Judge Wisdom and the 1952 RepublicanNational Convention: Ensuring Victoryfor Eisenhower and a Two-PartySystem for Louisiana

Joel William Friedman* At the same time that John Wisdom was struggling to unseat John E. Jackson and rebuild Louisiana's Republican Party, another southern attorney, Elbert Parr Tuttle of Atlanta, was spearheading a movement to reform and broaden the base of the Republican Party organization in Georgia. Tuttle's efforts so impressed the national Republican Party leaders that when John Wisdom asked Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, in the winter of 1951, to recommend someone who had experience in a delegate challenge and who might be able to advise him in his nascent Eisenhower effort in Louisiana, Lodge immediately suggested Elbert Tuttle. Wisdom took Lodge's advice to heart, called Tuttle, and Tuttle agreed to take a Sunday train to New Orleans so that the two could compare notes. Tuttle was well acquainted with the problems that Wisdom faced in Louisiana. The Georgia Republican Party was run by a small clique of "Post Office Republicans," the term used to describe those who became Republicans "because they hoped that if a Republican [P]resident was elected, they could name all the Postmasters and everybody that worked at the post office, the district attorney and the marshals."1 Wisdom and Tuttle spent much of the day in the garden of Wisdom's magnificent home. Within a few hours, the two had forged a bond of personal friendship and professional admiration that would last for more than forty years. "[O]f course I fell in love with the Wisdoms the minute I met them," Tuttle recalled.2 They commiserated over the common obstacles that lay in each of their paths and exchanged ideas about how to overcome these hindrances and to promote the hoped-for candidacy of General Eisenhower. Thereafter, Tuttle and Wisdom pushed forward on their separate fronts. They subsequently joined forces in February of 1952 when Wisdom was elected chairman, and Tuttle vice chairman, of the Southern Conference for Eisenhower, a loose confederation of pro-Eisenhower leaders in the South that became part of the move to draft Dwight Eisenhower for the party's presidential nomination.3 The strategies exchanged during their initial encounter, however, laid the groundwork for a grassroots movement that eventually reshaped the southern Republican Party and played a pivotal role in Dwight Eisenhower's capture of the Republican Party's presidential nomination. John Wisdom was already deeply involved with his Louisiana-based Americans for Eisenhower and his joint effort with Tuttle and other southerners to promote the Eisenhower candidacy through their Southern Conference for Eisenhower substantially before a corresponding organization - Citizens for Eisenhower - was formed in February of 1952. In fact, when a lieutenant in the Eisenhower national campaign initially telephoned Wisdom to suggest that he organize the Louisiana effort, Wisdom assured the caller that the Eisenhower campaign in Louisiana was already months ahead of the national movement. Consequently, Wisdom is fond of recalling, with an equal measure of pride, "We were for Eisenhower before Eisenhower was for Eisenhower." Citizens for Eisenhower was headed by Paul Hoffman, one of General Eisenhower's close personal friends who wanted to expand the regional "draft Eisenhower" movement to the national scene. This group, composed almost entirely of volunteers with little or no experience in political campaigning, played an important role in promoting Eisenhower's candidacy in the eyes of Democratic and Independent voters. Unfortunately, its leaders did not have the experience or savvy to mount the kind of campaign that would be necessary to overcome the momentum that already had been generated in favor of Senator Taft. For several months before Eisenhower was persuaded to run for the Presidency on the Republican ticket, four political and business leaders had met on an irregular basis at the Commodore Hotel in New York City to devise a strategy to draft the seemingly reluctant war hero. …