on

the floor attempting to discharge the duties of a

member,’’ Johnson suffered a stroke. He died on

November 19, 1850, and, by resolution of the

Kentucky legislature, was buried at the Frankfort

cemetery. State Senator Beriah Magoffin eulogized the frontier hero as Johnson would have

wished to be remembered: ‘‘He was the poor

man’s friend. . . . Void of ostentation, simple in

his taste, his manners, and his dress—brave,

magnanimous, patriotic and generous to a fault,

in his earliest years he was the beau ideal of the

soul and the chivalry of Kentucky.’’ 128
[ 132 ]

NOTES 1 John Spencer Bassett, ed., Correspondence of Andrew Jackson (Washington, DC, 1931), 5:331.

2The first full-length account of Richard Mentor Johnson’s career was William Emmons’ highly laudatory campaign biography, Authentic Biography of Colonel Richard M.

Johnson (New York, 1833). Ignatius Loyola Robertson’s

Sketches of Public Characters—Drawn from the Living and

the Dead (New York, 1830), includes a brief and highly

complimentary sketch of Johnson’s career. Leland Winfield

Meyer, Life and Times of Colonel Richard M. Johnson (New

York, 1967, reprint of 1932 edition), pp. 176, 298, 342, 401,

405, 489. Meyer’s biography, the only modern account of

Johnson’s life and career, accepts at face value many of the

assumptions and assessments that color the earlier works. 3 Louisville Journal, October 14, 1840, quoted in Meyer, p.

290. 4U.S., Congress, Biographical Directory of the United States

Congress, 1774–1989, S. Doc. 100–34, 100th Cong., 2d sess.,

1989, p. 1270. 5Meyer, pp. 13–48, 325–27.

6 Ibid., pp. 290–91.

7Robert V. Remini, Henry Clay: Statesman for the Union

(New York, 1991), p. 18. 8 See, for example, Johnson’s December 4, 1816, speech on

the Compensation Law, U.S., Congress, House, Annals of

Congress, 14th Cong., 2d sess., pp. 235–43. 9Meyer, p. 292.

10 Ibid., pp. 290–342 and passim.

11 Ibid., pp. 312–14 and Appendix, ‘‘Mr. James Y. Kelly’s

Reminiscences about ’Dick Johnson’ Taken Down as He

Spoke, April 2, 1929, to Leland W. Meyer,’’ pp. 477–78. 12Mrs. Samuel Harrison Smith (Margaret Bayard Smith),

The First Forty Years of Washington Society (New York, 1906),

quoted in Meyer, pp. 293, 304–5. 13 Charles M. Wiltse, John C. Calhoun, vol. 2, Nullifier,

1829–1839 (New York, 1968; reprint of 1948 ed.), p. 37. 14Meyer, pp. 49–58.

15 Ibid., p. 58; Biographical Directory of the United States

Congress, p. 1270. 16R. M. Johnson to Andrew Stevenson et al., June 9, 1835,

in James A. Padgett, ed., ‘‘The Letters of Colonel Richard

M. Johnson of Kentucky,’’ Register of the Kentucky State Historical Society 40 (January 1942): 83–86. 17Richard M. Johnson to Thomas Jefferson, February 27,

1808, in James A. Padgett, ed., ‘‘The Letters of Colonel Richard M. Johnson of Kentucky,’’ Register of the Kentucky State

Historical Society 38 (July 1940): 190–91. 18Richard M. Johnson to Thomas Jefferson, January 30,

1813, in ibid., p. 197. 19Richard M. Johnson to Thomas Jefferson, February 9,

1813 [1814?], in ibid., p. 198. 20Meyer, pp. 49–84.

21Richard Mentor Johnson to Dawson et al., February 6,

1836, printed in Kentucky Gazette, April 2, 1836, and reprinted in Meyer, p. 142. 22Meyer, pp. 49–84.

23Marshall Smelser, The Democratic Republic, 1801–1815

(New York, 1968), pp. 208–9; John Niven, John C. Calhoun

and the Price of Union (Baton Rouge, LA, 1988), p. 36; Harry

W. Fritz, ‘‘The War Hawks of 1812,’’ Capitol Studies 5 (Spring

1977): 28. 24 Smelser, p. 216.

25Richard Mentor Johnson to John Armstrong, received

February 23, 1813, quoted in Meyer, pp. 100–101. 26 Smelser, pp. 210, 255–56; Meyer, pp. 101–35.

27Meyer, pp. 136–88.

28U.S., Congress, House, Annals of Congress, 14th Cong.,

1st sess., pp. 1127–34, Appendix, p. 1801; 14th Cong., 2d

sess., pp. 235–43, Appendix, p. 1278; Charles M. Wiltse, John

C. Calhoun, vol. 1, Nationalist, 1782–1828 (New York, 1968;

reprint of 1944 edition), pp. 125–31; U.S., Congress, Senate,

The Senate, 1789–1989: Addresses on the History of the United

States Senate, by Robert C. Byrd, S. Doc. 100–20, vol. 2, 1991,

pp. 350–51; Meyer, pp. 168, 172, 326–27. 29Meyer, pp. 162–67.

30 Annals of Congress, 14th Cong., 2d sess., p. 1062. 31 Harry Ammon, James Monroe: The Quest for National

Identity (Charlottesville, VA, 1990), pp. 358–59. 32Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, p.

1270. 33 John Niven, John C. Calhoun and the Price of Union (Baton

Rouge, LA, 1988), pp. 59–80; Ammon, pp. 468–71; Meyer,

pp. 189–206; Merrill D. Peterson, The Great Triumvirate: Webster, Clay, and Calhoun (New York, 1987), pp. 88–95; Chase

C. Mooney, William H. Crawford, 1772–1834 (Lexington, KY,

1974), pp. 151–57. 34 John C. Calhoun to James Monroe, July 14, 1820, quoted

in Meyer, p. 195. 35Meyer, pp. 202–5.

36 James Monroe to John C. Calhoun, July 5, 1819, quoted

in ibid., p. 202. 37Kentucky Gazette, October 8, 1819, quoted in ibid., p. 203. 38Meyer, pp. 183–88.

39 Ibid., pp. 205–6; Remini, Henry Clay, pp. 207–8. 40Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Age of Jackson (Boston,

1945), pp. 134–36. 41 Speech of Col. Richard M. Johnson to the Senate, January 14, 1823, quoted in Meyer, pp. 283–84. 42 Schlesinger, pp. 134–36; Meyer, pp. 235, 282–89; Annals

of Congress, 17th Cong., 2d sess., pp. 23–27. 43Thomas Hart Benton, Thirty Years’ View; or, A History

of the Working of the American Government for Thirty Years,

From 1820 to 1851 (New York, 1871; reprint of 1854 ed.),

1:291–92.
[ 133 ]

RICHARD MENTOR JOHNSON

44Meyer, pp. 256–63, 293–94.

45 Ibid., passim; Donald R. Cole, Martin Van Buren and the

American Political System (Princeton, NJ, 1984), p. 125. 46Richard M. Johnson to Major General Andrew Jackson,

November 21, 1814, in Padgett, ed., Register of the Kentucky

State Historical Society 38: 326–27. 47Remini, Henry Clay, pp. 161–66. 48Meyer, p. 220.

49 Ibid., pp. 221–22.

50Remini, Henry Clay, p. 268. 51Robert V. Remini, Andrew Jackson and the Course of

American Freedom, 1822–1832 (New York, 1981), p. 103; U.S.,

Congress, Senate, Journal, Appendix, 19th Cong., special

session of March 4, 1825; U.S., Congress, Senate, Executive

Journal, 19th Cong., special session, p. 441. 52Niles’ Weekly Register, April 28, 1827, quoted in Meyer,

pp. 220–21. 53Meyer, pp. 318–19.

54 Ibid., pp. 317–22.

55 Ibid., pp. 251–55.

56Remini, Henry Clay, pp. 373, 716; Meyer, p. 457. 57Meyer, p. 256.

58Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, p.

1270. 59Meyer, pp. 266–71; Robert V. Remini, Andrew Jackson

and the Course of American Democracy, 1833–1845 (New York,

1984), pp. 203–16, 305–6, 423; Richard M. Johnson to Andrew Jackson, February 13, 1831, in Padgett, ed., Register

of the Kentucky State Historical Society 40: 69. 60Meyer, pp. 273–76; U.S., Congress, House, Journal, 21st

Cong., 1st sess., pp. 763–64; Remini, Jackson and the Course

of American Freedom, pp. 252–56. 61Remini, Jackson and the Course of American Freedom, p.

304; Meyer, pp. 393–400. 62Walter Hugins, Jacksonian Democracy and the Working

Class: A Study of the New York Workingmen’s Movement (Stanford, CA, 1960), pp. 63–64, 97. 63 John Norvell to John McLean, January 23, 1832, and

Worden Pope to John McLean, quoted in Meyer, p. 398. 64 Schlesinger, p. 142.

65Robert V. Remini, ‘‘Election of 1832,’’ in History of American Presidential Elections, 1789–1968, ed. Arthur M. Schlesinger and Fred L. Israel, (New York, 1971), 1:507–8; John

Niven, Martin Van Buren and the Romantic Era of American

Politics (New York, 1983), p. 300. 66Meyer, pp. 315–16, 398–402, 411.

67Major L. Wilson, The Presidency of Martin Van Buren

(Lawrence, KS, 1984), pp. 15–16; Niven, Martin Van Buren,

pp. 374–76; John Arthur Garraty, Silas Wright (New York,

1970; reprint of 1949 edition), p. 130; Remini, Jackson and the

Course of American Democracy, p. 256; Meyer, pp. 393–429. 68Remini, Jackson and the Course of American Democracy,

pp. 252–53. 69 Ibid., pp, 182–83, 252–55, Niven, Martin Van Buren, p.

351, 372–76; Cole, p. 262; Wilson, p. 16.

70Remini, Jackson and the Course of American Democracy,

pp. 256; Niven, Martin Van Buren, pp. 374–96; Wilson, p.

16; John C. Fitzpatrick, ed., The Autobiography of Martin Van

Buren (Washington, DC, 1920), 2:754, quoted in Meyer, pp.

337–38. 71 Niven, Martin Van Buren, p. 396; Meyer, p. 419. 72Richard M. Johnson to Andrew Stevenson, et al., June

9, 1835, in Padgett, ed., Register of the Kentucky State Historical Society 40: 83–86. 73Albert Balch to Andrew Jackson, April 4, 1835, quoted

in Meyer, p. 413. 74 C.S. Morgan to Martin Van Buren, January 9, 1936,

quoted in Robert Bolt, ‘‘Vice President Richard M. Johnson

of Kentucky: Hero of the Thames—Or the Great Amalgamator?’’ Register of the Kentucky Historical Society 75 (July 1977):

201. 75 John Catron to Andrew Jackson, March 21, 1835, in Bassett, Correspondence of Jackson, 5:330–32. 76 Joel Silbey, ‘‘Election of 1836,’’ in Schlesinger and Israel,

eds., 1:584–86. 77 Silbey, pp. 586–91; Harry L. Watson, Liberty and Power:

The Politics of Jacksonian America (New York, 1990), p. 204. 78United States Telegraph, June 3, 1835, quoted in Bolt, pp.

198–99. 79 Niven, Martin Van Buren, pp. 401–2; Silbey, pp. 591–

96; Senate Journal, 24th Cong., 2d sess., pp. 227–28. 80 Senate Journal, 24th Cong., 2d sess., pp. 227–28; Niven,

Martin Van Buren, pp. 401–2. 81 Senate Journal, 24th Cong., 2d sess., pp. 229–31. South

Carolina Senators John C. Calhoun and William C. Preston

and Tennessee Senator Hugh Lawson White attended but

did not vote. Wiltse, 2:303. 82 Senate Journal, 24th Cong., 2d sess., p. 231. 83 Ibid., pp. 238–39.

84 Ibid., Appendix, special session of March 4, 1837, pp.

355–65. 85Benton, 1:735; Cole, pp. 289–90; Remini, Jackson and the

Course of American Democracy, pp. 420–23; Stephen W.

Stathis and Ronald C. Moe, ‘‘America’s Other Inauguration,’’ Presidential Studies Quarterly 10 (Fall 1980): 561; Watson, p. 205. 86 See, for example, James C. Curtis, The Fox at Bay: Martin

Van Buren and the Presidency, 1837–1841 (Lexington, KY,

1970); Cole; Niven, Martin Van Buren; Wilson. 87 Niven, Martin Van Buren, pp. 423–24; Cole, pp. 307–11,

318. 88Meyer, p. 431.

89Ronald M. Satz, American Indian Policy in the Jacksonian

Era (Lincoln, NE, 1975), p. 183.

90Meyer, p. 431.

91Byrd, 2:219; Senate Journal, 25th Cong., 1st sess., pp. 27–

28; 2d sess., pp. 25, 32–33; 3d sess., p. 5; 26th Cong., 1st sess.,

pp. 5, 10–11, 46. 92 Henry Barrett Learned, ‘‘Casting Votes of the VicePresidents, 1789–1915,’’ American Historical Review 20 (April
[ 134 ]

RICHARD MENTOR JOHNSON

1915): 571; Byrd, The Senate, 1789–1989, vol. 4, Historical Statistics, 1789–1992, p. 642. 93 Ibid., p. 574.

94Kentucky Gazette, March 14, 1839, quoted in Meyer, pp.

431–32. 95 Senate Journal, 25th Cong., 2d sess., pp. 181–82; 26th

Cong., 2d sess., pp. 274–76; Francis Jennings, ed., The History

and Culture of Iroquois Diplomacy: An Interdisciplinary Guide

to the Treaties of the Six Nations and Their Leagues (New York,

1985), p. 206. 96 Satz, pp. 246–51; Meyer, pp. 337–39.

97Letter to Amos Kendall, August 12, 1839, enclosed in

Kendall’s letter of August 22, 1839, to Van Buren, quoted

in Meyer, p. 341. 98 Kendall to Van Buren, August 22, 1839, quoted in

Meyer, p. 341. 99Meyer, pp. 339–40.

100Robert Gray Gunderson, The Log-Cabin Campaign (Lexington, KY, 1957), p. 80. 101 Henry B. Stanton, Random Recollections (New York,

1887), p. 61. 102 Harriett Martineau, ‘‘Life at the Capital,’’ in America

Through British Eyes, ed. Allan Nevins (New York, 1948; revised from 1923 edition), p. 150. 103 Joseph E. Morse and R. Duff Green, eds., Thomas B.

Searight’s The Old Pike: An Illustrated Narrative of the National

Road (Orange, VA, 1971), pp. 105–6. 104Glyndon Van Deusen, The Jacksonian Era, 1828–1848

(New York, 1959), pp. 116–28; Watson, pp. 206–209; Cole,

pp. 307–41, 347–60. 105 Niven, Martin Van Buren, pp. 425–52; Watson, p. 410;

Van Deusen, pp. 132–40; Cole, pp. 318–42. 106 Harriett Martineau, ‘‘Life at the Capital,’’ p. 150. 107Remini, Jackson and the Course of American Democracy,

pp. 463–64.

108Andrew Jackson to Francis P. Blair, February 15, 1840,

quoted in Remini, Jackson and the Course of American Democracy, p. 463.

109Gunderson, p. 82; Meyer, pp. 435–36; Niven, Martin

Van Buren, p. 463. 110 Niven, Martin Van Buren, p. 463; Gunderson, pp. 81–

82; Cole, p. 358. 111 Niven, Martin Van Buren, p. 463; Gunderson, p. 83. 112Gunderson, pp. 41–75; Peterson, pp. 248, 281–96;

Remini, Henry Clay, pp. 545–67. 113Washington National Intelligencer, September 24, 1840,

quoting Wheeling Gazette, n.d., cited in Gunderson, p. 163;

Wilson, p. 206. 114Meyer, p. 433; Gunderson, pp. 241–46. 115Gunderson, p. 246. 116Remini, Henry Clay, pp. 566–67; Gunderson, pp. 253–

54.117Gunderson, p. 255. 118 Senate Journal, 26th Cong., 2d sess., pp. 171–72. 119 Ibid., pp. 172–73. 120 Ibid., pp. 191–92. 121 Ibid., pp. 231–32. 122Meyer, pp. 452–59. 123Andrew Jackson to Martin Van Buren, September 22,

1843, quoted in Meyer, p. 460. 124R.P. Letcher to John J. Crittenden, June 2, 1842, quoted

in Meyer, p. 454. 125General McCalla to Martin Van Buren, January 11,

1843, quoted in Meyer, p. 457. 126Meyer, pp. 461–62. 127R.P. Letcher to John J. Crittenden, January 6, 1844,

quoted in ibid., p. 461. 128Meyer, pp. 473–74.
[ 135 ]

Chapter 10

JOHN TYLER

1841
JOHN TYLER
[ 137 ]

Chapter 10

JOHN TYLER

10th Vice President: 1841

To this body [the Senate] is committed in an eminent degree, the trust of guarding and protecting

the institutions handed down to us from our fathers, as well against the waves of popular and rash impulses on the one hand, as against attempts at executive encroachment on the other.

—VICE PRESIDENT JOHN TYLER

Go you now then, Mr. Clay, to your end of the avenue, where stands the Capitol, and there perform

your duty to the country as you shall think proper. So help me God, I shall do mine at this end of

it as I shall think proper.

—PRESIDENT JOHN TYLER

He held the office of vice president for only

thirty-three days; he presided over the Senate for

less than two hours. Despite this brief experience, John Tyler significantly strengthened the

office by enforcing an interpretation of the Constitution that many of his contemporaries disputed. Tyler believed that, in the event of a vacancy in the office of president, the vice president

would become more than just the acting president. He would assume the chief executive’s full

powers, salary, and residence as if he himself

had been elected to that position. Taken for

granted today, that interpretation is owed entirely to this courtly and uncompromising Virginian who brought to the vice-presidency a

greater diversity of governmental experience

than any of his predecessors.

Early Years

John Tyler was born on March 29, 1790, at

Greenway, his family’s twelve-hundred-acre

James River estate in Charles City County, Virginia. He was the second son among the eight

children of John and Mary Armistead Tyler. The

elder John Tyler had been a prominent figure in

the American Revolution and a vigorous opponent of the Constitution at the Virginia ratifying

convention. Young John Tyler’s mother died

when he was only seven, leaving the boy’s upbringing to his father. During John’s late teens

and early twenties, his father served as governor

of Virginia and then as a federal judge. A modern biographer concluded: ‘‘The most important

single fact that can be derived from John Tyler’s

formative years is that he absorbed in toto the

political, social, and economic views of his distinguished father.’’ 1

Tyler received his early formal education at

private schools; at the age of twelve he enrolled

in the college preparatory division of the College

of William and Mary. Three years later he began

his college studies, chiefly in English literature

and classical languages, and graduated in 1807,

just seventeen years old. He studied law for two

years, first under his father’s direction, then with

a cousin, and finally with Edmund Randolph,

the nation’s first attorney general. Randolph’s

advocacy of a strong central government ran

counter to Tyler’s interpretation of the limited

extent to which the Constitution granted powers

to the national government and his belief in the

supremacy of states’ rights. Tyler feared the Constitution would be used to subordinate the inter-
[ 138 ]

JOHN TYLER

ests of the southern white planter class to those

of northern merchants and propertyless working

men, putting the South at an economic and political disadvantage.2

The young Virginian established his own legal

practice in 1811 and soon developed a reputation

as an eloquent and effective advocate in handling difficult criminal defense cases. That year

also brought his election, at age twenty-one, to

the Virginia house of delegates. He earned early

acclaim through his work in persuading the

house to pass a resolution censuring Virginia’s

two U.S. senators for their refusal to follow the

legislature’s ‘‘instructions’’ to vote against the recharter of the Bank of the United States.3

In March 1813, weeks after he inherited the

Greenway plantation on his father’s death, Tyler

married the beautiful and introverted Letitia

Christian. The death of both her parents soon

after the marriage conveyed to the bride holdings of land and slaves that greatly expanded the

wealth that John brought to their union. Reclusive and preferring domestic pursuits, Letitia

took no active interest in her husband’s public

life. During the time of his service in Congress

and as vice president, she visited Washington

only once, preferring the tranquility of the family’s plantation to the mud and grime of the nation’s capital. Together they had seven children

in a tranquil and happy union disrupted only

when she suffered a paralytic stroke in 1839. She

died in 1842.4

Tyler served five one-year terms in the Virginia house of delegates and was chosen to sit

on the state executive council. In 1817, at the age

of twenty-seven, he won election to the U.S.

House of Representatives, serving there until

1821 without apparent distinction. He actively

opposed legislation designed to implement

Henry Clay’s ‘‘American System,’’ linking a federally sponsored network of canals, railroads,

and turnpikes with a strong central bank and

protective tariffs in an alliance that seemed designed to unite the North and West at the South’s

expense.

Tyler’s views on slavery appeared ambivalent.

In attacking the 1820 Missouri Compromise governing the future admission of ‘‘slave’’ and

‘‘free’’ states, Tyler sought without success to

deny the federal government the right to regulate slavery. From his earliest days in the public

arena, the Virginian appeared uncomfortable

with the institution of slavery, although he

owned many slaves throughout his lifetime and

argued that slavery should be allowed to extend

to regions where it would prove to be economically viable. He expected, however, that the ‘‘peculiar institution’’ would eventually die out and,

on various occasions over the years, he advocated ending both the importation of slaves and

their sale in the District of Columbia.5

At the end of 1820, suffering from financial difficulties, chronically poor health, and a string of

legislative defeats, Tyler decided to give up his

career in the House of Representatives. He wrote

a friend, ‘‘the truth is, that I can no longer do

any good here. I stand in a decided minority, and

to waste words on an obstinate majority is utterly useless and vain.’’ 6 In 1823, however, his

health and political ambitions restored, Tyler returned to the Virginia house of delegates. Two

years later, he won election as Virginia’s governor and served two one-year terms until 1827,

when he was elected to the U.S. Senate. Reelected

in 1833, Tyler served until his resignation on February 29, 1836. While in the Senate he served

briefly as president pro tempore in March 1835

and as chairman of the Committee on the District

of Columbia and the Committee on

Manufactures.

Philosophy

In the 1830s John Tyler identified himself with

the Democratic party but differed often with

President Andrew Jackson. The two men diverged both in temperament—a Tidewater aristocrat opposing a Tennessee democrat—and in

political philosophy. Tyler supported the president’s veto of legislation rechartering the Bank

of the United States, but he opposed Jackson’s

removal of government funds from that institution. Although Tyler reluctantly advocated Jackson’s election in both 1828 and 1832, he opposed

many of the president’s nominees to key administration posts. The final break between the two

came in 1833 when Tyler, alone among Senate

Democrats, chose to oppose the Force Act, which

allowed Jackson to override South Carolina’s or-
[ 139 ]

JOHN TYLER

dinance nullifying the tariff of 1832. He feared

the Force Act would undermine the doctrine of

states’ rights, to which he was deeply committed.

By 1834 Tyler joined Henry Clay in actively opposing Jackson’s policies, and he voted with a

Senate majority to ‘‘censure’’ the president for refusing to provide information concerning his removal of government funds from the Bank of the

United States. In 1836, when the Virginia legislature ‘‘instructed’’ Tyler to reverse his censure

vote, Tyler refused. Unlike some senators who

by that time had come to ignore such legislative

instruction, Tyler remembered his own vote

years earlier against noncomplying senators and

concluded that he had no honorable choice but

to resign from the Senate.

In 1836 the emerging Whig party was united

only in its opposition to Jackson. To avoid demonstrating their lack of unity, the Whigs chose

not to hold a presidential nominating convention

that year.7 Party strategy called for fielding several regional candidates, nominated at the state

and local level, in the hope that they would deny

Jackson’s heir Martin Van Buren a majority in the

electoral college. Such an impasse would throw

the contest into the House of Representatives

where the outcome might be more easily influenced to produce a Whig president. Although

there was little general interest expressed in the

vice-presidential position, Tyler’s name appeared for that post on the ballots in several

states. He was listed as the running mate of William Henry Harrison in Maryland; of Hugh

Lawson White in Tennessee, North Carolina, and

Georgia; and of Willie Mangum in South Carolina. In Virginia, Tyler’s name appeared on the

ballot with both Harrison and White.

Van Buren won the presidency, but when the

vice-presidential ballots were tallied, Tyler came

in third, after Richard Mentor Johnson and

Francis Granger, with 47 electoral votes from the

states of Georgia, Maryland, South Carolina and

Tennessee.8 Under the provisions of the Constitution’s Twelfth Amendment, as no candidate

for the vice-presidency had secured a majority of

the electoral votes, the Senate would make the

selection from the top two candidates. On February 8, 1837, the Senate exercised this constitutional prerogative for the only time in its history

and selected Johnson on the first ballot.

Senate Election Deadlock

In April 1838, Tyler won election to the Virginia house of delegates for the third time—this

time as a Whig. On taking his seat early in 1839,

he was unanimously chosen speaker. In that capacity, he presided over a debate in which he

held an intense personal interest: the selection of

a United States senator. William C. Rives, the

Jacksonian Democrat who had succeeded Tyler

in 1836, hoped to retain his Senate seat for another term. Tyler, however, decided that he

would like to return to the Senate. The Democrats held a slight majority in the legislature, but

among their members were a dozen so-called

Conservatives, renegade Democrats who had

supported Jackson but disagreed with the financial policies of his successor, Martin Van Buren.

The legislature’s regular Democrats tried to win

the support of this maverick group to ensure that

Virginia would marshal its sizeable number of

electoral votes in favor of Van Buren in the 1840

presidential election. To this end, they offered to

support Rives, one of Virginia’s most prominent

Conservatives. But Rives proved unwilling to

lead Virginia’s Conservatives back to the Democratic fold. Consequently, the Democrats turned

to John Mason as their Senate candidate. Whig

leaders might have been expected to support

Tyler, who had resigned the seat in 1836 out of

support for that party’s doctrine. In fact, however, these party leaders were more willing to

‘‘sacrifice Tyler on the altar of party expediency’’

and promote Rives in return for cooperation

from his fellow Conservatives in voting for a

Whig presidential candidate in 1840.9

On February 15, 1839, each house first met separately to hear extended debate in support of

Rives, Tyler, and Mason then convened in joint

session to vote. With heavy support from the

Whig rank-and-file, Tyler received a plurality on

each of the first five ballots. On the sixth ballot,

Whigs began to shift in favor of Rives, who

moved into the lead but fell short of a majority

in this and succeeding tallies. On February 25,

after twenty-eight ballots and eight legislative

days during which no other business was trans-
[ 140 ]

JOHN TYLER

acted, both houses agreed to suspend the voting

indefinitely. The seat remained vacant for nearly

two years until Tyler’s election as vice president

broke the deadlock and opened the way for the

legislature to select Rives, who had recently

changed his political allegiance to the Whig

party.10

Contrary to his opponents’ later charges, Tyler

made no effort to obtain the vice-presidential

nomination as a consolation prize for the Senate

seat denied to him. ‘‘I do declare, in the presence

of my Heavenly Judge, that the nomination

given to me was neither solicited nor

expected.’’ 11

Whig Nominating Convention

Going into their December 1839 presidential

nominating convention, Whig leaders believed

that Democratic President Martin Van Buren was

easily beatable as long as they selected a challenger of moderate views who had not alienated

large numbers of voters. Taking its name from

the English political party of the seventeenth and

eighteenth centuries that had formed in opposition to monarchial tyranny, the American Whig

party was held together primarily by its opposition to the perceived executive tyranny of ‘‘King

Andrew’’ and his successor, Van Buren.

Desiring a presidential candidate who would

acknowledge the preeminent role of Congress as

maker of national policy, the party could not ignore Henry Clay. As a leader of the Senate’s

Whigs and orchestrator of the 1834 Senate censure of Jackson, Clay personified the notion of

congressional dominance. He was the best

known of his party’s potential candidates; he

was the most competent; and, as a slaveholder

and low-tariff advocate, he enjoyed considerable

support in the South. Party leaders from other

regions, however, argued that Clay’s public

record would work to his disadvantage and that,

in any event, he could not be expected to carry

the electorally essential states of New York and

Pennsylvania.

Turning from a battle-scarred legislative veteran to military heroes of uncertain political

leanings, the Whig convention, meeting in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, considered War of 1812

generals Winfield Scott and William Henry Harrison. Harrison’s heroism at the Battle of Tippecanoe was well known. He served as territorial

governor of Indiana after the war and later represented Ohio in the House of Representatives

and in the Senate, but he was hardly a national

figure before the 1836 election.12 That year he ran

well in the presidential contest and in 1840 won

the endorsement of Senator Daniel Webster, who

sought to block his old rival, Clay. At the convention, Harrison gained the crucial support of

New York political boss Thurlow Weed, who

also wanted to prevent Clay from becoming the

party’s nominee. Weed manipulated the convention’s voting rules to require a unit-rule system

that had each state cast its entire vote for the candidate preferred by a simple majority of its delegates. Weed then led his state’s influential delegation to secure a first-ballot victory for Harrison, a candidate unencumbered by a political

record or strong opinions. 13

The Whigs turned to the selection of a vicepresidential candidate as somewhat of an afterthought. In finding a running mate for Harrison,

they sought an equally malleable candidate who

would bring suitable geographical and ideological balance to the ticket. If Clay of Kentucky had

been selected for the presidency, party leaders

intended to find a vice-presidential candidate

from a state closed to slavery. With Harrison the

party’s choice, they looked instead to the slave

states for a suitable contender; they found John

Tyler.

The courtly Virginian had run well in southern

states during the 1836 contest and enjoyed a solid

identification with the South and states’ rights

doctrine.14 With Harrison rumored to be an abolitionist sympathizer, a slaveholder would nicely

balance the ticket. The Whigs particularly hoped

to pick up Virginia’s twenty-three electoral

votes, which had gone to the Democrats in 1836.

(Both Tyler and Harrison had been born in the

same Virginia county and their fathers had

served terms as that state’s governor.) The selection of Tyler, who had energetically campaigned

for Clay through the final convention ballot—

and was believed by some even to have shed

tears at his defeat—was also intended to mollify

Clay’s disappointed supporters in the South. The

convention’s general committee quickly agreed
[ 141 ]

JOHN TYLER

on Tyler and recommended him to the assembled delegates, who voted their unanimous approval. In selecting Tyler, party leaders made no

effort to determine whether his views were compatible with their candidate’s, for their privately

acknowledged campaign strategy was to ‘‘fool

the voters and avoid the issues.’’ 15

The 1840 Campaign

At Harrison’s request, Tyler remained inactive

during most of the 1840 election campaign. His

major contribution was his surname, which

formed the rhyming conclusion of the party slogan ‘‘Tippecanoe and Tyler Too.’’ Few Americans took much interest in his candidacy, for the

sixty-seven-year-old Harrison appeared to be in

good health and had vowed to serve only a single four-year term.

In the campaign’s final weeks, word reached

Tyler that President Van Buren’s running mate,

Vice President Richard Mentor Johnson, had

been conducting a vigorous reelection campaign

before enthusiastic crowds in Ohio and adjacent

states. Tyler responded with a speaking tour of

his own in portions of Virginia, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.16 One Democratic editor concluded

that he might as well have stayed home. ‘‘Mr.

Tyler is a graceful, easy speaker, with all that

blandness of manner which belongs to the Virginia character. But there is nothing forcible or

striking in his speech; no bright thoughts, no

well-turned expressions; nothing that left an impression on the mind from its strength and beauty—nothing that marked the great man.’’ 17

Saddled with responsibility for the economic

crises that characterized his administration, Martin Van Buren had but a slim chance to win a

second term. Harrison, for his part, avoided taking unpopular stands by repeating at every opportunity that he would take his direction from

Congress—the best instrument for expressing

the needs and wishes of the American people.

Although the popular-vote margin was relatively slim, the Harrison-Tyler ticket won a resounding electoral vote victory (234 to 60) in an

election that stimulated the participation of 80.2

percent of the eligible voters, the greatest percentage ever.

Although Tyler failed to carry his own state of

Virginia, he took some satisfaction in believing

that his Pennsylvania tour may have been responsible for winning that state’s important electoral votes. The election also placed both houses

of Congress under Whig control for the first time.

A Whig newspaper summarized the consequences of the Harrison-Tyler victory: ‘‘It has

pleased the Almighty to give the oppressed people of this misgoverned and suffering country a

victory over their weak and wicked rulers. . . .

The reign of incompetency, imposture and corruption, is at length arrested, and the country

redeemed.’’ 18

A Brief Vice-Presidency

At 11 a.m. on March 4, 1841, the Senate convened in special session to play its constitutional

role in inaugurating the Harrison presidency.

After the secretary of the Senate called members

to order, Henry Clay administered the oath of office to President pro tempore William R. King.

Then, as a wave of excitement swept chamber

galleries that had been packed to capacity since

early morning, Tyler entered the room accompanied by former Vice President Richard M.

Johnson, the Supreme Court, and the diplomatic

corps. The court, somber ‘‘in their black robes

with their grave, intellectual, reflecting

countenances,’’ sat in front-row seats to the presiding officer’s right. To his left, in colorful contrast, sat the ambassadors decorated, ‘‘not only

with the insignia of their various orders, but half

covered with the richest embroidery in silver and

in gold.’’ 19

John Tyler arose and proceeded with Vice

President Richard Johnson to the presiding officer’s chair to take his oath from President pro

tempore King. The new vice president then assumed the chair and launched a three-minute inaugural address with a ringing tribute to his

predecessors, calling it an honor ‘‘to occupy a

seat which has been filled and adorned . . . by

an Adams, a Jefferson, a Gerry, a Clinton, and

a Tompkins.’’ He then continued with a verbal

bouquet to the Senate and ‘‘the high order of the

moral and intellectual power which has distinguished it in all past time, and which still distinguishes it.’’ In the next sentence, Tyler moved
[ 142 ]

JOHN TYLER

into his main theme—the centrality of the states’

rights doctrine:

Here [in the Senate] are to be found the immediate representatives of the States, by whose sovereign will the Government has been spoken into

existence. Here exists the perfect equality among

the members of this confederacy, which gives to

the smallest State in the Union a voice as potential as that of the largest. To this body is committed in an eminent degree, the trust of guarding

and protecting the institutions handed down to

us from our fathers, as well against the waves of

popular and rash impulses on the one hand, as

against attempts at executive encroachment on

the other.

Concluding in the spirit of Vice President Jefferson, Tyler confessed to his shortcomings as a

presiding officer and asked of the Senate ‘‘your

indulgence for my defects, and your charity for

my errors. I am but little skilled in parliamentary

law, and have been unused to preside over deliberative assemblies. All that I can urge in excuse

of my defects is, that I bring with me to this chair

an earnest wish to discharge properly its duties,

and a fixed determination to preside over your

deliberations with entire impartiality.’’ 20

When Tyler finished, senators beginning new

terms took their oaths. At twenty minutes past

noon, President-elect Harrison and the inaugural

arrangements committee entered the chamber

and took seats in front of the secretary’s desk.

After several minutes, the entire official party

rose and proceeded to the Capitol’s east portico

where a crowd of fifty thousand awaited to witness the president’s oath-taking. On that blustery

spring day, Harrison spoke without hat or overcoat for more than ninety minutes. Following the

ceremony, Tyler and the Senate returned to the

chamber to receive the president’s cabinet nominations, which were confirmed unanimously on

the following day. Without caring to attend the

series of inaugural parties or to preside over the

Senate for the remainder of the special session

that ended on March 15, Tyler promptly returned to Williamsburg. He traveled there, as

one biographer noted, ‘‘with the expectation of

spending the next four years in peace and

quiet.’’ 21

Early in April, Secretary of State Daniel Webster sent word to Tyler that Harrison, worn out

from the press of jobseekers, had fallen seriously

ill. The vice president saw no compelling need,

however, to return to Washington on account of

the president’s condition. As Senator Thomas

Hart Benton observed, ‘‘Mr. Tyler would feel it

indelicate to repair to the seat of government, of

his own will, on hearing the report of the President’s illness.’’ 22 Then, at sunrise on April 5,

1841, two horsemen arrived at Tyler’s plantation.

They were State Department chief clerk Fletcher

Webster, son of Secretary of State Daniel Webster, and Senate assistant doorkeeper Robert

Beale, whose mission was to deliver a letter from

the cabinet addressed to ‘‘John Tyler, Vice President of the United States.’’ The letter reported

that President Harrison had died of pneumonia

the previous day.23 After a quick breakfast, Tyler

embarked on a hurried journey by horseback

and boat that placed him back in the nation’s

capital at 4 a.m. the following day.

As word of Harrison’s demise spread across a

startled nation, John Quincy Adams despaired

for the country’s well-being:

Tyler is a political sectarian, of the slave-driving,

Virginian, Jeffersonian school, principled against

all improvement, with all the interests and passions and vices of slavery rooted in his moral and

political constitution—with talents not above mediocrity, and a spirit incapable of expansion to

the dimensions of the station upon which he has

been cast by the hand of Providence, unseen

through the apparent agency of chance. No one

ever thought of his being placed in the executive

chair.24

Although Tyler at age fifty-one was younger

than any previous president, he was also the

most experienced in the ways of government. He

had served as a member of both houses of his

state legislature, both houses of the U.S. Congress, governor of his state, and vice president

of the United States.25 By appearance, he was

cast for a leadership role. Standing slightly over

six feet, he possessed all the ‘‘features of the best

Grecian model’’ including a sharply defined aquiline nose. When a bust of Cicero was discovered during an excavation in Naples, two visit-
[ 143 ]

JOHN TYLER

ing Americans reportedly exclaimed ‘‘President

Tyler!’’ 26

The Accidental President

Harrison’s demise after only a month in office

presented the nation with a potential constitutional crisis. The Constitution of that time contained no Twenty-fifth Amendment to lay out

procedures governing the vice president’s actions when the chief executive became disabled

or when there was a vacancy before the end of

the incumbent’s term. The document provided

only that the ‘‘Powers and Duties of the said Office . . . shall devolve on the Vice President

. . . [who] shall act accordingly, until the Disability be removed, or a President shall be elected.’’

In another section, the Constitution referred to

the vice president ‘‘when he shall exercise [emphasis added] the Office of President of the United States.’’ 27

These provisions had occasioned a theoretical

discussion between those who believed a person

does not have to become president to exercise

presidential powers and others who held that the

vice president becomes president for the balance

of the term.28 As the first vice president to succeed to the presidency upon the death of his

predecessor, Tyler was determined to transform

theory into practice on behalf of the latter view,

becoming president in his own right and not

‘‘Vice President, acting as President’’ as Harrison’s cabinet was inclined to label him. Secretary of State Webster raised his concern about

the constitutional implications of the succession

with William Carroll, clerk of the Supreme

Court. Carroll conveyed Webster’s misgivings to

Chief Justice Roger Taney, reporting that the

‘‘Cabinet would be pleased to see and confer

with you at this most interesting moment.’’

Taney responded with extreme caution, saying

that he wished to avoid raising ‘‘the suspicion

of desiring to intrude into the affairs which belong to another branch of government.’’ 29

Tyler argued that his vice-presidential oath

covered the possibility of having to take over as

chief executive and consequently there was no

need for him to take the separate presidential

oath. The cabinet, major newspapers, and some

Tyler advisers disagreed. To remove any doubt,

despite his own strong reservations, Tyler agreed

to the oath, which was administered on April 6

at Brown’s Indian Queen Hotel by Chief Judge

William Cranch of the U.S. Circuit Court for the

District of Columbia. Taking this step produced

a significant reward, for it boosted Tyler’s annual

salary five-fold from $5,000 to $25,000.30

In his first official move, Tyler convened Harrison’s cabinet and listened patiently as Secretary

of State Daniel Webster advised that it had been

Harrison’s custom to bring all administrative issues ‘‘before the Cabinet, and their settlement

was decided by the majority, each member of the

Cabinet and the President having but one vote.’’

Choosing his words with care, Tyler responded,

‘‘I am the President, and I shall be held responsible for my administration. I shall be pleased to

avail myself of your counsel and advice. But I

can never consent to being dictated to as to what

I shall do or not do. When you think otherwise,

your resignations will be accepted.’’ 31

Outside of his cabinet, Tyler’s assumption of

the presidency’s full powers evoked little general

concern that he was overstepping proper constitutional boundaries, or that a special election

should be called. Major newspapers argued that

he was fully justified in his action, although for

several months after he took office some journals

continued to refer to him as ‘‘acting president.’’

One suggested a compromise view; a special

election would be required only if the presidency

were to fall, in the absence of a vice president,

to the Senate president pro tempore or the House

Speaker, as designated by the presidential succession statute of 1792.32

As the epithet ‘‘His Accidency’’ grew in popularity, Congress convened on May 31, 1841, for

its previously called special session and immediately took up the issue of Tyler’s claim to be

president in his own right. The question was

raised as the House prepared a resolution authorizing a committee to follow the custom of informing the president that ‘‘Congress is now

ready to receive any communication he may be

pleased to make.’’ 33 One member moved to

amend the resolution by striking out the word

‘‘President’’ and substituting ‘‘Vice President

now exercising the office of President.’’ Members

more sympathetic to Tyler’s reading of the Con-
[ 144 ]

JOHN TYLER

stitution—and the need to get on with the business of the nation—offered a firm rebuttal, which

the House then agreed to.

In the Senate, on the following day, a member

posed a hypothetical question as to what would

happen if the president were only temporarily

disabled and the vice president assumed the office. He envisioned a major struggle at the time

the disabled president sought to resume his

powers, particularly if he and the vice president

were of different parties. Senator John C. Calhoun reminded the Senate that this was not the

situation that faced them, rendering further discussion pointless. And what about the Senate’s

president pro tempore? Should he assume the

vice-presidency as the vice president had assumed the presidency? Former President pro

tempore George Poindexter urged the incumbent

president pro tempore, Samuel Southard, to

claim the title. Southard ignored the advice, and

the Senate then joined the House in adopting a

resolution recognizing Tyler’s legitimate claim to

the presidency.34

Acting Vice President (President Pro Tempore)

In this early period of the Senate’s history,

when a vice president planned to be away from

the Capitol, the Senate customarily elected a

president pro tempore to serve for the limited

time of that absence. This official would preside,

sign legislation, and perform routine administrative tasks. Whenever the vice-presidency was vacant, as it was with the deaths of George Clinton

and Elbridge Gerry in James Madison’s administration, the post of president pro tempore, next

in line of presidential succession, assumed

heightened importance. Two individuals held

this crucial post during Tyler’s presidency: Samuel Southard, from 1841 to 1842, and Willie P.

Mangum from 1842 to 1845.

Soon after Vice President Tyler left Washington on the day of Harrison’s inauguration, the

Senate followed Clay’s recommendation and

elected Senator Samuel Southard of New Jersey

as president pro tempore. Southard had first entered the Senate in 1821 but resigned in 1823 to

become secretary of the navy. In 1833, after moving through a series of state and national offices,

Southard returned to the Senate, where he

helped to establish the Whig party. At a time

when Clay was attempting to consolidate his

control of the Senate, Southard proved to be a

useful ally. When the Senate convened in May

1841, a month after Harrison’s death, Southard’s

significance expanded. In this period of the Senate’s history, the vice president or, in his absence,

the president pro tempore made all committee

assignments. Southard willingly accommodated

Clay in the distribution of important

chairmanships.

The next year, however, on May 3, 1842, the

New Jersey Whig resigned from the Senate due

to ill health and died soon thereafter. Several

weeks later, on May 31, the Senate selected a new

president pro tempore, Willie P. Mangum (WNC), a leader of the Senate’s Whig caucus.

Mangum had served a Senate term in the 1830s

and, as a Clay delegate to the 1839 Whig convention, had been considered briefly as a vice-presidential nominee. He returned to the Senate in

1840, where he remained as a Whig leader until

1853. His 1842 selection as president pro tempore

occurred in recognition of his leadership in opposing Tyler. He held the post through the remainder of Tyler’s administration.

Tyler’s Presidency

Deep divisions over the issue of establishing

a new banking system overshadowed Tyler’s

early presidency. In the Senate, Henry Clay led

his party in a direction quite different from Tyler’s. The two men had been good friends, despite their philosophical differences. Tyler had

joined the Whigs because of his strong opposition to the policies of Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren. Ideologically, however, he had little sympathy for the Whig program of a national

bank, internal improvements, and protective tariffs embodied in Clay’s ‘‘American System.’’ As

a former states’ rights Democrat, Tyler emphasized the importance of state sovereignty over

national economic integration. Both Tyler and

Clay held a typical nineteenth-century, anti-Jacksonian view of the presidency as a limited, relatively passive office responsible for providing

Congress the necessary information to pass appropriate legislation. They saw the president’s

policy role as essentially limited to vetoing legis-
[ 145 ]

JOHN TYLER

lation that he believed to be either unconstitutional or not in the nation’s best interests. Tyler,

however, would have given the president sufficient power to keep Congress from actions that

might erode states’ rights. Clay made a sharper

distinction, advocating an assertive Congress

and a chief executive stripped of the powers acquired during Jackson’s years in office. Admirers

and foes alike began referring to Clay as ‘‘the Andrew Jackson of the Senate.’’

Although Clay had briefly opposed Tyler’s

move to take on full presidential powers after

Harrison’s death, he changed his mind and

began to provide the new chief executive with

valuable moral and political support. Yet Clay

also realized that Tyler now blocked his own

road to the presidency. Clay had appeared to be

the obvious successor in 1845, based on Harrison’s announcement that he intended to serve

only one term.

Clay intended to lead the nation from the Senate and he expected Tyler to help him to that objective by supporting his policies. That expectation quickly proved to be misplaced. Despite Tyler’s mild-mannered demeanor, he began to display a rock-like tenacity in pushing for his own

objectives. Clay sought to reestablish a strong,

private, central bank of the United States. Tyler,

consistent in his concern for preservation of

states’ rights—and state banks—advocated a

weaker bank, chartered in the District of Columbia, that would operate only in those states that

chose to have it. When Clay urged Tyler to push

for a new Bank of the United States during the

May 1841 special session, Tyler said he wanted

more time and intended to put the matter off

until the regular session in December. Clay arrogantly responded that this would not be acceptable. Tyler is said to have countered, ‘‘Then, sir,

I wish you to understand this—that you and I

were born in the same district; that we have fed

upon the same food, and have breathed the same

natal air. Go you now then, Mr. Clay, to your

end of the avenue, where stands the Capitol, and

there perform your duty to the country as you

shall think proper. So help me God, I shall do

mine at this end of it as I shall think proper.’’ 35

In the interest of party harmony, Clay eventually agreed to a compromise bank measure,

which the increasingly resentful Tyler promptly

vetoed. Congress subsequently passed a modified ‘‘Fiscal Corporation’’ bill to meet the president’s specific objections. Tyler also vetoed this

act as an unconstitutional infringement on states’

rights. On Saturday, September 11, 1841, in the

final days of the special session, Tyler’s entire

cabinet—with the exception of Secretary of State

Webster—resigned in a protest designed by Clay

to force Tyler’s own resignation. With the vicepresidency vacant, this would place Clay’s

prote ́ge ́, Senate President pro tempore Southard,

in the White House.

Refusing to be intimidated, Tyler responded

the following Monday by sending the Senate a

new slate of cabinet officers. Despite the president’s break with the Senate’s leaders, the body

on September 13 quickly confirmed each of the

nominees and then adjourned until December.

Later that day, in a starkly dramatic move, sixty

prominent Whigs assembled in the plaza adjacent to the Capitol. In a festive mood, they adopted a manifesto that asserted the supremacy of

Congress in policy-making, condemned the

president’s conduct, and proclaimed that the

Whig party could no longer be held responsible

for the chief executive’s actions. Tyler had become a president without a party.36

The chaos that ensued gave Tyler the unwanted distinction of having ‘‘the most disrupted Cabinet in presidential history.’’ 37 During his nearly four years in office, he appointed

twenty-two individuals to the administration’s

six cabinet seats. Many of these nominees were

manifestly unqualified for their assignments,

and the Senate refused to confirm four of them.

Among those rejected was Caleb Cushing, whom

Tyler chose to be secretary of the treasury. On

the day of Cushing’s initial rejection, Tyler immediately resubmitted his name. The Senate, irritated at this disregard of its expressed will, again

said ‘‘no’’ but by a larger margin. For a third

time, Tyler nominated Cushing and again the

Senate decisively rejected him. The Senate’s

Whig majority, stalling for time in the expectation that Henry Clay would be elected president

in 1844, also turned down, or failed to act on,

four of Tyler’s Supreme Court nominees—a

record not before or since equalled.
[ 146 ]

JOHN TYLER

Positioning himself to run in 1844 as the Whig

candidate for the presidency, Clay resigned from

the Senate in March 1842. Tyler continued the

struggle with his party’s congressional majority

by vetoing two tariff bills. As government revenues fell to a dangerously low level, he finally

agreed to a measure that became the Tariff Act

of 1842. Although this action probably aided the

nation’s economy, it destroyed any remaining

hope that Tyler might govern effectively. Northern Whigs condemned him for failing to push for

a sufficiently protective tariff, and his former

states’ rights allies in the South abandoned him

for supporting a measure that they considered

excessively protective.

John Tyler sought to be a strong president, but

his accomplishments proved to be modest. Stubborn, proud, and unpredictable, he decisively established the right of the vice president to assume the full powers of the presidency in the

event of a vacancy to an unexpired term. He

boldly exercised the veto ten times, a record exceeded only by Andrew Jackson among presidents who served in the nation’s first seventyfive years. His chief contributions lay in the field

of foreign policy. The annexation of Texas

opened a new chapter in the nation’s history. The

Webster-Ashburton treaty prevented a costly

war with Great Britain, and the Treaty of

Wanghia obtained economically promising

most-favored-nation status for the United States

in China. 38

Despite his earlier ambitions, Tyler became the

first president not to seek a second term. (No

party would have him as its candidate.) After

leaving the White House on March 3, 1845, Tyler

practiced law and was appointed to the board

of visitors for the College of William and Mary.

A year earlier, at the first presidential wedding

to be conducted in the White House, he had married Julia Gardiner, a vivacious partner who, like

his first wife Letitia, produced seven children.39

In February 1861 the ex-president chaired a conference in Washington in a last-ditch effort to

avert civil war. When that war began, he was

elected to Virginia’s secessionist convention and

then to the provisional Congress of the Confederacy. He had won a seat in the Confederate

Congress’ house of representatives, but his death

on January 18, 1862, came before he could begin

his service.

Tyler biographer Robert Seager notes that he

‘‘lived in a time in which many brilliant and

forceful men strode the American stage . . . and

he was overshadowed by all of them, as was the

office of the Presidency itself. . . . Had he surrendered his states’ rights and anti-Bank principles

he might have salvaged it. He chose not to surrender and the powerful Henry Clay crushed

him.’’ 40
[ 147 ]

NOTES 1Robert Seager II, And Tyler Too: A Biography of John &

Julia Gardiner Tyler (Norwalk, CT, 1963), p. 50. 2 Ibid., pp. 52–53.

3 Ibid., pp. 55–56.

4 Ibid., pp. 56–58.

5 Ibid., p. 53–54.

6Quoted in ibid., p. 72.

7Oliver Perry Chitwood, John Tyler: Champion of the Old

South (New York, 1939), pp. 148–49. 8 Ibid., p. 151–52.

9 Ibid., pp. 157–61.

10 Ibid., pp. 162–63.

11National Intelligencer, August 27, 1844; Seager, p. 135. 12Robert Gray Gunderson, The Log-Cabin Campaign (Lexington, KY, 1957), pp. 41–75; Merrill D. Peterson, The Great

Triumvirate: Webster, Clay, and Calhoun (New York, 1987),

pp. 248, 281–96; Robert V. Remini, Henry Clay: Statesman for

the Union (New York, 1991), pp. 545–67. 13 Norma Lois Peterson, The Presidencies of William Henry

Harrison & John Tyler (Lawrence, KS, 1989), p. 21; Chitwood,

pp. 164–67. 14 Seager, pp. 134–35. There is some scholarly controversy

over the reasons for Tyler’s selection. The view that he was

carelessly selected may not have been widely held until

after Tyler broke with Whig party leaders after becoming

president. For a discussion of this question, see Norma Peterson, The Presidencies of William Henry Harrison & John

Tyler, p. 26; Chitwood, pp. 167–73. 15William O. Stoddard, Lives of the Presidents, 10 vols.

(New York, 1888), 5:44; Chitwood, pp. 166–67; Norma Peterson, pp. 26–27. 16 Chitwood, pp. 184–85.

17Daily Pittsburgher, October 8, 1840, quoted in ibid., p.

187. 18Niles’ National Register, 59:163. 19Niles National Register, March 13, 1841, p. 19. This excellent source provides colorful descriptions of the events of

March 4, 1841. 20 Chitwood, pp. 200–201; U.S., Congress, Senate, Congressional Globe, 26th Cong., 2d sess., March 4, 1841, pp. 231–

32.21 Chitwood, p. 202.

22Thomas Hart Benton, Thirty Years’ View, 2 vols. (New

York, 1871), 2:211. 23Ruth C. Silva, Presidential Succession (Ann Arbor, MI,

1951), p. 16. 24 Charles Francis Adams, ed., Memoirs of John Quincy

Adams, 12 vols. (Philadelphia, 1876), 10:456–57. 25 Seager, p. 147.

26Quoted in Remini, p. 582.

27U.S. Constitution, Article II, section 1, clause 6; Article

I, section 2, clause 10. 28 Stephen W. Stathis, ‘‘John Tyler’s Presidential Succession: A Reappraisal,’’ Prologue 8 (Winter 1976): 223–24, especially footnote 1; Silva, pp. 2–3. See also Stephen W. Stathis,

‘‘The Making of a Precedent 1841 (The Presidential Succession of John Tyler),’’ (Master’s Thesis, Utah State University,

1971). 29 Samuel Tyler, Memoir of Roger Brooke Taney (Baltimore,

1872), pp. 295–96; Silva, pp. 16–17. 30 Sharon Stiver Gressle, ‘‘Salaries, Executive,’’ Encyclopedia of the American Presidency (New York, 1994), pp. 1344–

46.31Quoted in Seager, p. 149.

32 Silva, pp. 18–20.

33Congressional Globe, 27th Cong., 1st sess., pp. 3–4. 34 Stathis, p. 234; Chitwood, p. 206; Silva, pp. 21–22. Even

after he left the presidency, Tyler continued to confront the

issue of his proper title. On October 16, 1848, he wrote to

Secretary of State James Buchanan to complain that the State

Department, the government’s official arbiter of protocol,

had on three occasions addressed him in formal correspondence as ‘‘ex-vice president.’’ ‘‘I desire only to say,

that if I am addressed, and especially from the State department, by title, it must be that which the Constitution confers

. . .’’ [quoted in Silva, p. 21] 35 Chitwood, pp. 210–11; Seager, p. 147; Remini, p. 583.

36 Norma Peterson, pp. 89–91; Seager, p. 160.

37 Paul Finkelman, ‘‘John Tyler,’’ Encyclopedia of the American Presidency, 4:1521. 38 For a balanced assessment of Tyler’s presidency, see

Norma Peterson, chapter 15. 39 Seager, pp. 1–16.

40 Ibid., p. xvi.

[ 149 ]

Chapter 11

GEORGE MIFFLIN DALLAS

1845–1849
GEORGE M. DALLAS
[ 151 ]

Chapter 11

GEORGE MIFFLIN DALLAS

11th Vice President: 1845–1849

[Except that he is President of the Senate, the vice president] forms no part of the government:—

he enters into no administrative sphere:—he has practically no legislative, executive, or judicial functions:—while the Senate sits, he presides, that’s all:—he doesn’t debate or vote, (except to end a tie) he

merely preserves the order and courtesy of business . . . [When Congress is in recess] where is he to

go? what has he to do?—no where, nothing! He might, to be sure, meddle with affairs of state, rummage

through the departments, devote his leisure to the study of public questions and interests, holding himself

in readiness to counsel and to help at every emergency in the great onward movement of the vast machine:—But, then, recollect, that this course would sometimes be esteemed intrusive, sometimes factious,

sometimes vain and arrogant, and, as it is prescribed by no law, it could not fail to be treated lightly

because guaranteed by no responsibility.

—GEORGE M. DALLAS, CA. 1845 1

George Mifflin Dallas admitted in his later

years that his driving force in life was for historical fame. From the 1840s on through the latter

part of the nineteenth century, Americans associated his name with the acquisition of Texas and

the settlement of the Oregon boundary dispute.

Texas memorialized his contributions to the

state’s history by renaming the town of Peter’s

Corner in his honor. In the 1850s, when officials

in Oregon sought a name for the principal town

in Polk County, they settled on the logical choice:

Polk’s vice president. Thus, while largely forgotten today as the nation’s eleventh vice president,

George Mifflin Dallas has won his measure of

immortality in a large Texas city and a small Oregon town.2

For four years at the heart of the Senate’s

‘‘Golden Age,’’ Vice President George Dallas occupied a center stage seat in the nation’s premier

political theater. This courtly Philadelphia aristocrat—whose political ambition greatly exceeded his political energy—entered that arena

in 1845 filled with optimism for the nation, the

Democratic party, and his own presidential future. He departed in 1849 embittered and depressed, his political chances obliterated. During

his term, the nation fought and won a war with

Mexico, acquired vast new territories, settled a

chronic northwestern boundary dispute, discovered gold, and launched a communications revolution with the invention of the telegraph. In the

Senate, where political party caucuses assumed

new powers to appoint committee members and

distribute patronage, the central debates occurred over the status of slavery in the territories

and the very nature of the constitutional union.

With increasing frequency, senators faced conflicting choices between the desires of their parties and of their constituencies. When such an

unavoidable decision confronted Vice President

Dallas in July 1846 on the then searing issue of

tariff policy, he chose party over constituency—

thereby forfeiting his political future.

Early Years

George Mifflin Dallas was born in Philadelphia

on July 10, 1792, the second of Alexander and

Arabella Smith Dallas’ six children. Alexander

Dallas, a politically well-connected Philadelphia

lawyer, served as secretary for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and reporter for the
[ 152 ]

GEORGE M. DALLAS

opinions of the U.S. Supreme Court and other

courts then meeting in that city, which was at the

time the nation’s capital and leading commercial

center. In 1801, as a reward for the elder Dallas’

assistance in his presidential election campaign,

Thomas Jefferson appointed him U.S. district attorney for the eastern district of Pennsylvania.

He remained in that post until 1814, when President James Madison selected him as his treasury

secretary. In 1815, Alexander Dallas also served

concurrently for a brief period as acting secretary

of war. He then resigned the treasury position

in 1816 to return to his law practice with the intention of expanding the family’s financial resources. However, early the following year, a

chronic illness led to his death at the age of fiftynine, leaving his family without the wealth necessary to support its accustomed style of living.

George Dallas graduated with highest honors

from the College of New Jersey at Princeton in

1810. He then studied law and in 1813, at age

twenty, was admitted to the Pennsylvania bar.

With little taste for legal practice, he sought military service in the War of 1812 but abandoned

those plans on the objection of his ever-influential father. He then readily accepted an appointment to serve as private secretary to former

treasury secretary and Pennsylvania political figure Albert Gallatin, who was about to embark

on a wartime mission to secure the aid of Russia

in U.S. peace negotiations with Great Britain.

Dallas enjoyed the opportunities that travel to

this distant land offered, but after six months orders took him from St. Petersburg to London to

probe for diplomatic openings that might bring

the war to an end.

In August 1814, as British troops were setting

fire to the U.S. Capitol, young Dallas carried a

preliminary draft of Britain’s peace terms home

to Washington and accepted President Madison’s appointment as remitter of the treasury, a

convenient arrangement at a time when his father was serving as that department’s secretary.

The light duties of his new post left Dallas plenty

of time to pursue his major vocational interest—

politics.3

In 1816, lonely and lovesick, Dallas left Washington for Philadelphia, where he married Sophia Chew Nicklin, daughter of an old-line Federalist family. (They would eventually have eight

children.) His marriage extended his social and

political reach but, as his modern biographer reports, ‘‘Prestige came without money, a circumstance that was doubly unfortunate because

he had developed extravagant tastes as a youth.

For this reason he continually lived beyond his

means and was constantly in debt, a situation

that caused him on more than one occasion to

reject otherwise acceptable political posts.’’ 4 At

the start of his married life, Dallas achieved a

measure of financial stability by accepting a position as counsel to the Second Bank of the United

States, an institution his father had helped create

while treasury secretary. The 1817 death of Alexander Dallas abruptly ended George’s plans for

a family law practice. He left the Bank of the

United States to become deputy attorney general

of Philadelphia, a post he held until 1820.

George Mifflin Dallas cultivated a bearing appropriate to his aristocratic origins. Tall, with

soft hazel eyes, an aquiline nose, and sandy hair,

he dressed impeccably in the finest clothes his

fashionable city could offer, wrote poetry, and,

when the occasion warranted, spoke perfectly

nuanced French. He developed an oratorical

style that capitalized on his sonorous voice and

protected him from the barbs of quicker-witted

legal adversaries. His biographer explains that,

whether ‘‘by chance or design, his habit of talking slowly and emphasizing each word created

the feeling that he was reasoning his way to a

conclusion on the spot. Since he also prepared

cases carefully in advance, his apparent groping

for the right word—and finding it—reinforced

the initial impression that a great mind was at

work.’’ 5

Dallas, however, lacked both the intense drive

necessary to achieve his high ambitions and a

natural politican’s gift for warm social interaction with those outside his immediate circle.

‘‘A silk-stocking Jeffersonian in an age of egalitarianism,’’ he preferred to remain aloof from the

rough-and-tumble world of political deal making. Only once in his public life, when he ran for

the vice-presidency, did he submit himself to the

decision of the voting public. The Pennsylvania

state legislature awarded him his Senate term,

and the rest of his offices were given by appoint-
[ 153 ]

GEORGE M. DALLAS

ment. At crucial moments, Dallas pulled back

from the wrenching political compromises and

exhausting coalition building necessary to

achieve his lifelong quest for the presidency.6

Buchanan Rivalry

Pennsylvania’s chaotic political climate in the

forty years that followed the War of 1812 promoted, shaped, and ultimately sidetracked Dallas’ public career. Two factions within the state’s

Democratic party contended for power during

that time. Led by Dallas, the Philadelphia-based

‘‘Family party’’ shared his belief in the supremacy of the Constitution and in an active national

government that would impose protective tariffs,

operate a strong central banking system, and

promote so-called internal improvements to facilitate national commerce. In factional opposition to Dallas stood the equally patrician James

Buchanan of Harrisburg, head of the rival

‘‘Amalgamators,’’ whose strength lay among the

farmers of western Pennsylvania.7

When the Family party gained control of the

Philadelphia city councils, its members in 1828

elected Dallas as mayor. Boredom with that post

quickly led Dallas—in his father’s path—to the

position of district attorney for the eastern district of Pennsylvania, where he stayed from 1829

to 1831. In December 1831 he won a five-man,

eleven-ballot contest in the state legislature for

election to the U.S. Senate to complete an

unexpired term. In the Senate for only fourteen

months, he chaired the Naval Affairs Committee

and supported President Jackson’s views on protective tariffs and the use of force to implement

federal tariff laws in South Carolina.

A longtime supporter and financial beneficiary

of the Second Bank of the United States, whose

original charter his father had drafted, Dallas reluctantly parted company with the president on

the volcanic issue of the bank’s rechartering. As

one Dallas biographer has written: ‘‘There was

no question about how the people of Pennsylvania viewed the Second Bank of the United States.

The Philadelphia-based institution was Pennsylvanian by interest, location, and legislative

initiative.’’ 8 Dallas complied with a directive

from his state legislature that he support a new

charter, despite Jackson’s unremitting opposition

and his own view that the divisive recharter

issue should be put off until after the 1832 presidential election. When Jackson vetoed the recharter act in July 1831 and Congress failed to override the veto, Dallas—always the pragmatist—

dropped his support for the bank. Observing that

‘‘we ought to have it, but we can do without it,’’

he mollified the president and angered his state’s

influential commercial interests.9 Dallas realized

that his chances for reelection to the Senate by

the state legislature were uncertain. His wife Sophia, who refused to leave Philadelphia’s comforts for muddy and cholera-ridden Washington,

was growing increasingly bitter over the legislative and social demands of his life in the capital.

Consequently, Dallas chose not to run for a full

term and left the Senate in March 1833.10

Although off the national stage, Dallas remained active in state Democratic politics. The

tension with Buchanan intensified when the latter returned from his diplomatic post in Russia

and secured Pennsylvania’s other seat in the U.S.

Senate. Dallas turned down opportunities to return to the Senate and to become the nation’s attorney general. Instead, he accepted an appointment as state attorney general, holding that post

until 1835, when control of the state’s party machinery shifted from the declining Family party

to Buchanan’s Amalgamators. In 1837, it was

Dallas’ turn for political exile, as newly elected

President Martin Van Buren named him U.S.

minister to Russia. Although Dallas enjoyed the

social responsibilities of that post, he soon grew

frustrated at its lack of substantive duties and returned to the United States in 1839. He found

that during his absence in St. Petersburg Buchanan had achieved a commanding position in

the home state political contest that had long engaged the two men.11

In December 1839, Van Buren offered the U.S.

attorney-generalship to Dallas after Buchanan

had rejected the post. Dallas again declined the

offer and spent the following years building his

Philadelphia law practice. His relations with Buchanan remained troubled throughout this

period.
[ 154 ]

GEORGE M. DALLAS

The 1844 Campaign and Election

Favoring Van Buren for the 1844 Democratic

presidential nomination, Dallas worked successfully to blunt Buchanan’s drive for that prize.

Van Buren sought unsuccessfully to have the

Democratic convention held in November 1843

rather than late May 1844. He had hoped to capture the nomination before his opposition to the

annexation of Texas became public when Congress convened in early December. By April

1844, with Democratic support for annexation intensifying, Van Buren watched helplessly as his

chances for regaining the White House slipped

away.

Under the influence of Van Buren’s opponents,

the Democratic party’s Baltimore convention in

May adopted the Jackson-era rule that required

a two-thirds vote to select its nominee. After

eight deadlocked ballots at the superheated and

violence-prone convention, supporters of Van

Buren and his chief rival, Michigan’s Lewis Cass,

united on the unheralded former House Speaker

James K. Polk of Tennessee—who thus became

the first successful ‘‘darkhorse’’ candidate in

American presidential history. To cement an alliance with the disgruntled Van Buren faction,

Polk offered to support a Van Buren loyalist for

the vice-presidential nomination, New York Senator Silas Wright. Although Wright was absent

from the convention, those delegates who had

not already left town willingly added him to the

ticket.12

Four days earlier, Professor Samuel F. B. Morse

had successfully demonstrated that his newly invented ‘‘Magnetic Electric Telegraph’’ could

transmit messages over the forty-mile distance

between the U.S. Capitol and Baltimore. Silas

Wright was in the Capitol Rotunda reading other

telegraphic reports from the Baltimore convention when news of his nomination arrived. Bitter

at the convention’s rejection of Van Buren,

Wright dictated a response to Morse, who typed

out the following message to the convention’s

waiting delegates: ‘‘WASHINGTON. IMPORTANT!

MR. WRIGHT IS HERE, AND SAYS, SAY TO THE NEW

YORK DELEGATION, THAT HE CANNOT ACCEPT THE

NOMINATION.’’ His party’s remaining delegates

in Baltimore did not fully trust this new invention and repeated their message. Morse replied:

‘‘AGAIN: MR. WRIGHT IS HERE, AND WILL SUPPORT

MR. POLK CHEERFULLY, BUT CAN NOT ACCEPT THE

NOMINATION FOR VICE-PRESIDENT.’’ The unbelieving convention continued its request until

Wright dispatched two members of Congress in

a wagon—the evening train to Baltimore had already departed—bearing handwritten letters of

rejection.13

With Wright out of the picture, and with no

New York ally of Van Buren willing to accept the

nomination, the convention turned to James Buchanan, but he immediately instructed his allies

to withdraw his name. The searchlight then

swept across several candidates from New England and came to rest on Maine’s Senator John

Fairfield, who received an impressive, but inconclusive, 106 votes on the first ballot. At the suggestion of party leader and Mississippi Senator

Robert J. Walker (who was married to Dallas’

niece), Pennsylvania delegates then sparked a

move for Dallas, who was at home in Philadelphia. Dallas’ views were generally compatible

with Polk’s, especially on the key issue of annexing Texas. His stand in favor of protective tariffs

would appeal to northeastern commercial interests and offset Polk’s ambiguous position on this

sensitive issue. Party strategists realized that

Pennsylvania, with its prize of nearly 10 percent

of the total electoral votes, which were by no

means safely in the Democratic camp, could

prove decisive in the election. On the second ballot, the convention gave Dallas the nomination

with 220 votes to just 30 for Fairfield.

On May 30, sixty high-spirited delegates left

Baltimore for Philadelphia, arriving at the Dallas

residence at 3 a.m. As a bewildered Dallas stood

by his open door, the nocturnal visitors marched

by double column silently into his parlor. Forming a semicircle, the men burst into applause as

Senator Fairfield conveyed the surprising news

and Dallas, uneasy at the prospect of returning

to public life, accepted with less than abundant

enthusiasm.14

The selection also came as news to presidential

nominee Polk, whose advisers quickly assured

him that Dallas would be an excellent complement to the ticket. Within Pennsylvania, opinion was sharply divided, as resentful Buchanan
[ 155 ]

GEORGE M. DALLAS

allies feared that the less-than-dynamic Dallas

would cost their party the presidency in a contest

against the aggressive and better-known Whig

candidates, Kentucky’s Henry Clay and New Jersey’s Theodore Frelinghuysen.15 One Pennsylvania Whig dismissively described Dallas as ‘‘a

gentleman by birth and education, amiable in

private life, very bland and courteous in manner

. . . a reckless partizan totally devoid of principle

and capable of upholding or relinquishing . . .

opinions whenever his own or his party’s interests require it.’’ 16

As was customary prior to 1845, the various

states scheduled the presidential election on different days during November’s first two

weeks.17 When the votes were finally tallied, the

Polk-Dallas ticket won fifteen out of the twentysix states by a comfortable margin of 170 to 105

electoral votes. They were far less convincing,

however, in the popular vote, with a margin of

only 6,000 out of the 2.7 million ballots cast. Polk

narrowly lost his native Tennessee, while Dallas

barely carried Pennsylvania. While analysts

agreed that victories in New York and Pennsylvania made the difference for the Democratic

ticket, no such consensus existed about Dallas’

impact on this result.18

Preparing for Office

Like many of his contemporaries on the national political stage in 1845, George Dallas wanted to be president. In accepting the Democratic

nomination, Polk committed himself to serving

only one term, hoping this promise would encourage his party’s warring factions to suspend

their combat at least until the 1848 campaign.19

Instead, his pledge instantly prompted maneuvering from many quarters for the 1848 nomination. Four of the nation’s ten previous vice presidents had moved up to the presidency and Dallas saw no reason why he should not become the

fifth. For his first two years in the second office,

Dallas framed his behavior with that goal in

mind.

Dallas met Polk for the first time on February

13, 1845, joining the president-elect for the final

leg of his railroad journey to Washington. Dallas

used the opportunity to follow up on his earlier

suggestions for cabinet nominees he believed

would strengthen the party—and his own presidential chances.20 He particularly sought to sabotage archrival James Buchanan’s hopes of becoming secretary of state, the other traditional

launching pad to the White House. Buchanan

had arrogantly instructed Pennsylvania’s presidential electors to recommend him for that post

at the time they cast their ballots for the Democratic ticket. This infuriated Dallas, who promised a friend that, while he had become vice

president ‘‘willy-nilly’’ and expected to endure

‘‘heavy and painful and protracted sacrifices,

. . . I am resolved that no one shall be taken from

Pennsylvania in a cabinet office who is notoriously hostile to the Vice President. If such a

choice be made, my relations with the administration are at once at an end.’’ 21

Several weeks later, learning that Polk had indeed chosen Buchanan, Dallas failed to follow up

on his dark oath. Instead, he began quietly to

lobby for the appointment of Senator Robert J.

Walker—his earlier choice against Buchanan for

the state department—for the influential post of

treasury secretary. Polk, realizing that he had offended Dallas and Walker’s southern Democratic

allies, awarded the treasury post to Walker. Dallas continued to be sensitive about the administration’s distribution of major appointments, as

he sought to strengthen his Pennsylvania political base in order to weaken the Buchanan faction

and enhance his own presidential prospects. In

his subsequent appointments, however, Polk

continued to antagonize Dallas, as well as others

in the Democratic party. Again, the president

tried to appease the vice president. ‘‘I would

have been pleased to explain to you some of the

circumstances attending the appointments at

Philadelphia which were made some time ago,

but no opportunity for that purpose has occurred.’’ Dallas responded that it was pointless

to discuss these matters ‘‘in as much as you have

not been able to gratify the few requests I have

previously made.’’ Despite his frustration and

subsequent patronage losses to Secretary of State

Buchanan, who was a far tougher and more persistent operator, the vice president endeavored

to remain loyal to his president and party.22
[ 156 ]

GEORGE M. DALLAS

President of the Senate

From 1789 to 1845, the Senate followed the

practice of selecting its committees by ballot,

with the exception of several years in the 1820s

and 1830s when the power was specifically given

to the presiding officer (1823–1826) or, more

pointedly, to the president pro tempore (1828–

1833), an officer selected by and responsible to

the Senate.23 When the Senate convened in

March 1845 for its brief special session to receive

the new president’s executive nominations,

Democratic party leaders engineered a resolution that revived the practice of having the vice

president appoint the members of standing committees. Acknowledging that the vice president

was not directly responsible to the Senate, administration allies asserted that his was a greater

responsibility, as guaranteed in the Constitution,

‘‘to the Senate’s masters, the people of these

United States.’’ 24 The goal was to pack the Committee on Foreign Relations with members sympathetic to the administration’s position on the

Oregon boundary question. Vice President Dallas made the desired appointments.

In December 1845, at the opening of the Senate’s regular legislative session, party leaders

again sought to give the appointment power to

Dallas. On this occasion, however, four rebellious Democrats joined minority party Whigs to

defeat the resolution by a one-vote margin. This

action presented the Polk administration with

the unappealing likelihood that, in balloting by

the full Senate, Democrats hostile to its specific

objectives would take control of key Senate committees. Dallas reported that the return to the

usual procedure required him to work ‘‘unusually hard . . . to superintend some sixteen or

twenty ballotings for officers and chairmen of

Committees.’’ He was ‘‘much encouraged by the

kind manner in which I am complimented on my

mode of presiding. But I assure you,’’ he continued, ‘‘contrary to my expectations, it is not done

without a great deal of preparatory labor. Now

that [the anti-administration] hostility has shewn

itself, I am bound to be ready at all points and

against surprizes.’’ 25

To end this time-consuming process, Senate

party leaders took a step of major importance for

the future development of legislative political

parties. The Democrats and Whigs each organized a party caucus to prepare lists of committee assignments, an arrangement that marked the

beginning of the Senate seniority system. As long

as committee members had been selected by secret ballot or appointed by presiding officers, a

member’s experience did not guarantee his selection. After 1845, seniority became a major determinant, particularly in the selection of committee

chairmen. Legislative parties, charged with preparing slates of committee assignments, tended

to become more cohesive. In this period the tradition also began of seating in the chamber by

party—with the Democrats to the presiding officer’s right and the Whigs (later the Republicans)

to the left.

From his canopied dais, the vice president had

the best seat in the nation’s best theater. On one

memorable occasion, he reported to his wife that

‘‘the speech of [Senator Daniel] Webster to-day

would have overwhelmed and perhaps disgusted you. He attacked [Pennsylvania’s Representative] Mr. C. J. Ingersoll with the savage

and mangling ferocity of a tiger. For at least a

half an hour, he grit his teeth, scowled, stamped,

and roared forth the very worst & most abusive

language I have ever heard uttered in the Senate.’’ Dallas later observed that ‘‘[v]ast intellect,

like Webster’s, almost naturally glides into arrogance.’’ 26

In his brief inaugural address to the Senate,

Dallas had acknowledged that he entered into

his ‘‘tranquil and unimposing’’ new duties

‘‘[w]ithout any of the cares of real power [and]

none of the responsibilities of legislation’’ except

in rare instances when he might be called on to

break tied votes. If anything, he would stand as

‘‘an organ of Freedom’s fundamental principle of

order.’’ 27 Despite this noble disclaimer of partisanship, Dallas involved himself deeply in the

struggle to help the president achieve his legislative agenda. He worked against strong contrary

pressures from the party’s western faction, led

by Senator Thomas Hart Benton, and its southern bloc under the inspiration of Senator John C.

Calhoun. In assessing these senators’ motives,

Dallas reported that Benton intended to oppose

Calhoun wherever possible. ‘‘If Mr. Calhoun
[ 157 ]

GEORGE M. DALLAS

should support the [Polk] administration, Col.

Benton will not be able to resist the impulse to

oppose it:—on the contrary, if Mr. Calhoun opposes, Col. Benton will be our champion. Such

are, in the highest spheres of action, the uncertainties and extravagancies of human

passions!’’ 28

At the start of his term as Senate president,

Dallas was called on to make an administrative

decision that had larger constitutional consequences. Since 1815, senators had received a

compensation of eight dollars for each day they

were present in Washington. Public opposition

routinely frustrated persistent congressional efforts to move instead to an annual salary. In

March 1845 several senators hit upon a novel

way to supplement their compensation—to collect travel expenses to and from Washington for

the special session that the Senate held at the

start of each new administration to confirm presidential appointments. The problem was that

senators had already been paid for their travel

to the final regular session of the Congress that

had adjourned the day before the special session

began. When veteran Secretary of the Senate Asbury Dickins informed Dallas that ‘‘no distinct

and controlling decision’’ had ever been made on

this issue, Dallas ruled in a lengthy written opinion that each senator should be paid for travel

at the beginning and end of each session ‘‘without any enquiry or regard as to where he actually

was or how he was actually engaged . . . and

without any enquiry or regard as to, where he

intends to travel or remain when the Senate adjourns.’’ This decision unleashed a flood of applications from current and former senators for

compensation for travel to earlier special sessions, until Dallas advised that the ruling would

not be applied retroactively. Several years later,

in response to a Treasury Department challenge

of the Dallas ruling, the attorney general concluded that the ‘‘president of the Senate is the

sole judge of the amounts of compensation due

and his certificate is conclusive’’ and that ‘‘mileage is part of a Senator’s compensation, and not

mere defrayment of travelling expenses, and

hence actual travel is not necessary.’’ 29

Dallas followed the custom of members of

Congress who rented rooms, for the duration of

a congressional session, either on Capitol Hill or

closer to the White House. During the regular

session of the Twenty-ninth Congress, from December 1845 through August 1846, he resided at

Henry Riell’s boardinghouse within a short walk

of the Capitol at Third Street and Maryland Avenue, NE. For the first session of the Thirtieth

Congress, from December 1847 to August 1848,

he lived at Mrs. Gadsby’s on President’s Square

across from the White House. For his final session, from December 1848 to March 1849, he

moved several blocks to Mr. Levi Williams’

boardinghouse on the north side of Pennsylvania

Avenue, between 17th and 18th Streets,

Northwest.30

At the beginning of his first regular session in

December 1845, Dallas set a daily routine in

which he arrived at the vice president’s office in

the Capitol at 9 a.m., remained busily engaged

there receiving visitors and presiding until 4

p.m., adjourned to his lodgings for lunch, and

then returned to the Capitol until 9 or 10 p.m.

For a diversion, he would stroll around the Capitol grounds or walk down Pennsylvania Avenue.31 The newly refurbished Senate chamber he

pronounced ‘‘redeemed from a thousand barbarisms.’’ But he confided to his son that he expected the coming session to ‘‘be one of the most

important, disturbed, and protracted’’ in the nation’s history and feared that the weakness of administration supporters in the Senate ‘‘may exact

more exertion from me than would otherwise fall

my share.’’ 32

Dallas regularly complained about the inconveniences and demands of his daily life as vice

president. His wife disliked Washington and remained in Philadelphia except for rare visits. He

dined frequently with Treasury Secretary Robert

Walker and his nephew U.S. Coast Survey Superintendent Alexander Dallas Bache (a greatgrandson of Benjamin Franklin). His biographer

reports that during these years, the vice president allowed himself one luxury—a stylish African American coachman who wore a distinctive

black hat with broad band and steel buckle. Dallas was ill a great deal and complained of digestive disorders and sore feet, which he routinely

bathed in hot water augmented with mustard or

cayenne pepper.
[ 158 ]

GEORGE M. DALLAS

Always concerned about earning enough

money to support his desired social position and

his wife’s easy spending habits, Dallas supplemented his $5,000 government salary by maintaining an active law practice during his vicepresidency. He handled several high-profile

cases against the federal government, including

a claim against the Treasury Department for $15

million. The decision would be made by his close

friend and relative by marriage, Treasury Secretary Robert Walker. Dallas, whose cocounsel in

the case was Senator Daniel Webster, considered

that ‘‘unless Walker has lost his intelligence and

fairness, [the case] will be a lucrative one.’’ To

Dallas’ dismay and veiled anger, Walker decided

against his client.33

At the mid-point in his vice-presidency, Dallas

accepted a $1,000 fee for a secondary role in representing wealthy Philadelphian Pierce Butler in

his celebrated divorce from the Shakespearean

actress Fanny Kemble. Fearing that the nation’s

top legal talent would be attracted to Kemble’s

side, Butler preemptively purchased much of

that talent, including Dallas and Daniel Webster.

Despite intense criticism by political opponents

for cashing in on his national prominence, the

vice president tossed off these attacks as the

‘‘hissing and gobbling’’ of ‘‘snakes and geese’’

and spent his final months in office arranging an

expanded legal partnership with his son Philip.34

Tariffs and Westward Expansion

Dallas determined that he would use his vicepresidential position to advance two of the administration’s major objectives: tariff reduction

and territorial expansion. As a Pennsylvanian,

Dallas had traditionally supported the protectionist tariff policy that his state’s coal and iron

interests demanded. But as vice president, elected on a platform dedicated to tariff reduction, he

agreed to do anything necessary to realize that

goal. Dallas equated the vice president’s constitutional power to break tied votes in the Senate with the president’s constitutional power to

veto acts of Congress. At the end of his vice-presidential term, Dallas claimed that he cast thirty

tie-breaking votes during his four years in office

(although only nineteen of these have been identified in Senate records). Taking obvious personal satisfaction in this record, Dallas singled

out this achievement and the fairness with which

he believed he accomplished it in his farewell address to the Senate.35 Not interested in political

suicide, however, Dallas sought to avoid having

to exercise his singular constitutional prerogative

on the tariff issue, actively lobbying senators

during the debate over Treasury Secretary Walker’s tariff bill in the summer of 1846. He complained to his wife (whom he sometimes addressed as ‘‘Mrs. Vice’’) that the Senate speeches

on the subject were ‘‘as vapid as inexhaustible.

. . . All sorts of ridiculous efforts are making, by

letters, newspaper-paragraphs, and personal visits, to affect the Vice’s casting vote, by persuasion

or threat.’’ 36

Despite Dallas’ efforts to avoid taking a stand,

the Senate completed its voting on the Walker

Tariff with a 27-to-27 tie. (A twenty-eighth vote

in favor was held in reserve by a senator who

opposed the measure but agreed to follow the instructions of his state legislature to support it.)

When he cast the tie-breaking vote in favor of

the tariff on July 28, 1846, Dallas rationalized that

he had studied the distribution of Senate support

and concluded that backing for the measure

came from all regions of the country. Additionally, the measure had overwhelmingly passed

the House of Representatives, a body closer to

public sentiment. He apprehensively explained

to the citizens of Pennsylvania that ‘‘an officer,

elected by the suffrages of all twenty-eight states,

and bound by his oath and every constitutional

obligation, faithfully and fairly to represent, in

the execution of his high trust, all the citizens of

the Union’’ could not ‘‘narrow his great sphere

and act with reference only to [Pennsylvania’s]

interests.’’ While his action, based on a mixture

of party loyalty and political opportunism,

earned Dallas the respect of the president and

certain party leaders—and possible votes in 1848

from the southern and western states that supported low tariffs—it effectively demolished his

home state political base, ending any serious

prospects for future elective office. (He even advised his wife in a message hand-delivered by

the Senate sergeant at arms, ‘‘If there be the

slightest indication of a disposition to riot in the
[ 159 ]

GEORGE M. DALLAS

city of Philadelphia, owing to the passage of the

Tariff Bill, pack up and bring the whole brood

to Washington.’’) 37

While Dallas’ tariff vote destroyed him in

Pennsylvania, his aggressive views on Oregon

and the Mexican War crippled his campaign efforts elsewhere in the nation.38 In his last hope

of building the necessary national support to

gain the White House, the vice president shifted

his attention to the aggressive, expansionist foreign policy program embodied in the concept of

‘‘Manifest Destiny.’’ He actively supported efforts to gain control of Texas, the Southwest,

Cuba, and disputed portions of the Oregon

territory.

The joint United States-British occupation of

the vast western territory in the region north of

the forty-second parallel and south of the boundary at fifty-four degrees, forty minutes, was

scheduled for renewal in 1847. Dallas seized the

opportunity in 1846 to call for a ‘‘settlement’’ at

the 54° 40’ line, even at the risk of war with Great

Britain. For several months early in 1846, the vice

president pursued this position—seeking to

broaden his national political base—until President Polk and British leaders agreed to compromise on a northern boundary at the fortyninth parallel. This outcome satisfied Dallas, as

it removed his earlier fear that the United States

would be caught in a two-front war, with Great

Britain over the Oregon boundary and with Mexico over control of Texas. Now the nation would

be free to concentrate on war with Mexico, a conflict that Dallas hoped would serve to unify the

Democratic party and propel him to the White

House. As the Mexican War continued into 1847,

Dallas expanded his own objective to the taking

of all Mexico. Again, a moderate course advanced by more realistic leaders prevailed and

forced Dallas to applaud publicly the result that

gained for the United States the Mexican states

of California and New Mexico.

The events of 1846 extinguished Dallas’ presidential fire. Although he remained strong in

Philadelphia and its immediate precincts, Buchanan sapped his strength throughout the rest

of their state. The vice president, incapable of the

intense and sustained personal drive necessary

to secure the nomination, nonetheless sought to

bolster his political standing by advocating popular sovereignty as a solution to the crippling

issue of allowing slavery in the territories. This

stance only hardened the opposition against him

and he soon abandoned his presidential quest.39

Democratic party leaders originally looked to

Mexican War hero Zachary Taylor as their 1848

standard-bearer. When the general cast his lot

with the Whigs, Democrats turned to Michigan’s

Lewis Cass, who took the nomination at the Baltimore convention on the fourth ballot. They

chose General William O. Butler as the vice-presidential candidate. With Martin Van Buren’s

third-party candidacy eroding the Democratic

vote, Taylor and his running mate Millard Fillmore easily won the election.

By the end of the Mexican War in 1848, relations between Polk and Dallas had deteriorated

to the point that the two men rarely spoke to one

another. From the first days of his vice-presidency, Dallas complained to his wife Sophia and

others that the president cared little for his advice on either small matters or major affairs of

state. At the outbreak of the war with Mexico,

Dallas confided, ‘‘In making the officers of the

new Regiment of mounted riflemen, the tenant

of the White House has maintained his consistency of action by excluding every one for whom

I felt an interest.’’ When Polk summoned the vice

president to the White House for ‘‘a most important communication,’’ Dallas told Sophia that

Polk had a habit of ‘‘making mountains out of

molehills.’’ and that the meeting was ‘‘another

illustration of the mountain and the mouse. I am

heartily sick of factitious importance.’’ Dallas

considered Polk to be ‘‘cold, devious, and twofaced.’’ When he received Thomas Macauley’s

newly published History of England, he noted that

the author’s description of Charles I’s ‘‘defects of

character’’—faithlessness and cunning—‘‘are so

directly applicable to President Polk as almost to

be curious.’’ 40

Last Session

Dallas entered the sunset of his vice-presidency at the three-month final session of the

Thirtieth Congress, beginning on December 4,

1848. On the following day at noon, the Senate

convened for the reading by its clerk of President
[ 160 ]

GEORGE M. DALLAS

Polk’s State of the Union message. Dallas listened for a while, until boredom compelled him

to turn the chair over to Senator William King.

‘‘It was insufferably long, and some of its topics,

a dissertation on the American system and one

on the Veto Power especially, were almost ludicrous from their being misplaced and prolix.’’ 41

This ‘‘lame duck’’ session, with its

contentiousness and inaction, proved particularly frustrating as the Democrats sought to defer

action on the volatile issues. ‘‘The great party

project of the Session is to try hard to do nothing:—leaving all unsettled questions, and especially the free soil one, to harass Genl. Taylor

next winter.’’ 42

Dallas was constantly aware of his responsibilities for maintaining order on the Senate floor.

During the contentious final session, Mississippi’s Henry Foote constantly baited Missouri’s Thomas Hart Benton. While Benton never

hesitated to bully other adversaries, he

inexplicably refrained from challenging the diminutive Mississippian. As the Senate adjourned

for the day on February 10, 1849, Benton approached Dallas and, in a whisper, asked whether he intended to act on his earlier request that

alcoholic beverages be banned in the Senate. Dallas responded by asking whether any drinking

had been taking place in the chamber. ‘‘Yes, in

quantities, in every part, and at all times,’’ responded the agitated Missourian. Dallas, believing that Benton’s concern stemmed from an effort to curb Foote’s behavior and ‘‘to excuse his

own silent disregard of it in that way,’’ instructed the sergeant at arms to ban liquor on the

Senate side of the Capitol, except for members

claiming to require it for medicinal purposes.43

Dallas told his wife that he was tempted to return home, leaving his Senate duties to a president pro tempore, but he felt obligated to remain

at the Capitol for the important business of receiving the presidential electoral ballots, addressed to his attention, that were then arriving

from the individual states. He explained that his

duty was to ‘‘mark on each [envelope containing

a state’s ballots] the day and manner of receiving

it, and file them with the Secretary [of the Senate], of course without breaking the seals. If a

messenger hand me the list, I give him a certificate to that effect, on which he is entitled to be

paid his expenses, at the Treasury

Department.’’ 44

The president expressed to the vice president

his ambivalence about his plans for the forthcoming inauguration of Zachary Taylor. If the

planners reserved a place for him, he would attend, otherwise he would follow Van Buren’s

1841 precedent and simply go home. Dallas said

he would try to ‘‘follow the proper courtesies of

public life,’’ unless he too was intentionally

slighted. He examined the practice of his predecessors and found Richard M. Johnson to be the

only vice president to have attended the swearing in of his successor.

On March 2, 1849, Dallas followed the vicepresidential custom of delivering a farewell address to the Senate and then stepping aside so

that the Senate could elect a president pro tempore to bridge the transition between administrations. In remarks more exalted in phrasing than

the observations of his personal diary and correspondence, Dallas praised the Senate for the

‘‘elevated principle and dignified tone which

mark [its] proceedings; the frank and yet forbearing temper of its discussions; the mutual manifestations of conciliatory deference, so just and

appropriate among the delegates of independent

States; and the consequent calmness and precision of its legislative action,’’ which he believed

had ‘‘attracted to it a very large share of veneration and confidence.’’ He noted that, on occasion, tempers flared into ‘‘sudden impulses of

feeling,’’ but these ‘‘transient disturbances’’ were

rare and passed ‘‘over the scene like flashes

which do but startle, and then cease, [serving]

only to exhibit in stronger relief the grave decorum of its general conduct.’’ 45

To a standing ovation, Dallas left the chamber

in what he believed would be ‘‘the last scene of

my public life.’’ He recorded in his diary that

‘‘Mr. Filmore [sic] called at my chamber in the

Capitol today, shortly I had left the Senate, and

remained for an hour, making enquiries as to the

forms of proceeding and the general duties annexed to the office he was about assuming. He

was good enough to say that every body had told

him I eclipsed as a presiding officer, all of my

predecessors, and that he felt extreme diffidence
[ 161 ]

GEORGE M. DALLAS

in undertaking to follow me. Of course, after this,

I took pleasure in answering all his questions.’’ 46

Dallas left Washington largely embittered

about the price of success in public life, which

he believed led ‘‘almost invariably to poverty

and ignorance. Truth, Courage, Candour, Wisdom, Firmness, Honor and Religion may by accident now and then be serviceable:— but a steady

perseverance in them leads inevitably to private

life.’’ 47 His only regret about leaving the Senate

was that he would miss the ‘‘strange political

tableau [that] would present itself on the floor

of the Senate Chamber . . . on the 6. of March

next [if] Mr. Clay, Genl. Cass, Mr. Van Buren,

Mr, Calhoun, Mr. Webster, and Col. Benton were

grouped together! Such a convocation of selfimagined gods could not fail to be followed by

much thunder and lightening.’’ But, he consoled

himself, ‘‘All this galaxy, in the order of nature,

may disappear in the course or two or three

years. When then? Why, the Sun will still shine,

the earth still roll upon its axis, and the worms

of the Capitol be as numerous and phosphorescent as ever.’’ 48

Later Years

Dallas returned to private life until 1856, when

James Buchanan resigned as minister to Great

Britain to launch his presidential campaign challenging President Franklin Pierce for the Democratic nomination. Pierce, seeking to remove another potential rival for reelection, named Dallas

to that prize diplomatic post. Philadelphia journalist John Forney, a longtime Buchanan ally

who had once described Dallas as ‘‘below mediocre as a public man,’’ thought the sixty-fouryear-old Dallas fit the part. ‘‘I do not know anything more charming, always excepting a lovely

woman, than a handsome old man—one who,

like a winter apple, is ruddy and ripe with time,

and yet sound to the heart. Such a man was

George M. Dallas.’’ 49 After Buchanan won the

presidency, he retained Dallas at the Court of St.

James but conducted sensitive diplomatic relations with Great Britain from the White House.

Tired and longing for the comforts of home and

family, Dallas resigned his post in May 1861. As

a states’ rights Unionist, he was deeply saddened

by the eclipse of his Democratic party and its failure to prevent civil war. He died at the age of

seventy-two on December 31, 1864.
[ 162 ]

NOTES 1George M. Dallas to unknown addressee, 1845 [?], in

Roy M. Nichols, ‘‘The Library: The Mystery of the Dallas

Papers (Part I),’’ The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and

Biography 73 (July 1949): 373 [hereafter cited as Nichols-I]. 2Lewis A. McArthur, Oregon Geographic Names, 5th ed.

(Portland, OR, 1982), p. 205. 3 John M. Belohlavek, George Mifflin Dallas: Jacksonian Patrician (University Park, PA, 1977), pp. 13–14. 4 Ibid. pp. 4–5.

5 Ibid., p. 15.

6 Ibid., p. 5.

7 Ibid., p. 27.

8 Ibid., p. 37.

9Quoted in ibid., p. 43.

10Bruce Ambacher, ‘‘George M. Dallas and the Bank

War,’’ Pennsylvania History 42 (April 1975): 135. 11Belohlavek, p. 77.

12 Charles Sellers, ‘‘Election of 1844,’’ in History of American Presidential Elections, edited by Arthur M. Schlesinger,

Jr., and Fred L. Israel (New York, 1971), 1:759–72. 13 John Arthur Garraty, Silas Wright (New York, 1949), pp.

280–82. 14Belohlavek, pp. 86–88; Sellers, pp. 772–73.

15Belohlavek, p. 88.

16 Sidney George Fisher quoted in ibid., p. 89.

17By the time of the presidential elections of 1840 and

1844, states were increasingly selecting presidential electors

by popular vote, rather than by vote of their legislatures.

With presidential elections scheduled on a variety of days

throughout the states, conditions were ripe for election

fraud. Both political parties organized gangs of voters who

moved from state to state in an attempt to boost tallies in

close elections. Finally, in 1845 Congress established a uniform date for presidential elections—the first Tuesday after

the first Monday in November. Congressional elections

were not similarly standardized until 1872. Peter H.

Argersinger, ‘‘Electoral Processes,’’ Encyclopedia of American

Political History (New York, 1984), 2:496. 18 Sellers, p. 795; Belohlavek, p. 97.

19 Paul H. Beregeron, The Presidency of James K. Polk (Lawrence, KS, 1987), pp. 16–17. 20Dallas to Polk, December 15, 1845; Dallas to Sophia,

February 14, 1845 in Nichols-I, pp. 355–60. 21Dallas to Robert J. Walker, November 6, 1844, quoted

in Belohlavek, p. 100. 22Belohlavek, pp. 105–10.

23 See Chapter 7 of this book, ‘‘John C. Calhoun,’’ pp. 10–

12.24U.S., Congress, Congressional Globe, 29th Cong., 1st

sess., p. 20. 25 Ibid., pp. 19–22; Belohlavek, pp. 107–9; Dallas to Sophia, December 9, 1845, Nichols-I, p. 370.

26 Ingersoll had accused Webster of corruption and embezzlement while serving as secretary of state. Dallas to Sophia, April 7, 1846, Nichols-I, pp. 375–76; Roy F. Nichols,

‘‘The Library: The Mystery of the Dallas Papers (Part II),’’

The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 73 (October 1949): 480 [hereafter cited as Nichols-II]. 27U.S., Congress, Senate, Journal, 29th Cong., Extra Session, Appendix, p. 274. 28Dallas to Sophia, November 27, 1845, Nichols-I, p. 366.

29Ruth Ketring Nuermberger, ‘‘Asbury Dickins (1780–

1861): A Career in Government Service,’’ The North Carolina

Historical Review 24 (July 1947): 311–12; Dallas to Sophia,

March 17, 1845, Nichols-I, p. 365. On March 3, 1851, the

president approved a statute (Chapter 42) ending the practice of paying members of the previous Congress for mileage to attend the Senate special session beginning on March

4, 1853, and every four years thereafter. 30 Nichols-I, p. 391; Nichols-II, p. 475.

31Dallas to Sophia, December 2, 1845, Nichols-I, p. 369.

32Dallas to Sophia, November 27, 1845, ibid., p. 367.

33Belohlavek, pp. 134–35.

34 Ibid., pp. 135–36; Dallas to Sophia, December 10, 1848,

Nichols-II, p. 483. 35 Senate Journal, 30th Cong., 2d sess., March 2, 1849, p.

294. Nineteen of the thirty votes that Dallas claimed to have

cast have been identified in records of Senate floor proceedings. If Dallas’ figure is accepted, he would hold the record

among vice presidents for exercising this constitutional prerogative (although some scholars have credited John

Adams with casting as many as thirty tie-breaking votes—

see Chapter 1, note 1). If the lower figure is accurate, it still

places him just behind John Adams—and just ahead of John

C. Calhoun—for the number of ties broken in a four-year

period. For a list of vice-presidential tie-breaking votes, see

U.S., Congress, Senate, The Senate, 1789–1989, by Robert C.

Byrd, S. Doc., 100–20, 100th Cong., 1st sess., vol. 4, Historical

Statistics, 1789–1992, 1993, pp. 640–46. 36Dallas to Sophia, July 17, 1846, Nichols-I, pp. 384–85.

37Dallas’ public letter quoted in Charles John Biddle, Eulogy upon the Hon. George Mifflin Dallas Delivered before the

Bar of Philadelphia, February 11, 1865 (Philadelphia, 1865), p.

36; Belohlavek, pp. 113–14; Dallas to Sophia, July 30, 1846,

Nichols-I, p. 386. 38Belohlavek, p. 118.

39 Charles McCool Snyder, The Jacksonian Heritage: Pennsylvania Politics, 1833–1848 (Harrisburg, PA, 1958), pp. 205–

7; Frederick Moore Binder, James Buchanan and the American

Empire (Cranbury, NJ, 1994), p. 91. 40Dallas to Sophia, June 7, 1846, Nichols-I, pp. 381–82;

Dallas diary, January 14, 1849, Nichols-II, pp. 492–93;

Belohlavek, pp. 132–33. 41Dallas diary, December 5, 1848, Nichols-II, p. 475.
[ 163 ]

GEORGE M. DALLAS

42Dallas to Sophia, December 7, 1848, ibid., p. 477.

43Dallas diary, February 10, 1849, ibid., pp. 512–13.

44Dallas to Sophia, December 7, 1848; Dallas diary, December 8, 1848, ibid., pp. 477–78. 45 Senate Journal, 30th Cong., 2d sess., March 2, 1849, pp.

293–94.

46Dallas diary, March 2, 1849, Nichols-II, pp. 515–16.

47Dallas diary, January 28, 1849, ibid., p. 501; Dallas

diary, March 2, 1849, ibid., pp. 516–17. 48Dallas diary, January 28, 1849, ibid., p. 502.

49Belohlavek, p. 107; John W. Forney, Anecdotes of Public

Men (New York, 1881), 2:102.

[ 165 ]

Chapter 12

MILLARD FILLMORE

1849–1850
MILLARD FILLMORE
[ 167 ]

Chapter 12

MILLARD FILLMORE

12th Vice President: 1849–1850

I know how difficult it is to determine what is and what is not in order, to restrain improper language, and yet not abridge the freedom of debate. But all must see how important it is that the first

departure from the strict rule of parliamentary decorum be checked, as a slight attack, or even insinuation

of a personal character, often provokes a more severe retort, which brings out a more disorderly reply,

each Senator feeling a justification in the previous aggression. There is, therefore, no point so proper to

interpose for the preservation of order as to check the first violation of it.

—MILLARD FILLMORE, APRIL 3, 1850

The new vice president needed a clerk. Millard

Fillmore suffered from an eye disorder that limited his ability to read by candlelight, yet his official duties kept him so busy during the daytime

that he had to put off reading and preparing his

correspondence until evening. A clerk would be

most useful. When Fillmore’s immediate predecessor, George Dallas, took office in 1845, no

funding was provided for a vice-presidential

clerk because there had been no vice president

since 1841, when John Tyler had succeeded to the

presidency after the death of William Henry

Harrison. Senator Willie Mangum (W-NC), who

had fulfilled the office’s major constitutional

function as Senate president pro tempore from

1842 to 1845, had considered his duties too light

to justify continuing the perquisite that Vice

President Richard M. Johnson had enjoyed during his 1837–1841 term. Aware of these precedents, Fillmore asked Mangum, one of the Whig

party’s senior senators, to introduce the necessary authorizing resolution. When Mangum

did so, a Democratic senator immediately objected, noting that former Vice President Dallas

had gotten along just fine without a clerk.

Mangum responded by citing the example of

Vice President Johnson, also a Democrat. The

Democratic senator withdrew his objection and

Fillmore got his clerk. From this experience, Fillmore may have learned both how much the Senate valued precedent and how little some of its

members regarded the office of vice president.1

Millard Fillmore rose to the vice-presidency, in

part, because he was from New York. In presidential elections from 1812 to 1968, that state had

the nation’s largest congressional delegation and

therefore was entitled to cast more votes in the

electoral college than any other state. New

York’s electoral riches account for the fact that,

during the century from 1801 to 1901, eight of

the twenty-two vice presidents called that state

home. In designing a presidential ticket that

would attract large blocks of electoral votes, the

national parties always paid very careful attention to New York political leaders.

Millard Fillmore would occupy the nation’s

second highest office for fewer than seventeen

months. During his brief tenure, he suffered the

fate of other vice presidents: his president ignored him, his state’s party leaders undercut

him, and the Senate over which he presided

barely tolerated him. Yet the office benefitted

him, just as he improved it. The experience ratified and extended his stature as a significant national figure. When Zachary Taylor’s death

thrust Fillmore into the presidency, few seriously
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MILLARD FILLMORE

doubted that he was up to the job. His close relations with senators at a time when the Senate

served as the final arbiter of crucial national policy issues eased passage of the vital compromise

legislation that staved off national political disintegration for another decade. To his role as the

Senate’s president, Fillmore brought a deep

knowledge and understanding of the institution’s rules, precedents, and culture. Aware that

the incendiary climate in the Senate chamber

during 1850 could foster an explosion of devastating national consequence, he insisted on

order, decorum, and fair play. For his successors,

he provided a valuable example, couched in the

spirit of Thomas Jefferson a half century earlier.

Early Years

Millard Fillmore was born on January 7, 1800,

into an impoverished farm family in the central

New York frontier town of Locke. The second of

Nathaniel and Phoebe Fillmore’s nine children,

Millard found little time for formal schooling

and had barely learned to read by the age of seventeen. As a youth he worked on his father’s

farm—developing a muscular chest and broad

shoulders that would remain a distinguishing

physical characteristic for years to come—and he

served apprenticeships to a cloth dresser and a

textile mill operator. Aware of his educational

deficiencies, young Millard struggled to improve

his reading skills, carrying a dictionary on his

daily rounds.2 At age nineteen, he enrolled in a

small academy in the town of New Hope, where

he engaged in his first formal education, as well

as a budding relationship with Abigail Powers,

a local minister’s daughter. When Millard returned to the central New York tenant farm, the

judge who owned the property recognized his

potential and provided him with essential financial and educational support to pursue a legal career. Young Fillmore taught in a local school and

saved enough money to buy out the time remaining in his textile mill apprenticeship. When, before long, personal differences caused Millard

and the judge to part ways, the young man once

more returned to work on his father’s farm. In

1820, the elder Fillmore moved his family west

to the town of Aurora, eighteen miles from Buffalo. There Millard resumed his work as a teacher and as a law clerk, until he was admitted to

the New York bar in 1824. He then opened a

small law practice in East Aurora and in 1826

married Abigail Powers.3

In 1830 Millard and Abigail settled in Buffalo,

the thriving western terminus of the Erie Canal.

His practice flourished, as the local business

community came to recognize him as an energetic, careful, and talented lawyer. An impressive figure, Fillmore stood six feet tall and handsome, with sparkling blue eyes, a pinkish complexion, a jovial and kindly demeanor, and polished manners. He enjoyed dressing in the latest

fashions, displaying impeccable good taste that

masked his humble origins. The Fillmore family,

which now included a son and daughter, rose

rapidly in Buffalo society. Millard and Abigail

regularly entertained the city’s elite and others

with whom he associated in founding and promoting local educational, cultural, and civic institutions.

Buffalo’s proximity to major water transportation routes predisposed Fillmore to be a strong

supporter of John Quincy Adams’ National Republicans and Henry Clay’s ‘‘American System’’

of internal improvements, tariffs, and national

bank. In 1828, Fillmore met Albany editor and

political boss Thurlow Weed. Weed saw in Fillmore a natural politician and assisted his campaign, as a National Republican, for a seat in the

state assembly. Despite the strong contrary tide

that swept Democrat Andrew Jackson into the

White House, Fillmore won his race. Over the

next few years, he rose to leadership in western

New York’s newly emerging Whig party, sponsoring legislation beneficial to transportation, as

well as financial and educational enterprises.

Fillmore and Weed would remain close allies for

many years.4

In the House of Representatives

In 1832, Anti-Mason and National Republican

party voters in the congressional district that encompassed Buffalo elected Fillmore to the U.S.

House of Representatives. There he served a single term and dedicated himself to merging those

two parties into a strong Whig party in opposition to President Jackson’s policies. Maneuvering

to repair ill feelings between his supporting
[ 169 ]

MILLARD FILLMORE

party factions, Fillmore removed himself from a

reelection bid in 1834, but reentered the contest

in 1836. He resumed his seat in the House the

following year and served there until 1843.5

When the Whigs took control of the White House

and both houses of Congress for the first time

in 1841, Fillmore’s allies in the House nominated

him for the post of Speaker. Although he came

in second to a candidate supported by Henry

Clay, he was subsequently elected chairman of

the Committee on Ways and Means, a powerful

position at this time of national financial crisis.

His major accomplishment as chairman was to

steer through his chamber’s rough waters, and

against the force of President John Tyler’s opposition, the protective Tariff of 1842, a key revenue-raising component of his party’s plan for

economic recovery. The heads of executive

branch agencies came to fear the chairman’s

quietly efficient scrutiny of their budget requests,

as he routinely returned their spending estimates

heavily marked in red pencil with notes asking

for thorough justification of matters great and

small.6 At the end of the Twenty-seventh Congress, in March 1843, Fillmore again abandoned

the political and social life of Washington, which

he heartily disliked, for the quiet pleasures of

Buffalo.

Neither Vice President nor Governor

Whig party elder statesman John Quincy

Adams visited Buffalo in the summer of 1843 to

praise publicly his former house colleague’s

achievements and to urge him to return to government service. Still enjoying the high regard of

his party allies as a result of his successful management of the 1842 tariff, Fillmore had decided

to launch a behind-the-scenes campaign for the

Whig party’s 1844 vice-presidential nomination.

He learned, however, that state party strategist

Thurlow Weed coveted that spot for his close

ally, former New York governor William Seward, against whom Fillmore ‘‘harbored a jealousy

that had in it something of the petulance of a

child.’’ 7 To derail this scheme, Fillmore made a

bargain with John Collier of Binghamton, a New

York City-supported antagonist of the party’s

Weed-Seward Albany faction. Fillmore would

support Collier for governor and Collier would

put his influence behind Fillmore’s vice-presidential quest. The plan fell apart when Seward

declared he had no interest in the number two

position. To protect against the election of his

enemy Collier, Weed urged Fillmore to shift his

focus and seek the governorship. Fillmore initially refused. Weed then quietly went to work

to sabotage any chances that his faction-ridden

party would award Fillmore its vice-presidential

nomination. He hinted to delegates at the Whigs’

Baltimore convention that Seward would accept

a draft, while loudly proclaiming that no Whig

but Fillmore could win the governorship. Seeing

through Weed’s machinations, Fillmore wrote an

ally: ‘‘I need not tell you that I have no desire

to run for governor. . . . I am not willing to be

treacherously killed by this pretended kindness.

. . . Do not suppose for a moment that I think

they desire my nomination for governor.’’ 8

Weed’s tactics succeeded in denying Fillmore the

vice-presidential nomination, as Theodore

Frelinghuysen won a third-ballot nomination to

join Henry Clay on the party’s ticket.

Henry Clay made northern antislavery Whigs

nervous. Soon after receiving the party’s presidential nomination with a vow of opposition to

the annexation of Texas, which seemed certain

to become a slave state, he shifted to a more ambivalent stance. As abolitionists among New

York’s Whigs began to explore alliances with

other parties, Weed redoubled his efforts to solidify the state party by putting Fillmore at the

top of its ticket in the race for governor. Under

Weed’s pressure, John Collier withdrew in favor

of Fillmore, who then received the unanimous

nomination of the New York state Whig convention. Aware that the governorship could be a

way station on the road to greater national ambitions, Fillmore set aside his earlier reluctance. He

ran a strong campaign based on his opposition

to Texas annexation, which he believed would

benefit slaveholders at the expense of the rest of

the country. Fillmore’s views, however, proved

unpopular with many voters, particularly recent

immigrants who resented his party’s nativist,

anti-Catholic stance. In vain did Fillmore try to

appeal to foreign-born voters by working to create a German-language newspaper in Buffalo.
[ 170 ]

MILLARD FILLMORE

He lost by ten thousand votes to Democrat Silas

Wright, who earlier in the year had turned down

his party’s nomination as vice president in favor

of this race.

The disaffection of New York’s antislavery

Whigs accounted for Fillmore’s defeat, and the

loss of that pivotal state also cost Henry Clay the

presidency. Despite his setback, Fillmore

emerged as his party’s state leader, much to the

irritation of Seward and Weed, who feared the

New York Whig party’s center of influence

would thereby shift westward from their Albany

power base to Fillmore’s in Buffalo. Thus began

a politically destructive geographical and ideological polarization between Fillmore in the

state’s western districts and the Seward-Weed

forces in the east.9

Ambition for National Office

In his earlier life, Fillmore had shown no compelling ambition for public office, despite the evidence of his 1844 vice-presidential and gubernatorial campaigns. Twice he had given up his

seat in the U.S. House of Representatives for

other goals, and the center of his personal and

political universe seemed to be the city of Buffalo, where his law practice was flourishing. By

1847, however, as in 1844, Fillmore had grown

restless away from the larger state and national

arenas. He had become deeply hostile toward

President James K. Polk, whose administration

was reversing Whig economic gains. In addition,

the president was leading the nation in a war

with Mexico aimed at acquiring western territories, presumably to feed slavery’s insatiable

appetite. In this frame of mind, Fillmore readily

accepted his party’s nomination for the influential post of state comptroller. (He would have

preferred a U.S. Senate seat, but none was available.) By a wide margin over his Democratic opponent, Fillmore won the election, and his political star again began to rise. In Albany, he built

a record of accomplishment that enlarged his already considerable popularity. While comptroller, Fillmore retained a national presence, regularly denouncing President Polk’s war with Mexico, so that by 1848, northern Whigs had come

to view the New York comptroller as a logical

vice-presidential choice to balance the likely

presidential candidacy of war hero General

Zachary Taylor.10

The June 1848 Whig Convention

When the Whigs gathered at Philadelphia in

June 1848, party leaders expected that General

Taylor would win their presidential nomination.

A Louisiana slaveholder, Taylor lacked partisan

political experience and commitment. He had

never voted in a presidential election, but he was

an obviously electable military hero and had the

important support of the southern or ‘‘Cotton

Whig’’ branch of the party. Despite unhappiness

among the party’s antislavery elements in the

North and West, and a sputtering effort to revive

Henry Clay’s candidacy (Clay lamented, ‘‘I wish

I could slay a Mexican.’’ 11), Taylor gained the

Whig nomination on the fourth ballot.

Following the selection of Taylor, convention

chairman John Collier, a New Yorker and skillful

parliamentary tactician, took the rostrum and

gained control of Henry Clay’s disappointed and

angry forces, who threatened to disrupt the convention. Assuring the agitated delegates that

New York would actively support Taylor, Collier

presented a peace offering—a ‘‘surprise’’ candidate for vice president. On hearing the name

of Millard Fillmore, many opponents of Taylor

set aside their reservations and joined to support

the new ticket. By the second ballot, the prize

was Fillmore’s.12 Although Collier had skillfully

associated Fillmore with Clay, playing on his

well-established advocacy of Whig legislative

programs, the nominee was by no means broadly

sympathetic to the Kentucky statesman. However, the nervous delegates were in no mood for

an extended examination of Fillmore’s beliefs.

Collier saw that Fillmore would balance the ticket and block fellow New Yorkers Seward and

Weed, whose wishes for a return to a larger role

in Whig affairs threatened to further polarize

that party’s factions. Weed reluctantly acquiesced to the nomination, while Seward remained

deeply concerned. 13

The same contentiousness reflected in the 1848

convention’s proceedings made it inadvisable for

party leaders to develop a specific platform. Instead, the Whig candidates devised their positions to fit the prejudices of specific regions. Can-
[ 171 ]

MILLARD FILLMORE

didate Fillmore told southern audiences that he

‘‘regarded slavery as an evil, but one with which

the National Government had nothing to do.’’

Under the Constitution, he contended, ‘‘the

whole power over that question was vested in

the several states where the institution was tolerated. If they regarded it as a blessing, they had

a constitutional right to enjoy it; and if they regarded it as an evil, they had the power and

knew best how to apply the remedy.’’ As for

Congress, Fillmore concluded that it had no

power to interfere with slavery in the states

where it existed. He dodged entirely the more

ominous issue of slavery in the territories.14

In the weeks after the national convention,

Thurlow Weed and other northern Whig leaders

who suspected Taylor of Democratic sympathies

considered moves to undercut his candidacy by

influencing state party conventions to select panels of unpledged presidential electors. Fillmore

defused this subversive strategy by persuading

Taylor to write and publish a letter in which he

distanced himself from his vocal Democratic

supporters. In the so-called Allison Letter, Taylor

asserted that Congress, not the president, should

control the nation’s policy agenda. ‘‘The personal

opinions of the individual who may happen to

occupy the executive chair ought not to control

the action of Congress upon questions of domestic policy; nor ought his objections to be interposed where questions of constitutional power

have been settled by the various departments of

government, and acquiesced in by the people.’’ 15

Thanks in great measure to the influence of the

Allison Letter and Fillmore’s hard work, as well

as to the Free Soil party candidacy of Martin Van

Buren that divided traditional northern Democratic ranks, the Taylor-Fillmore ticket won New

York state by a narrow margin, providing barely

enough electoral votes to swing the election to

the Whigs.16 Expressing a common belief that the

Whigs had sold out their principles with the selection of Taylor, journalist Horace Greeley, a

Seward-Weed ally, concluded that the party was

‘‘at once triumphant and undone.’’ 17

A New Administration

Millard Fillmore shared Zachary Taylor’s belief in a strong legislature and a compliant executive. In a letter written immediately after his election, he explained that in all areas not directly

covered by the Constitution, ‘‘as to all other

questions of mere policy, where Congress has

the constitutional right to legislate, the will of the

people, as expressed through their representatives in Congress, is to control, and that will is

not to be defeated by the arbitrary interposition

of the [executive] veto power.’’ By adhering to

this classic Whig doctrine, Taylor and Fillmore

hoped to avoid the roiling sectional controversies

that could easily wreck their administration,

leaving them to the people’s representatives in

Congress. With guarded optimism, Fillmore saw

the 1848 election ‘‘as putting an end to all ideas

of disunion. It raises up a national party, occupying a middle ground, and leaves the fanatics and

disunionists, north and south, without the hope

of destroying the fair fabric of our constitution.’’ 18 Yet, even as he wrote this, secessionist

conventions were gathering in the South and

antislavery societies in the North were stating

their legislative demands. As word of the revolutions sweeping Europe reached the United

States, it became clear that the political climate

in the months ahead would hardly be free of

grave challenges to the nation’s constitutional

order.

In the months before taking his oath of office,

Fillmore had reason to believe his would be an

active vice-presidency. Thurlow Weed heard

that President-elect Taylor, fearing the unaccustomed administrative burdens that awaited him,

had said ‘‘I wish Mr. Fillmore would take all of

the business into his own hands.’’ The ill-informed Taylor believed that the vice president

would be an official member of his cabinet. Weed

worried that Fillmore would use his new position to take control of New York state’s lucrative

federal patronage appointments, which would

surely accelerate the political decline of that

state’s once-potent Weed-Seward political

faction.19

In a typically crafty move to rescue their fortunes, Weed lobbied Fillmore to support Seward’s candidacy for the Senate over that of John

Collier, who had engineered Fillmore’s vicepresidential nomination. In return, Weed promised full consultation in all state patronage mat-
[ 172 ]

MILLARD FILLMORE

ters. Anxious to secure his own political base in

New York before moving onto the national stage,

Fillmore abandoned Collier and yielded to

Weed’s entreaties, despite his misgivings based

on twenty years of experience with the

duplicitous political boss. As a result of Fillmore’s shift, Seward obtained the necessary

votes in the state legislature to win the Senate

seat. He headed to Washington with the vice

president-elect after both men, at a dinner with

Weed in Albany, had agreed to consult with one

another from time to time on the state’s rich federal patronage. Outwardly cordial to Fillmore,

Seward harbored a dark plot, conceived by

Weed, to sabotage Fillmore’s control over New

York’s federal appointments. Fillmore would

pay dearly for his abandonment of Collier.20

In 1849, March 4 fell on a Sunday. In observance of the Christian sabbath, President-elect

Taylor chose to defer his public oath-taking to

the following day.21 Thus, on a cloudy and brisk

Monday morning, Fillmore met Vice President

George Dallas at Willard’s Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue, the preferred lodging place of both

men. At 11 a.m., the two men set out for Capitol

Hill in an open carriage. Onlookers on Pennsylvania Avenue had difficulty telling the

present and future vice presidents apart. Both

were large, clean-shaven men, dressed in somber

black with full heads of white hair. Only Fillmore’s muscular torso, pink face, and sparkling

blue eyes distinguished him. At this point in the

transition process, as the president-elect was

making key appointments to his cabinet and

thereby setting the tone of his administration,

Taylor and Fillmore had met only for social occasions. Yet, Fillmore seemed unconcerned that

Taylor had not bothered to take advantage of his

broad knowledge of party leaders and issues.22

An honor guard of senators escorted Fillmore

into the mobbed Senate chamber where Vice

President Dallas led him to the presiding officer’s chair. Chief Justice Roger Taney administered the oath of office, and the new vice president delivered a brief inaugural address. Fillmore confessed his inexperience in the customs

and procedures of legislative bodies and asked

senators for their ‘‘indulgent forbearance.’’ In

cheerful words that he would soon have cause

to reconsider, Fillmore observed that ‘‘the senate

is composed of eminent statesmen, equally distinguished for their high intellectual endowments and their amenity of manners, whose persuasive eloquence is so happily tempered with

habitual courtesy, as to relieve your presiding officer from all that would be painful in the discharge of his duty, and render his position as

agreeable as it must be instructive.’’ 23 When he

concluded his remarks, President Polk and General Taylor, after an awkward delay, entered the

chamber and took their assigned seats. Pausing

only briefly, the presidential party then formed

ranks and proceeded with the senators to the inaugural platform on the Capitol’s eastern

portico.

In the weeks following the inauguration, Fillmore began to realize that on patronage matters

Weed and Seward had already succeeded in

weakening his limited influence with the new

president. When the important post of marshal

for New York’s northern district opened, Seward

and Weed, without consulting the vice president,

sent word to Secretary of State John Clayton that

they and Fillmore had agreed on P.V. Kellogg.

Clayton forwarded Kellogg’s name to the president, who made the selection. Learning of their

duplicity, Fillmore asked Taylor to rescind the

appointment, but the president refused to do so

without consulting Clayton. Weed rushed to

Washington and advised the president that Fillmore’s anger reflected a parochial dispute between state factions that could best be avoided

by placing New York’s patronage recommendations in other hands. He suggested Governor

Hamilton Fish, a ‘‘neutral’’ figure who was actually firmly within the Weed-Seward camp. Taylor naively agreed.24 The extent of Weed’s victory became clear when Fillmore recommended

John Collier for the post of New York naval officer. Taylor ignored the request and appointed a

Weed ally to that coveted position. The ultimate

Fillmore defeat occurred in the vice president’s

own political back yard with the appointment of

a Weed-Seward crony as collector for the port of

Buffalo. A Buffalo newspaper under Weed’s control gloated, ‘‘We could put up a cow against a

Fillmore nominee and defeat him.’’ Reflecting on
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MILLARD FILLMORE

his lowly status, Fillmore wrote Harvard President Edward Everett that since he had ‘‘no favors to bestow, either legislative or official,’’ he

expected a restful tenure.25

By November 1849, as Congress was about to

convene for the first regular session of the Taylor

administration, Fillmore complained to the president that the administration’s appointments, influenced by Weed and Seward, were destroying

his influence in New York. He asked the president whether in the future he would be ‘‘treated

as a friend or foe?’’ Taylor promised to do better—and soon forgot his promise.

The ‘‘Memorable Senate of that fearful epoch’’

Departing Vice President George M. Dallas

had regretted that he would not be present in the

presiding officer’s chair in December 1849 to witness the constellation of illustrious figures

among the sixty-member Senate of the Thirtyfirst Congress. Together again for what would

prove to be their last legislative session were the

members of the already legendary ‘‘Great Triumvirate.’’ Returning from a seven-year absence,

Henry Clay, whose initial Senate service dated

back forty-three years to 1806, had been the Whig

party’s preeminent legislative leader. Daniel

Webster, an eighteen-year Senate veteran, had

taken a sabbatical to be secretary of state in the

first Whig administration under Harrison and

Tyler. And John C. Calhoun, gaunt, ill, and unlikely to survive the session, had been vice president in the John Quincy Adams and Andrew

Jackson administrations, as well as Webster’s

successor as secretary of state in the Tyler presidency. Each of these men was by then identified

as the congressional personification of his region.

Also present among this eminent assembly were

Stephen A. Douglas, the ‘‘Little Giant’’ of Illinois;

Michigan’s Lewis Cass, the recently defeated

Democratic presidential candidate; Henry Foote

and Jefferson Davis of Mississippi; Missouri’s

Thomas Hart Benton, approaching a thirty-year

record of Senate service; Seward of New York;

Salmon P. Chase of Ohio, an eventual U.S. chief

justice; the fiery Sam Houston of Texas; and—

at a lesser level of eminence—the Dodges, Henry

of Wisconsin and Augustus Caesar of Iowa, the

Senate’s only father-son team.26

The 1848 treaty concluding the war with Mexico added to the nation’s land mass 500,000

square miles of new western territories, including present-day California, Nevada, Utah, and

much of New Mexico, Arizona, Wyoming, and

Colorado. Confronting Congress and the new

Taylor administration in 1849 was the explosive

issue of how these territories would be organized

with respect to slavery. Northern ‘‘free soil’’ advocates insisted that slavery be contained in the

states where it already existed. Southern planters

and their allies believed that their region’s economic system should be allowed to operate without such crippling restrictions. In the 1848 presidential campaign, Democratic candidate Lewis

Cass had supported the doctrine of ‘‘popular

sovereignty,’’ under which the residents of the

territories would decide the issue for themselves.

Former President Martin Van Buren, running as

the Free Soil party candidate, demanded support

for the 1846 Wilmot Proviso. This amendment to

an appropriations bill had failed to pass the Senate, but it provided a rallying cry for antislavery

forces by proposing the prohibition of slavery in

the territory acquired from Mexico. The Whigs,

standing on no platform, had simply ducked the

issue during the election campaign. Southerners

who at first had believed a Louisiana slaveholder

would be a sympathetic president, soon had

cause for concern when Taylor began to take advice from Senator Seward and other antislavery

Whigs.

In his December 24, 1849, annual message to

the newly convened Congress, Taylor sought to

defuse this portentous issue by proposing that

California and New Mexico apply immediately

for statehood, bypassing the territorial stage and

the Wilmot Proviso controversy. As Mexico had

prohibited slavery in these regions, there would

be few slaveholders to vote in favor of that institution. In fact, California had already approved

a constitution that prohibited slavery. Southern

members of Congress realized that the admission

of an additional free state would destroy the balance between slave and free states that had made

the Senate the principal forum for debate on the

slavery issue since the 1820 Missouri Compromise. Taylor’s message only further inflamed
[ 174 ]

MILLARD FILLMORE

the festering controversy among southerners,

who argued that if the territories had been taken

with the blood of all Americans, they should not

be closed to those citizens choosing to move with

their property to those regions. Southern members introduced legislation designed to preserve

the balance of new states and to toughen fugitive

slave laws.

Conflicting northern proposals prompted

Henry Clay in January 1850, with the assistance

of Democrat Stephen A. Douglas, to fashion an

‘‘Omnibus Bill,’’ a series of eight measures to address the slavery and territorial issues that collectively became known as the ‘‘Compromise of

1850.’’ In the weeks that followed, the compelling oratory of Clay, Webster, Calhoun, and others drew capacity crowds to the Senate chamber.

On March 7, Daniel Webster opened his classic

address with these memorable lines of national

reconciliation—and political suicide—addressed

to Senate President Fillmore: ‘‘Mr. President, I

wish to speak to-day, not as a Massachusetts

man, nor as a northern man, but as an American.’’ Four days later, Seward rose to denounce

the proposed compromise. Acknowledging that

the Constitution protected slavery, he asserted,

‘‘But, there is a higher law than the Constitution,

which regulates our authority over the domain,

and devotes it to the same noble purposes.’’

These speeches drew new battle lines, with Seward and the mortally ill Calhoun representing

their sections’ hard-liners, while Webster and

Clay sought a middle way. Suddenly secession

seemed a real possibility.27

Obligation to Preserve Order

The death of John C. Calhoun on March 31 removed a tenacious opponent of the compromise.

Fillmore presided at the statesman’s funeral in

the Senate chamber on April 2. On the following

day, responding to the deeply unsettled atmosphere, the vice president took an extraordinary

step for a presiding officer—he addressed the

Senate. His topic: the vice president’s ‘‘powers

and duties to preserve order.’’ 28 Speaking in a

solemn manner, Fillmore stated that when he

had first entered the office, he had assumed he

would not be called on to maintain order in a

body with such a strong reputation for courtesy

and deference. He soon realized that he had been

naive. To arm himself against the challenge of recurring disorderly behavior, he had consulted

old Senate records and manuals of parliamentary

practice for guidance. He discovered, to no one’s

surprise, that the Constitution conferred on the

vice president the general, if not express, power

to maintain order. Rules 16 and 17, adopted during the First Congress in 1789, had defined the

vice president’s constitutional prerogatives. He

alone possessed the authority to call a member

to order, and his decision was to be considered

final, not subject to appeal to the full Senate. In

1828 the Senate had adopted a rule that broadened the chamber’s responsibility for taking notice of unruly senators, while weakening the vice

president’s role. Rule 6 provided that either the

vice president or a senator could take action to

silence a disorderly senator. When a senator

called another senator to order, the offending

words were to be written down so that the vice

president could review them. Then the vice

president would rule on the merits of the question, subject to an appeal to the Senate to confirm

or override that ruling. The Senate adopted this

rule after Vice President John C. Calhoun, in

1826, declared that he lacked authority to call a

senator to order. He also objected to the arbitrary

practice of not permitting an appeal to the full

Senate.29

Fillmore acknowledged that senators were

generally unwilling ‘‘to appear as volunteers in

the discharge of such an invidious duty’’ as calling other senators to order. This reluctance

placed a greater obligation on the vice president

to exercise that power. The House of Representatives had recognized the unequal nature of the

responsibility in the wording of its comparable

rule, which provided that ‘‘the Speaker shall, or

a member may, call to order.’’ Fillmore concluded that, although some might charge him

with impeding freedom of debate, he would do

his duty to contain the first spark of disorder before it ignited a conflagration that would be more

difficult to bring under control. ‘‘[A] slight attack, or even insinuation, of a personal character,

often provokes a more severe retort, which

brings out a more disorderly reply, each Senator
[ 175 ]

MILLARD FILLMORE

feeling a justification in the previous aggression.’’ 30 Exactly two weeks after Fillmore spoke

these words, an altercation of historic proportions on the Senate floor dramatically validated

his concern.

On Saturday, April 17, 1850, the Senate resumed its consideration of the volatile legislation

related to the slavery issue and California statehood. Mississippi’s senior senator, Henry S.

Foote, made a motion to refer the various proposals to a special thirteen-member committee,

which would reshape them into a new legislative

plan. Since Missouri’s Thomas Hart Benton favored compromise but disliked Henry Clay’s

specific plan, he offered an amendment to undercut Foote’s motion. Seated in his accustomed

place at the dais, Vice President Fillmore ruled

that Benton’s motion was in order, citing as his

authority Thomas Jefferson’s Manual of Parliamentary Practice (Section 35.2). Henry Clay rose

in anger, charging that Fillmore’s ruling was an

attack on the Senate’s ‘‘power,’’ ‘‘consistency,’’

and ‘‘dignity.’’ He demanded that the Senate

vote to reverse the decision.

Clay’s complaint triggered an extended debate

and a fiery exchange in which Benton charged

Foote and his southern allies with alarming the

country ‘‘without reason, and against reason.’’ 31

Foote, who had been goading Benton for weeks,

responded by asserting that Benton had unfairly

maligned the ‘‘action of a band of patriots, worthy of the highest laudation, and who will be

held in veneration when their calumniators, no

matter who they may be, will be objects of general loathing and contempt.’’ 32 As Foote sharpened his reference to Benton, ‘‘a gentleman long

denominated the oldest member of the Senate—

the father of the Senate,’’ the burly sixty-eightyear-old Missourian rose from his seat separated

from Foote by four desks on the rear row of the

Democratic side, shoved back his chair, and advanced on the diminutive forty-six-year-old senator. Foote stepped away from Benton and into

the chamber’s nearby center aisle. He removed

a ‘‘five-barrelled’’ pistol from his pocket, cocked

the weapon, and pointed it at the floor. The Senate exploded in pandemonium. As alarmed senators called for order and blocked Benton’s advance, the ‘‘father of the Senate’’ shrieked ‘‘I

have no pistols! Let him fire! Stand out of the

way, and let the assassin fire!’’ Foote handed

over his pistol to a fellow senator, while Benton

demanded to be searched to prove that he had

no weapon. Fillmore called for order, but the

chamber would not be quieted. As several senators shouted ‘‘Be cool!’’ Benton and Foote angrily hurled justifications of their actions. Accepting that no further business would be transacted that day, Fillmore recognized a senator

who moved to adjourn. Despite his earnest preparations, the vice president now understood the

near impossibility of maintaining order in such

a deeply fractured Senate.33

On the following day, agreeing to Foote’s interrupted proposal, the Senate appointed the Select Committee of Thirteen to prepare a suitable

compromise measure. The committee reported

on May 8, but for the remainder of the spring

and into the summer the Senate heatedly debated the slavery-related issues that underlay the

Benton-Foote controversy. Vice President Fillmore’s estrangement from the Taylor administration deepened during this period and he

turned his creative energies to service on the

newly established Smithsonian Institution’s

board of regents.

On the Fourth of July, President Taylor celebrated the holiday by laying a ceremonial stone

at the partially constructed Washington Monument and listening to a lengthy speech of reconciliation by Senator Henry Foote. Suffering

from extended exposure to the sun, the president

returned to the White House, ate some raw fruit

and vegetables, which he washed down with

large amounts of iced milk. He soon fell ill with

the symptoms of acute gastroenteritis, which his

doctors diagnosed as ‘‘cholera morbus.’’ Under

their treatment, his condition worsened. On July

7, 1850, Fillmore was called from the dais in the

Senate chamber to the White House to keep vigil

outside the president’s bedroom. Late in the

evening of July 9, a cabinet messenger went to

Fillmore’s quarters in the Willard Hotel to inform the sleepless vice president that Taylor was

dead.34
[ 176 ]

MILLARD FILLMORE

President Fillmore

On the morning of July 10 a presidential messenger carried into the Senate chamber a letter

in which Millard Fillmore announced the ‘‘most

afflicting bereavement’’ of President Taylor’s

death and his own intention to take the presidential oath at noon in the House chamber. This

time, unlike the first unplanned presidential

transition less than a decade earlier, no one seriously questioned Fillmore’s right to take on the

full powers of the presidency. At the appointed

hour, before a joint session of Congress, Fillmore

took his presidential oath. Later in the day, the

entire Taylor cabinet resigned to give the new

chief executive the opportunity to set his own

course.

As president, Fillmore moved to end the stalemate over the western lands issue. By the end

of July, Clay’s omnibus compromise bill was

dead, replaced by a series of individual bills that

Senator Stephen Douglas had proposed as a

means to achieve Clay’s objectives. Working

closely and tactfully with legislative leaders, Fillmore succeeded in shaping these measures to be

acceptable to all regions and sentiments. Within

a few weeks, the individual bills became law.

Passage of this Compromise of 1850 resulted in

a major political realignment, which placed fatal

pressures on the Whig party. Northern Whigs

were furious about the Fugitive Slave Act, one

of the laws enacted as part of the compromise,

which Fillmore had only reluctantly signed.

Thus, while Whigs in the South urged moderation, their northern counterparts embraced antislavery politics. A modern observer of the Whig

party in 1850 characterized its many divisions,

including the Seward-Fillmore animosity, as

manifesting ‘‘the inescapable tension within

Whiggery between progress and stability, between moral urgency and social order.’’ 35

Against this dark political landscape, Fillmore

decided once again that he preferred the charms

of life in Buffalo to the contentiousness of the nation’s capital. Throughout 1851, the president let

it be known that he would not seek a full term

in 1852, hoping to advance Daniel Webster’s candidacy. Webster, however, was too frail to attract

the serious support of Whig national convention

delegates. At the last minute, Fillmore halfheartedly decided to run, in order to prevent the

nomination of Mexican War hero General Winfield Scott, the candidate of Fillmore’s archenemy, William Seward. At the convention, delegates deadlocked between Seward, Scott, and

Webster. After forty-six ballots, Fillmore tried to

strike a bargain with Webster. The aging statesman, the weakest of the three, refused to transfer

his delegates. They and others ultimately shifted

to Scott, giving him the nomination on the fiftythird ballot. In the general election, southern

Whigs abandoned their party to give the election

to the Democratic candidate, New Hampshire’s

Franklin Pierce. The Whig party would never

again be a significant national political force.

Anticipating his return to a happy life in Buffalo, Fillmore left a chilled White House on a bitterly cold March 4, 1853, to attend Pierce’s inauguration. His wife, Abigail, who had suffered

poor health for many months, stood through the

extended proceedings with other dignitaries in

the slush and lightly falling snow. The next day,

she complained of cold symptoms, which developed into pneumonia. Her condition worsened

and she died on March 30. Fillmore returned to

Buffalo, where in July 1854 his favorite daughter,

Mary Abigail, died at the age of twenty-two.

Grief-stricken and seeking a diversion, he reentered the national political arena by accepting the

1856 presidential nomination of the anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant Know-Nothing party, composed of former Whig moderates and conservative southern unionists. In that ill-starred venture, the former president carried only Maryland.

In 1858 Fillmore married Caroline McIntosh, a

wealthy Albany widow, and resumed his role as

Buffalo’s leading educator and philanthropist.36

He served as the first chancellor of the University

of Buffalo and the first president of the Buffalo

Historical Society. Millard Fillmore died at the

age of seventy-four on March 8, 1874.
[ 177 ]

NOTES 1U.S., Congress, Senate, Congressional Globe, 33d Cong.,

1st sess., pp. 4–5. 2Robert J. Rayback, Millard Fillmore: Biography of a President (Norwalk, CT, 1959), pp. 4–7. 3 Ibid., pp. 8–15.

4Elbert B. Smith, The Presidencies of Zachary Taylor and Millard Fillmore (Lawrence, KS, 1988), pp. 44–45. 5Rayback, pp. 81–85.

6U.S., Congress, House, The Committee on Ways and

Means: A Bicentennial History, 1789–1989, by Donald R.

Kennon and Rebecca M. Rogers, H. Doc. 100–244, 100th

Cong., 2d sess., pp. 105, 125–29. 7Glyndon G. Van Deusen, Thurlow Weed: Wizard of the

Lobby (Boston, 1947), p. 127. 8Rayback, pp. 148–51.

9 Ibid., pp. 155–59; Glyndon Van Deusen, William Henry

Seward (New York, 1967), pp. 100–103. 10Rayback, pp. 177–78.

11Quoted in Gil Troy, ‘‘Election of 1848,’’ in Running for

President: The Candidates and Their Images, ed. Arthur M.

Schlesinger, Jr., vol. 1, (New York, 1994), p. 188. 12Rayback, pp. 183–86; Van Deusen, Thurlow Weed, p. 161. 13Thurlow Weed, Autobiography (1883), p. 585; Van

Deusen, William Henry Seward, pp. 107–9. 14Rayback, pp. 186–87.

15W.L. Barre, The Life and Public Services of Millard Fillmore

(New York, 1971; reprint of 1856 edition), p. 308. 16 Smith, The Presidencies of Zachary Taylor and Millard Fillmore, p. 46. 17Troy, 1:193.

18Barre, p. 311.

19Rayback, p. 192; Van Deusen, William Henry Seward, pp.

114–15. 20 Smith, The Presidencies of Zachary Taylor and Millard Fillmore, p. 165; Rayback, pp. 192–96; Van Deusen, Thurlow

Weed, pp. 165–67; Van Deusen, William Henry Seward, pp.

111–12. 21Twenty-eight years had passed since an inauguration

day had fallen on a Sunday. On that occasion, in 1821, President Monroe had taken Chief Justice John Marshall’s advice

to postpone ‘‘the oath until Monday unless some official

duty should require its being taken on Sunday.’’ (Stephen

W. Stathis and Ronald C. Moe, ‘‘America’s Other Inauguration,’’ Presidential Studies Quarterly, 10 (Fall 1980): 553.) The

story that Senate President Pro Tempore David Atchison

served as ‘‘president for a day’’ on March 4, 1849, is without

foundation. Since Atchison’s Senate term expired on March

3, the Senate was without a president pro tempore, who

under the presidential succession plan then in effect might

have taken over. When the Senate convened on March 5

for the new Congress, it passed a resolution renewing

Atchison’s appointment as the temporary presiding officer.

Based on the 1821 Monroe precedent, it was assumed that

the new president began his term on March 4, but could

not exercise the duties of the office until he had taken the

formal oath. (George H. Haynes, ‘‘President of the United

States for a Single Day,’’ American Historical Review 30 (January 1925): 308–10. 22Rayback, pp. 196–97.

23Barre, pp. 212–13.

24Rayback, pp. 200–202; Van Deusen, William Henry Seward, pp. 114–15.

25 Smith, Zachary Taylor and Millard Fillmore, p. 163,

Rayback, pp. 203–4. 26Barre, p. 316.

27This familiar story is recounted in two modern-era

studies: William W. Freehling, The Road to Disunion: Secessionists at Bay, 1776–1854 (New York, 1990), Chapter 28, and

Merrill D. Peterson, The Great Triumvirate: Webster, Clay, and

Calhoun (New York, 1987), pp. 449–76. 28Congressional Globe, 31st Cong., 1st sess., pp. 631–32.

Out of his concern for proper decorum, Fillmore reportedly

ordered the removal of the large urn of snuff that had traditionally been placed on the vice president’s desk. He acted

because its availability caused members to congregate there,

talking loudly and obscuring his view of the chamber. (This

story is drawn from the recollections of Senate Assistant

Doorkeeper Isaac Bassett as reported in the New York Times,

June 7, 1894.) 29 See Chapter 7, ‘‘John C. Calhoun,’’ pp. 89–92.

30Congressional Globe, 31st Cong., 1st sess., p. 632. 31 Ibid., p. 762.

32 Ibid.

33Elbert B. Smith, Magnificent Missourian: The Life of Thomas Hart Benton (New York, 1958), pp. 271–72; Smith, The

Presidencies of Zachary Taylor and Millard Fillmore, pp. 138–

39; Congressional Globe, 31st Cong., 1st sess., pp. 762–64. 34 Smith, The Presidencies of Zachary Taylor and Millard Fillmore, pp. 156–57; Rayback, pp. 238–39. 35Daniel Walker Howe, The Political Culture of the American Whigs (Chicago, 1979), p. 207; Mark J. Stegmaier, Texas,

New Mexico, and the Compromise of 1850: Boundary Dispute

and Sectional Crisis (Kent, OH, 1996), p. 319. 36Rayback, p. 416.

[ 179 ]

Chapter 13

WILLIAM RUFUS DEVANE

KING

1853
WILLIAM R. KING
[ 181 ]

Chapter 13

WILLIAM RUFUS DEVANE

KING

13th Vice President: 1853

The ceremony, although simple, was very sad and impressive, and will never be forgotten by any

who were present. To see an old man, on the very verge of the grave, clothed with honors which he

cared not for, and invested with authority which he could never exercise, was truly touching. It was

only by persuasion that Mr. King would go through with the ceremony, as he looked on it as an idle

form, for he said he was conscious he would not live many weeks.

—National Intelligencer, APRIL 8, 1853

Since the adjournment of Congress, the Vice President of the United States has passed from the

scenes of earth, without having entered upon the duties of the station to which he had been called by

the voice of his countrymen. Having occupied, almost continuously, for more than thirty years, a seat

in one or the other of the two Houses of Congress, and having by his singular purity and wisdom, secured unbounded confidence and universal respect, his failing health was watched by the nation with

painful solicitude. His loss to the country, under all circumstances, has been justly regarded as

irreparable.

—FRANKLIN PIERCE, DECEMBER 5, 1853 1

On April 18, 1853, death cheated William King

of his life’s calling. Experience and temperament

had uniquely prepared him to be the Senate’s

constitutional presiding officer, but tuberculosis

denied him that role as vice president.2 Between

1836 and 1850, King had won a record-breaking

eleven elections to the post of Senate president

pro tempore. At the time of his 1852 election to

the vice-presidency, only one other member in

the body’s entire history had exceeded King’s

twenty-eight years and ten months of Senate

service.3 Warm-hearted and even-tempered,

King personified balance and fairness in deeply

disputatious times. Elected to the vice-presidential term that ran from March 4, 1853, to

March 3, 1857, King was positioned to occupy

center stage during such tumultuous future performances as the party rending 1854 struggle

over the Kansas-Nebraska Act and—the single

most dramatic act in the Senate’s history—the

1856 caning of Massachusetts Senator Charles

Sumner by a South Carolina representative. One

can now only speculate about the calming role

that this natural mediator might have played in

such events, although, ultimately, personalities

and minds much stronger than his would direct

the fateful course to national disunion and civil

war.

William King was far from a genius and he had

little talent as an orator. These qualities were so

well noted during his lifetime that a fellow

southerner, Senator Robert M. T. Hunter of Virginia, felt free to remark on them even in the

speak-no-evil context of a funeral oration. Hunter was quick to acknowledge, however, that this

guileless and self-effacing man was an individ-
[ 182 ]

WILLIAM R. KING

ual of integrity, sound judgment, and rich experience, who could be stern ‘‘when the public interests or his personal honor required it.’’ Hunter

and others lamented the demise of such a moderate and conciliatory statesman at ‘‘a period like

this [April 1853], pregnant with change, and

teeming, perhaps, with great and strange

events.’’ 4 Symbolic of the sectional balance that

King tried to achieve, the Virginia senator’s eulogy was followed by one from a longtime friend

from Massachusetts, the renowned orator Edward Everett. Everett reminded all that when the

Senate over the past several decades had needed

a presiding officer in the absence of the vice

president, its members ‘‘turned spontaneously’’

to Senator King. ‘‘He possessed, in an eminent

degree, that quickness of perception, that

promptness of decision, that familiarity with the

now complicated rules of congressional proceedings, and that urbanity of manner, which are required in a presiding officer.’’ 5

Early Career

William Rufus Devane King was born in

Sampson County, North Carolina, on April 7,

1786, the second son of William King and Margaret Devane. His father, a wealthy planter and

justice of the peace, had fought in the Revolutionary War, served as a delegate in the state convention called to ratify the U.S. Constitution, and

was an occasional member of the North Carolina

state assembly. At the time of his son’s birth, he

owned more than two dozen slaves. Young William studied at local academies and at the University of North Carolina Preparatory School, a

facility established in 1795 to cater to the educational needs of ‘‘raw, mostly untaught youths

of diverse ages and acquirements.’’ 6 He entered

the University of North Carolina in the summer

of 1801 and proved to be a capable student, but

he left that institution at the end of his junior

year.7 Following a period of legal training with

Fayetteville’s William Duffy—one of the state’s

leading lawyers—he gained admission to the

North Carolina bar in 1805. A Jeffersonian Republican, King served in the North Carolina legislature’s house of commons from 1808 to 1809,

and then as solicitor of the fifth circuit of the state

superior court at Wilmington. In 1810, several

months short of the constitutionally prescribed

age of twenty-five, he won the Wilmington district’s seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.8

There he joined with House Speaker Henry Clay,

also a freshman member, John C. Calhoun, and

other young, expansionist ‘‘warhawks’’ of the

Twelfth Congress in a determined and successful

campaign to initiate hostilities with Great Britain. In November 1816, King traded lawmaking

for diplomacy by resigning from the House to

serve as legation secretary under William

Pinkney, recently appointed U.S. minister to

Russia. Pinkney and King traveled first to the

Kingdom of Naples in an unsuccessful attempt

to obtain compensation for seized American

ships. In January 1817, they reached St. Petersburg, where they served for a year. In February

1818, without waiting to be formally recalled,

Pinkney and King returned to the United States.9

King then moved from North Carolina to the

rich economic and political opportunities of the

newly organized Alabama Territory. In October

1818, he purchased 750 acres of land and created

an Alabama River estate, ‘‘King’s Bend,’’ six

miles from the town of Cahaba, the new state

capital. In March 1819, King and several others

organized a land company and founded the

nearby town of Selma, which he named for a site

in classical legend that occupied high bluffs

above a river.10 The town prospered because of

its proximity to Cahaba, which remained the

state’s capital until 1826. The former congressman and diplomat rose quickly to local prominence and was selected as a delegate to the territory’s July 1819 constitutional convention and

then, in December 1819, as one of Alabama’s first

United States senators.

Senator from Alabama

Despite his lengthy Senate service and his important role as conciliator in a fractious era, William King is not today counted among the great

statesmen of the Senate’s ‘‘Golden Age.’’ 11 One

scholar of the period, mindful of King’s practice

of wearing a wig long after such coverings had

gone out of fashion, dismissed him as a ‘‘tall,

prim, wigtopped mediocrity.’’ Novelist John

Updike, after his own extended research, took a

more positive view of the slender and courtly
[ 183 ]

WILLIAM R. KING

statesman. Describing King’s face as ‘‘darkly

handsome and smolderingly receptive,’’ he characterized the senator as ‘‘one of those eminences

whose strong impression on their own times has

suffered a gradual erasure upon the tablets of

history.’’ 12 A fellow senator offered the following assessment:

He was distinguished by the scrupulous correctness of his conduct. He was remarkable for his

quiet and unobtrusive, but active, practical usefulness as a legislator. He was emphatically a

business member of the Senate, and, without ostentation, originated and perfected more useful

measures than many who filled the public eye by

greater display and daily commanded the applause of a listening Senate. . . . [T]o his honor

be it spoken, he never vexed the ear of the Senate

with ill-timed, tedious, or unnecessary debate.13

A moderate Democrat, King became an active

supporter of Andrew Jackson soon after the 1825

decision of the House of Representatives to select

John Quincy Adams over Jackson for president.

In the 1828 presidential election, Alabama cast its

electoral votes for Jackson, due in large measure

to King’s efforts. King generally supported the

Jackson administration during its stormy eightyear life, although as a southerner he was also

associated with the ‘‘little Senate’’ group considered loyal to Jackson’s nemesis, South Carolina’s

John C. Calhoun.14 The Alabama senator shared

Jackson’s hostility to Kentuckian Henry Clay’s

‘‘accursed American System’’ of centralized governmental action against foreign competition

through protective tariffs, a central banking system, and a public works program of canal and

road-building.

In 1831 and 1832, King used his chairmanship

of the Senate Committee on Public Lands to advance Jackson administration land policies. Consistent with his long-held views on the subject,

he attacked the notion that public lands should

be priced primarily to produce large amounts of

federal revenue (that would go ‘‘to the East to

pay the pensioners and support the fortifications’’); he believed public lands should be sold

only to those who actually planned to settle

them. A reduction in land prices would simultaneously stimulate territorial settlement and national economic growth.15 King also subscribed

to his region’s hostility to high protective tariffs,

arguing that high rates tax ‘‘the many for the

benefit of the few,’’ but he opposed John C. Calhoun’s theory that the South had the right to

‘‘nullify’’ odious laws, such as the 1828 ‘‘Tariff

of Abominations.’’ ‘‘I view [nullification] as neither peaceful nor constitutional, but clearly revolutionary in its character, and if persevered in,

must, in the nature of things, result in the severance of the Union. From such a calamity may

God in His mercy deliver us.’’ When Clay early

in 1833 presented a compromise tariff bill that

defused the building confrontation between federal force and state resistance, King, ever the

moderate, quickly rose to support the measure.

His moderation irritated both President Jackson

and southern hard-liners, who charged that he

had not worked hard enough to defend his region’s interests.16

King contested Henry Clay’s 1832 move to recharter the Bank of the United States, not because

he opposed the bank, but because he objected to

Clay’s political opportunism, tied to that year’s

presidential election. When, as part of that controversy, Jackson ordered the removal of federal

funds from the bank and then refused to respond

to a Clay-inspired Senate demand for a copy of

a related document, the Senate took the unprecedented action on March 28, 1834, of censuring

the president. Administration partisans, led by

Missouri Senator Thomas Hart Benton and King,

launched a vigorous and ultimately successful

campaign to expunge the censure from the Senate’s journal. King, who had become widely respected for his knowledge of the Senate’s rules

and precedents, argued that Jackson’s refusal to

produce the document was in no way an assault

on senatorial prerogatives. ‘‘The Senate was in

no danger,’’ he asserted, ‘‘it had never been so

strong or so saucy as it was at the present moment; why, then, was it like the Italian beggar,

continually wounding itself, for the purpose of

exciting the commiseration and benevolence of

the public.’’ 17

King’s conflict with Clay and the dangerous

tenor of the times are symbolized in the clash between the two men that took place in March

1841, as the Senate, under Clay’s leadership, for

the first time passed to the control of a new Whig
[ 184 ]

WILLIAM R. KING

majority. A great battle developed over Senate

printing patronage as Clay sought to dismiss

Democrat Francis P. Blair, editor of the Washington Globe, as official Senate printer. Clay ‘‘believed the Globe to be an infamous paper, and

its chief editor an infamous man.’’ King responded that Blair’s character would ‘‘compare

gloriously’’ to that of Clay. The Kentucky senator

jumped to his feet and shouted, ‘‘That is false,

it is a slanderous base and cowardly declaration

and the senator knows it to be so.’’ King answered ominously, ‘‘Mr. President, I have no

reply to make—none whatever. But Mr. Clay deserves a response.’’ King then wrote out a challenge to a duel and had another senator deliver

it to Clay, who belatedly realized what trouble

his hasty words had unleashed. As Clay and

King selected seconds and prepared for the imminent encounter, the Senate sergeant at arms

arrested both men and turned them over to a

civil authority. Clay posted a five-thousand-dollar bond as assurance that he would keep the

peace, ‘‘and particularly towards William R.

King.’’ Each wanted the matter behind him, but

King insisted on ‘‘an unequivocal apology.’’ On

March 14, 1841, Clay apologized and noted that

he would have been wiser to have kept quiet despite the intensity of his feelings against Blair.

King then gave his own apology, after which

Clay walked to King’s desk and said sweetly,

‘‘King, give us a pinch of your snuff.’’ King rose

and both men shook hands as applause engulfed

the chamber.18

Vice-Presidential Ambitions

In the late 1830s, as a leading southern moderate among long-serving, middle-aged senators,

William King attracted attention within the

Democratic party as a prospective vice-presidential candidate for the 1840 election. As early

as 1838, dissatisfaction with Vice President Richard M. Johnson for his negative impact on the

1836 race and his scandalous personal life 19

caused party leaders to begin the search for a

strong second-term running mate for President

Martin Van Buren. King was a natural contender,

having been on the national political stage for a

quarter century and having routinely substituted

for Johnson during the vice president’s frequent

absences from the Senate chamber. He enjoyed

significant support in the electorally important

state of Pennsylvania, thanks to his roommate

and close ally Senator James Buchanan. Buchanan wished to thwart the 1844 presidential

ambitions of both Senator Thomas Hart Benton

and Secretary of State John Forsyth by blocking

their paths to the vice-presidency in 1840. (In the

closeness of their relationship in the years after

1834, King and Buchanan—both lifelong bachelors—became known as the ‘‘Siamese

twins.’’ 20) King assured Buchanan that in return

for the Pennsylvanian’s help in obtaining the

vice-presidency in 1840, he would refuse to run

for the presidency in 1844, thus clearing the way

for Buchanan. The Pennsylvania senator agreed

to King’s plan and circulated his name among

leading Democratic newspaper editors. The anticipated renomination of President Van Buren,

a New Yorker, required balancing by a southerner such as King. By the start of 1840, however,

King’s vice-presidential chances had evaporated

because he was unable to generate support from

Democratic leaders in the influential states of

North Carolina and Pennsylvania. At the party’s

national convention in Baltimore, a motion to

give the second spot to King failed to draw serious interest and party leaders decided to leave

the vice-presidential selection to the individual

state party organizations.21

In 1842, King’s name again surfaced as a vicepresidential contender for the 1844 Democratic

ticket. Supporters of a presidential bid by South

Carolina’s John C. Calhoun tried without success

to dissuade King, as there would be room for no

more than one southerner on a national slate. But

by late 1843, the stronger candidacy of former

President Van Buren smothered Calhoun’s aspirations. For Van Buren’s running mate, the

names most frequently mentioned were James K.

Polk and William King. King’s supporters argued that, as a Jacksonian and resident of a

southern state loyal to the Democratic party (a

slap at Polk’s Whig-inclined Tennessee), he deserved the vice-presidency.22 However, in a repeat of his troubles four years earlier, King was

unable to attract serious support in the

electorally rich eastern states, so that his can-
[ 185 ]

WILLIAM R. KING

didacy had lost its vitality by the eve of the 1844

Baltimore convention. Meanwhile, Van Buren

had destroyed his own chances of becoming the

presidential nominee with his announcement of

opposition to the annexation of Texas. King

hoped that party leaders would fill that void by

selecting Buchanan, in which case he would

again offer himself for the second spot on the

grounds that his presence would help secure essential electoral votes from the wavering state of

North Carolina.

On April 9, 1844, President Tyler ended King’s

preconvention maneuvering by appointing him

minister to France. Throughout 1843 and into

early 1844, angry with Tyler’s policies, the Senate

had rejected many of his nominations to major

judicial, cabinet, and diplomatic posts. Among

these was the appointment as minister to France

of Virginia Representative Henry A. Wise, described by a modern historian as a ‘‘high-strung,

tobacco-chewing extrovert.’’ 23 As a result, this

sensitive post had remained vacant for eighteen

months until Tyler selected King, one of the Senate’s most popular members. Easily confirmed,

King left for Paris and soon succeeded in his

central mission: to keep France from interfering

with U.S. plans to annex Texas.24

From Paris, King kept actively in touch with

national and Alabama political developments. In

April 1846 he wrote his friend James Buchanan,

now his boss as secretary of state, ‘‘Most sincerely do I wish that we had both remained in

the Senate.’’ 25 King therefore decided to run for

his old Senate seat, then occupied by political

rival and fellow Democrat Dixon H. Lewis. Desiring to return in time to influence the Alabama

legislature’s election, he left for the United States

in November 1846. In a three-way race that included Whig leader Arthur Hopkins, the legislature took seventeen ballots during December

1847 but failed to make a selection. Throughout

this hotly contested battle between unionist and

states’ rights forces—a battle that one modern

historian of Alabama labeled ‘‘probably the most

significant senatorial election in the antebellum

period’’—states rights’ candidate Lewis led, followed by Hopkins and then unionist King. On

the eighteenth ballot, in the only election defeat

of his public career, King withdrew and the seat

went to Lewis.26 King, however, did not have to

wait long to fulfill his senatorial ambitions. Within seven months, Alabama’s other Senate seat became vacant when President Polk named Arthur

Bagby minister to Russia. On July 1, 1848, the

governor appointed King to fill the eight months

remaining in Bagby’s term. Later that year, in a

close race with his nemesis Arthur Hopkins,

King won a full term.27

Compromiser in 1850

The national mood had darkened during

King’s four-year absence from the Senate. He

told James Buchanan that he had doubts about

the wisdom of returning in those troubled days.

‘‘A seat in the Senate is, I assure you, far from

being desirable to me; bringing with it as it does

at this particular time especially, great responsibility, great labor, and no little anxiety.’’ 28

Characteristically, King tried to calm the brewing

storm. He urged northern senators to resist intensifying pressures to introduce antislavery petitions. ‘‘I speak as a senator who has been here

many years, and as one always anxious to see

the members of this body preserve that decorum

and kindness toward each other which secures

to the body the respect in which it is held

throughout the country and the world.’’ 29 He

supported the spirit, if not always the specifics,

of Henry Clay’s compromise measures. He opposed admitting California without the seasoning period of territorial status and he believed

that Congress had ‘‘about as much constitutional

power to prohibit slavery from going into the

Territories of the United States as we have power

to pass an act carrying slavery there.’’ He believed that abolishing slavery in the District of

Columbia would be unfair to the slaveholders in

adjacent states, but he supported abolition of the

slave trade there.

As the regional positions hardened in the tumultuous early months of 1850, King lamented

the ‘‘banefull spirit of party’’ that in dividing the

South encouraged northern extremists. In April,

King’s seniority and moderate views earned him

a place as one of two southern Democratic representatives on the Senate’s Select Committee of

Thirteen, appointed to review Henry Clay’s compromise resolutions regarding territories and
[ 186 ]

WILLIAM R. KING

slavery. With a majority of the committee’s members, he agreed that slavery was a ‘‘rightful’’ subject for legislative attention, but only in the legislatures of states and not of territories. Thus, King

took the view of southern conservatives that the

Constitution protected owners in their control of

slave property until a territory became a state.30

At home, he met bitter opposition from a faction

of ‘‘Southern Rights’’ secessionists who argued

that his voting record better reflected the interests of Massachusetts, but an equally large group

of supporters praised his support for compromise, union, and peace. He counseled patience, optimistically expecting the North to respect southern rights, but warning that if that

section’s actions jeopardized those rights—both

constitutional and material—all southern men

should ‘‘hurl defiance at the fanatical crew, and

unitedly determine to defend their rights at

every hazard and every sacrifice.’’ 31

Arbiter of Decorum

The Senate chamber in 1850 was frequently

jammed to capacity as the major debates on slavery in the territories drew large crowds of House

members, reporters, and the general public eager

to get a glimpse of the likes of Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, Thomas Hart Benton, Stephen A.

Douglas of Illinois, Sam Houston of Texas, and

others of the nation’s most notable public figures. As a frequent presiding officer, King regularly acted to restore decorum. In this electrically

charged environment, he took every opportunity

to remind other senators of his need for their

support ‘‘to put down the least movement toward disorder, or the slightest indulgence in personal remarks.’’ 32

In May, while Vice President Millard Fillmore

was presiding, a senator won adoption of a routine resolution to admit a local newspaper reporter to the Senate floor. Dissatisfied with such

flagrant circumvention of the Senate’s floor access rules, another member suggested referring

the matter to a committee. Several senators proposed that the presiding officer be allowed to

issue each member one admission permit to

award as he saw fit. According to the proposal,

with a guest waiting at the chamber’s entrance,

the host senator would go to the dais and request

his ticket from the vice president. New Jersey

Senator William Dayton predicted there would

be few takers. ‘‘All the multitudinous persons

who hang around the Capitol will not have the

face to ask Senators to go to the Vice President

and formally get the permit to allow them to

come on the floor every day.’’ Others laughed at

the dilemma of a senator having to decide between male and female guests and the idea of

such a system that would have sixty senatorial

guests contending with sixty senators and several hundred House members for floor space in

such cramped quarters. Senator Jefferson Davis

of Mississippi sounded the most realistic note:

‘‘It is utterly impossible to attempt to admit all

who desire to come on the floor. . . . The evil can

only be remedied by an enlarged chamber.’’ As

the member most identified with Senate decorum and tradition, King brought the debate to

a close by moving to refer the matter to a special

committee, knowing that another committee

would soon propose the construction of new

Senate and House chambers, each with ample

public galleries.33

Finally Vice President

On July 10, 1850, Zachary Taylor’s death

placed Millard Fillmore in the White House and

left the vice-presidency vacant. On July 11, the

solemn Senate set aside the practice of having

each party offer a nomination for the president

pro tempore’s post and unanimously selected

King for the vacancy. This otherwise routine act

took on special significance, for King would be

in effect the acting vice president of the United

States. King addressed the Senate in the tone of

a vice president offering an inaugural oration.

Noting the unusual bipartisan support for his

election, King vowed to enforce the Senate’s

rules ‘‘mildly, but firmly, and I trust impartially.

. . . Should I err, I look to my brother Senators,

in a spirit of kindness, to correct my errors.’’ 34

Continuing in the fashion of former Vice President Fillmore, King worked hard to calm the

angry seas that swelled with increasing violence

on the Senate floor.

King’s long quest for the vice-presidency had

resumed immediately after he returned from

France in 1846. However, his failure that year to
[ 187 ]

WILLIAM R. KING

regain his Senate seat, coupled with deep ideological divisions within the Alabama Democratic

party, denied him the support necessary to

launch a vigorous national campaign. At the

1848 national convention in Baltimore, following

the nomination of Michigan’s Lewis Cass for the

presidency, King’s was among a half-dozen

names placed before the delegates. On the first

ballot, he came in third. On the second ballot, the

convention selected Kentucky’s General William

O. Butler, a veteran of the War of 1812 and the

Mexican War.35

In January 1852, the Alabama state Democratic

convention endorsed the Compromise of 1850

and directed the state’s national convention delegates to support King for either the presidency

or vice-presidency. At the jam-packed, tumultuous Baltimore convention, delegates selected

Franklin Pierce on the forty-ninth ballot. In a

peace gesture to the Buchanan wing of the party,

Pierce’s supporters allowed Buchanan’s allies to

fill the second position, knowing that they would

select King. On the second ballot, with only

minor opposition, King finally captured his

prize.36 During the ensuing campaign, King’s tuberculosis, which he believed he had contracted

while in Paris, denied him the active behind-thescenes role that he might otherwise have played,

although he worked hard to assure his region’s

voters that New Hampshire’s Pierce was a

‘‘northern man with southern principles.’’ King’s

deteriorating physical condition clouded the victory that came in November; Pierce’s unwillingness to consult the vice-president-elect on cabinet appointments deepened his malaise.

In November, King began to suffer from a

worsening cough. A month later, he described

himself as looking like a skeleton and told

friends he doubted that he would ever recover.

On December 20, two weeks into the short December-March congressional session, King resigned his Senate seat and made plans to regain

his health away from wintertime Washington.37

On January 17, 1853, King left for the more salutary climate of Cuba, by way of Key West, Florida; he reached Havana in early February. Soon

realizing that he would be unable to return to

Washington in time for the March 4, 1853, inauguration, King requested that Congress permit

him to take his oath in Cuba.38 Consequently, for

the only time in this nation’s history, Congress

passed legislation allowing the vice-presidentelect to be sworn in outside the country. On

March 24, 1853, near Matanzas, a seaport town

sixty miles east of Havana, the gravely ill statesman, too feeble to stand unaided, became the nation’s thirteenth vice president. Deciding that he

would make every effort to return to the United

States, King set sail for Mobile on April 6. He

reached his Alabama plantation on April 17, but

his struggle was at an end. The sixty-seven-yearold King died there the following day. An opposition newspaper praised his ‘‘purity and patriotism’’ and concluded, ‘‘[t]hough not, perhaps,

brilliant, he was better—sensible, honest, never

running into ultraism, but in the contests between the State and the federal government,

maintaining the true conservative medium, so

necessary to the preservation of the constitution,

the rights of the States and the Republic.’’ 39
[ 188 ]

NOTES 1U.S., Congress, Senate, Journal, 33d Cong., 1st sess., p.

25.2On taking office as president pro tempore in January

1837, King offered the following observations about the

Senate and the role of its presiding officer. They are similar

in tone and formulation to those that Vice President Aaron

Burr uttered on March 2, 1805.

The Senate of the United States, gentlemen, is, from

its very organization, the great conservative body in

this republic. Here is the strong citadel of liberty. To

this body the intelligent and the virtuous, throughout

our wide-spread country, look with confidence for an

unwavering and unflinching resistance to the encroachments of power on the one hand, and the effervescence

of popular excitement on the other. Unawed and

unseduced, it should firmly maintain the constitution

in its purity, and present an impregnable barrier

against every attack on that sacred instrument, come

it from what quarter it may. The demon of faction

should find no abiding place in this chamber, but every

heart and every head should be wholly occupied in advancing the general welfare, and preserving,

unimpaired, the national honor. To insure success, gentlemen, in the discharge of our high duties, we must

command the confidence and receive the support of the

people. Calm deliberation, courtesy toward each other,

order and decorum in debate, will go far, very far, to

inspire that confidence and command that support. It

becomes my duty, gentlemen, to banish (if practicable)

from this hall all personal altercation; to check, at once,

every remark of a character personally offensive; to

preserve order, and promote harmony. . . . I earnestly

solicit your co-operation, gentlemen, in aiding my efforts promptly to put down every species of disorder.

(U.S., Congress, Senate, Register of Debates in Congress,

24th Cong., 2d sess., pp. 618–19.)

3As early as 1824, King regularly served as the chairman

of the Committee of the Whole, a long-since-abandoned

parliamentary form by which the full Senate could expedite

its proceedings. (John Milton Martin, ‘‘William Rufus King:

Southern Moderate,’’ Ph.D. dissertation, University of

North Carolina, 1955, p. 81.) Prior to 1890, the Senate elected

its president pro tempore only when the vice president was

away from the chamber. Election to that post during the

Senate’s first century was generally considered an acknowledgment of the Senate’s respect for the individual’s judicious temperament. In later years, the Senate designated a

permanent president pro tempore for each Congress, usually the senior member of the majority party. (U.S., Congress, Senate, The Senate, 1789–1989: Addresses on the History

of the United States Senate, by Robert C. Byrd, S. Doc. 100–

20, 100th Cong., 1st sess., vol. 2, 1991, Chapter 6; vol. 4, Historical Statistics, 1993, pp. 647–53.) 4U.S., Congress, Senate, Congressional Globe, 33d Cong.,

1st sess, pp. 19–21. See also U.S., Congress, Obituary Addresses on the Occasion of the Death of the Hon. William R. King,

of Alabama, Vice President of the United States, Delivered in the

Senate and House of Representatives of the United States, Eighth

of December, 1853 (Washington, 1854), pp. 8–13, 37. Representative Sampson Harris (D-AL) also commented that

King lacked ‘‘many of those great attributes of mind, which

dazzle and lead captive the admiring throng . . .’’ (p. 37)

and the National Intelligencer began its obituary, ‘‘Not endowed with shining talents, though of excellent sense . . .’’

(April 20, 1853). 5Congressional Globe, 33d Cong., 1st sess, p. 20. 6Martin, ‘‘William Rufus King: Southern Moderate,’’ pp.

3–5, 11–12. 7 No book-length biography of King exists. John Milton

Martin, the only modern-era scholar to have given King’s

career serious consideration, prepared a 1955 doctoral dissertation (‘‘William Rufus King: Southern Moderate,’’ University of North Carolina) and articles in the early 1960s on

King’s role as a ‘‘Jacksonian Senator’’ and his multiple

quests for the vice-presidency. Biographies of King’s leading contemporaries and histories of nineteenth-century Alabama political life give him only passing reference. A small

unorganized collection of his personal papers survives at

the Alabama Department of Archives and History in Montgomery. Incomplete records at the University of North

Carolina have led to conflicting accounts of his stay there.

An error-ridden biographical article by E.S.W. Dameron in

that institution’s University Magazine (March 1905, p. 317–

22) credits him with graduating in 1803, but notes that the

‘‘ravages of a century have despoiled his Alma Mater of all

account of his college life.’’ Others have accepted that information, including Thomas M. Owen in History of Alabama

and Dictionary of Alabama Biography, vol. 3 (Chicago, 1921),

p. 983, and Roy F. Nichols in ‘‘William Rufus Devane King,’’

Dictionary of American Biography (vol. 10, p. 406). John M.

Martin, King’s only reliable modern biographer, disagrees,

indicating that he withdrew in 1804, ‘‘William R. King and

the Compromise of 1850,’’ The North Carolina Historical Review 39 (October 1962): 500. In his University of North Carolina doctoral dissertation (pp. 20–22), Martin explores the

matter in greater detail and concludes that King felt he was

sufficiently prepared to begin his legal studies. 8By the time the Twelfth Congress convened on November 4, 1811, King had reached the required age of twentyfive. In those early years both houses of Congress occasionally ignored the minimum age requirement, which was generally applied at the time the oath of office was administered rather than on the date of election.
[ 189 ]

WILLIAM R. KING

9Martin, ‘‘William R. King and the Compromise of 1850,’’

p. 500; Martin, ‘‘William Rufus King: Southern Moderate,’’

Chapter 2. 10Martin, ‘‘William Rufus King: Southern Moderate,’’ pp.

61–65. King took the name ‘‘Selma’’ from the poem by

James Macpherson, ‘‘the Song of Selma.’’ Virginia O.

Foscue, Place Names in Alabama (Tuscaloosa, AL, 1989), pp.

26–27, 125; Writers’ Program, Alabama, Alabama: A Guide

to the Deep South (WPA American Guide Series) (New York,

1941), pp. 47–50, 237–38. 11The major documentary record of his Senate service is

found in the quasi-official proceedings of Congress, the Annals of Congress (1811–1816; 1819–1824), the Register of Debates in Congress (1824–1838), and the Congressional Globe

(1833–1853). Yet even this record is spare, as King made few

substantive speeches, preferring to preside rather than to

debate. He never married or had children, thus there were

no direct heirs with a vested interest in preserving a useful

record of his service. 12Roy Nichols and Jeannette Nichols, ‘‘Election of 1852,’’

in History of American Presidential Elections, 1789–1968, ed.

Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., vol. 2 (New York, 1971), p. 942;

John Updike, Memories of the Ford Administration (New York,

1992), pp. 227, 233. 13Congressional Globe, 31st Cong., 1st sess., p. 21. 14 John M. Martin, ‘‘William R. King: Jacksonian Senator,’’

The Alabama Review 18 (October 1965): 243–45. 15Martin, ‘‘William R. King: Jacksonian Senator,’’ pp.

247–51; Martin, ‘‘William Rufus King: Southern Moderate,’’

p. 77. 16Martin, ‘‘William R. King: Jacksonian Senator,’’ pp. 253,

256. 17 Ibid., p. 262.

18This story is derived from the account presented in

Robert V. Remini, Henry Clay: Statesman for the Union (New

York, 1991), p. 574. Remini consulted many sources beyond

the quasi-official Congressional Globe (26th Cong., 2d sess.,

pp. 245, 247–249, 256–257), which was reported in the third

person and without the detail that Remini located in contemporary newspapers, letters, and diary accounts. See also

Martin, ‘‘William Rufus King: Southern Moderate,’’ pp.

183–86. 19 See Chapter 9 of this volume, ‘‘Richard Mentor Johnson,’’ p. 129.

20 Philip Shriver Klein, President James Buchanan (University Park, PA, 1962), p. 111; Novelist John Updike, in Memories of the Ford Administration (pp. 227–41), speculates at

length on the nature of the intimacy between King and

Buchanan. 21 John M. Martin, ‘‘William R. King and the Vice Presidency,’’ The Alabama Review 16 (January 1963): 35–40; Klein,

pp. 131–32. 22Martin, ‘‘William R. King and the Vice Presidency,’’ pp.

43–44. 23 John Niven, John C. Calhoun and the Price of Union (Baton

Rouge, LA, 1988), p. 260. 24 St. George Leakin Sioussat, ‘‘John Caldwell Calhoun,’’

in American Secretaries of State and Their Diplomacy, ed. Samuel Flagg Bemis, vol. 5 (New York, 1928), pp. 164–65, 169,

208, 300; Martin, ‘‘William Rufus King: Southern Moderate,’’ Chapter 7. 25Letter of April 30, 1846, quoted in Martin, ‘‘William

Rufus King: Southern Moderate,’’ p. 268. 26William Warren Rogers, et al., Alabama: The History of

a Deep South State (Tuscaloosa, AL, 1994), p. 155. 27Martin, ‘‘William Rufus King: Southern Moderate,’’ pp.

274–81, 290–91, 300–303. 28Martin, ‘‘William R. King and the Compromise of

1850,’’ p. 501. 29Congressional Globe, 31st Cong., 1st sess., p. 342. 30Remini, Henry Clay: Statesman for the Union, pp. 746–

47.31 Ibid.

32Congressional Globe, 31st Cong., 1st sess., p. 915. 33 Ibid., pp. 1054–55.

34 Ibid., p. 1370.

35Martin, ‘‘William R. King and the Vice Presidency,’’ pp.

46–49. 36Congressional Quarterly’s Guide to U.S. Elections, 3d ed.

(Washington, DC, 1994), p. 43. 37Congressional Globe, 32d Cong., 2d sess., p. 89. 38 In King’s absence, Senator Lewis Cass, as the Senate’s

oldest member, administered the oath of office to newly

elected senators. President Franklin Pierce made no reference to his absent running mate during his inaugural address. Congress approved the necessary legislation on

March 2, 1853. (Congressional Globe, 32d Cong., 2d sess., Appendix, p. 341.) 39Daily [Montgomery] Alabama Journal, April 20, 1853.

[ 191 ]

Chapter 14

JOHN CABELL BRECKINRIDGE

1857–1861
JOHN C. BRECKINRIDGE
[ 193 ]

Chapter 14

JOHN CABELL BRECKINRIDGE

14th Vice President: 1857–1861

I trust that I have the courage to lead a forlorn hope.

—JOHN C. BRECKINRIDGE, 1860

The only vice president ever to take up arms

against the government of the United States,

John Cabell Breckinridge completed four years

as vice president under James Buchanan, ran for

president as the Southern Democratic candidate

in 1860, and then returned to the Senate to lead

the remnants of the Democratic party for the first

congressional session during the Civil War. Although his cousin Mary Todd Lincoln resided in

the White House and his home state of Kentucky

remained in the Union, Breckinridge chose to

volunteer his services to the Confederate army.

The United States Senate formally expelled him

as a traitor. When the Confederates were defeated, Breckinridge’s personal secession forced

him into exile abroad, bringing his promising political career to a bitter end.

An Illustrious Political Family

Born at ‘‘Cabell’s Dale,’’ the Breckinridge family estate near Lexington, Kentucky, on January

16, 1821, John Cabell Breckinridge was named

for his father and grandfather. The father, Joseph

Cabell Breckinridge, a rising young politician,

died at the state capital at the age of thirty-five.

Left without resources, his wife took her children

back to Cabell’s Dale to live with their grandmother, known affectionately as ‘‘Grandma

Black Cap.’’ She often regaled the children with

stories of their grandfather, the first John Breckinridge, who, in addition to introducing the Kentucky Resolutions that denounced the Alien and

Sedition Acts, had helped secure the Louisiana

Purchase and had served during the administration of Thomas Jefferson first as a Senate leader

and then as attorney general. The grandfather

might well have become president one day but,

like his son, he died prematurely. The sense of

family mission that his grandmother imparted

shaped young John C. Breckinridge’s self-image

and directed him towards a life in public office.

The family also believed strongly in education,

since Breckinridge’s maternal grandfather, Samuel Stanhope Smith, had served as president of

the College of New Jersey at Princeton, and his

uncle Robert J. Breckinridge started Kentucky’s

public school system. The boy attended the Presbyterian Centre College in Danville, Kentucky,

where he received his bachelor’s degree at seventeen. He then attended Princeton before returning to Lexington to study law at Transylvania

University.1

A tall, strikingly handsome young man with

a genial air and a powerful voice, considered by

many ‘‘a perfect gentleman,’’ Breckinridge set

out to make his fortune on the frontier. In 1841

he and his law partner Thomas W. Bullock settled in the Mississippi River town of Burlingame,

in the Iowa Territory. There he might have entered politics and pursued a career relatively free

from the divisive issue of slavery, but Iowa’s

fierce winter gave him influenza and made him

homesick for Kentucky. When he returned home

on a visit in 1843, he met and soon married Mary

Cyrene Burch of Georgetown. The newlyweds
[ 194 ]

JOHN C. BRECKINRIDGE

settled in Georgetown, and Breckinridge opened

a law office in Lexington.2

A Rapid Political Rise

When the Mexican War began, Breckinridge

volunteered to serve as an officer in a Kentucky

infantry regiment. In Mexico, Major Breckinridge

won the support of his troops for his acts of kindness, being known to give up his horse to sick

and footsore soldiers. After six months in Mexico

City, he returned to Kentucky and to an almost

inevitable political career. In 1849, while still

only twenty-eight years old, he won a seat in the

state house of representatives. In that election, as

in all his campaigns, he demonstrated both an

exceptional ability as a stump speaker and a politician’s memory for names and faces. Shortly

after the election, he met for the first time the Illinois legislator who had married his cousin Mary

Todd. Abraham Lincoln, while visiting his wife’s

family in Lexington, paid courtesy calls on the

city’s lawyers. Lincoln and Breckinridge became

friends, despite their differences in party and

ideology. Breckinridge was a Jacksonian Democrat in a state that Senator Henry Clay had made

a Whig bastion. In 1851, Breckinridge shocked

the Whig party by winning the congressional

race in Clay’s home district, a victory that also

brought him to the attention of national Democratic leaders. He arrived in Congress shortly

after the passage of Clay’s Compromise of 1850,

which had sought to settle the issue of slavery

in the territories. Breckinridge became a spokesman for the proslavery Democrats, arguing that

the federal government had no right to interfere

with slavery anywhere, either in the District of

Columbia or in any of the territories.3

Since Breckinridge defended both the Union

and slavery, people viewed him as a moderate.

The Pennsylvania newspaper publisher and political adventurer John W. Forney insisted that

when Breckinridge came to Congress ‘‘he was in

no sense an extremist.’’ Forney recalled how the

young Breckinridge spoke with great respect

about Texas Senator Sam Houston, who denounced the dangers and evils of slavery. But

Forney thought that Breckinridge ‘‘was too interesting a character to be neglected by the able

ultras of the South. They saw in his winning

manners, attractive appearance, and rare talent

for public affairs, exactly the elements they needed in their concealed designs against the country.’’ People noted that his uncle, Robert Breckinridge, was a prominent antislavery man, and that

as a state legislator Breckinridge had aided the

Kentucky Colonization Society (a branch of the

American Colonization Society), dedicated to

gradual emancipation and the resettlement of

free blacks outside the United States. They suspected that he held private concerns about the

morality of slavery and that he supported gradual emancipation. Yet, while Breckinridge was

no planter or large slaveholder, he owned a few

household slaves and idealized the southern way

of life. He willingly defended slavery and white

supremacy against all critics.4

The Kansas-Nebraska Controversy

In Congress, Breckinridge became an ally of Illinois Senator Stephen A. Douglas. When Douglas introduced the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854,

which repealed the Missouri Compromise and

left the issue of slavery in the territories to the

settlers themselves—a policy known as ‘‘popular

sovereignty’’—Breckinridge worked hard to

enact the legislation. Going to the White House,

he served as a broker between Douglas and

President Franklin Pierce, persuading the president to support the bill. He also spoke out in the

House in favor of leaving the settlers ‘‘free to

form their own institutions, and enter the Union

with or without slavery, as their constitutions

should prescribe.’’ 5

During those debates in March 1854, the normally even-tempered Breckinridge exchanged

angry words on the House floor with Democratic

Representative Francis B. Cutting of New York,

almost provoking a duel. ‘‘They were a highstrung pair,’’ commented Breckinridge’s friend

Forney. Cutting accused Breckinridge of ingratitude toward the North, where he had raised

campaign funds for his tough reelection campaign in 1853. Breckinridge, ‘‘his eyes flashing

fire,’’ interrupted Cutting’s speech, denied his

charges, denounced his language, and demanded an apology. When Cutting refused,

Breckinridge interpreted this as a challenge to a

duel. He proposed that they meet near Silver
[ 195 ]

JOHN C. BRECKINRIDGE

Spring, the nearby Maryland home of his friend

Francis P. Blair, and that they duel with western

rifles. The New Yorker objected that he had

never handled a western rifle and that as the

challenged party he should pick the weapons.

Once it became clear that neither party considered himself the challenger, they gained a facesaving means of withdrawing from the ‘‘code of

honor’’ without fighting the duel. When the two

next encountered each other in the House, Breckinridge looked his adversary in the eye and said:

‘‘Cutting, give me a chew of tobacco!’’ The New

Yorker drew a plug of tobacco from his pocket,

cut off a wad for Breckinridge and another for

himself, and both returned to their desks chewing and looking happier. Those who observed

the exchange compared it to the American Indians’ practice of smoking a peace pipe.6

Breckinridge supported the Kansas-Nebraska

Act in the hope that it would take slavery in the

territories out of national politics, but the act had

entirely the opposite effect. Public outrage

throughout the North caused the Whig party to

collapse and new antislavery parties, the Republican and the American (Know-Nothing) parties,

to rise in its wake. When the spread of KnowNothing lodges in his district jeopardized his

chances of reelection in 1855, Breckinridge declined to run for a third term. He also rejected

President Pierce’s nomination to serve as minister to Spain and negotiate American annexation

of Cuba, despite the Senate’s confirmation of his

appointment. Citing his wife’s poor health and

his own precarious finances, Breckinridge returned to Kentucky. Land speculation in the

West helped him accumulate a considerable

amount of money during his absence from

politics.7

The Youngest Vice President

As the Democratic convention approached in

1856, the three leading contenders—President

Pierce, Senator Douglas, and former Minister to

Great Britain James Buchanan—all courted

Breckinridge. He attended the convention as a

delegate, voting first for Pierce and then switching to Douglas. When Douglas withdrew as a

gesture toward party unity, the nomination went

to Buchanan. The Kentucky delegation nominated former House Speaker Linn Boyd for vice

president. Then a Louisiana delegate nominated

Breckinridge. Gaining the floor, Breckinridge declined to run against his delegation’s nominee,

but his speech deeply impressed the convention.

One Arkansas delegate admired ‘‘his manner, his

severely simple style of delivery with scarcely an

ornament [or] gesture and deriving its force and

eloquence solely from the remarkably choice

ready flow of words, the rich voice and intonation.’’ The delegate noted that ‘‘every member

seemed riveted to his seat and each face seemed

by magnetic influence to be directed to him.’’

When Boyd ran poorly on the first ballot, the

convention switched to Breckinridge and nominated him on the second ballot. Although Tennessee’s Governor Andrew Johnson grumbled

that Breckinridge’s lack of national reputation

would hurt the ticket, Buchanan’s managers

were pleased with the choice. They thought

Breckinridge would appease Douglas, since the

two men had been closely identified through

their work on the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Being

present at the convention, Breckinridge was prevailed upon to make a short acceptance speech,

thanking the delegates for the nomination, endorsing Buchanan and the platform, and reaffirming his position as a ‘‘state’s rights man.’’

The nominee was thirty-six years old—just a

year over the constitutional minimum age for

holding the office—and his election would make

him the youngest vice president in American

history.8

Breckinridge spent most of the campaign in

Kentucky, but he gave speeches in Ohio, Indiana,

and Michigan, defending the Kansas-Nebraska

Act. The election was a three-way race among

the Democrats under Buchanan, the Republicans

under John Charles Fre ́mont, and the KnowNothings under former President Millard Fillmore. Denouncing the antislavery policies of the

Republicans and Know-Nothings, Breckinridge

described himself not as proslavery but as a defender of the people’s constitutional right to

make their own territorial laws, a position that

caused some Deep South extremists to accuse

him of harboring abolitionist views. In November, Democrats carried all the slaveholding states
[ 196 ]

JOHN C. BRECKINRIDGE

except Maryland (which went Know-Nothing)

and enough northern states to win the election.

Breckinridge was proud that Kentucky voted for

a Democratic presidential ticket for the first time

since 1828.9

Strained Relations with Buchanan

Buchanan won the nomination and election

primarily because nobody knew where he stood

on the issues, since he had been out of the country for the past three years as minister to England. Although his supporters promoted him as

‘‘the man for the crisis,’’ Buchanan was in fact

the worst man for the crisis. Narrow, secretive,

petty, vindictive, and blind to corruption within

his administration, he proved unable to bind together either the factions of his party or the regions of his nation. A poor winner, Buchanan

distrusted his rivals for the nomination and refused to invite Stephen Douglas to join his cabinet or to take seriously Douglas’ patronage requests. Similarly snubbed, Breckinridge quickly

discovered that he held less influence with Buchanan as vice president than he had as a member of the House with Pierce.10

Viewing Breckinridge as part of the PierceDouglas faction, Buchanan almost never consulted him, and rarely invited him to the White

House for either political or social gatherings.

Early in the new administration, when the vice

president asked for a private interview with the

president, he was told instead to call at the White

House some evening and ask to see Buchanan’s

niece and hostess, Harriet Lane. Taking this as

a rebuff, the proud Kentuckian left town without

calling on either Miss Lane or the president. His

friends reported his resentment to Buchanan,

and in short order three of the president’s confidants wrote to tell Breckinridge that it had been

a mistake. A request to see Miss Lane was really

a password to admit a caller to see her uncle.

How Breckinridge could have known this, they

did not explain. In fact, the vice president had

no private meetings with the president for over

three years.11

The new vice president bought property in the

District of Columbia and planned to construct,

along with his good friends Senator Douglas and

Senator Henry Rice of Minnesota, three large, expensive, connected houses at New Jersey Avenue and I Street that would become known as

‘‘Minnesota Row.’’ Before the construction was

completed, however, the friendship had become

deeply strained when Douglas fell out with

President Buchanan over slavery in Kansas. A

proslavery minority there had sent to Washington a new territorial constitution—known as the

Lecompton Constitution. Buchanan threw his

weight behind the Lecompton Constitution as a

device for admitting Kansas as a state and defusing the explosive issue of slavery in the territory.

But Douglas objected that the Lecompton Constitution made a mockery out of popular sovereignty and warned that he would fight it as a

fraud. Recalling the way Andrew Jackson had

dealt with his opponents, Buchanan said, ‘‘Mr.

Douglas, I desire you to remember that no Democrat ever yet differed from an Administration

of his choice without being crushed.’’ To which

Douglas replied, ‘‘Mr. President, I wish you to

remember that General Jackson is dead.’’ Between these two poles, the vice president vainly

sought to steer a neutral course. He sided with

Buchanan on the Lecompton Constitution but

endorsed Douglas for reelection to the Senate.12

An Impartial Presiding Officer

As vice president in such a turbulent era,

Breckinridge won respect for presiding gracefully and impartially over the Senate. On January

4, 1859, when the Senate met for the last time in

its old chamber, he used the occasion to deliver

an eloquent appeal for national unity. During its

half century in the chamber, the Senate had

grown from thirty-two to sixty-four members.

The expansion of the nation forced them to move

to a new, more spacious chamber. During those

years, he observed, the Constitution had ‘‘survived peace and war, prosperity and adversity’’

to protect ‘‘the larger personal freedom compatible with public order.’’ He recalled the legislative labors of Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and

John C. Calhoun, whose performance in that

chamber challenged their successors ‘‘to give the

Union a destiny not unworthy of the past.’’ He

trusted that in the future ‘‘another Senate, in another age, shall bear to a new and larger Chamber, this Constitution vigorous and inviolate, and
[ 197 ]

JOHN C. BRECKINRIDGE

that the last generation of posterity shall witness

the deliberations of the Representatives of American States, still united, prosperous, and free.’’

The vice president then led a procession to the

new chamber. Walking two-by-two behind him

were the political and military leaders of what

would soon become the Union and the

Confederacy.13

Breckinridge counseled against secession. A famous incident, recounted in many memoirs of

the era, took place at a dinner party that the vice

president attended. South Carolina Representative Lawrence Keitt repeatedly denigrated Kentucky’s compromising tendencies. Breckinridge

responded by recalling a trip he had made

through South Carolina, where he met a militia

officer in full military regalia. ‘‘I tell you, sah, we

can not stand it any longer; we intend to fight,’’

said the officer. ‘‘And from what are you suffering?’’ asked Breckinridge. ‘‘Why, sah, we are suffering from the oppression of the Federal Government. We have suffered under it for thirty

years, and will stand it no more.’’ Turning to

Keitt, Breckinridge advised him ‘‘to invite some

of his constituents, before undertaking the war,

upon a tour through the North, if only for the

purpose of teaching them what an almighty big

country they will have to whip before they get

through!’’ 14

A Four-Way Race for President

Early in 1859 a New York Times correspondent

in Washington wrote that ‘‘Vice President Breckinridge stands deservedly high in public estimation, and has the character of a man slow to

form resolves, but unceasing and inexorable in

their fulfillment.’’ At a time when the Buchanan

administration was falling ‘‘in prestige and political consequence, the star of the Vice President

rises higher above the clouds.’’ Later that year,

Linn Boyd died while campaigning for the Senate, and Kentucky Democrats nominated Breckinridge for the seat, which would become vacant

at the time Breckinridge’s term as vice president

ended. Breckinridge may also have been harboring even greater ambitions. Although he remained silent about the upcoming presidential

campaign, many Democrats considered him a

strong contender. In 1860, the Democratic convention met in Charleston, South Carolina. Stephen Douglas was the frontrunner, but when his

supporters defeated efforts to write into the platform a plank protecting the right of slavery anywhere in the territories, the southern delegates

walked out. They held their own convention in

Baltimore and nominated Breckinridge as their

presidential candidate.15

For national balance, the breakaway Democrats selected Senator Joseph Lane, a Democrat

from Oregon, for vice president. Lane had spent

his youth in Kentucky and Indiana and served

in the Mexican War. President James K. Polk had

appointed him territorial governor of Oregon, an

office he held from 1849 to 1850 before becoming

Oregon’s territorial delegate to Congress in 1851.

When Oregon entered the Union in 1859, he was

chosen one of its first senators. Lane’s embrace

of the secessionist spirit attracted him to the

Southern Democrats. Had the four-way election

of 1860 not been decided by the electoral college

but been thrown into Congress, the Democratic

majority in the outgoing Senate might well have

elected him vice president. Instead, the race

ended Lane’s political career entirely, and Oregon became a Republican state.16

Breckinridge faced a campaign against three

old friends: Stephen Douglas, the Democratic

candidate; Abraham Lincoln, the Republican;

and John Bell of Tennessee, the Constitutional

Union party candidate. He was not optimistic

about his chances. Privately, he told Mrs. Jefferson Davis, ‘‘I trust that I have the courage to lead

a forlorn hope.’’ At a dinner just before the nomination, Breckinridge talked of not accepting it,

but Jefferson Davis persuaded him to run. Worried that a split in the anti-Republican vote

would ensure Lincoln’s victory, Davis proposed

a scheme by which Breckinridge, Douglas, and

Bell would agree to withdraw their candidacies

in favor of a compromise candidate. Breckinridge and Bell agreed, but Douglas refused, arguing that northern Democrats would take Lincoln before they voted for any candidate that the

southern firebrands had endorsed. The Illinois

senator pointed out that, while not all of Breckinridge’s followers were secessionists, every secessionist was supporting him. But Breckinridge

also counted on the support of the last three
[ 198 ]

JOHN C. BRECKINRIDGE

Democratic presidential candidates, Lewis Cass,

Franklin Pierce, and James Buchanan, as well as

most of the northern Democratic senators and

representatives. Despite these endorsements and

the financial levies that the Buchanan administration made on all Democratic officeholders for

him, Breckinridge failed to carry any northern

states. In the four-way race, he placed third in

the popular vote and second in electoral votes.

Most disappointingly, he lost Kentucky to Bell.17

A Personal Secession

Following the election, Breckinridge returned

to Washington to preside over the Senate, hoping

to persuade southerners to abandon secession.

But in December, South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida left the Union. In January,

Mississippi Senator Jefferson Davis and other

southerners bid a formal farewell to the Senate.

In February, Vice President Breckinridge led a

procession of senators to the House chamber to

count the electoral votes, and to announce the

election of Abraham Lincoln of Illinois. On

March 4, Breckinridge administered the oath of

office to his successor, Hannibal Hamlin, who in

turn swore him into the Senate. When President

Lincoln called Congress into special session on

July 4, 1861, to raise the arms and men necessary

to fight the Civil War, Breckinridge returned to

Washington as the leader of what was left of the

Senate Democrats. Many in Washington doubted

that he planned to offer much support to the

Union or the war effort. Breckinridge seemed out

of place in the wartime capital, after so many of

his southern friends had left. On several occasions, however, he visited his cousin Mary Todd

Lincoln at the White House.18

During the special session, which lasted until

August 6, 1861, Breckinridge remained firm in

his belief that the Constitution strictly limited the

powers of the federal government, regardless of

secession and war. Although he wanted the

Union restored, he preferred a peaceful separation rather than ‘‘endless, aimless, devastating

war, at the end of which I see the grave of public

liberty and of personal freedom.’’ The most dramatic moment of the session occurred on August

1, when Senator Breckinridge took the floor to

oppose the Lincoln administration’s expansion

of martial law. As he spoke, Oregon Republican

Senator Edward D. Baker entered the chamber,

dressed in the blue coat of a Union army colonel.

Baker had raised and was training a militia unit

known as the California Regiment. When Breckinridge finished, Baker challenged him: ‘‘These

speeches of his, sown broadcast over the land,

what meaning have they? Are they not intended

for disorganization in our very midst?’’ Baker

demanded. ‘‘Sir, are they not words of brilliant,

polished treason, even in the very Capitol?’’

Within months of this exchange, Senator Baker

was killed while leading his militia at the Battle

of Ball’s Bluff along the Potomac River, and Senator Breckinridge was wearing the gray uniform

of a Confederate officer.19

After the special session, Breckinridge returned to Kentucky to try to keep his state neutral. He spoke at a number of peace rallies, proclaiming that, if Kentucky took up arms against

the Confederacy, then someone else must represent the state in the Senate. Despite his efforts,

pro-Union forces won the state legislative elections. When another large peace rally was scheduled for September 21, the legislature sent a regiment to break up the meeting and arrest Breckinridge. Forewarned, he packed his bag and fled

to Virginia. He could no longer find any neutral

ground to stand upon, no way to endorse both

the Union and the southern way of life. Forced

to choose sides, Breckinridge joined his friends

in the Confederacy. In Richmond he volunteered

for military service, exchanging, as he said, his

‘‘term of six years in the Senate of the United

States for the musket of a soldier.’’ On December

4, 1861, the Senate by a 36 to 0 vote expelled the

Kentucky senator, declaring that Breckinridge,

‘‘the traitor,’’ had ‘‘joined the enemies of his

country.’’ 20

General Breckinridge

Commissioned a brigadier general, and later a

major general, Breckinridge went west to fight

at Shiloh, Stone’s River, Chickamauga, and Chattanooga. He returned east to the battle of Cold

Harbor, and in July 1864 he and General Jubal

T. Early led a dramatic raid on Washington, D.C.

Breckinridge’s troops advanced as far as Silver

Spring, Maryland, where they sacked Francis
[ 199 ]

JOHN C. BRECKINRIDGE

Blair’s home but did not destroy it, supposedly

at the urging of Breckinridge, who had often

been a guest there. Breckinridge got so close to

Washington that he could see the newly completed Capitol dome, and General Early joked

that he would allow him to lead the advance into

the city so that he could sit in the vice-presidential chair again. But federal troops halted the

Confederates, who retreated back to the Shenandoah Valley. There, at Winchester, Virginia,

they confronted Union troops commanded by

Philip H. Sheridan. The Confederate general

John B. Gordon later recalled that Breckinridge

was ‘‘desperately reckless’’ during that campaign, and ‘‘literally seemed to court death.’’

When Gordon urged him to be careful, Breckinridge replied, ‘‘Well, general, there is little left for

me if our cause is to fail.’’ As they rode from their

defeat on the battlefield, Jubal T. Early turned to

ask, ‘‘General Breckinridge, what do you think

of the ‘rights of the South in the territories’

now?’’ He received no answer.21

During the closing months of the war in 1865,

Jefferson Davis made Breckinridge his secretary

of war. He performed well in this final government position, firing the Confederacy’s bumbling commissary general and trying to bring

order out of the chaos, but these efforts came too

late. When General Robert E. Lee surrendered

his army, President Davis was determined to

keep on fighting, but Breckinridge opposed continuing the war as a guerrilla campaign. ‘‘This

has been a magnificent epic,’’ he said; ‘‘in God’s

name let it not terminate in farce.’’ Fleeing Richmond, Breckinridge commanded the troops that

accompanied Davis and his cabinet. Davis was

captured, but Breckinridge evaded arrest and

imprisonment by fleeing through Florida to

Cuba. From there he sailed for England. Subsequently, the Breckinridge family settled in Toronto, Canada. His daughter Mary later remarked that, while exile was a quiet relief for her

mother, it was hard on her father, ‘‘separated

from the activities of life, and unable to do anything towards making a support for his family.’’

In Canada he met other Confederate exiles, including the freed Jefferson Davis. Once, Breckinridge and Davis rode to Niagara. Across the river

they could see the red stripes of the American

flag, which Breckinridge viewed nostalgically

but the more embittered Davis described as ‘‘the

gridiron we have been fried on.’’ 22

On Christmas Day, 1868, departing President

Andrew Johnson issued a blanket pardon for all

Confederates. John C. Breckinridge returned to

the United States in February 1869. Stopping in

many cities to visit old friends, he reached Lexington, Kentucky, a month later. He had not been

back in Kentucky since he fled eight years before.

In welcome, a band played ‘‘Home Sweet

Home,’’ ‘‘Dixie,’’ and ‘‘Hail to the Chief.’’ Breckinridge declared himself through with politics: ‘‘I

no more feel the political excitements that

marked the scenes of my former years than if I

were an extinct volcano.’’ Other than publicly

denouncing the lawless violence of the Ku Klux

Klan, he devoted himself entirely to private matters. The former vice president practiced law and

became active in building railroads. Although he

was only fifty-four, his health declined severely

and he died on May 17, 1875. Despite his weakened condition at the end, Breckinridge surprised his doctor with his clear and strong voice.

‘‘Why, Doctor,’’ the famous stump speaker

smiled from his deathbed, ‘‘I can throw my voice

a mile.’’ 23
[ 200 ]

NOTES 1 Frank H. Heck, Proud Kentuckian: John C. Breckinridge,

1821–1875 (Lexington, KY, 1976), pp. 1–11; James C. Klotter,

The Breckinridges of Kentucky, 1760–1981 (Lexington, KY,

1986), pp. 95–98. 2 Heck, pp. 11–18; Klotter, p. 101.

3 Heck, pp. 22, 30–31; William C. Davis, Breckinridge:

Statesman, Soldier, Symbol (Baton Rouge, LA, 1974), p. 45. 4 John W. Forney, Anecdotes of Public Men (New York,

1873), 2:41–42; Heck, pp. 30–31, 163–64; Klotter, p. 113. 5 Heck, pp. 41–43.

6 Forney, 2:301; Heck, pp. 44–46; Benjamin Perley Poore,

Perley’s Reminiscences of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis

(Philadelphia, 1886), 1:439–42; L.A. Gobright, Recollections of

Men and Things at Washington During The Third of a Century

(Philadelphia, 1869), p. 138. 7 Heck, pp. 47, 53–54; Mark W. Summers, The Plundering

Generation: Corruption and the Crisis of the Union, 1849–1861

(New York, 1987), p. 203. 8Davis, Breckinridge, p. 145; Heck, pp. 59–60; Klotter, p.

111. 9 Klotter, pp. 111, 113; Heck, pp. 55–66.

10 Frederick Moore Binder, James Buchanan and the American Empire (Cranbury, NJ, 1994), pp. 219–22. 11 Ibid., p. 223; Heck, pp. 67–68; Davis, Breckinridge, p. 172. 12 Heck, pp. 69–74; Davis, Breckinridge, pp. 171–72; Elbert

B. Smith, The Presidency of James Buchanan (Lawrence, KS,

1975), p. 41; Forney, 1:41–42; Robert W. Johannsen, Stephen

A. Douglas (New York, 1973), p. 652. 13U.S., Congress, Senate, The Old Senate Chamber: Proceedings in the Senate of the United States upon Vacating their old

Chamber on January 4, 1859, S. Doc. 67, 74th Cong., 1st sess.,

pp. 4–15; Heck, pp. 75–76; Davis, Breckinridge, p. 194.

14 Forney, 1:283–84; Poore, 2:47; Davis, Breckinridge, p.

175. 15Davis, Breckinridge, p. 197; Smith, p. 113. 16David M. Potter, The Impending Crisis, 1848–1861 (New

York, 1976), p. 438; see also Margaret Jean Kelly, The Career

of Joseph Lane (Washington, 1942). 17William C. Davis, Jefferson Davis: The Man and His Hour

(New York, 1991), pp. 282–83; Heck, p. 85; Smith, pp. 124–

26; Summers, p. 274; Lowell H. Harrison, ‘‘John C. Breckinridge: Nationalist, Confederate, Kentuckian,’’ The Filson

Club History Quarterly 47 (April 1973): 128. 18Margaret Leech, Reveille in Washington, 1860–1865 (New

York, 1941), pp. 32, 87. As a sign of the public confusion

over Breckinridge’s loyalties, Mathew Brady’s studio produced a photograph of Breckinridge retouched to make him

appear to be wearing a Union army uniform. See Susan

Kismaric, American Politicians: Photographs from 1843 to 1993

(New York, 1994), p. 66. 19 Heck, pp. 101–2; U.S., Congress, Senate, The Senate,

1789–1989: Addresses on the History of the United States Senate,

by Robert C. Byrd, S. Doc. 100–20, 100th Cong., 1st sess.,

vol. 1, 1989, p. 250. 20 Heck, pp. 101–2, 106; U.S., Congress, Senate, United

States Senate Election, Expulsion, and Censure Cases, 1793–

1990, S. Doc. 103–33, 103d Cong., 1st sess., 1995, p. 103. 21 Klotter, p. 127; Leech, p. 345; Heck, pp. 111, 127–28;

Harrison, p. 136. 22 Heck, pp. 133–34; Davis, Jefferson Davis, pp. 600–601,

616–33, 658; Lucille Stilwell Williams, ‘‘John Cabell Breckinridge,’’ Register of the Kentucky State Historical Society 33 (January 1935): 29. 23 Heck, pp. 149, 157; Davis, Breckinridge, pp. 593, 623.
[ 201 ]

Chapter 15

HANNIBAL HAMLIN

1861–1865
HANNIBAL HAMLIN
[ 203 ]

Chapter 15

HANNIBAL HAMLIN

15th Vice President: 1861–1865

What can I do? The slow and unsatisfactory movements of the Government do not meet with my

approbation, and that is known, and of course I am not consulted at all, nor do I think there is much

disposition in any quarter to regard any counsel I may give much if at all.

—HANNIBAL HAMLIN, 1862

The emotional issue of slavery demolished the

American political system during the 1850s: the

Whig party disintegrated; the Democrats divided; and the Free Soil and American (or KnowNothing) parties flourished briefly and died.

Emerging from the wreckage of the old system,

the Republican party, which ran its first presidential campaign in 1856, drew converts from all

of these parties. Within the new party stood men

who had spent years fighting each other under

different political banners. In constructing a

presidential ticket in 1860, therefore, Republicans

needed candidates who would reflect their complex construction and reinforce their new unity.

They picked a presidential candidate, Abraham

Lincoln, who was not only a westerner but a

Whig who claimed Henry Clay as his political

role model. To balance Lincoln, Republicans

chose as their vice-presidential candidate Hannibal Hamlin, an easterner who had spent the bulk

of his political career as a Democrat and who had

battled Henry Clay when they served together

in the United States Senate. Despite their differences, Lincoln and Hamlin shared an opposition to the expansion of slavery into the western

territories, without being abolitionists.1

Youth

Hannibal Hamlin owed his classical name to

his grandfather Eleazer Hamlin, a man well read

in history, who named his first son after the

Roman general Scipio Africanus (everyone called

the boy Africa) and called his twin sons Cyrus,

after the great Persian conqueror, and Hannibal,

after the Carthaginian general who crossed the

Alps on elephants in his campaigns against

Rome. Cyrus became a Harvard-trained medical

doctor and moved to the village of Paris Hill,

Maine, where on August 27, 1809, was born his

son, whom he named after his brother Hannibal.

The boy grew up in a prosperous family, living

in an imposing, three-story white house. A natural leader among his peers, physically fit and athletic, Hannibal was also an avid reader. He was

sent to local public schools and then to Hebron

Academy.

Hannibal’s ambition to become a lawyer was

nearly sidetracked, first when his elder brother

took ill, forcing him to leave school to run the

family farm, and then when his father died, requiring him, under the terms of his father’s will,

to stay home and take care of his mother until

he turned twenty-one. When he came of age,

however, Hannibal left home to read law at the

offices of Fessenden and Deblois, under Samuel

C. Fessenden, an outspoken abolitionist and father of Hamlin’s future political rival, William

Pitt Fessenden. The association made Hamlin an

antislavery man and launched him into his new

profession. He set up his own law practice and

became the town attorney in Hampden, Maine.2
[ 204 ]

HANNIBAL HAMLIN

Democratic Politics in Maine and Washington

Politically, from the 1830s to the 1850s, Maine

was an entrenched Democratic state, and the politically ambitious Hamlin joined the Democratic

party. In 1835 he was elected to the state house

of representatives. Described as ‘‘tall, and gracious in figure, with black, piercing eyes, a skin

almost olive-colored, hair smooth, thick and

jetty, a manner always courteous and affable,’’

he fit easily into legislative politics, became a

popular member of the house, and was soon

elected its speaker. His most notable legislative

achievement was to lead the movement to abolish capital punishment in Maine. In 1840 he lost

a race for the U.S. House of Representatives, but

in 1843 (after the next election was delayed until

the districts could be reapportioned) he won a

seat in Congress. There he denounced Henry

Clay’s economic programs and voted very much

as a Jacksonian Democrat. He became chairman

of the Committee on Elections and won a coveted seat on the House Rules Committee. Hamlin

enjoyed considerable luck in his career, particularly in February 1844, when he missed sailing

on the U.S. Navy frigate Princeton, which was

going to demonstrate its new guns. One of the

guns exploded, killing Secretary of State Abel

Upshur and several others.3

The extension of slavery into the territories

was the most perplexing issue to face Congress

during Hamlin’s long career in the House and

Senate. His state of Maine had entered the Union

as a result of the Missouri Compromise, which

admitted one free state for every slave state. But

in 1846, when the United States entered a war

with Mexico, the prospects of vast new conquered territories south of the Missouri Compromise line raised the question of the parameters of slavery. Hamlin joined with other radical

antislavery men in the House to devise an

amendment that would prohibit the introduction

of slavery into any territory taken from Mexico

as a result of the war. Pennsylvania Representative David Wilmot was selected to introduce the

measure, which became known as the Wilmot

Proviso. Hamlin introduced his own version of

the proviso on an army appropriations bill, much

to the anger of Democratic President James K.

Polk. ‘‘Mr. Hamlin professes to be a democrat,’’

the president wrote in his diary, ‘‘but has given

indications during the present session that he is

dissatisfied, and is pursuing a mischievous

course . . . on the slavery question.’’ The president attributed Hamlin’s stand to a patronage

quarrel with the administration, but Hamlin

stood squarely on principle. ‘‘I have no doubt

that the whole North will come to the position

I have taken,’’ he said. ‘‘Some damned rascals

who may be desirous of disposing of myself, will

mutter & growl about abolitionism but I do not

care the snap of my fingers for them all.’’ 4

The Free Soil Challenge

In the House, Hamlin encountered many of the

men with whom he would serve and against

whom he would contend for the rest of his long

career. Among others, he met Representatives

Abraham Lincoln of Illinois, Andrew Johnson of

Tennessee, and Jefferson Davis of Mississippi.

He and Davis sparred frequently in the House

and Senate over slavery. Tempers between the

two men rose to such a level that for the only

time in his life Hamlin thought it prudent to

carry a pistol for self-protection. The unexpected

death of Senator John Fairfield from malpractice

by an incompetent physician opened a Senate

seat from Maine, which Hamlin was elected to

fill in 1848. That same year, antislavery Whigs

and Democrats united to form a Free Soil party

that nominated Martin Van Buren for president.

Although Hamlin approved of their antislavery

platform and had supported Van Buren in the

past, he could not bring himself to abandon his

party—to which he owed his Senate seat. As a

Democratic senator, Hamlin strongly opposed

Henry Clay’s proposed Compromise of 1850. If

the bill spread slavery into the West, he declared,

‘‘it will not be with my vote.’’ 5

As a temperance man, Senator Hamlin was

distressed by the drinking habits of his colleagues. He observed that New York Senator

Silas Wright was never sober and even sipped

whiskey while he addressed the Senate. Hamlin

estimated that as many as a third of the senators

were drunk by the end of a daily session and that

after a long executive session (held behind closed

doors) two-thirds of the members left inebriated.
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HANNIBAL HAMLIN

Nor did he approve of the ruffianly tendencies

and tempers of some senators. After a dispute

between Senator Thomas Hart Benton and

Henry S. Foote, in which Foote pulled a pistol

on the Senate floor, Hamlin wrote in disgust to

a friend, ‘‘Don’t you think the American Senate

is a dignified body!!!!!!!!’’ 6

Woolheads Versus Wildcats

The slavery issue split the Maine Democratic

party into two factions. Hamlin’s antislavery faction won the name ‘‘Woolheads’’ from its opponents. The Woolheads in turn labeled their adversaries, who opposed the Wilmot Proviso,

‘‘Wildcats.’’ In addition to the slavery issue, temperance also divided the two factions, with

Hamlin’s ‘‘Woolheads’’ supporting prohibition

laws and the ‘‘Wildcats’’ opposing them. In 1854,

Hamlin denounced Senator Stephen Douglas’ efforts to enact the Kansas-Nebraska bill and repeal the Missouri Compromise. ‘‘Shall we repeal

freedom and make slavery?’’ he asked. ‘‘It comes

to that.’’ When the bill passed the Senate by a

vote of 37 to 14, Hamlin was among only four

Democrats to vote against it.7

As political turmoil reigned, Hamlin’s attention was distracted by the illness of his wife,

Sarah Jane Hamlin. Both Hannibal and Sarah

Hamlin loved Washington’s social life of dances,

receptions, card playing, and theater-going. The

senator, she wrote home to their son, ‘‘has had

about ten invitations a week to dine, and he enjoys them very much, you know how much he

enjoys a good dinner.’’ But Sarah’s health declined so severely in 1855 that for a while he considered resigning his Senate seat. Sarah Jane

Hamlin died from tuberculosis in April 1856.

That September, Hamlin married his wife’s

younger half-sister, Ellen, who was the same age

as one of his sons. Characterized as plain but

witty and warm-hearted, she bore two more of

his children and offered him companionship

through the rest of his long life.8

Becoming a Republican

To some degree, Sarah’s illness provided political cover for Hannibal Hamlin at a time when

he was under intense pressure to abandon the

Democrats in favor of the newly formed Republican party. Republican leaders were anxious for

the popular Hamlin to join their party to balance

the radicals who threatened to gain control. ‘‘We

have a great many men in our party who go off

half cocked,’’ wrote the young editor and politico, James G. Blaine. ‘‘They must be made to ride

in the rear of the car instead of in the engine or

else we are in constant danger of being thrown

from the track.’’ In 1856, Republicans wanted

Hamlin to head their ticket as the Republican

candidate for governor of Maine. Hamlin clung

to his old party as long as he could, and also had

no desire to leave the Senate. However, Republicans warned him that refusal to run for governor would end any chance of his being returned to the Senate. Hamlin agreed to run for

governor, but only if the legislature would send

him back to the Senate as soon as possible. An

effective campaigner, Hamlin canvassed the

state. Republicans won a smashing victory over

both Whigs and Democrats, sweeping all six congressional districts and carrying the legislature.

Since Maine’s elections were held in September

(because of the state’s harsh winter weather), the

early victory gave a psychological boost to the

national Republican campaign that year. Hamlin

won widespread credit for helping Republicans

broaden their electoral base.9

Inaugurated governor on January 8, 1857,

Hamlin resigned on February 25 to begin his

third term as senator. In Washington he provided the Republicans with a strong voice

against the ‘‘doughface’’ policies of James

Buchanan’s administration. (It was a decidedly

Maine ‘‘Down East’’ voice, with Hamlin pronouncing ‘‘now’’ as ‘‘ne-a-ow,’’ for instance.)

While boarding at the St. Charles Hotel in Washington, Hamlin became reacquainted and favorably impressed with Andrew Johnson of Tennessee, with whom he had served in the House

and who had just been elected to the Senate. As

the 1860 elections approached, some Maine Republicans viewed Hamlin as a possible favoriteson candidate, in case the frontrunner, New York

Senator William Seward, should falter. But James

G. Blaine worked the Maine delegation to the Republican National Convention in favor of Abraham Lincoln’s nomination. On the train ride to

Chicago, Blaine convinced Governor Lot Morrill
[ 206 ]

HANNIBAL HAMLIN

and other delegates to throw their support to

Lincoln. When Lincoln upset Seward, the vicepresidential nomination was offered first to the

Seward camp. The disappointed Seward men

put no one forward for the second spot. There

was strong support among the delegates for

Cassius M. Clay, the Kentucky abolitionist, but

Republican party leaders thought him too radical. By contrast, Hamlin seemed a more ‘‘natural’’ choice, more moderate, but with a spotless

record against slavery, and a friend of Seward’s

in the Senate. Hamlin won the nomination on the

second ballot.10

The nomination came as a shock to Hannibal

Hamlin. While playing cards in his Washington

hotel room, Hamlin heard a racket in the corridor. The door burst open and the room filled

with excited men, led by Indiana Congressman

Schuyler Colfax, who read a telegram from the

convention and addressed him as ‘‘Mr. VicePresident.’’ Stunned, Hamlin said he did not

want the office, but Ohio Senator Ben Wade

warned him that to decline would only give ammunition to the Democrats, suggesting that he

was afraid to run on a losing ticket. Hamlin

agreed, whispering to Wade and Colfax: ‘‘You

people have spoiled a good lone hand I held.’’

Afterwards, writing to his wife, Hamlin explained: ‘‘I neither expected or desired it. But it

has been made and as a faithful man to the cause,

it leaves me no alternative but to accept it.’’ At

least, he conceded, the duties of the office would

‘‘not be hard or unpleasant.’’ Whether in cards

or in politics, Hamlin had a lucky streak. As

Blaine observed: ‘‘He always turns up on the

winning side.’’ 11

Abra/Hamlin/coln

During the campaign, both Lincoln and Hamlin considered it prudent to make no speeches.

However, Hamlin assured Lincoln, ‘‘While I

have been silent, I have never been so busy thro’

the Press and by personal effort endeavoring to

strengthen the weak points all along the line.’’

After Maine Republicans swept the September

elections, Hamlin traveled to Boston in October

to march in a torchlight parade, accompanied by

Maine lumberjacks, Penobscot Indians, and

party stalwarts. One of the favorite signs combined the ticket into a single name: ‘‘Abra/Hamlin/coln.’’ On a less friendly note, southerners

denounced Lincoln and Hamlin as a radical abolitionists. Going even further, Robert Barnwell

Rhett, editor of the Charleston [S.C.] Mercury,

wrote that ‘‘Hamlin is what we call a mulatto.

He has black blood in him.’’ An amused New

Yorker, George Templeton Strong, observed that

Hamlin seemed ‘‘a vigorous specimen of the

pure Yankee type. His complexion is so swarthy

that I cannot wonder at the demented South for

believing him a mulatto.’’ 12

Once the election had been won, Lincoln summoned Hamlin to meet him in Chicago on November 22. After some casual initial conversation—Hamlin noted that Lincoln had started to

grow a beard, and both men reminisced about

hearing each other’s speeches during their term

together in the House of Representatives—they

got down to work. Lincoln wanted to discuss the

composition of his cabinet and knew that Hamlin, as a senator, had worked with and taken the

measure of many of the men he was considering

for appointment. Lincoln was especially concerned about attracting his former rival, William

Seward, into the cabinet as secretary of state.

When the Senate convened in December, Senator

Hamlin carried notes from Lincoln to Seward

and pressed his colleague to accept the offer,

which he did. Hamlin also successfully promoted Gideon Welles of Connecticut as a New

England candidate for the cabinet as secretary of

the navy. These early dealings hinted that Hamlin might play a more active role in the administration than had previous vice presidents. It soon

turned out, however, that Hamlin’s usefulness to

Lincoln was tied mostly to his role as a senior

senator and subsided almost as soon as he vacated his Senate seat for the vice-presidency.13

The Lincoln-Hamlin victory triggered the secession of the southern states. When asked by a

friend from Maine what the future would hold,

the new vice president replied, ‘‘there’s going to

be a war, and a terrible one, just as surely as the

sun will rise to-morrow.’’ Congress was out of

session and Hamlin was in Maine when word

came that Confederates had fired on Fort Sumter. The vice president devoted himself to raising

a Maine regiment to fight for the Union. On his
[ 207 ]

HANNIBAL HAMLIN

way back to Washington, Hamlin stopped in

New York City, where he complied with President Lincoln’s request to keep him advised daily

on what troops were leaving New York to protect the capital.14

‘‘A Contingent Somebody’’

When the Senate convened on the Fourth of

July in 1861 to take the legislative actions necessary for raising and funding an army for the

Union, Vice President Hamlin discovered that he

had far less power and patronage as vice president than he had as a senator. The loss of patronage particularly galled Hamlin, who was ‘‘noted

for his fidelity to political friends.’’ He also felt

unhappy over being relegated to serving as an

inactive observer of events. Hamlin considered

himself the most unimportant man in Washington, ignored equally by the administration and

the senators. He called his job ‘‘a fifth wheel on

a coach’’ and identified the vice president as ‘‘a

contingent somebody.’’ When Jessie Benton

Fre ́mont asked Hamlin to intervene in favor of

a new military command for her husband, the

vice president replied: ‘‘What can I do? The slow

and unsatisfactory movements of the Government do not meet with my approbation, and that

is known, and of course I am not consulted at

all, nor do I think there is much disposition in

any quarter to regard any counsel I may give

much if at all.’’ 15

Reflecting later on his office, Hamlin told an

interviewer:

There is a popular impression that the Vice

President is in reality the second officer of the

government not only in rank but in power and

influence. This is a mistake. In the early days of

the republic he was in some sort an heir apparent

to the Presidency. But that is changed. He presides over the Senate—he has a casting vote in

case of a tie—and he appoints his own private

secretary. But this gives him no power to wield

and no influence to exert. Every member who has

a constituency, and every Senator who represents

a state, counts for more in his own locality, and

with the Executive who must needs, in wielding

the functions of his office, gather around him,

and retain by his favors, those who can vote in

Congress and operate directly upon public sentiment in their houses.

Hamlin explained that he soon saw that his office

was a ‘‘nullity’’ in Washington. He tried not to

intrude upon the president, but always gave Lincoln his views, and when asked, his advice.16

Moreover, Hamlin found presiding over the

Senate so boring that he was frequently absent.

In contrast to his service as a senator, when he

rarely missed a day of a session, as vice president

he would leave for Maine well before the end of

a session, turning his duties over to the president

pro tempore. Hamlin’s inattentiveness to Senate

proceedings became an embarrassment when the

Delaware Democrat Willard Saulsbury launched

into a savage attack on President Lincoln as ‘‘a

weak and imbecile man.’’ Republican senators

objected that the remarks were not in order, but

Vice President Hamlin had to admit that ‘‘[t]he

Chair was not listening to what the Senator from

Delaware was saying, and did not hear the

words.’’ To this Saulsbury replied, ‘‘That is the

fault of the Chair, and not of the Senator who

was addressing the Chair.’’ Hamlin finally ordered Saulsbury to be seated for questioning the

motives of the senators who had raised the objection, and when Saulsbury refused to comply, the

vice president ordered the sergeant at arms to

place the senator in custody. After a brief conversation, Saulsbury accompanied the assistant

sergeant at arms out of the chamber.16

Hamlin attributed Saulsbury’s belligerence to

his drinking. ‘‘He was very drunk—beastly so on

the night of the transaction,’’ the vice president

wrote. ‘‘It was a most disgraceful scene.’’ As a

temperance man, Hamlin determined to banish

liquor from the Senate chamber and committee

rooms. The combination of his rule outlawing

the sale of liquor in the Senate restaurant and the

departure of the hard-drinking southern senators after secession sobered the institution. One

visitor to the Capitol noted, ‘‘A few Senators

were seen walking with unsteady gait from the

cloak room to their desks, but thanks to the firmness of Hannibal Hamlin, the Senate became a

pleasant place to the sober people who had to

live there.’’ 17

Throughout the war, Hamlin identified more

with the frustrated congressional radicals than

with the more cautious President Lincoln. Those
[ 208 ]

HANNIBAL HAMLIN

around Lincoln concluded that the vice president

was not in close sympathy with the president but

‘‘was known as one who passively rather than

actively strengthened a powerful cabal of Republican leaders in their aggressive hostility to Lincoln and his general policy.’’ Lincoln did not appear to hold this against Hamlin. As one newspaper correspondent of the era observed: ‘‘Lincoln measured the men about him at their value.

He knew their worth, their fidelity, and in no

sense distrusted them.’’ He did not require absolute loyalty in order to use a person. Hamlin, for

instance, was among those who pressed Lincoln

hard to issue an emancipation proclamation.

Fearing at first that such a measure would divide

the North, Lincoln resisted until he believed he

could use the issue as a military advantage, to

give a nobler purpose to the war. When Lincoln

first drafted a proclamation, he invited Hamlin

to dinner and let him be the first to see the document, asking for his suggestions. Hamlin later

described Lincoln as ‘‘much moved at the step

he was taking.’’ 18

Dumped from the Ticket

Despite Hamlin’s grumbling about the powerlessness of the vice-presidency, he was willing to

stand for reelection in 1864. Hamlin assumed

that Lincoln supported his nomination, but the

president—an entirely pragmatic politician—

doubted that Hamlin would add much strength

to the ticket in what was sure to be a difficult

reelection campaign, with the survival of the nation at stake. Maine would vote Republican

whether or not Hamlin was on the ticket, and he

carried little weight in any other state. Lincoln

sent emissaries to sound out several prominent

War Democrats, among them Tennessee’s war

governor, Andrew Johnson. As the thinking

went, to nominate a southerner like Johnson

would be a way to ‘‘nationalize the Republican

party.’’ At the convention, to the surprise of

Hamlin’s supporters, the Tennessee governor

outpolled the vice president on the first ballot

and went on to win the nomination on the second. ‘‘To be Vice President is clearly not to be

anything more than a reflected greatness,’’ Secretary of the Senate John W. Forney wrote to console Hamlin. ‘‘You know how it is with the

Prince of Wales or the Heir Apparent. He is waiting for somebody to die, and that is all of it.’’

Hamlin maintained a dignified silence but was

vexed by his defeat. Years later he wrote: ‘‘I was

dragged out of the Senate, against my wishes—

tried to do my whole duty, and was then

unceremoniously ‘whistled down the wind.’

While I have never complained to any one, I did

not fail to feel and know how I was treated.’’ 19

During the summer of 1864, the lame-duck

vice president briefly served in the Union army.

When the war began in 1861, Hamlin had enlisted as a private in the Maine Coast Guard. His

unit was called to active duty in 1864 and ordered to report to Fort McClary, at Kittery,

Maine. Although Hamlin could have accepted a

purely honorary place on the roll, he insisted

upon active service. ‘‘I am the Vice-President of

the United States, but I am also a private citizen,

and as an enlisted member of your company, I

am bound to do my duty.’’ He added, ‘‘I aspire

only to be a high private in the rear ranks, and

keep step with the boys in blue.’’ Promoted to

corporal, Hamlin reported on July 7, drilled, and

did guard duty and kitchen patrol along with the

rest of the enlisted men. As vice president, however, he was assigned to officers’ quarters. When

his tour of duty ended in September, he left the

company to campaign for the Republican ticket,

first in Maine, and then down through New England to New York and Pennsylvania, doing what

he could to aid Lincoln’s reelection.20

In the Vice President’s Room in the Capitol on

inauguration day, Hamlin’s successor, Andrew

Johnson, approached him with a request. ‘‘Mr.

Hamlin, I am not well, and need a stimulant,’’

he said. ‘‘Have you any whiskey?’’ Hamlin explained that he had prohibited the sale of liquor

in the Capitol, but when Johnson pressed his request, a messenger was sent to procure a bottle.

Johnson poured a tumbler and downed it

straight, then had two more drinks before going

onto the Senate floor to give an embarrassingly

drunken inaugural address. Recounting the

scene later, Hamlin privately commented that if

Johnson ordinarily drank that way, ‘‘he must be

able to stand a great deal.’’

A few weeks after Hamlin returned to Maine,

on the morning of April 15, 1865, he encountered
[ 209 ]

HANNIBAL HAMLIN

a group of sorrowful men on the street in Bangor,

who informed him that Lincoln had been assassinated. Hamlin boarded a steamer for Washington to attend the president’s funeral. At the

White House, he stood side by side with Andrew

Johnson at Lincoln’s casket, causing those who

saw them to note the irony that Hamlin had

within a matter of weeks missed the presidency.

None could have realized how differently the nation’s history might have developed if Lincoln

had been succeeded by Hamlin, who favored a

Radical Reconstruction of the South, rather than

by Johnson, who opposed it.21

A Post-Vice-Presidential Political Career

After Hamlin’s defeat for renomination as vice

president, Lincoln had considered appointing

him secretary of the treasury but concluded that

‘‘Hamlin has the Senate on the brain and nothing

more or less will cure him.’’ However, Hamlin

was outmaneuvered for the Senate seat by his

Maine Republican rival, William Pitt Fessenden.

Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner instead

recommended that Hamlin be appointed collector of the port of Boston, and President Johnson

made the nomination. In time, Hamlin became

dismayed over Johnson’s policies on Reconstruction and his abandonment of the rights of the

freedmen. As other Republican officeholders resigned in protest, many looked to Hamlin to join

them, but he held onto his collectorship. Finally,

the governor of Maine wrote to Hamlin that his

resignation would ‘‘strike a lofty note’’ and set

a ‘‘high example’’ of sacrifice for principles. Realizing that his political future depended upon

distancing himself from Johnson, Hamlin abandoned the office with a blast at the president.22

In 1868, against his wishes, Hamlin’s name

was put forward as a vice-presidential candidate

on the ticket headed by U.S. Grant, but the nomination went to House Speaker Schuyler Colfax.

At last in 1869 Hamlin was elected to another

term in the Senate. He returned as a respected

elder statesman and served two terms. One journalist who met Senator Hamlin in 1871 described

him as attired in an antique blue swallow-tailed

coat with big brass buttons, the type worn by

antebellum statesmen. Hamlin mistook the journalist for a resident of Maine ‘‘and with the amiable humbug habit of many years wrung my

hand warmly and affectionately inquired for the

folks at the farm.’’ The journalist took no offense,

recognizing that ‘‘this trick of pretending remembrance is a venial sin with politicians and

head waiters, great and small.’’ Still, the incident

gave an indication of how Hamlin had survived

in politics for so long.23

In 1877, Hamlin fainted in the Senate Republican cloakroom, the first signs of his heart disease. He chose not to stand for reelection in 1880.

The election that year of James Garfield as president made Maine’s James G. Blaine secretary of

state. Garfield and Blaine appointed Hamlin

minister to Spain, a post that carried few duties

and allowed him to make an extended tour of

the European continent. The most amusing part

of his brief diplomatic tenure was that the various foreign ministers he met ‘‘seemed to regard

as of great importance’’ the fact that he had

served as vice president. Hamlin retired from

public service in 1882. He made his last public

appearance at a Republican Club dinner at

Delmonico’s in honor of Lincoln’s birthday in

February 1891. There he was toasted as ‘‘The Surviving Standard-Bearer of 1860,’’ to thunderous

applause. A few months later, on the Fourth of

July in 1891, thirty years to the day after he convened the Senate at the start of the Civil War,

Hannibal Hamlin walked from his home to the

Tarratine Club of Bangor, Maine. He had founded the social club, served as its president, and

went there every afternoon (except Sunday) to

play cards. While seated at the card table, Hamlin collapsed and fell unconscious, dying that

night at the age of eighty-one.24
[ 210 ]

NOTES 1 See William E. Gienapp, The Origins of the Republican

Party, 1852–1856 (New York, 1987). 2 Charles Eugene Hamlin, The Life and Times of Hannibal

Hamlin (Cambridge, MA, 1899), pp. 7–8; H. Draper Hunt,

Hannibal Hamlin of Maine: Lincoln’s First Vice-President (Syracuse, NY, 1969), pp. 1–11; Mark Scroggins, Hannibal: The Life

of Abraham Lincoln’s First Vice President (Lanham, MD, 1994),

pp. 4–19. 3 Hunt, pp. 23–26.

4 Ibid., pp. 40–41; Scroggins, pp. 34–58.

5 Hunt, pp. 44–47, 63; Hamlin, pp. 72–181; Frederick J.

Blue, The Free Soilers: Third Party Politics, 1848–54 (Urbana,

IL, 1973), pp. 97–100. 6 Hunt, pp. 48, 62. See description of the incident in Chapter 12 of this volume, ‘‘Millard Fillmore,’’ p. 175. 7 Hunt, pp. 68, 81; Gienapp, pp. 47, 77.

8 Hunt, pp. 84–85; Scroggins, pp. 102–5, 117–18.

9Gienapp, pp. 208, 390–94.

10 Hunt, pp. 114–18, 152; John Russell Young, Men and

Memories, Personal Reminiscences (New York, 1901), pp. 48–

50; Hans L. Trefousse, Andrew Johnson: A Biography (New

York, 1989), p. 115. 11 Hunt, pp. 118–19; Hamlin, p. 580.

12 Hunt, pp. 121, 125–26, 152; Hamlin, pp. 354–55, 359.

13 Hunt, pp. 127, 133; Hamlin, pp. 366–75.

14 Hunt, pp. 148, 153.

15 Ibid, p. 155; Benjamin Perley Poore, Perley’s

Reminiscences of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis (Philadelphia, 1886), 2:97–98. 16 ‘‘Conversation with Hon. H. Hamlin,’’ April 8, 1879, in

Michael Burlingame, ed., An Oral History of Abraham Lincoln:

John G. Nicolay’s Interviews and Essays (Carbondale, IL, 1996),

pp. 67–68. 16 Hunt, pp. 157–58.

17 Ibid, pp. 158, 188; Hamlin, p. 497.

18 Hunt, pp. 160, 189; Young, p. 54.

19David Donald, Lincoln (New York, 1995), pp. 503–6;

Hunt, pp. 177–89; Hamlin, pp. 461–89; James G. Blaine,

Twenty Years of Congress: From Lincoln to Garfield (Norwich,

CT, 1884), p. 522; David Donald, Charles Sumner and the

Rights of Man (New York, 1970), pp. 169–73. 20 Scroggins, pp. 210–12.

21 Hamlin, p. 497; Hunt, p. 200; Poore, pp. 159–60.

22 Scroggins, pp. 213–15; Hunt, pp. 194, 200; Beverly Wilson Palmer, ed., The Selected Letters of Charles Sumner (Boston, 1990), 2:326–27. 23Edward P. Mitchell, Memoirs of an Editor (New York,

1924), p. 314. 24 Hunt, pp. 221, 250; Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s

Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877 (New York, 1988), p. 266.
[ 211 ]

Chapter 16

ANDREW JOHNSON

1865
ANDREW JOHNSON
[ 213 ]

Chapter 16

ANDREW JOHNSON

16th Vice President: 1865

The inauguration went off very well except that the Vice President Elect was too drunk to perform

his duties & disgraced himself & the Senate by making a drunken foolish speech.

—SENATOR ZACHARIAH CHANDLER

Vice President-elect Andrew Johnson arrived

in Washington ill from typhoid fever. The night

before his March 4, 1865, inauguration, he fortified himself with whiskey at a party hosted by

his old friend, Secretary of the Senate John W.

Forney. The next morning, hung over and confronting cold, wet, and windy weather, Johnson

proceeded to the Capitol office of Vice President

Hannibal Hamlin, where he complained of feeling weak and asked for a tumbler of whiskey.

Drinking it straight, he quickly consumed two

more. Then, growing red in the face, Johnson entered the overcrowded and overheated Senate

chamber. After Hamlin delivered a brief and

stately valedictory, Johnson rose unsteadily to

harangue the distinguished crowd about his

humble origins and his triumph over the rebel

aristocracy. In the shocked and silent audience,

President Abraham Lincoln showed an expression of ‘‘unutterable sorrow,’’ while Senator

Charles Sumner covered his face with his hands.

Former Vice President Hamlin tugged vainly at

Johnson’s coattails, trying to cut short his remarks. After Johnson finally quieted, took the

oath of office, and kissed the Bible, he tried to

swear in the new senators, but became so confused that he had to turn the job over to a Senate

clerk.1

Without a doubt it had been the most inauspicious beginning to any vice-presidency. ‘‘The inauguration went off very well except that the

Vice President Elect was too drunk to perform

his duties & disgraced himself & the Senate by

making a drunken foolish speech,’’ Michigan Republican Senator Zachariah Chandler wrote

home to his wife. ‘‘I was never so mortified in

my life, had I been able to find a hole I would

have dropped through it out of sight.’’ Johnson

presided over the Senate on March 6 but, still

feeling unwell, he then went into seclusion at the

home of an old friend in Silver Spring, Maryland.

He returned to the Senate only on the last day

of the special session, March 11. Rumors that had

him on a drunken spree led some Radical Republicans to draft a resolution calling for Johnson’s

resignation. Others talked of impeachment.

President Lincoln, however, assured callers that

he still had confidence in Johnson, whom he had

known for years, observing, ‘‘It has been a severe

lesson for Andy, but I do not think he will do

it again.’’ 2

Plebian Roots

Lost in his muddled inaugural was Johnson’s

celebration of his dramatic rise from ‘‘plebeian’’

roots. He had been born in a log cabin in Raleigh,

North Carolina, on December 29, 1808, to Jacob

Johnson, an illiterate bank porter and city constable, and his wife, Mary, known as ‘‘Polly the

Weaver’’ for her work as a seamstress and laundress. When Andrew was three his father died.

His mother remarried and later apprenticed her

sons William and Andrew at James Selby’s tailor

shop. Young Andy Johnson was something of a
[ 214 ]

ANDREW JOHNSON

hell-raiser and at fifteen he and his brother got

into trouble by pelting a neighbor’s house with

pieces of wood. When the woman threatened to

sue, the boys fled from Raleigh, causing their employer Selby to post a ten-dollar reward for their

return.3

Johnson went to Laurens, South Carolina,

where he worked in a tailor shop. He fell in love

with a local girl, but her mother objected to her

marriage with a penniless tailor. Disappointed,

he abandoned South Carolina and walked to

Tennessee. There he worked in a tailor shop and

in 1827 married Eliza McCardle, daughter of a

Greenville shoemaker. Eliza did not teach her

husband to read, as some stories later had it, but

she aided his further efforts at self-education.

Short, stocky, and swarthy, but always impeccably dressed, as befitted his trade, Johnson built

a solid business as a tailor, invested in real estate,

raised a growing family, joined a debating society, and won the title ‘‘Colonel Johnson’’ for his

rank in the state militia. With his steadily increasing wealth and status, he also bought a few

slaves. A staunch supporter of the Democrat Andrew Jackson, Johnson became active in local

politics. In 1829, he won his first race as alderman. He was chosen mayor of Greenville in 1834

and elected to the Tennessee state legislature the

following year. In the legislature he introduced

a homesteading bill that would give poor men

160 acres of public land if they would live on it—

a measure he persisted in pushing when he

moved to the U.S. Congress, until it became federal law in 1862.4

A Rising Political Star

Tennessee Democrats, spotting Andrew Johnson as a rising star and a pugnacious debater,

sent him around the state to campaign for their

ticket in the 1840 election. Governor James K.

Polk received reports that Johnson was ‘‘a

strongminded man who cuts when he does cut

not with a razor but with a case knife.’’ In 1843,

Johnson won election to the U.S. House of Representatives, where he attracted attention as an

outspoken and unbending defender of Jeffersonian-Jacksonian principles. He opposed Whig

programs for protective tariffs and internal improvements as unnecessary public expenditures.

He proposed cutting the number of government

clerks, voted against raising soldiers’ pay, assailed military academies as aristocratic, opposed purchasing paintings of past presidents

for the White House, and opposed accepting the

funds bequeathed to the United States by James

Smithson to create a Smithsonian Institution, on

the grounds that if the funds were unwisely invested the taxpayers would have to support the

enterprise. Among those with whom he served

in Congress who had the opportunity to take his

full measure were the Whig representative from

Illinois, Abraham Lincoln, and the Democratic

representative from Mississippi, Jefferson Davis.

Johnson particularly sparred with Davis, whom

he portrayed as part of the South’s ‘‘illegitimate,

swaggering, bastard, scrub aristocracy.’’ 5

In 1852, Tennessee elected Johnson governor.

During his term he succeeded in enacting taxsupported public education for his state. He won

reelection over intense opposition and served

until 1856, when the legislature elected him to

the U.S. Senate. Once more, Johnson pressed for

passage of a Homestead bill, which he succeeded

in moving through Congress in 1860, only to

have it vetoed by President James Buchanan.

While Johnson was preoccupied with his Homestead bill, his party was breaking up over the

issue of slavery in the territories. In 1860, Johnson supported the Southern Democratic candidate, John C. Breckinridge, but he strenuously

opposed the secessionists within his party. After

Lincoln’s election, Johnson fought to keep Tennessee in the Union. To Andrew Johnson, secession appeared simply a continuation of John C.

Calhoun’s discredited policy of nullification,

against which his hero Andrew Jackson had

stood his ground. Johnson threw his support behind Lincoln as the new embodiment of

Jackson.6

War Democrat

In the spring of 1861, Johnson took the train

from Washington back to Tennessee and was

mobbed at several stops in Virginia. The senator

had to pull a pistol to defend himself. Although

Union sympathies were strong in the eastern

mountains of Tennessee, where Johnson’s hometown of Greenville was located, he found Con-
[ 215 ]

ANDREW JOHNSON

federate flags flying around the town. There

were enough Union sympathizers in Tennessee

to defeat an effort to call a state convention to

secede, but after the firing on Fort Sumter, sentiment in the state swung more heavily to the Confederates. To avoid arrest, Johnson left Tennessee

and returned to the Senate. As the only southern

senator to remain loyal to the Union after his

state seceded, Johnson became a hero in the

North. As a leader of the ‘‘War Democrats,’’ he

denounced ‘‘Peace Democrats’’ and defended

President Lincoln’s use of wartime executive

power. ‘‘I say, Let the battle go on—it is Freedom’s cause. . . . Do not talk about Republicans

now; do not talk about Democrats now; do not

talk about Whigs or Americans now; talk about

your Country and the Constitution and the

Union.’’ 7

When federal troops conquered Nashville and

its immediate vicinity, President Lincoln sent

Andrew Johnson back to Tennessee in 1862 as

war governor. Johnson still identified himself as

a Democrat, but as one who put the Union before

party. He denounced the state’s aristocratic

planting class who had supported the war, and

said that if freeing their slaves would help to end

the war, then he was in favor of emancipation.

‘‘Treason,’’ he said, in a much-publicized quote,

‘‘must be made odious and traitors punished.’’

In 1863, Tennessee held elections for a civilian

government. Much to Johnson’s chagrin, a conservative, proslavery candidate won the race for

governor. President Lincoln wired Johnson to ignore the results and not recognize the new governor. ‘‘Let the reconstruction be the work of

such men only as can be trusted for the Union,’’

Lincoln instructed. ‘‘Exclude all others. . . . Get

emancipation into your new state constitution.’’

Following Lincoln’s advice, Johnson made anyone who wished to vote take an oath of loyalty,

which was then followed by a six-month waiting

period. Since this meant that only those who had

opposed the Confederacy could vote, Johnson’s

Radical forces swept the next state elections.8

Lincoln faced a difficult campaign for reelection in 1864, and he doubted that his vice president, Maine Republican Hannibal Hamlin,

would add much to his ticket. Officially, the

president maintained a hands-off attitude toward the choice of a vice president, but privately

he sent emissaries to several War Democrats as

potential candidates on a fusion ticket. General

Benjamin F. Butler let the president know he had

no interest in the second spot, but Johnson of

Tennessee and Daniel S. Dickinson of New York

both expressed eagerness to be considered. Secretary of State William Seward, who counted

New York as his own political base, wanted no

part of Dickinson in the cabinet and threw his

weight behind Johnson. The fearless, toughminded war governor of Tennessee captured the

imagination of the delegates. As John W. Forney

judged Johnson’s wartime record: ‘‘His speeches

were sound, his measures bold, his administration a fair success.’’ Johnson won the nomination

on the first ballot.9

Becoming a Household Word

During the campaign, the great Republican orator Robert G. Ingersoll wrote to Johnson saying:

The people want to see and hear you. The name

of Andrew Johnson has become a household

word all over the great West, and you are regarded by the people of Illinois as the grandest

example of loyalty in the whole South.

Traveling to Logansport, Indiana, in October,

Johnson told the crowd that a Democratic newspaper had accused the Republicans of nominating ‘‘a rail-splitter’’ at the head of their ticket and

‘‘a boorish tailor’’ at its tail. Rather than see this

as a rebuke, Johnson took pride in having risen

up ‘‘from the mass of the people.’’ The aristocrats

were offended that he was a tailor, he said, but

he had learned ‘‘that if a man does not disgrace

his profession, it never disgraces him.’’ Johnson

acquitted himself well during the campaign but

at times had trouble restraining himself in the excitement of facing a crowd, whether hostile or

supportive. Late in October 1864 he addressed a

large rally of African Americans in Nashville.

Johnson noted that, since Lincoln’s emancipation

proclamation had not covered territories like

Tennessee that were already under Union control, he had issued his own proclamation freeing

the slaves in Tennessee. He also asserted that society would be improved if the great plantations

were divided into many small farms and sold to

honest farmers. Looking out over the crowd and
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ANDREW JOHNSON

commenting on the storm of persecution through

which his listeners had passed, he wished that

a Moses might arise to ‘‘lead them safely to their

promised land of freedom and happiness.’’ ‘‘You

are our Moses,’’ shouted people in the crowd.

‘‘We want no Moses but you!’’ ‘‘Well, then,’’ replied Johnson, ‘‘humble and unworthy as I am,

if no other better shall be found, I will indeed

by your Moses, and lead you through the Red

Sea of war and bondage, to a fairer future of liberty and peace.’’ 10

Vice President

Success on the battlefield brought Lincoln and

Johnson victory in the election of 1864. As the

Civil War approached its end, the equally monumental challenge of reconstructing the Union lay

ahead. In Congress, the Radical Republicans

wanted a victor’s peace, enforced by federal

troops, that would allow the former Confederate

states to return to the Union only on terms that

protected the rights of the freedmen. They offered their plan as the Wade-Davis bill of 1864,

which Lincoln killed by a pocket veto. Lincoln

wanted to be free to pursue a more lenient, flexible approach to Reconstruction. Having gotten

the United States into the Civil War during a congressional recess in 1861, Lincoln anticipated

ending the war and reconstructing the South

during the long recess between March and December 1865. He presumed that his new vice

president would be in sympathy with these

plans, since in July 1864 Johnson had congratulated Lincoln on his veto of the Wade-Davis bill,

saying that ‘‘the real union men’’ were satisfied

with the president’s approach.11

The vice president-elect hesitated in leaving

Tennessee. In January 1865, Johnson wrote to

Lincoln pointing out that the final abolition of

slavery in Tennessee could not be taken up until

the new civilian legislature met that April. He

wanted to remain as war governor until that

time, before handing power over to the elected

representatives of the people. Johnson suggested

that his inaugural as vice president be delayed

until April. His friend, John W. Forney, secretary

of the Senate, had checked the records and found

that several vice presidents (John Adams, George

Clinton, Elbridge Gerry, Daniel Tompkins, Martin Van Buren, and William R. King) were sworn

in on dates after March 4. With the war still underway, however, Lincoln replied that he and his

cabinet unanimously believed that Johnson must

be in Washington by March 4. Had Johnson not

complied, he might not have taken the oath of

office before Lincoln’s death on April 14, adding

more constitutional confusion to the aftermath of

the assassination.12

An Assassination Plot

During Johnson’s six weeks as vice president,

he faced greater danger than he knew. The assassination plot that would make Johnson president

included him as a target. The circle of conspirators that John Wilkes Booth had gathered at Mrs.

Mary Surratt’s boardinghouse had at first

planned to capture President Lincoln and whisk

him off to the Confederacy. But the war was ending sooner than they anticipated, and when the

attempted capture went awry, Booth decided to

kill Lincoln, Vice President Johnson, and Secretary of State William H. Seward, thereby

throwing the North into confusion and anarchy.

Booth intended to kill Lincoln himself, and assigned Lewis Payne to assassinate Seward. For

the vice president, whom he considered the least

important victim, Booth assigned his weakest

partner, George Atzerodt. A German carriage

maker from Port Tobacco, Maryland, Atzerodt

had spent the war years ferrying Confederates

across the Potomac River to circumvent the

Union blockades.

On the morning of April 14, 1865, Atzerodt

registered at Kirkwood House, a hotel at the corner of Twelfth Street and Pennsylvania Avenue,

between the White House and the Capitol. He

took a room almost directly above the groundfloor suite occupied by the vice president. So incompetent at conspiracy was Atzerodt that he

signed his right name to the hotel register. His

notion of surveillance was to spend the afternoon

in the hotel bar asking suspicious questions

about the vice president and his guard. Sufficiently fortified with liquor, Atzerodt armed

himself and asked the desk clerk to point out the

vice president’s suite. When informed that Johnson had just come back to his rooms, Atzerodt

reacted in shocked surprise, and left the hotel.
[ 217 ]

ANDREW JOHNSON

Shortly afterwards, Johnson also left for an appointment with Lincoln.

When Booth arrived at the Kirkwood House

and learned that Atzerodt was gone, he lost hope

that this weak man would have the nerve to

carry out his assignment. If he could not have

Johnson killed, Booth improvised a way of discrediting him. He asked for a blank card, which

he filled out: ‘‘Don’t wish to disturb you. Are you

at home? J. Wilkes Booth.’’ Booth assumed that

Johnson would have a hard time explaining the

card, since it suggested that the vice president

was himself part of the conspiracy. Fortunately

for Johnson, his secretary, William A. Browning,

picked up the mail at the desk and assumed that

the card was for him, since he had once met

Booth after a performance.

A pounding at the door later that evening

awakened Andrew Johnson. Rather than George

Atzerodt with a pistol, the excited man at the

door was former Wisconsin Governor Leonard

Farwell, who had just come from Ford’s Theater

and who exclaimed, ‘‘Someone has shot and

murdered the President.’’ Johnson ordered

Farwell to go back to the theater to find out what

he could about the president’s condition. Farwell

returned with the District of Columbia’s provost

marshal, who assured Johnson and the crowd

that had gathered in his room that President Lincoln was dying and that Secretary of State William Seward was dead, as part of a gigantic plot

(in fact, Seward had been badly wounded but

not killed). Johnson wished to leave immediately

to be with the president, but the provost marshal

urged him to wait until order had been restored

in the streets. At dawn, Johnson, receiving word

from Secretary of War Edwin Stanton that Lincoln was dying, insisted on going to the president’s side. Flanked by Governor Farwell and

the provost marshal, the vice president walked

the few blocks to the Petersen house, just across

from Ford’s Theater, where Lincoln had been

carried. Admitted to the bedroom where the cabinet and military leaders were gathered around

the president’s deathbed, Johnson stood with his

hat in his hand looking down saying nothing. He

then took Robert Lincoln’s hand, whispered a

few words to him, conversed with Stanton, and

went to another parlor to pay his respects to

Mary Todd Lincoln. Somberly, he walked back

to Kirkwood House. There, in his parlor, at ten

o’clock that morning after Lincoln’s death, Johnson took the oath of office from Chief Justice

Salmon P. Chase.13

A Stormy Presidency

Lincoln’s death stunned the nation and elevated the often harshly criticized wartime president to a sanctified martyr. In Washington, some

Radical Republicans viewed Lincoln’s death as

a godsend. They held, as Johnson’s friend Forney

wrote in the Philadelphia Press, that ‘‘a sterner

and less gentle hand may at this juncture have

been required to take hold of the reins of Government.’’ Johnson’s fiery rhetoric in the Senate and

as war governor, his early embrace of the ‘‘state

suicide’’ theory that secession had reduced the

southern states to the status of territories, to be

readmitted under terms set by Congress, his call

for expropriation of plantation lands, his authorship of the Homestead Act, all suggested that the

new president would act more sympathetically

toward Radical Reconstruction than would Lincoln. ‘‘Johnson, we have faith in you,’’ the Radical Republican Senator Ben Wade told the new

president. ‘‘By the Gods, there will be no trouble

now in running this government.’’ 14

Johnson also won admiration for his gallant

treatment of Mrs. Lincoln, who was too distraught to leave the White House for more than

a month after her husband’s death. Rather than

move into the White House, which served as the

president’s office as well as his residence, President Johnson worked out of a suite of rooms in

the Treasury Department (marked today by a

plaque on the door). However, the spirit of good

will evaporated almost a soon as Johnson began

making decisions regarding Reconstruction.

Showing a strange amalgam of political courage and ‘‘pigheaded’’ stubbornness, Andrew

Johnson confounded both his supporters and his

adversaries. By the end of May 1865, it became

clear that, like Lincoln, he intended to pursue a

more lenient course toward Reconstruction than

the Radicals in Congress wanted. Members of

Congress grumbled when Johnson handed pardons to former Confederate leaders, suspected

that the plebeian president took pride in having
[ 218 ]

ANDREW JOHNSON

former aristocrats petition him. Congress was

further shocked when the new governments

formed under Johnson’s plan enacted ‘‘Black

Codes’’ that sought to regulate and restrict the

activities of the freedmen. There was fear also

that the former Confederate states would send

Confederate officers and officeholders to reclaim

their seats in Congress and undo the legislative

accomplishments of the wartime Republican majorities. When the president opposed granting

political rights to the freedmen, white southerners looked to him as a defender of white supremacy and as their protector against Radical

retribution. The Democratic party considered

Johnson as one of their own, who might be induced to return to their fold.15

The predominantly Republican Washington

press corps had at first embraced President Johnson, assuring their readers that he supported

black suffrage and other Radical measures.

Forney celebrated his old friend as a ‘‘practical

statesman’’ whose policies offered a common

ground for ‘‘all earnest loyalists.’’ Whatever honeymoon the new president enjoyed with Congress and the press ended in February 1866 when

Johnson vetoed the Freedmen’s Bureau bill. The

veto shocked Republican conservatives and

drove them into alliance with the Radicals

against the president. The press and even Forney

deserted Johnson. That fall, Johnson conducted

a disastrous ‘‘swing around the circle,’’ campaigning by train in favor of congressional candidates who supported his policies. Egged on by

hecklers, he made intemperate remarks that further alienated the voters and resulted in the election of an even more hostile Congress. The new

Congress seized the initiative on Reconstruction

from the president—most notably with a constitutional amendment giving the freedmen the

right to vote—and passed legislation to limit his

responses. Among these laws, the Tenure of Office Act prohibited the president from firing cabinet officers and other appointees without Senate

approval. Johnson considered the act unconstitutional—as indeed the Supreme Court would later

declare it—and in February 1868 he fired his secretary of war, Edwin Stanton, for insubordination.16

The Impeachment of Andrew Johnson

Although Johnson’s term was coming to a

close and he had little chance of nomination by

any party, the House of Representatives voted to

impeach the president. The New York Tribune’s

editor Horace Greeley thought this a foolhardy

tactic. ‘‘Why hang a man who is bent on hanging

himself?’’ Greeley asked. But the Republican

members of Congress and their allies in the press

wanted to take no chance of the president’s sabotaging congressional Reconstruction during his

last months in office. Said Thaddeus Stevens,

leader of the House impeachers: ‘‘I don’t want

to hurt the man’s feelings by telling him he is

a rascal. I’d rather put it mildly, and say he

hasn’t got off that inaugural drunk yet, and just

let him retire to get sobered.’’ The House voted

for impeachment, and on March 5, 1868, the

United States Senate convened as a court to consider removing Johnson from the presidency. As

the trial opened, the majority of the northern

press favored conviction, but as the proceedings

wound on, a profound sense of disillusionment

set in among the correspondents, who communicated their dismay to their readers.17

Correspondent George Alfred Townsend described Johnson’s Senate trial as ‘‘a more terrible

scene than the trial of Judas Iscariot might be before the College of Cardinals.’’ Not a single Democrat countenanced the impeachment, he pointed out, ‘‘It was purely within the political organization which had nominated the offender.’’ Although Townsend was a Republican who considered Johnson a barrier against any settlement

of ‘‘the Southern question,’’ when he arrived at

the Capitol he found none except Charles Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens who seemed excited

over Johnson’s policies. ‘‘It was his abuse of the

party patronage which was an unforgiven sin.’’

Johnson took patronage away from his critics

and purged over 1,600 postmasters. In addition,

Townsend noted: ‘‘He had disobeyed an act of

Congress, of doubtful validity, taking away from

him the power to make ad-interim appointments, or those made between sessions of Congress. This was a challenge to every member of

Congress in the regular caucus ranks that off

straight come the heads of HIS post-master, HIS
[ 219 ]

ANDREW JOHNSON

revenue officials, HIS clerks, and HIS brothersin-law.’’ 18

Rather than appear in the Senate chamber personally, President Johnson wisely left his defense

to his attorneys. Although Republicans enjoyed

a more than two-thirds majority in the Senate at

the time, seven Republicans—fearing impeachment’s negative impact on the office of the presidency—broke with their party. As a result, the

impeachers failed by a single vote to achieve the

two-thirds majority necessary to convict the

president. In the 1868 elections, Johnson endorsed the Democratic candidate, Horatio Seymour, and was deeply disappointed over the victory of the Republican, U.S. Grant. Refusing to

attend Grant’s inauguration, Johnson left the

White House in March 1869, discredited but not

disgraced. Out of office for the first time in thirty

years, he could not stay retired. That fall he campaigned for a Senate seat from Tennessee and

lost. Never giving up, Johnson tried again in January 1875 and won back a seat in the Senate that

had once tormented him.19

The only former U.S. president ever to return

to serve in the Senate, Johnson saw his election

as a vindication and came back to Washington

in triumph. He took his oath of office on March

5, along with Lincoln’s other vice president, Hannibal Hamlin, reelected a senator from Maine.

(Both men had begun their congressional service

in the House of Representatives on the same day,

thirty-two years earlier.) Hamlin in 1866 had resigned as collector of the port of Boston as a public protest against Johnson’s policies on Reconstruction. The oath was administered by Vice

President Henry Wilson, who as a senator had

voted for Johnson’s conviction and for his disqualification from holding future office. When

Johnson stepped forward to shake hands first

with Hamlin and then Wilson, the chamber

erupted into cheers. A reporter asked if he would

use his new position to settle some old scores,

to which Johnson replied, ‘‘I have no enemies to

punish nor friends to reward.’’ The special session ended on March 24, and Johnson returned

to Tennessee. At the home of a granddaughter,

he suffered a stroke and died on July 31, 1875.

A marble bust of Johnson, sculpted with a typically pugnacious and defiant expression, looks

down from the gallery at the Senate chamber,

where he served on three occasions as a senator,

briefly presided as vice president, and was tried

and acquitted in a court of impeachment.20
[ 220 ]

NOTES 1 H. Draper Hunt, Hannibal Hamlin of Maine: Lincoln’s First

Vice-President (Syracuse, NY, 1969), pp. 196–98; Lloyd Paul

Stryker, Andrew Johnson: A Study in Courage (New York,

1929), p. 167. 2 Hans L. Trefousse, Andrew Johnson: A Biography (New

York, 1989), pp. 188–91; John W. Forney, Anecdotes of Public

Men (New York, 1873), 1:177. 3Trefousse, Andrew Johnson, pp. 20–23.

4 Ibid., pp. 35–50.

5 Ibid, pp. 43, 51–83; Donald W. Riddle, Congressman Abraham Lincoln (Urbana, IL, 1957), pp. 144, 147, 159. 6Trefousse, Andrew Johnson, pp. 84–127; Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877 (New

York, 1988), p. 176; LeRoy P. Graf, ed., The Papers of Andrew

Johnson, vol. 7, 1864–1865 (Knoxville, TN, 1986), p. 9. 7 Christopher Dell, Lincoln and the War Democrats: The

Grand Erosion of Conservative Tradition (Rutherford, NJ,

1975), pp. 36–37, 80. 8 Ibid., pp. 202, 238–39, 289; Foner, pp. 43–44.

9 Hunt, pp. 178–89; Trefousse, Andrew Johnson, pp. 176–

79; Stryker, pp. 121–23; Forney, 1:166–67, 2:48. 10Graf, ed., 7:110, 222, 251–53.

11 Ibid., 7:30.

12 Ibid., 7:420–21, 427.

13 See Jim Bishop, The Day Lincoln Was Shot (New York,

1955). 14Dell, p. 323; Foner, p. 177.

15Graf, ed., 7:639; Foner, pp. 176–216; Joel H. Silbey, A

Respectable Minority: The Democratic Party in the Civil War

Era, 1860–1868 (New York, 1877), pp. 178–79. 16Donald A. Ritchie, Press Gallery: Congress and the Washington Correspondents (Cambridge, MA, 1991), pp. 79–90;

Foner, pp. 261–71. 17Ritchie, pp. 83–84; Hans L. Trefousse, Impeachment of a

President: Andrew Johnson, the Blacks, and Reconstruction

(Knoxville, TN, 1975), pp. 146–64; Benjamin Perley Poore,

Perley’s Reminiscences of Sixty Years in the Nation’s Metropolis

(Philadelphia, 1886), 2:229. 18George Alfred Townsend, Washington, Outside and Inside (Hartford, CT, 1873), pp. 506–7; Foner, p. 266.

19Michael Les Benedict, The Impeachment and Trial of Andrew Johnson (New York, 1973), pp. 126–80. 20Trefousse, Andrew Johnson, pp. 353–79; Stryker, pp. 805–

11, Hunt, pp. 202–5.
[ 221 ]

Chapter 17

SCHUYLER COLFAX

1869–1873
SCHUYLER COLFAX
[ 223 ]

Chapter 17

SCHUYLER COLFAX

17th Vice President: 1869–1873

The Vice Presidency is an elegant office whose occupant must find it his principal business to try

to discover what is the use of there being such an office at all.

—Indianapolis Journal, MARCH 7, 1871

As amiable a man who ever served in Congress, good-natured, kindly, cordial, and always

diplomatic, Indiana’s Schuyler Colfax won the

nickname ‘‘Smiler’’ Colfax. Through two of the

most tumultuous decades in American public

life, Colfax glided smoothly from the Whig to

Know-Nothing to Republican parties, mingling

easily with both conservatives and radicals. He

rose to become Speaker of the House and vice

president and seemed poised to achieve his goal

of the presidency. Along the way, there were

those who doubted the sincerity behind the smile

and suspected that for all his political dexterity,

Colfax stood for nothing save his own advancement. Those close to President Abraham Lincoln

later revealed that he considered Speaker Colfax

an untrustworthy intriguer, and President Ulysses S. Grant seemed relieved when the Republican convention dumped Vice President Colfax

from the ticket in 1872. Even the press, which

counted the Indiana editor as a colleague and

pumped him up to national prominence, eventually turned on Colfax and shredded his once admirable reputation until he disappeared into the

forgotten recesses of American history.1

Early Years

Schuyler Colfax was born into a family of distinguished heritage but depleted circumstances.

His grandfather, who had fought in the American Revolution and served closely with George

Washington, married Hester Schuyler, a cousin

of General Philip Schuyler, and named one of his

sons for Washington and another for Schuyler.

Schuyler Colfax, Sr., became a teller in a bank on

New York City’s Wall Street. In 1820 he married

Hannah Stryker, the daughter of a widowed

boardinghouse keeper. He died of tuberculosis

two years later, as his wife was expecting her

first child. Four months after his father’s death,

Schuyler, Jr. was born in New York City on

March 23, 1823.

As a boy, Colfax attended public schools until

he was ten, when he was obliged to work as a

clerk in a retail store to help support himself, his

mother, and his grandmother. Three years later,

his mother married George W. Matthews, and

the family moved to New Carlisle, Indiana.

Young Colfax worked in his stepfather’s store,

which served also as the village post office.

Townspeople later recalled that Colfax would sit

on barrels reading newspapers as they arrived

by post. He borrowed whatever books he could

get to provide himself with an education. In

1841, the family moved to South Bend, where

Matthews was elected as the Whig candidate for

county auditor and hired Schuyler as his deputy.

Enjoying politics, the boy became active in a

‘‘moot legislature,’’ where he gained his first

experience in debate and parliamentary

procedure.2
[ 224 ]

SCHUYLER COLFAX

Politics and the Press

At sixteen, Colfax wrote to Horace Greeley,

editor of the influential Whig newspaper, the

New-York Tribune, offering to send occasional articles. Always open to new talent, Greeley agreed

and published the boy’s writings on Indiana politics, beginning a correspondence and friendship

that lasted for the rest of their lives. Colfax also

reported on the Indiana legislature for the Indiana State Journal, and when he was nineteen local

Whigs engaged him to edit the South Bend Free

Press. The young editor described himself as an

‘‘uncompromising Whig.’’ He idolized Henry

Clay and embraced all of the Whig reforms, taking a pledge of abstinence from alcoholic spirits

(but not from the cigars he loved). In 1844 he

married a childhood sweetheart, Evelyn Clark,

and by the next year was able to purchase the

Free Press, renaming it the St. Joseph Valley Register. The writer Harriet Beecher Stowe later proclaimed it ‘‘a morally pure paper.’’ 3

Advancing from the editorial page into politics, Colfax served as a delegate to the Whig convention of 1848 and to the convention that drafted a new constitution for Indiana in 1849. He led

the opposition to a provision in the constitution

that barred African Americans from settling in

Indiana or those already in the state from purchasing land. Despite his efforts, this racial barrier stood until ruled unconstitutional as a consequence of the Thirteenth Amendment to the

Constitution in 1865. In 1851, the Whigs chose

Colfax to run for Congress. At that time, Indiana

was a Democratic state and Colfax narrowly lost

to the incumbent Democrat. He declined to run

again in 1852. Dismayed over the disintegration

of the Whig party and offended by Senator Stephen A. Douglas’ Kansas-Nebraska Act that repealed the Missouri Compromise, Colfax again

ran for Congress in 1854 as an Anti-Nebraska

candidate. His friend and fellow editor Horace

Greeley, who had served a brief term in 1849, encouraged him: ‘‘I thought it would be a nuisance

and a sacrifice for me to go to Congress,’’ he advised Colfax, ‘‘but I was mistaken; it did me lasting good. I never was brought so palpably and

tryingly into collision with the embodied

scoundrelism of the nation as while in

Congress.’’ 4

Building a New Party

Antislavery Whigs like Colfax sought to build

a new party that combined the antislavery elements among the Whigs, Democrats, and Free

Soilers, a coalition that eventually emerged as

the Republican party. For a brief time, however,

it seemed likely that a nativist organization, the

Know-Nothings, might become the new majority

party. The first Know-Nothing lodge in Indiana

opened in early 1854 and by election time the

party had grown, in the words of one Methodist

minister, ‘‘as thick as the Locusts in Egypt.’’ The

Know-Nothings opposed slavery and alcohol

but turned their greatest passions against Catholics and immigrants. Although Colfax shared

these nativist prejudices (arguing that ‘‘Protestant foreigners, who are thoroughly Americanized’’ should be admitted into the party), he

made it clear that he would remain only if the

Know-Nothings kept a firm antislavery plank in

their platform. When the new congressman arrived in the House of Representatives in 1855, it

was unclear which members belonged to what

party. The New-York Tribune Almanac estimated

that there were 118 Anti-Nebraska representatives, a number that included Republicans, antiNebraska Democrats, and antislavery KnowNothings, comprising a slight majority of the

House. By the following year, the KnowNothings had already peaked and declined, and

Colfax announced that he would run for reelection as a Republican.5

The House of Representatives proved an ideal

arena for Colfax’s talents. Short and stocky, fairhaired, with a ready smile, he got along well

with his colleagues in private but never hesitated

to do battle with the opposition on the House

floor. When Republicans held the majority, he

served energetically as chairman of the Committee on Post Offices and Post Roads, handling the

kind of patronage that built political organizations. Never having been a lawyer, he could put

complex issues of the day into layman’s terms.

In 1856, his speech attacking laws passed by the

proslavery legislature in Kansas became the most

widely requested Republican campaign docu-
[ 225 ]

SCHUYLER COLFAX

ment. His speech raised warnings that it was a

short step between enslaving blacks and suppressing the civil liberties of whites. Watching

Colfax battle southern representatives over the

slavery issue, James Dabney McCabe recorded

that ‘‘Mr. Colfax took an active part in the debate, giving and receiving hard blows with all

the skill of an old gladiator.’’ 6

Colfax traveled widely, spoke frequently, and

helped fuse the various Republican and antislavery groups into a unified party for the 1860 election. When the southern Democrats seceded and

put House Republicans in the majority, he considered running for Speaker, but after testing the

waters declined to be a candidate. He resumed

his chairmanship of the Post Office Committee.

Colfax took a moderate position on emancipation and other issues of the day, maintaining

close ties with both wings of his party. He enjoyed direct access to President Lincoln and often

served as a conduit of information and opinion

from Horace Greeley and other Republican editors. He worked tirelessly on behalf of the Union,

recruiting regiments and raising public spirits.

Yet antiwar sentiments ran strong in Indiana and

many other northern states, and in 1862 Colfax

faced a tough campaign for reelection against

David A. Turpie. Winning a narrow victory further elevated Colfax within the party at a time

when many other Republicans, including House

Speaker Galusha Grow, were defeated. When the

Thirty-eighth Congress convened in December

1863, House Republicans—with their numbers

considerably thinned—elected Schuyler Colfax

Speaker, despite President Lincoln’s preference

for a Speaker less tied to the Radical faction of

his party.7

Speaker of the House

As Speaker of the House, Schuyler Colfax presided, in the words of the journalist Ben: Perley

Poore, ‘‘in rather a slap-dash-knock-’em-downauctioneer style, greatly in variance with the decorous dignity of his predecessors.’’ He had studied and mastered the rules of the House, and

both sides considered his rulings fair. Credited

as being the most popular Speaker since Henry

Clay, Colfax aspired to be as powerful as Clay.

Certainly, he shared Clay’s sense of the dramatic,

once stepping down from the presiding officer’s

chair to urge the House to expel an Ohio Democrat who had advocated recognizing the independence of the Confederacy. Another time the

Speaker broke precedent by requesting that his

vote be recorded in favor of the Thirteenth

Amendment. Yet with the exception of the

power to appoint members to committees, the

Speaker of the House was still mostly a figurehead. Observers declared the real power in the

House to be the tough-minded Pennsylvanian

Thaddeus Stevens, chairman of the Appropriations Committee and de facto Republican floor

leader.8

Washington newspaper correspondents celebrated the election of one of their own as Speaker

and threw a dinner in his honor. ‘‘We journalists

and men of the newspaper press do love you,

and claim you as bone of our bone and flesh of

our flesh,’’ said correspondent Sam Wilkeson.

‘‘Fill your glasses, all, in an invocation to the

gods for long life, greater success, and ever-increasing happiness to our editorial brother in the

Speaker’s Chair.’’ In reply Colfax thanked the

press for sustaining him through all his elections.

Trained in journalism, Speaker Colfax applied

the lessons of his craft to his political career,

making himself available for interviews, planting

stories, sending flattering notes to editors, suggesting editorials, and spreading patronage. A

widower (his wife died in 1863) with no children,

Colfax was free to socialize nightly with his

friends on Washington’s ‘‘Newspaper Row.’’ He

hoped to parlay his popularity with the press

into a national following that would make him

the first journalist to occupy the White House.9

The press lavished more attention on Speaker

Colfax than they had on Galusha Grow or any

of his immediate predecessors. They praised the

regular Friday night receptions that the Speaker

and his mother held and commended him for the

‘‘courtesy, dignity, and equitability which he exhibited in the discharge of the important duties

of the chair.’’ It was harder for the press to detect

whether Speaker Colfax actually had any influence on specific legislation. He gave the radical

firebrands wide latitude, while speaking with

moderation himself. At one point, when Radical

Republicans were prepared to introduce a reso-
[ 226 ]

SCHUYLER COLFAX

lution in the party conference that defended the

Republican record and called for the use of black

soldiers in the Union army, Colfax outflanked

them with a motion that substituted patriotic flag

waving for partisanship, calling instead for all

loyal men to stand by the Union. His action was

taken as an effort to give the Republican party

a less vindictive image that would build a broader base for congressional elections.10

On April 14, 1865, Colfax called at the White

House to talk over Reconstruction and other

matters with President Lincoln before Colfax left

on a long tour of the western states and territories. With the war won, Lincoln was in an ebullient mood and held a long and pleasant conversation with the Speaker (whom Lincoln privately regarded as ‘‘a little intriguer—plausible,

aspiring beyond his capacity, and not trustworthy’’). The president invited the Speaker to

join his party at Ford’s Theater that night, but

Colfax declined. Later that evening, he was

awakened with news that the president had been

shot and rushed to spend the night in the room

where Lincoln died.11

Reconstructing the South

During the summer of 1865, Colfax toured the

mining regions between the Rocky Mountains

and the Pacific. Newspaper correspondent Albert Richardson, who accompanied him, recorded that the trip proved to be ‘‘one continuous ovation’’ for Colfax, with brass bands, banquets, and public receptions, during which the

Speaker made seventy speeches. He returned to

a capital still uncertain over how the new President Andrew Johnson would handle the reconstruction of the southern states. Radicals in Congress trusted that Johnson would use federal

troops to support tough policies toward the

former Confederacy, but there were signs that

Johnson favored a speedier, more lenient readmission of the states. That November, at a serenade to mark his return to Washington, Speaker

Colfax made some remarks that seemed impromptu but that may have been prearranged.

He endorsed Johnson’s attempts to begin Reconstruction prior to congressional legislation and

set as a minimum for the return of the southern

states a guarantee that freedmen would be treated equally under the law. He made no mention

of the radical demand that the freedmen also

have the right to vote. The speech won widespread praise in the North, where it was perceived as the firm foundation of Republican policy on which both the president and Congress

could stand.12

Colfax’s efforts at party harmony and a moderate course of Reconstruction were short lived.

Johnson resented Colfax’s preempting his own

statement of policy on the subject. The president’s plans to reconstruct the South showed little regard for the rights of the freedmen, and he

vetoed such relatively moderate congressional

efforts as the Freedmen’s Bureau bill. His action

drove moderate and radical Republicans into an

alliance that brought about congressional Reconstruction of the South. Finally, Johnson’s dismissal of Secretary of War Edwin Stanton in violation of the Tenure of Office Act convinced even

moderates like Colfax that the president must be

impeached. Through all of these dramatic events,

Colfax’s most astonishing success was his ability

to retain the support of all sides in his party and

to hold House Republicans together. The party

defections that saved Johnson took place in the

Senate rather than the House.13

From Speaker to Vice President

As the 1868 presidential election approached,

Speaker Colfax believed the nomination of Ulysses S. Grant to be ‘‘resistless.’’ As for himself, he

declined to run either for the Senate or for governor of Indiana, leaving the door open for the

vice-presidential nomination. Colfax insisted

that presiding over the House as Speaker was

‘‘the more important office’’ than presiding over

the Senate as vice president. But the vice-presidency was the more direct avenue to the presidency. At the convention, his chief rivals for the

second spot were Senate President pro tempore

Ben Wade and Massachusetts Senator Henry

Wilson. Colfax polled fourth on the first ballot

and gained steadily with each subsequent ballot.

The temperance forces were delighted that

Colfax’s headquarters distributed no liquor, in

contrast to Senator Wade, who handed out spirits freely among the delegates. Among Republicans there was a collective sense that the absti-
[ 227 ]

SCHUYLER COLFAX

nent Colfax would balance a ticket with Grant,

who had been known to drink heavily.14

Colfax stayed in Washington while the Republican convention met in Chicago. His good

friend, William Orton, head of the Western

Union Telegraph Company, arranged for Colfax

to receive dispatches from the convention every

ten minutes. On May 21 Colfax was in the Speaker’s Lobby when he received Orton’s telegram

announcing his nomination. Cheers broke out,

and the room quickly filled with congressmen

wishing to offer congratulations. As he left the

lobby, Colfax was greeted by House staff members, who ‘‘gathered around him in the most affectionate manner and tendered him their regards.’’ Citizens hailed him as he walked across

the Capitol grounds. On the Senate side, Bluff

Ben Wade received the news that he had been

beaten and said, ‘‘Well, I guess it will be all right;

he deserves it, and he will be a good presiding

officer.’’ The news was received with seemingly

universal applause. ‘‘His friends love him devotedly,’’ wrote one admirer, ‘‘and his political adversaries . . . respect him thoroughly.’’ 15

For years, Colfax had addressed Sunday

schools and temperance revival meetings,

quoting from the Bible and urging his listeners

to a life of virtue. He won support from the religious magazines as a ‘‘Christian Statesman.’’

One campaign biography praised his ‘‘spotless

integrity’’ and declared, ‘‘So pure is his personal

character, that the venom of political enmity has

never attempted to fix a stain upon it.’’ Democrats, however, lambasted Colfax as a bigot for

the anti-Catholicism of his Know-Nothing past.

Republicans dismissed these charges as mudslinging and organized Irish and German Grant

and Colfax Clubs to court the Catholic and foreign-born vote. (Although it was not known at

the time, U.S. Grant had also once joined the

Know-Nothings and apparently shared their

anti-Catholic prejudices.) 16

In November 1868, Grant and Colfax were narrowly elected over the Democratic ticket headed

by New York Governor Horatio Seymour. Days

after the election, the vice president-elect married Ellen Wade, niece of the Ohio senator he had

defeated for the vice-presidential nomination.

The groom was forty-five and the bride ‘‘about

thirty,’’ an attractive and charming woman. By

April 1870 their son Schuyler III was born. This

domestic bliss would in fact contribute to

Colfax’s political undoing. As a married man, he

found less time to socialize with his old friends

in the press, and invitations to the lavish receptions at his new home became harder for reporters to receive, causing considerable resentment

among his old friends on Newspaper Row, who

thought he was putting on airs. Not a wealthy

man, the new vice president could never say no

to a gift. He grew indiscreet in his acceptance of

everything from sterling silver to free railroad

passes. In 1868 Colfax also accepted some railroad stocks from his friend Representative Oakes

Ames, who promised handsome dividends. Neither suspected the political price that the stock

would ultimately exact.17

Plans to Retire

The first Speaker of the House ever elected vice

president (a previous former Speaker, James K.

Polk, had won the presidency in 1844), Colfax

moved easily to the Senate chamber as a man

long familiar with the ways of Capitol Hill. The

Senate proved an easier body to preside over,

leaving him with time on his hands to travel, lecture, and write for the press. The Indianapolis

Journal observed that ‘‘the Vice Presidency is an

elegant office whose occupant must find it his

principal business to try to discover what is the

use of there being such an office at all.’’ Colfax

consulted periodically with President Grant, but,

as one Democratic paper sneered, the vice president carried ‘‘more wind than weight.’’ His distance from the president proved not to be a disadvantage when various scandals began to tarnish Grant and his administration. Speculation

soon arose that Colfax would replace Grant in

the next election. There was much surprise,

therefore, when in September 1870, at age fortyseven, Colfax announced that he intended to retire at the end of his term. ‘‘I will then have had

eighteen years of continuous service at Washington, mostly on a stormy sea—long enough for

any one; and my ambition is all gratified and satisfied.’’ This was an old tactic for Colfax, who

periodically before had announced his retirement and then changed his mind. Some believed
[ 228 ]

SCHUYLER COLFAX

he intended the announcement to further separate himself from the Grant administration and

open the way for the presidential nomination in

1872. But the national press and Senator Henry

Wilson took the announcement at face value, and

before long the movement to replace him went

further than Colfax had anticipated.18

Colfax predictably changed his mind early in

1872 and acceded to the wishes of his friends that

he stand for reelection on ‘‘the old ticket.’’ President Grant may have questioned Colfax’s intentions. In 1871 the president had sent his vice

president an extraordinary letter, informing him

that Secretary of State Hamilton Fish wished to

retire and asking him ‘‘in plain English’’ to give

up the vice-presidency for the State Department.

Grant appeared to be removing Colfax as a potential rival. ‘‘In all my heart I hope you will say

yes,’’ he wrote, ‘‘though I confess the sacrifice

you will be making.’’ Colfax declined, and a year

later when Senator Wilson challenged Colfax for

renomination, the president chose to remain neutral in the contest.19

For a man who had assiduously courted the

press for so long, Colfax found himself abandoned by the Washington correspondents, who

overwhelmingly supported Henry Wilson.

Colfax’s slide in the opinion of the Washington

press corps had its roots in a dinner at the beginning of his term as vice president, when he had

lectured them on the need to exercise their responsibilities prudently, since in their hands lay

the making and unmaking of great men. The reporters had noted archly that Colfax, like other

politicians, had never complained about the

‘‘making’’ of their reputations, just the

‘‘unmaking.’’ Mary Clemmer Ames, a popular

newspaper writer in Washington, attributed

Colfax’s downfall to envy within the press corps.

He did not invite them to his dinners and receptions, so they decided to ‘‘write him down.’’ The

naturally cynical and skeptical reporters, apparently considering the vice president’s sanctimoniousness contradictory to his newfound riches

and opulent lifestyle, sought to take him down

a few pegs. One correspondent likened Colfax to

‘‘a penny dip burning high on the altar among

the legitimate tapers of State.’’ By contrast, the

reporters liked Senator Wilson, who leaked so

freely that they dubbed him ‘‘the official reporter

of the [secret] executive sessions of the Senate.’’

Colfax bitterly charged that Wilson had invited

newspapermen in ‘‘nearly every evening, asking

them to telegraph that he was gaining steadily,

that I did not care for it.’’ When he lost the nomination, the vice president magnanimously shook

Senator Wilson’s hand, but one observer noticed

that his famous smile had become ‘‘a whitened

skeleton of its former self.’’ At least Colfax’s defeat spared him having to run against his old

mentor, Horace Greeley, presidential candidate

that year on a fusion ticket of Democrats and Liberal Republicans.20

The Cre ́dit Mobilier Scandal

As a man still in his forties, Colfax might well

have continued his political career after the vicepresidency, except for his connection to the

worst scandal in nineteenth-century U.S. political history. In September 1872, as the presidential

campaign was getting underway, the New York

Sun broke the four-year-old story about the

Cre ́dit Mobilier, a finance company created to

underwrite construction of the transcontinental

Union Pacific Railroad. Since the railroad depended on federal subsidies, the company had

recruited Massachusetts Representative Oakes

Ames to distribute stock among the key members of Congress who could help them the most.

Some members had paid for the stock at a low

value, others had put no money down at all but

simply let the generous dividends pay for the

stock. On Oakes Ames’ list were the names of

both Schuyler Colfax and Henry Wilson, along

with such other Washington luminaries as Representatives James Garfield and James G. Blaine.

In South Bend, Indiana, Vice President Colfax

made a public statement that completely dissociated himself from Cre ́dit Mobilier, assuring his

listeners that he never owned a dollar of stock

that he had not paid for.21

On January 7, 1873, the House committee investigating the Cre ́dit Mobilier scandal called the

vice president to testify. Ames claimed that, since

Colfax had lacked the money to buy the stock,

the stock had been paid for by its own inflated

dividends. Ames’ notes indicated that Colfax

had received an additional $1,200 in dividends.
[ 229 ]

SCHUYLER COLFAX

On the stand, Colfax swore flatly that he had

never received a dividend check from Ames, but

his testimony was contradicted by evidence from

the files of the House sergeant at arms. Without

missing a beat, Colfax insisted that Ames himself

must have signed and cashed the check. Then the

committee produced evidence from Colfax’s

Washington bank that two days after the payment had been made, he had deposited $1,200

in cash—and the deposit slip was in Colfax’s

own handwriting. Taking two weeks to explain,

Colfax claimed that he had received $200 from

his stepfather (who worked as a clerk in the

House of Representatives) and another $1,000

from George Nesbitt, a campaign contributor by

then deceased. This story seemed so patently

self-serving and far-fetched that even his strongest supporters dismissed it. Making matters

worse, the committee disclosed evidence suggesting that Nesbitt, who manufactured stationery, had bribed Colfax as chairman of the House

Post Office Committee in order to receive government contracts for envelopes. A resolution to

impeach Colfax failed to pass by a mostly partyline vote, in part because just a few weeks remained in his term. The pious statesman had

been exposed, and the public was unforgiving.

Colfax left the vice-presidency in disgrace, becoming a symbol of the sordidness of Gilded Age

politics. Later in 1873, when the failure of the

transcontinental railroads to make their bond

payments triggered a disastrous financial collapse on Wall Street, plunging the nation into a

depression that lasted for the rest of the decade,

one ruined investor muttered that it was ‘‘all

Schuyler Colfax’s fault, damn him.’’ 22

Later Years

Others implicated in Cre ́dit Mobilier survived

politically. Henry Wilson was elected vice president. James Garfield became president in 1880,

and James G. Blaine won the Republican presidential nomination, but not the election, in 1884.

Colfax, however, returned to private life in South

Bend, Indiana. Briefly, there was talk that his

friend William Orton would put up the funds to

enable him to purchase the prestigious New-York

Tribune after Horace Greeley’s death in 1872, but

the deal fell through. Then a new opportunity

developed. Called upon to deliver a short speech

at the unveiling of a statue of Abraham Lincoln

in Springfield, Illinois, Colfax discovered that the

public had an insatiable appetite for information

about their martyred president. He commenced

a lucrative career as a public lecturer (up to

$2,500 per speech) on his wartime relationship

with Lincoln. From time to time, Colfax’s name

surfaced as a candidate for the House or the Senate, or for the presidential nomination, but he declined to become a candidate. ‘‘You can’t imagine the repugnance with which I now view the

service of the many headed public,’’ he wrote,

‘‘with all its toils, its innumerable exactions of all

kinds, the never ending work and worry, the explanations about everything which the public

think they have a right to, the lack of independence as to your goings and comings, the misunderstandings, the envyings, backbitings, etc.,

etc., etc.’’ On January 13, 1885, on his way to a

speaking engagement in Iowa, Colfax was stricken by a heart attack and died while waiting at

a railroad station in Mankato, Minnesota, where

the temperature dipped to thirty below zero. Unrecognized by those around him, the former

Speaker and vice president was identified only

by papers in his pocket.23

Doggerel from a critical newspaper perhaps

served as the epitaph for Schuyler Colfax’s rise

to national prominence and precipitous fall from

grace:

A beautiful smiler came in our midst,

Too lively and fair to remain;

They stretched him on racks till the soul of

Colfax

Flapped up into Heaven again,

May the fate of poor Schuyler warn men of a

smiler,

Who dividends gets on the brain! 24
[ 230 ]

NOTES 1 James G. Blaine, Twenty Years of Congress: From Lincoln

to Garfield (Norwich, CT, 1884), 1:497–98; Neil MacNeil,

Forge of Democracy: The House of Representatives (New York,

1963), p. 69; Allan G. Bogue, The Congressman’s Civil War

(New York, 1989), p. 117. 2Willard H. Smith, Schuyler Colfax: The Changing Fortunes

of a Political Idol (Indianapolis, 1952), pp. 1–7; Albert D. Richardson, A Personal History of Ulysses S. Grant with a Portrait

and Sketch of Schuyler Colfax (Hartford, CT, 1868), p. 553. 3 Smith, pp. 13–16; Edward Winslow Martin [James

Dabney McCabe], The Life and Public Service of Schuyler

Colfax (New York, 1868), p. 15. 4Richardson, pp. 554–55; Donald A. Ritchie, Press Gallery:

Congress and the Washington Correspondents (Cambridge,

MA, 1991), p. 43. 5William E. Gienapp, The Origins of the Republican Party,

1852–1856 (New York, 1987), pp. 109, 180–81, 240–41, 245. 6 Ibid, p. 359; Martin [James Dabney McCabe], p. 109.

7 Charles Edward Russell, Blaine of Maine: His Life and

Times (New York, 1931), p. 237; Bogue, p. 116; David Herbert Donald, Lincoln (New York, 1995), pp. 468–69. 8Benjamin Perley Poore, Perley’s Reminiscences of Sixty

Years in the National Metropolis (Philadelphia, 1887) 2:211;

McNeil, pp. 69, 171; James G. Blaine, Twenty Years of Congress: From Lincoln to Garfield (Norwich, CT, 1884), 1:325–

26, 497–98; Albert G. Riddle, Recollections of War Times:

Reminiscences of Men and Events in Washington, 1860–1865

(New York, 1895), p. 222. 9Ritchie, pp. 63–64, 67.

10Bogue, pp. 116, 125.

11 Smith, pp. 202–9.

12Richardson, p. 559; Michael Les Benedict, A Compromise

of Principle: Congressional Republicans and Reconstruction

1863–1869 (New York, 1974), p. 130; Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877 (New York,

1988), pp. 181, 226. 13Benedict, pp. 168, 255; Smith, pp. 222–26.

14 Foner, p. 338; Smith, p. 284, Russell, p. 237.

15Martin [James Dabney McCabe], pp. 246–47, 253.

16Russell, p. 237; Richardson, p. 560; Tyler Anbinder, Nativism and Slavery: The Northern Know Nothings and the Politics of the 1850s (New York, 1992), pp. 271–74. 17 Smith, pp. 308–9, 312; Mark Wahlgren Summers, The

Era of Good Stealings (New York, 1993), p. 66; McNeil, p. 198. 18 Smith, pp. 316–17, 324, 326, 333; Ernest A. McKay,

Henry Wilson: Practical Radical: A Portrait of a Politician (Port

Washington, NY, 1971), p. 225. 19George S. Sirgiovanni, ‘‘Dumping the Vice President:

An Historical Overview and Analysis,’’ Presidential Studies

Quarterly 24 (Fall 1994): 769–71. 20 Poore, 2:243; Ritchie, pp. 96, 106; Richard H. Abbott,

Cobbler in Congress: The Life of Henry Wilson, 1812–1875 (Lexington, KY, 1972), p. 243; Smith, pp. 358–59; Summers, Era

of Good Stealings, p. 66; Mark Wahlgren Summers, The Press

Gang: Newspapers and Politics, 1865–1878 (Chapel Hill, NC,

1994), pp. 152–53. 21 Smith, pp. 369–74; Ritchie, pp. 102–3.

22 Smith, pp. 374–416; Russell, pp. 243–45; Sean Dennis

Cashman, America in the Gilded Age: From the Death of Lincoln

to the Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (New York, 1984), p. 197;

Summers, The Era of Good Stealings, pp. 52–53, 66, 242; see

also W. Allan Wilbur, ‘‘The Credit Mobilier Scandal, 1873,’’

in Congress Investigates: A Documented History, 1792–1974,

ed. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. and Roger Bruns (New York,

1975), pp. 1849–63. 23Merrill D. Peterson, Lincoln in American Memory (New

York, 1994), p. 138; Smith, pp. 422, 430, 438–39; O.J. Hollister, Life of Schuyler Colfax (New York, 1886), pp. 385–91. 24 Summers, The Press Gang, p. 154.
[ 231 ]

Chapter 18

HENRY WILSON

1873–1875
HENRY WILSON
[ 233 ]

Chapter 18

HENRY WILSON

18th Vice President: 1873–1875

He was not learned, he was not eloquent, he was not logical in a high sense, he was not always

consistent in his political actions, and yet he gained the confidence of the people, and he retained it to

the end of his life.

—SENATOR GEORGE BOUTWELL

Long before public opinion polling, Vice President Henry Wilson earned recognition as a master at reading the public’s mind. During his

eighteen years in the United States Senate, Wilson traveled relentlessly through his home state

of Massachusetts. A typical day would find him

visiting shops and factories around Boston. Then

he would board the night train to Springfield,

where he would rouse some political friend at

2 a.m. and spend the rest of the night talking

over current issues, departing at dawn to catch

the early train to Northampton or Greenfield.

‘‘After a week or two spent in that way,’’ his

friend George F. Hoar observed,

never giving his own opinion, talking as if he

were all things to all men, seeming to hesitate

and falter and be frightened, so if you had met

him and talked with him you would have said

. . . that there was no more thought, nor more

steadiness of purpose, or backbone in him than

in an easterly cloud; but at length when the time

came, and he had got ready, the easterly cloud

seemed suddenly to have been charged with an

electric fire and a swift and resistless bolt flashed

out, and the righteous judgment of Massachusetts came from his lips.1

Such systematic sampling of public opinion

enabled Wilson to represent the prevailing sentiments of his constituents and to make remarkably accurate political prognoses. This skill

helped him build political alliances and parties

and win elections. It also added an element of

opportunism to Wilson’s political maneuvering

that brought him distrust, even from his political

allies. Yet he did not simply follow the winds of

public opinion whichever way they blew.

Throughout his long political career, Wilson remained remarkably consistent in his support for

human freedom and equality of rights for all

men and women regardless of their color or

class.

The Rise of Jeremiah Jones Colbath

Henry Wilson’s life resembled a Dickens

novel. Like Pip, David Copperfield, and Nicholas Nickleby, he overcame a childhood of hardship and privation through the strength of his

character, his ambition, and occasional assistance

from others. He was born Jeremiah Jones

Colbath on February 16, 1812, in Farmington,

New Hampshire. His shiftless and intemperate

father named the child after a wealthy bachelor

neighbor in vain hope of inheritance. The boy

grew to hate the name, and when he came of age

had it legally changed to Henry Wilson, inspired

either by a biography of the Philadelphia school

teacher Henry Wilson or by a portrait of the Rev.

Henry Wilson in a volume on English clergymen.

The Colbaths lived from hand to mouth; ‘‘Want

sat by my cradle,’’ he later recalled. ‘‘I know

what it is to ask a mother for bread when she

has none to give.’’ 2
[ 234 ]

HENRY WILSON

When the boy was ten years old, his father apprenticed him to a nearby farmer, binding him

to work until his twenty-first birthday. The apprenticeship supposedly allowed one month of

school every year, so long as there was no work

to be done, but he rarely had more than a few

days of school at any time. Lacking formal education, he compensated by reading every book

in the farmhouse and borrowing other books

from neighbors. He read copiously from history,

biography and philosophy. Also as part of his

self-improvement efforts, at age nineteen he took

a pledge of total abstinence from alcohol, which

he maintained thereafter. In 1833 he reached

twenty-one and was freed from his apprenticeship. Long estranged from his parents, the newly

renamed Henry Wilson set out for new horizons.

He hunted for employment in the mills of New

Hampshire and then walked one hundred miles

from Farmington to Boston. Just outside of Boston he settled in the town of Natick, where he

learned shoemaking from a friend.3

The ambitious young cobbler worked so hard

that by 1836 his health required he get some rest.

Gathering his savings, Wilson traveled to Washington, D.C., to see the federal government. His

attention was caught instead by the sight of

slaves laboring in the fields of Maryland and Virginia and of slave pens and auctions within view

of the Capitol Building. He left Washington determined ‘‘to give all that I had . . . to the cause

of emancipation in America,’’ he said. Wilson

committed himself to the antislavery movement

and years later took pride in introducing the legislation in Congress that ended slavery in the

District of Columbia. Home from his journey, he

enrolled briefly in three academies and then

taught school for a year, falling in love with one

of his students, Harriet Malvina Howe. They

were married three years later, in 1840, when she

turned sixteen.4

From Shoemaker to Politician

Although he harbored political aspirations,

Wilson returned to the shoemaking business.

Even during the economic recession that swept

the country in the late 1830s, he prospered.

Abandoning the cobbler’s bench himself, he

hired contract laborers and supervised their

work, vastly increasing his production. As a factory owner, Wilson was able to build a handsome house for his family and to devote his attention more fully to civic affairs.5

An active member of the Natick Debating Society, Wilson became swept up in the leading reform issues of his day, temperance, educational

reform, and antislavery, and these in turn shaped

his politics. Although the Democratic party in

Massachusetts appealed to workers and small

businessmen like Wilson, he was drawn instead

to the more upper-crust Whig party because it

embraced the social reforms that he supported.

At a time when the Whigs were seeking to expand their political base, Wilson’s working-class

background and image as the ‘‘Natick Cobbler’’

appealed to the party. During the 1830s and

1840s, the Whigs ran him repeatedly for the state

legislature, and he won seats in its upper and

lower houses. Unlike many other Whigs, Wilson

mingled easily in the state’s factories and saloons. He gathered political lieutenants around

the state and invested some of his shoemaking

earnings in the Boston Republican, which he

edited from 1848 to 1851. He also joined the

Natick militia, rising to brigadier general and

proudly claiming the title ‘‘General Wilson’’

through the rest of his long political career.6

As a self-made man, Henry Wilson felt contempt for aristocrats, whether Boston Brahmins

or southern planters. ‘‘I for one don’t want the

endorsement of the ‘best society’ in Boston until

I am dead,’’ he once declared, ‘‘—for it endorses

everything that is dead.’’ He reserved even greater contempt for aristocratic southerners who

lived off the labor of their slaves, swearing that

slavery must be ended. ‘‘Freedom and slavery

are now arrayed against each other,’’ he declared; ‘‘we must destroy slavery, or it will destroy liberty.’’ Although the Whigs promoted

numerous reforms, as a national party they included many southerners who supported slavery. In Massachusetts, the party split between

‘‘Cotton Whigs,’’ with political and economic ties

between the New England cotton mills and the

southern cotton plantations, and the ‘‘Conscience

Whigs,’’ who placed freedom ahead of patronage

and profits. Sensing the changing tides of public

opinion, Wilson predicted that, if antislavery
[ 235 ]

HENRY WILSON

supporters in all the old parties could bind together to form a new party, they could sweep

the northern elections and displace southerners

from power in Washington. In 1848 he abandoned the Whigs for the new Free Soil party,

which nominated Martin Van Buren for president on an antislavery platform.7

A Residue of Distrust

The Free Soil party proved to be premature.

Wary voters defeated Wilson in his campaigns

as the Free Soil candidate for the U.S. House of

Representatives in 1852 and governor in 1853.

Sadly disappointed in 1853 at the defeat of a new

state constitution for which he had labored long

and hard, Wilson responded by secretly joining

the Order of the Star Spangled Banner, also

known as the American or Know-Nothing

party—an anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant, nativist movement. Given the collapse of the established parties, the Know-Nothings flourished

briefly, offering Wilson an unsavory opportunity

to promote his personal ambitions—despite the

party’s conflict with his political ideals of racial

and religious equality. At the same time, Wilson

called for the creation of ‘‘one great Republican

party’’ in opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska

Act, which threatened to open the western territories to slavery. In 1854, he ran as the Republican candidate for governor, but his strange maneuvering during and after the campaign convinced many Republicans that Wilson had sold

them out by throwing the gubernatorial election

to the Know-Nothings in return for being elected

a U.S. senator by the Know-Nothings in the Massachusetts legislature, with the aid of Free Soilers

and Democrats. Although Wilson identified himself as a Republican, his first Senate election left

a residue of distrust that he would spend the rest

of his life trying to live down.8

In the Senate, Henry Wilson was inevitably

compared with his handsome, dignified, scholarly senior colleague from Massachusetts,

Charles Sumner. An idealist and fierce foe of

slavery, Sumner laced his speeches with classical

allusions and gave every indication that he

would appear quite natural in the toga of a

Roman senator. Henry Wilson would have

seemed ludicrous in Roman garb or in attempting to match Sumner’s grandiloquent addresses.

Listeners described Wilson instead as ‘‘an earnest man’’ who presented ‘‘the cold facts of a

case’’ without relying on flamboyant oratory.

George Boutwell, who served with him in Massachusetts and national politics, judged Wilson

an especially effective speaker during elections

and estimated that during the course of Wilson’s

career he spoke to more people than anyone else

alive. Boutwell concluded of Wilson:

He was not learned, he was not eloquent, he was

not logical in a high sense, he was not always

consistent in his political actions, and yet he

gained the confidence of the people, and he retained it to the end of his life. His success may

have been due in part to the circumstance that

he was not far removed from the mass of the people in the particulars named, and that he acted

in a period when fidelity to the cause of freedom

and activity in its promotion satisfied the public

demand.9

Despite their different backgrounds and personalities, Wilson and Sumner agreed strongly

on their opposition to slavery and pooled their

efforts to destroy the ‘‘peculiar institution.’’ Even

when people distrusted Wilson’s wily political

maneuvering or disdained his plebeian roots,

they gave him credit for showing backbone in his

fight against slavery. Massachusetts returned

him to the Senate for three more terms, until his

election as vice president.

Chairman of the Military Affairs Committee

During the 1850s, Wilson fought from the minority. When the southern states seceded in 1860

and 1861 and the Republicans moved into the

majority, Henry Wilson assumed the chairmanship of the Senate Committee on Military Affairs,

a key legislative post during the Civil War. In the

months that Congress stood in recess, impatient

Radical Republicans demanded quick military

action against the South. In July 1861, at the

war’s first battle, along Bull Run creek in Manassas, Virginia, Wilson rode out with other senators, representatives, newspaper reporters, and

members of Washington society to witness what

they anticipated would be a Union victory. In his

carriage, Senator Wilson carried a large hamper

of sandwiches to distribute among the troops.
[ 236 ]

HENRY WILSON

Unexpectedly, however, the Confederates routed

the Union army. Wilson’s carriage was crushed

and he was forced to beat an inglorious retreat

back to Washington.10

Defeat at the ‘‘picnic battle,’’ sobered many in

the North who had talked of a short, easy war.

In seeking to assign blame for the debacle, rumors spread that Wilson himself might have

tipped off the enemy through his friendly relationship with a Washington woman, Mrs. Rose

O’Neal Greenhow. When she was arrested as a

Confederate spy, ‘‘the Wild Rose’’ held a packet

of love letters signed ‘‘H.’’ But the letters were

not in Wilson’s handwriting, and Mrs.

Greenhow knew many other senators, members

of Lincoln’s cabinet, and other highly placed

sources of information.11

Wilson went back to Massachusetts to raise a

volunteer infantry, in which he wore the uniform

of colonel. However, once the regiment reached

Washington, he resigned his commission and returned to his Senate seat. Wilson also served as

a volunteer aide-de-camp to General George

McClellan, who commanded the Union armies.

When he reported to the general’s camp, he was

ordered to accompany other officers on a horseback inspection of the capital’s fortifications. As

the Boston newspaper correspondent Benjamin

Perley Poore observed, ‘‘Unaccustomed to

horsemanship, the ride of thirty miles was too

much for the Senator, who kept his bed for a

week, and then resigned his staff position.’’ Still,

this brief association made Wilson more sympathetic to McClellan than were other Radical Republicans in Congress. The Radicals established

a Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War,

in part to bypass Wilson’s Military Affairs Committee in scrutinizing and attacking the various

officers of the Union army. Wilson at first defended the army, arguing that Democratic generals were opposed to the Republican administration but not to the war. Over time, he grew

disheartened by the protracted war and impatient with McClellan’s overly cautious military

tactics. However, he made it a point, as committee chair, to avoid public criticism of the military

operations of any general.12

Wilson and the Radicals

Henry Wilson soon stood among the inner circle of Radical Republicans in Congress beside

Charles Sumner, Benjamin Wade, Thaddeus Stevens, and Henry Winter Davis. He introduced

bills that freed slaves in the District of Columbia,

permitted African Americans to join the Union

army, and provided equal pay to black and

white soldiers. Wilson pressed President Lincoln

to issue an emancipation proclamation and worried that the final product left many people still

enslaved in the border states. Known as one of

the most persistent newshunters in Washington,

Wilson brought knowledgeable newspaper reporters straight from the battlefield to the White

House to brief the president. Despite his intimacy with Lincoln, Wilson considered him too

moderate and underestimated his abilities. The

senator was once overheard denouncing Lincoln

while sitting in the White House waiting room.

He hoped that Lincoln would withdraw from the

Republican ticket in 1864 in favor of a more radical presidential candidate.13

Following Lincoln’s assassination, Wilson initially hoped that the new president, his former

Senate colleague Andrew Johnson, would pursue the Radical Republican agenda for reconstruction of the South. He was deeply disappointed in Johnson’s endorsement of a speedy

return of the Confederate states to the Union

without any protection for the newly freed

slaves. When the Thirty-ninth Congress convened in December 1865, Wilson introduced the

first civil rights initiative of the postwar Congress. His bill aimed at outlawing the Black

Codes and other forms of racial discrimination

in the former Confederacy but, deemed too extreme by the non-Radical Republicans, it was defeated. Wilson also proposed that the Constitution be amended to prohibit any effort to limit

the right to vote by race.14

Johnson’s more lenient policies for Reconstruction and his veto of the Freedmen’s Bureau bill

and other congressional efforts to protect black

southerners eventually drove moderate Republicans into an alliance with the Radicals. Over

time, Wilson saw his objectives added to the

Constitution as the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and
[ 237 ]

HENRY WILSON

Fifteenth amendments. He supported the use of

federal troops to enforce congressional Reconstruction, to permit freedmen to vote, and to establish Republican governments in the southern

states. When Johnson stubbornly resisted the

Radical programs, Wilson endorsed efforts to

impeach the president. He accused the president

of ‘‘unworthy, if not criminal’’ motives in resisting the will of the people on Reconstruction and

cast his vote to remove Johnson from office.

However, seven moderate Republican senators

broke ranks with their party, and the Radicals

failed by a single vote to achieve the two-thirds

necessary to remove the president.15

National Ambitions

Prior to the presidential election of 1868, Henry

Wilson made an extended speaking tour

throughout the southern states. Many journalists

interpreted this effort as a means of promoting

himself as a presidential candidate. In fact, Wilson supported U.S. Grant, the hero of Appomattox, for president and sought the vice-presidential nomination for himself. Always a political mechanic bent on building coalitions, Wilson

felt certain that the southern Republican party

could survive only if it became biracial. ‘‘I do not

want to see a white man’s party nor a black

man’s party,’’ he told a black audience in New

Orleans. ‘‘I warn you to-night, as I do the black

men of this country everywhere, to remember

this: that while a black man is as good as a white

man, a white man is as good as a black man. See

to it while you are striving to lift yourselves up,

that you do not strive to pull anybody else

down.’’ By urging southern blacks to take a conciliatory, nonviolent approach toward those who

had so recently enslaved and oppressed them,

Wilson stunned his Radical Republican colleagues in Congress. ‘‘Wilson is a ——————

fool!’’ wrote Ohio Senator Ben Wade. Nevertheless, southern delegates to the Republican convention generally supported Wilson’s

candidacy.16

On the first ballot for vice president at the Chicago convention, Ben Wade led with Wilson not

far behind. That ballot marked Wilson’s peak,

and he lost support steadily on subsequent ballots. When House Speaker Schuyler Colfax

gained strength, Wilson’s delegates switched to

Colfax, giving him the nomination. Grant’s election brought expectations that Wilson might be

named to the cabinet, but the senator asked that

his name be removed from consideration, citing

his wife’s critically ill health—she died in 1870.

Still, Wilson remained an influential and frequently consulted senator throughout Grant’s

first term.

Grant’s Second Vice President

By Grant’s inauguration in 1869, Massachusetts boasted the most powerful delegation in

Congress. Wilson chaired the Senate Military Affairs Committee, while Sumner chaired Foreign

Relations. In the House, four Massachusetts representatives chaired committees, including Appropriations and Foreign Affairs. Commenting

on the state’s two senators, Massachusetts Representative George F. Hoar noted that, while

Sumner was a man of great learning, great principle, and great ego, ‘‘Wilson supplied almost everything that Sumner lacked.’’ Wilson was the

more practical politician, with his finger on the

public pulse. He recognized the value of party

organization and ‘‘did not disdain the art and diplomacies of a partisan.’’ Wilson also combined

practical politics with a strong inclination for reform. He spoke out for civil rights for the freedmen, voting rights for women, federal aid to education, federal regulation of business, protection

of women, and prohibition of liquor. Hoar

judged that no other man in the Senate, ‘‘not

even Sumner, had more influence over his colleagues’’ than did Henry Wilson.17

During Grant’s first term, the imperious Sumner challenged the new president and defeated

his plans for incorporating Santo Domingo into

the United States. President Grant retaliated by

goading the Senate Republican caucus to remove

Sumner as chair of the Foreign Relations Committee (Wilson spoke in defense of retaining

Sumner’s chairmanship). A wounded Sumner

opposed Grant’s renomination in 1872, raising

concerns that he and his allies might bolt to the

Liberal Republican-Democratic fusion ticket

headed by the eccentric newspaper editor Horace Greeley. After Vice President Schuyler

Colfax released word that he did not intend to
[ 238 ]

HENRY WILSON

stand for a second term, many Republican leaders calculated that selecting Wilson for vice president would outflank Sumner and strengthen

Grant with workers and with the ‘‘old anti-slavery guard.’’ Saluting the working-class origins of

their ticket, Republican posters showed idealized

versions of Grant, ‘‘the Galena Tanner,’’ and Wilson, ‘‘the Natick Shoemaker,’’ attired in workers’

aprons.18

Just as the presidential campaign got underway in September 1872, the New York Sun published news of the Cre ́dit Mobilier scandal, offering evidence that key members of Congress had

accepted railroad stock at little or no cost, presumably to guarantee their support for legislation that would finance construction of a transcontinental line. On the list were the names of

Grant’s retiring vice president, Colfax, and his

new running mate, Henry Wilson. Newspaper

correspondent Henry Van Ness Boynton sent the

New York Times a dispatch reporting that Senator

Wilson had made a ‘‘full and absolute denial’’

that he had ever owned Cre ́dit Mobilier stock.

In truth, Wilson had purchased the stock in his

wife’s name but had later returned it. Called to

testify before a House investigating committee,

Boynton recounted how he had gone to see Wilson to ask if he would deny the charges against

him and that Wilson had given him an absolute

denial, knowing that he would file the story that

night. Wilson did not contradict the reporter.

‘‘General Boynton is a man of character and

truth,’’ he told the committee, ‘‘and I should take

his word.’’ Although the committee cleared Wilson of any wrongdoing in taking the stock, it

concluded that the information Wilson had given

the Times had been ‘‘calculated to convey to the

public an erroneous impression.’’ 19

The Ravages of Ill Health

The Cre ́dit Mobilier scandal did not dissuade

voters from reelecting Grant and making Henry

Wilson vice president. Wilson helped the ticket

by embarking on an ambitious speaking tour

that took him some ten thousand miles to deliver

ninety-six addresses, ruining his health in the

process. In May 1873, the sixty-one-year-old Wilson suffered a stroke that caused him to lose control of his facial muscles and to speak thickly

whenever fatigued. Although doctors ordered

him to rest, the advice went against his nature.

A friend wrote, ‘‘You know he was never still

for five minutes, and it is more difficult for him

than for most persons to sit quietly and dream

away the time.’’ After spending the summer

recuperating in Massachusetts, Wilson traveled

to Washington in December for the opening of

the new Congress, but by January his poor health

forced him to return home once again. Instead

of presiding over the Senate, he spent his time

writing a multi-volume history of the rise and

fall of the slave power, memorializing his own

role in the great events of the Civil War and Reconstruction.20

Wilson’s ill health kept him from playing any

role of consequence as vice president but did not

suppress his political concerns and ambitions.

He lamented that a ‘‘Counter-Revolution’’ was

overtaking Reconstruction and urged his old

antislavery veterans to speak out against efforts

to limit the rights of the freedmen. Wilson

blamed the decay of Reconstruction on the Grant

administration. According to Representative

James Garfield, the vice president had asserted

that ‘‘Grant is now more unpopular than Andrew Johnson was in his darkest days; that

Grant’s appointments had been getting worse

and worse; that he is still struggling for a third

term; in short that he is the millstone around the

neck of our party that would sink it out of sight.’’

Yet Wilson could not bring himself to admit that

his own involvement in the Cre ́dit Mobilier scandal, as well as the involvement of other members

of Congress in the many other scandals of the

era, had dimmed the moral fervor of the antislavery movement and congressional Reconstruction, thus undermining public confidence in an

active federal government. For the rest of the

nineteenth century, political trends moved away

from Wilson’s cherished reforms. A new generation of genteel reformers advocated limited government, civil service reform, and other administrative solutions and abandoned support for the

voting and civil rights of the freedmen, women’s

rights, and other social reforms that Wilson

esteemed.21

In the spring of 1875, Vice President Wilson

made a six-week tour of the South, raising sus-
[ 239 ]

HENRY WILSON

picions that he intended to ‘‘advertise himself’’

for the presidential nomination the next year. He

returned home optimistic about the chances that

the Republicans could build political and economic ties to conservative southerners by appointing a southern ex-Whig to the cabinet and

by offering economic aid to southern business

(policies later adopted by the next president,

Rutherford B. Hayes). Although Grant desired a

third term, Wilson’s friends felt sure that the vice

president could win the presidential nomination

and election.22

Wilson’s great ambition went unfulfilled. That

fall, he consulted Dr. William Hammond, complaining of pain in the back of his head and an

inability to sleep. ‘‘I enjoined rest from mental

labor,’’ the doctor noted, but the vice president

replied that he could not comply with those

wishes ‘‘as fully as desirable.’’ Dr. Hammond

saw Wilson again in early November and noted

‘‘vertigo, thickness of speech, twitching of the facial muscles, irregularity of respiration, and the

action of the heart, slight difficulty of swallowing, and intense pain in the back of the head and

nape of the neck.’’ He observed that the vice

president’s ‘‘hands were in almost constant motion and he could not sit longer than a few seconds without rising and pacing the floor, or

changing to another chair.’’ Wilson insisted that

he must travel to Washington for the new Congress but promised his doctor not to work too

hard. He told a friend that ‘‘he would at least

be able to preside at the opening of the Senate,

and perhaps through most of the session.’’ 23

During the nineteenth century, many members

of Congress lived in boardinghouses and hotels

where the plumbing left much to be desired. To

accommodate them, the Capitol provided luxurious bathing rooms in its basement for the

House and Senate. There members could soak in

large marble tubs, enjoy a massage, and have

their hair cut and beards trimmed. On November

10, 1875, Wilson went down to soak in the tubs.

Soon after leaving the bath, he was struck by paralysis and carried to a bed in his vice-presidential office, just off the Senate floor. Within a

few days, he felt strong enough to receive visitors and seemed to be gaining strength. When

he awoke in his Capitol office on November 22,

he was informed that Senator Orris Ferry of Connecticut had died. Wilson lamented the passing

of his generation, commenting ‘‘that makes

eighty-three dead with whom I have sat in the

Senate.’’ Shortly thereafter, he rolled over and

quietly died, at age sixty-three. His body lay in

state in the Rotunda, and his funeral was conducted in the Senate chamber, the vice-presidential chair arrayed in black crepe.

In his memory, the Senate in 1885 placed a

marble bust of Wilson by the sculptor Daniel

Chester French in the room where the vice president died.24 There the Senate also installed a

bronze plaque, with an inscription written by his

old friend and colleague, George F. Hoar:

IN THIS ROOM

HENRY WILSON

VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

AND A SENATOR FOR EIGHTEEN YEARS,

DIED NOVEMBER 22, 1875

The son of a farm laborer, never at school more

than twelve months, in youth a journeyman

shoemaker, he raised himself to the high places

of fame, honor and power, and by unwearied

study made himself an authority in the history

of his country and of liberty and an eloquent public speaker to whom Senate and people eagerly

listened. He dealt with and controlled vast public

expenditure during a great civil war, yet lived

and died poor, and left to his grateful countrymen the memory of an honorable public service,

and a good name far better than riches.25
[ 240 ]

NOTES 1George F. Hoar, Autobiography of Seventy Years (New

York, 1903), 1:218. 2Richard H. Abbott, Cobbler in Congress: The Life of Henry

Wilson, 1812–1875 (Lexington, KY, 1972), pp. 1–6; Elias

Nason and Thomas Russell, The Life and Public Services of

Henry Wilson, Late Vice-President of the United States (New

York, 1969; reprint of 1876 ed.), p. 17. 3 Nason and Russell, pp. 18–21; Ernest A. McKay, Henry

Wilson: Practical Radical: A Portrait of a Politician (Port Washington, NY, 1971), pp. 6–12. 4 Nason and Russell, pp. 29–34; Abbott, p. 11.

5McKay, Henry Wilson: Practical Radical, p. 16; Abbott, pp.

14–15. 6Abbott, pp. 30, 36.

7 Ibid, pp. 27, 53.

8 Ibid., pp. 46–63; Ernest A. McKay, ‘‘Henry Wilson: Unprincipled Know Nothing,’’ Mid-America 46 (January 1964):

29–37; David Herbert Donald, Charles Sumner and the Coming of the Civil War (Chicago, 1960), p. 268; William E.

Gianapp, The Origins of the Republican Party, 1852–1856

(New York, 1987), pp. 135–36. 9Allan G. Bogue, The Earnest Men: Republicans of the Civil

War Senate (Ithaca, NY, 1981), pp. 33–34; Abbott, p. 18;

George S. Boutwell, Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs (New York, 1968; reprint of 1902 ed.), 1:228–29. 10Abbott, p. 116; McKay, Henry Wilson: Practical Radical,

pp. 146–47. 11Abbott, p. 117; Margaret Leech, Reveille in Washington,

1860–1865 (New York, 1941), pp. 134–38. 12Abbott, pp. 125–26; McKay, Henry Wilson: Practical Radical, p. 161; Benjamin Perley Poore, Perley’s Reminiscences of

Sixty Years in the National Metropolis (Philadelphia, 1887),

2:99.

13Wilson also introduced a bill to permit women to vote

and hold office in the District. Bogue, pp. 109–10, 152, 167,

169; T. Harry Williams, Lincoln and the Radicals (Madison,

WI, 1941), pp. 161, 309, 316; J. Cutler Andrews, The North

Reports the Civil War (Pittsburgh, 1955), p. 332. 14Earl M. Maltz, Civil Rights, The Constitution, and Congress, 1863–1869 (Lawrence, KS, 1990), pp. 43, 148; Michael

Les Benedict, A Compromise of Principle: Congressional Republicans and Reconstruction, 1863–1869 (New York, 1974), p. 24. 15Abbott, pp. 200–202.

16 Ibid., pp. 196–99; Benedict, pp. 259–60.

17 Hoar, pp. 213, 215, 217–18; Abbott, p. 225. Henry Wilson, History of Antislavery Measures of the Thirty-Seventh and

Thirty-Eighth Congresses (Boston, 1865); History of the Reconstruction Measures of the Thirty-Ninth and Fortieth Congress

(Chicago, 1868); History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power

in America, 3 vols. (Boston, 1872–1877). 18William B. Hesseltine, Ulysses S. Grant, Politician (New

York, 1935), pp. 276–77; McKay, Henry Wilson: Practical Radical, pp. 222–23.

19Donald A. Ritchie, Press Gallery: Congress and the Washington Correspondents (Cambridge, MA, 1991), pp. 105–6. 20Abbott, p. 249.

21Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877 (New York, 1988), p. 527; William S.

McFeely, Grant: A Biography (New York, 1981), p. 406; see

also Mark Wahlgren Summers, The Era of Good Stealings

(New York, 1993). 22Abbott, p. 255.

23William A. Hammond, On The Cause of Vice-President

Wilson’s Death (Cambridge, MA, 1875), pp. 7–8. 24 In 1886 the Senate began the practice of acquiring marble busts of all former vice presidents. 25 Hoar, p. 219.
[ 241 ]

Chapter 19

WILLIAM ALMON WHEELER

1877–1881
WILLIAM A. WHEELER
[ 243 ]

Chapter 19

WILLIAM ALMON WHEELER

19th Vice President: 1877–1881

Who is Wheeler?

—RUTHERFORD B. HAYES

In the wake of the Grant-era scandals, both the

Republican and Democratic parties searched for

untarnished candidates as they approached the

presidential election of 1876. Democrats chose

one of their most prominent leaders, New York

Governor Samuel J. Tilden, who had won national attention by taking on the Tweed Ring in

New York City. Republicans passed over their

party’s bigger names, men who had been stained

by various expose ́s in the press, and settled instead on a ticket of Ohio Governor Rutherford

B. Hayes and New York Representative William

A. Wheeler. Although neither man was very well

known to the nation, both had reputations for

scrupulous honesty and independence. If history

remembers William Wheeler at all, it is for his

character. In his introduction to John F. Kennedy’s Profiles in Courage, the historian Allan

Nevins reproduced a colloquy between Wheeler

and Senator Roscoe Conkling, the Republican

political boss of New York. ‘‘Wheeler, if you will

act with us, there is nothing in the gift of the State

of New York to which you may not reasonably

aspire,’’ Conkling tempted; to which Wheeler replied, ‘‘Mr. Conkling, there is nothing in the gift

of the State of New York which will compensate

me for the forfeiture of my self-respect.’’ 1

A Cautious Politician

Among the stranger individuals to occupy the

vice-presidency, William Almon Wheeler seems

to have been scarred by his father’s ill health,

which left him neurotically obsessed with his

own well-being. An excessively cautious politician—to the point of timidity—he straddled the

various factions in his party, avoided all commitments, and advanced himself politically while

covering himself with obscurity. William Wheeler was born on June 30, 1819, in the upstate New

York town of Malone, near the Canadian border.

His father, Almon Wheeler, had attended the

University of Vermont and was a promising

young attorney and local postmaster who died

at the age of thirty-seven, when William was just

eight years old. Left in debt, his mother, Eliza,

took in boarders from the nearby Franklin Academy to support her two children. William attended the academy, farmed, and did whatever

he could to save money for college. At nineteen,

with the help of a loan from a friend, he entered

the University of Vermont in Burlington. There

he studied for two years, at times living on bread

and water, until ‘‘an affection of the eyes’’ caused

him to drop out.2

He returned to Malone, taught school and

studied law. In 1845, shortly after he was admitted to the bar, he married one of his former students, Mary King. A Whig, Wheeler was soon

running for office. He became town clerk, school

commissioner, and school inspector. In later

years he recalled that the thirty dollars a year he

earned as town clerk, recording deeds and laying

out roads, ‘‘were of more value to me than the

thousands I have since attained.’’ He served as

district attorney for Franklin County from 1846

to 1849 and, from 1850 to 1851, served in the state
[ 244 ]

WILLIAM A. WHEELER

assembly, where he chaired the ways and means

committee. Joining the new Republican party, he

moved to the state senate in 1858 and was elected

its president pro tempore. Wheeler also conducted a private law practice until ‘‘throat trouble’’ interfered with his courtroom advocacy and

convinced him to abandon the law in favor of

running a local bank and serving as a railroad

trustee, positions that he held until ‘‘driven from

business in 1865, by broken health.’’ 3

A Silent Member of the House

Wheeler was elected to serve in the U.S. House

of Representatives from 1861 to 1863. He then returned to New York, where he chaired the state

constitutional convention, a prestigious body

whose members included two future presidential candidates, Horace Greeley and Samuel

J. Tilden. Although Wheeler spoke infrequently,

his words carried weight, and he gained high

marks for fairness as presiding officer. In 1868

he again won election to the House, where he

chaired the Committee on Pacific Railroads. It

was at this time that Iowa Representative Oakes

Ames, acting as an agent for the Cre ́dit Mobilier,

the construction company for the Union Pacific

Railroad, began spreading railroad stock among

high-ranking members of Congress, ‘‘where it

would do the most good.’’ Wheeler not only refused all stocks offered to him, but resigned his

chairmanship to avoid further temptation. In

1872, when the Cre ́dit Mobilier scandal broke in

the newspapers, Wheeler remained clean as

some of the most prominent members of Congress were caught with the stock. His rectitude

even inspired him to oppose an appropriation to

construct a post office in his home town of

Malone.

Wheeler stayed aloof from the New York state

political machine run by Senator Roscoe

Conkling. In 1872, Conkling maneuvered to

make Wheeler Speaker of the House in place of

his hated rival, James G. Blaine. Wheeler declined to have anything to do with the scheme

and supported Blaine, who apparently had

promised, but never delivered on the promise,

to make Wheeler chairman of the House Appropriations Committee. Wheeler also cited his poor

health as a reason for not putting himself forward, and only the persuasiveness of his wife

and friends kept him from retiring from

Congress.4

In the House, Wheeler generally kept silent unless he was managing a bill, but then he always

proved to be well prepared and highly effective.

He remained in the political shadows until 1874,

when as a member of the House Committee on

Southern Affairs he investigated a disputed election in Louisiana. The election of 1872 had torn

apart the Republican party in the state, with half

of the party machinery supporting William Pitt

Kellogg for governor, and the other half joining

the Democrats on a fusion ticket. The election

board declared the Democratic candidates the

victors, but Republicans refused to concede.

They created their own election board, which

gave the governorship to Kellogg and a number

of disputed elections to their candidates for the

state legislature. After President Grant recognized Kellogg as governor, a battle erupted on

the streets of New Orleans that left fifty-six people dead. A mob ousted Kellogg, but federal

troops restored him to office.5

The Wheeler Compromise

Traveling to Louisiana, Wheeler and other

committee members heard highly emotional and

contradictory testimony from both sides. It was

Wheeler who forged the compromise that let

Kellogg remain as governor and allowed the

committee to arbitrate the disputed seats in the

legislature, most of which went to the Democrats. In March 1875, the House endorsed the

‘‘Wheeler compromise,’’ a plan which essentially

undid federal Reconstruction of the state and

held out hope for peace between the North and

South a decade after the Civil War had ended.

When Louisiana Democrats violated the spirit of

the compromise by unseating even more Republican state legislators, in order to elect a Democrat to the U.S. Senate, most northern politicians

and newspapers ignored the violations. The

North seemed relieved to escape the responsibilities of Reconstruction. Representative Wheeler

observed that northerners had expected too

much from the South and declared that it was

time to admit the failure of efforts to promote

peace with the sword. His compromise taught
[ 245 ]

WILLIAM A. WHEELER

northern Republicans how to cut their losses.

Thereafter the party concentrated on preserving

its power in the North while scaling down its

military efforts in the South, even if that meant

abandoning the political rights of the freedmen.6

Wheeler was content in his life as a member

of the House of Representatives and dreamed of

becoming Speaker. However, in early 1876 some

Republicans began talking of him as a candidate

for president or vice president. The politically astute manager of the Western Associated Press,

William Henry Smith, predicted that the GOP

ticket would be Hayes and Wheeler. Upon hearing this forecast, Ohio Governor Rutherford B.

Hayes wrote to his wife, ‘‘I am ashamed to say,

Who is Wheeler?’’ Because Wheeler had served

in the House from 1861 to 1863 and again from

1869 to 1877, while Hayes had been a representative during the intervening years from 1865 to

1867, there had been no overlap in their service.7

A Quiet Candidate

At the Republican convention in Cincinnati,

Wheeler received a handful of votes for president, but the major contest was between Senator

Conkling, House Speaker Blaine, and Governor

Hayes. When Conkling’s nomination seemed impossible, his party machine, the ‘‘stalwarts,’’

threw their support to Hayes as the best way of

stopping Blaine, leader of the ‘‘half-breed’’ faction. Having helped Hayes win the presidential

nomination, the stalwarts considered the vicepresidency theirs to name and they put forward

New York Representative Stewart Woodford.

The half-breeds, however, wanted the stalwarts

off the ticket. Massachusetts half-breed Senator

George F. Hoar promoted his friend Wheeler as

a man of high moral character. Hoar approached

the distinguished author James Russell Lowell,

a member of the Massachusetts delegation, on

Wheeler’s behalf. When Lowell replied that he

was unwilling to vote for anyone about whom

he knew so little, Hoar responded, ‘‘Mr. Lowell,

Mr. Wheeler is a very sensible man. He knows

The Bigelow Papers by heart.’’ Lowell, the author of The Bigelow Papers, said nothing but later

was overheard telling other delegates, ‘‘I understand that Mr. Wheeler is a very sensible man.’’ 8

Former Vermont Senator and Representative

Luke Poland placed Wheeler’s name in nomination, while Conkling’s lieutenant Tom Platt nominated Woodford. The publicity Wheeler had received for his compromise, coupled with his

independence from the Conkling machine, appealed to the delegates, who voted for him overwhelmingly. When the roll call of the states

reached New York, the stalwarts realized they

were about to lose and withdrew Woodford’s

name. The New York delegation voted unanimously for Wheeler—a bitter pill for Conkling’s

supporters to swallow.9

During the campaign, Democrats vainly

sought scandals in the pasts of the Republican

candidates but could find nothing that would tar

Wheeler’s reputation. One campaign biography

boasted that, at the time when it was fashionable

for congressmen ‘‘to dabble in railroad stocks

and bonds,’’ Wheeler had neither bought nor

sold a share of stock or a single bond in any Pacific railroad. He had served his country in Congress for ten years without adding to the personal wealth that he brought to Washington.

‘‘With simple tastes,’’ his biographer extolled,

‘‘he has never been greedy of gain either for its

own sake or for the luxury it would buy. As a

legislator, the thought never occurred to him that

his influence could bring riches, and not the

shadow of a stain rests on his name.’’ Wheeler

had also voted against the ‘‘salary grab’’—an unpopular attempt by members of Congress to

raise their pay retroactively—and refused the increase in his own salary.10

Wheeler also appealed to the professional

songwriters, who in 1876 were just taking over

the business of writing campaign songs from the

amateurs who had long prevailed. The Tin Pan

Alley men leaned towards puns, alliteration and

other word-plays in their songs. Thus the sheet

music for ‘‘We’ll Go for Hayes! We’ll Wheel’er

in on Time’’ showed Wheeler pushing Hayes in

a wheelbarrow toward the White House.11

While Wheeler did not detract from the ticket,

he added little to it and even refused to campaign. The Democratic vice-presidential nominee

Thomas Hendricks spoke in the swing state of

Indiana, but Wheeler declined all invitations

from the Republicans. In a remarkable reply to
[ 246 ]

WILLIAM A. WHEELER

James G. Blaine’s invitation to speak to a series

of mass meetings in Maine, Wheeler cited his

frailty and insomnia as excuses:

I greatly regret my physical inability to do little

in the way of speaking in his canvass. But I have

no reserve of strength to draw upon. I was driven from business in 1865, by broken health and

have never been strong since. . . . My trouble for

years has been wakefulness at night. No resident

of the grave or a lunatic asylum has suffered

more from this cause than I have. Speaking, and

the presence of crowds, excite me and intensify

my wakefulness. . . . Gov. Hayes wrote me, asking me to go to Indiana and Ohio, to which I answered as I write you. . . . I regret that I was nominated. You know I did not want the place. I

should have gone back to the House, and into

a Republican majority. I should have almost to

a certainty, been its Speaker, which I would

greatly prefer to being laid away.12

All that Wheeler would do was to issue the traditional letter of acceptance of his nomination.

The conciliatory tone of that letter toward the

South was seen as part of the Republicans’ strategy of trying to detach the old southern Whigs

from the southern Democrats. Candidate Hayes

issued a similarly ambiguous endorsement of

reconciliation with the South. At the Republican

convention, the civil rights leader Frederick

Douglass had challenged the delegates to decide

whether they meant to uphold for blacks the

rights they had written into the Constitution or

whether they could ‘‘get along without the vote

of the black man in the South.’’ The Hayes and

Wheeler ticket suggested that the party had chosen the latter course.13

The Contested Election

On election night, it looked as if Tilden and

Hendricks had defeated Hayes and Wheeler, especially after Democrats captured Wheeler’s

home state of New York. Republican newspapers

conceded the election, but Zachariah Chandler,

chairman of the Republican National Committee,

saw hope in the southern electors and dispatched telegrams to party leaders in those

southern states still under Reconstruction rule,

alerting them that the election was still undecided. Three southern states each sent two sets

of electoral ballots, one set for Tilden and one set

for Hayes. One of the disputed states was Louisiana, where only a year earlier Wheeler had

found evidence that the state board of election

had produced fraudulent returns. Now his election as vice president depended upon that same

board.14

After a specially created electoral commission

awarded all of the disputed ballots to Hayes, a

joint session of Congress still had to count the

ballots, and there was talk of angry Democrats

marching on Washington by the thousands to

prevent this ‘‘steal’’ of the election. To avoid

bloodshed, friends of both candidates met at the

Wormley Hotel in Washington in late February

1877. There they agreed to a compromise that

settled the election and ended Reconstruction. In

return for Hayes’ election, Republicans offered

federal funds to build railroads through the ravaged South and otherwise restore the southern

economy, promised to appoint a southerner to

the cabinet, and—most important—pledged to

remove all federal troops from the southern

states. When members of the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives still tried to

block the counting of the electoral ballots, a Louisiana representative assured them that an acceptable arrangement had been negotiated at the

Wormley Hotel. The revolt fizzled, and at 4 a.m.

on March 2, senators marched to the House

chamber to declare Hayes president. Hayes

upheld the bargain and removed the federal

troops, abandoning black voters to

disfranchisement and segregation.15

Hymn Singing and Square Talk

Although they had not known each other before their nomination, Hayes and Wheeler developed an unusually friendly relationship while in

office. The Hayes family—scorned by many

Washington politicos for their old-fashioned

manner and strict adherence to temperance—became a surrogate family to the lonely vice president, a sixty-year old widower with no children.

The vice president was fond of hymn singing,

and each Sunday evening the Hayes family invited Wheeler and a few other friends to the

White House library, where Secretary of the Interior Carl Schurz played the piano and the vice
[ 247 ]

WILLIAM A. WHEELER

president distributed copies of The Presbyterian

Hymn and Tune Book for ‘‘a revelry of sweet

sounds and mingling of souls.’’ 16

Wheeler also provided Hayes with advice

about appointments, recommending that selections be made according to ‘‘personal character,

recognized capacity and experience.’’ He especially warned Hayes about the hostility that the

Conkling machine exhibited toward the new administration. At one point, Hayes noted in his

diary that Wheeler was critical of cabinet members who, when approached by jobseekers, responded equivocally. ‘‘When there is no hope

tell the man so,’’ Wheeler asserted. ‘‘He will be

disappointed at the time, but it is the best way.’’

Hayes observed that Wheeler was right.

‘‘Prompt and square talk is in the long run safest

and is just to the parties concerned. I must also

bear this in mind.’’ 17

Despite their friendship, Hayes rarely consulted Wheeler and did not include him within

his circle of advisers. Wheeler spent his vicepresidency presiding over Senate debates, a job

he found dull and monotonous, comparing his

role of repeating set phrases to that of a parrot.

During his term, he cast six tie-breaking votes,

including one that helped his old friend William

Pitt Kellogg to be seated as senator from Louisiana. Wheeler grew particularly frustrated at

being left out of both cabinet meetings and party

caucuses and feeling that he was generally ignored. The greatest trial of being vice president,

he once commented, was attending church. ‘‘I

hear the minister praying for the President, his

Cabinet, both Houses of Congress, the Supreme

Court, the governors and legislatures of all the

states and every individual heathen . . . and find

myself wholly left out.’’ 18

A Forgotten Man

Wheeler made it easy for his nation to forget

that he existed. A more assertive man might have

risen to lead the opposition to the Conkling machine, but Wheeler contented himself with sneering at Conkling rather than challenging him. The

vice president urged President Hayes not to appear weak and yielding to Conkling. But when

Hayes took on Conkling by removing his lieutenants Chester A. Arthur and Alonzo Cornell from

their lucrative posts at the New York customhouse, Wheeler disapproved the action because

he feared it might split the party. Wheeler even

endorsed Cornell’s candidacy for governor of

New York.19

In December 1879, the Republican National

Committee met in Washington, as a first step toward nominating the presidential ticket for 1880.

Hayes had let it be known that he would not

stand for a second term, and sentiments within

the party seemed to be roughly divided between

Grant and Blaine. In his diary Hayes commented, ‘‘If New York could with a fair degree

of unity, present a man like say the Vice President . . . he would probably be nominated.’’ But

there was no hope of the factions in New York

uniting, especially over someone who opposed

Roscoe Conkling.20 At the convention, James A.

Garfield defeated Grant, Blaine, and other candidates on the thirty-sixth ballot to become the

Republican nominee. He and his running mate

Chester A. Arthur went on to win the election.

In March 1881, Wheeler turned over the vicepresidency to his successor, Conkling’s confederate Chet Arthur. Within months, Conkling

launched his last great political battle against the

new president. In May, both New York senators,

Conkling and Tom Platt, dramatically resigned

and returned to Albany, where they expected the

state legislature to reelect them as a sign of solidarity in their patronage struggles with Garfield.

Instead, the legislature rebelled. A number of

candidates entered the Senate race, including

former Vice President Wheeler. On several ballots, Wheeler ran ahead of Conkling. Although

neither won the election, Conkling’s biographer

concluded that ‘‘the ambition of former VicePresident Wheeler was a major contributing

cause’’ to Conkling’s defeat. Crushed by his defeat and by Garfield’s assassination, Conkling retired from politics to a lucrative Wall Street law

practice. William A. Wheeler also retired from

public life, turning down an appointment from

President Chester Arthur to serve on a commission to study the tariff because, he said, his

health was not up to it. He died on June 4, 1887,

in Malone, a forgotten man.21
[ 248 ]

NOTES 1 John F. Kennedy, Profiles in Courage (New York, 1956),

p. xiv. 2William Dean Howells, Sketch of the Life and Character of

Rutherford B. Hayes, Also a Biographical Sketch of William A.

Wheeler (New York, 1876), pp. 5–7; see also James T. Otten,

‘‘Grand Old Partyman: William A. Wheeler and the Republican Party, 1850–1880,’’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of

South Carolina, 1976), pp. 1–11, 285–86. 3 Howells, p. 10; Keith Ian Polakoff, The Politics of Inertia:

The Election of 1876 and the End of Reconstruction (Baton

Rouge, LA, 1973), p. 123. 4Otten, pp. 63–79, 288–89.

5 Polakoff, p. 181.

6 Ibid; William Gillette, Retreat from Reconstruction, 1869–

1879 (Baton Rouge, LA, 1979), pp. 133, 294. 7 Howells, p. 12; Polakoff, p. 37.

8 Herbert Eaton, Presidential Timber: A History of Nominating Conventions, 1868–1960 (New York, 1964), pp. 55–59;

Richard E. Welch, Jr., George Frisbie Hoar and the Half-Breed

Republicans (Cambridge, MA, 1971), p. 55. 9 Polakoff, pp. 67–68; David M. Jordan, Roscoe Conkling of

New York: Voice in the Senate (Ithaca, NY, 1971), p. 241. 10 Howells, pp. 16–17, 20.

11 Irwin Silber, Songs America Voted By (Harrisburg, PA,

1971), p. 115. 12Mark Wahlgren Summers, The Era of Good Stealings

(New York, 1993), p. 281; Polakoff, p. 123. 13Gillette, pp. 304, 419.

14 Ibid., p. 332; Otten, p. 218.

15 For details of the compromise, see C. Vann Woodward,

Reunion and Reaction; The Compromise of 1877 and the End of

Reconstruction (New York, 1991; reprint of 1951 edition); Eric

Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–

1877 (New York, 1988); and Polakoff. See also Chapter 21

of this volume, ‘‘Thomas Andrews Hendricks,’’ p. 263. 16 Kenneth E. Davison, The Presidency of Rutherford B.

Hayes (Westport, CT, 1972), pp. 84–85. 17Otten, p. 171; T. Harry Williams, ed., Hayes: The Diary

of a President, 1875–1881 (New York, 1964), pp. 69, 129. 18 Howells, p. 26; Otten, pp. 176, 181, 292; U.S., Congress,

Senate, The Senate, 1789–1989, by Robert C. Byrd, S. Doc.

100–20, 100th Cong., 1st sess., vol. 4, Historical Statistics,

1789–1992, 1993, p. 644. 19Williams, ed., p. 302; Otten, pp. 209, 256, 263.

20Williams, ed., pp. 256–57.

21 Jordan, pp. 407–8; Otten, pp. 277–79.
[ 249 ]

Chapter 20

CHESTER ALAN ARTHUR

1881
CHESTER A. ARTHUR
[ 251 ]

Chapter 20

CHESTER ALAN ARTHUR

20th Vice President: 1881

Such an honor and opportunity comes to very few of the millions of Americans, and to that man

but once. No man can refuse it, and I will not.

—CHESTER A. ARTHUR

Following the Civil War and Reconstruction,

‘‘boss rule’’ and ‘‘machine politics’’ flourished in

the United States, and nowhere more intensely

than in New York, the most populated state in

the Union. The Tweed Ring ran the Democratic

party’s Tammany Hall apparatus in New York,

and an equally powerful machine operated within the state’s Republican party. Throughout the

1870s, that party’s ‘‘stalwart’’ faction, led by Senator Roscoe Conkling, dominated New York politics until it reached both its apex and nadir within the space of a few months in 1881. Although

responsible for some of the most tawdry politics

in American history, Conkling’s machine also

produced two vice presidents, Chester Alan Arthur and Levi P. Morton, one of whom—Arthur—became president of the United States

under tragic circumstances and turned against

the machine and its spoilsmen.

A spellbinding orator with a commanding

presence, Senator Roscoe Conkling was the uncrowned leader of the Senate in an era before majority and minority leaders were formally designated. One woman newspaper correspondent

described him as the most alluring politician of

his time and ‘‘the Apollo of the Senate.’’ New

York’s other senator, Thomas C. Platt, similarly

considered Conkling one of the handsomest men

he had ever met.

He was over six feet tall, of slender build, and

stood straight as an arrow. . . . A curl, described

as Hyperion, rolled over his forehead. An imperial [air] added much to the beauty of his Apollolike appearance. His noble figure, flashing eye

and majestic voice made one forget that he was

somewhat foppish in his dress.A physical fitness

fanatic, Conkling boxed to keep in shape for his

political battles, and a journalist noted that

Conkling also ‘‘loved to use words as a prizefighter loves to use his fists.’’ No one admired

Conkling’s talents and abilities more than he

himself. A vain and haughty man with a monumental ego, he believed himself unfettered by the

rules that governed lesser mortals. These impulses led him to carry on a scandalous affair

with Kate Chase Sprague, the wife of his Senate

colleague William Sprague, and to challenge

openly two presidents—Rutherford B. Hayes and

James A. Garfield—for power and patronage.1

Conkling built his political machine on a rich

source of patronage, the New York customhouse,

headed by the collector of the port of New York.

Before income taxes, the chief sources of federal

revenue were the duties charged on imported

goods. The busy port of New York served as the

point of deposit for many imports, and its customhouse became the largest federal office in the

government, taking in more revenue and handing out more jobs than any other. Since the days

of Andrew Jackson, the ‘‘spoils system’’ had prevailed in the hiring and retention of federal employees. Each new administration cleaned house,

regardless of the ability of individual civil servants, making room for its own appointees. As

was the case at the city and state level, these fed-
[ 252 ]

CHESTER A. ARTHUR

eral jobs provided the glue that united political

party organizations. Yet increasingly in the postCivil War era, federal offices like the New York

customhouse became symbols of waste, fraud,

and incompetence that cost the government millions of dollars.2

Political Lieutenant in the Conkling Machine

From 1871 to 1877, the head of the New York

customhouse was Roscoe Conkling’s close ally,

Chester Alan Arthur. Born in North Fairfield,

Vermont, on October 5, 1829, Arthur was the son

of a Baptist minister who held a succession of

pastorates throughout Vermont and upstate

New York. When his father finally settled at a

church in Schenectady, young Arthur was able

to attend Union College, from which he graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1848. For a few years

he taught school and was a principal. He then

studied law and gained admission to the bar in

New York City in 1854. During the Civil War,

he became a judge advocate general and later the

quartermaster general of the New York militia.

Although he never saw combat, these posts enabled him to campaign as ‘‘General Arthur’’ in

his later political career.

Arthur married Virginia-born Ellen Lewis

Herndon in 1859 and established his family in

a handsome brownstone on Lexington Avenue

near Gramercy Park. His law practice enabled

him to live in a conspicuously stylish fashion. At

first, Arthur was identified with the conservative

wing of his party, led by former Governor William H. Seward and Albany boss Thurlow Weed.

But at the state convention in 1867, he entered

the orbit of the rising political star Roscoe

Conkling. An upstate Republican, Conkling

needed alliances with New York City men and

recruited Arthur into his organization.

Conkling’s biographer David Jordan assessed

Arthur as ‘‘a shrewd, imaginative, and meticulous political manager; he was a master organizer, a necessity for Conkling’s new organization.’’ The popular ‘‘Chet’’ Arthur rose quickly

within the ranks of the machine. In 1871, President Ulysses S. Grant rewarded Conkling’s loyalty to his administration by appointing Arthur

to the highly lucrative post of collector of the

port of New York.3

Numerous scandals within the administration

of President Ulysses S. Grant led Republicans to

seek a less-tarnished candidate for the 1876 contest. Chet Arthur supported Conkling’s bid for

the Republican presidential nomination, but

when the nomination went instead to the reformconscious governor of Ohio, Rutherford B.

Hayes, Arthur threw the support of his office behind Hayes, raising funds and getting out voters

to help Hayes carry New York and win the election. Rather than showing his gratitude, however, President Hayes appointed a commission

to investigate the New York customhouse. When

the group’s report exposed inefficiency, graft,

and a bloated payroll, Hayes issued an order forbidding federal officeholders to take part in political activities, so that the customhouse could

be run under a merit system. Conkling’s lieutenants, Arthur as collector and Alonzo Cornell as

naval officer of the port—both members of the

Republican State Committee—should have resigned under this order, but they refused. Hayes

then fired both men and nominated Theodore

Roosevelt, Sr. (father of the future president) and

L. Bradford Prince to replace them. An outraged

Conkling persuaded the Senate to reject both

nominations.4

The Stalwarts and the Half-Breeds

As the election of 1880 approached, Hayes

chose not to seek a second term. Rather than become a candidate himself, Conkling threw his

support behind former president U.S. Grant.

Conkling particularly wanted to block the nomination of his longtime rival, Senator and former

House Speaker James G. Blaine of Maine. Back

in 1866, when they were both members of the

House, Blaine had delivered a sarcastic speech

that mocked Conkling’s ‘‘turkey-gobbler strut’’

and ‘‘Hyperion curl.’’ Delighted political cartoonists had seized on these characteristics to

mock Conkling. Although Blaine and Conkling

served together in the House and Senate for another fourteen years, they never spoke to one another again. Each dedicated himself to blocking

the other from becoming president.5

At the national convention in June, Conkling

proposed a unit rule to force the entire New York

delegation to support Grant, but William H. Rob-
[ 253 ]

CHESTER A. ARTHUR

ertson, a Blaine supporter, led a minority of the

delegation to rebel against the stalwarts. Robertson’s faction, known dismissively as ‘‘halfbreeds,’’ joined with other independent delegates to defeat the unit rule. The result was an

extended deadlock that was broken only when

the Blaine forces swung their support to a

darkhorse candidate, Ohio Representative James

A. Garfield. Garfield’s supporters realized that

they needed a New Yorker on the ticket, not only

for the state’s large potential harvest of electoral

votes but also to mollify Conkling. Garfield at

first wanted Levi P. Morton, his friend from the

House of Representatives, but Morton felt he

could not accept without Conkling’s approval.

When Conkling made it clear that no friend of

his should join the ticket, Morton declined. The

Garfield forces next turned to Chet Arthur, who

showed no such reluctance. ‘‘Such an honor and

opportunity comes to very few of the millions of

Americans, and to that man but once,’’ Arthur

told Conkling. ‘‘No man can refuse it, and I will

not.’’ 6

The selection of Chet Arthur for vice president

did not pacify Conkling, whom Garfield knew

was a man ‘‘inspired more by his hates than his

loves.’’ In August 1880, Garfield went to New

York to make peace with Conkling’s machine. In

the Fifth Avenue Hotel rooms of Levi Morton,

Garfield met with Arthur, Platt, and other machine leaders—but not with Conkling, who

stayed away. The Conkling men sought an understanding about patronage in a Garfield administration. In return for assurances that he

would take their wishes into consideration for

New York appointments, they agreed to raise

funds for his campaign. According to Platt, Garfield also disavowed any close relations with

Hayes’ civil service proposals. With these guarantees, the Conkling machine threw its weight

behind Garfield, enabling him to win a very narrow victory in November. It was said that, while

Garfield owed his nomination to Blaine, he owed

his election to Conkling.7

Party reformers were chagrined at the choice

of Chet Arthur, the recently deposed collector of

the port of New York and a symbol of corrupt

machine politics, as Garfield’s running mate.

Most Republican newspapers held the vice-presidential candidate in low esteem. One campaign

biography devoted 533 pages to Garfield and

only 21 pages—almost as an embarrassed

aside—to Arthur. Enumerating his ‘‘good’’

qualities, the campaign tract observed that his

face was ‘‘full, fat and fair,’’ that he did not talk

with ‘‘offensive accents,’’ that he dressed ‘‘in perfect good taste,’’ and that he was ‘‘fairly corpulent as his pictures very well suggest.’’ 8 Arthur probably gained some public sympathy for

his wife’s death in 1880, which left him to raise

a son and young daughter.

An Evenly Balanced Senate

Once elected, Vice President Arthur proved

crucial to his party’s fortunes in the Senate. At

the beginning of the Forty-seventh Congress, the

party balance in the Senate was exactly equal, a

situation in which the vice president’s vote might

be needed to give the Republicans a majority to

organize the body and chair its committees.

When the Senate met on March 4, 1881, there

were 37 Republicans, 37 Democrats, and 2 Independents. One of the Independents, former Supreme Court Justice David Davis, announced

that he planned to vote with the Democrats to

organize the chamber. If the other Independent,

William Mahone of Virginia, could also be persuaded to join them, the Democrats would take

the majority. Rumors spread that the White

House was plying Mahone with ‘‘champagne

and satisfaction,’’ or promises of patronage, to

win him for the Republicans. With a noisy mob

watching from the galleries, Vice President Arthur directed the clerk to call the roll. When

Mahone’s name was reached, the Virginia senator, sitting on the Democratic side of the aisle,

voted with the Republicans, giving Arthur the

deciding vote. For his vote, Mahone received a

basket of flowers from the White House, the

chairmanship of the Agriculture Committee, and

control of federal patronage in Virginia. Democrats, however, intended to fight the administration at every turn, making every vote—especially

the vice president’s—critical.9

At this juncture, a fissure disrupted Republican ranks. Much to Roscoe Conkling’s chagrin,

President Garfield had named James G. Blaine as

secretary of state, and from that post Blaine plot-
[ 254 ]

CHESTER A. ARTHUR

ted against his longtime rival. While a number

of offices went to Conkling men, they were excluded from the cabinet seats they desired—especially the secretary of the treasury, which had

jurisdiction over the collector of the Port of New

York. On the day before their inauguration, Arthur had visited Garfield, along with Senators

Conkling and Platt, to plead for their candidate

for treasury secretary. As Garfield noted in his

diary, Conkling seemed ‘‘full of apprehension

that he had been or was to be cheated.’’ 10

‘‘A Square Blow at Conkling’’

Conkling had good reason for apprehension.

On March 23, Vice President Arthur, while presiding over the Senate, received a list of presidential nominations. His eye fell on the name of

New York state senator William H. Robertson for

collector of the port of New York, which, as one

reporter described it, represented ‘‘a square blow

at Conkling.’’ Arthur folded the document so

that Robertson’s name appeared uppermost and

had a page deliver it to Senator Conkling. From

the press gallery, reporters watched Conkling

walk rapidly to his colleague Platt and hold a

‘‘whispered conference.’’ Conkling made it

known that he considered the nomination personally offensive, and Vice President Arthur

joined with Senators Conkling and Platt in a letter asking the president to withdraw Robertson’s

name. At the Republican caucus, Conkling delivered a long, eloquent, and bitter attack on the

president for his breach of senatorial courtesy.

He persuaded Senate Republicans to postpone

the customs collectors’ nominations and take up

less controversial posts. President Garfield retaliated by withdrawing the nominations of five of

Conkling’s men. When it began to look as if Senate Democrats would contribute enough votes to

confirm Robertson, Conkling and his colleague

Tom Platt decided to resign from the Senate and

return to New York, where they expected the

state legislature to reelect them as a sign of endorsement in their power struggle with the

president.11

Vice President Arthur had no trouble deciding

which side to take in this epic struggle between

his president and his party boss. After the Senate

adjourned, Arthur also journeyed to Albany,

where he lobbied for Conkling’s reelection. J. L.

Connery, the editor of the New York Herald,

which the Conkling machine courted, recalled

Arthur telling him in confidence that Garfield

had been neither honorable nor truthful. ‘‘It is a

hard thing to say of a President of the United

States, but it is, unfortunately, only the truth,’’

said Arthur. ‘‘Garfield—spurred by Blaine, by

whom he is easily led—has broken every pledge

made to us; not only that, but he seems to have

wished to do it in a most offensive way.’’ Garfield’s supporters, however, never forgave Arthur for his betrayal of the president.12

A Presidential Assassination

The strategy of the Conkling forces unraveled

when the New York legislature reacted negatively to the ‘‘childish’’ resignations of its two

senators. Led by state senate president pro tempore William Robertson (the customs collector

nominee), the half-breeds called on legislators to

‘‘stand by the administration,’’ and the legislature entered a month-long deadlock over the

senatorial elections. On July 2, Platt withdrew

from the race in a last-ditch attempt to improve

Conkling’s chances of reelection. That same day,

on the brink of victory, President Garfield

walked arm in arm with Secretary of State Blaine

through Washington’s Baltimore and Ohio railroad station. A crazed assassin shot the president

in the back and then identified himself with

Conkling’s stalwarts. After lingering throughout

the summer, the mortally wounded Garfield

died on September 19. By then the New York legislature had rejected Conkling’s bid for reelection. ‘‘How can I speak into a grave?’’ Conkling

complained. ‘‘How can I battle with a shroud. Silence is a duty and a doom.’’ 13

Garfield’s death elevated to the presidency a

man who had shared an apartment in Washington with Conkling and who had sided with

Conkling against Garfield. Political observers

naturally assumed that Conkling would dominate Chet Arthur’s administration. Newspaper

correspondent Theron Crawford later noted that

Conkling ‘‘had been in the habit of patronizing

Mr. Arthur, and had given him political orders

for so many years that he could not imagine this

pleasure-loving, easy-going man capable of re-
[ 255 ]

CHESTER A. ARTHUR

bellion.’’ Arthur was in New York when Garfield

died, and it was Roscoe Conkling who carried

the new president’s bag to the station when he

left for Washington.

Less than a month later, Conkling arrived in

Washington and held a private meeting with Arthur. Reporters speculated that the two had chosen a new cabinet, yet no announcement was

made to the press. Neither man would publicly

acknowledge what had transpired, but their associates described a stormy session. Conkling

presented his patronage demands: he wanted

William Robertson dismissed as collector and he

himself was willing to accept a cabinet portfolio.

But Conkling underestimated how deeply the assassination had shocked and sobered Chester Arthur. Senator Platt described Arthur as ‘‘overcome with grief,’’ particularly after newspapers

quoted the assassin saying ‘‘I am a Stalwart, and

I want Arthur for President.’’ Feeling the weight

of his new office and calculating that public

opinion would never tolerate Robertson’s removal, the president rejected Conkling’s advice.

A New York Republican leader told a friend in

the press that President Arthur felt very bitter

over the demands Conkling had made on him.

‘‘You can put it down for a fact that ‘Conk’ wanted ‘Chet’ to remove Robertson and appoint one

of our fellows collector.’’ When Arthur refused,

Conkling stormed out, swearing that all of his

friends had turned traitor to him.14

Conkling’s mistress, Kate Chase Sprague, tried

to intercede with the president, reminding him

of ‘‘the vital importance of placing a robust, courageous, clear-headed man at the head of the

Treasury,’’ and arguing that Conkling would be

a ‘‘tower of strength’’ in the cabinet. But Arthur

offered neither a cabinet appointment nor the removal of Robertson as collector. Instead,

Conkling went into permanent political exile. Although Arthur later named Conkling to the Supreme Court, his former leader declined. At the

same time, Arthur accepted Blaine’s resignation

as secretary of state, feeling that by doing so he

had neutralized the heads of both warring factions and could steer a course between them.

Senator Chauncey Depew later judged that,

while Arthur tried to govern fairly, ‘‘he was not

big enough, nor strong enough, to contend with

the powerful men who were antagonized.’’ 15

Support for Civil Service Reform

Since the martyred President Garfield was regarded as a ‘‘victim of that accursed greed for

spoils of office,’’ his death rallied public support

behind civil service reform legislation. In Arthur’s first annual message to Congress in December 1881, he pledged his willingness to enforce any reform legislation that Congress might

enact modeled on the British civil service system.

Democratic Senator George H. Pendleton of Ohio

sponsored a measure that became known as the

Pendleton Act, which President Arthur signed in

January 1883. The Pendleton Act established a bipartisan Civil Service Commission to set rules by

which federal jobs would be filled. The act

placed about 14,000 jobs, about one-tenth of the

total federal employment at the time, under civil

service. Although by no means a complete reversal of the spoils system, it took a large step in

that direction. As the journalist Henry Stoddard

mused, it was a strange turn of events that a

spoilsman like Chester Arthur should sign the

first effective civil service law and also be the

first president to veto a river and harbor appropriations bill as excessive ‘‘—the bill that had

come to be known as the ‘pork barrel’ bill into

which both parties dug deep.’’ 16

The initial reaction to Vice President Arthur’s

elevation to the presidency had been one of universal dismay: ‘‘Chet Arthur in the White

House!’’ But, as chief executive, Chester Alan Arthur replaced Chet Arthur. The new president

acted in a dignified manner, made strong appointments, and won approval for the ‘‘elevated

tone’’ of his administration. He redecorated the

White House and entertained regally. He became

famous for his fourteen-course dinners that often

kept his guests at the table until after midnight,

consuming fine wines and rich foods. Overeating

and underexercising did not help Arthur’s

health, and during his presidency he suffered

from kidney disease that slowly sapped his

strength. In 1884, he made himself available for

renomination. ‘‘Arthur has given us a good administration, but it has been negatively rather

than positively good,’’ wrote one dubious jour-
[ 256 ]

CHESTER A. ARTHUR

nalist. ‘‘He has done well, in other words, by not

doing anything bad. This kind of goodness does

not count for much in presidential campaigns.’’ 17

Arthur’s attempt to steer a course between the

stalwarts and half-breeds succeeded only in

alienating both sides. At the Republican convention, the remnants of the stalwart wing (led by

Tom Platt) supported James G. Blaine, on the

grounds that Arthur had deserted them. When

they tried to persuade Conkling, now a highly

successful New York attorney, to emerge from

his political retirement and endorse Blaine’s

presidential candidacy, Conkling acidly replied,

‘‘No thank you, I don’t engage in criminal practice.’’ Blaine lost New York by a whisker—and

with it the election. Grover Cleveland, who had

owed his election as governor of New York to

the split between the stalwarts and the halfbreeds, now became the first Democratic president since the Civil War. Chester Arthur returned to his New York law office. Rapidly declining in health, he died on November 17, 1886,

less than two years after leaving the White

House. He had been chosen as vice president

without much expectation but, when thrust into

the presidency, he rose to the occasion and conducted the office with style.18
[ 257 ]

NOTES 1David J. Rothman, Politics and Power: The United States

Senate, 1869–1901 (Cambridge, MA, 1966), pp. 27–30; Donald A. Ritchie, Press Gallery: Congress and the Washington Correspondents (Cambridge, MA, 1991), p. 156; Louis J. Lang,

ed., The Autobiography of Thomas Collier Platt (New York,

1910), p. 55; Henry L. Stoddard, As I Knew Them: Presidents

and Politics from Grant to Coolidge (New York, 1927), p. 115. 2Ari Hoogenboom, Outlawing the Spoils: A History of the

Civil Service Reform Movement, 1865–1883 (Urbana, IL, 1961),

pp. 1–32. 3David M. Jordan, Roscoe Conkling of New York: Voice in

the Senate (Ithaca, NY, 1971), pp. 146–48. 4 Ibid., pp. 155–78; Chester L. Barrows, William M. Evarts:

Lawyer, Diplomat, Statesman (Chapel Hill, NC, 1941), p. 326. 5Ritchie, pp. 136–37.

6 Jordan, p. 341; Stoddard, pp. 118–19; Chauncey M.

Depew, My Memories of Eighty Years (New York, 1924), pp.

122–23. 7 Justus D. Doenecke, The Presidencies of James A. Garfield

& Chester A. Arthur (Lawrence, KS, 1981), pp. 26–27; Jordan,

p. 439; Lang, ed., pp. 128–32; Alfred R. Conkling, The Life

and Letters of Roscoe Conkling, Orator, Statesman, Advocate

(New York, 1889), p. 614. See also Chapter 22 of this volume,

‘‘Levi P. Morton,’’ p. 271. 8 James S. Brisbin, From The Tow-Path to the White House:

The Early Life and Public Career of James A. Garfield (Philadelphia, 1880), pp. 546–47.

9 ‘‘The Great Senate Deadlock: 1881,’’ Senate History 9

(July 1984): 1, 9–10. 10 Harry James Brown and Frederic D. Williams, eds., The

Diary of James A. Garfield (East Lansing, MI, 1981), 4:552. 11Ben: Perley Poore, Perley’s Reminiscences of Sixty Years

in the National Metropolis (Philadelphia, 1886), pp. 400–402;

Conkling, p. 640; Doenecke, p. 45. 12Theodore Clarke Smith, The Life and Letters of James

Abram Garfield (New Haven, CT, 1925), 2:1128–29; T.B.

Connery, ‘‘Secret History of the Garfield-Conkling Tragedy,’’ Cosmopolitan 23 (June 1897): 145–62. 13 Jordan, pp. 379–409; Henry L. Stoddard, p. 114.

14Theron C. Crawford, James G. Blaine: A Study of His Life

and Career, from the Standpoint of a Personal Witness of the

Principal Events in his History (Philadelphia, 1893), p. 525;

Thomas C. Reeves, Gentleman Boss: The Life of Chester A. Arthur (New York, 1975), p. 256; William C. Hudson, Random

Recollections of an Old Political Reporter (New York, 1911), p.

127; Lang, ed., pp. 162–63. 15 Katherine Chase Sprague to Chester A. Arthur, October

21, 1881, Chester A. Arthur Papers, Library of Congress;

Crawford, pp. 508, 546; Depew, p. 118. 16 Hoogenboom, pp. 213–53; Stoddard, p. 122.

17 Poore, p. 431; Stoddard, pp. 117, 285; Francis Carpenter,

ed., Carp’s Washington (New York, 1960), p. 30; Doenecke,

pp. 76–77, 80, 183–84. 18Lang, ed., p. 181; Ritchie, p. 137.

[ 259 ]

Chapter 21

THOMAS ANDREWS

HENDRICKS

1885
THOMAS A. HENDRICKS
[ 261 ]

Chapter 21

THOMAS ANDREWS

HENDRICKS

21st Vice President: 1885

There were no neutral tints in his own political colors.

—SENATOR DANIEL VOORHEES

American political parties have traditionally

been coalitions of contradictory and contentious

forces. The electoral college is largely responsible

for the loose-knit nature of these political parties.

Victory requires a majority of electors from

throughout the nation, a feat nearly impossible

for any party rooted in a single region or clustered about one ideology or interest group. To

build such national coalitions, politicians must

reach out to those with whom they may disagree.

The Democratic party emerged from Thomas Jefferson’s defense of the yeoman farmer against

Alexander Hamilton’s efforts to use the government to promote American industry and finance.

Yet to build a national party, Jefferson needed

to embrace New York’s Tammany Hall, which

represented urban interests. Nearly a century

later, Indiana’s Thomas A. Hendricks confronted

that same split. He was a ‘‘soft-money’’ agrarian

reformer, who ran twice for vice president on

Democratic tickets headed by two different

‘‘hard-money’’ New York governors.

Early Years

A son of the Mississippi Valley, Thomas A.

Hendricks was born on a farm near Zanesville,

Ohio, on September 7, 1819, to John and Jane

Thomson Hendricks. When just six months old,

he moved with his parents to Indiana, where his

father’s older brother, William, was a U.S. representative and a soon-to-be governor of that

new state. Hendricks was raised as a staunch

Presbyterian and a Jacksonian Democrat, the two

pillars of his thinking throughout his life. He attended the Presbyterian-run Hanover College in

Indiana, where he proved an average student but

a skillful debater. After graduating, he went east

to Pennsylvania to study at a law school run by

one of his uncles. In 1843 he was admitted to the

bar and practiced in Shelbyville, Indiana. That

same year, he met Eliza Morgan, a vivacious

teenager from Ohio who was visiting in Indiana.

After two years of correspondence, he felt financially secure enough to propose, and they were

married in 1845. Their only child died at age

three. In later years, an old neighbor said that he

doubted whether Hendricks could have

achieved his political success without Eliza. ‘‘She

is generous, wise and discreet. The man born to

get on in the world always marries that kind of

woman, it appears.’’ 1

Slavery and Politics

Always ambitious, Hendricks plunged into

politics. He was elected to the Indiana house of

representatives in 1848, served as a delegate to

the state constitutional convention in 1849, and

won a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives

in 1850. A popular member of the House, he became a follower of Illinois Democratic Senator
[ 262 ]

THOMAS A. HENDRICKS

Stephen A. Douglas and supported Douglas’

controversial Kansas-Nebraska Act. That statute

repealed the Missouri Compromise and permitted residents of the territories to determine

whether or not to permit slavery, a concept

known as ‘‘popular sovereignty.’’ Public outrage

in the North caused the dissolution of the old

Whig party and a period of political instability

that eventually resulted in the emergence of the

new Republican party. Hendricks believed his

vote for the Kansas-Nebraska Act reflected the

sentiments of his constituents, although it was

later cited as the cause of his defeat for reelection

in 1854. He was opposed by a former Democrat

representing a coalition of Free Soilers, abolitionists, temperance advocates, Know-Nothings, and

Whigs. Hendricks denounced the nativism of the

Know-Nothing movement and defended the

rights of immigrants and religious minorities.

Despite these admirable stands for minority

rights, he had a blind eye on racial issues. As a

delegate to the Indiana constitutional convention

in 1849, he had led the move to enact ‘‘Black

Laws’’ that promoted segregation and restricted

the migration of free blacks into the state.2

After losing his seat in Congress, Hendricks in

1855 accepted an appointment from President

Franklin Pierce to become commissioner of the

General Land Office in the Interior Department,

a post he held through 1859. As a Douglas Democrat, he felt increasingly out of step with the

anti-Douglas administration of James Buchanan

and resigned his office to return to Indiana,

where in 1860 he ran unsuccessfully for governor. He then moved to Indianapolis to practice

law.3

A Pro-Union Democrat

When the Civil War erupted in 1861, the

Democratic party in Indiana divided between

peace and pro-Union factions. Jesse D. Bright,

the president pro tempore of the U.S. Senate, led

the party’s peace wing, while Hendricks became

a leading ‘‘War Democrat.’’ Bright, an imperious

man who had tolerated no opposition in his

twenty-year domination of the state Democratic

party, was expelled from the Senate in February

1862, when it was discovered that he had written

a letter addressed to Jefferson Davis as ‘‘President of the Confederate States,’’ recommending

that the Confederacy purchase rifles from an Indiana manufacturer. Bright expected that the Indiana legislature would reelect him, but instead

Judge David Turpie was chosen to fill the few

months remaining in his term. The legislature

elected Thomas Hendricks to take the seat during the next full term. Bright thereafter blamed

Hendricks for his defeat.4

When peace Democrats in the state legislature

attempted to pass antiwar resolutions, proUnion members bolted. Hendricks recognized

that the peace movement would discredit the

party, and he was sufficiently familiar with the

legislature to be certain that there were enough

pro-Union Democrats to defeat the resolutions.

Accepting both his reasoning and his head

counting, the bolters resumed their seats and defeated the peace resolutions.5

Hendricks took his oath as a U.S. senator in

1863, becoming one of only ten Democrats facing

thirty-three Republicans. He soon assumed the

role of his party’s recognized leader in the Senate. Hendricks was a thorough partisan. ‘‘There

were no neutral tints in his own political colors,’’

future Indiana Democratic Senator Daniel Voorhees later commented. But even Republican senators acknowledged that his speeches were well

prepared and that his arguments were plausible—if one accepted all of his premises. Assessing Hendricks’ Senate career, the journalist A.K.

McClure later said, ‘‘He was a Democratic Senator in the most trying times of the war, when

many less faithful or less discreet men made

hopeless shipwreck of their political future, but

the record of Mr. Hendricks has stood the severest test and is conspicuous for its freedom from

the partisan blunders which then and since have

ranked as crimes.’’ 6

President Abraham Lincoln cultivated the support of War Democrats like Hendricks. As Congress prepared to adjourn in March 1865, Hendricks paid a last visit to the president, who told

him, ‘‘We have differed in politics, Senator Hendricks, but you have uniformly treated my administration with fairness.’’ During the period of

congressional Reconstruction of the South that

followed the war, Hendricks never missed an opportunity to remind Republican senators that
[ 263 ]

THOMAS A. HENDRICKS

President Lincoln had opposed such radical Reconstruction measures as the Wade-Davis bill

and had wanted a speedy return of the southern

states to the Union. Hendricks consistently opposed repealing the fugitive slave laws until

slavery was constitutionally abolished, and he

tried to prevent African Americans from gaining

the right to vote. ‘‘I say we are not of the same

race,’’ Hendricks declared; ‘‘we are so different

that we ought not to compose one political

community.’’ 7

Hendricks emerged as one of the few prominent Democrats not to be stigmatized as a Copperhead (or southern sympathizer) during the

war. As a result, his name arose for the 1868

Democratic presidential nomination. He lost the

nomination to New York Governor Horatio Seymour but went back to Indiana, where he was

nominated to run for governor. In the fall, both

Seymour and Hendricks were defeated. Hendricks returned to his law practice and bided his

time for a revival of Democratic fortunes. Looking toward the 1872 presidential election, former

Iowa Senator A.C. Dodge recommended Hendricks as a ‘‘worthy, able and excellent man.’’ He

believed that there was strong support throughout the Midwest for the Indianan, although he

doubted that Hendricks would run well in the

East. The Democrats instead nominated the eccentric newspaper editor Horace Greeley for

president on a fusion ticket with liberal Republicans who opposed the corruption of the Ulysses

Grant administration. That same year, Indiana

Democrats nominated Hendricks to run again

for governor and, while Greeley went down to

a crashing defeat, Hendricks won the Indiana

state house.8

Tilden-Hendricks

His victory in that important swing state made

Hendricks a frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1876. However, after the

panic of 1873 and the widespread economic crisis

that followed, Hendricks became publicly identified with agrarian reform and ‘‘soft money.’’

Currency reformers believed that postwar contractions of the currency had caused the economic depression and that inflation of the currency through issuance of greenbacks or increased minting of silver currency would lower

farmers’ costs of repaying their debts. Such arguments struck fear into eastern financial circles,

whose members supported sound currency

based on gold and believed that any debasing of

the currency would rob creditors of just returns

on their investments. The hard-money element

within the Democratic party rallied behind the

nomination of Samuel J. Tilden, known in some

circles as the ‘‘Great Forecloser.’’ To balance

Tilden, the party nominated the soft-money Hendricks for vice president.

The Republican candidate, Ohio governor

Rutherford B. Hayes, carried every midwestern

state except Hendricks’ Indiana. On election

night, it appeared that the Tilden-Hendricks ticket had won both the popular and the electoral

vote, but the outcome in three southern states

still controlled by Reconstruction governments

remained in dispute. Both Republicans and

Democrats claimed these electoral votes. The

Democrats needed just one more state to win, the

Republicans needed all of the disputed votes.

When a deadlock developed between the Republican Senate and the Democratic House over

counting the electoral votes, both sides reluctantly agreed to set up a special electoral commission. Republicans gained an 8-to-7 majority

on the commission, and by that straight party

vote the commission assigned all of the disputed

electoral votes to Hayes, who was sworn in as

president. To prevent a new civil war, Tilden and

Hendricks accepted the outcome, but thereafter

Democrats charged that the election had been

stolen from them.9

Hobbled by Illness

After the electoral disappointment, Hendricks

and his wife consoled themselves with a long

journey through Europe. He returned to his law

practice and continued to speak out on the issues

of the day. Hoosiers were ‘‘a speech-loving people,’’ as one of Hendricks’ biographers noted,

and large crowds always showed up for his orations. In 1880, Indiana once again boosted Hendricks for president, but while he was vacationing at Hot Springs, Arkansas, Hendricks suffered

a stroke. Two years later, he developed a lameness in one foot—a result, claimed the journalist
[ 264 ]

THOMAS A. HENDRICKS

Ben: Perley Poore, of Hendricks’ frequent public

speaking engagements:

While speaking he was in the habit of bending

forward on the tip of his right foot, resting the

entire weight upon it. From the pressure of his

right shoe a swelling arose on one of his toes.

. . . In twenty-four hours erysipelas [an acute skin

inflammation] developed, and it was only after

an illness of six months that he recovered. But

he always afterwards was somewhat lame, especially when he was fatigued.10

As the 1884 election approached, Samuel

Tilden, who had also suffered a paralytic stroke,

mentioned to a newspaper reporter that his old

running mate Thomas Hendricks wanted a reprise of the 1876 ticket of Tilden and Hendricks,

‘‘and I do not wonder, considering my

weakness!’’ Tilden announced his withdrawal

from the race, which left the Democratic nomination wide open. No one doubted that Hendricks

was available for the nomination in 1884, but his

constant availability in every presidential election since 1868 had devalued his candidacy. The

party looked for a new face to unite them and

lead them to victory after so many years in the

minority. Hendricks was dismissed as a man of

‘‘inordinate ambition.’’ 11

Cleveland-Hendricks

Hendricks attended the Democratic National

Convention in 1884 not as a candidate but rather

as a delegate who would nominate former Indiana Senator Joseph E. McDonald. His appearance at the convention drew much enthusiastic

applause, since he represented the ‘‘old ticket’’

of 1876 that had been robbed of victory. As the

convention moved toward nominating the reform governor of New York, Grover Cleveland,

Cleveland’s opponents—especially New York

City’s Tammany Hall—concluded that Hendricks was the only man around whom the opposition could be united. They planned a strategy to stampede the convention to Hendricks the

next day. Just as Indiana swung its vote to him,

Hendricks entered the convention hall through

a door facing the delegates. The band struck up

a tune as Tammany Hall boss John Kelly and his

henchmen leaped from their seats and began

shouting for Hendricks. As the delegates paraded, Hendricks sat calmly. ‘‘To those near

him,’’ Indiana Senator Daniel Voorhees asserted,

‘‘he simply appeared to enjoy in a quiet silent

way the popular approval of his long and faithful services.’’ 12

These tactics might have worked, except that

Cleveland’s managers got wind of the conspiracy

and sent messages to all the delegates warning

them not to get caught up in any spurious demonstrations. Cleveland’s supporters argued that

New York was essential for a Democratic victory

and that Cleveland, a hard-money reform governor, could attract liberal Republican voters, a

group known as the mugwumps. These arguments prevailed, and the Hendricks boom fizzled when Illinois increased its vote for Cleveland, followed by enough other states to give

Cleveland the nomination at the end of the second ballot. Hendricks was rewarded with the

vice-presidential nomination, once again to balance a hard-money presidential candidate and to

offer the promise of carrying the swing state of

Indiana.13

The prospect of victory invigorated Hendricks,

and he campaigned valiantly, proving ‘‘a tower

of strength for the ticket’’ in what has often been

described as the ‘‘dirtiest’’ campaign in American political history. He attacked the incumbent

Republican administration, helped stop a party

bolt by Tammany Hall, drew large crowds to his

speeches, and dramatically survived a late-night

train wreck while campaigning in Illinois. Hendricks won praise as an ‘‘urbane leader.’’ He

stood five feet nine inches tall and was described

as ‘‘well proportioned and stoutly built, though

not corpulent.’’ His once light hair had turned

silver, and he wore ‘‘the least of side whiskers,

which are light gray, and his complexion is fair.’’

As a speaker he was clear and forceful, while in

conversation he was ‘‘easy, courteous, cautious,

and deferential.14

Vice President of the Spoilsmen

In 1884, Democrats won their first presidential

election since 1856, and Thomas Hendricks returned as presiding officer to the Senate where

he had once served in a pitifully small minority.

From the start, however, Hendricks found himself at odds with President Cleveland, a scru-
[ 265 ]

THOMAS A. HENDRICKS

pulously honest man with good intentions but

limited vision. Unlike Hendricks, who had long

called for more government intervention in the

economy to promote agrarian reform, Cleveland

advocated laissez-faire economics and was a Social Darwinist who thought the slightest hint of

government paternalism would undermine the

national character.15

Mugwump reformers waited to see if Cleveland would expand the Civil Service System recently established by the Pendleton Act, but

Democrats, long out of power, demanded patronage. Vice President Hendricks and many

Democratic senators, furious when Cleveland ignored the patronage requests of their state party

organizations, considered the president’s conduct ‘‘treacherous.’’ Cleveland dismissed these

complaints as the howls of old Jacksonian

spoilsmen and wild-eyed currency reformers,

among whom he counted his vice president. But

by midsummer 1885, Cleveland buckled at the

threat of revolt within his party. He replaced his

civil-service-reform-minded assistant postmaster

general with former Illinois Congressman Adlai

Stevenson, ‘‘who understood practical politics.’’

Given free rein, Stevenson replaced Republican

postmasters with deserving Democrats at a fast

clip, until more than 40,000 federal jobs changed

hands.16

The Indiana Democratic organization was particularly outspoken about its dissatisfaction with

Cleveland’s skimpy patronage, and Vice President Hendricks became known as ‘‘Vice President of the spoilsmen.’’ The label ‘‘spoilsman’’

distressed Hendricks. As one senator who knew

him explained, Hendricks felt the charge came

from those who ‘‘had been wont to linger in the

shade and slumber while he and the ‘boys,’ as

he loved sometimes to call the party workers,

had borne the heat and dust and burden of the

battle.’’ 17

In September, Hendricks left Washington to attend the thirty-fifth anniversary reunion of the

surviving members of the constitutional convention of Indiana and to rest in anticipation of the

coming session of Congress in December. While

at home in Indianapolis, he died in his sleep on

November 25, 1885.

Death of the Vice President

Hendricks’ death eliminated the leader of the

possible rival camp to Cleveland’s presidency,

but also for the second time in a decade deprived

the nation of a vice president for more than three

years, raising concerns about the problem of

presidential succession. If Cleveland should die,

who would become president? The Presidential

Succession Act of 1792 provided that the Senate’s

president pro tempore and the Speaker of the

House, in that order, should succeed. There was

concern that one of these offices might soon be

filled with members of the opposition rather

than members of Cleveland’s party, since both

posts were vacant at the time of Hendricks’ sudden death and, while Democrats controlled the

House, Republicans controlled the Senate. On

the recommendation of Massachusetts Republican Senator George F. Hoar, Congress in 1886

adopted a law that eliminated congressional officers from the line of succession in favor of cabinet officers, in order of their rank. This system

prevailed until 1947, when the death of a president had again left the vice-presidency open for

almost an entire term, stimulating another reevaluation and a different solution to the

problem.18

When President Cleveland ran for reelection in

1888, Democrats had to choose a replacement for

Thomas Hendricks. The honor went to former

Ohio Senator Allen G. Thurman. This time,

Cleveland faced a Hoosier Republican, Senator

Benjamin Harrison. Without Hendricks on the

ticket, the Democrats failed to carry Indiana. Although Cleveland won a plurality of the popular

vote, he lost the electoral college and with it the

presidency.

Hendricks’ death, as the veteran journalist Ben:

Perley Poore judged, ‘‘removed an official

around whom the disaffected Democrats could

have crystallized into a formidable opposition,’’

for Hendricks had not been disposed to accept

being what Hannibal Hamlin had described as

the fifth wheel on a coach.19
[ 266 ]

NOTES 1W.U. Hensel, ‘‘A Biographical Sketch of Thomas A.

Hendricks,’’ in William Dorsheimer, Life and Public Services

of Hon. Grover Cleveland (New York, 1884), pp. 184–95; John

W. Holcombe and Hubert M. Skinner, Life and Public Services

of Thomas A. Hendricks with Selected Speeches and Writings (Indianapolis, 1886), p. 93. 2 Hensel, pp. 210–12; Holcombe and Skinner, pp. 117–18;

Ralph D. Gray, ‘‘Thomas A. Hendricks: Spokesman for the

Democracy,’’ in Gentlemen from Indiana: National Party Candidates, 1836–1940, ed. Ralph D. Gray (Indianapolis, 1977),

p. 126. 3Gray, p. 128.

4 Holcombe and Skinner, pp. 195, 245.

5 Christopher Dell, Lincoln and the War Democrats: The

Grand Erosion of Conservative Tradition (Rutherford, NJ,

1975), p. 201. 6U.S., Congress, Memorial Addresses on the Life and Character of Thomas A. Hendricks (Washington: Government

Printing Office, 1886), pp. 26, 38–39; Hensel, p. 225. 7 Holcombe and Skinner, p. 267; Hensel, p. 226; Eric

Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–

1877 (New York, 1988), pp. 278–79. 8 Horace Samuel Merrill, Bourbon Democracy of the Middle

West, 1865–1896 (Seattle, 1967; reprint of 1953 edition), p.

71.9The best account of the disputed election is Keith Ian

Polakoff, The Politics of Inertia: The Election of 1876 and the

End of Reconstruction (Baton Rouge, LA, 1976). See also

Chapter 19 of this volume, ‘‘William Almon Wheeler,’’ p.

246.

10 Hensel, pp. 279, 284; Ben: Perley Poore, Perley’s

Reminiscences of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis (Philadelphia, 1887), 2:503–4. 11 Herbert Eaton, Presidential Timber: A History of Nominating Conventions, 1868–1960 (New York, 1964), pp. 102–7;

Allan Nevins, Grover Cleveland, A Study in Courage (New

York, 1932), pp. 146–47; Memorial Addresses, p. 25. 12 Nevins, p. 154; Memorial Addresses, p. 29. 13Eaton, p. 111; Nevins, p. 154; Poore, p. 284; Richard E.

Welch, Jr., The Presidencies of Grover Cleveland (Lawrence,

KS, 1988), pp. 28–29. 14 Nevins, p. 177; Hensel, p. 255; Holcombe and Skinner,

pp. 7, 363–64. 15 Vincent P. De Santis, ‘‘Grover Cleveland: Revitalization

of the Presidency,’’ in Six Presidents from the Empire State,

ed. Harry J. Sievers (Tarrytown, NY, 1974), pp. 90–91. 16 John A. Garraty, The New Commonwealth, 1877–1890

(New York, 1968), pp. 288–90; Horace Samuel Merrill, Bourbon Leader: Grover Cleveland and the Democratic Party (Boston,

1957), p. 99. See also Chapter 23 of this volume, ‘‘Adlai

Ewing Stevenson,’’ pp. 280–81. 17 Nevins, pp. 237, 247; Memorial Addresses, p. 63. 18 Chester L. Barrows, William M. Evarts: Lawyer, Diplomat, Statesman (Chapel Hill, NC, 1941), p. 446; Richard E.

Welch, Jr., George Frisbie Hoar and the Half-Breed Republicans

(Cambridge, MA, 1971), p. 137; John D. Feerick, From Failing

Hands: The Story of Presidential Succession (New York, 1965),

pp. 140–46. 19 Poore, 2:503–4.
[ 267 ]

Chapter 22

LEVI PARSONS MORTON

1889–1893
LEVI P. MORTON
[ 269 ]

Chapter 22

LEVI PARSONS MORTON

22nd Vice President: 1889–1893

Business experience had taught him conservatism. He never was influenced by crazy theorists.

—SENATOR THOMAS C. PLATT

Like a hero from the pages of a Horatio Alger

novel, Levi P. Morton worked his way up by

pluck and luck to fame and fortune. From a boy

toiling in a country store, he rose to become one

of the nation’s wealthiest and most influential

bankers and vice president of the United States.

Morton might have become president as well,

had his political acumen matched his financial

ability.

Youth

Born on May 16, 1824, in the little village of

Shoreham, Vermont, Levi Parsons Morton was

named for his uncle, the first American missionary to Palestine. He was the son of a Congregational preacher, who moved his family from

church to church in New England, never accruing much wealth. Although young Morton wanted to attend college, his father was too poor to

send him. An older brother advised him not to

worry about further schooling since ‘‘a selftaught man is worth two of your college boys.’’

Instead, Morton took a job in a country store.

After getting his fill of heavy manual labor, he

sought respite as a teacher in a country school.

Then he took another clerkship in the general

store of W.W. Estabrook, in Concord, New

Hampshire, where he learned the bookkeeper’s

art of calculating profit and loss.1

Estabrook dispatched Morton to run his store

in Hanover, New Hampshire. There the young

Morton lived with the family of a Dartmouth

College professor and met Lucy Young Kimball,

whom he would eventually marry thirteen years

later. But first he had a fortune to earn. Morton

later recalled that he was happiest ‘‘when I was

learning how to accomplish things; when I was

building up my business.’’ When his employer

went bankrupt, the chief creditor, James M.

Beebe, came to New Hampshire to inspect the

situation and was impressed enough with

Morton’s industriousness to invite him to join

James M. Beebe & Co. in Boston—‘‘the business

Mecca for every Yankee boy.’’ Beebe & Co., Boston’s largest importing firm, soon took Junius

Spencer Morgan as a partner, thus introducing

Levi Morton to Morgan’s son, J.P. Morgan, who

would one day become his principal rival as a

banker. In 1854, Beebe sent Morton to New York

City to take charge of the company’s operations

there. A year later, Morton formed his own dry

goods company in New York. Finally wealthy

and secure enough to settle down, he married

Lucy Kimball in 1856. The new Mrs. Morton disliked his Old Testament name of Levi and began

calling her husband ‘‘L.P,’’ as he became known

among family and friends thereafter.2

Banking and Politics

Morton’s chief business was importing cotton

from the South for New England’s textile industry and exporting manufactured goods from the

North to the agricultural South. When the Civil

War broke out in the spring of 1861, his loss of

southern clients forced him to suspend business.

For the next decade, Morton worked to pay back
[ 270 ]

LEVI P. MORTON

his own creditors, dollar for dollar. Although the

war soon stimulated the northern economy and

rebuilt Morton’s financial base, he saw a safer

and more profitable future in banking. In 1863,

he founded a Wall Street banking house, later

named Morton, Bliss & Co., with a London firm

called Morton, Rose. By the end of the war,

Morton’s bank could challenge the powerful Jay

Cooke & Co. for the right to handle government

transactions. In 1873 Cooke’s bank failed, leaving

Morton as one of the preeminent bankers in the

nation.3

Morton’s gracious manners and generous campaign contributions made him many friends in

Washington, among them President Ulysses S.

Grant and Grant’s strongest supporter in Congress, Senator Roscoe Conkling of New York.

Morton and his British partner, Sir John Rose, expanded their financial and political fortunes by

facilitating U.S. negotiations with Great Britain

to settle the ‘‘Alabama Claims.’’ During the war,

Britain had violated its neutrality by allowing the

construction of Confederate shipping on its soil.

Senator Charles Sumner, chairman of the Foreign

Relations Committee, pressed the administration

to demand large-scale compensation from Britain, including the annexation of Canada, even if

those claims led the two nations to war. Morton

and Rose persuaded the British and Americans

to accept international arbitration of their war

claims; the U.S. to reduce its demands; and the

British to pay $15 million in damages, for which

the house of Morton, Rose acted as disbursing

office. When advised that the government’s position would be strengthened by using Morton,

Rose as its agent, President Grant questioned

whether Morton’s firm was strong because of the

government’s patronage rather than the other

way around.4

After his wife Lucy died in 1871, L.P. Morton

married Anna Livingston Reade Street in 1873.

Anna’s connections as a member of New York’s

old Knickerbocker society helped propel Morton

into New York’s political scene. From all accounts, Anna Morton combined great charm,

wisdom and prudence, making her admirably

suited to be the wife of a political man. In 1876,

Morton became financial chairman of the Republican National Committee. Aware that success in

this position might reward him with an attractive

diplomatic post, he was also considering a race

for Congress. Morton asked his friend Whitelaw

Reid, editor of the New-York Tribune, ‘‘If elected,

and I wanted a foreign mission, could I well resign and accept that, or if defeated, what then?’’

adding ‘‘I have never made a speech in my life.’’

Reid encouraged him not to worry about speechmaking but advised that a resignation from a

newly won office would create some bitterness.

When Morton declared his candidacy for a

House seat from New York’s Eleventh District,

a fashionable residential area around upper Fifth

Avenue, he ran on a platform of sound currency

based on the gold standard. That plank would

remain consistent through his next quarter century in politics. His opponents pictured him as

a plutocrat and ‘‘a tool of Wall Street,’’ charges

that would similarly follow him in every election. Morton lost by a narrow margin but won

when he ran again for the seat in 1878.5

The Conkling Machine

In politics, Morton identified himself with the

New York political faction, the ‘‘stalwarts,’’

headed by Republican Senator Roscoe Conkling.

Opposing the stalwarts were the ‘‘half-breed’’

Republicans who rallied behind Senator James

G. Blaine of Maine. Conkling and Blaine were

bitter personal and political rivals, yet few substantive differences existed between their rival

factions on the issues of the day. Conkling’s machine was more identified with New York’s financial interests and made sound currency its

chief legislative aim, while the half-breeds placed

more emphasis on railroads, industry, and the

protective tariff. Both organizations, however,

thrived on government patronage and opposed

civil service reform. Morton’s presence in the

Conkling machine attested to its connections

with Wall Street financiers.

Entering Congress in 1879, Morton acted as

much as a representative of Morton, Bliss & Co.

as he did as a representative of the Eleventh District, since he saw no difference between his own

interests and those of his constituents. The newspaper reporter George Alfred Townsend described Morton as ‘‘not a loquacious man, and

yet an interesting talker, and one of the
[ 271 ]

LEVI P. MORTON

pleasantest expressions of his face is that of the

respectful, intelligent listener.’’ He stood six feet

tall, straight-limbed and erect, and walked with

‘‘flexible and quiet movements.’’ With closecropped hair and a square jaw, his face had a cosmopolitan appearance, ‘‘though the New England lines are decided.’’ The ‘‘whole tone of his

talk and character are toward tranquillity,’’

Townsend observed. In the House, Morton was

‘‘a close listener, a silent critic, a genial answerer;

neither intrusive nor obtrusive.’’ Since Morton

was wealthier than his colleagues, he was able

to establish his family in a handsome house on

Lafayette Square that became a popular meeting

place for politicos and high society. Morton won

a reputation for his urbanity and generous hospitality. Among the friends he made was Representative James Garfield of Ohio.6

Declining the Vice-Presidency

In 1880, Morton went to the Republican convention as a Conkling lieutenant, dedicated to

winning a third-term nomination for Ulysses S.

Grant. Conkling’s stalwarts were equally determined to stop the nomination of Blaine. When

a deadlock developed, Blaine’s half-breeds threw

their support to Garfield, a darkhorse candidate.

Once Garfield won the nomination, he realized

that he would need a New Yorker on the ticket

and immediately thought of his wealthy and

well-positioned friend, L.P. Morton. Morton

scurried to find Conkling, who objected. When

Morton declined the offer, the vice-presidential

nomination went instead to another Conkling

man, Chester A. Arthur, who had fewer scruples

about breaking with the boss.

Still trying to make peace with the Conkling

faction, Garfield came to New York in August

1880 for a meeting in Morton’s suite at the Fifth

Avenue Hotel. There, Garfield promised to support the Conkling machine’s patronage demands, which included the post of secretary of

the treasury. The Treasury Department oversaw

the New York customhouse, upon whose patronage the New York machine had been built. Morton agreed to chair Garfield’s campaign finance

committee, assuming that the treasury portfolio

would be his. After winning the election, however, Garfield insisted that he had made no specific pledges. In December 1880, Garfield recorded in his diary that Morton was ‘‘under misapprehension’’ that he had been promised the

Treasury Department. ‘‘This was not my understanding and seems wholly inadmissable. It

would be a congestion of financial power at the

money centre and would create jealousy at the

West.’’ 7

Blaine, who had been named secretary of state,

pronounced Morton ‘‘unfit’’ for the treasury,

while Senator Conkling traveled to Garfield’s

home in Mentor, Ohio, to lobby for Morton.

Conkling wanted to balance Blaine in the cabinet,

to protect his organization’s control over the

New York customhouse, and to remove Morton

from a hotly contested race for the other Senate

seat from New York, which Conkling wanted for

Tom Platt. Haughtily, Conkling told the president-elect that New York would rather be passed

over completely in the cabinet if it could not obtain the Treasury Department. Even Garfield’s

wife Lucretia joined the fray when she wrote

from a New York shopping trip:

Mr. [Whitelaw] Reid told me this morning that

Morton had been very ugly in his talk about you,

using the expression that seems to be so gratifying to the Conkling clique, ‘‘That Ohio man cannot be relied upon to stand by his pledges.’’ 8

Shortly before the inauguration, Garfield offered Morton the secretaryship of the navy,

which he accepted. But Conkling and Arthur

roused Morton from his bed in the middle of the

night and persuaded him to decline the post. The

next day Garfield recorded: ‘‘Morton broke

down on my hands under the pressure of his

N.Y. friends, who called him out of bed at 4 this

morning to prevent his taking the Navy Dep’t.

. . . The N.Y. delegation are in a great row because I do not give the Treasury to that state.’’

Despite his exasperation, Garfield still owed

Morton something for his work as campaign finance chairman and settled on making him minister to France.9

Collapse of the Conkling Machine

As president, Garfield confronted the

Conkling machine by appointing the half-breed

Republican William Robertson to be collector of

the port of New York and head of the custom-
[ 272 ]

LEVI P. MORTON

house. His action triggered a series of events that

culminated in the resignations of Senators

Conkling and Platt, who expected to be reelected

by the New York legislature as a show of support. Instead, both were defeated. In the midst

of this monumental struggle, on July 2, 1881,

President Garfield was shot by a deranged follower of Conkling’s stalwarts. On July 20, when

Morton sailed for France, Garfield was still lingering and recovery seemed possible. But on

September 19, the president died, making Chester Arthur—and not L.P. Morton—president of

the United States. Morton spent the next four

years in the diplomatic service, attending largely

to the ceremonies connected with France’s gift of

the Statue of Liberty to the United States. But he

still harbored ambitions for a seat in the Senate.10

By the time Morton returned to the United

States, Roscoe Conkling had quit politics for a lucrative law practice and Tom Platt had picked

up Conkling’s leadership of the New York party.

In 1884 Platt decided to support Blaine for president, on the grounds that Chet Arthur had deserted his former friends. Morton followed the

Platt machine into the Blaine camp. He was one

of the two hundred businessmen who attended

the infamous ‘‘millionaires’ dinner’’ given in

Blaine’s honor at Delmonico’s restaurant on October 29, 1884. At that dinner, a Protestant minister rose to denounce the Democrats as the party

of ‘‘rum, Romanism, and rebellion.’’ Blaine ignored the remark, but Democrats seized upon it

and publicized it widely among Irish voters.

Blaine lost New York by a narrow margin and

with it the presidency.11

Platt put Morton forward unsuccessfully for

senator in 1885 and 1887. In the former instance,

Morton was perceived as the frontrunner, having

greater resources and the full backing of Platt’s

machine. But Platt’s men had made the mistake

of taking all the key committee posts in the state

assembly, causing the ‘‘soreheads’’ who had

been left out to unite behind another candidate,

who snatched away the coveted Senate seat. The

1887 election was a three-man race, in which another candidate appeared to have a better chance

of winning for the stalwarts. Morton’s withdrawal from the race, seen as an expression of

his selfless sense of duty to his party (or faction

of the party), raised his chances for the vice-presidential nomination in 1888.12

A Strange Victory

When James G. Blaine, declining in health,

made it clear he would not run again for president in 1888, Tom Platt threw New York’s support to Indiana Senator Benjamin Harrison—the

grandson of former President William Henry

Harrison. Blaine recommended Harrison as the

best candidate and suggested for vice president

former Representative William Walter Phelps of

New Jersey. However, Platt’s support of Morton

helped the banker defeat Phelps by a margin of

five to one. The ticket of Harrison and Morton

put together a strange victory in the presidential

election. They lost the popular vote by 90,000 but

still managed to beat the incumbent President

Grover Cleveland in the electoral college, 233 to

168. The journalist Arthur Wallace Dunn attributed the Republican success in 1888 to the combined political shrewdness of Republican National Committee chairman and Pennsylvania

Senator Matt Quay and New York party boss

Tom Platt.13

As president, however, Benjamin Harrison

would not allow Platt and Quay to dictate his

cabinet and other federal appointments. Although principled, his stand against the

spoilsmen alienated him from those most responsible for his election. A thoughtful man,

Harrison was cold in person but articulate and

compelling as a public speaker. By contrast, Vice

President Morton was no public speaker, but ‘‘a

loveable personality,’’ who ‘‘filled every position

with grace, dignity, and ability.’’ In an era of

greed, corruption, and excess, Harrison and

Morton both epitomized family life and puritanical religious values. Harrison’s cabinet was

conservative and business oriented, with the department store magnate John Wanamaker serving as postmaster general. The political

officeseekers ridiculed the publicity received by

Harrison’s family, particularly his granddaughter, known as Baby Ruth (namesake of the

candy bar); they scoffed that the supposedly puritanical Morton owned Washington’s Shoreham

Hotel (which he named after his Vermont birthplace), where liquor was sold; and they belittled
[ 273 ]

LEVI P. MORTON

the attention given to Wanamaker’s Sunday

school teaching. As a spoilsmen’s verse put it:

The baby rules the White House, Levi runs the bar,

Wanny runs the Sunday school, And dammit here we are! 14

Due to Mrs. Harrison’s illnesses and death in

1892, Anna Morton often entertained on behalf

of the administration at the vice president’s mansion on Scott Circle. ‘‘Mrs. Morton became the

leader of society in Washington, and there was

never a more brilliant and popular leader than

she,’’ according to one account. ‘‘It was her innate graciousness, her innate tact, and her kindness of heart . . . which won her admiration and

respect of all.’’ Morton, whose only child by his

first marriage had died in infancy, had five

daughters by his second wife and boasted a lively home.15

The Businessman’s Cabinet and the Millionaires’

Club

Just as Harrison’s cabinet was called the ‘‘businessman’s cabinet’’ for its inclusion of Wanamaker and the Vermont marble baron Redfield

Proctor, the Senate over which Vice President

Morton presided was dubbed a ‘‘millionaires’

club.’’ In the late nineteenth century, businessmen had steadily gained control over both the

Republican and Democratic parties and used

their political positions to advance their economic interests. Senators became identified as

spokesmen for railroads, timber, mining, and

other industries. As California Senator George

Hearst, who had made his millions in mining,

proclaimed: ‘‘the members of the Senate are the

survivors of the fittest.’’ It seemed appropriate,

therefore, that the Senate’s presiding officer

should be one of the nation’s most prominent

bankers.16

President Harrison considered the greatest

failure of his administration to be its inability to

pass the federal elections bill sponsored by

Henry Cabot Lodge. Known as the ‘‘Force bill,’’

it was intended to force the South to permit black

men to vote and thereby protect their civil rights.

After Republican losses in the congressional elections of 1890, the Senate had taken up the Lodge

bill again, only to encounter a Democratic filibuster by those who believed it would restore a

Reconstruction-like Republican rule in the South.

Harrison summoned Republican senators to the

White House and urged them to do everything

possible to pass the bill. But western silver Republicans believed that the nation’s most pressing need was an inflated currency to cure economic ills. These Republicans joined Democrats

in passing a resolution to take up a new currency

measure in place of the elections bill.

The elections bill reached the Senate floor only

because of Vice President Morton’s tie-breaking

vote. But the bill immediately encountered another filibuster, and Morton did nothing to help

Republican efforts to break it. Republican senators hoped to persuade Morton to vacate his

chair, in order to allow a more sympathetic

member to preside, but Morton insisted on being

present throughout the debate. Because the vice

president had announced that he planned to preside as a neutral figure and not follow the dictates of the Republican caucus, he was accused

of doing little to maintain party discipline and

compared unfavorably to Speaker of the House

Thomas Brackett Reed, who presided with an

iron fist. Massachusetts Senator George F. Hoar

sneered at Morton as one of those vice presidents

who ‘‘asserted their authority with as little show

of force as if they were presiding over a company

of guests at their own table.’’ Finally on January

22, 1891, a resolution to replace the elections bill

with another was passed 35 to 34, and the elections bill died.17

Unceremoniously Dumped

As the Republican convention approached in

1892, Morton’s supporters floated his name for

the presidency, but he lacked the necessary delegate votes. Then Secretary of State Blaine resigned from Harrison’s cabinet to become a candidate himself. The ‘‘Old Guard’’ bosses, notably

Pennsylvania’s Quay and New York’s Platt, supported Blaine, but President Harrison held the

majority of the delegates. Morton was

unceremoniously dumped from the ticket in

favor of another New Yorker, his supposed

friend Whitelaw Reid. President Harrison apparently had never cared much for his vice president—or forgiven him for his neutrality over the

Force bill—and did not demand his renomina-
[ 274 ]

LEVI P. MORTON

tion. At the same time, the ‘‘Platt Contingent’’ at

the convention determined that a Harrison ticket

was doomed to defeat, and they had better plans

for Morton.18

In 1894, Platt ran Morton for governor of New

York, a race that he won handily. Platt later memorialized Morton as ‘‘the safest Governor New

York ever had. Business experience had taught

him conservatism. He never was influenced by

crazy theorists, but conducted his administration

as he did his great private financial institutions.’’

Senator Chauncey Depew similarly credited

Morton as bringing to the governorship ‘‘business ability which had made him one of the great

merchants and foremost bankers.’’ In 1896, Platt

put the seventy-two-year-old Governor Morton

forward as New York’s favorite son for the Republican presidential nomination, to stop the

nomination of Ohio Governor William McKinley, whose past flirtation with free silver worried

the gold standard men of the East. Platt organized banquets and planted newspaper editorials that encouraged Morton to envision himself in the White House. But these efforts were

routed by the campaign strategies of the brilliant

businessman-tactician Mark Hanna, who engineered McKinley’s nomination.19

Morton retired from politics and returned to

his banking career, organizing the Morton Trust

Company. In 1909, when Morton was in his

eighties, an offer came from J.P. Morgan to

merge the Morton bank into the Morgan Guaranty Trust Company. Morton deeply regretted

that, as a result of the merger, the company bearing his name was retired from the business

world. L.P. Morton died on his ninety-sixth

birthday in 1920, already a long-forgotten name

in both banking and politics.20
[ 275 ]

NOTES 1Robert McNutt McElroy, Levi Parsons Morton: Banker,

Diplomat and Statesman (New York, 1975; reprint of 1930 edition), pp. 25–26. 2 Ibid., pp. 20–37, 39; George Alfred Townsend, ‘‘Levi P.

Morton: A Biography,’’ in Lew Wallace, Life of Gen. Ben Harrison (Philadelphia, 1888), p. 361. 3McElroy, pp. 42, 51.

4David M. Jordan, Roscoe Conkling of New York: Voice in

the Senate (Ithaca, NY, 1971), pp. 151–52; William S.

McFeely, Grant, A Biography (New York, 1981), pp. 333, 336,

355. 5Royal Cortissoz, The Life of Whitelaw Reid (New York,

1921), 1:351; McElroy, pp. 71–74. 6McElroy, pp. 84–88, 97; Townsend, pp. 354–55, 372.

7Theodore Clarke Smith, The Life and Letters of James

Abram Garfield (New Haven, CT, 1925), 2:1047, 1055; Louis

J. Lang, ed., The Autobiography of Thomas Collier Platt (New

York, 1910), pp. 128, 131–32. See also Chapter 20 of this volume, ‘‘Chester Alan Arthur,’’ p. 253. 8 Smith, pp. 1074, 1078, 1083–84.

9 Ibid., pp. 1090–91: Harry James Brown and Frederick D.

Williams, The Diary of James A. Garfield (East Lansing, MI,

1981), 4:552; Jordan, p. 376. 10 Smith, p. 1072; Justus D. Doenecke, The Presidencies of

James A. Garfield & Chester A. Arthur (Lawrence, KS, 1981),

pp. 20–21, 30, 95. 11Lang, ed., p. 181; Jordan, pp. 416–17.

12 Chester L. Barrows, William M. Evarts: Lawyer, Diplomat,

Statesman (Chapel Hill, NC, 1941), pp. 436–37; Lang, ed., pp.

187–92; Paul Lancaster, Gentleman of the Press: The Life and

Times of an Early Reporter, Julian Ralph of the Sun (Syracuse,

NY, 1992), p. 141. 13Robert F. Wesser, ‘‘Election of 1888,’’ in History of American Presidential Elections, 1789–1968, ed. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., and Fred L. Israel (New York, 1969), 2:1635; Arthur Wallace Dunn, From Harrison to Harding: A Personal

Narrative, Covering a Third of a Century, 1888–1921 (Port

Washington, NY, 1972; reprint of 1922 edition), 1:8. 14 Homer Socolofsky and Allan B. Spetter, The Presidency

of Benjamin Harrison (Lawrence, KS, 1987), pp. 19–45; Frank

Carpenter, Carp’s Washington (New York, 1960), p. 305;

Chauncey M. Depew, My Memories of Eighty Years (New

York, 1924), p. 220; Herbert Adams Gibbons, John Wanamaker (New York, 1926), 1:328. 15 Great Leaders and National Issues of 1896 (New York,

1896), p. 287. 16Thomas C. Corchran and William Miller, The Age of Enterprise: A Social History of Industrial America (New York,

1942), pp. 162–64. 17McElroy, pp. 188–91; Socolofsky and Spetter, pp. 64–

65; Charles W. Calhoun, ‘‘Civil Religion and the Gilded Age

Presidency: The Case of Benjamin Harrison,’’ Presidential

Studies Quarterly 23 (Fall 1993): 658; George F. Hoar, Autobiography of Seventy Years (New York, 1903), 2:68. 18McElroy, pp. 194–205; H. Wayne Morgan, From Hayes

to McKinley: National Party Politics, 1877–1896 (Syracuse, NY,

1969), p. 415. 19Lang, ed., pp. 332–33; Depew, pp. 147, 218, 220; James

A. Kehl, Boss Rule in the Gilded Age: Matt Quay of Pennsylvania (Pittsburgh, 1981), pp. 199–203; Morgan, p. 491.

20McElroy, p. 320.

[ 277 ]

Chapter 23

ADLAI EWING STEVENSON

1893–1897
ADLAI E. STEVENSON
[ 279 ]

Chapter 23

ADLAI EWING STEVENSON

23rd Vice President: 1893–1897

‘‘Has Mr. Cleveland yet consulted you to that extent?’’ Vice President Stevenson was once asked.

‘‘Not yet,’’ he replied. ‘‘But, there are still a few weeks of my term remaining.’’

In February 1900, the Chicago American ran a

photograph of former Vice President Adlai Stevenson holding his new grandson, Adlai Ewing

Stevenson II. That year the grandfather was

again nominated to run for vice president on the

Democratic ticket. A half century later, the

grandson would run twice as the Democratic

nominee for president and gain even greater national and international prominence. Yet it was

the grandfather who came closest to becoming

president of the United States—when President

Grover Cleveland underwent critical surgery.1

Youth

The Stevenson family were Presbyterians from

Northern Ireland who migrated first to Pennsylvania and then to North Carolina and Kentucky. Adlai E. Stevenson, son of John Turner

Stevenson and Eliza Ewing Stevenson, was born

on the family farm in Christian County, Kentucky, on October 23, 1835. He attended the common school in Blue Water, Kentucky, presided

over by a ‘‘dreaded schoolmaster,’’ Mr. Caskie.

Years later, when as vice-presidential candidate

Stevenson was about to speak at a barbecue in

Kentucky, the elderly schoolmaster approached

the platform and inquired, ‘‘Adlai, I came twenty

miles to hear you speak; don’t you remember

me?’’ Stevenson instantly replied, ‘‘Yes, Mr.

Caskie, I still have a few marks left to remember

you by!’’ 2

In 1852, when Adlai was sixteen, frost killed

the family’s tobacco crop. His father set free their

few slaves and moved to Bloomington, Illinois,

where he operated a sawmill. Adlai worked in

the mill and taught school, earning money for

college. He attended the Presbyterian-run Centre

College in Danville, Kentucky, headed by the

Reverend Lewis Warner Green. Adlai fell in love

with Green’s daughter Letitia, but family problems delayed their marriage for nine years. His

father’s death prompted Adlai to return to

Bloomington to run the sawmill; then, when the

Reverend Green died, Letitia and her mother

moved near Bloomington. Mrs. Green considered the Stevensons socially inferior and did not

favor a marriage between the young people,

even though Adlai had studied law and had

been admitted to the bar in 1858. Not until 1866

did Adlai and Letitia finally marry. They had

three daughters and a son, Lewis, who became

father to the later presidential candidate.3

A Democrat in Republican Territory

As a young lawyer, Stevenson encountered

such celebrated Illinois attorneys as Stephen A.

Douglas and Abraham Lincoln, campaigning for

Douglas in his 1858 Senate race against Lincoln.

Stevenson also made speeches against the

‘‘Know-Nothing’’ movement, a nativist group

opposed to immigrants and Catholics. That

stand helped cement his support in Illinois’ large

German and Irish communities. In a predominantly Republican area, the Democratic Stevenson won friends through his storytelling and his

warm and engaging personality. In 1860 at the
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ADLAI E. STEVENSON

age of twenty-five, he was appointed master in

chancery (an aide in a court of equity), his first

public office, which he held during the Civil

War. In 1864 Stevenson was elected district attorney, and at the end of his term in 1868 he entered

law practice with his cousin, James S. Ewing. Stevenson & Ewing became one of the state’s most

prominent law firms.4

In 1874, when Stevenson ran for the House of

Representatives as a Democrat, local Republican

newspapers painted him as a ‘‘vile secessionist,’’

but the continuing hardships from the economic

panic of 1873 caused voters to sweep him into

office with the first Democratic congressional

majority since the Civil War. In the presidential

election year of 1876, however, the Republican

ticket headed by Rutherford B. Hayes carried his

district, and Stevenson was narrowly defeated

for reelection, taking 49.6 percent of the vote.

Then, in 1878, he ran on both the Democratic and

Greenback tickets and won. Returning to a

House from which one-third of his earlier colleagues had either voluntarily retired or been retired by the voters gave Stevenson a sense of the

swiftly changing tides of politics. In 1880, again

a presidential election year, he once more lost

narrowly, and he was defeated in his final race

for Congress in 1882.5

The Headsman of the Post Office

Stevenson served as a delegate to the Democratic convention of 1884 that nominated Grover

Cleveland for president. Cleveland’s reform

record as governor of New York helped win over

Republican reformers, the mugwumps, who enabled him to defeat the popular but scandal-ridden Republican candidate James G. Blaine. When

Cleveland took office as president, the mugwumps expected him to carry out the goals of

civil service reform rather than return to the

spoilsmanship of Jacksonian Democracy. They

felt reassured at first when Cleveland appointed

an able Republican as postmaster of New York

City. But job-hungry Democrats besieged the administration for patronage, and the president

had to respond to the angry rumblings from his

party on Capitol Hill.

Particularly at stake were the 55,000 fourthclass postmasters. Although paying just a thousand dollars a year, these offices were critically

important to local political operations. In small

towns, the postmaster knew everyone, as well as

the mail they received and the newspapers and

magazines they read. This knowledge placed the

postmasters in an excellent position to keep the

national party organization informed on public

opinion. The local postmasters would also distribute party literature in bulk more cheaply than

if it were individually addressed. Former Democratic nominee Samuel J. Tilden, a master political organizer, reminded the Cleveland administration that these rural post offices essentially

served as their party’s local headquarters. To

leave them in the hands of Republicans would

be ‘‘infidelity to the principles and causes of the

Administration.’’ 6

When First Assistant Postmaster General Malcolm Hay, a civil service reformer, resigned due

to ill health after only three months in office,

Cleveland appointed the more partisan Adlai

Stevenson to succeed him. Given free rein to remove Republican officeholders, Stevenson thoroughly enjoyed swinging the axe. One Republican journalist described Stevenson as ‘‘an official axman who beheaded Republican officeholders with the precision and dispatch of the

French guillotine in the days of the Revolution.’’

Dubbed ‘‘the Headsman’’ for replacing some

40,000 Republicans with deserving Democrats,

he once ‘‘decapitated sixty-five Republican postmasters in two minutes.’’ Republicans protested

but recognized that they had swung the same

axe, and even the mugwumps realized that true

civil service reform probably could not be

achieved until greater balance was achieved between Democratic and Republican officeholders.7

Cleveland rewarded Stevenson with a judicial

nomination to the supreme court of the District

of Columbia, but Senate Republicans refused to

confirm the man who had discharged so many

of their postmasters. When Cleveland was defeated for reelection in 1888, President Benjamin

Harrison appointed James S. Clarkson as first assistant postmaster general, and Clarkson

promptly undid Stevenson’s handiwork by replacing 32,335 of the fourth-class postmasters.

When the Democrats chose Cleveland once again
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ADLAI E. STEVENSON

as their standard bearer in 1892, they appeased

party regulars by the nomination of the

‘‘headsman of the post-office,’’ Adlai Stevenson,

for vice president. As a supporter of using greenbacks and free silver to inflate the currency and

alleviate economic distress in the rural districts,

Stevenson balanced the ticket headed by Cleveland, the hard-money, gold-standard supporter.

Just before the election, Cleveland learned that

Republicans were planning a lurid expose ́ of

Stevenson’s soft-money record. Cleveland’s campaign manager caught Stevenson at a speaking

engagement in West Virginia and handed him a

letter endorsing sound money. Stevenson signed

the letter and released it to the press, thus defusing the issue. The winning Cleveland-Stevenson

ticket carried Illinois, although not Stevenson’s

home district.8

Civil service reformers held out hope for the

second Cleveland administration but saw Vice

President Stevenson as a symbol of the spoils

system. He never hesitated to feed names of

Democrats to the Post Office Department. Once

he called at the Treasury Department to protest

against an appointment and was shown a letter

he had written endorsing the candidate. Stevenson told the treasury officials not to pay attention

to any of his written endorsements; if he really

favored someone he would tell them personally.9

Silver and Gold

While such stories about ‘‘Uncle Adlai’’

brought smiles around Washington, Stevenson’s

presence as next in line to the presidency frightened Cleveland’s more conservative supporters.

Just before Cleveland took office, a financial

panic on Wall Street had plunged the nation into

depression. As a staunch advocate of limited

government, Cleveland disapproved of any government program to reduce economic suffering.

By contrast, Vice President Stevenson represented the ‘‘populist doctrines’’ of currency reform that were creeping into the Democratic

party. In June 1893, after Cleveland proposed repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act and a

return to the gold standard, one of his hardmoney supporters wrote Cleveland saying: ‘‘I

wish you had Congress in session now. You may

not be alive in September. It would make a vast

difference to the United States if you were not.’’

The writer did not know that Cleveland faced a

potentially fatal operation. A habitual cigarsmoker, Cleveland had developed cancer of the

mouth that required immediate surgery. The

president insisted that the surgery be kept secret

to avoid another panic on Wall Street over the

thought of a silverite like Stevenson in the White

House. While on a yacht in New York harbor

that summer, Cleveland had his entire upper jaw

removed and replaced with an artificial device,

an operation that left no outward scar. The cancer surgery remained secret for another quarter

century. Cleveland’s aides explained that he had

merely had dental work. His vice president little

realized how close he came to the presidency

that summer.10

Meanwhile, a major battle loomed in the Senate over currency reform. In 1890, the Republican

President Harrison had supported the Sherman

Silver Purchase Act in return for silver Republicans’ support of the protective tariff named

after Ohio Representative—and future President—William McKinley. But in the 1890 elections the unpopular McKinley tariff defeated

many Republicans, including McKinley, restored

Democratic majorities in Congress, and bolstered

the populist movement that was demanding

more government intervention in railroad regulation, currency reform, and farm relief. Disdainful of the populists, Cleveland interpreted the

Republican defeat as vindication of his policies.

Upon reentering the White House in 1893, he

was determined to repeal the Sherman Act to restore business confidence and therefore called

Congress into extraordinary session in August to

consider the issue.11

In October 1893, efforts to repeal the Sherman

Silver Purchase Act met with a filibuster in the

Senate. Indiana Senator Daniel Voorhees, leader

of the Cleveland Democrats, announced that the

Senate would remain in continuous session until

a vote was taken. Opponents made repeated calls

for quorums, feigned illness, and refused to appear even when summoned by the Senate sergeant at arms. Those conducting the filibuster

benefitted from the cooperation of the presiding

officer. Vice President Stevenson refused to turn

his back on the silverites, who had helped to
[ 282 ]

ADLAI E. STEVENSON

nominate him, and gave no aid to the administration in whipping the dissenters into line. The

prominent Washington correspondent Julian

Ralph knew that the Senate had no formal cloture procedure but heard that it might be possible for the vice president to cut off debate by

simply ordering a vote. Ralph asked the opinion

of former House Speaker Thomas B. Reed, who

had broken similar dilatory actions in the House

by counting the minority as present even if they

failed to answer the roll. Reed asserted that the

vice president ‘‘could do whatever he pleased if

he had a majority behind him.’’ But Democrat

Isham G. Harris of Tennessee, the president pro

tempore, strongly disagreed. ‘‘Why, sir, I don’t

believe he would live to accomplish it,’’ said

Harris (who later repudiated the threatening

quote when it appeared in the Ralph story).12

New York Democratic Senator David Hill followed Ralph’s suggestion by circulating a petition to force the vice president to overrule all dilatory motions, but it failed to attract many signers. Nor were Democrats able to agree on adoption of a cloture rule. Finally, the Senate accepted

a compromise arranged by Maryland Democratic Senator Arthur Pue Gorman that established a gradual reduction of silver purchases

over a three-year period. Although this agreement made possible passage of the repeal, President Cleveland never forgave Gorman for his

compromise and thereafter rarely consulted this

important Democratic leader. Repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act only contracted the currency and further weakened the economy.

Silverites called it the ‘‘Crime of 1893.’’ The

Democrats became tagged as the party of the

‘‘empty dinnerpail’’ and suffered sweeping congressional defeats in 1894.13

A Notable Sense of Humor

Adlai Stevenson enjoyed his role as vice president, presiding over ‘‘the most august legislative

assembly known to men.’’ He won praise for ruling in a dignified, nonpartisan manner. In personal appearance he stood six feet tall and was

‘‘of fine personal bearing and uniformly courteous to all.’’ Although he was often a guest at

the White House, Stevenson admitted that he

was less an adviser to the president than ‘‘the

neighbor to his counsels.’’ He credited the president with being ‘‘courteous at all times’’ but

noted that ‘‘no guards were necessary to the

preservation of his dignity. No one would have

thought of undue familiarity.’’ For his part,

President Cleveland snorted that his vice president had surrounded himself with a coterie of

free-silver men dubbed the ‘‘Stevenson cabinet.’’

The president even mused that the economy had

gotten so bad and the Democratic party so divided that ‘‘the logical thing for me to do . . .

was to resign and hand the Executive branch to

Mr. Stevenson,’’ joking that he would try to get

his friends jobs in Stevenson’s new cabinet.14

Toward the end of his term, ‘‘Uncle Adlai’’

was a dinner guest at the home of Senator

Gorman. The vice president had a strong sense

of humor, which he suppressed while presiding

over the Senate but let loose in private. At dinner, Stevenson said he resented the familiar

charge that vice presidents were never consulted

by the president and told a story about Vice

President John Breckinridge once being consulted by President James Buchanan—about the

wording of his Thanksgiving message. ‘‘Has Mr.

Cleveland yet consulted you to that extent?’’

Senator Gorman asked. ‘‘Not yet,’’ Stevenson replied. ‘‘But, there are still a few weeks of my term

remaining.’’ 15

Stevenson was mentioned as a candidate to

succeed Cleveland in 1896. Although he chaired

the Illinois delegation to the Democratic National

Convention, he gained little support. As one

Democrat noted, ‘‘the young men of the country

are determined to have something to say during

the next election, and are tired of these old

hacks.’’ Stevenson received a smattering of votes,

but the convention was taken by storm by a thirty-six-year-old former representative from Nebraska, William Jennings Bryan, who delivered

his fiery ‘‘Cross of Gold’’ speech in favor of a

free-silver plank in the platform. Not only did

the Democrats repudiate Cleveland by embracing free silver, but they also nominated Bryan for

president. Many Cleveland Democrats, including most Democratic newspapers, refused to

support Bryan, but Vice President Stevenson loyally endorsed the ticket. In the fall, Bryan conducted the nation’s first whistle-stop campaign,
[ 283 ]

ADLAI E. STEVENSON

traveling extensively around the country and

capturing people’s imaginations. Although he

did far better than expected, he lost the election

to Ohio’s Republican governor, William

McKinley.16

A bimetallist himself, McKinley ran on a goldstandard platform. But McKinley wanted to

enact a protective tariff, and, to win support

from silver Republicans, he promised to appoint

a bipartisan commission to negotiate an international agreement on bimetallism. Silverites

hoped that a prominent Democrat might be appointed, but when their leading candidates declined they settled for ‘‘a man of no particular

weight,’’ the former vice president. The work of

the commission came to naught. Stevenson

found more satisfaction as a political speaker, addressing all things ‘‘purely and absolutely

Democratic.’’ 17

After the 1896 election, Bryan became the titular leader of the Democrats and frontrunner for

the nomination in 1900. Much of the newspaper

speculation about who would run as the party’s

vice-presidential candidate centered on Indiana

Senator Benjamin Shively. But when reporter Arthur Wallace Dunn interviewed Shively at the

convention, the senator said he ‘‘did not want the

glory of a defeat as a vice presidential candidate.’’ A disappointed Dunn said that he still

had to file a story on the vice-presidential nomination, and then added: ‘‘I believe I’ll write a

piece about old Uncle Adlai.’’ ‘‘That’s a good

idea,’’ said Shively. ‘‘Stevenson is just the man.

There you have it. Uniting the old Cleveland element with the new Bryan Democracy. You’ve got

enough for one story. But say, this is more than

a joke. Stevenson is just the man.’’ For the rest

of the day, Dunn heard other favorable remarks

about Stevenson, and by that night the former

vice president was the leading contender, since

no one else was ‘‘very anxious to be the tail of

what they considered was a forlorn hope

ticket.’’ 18

The Populists had already nominated the ticket of Bryan and Charles A. Towne, a silver Republican from Minnesota, with the tacit understanding that Towne would step aside if the

Democrats nominated someone else. Bryan preferred his good friend Towne, but Democrats

wanted one of their own, and the regular element of the party felt comfortable with Stevenson. Towne withdrew and campaigned for Bryan

and Stevenson. As a result, Stevenson, who had

run with Cleveland in 1892, now ran with his

nemesis Bryan in 1900. Twenty-five years senior

to Bryan, Stevenson added age and experience

to the ticket. Nevertheless, their effort never

stood a chance against the Republican ticket of

McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt. Stevenson

returned again to private practice in Illinois,

making one last attempt at office in an unsuccessful race for governor in 1908. After that, he

retired to Bloomington, where his Republican

neighbors described him as ‘‘windy but

amusing.’’ 19

Grandfather and Grandson

Through Stevenson’s long career, his wife

Letitia was a ‘‘keen observer and judge of people,

and a charming hostess.’’ Although suffering

from migraine headaches and severe rheumatism that forced her to wear leg braces when

standing at receptions, she dutifully supported

his many political campaigns. Letitia also helped

establish the Daughters of the American Revolution as a way of healing the divisions between

the North and South after the Civil War. She succeeded Mrs. Benjamin Harrison as the DAR’s

second president-general. Adlai Stevenson II remembered his grandparents’ home as ‘‘a very

formal household.’’ The vice president addressed his wife as ‘‘Mrs. Stevenson’’ and she

called him ‘‘Mr. Stevenson.’’ Young Adlai considered his grandfather ‘‘one of the great raconteurs of his day’’ and learned much about American history and politics from him. At his grandfather’s house in Bloomington he met many ‘‘distinguished Democrats’’ from around the land, including William Jennings Bryan. He recalled that

hanging on the wall was a lithograph, ‘‘The Lost

Bet,’’ depicting a gentleman in top hat and frock

coat paying off an election bet by pulling a

wagon down a street beneath a banner that read:

‘‘Grover Cleveland and Adlai E. Stevenson.’’ 20

Adlai Stevenson died in Bloomington on June

14, 1914. Thirty-eight years later, his grandson

and namesake, then serving as governor of Illinois, agonized over whether to make himself
[ 284 ]

ADLAI E. STEVENSON

available for the Democratic nomination for

president. When Adlai E. Stevenson II appeared

on the television news show Meet the Press, a reporter from the Chicago Daily News pressed him

for a commitment by saying: ‘‘Wouldn’t your

grandfather, Vice President Stevenson, twirl in

his grave if he saw you running away from a

chance to be the Democratic nominee in 1952?’’

Stevenson, who loathed giving up his governorship for what most likely would be a futile campaign against the war hero Dwight Eisenhower,

blanched at the comparison and replied, ‘‘I think

we have to leave Grandfather lie.’’ 21
[ 285 ]

NOTES 1 Jeff Broadwater, Adlai Stevenson and American Politics:

The Odyssey of a Cold War Liberal (New York, 1994), p. 1. 2Adlai E. Stevenson, Something Of Men I Have Known

(Chicago, 1909), p. 47. 3 Porter McKeever, Adlai Stevenson: His Life and Legacy

(New York, 1989), pp. 15–18; Jean H. Baker, The Stevensons:

A Biography of an American Family (New York, 1996), pp. 82–

95.4George Spiel, The Battle of 1900 (Chicago, 1900), p. 475;

Broadwater, p. 1. 5McKeever, p. 17; Stevenson, p. 47; Baker, pp. 112–22.

6 Horace Samuel Merrill, William Freeman Vilas, Doctrinaire Democrat (Madison, WI, 1954), pp. 100, 102–3. 7David S. Barry, Forty Years in Washington (Boston, 1924),

p. 191; Solomon X. Griffin, People and Politics: Observations

by a Massachusetts Editor (Boston, 1923), p. 307; Wayne Morgan, From Hayes to McKinley: National Party Politics, 1877–

1896 (Syracuse, NY, 1969), p. 446; Merrill, William Freeman

Vilas, p. 105. 8Griffin, pp. 307, 327; McKeever, p. 17; Herbert Eaton,

Presidential Timber: A History of Nominating Conventions,

1868–1960 (New York, 1964), pp. 145–47; Allan Nevins, Grover Cleveland, A Study in Courage (New York, 1932), pp. 504–

5. 9 Nevins, p. 518.

10 Horace Samuel Merrill, Bourbon Democracy of the Middle

West, 1865–1896 (Seattle, 1967; reprint of 1953 edition), pp.

216, 237; Morgan, p. 450; Richard E. Welch, Jr., The Presidencies of Grover Cleveland (Lawrence, KS, 1988), pp. 60, 106,

119; Robert H. Ferrell, Ill-Advised: Presidential Health and

Public Trust (Columbia, MO, 1992), pp. 3–11. 11 Paolo E. Coletta, ‘‘The Democratic Party, 1884–1910,’’

in History of U.S. Political Parties, ed. Arthur M. Schlesinger,

Jr. (New York, 1980), 2:996. 12 Paul Lancaster, Gentleman of the Press: The Life and Times

of an Early Reporter, Julian Ralph of the Sun (Syracuse, NY,

1992), p. 221. 13 John R. Lambert, Arthur Pue Gorman (Baton Rouge, LA,

1953), pp. 193, 195, 199; Baker, pp. 163–71. 14 Stevenson, pp. 63, 243–44; Spiel, p. 477; Allan Nevins,

ed., Letters of Grover Cleveland, 1850–1908 (Boston, 1933), p.

380. 15David S. Barry, Forty Years in Washington (Boston, 1924),

pp. 191–92. 16Merrill, William Freeman Vilas, p. 198. 17Leon Burr Richardson, William E. Chandler, Republican

(New York, 1940), p. 551; Spiel, p. 477. 18Arthur Wallace Dunn, From Harrison to Harding: A Personal Narrative, Covering a Third of a Century, 1888–1921 (Port

Washington, NY, 1972; reprint of 1922 edition), 1:344; Baker,

pp. 174–77. 19Louis W. Koenig, Bryan: A Political Biography of William

Jennings Bryan (New York, 1971), p. 324; Broadwater, p. 2. 20McKeever, p. 18; John Bartlow Martin, Adlai Stevenson

(New York, 1952)., p. 41; Baker, pp. 154–63. 21McKeever, p. 185.

[ 287 ]

Chapter 24

GARRET AUGUSTUS HOBART

1897–1899
GARRET AUGUSTUS HOBART
[ 289 ]

Chapter 24

GARRET AUGUSTUS HOBART

24th Vice President: 1897–1899

For the first time in my recollection, and the last for that matter, the Vice President was recognized

as somebody, as a part of the Administration, as a part of the body over which he presided.

—VETERAN NEWSPAPER CORRESPONDENT

It seems startling that someone who never held

prior office outside of a state legislature could be

nominated and elected Vice President of the

United States, as was Garret Augustus Hobart in

1896. By the time convention delegates chose the

last nineteenth-century vice president, they had

come to regard that office as little more than a

‘‘fifth wheel to the executive coach.’’ The nomination was in their view simply a device for balancing the ticket, either by ideology or by region.

‘‘Gus’’ Hobart, an easterner chosen to run with

a middle westerner, William McKinley of Ohio,

completely shared McKinley’s conservative political philosophy. With warm feelings for Hobart, President McKinley decided to rescue the

vice-presidency from its low estate. McKinley so

embraced the vice president as his friend, associate, and confidant that Hobart’s home on Lafayette Square became known as the ‘‘Little Cream

White House,’’ and Hobart as the ‘‘Assistant

President.’’ 1

Youth

Hobart was the descendant of a long line of

clergymen, with a family tree that dated back to

the Massachusetts Bay Colony of the early seventeenth century. In 1841 his father had left New

England to open a primary school in Long

Branch, New Jersey. There, on June 3, 1844, Garret Augustus Hobart was born. Young Hobart attended his father’s school and then went to

boarding school. As a member of the Reformed

Church, he attended Rutgers College, which was

then under that church’s control. He graduated

at the top of his class in 1863. Although the nation was deeply engaged in the Civil War, Hobart did not join the Union army. Instead, he

studied law in Paterson, New Jersey, under the

tutelage of Socrates Tuttle, a childhood friend of

his father’s. He became a lawyer in 1866, and on

July 21, 1869, married Tuttle’s daughter, Jennie.

Hobart’s family had long been Democrats, but

marriage into the Republican Tuttle household

converted the young man to the Grand Old

Party.2

Not a Conventional Politician

After service as clerk of a grand jury, Hobart

was elected a judge in Paterson in 1868. In 1871,

after his father-in-law became mayor, Hobart

was appointed to the post of city counsel. The

following year he went to the state assembly, rising speedily to become speaker in 1874. In 1876

he won election to the state senate, which chose

him as senate president in 1881, according him

the distinction of being the first person to head

both houses of the New Jersey legislature. Despite these achievements, Hobart was no politician in the conventional sense. ‘‘He was not fond

of standing in the public eye,’’ a friend later assessed. ‘‘He did not seek popularity by those

methods which usually evoke the applause and

admiration of the multitude. He was not

spectacular.’’ 3
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GARRET A. HOBART

A rotund, jovial, hospitable man, Hobart displayed much tact, charm, and ability to work

with other people. These qualities, which made

him an outstanding state legislator, should have

helped him move up to the national legislature,

if it had not been for his increasingly lucrative

law practice in New Jersey. The many banks and

railroads among his clients made him wealthy,

and he was loath to abandon his comfortable

family life in New Jersey for the demands of a

political career in Washington. (The Hobart

home, ‘‘Carroll Hall,’’ was reputedly the ‘‘largest

and most sumptuous in Paterson.’’) Several

times Hobart stood for the United States Senate

but never fought hard enough to win election

from a state legislature in which he was immensely popular. He served instead as chairman

of the State Republican Committee from 1880 to

1891 and as a member of the party’s national

committee.4

A Homesick Candidate

Since the Civil War, New Jersey had leaned toward Democratic presidential candidates. President Grover Cleveland had carried the state in

1892, but, during the economic depression that

followed, both houses of the legislature and the

governorship of New Jersey went Republican,

suggesting that the state could be taken by the

national ticket in 1896. Looking over the scene,

the Democratic New York Graphic noted that there

was no other Republican in New Jersey as strong

as this ‘‘sturdy, bright faced, genial

gentleman.’’ 5

In 1896, the New Jersey delegation went to the

Republican convention in St. Louis determined

to nominate Hobart for vice president, as a way

of consolidating the party’s recent gains within

their state. When Ohio Governor McKinley defeated House Speaker Thomas Reed and several

other prominent candidates for the presidential

nomination, newspapers identified some twenty

potential candidates for the vice-presidency. All

of them were governors, cabinet members, senators, and representatives, with the exception of

Hobart, who remained unknown outside of his

state. Yet when the vote was taken, Hobart, who

had attended the convention as a delegate,

emerged the nominee.

Hobart insisted that he had not sought the

nomination but that it was handed to him as ‘‘a

tribute from my friends.’’ It came equally as a

tribute from Marcus A. Hanna, the Cleveland industrialist and political strategist who masterminded McKinley’s nomination. Hanna wanted

a ticket to satisfy the business interests of America, and Hobart, a corporate lawyer, fit that requirement perfectly. Hanna’s biographer noted

that, even if Hobart did little to strengthen the

ticket, ‘‘he did nothing to weaken it.’’ 6

Hobart himself felt ambivalent about the

honor. Ambitious for national office, he was realistic enough to know what it would ultimately

cost him. From the convention, he wrote to his

wife:

I have been too busy to be homesick, but, to tell

the honest truth, I am heart-sick over my own

prospects. It looks to me I will be nominated for

Vice-President whether I want it or not, and as

I get nearer to the point where I may, I am dismayed at the thought. . . . If I want a nomination,

everything is going my way. But when I realize

all that it means in work, worry, and loss of home

and bliss, I am overcome, so overcome I am simply miserable.7

Unlike the Democratic presidential candidate

William Jennings Bryan, who barnstormed the

country making speeches, William McKinley

stayed at home in Canton, Ohio, running his

campaign from his front porch. Hobart similarly

limited his speaking to his portico in New Jersey.

McKinley and Hobart stood firm for the gold

standard and the protective tariff. Bryan, for his

part, ran on a ‘‘Free Silver’’ platform and attracted many desperate farmers and debtors to

his crusade. But economic conditions—and corporate interests—favored the Republicans.

McKinley won by a half million votes, or 51 percent of the total cast. His Republican ticket carried 23 of the 45 states, including Hobart’s New

Jersey.

The Little Cream White House

For a running mate, McKinley had preferred

Speaker Thomas B. Reed, with whom he had

worked for many years in the House, but Reed

would accept only the top spot on the ticket. Although McKinley and Hobart were strangers by
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GARRET A. HOBART

comparison, the president had no difficulty

warming up to Gus Hobart. The wealthy Hobarts leased a house at 21 Lafayette Square,

which became known as the ‘‘Little Cream White

House.’’ Built in 1828 by Col. Ogle Tayloe, the

house had hosted Washington’s high society

during the antebellum years. At the outset of the

Civil War, General George McClellan had taken

it as his headquarters. After the war, Pennsylvania Senator Don Cameron had remodeled and restored the old house. The Hobarts used it to entertain lavishly—particularly because President

McKinley’s wife was an invalid who could not

shoulder the traditional social burdens of the

White House. The president frequently attended

Hobart’s dinners and afternoon smokers, where

he could meet informally with party leaders

from Capitol Hill.8

No previous vice president had visited the

White House as often as Gus Hobart, due in part

to the warm friendship that developed between

Ida McKinley and Jennie Hobart. Mrs. McKinley

suffered from epilepsy, which left her a recluse

in the White House. President McKinley doted

on his wife and grew to depend on Jennie Hobart, who visited Ida daily. ‘‘The President constantly turned to me to help her wherever I

could,’’ Mrs. Hobart wrote in her memoirs, ‘‘—

not because I was Second Lady, but because I

was their good friend.’’ Whenever McKinley had

to be away from his wife in the evenings, he

would entrust her to Jennie Hobart’s care. He

also invited Mrs. Hobart to White House social

functions because her presence ‘‘gave him confidence.’’ In addition to seeing each other in

Washington, the McKinleys and Hobarts vacationed together at Bluff Point on Lake

Champlain.9

McKinley looked on Hobart as a trusted adviser. Although the vice president was not invited to join meetings of the cabinet, the president and cabinet members consulted with him

freely. The mutual regard between the two men

made them, in the words of one acquaintance,

‘‘coadjustors in the fixing of the policies of the

Administration to an extent never before

known.’’ Arthur Wallace Dunn, a newspaper

correspondent who covered presidents from

Benjamin Harrison to Warren Harding, marveled that ‘‘for the first time in my recollection,

and the last for that matter, the Vice President

was recognized as somebody, as a part of the Administration, and as a part of the body over

which he presided.’’ Dunn described Hobart as

a ‘‘business politician,’’ whose knowledge of the

‘‘relations between business and politics’’ made

his judgments extremely useful. McKinley even

turned to his vice president for personal financial

advice. Having once suffered the embarrassment

of declaring personal bankruptcy, McKinley

turned over a portion of his monthly presidential

salary, which Vice President Hobart invested for

him.10

The Splendid Little War

Although Hobart socialized more frequently

and worked more closely with the president than

had most of his predecessors, his primary function remained that of presiding over the Senate.

In his brief, self-deprecatory inaugural address,

Hobart had told the senators that, while he was

unfamiliar with their rules and procedures, he

would work to the best of his abilities, feeling

confident that they would indulge him as considerately as they had all of the previous occupants

of the chair. Hobart’s experiences presiding over

the New Jersey assembly and state senate served

him well, and he soon won favorable notices for

impartial and informed rulings. Massachusetts

Senator Henry Cabot Lodge applauded Hobart

for abandoning his predecessors’ habit of ‘‘submitting nearly every question of order to the Senate,’’ and instead ruling promptly on these

points himself, ‘‘as every presiding officer ought

to do.’’ One newspaper correspondent wrote

that, initially, Hobart’s ‘‘business-like advice and

warning intimations rather nettled many of the

Senators,’’ but that over time he appeared to captivate the Senate with his genial good nature.11

Hobart settled comfortably into the job. Senate

vouchers show that he purchased for the Vice

President’s Room in the Capitol silk mohair carpeting, Neapolitan silk curtains, Persian throw

rugs, and ‘‘a silk velour slumber robe’’ made to

match the velour cushions on his sofa. Hobart

also ordered the grandfather clock and the imposing mahogany desk that his successors continue to use.12 Presiding over the Senate was no
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GARRET A. HOBART

easy task, however. In 1898, following the unexplained sinking of the U.S. battleship Maine in

Havana harbor, sentiment in the Senate swung

sharply toward war with Spain, which at that

time still ruled Cuba as a colony. President

McKinley’s cautious attempts to avoid going to

war made him seem indecisive. When

McKinley’s friend Senator William Mason of Illinois announced in favor of war, a demonstration

broke out on the Senate floor that Hobart found

impossible to quiet. As Mrs. Hobart recalled, the

vice president was ‘‘worried to desperation’’

over the rising rebelliousness of the Senate, and

took his concerns to McKinley. ‘‘Mr. President,

I can no longer hold back the Senate,’’ he

warned. ‘‘They will act without you if you do not

act at once.’’ Accepting the inevitable, McKinley

called on Congress to declare that a state of war

existed with Spain. Hobart sent the president a

pen to sign the declaration.13

The ‘‘splendid little war’’ with Spain was

fought and won within a six-month period. At

the conclusion of the Fifty-fifth Congress, Vice

President Hobart congratulated the Senate on

this remarkable achievement, noting that ‘‘unlike

any other session in the history of our country,

this Congress has witnessed the inception, prosecution, and conclusion of a war.’’ More than just

a war Congress, it had also been a peace Congress, having approved the ratification of the

Treaty of Paris that ended the Spanish-American

War.

The vice president played a significant part in

one aspect of that peace treaty. Although the

United States had pledged not to take Cuba as

its own territory, it did decide to hold the Philippine Islands, unexpectedly acquired from

Spain. After the Senate had approved the peace

treaty by the necessary two-thirds vote, Georgia

Democrat Augustus O. Bacon had sponsored an

amendment promising independence to the Philippines if it established a stable government. Due

to the absence of several administration supporters, the vote was tied at 29 to 29. Hobart assured

the taking of the territory for the United States

by casting the deciding vote against Bacon’s

amendment.14

The Vice President’s Valedictory

The vice president’s speech concluding the second session of the Fifty-fifth Congress was in fact

his valedictory, for he would die before the next

Congress convened. In addressing the senators

for the last time, he noted that ‘‘the Senate of the

United States is a peculiar body. . . . made up,

as you know of many elements, and in its membership you will find not only straight and stalwart Republicans, to whose active efforts the

country is now looking for relief, but

Bimetallists, Populists, Silverites—both Republican and Democratic—and a few gold Democrats.’’ Despite the senators’ many differences,

Hobart as presiding officer observed that each of

them stood on the common ground of patriotism, pride in the nation’s history, zealousness for

its Constitution, and devotion to its flag. For a

generation old enough to remember the Civil

War, the Spanish-American War appeared to

represent the end of the old divisions that had

led to secession. Former Union and Confederate

soldiers supported a common war effort, with

some from both sides donning uniforms once

again.15

Beginning in early 1899, Hobart suffered from

fainting spells triggered by serious heart problems. He never fully recovered. Yet that summer

he performed a last major service for the McKinley administration when he helped the gentle

president to fire his secretary of war, General

Russell A. Alger. A large, affable man with presidential ambitions, Alger had become tarred by

scandals that emerged during the Spanish-American war—particularly charges that unscrupulous war suppliers had fed ‘‘embalmed beef’’ to

American soldiers. McKinley saw the need to

sacrifice his secretary of war to the demands of

public opinion, but could not bring himself to

fire a friend. When Secretary of State John Hay

declined to deliver the bad news, the task fell to

Hobart. That summer, Alger and his wife regularly spent weekends with the Hobarts at their

summer house at Norwood Park, New Jersey.

One evening, Hobart took Alger into the smoking room and suggested that he find some excuse

for retiring from the cabinet. During the next

week, newspapers published stories that Alger
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GARRET A. HOBART

had been pressured to step down but that the

president was standing loyally by him. The oblivious Alger returned to Hobart’s seaside home

the next weekend and insisted that in light of the

president’s loyal backing he had no reason to

leave the cabinet. Now Hobart bluntly explained

that the president would feel ‘‘very much relieved’’ if the secretary would resign. Alger

could not believe what he was hearing until Hobart admitted that he was speaking with the

president’s authorization. The shaken secretary

of war hurried back to Washington and at nine

o’clock on Monday morning handed his resignation to President McKinley.16

As Hobart suffered increasingly debilitating

attacks and his strength declined, rumors spread

that his illness would keep him from running

again for vice president. In the fall of 1899, as

McKinley was preparing a grand reception to

honor the return of Admiral George Dewey from

the Philippines, he invited the Hobarts to stay at

the White House. ‘‘I can imagine no place where

you will be more comfortable than here.’’ But

Hobart declined. He conceded that he must remain in Paterson and could not return to Washington either for the Dewey reception or to preside again over the Senate when it reconvened

that December. This public announcement was

an admission that the vice president was ‘‘in virtual retirement,’’ with no hope of recovery. Hobart died on November 21, 1899. Arriving at the

Hobart home in Paterson for the funeral, President McKinley told the family, ‘‘No one outside

of this home feels this loss more deeply than I

do.’’ 17

History has remembered Garret Hobart less for

his life than for his death. The void he left was

quickly filled. The powerful Senator Mark

Hanna moved into the ‘‘Little Cream White

House,’’ and the vacant vice-presidency was

soon occupied by one of America’s most dynamic political leaders, Theodore Roosevelt.

McKinley’s second running mate in 1900 bore little resemblance to the man he succeeded. In

short order the young, energetic Roosevelt—and

the progressive reform movement he embodied—eclipsed not only Hobart but McKinley

as well, as the United States entered the twentieth century.
[ 294 ]

NOTES 1David S. Barry, Forty Years in Washington (Boston, 1924),

p. 246; David Magie, Life of Garret Augustus Hobart, Twentyfourth Vice-President of the United States (New York, 1910),

p. 169. 2Magie, pp. 1–26, 42; Jennie Tuttle Hobart, Memories

(Paterson, NJ., 1930), p. 3. 3 Address of Honorable John W. Griggs at the Unveiling of the

Statue of Garret Augustus Hobart, Late Vice-President of the

United States at Paterson, New Jersey, June 3, 1903 (Paterson,

NJ, 1903), p. 4. 4Magie, pp. 27–57; Edward S. Ellis, et al., Great Leaders

and National Issues of 1896 (William Ellis Scull, 1896), p. 542. 5Magie, p. 50.

6 Ibid., pp. 58, 74; Margaret Leech, In The Days of McKinley

(New York, 1959), p. 83; Herbert D. Croly, Marcus Alonzo

Hanna (New York, 1912), p. 191. 7Magie, p. 79.

8Barry, pp. 245–46; Magie, pp. 116–17; H. Wayne Morgan,

William McKinley and His America (Syracuse, NY, 1963), pp.

220, 274.

9Leech, p. 435; Magie, p. 170; Hobart, pp. 13–14, 19, 29.

10 Address of Honorable John W. Griggs, p. 9; Arthur Wallace

Dunn, From Harrison to Harding: A Personal Narrative, Covering a Third of a Century, 1888–1921 (Port Washington, NY,

1972; reprint of 1922 edition), 1:224–25; Morgan, p. 321. 11U.S., Congress, Senate, Congressional Record, 55th Cong.,

special session, p. 1; Magie, pp. 151–52, 156. 12 Hobart’s purchases are documented in the reports of

the Secretary of the Senate and in a booklet published by

the Office of the Senate Curator, The Vice President’s Room. 13 Horace Samuel Merrill and Marion Galbraith Merrill,

The Republican Command, 1897–1913 (Lexington, KY, 1971),

p. 49; Leech, pp. 184–85, 193; Hobart, pp. 58–60. 14 Harold U. Faulkner, Politics, Reform and Expansion,

1890–1900 (New York, 1959), p. 258; Lewis L. Gould, The

Presidency of William McKinley (Lawrence, KY, 1980), p. 150. 15Magie, pp. 162–63.

16Barry, pp. 256–59; Magie, pp. 209–11.

17Magie, pp. 176, 212–17, 231; Hobart, p. 68.
[ 295 ]

Chapter 25

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

1901
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
[ 297 ]

Chapter 25

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

25th Vice President: 1901

I would a great deal rather be anything, say professor of history, than Vice-President.

—THEODORE ROOSEVELT 1

Senator Thomas C. Platt of New York declared

that he went to the presidential inaugural of 1901

‘‘to see Theodore Roosevelt take the veil.’’ 2 Roosevelt, the governor of New York, had been elected vice president the previous autumn on William McKinley’s Republican ticket, and Platt

looked forward to having the maverick governor

in seclusion for four years. The new vice president was not entirely certain of his own prospects, stating that ‘‘it [the vice-presidency] is not

a steppingstone to anything except oblivion’’—

hardly a ringing endorsement of the nation’s second highest office.3 Yet this was the prevailing

opinion about the vice-presidency at the beginning of the twentieth century. Most of Roosevelt’s nearest predecessors were men of limited qualifications and interests whose functions

were primarily social. Some observers hoped

that this office would finally tame the firebrand

Roosevelt, but if the Rough Rider’s active and

adventurous past was any indication, the vicepresidency was in for some changes.

Youth

The life of Theodore Roosevelt is one of the

great American stories. He was born on October

27, 1858, in New York City to a prominent family

of moderate wealth. Theodore Roosevelt, Sr., a

partner in the importing firm of Roosevelt and

Son, was a well-known philanthropist, teaching

in mission schools and founding the Children’s

Aid Society. His wife, Martha Bulloch, was a

woman of remarkable beauty and refined taste.

The couple made a striking contrast: Theodore

being a vigorous entrepreneur of somewhat mercurial temperament, while Martha, a Georgian,

was the stereotypical ‘‘southern belle.’’ Theodore, Jr., the second of four children, was a frail

boy, frequently suffering from severe asthmatic

attacks. As an adolescent, however, he had taken

his father’s advice to ‘‘make’’ his body, so that

by the time he entered Harvard in 1876, he was

an accomplished athlete and outstanding boxer.

At Harvard, Roosevelt excelled in natural science

and politics, graduating twenty-first in a class of

177.

Upon graduation, Roosevelt had a number of

careers open to him. He had long considered

science his greatest strength—his first published

work, The Summer Birds of the Adirondacks, appeared in 1877 while he was still an undergraduate—but was gradually losing professional interest in the topic. He began studying law at Columbia and undertook his first work of history,

The Naval War of 1812 (published in 1882). It was

politics, however, that most piqued his interest.

This possible vocation horrified Roosevelt’s family and social peers, most of whom considered

politics a low and dirty activity dominated by

corrupt bosses and ill-bred immigrants. Theodore, however, decided that he ‘‘intended to be

one of the governing class,’’ a determination that

would dominate the rest of his life.4
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THEODORE ROOSEVELT

Legislator, Cowboy, and Naturalist

In 1881, at the age of twenty-three, Roosevelt

was elected to the New York state assembly as

a Republican. He quickly established himself as

the leader of a group of young independentminded Republican legislators, known as the

‘‘Roosevelt Republicans,’’ who fought to clean

up New York politics by opposing the power of

both the Republican state machine and the Tammany Hall Democrats of New York City. Roosevelt gained a widespread reputation for honesty, integrity, and vigor. In his second term, he

was made minority leader of the assembly and

in his third term collaborated often with Democratic Governor Grover Cleveland to pass reform

legislation, especially civil service reform.5

This seemingly charmed career was sidetracked in February of 1884, when Roosevelt suffered the deaths of both his wife and his mother.

He had met the beautiful Alice Lee while he was

at Harvard and they had married on October 27,

1880, a handsome couple who delighted in the

social life of New York. Alice became ill with

Bright’s Disease immediately after giving birth

to their first child, also named Alice. At the same

time, Martha Roosevelt lay ill with typhoid fever

in an upstairs room. On Valentine’s Day, 1884,

Martha died, followed the next morning by

Alice, who died in her husband’s arms. The blow

was tremendous, causing Theodore to lament in

his diary, ‘‘The light has gone out of my life.’’

He never spoke of Alice Lee Roosevelt again. He

declined to run for reelection to the assembly, deciding instead to go west and forget his sorrows

by becoming a cowboy. He purchased a ranch

in the Dakota Territory and spent the next two

years tending to a large herd of cattle, chasing

outlaws, writing popular books about the West

such as Hunting Trips of a Ranchman (1885), and

creating an image as one of the nation’s most

enigmatic cowboys.6

These sojourns in the West helped to expand

one of Roosevelt’s greatest interests, his love of

nature. As a young man Roosevelt had enjoyed

studying the plant and animal life of his native

New York. The Dakota Territory opened up new

experiences and also fostered a concern for the

vanishing wildlife of the nation. Throughout his

subsequent political career, he would maintain

an interest in preserving America’s natural beauty, despite his penchant for shooting at much of

it on western hunting trips. Whether it was the

founding of Boone and Crockett Clubs throughout the country or setting up wildlife preserves

as president, this interest would remain a constant throughout his life. Another constant interest was history. In all, Roosevelt wrote fourteen

books on various topics, as well as numerous articles. While not recognized as great works of

history, his Naval War of 1812, Thomas Hart Benton

(1886), and Winning of the West (1889) were considered standard works for decades. All of this

he accomplished while pursuing an active career

in politics.7

Even in his attempts at seclusion, Roosevelt

could not entirely escape from politics. Before

leaving for the Dakotas in 1884, he led the New

York delegation to the Republican National Convention in an attempt to block the presidential

nomination of James G. Blaine. When this effort

failed, Roosevelt declined to follow the example

of other reformers, who switched their allegiance

to the Democratic candidate, Grover Cleveland.

As he boarded his train for the Dakotas, he indicated that he would support the Republican

nominee. The reform press reacted with outrage,

excoriating their former hero from afar. During

his years as a cowboy, Roosevelt made frequent

trips back east to attend to family business and

regaled reporters with tales of his exotic adventures. This ensured that his name remained in

the papers in New York, as well as spreading to

more western locales. He remained enough in

the public eye, in fact, that upon one of his return

trips in 1886, the party nominated him for mayor

of New York City.8

Politics and War

After losing the three-way mayoral race of

1886 and spending a few years on his literary

pursuits, Roosevelt held a succession of appointed posts in which he performed well and

continued to enhance his public reputation. In

1889 he became a civil service commissioner

under President Benjamin Harrison. He left this

position in 1895 to become a New York City police commissioner, and then, in 1897, President
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THEODORE ROOSEVELT

William McKinley appointed him assistant secretary of the navy. Roosevelt found himself in

this office when the United States declared war

on Spain in 1898. Never one to miss the action,

Roosevelt promptly resigned his post to form a

volunteer regiment of western cowboys and eastern adventurers that the press dubbed ‘‘Roosevelt’s Rough Riders.’’ The Spanish-American

War did not last long, but it was long enough

for the Rough Riders to ride (or march, since only

Colonel Roosevelt was actually mounted) into

American folklore. After the well-chronicled Battle of San Juan Hill, Roosevelt returned to the

United States as the most famous man in the

nation.9

In the summer of 1898, the New York Republican party was searching for a gubernatorial

candidate. As the current Republican administration was plagued with scandals and falling

popularity, the prospects of a Democratic victory

in the fall were rising daily. It quickly became

obvious to party leaders that only a man of tremendous popularity and an impeccable reputation for honesty and ‘‘clean government’’ could

rescue the party from defeat. That man was the

vigorous colonel just returned from Cuba, Theodore Roosevelt. The man whose opinion

mattered most, however, was not so sure. Senator Thomas Platt had risen to power in the party

the old-fashioned way, by climbing up through

the party machinery. By 1898, he had established

himself as the unquestioned leader of the state

GOP. Known as the ‘‘Easy Boss,’’ Platt was in a

position to decide who the state convention

would nominate for governor. As a veteran New

York politician, Platt had seen Roosevelt in action and was suspicious of the young man’s reform attitude, his lack of sympathy for the machine, and his immense personal popularity. The

last thing the Easy Boss wanted was a challenge

to his power within the party. On the other hand,

Roosevelt had shown his party regularity by not

bolting the Blaine campaign in 1884, and his

most virulent tirades were usually reserved for

the Democratic Tammany Hall machine in New

York City. Most of all, Platt saw in the famous

colonel a way to keep the party in office, an outcome far preferable to the election of a hostile

Democratic administration.10

On September 17, Roosevelt went to see Platt

at the senator’s apartment in the Fifth Avenue

Hotel in order to come to some sort of working

agreement. The reformers once more cried out in

protest that their leader was consorting with the

enemy. Roosevelt’s ambiguous relationship with

many vocal reform advocates was a recurring

theme during his career. Those who worked to

overthrow the machines did not see how a politician could further the cause of reform while still

working with men like Tom Platt. Roosevelt was,

above all else, a man of action who measured

success by results. He was willing to compromise in order to accomplish gradual changes.

He was contemptuous of what he called ‘‘professional reformers,’’ men who refused to bend

their ideals to the realities of power. While others

railed at the system from without, Roosevelt

would try to reform it from within, but to do this

required power.11

Governor of New York

Senator Platt agreed to Roosevelt’s nomination

after the candidate promised to consult him on

appointments to office and important policy

matters. Roosevelt’s campaign was rather simple; he promised merely to run a ‘‘clean’’ administration and capitalized on his popularity with

the voters. Although he may not have had a clear

program in mind while running for office, once

in, he quickly showed that he had no intention

of being a mere caretaker for the machine. It became apparent that he and Senator Platt had different definitions of ‘‘consultation.’’ One of the

governor’s first decisions was to appoint a new

administrator for the state canal system. It was

in this office that most of the worst scandals of

the previous administration had taken place.

Senator Platt had promised the position to

Francis J. Hendricks of Syracuse. When Roosevelt refused to make the appointment (because

Hendricks was from a ‘‘canal county’’), Platt was

incensed. Roosevelt managed to calm the situation by drawing up a list of names, all good party

men, and allowing Platt to choose from it. By this

method, most future appointments were made

amicably, but the governor had shown his inde-
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THEODORE ROOSEVELT

pendence and given the Easy Boss an uneasy

feeling about the future.12

Conflicts over policy would be a more difficult

matter. Governor Roosevelt supported legislation authorizing the state supreme court to inspect the books of corporations, endorsed

antimonopoly legislation, pushed for better civil

service laws, supported an eight-hour-day law

for public employees, and advocated a minimum

wage for New York City’s school teachers. These

and other measures ran afoul of Senator Platt’s

wishes, but the issue which most disturbed him

was Roosevelt’s support for a tax on public franchises. Platt’s political machine was financed primarily by large corporations in New York, many

of which held public franchises. Nothing was

more hateful to these interests than corporate

taxes, especially on companies that were, in their

eyes at least, providing a public service such as

water or gas. By forcing the franchise tax through

the legislature, Roosevelt made powerful enemies who informed Senator Platt of their disapproval. The boss worried that his hold on the

party was fading because of his inability to control his governor. He began reconsidering his relationship with Theodore Roosevelt.13

Getting rid of Governor Roosevelt did not

promise to be easy. While the impetuous governor may have made enemies in the business

community, he was immensely popular with the

public. In fact, it was this popularity that made

him such an effective governor. One reason Senator Platt had acquiesced in Roosevelt’s nomination was that the senator anticipated controlling

the state assembly. As long as Platt’s will was supreme in the legislature, the governor’s most

threatening schemes could be defeated. Roosevelt, however, had developed a weapon capable of changing the minds of wavering legislators. During his campaign for election, the governor had demonstrated the power of his personality; as one observer remarked, ‘‘Teddy . . .

[was] a wonder . . . there were immense gatherings of enthusiastic people at every stopping

place. . . . [Even when] the speech was nothing,

. . . the man’s presence was everything. It was

electrical, magnetic.’’ Roosevelt was aware of his

hold on the public imagination. As the most vigorous governor most New Yorkers had ever

seen, Roosevelt used constant publicity to push

for his programs. He regularly held two press

conferences a day and consulted experts of all

kinds on complex issues.14 The growing media

of the day feasted on this constant flow of information, and the public loved it. Under such intense public scrutiny, only the most intransigent

of legislators cared to challenge Roosevelt. This

method of public persuasion would serve Roosevelt well in the future, as it defined his political

style and formed his most lasting contribution to

the political process in the twentieth century.

Deciding Whether to Run for Vice President

During Roosevelt’s term as governor, many of

his friends and admirers began once more to consider his future. As governor of New York, he

naturally became a potential candidate for president. Even Senator Platt realized this when he

was considering Roosevelt’s gubernatorial nomination, saying, ‘‘If he becomes Governor of New

York, sooner or later, with his personality, he

will have to be President of the United States.

. . . I am afraid to start that thing going.’’ 15 In

1900 however, the Republicans already had a

candidate in incumbent President William

McKinley. Few doubted that Roosevelt would be

a candidate in 1904; the problem was what he

should do until then. Even if Roosevelt were reelected governor, he could only serve until 1902,

leaving two years before he could run for president. Roosevelt himself did not believe that his

current popularity could last another four

years.16 His friends, however, found a solution

to his problem: they would make him vice

president.

The most conspicuous proponent of this idea

was Massachusetts Senator Henry Cabot Lodge.

Roosevelt and Lodge had been close friends for

many years, and Lodge had no doubt about his

friend’s presidential destiny. Lodge was sure

that the vice-presidency was the way to the Executive Mansion. This must have sounded odd to

many since the vice-presidency was widely perceived as ‘‘a spot to gain four years of rest and

a good income,’’ 17 hardly the sort of office to appeal to an active man like Roosevelt. Lodge,

however, knew his friend well enough to realize
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THEODORE ROOSEVELT

that all Roosevelt needed to succeed was a place

in the spotlight. As Lodge later put it,

I do not pretend to say that the office [of vice

president] in itself is suited to you and to your

habits, but for the future it is, in my judgement,

invaluable. It takes you out of the cut-throat politics of New York, where I am sure they would

have destroyed your prospects, if you had remained two years longer, and it gives you a position in the eyes of the country second only to that

of the President.18

Some of Roosevelt’s other friends also speculated

that the vice president’s role as presiding officer

of the Senate would keep him in the public eye

much more effectively than his current position

as governor of New York. Finally, many of his

western supporters were eager for the opportunity to promote their man for a national office,

especially after his appearance at the Rough Riders’ reunion in Las Vegas in 1899. Newspapers

all over the West championed him for the vicepresidency in 1900 and the presidency in 1904.

Some even suggested replacing McKinley in

1900.19 The movement was gathering momentum, and Vice President Garret A. Hobart’s

death in November 1899 only increased the

pace—but what about the candidate?

While flattered by all the support for his candidacy, Roosevelt did not relish the idea of being

vice president. He worried that as vice president

he ‘‘could not do anything.’’ 20 For a man who

thrived on the ‘‘strenuous life,’’ it was an unpleasant prospect indeed. He would have few responsibilities in the office, and it would restrict

his ability to speak out on issues that greatly concerned him. He worried that ‘‘if I did anything

[as vice president] I would attract suspicion and

antagonism.’’ He considered the potential for a

vice president to be active in formulating policy

to be ‘‘infinitesimal.’’ 21 As governor of New

York, at least, he was actively doing the work

that so stimulated him; as vice president that

would not be possible.

Presiding over the Senate did not appeal to

him either. The job would undoubtedly be a

‘‘bore’’ and might, in fact, prove quite maddening. As he wrote to Lodge, ‘‘I should be in a cold

shiver of rage at inability to answer hounds like

[Senator Richard] Pettigrew [D-SD] and the

scarcely more admirable [Senator William]

Mason [R-IL] and [Senator Eugene] Hale [R-ME].

. . . I would be seeing continually things that I

would like to do, and very possibly would like

to do differently from the way in which they are

being done.’’ The vice president had little, if any,

real authority in the Senate, and Roosevelt was

adamant that he would ‘‘not like to be a

figurehead.’’ 22

There were also financial reasons for Roosevelt’s reluctance to run. He was, by his own

standards, a man of ‘‘very moderate means.’’ The

vice president was expected to carry on an active

social life in Washington, which required ‘‘the

expenditure of a good deal of money for entertaining and the like.’’ Roosevelt could certainly

not entertain on a scale comparable to that of

Levi Morton and Garret Hobart, the two most recent Republican vice presidents. Still, if the office

held opportunities to do valuable work, Roosevelt would have tolerated the financial problems.23 Unfortunately, the vice-presidency offered few such possibilities and promised to be

a financial strain as well.

The more Roosevelt thought about it, the less

appealing the vice-presidency became. He continually expressed this opinion to anyone who

asked, finally stating, ‘‘I would a great deal rather be anything, say professor of history, than

Vice-President.’’ 24 It was not, however, a teaching position that attracted his attention. The position that Roosevelt really wanted was secretary

of war, but McKinley appointed Elihu Root to

that recently vacated post. Roosevelt’s second

choice was governor general of the Philippines,

but the president, not trusting Roosevelt’s impetuous nature, was unlikely to grant him that

office.25 With these options unavailable, the governor’s mansion seemed the best place for him.

It was left for the Easy Boss to step in and supply

the final piece to the nomination puzzle.

Senator Platt was looking for a way to get Governor Roosevelt out of New York. The corporations and large financial interests of the state

were increasingly disturbed by the governor’s

performance, especially his support of the franchise tax, and were anxious to return to business

as usual. They placed growing pressure on Sen-
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THEODORE ROOSEVELT

ator Platt to do something about his governor.

While reluctant to resort to a potentially disastrous fight against Roosevelt’s renomination for

governor, the boss saw an opportunity in all the

talk about the vice-presidency. If he could push

Roosevelt into that position devoid of power, he

would get the young reformer out of the way,

appease his financial supporters, and be free to

select a more pliable governor as Roosevelt’s replacement. It seemed the perfect solution.26

The boss proceeded to push Roosevelt’s name

to party leaders and hinted to the governor that

he might not support him for a second gubernatorial term. This challenge from the machine,

however, only raised the fighting spirit in Roosevelt, who was never one to a retreat from political battle. In February 1900 Roosevelt therefore

attempted to remove himself from the vice-presidential race, telling the New York Tribune that

‘‘under no circumstances could I, or would I, accept the nomination for the vice presidency.’’ 27

The boom for his nomination, however, continued, with friends and foes alike fanning the

flames.

Meanwhile, in Washington, President McKinley remained silent on the issue. The president

had never been greatly impressed by Governor

Roosevelt for reasons of both personality and

policy. Yet, after Hobart’s death, he gave no indication of preference in the selection of his new

running mate. Most Republican leaders believed

Roosevelt would bring a new kind of glamor and

excitement to their ticket. The governor was a recent war hero, whose record in office had been

very popular and less radical than some had

feared. There were also no other similarly attractive candidates available.28 McKinley may have

been opposed to Roosevelt, but he proposed no

alternatives, and his silence seemed to indicate

acceptance.

Election of 1900

By the time the Republican National Convention opened in June in Philadelphia, it had become obvious that Roosevelt was the favorite to

receive the vice-presidential nomination. When

he continued to protest that he would rather be

governor of New York, Lodge warned him that,

if he attended the convention, his nomination

was assured. But Roosevelt could not stay away,

claiming that to do so would look like cowardice.29 As a result, despite his protestations, his

magnetic presence at the convention fired the enthusiasm of his partisans to a fever pitch. When

he appeared for the opening session clad in a

black hat reminiscent of the Rough Riders’

Cuban campaign—what one delegate called ‘‘an

acceptance hat’’—his nomination was sealed.

Scores of western delegates spent that night parading and chanting ‘‘We want Teddy.’’ As Senator Platt put it, ‘‘Roosevelt might as well stand

under Niagara Falls and try to spit water back

as to stop his nomination by this convention.’’ 30

Ohio Senator Mark Hanna, who opposed the

Roosevelt nomination, tried to block the movement from his position as convention chairman,

but without support from the president he could

do little against the combined forces of Platt,

Pennsylvania boss Matthew Quay (who had an

old score to settle with Hanna), and genuine

popular will. In desperation, Hanna could only

protest, ‘‘Don’t you realize that there’s only one

life between this madman and the White

House?’’ 31

Theodore Roosevelt really did not want to be

vice president, but he was a confirmed political

realist with presidential ambitions. He knew that

regaining the nomination for governor of New

York would be difficult, if not impossible,

against the open opposition of Senator Platt, and

even a successful gubernatorial campaign promised only two years of political struggle against

growing corporate hostility. Although Roosevelt

continued to fight his own nomination, his protests grew gradually weaker, until, by the time

of the convention, they were no longer convincing. Everything pointed to the vice-presidency,

and Theodore Roosevelt knew how to read the

signs. He did not pursue the office, but when it

was thrust upon him, he accepted it. For good

or ill, he was now President McKinley’s running

mate and he was determined to make the best

of it.

Republican strategy in 1900 was to let their

youthful vice-presidential candidate take to the

hustings while President McKinley conducted

his ‘‘front porch campaign,’’ just as he had in

1896, except this time he received guests at the
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THEODORE ROOSEVELT

White House rather than his home in Canton,

Ohio. This strategy suited the vigorous Roosevelt

extremely well, as he proclaimed himself to be

‘‘strong as a bull moose.’’ It allowed him to tour

the West and Midwest, taking on Democratic

presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan

on issues of the tariff, the gold standard, and

American empire. These two great orators set

standards of stamina never before seen. Roosevelt covered 21,000 miles in twenty-four states,

making over 600 speeches.32 Roosevelt’s tour

helped the GOP compensate for Bryan’s popularity in the West and it added life to an otherwise dull campaign. The vice-presidential candidate radiated energy, while McKinley sat on

his porch in Washington, reminding the nation

how prosperous it was.

For Roosevelt, the campaign also provided an

opportunity to perform on a national stage. Everywhere he went, he drew huge crowds and

constant public attention. As historian John Milton Cooper, Jr., has put it, ‘‘The sheer fascination

of his presence among people who had already

read or heard about him, together with the pungency of his personality, made him the sensation

of the 1900 campaign.’’ 33 Roosevelt’s nationwide

tour helped accelerate the growing trend toward

direct, personal campaign techniques. Throughout the nation, ‘‘boy orators’’ such as Roosevelt,

Bryan, and Robert M. LaFollette of Wisconsin

were altering the system of party campaigning

that had persisted for decades. Rather than relying solely on their parties to obtain office, they

used whistle-stop campaigns and the burgeoning mass media to take their message directly to

the voters. They pushed for direct primaries in

order to bypass the party machines and relied on

public indignation to insist on reforms. Theodore

Roosevelt was helping to lead the way for

changes in American political campaigns that

would reverberate throughout the twentieth century.34 Of course, the press played its part in promoting these changes. Roosevelt, as the most interesting candidate in 1900, received more press

coverage than even the presidential candidates,

and certainly more than the Democratic nominee

for vice president, Adlai Stevenson. Reporters

loved Roosevelt because he was always good

news copy. While other politicians relied on editors for favorable press coverage, Roosevelt had

an ongoing rapport with reporters. They could

go to any politician for opinions; they could go

to Roosevelt for stories. His campaign dominated the news. As journalist Finley Peter

Dunne’s favorite character ‘‘Mr. Dooley’’ put it,

‘‘’Tis Teddy alone that’s r-runnin’, an’ he ain’t

runnin’, he’s gallopin’.’’ 35

An Unenthusiastic Presiding Officer

McKinley’s reelection was nearly a foregone

conclusion. The nation was prosperous and the

administration was popular. On election day,

McKinley received 51.6 percent of the vote, up

from 51 percent in 1896. He lost only one state

(Kentucky) from the previous election while

adding Washington, Wyoming, Utah, South Dakota, Kansas, and Nebraska. Roosevelt’s popularity in the West may have influenced these

states, but the prosperity of McKinley’s first term

had also reduced the impact of ‘‘free silver’’ as

a decisive issue, depriving Bryan of his greatest

western appeal.36

Roosevelt was not overjoyed at being vice

president but was proud of helping the ticket

achieve victory. He did, however, show early

signs of frustration at the prospect of inactivity.

He declined an invitation to speak in February

1901, ‘‘chiefly for the excellent reason that I have

nothing whatever to say.’’ 37 His penchant for

speaking out would return soon enough, but this

initial hesitation reflected the uncertainty of Roosevelt’s new position. Accustomed to the aggressive pursuit of his own policies, he now had to

be careful not to offend either his president or

the party leadership, a goal he had failed to

achieve in New York. It was a potentially trying

situation for an active and outspoken young

man.

The first task of the new vice president was to

preside over the Senate, meeting in a special session for four days beginning March 4. This brief

appearance did not give Roosevelt much time to

make an impression, but in those four days he

impressed no one. He had not been looking forward to this role, but as he characteristically put

it, ‘‘Now all that there is for me to do is to perform with regularity and dignity the duty of pre-
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THEODORE ROOSEVELT

siding over the Senate, and to remember the fact

that the duty not being very important is no excuse for shirking it.’’ 38 He proved as ill-suited

for the role as he was unenthusiastic. His mind

wandered, and he had a limited grasp of Senate

procedures. As Senator Joseph Foraker tactfully

put it, ‘‘his peculiar qualifications for the public

service fitted him better for wider, broader and

more useful fields.’’ 39 Roosevelt confessed to

being ‘‘the poorest presiding officer the Senate

ever had.’’ 40 The first impressions made by the

new vice president in the Senate were hardly

encouraging.

Once the Senate adjourned, Roosevelt returned

home to New York to spend the summer with

his wife and seven children, his most enjoyable

vacation in years. Two years after the death of

his first wife, Theodore had married his childhood sweetheart, Edith Carow. Edith was a very

private woman who never seemed entirely comfortable with the publicity that always surrounded her husband. Privately, however, her

influence went even beyond the difficult task of

raising the rambunctious Roosevelt children. She

controlled the family’s finances—Theodore having never been good at managing his money—

and it was later suspected that she was influential in his presidential appointments because she

was considered a better judge of character than

he was. (From 1901 to 1909, as first lady, Edith

would help transform the White House into a

centerpiece for the social and cultural life of

Washington and the nation.) The lack of pressing

business as vice president allowed Theodore to

spend time playing football with his sons and

sparring with his tempestuous older daughter,

Alice. Theodore’s relationship with Alice would

become increasingly strained during his presidency as she struggled for greater independence.

As he later put it, ‘‘I can be President of the United States, or I can attend to Alice. I can’t do

both.’’ During Roosevelt’s presidency, ‘‘Princess

Alice’’ would become a celebrity as a Washington socialite and a prominent model of the independent young woman of the new century. She

would eventually marry Republican Congressman Nicholas Longworth of Ohio, a future

Speaker of the House, in 1906, and become one

of the most famous matrons of Washington

society.41

Because of his lack of interest in the official duties of his new office, Roosevelt in the summer

of 1901 began looking for other activities and focused on two. First, he resumed a regular speaking schedule. These speeches reveal that, without

more immediate matters to deal with, his

thoughts were increasingly turning to one of his

favorite topics: foreign policy. He spoke to

crowds in New York and New England about

the need for an effective navy and the threat

from a newly powerful Germany.42 Perhaps

Roosevelt saw this as an area in which he would

have some freedom, because he and McKinley,

while not always in complete accord, had similar

views on foreign policy. Roosevelt’s more virulent criticism was aimed at anti-imperialist

Democrats, who were McKinley’s enemies as

well. By spending his time attacking the Democrats on foreign policy, he might avoid disturbing the Old Guard in his own party with his progressive views on domestic matters.

Vice President Roosevelt’s second activity revealed his ambition. He spent considerable time

lining up support for a presidential bid in 1904.

Despite his concerns that opposition from the

party in New York would deny him the nomination, he cautiously pursued a course designed to

build a broad base of popular support. He concentrated his efforts especially in the West,

where he was already popular and where the

Bryanite Democrats represented a significant

electoral challenge. Friends such as William

Allen White in Kansas, Philip B. Stewart in Colorado, and Booker T. Washington in the South

began acting as unofficial campaign managers,

and he planned a national speaking tour for

1902. Roosevelt also undertook a potentially

more risky strategy of supporting progressiveminded Republicans in state elections. He volunteered to assist Albert B. Cummins of Iowa in his

campaign for governor. Cummins had defeated

an Old Guard opponent for the nomination and

in supporting him too heartily, Roosevelt ran the

risk of offending the national party leadership.

He may have been willing to take that chance in

order to build a separate base of party support

and appeal to the growing public interest in pro-
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THEODORE ROOSEVELT

gressive candidates. Roosevelt was preparing

once more for political battle, and, on the whole,

the odds looked good.43

It appeared that Vice President Roosevelt’s official responsibilities were to be limited, at least

for the moment, since President McKinley did

not consult him either on policy or appointments. Although McKinley had used Vice President Hobart as his liaison with the Senate, Roosevelt was poorly suited for this role, since he

shone more as a public spokesman than as a parliamentary operator. In addition, the Senate was

dominated by Old Guard Republicans, most of

whom were wary of Roosevelt’s insurgent impulses. In any event, McKinley was not likely to

entrust his impetuous vice president with legislative responsibilities, because he distrusted the

younger man’s lack of caution. Roosevelt, for his

part, chafed under the restraints of McKinley’s

slowness in dealing with contentious issues. As

a result, while the relations between the two men

were amicable and professional, they were not

close.44

Early in September 1901, everything changed.

On September 5 President McKinley, a longtime

advocate of protective tariffs, delivered a major

policy speech at the Pan American Exposition in

Buffalo, New York. In his address, the president

called for a new era of reciprocal trade with other

nations, in which the old trade barriers must fall.

‘‘The period of exclusiveness is past . . . the expansion of our trade and commerce is the pressing problem,’’ he declared. The next day, September 6, the president held a public reception

in the Temple of Music. At slightly after 4 p.m.,

a young anarchist named Leon Czolgosz walked

up to the president with a gun in his right hand,

hidden in a bandage. He fired two shots at the

president: one bounced off a button, but the

other lodged in McKinley’s stomach. For a week,

the president struggled to survive, but on September 14 he expired, whispering the title of his

favorite hymn, ‘‘Nearer, My God, To Thee.’’ 45

McKinley’s pathbreaking initiative for lower tariffs died with him.

Upon hearing of the shooting, Roosevelt had

rushed to Buffalo, but when the doctors had been

encouraged by the president’s progress after

three days, the vice president had departed for

the Adirondacks. On September 13, he was recalled by a note from Secretary of War Elihu

Root, ‘‘The President appears to be dying, and

members of the Cabinet in Buffalo think you

should lose no time in coming.’’ Making a furious trip by buckboard and special train, Roosevelt arrived in Buffalo on the fourteenth to find

the president already dead. After paying his respects to Mrs. McKinley, he met with the cabinet,

telling them, ‘‘I wish to say that it shall be my

aim to continue, absolutely unbroken, the policy

of President McKinley for the peace, the prosperity, and the honor of our beloved country.’’ He

then took the oath of office, becoming, at fortytwo, the youngest president in the nation’s

history.46

A Popular President

Roosevelt’s pledge to continue McKinley’s

policies was not only meant to calm the nation,

but was consistent with his conception of the role

of the vice president. In an article for Review of

Reviews in 1896, Roosevelt, then New York City’s

police commissioner, had described the vice

president as a ‘‘functionless official’’ except for

the possibility of becoming ‘‘the head of the

whole nation.’’ He therefore stressed:

The Vice-President should so far as possible

represent the same views and principles which

have secured the nomination and election of the

President, and he should be a man standing well

in the councils of the party, trusted by his fellow

party leaders, and able in the event of any accident to his chief to take up the work of the latter

just where it was left.47

Of course, the man holding the office in September 1901 did not fit this model. Roosevelt had

not been selected because of his similarities to

McKinley and, now that he was president, would

not take long to go his own way. He almost immediately began pursuing a nature conservation

program and in a few months would instigate

an antitrust suit against the Northern Securities

Company. He would genuinely attempt to steer

a middle course between the Old Guard and the

insurgent Republicans, but pressure for change

was rising and Roosevelt’s heart had always

been with the reformers.48 His first annual message to Congress, calling for some regulation of
[ 306 ]

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

corporations, served notice that life under Roosevelt would be different from life under

McKinley.

President Roosevelt inherited a number of advantages from his predecessor. The first was a

powerful and efficient party organization, built

by Mark Hanna, which Roosevelt immediately

began making his own. He used appointments

and the connections he had already made to give

power to his supporters and prepare for the convention of 1904. He also inherited a talented and

able cabinet. He would rely a great deal on men

like Secretary of State John Hay, Secretary of War

Elihu Root, and McKinley’s personal secretary

George Courtelyou. Roosevelt had also learned

some things about press relations from

McKinley’s White House. The McKinley administration, thanks primarily to the enterprising

Cortelyou, had made innovative changes in handling the media. McKinley had used press releases, pre-released speech transcripts, and ‘‘trial

balloons’’ to shape news reports as no other

president had ever done. Roosevelt combined

this efficiency with his own tremendous personality to dominate the news. His control of the information the papers reported gave him extraordinary power to shape his own publicity.49

Because Roosevelt was vice president for so

short a time, he had little impact on the office,

but thanks to his skill at publicity, the potential

certainly existed for him to have played an influential role in that office. Roosevelt had defied

conventional practice by waging an active national campaign for the vice-presidency, 50 demonstrating his ability to publicize the Republican

cause and reach out to the voters in a way that

McKinley could not. It seems likely that McKinley, a man well aware of the power of the press,

might have continued to use Roosevelt in a similar fashion, as a sort of ‘‘public persuader’’ for

the administration.51 McKinley had indicated

that he would pursue trade reciprocity agreements in his second term, had begun to prepare

an antitrust agenda, and had hinted that he

might take up the tariff issue.52 If so, Roosevelt

would have been the ideal man to sell these programs to the public.

Theodore Roosevelt became one of the nation’s

most active and popular presidents, easily winning reelection in 1904. He pursued important

domestic legislation, such as the Hepburn Act

(for greater regulation of railroads) and the Pure

Food and Drug acts, and he led the nation into

a more active role in international relations. In

1906, he became the first American to receive the

Nobel Prize for Peace for his mediation of the

Russo-Japanese War.

After leaving office in 1909, Roosevelt embarked on a hunting safari in Africa, returning

home in 1910 to a hero’s welcome. In 1912, disenchanted with the policies of his presidential

successor William Howard Taft, Roosevelt decided to run for president once more. Denied the

nomination by the Republicans, he formed his

own party, the Progressive or Bull Moose party,

chose Hiram Johnson of California as a running

mate, and ran against Taft. The three contenders,

Roosevelt, Taft, and Democrat Woodrow Wilson,

the eventual winner, together produced one of

the most memorable presidential campaigns in

U.S. history. When the ballots were counted,

Roosevelt’s independent candidacy came in second, ahead of Taft’s Republican ticket.53

After the campaign of 1912, Roosevelt retired

once more into private life. He would not, however, remain in the background. Upon the outbreak of World War I in Europe in 1914, Roosevelt called for immediate entry by the United

States on the side of the Allies. When President

Wilson adopted a policy of neutrality, Roosevelt

became the president’s most vociferous critic.

After the United States entered the war in 1917,

Roosevelt proposed to lead a division of volunteers, a reincarnation of the Rough Riders, to

fight in France and was outraged when President

Wilson refused him a command. Roosevelt continued to criticize Wilson throughout the war,

but late in 1918, as peace negotiations proceeded

in Paris, Roosevelt fell ill. On January 6, 1919, at

the age of sixty, Theodore Roosevelt died in his

sleep.54

As Henry Cabot Lodge had predicted, the vicepresidency proved a stepping stone for Roosevelt to the White House, though not in the way

he had foreseen. Theodore Roosevelt was elected

vice president thanks to a combination of Senator

Platt’s desire to get him out of the way and a

popular movement among friends and admirers
[ 307 ]

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

within the GOP. Despite Platt’s hope that he

would fade from view, Roosevelt appeared to be

on the path to the presidency, poised to use the

vice-presidency in novel ways to build his own

support for 1904. Lodge thus proved a better

prophet than either Roosevelt or Platt. The vicepresidency led, not to oblivion, but to the White

House.
[ 308 ]

NOTES 1Elting E. Morison, ed., The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt,

vol. 2, The Years of Preparation, 1898–1900 (Cambridge, 1951),

p. 1174. 2Quoted in Irving G. Williams, The Rise of the Vice Presidency (Washington, D.C., 1956), p. 81. 3Morison, 2:1439.

4Edmund Morris, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (New

York, 1979), pp. 32–36, 60–70, 128, 135–56. This is the most

detailed and colorful account of Roosevelt’s life and early

career. 5 Ibid., pp. 159–201, 227–67; William Henry Harbaugh,

Power and Responsibility: The Life and Times of Theodore Roosevelt (New York, 1961), pp. 27–28. Harbaugh provides the

most thorough scholarly account of Roosevelt’s public

career. 6Morris, pp. 240–45, 270–341. As chairman of the Stockman’s Association, Roosevelt was automatically a deputy

sheriff of Billings County, a responsibility he took very seriously. 7 Ibid., pp. 382–85, 153–56, 386–93. Boone and Crockett

Clubs were dedicated to preserving wildlife throughout the

nation and to westward expansion. 8 Ibid., pp. 261–68, 345–47.

9 Ibid., Chapters 16–25.

10 Ibid., pp. 665–66; Harbaugh, Power and Responsibility,

pp. 108–11. 11 Harbaugh, Power and Responsibility, pp. 109–11. 12 Ibid., pp. 111–14.

13 Ibid., pp. 114–21.

14 Ibid., pp. 113–22; John Morton Blum, The Republican

Roosevelt, 2d ed. (New York, 1964), pp. 15–16. 15Quoted in Morris, p. 666.

16 Henry Cabot Lodge, ed., Selections from the Correspondence of Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge, 1884–1918

(New York, 1925), 1:426. 17David J. Rothman, Politics and Power: The United States

Senate, 1869–1901 (Cambridge, MA, 1966), p. 157. 18Lodge, 1:467.

19Morison, 2:1157; Harbaugh, Power and Responsibility, p.

123. 20Morris, p. 718.

21Lodge, 1:435, 442.

22Morison, 2:1157; Lodge, 1:448.

23Morison, 2:1140; Lodge, 1:442.

24Morison, 2:1174.

25G. Wallace Chessman, ‘‘Theodore Roosevelt’s Campaign Against the Vice-Presidency,’’ Historian 14 (Spring

1952): 174–75; Lodge, 1:442. 26Williams, p. 73; Morison, 2:449.

27Quoted in Chessman, ‘‘Theodore Roosevelt’s Campaign Against the Vice-Presidency,’’ p. 179.

28 John Milton Cooper, Jr., Pivotal Decades: The United

States, 1900–1920 (New York, 1990), p. 29. This work offers

an outstanding general synthesis of the politics of this era. 29Lodge, 1:460.

30Quoted in Harbaugh, Power and Responsibility, p. 135. 31Quoted in Blum, p. 22.

32 Harbaugh, Power and Responsibility, pp. 137–38. 33 Cooper, Pivotal Decades, pp. 29–30. 34 Ibid., pp. 28–30.

35 Chalmers M. Roberts, The Washington Post: The First 100

Years (Boston, 1977), p. 57; David S. Barry, Forty Years in

Washington (Boston, 1924), p. 270; Morris, p. 731. 36William H. Harbaugh, ‘‘The Republican Party, 1893–

1932,’’ in History of U.S. Political Parties, ed. Arthur M.

Schlesinger, Jr., vol. 3, 1910–1945, From Square Deal to New

Deal (New York, 1973), p. 2080; Cooper, Pivotal Decades, pp.

24–25. 37Morison, 2:1422; Lodge, 1:484.

38Morison, 2:1446.

39Quoted in Barry, p. 273.

40Quoted in Williams, p. 81.

41 Harbaugh, Power and Responsibility, pp. 143–44; Morris,

pp. 26, 313, 359, 372; Lewis Gould, The Presidency of Theodore

Roosevelt (Lawrence, KS, 1991), pp. 102–4, 226. 42Lodge, 1:484–88, 492–94.

43Morison, 3:121, 129; G. Wallace Chessman, Theodore

Roosevelt and the Politics of Power (Boston, 1969), pp. 79–83;

Blum, p. 40; Williams, p. 81; Gould, The Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, p. 128. 44 Chessman, Theodore Roosevelt and the Politics of Power,

p. 77; Lewis Gould, The Presidency of William McKinley (Lawrence, KS, 1980), p. 215; Morison, pp. 56–57. 45Gould, The Presidency of William McKinley, pp. 251–52;

Harbaugh, Power and Responsibility, pp. 144–45. 46 Harbaugh, Power and Responsibility, pp. 144–46. 47Theodore Roosevelt, ‘‘The Three Vice-Presidential Candidates and What They Represent,’’ American Monthly Review of Reviews 14 (September 1896): 289–91. 48 Harbaugh, ‘‘The Republican Party, 1893–1932,’’ p. 2080;

Chessman, Theodore Roosevelt and the Politics of Power, pp.

82–84. 49 Chessman, Theodore Roosevelt and the Politics of Power,

pp. 80–82; Blum, pp. 38–44; Gould, The Presidency of Theodore

Roosevelt, pp. 16–21; Robert C. Hilderbrand, Power and the

People: Executive Management of Public Opinion in Foreign Affairs, 1897–1921 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1981), pp. 52–61; John Milton Cooper, The Warrior and the Priest: Woodrow Wilson and

Theodore Roosevelt (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 65, 70. 50Although most scholars have credited Roosevelt with

being the first vice-presidential candidate to wage a national campaign, Richard Mentor Johnson also did so in
[ 309 ]

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

1840. See Chapter 9 of this volume, ‘‘Richard Mentor Johnson,’’ p. 130. 51This role is suggested in Horace Samuel Merrill and

Marion Galbraith Merrill, The Republican Command, 1897–

1913 (Lexington, KY, 1971), p. 95. 52Gould, The Presidency of William McKinley, pp. 249–51;

Cooper, The Warrior and the Priest, p. 77. McKinley’s untimely death permits only speculation about his full intentions, but his public and private statements indicate preparations for a more active agenda of antitrust and tariff legislation. 53 For the most penetrating discussions of Roosevelt’s

presidency see Blum’s Republican Roosevelt and Gould’s

Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt. Chessman’s Theodore Roosevelt and the Politics of Power is also helpful. For the election

of 1912, see Cooper’s The Warrior and the Priest. 54The fullest account of Roosevelt’s post-presidential activities appears in Harbaugh’s Power and Responsibility.

[ 311 ]

Chapter 26

CHARLES WARREN

FAIRBANKS

1905–1909
CHARLES W. FAIRBANKS
[ 313 ]

Chapter 26

CHARLES WARREN

FAIRBANKS

26th Vice President: 1905–1909

My name must not be considered for Vice President and if it is presented, I wish it withdrawn.

Please withdraw it.

—CHARLES WARREN FAIRBANKS 1

In the summer of 1904 Senator Charles Warren

Fairbanks wanted to be president of the United

States. Many in 1900 had seen him as the natural

successor to his good friend President William

McKinley. Now, however, it was not the fallen

McKinley who occupied the White House, but

Theodore Roosevelt, and the president appeared

on his way to easy renomination at the 1904 Republican convention. When members of the Republican Old Guard suggested Fairbanks for vice

president, the senator saw an opportunity for advancement. After all, the second spot had led to

the presidency for Roosevelt, it might do the

same for him. The vice-presidency might prove

a good place from which to maneuver for the

1908 convention, and anything could happen

with the impetuous Roosevelt in the White

House. As Finley Peter Dunne’s fictional character Mr. Dooley speculated, ‘‘Th’ way they got

Sinitor Fairbanks to accipt was by showin’ him

a pitcher iv our gr-reat an’ noble prisidint thryin

to jump a horse over a six-foot fence.’’ 2 Most of

all, Roosevelt’s prodigious shadow seemed a natural place for a man described by friends as ‘‘a

safe and popular politician’’ to wait for his turn

in the White House.3 If ever a man seemed destined to remain in the political shadows, it was

Charles Warren Fairbanks.

Youth

Charles Fairbanks was born on May 11, 1852,

in a modest log house in Ohio. His father,

Loriston Fairbanks, was a farmer and wagon

maker who had moved from New York to go

into business for himself. He became active in

Union County as a member of the agricultural

board, and his wife, Mary Adelaide Smith, was

a local temperance advocate. As a moderately

wealthy farmer, Fairbanks could afford to send

his son Charles to college at Ohio Wesleyan.

Charles excelled at his studies, graduating eighth

out of forty-four in the class of 1874. He continued his education at Cleveland Law College, taking only six months to complete his courses and

pass the bar.4

On October 6, 1874, Charles married Cornelia

Cole and moved with her to Indianapolis, Indiana, where, with the help of an uncle, Charles

took a position as attorney with the Chesapeake

and Ohio railroad system. Over the next decade,

young Fairbanks built a sterling reputation—as

well as a personal fortune—as a lawyer for numerous railroad interests in the Midwest. He

specialized in dealing with bankrupt railroads

and he prosecuted strikers after the Indianapolis

railroad strike in 1877. These activities brought
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CHARLES W. FAIRBANKS

the young lawyer to the attention of Indiana’s

Republican party.5

Leader of the Indiana Republicans

In 1884, Indiana’s Republicans split in their

support of presidential candidates, some favoring Walter Q. Gresham and others preferring

Benjamin Harrison. The election of Harrison in

1888 seemingly jeopardized Fairbanks’ prospects, since he had been active on behalf of the

Gresham faction. Harrison’s lackluster performance in the White House, however, followed by

impressive Democratic victories in 1892, gave

Fairbanks the opportunity to return to prominence in the state by helping to rebuild the party.

The campaign of 1892 also brought him into contact with the governor of Ohio, William McKinley. The two men formed a friendship that lasted

until McKinley’s untimely death in 1901 and

proved extremely beneficial to the careers of both

men.6

Even though he held no office, Fairbanks managed to gain control of the Indiana Republican

party, primarily because of his wealth. He spent

freely on campaigns and consistently urged

party unity behind candidates at all levels. Persistent letter writing and encouragement endeared him to GOP officeholders throughout the

state, and he used his connections with the railroads to obtain passes for political allies. Perhaps

most importantly, he secretly owned a majority

interest in the state’s largest newspaper, The Indianapolis News. By 1901, he had also purchased the

major opposition daily, The Indianapolis Journal.

Fairbanks’ control of the press significantly promoted the Republican cause in Indiana.7

As leader of his state’s Republican party, Fairbanks stood in an excellent position to command

the attention of the national party. With the parties almost evenly balanced in the late nineteenth

century, a small shift in the voting patterns of

one of the more densely populated industrial

states could win or lose a presidential election.

Indiana was one of these vital states. In the thirteen presidential elections from 1868 to 1916,

eleven of the national tickets boasted a Hoosier

candidate, usually running for vice president.

Charles Fairbanks thus became an important

man in Republican electoral considerations.8

When William McKinley ran for president in

1896, he made his friend Fairbanks a key player

in his campaign strategy. Fairbanks ran

McKinley’s campaign in Indiana and delivered

a united Hoosier delegation for McKinley at the

Republican National Convention in St. Louis. As

temporary chairman of that convention, Fairbanks uncharacteristically delivered a stirring

keynote address, in which he lambasted the

Democrats and advocated the gold standard for

currency.9 McKinley won the Republican nomination handily, then defeated Democrat William

Jennings Bryan in the general election. Indiana,

which he won by only about 18,000 votes,

proved instrumental to his victory.10

On the state level, the Republicans also did

well enough to regain control of the Indiana legislature, guaranteeing that they would determine

that body’s choice of a United States senator.

Speculation naturally turned to Charles Fairbanks. The wealthy lawyer had assisted many of

the Republican legislators during their campaigns; now they could return the favor. With a

little help from President McKinley, Fairbanks

easily won election to his first political office.11

A Senator with Presidential Ambitions

Fairbanks’ Senate career proved competent if

unspectacular. He stuck to the party line and was

well respected among his colleagues. As chairman of the Immigration Committee, he favored

restricting immigration and requiring a literacy

test before entry into the United States—both

popular positions. When the Immigration Committee proved too contentious for his liking, Fairbanks moved to the chairmanship of the more

agreeable Committee on Public Buildings and

Grounds. Although he had originally opposed

the pressure for war with Spain in 1898, he faithfully followed President McKinley’s lead when

war came. The president appointed him to the

Joint-High Commission to decide the U.S.-Canadian boundary in Alaska. No settlement was

reached, but Fairbanks helped his own popularity by declaring, ‘‘I am opposed to the yielding

of an inch of United States territory.’’ The people

of Alaska showed their appreciation by naming

the city of Fairbanks in his honor. Perhaps Fairbanks’ only controversial stand in the Senate was
[ 315 ]

CHARLES W. FAIRBANKS

his support for the demands of black soldiers

fighting in Cuba that they be commanded by

black officers. Thanks to the senator’s intervention, Indiana became the first state to accept this

position as general policy for its militia units.12

Fairbanks’ calm demeanor and ‘‘safe’’ Republican views made him very popular in the Senate.

As a senator from a pivotal state and a consistent

defender of the McKinley administration, Fairbanks emerged as a natural successor to McKinley. He certainly looked like a president: tall (approximately six feet, four inches), dignified, always clad in a proper Prince Albert coat.13 In

1900 some conservatives, most notably Ohio Senator Mark Hanna, tried to maneuver Fairbanks

into a vice-presidential nomination.14 The conservative attempt to block the nomination of

New York Governor Theodore Roosevelt ended

in failure, but the mention of Fairbanks for vice

president fueled the senator’s already growing

ambition. The Indianan turned down Hanna’s

offer for practical reasons and because he had set

his sights higher. As one journalist put it, ‘‘[Fairbanks] had dreams of the White House. He preferred to remain in the Senate until the real call

came.’’ 15

Charles Fairbanks’ political fortunes changed

dramatically on September 6, 1901, when President McKinley was assassinated while visiting

the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo. He lost

not only a friend, but also a political patron. Although McKinley’s successor, Theodore Roosevelt, promised to continue the fallen president’s policies, Fairbanks’ close connection to the

White House was severed. Beyond these personal considerations, the nation’s political environment was about to change—partly in response to Roosevelt—in ways that would leave

Fairbanks in the shadows. President Roosevelt

brought a new glamour to the presidency. He

dominated the news and shifted the national debate to new issues.16 None of these changes

proved helpful to Fairbanks’ presidential

ambitions.

Conditions were also changing in Indiana. In

1899 the state legislature had elected a young

firebrand named Albert J. Beveridge to the Senate. The new junior senator from Indiana was a

powerful orator who shot to prominence by advocating a policy of overseas expansion for the

United States. His growing power in Indiana

represented a challenge to Fairbanks. The threat

became increasingly severe as Beveridge gradually broke away from the party’s Old Guard and

began siding with the insurgents in calling for

greater regulation of railroads and business

trusts. No longer merely over party power, the

battle had come also to concern policies. To make

matters worse for Fairbanks, President Roosevelt

quite obviously preferred the counsel of Senator

Beveridge.17

This smoldering conflict erupted in 1901 when

a federal judgeship became available in Indiana.

Beveridge recommended an old friend, Francis

Baker, whom Fairbanks adamantly refused to

endorse. The squabble became public and was

widely seen as a test of prestige within the state.

Because this type of patronage could crucially affect a politician’s ability to accumulate and wield

power, the dispute had serious repercussions for

Fairbanks. When Roosevelt nominated Baker,

apparently without much concern for the prerogatives of the senior senator, there was little question which of Indiana’s senators had the favor of

the White House.18

Vice-Presidential Candidate

Charles Fairbanks saw his presidential hopes

gradually slipping away. President Roosevelt effectively maneuvered throughout 1902 and 1903

to gain control of the party and ensure his renomination in 1904. Some conservatives considered supporting Mark Hanna for the nomination,

but Hanna’s death in February 1904 ended any

real opposition to Roosevelt within the GOP.

With Hanna gone, Fairbanks became more closely identified as the heir to McKinley, but Roosevelt’s presence—rather than McKinley’s spirit—had come to dominate the party.

Still, the Old Guard could not simply be dismissed. If one of their own could not be the presidential nominee, they would choose the vicepresidential candidate. Fairbanks was the obvious choice, since conservatives thought highly of

him yet he managed not to offend the party’s

more progressive elements. Roosevelt was far

from pleased with the idea of Fairbanks for vice

president. He would have preferred Representa-
[ 316 ]

CHARLES W. FAIRBANKS

tive Robert R. Hitt of Illinois, but he did not consider the vice-presidential nomination worth a

fight. For his part, Fairbanks followed Roosevelt’s example from 1900 by declaring that he

was not a candidate. His friends, however, had

little doubt of his interest in the position, and he

privately informed Roosevelt that he would

serve in any way the president indicated. With

solid support from New York, Pennsylvania, and

Indiana (thanks to the acquiescence of Senator

Beveridge) Fairbanks was easily placed on the

1904 Republican ticket in order to appease the

Old Guard.19

By avoiding controversy and contentious issues, Fairbanks made himself a useful running

mate, conservative enough to alleviate business

uneasiness about Roosevelt but not so outspoken

as to be unacceptable to the insurgents. Still, the

reaction was not entirely favorable. The New York

Journal called Fairbanks ‘‘a mere blank wall upon

which the influences that control the Republican

party can paint what they will.’’ 20

If the goal of constructing a national presidential ticket is to achieve a complementary balance between its two members, the Republican

ticket of 1904 came close to being ideal. Roosevelt

and Fairbanks differed from one another in nearly every way. The ticket offered balance both

geographically, between New York and Indiana,

and ideologically, from progressive to conservative. Perhaps the greatest contrast was one of

personality. The vigorous and ebullient Roosevelt differed markedly from the calm and cool

Fairbanks. One wag called the 1904 ticket ‘‘The

Hot Tamale and the Indiana Icicle.’’ Fairbanks’

cool demeanor often led cartoonists to portray

him as a block of ice.21 Although friends claimed

he was a very genial fellow in private and only

appeared austere, 22 the icy image remained the

popular one, providing an interesting contrast to

the ‘‘strenuous life’’ of President Roosevelt.

Mrs. Fairbanks partially offset this impression

of coldness. Cornelia Fairbanks had become one

of the most popular hostesses in Washington, renowned for her charm and tact. She also remained active as president-general of the Daughters of the American Revolution. The Fairbanks’

Washington home, the Van Wyck House near

Dupont Circle, occupied a prominent place in the

capital’s social landscape.23

Charles Fairbanks assumed the principal Republican campaign duties for the ticket in 1904,

as tradition dictated that incumbent presidents

remain at work in the White House. He toured

all the northern states and spent the final week

ensuring a Republican victory in Indiana.24 His

task turned out to be relatively easy thanks to

Theodore Roosevelt’s enormous popularity and

the Democratic nomination of the rather lifeless

Judge Alton B. Parker of New York. The Republicans’ landslide victory over Democrats Parker

and Henry G. Davis unquestionably resulted

from Roosevelt’s popularity, but Fairbanks was

now vice president and he hoped his star was

on the rise once more. He began making plans

to pursue an even higher calling in 1908.

President of the Senate

In an 1896 article for Review of Reviews, Roosevelt, while New York City police commissioner, had argued that the vice president should

participate actively in a presidential administration, including attendance at cabinet meetings

and consultation on all major decisions. He even

posited that the vice president should be given

a regular vote in the Senate.25 Now that he was

president, however, Roosevelt displayed no intention of following his own advice. He did not

invite Fairbanks to participate in the cabinet and

consulted the vice president about nothing of

substance. Roosevelt certainly showed no inclination to support granting Fairbanks a vote in

the Senate and, given Fairbanks’ conservative

tendencies, would probably have opposed any

attempt to do so. Discussing the office abstractly

turned out to be quite different from dealing

with a flesh-and-blood occupant.

The new vice president spent much of his time

presiding over the Senate. He undoubtedly felt

comfortable dealing with his old friends on Capitol Hill, and President Roosevelt gave him nothing else to do. As Senate president, Fairbanks

had little direct power to affect the course of legislation, but working in tandem with the Republican leadership he was able to play a role in

passing the president’s ambitious legislative program that included the Hepburn Act regulating
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CHARLES W. FAIRBANKS

railroad rates, the Pure Food and Drug Act, and

an employer’s liability law for the District of

Columbia.

Fairbanks, Republican Senate leader Nelson

Aldrich of Rhode Island, and Speaker of the

House Joe Cannon of Illinois also worked together effectively to bury unwanted legislation

in hostile committees and to rule opposition

speakers ‘‘out of order’’ at every opportunity.26

Fairbanks never had a chance to break a tied

vote, but he seldom missed a session and opposition speakers remained sensitive to his vigilance

in the chair.

In 1907, Fairbanks wielded the power of his office against his old foe Albert Beveridge. When

the Senate considered legislation for government

inspection of packaged meat, Beveridge advocated charging the inspection fees to the meat

packers, but was unsuccessful in his attempts.

Later in the session, he offered this plan as an

amendment to the agriculture appropriations

bill. In order to stop the amendment, Senator

Francis Warren of Wyoming raised a point of

order that the amendment contained ‘‘general

legislation’’ and, therefore, under Senate rules,

could not be added to an appropriations bill. The

presiding officer, Vice President Fairbanks, could

either rule on the point of order himself or

present it to the Senate for a decision. Senator

Jacob Gallinger of New Hampshire submitted a

list of precedents in which previous officers had

referred similar points of order to the Senate for

determination. Fairbanks promptly ignored

these precedents and ruled Beveridge’s amendment out of order, observing, ‘‘During the

present session the Chair has frequently been invited by Senators to submit to the Senate points

of order on amendments which were not in

order, and in every case of such invitation the

Chair has felt obliged to decline to do so.’’ Fairbanks took further pleasure in chastising

Beveridge for offering an amendment that was

very similar to a bill Beveridge had introduced

the previous December. If the matter were of

‘‘such large consequence,’’ he asserted, the Senate would have dealt with it then, in ‘‘an orderly

and appropriate way.’’ 27 The vice-presidency

may not have had much power, but Fairbanks

knew how to use what he had.

The most famous instance of Fairbanks’ effectiveness as presiding officer came in May 1908

during debate over the conference report on the

Aldrich-Vreeland Emergency Currency Act. This

legislation authorized the issuance of emergency

currency based on state bonds, municipal bonds,

and railroad bonds. The inclusion of bonds from

railroad companies enraged many midwestern

and southern progressives, who saw it as an example of the railroads’ control of Congress. As

Senator Robert C. Byrd observed in discussing

this incident in a 1989 address to the Senate,

‘‘Filibusters are inherently much more difficult

to wage successfully on conference reports than

on bills, because conference reports are not

amendable.’’ 28 Nevertheless, Republican Senator Robert La Follette of Wisconsin, leading the

small but determined opposition to the legislation, decided to filibuster. By holding the floor,

La Follette and Democratic Senators Thomas

Gore of Oklahoma and William Stone of Missouri hoped to force the leadership to drop railroad bonds from the measure. La Follette began

speaking at 12:20 p.m. on Friday, May 29. Either

Gore or Stone was to take the floor when he finished and, by speaking in rotation, they could stifle Senate business indefinitely.

A filibuster in the early twentieth century

could be particularly unpleasant. In the summer,

an extremely hot Senate chamber customarily

drove senators to the cloakrooms for relief. During a filibuster, however, if too many members

left the chamber, the speaker, or an ally, could

suggest the absence of a quorum without losing

control of the floor. This procedure required the

vice president to direct that the roll be called,

and, if a quorum (forty-seven members at that

time) were not present, the Senate would adjourn until a quorum could be obtained, further

contributing to the filibuster’s objective of delay.

In any event, the quorum call allowed the speaker a few moments to seek water or food and

some fresh air. When Robert La Follette took the

floor on May 29, 1908, he brought a clerk with

him to keep track of the number of senators

present. Since the day turned out to be especially

warm, senators had no desire to linger in the

sweltering chamber. Whenever the count of
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CHARLES W. FAIRBANKS

members in the chamber fell below the required

number, La Follette would stop his speech to

suggest the absence of a quorum, forcing his colleagues to file back into the chamber to answer

the roll. This cycle continued for hours. When

Vice President Fairbanks ordered La Follette’s

clerk, who had been keeping count for his boss,

to leave the chamber, other members friendly to

the Wisconsin senator’s cause took up the counting. Finally, at about 11:45 that night, after thirtytwo quorum calls, Fairbanks, under the guidance

of party leader Aldrich, managed to limit the tactic by making a resourceful parliamentary ruling

that some business other than debate must take

place between quorum calls. Not until 2:25 a.m.

on Saturday, May 30, did La Follette finally establish the absence of a quorum, at which point

the Senate adjourned until the sergeant at arms

roused enough senators from bed to begin debate once more, at 3:40 a.m., allowing La Follette

a short nap.

La Follette continued until 7:00 a.m. William

Stone followed, holding the floor until 1:30 p.m.,

and then yielded to Senator Gore. Gore was to

speak until 4:30 p.m., when Stone would return.

At the appointed time, Gore, who was blind,

heard that Stone had returned, but when Gore

yielded the floor, Stone, either by mistake or

through chicanery, had stepped outside the

chamber for a moment. Vice President Fairbanks,

alert to his opportunity, immediately recognized

Nelson Aldrich, who moved that the vote be

taken on his bill. Fairbanks, ignoring other

speakers shouting for recognition, directed the

clerk to call the yeas and nays, and Aldrich, first

on the roll, answered in the affirmative. Under

Senate rules, once a vote began, it could not be

stopped for further debate. After more than

twenty-eight hours, the filibuster was broken.29

The passage of the Aldrich-Vreeland Act

pleased President Roosevelt, but his vice president’s other Senate rulings would not always

produce such agreeable results. Roosevelt spent

most of 1907 and 1908 fighting with Congress.

The Senate, especially, erected roadblocks to the

president’s legislative initiatives, particularly

those seeking to expand the powers of the executive branch. Roosevelt believed that Congress

was incapable of making the kind of informed,

disinterested decisions necessary to regulate the

nation’s powerful trusts. He preferred to rely on

executive agencies, staffed by experts whom he

considered capable of maintaining a careful

watch over the nation’s business community. He

argued that efficient executive power, rather

than clumsy intermittent legislation, would most

effectively deal with the trusts. The Hepburn bill

included provisions allowing the Interstate Commerce Commission to set railroad rates, and Roosevelt pursued legislation to allow executive

agencies to set maximum prices for certain commodities. While the Senate eventually agreed to

the Hepburn bill with some modifications, it jealously guarded its prerogatives against what it

saw as presidential encroachment. Even a president as persuasive as Theodore Roosevelt had

difficulty convincing Congress to expand the executive’s power.30

Opposition from his own party in the Senate

constantly frustrated Roosevelt, who attempted

to rouse public opinion in support of greater executive power. For their part, many Republican

senators bristled at the seemingly endless flow

of presidential messages from the White House,

as well as at Roosevelt’s constant public criticism

of their cherished institution.31 Vice president

Fairbanks’ sympathies plainly lay with the Senate, and when his term ended in 1909, he used

his farewell address to launch a vigorous defense

of his Senate colleagues. He supported the record

of the recent session against ‘‘erroneous’’ criticism that it was unresponsive to the popular will.

‘‘The Senate of the United States,’’ he said, ‘‘was

designed by our fathers to be a deliberative

chamber in the fullest and best sense—a chamber

where the passions of the hour might be arrested

and where the better judgement of the people

would find ultimate expression.’’ Offering a Senate response to Roosevelt’s ‘‘bully pulpit,’’ he declared, ‘‘A servile Senate was not contemplated

by its founders.’’ 32

Pursuit of the Presidency

During his vice-presidency, Fairbanks also

spent considerable time trying to secure the Republican presidential nomination in 1908. In this

endeavor, he faced serious obstacles. His own

lackluster image offered cartoonists and writers
[ 319 ]

CHARLES W. FAIRBANKS

a favorite target. When President Roosevelt told

columnist Finley Peter Dunne that he was considering taking a ride in a submarine, Dunne advised, ‘‘You really shouldn’t do it—-unless you

take Fairbanks with you.’’ 33 Fairbanks even

earned a short mention in David Graham Phillips’ 1906 expose ́ The Treason of the Senate, where

he is referred to as the ‘‘presiding genius’’ of the

Senate.34

Fairbanks’ popularity increased somewhat

after a supposed attempt on his life. While the

vice president was laying the cornerstone for a

new federal building in Flint, Michigan, police

arrested a man in the crowd carrying a thirtytwo-caliber revolver and pockets full of ‘‘socialistic literature.’’ This incident surely evoked

memories of the assassination of President

McKinley. Fairbanks also tried to use favorable

publicity to bolster his image. He spent the summer of 1905 on a farm he owned in Illinois trying

to appeal to the farm vote. He had himself photographed chopping down a tree and cutting it up,

perhaps trying to emulate Roosevelt’s much-admired vigor. Still, no one outside the inner circle

of the Republican party seemed to pay much attention. The New York Daily News committed his

obscurity to verse, saying:

Fairbanks was in town two days

Yet no one seemed the wiser;

He yearned to meet the public gaze

His own press advertiser.

He strolled about the town at will

Without much molestation,

The only effect was a heavy chill

And his own great agitation.

A stranger on a foreign shore

Would scare up more attention;

And he is feeling extra sore

For lack of even mention.35

In his effort to attract support, Fairbanks’ oratory proved less than appealing. The Nation declared, ‘‘No public speaker can more quickly

drive an audience to dispair.’’ 36 He seemed both

uninspiring and out of step with the times. During an era of growing clamor for progressive reforms, Fairbanks’ speeches were full of what one

observer called ‘‘splendid verbosity,’’ simply

equating the Republican party with prosperity.

During the congressional races of 1906, he spoke

often for GOP candidates, stressing the theme

‘‘Let Well Enough Alone.’’ Collier’s Weekly

summed up his performance with another poem:

Then Mr. Fairbanks waxed quite warm;

His voice ris to a roar.

He yelled: ‘‘I say to you, my friends, That two and two make four,’’

And thereupon all doubts dissolved, All fears were put to rout; Pie-seekers said that Fairbanks knew

Just what he was about.

He did not name unbusted trusts

Or mention Standard Oil;

He did not talk of railroad graft

Nor speak of children’s toil.

He said the crops looked mighty well,

The cattle all seemed fat,

The sky was blue, the grass still grew,

And the G.O.P. stood pat.

And he let it go at that.37

The only substantive issue that really seemed

to hold Fairbanks’ attention was the gold standard. He had demanded a strong gold plank in

the Indiana platform in 1896 and succeeded in

helping McKinley make that a major part of the

1896 campaign.38 After McKinley’s victory in

1900, however, the gold standard had ceased to

be a salient issue for the public. Fairbanks’ continued reliance on it seemed safe and popular,

but not likely to create a groundswell of support.

It was merely one more instance of Fairbanks’

failure to keep up with the rapid political

changes of the new century.

An even more serious problem for Fairbanks

loomed in the form of opposition from Theodore

Roosevelt. The president had already announced

he would not run in 1908, but he intended to

choose his own successor. His list clearly did not

include Fairbanks. Roosevelt preferred Secretary

of State Elihu Root, but his age (over sixty) and

background in corporate law made him an unlikely choice. The president, therefore, settled on

his secretary of war and close friend, William

Howard Taft, using the power of his office to secure convention delegations loyal to Taft. By the

time the convention began, Taft’s selection was

nearly determined.39 Against the power of a

popular incumbent president, Fairbanks never

had a chance.

Roosevelt could hardly conceal his scorn for

Fairbanks. The president liked to tell amusing

stories about his uninspiring vice president and

would often discuss his preferred successors in
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CHARLES W. FAIRBANKS

Fairbanks’ presence without mentioning the gentleman from Indiana.40 When Fairbanks and

New York Governor Charles Evans Hughes both

showed some strength as possible nominees in

the summer of 1908, Roosevelt seemed stunned.

As he exclaimed to a Hughes supporter before

the convention, ‘‘Do you know whom we have

most trouble in beating? Not Hughes—but

Fairbanks! Think of it—Charley Fairbanks! I was

never more surprised in my life. I never dreamt

of such a thing. He’s got a hold in Kentucky, Indiana, and some other states that is hard to

break. How and why is beyond me.’’ 41 This

strength, though, was illusory compared to the

influence wielded by Roosevelt on behalf of Taft.

After gaining the nomination, Taft went on to

win an easy victory over William Jennings Bryan

in November.

Still Active in Politics

After the inauguration of Taft and new Vice

President James Sherman in March 1909, Fairbanks returned to Indiana to live the life of a

country gentleman. He remained marginally active in Indiana politics but tried to maintain a

low profile during the disastrous party split in

1912. In 1914, the former vice president returned

to prominence once more as the advocate of

party unity. The Indiana delegation to the 1916

Republican National Convention supported him

as a ‘‘favorite son’’ candidate for president, in

hopes of a deadlocked convention. When

Charles Evans Hughes obtained the nomination,

there was talk of proposing Fairbanks for vice

president. The prospect of reacquiring his old

position did not appeal to Fairbanks. He wired

his friends in the Indiana delegation, ‘‘My name

must not be considered for Vice President and

if it is presented, I wish it withdrawn. Please

withdraw it.’’ When, despite Fairbanks’ wishes,

he was nominated on the first ballot, 42 his loyalty to the party induced him to accept the nomination and fulfill his duty as a candidate. He

toured the country calling for a return to the high

tariff policies that Democratic President Woodrow Wilson had abandoned. Neither Fairbanks

nor his opponent and fellow Hoosier, Democratic Vice President Thomas Marshall, aroused

much enthusiasm. As the New Republic put it,

‘‘Mr. Marshall is an argument for the election of

Mr. Hughes. Mr. Fairbanks is an argument for

the re-election of Mr. Wilson.’’ Hughes and Fairbanks suffered a narrow defeat in 1916, but Fairbanks could take comfort that Indiana swung

once more into the Republican column.43

After the election, Charles Fairbanks again retired to private life. He remained active in the

Indiana Forestry Association, a conservation

group of which he was founder and first president (perhaps his only similarity to Roosevelt).

During the First World War, he visited several

army camps to encourage the troops and spoke

for the Liberty Loan campaigns. Fairbanks died

on June 14, 1918, at the age of sixty-six.

Ironically, the message from the Republican

National Convention in 1904 notifying Charles

Fairbanks of his nomination for the vice-presidency spoke in glowing terms of the party’s

unity. It lamented previous selections that had

been made to appease defeated factions and rejoiced that this selection was not such a case. It

compared the hoped-for collaboration between

Roosevelt and Fairbanks to that of McKinley and

Garret Hobart (conspicuously passing over

McKinley and Roosevelt).44 The author of this

message surely must have been aware of its inaccuracy. Roosevelt accepted Fairbanks because he

did not consider the office worth a fight. Fairbanks took the position in hopes that it would

lead to the presidency. The two men never cooperated well and spent the last two years of the

administration actually working at cross purposes. Roosevelt thwarted Fairbanks’ bid for the

presidential nomination, while Fairbanks helped

to bottle up Roosevelt’s legislation in the Senate.

Charles Fairbanks was neither a great orator

nor a brilliant political thinker. He succeeded by

mastering the intricacies of the Senate and by

avoiding controversy. Like so many other Indiana politicians, Fairbanks excelled as a political

insider. He was skilled in the arts of political

management and compromise.45 Those skills

made him a valued member of the Senate and

an influential state politician but were far less

useful in presidential politics. Perhaps an observer in 1897 had him pegged best when he

said, ‘‘Fairbanks may not be a great Statesman,

but he certainly is a great Politician.’’ 46 By un-
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CHARLES W. FAIRBANKS

derstanding party politics, Fairbanks advanced

as far as the vice-presidency. Yet, in an era dominated by the likes of Roosevelt, Wilson, Bryan,

and La Follette, Fairbanks’ political skills were

not sufficient to allow him to escape the shadows

of those men.
[ 322 ]

NOTES 1Quoted in Herbert J. Rissler, ‘‘Charles Warren Fairbanks: Conservative Hoosier,’’ (Ph.D. dissertation, Indiana

University, 1961), p. 266. 2 James H. Madison, ‘‘Charles Warren Fairbanks and Indiana Republicanism,’’ in Ralph D. Gray, ed., Gentlemen From

Indiana: National Party Candidates, 1836–1940 (Indianapolis,

1977), p. 184. 3William Henry Smith, The Life and Speeches of Hon.

Charles Warren Fairbanks (Indianapolis, 1904), p. 7. 4Rissler, pp. 5–27.

5 Ibid., pp. 28–35.

6 Ibid., pp. 40–62; Smith, p. 39.

7 John Braeman, Albert J. Beveridge: American Nationalist

(Chicago, 1971), pp. 73–77; Madison, p. 177; Donald A.

Ritchie, Press Gallery: Congress and the Washington Correspondents (Cambridge, MA, 1991), p. 182. 8Rissler, preface; Ralph D. Gray, ed., Gentlemen From Indiana: National Party Candidates, 1836–1940 (Indianapolis,

1977), Chapters VII-XI. 9 Smith, pp. 44–55; Rissler, pp. 64–72; Madison, p. 179.

10Congressional Quarterly’s Guide to U.S. Elections, 3d. ed.

(Washington, 1994), p. 444. 11Rissler, pp. 76–77; Madison, p. 179.

12Rissler, pp. 80–97.

13Madison, pp. 181–82.

14Lewis L. Gould, ‘‘Charles Warren Fairbanks and the

Republican National Convention of 1900: A Memoir,’’ Indiana Magazine of History 77 (December 1981): 370. 15 Henry L. Stoddard, As I Knew Them: Presidents and Politics From Grant to Coolidge (New York, 1927), p. 248. 16 For the most thorough discussion of Roosevelt’s presidency, see Lewis L. Gould, The Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt (Lawrence, KS, 1991). For a discussion of Roosevelt’s

vice-presidency, see Chapter 25 of this volume, ‘‘Theodore

Roosevelt,’’ pp. 303–5. 17 For the life and career of Albert J. Beveridge, see

Braeman, Albert J. Beveridge: American Nationalist and

Claude G. Bowers, Beveridge and the Progressive Era (New

York, 1932). 18Braeman, pp. 76–77; Bowers, 175–76.

19Gould, The Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, p. 135;

Rissler, pp. 135–50; Irving G. Williams, The Rise of the Vice

Presidency (Washington, 1956), pp. 86–87. 20Rissler, p. 115.

21 Ibid., p. 151; Gould, ‘‘Charles Warren Fairbanks,’’ p.

361.

22George F. Sparks, ed., A Many Colored Toga: The Diary

of Henry Fountain Ashurst (Tucson, 1962), p. 79. 23Thomas R. Shipp, ‘‘Charles Warren Fairbanks, Republican Candidate for Vice President,’’ American Monthly Review of Reviews 30 (August 1904): 181. 24Rissler, pp. 157–58.

25Theodore Roosevelt, ‘‘The Three Vice-Presidential Candidates and What They Represent,’’ American Monthly Review of Reviews 14 (September 1896): 289–97. 26Williams, p. 90.

27Braeman, p. 109; Asher C. Hinds, Hind’s Precedents of

the House of Representatives of the United States, vol. 2 (Washington, 1907), pp. 883–85. 28U.S., Congress, Senate, The Senate, 1789–1989: Addresses

on the History of the United States Senate, by Robert C. Byrd,

S. Doc., 100–20, 100th Cong., 1st sess., vol 2, 1991, p. 108. 29Belle Case La Follette and Fola La Follette, Robert M.

La Follette, June 14, 1855–June 18, 1925 (New York, 1953), pp.

238–56. This source gives the most detailed and interesting,

if one sided, account of the filibuster. 30 John M. Blum, The Republican Roosevelt, 2d ed. (New

York, 1964), pp. 87, 95–96, 105, 107–8. 31Gould, The Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, pp. 276–77,

291–94. 32U.S., Congress, Senate, Congressional Record, 60th Cong.,

2d sess., 1909, p. 3825. 33 Jules Witcover, Crapshoot: Rolling the Dice on the Vice

Presidency (New York, 1992), p. 58. 34David Graham Phillips, The Treason of the Senate (Chicago, 1964; reprint of 1906 edition), p. 198. 35Rissler, pp. 169–72.

36 Ibid., pp. 145–46.

37 Ibid., pp. 178–79, 202.

38 Ibid., pp. 69–70; Stoddard, p. 239.

39Gould, The Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, pp. 271–73,

283–84. 40Williams, pp. 88–89.

41 Stoddard, p. 335.

42Rissler, pp. 265–66.

43 Ibid., pp. 266–71; Congressional Quarterly’s Guide to U.S.

Elections, p. 449. 44 Smith, pp. 234–35.

45 For an excellent overview of Indiana politics and the

general skills of Hoosier politicians, see Philip R.

VanderMeer, The Hoosier Politician: Officeholding and Political

Culture in Indiana 1896–1920 (Urbana, IL, 1985). 46Madison, p. 173.
[ 323 ]

Chapter 27

JAMES SCHOOLCRAFT

SHERMAN

1909–1912
JAMES SCHOOLCRAFT SHERMAN
[ 325 ]

Chapter 27

JAMES SCHOOLCRAFT

SHERMAN

27th Vice President: 1909–1912

You will have to act on your own account. I am to be Vice President and acting as a messenger

boy is not part of the duties as Vice President.

—JAMES SCHOOLCRAFT SHERMAN TO PRESIDENT WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT

A marble bust of James Schoolcraft Sherman

has the distinction of being the only vice-presidential bust in the United States Capitol with

eyeglasses. Sherman apparently had thought

that no one would recognize him without his

glasses. However, over time he has grown so obscure that no one recognizes him even with his

glasses.1 Capitol visitors often confuse him with

the more famous Senator John Sherman, author

of the Sherman Antitrust Act. Yet while he never

authored a famous bill, ‘‘Sunny Jim’’ Sherman

was a powerful leader in the House of Representatives, a skilled parliamentarian, and a

popular presiding officer of the Senate during his

vice-presidency under William Howard Taft.

Youth

James S. Sherman was born on October 24,

1855, in Utica, New York, where his grandfather,

Willett Sherman, ran a profitable glass factory

and owned an impressive farm. In later years,

Senator Elihu Root recalled spending summers

at his own grandfather’s farm and ‘‘the big,

white house, with the great columns,’’ of Sherman’s grandfather’s adjoining farm. Root believed that Sherman inherited his probusiness

politics from his grandfather. Sherman’s father,

Richard U. Sherman, headed a food canning

company and published a Democratic newspaper.

Young James Sherman graduated from

Whitestown Seminary in 1874 and then attended

Hamilton College, where he achieved recognition for his skills in oratory and debate. His genial temperament made him ‘‘the most popular

man in his class.’’ He graduated from Hamilton

in 1878, received his law degree there the following year, and was admitted to the New York

state bar in 1880, practicing in a firm with his

brother-in-law. In 1881, he married Carrie Babcock of East Orange, New Jersey; they would

have three sons.

Sherman was a joiner. In college he had joined

the Sigma Phi fraternity. He was active in the

Dutch Reformed Church. He was a member of

the Royal Arcanum, the Order of Elks, and of all

the local clubs in Utica. In politics, he broke with

his Democratic father to become a Republican

and at the age of twenty-nine won election as

mayor of Utica. Two years later, in 1886, his district elected him to the U.S. House of Representatives. Except for the two years following his defeat for reelection in 1890, he remained in national public office for the rest of his life.2

A Jolly Coterie in the House

As a Republican committed to a high protective tariff, Sherman blamed his single defeat on

an angry voter reaction to the McKinley Tariff

of 1890, which had swept many members of his
[ 326 ]

JAMES SCHOOLCRAFT SHERMAN

party out of Congress (including William McKinley). In 1892 Sherman narrowly defeated Democrat Henry Bentley, who had beaten him in 1890,

and returned to Congress. There Sherman reestablished himself as the leader of a ‘‘jolly coterie’’

of New York Republicans. Speaker Thomas B.

Reed, who enjoyed the company of these younger men, promoted Sherman in the House hierarchy. Democratic Leader Champ Clark identified him as among the ‘‘Big Five’’ in the House

Republican leadership, but Sherman never held

a party leadership post or chaired a major committee. He served on the committees on the Judiciary, Census, Industrial Arts and Expositions,

Interstate and Foreign Commerce, and Rules;

and for fourteen years he chaired the Indian Affairs Committee. Democratic Representative

John Sharp Williams believed that Sherman

could have had a seat on either of the most important House committees, Appropriations or

Ways and Means, ‘‘for the asking.’’ But the New

Yorker always stood aside in favor of friends

who wanted those appointments, ‘‘thereby making the task of the Speaker, who was in those

days always the party leader, easier and the

pathway of his friends pleasanter.’’ 3

The secret of Sherman’s success in the House

was his recognized parliamentary ability. Whenever House Speakers Tom Reed, David Henderson, and Joseph Cannon had to leave the chair,

they knew that they could trust Sherman with

the gavel, because he was a ‘‘decisive, self-possessed, and able parliamentarian.’’ Unlike the

smaller Senate, the House regularly used the device of a ‘‘committee of the whole’’ as a means

of suspending its rules and moving ahead more

speedily on legislation, since a smaller quorum

was needed for the committee of the whole, and

debate was limited. Amendments could be voted

upon, but the final bill had to be reported back

to the full House to be voted upon in regular session. Officially known as the Committee of the

Whole House on the State of the Union, this committee comprised all House members and met in

the House chamber. To indicate that the House

was meeting in the committee of the whole rather than in regular session, the House sergeant at

arms lowered the House mace from its pedestal,

and the Speaker stepped down as presiding officer in favor of another member. Henry Cabot

Lodge declared that Sherman ‘‘gradually came

to be recognized as the best Chairman of the

Committee of the Whole whom that great body

had known in many years.’’ Presiding effectively

over the committee of the whole, said Lodge,

was ‘‘a severe test of a man’s qualities, both

moral and mental. He must have strength of

character as well as ability, quickness in decision

must go hand in hand with knowledge, and

firmness must always be accompanied by good

temper.’’ 4

While in the House, Sherman was a leader in

the fight to preserve the gold standard against

Populist proposals for ‘‘free silver’’—by which

farmers hoped to reduce their debts by fueling

inflation through an expansion of the amount of

money in circulation. Sherman also fought

Democratic President Grover Cleveland’s efforts

to lower the tariff. When the Republicans returned to power with the election of William

McKinley as president in 1896, Sherman played

a key role in passage of the Dingley Tariff that

reversed Democratic efforts and restored the

high protective tariff. As usual, Speaker Reed

turned the gavel over to Sherman to chair the

committee of the whole throughout most of the

debate on the Dingley Tariff. When Speaker

Reed retired in 1900, Sherman sought the Speakership but lost to David Henderson. He became

Henderson’s right-hand man and continued to

play that role under Henderson’s successor, the

powerful ‘‘Uncle Joe’’ Cannon.5

McKinley’s assassination in 1901 transferred

the presidency to the dynamic Theodore Roosevelt, whose strong personality stimulated a national reform movement that had grown out of

a series of local responses to the human abuses

of industrialism. Progressives demanded

change, which conservative leaders in Congress

resisted. Sherman stood with the Old Guard.

‘‘He was preeminently a stand-patter and proud

of it,’’ recalled Senator Chauncey Depew. Having inherited the presidency of the New Hartford

Canning Company from his father, Sherman

fought progressive efforts to require accurate labeling of the weights and measures of canned

jelly, catsup, corn, and other foods. He proposed
[ 327 ]

JAMES SCHOOLCRAFT SHERMAN

a substitute amendment that required only that

if a canner did label the weight and measure of

the product, that such labeling must be accurate.

This caused Dr. Harvey Wiley, who led the crusade for pure food and drug laws, to rename

‘‘Sunny Jim’’ Sherman as ‘‘Short-weight Jim.’’ 6

The Republican Congressional Campaign

Committee

Sherman chaired the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee during the congressional elections of 1906, raising large campaign

contributions from business interests and gaining further recognition from his party’s leaders.

Sherman himself faced a hard fight for reelection

that year. At one point, he turned desperately to

an old fraternity brother, Elihu Root, then secretary of state in the Roosevelt administration.

Sherman invited Root to speak for him and for

the New York Republican gubernatorial candidate, Charles Evans Hughes, who was locked

in battle with the Democratic candidate, newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst. Other

Republican leaders, fearing that Hearst might exploit Root’s corporate connections to embarrass

the Republican ticket, pleaded with Root to cancel his trip. But Sherman begged Root to reconsider. Root made the speech, in which he strongly and eloquently denounced Hearst, an attack

that was credited with helping Hughes and Sherman win their elections.7

In 1908, Sherman chaired the Republican state

convention for the third time (having previously

done so in 1895 and 1900). His supporters then

launched a vice-presidential boom for him. President Theodore Roosevelt had announced that he

would not stand for a third term, and had anointed Secretary of War William Howard Taft as his

successor. The New York delegation went to the

convention pledged to their governor, Charles

Evans Hughes, for president, but as one journalist observed, the state’s delegation was actually

anxious to nominate Sherman for the second

place on the ticket. Fortunately for Sherman’s

ambitions, Governor Hughes did nothing to promote his candidacy. Hughes’ cool aloofness inspired a Gridiron Club parody of an old

spiritual:

Swing low, sweet chariot,

You’ll have to if you’re after me;

Swing low, sweet chariot,

For I’m lying low, you see.8

A Machiavellian Nomination

Taft won the nomination and would have preferred a progressive running mate, someone of

the stature of Indiana Senator Albert Beveridge

or Iowa Senator Jonathan Dolliver. But House

members, led by Speaker Cannon, pressed for

the nomination of James Sherman. On the surface, it seemed as though Sherman won the nomination by default, after the more progressive

possibilities withdrew their names from consideration. But years later, in his memoirs, Senator

Chauncey Depew revealed a more Machiavellian

version of what had happened. The New York

delegation had lobbied hard to convince Taft’s

managers that New York would be a critical state

in the election, and that a New Yorker would

most strengthen the ticket headed by a ‘‘westerner’’ like Taft of Ohio. Since Taft’s managers

had already discussed the nomination with several other potential candidates, they could not

turn to Sherman without first dissuading these

people—and doing so without offending their

states. As Depew explained:

The method adopted by one of the leading

managers was both adroit and hazardous. He

would call up a candidate on the telephone and

say to him: ‘‘The friends of Mr. Taft are very favorable to you for vice-president. Will you accept

the nomination?’’ The candidate would hesitate

and begin to explain his ambitions, his career and

its possibilities, and the matter which he would

have to consider. Before the prospective candidate had finished, the manager would say,

‘‘Very sorry, deeply regret,’’ and put up the

telephone.

When the nomination was made these gentlemen who might have succeeded would come

around to the manager and say impatiently and

indignantly: ‘‘I was all right. Why did you cut me

off?’’ However, those gentlemen have had their

compensation. Whenever you meet one of them

he will say to you: ‘‘I was offered the vice-presidency with Taft but was so situated that I could

not accept.’’ 9
[ 328 ]

JAMES SCHOOLCRAFT SHERMAN

Straddling Party Divisions

House Democratic minority leader Champ

Clark agreed that Sherman stood prominently in

the House, but no more so than a half dozen

other Republicans. In Clark’s estimation, Sherman was ‘‘an industrious, level-headed, capable

member, and a capital presiding officer,’’ but in

truth he received the nomination as a means of

placating the GOP’s conservative wing, which

viewed Taft suspiciously as a progressive. ‘‘The

Stand-patters selected Sherman partly because

he wanted it, partly because they could trust

him, and partly because he was perhaps the most

acceptable of all the Old Guard chieftains in the

House to President Roosevelt,’’ Clark assessed.

The vice-presidential nomination was clinched

when Speaker Cannon stepped onto the platform, hiked up his sleeves, and offered an impassioned endorsement of Sherman. With the Old

Guard’s stamp of approval, ‘‘the two wings

flapped together.’’ 10

While well-known in Washington, Sherman

had little popular identification across the nation, and it is doubtful that he brought many

votes to the Taft ticket. The opposition Democratic candidate was William Jennings Bryan,

who had twice before lost the presidency, in 1896

and 1900. Few Republicans would have voted for

Bryan regardless of who ran with Taft, but Sherman campaigned with good grace. When the

Democratic candidate for vice president, John

Worth Kern, came to Utica he received a telegram from Sherman, who was campaigning elsewhere, welcoming Kern to his home city and

urging him to call upon the Sherman family.11

For the third and last time, William Jennings

Bryan went down to defeat as Taft and Sherman

were elected. While Taft prepared to enter the

White House, Theodore Roosevelt made arrangements to leave the country for an extended

hunting trip in Africa and tour of Europe, to give

his successor a chance to establish himself. Even

Taft had trouble in accepting the departure of the

dynamic Roosevelt from the presidency. ‘‘When

I hear someone say Mr. President,’’ said Taft, ‘‘I

look around expecting to see Roosevelt.’’ Facing

Taft was the problem of keeping together the

warring conservative and progressive factions of

the Republican party. Roosevelt had finessed

party unity by talking publicly of reform while

working privately with conservative leaders in

Congress, and by steering absolutely clear of

such divisive issues as the tariff. Taft came into

office with a reputation for progressivism but

with the support of such powerful conservatives

as Rhode Island Senator Nelson Aldrich, who

had worked quietly behind the scenes for Taft’s

nomination. During the campaign, Taft had

managed to straddle party divisions, but once he

assumed the office, he would have to choose

sides.12

No Messenger Boy

At first, Taft thought he had a perfect role for

Sherman. The president-elect said that he had no

intention of having anything to do with the reactionary House Speaker Cannon. ‘‘I am going to

rely on you, Jim, to take care of Cannon for me,’’

said Taft. ‘‘Whatever I have to do there will be

done through you.’’ ‘‘Not through me,’’ Sherman

declined. ‘‘You will have to act on your own account. I am to be Vice President and acting as

a messenger boy is not part of the duties as Vice

President.’’ A month later, Taft invited Cannon

to visit him, and thereafter Taft and Cannon met

regularly at the White House. It was the beginning of a drift to the right that would eventually

alienate Taft from Republican progressives.13

Whatever ill-will may have resulted from Sherman’s refusal to cooperate over handling Speaker Cannon evaporated in the glow of the inaugural festivities. Taft’s wife, Helen, later wrote

that Vice President and Mrs. Sherman shared a

box with them at the inaugural ball. ‘‘They also

had with them a large family party and were

both so jolly and so much in the festive spirit that

formality disappeared.’’ 14

When Taft met with Speaker Cannon in December 1908, he learned that the House Ways

and Means Committee was at work on major tariff revisions. Taft favored lowering tariff rates

and negotiating reciprocal trade agreements

with other nations to stimulate international

trade, but congressional conservatives remained

committed to high tariff duties to protect American industries. House Ways and Means Committee chairman Sereno Payne eventually pro-
[ 329 ]

JAMES SCHOOLCRAFT SHERMAN

duced the Payne bill, which pleased Taft by its

moderate tariff reductions. In the Senate, however, Finance Committee chairman Nelson Aldrich amended the tariff with massive increases

in rates. Insurgent Republicans led by Wisconsin

Senator Robert La Follette fought the Payne-Aldrich Tariff, but Aldrich prevailed. Never in

doubt was the stance of the Senate’s new presiding officer, Vice President Sherman, a lifelong

high-tariff man. In the end, President Taft sided

with Sherman and the protectionists and signed

the bill. As progressives began to reevaluate their

assessment of Taft, the president compounded

his problems by speaking out in defense of the

Payne-Aldrich Tariff at Winona, Wisconsin, in

Senator La Follette’s home state, describing the

tariff as ‘‘the best bill that the Republican party

ever passed.’’ At the same time, Vice President

Sherman was telling people that the Republican

party ‘‘had fulfilled every campaign pledge in

passing the Aldrich bill.’’ 15

Growing Relationship Between Taft and Sherman

The more conservative the president became,

the closer he grew to his vice president. Taft

found that he liked Sherman, a man who ‘‘hated

shams, believed in regular party organization,

and was more anxious to hold the good things

established by the past than to surrender them

in search for less certain benefits to be derived

from radical changes in the future.’’ Like Taft,

Sherman possessed a jovial spirit, and the president credited the vice president with accomplishing much on Capitol Hill by his ‘‘charm of

speech and manner, and his spirit of conciliation

and compromise.’’ Sherman succeeded through

a ‘‘sunny disposition and natural good will to

all.’’ Yet he also manifested what Taft called ‘‘a

stubborn adherence’’ to his principles. ‘‘In other

words,’’ said Taft, ‘‘it would be unjust to Mr.

Sherman to suggest that his sunny disposition

and his anxiety to make everybody within the

reach of his influence happy, was any indication

of a lack of strength of character, of firmness of

purpose, and of clearness of decision as to what

he thought was right in politics.’’ 16

From all accounts, Sherman showed fairness,

judicial temperament, and good humor in his capacity as presiding officer. ‘‘In the Senate we

have no rules,’’ observed New York Senator

Chauncey Depew. Sherman had risen in the

House because of his mastery at presiding over

the House, whose rules were more rigid and its

precedents voluminous. He thus found it quite

a change to ‘‘preside over a body which is governed practically by no rules whatever, but is a

rule unto itself.’’ Depew noted that the older senators resented any effort on the part of the chair

to curb their wanderings or their ‘‘very unregulated wills.’’ He recalled how the vice president

had ruled against Texas Democrat Joseph W. Bailey, one of the most quarrelsome senators, who

instantly declared that the independence of the

Senate had been invaded by the Vice President

who was not a member of the Senate but only

its Constitutional presiding officer; that he had

no right to use a position which was largely one

of courtesy to violate the traditions of the most

august body in the world and deny, or attempt

to deny, to a Senator the rights to which every

Senator was entitled.

Throughout this attack, Sherman showed no

trace of emotion.

He was the presiding officer personified. With

perfect calmness, good humor, and dignity, he

stated the case to a breathless Senate. He did it

so clearly and convincingly that the Senate sat

down upon the tumultuous senator, and Sherman’s decisions were never after questioned.17

Always showing his sunny disposition in public, Sherman played tough-minded, hard-ball

politics in private. ‘‘Sherman’s indictments,’’

President Taft once complained, ‘‘are as abrupt

and severe as a school master’s.’’ When progressives revolted against the Payne-Aldrich tariff,

Sherman advised: ‘‘Mr. President, you can’t cajole these people. You have to hit them with a

club.’’ Sherman recommended cutting off

postmastership appointments to the progressives as punishment for their disloyalty, to which

Taft replied: ‘‘I hate to use the patronage as a

club unless I have to.’’ ‘‘It is your only club,’’

Sherman rebutted. ‘‘You have other weapons,

but the appointing power is your only club.’’ 18
[ 330 ]

JAMES SCHOOLCRAFT SHERMAN

Roosevelt and Taft Split

In January 1910, Taft fired Theodore Roosevelt’s good friend Gifford Pinchot as head of

the U.S. Forest Service, after Pinchot had accused

Taft’s secretary of the interior, Richard Ballinger,

of undermining the conservation program in

favor of business interests. Sherman strongly

backed Taft’s decision, and when a joint congressional committee was established to investigate

the Ballinger-Pinchot controversy, the vice president made sure to name only Taft supporters to

the committee. Not surprisingly, the committee

exonerated Ballinger, but the incident further divided the Republican party.19

As the 1910 congressional elections approached, Taft dispatched Vice President Sherman on a number of political missions. In Wisconsin, Taft tried to block the renomination of

the Senate’s leading insurgent, Robert La

Follette. Although the state had abandoned party

nominating conferences in favor of primary elections, conservatives had organized a ‘‘true Republican meeting.’’ The president sent Sherman

to bestow the administration’s blessing. Despite

their efforts, however, La Follette easily won renomination and reelection.20

Sherman then plunged into New York state

politics, where Governor Charles Evans Hughes’

resignation to become a Supreme Court justice

had triggered open warfare between conservative and progressive Republicans. William

Barnes of Albany, who led the party’s Old

Guard, selected Vice President Sherman as temporary chairman of the state convention to nominate the next governor. But Representative Herbert Parson, the Republican national committeeman for New York and leader of the party organization in New York City, appealed to former

president Theodore Roosevelt for help. Roosevelt, who had just returned from his long overseas journey, was deeply angered over the

Ballinger-Pinchot affair, and dismayed by the increasingly conservative tendencies of the Taft administration. Roosevelt agreed to run against

Sherman for chairman to help insure the nomination of a progressive candidate for governor and

a more progressive platform.21

Roosevelt maintained that his candidacy was

directed against Sherman and not against the administration. He portrayed Sherman as having

spread the erroneous impression of having Taft’s

support. Yet Sherman remained in close communication with Taft by telephone throughout the

New York convention fight, and at one point the

president laughed as he told aides, ‘‘They have

defeated Theodore.’’ But Sherman could not

overcome Roosevelt’s immense popularity, and

convention delegates voted, 568 to 443, to reject

Sherman in favor of Roosevelt. Although Taft

maintained public neutrality, Sherman’s defeat

was widely perceived as a defeat for the

president.22

The internal split proved a disaster for the Republican party in the 1910 congressional midterm elections. Republicans lost eight seats in the

Senate—where insurgents now held the balance

of power—and lost their majority in the House

to the Democrats. In the hope of restoring harmony, Taft invited the leading insurgent senators to the White House to discuss patronage.

All but the implacable La Follette attended. But

these efforts alarmed the party’s conservatives,

who warned that, if Taft embraced the progressives, the Old Guard might throw their support

to Vice President Sherman in 1912. Harmony

was the last thing that the hapless Taft could

achieve.23

Death and Defeat

At first, Senator La Follette emerged as the

principal challenger to Taft’s renomination, but

when the overworked and exhausted La Follette

suffered a breakdown in February 1912, Theodore Roosevelt jumped into the race for the Republican nomination. In a series of bitter confrontations, Roosevelt won the popular primaries but Taft retained control of the party machinery that chose a majority of the delegates. In

New York, Sherman’s forces managed to gain 78

delegates for Taft, with only 12 for Roosevelt.24

Denied the nomination, the former president

walked out of the Republican convention to form

the Progressive (‘‘Bull Moose’’) party. Democrats

meanwhile had nominated the progressive governor of New Jersey, Woodrow Wilson, who be-
[ 331 ]

JAMES SCHOOLCRAFT SHERMAN

came the frontrunner by virtue of the Republican

split.

With Taft’s defeat in the November elections

an almost foregone conclusion, the Republican

convention renominated Sherman with little fuss

or attention. He became the first sitting vice

president to be renominated since John C. Calhoun, eighty years earlier. New York Republicans continued to argue that Sherman would

bring the most strength to the ticket. In fact, Sherman was too ill to campaign that year. Since 1904

he had suffered from Bright’s disease, a serious

kidney ailment. During the long session of the

Senate in 1912, Sherman’s discomfort had been

increased by the Senate’s inability to elect a Republican president pro tempore who might spell

him as presiding officer. He returned to Utica,

where his family doctor diagnosed his condition

as dangerous and prescribed rest and relaxation.

His doctor urged him not even to deliver his

speech accepting the nomination, at ceremonies

planned for late August. ‘‘You may know all

about medicine,’’ Sherman responded, ‘‘but you

don’t know about politics.’’ Sherman went

through with the ceremonies and spoke for half

an hour. Two days later, his health collapsed,

leaving him bedridden. By mid-September, Sherman felt well enough to travel to Connecticut,

where he checked into an oceanside hotel to recuperate. When reporters caught up with him

and asked why he had avoided campaigning,

Sherman replied, ‘‘Don’t you think I look like a

sick man?’’ 25

His longtime colleague and adversary, Robert

La Follette, later noted that ‘‘the hand of death’’

had been upon Sherman throughout his vicepresidency. ‘‘From the first its shadow went with

him in and out of this Chamber, stood over him

at his desk, followed him down the corridors,

pursued him to his home. Month after month,

waking or sleeping, in social cheer or the still

hours of the night, it was his constant companion. Before all others he was the first to know

what threatened him.’’ Yet Sherman never allowed his illness to hamper him. ‘‘He bore an

outward geniality and spirit that dispelled fear

from all his friends.’’ 26

On October 30, 1912, President Taft was at a

dinner at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, after launching the battleship New York, when word came

that Vice President Sherman had died. He was

fifty-seven years old. Taft asked the diners to adjourn in Sherman’s memory and later issued a

statement that he felt ‘‘a sense of personal bereavement in the loss of a friend.’’ Privately, Taft

fretted that Sherman’s death might dissuade

people from voting for the ticket. Mrs. Taft considered Sherman’s death ‘‘very unfortunate’’

coming just before the election. ‘‘You have the

worst luck,’’ she commiserated with her

husband.27

A Deceased Running Mate

Taft considered naming the progressive governor of Missouri, Herbert S. Hadley, to replace

Sherman, but members of the national committee

persuaded the president that it would be poor

politics to choose someone who was unlikely to

carry his own state in the election. So Taft put

off the decision and went into the election with

a deceased running mate. It mattered little, since

the Democratic candidate, Woodrow Wilson,

won the presidency with 435 electoral votes; the

Progressive candidate, Theodore Roosevelt, took

second place with 88 electoral votes; and Taft

came in a dismal third, with only the 8 electoral

votes of Vermont and Utah. In January, the Republican National Committee named another

New Yorker, Columbia University president

Nicholas Butler, to fill out the Republican ticket

for purposes of receiving electoral votes, which

were counted on February 12, 1913. Taft’s reelection campaign remains one of the worst defeats

ever suffered by a Republican presidential candidate (in 1936, Alf Landon tied Taft by winning

only 8 electoral votes).28

Various memorial services were held to honor

the deceased vice president. Senator Elihu Root

paid tribute to Sunny Jim, whose ‘‘smile was always bright; his fair, ruddy face was always

glowing with kindly feeling; and the impression

produced by his just and sweet and serene temperament was so strong that the world thought

of him as a bright and cheerful man. It was all

real; there was none of it put on.’’ Senator

Chauncey Depew commended Sherman’s steadfast defense of the protective tariff, ‘‘the fundamental principle of all his political career.’’
[ 332 ]

JAMES SCHOOLCRAFT SHERMAN

Democratic Senator John Worth Kern, who had

lost the vice-presidency to Sherman in 1908, recalled his arrival in the Senate in 1911. Vice President Sherman had been so anxious to show his

good will that within minutes after Kern had

taken the oath of office, Sherman invited him to

take the gavel and preside over the Senate. ‘‘I

protested that I was a stranger, not only to this

body but its procedure,’’ said Kern,

but he insisted, saying, ‘‘It will be only for a few

minutes and it is for my own pleasure and gratification that I ask you to do me this personal

favor.’’ And from that time on until the last he

never lost an opportunity to make me feel that

however wide our political differences—and

they were irreconcilable—I had in him a friend

on whose fidelity I might always rely.

Senator Charles Curtis of Kansas, who had

served with Sherman in the House, and who

would follow him as vice president during Herbert Hoover’s administration, described Sherman as a fatherly man: ‘‘He was at once interested in the things in which you were interested,

and immediately took upon himself the cloak of

helper and adviser. He was thus particularly useful and congenial to new Members, and commanded for himself respect and support in everything he undertook.’’ 29

An Unexpected Reappearance

Despite these eulogies, James Schoolcraft Sherman quickly disappeared from public memory.

He remained the least-remembered twentiethcentury vice president until 1974, when he made

an unexpected reappearance in E.L. Doctorow’s

best-selling novel Ragtime. At a climactic moment in the book, Sarah, a black domestic, tried

to intercede on behalf of her husband, when Vice

President Sherman attends a campaign rally in

New Rochelle, New York:

When the Vice-President’s car, a Packard,

rolled up to the curb and the man himself

stepped out, a cheer went up. Sunny Jim Sherman was a New York State politician with many

friends in Westchester. He was a round balding

man and in such ill health that he would not survive the campaign. Sarah broke through the line

and ran toward him calling, in her confusion,

President! President! Her arm was extended and

her black hand reached toward him. He shrank

from the contact. Perhaps in the dark windy

evening of impending storm it seemed to Sherman’s guards that Sarah’s black hand was a

weapon. A militiaman stepped forward and,

with the deadly officiousness of armed men who

protect the famous, brought the butt of his

Springfield against Sarah’s chest as hard as he

could. She fell. A Secret Service man jumped on

top of her. The Vice-President disappeared into

the hotel.30

That scene, which led to Sarah’s death in the

novel, was entirely fictitious. Sherman simply

served as the novelist’s metaphor of an

unhealthy and unresponsive political system. Although perhaps better than total obscurity, it was

not the way ‘‘Sunny Jim’’ would have wanted to

be remembered.
[ 333 ]

NOTES 1 Senate Curator James Ketchum provided the following

information in response to the popular belief that Sherman’s

marble bust was damaged in the 1983 explosion that took

place on the second floor of the Capitol’s Senate wing, adjacent to the Sherman bust. ‘‘As Bessie Potter Vonnoh began

working on the translation of her Sherman bust from plaster

to marble, she discovered an imperfection near the surface

of the stone. She raised her concern about its possible effect

on the finished piece with the Senate Library Committee.

In response, Chairman George Peabody Wetmore asked architect Thomas Hastings (of the firm of Carrere and Hastings) and sculptor James Earle Fraser to look into the matter.

Both agreed that the discoloration on the right cheek was

of little concern. Unfortunately, as the carving progressed,

the dark spot became more apparent. There was little that

could be done to minimize it and the work proceeded to

completion. After the 1983 bombing of the Capitol, it was

erroneously reported that the area in question, located just

below Sherman’s glasses, resulted from the explosion. The

bust of J.S. Sherman, including his glasses, survived that

bombing unscathed.’’ 2Memorial Services in Honor of the Memory of the Late James

Schoolcraft Sherman, Vice-President of the United States (New

York, 1913), pp. 12, 34–35. 3 Ibid., pp. 5–6; Samuel W. McCall, The Life of Thomas

Brackett Reed (Boston, 1914), p. 164; James Schoolcraft Sherman, Late Vice President of the United States, Memorial Addresses Delivered at a Joint Session of the Senate and the House of

Representatives of the United States, February 15, 1913 (Washington, 1913), p. 50. 4Memorial Addresses, pp. 38–39, 50. 5 Ibid., pp. 21–22.

6 Ibid., p. 23; Mark Sullivan, Our Times, 1900–1925 (New

York, 1953), 2:521; James Harvey Young, Pure Food: Securing

the Federal Food and Drugs Act of 1906 (Princeton, NJ, 1989). 7 Henry F. Pringle, Theodore Roosevelt, A Biography (New

York, 1956), p. 318; Philip C. Jessup, Elihu Root (New York,

1938), 2:114–15, 122. 8Arthur Wallace Dunn, From Harrison to Harding: A Personal Narrative, Covering a Third of a Century, 1888–1921 (Port

Washington, NY, 1971; reprint of 1922 edition), 2:73, 201;

Arthur Wallace Dunn, Gridiron Nights (New York, 1915), p.

201.

9 Chauncey M. Depew, My Memories of Eighty Years (New

York, 1924), pp. 176–77. 10 Champ Clark, My Quarter Century of American Politics

(New York, 1920), 2:284–87. 11Memorial Addresses, p. 43. 12 Henry F. Pringle, The Life and Times of William Howard

Taft (Norwalk, CT, 1967; reprint of 1939 edition), p. 399;

Horace Samuel Merrill and Marion Galbraith Merrill, The

Republican Command, 1897–1913 (Lexington, KY, 1971), p.

274. 13 Henry L. Stoddard, As I Knew Them: Presidents and Politics from Grant to Coolidge (New York, 1927), p. 347. 14Mrs. William Howard Taft, Recollections of Full Years

(New York, 1914), p. 345. 15Merrill and Merrill, pp. 277–98; George E. Mowry, Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressive Movement (New York,

1946), p. 70. 16Memorial Services, pp. 9–10. 17 Ibid., p. 28; Clark, 2:285.

18 Judith Icke Anderson, William Howard Taft, An Intimate

History (New York, 1981), pp. 132, 187. 19William Manners, TR and Will: A Friendship That Split

the Republican Party (New York, 1969), pp. 104–23. 20George E. Mowry, The Era of Theodore Roosevelt, 1900–

1912 (New York, 1958), p. 267; Belle Case La Follette and

Fola La Follette, Robert M. La Follette, June 14, 1855–June 18,

1925 (New York, 1953), 1:298–99. 21 Stoddard, p. 381.

22Elting E. Morison, et al., eds., The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt (Cambridge, MA, 1954), 7:116, 140, 147; Henry F.

Holthusen, James W. Wadsworth, Jr.: A Biographical Sketch

(New York, 1926), pp. 64–65. 23 James Holt, Congressional Insurgents and the Party System, 1910–1916 (Cambridge, MA, 1967), p. 44. 24 Holthusen, p. 80.

25New York Times, September 17, October 31, 1912. 26Memorial Services, p. 48. 27New York Times, October 31, 1912; Washington Post, October 31, 1912; Manners, p. 289. 28New York Times, November 3, 1912, January 5, 1913. 29Memorial Services, pp. 14, 19; Memorial Addresses, pp. 44,

54.30E.L. Doctorow, Ragtime (New York, 1974), p. 159.

[ 335 ]

Chapter 28

THOMAS R. MARSHALL

1913–1921
THOMAS R. MARSHALL
[ 337 ]

Chapter 28

THOMAS R. MARSHALL

28th Vice President: 1913–1921

[I]t has not been the practice for Presidents to throw any of the burdens of their office upon the

Vice President. He rules the dignified and at times irascible Senate and reflects upon the inactive character of his job. . . . He has an automobile provided for him . . . but has to buy his own tires, gasoline

and supplies.

—WASHINGTON EVENING STAR, MARCH 2, 1913 1

Vice President Thomas R. Marshall, who

served two terms with President Woodrow Wilson from 1913 to 1921, claimed that most of the

‘‘nameless, unremembered’’ jobs assigned to him

had been concocted essentially to keep vice

presidents from doing any harm to their administrations. One of these chores, according to Marshall, was that of regent of the Smithsonian Institution. The vice president recalled that at his first

board meeting the other regents, including the

chief justice of the United States and the inventor

Alexander Graham Bell, discussed funding an

expedition to Guatemala to excavate for traces of

prehistoric man. With the breezy manner of a

self-described ‘‘light-hearted Hoosier,’’ Marshall

asked if the Smithsonian had ever considered excavating in Washington, D.C. Judging from the

specimens walking about on the street, he said,

they would not have to dig far below the capital

to discover prehistoric man. ‘‘And then the utter

uselessness and frivolity of the vice-presidency

was disclosed,’’ Marshall confessed, ‘‘for not a

man smiled. It was a year before I had courage

to open my mouth again.’’ 2

This typically self-deprecating story revealed

much about Marshall’s lamentable vice-presidency. His feelings of inadequacy in both himself

and the position he held were reflected again in

his reaction to an invitation from President Wilson to attend cabinet meetings. Vice President

Marshall stopped going after a single session.

When asked why, he replied that he realized ‘‘he

would not be listened to and hence would be unable to make any contribution.’’ Marshall similarly attended only one meeting of the Senate

Democratic Caucus. ‘‘I do not blame proud parents for wishing that their sons might be President of the United States,’’ he later said. ‘‘But if

I sought a blessing for a boy I would not pray

that he become Vice-President.’’ 3

Woodrow Wilson, a supremely self-confident

intellectual, regarded Marshall as a ‘‘small-caliber man’’ and had not wanted him on his ticket

in 1912.4 During their eight years together, Wilson undoubtedly made Marshall feel uncomfortable. The editor William Allen White once described presenting a proposal to Wilson at the

White House. Wilson ‘‘parried and countered

quickly, as one who had heard the argument I

would present and was punctiliously impatient.

He presented another aspect of the case and

outtalked me, agreeing in nothing. I could not

tell how much he assimilated.’’ 5 For a more insecure man like Marshall, such a response must

have been excruciating. Convinced that the

president and other high-ranking officials did

not take him seriously enough to listen to him,

Marshall learned not to speak, not to attend

meetings, and not to offer suggestions. He became the epitome of the vice president as non-
[ 338 ]

THOMAS R. MARSHALL

entity. But this condition moved from comedy to

tragedy when President Wilson suffered a paralytic stroke in 1919. Faced with the crisis of having to determine whether the president was able

to fulfill the duties of his office, Marshall failed

miserably.

A Man of Contradictions

Thomas Riley Marshall had been little known

outside his home town of Columbia City, Indiana, before he was elected governor in 1908. Born

in Indiana on March 14, 1854, he was the only

child of a country doctor and his sickly wife.

After moving to Illinois and Kansas for Mrs.

Marshall’s health, the family returned to Indiana

where Thomas attended Wabash College. From

his youth he intended to become a lawyer and

spent many of his Saturdays in the courtroom listening to such prominent Indiana lawyer-politicians as Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Hendricks,

and Daniel Voorhees—who became president,

vice president, and senator, respectively. Marshall read law and went into practice in Columbia City. In his early years he was a hard-drinking man, who ‘‘wanted a barrel, not a drink.’’ His

intemperance persisted for years, and he often

appeared hung over in court. A seemingly confirmed bachelor, he lived with his mother until

her death. Shortly thereafter, however, at the age

of forty-one, he married Lois Kimsey, a deputy

in the office of her father, the county clerk in

nearby Angola, Indiana. After several difficult

years, his wife persuaded him to stop drinking,

and after 1898 he never touched another alcoholic beverage.6

Marshall’s biographer, Charles M. Thomas,

summarized the contradictions of his subject’s

personality:

He was prior to 1898, a most pronounced drinker

and at the same time a leader in the church and

a temperance lecturer. He was inconsistent, yet

he was trusted. He was a fundamentalist in religion, yet not sectarian [that is, not intolerant]. He

was enjoyed as the biggest wit in town, yet his

judgment was respected by those who knew him,

and his leadership was accepted. His later political career proves that, despite his conflicting

traits, there was something in his character which

made men like him.7

An Indiana Democrat

Marshall came from a traditionally Democratic

family who traced their political roots back to the

age of Andrew Jackson. Marshall himself was always a regular party man. In 1876 he became secretary of the Democratic County Convention and

spoke for many Democratic candidates. In 1880

he lost an election for prosecuting attorney. For

years that defeat dissuaded him from campaigning for office. Although he became a member of

the Democratic State Central Committee, he did

not run again until 1908, when he sought the

Democratic nomination for governor. When the

frontrunning candidates eliminated each other

from the race, Marshall won the nomination. He

campaigned against Republican Representative

James ‘‘Sunny Jim’’ Watson, who would later become Senate majority leader. Marshall was elected governor that year, even though in the presidential election Republican William Howard

Taft carried Indiana against William Jennings

Bryan, whose vice-presidential candidate, John

W. Kern, was a Hoosier. It was the first time that

Indiana Democrats had won the governorship

since 1896.8

The ‘‘boss’’ of the Indiana Democratic party at

that time was the Irish-born Thomas Taggart,

owner of a nationally famous hotel, health resort,

and gambling casino at French Lick, Indiana.9

After William Jennings Bryan’s two unsuccessful

campaigns for president in 1896 and 1900, Tom

Taggart had helped the anti-Bryan Democrats

and regular machine organizations to nominate

the more conservative Judge Alton B. Parker for

president in 1904. Taggart managed Parker’s

campaign as Democratic party national

chairman.

Bryan recaptured the Democratic nomination

in 1908, but Taggart, a national committeeman,

had enough influence in the party to ensure the

choice of Indiana’s John Worth Kern for vice

president. In 1912 Taggart went to the Democratic convention with similar plans to recognize

Indiana Democrats by winning the second spot

for the governor, who could not succeed himself

in the statehouse. A conventional, middle-of-theroad politician, Marshall as governor had been

neither in Taggart’s pocket nor much identified
[ 339 ]

THOMAS R. MARSHALL

with his party’s more progressive wing. But Indiana was a pivotal state, carried by every winning

presidential candidate since 1880. Moreover,

having Marshall on the national ticket would

help state Democrats elect the machine’s new

candidate for governor.

Tom Taggart disliked New Jersey Governor

Woodrow Wilson, whom progressive Democrats

were supporting. Instead Taggart hoped for the

nomination of House Speaker Champ Clark. But

the party boss was shrewd enough to keep Indiana’s 29 votes united for Marshall as their ‘‘favorite son,’’ until he could determine how to use

them to the best advantage. The Democratic convention required a two-thirds vote to nominate

a presidential candidate. On the first ballot, Clark

had 440 delegates to Wilson’s 324. Despite his

majority of votes, Clark peaked on the tenth ballot. On the fourteenth ballot, William Jennings

Bryan endorsed Wilson. Sensing the way the

wind was blowing, Taggart on the twenty-eighth

ballot gave all of Marshall’s delegates to Wilson,

who went on to win the nomination on the fortysixth ballot. Wilson would have preferred Alabama Representative Oscar W. Underwood for

vice president, but when Underwood declined,

Taggart clinched the nomination for Governor

Marshall. As for Marshall, he had hoped that the

frontrunning Wilson and Clark would eliminate

each other, giving him the presidential nomination as the darkhorse candidate. When awarded

the vice-presidential nomination instead, Marshall’s first inclination was to decline on the

ground that the job did not pay enough. But Mrs.

Marshall had always wanted to go to Washington, and her tears of disappointment convinced

him to change his mind and accept. In a multicandidate race, the Democratic ticket won with

435 electoral votes to 88 for Theodore Roosevelt’s

‘‘Bull Moose’’ ticket and only a meager 8 for Republican William Howard Taft.10

Vice President

Thomas R. Marshall went to Washington

‘‘with the feeling that the American people might

have made a mistake in setting me down in the

company of all the wise men in the land.’’ His

job as vice president required him to preside

over the Senate, but other than delivering his gubernatorial messages to the Indiana legislature,

Marshall had no legislative experience. He assumed that as presiding officer of the Senate he

had some authority, but it did not take him long

to discover ‘‘that the Senate was not only a selfgoverning body but that it was a quite willful set

of men, who had not the slightest hesitancy in

overruling a presiding officer.’’ Marshall and his

wife also found that they were invited everywhere to social functions in Washington. After

a while, however, he decided that these invitations were less out of respect for him and his office, than Washington’s efforts to ‘‘size up’’ a

new man under the microscope. With whatever

illusions he might have had about his office

quickly dispelled, Marshall came to agree with

the early senator who had suggested that Vice

President John Adams be titled ‘‘His Superfluous

Excellency.’’ 11

A slight, bespectacled man, with his hat

pushed back on his head, a pipe or cigar always

ready in his hand, Marshall knew that he ‘‘was

too small to look dignified in a Prince Albert

coat,’’ and so he continued his ordinary manner

of dress. ‘‘He is calm and serene and small; mild,

quiet, simple and old-fashioned,’’ as one Indiana

writer described him. ‘‘His hair is gray and so

is his mustache. His clothes are gray and so is

his tie. He has a cigar tucked beneath the mustache and his gray fedora hat shades his gray

eyes.’’ Another observer characterized Marshall’s voice as ‘‘musical, pleasant in tone, and

. . . sufficient for stump-speaking out of doors,

altho you wouldn’t think it to hear its soft notes

in conversation.’’ 12

In later years, President Franklin D. Roosevelt

loved to tell the story of Vice President Marshall’s arrival aboard the cruiser San Diego, anchored off the Panama-Pacific Industrial Exposition, that took place in 1915 in San Francisco.

As assistant secretary of the navy, FDR had designed the first vice-presidential flag, which was

flown when Marshall came on board. Apparently, the vice president had not been instructed

about naval etiquette. He came up the gangplank

in the formal attire that the occasion required:

silk hat, frock coat, gloves, and cane, and his

ever-present cigar. When the band struck up the

‘‘Star Spangled Banner,’’ the vice president ‘‘real-
[ 340 ]

THOMAS R. MARSHALL

ized his predicament,’’ shifted the cane from

right hand to left, took the cigar out of his mouth,

got the hat off his head and saluted. But when

the first gun went off: ‘‘the whole works went

two feet into the air.’’ After the hat, gloves, cane

and cigar were retrieved, Marshall tried to shake

hands with the first saluting sailor he approached. ‘‘By that time,’’ Roosevelt recalled,

‘‘the Admiral and I had sprinted across the deck

and rescued the Vice President.’’ Later at the exposition, Roosevelt and Marshall watched a motion picture that included the scene aboard the

cruiser. ‘‘My God,’’ said Marshall, ‘‘if I looked

like that I will never go on board another ship

as long as I live!’’ 13

Witty but Overshadowed

From these descriptions, it is not surprising

that Vice President Marshall gained a reputation

as a rustic provincial. He also won notice for his

folksy stories and down-home wit. In those days

the Capitol guides escorted visitors through the

corridor behind the Senate chamber. Whenever

the vice president left the door to his office open,

he could hear the guides pointing him out as if

he were a curiosity. One day he went to the door

and said, ‘‘If you look on me as a wild animal,

be kind enough to throw peanuts at me.’’ Seeking more space and more privacy, Marshall requested and received an office in the recently

opened Senate Office Building, where he could

‘‘put his feet on the desk and smoke.’’ 14

Compared with the president, or even the

Speaker of the House, Vice President Marshall

could boast few perquisites of office. He had to

share his small quarters in the Capitol with a secretary and stenographer. His $12,000 annual salary compared poorly with the president’s

$75,000 stipend, and he lacked travel and housing allowances. Awarded an automobile and a

$1,000-per-year chauffeur, Marshall had to finance auto repairs from his personal resources.

Each of the recent vice presidents had accepted

from the Senate a solid silver inkstand as a memento of their office, but Vice President James

Sherman had declined the honor, leaving Marshall to wrestle with the inevitable questions of

propriety.15

Serving under a vigorous and innovative

president, Marshall had difficulty determining

his own role. Woodrow Wilson broke tradition

in April 1913 by personally coming to the Capitol

to address a joint session one day and the next

by visiting the President’s Room outside the Senate chamber to lobby senators in support of his

tariff proposals. It was clear that the president

intended to be his own lobbyist on Capitol Hill

and had no particular use for his vice president.

Marshall quickly ascertained that he was ‘‘of no

importance to the administration beyond the

duty of being loyal to it and ready, at any time,

to act as a sort of pinch hitter; that is, when everybody else on the team had failed, I was to be

given a chance.’’ Marshall was probably also

aware of Wilson’s belittling comments about the

vice-presidency in his 1885 book Congressional

Government. The position, Wilson the scholar of

government declared, ‘‘is one of anomalous insignificance and curious uncertainty,’’ whose

chief importance ‘‘consists in the fact that he may

cease to be Vice President.’’ 16

Although both men had served as Democratic

governors and both were Calvinist Presbyterians, Wilson and Marshall in fact had little

in common. Marshall had considered himself a

progressive governor of his state, but the president and his closest advisers looked upon him

as a conservative. The White House rarely consulted him, and many months often elapsed between meetings of the president and vice president. Marshall loyally supported Wilson’s program but was by nature too iconoclastic to embrace wholeheartedly Wilson’s idealism. For instance, the vice president never reconciled himself to child labor laws or woman suffrage. Certainly Marshall lacked Wilson’s imagination and

determination, two qualities that the vice president admired greatly in his chief executive.

‘‘Whether you may like Woodrow Wilson, or

not, is beside the point,’’ Marshall wrote, ‘‘this

one thing you will be compelled to accord him:

he had ideas and he had the courage to express

them. He desired things done, and he had the

nerve to insist on their being done.’’ 17

Even in the Senate, Marshall was overshadowed by his two fellow Indianans, both progressive Democrats. Indiana’s senior senator was
[ 341 ]

THOMAS R. MARSHALL

Benjamin Shively, whom Marshall described as

‘‘one of the finest specimens of physical manhood in the Senate—tall, commanding, of striking appearance, and his brain was as large as his

body.’’ Shively was also ‘‘a great orator, and a

great logician, and when he spoke his words

commanded careful consideration.’’ The junior

senator from Indiana was John Worth Kern,

chairman of the Democratic caucus and floor

leader for Wilson’s New Freedom program. Kern

was ‘‘strong in debate, gentle as a woman in his

relations with his fellow-men, full of good ways

and good works.’’ The majority leader had ‘‘a

weakness for the telling of stories, and he told

them in an inimitable way.’’ 18

Correspondent Louis Ludlow, who covered

Washington for various Indiana newspapers,

rated Marshall highly for his irrepressible wit.

Marshall’s funny remarks ‘‘at the expense of the

Senate’s dignity’’ had at first shocked the older

and more staid senators, ‘‘but out in the cloakroom they would laugh over his sayings until

their sides ached.’’ Marshall described the Senate

as ‘‘the Cave of Winds’’ and used humor to belittle ‘‘the idols of clay’’ that populated it.19 President Wilson apparently enjoyed hearing Marshall’s stories and often repeated them at cabinet

meetings and dinner parties. But Wilson’s close

confidant, Colonel Edward House, believed that

Marshall’s wit diminished his standing as a serious statesman and made him appear just a jester.

‘‘An unfriendly fairy godmother presented him

with a keen sense of humor,’’ House commented.

‘‘Nothing is more fatal in politics.’’ 20

Ironically, Vice President Marshall did not deserve authorship of his most famous quip about

‘‘a good five-cent cigar.’’ Although there are

many versions of this story, the most often repeated alleges that Kansas Senator Joseph

Bristow had been making a long-winded speech

with the repeated refrain ‘‘What this country

needs—’’ causing the vice president to lean over

and whisper to one of the Senate clerks: ‘‘Bristow

hasn’t hit it yet. What this country needs is a

good five-cent cigar.’’ Newspapers repeated the

quote and cigar makers gratefully showered the

vice president with their products. Immortalized

in every dictionary of quotations, the ‘‘five-cent

cigar’’ quote remains just about the only thing

for which Thomas R. Marshall is remembered

today. But historian John E. Brown has traced the

quotation back to the Indiana newspaper cartoonist Kin Hubbard, who put the words in the

mouth of his popular character ‘‘Abe Martin.’’

As a fan of the cartoon strip, Marshall simply

picked up the phrase, repeated it, and became

its surrogate father.21

In 1916, the Democratic Convention renominated Wilson and Marshall. Wilson gave little indication whether he wanted to retain or replace

Marshall. In late 1915, Arizona Senator Henry F.

Ashurst had learned of a plan to ‘‘ditch’’ Marshall from the ticket and had called on the president to endorse Marshall for a second term, but

Wilson simply replied: ‘‘I have a very high regard for Vice-President Marshall and I wish you

would tell him so.’’ When the senator pressed

harder, asking if he could say that President Wilson was for Marshall’s renomination, Wilson

‘‘gurgled out’’ a positive response. Nevertheless,

Secretary of War Newton Baker had the strong

impression that the president would have preferred him for a running mate. Meanwhile, Marshall had increased his income by giving numerous after-dinner talks on the lecture circuit

whenever Congress was not in session and had

made himself a nationally popular figure. With

a difficult reelection campaign ahead, the Democrats hesitated to drop the well-liked (if not necessarily well-respected) vice president from the

ticket. In November, Wilson and Marshall won

a narrow victory over the Republican ticket of

Charles Evans Hughes and Charles Fairbanks

(also from Indiana—which went Republican in

the election). Marshall became the first vice

president since John C. Calhoun, almost a century earlier, to be reelected to a second term.22

A Stressful Second Term

Marshall’s second term proved difficult and

stressful. In April 1917, the United States entered

the First World War, joining the allied forces

against Germany. Marshall spent much of the

war speaking at rallies to sell Liberty bonds. Victory on the battlefield then thrust the United

States into the negotiations to end the war and

determine the future of Europe and the world.

On December 4, 1918, President Wilson sailed for
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THOMAS R. MARSHALL

France to negotiate the peace treaty. Except for

the few days between February 24 and March 5,

1919, Wilson remained out of the country until

July, after the Treaty of Versailles had been

signed. During Wilson’s unprecedented long absences from the United States, he designated

Vice President Marshall to preside over cabinet

meetings in his place. The request startled Marshall, but he complied gamely. On December 10,

1918, he presided over the cabinet for the first

time, and Navy Secretary Josephus Daniels recorded in his diary that Marshall ‘‘was bright &

full of jest.’’ However, a photograph taken of him

presiding showed a man trying to look resolute

but appearing decidedly uncomfortable. As

Louis Ludlow noted: ‘‘This was the first instance

in history when a President showed an inclination to make a real use of his spare tire.’’ 23

Marshall presided only briefly over the cabinet, withdrawing after a few sessions on the

grounds that the vice president could not maintain a confidential relationship with both the executive and legislative branches. Still, he had established the precedent of presiding over the

cabinet during the president’s absence, making

it particularly difficult to understand why he

failed to carry out that same duty in October

1919, after Wilson suffered a paralytic stroke. Initially, Wilson’s wife Edith, his personal physician Admiral Cary Grayson, and his secretary Joe

Tumulty, kept the vice president, the cabinet,

and the nation in the dark over the severity of

Wilson’s illness. Noting with understatement

that the eighteen months of Wilson’s illness were

‘‘not pleasant’’ for him, Marshall recalled that the

standing joke of the country was that ‘‘the only

business of the vice-president is to ring the White

House bell every morning and ask what is the

state of health of the president.’’ In fact, Marshall

was admittedly afraid to ask about Wilson’s

health, for fear that people would accuse him of

‘‘longing for his place.’’ 24

Secretary of Agriculture David Houston met

Marshall while lunching at the Shoreham Hotel,

and recorded in his memoirs:

The Vice President was evidently much disturbed and expressed regret that he was being

kept in the dark about the President’s condition.

He asked me if I could give him the real facts,

which I was unable to do. . . . The Vice President

expressed the view that he ought immediately to

be informed; that it would be a tragedy for him

to assume the duties of President, at best; and

that it would be equally a tragedy for the people;

that he knew many men who knew more about

the affairs of the government than he did; and

that it would be especially trying for him if he

had to assume the duty without warning.25

Tumulty eventually sent word to Marshall

through a friendly intermediary, Baltimore Sun

correspondent J. Fred Essary, that the president’s

condition was so grave that he might die at any

time. A stunned Marshall sat absolutely speechless. ‘‘It was the first great shock of my life,’’ he

later told Essary. Still, he could not bring himself

to act, or to do anything that might seem ambitious or disloyal to his president. It was Secretary

of State Robert Lansing rather than Vice President Marshall who determined to call cabinet

meetings in the president’s absence. Without the

participation of either the president or vice president, the cabinet met regularly between October

1919 and February 1920, presided over by Secretary of State Lansing, or in his absence, Secretary of the Treasury Carter Glass. When Wilson recovered sufficiently, he fired Lansing for

attempting to ‘‘oust’’ him from office by calling

these meetings. Wilson, who was never himself

after his stroke, argued that these meetings held

no purpose since no cabinet decisions could be

made without the president. Yet Wilson himself

had sanctioned the cabinet meetings over which

Marshall had presided a year earlier. If nothing

else, for the cabinet to hold regular meetings at

least assured the American public that their government continued to function.26

The Constitution declares that the vice president could assume the duties of president in case

of the president’s ‘‘Inability to discharge the

Powers and Duties of the said Office,’’ but until

the Twenty-fifth Amendment was adopted in

1967, the Constitution said absolutely nothing

about how he should do it.27 Marshall was clearly in a difficult situation. As editor Henry L.

Stoddard observed, ‘‘Wilson’s resentment of

Lansing’s activities is proof that Vice President

Marshall would have had to lay siege to the
[ 343 ]

THOMAS R. MARSHALL

White House, had he assumed the Presidency.’’ 28 The eminent historian of American diplomacy Thomas A. Bailey noted that President

Wilson ‘‘clung to his office, without the power

to lead actively and sure-footedly, but with

unimpaired power to obstruct.’’ In his classic

study of Wilson’s handling of the Treaty of Versailles, Bailey speculated that if Wilson had died

rather than been incapacitated by his stroke, the

results would have been far more positive, and

that Wilson’s historical reputation would have

eclipsed even Abraham Lincoln as a martyr. Had

Wilson died, the Senate might well have been

shamed into action on the League of Nations.

‘‘Much of the partisanship would have faded, because Wilson as a third-term threat would be

gone, and Vice President Marshall, a small-bored

Hoosier, was not to be feared,’’ wrote Bailey:

Marshall of course would have been President

for seventeen months. Having presided over the

Senate for more than six years, and knowing the

temper of that body, he probably would have recognized the need for compromise, and probably

would have worked for some reconciliation of

the Democratic and Republicans points of view.

In these circumstances it seems altogether reasonable to suppose that the Senate would have

approved the treaty with a few relatively minor

reservations.29

Indeed, Marshall presided over the Senate during the ‘‘long and weary months’’ of debate on

the Treaty of Versailles. Although he stood loyally with the president, he believed that some

compromise would be necessary and tried unsuccessfully to make the White House understand. ‘‘I have sometimes thought that great men

are the bane of civilization,’’ Marshall later wrote

in his memoirs, in a passage about the clash between Woodrow Wilson and Senator Henry

Cabot Lodge: ‘‘[T]hey are the real cause of all the

bitterness and contention which amounts to anything in the world. Pride of opinion and authorship, and jealousy of the opinion and authorship

of others wreck many a fair hope.’’ 30

Despite assurances from members of both parties in Congress that they would support him

should he assert his claim to the presidency,

Thomas R. Marshall never sought to fill Woodrow Wilson’s place. His years in Washington had

convinced him that he desired the good will of

others rather than the ‘‘pomp or power’’ of the

presidency. Rather than act as president, or even

preside over cabinet meetings, Marshall contented himself with replacing Wilson as ‘‘official

host’’ for the many visiting European royalty

and other dignitaries who came to Washington

to offer thanks for American assistance during

the First World War.31 By shrinking from a distasteful duty, Marshall gave himself peace of

mind but deprived the nation of whatever leadership he might have offered in trying times.

Marshall himself told the story of riding on a

train behind a man and a woman who were discussing the news that President Wilson had removed Secretary of State Lansing for holding

cabinet meetings. ‘‘Why what else could Mr.

Lansing have done?’’ the woman asked. ‘‘Here

the President was sick. A lot of big questions had

to be talked over and there was the Vice President, who doesn’t amount to anything. The only

thing Mr. Lansing could do, I tell you, was to

call these Cabinet meetings, and I think he did

the right thing.’’ Said Marshall, ‘‘There you have

it in a nutshell. The woman was right. I don’t

amount to anything.’’ 32

Although Thomas Marshall publicly hinted

that he would accept the Democratic nomination

for president in 1920, few delegates outside of Indiana cast any votes for him. Instead, Democrats

nominated James M. Cox and Franklin D. Roosevelt, who lost overwhelmingly to the Republican ticket of Warren G. Harding and Calvin

Coolidge. Marshall left office as vice president in

March 1921 and returned to Indiana. He died

while visiting Washington on June 1, 1925, at age

seventy-one. In 1922 President Harding had appointed him to serve on the Federal Coal Commission to settle labor troubles in the coal mines,

but otherwise Marshall insisted he had retired.

‘‘I don’t want to work,’’ he said. ‘‘[But] I

wouldn’t mind being Vice President again.’’ 33
[ 344 ]

NOTES 1 ‘‘Vice President Marshall Has Fallen Into a Big Job With

Little Work, Many Peculiar Customs and Much Social

Strain,’’ Washington Evening Star, March 2, 1913, part 4, p.

6. 2Thomas R. Marshall, Recollections of Thomas R. Marshall,

Vice-President and Hoosier Philosopher: A Hoosier Salad (Indianapolis, 1925), pp. 16–18. 3Ray Stannard Baker, Woodrow Wilson, Life and Letters

(Garden City, N.Y., 1931), 4:104–9; and Daniel C. Roper,

Fifty Years of Public Life (Durham, NC, 1941); John E. Brown,

‘‘Woodrow Wilson’s Vice President: Thomas R. Marshall

and the Wilson Administration, 1913–1921’’ (Ph.D. dissertation, Ball State University, 1970), p. 216. 4 Charles M. Thomas, Thomas Riley Marshall, Hoosier

Statesman (Oxford, OH, 1939), p. 129. 5William Allen White, The Autobiography of William Allen

White (New York, 1946), pp. 615–16. 6Thomas, pp. 27–28; Marshall, p. 96.

7Thomas, p. 35.

8 Ibid., pp. 40–55.

9 Indianapolis News, March 6, 1929. 10 Josephus Daniels, The Wilson Era: Years of Peace, 1910–

1917 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1944), p. 550; Thomas, pp. 112–39;

Brown, p. 146; Congressional Quarterly’s Guide to U.S. Elections, 3d ed. (Washington, DC, 1994), p. 390. The 1912 election is also discussed in Chapter 25 of this volume, ‘‘Theodore Roosevelt,’’, p. 306, and Chapter 27, ‘‘James Schoolcraft

Sherman,’’ pp. 330–31. 11Marshall, pp. 221–25, 229.

12 Ibid., p. 233; Brown, pp. 50–51.

13Brown, pp. 250–51.

14Marshall, p. 230; Thomas, p. 141; Washington Evening

Star, March 2, 1913, part 4, p. 6; March 4, 1913, p. 1; and

March 6, 1913, ‘‘Senate takes day off.’’ 15Washington Evening Star, March 2, 1913, part 4, p. 6.

16Marshall, p. 233; Woodrow Wilson, Congressional Government: A Study in American Politics (Baltimore, 1981; reprint of 1885 edition), p. 162. 17Brown, pp. 157–59, 171; Daniels, pp. 552–53; Thomas,

pp. 142–44; Marshall, p. 241. 18Marshall, pp. 292–93.

19Louis Ludlow, From Cornfield to Press Gallery; Adventures and Reminiscences of a Veteran Washington Correspondent

(Washington, DC, 1924), pp. 311–15. 20Thomas, p. 153.

21Ludlow, pp. 313–14; Brown, pp. 188–93.

22George F. Sparks, A Many-Colored Toga: The Diary of

Henry Fountain Ashurst (Tucson, AZ, 1962), pp. 42–43;

Thomas, pp. 234–36. 23E. David Cronon, ed., The Cabinet Diaries of Josephus

Daniels, 1913–1921 (Lincoln, NE, 1963), p. 354; Ludlow, p.

301. 24Daniels, p. 558; Marshall, p. 368.

25David F. Houston, Eight Years With Wilson’s Cabinet,

1913 to 1920 (Garden City, NY, 1926), pp. 36–38. 26Thomas, p. 207; see also Herbert Hoover, The Ordeal of

Woodrow Wilson (Baltimore, 1992; reprint of 1958 edition),

pp. 270–78; Robert H. Farrell, Ill-Advised: Presidential Health

and Public Trust (Columbia, MO, 1992), p. 16. 27 See Birch Bayh, One Heartbeat Away: Presidential Disability and Succession (Indianapolis, 1968). 28 Henry L. Stoddard, As I Knew Them: Presidents and Politics from Grant to Coolidge (New York, 1927), pp. 539–47. 29Thomas A. Bailey, Woodrow Wilson and the Great Betrayal

(New York, 1945), pp. 137–38. 30Marshall, pp. 363–64.

31 Ibid., p. 368.

32Brown, pp. 418–19.

33Ludlow, p. 312.
[ 345 ]

Chapter 29

CALVIN COOLIDGE

1921–1923
CALVIN COOLIDGE
[ 347 ]

Chapter 29

CALVIN COOLIDGE

29th Vice President: 1921–1923

If the Vice-President is a man of discretion and character so that he can be relied upon to act as

a subordinate in that position, he should be invited to sit with the Cabinet, although some of the Senators,

wishing to be the only advisers of the President, do not look on that proposal with favor.

—CALVIN COOLIDGE

Calvin Coolidge came to the vice-presidency

from the governorship of Massachusetts, but he

was at heart a Vermonter. Born in Vermont on

the Fourth of July 1872, he died in Vermont sixtyone years later, on January 5, 1933. During the

years between, he lived most of his adult life in

Massachusetts and worked out of the statehouse

in Boston but never identified with Back Bay society. ‘‘I come from Boston,’’ a lady once identified herself to him when he was president. ‘‘Yes,

and you’ll never get over it,’’ Coolidge replied

dryly. One of Coolidge’s first biographers,

Claude Fuess, identified him as the archetypical

Yankee, ‘‘with his wiry, nervous body, his laconic speech, his thrift, his industry, his conservative distrust of foreigners and innovations, and

his native dignity.’’ This dour, taciturn man

served eight years as vice president and president during the ‘‘Roaring Twenties,’’ an era remembered for its speakeasies, flappers, and anything-goes attitudes. Calvin Coolidge, as journalist William Allen White aptly recorded, was ‘‘A

Puritan in Babylon.’’ 1

Youth

Calvin Coolidge grew up in the bucolic setting

of rural Vermont in the late nineteenth century.

He was a slight, red-headed, blue-eyed boy

whose decided nasal twang was made worse by

numerous childhood allergies until it gave his

voice a quacking sound. His invalid mother died

when he was just twelve years old, and he was

raised by his father, Colonel John Coolidge, a talented jack-of-all-trades, who ran a general store

and farmed, as well as serving as justice of the

peace and a member of the state legislature. For

all these accomplishments, Colonel Coolidge

was not a man who could express his emotions

openly, and one senses from reading Calvin Coolidge’s Autobiography that he spent much of his

life trying to earn his father’s respect and approval. As Coolidge later noted, ‘‘A lot of people

in Plymouth can’t understand how I got to be

President, least of all my father!’’ 2

A Shy Politician

A painfully shy boy, Coolidge would go into

a panic at the sound of a stranger’s voice in the

house. Writing in a letter to a friend years later,

he recalled that when visitors would sit with his

parents in the kitchen, he found it difficult to go

in and greet them. ‘‘I was almost ten before I realized I couldn’t go on that way. And by fighting

hard I used to manage to get through that door.

I’m all right with old friends, but every time I

meet a stranger, I’ve got to get through the old

kitchen door, back home, and it’s not easy.’’ 3

Shortly after his mother died, Coolidge escaped from the drudgery of farm work to attend

the Black River Academy in Ludlow, Vermont,

his ‘‘first great adventure,’’ which he described

as ‘‘a complete break with the past.’’ His parents
[ 348 ]

CALVIN COOLIDGE

and a grandmother had attended the school

briefly, but Coolidge embraced schoolwork more

thoroughly, going on to Amherst as the first

member of his family to attend college. He did

well enough to be chosen one of the three commencement speakers at his graduation, assigned

to deliver the ‘‘grove oration,’’ which was to describe the class members in a witty and humorous manner. Coolidge later related that he

learned from the experience ‘‘that making fun of

people in a public way was not a good method

to secure friends, or likely to lead to much

advancement.’’ 4

After college he read law with the firm of

Hammond and Field in Northampton, Massachusetts, before joining the bar in 1897. Politically a conservative Republican, Coolidge had

marched in a torchlight parade for Benjamin

Harrison’s unsuccessful reelection campaign in

1892 and wrote letters to the local papers in support of William McKinley’s election in 1896. In

December 1898 he won his first election to the

Northampton city council, an unsalaried job that

he saw primarily as a means of making useful

contacts for his law practice. He was then elected

city solicitor, a post that paid six hundred dollars

annually, which he believed would make him a

better lawyer. Next came election to the Massachusetts house of representatives, and appointment to its judiciary committee, which he again

considered more in terms of promoting himself

as a lawyer than as a politician. He ran for mayor

of Northampton, ‘‘thinking the honor would be

one that would please my father, advance me in

my profession, and enable me to be of some public service.’’ As a local office, it would not ‘‘interfere seriously with my work.’’ 5

Coolidge always insisted that he never

planned his political career. He meant only ‘‘to

be ready to take advantage of opportunities.’’ 6

In 1911 he ran for the state senate and soon became its president, a role that took him from

local to statewide office. Coolidge summed up

his philosophy as a legislator in a letter to his father upon the elder Coolidge’s election to the

Vermont Senate:

It is much more important to kill bad bills than

to pass good ones, and better to spend your time

on your own committee work than to be bothering with any bills of your own. . . . See that the

bills you recommend from your committee are so

worded that they will do just what they intend

and not a great deal more that is undesirable.

Most bills can’t stand that kind of test.7

A Return to Conservatism

Coolidge began his ascendancy in statewide

politics at a time when the Massachusetts Republican party was still divided between conservatives and progressives. In 1912, Theodore Roosevelt had walked out of the Republican party

and campaigned for president on the ticket of the

Progressive (‘‘Bull Moose’’) party. In that election, the Republican nominee, William Howard

Taft, had come in a distant third behind the more

progressive candidacies of Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. Coolidge was far from comfortable

with the reform politicians and muckraking

magazines of the era. ‘‘It appeared to me in January, 1914, that a spirit of radicalism prevailed

which unless checked was likely to prove very

destructive,’’ he later wrote. ‘‘It consisted of the

claim in general that in some way the government was to be blamed because everybody was

not prosperous.’’ He believed that progressive

reforms and ‘‘unsound legislative proposals’’

would destroy business and that the country

needed ‘‘a restoration of confidence in our institutions and in each other, on which economic

progress might rest.’’ Fittingly, Coolidge’s first

address as president of the state senate appealed

‘‘to the conservative spirit of the people.’’ 8

Coolidge correctly anticipated the shift in public opinion. Even before the First World War, a

conservative reaction to the progressive era was

apparent as voters grew tired of political crusades. In 1914, an economic recession that was

especially severe on the East Coast also hurt progressive candidates. Conservative challengers argued that more laws and more regulations

would only mean more taxes. In one sign of the

changing atmosphere, when the first direct elections for U.S. senators were held in 1914, progressive candidates went down to defeat. Conservative Republicans swept the field in many

states, reducing the Democratic majorities in

both the Senate and House. Most symbolically,
[ 349 ]

CALVIN COOLIDGE

the staunchly conservative Senator Boies Penrose

of Pennsylvania beat one of the nation’s most

prominent progressives, Gifford Pinchot. ‘‘The

most curious part,’’ Pinchot confessed, ‘‘is that

no one seemed to know in advance that we were

to be beaten and certainly no one thought the defeat would be so complete.’’ 9

Calvin Coolidge’s fortunes rose as those of the

progressives fell. In 1915 he was elected lieutenant governor, and on January 1, 1919, he was inaugurated as governor of Massachusetts. Before

that year was out, unexpected events had made

him one of the most famous and admired men

in the country. ‘‘No doubt it was the police strike

of Boston that brought me into national prominence. That furnished the occasion and I took advantage of the opportunity,’’ Coolidge wrote

with characteristic understatement in his

Autobiography.10

Boston’s police force was badly underpaid and

overworked. As a legislator, Coolidge had

achieved a reasonably favorable record toward

labor, and as governor he tried unsuccessfully to

persuade the legislature to improve the policemen’s lot. The police then organized the Boston

Social Club and sought to affiliate with the

American Federation of Labor, but Boston Police

Commissioner Edwin Curtis had no intention of

dealing with a police union, and he suspended

the police union organizers from the force.

Angry police voted to go out on strike, throwing

the city into a panic. There was an increase in

looting and robberies, and volunteers turned out

to police the streets. Governor Coolidge ignored

all appeals to intervene, and his inactivity undoubtedly allowed the situation to worsen. Finally, after much confusion and delay, Coolidge

sided with the hard-line Police Commissioner

Curtis, who had announced that the striking police would not be reinstated. More than for his

actions, ‘‘Silent Cal’’ became famous for his

words. In a telegram to AFL President Samuel

Gompers, who had sought his support for the

police, Coolidge asserted, ‘‘There is no right to

strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, any time.’’ At a time when the nation was

rocked by a series of often violent postwar labor

disputes, many citizens welcomed this message.

Coolidge became the ‘‘law and order’’ governor.

His photograph appeared on the front pages of

newspapers nationwide, and thousands of telegrams and letters poured in to congratulate him.

There was talk of running Calvin Coolidge for

president in 1920.11

The Coolidge Phenomenon

New York Times correspondent Charles Willis

Thompson was among the many journalists curious about this new phenomenon. Thompson

noted that Coolidge began making political

speeches outside of Massachusetts but not in

such likely places as Chicago and New York. Instead, Coolidge went to Oregon and to the Rocky

Mountain states, and his speeches were always

on nonpolitical themes. ‘‘Each one of these nonpolitical speeches had in it that quality of arrest;

there was something in it, unpretentious as it

was as a whole, that made you stop and think,’’

Thompson observed. ‘‘There was nothing spectacular about him yet, or ever.’’ The 1920 Republican convention opened in Chicago with many

candidates and no clear frontrunner. The real

story was not in the primaries or in the main convention hall, but in the back rooms, which became immortalized as the ‘‘smoke-filled room’’

where decisions were made by a coterie of Republican senators. When the convention became

deadlocked between General Leonard Wood and

Illinois Governor Frank Lowden, the senators

met privately to pick a candidate and prevent a

rift in the party. They were determined to name

someone who would reduce the powers of the

presidency, which they believed had expanded

disproportionately during the administrations of

Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. To

this end, they chose one of their most pliable colleagues, Ohio Senator Warren G. Harding, as the

Republican presidential nominee.12

Harding had been far from a leading contender

among the delegates, who nominated him without much enthusiasm. Seeking to balance the

conservative Harding, and hoping to make it an

all-senatorial ticket, the senators first offered the

vice-presidential nomination to California Senator Hiram Johnson, who turned it down. They

next went to progressive Senator Irvine Lenroot

of Wisconsin. When Illinois Senator Medill

McCormick stepped to the podium to nominate
[ 350 ]

CALVIN COOLIDGE

Lenroot, a delegate from Portland, Oregon,

former Judge Wallace McCamant, called out

loudly, ‘‘Coolidge! Coolidge!’’ Other delegates

took up the cry. When Senator McCormick finished his address, McCamant leaped on a chair

among the Oregon delegation and nominated

Governor Calvin Coolidge of Massachusetts for

vice president. Showing enthusiasm for the first

time, the delegates demonstrated spontaneously

in Coolidge’s behalf. Lenroot would be ‘‘just one

too many Senators on the presidential ticket,’’ a

reporter observed. Delegates for other candidates who felt they had been denied their

choice for the top spot were determined to have

a voice in the second place. They voted 674 for

Coolidge to 146 for Lenroot.13

Coolidge himself was back in Boston, in the

hotel where he lived as governor, nursing his

disappointment that all of his quiet campaigning

had seemingly made no impact on the presidential race. That evening as he and Mrs. Coolidge were preparing to go down to dinner, he

received news about McCamant’s surprising

speech and the demonstration that followed. The

phone rang again, and Coolidge turned to his

wife to utter a single word: ‘‘Nominated.’’

‘‘You aren’t going to take it are you?’’ asked

Mrs. Coolidge.

‘‘Well—I suppose I’ll have to.’’ said Coolidge.14

It had been perhaps the most unusual and

independent vice-presidential nomination in

American political history. Where parties normally balance, both Harding and Coolidge were

unabashed conservatives and comprised the

most conservative ticket since the party had gone

down to disastrous defeat in 1912. But in 1920

that proved to be exactly what the nation wanted, and in November the Harding-Coolidge ticket overwhelmed the Democratic ticket of James

M. Cox and Franklin D. Roosevelt. At his inauguration as vice president, Calvin Coolidge took

satisfaction that ‘‘the same thing for which I had

worked in Massachusetts had been accomplished in the nation. The radicalism which had

tinged our whole political and economic life

from soon after 1900 to the World War period

was passed.’’ 15

An Impassive Senate President

‘‘More hotel life, I suppose,’’ Grace Coolidge

commented on their move to Washington, D.C.

The U.S. vice president still had no official place

of residence, and Coolidge was not prepared to

spend his $12,000 a year salary on purchasing a

house commensurate with his position. ‘‘There

is no dignity quite so impressive, and no independence quite so important, as living within

your means,’’ he observed. The Coolidges

moved into the suite of rooms at the Willard

Hotel being vacated by Vice President and Mrs.

Thomas R. Marshall, for which they paid eight

dollars a day. As vice president, he occupied an

office in the Capitol and another in the Senate

office building. His staff consisted of a secretary,

a clerk, an assistant clerk, and a chauffeur. He

inherited Vice President Marshall’s Cadillac.16

‘‘Presiding over the Senate was fascinating to

me,’’ Coolidge later wrote. Although the Senate’s

methods at first seemed peculiar, he soon became familiar with them and suggested that they

were ‘‘the best method of conducting its business. It may seem that debate is endless, but

there is scarcely a time when it is not informing,

and, after all, the power to compel due consideration is the distinguishing mark of a deliberative

body.’’ However, as Coolidge tried to master the

Senate rules, he soon discovered that there was

but one fixed rule: ‘‘that the Senate would do

anything it wanted to do whenever it wanted to

do it. When I had learned that, I did not waste

much time on the other rules, because they so

seldom applied.’’ 17

Vice President Coolidge presided in a remarkably impassive manner. Once James A. Reed, a

Missouri Democrat, and Porter J. McCumber, a

North Dakota Republican, engaged in a shouting

match on the Senate floor. Other senators and the

galleries joined in the uproar, while Coolidge

simply watched the commotion. When the parliamentarian begged him to use his gavel to restore order, the vice president replied, ‘‘Yes I

shall if they get excited.’’ 18

Doomed to be an Outsider

Coolidge’s most controversial moment as vice

president came in July 1921. Midwestern progressive Republicans were seeking federal relief
[ 351 ]

CALVIN COOLIDGE

for farmers, whose sales and purchasing power

had collapsed after the war. Senator George Norris of Nebraska introduced a bill that would

make it easier to market American farm products

overseas. The Harding administration countered

with a bill sponsored by Minnesota Senator

Frank Kellogg to make domestic marketing of

farm goods easier. Norris had asked Coolidge,

as presiding officer, to recognize Senator Joseph

E. Ransdell, a Louisiana Democrat, first. Coolidge had agreed, but then he left the chair and

asked Charles Curtis of Kansas, a tough-minded

partisan senator, to preside in his place. When

Ransdell stood and sought recognition, Curtis ignored him and instead called upon Kellogg, who

in fact was still in his seat and had not even risen

to seek recognition. After the ensuing hubbub,

as Kellogg claimed the floor, Coolidge reentered

the chamber and once again presided. Progressive Republicans and Democrats long remembered this maneuver and never fully trusted

Coolidge again. His biographer, Donald McCoy,

concluded, ‘‘The episode may have doomed

Coolidge to be an outsider for the rest of his time

as Vice President and even have contributed to

his troubles with Congress while he was President. He was now distrusted by the progressives

and perhaps even disliked by the regulars for

violating one of the unwritten rules of the Senate.’’ He had gone back on his word.19

Coolidge lacked either the jovial good humor

of his predecessor Thomas Marshall or the type

of personality that would attract senators to him.

In the Senate restaurant, Coolidge ate alone, in

a corner, facing the wall. ‘‘Is that how you treat

your presiding officer?’’ someone asked Senator

Edwin Ladd of North Dakota. ‘‘Nobody has anything to do with him,’’ said the Senator. ‘‘After

this, of course, he’s through.’’ Coolidge cast no

tie-breaking votes and spoke only as required—

and as briefly as possible. Biographer Donald

McCoy noted that, while Coolidge had been a

success as presiding officer in Massachusetts, in

the U.S. Senate he was ‘‘almost a nonentity.’’ 20

Largely overlooked in the Senate, Coolidge

won more notice for all of the ‘‘dining out’’ that

he and his wife did. ‘‘As the President is not

available for social dinners of course the next officer in rank is much sought after for such occasions,’’ he noted. On an average they ate out

three times a week during the congressional season. At first the Coolidges enjoyed these social

dinners, since as the ranking guests they were

able to arrive last and leave first. He considered

it an opportunity to become acquainted with official Washington. But Washington proved a cruel

atmosphere for the Yankee Coolidge. Stories

spread through the city that the new vice president was either very dumb or very shy. Coolidge’s table manners were peculiar to say the

least. He sat quietly, nibbling nuts and crackers

and saying next to nothing to those around him.

Soon it became a Washington parlor game to

tease the vice president into talking. One famous

story had a Washington socialite telling him that

she had bet her friends she could get him to say

three words. ‘‘You lose,’’ Coolidge replied.

‘‘They provoked him to Yankee aphorisms and

he knew what they were up to,’’ wrote William

Allen White. ‘‘So he clowned a little for his own

delight, played the dumb man, impersonated the

yokel and probably despised his tormenters in

his heart.’’ New Hampshire Senator George

Moses told of a stag party where Coolidge was

a guest, when several senators spiked the

punch—this during Prohibition—to loosen up

the vice president, but the more Coolidge drank,

the quieter he became. The longer he stayed in

Washington, the more suspicious he grew of everyone he met. When an old friend warned that

this was an unhealthy state of mind, Coolidge replied: ‘‘I do not think you have any comprehension of what people do to me. Even small things

bother me.’’ Later, when he was president, Coolidge declined an invitation to a fashionable

Washington home. ‘‘When I lived at the Willard

and was vice president they didn’t know I was

in town,’’ Coolidge exploded. ‘‘Now that I am

President they want to drag me up to their house

for one of their suppers and show me off to a

lot of people, and I’m not going. . . . I’m not

going, and I’m not going to let that wife of mine

go.’’ 21

Coolidge was blessed with a wife, Grace Goodhue Coolidge, whose warmth and charm more

than made up for his aloofness and eccentricities.

However, Coolidge tightly restricted her activi-
[ 352 ]

CALVIN COOLIDGE

ties, forbidding her to drive, ride horseback, or

fly, from wearing slacks, bobbing her hair, or expressing her opinion on any political issue. In the

age of the liberated woman of the 1920s, he wanted Grace to be the model of old-fashioned womanhood. As if this were not enough, he also made

her the target for his pent-up anger and unhappiness. Always a quiet man in public, Coolidge

would explode in private by throwing temper

tantrums. Historian Donald McCoy has noted

that ‘‘the reserved and unathletic New

Englander could not release his frustrations in a

healthy way. Whatever release he got came in the

form of tantrums, the brunt of which his wife

bore. Anything that was unexpected could lead

him to prolonged moods of sulking and even to

fits of yelling.’’ Most likely, Coolidge’s private

outbursts resulted from his disappointment in

the vice-presidency, which left him in the shadows, powerless.22

Sitting with the Cabinet

A major exception to Coolidge’s isolation during this period was President Harding’s invitation to him to sit with the cabinet. This was probably a response to the unhappy situation in the

last years of the Wilson administration, when

Vice President Marshall had declined to preside

over the cabinet during the president’s illness,

and Secretary of State Robert Lansing had been

fired by Wilson for holding cabinet meetings

without his authorization. Harding had made

the offer first to Irvine Lenroot, when he was

considered for the vice-presidency, and then to

Coolidge.23 When they met after the convention,

Harding told the press:

I think the vice president should be more than

a mere substitute in waiting. In reestablishing coordination between the Executive Office and the

Senate, the vice president can and ought to play

a big part, and I have been telling Governor Coolidge how much I wish him to be not only a participant in the campaign, but how much I wish

him to be a helpful part of a Republican administration.24

Coolidge joined the cabinet meetings, becoming the first vice president to do so on a regular

basis. He sat at the farthest end of the table from

Harding, listening to what was said and saying

almost nothing himself. In his Autobiography,

Coolidge wrote, ‘‘If the Vice-President is a man

of discretion and character so that he can be relied upon to act as a subordinate in that position,

he should be invited to sit with the Cabinet, although some of the Senators, wishing to be the

only advisers of the President, do not look on

that proposal with favor.’’ Coolidge believed

that, although the vice president could probably

offer little insight about the Senate, and virtually

nothing about the House, a vice president needed to be fully informed of what was going on

in case he should become president. ‘‘My experience in the Cabinet,’’ he concluded, ‘‘was of supreme value to me when I became President.’’

By contrast, Coolidge’s own vice president,

Charles Dawes, disagreed and let it be known

publicly that he did not consider it wise for vice

presidents to be invited to cabinet meetings because of the separation of powers between the

branches.25

The Harding administration meanwhile had

become mired in scandal. The Senate had

launched an investigation of improper leasing of

naval oil reserves at Teapot Dome in Wyoming.

There were also indications of scandals brewing

in the Veterans Administration and the Department of Justice. Whether Harding would be reelected, whether he would keep Coolidge on the

ticket, and whether the ticket could be reelected

in the face of these scandals were all unanswerable questions in the summer of 1923, when a

dispirited Harding traveled to Alaska and the

Pacific Coast. Vice President Coolidge was on vacation at his father’s home in Plymouth, Vermont, when on the night of August 2, 1923, he

was awakened by his father calling his name. ‘‘I

noticed that his voice trembled. As the only times

I had ever observed that before were when death

had visited our family, I knew that something of

the gravest nature had occurred,’’ Coolidge recorded. Colonel John Coolidge informed his son

that a telegram had arrived announcing that

President Harding had died in San Francisco. As

Calvin Coolidge noted, his father ‘‘was the first

to address me as President of the United States.

It was the culmination of the lifelong desire of

a father for the success of his son.’’ Coolidge
[ 353 ]

CALVIN COOLIDGE

quickly dressed, and in a downstairs parlor, lit

by a flickering kerosene lantern, his father as a

notary public administered to him the oath of office as president. Arizona Senator Henry Fountain Ashurst, a Democrat, observed that ‘‘the

simplicity of this episode fired the public imagination.’’ Harding’s death and ‘‘the sportsmanship of the American people,’’ Ashurst believed,

built public support for Coolidge’s presidency

and revived Republican spirits.26

A Surprisingly Popular President

After his unsatisfying years as vice president,

Coolidge became a surprisingly popular president, easily winning reelection in 1924. Correspondent Charles Willis Thompson, a keen observer of presidents during the first decades of

this century, believed that the nation found psychological relief in Coolidge after the high-minded oratory of Wilson and the bombast of Harding. Recognizing that he did not have the voice

of an orator, Coolidge ‘‘never wasted time trying

to acquire it.’’ His message was straightforward,

with ‘‘no purple . . . no argument, no stock official phrases. He told Congress what he thought

would be for the good of the country and told

it as briefly as he could.’’ Thompson concluded

that Coolidge was as good as elected the day he

sent his first message to Congress in 1923. ‘‘Congress, with its historic political wisdom, banged

him around the Capitol walls by the hair of his

head,’’ but the people loved him, and decided to

‘‘Keep Cool With Coolidge.’’ 27

Coolidge had the advantage of being everything that Harding was not—which provided

him some comfortable distance as the news of

the Harding administration’s scandals broke.

Harding was tall and handsome. Coolidge was

smaller, five feet nine inches tall, and weighed

perhaps a hundred and fifty pounds. Harding

had a famous smile. Coolidge’s skin was smooth,

one biographer noted, ‘‘because of lack of exercise in either frowning or smiling.’’ Harding was

gregarious. Coolidge was aloof. Harding tolerated his friends, even the most corrupt of them.

Coolidge preached thrift and honesty. During

the 1924 campaign, the Democratic and Progressive candidates tried to tar Coolidge with the

Teapot Dome scandal but not a trace stuck to

him.28

The press, which had belittled Coolidge during

his vice-presidency, now helped build up his

public image. Coolidge said very little, but newspaper reporters must have news. ‘‘So we grasped

at little incidents to build up human interest stories,’’ explained correspondent Thomas L.

Stokes. At first the press pictured Coolidge as a

‘‘strong, silent man,’’ so much so that the Baltimore Sun’s veteran Washington correspondent

Frank R. Kent accused his press corps colleagues

of inflating Coolidge to make him look good.

Kent compared Coolidge’s ‘‘weak and watery utterances’’ at his press conferences with the

‘‘forceful and vigorous’’ dispatches that reporters produced. He charged reporters with turning

a passive, indecisive chief executive into ‘‘a redblooded, resolute, two-fisted, fighting executive,

thoroughly aroused and determined.’’ This

mythical presidential image served reporters’ interests by appealing to the illusions of their readers and their editors. But as time passed and it

became clear that Coolidge was neither strong

nor silent, newspapers shifted their emphasis to

his dry wit and created a national character:

‘‘Cal.’’ ‘‘Everyone spoke of him fondly as ’Cal.’

He was one of us,’’ observed correspondent

Stokes. ‘‘He was the ordinary man incarnate.’’

Another veteran correspondent, Delbert Clark,

speculated that the press enjoyed writing, and

even manufacturing, homey little stories about

Coolidge because ‘‘the mounting evidence he

gave of being a very small, very solemn man in

a very big job, intrigued them by reason of the

contradictions involved.’’ 29

The presidency was far more gratifying for

Coolidge than the vice-presidential years had

been. He claimed to maintain as much simplicity

in life as possible, clearly disliking most formal

ceremonies. Yet he also enjoyed the pomp and

circumstance of office, and he could not hide the

pleasure on his face when the band played ‘‘Hail

to the Chief.’’ But the presidency was not always

a happy time for Calvin Coolidge. In July 1924,

he was devastated by the death of his son, Calvin, Jr. In playing lawn tennis on the White

House South Grounds, the boy had raised a blister on his toe which resulted in blood poisoning.
[ 354 ]

CALVIN COOLIDGE

‘‘In his suffering he was asking me to make him

well. I could not,’’ Coolidge remarked. ‘‘When

he went the power and the glory of the Presidency went with him.’’ 30

Coolidge was never an innovative or active

president. He was largely uninterested in foreign

policy. Embracing a laissez-faire philosophy opposed to government intervention, he had no

bold domestic programs but carried on the policies begun under Harding. As he had throughout his political life, he felt more comfortable

blocking legislation that he opposed than he did

in proposing new measures. Thus, he vetoed

such legislation as the soldiers’ bonus, the

McNary-Haugen farm bills, and Senator Norris’

efforts to develop water power in the Tennessee

River Valley. He believed in reducing government regulation, cutting taxes, and allowing

business to operate with as little restraint as possible. His presidency coincided with a period of

tremendous economic prosperity, for which he

reaped full credit. The stock market soared, although an investigation by the Senate Banking

and Currency Committee a few years later concluded that fully half of the fifty billion dollars

worth of stocks sold during the 1920s had been

‘‘undesirable or worthless.’’ His secretary of

commerce, Herbert Hoover, repeatedly urged

Coolidge to increase federal controls on private

banking and stock trading practices. (Coolidge

could barely hide his distaste for his active, energetic commerce secretary, whom he mocked as

‘‘The Wonder Boy.’’) But the government continued its ‘‘hands-off policies’’ under Coolidge’s

dictum that ‘‘the business of America is business.’’ Coolidge left the presidency in March of

1929. By November the stock market had

crashed, taking the Coolidge prosperity with it.

By the time he died in January 1933, the nation

was paralyzed in the worst depression of its history. Although his successor Herbert Hoover

bore the weight of blame for that depression, historians have found Calvin Coolidge culpable of

contributory neglect.31

Calvin Coolidge never made any pretensions

to greatness. ‘‘It is a great advantage to a President and a major source of safety to the country,

for him to know that he is not a great man,’’ he

recorded in his Autobiography. That seems the

most fitting epitaph for the man.32
[ 355 ]

NOTES 1 Claude M. Fuess, Calvin Coolidge: The Man from Vermont

(Boston, 1940), p. 5; William Allen White, A Puritan in Babylon: The Story of Calvin Coolidge (New York, 1938). 2 Calvin Coolidge, The Autobiography of Calvin Coolidge

(New York, 1929), pp. 99, 174; White, p. vii. 3Donald R. McCoy, Calvin Coolidge, The Quiet President

(Lawrence, KS, 1988), p. 8. 4 Coolidge, p. 71.

5 Ibid., pp. 83–99.

6 Ibid., p. 99.

7 Fuess, pp. 107–8.

8 Coolidge, p. 107.

9Gifford Pinchot to Lady Jonstone, November 9, 1914,

Gifford Pinchot Papers, Library of Congress. 10 Coolidge, p. 141.

11McCoy, pp. 83–94.

12 Charles Willis Thompson, Some Presidents I Have Known

and Two Near Presidents (Indianapolis, 1929), pp. 327–29, 361;

Coolidge, p. 148; Andrew Sinclair, The Available Man: The

Life Behind the Masks of Warren Gamaliel Harding (New York,

1965), pp. 142–49. 13Thompson, pp. 362–64; Fuess, pp. 234–67; Herbert F.

Margulies, ‘‘Irvine L. Lenroot and the Republican Vice-Presidential Nomination of 1920,’’ Wisconsin Magazine of History

61 (Autumn 1977): 21–31. 14White, p. 214.

15 Coolidge, p. 158.

16 Fuess, p. 287; McCoy, p. 134.

17 Coolidge, pp. 161–62.

18 Irving G. Williams, The Rise of the Vice Presidency (Washington, 1956), p. 124. 19McCoy, p. 136.

20 Ibid., pp. 134–35, 145.

21 Ibid., p. 162; Coolidge, pp. 160, 173; White, p. 222;

Fuess, p. 303. 22McCoy, p. 145; White House Chief Usher Ike Hoover

later wrote: ‘‘Those who saw Coolidge in a rage were simply startled. The older employees about the White House

who had known [Theodore] Roosevelt used to think he

raved at times, but in his worst temper he was calm compared with Coolidge.’’ Relating the tempers of various other

presidents, Hoover concluded, ‘‘It remained for Coolidge,

the one who from his reputation would be least suspected,

to startle the household with sparks from his anger. Many

times, too, the cause was of but trifling importance. He

would just work himself up to a real explosion.’’ Irwin

Hood (Ike) Hoover, Forty-Two Years in the White House (Boston, 1934), p. 233. 23Margulies, p. 25. See Chapter 28 of this volume,

‘‘Thomas R. Marshall,’’ p. 342. 24McCoy, p. 123.

25 Coolidge, pp. 163–64; George H. Haynes, The Senate of

the United States: Its History and Practice (Boston, 1938), 1:225,

228–29. 26 Coolidge, pp. 174–75; George F. Sparks, ed., A ManyColored Toga: The Diary of Henry Fountain Ashurst (Tucson,

AZ, 1962), pp. 211, 223. 27Thompson, pp. 354–55.

28McCoy, p. xv; John D. Hicks, The Republican Ascendancy,

1921–1933 (New York, 1960), p. 81. 29Thomas L. Stokes, Chip Off My Shoulder (Princeton, NJ,

1940), pp. 135–41; Donald A. Ritchie, Press Gallery: Congress

and the Washington Correspondents (Cambridge,, MA, 1991),

p. 210; Delbert Clark, Washington Dateline (New York, 1941),

pp. 62–66. 30White, p. 413; Coolidge, p. 190.

31 Stokes, p. 138; Donald A. Ritchie, ‘‘The Pecora Wall

Street Expose,’’ in Congress Investigates: A Documented History, 1792–1974, ed. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., and Roger

Bruns, (New York, 1975), pp. 2555–56; David Burner, Herbert Hoover: A Public Life (New York, 1979), pp. 244–45; William E. Leuchtenburg, The Perils of Prosperity, 1914–32 (Chicago, 1958), p. 246. 32 Coolidge, p. 173.

[ 357 ]

Chapter 30

CHARLES G. DAWES

1925–1929
CHARLES G. DAWES
[ 359 ]

Chapter 30

CHARLES G. DAWES

30th Vice President: 1925–1929

I should hate to think that the Senate was as tired of me at the beginning of my service as I am

of the Senate at the end.

—CHARLES G. DAWES

It is ironic that ‘‘Silent Cal’’ Coolidge should

have a vice president as garrulous as Charles

Gates Dawes. A man of action as well as of blunt

words, ‘‘Hell’n Maria’’ Dawes (the favorite expression by which he was known) was in so

many ways the opposite of President Coolidge

that the two men were never able to establish a

working relationship. The president probably

never forgave his vice president for stealing attention from him at their inaugural ceremonies,

nor did he ever forget that Dawes was responsible for one of his most embarrassing defeats in

the Senate. As a result, although Dawes was one

of the most notable and able men to occupy the

vice-presidency, his tenure was not a satisfying

or productive one, nor did it stand as a model

for others to follow.

Charles Dawes was not Calvin Coolidge’s

choice for a running mate. It would have taken

a far more self-confident president to want a vice

president with a longer and more distinguished

career than his own. Dawes had been a prominent official in the McKinley administration

when Coolidge was still a city council member

in Northampton, Massachusetts. Dawes became

a highly decorated military officer during the

First World War, was the president of a prestigious financial institution, was the first director

of the Bureau of the Budget, and devised the

‘‘Dawes Plan’’ to salvage Europe’s postwar economy, for which he received the Nobel Peace

Prize. Dawes had a keen concern for foreign affairs, in which Coolidge showed little interest. As

an activist in domestic policy, Dawes convinced

the Senate to pass the McNary-Haugen farm relief bill; Coolidge vetoed the bill. Dawes was a

problem solver, Coolidge a problem avoider. The

1920s might have been a very different decade

if the Republican ticket in 1924 had been DawesCoolidge rather than Coolidge-Dawes.

Banking, Business and Politics

Born in Marietta, Ohio, on August 27, 1865,

Charles Dawes was the great-great grandson of

William Dawes, who had ridden with Paul Revere to warn the colonists that the Redcoats were

coming. Dawes’ father, Rufus Dawes, was a Civil

War veteran and lumber merchant who served

as a Republican for one term in the U.S. House

of Representatives. Young Charlie, who even as

a boy had a reputation for ‘‘flying off the handle’’

when something angered him, attended the

Marietta Academy in Ohio and graduated from

Marietta College in 1884. Two years later he received his law degree from the Cincinnati Law

School. While in law school he worked during

the summers as a civil engineer for the Marietta,

Columbus & Northern Ohio Railway Company.1

In 1887, former Ohio Governor Rufus Walton

hired Dawes to go to Lincoln, Nebraska, and

look after his real estate holdings. Dawes was admitted to the bar in Nebraska and opened the

law office of Dawes, Coffroth & Cunningham.

He established a reputation for handling railroad
[ 360 ]

CHARLES G. DAWES

rate cases under the Interstate Commerce Act of

1887 and as a ‘‘people’s advocate against the railroad lobby.’’ The same year that Dawes opened

his law office, William Jennings Bryan started his

law practice in the same building in Lincoln.

Dawes, who was then twenty-two, and Bryan,

who was twenty-seven, attended Sunday services and Wednesday night prayer meetings at the

same Presbyterian church and even lived two

houses apart on the same street. As a consequence, the two men, from different parties

and with very different views on the issues, had

many opportunities to meet and debate politics.

(In 1924, Dawes would run for vice president

against Bryan’s brother Charles, the Democratic

vice-presidential candidate.) Dawes became director of the American Exchange National Bank,

a small bank in Lincoln, which he and other directors fought hard to save during the panic of

1893. As a bank director, he strongly disagreed

with Bryan’s advocacy of free silver to stimulate

inflation and help the indebted farmers. Dawes

became so engrossed in the currency issue that

he published his first book, The Banking System

of the United States and Its Relation to the Money

and Business of the Country, in 1894.2

‘‘I struck Lincoln right at the top of a boom,’’

Dawes noted, ‘‘then it started sliding.’’ The panic

of 1893 had undermined his business and banking career in Lincoln, sending him in search of

new business ventures elsewhere. Attracted by

the utilities industry, he bought control of the La

Crosse, Wisconsin, Gas Light & Coke Company,

and became president of the People’s Gas Light

& Coke Company of Chicago. In January 1895,

he moved his family to Chicago to make that city

the center of his business interests. But within

two weeks he met the Cleveland industrialist

Marcus A. Hanna, who was promoting the presidential aspirations of Ohio Governor William

McKinley. Writing in his diary that ‘‘McKinley

seems to be the coming man,’’ Dawes was bitten

by the political bug. He managed McKinley’s

preconvention campaign in Illinois, winning that

state’s delegates away from the erstwhile ‘‘favorite son’’ candidate, Senator Shelby M. Cullom.

Not only did McKinley win the Republican nomination, but Dawes’ old friend William Jennings

Bryan won the Democratic nomination. While

Dawes disagreed profoundly with the logic of

free silver, he listened to Bryan’s ‘‘Cross of Gold’’

speech with a feeling of great pride ‘‘for the brilliant young man whose life for so many years

lay parallel to mine, and with whom the future

years may yet bring me into conflict as in the

past.’’ 3

Comptroller of the Currency

Mark Hanna put Dawes in charge of the Chicago headquarters, which largely ran the McKinley campaign. Dawes also served on the Republican National Executive Committee as

McKinley’s ‘‘special representative.’’ McKinley’s

victory led to Dawes’ appointment as comptroller of the currency, a post in which he sought to

reform banking practices that had led to the depression of the 1890s. McKinley treated Dawes

‘‘as a father would a son.’’ Dawes frequently had

lunch at the White House with McKinley and his

invalid wife Ida and returned for an evening of

cards or of playing the piano for the McKinleys’

entertainment. (A self-taught pianist, Dawes

later wrote a popular piano piece, ‘‘Melody in A

Major,’’ and when lyrics were added in 1951 it

became the well-known song ‘‘It’s All in the

Name of the Game.’’) More than a companion to

the president, Dawes was a trusted adviser. In

1900 when Mark Hanna tried to block the vicepresidential nomination of New York Governor

Theodore Roosevelt, it was Dawes who intervened with McKinley on Roosevelt’s behalf.4

In June 1901, Dawes decided to resign as

comptroller of the currency to return to Illinois

and run for the Senate. He was assured of

McKinley’s endorsement, but his resignation did

not take place until October, a month after

McKinley’s assassination. Dawes’ political ambitions were thwarted by new President Theodore

Roosevelt, who endorsed another candidate, and

by the ‘‘blond boss’’ of the Illinois Republican

party, William Lorimer. Running for vice president in 1924 and reflecting on his only other run

for elected office in 1901, Dawes remarked: ‘‘I

don’t know anything about politics. I thought I

knew something about politics once. I was taken

up on the top of a twenty story building and
[ 361 ]

CHARLES G. DAWES

showed the promised land—and then I was

kicked off.’’ 5

A day after losing the Senate nomination, the

thirty-six-year-old Dawes began to organize the

Central Trust Company of Illinois. He became its

president and devoted his attentions to banking

and to family life until the First World War.

Dawes had married Caro Blymyer in 1889. They

had two children and later adopted two more.

In the late summer of 1912, Dawes suffered the

greatest tragedy of his life when his only son

drowned at Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, while on

a brief vacation before returning to Princeton

University. Deeply saddened, Dawes and his

wife withdrew from most social life and turned

to philanthropy. In memory of their son, they

founded the Rufus Fearing Dawes Hotel for Destitute Men in Chicago and Boston, and later established the Mary Dawes Hotel for Women in

honor of Dawes’ mother.6

Supplying the War in Europe

When the United States entered the First

World War in 1917, Dawes received a telegram

from Herbert Hoover, who had organized American relief efforts in Europe and was now serving

as Food Administrator. Searching for talented

administrators, Hoover wanted Dawes to take

charge of grain prices. But instead of a desk job

in Washington, Dawes longed to be in uniform.

Hoover considered that a mistake. ‘‘I can find a

hundred men who will make better lieutenant

colonels of engineers, and I want you right here,’’

he argued. ‘‘No, Mr. Hoover, I don’t want to consider it,’’ Dawes replied. A few days later, Dawes

at age fifty-two received his commission as a

major in the 17th Railway Engineers, bound for

France, and, just as Hoover predicted, he was

soon a lieutenant colonel.7

The American Expeditionary Force (AEF) was

commanded by General John J. Pershing, who

had known Dawes since the 1890s when Pershing was a military instructor at the University

of Nebraska in Lincoln. In August 1917, Pershing

summoned Dawes to Paris and made him chief

of supply procurement for the American forces

in Europe, assigning him to head the board that

collected supplies and to coordinate purchases to

hold down inflation and duplication of orders.

Dawes rose to the rank of brigadier general.

When the Allied command was unified, General

Dawes became the U.S. member of the Military

Board of Allied Supply. While representing the

United States Army in conferences with other Allied armies and governments, Dawes particularly admired men of action rather than those

who simply talked. ‘‘Action, then, is everything—words nothing except as they lead immediately to it,’’ he commented, adding, ‘‘I came

out of the war a postgraduate in emergency conferences.’’ 8 After the Armistice in 1918, he remained in Europe to oversee the disposition of

surplus military property. In 1919 he resigned

his commission and returned to the United

States. His wartime experiences in negotiating

and coordinating efforts with his Allied counterparts left him an internationalist in outlook, advocating ratification of the Treaty of Versailles

and United States membership in the League of

Nations. After the war, everyone called him

‘‘General Dawes,’’ despite his protests to the

contrary.9

In 1920 Dawes supported his good friend, Illinois Governor Frank Lowden, for the Republican

presidential nomination, but that prize went to

Ohio’s Warren G. Harding. In February 1921,

however, an event occurred that brought Dawes

to the attention not only of president-elect Harding but of the entire nation. A House of Representatives committee to investigate war expenditures called Dawes to testify. Republicans—who held the majority—were clearly

eager to uncover any information about ‘‘extravagant purchases’’ in the AEF that might tarnish the outgoing administration of Woodrow

Wilson. Journalist Bascom Timmons recorded

that Dawes, a busy man, had resented being

called by the committee. On the morning that he

was due to testify, he walked around the Capitol

waiting for the committee to assemble, getting

angrier all the time. It took only a spark to set

him off. In the course of the interrogation, Representative Oscar Bland, an Indiana Republican,

pressed Dawes on how much the American army

had paid for French horses.10

‘‘Hell’n Maria!’’ Dawes exclaimed, jumping up

from his seat and striding to the mahogany table

where the committee sat. ‘‘I will tell you this, that
[ 362 ]

CHARLES G. DAWES

we would have paid horse prices for sheep, if

they could have hauled artillery!’’ Peppering his

remarks with profanity, Dawes lectured the committee on the urgency of getting supplies to soldiers who were being shot at. He recounted how

he had cut through the red tape and ‘‘had to connive with the smuggling of horses over there,’’

but he got the horses to drag the cannon to the

front. Turning the fire on ‘‘pinhead’’ politicians,

Dawes roared: ‘‘Your committee can not put a

fly speck on the American Army. . . . I am against

that peanut politics. This was not a Republican

war, nor was it a Democratic war. It was an

American war.’’ 11

Afterwards, Dawes explained that he had

‘‘suddenly decided that so far as I could bring

it about either the Committee or I would go out

of business.’’ His ‘‘Hell ’n Maria’’ testimony took

up seven hours for three sessions of the committee, with the official stenographers complaining

that he often spoke too rapidly. Dawes’ defense

of the AEF won great praise from both parties.

The newspapers, and especially the editorial cartoonists, loved Dawes’ indignant outburst and

quaint expletive. His published testimony, even

with the expletives deleted, became a Government Printing Office best seller. The incident

made him a national figure, and in July 1921,

when Congress created the Bureau of the Budget, Harding appointed Dawes as its first director.

Adding to his colorful personality, Dawes at this

time adopted his trademark pipe. For years he

had smoked as many as twenty cigars a day, but

during the war a British officer had given him

a pipe. Soon after his appointment to the Bureau

of the Budget, a newspaper photograph showed

him smoking his pipe on the Treasury Department steps. A Chicago pipe manufacturer sent

him a new, strangely shaped pipe with most of

its bowl below rather than above the stem.

Dawes tried it, liked it, and ordered a gross

more. From then on, he was rarely seen without

this distinctive pipe, which together with his

wing-tip collars and hair parted down the middle, reinforced his individualistic, iconoclastic,

and idiosyncratic public image.12

The Nobel Peace Prize

After spending a year setting up the first federal budget under the new act, Dawes returned

to Illinois, concerned about graft and political

corruption, especially in Chicago. He organized

‘‘The Minute Men of the Constitution,’’ to watch

elections and prevent vote fraud. The group opposed the political activities of the Ku Klux Klan,

and it also assailed what it considered to be unfair labor union practices. Dawes insisted that his

group was not anti-union, but that it opposed the

closed union shop. At one point the ‘‘Minute

Men’’ had a membership of 25,000, but after his

election as vice president the group disbanded.

In 1923, the economy of Germany had deteriorated drastically. Since Germany was unable to

repay its war debts, France sent troops to occupy

the industrial Ruhr valley. President Harding appointed Dawes to head a commission to study

and solve the German financial problem. The

‘‘Dawes Plan’’ offered ways to stabilize the German currency, balance its budget, and reorganize

its Reichbank, but the plan postponed action on

the most difficult issue of delaying and reducing

the German war reparations. Nevertheless, the

‘‘Dawes Plan’’ was recognized as a significant

enough contribution to world peace to win

Dawes the 1925 Nobel Peace Prize, which he

shared with his British counterpart, Sir Austen

Chamberlain. Dawes donated his share of the

prize money to the Walter Hines Page School of

International Relations at Johns Hopkins

University.

The Second Choice for the Second Spot

At the Republican convention in 1924, Calvin

Coolidge was nominated without significant opposition, but the front-running candidate for vice

president, Governor Lowden, had let it be

known that he did not want the second spot on

the ticket. Nor did the popular Idaho Senator

William E. Borah want to be the number two

man. A story at the time recorded that President

Coolidge had offered Borah a place on the ticket.

‘‘For which position?’’ Borah had supposedly replied. On the second ballot, the delegates nominated Lowden, but he declined to run, as threatened. Republican National Chairman William
[ 363 ]

CHARLES G. DAWES

Butler promoted Commerce Secretary Herbert

Hoover, but Hoover remained too unpopular

with the farm states for his price fixing as food

commissioner during the war, and the delegates

on the third ballot chose Charles G. Dawes for

vice president. President Coolidge, who had already sent a congratulatory note to Frank

Lowden, accepted Dawes as someone who

would add strength to the campaign and who he

expected would remain personally loyal to

him.13

When the unexpected news came over the

radio, Dawes was back at his birthplace of Marietta, Ohio, delivering the commencement address to his alma mater. ‘‘There is one recollection I shall always treasure,’’ he later wrote. ‘‘It

is of the gathering of thousands of the people of

the town, the next day, to hear me speak briefly

from the front porch of the old family home; and

the church bells of the town were rung in honor

of the occasion. Some people may claim that the

vice-presidency does not amount to much, but

just then it seemed to me the greatest office in

the world.’’ 14

During the campaign, Coolidge maintained his

stance of speaking infrequently and keeping his

remarks as bland and inoffensive as possible. He

left it to Dawes to attack the Democratic candidate, John W. Davis, and the Progressive candidate, Wisconsin Senator Robert M. La Follette.

Dawes entertained his audiences with the type

of ‘‘Hell’n Maria’’ speeches they expected, shaking his fist and denouncing La Follette—whose

platform among other things advocated allowing

Congress to overturn Supreme Court decisions—

as a demagogue and dangerous radical ‘‘animated by the vicious purpose of undermining

the constitutional foundation of the Republic.’’

Dawes went so far as to suggest that La Follette

was a Bolshevik, although La Follette had publicly rejected Communist support and had been

attacked by them.15

Coolidge and Dawes were overwhelmingly

elected in 1924, winning more votes than the

Democratic and Progressive candidates combined. ‘‘When Coolidge was elected President

the world desired tranquility,’’ Dawes noted in

his journal, ‘‘—a reaction of its peoples from the

excesses of war.’’ 16 But tranquility was not

Charles Dawes’ style.

An Assault on the Rules of the Senate

At his swearing-in in the Senate chamber in

March 1925, Dawes was called upon to deliver

a brief inaugural address, a tradition that dated

back to John Adams in 1789. What the audience

heard, however, was far from traditional. As the

Senate’s new presiding officer, Dawes addressed

himself to ‘‘methods of effective procedure,’’

rather than any particular policies or programs.

He then launched into an attack on the Senate

rules, ‘‘which, in their present form, place power

in the hands of individuals to an extent, at times,

subversive of the fundamental principles of free

representative government.’’ The rules of the

Senate, he declared, ran contrary to the principles of constitutional government, and under

these rules ‘‘the rights of the Nation and of the

American people have been overlooked.’’ 17

Dawes focused his attack on filibusters, which

at that time were being carried out most frequently by the small band of progressive Republicans, such as Robert La Follette, Sr., and George

Norris, who held the balance of power in the

Senate. Dawes declared that Rule 22, which required a two-thirds majority of those present and

voting to shut off debate, ‘‘at times enables Senators to consume in oratory those last precious

minutes of a session needed for momentous decisions,’’ thus placing great power in the hands of

a minority of senators. ‘‘Who would dare oppose

changes in the rules necessary to insure that the

business of the United States should always be

conducted in the interests of the Nation and

never be in danger of encountering a situation

where one man or a minority of men might demand unreasonable concessions under threat of

blocking the business of the Government?’’ he

asked. Unless the rules were reformed, they

would ‘‘lessen the effectiveness, prestige, and

dignity of the United States Senate.’’ He insisted

that ‘‘reform in the present rules of the Senate

is demanded not only by American public opinion, but I venture to say in the individual consciences of a majority of the Members of the Senate itself.’’ He concluded by appealing to sen-
[ 364 ]

CHARLES G. DAWES

ators’ consciences and patriotism in correcting

these defects in their rules.18

Since Dawes had not given advance copies of

the speech to the press or anyone else, no one

had anticipated his diatribe. In the audience,

President Calvin Coolidge attempted indifference, but could not hide his discomfort. Dawes

had managed to upstage the president’s own inaugural address, which was to follow at ceremonies outside on the Capitol’s east front. As the

senators proceeded to the inaugural platform,

they talked of nothing else but their anger over

Dawes’ effrontery, making Coolidge’s address

anticlimactic. After the ceremony, Dawes

compounded the ill will when he joined the

president to ride back to the White House, instead of returning to the chamber to adjourn the

Senate. In the Senate chamber, there was considerable confusion. Senator James A. Reed of Missouri noted that the Senate did not adjourn, nor

did it recess. ‘‘It simply broke up.’’ 19

Most senators were less than receptive to

Dawes’ advice. ‘‘Dawes showed as little knowledge of the Senate’s rules as he did good taste,’’

snapped Democratic minority leader Joseph T.

Robinson. ‘‘It was exactly what should not have

been said,’’ added Robinson’s colleague from Arkansas, Thaddeus Caraway. ‘‘I regret that such

occasion was perverted into a farce,’’ complained

Senator Claude Swanson of Virginia. ‘‘I have an

opinion of the spectacle but do not care to express it,’’ was George Norris’ response, and Republican majority leader Charles Curtis declined

to make any public comment on the vice president’s remarks. But while the senators disapproved, columnist Mark Sullivan observed

that the public was delighted. Sullivan described

Dawes as a hero who had finally made a dent

‘‘in that fine old encrusted Senatorial tradition,

buttressed by antique rules and practices, and

solemnly defended by conservative and radical

Senators alike.’’ 20

An Irritated President

After upstaging the president on inaugural

day, Dawes compounded his error by writing to

inform Coolidge that he did not think the vice

president should attend cabinet meetings. President Harding had invited Coolidge to cabinet

meetings on a regular basis, but Dawes did not

believe that Harding’s action should necessarily

set a precedent for future presidents. He took the

initiative by declining even before Coolidge had

offered him an invitation. ‘‘This was done to relieve him—if he shared my views—of any embarrassment, if he desired to carry them out,’’

Dawes later explained, ‘‘notwithstanding the fact

that he had accepted Harding’s invitation.’’

Dawes dismissed suggestions by the ‘‘busybodies and mischievemakers’’ in Washington,

who imagined ‘‘unpleasant relations between

Coolidge and myself.’’ What Coolidge thought

is less certain. In his Autobiography, Coolidge

counted his experiences in the cabinet as being

‘‘of supreme value’’ to him when he became

president and suggested that the vice president

should be invited to sit with the cabinet, if he was

‘‘a man of discretion and character so that he can

be relied upon to act as a subordinate in that position.’’ The implication was that Dawes did not

fit that description. In addition, Coolidge never

mentioned Dawes by name in his memoirs.21

Coolidge also felt irritated over an incident

that occurred on March 10, only days after

Dawes started presiding over the Senate. Up for

debate was the president’s nomination of

Charles Warren to be attorney general. In the

wake of Teapot Dome and other business-related

scandals, Democrats and Progressive Republicans objected to the nomination because of

Warren’s close association with the ‘‘Sugar

Trust.’’ At midday, six speakers were scheduled

to address Warren’s nomination. Desiring to return to his room at the Willard Hotel for a nap,

Dawes consulted the majority and minority leaders, who assured him that no vote would be

taken that afternoon. After Dawes left the Senate,

however, all but one of the scheduled speakers

decided against making formal remarks, and a

vote was taken. When it became apparent that

the vote would be tied, Republican leaders hastily called Dawes at the Willard. The roused vice

president jumped in a taxi and sped toward the

Capitol. But enough time intervened to persuade

the only Democratic senator who had voted for

Warren to switch his vote against him. By the

time Dawes arrived there was no longer a tie to
[ 365 ]

CHARLES G. DAWES

break, and the nomination had failed by a single

vote—the first such rejection in nearly sixty

years. President Coolidge angrily held Dawes responsible for his most embarrassing legislative

defeat, and the rest of Washington could not resist teasing the vice president over the incident.

The Gridiron Club presented him with a fourfoot high alarm clock. And Senator Norris read

a parody of ‘‘Sheridan’s Ride’’ on the Senate

floor:

Hurrah, Hurrah for Dawes!

Hurrah! hurrah for this high-minded man!

And when his statue is placed on high,

Under the dome of the Capitol sky,

The great senatorial temple of fame—

There with the glorious General’s name

Be it said, in letters both bold and bright,

‘‘Oh, Hell an’ Maria, he has lost us the

fight.’’ 22

Stimulating a National Debate

Dawes bore the criticism surprisingly well. He

was never a man to shy away from controversy,

and he enjoyed being at the center of attention.

He also enjoyed occupying the Vice President’s

Room behind the Senate chamber, which he

found impressive, with its tall mahogany cabinet, Dolly Madison mirror, Rembrandt Peale

portrait of Washington, and chandelier that once

hung in the White House. When the Senate was

not in session, large delegations of visitors would

tour the corridor outside his office, and since the

door was generally kept open for better ventilation they would always ‘‘stop and peek in.’’ The

senators, too, would stop and talk with the vice

president who took such an active interest in

their rules and proceedings. But Dawes found it

curious that conversation always seemed to get

around to whether ‘‘this or that Senator will be

willing to concede the right-of-way to this or that

piece of general legislation as a measure of surpassing public importance.’’ He remained convinced that, by allowing unlimited debate, the

Senate rules granted an intolerable power to the

minority.23

Rather than cease his criticism, Dawes continued to seek public forums to denounce the Senate filibuster. During the summer recess in 1925,

he toured the country addressing public meetings on the subject. He pointed out that filibusters flourished during the short sessions of Congress, held between December and March following each congressional election, and that

these protracted debates tied up critical appropriations bills until the majority would agree to

fund some individual senator’s pet project. He

frequently cited a filibuster by Senator Benjamin

Tillman that brought a $600,000 appropriation to

South Carolina. Dawes praised the work of Senators Francis Warren, chairman of the Appropriations Committee, and Reed Smoot, chairman

of Finance. ‘‘It is they and their like who perform

most of the difficult, disagreeable and necessary

work, speaking only when they have something

to say and accomplish.’’ By contrast to such

‘‘constructive’’ senators, he had no use for legislative showmen, radicals, and filibusterers.24

Dawes’ campaign stimulated a national debate

on the Senate rules. A significant rebuttal to his

assertions came from the political scientist Lindsay Rogers, who argued that filibusters served

a useful purpose. Too much legislation was hammered out in committees that met in secret,

where powerful corporate interests held sway,

and where progressive reformers had little influence. Rogers pointed out that ‘‘the powers of

delay given individual Senators force into pending bills some amendments that the Senate leaders would not accept were they free to act as they

desired.’’ He also pointed out that despite the filibuster, the Senate got a ‘‘creditable amount of

business’’ done each session. Changing the rules

would be inadvisable, since it would silence the

minority and allow the majority to act

unimpeded.25

Although the Senate did not change its rules

during his vice-presidency, Dawes noted with

satisfaction that it invoked cloture more frequently than ever before. After 1917, when the

cloture rule was first adopted, the Senate had

voted to cut off debate on the Versailles Treaty

in 1919 but failed to invoke cloture on tariff legislation in 1921 and 1922. During the Sixty-ninth

Congress, which ran from 1925 to 1927, the Senate cast seven votes on cloture, and three times

gained the two-thirds majority sufficient to cut

off filbusters. Not until the Ninety-third Congress, from 1973 to 1975, after a rules change had

reduced the majority needed to vote cloture from
[ 366 ]

CHARLES G. DAWES

two-thirds to three-fifths of the members, did the

Senate equal and surpass that number of successful cloture votes.

Farm Relief and Banking Reform

Dawes also personally intervened in other attempts to cut off debate, and his efforts led to

the Senate’s passage of bills that extended the

Federal Reserve banks and would have provided

farm relief. Agitation for farm relief became a

pressing issue during the 1920s, when American

farmers were shut out of the general prosperity

of the era. After the First World War, farm prices

had fallen and never recovered. Members of

Congress from midwestern and plains states

therefore formed the Farm Bloc, consisting of

some twenty-five senators and one hundred representatives. Holding the balance of power in

Congress, they promoted legislation to solve the

problem of distributing surplus farm produce.

Each year between 1924 and 1928, Senator

Charles McNary of Oregon and Representative

Gilbert Haugen of Iowa, both Republicans, sponsored the McNary-Haugen bill to permit the federal government to buy crop surpluses and sell

them abroad while at the same time maintaining

a high tariff on the importation of farm goods.

The result would have raised prices in the United

States.

Robert M. La Follette, Jr., who had succeeded

his late father in the Senate, led a filibuster

against the McFadden-Pepper bill to extend the

charters of the Federal Reserve Banks. By holding up passage of the bank bill, La Follette

sought to pressure the Senate to vote on the

McNary-Haugen bill. The only way to break this

logjam, as far as Dawes could see, was to form

a coalition ‘‘between the conservatives favoring

the bank bill and certain radicals favoring the

farm bill.’’ The vice president intervened, calling

representatives of both groups to a meeting in

his room. One of the participants, Pennsylvania

Senator George Wharton Pepper, commented

that ‘‘by sheer force of his personality, [Dawes]

forced an agreement that both measures should

be voted upon. This agreement was carried out.

Both bills passed.’’ Pepper gave Dawes the chief

credit for enacting these bills, as did Senator

James E. Watson, the Indiana Republican who

would soon become majority leader. In the

course of a speech on equalization fees, Watson

noted, ‘‘This explanation of the equalization fee

was prepared by the Vice President, who is a

supporter of the McNary-Haugen bill.’’ Although Watson deleted this indiscretion from the

Congressional Record, alert reporters in the press

gallery had already publicized the statement.

Dawes’ interest in this legislation did not further

endear him to President Coolidge, who twice vetoed the McNary-Haugen bills that his vice president had helped the Senate pass. Coolidge complained that ‘‘the McNary-Haugen people have

their headquarters in [Dawes’] chambers.’’ 26

An Irksome Job for a Man of Action

As a man of action, Charles Dawes found the

job of presiding over Senate debates ‘‘at times

rather irksome.’’ He felt more comfortable in executive and administrative positions with ‘‘specific objectives and well-defined authority and

responsibilities.’’ He preferred clear statements

of fact to speeches that appealed to prejudice or

emotion. As presiding officer, he enjoyed making

decisions about rulings from the chair and took

some pride in the fact that the Senate had never

overturned one of his decisions, but he attributed

much of his success to the Senate’s young journal

clerk, Charles Watkins. Watkins had studied the

rules and compiled the Senate Precedents, making

himself ‘‘the actual parliamentarian’’ of the Senate. ‘‘Senate precedents are almost always conflicting, and when Charley Watkins gives me a

choice of precedents to follow, I sometimes make

my own decision. But it is chiefly upon his advice that I act.’’ A decade later, Watkins became

the Senate’s first official parliamentarian, a post

he held until his retirement in 1964.27

Dawes similarly bristled over the social requirements of the vice-presidency, and as one

Washington hostess recorded, ‘‘his social tactics,

no less than his insubordination to the Senate,

brought down blame upon him in Washington.’’

Although he frequently dined out and entertained generously, it was always on his own

terms. He would arrive late, leave early, and

smoke his pipe at the dinner table. Caro Dawes

also disappointed Washington’s social set. Lacking the stamina that Mrs. Thomas Marshall and
[ 367 ]

CHARLES G. DAWES

Mrs. Calvin Coolidge had shown for attending

a continuous procession of luncheons and receptions, Mrs. Dawes declined many invitations. She

never seemed to enjoy ‘‘presiding over the Ladies of the Senate,’’ and looked visibly relieved

when her guests departed. Yet even her critics

conceded that her ‘‘manner was sweet and

gentle, her conversation cultured, and her dignity unimpeachable,’’ providing a gentle counterpart to her ‘‘Hell ’n Maria’’ husband. The vice

president’s estrangement from the president further shaded his social standing. As one Senate

wife later confided, ‘‘I have always had a feeling

which many share, that a slightly different attitude on the part of the Coolidges might have

done much to relieve the strain so far as the

Dawes were concerned.’’ 28

In 1927, President Coolidge stunned the nation

with his announcement that he did not choose

to run for reelection the following year. Although pundits debated whether Coolidge wanted to accept a draft, his announcement opened

a spirited campaign for the Republican presidential nomination. Although Dawes was frequently mentioned for the presidency, he announced that he was not a candidate and instead

favored his longtime friend, Illinois Governor

Frank Lowden. The nomination went instead to

Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover, whose

supporters considered putting Dawes on their

ticket as vice president. But President Coolidge

let it be known that he would consider Dawes’

nomination as a personal affront. Instead, the

nod went to Senate Majority Leader Charles Curtis of Kansas. For the third straight time, the Republican ticket swept the national election.29

A Travesty Upon Good Government

As Dawes’ term of office approached its end,

a senator told him how much the members of the

Senate thought of him, adding ‘‘but the Senate

got very tired of you at the beginning of your

service.’’ Dawes replied, ‘‘I should hate to think

that the Senate was as tired of me at the beginning of my service as I am of the Senate at the

end.’’ 30

At about this time, Dawes attended the annual

Gridiron Dinner. He and his successor, Charles

Curtis, were ordered to stand while the ‘‘Dawes

Decalogue, or the Letter of a Self-made Has-Been

to His Successor’’ was read, listing several commandments drawn from ‘‘the depths of my

experience’’:

Don’t steal the first page on Inauguration Day,

and you may be invited to sit in the Cabinet.

Don’t be afraid to criticize the Senate. You

know how much it needs it. The public likes it

and the Senate thrives on it. . . .

Don’t try to change the Senate Rules.

Don’t buck the President if you want to stay

more than four years.

Don’t do your sleeping in the day time.31

Ironically, Dawes spent his last days in the

Senate watching another filibuster, napping on

the couch in his office and responding when the

quorum bells rang. When the Senate dispatched

its sergeant at arms to ‘‘arrest’’ absent senators,

Dawes considered listening to the profanity of

the arrested senators as they were brought in

‘‘one of the few pleasant incidents of such proceedings.’’ He noted with some dismay that the

galleries were filled to watch the filibuster and

grumbled that ‘‘a travesty upon good government in the Senate is regarded as an amusement

rivaling a picture show.’’ In his farewell speech

to the Senate on March 4, 1929, Dawes reiterated

his objections to the Senate rules, saying, ‘‘I take

back nothing.’’ 32

Dawes had resigned as chairman of the board

of the Central Trust Company of Illinois when

he was elected vice president. After his term in

Washington, he returned as honorary chairman,

when it merged to become the Central Republic

Bank & Trust Co. He became chairman of a financial commission to the Dominican Republic,

and chairman of a committee to finance the exposition ‘‘A Century of Progress, Chicago, 1933.’’

In April 1929, President Hoover appointed

Dawes U.S. ambassador to Great Britain, a post

he held until 1932. He was scheduled to head the

American delegation to the World Disarmament

Conference in Geneva, Switzerland, when President Hoover persuaded him to take charge of the

Reconstruction Finance Corporation, which Congress had just created to assist corporations and

banks in need of relief from the Great Depression. Dawes’ national standing rose so high that
[ 368 ]

CHARLES G. DAWES

some Republicans talked of dumping Vice President Curtis from the ticket in favor of Dawes as

a ‘‘rip-snorting, hell-raising’’ candidate to boost

Hoover’s chances of reelection. Then in June

1932, Dawes abruptly resigned as chairman of

the RFC. His own financial base, the Central Republic Bank of Chicago was near collapse and required a ninety million dollar loan from the RFC

to keep it alive and to keep the entire Chicago

banking structure from collapsing. Dawes had to

resign to avoid a conflict of interest.33

Dawes, whose early career was shaken by the

panic of 1893, was now confronted by an even

greater financial crisis, one that shook his natural

self-confidence and ended whatever remaining

political chances he might have had. Reporter

Thomas L. Stokes met Dawes shortly after his

resignation from the RFC and found him ‘‘a dejected, dispirited man.’’ Dawes was distributing

a typewritten statement to the press predicting

business improvement. ‘‘That’s all he had to

say,’’ wrote Stokes. ‘‘He was manifestly uneasy

and nervous, not the hail fellow, the ’Hell and

Maria’ I had known about Washington for several years. I wondered at the time what was

wrong.’’ Several days later Stokes heard rumors

about the shaky banking situation in Chicago

and then about the RFC loan. Eventually the

Central Republic Bank was placed in receivership and liquidated. Dawes reorganized it as the

City National Bank & Trust Company of Chicago

and paid back the RFC loans. He remained associated with the bank until he died at the age of

eighty-five, on April 23, 1951.34

Historians have concluded that if Dawes was

not really a leader, he acted like one. As vice

president, he would not accept direction from

the president, and whenever his views did coincide with Coolidge’s his lobbying on behalf of

administration measures was more likely to hurt

rather than help. Dawes’ forthrightness and tactlessness incurred the anger of many senators. Although his ‘‘bull-like integrity’’ won Dawes recognition as an outstanding vice president, that

quality antagonized the Coolidge Administration more than aiding it. As for Dawes, he believed that the vice-presidency ‘‘is largely what

the man in it makes it.’’ And for his part, he

made the most of it.35
[ 369 ]

NOTES 1 Paul R. Leach, That Man Dawes (Chicago, 1930), p. 32. 2 Ibid., pp. 40–48; Bascom N. Timmons, Portrait of an

American: Charles G. Dawes (New York, 1953), p. 26; Charles

G. Dawes, A Journal of the McKinley Years (Chicago, 1950),

pp. vii-viii; Dawes was also the author of Essays and Speeches

(1915), A Journal of the Great War (1921), The First Year of the

Budget of the United States (1923), Notes as Vice President

(1935), How Long Prosperity? (1937), A Journal of Reparations

(1939), A Journal as Ambassador to Great Britain (1939), and

A Journal of the McKinley Years (1950). 3Timmons, p. 18; Dawes, A Journal of the McKinley Years,

pp. 51, 89. 4 Charles G. Dawes, Notes as Vice President, 1928–1929

(Boston, 1935), p. 49; National Cyclopedia of American Biography (New York, 1958), p. 7; Dawes, A Journal of the McKinley Years, pp. 232–33. 5Leach, p. 102.

6Dawes, A Journal of the McKinley Years, pp. 443–49. 7Leach, p. 149.

8Dawes, Notes as Vice President, p. 10. 9Leach, p. 167.

10Timmons, pp. 194–95.

11The ‘‘Hell ’n Maria’’ reference does not appear in the

hearing transcripts. As the subcommittee chairman explained: ‘‘Objection has been made by members of the committee to the fact that at the request of the witness, Mr.

Dawes, the many fluent expressions of profanity were omitted from the transcript.’’ U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Select Committee on Expenditures in the War

Department, War Expenditures, 66th Cong., 2d sess (Washington, 1921), pp. 4427, 4492, 4515; Timmons, pp. 195–98;

Leach, pp. 175–78. 12Dawes, Notes as Vice President, pp. 10–12; Leach, pp.

186–88. 13 Claude M. Fuess, Calvin Coolidge: The Man From Vermont (Boston, 1940), pp. 345–46. 14Dawes, Notes as Vice President, p. 18.

15Donald R. McCoy, Calvin Coolidge: The Quiet President

(Lawrence, KS, 1988), pp. 254–59; William Leuchtenburg,

The Perils of Prosperity, 1914–32 (Chicago, 1958), p. 134. 16Dawes, Notes as Vice President, p. 32. 17McCoy, pp. 264–65; U.S., Congress, Senate, Congressional Record, 69th Cong., special sess., p. 3. 18 Ibid., pp. 3–4.

19 Ibid., p. 8; Fuess, p. 361.

20Leach, pp. 249–50; Mark Sullivan, Our Times: The United

States, 1900–1925 (New York, 1935), 6:634–36. 21Dawes, Notes as Vice President, pp. 33–34; Calvin Coolidge, The Autobiography of Calvin Coolidge (New York, 1929),

pp. 163–64. 22Richard Lowitt, George W. Norris: The Persistence of a

Progressive, 1913–1933 (Urbana, IL, 1971), pp. 279–80. 23Dawes, Notes as Vice President, pp. 154, 169. 24McCoy, pp. 268–69; Dawes, Notes as Vice President, pp.

110, 288. 25Lindsay Rogers, The American Senate (New York, 1926),

pp. 188–90. 26Dawes, Notes as a Vice President, pp. 62–70; McCoy, p.

323; Leach, p. 273; see also George Wharton Pepper, In The

Senate (Philadelphia, 1930). 27Dawes, Notes as Vice President, pp. 107, 179–80. 28 Frances Parkinson Keyes, Capital Kaleidoscope: The Story

of a Washington Hostess (New York, 1937), pp. 140–43. 29 ‘‘Heap Big Chief,’’ American Mercury 17 (August 1929):

404. 30Dawes, Notes as Vice President, p. 255. 31 Ibid., pp. 183–84.

32 Ibid., pp. 299, 304, 316.

33David Burner, Herbert Hoover, A Public Life (New York,

1979), p. 275. 34Thomas L. Stokes, Chip Off My Shoulder (Princeton, NJ,

1940), pp. 329–30. 35McCoy, p. 247; Dawes, Notes as Vice President, p. 4.

[ 371 ]

Chapter 31

CHARLES CURTIS

1929–1933
CHARLES CURTIS
[ 373 ]

Chapter 31

CHARLES CURTIS

31st Vice President: 1929–1933

His politics were always purely personal. Issues never bothered him.

—WILLIAM ALLEN WHITE

In the spring of 1932, George and Ira

Gershwin’s Broadway musical, ‘‘Of Thee I Sing,’’

spoofed Washington politics, including a vice

president named Alexander Throttlebottom,

who could get inside the White House only on

public tours. The tour guide, who failed to recognize Throttlebottom, at one point engaged him

in a discussion of the vice-presidency:

Guide: Well, how did he come to be Vice President?

Throttlebottom: Well, they put a lot of names

in a hat, and he lost.

Guide: What does he do all the time?

Throttlebottom: Well, he sits in the park and

feeds the peanuts to the pigeons and the squirrels, and then he takes walks, and goes to the

movies. Last week, he tried to join the library, but

he needed two references, so he couldn’t get in.1

Audiences laughed heartily at these lines, in

part because they could easily identify the hapless Throttlebottom with the incumbent vice

president, Charles Curtis. Curtis was never close

to President Herbert Hoover and played no significant role in his administration. Despite Curtis’ many years of experience as a member of the

House and Senate and as Senate majority leader,

his counsel was rarely sought on legislative matters. His chief notoriety as vice president came

as a result of a messy social squabble over protocol, which only made him appear ridiculous.

Many Republicans hoped to dump Curtis from

the ticket when Hoover ran for reelection. Given

Curtis’ Horatio Alger-style rise in life, and his

long and successful career in Congress, how did

he become such a Throttlebottom as vice

president?

Formative Years on the Reservation

Although colorful in itself, Charles Curtis’ actual life story often became obscured by its political mythology.2 He began life in 1860 in North

Topeka, Kansas, where he spent his earliest years

partly in the white and partly in the Native

American community. The son of Orren Curtis,

a white man, and Ellen Pappan, who was onequarter Kaw Indian, Charles Curtis on his mother’s side was the great-great grandson of White

Plume, a Kansa-Kaw chief who had offered assistance to the Lewis and Clark expedition in

1804. White Plume’s daughter married Louis

Gonville, a French-Canadian fur trader, and their

daughter, Julie Gonville, married Louis Pappan.

As a result of the Kansa-Kaw treaty of 1825, the

tribe relinquished its claims to its traditional

lands in Missouri and Kansas. A two-millionacre reservation was established west of Topeka

for full-blooded Indians, while a series of feesimple land grants along the Kansas river were

set aside for ‘‘half-breeds’’—those who had intermarried with whites. Curtis’ grandmother Julie

Gonville Pappan received ‘‘Half-Breed Reservation No. Four,’’ directly across the river from the

Kansas capital, where she and her husband ran

a profitable ferry business.

Reflecting his mother’s heritage, Charles Curtis spoke French and Kansa before he learned
[ 374 ]

CHARLES CURTIS

English. His mother died in 1863, about the time

that his father left to fight in the Civil War. Soon

thereafter, Orren Curtis remarried, divorced, remarried again, and was dishonorably discharged

from the Union army. At the end of the war, Curtis was court martialled for having hanged three

prisoners in his custody—or as the charges read

for ‘‘executing the bushwakers.’’ Sentenced to a

year’s hard labor at the Missouri State Penitentiary, he was pardoned a month later and returned to Kansas. Given Orren’s unstable circumstances and roving nature, young Charley

remained in the custody of his paternal grandparents. In 1865, his maternal grandparents,

Louis and Julie Pappan Gonville, left North Topeka to return to the Kaw reservation at Council

Grove, concerned that otherwise they might be

excluded from future land settlements and compensation. The next year, young Charley went to

live with them on the reservation.3

Since Charley could speak the Kaw language,

he fit comfortably into the tribe. ‘‘I had my bows

and arrows,’’ he later recalled, ‘‘and joined the

other boys in shooting arrows at nickles, dimes,

and quarters which visitors would place in split

sticks.’’ In those still-frontier days, the Kaw reservation was frequently raided by nomadic

Cheyenne Indians, and during one attack Charley was sent on a mission to inform Topeka. ‘‘I

volunteered to make the trip,’’ he later told audiences. ‘‘When we heard the Cheyennes were

coming, the horses and ponies were driven to

pasture, some distance from my grandpa’s

home, so there was no horse or pony to ride. I

therefore, started out on foot, traveling during

the night.’’ The next day, he arrived in Topeka,

some sixty miles away. Curtis’ ‘‘cross-country

run’’ made him a celebrity in North Topeka, but

the incident also convinced his paternal grandparents, William and Permelia Curtis, that their

grandson should be raised in the more ‘‘civilized’’ atmosphere of Topeka rather than return

to the reservation.4

Curtis had learned to ride Indian ponies bareback and won a reputation as a ‘‘good and fearless rider.’’ Back in North Topeka, his grandfather William Curtis had built a race track, and

in 1869 Charles Curtis rode in his first race. He

soon became a full-fledged jockey and continued

to ride until 1876. A fellow jockey described Curtis as ‘‘rather short and wiry’’ and ‘‘just another

brush boy jockey,’’ explaining that eastern riders

‘‘called us brush boys because we rode in what

would be called the sticks.’’ As a winning jockey,

Curtis was known throughout Kansas as ‘‘The

Indian Boy.’’ His mounts made a lot of money

for the local gamblers and prostitutes who bet

on him, and he recalled that after one race a

madam bought him ‘‘a new suit of clothes, boots,

hat and all,’’ and had a new jockey suit made

for him; others bought him candy and presents.

‘‘I had never been so petted in my life and I liked

it,’’ Curtis reminisced.5

His family, however, had greater ambitions for

the boy than horse racing. In 1871, grandfather

William Curtis brought suit on behalf of Charley

and his sister Elizabeth to establish their claim,

over that of their father, for title to their mother’s

share of the Half-Breed Lands in North Topeka.

When Curtis’ father lost this suit, he left Topeka

for good. Grandfather Curtis wanted Charley to

stop racing and go back to school, but after his

grandfather’s death in 1873, the boy set out to

join his other grandparents Louis and Julie

Pappan, who were traveling with the Kaw Tribe

from Kansas to the Indian Territory of Oklahoma. Still on the tribal roll, and ‘‘longing for the

old life,’’ he wanted to live on the reservation.

Grandmother Julie talked him out of it. She invited him to her wagon and asked why he wanted to go to the Indian Territory. While she would

have liked nothing better than to have him live

with her, she told him that on the reservation he

would end up ‘‘like most of the men on it,’’ without an education or future prospects. If Charley

expected to make something of himself, he

should return to Topeka and attend school. ‘‘I

took her splendid advice and the next morning

as the wagons pulled out for the south, bound

for Indian Territory, I mounted my pony and

with my belongings in a flour sack, returned to

Topeka and school,’’ Curtis recounted. ‘‘No man

or boy ever received better advice, it was the

turning point in my life.’’ 6

A Passion for Politics

In Topeka, Curtis lived with grandmother

Permelia Hubbard Curtis, a decidedly strong-
[ 375 ]

CHARLES CURTIS

minded woman. ‘‘She brooked no opposition,’’

recalled Charley’s half-sister, Dolly. ‘‘I think she

regarded being both a Methodist and a Republican as essential for anyone who expected to go

to heaven.’’ When Charley was offered a contract

to race at the Philadelphia Centennial in 1876,

Permelia Curtis put her foot down. Instead, he

retired as a jockey and went to high school. After

graduating, he studied law, supporting himself

by working as a custodian in a law firm and by

driving a hack. When he had no customers, he

would stop under street lamps to read his law

books. In 1881, at the age of twenty-one, Charles

Curtis was admitted to the Kansas bar. Although

his life appeared to be a rags-to-riches story, Curtis had in fact a considerable inheritance in land

in North Topeka. The young lawyer plunged

into real estate, selling lots and building houses.

He also opened his own firm and practiced

criminal law. In 1884, Charles Curtis married

Anna Baird. They had three children and also

took in his half-sister Dolly when her mother

died.7

As a young man, Curtis showed a passion for

politics. In 1880, during James Garfield’s campaign for president, Curtis donned an oilcloth

cap and carried a torch in a Republican parade

through Topeka. It was only a matter of time before the popular ‘‘Indian jockey’’ ran for office

himself. In 1884, after shaking every hand in the

district, Curtis won election as Shawnee county

attorney. Since both his father and grandfather

Curtis had operated saloons in North Topeka, he

was supported by the liquor interests, which had

also retained his law firm. But once elected, Curtis insisted on enforcing the state’s prohibition

laws and closed down all of the saloons in the

county. He won attention not only as a ‘‘dry,’’

but as a law-and-order prosecutor.8

By a single vote in 1889, Curtis lost the nomination to fill a vacancy in the U.S. House of Representatives. It was a time of agrarian depression,

when voters in the West were turning away from

conservatives like Curtis in favor of the more

radical solutions put forward by the Farmers’ Alliance and its political offspring, the Populist

party. In 1891, William Allen White, editor of the

Emporia Gazette, first met the ‘‘young prince,’’

Charles Curtis, and later provided this description:

He came down from Topeka to campaign the

county, sent by the Republican state central committee. His job was to fight the Farmers’ Alliance.

He had a rabble-rousing speech with a good deal

of Civil War in it, a lot of protective tariff, and

a very carefully poised straddle on the currency

question (which, I was satisfied then—and still

think—that he knew little about, and cared nothing for). For his politics were always purely personal. Issues never bothered him. He was a handsome fellow, five feet ten, straight as his Kaw Indian grandfather must have been, with an olive

skin that looked like old ivory, a silky, flowing,

handlebar mustache, dark shoe-button eyes,

beady, and in those days always gay, a mop of

crow’s wing hair, a gentle ingratiating voice, and

what a smile! 9

For three days, White and Curtis toured the

county together, with White making the introductions and Curtis making the speeches. Never

had White met anyone who could charm a hostile audience as effectively as did Curtis, whose

personality could overshadow whatever he was

speaking about. This trait helped Curtis defeat

the Populist and Democratic fusion candidate for

a seat in the House in 1892—the same election

that saw Kansas vote for the Populist presidential candidate and elect a Populist governor.

Curtis’ upset victory brought him to the attention of prominent easterners, such as House Republican leader Thomas B. Reed, who were delighted that someone who thought the way they

did on tariff, railroad, and currency issues could

win election in so Populist a state as Kansas.

Reed took a particular liking to ‘‘the Indian,’’ as

he called Curtis, and made him one of his

lieutenants.10

‘‘Our Charley’’

When Curtis first came to Washington, Democrats firmly controlled the federal government.

Grover Cleveland had just been elected to his

second term as president, and in the House

Democrats held 218 seats, Republicans 124, and

the Populists 14. Then in 1893 a severe economic

depression dramatically reversed party fortunes.

Campaigning against the Democrats as the party
[ 376 ]

CHARLES CURTIS

of the ‘‘empty dinner pail,’’ Republicans won 254

seats in the next Congress, leaving the Democrats

with 93 and the Populists with 10. Tom Reed,

who had resumed the speakership with the return of a Republican majority, trusted Curtis’ political judgment. According to an often-repeated

story, Curtis once entered Speaker Reed’s office

and found a group of Republicans discussing the

restoration of the gold standard. ‘‘Indian, what

would you do about this?’’ Reed asked. Curtis

suggested taking the matter out of the hands of

the standing committees that had been dealing

with it, since it was apparent they would never

agree. Instead, he recommended appointing a

special committee to write a new bill. Reed liked

the idea so much that he appointed Curtis as a

member of the special committee that drafted the

Gold Standard Act of 1900.11

Curtis devoted most of his attention to his

service on the Committee on Indian Affairs,

where he drafted the ‘‘Curtis Act’’ in 1898. Entitled ‘‘An Act for the Protection of the People of

the Indian Territory and for Other Purposes,’’ the

Curtis Act actually overturned many treaty

rights by allocating federal lands, abolishing tribal courts, and giving the Interior Department

control over mineral leases on Indian lands. Having reinstated his name on the Kaw tribal rolls

in 1889, Curtis was able, through his position on

the House Indian Affairs Committee, to calculate

the benefits he might receive from government

allotments to his tribe. In 1902, he drafted the

Kaw Allotment Act under which he and his children received fee simple title to Kaw land in

Oklahoma.12

Congressman Curtis, hailed throughout Kansas as ‘‘Our Charley,’’ assiduously built his political base in the state. William Allen White recalled that Curtis carried with him little books

containing the names of all the Republicans in

each township and used to mumble these names

‘‘like a pious worshiper out of a prayer book’’

to commit them to memory. When Curtis greeted

a voter, he could recall the man’s name and ask

about his wife, children, and business. He left

voters convinced that they were intimates. In

1903, Curtis made a bid for a Senate seat, competing against fellow Republican Representative

Chester Long. Both men had strong support

from the railroads, Long being allied with the J.

P. Morgan interests and Curtis identified with

the Jay Gould railroads. Editor William Allen

White grumbled that the money and influence in

the election came from the railroads and ‘‘the

people had nothing to do with it.’’ 13

When the Republicans deadlocked, Long and

Curtis reached an agreement that Long would

gain the nomination in 1903 and would then support Curtis for the next Senate opening—which

occurred sooner than anyone anticipated. In

1904, Kansas Senator Joseph R. Burton was indicted by a federal grand jury in St. Louis, Missouri, for representing clients for a fee before the

Post Office in violation of federal statutes. Although the U.S. Supreme Court overturned this

conviction on the grounds that Missouri lacked

jurisdiction, Burton was tried and convicted

again in 1905. In May 1906, the Supreme Court

upheld Burton’s second conviction, and as the

Senate prepared to expel him, Burton resigned

on June 4, 1906.

At that time, state legislatures still elected U.S.

senators, but since the Kansas legislature was not

in session, the governor appointed Alfred W.

Benson to fill the vacancy. When the legislature

reconvened, Curtis and several other Republicans challenged Benson for the seat. Kansas

progressives promoted the candidacy of Joseph

L. Bristow, arguing that he would more faithfully support the reform legislation of President

Theodore Roosevelt. Curtis turned for help to

Roosevelt’s chief conservative opponent, Rhode

Island Senator Nelson W. Aldrich. As chairman

of the Senate Finance Committee, Aldrich handled all tariff legislation and was able to channel

considerable amounts of money from business

interests to pro-tariff politicians. Aldrich supplied Curtis with funds to purchase newspapers

that would support his senatorial candidacy.

William Allen White, who supported Bristow,

warned President Roosevelt that attorneys for

every railroad in the state were for Curtis. ‘‘Two

railroad attorneys when I asked them why they

were for Curtis, frankly told me in confidence of

friendship that orders came from higher up to

be for Curtis and they are obeying orders,’’

White wrote to the president. But Roosevelt

seemed less concerned, assuring White that ‘‘so
[ 377 ]

CHARLES CURTIS

far my experience with Curtis has been rather

more pleasant than with the average of his

colleagues.’’ 14

A High-Tariff Man

The state legislature elected Charles Curtis

senator on January 23, 1907, and he took his seat

a week later. Just as he had worked closely with

Tom Reed in the House, Curtis became a chief

lieutenant for Senator Aldrich. Then in his last

years in the Senate, and having outlasted his

most powerful allies, Aldrich came to rely on a

group of younger, high-tariff colleagues, including Curtis, W. Murray Crane of Massachusetts,

Eugene Hale of Maine, and Reed Smoot of Utah.

In 1909, Curtis played an influential role in the

passage of the Payne-Aldrich Tariff, which

raised rates so high that it helped split the Republican party into warring conservative and

progressive factions. Two years later, that split

claimed Curtis as a victim, when he was defeated

for renomination by a progressive Republican—

who in turn was defeated by a Democrat.15

As a result of the ratification of the Seventeenth Amendment, the first direct popular elections of senators were held in 1914. Progressives

were confident that the people would support

their candidates, but with an economic recession

at home and war in Europe, voters nationwide

instead turned to conservative candidates. After

defeating the progressive incumbent Joseph

Bristow for the Republican Senate nomination,

Charles Curtis went on to defeat both a Democratic and a Progressive party opponent that

November.16

Curtis returned to the Senate in 1915 as a symbol of the rewards of party regularity and the defeat of insurgency. Following the pattern set by

Senate Democrats, who had created the post of

party whip in the previous Congress, Senate Republicans appointed New York Senator James

Wadsworth as both conference secretary and

whip. Then, within a week, the party decided to

split these posts and elected Charles Curtis Republican whip. He served under the party leadership of New Hampshire Senator Jacob

Gallinger from 1915 to 1918 and of Massachusetts Senator Henry Cabot Lodge from 1918 to

1924. In 1918, when Republicans won back the

majority in the Senate, Curtis’ role as whip expanded, as he led much of the Republican opposition to the Wilson administration. ‘‘No one

ever accused him of being a Progressive,’’ wrote

one Washington correspondent, ‘‘but the feminists nevertheless called him friend, and it is one

of the proudest of his claims that he led the floor

fight for the Nineteenth Amendment,’’ granting

women the right to vote.17

Senator Curtis went to the 1920 Republican

convention in Chicago as head of the Kansas delegation. When the convention reached a stalemate between the presidential candidacies of

General Leonard Wood and Illinois Governor

Frank Lowden, Curtis was one of the senators

who gathered in the famous ‘‘smoke-filled

room’’ and anointed their colleague, Ohio Senator Warren G. Harding, as the party’s nominee.

Curtis then returned to the Kansas delegation

and told them frankly, as William Allen White

recalled, ‘‘that it had been decided (the phrase

was his) to give Harding a play.’’ The hot and

tired delegates were glad to take orders and

break the deadlock. Kansas switched from Wood

to Harding, whose bandwagon began its roll toward the White House.18

Harding’s election took Curtis into the inner

circle of Washington power, where he remained

a poker-playing adviser to Harding throughout

that ill-fated presidency. In 1923, as Harding considered running for a second term, Curtis inquired about his intentions of keeping Vice President Calvin Coolidge on the ticket, perhaps hoping for the job himself. ‘‘We are not worrying

about that little fellow in Massachusetts,’’ Harding supposedly told him. ‘‘Charlie Dawes is the

man!’’ Harding’s sudden death elevated Coolidge to the presidency, and the following year

it was indeed Dawes, not Curtis, who won the

nomination for vice president.19

Senate Majority Leader

In 1923, Curtis became chairman of the Senate

Rules Committee, and two years later he succeeded Lodge as majority leader—becoming the

first Republican to hold the official title of party

floor leader. He did not occupy the front-row

desk that was subsequently reserved for the party’s leaders but instead led from the back-row
[ 378 ]

CHARLES CURTIS

seat on the center aisle. As floor leader, Curtis

limited his role to that of a legislative tactician

who tried to keep his party united. ‘‘You boys

tell me what you want, and I’ll get it through,’’

Curtis promised. He was said to know ‘‘every

senator’s feelings on any pending legislation so

thoroughly that he can tell in advance how that

senator is going to vote.’’ Remarkably, Curtis

maintained good relations with both the conservative and progressive wings of his party. The

conservative Pennsylvania Senator George

Wharton Pepper recorded that Curtis as majority

leader ‘‘displayed a remarkable talent for accomplishing good results for his party by what in

international parlance are termed ‘conversations’

with the other side. He was unusually adept at

making deals.’’ The progressive Nebraska Senator George Norris noted that, while he often disagreed with Curtis on legislative matters, he

never knew Curtis to violate his word or fail to

carry out an agreement. Idaho Senator William

Borah acclaimed Curtis ‘‘a great reconciler, a

walking political encyclopedia and one of the

best political poker players in America.’’ 20

Journalists described majority leader Curtis as

one of the greatest ‘‘whisperers’’ in Congress.

‘‘Whenever he took his favorite pose, with a

short fat arm coiled around another Senator’s

shoulders, the Press Gallery got busy,’’ wrote

one reporter. ‘‘It was a sure sign that something

was doing. . . .‘Talk, talk, talk,’ he would complain to the reporters about the endless Senate

deliberations.’’ Curtis believed ‘‘that everything

can be fixed by friendly and confidential getting

together.’’ The press depicted Curtis as taciturn,

not given to long speeches, and unhappy with

the Senate’s penchant for filibustering (Curtis

had supported creating a cloture rule as early as

1911). He had a ‘‘poker face’’ that masked his

feelings, which some attributed to his Indian

ancestry.21

As majority leader, Curtis loyally supported

the Coolidge administration, but as a farm-state

senator he strongly advocated the kind of federal

farm relief that the president opposed. He consistently voted for the McNary-Haugen bills that

Coolidge vetoed. In May 1928, however, he shifted his vote to sustain—by a one-vote margin—

Coolidge’s veto. He explained that, regardless of

his belief in the issue, he felt it was his duty as

leader to stand by the president. This was not an

easy vote for Curtis, who at the time was an announced candidate to succeed Coolidge in that

year’s presidential election, and who was counting on strong support from the farm states. Significantly, another senatorial candidate for the

presidency, Indiana’s ‘‘Sunny Jim’’ Watson (who

later followed Curtis as majority leader), voted

to override the veto.22

Presidential Candidate

Curtis had harbored presidential ambitions for

some time. In 1924 he had been widely mentioned as a vice-presidential candidate, but his

wife, Anna, was seriously ill at the time. His sister Dolly volunteered to stay with her, so that

Curtis could attend the convention and improve

his chances for the vice-presidential nomination.

‘‘Dolly,’’ he replied, ‘‘I would not leave Anna

now to be President of the United States, and certainly not for the Vice Presidency.’’ (Anna Curtis

died on June 29, 1924.) In 1927 President Coolidge jolted the nation by announcing that he did

not choose to run in 1928. Potential candidates

and the press speculated endlessly about what

Coolidge meant—whether he expected the convention to deadlock and then draft him or

whether he would not run under any circumstances. Curtis assumed that Coolidge was

out of the race and felt assured that Coolidge favored him for president. Even Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover privately conceded that

Curtis ‘‘was a natural selection for Mr. Coolidge’s type of mind.’’ 23

Hoover was the frontrunner, but the farm

states had remained strongly opposed to him

ever since his service as ‘‘Food Czar’’ during the

First World War, as well as because he opposed

the McNary-Haugen bills. Curtis and Hoover

had never been close. Recalling that Hoover had

campaigned for Democratic candidates in 1918,

Curtis had tried to prevent President Harding

from appointing Hoover to the cabinet. Hoover

saw Curtis as one of a half-dozen senators who

were trying to stop his nomination by heaping

attacks on him. ‘‘Their favorite name for me was

‘Sir Herbert,’ a reference to my periodic resi-
[ 379 ]

CHARLES CURTIS

dence in England,’’ Hoover recalled with some

indignation.24

After announcing for president, Curtis made

no speeches and continued to devote his attention to his functions as Senate majority leader.

The New York Times called his campaign ‘‘quieter

than gumshoes.’’ This was how Curtis wanted

it. Serving as his own campaign manager, he

planned to work the back rooms as he always

had, hoping that if the convention frontrunners

deadlocked, he would emerge as the compromise candidate—in the way the delegates

had turned to Warren Harding in 1920. About

the only publicity his campaign received occurred when a Senate page stamped the words

‘‘Curtis for President’’ in the snow around the

Capitol. Not until Curtis reached the convention

in Kansas City did he speak out against Hoover.

He warned that the Republicans could not afford

to nominate a candidate who would place the

party ‘‘on the defensive from the day he is

named.’’ Despite caravans of farmers who protested against Hoover, the commerce secretary

easily won the Republican nomination on the

first ballot.25

Eating Bitter Words

To balance the ticket, Republicans sought a

farm-state man for vice president and chose

Charles Curtis of Kansas. Insisting that he had

never sought the vice-presidency, Curtis agreed

to run because of his loyalty to the party. Reporters viewed the choice of Curtis as ‘‘the perfect

touch of irony’’ for the convention, given his earlier opposition to Hoover. ‘‘I can see him yet as

he stood before the convention gulping at his

pride under the klieg lights,’’ recalled reporter

Thomas L. Stokes:

He had eaten his bitter words, but he was suffering from indigestion, you could see. His bald

head gleamed, as if still feverish under the indignity of second place on the ticket. His mustache

twitched in pain, as he tried to smile. It was only

a contorted grin that creased his swarthy face. In

the press section we nudged each other and

chuckled cruelly.26

During the campaign, Curtis visited the incumbent vice president, Charles Dawes. Sympathetically, Dawes noted that Curtis looked pretty

worn out, his hand was in a sling because a car

door had slammed on his fingers, and he had not

much voice left. Later, however, listening to Curtis speak on the radio, Dawes bristled when Curtis referred to the vice-presidency as amounting

to nothing. Although he recognized that the remark was intended to sound modest and was

made in jest, Dawes recorded in his journal, ‘‘But

when I find him tired, with a husky voice and

bandaged arm, resting after a five thousand-mile

trip and preparing to start on ten thousand miles

more, I am inclined to think that he places quite

a high value on the office.’’ 27

The Hoover-Curtis ticket rode to victory that

November over the Democratic ticket of Alfred

Smith and Joseph T. Robinson. Each of the vicepresidential candidates served as his party’s

floor leader in the Senate, and, despite their political differences, the two were known as

‘‘chums.’’ Curtis was celebrated as a ‘‘stand patter,’’ the most regular of Republicans, and yet a

man who could always bargain with his party’s

progressives and with senators from across the

center aisle. Newspapers claimed that Curtis

knew the Senate rules better than any other senator and declared him ‘‘the most competent man

in Congress to look after the legislative program

of the administration.’’ 28

This was not to be. Hoover and Curtis remained alienated after the strains of campaigning against each other for the nomination. Since

their ticket had been a marriage of convenience,

there was little love to lose over the next four

years. Neither man mentioned the other in his

inaugural address, and except for formal occasions they seem to have had as little to do with

each other as possible. A politico not identified

with issues or ideas, Curtis could never measure

up to Hoover’s standards and never became an

inside player. Although Curtis attended some

cabinet meetings, his advice was neither sought

nor followed. He spent his vice-presidency presiding over the Senate, and on a few occasions

casting tie-breaking votes. Sixty-nine years old

when he took office, Curtis was no longer the

vigorous politician of his youth.29
[ 380 ]

CHARLES CURTIS

A Subtle Transformation

Curtis enjoyed the status of the vice-presidency and made much of his rise ‘‘from Kaw

tepee to Capitol.’’ As the first American of Indian

ancestry to reach high office, he decorated his office with Native American artifacts and posed for

pictures wearing Indian headdresses. But the

press who covered him noted that Charles Curtis

had changed in many ways, both subtle and conspicuous. As a senator, he had always been a

‘‘placid, humble, unchanging, decent fellow,’’

but when he began to harbor presidential ambitions ‘‘his humility turned inside out.’’ Curtis

grew pompous, demanding that past intimates

address him as the vice president of the United

States and giving the impression that he felt that

he, rather than Herbert Hoover, should be occupying the White House. Perhaps sensing that resentment, the Hoover White House never trusted

Curtis as a legislative lieutenant. Reporters who

watched him believed that the frustrated Curtis,

having been so busy and influential as majority

leader, ‘‘just had to have something to do’’ as

vice president. He found his outlet as ‘‘a stern

and unbending disciplinarian in the Senate and

a defiant defender of vice presidential rank and

precedent there and elsewhere, particularly at

dinner tables.’’ Or, as one Washington hostess

noted archly, ‘‘Mr. Curtis openly exulted in the

ephemeral effulgence of the limelight which

shone upon him.’’ 30

Curtis’ search for status revived the issue of an

official vice-presidential residence. The wealthy

widow of Missouri Senator John B. Henderson

lived in a brownstone castle on 16th Street, on

a hillside several blocks north of the White

House. For years Mrs. Henderson had lobbied to

rechristen 16th Street as the Avenue of the Presidents and had persuaded many embassies to locate along the street—by selling them inexpensive parcels of land. Mrs. Henderson became

convinced that the street would be the perfect location for a permanent vice-presidential dwelling, suitable for entertaining, and she offered to

give the government a house overlooking Meridian Hill Park, whose land she had also contributed to the city. Earlier, Vice President Calvin

Coolidge had declined a similar offer, but Curtis

was much more receptive, and sent his sister

Dolly Curtis Gann out to inspect the property.

She pronounced the house ‘‘lovely’’ and appropriate for its purposes, arguing that a vice president ‘‘should not have the social duties now incumbent upon him unless he is to be in a position

to fulfill them properly and comfortably.’’ But a

member of the Henderson family objected to the

elderly Mrs. Henderson’s penchant for giving

away her property, and the deal fell through.

Not for another half century would vice presidents have an official residence.31

A Tempest in a Teapot

When the stock market crashed in 1929, the nation began to slip into the worst economic depression in its history. At a moment when people

wanted positive action from their political leaders, poor Curtis became embarrassingly embroiled in a ‘‘tempest in a teapot.’’ His sister

Dolly openly feuded with Alice Roosevelt Longworth, the daughter of Theodore Roosevelt and

wife of House Speaker Nicholas Longworth,

over their relative positions in protocol. ‘‘Princess Alice’’ admitted making a ‘‘little mischief’’

over the affair. After Curtis’ wife died, Dolly had

invited him to live at her Washington home and

had acted as his official hostess. Dolly Gann asserted that as hostess for the vice president she

should be seated ahead of the congressional and

diplomatic wives at Washington dinners. ‘‘At

that there was a cackle of excited discussion

about the propriety of designating any one not

a wife to hold the rank of one,’’ observed Alice

Longworth. Alice raised the issue with her husband Nick, who disapproved of Dolly Gann’s

pretensions and used the controversy as an excuse to avoid going to Prohibition-era ‘‘dry’’ dinner parties that he hated to attend. All this

caused a ‘‘torrent of newspaper publicity,’’ predominantly negative. William Allen White’s Emporia Gazette proclaimed:

If Washington does not do right by our Dolly,

there will be a terrible ruckus in Kansas. We will

be satisfied with nothing less than that she be

borne into the dinner on the shoulders of Mrs.

Nick Longworth, seated in the center of the table

as an ornament with a candelabra in each hand
[ 381 ]

CHARLES CURTIS

and fed her soup with a long-handled spoon by

the wife of the Secretary of State.32

Bad press dogged Curtis and he assumed the

public image of a Throttlebottom, especially as

a result of his panicky response to the bonus

marchers in 1932. World War I veterans had

marched on Washington to demand that Congress pass legislation enabling them to receive

early payment of their promised bonus for wartime service. As a senator, Curtis had sponsored

an earlier bonus bill and, although he himself

had never served in the military, he frequently

cited his father’s Civil War service in seeking veterans’ support for his campaigns. But when the

marchers camped around Washington and paraded to the Capitol, Curtis urged President

Hoover to call out the troops. The president,

however, tried to keep calm and maintain the

peace.33

The Depression Sinks the Ticket

In July 1932, some four hundred men marched

to the Capitol grounds. When the architect of the

Capitol had the lawn sprinklers turned on, the

marchers gave up their idea of camping on the

grounds and instead began a single-file march

around the Capitol Building. A nervous Vice

President Curtis announced that ‘‘Neither Speaker [John Nance] Garner nor I issued any permits

to parade inside Capitol Grounds, and for this

reason I believe they should be kept off.’’ The

vice president had a ‘‘stormy session’’ with the

District of Columbia’s police chief, Pelham

Glassford, who informed him that only the president could call out the army. Curtis then contacted the U.S. Marines to have them stand ready

for an emergency. But the marines took the vice

president too literally and sent two companies

wearing trench helmets to the Capitol, riding on

the city trollies. Curtis claimed to have been misunderstood, but his calling out the marines made

him even more the subject of national jokes.34

As the depression worsened and the presidential election approached, many Republicans

talked of dumping Curtis from the ticket in favor

of a stronger candidate who might help Hoover’s

chance of reelection. Curtis himself recognized

his vulnerability and talked of running for the

Senate seat from Kansas instead. But with his sister Dolly rallying support among the delegates,

Curtis was renominated on the Hoover ticket to

face Franklin D. Roosevelt and John Nance Garner. In the depth of the depression, the HooverCurtis campaign never stood a chance. Hecklers

challenged Curtis when he spoke. Why had he

not fed the veterans in Washington? they yelled

at one stop. ‘‘I’ve fed more than you have, you

dirty cowards!’’ Curtis shouted back at the

crowd. ‘‘I’m not afraid of you!’’ The crowd

chanted ‘‘Hurrah for Roosevelt!’’ 35

A landslide defeat in November 1932 retired

Charles Curtis from a political career that had

begun almost fifty years earlier when he ran for

Shawnee County district attorney. Now, to the

surprise of many Kansans, Curtis seemed to have

‘‘lost interest in Kansas.’’ Having spent so much

of his life in the nation’s capital, he remained in

Washington, where he practiced law and talked

politics. In 1935 he became chairman of the Republican senatorial campaign committee, hoping

the party could win back the Senate majority the

next year, but he died in February 1936 at his sister Dolly’s home. A party regular—‘‘one-eighth

Kaw Indian and a one-hundred per cent Republican’’ as he liked to tell audiences—he had been

yoked to one of the most intellectual and least

political of all American presidents, and the incompatibility of the team made his vice-presidency a dismal failure.36
[ 382 ]

NOTES 1Quoted in Chalmers Roberts, First Rough Draft: A Journalist’s Journal of Our Times (New York, 1973), p. 268. 2 For an especially egregious example, see Don C. Seitz,

From Kaw Teepee to Capitol: The Life Story of Charles Curtis,

Indian, Who Has Risen to High Estate (New York, 1928). 3William E. Unrau, ‘‘The Mixed-Blood Connection:

Charles Curtis and Kaw Detribalization,’’ in Kansas and the

West: Bicentennial Essays in Honor of Nyle H. Miller, ed. Forrest R. Blackburn, et al. (Topeka, KS, 1976), pp. 151–61; William E. Unrau, Mixed-Bloods and Tribal Dissolution: Charles

Curtis and the Quest for Indian Identity (Lawrence, KS, 1989),

pp. 9–10, 58, 64–65; Marvin Ewy, ‘‘Charles Curtis of Kansas:

Vice President of the United States, 1929–1933,’’ Emporia

State Research Studies 10 (December 1961): 6–9. 4Unrau, Mixed-Bloods and Tribal Dissolution, pp. 70–75. 5 Ibid., pp. 61–62, 81–82; New York Times, June 17, 1928;

Seitz, p. 128. 6Unrau, Mixed Bloods and Tribal Dissolution, pp. 92–93;

Ewy, p. 11. 7Dolly Gann, Dolly Gann’s Book (Garden City, NY, 1933),

pp. 1, 4–5; Unrau, Mixed Bloods and Tribal Dissolution, pp.

97–98. 8Unrau, Mixed Bloods and Tribal Dissolution, pp. 99–101;

Ewy, pp. 15–17. 9William Allen White, The Autobiography of William Allen

White (New York, 1946), p. 196. 10 Ibid., pp. 196–97.

11 Seitz, pp. 161–62; Ewy, p. 23.

12Unrau, Mixed-Bloods and Tribal Dissolution, pp. 119–23;

Unrau, ‘‘The Mixed-Blood Connection,’’ p. 159. 13White, pp. 304, 352, 366.

14 Horace Samuel Merrill and Marion Galbraith Merrill,

The Republican Command, 1897–1913 (Lexington, KY, 1971),

pp. 26, 288. 15 Ibid., pp. 27, 295.

16Ewy, pp. 27–29.

17 Ibid., pp. 30–31; ‘‘Heap Big Chief,’’ American Mercury

17 (August 1929): 401. 18Andrew Sinclair, The Available Man: The Life Behind the

Masks of Warren Gamaliel Harding (New York, 1965), pp. 143–

49; White, p. 546.

19 Curtis served as an honorary pallbearer at Harding’s

funeral, and was later active in the effort to suppress news

of Harding’s illegitimate child by Nan Britton. Francis Russell, The Shadow of Blooming Grove: Warren G. Harding in His

Times (New York, 1968), pp. 571, 597, 626. 20 Irving G. Williams, The Rise of the Vice Presidency (Washington, D.C., 1956), p. 144; Seitz, pp. 172, 178; George Wharton Pepper, In The Senate (Philadelphia, 1930), p. 35: New

York Times, June 19, 1928; Washington Evening Star, February 8, 1936. 21 ‘‘Heap Big Chief,’’ p. 410; Seitz, pp. 172–73.

22New York Times, May 26, 1928. 23Gann, p. 74; Herbert Hoover, The Memoirs of Herbert

Hoover: The Cabinet and the Presidency, 1920–1933 (New York,

1952), p. 194. 24 John D. Hicks, Republican Ascendancy, 1921–1933 (New

York, 1960), p. 201; Sinclair, p. 184; Russell, p. 433; Hoover,

p. 192. 25New York Times, February 3, April 26, June 11–15, 1928;

Ewy, pp. 38–39. 26Thomas L. Stokes, Chip Off My Shoulder (Princeton, NJ,

1940), pp. 230–31. 27 Charles G. Dawes, Notes as Vice President, 1928–1929

(Boston, 1935), p. 123. 28New York Times, September 2, November 11, 1928. 29Williams, p. 146; Ewy, p. 43.

30 ‘‘Heap Big Chief,’’ pp. 401–6, 411; Gene Smith, The Shattered Dream: Herbert Hoover and the Great Depression. (New

York, 1970), p. 185; Frances Parkinson Keyes, Capital Kaleidoscope: The Story of a Washington Hostess (New York, 1937),

p. 245. 31Gann, pp. 191–92.

32Alice Roosevelt Longworth, Crowded Hours (New York,

1933) pp. 73, 330–33; David Burner, Herbert Hoover: A Public

Life (New York, 1979), p. 291.

33Daniel J. Lisio, The President and Protest: Hoover, Conspiracy, and The Bonus Riot (Columbia, MO, 1974), p. 218. 34 Fleta Campbell Springe, ‘‘Glassford and the Siege of

Washington,’’ Harpers 165 (November 1932): 649–51; Smith,

p. 149. 35Williams, p. 147; Ewy, pp. 51–52; Lisio, p. 244.

36Unrau, Mixed-Bloods and Tribal Dissolution, p. 112.
[ 383 ]

Chapter 32

JOHN NANCE GARNER

1933–1941
JOHN NANCE GARNER
[ 385 ]

Chapter 32

JOHN NANCE GARNER

32nd Vice President: 1933–1941

My belief has always been in Executive leadership, not Executive rulership.

—JOHN NANCE GARNER

‘‘There is hardly any limitation upon the ways

in which the Vice President might be of service

to the President,’’ wrote Franklin Delano Roosevelt in a 1920 issue of the Saturday Evening Post

when he was the Democratic vice-presidential

candidate. The vice president, Roosevelt suggested, should be entrusted with ‘‘carrying the

large burden of interpreting administration policies to Congress and to the public.’’ Like the vice

president in a modern corporation, he should be

a ‘‘super handy man,’’ handling various matters

of detail and ‘‘leaving the president free to deal

mainly with matters of policy.’’ 1

Upon becoming president a dozen years later,

however, Roosevelt had adjusted his image of

the vice-presidency to more closely match the

predispositions of the man that the Democratic

National Convention nominated to be his running mate, John Nance Garner. As vice president, Garner would indeed work extensively at

‘‘interpreting administration policies to Congress,’’ as the White House’s chief liaison to Capitol Hill, but he did little to communicate these

policies to the public because he refused to be

a spokesman or campaigner. He did provide the

administration with expertise on ‘‘matters of detail’’ but limited this advice mostly to the intricacies of maneuvering legislation through

Congress.

Garner’s long career in the House of Representatives had prepared him for the vice-presidency. He had rarely originated innovative ideas

to answer the problems of the country, yet once

someone else conceived an idea for legislation,

Garner was often called upon to serve as a parliamentary midwife. He would expertly guide

the plan through the House, from negotiations

in smoky back rooms to a debate and vote on

the floor.

On the surface, there appears to be little mystery about John Nance Garner. Plainspoken and

refreshingly unpretentious, ‘‘Cactus Jack’’ from

the tiny back-country town of Uvalde, Texas,

was by all accounts a man of common words,

simple tastes, a frugal lifestyle, and an unswerving pragmatism that prompted Roosevelt to dub

him ‘‘Mr. Common Sense.’’ Yet, for all his uncomplicated personality, Garner remains an

enigmatic presence in history. For thirty-eight

years in Washington, from 1903 to 1941, Garner

continued to be a secretive back-room operator.

Because nearly all of his most important political

activities took place out of the public eye and off

the record, his personal motivations or convictions remain unclear. It is particularly difficult to

gauge the degree to which, in his role as vice

president, Garner should be credited for the legislative successes of the first Roosevelt administration or be blamed for the failures of the

second.2

Youth

Garner was born on November 22, 1868, in Red

River County, Texas. Although political promoters later romanticized his modest upbringing in

a mud-chinked log cabin, his mother, Rebecca
[ 386 ]

JOHN N. GARNER

Walpole Garner, was the daughter of the town

banker and a descendent of English aristocracy.

At age eighteen, young Garner set off to enroll

at the University of Tennessee, the state in which

both sides of his family had roots. Finding himself handicapped by an insufficient preparatory

education and various respiratory problems,

however, the young man soon returned home

and found work in a law office. By studying in

his spare time, Garner gained entrance to the bar

in 1890. He then failed in his first bid for political

office as a twenty-one-year-old candidate for city

attorney.

A Back-Room Politician

Garner moved to Uvalde, Texas, for the health

benefits of its dry climate. During his successful

campaign for judge of Uvalde County, he met

Ettie Rheiner, who soon became his cherished

partner as both beloved wife and career-long

personal secretary.3 Garner served as county

judge from 1893 to 1896, followed by a tenure

in the Texas state legislature from 1898 to 1902.

When Texas gained an additional congressional

seat after the 1900 census, Garner managed to secure the chairmanship of a special redistricting

committee. He used this position to carve out an

advantageous congressional district, from which

he ran successfully in 1902 for the U.S. House of

Representatives.

During his first several years in the House,

Garner was a silent backbencher who ingratiated

himself with his colleagues by cultivating friendships and by his record of party loyalty. He was

eventually rewarded with coveted committee

appointments, and by the 1920s his seniority had

made him the ranking Democrat on the Ways

and Means Committee and chairman of the

Democrats’ Committee on Committees, which

chose that party’s members for all House committees. His vociferous attacks on Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon’s economic programs

earned him a national reputation as ‘‘a Jefferson/

Jackson Democrat—egalitarian, rural, states’

rights oriented, and populist.’’ 4

In 1929, Garner was elected the floor leader of

a House Democratic party whose morale and

representation had suffered a crushing blow in

the 1928 elections. As minority leader, Garner relied upon informal methods to strengthen the

party’s influence. He enjoyed a close rapport

with Republican Speaker Nicholas Longworth,

his debonair alter ego. Said Garner, ‘‘I was the

heathen and Nick was the aristocrat.’’ This congressional odd couple cohosted a daily bipartisan gathering of lawmakers in a small room,

deep in the bowels of the Capitol, which became

known as the ‘‘Bureau of Education.’’ Like The

Boar’s Head Club, the site of Speaker Joe Cannon’s drinking and gambling congregations that

Garner had attended decades earlier, the bureau

provided a place for politicians to relax and get

to know one another over a cordial drink, ignoring the Eighteenth Amendment’s ban on alcoholic beverages. The bureau also served as an informal forum for constructive, off-the-record

communications and negotiations between the

two parties. In this setting, Longworth said that

Garner operated as ‘‘a one man cabal’’ 5

Garner presented only four major bills to Congress under his own name in his entire three decades in the House, a fact a longtime House colleague, James F. Byrnes of South Carolina, attributed to Garner’s collaborative parliamentary

style: ‘‘It was his policy, whenever he had an

idea . . . to induce a prospective opponent or a

doubtful supporter to sponsor the legislation.

When he achieved that, he knew his purpose was

accomplished.’’ As a result, Byrnes noted, ‘‘The

Congressional Record will not show the remarkable influence he exercised upon the members of

the House and Senate during his long service.’’

Garner himself later asserted that he had ‘‘no

more useful years than those in the ranks of or

as the leader of the opposition to the majority.’’ 6

Between the 1930 congressional elections and

the opening of the Seventy-second Congress on

December 7, 1931, fourteen members-elect, including Longworth, died.7 After special elections

were held to replace the deceased, the Democrats

emerged with a 219 to 214 advantage, enabling

Garner to become Speaker and the titular head

of his party as its highest national officeholder.

Garner did not share the same close personal

friendship with the new Republican minority

leader, New York’s Bertrand Small, that he had

enjoyed with Longworth. The two parties were

becoming increasingly polarized in their ap-
[ 387 ]

JOHN N. GARNER

proaches to solving the crisis that gripped the national economy. In addition, a decade in the minority had permitted many House Democrats to

lapse into habits of frequent absenteeism and

maverick voting patterns, which the party with

its slim majority could now ill afford.

The new Speaker enforced party discipline

with a severity that inspired Sam Rayburn to call

him, ‘‘a terrible, table-thumping Democrat.’’

Under the slogan ‘‘You’ve got to bloody your

knuckles!’’ Garner regularly summoned House

Democrats to caucus or bureau meetings, where

they wrangled out consensus policies to which

he would then ‘‘bind’’ all of their votes. ‘‘And

if they didn’t stay bound,’’ he recalled, ‘‘I’d put

’em down in my book and they’d never get

through paying for it.’’ Of his overriding concern

for party solidarity, Garner once declared, ‘‘I

have always done what I thought was best for

my country, never varying unless I was advised

that two-thirds of the Democrats were for a bill

and then I voted for it.’’ 8

In his response to the Great Depression, this

dedication to maintaining a governing consensus

eventually outweighed Garner’s normally conservative principles, and he grew increasingly

supportive of federal intervention in economic

affairs. At first, the Speaker attempted to forge

bipartisan cooperation in support of Herbert

Hoover’s economic programs, such as the Reconstruction Finance Corporation and the GlassSteagall banking bills. This conciliatory approach

meant reversing his previous opposition to such

measures as a manufacturers’ sales tax designed

to increase government revenue in the face of

mounting deficits—favored by business groups

for more than a decade—and establishment of a

moratorium on foreign debts in order to relieve

some of the financial burden on the nation’s European trading partners.9

By 1932, however, the overwhelming consensus among congressional Democrats and the

public against the sales tax and in favor of additional relief measures convinced Garner to repudiate Hoover’s program. He proposed his own

federal relief spending bill through a massive

public works program. This action was highly

uncharacteristic, given his reluctance to offer his

own proposals and his long record of opposition

to increased government spending. Hoover vetoed the bill, condemning it as ‘‘the most gigantic

pork barrel raid ever proposed to an American

Congress!’’ Relations between the two men

never recovered.10

The Election of 1932

A ‘‘Garner for President’’ movement emerged

in January 1932. Instigated by an editorial campaign in the newspapers of William Randolph

Hearst, it was independent of any initiative or

encouragement by Garner. Over such other prospective nominees as Franklin Roosevelt, Al

Smith, and former Secretary of War Newton

Baker, Hearst endorsed Garner as the candidate

he considered most likely to adhere to his own

agenda, which included instituting a national

sales tax and keeping the United States out of the

League of Nations.11 The Garner bandwagon included many conservative southern and western

politicians who felt ideologically and personally

comfortable with Garner. A contemporary journalist attributed the attraction of the Garner candidacy to the desire of ‘‘the rank and file Democrats to get away from everything the East implies and to find a good, safe politician with an

innocuous record, what they want is a Democratic Coolidge.’’ Others supported Garner only

as a stalking-horse for another candidate or as

one of a variety of candidates whose delegates

could collectively block Roosevelt.12

Garner himself was less interested in becoming

president than in ensuring his tenure as Speaker

by nominating a candidate who could capture

the White House with long enough coattails to

solidify the party’s majority in Congress. Roosevelt’s candidacy, he concluded, was the best

bet to unite and strengthen the party enough to

achieve this goal. Garner therefore ignored the

efforts of his promoters and refused to proclaim

himself a candidate, although he never actually

ordered them to desist. As a consequence, Garner found himself holding a tiger by the tail at

the Democratic National Convention in Chicago,

where he placed third on the first ballot behind

Roosevelt and Smith. After three ballots, during

which Garner’s numbers increased marginally,

Roosevelt’s strategists realized that without Garner’s support they would never achieve the nec-
[ 388 ]

JOHN N. GARNER

essary two-thirds vote that the party’s centuryold rule mandated for nomination. They feared

they were about to lose the Mississippi delegation, which operated under a rule that gave all

twenty of its votes to the candidate favored by

a simple majority of its members. To break the

impasse, Roosevelt campaign manager James

Farley called Garner’s campaign manager, Representative Sam Rayburn, to a meeting in Mississippi Senator Pat Harrison’s hotel room. They

agreed to ask Garner to transfer his delegates to

Roosevelt in return for the vice-presidential

nomination. Garner reluctantly agreed in order

to avoid the type of deadlocked convention that

in 1924 had produced the unsatisfying compromise candidacy of John W. Davis and his losing campaign. Garner consoled himself with the

thought that the apparently less demanding office ‘‘might be a nice way for me to taper off my

career.’’ 13

Roosevelt wanted to use Garner’s homespun

appeal in extensive campaigning as a sort of

‘‘Texas Al Smith.’’ But Garner refused, believing

that such efforts would be irrelevant, since he regarded elections as merely a referendum on the

incumbent’s performance. He made only two

speeches and was briefly employed as Roosevelt’s peacemaking mediator to Smith before

being dismissed to go home to Uvalde. There he

was reelected to his House seat on the same day

he was elected vice president of the United

States.14

Between the November 1932 election and the

March 1933 inauguration, Roosevelt frequently

phoned Garner in Uvalde to solicit his opinions

about proposals for legislation and organizing

the new government. Although Garner offered

relatively few legislative proposals, he did advocate government guarantees of banking deposits,

an idea he promoted in Congress despite the objections of the president-elect. Eventually, the

groundswell of congressional support for the

plan won Roosevelt over, and he endorsed the

Vandenberg Amendment to the Glass-Steagall

Banking Act, creating the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. In this case, Garner appeared

to be ahead of the ‘‘New Deal’’ curve, belying

his later reputation as an inflexible reactionary.

Inauguration Day in 1933 marked a ceremonial

demonstration of mutual affection and gratitude

between the outgoing Speaker and his House

colleagues as the procession of 400 House members and another 150 members-elect escorted

Garner through the Capitol to the Senate chamber, where he thanked them with an emotional

farewell speech in which he grieved, ‘‘my heart

will always be in the House.’’ 15

First Term—Supporting the President’s Program

In many respects, Garner’s new job was a step

down. He called the vice-presidency ‘‘the spare

tire on the automobile of government,’’ ‘‘a no

man’s land somewhere between the legislative

and the executive branch,’’ and ‘‘not worth a

bucket of warm spit.’’ He bemoaned the fact that

the vice president had ‘‘no arsenal from which

to draw power,’’ believing that only when men

‘‘have friendship for him and faith in and respect

for his judgement can he be influential.’’ 16

In the Senate, the new vice president renewed

political alliances with over twenty of his former

colleagues who had moved there from the

House, including such influential Democratic

senators as Arkansas’ Joe Robinson, Mississippi’s Pat Harrison, Kentucky’s Alben Barkley, Virginia’s Carter Glass, South Carolina’s

James Byrnes, Texas’ Morris Sheppard, and

Maryland’s Millard Tydings. These men were

products of the Wilsonian progressive New Freedom movement, but by the 1930s some of them

had become the leaders of the party’s conservative wing of southern and western Democrats,

who held the key committee chairmanships. Garner’s vice-presidency enhanced the influence of

these men because he often sympathized with

them in their efforts to limit the liberalism of the

New Deal.17

Garner’s familiarity with the mechanics and

personalities of Congress initially proved invaluable to the new Roosevelt administration. Before

committing himself to the innovative experiments of his ‘‘Brains Trust,’’ Roosevelt asked for

Garner’s realistic assessment of congressional reaction. After observing Garner in cabinet meetings, Roosevelt’s Postmaster General James Farley came ‘‘to look upon him as one of the truly

great public men of this generation’’ because of
[ 389 ]

JOHN N. GARNER

Garner’s mastery of ‘‘such intricate problems as

government financing, taxation, tariffs, and revenue bills.’’ Once Roosevelt decided on a new proposal, Garner acted as his political general, personally leading the White House troops as they

stormed Capitol Hill.18

Most of Garner’s political generalship was of

the guerrilla variety. He continued to host regular Bureau of Education meetings in a room near

the Senate floor. Darrell St. Claire, assistant secretary of the Senate, remembered that ‘‘the whiskey vapor would come flowing into the chamber

from the formal office, along with the laughter.’’

Garner would lure guests there from both the

legislative and the executive branches, ambushing them with bombardments of reason and liquor designed to ‘‘hypnotize, mesmerize and otherwise to get our friends to approve matters in

a helpful way.’’ 19

Garner did not always agree with Roosevelt’s

policies during the ‘‘First One Hundred Days’’

of the new administration, but he encouraged

other reluctant lawmakers to follow him in supporting the president because it was ‘‘good politics and good patriotism.’’ ‘‘Sometimes conditions in a country justify temporary violations of

deep principles of government,’’ he reasoned to

one congressman, ‘‘if ever there was such a time

it is now.’’ To another Democrat who was skeptical of Roosevelt, ‘‘It doesn’t matter what kind

of a fool you think he is; he’s your fool just as

long as he’s President and the leader of your

party.’’ In a letter responding to criticism of the

administration from a Texas lumberman friend

named John Henry Kirby he admitted, ‘‘You

can’t do everything you want to and I can’t do

half of what I would like to do. You can’t control

everybody you would like to and I am in a similar fix.’’ 20

One historian of the vice-presidency rated Garner as ‘‘a combination presiding officer, Cabinet

officer, personal counselor, legislative tactician,

Cassandra and sounding board’’ for the administration and ‘‘undoubtedly one of the most powerful of the twentieth century Vice-Presidents.’’ 21 However, there were some tasks that

Garner stubbornly avoided, especially those that

would involve publicity, which he felt was inappropriate for a vice president. He refused to act

as a spokesman for the administration because,

he told Roosevelt, ‘‘Any speech or statement I

made would be searched to find a difference between you and me.’’ Instead, when the press

begged him for comments, he declared, ‘‘I’m a

member of a firm—the junior member. Go to

headquarters for the news.’’ Just as he had in

1932, he begged out of campaigning publicly for

his party in the national and statewide elections.

He also declined a radio station’s offer to give

weekly fifteen-minute addresses at $1,500 each,

which he thought would be exploitative of his

office.22

Garner further absolved himself of the traditional vice-presidential obligations to represent

the administration at a variety of ceremonial and

gala affairs. He adamantly protected his privacy

and his personal time with his wife, refusing

even the accompaniment of the Secret Service. ‘‘I

don’t want those constables protecting me. There

is not anybody crazy enough to shoot a VicePresident,’’ he declared.23

Thanks to the large Democratic majorities,

Garner needed to cast a tie-breaking vote in the

Senate on only two minor matters, but he still

made his presence felt as presiding officer. One

of the cagey veteran’s favorite parliamentary

tricks was to ‘‘buggy-whip’’ bills through debate

with an unexpected staccato call of ‘‘Therebeing-no-objections-the-bill-is-passed’’ and a

sudden rap of the gavel. He also descended frequently from the dais to lobby the senators in

attendance.24

The cantankerous Garner had little patience

with the flamboyant senator from Louisiana,

Huey Long. Long once asked Garner to require

all of his colleagues to stay and listen to his filibuster on the National Recovery Act, to which

Garner retorted: ‘‘In the first place the Senator

from Louisiana should not ask that. In the second

place, it would be cruel and unusual punishment.’’ Another time he remarked to humorist

Will Rogers before the convening of a session,

‘‘Will, sometimes I think the hearing in my right

ear and the vision in my right eye isn’t as good

as it used to be. Long sits on my right. . . . I may

not be able to hear or see Huey this morning.’’ 25

Long antagonized Garner on another occasion

by drawling: ‘‘Mr. President, I rise to make a par-
[ 390 ]

JOHN N. GARNER

liamentary inquiry. How should a Senator who

is half in favor of this bill and half against it cast

his vote?’’ Snapped an exasperated Garner: ‘‘Get

a saw and saw yourself in two. That’s what you

ought to do anyway!’’ 26

Roosevelt’s first term was not without a few

points of contention between the president and

his vice president, foreshadowing their later

problems. Garner had grave misgivings about

the National Recovery Act, diplomatic recognition of Russia, and the embargo clause in the

Neutrality Act. Roosevelt was somewhat dissatisfied with Garner’s choices when the Senate authorized him to select one member to the London

Economic Conference in 1933 and three to the

Nye munitions industry investigation committee. The president also suspected that Garner had

botched his plan to slip the soldier’s bonus bill

of 1935 through Congress by leaking the strategy

to his congressional friends.27

At the 1936 Democratic National Convention

in Pittsburgh, the cumbersome 1832 rule requiring that two-thirds of all delegates approve both

the presidential and vice-presidential nominations was overturned in favor of a simple majority. The rules change enabled future Democratic

presidential nominees to choose their own running mates, rather than accept the consensus of

the convention. Initiated by Roosevelt, this reform was passed largely in deference to his personal prestige. Yet Garner’s presence on the ticket also must have made the delegates feel comfortable in doing so. It is difficult to imagine the

same rule passing in 1940, when Roosevelt offered as his running mate Henry Wallace, a less

popular man within the party, who would not

likely have been approved under the former

rules.

Second Term—An Obstacle to Roosevelt

The second term of the Roosevelt-Garner administration saw the breakdown of the working

relationship between the president and vice

president. Garner objected to Roosevelt’s determination to escalate the New Deal’s centralizing

of the federal government, expanding government regulation and spending programs, and

‘‘revolutionizing’’ the Democratic party.

The first issue over which the two men had a

truly acrimonious dispute was Roosevelt’s labor

agenda. Garner objected to such New Deal prolabor legislation as the Wagner-Connery Act of

1935 and the Black-Connery bill of 1937. He

fiercely opposed organized labor’s 1936 sit-down

strikes, considering them a violation of business

owners’ property rights. When the president

proved reluctant to repudiate these tactics, Garner secretly lobbied Congress in support of efforts by Texas Representative Martin Dies, Jr.,

and South Carolina Senator James Byrnes to pass

congressional resolutions condemning the

strikes. When Republican Senator Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan gave a ringing speech on

the floor of the Senate in support of Byrnes’

amendment, Garner jumped down from his presiding seat to offer his congratulations.28

On February 5, 1937, Roosevelt called Garner

and a handful of Democratic congressional leaders to a meeting at the White House, where he

stunned them with an audacious plan to reorganize the Supreme Court. Up to six new justices

would be chosen by the president in an attempt

to ensure many years of judicial approval for his

liberal legislative agenda.

Garner himself was not among those critics

who considered the proposal to be a threat to the

judiciary’s independence, believing that ‘‘no

President can control that court.’’ However, he

was deeply concerned about the threat to party

unity posed by Roosevelt’s somewhat reckless

method of handling such a controversial proposal. Garner complained that the president sent

the plan to Congress, ‘‘without notice after saying he had no legislative program other than outlined . . . it was not in the party platform nor

was it taken after consultation with Congressional leaders who would have to put it through.

Party policy is not made by one man without

consultation with elected officials from another

branch of government.’’ 29

While never issuing a public statement against

the bill, Garner demonstrated his disapproval

with two symbolic gestures. First, he held his

nose and gave an emphatic ‘‘thumbs-down’’ sign

as the bill was introduced on the floor of the Senate. Then, during the subsequent congressional

debate, Garner suddenly departed from the cap-
[ 391 ]

JOHN N. GARNER

ital in June to return to Texas. It was the first time

he had left Washington while Congress was in

session. Roosevelt was furious. ‘‘Why in hell did

Jack have to leave at this time for?’’ he fumed,

‘‘This is a fine time to jump ship.’’ In response

to widespread speculation in the press about a

rift between the president and himself, Garner issued a public statement from Texas declaring

that his departure was in no way meant as a protest. ‘‘I asked the Boss,’’ he claimed, ‘‘and he told

me it was all right for me to go fishing.’’ Garner

eventually returned to Washington, but the

death of Senate Democratic Majority Leader Joseph Robinson in July 1937 mortally wounded

Roosevelt’s court proposal. The faithful Robinson had tenaciously led the fight for the bill on

the president’s behalf. After his passing, Roosevelt assigned that task to the unenthusiastic

Garner. Meanwhile, Roosevelt’s intervention to

help loyal New Dealer Alben Barkley succeed

Robinson as majority leader provoked resentment from many senators, as well as the vice

president. When the Judiciary Committee reduced Roosevelt’s Court packing plan to the

point where it became unrecognizable, Roosevelt

was convinced that Garner had collaborated

with the opposition. For his part, Garner blamed

Roosevelt for antagonizing the Senate by interfering in its internal affairs. Neither man completely trusted the other again. 30

Roosevelt and Garner had fundamentally different styles and philosophies of governing. Garner was a strict traditionalist in his attitudes toward party affairs and a strict and unbending

constructionist in his literal interpretations of the

constitutional doctrine of separation of powers.

He was a staunch defender of the sovereignty of

the legislature from undue interference by the

executive. Citing the low-key approach of Calvin

Coolidge as a model, he once stated ‘‘My belief

has always been in Executive leadership, not Executive rulership.’’ 31

Roosevelt, in contrast, used the powers of the

presidency to set the agenda of his party and the

tone of the legislative debate. Under Roosevelt,

the White House increasingly issued preemptive

public announcements to marshal public support

to gain political leverage. Garner objected to

Roosevelt that this threatened to ‘‘jeopardize the

legislative program by giving out premature information.’’ He complained privately that Roosevelt wanted too much power. ‘‘He has changed

in office. He does not delegate. His nature is [to]

want to do everything himself.’’ 32

Purging the Party

By 1938, the president was sufficiently frustrated by the conservative Democrats in Congress to attempt a ‘‘purge’’ of the party. He embarked on a campaign through southern and

western states to endorse liberal candidates in

primary challenges to such conservative incumbents as Senators Millard Tydings of Maryland,

Walter George of Georgia, and Guy Gillette of

Iowa. Garner argued to Roosevelt that his intervention in local elections was an unfair invasion

of a local politician’s ‘‘own constituency and his

own orbit’’ and could only provoke resentment

from voters who would regard it as ‘‘Presidential

arrogance.’’ He warned Roosevelt, ‘‘You can’t

defeat the Southern Democrats and if you defeat

the Democrats in the North you will get Republicans instead.’’ 33

This prediction proved true, as the November

elections resulted in the Republicans gaining

eighty-one House and eight Senate seats. Although only one of Roosevelt’s primary election

targets (Representative John J. O’Connor of New

York City) lost, several of Garner’s close friends

in the Senate, including Connecticut’s Augustine

Lonergan, New Hampshire’s Fred Brown, and

Wisconsin’s Francis Duffey, were among the

Democratic casualties in the general elections.

Roosevelt then further insulted conservatives by

appointing to key administrative posts several

New Dealers who had been defeated in the elections. Garner lamented to Postmaster General

James Farley that Roosevelt had ‘‘stirred up a

hornet’s nest’’ by entering into the primary

fights. ‘‘There are now twenty men—Democrats—in the Senate who will vote against anything he wants.’’ 34 In 1939, Congress denied virtually everything Roosevelt requested, including

an undistributed profits tax, government reorganization, increased funding for the Works

Progress Administration, and revision of the

neutrality laws. Convinced that the crisis of the

depression was essentially over and that contin-
[ 392 ]

JOHN N. GARNER

ued relief programs threatened to create a complacently dependent lower class, Garner considered it time to roll back some of the regulatory

legislation and ‘‘pump-priming’’ expenditures

that had been passed for emergency relief during

the first term.35

Privately, Garner confided his suspicions of

several ardent New Dealers in the Roosevelt

‘‘Brains Trust.’’ ‘‘I am not worried about the

Boss. It’s the people around him. I have no confidence in them.’’ Another time Garner claimed,

‘‘I have more honest affection for him [Roosevelt] in my little finger that they have in their

whole bodies.’’ This hostility was mutual. The

New Dealers were contemptuous of Garner’s

conservatism and his occasionally coarse behavior and disdained his somewhat shady style of

old-fashioned, back-room horse trading. Identifying Garner as a convenient scapegoat for Roosevelt’s frustrations in guiding his agenda

through Congress, liberals within the administration launched assaults to discredit his character. Harold Ickes, writing in a June 1939 issue

of Look magazine, accused Garner of ‘‘a traitorous knifing in the back of the commander in

chief.’’ 36

The coming 1940 presidential election sparked

the final break. Garner claimed that at the inauguration ceremony in 1937 he and the president

had taken a mutual pledge to retire at the end

of that term. As tumultuous events unfolded

abroad, however, it became increasingly apparent that Roosevelt intended to run for an unprecedented third term, arguing that the volatility of

the international situation made his presence

indispensable.37

In December of 1939, Garner announced that,

while he would not actively campaign, he would

not reject the presidential nomination if he were

offered it at the 1940 convention, regardless of

whether Roosevelt chose to retire or run again.

He thus became the first vice president of the

modern era to challenge his own chief executive

for the office. Garner admitted that his passive

candidacy was hopeless if Roosevelt really wanted to be reelected and that he would be happy

to retire to Uvalde. But his opposition to a third

term motivated him to join the ‘‘Stop Roosevelt’’

movement. He considered himself the only candidate with a chance of attracting enough support to convince the president to retire.

During the last two years of Roosevelt’s second

term, Garner was the consistent frontrunner

among the possible successors to Roosevelt in

public opinion polls. Although the public rarely

got to observe Jack Garner’s actions directly,

what they did know about him—or at least what

they thought they knew—captured their imagination. His wheeler-dealer image, self-made

wealth, and free-market convictions made him a

symbol of the emerging business age. At the

same time, as a rugged, individualistic frontiersman, he was a nostalgic throwback to a vanishing age, a reassuringly simple figure in an increasingly complex world. It was obvious to all

that ‘‘Cactus Jack’’ had earned his nickname because he was a hardy survivor with a tough hide,

stumpy stature, prickly disposition, and deep

Texas roots.

Conservative congressmen praised Garner to

their favorite reporters. The press, in turn, was

usually eager to carry ‘‘good copy’’ about the

legendary cowboy vice president who rode herd

on Washington and plotted in the cloakrooms.

Complained one contemporary critic, ‘‘the newspaper men have never lost an opportunity to

apotheosize his mediocrity.’’ Despite this buildup, Roosevelt correctly doubted that Garner possessed enough ambition or standing to mount a

serious challenge in 1940. Yet Garner believed

Roosevelt resented the press attention that was

often lavished on his vice president. Postmaster

General James Farley noted that Roosevelt sometimes seemed quick to blame Garner for the administration’s legislative failures and that the

president ‘‘did not like to see the trees grow too

tall around him.’’ 38

Hitler’s offensive across Western Europe in

1940 and the patriotic rallying around the president that the crisis inspired effectively precluded

any challenge to Roosevelt’s nomination. He was

renominated on the first ballot at the Democratic

National Convention in Chicago with the votes

of 946 delegates. Farley and Garner were far behind with 72 and 61 votes, respectively. Not only

did Garner not campaign for Roosevelt, he could

not even bring himself to vote in the 1940 election. He went home to Uvalde, where he lived
[ 393 ]

JOHN N. GARNER

in retirement until his death at the age of ninetyeight twenty-seven years later.

Conclusion

Years after his retirement from politics, Garner

mused that the country might have benefited

more had he retained the speakership and used

it to check the growth of Franklin Roosevelt’s

ambitions and powers in much the way Speaker

Cannon had restrained Theodore Roosevelt. ‘‘I

think I could have talked him out of a lot of

things. That could have been my contribution. I

would have had no desire to dictate his decisions,’’ Garner told Bascom Timmons, his newspaper correspondent biographer, ‘‘but there

would have been times when I would have told

him what he could not do.’’ 39 In a 1957 interview, Garner lamented, ‘‘If I hadn’t been nominated for Vice President, I might still be speaker

today.’’ This claim does not seem farfetched,

given Garner’s relish for the position, his robust

health, and the preservation of a Democratic majority in the House for all but two congresses

during the rest of his long life.40

The memory of his sour second term with Garner encouraged Roosevelt to redefine drastically

what he was looking for in a vice president in

1940. Henry Agard Wallace was in many ways

the antithesis of Garner. As vice president, Wallace was without either the inclination or access

to make his own clandestine alliances and deals

that might undermine the president’s authority.

While Garner was a parochial thinker with isolationist convictions, Wallace was fascinated with

foreign affairs and peoples and entertained ideas

about how Americans could help solve their

problems. An administrator rather than a politician like Garner, Wallace lacked legislative experience and extensive party ties. To some degree,

Wallace resembled the corporate vice president

that Roosevelt had advocated in 1920, who could

handle ‘‘matters of detail.’’ 41

The vice-presidency of John Nance Garner

stands as a watershed in the evolution of the office. His first term marked the apex of the parliamentarian as vice president; his second term

represented its nadir. Perhaps no other vice

president had as much impact, both positive and

negative, on the legislative efforts of his administration. Garner was a specialist in an office that

would soon require generalists. He was the last

vice president whose duties were primarily legislative. Garner was also the last of the largely

silent, Washington-based vice presidents before

the coming age of modern telecommunications

and travel enabled future vice presidents to assume higher profiles as representatives of their

administrations, as wide-ranging campaigners,

public spokesmen, and foreign emissaries.42

During his first term, Garner may have made

a more valuable and positive contribution to his

administration than any of his predecessors, but

his actions in the second term did more to undermine the administration than those of any vice

president since John C. Calhoun. Chosen to balance the ticket in 1932, Garner felt obligated to

use all of the formal and informal powers of his

office to protect the interests of the party’s conservative wing that had, against his better

judgment, moved him from Speaker to vice

president.
[ 394 ]

NOTES 1 Franklin D. Roosevelt, ‘‘Can the Vice President Be Useful?’’ Saturday Evening Post 193 (October 16, 1920): 8. Roosevelt also wrote that the very ambiguity of the office placed

its occupant in a unique position to serve as an ‘‘additional

set of eyes and ears’’ and as ‘‘a kind of roving commission’’

to study the fundamental structural problems in government, ‘‘especially where the jurisdiction or control does not

rest in one department but partly in one and partly in others.’’ By the time Roosevelt finally attempted to realize his

longtime ambition to radically reorganize the federal government in 1937, however, he chose a commission of academicians rather than his vice president to study the matter

and make recommendations. See Richard Polenberg, Reorganizing Roosevelt’s Government, 1936–1939 (Cambridge,

MA, 1966). 2Attempts to solve the mysteries of Garner’s career are

not helped by the fact that he burned all of his personal

papers soon after retiring from Washington. ‘‘I didn’t want

to go through the files myself,’’ he explained. ‘‘I needed all

my own energies for present activities.’’ Bascom N.

Timmons, Garner of Texas: A Personal History (New York,

1948), p. 286. An excellent bibliography of sources on Garner can be found in Donald R. Kennon, The Speakers of the

U.S. House of Representatives: A Bibliography, 1789–1984 (Baltimore, 1986), pp. 226–36. 3 See Mrs. John N. [Marietta] Garner, ‘‘30 Years of Dictation,’’ Good Housekeeping 94 (May 1932): 28. 4 For an account of Garner’s maneuvers for position and

influence within his party, see Alex Arnett, ‘‘Garner versus

Kitchin: A Study of Craft and Statecraft’’ in Vera Largent,

ed., The Walter Clinton Jackson Essays in the Social Sciences

(Chapel Hill, NC, 1942), pp. 133–45; Ronald M. Peters, Jr.,

The American Speakership: The Office in Historical Perspective

(Baltimore, 1990), p. 111. 5D. B. Hardeman and Donald C. Bacon, Rayburn: A Biography (Austin, TX, 1987), pp. 114, 303; Timmons, p. 122. 6Timmons, pp. 110, 293.

7The 14 House members who died between the November 4, 1930, elections and the December 7, 1931, convening

of the 72nd Congress were Ernest Ackerman (R-NJ), James

Aswell (D-LA), Henry Cooper (R-WI), Charles Edwards (DGA), Fletcher Hale (R-NH), George Graham (R-PA), Nicholas Longworth (R-OH), Samuel Major (D-MO), Charles

Mooney (D-OH), David O’Connell (D-NY), Matthew

O’Malley (D-NY), John Quayle (D-NY), Bird Vincent (RMI), and Harry Wurzbach (R-TX). 8 Hardeman and Bacon, pp. 116, 346; Allan Andrew

Michie, Dixie Demagogues (New York, 1939), p. 25. 9 For highly critical views of Garner’s speakership see

George Milburn, ‘‘The Statesmanship of Mr. Garner,’’ Harper’s Magazine (November 1932), pp. 669–82; Jordan A.

Schwarz, ‘‘John Nance Garner and the Sales Tax Rebellion

of 1932,’’ Journal of Southern History 30 (May 1964): 162–80;

and Jordan A. Schwarz, The Interregnum of Despair: Hoover,

Congress and the Depression (Urbana, IL, 1970), chapter 5. 10Milburn, p. 679.

11Roosevelt waited until February 2, 1932, to announce

his own repudiation of the League of Nations, after Hearst

had endorsed Garner. Irving G. Williams, The Rise of the Vice

Presidency (Washington, DC, 1956), p. 150. 12 Schwarz, ‘‘John Nance Garner and the Sales Tax Rebellion of 1932,’’ p. 165; Douglas Craig, After Wilson: The Struggle for the Democratic Party, 1920–1934 (Chapel Hill, NC,

1992), p. 244. 13 Hardeman and Bacon, pp. 137–38; David Robertson, Sly

and Able: A Political Biography of James F. Byrnes (New York,

1994), pp. 138–40. 14Williams, p. 152.

15Timmons, p. 174.

16 Jules Witcover, Crapshoot: Rolling the Dice on the Vice

Presidency (New York, 1992), p. 400; Timmons, pp. 176, 178. 17 See James Patterson, Congressional Conservatism and the

New Deal (Lexington, KY, 1967). 18 James A. Farley, Jim Farley’s Story: The Roosevelt Years

(New York, 1948) pp. 91, 163; James A. Farley, Behind the

Ballots: The Personal History of a Politician (New York, 1973). 19Darrell St. Claire, Assistant Secretary of the Senate, Oral

History Interviews, December 1976-April 1978 (U.S. Senate

Historical Office, Washington, DC); John Michael Romano,

‘‘The Emergence of John Nance Garner as a Figure in American National Politics, 1924–1941,’’ (Ph.D. dissertation, St.

John’s University, 1974), p. 231. 20Timmons, pp. 182, 183; Patterson, p. 40; Michie, p. 39.

21Williams, pp. 159, 175.

22Timmons, pp. 140, 202; U.S. News and World Report, November 21, 1958, p. 107. 23Timmons, p. 208.

24Besides presiding regularly over the Senate, he also frequented the Senate Democrats’ party conferences. See Romano, pp. 185, 212. 25Timmons, p. 186. In fact, Garner admitted in an interview in U.S. News and World Report, November 21, 1958, pp.

101–2, that he had been diagnosed as permanently hard of

hearing in his left ear sometime during the Taft administration but had managed to keep the fact a secret throughout

his career. 26 Paul Boller, Congressional Anecdotes (New York, 1991),

p. 255. 27Romano, pp. 219, 268; Farley, Jim Farley’s Story, p. 54. 28 Patterson, p. 137.

29Timmons, pp. 219, 225.

30 Farley, Jim Farley’s Story, p. 84; Henry M. Hyde, ‘‘White

House No-Man,’’ Saturday Evening Post 25 (June 25, 1938):

23.
[ 395 ]

JOHN N. GARNER

31Timmons, pp. 291–92.

32 Ibid., pp. 228, 255.

33 Ibid., pp. 234–35.

34 Farley, p. 137.

35Romano, p. 291; Timmons, pp. 291–92.

36 Farley, Jim Farley’s Story, p. 206; Ickes quoted in Romano, p. 99. 37 See Bernard Donahoe, Private Plans and Public Dangers

(South Bend, IN, 1965). 38Milburn, p. 669; Farley, Jim Farley’s Story, pp. 230, 168,

172, 70. 39Timmons, p. 279.

40U.S. News and World Report, March 8, 1957, p. 68. See

also U.S. News and World Report, November, 21, 1958, pp.

98–105, and January 16, 1967, pp. 44–45. Garner’s greatest

contribution to the office of the Speaker may have occurred

during his vice-presidency, when in 1936 he endorsed his

longtime apprentice Sam Rayburn for House majority leader, the stepping stone to his speakership. 41Garner had a low opinion of his successor, whom he

considered ‘‘a dangerous character . . . not because he’s bad

at heart, but because he doesn’t know where he’s going.’’

Farley, Jim Farley’s Story, p. 205. 42 Ironically, the parochial Garner became the first vice

president to be sent abroad. In 1935, he led a delegation to

the Far East, although he merely silently attended ceremonies as an official representative while Secretary of War

George H. Dern spoke for the president. Later that year,

Garner went to Mexico as part of the ‘‘Good Neighbor’’ policy and gave a speech on the Laredo Bridge. Williams, p.

162.

[ 397 ]

Chapter 33

HENRY AGARD WALLACE

1941–1945
HENRY A. WALLACE
[ 399 ]

Chapter 33

HENRY AGARD WALLACE

33d Vice President: 1941–1945

No matter what he does, it is always going to seem faintly ridiculous, and no matter how he acts,

it is always going to seem faintly pathetic—at least to the cold-eyed judgments of the Hill.

—ALLEN DRURY

Prefaced by the stormy Democratic nominating convention of 1940, the vice-presidency of

Henry A. Wallace concluded with the equally

tempestuous 1944 convention. In 1940, when

Vice President John Nance Garner broke with

President Franklin D. Roosevelt and withdrew to

Texas, Roosevelt designated Wallace as his running mate over the considerable objection of

many convention delegates. Four years later, in

1944, Roosevelt jettisoned Wallace in favor of

Harry S. Truman, who then succeeded to the

presidency following Roosevelt’s death. During

his single term, Henry Wallace became more involved in administrative and foreign policy matters than any of his predecessors. Although

widely judged a failure as vice president, Wallace was in many ways a forerunner of the modern vice presidents, who often serve as executive

assistant and international emissary for the

president.

As Roosevelt planned to run for a third term

in 1940, he wanted to revolutionize the role of

the vice president and make the office into an

‘‘additional set of eyes and ears.’’ He sought

someone who could handle administrative questions and large national policies without being

a member of the cabinet. As an active secretary

of agriculture and a committed New Dealer,

Henry Wallace seemed the ideal person for the

job. But Wallace’s visionary social liberalism, his

mysticism, his curiously shy and introspective

personal demeanor, and his political insensitivity, all prevented him from gathering the support

from congressional leaders that would have enabled him to sustain a successful political career

in Washington. Because few senators came to

know Wallace personally, they often judged his

character on the basis of his poorly delivered

speeches and unusual appearance. Journalist

Allen Drury, who observed the vice president

often from the Senate press gallery, described

Wallace as follows: ‘‘A shock of silver-graying

hair sweeps over to the right of his head in a

great shaggy arc. He looks like a hayseed, talks

like a prophet, and acts like an embarassed

schoolboy.’’ Drury recorded sympathetically in

his diary that he found it difficult to ‘‘put into

exact words the combination of feelings he

arouses. The man’s integrity and his idealism

and his sainted other-worldliness are never in

question; it’s just the problem of translating them

into everyday language and making them jibe

with his shy, embarrassed, uncomfortable goodfellowship that is so difficult.’’ Drury considered

Henry Wallace doomed by fate. ‘‘No matter

what he does, it is always going to seem faintly

ridiculous, and no matter how he acts, it is always going to seem faintly pathetic—at least to

the cold-eyed judgments of the Hill.’’ 1

Youth

Henry A. Wallace was born on October 7, 1888,

near the town of Orient, Iowa, an oddly appropriate location for someone who would become
[ 400 ]

HENRY A. WALLACE

so fascinated with oriental philosophy. Wallace

was also deeply influenced by Iowa’s rural culture. The agrarian lifestyle and communal society of turn-of-the-century Iowa formed his values, especially the idealism for which he is remembered. As a student at Iowa State College

he studied plant genetics and crossbreeding. He

discovered and patented a successful strain of

corn that produced a greater yield while resisting

disease better than normal corn. This triumph allowed the young Wallace to found his own business to manufacture and distribute the plants, a

venture that gave him valuable experience for

his later career in public service.

The future vice president was actually the

third Henry Wallace. The first, his grandfather,

had been a Presbyterian preacher turned farmer,

who became editor of the Iowa Homestead and

publisher of Wallace’s Farmer. These heavily read

agricultural journals spread the Wallace name

over the Iowa countryside and throughout the

rural Midwest. The vice president’s father,

Henry Cantwell Wallace, served as secretary of

agriculture in the administrations of presidents

Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge from

1921 until his death in 1924. Henry Agard Wallace took over as publisher of the family journal

when his father went to Washington, continuing

in that role until he himself moved to Washington as secretary of agriculture in 1933.2

The Wallaces had traditionally been a Republican family, but the shock of the Great Depression and its impact on rural America forced

Henry A. Wallace to reevaluate his political affiliations. Disgruntled by the Coolidge and Hoover agricultural policies, Wallace threw his support to the Democrats. In 1932, Wallace supported Franklin Roosevelt, who in turn selected

Wallace as his secretary of agriculture.

Secretary of Agriculture

An active secretary of agriculture, Wallace

took to heart the needs and fears of his agricultural constituents. In addition to helping American farmers sustain themselves during the economic downturn, his Department of Agriculture

oversaw the creation and development of the

food stamp and school lunch programs that

greatly aided urban America. In 1934, Wallace

published a book about the economic turbulence

of the depression and its repercussions on farmers, which he titled New Frontiers. In it Wallace

outlined the visionary politics that he employed

in his subsequent writings and speeches. Later

observers would compare both the title and the

themes of this book with the ideas espoused by

John F. Kennedy.3

Drastic times called for drastic measures. A

firm supporter of government economic intervention, Wallace vigorously implemented the

controversial measures of the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933. Never before in peacetime,

had the federal government sought to regulate

production in American farming, with government planning designed to battle overproduction and low prices. Additionally, Wallace offered hog and cotton farmers a single opportunity to improve their stagnating markets by

ploughing under ten million acres of cotton and

slaughtering six million pigs. For these losses,

the government would issue relief checks totalling millions of dollars. Although it earned him

the nickname ‘‘The Greatest Butcher in Christendom,’’ the program essentially worked, and the

market experienced a 50-percent rise in prices.

Wallace scorned those who ridiculed his plans

without considering the logic behind them, observing, ‘‘Perhaps they think that farmers should

run a sort of old-folks home for hogs.’’ 4

Having proved himself an effective, energetic

cabinet member, Wallace remained in office

through Roosevelt’s first two terms. By 1940,

with Europe plunged into war, there was talk of

an unprecedented third term, and Wallace was

among those who endorsed the president’s reelection. Because Vice President John Nance Garner, who aspired to the presidency himself,

strongly opposed a third term, Roosevelt sought

a new running mate for the 1940 election once

he made the decision to run. FDR’s choice of

Wallace marked a turning point in the history of

the vice-presidency. Never before had the president so openly made the selection. In the past,

the main function of a vice president was usually

to balance the ticket, to unite the party, and to

pull in voters not normally drawn by the presidential candidate himself, with comparatively

little attention paid to the compatibility of the
[ 401 ]

HENRY A. WALLACE

two men. Presidential candidates generally acceded to the wishes of their party conventions

in completing the ticket.

The 1940 Election

The Republicans in 1940 had chosen a dynamic

darkhorse candidate for president, Wendell Willkie, and to balance the ticket the convention had

selected the Republican Senate minority leader,

Charles McNary of Oregon. During the 1920s,

McNary had chaired the Senate Agriculture

Committee and had won national attention, particularly in agricultural areas, for his sponsorship

of the McNary-Haugen bills. Vetoed by presidents Coolidge and Hoover, these bills were

forerunners of the New Deal’s agricultural program. Seeking to neutralize McNary’s popularity

in the farm belt, FDR decided to make his secretary of agriculture his vice president. Roosevelt

also felt confident that, if anything happened to

him, Wallace would vigorously pursue the liberal objectives of the New Deal. Democratic convention delegates were furious, however, since

they considered the former Republican Wallace

as an outsider, lacking any of the qualities of a

typical politician. When warned that the delegates might revolt, Roosevelt made it clear that

‘‘they will go for Wallace or I won’t run, and you

can jolly well tell them so.’’ Party leaders reluctantly capitulated to the president’s demand and

nominated Wallace, but the convention’s mood

was so sour that Wallace decided not to make

an acceptance speech.5

Shortly after Wallace became the vice-presidential candidate, stories circulated about his religious beliefs. Having abandoned the Calvinism

of his youth, he had studied Catholicism, Judaism, Buddhism, Islam, Zoroastrianism, and

Christian Science, finally settling into the Episcopal Church in Washington. But Wallace had

also fallen under the influence of a Russian-born

‘‘guru’’ named Nicholas Roerich. During the

1930s, Wallace had written a series of letters to

one of Roerich’s associates, detailing his spiritual

beliefs and his candid observations about contemporary political leaders. These so-called

‘‘guru letters’’ fell into the hands of Republicans,

who considered releasing them to embarrass

Wallace during the campaign. Democrats countered with evidence that presidential candidate

Willkie had carried on an extramarital affair. Although the two parties eventually agreed to a

quid pro quo that suppressed both the ‘‘guru letters’’ and the Willkie affair, the news shook some

of Roosevelt’s confidence in his running mate.

Nonetheless, the Democratic team swept the

election.6

Wartime Vice President

When he first took office, Wallace found the

job of vice president untaxing. During the early

months of his tenure, he had more time for tennis

than ever before, but as the United States moved

closer to war the vice president began to assume

unprecedented duties, being assigned executive

tasks to allow Roosevelt more freedom to deal

with international affairs. One of Wallace’s biographers, Richard Walton, has asserted that

‘‘never before, nor since, has a Vice President

had so much direct executive authority.’’ Others

referred to him as the first ‘‘working’’ vice president. Named a member of FDR’s secret ‘‘war

cabinet,’’ Wallace chaired the Economic Defense

Board, the Supply Priorities and Allocations

Board, and the Board of Economic Warfare. Journalists began to refer to him as ‘‘Mr. Assistant

President.’’ 7

Divided into an Office of Imports, Office of Exports, and Office of War Analysis, the Board of

Economic Warfare (BEW) supported the Allied

war effort through procurement of strategic resources. As chairman, Wallace freed himself to

deal with long-term policy matters by delegating

the day-to-day management of the BEW to Milo

Perkins, an associate from the Agriculture Department. Like many special boards created by

President Roosevelt, the BEW came in for its

share of interdepartmental bickering, rivalries,

and conflicts of authority. Although Roosevelt

expressly forbade federal government agencies

to publicly criticize each other during the war,

Wallace, after eight years of fighting within the

cabinet, failed to recognize that the president

was serious about this order.8 Wallace’s diary

traces his fight to gain greater autonomy for the

BEW and his many clashes with cabinet officers

like Secretary of State Cordell Hull and Secretary

of Commerce Jesse Jones. These established bu-
[ 402 ]

HENRY A. WALLACE

reaucrats did not relish the thought of an activist

vice president assuming responsibilities that

their departments normally held. Wallace believed that the wartime emergency required

drastic action to deal with problems like rubber

shortages, while Jones and Hull believed that existing mechanisms could solve even wartime demands. Wallace’s assertion of his authority to

purchase materiel vital to the war effort spawned

conspicuous political battles.9

When Roosevelt signed an executive order in

April 1942 allowing the BEW to negotiate contracts with foreign governments, Secretary Hull

saw it as an attempt to create a second Department of State. Wallace’s goals for social justice

ran against the grain of Hull’s State Department

policies. For instance, Wallace was firmly convinced that the Latin American rubber supply

could be increased dramatically if the living

standards of that region’s rubber workers were

raised to reduce the incidence of chronic malnutrition and malaria. He attempted to force negotiated contracts to provide for socially beneficial improvements to the Latin American infrastructure, with the United States funding half the

cost of these programs. Wallace’s acquisition of

executive authority had been unpopular with the

rank and file in Congress, and most members

supported Hull, a former senator, in his attacks

on the BEW and its chairman. A growing consensus that Wallace had pushed a too active program in Latin America caused Roosevelt to issue

another executive order, which preserved the

State Department’s monopoly on negotiations

with foreign governments, a blow aimed directly

at Wallace’s authority.10

The BEW controversy climaxed in February

1943, when Wallace tried to place the purchasing

authority of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) under the BEW’s jurisdiction. An infuriated Commerce Secretary Jesse Jones roundly

denounced what he considered Wallace’s arrogant action. When Wallace retaliated by accusing

Jones of delaying shipments of quinine to marines dying of malaria, the imbroglio became too

hot for Roosevelt to ignore. The embattled vice

president wrote to the president, asking for either complete vindication for his actions in the

matter or relief of his duties as chairman of the

BEW. Roosevelt responded on July 15, 1943, by

dissolving the BEW and reconstituting its function under a new Foreign Economic Administration, headed by Leo Crowley, a known supporter

of Jones. By revealing the strained relations between the president and vice president, the order

substantially weakened Wallace’s position in

Washington politics. Until then, Wallace had

been ‘‘the ideal and inspiration of every little

world-planner in Washington,’’ wrote the commentator Raymond Moley. ‘‘After Roosevelt

abolished the BEW . . . it was clear to them that

they must forsake their high priest and follow

the president.’’ 11

As Senate President

In spite of his earlier success as agriculture secretary, Wallace demonstrated acute political insensitivity in his failure at BEW. ‘‘I did not look

on myself as very much of a politician,’’ he said,

revealingly. Wallace disliked the formalities and

superficialities of the political world, particularly

as practiced on Capitol Hill, and he lacked the

small-talk abilities critical in a system so dependent on unofficial meetings and social politics.

Senate staff member Richard Riedel judged Wallace ‘‘the least congressional of all the Vice Presidents’’ and recorded that he possessed ‘‘none of

the political talents that enable public figures to

mingle with and influence each other.’’ 12

Wallace never fit into the Senate’s club-like atmosphere, in part because he refused to join the

club. One of his first acts as president of the Senate was to close down the private bar that ‘‘Cactus Jack’’ Garner had maintained to entertain

senators in his office—Wallace himself neither

drank nor smoked. Later, when Wallace hit a

home run during a congressional baseball game,

a senator observed that it clearly ‘‘furnished

more pleasure [for him] than any political contest.’’ The Spartan, health-conscious Wallace

chose to demonstrate his physical prowess over

the men who held him at a political arm’s length.

During a friendly boxing match, he knocked out

Louisiana Senator Allen Ellender, who had been

less than supportive of Wallace’s vicepresidency.13

As the Senate’s presiding officer, Wallace

found his duties monotonous and boring. He
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HENRY A. WALLACE

disdained the senators’ right of unlimited debate

and slumped down ‘‘unceremoniously’’ in the

presiding officer’s chair during the proceedings.

When he tried to intervene in debate, the senators slapped him down. Wallace once suffered

an embarrassing browbeating from Tennessee’s

crusty Kenneth McKellar, who had been arguing

over the rules of the Senate for several hours.

When Wallace, from the chair, declared this tirade a ‘‘parliamentary trick,’’ McKellar launched

into an attack on the presiding officer and ultimately forced Wallace to apologize for his impetuous insult. Left only with his constitutional

role of breaking tie votes, Wallace was able to

cast only four votes—the most satisfying being

to prevent the Senate from terminating the Civilian Conservation Corps.14

A Roving Vice President

It soon became clear that Wallace’s aspirations

lay beyond the Senate chamber. More interested

in the issues of the world, he became the first vice

president to take an active role in foreign policy,

serving as the president’s personal ambassador.

Wallace made his first trip in late 1940, when

Roosevelt sent him to the inauguration of Mexican President Camacho, whose disputed election

threatened Mexican political stability and U.S.

access to Mexican trade. Having studied the language, Wallace eagerly delivered a speech in

Spanish to the crowd gathered at the Mexican

capital—an effort that won him thunderous applause. In 1943 Wallace made an official tour of

Costa Rica, Panama, Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia. At every stop he took pains

to meet the common people and converse with

them in their native tongue. He traveled without

a large entourage and refused to accept costly

ceremonial gifts. The images of bitter suffering

and poverty that he encountered in these underdeveloped countries convinced Wallace of the

need for U.S. humanitarian aid and strengthened

his resolve to struggle for a lasting postwar

peace.15

In 1944 the president asked Wallace to make

an even more ambitious and dangerous trip to

China and the Soviet Union. Historians continue

to speculate on whether Roosevelt expected Wallace to accomplish anything diplomatically or

simply wanted the vice president out of the

country while preparing to dump him from the

Democratic ticket. Whatever was at stake, Wallace felt exuberant and optimistic about the possibilities of his venture. FDR asked him to foster

greater cooperation between Chiang Kai-shek

and the Communist forces in China and to prod

the Nationalists into stepping up their campaign

against the Japanese.16

Arriving in Siberia, Wallace tried again to meet

the indigenous population as he had in Latin

America. Even though he spoke little Russian

and had to use an interpreter, he insisted on delivering an address in Russian at Irkutsk. He visited the collective farms in several Siberian villages and seemed most impressed with their productivity. These observations planted the seeds

of Wallace’s respectful impression of the Soviet

Union. Later analysis revealed that his visit had

been considerably more orchestrated by the Soviets than Wallace or the rest of his party had

realized. Wallace saw the famous Soviet Academy of Science but not the advanced atomic experiments being conducted there. Similarly, he

was never taken to visit the nearby forced-labor

camps and consequently gained a distorted view

of Soviet life.17

After touring Russia, Wallace’s modest entourage of diplomats arrived in Chungking to begin

their most difficult and least successful task—

trying to solve China’s major wartime problems.

Unprepared for the sad state of Chiang Kaishek’s regime, Wallace concluded that cooperation between the Nationalists and Communists

would be nearly impossible. Nevertheless, he

managed to negotiate an agreement by which

U.S. forces were to enter northern China to set

up weather stations to aid in bombing raids

against the Japanese. Although the publicity

from Wallace’s first two goodwill tours had been

highly positive and had helped him to redefine

the vice president’s role in foreign relations, his

final journey gravely damaged his political career.18

Wallace’s favorable view of the Soviet Union

became increasingly pronounced and more

widely discussed. Shortly before his marathon

tour of Russia and China, Wallace wrote an article for the New York Times, called ‘‘The Dangers
[ 404 ]

HENRY A. WALLACE

of American Fascism,’’ in which he condemned

the rising tide of anti-Soviet propaganda. Seeking to break down the wall of ignorance between

the Russian and American cultures, he anticipated that the two peoples would eventually

find they shared the same hopes and fears and

could live together in friendship. His visit to Russia, and the warm welcome he received there,

further softened his views. Wallace compared

the Soviet citizens he visited in Siberia with the

farm families of the Midwest whom he had

known as a boy. His warm regard for the Soviet

Union earned him a liberal identity during the

war and a heretical image during the cold war

that followed.19

Wallace’s Idealism

Wallace envisioned a postwar era governed by

an international peacekeeping force and an international court, rather than through balance-ofpower politics. His plan also called for an end

to European imperialism in Asia and Africa. In

an address to the Free World Association on May

8, 1942, Wallace outlined his ‘‘Century of the

Common Man,’’ in which he endorsed federal

support for education and collective health care

for workers. These proposals would have required continuing the initiatives of the New Deal

era that Wallace so admired, but the administration lacked sufficient political capital to promote

an expanded program of domestic social welfare,

because of the enhanced executive war powers

adopted by the president. More than the New

Deal inspired Henry Wallace. Christian morality

and the social gospel formed the fundamental inspiration behind his speeches. As a product of

Protestant liberalism, he adhered to the principles of the Sermon on the Mount and saw himself as bound to accomplish the work of the

Lord.20

President Roosevelt admired and sought to

harness his vice president’s idealistic liberalism,

while at the same time trying to teach him how

the political machinery of Washington really operated. Roosevelt thought that Wallace was a few

years ahead of his time and expected that his

ideas would eventually be realized. Yet Wallace’s inability to grasp Washington politics led

to a marked decline in the vice president’s stature on Capitol Hill in the final year of his tenure.

Growing hostility between the executive branch

and the conservatively oriented Congress finally

convinced FDR that Wallace had become an expensive political liability.

The 1944 Election

As the 1944 elections approached, four influential Democrats decided to ensure that Wallace

was not nominated in the next Democratic convention. Terming themselves the ‘‘Conspiracy of

the Pure in Heart,’’ the four consisted of Democratic party chairman Robert Hannegan, Postmaster General Frank Walker, New York Democratic party chief Ed Flynn, and Democratic party

treasurer Edwin Pauley. The Democratic leadership had unsuccessfully opposed Wallace in the

1940 nomination convention, but this time they

had the advantage of Roosevelt’s declining

health and his increasing preoccupation with

wartime diplomacy.21

Roosevelt himself appears to have grown dissatisfied with the vice president’s record. Wallace had not proved himself to be the political

partner Roosevelt had hoped he would become.

The president’s motivation in sending Wallace

overseas at a critical political time at home may

therefore have been devious. The Asian journey

allowed Wallace no time to campaign and made

him vulnerable to political attack. When Wallace

returned to Washington’s National Airport, he

faced reporters who asked if he planned to withdraw from the race. The vice president replied,

‘‘I am seeing the president at 4:30. I have a report

to make on a mission to China. I do not want

to talk politics.’’

But Wallace did try to make a compelling case

that he should continue as FDR’s running mate,

indicating that he had the support of labor leaders and rank and file Democrats.22 In that conversation on July 11, Roosevelt appeared sympathetic to keeping Wallace on the team. Wallace

asked the president to communicate his support

in writing to the Democratic leadership, assuming that the endorsement of the terribly popular

chief executive would resolve the matter as it

had four years earlier. Roosevelt’s letter, however, emphasized that he had no desire to dictate

to the convention. This approach left the door
[ 405 ]

HENRY A. WALLACE

open to the ‘‘Conspiracy of the Pure in Heart’’

to find a replacement for Wallace. These party

leaders first considered the director of the Office

of War Mobilization, James F. Byrnes of South

Carolina, a former senator and Supreme Court

justice, before finally settling on Senator Harry

Truman of Missouri. In effect, FDR had astutely

removed his hand from the process, knowing full

well what would happen to Wallace without his

active support.23

Nonetheless, at the 1944 Democratic convention in Chicago, Wallace showed surprising popularity among the delegates, threatening to ruin

the Democratic leadership’s carefully orchestrated plan to dump him. After his rousing

speech, cheering delegates began to shout for

‘‘Wallace in ’44.’’ The convention chairman, Indiana Senator Samuel D. Jackson, noted the

crowd’s enthusiasm and feared that Wallace

might win on the first ballot. He therefore called

for an adjournment until the next day, blaming

fire code infractions due to the more than capacity crowd at the convention center. Although the

nays drowned out the ayes on the motion, the

chairman declared the session adjourned. During the night, Roosevelt’s ambiguous letter of

support circulated among the delegates and undermined Wallace’s position. The next day, the

delegates selected Senator Truman for vice president. Jubilant Democratic leaders later boasted of

their role in the affair. Party chairman Hannegan

told friends that his epitaph should read, ‘‘Here

lies the man who kept Henry Wallace from being

President of the United States.’’ 24

Commerce Secretary

Although defeated for renomination, Wallace

did not retire from politics. His active campaigning for FDR’s fourth term led the president to reward his loyalty with appointment as secretary

of commerce. Some have suggested that Roosevelt believed the Senate would never confirm

Wallace. In his letter firing Jesse Jones as commerce secretary, FDR admitted that Wallace’s

appointment was a repayment for his ‘‘utmost

devotion to our cause.’’ This letter caused a

storm of debate in Congress and the press. Members of Congress expressed serious doubt about

Wallace’s abilities and were particularly disturbed at the prospect that he would take charge

of the billions of dollars of loans made by the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC). As a

compromise, senators who wished to let the

president have his appointment yet shuddered

at giving their former presiding officer power,

voted to transfer the money-lending responsibilities of the RFC out of the Commerce Department’s jurisdiction. Stripped of his economic influence, Wallace was confirmed.25

Wallace’s short career directing the Commerce

Department was racked with controversy.

Eighty-two days after Wallace left office as vice

president, Franklin Roosevelt died, making

Harry Truman president. Truman’s administration took a decidedly hard-line turn against the

Soviet Union, a policy that, coupled with the increasing influence of conservatives in Truman’s

cabinet, confounded and alienated Wallace. Expressing his disapproval of Truman’s foreign

policy, Wallace wrote a twelve-page letter urging

the United States to exercise caution in abandoning its powerful wartime ally. Wallace firmly believed that the only way to end the spread of

communism was to raise the world’s standards

of living. In a speech at Madison Square Garden

in September 1946, Wallace warned that American foreign policy towards Russia could lead to

a third world war. Although Wallace had previously cleared his remarks with Truman, his

speech occurred at the very time Secretary of

State James Byrnes was negotiating with Soviet

authorities in Paris. Byrnes charged that Wallace’s speech had undermined U.S. policy and

suggested damaging disunity within the administration. Shortly thereafter, Truman fired Wallace as secretary of commerce.26

Later Years

Wallace’s final public action was a failed bid

for the presidency in 1948. Still commanding a

modest following from left-wing groups, he ran

on the Progressive ticket, campaigning against

Truman, the Republican candidate Thomas E.

Dewey, and the Dixiecrat candidate Strom Thurmond. Support from the Communist party damaged Wallace’s campaign by alienating many liberals and other voters. The aggressive actions of

the Soviets in Berlin and Czechoslovakia also
[ 406 ]

HENRY A. WALLACE

turned voters against Wallace. The former vice

president had little impact on the election, except

by capturing enough votes in New York to throw

that state to Dewey. Rather than present himself

as the liberal, internationalist alternative to the

cold warriors, Wallace had bolted to a third

party. This action, combined with the walkout of

conservative southern Democrats over the issue

of civil rights, made Truman appear to be the

centrist candidate carrying on the traditions of

Roosevelt and the New Deal, thus enabling him

to win the upset victory of the century.

Following his defeat in 1948, Henry Wallace

retired from official political life. He still believed

in his concept of world peace and worked for social justice in Latin America, travelling there on

numerous occasions and persuading foundations to support the region’s developing nations.

In retirement, Wallace continued his genetic experimentation on various strains of corn and

other crops, a scientific inquiry that provided

him with the satisfaction his political career had

lacked. At the end of his life, as he suffered from

Lou Gehrig’s Disease, Wallace continued to reflect on international issues and worried about

the United States’ deepening involvement in

Vietnam. He traced the origins of that war back

to the beginning of the cold war, ‘‘when I was

getting the hell kicked out of me for suggesting

that we were taking on more than we could

chew.’’ Wallace died on November 18, 1965, in

Danbury, Connecticut.27

Henry Wallace will be remembered as an unusual vice president because of the circumstances of his rise and fall from power and

because of his unprecedented executive responsibilities. His foreign travels also forged new political paths that later vice presidents would follow. Clearly Wallace’s personal eccentricities

contributed to his political failure in Washington

politics. Yet, viewed in retrospect from after the

end of the cold war, his visionary social liberalism—so radically different from the politics of

Harry Truman—raises the question of how

world events might have been different had the

vote for vice president at the 1944 Democratic

convention not been delayed overnight.
[ 407 ]

NOTES 1 Jules Witcover, Crapshoot: Rolling the Dice on the Vice

Presidency (New York, 1992), pp. 405–6; Allen Drury, A Senate Journal, 1943–1945 (New York, 1963), pp. 137–38. 2 J. Samuel Walker, Henry A. Wallace and American Foreign

Policy (Westport, CT, 1976.), pp. 3–8. 3Witcover, pp. 77–78.

4 Norman D. Markowitz, The Rise and Fall of the People’s

Century: Henry A. Wallace and American Liberalism, 1941–1948

(New York, 1973), pp. 15–27; Witcover, p. 77. 5Markowitz, pp. 28–31; Doris Kearns Goodwin, No Ordinary Time: Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt: The Home Front in

World War II (New York, 1994), pp. 128–33. 6Walker, pp. 50–60; Charles J. Errico and J. Samuel Walker, ‘‘The New Deal and the Guru,’’ American Heritage (March

1989), pp. 92–99. 7 John Morton Blum, ed., The Price of Vision: The Diary of

Henry A. Wallace, 1942–1946 (Boston, 1973), pp. 23–24; Richard J. Walton, Henry Wallace, Harry Truman, and the Cold War

(New York, 1976), p. 8; Edward L. and Frederick H.

Schapsmeier, Prophet in Politics: Henry A. Wallace and the War

Years, 1940–1965 (Ames, IA, 1970), p. 22. 8Walton, pp. 8–10; Schapsmeier and Schapsmeier, pp. 50–

71.9Blum, pp. 53–229.

10 Schapsmeier and Schapsmeier, p. 20; Markowitz, pp.

65–70. 11Markowitz, pp. 70–73; Moley quoted in Donald Young,

American Roulette: The History and Dilemma of the Vice Presidency (New York, 1972), p. 194.

12Blum, p. 22; Schapsmeier and Schapsmeier, p. 7; Richard Langham Riedel, Halls of the Mighty: My 47 Years at the

Senate (Washington, 1969), p. 193. 13Blum, pp. 22–23; Riedel, p. 193.

14Drury, p. 121.

15 Schapsmeier and Schapsmeier, pp. 38–49; Drury, pp.

137–38. 16Walton, pp. 15–16; Schapsmeier and Schapsmeier, p. 91.

17Blum, pp. 335–48; Schapsmeier and Schapsmeier, pp.

85–91. 18Blum, pp. 349–60; Schapsmeier and Schapsmeier, pp.

91–98. 19Witcover, p. 82.

20Walker, pp. 83–97; Schapsmeier and Schapsmeier, pp.

30–37; Blum, pp. 13–15. 21Walton, pp. 22–23; Witcover, pp. 84–87.

22Blum, pp. 361–62.

23Witcover, pp. 84–87; Schapsmeier and Schapsmeier, pp.

102–3. 24 Schapsmeier and Schapsmeier, pp. 104–9; Markowitz,

p. 91; David McCullough, Truman (New York, 1992), pp.

292–323. 25 Schapsmeier and Schapsmeier, pp. 114–19; Drury, pp.

345–55; U.S., Congress, Senate, Congressional Record, 79th

Cong., 1st sess., pp. 694–95, 1163–67. 26Walker, pp. 133–63; McCullough, pp. 513–18.

27 Schapsmeier and Schapsmeier, pp. 224–39; Walker, p.

212.

[ 409 ]

Chapter 34

HARRY S. TRUMAN

1945
HARRY S. TRUMAN
[ 411 ]

Chapter 34

HARRY S. TRUMAN

34th Vice President: 1945

I enjoyed my new position as Vice-President, but it took me a while to get used to the fact that

I no longer had the voting privileges I had enjoyed for ten years as a senator.

—HARRY S. TRUMAN

When Democratic party leaders determined to

dump Vice President Henry Wallace from the

ticket in 1944, they looked for a suitable replacement. They considered Wallace too unpredictable to serve another term under Roosevelt,

whose health had visibly declined during the

Second World War. There was no shortage of

candidates: Majority Leader Alben Barkley, presidential assistant James F. Byrnes, Supreme

Court Justice William O. Douglas, and others advertised their availability. But the nomination

went to someone who did not want it. Missouri

Senator Harry S. Truman had committed himself

to nominating Byrnes. When a reporter asked

why he did not become a candidate himself, considering that the next vice president might likely

‘‘succeed to the throne,’’ Truman shook his head

and replied, ‘‘Hell, I don’t want to be President.’’

Harry Truman felt content to stay in the Senate,

where he had spent ten happy years.1

A Farm Boy at Heart

Despite a long record of public service, the always underestimated Truman made an unlikely

candidate for national office. He was at heart a

farm boy, born in the rural village of Lamar, Missouri, on May 8, 1884. His father, John Truman,

was a farmer and livestock dealer. For much of

their childhood, Harry and his brother and sister

lived on their grandmother’s six hundred-acre

farm near Grandview, Missouri. Poor eyesight

corrected by thick glasses kept him from playing

sports but failed to hamper his love of books.

When the children were old enough for schooling, the Truman family moved to Independence.

Then, in 1903, after John Truman went bankrupt

speculating in grain futures, the family moved

to Kansas City, where John Truman took a job

as night watchman at a grain elevator. Harry applied to West Point but was rejected because of

his poor eyesight. Instead of attending college,

he worked as a timekeeper on a railroad construction crew, a newspaper wrapper, and a

bank teller. In 1905 the parents returned to the

Grandview farm, and Harry and his brother followed the next year. After John Truman died in

1914, Harry Truman assumed the supervision of

the farm, plowing, sowing, harvesting, and repairing equipment himself. For the rest of his life,

Truman always enjoyed returning to the family’s

farm (now subdivided into suburban housing,

although the farmhouse stands as part of the

Harry S. Truman National Historical Site). As

president, he later asserted: ‘‘I always give my

occupation as farmer. I spent the best years of

my life trying to run a 600-acre farm successfully,

and I know what the problems are.’’ 2

Farming meant hard work and isolation. Nor

did it produce sufficient income for Harry to

marry his childhood sweetheart Elizabeth (Bess)

Wallace. Truman proposed in 1911, but Bess

turned him down. Undaunted, he pursued the

courtship for another eight years. After long

days on the farm, Harry devoted his evenings to
[ 412 ]

HARRY S. TRUMAN

practicing the piano and reading history. He had

other dreams as well: as a boy, he and his father

had attended the Democratic National Convention in Kansas City in 1900 and watched William

Jennings Bryan be nominated a second time for

president. The ‘‘Great Commoner’’ always remained one of his heroes. Truman’s father loved

politics. ‘‘Politics is all he ever advises me to neglect the farm for,’’ Harry wrote to Bess.3

The United States entered the First World War

in 1917. At thirty-three, Truman was two years

over the age limit for the draft and would also

have been exempted as a farmer. But he turned

the farm over to his mother and sister and enlisted, overcoming his poor eyesight by memorizing the eye chart. Having served in the National Guard, Truman helped organize a regiment from a National Guard company in Kansas

City and was elected first lieutenant. When the

129th Field Artillery went overseas, he was promoted to captain and placed in command of Battery D. The ‘‘Dizzy D’’ had a wild and unruly

reputation, but Captain Harry whipped them

into line. They encountered heavy fighting in the

Meuse-Argonne offensive, from which Truman

emerged with the undying respect of his troops

and increased confidence in his own abilities. His

exploits also lifted him in the eyes of Bess Wallace, who at last married him after the war, in

June 1919.4

Machine Politics

Truman temporarily moved into his in-laws’

house in Independence, Missouri, an arrangement that lasted for the rest of his life. Instead

of returning to the farm, he started a haberdasher’s shop in Kansas City with his Battery D

sergeant, Eddie Jacobson. When Truman &

Jacobson failed during the recession of 1922,

bankruptcy turned Harry Truman from business

to politics. Another army buddy, Jimmy

Pendergast, introduced Truman to his uncle

Thomas Pendergast, the Democratic political

boss of Kansas City. In 1922 the Pendergast machine endorsed Truman for county judge in Jackson County, which was an administrative rather

than a judicial function. After narrowly winning

the primary, he sailed easily to election as the

Democratic candidate that fall. In this and all future elections, Truman could count on the loyal

support of the veterans of the 129th, most of

whom lived in the Kansas City vicinity. In 1924,

the year his only daughter, Margaret, was born,

Truman lost his bid for reelection when the antiPendergast faction of the Democratic party split

away and swung its support to the Republicans.

He then sold memberships in the Kansas City

Automobile Club until he won reelection in 1926.

During the next twenty-six years of uninterrupted public service, he never lost another election—to the surprise of everyone except Harry

Truman.5

Like most political machines, the Pendergast

organization depended upon patronage and

government contracts. Pendergast owned the

Ready-Mix Concrete Company and held interests in a variety of construction, paving, pipe,

and oil companies that built roads, courthouses,

and other public works in and around Kansas

City. As an activist administrator, Truman

sought to build roads and public buildings, but

he held out against funneling county projects to

corrupt contractors. Pendergast’s interests got

county contracts only when they were the lowest

bidders. ‘‘Three things ruin a man,’’ Truman

later said. ‘‘Power, money, and women. I never

wanted power. I never had any money, and the

only woman in my life is up at the house right

now.’’ Once, when Truman discovered that an

associate had taken money to cut a deal with a

road builder, he kept silent to ensure that the

construction went forward. In frustration, Truman poured out his feelings privately on paper:

I had to compromise in order to get the voted

road system carried out . . . I had to let a former

saloonkeeper and murderer, a friend of the

Boss’s, steal about $10,000 from the general revenues of the county to satisfy my ideal associate

and keep the crooks from getting a million or

more out of the bond issue. Was I right or did

I compound a felony? I don’t know.6

Despite his machine connections, Truman developed a progressive reputation as county

judge. In 1934 he wanted to run for the U.S.

House of Representatives, but Pendergast had already picked another candidate. Instead, to Truman’s astonishment, the boss wanted him to run
[ 413 ]

HARRY S. TRUMAN

for the Senate. In fact, Pendergast’s first four

choices had turned him down. Few gave Truman

much of a chance. Missouri’s anti-Pendergast

Senator Bennett Champ Clark mocked Truman’s

assertion that if elected he would not attempt to

boss or dictate to anyone. ‘‘Why, bless Harry’s

good kind heart—no one has ever accused him

of being a boss or wanting to be a boss and nobody will ever suspect him of trying to dictate

to anybody in his own right as long as a certain

eminent citizen of Jackson County remains

alive.’’ But, in the Democratic primary, Truman

waged a vigorous campaign over the entire state

and won the three-way race by a wide margin.

Since Missouri was a Democratic state, he

coasted to victory in November. As Truman left

for Washington, Tom Pendergast gave him some

parting advice: ‘‘Work hard, keep your mouth

shut, and answer your mail.’’ 7

A Workhorse in the Senate

Reversing historical trends, the Democrats

gained ten Senate seats during the congressional

midterm elections of 1934. The new class of

Democrats included James Murray of Montana,

Joseph Guffey of Pennsylvania, Francis Maloney

of Connecticut, Sherman Minton of Indiana, and

Lewis Schwellenbach of Washington. In contrast

to these liberal Democrats, Harry Truman was

more conservative and less known. ‘‘I was as

timid as a country boy arriving on the campus

of a great university for his first year,’’ he later

admitted. Following Pendergast’s advice, he

kept his mouth shut and his eye on his new colleagues. Before long he had separated out the

‘‘workhorses’’ from the ‘‘showhorses’’ and concluded that the real business of the Senate was

conducted by conscientious senators who usually attracted the least publicity. Having also discovered that ‘‘the real work’’ of the Senate took

place in committee rooms rather than on the

floor, he devoted himself to committee work,

through research, correspondence, and hearings.

He made it his business ‘‘to master all of the details’’ of the legislation that came before his committees. ‘‘My ten years in the Senate had now

begun,’’ he wrote two decades later, ‘‘—years

which were to be filled with hard work but

which were also to be the happiest ten years of

my life.’’ The only painful memories were of the

scorn that some journalists continued to heap on

him as Pendergast’s errand boy.8

As a new senator, Truman relied on the veteran Democratic secretary, Leslie Biffle, to counsel him on how to act, when to speak, what committees to request, and other practical advice.

Truman’s down-home, poker-playing style soon

won him friendships with many senators as well

as with Vice President John Nance Garner—who

invited Truman to join those who met at the

‘‘doghouse,’’ his hideaway office, to ‘‘strike a

blow for liberty’’ with shots of bourbon. Accepted as an insider, Truman had nothing but contempt for the Senate’s most famous outsider,

Huey Long. The Louisiana senator’s flamboyant

style and long-winded filibusters represented the

entirely opposite route from the one Truman

took in the Senate.9

Appointed to the Interstate Commerce Committee, Truman and its chairman, Montana Senator Burton K. Wheeler, began a long, detailed

investigation of the nation’s transportation system. Their efforts resulted in the Wheeler-Truman Transportation Act of 1940, which established new standards of federal regulation for

the nation’s railroad, trucking and shipping industries. It was the signal accomplishment of his

first term. Most Washington observers doubted

that Truman would have a second term. The U.S.

district attorney in Kansas City, Maurice Milligan, was prosecuting Tom Pendergast for vote

fraud and income tax evasion. Loyally standing

by the boss, Truman delivered a blistering attack

in the Senate chamber accusing the president,

Milligan, and the federal courts of playing politics with Pendergast. But Pendergast was convicted and sent to the federal penitentiary in

1939. Seeing Truman as just an extension of the

machine, Milligan then ran for the Democratic

nomination for the Senate in 1940, as did Missouri Governor Lloyd Stark, who previously had

sought Pendergast’s endorsement but now presented himself as a reformer. President Roosevelt

leaned toward Stark, and Truman seemed

doomed to defeat, but Milligan and Stark split

the anti-Pendergast vote, enabling Truman to

squeak through to a victory in the Democratic
[ 414 ]

HARRY S. TRUMAN

primary, which ‘‘virtually guaranteed’’ his reelection in November.10

The Truman Committee

Returning to Washington his own man, Truman moved for the creation of a special committee to investigate the national defense preparations on the eve of World War II. He had heard

of waste and extravagance and contractors overcharging the government at Missouri military

bases, and he believed that a watchdog committee would be essential as the government

pumped massive amounts of money into its defense industries. With the help of party secretary

Les Biffle, Truman was appointed chair of the

Special Committee to Investigate the National

Defense Program, which became nationally

known as the Truman Committee. As an avid

student of history, Truman knew what havoc the

Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War had

created for President Abraham Lincoln, and he

was determined to assist rather than to combat

President Roosevelt. The Truman Committee investigated business, labor, and government

agencies, seeking ways to make all three cooperate. Whenever the Truman Committee concluded that reforms were needed in war agencies, Truman took care to inform the president

first, before he talked to the press, giving Roosevelt the chance to institute the necessary

changes before being pressured by negative

publicity.11

Harry Truman was fifty-seven when he assumed the chairmanship of the special committee and rose to national prominence. Of average

height and appearance, speaking with a midwestern twang, and earthy in his expressions, he

was known in Washington as diligent and

unprepossessing. Over time, his voting record

had increasingly conformed to Roosevelt administration policies, and he remained a loyal Democrat, more likely to complain in private than in

public about any differences with the New Deal.

The Truman Committee won its chairman favorable press notices for saving the taxpayers millions of dollars and the Roosevelt administration

much potential embarrassment. ‘‘I have had considerable experience in letting public contracts,’’

Truman said, recalling his Jackson County days,

‘‘and I have never yet found a contractor who,

if not watched, would not leave the Government

holding the bag.’’ The public agreed. As Harper’s

Magazine concluded in June 1945, before the war

Truman had been ‘‘just another obscure junior

Senator,’’ but three years later ‘‘he had made

himself known, and respected, as the chairman

of a special committee investigating war production and, in consequence, the almost inevitable

choice of his party as a compromise candidate

for the Vice Presidency.’’ 12

Choosing Truman for Vice President

While it later seemed inevitable, there was

nothing predictable about Truman’s selection for

vice president in 1944. Vice President Henry

Wallace’s unpopularity among party leaders had

set off a monumental contest for the second spot

at the Chicago convention. Senator Alben Barkley wanted the job, but his hot-tempered resignation and swift reelection as majority leader

in protest over President Roosevelt’s veto of a

revenue bill in February 1944 eliminated him as

an acceptable choice to the president. Barkley

and ‘‘Assistant President’’ James Byrnes—a

former senator and former Supreme Court Justice—each asked Truman to nominate him at the

convention. Byrnes asked first, and Truman

readily agreed. Senator Truman consistently told

everyone—even his daughter Margaret—that he

was not a candidate himself. The only race in his

mind was for his reelection to the Senate in

1946.13

The pivotal person at the convention was Bob

Hannegan, a St. Louis political leader serving as

commissioner of internal revenue and tapped as

the next Democratic National Committee chairman. During the heated Senate campaign of

1940, Hannegan had switched his support from

Governor Stark to Truman as the better man, and

he delivered enough St. Louis votes to help Truman win. Hannegan, Bronx boss Ed Flynn, Chicago mayor Ed Kelly, key labor leaders, and

other party movers and shakers viewed Wallace

as a liability for his leftist leanings. Byrnes was

equally vulnerable for his segregationist record

and his conversion from Catholicism. When

these party leaders expressed their opposition to

Wallace and Byrnes, Roosevelt suggested Su-
[ 415 ]

HARRY S. TRUMAN

preme Court Justice William O. Douglas. The

group then countered with Harry Truman,

whom Roosevelt agreed had been loyal and

‘‘wise to the ways of politics.’’ After much discussion, Roosevelt turned to Hannegan and conceded, ‘‘Bob, I think you and everyone else here

want Truman.’’ 14

Hating to disappoint and alienate any of the

potential candidates, Roosevelt kept them all

guessing. At lunch with Vice President Wallace,

Roosevelt informed him that the professional

politicians preferred Truman as ‘‘the only one

who had no enemies and might add a little independent strength to the ticket.’’ Roosevelt promised Wallace that he would not endorse another

candidate, but would notify the convention that

if he were a delegate he would vote for Wallace.

At the same time, the president held out hope

to Byrnes that he was ‘‘the best qualified man in

the whole outfit,’’ and urged him to stay in the

race. ‘‘After all, Jimmy,’’ you’re close to me personally,‘‘ Roosevelt said. ’’I hardly know Truman.’’ (Roosevelt, whose own health was growing precarious, did not even know Truman’s

age—which was sixty.) Despite encouraging

Wallace and Byrnes, the president had written a

letter for Hannegan to carry to the convention:

Dear Bob: You have written me about Harry Truman and Bill Douglas. I should, of course, be very

glad to run with either of them and believe that

either one of them would bring real strength to

the ticket.15

Meanwhile, Senator Truman continued to

deny any interest in the vice-presidency. In an

off-the-record interview, he explained to a reporter that if he ran for vice president the Republicans would raise charges of bossism against

him. He did not want to subject his family to the

attacks and negative publicity of a national campaign. Bess Truman was against it, and so was

Truman’s ninety-one-year-old mother, who told

him to stay in the Senate. ‘‘The Vice President

simply presides over the Senate and sits around

hoping for a funeral,’’ Truman protested. ‘‘It is

a very high office which consists entirely of

honor and I don’t have any ambition to hold an

office like that.’’ His secret ambition, admitted on

a visit to the Senate chamber twenty years later,

was to occupy the front row seat of the majority

leader.16

In an overheated hotel room, the politicians

leaned heavily on Truman to run. They placed

a call to Roosevelt, and as Truman sat nearby,

Hannegan held the phone so that he could hear.

‘‘Bob, have you got that fellow lined up yet?’’

Roosevelt asked. ‘‘No. He is the contrariest Missouri mule I’ve ever dealt with,’’ Hannegan replied. ‘‘Well, you tell him that if he wants to

break up the Democratic party in the middle of

the war, that’s his responsibility,’’ Roosevelt declared and hung up the phone. Stunned, Truman

agreed to run, but added: ‘‘why the hell didn’t

he tell me in the first place?’’ 17

Henry Wallace appeared personally at the convention to seek renomination, stimulating an enthusiastic reception from the galleries. On the

first ballot, Wallace led Truman 429 to 319. But

the party’s leaders swung their delegations and

put Truman over the top on the second ballot.

In a speech that lasted less than a minute, Truman accepted the nomination. Democratic liberals bemoaned the choice, while Republicans

mocked the ‘‘little man from Missouri.’’ Newspapers charged him with being a member of the

Ku Klux Klan, when in fact he had vigorously

fought the Klan in Jackson County. Critics also

noted that Truman had placed his wife on his

Senate payroll, but Truman rejoined that hiring

her had been legal and that she had earned every

penny. (Truman’s sister Mary Jane had also been

on his Senate payroll since 1943.) None of these

controversies mattered much. On election day, a

majority of voters did not want to change leaders

in wartime and cast their ballots for Roosevelt

regardless of who ran with him. Eleanor Roosevelt, who had preferred Wallace and distrusted Byrnes, reflected the prevailing sentiment that the vice-presidential candidate had

been a safe choice. She wrote that while she did

not know Truman, ‘‘from all I hear, he is a good

man.’’ 18

Roosevelt and Truman

After his nomination, Truman had gone to the

White House for lunch with Roosevelt and had

been shocked at the president’s gaunt appearance and trembling hands. Only to his most inti-
[ 416 ]

HARRY S. TRUMAN

mate friends did Truman confide his fears that

Roosevelt would never survive his fourth term.

On a cold January 20, 1945, Truman stood with

Roosevelt on the South Portico of the White

House to take the oath as vice president. The

ceremonies had been moved from their traditional location at the Capitol as a concession to

the war and Roosevelt’s health. After the postinaugural luncheon, the new vice president

slipped away and telephoned his mother who

had heard the inauguration over the radio at

Grandview. ‘‘Now you behave yourself,’’ she

instructed.19

Truman’s vice-presidency was practically a

continuation of his years in the Senate. The Trumans kept their same apartment at 4701 Connecticut Avenue, and he retained the same office

in Room 240 of the Senate office building. He

spent most of his time presiding over the Senate,

whose rules and procedures he had already mastered, and whose members he already knew. ‘‘I

enjoyed my new position as Vice-President,’’ he

late wrote, ‘‘but it took me a while to get used

to the fact that I no longer had the voting privileges I had enjoyed for ten years as a senator.’’

During his eighty-two days as vice president,

Truman had only one opportunity to vote, on an

amendment to limit the extension of Lend-Lease.

The vice president voted against the amendment.

As the United Press reporter Allen Drury observed: ‘‘Harry Truman, with all the brisk eagerness of someone who is bored to death, seized

his first chance to vote in the Senate today and

made the most of it. The vote wasn’t necessary,

for under the rules a tie kills a proposal, but he

cast it anyway, with obvious satisfaction.’’ 20

During Truman’s vice-presidency, critical decisions were being made regarding ending the war

and planning for the future peace, but the president neither advised nor consulted him. Roosevelt left Washington for his long journey to

Yalta two days after the inauguration and did

not return for almost a month. Even then, he saw

the vice president only twice more, on March 8

and March 19, before he left for a rest at the ‘‘Little White House’’ in Warm Springs, Georgia.

Roosevelt assumed there would be time to educate his vice president later.21

Truman’s major assignment was to help his

predecessor, Henry Wallace, win confirmation as

secretary of commerce. Roosevelt had appointed

Wallace as a gesture of consolation to his former

vice president, and enlisted Truman to win support from recalcitrant senators. To pacify Wallace’s critics, the Democratic leadership cut a

deal to remove the Federal Loan Agency from

the Commerce Department. The House passed

the measure first, and when it reached the Senate, Majority Leader Barkley planned to call it up

for immediate consideration, to clear the way for

Wallace’s confirmation. Barkley, however, was

not paying attention when Ohio Republican Senator Robert Taft sought recognition to move Wallace’s confirmation vote first. Truman looked to

the majority leader. ‘‘Finally, Barkley woke up

and I recognized him,’’ Truman commented, believing that his action saved Wallace from defeat.

Ironically, as president, Truman would fire

Henry Wallace from his own cabinet a year

later.22

As vice president, Truman aspired to mend

fences between Congress and the Roosevelt administration. During the depression, Roosevelt

had ridden Congress like a rodeo cowboy, but

he had been badly bucked during the ‘‘Court

packing’’ fight in 1937. Despite large Democratic

majorities, Congress not only rejected Roosevelt’s efforts to add several new liberal justices

to the Supreme Court, but also turned down his

requests to reorganize the executive branch and

to expand New Deal economic programs. The

legislative and executive branches finally reconciled on the eve of the Second World War,

when the president and Congress joined together

to suspend American neutrality and aid the Allies. The war relegated Congress to a back seat

behind the president as commander in chief,

causing resentment, suspicion, and hostility toward the administration to simmer on Capitol

Hill. During the war, a coalition of Republicans

and conservative southern Democrats pruned

many New Deal programs. Truman thought that

he could help reestablish some common ground.

Although recognizing that a vice president could

never exert open influence in the Senate, Truman

believed that ‘‘if he is respected personally and
[ 417 ]

HARRY S. TRUMAN

if he maintains good relations with the members

of the Senate, he can have considerable power

behind the scenes.’’ 23

A week after the January 1945 inauguration,

Truman’s political mentor, Tom Pendergast,

died in Kansas City. Released from prison,

Pendergast had spent his last years estranged

from his family and old friends. Truman had not

seen the boss in years, but he determined to go

to Pendergast’s funeral. He owed his rise in politics to Pendergast, who, he insisted, ‘‘never

asked me to do a dishonest deed. He knew I

wouldn’t do it if he asked me. He was always

honest with me, and when he made a promise

he kept it.’’ Although Truman meant this as an

act of friendship and loyalty, many considered

it disgraceful for a vice president to pay homage

to a convicted criminal and interpreted the incident as evidence that Truman remained a parochial machine politician. The vice president

earned more bad publicity a few weeks later

when he played the piano at the Washington

Press Club’s canteen for servicemen. As Truman

played, the movie actress Lauren Bacall posed

seductively atop the piano, allowing photographers to snap some decidedly undignified

pictures.24

The vice president spent most of his time

around the Senate chamber, talking with senators and listening to tedious speeches as he presided. Watching him from the press gallery on

April 12, 1945, Associated Press reporter Tony

Vaccaro commented, ‘‘You know, Roosevelt has

an awfully good man in that Truman when it

comes to dealing with the Senate if he’ll only

make use of him.’’ Then he added, ‘‘He doesn’t

make use of him though. Truman doesn’t know

what’s going on. Roosevelt won’t tell him anything.’’ That day, Truman used his time while

presiding to keep in contact with his mother and

sister in Missouri. ‘‘I am trying to write you a

letter today from the desk of the President of the

Senate,’’ he wrote, ‘‘while a windy Senator from

Wisconsin [Alexander Wiley] is making a speech

on a subject with which he is in no way familiar.’’

He reminded them to turn on their radios the

next evening to hear him make a Jefferson Day

speech to the nation and to introduce the president. While Truman was presiding that afternoon, Roosevelt collapsed and died of a cerebral

hemorrhage in Warm Springs.25

Unaware of his impending fate, Truman recessed the Senate at five that afternoon and

strolled through the Capitol, without his Secret

Service agent. He was the first vice president to

be assigned a regular Secret Service agent, after

his military aide, Harry Vaughn, pointed out to

Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau how odd

it was to have scores of agents guarding the

president and no one protecting the vice president. But the protection was somewhat erratic,

enabling Truman to saunter unaccompanied

through the Capitol to House Speaker Sam

Rayburn’s hideaway office, the ‘‘Board of Education.’’ There he planned to mix a drink and

spend some time talking politics with the Speaker and a handful of congressional cronies. When

Truman arrived, Rayburn relayed a message that

the president’s press secretary wanted him to call

right away. Truman called and was told to come

to the White House as ‘‘quickly and quietly’’ as

possible. ‘‘Holy General Jackson!’’ he exclaimed,

the color drained from his face. Still not knowing

exactly what had happened, Truman hurried

back the length of the Capitol, still alone. At his

office he grabbed his hat and his driver. They

headed straight to the North Portico of the White

House, where Truman was ushered up to the

family quarters. There Eleanor Roosevelt told

him that the president was dead.26

President Truman

That evening, Harry Truman took the oath as

president in a somber ceremony in the Cabinet

Room. He placed his first call from the Oval Office to Secretary of the Senate Leslie Biffle, asking

him to arrange for the congressional leadership

to attend the ceremony and to set up a luncheon

at the Senate the next day. As Republican Senator

Arthur Vandenberg noted in his diary:

Truman came back to the Senate this noon for

lunch with a few of us. It shattered all tradition.

But it was both wise and smart. It means that the

days of executive contempt for Congress are

ended; that we are returning to a government in

which Congress will take its rightful place.

After Roosevelt’s funeral, Truman returned to

address a joint session of Congress. ‘‘Now
[ 418 ]

HARRY S. TRUMAN

Harry—Mr. President—we are going to stand by

you,’’ Speaker Rayburn assured him. ‘‘I think

you will,’’ Truman replied. Majority Leader

Alben Barkley further urged Truman to have

confidence in himself. ‘‘If you do not, the people

will lose confidence in you.’’ 27

Three months in the vice-presidency had given

Truman no preparation for the nation’s highest

post. He was thrust into the role of commander

in chief while war was still underway in Europe

and the Pacific. He knew little about the development of the atomic bomb, yet within months he

would be called upon to decide whether to use

this weapon against Japan. Nor did he know

much about the agreements Roosevelt had

reached with the Russians and British at Yalta.

Truman talked with everyone who had accompanied Roosevelt to learn as much as possible

about what Roosevelt had agreed to and what

he intended to do in foreign policy. Truman’s inexperience in international matters contrasted

sharply with his abundant knowledge of domestic affairs, gained from ten years in local government and another ten in the Senate.28

Truman’s assets were his firm personal principles, his honesty, humility, and homespun

character, and his ability to speak plain truths.

Regardless of his lack of preparation, these qualities enabled him to face the challenges of the cold

war, make portentous decisions, and retain the

respect of the electorate, who accepted him as

one of them. He could be magnanimous, as in

his gesture of consulting with former President

Herbert Hoover, long barred from the Roosevelt

White House. He could be intrepid, as in his determination to remove General Douglas MacArthur from command in Korea, in order to preserve the superiority of the civilian government

over the military. In 1948 Truman won the most

unexpected election upset of the century. Although he left the presidency in 1953 at a low

ebb in his popularity, his standing rose again

over the years. After his death on December 26,

1972, he achieved the status of folk hero. Songs

proclaimed: ‘‘America Needs You Harry Truman.’’ A Broadway play, ‘‘Give ’Em Hell,

Harry,’’ was based on his life story, and biographies of him became best sellers. Presidential

candidates from both parties claimed Truman

rather than Roosevelt as their model. In retrospect, his selection for vice president had been

a wise move by the party leaders.29
[ 419 ]

NOTES 1Edward A. Harris, ‘‘Harry S. Truman: ‘I Don’t Want to

be President,’’’ in J.T. Salter, ed., Public Men: In and Out of

Office (Chapel Hill, NC, 1946), pp. 4–5; Robert H. Ferrell,

Choosing Truman: The Democratic Convention of 1944 (Columbia, MO, 1994), pp. 1–34. 2Robert H. Ferrell, ed., The Autobiography of Harry S. Truman (Boulder, CO, 1980), pp. 17–20; Margaret Truman,

Harry S. Truman (New York, 1973), p. 47; U.S., Congress,

House, Congressional Record, 103d Cong., 1st sess., pp.

H10918–20. 3David McCullough, Truman (New York, 1992), pp. 63,

88–90. 4 Ibid., pp. 102–44; Richard Lawrence Miller, Truman: The

Rise to Power (New York, 1986), pp. 103–48; Jhan Robbins,

Bess & Harry: An American Love Story (New York, 1980), pp.

23–37. 5Margaret Truman, pp. 59–82; Ferrell, ed., The Autobiography of Harry S. Truman, pp. 81–84. 6Robert H. Ferrell, Harry S. Truman: A Life (Columbia,

MO, 1994), pp. 91–116; McCullough, pp. 181–86. 7Margaret Truman, pp. 83–89; Ferrell, Truman: A Life, pp.

124–32; McCullough, pp. 202–13. 8 Harry S. Truman, Memoirs by Harry S. Truman, vol. 1,

Year of Decisions (Garden City, NY, 1955), pp. 142–43, 149;

Alonzo L. Hamby, Man of the People: A Life of Harry S. Truman (New York, 1995) pp. 200–212; Harris, p. 9; Margaret

Truman, p. 91. 9Ernest Barcella, ‘‘They Call Him Mr. Baffle,’’ Colliers

(January 29, 1949), pp. 27, 61–62; Margaret Truman, pp. 100–

102. 10Truman, Memoirs, 1:159–63; McCullough, pp. 234–52;

Hamby, pp. 213–47. 11 Ferrell, Truman: A Life, pp. 153–61. 12Theodore Wilson, ‘‘The Truman Committee, 1941,’’ in

Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., and Roger Bruns, eds., Congress

Investigates: A Documented History, 1792–1974 (New York,

1975), 4:3115–3262; Hamby, pp. 248–60. 13Margaret Truman, p. 167; Miller, pp. 381–85.

14McCullough, pp. 292–301; Ferrell, Choosing Truman, pp.

35–50. 15McCullough, pp. 299–306; David Robertson, Sly and

Able: A Political Biography of James F. Byrnes (New York,

1994), pp. 8–9; Robert H. Ferrell, Ill-Advised: Presidential

Health and Public Trust (Columbia, MO, 1992), p. 44. 16McCullough, pp. 298–99, 317–318; Harris, pp. 4–5; Remarks by Former President Harry S. Truman and Responses by

Members of the Senate Thereto in the United States Senate on

May 8, 1964 (Washington, 1964), p. 3. 17Truman, Memoirs, 1:192–93; Hamby, pp. 274–84. 18Miller, pp. 381–87; McCullough, pp. 324–33; Ferrell,

Choosing Truman, pp. 57–61; Harris, pp. 5–6; Doris Kearns

Goodwin, No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt:

The Home Front in World War II (New York, 1994), p. 530. 19 Jonathan Daniels, The Man of Independence (Port Washington, NY, 1971; reprint of 1950 edition), p. 255; Truman,

Memoirs, 1:1–4, 194–95. 20Truman, Memoirs, 1:195–96; Allen Drury, A Senate Journal, 1943–1945 (New York, 1963), p. 409. 21Margaret Truman, pp. 203–5.

22Truman, Memoirs, 1:195; Daniels, p. 257. 23Truman, Memoirs, 1:196–97; McCullough, pp. 335–36;

see also James T. Patterson, Congressional Conservatism and

the New Deal: The Growth of the Conservative Coalition in Congress, 1933–1939 (Lexington, KY, 1967). 24 Harris, p. 18; McCullough, pp. 336–37.

25Drury, p. 410; McCullough, p. 340.

26Margaret Truman, pp. 201–3; McCullough, pp. 335–42;

Ferrell, Truman: A Life, pp. 174–76. Others have reported

Truman’s April 12, 1945, exclamation as ‘‘Jesus Christ and

General Jackson!’’ (McCullough, p. 341; Robert J. Donovan,

Conflict and Crisis: The Presidency of Harry S. Truman, 1945–

1948 (New York, 1977), p. 4. 27 Arthur H. Vandenberg, Jr., ed., The Private Papers of

Senate Vandenberg (Boston, 1952), p. 167; H.G. Dulaney, Edward Hake Phillips, and MacPhelan Reese, eds., Speak Mr.

Speaker (Bonham, TX, 1978), p. 120; McCullough, p. 356. 28Marie D. Natoli, ‘‘Harry S. Truman and the Contemporary Vice Presidency,’’ Presidential Studies Quarterly 14

(Winter 1988): 81–84. 29 Ferrell, Choosing Truman, pp. 89–95. On Truman’s presidency see Robert J. Donovan, Conflict and Crisis: The Presidency of Harry S. Truman, 1945–1948 (New York, 1977), and

Tumultuous Years: The Presidency of Harry S. Truman, 1949–

1953 (New York, 1977).

[ 421 ]

Chapter 35

ALBEN W. BARKLEY

1949–1953
ALBEN W. BARKLEY
[ 423 ]

Chapter 35

ALBEN W. BARKLEY

35th Vice President: 1949–1953

Barkley, as Vice President, was in a class by himself. He had the complete confidence of both the

President and the Senate.

—HARRY S. TRUMAN

Alben W. Barkley, who served as vice president of the United States from 1949 to 1953, was

popularly known as the ‘‘Veep.’’ His young

grandson had suggested this abbreviated alternative to the cumbersome ‘‘Mr. Vice President.’’

When Barkley told the story at a press conference, the newspapers printed it, and the title

stuck. Barkley’s successor as vice president,

Richard Nixon, declined to continue the nickname, saying that it had been bestowed on Barkley affectionately and belonged to him. While

commentators may occasionally use ‘‘veep’’ as a

generic term for vice presidents, historically the

term is Barkley’s alone.1

A storyteller of great repute, Alben Barkley frequently poked fun at himself and his office. He

was especially fond of telling about the mother

who had two sons. One went to sea; the other

became vice president; and neither was heard

from again. In Barkley’s case, the story was not

at all true. He made sure that the public heard

from him, and about him, as often as possible.

And what the public heard, they liked, for Alben

Barkley performed admirably as vice president

of the United States.

Seventy years old when he was sworn in as

vice president, Alben Barkley was a genial

grandfatherly figure—but with enough life left

in him to court and marry a widow half his age

and to captivate national attention with their

May-December romance. In many ways, Barkley

was the last of the old-time vice presidents, the

last to preside regularly over the Senate, the last

not to have an office in or near the White House,

the last to identify more with the legislative than

the executive branch. He was an old warhorse,

the veteran of many political battles, the perpetual keynote speaker of his party who could rouse

delegates from their lethargy to shout and cheer

for the party’s leaders and platform. His stumpspeaker’s lungs enabled him to bellow out a

speech without need for a microphone. He was

partisan to the marrow, but with a sense of

humor and a gift of storytelling that defused partisan and personal animosities.2

Campaigning on Horseback

Ever the politician, Alben Barkley loved to

point out that he had been born in a log house,

in Graves County, Kentucky, on November 24,

1877. The baby was named Willie Alben, a name

that always embarrassed him, and as soon as he

was old enough to have a say about it, he reversed the order and formalized the name to

Alben William. ‘‘Just imagine the tribulations I

would have had,’’ he later commented, ‘‘a robust, active boy, going through a Kentucky

childhood with the name of ’Willie,’ and later

trying to get into politics!’’ 3

Barkley worked his way through Marvin College, a Methodist institution in Clinton, Kentucky. He also briefly attended Emory College

and the University of Virginia law school. As did

most lawyers in those days, he learned his trade
[ 424 ]

ALBEN W. BARKLEY

mainly by ‘‘reading’’ law, in a Paducah law office, before hanging out his own shingle. In 1903

he married and began to raise a family. Two

years later, Alben Barkley ran for prosecuting attorney of McCracken County. Later he would

deny the stories that he campaigned on a mule.

‘‘This story is a base canard, and, here and now,

I wish to spike it for all time,’’ he wrote in his

memoirs, That Reminds Me. ‘‘It was not a mule—

it was a horse.’’ 4

From prosecuting attorney, Barkley ran for

county judge, and in 1912, at the age of thirtyfive, he won a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. His victory began a forty-two-year

career in national politics that would take him

from the House to the Senate to the vice-presidency. Barkley entered politics as a Democrat in

the mold of Jefferson, Jackson, and William Jennings Bryan, but in Congress he came under the

powerful influence of President Woodrow Wilson. As a Wilsonian, Barkley came to define flexibility of government and a willingness to experiment with social and economic programs as the

policies of ‘‘a true Liberal.’’ Although he was

later closely identified with the New Deal, Barkley asserted: ‘‘I was a liberal and a progressive

long before I ever heard of Franklin D.

Roosevelt.’’ 5

In 1923, Representative Barkley made an unsuccessful run for the Democratic nomination as

governor of Kentucky. That sole electoral defeat

actually helped propel him into the Senate, because the race gave him name recognition

throughout Kentucky and won him the title

‘‘iron man,’’ for his ability to give as many as sixteen speeches a day on the campaign trail. In

1926 Barkley won the nomination for the United

States Senate and defeated an incumbent Republican to win the seat. By the 1930s he had moved

into the Senate Democratic leadership as an assistant to Majority Leader Joseph T. Robinson.

He also received national attention as the keynote speaker at the 1932 Democratic convention

that first nominated Franklin D. Roosevelt for

president.6

The Struggle for the Majority Leadership

During the early New Deal, Barkley served

shoulder to shoulder with Majority Leader Robinson. Rarely were two leaders so starkly different in nature, which perhaps explains the effectiveness of their combined efforts. Joe Robinson of Arkansas, who had led the Democratic minority in the 1920s and became majority leader

in 1933, gave the impression ‘‘of brute, animal

strength, and a willingness to use it.’’ He ran the

Senate by a mix of threats, favors, and parliamentary skill. Robinson had no patience to cajole, and left such tasks to trusted aides like Barkley, South Carolina’s James F. Byrnes, and Mississippi’s Pat Harrison. ‘‘Scrappy Joe’’ could annihilate an opponent in debate, but for the most

part he preferred to leave the oratory to Barkley,

who could talk on any subject for any amount

of time. Unlike Robinson, Barkley had no ability

when it came to threatening and domineering.

He succeeded through the art of compromise,

and through his convivial personality and gift of

storytelling.7

When Robinson died during the fierce legislative battle to enact President Roosevelt’s ‘‘Court

packing’’ plan in 1937, a contest developed between Senators Barkley and Harrison to become

majority leader. Pat Harrison was chairman of

the influential Finance Committee, and a beloved

figure in the Senate who held the loyalty of many

members. It appeared that Harrison would win

the race—much to President Roosevelt’s dismay.

Although Harrison had worked for enactment of

much New Deal legislation, he was too conservative and too independent for Roosevelt’s taste.

Moreover, most of the opponents of Roosevelt’s

Court plan stood with Harrison, who had refrained from speaking out on that controversial

issue. Although professing neutrality, Roosevelt

privately threw his support behind Barkley,

pressing state Democratic leaders to lobby their

senators in Barkley’s behalf. Roosevelt also addressed a public letter to ‘‘My dear Alben,’’ implying his endorsement of the Kentucky senator.

When Barkley won the majority leadership by a

single vote, many senators—including his own

supporters—interpreted his election as a victory

for the president rather than for Barkley. For

many years thereafter his colleagues assumed

that he spoke primarily for the White House to
[ 425 ]

ALBEN W. BARKLEY

the Senate, rather than for the Senate to the

White House.8

After the forceful leadership of Joe Robinson,

any successor would suffer by comparison, and

the press soon began to taunt ‘‘bumbling Barkley.’’ On paper he led an enormous majority of

76 Democrats against 16 Republicans and a

handful of independents. But in fact the Democratic party was seriously divided between its

liberal and conservative wings, and Barkley

could not guarantee a majority behind any of the

administration’s domestic programs. Not until

World War II forged a new cohesiveness in the

Senate did Barkley truly have a majority behind

him. Without question, he grew in office, gaining

respect from both senators and journalists for his

dogged hard work and persistent good nature.

The Majority Leader Resigns

Senator Barkley was part of the ‘‘Big Four’’

that included Vice President Henry Wallace,

House Speaker Sam Rayburn, and House Majority Leader John McCormack. The Big Four met

regularly with President Roosevelt to map the

administration’s legislative strategy. Barkley saw

himself as the leader of the president’s forces, out

to enact the president’s program. But in 1944

even Barkley’s loyalty was stretched to the

breaking point. Relations between the administration and Congress had grown strained during

the war, as the chief executive was preoccupied

by military and diplomatic affairs. In February

1944, Roosevelt became the first president to veto

a revenue bill, rejecting a two-billion-dollar tax

increase as insufficient and declaring it a relief

measure ‘‘not for the needy but for the greedy.’’

Senator Barkley, who had worked out the compromises within the Senate Finance Committee,

of which he was a member, and who believed

it was the best bill he could get passed, felt incensed over the president’s accusations. He rose

in the Senate to urge his colleagues to override

the president’s veto. Then he resigned as majority leader.9

The next day, the Senate Democrats unanimously reelected Barkley as their leader, and

from then on it was clear that Barkley spoke for

the Senate to the White House. The dramatic resignation and reelection elevated Barkley’s respect and standing as a leader but also dampened his relations with President Roosevelt. That

summer, when the Democratic convention met

and it became clear that the unpopular Henry

Wallace would need to be replaced as vice president, the mood of the convention favored Barkley for the job, but Roosevelt would not tolerate

one who had so recently rebelled against him. Instead he chose the less-known Missouri Senator

Harry Truman. The Roosevelt-Truman ticket

won election in the fall, and in April 1945 it was

Vice President Truman, not Alben Barkley, who

inherited the presidency upon Roosevelt’s

death.10

Whatever bitterness Barkley might have felt he

put aside, transferring his loyalty completely to

Truman. During Truman’s short vice-presidency, they enjoyed what Barkley called a

‘‘catcher-pitcher’’ relationship, with the majority

leader calling the signals. They continued to

work together closely after Truman moved to the

White House. These were rough years for the

Democrats. In the 1946 elections voters sent Republican majorities to the Senate and House for

the first time since the Great Depression. Barkley

became minority leader during the Eightieth

Congress in 1947 and 1948. It was a foregone

conclusion that the Republicans would also win

the presidency in 1948, and the smart money was

on New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey to become the next president.

A Remarkable Upset

A dispirited Democratic convention met in

Philadelphia in 1948. Yet, once again, Alben Barkley was able to lift his party’s spirits and get

the delegates cheering with an old-fashioned,

rip-roaring, Republican-bashing keynote address. The demonstration that followed his

speech was so long and so enthusiastic that Barkley became the obvious choice for vice president. President Truman, suspicious that Barkley,

who had mentioned him only once in the hourlong speech, was trying to replace him at the top

of the ticket, was not eager to have the senator

as his running mate. ‘‘Old man Barkley,’’ as Truman called him, was seventy years old, and their

neighboring states were too similar to balance

the ticket regionally. But since others—like Su-
[ 426 ]

ALBEN W. BARKLEY

preme Court Justice William O. Douglas—had

turned him down, Truman agreed to accept Barkley for his running mate if the delegates wanted

him. ‘‘It will have to come quick,’’ Barkley said

of his selection. ‘‘I don’t want it passed along so

long it is like a cold biscuit.’’ When offered the

second place on the ticket, Barkley, so often the

bridesmaid in the past, accepted with pleasure

and set out on a grueling speaking tour that

showed he was still an ‘‘iron man’’ at age

seventy.11

While the president whistle-stopped by train,

Barkley made the first ‘‘prop stop’’ campaign by

air. He had come a long way since the days when

he first campaigned for office on horseback. In

six weeks he toured thirty-six states and gave

more than 250 speeches. He spoke to so many

small audiences that the press dubbed him ‘‘the

poor man’s candidate.’’ But his strength and

stamina refuted the charges that he had been too

old to run.12

The election of 1948 proved to be the most dramatic upset of all time. It is doubtful whether

there is a single American history textbook in the

schools today that fails to include the famous

picture of a smiling Harry Truman holding up

the Chicago Tribune’s erroneous headline:

‘‘Dewey Defeats Truman.’’ So in January 1949

Alben Barkley stepped down again as Senate

Democratic leader, this time to become president

of the Senate. As vice president, Barkley buried

whatever differences he had with Truman and

the two men got along well, although some mutual suspicions lingered on. For years in the Senate it had been Truman who called Barkley

‘‘boss.’’ And Barkley must surely have thought

of President Truman: ‘‘There but for the spite of

Franklin Roosevelt, go I.’’ Yet in every respect,

politically, ideologically, and socially, the two

men were remarkably alike and worked together

harmoniously.

The Delicate Nature of the Vice-Presidency

Having served in the job, even if briefly, Harry

Truman understood the delicate nature of the

vice-presidency, which he noted fell between the

legislative and executive branches without being

responsible to either. ‘‘The Vice-President cannot

become completely acquainted with the policies

of the President, while the senators, for their

part, look on him as a presiding officer only, who

is outside the pale as far as the senatorial club

is concerned.’’ Despite being presiding officer,

the vice president was ‘‘hardly ever’’ consulted

about legislative matters. Although he could

lobby for the president’s legislation, he had nothing to trade for votes. Truman noted that the status of John Nance Garner had rested more on his

position within the Democratic party than on the

vice-presidency, while Henry Wallace was a

party outsider who had little influence within the

Senate. Alben Barkley, by contrast, ‘‘was in a

class by himself,’’ declared Truman. ‘‘He had the

complete confidence of both the President and

the Senate.’’ 13

Although new in the job, Barkley had long experience in dealing with vice presidents. He recalled how as a freshman senator in 1927 he had

gone to the rostrum in the Senate chamber to

chat with Vice President Charles Dawes, who

said, ‘‘Barkley, this is a helluva job I have as VicePresident.’’ ‘‘What is the matter with it?’’ Barkley

asked, to which Dawes replied: ‘‘I can do only

two things here. One of them is to sit up here

on this rostrum and listen to you birds talk without the ability to reply. The other is to look at

the newspapers every morning to see how the

President’s health is.’’ 14

As party leader in the Senate, Alben Barkley

had assessed the influence of several vice presidents over legislation and decided that the degree of influence depended on the person who

held the office. Vice presidents with experience

in the House or Senate could occasionally exercise some leverage on legislation. As an example,

Barkley cited former House Speaker John Nance

Garner as the vice president who ‘‘exercised larger influence in the passage of legislation than any

other occupant of the Office.’’ Garner assisted the

passage of early New Deal legislation ‘‘in an informal and entirely proper way,’’ helping to

speed emergency bills through the Senate. Barkley therefore declared that ‘‘a Vice-President

who is well liked by members of the Senate and

by the corresponding members of the House in

charge of legislation can exercise considerable

power in the shaping of the program of legislation which every administration seeks to enact.’’
[ 427 ]

ALBEN W. BARKLEY

Unlike some of his predecessors, Barkley was

determined not to enter into a ‘‘four-year period

of silence.’’ He accepted hundreds of invitations

to speak at meetings, conventions, banquets, and

other partisan and nonpartisan programs. ‘‘I like

to do it,’’ he explained. ‘‘I like people and I enjoy

the thrill of crowds. I have always believed it to

be the duty of those who are elected to high office by the people to take government to them

whenever and by whatever legitimate means

possible.’’ Traveling almost exclusively by air,

Barkley claimed to have spent more time in the

air than all his predecessors combined. Having

served twenty-two years as a member of the

House and Senate, and the past twelve as Democratic leader, he missed taking an active part in

the debates and piloting legislation through to

passage. He found that the office did not

consume all his energies. Barkley constantly

sought other activities to occupy his time, attending meetings of the Senate Democratic Policy

Committee, legislative conferences with the

president, and cabinet meetings. He was the first

vice president to become a member of the National Security Council, as provided by the National Security Act of 1947. ‘‘All these conferences I attend regularly,’’ he said in 1952, noting that he enjoyed them and engaged freely in

the discussions.15

Proud to be the Presiding Officer

Nevertheless, Alben Barkley was also the last

vice president to preside regularly over the Senate. Senate Parliamentarian Floyd Riddick estimated that Barkley presided between 50 and 75

percent of the time, a figure that seems incredibly

high today, but which reflected the traditional

concept of the vice president’s constitutional responsibility. As one who presided routinely, Barkley also used the Vice President’s Room, outside the chamber, as his working office. He was

proud to occupy that historic room, and liked to

keep a wood fire burning in its fireplace, the

smell of wood smoke reminding him of the open

hearth in his childhood home. He also took

pleasure in the furnishings and art works of the

room that were associated with famous names

from the past.16

In the Eighty-first Congress, which began in

January 1949, the Democrats enjoyed a 54-to-42

majority in the Senate. By the Eighty-second

Congress, their margin had shrunk to 49 to 47.

But in both of those congresses the real majority

belonged to a coalition of conservative Democrats and Republicans. This conservative coalition had emerged out of the opposition to FDR’s

Court packing plan in 1937 and predominated in

the Senate at least until the liberal Democratic

sweep of Senate elections in 1958. During the

Second World War and throughout the Truman

administration, this conservative coalition frequently frustrated administration efforts to enact

domestic reform legislation.17

President Truman had proposed an ambitious

Fair Deal program to deal with national health

insurance, farm supports, labor-management relations, and civil rights, but the conservative coalition repeatedly derailed his legislative initiatives, often through the use of filibusters. In the

field of civil rights, for instance, the president desegregated the armed forces through executive

order but had no luck in winning congressional

approval of bills to outlaw the poll tax, make

lynching a federal crime, or prohibit segregation

and discrimination in interstate commerce. More

typical of congressional attitudes at the time was

the passage of a bill to authorize segregated

schools on federal property—a bill which President Truman vetoed. ‘‘Step by step we are discarding old discriminations;’’ he declared, ‘‘we

must not adopt new ones.’’ 18

The Senate overturned some of Vice President

Barkley’s rulings. Charles Watkins, who served

as parliamentarian during Barkley’s vice-presidency, observed that, while Barkley was well acquainted with the Senate’s rules, he would sometimes get them mixed up or become obstinate

about how a rule should be applied. On a few

occasions, Barkley persisted in his own interpretations of the rules in spite of Watkins’ advice,

only to have the Senate reverse his rulings—

which dealt with efforts to enact civil rights legislation. Early in 1949, Barkley’s successor as majority leader, Senator Scott Lucas of Illinois, attempted to amend the rules to make cloture easier to obtain as a way of ending a filibuster. Georgia Senator Richard Russell led the opposition to
[ 428 ]

ALBEN W. BARKLEY

any rules changes that might favor civil rights

legislation. In a procedural move—and against

the parliamentarian’s advice—Barkley ruled

against Russell’s point of order, but the Senate,

by a vote of 41 yeas to 46 nays, failed to sustain

the chair’s ruling. Barkley was apparently willing to take the risk of defeat both because of his

support for the administration’s civil rights program and because of his own frustration at the

Senate’s inability to invoke cloture and end debate during his years as majority leader.19

As vice president, Barkley did what he could

to help his successors as majority leader, Scott

Lucas (who served from 1949 to 1951) and Ernest

McFarland (who held the leadership from 1951

to 1953). Barkley continued to interpret the relationship between the vice president and the floor

leader as that of catcher and pitcher. With the divisions inside the ranks of the Democratic party,

however, as well as the rapidly diminishing popularity of the Truman administration, Barkley

often watched his successors’ pitches go wild.

Lucas and McFarland were more legislative mechanics than floor leaders, and neither achieved

Barkley’s status or prestige in the post. As one

journalist observed, they made the job of majority leader ‘‘misery without splendor.’’ Despite

their leadership roles, Lucas and McFarland

were each in turn defeated when they ran for reelection. Perhaps the sight of their increasing discomfort and distress may have added to

Barkley’s own comfort and pleasure in his position as presiding officer rather than floor

leader.20

An Activist Vice President

As vice president, Alben Barkley tried to be as

much of an activist as his office would allow. He

was assisted by a sympathetic president, who

not only had held the job, but was a student of

American government and history and thought

seriously about how to enhance the vice-presidency. By executive order, President Truman

proclaimed a new coat of arms, seal, and flag for

the vice president. ‘‘You can make ’em step aside

now,’’ Truman assured Barkley when the new

symbols of office were unveiled. Truman also

supported a raise in the vice president’s salary

and expenses.21 When Barkley celebrated his

thirty-eighth anniversary of service in the legislative branch, President Truman paid a surprise

visit to the Senate chamber to present to the vice

president a gavel made from timber taken from

the White House during its reconstruction. Barkley was deeply touched by the gesture. In accepting the gift, Barkley noted that President

Truman frequently said that no president and

vice president got along together as well as they

did. ‘‘The reason for this,’’ Barkley told the Senate, ‘‘is that I have let him have his way about

everything.’’ 22

During the 1950 congressional campaign,

which occurred after the United States had entered the Korean War, President Truman left the

job of campaigning for Democratic candidates to

Vice President Barkley, who barnstormed the nation. Although Barkley’s party suffered losses,

the Democrats retained their majorities in both

houses of Congress.23 Yet, despite his vigorous

campaigning, it became evident that age was beginning to catch up with Alben Barkley. In 1950,

the columnist Drew Pearson attended a dinner

for the vice president, at which the president,

chief justice, and Speaker of the House were

present. Barkley gave a brief speech and

‘‘seemed a little old and tired,’’ Pearson recorded

in his private diary. ‘‘It was about the first time

that his speech wasn’t all it usually is.’’ 24

Even though he was exempted from the Twenty-second Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1951, that limited future presidents to two

terms, Truman announced his decision not to

seek a third term. Vice President Barkley then

sought the Democratic nomination for president,

but his age and failing eyesight defeated his candidacy. Organized labor, which exerted great influence within the Democratic party organization, openly opposed his nomination because he

was too old. Although deeply hurt, Barkley accepted the decision and withdrew from the race.

He was invited to deliver a farewell address to

the convention and did so with characteristic

grace and style, celebrating the Democratic ‘‘crusade’’ that he had helped to lead to ensure a

‘‘happier and fuller life to all mankind in the

years that lie before us.’’ When he bid the convention good-by, the delegates awarded him a

forty-five-minute ovation, demonstrating the
[ 429 ]

ALBEN W. BARKLEY

enormous affection that the party felt for him,

even as they denied him his heart’s desire.25

Return from Retirement

Alben Barkley retired to Kentucky but could

not stay retired for long. In 1954 he ran once

again for a seat in the Senate against the incumbent Republican Senator John Sherman Cooper.

Campaigning always seemed to invigorate him,

and he swept back into office by a comfortable

margin. His victory helped return the Senate

Democrats to a one-vote majority and made Lyndon Johnson majority leader. Two years later, in

1956, students at Washington and Lee University

invited Senator Alben Barkley to deliver the keynote address at their mock convention. He accepted and gave one of his classic rip-snorting,

Republican-bashing, Democratic-praising orations. At its conclusion he reminded his audience

that after all of his years in national politics he

had become a freshman once again, but that he

had declined an offer of a front row seat with

other senior senators. ‘‘I’m glad to sit on the back

row,’’ he declared, ‘‘for I would rather be a servant in the House of the Lord than to sit in the

seats of the mighty.’’ Then, with the applause of

the crowd in his ears, Alben Barkley collapsed

and died from a massive heart attack. For an oldfashioned orator, there could have been no more

appropriate final exit from the stage.26

Clearly, Alben Barkley enjoyed being vice

president of the United States. Although he

missed the opportunity to speak out, maneuver,

and vote on bills as he had as senator and

majority leader, he enjoyed promoting the president’s legislative program. He also savored the

thrill of the crowds that a vice president can attract, relished performing the ceremonial duties,

and delighted in the prestige of national office.

‘‘I hope the Vice-Presidency continues to hold

the respect of the American people,’’ he said.

‘‘The qualifications for it are the same as for the

Presidency itself. They have to be; for he may become the President in case of a death or disability.’’ The best way for vice presidents to retain

respect, he concluded, was to deserve it. ‘‘I have

always felt that public officers should lean backwards in the performance of their official duties

because, to a larger extent than many people realize, they are looked upon as examples of probity and propriety in dealing with public matters. It will be a sad day for this country and

its institutions if and when the people lose

confidence in their public servants.’’ For his

part, Alben Barkley retained public confidence—even public affection—throughout his

long career in the legislative branch and for

four years cast the vice presidency in a highly

positive light.
[ 430 ]

NOTES 1Alben W. Barkley, That Reminds Me (Garden City, NY,

1954), pp. 21–22. 2 For Barkley’s life and career, see James K. Libbey, Dear

Alben: Mr. Barkley of Kentucky (Lexington, KY, 1976), and

Polly Ann Davis, Alben Barkley: Senate Majority Leader and

Vice President (New York, 1979). 3Barkley, That Reminds Me, p. 27. 4 Ibid., p. 77.

5Donald A. Ritchie, ‘‘Alben W. Barkley: The President’s

Man,’’ in Richard A. Baker and Roger H. Davidson, eds.,

First Among Equals: Outstanding Senate Leaders of the Twentieth Century (Washington, 1991), pp. 130, 146. 6 Ibid., pp. 129–31.

7Donald C. Bacon, ‘‘Joseph Taylor Robinson: The Good

Soldier,’’ in Baker and Davidson, eds., First Among Equals,

pp. 63–66. 8Ritchie, pp. 127–29.

9The events surrounding Barkley’s resignation are dramatically recounted in Allen Drury’s A Senate Journal, 1943–

1945 (New York, 1963), pp. 85–97. 10Barkley, That Reminds Me, pp. 169–94. 11Alonzo L. Hamby, Man of the People: A Life of Harry S.

Truman (New York, 1995), pp. 448–51; Robert J. Donovan,

Conflict and Crisis: The Presidency of Harry S Truman, 1945–

1948 (New York, 1977), pp. 405–6; Margaret Truman, Harry

S. Truman (New York, 1973), pp. 9–11; David McCullough,

Truman (New York, 1992), pp. 637–38. 12Barkley, That Reminds Me, pp. 195–204.

13 Harry S. Truman, Memoirs by Harry S. Truman, vol. 1,

Year of Decisions (Garden City, NY, 1955), p. 57. 14Alben W. Barkley, ‘‘The Vice-Presidency,’’ May 1952,

pp. 7–8, Alben W. Barkley Papers, University of Kentucky. 15 Ibid., pp. 12–14.

16 Floyd M. Riddick: Senate Parliamentarian, Oral History

Interviews, June 26, 1978 to February 15, 1979 (U.S. Senate

Historical Office, Washington, DC), p. 66; Barkley, That Reminds Me, p. 210. 17 See James T. Patterson, Congressional Conservatism and

the New Deal: The Growth of the Conservative Coalition in Congress, 1933–1939 (Lexington, KY, 1967). 18 Harold F. Gosnell, Truman’s Crises: A Political Biography

of Harry S. Truman (Westport, CT, 1980), pp. 439–49, 481–

90.19 Floyd M. Riddick, pp. 67, 126–28, 144–46; U.S., Congress,

Senate, Congressional Record, 81st Cong, 1st sess., p. 2274;

Gilbert C. Fite, Richard B. Russell, Jr.: Senator From Georgia

(Chapel Hill, NC, 1991), pp. 245–46. 20Ritchie, pp. 156–57.

21Davis, pp. 280–81.

22Congressional Record, 82d Cong., 1st sess, p. 1710. 23Gosnell, pp. 453–54.

24Tyler Abell, ed., Drew Pearson, Diaries, 1949–1959 (New

York, 1974), pp. 128–29. 25Barkley, That Reminds Me, pp. 231–51. 26 Ibid., pp. 312–14.
[ 431 ]

Chapter 36

RICHARD MILHOUS NIXON

1953–1961
RICHARD M. NIXON
[ 433 ]

Chapter 36

RICHARD MILHOUS NIXON

36th Vice President: 1953–1961

[I]t just is not possible in politics for a Vice President to ‘‘chart out his own course’’.

—RICHARD M. NIXON 1

On the morning of April 16, 1956, Vice President Richard Nixon served notice that the vicepresidency had finally become an office to be

sought after by ambitious politicians rather than

a position in which to gain four years of rest.

After weeks of speculation that Nixon would be

dropped from the Republican ticket in the coming presidential race, fueled by President Dwight

Eisenhower’s comment that the vice president

had to ‘‘chart his own course,’’ Nixon decided

to force Ike’s hand. The young politician walked

into the Oval Office and said, ‘‘Mr. President, I

would be honored to continue as Vice President

under you.’’ 2 Eisenhower now had to either accept his running mate or reject him openly. Not

willing to risk a party squabble during what

promised to be a successful reelection bid, Eisenhower told the press he was ‘‘delighted by the

news.’’ Richard Nixon had defied pressure to

leave office voluntarily that came from within

the White House, the press, and some segments

of the party. In the process, he had been offered

a major cabinet position and had been urged to

run for a seat in the Senate. Instead, this ambitious young politician fought to remain in what

had once been considered a meaningless office.

Over the previous four years, Nixon had not

only worked hard to promote the policies of the

Eisenhower administration but had used the

vice-presidency to build a foundation of support

among the regulars of the Republican party that

made him the early favorite for the presidential

nomination in 1960. He had fought hard for the

office in 1952 and was not about to let anyone

but Eisenhower take it from him.

From Whittier to Congress

Richard Nixon’s career seems best described as

a series of fierce political battles. Every campaign

was bruising, and he never occupied a ‘‘safe’’

seat, perhaps only fitting for a man who had

come so far, so fast. Born on January 9, 1913, to

a Quaker family in Yorba Linda, California, Richard Milhous Nixon spent his childhood reading

and working in the various family enterprises.

As a teenager in Whittier, California, he split his

time between the family grocery store and the

high school debating team, where he received

numerous awards. He went on to Whittier College, a small Quaker school not far from home,

and then received a scholarship to attend law

school at Duke University. Nixon’s academic

performance was characterized by perseverance

and a determination to work harder than any of

his classmates. That determination pushed him

to finish third in his class at Duke in 1937 but

did not result in any job offers from well-known

firms in New York City, as Nixon had hoped.

Disappointed, he returned to Whittier, joined a

small firm, and began dabbling in local politics.

In 1940 he married Thelma ‘‘Pat’’ Ryan, after

wooing her persistently for more than two years.

As was the case for so many men of his generation, World War II interrupted Richard Nixon’s

plans. His Quaker background made Nixon reluctant to volunteer for duty in the armed serv-
[ 434 ]

RICHARD M. NIXON

ices, but in 1942, he obtained a job with the Office

of Price Administration in Washington that allowed him to contribute to the war effort and

gain valuable government experience. Soon,

however, the call to arms became too great to resist, and in August of 1942 he joined the navy.

He served in the South Pacific Air Transport

Command, operating airfields during General

Douglas MacArthur’s island-hopping campaign.

While the war unexpectedly altered Nixon’s career path, his service record made him an even

more attractive political candidate than he had

been previously. Even before his discharge was

official, the Committee of 100, a group of southern California business and professional leaders

looking for a promising Republican candidate to

sponsor against incumbent Democratic Representative Jerry Voorhis, asked if Nixon was

available as a congressional candidate. After

brief interviews to determine that this returning

young veteran held acceptably Republican

views, the group helped launch a career that was

more promising than they could have foreseen.

Despite this impressive backing, however, the

campaign against Voorhis was a hard-nosed affair that gained Nixon both ardent admirers and

fierce enemies. Nothing ever came easily for Dick

Nixon.3

That first campaign in 1946 gave Richard

Nixon the issue that would catapult him to

prominence. He vigorously attacked Representative Voorhis for being dominated by Communist-controlled labor unions. Like many Republican candidates across the country, Nixon

accused the Democrats of allowing Communists

to enter important positions in the federal government, thus undermining American security

and threatening to ‘‘socialize’’ the United States.

As the cold war began to heat up in Europe and

Asia, the American public reacted positively to

Republican appeals to throw the Communists

out of government, as well as to calls for cutting

back on the New and Fair Deals. Republicans

swept to victory in congressional elections across

the country, winning majorities in the House and

Senate for the first time since 1928. Nixon rode

this wave of protest, receiving a whopping 57

percent of the vote in his district. The

anticommunism that won him a seat in Congress

became his trademark issue on Capitol Hill when

he gained appointment to the House Committee

on Un-American Activities (HUAC).4

Formed in the 1930s to investigate the activities

of Nazi and Communist organizations in the

United States, HUAC had also served as a forum

for attacks on Jews, civil libertarians, and labor

union activists. By the late 1940s, the committee

had a tarnished reputation as an ineffective and

irresponsible group that was more dedicated to

attracting publicity than to preserving American

security. But, with public anxiety on the rise,

HUAC members had the opportunity to lead the

fight against domestic communism. Nixon took

little part in the committee’s investigations of

Hollywood during 1947, but he became the leading figure in its highly publicized investigation

of Alger Hiss.

In 1948, Whittaker Chambers, an editor for

Time and a former Communist, testified that

Hiss, a former State Department official and adviser to President Roosevelt at Yalta, had been

a Communist agent. Hiss denied the charge, but

over the next year and a half, the attempt to uncover the real story thrust Richard Nixon into the

spotlight. Nixon led the investigation that eventually sent Hiss to prison for perjury. The case

gave Nixon a national reputation as a diligent

hunter of Communists and established him as a

rising, if controversial, young star in the GOP.5

Nixon was not content to remain in the House

of Representatives. After only four years in the

House, he set his sights on the Senate seat held

by Democrat Sheridan Downey. Facing a primary challenge from Representative Helen

Gahagan Douglas, an aggressive opponent,

Downey decided to retire and to endorse another

Democrat, Chester Boddy. While Douglas and

Boddy engaged in a vicious primary battle,

Nixon watched and waited. When Douglas, a

former actress, narrowly won the nomination,

one of the nastier senatorial campaigns in U.S.

history began. Nixon attacked Douglas for having voted against appropriations for HUAC and

insinuated that she was a Communist sympathizer, charges that Boddy had used during

the primaries. The Nixon campaign distributed

pink leaflets comparing Douglas’ House voting
[ 435 ]

RICHARD M. NIXON

record with that of Labor party member Vito

Marcantonio of New York, while the candidate

and others referred to her as ‘‘the Pink Lady.’’

Douglas fought just as hard, implying that Nixon

had fascist tendencies and was controlled by oil

interests. She even pinned on him the label that

would haunt him for years, ‘‘Tricky Dick.’’ When

the smoke cleared, Nixon emerged with an overwhelming victory, garnering 59 percent of the

vote. Nixon ran well throughout the state, exhibiting an ability to win votes in traditional Democratic areas and gaining continued attention

from Republican leaders nationwide. The campaign also brought harsh criticism. For years

afterward, his opponents would point to the 1950

race as an example of the mean streak they considered so much a part of Richard Nixon’s character. The victory brought him increased prestige

within the Republican party and among conservatives generally, but it also formed the foundation for his reputation as an unscrupulous

campaigner.6

Even a seat in the United States Senate, however, could not entirely satisfy the restless Californian. In 1951, he embarked on a national

speaking tour, delivering forty-nine speeches in

twenty-two states. His travels boosted his already rising popularity with Republicans, and he

was soon regarded as the party’s most popular

speaker.7 During these speeches, Nixon also

showed his dexterity at reaching out to the different factions within the party. In the early

1950s, Republicans were deeply divided between

the conservative party regulars, usually known

as the Old Guard and personified by Ohio Senator Robert Taft, and the more liberal eastern

wing of the party, led by Thomas Dewey of New

York. Nixon’s anticommunism appealed to conservatives, but his firm internationalism and

moderate views on domestic policy also made

him popular with more liberal audiences. This

ability to appeal to the party as a whole would

serve him well in the future. By 1952, people

were already thinking of him as a national candidate. Any Republican presidential nominee

would be under tremendous pressure to ‘‘balance’’ the ticket by finding a vice-presidential

candidate who would be acceptable in both the

East and the Midwest. Richard Nixon’s consensus approach to Republican politics positioned

him to fill that role.

Campaigning for the Vice-Presidency

In 1952 the campaign for the Republican presidential nomination centered around Taft and

General Dwight D. Eisenhower. Senator Taft had

been an influential force in the party for more

than a decade, leading the opposition to President Harry Truman’s ‘‘Fair Deal.’’ Eisenhower,

the commander of Allied forces in Europe during

World War II, had been sought by both parties

as a nominee ever since the end of the war. In

1952, he announced that he was a Republican

and that he was willing to run. Widely, though

not always accurately, considered more liberal

than Taft, Eisenhower was primarily concerned

that the Republicans were in danger of rejecting

internationalism. After failing to convince Taft to

support an internationalist program, Ike threw

his hat in the ring.

The contest threatened to polarize the party,

and a number of darkhorse candidates entered

the Republican national convention hoping for a

deadlock. The most prominent of these hopefuls

was Governor Earl Warren of California. As a

member of the California delegation, Senator

Nixon was obligated to support Warren’s candidacy until the governor gave up the race.

Nixon, however, used the train ride to the convention in Chicago to lobby his fellow delegates

on behalf of Eisenhower. He argued that, when

(rather than if) Warren released his delegates,

they should throw their support to Eisenhower,

because Taft could not win the general election.

Many Taft supporters later referred to Nixon’s

efforts as ‘‘the Great Train Robbery,’’ claiming he

sold out both Taft and Warren in exchange for

the vice-presidential nomination. Nixon’s support for Eisenhower was sincere, but both Thomas Dewey and Ike’s campaign manager, Henry

Cabot Lodge, Jr., had told Nixon weeks earlier

that he was the probable choice if Eisenhower

should win. These promises, coupled with Taft’s

preference for Nixon’s California colleague Senator William Knowland, undoubtedly spurred

his efforts. After Eisenhower won the nomination, he put together a list of potential running
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RICHARD M. NIXON

mates with Senator Nixon’s name at the top.

Party leaders had already decided that Nixon

was their man.8

Richard Nixon was, in many ways, the ideal

running mate for Dwight Eisenhower. The general indicated that he wanted someone ‘‘who

was young, vigorous, ready to learn, and of good

reputation.’’ 9 Only on the last of these criteria

was Nixon suspect, and the most outspoken critics of Nixon’s tactics were liberal Democrats who

probably would not have voted for the Republican ticket in any event. Aside from providing

a youthful counter to the sixty-two-year-old Eisenhower, Nixon balanced the ticket geographically, since Eisenhower’s campaign relied heavily on New Yorkers. His nomination also indicated that California was becoming increasingly

vital in presidential politics. Perhaps most important, Nixon was one of only a very few Republicans of national stature acceptable to both

the Eisenhower camp and the Old Guard.10 His

selection was intended to foster unity within the

party and to calm the strife that could lead to another electoral disaster like that of 1948. Calm,

however, was seldom to be associated with Richard Nixon.

On September 18, 1952, barely two months

after the Republican convention and just as the

campaign was beginning to heat up, the front

page of the New York Post ran the headline, ‘‘Secret Nixon Fund!’’ The story reported that Nixon

had established a ‘‘millionaire’s club’’ to help

pay his political expenses. About seventy California businessmen contributed $100 to $500

each to pay the senator’s travel and postage bills

and prepare for future campaigns. Unconcerned

by the article at first, Nixon argued that the fund

was hardly secret and was intended as a means

of saving public funds that would otherwise

have been applied to his Senate expense account.

He apparently forgot that such uses of his account would have been illegal. The Truman administration had been rocked by a series of scandals over the previous two years, and one of the

keys to the Republican campaign was Eisenhower’s pledge to clean the ‘‘crooks and cronies’’

out of Washington. The Democrats charged the

Republicans with hypocritically attacking the administration when the GOP’s vice-presidential

nominee was taking money from business interests. Democratic leaders called on Nixon to resign, and public pressure began to build for the

Republicans to come clean about the ‘‘secret

fund.’’ The Washington Post and New York Herald

Tribune joined the call for Nixon’s resignation.

His candidacy was in jeopardy before it could

even get started.11

Eisenhower, meanwhile, remained cautious.

He asserted his belief that his running mate was

an honest man and that the facts would vindicate

him. But Ike did not dismiss the possibility of

Nixon’s resignation, saying only that he would

talk with Nixon about the situation as soon as

possible. When Eisenhower later told the press

that the Republican campaign must be ‘‘clean as

a hound’s tooth,’’ Nixon advisers took it as a sign

that their man was in trouble with the boss. Relations between the two camps had been strained

from the beginning. Some of Eisenhower’s advisers were uncomfortable with Nixon on the ticket,

because they mistakenly viewed him as a tool of

the Old Guard, and they would have been more

than happy to see him go. For their part, Nixon’s

supporters resented the disdain they felt coming

from Eisenhower’s people and were angry that

Ike was leaving Nixon to fend for himself.12 Finally, Nixon decided to force a decision by appearing on national television to explain his actions. On September 23, just hours before he

went on the air, he received a call from Tom

Dewey, who explained that Eisenhower’s ‘‘top

advisers’’ had decided that it would be best if

Nixon ended his speech by offering his resignation. Nixon was momentarily stunned, but when

Dewey asked what he was going to do, he replied, ‘‘Just tell them I haven’t the slightest idea

as to what I am going to do and if they want

to find out they’d better listen to the broadcast.

And tell them I know something about politics

too!’’ 13

What Nixon did that night saved his candidacy. From a studio in Los Angeles, Nixon

gave the nation a detailed report of his financial

history, everything from the mortgage on his

house to the one political gift he said he intended

to keep, a little dog his daughters named

‘‘Checkers.’’ While this reference to his dog provided the popular name for one of the twentieth
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RICHARD M. NIXON

century’s most significant political speeches,

Nixon did much more than create a colorful

image. He effectively refuted the ridiculous

charge that he used the fund to live a life of luxury, while deflecting the more fundamental

questions involving the influence gained by its

contributors—questions that the Democrats

seemed to lose sight of in their haste to sensationalize the story. Nixon also challenged the

other candidates to make a full disclosure of their

assets, knowing that Democratic presidential

nominee Adlai Stevenson had problems with a

fund of his own. Finally, he urged viewers to

write to the Republican National Committee to

state whether Nixon should leave or remain on

the ticket. He presented himself as a common

American, struggling to pay the bills, doing his

part to clean up ‘‘the mess in Washington,’’ and

suffering the attacks of vicious foes.

Many observers found Nixon’s ‘‘Checkers’’

speech repulsive. Journalist Walter Lippmann

called it ‘‘the most demeaning experience my

country has ever had to bear,’’ and Eisenhower’s

close friend, General Lucius Clay, thought it was

‘‘corny.’’ But the speech seemed to touch a chord

in what is often called ‘‘Middle America’’ that

elite observers failed to understand. Historian

Herbert Parmet has argued that the appeal was

like that of a Frank Capra movie, with Nixon

playing the role of ‘‘Mr. Smith.’’ Nearly sixty million people watched the telecast (a record audience that would not be broken until Nixon debated John F. Kennedy in the 1960 presidential

race), and the response was overwhelming. Over

160,000 telegrams poured into Republican national headquarters, and switchboards around

the country were jammed with calls to local and

state party officials urging Nixon to stay on the

ticket. There was little Eisenhower could do but

consent. In a bold stroke, Nixon had effectively

taken the decision away from Eisenhower by appealing to the party faithful. Nixon remained on

the ticket, and ‘‘Ike and Dick’’ cruised to a comfortable victory in November.14

The Eisenhower Team

Over the next eight years, Richard Nixon elevated the office of vice president to a position of

importance never before seen. No previous vice

president was ever as active within the administration or enjoyed as much responsibility, partly

because of Nixon’s own energetic habits. He was

always looking for something to do and took a

keen interest in almost every aspect of government. Circumstances also played a part because

of Eisenhower’s occasional health problems. Believing that Franklin Roosevelt’s failure to keep

Vice President Harry S. Truman informed of

government initiatives like the Manhattan

Project had been dangerous, Eisenhower was determined that his own vice president would be

as well informed as anyone in the administration.15 But the primary reason for Nixon’s activist status was that Eisenhower provided him

with unique opportunities. Apart from the vice

president’s constitutional role as presiding officer of the Senate, the occupant of that office can

only safely take up the activities that the president indicates are appropriate. Most presidents

made little use of their vice presidents. Eisenhower, however, with his military experience

confirming the value of a well-trained subordinate officer, found that Nixon could be an important part of his ‘‘team’’ concept of presidential

administration, especially since Nixon possessed

many of the political skills that were lacking in

some of Eisenhower’s other key advisers. Also,

unlike some other vice presidents, Nixon did not

represent a former or potential challenger to Eisenhower. Ike was, therefore, willing to use his

youthful vice president for important tasks, and

Nixon was willing to be so used. When they differed on questions of policy, there was never any

question that Nixon would follow the president’s

lead. Because Nixon could perform smoothly in

the several roles that Eisenhower needed filled,

he was able to cultivate the image of an active

and important vice president.

Party Liaison

Nixon’s most important function in the administration was to link Eisenhower with the party

leadership, especially in Congress. Nixon and

Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., were the only former

congressmen in the Eisenhower cabinet, and no

one else had Nixon’s connections with the Senate. Although the Republicans held a slim majority in Congress, it was not certain that the Old
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RICHARD M. NIXON

Guard, many of whom were influential committee chairmen, would rally to Eisenhower’s legislative agenda. If the president was going to push

through his program of ‘‘modern Republicanism’’ and stave off unwanted legislation, he

needed a former member who could ‘‘work the

Hill’’ on his behalf. Nixon advised Eisenhower

to go to Congress ‘‘only in dramatic circumstances,’’ because ‘‘Truman came so often

there were occasions when he didn’t have a full

House,’’ but he need not have worried. Eisenhower had no intention of trying to dominate

Congress the way his predecessors had. Eisenhower and Nixon held regular meetings with the

Republican congressional leadership, but the

president had little contact with other GOP

members of Congress, and he seldom tried to

harness public pressure against Congress to support his legislation. This approach suited Eisenhower’s ‘‘hidden hand’’ style of leadership, but

to be effective, someone had to serve as the administration’s political broker with the rest of the

Republicans. Nixon was the obvious candidate.16

One of the more immediate tasks for the new

vice president was to help the administration defeat the Bricker amendment. In 1951, Republican

Senator John W. Bricker of Ohio had introduced

a constitutional amendment that would have

drastically curtailed the ability of the president

to obtain treaties and executive agreements with

other nations. Bricker’s immediate purpose was

to prohibit President Truman from entering into

agreements such as the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, for fear that it would compromise the sovereignty of the United States. More generally, the

Bricker amendment aimed to increase the influence of Congress in making foreign policy. Even

with a Republican in the White House, Bricker

refused to back away from his amendment, offering it as the first order of business in the new

Congress, with the support of almost every Republican senator. Eisenhower, however, believed

the amendment would severely restrict the necessary powers of the president and make the nation ‘‘helpless in world affairs.’’ Rather than

confront his own party leadership, he hoped to

delay action on the measure in order to gradually

chip away at its support. He sent Nixon and others to work with Bricker on compromises and

suggested a ‘‘study committee,’’ with Bricker as

its chair, to come up with an agreeable alternative.17 Bricker, however, would not yield on

the substance of his amendment. Finally, in 1954,

after much wrangling, the administration convinced Democrat Walter George of Georgia to

offer a much less stringent substitute. On the crucial roll call, the substitute received a vote of 60

to 31, falling one short of the two-thirds majority

necessary for passage of a constitutional amendment. Bricker tried to revive his amendment, but

too many Republicans had changed sides.18 Vice

President Nixon had been one of the administration’s most active lobbyists in defeating the

amendment without splitting the party. His

other primary assignment as party intermediary

proved more demanding.

Senator Joseph R. McCarthy (R-WI) shot to

fame in 1950 by brazenly claiming that the State

Department was full of ‘‘known Communists.’’

Over the next two years, he waged a running

battle with the Truman administration over its

conduct of foreign policy and the loyalty of its

appointees. Many Republicans and some conservative Democrats joined in this

anticommunist ‘‘crusade.’’ They averred that the

nation had been betrayed at Yalta and that Truman had ‘‘lost China.’’ McCarthy promised to

clean the Communists out of government and to

end ‘‘twenty years of treason.’’

When Dwight Eisenhower entered the White

House, he and his advisers hoped that Vice

President Nixon could keep McCarthy in line if

the senator continued his attacks. The results of

this strategy were mixed. Nixon was certainly

the right man for the job. As historian David

Oshinsky writes, ‘‘Only Taft and Nixon seemed

able to reach him [McCarthy], and Taft was now

too sick to try.’’ 19 Nixon was also one of the few

people in the nation who could safely deal with

the ‘‘McCarthy problem,’’ because, as Eisenhower put it, ‘‘Anybody who takes it on runs the

risk of being called a pink. Dick has had experience in the communist field, and therefore he

would not be subject to criticism.’’ 20 Nixon succeeded in convincing McCarthy not to pursue an

investigation of the CIA, but the senator was
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RICHARD M. NIXON

soon talking about ‘‘twenty-one years of treason,’’ implying that Eisenhower had not

stemmed the tide. Neither Nixon nor anyone else

could convince McCarthy not to investigate the

U.S. Army. As chairman of the Committee on

Government Operations’ Permanent Investigations Subcommittee, McCarthy had wide discretion to conduct investigations, but Eisenhower

publicly claimed that he would not allow members of the executive branch to testify about private conversations. He also supported army officers who refused to appear before the subcommittee. As the president did what he could

to divert the hearings, he had Nixon make a national speech emphasizing the need to be ‘‘fair’’

in the pursuit of Communists. In the end, McCarthy went too far. The televised Army-McCarthy

hearings revealed to the public a bellicose senator viciously attacking the army and the administration. As the president refused to give executive information to the committee, and as

McCarthy’s public support waned, his Senate

colleagues finally decided they had seen enough.

On December 2, 1954, with Vice President Nixon

presiding, the Senate voted 67 to 22 to condemn

McCarthy’s behavior. Republicans split 22 to 22

on the vote, with Democrats unanimously in

favor. Thus, after Eisenhower’s attempt to use

Nixon to contain McCarthy failed, the administration had resorted instead to quiet resistance,

allowing McCarthy himself to bring about his

own downfall.21

Adviser and Campaigner

Apart from his specific assignments, Nixon

also served as the administration’s general political expert. No one in the administration had a

more thorough knowledge of the way Congress

worked and how to get legislation passed. He always attended cabinet meetings and contributed

his insight by pointing out the political implications of any decision. He urged cabinet members

to get to know the chairmen of the committees

that had jurisdiction over their departments. Eisenhower’s speech writer, Emmett Hughes, described Nixon as ‘‘crisp and practical and logical:

never proposing major objectives, but quick and

shrewd in suggesting or refining methods.’’ 22

Nixon also emphasized the need to sell ‘‘modern

Republicanism’’ to the public. Cabinet members,

he said, should not be afraid to make partisan

speeches and should concentrate them in competitive congressional districts. He even suggested that they should welcome the chance to

appear on such television interview shows as

Meet the Press.23 Meanwhile, both Eisenhower

and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles used

Nixon to publicly explore policy options and

propose ideas that they were wary of advocating

themselves. As Ike put it, ‘‘He [Nixon] can sometimes take positions which are more political

than it would be expected that I take.’’ 24

Nowhere was this approach more in evidence

than on the campaign trail. The Republican strategy in 1952 had been simple. While Eisenhower

ran a positive campaign that emphasized his appeal to citizens of all parties, Nixon’s job was to

‘‘hammer away at our opponents.’’ He quickly

gained a reputation as the Republican ‘‘hatchet

man,’’ an image that would be captured by

Washington Post cartoonist ‘‘Herblock’s’’ portrayal of him as a mud-slinging sewer dweller,

an image that Nixon deeply resented. Nixon’s

campaign was a hard-hitting anticommunist assault, charging that Truman’s secretary of state,

Dean Acheson, ‘‘had lost China, much of Eastern

Europe, and had invited the Communists to

begin the Korean War,’’ and calling Democratic

presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson a graduate of Acheson’s ‘‘Cowardly College of Communist Containment.’’ 25 But Nixon’s campaigning was hardly over after 1952. In fact, it seemed

as though he were campaigning throughout his

vice-presidency. In 1954 he hit the campaign trail

once more on behalf of congressional

Republicans.

In many ways, Nixon emerged as the party’s

spokesman during these years because Eisenhower was unwilling to take on that role. Eisenhower was determined to be president of ‘‘all the

people,’’ and did not ‘‘intend to make of the

presidency an agency to use in partisan elections.’’ 26 Apparently, he had no such qualms

about the vice-presidency, and who better to

rally the party faithful than Nixon, the man a

contemporary observer called the ‘‘scientific

pitchman of politics.’’ 27 While Eisenhower

would not go after the Democrats, he was quite
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RICHARD M. NIXON

willing to let Nixon do so. According to White

House Chief of Staff Sherman Adams, ‘‘[Ike] told

Nixon and others, including myself, that he was

well aware that somebody had to do the hardhitting infighting, and he had no objection to it

as long as no one expected him to do it.’’ 28 Nixon

therefore conducted another aggressive campaign for the midterm election, covering nearly

26,000 miles to ninety-five cities in thirty states

on behalf of Republican candidates. The outcome

was not favorable for the GOP, which lost two

Senate seats and sixteen House seats, and Nixon

received little public credit for his efforts.29

Eisenhower’s ambivalence about Nixon’s attacking campaign style emerged forcefully two

years later in their 1956 reelection campaign. Eisenhower told Nixon that he should try to elevate the level of his speeches and that he should

avoid ‘‘the exaggerations of partisan political

talk.’’ Unlike Harry Truman’s ‘‘give ’em hell’’

campaign of 1948, Ike wanted Nixon to ‘‘give

’em heaven.’’ This more dignified campaign

style led to discussions of a ‘‘new Nixon.’’ He

talked about ‘‘Republican prosperity’’ and Eisenhower’s positive accomplishments as president.

It seemed that Nixon had finally decided to put

away his rhetorical boxing gloves. But it was a

false impression. Nixon was uncomfortable with

this approach. Republican crowds did not react

with the same vigor as when he ripped into the

Democrats, and he found it hard to suppress his

‘‘normal partisan instincts,’’ and to ‘‘campaign

with one arm tied behind [his] back.’’ 30 Yet this

was not entirely his campaign, and he had to

abide by Eisenhower’s wishes. Ike, however,

soon remembered why he had chosen Nixon in

the first place. As the campaign intensified and

Stevenson (running once more) and the Democrats stepped up their attacks on the administration, Eisenhower decided to give his aggressive

vice president a bit more rope. He told him,

‘‘Look, Dick, we’ve agreed that your speeches

generally in this campaign ought to be on a higher level than in the past. Still I think it’s perfectly

all right for you to pick up on some of these wild

charges and throw them back at the other fellow.’’ 31 Eisenhower, of course, did not intend to

follow this course himself. So, while Eisenhower’s staff privately worried about Nixon

‘‘running loose through the country,’’ the ‘‘old

Nixon’’ reemerged with Eisenhower’s blessing

and once more provided Democrats with their

favorite target.

Two years later, many of Nixon’s friends advised him to stay away from the 1958 congressional elections. Despite Eisenhower’s continued

popularity and his comfortable victory in 1956,

Republicans had lost ground in Congress in 1954

and again in 1956. Most observers predicted further losses in 1958. Many of Nixon’s friends in

the party, anticipating that he would run for

president in 1960, thought that being associated

with the certain disaster of 1958 would only get

in the way. As Tom Dewey told him, ‘‘I know

that all those party wheelhorses will tell you stories that will pluck your heartstrings, but you’re

toying with your chance to be President. Don’t

do it, Dick. You’ve already done enough, and

1960 is what counts now.’’ 32

If Nixon did not carry the banner for the party,

who would? Eisenhower was not willing to do

so, and no one else could. In the end, Nixon

could not resist, and he took to the campaign

trail once more. He was more disenchanted with

the party’s organization than ever, and the results of the elections confirmed his pessimism.

(He reported to the cabinet, ‘‘There were just too

many turkeys running on the Republican ticket.’’) 33 The GOP lost 13 seats in the Senate and

47 in the House while losing 13 of 21 gubernatorial races. The only really impressive victories for the Republicans were for governors

Nelson Rockefeller in New York and Mark Hatfield in Oregon, and Senator Barry Goldwater in

Arizona. The press proclaimed that the big winner was Rockefeller, while the big loser was

Nixon. Years later, Nixon would lament, ‘‘Perhaps Dewey had been right: I should have sat

it out.’’ 34 Despite the immediate disaster, Eisenhower was not the only beneficiary of Nixon’s

campaigning. Rank-and-file Republicans did not

forget that Nixon had tried to help, and party

leaders throughout the nation owed the vice

president a significant political debt. He would

collect in 1960.
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RICHARD M. NIXON

Goodwill Ambassador

While Nixon’s roles as political adviser and

campaigner were the most important ones in defining his place in the administration, it was his

role as international goodwill ambassador that

brought him the most praise. Henry Wallace had

been the first vice president to travel abroad, but

no one either before or since did so with greater

fanfare than Nixon. On most occasions his visits

were intended only as gestures of American

friendship. Nixon’s 1958 trip to Argentina for the

inauguration of that nation’s first democratically

elected leader was one such visit. Sometimes,

however, the vice president’s travels had a more

substantive purpose. On his first trip abroad, to

Asia in 1953, Nixon took with him a note from

Eisenhower to South Korean leader Syngman

Rhee. The letter made it clear that the United

States would not support a South Korean invasion of the North, and Nixon was sent to obtain

a promise from Rhee that such an action would

not take place.35 Nixon visited a number of countries in Asia from Japan to Pakistan, travelling

38,000 miles. He established a practice of meeting

with students, workers, and opposition leaders

as well as with government officials. His openness seemed popular in most of these nations,

and he developed an abiding interest in the continent and its politics. His travels gave him a reputation at home as an expert on Asian affairs that

would remain with him throughout his life. He

also travelled to Austria in 1956 to meet with

Hungarian refugees and to Africa a year later.

But Nixon’s most famous trips were still to

come. When he set off for South America in 1958,

he anticipated an uneventful tour that would

merely distract him from his attempts to talk the

administration into cutting taxes at home. He

was unprepared for the vehemence of the antiAmerican demonstrations he would encounter

from those opposing U.S. policy toward Latin

America. In Peru, Nixon was blocked from visiting San Marcos University by a crowd of demonstrators chanting ‘‘Go Home Nixon!’’ He was

met in Venezuela by hostile crowds that spat at

him as he left his plane. In the capital, Caracas,

the scene turned violent. A mob surrounded his

car and began rocking it back and forth, trying

to turn it over and chanting ‘‘Death to Nixon.’’

Protected by only twelve Secret Service agents,

the procession was forced to wait for the Venezuelan military to clear a path of escape. But by

that time, the car had been nearly demolished

and the vice president had seen his fill of South

America. President Eisenhower sent a naval

squadron to the Venezuelan coast in case they

needed to rescue the vice president, but Nixon

quietly left the country the next day. He returned

to Washington to a hero’s welcome. Over 15,000

people met him at the airport, including President Eisenhower and the entire cabinet. Over the

next few days, politicians of both parties

throughout the nation praised Nixon’s courage,

and congratulations poured in by the thousands.

It was Nixon’s shining moment, but the respect

was more the result of Americans rallying behind their vice president than any change in Nixon’s standing.36

Nixon’s final trip abroad brought him more favorable reviews. In 1959, he travelled to the Soviet Union to open the United States Exhibition

in Sokolniki Park in Moscow, part of a new cultural exchange program. As he and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev toured the exhibit, they

engaged in a lengthy and sometimes heated debate on the merits of capitalism versus communism. Much of this debate was captured by

American television, which transmitted an

image of the nation’s vice president standing in

a model American kitchen defending American

progress against a belligerent Khrushchev. The

encounter became known as ‘‘The Kitchen Debate,’’ and the nation once more took pride in

its feisty vice president. Nixon concluded his trip

with a thirty-minute speech on Soviet television,

becoming the first American official to address

the Soviet Union in a live broadcast. He stressed

‘‘peaceful competition’’ between the East and

West and expressed hope that the ‘‘Spirit of Geneva’’ would include a freer exchange of information. On his return, Nixon stopped in Warsaw, Poland, and was given a remarkable and

touching reception by the people of that city,

who crowded the streets, throwing roses and

shouting ‘‘Long Live Nixon.’’ While the trip contained little of real substance, it showed Ameri-
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RICHARD M. NIXON

cans an energetic young leader acting on the

world stage, an impressive image and one that

Nixon would try to cultivate for the future. In

all, Nixon visited fifty-four countries and met

forty-five heads of state during his eight years

as vice president, setting a standard difficult for

his successors to match and his opponents to

discount.37

The vice president, of course, did not travel

alone. Pat Nixon always accompanied her husband overseas and established her own role in

spreading American ‘‘goodwill.’’ She had vigorously campaigned with him for Congress in 1946

and 1950, but by 1952 she had grown weary of

politics. Still, when her husband received the

vice-presidential nomination, she took up campaigning with him once again. She seemed resigned to being married to a politician and concentrated on raising their two daughters, Tricia

and Julie, with minimal privacy at their home on

Tilden Street in Washington’s Spring Valley section. However, as Nixon biographer Jonathan

Aitken puts it, ‘‘Pat longed for that peace which

the world of politics cannot give.’’ She did, however, enjoy travelling and developed a reputation as an ambassador in her own right. While

the vice president met with political leaders, Mrs.

Nixon visited hospitals and schools, mixing with

people wherever she went. She gave the first

press conference exclusively for women reporters in Japan and dined in a previously all-male

club in Kuala Lumpur. Everywhere she went,

she was extremely popular and only added to

the positive image of her husband. If anyone deserved the title ‘‘goodwill ambassador,’’ it was

Pat Nixon.38

Constitutional Roles

Apart from the jobs Eisenhower gave him,

Nixon was also the presiding officer of the Senate, as provided in the Constitution. Like many

of his predecessors, Nixon did not find this task

to be particularly interesting. He was too energetic and ambitious to sit and listen to Senate

speeches without being able either to vote or to

intervene and was therefore seldom present in

the Senate chamber. After the 1952 elections, Republicans held a one-vote majority in the Senate,

with 48 members; the Democrats had 47; and

Wayne Morse (OR) had just left the Republican

party and intended to vote as an Independent.

But when Senate Republican Leader Robert Taft

died in July 1953, Ohio’s governor replaced him

with a Democrat, Thomas A. Burke, shifting the

one-vote majority to the Democrats. Wayne

Morse made it clear, however, that he would

vote with his former Republican colleagues on

organizational matters, giving the Republicans

exactly half the votes of the ninety-six-member

Senate, with Vice President Nixon available to

break a tied vote in the Republicans’ favor. The

Democrats therefore realized it would be futile

to offer the resolutions necessary to give them

control of the Senate’s committee chairmanships

and majority floor leadership offices. For the remainder of that Congress, Nixon occasionally

appeared if he thought it would be necessary to

break a tie, but otherwise he customarily left

after the opening prayer and majority leader’s

announcements, turning over the chair to a junior member.39

As the Democratic majority grew during the

1950s, Nixon spent even less time in the Senate.

Because Nixon had never been known as a legislative tactician or parliamentarian, and his one

constitutionally mandated job did not provide

any real opportunities to use his political skills,

he avoided his duties in the Senate whenever

possible.

The vice president did try to take a more active

role in the Senate’s deliberations on one occasion,

but his effort failed. In 1957, the Eisenhower administration decided to push for a civil rights bill

and anticipated that opponents of the bill would

use a filibuster to kill it if necessary. Senate Rule

XXII provided that cloture could not be invoked

on a rules change, making it impossible to stop

such a filibuster. At the opening of the first session of the Eighty-fifth Congress in 1957, Senator

Clinton Anderson (D-NM), in a strategy intended to make cloture easier to obtain, moved

that the Senate consider new rules. Nixon—over

the objections of the Republican leadership,

which supported the existing cloture provisions—stated that ‘‘in the opinion of the Chair,’’

the membership after each election composed a

new Senate rather than a continuing body. As a

result, he ruled, the Senate could change the
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RICHARD M. NIXON

rules at the beginning of each Congress by vote

of a simple majority. The Senate, however, tabled

Anderson’s motion the next day by a vote of 55

to 38. Later that year, after repeated attempts to

change the cloture rule in order to pass the Civil

Rights Act of 1957, Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson engineered a compromise that applied cloture to debate on motions for changes

in rules, but declared that ‘‘the rules of the Senate

shall continue from one Congress to the next

Congress unless they be changed as provided in

these rules.’’ 40

The other task that is inherent in the vice president’s job is, as Charles Dawes put it, ‘‘to check

the morning’s newspaper as to the President’s

health.’’ 41 For Richard Nixon, that was not just

an idle activity. On September 24, 1955, Nixon

received a call informing him that the president

had suffered a coronary attack. Nixon was

placed in a very delicate situation. While the

president was ill, Nixon needed to show that the

nation’s business was being handled effectively

so as not to seem weak, but if he attempted to

take too much control it would arouse fears of

a power grab by an overly ambitious understudy. He recognized that ‘‘even the slightest

misstep could be interpreted as an attempt to assume power.’’ 42 Nixon and other members of

the cabinet decided to emphasize that Eisenhower’s team concept would ensure the government could operate without difficulty until the

president recovered. The vice president would

preside at cabinet and National Security Council

meetings, just as he had done numerous times

when the president had been away. White House

Chief of Staff Sherman Adams flew to Denver,

where Eisenhower was hospitalized, to assist the

president, and when Ike was feeling better Nixon

was one of the first to visit him. Still, Nixon was

careful to observe proper protocol. He presided

over cabinet meetings from the vice president’s

chair and conducted business from his office in

the Capitol. He even made sure to visit cabinet

members rather than having them come to see

him. As he put it, he had ‘‘to provide leadership

without appearing to lead.’’ 43 Nixon handled

this ambiguous situation with considerable skill,

leading Emmett Hughes, a frequent critic, to call

it his ‘‘finest official hour.’’ 44

But while the vice president’s actions, and inactions, brought widespread praise, they also

raised fears that the Eisenhower administration

could suddenly become the Nixon administration, especially when the president underwent

an operation for ileitis in June of 1956. Eisenhower’s health would become a primary issue in

the 1956 election, as Democrats reminded voters

that a vote for Eisenhower was also a vote for

Nixon. Ike’s health would continue to be a subject of concern during his second term, and after

Eisenhower suffered a stroke in 1957 he decided

that it was time to set out procedures for how

Nixon should proceed if the president were to

become incapacitated. He drafted a letter stating

that, if he were unable to perform his duties,

Nixon would serve as ‘‘acting president’’ until

he recovered. Eisenhower would determine

when he was sufficiently able to take control

once more. The agreement was strictly between

Eisenhower and Nixon and therefore amounted

only to a shaky precedent (although Kennedy

and Johnson copied it later).45 Not until passage

of the Twenty-fifth Amendment in 1967 was the

issue of presidential incapacity officially dealt

with.

Nixon and Eisenhower

In the end, Richard Nixon filled with considerable skill the roles that President Eisenhower

gave him. So why did Eisenhower come close to

dropping him from the ticket in 1956? Eisenhower’s opinion of his vice president was most

ambiguous. The president appreciated Nixon’s

efforts in carrying out his assigned tasks. He told

associates, ‘‘it would be difficult to find a better

Vice President’’ and publicly repeated such

praises on a regular basis. He also ‘‘believed

Nixon to be the best prepared man in government to take over [his] duties in any emergency.’’ 46 This was more than just public flattery

for a subordinate. Because of his wide-ranging

interests and Eisenhower’s willingness, Nixon

was perhaps the most informed member of the

administration. Secretary of State John Foster

Dulles kept him briefed on State Department af-
[ 444 ]

RICHARD M. NIXON

fairs, and even the CIA was willing to provide

outlines of its current activities.47

For Eisenhower, this faith in Nixon as vice

president did not translate into confidence about

Nixon’s potential for the presidency. He saw

Nixon as a dedicated junior officer who performed his duties with skill but had not developed into a true leader. He worried constantly

that his young vice president had not ‘‘matured.’’ Eisenhower saw the presidency as the office of a statesman rather than a partisan politician. The 1960s image of Eisenhower as being

naive or nonpolitical is inaccurate, but he did believe that presidential politics was different from

congressional or statewide politics. The office required a person who could rise above unseemly

partisan bickering (at least in public) to represent

the national interest, and he did not believe that

Richard Nixon had shown that kind of potential.

This was partially an unfair assessment, since

Nixon’s public image as a fierce partisan was

magnified by Eisenhower’s insistence on using

him to conduct the president’s public political

battles. Still, Nixon’s ‘‘natural partisan instincts,’’

as Nixon called them, were never far from the

surface, and they made Eisenhower uncomfortable. In the end, Eisenhower decided that Nixon

just had not ‘‘grown,’’ and that he was not ‘‘presidential timber.’’ 48

When Eisenhower decided to run for reelection in 1956, he also began to feel uneasy about

not having established a ‘‘logical successor.’’ 49

He would have liked to run with Robert Anderson, his treasury secretary, but Anderson, a

Democrat, knew the GOP would never accept

him. The president hoped to find a way to get

Nixon off the ticket without seeming to ‘‘dump’’

him. As a result, when he announced his own

candidacy and the press asked him about Nixon,

he dodged by claiming it was ‘‘traditional . . .

to wait and see who the Republican Convention

nominates.’’ 50 Since this was a ‘‘tradition’’ that

had been broken by Franklin Roosevelt and had

not been observed by Eisenhower himself in

1952, it was obvious that Eisenhower was being

disingenuous. No one saw this more clearly than

Richard Nixon.

Eisenhower hoped to avoid a decision by convincing Nixon to leave the ticket voluntarily. He

offered to appoint Nixon secretary of defense in

a new administration. He argued that Nixon’s

low poll numbers might be a drag on the ticket

and that Nixon needed to gain executive experience in order to improve his future prospects.

Nixon replied that he would do whatever Eisenhower decided was best for the campaign, but

that was exactly the decision the president was

trying to avoid. He told the press that Nixon

would have ‘‘to chart out his own course.’’ Eisenhower’s evasions infuriated Nixon, and after

days of dangling on Ike’s hook, he decided to

force the issue by telling the president that he

wanted to run again. Eisenhower, finally forced

to choose, relented.51

There was one more ‘‘dump Nixon’’ attempt

in 1956, led by Harold Stassen, Eisenhower’s

‘‘secretary of peace’’ and foreign policy adviser,

after Eisenhower’s ileitis operation, but, by that

time, Nixon already had the support of the party

leadership and the convention delegates. Since

Nixon had used the vice-presidency to build a

strong base of support within the party and to

gain tremendous press coverage, the argument

that he would be better off in the cabinet was

simply not credible. He realized that the rest of

the nation would see it as a replay of the 1944

‘‘demotion’’ of Henry Wallace rather than as a

move into a more responsible position.52 While

it was not wise to say so, he also realized that

he was only one uncertain heartbeat away from

the presidency, and that was a chance worth

taking.

Nixon, however, would have to deal with Eisenhower’s ambivalence again in 1960. Nixon

was clearly the favorite for the Republican presidential nomination that year, but he faced a significant challenge from New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller. Eisenhower did not openly endorse Nixon even though he certainly preferred

Nixon and was furious with Rockefeller for attacks he had made on the administration. While

Nixon managed to hold off Rockefeller, the governor’s criticisms pointed out what would become an essential problem for Nixon during the

general election: while Eisenhower personally

maintained immense popularity, his administration did not. Nixon’s campaign stressed his experience. In contrast to his Democratic opponent,
[ 445 ]

RICHARD M. NIXON

Massachusetts Senator John F. Kennedy, Nixon

had met with world leaders, led sessions of the

cabinet, and had better presidential ‘‘credentials’’ than any man in America. But this approach put Nixon in the difficult position of defending an administration for which he was not

responsible. For two years he had privately

urged a tax cut to stimulate the economy, but Ike

would not unbalance the budget. Nixon had also

urged increases in defense expenditures and an

invasion of Cuba, but the president said they

were unnecessary. These criticisms would be

taken up by the Democrats in 1960, and Nixon

had to defend the administration, even while privately agreeing with the critics. He refused campaign help from the White House staff but could

not assemble a full staff to generate innovative

policy ideas for fear of offending Ike.53 It seemed

he was boxed in.

Eisenhower himself exacerbated the problem.

While Nixon campaigned as an experienced

leader, the press asked Eisenhower what policy

suggestions Nixon had made that had been implemented. Eisenhower replied, ‘‘If you give me

a week, I might think of one.’’ 54 This was hardly

the sort of endorsement Nixon needed—and it

was not entirely fair. Elliot Richardson, who

served during Eisenhower’s second term as an

assistant secretary of the Department of Health,

Education, and Welfare, tells the story of a 1959

cabinet meeting at which Nixon stood against a

majority opposed to a higher education subsidy

proposal. This followed a typical pattern of cabinet disinterest in the electoral value of its decisions. Richardson reported, ‘‘Time and again I

would see Nixon get up from the table after Cabinet meetings so tense that beads of sweat were

standing out on his brow.’’ At the 1959 meeting,

Nixon realized that a record of support for this

legislation would be highly desirable in his 1960

presidential campaign. Consequently, he structured that day’s discussion so that the opponents

had to acknowledge that the bill would have little immediate budgetary impact, that it established no new precedent for federal support of

education, and that it indeed met an important

national priority. Eisenhower reluctantly added

his support.55

Eisenhower mostly stayed out of the campaign

until the last weeks, when he made several

speeches on Nixon’s behalf. His reluctance was

due as much to Nixon’s determination to run his

own campaign as to Ike’s ill health or indifference. The race itself was one of the closest in

American history. It featured two bright young

candidates who evinced an unbounded optimism about the nation’s future squaring off in

the historic television debates that captured the

attention of the nation. In the end, Kennedy won

by the narrowest of margins, but Nixon had run

a highly competent campaign in spite of the

handicaps of representing a minority party,

being tied to an unpopular administration, and

facing a charismatic opponent. He also was attempting to become the first sitting vice president to be elected president since Martin Van

Buren. In light of these obstacles, it is amazing

that he came as close as he did to winning, but

he had been campaigning almost continuously

since 1946, developing an ability to discern voters’ concerns. He also devised innovative campaign techniques, using television and advertising, that allowed him to address those concerns.

Only the magical charm of Jack Kennedy could

finally defeat him.56

Most of Nixon’s opponents hoped that his career was over, but more perceptive observers

knew better. As Republican Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman William Miller said,

‘‘Any man who, at 47, comes within 300,000 [sic]

votes of winning the presidency—for a party that

is greatly outnumbered—has to be reckoned

with. It’s far too early to bury Dick Nixon.’’ 57

Nixon, however, soon walked into another disaster. He returned to California and challenged

Democratic Governor Edmund G. (Pat) Brown in

the 1962 gubernatorial race. Amid speculation

that he only wanted the office as a step toward

another presidential race, Nixon was defeated

soundly and responded with a vitriolic ‘‘last’’

press conference in which he blamed the media

for his defeat and declared, ‘‘You won’t have

Nixon to kick around anymore.’’ But his retirement proved temporary, as he staged a remarkable comeback to gain the GOP nomination in

1968 and to win the presidency amid the national

turmoil over the Vietnam War. Nixon’s presi-
[ 446 ]

RICHARD M. NIXON

dency would be marked by a new spirit of detente with the Soviet Union and by the establishment of diplomatic relations with the People’s

Republic of China, but all would be overshadowed by the tragedy of Watergate.

President Nixon was accused of using his office to cover up crimes in his reelection campaign, including a break-in at Democratic national headquarters in the Watergate office building, and misusing federal funds to influence government witnesses. Under threat of impeachment, Richard Nixon, in 1974, became the only

president in American history to resign from office. This time, his retirement was permanent,

but he remained in the public eye as a prolific

author and one of the nation’s most cogent commentators on international politics. He even

served as an informal adviser to many of his successors. Richard Nixon died on April 22, 1994,

at the age of 81.58

Nixon’s opinion of the vice-presidency

changed with his situation. Early on, he declared,

‘‘I like it much better than service in the House

or Senate. In the vice-presidency you have an opportunity to see the whole operation of the government and participate in its decisions.’’ 59 But

at other times he was frustrated about being Eisenhower’s ‘‘hatchet man.’’ 60 Appropriately, his

opinion of his chief also fluctuated. Nixon admired Eisenhower’s political savvy, calling him

a ‘‘far more complex and devious man than most

people realize, and in the best sense of those

words.’’ 61 But, Nixon was also deeply hurt by

Eisenhower’s unwillingness to come to his support in the 1952 fund crisis, the ‘‘dump Nixon’’

movement of 1956, or his own election bid in

1960.62 As a Nixon aide put it, the vice president’s opinion of Eisenhower went from ‘‘hero

worship, to resentment, to hero worship, to

disenchantment.’’ 63

Yet Nixon’s fortunes were intimately tied to Eisenhower’s coattails. Years later, in 1968, Nixon

would remind crowds that he ‘‘had a good teacher,’’ and could still exhort crowds, ‘‘Let’s win this

one for Ike!’’ One of his first acts as presidentelect would be a public visit to the dying general.64 But it was never a comfortable situation.

When reporters in 1960 asked Nixon what president best fit his idea of being ‘‘good for the country,’’ Nixon praised Woodrow Wilson but settled

on Theodore Roosevelt. Significantly, he did not

mention Dwight D. Eisenhower.65

Franklin Roosevelt had briefly envisaged expanding the vice-presidency by making it a kind

of ‘‘assistant presidency,’’ with greater executive

responsibilities. This is not the role that Eisenhower intended for Nixon. In fact, in 1959 Eisenhower proposed to his cabinet that he recommend legislation to create an office of assistant president. He envisioned perhaps two assistants, one dealing with foreign policy, the other

with domestic matters. Nixon was horrified, arguing that the change would make the vice-presidency even more superfluous than it already

was. More important, Secretary of State Dulles

was equally mortified, and the plan was quickly

dropped. Eisenhower’s suggestion revealed that

he never really considered Nixon a potential executive assistant.66

Nixon did expand the visibility and duties of

the vice-presidency as none of his predecessors

had, but those new duties were of a personal nature rather than an inherent part of the office, because they resulted more from the particular

needs of President Eisenhower than from a reconstructed vision of the vice-presidency. As a

result, the changes in the office were limited and

unique to the situation. Nixon’s new jobs were

overwhelmingly political, as party liaison, campaigner, and goodwill ambassador, although he

did have a few executive functions. He established an important precedent by presiding over

nineteen cabinet meetings and twenty-six meetings of the National Security Council.67 He also

chaired the President’s Committee on Government Contracts and the Cabinet Committee on

Price Stability, but these jobs were minor, because it was Nixon’s political role that mattered

to the president. Not many presidents would

need this kind of political troubleshooter, because Eisenhower was unusual in his lack of connections with his own party. Only the role of

goodwill ambassador was really the kind of task

future vice presidents could be expected to fill

with regularity. The vice-presidency had become

more visible, but whether it would continue to

be more important would depend on the needs

of future presidents.
[ 447 ]

RICHARD M. NIXON

When Eisenhower hoped Nixon would take a

cabinet spot, he had worried that ‘‘Nixon can’t

always be the understudy to the star.’’ 68 But

Nixon was not even really the understudy. He

was one part of Eisenhower’s ‘‘team.’’ His position on that team was one to which he was well

suited, thus his determination to stay. He was

constantly campaigning for Eisenhower and for

other Republicans, but he realized that he was

also campaigning for Richard Nixon. He had discovered how to turn the vice-presidency into a

platform for greater ambitions, but he was always dependent on Eisenhower’s needs. Nixon

was right that he could not truly chart his

own course. Luckily for him, the course laid

out by Eisenhower was one Nixon wanted to

follow, because it pointed toward the White

House.
[ 448 ]

NOTES 1Richard M. Nixon, RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon

(New York, 1978), p. 170. 2 Ibid., p. 172.

3The two most comprehensive works on Nixon’s early

life and career are Roger Morris, Richard Milhous Nixon: The

Rise of an American Politician (New York, 1990) and Jonathan

Aitken, Nixon: A Life (Washington, DC, 1993). 4Morris, pp. 257–337.

5 For the history of HUAC, see Walter Goodman, The

Committee: The Extraordinary Career of the House Committee

on Un-American Activities (New York, 1968). The most thorough work on the Hiss case is Allen Weinstein, Perjury: The

Hiss-Chambers Case (New York, 1978). 6Morris, pp. 515–624.

7 Ibid., pp. 628–29; Stephen E. Ambrose, Nixon: The Education of a Politician, 1913–1962 (New York, 1987), p. 225;

Aitken, pp. 193–94. 8 For the details on the 1952 race, see George H. Mayer,

The Republican Party, 1854–1962 (New York, 1964), pp. 482–

95; James T. Patterson, Mr. Republican: A Biography of Robert

A. Taft (Boston, 1972), pp. 499–568; Stephen E. Ambrose, Eisenhower: Soldier, General of the Army, President-Elect, 1890–

1952 (New York, 1983), pp. 529–72. For Nixon’s selection,

see Dwight D. Eisenhower, Mandate For Change, 1953–1956

(New York, 1963), p. 46; Morris, pp. 625–736; and Aitken,pp.

201–6. 9Eisenhower, p. 46.

10Ambrose, Nixon, p. 262. On Nixon’s relationship with

the Old Guard, see David W. Reinhard, The Republican Right

Since 1945 (Lexington, KY, 1983), pp. 131–32. 11Richard Nixon, Six Crises (New York, 1962), pp. 78–88;

Ambrose, Nixon, pp. 256–58; Morris, pp. 757–850. 12Ambrose, Nixon, pp. 281–83. For his part, Eisenhower

said privately that if he was still in the army and Nixon

was a junior officer, Nixon would have been dismissed immediately, but politics was run by different norms. See

Elmo Richardson, The Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower

(Lawrence, KS, 1979), p. 20; Aitken, pp. 208–13. 13 Nixon, Six Crises, p. 110. 14 Herbert S. Parmet, Richard Nixon and His America (Boston, 1990), pp. 238, 248–49; Nixon, Six Crises, pp. 117–19.

Nixon’s appeal to ‘‘Middle America’’ would continue to astound his critics in the future, see Nicol C. Rae, The Decline

and Fall of the Liberal Republicans: From 1952 to the Present

(New York, 1989), p. 41; Aitken, pp. 213–20. 15Ambrose, Nixon, p. 309; Parmet, p. 316. 16Ambrose, Nixon, pp. 304–6, 309; Gary W. Reichard, The

Reaffirmation of Republicanism: Eisenhower and the EightyThird Congress (Knoxville, TN, 1975), p. 219. The seminal

work on Eisenhower’s leadership style is Fred I. Greenstein,

The Hidden-Hand Presidency: Eisenhower as Leader (New York,

1982).

17Reichard, The Reaffirmation of Republicanism, p. 62. 18Duane Tananbaum, The Bricker Amendment Controversy:

A Test of Eisenhower’s Political Leadership (Ithaca, NY, 1988),

pp. 72, 157–215. 19David M. Oshinsky, A Conspiracy So Immense: The World

of Joe McCarthy (New York, 1983), p. 317. 20 Nixon, RN, p. 144. 21Oshinsky, pp. 416–95; Gary W. Reichard, Politics as

Usual: The Age of Truman and Eisenhower (Arlington Heights,

IL, 1988), pp. 98–109. For McCarthy and the Senate, see also

Robert Griffith, The Politics of Fear: Joseph R. McCarthy and

the Senate (Lexington, KY, 1970). 22Emmet John Hughes, The Ordeal of Power: A Political

Memoir of the Eisenhower Years (New York, 1962, 1963), p.

117. 23 Ibid., p. 103; Ambrose, Nixon, p. 309; Irving G. Williams, The Rise of the Vice Presidency (Washington, 1956), p.

247. 24 Nixon, RN, p. 144. See also, Parmet, pp. 333–36. 25 Nixon, Six Crises, p. 77; Nixon, RN, p. 110. 26Quoted in Jules Witcover, Crapshoot: Rolling the Dice on

the Vice Presidency (New York, 1992), p. 125. 27 Philip Potter, ‘‘Political Pitchman—Richard M. Nixon,’’

in Eric Sevareid, ed., Candidates 1960: Behind the Headlines

in the Presidential Race (New York, 1959), p. 69. 28 Sherman Adams, Firsthand Report: The Story of the Eisenhower Administration (New York, 1961), p. 167. 29 Nixon, RN, pp. 161–62. 30 Ibid., pp. 177–78. For the ‘‘new Nixon,’’ see Witcover,

p. 133. 31 Hughes, p. 161.

32 Nixon, RN, p. 199. 33 Ibid., p. 163.

34 Ibid., p. 200; Nixon, Six Crises, pp. 233–34. 35Ambrose, Nixon, pp. 322–23. 36 See Ambrose, Nixon, pp. 462–82; Nixon, RN, pp. 185–

93; and Aitken, pp. 250–54. 37Ambrose, Nixon, pp. 509–34, 569; Aitken, pp. 258–65. 38Ambrose, Nixon, pp. 326, 621; Aitken, p. 235. 39Ambrose, Nixon, p. 308. 40 Jacob K. Javits with Rafael Steinberg, Javits: The Autobiography of a Public Man (Boston, 1981), pp. 256–59; U.S.,

Congress, Senate, The Senate, 1789–1989: Addresses on the

History of the United States Senate, by Robert C. Byrd, S. Doc.

100–20, 100th Cong., 1st sess., vol. 2, 1991, p. 129; Ambrose,

Nixon, p. 609. 41Quoted in Nixon, Six Crises, p. 131. 42 Ibid., p. 134.

43 Ibid., pp. 144, 148.

44 Hughes, p. 275.

45 Nixon, Six Crises, pp. 177–79. For a provocative discussion of Eisenhower’s health and of presidential health gen-
[ 449 ]

RICHARD M. NIXON

erally, see Robert H. Ferrell, Ill-Advised: Presidential Health

and Public Trust (Columbia, MO, 1992). 46Dwight D. Eisenhower, Waging Peace, 1956–1961 (New

York, 1965), p. 8; Ambrose, Nixon, p. 387. 47 Parmet, pp. 316–25.

48Richardson, p. 35; Stephen E. Ambrose, Eisenhower: The

President (New York, 1984), pp. 319–20; Hughes, p. 152. 49Reichard, Politics as Usual, p. 120. 50Quoted in Ambrose, Eisenhower: The President, p. 296. 51 Nixon, RN, pp. 166–73. 52Ambrose, Nixon, p. 381. 53 Hughes, p. 277; Theodore H. White, The Making of the

President, 1960 (New York, 1961), p. 201. It is possible that

Nixon would not have assembled such a group anyway.

Even in Congress, Nixon did not have any legislative assistants, relying only on secretaries to deal with constituent

services and dealing with all policy matters himself. Len

Hall, his campaign manager in 1960, complained that Nixon

insisted on running even the most minute details of the

campaign himself. (See Garry Wills, Nixon Agonistes: The

Crisis of the Self-Made Man (Boston, 1970), p. 16.) This pattern

of personal control would persist even in his presidency. 54Quoted in Aitken, p. 284.

55Aitken, pp. 265–66.

56 For the election of 1960, see White, The Making of the

President, 1960. 57Quoted in Reichard, Politics as Usual, p. 166.

58 For Nixon’s later life and career, see Stephen E. Ambrose, Nixon: The Triumph of a Politician, 1962–1972 (New

York, 1989) and Ambrose, Nixon: Ruin and Recovery, 1973–

1990 (New York, 1991). For his presidency, see Joan Hoff,

Nixon Reconsidered (New York, 1994) and Theodore H.

White, Breach of Faith: The Fall of Richard Nixon (New York,

1975). 59Quoted in Donald Young, American Roulette: The History

and Dilemma of the Vice Presidency (New York, 1965, 1972),

p. 260. 60Ambrose, Nixon, p. 360. 61 Nixon, Six Crises, p. 161. 62 See Ambrose, Nixon, pp. 618–20. 63 Potter, p. 88.

64Wills, pp. 116, 138.

65 Potter, pp. 77–78.

66 See Ambrose, Nixon, pp. 511–13. 67 Interestingly, one of the most fervent advocates of Nixon’s responsibility to preside in the president’s absence was

John Foster Dulles. As the nephew of Robert Lansing, Dulles vividly remembered Wilson’s rage when Secretary of

State Lansing presided over the cabinet while the president

was disabled. Dulles wanted no confusion about where responsibility resided. See Chapter 28 of this volume, ‘‘Thomas R. Marshall,’’ p. 342. 68Quoted in Ambrose, Nixon, p. 392.

[ 451 ]

Chapter 37

LYNDON BAINES JOHNSON

1961–1963
LYNDON B. JOHNSON
[ 453 ]

Chapter 37

LYNDON BAINES JOHNSON

37th Vice President: 1961–1963

I think a fair assessment would be that there was a big sigh of relief when Johnson departed the

Senate. Not that they didn’t like Johnson . . . but he was so strong, and so difficult, and so tough, that

it was a relief to get him over to the vice president’s office.

—GEORGE A. SMATHERS

The only thing that astonished politicians and

the press more than John F. Kennedy’s offer of

the vice-presidential nomination to Lyndon B.

Johnson was Johnson’s acceptance. Neither man

particularly liked the other, and their styles contrasted starkly. Kennedy cultivated a smooth, sophisticated and self-deprecating image, while

Johnson often appeared boorish, bullying and

boastful. In the U.S. Senate, Johnson, as majority

leader, for years had stood second only to the

president of the United States in power and influence, whereas Kennedy was an unimpressive

back bencher. Although Kennedy’s choice for the

second spot on the ticket dismayed his liberal

supporters, the candidate recognized that Johnson could help him carry Texas and the South

and that he would undoubtedly be easier to deal

with as vice president than as majority leader.

Johnson’s reasons for accepting were more enigmatic, for he was trading a powerful job for a

powerless one.

From Farm to Congress

Johnson reached the dubious pinnacle of the

vice-presidency after a remarkable climb to

power in Washington. It started on a farm near

Stonewall, Texas, where he was born on August

27, 1908, the son of the Texas politico, Sam Ealy

Johnson, and his refined and demanding wife,

Rebecca Baines Johnson. Sam Ealy Johnson

served six terms in the Texas House of Representatives, faithfully supporting the interests

of his constituents, until his various real estate,

insurance brokering, and ranching ventures

began to drag him into debt. Throughout his life,

Lyndon Johnson never forgot the impact his father’s economic disgrace had on his family.1

Graduating from high school in 1924, Johnson

escaped both his family and the rugged Texas

Hill Country by heading toward California in

search of work. When nothing but hard labor

turned up, Johnson returned home a year later

and attended Southwest Texas State Teacher’s

College in San Marcos. Depleted funds forced

him to leave college and spend a year as principal and teacher at a Mexican-American school

in Cotulla, Texas, near the Mexican border. Years

later he asserted, ‘‘You never forget what poverty and hatred can do when you see its scars

in the face of a young child.’’ 2

When a candidate for governor failed to appear at a rally in 1930, Johnson delivered an impromptu campaign speech for him. This speech

so impressed a candidate for the state senate,

Welly Hopkins, that he recruited Johnson to

manage his own successful campaign. Later,

while Johnson was teaching high school in Houston, Hopkins recommended him to the newly

elected Representative Richard Kleberg. Hired as

Kleberg’s secretary, Johnson arrived in Washington with a congressman more interested in golf

than in legislating, a situation that gave the
[ 454 ]

LYNDON B. JOHNSON

young aide the opportunity to take charge and

make himself known. Directing Kleberg’s staff,

Johnson learned how Washington worked and

also got himself elected Speaker of the Little Congress, an association of House staff members. In

1934, after he courted and married Claudia Alta

‘‘Lady Bird’’ Taylor, Johnson sought wider career horizons and was soon appointed Texas

state director of the National Youth Administration, a New Deal agency designed to help students afford to stay in school. Success in that job

propelled him into a special election for Congress in 1937, campaigning under banners that

proclaimed ‘‘Franklin D. and Lyndon B.’’ 3

A New Deal Congressman

Johnson’s victory began a thirty-two-year political career that would end in the White House.

After the election, President Franklin D. Roosevelt visited Galveston, Texas, and warmly

greeted the new congressman. FDR admired

Johnson’s vitality and predicted that someday he

would become the ‘‘first Southern President’’

since the Civil War. Johnson had also become a

prote ́ge ́ of his fellow Texan, Sam Rayburn, the

future House Speaker, who guided much of his

career. An active congressman, Johnson used his

New Deal connections to bring rural electrification and other federal projects into his district,

then, ambitious and in a hurry, he ran in a special

election for the U.S. Senate in 1941. On election

night, Johnson held a lead but announced his

vote tallies too soon, allowing the opponent to

‘‘find’’ enough votes to defeat him. When America entered the Second World War, Johnson

briefly served in uniform as a navy lieutenant

commander. He received a silver star from General Douglas MacArthur for having flown as a

passenger in a bomber that was attacked by Japanese planes (none of the others on board received

a medal). When President Roosevelt called on

members of Congress to choose between military

and legislative service, Johnson returned to the

House for the duration of the war. In 1948 he

again ran for the Senate and fought a celebrated

campaign for the Democratic nomination against

the popular Governor Coke Stevenson. Having

learned his lesson from the previous Senate race,

Johnson held back on announcing his vote tallies

and with the help of some friendly political machines eked out an 87-vote victory for which he

was dubbed ‘‘Landslide Lyndon.’’ 4

A Southern Moderate

Johnson rode into the Senate in 1949 on the political wave that returned Harry Truman to the

White House and Democratic majorities to both

houses of Congress. His class of freshmen senators included Democrats Hubert Humphrey of

Minnesota, Robert Kerr of Oklahoma, Clinton

Anderson of New Mexico, Estes Kefauver of

Tennessee, and Paul Douglas of Illinois. Seeking

to establish himself quickly against this formidable competition, Senator-elect Johnson called in

the Senate’s twenty-year-old chief telephone

page, Bobby Baker, who had already gained a

reputation as a head counter. ‘‘Mr. Baker, I understand you know where the bodies are buried

in the Senate,’’ he began their critical relationship

by remarking. ‘‘I gotta tell you, Mr. Baker, that

my state is much more conservative than the national Democratic party. I got elected by just

eighty-seven votes and I ran against a caveman.’’ 5

Johnson sought to move to a middle ground

that would enable him to rise in the national

ranks of his party without losing his base in

Texas. Just as Sam Rayburn had promoted Johnson’s career in the House, Georgia Senator Richard Russell became the Senate mentor for the

young Texan. Russell, a powerful, highly respected ‘‘senator’s senator,’’ might have served

as Democratic floor leader in the Senate, except

that he could not follow the Truman administration’s lead on civil rights. He therefore preferred

to exercise his influence as chairman of the

Armed Services Committee and of the Southern

Caucus. Johnson won the affection of the bachelor senator by adopting Russell as part of his

family, inviting the Georgian to his Washington

home on lonely Sundays and to Texas for

Thanksgiving. Russell not only placed Johnson

on the Armed Services Committee but made him

chairman of its Preparedness Subcommittee. In

1952 Russell formally entered the race for the

Democratic nomination for president, in part to

prevent another ‘‘Dixiecrat’’ boycott of the party

like the one that had occurred in 1948. Russell’s
[ 455 ]

LYNDON B. JOHNSON

defense of racial segregation, however, doomed

his nomination—and served as a vivid example

to Johnson of the need to rise above the image

of a southern senator if he wished to realize his

national ambitions.6

Turmoil in the Democratic ranks elevated

Johnson swiftly in the Senate. In 1950 the Democratic majority leader and whip were both defeated for reelection. Democrats then chose Arizona Senator Ernest McFarland for leader and

the freshman Johnson as their new whip. Two

years later, MacFarland was himself defeated. At

first Johnson urged Russell to take the leadership, already knowing that the Georgia senator

did not want the job. When Russell declined,

Johnson asked his support for his own bid, arguing that the prestige of the office would help his

reelection in Texas. Although a handful of liberal

Democrats backed Montana Senator James Murray for the post, Johnson with Russell’s backing

was overwhelmingly elected Democratic floor

leader. He was still serving in his first senatorial

term.7

Democratic Leader

Johnson led Senate Democrats during the entire eight years of the Republican Eisenhower administration, as minority leader for the first two

years and as majority leader for the last six. The

two parties were so evenly balanced that during

Johnson’s minority leadership the death and replacement of senators occasionally gave the

Democrats a majority of the senators. After the

1954 election, the switch of Oregon Senator

Wayne Morse from independent status helped

give the Democrats a slim majority, but the party

faced a deep internal division between southern

conservatives, who opposed civil rights legislation, and northern liberals, who advocated racial

integration. As Johnson moved to the center of

his party, he worked to prevent an open split,

commenting that his major concern was to keep

Senator Russell and other southern conservatives

‘‘from walking across the aisle and embracing

[Republican leader] Everett Dirksen.’’ 8

As majority leader, Lyndon Johnson demonstrated unrelenting energy, ambition, attention to detail, and an overwhelming personality.

His close aide John Connally described Johnson

as alternately

cruel and kind, generous and greedy, sensitive

and insensitive, crafty and naive, ruthless and

thoughtful, simple in many ways yet extremely

complex, caring and totally not caring; he could

overwhelm people with kindness and turn

around and be cruel and petty towards those

same people; he knew how to use people in politics in the way nobody else could that I know of.

Above all, Johnson was a compromiser, a

broker, and a master of the art of the deal. His

hands-on method of persuading other senators,

with its sweet talk, threats, and exaggerated facial expressions and body language, became

widely known as ‘‘the treatment.’’ 9

Other politicians, regardless of party, admired

Johnson as a virtuoso at their craft. Republican

Representative Gerald Ford met Johnson in 1957

when they served on a bipartisan House-Senate

committee to draft new legislation on space policy. ‘‘Johnson elected himself chairman,’’ Ford

recalled, ‘‘and boy, did he operate.’’ The Senate

leader did not twist arms, but ‘‘the pressure of

his presence and the strength of his voice and

the movement of his body made it hard to say

no.’’ A keen judge of people, Johnson knew how

far to push and when to coax. ‘‘Any compromise

that Lyndon made,’’ Ford concluded, ‘‘he got

better than fifty percent.’’ Johnson insisted that

his only power as majority leader was the power

to persuade. But his friend George Smathers,

senator from Florida, noted that ‘‘persuasion’’

often meant doing favors: putting senators on

desired committees, sending them on trips, arranging for campaign contributions, and even

getting them honorary college degrees. ‘‘He was

a consummate artist,’’ said Smathers. ‘‘How he

did it, a color here, a little red here, a little purple

there, beautiful.’’ 10

Senator Smathers was with Johnson on the

weekend in 1955 when the majority leader suffered his first heart attack. When doctors advised

Johnson that it would take weeks of recuperation

before he could return to the Senate, Johnson delegated Smathers to stand in for him as floor leader. ‘‘We never saw Johnson again for some forty

days, although he began to call us on the tele-
[ 456 ]

LYNDON B. JOHNSON

phone in about a week,’’ Smathers recalled. ‘‘Just

ran us crazy talking to him on the phone, getting

things done. He was the most hard-driving guy

I ever saw in my life.’’ The heart attack made

Johnson pace himself differently than before. Periodically, he would leave Washington to spend

time on his ranch in the Texas Hill Country.

Typically, however, Johnson could not relinquish control and made the Senate adjust to his

schedule. Whenever Johnson was absent, little

could take place. Although the Democratic whip,

Montana Senator Mike Mansfield, tried to move

legislation along, Democratic Secretary Bobby

Baker would circulate through the chamber advising senators to stall because ‘‘Johnson wants

this kept on the burner for a while.’’ When Johnson returned he would insist on passing things

in a rush: ‘‘We’ve got to get this damn thing done

tonight!’’ By letting measures pile up, sufficient

pressure would have built up to pass everything

in short order. ‘‘Who can remember,’’ asked one

journalist, ‘‘when one legislator so dominated

Congress?’’ 11

Civil Rights

The majority leader’s signal achievement was

the passage in 1957 of the first civil rights bill

since Reconstruction. It served as a large step in

his transformation from southerner to national

figure. His patron, Richard Russell, had given

Johnson ‘‘elbowroom’’ to move toward the center, protecting him from attack on the right and

exempting him from signing ‘‘The Southern

Manifesto’’ against the Supreme Court’s ruling

in Brown v. Board of Education. Although Johnson’s move may have had an element of cynical

maneuvering, those closest to him believed that

he also felt genuine compassion for African

Americans, for the poor, and for the disadvantaged. He spoke often of the hardships of his

own childhood, and those memories seemed to

inspire him to achieve something significant

with his life. ‘‘Nobody needed to talk to him

about why it’s important to get ahead,’’ George

Smathers commented. ‘‘He was preaching that

all the time to everybody.’’ 12

Although the civil rights bill had been proposed by the Eisenhower administration and

was ostensibly managed by Republican leader

William Knowland, it was Lyndon Johnson who

fashioned the compromises that led to its passage. In return for significant modifications in

the bill, he persuaded southern conservatives not

to filibuster, and he advised northern liberals to

accept his deal as the best they could get. The

fact that Congress passed any civil rights bill

held symbolic significance, but angry liberals felt

that the watered-down bill simply elevated

‘‘symbol over substance.’’ Liberals pointed out

that the bill provided southern blacks with little

protection for either civil or voting rights. Criticism came from the right as well. One columnist

in Dallas wrote that ‘‘Johnson did his party a

great favor by his engineering of the Civil Rights

Bill of 1957, but he did himself no good at all

in Texas.’’ 13

During those congresses when the Senate was

almost evenly divided, Johnson perfected his

role as cautious broker. Then a severe economic

recession triggered a Democratic landslide in the

congressional elections of 1958. The Senate

Democratic majority of 49 to 47 in the Eightyfifth Congress swelled to 65 to 35 in the Eightysixth Congress, with the added margin of four

Democratic seats from the newly admitted states

of Alaska and Hawaii. Liberals who entered in

the new class quickly became impatient with

Johnson’s moderate approach. While the majority leader sought to appease the newcomers with

appointments to major committees, he found

himself attacked as a dictator by mavericks like

Pennsylvania’s Joseph Clark and Wisconsin’s

William Proxmire. They demanded more meetings of the Democratic Conference so that other

senators could have a say in setting the party’s

agenda. Johnson held his own, telling Proxmire

that ‘‘it does not take much courage, I may say,

to make the leadership a punching bag.’’ But he

faced a quandary, as his aide Harry McPherson

noted, since ‘‘he had enough Democrats behind

him to create major expectations, but not enough

to override the President’s vetoes.’’ 14

Johnson found it harder to control the larger

majority but still retained his firm hand on the

leadership and enjoyed the ‘‘perks’’ of office.

When the New Senate Office Building (later

named the Dirksen Building) opened in 1958, it

allowed many committees to move out of the
[ 457 ]

LYNDON B. JOHNSON

Capitol. Johnson took over the District of Columbia Committee’s two-room suite just outside the

Senate chamber, turning it into his leadership office. The larger of the two rooms—dubbed the

‘‘Taj Mahal’’ by reporters—with its elegant

frescoed ceilings, crystal chandelier, and marble

fireplace, symbolized the preeminence of the majority leader. ‘‘Behind his desk in his imperial

suite,’’ wrote one journalist, ‘‘Johnson is the

nerve center of the whole legislative process.’’ 15

(Later, during Johnson’s vice-presidency, the

Senate named the room in his honor.)

As the election of 1960 approached, several

senators jumped into the presidential race, but

Lyndon Johnson held back. Some joked that, as

Democratic leader under Eisenhower, Johnson

had already served eight years as president and

was constitutionally ineligible to run. Despite the

power and prestige of his office, however, its duties kept him from stumping the country as did

Massachusetts Senator John F. Kennedy. Rather

than enter the primaries and challenge Kennedy

(whom he privately derided as ‘‘Sonny Boy’’),

Johnson chose to wage his presidential campaign

through House Speaker Rayburn and other powerful congressional leaders, confident that they

could corral their state delegations at the Democratic National Convention in support of his candidacy. ‘‘He thought that national politics were

the same as Senate politics,’’ said Howard

Shuman, a Senate staff member who observed

Johnson at the time. ‘‘He tried to get the nomination by calling himself a Westerner and combining the southern and mountain states to give him

the nomination. That is the way he dominated

the Senate.’’ But Johnson was caught off-guard

by Kennedy’s savvy and sophisticated campaign, with advanced polling techniques identifying those issues that would strengthen or

weaken the candidate in every state. As Johnson

later told Bobby Baker, if he learned anything

from the campaign it was ‘‘that Jack Kennedy’s

a lot tougher, and maybe a lot smarter, than I

thought he was.’’ 16

Johnson waited until July 5, 1960, to announce

his formal candidacy and then fought a bitter

fight against the front-running Kennedy. When

the two met at the convention on July 12 to address a joint session of the Texas and Minnesota

delegations, Johnson portrayed himself as the

diligent legislator who had fought the good

fight, dutifully answering every quorum call on

the recent civil rights bill, in contrast to Kennedy,

who had missed all of the quorum calls while

out campaigning. Kennedy refused to be baited.

He wittily commended Johnson’s perfect record

on quorum calls and strongly endorsed him—for

majority leader.17

The 1960 Election

The next day, Kennedy won the Democratic

nomination on the first ballot and then had twenty-four hours to select a vice president. He had

given no indication of having made up his mind

in advance. The party’s pragmatists urged Kennedy to choose Johnson in order to carry Texas

and the South, but conservatives like Richard

Russell urged Johnson to stay off the liberal-leaning ticket. Still recalling the bitter experience of

‘‘Cactus Jack’’ Garner, who traded the House

speakership for the vice-presidency with Franklin D. Roosevelt, Rayburn and the Texas delegation adamantly opposed the notion that Johnson

should give up the majority leadership for the

hollow status of being vice president. Liberal

Democrats reacted negatively to Johnson as a

wheeler-dealer, and Robert Kennedy, as the campaign manager, had given his word to labor

leaders and civil rights groups that Johnson

would never be the vice-presidential candidate.

When John Kennedy reported that he would

offer the second spot to Johnson, his brother interpreted the move as only a token gesture of

party solidarity, since Johnson had told people

he would never accept the second spot. Then

Johnson astonished both brothers by accepting.

Considering the choice a terrible mistake, Robert

Kennedy was delegated to talk the Texan out of

running. Going to Johnson’s suite, he proposed

that the Texas become instead the Democratic

party’s national chairman. But a tearful Johnson

declared, ‘‘I want to be Vice President, and, if the

President will have me, I’ll join him in making

a fight for it.’’ John Kennedy chose to retain him

on the ticket, but the animosity between Johnson

and Robert Kennedy never diminished.18

Pondering why Johnson had accepted, some of

his aides thought that he saw no future in being
[ 458 ]

LYNDON B. JOHNSON

Kennedy’s majority leader. If he succeeded in enacting the party platform, the credit would have

gone to the president. If he failed, the blame

would have been his. Since the Texas state legislature had passed a law permitting Johnson to

run for reelection to the Senate at the same time

that he sought national office, Johnson may also

have been gambling that Kennedy would lose to

Richard Nixon, leaving Johnson as majority leader with a Republican in the White House. Another factor, mentioned by Johnson’s friends,

was that Lady Bird Johnson had influenced his

decision by reasoning that, after his heart attack,

the vice-presidency would be less strenuous than

the majority leadership. Johnson offered his own

reason when he called Richard Russell and explained that, if he had declined the vice-presidency, he would have been ‘‘left out’’ of party

affairs in the future.19

Before the campaign could begin, the Kennedy-Johnson ticket had to return to Washington

for a post-convention session of the Senate. On

the assumption that he would be the party’s

standard bearer, Johnson had devised this session to demonstrate his legislative prowess and

launch his fall campaign. Instead, he found himself playing second fiddle. Republican senators

mocked the majority leader, asking if he had

cleared moves in advance with ‘‘your leader.’’

When the Democratic Policy Committee met for

its regular luncheon, everyone waited to see

whether Kennedy would bounce Johnson from

his usual place at the head of the table. Kennedy

dodged the issue by not showing up. With the

Republican presidential candidate, Richard

Nixon, presiding over the Senate as vice president, Senate Republicans were not likely to hand

Kennedy any victories. The session failed

dismally.20

In the fall, Johnson campaigned intensely, conducting a memorable train ride through the

South. He also pressed for a joint appearance of

the Democratic candidates somewhere in Texas.

They arranged the meeting at the airport in Amarillo, where campaign advance men stopped all

air traffic during the brief ceremonies so that the

candidates could address the crowd. But they

had not counted on the Republican-leaning airline pilots, who deliberately ran the engines of

their planes in order to drown out the speakers.

At the close of the ruined appearance, a photographer snapped a concerned Kennedy placing

his hand on Johnson’s shoulder, trying to calm

his angry, gesticulating running mate. Then, just

before the election, Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson were jeered and jostled by a hostile crowd

of right-wingers in Dallas, Texas. Dismayed over

this event, Senator Richard Russell cut short a

tour of Europe and flew to Texas to campaign

for Johnson. News of Russell’s endorsement was

carried in newspapers throughout Dixie, helping

to solidify the Democratic ticket’s hold on the increasingly unsolid South.21

Vice President Johnson

Those who spent election night with Johnson

later observed that he showed no signs of jubilation at the narrow victory over Richard Nixon

and gave every impression of not wanting to become vice president. After the election, he used

his influence to recommend candidates for cabinet appointment—especially Arkansas Senator J.

William Fulbright to be secretary of state, but

Fulbright withdrew his name from consideration. The chief of staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Carl Marcy, recalled an encounter in the Democratic cloakroom where

Johnson grabbed him by the lapels, breathed in

his face and said: ‘‘What’s wrong with Bill Fulbright? I had it set for him to be Secretary of State

and he turned it down.’’ Johnson helped to assure Senate approval of Robert Kennedy’s nomination for attorney general by persuading conservative opponents to drop their request for a

recorded vote, but when Johnson promoted his

supporter Sarah T. Hughes for federal judge,

Robert Kennedy rejected the sixty-four-year old

Dallas lawyer as too old. Later, when Johnson

was out of the country, House Speaker Sam Rayburn traded passage of an administration bill in

return for Hughes’ appointment. It was an object

lesson in the power of the Speakership versus the

powerlessness of the vice-presidency.22

Not intending to become an inactive vice president, Johnson retained the ‘‘Taj Mahal’’ as his office and anticipated keeping the rest of his authority as majority leader. He proposed that, as

vice president, he continue to chair the meetings
[ 459 ]

LYNDON B. JOHNSON

of the Democratic Conference. Although the new

majority leader, Montana Senator Mike Mansfield, did not object, other senators warned him

that the scheme would never work. As Hubert

Humphrey observed, Johnson ‘‘was not an easy

man to tell that you can’t do something.’’ When

the Democratic Conference met on January 3,

1961, senator after senator stood to denounce the

proposal, including some whom Johnson had

considered his supporters. Although the conference voted 46 to 17 to permit the vice president to preside, it was clear that he could not

play the role of ‘‘super majority leader.’’ Afterwards, Johnson pulled back and seemed reluctant to approach senators and lobby for their

votes. ‘‘I think a fair assessment would be that

there was a big sigh of relief when Johnson departed the Senate,’’ his friend George Smathers

concluded. ‘‘Not that they didn’t like Johnson

. . . but he was so strong, and so difficult, and

so tough, that it was a relief to get him over to

the vice president’s office.’’ The Senate now

shifted from ‘‘the benevolent dictatorship’’ of

Lyndon Johnson to the more democratic leadership of Mike Mansfield. On the occasions when

Johnson presided over the Senate, he habitually

appeared bored.23

Facing constraints in his legislative role, Johnson sought to expand his activities within the executive branch. In addition to the Taj Mahal at

the Capitol, he occupied a large suite in the Executive Office Building next to the White House.

Johnson’s staff prepared a draft of an executive

order making the vice president in effect a deputy president, giving him ‘‘general supervision’’

over most space and defense programs. The proposal went to President Kennedy and never returned, although the president did appoint Johnson to chair the Space Council and the White

House Committee on Equal Employment. These

posts were not sufficient to halt the vice president’s shrinking status. When Johnson entered

the Democratic cloakroom, senators treated him

courteously, but since he was no longer in a position to court their votes or distribute coveted

committee assignments, he was no longer the

center of their attention.24

Johnson grumbled in private but kept his silence in public and at White House meetings.

President Kennedy always treated his vice president cordially, but the president’s young aides,

mostly ivy leaguers, snickered about ‘‘Uncle

Cornpone.’’ Acutely aware of their contempt,

Johnson attended National Security Council and

other policy-making sessions but said nothing

unless questioned directly. He felt insecure and

ignored and wore his feelings openly. ‘‘I cannot

stand Johnson’s damn long face,’’ John Kennedy

once complained to George Smathers. ‘‘He

comes in, sits at the cabinet meetings, with his

face all screwed up, never says anything. He

looks so sad.’’ 25

Seeking to boost the vice president’s spirits by

giving him some public exposure, Kennedy sent

Johnson on a string of foreign missions and

goodwill tours. The elixir worked. Johnson attracted enthusiastic crowds and reveled in the

press attention. Traveling in Pakistan in 1961,

Johnson repeated a line that he often used while

campaigning: ‘‘You-all come to Washington and

see us sometime.’’ To his surprise, an impoverished camel driver, Bashir Ahmed, took the invitation literally and set out for America. When the

press mocked the story, Johnson arranged for the

People-to-People program to pay the camel driver’s costs, personally met him at the airport in

New York and flew him to his Texas ranch, turning a potential joke into a public relations coup.

On the negative side, Johnson’s taste for hyperbole led him to proclaim South Vietnam’s illfated President Ngo Dinh Diem to be the ‘‘Winston Churchill of Asia.’’ These persistent journeys prompted The Reporter magazine to define

the vice president as someone ‘‘who chases

around continents in search of the duties of his

office.’’ 26

The press attention garnered on foreign visits

tended to evaporate as soon as Johnson returned

to the Capitol. One reporter who had covered his

years as majority leader spent an hour in the vice

president’s office and noticed a striking difference: not one other visitor appeared and the

phone rang only once. Late in the afternoons,

Johnson’s aides would invite reporters from the

Senate press gallery down for a drink with the

vice president. ‘‘When a vice president calls he

might have something to say,’’ United Press reporter Roy McGhee reasoned. ‘‘Generally, he
[ 460 ]

LYNDON B. JOHNSON

didn’t, except blowing his own horn.’’ Little substantive news ever came out of the meetings, and

sometimes the press would leave with nothing

to write about at all. The press considered Johnson no longer a significant player in Washington

events. The television program ‘‘Candid Camera’’ exploited his growing obscurity by asking:

who is Lyndon Johnson? People guessed a baseball player, an astronaut, anything but vice president of the United States.27

Where Johnson most logically might have

played a constructive role in helping pass the

president’s legislative agenda, he seemed to abdicate responsibility. John F. Kennedy had promised a vigorous administration, but his proposals

on issues from Medicare to civil rights had

stalled in Congress. The power of conservative

southern Democratic committee chairmen, the

death in November 1961 of Speaker Sam Rayburn, and the passive leadership style of Senator

Mansfield combined to deadlock the legislative

process. As part of the Kennedy administration,

Johnson was moving leftward away from his

former power base of southern conservatives,

and this further reduced his effectiveness in

planning legislative strategy. Harry McPherson

noted that by mid-1963 the vice president

seemed to share in the ‘‘general malaise’’ of the

time, and that he ‘‘had grown heavy and looked

miserable.’’ Rumors persisted that he would be

dropped from the Democratic ticket in 1964.

A Scandal

Johnson saw Attorney General Robert Kennedy as his chief adversary, but rather than

Bobby Kennedy, it was Democratic Majority Secretary Bobby Baker who most threatened his political survival. For years, Bobby Baker had been

Johnson’s alter ego, known as ‘‘Little Lyndon.’’

Baker combined unlimited energy and ambition

with poor judgment. While Johnson served as

majority leader he dominated Baker’s activities,

telling him exactly what he wanted done. ‘‘Get

so and so on the telephone,’’ Johnson would

snap his fingers, sending Baker off to relay the

leader’s wishes. Senator Mansfield retained

Baker as the Democratic secretary, but left him

to his own devices. During the 1960s, Baker devoted as much time to his own finances as he

did to Senate business.28

Dabbling in everything from vending machines to motels and real estate ventures, Bobby

Baker was sued by one of his partners in August

1963. This event triggered press inquiries into

Baker’s financial dealings and reports of his influence peddling. As the story unfolded, Johnson’s name surfaced in connection with an insurance agent close to Baker who charged that he

had given the vice president kickbacks in the

form of gifts and advertising on the Johnson family television and radio stations as conditions for

selling him an expensive life insurance policy.

Republican senators demanded a full-fledged investigation, and on October 7, Baker resigned his

Senate position. ‘‘I knew Johnson was petrified

that he’d be dragged down,’’ Baker later wrote;

‘‘he would show this by attempting to make light

of our former relationship and saying that I had

been more the Senate’s employee than his own.’’

One day, when Senator Russell rose to pay tribute to Harry McPherson, who was leaving to

take a post at the Pentagon, Johnson as presiding

officer called over one of the Democratic cloakroom staff and muttered:

Now here’s a boy—Harry McPherson—from

Tyler, Texas. I brought him up here. I put him

on the policy committee. . . . Now here is Senator

Russell down there on the floor saying what a

great man he is. . . . On the other hand, when

I came here Bobby Baker was working here.

. . . Then he gets in trouble. Everybody says he’s

my boy. But they don’t say anything about Harry

McPherson being my boy.29

Despite the negative publicity, John Kennedy

gave every indication of keeping Lyndon Johnson as vice president during his second term.

Late in 1963, reporter Charles Bartlett privately

asked why he did not get another vice president.

Kennedy replied that dumping Johnson would

only hurt the Democratic ticket’s chances in

Texas. It was to mend political fences between

Democratic factions in Texas that Kennedy traveled to Dallas in November 1963. Johnson met

the official party and planned to entertain them

at his ranch. The vice president was riding in a

car behind Kennedy’s limousine when shots
[ 461 ]

LYNDON B. JOHNSON

were fired. When the motorcade rushed to the

hospital, Johnson learned that Kennedy was

dead. Taking the oath of office from Judge Sarah

T. Hughes—herself a symbol of his limited influence as vice president—Johnson returned to

Washington as president of the United States.

Half of Kennedy’s cabinet had been flying to a

meeting in Tokyo when they received the news.

As the plane changed course for home, someone

spoke what they were all thinking: ‘‘I wonder

what kind of a president Johnson will make?’’ 30

Suddenly President

Lyndon Johnson underwent a remarkable

transformation. The disaffected vice president

grew into a remarkably active and determined

president. He set out to heal a shocked nation,

to enact Kennedy’s legislative program, and to

leave his own mark on the presidency. Freed

from his obligations to the southern conservatives in the Senate, Johnson won passage of the

most significant civil rights and voting rights legislation of the century. Following his landslide

reelection in 1964, Johnson enacted the most

sweeping domestic reforms since the New Deal.

Few areas of American social and economic life

were left untouched by his ‘‘Great Society’’ programs. Commented the liberal Democratic Senator Paul Douglas, ‘‘Had I been told in 1956 that

ten years later I would be one of Lyndon Johnson’s strongest supporters, I would have thought

the seer was out of his mind.’’ 31

As president, Johnson played the ultimate majority leader, although as the chief executive he

found there were some areas where he could not

cut a deal. His civil rights triumphs could not

stop racial turmoil and riots in American cities.

Nor could his ability to ram the Gulf of Tonkin

Resolution through Congress ensure a military

victory in Southeast Asia. There his efforts to fortify the shaky government of South Vietnam led

to America’s longest and most unpopular war

and ultimately to his withdrawal as a candidate

for reelection in 1968. Returning to his Texas

ranch a rejected and deeply wounded man, Lyndon Johnson died on January 23, 1973, just as the

peace accords in Vietnam were being finalized.

Recalling his old friend’s career, George

Smathers asserted that of all the people with

whom he served Johnson ‘‘was far and away the

man who accomplished the most, by far. He deserves to be remembered for the good things that

he did, and not just to be remembered as sort

of a lumbering, overbearing, sometimes crude

individual who tried to dominate everybody he

was with.’’ 32
[ 462 ]

NOTES 1Robert A. Caro, The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Path to

Power (New York, 1982), pp. 79–137. 2Bruce J. Schulman, Lyndon B. Johnson and American Liberalism: A Brief Biography with Documents (Boston, 1995), p.

9. 3 Ibid., p. 18; Caro, The Path to Power, pp. 217–40, 261–68. 4 Schulman, p. 19; Robert A. Caro, The Years of Lyndon

Johnson: Means of Ascent (New York, 1990). 5Bobby Baker, Wheeling and Dealing: Confessions of a Capitol Hill Operator (New York, 1978), pp. 34, 40. 6 John A. Goldsmith, Colleagues: Richard B. Russell and His

Apprentice, Lyndon B. Johnson (Washington, 1993), pp. 9–30;

Robert Dallek, Lone Star Rising: Lyndon Johnson and His

Times, 1908–1960 (New York, 1991), pp. 378–80. 7Dallek, pp. 421–23; Bobby Baker, pp. 59–63.

8Goldsmith, p. 73.

9Merle Miller, Lyndon: An Oral Biography (New York,

1980), p. xvi; Harry McPherson, A Political Education (Boston, 1972), p. 159; Robert L. Riggs, ‘‘The South Could Rise

Again: Lyndon Johnson and Others,’’ in Eric Sevareid, ed.,

Candidates 1960; Behind the Headlines in the Presidential Race

(New York, 1959), pp. 299–300; Rowland Evans and Robert

Novak, Lyndon B. Johnson: The Exercise of Power (New York,

1966), p. 104. 10 James Cannon, Time and Chance: Gerald Ford’s Appointment with History (New York, 1994), p. 67; George A.

Smathers, United States Senator from Florida, Oral History

Interviews, 1989, (U.S. Senate Historical Office, Washington, DC), pp. 45, 74–75. 11 Smathers oral history, p. 22; Darrell St. Claire: Assistant

Secretary of the Senate, Oral History Interviews, 1976–1978

(U.S. Senate Historical Office, Washington, DC), pp. 134,

214–15; Riggs, p. 295. 12George Reedy, The U.S. Senate: Paralysis or a Search for

Consensus? (New York, 1986), p. 107; Smathers oral history,

pp. 57, 70. 13 Howard E. Shuman, ‘‘Lyndon B. Johnson: The Senate’s

Powerful Persuader,’’ Richard A. Baker and Roger H. Davidson, eds., First Among Equals: Outstanding Senate Leaders

of the Twentieth Century (Washington, 1991), pp. 222–29;

Dallek, pp. 517–27. 14McPherson, pp. 159, 168; Jay G. Sykes, Proxmire (Washington, 1972), pp. 109–20. 15Riggs, p. 301.

16McPherson, p. 171; Dallek, p. 569; Howard E. Shuman,,

Legislative and Administrative Assistant to Senators Paul Douglas and William Proxmire, 1955–1982, Oral History Interviews, 1987 (U.S. Senate Historical Office, Washington, DC),

pp. 116–17; Bobby Baker, p. 138. 17Evans and Novak, p. 273.

18Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Robert Kennedy and His Times

(Boston, 1978), 1: 209–21; Dallek, pp. 574–81. 19McPherson, pp. 178–79; Smathers oral history, p. 88;

Goldsmith, p. 77. 20McPherson, p. 179; Dorothye G. Scott, Administrative Assistant to the Senate Democratic Secretary and the Secretary of

the Senate, 1945–1977, Oral History Interviews, 1992 (U.S.

Senate Historical Office, Washington, DC), pp. 140–41. 21Goldsmith, p. 81; Rein J. Vander Zee, Assistant to the Senate Democratic Whip and Assistant Secretary of the Majority,

1961–1964, Oral History Interviews, 1992 (U.S. Senate Historical Office, Washington, DC,) p. 65. The photograph is

included in Susan Kismaric, American Politicians: Photographs from 1843 to 1993 (New York, 1994), p. 166. 22Miller, pp. 272–73; Carl Marcy, Chief of Staff, Foreign Relations Committee, 1953–1973, Oral History Interviews, 1983

(U.S. Senate Historical Office, Washington, DC), p. 128;

Goldsmith, p. 86; Evans and Novak, pp. 314–15. 23Goldsmith, pp. 83–84; Leonard Baker, The Johnson

Eclipse: A President’s Vice Presidency (New York, 1966), pp.

22–28, 32; Smathers oral history, pp. 89, 121; Shuman oral

history, p. 239. 24Goldsmith, p. 86; McPherson, pp. 184–85.

25William S. White, The Professional: Lyndon B. Johnson

(Boston, 1964), pp. 227–46; Goldsmith, p. 87; Leonard Baker,

pp. 42–48; Smathers oral history, pp. 86, 89. 26Leonard Baker, pp. 62–67, 167; Paul Conkin, Big Daddy

from the Pedernales: Lyndon Baines Johnson (Boston, 1986), pp.

167–69. 27Booth Mooney, LBJ: An Irreverent Chronicle (New York,

1976), p. 141; Roy L. McGhee, Superintendent of the Senate Periodical Press Gallery, 1973–1991, Oral History Interviews, 1992

(U.S. Senate Historical Office, Washington, DC), pp. 22–23. 28Evans and Novak, pp. 311–13; Goldsmith, p. 91;

McPherson, p. 200; Smathers oral history, pp. 61–62. 29Bobby Baker, pp. 172–91; Vander Zee oral history, pp.

87–88. 30Miller, pp. 308, 316.

31 Paul H. Douglas, In the Fullness of Time: The Memoirs

of Paul H. Douglas. New York, 1972), p. 233. 32 Smathers oral history, pp. 165–66.
[ 463 ]

Chapter 38

HUBERT H. HUMPHREY

1965–1969
HUBERT H. HUMPHREY
[ 465 ]

Chapter 38

HUBERT H. HUMPHREY

38th Vice President: 1965–1969

I did not become vice president with Lyndon Johnson to cause him trouble.

—HUBERT H. HUMPHREY, 1965

As vice president during 1968—arguably the

United States’ most politically turbulent postWorld War II year—Hubert Humphrey faced an

excruciating test of statesmanship. During a time

of war in Southeast Asia when the stakes for this

nation were great, Humphrey confronted an agonizing choice: whether to remain loyal to his

president or to the dictates of his conscience. His

failure to reconcile these powerful claims cost

him the presidency. Yet few men, placed in his

position, could have walked so agonizing a tightrope over so polarized a nation.

Near the end of his long career, an Associated

Press poll of one thousand congressional administrative assistants cited Hubert Humphrey as

the most effective senator of the preceding fifty

years.1 A biographer pronounced him ‘‘the premier lawmaker of his generation.’’ 2 Widely recognized during his career as the leading progressive in American public life, the Minnesota senator was often ahead of public opinion—which

eventually caught up with him. When it did, he

was able to become one of Congress’ most constructive legislators and a ‘‘trail blazer for civil

rights and social justice.’’ 3 His story is one of rich

accomplishment and shattering frustration.

Hubert Humphrey’s oratorical talents, foremost among his abundant personal and political

qualities, powered his rapid ascent to national

prominence.4 Lyndon Johnson remarked that

‘‘Hubert has the greatest coordination of mind

and tongue of anybody I know,’’ 5 although

Harry Truman was one among many who recognized that this ‘‘Rembrandt with words’’ frequently talked too much.6 Dubbed ‘‘Minnesota

Chats,’’ 7 by Johnny Carson, Humphrey often left

himself open to the charge that he was ‘‘a gabby

extremist of the Left,’’ a label that stuck with him

despite his moves towards moderation.8 Any

lapses of caution may have been the result of

Humphrey the orator being an ‘‘incandescent

improviser,’’ 9 with overstatement being the

price he paid for his dazzling eloquence.

Humphrey drew his oratorical power from his

emotional temperament, which sometimes left

him in tears on the stump, undoubtedly moving

many in his audience. He would say that he had

a ‘‘zealous righteousness burning within him,’’

yet his ultimate legislative accomplishments

were achieved when he moderated the firebrand

and willingly compromised with his opponents.10 In fact, Humphrey learned to combine

his rhetorical talents effectively with his substantive goals by developing into a persuader

and for the most part foregoing intimidation, unlike his colleague and mentor Lyndon Johnson.

It is not surprising that, while Johnson hated the

powerlessness of the vice-presidency, Humphrey relished the national podium it offered.

A Prairie Progressive

The origins of the Minnesotan’s ‘‘zealous righteousness’’ can be found in his home state’s tradition of agrarian reformism that tenaciously promoted ‘‘the disinherited’’ underdogs at the expense of ‘‘the interests.’’ 11 Humphrey personally
[ 466 ]

HUBERT H. HUMPHREY

was a warm, sincere, even ‘‘corny’’ populist, an

old-time prairie progressive politically descended from the likes of William Jennings

Bryan, George Norris, and Robert La Follette, Sr.

Born in South Dakota in 1911, Humphrey

learned his ideology first hand in the persistent

agricultural depression of the Midwest during

the 1920s and 1930s. He and his family were victims, like so many others, of the Dust Bowl and

the Great Depression that had evicted them from

their home and business. Humphrey’s poor,

rural upbringing stirred both him and his pharmacist father to become politically conscious, ardent New Dealers. Thus Humphrey was ‘‘permanently marked by the Depression,’’ which in

turn stimulated him to study and teach college

political science in the employ of the New Deal’s

Works Progress Administration.12 After Humphrey became an administrator in that agency,

the Minnesota Democratic party recognized his

oratorical talents and, in their search for ‘‘new

blood,’’ tapped him as candidate for mayor of

Minneapolis.13 Although he lost his first race in

1943, he succeeded in 1945. This post would

prove to be Humphrey’s sole executive experience until the time of his vice-presidency. He

made the most of it, successfully impressing his

reformist principles on organized crime by

stretching his mayoral powers to their limit on

the strength of his personality and his ability to

control the city’s various factions.

Hubert Humphrey’s mayoral success and visibility propelled him directly into the Senate for

a career that would encompass five terms. He

was first elected in 1948 after gaining national attention at the Democratic National Convention

with his historic plea for civil rights legislation.

Although no strong constituency existed for this

issue in Minnesota, the position was in line with

Humphrey’s championing of others among his

state’s underdogs, including farmers, labor, and

small business. In hammering his civil rights

plank into the platform, Humphrey helped to

bring the breakaway progressive supporters of

Henry Wallace back into the Democratic fold,

while simultaneously prompting the Dixiecrats

to walk out of the convention hall and the party.

In the Senate

Humphrey’s headline-grabbing civil rights

speech appealed to Minneapolis’ liberal community, and his stand in favor of the Marshall Plan

and against the Taft-Hartley labor-management

relations law attracted the support of farmers

and labor. As a result, Minnesota elected a Democrat to the Senate for the first time since 1901.

In his first feisty days in the Senate, Humphrey

immediately moved to the cutting edge of liberalism by introducing dozens of bills in support

of programs to increase aid to schools, expand

the Labor Department, rescind corporate tax

loopholes, and establish a health insurance program that was eventually enacted a decade and

a half later as Medicare. In addition, Humphrey

spoke as a freshman senator on hundreds of topics with the ardor of a moralizing reformer. Accustomed to discussing candidly and openly policy matters that disturbed him, the junior senator

quickly ran afoul of the Senate’s conservative establishment. He found that many senators

snubbed him for his support of the Democratic

party’s 1948 civil rights plank and, as Senator

Robert C. Byrd has written, Humphrey ‘‘chose

his first battles poorly, once rising to demand the

abolition of the Joint Committee on the Reduction of Nonessential Federal Expenditures as a

nonessential expenditure.’’ Committee chairman

Harry Byrd, Sr., happened to be away from the

Senate floor at the time, but he and other powerful senior senators punished this breach of decorum by further isolating Humphrey.14

Yet Humphrey, under the guidance of Democratic leader Lyndon Johnson, soon moderated

his ways, if not his goals. As New York Times congressional correspondent William S. White observed in his classic study of the early 1950s Senate, Humphrey’s

slow ascent to grace was [due to] the clear, but

far from simple, fact that he had in him so many

latently Senatorial qualities. Not long had he been

around before it became evident that, notwithstanding his regrettable past, he had a tactile

sense of the moods and the habits and the mind

of the place.15

By the mid-1950s, Humphrey had moved into

the ranks of the Senate’s ‘‘Inner Club.’’
[ 467 ]

HUBERT H. HUMPHREY

It is hardly surprising that a politician so filled

with energy and vision had presidential ambitions dating from the time of his mayoral election. Indeed, on six occasions during his career

Humphrey sought either the presidency or the

vice-presidency. His first foray into the vicepresidential race was 1952, but it was the 1956

contest that revealed the essential Humphrey, as

he campaigned vigorously for that office after

presidential nominee Adlai Stevenson threw

open the nomination. Undaunted by his failure

in that contest, Humphrey continued his advocacy role in the Senate. Then, in 1958, during a

visit to the Soviet Union as part of a fact-finding

trip to Europe, Humphrey engaged in a historic

eight-and-a-half-hour impromptu conversation

on disarmament with Soviet Premier Nikita

Khrushchev. This event thrust him into the international spotlight, and the publicity he gained

made him an instant presidential candidate for

1960. Yet Humphrey, a longtime proponent of

disarmament, then paradoxically exploited this

publicity to criticize President Dwight Eisenhower for allowing a ‘‘missile gap’’ to develop.

In 1960 a defense issue of a more personal

stripe helped to undermine Humphrey’s presidential bid. More than in any other of his many

election years, his World War II draft

deferment—first as a father and then for a medical condition identified as a right scrotal hernia 16—was used against him in the primaries.

Although Humphrey’s draft status seemed to invite exploitation by his political opponents, his

chronic lack of campaign funds and organization, as well as his moderate liberal image, actually lost him the nomination.

Out of defeat, the irrepressible Minnesotan

snatched senatorial victory by becoming the

choice of departing Majority Leader and Vice

President-elect Lyndon Johnson for Senate majority whip. Humphrey used his new post to become a driving force in the Senate. Johnson had

promoted Humphrey for this leadership position

as a reward for his cooperation in the Senate and

to solidify a relationship for the benefit of the

Kennedy administration. Newly elected Majority

Leader Mike Mansfield noted Humphrey’s ‘‘vibrant personality and phenomenal energy.’’

These traits, coupled with a new-found pragmatism, gained him appointment to the Appropriations Committee and a solid record of legislative accomplishment.17 Humphrey went on to

become a major congressional supporter of a

number of New Frontier programs, many of

which had been originally outlined in his own

bills in the 1950s. Chief among these were the Job

Corps, the Peace Corps, an extension of the Food

for Peace program, and ‘‘a score of progressive

measures’’ pertaining to health, education, and

welfare.18

Humphrey’s role in pressing for the landmark

1963 Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty with the

Soviet Union ranks as one of his greatest triumphs. A supporter of disarmament since the

1950s, he helped persuade President Eisenhower

to follow the Soviets into a voluntary testing

moratorium. Humphrey was a follower of

George Kennan’s geo-strategic analysis, which

counselled a moderate course designed selectively and nonprovocatively to contain Soviet

probes into areas vital to the United States. This

middle way between provocation and disarmament also encouraged pragmatic negotiations, and Humphrey continued to prod President John F. Kennedy into the more permanent

test ban treaty and the establishment of a U.S.

Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. At the

treaty-signing ceremony, President Kennedy recognized Humphrey’s years of often lonely efforts, commenting, ‘‘Hubert, this is your treaty—

and it had better work.’’ 19

The principal items on Humphrey’s longstanding domestic legislative agenda failed to advance

significantly until the so-called ‘‘Great Society’’

period that followed Kennedy’s death. The first,

and perhaps biggest, breakthrough came with

passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which he

managed in a Senate obstructed by southern filibusterers. In working for that legislation, Humphrey skilfully combined his talent as a soft-spoken, behind-the-scenes negotiator with a rhetorical hard sell focused on the media. Humphrey’s

subsequent record of legislative achievement

was remarkable. With his support, federal aid to

farmers and rural areas increased, as did the new

food stamp program and foreign-aid food exports that benefitted the farms. Congress authorized scholarships, scientific research grants, aid
[ 468 ]

HUBERT H. HUMPHREY

to schools, rehabilitation of dropouts, and vocational guidance. Legislation promoted public

power projects, mass transportation, public

housing, and greater unemployment benefits.

While the Minnesota senator could claim credit

for helping to create millions of jobs, he also

reaped the scorn of critics fearful of deficit

spending. Humphrey replied that ‘‘a balanced

budget is a futile dream,’’ which could not be attained anyway until ‘‘the world is in balance.’’

Dismissing those ‘‘Scrooges’’ who harbored a

‘‘bookkeeper’s mentality,’’ Humphrey, a selfproclaimed ‘‘jolly Santa,’’ reiterated his priority,

people’s ‘‘needs and desires.’’ 20

Campaigning for Vice President

Hubert Humphrey was convinced he could

fulfill these ‘‘needs and desires’’ only by becoming president. He saw the vice-presidency as the

major stepping stone to this objective, reasoning

that, as vice president, he would also have greater access to the president than he did as Senate

whip. Humphrey believed he would need the

national prominence of the vice-presidential office to secure the presidency because he lacked

the requisite financial base to run such a large

national campaign. Since 1945 the vice-presidency had come to be viewed as a viable springboard to the presidency—a notion furthered by

the near success of Vice President Nixon in the

1960 presidential contest. Yet Humphrey recognized that the vice-presidential office itself was

‘‘awkward’’ and ‘‘unnatural’’ for an energetic

politician.21

Humphrey realized that he would have to pay

the price for his greater access to power by compromising some of his principles, because, above

all, Johnson demanded loyalty from his vice

president. But in 1964, the cost did not appear

to be substantial, since Johnson needed Humphrey and the entre ́e he provided to the Democratic party’s liberal wing. There was, however,

never any question as to who was boss. Even

when both men served together in the Senate,

their relationship was ‘‘one of domination-subordination.’’ 22 Humphrey had been Johnson’s

prote ́ge ́, his ‘‘faithful lieutenant’’ and go-between with the liberals.23 It is ironic that when

Humphrey actually became Johnson’s vice president, one of the closest political relationships in

Congress eventually turned into one of the most

mutually frustrating presidential-vice-presidential relationships in history. This conflict occurred even though the new vice president

sought to accommodate the chief executive by

adopting a more conservative stance on both domestic and foreign policy issues, with the resulting erosion of his former liberal credentials.

Johnson succeeded in effectively manipulating

Humphrey by running hot and cold, alternately

favoring and punishing him. Such behavior

modification began early in the political season

of 1964, when Johnson played Humphrey off

against rivals for the vice-presidency, encouraging all the potential candidates to campaign publicly for popular support. Humphrey’s political

adroitness in arranging a compromise solution

for the racially divided Mississippi delegation at

the Democratic National Convention impressed

Johnson and finally clinched the nomination for

the Minnesotan. Humphrey augmented his popularity by delivering a speech at the convention

with a famous refrain attacking right-wing opposition to the Great Society programs that many

Republicans had indeed voted for: ‘‘But not Senator Goldwater.’’ 24 The charges by the Republican vice-presidential candidate William Miller

during the fall campaign that Humphrey was a

‘‘radical,’’ on the ‘‘left bank . . . of the Democratic

Party’’ 25 had little impact on the voters. Humphrey campaigned persuasively, dispelling his

past reputation as a ‘‘flaming radical’’ by explaining that, although he retained his old goals,

he was now willing to take an incremental approach and ‘‘make what progress is available at

the moment.’’ 26

Lobbying for the Administration

After the landslide mandate of the 1964 election, Humphrey enthusiastically reverted to type

and became, according to biographer Albert

Eisele, ‘‘the busiest vice president in history during his first year in office.’’ 27 An active vice-presidential lobbyist, he sought to trade on his

former status as ‘‘one of the most well-liked

members of the Senate.’’ 28 Concentrating on selling Congress and the nation on the domestic

measures to bring about the Great Society, Hum-
[ 469 ]

HUBERT H. HUMPHREY

phrey maintained a degree of involvement that

was unprecedented for a vice president. No previous vice president had been so intimately associated with crafting such a body of legislation.

The ‘‘legislation long dear to his heart’’ included

the 1965 Voting Rights Act, Medicare, establishment of the Department of Housing and Urban

Development and the Office of Economic Opportunity, and creation of the Head Start program.29

Humphrey’s vision for the Great Society included providing federal funds for the National

Endowment for the Arts, the Public Broadcasting

Service, and solar energy research. Instrumental

in passage of the Food Stamp Act of 1964, Humphrey was also the White House’s most vigorous

salesman in persuading farmers to accept the

Model Cities program, African-Americans to

abide the draft, and conservatives to tolerate the

expanded welfare state.30

The president assigned Humphrey his primary

job inside the halls of Congress, where his

knowledge and contacts would be invaluable.

After presiding in the Senate chamber, Humphrey took his campaign for the administration’s

agenda into the adjacent cloakrooms—the most

effective legislative venue, as his long years of

experience had taught him. Humphrey’s tenure

as a member also made him acutely aware of the

Senate’s unwritten codes of behavior. The vice

president understood that as Senate president he

must never forget the difference between its

chamber and its cloakrooms: now that he was no

longer a regular member of the ‘‘club,’’ he must

confine his political dealings to the cloakrooms,

while limiting his chamber activities to the strictly procedural.

After Johnson announced in 1965 that his

Great Society programs and the mission in Vietnam could be accomplished simultaneously,

Humphrey worked the Senate on a daily basis,

encouraging the sale of some raw materials from

the U.S. strategic stockpile to pay for the rapidly

escalating costs of military involvement, since

the administration did not propose to increase

taxes.

Humphrey’s lobbying activity on Capitol Hill

reflected his style of perpetual exertion. Senate

Majority Leader Mike Mansfield utilized the vice

president’s consensus-gathering talents when he

asked him to mediate between contentious factions supporting the 1965 Voting Rights bill. The

next year, the vice president dealt directly with

congressional leaders to push the administration’s version of the Model Cities bill.31 Humphrey understood that he no longer had any legislative authority, but in his capacity as the president’s ‘‘field marshal on Capitol Hill,’’ he

‘‘collect[ed]’’ debts that were ‘‘due’’ him from his

past accumulation of goodwill. In 1965, Humphrey spent far more time in his chandeliered office a few steps from the Senate chamber than

he did across town in the Old Executive Office

Building. On Capitol Hill he exercised his skills

as a ‘‘legislative troubleshooter’’ and

‘‘intermediary’’ between factions. ‘‘Time and

again,’’ the vice president ‘‘delivered votes from

lawmakers who seemed immune to blandishments from any other quarter.’’ According to

Newsweek’s Charles Roberts, Humphrey sometimes cautioned senators in the cloakroom that

he would be obligated to make unflattering

speeches about them in their districts if they did

not vote his way.32

By 1966, however, Great Society programs

began to stall in Congress and racial tensions

mounted, prompting Humphrey to increase the

pressure for summer jobs for inner city youth.

In frustration, the vice president blurted out one

day that, if he were a slum dweller, immersed

in rats and garbage, he himself might ‘‘revolt.’’ 33

When riots broke out a week later, Humphrey,

under fire from both critics and the White House,

qualified his earlier statement by adding that

‘‘we cannot condone violence.’’ 34 And when

urban riots flared again in the summer of 1967,

while the administration’s agenda remained in

limbo, Humphrey called for a ‘‘Marshall Plan’’

for the cities.35 Johnson, burdened by soaring inflation, interest rates, and government debt, immediately rebuked his vice president, who did

not mention his plan again.

On the domestic front Humphrey was motivated by the disparity in standards of living he

observed in the richest country on earth. He constantly pressed for increases in Aid to Families

with Dependent Children, Social Security, and

welfare benefits.36 The glory of the Great Society

was its future-oriented generosity, yet as the eco-
[ 470 ]

HUBERT H. HUMPHREY

nomic consequences became apparent, President

Johnson grew more fiscally conservative. As a result, Vice President Humphrey felt doubly cheated, not only because his long-held vision was

being constrained, but also because, despite his

continuous congressional lobbying efforts, the

more parsimonious president—and not he—received all the credit for the successes that were

achieved.37 Nevertheless, Humphrey could

hardly be dissatisfied with the results of the domestic policy labors that he so enjoyed.

A Varied Role

Although domestic legislation consumed most

of Humphrey’s energies early in his term, his

vice-presidential role can be divided into roughly three separate functions. He was, at various

times, the executive branch’s representative in

the Senate, the chief of numerous executive

councils, and the president’s spokesman-atlarge. Among the statutory duties assigned to the

vice-presidency were the administration of

oceanography and the space race. As the chairman of councils on topics ranging from Native

Americans to the environment, youth, and tourism, Humphrey served as titular head of a wide

variety of executive branch enterprises.

But Humphrey soon abandoned most of these

White House duties when he realized that the

president personally controlled everything of

significance. He did, however, maintain his role

as liaison to the country’s mayors, a duty that

dovetailed nicely with his assignment as civil

rights coordinator and liaison to the country’s

African American leaders. These activities were

all part of Humphrey’s political mission to reduce racial inequities and conflicts by instituting

just governance.

In 1966, with the Great Society’s remaining legislation stalled in Congress, Humphrey used his

vice-presidential platform to support Democrats

seeking congressional seats in the coming midterm elections. To that end, Humphrey campaigned in almost every state as party cheerleader and presidential surrogate. He also used

his liaison duties to channel political information

back to the president, thereby influencing the aid

many candidates would receive and gaining a

substantial hand in overall campaign strategy.

Humphrey proved to be a vigorous campaigner.

As the escalating war in Vietnam slowly smothered domestic legislative initiatives, he advised

campaigners to ‘‘Run on Vietnam’’ and became

the administration’s ‘‘chief spear carrier.’’ 38

Despite Humphrey’s energetic Senate lobbying, by 1966 events had shifted the focus of his

vice-presidency from Capitol Hill to the White

House. Indeed, he became the most active White

House spokesman, and his nationwide speaking

tours were geared to a ‘‘frantic pace.’’ 39 Humphrey’s frenzy may be traced in part to the insecurity that his mercurial and manipulative boss

engendered. Johnson had a ‘‘routine of slapping

Humphrey one day and stroking him the

next.’’ 40 The president would publicly praise his

vice president and then, shortly afterward, exclude him from the inner councils, chiefly because Humphrey talked too much and too freely

in public. Johnson, inordinately concerned with

leaks and their relationship to loquacity, ended

up giving Humphrey little opportunity to contribute to administration policy decisions. The

more Humphrey was shut out, the more he became a mere ‘‘political spokesman,’’ as he put it,

falling back on his formidable rhetorical talents.41 This choice reflected not only his pledge

of loyalty to the president, but also his inclination to seek compromise.

With the situation in Vietnam heating up,

Johnson made Humphrey his primary spokesman on war policy. The vice president duly visited university campuses to answer questions

and reiterate the administration’s policy line. But

his new, more conservative stance began to alienate liberal supporters as he uttered such

hawkish assertions as, ‘‘only the Viet Cong commit atrocities.’’ 42

Anticommunist and Internationalist

The president also sent Humphrey to Europe

to gather support for the administration’s war

policy, along with a nuclear nonproliferation

treaty, increased East-West trade, and international monetary reform. Although many considered the vice president’s efforts on his European trip a diplomatic success, he encountered

antiwar demonstrators everywhere he went.

Humphrey handily dismissed these Europeans
[ 471 ]

HUBERT H. HUMPHREY

as ‘‘Communist led,’’ 43 an assessment in keeping

with his political record, since he had supported

United States cold war policy since 1950. Even

as mayor, Humphrey had battled Communists

and pro-Soviet leftists for control of his Democratic-Farmer-Labor party. In the Senate, Humphrey had joined the anticommunist crusade in

the interest of protecting his noncommunist

friends in labor unions. Ideologically, he had always been an internationalist, a Wilsonian, committed to worldwide free trade and open markets, which would, ‘‘coincidentally,’’ benefit his

Minnesota farm constituents.

The Minnesota Democrat was not always consistent in his internationalist motivations and

foreign policy views. For example, although he

was a longtime advocate of disarmament, chairman of the Senate disarmament subcommittee,

and later father of the Limited Nuclear Test Ban

Treaty of 1963, Humphrey had also attacked the

Eisenhower administration’s ‘‘missile gap’’ in

1960. Even though he may have indulged in a

measure of political inconsistency, his views

were fundamentally moderate. He never espoused unilateral disarmament but rather supported an active policy of negotiating mutual nuclear and conventional cutbacks with the Soviets.

While he advocated outright independence for

the ‘‘captive nations’’ of Eastern Europe, he denounced Secretary of State John Foster Dulles’

‘‘brinksmanship’’ over Vietnam, Taiwan, and

Korea as a dangerous game of threatening to use

massive nuclear force.

Humphrey’s record on the cold war at home

was even more complex. He had voted for the

McCarran Internal Security Act of 1950 and had

introduced the Communist Control Act of 1954,

both of which severely repressed those identified

as American Communists. Humphrey later regretted his participation in the latter act and

called for its repeal. Yet, at the time, he was silent

regarding the actions of Senator Joseph McCarthy, even though he did deplore the ‘‘psychosis

of fear’’ and ‘‘this madness of know-nothingness.’’ 44 In the 1950s Humphrey supported the

generally held view that agents of foreign governments committed to the overthrow of the U.S.

government were not entitled to civil liberties.

Yet, this stance could also be explained as a cynical attempt to save the Democrats from the ‘‘soft

on communism’’ label, especially during

the election year of 1954, the apogee of

McCarthyism.

While Humphrey’s staunch anticommunism

became even more pronounced as he progressed

into the upper echelons of the ‘‘Establishment,’’

he struggled to maintain his position as a moderate, shifting nimbly to the right and left of center as the circumstances warranted—the socalled ‘‘Humphrey duality.’’ 45 By the time of the

1964 presidential campaign, Humphrey labeled

Goldwater and his faction as ‘‘reactionary,’’ predicting that, if Goldwater were elected, he would

institute a ‘‘nuclear reign of terror.’’ 46 In spite of

his strong anticommunism, Humphrey feared

that an East-West confrontation could escalate

into nuclear warfare. Thus, his conservative detractors were able to label him ‘‘soft on communism’’ when the compromiser in him proposed, for instance, the solution of coalition governments in Southeast Asia.47 Humphrey believed that, if the native Communist and

anticommunist elements could pragmatically

combine in a parliamentary forum, the local military conflict would be less likely to engender an

eventual superpower confrontation.

The Vietnam War I: Opposition

As early as 1954, Humphrey had opposed any

continuance of the French war in Vietnam by the

United States. On that issue, his pre-vice-presidential foreign policy can generally be described

as ‘‘dovish,’’ despite the often precarious balance

he sought to strike. Humphrey did lead the effort

to ratify the SEATO treaty in 1955 and asserted

in 1960 that, ‘‘I happen to believe that the most

dangerous, aggressive force in the world today

is Communist China.’’ 48 But for Vietnam, he advocated the counterinsurgency techniques of

General Edward Lansdale that, rather than a

conventional military strategy, emphasized an

unconventional and, above all, a political solution incorporating a ‘‘rural reconstruction’’ program.49 In the 1964 campaign, although Humphrey endorsed a ‘‘free civilization’’ resisting the

‘‘expansion of Communist power,’’ he remained

a relatively consistent moderate as the campaign’s political rhetoric focused more on do-
[ 472 ]

HUBERT H. HUMPHREY

mestic affairs and the larger cold war, in which

the Democrats appeared more moderate than the

saber-rattling Goldwater and his running mate,

William Miller.50

Just a few weeks after the newly elected Johnson administration took office, however, the Viet

Cong attacked and killed American troops in

South Vietnam, spurring the president to retaliate by bombing the North. Humphrey, virtually

alone among Johnson’s inner circle, immediately

opposed this ‘‘Operation Rolling Thunder’’ with

several arguments. The first was drawn from the

advice of Undersecretary of State George Ball. A

former member of the U.S. Strategic Bombing

Survey after World War II, Ball understood the

limited capabilities of the U.S. Air Force. Humphrey himself reminded the cabinet that the

United States’ experience in Korea demonstrated

the pitfalls of the nation engaging in a land war

in Asia, even though that earlier conflict had indeed represented a clearer case of a conventional

invasion. Citing that precedent, Humphrey

warned that U.S. escalation in Vietnam could

provoke an intervention by the Chinese or even

by the Soviets, with potential nuclear consequences. The vice president asked what good

reason the United States could have to interject

itself into ‘‘that faraway conflict’’ when ‘‘no lasting solution can be imposed by a foreign

army.’’ 51

In 1965 Humphrey pushed for a political resolution as the only hope to save not only the unstable government of South Vietnam, but also the

full funding of the Great Society programs. The

vice president included these points in both

verbal counsel and memos to the president, also

reminding him that direct bombing by the United States had been Goldwater’s position during

the campaign. Humphrey predicted that the

president would eventually be opposed not by

the Republicans, but more dangerously, from

within his own party. Johnson’s response was increasingly to freeze the vice president out of the

Vietnam councils, forcing him to concentrate on

Great Society issues. Although Humphrey lost

access to the president because of a variety of injudicious public comments, the gulf over Vietnam was the principal cause of his year-long executive exile. This period proved to be the turning point not only of his vice-presidency, but also

of his political career.

The Vietnam War II: A Change of Position

As Humphrey’s legislative and executive opportunities dwindled, the penitent vice president

eventually became only too happy to carry out

the new role Johnson had assigned him, that of

special envoy. The president sent him on propaganda and fact-finding trips to Southeast Asia to

gather evidence of Chinese aggression. On his

first trip in early 1966, Humphrey was strongly

influenced by the hawkish views of Ambassador

Henry Cabot Lodge and General William Westmoreland. So eager was Humphrey to regain the

good graces of the president that, even as early

as November 1965, he had reported back from

his visits to college campuses, which were now

holding ‘‘teach-ins’’ against the war, that students were increasingly supporting the Vietnam

policy. As Humphrey found that his hopes for

compromise were not always attainable, he

began to make his irrevocable political choice between loyalty to his lifelong conscience and loyalty to Lyndon Johnson. ‘‘I did not become vice

president with Lyndon Johnson to cause him

trouble,’’ he declared in 1965.52 The president

may have somewhat appeased Humphrey just

before his February 1966 conversion with the

Christmas 1965 bombing pause of which Johnson

said that he was now trying ‘‘Hubert’s way.’’ 53

Humphrey departed on his extended peace offensive throughout Indochina and South Asia,

which even included some impromptu, and ultimately fruitless, negotiations with Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin in India. At the end of this

publicity-laden circuit, Johnson continued his

pattern of molding Humphrey’s behavior. The

president rewarded—or exploited—depending

on one’s perspective, Humphrey’s demonstration of renewed loyalty by permitting him to announce ambitious plans ‘‘to export the Great Society to Asian countries,’’ like South Vietnam.54

Humphrey instinctively responded to the idea of

extending the war on poverty and injustice to

other nations.

During the vice president’s grand tour of

South and Southeast Asian capitals, the local

leaders easily persuaded him that the Red Chi-
[ 473 ]

HUBERT H. HUMPHREY

nese menace and its advance ‘‘agent North Vietnam’’ necessitated U.S. military aid to their countries.55 Humphrey returned to the United States

convinced that Chinese ‘‘imperialism and expansion’’ threatened to topple Asian dominos as far

as Australia.56 He dismissed Senator Mike Mansfield and other skeptical senators as having

missed the ‘‘big picture’’ regarding the Communist ‘‘master plan’’ and the Chinese ‘‘epidemic [that] we must stop’’ before they come

‘‘closer to home’’ and all the way to Honolulu

and San Francisco.57 When Senator Robert F.

Kennedy suggested the possibility of a coalition

government for South Vietnam, a position Humphrey himself had espoused in his pre-vice-presidential days, the vice president retorted that

would be like ‘‘putting a fox in a chicken

coop.’’ 58 Humphrey soon came to regret the

memorable quality of some of his more strident

statements, as he lost the support of many liberals and midwestern progressives who now

characterized him as being ‘‘more royalist than

the crown.’’ 59 Newsweek magazine observed that

Humphrey was ‘‘the scrappiest warrior in the

White House phalanx.’’ 60

The Vietnam War III: Public Support and Private

Doubts

Johnson again tapped Humphrey’s inherent

exuberance in a successful campaign to persuade

Congress to vote more money for the war. As

one Democratic liberal commented, the vice

president was ‘‘one hell of a salesman.’’ 61 Humphrey declared that his new position was born

out of ‘‘conscience’’ 62 and that the war was ‘‘a

matter of survival.’’ He pointed out that ‘‘Vietnam today is as close to the U.S. as London was

in 1940’’ and would require the same kind of

long-term U.S. commitment.63 Such statements

were more than enough to get Humphrey readmitted to the administration’s inner circle of

Vietnam advisers. Having done his duty, the vice

president was rewarded with a second trip to

Southeast Asia in 1967. There, shortly after hearing another of General William Westmoreland’s

optimistic estimates, he publicly hailed the Vietnam war as ‘‘our great adventure,’’ which was

making the world freer and better.64

Humphrey’s closest foreign policy adviser,

George Ball, recognized that the vice president

‘‘could never do anything half heartedly.’’ Yet as

a genuine intimate, Ball also knew that ‘‘Humphrey’s loyal and excessively exuberant support’’ masked a vice president who ‘‘was personally revolted by the war.’’ 65 Ball believed that a

Humphrey administration would pull out of

Vietnam quickly. Although Humphrey had no

input into the Johnson administration’s Vietnam

policy, as Defense Secretary Clark Clifford was

well aware, the vice president did join Clifford’s

faction in the White House, which advocated a

more dovish diplomacy. This group pushed for

a pause in bombing North Vietnam without precondition as an inducement to the Communists

to reciprocate. The more hawkish faction demanded advance concessions by the North Vietnamese. Humphrey was caught between loyally

supporting the hawks in public and actually

being antiwar, ‘‘in his heart.’’ 66

Humphrey had already begun to rediscover

the doubts in his heart during his second trip to

Southeast Asia. He observed the continuing indifference of South Vietnamese Generals

Nguyen Van Thieu and Nguyen Cao Ky to their

own forces and their apparently unlimited demands on the United States at the very time the

war was supposedly being ‘‘de-Americanized.’’

After that second trip, Humphrey implied to his

close friend, Dr. Edgar Berman, that he identified

with Republican presidential candidate George

Romney, who had destroyed his political future

by admitting in 1967 that he had been ‘‘brainwashed’’ by American officials into believing the

United States was winning the war.67 Berman

later related that Humphrey had told him privately that the United States was ‘‘throwing lives

and money down a corrupt rat hole’’ in South

Vietnam.68 When Humphrey sent a confidential

memo suggesting this to Johnson, who was beginning to have private doubts of his own, the

president typically became infuriated by the dissent. In fact, the vice president was the associate

on whom Johnson took out most of his anger,

remaining rigid in his insistence that it was the

North Vietnamese who had to yield a concession

first before U.S. deescalation could occur.
[ 474 ]

HUBERT H. HUMPHREY

Neither the president nor the vice president,

however, could ignore for long the fact that their

administration was publicly backing a seemingly

losing cause that was also undermining Humphrey’s homegrown American Great Society.

When the U.S. bombing neither forced North

Vietnam to the negotiating table nor did much

strategic damage, since that country had little infrastructure, Humphrey in the spring of 1968

strongly advised a halt. This action was Humphrey’s first serious divergence from Johnson’s

policy since 1965.

The 1968 Election

This vice-presidential advice, delivered just

days before the end of March 1968, was not the

only instance of a prominent Democrat dissenting from Johnson’s policy. As Humphrey had

predicted three years earlier, the president’s own

party was now sharply divided, resulting in a

strong showing by the peace candidate, Senator

Eugene McCarthy, in the New Hampshire and

Wisconsin presidential primaries. When Johnson

on March 31 announced his decision not to run

for reelection, Humphrey was in Mexico City initialing a nuclear nonproliferation treaty. The vice

president immediately became the Democratic

frontrunner, although he declined to enter any

primaries. Robert Kennedy’s assassination in

June, after winning the California primary, assured Humphrey the nomination by default but

left the Democratic party in serious disarray. The

path to the November election was strewn with

other obstacles, as well, not the least of which

was Humphrey’s late start due to Johnson’s lastminute surprise withdrawal. As a result, Humphrey lacked either sufficient campaign funds or

a mature organization to apply them. Moreover,

the vice president contributed to his own organizational inefficiency by decentralizing his campaign structure.

The Democrats projected an image of disorganization and chaos to the nation that year,

as the party at one time or another split as many

as four ways into factions supporting Humphrey, Johnson, Eugene McCarthy, and George

Wallace. The raucous Chicago convention—with

nationally televised images of police beating

young antiwar protesters in the parks—further

weakened Humphrey’s standing in the polls,

and the extreme polarization within the party

prevented him from achieving his trademark

unifying compromise. The vice president struggled to avoid either being too closely identified

with the unpopular president, or dissociating

himself so far that he would lose his Democratic

party support and Johnson-controlled campaign

funds. Even though Johnson had withdrawn

from the race in March, the possibility remained

that the president might reenter the campaign if

circumstances allowed him to be drafted at the

August convention. With this sword hanging

over Humphrey’s head, he did not feel secure

enough to risk provoking Johnson into such a

move by openly opposing the president’s policy.

As a result, the vice president had publicly associated himself with the president’s policy for so

long that a post-convention switch would lack

credibility with the voters.

Johnson not only intimidated Humphrey, but

he also cajoled the vice president into supporting

the administration’s line on the war in order to

avoid jeopardizing the delicate Paris peace talks.

Since Republican nominee Richard Nixon had

adopted the patriotic stance of not criticizing

Johnson’s current handling of the war, Humphrey could not differentiate himself from his

Republican opponent on that score without

being perceived as disloyal either to the president, to the country, or to his own vice-presidential record. In classic fashion, Humphrey presented ambiguous scenarios for a bombing halt

and troop withdrawal. These proposals were directly rejected by Johnson, who thus appeared to

move closer to Nixon! In the face of the national

crisis, both candidates chose to divert their attention to the domestic problems of law and order

and inflation.69 As these issues, too, were inextricably bound to the war itself, all topics seemed

to associate the party in power with the general

chaos. Humphrey refused to repudiate either the

positions taken during his vice-presidency or his

belief that there would be a breakthrough at

Paris. Johnson had convinced Humphrey that

the latter was imminent, even while denying his

vice president detailed information from those

negotiations.70
[ 475 ]

HUBERT H. HUMPHREY

Badly behind in the polls, Humphrey took to

television in late September to try to solve the

dilemma of his private opposition to the war and

his public pledge to bring it to an ‘‘honorable

conclusion.’’ 71 For the first time, he publicly proposed halting the bombing as an inducement to

North Vietnamese reciprocity once he became

president. As a result, his popularity rebounded

in the final month of the campaign. When the

election returns came in, Humphrey had collected 42.7 percent of the popular vote to Richard

Nixon’s 43.4 percent, although the Republican

had 301 electoral votes to Humphrey’s 191. Too

many voters had remembered the vice president’s overselling of the war and distrusted his

recent apparent conversion.72

After the election, Humphrey blamed the loss

on his failure to break with Johnson but contended that he could not have proceeded differently. A more dovish or hawkish approach

might not have secured Humphrey the presidency, but it is probable that a less ambivalent,

less inconsistent message might have satisfied

enough of the electorate. In the end, perhaps

Humphrey could not have overcome the profound irony inherent in the fact that the war that

gave him his presidential chance also took it

away.

Back in the Senate

Humphrey’s electoral defeat finally removed

the constraints of his office, allowing him to express his personal political opinions. He did so

in his newspaper column, his memoirs, and as

a college political science teacher, along with

other educational ventures. Humphrey almost

immediately began to seek the Minnesota Senate

seat that Eugene McCarthy planned to vacate in

1970. Easily winning on his old populist platform

and underplaying the Vietnam issue, Humphrey

resumed his prior senatorial pattern of introducing an abundance of bills that were mostly domestic in content. As in his early Senate career,

most of his new legislative proposals were stymied. Returning as a new senator without seniority or important committee assignments,

Humphrey also had lost many of his valuable

former contacts, who had left the Senate. The

times had passed him by.

But the irrepressible warrior already had his

eye on the 1972 presidential contest, believing he

could successfully challenge Richard Nixon on

economic issues. Humphrey also criticized the

administration’s rough handling of dissidents,

asserting that ‘‘you can’t have civil order without

civil justice.’’ 73 Still, he remained vulnerable on

Vietnam, especially after the 1971 publication of

the Pentagon Papers, which revealed that a deceitful Johnson had decided before the 1964 election to bomb North Vietnam and thus escalate

the war. These disclosures resuscitated Humphrey’s image as Johnson’s dupe or shill and

convinced many citizens that the former vice

president could not be trusted. Although leading

in the national polls in December 1971, Humphrey was soon accused of waffling even on domestic issues, and another poll that same year

found that he was viewed as ‘‘too talkative, too

willing to take both sides of an issue.’’ 74 Too

many Democrats saw the former vice president

as part of the ‘‘Establishment’’ and turned to his

Senate colleague George McGovern as the agent

of change. Despite failing to win the 1972 nomination, Humphrey tried unsuccessfully once

more in 1976.

During his typically active Senate term, Humphrey resumed his seat on the powerful Appropriations Committee and by 1975 was chairman

of the Joint Economic Committee. In 1974 he introduced the highly ambitious Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment and National Growth bill,

which eventually passed after his death in 1978.

This final legislative monument symbolizes

Humphrey’s entire career, which was committed

to ‘‘the humanitarian goals of the New Deal.’’ 75

Humphrey realistically understood that his core

constituency comprised those Americans from

the lower social and economic classes—the disadvantaged underdogs—a positioning that

flowed from what journalist Murray Kempton

called Humphrey’s ‘‘overabundance of feeling

for humanity.’’ 76 Although this instinct lit his

way onto the public stage in 1948 when he made

his singular stand for civil rights, his historical

vision became blinded by his failure to recognize

that the Vietnam war could destroy his hopes for

the Great Society. Humphrey’s digression into
[ 476 ]

HUBERT H. HUMPHREY

self-delusion had prompted him in 1968 to

stump for ‘‘the politics of joy,’’ a slogan that

many viewed as entirely inappropriate in the

midst of wartime and civil disorder.77 Humphrey’s greatest asset, his enthusiasm, paradoxically may have also been his greatest liability.

In the course of pragmatically compromising on

the chief issue of the day, Vietnam, he allowed

himself to become the administration’s loudest

proponent of the war.

Although Humphrey’s tactics may have sometimes veered off course, he understood the profound value of the strategy of compromise, without which, he said, the Great Society legislation

would not have been possible. In 1971 Humphrey called himself a gradualist, the soundest

course by which one can make ‘‘steady progress

if we don’t bite off too much.’’ 78 In 1973, former

Secretary of State Dean Rusk echoed Humphrey’s self-assessment by characterizing him as

‘‘a liberal with common sense.’’ 79 Humphrey

was able to realize the difference between campaigning, where it was constructive to be partisan, and governing, where to hold grudges

would be, in his words, ‘‘Neanderthal.’’ 80 While

this generosity of spirit made him incapable of

being ruthless, a trait probably essential to a

presidential aspirant, it also made him an ideal

senator or vice president, an advocate and deal

maker who ‘‘was a terrific fighter but no killer.’’ 81 As a result, the ‘‘Happy Warrior’’ in the

public service knew enough defeats to ensure

that his ‘‘name had become synonymous with

cheerfulness in the face of adversity.’’ 82 Humphrey’s behavior during his last days testifies to

his awe-inspiring strength of character. Terminally ill and in great physical discomfort, he continued his senatorial workload with the same intensity and affability as always. He died on January 13, 1978.

Perhaps the key to Humphrey’s indefatigable

essence was that he placed personal political ambition below his support of a larger agenda. The

innumerable bills that he introduced and shepherded through Congress demonstrate that, with

Humphrey, the people and their issues came

first.
[ 477 ]

NOTES 1Edgar Berman, Hubert, the Triumph and the Tragedy of the

Humphrey I Knew, (New York, 1979), p. 23. 2 Carl Solberg, Hubert Humphrey: A Biography, (New York,

1984), p. 214. 3 Jules Witcover, Crapshoot: Rolling the Dice on the Vice

Presidency, (New York, 1992), p. 182. 4 Solberg, p. 387.

5 Ibid., p. 12.

6 Ibid., p. 167.

7 Hays Gorey, ‘‘I’m a Born Optimist,’’ American Heritage,

December 1977, p. 63. 8Allan H. Ryskind, Hubert, An Unauthorized Biography of

the Vice President, (New York, 1968), p. 234. 9 Solberg, p. 91.

10Ryskind, p. 300.

11 Ibid., p. 231.

12Berman, p. 17.

13 Solberg, p. 89.

14U.S., Congress, Senate, The Senate, 1789–1989: Addresses

on the History of the United States Senate, by Robert C. Byrd,

S. Doc. 100–20, 100th Cong., 1st sess., vol. 1, 1989, p. 606. 15William S. White, Citadel: The Story of the Senate (New

York, 1957), pp. 112–13. 16 Solberg, pp. 99, 209.

17Albert Eisele, Almost to the Presidency, a Biography of Two

American Politicians (Blue Earth, MN, 1972), p. 179. 18 Ibid., p. 181.

19 Ibid., p. 185.

20Ryskind, pp. 280, 281.

21Berman, p. 87.

22 Marie D. Natoli, ‘‘The Humphrey Vice Presidency in

Retrospect,’’ Presidential Studies Quarterly 12 (Fall 1982): 604. 23Ryskind, p. 319.

24 Solberg, p. 258.

25 Joel K. Goldstein, The Modern American Vice Presidency,

(Princeton, NJ, 1982), pp. 121, 122. 26Eisele, pp. 206, 212.

27 Ibid., p. 235.

28 Natoli, p. 604.

29Witcover, p. 197.

30 Solberg, pp. 462–63; Berman, p. 97.

31Congressional Quarterly Almanac, 89th Cong., First sess.,

1965, vol. 21 (Washington DC, 1966), pp. 547, 821, 829; vol.

22, p. 226. 32 Charles Roberts, LBJ’s Inner Circle, (New York, 1965),

pp. 190–91. 33Ryskind, p. 324; Eisele, p. 249.

34Eisele, p. 249.

35 Solberg, p. 309.

36Berman, pp. 27, 31.

37Goldstein, p. 181.

38 Solberg, p. 297; Eisele, pp. 249–50.

39 Ibid., p. 236.

40Witcover, p. 199.

41 Natoli, p. 605.

42 Solberg, p. 301.

43 Ibid., p. 304.

44Eisele, p. 99.

45Gorey, p. 62; Eisele, p. 99; Solberg pp. 157–59, 468.

46Ryskind, p. 266.

47 Ibid., p. 275.

48Eisele, p. 229.

49 Ibid., p. 230; Solberg, p. 276.

50Witcover, p. 195.

51Berman, p. 102.

52Eisele, p. 224.

53 Solberg, p. 284.

54Eisele, p. 243.

55 Solberg, p. 291.

56Eisele, p. 243.

57 Solberg, p. 289; Goldstein, p. 194; Eisele, p. 243.

58Ryskind, p. 303.

59 Solberg, p. 290.

60Goldstein, p. 194.

61Eisele, p. 246.

62 Ibid., p. 246.

63 Solberg, p. 291.

64 Ibid., p. 312.

65George Ball, The Past has Another Pattern: Memoirs (New

York, 1982), pp. 445, 409. 66 Clark Clifford, with Richard Holbrooke, Counsel to the

President: Memoirs (New York, 1991), pp. 527, 570. 67Berman, p. 111.

68 Ibid., p. 115.

69Eisele, p. 369.

70 Solberg, pp. 347–48, 350.

71Eisele, p. 379; Berman, p. 215.

72 Solberg, p. 407.

73Eisele, p. 432.

74 Ibid., p. 440.

75 Ibid., p. 445.

76Berman, p. 40.

77 Solberg, p. 332.

78 LBJ Oral History Collection, Joe B. Frantz interview with

Hubert Humphrey, 1971, University of Texas Oral History

Project, p. 17. 79 Natoli, p. 604.

80Berman, p. 60.

81 Solberg, p. 469.

82Eisele, p. 393.

[ 479 ]

Chapter 39

SPIRO THEODORE AGNEW

1969–1973
SPIRO T. AGNEW
[ 481 ]

Chapter 39

SPIRO THEODORE AGNEW

39th Vice President: 1969–1973

A little over a week ago, I took a rather unusual step for a Vice President . . . I said something.

—SPIRO AGNEW

On November 13, 1969, Vice President Spiro

Agnew became a household word when he vehemently denounced television news broadcasters

as a biased ‘‘unelected elite’’ who subjected

President Richard M. Nixon’s speeches to instant

analysis. The president had a right to communicate directly with the people, Agnew asserted,

without having his words ‘‘characterized

through the prejudices of hostile critics.’’ Agnew

raised the possibility of greater government regulation of this ‘‘virtual monopoly,’’ a suggestion

that the veteran television newscaster Walter

Cronkite took as ‘‘an implied threat to freedom

of speech in this country.’’ But Agnew’s words

rang true to those whom Nixon called the Silent

Majority. From then until he resigned in 1973,

Agnew remained an outspoken and controversial figure, who played traveling salesman for

the administration. In this role, Spiro Agnew was

both the creation of Richard Nixon and a reflection of his administration’s siege mentality.1

Early Years

The son of a Greek immigrant whose name

originally was Anagnostopoulos, Spiro Theodore Agnew was born in Baltimore, Maryland,

on November 9, 1918. He attended public

schools and went to Johns Hopkins University

in 1937 to study chemistry, before transferring to

the University of Baltimore Law School, where

he studied law at night while working at a grocery and an insurance company during the day.

In 1942 he married a fellow insurance company

employee, Elinor Isabel Judefind, known to all

as Judy. Drafted into the army during World

War II, he won a Bronze Star for his service in

France and Germany. He returned to school on

the GI Bill of Rights, received his law degree in

1947, practiced law in a Baltimore firm, and

eventually set up his own law practice in the Baltimore suburb of Towson.

Remaking His Image

Moving from city to suburb, Agnew remade

his own image. When he recalled the ethnic slurs

he suffered about ‘‘Spiro’’ while a school boy, he

now called himself ‘‘Ted’’ and vowed that none

of his children would have Greek names. Agnew

similarly changed party affiliations. Although

his father was a Baltimore Democratic ward

leader and Agnew had first registered as a Democrat, his law partners were Republicans and he

joined their party. In 1957 the Democratic county

executive of Baltimore County appointed him to

the board of zoning appeals. In 1960 Agnew

made his first race for elective office, running for

associate circuit judge, and coming in fifth in a

five-person contest. In 1961, when a new county

executive dropped him from the zoning board,

Agnew protested vigorously and in so doing

built his name recognition in the county. The following year he ran for county executive. A bitter

split in the Democratic party helped make him

the first Republican elected Baltimore County executive in the twentieth century. In office he established a relatively progressive record, and in
[ 482 ]

SPIRO T. AGNEW

1966, when nominated as the Republican candidate for governor of Maryland, Agnew positioned himself to the left of his Democratic challenger, George Mahoney. An arch segregationist,

Mahoney adopted the campaign slogan, ‘‘Your

Home Is Your Castle—Protect It,’’ which only

drove liberal Democrats into Agnew’s camp.

Charging Mahoney with racial bigotry, Agnew

captured the liberal suburbs around Washington

and was elected governor.2

It came as a shock to Agnew’s liberal supporters when as governor he took a more hard-line

conservative stance on racial matters than he had

during the campaign. Early in 1968, students at

the predominantly African American Bowie

State College occupied the administration building to protest the run-down condition of their

campus—at a time when Maryland essentially

ran separate college systems for black and white

students. Instead of negotiating, Agnew sent the

state police to take back the administration

building. When the students went to Annapolis

to protest, Agnew ordered their arrest and had

the college temporarily closed down. Then in

April, when riots broke out in Baltimore following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King,

Jr., Governor Agnew summoned black leaders to

his office. Rather than appeal for their help, he

castigated them for capitulating to radical agitators. ‘‘You were intimidated by veiled threats,’’

Agnew charged, ‘‘you were stung by . . . epithets

like ‘Uncle Tom.’’’ Half of the black leaders

walked out before he finished speaking. ‘‘He

talked to us like we were children,’’ one state

senator complained. The incident dramatically

reversed Agnew’s public image, alienating his

liberal supporters and raising his standing

among conservatives.3

Spiro Who?

On the national scene, Agnew formed a committee to draft New York Governor Nelson

Rockefeller for president in 1968. In March, during his weekly press conference, Agnew watched

on television what he expected would be Rockefeller’s declaration of candidacy. Without warning, Rockefeller withdrew from the contest,

humiliating Agnew in front of the press corps.

Rockefeller later jumped back into the race, but

by then Agnew had moved toward the

frontrunner, Richard Nixon. When polls showed

none of the better-known Republicans adding

much as Nixon’s running mate, Nixon surprised

everyone—as he liked to do—by selecting the

relatively unknown Agnew. ‘‘Spiro who?’’ asked

the pundits, who considered Agnew unqualified

for national office. Despite such doubts, Nixon

saw much promise in his choice. ‘‘There can be

a mystique about the man,’’ Nixon assured reporters. ‘‘You can look him in the eyes and know

he’s got it.’’ 4

Nixon expected Agnew to appeal to white

southerners and others troubled by the civil

rights movement and recent rioting in the cities.

Attention shifted from this issue during the campaign, however, when Agnew made a number

of gaffes, including some ethnic slurs and an accusation that Vice President Hubert Humphrey,

the Democratic candidate, was soft on communism. Agnew also encountered allegations of

having profited financially from his public office,

charges that he flatly denied. Agnew’s biggest

problem was that he seemed so ordinary and

unremarkable. A tall, stiff, bullet-headed man

and the sort of fastidious dresser who never removed his tie in public, he tended to speak in

a deadening monotone. Whether he helped or

hurt the campaign is not clear, but in November

the Nixon-Agnew ticket won a razor-thin victory

over the Democratic candidate Hubert Humphrey and the independent candidacy of Alabama Governor George Wallace.5

Learning the Constraints of the Office

Although Nixon had chosen a running mate

who would not outshine him, he had pledged to

give his vice president a significant policy-making role and—for the first time—an office in the

West Wing of the White House. Nixon also encouraged Agnew to use his position as presiding

officer of the Senate to get to know the members

of Congress in order to serve as their liaison with

the White House, and Agnew enthusiastically

charged up Capitol Hill. Having had no previous

legislative experience, he wanted to master the

techniques of presiding over the Senate. For the

first months of his vice-presidency, he met each

morning with the Senate parliamentarian, Floyd
[ 483 ]

SPIRO T. AGNEW

Riddick, to discuss parliamentary procedures

and precedents. ‘‘He took pride in administering

the oath to the new senators by never having to

refer to a note,’’ Riddick observed. ‘‘He would

study and memorize these things so that he

could perform without reading.’’ According to

Riddick, at first Agnew presided more frequently than had any vice president since Alben

Barkley.6

‘‘I was prepared to go in there and do a job

as the President’s representative in the Senate,’’

said Agnew, who busily learned to identify the

senators by name and face. Yet he quickly discovered the severe constraints on his role as presiding officer. Agnew had prepared a fourminute speech to give in response to a formal

welcome from Majority Leader Mike Mansfield.

When Mansfield moved that the vice president

be given only two minutes to reply, Agnew felt

‘‘it was like a slap in the face.’’ The vice president

also unwittingly broke precedent by trying to

lobby on the Senate floor. During the debate over

the ABM (Anti-Ballistic-Missile) Treaty, Agnew

approached Idaho Republican Senator Len Jordan and asked how he was going to vote. ‘‘You

can’t tell me how to vote!’’ said the shocked senator. ‘‘You can’t twist my arm!’’ At the next

luncheon of Republican senators, Jordan accused

Agnew of breaking the separation of powers by

lobbying on the Senate floor, and announced the

‘‘Jordan Rule,’’ whereby if the vice president

tried to lobby him on anything, he would automatically vote the other way. ‘‘And so,’’ Agnew

concluded from the experience, ‘‘after trying for

a while to get along with the Senate, I decided

I would go down to the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue and try playing the Executive

game.’’ 7

The vice president fit in no better at the White

House than at the Capitol. Nixon’s highly protective staff concluded that Agnew had no concept

of his role, especially in relation to the president.

Nixon found their few private meetings dismaying because of Agnew’s ‘‘constant self-aggrandizement.’’ Nixon told his staff that as vice president he rarely had made any requests of President Dwight Eisenhower. ‘‘But Agnew’s visits always included demands for more staff, better facilities, more prerogatives and perquisites.’’ The

anticipated use of Agnew as a conduit to the nation’s mayors and governors floundered when it

became apparent that Agnew did nothing more

than pass their gripes along to the president.

When Agnew protested that Nixon did not see

enough of his cabinet, Nixon grumbled that his

vice president had become an advocate for all the

‘‘crybabies’’ in the cabinet who wanted to plead

their special causes. Nixon’s chief of staff H.R.

Haldeman took Agnew aside and advised him

that ‘‘the President does not like you to take an

opposite view at a cabinet meeting, or say anything that can be construed to be mildly not in

accord with his thinking.’’ 8

Nixon appointed Agnew head of the National

Aeronautics and Space Council but again found

the vice president more irritant than asset. In

April 1969, while at Camp David, Nixon summoned Haldeman to complain that the vice

president had telephoned him simply to lobby

for a candidate for director of the Space Council.

‘‘He just has no sensitivity, or judgment about

his relationship’’ with the president, Haldeman

noted. After Agnew publicly advocated a space

shot to Mars, Nixon’s chief domestic advisor,

John Ehrlichman, tried to explain to him the facts

of fiscal life:

Look, Mr. Vice President, we have to be practical.

There is no money for a Mars trip. The President

has already decided that. So the President does

not want such a trip in the [Space Council’s] recommendations. It’s your job . . . to make absolutely certain that the Mars trip is not in there.

From such experiences, the White House staff

concluded that Agnew was not a ‘‘Nixon team

player.’’ 9

Unleashing Agnew

Throughout his first term, President Nixon

was preoccupied with the war in Vietnam. By the

fall of 1969, Nixon came to the unhappy conclusion that there would be no quick solution in

Vietnam and that it would steadily become his

war rather than Lyndon Johnson’s. On November 3, Nixon delivered a television address to the

nation in which he called for public support for

the war until the Communists negotiated an honorable peace. Public reaction to the speech was

generally positive, but the Nixon family was
[ 484 ]

SPIRO T. AGNEW

‘‘livid with anger’’ over the critical commentary

by various network broadcasters. Nixon feared

that the ‘‘constant pounding from the media and

our critics in Congress’’ would eventually undermine his public support. As president he wanted

to follow the Eisenhower model of remaining

above the fray and to use Agnew for the kind

of hatchet work that he himself had done for Ike.

When his speech writer Pat Buchanan proposed

that the vice president give a speech attacking

network commentators, Nixon liked the idea.

H.R. Haldeman went to discuss the proposed

speech with the vice president, who was interested ‘‘but felt it was a bit abrasive.’’ Nevertheless, the White House staff believed the message

needed to be delivered, ‘‘and he’s the one to do

it.’’ 10

Agnew already had some hard-hitting speeches under his belt. On October 20, 1969, at a dinner

in Jackson, Mississippi, he had attacked ‘‘liberal

intellectuals’’ for their ‘‘masochistic compulsion

to destroy their country’s strength.’’ On October

30 in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, he called student

radicals and other critics of the war ‘‘impudent

snobs.’’ On November 11 in Philadelphia he decried the ‘‘intolerant clamor and cacophony’’

that raged in society. Then, on November 13 in

Des Moines, Iowa, he gave Buchanan’s blast at

the network news media. Haldeman recorded in

his diary that, as the debate on Agnew mounted,

the president was ‘‘fully convinced he’s right

and that the majority will agree.’’ The White

House sent word for the vice president ‘‘to keep

up the offensive, and to keep speaking,’’ noting

that he was now a ‘‘major figure in his own

right.’’ The vice president had become ‘‘Nixon’s

Nixon.’’ 11

Agnew relished the attention showered upon

him. He had been frustrated with his assignment

as liaison with the governors and mayors, and

dealing with taxation, health, and other substantive issues had required tedious study. By

contrast, he found speechmaking much more

gratifying. As John Ehrlichman sourly noted,

Agnew ‘‘could take the texts prepared in the

President’s speechwriting shop, change a phrase

here and there, and hit the road to attack the effete corps of impudent snobs.’’ His colorful

phrases, like ‘‘nattering nabobs of negativism,’’

and ‘‘radiclibs’’ (for radical liberals) were compiled and published as ‘‘commonsense

quotations.’’ ‘‘I have refused to ‘cool it’—to use

the vernacular,’’ Agnew declared, ‘‘until the selfrighteous lower their voice a few decibels. . . .

I intend to be heard over the din even if it means

raising my voice.’’ 12

The Agnew Upsurge

The ‘‘Agnew upsurge’’ fascinated President

Nixon, who took it as evidence that a new conservative coalition could be built between bluecollar ethnic voters and white-collar suburbanites. Nixon believed that Agnew was receiving

increasing press coverage because his attacks on

the media ‘‘forced them to pay attention.’’ When

some of his advisers wanted to put Agnew out

in front in opposition to expanded school desegregation, Nixon hesitated because he did not

want to ‘‘dilute or waste the great asset he has

become.’’ By March 1970, the relationship between the president and vice president reached

its apex when the two appeared for an amusing

piano duet at the Gridiron Club. No matter what

tunes Nixon tried to play, Agnew would drown

him out with ‘‘Dixie,’’ until they both joined in

‘‘God Bless America’’ as a finale.13

As the strains of their duet faded, Nixon began

having second thoughts and concluded that he

needed to ‘‘change the Agnew approach.’’ He informed Haldeman that the vice president had become a better salesman for himself than for the

administration, emerging as ‘‘too much of an

issue and a personality himself.’’ That month,

when the Apollo XIII astronauts had to abort

their mission and return to earth, Haldeman

worked frantically to keep Agnew from flying to

Houston and upstaging the president. Agnew sat

in his plane on the runway for over an hour until

Nixon finally canceled the trip. ‘‘VP mad as

hell,’’ Haldeman noted, ‘‘but agreed to follow orders.’’ In May 1970, after National Guardsmen

shot and killed four students at Kent State University, Nixon cautioned Agnew not to say anything provocative about students. Word leaked

out that the president was trying to muzzle his

vice president. The next time Buchanan prepared

‘‘a hot new Agnew speech,’’ Nixon felt more

leery than before.14
[ 485 ]

SPIRO T. AGNEW

By the summer of 1970, Nixon pondered how

best to use Agnew in that fall’s congressional

elections. The president himself wanted to remain remote from partisanship and limit his

speaking to foreign policy issues while Agnew

stumped for candidates. Nixon worried that, if

Agnew continued to appear an unreasonable figure, using highly charged rhetoric, he might hurt

rather than help the candidates for whom he

campaigned. ‘‘Do you think Agnew’s too

rough?’’ Nixon asked John Ehrlichman one day.

‘‘His style isn’t the problem, it’s the content of

what he says. He’s got to be more positive. He

must avoid all personal attacks on people; he can

take on Congress as a unit, not as individuals.’’

Some Republican candidates even asked Agnew

to stay out of their states. As the campaign progressed, Agnew’s droning on about law and

order diminished his impact. Nixon felt compelled to abandon his presidential aloofness and

enter the campaign himself, barnstorming

around the country, as Attorney General John

Mitchell complained, like a man ‘‘running for

sheriff.’’ The disappointing results of the midterm elections—Republicans gained two seats in

the Senate but lost a dozen in the House—further

shook Nixon’s confidence in Agnew.15

The Number One Hawk

In 1971 the president devoted most of his attention to foreign policy, planning his historic

visit to China, a summit in Moscow, and continued peace talks with the North Vietnamese in

Paris. The vice president went abroad for a series

of good-will tours and ached for more involvement in foreign policy—an area that Nixon reserved exclusively for himself and National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger. Nixon preferred

that Agnew limit himself to attacking the media

to ‘‘soften the press’’ for his foreign policy initiatives. He decided to keep the vice president out

of all substantive policy decisions, since Agnew

seemed incapable of grasping the big picture. For

his part, Agnew complained that he was ‘‘never

allowed to come close enough’’ to Nixon to participate in any policy discussions. ‘‘Every time I

went to see him and raised a subject for discussion,’’ the vice president later wrote, ‘‘he

would begin a rambling, time-consuming

monologue.’’ 16

Agnew, who described himself as the ‘‘number-one hawk,’’ went so far as to criticize Nixon’s

‘‘Ping-Pong Diplomacy’’ with the People’s Republic of China. The dismayed president considered Agnew ‘‘a bull in the . . . diplomatic China

shop.’’ Nixon had H.R. Haldeman lecture the

vice president on the importance of using the

China thaw to ‘‘get the Russians shook.’’ ‘‘It is

beyond my understanding,’’ Nixon told

Ehrlichman. ‘‘Twice Agnew has proposed that

he go to China! Now he tells the world it’s a bad

idea for me to go! What am I going to do about

him?’’ 17

The Connally Alternative

By mid-1971, Nixon concluded that Spiro

Agnew was not ‘‘broad-gauged’’ enough for the

vice-presidency. He constructed a scenario by

which Agnew would resign, enabling Nixon to

appoint Treasury Secretary John Connally as vice

president under the provisions of the Twentyfifth Amendment. By appealing to southern

Democrats, Connally would help Nixon create a

political realignment, perhaps even replacing the

Republican party with a new party that could

unite all conservatives. Nixon rejoiced at news

that the vice president, feeling sorry for himself,

had talked about resigning to accept a lucrative

offer in the private sector. Yet while Nixon excelled in daring, unexpected moves, he encountered some major obstacles to implementing this

scheme. John Connally was a Democrat, and his

selection might offend both parties in Congress,

which under the Twenty-fifth Amendment had

to ratify the appointment of a new vice president.

Even more problematic, John Connally did not

want to be vice president. He considered it a

‘‘useless’’ job and felt he could be more effective

as a cabinet member. Nixon responded that the

relationship between the president and vice

president depended entirely on the personalities

of whoever held those positions, and he promised Connally they would make it a more meaningful job than ever in its history, even to the

point of being ‘‘an alternate President.’’ But

Connally declined, never dreaming that the post

would have made him president when Nixon
[ 486 ]

SPIRO T. AGNEW

was later forced to resign during the Watergate

scandal.18

Nixon concluded that he would not only have

to keep Agnew on the ticket but must publicly

demonstrate his confidence in the vice president.

He recalled that Eisenhower had tried to drop

him in 1956 and believed the move had only

made Ike look bad. Nixon viewed Agnew as a

general liability, but backing him could mute

criticism from ‘‘the extreme right.’’ Attorney

General John Mitchell, who was to head the reelection campaign, argued that Agnew had become ‘‘almost a folk hero’’ in the South and

warned that party workers might see his removal as a breach of loyalty. As it turned out,

Nixon won reelection in 1972 by a margin wide

enough to make his vice-presidential candidate

irrelevant.19

Immediately after his reelection, however,

Nixon made it clear that Agnew should not become his eventual successor. The president had

no desire to slip into lame-duck status by allowing Agnew to seize attention as the frontrunner

in the next election. ‘‘By any criteria he falls

short,’’ the president told Ehrlichman:

‘‘Energy? He doesn’t work hard; he likes to play

golf. Leadership?’’ Nixon laughed. ‘‘Consistency? He’s all over the place. He’s not really a

conservative, you know.’’

Nixon considered placing the vice president in

charge of the American Revolution Bicentennial

as a way of sidetracking him. But Agnew declined the post, arguing that the Bicentennial was

‘‘a loser.’’ Because everyone would have a different idea about how to celebrate the Bicentennial, its director would have to disappoint too

many people. ‘‘A potential presidential candidate,’’ Agnew insisted, ‘‘doesn’t want to make

any enemies.’’ 20

Impeachment Insurance

Unbeknownst to both Nixon and Agnew, time

was running out for both men’s political careers.

Since the previous June, the White House had

been preoccupied with containing the political

repercussions of the Watergate burglary, in

which individuals connected with the president’s reelection committee had been arrested

while breaking into the Democratic National

Committee headquarters. Although Watergate

did not influence the election, persistent stories

in the media and the launching of a Senate investigation spelled trouble for the president. Innocent of any connection to Watergate, Agnew

spoke out in Nixon’s defense.

Then, on April 10, 1973, the vice president

called Haldeman to his office to report a problem

of his own. The U.S. attorney in Maryland, investigating illegal campaign contributions and kickbacks, had questioned Jerome Wolff, Agnew’s

former aide. Wolff had kept verbatim accounts

of meetings during which Agnew discussed raising funds from those who had received state contracts. Agnew swore that ‘‘it wasn’t shakedown

stuff, it was merely going back to get support

from those who had benefitted from the Administration.’’ Since prosecutor George Beall was the

brother of Maryland Republican Senator J. Glenn

Beall, Agnew wanted Haldeman to have Senator

Beall intercede with his brother—a request that

Haldeman wisely declined.21

President Nixon was not at all shocked to learn

that his vice president had become enmeshed in

a bribery scandal in Maryland. At first, Nixon

took the matter lightly, remarking that taking

campaign contributions from contractors was ‘‘a

common practice’’ in Maryland and other states.

‘‘Thank God I was never elected governor of

California,’’ Nixon joked with Haldeman. But

events began to move quickly, and on April 30,

1973, Nixon asked Haldeman and Ehrlichman to

resign because of their role in the Watergate

coverup. Then, that summer, the Justice Department reported that the allegations against

Agnew had grown more serious. Even as vice

president, Agnew had continued to take money

for past favors, and he had received some of the

payments in his White House office.22

Nixon had quipped that Agnew was his insurance against impeachment, arguing that no one

wanted to remove him if it meant elevating

Agnew to the presidency. The joke took on reality when Agnew asked House Speaker Carl Albert to request that the House conduct a full inquiry into the charges against him. Agnew reasoned that a vice president could be impeached

but not indicted. That line of reasoning, however,

also jeopardized the president. For over a cen-
[ 487 ]

SPIRO T. AGNEW

tury since the failed impeachment of President

Andrew Johnson, it had been commonly accepted reasoning that impeachment was an impractical and inappropriate congressional tool

against the presidency. Agnew’s impeachment

would set a precedent that could be turned

against Nixon. A brief from the solicitor general

argued that, while the president was immune

from indictment, the vice president was not,

since his conviction would not disrupt the workings of the executive branch. Agnew, a proud

man filled with moral indignation, reacted to

these arguments by digging in his heels and taking a stance that journalists described as ‘‘aggressively defensive.’’ He refused the initial suggestions from the White House that he resign voluntarily, after which Agnew believed that highlevel officials ‘‘launched a campaign to drive me

out by leaking anti-Agnew stories to the

media.’’ 23

‘‘I Will Not Resign If Indicted!’’

By September, it was a more desperate, less

confident-looking man who informed Nixon that

he would consider resignation if granted immunity from prosecution. Nixon noted that ‘‘in a

sad and gentle voice he asked for my assurance

that I would not turn my back on him if he were

out of office.’’ Believing that for Agnew to resign

would be the most honorable course of action,

Nixon felt confident that, when the vice president left for California shortly after their meeting, he was going away to think matters over and

to prepare his family for his resignation. But in

Los Angeles, fired up by an enthusiastic gathering of the National Federation of Republican

Women, Agnew defiantly shouted, ‘‘I will not resign if indicted!’’ As Agnew later explained, he

had spent the previous evening at the home of

the singer Frank Sinatra, who had urged him to

fight back.24

Nixon’s new chief of staff and ‘‘crisis manager,’’ General Alexander M. Haig, Jr., was

haunted by the specter of a double impeachment

of the president and vice president, which could

turn the presidency over to congressional Democrats. General Haig therefore took the initiative

in forcing Agnew out of office. He instructed

Agnew’s staff that the president wanted no more

speeches like the one in Los Angeles. He further

advised that the Justice Department would prosecute Agnew on the charge of failing to record

on his income tax returns the cash contributions

he had received. Haig assured Agnew’s staff

that, if the vice president resigned and pleaded

guilty on the tax charge, the government would

settle the other charges against him and he

would serve no jail sentence. But if Agnew continued to fight, ‘‘it can and will get nasty and

dirty.’’ From this report, Agnew concluded that

the president had abandoned him. The vice

president even feared for his life, reading into

Haig’s message: ‘‘go quietly—or else.’’ General

Haig similarly found Agnew menacing enough

to alert Mrs. Haig that should he disappear she

‘‘might want to look inside any recently poured

concrete bridge pilings in Maryland.’’ 25

A Plea of Nolo Contendere

Meanwhile, Agnew’s attorneys had entered

into plea bargaining with the federal prosecutors. In return for pleading nolo contendere, or

no contest, to the tax charge and paying $160,000

in back taxes (with the help of a loan from Frank

Sinatra), he would receive a suspended sentence

and a $10,000 fine. On October 10, 1973, while

Spiro T. Agnew appeared in federal court in Baltimore, his letter of resignation was delivered to

Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Agnew was

only the second vice president to resign the office

(John C. Calhoun had been the first). Prior to resigning, Agnew paid a last visit to President

Nixon, who assured him that what he was doing

was best for his family and his country. When

he later recalled the president’s gaunt appearance, Agnew wrote: ‘‘It was hard to believe he

was not genuinely sorry about the course of

events. Within two days, this consummate actor

would be celebrating his appointment of a new

Vice-President with never a thought of me.’’ 26

Nixon still wanted to name John Connally as

vice president, but Senate Majority Leader Mike

Mansfield intimated that Congress would never

confirm him. On October 12—even as pictures of

Agnew were being removed from federal offices

around the country—Nixon appointed House

Republican Leader Gerald R. Ford as the first

vice president to be selected under the Twenty-
[ 488 ]

SPIRO T. AGNEW

fifth Amendment. Agnew was stunned by the

laughter and gaiety of the televised event that

seemed ‘‘like the celebration of a great election

victory—not the aftermath of a stunning

tragedy.’’ 27

The coda to the Agnew saga occurred the following year, as Nixon’s presidency came to an

end. In June 1974, the besieged president dictated an entry in his diary in which he confronted the real possibility of impeachment.

Nixon reviewed a series of decisions that now

seemed to him mistakes, such as asking

Haldeman and Ehrlichman to resign, appointing

Elliot Richardson attorney general, and not destroying the secret tape recordings of his White

House conversations. ‘‘The Agnew resignation

was necessary although a very serious blow,’’

Nixon added,

because while some thought that his stepping

aside would take some of the pressure off the effort to get the President, all it did was to open

the way to put pressure on the President to resign

as well. This is something we have to realize: that

any accommodation with opponents in this kind

of a fight does not satisfy—it only brings on demands for more.

On August 9, 1974, Richard Nixon joined Spiro

Agnew in making theirs the first presidential and

vice-presidential team in history to resign from

office.28

Following his resignation, the vice president

who had made himself a household word faded

quickly into obscurity. Agnew moved to Rancho

Mirage, California, where he became an international business consultant, tapping many of

the contacts he had made with foreign governments on travels abroad as vice president. He

published his memoir, ominously entitled Go

Quietly . . . or else, and a novel, The Canfield Decision, whose protagonist was a wheeling and

dealing American vice president ‘‘destroyed by

his own ambition.’’ For the rest of his life, Agnew

remained largely aloof from the news media and

cut off from Washington political circles. Feeling

‘‘totally abandoned,’’ he refused to accept any

telephone calls from former President Nixon.

When Nixon died in 1994, however, Agnew

chose to attend his funeral. ‘‘I decided after

twenty years of resentment to put it aside,’’ he

explained. The next year, Spiro Agnew’s bust

was at last installed with those of other vice

presidents in the halls of the U.S. Capitol. ‘‘I’m

not blind or deaf to the fact that there are those

who feel this is a ceremony that should not take

place,’’ he acknowledged. Agnew died of leukemia on September 17, 1996, in his home state of

Maryland.29
[ 489 ]

NOTES 1 John R. Coyne, Jr., The Impudent Snobs: Agnew vs. the Intellectual Establishment (New Rochelle, NY, 1972), pp. 7–18,

265–70. 2 Jim G. Lucas, Agnew: Profile in Conflict (New York, 1970),

pp. 9–37. 3 Ibid., pp. 37–62.

4 Jules Witcover, White Knight: The Rise of Spiro Agnew

(New York, 1972), pp. 4–10, 180–99; Robert W. Peterson, ed.,

Agnew: The Coining of a Household Word (New York, 1972),

pp. 1–25; Dan Rather and Gary Paul Gates, The Palace Guard

(New York, 1974), p. 295. 5Witcover, pp. 234–82; Lucas, pp. 19, 63–100; Richard

Nixon, RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon (New York, 1978),

311–13. 6Tom Wicker, One of Us: Richard Nixon and the American

Dream (New York, 1991), p. 344; Peterson, ed., p. 9; Nixon,

p. 340; Allen Drury, Courage and Hesitation (Garden City,

NY, 1971), p. 98; Floyd M. Riddick: Senate Parliamentarian,

Oral History Interviews, 1978–1979 (U.S. Senate Historical

Office, Washington, DC), p. 68. 7Drury, pp. 98–100; Witcover, p. 293.

8 H.R. Haldeman, The Haldeman Diaries; Inside the Nixon

White House (New York, 1994), p. 27; John Ehrlichman, Witness to Power: The Nixon Years (New York, 1982), pp. 106,

111, 145–46; Spiro T. Agnew, Go Quietly. . . or else (New

York, 1980), pp. 31–32. 9 Haldeman, p. 53; Ehrlichman, pp. 144–45, 152.

10 Nixon, pp. 409–12; Haldeman, pp. 99, 106; Witcover,

pp. 296–97, 449. 11 Coyne, pp. 253–70; Haldeman, p. 109; Rather and Gates,

p. 296.

12Ehrlichman, p. 146; James Calhoun, The Real Spiro

Agnew: Commonsense Quotations of a Household Word (Greta,

LA, 1970), p. 45. 13 Haldeman, pp. 118, 127–28.

14 Ibid., pp. 147, 150, 161–62, 169.

15 Ibid., pp. 179–80; Ehrlichman, p. 103; Rather and Gates,

pp. 300–302. 16 Haldeman, pp. 240–41; Agnew, p. 34.

17 Nixon, p. 549; Haldeman, p. 247; Ehrlichman, pp. 154–

55; Agnew, p. 23. 18 Haldeman, pp. 275, 296, 306–7, 317, 327; Witcover, pp.

432–33; Agnew, pp. 38–40. 19 Nixon, pp. 674–75; Haldeman, pp. 356–57.

20Ehrlichman, p. 142; Haldeman, p. 534; Agnew, pp. 37–

38.21 Haldeman, p. 629; Agnew, pp. 50–51, 57–58; Richard

M. Cohen and Jules Witcover, A Heartbeat Away: The Investigation and Resignation of Vice President Spiro T. Agnew (New

York, 1974), pp. 3–16. 22 Jonathan Aitken, Nixon: A Life (Washington, 1993), pp.

356–57, 503–4; Nixon, p. 823; Ehrlichman, pp. 142–43;

Agnew, pp. 98–99. 23Agnew, pp. 100–103, 130–32; Cohen and Witcover, pp.

149, 190–216. 24 Nixon, pp. 912–18; Agnew, p. 178.

25Agnew, pp. 182–83, 186–90; Alexander M. Haig, Jr.,

Inner Circles: How America Changed the World: A Memoir

(New York, 1992), pp. 350–67. 26Agnew, pp. 192–99.

27 Ibid., pp. 201–2, 220–21; Haig, pp. 367–70.

28 Nixon, pp. 1002–5.

29Washington Post, September 19, 1996.

[ 491 ]

Chapter 40

GERALD RUDOLPH FORD

1973–1974
GERALD R. FORD

(Addressing a joint session of Congress after his swearing in

as vice president on December 6, 1973)
[ 493 ]

Chapter 40

GERALD RUDOLPH FORD

40th Vice President: 1973–1974

Life plays some funny tricks on people. Here I have been trying . . . for 25 years to become Speaker

of the House. Suddenly, I am a candidate for President of the Senate, where I could hardly ever vote,

and where I will never get a chance to speak.

—GERALD R. FORD

The assassination of President John F. Kennedy in November 1963 placed Lyndon Johnson

in the White House and—for the sixteenth time

in American history—left the vice-presidency

unoccupied. Just months later, former Vice President Richard M. Nixon, his political career seemingly terminated by his loss to Kennedy in the

presidential election of 1960 and his subsequent

defeat for governor of California in 1962, appeared before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee

on Constitutional Amendments to discuss means

of filling vice-presidential vacancies. The existing

order of succession that placed the Speaker of the

House and president pro tempore of the Senate

next in line to the presidency troubled Nixon. He

pointed out that there were no guarantees that

either of these legislative officials would be ideologically compatible with the president or even

of the same party. He similarly disliked proposals for the president to nominate a vice president

subject to confirmation by Congress, since a Congress controlled by the opposition party might

unduly influence the president’s choice. Nixon

proposed that the Electoral College elect the new

vice president. Not only would this method

guarantee that the same electors who chose the

president would choose the vice president, but

having been elected by the people the electors

would give additional legitimacy to the new vice

president.1

Chairman Birch Bayh, an Indiana Democrat,

and other subcommittee members listened respectfully to Nixon’s arguments but were

unpersuaded. They considered the Electoral College ‘‘too much of a historical curiosity,’’ too

cumbersome, and too far removed from public

awareness to make such an important decision.

Instead, the subcommittee reported an amendment that provided:

Whenever there is a vacancy in the office of Vice

President, the President shall nominate a Vice

President who shall take the office upon confirmation by a majority vote of both houses of

Congress.

The Twenty-fifth Amendment, which also included provisions for the vice president to take

charge during a president’s disability, was

passed by Congress and ratified by the required

three-quarters of the states in 1967.

Six years later the amendment was implemented by none other than President Richard

Nixon. Following Spiro Agnew’s resignation,

Nixon nominated Gerald R. Ford as his new vice

president. Confronting the scenario that he had

described in his earlier testimony, Nixon could

not choose the candidate he preferred, John

Connally. Because the Democratic majorities in

both houses of Congress opposed Connally, the

president was forced to settle for someone more

likely to win confirmation. For the Democrats,
[ 494 ]

GERALD R. FORD

there was also some irony involved. Less than

a year later, when Nixon himself resigned, it was

the former Republican leader of the House who

succeeded him. Had the Twenty-fifth Amendment not been adopted, the resignations—or impeachments—of Nixon and Agnew would have

handed the presidency to the Speaker of the

House, a Democrat.2

An Uncomplicated Man

The amendment’s first beneficiary, Gerald Rudolph Ford, was an uncomplicated man who

traveled a complex path to become vice president. He was born Leslie Lynch King, Jr. in

Omaha, Nebraska, on July 14, 1913. His mother,

after having been physically abused by his father, obtained a divorce and moved to her parents’ home in Grand Rapids, Michigan. There

she met and married Gerald R. Ford, a paint

salesman, who formally adopted her son and renamed him. The novelist John Updike has observed that Ford therefore became ‘‘the only

President to preside with a name completely different from the one he was given at birth,’’ which

was just as well, since ‘President King’ ‘‘would

have been an awkward oxymoron.’’ 3

After this uncertain start, Jerry Ford lived a

normal Middle American childhood in what he

described as a ‘‘strait-laced, highly conservative

town.’’ He attended public schools, excelled in

athletics, and worked lunch times grilling hamburgers. His mother was an active member of her

church, garden clubs, and various civic organizations, and his stepfather was a Mason, Shriner,

and Elk. Jerry became an Eagle Scout. The family

fortunes alternated between prosperous and

strapped, more often the latter; some football

boosters arranged for Ford to receive scholarships and part-time jobs to help him attend the

University of Michigan, where he became a star

football player. The Green Bay Packers and Detroit Lions offered to sign him as a professional

player, but Ford chose instead to attend the Yale

Law School. To support himself, he coached

Yale’s freshman football squad, two of whose

members—William Proxmire and Robert Taft,

Jr.—would one day as senators vote for his confirmation as vice president.4

A ‘‘B’’ student among Phi Beta Kappas, Ford

found the academic competition as tough as anything he had experienced on a football field. His

classmates at Yale included Cyrus Vance, Potter

Stewart, and Sargent Shriver. Yet Ford managed

to rank in the top third of his class. ‘‘How that

happened,’’ he later commented, ‘‘I can’t explain.’’ He completed course work in 1941 and

went back to Michigan to take the bar exam and

start a law practice. After Pearl Harbor he enlisted in the navy and spent the war in the Pacific. Discharged in 1946, he returned to Grand

Rapids, moved to a larger law firm, and joined

the American Legion and Veterans of Foreign

Wars. In 1947 Ford began dating Elizabeth

(Betty) Bloomer Warren, the fashion coordinator

for a local department store, who was in the

process of obtaining a divorce.

Politics also attracted him. At Yale he had supported the Republican presidential candidate

Wendell Willkie in 1940 and had become involved in the isolationist group America First.

Ford would remain a Republican, but Pearl Harbor and the Second World War converted him

to an internationalist foreign policy. He modeled

himself after his state’s senior senator, Republican Arthur Vandenberg, who had similarly reversed his position on America’s role in world

affairs. In 1948, the thirty-four-year-old Ford decided to challenge the renomination of Republican Representative Barney Jonkman, an outspoken isolationist and critic of Senator Vandenberg. Conventional wisdom pictured Jonkman as

unbeatable, but when President Harry Truman

called the Eightieth Congress back into special

session that summer, Ford had the district to

himself for campaigning, while the incumbent

was busy in Washington. He drew support from

internationalists in both parties—since Democrats knew they had no chance of electing a Democrat in that district. In the primary, Ford beat

Jonkman 2 to 1. On October 15, 1948, shortly before the general election, Ford married Betty

Warren. He had been campaigning just minutes

before the ceremony, and the next day the newly

married couple attended a political rally. ‘‘I was

very unprepared to be a political wife,’’ Betty

Ford later observed, ‘‘but I didn’t worry because
[ 495 ]

GERALD R. FORD

I really didn’t think he was going to win.’’ She

was wrong. Although Truman and the Democrats carried the election of 1948, Gerald Ford

won election to Congress with 61 percent of the

vote.5

Rising in the House Leadership

When Ford entered the House of Representatives in the Eighty-first Congress, an oldtimer on

the Michigan delegation advised him that he

could either spend his time in committee, mastering one area of legislation, or on the floor,

learning the rules, parliamentary procedure and

debating tactics. Ford chose the latter. It was on

the House floor that he first met Richard Nixon,

who had already achieved notoriety during the

House Un-American Activities Committee’s investigation of the Alger Hiss-Whittaker Chambers controversy. Impressed with Nixon’s performance, Ford tried to be present whenever the

Californian spoke in the House. The two men

shared similar backgrounds and outlooks on foreign and domestic politics and liked to talk about

football and baseball. In 1951, Ford invited the

newly elected Senator Nixon to speak at a Lincoln Day banquet in Grand Rapids.6 The next

year, when Nixon delivered his famous ‘‘Checkers’’ televised speech to save his vice-presidential candidacy, Ford wired him:

Over radio and newspapers I am in your corner

100 percent. Fight it to the finish as you did the

smears by Communists when you were proving

charges against Alger Hiss. . . . I will personally

welcome you in Grand Rapids or any other part

of Michigan.7

As Nixon’s horizons expanded, Ford retained

his seat in the House, slowly amassing seniority

and respect. Ford had joined with Nixon and

other new members of the House to organize the

Chowder and Marching Society, an informal

caucus of Republican veterans of the Second

World War, which became his first stepping

stone to leadership. In 1960, Ford’s name surfaced as a possible vice-presidential candidate to

run with Nixon. In 1963, Lyndon Johnson appointed him a member of the Warren Commission to investigate the assassination of John F.

Kennedy. But Ford focused his ambition principally on the House, where he hoped someday

to become Speaker. Elected chairman of the Republican Conference in 1963, Ford was also moving up in seniority on the powerful Appropriations Committee. In 1965, after his party suffered

a thirty-six-seat loss and had its ranks reduced

to the lowest level since the Great Depression,

a group of dissatisfied Republicans known as

Young Turks promoted Ford as their candidate

to replace the incumbent Charles Halleck as minority leader. Ford attributed his narrow victory

over Halleck to the help of Representative Bob

Dole, who delivered the support of the Kansas

delegation to him as a bloc.8

President Johnson, having worked closely with

Halleck, deplored Ford’s elevation to the Republican leadership. Expecting Ford to be more partisan than Halleck and less cooperative, Johnson

made wisecracks that the trouble with Ford was

that ‘‘he used to play football without a helmet’’

and that he was ‘‘too stupid to walk and chew

gum at the same time.’’ Johnson also told reporters that Ford had violated national security by

leaking stories told to him in confidence. These

charges were untrue, and reporters backed

Ford’s denial, but the incident revealed the depth

of Johnson’s animosity toward the new Republican leader. Ford’s friend and supporter, New

York Representative Charles Goodell, believed

that ‘‘Johnson thought Ford was stupid because

he was predictable.’’ Goodell saw Ford as a solid

fellow who had no instinct for the kind of political manipulation upon which men like Johnson

and Nixon thrived.9

In September 1965, at a time when Ford’s star

was on the rise and Richard Nixon’s had gone

into political eclipse, the two men met for breakfast at the Mayflower Hotel to discuss rebuilding

their damaged party. Nixon, who still harbored

presidential ambitions, pledged to campaign for

House Republican candidates, admitting that he

was motivated by ‘‘pragmatism more than altruism.’’ Thereafter, Nixon maintained close ties

with Ford, calling him sometimes from pay

phones during his political journeys around the

country. ‘‘Many people in politics respected

Richard Nixon’s abilities,’’ the journalist Richard

Reeves observed, ‘‘but Ford was one of the few

who talked about liking Nixon.’’ 10
[ 496 ]

GERALD R. FORD

Ford also spent much of the time between 1965

and 1968 traveling from state to state to speak

for Republican candidates and reinforce his political base in the House. During his first six

months as leader, Ford visited thirty-two states.

When reporters asked if he was running for

something, he replied: ‘‘I’m running for House

Speaker.’’ Given that the Republicans held only

140 out of 435 House seats, this was an extravagant ambition, but in 1966 his efforts helped

House Republicans make a remarkable rebound

with a gain of 47 seats. Ford’s long hours on Capitol Hill and frequent absences from home for

political speaking engagements, however, took

their toll on his family, especially on his wife

Betty, who turned to alcohol and pain-killers to

compensate for her loneliness. ‘‘I’d felt as though

I were doing everything for everyone else, and

I was not getting any attention at all,’’ she

lamented.11

The Ultimate Nixon Loyalist

In 1968, a ‘‘new Nixon’’ won the Republican

presidential nomination, and Ford was again

mentioned as a vice-presidential candidate. Ford,

the permanent chairman of the convention, had

been an unequivocal Nixon supporter from the

beginning of the campaign. At a strategy session,

Nixon turned to him and said, ‘‘I know that in

the past, Jerry, you have thought about being

Vice President. Would you take it this year?’’

Ford replied that, if the Republicans did as well

in 1968 as they had two years earlier, they might

take the majority in the House, and he would

prefer to become Speaker. He endorsed New

York Mayor John Lindsay for vice president. But

in fact, Nixon had already decided on Maryland

Governor Spiro Agnew as his running mate—

even before asking Ford. Ford shook his head in

disbelief at that choice.12

During Nixon’s first term, House Republican

leader Gerald Ford was the ultimate Nixon loyalist in Congress. In May 1971, when the House

voted to restore funds for the Supersonic Transport (SST) project, but not enough votes could

be found in the Senate, President Nixon ruminated to his aide, H.R. Haldeman, on the ‘‘lack

of leadership’’ in Congress, ‘‘making the point

that Gerry Ford really is the only leader we’ve

got on either side in either house.’’ Ford annoyed

conservative Republicans by his support for Nixon’s Family Assistance Plan and angered liberals

by his efforts to impeach Supreme Court Justice

William O. Douglas—an action widely interpreted as a response to the defeat of two of Nixon’s Supreme Court nominations.13

For all these efforts, Ford and his Republican

counterparts in the Senate ‘‘had trouble finding

anyone on the White House staff dealing with

policy who was interested in consulting with us

on domestic legislative priorities.’’ Whenever the

Republican congressional leadership met with

Nixon at the White House, the members received

promises that his aides would work with them,

‘‘but they never did.’’ Ford attributed this unresponsiveness to the ‘‘us versus them’’ mentality

of Nixon’s staff. He also regretted Vice President

Agnew’s intemperate attacks on the news media,

which Ford believed would only reopen old

wounds. Nevertheless, Ford felt confident that

Nixon’s coattails in 1972 would carry a Republican majority into the House and finally make

him Speaker. On election night, he was deeply

disappointed with the results. ‘‘If we can’t get a

majority [in the House] against McGovern, with

a Republican President winning virtually every

state, when can we?’’ Ford complained to his

wife. ‘‘Maybe it’s time for us to get out of politics

and have another life.’’ He began to think seriously of retiring as House leader when Nixon’s

second term was over in 1976.14

The First Appointed Vice President

Unforseen events during the next year completely changed Gerald Ford’s life. When stories

broke that Vice President Agnew had taken kickbacks from Maryland contractors, the vice president visited Ford to swear to his innocence. Although Ford professed not to doubt Agnew’s

word, after that meeting he made certain that

someone else was always present whenever he

saw the vice president. On October 10, 1973,

Nixon called Ford to his hideaway office at the

Executive Office Building and told him that there

was evidence that Agnew had received illegal

payments in his office in the West Wing of the

White House and that the matter was going to

court. Ford returned to the House chamber,
[ 497 ]

GERALD R. FORD

where just minutes later the word was passed:

‘‘Agnew has resigned.’’ The next day, Nixon met

with Ford and Senate Republican leader Hugh

Scott at the White House to discuss filling the vacancy under the Twenty-fifth Amendment and

asked them to have their Republican colleagues

each send him their top three choices for the

office.15

Nixon knew that Democrats felt apprehensive

about confirming someone who might be a

strong contender for the presidency in 1976 and

that they preferred ‘‘a caretaker Vice President

who would simply fill out Agnew’s unexpired

term.’’ Nixon wanted to appoint his Treasury

Secretary, John Connally, but after meeting with

the Democratic congressional leadership he concluded that Connally would have a difficult time

being confirmed. At Camp David, Nixon prepared an announcement speech with four

endings, one each for Nelson Rockefeller, Ronald

Reagan, Connally, and Ford. Looking through

the names that Republican party leaders had

suggested, he found that Rockefeller and Reagan

had tied, Connally was third, and Ford last.

However, among members of Congress, including such Democrats as Senate Majority Leader

Mike Mansfield and House Speaker Carl Albert,

Ford’s name came in first and, as Nixon noted,

‘‘they were the ones who would have to approve

the man I nominated.’’ As Speaker Albert later

asserted, ‘‘We gave Nixon no choice but Ford.’’ 16

The Watergate scandal had so preoccupied

and weakened Nixon that he could not win a

fight over Connally. Choosing either Rockefeller

or Reagan would likely split the Republican

party. That left Ford. Nixon reasoned that, not

only were Ford’s views on foreign and domestic

policy practically identical with his, but that the

House leader would be the easiest to confirm. He

had also received assurances that Ford ‘‘had no

ambitions to hold office after January 1977,’’

which would clear the path for Connally to seek

the Republican presidential nomination. On the

morning of October 12, 1973, Nixon called Ford

to a private meeting. While he intended to nominate Ford for vice president, Nixon explained, he

planned to campaign for Connally for president

in 1976. Ford raised no objections to that arrangement, and that evening, Nixon announced the

news publicly from the East Room.17

Ford’s nomination was subject to confirmation

in both the Senate and House, where Democrats

held commanding majorities. Because of the Watergate scandal, congressional Democrats were

concerned that the individual they confirmed as

vice president might well become president before Nixon’s term was completed. Liberals expressed displeasure with Ford’s conservative

voting record on social welfare and other domestic issues and his undeviating loyalty to President Nixon’s foreign policies but did not believe

they could withhold confirmation merely because of policy disagreements. A few liberals, led

by New York Representative Bella Abzug, tried

to block action on Ford’s nomination, anticipating that Nixon’s eventual removal would make

House Speaker Albert president. Albert, however, pushed for Ford’s speedy confirmation.

Then, on October 20, Nixon fired Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox in defiance of his attempts

to subpoena the White House tape recordings, an

event the press dubbed the ‘‘Saturday Night

Massacre.’’ Both Democrats and Republicans

now felt it legitimate to ask what position Ford

would take as president on such questions as executive privilege and the independent jurisdictions of the legislative and judicial branches.

Congress appeared to hold Ford’s nomination

hostage until Nixon complied with the subpoenas of his tapes.18

White House chief of staff Alexander Haig

worried that, if Nixon were impeached before

Ford became vice president, Democrats might

delay his confirmation in order to make Speaker

Albert president. Haig therefore helped break

the logjam by pressing Nixon to move on the appointment of a new special prosecutor and a new

attorney general (since Elliot Richardson had resigned rather than fire Cox), as well as to guarantee some compliance on the matter of the tapes.

On November 27 the Senate voted 92 to 3 to confirm Ford, and on December 6, the House agreed,

387 to 35 (with Ford voting ‘‘present’’). President

Nixon wanted Ford to take the oath of office in

the East Room of the White House, but Ford

thought it more appropriate to hold the ceremony in the Capitol, where he had served for a
[ 498 ]

GERALD R. FORD

quarter of a century. Nixon had little desire to

appear in a House chamber where impeachment

motions were being filed against him, and where

he might be booed, but at last he relented. Addressing his enthusiastic former colleagues, the

new vice president modestly identified himself

as ‘‘a Ford, not a Lincoln.’’ General Haig complained about the atmosphere in the House

chamber: ‘‘Ford was treated throughout the ceremony and afterwards as a President-in-waiting,

especially by Republicans, and there can be little

question that Richard Nixon’s presidency was

over, in their minds, from the moment his successor took the oath.’’ 19

A Catalyst to Bind the National Wounds

Although warmly cheered in Congress, the

new vice president received only a lukewarm reception in the press. Many journalists did not believe Ford measured up to the job. The New York

Times dismissed him as a ‘‘routine partisan of

narrow views,’’ and the Washington Post regarded him as ‘‘the very model of a second-level

party man.’’ The columnist David Broder

thought that Nixon did not want ‘‘a partner in

policy-making or an apprentice President.’’ The

harshest criticism came from the conservative

Wall Street Journal, which pronounced, ‘‘The

nomination of Mr. Ford caters to all the worst

instincts on Capitol Hill—the clubbiness that

made him the choice of Congress, the partisanship that threatened a bruising fight if a prominent Republican presidential contender were

named, the small-mindedness that thinks in

terms of those who should be rewarded rather

than who could best fill the job.’’ 20

During the confirmation process, Republican

Senator Mark Hatfield of Oregon asked Ford

whether his role might be that of ‘‘a catalyst to

bind up some of these deep-seated wounds, political and otherwise?’’ Ford replied that he expected to make speeches around the country. ‘‘I

would maximize my efforts not to do it in an abrasive way,’’ he promised, ‘‘but rather to calm

the waters.’’ Ford carried out that promise so

well that President Nixon discovered he had a

new political weapon: an honest, believable, and

congenial vice president. Although some skeptics regarded Ford, in the words of the columnist

Nicholas von Hoffman, as just ‘‘Agnew without

alliteration,’’ the public generally accepted the

new vice president as trustworthy, forthright

and unpretentious if not particularly brilliant.

Ford spent most of his eight months as vice

president on the road rather than in the Senate

chamber, delivering an almost continuous

stream of speeches, holding fifty-two press conferences, and giving eighty-five formal interviews, in an effort to demonstrate a new openness in government.21

Vice President Ford balanced precariously between supporting the president and maintaining

some distance from the Watergate scandal. ‘‘I am

my own man,’’ he proclaimed. The Nixon White

House thought differently. Ford’s top aide, Robert Hartmann, a crusty former newspaper correspondent, was summoned by General Haig’s

staff secretary to receive a lengthy list of priorities for the new vice president. Included were

congressional relations, speaking engagements

outside of Washington, serving as the administration’s point man during the 1974 campaign,

and being available for foreign travel. If Ford

needed assistance in speech writing, scheduling,

and advance personnel, the White House would

provide it. Hartmann concluded that Nixon’s

staff ‘‘intended to integrate [Ford’s] supporting

staff so completely with the White House that it

would be impossible for him to assert even the

little independence Agnew had managed.’’ At

the meeting’s end, the staff secretary shook Hartmann’s hand and declared, ‘‘What we want to

do is to make the Vice President as much as possible a part of the White House staff.’’ 22

The Smoking Gun and the President’s Resignation

Although Ford steadfastly defended Nixon

throughout the Watergate crisis, he could never

understand why the president did not simply release the tapes to clear his name and end the controversy, if he was as innocent as he professed.

The longer Nixon stonewalled, the more pressure mounted from members of his own party

on Capitol Hill for the president to resign before

the midterm elections of 1974. Where Nixon and

Ford had once hoped to achieve Republican majorities in Congress, they now faced the prospect

of massive losses of seats. In the first few months
[ 499 ]

GERALD R. FORD

of 1974, Republicans lost four of five special elections—including Ford’s old Grand Rapids district. In May 1974, when Nixon released the first,

highly edited transcripts of his secret tapes, public opinion turned even further against him. Senate Republican leader Hugh Scott called the language and contents of the transcripts ‘‘deplorable, shabby, disgusting, and immoral.’’ Ford

also admitted that the tapes ‘‘don’t exactly confer

sainthood on anyone.’’ The vice president attended a Senate Republican Policy Committee

luncheon where Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater rose and said: ‘‘I’m not yelling at you, Mr.

Vice President, but I’m just getting something off

my chest. The president ought to resign. It’s not

in the best interest of everybody to have to face

an impeachment trial.’’ Ford immediately excused himself and left.23

The release of the additional tapes finally produced the ‘‘smoking gun’’ that demonstrated beyond question that Nixon—despite his protestations to the contrary—had personally directed

the cover-up of the Watergate scandal. By the beginning of August, Nixon realized that he would

have to resign to avoid impeachment, and he instructed General Haig to tell Ford to be prepared

to take over the presidency within a matter of

days. Nixon noted that, while Ford was not experienced in foreign affairs, ‘‘he’s a good and decent man, and the country needs that now.’’ General Haig went to Ford’s office, but finding

Ford’s aide Robert Hartmann there, Haig hesitated to give Ford a list of options prepared by

the president’s legal counsels that included the

power of the incoming president to pardon his

predecessor (the legal counsels had gone so far

as to draft a pardon in Ford’s name, dated August 6, 1974). After the first meeting concluded,

Haig called Ford at his Capitol office to set up

another meeting—alone—where he could be

more candid. Ford seemed receptive, but the

next time they talked, Haig observed that Ford’s

voice had grown more formal and that he called

him ‘‘General’’ rather than ‘‘Al.’’ ‘‘I want you to

understand,’’ Ford said, ‘‘that I have no intention

of recommending what the President should do

about resigning or not resigning, and nothing we

talked about yesterday afternoon should be

given any consideration in whatever decision the

President may wish to make.’’ Haig concluded

that Ford was trying to protect himself from potential charges that he had made a deal to get

the presidency. Haig insisted that Nixon had

never known of the list of options, and that his

own actions had not been Machiavellian.24

On August 8, Nixon called Ford to the Oval

Office and told him that he was resigning.

‘‘Jerry,’’ he added, ‘‘I know you’ll do a good

job.’’ He recommended that Ford keep Henry

Kissinger as secretary of state, because if Kissinger were to leave along with Nixon ‘‘our foreign

policy would soon be in disarray.’’ He also urged

him to retain Haig as chief of staff during the

transition, to handle the inevitable ‘‘scramble for

power’’ within the staff and cabinet. Ford accepted both recommendations. Nixon noted that he

would be gone by noon the next day so that Ford

could take the oath of office at the White House

as Truman had done. A tearful Nixon closed the

conversation by thanking Ford for his long loyal

support.25

The First Nonelected President

The next morning, Nixon departed from the

White House lawn by helicopter while Gerald

Ford waved goodbye. The first nonelected vice

president was then sworn in as president of the

United States. In his inaugural address, Ford

proclaimed that ‘‘our long national nightmare is

over.’’ The nation agreed, and Ford entered office on the crest of favorable public opinion.

Within a month, however, the good will dissipated when Ford pardoned Richard Nixon. Although deeply dismayed when the tapes showed

that Nixon had lied to him, Ford felt personally

concerned about Nixon’s mental and physical

health and politically concerned about the national impact of a trial of a former president. He

decided that Nixon’s resignation and the sentence of having to live with the humiliation was

as severe a punishment as a jail term. ‘‘You can’t

pull a bandage off slowly,’’ he concluded, ‘‘and

I was convinced that the sooner I issued the pardon the better it would be for the country.’’ 26

Although Ford pardoned Nixon, he declined

to pardon Nixon’s coconspirators, many of

whom served jail terms for obstruction of justice;
[ 500 ]

GERALD R. FORD

he also declined advice to issue a general amnesty for Vietnam-era draft evaders. The Nixon

pardon proved more unpopular than Ford expected and forced him to spend the rest of his

presidency explaining and justifying the action

to a suspicious public. Adverse reaction to the

pardon precipitated a Democratic landslide in

the congressional elections of 1974, with House

Democrats gaining forty-eight seats.

A man of Congress, who had wanted to restore

a sense of cooperation and conciliation between

the executive and legislative branches, President

Ford confronted a hostile legislature that turned

his presidency into a clash of vetoes and veto

overrides. During his term, Congress further

trimmed the powers of the ‘‘imperial presidency’’ and challenged executive authority in

foreign and domestic affairs. Ford fought back,

becoming an outspoken critic of Congress. The

veteran Washington correspondent Sarah

McClendon interpreted Ford’s aggressiveness as

his response to all those frustrating years of serving in the House without becoming Speaker. She

imagined him thinking: ‘‘Now that I am president, I can finally be Speaker of the House, too.

I am going to make up for all those years by driving those Democrats out of their seats, and out

of their minds, if I can.’’ She concluded that he

almost did.27

Ford sought reelection to the presidency in

1976 but was challenged in the primaries by

former California governor Ronald Reagan.

Once having secured the nomination, Ford chose

as his running mate Senator Robert J. Dole of

Kansas. In the first presidential race under the

new Federal Election Campaign Act that provided partial public funding to presidential candidates, Ford and Dole faced former Georgia

governor Jimmy Carter and Minnesota Senator

Walter F. Mondale. The candidates engaged in

the first televised presidential campaign debates

since 1960. Although Ford stressed his many

years of government experience, Carter, the outsider, won a narrow victory, denying Ford election to a full term in the office he had held for

two years.
[ 501 ]

NOTES 1U.S., Congress, Senate, Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on Constitutional Amendments, Presidential Inability and Vacancies in the Office of Vice President (Washington, 1964), pp. 234–50. 2U.S., Congress, Senate, Committee on Rules and Administration, Nomination of Gerald R. Ford of Michigan to be Vice

President of the United States (Washington, 1973), pp. 4, 144–

64.3 John Updike, Memories of the Ford Administration: A Novel

(New York, 1992), p. 354. 4Gerald R. Ford, A Time to Heal: The Autobiography of Gerald R. Ford (New York, 1979), pp. 42–56; James Cannon, Time

and Chance: Gerald Ford’s Appointment with History (New

York, 1994), pp. 1–38. 5 Ford, pp. 57–68; Cannon, pp. 32–52.

6 Ford, pp. 68–70; Cannon, pp. 54–55.

7Richard Nixon, RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon (New

York, 1978), pp. 101–2. 8 Ford, pp. 72–78; Cannon, pp. 53–55; Nixon, pp. 215–16.

9 Ford, pp. 78–79; Samuel Shaffer, On and Off the Floor:

Thirty years as a Correspondent on Capitol Hill (New York,

1980), pp. 264–65; Richard Reeves, A Ford, Not a Lincoln

(New York, 1975), p. 26. 10 Cannon, pp. 89–90; Reeves, p. 115.

11 Clark R. Mollenhoff, The Man Who Pardoned Nixon (New

York, 1976), p. 13; Jerald F. terHorst, Gerald Ford and the Future of the Presidency (New York, 1974), p. 97; Cannon, p.

88.12 Ford, pp. 85–86; Cannon, p. 95.

13 H.R. Haldeman, The Haldeman Diaries: Inside the Nixon

White House (New York, 1994), pp. 286, 288; Mollenhoff, p.

14; Nixon, pp. 427, 438. 14 Ford, pp. 89–90; Cannon, p. xv.

15Robert T. Hartmann, Palace Politics: An Inside Account

of the Ford Years (New York, 1980), pp. 14–17. 16 Nixon, p. 925; Cannon, p. 205.

17 Nixon and Ford tell different versions of the event in

their memoirs: Nixon, pp. 926–27; and Ford, pp. 104–6; see

also Cannon, pp. 210–11. 18 Committee on Rules and Administration, Nomination of

Gerald R. Ford, p. 5. 19Alexander M. Haig, Jr., Inner Circles: How America

Changed the World: A Memoir (New York, 1992), pp. 427, 439–

41; Hartmann, p. 87. 20Mark J. Rozell, The Press and the Ford Presidency (Ann

Arbor, MI, 1992), pp. 15–16. 21 Ibid., p. 19; Ford, p. 127; Cannon, p. 273.

22 Stanley I. Kutler, The Wars of Watergate: The Last Crisis

of Richard Nixon (New York, 1990), p. 420; Hartmann, p. 82. 23 Nixon, pp. 988–89, 996–97, 1001; Shaffer, p. 293.

24 Nixon, pp. 1057–58; Haig, pp. 481–86; Kutler, p. 555;

Ford, pp. 4–6. 25 Nixon, pp. 1078–79.

26 Ford, pp. 157–82; Hartmann, p. 255.

27 Haig, pp. 512–15; Cannon, pp. 359–91, 414–15; Sarah

McClendon, My Eight Presidents (New York, 1978), pp. 186–

87.

[ 503 ]

Chapter 41

NELSON ALDRICH

ROCKEFELLER

1974–1977
NELSON A. ROCKEFELLER
[ 505 ]

Chapter 41

NELSON ALDRICH

ROCKEFELLER

41st Vice President: 1974–1977

I’ve known all the Vice Presidents since Henry Wallace. They were all frustrated, and some were

pretty bitter.

—NELSON ROCKEFELLER

Television cameras that had been installed in

the Senate chamber to cover the expected impeachment trial of President Richard M. Nixon

were used instead to broadcast the swearing-in

of Nelson A. Rockefeller as vice president on December 19, 1974. A year earlier, Gerald Ford had

chosen to take his oath as vice president in the

House chamber, where he had served as Republican floor leader. Rockefeller might have opted

for a White House ceremony but decided to take

the oath in the chamber where he would preside

as president of the Senate. With President Gerald

Ford attending and Chief Justice Warren Burger

administering the oath, Rockefeller became the

nation’s second appointed vice president. After

the brief ceremony, the cameras were switched

off. Not until 1986 would Senate proceedings be

televised on a regular basis.1

A Family of Wealth and Power

Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller came to the vicepresidency boasting a remarkable pedigree. His

maternal grandfather, Rhode Island Senator Nelson Aldrich, had been the Senate’s most powerful member at the turn of the century. Aldrich

chaired the Senate Finance Committee and

played the key role in passage of tariffs that influenced every industry and agricultural product. In 1901, Aldrich’s daughter Abby married

John D. Rockefeller, Jr., son of the nation’s

wealthiest man, the founder of Standard Oil. Although they combined political power and corporate wealth, the reputations of Nelson Aldrich

and John D. Rockefeller, Sr. were less than stellar. In a series of articles for Cosmopolitan magazine during 1906, muckraking journalist David

Graham Phillips portrayed Aldrich as a corrupt

boss who contributed to the ‘‘Treason of the Senate.’’ Similarly, writer Ida Tarbell exposed the

senior Rockefeller as a ruthless robber baron, and

President Theodore Roosevelt included him

among the ‘‘malefactors of great wealth.’’ At the

time of Nelson Rockefeller’s birth, on July 8,

1908, both of his grandfathers were afflicted by

negative publicity. Senator Aldrich withdrew

from politics in 1911, while John D. Rockefeller,

Sr., hired one of the first public relations specialists to reshape his public image into that of a

kindly old gentleman handing shiny dimes to

children.2

Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller inherited both a

vast family fortune and a family image that he

had to live down in order to achieve his political

ambitions—because even as a little boy he wanted to be president of the United States. ‘‘After

all,’’ he reasoned, ‘‘when you think of what I

had, what else was there to aspire to?’’ The third

of five brothers, Nelson was the energetic, outgoing leader within his own family. He and his
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NELSON A. ROCKEFELLER

brothers grew up in the family home on West

54th Street in New York, which was so filled with

art that his parents bought the town house next

door just to house their collection. Eventually the

Rockefellers gave the property to the Museum of

Modern Art. Nelson attended the progressive

Lincoln School of Teachers College at Columbia

University, but dyslexia hindered his schooling

and prevented him from attending Princeton.

With the help of tutors he graduated Phi Beta

Kappa from Dartmouth in 1930. Shortly thereafter, he married Mary Todhunter Clark, known

as Tod, whose calm reserve seemed to balance

his boundless enthusiasms. After a round-theworld honeymoon, they settled in New York and

Nelson went to work for the family business.3

Nelson Rockefeller proved so successful in

renting out space in the newly constructed

Rockefeller Center that his father made him

president of the Center. He earned negative publicity after he ordered the removal from Rockefeller Center of murals painted by the noted

Mexican artist Diego Rivera, which contained a

heroic Lenin and a villainous-looking J.P. Morgan. Otherwise, Rockefeller won high praise for

his executive abilities. He became a director of

the Creole Petroleum Company, a Rockefeller

subsidiary in Venezuela. He learned Spanish and

began a lifelong interest in Latin-American affairs. Art was another of his passions, and during

the depression he served as treasurer of the Museum of Modern Art. In 1939 he became the museum’s president, encountering such intense infighting that he boasted, ‘‘I learned my politics

at the Museum of Modern Art.’’ 4

In 1940, President Franklin Roosevelt appointed the thirty-two-year-old Rockefeller to

the new post of coordinator of the Office of InterAmerican Affairs. It was a shrewd move on Roosevelt’s part, designed to mute the Rockefeller

family’s support of Wendell Willkie for president that year. Although his brothers served in

uniform, Nelson held civilian posts throughout

World War II, becoming assistant secretary of

state for American republics affairs in 1944. He

played a key role in hemispheric policy at the

United Nations Conference held in San Francisco, developing consensus for regional pacts

(such as the Rio Pact and NATO) within the

UN’s framework. Although President Roosevelt

tried to lure Rockefeller into the Democratic

party, he remained loyal to his family’s Republican ties. When Roosevelt died, his successor

showed less appreciation for Rockefeller’s talents. In August 1945 the failed haberdasher

Harry Truman fired the multimillionaire Rockefeller, in order to settle a dispute within the State

Department.5

Reputation as a Spender

Rockefeller returned to government during

Dwight Eisenhower’s administration, where he

chaired a committee on government organization, became under secretary of the new Department of Health, Education and Welfare, served

as special assistant to the president for cold war

strategy, and headed the secret ‘‘Forty Committee,’’ a group of high government officials who

were charged with overseeing the CIA’s clandestine operations. He was slated for a high-level

post in the Department of Defense until fiscally

conservative Secretary of the Treasury George

Humphrey vetoed Rockefeller as a ‘‘spender.’’ 6

Rockefeller returned to New York determined

to establish his own political career. In 1958 he

challenged the popular and prestigious governor

Averell Harriman, in what the press dubbed the

‘‘battle of the millionaires.’’ Rockefeller campaigned as a man of the people, appearing in

shirtsleeves and eating his way through the ethnic foods of New York neighborhoods. His victory in a year when Republicans lost badly elsewhere made him an overnight contender for the

Republican presidential nomination in 1960. Republicans who distrusted Vice President Richard

Nixon rallied to Rockefeller, and Democrats like

Senator John F. Kennedy considered him the

most formidable candidate that the Republicans

might nominate. Because Rockefeller’s advisers

were reluctant to have him enter the party primaries, however, he was never able to demonstrate his popular appeal or overcome Nixon’s

lead among party loyalists. Instead, Rockefeller

used his clout to summon Nixon to his Fifth Avenue apartment and dictate terms for a more liberal party platform. Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater denounced this event as ‘‘the Munich of

the Republican Party,’’ the beginning of a long
[ 507 ]

NELSON A. ROCKEFELLER

estrangement between Rockefeller and the Republican right.7

Nixon’s defeat in 1960 made Rockefeller the

frontrunner for the Republican nomination in

1964. But between the two elections he stunned

the nation by divorcing his wife of thirty-two

years and marrying a younger woman,

Margaretta Fitler Murphy, better known as

‘‘Happy.’’ She was the recently divorced wife of

an executive in the Rockefeller Medical Institute.

The birth of their son, Nelson, Jr., on the eve of

the Republican primary in California reminded

voters of the remarriage and contributed to

Rockefeller’s loss to Goldwater. At the party’s

convention in San Francisco, Goldwater’s delegates loudly booed Rockefeller when he tried to

speak. To them, he embodied the hated ‘‘Eastern

liberal establishment.’’ Rockefeller sat out the

election, an act that further branded him as a

spoiler.8

An Impressive Record as Governor

Unsuccessful in his presidential bids, Rockefeller achieved a more impressive record as governor. He was a master builder, overseeing highway construction, the expansion of the state university system, and the erection of a vast new

complex of state office buildings in Albany. Although New Yorkers joked about their governor’s ‘‘edifice complex,’’ they elected him to

four terms. To pay for his many projects without

raising taxes excessively, Rockefeller consulted

the prominent municipal bond specialist John

Mitchell (later attorney general under Richard

Nixon) who advised the creation of quasi-independent agencies that could issue bonds. The

State University Construction Fund would repay

its bonds through tuition and fees, while other

agencies would build roads, public housing, and

hospitals. As a result, control of a large part of

the budget and of state operations shifted from

the legislature to the governor. It was later revealed during Rockefeller’s vice-presidential

confirmation hearings that he had also made personal financial contributions to the chairmen of

these independent agencies, thereby reinforcing

their loyalty to the governor.9

In perpetual motion, Governor Rockefeller

tackled one project after another. He waded into

campaigning with similar gusto, shaking hands

and giving his famous greeting: ‘‘Hiya, fella!’’ He

laced his speeches with superlatives and platitudes and so often repeated the phrase, ‘‘the

brotherhood of man under the fatherhood of

God,’’ that reporters shortened it to create the acronym BOMFOG. Although he campaigned as a

man of the people, he lived in a different world.

When aides proposed a plan for the state to take

over state employee contributions to Social Security, in order to increase their take-home pay,

Rockefeller asked, ‘‘What is take-home pay?’’ 10

A staunch anticommunist, Rockefeller never

opposed the war in Vietnam, explaining that he

did not want to offend President Lyndon Johnson and risk cuts in federal aid to New York. In

1968 Johnson tried to convince Rockefeller to run

for president. ‘‘He told me he could not sleep at

night if Nixon was president, and he wasn’t all

that sure about Hubert [Humphrey] either,’’

Rockefeller later revealed. The governor responded that he had promised his wife not to

run again, but Johnson insisted, ‘‘Let me talk to

Happy,’’ and took her off in the White House to

apply some of his famed personal persuasion.

‘‘They came back a half hour later,’’ Rockefeller

recalled, ‘‘and Lyndon said, ‘I’ve talked her into

letting you run.’’’ Rockefeller announced his candidacy, but Nixon’s powerful campaign apparatus rolled over him. When Humphrey became

the Democratic nominee, he invited Rockefeller

to run as his vice president. ‘‘I turned him

down,’’ Rockefeller said. ‘‘Franklin Roosevelt

wanted me to be a Democrat (back in the 1940s).

It was too late.’’ 11

Despite an inability to hide his personal disdain for Richard Nixon, Rockefeller campaigned

for Nixon in both 1968 and 1972. He admired

Nixon’s tough stands in Vietnam and Cambodia—shaped by National Security Adviser

Henry Kissinger, who originally had served as

Rockefeller’s foreign policy adviser. Nixon appointed Rockefeller to serve on the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board to oversee CIA activities.

Meanwhile, Rockefeller’s own politics were

shifting toward the right, partly to make peace

with conservative Republicans who had vilified

him, and partly in response to the so-called ‘‘conservative backlash’’ of the late 1960s. Rocke-
[ 508 ]

NELSON A. ROCKEFELLER

feller’s tough ‘‘law and order’’ stand during the

Attica prison riots in 1971 further diminished his

liberal image. The governor refused demands of

rioting prisoners at the state penitentiary that he

negotiate with them in person and instead sent

in state troops, resulting in the deaths of many

inmates and their captives. At the Republican

convention in 1972, Rockefeller nominated

Nixon. After the election, as Nixon sank into the

Watergate scandal, Rockefeller steadfastly resisted attacking him while he was down.12

Broadening the Ticket’s Electoral Appeal

When Vice President Spiro Agnew resigned in

October 1973, Rockefeller let it be known that he

would not turn down a vice-presidential nomination, as he had done in 1960 and 1968. But

Nixon, believing that choosing Rockefeller

would offend Republican conservatives, instead

selected the more centrist Gerald Ford. Happy

Rockefeller said she never expected Nixon to

pick her husband because ‘‘weakness never

turns to strength.’’ That December, Rockefeller

resigned after fourteen years as governor, to give

his long-serving lieutenant governor, Malcolm

Wilson, a chance to run for the office as the incumbent. Rockefeller then devoted his attention

to the newly created Commission on Critical

Choices for America, which many expected he

would use as a vehicle to run for the presidency

in 1976.13

Rockefeller was firmly convinced that Nixon

would never resign, but events proved him

wrong. In August 1974, when Gerald Ford assumed the presidency and prepared to appoint

his own vice president, Rockefeller and George

Bush headed his list of candidates. Bush, a

former Texas congressman and chairman of the

Republican National Committee, was the safer,

more comfortable choice. But Ford believed in a

balanced ticket (in 1968 Ford had urged Nixon

to select New York City’s liberal Republican

mayor John Lindsay as his running mate).

Weighing the assets and deficits, Ford acknowledged that Rockefeller was still anathema to

many conservatives. Still, the new president believed that the New Yorker was well qualified

to be president, would add executive expertise

to the administration, and would broaden the

ticket’s electoral appeal if they ran in 1976. Also,

by selecting as strong a man as Rockefeller, Ford

would demonstrate his own self-confidence as

president.14

Robert Hartmann, one of Ford’s closest aides,

asked Rockefeller why he had accepted the vicepresidency now after turning it down before. ‘‘It

was entirely a question of there being a Constitutional crisis and a crisis of confidence on the part

of the American people,’’ Rockefeller replied. ‘‘I

felt there was a duty incumbent on any American who could do anything that would contribute to a restoration of confidence in the democratic process and in the integrity of government.’’ Rockefeller also reasoned that, while

Ford as a former member of Congress understood the ‘‘Congressional-legislative side’’ of the

issues, he as governor had mastered the ‘‘Executive-administrative side,’’ and that together they

could make an effective team. Although fully

aware of the limitations of his office, and recognizing that he was ‘‘just not built for standby

equipment,’’ Rockefeller had accepted because

Ford promised to make him a ‘‘partner’’ in his

presidency.15

Number One Achievement

The media applauded the selection. After berating Nixon for picking Ford, reporters praised

Ford’s appointment of ‘‘a man of national stature.’’ The New York Times called it a ‘‘masterly

political act,’’ and Newsweek congratulated Ford

for adding a ‘‘dollop of high style’’ to his ‘‘homespun Presidency.’’ Time observed that President

Ford felt secure enough to name a dynamic personality as vice president. Ford basked in his accomplishment. In November, when reporters

asked him what he considered the top achievements of his first hundred days as president,

Ford replied: ‘‘Number one, nominating Nelson

Rockefeller.’’ 16

Yet nomination was only half the process, for

the Twenty-fifth Amendment to the Constitution

required confirmation by both houses of Congress. Democrats and some conservative Republicans relished the prospect of opening the books

on the private finances of one of the nation’s

wealthiest families. Even President Ford expressed fascination with the details as they
[ 509 ]

NELSON A. ROCKEFELLER

emerged. ‘‘Can you imagine,’’ he said privately,

‘‘Nelson lost $30 million in one year and it didn’t

make any difference.’’ After the shocks of Watergate and the revelations that Agnew had taken

kickbacks, it was reassuring to have a vice president too rich to be bought. But the confirmation

hearings revealed that Rockefeller had been

making personal contributions to government

officials, including Henry Kissinger and the administrators of New York’s supposedly independent commissions. Since state law had prohibited making large financial gifts to state appointees, Rockefeller had given the money as

‘‘loans’’ that he never expected to be repaid.17

Rockefeller’s confirmation hearings dragged

on for months, and House and Senate leaders

talked of delaying his confirmation until the new

Congress convened in January. ‘‘You just can’t

do that to the country,’’ President Ford complained to House Speaker Carl Albert and Senate

Majority Leader Mike Mansfield. ‘‘You can’t do

it to Nelson Rockefeller, and you can’t do it to

me. It’s in the national interest that you confirm

Rockefeller, and I’m asking you to move as soon

as possible.’’ The Senate finally acted on December 10, and the House on December 19. That

evening, Rockefeller took the oath in the Senate

chamber.18

The secretary of the Senate found it amusing

to give Rockefeller the standard orientation,

signing him up for health insurance and other

benefits he did not need. Ironically, Rockefeller

was also the first vice president eligible to occupy the new vice-presidential mansion—formerly the residence of the chief of Naval Operations—on Massachusetts Avenue. ‘‘Congress

has finally determined to give the Vice President

a home in Washington,’’ Ford told Rockefeller.

‘‘It’s up on Admiral’s Hill, and you’ll have to live

in it.’’ Rockefeller grimaced but nodded in agreement. He already had a home in Washington that

he purchased during the Second World War, a

colonial-era farmhouse situated on twenty-seven

acres of land, one of the most expensive properties in the District of Columbia. Rockefeller

spent only a single night in the vice-presidential

mansion, but he stimulated some publicity by installing a mink-covered bed designed by Max

Ernst that was valued at $35,000. Press criticism

later resulted in the bed being loaned to a museum. Years after, when Happy Rockefeller visited George and Barbara Bush at the vice-presidential mansion, she offered to return the bed to

the mansion. Barbara Bush insisted that Mrs.

Rockefeller was always welcome to spend the

night and did not need to bring her own bed.19

Less Than a Full Partner

Gerald Ford told the nation that he wanted his

vice president to be ‘‘a full partner,’’ especially

in domestic policy. ‘‘Nelson, I think, has a particular and maybe peculiar capability of balancing the pros and cons in many social programs, and I think he has a reputation and the

leadership capability,’’ Ford explained. ‘‘I want

him to be very active in the Domestic Council,

even to the extent of being chairman of the Domestic Council.’’ But during the months while

Rockefeller’s nomination stalled in Congress,

Ford’s new White House staff established its control of the executive branch and had no intention

of sharing power with the vice president and his

staff. One Rockefeller aide lamented that the

‘‘first four month shakedown was critical and he

wasn’t involved. That was when the relationship

evolved and we were on Capitol Hill fighting for

confirmation.’’ 20

Rockefeller envisioned taking charge of domestic policies the same way that Henry Kissinger ran foreign policy in the Ford administration.

Gerald Ford seemed to acquiesce, but chief of

staff Donald Rumsfeld objected to the vice president preempting the president. When Rockefeller tried to implement Ford’s promise that domestic policymakers would report to the president via the vice president, Rumsfeld intervened

with various objections. Rockefeller shifted gears

and had one of his trusted assistants, James Cannon, appointed chief of the Domestic Council.

Rumsfeld responded by cutting the Council’s

budget to the bone. Rockefeller then moved to

develop his own policies independent of the Domestic Council. Tapping the scientist Edward

Teller, who had worked for Rockefeller’s Commission on Critical Choices, he proposed a $100

billion Energy Independence Authority. Although Ford endorsed the energy plan, the presi-
[ 510 ]

NELSON A. ROCKEFELLER

dent’s economic and environmental advisers

lined up solidly against it.21

Usually, Ford and Rockefeller met once a

week. Ford noted that Rockefeller ‘‘would sit

down, stir his coffee with the stem of his hornrimmed glasses and fidget in his chair as he

leaped from one subject to another.’’ Nothing,

Ford observed, was too small or too grandiose

for Rockefeller’s imagination. Beyond the substantive issues, the two men also spent much

time talking over national politics. Yet Ford and

his staff shut Rockefeller out of key policy debates. In October 1975, when Ford proposed

large cuts in federal taxes and spending, the vice

president complained, ‘‘This is the most important move the president has made, and I wasn’t

even consulted.’’ Someone asked what he did as

vice president, and Rockefeller replied: ‘‘I go to

funerals. I go to earthquakes.’’ Rockefeller had

disliked the vice-presidential seal, with its

drooping wings and single arrow in its claw. He

had a new seal designed with the eagle’s wings

outspread and multiple arrows in its clutch. As

one of his aides recalled, ‘‘One day after a particularly long series of defeats, I walked into the

Governor’s office [Rockefeller’s staff always referred to him as ’’Governor‘‘] with yet another

piece of bad news. The Governor turned to me

and pointed at the new seal and flag, sighing,

‘See that goddamn seal? That’s the most important thing I’ve done all year.’ ’’ 22

An Impervious Senate

Vice President Rockefeller found the Senate

equally impervious to his desire to exert leadership. In January 1975, when the post-Watergate

Congress met, the expanded liberal ranks in the

Senate moved to amend Rule 22 to reduce from

two-thirds to three-fifths of the senators the

number of votes needed to invoke cloture and

end a filibuster. Minnesota Democratic Senator

Walter Mondale introduced the amendment, and

Kansas Republican James Pearson moved that

the chair place before the Senate a motion to

change the cloture rule by a majority vote. When

the Senate took up the matter in February, Senate

Democratic Majority Leader Mike Mansfield

raised a point of order that the motion violated

Senate rules by permitting a simple majority vote

to end debate. Instead of ruling on the point of

order, Vice President Rockefeller submitted it to

the Senate for a vote, stating that, if the body tabled the point of order, he ‘‘would be compelled

to interpret that action as an expression by the

Senate of its judgment that the motion offered by

the Senator from Kansas to end debate is a proper motion.’’ The Senate voted 51 to 42 to table

Mansfield’s motion, in effect agreeing that Senate

rules could be changed by a simple majority vote

at the beginning of a Congress. The Senate, however, adjourned for the day without actually voting on the resolution to take up the cloture rule

change. The leaders of both parties then met and

determined that they disagreed with this procedure, which they felt had set a dangerous precedent. The leadership therefore devised a plan to

void the rulings of the chair and revise the cloture rule in a more traditional manner. More

than a week later, in early March, the Senate

voted to reconsider the vote by which the Mansfield point of order had been tabled and then

agreed to Mansfield’s point of order by a majority vote. A cloture motion was then filed and

agreed to, 73 to 21, after which the Senate adopted a substitute amendment introduced by Senator Robert C. Byrd, which specified that cloture

could be invoked by a three-fifths vote on all issues except changes in the rules, which would

still require a two-thirds vote. 23

In making his controversial ruling, Rockefeller

had notified the Senate parliamentarian that he

was making the decision on his own, contrary to

the parliamentarian’s advice. As parliamentarian

emeritus Floyd Riddick observed,

Certainly it was contrary to the practices and

precedents of the Senate, and I think that is why

the leadership, under Mr. Mansfield as majority

leader, wanted to vitiate in effect all of the statements made by the vice president and come back

and do it under the rules, practices, and precedents of the Senate.24

On another occasion as presiding officer,

Rockefeller tried to break a filibuster by declining to recognize Senators James Allen of Alabama and William Brock of Tennessee and instead ordering the roll call to proceed. Senator

Barry Goldwater challenged him, but Rockefeller
[ 511 ]

NELSON A. ROCKEFELLER

replied, ‘‘It says right here in the precedents of

the Senate, ‘The Chair may decline to respond;

the chair may decline to answer a parliamentary

inquiry.’ ’’ ‘‘That is correct,’’ Goldwater countered. ‘‘That is what it says, but I never thought

I would see the day when the chair would take

advantage of it.’’ Later, Rockefeller apologized

for any ‘‘discourtesy’’ he may have shown the

Senate by this incident. ‘‘If I make a mistake I

like to say so.’’ 25

Investigating the CIA

President Ford also sought to use Rockefeller

to head off a Senate investigation of the Central

Intelligence Agency. In December 1974, the New

York Times’ reporter Seymour Hersh published

an expose ́ of CIA spying on antiwar activists that

constituted domestic activities in violation of the

CIA’s charter. When Democrats called for an investigation, Ford appointed a blue-ribbon Commission on CIA Activities and made Rockefeller

its chairman. But the Senate went ahead and established its own Select Committee on Intelligence Activities, chaired by Frank Church of

Idaho. When Senator Church asked for materials

from the White House, he was told that the papers had been given to the Rockefeller Commission. When the senator demanded the papers

from Rockefeller, the vice president declined to

provide them on the grounds that only the president could grant access to the papers. One

Church aide called Rockefeller ‘‘absolutely brilliant’’ in denying them access in a friendly manner. ‘‘He winked and smiled and said, ‘Gee, I

want to help you but, of course I can’t—not until

we’ve finished our work and the president approves it.’ ’’ Said Senator John Tower, vice chair

of the committee, ‘‘We were very skillfully

finessed.’’ 26

The CIA assignment put Rockefeller in the

crossfire between critics and defenders of the

agency. Whether his report was critical or lenient, it was sure to draw fire. Rockefeller himself had a long involvement in CIA matters, dating back to the Eisenhower and Nixon administrations, when he served on panels that oversaw

the highly secret agency. Yet even Rockefeller

seemed unprepared for the revelations that the

intelligence agency had plotted the assassinations of foreign leaders. To the surprise of both

Senator Church and President Ford, the Rockefeller Commission chose to adhere to its original

mandate and not investigate the assassinations.

The panel turned those records over to the Senate committee, allowing Rockefeller to extricate

himself from a difficult situation.27

Ford’s Biggest Political Mistake

In the fall of 1975, President Ford determined

to run for election and appointed Howard ‘‘Bo’’

Callaway of Georgia as his campaign manager.

Ford did not consult Rockefeller until the day he

announced the choice. Callaway immediately

began spreading the word that Rockefeller was

too old, and too liberal, and too much of a detriment to the ticket. Some administration officials

believed that Donald Rumsfeld wanted the vicepresidential nomination for himself and hoped

that this humiliation would encourage Rockefeller to remove himself from contention. President Ford was given opinion polls that showed

twenty-five percent of all Republicans would not

vote for him if Rockefeller remained on the ticket. Ford’s advisers complained that Rockefeller

was not a ‘‘team player,’’ and that he had been

a ‘‘commuting’’ vice president, flying weekly to

New York where his wife and sons had remained. Still, Rockefeller hung on doggedly,

patching up his difference with Barry Goldwater

and making public appearances in the South—

to prove, as he said, that he did not have horns.

After one rally in South Carolina, a Republican

leader conceded that the vice president had

changed some minds from ‘‘hell no,’’ to ‘‘no.’’ 28

When it became clear that former California

Governor Ronald Reagan would challenge Ford

for the Republican nomination, Ford reluctantly

resolved to jettison Rockefeller. Putting the situation to him, Ford insisted that he was just telling

him the facts, not what to do. Rockefeller, however, had been in politics long enough to know

that he was being asked to leave gracefully. He

announced that he would not be a candidate for

vice president the following year. Although he

publicly insisted that he jumped without having

been shoved, privately he told friends, ‘‘I didn’t

take myself off the ticket, you know—he asked

me to do it.’’ 29
[ 512 ]

NELSON A. ROCKEFELLER

Rockefeller’s withdrawal, along with Ford’s

clumsy firing of Defense Secretary James Schlesinger—replacing him with Donald Rumsfeld—

became known as the ‘‘Halloween Massacre.’’ It

resulted in a plunge in Ford’s popularity and

polls that showed Reagan leading him for the Republican nomination. Southern Republicans

largely deserted the president for Reagan, causing Rockefeller to comment that he had made a

mistake in withdrawing when he did. ‘‘I should

have said in that letter . . . when Bo Callaway

delivered to you the Southern delegates, then I’m

off the ticket.’’ Ford responded, ‘‘You didn’t

make the mistake. We made the mistake.’’

Dumping Rockefeller embarrassed Ford as much

as it did Rockefeller. ‘‘It was the biggest political

mistake of my life,’’ Ford confessed. ‘‘And it was

one of the few cowardly things I did in my

life.’’ 30

Despite being dropped, Rockefeller still wanted to be a major player. Before the Republican

convention in 1976, he even proposed taking

over as White House chief of staff, to help boost

morale and public confidence. At the convention,

Rockefeller delivered the large New York state

delegation to Ford, participated in the choice of

Senator Robert Dole as Ford’s running mate, and

placed Dole’s name in nomination. He campaigned hard for the Republican ticket in the fall.

At one stop in Birmingham, New York, hecklers

provoked the vice president into making an obscene gesture back at them. Photographs of the

vice president ‘‘giving the finger’’ were widely

reprinted as a symbolic act of signing out of

politics.31

Leaving office in January 1977, Rockefeller retired from politics and devoted his last two years

(he died on January 26, 1979) to other interests,

primarily in the arts. He always insisted that he

had understood full well what he was getting

into when Ford offered him the vice-presidency.

‘‘I’ve known all the Vice Presidents since Henry

Wallace,’’ he said. ‘‘They were all frustrated, and

some were pretty bitter. So I was totally prepared.’’ Rockefeller expressed thanks for the respectful way in which Ford had treated him. ‘‘I

was never told to make a speech or to clear a

speech with the President,’’ he noted. But he regretted not having had more responsibilities in

the administration and not being able to make

a greater contribution to public policy. ‘‘The

Vice-Presidency is not much of a job,’’ he concluded. ‘‘But at least Washington is where the action is.’’ 32
[ 513 ]

NOTES 1 Floyd M. Riddick: Senate Parliamentarian, Oral History

Interviews, June 16, 1978 to February 15, 1979 (U.S. Senate

Historical Office, Washington, DC), pp. 255–65. 2 For Aldrich, see Horace Samuel Merrill and Marion Galbraith Merrill, The Republican Command, 1897–1913 (Lexington, KY, 1971); for Rockefeller see Allan Nevins, John D.

Rockefeller: The Heroic Age of American Enterprise (New York,

1940), 2 vols. 3Memorial Addresses and Other Tributes in the Congress of

the United States on the Life and Contributions of Nelson A.

Rockefeller, S. Doc. 96–20 (Washington, 1979), p. 16. 4 Joseph E. Persico, The Imperial Rockefeller: A Biography of

Nelson A. Rockefeller (New York, 1982), pp. 25–32; Peter Collier and David Horowitz, The Rockefellers: An American Dynasty (New York, 1976), pp. 206–10. 5 Collier and Horowitz, pp. 214, 237, 242–43.

6 Ibid., pp. 272–76; Michael Kramer and Sam Roberts, ‘‘I

Never Wanted to Be Vice-President of Anything!’’ An Investigative Biography of Nelson Rockefeller (New York, 1976), p. 373. 7 Collier and Horowitz, p. 342.

8 See Theodore H. White, The Making of the President, 1964

(New York, 1965). 9 Ibid., pp. 469–77.

10 Persico, p. 227; Memorial Addresses, p. 229. 11Richard Reeves, A Ford, Not a Lincoln (New York, 1975),

p. 150; Memorial Addresses, p. 237. 12 Persico, p. 241.

13Robert T. Hartmann, Palace Politics: An Inside Account

of the Ford Years (New York, 1980), p. 238. 14Reeves, p. 149; Gerald R. Ford, A Time to Heal: The Autobiography of Gerald R. Ford (New York, 1979), pp. 143–44. 15 Hartmann, pp. 230–36; Persico, p. 245.

16Mark Rozell, The Press and the Ford Presidency (Ann

Arbor, MI, 1992), pp. 45–46; Reeves, p. 147. 17Reeves, p. 147; Kramer and Roberts, pp. 369–70.

18 Ford, p. 224.

19Dorothye G. Scott: Administrative Assistant to the Senate

Democratic Secretary and the Secretary of the Senate, 1945–1977,

Oral History Interviews, 1992 (U.S. Senate Historical Office,

Washington, DC), p. 174; Ford, p. 145; Persico, pp. 262–63. 20 ‘‘How It Looks to Ford,’’ Newsweek (December 9, 1974),

p. 37; Paul C. Light, ‘‘The Institutional Vice Presidency,’’

Presidential Studies Quarterly 13 (Spring 1983): 210; Paul C.

Light, Vice-Presidential Power: Advice and influence in the

White House (Baltimore, Press, 1984), pp. 180–83. 21 Hartmann, pp. 304–10; Kramer & Roberts, pp. 372–73.

22 Ford, p. 327; Persico, p. 262; Light, ‘‘The Institutional

Vice Presidency,’’ p. 211. 23Riddick Oral History, pp. 212–219; U.S., Congress, Senate, Committee on Rules and Administration, Senate Cloture

Rule, by Congressional Research Service, S. Print 99–95, 99th

Cong., 1st sess., 1985, pp. 30–31. 24Riddick Oral History, pp. 218–19; U.S., Congress, Senate, Congressional Record, 94th Cong., 1st sess., p. 3841. 25 Kramer and Roberts, p. 371.

26Loch K. Johnson, A Season of Inquiry: The Senate Intelligence Investigation (Lexington, KY, 1985), pp. 30–31, 41–43. 27 Ibid., p. 48; Light, Vice-Presidential Power, pp. 184–87. 28Light, Vice-Presidential Power, pp. 183, 189–90; Hartmann, p. 354; Persico, p. 272; Kramer and Roberts, p. 375. 29 Ford, p. 328; Hartmann, pp. 357, 365–66.

30 Ford, p. 331; Hartmann, p. 367; James Cannon, Time and

Chance (New York, 1994), p. 407. 31 Hartmann, p. 400; Persico, pp. 274–75.

32 Ford, p. 437; Hartmann, p. 231; Persico, pp. 245, 277.

[ 515 ]

Chapter 42

WALTER F. MONDALE

1977–1981
WALTER F. MONDALE
[ 517 ]

Chapter 42

WALTER F. MONDALE

42nd Vice President: 1977–1981

We understood each other’s needs. We respected each other’s opinions. We kept each other’s confidence. Our relationship in the White House held up under the searing pressure of that place because

we entered our offices understanding—perhaps for the first time in the history of those offices—that each

of us could do a better job if we maintained the trust of the other. And for four years, that trust endured.

—WALTER F. MONDALE

The wisest decision Walter Mondale ever

made was not to run for president in 1976. For

two years, the Minnesota senator tested the waters for a presidential campaign, conducting an

extensive fund-raising and public relations tour

of the country. Concluding that he had neglected

both his family and his senatorial responsibilities, that he had little taste for mass media image

making, and that his standing in the polls had

not risen, he dropped out of the race in November 1974. At the time, he explained that he lacked

‘‘the overwhelming desire to be President’’ and

dreaded spending another year ‘‘sleeping in Holiday Inns.’’ A number of Democratic senators announced for president in 1976, but the candidate

who won the nomination was the little-known

former governor of Georgia, Jimmy Carter, who

showed the determination to conduct precisely

the kind of campaigning that Mondale had rejected. Carter then bypassed the senators who

had run against him and tapped Mondale for his

running mate. Although he would never become

president, Walter Mondale proved himself one

of the more successful vice presidents in American history, in terms of shaping administration

policies and exercising influence over cabinet

appointments.1

Being selected by Carter for the vice-presidential nomination followed a familiar pattern

for Mondale, in which he was admired, trusted,

and promoted by other politicians. His career

progressed as much by selection as by election.

As a college student in the 1940s he organized

a ‘‘Diaper Brigade’’ of student volunteers to help

Hubert Humphrey, Orville Freeman, and Karl

Rolvaag take control of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor party, and each of those

leaders later fostered his career. Mondale was

twenty-one when he first went to Washington as

a prote ́ge ́ of Senator Humphrey; at thirty-two

Governor Freeman appointed him state attorney

general; and at thirty-six Governor Rolvaag appointed him to fill Humphrey’s vacant seat in the

United States Senate. Despite his youth when he

entered the Senate, Mondale held values closer

to those of the older generation of Democrats—

forged by the Great Depression and the New

Deal and influenced by the liberalism of Franklin

D. Roosevelt—than they were to the new generation of postwar politicians of the era of John F.

Kennedy. As a senator, vice president, and presidential candidate, Mondale played a transitional

role in the Democratic party, seeking to bridge

the generational and ideological divisions that

racked the party during and after the 1960s.2

‘‘Crazy Legs’’ from Elmore

A small-town, midwestern preacher’s son,

Walter Frederick ‘‘Fritz’’ Mondale was born in

Ceylon, Minnesota, on January 25, 1928. His father Theodore Sigvaard Mondale was a Meth-
[ 518 ]

WALTER F. MONDALE

odist minister and his mother Claribel Hope

Mondale taught music. The family’s Norwegian

surname originally had been Mundal. As a child,

Fritz moved with his family when his father was

reassigned to a church in Elmore, Minnesota, in

1937. A strong believer in the social gospel of

helping the poor and needy, who feared the concentration of wealth in the hands of the few,

Mondale’s father regularly talked politics with

his family at mealtimes. The family’s heroes were

Franklin Roosevelt and Minnesota’s radical governor Floyd Olson.3

Fritz was an ambitious youth, eager to make

a name for himself. Showing more interest in

sports than religion, Mondale excelled at basketball and track in high school, and won the nickname ‘‘Crazy Legs’’ as a star football player. He

also showed an interest in politics, founding the

‘‘Republicrats,’’ a student political organization

and winning election as president of the junior

class (although he lost his race for senior class

president). Once, on a summer job, his wisecracks caused a fellow worker to lose his temper.

‘‘I’m sorry, George, I didn’t mean any harm,’’

Mondale apologized. ‘‘But I’m planning to go

into politics someday, and I’ve gotta learn how

to get people’s hackles up.’’ In 1946 he enrolled

in Macalester College in St. Paul, working at odd

jobs to pay his way.4

As a college freshman in the days of the cold

war, Mondale encountered political science professors who warned against the extremes of both

the right and left and called for liberals to seek

the middle ground. In October 1946, Mondale

heard the left-leaning former Vice President

Henry Wallace speak at the campus. A few

months later he was more impressed when he

heard Minneapolis Mayor Hubert H. Humphrey.

A political science professor had taken Mondale

to a rally that aimed at merging the Democratic

party with the Farmer-Labor party to support

Humphrey’s reelection as mayor. Captivated by

the thirty-five-year-old mayor’s energy and rhetoric, Mondale volunteered his services to Humphrey’s campaign. Campaign manager Orville

Freeman enlisted him to put up signs and hand

out leaflets. Humphrey and other liberal Democrats were attempting to steer the leadership of

the Democratic-Farmer-Labor party away from

the Communists and other radical groups of the

type that had coalesced around Wallace. In 1948,

Mondale again volunteered to help Humphrey

win first the Democratic nomination for the U.S.

Senate against the radical Elmer Benson and then

the Senate seat from the Republican incumbent

Joseph Ball.5 Humphrey had helped organize the

Americans for Democratic Action (ADA), and

Mondale became active in its campus offshoot,

Students for Democratic Action (SDA). After his

father died in 1948, Mondale dropped out of college. Too excited by politics to sit passively in

college lectures, he followed Humphrey to

Washington to become national secretary of the

SDA. Writing to his mother, he described the

post as placing him ‘‘in an excellent position to

meet and know national figures in the liberal

movement’’ and that he was ‘‘exploiting this advantage to its fullest.’’ Labor unions, however,

withheld funding from the ADA, which they dismissed as comprised of college professors and

visionaries. Mondale therefore spent his time

raising money and shuffling paperwork rather

than pursuing politics, which left him disillusioned. An SDA colleague, Norma Dinnerstein,

to whom he was briefly engaged, diagnosed his

discontent: ‘‘because you were moving so very

fast and seeking so very much, you found corruption and a certain defeat in every victory,’’

she wrote. ‘‘And worst of all, you figured out

that ‘Crazy Legs’ from Elmore wasn’t worth so

very much in the big wide world.’’ 6

A Rising Young Politician

In January 1950, Mondale returned to college

at the less-expensive University of Minnesota,

graduating in the summer of 1951, cum laude.

With the United States fighting a war against

Communist North Korea, Mondale enlisted in

the army. Stationed at Fort Knox, Kentucky, he

was a corporal in education programs at the time

of his discharge in 1952. Armed with the GI Bill,

he entered the University of Minnesota Law

School and received his law degree in 1956. He

then practiced law in Minneapolis until 1960. A

blind date during the summer of 1955 introduced

him to Macalester student Joan Adams. He did

not know her, but she had heard of him, since

‘‘he was well known on campus.’’ Although
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WALTER F. MONDALE

more interested in art than politics, she, too, was

the child of a small-town minister, and the two

found they had much in common. They married

on December 27, 1955.7

In 1958, Mondale managed Orville Freeman’s

gubernatorial race and became the DemocraticFarmer-Labor party’s finance director, as well as

a special assistant to the state attorney general

on interstate trade matters. The next year, the

Mondales moved into a house located in a newly

created state senate district, because he planned

to run for office. Before he could announce, however, he received an appointment from Governor

Freeman to be state attorney general—making

him the youngest state attorney general in the

nation.8

Mondale catapulted to national attention by investigating the celebrated Sister Elizabeth Kenny

Foundation, a Minneapolis-based charity that

advertised nationally in its crusade to help the

handicapped. When allegations arose that the

Foundation’s directors had been diverting millions of dollars from the donations to their private use, Mondale investigated and found that

only 1.5 percent of the money raised actually

supported medical services. The resulting press

attention kept him on the front pages and assured his election to the attorney general post.

Mondale won by 246,000 votes, while Freeman

lost his bid for reelection as governor. In office,

Mondale solidified his reputation as an active

‘‘people’s lawyer,’’ pursuing consumer protection and civil rights cases. Rather than running

for governor in 1962, as many had expected,

Mondale deferred to Lieutenant Governor Karl

Rolvaag, who defeated the incumbent Republican Governor Elmer Anderson by only ninetyone votes. Meanwhile, Mondale won reelection

as attorney general with more votes than any

other candidate on the ballot. In 1963 he persuaded twenty-three other state attorney generals to sign a brief in favor of the indigent prisoner Clarence Earl Gideon, who was urging the

U.S. Supreme Court to establish the right to free

counsel for those charged with major crimes but

unable to hire their own attorneys.9

The Great Society and the Vietnam War

In the presidential election of 1964, Lyndon

Johnson chose Hubert Humphrey as his running

mate. With their landslide victory, Humphrey’s

Senate seat became available. Governor Rolvaag

appointed Mondale to the vacancy over several

more senior Democrats—because he considered

Mondale the most likely to win reelection. The

appointment sent Fritz Mondale to Washington

at an auspicious moment for Democratic liberals.

Following the Johnson landslide, the Senate of

the Eighty-ninth Congress opened with 68

Democrats facing 32 Republicans and a similarly

lopsided margin in the House. So many Democrats crowded the Senate chamber, in fact, that

an extra fifth row of desks was set up to accommodate Mondale, Robert Kennedy of New York,

Joseph Tydings of Maryland, and Fred Harris of

Oklahoma. The younger, more liberal senators

were eager to help Johnson build his ‘‘Great Society.’’ In 1966 Mondale sponsored the Fair Warning Act, requiring automotive manufacturers to

notify owners of any defects in their cars. He

then surprised everyone by forging the legislative compromise that led to the enactment of an

open housing amendment to the Civil Rights Act

of 1968. Mondale steadfastly endorsed Lyndon

Johnson’s handling of both domestic and foreign

policy issues and stuck with the president even

when the Democratic party began to divide over

the Vietnam War.10

As a senator, Mondale labored long hours and

demanded similar stamina from his staff. He revealed little of Hubert Humphrey’s passionate

political style. Cool, deliberate, and rarely emotional, Mondale wore a coat and tie even to the

most informal gatherings, refused to be photographed smoking the cigars he loved, sported

bad haircuts, and tended to look wooden and

formal. Although he attracted respectful notice

from the press, he was uncomfortable speaking

on television, unable to adopt the more relaxed

and natural style that medium favored. Balancing these shortcomings were Mondale’s natural decency and seriousness. ‘‘The thing that is

most evident about Mondale,’’ Hubert Humphrey once observed, ‘‘is that he’s nonabrasive.
[ 520 ]

WALTER F. MONDALE

He is not a polarizer.’’ These were not attributes

that drew public attention or acclaim. Mondale

could walk through any airport in the country,

he joked, ‘‘and not a head will turn.’’ Nevertheless, when he stood for election to his Senate seat

in 1966, a year that favored Republican candidates, he won by a comfortable margin.11

When Johnson withdrew from the presidential

campaign of 1968, Mondale cochaired Hubert

Humphrey’s bid for the Democratic nomination.

That tragic campaign year was marred by the assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy and by

riots at the Democratic convention in Chicago.

Humphrey gained the nomination but also a

badly tattered party. ‘‘I didn’t leave Chicago,’’

Mondale later recalled, ‘‘I escaped it.’’ During

the campaign, he urged Humphrey to support a

bombing halt over North Vietnam, a position

that Humphrey finally embraced in late September. The Democratic ticket then gained in the

polls and in the end lost the election to the Republican candidate Richard Nixon by less than

one percent of the popular vote.12

Nixon’s entrance into the White House gave

Walter Mondale and other liberal Democrats an

opportunity to reevaluate their views about the

war and the ‘‘imperial presidency.’’ In a speech

at Macalester College in October 1969, Mondale

reversed his position on the Vietnam War. He

called the war ‘‘a military, a political and a moral

disaster’’ and declared that the United States

government could not impose a solution on Vietnam’s essentially internal conflict. As a liberal,

Mondale also feared that the war was draining

financial resources that should be applied to domestic problems. In 1971 he voted for the

McGovern-Hatfield Amendment to stop American military actions in Cambodia and to set a

timetable for withdrawing American troops

from Vietnam. In 1973 he cosponsored the War

Powers Resolution. Mondale had come to the

Senate sharing the conventional view that ‘‘we

had to rely greatly on the President of the United

States.’’ But the events had showed him ‘‘the

consequences of having a President who is largely unaccountable to Congress, to the law or to

the American people.’’ 13

The Nixon administration provided a natural

foil for Mondale’s liberalism. As chairman of the

Senate Select Committee on Equal Educational

Opportunity, Mondale fought Nixon’s proposed

antibusing legislation. He similarly opposed the

administration’s plans to build costly antiballistic missile systems and supersonic transport aircraft. But, facing reelection in 1972, Mondale was

careful to avoid unpopular causes that might alienate him from his middle-class constituency. ‘‘I

don’t like wasting my time slaying windmills,’’

he insisted. When Senator George McGovern

emerged as the frontrunner for the Democratic

presidential nomination that year, he sent his

campaign manager Gary Hart and the Hollywood actor Warren Beatty to ask whether Mondale would be a vice-presidential candidate. The

Minnesotan declined to give up his Senate seat

to join a losing campaign, headed by a candidate

with whom he often disagreed. Although Mondale’s opponent in his Senate race tried to paint

him as a ‘‘McGovern liberal,’’ Mondale won by

an even greater margin than in his previous

race.14

Running for President—and for Vice President

After 1972 the Watergate scandal inverted the

political landscape. Democratic chances looked

brighter with Nixon crippled by a string of devastating revelations about illegal activities, combined with public concerns over a weakened

economy. Early in 1973, Mondale began constructing a campaign for the next presidential

nomination. To gain more depth in foreign policy issues, he toured foreign capitals from London to Jerusalem. In order to raise both funds

and his public visibility, he logged some 200,000

miles, visiting thirty states, campaigning for

Democratic candidates for Congress, meeting

with local party organizers, and engaging in as

many radio and television interviews as possible.

Mondale and his legislative assistant, Roger

Colloff, also wrote a book, The Accountability of

Power: Toward a Responsible Presidency, discussing

ways to keep the presidency strong and yet fully

accountable to the Congress and the people. But

before the book was published in 1975, Mondale

had already dropped out of the race.15

Mondale found the road to the nomination tortuous and unendurable. ‘‘It is a process which

involves assembling an experienced and quali-
[ 521 ]

WALTER F. MONDALE

fied core staff, raising funds in staggering quantities, and traveling to every corner of the nation

in preparation for a series of delegate selections

each of which is unique.’’ The time required to

campaign kept a candidate away from his family, his job, and his rest. For all the agony, Mondale’s standing in the polls never rose. On November 21, 1974, he surprised everyone by announcing his withdrawal from the race. Many lamented his decision as a sign that only someone

‘‘single-mindedly obsessed’’ with pursuing the

presidency could achieve it.16

Free of the campaign, Mondale returned to his

Senate duties. With civil rights legislation primarily in mind, he led a movement in 1975 to

change the Senate cloture rule in order to make

ending a filibuster easier, by reducing the votes

needed from two-thirds to three-fifths of the senators. He also won recognition for his diligent

work as a member of the select committee,

chaired by Senator Frank Church, that investigated the covert activities of the CIA and FBI.

Having done the necessary background research

to ask incisive questions, Mondale regularly upstaged Church, who was still actively campaigning for president. Church, Henry Jackson, Birch

Bayh, and other senators appeared to be the leading contenders for the nomination until a surprise candidate claimed victory in the Iowa caucuses. Former Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter

campaigned as an ‘‘outsider,’’ removed from the

Washington political scene that had produced

the Vietnam War, the Watergate scandal and

other policies that dismayed and disillusioned

American voters. Carter’s freshness, down-toearth style, and promise of a government that

would be honest, fair, and compassionate

seemed a welcome antidote to the ‘‘imperial

presidency.’’ By June, Carter had the nomination

sufficiently locked up and could take time

to interview potential vice-presidential

candidates.17

The pundits predicted that Frank Church

would be tapped to provide balance as an experienced senator with strong liberal credentials.

Church promoted himself, persuading friends to

intervene with Carter in his behalf. If a quick

choice had been required as in past conventions,

Carter later recalled, he would probably have

chosen Church. But the longer period for deliberation gave Carter time to worry about his compatibility with the publicity-seeking Church,

who had a tendency to be long-winded. Instead,

Carter invited Senators Edmund Muskie, John

Glenn, and Walter Mondale to visit his home in

Plains, Georgia, for personal interviews, while

Church, Henry Jackson, and Adlai Stevenson III

would be interviewed at the convention in New

York.18

When Mondale arrived in Plains, it was evident that he had studied for the interview. He

had researched Carter’s positions on every issue

to identify their similarities and differences. He

read Carter’s book, Why Not the Best? and talked

to those who knew the Georgia governor. Carter

found him ‘‘extremely well prepared’’ and was

also impressed by Mondale’s assertion that he

would not trade in his Senate seat for a purely

ceremonial office. He was only interested in

being vice president if the position became ‘‘a

useful instrument of government.’’ There were

many similarities in the two men’s lives, both

having grown up in small towns with strong religious influences. Of all the potential candidates,

Carter found Mondale the most compatible.

When reporters asked why the Minnesotan

wanted to get back into a race he had already

dropped out of and spend more nights in Holiday Inns, he replied wryly, ‘‘I’ve checked and

found out they’ve all been redecorated.’’ 19

Mondale’s longtime mentor Hubert Humphrey strongly advised him to accept the second

spot. ‘‘My vice presidential years were tough

years but I am a better man for it and I would

have made a better President,’’ he counseled. ‘‘I

learned more about the world and the presidency than I could have ever learned in the Senate.’’ To provide some suspense for the convention, Carter waited until the last moment to announce his choice. When the offer finally came,

Mondale accepted instantly. The press dubbed

the ticket ‘‘Fritz and Grits.’’ After the convention,

Mondale set off on a rigorous campaign that emphasized economic issues. The high point of the

campaign for him came during his televised debate with the Republican vice-presidential candidate, Senator Robert Dole. Carter’s advisers

felt so certain that Mondale had won the debate
[ 522 ]

WALTER F. MONDALE

that they featured it in televised advertisements,

asking, ‘‘When you know that four of the last six

vice presidents have wound up as president,

who would you like to see a heartbeat away from

the presidency?’’ 20

Teamwork in the Carter White House

A close election put Carter in the White House

and made the Mondales the first family to settle

into the vice-presidential mansion on Massachusetts Avenue. That twenty-room Victorian house,

previously occupied by the chief of Naval Operations, was, Mondale observed, ‘‘the best house

we’ve ever had.’’ No longer did American vice

presidents have to provide their own lodging.

Joan Mondale won the nickname ‘‘Joan of Art’’

for her elaborate presentations of artworks in the

vice president’s mansion and her promotion of

American artists. She also expanded the role of

‘‘second lady’’ by reviving, and serving as honorary chair of, the Federal Council on the Arts

and Humanities.21

Carter and Mondale formed a remarkably

close team. Carter was conscious that previous

‘‘forced marriages’’ of presidents and vice presidents had not worked, that White House staff

had shut out vice presidents, and that strong

men like Hubert Humphrey and Nelson Rockefeller had been frustrated in the job. Determined

to make Mondale more of a partner, Carter directed that Mondale be given an office inside the

West Wing—the first since Spiro Agnew—and

instructed that the presidential and vice-presidential staffs be integrated ‘‘as a working team’’

(Mondale had a vice presidential staff that

ranged from fifty-five to sixty members). The office space proved critical, since as one vice-presidential aide commented, ‘‘Mondale didn’t have

to beg anyone to visit him in the West Wing.’’

Not everyone was happy with this arrangement,

especially the Georgians who had accompanied

Carter to power. Attorney General Griffin Bell

thought that moving the vice president into the

White House had been a mistake, noting that,

even though Carter was a more conservative

Democrat than Mondale, the vice president had

shaped much of the administration’s program to

his own liking. ‘‘He managed to do this because

of his physical location in the West Wing of the

White House,’’ Bell concluded, ‘‘and because of

placing some close aides in crucial posts in the

policy-making apparatus.’’ 22

Famous as a politician who always did his

homework, Mondale studied the vice-presidency

to determine why so many of his predecessors

had failed. He had not paid much attention to

the subject previously; his book on the presidency, Accountability of Power, had mentioned the

vice-presidency only in terms of succession.

Mondale identified Nelson Rockefeller’s chairing

of the Domestic Council as a mistake and observed that vice presidents too often took minor

functions ‘‘in order to appear that their role was

significant.’’ Instead of specific assignments, he

preferred to remain a generalist and a troubleshooter, someone consulted on all issues. At one

point he even turned down Carter’s suggestion

that the vice president become the chief of staff.

‘‘If I had taken on that assignment,’’ Mondale

reasoned, ‘‘it would have consumed vast

amounts of my time with staff work.’’ The vice

president also planned to avoid being shunted

into such ceremonial functions as attending state

funerals. The chief exception that he made was

to travel to Yugoslav President Tito’s funeral in

1980, because high-level diplomatic contact was

required.23

From the start, Carter invited Mondale to

every meeting that he scheduled and gave him

the opportunity to pick and choose those he

wished to attend. Carter and Mondale also held

private luncheons each Monday to discuss any

matters that either wanted to bring up. Mondale

received the same daily intelligence information

that Carter got and met regularly with the senior

staff and the National Security Council. Yet the

vice president usually kept silent in group meetings, knowing that he would later have an opportunity to talk with Carter alone. Having

played junior partner to men like Hubert Humphrey and Orville Freeman, Mondale instinctively understood his role as vice president. In

groups of any size he automatically deferred to

Carter. The president responded by threatening

to fire any staff member who assailed the vice

president. Hamilton Jordan, Carter’s eventual

chief of staff, also made sure that Mondale and

his staff were never isolated from current policy
[ 523 ]

WALTER F. MONDALE

discussions. ‘‘I consider I work for Mondale,’’

Jordan insisted. ‘‘He’s my second boss, the way

Carter is my first boss.’’ Jordan, whose office was

located next to Mondale’s, liked the vice president, whom he considered shrewd. ‘‘In the

White House, he played his cards wisely,’’ Jordan reflected.24

‘‘We understood each other’s needs,’’ Mondale

later said of his relationship with Carter. ‘‘We respected each other’s opinions. We kept each other’s confidence. Our relationship in the White

House held up under the searing pressure of that

place because we entered our offices understanding—perhaps for the first time in the history of

those offices—that each of us could do a better

job if we maintained the trust of the other. And

for four years, that trust endured.’’ The vice

president’s free access to the Oval Office gave

him considerable leverage over the administration’s agenda. Unlike many of his predecessors,

he could bring ideas to the table and win recognition for them. When Mondale took a position, Carter usually listened. In 1978, when Congress passed a defense authorization bill that

provided $2 billion for a new aircraft carrier that

Carter opposed, Mondale advocated a veto.

Carter’s top aides believed that a veto would

surely be overridden, embarrassing the president, but Mondale went to Carter and argued

that he had to take a stand against unnecessary

spending, saying, ‘‘If you don’t do it now, you’ll

never get control.’’ Carter vetoed the bill, and

Congress upheld his veto.25

A Crisis of Confidence

At the same time, Mondale cringed at Carter’s

inept handling of Congress and tried unsuccessfully to stop actions that might alienate the administration from its erstwhile supporters on

Capitol Hill. Mondale watched Carter squander

the initial good will afforded his administration

by pursuing a legislative agenda that was much

too ambitious and complicated, rather than focusing on a few major issues. In one instance,

however, Mondale himself became the object of

congressional ire. In 1977 Senate liberals led by

Howard Metzenbaum of Ohio and James

Abourezk of South Dakota filibustered against

Carter’s proposal to deregulate natural gas.

Using the recently devised tactics of the ‘‘postcloture filibuster,’’ they filed more than five hundred amendments to the bill. After the Senate debate had dragged on for twelve days, including

an all-night session, Majority Leader Robert C.

Byrd persuaded Mondale to cooperate in a daring strategy to cut off the filibuster. On the floor,

Byrd raised points of order that many of the

amendments should be ruled out of order as incorrectly drawn or not germane. As presiding officer, Mondale ruled thirty-three amendments

out of order in a matter of minutes. The Senate

erupted into angry protest, with even senators

who had not filibustered denouncing the tactic.

The vice president was lectured by many senators, including some of his longtime friends, for

abusing the powers of the presiding officer. In

his defense, Senator Byrd pointed out that the

vice president was not there to ‘‘pull the rug out’’

from under the Senate. ‘‘The Vice President is

here to get the ox out of the ditch.’’ Although the

strategy worked and the bill was enacted, ‘‘the

struggle had left some deep wounds,’’ Byrd later

concluded.26

Repeatedly, Mondale urged President Carter

to make clear his goals for the nation and the reasons the public should follow his lead. Neither

a New Deal nor a Great Society liberal, nor a traditional conservative, Carter seemed to straddle

the issues and avoid choosing sides. Ironically,

when Carter finally did attempt to define his

presidential identity, he left Mondale in despair.

During the summer of 1979, Carter abruptly canceled a planned televised address on energy policy and closeted himself at Camp David with

groups of citizen advisers to help him rethink his

administration’s aims. Pollster Patrick Caddell

wanted the president to address the ‘‘malaise’’

that seemed to have settled on America. Mondale thought Caddell’s analysis ‘‘crazy’’ and

warned that if the president made such a negative speech he would sound like ‘‘an old scold

and a grouch.’’ Although Carter’s other advisers

reluctantly came around, Mondale could not reconcile himself to Carter’s position. ‘‘I thought it

would destroy Carter and me with him,’’ Mondale later noted. He felt so strongly about this

issue that he contemplated resigning if Carter
[ 524 ]

WALTER F. MONDALE

gave Caddell’s speech. The president took Mondale for a long walk at Camp David and tried

to calm him down. ‘‘I had only partial success,’’

Carter recorded, ‘‘convincing him to support my

decision even though he could not agree with it.’’

Carter went on to deliver a televised speech

warning of a ‘‘crisis of confidence’’ and to charge

that Americans were suffering from a national

malaise. He followed that speech with a drastic

overhaul of his cabinet, giving the impression

that his administration was falling to pieces. The

negative public reaction proved Mondale’s concerns fully justified.27

The Carter administration’s standing in the

public opinion polls slipped steadily. In November 1978, Republicans had made considerable

gains in the congressional elections, including

winning both Senate seats in Minnesota. The

‘‘malaise’’ speech and cabinet shake-ups further

disenchanted the voters. Exhausted staff members, pessimistic about the president’s reelection

chances, began making plans for themselves

after the 1980 election. The Georgians in the

president’s inner circle grew increasingly protective of him and complained about the lack of loyalty in the cabinet, and some also criticized the

vice president. Reporters noted that Mondale no

longer attended the White House weekly staff

sessions on congressional relations.28

One crisis after another eroded public confidence in the president’s abilities. The nation

sustained gasoline shortages, double-digit inflation, and a serious recession. Carter’s decision to

impose an austerity budget to cut inflation, rather than stimulating the economy to end the recession, offended Democratic liberals, who urged

Massachusetts Senator Edward M. Kennedy to

challenge the president for renomination. As

matters grew worse, Mondale took a less visible

and active role. ‘‘I thought there was not much

I could do to change things,’’ he later explained,

‘‘so why break my health trying.’’ In November

1979, militant Iranians seized the American embassy in Teheran and took sixty-three hostages.

In December, Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan. Initially, these foreign policy crises boosted

Carter’s popularity and were enough to help

Carter and Mondale win renomination. But as

the months wore on with no solutions, Carter

again slipped in the polls. The Republican candidate, Ronald Reagan, portrayed the Carter administration as weak abroad and in disarray at

home. Mondale campaigned vigorously for the

Democratic ticket, but as vice president he drew

little media attention. ‘‘I’d have to set my hair

on fire to get on the news,’’ he complained.29

Titular Leader and Presidential Candidate

Reagan’s election discredited Carter and left

Mondale as the titular leader of the Democratic

party. Although he returned to private law practice in Minnesota, Mondale had determined,

even before he left the vice-presidency, to run for

president in 1984. As a private citizen, he traveled abroad to meet with foreign leaders, consulted with leading American economists, and

sought to build bridges to reunite the Democratic

party. During the 1982 congressional elections,

Mondale campaigned far and wide for Democratic candidates. A deep recession swung many

voters back to the Democratic party and made

Reagan vulnerable as a candidate for reelection,

but in 1983 the economy began to revive, for

which ‘‘Reaganomics’’ took full credit. Surprise

contenders for the Democratic nomination also

appeared, among them the Reverend Jesse Jackson and Colorado Senator Gary Hart. Although

Mondale had the support of labor and other traditional elements of the Democratic coalition, he

was more reserved, less charismatic, and less

telegenic than his competitors. Hart campaigned

as the candidate of ‘‘new ideas,’’ but Mondale

countered with a parody of a popular television

commercial, asking: ‘‘Where’s the beef?’’ He won

the nomination but then faced Ronald Reagan in

the general election campaign.30

The 1984 race between Walter Mondale and

Ronald Reagan offered a clear-cut choice between liberal and conservative candidates and

philosophies. While running against one of the

best-loved presidents, Mondale won credit for

being one of the best-informed candidates ever

to run for the presidency. He also added some

spark to his campaign by selecting the first

woman candidate for vice president on a major

party ticket, Representative Geraldine Ferraro, a

liberal who also appealed to many conservatives

in her Queens, New York, district. During the
[ 525 ]

WALTER F. MONDALE

first television debate of the campaign, Reagan

seemed to appear distracted and show his age.

In a later debate, however, the seasoned performer bounced back by promising not to make

an issue of Mondale’s ‘‘youth and inexperience.’’

With the nation facing huge deficits, Mondale

told the voters that a raise in taxes was inevitable. ‘‘Mr. Reagan will raise taxes, and so will

I,’’ he said. ‘‘He won’t tell you, I just did.’’ It was

a disastrous strategy. Reagan promised prosperity, a strong defense, and balanced budgets without raising taxes. Mondale ended his campaign

in Minneapolis, telling the crowd, ‘‘You have

given me, a small-town boy from Elmore, a

chance to shape our country and to shape our

times,’’ but on election day, he lost forty-nine

states and carried only Minnesota and the District of Columbia. Assessing the results, Mondale

commented, ‘‘Reagan was promising them

‘morning in America,’ and I was promising a

root canal.’’ 31

In later years, many anticipated that Mondale

would challenge Minnesota Republican Rudy

Boschwitz for his Senate seat in 1990. Polls

showed Mondale running ahead, but at age

sixty-two he chose not to reenter politics. ‘‘I believe it’s time for other candidates to step forward,’’ he said, admitting that it had been a difficult decision to make. When Bill Clinton won

the presidency in 1992, he offered Mondale the

ambassadorship to Japan, which he accepted.

The Mondales had frequently visited that country, and Joan had considerable knowledge of Japanese pottery and art. The Japanese dubbed Fritz

Mondale an Oh-mono, which roughly translates,

‘‘big wheel,’’ or ‘‘big cheese.’’ As reporter T.R.

Reid commented, ‘‘Mondale brings to the Tokyo

embassy everything Japan wanted in a U.S. ambassador: political clout, personal access to the

president and a genuine appreciation for Japanese culture and traditions.’’ One Japanese newspaper described him as ‘‘A man with real power

in Congress and the Democratic Party!!’’ Mondale professed to be ‘‘glad to be back in public

life’’ with such ‘‘an exciting, challenging undertaking.’’ He was sworn in as ambassador by Vice

President Al Gore, who declared that Mondale’s

experiences as a senator had prepared him for

a diplomatic life ‘‘full of tribal feuds and strange

languages.’’ Responding in kind, Mondale insisted that ‘‘Nothing could be more ennobling

that to be sworn in by a Democratic vice

president.’’ 32
[ 526 ]

NOTES 1 Finlay Lewis, Mondale: Portrait of a Politician (New York,

1984), pp. 160–61; Paul C. Light, Vice-Presidential Power: Advice and Influence in the White House (Baltimore, 1984), p. 1. 2 Steven M. Gillon, The Democrats’ Dilemma: Walter F. Mondale and the Liberal Legacy (New York, 1992), pp. x-xiv. 3 Ibid., pp. 1–15; Lewis, pp. 9–11.

4Lewis, p. 15.

5 Ibid., pp. 20–34; Gillon, pp. 17–21.

6Gillon, pp. 21–40.

7 Ibid., pp. 41–52; Lewis, pp. 49–52.

8Gillon, pp. 51–54.

9 Ibid., pp. 56–66; Lewis, pp. 62–75.

10Gillon, pp. 69–97; Lewis, pp. 76–84.

11Gillon, pp. 99–111, 146–47; Lewis, p. 43.

12Gillon, pp 111–22.

13 Ibid., pp. 123–30; Walter F. Mondale, The Accountability

of Power: Toward a Responsible Presidency (New York, 1975),

pp. vii-ix. 14Gillon, pp. 130–41.

15 Ibid., pp. 143–53; Mondale, pp. ix-xv.

16Mondale, pp. 23–30; Gillon, p. 152.

17Gillon, pp. 153–62; Loch K. Johnson, A Season of Inquiry:

The Senate Intelligence Investigation (Lexington, KY, 1985),

pp. 105, 153–56. 18LeRoy Ashby and Rod Gramer, Fighting the Odds: The

Life of Senator Frank Church (Pullman, WA, 1994), pp. 522–

26; Jimmy Carter, Keeping Faith: Memoirs of a President (New

York, 1982), pp. 35–36. 19Gillon, pp. 163–67; Carter, p. 37.

20Gillon, pp. 163–85.

21Washington Post, August 14, 1993; Lewis, pp. 230–40. 22 Carter, pp. 39–40; Light, pp. 75, 164–65, 207.

23Mondale, pp. 72–76; Light, pp. 29, 47, 206.

24Light, pp. 49–50, 141, 146, 208–9, 212–15, 229.

25 Ibid., pp. 42, 213, 251.

26U.S., Congress, Senate, The Senate, 1789–1989: Addresses

on the History of the United States Senate, by Robert C. Byrd,

S. Doc. 100–20, 100th Cong., 1st sess., vol. 2, 1991, pp. 154–

56; Gillon, pp. 187–93. 27Gillon, pp. 200–203, 260–66; Lewis, pp. 214–15; Light,

p. 255; Carter, pp. 115–16; Garland A. Haas, Jimmy Carter

and the Politics of Frustration (Jefferson, NC, 1992), pp. 83–

85.28Light, p. 216; Haynes Johnson, In the Absence of Power:

Governing America (New York, 1980), p. 287. 29Gillon, pp. 251–57, 267–76, 289; Lewis, pp. 208–10.

30Lewis, p. 245; Gillon, pp. 301–32.

31Gillon, pp. 365–90, 394; Elizabeth Drew, Campaign Journal: The Political Events of 1983–1984 (New York, 1985), pp.

555–57, 619–22. 32Roll Call, June 4, 1989; Washington Post, August 14, September 15, 1993.
[ 527 ]

Chapter 43

GEORGE H.W. BUSH

1981–1989
GEORGE H.W. BUSH

(Presiding in old Senate chamber)
[ 529 ]

Chapter 43

GEORGE H.W. BUSH

43rd Vice President: 1981–1989

Only the President lands on the south lawn.

—VICE PRESIDENT GEORGE BUSH, MARCH 30, 1981

Rarely had a vice president come to the office

so eminently qualified as George Bush. He had

been a businessman, United States representative, United Nations ambassador, chairman of

the Republican National Committee, chief U.S. liaison officer to the People’s Republic of China,

Central Intelligence Agency director, and presidential contender. Yet while his vice-presidential

predecessors had struggled to show they were

part of the president’s inner circle of policymakers, Bush found himself having to insist that

he was ‘‘out of the loop.’’ While he occupied the

vice-presidency, he kept his profile low, avoided

doing anything that might upstage his president,

and remained ever loyal and never threatening.

That strategy made him the first vice president

in more than 150 years to move directly to the

presidency by election.

A Tradition of Public Service

Bush dedicated his vice-presidential memoirs,

Looking Forward, to his mother and father,

‘‘whose values lit the way.’’ ‘‘Dad taught us

about duty and service,’’ he said of Senator Prescott S. Bush. The son of an Ohio steel company

president, Prescott Bush had attended Yale,

where he sang with the Whiffenpoofs and excelled in athletics. After military service in the

First World War, he married Dorothy Walker in

1921 and produced a family of five children. In

1923 Prescott Bush moved east to take a managerial position in Massachusetts, and two years

later shifted to New York City, establishing his

family in suburban Greenwich, Connecticut. In

1926 he became vice president of W.A. Harriman

and Company, an investment firm, later Brown

Brothers, Harriman. In addition to his Wall Street

activities, Prescott Bush served as president of

the United States Golf Association during the

1930s. During World War II, he helped to establish the United Service Organization (USO). Prescott Bush also sought elected office. From 1947

to 1950 he was finance chairman of the Connecticut Republican party. He lost a race for the Senate in 1950 by just a thousand votes, and in 1952

defeated Representative Abraham Ribicoff for a

vacant seat in the Senate. Tapping his golf skills,

Prescott Bush became a frequent golfing partner

with President Dwight Eisenhower. After two

terms in the Senate, he retired in 1962, an exemplar of the eastern, internationalist wing of the

Republican party.1

As much as George Bush physically resembled

his tall, lean, athletic father and followed his

footsteps in business and politics, he was raised

primarily by his mother, Dorothy. An athletic

woman herself (she was runner-up in the national girls’ tennis tournament of 1918), Dorothy

Bush brought up her large family while her husband absented himself to devote long hours to

business and public service. She taught her children kindness, charity, and modesty—and rebuked them for any signs of self-importance.

George Bush’s closest associates attributed his

difficulty in talking about himself to his mother’s

admonitions. Once when he was vice president,
[ 530 ]

GEORGE H.W. BUSH

Dorothy complained that her son had been reading while President Ronald Reagan delivered his

State of the Union address. Bush explained that

he was simply following the text of the speech,

but she still thought it showed poor manners.2

George Herbert Walker Bush was born on June

12, 1924, at Milton, Massachusetts, where his father was then working. His mother named him

for her father, George Herbert Walker, and since

Walker’s children had called him ‘‘Pop,’’ his

namesake won the unfortunate diminutive

‘‘Poppy.’’ George grew up in Greenwich and

spent his summers at his grandfather’s vacation

home in Kennebunkport, Maine. At twelve he

went off to the prestigious Phillips Academy in

Andover, Massachusetts, in preparation for entering his father’s alma mater, Yale. When the

Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, on December 7,

1941, George Bush determined to enlist. Secretary of War Henry Stimson delivered the commencement address at Andover, urging the

graduating class to get a college eduction before

putting on a uniform. ‘‘George, did the Secretary

say anything to change your mind?’’ his father

asked. ‘‘No, sir. I’m going in,’’ Bush replied. He

was sworn into the navy on his eighteenth

birthday.3

The youngest aviator in the navy, Bush was

sent to the Pacific and flew missions over Wake

Island, Guam, and Saipan. On September 2, 1944,

his plane was hit by antiaircraft fire. Bush managed to drop his cargo of bombs (winning the

navy’s Distinguished Flying Cross for completing his mission under fire) before he flew out to

sea to give his crew a chance to parachute. However, one crew member was trapped on the plane

and the other’s chute failed to open. Bush ejected, drifted alone at sea on a raft, and was rescued

by the American submarine, U.S.S. Finback. Rejoining his squadron, he saw further action over

the Philippines, flying a total of fifty-eight combat missions before he was finally ordered home

in December 1944.4

Two weeks later he married Barbara Pierce in

her home town of Rye, New York. They had met

as teenagers at a Christmas dance and become

engaged in 1943 (in the Pacific he had nicknamed

his plane ‘‘Barbara’’). The newlyweds headed to

New Haven, where George Bush enrolled at

Yale. Their first child—a future governor of

Texas—was born there in July 1946. Having a

wife and child to support deterred Bush neither

from his education nor from his extracurricular

activities. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa, captained the Yale baseball team, and was admitted

to the prestigious Skull and Bones Club. Unlike

fellow student William F. Buckley, Bush was not

offended by the liberal humanism of Yale in the

1940s. Neither a political activist nor an aggrieved conservative, Bush concerned himself

primarily with winning a national baseball

championship at the College World Series.5

A Shift to the Sunbelt

Having graduated in two and a half years with

honors and won two letters in sports, Bush considered applying for a Rhodes scholarship but

concluded that he could not afford to bring his

wife and son with him to England. He turned

instead to a career in business and accepted an

offer from a close family friend, Neil Mallon, to

work in the Texas oil fields. Bush started as an

equipment clerk at Odessa, Texas. The company

then transferred him to California as a salesman

and then called him back to Midland, Texas.

George and Barbara Bush moved frequently and

calculated that they had lived in twenty-eight

different houses before eventually reaching the

White House. During these years their family increased to four sons and two daughters, although, tragically, their first daughter, Robin,

died of leukemia as a child. Bush coached Little

League and was less an absentee father than his

own father had been, but it was Barbara Bush

who served as the disciplinarian and kept the

growing family in line.6

Once back in Texas, George Bush decided to

go independent. He and a neighbor, John

Overby, formed the Bush-Overby Oil Development Company, which benefitted from Bush

family connections on Wall Street that financed

its operations. His uncle Herbert Walker invested nearly a half million dollars, for instance.

Others, including Washington Post owner Eugene

Meyer, were willing to invest in a ‘‘sure-fire’’

business headed by Senator Prescott Bush’s son.

By 1953 Bush-Overby had merged with another

independent oil company to form Zapata Petro-
[ 531 ]

GEORGE H.W. BUSH

leum—picking the name from the Mexican revolutionary and Marlon Brando film, Viva Zapata!

In 1959 the company split its operations between

inland and offshore oil and gas, and Bush moved

to Houston as president of Zapata Offshore.7

The moving force for Bush’s energetic business

career was a desire to amass sufficient capital to

enter politics. His father had been elected to the

Senate in 1952 from Connecticut, but the son,

born and raised a Yankee, staked his claim instead in the ‘‘Solid South.’’ In 1952 Democrats

held almost every House and Senate seat in the

southeastern and southwestern states, a vast expanse sweeping from Virginia to Southern California. Yet dramatic change was already underway. In 1948 southern delegates had walked out

of the Democratic convention in protest over including a civil rights plank in the platform and

had run South Carolina Governor J. Strom Thurmond as the ‘‘Dixiecrat’’ candidate for president.

In 1952 Republican presidential candidate

Dwight D. Eisenhower made inroads into the

states of the old Confederacy, carrying Virginia,

Tennessee, Florida, and his birth state of Texas.

Texas’ conservative governor Allan Shivers led

a ‘‘Democrats for Eisenhower’’ movement, and

in 1961 a political science professor named John

Tower won Vice President Lyndon Johnson’s vacated Senate seat, becoming the first Texas Republican senator since Reconstruction.8

George Bush reflected a significant political

power shift in post-World War II America.

Young veterans like himself sought a fresh start

by moving from inner cities into new suburbs

and from the Rust Belt to the Sunbelt. Throughout the South, military bases established or expanded during the Second World War continued

to grow during the cold war. In Texas, the postwar demand for energy sources brought boom

times to the oil fields. The state attracted eager

young entrepreneurs not bound by old party loyalties. In 1962, a group of Republicans fearful

that the reactionary John Birch Society might

take over the local party operations invited Bush

to head Houston’s Harris County Republican

party organization. ‘‘This was the challenge I’d

been waiting for,’’ he said, ‘‘—an opening into

politics at the ground level, where it all

starts.’’ 9

Bush did not plan to stay at the ground level

for long. In 1963 he announced his candidacy for

the Republican nomination for the Senate to oust

the incumbent liberal Democrat Ralph Yarborough. Bush won the primary with 67 percent

of the vote. Although the Texas electorate was

lopsidedly Democratic, Bush believed he could

appeal to its conservative majority. But in 1964

he ran on a ticket headed by Barry Goldwater,

while Yarborough had the coattails of Texas’

own Lyndon B. Johnson. LBJ took 63 percent of

the state’s votes, while Bush managed to pare

Yarborough’s winning margin to 56 percent. It

was a creditable first race for a novice

politician.10

The national population shift also added new

members to the Texas delegation in the House

of Representatives. In 1963, as Harris County

chairman, Bush had filed suit under the Supreme

Court’s one-man-one-vote ruling for a congressional redistricting in Houston. Victory in court

led to the creation of a new Seventh Congressional District, for which Bush ran in 1966. To

finance his campaign, he resigned from Zapata,

selling his share for more than a million dollars.

His opponent, the Democratic district attorney of

Houston, portrayed Bush as a carpetbagger, but

Bush knew that three-fourths of the district’s

residents were also newcomers. It was a ‘‘silkstocking’’ district—white, wealthy, and with

only a small Hispanic and African American

population. Cashing in on the name recognition

he had gained from his Senate bid, Bush took the

House seat with 57 percent of the vote.11

Congressman Bush

The 1966 election provided a midterm rebound

for Republicans after the disaster two years earlier. Former Vice President Richard Nixon canvassed the nation for Republican congressional

candidates, building a base for his own political

comeback. Nixon toured Houston for Bush, as

did House Republican leader Gerald Ford in his

bid to become Speaker. Both Nixon and Ford had

known Prescott Bush in Washington. Due to his

father’s prominence and his own well-publicized

race for the Senate, George Bush arrived in the

House better known than most of the forty-six

other freshmen Republicans. As a freshman he
[ 532 ]

GEORGE H.W. BUSH

won a coveted seat on the Ways and Means

Committee (which put the Bushes on everyone’s

‘‘list’’ of social invitations). He paid diligent attention to constituent affairs and in 1968 was reelected without opposition. That year, after a single term in Congress, his name surfaced on the

short list of candidates whom Nixon considered

as running mates. Holding a safe seat and fitting

comfortably into the camaraderie of the House,

Bush might have made his career there, except

for his greater ambitions and for the urging of

two presidents of the United States that he run

for the Senate.12

Neither Lyndon Johnson nor Richard Nixon

cared for the liberal Democratic senator Ralph

Yarborough, and both appealed to Bush to challenge him again. Nixon added a particular inducement by promising Bush a high-level post

in his administration should he lose the race. Calculating the conservative mood of his state, Bush

concluded that he could unseat Yarborough in

a rematch. In 1970 he easily won the Republican

nomination but was distressed when Yarborough lost the Democratic primary to the more

conservative Lloyd Bentsen. Rather than campaigning from the right of his opponent, Bush

found himself situated on the left. Democrats

portrayed him as a liberal, Ivy League carpetbagger. (At a Gridiron dinner years later, Texas

Representative Jim Wright was still teasing Bush

as ‘‘the only Texan I know who eats lobster with

his chili. . . . He and Barbara had a little downhome quiche cook off.’’) Bush lost the race with

46 percent of the vote. It would take him eighteen years to even the score with Bentsen.13

Politics and Foreign Policy

Bush reminded President Nixon of his offer of

a job but did not want anything in the White

House, where he might be under the thumb of

Nixon’s ‘‘praetorian guard,’’ H.R. Haldeman and

John Ehrlichman. He volunteered instead for the

post of United Nations ambassador, arguing that

it would position him within New York’s social

circles, where Nixon lacked a strong political

base. That argument appealed to Nixon, who

was very concerned about his own reelection in

1972. Bush’s appointment raised complaints that

he was a Texas oilman-politician with no previous experience in foreign affairs. He retorted

that his experience as a salesman would make

him ‘‘the American salesman in the world marketplace for ideas.’’ 14

Nixon won a landslide reelection in 1972 and

went to Camp David to reorganize his administration, determined to put absolute loyalists in

every top position. In his memoirs, Bush later recalled that he hoped for a cabinet appointment,

but when he received his summons to the president’s mountain retreat it was to take over the

Republican National Committee from Senator

Bob Dole. Bush reluctantly agreed to take the job

but only if he could attend cabinet meetings. At

the time, he had no notion that the Watergate

break-in of June 1972 would erupt into a postelection scandal and destroy Nixon’s presidency.

But from the moment he took office, Bush recalled, ‘‘little else took up my time as national

committee chairman.’’ Throughout the storm,

Bush defended the president against all charges.

Finally, the release of the ‘‘smoking gun’’ tape

revealed that Nixon had participated in the Watergate cover-up, eroded what was left of the

president’s support on Capitol Hill, and changed

Bush’s mind.15

On Tuesday, August 6, 1974, Nixon called a

cabinet meeting to dispel rumors of his impending resignation. He announced that had decided

not to resign because it would weaken the presidency and because he did not believe he had

committed an impeachable offense. As Nixon

then tried to steer the discussion onto economic

issues, White House chief of staff Alexander

Haig heard a stir from the group sitting away

from the cabinet table:

It was George Bush, who as a guest of the President occupied one of the straight chairs along the

wall. He seemed to be asking for the floor. When

Nixon failed to recognize him, he spoke anyway.

Watergate was the vital question, he said. It was

sapping public confidence. Until it was settled,

the economy and the country as whole would

suffer. Nixon should resign.

Surely it was unprecedented, Haig observed,

for the chairman of the Republican National

Committee to advise a Republican president to

resign from office at a cabinet meeting. The cabi-
[ 533 ]

GEORGE H.W. BUSH

net sat in shocked silence as all realized that Nixon’s resignation was inevitable. Bush, who

thought that Nixon had looked ‘‘beleaguered,

worn down by stress, detached from reality,’’ felt

that the issue needed to be addressed squarely.

In a letter the next day he reiterated that Nixon

should resign, adding that his view was ‘‘held

by most Republican leaders across the

country.’’ 16

Nixon’s resignation on August 9 made Gerald

Ford president and opened a vacancy in the vicepresidency. Bush let Ford know that he was

available for the post. A poll of Republican officeholders put Bush at the top of the list, but he

was passed over for New York Governor Nelson

Rockefeller, who carried more independent stature. To soften the blow, Ford offered Bush a

choice of ambassadorships to London or Paris.

Instead, Bush asked to be sent to China. There

he thought he could both broaden his foreign

policy expertise and remain politically visible.

Nixon’s initiatives in 1971 had drawn great public attention and put China back on the American

political map. During his year in Beijing, China

attracted a steady stream of American visitors,

from President Ford and Secretary of State

Henry Kissinger to members of Congress and

countless delegations of prominent American

citizens.17

When he made the appointment, Ford told

Bush to expect to stay in China for two years,

but after a year Bush wrote the president that he

wanted to return to the United States. His letter

arrived while Ford was preoccupied with congressional scrutiny of the Central Intelligence

Agency. Considering Bush an able administrator

and a savvy politician, Ford telegraphed him to

come home to be CIA director. The ‘‘for eyes

only’’ cable came as a shock to Bush, who had

expected a cabinet appointment. He never anticipated taking charge of an agency that was under

investigation for everything ‘‘from lawbreaking

to simple incompetence.’’ Since the post had traditionally been nonpolitical, Bush suspected his

rivals within the administration wanted to bury

him there. Yet he felt he had no choice but to

accept. His confirmation was stalled when congressional Democrats demanded that Bush

promise not to run for vice president in 1976. ‘‘If

I wanted to be Vice President,’’ Bush demurred,

‘‘I wouldn’t be here asking you to confirm me

for the CIA.’’ He refused to renounce his ‘‘political birthright’’ for the price of confirmation. The

senators persisted until Bush finally asked Ford

to exclude him from consideration for the second

spot. ‘‘I know it’s unfair,’’ he told the president,

‘‘but you don’t have much of a choice if we are

to get on with the job of rebuilding and strengthening the agency.’’ After Ford notified the Senate

Armed Services Committee that Bush would not

be considered for vice president, the CIA confirmation followed speedily.18

Although he briefed the president each week

on intelligence matters, Bush found that the CIA

directorship was not a policy-making position. It

also kept him on the fringe of politics. From his

offices in Langley, Virginia, Bush watched the

1976 presidential race take place in the distance.

Challenged from the right by former California

Governor Ronald Reagan, Ford dropped Rockefeller and selected Kansas Senator Bob Dole for

vice president. An even more unexpected political saga was unfolding on the Democratic side,

where a pack of senior Democratic senators

vying for the nomination were eliminated by an

obscure political ‘‘outsider,’’ former Georgia

Governor Jimmy Carter. In Iowa, Carter scored

an upset by persistent personal campaigning and

by promising to create a less ‘‘imperial’’ presidency. As CIA director, Bush briefed candidate

Carter, then later returned to Plains, Georgia, to

brief him as president-elect. Bush informed

Carter that if the president wanted to name his

own director he would resign from the CIA.19

Running for President—and Vice President

Back in private life in Houston for the first time

in a decade, Bush laid the groundwork for a

presidential campaign in 1980. As with the

Democrats, Republican party reforms had shifted control of the delegate-selection process from

state party organizations to primary elections. In

1979, Bush logged more than 250,000 miles to attend 850 political events. Like Carter, he intended to make his mark in the Iowa caucuses.

The field of Republican contenders included Senators Howard Baker and Bob Dole, Representatives John Anderson and Philip Crane, and
[ 534 ]

GEORGE H.W. BUSH

former Texas Governor John Connally, but the

man to beat was Ronald Reagan. After narrowly

losing the nomination in 1976, Reagan made it

clear that despite his age he planned to run

again. As the frontrunner, Reagan initially pursued a more traditional campaign, spending

most of his time in New Hampshire and the

northeast, while Bush devoted nearly every day

to Iowa. A week before the Republican caucuses,

Bush’s organization sent a million pieces of mail

to party members across the state. When the caucuses met on January 21, 1980, Bush won 31.5

percent to Reagan’s 29.4 percent. The margin

was slim but enough to enable Bush to claim momentum—or as he called it ‘‘the Big Mo.’’ 20

The news from Iowa jolted Ronald Reagan,

who learned the result while watching an old

movie. Rather than become unnerved, however,

Reagan found the loss reinvigorating. He reorganized his staff, replaced his campaign manager,

and concentrated his fire on Bush in New Hampshire. Reagan and Bush agreed to meet at a headto-head debate sponsored by the Nashua Telegraph. When four other Republican candidates

objected to the two-person format, Bush opposed

opening the debate, while Reagan dramatically

appeared at the debate trailed by the four excluded candidates. As Bush sat stiffly, Reagan

started to explain why he had brought the others.

The debate moderator, Nashua Telegraph editor

Jon Breen, ordered Reagan’s microphone turned

off. Reagan replied, ‘‘I am paying for this microphone.’’ No matter that he had swiped the line

from an old Spencer Tracy movie, State of the

Union, Reagan had given a memorable performance. Leaving the debate, Reagan’s staff told him

that ‘‘the parking lot was littered with Bush-forPresident badges.’’ Having regained command

of the race, Reagan remained in the state until

election night, convincingly beating Bush by 50

to 23 percent.21

Bush was frustrated at the way the public perceived him and his opponent. Bush had been a

combat pilot in the Second World War, but

Reagan was widely known for his war movies.

Bush had actually ‘‘met a payroll’’ as an independent oil company executive, while Reagan

had simply preached the free-enterprise system

to appreciative audiences. Bush was a devoted

family man, while Reagan won attention for defending family values, despite being divorced

and estranged from his children. Bush looked

and sounded awkward and inarticulate on television, while Reagan mastered the medium.

Bush’s media advisers warned him about his

‘‘preppy’’ and ‘‘elitist’’ appearance, but when he

asked why the public had never held Ivy League

attendance against the Roosevelts, Tafts, and

Kennedys, they had no explanation. He concluded that his image was ‘‘just something I’d

have to live with.’’ 22

The New Hampshire primary effectively

ended Bush’s presidential campaign well before

he formally dropped out of the race in May. It

was during this interregnum, when his political

future seemed doubtful, that Bush sold his home

in Houston and purchased his grandfather’s old

estate, Walker’s Point, at Kennebunkport, Maine.

This move further blurred his identity: was he

a Texan or a Yankee? In July, he went to the Republican convention in Detroit with a slim hope

for the vice-presidential nomination but encountered a boom for Gerald Ford. With a good

chance of defeating the incumbent President

Jimmy Carter and the divided Democrats,

Reagan wanted to unify the Republican party. At

Henry Kissinger’s suggestion, Reagan approached Ford with the novel idea that the

former president run for vice president. Ford indicated he might accept if assured a meaningful

role in the administration.

Word of this ‘‘dream ticket’’ sparked considerable enthusiasm at the Republican convention.

Then Ford visited the CBS booth to be interviewed by Walter Cronkite. The veteran broadcaster pressed Ford about the details of how a

former president might accept the second spot,

prompting Ford to elaborate on his ideas for a

co-presidency. From his hotel room, Bush

watched the interview with the sinking feeling

that Ford would never talk so freely unless all

of the arrangements for his candidacy had been

completed. But Ronald and Nancy Reagan also

watched Ford’s interview, with mounting dismay. ‘‘Wait a minute’’ Reagan later recalled thinking, ‘‘this is really two presidents he’s talking about.’’

Later that night, Reagan called Ford to his hotel

suite, where the two men met behind closed
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GEORGE H.W. BUSH

doors. When they emerged after ten minutes

alone together, the ‘‘dream ticket’’ had evaporated. ‘‘The answer was no,’’ Reagan told his

staff. ‘‘He didn’t think it was right for him or for

me. And now I am inclined to agree.’’ Reagan

knew he needed to make a prompt decision

about a replacement, since any delay would

cause a letdown among the delegates and raise

questions about his decision-making abilities. As

Michael Deaver described the scene, Reagan

‘‘picked up the phone and said, to the amazement of everyone in the room, ‘I’m calling

George Bush. I want to get this settled. Anyone

have any objections?’ ’’ Recognizing the need to

broaden the ticket ideologically, no one could

offer an alternative. Reagan placed the call, telling Bush that he wanted to announce his selection right away, if he had no objection. Surprised

and delighted, Bush had none.23

Joining the Reagan Team

Reagan had not been impressed by Bush during the primaries. During their contest, Bush had

leveled the charge of ‘‘voodoo economics’’

against Reagan’s programs, a taunt that still

stung. Reagan thought Bush lacked ‘‘spunk’’ and

became too easily rattled by political criticism.

‘‘He just melts under pressure,’’ Reagan complained. Thus when Reagan won the presidency

in 1980, there were indications that Bush would

remain an outsider from the Reagan team. Washington observers commented that the Reagans

and the Bushes rarely socialized. Yet Bush had

several advantages as vice president. His personality and his long experience in appointed offices

made him naturally deferential to the president.

He avoided criticizing or differing with Reagan

in any way. He also had the good fortune of seeing his campaign manager, James A. Baker III,

appointed chief of staff in the Reagan White

House. While other vice presidents had to combat protective chiefs of staff, the longtime friendship of Bush and Baker continued throughout

Reagan’s administration. Although Baker served

Reagan foremost, he made sure nothing would

jeopardize Bush’s eventual succession to the

presidency.24

George and Barbara Bush moved into the vicepresidential mansion at the Naval Observatory

and thrived on the many social duties of the office. Bush’s attendance at a string of state funerals became a common joke for comedians. Barbara Bush felt such criticism was shortsighted,

since ‘‘George met with many current or future

heads of state at the funerals he attended, enabling him to forge personal relationships that

were important to President Reagan—and later,

President Bush.’’ From the start, Bush recognized

the constitutional limits of the office. He would

not be the decision maker, since that was the

president’s job. His position would be meaningful therefore only if the president trusted him

enough to delegate significant responsibilities to

him. He determined to be a loyal team player

and not to separate himself when things got

tough. As president of the Senate, he also tried

to stay in close touch with the senators and to

keep the president informed of what was happening on the Hill. Respecting the limitations on

his legislative role, however, he avoided trying

to intervene in Senate deliberations.25

That attitude served Bush well during the first

crisis of his vice-presidency. Touring Texas,

where he had unveiled a historical marker at the

hotel where John Kennedy spent his last night

before Dallas, Bush received word that President

Reagan had been shot and seriously wounded.

He immediately flew to Washington. When his

plane landed at Andrews Air Force Base, aides

wanted him to proceed directly to the White

House by helicopter. They thought it would

make dramatic television footage and demonstrate that the government was still functioning. Bush vetoed the idea, declaring that ‘‘only

the President lands on the south lawn.’’ His helicopter instead flew to the vice-presidential residence, from which he drove to the White House.

The gesture was not lost on Ronald Reagan, who

slowly warmed to his vice president.26

Over time, Reagan grew comfortable with his

vice president. The genial Reagan especially appreciated Bush’s effort to start staff meetings

with a ‘‘joke of the day.’’ The two men had lunch

together every Thursday and their discussions,

according to Bush, were ‘‘wide-ranging, from affairs of state to small talk.’’ The vice president

made a point of never divulging publicly the ad-
[ 536 ]

GEORGE H.W. BUSH

vice he gave the president in private, and Reagan

clearly appreciated his loyalty and discretion.27

As vice president, Bush devoted much attention to two special projects the president assigned to him. One was to chair a special task

force on federal deregulation. The task force reviewed hundreds of rules and regulations, making specific recommendations on which ones to

revise or eliminate in order to cut red tape. Bush

chaired another task force on international drug

smuggling, to coordinate federal efforts to stem

the flow of drugs into the United States. Not coincidentally, both efforts—against big government and illegal drugs—were popular issues

with Republican conservatives. Having joined

the Reagan ticket as a representative of the moderate wing of his party, Vice President Bush

courted conservatives to erase their suspicions.

His conspicuous efforts to befriend the likes of

New Hampshire publisher William Loeb and

Moral Majority leader Jerry Falwell drove the

newspaper columnist George Will to comment:

‘‘The unpleasant sound Bush is emitting as he

traipses from one conservative gathering to another is a thin, tinny arf—the sound of a lap

dog.’’ 28

A Troubled Second Term

Bush so solidified his position by 1984 that

there was no question of replacing him when

Reagan ran for a second term. By then, Barbara

Bush had also become a national figure in her

own right. The public enjoyed her direct, warm,

and casual style. In 1984 she published a popular

children’s book, C. Fred’s Story, about the family’s basset hound—a forerunner of the best-selling Millie’s Book by C. Fred’s replacement. Yet

George and Barbara Bush found the reelection

campaign far more trying than the race four

years earlier. The Democratic candidate, Walter

Mondale, had made history by choosing the first

woman candidate for vice president on a major

national ticket. New York Representative Geraldine Ferraro was an attractive and aggressive

candidate. Although a millionaire herself, she

represented a blue-collar district in Queens that

placed her in sharp contrast to Bush’s Ivy League

image. While Ferraro encountered significant

problems of her own, she brought color to an

otherwise dull and packaged campaign. Many

reporters, especially women members of the

press, cheered her campaign, leaving Bush at a

decided disadvantage. As his anger flared after

his televised debate with Ferraro, Bush was

quoted as saying that he had ‘‘tried to kick a little

ass last night.’’ Despite Reagan’s landslide reelection, the campaign left Bush feeling depressed and wondering if he still had a future

in politics.29

Bush’s friends Jim Baker and Nicholas Brady

quickly helped revive his optimism and enthusiasm, and by that Christmas they were already

planning strategy for his run for the presidency

in 1988. From the Reagan camp, Bush hired Craig

Fuller as his vice-presidential chief of staff, and

from Reagan’s campaign team he selected Lee

Atwater as his chief campaign strategist. Before

the end of 1985, Atwater had set up a political

action committee, the Fund for America, that had

raised more than two million dollars. Well in advance of the election, Bush became the conceded

frontrunner to replace Reagan. The strategy,

however, depended upon Reagan retaining his

phenomenal popularity. Then news of the

Iran-Contra scandal shook the Reagan

administration.30

The press and public were astonished in the

fall of 1986 to learn that the Reagan administration had secretly reversed its declared intention

not to sell arms to Iran. Designed to free American hostages, the arms sales had produced revenue that administration officials had diverted to

support anticommunist rebels in Nicaragua, in

direct violation of the law. These revelations implicated President Reagan’s national security advisers, Robert McFarland and John Poindexter,

and a National Security Council aide, Oliver

North. When Secretary of State George Shultz

and Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger

made it clear that they had opposed the IranContra plan, they left open the question of the

vice president’s position. Either way, whether he

had supported the illegal plan or been kept in

the dark about it, Bush stood to lose. Alexander

Haig, one of his opponents for the Republican

nomination, asked: ‘‘Where was George Bush

during the story? Was he the copilot in the cockpit, or was he back in economy class?’’ 31
[ 537 ]

GEORGE H.W. BUSH

The vice president maintained that those who

ran the operation had ‘‘compartmentalized’’ it,

so that he knew of only some parts of the plan

and had been ‘‘deliberately excluded’’ from others. Despite his claims of being ‘‘out of the loop,’’

public opinion polls indicated that people had

trouble believing Bush was an innocent bystander. The issue burst open in a live television

encounter between Bush and CBS anchorman

Dan Rather on January 25, 1988. Lee Atwater and

Roger Ailes, Bush’s campaign director and

media adviser, worried much over the vice president’s image as a ‘‘wimp.’’ Before the interview,

they convinced Bush that the broadcaster was

setting a trap for him and planned to ‘‘sandbag’’

him over the Iran-Contra affair. Rather prefaced

the interview by suggesting that Bush had been

present at numerous White House meetings on

Iran-Contra and then devoted his first question

to the scandal. Bush angrily charged that CBS

had misrepresented the purpose of the interview. Rather replied that he did not want to be

argumentative, but Bush retorted, ‘‘You do, Dan.

. . . I don’t think it’s fair to judge a whole career

. . . by a rehash on Iran.’’ Atwater, and Ailes were

delighted. Bush’s obvious fury had put ‘‘the

wimp issue’’ to rest.32

Winning the Presidency in His Own Right

By the time Bush had officially declared his

candidacy for president, his campaign had already raised ten million dollars, but he was by

no means assured of the nomination. No vice

president since Martin Van Buren in 1836 had

won election on his own immediately following

the term of the president with whom he had

served. While Reagan was still personally popular, the Iran-Contra scandal had hobbled his administration. Senate Republican Leader Bob Dole

was pressing a hard campaign against Bush, as

was televangelist Pat Robertson. Returning to an

economically depressed Iowa, Bush campaigned

surrounded by Secret Service agents and rode in

a motorcade of official limousines that looked

like ‘‘the caravan of an Eastern potentate.’’ The

results of the Iowa caucuses relegated Bush to a

dismal third place behind Dole and Robertson.33

As it did for Ronald Reagan eight years earlier,

the embarrassing loss in Iowa forced Bush to revamp his strategy. The Bushes flew to New

Hampshire, where Governor John Sununu assured Barbara: ‘‘Don’t worry. He’ll win in New

Hampshire. ‘Mr. Fix-it’ will see to it.’’ Bush followed the advice of his ‘‘handlers’’—Sununu,

Baker, Atwater, and Ailes. He abandoned his set

speeches in favor of meeting voters at factories

and shopping malls and drove an eighteenwheel truck, trying to shed his ‘‘preppy’’ image

and show a more down-to-earth personal side.

He also went on the attack, pledging that he

would never raise taxes as president, while

claiming that Senator Dole had straddled the tax

issue. The New Hampshire campaign saw the

beginning of the negative attack advertisements

that would mark the Bush campaign for the rest

of the year. The decent, affable, self-effacing

Bush, who had trouble boasting about his own

impressive resume, had fewer compunctions

about attacking his opponents. Bush defeated

Dole and Robertson in New Hampshire and

went on to take the Republican nomination.

Although he started well behind in the polls

at the outset, he waged a vigorous general election campaign against Massachusetts Governor

Michael Dukakis and his running mate, Lloyd

Bentsen (who had defeated Bush for the Senate

in 1970). Atwater and Ailes crafted a campaign

of direct attacks on the Democratic candidate for

refusing to sign a bill making the Pledge of Allegiance mandatory for school children, for allowing a weekend parole system that released convict Willie Horton from prison, and for not having cleaned up a badly polluted Boston harbor.

Never appreciating the impact of the negative

ads, Dukakis responded to them inadequately.

Bush won an impressive victory in November,

portraying himself as proudly patriotic, tough on

crime, opposed to taxes, and sympathetic to educational and environmental issues.34

The chief circumstance in which candidate

Bush ignored the advice of his ‘‘handlers’’ concerned the choice of his own vice-presidential

candidate. Neither James Baker nor Lee Atwater

was impressed with the qualifications of Indiana

Senator Dan Quayle, although Roger Ailes and

Craig Fuller saw Quayle’s potential to attract

younger and more conservative voters. Quayle

had also been conducting his own ‘‘sub rosa’’
[ 538 ]

GEORGE H.W. BUSH

campaign to bring his availability to Bush’s attention. Bush viewed Quayle as a young, goodlooking, successful politician who was likely to

play the same appreciative and deferential role

that Bush had as vice president. Whatever

Quayle’s merits, the Bush campaign’s strategy of

keeping his choice secret until the last moment

to add some drama to an otherwise predetermined convention, proved to be a mistake.

Quayle was so little known to the nation—even

to the media—that his public image became

shaped entirely by initial perceptions, which

were not favorable. One 1988 Democratic campaign button read simply, ‘‘Quayle—A Heartbeat Away.’’ 35

George Bush served one term as president of

the United States. His years of experience in foreign policy prepared him well to serve as the nation’s first post-cold war president. When the

Iraqi army under Saddam Hussein invaded

Iraq’s oil-rich neighbor Kuwait, Bush responded

promptly and boldly on both the diplomatic and

military fronts. The lightning-quick Persian Gulf

war lifted his public approval rating to an astonishing 91 percent. On the domestic front, his administration fared less well, diminished by a persistent economic recession, mounting federal

deficits, and his broken campaign pledge not to

raise taxes. Bush also suffered from his lack of

what he called ‘‘the vision thing,’’ a clarity of

ideas and principles that could shape public

opinion and influence Congress. ‘‘He does not

say why he wants to be there,’’ complained columnist George Will, ‘‘so the public does not

know why it should care if he gets his way.’’

Standing for reelection, Bush faced a ‘‘New Democrat,’’ Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton, and a

scrappy Texas billionaire independent candidate, Ross Perot. In November 1992, President

Bush finished second with 38 percent of the vote

to Clinton’s 43 percent and Perot’s 19 percent.36

In retrospect, George Bush lost in 1992 for the

same reason he had won in 1988. Having served

as Reagan’s vice president, he personified a continuation of the previous policies. By 1992, Barbara Bush concluded that ‘‘we lost because people really wanted a change. We had had twelve

years of a Republican presidency.’’ Seen in those

terms, Bush’s defeat represented the vice-presidential conundrum: once having achieved the office, one never escapes it.37
[ 539 ]

NOTES 1George Bush with Victor Gold, Looking Forward (New

York, 1987), p. 26; Leonard Schlup, ‘‘Prescott Bush and the

Foundations of Modern Republicanism,’’ Research Journal of

Philosophy and Social Sciences (1992), pp. 1–16; Garry Wills,

‘‘Father Knows Best,’’ New York Review of Books (November

5, 1992), pp. 36–40. 2 George Bush, pp. 26–27; Washington Post, November 20,

1992. 3George Bush, pp. 30.

4 Ibid., pp. 32–40; Fitzhugh Green, George Bush: An Intimate Portrait (New York, 1989), pp. 27–40. 5George Bush, pp. 41–45; Barbara Bush, Barbara Bush: A

Memoir (New York, 1994), pp. 16–29; see William F. Buckley,

God and Man at Yale: The Superstitions of Academic Freedom

(Chicago, 1951). 6George Bush, pp. 46–58; Green, pp. 55–58, Barbara Bush,

pp. 30–49. 7Green, pp. 59–74; George Bush, pp. 61–68.

8 See Dewey W. Grantham, The Life and Death of the Solid

South: A Political History (Lexington, KY, 1988). 9Green, pp. 75–81.

10 Ibid., pp. 81–87; George Bush, pp. 77–89.

11Barbara Bush, pp. 57–63; George Bush, pp. 89–93.

12George Bush, pp. 93–98; Barbara Bush, p. 67; Richard

Nixon, RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon (New York, 1978),

p. 312. 13George Bush, pp. 99–103; Bob Schieffer and Gary Paul

Gates, The Acting President (New York, 1989), p. 317; Washington Times, March 24, 1986. 14 Schieffer and Gates, p. 317; Barbara Bush, p. 79; Green,

pp. 115–17; George Bush, pp. 107–20; H.R. Haldeman, The

Haldeman Diaries: Inside the Nixon White House (New York,

1994), p. 217. 15George Bush, pp. 120–25; Haldeman, pp. 540, 545, 553.

16Alexander M. Haig, Jr., with Charles McCarry, Inner

Circles: How America Changed the World: A Memoir (New

York, 1992), pp. 492–93; George Bush, pp. 122–25. 17George Bush, pp. 129–49.

18Barbara Bush, pp. 108, 130–31; George Bush, pp. 153–

59; Gerald Ford, A Time to Heal: The Autobiography of Gerald

R. Ford (New York, 1979), pp. 325–26, 337–38; Loch K. Johnson, A Season of Inquiry: The Senate Intelligence Investigation

(Lexington, KY, 1985), pp. 158–59.

19George Bush, pp. 164–79.

20 Ibid., pp. 184–85; Lou Cannon, Reagan (New York,

1982), pp. 229, 247–48. 21 Cannon, pp. 249–54; Ronald Reagan, An American Life

(New York, 1990), pp. 212–13. 22 Schieffer and Gates, p. 341; George Bush, p. 203.

23Marie D. Natoli, ‘‘The Vice Presidency: Gerald Ford as

Healer?’’ Presidential Studies Quarterly 10 (Fall 1980): 662–

64; Schieffer and Gates, pp. 313–14; Cannon, pp. 265–67;

Reagan, pp. 214–16; Michael Deaver, Behind the Scenes (New

York, 1987), pp. 96–97; Barbara Bush, p. 169. 24 Cannon, pp. 262–63; Schieffer and Gates, p. 125.

25Barbara Bush, p. 182; Green, pp. 185–96; George Bush

to Senator Mark Hatfield, April 14, 1995, Senate Historical

Office files. 26George Bush, pp. 217–32.

27 Schieffer and Gates, p. 318.

28George Bush, p. 233; Schieffer and Gates, p. 320.

29Barbara Bush, pp. 194–97; Schieffer and Gates, p. 318.

30 Schieffer and Gates, p. 319.

31William S. Cohen and George J. Mitchell, Men of Zeal:

A Candid Inside Story of the Iran-Contra Hearings (New York,

1989), p. 268; see also Theodore Draper, A Very Thin Line:

The Iran-Contra Affairs (New York, 1991). 32George Bush, pp. 240–41; Green, pp. 216–18; Cohen and

Mitchell, p. 264; Schieffer and Gates, pp. 347–50; Jack W.

Germond and Jules Witcover, Whose Bright Stripes and Bright

Stars? The Trivial Pursuit of the Presidency, 1988 (New York,

1989), pp. 118–30. 33 Schieffer and Gates, pp. 321–23, 342–45; Germond and

Witcover, pp. 65–80, 101–18. 34Barbara Bush, pp. 224–25; Schieffer and Gates, pp. 353–

55, 373; Germond and Witcover, pp. 399–467. 35 Schieffer and Gates, pp. 365–67; Germond and

Witcover, pp. 375–95; David S. Broder and Bob Woodward,

The Man Who Would be President: Dan Quayle (New York,

1992), p. 15. 36George F. Will, The Leveling Wind: Politics, the Culture

and Other News, 1990–1994 (New York, 1994), pp. 282–94;

on Bush and the Persian Gulf War, see Bob Woodward, The

Commanders (New York, 1991). 37Barbara Bush, p. 498.

[ 541 ]

Chapter 44

J. DANFORTH QUAYLE

1989–1993
J. DANFORTH QUAYLE
[ 543 ]

Chapter 44

J. DANFORTH QUAYLE

44th Vice President: 1989–1993

The essence of the vice presidency is preparedness.

—VICE PRESIDENT DAN QUAYLE

New Orleans’ Spanish Plaza, on a hot August

day in 1988, teemed with people waiting for the

SS Natchez to steam down the Mississippi River.

On board the riverboat was Vice President

George Bush, soon to become the Republican

nominee for president of the United States. Frantically pushing their way through the mob on the

plaza were Indiana Senator Dan Quayle and his

wife Marilyn. Those who had been standing in

the broiling sun for hours understandably were

not anxious to make way for the late arrivals.

Only the Quayles knew that he was to join Bush

on deck to be announced as the vice-presidential

candidate. Bush had insisted that the choice remain secret to add drama to the event. ‘‘This was

not the best-planned episode in political history,’’ Quayle lamented. The Quayles waved

vainly at Bush’s staff members on the boat but

went unnoticed until South Carolina Senator

Strom Thurmond and a few others on board

pointed them out in the crowd, and the Secret

Service parted the way for the Quayles to board.

Barbara Bush later commented that ‘‘Dan and

Marilyn had trouble getting to the platform because they looked too young and no one realized

why they needed to be up there.’’ 1

More of a problem for Quayle than reaching

the boat was being taken seriously once he got

there. Bush’s tactic of not revealing his vice-presidential choice until the last moment added suspense to an otherwise predictable convention but

did a disservice to Quayle. Little known to the

national media and to the public outside of his

own state, the forty-one-year-old senator found

his public identity shaped by some unfortunate

first impressions. Jacketless on the sweltering

deck, Quayle grabbed Bush’s arm and shouted

‘‘Let’s go get ’em!’’ He reminded reporters less

of a vice-presidential candidate than an elated

game show contestant who had just won a car.

Even Bush’s own staff had to order speedy background research to find out about their nominee.

When keen observers like journalists David

Broder and Bob Woodward and political scientist Richard Fenno examined his background

and positions closely, Quayle appeared fairly

substantial. Yet his initial image as a lightweight

made his selection seem so inappropriate that the

entire vice-presidency, in the metaphor of journalist Jules Witcover, appeared to be a

‘‘crapshoot.’’ 2

The media legitimately wanted to know what

credentials Quayle possessed for the nation’s second-highest job. Could he confirm reports that

he had been a poor student? What was his family’s financial standing? Had he dodged the Vietnam War? Quayle did not handle these initial inquiries well. He seemed tongue-tied and flustered, wearing a stunned expression that Bush’s

media adviser Roger Ailes described as ‘‘that

deer-in-the-headlights look.’’ Campaign managers made things worse by staging Quayle’s

first formal news conference in his home town

of Huntington, Indiana, among a crowd of supporters so protective of their candidate and hos-
[ 544 ]

J. DANFORTH QUAYLE

tile to the reporters that the event soured

Quayle’s relations with the press from the start.3

A Problem of Perception

Quayle perceived himself quite differently

from the image he saw in the general media. The

press pictured him as wealthy, because his

grandfather Eugene Pulliam owned radio stations and such newspapers as the Indianapolis

Star and the Arizona Republic. But Quayle argued

that his own family had lived a much more modest, middle-class life. His grandfather had actually left his money in a series of trusts designed

to protect the financial security of his newspapers rather than to enrich his family.

Born on February 4, 1947, in Indianapolis, the

son of Corrine Pulliam Quayle and James C.

Quayle, he was named James Danforth Quayle

after a college friend of his father who was killed

in World War II. James Quayle, a manager for

the Pulliam newspapers, moved the family to

Scottsdale, Arizona, in the mid-1950s and then

back to Huntington, Indiana, in 1963, where he

published the Huntington Herald-Press. Dan

Quayle grew up in a Republican family—he recalled once walking behind his grandfather and

his golfing partner Dwight Eisenhower—and the

family newspapers were staunchly conservative.

But Dan Quayle ‘‘was never much of a student

government type,’’ and at DePauw University

his prime interests were golf and the Delta

Kappa Epsilon fraternity. He described himself

as a ‘‘late bloomer,’’ and admitted that he enjoyed the movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off because

it reminded him of his own lackadaisical

schooldays.4

Intending to go to law school, Quayle realized

that his draft deferment would expire when he

graduated from DePauw in 1969. He therefore

chose to join the Indiana National Guard, which

would most likely keep him out of the Vietnam

War. Countless other young men of his generation were making similar decisions, but this act

would have serious consequences when Quayle

was selected to run for vice president. Grilled by

Bush’s staff regarding whether he had any regrets about going into the Guard rather than to

Vietnam, he replied, ‘‘I did not know in 1969 that

I would be in this room today, I’ll confess.’’ A

related question was whether Quayle’s family

pulled any strings to get him into the Guard.

Interviewed during the convention, Quayle

could not recall any special connections but speculated that ‘‘phone calls were made.’’ Identification with his family’s newspaper had further

helped gain him assignment as an information

officer with the Guard’s public relations unit.5

After his six months in the National Guard,

Quayle applied to Indiana University Law

School. His poor college grades kept him out of

the main law school in Bloomington, but he was

admitted to the night school in Indianapolis.

Quayle studied harder in law school, finding

time also to work as a research assistant for the

state attorney general, as an administrative assistant in the governor’s office, and as director

of inheritance taxes for the state department of

revenue. A joint project on a capital punishment

brief introduced him to fellow law student

Marilyn Tucker, and a short courtship led to

their marriage ten weeks later in 1972. Two years

later, after they both passed the bar exam on the

same day (and in the same month that their first

child was born) the Quayles moved back to Huntington. They set up a law practice, Quayle and

Quayle, in the building that housed his father’s

newspaper. Marilyn handled most of the legal

business, while Dan spent his time as an associate publisher of the paper. His real career objective, however, was politics rather than journalism. They chose a house in a district represented

in the state legislature by a Democrat, whom

Quayle planned to challenge in 1976.6

Upset Victories

Unexpectedly, in February 1976, Republican

county chairman Orvas Beers approached the

twenty-nine-year-old Quayle and asked him to

run for Congress. ‘‘You mean now?’’ the astonished Quayle asked, thinking of his plan to start

in the state legislature. Beers explained that no

one else wanted to run for the House seat against

eight-term Democrat Ed Roush. After consulting

with his wife and his father, and obtaining promises from Beers to provide enough money to

mount a creditable campaign, Quayle announced his candidacy. Copying Jimmy Carter’s

style, Quayle ran as a Washington ‘‘outsider,’’ at-
[ 545 ]

J. DANFORTH QUAYLE

tacking the Democratic Congress and Roush’s

liberal voting record. While he went out campaigning, Marilyn Quayle set up a headquarters

in a back room of Mother’s Restaurant in Fort

Wayne, where she ‘‘met with the county chairmen and stroked everybody and made everybody fall into place.’’ Rather than rely on the

party organization, Quayle developed his own

cadre of volunteers, drawn especially, as he

noted, from ‘‘the Christian community.’’ Roush

failed to take his challenger seriously and agreed

to a series of debates that gave the newcomer

much-needed exposure. Election day provided

ample Republican coattails, as Indianans cast

their votes for Republicans Gerald Ford for president, Otis Bowen for governor, and Richard

Lugar for senator. Dan Quayle upset Ed Roush

with 54 percent of the vote. In the wake of the

victory, both Dan and Marilyn Quayle suspended their law practice.7

Congressman Quayle began his term by introducing a term-limit bill that would restrict himself and his colleagues to no more than twelve

years’ service. He identified himself as a critic of

‘‘the old ways’’ and as an opponent of pork barrel politics, congressional pay raises, and government bureaucracy. Yet Quayle had a lackluster

attendance record in the House, often skipping

committee meetings and missing votes to play

golf. People referred to him as a ‘‘wet head,’’ because he always seemed to be coming from the

House gymnasium. The House never engaged

his interest. ‘‘Almost as soon as I was in, I wanted out—or up,’’ he admitted. Since, as a freshman member of the minority party, Quayle

would have little influence over legislation, he

devoted most of his attention to constituent services and building a strong base back home,

spending most of his second year running for reelection. For years Quayle’s district had been

considered marginal, with only a few percentage

points dividing the two parties. But in 1978 he

won reelection by a smashing two-to-one margin, causing people to talk about him challenging

Birch Bayh for the Senate.8

Quayle approached ‘‘Doc’’ Bowen, the popular

governor of Indiana, offering to support Bowen

for the Senate in 1980 but stating that, if Bowen

chose not to run, then Quayle would declare his

own candidacy. He repeated that message to Republican leaders across the state. Bowen’s decision in 1979 not to make the Senate race cleared

the way for Quayle. As a thirty-three-year-old

challenger, Quayle reversed the tables on the veteran Bayh, who himself had challenged and

upset a three-term incumbent while still in his

thirties. It was a classic race of a liberal versus

a conservative, with the two men differing on

every issue from abortion to welfare. The political scientist Richard Fenno joined Quayle on the

campaign trail while the candidate was still the

decided underdog. ‘‘He struck me as a remarkably handsome kid, but more kid even than

handsome,’’ Fenno noted. ‘‘As a campaigner, he

was a natural—vigorous (but not polished) in

speech, attentive in personal contact, open in dialogue and undaunted by potentially unfriendly

audiences.’’ The National Conservative Political

Action Committee (NCPAC) and the Moral Majority ran ads attacking Bayh, but, even more significantly, double-digit inflation and unemployment in the state undermined the incumbent.

Ronald Reagan’s 1980 challenge to Jimmy Carter

provided a further boost to Republican senatorial candidates. Carter dragged down to defeat

with him such senior Democratic senators as

George McGovern, Frank Church, Warren Magnuson, and Birch Bayh. For the first time since

1952, Republicans won control of the Senate.9

Quayle found it both a curse and a blessing to

be so constantly underestimated. Like Roush,

Bayh had agreed to a series of debates, assuming

that he could easily outshine his opponent. By

the end of the campaign, Bayh regretted the decision. Although not particularly articulate as a debater, Quayle exuded confidence and demonstrated his highly competitive nature. Even

after this second impressive upset, however,

Quayle arrived in the Senate identified as a

‘‘golden boy’’ who had led a ‘‘charmed life.’’ Reinforcing this image, his name surfaced in a scandal in March 1981, when it was revealed that he

and two representatives on a golfing weekend in

Florida had shared a cottage with an attractive

female lobbyist. Both representatives lost their

seats in the next election, while Quayle lost face.

He also found the transition to the Senate dif-
[ 546 ]

J. DANFORTH QUAYLE

ficult, especially missing the afternoon basketball

games in the House gym. ‘‘There aren’t many

senators under thirty-five with children under

six,’’ he observed (the Quayles by then had three

small children). Sessions in the Senate ran late

into the nights. Good advice, however, came

from Senator Mark Hatfield, who took Quayle

aside and said, ‘‘Look, you’re young and you’ve

got a family. Make time for them.’’ Marilyn

Quayle later commented that there was probably

not another U.S. senator who rearranged his

schedule to coach his sons’ basketball teams.10

Building a Record in the Senate

In choosing committees, Quayle had hoped for

Foreign Relations and Finance. Instead he was

assigned to Armed Services, Budget, and Labor

and Human Resources. Initially, Quayle showed

no interest in the Labor Committee but took it

when he determined that he could achieve seniority there faster than on any other committee.

In the past, freshman senators had to bide their

time before they could chair a committee, but

Senate reforms in the 1970s had ensured that

most new senators of the majority party would

chair a subcommittee. Quayle had sought to

chair the Labor Committee’s subcommittee on

Health, but committee chairman Orrin Hatch

chose that spot for himself. Instead, Quayle

chaired the Employment and Productivity Subcommittee, which would handle the reauthorization of the Comprehensive Employment and

Training Act (CETA). During his campaign,

Quayle had criticized CETA as one of the worst

examples of big government programs, yet he

recognized that any jobs program would impact

on the high unemployment in Indiana.11

President Ronald Reagan was leading a concerted effort to trim government spending on domestic programs, particularly those identified

with the welfare state. Quayle also wanted to cut

government, but he had stepped up from representing a single, fairly prosperous district to

serving a state with a severe unemployment crisis. ‘‘The scale of problems Gary has is so much

greater than Fort Wayne,’’ he commented. If

CETA were abolished, who would help poor and

unskilled workers retrain? Since the members of

the slim Republican majority might not be united

on this issue, Quayle sought to build a bipartisan

coalition. He sidestepped the subcommittee’s

cantankerous ranking Democrat, Ohio Senator

Howard Metzenbaum, and forged an alliance instead with Massachusetts Senator Edward M.

Kennedy. When reporters asked about this pragmatic union, which flew in the face of ideological

differences, Quayle replied:

They don’t know who Dan Quayle is in Massachusetts. But they do know who Ted Kennedy is

in Indiana. I don’t think there will be any recall.

Actually, the fact that the two of us would get

together underscores the seriousness of the problem of unemployment, and it emphasizes our

commitment.12

The Quayle-Kennedy alliance caught the

Reagan administration off guard and disrupted

its plan to let CETA expire. The administration

countered with an alternative bill, but Quayle’s

bipartisan approach enabled him to negotiate between Kennedy, Hatch, and the Reagan administration. The eventual Quayle-Kennedy bill resulted in creation of the Jobs Training Partnership Act of 1982. Senator Kennedy congratulated

Quayle for having worked hard to develop a

common consensus while remaining consistent

with his own principles. Both congressional

Democrats and the Reagan administration

claimed credit for the act, and to Quayle’s dismay the White House scheduled the signing

ceremony for a day when he would be out of

town. Still, his success won considerable attention, gave him credibility as an effective senator,

and provided him with ammunition for his Senate reelection campaign.13

In foreign affairs, Quayle was eclipsed by Indiana’s senior senator, Richard Lugar, who chaired

the Foreign Relations Committee. Yet Quayle involved himself in foreign policy issues through

the Armed Services Committee. As a freshman,

he took the lead in persuading other freshmen

Republicans to reach a compromise on a Reagan

administration plan to sell AWACS surveillance

planes to Saudi Arabia. Quayle arranged for

Reagan to sign a ‘‘letter of certification’’ that satisfied enough otherwise doubtful senators to win

approval for the sale. Quayle was also willing to

take positions independent of the administra-
[ 547 ]

J. DANFORTH QUAYLE

tion. In 1987, as the Intermediate Nuclear Forces

(INF) Treaty moved toward completion, Quayle

joined a group of conservative Republican senators in opposition. When President Reagan accused them of accepting the inevitability of war,

Quayle denounced the president’s comments as

‘‘totally irresponsible.’’ A question arose over

whether the treaty covered such ‘‘futuristic’’

weapons as lasers, particle beams and microwaves. Both the State Department and the Soviets agreed they were covered, but Quayle insisted they were not. (Later it became evident

that the economic deterioration of the Soviet

Union severely hampered its ability to compete

with the United States in developing such sophisticated space weapons.) ‘‘Senator Quayle

came at me repeatedly with complaints about

this issue,’’ Secretary of State George Shultz recalled. At last the secretary begged, ‘‘Dan, you

have to shut down! We can’t have the president’s

achievement wrecked by Republicans!’’ The treaty was finally approved by a vote of 93 to 5, with

Quayle voting in favor.14

Senate Republican Leader Howard Baker appointed Quayle in 1984 to chair a special committee to examine procedural chaos in the Senate.

Quayle had impressed the leadership, as Alan

Ehrenhalt noted, for ‘‘asking troublesome questions in a way that might lead to constructive answers.’’ The Quayle Committee argued that too

many committees and subcommittees stretched

senators’ time too thin. It recommended that senators serve on no more than two major committees and one secondary committee and chair no

more than two committees or subcommittees.

The panel urged that the number of committee

slots be reduced and called for no more than five

subcommittees per committee. Reviewing floor

procedures in the Senate, the committee proposed limiting ‘‘nongermane’’ amendments and

other dilatory tactics. None of these rules

changes was adopted, but based on the report,

seventeen senators gave up their extra committee

seats, and one committee reduced its subcommittees. Secretary of the Senate William

Hildenbrand, who had followed the process

closely, called it remarkable that any senators

gave up committee memberships, since they

‘‘had staff on those committees, and they didn’t

want to lose staff.’’ Hildenbrand said Quayle

succeeded ‘‘beyond my wildest expectations.’’

Quayle, however, considered the achievements

more modest than the recommendations. He was

especially disappointed when the Democrats reversed several committee cutbacks after they

won back control of the Senate in 1987.15

These accomplishments gave Quayle a strong

record on which to campaign in 1986, and he defeated his opponent, Jill Long, by an impressive

61 percent of the vote. His reelection was more

notable because, without Ronald Reagan heading the ticket, many other first-term Senate Republicans—including Mark Andrews of North

Dakota, Jeremiah Denton of Alabama, Paula

Hawkins of Florida, and Mack Mattingly of

Georgia—went down to defeat when they ran on

their own. As a result, Democrats won enough

seats to regain the chamber’s majority. Quayle’s

margin of victory was large enough to give him

thoughts of running for president. But when Vice

President George Bush survived the Iran-Contra

scandal and reestablished himself as the Republican frontrunner, Quayle shifted his attention to

the vice-presidency.16

The Unexpected Vice-Presidential Candidate

No one runs for vice president so much as

making oneself strategically available for the selection. Quayle consciously began to give more

Senate speeches, particularly on such high-profile issues as the INF Treaty. He issued more

press releases and wrote more op-ed pieces to

raise his name recognition. He made a point of

dropping by George Bush’s office at the Capitol

for informal chats. He also maintained contact

with Bush’s campaign aides. He tried ‘‘as subtly

as I could, to make it clear I was both qualified

and available.’’ 17

Although some of Bush’s top staff considered

Quayle a lightweight, the sixty-four-year-old

Bush had compelling reasons for picking the Indiana senator as his running mate. Youthful and

photogenic, Quayle would appeal to a younger

generation of voters. He had proven his ability

to campaign by his upset victories for the House

and Senate. He had applied himself seriously as

a senator, building a strong conservative voting
[ 548 ]

J. DANFORTH QUAYLE

record and receiving high marks from conservative groups that were suspicious of Bush’s moderation. As a midwesterner, Quayle would add

regional balance to Bush’s Texas-New England

background. And especially since Quayle had

not yet established a national identity, he would

be likely to remain dependent and deferential toward Bush, in much the same manner that Bush

had served Ronald Reagan. To maintain suspense about his choice, Bush kept his decision

secret from everyone. Not until they were flying

to the convention in New Orleans, did Bush

whisper to his wife Barbara that he had chosen

Quayle for vice president, because he felt Quayle

was respected as a senator, was bright, and ‘‘the

right age.’’ 18

Neither Bush nor Quayle anticipated the incredulity and negative publicity that the selection

would trigger. The press felt blindsided by the

choice of Quayle, and reporters scrambled to collect information about him. As the first person

named to a national ticket who had been born

after World War II and who had come of age

during the Vietnam War, Quayle found that his

background was scrutinized differently than it

had been during his previous campaigns. Initial

reports also distorted Quayle’s family finances

and connections. The candidate himself had

trouble perceiving himself the way others did.

What seemed to him a normal, middle-class upbringing appeared more affluent to others. Dan

Coats, who served on his staff and succeeded

him in the House and Senate, observed: ‘‘standing back and looking at the surface of his life,

almost everyone would say it was fairly sheltered, some would say privileged. Plenty of opportunities to play golf; enough money in the

family to live a comfortable lifestyle.’’ 19

Quayle blamed Bush’s aides for not making

available to the press more background material

about his record and for allowing a hostile caricature to develop. With a sickening feeling,

Quayle realized that ‘‘the stories and the jokes

and the contempt were going to keep coming.’’

Bush’s aides blamed Quayle’s inexperience in

dealing with the national press. He had a habit

of not reading prepared texts that led him to

make offhand remarks, and the resulting incoherent expressions and nonsequiturs fed the

monologues of late-night television comedians.

Bush’s staff took over Quayle’s campaign and

designed it to avoid drawing any attention away

from the presidential candidate. Quayle’s ‘‘handlers’’ prevented him from talking directly to the

press and arranged his schedule to skirt major

cities or other areas where the ticket was in

trouble.20

The lowest point of the campaign occurred on

October 6, 1988, during his nationally televised

vice-presidential debate with the Democratic

candidate, Lloyd Bentsen. Quayle had promised

the debate would give viewers ‘‘a much better

impression’’ of him. Because the press painted

him as a juvenile, unseasoned for national office,

he had often responded that he had as much experience in Congress as Jack Kennedy had when

he sought the presidency. His advisers warned

that a Kennedy analogy could backfire, but during the debate a nervous Quayle fell back on the

line. When he did, Bentsen had a well-prepared

response: ‘‘Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy.

I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend

of mine. Senator, you are no Jack Kennedy.’’ The

audience laughed and applauded, and the next

day Michael Dukakis’ campaign ran an ad featuring pictures of Bentsen and Quayle, with the

message: ‘‘This is the first presidential decision

that George Bush and I had to make. Judge us

by how we made it and who we chose.’’ But voters rarely cast a ballot for or against a vice-presidential candidate. Despite bad publicity and negative public opinion polls, Quayle was not

enough of a liability to prevent George Bush’s

election. On inauguration day, in January 1989,

it was Senator Quayle not Senator Bentsen

who took the oath of office as vice

president.21

Inside the Bush Administration

Bush’s staff described his White House as

‘‘smaller, more collegial—intimate even’’ than it

had been under Reagan. The informal tone suited Vice President Quayle well, and he enjoyed

regular access to the president. Still, Quayle

lacked the standing of such strong-minded officials as Secretary of State James A. Baker, Office

of Management and Budget director Richard

Darman, and White House Chief of Staff John
[ 549 ]

J. DANFORTH QUAYLE

Sununu. The top staff preferred that Quayle keep

occupied with ‘‘the traditional busywork of the

No. 2 job.’’ Marilyn Quayle, always her husband’s closest and most candid adviser, complained that the vice president’s overcrowded

schedule prevented him from focusing on specific issues. Quayle countered by forming a

smart, young staff (six of whom held Ph.D.s),

headed by William Kristol, known as ‘‘the Great

Reaganite Hope’’ in the Bush White House for

arguing for conservative positions with Bush’s

more moderate advisers. His staff—larger than

Mondale or Bush’s vice-presidential staffs—

worked to carve an independent identity for

Quayle within the confines of the president’s

agenda.22

Several former vice presidents offered Quayle

solicitous advice. Richard Nixon emphasized the

need for loyalty to the president. Walter Mondale counseled him not accept any ‘‘line item authority,’’ meaning responsibility for particular

programs, since the vice-presidency did not provide the authority to carry out such tasks and he

would only be blocked by cabinet members and

other centers of power within the administration.

George Bush, who had held the job for the previous eight years, suggested that he travel a lot

to get some seasoning. Bush also encouraged

Quayle to ‘‘say some things that the President

cannot say,’’ particularly on ideological themes

popular with conservative groups. The president

invited his vice president to attend all significant

meetings to become fully informed about every

aspect of the presidency.23

Shortly after the election, Quayle asked: ‘‘How

am I going to spend my day?’’ He seriously considered taking a more activist role as presiding

officer of the Senate. ‘‘The gavel is a very important instrument,’’ he insisted, ‘‘. . . an instrument

of power. An instrument that establishes the

agenda.’’ The problem was that the Democrats

controlled the Senate, and the rules of the Senate,

which allowed any ruling of the chair to be overturned by a majority vote, made presiding more

a responsibility than a power. Quayle soon

lapsed back into the traditional legislative role of

the vice-presidency. He visited Capitol Hill

weekly for the regular luncheon meetings of Republican senators and stood ready when needed

to break a tie vote (although he never had an opportunity to do so). He argued the administration’s case on legislation and unsuccessfully tried

to persuade senators to confirm John Tower as

secretary of defense. Steadily he felt himself becoming more a part of the executive than the legislative branch. ‘‘When I was in the Senate, I

thought it was disorganized but manageable,’’

he mused. ‘‘From the viewpoint of the Executive

Branch, I found the Senate disorganized and

unmanageable.’’ 24

Marilyn Quayle faced similar problems in defining her new role. The governor of Indiana

asked if she would be interested in being appointed to fill Dan’s Senate seat. The Quayles

briefly considered the office but concluded that

it would not work, since the press would pounce

upon the slightest disagreement between herself

and the Bush administration. She thought of resuming her law career, but concluded that it

raised the appearances of conflict of interest. She

chose instead to play a more traditional role as

hostess and unofficial adviser. On the side, she

and her sister wrote and published Embrace the

Serpent, a novel about politics, intrigue and a vice

president’s wife.25

The vice-presidency was, in Quayle’s words,

an ‘‘awkward job,’’ far more confining than his

years in the House and Senate when he could determine for himself what he supported and what

he would say. Not only did the president set the

program, but others in the administration held

jurisdiction for carrying it out and jealously

guarded their territory. Quayle, who met early

each weekday morning with the president and

his national security adviser and lunched with

the president weekly, felt free to argue his positions in any meeting. Once a decision was made,

however, he loyally fell in behind, even if he had

opposed it. ‘‘Anyone who thinks cheerleading

for a policy you don’t believe in amounts to hypocrisy doesn’t really understand the way government has to work,’’ he insisted.26

Following the lead of his predecessors, Quayle

traveled widely, giving speeches for the administration, raising funds for the Republican party,

and introducing himself in foreign capitals. At

the White House he chaired the White House

Council on Competitiveness, which aimed at re-
[ 550 ]

J. DANFORTH QUAYLE

ducing burdensome regulations. Quayle received relatively little publicity for his efforts on

the council, in part because he thought deregulation could be achieved more easily if the council

worked behind the scenes and avoided clashing

with Congress. He received more press attention

for chairing the National Space Council, which

coordinated policy for the space program.27

On Capitol Hill, the vice president played a liaison role with the conservative wing of the Republican party. His services proved most useful

in 1990, when a ‘‘budget summit’’ with congressional Democrats led Bush to break his ‘‘no-newtaxes’’ pledge. House Republicans revolted and

voted down the initial budget compromise.

Georgia Representative Newt Gingrich commented that for several days conservatives in the

House were no longer talking to budget director

Richard Darman or chief of staff John Sununu,

leaving vice president Quayle as ‘‘the primary

source of information between the most active

wing of the House Republican Party’’ and the

Bush administration. ‘‘Oddly enough,’’ Quayle

concluded, ‘‘I came out of the debacle somewhat

enhanced within the party and the West Wing.’’

He did not talk down to House Republicans in

the manner of Darman and Sununu, and he demonstrated that in private he could play a role as

broker and peacemaker. By contrast, his public

position of blaming tax increases on the Democrats drove his ratings down further in the opinion polls.28

A similar gap between Quayle’s backstage activity and the public perception of him developed in foreign policy matters. In late 1989, when

President Bush and Secretary of State Baker were

flying to a meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev at

Malta, an attempted coup took place in the Philippines. Quayle presided over the White House

Situation Room, coordinating American efforts

to ensure the survival of Philippine President

Corazon Aquino’s government. When those in

the Situation Room had reached a consensus to

provide air power to keep rebel planes from taking off, rather than to bomb them as Aquino had

requested, Quayle called Air Force One and had

Bush awakened to present their recommendation. Quayle prided himself on his crisis management, but since the activity took place away from

public view, and since he could not publicly brag

about his role, only ‘‘a small spate of welcome

stories’’ appeared.29

In other matters of foreign policy, George Bush

remained very much in command, leaving little

room for his vice president other than to attend

the meetings and offer the president his support.

In January 1991, just before ‘‘Operation Desert

Shield’’ changed to ‘‘Desert Storm,’’ Bush sent

Quayle to the Middle East to meet with Saudi

Arabian leaders. On his own, Quayle determined

to visit American troops. He realized that the

gesture might rekindle press ridicule of his National Guard service but decided that he had no

other choice. ‘‘The fact is I had to do it,’’ he later

explained. ‘‘The essence of the vice-presidency is

preparedness, and if I ever had to take over from

President Bush—especially at a time like this—

I would not be able to function if I felt I couldn’t

visit the troops who would be under my

command.’’ 30

The ‘‘Dump Quayle’’ Movement

Victory in the Persian Gulf War lifted President Bush’s standing in the public opinion polls

to unprecedented heights. As leading Democrats

took themselves out of contention, Bush seemed

certain of reelection in 1992. Quayle’s position on

the ticket received a boost from a seven-part series of respectful articles by the prominent journalists David Broder and Bob Woodward that

appeared in January 1992 on the front pages of

the Washington Post. These were later published

as a book, The Man Who Would Be President.

Broder and Woodward argued that ‘‘serious assessments of Quayle have taken a back seat to

jokes about him.’’ After his ‘‘gaffe-ridden performance’’ in 1988, he had been ‘‘saddled with

a reputation as a lightweight and treated as a figure of fun.’’ The press had focused on the vice

president only when he did something that lived

down to their expectations. But Broder and

Woodward concluded that ‘‘all jokes aside—Dan

Quayle has proved himself to be a skillful player

of the political game, with a competitive drive

that has been underestimated repeatedly by his

rivals.’’ 31

The election, however, turned out differently

than expected. A persistent recession held the
[ 551 ]

J. DANFORTH QUAYLE

economy stagnant, and the Bush administration

mustered none of the decisiveness on economic

issues that it had demonstrated in winning the

Gulf War. The president’s health also revived

worries about Quayle’s ability to succeed him.

While jogging in May 1991, Bush suffered heart

fibrillations, and plans were made for Quayle to

take over presidential powers if Bush needed to

be anesthetized to regulate his heart beat. This

news inspired a tee-shirt featuring the Edvard

Munch painting of ‘‘The Scream,’’ with the caption: President Quayle? 32

The vice president still suffered from gaffes. To

his dismay he heard that even Republican members of Congress were telling Quayle jokes, most

of them apocryphal, such as his comment that

his Latin American travels made him wish he

had studied Latin harder in school. The conservative magazine American Spectator ran a cover

story on ‘‘Why Danny Can’t Read.’’ In May 1992,

Quayle delivered a speech on family values in

which he criticized the popular television program Murphy Brown for ‘‘mocking the importance of fathers, by bearing a child alone.’’ Although even his critics conceded that the rise of

single-parent families was a cause for alarm, the

vice president’s example of a fictional television

character seemed to trivialize his issue. The next

month brought an even more embarrassing flap

when Quayle visited a school in Trenton, New

Jersey, for a ‘‘little photo op,’’ helping students

prepare for a spelling bee. The word was ‘‘potato.’’ The student at the blackboard spelled it

correctly, but the card Quayle had been handed

read ‘‘potatoe.’’ Television pictures of the vice

president coaxing the puzzled student to misspell ‘‘potato’’ confirmed everyone’s worst suspicions. ‘‘Boy, I hope this doesn’t hurt his credibility,’’ mocked comedian Jay Leno.33

During the summer of 1992, the Bush administration seemed increasingly vulnerable, and

nervous Republicans urged the president to

dump Quayle from the ticket. Public opinion

polls showed him to be the least popular vice

president in forty years, scoring even lower than

Spiro Agnew. The televised Persian Gulf War

had also raised public awareness of other players

in the Bush administration, among them Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney and Chairman of

the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell, who began

to be mentioned as replacements for Quayle.

However, the White House staff concluded that

changing running mates would be a sign of

panic, would make Bush appear disloyal, and

would serve as an admission that his original

choice had been a mistake. Bush made it clear

he would stick with Quayle, while Quayle in a

television interview said that he had Bush’s complete confidence and added, ‘‘Believe me, if I

thought I was hurting the ticket, I’d be gone.’’ 34

Now four years older, slightly grayer, and

more seasoned in the job, Quayle hoped that the

reelection race would cast him in a more favorable light. This time his own staff ran his campaign. Having been the first member of the postwar generation on a national ticket, Quayle this

time faced two more ‘‘baby boomers,’’ Arkansas

Governor Bill Clinton for president and Tennessee Senator Al Gore for vice president.

Quayle and Gore both had come to the House

in 1977 and had played basketball together in the

House gym. The orderly announcement of the

Democratic vice-presidential selection caused

Quayle some envy: ‘‘It was hard for me to watch

Gore’s unveiling without thinking back to the

chaos of Spanish Plaza in New Orleans and shaking my head.’’ Most of all, he anticipated that a

debate with Gore could wipe the slate clean,

erasing his faltering performance against Bentsen four years earlier. It was a scrappy debate,

with neither vice-presidential candidate conceding any points to the other. This time it was Admiral James Stockdale, running mate of thirdparty candidate Ross Perot, who seemed clearly

out of his depth. Although critics declared the

debate a draw, Quayle won by not losing. Columnist Charles Krauthammer described his performance as nervy: ‘‘His party facing annihilation, his colleagues deserting, his ammunition

gone, Quayle seemed determined to go down

fighting. It was a display of frantic combativeness that verged on courage.’’ 35

Returning to Huntington, Indiana, to vote on

election day, Quayle by chance encountered Ed

Roush, the man he had beaten for Congress in

his first race. The incident seemed a forewarning

that his decade and a half in politics ‘‘was coming full circle.’’ That night the Bush-Quayle ticket
[ 552 ]

J. DANFORTH QUAYLE

lost with 38 percent of the vote to Clinton-Gore’s

43 percent and Perot-Stockdale’s 19 percent. Dan

Quayle retired from the vice-presidency to write

a popular memoir, Standing Firm, to appear in a

Frito-Lay potato chip commercial, and to contemplate his own race for president in 1996. Although he moved back to Indiana, he made it

clear that he would not run for governor. ‘‘If I

ever run for public office again,’’ he promised,

‘‘it will be for president.’’ His every step seemed

to point to a return to the national political arena,

but serious illnesses, including blood clots in the

lungs and a benign tumor on his appendix, convinced him to withdraw from the race. He announced that he planned to put his family first

‘‘and to forgo the disruption to our lives that a

third straight national campaign would

create.’’ 36

‘‘No Vice President took as many shots—unfair shots—as Dan Quayle,’’ declared Senate Republican Leader Bob Dole. ‘‘And no Vice President withstood those shots with as much grace,

good humor, and commitment to not back

down.’’ Barbara Bush similarly saluted Quayle

for being ‘‘a superb vice president.’’ He was loyal

and smart, she insisted. ‘‘There is no question

that he had a perception problem, and it was politically chic to kick Dan around. It was darned

unfair.’’ Admitting that he had been bruised by

the experience, the former vice president kept his

sense of humor. When asked about his handicap

in golf, Quayle quipped: ‘‘My handicap is the

same as it has been ever since I became vice

president: the news media.’’ 37
[ 553 ]

NOTES 1Dan Quayle, Standing Firm: A Vice-Presidential Memoir

(New York, 1994), pp. 3–9; Barbara Bush, Barbara Bush: A

Memoir (New York, 1994), p. 226. 2David S. Broder and Bob Woodward, The Man Who

Would Be President: Dan Quayle (New York, 1992), pp. 57,

62; Richard F. Fenno, Jr., The Making of a Senator: Dan Quayle

(Washington, 1989), pp. vii-viii; Jules Witcover, Crapshoot:

Rolling the Dice on the Vice Presidency (New York, 1992), pp.

4–11. 3Witcover, p. 343; Broder and Woodward, p. 65; New York

Times, August 17, 25, 1988. 4Broder and Woodward, pp. 37, 84–87; Quayle, p. 43;

Maureen Dowd, ‘‘The Education of Dan Quayle,’’ New York

Times Magazine, (June 25, 1989), p. 20; Washington Post, October 2, 1988. 5Quayle, pp. 30–41; New York Times, August 26, 1988. 6Quayle, pp. 11–12; Fenno, pp. 3–4.

7Quayle, pp. 12–14; Broder and Woodward, pp. 33–46.

8 Fenno, pp. 6–12, 30; Quayle, p. 14.

9Quayle, pp. 14–15; Broder and Woodward, pp. 47–51;

Fenno, p. 13. 10 Fenno, pp. 21–22; Quayle, pp. 15–16; Washington Post,

August 18, 1988. 11 Fenno, pp. 23–24, 35–36.

12 Ibid., pp. 35–51, 61; Quayle, pp. 16–17.

13 Fenno, pp. 69–118.

14 Ibid., pp. 24–31; George P. Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph:

My Years as Secretary of State (New York, 1993), pp. 1007,

1084–85. 15Alan Ehrenhalt, Politics in America: Members of Congress

in Washington and at Home (Washington, 1985), p. 498; William F. Hildenbrand, Secretary of the Senate, Oral History Interviews, 1985 (U.S. Senate Historical Office, Washington, DC),

p. 331; Dan Quayle, ‘‘The New Senate: Two Steps Backwards,’’ Congressional Record, 100th Cong., 1st sess., January

13, 1987, pp. 1215–17; Temporary Select Committee to Study

the Senate Committee System, Report Together with Proposed

Resolutions, 98th Cong., 2d sess., S. Prt. 98–254. 16Quayle, Standing Firm, p. 18. 17 Ibid., pp. 18–19; Broder and Woodward, pp. 15–21.

18Quayle, Standing Firm, p. 18; Bush, pp. 225–26; Bob

Schieffer and Gary Paul Gates, The Acting President (New

York, 1989), pp. 365–67. 19Broder and Woodward, p. 36.

20Quayle, Standing Firm, pp. 26–58; Schieffer and Gates,

p. 366. 21Washington Post, October 2, 1988; Quayle, Standing Firm,

pp. 59–67; Jack W. Germond and Jules Witcover, Whose

Broad Stripes and Bright Stars? The Trivial Pursuit of the Presidency, 1988 (New York, 1989), pp. 435–44; Fitzhugh Green,

George Bush: An Intimate Portrait (New York, 1989), p. 238. 22 John Podhoretz, Hell of a Ride: Backstage at the White

House Follies, 1989–1993 (New York, 1993), pp. 165, 219;

Broder and Woodward, pp. 18–19, 120; Roll Call, September

17, 1992. 23Quayle, Standing Firm, pp. 74–76, 91–92; Dowd, p. 36;

Dan Quayle to Senator Mark O. Hatfield, June 1995, Senate

Historical Office files. 24Washington Post, December 3, 1988; Quayle to Hatfield,

June 1995. 25Quayle, Standing Firm, pp. 77–78; Broder and Woodward, pp. 155–74; Marilyn T. Quayle and Nancy T. Northcott, Embrace the Serpent (New York, 1992). 26Broder and Woodward, pp. 90–91; Quayle, Standing

Firm, p. 105. 27Broder and Woodward, pp. 91–92, 125–52; Quayle,

Standing Firm, pp. 177–90. 28Broder and Woodward, p. 101; Quayle, Standing Firm,

pp. 189–203. 29Quayle, Standing Firm, pp. 145–239; Bob Woodward,

The Commanders (New York, 1991), pp. 146–53. 30Quayle, Standing Firm, p. 219; see also Paul G. Kengor,

‘‘The Role of the Vice President During the Crisis in the Persian Gulf,’’ Presidential Studies Quarterly 24 (Fall 1994). 31Broder and Woodward, p. 10.

32Washington Post, May 6, 1991; Quayle, Standing Firm,

pp. 251–63. 33Quayle, Standing Firm, pp. 131–32, 315–36; Dan Quayle,

‘‘Restoring Basic Values,’’ Vital Speeches of the Day 58 (June

15, 1992), pp. 517–20. 34Quayle, Standing Firm, pp. 255–56; 337–46; Washington

Post, July 2, August 19, 1992.

35Quayle, Standing Firm, pp. 337–38, 351–53; Washington

Post, October 15, 1992.

36Quayle, Standing Firm, p. 356; Washington Post, January

13, 1993, February 10, 1995. 37U.S., Congress, Senate, Congressional Record, 103d

Cong., 1st sess., January 27, 1993, p. S771; Bush, p. 447.

[ 555 ]

APPENDIX

Major Party Presidential and Vice-Presidential Candidates

Election Year Winners/Party Losers/Party

1788 George Washington (Federalist)

John Adams

1792 George Washington (Federalist)

John Adams

1796 John Adams (Federalist) Thomas Jefferson (Republican) 1

Thomas Jefferson

1800 Thomas Jefferson (Republican) John Adams (Federalist)

Aaron Burr 2 Charles C. Pinckney

1804 Thomas Jefferson (Republican) Charles C. Pinckney (Federalist)

George Clinton Rufus King

1808 James Madison (Republican) Charles C. Pinckney (Federalist)

George Clinton Rufus King

1812 James Madison (Republican) DeWitt Clinton (Federalist)

Elbridge Gerry Jared Ingersoll

1816 James Monroe (Republican) Rufus King (Federalist)

Daniel Tompkins John E. Howard

1820 James Monroe (Republican) J. Q. Adams (Republican) 3

Daniel Tompkins Richard Stockton

1824 J.Q. Adams (National Republican) 4 Andrew Jackson (Republican)

John C. Calhoun John C. Calhoun

1828 Andrew Jackson (Democrat) 5 J.Q. Adams (National Republican)

John C. Calhoun Richard Rush

1832 Andrew Jackson (Democrat) Henry Clay (National Republican)

Martin Van Buren John Sergeant

1836 Martin Van Buren (Democrat) W. H. Harrison/Daniel

Richard M. Johnson 6 Webster/H.L. White (Whig—

regional candidates) 7

Francis Granger/John Tyler

1840 W.H. Harrison (Whig) Martin Van Buren (Democrat)

John Tyler 8 Richard M. Johnson 9
[ 556 ]

APPENDIX

Election Year Winners/Party Losers/Party

1844 James K. Polk (Democrat) Henry Clay (Whig)

George M. Dallas Theodore Frelinghuysen

1848 Zachary Taylor (Whig) Lewis Cass (Democrat)

Millard Fillmore William O. Butler

1852 Franklin Pierce (Democrat) Winfield Scott (Whig)

William R. King William A. Graham

1856 James Buchanan (Democrat) John C. Fre ́mont (Republican)

John C. Breckinridge William L. Dayton

1860 Abraham Lincoln (Republican) Stephen A. Douglas (Democrat) 10

Hannibal Hamlin Herschel V. Johnson

1864 Abraham Lincoln (Republican) George B. McClellan (Democrat)

Andrew Johnson 11 G. H. Pendleton

1868 Ulysses S. Grant (Republican) Horatio Seymour (Democrat)

Schuyler Colfax Francis P. Blair, Jr.

1872 Ulysses S. Grant (Republican) Horace Greeley (Democrat) 12

Henry Wilson B. Gratz Brown

1876 Rutherford B. Hayes (Republican) Samuel J. Tilden (Democrat)

William A. Wheeler Thomas Hendricks

1880 James Garfield (Republican) Winfield S. Hancock (Democrat)

Chester A. Arthur William H. English

1884 Grover Cleveland (Democrat) James G. Blaine (Republican)

Thomas A. Hendricks John A. Logan

1888 Benjamin Harrison (Republican) Grover Cleveland (Democrat)

Levi P. Morton Allen G. Thurman

1892 Grover Cleveland (Democrat) Benjamin Harrison (Republican)

Adlai E. Stevenson Whitelaw Reid

1896 William McKinley (Republican) William J. Bryan (Democrat)

Garret A. Hobart Arthur Sewall

1900 William McKinley (Republican) William J. Bryan (Democrat)

Theodore Roosevelt Adlai E. Stevenson

1904 Theodore Roosevelt (Republican) Alton B. Parker (Democrat)

Charles W. Fairbanks Henry G. Davis

1908 William H. Taft (Republican) William J. Bryan (Democrat)

James S. Sherman John W. Kern
[ 557 ]

APPENDIX

Election Year Winners/Party Losers/Party

1912 Woodrow Wilson (Democrat) Theodore Roosevelt (Progressive) 13

Thomas R. Marshall Hiram W. Johnson

1916 Woodrow Wilson (Democrat) Charles E. Hughes (Republican)

Thomas R. Marshall Charles W. Fairbanks

1920 Warren G. Harding (Republican) James M. Cox (Democrat)

Calvin Coolidge Franklin D. Roosevelt

1924 Calvin Coolidge (Republican) John W. Davis (Democrat) 14

Charles G. Dawes Charles W. Bryan

1928 Herbert C. Hoover (Republican) Alfred E. Smith (Democrat)

Charles Curtis Joseph T. Robinson

1932 Franklin D. Roosevelt (Democrat) Herbert C. Hoover (Republican)

John N. Garner Charles Curtis

1936 Franklin D. Roosevelt (Democrat) Alfred M. Landon (Republican)

John N. Garner Frank Knox

1940 Franklin D. Roosevelt (Democrat) Wendell L. Willkie (Republican)

Henry A. Wallace Charles L. McNary

1944 Franklin D. Roosevelt (Democrat) Thomas E. Dewey (Republican)

Harry S. Truman John W. Bricker

1948 Harry S. Truman (Democrat) Thomas E. Dewey (Republican) 15

Alben W. Barkley Earl Warren

1952 Dwight D. Eisenhower (Repub.) Adlai E. Stevenson (Democrat)

Richard M. Nixon John J. Sparkman

1956 Dwight D. Eisenhower (Repub.) Adlai E. Stevenson (Democrat)

Richard M. Nixon Estes Kefauver

1960 John F. Kennedy (Democrat) Richard M. Nixon (Republican)

Lyndon B. Johnson Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr.

1964 Lyndon B. Johnson (Democrat) Barry M. Goldwater (Republican)

Hubert H. Humphrey William E. Miller

1968 Richard M. Nixon (Republican) Hubert H. Humphrey (Democrat)

Spiro T. Agnew Edmund S. Muskie

1972 Richard M. Nixon (Republican) George S. McGovern (Democrat)

Spiro T. Agnew R. Sargent Shriver 16

1976 Jimmy Carter (Democrat) Gerald R. Ford (Republican)

Walter F. Mondale Robert J. Dole
[ 558 ]

APPENDIX

Election Year Winners/Party Losers/Party

1980 Ronald Reagan (Republican) Jimmy Carter (Democrat)

George Bush Walter F. Mondale

1984 Ronald Reagan (Republican) Walter F. Mondale

George Bush Geraldine Ferraro

1988 George Bush (Republican) Michael S. Dukakis (Democrat)

Dan Quayle Lloyd Bentsen

1992 Bill Clinton (Democrat) George Bush (Republican)

Al Gore, Jr. Dan Quayle

NOTES

1 Jefferson ran against Adams for president. Since he received the second highest electoral vote, he automatically

became vice president under the system that existed at the

time. (See note 2.) ‘‘Republican’’ refers to two different parties widely separated in time: Jeffersonian Republicans of

the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and the

present Republican party, which was founded in the 1850s.

The election dates should make clear which of the two parties is intended. 2 In the nation’s early years, electors did not differentiate

between their votes for president and vice president, and

the runner-up for president became vice president. In 1800

Jefferson and Burr each received 73 electoral votes, thus

sending the election to the House of Representatives, which

selected Jefferson as president. Burr automatically became

vice president. This stalemate led to ratification of the

Twelfth Amendment to the Constitution in 1804. 3By 1820 the Federalist party was defunct, and a period

of party realignment began that continued until 1840 when

the Whig and Democratic parties became established. In the

interim, party affiliations underwent considerable flux. For

much of that time, the split fell between the supporters and

opponents of Andrew Jackson. The pro-Jackson forces

evolved into the Democratic party, while those opposing

Jackson eventually coalesced into the Whig party. 4All the presidential candidates in 1824 were Republicans—although of varying persuasions—and Calhoun had

support for the vice-presidency from both the Adams and

Jackson camps. As no presidential candidate received the

necessary majority of electoral votes, the House of Representatives made the decision. Calhoun, however, received

a clear majority (182 of 260) of the vice-presidential electoral

votes.

5The Democratic party was not yet formally created during Jackson’s two terms as president but developed later

from his supporters. (See note 3.) 6As no vice-presidential candidate received a majority of

electoral votes in 1836, the Senate for the only time in its

history selected the vice president. 7 For a discussion of the early origins of the Whig party

in the 1836 election, see Chapter 9, ‘‘Richard Mentor Johnson,’’ p. 127, and Chapter 10, ‘‘John Tyler,’’ p. 139. 8Although Tyler ran on the Whig ticket, he remained a

Democrat throughout his life. 9The Democratic party initially failed to nominate a vicepresidential candidate in 1840 but ultimately backed Johnson. (See Chapter 9, p. 130.) 10 John C. Breckinridge and Joseph Lane were the presidential and vice-presidential nominees of the Southern

Democratic party that year. John Bell and Edward Everett

ran on the Constitutional Union party ticket. 11 Johnson was a War Democrat, who ran on a fusion ticket with Republican President Abraham Lincoln. (See Chapter 16, p. 215.) 12Also the candidates of the Liberal Republican party.

13William Howard Taft and James S. Sherman were the

Republican presidential and vice-presidential candidates. 14Robert M. La Follette and Burton K. Wheeler were the

presidential and vice-presidential nominees of the Progressive party that year. 15 J. Strom Thurmond and Fielding L. Wright were the

presidential and vice-presidential nominees of the States’

Rights Democratic party that year. 16Added to the ticket on August 8, 1972, after the resignation of Thomas Eagleton.
[ 559 ]

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

This selected bibliography includes general works dealing with the history of the vice-presidency as well as studies

and published works of the individuals who have served as vice president from 1789 to 1993. ‘‘Campaign biographies’’

are not included, except for those vice presidents who lack more scholarly biographies. Period histories are omitted, but

presidential histories likely to provide useful background information are listed as appropriate. The voluminous literature

dealing with the Twenty-fifth Amendment is not included.

GENERAL REFERENCES

Bayh, Birch. One Heartbeat Away: Presidential Disability and

Succession. Indianapolis, 1968.

Cantor, Joseph E. ‘‘The Vice Presidency and the Vice Presidents: A Selected Annotated Bibliography.’’ Congressional

Research Service Report No. 84–124 L, October 1, 1976. Revised July 31, 1984 by George H. Walser.

David, Paul D. ‘‘The Vice Presidency: Its Institutional Evolution and Contemporary Status.’’ Journal of Politics 29 (November 1967): 721–48.

Dorman, Michael. The Second Man: The Changing Role of the

Vice Presidency. New York, 1968.

Feerick, John. From Failing Hands. New York, 1965.

————. ‘‘The Problem of Presidential Inability—Will

Congress Ever Solve It.’’ Fordham Law Review 32 (1963): 73–

134.

————. The Twenty-Fifth Amendment. New York, 1976.

Ferrell, Robert H. Ill Advised: Presidential Health and Public

Trust. Columbia, MO, 1992.

Goldstein, Joel L. The Modern American Vice Presidency: The

Transformation of a Political Institution. Princeton, NJ, 1982.

Graf, Henry F. ‘‘A Heartbeat Away.’’ American Heritage 15

(August 1964).

Hatch, Louis C., and Shoup, Earl L. A History of the VicePresidency of the United States. New York, 1934.

Kiser, George C. ‘‘Presidential Primaries: Stepping-Stones

to the Vice Presidential Nomination?’’ Presidential Studies

Quarterly 22 (Summer 1992): 493–517.

Learned, Henry B. ‘‘Casting Votes of the Vice Presidents,

1789–1915.’’ American Historical Review 20 (April 1915): 571–

76.

————. ‘‘Some Aspects of the Vice Presidency.’’ American

Political Science Review 7 (February 1913 supp.): 162–77.

Medina, J. Michael. ‘‘The American Vice President: Toward

a More Utilized Institution.’’ George Mason University Law

Review 13 (Fall 1990): 77–111.

Paullin, Charles O. ‘‘The Vice President and the Cabinet.’’

American Historical Review 29 (April 1924): 496–500.

Tompkins, Dorothy C. The Office of Vice President: A Selected

Bibliography. Berkeley, CA, 1957.

Waugh, Edgar Wiggins. Second Consul: The Vice-Presidency:

Our Greatest Political Problem. Indianapolis, 1956.

Wilhelm, Stephen J. ‘‘The Origins of the Office of the Vice

Presidency.’’ Presidential Studies Quarterly 7 (Fall 1977): 208–

14.

Williams, Irving G. The American Vice-Presidency: New Look.

Garden City, NY, 1954.

————. ‘‘Senators, Rules, and Vice-Presidents.’’ Thought

Patterns 5 (1957): 21–35.

————. The Rise of the Vice Presidency. Washington, 1956.

Witcover, Jules. Crapshoot: Rolling the Dice on the Vice-presidency. New York, 1992.

Young, Donald. American Roulette: The History and Dilemma

of the Vice Presidency. New York, 1974.

Young, Klyde, and Lamar Middleton. Heirs Apparent: The

Vice Presidents of the United States. 1948. Reprint. Freeport,

NY, 1969.

JOHN ADAMS (Chapter 1)

Adams, John. Diary and Autobiography. Edited by Lyman H.

Butterfield. 4 vols. Cambridge, MA, 1961.

Adams, John. Papers of John Adams. Edited by Robert J. Taylor, Mary-Jo Kline, Gregg L. Lint, et al. 8 vols. Cambridge,

MA, 1977–1989.

Bowling, Kenneth R., and Veit, Helen E. The Diary of William

Maclay and Other Notes on Senate Debates. Documentary History of the First Federal Congress, 1789–1791, vol. 9. Baltimore,

1988.

Dauer, Manning J. The Adams Federalists. 1953. Reprint. Baltimore, 1968.

Ellis, Joseph J. Passionate Sage: The Character and Legacy of

John Adams. New York, 1993.

Ferling, John. John Adams: A Life. Knoxville, TN, 1992.

Guerrero, Linda Dudik. ‘‘John Adams’ Vice Presidency,

1789–1797: The Neglected Man in the Forgotten Office.’’
[ 560 ]

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Santa Barbara,

1978.

Howe, John R., Jr. The Changing Political Thought of John

Adams. Princeton, NJ, 1966.

Hutson, James H. ‘‘John Adams’ Titles Campaign.’’ New

England Quarterly 41 (1968): 34–41.

Shaw, Peter. The Character of John Adams. Chapel Hill, NC,

1976.

Smith, Page. John Adams. 2 vols. 1962–1963. Reprint. Norwalk, CT, 1988.

THOMAS JEFFERSON (Chapter 2)

Brown, Ralph Adams. The Presidency of John Adams. Lawrence, KS, 1975.

Cunningham, Noble E., Jr. The Jeffersonian Republicans: The

Formation of Party Organization, 1789–1801. Chapel Hill, NC,

1957.

Gibbs, George. Memoirs of the Administrations of Washington

and John Adams. 2 vols. New York, 1846.

U.S. Congress. Senate. A Manual of Parliamentary Practice, by

Thomas Jefferson. 1801. Reprint. S. Doc., 103–8, 102d Cong.,

2d sess., 1993.

Jefferson, Thomas. The Life and Selected Writings of Thomas

Jefferson. Edited, and with an introduction by Adrienne

Koch and William Peden. New York, 1944.

————. The Writings of Thomas Jefferson. Edited by Paul

Leicester Ford. 10 vols. New York, 1892–1899.

Kurtz, Stephen G. The Presidency of John Adams: The Collapse

of Federalism, 1795–1800. Philadelphia, 1975.

Malone, Dumas. Jefferson and the Ordeal of Liberty. Jefferson

and His Time, vol. 3. Boston, 1962.

Peterson, Merrill D. Thomas Jefferson and the New Nation: A

Biography. 1970. Reprint. Norwalk, CT, 1987.

AARON BURR (Chapter 3)

Abernethy, Thomas Perkins. The Burr Conspiracy. 1954. Reprint. Gloucester, MA, 1968.

Alexander, Holmes Moss. Aaron Burr, the Proud Pretender.

1937. Reprint. Westport, CT, 1973.

Burr, Aaron. Memoirs of Aaron Burr. 2 vols. 1836–1837. Reprint. New York, 1971.

Cunningham, Noble E., Jr. The Jeffersonian Republicans in

Power: Party Operations, 1801–1809. Chapel Hill, NC, 1963.

————. The Process of Government Under Jefferson. Princeton, NJ, 1978.

Harrison, Lowell. ‘‘John Breckinridge and the Vice-Presidency, 1804: A Poltical Episode.’’ Filson Club History Quarterly 26 (April 1952): 155–65.

Kline, Mary-Jo, and Joanne Wood Ryan, eds. Papers of Aaron

Burr. Ann Arbor, MI, 1978–1981. Microfilm, 27 reels and

guide, 1 supplemental reel.

————. The Political Correspondence and Public Papers of

Aaron Burr. 2 vols. Princeton, NJ, 1983.

Lomask, Milton. Aaron Burr. 2 vols. New York, 1979–1982.

Malone, Dumas. Jefferson the President: First Term, 1801–1805.

Jefferson and His Time, vol. 4. Boston, 1970.

Mitchill, Samuel Latham. ‘‘Dr. Mitchill’s Letters from Washington, 1801–1813.’’ Harper’s New Monthly Magazine 58

(April 1879): 740–55.

Pancake, John S. ‘‘Aaron Burr: Would-Be Usurper.’’ William

and Mary Quarterly 8 (April 1951).

Parmet, Herbert S., and Marie B. Hecht. Aaron Burr: Portrait

of An Ambitious Man. New York, 1967.

Plumer, William. William Plumer’s Memorandum of Proceedings in the United States Senate, 1803–1807. Edited by Everett

S. Brown. 1923. Reprint. New York, 1969.

Reports of the Trials of Colonel Aaron Burr. David Robertson,

Reporter. 1808. Reprint. New York, 1969.

Slaughter, Thomas P. ‘‘Conspiratorial Politics: The Public

Life of Aaron Burr.’’ New Jersey History 103 (Spring/Summer 1985): 69–81.

Thomas, Gordon L. ‘‘Aaron Burr’s Farewell Address.’’

Quarterly Journal of Speech 39 (1953).

GEORGE CLINTON (Chapter 4)

Cunningham, Noble E., Jr. The Jeffersonian Republicans in

Power: Party Operations, 1801–1809. Chapel Hill, NC, 1963.

————. The Process of Government Under Jefferson. Princeton, NJ, 1978.

Kaminski, John P. George Clinton: Yeoman Politician of the

New Republic. Madison, WI, 1993.

Malone, Dumas. Jefferson the President: Second Term, 1805–

1809. Jefferson and His Time, vol. 5. Boston, 1974.

Plumer, William. William Plumer’s Memorandum of Proceedings in the United States Senate,1803–1807. Edited by Everett

S. Brown. 1923. Reprint. New York, 1969.

Rutland, Robert Allen. The Presidency of James Madison. Lawrence, KS, 1990.

Spaulding, Ernest Wilder. His Excellency George Clinton, Critic of the Constitution. 1938. Reprint. Port Washington, NY,

1964.

ELBRIDGE GERRY (Chapter 5)

Austin, James T. The Life of Elbridge Gerry. 2 vols. 1828–1829.

Reprint. New York, 1970.

Billias, George Athan. Elbridge Gerry, Founding Father and Republican Statesman. New York, 1976.

Learned, Henry B. ‘‘Gerry and the Presidential Succession

in 1813.’’ American Historical Review 22 (October, 1916): 94–

97.

Rutland, Robert Allen. The Presidency of James Madison. Lawrence, KS, 1990.
[ 561 ]

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

DANIEL D. TOMPKINS (Chapter 6)

Ammon, Harry. James Monroe: The Quest for National Identity.

1971. Reprint. Charlottesville, VA, 1990.

Irwin, Ray W. Daniel D. Tompkins: Governor of New York and

Vice President of the UnitedStates. New York, 1968.

Jenkins, John S. Lives of the Governors of New York. Auburn,

NY, 1852.

Mooney, Chase C. William Crawford, 1772–1834. Lexington,

KY, 1974.

Rayback, Joseph G. ‘‘A Myth Re-examined: Martin Van

Buren’s Roles in the Presidential Election of 1816.’’ Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 124 (April 29, 1980):

106–18.

Remini, Robert V. ‘‘New York and the Presidential Election

of 1816.’’ New York History 31 (1950).

Tompkins, Daniel D. Public Papers of Daniel D. Tompkins,

Governor of New York, 1807–1817. 3 vols. New York, 1898–

1902.

JOHN CALDWELL CALHOUN (Chapter 7)

Capers, Gerald M. John C. Calhoun, Opportunist: A Re-Appraisal. Gainesville, FL, 1960.

Coit, Margaret L. John C. Calhoun: American Portrait. 1950.

Reprint, with new introduction by Clyde N. Wilson. Columbia, SC, 1991.

Cole, Donald B. The Presidency of Andrew Jackson. Lawrence,

KS, 1993.

Ewing, Gretchen Garst. ‘‘Duff Green, John C. Calhoun, and

the Election of 1828.’’ South Carolina Historical Magazine 79

(April 1978): 126–37.

Hay, Robert P. ‘‘The Pillorying of Albert Gallatin: The Public Response to His 1824 Vice-Presidential Nomination.’’

Western Pennsylvania Historical Magazine 65 (June 1982): 181–

202.

Hay, Thomas R. ‘‘John C. Calhoun and the Presidential

Campaign of 1824.’’ North Carolina Historical Review 12

(1935): 20–44.

Meriwether, Robert M., W. Edwin Hemphill, and Clyde N.

Wilson, eds. The Papers of John C. Calhoun. 22 vols. to date.

Columbia, SC, 1987.

Niven, John. John C. Calhoun and the Price of Union. Baton

Rouge, LA, 1988.

Peterson, Merrill D. The Great Triumvirate: Webster, Clay and

Calhoun. New York, 1987.

‘‘Sketch of the Life of J.C. Calhoun, Vice-President of the

United States.’’ The Casket 3 (March 1827): 81–82.

Stenberg, Richard R. ‘‘The Jefferson Birthday Dinner, 1830.’’

Journal of Southern History 4 (1938): 334–46.

————. ‘‘A Note on the Jackson-Calhoun Breach of 1830–

1831.’’ Tyler’s Quarterly Historical and Genealogical Magazine

21 (1939): 480–96.

Wiltse, Charles M. John C. Calhoun. 3 vols. 1944–1951. Reprint. New York, 1968.

MARTIN VAN BUREN (Chapter 8)

Cole, Donald B. Martin Van Buren and the American Political

System. Princeton, NJ, 1984.

————. The Presidency of Andrew Jackson. Lawrence, KS,

1993.

Curtis, James C. ‘‘In the Shadow of Old Hickory: The Political Travail of Martin Van Buren.’’Journal of the Early Republic

1 (Fall 1981): 249–68.

Fitzpatrick, John C., ed. The Autobiography of Martin Van

Buren. 2 vols. 1920. Reprint. New York, 1973. Originally

published as American Historical Association Annual Report

for the Year 1918, vol. 2.

Gammon, Samuel Rhea, Jr. The Presidential Campaign of 1832.

Baltimore, 1922.

Mintz, Max M. ‘‘The Political Ideas of Martin Van Buren.’’

New York History 30 (October 1949): 422–48.

Moody, Robert D. ‘‘The Influence of Martin Van Buren on

the Career and Acts of Andrew Jackson.’’ Papers of the Michigan Academy of Science, Arts and Letters 7 (1926): 225–40.

Niven, John. Martin Van Buren: The Romantic Age in American Politics. New York, 1983.

Remini, Robert V. Andrew Jackson and the Course of American

Democracy, 1833–1845. New York, 1984.

————. Martin Van Buren and the Making of the Democratic

Party. New York, 1959.

RICHARD MENTOR JOHNSON (Chapter 9)

Bolt, Robert. ‘‘Vice-President Richard M. Johnson of Kentucky: Hero of the Thames—or the Great Amalgamator?’’

Register of the Kentucky Historical Society 74 (July 1977): 191–

203.

Brown, Thomas. ‘‘The Miscegenation of Richard Mentor

Johnson as an Issue in the National Election Campaign of

1835–1836.’’ Civil War History 29 (1993): 5–30.

Curtis, James C. The Fox at Bay: Martin Van Buren and the

Presidency, 1837–1841. Lexington, KY, 1970.

Meyer, Leland Winfield. The Life and Times of Colonel Richard

M. Johnson of Kentucky. 1932. Reprint. New York, 1967.

Niven, John. Martin Van Buren: The Romantic Age of American

Politics. New York, 1983.

Padgett, James A., ed. ‘‘The Letters of Colonel Richard M.

Johnson of Kentucky.’’ Register of the Kentucky Historical Society 38 (1940): 186–201, 323–39; 39 (1941): 22–46, 172–88,

260–74, 358–67; 40 (1942): 69–91.

Schlesinger, Arthur M., Jr. The Age of Jackson. Boston, 1945.

Sprague, Stuart S. ‘‘The Death of Tecumseh and the Rise

of Rumpsey Dumpsey: The Making of a Vice President.’’

Filson Club History Quarterly 59 (October 1985): 455–61.

Williams, Major L. The Presidency of Martin Van Buren. Lawrence, KS, 1984.
[ 562 ]

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

JOHN TYLER (Chapter 10)

Adams, John Quincy. The Diary of John Quincy Adams, 1794–

1845: American Diplomacy, and Political, Social and Intellectual

Life from Washington to Polk. Edited by Alan Nevins. 1928.

Reprint of 1951 ed. New York, 1969.

Chitwood, Oliver P. John Tyler, Champion of the Old South.

1939. Reprint. New York, 1964.

Leigh, Benjamin Watkins. ‘‘John Tyler and the Vice Presidency.’’ Tyler’s Quarterly Historical and Genealogical Magazine

9 (July 1927).

Seager, Robert. And Tyler Too: A Biography of John & Julia

Gardner Tyler. New York, 1963.

Shelley, Fred, ed. ‘‘The Vice President Receives Bad News

in Williamsburg: A Letter of James Lyons to John Tyler.’’

Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 76 (1968): 337–39.

Stathis, Stephen W. ‘‘John Tyler’s Presidential Succession:

A Reappraisal.’’ Prologue 8 (Winter, 1976): 223–36.

Tyler, Lyon Gardner, ed. The Letters and Times of the Tylers.

3 vols. 1884–1886. Reprint. New York, 1970.

GEORGE MIFFLIN DALLAS (Chapter 11)

Ambacher, Bruce I. ‘‘George M. Dallas: Leader of the ’Family’ Party.’’ Ph.D. dissertation, Temple University, 1971.

————. ‘‘George M. Dallas and the Bank War.’’ Pennsylvania History 42 (April 1975): 117–35.

Belohlavek, John M. George Mifflin Dallas: Jacksonian Patrician. University Park, PA, 1977.

Bergeron, Paul H. The Presidency of James K. Polk. Lawrence,

KS, 1987.

Burt, Struthers. ‘‘George Mifflin Dallas [1792–1864]: The

Other Vice-President from Princeton.’’ In The Lives of Eighteen from Princeton, edited by Willard Thorp, pp. 178–91.

1946. Reprint. Freeport, NY, 1968.

Dallas, George Mifflin. Diary of George Mifflin Dallas, United

States Minister to Russia, 1837–1839. 1892. Reprint. New

York, 1970.

Nichols, Roy, ed. ‘‘The Library: The Mystery of the Dallas

Papers.’’ Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 73:

349–92, 475–517.

MILLARD FILLMORE (Chapter 12)

Barre, W. L. The Life and Public Services of Millard Fillmore.

1856. Reprint. New York, 1971.

Dix, Dorothea Lynde. The Lady and the President: The Letters

of Dorothea Dix & Millard Fillmore. Lexington, KY, 1975.

Fillmore, Millard. Millard Fillmore Papers. Edited by Frank

Hayward Severence. 2 vols. Buffalo, NY, 1907.

————. Millard Fillmore Papers. Edited by Lester W. Smith.

Buffalo, NY, 1975. Microfilm. 68 reels and guide.

Rayback, Robert J. Millard Fillmore: Biography of a President.

Buffalo, NY, 1959.

WILLIAM RUFUS KING (Chapter 13)

Martin, John M. ‘‘William R. King and the Vice Presidency.’’

Alabama Review 16 (January 1963): 35–54.

Martin, John M. ‘‘William Rufus King: Southern Moderate.’’

Ph.D. dissertation, University of North Carolina, 1955.

————. ‘‘William R. King: Jacksonian Senator.’’ Alabama

Review 18 (October 1985).

U.S. Congress. Obituary Addresses. 33d Congress, 1st session,

1853–1854. Washington, 1854.

JOHN CABELL BRECKINRIDGE (Chapter 14)

Davis, William C. Breckinridge: Statesman, Soldier, Symbol.

Baton Rouge, LA, 1974.

Harrison, Lowell H. ‘‘John C. Breckinridge: Nationalist,

Confederate, Kentuckian.’’ Filson Club History Quarterly 47

(April 1973): 125–44.

Heck, Frank H. ‘‘John C. Breckinridge in the Crisis of 1860–

1861.’’ Journal of Southern History 21 (August 1955): 316–46.

————. Proud Kentuckian, John C. Breckinridge, 1821–1875.

Lexington, KY, 1976.

O’Connor, John R. ‘‘John Cabell Breckinridge’s Personal Secession: A Rhetorical Insight.’’ Filson Club History Quarterly

43 (October 1969): 345–52.

Stillwell, Lucille. Born to Be a Statesman: John Cabell Breckinridge. Caldwell, ID, 1936.

HANNIBAL HAMLIN (Chapter 15)

Fite, Emerson David. The Presidential Campaign of 1860. 1911.

Reprint. Port Washington, NY, 1967.

Hamlin, Charles Eugene. The Life and Times of Hannibal Hamlin. 2 vols. 1899. Reprint. Port Washington, NY, 1971.

Hunt, H. Draper. Hannibal Hamlin of Maine: Lincoln’s First

Vice-President. Syracuse, NY, 1969.

————. ‘‘President Lincoln’s First Vice President: Hannibal Hamlin of Maine.’’ Lincoln Herald 88 (Winter 1986): 137–

44.

Luthin, Reinhard H. The First Lincoln Campaign. 1944. Reprint. Gloucester, MA, 1964.

Scroggins, Mark. Hannibal: The Life of Abraham Lincoln’s First

Vice President. Lanham, MD, 1993.

ANDREW JOHNSON (Chapter 16)

Benedict, Michael Les. The Impeachment and Trial of Andrew

Johnson. New York, 1972.

DeWitt, David M. ‘‘Vice President Andrew Johnson.’’ Publications of the Southern History Association 8 (November 1904):

437–42; 9 (January 1905): 1–23, (March 1905): 71–86, (May

1905): 151–59, (July 1905): 213–25.

Glonek, James F. ‘‘Lincoln, Johnson, and the Baltimore Ticket.’’ Abraham Lincoln Quarterly 6 (March 1951): 255–71.

Graf, LeRoy P., Ralph W. Haskins, Paul H. Bergeron, eds.

The Papers of Andrew Johnson. 12 vols. to date. Knoxville, TN,

1967– .
[ 563 ]

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Hardison, Edwin T. ‘‘In the Toils of War: Andrew Johnson

and the Federal Occupation of Tennessee.’’ Ph.D. dissertation, University of North Carolina, 1981.

Harris, William C. ‘‘Andrew Johnson’s First ’Swing Around

the Circle’: His Northern Campaign of 1863.’’ Civil War History 35 (June 1989): 153–71.

McCulloch, Hugh. Men and Measures of Half a Century:

Sketches and Comments. New York, 1888.

Trefousse, Hans L. Andrew Johnson: A Biography. New York,

1989.

SCHUYLER COLFAX (Chapter 17)

Hesseltine, William Best. Ulysses S. Grant, Politician. 1935.

Reprint. New York, 1957.

Hollister, Ovando J. Life of Schuyler Colfax. New York, 1886.

McFeely, William S. Grant: A Biography. New York, 1981.

Smith, Willard H. Schuyler Colfax: The Changing Fortunes of

a Political Idol. Indianapolis, 1952.

HENRY WILSON (Chapter 18)

Abbott, Richard. Cobbler in Congress: The Life of Henry Wilson,

1812–1875. Lexington, KY, 1972.

Hesseltine, William Best. Ulysses S. Grant, Politician. 1935.

Reprint. New York, 1957.

McFeely, William S. Grant: A Biography. New York, 1981.

McKay, Ernest. Henry Wilson: Practical Radical; A Portrait of

a Politician. Port Washington, NY, 1971.

————. ‘‘Henry Wilson and the Coalition of 1851.’’ New

England Quarterly 36 (1963): 338–57.

Nason, Elias, and Thomas Russell. The Life and Public Services of Henry Wilson, Late Vice-President of the United States.

1876. Reprint. New York, 1969.

U.S. Congress. Memorial Addresses. 44th Congress, 1st session, 1875–1876. Washington, 1876.

Wilson, Henry. History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power

in America. 3 vols. 1872–1877. Reprint. New York, 1969.

WILLIAM ALMON WHEELER (Chapter 19)

Davison, Kenneth E. The Presidency of Rutherford B. Hayes.

Westport, CT, 1972.

Hoogenboom, Ari Arthur. The Presidency of Rutherford B.

Hayes. Lawrence, KS, 1988.

Howells, William Dean. Sketch of the Life and Character of

Rutherford B. Hayes: Also A Biographical Sketch of William A.

Wheeler. 1876. Reprint. Folcroft, PA, 1977.

Otten, James T. ‘‘Grand Old Partyman: William A. Wheeler

and the Republican Party, 1850–1880.’’ Ph.D. dissertation,

University of South Carolina, 1976.

CHESTER ALAN ARTHUR (Chapter 20)

Arthur, Chester Alan. Chester A. Arthur Papers. Microfilm.

3 reels. Washington, 1959.

Doenecke, Justus D. The Presidencies of James A. Garfield and

Chester A. Arthur. Lawrence, KS, 1981.

Howe, George Frederick. Chester A. Arthur, A Quarter-Century of Machine Politics. 1935. Reprint. New York, 1957.

Memorial Sketch of Lafayette S. Foster, United States Senator

from Connecticut, and Acting Vice-President of the United

States. Boston, 1881.

Reeves, Thomas C. Gentleman Boss: The Life of Chester Alan

Arthur. New York, 1975.

Schwartz, Sybil. ‘‘In Defense of Chester Arthur.’’ Wilson

Quarterly 2 (Autumn 1978): 180–84.

THOMAS ANDREWS HENDRICKS (Chapter 21)

Gray, Ralph D. ‘‘Thomas A. Hendricks: Spokesman for the

Democracy.’’ In Gentlemen from Indiana: National Party Candidates, 1836–1940, edited by Ralph D. Gray, pp. 117–39. Indianapolis, 1977.

Hensel, William. ‘‘A Biographical Sketch of Thomas A. Hendricks, Nominee for the Vice-Presidency of the United

States.’’ In Life and Public Services of Hon. Grover Cleveland,

by William Dorshimer. Philadelphia, 1884.

Holcombe, John Walker, and Hubert Marshall Skinner. Life

and Public Services of Thomas A. Hendricks, With Selected

Speeches and Writings. Indianapolis, 1886.

U.S. Congress. Memorial Addresses. 49th Congress, 1st session, 1885–1886. Washington, 1886.

LEVI PARSONS MORTON (Chapter 22)

Harney, Gilbert L. The Lives of Benjamin Harrison and Levi

P. Morton. Providence, RI, 1888.

Katz, Irving. ‘‘Investment Bankers in American Government and Politics: The Political Activities of William C. Corcoran, August Belmont, Sr., Levi P. Morton, and Henry Lee

Higginson.’’ Ph.D. dissertation, New York University, 1964.

McElroy, Robert McNutt. Levi Parsons Morton: Banker, Diplomat, and Statesman. 1930. Reprint. New York, 1975.

Testimonial to Vice-President Levi P. Morton, Upon His Retirement from Office on March 4, 1893. Concord, NH, 1893.

ADLAI EWING STEVENSON (Chapter 23)

Baker, Jean H. The Stevensons: A Biography of an American

Family. New York, 1996.

Schlup, Leonard. ‘‘The Political Career of the First Adlai E.

Stevenson.’’ Ph.D. dissertation, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1973.

————. ‘‘The Congressional Career of the First Adlai E.

Stevenson.’’ Illinois Quarterly 38 (Winter 1975): 5–19.

————. ‘‘Vilas, Stevenson, and Democratic Politics, 1883–

1892.’’ North Dakota Quarterly 44 (Winter 1976): 44–52.

————. ‘‘Adlai E. Stevenson and the 1892 Campaign in

Alabama.’’ Alabama Review 29 (January 1976): 3–15.

————. ‘‘Adlai E. Stevenson’s Campaign Visits to West

Virginia.’’ West Virginia History 38 (January 1977): 126–35.
[ 564 ]

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

————. ‘‘Adlai E. Stevenson and the Presidential Election

of 1896.’’ Social Science Journal 14 (April 1977): 117–28.

————. ‘‘Grover Cleveland and His 1892 Running Mate.’’

Studies in History and Society 2 (Fall 1977): 60–74.

————. ‘‘Adlai E. Stevenson’s Campaign Visits to Kentucky in 1892.’’ Register of the Kentucky Historical Society 75

(April 1977): 112–20.

————. ‘‘Adlai E. Stevenson and the 1892 Campaign in

Virginia.’’ Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 86 (July

1978): 345–54.

————. ‘‘Democratic Talleyrand: Adlai E. Stevenson and

Politics in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era.’’ South Atlantic Quarterly 78 (Spring 1979): 182–94.

————. ‘‘Presidential Disability: The Case of Cleveland

and Stevenson.’’ Presidential Studies Quarterly 9 (Summer

1979): 303–10.

————. ‘‘Vice-President Stevenson and the Politics of Accommodation.’’ Journal of Political Science 7 (Fall 1979): 30–

39.

————. ‘‘Adlai E. Stevenson and the Southern Campaign

of 1892.’’ Quarterly Review of Historical Studies 17 (August

1977): 7–14.

————. ‘‘Adlai E. Stevenson and Presidential Politics in

the Cleveland Era.’’ International Review of History and Political Science 16 (August 1979): 1–10.

————. ‘‘Gilded Age Politician: Adlai E. Stevenson of Illinois and His Times.’’ Illinois Historical Journal 82 (Winter

1989): 219–30.

————. ‘‘An American Chameleon: Adlai E. Stevenson

and the Quest for the Vice Presidency in Gilded Age Politics.’’ Presidential Studies Quarterly 21 (Summer 1991): 511–

29.

————. ‘‘Adlai E. Stevenson and the 1892 Campaign in

North Carolina: A Bourbon Response to Southern Populism.’’ Southern Studies, New ser. 2 (Summer 1991): 131–49.

Stevenson, Adlai E. Something of the Men I have Known: With

Some Papers of A General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective. Chicago, 1909.

GARRET AUGUSTUS HOBART (Chapter 24)

Glynn, Martin H. In Memoriam. Garret A. Hobart, Vice-President of the United States. Washington, 1900.

Hobart, Jennie Tuttle (Mrs. Garret A. Hobart). Memories.

Patterson, NJ, 1930.

Magie, David. Life of Garret Augustus Hobart, Twenty-fourth

Vice President of the United States. New York, 1910.

Roosevelt, Theodore. ‘‘The Three Vice-Presidential Candidates and What They Represent.’’ Review of Reviews 14

(September 1896): 289–97.

Russell, Henry Benajah. The Lives of William McKinley and

Garret A. Hobart, Republican Presidential Candidates of 1896.

Hartford, CT, 1896.

U.S. Congress. Memorial Addresses. 56th Congress, 1st session, 1899–1900. Washington, 1900.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT (Chapter 25)

Blum, John Morton. The Republican Roosevelt. Cambridge,

MA, 1954.

Chessman, G. Wallace. Theodore Roosevelt and the Politics of

Power. Boston, 1969.

————. ‘‘Theodore Roosevelt’s Campaign Against the

Vice-Presidency.’’ Historian 14 (Spring 1952).

Gould, Lewis L. ‘‘Charles Warren Fairbanks and the Republican National Convention of 1900.’’Indiana Magazine of History 77 (December 1981): 358–72.

Grantham, Dewey W., comp. Theodore Roosevelt. Englewood

Cliffs, NJ, 1971.

Harbaugh, William Henry. Power and Responsibility: The Life

and Times of Theodore Roosevelt. New York, 1961.

Lodge, Henry Cabot, and Charles Redmond, eds. Selections

from the Correspondence of Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot

Lodge, 1884–1918. 2 vols. 1925. Reprint. New York, 1971.

Morris, Edmund. The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt. New York,

1979.

Pringle, Henry F. Theodore Roosevelt: A Biography. 1931. Revised ed. New York, 1954.

Roosevelt, Theodore. The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt. Edited

by Elting E. Morison and John Blum. 8 vols. Cambridge,

MA, 1951–1954.

————. Theodore Roosevelt, An Autobiography. 1913. Reprint, with new introduction by Elting Morison. New York,

1985.

————. The Works of Theodore Roosevelt. National ed.

Edited by Hermann Hagedorn. 20 vols. New York, 1927.

Schlup, Leonard. ‘‘Theodore Roosevelt and Adlai Stevenson: An Examination of Differences in 1900.’’ Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal (Spring 1989): 2–7.

CHARLES WARREN FAIRBANKS (Chapter 26)

Gould, Lewis L. ‘‘Charles Warren Fairbanks and the Republican National Convention of 1900: A Memoir.’’ Indiana

Magazine of History 77 (December 1981): 358–72.

————. The Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt. Lawrence, KS,

1991.

Madison, James H. ‘‘Charles Warren Fairbanks and Indiana

Republicanism.’’ In Gentlemen from Indiana: National Party

Candidates, 1836–1940, edited by Ralph Gray. Indianapolis,

1977.

Rissler, Herbert J. ‘‘Charles Warren Fairbanks: Conservative

Hoosier.’’ Ph.D. dissertation, Indiana University, 1961.

Shipp, Thomas R. ‘‘Charles Warren Fairbanks, Republican

Candidate for Vice President.’’ American Monthly Review of

Reviews 30 (August 1904): 176–81.

Slaydon, Ellen Maury. Washington Wife: Journal of Ellen

Maury Slaydon from 1897–1919. New York, 1963.
[ 565 ]

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Smith, William Henry. The Life and Speeches of Hon. Charles

W. Fairbanks, Republican Candidate for Vice-President. Indianapolis, 1904.

JAMES SCHOOLCRAFT SHERMAN (Chapter 27)

Coletta, Paolo E. The Presidency of William Howard Taft. Lawrence, KS, 1973.

Schlup, Leonard. ‘‘The Pulse of Old Guard Politics: James

S. Sherman and the 1908 Republican Ticket.’’ Social Science

Quest 5 (Summer 1988): 9–22.

U.S. Congress. Memorial Addresses. 62d Congress, 3d session, 1912–1913. Washington, 1913.

THOMAS RILEY MARSHALL (Chapter 28)

Brown, John R. ‘‘Woodrow Wilson’s Vice-President: Thomas R. Marshall and the Wilson Administration, 1913–1921.’’

Ph.D. dissertation, Ball State University, 1970.

Canfield, Leon Hardy. The Presidency of Woodrow Wilson:

Prelude to a World in Crisis. Rutherford, NJ, 1966.

Lincoln, A. ‘‘Theodore Roosevelt, Hiram Johnson, and the

Vice Presidential Nomination of 1912.’’ Pacific Historical Review 28 (August 1959): 267–83.

Marshall, Thomas R. Recollections of Thomas R. Marshall,

Vice-President and Hoosier Philosopher: A Hoosier Salad. Indianapolis, 1925.

Smith, Gene. When the Cheering Stopped: The Last Years of

Woodrow Wilson. 1964. Reprint with introduction by Allan

Nevins. Alexandria, VA, 1982.

Thomas, Charles M. Thomas Riley Marshall: Hoosier Statesman. Oxford, OH, 1939.

CALVIN COOLIDGE (Chapter 29)

Bagby, Wesley M. The Road to Normalcy: The Presidential

Campaign and Election of 1920. Baltimore, 1962.

————. ‘‘The ’Smoke-Filled Room’ and the Nomination

of Warren G. Harding.’’ Mississippi Valley Historical Review

41 (March 1955).

Coolidge, Calvin. The Autobiography of Calvin Coolidge. 1929.

Reprint. Rutland, VT, 1984.

————. The Price of Freedom: Speeches and Addresses. New

York, 1924.

Fuess, Claude M. Calvin Coolidge, The Man From Vermont.

1940. Reprint of 1965 ed. Westport, CT, 1976.

Margulies, Herbert F. ‘‘Senator Irvine Lenroot and the Republican Vice Presidential Nomination of 1920.’’ Wisconsin

Magazine of History 61 (Autumn 1977): 21–31.

McCoy, Donald R. Calvin Coolidge: The Quiet President. 1967.

Reprint, with new preface. Lawrence, KS, 1988.

White, William Allen. A Puritan in Babylon: The Story of Calvin Coolidge. 1938. Reprint. Gloucester, MA, 1973.

CHARLES GATES DAWES (Chapter 30)

Ackerman, Carl W. Dawes—The Doer! New York, 1924.

Dawes, Charles G. A Journal of the McKinley Years. Chicago,

1950.

————. Essays and Speeches. Boston, 1915.

————. Notes as Vice President, 1928–1929. Boston, 1935.

Gilbert, Clinton Wallace. ‘‘You Takes Your Choice.’’ New

York, 1924.

Leach, Paul Roscoe. That Man Dawes. Chicago, 1930.

Fixton, John E., Jr. ‘‘The Early Career of Charles G. Dawes.’’

Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 1953.

Timmons, Bascom N. Charles G. Dawes, Portrait of An American. New York, 1979.

CHARLES CURTIS (Chapter 31)

Ewy, Marvin. Charles Curtis of Kansas: Vice-President of the

United States, 1929–1933. Emporia, KS, 1961.

Fausold, Martin L. The Presidency of Herbert Hoover. Lawrence, KS, 1985.

Schlup, Leonard. ‘‘Charles Curtis: The Vice-President from

Kansas.’’ Manuscripts 35 (Summer 1983): 183–201.

Unrau, William E. Mixed-Bloods and Tribal Dissolution:

Charles Curtis and the Quest for Indian Identity. Lawrence, KS,

1989.

JOHN NANCE GARNER (Chapter 32)

Fisher, Ovie C. Cactus Jack. Waco, TX, 1978.

Garner, John Nance. ‘‘This Job of Mine.’’ American Magazine

118 (July 1934): 23, 96.

James, Marquis. Mr. Garner of Texas. Indianapolis, 1939.

Patenaude, Lionel V. ‘‘John Nance Gardner.’’ In Profiles in

Power: Twentieth-Century Texans in Washington, edited by

Kenneth E. Hendrickson, Jr., and Michael L. Collins. Arlington Heights, IL, 1993.

Romano, Michael J. ‘‘The Emergence of John Nance Garner

as a Figure in American National Politics, 1924–1941.’’ Ph.D.

dissertation, St. John’s University, 1974.

Timmons, Bascom N. Garner of Texas: A Personal History.

New York, 1948.

HENRY AGARD WALLACE (Chapter 33)

Markowitz, Norman D. The Rise and Fall of the People’s Century: Henry A. Wallace and American Liberalism, 1941–1948.

New York, 1973.

Schapsmeier, Edward L., and Frederick H. Schapsmeier.

Henry A. Wallace of Iowa: the Agrarian Years, 1910–1940.

Ames, IA, 1968.

————. Prophet in Politics: Henry A. Wallace and the War

Years, 1940–1965. Ames, IA, 1973.

Wallace, Henry Agard. Democracy Reborn. Selected from Public Papers and Edited with an Introduction and Notes by Russell

Lord. 1944. Reprint. New York, 1973.

————. Henry A. Wallace Papers at the University of Iowa.

Edited by Earl M. Rogers. Iowa City, IA, 1974. Microfilm.

67 reels and guide.

————. The Price of Vision: The Diary of Henry A. Wallace,

1942–1946. Edited by John Morton Blum. Boston, 1973.
[ 566 ]

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

————. The Reminiscences of Henry Agard Wallace. Columbia University Oral History Program Collection, part 3, no.

40. Glen Rock, NJ, 1977. Microfilm. 2 reels.

————. Whose Constitution? An Inquiry into the General

Welfare. 1936. Reprint. Westport, CT, 1971.

HARRY S. TRUMAN (Chapter 34)

Asbell, Bernard. When F.D.R. Died. New York, 1961.

Bishop, Jim. FDR’s Last Year: April 1944–April 1945. New

York, 1974.

Daniels, Jonathan. The Man of Independence. 1950. Reprint.

Port Washington, NY, 1971.

Donovan, Robert J. Conflict and Crisis: The Presidency of Harry

S Truman, 1945–1948. New York, 1977.

Ferrell, Robert H. Choosing Truman: The Democratic Convention of 1944. Columbia, MO, 1994.

————. Harry S. Truman: A Life. Columbia, MO, 1994.

————, ed. The Autobiography of Harry S Truman. Boulder,

CO, 1980.

Flynn, Edward J. You’re the Boss. New York, 1947.

Goldman, Elliot. ‘‘Justice William O. Douglas: The 1944 Vice

Presidential Nomination and His Relationship with Roosevelt, an Historical Perspective.’’ Presidential Studies Quarterly 12 (Summer 1982): 377–85.

Hamby, Alonzo L. Man of the People: A Life of Harry S. Truman. New York, 1995.

Heaster, Brenda L. ‘‘Who’s on Second: The 1944 Democratic

Presidential Nomination.’’ Missouri Historical Review (January 1986).

Helm, William P. Harry Truman, A Political Biography. New

York, 1947.

Kirkendall, Richard S. ‘‘Truman’s Path to Power.’’ Social

Science 43 (1968): 67–73.

McClure, Arthur F., and Donna Costigan. ‘‘The Truman

Vice Presidency: Constructive Apprenticeship or Brief Interlude?’’ Missouri Historical Review 65 (April 1971): 318–41.

McCullough, David G. ‘‘ ‘I Hardly Know Truman’.’’ American Heritage 43 (July/August 1992): 46–64.

————. Truman. New York, 1992.

Parker, Daniel F. ‘‘The Political and Social Views of Harry

S Truman.’’ Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania,

1951.

Partin, John W. ‘‘Roosevelt, Byrnes, and the 1944 Vice-Presidential Nomination.’’ Historian 42 (1979): 85–100.

Rovin, Fern R. ‘‘Politics and the Presidential Election of

1944.’’ Ph.D. dissertation, Indiana University, 1973.

Steinberg, Alfred. The Man from Missouri: The Life and Times

of Harry S Truman. New York, 1962.

Truman, Harry S. Memoirs. 2 vols., Garden City, NY, 1955–

1956.

Tugwell, Rexford Guy. How They Became President: Thirtyfive Ways to the White House.New York, 1964.

ALBEN W. BARKLEY (Chapter 35)

Barkley, Alben W. That Reminds Me. Garden City, NY, 1954.

Barkley, Jane R. and Francis Spatz Leighton. I Married the

Veep. New York, 1958.

Claussen, E. Neal. ‘‘Alben Barkley’s Rhetorical Victory in

1948.’’ Southern Speech Communications Journal 45 (1979): 79–

92.

Davis, Polly Ann. Alben W. Barkley, Senate Majority Leader

and Vice President. New York, 1979.

————. ‘‘Alben W. Barkley: Vice President.’’ Register of the

Kentucky Historical Society 76 (April 1978): 112–32.

Libbey, James K. Dear Alben. Mr. Barkley of Kentucky. Lexington, KY, 1979.

Wallace, H. Lew. ‘‘Alben Barkley and the Democratic Convention of 1948.’’ Filson Club History Quarterly 55 (July 1981):

231–52.

RICHARD MILHOUS NIXON (Chapter 36)

Aitken, Jonathan. Nixon—A Life. Washington, 1993.

Ambrose, Stephen E. Nixon. 2 vols. to date. New York, 1987–

1989.

Casper, Dale C. Richard M. Nixon: A Bibliographic Exploration.

New York, 1988.

De Toledano, Ralph. Nixon. Rev. and expanded ed. New

York, 1960.

Goldstein, Joel K. ‘‘The American Vice-Presidency, 1953–

1978.’’ Ph.D. dissertation, Oxford University (London),

1978.

Mazo, Earl and Stephen Hess. Nixon: A Political Portrait.

New York, 1968.

Nixon, Richard M. RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon. New

York, 1978.

————. Six Crises. 1962. Reprint, with new introduction.

New York, 1990.

‘‘Nixon’s Own Story of Seven Years in the Vice-Presidency.’’ U.S. News and World Report 48 (May 16, 1960): 98–

106.

Pach, Chester J., Jr., and Elmo Richardson. The Presidency

of Dwight D. Eisenhower. 1979. Rev. ed. Lawrence, KS, 1991.

Rovere, Robert H. ‘‘Letter from Washington: National Security Council and Cabinet Under Direction of Mr. Nixon.’’

New Yorker 31 (October 8, 1955): 179–86.

LYNDON BAINES JOHNSON (Chapter 37)

Baker, Leonard. The Johnson Eclipse: A President’s Vice Presidency. New York, 1966.

Caro, Robert A. The Years of Lyndon Johnson. 2 vols. to date.

New York, 1982-.

Dalleck, Robert. Lone Star Rising: Lyndon Johnson and His

Times, 1908–1960. 1 vol. to date. New York, 1991.
[ 567 ]

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Evans, Rowland and Robert Novak. Lyndon B. Johnson: The

Exercise of Power, A Political Biography. New York, 1966.

Goldstein, Joel K. ‘‘The American Vice-Presidency, 1953–

1978.’’ Ph.D. dissertation, Oxford University (London),

1978.

Johnson, Lyndon B. The Vantage Point: Perspectives of the

Presidency, 1963–1969. New York, 1971.

Kearns, Doris. Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream. New

York, 1976.

Lester, Robert Leon. ‘‘Developments in Presidential-Congressional Relations: FDR-JFK.’’ Ph.D. dissertation, University of Virginia, 1969.

Light, Paul C. ‘‘The Institutional Vice Presidency.’’ Presidential Studies Quarterly 13 (Spring 1983): 198–211.

Riccards, Michael P. ‘‘Rare Counsel: Kennedy, Johnson and

the Civil Rights Bill of 1963.’’ Presidential Studies Quarterly

11 (1981): 395–98.

White, William S. The Professional: Lyndon B. Johnson. Boston,

1964.

HUBERT HORATIO HUMPHREY (Chapter 38)

Broder, David. ‘‘Triple H Brand of Vice Presidency.’’ New

York Times Magazine (December 6, 1964).

Eisele, Albert. Almost to the Presidency: A Biography of Two

American Politicians. Blue Earth, MN, 1972.

Garrettson, Charles Lloyd, III. Hubert H. Humphrey: The Politics of Joy. New Brunswick, NJ, 1993.

Goldstein, Joel K. ‘‘The American Vice-Presidency, 1963–

1978.’’ Ph.D. dissertation, Oxford University (London),

1978.

Humphrey, Hubert H. ‘‘Changes in the Vice Presidency.’’

Current History 67 (August, 1974): 58–59, 89–90.

Humphrey, Hubert H. The Education of a Public Man: My Life

and Politics. Edited by Norman Sherman. 1976. New ed.

Minneapolis, 1991.

Natoli, Marie D. ‘‘The Humphrey Vice Presidency in Retrospect.’’ Presidential Studies Quarterly 12 (Fall 1982): 603–9.

Pomper, Gerald. ‘‘The Nomination of Hubert Humphrey

for Vice-President.’’ Journal of Politics 28 (August 1966).

Ryskind, Allan H. Hubert: An Unauthorized Biography of the

Vice President. New York, 1968.

U.S. Congress. Memorial Addresses. 95th Congress, 2d session, 1978. Washington, 1978.

SPIRO THEODORE AGNEW (Chapter 39)

Agnew, Spiro T. Addresses and State Papers of Spiro T. Agnew,

Governor of Maryland, 1967–1969. Edited by Franklin L.

Burdett. 2 vols. Annapolis, MD, 1975.

Agnew, Spiro T. Collected Speeches of Spiro Agnew. New

York, 1971.

————. Go Quietly . . . Or Else. New York, 1980.

————. The Canfield Decision. Chicago, 1976.

————. Where He Stands. New York, 1968.

Aiken, George D. Aiken: Senate Diary, January 1972-January

1975. Brattleboro, VT, 1976.

Albright, Joseph. What Makes Spiro Run: The Life and Times

of Spiro Agnew. New York, 1972.

Cohen, Richard M., and Jules Witcover. A Heartbeat Away:

The Investigation and Resignation of Vice President Spiro T.

Agnew. New York, 1974.

Coyne, John R., Jr. The Impudent Snobs: Agnew vs. the Intellectual Establishment. New Rochelle, NY, 1972.

Goldstein, Joel K. ‘‘The American Vice-Presidency, 1953–

1978.’’ Ph.D. dissertation, Oxford University (London),

1978.

Witcover, Jules. White Knight: The Rise of Spiro Agnew. New

York, 1972.

GERALD R. FORD (Chapter 40)

Firestone, Bernard, and Alexej Ugrinsky, eds. Gerald R. Ford

and the Politics of Post-Watergate America. 2 vols. Westport,

CT, 1993.

Ford, Betty, with Chris Chase. The Times of My Life. New

York, 1978.

Ford, Gerald R. A Time to Heal: The Autobiography of Gerald

R. Ford. 1979. Reprint. Norwalk, CT, 1987.

————. Selected Speeches. Edited by Michael V. Doyle. Arlington, VA, 1973.

Ford, Gerald R., et al. ‘‘On the Threshold of the White

House.’’ Atlantic Monthly 234 (July, 1974): 63–72.

‘‘Gerald R. Ford: Close Scrutiny Before Confirmation.’’ Congressional Quarterly 31 (20 October 1973): 2759–72.

Goldstein, Joel K. ‘‘The American Vice-Presidency, 1953–

1978.’’ Ph.D. dissertation, Oxford University, 1978.

‘‘Michigan Congressman GOP Vice Presidential Possibility.’’ Congresssional Quarterly 22 (10 July 1964): 1445–48.

Mollenhoff, Clark R. The Man Who Pardoned Nixon. New

York, 1976.

Natoli, Marie D. ‘‘The Vice Presidency: Gerald Ford as Healer?’’ Presidential Studies Quarterly 10 (Fall 1980): 662–64.

Reeves, Richard. A Ford, Not a Lincoln. New York, 1975.

Schapsmeier, Edward L., and Frederick H. Schapsmeier.

Gerald R. Ford’s Date With Destiny: A Political Biography. New

York, 1989.

Syers, William A. ‘‘The Political Beginnings of Gerald R.

Ford: Anti-Bossism, Internationalism, and the Congressional Campaign of 1948.’’ Presidential Studies Quarterly 20

(Winter 1990): 127–42.

Sidey, Hugh. Portrait of a President. New York, 1975.

TerHorst, Jerald F. Gerald Ford and the Future of the Presidency. New York, 1974.

U.S. Congress. House. Committee on the Judiciary. Nomination of Gerald R. Ford to the Vice Presidency of the United States.
[ 568 ]

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Hearings, 93rd Cong., 1st sess. November 15–26, 1973.

Washington, 1973.

U.S. Congress. Senate. Committee on Rules and Administration. Nomination of Gerald R. Ford of Michigan to be Vice

President of the United States. Hearings, 93rd Cong., 1st sess.

November 1–14, 1973. Washington, 1993.

U.S. Congress. Tributes to Honorable Gerald R. Ford, President

of the United States. 95th Cong., 1st sess., 1977. Washington,

1977.

NELSON ALDRICH ROCKEFELLER (Chapter 41)

Bales, Peter Relyea. ‘‘Nelson Rockefeller and His Quest for

Inter-American Unity.’’ Ph.D. dissertation, State University

of New York, Stony Brook, 1992.

Connery, Robert H., and Gerald Benjamin. Rockefeller of New

York: Executive Power in the Statehouse. Ithaca, NY, 1979.

Desmond, James. Rockefeller. New York, 1964.

Firestone, Bernard, and Alexej Ugrinsky, eds. Gerald R. Ford

and the Politics of Post-Watergate America. 2 vols. Westport,

CT, 1993.

Goldstein, Joel K. ‘‘The American Vice-Presidency, 1953–

1978.’’ Ph.D. dissertation, Oxford University (London),

1978.

Kramer, Michael S., and Sam Roberts. ‘‘I Never Wanted to

be Vice-President of Anything’’: An Investigative Biography of

Nelson Rockefeller. New York, 1976.

Library of Congress. Congressional Research Service. Analysis of the Philosophy and Public Record of Nelson A. Rockefeller,

Nominee for Vice President of the United States. 93rd Cong.,

2d sess. House. Committee Print. Washington, 1974.

Light, Paul C. ‘‘Vice-Presidential Influence Under Rockefeller and Mondale.’’ Political Science Quarterly 98 (Winter

1983–1984): 617–40.

————. Vice-Presidential Power: Advice and Influence in the

White House. Baltimore, 1984.

Morris, Joe Alex. Nelson Rockefeller, A Biography. New York,

1960.

Persico, Joseph E. The Imperial Rockefeller: A Biography of Nelson A. Rockefeller. New York, 1982.

Rockefeller, Nelson A. The Future of Freedom: A Bicentennial

Series of Speeches. Washington, 1976.

Turner, Michael. The Vice President as Policy Maker: Rockefeller in the Ford White House. Westport, CT, 1982.

Underwood, James E., and William J. Daniels. Governor

Rockefeller in New York: The Apex of Pragmatic Liberalism in

the United States. Westport, CT, 1982.

U.S. Congress. House. Committee on the Judiciary. Nomination of Nelson A. Rockefeller to be Vice President of the United

States. Hearings, 93rd Cong., 2d sess. November 21-December 5, 1974. Washington, 1974.

————. Selected Issues and the Positions of Nelson A. Rockefeller, Nominee for Vice President of theUnited States: An Analysis. 93rd Cong., 2d sess. Committee Print. Washington, 1974.

U.S. Congress. Senate. Committee on Rules and Administration. Nomination of Nelson A. Rockefeller of New York to be

Vice President of the United States. Hearings, 93rd Cong., 2d

sess. September 23-November 18, 1974. Washington, 1974.

U.S. Congress. Memorial Addresses. 96th Cong., 1st sess.,

1979. Washington, 1979.

WALTER F. MONDALE (Chapter 42)

Carter, Jimmy. Keeping Faith: Memoirs of a President. New

York, 1982.

Eisele, Albert. Almost to the Presidency: A Biography of Two

American Politicians. Blue Earth, MN, 1972.

Gillon, Steven M. The Democrats’ Dilemma: Walter F. Mondale

and the Liberal Legacy. New York, 1992.

Goldstein, Joel K. ‘‘The American Vice-Presidency, 1953–

1978.’’ Ph.D. dissertation, Oxford University (London),

1978.

Lewis, Finlay. Mondale: Portrait of An American Politician.

New York, 1980.

Light, Paul C. ‘‘Vice-Presidential Influence Under Rockefeller and Mondale.’’ Political Science Quarterly 98 (Winter

1983–1984): 617–40.

Mondale, Walter F. The Accountability of Power: Toward a Responsible Presidency. New York, 1975.

————. Vice-Presidential Power: Advice and Influence in the

White House. Baltimore, 1984.

Natoli, Marie D. ‘‘The Vice Presidency: Walter Mondale in

the Lion’s Den.’’ Presidential Studies Quarterly 8 (Winter

1978): 100–102.

‘‘Vice Presidential Campaign Debate: Mondale-Dole Meet

in Houston.’’ In The Presidential Campaign 1976. Vol. 3, The

Debates, pp. 154–79. Washington, 1979.

GEORGE BUSH (Chapter 43)

Bush, George, with Victor Gold. Looking Forward. Garden

City, NY, 1987.

Bush, George. The Wit & Wisdom of George Bush: With Some

Reflections from Dan Quayle. Edited by Ken Brady and Jeremy Solomon. New York, 1989.

Ide, Arthur Frederick. Bush-Quayle: The Reagan Legacy. Irving, TX, 1989. King, Nicholas. George Bush: A Biography.

New York, 1980.

Kirschten, Dick. ‘‘George Bush—Keeping His Profile Low

So He Can Keep His Influence High.’’National Journal 13

(June 20, 1981): 1096–1100.

U.S. Congress. Senate. Committee on Armed Services. Nomination of George Bush to be Director of Central Intelligence.

Hearing, 94th Cong., 1st sess. December 15–16, 1975. Washington, 1975.

J. DANFORTH QUAYLE (Chapter 44)

Broder, David S. The Man Who Would be President: Dan

Quayle. New York, 1992.

Campbell, Colin S.J., and Bert A. Rockman, eds. The Bush

Presidency: First Appraisals. Chatham, NJ, 1991.
[ 569 ]

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

DeMoss, Dorothy. ‘‘George Bush.’’ In Profiles in Power:

Twentieth-Century Texans in Washington, edited by Kenneth

E. Hendrickson, Jr., and Michael L. Collins. Arlington

Heights, IL, 1993.

Duffy, Michael, and Dan Goodgame. Marching in Place: The

Status Quo Presidency of George Bush. New York, 1992.

Fenno, Richard F., Jr. The Making of a Senator: Dan Quayle.

Washington, 1989.

Ide, Arthur Frederick. Bush-Quayle: The Reagan Legacy. Irving, TX, 1989.

Mullins, Kerry, and Aaron Wildavsky. ‘‘The Procedural

Presidency of George Bush.’’ Political Science Quarterly 107

(Spring 1992): 31–62.

Quayle, Dan. Standing Firm: A Vice-Presidential Memoir. New

York, 1994.

[ 571 ]

CREDITS FOR ILLUSTRATIONS

Cover illustration: Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress, LC–USZ62– 116624

Frontispiece: AP/WideWorld Photo

John Adams: The Harvard University Art Museums, Acc. No. H073

Thomas Jefferson: Office of the Curator, The White House

Aaron Burr: Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress, LC–USZ62–16737

George Clinton: The National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, NPG 84.172

Elbridge Gerry: Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress, LC–USZ62–74104

Daniel D. Tompkins: Collection of the City of New York, City Hall

John C. Calhoun: The National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, NPG 78.64

Martin Van Buren: Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress, LC–USZ62–19608

Richard Mentor Johnson: Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress, LC–USZ62–1887

John Tyler: Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress, LC–USZ62–96919

George M. Dallas: Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress, LC–USZ62–10549

Millard Fillmore: Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress, LC–USZ62–13013

Willam R. King: Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress

John C. Breckinridge: Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress, LC–USZ62–9895

Hannibal Hamlin: Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress, LC–BH82–3882

Andrew Johnson: Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress, LC–B8184–10690

Schuyler Colfax: Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress, LC–USZ62–116494

Henry Wilson: Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress, LC–BH83–3701

William A. Wheeler: Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress, LC–BH832–29130

Chester A. Arthur: Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress, LC–USZ62–13021

Thomas A. Hendricks: Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress

Levi P. Morton: Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress, LC–USZ62–10566

Adlai E. Stevenson: Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress, LC–USZ62–108489

Garret Augustus Hobart: Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress, LC–USZ62–10553

Theodore Roosevelt: Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress, LC–USZ62–12095

Charles W. Fairbanks: Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress, LC–USZ61–445

James Schoolcraft Sherman: Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress, LC–USZ62–85213

Thomas R. Marshall: Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress, LC–USZ62–116554

Calvin Coolidge: Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress, LC–B2–5253–4

Charles G. Dawes: Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress, LC–USZ62–08528

Charles Curtis: Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress, LC–USZ62–11655

John Nance Garner: Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress, LC–USZ62–116737

Henry A. Wallace: Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress, LC–USW3–6470–D

Harry S. Truman: Harry S. Truman Presidential Library
[ 572 ]

CREDITS FOR ILLUSTRATIONS

Alben W. Barkley: UPI/Corbis-Bettman

Richard M. Nixon: U.S. Senate Historical Office, SHP–5987

Lyndon B. Johnson: Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress, LC–U9–5759–#5

Hubert H. Humphrey: U.S. Senate Historical Office, SHP–5987

Spiro T. Agnew: Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress, LC–U9–26543–#24

Gerald R. Ford: Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress, LC–U9–28835–#34

Nelson A. Rockefeller: Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress, LC–U9–30000A–#13A

Walter F. Mondale: Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress, LC–U9–32972–#30

George Bush: U.S. Senate Historical Office, SHP–5580

J. Danforth Quayle: U.S. Senate Historical Office, SHP–5987
[ 573 ]

INDEX

[This index generally includes individuals mentioned in the book only if they play a sufficient

role in the story or appear in more than one chapter. But major party presidential and vicepresidential candidates are included even if they are only mentioned in passing. Wives of vice

presidents are indexed but rarely parents.]

Abolitionists, Van Buren and, 114

Acheson, Dean, Nixon on, 439

Adams, Abigail, 4, 7, 8

Adams, John, 3-13, 17, illus. 2

in 1788 election, 5-6, 52

in 1796 election, 10, 19

in 1800 election, 11, 35

addressing the Senate, 7, 8, 10-11

Alien and Sedition Acts and, 23

announcing electoral vote count, xiii, 20

appointment of Gerry, 65

breaking tie votes, 3, 8, 10

in Continental congresses, 4

death of, 11, 25

elected president, xv, 10, 19, 53

elected vice president, 6, 52

on Gerry, 64

inauguration as president, 20

Jefferson and, 21, 25

in legislature, 4

patronage and, 6, 37, 38

presiding over the Senate, 7-8, 24

reelected vice president, 9, 52

on removal of cabinet officers, 8

Revolutionary War activities, 4-5

on role of vice president, 7

signing legislative documents, 7

in state constitutional convention, 5

on titles, 7-8

as vice president, xv, 6-10

writings of, 4, 9

youth, 3

Adams, John Quincy

in 1824 election, 83, 86-87, 107

in 1828 election, 93, 108

on Clinton, 54-56

elected president, 87, 107, 125

Fillmore and, 169

franking privilege for Burr and, 42

as president, 88-89

on Tyler, 142

Agnew, Elinor Isabel ‘‘Judy’’ Judefind, 481

Agnew, Spiro T., 481-88, illus. 480

appearance of, 482

bribery scandal and, 486-87

bust of, 488

characteristics of, 486

death of, 488

Ford and, 496

foreign travel by, 485

as governor, 482

Nixon on, 483-85, 488

presiding over the Senate, 482-83

resignation of, 487, 496, 508

as vice president, 482-87

youth, 481

Alabama, vice president from, 181-87

Alabama Claims, Morton and, 270

Albert, Carl

Agnew and, 486

Ford and, 497

Rockefeller and, 508

Aldrich, Nelson W.

1908 election and, 328

Curtis and, 376-77

Fairbanks and, 316, 318, 329

Rockefeller and, 505

Aldrich-Vreeland Emergency Currency Act (1908), 317-18

Alger, Russell A., Hobart and, 292-93

Alien Act (1798), 23

Alien and Sedition Acts, 23-24

Burr opposition to, 34

Alston, Aaron Burr, 39, 44

Alston, Joseph, 39

Alston, Theodosia Burr, 31, 33, 39, 44

Ames, Oakes

Colfax and, 227-29

Wheeler and, 244

Anticommunism

Humphrey and, 470-71

Nixon and, 434-35, 439

Antifederalists

in 1788 election, 5

Clinton and, 51-52

in Second Congress, 9

Arms control, 467, 471

Armstrong, John, Jr., Clinton and, 55

Antislavery movement
[ 574 ]

INDEX

Antislavery movement (continued)

Colfax and, 224

Wilson and, 234-35

Arthur, Chester A., 251-56, illus. 250

appearance of, 253

breaking tie votes, 253

Conkling and, 251-55

death of, 256

elected vice president, 247, 253

Garfield and, 254

Hayes and, 252

Morton and, 271

New York customhouse and, 251-52

patronage and, 253-55

presiding over the Senate, 253-54

as president, 254-56

succeeding to presidency, 254, 272

as vice president, 253-54

as vice-presidential candidate, 271

youth, 252

Arthur, Ellen L.H., 252, 253

Ashurst, Henry F., on Coolidge, 353

Assassinations

of president, 216-17, 254, 272, 305, 315, 461

plot against vice president, 216-17

Atwater, Lee, Bush and, 536-38

Atzerodt, George, A. Johnson and, 216-17

Baker, Bobby

L.B. Johnson and, 454, 456

scandal and, 460

Baker, Edward D., Breckinridge and, 198

Baker, James A., III, Bush and, 535-36, 538

Ball, George, Humphrey and, 472-73

Bank of the U.S.

First, 57

proposal in 1840s, 145

Second, 109-11, 112-13, 123, 124, 139, 152, 153, 183

Barkley, Alben W., 423-29, illus. 422

in 1948 election, 425-26

as campaigner, 428

as candidate for vice president, 411, 414

death of, 429

on Garner, 426

in House, 424

as majority leader, 391, 424-25

nomination of Wallace and, 416

presiding over the Senate, 427-28

resignation as majority leader, 425

rulings overturned, 427-28

in Senate, 424-25, 429

Truman and, 418, 425-27

on vice-presidency, 426-27, 429

as vice president, 426-29

youth, 423

Bassett, Richard, Adams and, 8

Bayard, James A., Burr and, 36

Bayh, Birch, Quayle and, 545

Beckley, John, Clinton and, 54

Bell, John, in 1860 election, 197

Benton, Thomas Hart

on Calhoun, 99

on Calhoun and Van Buren, 96

on constitutional amendment, 89

Dallas and, 156

on debt imprisonment, 124

Foote and, 160, 175

King and, 183

on Panama Congress, 88

on Van Buren inauguration, 128

Bentsen, Lloyd M.

in 1988 election, 537, 548

Bush and, 532

Beveridge, Albert J., Fairbanks and, 315, 316

Biffle, Leslie, Truman and, 413, 417

Blaine, James G.

in 1876 election, 245

in 1884 election, 256, 272

in 1892 election, 273

Arthur and, 255

Conkling and, 252, 253, 256, 270

on Hamlin, 205

Morton and, 272

T. Roosevelt and, 298

as secretary of state, 271

Wheeler and, 244, 246

Blair, Francis P., 184

Breckinridge and, 198-99

R.M. Johnson and, 126

Blount, William, Jefferson and, 22

Board of Economic Warfare (BEW), 401-2

Bonus march, Curtis and, 381

Booth, John Wilkes, 216-17

Borah, William E.

in 1924 election, 362

on Curtis, 378

Boston massacre, 4

Boston police strike, 349

Boutwell, George, on H. Wilson, 235

Boynton, Henry Van Ness, H. Wilson and, 238

Branch, John, and Panama Congress, 89

Breckinridge, John

Judiciary Act and, 38

Kentucky Resolutions and, 23

Breckinridge, John C., 193-99, illus. 192

addressing Senate, 196

appearance of, 193

as Confederate leader, 198-99

characteristics of, 194, 197

death of, 199

elected vice president, 196

expelled from Senate, 193, 198

in House, 194-95

A. Johnson and, 214

as presidential candidate, 197-98
[ 575 ]

INDEX

Breckinridge (continued)

presiding over the Senate, 196-97

as vice president, 196-97

as vice-presidential candidate, 195

youth, 193

Breckinridge, Mary C. Burch, 193

Bricker amendment, Nixon and, 438

Bricker, John W., Nixon and, 438

Bright, Jesse D., Hendricks and, 262

Bristow, Joseph L., Curtis and, 376, 377

Bryan, William Jennings

in 1896 election, 282, 314

in 1900 election, 283, 303

in 1908 election, 328

1912 election and, 339

Dawes and, 360

Buchanan, James

in 1856 election, 195

Breckinridge and, 193, 196, 198

Dallas and, 153, 155, 159, 161

Hendricks and, 262

King and, 184, 185

veto of homestead bill, 214

Buchanan, Patrick J., Agnew and, 484

Bull Moose party, in 1912 election, 306, 330

Bull Run, Battle of, H. Wilson and, 235-36

Burr, Aaron, 31-46, illus. 30

in 1796 election, 10, 19

in 1800 election, xii, 11, 34-36

addressing Senate, 36, 43

announcing electoral vote count, 42

breaking tie votes, 37-38

as campaigner, 35

as candidate for governor, 39, 40

conspiracy by, 43-44

death of, 44

duel with Hamilton, 39

elected to Senate, 33

elected vice president, 11, 36

in New York legislature, 33

patronage and, 37, 53

presiding at impeachment trials, 40-42

proposal to give franking privilege on retirement, 42

retirement from vice-presidency, 39

in Revolutionary War, 32

sworn in as vice president, 36

treason trial, 44

as vice president, xvi, 36-43, 49

as vice-presidential candidate, 33-35, 53

youth, 32

Burr, Theodosia Bartow Prevost, 33

Burr, Theodosia. See Alston, Theodosia Burr

Bush, Barbara Pierce, 530, 535-36, 538, 552

Bush, Dorothy Walker, 529

Bush, George H.W., 529-38, illus. 528

in 1980 election, 533

characteristics of, 530, 534

in China, 533-35

as CIA director, 533

deciding whether to keep Quayle on ticket, 551

Ford and, 508

foreign travel by, 535

in House, 531-32

Iran-Contra scandal and, 536-37

as president, 538, 548-52

as presidential candidate, 536-38

Quayle and, 537-38

at Republican National Committee, 532-33

as Texas businessman, 531

as UN ambassador, 532

as vice president, 535-37

in World War II, 530

youth, 529

Bush, Prescott S., 529, 531

Butler, Nicholas, in 1912 election, 331

Butler, Pierce, Dallas and, 158

Butler, William O., in 1848 election, 159, 187

Byrd, Robert C.

cloture and, 510

Mondale and, 523

Byrnes, James F.

as candidate for vice president, 405, 411, 414-15

Garner and, 390

on Garner, 386

Wallace and, 405

Cabinet, resignation of

Jackson’s, 95, 109

Taylor’s, 176

Tyler’s, 145

Cabinet meetings

secretary of state presiding in president’s illness, 342,

343, 352

vice president attending, 337, 352, 379, 427, 439, 445

vice president declining to attend, 364

vice president presiding in president’s absence, 342, 443,

446

Calhoun, Floride Colhoun, 85, 86, 95, 108

Calhoun, John C., 81-101, illus. 82

in 1824 election, 86, 107

abolitionists and, 114

appointing Senate committees and chairmen, 88-89

breaking tie votes, 96, 109

Compromise of 1850 and, 98, 174

Dallas and, 156

death of, 99

Eaton affair and, 95, 108

election of J.Q. Adams and, 87

elected vice president, 87, 93

in House, 85

investigation of, 93

Jackson and, 94-95

King and, 182, 183, 184

nullification and, 94-96, 97, 109

opposition to Jackson, 111
[ 576 ]

INDEX

Calhoun (continued)

as presidential candidate, 86, 96, 107

presiding over Senate, 87-92, 94, 96, 174

resignation as vice president, 97, 109

as secretary of state, 98

as secretary of war, 85-86, 123-24

in Senate, 97-99, 173

on Senate rules, 91

Van Buren and, 96, 108-9

as vice president, xvi-xvii, 87-97, 107

Webster-Hayne debate and, 94

writings of, 92, 93-94, 95, 96

youth, 84

California, vice president from, 433-47

Callaway, Howard ‘‘Bo,’’ Rockefeller and, 511

Cannon, Joseph G.

Fairbanks and, 317

Sherman and, 326-27

Taft and, 328

Capitol, U.S.

burning of, 68

telegraph at, 154

vice president lying in state in, 58, 239

vice president’s death in, 239

Vice President’s Room in, 239, 291, 365, 427

Carter, James Earl ‘‘Jimmy’’

in 1976 election, 500, 517, 521, 533

Mondale and, 521-24

Cass, Lewis

in 1844 election, 154

in 1848 election, 159, 173, 187

Breckinridge and, 198

Censure of president, 112-13

Central Intelligence Agency, 511

Chamber, House, Ford swearing in, 498

Chamber, Senate

assaults in, 175

funeral in, 239

Rockefeller swearing in, 505, 509

Chambers, Whittaker, Nixon and, 434

Chandler, Zachariah

1876 election and, 246

on A. Johnson, 213

Chase, Samuel, 40-42

Cheetham, James, Burr and, 37, 43

China

Bush in, 533

Wallace and, 403

Chinn, Julia, and R.M. Johnson, 125

Church, Frank F.

Mondale and, 521

Rockefeller and, 511

Civil liberties, Jefferson and, 24

Civil rights legislation

Barkley and, 428

Humphrey and, 466, 467

H. Wilson and, 236-37

Civil Rights Act (1957)

L.B. Johnson and, 456-57

Nixon and, 443

Civil Service Commission, creation of, 255

Civil War

Arthur and, 252

Breckinridge in, 198-99

Colfax and, 225

Hamlin and, 206-7, 208

Hendricks and, 262

A. Johnson and, 214-15, 216

H. Wilson and, 235-36

Clark, Bennett Champ, on Truman, 413

Clark, James B. (Champ)

in 1912 election, 339

on Sherman, 328

Clay, Henry

in 1824 election, 83, 87, 107

in 1832 election, 110

1840 election and, 140

in 1844 election, 155, 169-70

in 1848 election, 170

censure of Jackson and, 112-13

Clinton and, 57-58

Compromise of 1850 and, 98, 174-75, 185

dueling and, 39, 90, 184

duel with Randolph, 90

investigation of Calhoun and, 93

R.M. Johnson and, 123, 124, 125, 131

King and, 182, 183-84

opposition to Jackson, 111-13

opposition to Van Buren, 96

as presidential candidate, 87

as secretary of state, 89, 90

in Senate, 173

as Speaker of the House, 66, 67, 77, 85

tariff and, 97

Tyler and, 139, 144-45, 146

Cleveland, Grover

elected president, 256, 280-81

health of, 281

Hendricks and, 264-65

as presidential candidate, 264

Sherman and, 326

Stevenson and, 280-82

Clifford, Clark, Humphrey and, 473

Clinton, Cornelia Tappan, 50

Clinton, De Witt

in 1812 election, 66

Burr and, 37, 53

George Clinton and, 56

patronage and, 37

Tompkins and, 74, 76

Twelfth Amendment and, 36

Van Buren and, 106

Clinton, George, 49-60, illus. 48

in 1788 election, 5, 52

in 1792 election, 9, 52

and 1800 election, 34
[ 577 ]

INDEX

Clinton (continued)

in 1804 election, 39

addressing Senate, 57

appearance of, 50

breaking tie votes, 55, 57

Burr and, 33

as candidate for vice president, 51-53

characteristics of, 49

Constitution and, 51

in Continental Congress, 50

death of, 58, 63, 66

elected vice president, 42

as governor, 51, 53

in legislature, 50

patronage and, 37, 53

as presidential candidate, 55-57

presiding over the Senate, 54-55, 57

reelected vice president, 57

residence as vice president, 54

retired as governor, 52

in Revolution, 50-51

sworn in as vice president, 43, 49

as vice president, 53-58

youth, 50

Clinton, William J., 538, 551-52

Colbath, Jeremiah Jones. See Wilson, Henry

Colfax, Ellen Wade, 227

Colfax, Evelyn Clark, 224, 225

Colfax, Schuyler, 223-29, illus. 222

appearance of, 224

characteristics of, 223, 227

Cre ́dit Mobilier scandal and, 227-28

death of, 229

elected vice president, 227

Hamlin and, 206

in House, 224

as lecturer on Lincoln, 229

presiding over the Senate, 227

press and, 225, 227, 228

retirement of, 227-28, 237-38

as Speaker, 225-26

as vice-presidential candidate, 226-27

youth, 223

Colhoun, John Ewing, 38, 85

Collier, John, Fillmore and, 169-72

Committees, Senate, appointment of, 87, 90-91, 111-12, 128,

156

Compensation Act (1816), 121, 123

Compromise of 1850, 98, 174-76, 185

Confederate States of America, 198-99

Confederation Congress, 18

Congress

First, 8

Second, 8

Conkling, Roscoe

in 1876 election, 245

Arthur and, 251-55

Blaine and, 252-53, 256, 271

Morton and, 253, 270-71

resignation of, 247, 254, 272

Wheeler and, 243, 244, 247

Connally, John

on L.B. Johnson, 455

Nixon and, 485, 487, 493, 497

Constitution, U.S.

amendments proposed, 89

Article I, section 3, xiii, 65

Article II, section 1, xii, xiii, 6, 35

Burr on, 33

Clinton opposition to, 51

Gerry and, xv, 65

Constitution, U.S., Amendments

Twelfth, xii, xiv, 36, 52, 121

Thirteenth, 236-37

Fourteenth, 236-37

Fifteenth, 236-37

Seventeenth, 377

Nineteenth, 377

Twenty-second, 428

Twenty-fifth, xii, 342, 443, 485, 487-88, 493, 497, 508

Constitutional Convention, Gerry at, 64-65

Continental Congress

Adams in, 4

Clinton in, 50

Jefferson and, 17-18

Coolidge, Calvin, 347-54, illus. 346

in 1920 election, 343, 350

in 1924 election, 359, 362-63

appearance of, 353

attending cabinet meetings, 352

Boston police strike and, 349

characteristics of, 347, 351-53

Curtis and, 378

Dawes and, 359, 364-67

death of, 354

as governor, 349-50

as president, 353-54, 364-65

presiding over the Senate, 350-51

residence as vice president, 350

on Senate rules, 350

succeeding to presidency, 352-53

vetoes by, 354, 378

as vice president, 350-53

youth, 347

Coolidge, Grace Goodhue, 350-52

Corrupt bargain, 83, 93, 107

Cox, James M., 343, 350

Crawford, William H.

in 1824 election, 83, 87, 107

Bank of the U.S. and, 57

as president pro tempore, 58

as treasury secretary, 86, 123

Cre ́dit Mobilier scandal, 228-29, 238, 244

Crockett, David, on Van Buren, 114

Curtis, Anna Baird, 375, 378

Curtis, Charles, 373-81, illus. 372
[ 578 ]

INDEX

Curtis (continued)

in 1928 election, 367

appearance of, 375

breaking tie votes, 379

characteristics of, 375-76, 378, 380

Coolidge and, 351

Dawes and, 364

death of, 381

elected vice president, 379

in House, 375-76

on Indian Affairs Committee, 376

as presidential candidate, 378-79

presiding over the Senate, 380

as Republican whip, 377

in Senate, 377-79

as Senate majority leader, 377-79

on Sherman, 332

as vice president, 379-81

as vice-presidential candidate, 379

youth, 373-75

Curtis, Dolly. See Gann, Dolly Curtis

Cushing, Caleb, nomination rejected, 145

Cutler, Manasseh, on Burr, 40-41

Cutting, Francis B., Breckinridge and, 194-95

Czolgosz, Leon, 305

Dallas, Alexander, 40

Dallas, George M., 151-61, illus. 150

addressing Senate, 156, 158, 160

appearance of, 152, 161

banning liquor in Senate, 160

breaking tie votes, 158

characteristics of, 152

death of, 161

elected vice president, 155

Fillmore and, 172

nominated for vice president, 154

patronage and, 155

presiding over Senate, 156-61

residence as vice president, 157

in Senate, 153

travel expenses and, 157

as vice president, 156-61

youth, 151-52

Dallas, Sophia Nicklin, 152, 153

Dalton, Tristram, Adams and, 8

Daniels, Josephus, on Marshall, 342

Davis, David, 253

Davis, Henry G., in 1904 election, 316

Davis, Jefferson

Breckinridge and, 197, 199

Hamlin and, 204

A. Johnson and, 214

Davis, John W., in 1924 election, 363

Dawes, Caro Blymyer, 361, 366-67

Dawes, Charles G., 359-68, illus. 358

addressing Senate, 363, 367

appearance of, 362

attack on Senate rules, 363-65, 367

at Bureau of the Budget, 362

characteristics of, 368

Curtis and, 379

death of, 368

declining to attend cabinet meetings, 352, 364

elected vice president, 363

filibusters and, 363-67

financial problems of, 368

intervening on legislation, 366

missing tie vote, 364-65

presiding over the Senate, 364-67

testimony on wartime procurement, 361-62

on vice-presidency, 368, 426

as vice president, 363-67

as vice-presidential candidate, 363

winning Nobel Peace Prize, 362

in World War I, 361

writings of, 360

youth, 359

Dawes Plan for German currency, 362

Dayton, Jonathan, Burr and, 38

Debt imprisonment, 124

Declaration of Independence

Adams and, 4

Jefferson and, 17-18

Democratic party

in 1832 election, 110

in 1836 election, 114

in 1850s, 203

in 1950s Senate, 455

in 1968 election, 474

Calhoun and, 97-98

caucus making committee assignments, 156

formation of, 124

Hamlin and, 204

leaders and choice of vice president in 1944, 404, 414-

15

nomination rules change in 1932, 390

in Pennsylvania, 153

Depew, Chauncey, on Sherman, 326-27, 329, 331

Dewey, Thomas E.

in 1948 election, 405-6, 425-26

Nixon and, 435-36, 440

Dickerson, Mahlon, Calhoun and, 89, 91

Dickins, Asbury

Senate election of R.M. Johnson and, 127

on travel expenses, 157

Disarmament. See Arms control

Dole, Robert J.

in 1976 election, 500, 512, 521, 533

in 1988 election, 537

Ford and, 495, 500

on Quayle, 552

Douglas, Helen Gahagan, Nixon and, 434-35

Douglas, Paul H., on LBJ, 461

Douglas, Stephen A.
[ 579 ]

INDEX

Douglas (continued)

in 1856 election, 195

in 1860 election, 197

Breckinridge and, 194

Buchanan and, 196

Hamlin and, 205

Hendricks and, 262

Stevenson and, 279

Douglas, William O.

as candidate for vice president, 411, 415

Ford and, 496

Truman and, 426

Drug smuggling, control of, Bush and, 536

Duels

Burr vs. Hamilton, 39

Clay vs. Randolph, 90

threatened, 184, 194-95

Dukakis, Michael, 537, 548

Dulles, John Foster

Humphrey and, 471

Nixon and, 439, 443-44

Eaton, John, Calhoun and, 95, 108

Eaton, Peggy, 95, 108

Ehrlichman, John

Agnew and, 483-84

resignation of, 486

Eisenhower, Dwight D.

in 1952 election, 435

deciding whether to keep Nixon on ticket, 444

health of, 443

Nixon and, 433, 436, 438-40, 443-47

Rockefeller and, 506

on vice-presidency, 437

Elections, presidential

1788, 5-6, 52

1792, 9, 52

1796, 10, 19-20, 53

1800, xii, 11, 25, 34-36, 53

1804, 39, 53-54

1808, 55-57

1812, 66

1816, 74

1820, 77

1824, 83, 86-87, 107, 125

1828, 92-93, 107-8, 183

1832, 110, 125

1836, 114-15, 121, 126, 139

1840, 115, 121, 129, 140-41

1844, 98, 116, 131, 154-55, 169, 184-85

1848, 116, 159, 170-71, 187, 235

1852, 176, 187

1856, 176, 195, 203, 205

1860, 197, 205, 225

1864, 215-16

1868, 219, 226, 237, 263

1872, 228, 238, 263

1876, 243, 245, 246, 263

1880, 247, 252-53, 263, 271

1884, 255-56, 264, 272

1888, 265, 272

1892, 273, 281

1896, 274, 282, 290, 314, 360

1900, 283, 300, 302-3

1904, 316

1908, 319-20, 327

1912, 306, 330-31, 338-39

1916, 320, 341

1920, 343, 349, 361, 377

1924, 353, 362-63

1928, 367, 378-79

1932, 381, 387-88, 400

1936, 390

1940, 392, 399, 400

1944, 399, 404-5, 411, 414-15

1948, 405-6, 425-26

1952, 435-37, 439

1956, 440, 444

1960, 444-45, 457-58, 467, 506

1964, 468, 471-72, 507

1968, 445, 474, 482, 496, 507, 520

1972, 446, 475, 486, 496, 508, 520

1976, 500, 511, 517, 521, 533

1980, 524, 533-35

1984, 524, 536

1988, 537-38, 547-48

1992, 538, 551-52

contested, 246, 263

Electoral college

in 1788 election, 6, 52

in 1796 election, 10, 19, 20

in 1876 election, 263

efforts to abolish, 89

Embargo Act (1807), 55

Everett, Edward, on King, 182

Expulsion from Senate, 193, 198, 262

Fairbanks, Charles W., 313-21, illus. 312

in 1916 election, 320, 341

addressing Senate, 318

appearance of, 315

characteristics of, 316

death of, 320

as presidential candidate, 318-20

presiding over the Senate, 316-18

railroads and, 314

in Senate, 314-15

as vice president, 316-20

as vice-presidential candidate, 315-16, 341

youth, 313

Fairbanks, Cornelia Cole, 313, 316

Farley, James

Garner and, 388

on Garner, 388-89, 392
[ 580 ]

INDEX

Federal deregulation

Bush and, 536

Quayle and, 550

Federalist party

in 1790s, 9, 10, 11, 18, 21-22, 65-66

in 1796 election, 10, 19

in 1800 election, 35-36

in 1808 election, 56

Burr and, 37, 39

control of judges, 40, 41

Gallatin case and, 33

Jefferson on, 22

Federalists, in 1788 election, 5-6, 52

Ferraro, Geraldine, in 1984 election, 524-25, 536

Filibusters

Dawes and, 363, 365-67

Fairbanks and, 317-18

Mondale and, 523

Stevenson and, 281

Fillmore, Abigail Powers, 168, 176

Fillmore, Caroline McIntosh, 176

Fillmore, Millard, 167-76, illus. 166

in 1848 election, 159

in 1852 election, 176

in 1856 election, 176, 195

addressing Senate, 172, 174

appearance of, 168, 172

Dallas and, 160

death of, 176

in House, 168-69

patronage and, 171, 172

as president, 176

presiding over Senate, 168, 173-75

succeeding to presidency, 167, 176, 186

as vice president, 171-75

as vice-presidential candidate, 169

youth, 168

Foote, Henry S., Benton and, 160, 175

Ford, Elizabeth ‘‘Betty’’ Bloomer Warren, 494, 496

Ford, Gerald R., 493-500, illus. 492

in 1976 election, 500, 511-12, 533

1980 election and, 534-35

appointed vice president, 487, 493, 497, 508

appointing vice president, 508

Bush and, 531, 533

characteristics of, 498

in House, 495-96

on L.B. Johnson, 455

Nixon and, 487-88, 495-99

pardon of Nixon, 499

as president, 499-500, 508-12

Rockefeller and, 508-12

succeeding to presidency, 499

sworn in as vice president, 497-98

on vice-presidency, xiv

in World War II, 494

youth, 494

Foreign policy

in 1790s, 9-10, 22

Jefferson and, 22, 55

vice president involved in, 403, 441, 550

Forney, John W.

on Breckinridge, 194

Hamlin and, 208

on A. Johnson, 215, 218

on vice-presidential swearing in, 216

France

Gerry as envoy to, 65

Jefferson and, 18, 55

King and, 185

Revolution, 9

U.S. relations with

in 1790s, 10, 22, 34, 65

in 1830s, 111

Franklin, Benjamin, 18

Free Soil party

in 1848 election, 116, 171, 173, 235

in 1850s, 203

Hamlin and, 204

Freedmen’s Bureau, veto of, 218

Freedom of the press, 24

Freeman, Orville, 517-19

Frelinghuysen, Theodore, 155, 169

Fre ́mont, John C., 195

Fulbright, J. William, L.B. Johnson and, 458

Gaillard, John, 68, 88

Gallatin, Albert

Burr and, 33, 36, 39, 40

Clinton and, 53, 57

Dallas and, 152

on Gerry, 66

as Jefferson adviser, 54

as treasury secretary, 67, 74, 123

Gallinger, Jacob, Fairbanks and, 317

Gann, Dolly Curtis, 375, 380-81

Garfield, James A.

in 1880 election, 253

Arthur and, 254

death of, 254, 272

elected president, 247, 253, 271

Morton and, 271

as president, 253-54, 271-72

Garner, Ettie Rheiner, 386

Garner, John N., 385-93, illus. 384

in 1932 election, 381

1940 election and, 400

breaking tie votes, 389

characteristics of, 392

death of, 393

elected vice president, 388

in House, 386-88

influence of, 386, 389, 393, 426

intervening on legislation, 390

as presidential candidate, 392
[ 581 ]

INDEX

Garner (continued)

presiding over the Senate, 389-90

as Speaker, 386-88

Supreme Court packing plan and, 390-91

Truman and, 413

on vice-presidency, 388

as vice president, 388-93

youth, 385-86

Geneˆt, Edmond, 10

Clinton and, 52, 56

Gerry, Ann Thompson, 65

Gerry, Elbridge, 63-69, illus. 62

in 1812 election, 66

addressing the Senate, 66

in Constitutional Convention, 64-65

in Continental Congress, 63-64

death of, 68

elected vice president, 66

as envoy to France, 65

‘‘Gerrymander’’ and, 66

as governor, 66

in House of Representatives, 65

Jefferson and, 21

in legislature, 63

on legislative responsibilities of vice president, 65

presiding over the Senate, 66-68

during Revolution, 63-64

social life as vice president, 67

sworn in as vice president, 66

as vice president, 66-68

youth, 63

Giles, William Branch

as candidate for president pro tempore, 67

Clinton and, 57

Goldwater, Barry M.

in 1964 election, 472

Ford and, 499

Rockefeller and, 506-7, 510

Gore, Albert A., Jr., xviii, 525, 551-52

Gore, Thomas P., 317-18

Gorman, Arthur P., 282

Governor becoming vice president, 216, 303, 339, 347, 350,

482

Granger, Francis, in 1836 election, 127

Grant, Ulysses S.

in 1868 election, 219, 226-27, 237

in 1872 election, 238

in 1880 election, 22/5

Arthur and, 252

Colfax and, 223, 226-28

elected president, 227, 237

Great Britain

Burr on Jay Treaty, 33

Jay Treaty and, 21

Jefferson and, 55

U.S. relations with, 10, 66, 68, 123, 152, 159, 182, 270

Van Buren appointment to, 96

Greeley, Horace

in 1872 election, 237, 263

Colfax and, 224-25, 228

Grundy, Felix, 111, 127

Haig, Alexander M., Jr.

Agnew and, 487

on Bush, 532, 536

Ford and, 497-99

Haldeman, H.R.

Agnew and, 483-86

resignation of, 486

‘‘Half-breeds’’

in 1876 election, 245

in 1880 election, 253

in 1884 election, 256

Blaine and, 270

Conkling and, 254

Hamilton, Alexander, 9

1788 election and, 6

1796 election and, 10, 19

1800 election and, 11, 35-36

on assumption of state debts, 9, 65

as Burr ally, 33, 34

Burr gubernatorial campaign and, 39

Clinton and, 51, 52

foreign policy and, 10

Jefferson and, 18

killed by Burr, 39

Hamlin, Ellen, 205

Hamlin, Hannibal, 203-9, illus. 202

appearance of, 204, 206, 209

banning liquor from Senate, 207

characteristics of, 205, 209

in Coast Guard, 208

death of, 209

dropped from ticket for second term, 208, 215

elected vice president, 198, 206

in House, 204

A. Johnson and, 213, 219

in Senate, 204-5, 209

temperance and, 204

patronage and, 207

presiding over the Senate, 207

as vice-presidential candidate, 206

youth, 203

Hamlin, Sarah Jane, 205

Hancock, John, Adams and, 4, 5

Hanna, Marcus A.

Dawes and, 360

Fairbanks and, 315

Hobart and, 290, 293

T. Roosevelt and, 302, 306

Hannegan, Robert

Truman and, 414-15

Wallace and, 404

Hanson, John, 51

Harding, Warren G.
[ 582 ]

INDEX

Harding (continued)

in 1920 election, 343, 349-50, 361

Curtis and, 377

Dawes and, 362

death of, 352

as president, 352

on vice-presidency, 352

Harper, Robert Goodloe

Burr and, 35-36

Pickering impeachment trial and, 40

Harrison, Benjamin

elected president, 265, 272

as president, 272-74, 280

Harrison, Byron P. ‘‘Pat,’’ Barkley and, 424

Harrison, William H.

in 1836 election, 127

in 1840 election, 115, 121, 130, 140-41

death of, 142

elected president, 115, 130, 141

presidential inauguration, 141-42

in Senate, 88

in War of 1812, 123

Hartmann, Robert, 498-99

Rockefeller and, 508

Hatfield, Mark O.

Ford and, 498

Quayle and, 546

Hay, John, 292, 306

Hayes, Rutherford B.

in 1876 election, 243, 245, 246

Arthur and, 252

elected president, 246, 263

Wheeler and, 246-47

Hayne, Robert Y., 94

Hearst, William Randolph, on Garner, 387

Henderson, David, Sherman and, 326

Hendricks, Eliza Morgan, 261

Hendricks, Thomas A., 261-65, illus. 260

in 1876 election, 245, 263

appearance of, 264

characteristics of, 264

death of, 265

elected vice president, 264

as governor, 263

health of, 263-64

in House, 261-62

patronage and, 265

in Senate, 262

as vice president, 264-65

youth, 261

Hildenbrand, William F., on Quayle, 547

Hillhouse, James, 36, 42

Hiss, Alger, Nixon and, 434

Hoar, George F.

on Morton, 273

presidential succession and, 265

Wheeler and, 245

on H. Wilson, 237

Hobart, Garret A., 289-93, illus. 288

addressing the Senate, 291

breaking tie votes, 292

characteristics of, 289, 291

death of, 293

elected vice president, 290

in legislature, 289-90

McKinley and, 290-93

presiding over the Senate, 291-92

as vice president, 290-93

youth, 289

Hobart, Jennie Tuttle, 289, 291

Hoover, Herbert

1924 election and, 363

in 1928 election, 378-79

bonus march and, 381

Coolidge and, 354

Curtis and, 373, 379

Dawes and, 361, 367

Garner and, 387

House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC), 435

House of Representatives

in 1800 election, xii, 25, 35, 53

in 1824 election, 83, 87, 107, 125

confirming vice president, 497, 508-9

investigation of Calhoun and, 93

on presidential succession, 143

Speaker, becoming vice president, 223, 227, 388

Hughes, Charles Evans

in 1908 election, 320

in 1916 election, 320, 341

Sherman and, 327, 330

Hughes, Sarah T., L.B. Johnson and, 458, 461

Hull, Cordell, 401-2

Humphrey, Hubert H., 465-76, illus. 464

in 1968 election, 474-75, 482, 507, 520

in 1972 election, 475

arms control and, 467, 471

back in Senate, 475-76

campaigning, 470

characteristics of, 465-67, 476

death of, 476

foreign travel by, 470, 472-73

L.B. Johnson and, 459, 466-67

legislative achievements of, 467-68

Mondale and, 517-18

on Mondale, 519-20

oratory of, 465

as presidential candidate, 467, 474-75

in Senate, 466-68

on vice-presidency, 521

as vice president, 468-74

as vice-presidential candidate, 468

Vietnam and, 471-74

youth, 465-66

Hunter, Robert M.T., 181
[ 583 ]

INDEX

Illinois, vice presidents from, 279-84, 359-68

Impeachment

of Blount, 22

of A. Johnson, 218-19, 226, 237

of Pickering, 40

of Samuel Chase, 40, 41-42

Independent treasury bill, 115, 129

Indian Affairs Committee, 376

Indiana

machine politics in, 338-39

vice presidents from, 223-29, 261-65, 313-21, 337-43, 543-

52

Ingersoll, Jared, 66

Ingersoll, Robert G., A. Johnson and, 215

Iowa, vice president from, 399-406

Iran-Contra scandal, 536-37

Irving, Washington, 74

Jackson, Andrew

in 1824 election, 83, 87, 107

in 1828 election, 92-93, 107-8

in 1832 election, 110

1836 election and, 114, 126

Calhoun and, 92-93, 94-96

censure of, 112-13

dueling and, 39

elected president, 93, 108

on R.M. Johnson, 130, 131

R.M. Johnson and, 124-25

King and, 183

nullification and, 97

as presidential candidate, 87

Second Bank of the U.S. and, 109-10, 153, 183

in Senate, 88

Tyler and, 138

Van Buren and, 108-9, 110

on Van Buren, 116

Jackson, Rachel, 93, 95

Jay, John

Burr and, 33

as candidate for governor, 52

Jay Treaty, 10, 21

Burr and, 33

Jefferson, Martha, 18

Jefferson, Thomas, 17-28, illus. 16

in 1796 election, 10, 19

in 1800 election, xii, 11, 34-36

Adams and, 21, 25

addressing the Senate, 20, 25, 53

Alien and Sedition Acts and, 23-24

appearance of, 19, 20

Burr and, 40

on Burr, 34

on civil liberties, 24

Clinton and, 52, 53-54, 55, 56

death of, 25

Declaration of Independence and, 4, 18

elected president, xv, 25, 35, 42

elected vice president, 10, 19, 34

foreign policy and, 10, 55

as governor, 18

inauguration as president, 25, 36-37, 49

R.M. Johnson and, 122

Kentucky Resolutions and, 23-24

Manual of Parliamentary Practice, xvi, 24-25, 26, 87, 175

patronage and, 38

on presidency, 20

as president, 25, 49

presiding over the Senate, 24-25

reelected president, 42

on role of vice-president, 21

as secretary of state, 9, 18-19, 52

on state governments, 24

sworn in as vice president, 20

as vice president, xv-xvi, 20-25

writings of, 18, 21

youth, 17

Jobs Training Partnership Act of 1982, 546

Johnson, Andrew, 213-19, illus. 212

addressing Senate, 213

appearance of, 214

assassination plot against, 216-17

characteristics of, 214

death of, 219

elected vice president, 216

Hamlin and, 204, 205, 208, 209

homestead bill and, 214

in House, 214

impeachment of, 218-19, 226, 237

inauguration as vice president, 208, 213

pardons by, 199

patronage and, 218

as president, 217-19

Reconstruction and, 226

in Senate, 219

succeeding to presidency, 217

veto by, 218

as vice president, 216-17

as vice-presidential candidate, 208, 215

as war governor, 214-15

H. Wilson and, 236

youth, 213-14

Johnson, Claudia Alta ‘‘Lady Bird’’ Taylor, 454, 458

Johnson, Eliza McCardle, 214

Johnson, Hiram, 306, 349

Johnson, James, 122, 124

Johnson, Lyndon B., 453-62, illus. 452

1957 civil rights bill and, 456-57

in 1964 election, 468

Bobby Baker and, 454, 456

Bush and, 532

characteristics of, 455

death of, 461

as Democratic floor leader, 455-57

Ford and, 495
[ 584 ]

INDEX

Johnson (continued)

foreign travel by, 459

in House, 454

Humphrey and, 468-74

on Humphrey, 465

Mondale and, 519

post-convention Senate session and, 458

as president, 461

as presidential candidate, 457

presiding over the Senate, 459

Rockefeller and, 507

rules change and, 443

in Senate, 454-57

succeeding to presidency, 461

as vice president, 458-61

as vice-presidential candidate, 458

in World War II, 454

youth, 453

Johnson, Richard Mentor, 121-34, illus. 120

in 1828 election, 125

in 1836 election, 114-15, 121, 126-27

in 1840 election, 121, 129, 141

addressing Senate, 128, 129, 131

appearance of, 122, 129

breaking tie votes, 128

characteristics of, 131

death of, 131

debt imprisonment and, 124

in House, 122-24, 125-26

patronage and, 128

as presidential candidate, 126

presiding over Senate, 128

in Senate, 124-25

Sunday mail delivery and, 124

as vice president, xvii, 127-30

as vice-presidential candidate, 125-26

vice-presidential clerk and, 167

youth, 121-22

Jones, Jesse, Wallace and, 401-2, 405

Jordan, Leonard B., Agnew and, 483

Judiciary Act of 1801, 38

Kansas, vice president from, 373-81

Kansas-Nebraska Act, 205

Breckinridge and, 194-95

Hendricks and, 262

Kellogg, William P., Wheeler and, 244, 247

Kendall, Amos, 110, 126

Kennedy, Edward M.

in 1980 election, 524

Quayle and, 546

Kennedy, John F.

in 1960 election, 445, 453, 457

death of, 461

L.B. Johnson and, 453, 459-60

as president, 459-60, 467

as presidential candidate, 457-58

Kennedy, Robert F.

death of, 474

Humphrey and, 473

L.B. Johnson and, 457-58, 460

Kentucky Resolutions, 23-24

Kentucky, vice presidents from, 121-31, 193-99, 423-29

Kern, John Worth

Marshall and, 341

on Sherman, 332

Sherman and, 328

Key, Philip Barton, Burr and, 42

Khrushchev, Nikita, Nixon and, 441

King, Leslie L., Jr. See Ford, Gerald R.

King, Rufus, 67

Tompkins and, 75, 77, 78-79

King, William R., 181-87, illus. 180

in 1852 election, 187

addressing Senate, 186

appearance of, 182-83

Calhoun and, 91

characteristics of, 181, 183

Clay and, 182-84

Compromise of 1850 and, 185-86

death of, 187

in House, 182

as president pro tempore, 127, 128, 141, 160, 181

presiding over the Senate, 186

sworn in as vice president, 187

as vice-presidential candidate, 184-86

youth, 182

Kissinger, Henry

Ford and, 499

Rockefeller and, 507-8

Knowland, William F.

L.B. Johnson and, 456

Nixon and, 435

Know-Nothing party

in 1850s, 176, 195, 203

Colfax and, 224

Hendricks and, 262

Stevenson and, 279

H. Wilson and, 235

Knox, Henry, 6

La Follette, Robert M.

1912 election and, 330

in 1924 election, 363

filibuster and, 317-18, 363

on Sherman, 331

Sherman and, 330

tariff and, 329

La Follette, Robert M., Jr., 366

Ladd, Edwin, on Coolidge, 351

Lane, Joseph, 197

Lansing, Robert, 342-43, 352

Lenroot, Irvine, 349-50

Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (1963), 467, 471
[ 585 ]

INDEX

Lincoln, Abraham

in 1860 election, 197, 205-6

assassination of, 209, 216-17, 226

Breckinridge and, 194

Colfax and, 223, 225, 226

elected president, 198

Hamlin and, 203, 204, 206-8

Hendricks and, 262-63

in House, 214

inauguration of, 213

A. Johnson and, 214, 215

Reconstruction and, 216

Stevenson and, 279

H. Wilson and, 236

Lincoln, Mary Todd, 217

Breckinridge and, 193, 194, 198

Liquor

in Senate, 160, 204-5, 207, 402

use by vice president, 78, 208, 213

Lloyd, James, and Calhoun, 91

Lodge, Henry Cabot

Curtis and, 377

on Hobart, 291

T. Roosevelt and, 300-302

on Sherman, 326

Lodge, Henry Cabot, Jr.

Humphrey and, 472

Nixon and, 435, 437

Long, Chester, Curtis and, 376

Long, Huey P.

Garner and, 389-90

Truman and, 413

Longworth, Alice Roosevelt, 304, 380

Longworth, Nicholas, 304

Garner and, 386

Louisiana

in 1876 election, 246

Wheeler and, 244

Lowden, Frank

in 1920 election, 349, 361, 377

in 1924 election, 362

in 1928 election, 367

Lucas, Scott W., 427-28

Machine politics, 251, 270, 299, 301-2, 338, 412-13

Maclay, William

Adams and, 5, 7, 8

on Jefferson, 19

on removal of cabinet officers, 8

Macon, Nathaniel, 88, 93

Madison, Dolley, 67

Madison, James, 21

in 1790s, 19

1792 election and, 52

on 1800 election, 35

Burr and, 40

Clinton and, 53, 57

on Clinton, 52

Dallas and, 152

elected president, 57, 66

foreign policy of, 63, 66

on Gerry, 65

as heir apparent to Jefferson, 49, 53

inauguration of, 57

Jefferson and, 20, 54

as president, 57-58, 63, 67, 74

as presidential candidate, 55-57

Virginia Resolutions and, 23-24

Mahone, William, 253

Maine, vice president from, 203-9

Mangum, Willie P., 144, 167

Mansfield, Michael J.

Agnew and, 483

Bobby Baker and, 460

Ford and, 497

Humphrey and, 467, 469, 473

L.B. Johnson and, 456, 459, 460

Nixon and, 487

Rockefeller and, 508, 510

Marshall, John

Burr and, 37, 44

swearing in Jefferson and Clinton, 49

Marshall, Lois Kimsey, 338-39

Marshall, Thomas R., 337-43, illus. 336

in 1916 election, 320, 341

appearance of, 339

characteristics of, 337-38, 341

death of, 343

elected vice president, 339

as governor, 338

offices of, 340

presiding over the Senate, 339-41, 343

residence as vp, 350

as vice president, 339-43

Wilson’s illness and, 342-43

youth, 338

Martineau, Harriett, on R.M. Johnson, 129, 130

Maryland, vice president from, 481-88

Mason, James, Calhoun and, 98

Massachusetts, vice presidents from, 3-11, 63-68, 233-39,

347-54

Mathers, James, Burr and, 41-42

Maysville Road, 125

McCarthy, Eugene J., 474

McCarthy, Joseph R.

Humphrey and, 471

Nixon and, 438

McClellan, George, H. Wilson and, 236

McFarland, Ernest W.

Barkley and, 428

L.B. Johnson and, 455

McGovern, George S., 475, 520

McKellar, Kenneth, Wallace and, 403

McKinley, Ida, 291, 360

McKinley, William
[ 586 ]

INDEX

McKinley (continued)

in 1900 election, 300, 302-3

Dawes and, 360

death of, 305, 315

elected president, 282-83, 290

Fairbanks and, 314-15

Hobart and, 290-93

as president, 289, 291-93, 300-302, 304

Sherman and, 326

McNary, Charles, 401

McPherson, Harry

L.B. Johnson and, 460

on L.B. Johnson, 456, 460

Mexican War, 159

Breckinridge in, 194

Michigan, vice president from, 493-500

Miller, William E., 472

Minnesota, vice presidents from, 465-76, 517-25

Missouri

machine politics in, 412-13

vice president from, 411-18

Missouri Compromise, 77

Mitchell, John, 507

Agnew and, 486

Mitchill, Samuel L.

on Burr, 40, 42, 43, 49

on Clinton, 55-56

Mondale, Joan Adams, 518, 522, 525

Mondale, Walter F., 517-25, illus. 516

in 1976 election, 500

in 1980 election, 524

in 1984 election, 524, 536

as ambassador to Japan, 525

appointed to Senate, 519

Carter and, 521-24

characteristics of, 519

cloture and, 510

as presidential candidate, 520-21

presiding over the Senate, 523

Quayle and, 549

in Senate, 519-21

on vice-presidency, 522, 549

as vice president, 522-24

as vice-presidential candidate, 521

writings of, 520, 522

youth, 517

Monroe, James

1792 election and, 52

Calhoun and, 85-86

on Clinton, 52

elected president, 75

Jackson and, 95

R.M. Johnson and, 123

reelected president, 77-78

as secretary of state, 67, 85

Tompkins and, 77, 78

on vice-presidency, 33

Morris, Gouverneur, on Clinton, 58

Morris, Robert, Adams and, 8

Morse, Samuel F.B., 154

Morse, Wayne L.

as Democrat, 455

as Independent, 442

Morton, Anna L.R. Street, 270, 273

Morton, Levi P., 269-74, illus. 268

appearance of, 271

banking and, 269-70

breaking tie votes, 273

characteristics of, 270-71

Conkling and, 251, 253

death of, 274

elected vice president, 272

as governor, 274

in House, 270-71

as minister to France, 271

not renominated, 273-74

as vice president, 273

youth, 269

Morton, Lucy K., 269, 270

National Defense Program, Special Committee to

Investigate the, 414

National Republicans

in 1824 election, 83

in 1828 election, 93

in 1832 election, 110

Calhoun and, 86

Fillmore and, 168

opposition to Jackson, 111

Native American ancestry of vice president, 373-74, 380

Naturalization Act (1798), 23

New Jersey

indictment of Burr, 39

vice president from, 289-93

New York

customhouse in, 251-52, 271

east-west rivalry in, 170

in selection of vice president, xvi, 167

indictment of Burr, 39

machine politics in, 251, 270, 299, 301-2, 304

vice presidents from, xvi, 31-46, 47-60, 71-80, 103-18, 167-

76, 243-47, 251-56, 269-74, 297-307, 325-32, 505-12

News media. See Press

Nixon, Richard M., 433-37, illus. 432

in 1952 election, 435-37

in 1956 election, 440

in 1960 election, 444-45, 458

in 1968 election, 445 474-75, 482, 496, 507, 520

in 1972 election, 446, 475, 486

Agnew and, 481, 483-87

on Agnew, 483, 484, 485, 488

appointing vice president, 487-88, 493, 497-98, 508

breaking tie votes, 442

Bush and, 531-33

as campaigner, 439-40
[ 587 ]

INDEX

Nixon (continued)

California governor’s race and, 445

‘‘Checkers’’ speech, 436-37

death of, 446

Eisenhower and, 433, 436, 443-47

on filling vice-presidential vacancies, 493

Ford and, 495-99

on Ford, 496, 499

foreign travel by, 441-42

in House, 434

pardon of, 499

as president, 445-46, 475, 482-87, 496-99

presiding over the Senate, 442-43

Quayle and, 549

resignation of, 446, 488, 499

Rockefeller and, 497, 506-8

secret fund and, 436

in Senate, 435

in South America, 441

in Soviet Union, 441

on vice-presidency, 446, 549

as vice president, 437-46

in World War II, 433-34

youth, 433

Nixon, Thelma ‘‘Pat’’ Ryan, 433, 442

Nobel Peace Prize, Dawes and, 362

Nominations rejected by Senate, 145, 364-65

Norris, George

Coolidge and, 351

on Curtis, 378

on Dawes, 364-65

filibusters and, 363-64

Nullification

Calhoun and, 94-96, 97, 108-9

in 1799 Kentucky resolutions, 24

Oregon boundary, 159

Otis, Samuel A., Adams and, 6

Panama Congress, 88-89, 107

Panic of 1837, 115, 129

Panic of 1873, 263

Panic of 1893, Dawes and, 360

Parker, Alton B., 316, 338

Parliamentarian, Senate, 366, 482-83, 510

Barkley and, 427

Parties, political

in 1850s, 203

development of, 9, 18

first caucuses, 156

first transfer of presidential power between, 25

president and vice president of different, 17, 19-20

Patronage, 272

Adams and, 6

Arthur and, 255

Burr and, 37

Clinton and, 53

Conkling and, 251-55

Dallas and, 155

Fairbanks and, 315

Fillmore and, 171-72

Hamlin and, 207

Hendricks and, 265

Morton and, 270-71

A. Johnson and, 218

R.M. Johnson and, 128

Sherman and, 329

Stevenson and, 280-81

Tompkins and, 74

Wheeler and, 247

Payne, Sereno, 328-29

Payne-Aldrich Tariff

Curtis and, 377

Sherman and, 329

Pendergast, Thomas, 412-13, 417

Pendleton, George H., 255

Pennsylvania, vice president from, 151-61

Pepper, George W.

on Curtis, 378

on Dawes, 366

Perot, Ross, 538, 551

Pickering, John, Burr and, 40

Pierce, Franklin

in 1852 election, 187

in 1856 election, 195

Breckinridge and, 194, 198

Dallas and, 161

elected president, 176

Hendricks and, 262

Pinckney, Charles Cotesworth, 35, 57

Pinckney, Thomas, 10, 19

Pinkney, William, King and, 182

Platt, Thomas C.

1884 election and, 256

on Arthur, 255

on Conkling, 251

Conkling and, 251, 253, 254

Morton and, 271, 274

on Morton, 274

resignation of, 247, 254, 272

T. Roosevelt and, 297, 299-302

Plumer, William

on Burr, 37, 39-40, 41

on Clinton, 49, 54-55

on Tompkins, 78

Political campaigns, changes in, 303

Polk, James K.

in 1840 election, 130

in 1844 election, 116, 154, 184

Calhoun and, 98

Dallas and, 159

elected president, 116, 155

Fillmore and, 170

Great Britain and, 159
[ 588 ]

INDEX

Polk (continued)

on Hamlin, 204

Postmasters, patronage and, 280

President of the Senate

absence from the Senate, 77, 78, 207, 238

addressing the Senate, 7-8, 10-11, 20, 25, 36, 43, 53, 57,

66, 128-29, 131, 141-42, 156, 158, 160, 172, 174, 196-

97, 213, 291-92, 318, 363, 367

announcing electoral vote count, xiii, 20, 42, 130, 160, 198

appointing committees, 87-88, 128, 156

breaking tie votes, xiii, 3, 8, 10, 37-38, 55, 57, 96, 109,

114, 128, 158, 247, 253, 273, 292, 379, 389, 403, 416,

442

Democratic Conference and, 459

influence on legislation, xix, 55, 128, 366, 390, 426, 438,

460, 468-69, 473, 483, 549

last to preside regularly over the Senate, 423, 427

missing tie vote, 364-65

as party liaison, 550

powers of, xvi, 87, 90-92, 173-75

presiding over impeachment trials, 22, 40-42

presiding over the Senate, xvii

Adams, 7-9

Agnew, 482-83

Arthur, 253-54

Barkley, 423, 427-28

Breckinridge, 196-198

Burr, 37-38

Calhoun, 87-92, 94, 96, 174

Clinton, 54-55, 56-57

Colfax, 227-28

Coolidge, 351-52

Curtis, 380

Dallas, 156-61

Dawes, 364-67

Fairbanks, 316-18

Fillmore, 167, 173-75

Garner, 389-90

Gerry, 66-68

Hamlin, 207

Hobart, 291-92

Jefferson, 22, 24-25

L.B. Johnson, 459

R.M. Johnson, 128

Marshall, 339-40, 343

Mondale, 523

Morton, 273

Nixon, 442-43

Quayle, 549

Rockefeller, 510-11

Roosevelt, 303-4

Sherman, 329

Stevenson, 281-82

Tompkins, 76, 78, 79

Truman, 416-17

Van Buren, 87-92, 111-14

Wallace, 402-3

Wheeler, 247

Wilson, 238

relations with majority leader, 428

rulings by, 91, 366, 428, 442-43, 510, 523

ruling overturned by Senate, 427-28

signing legislative documents, 7

See also Vice President of the U.S.

President of the U.S.

appointing vice president, 487-88, 493, 497, 508

assassination of, 216-17, 254, 272, 305, 315, 460-61

censure of, 112-13, 138, 183

choosing vice-presidential nominee, 390, 400, 415, 425-

26, 444, 468

considering whether to replace vice president, 444, 460,

485-86, 511, 551

death of, 142, 167, 175, 186, 209, 216-17, 226, 254, 272,

305, 315, 405, 417, 38/20

first not elected, 499

first not seeking second term, 146

health of

Bush, 551

Cleveland, 281

Eisenhower, 443

F.D. Roosevelt, 415, 416

Wilson, 342-43

incapacity of, 443

lobbying Congress, 340

relations with vice president

Adams, 21

J.Q. Adams, 88-89, 92-93

Buchanan, 196

Bush, 548, 550-52

Carter, 522-24

Cleveland, 264-65, 281-82

Coolidge, 359, 363-67

Eisenhower, 433, 437-40, 443-47

Ford, 509-12

Garfield, 254

Grant, 227

Harding, 352

B. Harrison, 273-74

Hayes, 246-47

Hoover, 373, 379-80

Jackson, 94-96, 110-11

Jefferson, 37, 39, 40, 49, 54, 55, 56

L.B. Johnson, 469, 470-74

Lincoln, 206-8

Kennedy, 459-60

Madison, 57, 63

McKinley, 289-93, 304-5

Monroe, 75, 77, 78

Nixon, 483-87, 498

Polk, 155, 159

Reagan, 535-37

F.D. Roosevelt, 388-92, 401-4, 416-17

T. Roosevelt, 316, 320

Taft, 328-30

Taylor, 172-73

Truman, 426, 428
[ 589 ]

INDEX

President of the U.S. (continued)

Van Buren, 128

Washington, 3, 6-7, 10

W. Wilson, 337, 340-42

resignation of, 446, 488, 499

vetoes by, 146, 218, 354, 378, 425

Presidential candidate, choosing vice president, 482, 521,

524, 534-35, 537-38, 547-48

Presidential succession, xii-xiii, 143-44, 265, 342-43

Presidential Succession Act (1792), xii, 265

President pro tempore

addressing the Senate, 186

announcing electoral votes, 127

appointing committees and chairmen, 88, 111, 128, 144

in line of succession to presidency, xii-xiii, 145

most often elected, 181

practice of appointing at end of a Congress, 25, 67-68,

160

presiding over the Senate, 58, 186

swearing in vice president, 20, 128, 141

in vice-presidential vacancy, xiii, 144, 186

Press

Agnew and, 484

Bush and, 537

Coolidge and, 353

Curtis and, 378, 381

Fairbanks and, 314

Ford and, 498

Garner and, 392

L.B. Johnson and, 459-60

Quayle and, 543, 548, 550

Rockefeller and, 508

T. Roosevelt and, 306

Press corps, Washington

Colfax and, 225, 227-28

L.B. Johnson and, 459-60

Prevost, Theodosia Bartow, 33

Public lands, 183

Quay, Matthew, 302

Quayle, J. Danforth, 543-52, illus. 542

in 1988 election, 537-38, 547-48

in 1992 election, 551-52

Bush and, 537-38, 548, 550-52

characteristics of, 544-45

foreign travel by, 549

in House, 545

job training and, 546

presiding over the Senate, 549

in Senate, 545-47

on vice-presidency, 549

as vice president, 548-52

writings of, 552

youth, 544

Quayle, Marilyn Tucker, 543-46, 549

Radical Republicans

Colfax and, 226

A. Johnson and, 216, 217-18

H. Wilson and, 235-36, 237

Randolph, John

Calhoun and, 89-91

Chase impeachment and, 41

Clinton and, 55

duel with Clay, 90

Rayburn, Sam T.

Barkley and, 425

Garner and, 388

on Garner, 387

L.B. Johnson and, 454, 457-58

Truman and, 417-18

Reagan, Ronald

in 1976 election, 511, 533

in 1980 election, 524-25, 534-35

Bush and, 535-36

Iran-Contra scandal and, 536-37

Nixon and, 497

Quayle and, 546-47

Reconstruction

1876 election and, 246

Colfax and, 226

Hendricks and, 262-63

A. Johnson and, 216, 217-18

Wheeler and, 244

H. Wilson and, 236-37

Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC), 387, 402, 405

Reed, James A.

Coolidge and, 350

Dawes and, 364

Reed, Thomas B.

Curtis and, 375

Sherman and, 326

Reid, Whitelaw, 270, 273

Republican floor leader, Senate, first, 377-78

Republican party (1)

in 1790s, 10, 19, 21-22, 65-66

in 1808 election, 55, 57

in 1824 election, 83

in 1828 election, 107

Alien and Sedition Acts and, 23

attack on Federalist judges, 40

Burr and, 33-34, 37, 40

formation of, 9, 18

Jefferson and, 21

Tompkins and, 73, 74

Van Buren and, 106

Republican party (2)

first Senate floor leader, 377

formation of, 203, 205, 224-25

in Indiana, 314

machine politics in, 251, 270-72

Old Guard in, 313, 315-16, 326, 328, 330, 435-38

in Reconstruction, 226, 245

split in, 328, 330, 348
[ 590 ]

INDEX

Republican party (2) (continued)

whip, 377

H. Wilson and, 235, 239

Republican party leadership, Nixon and, 437-38

Resignation of vice president, 97, 109, 487, 497, 508

Riddick, Floyd M.

Agnew and, 482-83

on Barkley, 427

Rockefeller and, 510

Rives, William C., 126, 139

Robertson, William H., 252-55, 271-72

Robinson, Joseph T.

in 1928 election, 379

Barkley and, 424

on Dawes, 364

Supreme Court packing plan and, 391

Rockefeller, John D., Jr., 505

Rockefeller, John D., Sr., 505

Rockefeller, Margaretta (Happy) Fitler Murphy, 507-9

Rockefeller, Mary Todhunter Clark, 506

Rockefeller, Nelson A., 505-12, illus. 504

in 1960 election, 444, 506

in 1964 election, 507

in 1968 election, 482, 507

Agnew and, 482

characteristics of, 510

family background of, 505

Ford and, 508-12

as governor, 506-7

Nixon and, 497, 507-8

not seeking renomination, 511

presiding over the Senate, 510-11

on vice-presidency, 512

as vice president, 509-11

World War II and, 506

youth, 505-6

Rolvaag, Karl, Mondale and, 517-19

Roosevelt, Alice. See Longworth, Alice Roosevelt

Roosevelt, Alice Lee, 298

Roosevelt, Edith Carow, 304

Roosevelt, Eleanor, Truman and, 415, 417

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

in 1920 election, 343, 350

in 1932 election, 381, 387-88

Barkley and, 424-25

choice of vice president and, 400-401, 414-15

death of, 405, 417

Garner and, 388-93

L.B. Johnson and, 454

on Marshall, 339-40

Rockefeller and, 506

third term and, 392, 399-400

Truman and, 413-17

on vice-presidency, 385

Wallace and, 399-405

Roosevelt, Theodore, 297-307, illus. 296

1884 election and, 298

in 1904 election, 316

in 1912 election, 306, 331

Curtis and, 376-77

Dawes and, 360

death of, 306

deciding whether to run for vice president, 300-302

elected vice president, 283, 297, 303

Fairbanks and, 313, 315-16, 318-20

as governor, 299-302

as president, 305-6, 315-16

presiding over the Senate, 303-4

Sherman and, 326, 330

in Spanish-American War, 299

succeeding to presidency, 305, 315

on vice-presidency, 297, 301, 305

as vice president, xviii, 303-5

as vice-presidential candidate, 302-3

World War I and, 306

writings of, 297-98

youth, 297

Root, Elihu

T. Roosevelt and, 301, 305-6

on Sherman, 331

Sherman and, 327

Roush, J. Edward, 544-45, 551

Rules, Senate

call to order, 91-92, 96, 174-75

change at beginning of a Congress, 443, 510

cloture, 427-28, 442-43, 510, 521

Dawes and, 363-65

filibuster, 363-65, 367

point of order, 317, 428, 510, 523

rulings by presiding officer, xiv, 91, 318, 366, 428, 442-

43, 510, 523

Rumsfeld, Donald, 509, 511-12

Rush, Benjamin, 5, 9, 20

Rush, Richard, 93

Russell, Richard B.

Barkley and, 427-28

L.B. Johnson and, 454-58

Russia, 182. See also Soviet Union

Salaries, Senate, 157

Saulsbury, Willard, Hamlin and, 207

Scott, Winfield, 176

Seaton, Mrs. William A., 77

Secession

Breckinridge and, 197, 198

Calhoun and, 96

Secretary of Agriculture, Wallace, 400, 416

Secretary of Commerce, Wallace, 401-2, 405

Secretary of state

assassination plot against, 216-17

Buchanan, 155

Byrnes, 405

Clay appointed as, 87

Hull, 401-2

Jefferson, 10, 18-19
[ 591 ]

INDEX

Secretary of state (continued)

presiding over cabinet meetings in president’s illness,

342, 343, 352

resignation of, 109, 111

Van Buren, 108-9

Webster, 142-43

Secretary of the Senate

on dates vice presidents sworn in, 216

election of R.M. Johnson and, 127

first, 6

on Quayle, 547

on travel expenses, 157

Truman and, 417

on vice presidency, 208

Secretary of the treasury

Crawford, 86, 123

Hamilton, 18

Taney, 111

Walker, 157-58

Secretary of war, 85-86, 123-24

Secret Service protection for vice president, first, 417

Sedition Act (1798), 23-24

Senate chamber

disorder in, 292

funeral in, 239

Rockefeller swearing in, 505, 509

Senate majority leader becoming vice president, 379, 425-

26, 457-58

Senate, U.S.

choosing vice president, xviii, 115, 121, 127, 139

confirming vice president, 497, 508-9

even party division in, 253

expulsion from, 193, 198, 262

in impeachment trials, 40-42, 218-19

organizational matters, 90-91, 111, 156, 157

presidential succession and, 144

procedure, review of, 547

Senator becoming vice president, 186, 206, 238, 316, 379,

415, 425-26, 436-37, 457-58, 468, 521-22, 547-48

Senatorial courtesy, 254

Senators, compensation of, 157

Seniority system, beginning of, 156

Sergeant at arms, Senate, 367

banning liquor in Senate, 160

impeachment trials and, 41

maintaining order, 207

Sergeant, John, in 1832 election, 110

Seward, William H.

1852 election and, 176

in 1860 election, 205-6

Arthur and, 252

Burr and, 44

Compromise of 1850 and, 174

Fillmore and, 169, 170-72

Hamlin and, 206

A. Johnson and, 215

Lincoln assassination and, 216-17

Seymour, Horatio, 219, 227, 263

Sherman, Carrie Babcock, 325

Sherman, James S., 325-32, illus. 324

characteristics of, 328-29, 331-32

Committee of the Whole and, 326

death of, 331

elected vice president, 320, 328

health of, 331

in House, 325-27

presiding over the Senate, 329

as vice president, 328-31

as vice-presidential candidate, 328

youth, 325

Sherman Silver Purchase Act, 281

Shively, Benjamin, Marshall and, 341

Slavery

Breckinridge on, 194

Hamlin and, 205

Hendricks and, 263

in the territories, 173, 185-86, 194-95, 197, 204

Tyler on, 138

Whigs and, 169-70, 171

Wilson and, 234-35, 236

Smathers, George A., 455-56, 459, 461

Smith, Alfred

in 1928 election, 379

Garner and, 387

Smith, Margaret Bayard, 122

Smith, Samuel

Clinton and, 55, 57

committee chairman, 88

Smithsonian Institution, Marshall and, 337

Smoot, Reed, Dawes on, 365

South Carolina, vice president from, 83-99

Southard, Samuel, 144

Soviet Union, 403-5

Spain

relations with in 1898, 292

Burr conspiracy and, 44

Spanish-American War, 292, 299

Sprague, Kate Chase, 251, 255

Sprague, William, 251

‘‘Stalwarts,’’ 251, 254

in 1876 election, 245

in 1880 election, 271

in 1884 election, 256

Morton and, 270

Stanton, Edwin, 226

Stevens, Thaddeus

Colfax and, 225

impeachment of A. Johnson and, 218-19

H. Wilson and, 236

Stevenson, Adlai E. (1835-1914), 279-84, illus. 278

in 1900 election, 283, 303

appearance of, 282

death of, 283

elected vice president, 281

in House, 280

patronage and, 265, 280
[ 592 ]

INDEX

Stevenson (continued)

presiding over the Senate, 281-82

as vice president, 281-82

youth, 279

Stevenson, Adlai E. (1900-1965), 283-84

in 1952 election, 437, 439

in 1956 election, 440

Stevenson, Letitia Green, 279, 283

Stone, William, 317-18

Sumner, Charles

Grant and, 237-38

Morton and, 270

H. Wilson and, 235, 236, 237

Supreme Court

appointments to, 38

chief justice on presidential succession, 143

F.D. Roosevelt and, 390-91, 424

Taft, Robert A.

in 1952 election, 435

death of, 442

nomination of Wallace and, 416

Taft, William Howard

in 1908 election, 319-20, 327-28

in 1912 election, 306, 330-31

as president, 328-30

Taggart, Thomas, Marshall and, 338-39

Tammany Society, 73

Taney, Roger B.

as chief justice, 172

on presidential succession, 143

as treasury secretary, 111

Tariffs

1832, 97, 109-10

1842, 146, 169

of Abominations, 93, 108

Dallas and, 158-59

Payne-Aldrich, 329, 377

Taylor, Zachary

in 1848 election, 159, 170-71

death of, 167, 175, 186

elected president, 116, 171

Fillmore and, 172-73

inauguration of, 172

slavery and, 173

Teapot Dome scandal, 352

Tecumseh, 121, 123

Telegraph at U.S. Capitol, 154

Tennessee, vice president from, xviii, 211-19

Tenure of Office Act (1867), 218, 226

Texas

annexation of,

Calhoun and, 98

Van Buren and, 154, 185

vice presidents from, 385-93, 453-61, 529-38

Thomson, Charles, on Gerry, 64

Thurman, Allen G., 265

Thurmond, Strom, 405

Tilden, Samuel J.

in 1876 election, 243, 246, 263

Hendricks and, 263-64

Tompkins, Daniel D., 73-80, illus., 72

absence from Senate, 77, 78, 88

appearance of, 73

death of, 79

elected vice president, 75

financial problems, 76, 78-79

as governor, 74-75

patronage and, 74

presiding over the Senate, 76-77, 78-79

reelected vice president, 77-78

Van Buren and, 106

as vice president, 75-79

youth, 73

Tompkins, Hannah Minthorne, 73

Tower, John G.

Quayle and, 549

Rockefeller and, 511

Travel expenses, Senate, 157

Treason charges against Burr, 44

Treaty of Versailles, 343

Truman, Elizabeth (Bess) Wallace, 411-12, 415

Truman, Harry S., 411-18, illus. 410

in 1944 election, 405, 414-15

in 1948 election, 406, 425-26

appearance of, 414

Barkley and, 425-28

breaking tie votes, 416

characteristics of, 414, 418

death of, 418

on Humphrey, 465

legislation and, 427

as president, 417-18, 427-28

presiding over the Senate, 416-17

Rockefeller and, 506

in Senate, 413-15

succeeding to presidency, 405, 417

on vice-presidency, 415-17, 426

as vice president, 416-17

as vice-presidential candidate, 405, 414-15

in World War I, 412

youth, 411

Truman Committee, 414

Trumbull, John, Adams and, 8

Tyler, John, 137-46, illus. 136

in 1836 election, 127, 139

in 1840 election, 130, 140-41

addressing the Senate, 141-42

appearance of, 142-43

appointment of Calhoun, 98

candidate for vice president, 130, 139, 141

death of, 146

elected vice president, 130

Fillmore and, 169

in House, 138
[ 593 ]

INDEX

Tyler (continued)

nominations rejected, 145

as president, 144-46

resignation from Senate, 139

in Senate, 138-39

on slavery, 138

succeeding to presidency, 137, 143-44

sworn in as president, 143

vetoes by, 145-46

as vice president, 141-42

youth, 137

Tyler, Julia Gardiner, 146

Tyler, Letitia Christian, 138

Updike, John

on Ford, 494

on King, 182

Van Buren, Hannah Hoes, 106

Van Buren, Martin, 103-18, illus. 104

1824 election and, 87, 107

1828 election and, 107-8

in 1832 election, 110, 125

in 1836 election, 115, 121, 126, 139

in 1840 election, 115, 129-30, 140-41

in 1844 election, 116, 154, 184

in 1848 election, 116, 159, 171, 173

appearance of, 114, 116

appointed minister to England, 95, 96, 109

breaking tie votes, 114

Calhoun and, 88-89, 90-91, 93, 94-95, 96

censure of Jackson and, 112-13

committee chairman, 88

death of, 116

elected president, 115, 127

inauguration of, 128

as Jackson adviser, 95, 108-9

R.M. Johnson and, 124, 128, 129

King and, 184-85

in legislature, 106

as president, 97, 115, 129

presiding over Senate, 111-14

resignation as secretary of state, 109

as secretary of state, 108-9

in Senate, 78, 107-8

as vice president, 110-14

youth, 105-6

Vandenberg, Arthur H., 494

Garner and, 390

Truman and, 417

Veterans. See Bonus march

Vetoes, presidential

by Coolidge, 354, 378

by A. Johnson, 218

by F.D. Roosevelt, 425

by Tyler, 146

Vice-presidency

Adams on, 7

constitutional origins of, xi-xiii, 6

duties of, xiii-xiv

Jefferson on, 20-21

vacancy in, xii-xiii

Vice president of the U.S.

age of, xv, 195, 423, 425-26

appointed by president, 487-88, 497, 508

assassination plot against, 216-17

attending cabinet meetings, xix, 337, 352, 427, 439, 445

attending presidential meetings, 522, 549

banker as, 272-73

busts of, xix-xx, 239, 325

campaigning for congressional candidates, 428, 439-40,

470

chairing executive councils, 470, 483, 549-50

challenging president for nomination, 392

chosen by Senate, 127

cities and towns named for, 151, 314

clerk for, 167

confirmed by Congress, 497, 508-9

conflict with cabinet officers, 401-2

consulted by president

Adams, 6-7, 10

Bush, 535-36

Garner, 388-89

Hamlin, 206

Hobart, 291

Humphrey, 469

Jefferson, 21

Mondale, 522-23

Nixon, 437, 439

Quayle, 549

Sherman, 330

Van Buren, 110-11

declining to attend cabinet meetings, 364

died in office, 58, 68, 187, 239, 265, 293, 331

elected president, xv, xvii-xviii, 10, 20, 25, 115, 529

elected by Senate, xvii, 115

foreign travel by, 403-4, 441-42, 459, 470, 472-73, 485, 535,

550

influence of, 401, 406, 437, 460

involved in foreign policy, 550

as link to party leadership, 437-38, 550

maintaining law practice, 158

not consulted by president

Adams, 6

Agnew, 485

Breckinridge, 196

Burr, 37,

Bush, 537

Clinton, 54

Curtis, 373, 379

Dallas, 155, 159

Fairbanks, 316, 320

Fillmore, 172-73

Hamlin, 207
[ 594 ]

INDEX

Vice president of the U.S. (continued)

Humphrey, 470, 472

Jefferson, 21

L.B. Johnson, 459

R.M. Johnson, 128

Marshall, 340-41

Rockefeller, 509-10

Roosevelt, 305

Stevenson, 382

Truman. 416-17

Wheeler, 247

not renominated, xv, 208, 214, 228, 273-74, 405, 411, 414,

511

not seeking reelection, 392

offices of, 340, 350, 365, 416, 423, 427, 459, 469, 482, 522

oldest, xv, 423

perquisites of, 340, 350

presidential illness and, 342-43

presiding over cabinet meetings in president’s absence,

342

presiding over cabinet meetings during president’s

illness, 443, 446

previous political experience of, xiv, xv

qualifications for, xvi, xviii

reasons for choosing, 487, 497, 508

reelected, 57, 93, 341, 390, 444, 536

renominated, 93, 130, 331, 341, 381, 433, 444, 486, 536,

551

residence of, official, 380, 509, 522, 535

residence of, private, 54, 350, 416, 442

resignation of, 97, 109, 487, 497, 508

role of, xiii-xiv, xvii, xix, 385, 393, 399, 401, 446, 470, 483,

549-50

seal, coat of arms, and flag, 428, 510

Secret Service and, 417

serving under two presidents, xiv, 57, 87, 93

song by, 360

staff of, xix, 350, 522, 549

succeeding to presidency, xv, xvii, 137, 143-44, 167, 176,

217, 254, 305, 352-53, 417, 461, 499

swearing in of

in House chamber, 498

outside United States, 187

youngest, xv, 195

See also President of the Senate

Vice President’s Room

Barkley and, 427

Dawes and, 365

Hobart and, 291

plaque to Wilson in, 239

Vice-presidential candidates

announcement of, 543, 548

chosen by president, 390, 400

deceased, 331

qualifications of, 543

reasons for choosing, xviii

Agnew, 482, 486

Arthur, 253

Barkley, 425-26

Breckinridge, 195

Bush, 534-35

Calhoun, 87, 92-93

Clinton, 53, 57

Colfax, 226-27

Coolidge, 349-50

Curtis, 379

Dallas, 154

Dawes, 359, 362-63

Fairbanks, 315-16

Fillmore, 167, 170

Ford, 40/9,

Garner, 388, 390

Gerry, 66,

Hamlin, 203, 206

Hendricks, 264

Hobart, 290

Humphrey, 468

A. Johnson, 215, 208

L.B. Johnson, 453, 457-58, 460

R.M. Johnson, 126, 130

King, 184, 187

Marshall, 338-39

Mondale, 521

Morton, 271-72

Nixon, 435-36, 444

Quayle, 537-38, 547-48, 551

Roosevelt, 300, 302

Sherman, 327-28

Stevenson, 281, 283

Tompkins, 75

Truman, 404-5, 414-15

Tyler, 140-41

Van Buren, 109

Wallace, 393, 399-401

Wilson, 237-38

Wheeler, 245

Vice-presidential succession, xii

Vietnam War

Humphrey and, 471-74

Mondale and, 520

Nixon and, 483-84

Virginia Resolutions, 23-24

Virginia, vice presidents from, 17-26, 137-46

Voorhees, Daniel

filibuster and, 281

on Hendricks, 263-64

Voorhis, Jerry, Nixon and, 434

Wade, Benjamin F.

as candidate for vice president, 226-27, 237

Hamlin and, 206

A. Johnson and, 217

H. Wilson and, 236-37

Walker, Frank, Wallace and, 404

Walker, Robert J., Dallas and, 155, 157-58
[ 595 ]

INDEX

Wallace, Henry A., 399-406, illus. 398

in 1940 election, 400-401

in 1948 election, 405-6

appearance of, 399

Barkley and, 425

breaking tie votes, 403

characteristics of, 399, 402

as commerce secretary, 405

influence of, 399, 401, 406, 426

not renominated, 411, 414-15

presiding over the Senate, 402-3

religious views of, 401, 404

as secretary of agriculture, 400-401

Truman and, 416

as vice president, 401-5

writings of, 400, 403-4

youth, 399-400

War of 1812, 66, 68, 123

Warhawks, 85, 123, 182

Warren, Charles, nomination of, 364-65

Warren, Earl, in 1952 election, 435

Warren, Francis E.

Dawes and, 365

Fairbanks and, 317

Warren, Mercy Otis, on Gerry, 63

Washington, George, 3, 19

in 1788 election, 5-6, 52

Adams and, 7, 9

elected president, 5-6

neutrality of, 9, 10

in Revolution, 32, 51

in second term, 9-10

Watergate scandal, 486, 497-98

Bush and, 532-33

Watkins, Charles

Barkley and, 427

Dawes and, 366

Watson, James E., on Dawes, 366

Webster, Daniel

in 1824 election, 87

in 1836 election, 127

1852 election and, 176

as secretary of state, 142, 143

Compromise of 1850 and, 98, 174

Dallas and, 158

opposition to Jackson, 111, 113

in Senate, 173

on Tompkins, 78

Van Buren and, 96, 112

in Webster-Hayne debate, 94

Weed, Thurlow

1840 election and, 140

Arthur and, 252

Fillmore and, 168-70, 171, 172-73

Westmoreland, William, 472-73

Wheeler, Burton K., Truman and, 413

Wheeler, Mary King, 243

Wheeler, William A., 243-47, illus. 242

in 1876 election, 246

breaking tie votes, 247

characteristics of, 243-44

death of, 247

health of, 243, 246

in House, 244-45

Louisiana contested election and, 244

patronage and, 247

as vice president, 246-47

as vice-presidential candidate, 245

youth, 243

Whig party

in 1836 election, 114, 127, 139,

in 1840 election, 115, 130, 140

in 1844 election, 169-70

in 1848 election, 170-71

in 1850s, 203

after 1850, 176

abolitionists and, 169-70

caucus making committee assignments, 156

Colfax and, 224

Fillmore and, 168-69

formation of, 111

H. Wilson and, 234

White, Hugh Lawson, 111, 113, 126-27

Willkie, Wendell, 401

Wilmot Proviso, 173, 204

Calhoun and, 98

Wilson, Harriet Howe, 234, 237

Wilson, Henry, 233-39, illus. 232

characteristics of, 233, 237

Cre ́dit Mobilier and, 228-29

death of, 239

elected vice president, 238

on Grant presidency, 238

health of, 238-39

A. Johnson and, 219

plaque in Capitol, 239

in Senate, 235-37

as shoemaker, 234

as vice president, 238-39

as vice-presidential candidate, 226, 228, 237

youth, 233-34

Wilson, Woodrow

in 1912 election, 306, 330-31, 339

in 1916 election, 341

Barkley and, 424

elected president, 331

illness of, 342-43

lobbying Congress, 340

Marshall and, 340-41

on Marshall, 337

T. Roosevelt and, 306

on vice-presidency, 340

World War I

Dawes in, 361

Marshall and, 341-42

Truman in, 412
[ 596 ]

INDEX

World War II

Bush in, 530

L.B. Johnson in, 454

Nixon in, 433-34

Rockefeller and, 506

Wallace and, 401-2

Wright, Silas

1844 election and, 154

elected governor of New York, 170

R.M. Johnson and, 126, 128

liquor and, 204

panic of 1837 and, 129

tariff and, 93

Van Buren and, 113, 116

Wythe, George, 17, 24

X,Y,Z Affair, 22, 34

Yarborough, Ralph, 531-32

Yates, Richard, 33

Yellowstone expedition, 123-24