page_title: Alben W. Barkley
section_title: Later life and death
hierarchical_section_title: Alben W. Barkley / Later life and death
caption_attribution_description: English: Front of The Angles, located on Alben Barkley Drive (U.S. Route 62) west of Fortieth Street in Paducah, Kentucky, United States. Built in 1853 and the home of Vice President Alben W. Barkley, it is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
context_page_description: Alben William Barkley was an American lawyer and politician from Kentucky who served in both houses of Congress and as the 35th vice president of the United States from 1949 to 1953. In 1905, he was elected county attorney for McCracken County, Kentucky. He was chosen County Judge/Executive in 1909 and U.S. representative from Kentucky's First District in 1912. As a Representative, he was a liberal Democrat, supporting President Woodrow Wilson's New Freedom domestic agenda and foreign policy.
  Endorsing Prohibition and denouncing parimutuel betting, Barkley narrowly lost the 1923 Democratic gubernatorial primary to fellow Representative J. Campbell Cantrill. In 1926, he unseated Republican Senator Richard P. Ernst. In the Senate, he supported the New Deal approach to addressing the Great Depression and was elected to succeed Senate Majority Leader Joseph T. Robinson upon Robinson's death in 1937. During his 1938 re-election bid, his opponent A. B. "Happy" Chandler accused him of using Works Progress Administration employees to campaign for him; Barkley claimed Chandler used state employees in the same way.
context_section_description: Barkley's term as vice president ended on January 20, 1953. After the election, he had surgery to remove his cataracts. He contracted with NBC to create 26 fifteen-minute commentary broadcasts called "Meet the Veep". Low ratings prompted NBC's decision not to renew the series in September 1953. In retirement, Barkley remained a popular speaker and began working on his memoirs with journalist Sidney Shallett. He re-entered politics in 1954, challenging incumbent Republican Senator John Sherman Cooper. In a 1971 study of Barkley's Senate career, historian Glenn Finch argued that Barkley was the only person who could beat Cooper. Few issues differentiated the candidates, and the campaign hinged on party politics; visits to Kentucky by President Eisenhower, Vice President Richard Nixon, and Senator Everett Dirksen on Cooper's behalf reinforced this notion. Barkley resumed his Iron Man campaign style, campaigning for up to sixteen hours a day, countering the "too old" charge that cost him the presidential nomination. He won the general election by a vote of 434,109 to 362,948, giving Democrats a one-vote advantage in the Senate.
  Veteran West Virginia Senator Harley M. Kilgore offered to exchange seats with Barkley, putting Barkley on the front row with the chamber's senior members and himself on the back row with the freshman legislators, but Barkley declined the offer. In honor of his previous service, he was assigned to the prestigious Committee on Foreign Relations. In this position, he endorsed Eisenhower's appointment of Cooper as U.S. Ambassador to India and Nepal. His relative lack of seniority did not afford him much influence. Barkley did not sign the 1956 Southern Manifesto.
  
  In an April 30, 1956, keynote address at the Washington and Lee Mock Convention, Barkley spoke of his willingness to sit with the other freshman senators in Congress; he ended with an allusion to Psalm 84:10, saying "I'm glad to sit on the back row, for I would rather be a servant in the House of the Lord than to sit in the seats of the mighty." He then collapsed onstage and died of a heart attack. He was buried in Mount Kenton Cemetery near Paducah.
caption: The Angles, Barkley's home in Paducah
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