PllOFII.KS IN COURAGE

MEMORIAL EDITION

JOHN F. KENNEDY

PROFILES

IN

COURAGE

With a special foreword by

HAMISH H\MILTON

LONDON

He well knows what snares are spread about his path, from
personal animosity . . . and possibly from popular delusion.
But he has put to hazard his ease, his security, his interest,
his power, even his .. . popularity ... He is traduced and
abused for his supposed motives. He will remember that
obloquy is a necessary ingredient in the composition of all
true glory: he will remember . . . that calumny and abuse
are essential parts of triumph . . . He may live long, he may
do much. But here is the summit. He never can exceed
what he does this day.

— Edmund Burke’s eulogy of Charles
James Fox for his attack upon the
tyranny of the East India Company —
House of Commons, December i, 1783

Contents

☆

☆ ☆

A’

Forcu'ord to the MnnorUil lldition
htj Robert F. Kennedy 9

Preface 15

I. Coura<_'e and Politics 21

PART ONE

The Time and the Place 45

n. John Quincy Adams 52

“the magistrate is the servant n 1 ... of the

PEOl'LE, BUT OF HIS GOD.”

PART TWO

The Time and the Place 75
in. Daniel Webster 81

“. . . NOT AS A MASSACHUSETTS MAN . . . BUT AS AN
AMERICAN . . .”

[ 7 ]

CONTENTS

IV. Thomas Hart Benton loi

“l DESPISE THE BUBBLE POPULARITY . .

V. Sam Houston i2x

. I CAN FORGET THAT I AM CALLED A TRAJTOB.”

PART THREE
The Time and the Place 141
VI. Edmund G. Ross 146

“l . . . LOOKED DOWN INTO MY OPEN GRAVE.*

VH. Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar 172

“today I MUST BE TRUE OR FALSE . .

PART FOUR
The Time and the Place 201
vni. George Norris 207

“l HAVE COME HOME TO TELL YOU THE TRUTH.”

IX. Robert A. Taft 231

. . LIBERTY OF THE INDIVIDUAL TO THINK HIS OWN
THOUGHTS . . .”

X. Other Men of Political Courage 245

“. . . CONSOLATION FOR . . . THE CONTEMPT OF MANKIND.”

XI. The Meaning of Courage 257

Bibliography 269
Index 283

[ 8 ]

FOREWORD
TO THE

MEMORIAL EDITION

☆

C OURAGE IS THE VIRTUE that President Kennedy most
admired. lie sought out those people who had dem-
onstrated in some way, whether it was on a battle-
field or a baseball diamond, in a speech or fighting for a
cause, that they had courage, that they would stand up, that
they could be counted on.

That is why this book so fitted his personality, his beliefs.
It is a study of men who, at risk themselves, their futures,
even the well-being of their children, stood fast for principle.
It was toward that ideal that he modeled his life. And this in
time gave heart to others.

As Andrew Jackson said, ‘‘One man with courage makes a
majority.^’ That is the effect President Kennedy had on others.

President Kennedy would have been forty-seven in May of
1964. At least one half of the days that he spent on this earth
were days of intense physical pain. He had scarlet fever
when he was very young, and serious back trouble when he
was older. In between he had almost every other conceivable
ailment. When we were growing up together we used to
laugh about the great risk a mosquito took in biting Jack
Kennedy — with some of his blood the mosquito was almost

[ 9 ]

A*

FOREWORD

sure to die. He was in Chelsea Naval Hospital for an ex-
tended period of time after the war, had a major and painful
operation on his back in 1915, campaigned on crutches in
1919. In 1915 on a trip we took around the world he became
ill. We flew to the military hospital in Okinawa and he had
a temperature of over 106 degrees. They didn’t think he
would live.

But during all this time, I never heard him complain. I
never heard him say anything that would indicate that he
felt God had dealt with him unjustly. Those who knew him
well would know he was sufiFering only because his face was
a little whiter, the lines around his eyes were a little deeper,
his words a little sharper. Those who did not know him well
detected nothing.

He didn’t complain about his problem, so why shoiild 1
complain about mine — that is how one always felt.

When he battled against illness, when he fought in the
war, when he ran for the Senate, when he stood up against
powerful interests in Massachusetts to fight for the St.
Lawrence Seaway, when he fought for a labor reform act in
1906. when he entered the West Virginia primary in i960,
when he debated Lyndon Johnson at the Democratic Con-
vention in Los Angeles with no advance notice, when he took
the blame completely on himself for the failure at the Bay of
Pigs, when he fought the steel companies, when he stood up
at Berhn in 1915 and then again in 1906 for the freedom of
that city, when he forced the withdrawal of the Soviet mis-
siles from Cuba, when he spoke and fought for equal rights
for all our citizens, and hundreds of other things both big
and small, ne was reflecting what is the best in the human
being.

[ 10 ]

FOREWORD

He was demonstrating conviction, courage, a desire to help
others who needed help, and true and genuine love for his
country.

Because of his efiForts, the mentally retarded and the
mentally ill will have a better chance, tlie yovmg a greater
opportunity to be educated and live with dignity and self-
respect, the ill to be cared for, the world to live in peace.

President Kennedy had only a thousand days in the White
House instead of three thousand days, yet so much was ac-
complished. Still so much needs to be done.

This book tells the stories of men who in their own time
recognized what needed to be done — and did it. President
Kennedy was fond of quoting Dante that “the hottest places
in HHl are reserved for those who, in a time of great moral
crisis, maintain their neutrality.”

If there is a lesson from the lives of the men John Kennedy
depicts in this book, if there is a lesson from his life and
from his death, it is that in this Vvorld of ours none of us can
afford to be lookers-on, the critics standing on the sidelines.

Thomas Carlyle wrote, “The courage we desire and prize
is not the courage to die decently but to live manfully.”

On the morning of his death. President iivennedy called
former Vice President John Nance Gamer ♦o pay his respects.
It was Mr. Gamer’s ninety- fifth birthday. When Mr. Gamer
first came to Washington the total federal budget was less
than 500 million dollars. President Kennedy was administer-
ing a budget of just under 100 billion dollars.

President Kennedy’s grandmother was living in Boston
when President Kennedy was assassinated. She was also alive
the year President Lincoln was shot.

[Ill

FOREWOHD

We are a young country. We are growing and expanding
until it appears that this planet will no longer contain us. We
have problems now that people fifty, even ten years ago,
would not have dreamed would have to be faced.

The energies and talents of all of us are needed to meet
the challenges — the internal ones of our cities, our farms, our-
selves — to be successful in the fight for freedom around the
globe, in the battles against illiteracy, hunger and disease.
Pleasantries, self-satisfied mediocrity will serve us badly.
We need the best of many — ^not of just a few. We must strive
for excellence.

Lord Tweedsmuir, one of the President’s favorite authors,
wrote in his autobiography: “Public life is the crown of a
career, and to young men it is the worthiest ambition. Politics
is still the greatest and most honorable adventure.”

It has been fashionable in many places to look down on
politics, on those in Government. President Kennedy, I think,
changed that and altered the public conception of Govern-
ment. He certainly did for those who participated. But,
however we feel about politics, the arena of Government
is where the decisions will be made which will affect not only
all oiu: destinies but the futme of our children bom and
unborn.

At the time of the Guban missile crisis last year, we dis-
cussed the possibility of war, a nuclear exchange, and talked
about being killed — the latter at that time seemed so unim-
portant, almost frivolous. The one matter which really was
of concern to him and truly had meaning and made that time
much more fearful than it would otherwise have been was
the specter of the death of the children of this country and
around the world — ^the young people who had no part and

[ 12 ]

FOREWORD

knew nothing of the confrontation, but whose lives would be
snuffed out like everyone else’s. They would never have been
given a chance to make a decision, to vote in an election, to
run for oflBce, to lead a revolution, to determine their own
destinies.

We, our generation, had. And the great tragedy was that
if we erred, we erred not just for ourselves, our futures, our
homes, our country, but for the lives, futures, homes and
countries of those who never had been given an opportunity
to play a role, to vote “aye” or “nay,” to make themselves felt.

Bonar Law said, “There is no such thing as inevitable war.
If war comes it will be from failure of human wisdom.”

It is true. It is human wisdom that is needed not just on
our ‘■iHe but on all sides. I might add that if wisdom had not
been demonstrated by the American President and also by
Premier Khrushchev, then the world as we know it would
have been destroyed.

But there will be future Cubas. There will be future crises.
We have the problems of the hungry, the neglected, the poor
and the downtrodden. They must receive more help. And just
as solutions had to be found in October of 1962, answers must
be found for these other problems that still • >ce us. So that
wisdom is needed still.

John Quincy Adams, Daniel Webster, Sam Houston,
Thomas Hart Benton, Edmund G. Ross, Lucius Quintus Cin-
cinnatus Lamar, George Norris and Robert Taft imparted a
heritage to us. They came, they left their mark, and this coun-
try was not the same because these men had lived. By how
much the good of what they did and deeded to us was
cherished, nurtured and encouraged, by so much did the
country and all of us gain.

[ 13 ]

FOREWORD

And so it is also for John F, Kennedy. Like these others, his
life had an import, meant something to the coimtry while
he was alive. More significant, however, is what we do with
what is left, with what has been started. It was his conviction,
like Plato’s, that the definition of citizenship in a democracy
is participation in Government and that, as Francis Bacon
wrote, it is ‘left only to God and to the angels to be lookers
on.” It was his conviction that a democracy with this effort
by its people must and can face its problems, that it must
show patience, restraint, compassion, as well as wisdom and
strength and courage, in the struggle for solutions which are
very rarely easy to find.

It was his conviction that we should do so successfully be-
cause the courage of those who went before us in this land
exists in the present generation of Americans.

“We dare not forget today that we are the heirs of that
first revolution. Let the word go forth from this time and
place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed
to a new generation of Americans — bom m this century,
tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace,
proud of our ancient heritage — and unwilling to witness or
permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this
nation has always been committed, and to which we are com-
mitted today at home and around the world.”

This book is not just the stories of the past but a book of
hope and confidence for the future. What happens to the
country, to the world, depends on what we do with what
others have left us.

— Robert F. Kennedy

[ 14 ]

Preface

☆

☆ ☆
☆

^ iiJCji FxnsT hb:ading — long before 1 entered the Senate —

an account of John Quincy Adams and his struggle
with the Federalist party, I have been interested in
the problems of political courage in the face of constituent
pressures, and tlie light shed on those problems by the lives
of past statesmen. A long period of hospitalization and con-
valescence following a spinal operation in October, 1954,
gave me my first opportunity to do the reading and research
necessary for this project

I am not a professional historian; and, although all errors
of fact and judgment are exclusively my own, I should like
to acknowledge with sincere gratitude those who assisted
me in the preparation of this volume.

I owe a special debt of gratitude to an outstanding Amer-
ican institution — the Library of Congress. Throughout the
many months of my absence from Washington the Legis-

[ 15 J

PREFACE

lative Reference and Loan Divisions of the Library fulfilled
all of my requests for books with amazing promptness and
cheerful courtesy, Milton Kaplan and Virginia Daikcr of
the Prints and Photos Division were most helpful in sug-
gesting possible illustrations. Dr, George Galloway, and
particularly Dr, William R. Tansill, of the Library StafiF,
made important contributions to the selection of examples
for inclusion in the book, as did Arthiu: Krock of the New
York Times and Professor James McGregor Bums of Wil-
liams College.

Professor John Bystrom of the University of Minnesota,
former Nebraska Attorney General C. A. Sorensen, and
the Honorable Hugo Srb, Clerk of the Nebraska State
Legislature, were helpful in providing previously unpub-
lished correspondence of George Norris and pertinent docu-
ments of the Nebraska State Legislature.

Professor Jules Davids of Georgetown University assisted
materially in the preparation of several chapters, as did my
able friend James M. Landis, who delights in bringing the
precision of the lawyer to the mysteries of history.

Chapters II 'through X were greatly improved by the
criticisms of Professors Arthur N. Holcombe and Arthur
M. Schlesinger, Jr., both of Ilarv'ard; and Professor Walter
Johnson of the University of Chicago. The editorial sug-
gestions, understanding cooperation and initial encourage-
ment which I received from Evan Thomas of Harper fit
Brothers made this book possible.

To Gloria Liftman and Jane Donovan, my thanks for
their efforts above and beyond the call of duty in typing
and retyping this manuscript.

[ 16 ]

The greatest debt is owed to my research associate, Theo-
dore C. Sorensen, for his invaluable assistance in the as-
sembly and preparation of the material upon which this
book is based.

This book would not have been possible without the
encouragement, assistance and criticisms olFcrcd from the
very beginning by my wife Jacqueline, whose help during
all the days of my convalescence I cannot ever adequately
acknowledge.

— John F. Kennedy

PROFILES IN COURAGE

I?)an

\\- 9 -

I

Courage and Politics
☆

^His IS A BOOK about that most admirable of human
%

virtues — courage. “Grace under pressure,” Ernest
Hemingway defined it. And these are the stories
of the pressures experienced by eight United States Senators
and the graee with which they endured them — the risks to
their careers, the unpopularity of their courses, the defama-
tion of their characters, and sometimes, but sadly only some-
times, the vindication of their reputations and their
principles.

A nation which has forgotten the quality of courage which
in the past has been brought to public life is not as likely to
insist upon or reward that quality in its chosen leaders today
— and in fact we have forgotten. We may remember how
John Quincy Adams became President through the political
schemes of Henry Clay, but we have forgotten how, as a
young man, he gave up a promising Senatorial career to stand
by the nation. We may remember Daniel Webster for his

[ 21 ]

PBOFILES IN COURAGE

subservience to the National Bank throughout much of his
career, but we have forgotten his sacrifice for the national
good at the close of that career. We do not remember — and
possibly we do not care.

“People don't give a damn,” a syndicated columnist told
millions of readers not so many years ago, “what the average
Senator or Congressman says. The reason they don’t care is
that they know what you hear in Congress is gg% tripe,
ignorance and demagoguery and not to be relied upon. . .

Earlier a member of the Cabinet had recorded in his diary:

While I am reluctant to believe in the total depravity of the
Senate, I place but little dependence on the honesty and truth*
fulness of a large portion of the Senators. A majority of them
are small lights, mentally weak, and wholly unfit to be Senators.
Some are vulgar demagogues . . . some are men of wealth who
have purchased their position . . . [some are] men of narrow
intellect, limited comprehension, and low partisan prejudice. . . .

And still earlier a member of the Senate itself told his
colleagues that “the confidence of the people is departing
from us, owing to our unreasonable delays.”

The Senate knows that many Americans today share these
sentiments. Senators, we hear, must be politicians — and
politicians must be concerned only with winning votes, not
with statesmanship or courage. Mothers may still want their
favorite sons to grow up to be President, but, according to
a famous Gallup poll of some years ago, they do not want
them to become politicians in the process.

Does this current rash of criticism and disrespect mean the
quality of the Senate has dedinedP Certainly not. For of

[ 22 ]

COURAGE AND POLITICS

the three statements quoted above, the first was made in the
twentieth century, the second in the nineteenth and the
third in the ei^teenth (when the first Senate, barely under-
way, was debating where the Capitol should be located).

Does it mean, then, that the Senate can no longer boast
of men of courage?

Walter Lippmann, after nearly half a century of careful
observation, rendered in his recent book a harsh judgment
both on the politician and the electorate:

With exceptions so rare they are regarded as miracles of
nature, successful democratic politicians are insecure and in-
timidated men. They advance politically only as they placate,
appease, bribe, seduce, bamboozle, or otherwise manage to
mar'puljtc the demanding threatening elements in their con-
stituencies. The decisive consideration is not whether the
proposition is good but whether it is popular — ^not whether it
will work well and prove itself, but whether die active-talking
constituents like it immediately.

I am not so sure, after nearly ten years of living and
working in the midst of “successful democratic politicians,”
that they are all “insecure and intimidated men.” I am con-
vinced that the complication of public business and the com-
petition for the public’s attention have obscured innumerable
acts of political courage — ^large and small — ^performed almost
daily in the Senate Chamber. I am convinced that the decline
— if there has been a decline— has been less in the Senate
than in the public’s appreciation of the art of politics, of the
nature and necessity for compromise and balance, and of the
nature of the Senate as a legislative chamber. And, finally, I
am convinced that we have criticized those who have fbl-

[ 23 ]

PROFILES IN COURAGE

lowed the crowd — and at the same time criticized those who
have defied it — because we have not fully understood the
responsibility of a Senator to his constituents or recognized
the diflSculty facing a politician conscientiously desiring, in
Webster’s words, “to push [his] skiff from the shore alone”
into a hostile and turbulent sea. Perhaps if the American
people more fully comprehended the terrible pressures which
discourage acts of pohtical courage, which drive a Senator
to abandon or subdue his conscience, then they might be
less critical of those who take the easier road — and more
appreciative of those still able to follow the path of courage.

The first pressure to be mentioned is a form of pressure
rarely recognized by the general pubhe. Americans want to
be liked — and Senators are no exception. They are by nature
— and of necessity — social animals. We enjoy the comrade-
ship and approval of our friends and colleagues. We prefer
praise to abuse, popularity to contempt. Realizing that the
path of the conscientious insurgent must frequently be a
lonely one, we are anxious to get along with our fellow legis-
lators, our fellow members of the club, to abide by the club-
house rules and patterns, not to pursue a unique and inde-
pendent course which would embarrass or irritate the other
members. We reahze, moreover, that our influence in the
club — and the extent to which we can accomplish om ob-
jectives and those of our constituents — are dependent in
some measure on the esteem with which we are regarded by
other Senators. “The way to get along,” I was told when I
entered Congress, “is to go along.”

Going along means more than just good fellowship — ^it in-
cludes the use of compromise, the sense of things possible.

[ 24 ]

COURAGE AND POLITICS

We should not be too hasty in condemning all compromise
as bad morals. For politics and legislation are not matters for
inflexible principles or imattainablc ideals. Politics, as John
Morley has acutely observed, “is a field where action is one
long second best, and where the choice constantly lies be-
tween two blunders”; and legislation, under the democratic
way of life and the Federal system of Government, requires
compromise between the desires of each individual and
group and those around them. Henry Clay, who should have
known, said compromise was the cement that held the Union
together:

All legislation ... is founded upon the principle of mutual
concession. . . . Let him who elevates himself above humanity,
ab( \ c .1 . weaknesses, its infirmities, its wants, its necessities, say,
if he pleases, “I never will compromise”; but let no one who is
not above the frailties of oiur common nature disdain com-
promise.

It is compromise that prevents each set of reformers — the
wets and the drys, the one-worlders and the isolationists, the
viviseclionists and the anti-vivisectionists — from crushing
the group on the extreme opposite end of the political spec-
trum. The fanatics and extremists and even those conscien-
tiously devoted to haid and fast principles are always dis-
appointed at the failure of their Goveniment to rush to
implement all of their principles and to denoimce those of
their opponents. But the legislator has some responsibility to
conciliate those opposing forces within his state and party
and to represent them in the larger clash of interests on the
national level; and he alone knows that there are few if any

[ 25 ]

PROFILES IN COURAGE

issues where all the truth and all the right and all the angels
are on one side.

Some of my colleagues who are criticized today for lack
of forthright principles — or who are looked upon with scorn-
ful eyes as compromising "politicians” — are simply engaged
in the fine art of conciliating, balancing and interpreting the
forces and factions of public opinion, an art essential to keep-
ing our nation united and enabling our Government to func-
tion. Their consciences may direct them from time to time
to take a more rigid stand for principle — ^but their intellects
tell them that a fair or poor bill is better than no bill at all,
and that only through the give-and-take of compromise will
any bill receive the successive approval of the Senate, the
House, the President and the nation.

But the question is how we will compromise and with
whom. For it is easy to seize upon unnecessary concessions,
not as means of legitimately resolving conflicts but as
methods of “going along.”

There were further implications in the, warning that I
should “go along” — ^implications of the rewards that would
follow fulfillment of my obligation to follow the parly lead-
ership whom I had helped select. All of us in the Congress
are made fully aware of the importance of party unity ( what
sins have been committed in that namel ) and the adverse
efiPect upon our party’s chances in the next election which any
rebellious conduct might bring. Moreover, in these days of
Civil Service, die loaves and fishes of patronage available to
the legislator — ^for distribution to those earnest campaigners
whose efforts were inspired by something more than mere
conviction — are comparatively few; and he who breaks the

[ 26 ]

COUBAGE AND POLITICS

party’s ranks may find that there are suddenly none at all.
Even the success of legislation in which he is interested de-
pends in part on the extent to which his support of his
party’s programs has won him die assistance of his party’s
leaders. Finally, the Senator who follows the independent
course of conscience is likely to discover that he has earned
the disdain not only of his colleagues in the Senate and his
associates in his party but also that of the all-important
contributors to his campaign fund.

It is thinking of that next campaign — ^the desire to be re-
elected — ^that provides the second pressure on the conscien-
tious Senator. It should not automatically be assmned that
this is a wholly selfish motive — although it is not unnatural
that these who have chosen politics as their profession should
seek to continue their careers — ^for Senators who go down to
defeat in a vain defense of a single principle will not be on
hand to fight for that or any other principle in the future.

Defeat, moreover, is not only a setback for the Senator
himself — ^he is also obligated to consider the effect upon the
party he supports, upon the friends and supporters who have
“gone out on a limb” for him or invested their savings in his
career, and even upon the wife and children who^e happiness
and security— often depending at least in part upon his suc-
cess in office — ^may mean more to him than anything eke.

Where eke, in a non-totalitarian country, but in the po-
litical profession is the individual expected to sacrifice all —
including his own career — ^for the national good? In private
life, as in industry, we expect the individual to advance hk
own enli^tened self-interest — ^widiin the limitations of the
law— in order to achieve over-all progress. But in public life

[ 27 ]

PROFILES IN COURAGE

we expect individuals to sacrifice their private interests to
permit the national good to progress.

In no other occupation but politics is it expected that a
man will sacrifice honors, prestige and his chosen career on
a single issue. Lawyers, businessmen, teachers, doctors, all
face difBcult personal decisions involving their integrity —
but few, if any, face them in the glare of the spotlight as do
those in public office. Few, if any, face the same dread finality
of d(x;ision that confronts a Senator facing an important call
of the roll. He may want more time for his decision — ^he may
believe there is something to be said for both sides — ^he may
feel that a slight amendment could remove all difficulties —
but when that roll is called he cannot hide, he cannot equiv-
ocate, he carmot delay — and he senses that his constituency,
like the Raven in Poe’s poem, is perched there on his Senate
desk, croaking “Nevermore” as he casts the vote that stakes
his political future.

Few Senators “retire to Pocatello” by choice. The virus
of Potomac Fever, which rages everywhere in Washington,
breeds nowhere in more virulent form than on the Senate
floor. The prospect of forced retirement from “the most ex-
clusive club in the world,” the possibilities of giving up the
interesting work, the fascinating trappings and the impressive
prerogatives of Congressional office, can cause even the most
courageous politician seriotis loss of sleep. Thus, perhaps
without realizing it, some Senators tend to take the easier,
less troublesome path to harmonize or rationalize what at
first appears to be a conflict between their conscience — or
the result of their deliberations — and the majority opinion of
their constituents. Such Senators are not political cowards —

[ 28 ]

COUKAGE AND POLITICS

they have simply developed the habit of sincerely reaching
conclusions inevitably in accordance with popular opinion.

Still other Senators have not developed that habit — they
have neither conditioned nor subdued their consciences —
but they feel, sincerely and without cynicism, that they must
leave considerations of conscience aside if they are to be
effective. The profession of politics, they would agree with
political writer Frank Kent, is not immoral, simply non-
moral:

Probably the most important single accomplishment for the
politically ambitious is the fine art of seeming to say something
without doing so. . . . The important thing is not to be on the
right side of the current issue but on the popular side . . .
regardlc. _ of your own convictions or of the facts. This business
of getting the votes is a severely practical one into which
matters of morality, of right and wrong, should not be allowed
to intrude.

And Kent quotes the advice allegedly given during the
1920 campaign by former Senator Ashurst of Arizona to his
colleague Mark Smith:

Mark, the great trouble with you is that you refuse to be a
demagogue. You will not submerge your principles in order
to get yourself elected. You must learn that there are times
when a man in public life is compelled to rise above Jus prin-
ciples.

Not all Senators would agree — but few would deny that the
desire to be re-elected exercises a strong brake on independ-
ent courage.

The third and most significant source of pressures which

[ 29 ]

FBOFILES IN COUBAGE

discourage political courage in the conscientious Senator or
Congressman — and practically all of the problems described
in this chapter apply equally to members of both Houses —
is the pressure of his constituency, the interest groups, the
organized letter writers, the economic blocs and even the
average voter. To cope with such pressures, to defy them or
even to satisfy them, is a formidable task. All of us occa-
sionally have the urge to follow the example of Congressman
John Steven hfcGroarty of California, who wrote a con-
stituent in 1Q34:

One of the countless drawbacks of being in Congress is that
I am compelled to receive impertinent letters from a jackass
like you in which you say I promised to have the Sierra Madre
mountains reforested and I have been in Congress two months
and haven't done it. Will you please take two running jumps
and go to hell.

Fortimately or unfortunately, few follow that urge— but the
provocation is there — ^not only from unreasonable letters and
impossible requests, but also from hopelessly inconsistent de-
mands and endlessly imsatisfied grievances.

In my o£Bce today, for example, was a delegation repre-
senting New England textile mills, an industry essential to
our prosperity. They want the tariff lowered on the imported
wool they buy from Australia and they want the tariff raised
on the finished woolen goods imported from England with
which they must compete. One of my Southern colleagues
told me that a s imilar group visited him not long ago with
the same requests — ^but further urging that he take steps to
(i) end the low-wage competition from Japan and ( 2 ) pre-

[ 30 ]

COURAGE AND POLITICS

vent the Congress from ending— through a higher miniTnuni
wage — the low-wage advantage they themselves enjoy to the
dismay of my constituents. Only yesterday two groups called
me off the Senate floor — ^the first was a group of businessmen
seeking to have a local Government activity closed as unfair
competition for private enterprise; and the other was a
group representing the men who work m the Government
installation and who are worried about their jobs.

All of us in the Senate meet endless examples of such con-
flicting pressures, which only reflect the inconsistencies in-
evitable in our complex economy. If we tell our constituents
frankly that we can do nothing, they feel we are unsympa-
thetic or inadequate. If we try and fail — usually meeting a
coimteraction fron. other Senators representing other inter-
ests — they say we are like all the rest of the politicians. All
we can do is retreat into the Cloakroom and weep on the
shoulder of a sympathetic colleague — or go home and snarl
at our wives.

We may tell omselves that these pressure groups and
letter writers represent only a small percentage of the voters
— and this is true. But they are the articulate few wh»>se
views cannot be ignored and who constitute the greater part
of our contacts with the public at large, whose opinions we
cannot know, whose vote we must obtain and yet who in
all probability have a limited idea of what we are trying to
do. ( One Senator, since retired, said that he voted with the
special interests on every issue, hoping that by election time
all of them added together would constitute nearly a majority
that would remember bim favorably, while the otber mem-
bers of the public would never know about- much less re-

[ 31 ]

PROFILES IN COURAGE

member — ^his vote against their welfare. It is reassuring to
know that this seemingly unbeatable formula did not work
in his case.)

These, then, are some of the pressures which confront a
man of conscience. He cannot ignore the pressure groups,
his constituents, his party, the comradeship of his colleagues,
the needs of his family, his own pride in office, the necessity
for compromise and tlie importance of remaining in office.
He must judge for himself which path to choose, which step
will most help or hinder the ideals to which he is committed.
He realizes that once he begins to weigh each issue in terms
of his chances for re-election, once he begins to compromise
away his principles on one issue after another for fear that
to do otherwise would halt his career and prevent future
fights for principle, then he has lost the very freedom of con-
science which justifies his continuance in office. But to de-
cide at which point and on which issue he will risk his career
is a difficult and soul-searching decision.

« • «

But this is no real problem, some will say. Always do what
is right, regardless of whether it is popular. Ignore the pres-
sures, the temptations, the false compromises.

That is an easy answer — but it is easy only for those who
do not bear the responsibilities of elected office. For more
is involved than pressure, politics and personal ambitions.
Are we rightfully entitled to ignore the demands of our con-
stituents even if we are able and willing to do so? We have
noted the pressures that make political courage a difficult
course — ^let us turn now to those Constitutional and more

[ 32 ]

COURAGE AND POLITICS

theoretical obligations which cast doubt upon the propriety
of such a course — obligations to our state and section, to our
party and, above all, to our constituents.

The primary responsibility of a Senator, most people as-
sume, is to represent the views of his state. Ours is a Federal
system — a Union of relatively sovereign states whose needs
differ greatly — and my Constitutional obligations as Senator
would thus appear to require me to represent the interests of
my state. Who will speak for Massachusetts if her own Sena-
tors do not? Her rights and even her identity become sub-
merged. Her equal representation in Congress is lost. Her
aspirations, however much tliey may from time to time be
in the minority, are denied that equal oppoi trinity to be
heard to which all .ninority views aie entitled

Any Senator need not look very long to realize that his
colleagues are representing their local interests. And if such
interests are ever to be abandoned in favor of the national
good, let the constituents — ^not the Senator — decide when
and to what extent. For he is their agent in Washington, the
protector of tlieir rights, recognized by the Vice President
in the Senate Chamber as “the Senator from Massachusetts”
or “the Senator from Texas.”

But when all of this is said and admitted, we have not yet
told the full stoi). For in Washington we are “United States
Senators” and members of the Senate of the United States as
well as Senators from Massachusetts and Texas. Our oath of
office is administered by the Vice President, not by the Gov-
ernors of our respective states; and we comejto Washington,
to paraphrase Edmund Burke, not as hostile ambassadors or
special pleaders for our state or section, in exposition to ad-

PROFILES IN COURAGE

vocates and agents of other areas, but as members of the
deliberative assembly of one nation with one interest. Of
course, we should not ignore the needs of our area — ^nor
could we easily as products of that area — ^but none could be
found to look out for the national interest if local interests
wholly dominated the role of each of us.

There are other obligations in addition to those of state
and region — the obligations of the party whose pressures
have already been described. Even if I can disregard those
pressures, do I not have an obligation to go along with the
party that placed me in office? We believe in this country
in the principle of party responsibihty, and we recognize
the necessity of adhering to party platforms — ^if the party
label is to mean anything to the voters. Only in this way can
our basically two-party nation avoid the pitfalls of multiple
splinter parties, whose purity and rigidity of principle, 1
might add — ^if I may suggest a sort of Gresham’s Law of
politics — ^increase inversely with the size of their member-
ship.

And yet we cannot permit the pressures of party responsi-
bility to submerge on every issue the call of personal re-
sponsibility. For the party which, in its drive for unity,
discipline and success, ever decides to exclude new ideas,
independent conduct or insurgent members, is in danger. In
the words of Senator Albert Beveridge:

A party can live only by growing, intolerance of ideas brings
its death. ... An organization that depends upon r^roduction
only for its vote, son taking die place of father, is not a
political party, but a Chinese tong; not citizens brought to-
gether by diought and conscience, but an Indian tribe held
together by blood and prejudice.

[ 34 ]

COURAGE AND POLITICS

The two-party system remains not because both are rigid
but because both are flexible. The Republican party when I
entered Congress was big enough to hold, for example, both
Robert Taft and Wayne Morse — and the Democratic side
c.** the Senate in which 1 now serve can happily embrace, for
example, both Harry Byrd and Wayne Morse.

Of course, both major parties today seek to serve the
national interest. They would do so in order to obtain the
broadest base of support, if for no nobler reason. But when
party and officeholder differ as to how the national interest
is to be served, we must place first the re.sponsibility we owe
not to our party or even to our constituents but to our in-
dividual consciences.

But it is a lit Je easier to dismiss one’s obligations to local
interests and party ties than to face squarely the problem of
one’s responsibility to the will of his constituents. A Senator
who avoids this responsibility would appear to be account-
able to no one, and the basic safeguards of our democratic
system would thus have vanished. He is no longer representa-
tive in the true sense, he has violated his public trust, he has
betrayed the confidence demonstrated by those who voted
for him to carry out their views. “Is the creature,” as John
Tyler asked the House of Representatives in his maiden
speech, “to set himself in opposition to his Creator? Is the
servant to disobey the wishes of his master?”

How can he be regarded as representing the people when
he speaks, not dieir language, but his own? He ceases to be their
representative when he does so, and represents himself alone.

In short, according to this school of thought, if I am to
be properly responsive to the will of my constituents, it is

[ 35 ]

PROFILES IN COURAGE

my duty to place their principles, not mine, above all ebe.
This may not always be easy, but it nevertheless is the es-
sence of democracy, faith in the wisdom of the people and
their views. To be sure, the people will make mistakes — they
will get no better government than they deserve — ^but that
is far better than the representative of the people arrogating
for himself the right to say he knows better than they what
is good for them. Is he not chosen, the argument closes, to
vote as they would vote were they in his place?

It is difficult to accept such a narrow view of the role of
United States Senator — ^a view that assumes the people of
Massachusetts sent me to Washington to serve merely as
a seismograph to record shifts in popular opinion. I reject
this view not because I lack faith in the “wisdom of the
people,” but because this concept of democracy actually puts
too little faith in the people. Those who would deny the
obligation of the representative to be bound by every impulse
of the electorate — ^regardless of the conclusions his own de-
liberations direct — do trust in the wisdom of the people.
They have faith in their ultimate sense of justice, faith in
their ability to honor coinage and respect judgment, and
faith that in the long run they will act imselfishly for the
good of the nation. It is that kind of faith on which democ-
racy is based, not simply the often frustrated hope that pub-
lic opinion will at all times under all circumstances promptly
identify itself with the public interest.

The voters selected us, in short, because they had con-
fidence in our judgment and our ability to exercise that
judgment from a position where we could determine what
were their own best interests, as a part of the nation’s in-

[ 36 ]

COURAGE AND POLITICS

terests. This may mean that we must on occasion lead, in-
form, correct and sometimes even ignore constituent opinion,
if we are to exercise fully that judgment for which we were
elected. But acting without selfish motive or private bias,
those who follow the dictates of an intelligent conscience
are not aristocrats, demagogues, eccentrics or callous poli-
ticians insensitive to the feelings of the public. They expect
— and not without considerable trepidation — ^their constitu-
ents to be the final judges of the wisdom of their course; but
they have faith that those constituents — today, tomorrow
or even in another generation — ^will at least respect the
principles that motivated their independent stand.

If their careers are temporarily or even permanently buried
under an avalanche of abusive editorials, poison-pen letters,
and opposition votes at the polls — as they sometimes are, for
that is the risk they take — they await the futiure with hope
and confidence, aware of the fact that the voting public
frequently sufl^ers from what ex-Congressman T. V. Smith
called the lag ‘Isetween our way of thought and our way of
life” Smith compared it to the subject of the anonymous
poem:

There was a dachshund once, so long
He hadn’t any notion
How long it took to notify
His tail of his emotion.

And so it happened, while his eyes
Were filled with woe and sadness.

His little tail went wagging on
Because of previous gladness.

[ 37 ]

PROFILES IN COURAGE

Moreover, I question whedier any Senator, before we
vote on a measure, can state with certainty exactly how
the majority of his constituents feel on the issue as it is
presented to the Senate. All of us in the Senate live in an
iron lung — the iron lung of politics, and it is no easy task
to emerge from that rarefied atmosphere in order to breadie
the same fresh air our constituents breathe. It is difficvilt, too,
to see in person an appreciable number of voters besides
those professional hangers-on and vocal elements who gather
about the politician on a trip home. In Washington I
frequently find myself believing that forty or fifty letters,
six visits from professional politicians and lobbyists, and
three editorials in Massachusetts newspapers constitute public
opinion on a given issue. Yet in truth 1 rarely know how
the great majority of the voters feel, or even how much
they know of the issues that seem so burning in Washington.

Today the challenge of political courage looms larger
than ever before. For our everyday life is becoming so
saturated with the treipendous power of mass communica-
tions that any unpopular or unorthodox course arouses a
storm of protests such as John Quincy Adams — under
attack in 1807— could never have envisioned. Our political
life is becoming so expensive, so mechanized and so domi-
nated by professional politicians and public relations men
that the idealist who dreams of independent statesmanship is
rudely awakened by the necessities of election and accom-
plishment. And our public life is becoming so increasingly
centered upon diat seemingly unending war to which we
have given the curious epidiet “cold" that we tend to

138 ]

COURA.GE AND POLITICS

encourage rigid ideological unity and orthodox patterns of
thought.

And thus, in the days ahead, only the very courageous
will be able to take the hard and impopular decisions
necessary for our survival in the struggle with a powerful
enemy — an enemy with leaders who need give little thought
to the popularity of their course, who need pay little tribute
to the public opinion they themselves manipulate, and who
may force, without fear of retaliation at the polls, their
citizens to sacrifice present laughter for future glory. And
only the very courageous will be able to keep alive the
spirit of individualism and dissent which gave birth to this
nation, nourished it as an infant and carried it through its
severest tests upon llie attainment of its matiuity.

Of coxuse, it would be much easier if we could all
continue to think in traditional political patterns — of liber-
alism and conservatism, as Republicans and Democrats, from
the viewpoint of North and South, management and labor,
business and consumer or some equally narrow framework.
It would be more comfortable to continue to move and vote
in platoons, joining whomever of our colleagues are equally
enslaved by some current fashion, raging prejudice or popular
movement. But today this nation cannot tolerate the luxury
of such lazy political habits. Only the strength and progress
and peaceful change that come from independent judg-
ment and individual ideas — and even from the unorthodox
and the eccentric — can enable us to surpass that foreign
ideology that fears free thought more than it fears hydrogen
bombs.

We shall need compromises in the days ahead, to be sure.

[ 39 ]

PROFILES IN COURAGE

But these will be, or should be, compromises of issues,
not of principles. We can compromise our political positions,
but not oiursclves. We can resolve the clash of interests
without conceding our ideals. And even the necessity for
the right kind of compromise does not eliminate the need
for those idealists and reformers who keep our compromises
moving ahead, who prevent all political situations from
meeting the description supplied by Shaw: “smirched with
compromise, rotted with opportunism, mildewed by expedi-
ence, stretched out of shape with wirepulling and putrefied
with permeation.” Compromise need not mean cowardice.
Indeed it is frequently the compromisers and conciliators
who are faced with the severest tests of political courage as
they oppose the extremist views of their constituents. It was
because Daniel Webster conscientiously favored compromise
in 1850 that he earned a condemnation unsurpassed in the
annals of pohtical history.

His is a story worth remembering today. So, I believe,
are the stories of other Senators of courage — men whose
abiding loyalty to their nation triumphed over all personal
and political considerations, men who showed the real
meaning of courage and a real faith in democracy, men
who made the Senate of the United States something more
than a mere collection of robots dutifully recording the
views of their constituents, or a gathering of time-servers
skilled only in predicting and following the tides of public
sentiment.

Some of these men, whose stories follow, were right in
their beliefs; others perhaps were not. Some were ultimately
vindicated by a return to popularity; many were not. Some

[ 40 ]

COURAGE AND POLITICS

showed courage throughout the whole of their political
lives; others sailed with the wind until the decisive moment
when their conscience, and events, propelled them into the
center of the storm. Some were courageous in their un-
yielding devotion to absolute principles; others were damned
for advocating compromise.

Whatever their differences, the American politicians whose
stories are here retold shared that one heroic quality —
courage. In the pages that follow, 1 have attempted to set
forth their lives — ^the ideals they lived for and the principles
tliey fought for, their virtues and their sins, their dreams
and their disillusionments, the praise they earned and the
abuse they endured. All this may be set down on the printed
page. It is ours to write about, it is ours to read about. But
there was in the hves of each of these men something that
it is difBcult for the printed page to capture — and yet
something that has reached the homes and enriched the
heritage of every citizen in every part of the land.

[ 41 ]

IPJ

o

The Time and the Place

☆

☆ ☆
☆

As our first story begins, in 1803, Washington was no
more than a raw, country village. Legend has it that a new
French envoy, looking about upon his arrival, cried: “My
CodI What have 1 done to be condemned to reside in this
city!’' In the imfinished Capitol sat the Senate of the United
States, already vastly different from that very first Senate
which had sat in the old New York City Hall in 1789,
and even more different from the body originally planned
by the makers of the Constitution in 1787.

The foimding fathers could not have envisioned service
in the Senate as providing an opportunity for “political
courage," whereby men would endanger or end their careers
by resisting the will of their constituents. For their very
concept of the Senate, in contrast to the House, was of a
body which would not be subject to constituent pressures.
Each state, regardless of size and population, was to have the
same number of Senators, as though they were ambassadors

[ 45 ]

PROFILES IN COURAGE

from individual sovereign state governments to the Federal
Government, not representatives of the voting public.
Senators would not stand for re-election every two years —
indeed, Alexander Hamilton suggested they be given life
tenure — and a six-year term was intended to insulate them
from public opinion.

Nor were Senators even to be elected by popular vote; the
state legislatures, which could be relied upon to represent
the conservative property interests of each state and to resist
the "follies of the masses,” were assigned that function. In
tlus way, said Delegate John Dickinson to the Constitutional
Convention, the Senate would "consist of the most distin-
guished characters, distinguished for their rank in life and
their weight of property, and bearing as strong a likeness
to the British House of Lords as possible.”

Moreover, the Senate was to be less of a legislative body —
where heated debates on vital issues would be followed
anxiously by the public — and more of an executive council,
passing on appointments and treaties and generally advising
the President, without public galleries or even a journal of
its own proceedings. Local prejudices, said Hamilton, were
to be forgotten on the Senate floor, else it would simply be
a repetition of the Continental Congress where “the first
question has been liow will such a measure affect my
constituents and . . . my re-election.' ”

The original twenty-two United States Senators, meeting
in New York in 1789, at first seemed to fulfill the expecta-
tions of the makers of the Constitution, particularly regarding
its resemblance to the House of Lords. A distinguished and
glittering gathering of eminent and experienced statesmen,
the Senate, as compared with the House of Representatives,

[ 46 ]

THE TIME AND THE PLACE

was on the whole far more pompous and formal, its chambers
far more elaborate, and its members far more concerned
with elegance of dress and social rank. Meeting behind
closed doors, without the use of standing committees, the
Senate consulted personally with President Washington, £aid
acted very nearly as an integral part of the administra-
tion.

But, as it must to all legislative bodies, pohtics came to
the United States Senate. As the Federalist party split on
foreign policy and Thomas Jefferson resigned from the
Cabinet to organize his followers, the Senate became a
forum for criticism of the executive branch, and tlie role
of executive council was assumed instead by a Cabinet of
men upon wh^'iu the President could depend to share his
views and be responsible to him. Other precedents had
already divided the Senate and the White House. In 1789
“Senatorial Courtesy” rejected Benjamin Fishboume as of-
ficer of the Port of Savannah because he was unacceptable
to the Georgia Senators. Shortly thereafter, special com-
mittees laimched the first Senate investigations of Adminis-
tration policies and practices. And in that same year the
impossibihty of the Senate’s role as an executive council
became apparent when a Northwest Indian Treaty was being
discussed in person with the Senate by Washington and his
Secretary of War. Senator Maclay and others, fearful (as
he expressed it in his diary) that “the President wishes to
tread on the necks of the Senate,” sought to refer the
matter to a select conunittee. The President, Maclay records,

started up in a violent fret . . . [and withdrew] with a discon-
tented air. Had it been any other man than the man whom I

[ 47 ]

PROFILES IN COURAGE

wish to regard as the first character in the world, I would have
said with sullen dignity.

Gradually the Senate assumed more of the aspects of a
legislative body. In 1794 public galleries were authorized
for regular legislative sessions; in 1801 newspaper cor-
respondents were admitted; and by 1803 the Senate was
debating who should have the privilege of coming upon
the Senate floor. Congressmen, Ambassadors, Department
Heads and Governors could be agreed upon, but what about
“the ladies”? Senator Wright contended “that their presence
gives a pleasing and necessary animation to debate, polishing
the speakers' arguments and softening their manner.” But
John Quincy Adams, whose puritanical candor on such
occasions will be subsequently noted, replied that the ladies
“introduced noise and confusion into the Senate, and debates
were protracted to arrest their attention.” (The motion to
admit “the ladies” was defeated 16-12, although this policy
of exclusion would be reversed in later years, only ,to be
restored in modem times. )

Although Senators were paid the munificent sum of $6
per day, and their privileges included the use of great silver
snufiFboxes on the Senate floor, the aristocratic manners which
had characterized the first Senate were strangely out of place
when the stmggling hamlet of Washington became the capi-
tal city in 1800, for its rugged surroundings contrasted
sharply with those enjoyed at the temporary capitals in
New York and Philadelphia. Formality in Senate procedures
was retained, however — although Vice President Aaron
Burr, himself an object of some disrepute after killing

[ 48 ]

THE TIME AND THE PLACE

Hamilton in a duel, frequently found it necessary to call
Senators to order for “eating apples and cakes in their
seats” and walking between those engaged in discussion.
And John Quincy Adams noted in his diary that some of
his colleagues’ speeches “were so wild and so bluntly
expressed as to be explained only by recognizing that the
member was inflamed by drink.” But certainly the Senate
retained greater dignity than the House, where Members
might sit with hat on head and feet on desk, watching
John Randolph of Roanoke stride in wearing silver spurs,
carrying a heavy riding whip, followed by a foxhound which
slept beneath his desk, and calling to the doorkeeper for
more liquor as he launched vicious attacks upon his op-
ponents.

Ne^’ertheless, the House, still small enough to be a truly
deliberative body, overshadowed the Senate in terms of
political power during the first three decades of our govern-
ment. Madison said that “being a young man and desirous
of increasing his reputation as a statesman, he could not
afford to accept a seat in the Senate,” whose debates had
little influence on public opinion. Many Senators surrendered
their seats to become members of the House, or to hold other
state and local oflBccs; and the Senate frequently adjourned
to permit its members to hear an important House debate.

Senator Maclay, whose diary provides the best, if some-
what acidly warped, record of that early Senate, frequently
complained of dull and trivial sessions, as witness this entry
for April 3, 1790: “Went to the Hall. The minutes were read.
A message was received from the President of the United
States. A report was handed to the Chair. We looked and

[ 49 ]

PROFILES IN COURAGE

laughed at each other for half an hour, and adjourned."

But as the Senate shed its role as executive council and
entered on a more equal basis with the House into the
legislative process, it also became apparent that no Con-
stitutional safeguards, however nobly created, could prevent
political and constituent pressures from entering those delib-
erations. Maclay was disgusted that, in place of “the most
delicate honor, the most exalted wisdom and the most
refined generosity” governing every act and deed of his
colleagues, as he had expected, he found “the basest selfish-
ness. . . . Our government is a mere system of jockeying
opinions: “Vote this way for me, and I will vote that way
for you.’ ” The local prejudices which Hamilton had hoped
to exclude only intensified, particularly as the Federalists of
New England and the JefiFersonians of Virginia split along
sectional as well as partisan lines. State legislatures, which
would become increasingly responsive to those previously
scorned “masses” as property qualifications for voting were
removed, transmitted the political pressures of their own
constituents to their Senators through “instructions” (a
device which in this country apparently had originated in the
old Puritan town meetings, which had instructed their
deputies to the Massachusetts General Court on such meas-
ures as "removing the Capital from the wicked city of
Boston,” taking any steps possible “to exterminate the
legal profession,” and preventing debtors from paying their
debts “with old rusty barrels of guns that are serviceable
for no man, except to work up as old iron”). Some Senators
were also required to return regularly to their state legisla-
tures, to report like Venetian envoys on their stewardship
at the Capital.

[ 50 ]

THE TIME AND THE PLACE

It was a time of change — in the Senate, in the concept
of our government, in the growth of the two-party system,
in the spread of democracy to the farm and the frontier
and in the United States of America. Men who were flexible,
men who could move with or ride over the changing cur-
rents of public opinion, men who sought their glory in the
dignity of the Senate rather than its legislative accomplish-
ments — these were the men for such times. But young John
Quincy Adams of Massachusetts was not such a man.

[ 51 ]

II

THE MAGISTRATE IS THE SERVANT NOT.

OF THE PEOPLE, BUT OF HIS GOD.”

☆

John Quincy Adams

young senator from Massachusetts stirred rest-
I lessly in his chair as the debate droned on. The half-
filled Senate chamber fairly echoed with the shout-
ing of his Massachusetts' colleague, Senator Pickering, who
was denouncing President Jefferson’s Trade Embargo of
1807 for what seemed like the one hundredth time. Outside,
a dreary January rain had bogged the dismal village of
Washington in a sea of myd. Sorting the mail from Massa-
chusetts which lay in disarray on his desk, John Quincy
Adams found his eye caught by an unfamiliar handwriting,
on an envelope with no return address. Inside was a single
sheet of fine linen paper, and the Senator grimly read its
anonymous message a second time before crumpling letter
and envelope into the basket by his desk:

[ 52 ]

JOHN QUINCY ADAMS

Lucifer, Son of die Morning, how thou hast fallen! We hope
not irrecoverably. Oh Adams, remember who thou art. Return
to Massachusetts! Return to thy country. Assist not in its
destruction! Consider the consequences! Awake — arouse in time!

A Fedebaust

A Federalist! Adams mused bitterly over the word. Was
he not the son of the last Federalist President? Had he not
served Federalist administrations in the diplomatic service,
abroad? Had he not been elected as a Federalist to the
Massachusetts Legislature and then to the United States
Senate? Now, simply because he had placed national interest
before party and section, the Federalists had deserted him.
Yes, he thought, I did not desert them, as they charge — ^it is
they who have deserted me.

My political prospects are declining [he wrote in his diary
that night] and as my term of service draws near its close, I
am constantly approaching to the certainty of being restored
to the situation of a private citizen. For this event, however,
I hope to have my mind sufficiently prepared. In the meantime,
I implore that Spirit from whom every good and perfect gift
descends to enable me to render essential service to my country,
and that I may never be governed in my public conduct by
any consideration other than that of my duty.

These are not merely the sentiments of a courageous
Senator, they are also the words of a Puritan statesman.
For John Quincy Adams was one of the great representatives
of that extraordinary breed who have left a memorable
imprint upon our Government and our way of life. Harsh
and intractable, like the rocky New England countryside
which colored his attitude toward the world at large, the

[ 53 ]

PROFILES IN COURAGE

Puritan gave meaning, consistency and character to the early
days of the American Republic. His somber sense of
responsibility toward his Creator he carried into every phase
of his daily life. He believed that man was made in the
image of God, and thus he believed him equal to the extraor-
dinary demands of self-government. The Puritan loved
liberty and he loved the law; he had a genius for determin-
ing the precise point where the rights of the state and the
rights of the individual could be reconciled. The intellect
of the Puritan — of John Quincy Adams and his forebears
— ^was, as George Frisbie Hoar has said:

fit for exact ethical discussion, clear in seeing general truths,
active, unresting, fond of inquiry and debate, but penetrated
and restrained by a shrewd common sense. . . . He had a tenacity
of purpose, a lofty and infiexible courage, an unbending will,
which never qualified or flinched before human antagonist, or
before exile, torture, or death.

In John Quincy Adams these very characteristics jwere
unhappily out of tune with the party intrigues and pohtical
passions of the day. Long before those discouraging months
in the Senate when his mail was filled with abuse from the
Massachusetts Federalists, long before he had even entered
the Senate, he had noted in his diary the dangers that
confronted a Pinitan entering politics: “1 feel strong tempta-
tion to plimge into political controversy,” he had written,
‘l>ut ... a politician in this .country must be the man of
a party. 1 would fain be the man of my whole coimtry.”

• • •

Abigail Adams had proudly told her friends when John

[ 54 ]

JOHN QUINCY ADAMS

Quincy was still a boy that she and her husband, who com-
pletely directed his education and training, had marked their
son for future leadership “in the Cabinet or the field ... a
guardian of his coxmtry s laws and liberties.” Few if any
Americans have been bom with the advantages of John
Quincy Adams: a famous name; a brilliant father who la-
bored unceasingly to develop his son’s natural talents; and
an extraordinary mother. Indeed he was bom with every-
thing to make for a happy and successful life except for those
qualities that bring peace of mind. In spite of a life of ex-
traordinary achievement, he was gnawed constantly by a
sense of inadequacy, of frustration, of failure. Though his
hard New England conscience and his remarkable talents
drove him steadily along a road of unparalleled success, he
had from the beginning an almost morbid sense of constant
failure.

His early feehngs of inadequacy, as well as his precocious
mind, were evidenced by the letter he wrote his father at
age nine:

Dear Sir:

I love to receive letters very well; much better than 1 love
to write them. I make but a poor figure at coinposition. My
head is much too fickle. My thoughts are running after bird’s
eggs, play and trifles, till I get vexed with myself. Mamma has
a troublesome task to keep me a studying. I own I am ashamed
of myself. I have but just entered the third volume of Rollins
History, but designed to have got half through it by this lime.
I am determined this week to be more diligent. I have set myself
a stint to read the third volume half out. If 1 can but keep my
resolution, I may again at the end of the week give a better
account of myself. I wish, sir, you would give me in writing

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PBOFILES IN COURAGE

some instructions with regard to the use of my time, and advise
me how to proportion my studies and play, and I will keep
them by me, and endeavor to foUow them.

With the present determination of growing better, I am, dear

sir, your son, John Quincy Adams

Again, thirty-six years later, having served as United States
Senator, Harvard professor, and American Minister to major
European powers, he could write sadly in his diary:

I am forty-five years old. Two-thirds of a long life have
passed, and I have done nothing to distinguish it by usefulness
to my country and to mankind. . . . Passions, indolence, weak-
ness and infirmities have sometimes made me swerve from my
better knowledge of right and almost constantly paralyzed my
efforts of good.

And finally, at age seventy, having distinguished himself
as a brilliant Secretary of State, an independent President
and an eloquent member of Congress, he was to record som-
berly that his "whole life has been a succession of disappoint-
ments. I can scarcely recollect a single instance of success in
anything that I ever undertook.”

Yet the lifetime which was so bitterly deprecated by its
own principal has never been paralleled in American history.
John Quincy Adams — imtil his death at eighty in the Capitol
— ^held more important offices and participated in more im-
portant events than anyone in the history of our nation, as
Minister to the Hague, Emissary to England, Minister to
Prussia, State Senator, United States Senator, Minister to
Russia, Head of the American Mission to negotiate peace
with England, Minister to England, Secretary of State,

[ 56 ]

JOHN QUINCY ADAMS

President of the United States and member of the House of
Representatives. He figured, in one capacity or another, in
the American Revolution, the War of 1812 and the prelude
to the Civil War. Among the acquaintances and colleagues
who march across the pages of his diary are Sam Adams ( a
kinsman), John Hancock, Washington, Jefferson, Franklin,
Lafayette, John Jay, James Madison, James Monroe, John
Marshall, Henry Clay, Amlrew Jackson, Thomas Hart Ben-
ton, John Tyler, John C. Calhoun, Daniel Webster, Lincoln,
James Buchanan, William Lloyd Garrison, Andrew Johnson,
Jefferson Davis and many others.

Though one of the most talented men ever to serve his
nation, he had few of the personal characteristics wliich or-
dinarily give c^'l't! and charm to personality. But there is a
fascination and nobility in this picture of a man unbending,
narrow and intractable, judging himself more severely than
his most bitter enemies judged him, possessing an integrity
unsurpassed among the major political figures of our history,
and constantly driven onward by his conscience and his
deeply felt obligation to be worthy of his parents, their
example and their precepts.

His frustrations and defeats in political office — as Senator
and President — were the inevitable result of this intransi-
gence in ignoring the pohtical facts of life. It is significant to
note that the two Adamses, father and son, were the only
Presidents not elected for a second term in the first fifty
years of ovur nation’s history. Yet their failures, if they can be
called failuies, were the result of their own undeviating de-
votion to what they considered to be the pubhc interest and
the result of the inabihty of their contemporaries to match

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PROFILES IN COURAGE

the high standards of honor and rectitude that they brought
to public life.

The story of the son is not wholly separable from the
story of the father. For John Quincy Adams was, as Samuel
Eliot Morison has described him, “above all an Adams”;
and his heartwarming devotion to his father and the latter’s
steadfast loyalty to his son regardless of political embarrass-
ment offer a single ray of warmth in that otherwise hard,
cold existence. (“What a queer familyl” Federalist leader
Harrison Otis wrote in later years. “I think them all varieties
in a peculiar species of oiur race exhibiting a combination of
talents and good moral character with passions and preju-
dices calculated to defeat their own objects and embarrass
their friends.”) As a child in a tightly knit Fmitan family,
John Quincy had been taught by his mother to emulate his
famous father; and as a Senator, when colleagues and friends
deserted him on every side, it was to his father that he
turned for support and approval.

Even after the death of the elder Adams, John Quincy
maintained touching loyalty to his father s memory. Reading
in Jefferson’s works the letters written by the latter more
than thirty-five years earlier when his father and Jefferson
h^ been political rivals (although their early friendship
was later revived), he could still work himself into a rage at
what he regarded as Jefferson’s perfidy. “His treatment of
my father,” Adams wrote in his diary, “was double-dealing,
treacherous and false beyond all toleration.” John Quincy
did not comprehend, after a lifetime in the thick of it, how
our complicated Federal system of checks and balances op-
erated; nor did he realize that what he regarded as Jefferson’s

[ 58 ]

JOHN QUINCY ADAMS

"machinations” was merely a facet of the latter’s genius
applied with success to the art and science of Government.

The failure of John Quincy Adams to recognize die po-
litical facts of life first became apparent during his years in
the Senate, years which were neither the most productive of
his life nor those in which his contribution was especially
significant. Yet his single term in the United States Senate
gives us a clear insight into the fate of a man who brou^t
to the public service notable faculties, a respected name and
a singular ambition for the right. His experience illustrates
as does almost none other that even this extraordinary equip-
ment is not enough to succeed in American political life.

• • •

It was not unnatural that John Quincy, returning to
Boston after diplomatic service abroad upon his father’s
defeat for President by Thomas Jefferson, should become
active in the affairs of his father’s party. He admired the
Federalists as the foimders of the Constitution, the cham-
pions of naval power and a bulwark against French Revolu-
tionary influences.

But no sooner had the young ex-diplomat be^ elected as
a Federalist to the Massachusetts Legislature when he dem-
onstrated his audacious disdain for narrow partisanship.
Without consulting his senior colleagues, he proposed — only
forty-eight hours after he had become a member of that
august legislative body — ^that the Republican (Jeffersonian
or Democratic) party be given proportional representation
on the Governor’s council. (Adams later noted that this act
of nonpartisan independence “marked the pi 'uciple by which

[ 59 ]

PROFILES IN COURAGE

my whole public life has been governed from that day to
this”)

In subsequently selecting young Adams for the Senate,
his colleagues in the state legislature may have assumed that
the honor for one of his comparative youth would help im-
press upon him his obligations to his party.

But while with one hand die legislature moved young
John Quincy nearer his vision of service to the nation, with
the other it rudely ripped through the fabric of his dream
and placed real and unpleasant obstacles in his path. For
upon the heels of his election, the jealous and antagonistic
Timothy Pickering (who had been dismissed as Secretary of
State by his father) was selected as Adams’ Senatorial col-
league to fill a short-term vacancy. Neither Pickering nor
Adams entertained any illusions about the former’s bitter
enmity toward the entire Adams family, and John Quincy
realized that as a well-known and powerful Federalist, Sena-
tor Pickering would be able to channel upon his yovmg col-
league all the dislikes and suspicions which the remaining
Federalist Senators had harbored for die independence
shown by the senior Adams as President. Nor could he ex-
pect sympathy from JefiFerson’s Republican Senators, who
had recently completed a bitter campaign against his father
and the Alien and Sedition Laws which bore his approval.
Noting in his diary that “the qualities of mind most pecul-
iarly called for are firmness, perseverance, patience, cool-
ness and forbearance,” John Quincy Adams, like any Puritan
gentleman, set out for Washington determined to meet the
standards of self-discipline which he had imposed upon him-
self.

Arriving in Washington, Adams promptly indicated his

[ 60 ]

JOHN QUINCY ADAMS

disregard for both party afiBliations and customary freshman
reticence. Although illness in the family had prevented him
firom arriving in time to vote on ratification of President
Jefferson’s treaty for the purchase of the Louisiana Terri-
tory, he promptly aroused a storm of controversy by
becoming the only Federalist to support that precedent-
shattering acquisition actively on the floor and to vote for
an $11 million appropriation to effectuate it. His democratic
principles also caused him to fight administration measures
for imposing a government and taxes upon the residents of
the Territory — thus incurring the opposition of his Repub-
lican colleagues as well. But, with a vision of an America
stretched to its continental limits, he regarded Jefferson’s re-
markable feat in •'xcluding Napoleon from our boundaries
while eiuiching our nation as far more important than the
outraged astonishment of his Federahst colleagues. Con-
cerned primarily with maintaining the hegemony of New
England, they feared westward expansion would diminish
the political and economic influence of the commercial
cities of the Northeast, lower the value of Eastern lands in
which they were financially interested, and provide the Tef-
fersonians with a permanent majority in Congress. ’Jhe
young Federalist from Massachusetts, as though he were
oblivious to their attitude, heaped fuel upon the fires of
Federalist rage by attending a banquet of Jeffersonians in
celebration of the purchasel

“The dinner was bad and the toasts too numerous,” Adams
complained dourly in his diary that night. But it is doubtful
that even a feast reminiscent of Boston’s finest inns would
have made his attendance worth while — ^fi-r this was re-
garded by his Federalist friends as the final proof of perfidy.

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PBOFILES IN COURAGE

"Cune on the stripling, how he apes his sirel” wrote
Theodore Lyman, a prominent Federalist who had sided
with Pickering in the latter's falling-out with the senior
Adams. But there was only one Federalist politician whose
opinion young John Quincy valued above his own — ^John
Adams. Anxiously, he sought his father's views, and the
reassurance he received from that elder statesman early in
1804 compensated for all the abuse he had received at the
hands of his father's party. "I do not disapprove of your
conduct in die business of Louisiana," John Adams wrote
his son, "though I know it will become a very unpopular
subject in the northern states. ... I think you have been
rightl"

In his diary young Adams summed up his first months
in the Senate:

I have already had occasion to experience, which I had before
the fullest reason to expect, the danger of adhering to my own
principles. The country is so totally given up to the spirit of
party that not to follow blindfolded die one or the othef is an
expiable offence. . . . Between both, I see the impossibility of
pursuing the dictates of my own conscience without sacrificing
every prospect, not merely of advancement, but even of retain-
ing that character and reputation 1 have enjoyed. Yet my choice
is made, and, if I cannot hope to give satisfaction to my country,
I am at least determined to have the approbation of my own
reflections.

The possession of the proud name of Adams could not
prevent — and may well have hastened — ^the young Senator's
gradual emergence as a minority of one. Had his political
philosophy been more popular, his personal maimetisms

[ 62 ]

JOHN QUINCY ADAMS

would still have made close alliances difficult He was, after
all, “an Adams . . . cold, tactless and rigidly conscientious."
The son of an unpopular father, a renegade in his party and
ratlier brash for a freshman Senator, John Quincy neither
sought nor was offered political alliances or influence.

After only ten days in the Senate he had irritated his
seniors and precipitated a three-hour debate by objecting
to a routine resolution calling upon Senators to wear crepe
one month in honor of three recently deceased patriots. Such
a resolution, he somewhat impertinently argued, was im-
proper if not unconstitutional by “tending to unsuitable dis-
cussions of character, and to debates altogether foreign to
the subjects which properly belong” in the Senate. Next he
astounded his r<»P''ngues by seeking to disqualify from an
impeachment hearing any Senator who had previously voted
on the impeachment resolution as a Member of the
House. Then to show his stubborn intellectual inde-
pendence, he alone opposed a motion to go into executive
session when its sole purpose, he thought, was to give in the
Journal an appearance of doing business when actually there
was none to be done.

But if the Federalist party learned to dislike the “striplirvr”
even more intensely than they had disliked “his sire,” it must
be said that any Federalist love for John Quincy would have
been wasted anyway. For he became increasingly contemp-
tuous of the Federalist party. An American nationalist who
had lived a great part of his brief life abroad, he could not
yield his devotion to the national interest for the narrowly
partisan, parochial and pro-British outlook which dominated
New England's first political party. His foj ■»er colleagues

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PROFILES IN COURAGE

in the State Legislature publicly charged him with imgrate-
ful “conduct worthy of Machiavelli”; but he wrote his
mother that he felt that, as Senator, he could best determine
what Massachusetts’ best interests were, and “if Federalism
consists in looking to the British navy as the only palladium
of our liberty, I must be a pohtical heretic.”

Many Senators before and after 1804 have combatted the
ill-eflFects of being termed a political heretic by their party
chieftains by building strong personal popularity among
their constituents. This became increasingly possible as uni-
versal manhood suffrage became general early in the nine-
teeth century. But not John Quincy Adams. He regarded
every public measure tliat came before him, a fellow Sena-
tor observed, as though it were an abstract proposition from
Euclid, unfettered by considerations of political appeal. He
denied the duty of elected representatives “to be palsied by
the will of their constituents”; and he refused to achieve
success by becoming what he termed a “patriot by profes-
sion,” by pretending “extraordinary solieitude for the peo-
ple, by flattering their prejudices, by ministering to their
passions, and by humoring their transient and changeable
opinions.” His guiding star was the principle of Puritan
statesmanship his father had laid down many years before:
“The magistrate is the servant not of his own desires, not
even of the people, but of his God."*

We would admire the coinage and determination of John
Quincy Adams if he served in the Senate today. We would
respect his nonpartisan, nonsectional approach. But I am not
so certain that we would like him as a person; and it is ap-
parent that many of his colleagues, on both sides of the aisle,

[ 64 ]

JOHN QUINCY ADAMS

did not. His isolation from either political party, and the
antagonisms which he aroused, practically nullified the im-
pact of his own independent and scholarly propositions. His
diary reveals that the yoimg Senator was not wholly in-
sensitive to his increasing political isolation: he complained
that he had “nothing to do but to make fruitless opposition.”
“I have already seen enough to ascertain that no amendments
of my proposing will obtain in the Senate as now filled.” “I
have no doubt of inciuring much censure and obloquy for
this measure.” And he referred to those “who hate me rather
more than they love any principle.” He was particularly
bitter about Pickering’s contemptuous conduct toward him,
and felt that his colleague “abandons altogether the ground
of right, and reh'e. upon what is expedient.”

But it was not until 1807 that the split between party and
Senator became irreparable, and Adams was denounced by
the great majority of his constituents, as well as the party
chiefs. The final break, naturally enough, concerned this
nation s foreign policy. As our relations with Great Britain
worsened, our ships were seized, our cargoes were confis-
cated, and our seamen were “impressed” by British cruisers
and compelled to serve — as alleged British subjects — ^in ♦Jie
King’s navy. Thousands of American seamen were taken
on an organized basis, ships were lost at sea for want of men,
and even those able to "prove” American citizenship were
frequently refused permission to return. Adams’ patriotic in-
stincts were aroused, and he was indignant that the very
Federalist merchants whose ships were attacked had decided
that appeasement of Great Britain was the only answer to
their problems. His Federalist colleagues ev -n attempted to

[ 65 ]

PROFILES IN COURAGE

rationalize such aggressive measures by talking vaguely of
Britain’s difficulties in war with France and om: friendly
tone toward the latter. With undisguised contempt for this
attitude, Adams in 1806 had introduced and pushed to pas-
sage — successfully — a imique experience for him, he noted
in his diary — a series of resolutions condemning British ag-
gressions upon American ships, and requesting the President
to demand restoration and indemnification of the confiscated
vessels. The Federalists, of course, had solidly opposed his
measures, as they did an Adams-supported administration
bill hmiting British imports. He was now, for all practical
pmposes, a man without a party.

Finally, in the summer of 1807, the American frigate
Chesapeake was summarily fired upon off the Virginia Capes
by the British man-of-war Leopard, after the American ves-
sel had refused either to be searched or to hand over four
seamen whom the English claimed to be British subjects.
Several of the American crew were killed or injured. The
incensed Adams was convinced that, party or no party, the
time for forceful action against such intolerable acts had
come. He pleaded with local Federalist officials to call a town
meeting in Boston to protest the incident. Turned down, and
outraged when a prominent Federalist attempted to justify
even the Leopardis attack, he discovered to his grim satisfac-
tion that the Republican party was organizing a similar mass
meeting to be held at the State House that very week.

The Federalist Repertory warned the faithful that the
meeting represented nothing but an “irregular and tumul-
tuous mode of proceeding,” which “no just or honorable man”
should attend. But John Quincy Adams did attend; and,
although he declined to serve as moderator, he nevertheless

[ 66 ]

JOHN QUINCY ADAMS

was instrumental in drafting the group s fighting resolution
which pledged to the President the lives and fortunes of the
participants in support of “any measures, however serious.”

Now the Federalists were outraged. Although they hur-
riedly called an official town meeting to pledge hypocriti-
cally their support to the President too, they stated publicly
that John Quincy Adams, for his public association with
Republican meetings and causes, should “have his head taken
off for apostasy . . . and should no longer be considered as
having any communion with the party.” It was this episode,
the Senator later commented, “which alienated me from that
day and forever from the councils of the Federalist party.”

When Jefferson on September i8, 1807, called upon Con-
gress to retaliate rgainst the British by enacting an embargo
effectively shutting off all further international trade — a
measure apparently ruinous to Massachusetts, the leading
commercial state in the nation — it was John Quincy Adams
of Massachusetts who rose on the Senate floor and called for
referral of the message to a select committee; who was ap-
pointed Chairman of the committee; and who reported both
the Embargo Bill and a bill of his own preventing British
vessels from entering American waters.

“This measure will cost you and me our seats,” young
Adams remarked to a colleague, as the select committee com-
pleted its work and its members made their way to the
Senate floor, “but private interest must not be put in op-
position to public good.”

His words were unerringly prophetic. As the Embargo
Bill, with his help, became law, a storm of protest arose in
Massachusetts reminiscent of the days of the Boston Tea

[ 67 ]

PROFILES IN COURAGE

Party. In that state were located a substantial proportion of
America’s merchant fleet and practically all of the ship-
building and Ashing industries. The embargo completely
idled the shipbuilding industry, destroyed the shipping trade
and tied up the Ashing vessels; and stagnation, bankruptcy,
distress, and migration from the territory became common.
Neither merchants nor seamen could be convinced that the
act was for their own good. Even the fanners of New Eng-
land foimd their products a glut on the market, their export
outlets having been closed.

The Federalist leaders insisted the Embargo was an at-
tempt by Jefferson to ruin New England prosperity, to pro-
voke England to war, and to aid the French. Even though
New England Republicans refused to defend their President’s
bill, the Federalist party, scoring heavily on the issue, re-
turned triumphantly to power in both Houses of the Massa-
chusetts legislature. Talk of New England seceding became
commonplace.

But however great their hatred for Jefferson and his Em-
bargo, Massachusetts Federalists, merchants and other citi-
zens were even more bitter over the “desertion” of their
Senator to the ranks of the enemy. “A party scavengerl”
snorted the Northampton Hampshire Gazette, “one of those
ambitious politicians who lives on both land and water, and
occasionally resorts to each, but who finally settles down in
the mud.” Adams, said the Salem Gazette, is “a popularity
seeker . . . courting the prevailing party,” and one of “Bona-
parte’s Senators.” The Greenfield Gazette called him an
apostate “associated with the assassins of his father’s charac-
ter.” His own social circles in Boston — ^the rich, the culti-

[ 68 ]

JOHN QUINCY ADAMS

vated and the influential — ^all turned against him. "I would
not sit at the same table with that renegade," retorted one
of Boston’s leading citizens in refusing to attend a dinner at
which Adams would be present. And a leading Federalist
wrote widi glee to the Washington party stalwarts, “He
walks into State Street at the usual hour but seems totally
unknown."

John Quincy Adams was alone — but not quite alone.
“Most completely was I deserted by my friends, in Boston
and in the state legislature," he wrote his mother. “I can
never be sufficiently grateful to Providence that my father
and my mother did not join in this general desertion.” For
when the immerciful abuse from his home state was first
heaped upon h'm John Quincy had again turned to his
father and poured out his feelings. And his father replied
that his son’s situation was “clear, plain and obvious”:

You are supported by no party; you have too honest a heart,
too independent a mind, and too brilliant talents, to be sin-
cerely and confidentially trusted by any man who is under the
domination of party maxims or party feelings. . . . You may
depend upon it then that your fate is decided. ... You ought
to know and expect this and by no means regret it. My advice
to you is steadily to pursue the course you are in, with modera-
tion and caution however, because I think it the path of justice.

But the entire Adams family was damned in the eyes of
the ex-President’s former supporters by his son’s act of
covirage. “His [John Quincy’s] apostasy is no longer a mat-
ter of doubt with anybody,” cried Representative Cardenier
of New York. “I wish to God that the noble house of Brain-

[ 69 ]

PROFILES IN COURAGS

tree had been put in a hole — and a deep one, too — 20 years
ago!” But father and son, the Adamses stood together.
“Parton has denounced you as No Federalist,” his father
wrote, “and 1 wish he would denounce me in the same man-
ner, for 1 have long since renounced, abdicated, and dis-
claimed the name and character and attributes of that sect,
as it now appears.”

With his father s support — ^in a fi^t where he stood with
the President who had defeated his father! — ^John Quincy
maintained the unflinching and inflexible bearing which be-
came his Pmitan ancestry. When he was accosted in Boston
by a politically minded preacher who assailed his views “in
a rude and indecent manner, I told him that in consideration
of his age 1 should only remark that he had one lesson yet
to learn — Christian charity.” When his colleague Pickering
denounced him in an open letter to the Legislature which
was distributed throughout Massachusetts in tens of thou-
sands, he wrote a masterful reply — criticizing the Federalist
party as sectional, outmoded and unpatriotic; insisting, that
the critical issues of war and peace could not be decided on
die basis of “geographical' position, party bias or professional
occupation”; and exploding at Pickering's servile statement
that “Although Great Britain, with her thousand ships of
war, could have destroyed our commerce, she has really done
it no essential injury.”

The Federalist Legislature convened at the end of May
1808, with — as the Massachusetts Republican Governor
wrote JefiFerson — ^but one “principal object — ^the political
and even the personal destruction of John Quincy Adams.”
As soon as both Houses had organized, the legislature imme-
diately elected Adams’ successor — ^nine months prior to the

[ 70 ]

JOHN QUINCY ADAMS

expiration of his terml And as its next order of business, the
Legislature promptly passed resolutions instructing its Sena-
tors to urge repeal of the Embargo.

"The election,” Adams realized, “was precipitated for the
sole purpose of specially marking me. For it ought, in regular
order, not to have been made until the winter session of the
legislature.” And the resolutions, he felt, enjoined “upon
their Senators a course of conduct which neither my judg-
ment could approve nor my spirit brook.”

Only one course was conscientiously open to him — ^he
resigned his seat in the Senate in order to defend the policies
of the man who had driven his father from the Presidency.

It was “out of the question,” he wrote, to hold his seat
“witliout exercising the most perfect freedom of agency,
under the sole and exclusive control of my own sense of
right.”

I will only add, that, far from regretting any one of those acts
for which I have suffered, I would do them over again, were
they now to be done, at the hazard of ten times as much slander,
unpopularity, and displacement.

But had his own vote in the Senate been necessary to save
JeflFerson's foreign policy, Adams wrote to those who criti-
cized his departure at such a critical time, then “highly as
I reverenced the authority of my constituents, and bitter as
would have been the cup of resistance to their declared will
... I would have defended their interests against their in-
clinations, and incurred every possible addition to their re-
sentment, to save them from the vassalage of their own de-
lusions.”

[ 71 ]

PROFILES IN COURAGE

Hated by the Federalists and suspected by the Republi-
cans, John Quincy Adams returned to private life. His star
was soon to rise again; but he never forgot this incident or
abandoned his courage of conscience. (Legend has it that
during Adams’ politically independent term as President, in
response to the Presidential toast “May he strike confusion
to his foesl" Daniel Webster dryly conunented, “As he has
already done to his friends.”) Soon after his retirement from
the White House in 1829, Adams was asked by the voters
of the Plymouth District to represent them in Congress. In
disregard of the advice of his family and friends and his own
desire for leisure time to write his father’s biography, he
agreed to accept the post if elected. But he specified, first,
that he should never be expected to promote himself as a
candidate and ask for votes; and, secondly, that he would
pursue a course in Congress completely independent of the
party and people who elected him. On this basis Adams was
elected by an overwhelming vote, and served in the House
until his death. Here he wrote perhaps the brightest chapter
of his history, for as “Old Man Eloquent” he devoted his
remarkable prestige and 'tireless energies to the struggle
against slavery.

To be returned on this independent basis to the Congress
from which he had departed so ignominiously twenty-two
years earlier was a deeply moving experience for the coura-
geous ex-Senator. “I am a member-elect of the Twenty-Sec-
(Mid Congress,” he recorded with pride in his diary. “No
election or appointment conferred upon me ever gave me so
much pleasure. My election as President of the United States
was not half so gratifying to my iiunost soul.”

[ 72 ]

The Time and the Place

☆

☆ ☆
☆

Great crises produce great men, and great deeds of courage.
This coimtry has known no greater crisis than that which
cubninated in the fratricidal war between North and South
in 1861. Thus, without intending to slight other periods of
American history, no work of this nature could overlook
three acts of outstanding political courage — of vital impor-
tance to the eventual maintenance of the Union — which oc-
ciured in tlie fateful decade before the Civil War. In two
cases — involving Senators Sam Houston of Texas and
Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri, both of whom had en-
joyed pcditical dominion in their states for many years —
defeat was their reward. In the third — that involving Daniel
Webster of Massachusetts — even death, which came within
two years of his great decision, did not halt the calumnies
heaped upon him by his enemies, who had sadly embittered
his last days.

■ It is not surprising that this ten-year period of recurring

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PBOFILES IN COURAGE

crises, when the ties that bound the Union were successively
snapping, should have brought forth the best, as it did the
worst, in our political leaders. All in a position of responsi-
bility were obliged to decide between maintaining their
loyalty to the nation or to their state and region. For many
on both sides — the abolitionists in the North, the fire-eaters
in the South, men who were wholly convinced of the right-
ness of their section’s cause — ^the decision came easily.

But to those who felt a dual loyalty to their state and
their country, to those who sought compromises which
would postpone or remove entirely the shadow of war which
hung over them, the decision was agonizing, for the ulti-
mate choice involved the breaking of old loyalties and
friendships, and the prospect of humiliating political defeat.

The cockpit in which this struggle between North and
South was fought was the chamber of the United States
Senate. The South, faced with the steadily growing popula-
tion of the North as reflected in increasing majorities in the
House of Representatives, realized that its sole hope of
maintaining its power and prestige lay in the Senate. It was
for this reason that the admission of new states into the
Union, which threatened continuously to upset the precari-
ous balance of power between the free and the slave states,
between the agricultural and manufactiuing regions, was at
the heart of some of the great Senate debates in the first
half of the nineteenth century.

In 1820 a law was passed to admit Maine and Missouri
into the Union together, one free, the other slave, as part of
Henry Clay’s first great compromise. In 1836 and 1837,
Arkansas and Michigan, and in 1845 1-846, Florida and

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THE TIME AND THE PLACE

Iowa, were admitted through legislation which coupled
them together. But the seams of compromise were bursting
by 1850, as vast new territories acquired by the Mexican
War accelerated the pace of the slavery controversy. The at-
tention of the nation was focused on the Senate, and focused
especially on the three most gifted parliamentary leaders in
American history — Clay, Calhoun and Webster. Of these,
only Daniel Webster was to share with Benton and Houston
the ignominy of constituent wrath and the humiliation of po-
litical downfall at the hands of tire states they had loved and
championed. We shall note well the courage of Webster,
Benton and Houston; but if we are to understand the times
that made their feats heroic, we must first note the leader-
ship of the tw'> .'Kate giants who formed with Webster the
most outstanding triumvirate the Senate has ever known,
Henry Clay and John C. Calhoun.

Henry Clay of Kentucky — bold, autocratic and magnetic,
fiery in manner with a charm so compelling that an opponent
once declined a meeting which would subject him to the ap-
peal of Harry of the West. To Abraham Lincoln, “He was
my beau ideal”; to the half -mad, half-genius John Randolph
of Roanoke, he was, in what is perhaps the most memorable
and malignant sentence in the history of personal abuse, “a
being, so brilliant yet so corrupt, which, like a rotten mack-
erel by moonlight, shines and stinks.” Not even John Cal-
houn, who had fought him for years, was impervious to his
fascination: “I don’t like Henry Clay. He is a bad man, an
impostor, a creator of wicked schemes. I wouldn’t speak to
him, but, by God, I love him.”

Others besides John Calhoun loved him. Like Charles

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PROFILES IN COURAGE

James Fox, he reveled in a love for life, and had a matchless
gift for winning and holding the hearts of his fellow-coun-
trymen — and women. Elected to the Senate when still below
the constitutional age of thirty, he was subsequently sent to
the House, where in a move never duplicated before or since
he was immediately elected Speaker at the age of thirty-five.

Though he lacked the intellectual resources of Webster
and Calhoun, Henry Clay nevertheless had visions of a
greater America lieyond those held by either of his famous
colleagues. And so, in 1820, 1833 and 1850 he initiated, ham-
mered and charmed through reluctant Congresses the three
great compromises that preserved the Union until i86i, by
which time the strength of the North was such that seces-
sion was doomed to failure.

The second and probably the most extraordinary of the
triumvirate was John C. Calhoim of South Carolina, with
bristling hair and eyes that burned like heavy coals, “the
cast-iron man,” according to the English spinster, Harriet
Martineau, “who looks as if he had never been bom, and
never could be extinguished.” Calhoun, in spite of this ap-
pearance, had been bom— in 1782, the same year as Webster
and five years after Clay. He was six feet, two inches tall; a
graduate of Yale University; a Member of Congress at the
age of twenty-nine; a War Hawk who joined Henry Clay in
driving the United States into the War of 1812; a nationalist
who turned sectionalist in the 1820’s as the economic pres-
sures of the tariff began to tell on the agricultural economy
of South Carolina. Calhoun had a mind that was cold, nar-
row, concentrated and powerful. Webster considered him
“much the ablest man in the Senate,” the greatest in fact that
he had met in his entire public life. “He could have,” he de-

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THE TIME AND THE PEACE

dared, “demolished Newton, Calvin or even John Locke as
a logician.”

His speeches, stripped of all excess verbiage, marched
across the Senate floor in even columns, measured, disci-
plined, carrying all before them. Strangely enough, although
he had the appearance, especially in his later days, of a
fanatic, he was a man of infinite charm and personality. He
was reputed to be the best conversationalist in South Caro-
lina, and he won to him through tlieir emotions men who
failed to comprehend his closely reasoned arguments. His
hold upon the imagination and affection of the entire South
steadily grew, and at his death in the midst of the great
debate of 1850 he was universally mourned.

Calhoun believ^'d that the Constitutional Convention had
not nationalized our government; that the sovereign states
still retained “the right of judging . . . when the Congress
encroached upon the individual state’s power and liberty.”

With other Southerners, he believed that the geography
and climate of tlie Western country made it unlikely that
slavery could ever prosper in many of the territories that
were seeking to become states, and that only in the South-
west could they hope to balance the surging tide of free
Western states by securing new slave states and Senators
from the lands seized from Mexico. The Clay Compromise
of 1850, which sought to conciliate the differences between
North and South as to the ultimate fate of these lands, thus
assumed far-reaching importance.

All of the currents of conflict and disunion, of growth
and decline, of strength and weakness, came to a climax in
1850.

The three chief protagonists in the Washington drama of

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PROFILES IN COURAGE

1850 had been colleagues in Congress as far back as 1813.
Then they were young, full of pride and passion and hope,
and the world lay waiting before them. Now, nearly forty
years later in the sunset of their lives — ^for they would all
be dead within two years — ^with youth and illusions gone,
they moved once again to the center of the stage.

But they were not alone in the struggle. Neither Senator
Thomas Hart Benton nor Sam Houston was dwarfed by
the towering reputations of his three colleagues. Each was a
legend in his own lifetime — and occupying respectively the
strategic border states of Missouri and Texas, it was inevi-
table that the choice that each would make as the country
slowly drifted apart would affect the nature and outcome of
the general struggle.

That secession did not occur in 1850 instead of 1861 is
due in great part to Daniel Webster, who was in large meas-
ure responsible for the country’s acceptance of Henry Clay’s
compromise. The reasons he supported the compromise, the
effect of his support and the calumnies he suffered are_^ de-
tailed in Chapter III.

That the key border state of Missouri did not join the
Confederacy in 1861 was due in good measure to the memory
of its former Senator Thomas Hart Benton. No man gave
more than Senator Benton for the preservation of the Union.
His efforts and his fate are told in Chapter IV.

Texas joined the Confederacy, but not without a struggle
that made Senator Houston’s old age a shipwreck. His story
is told in Chapter V.

[ 80 ]

• • •

NOT AS A MASSACHUSETTS MAN
...BUT AS AN AMERICAN...”

☆

Daniel Webster

"^HE BLizzARDY NIGHT of January 21, 1850, was no
night in Washington for an ailing old man to be
. out. But wheezing and coughing fitfully, Henry Clay
made his way through the snowdrifts to the home of Daniel
Webster. He had a plan — a plan to save the Union — and he
knew he must have the support of the North’s most re-
nowned orator and statesman. He knew that he had no time
to lose, for that verj’ afternoon President Taylor, in a mes-
sage to Congress asking California’s admission as a free state,
had only thrown fuel on the raging fire that threatened to
consume the Union, Why had the President failed to men-
tion New Mexico, asked the North? What about the Fugitive
Slave Law being enforced, said the South? What about the

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PROFILES IN COURAGE

District of Columbia slave trade, Utah, Texas boundaries?
Tempers mounted, plots unfolded, disunity was abroad in
the land.

But Henry Clay had a plan — a plan for another Great
Compromise to preserve the nation. For an hour he outlined
its contents to Daniel Webster in the warmth of the latter's
comfortable home, and together they talked of saving the
Union. Few meetings in American history have ever been
so productive ot so ironic in their consequences. For the
Compromise of 1850 added to Henry Clay’s garlands as the
great Pacificator; but Daniel Webster’s support which in-
sured its success resulted in his political crucifixion, and, for
half a century or more, his historical condemnation.

The man upon whom Hemy Clay called that wintry night
was one of the most extraordinary figures in American po-
litical history. Daniel Webster is familiar to many of us today
as the battler for Jabez Slone’s soul against the devil in
Stephen Vincent Ben^t’s story. But in his own lifetime, he
had many battles against the devil for his own soul— and
some he lost. Webster, wrote one of his intimate friends,
was “a compound of strength and weakness, dust and di-
vinity,” or in Emerson's words “a great man with a small
ambition.”

There could be no mistaking he was a great man — ^he
looked like one, talked like one, was treated like one and
insisted he was one. With all his faults and failing, Daniel
Webster was undoubtedly the most talented figure in our
Congressional history: not in his ability to win men to a
cause — ^he was no match in that with Henry Clay; not in
his abOity to hammer out a philosophy of government —

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DANIEL WEBSTER

Calhoun outshone him there; but in his abihty to make alive
and supreme the latent sense of oneness, of Union, that all
Americans felt but which few could express.

But how Daniel Webster could express itl How he could
express almost any sentiments! Ever since his first speech
in Congress — ^attacking the War of 1812 — ^had riveted the
attention of the House of Representatives as no freshman
had ever held it before, he was the outstanding orator of his
day — ^indeed, of all time — ^in Congress before hushed
throngs in Massachusetts and as an advocate before the
Supreme Court. Stem Chief Justice Marshall was said to
have been visibly moved by Webster’s famous defense in
the Dartmouth College case~“It is, sir, as I have said, a
small college — ^ yet there are those who love it.” After
his oration on the two hundredth founding of Plymouth
Colony, a young Harvard scholar wrote:

I was never so excited by public speaking before in my life.
Three or four times I thought my temple would b’lrst with the
rush of blood. ... I was beside myself- and I am still so.

And the peroration of his reply to Senator Hayne of South
Carolina, when secession had threatened twenty years
earher, was a national rallying cry memorized by every
schoolboy — ^“Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and
inseparablel”

A very slow speaker, hardly averaging a hundred words a
minute, Webster combined the musical charm of his deep
organ-like voice, a vivid imagination, an abihty to crush his
opponents with a barrage of facts, a confident and dehberate

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PROFILES IN COURAGE

maimer of speaking and a striking appearance to make his
orations a magnet that drew crowds hurrying to the Senate
chamber. He prepared his speeches with the utmost care, but
seldom wrote them out in a prepared text. It has been said
that he could think out a speech sentence by sentence, cor-
rect the sentences in his mind without the use of a pencil and
then deliver it exactly as he thought it out.

Certainly that striking appearance was half the secret of
his power, and convinced all who looked upon his face that
he was one bom to rule men. Although less than six feet
tall, Webster’s slender frame when contrasted with the mag-
nificent sweep of his shoulders gave him a theatrical but
formidable presence. But it was his extraordinary head that
contemporaries found so memorable, with the features
Carlyle described for all to remember: “The tanned com-
plexion, the amorphous crag-like face; the dull black eyes
imder the precipice of brows, like dull anthracite furnaces
needing only to be blown; the masti£F mouth accurately
closed.” One contemporary called Webster “a living lie,
because no man on earth could be so great as he looked.”

And Daniel Webster was not as great as he looked. The
flaw in the granite was the failure of his moral senses to
develop as acutely as his other faculties. He could see noth-
ing improper in writing to the President of the Bank of the
United States — at the very time when the Senate was en-
gaged in debate over a renewal of the Bank’s charter — ^not-
ing that “my retainer has not been received or refreshed as
usual.” But Webster accepted favors not as gifts but as
services which he believed were rightly due him. When he
tried to resign frpm the Senate in 1836 to recoup speculative

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DANIEL WEBSTER

losses through his law practice> his Massachusetts business-
men friends joined to pay his debts to retain him in office.
Even at his deathbed, legend tells us, there was a knock at
his door, and a large roll of bills was thrust in by an old
gentleman, who said that “At such a time as this, there
should be no shortage of money in the house.”

Webster took it all and more. What is difficult to com-
prehend is that he saw no wrong in it — ^morally or otherwise.
He probably believed that he was greatly underpaid, and
it never occurred to him that by his own free choice he
had sold his services and his talents, however extraordinary
they might have been, to the people of the United States,
and no one else, when he drew his salary as United States
Senator. But Webster’s support of the business interests of
New England was not the result of the money he obtained,
but of his personal convictions. Money meant little to him
except as a means to gratify his pecuhar tastes. He never
accumulated a fortune. He never was out of debt. And he
never was troubled by his debtor status. Sometimes he paid,
and he always did so when it was convenient, but as
Gerald W. Johnson says, “Unfortimately he sometimes paid
in the wrong coin — ^not in legal tender — but in the con-
fidence that the people reposed in him.”

But whatever his faults, Daniel Webster remained the
greatest orator of his day, the leading member of the Amer-
ican Bar, one of the most renoumed leaders of the Whig
party, and the only Senator capable of checking Calhoun.
And thus Henry Clay knew he must enlist these extraor-
dinary talents on behalf of his Great Compromise. Time and
events proved he was right.

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PROFILES IN COURAGE

As the Cod-like Daniel listened in thoughtful silence, the
sickly Clay unfolded his last great effort to hold the Union
together. Its key features were five in number; (i) Cali-
fornia was to be admitted as a free (nonslaveholding) state;
(2) New Mexico and Utah were to be organized as terri-
tories without legislation either for or against slavery, thus
nmning directly contrary to the hotly debated Wilmot
Proviso which was intended to prohibit slavery in the new
territories; (3) Texas was to be compensated for some ter-
ritory to te ceded to New Mexico; (4) the slave trade would
be abolished in the District of Columbia; and (5) a more
stringent and enforceable Fugitive Slave Law was to be
enacted to guarantee return to their masters of runaway
slaves captmed in Northern states. The Compromise would
be condemned by the Southern extremists as appeasement,
chiefly on its first and fourth provisions; and by the North-
ern abolitionists as 90 per cent concessions to the South
with a meaningless 10 per cent sop thrown to the North, par-
ticularly because of the second and fifth provisions. . Few
Northerners could stomach any strengthening of the Fugi-
tive Slave Act, the most bitterly hated measure — and until
Prohibition, the most flagrantly disobeyed — ever passed by
Congress. Massachusetts had even enacted a law making it a
crime for anyone to enforce the provisions of the Act in
that statel

How could Henry Clay then hope to win approval to such
a plan from Daniel Webster of Massachusetts? Was he not
specifically on record as a consistent foe of slavery and a sup-
porter of the Wilmot Proviso? Had he not told the Senate in
the Oregon Debate:

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DANIEL WEBSTER

I shall oppose all slavery extension and all increase of slave
representation in all places, at all times, under all circumstances,
even against all inducements, against all supposed limitation of
great interests, against all combinations, against all compromises.

That very week he had written a friend: “From my earliest
youth, I have regarded slavery as a great moral and political
evil. . . . You need not fear that I shall vote for any com-
promise or do anytliing inconsistent with the past.”

But Daniel Webster feared that civil violence “would only
rivet the chains of slavery the more strongly.” And the
preservation of the Union was far dearer to his heart than
his opposition to slavery.

And thus on that fateful January night, Daniel Webster
promised Henry Clay his conditional support, and took
inventory of the crisis alxjut him. At first he shared the
views of those critics and historians who scoffed at the pos-
sibility of secession in 1850. But as he talked with Southern
leaders and observed “the coiulition of the country, I
thought the inevitable consequences of leaving the existing
controversies unadjusted would be Civil War.” “I am nearly
broken down with labor and anxiety,” he wrote his son.
“I know not how to meet the present emergency, or with
what weapons to beat dowm the Nortliem and Southern
foUies now raging in equal extremes. ... I have poor spirits
and httle courage.”

Two groups were threatening in 1850 to break away from
the United States of America. In New England, Garrison
was publicly proclaiming, “1 am an Abolitionist and, there-
fore, for the dissolution of the Union.” And a mass meeting

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PROFILES IN COURAGE

of Northern Abolitionists declared that “the Constitution is
a covenant with death and an agreement with hell.” In the
South, Calhoun was writing to a friend in February of 1850,
“Disunion is the only alternative that is left for us.” And
in his last great address to the Senate, read for him on March
4, only a few short weeks before his death, while he sat
by too feeble to speak, he declared, “The South will be
forced to choose between abolition and secession.”

A preliminaiy convention of Southerners, also instigated
by Calhoun, urged a full-scale convention of the South at
Nashville for Jxme of that fateful year to popularize the idea
of dissolution.

The time was ripe for secession, and few were prepared
to speak for union. Even Alexander Stephens of Georgia,
anxious to preserve the Union, wrote friends in the South
who were sympathetic with his views that “the feeling
among the Southern members for a dissolution of the Union
... is becoming much more general. Men are now beginning
to talk of it seriously who twelve months ago hardly per-
mitted themselves to think of it the crisis is not far ahead.

... A dismemberment of this Republic I now consider in-
evitable.” During the critical month preceding Webster’s
speech, six Southern states, each to secede ten years later,
approved the aims of the Nashville Convention and ap-
pointed delegates. Horace Greeley wrote on February 23:

There are sixty members of Congress who this day desire
and are plotting to effect the idea of a dissolution of the Union.
We have no doubt the Nashville Convention will be held and
that die leading purpose of its authors is the separation of die

[ 88 ]

DANIEL WEBSTER

slave states . . . with the formation of an independent con-
federacy. •

Such was the perilous state of the nation in the early months
of 1850.

By the end of February, the Senator from Massachusetts
had determined upon his course. Only the Clay Compromise,
Daniel Webster decided, could avert secession and civil war;
and he wrote a friend that he planned “to make an honest
truth-telling speech and a Union speech, and discharge a
clear conscience,” As he set to work preparing his notes, he
received abundant warning of the attacks his message would
provoke. His constituents and Massachusetts newspapers
admonished him strongly not to waver in his consistent anti-
slavery stand, and i-iany urged him to employ still tougher
tones against the South. But the Senator from Massachusetts
had made up his mind, as he told his friends on March 6, “to
push my skiff from the shore alone.” He would act accord-
ing to the creed with which he had challenged the Senate
several years earlier:

Inconsistencies of opinion arising from changes of circum-
stances are often justifiable. But there is one sort of inconsistency
that is culpable; it is the inconsistency between a man’s convic-
tion and his vote, between his conscience and his conduct. No
man shall ever charge me with an inconsistency of that kind.

And so came the 7th of March, 1850, the only day in his-
tory which would become the title of a speech delivered on
the Senate floor. No one recalls today — ^no one even recalled
in -1851 — the formal title Webster gave his address, for it

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PROFILES IN COURAGE

had become the "Seventh of March” speech as much as
Independence Day is known as the Fourth of July.

Realizing after months of insomnia that this might be the
last great effort his health would permit, Webster stim-
ulated his strength for the speech by oxide of arsenic and
other drugs, and devoted the morning to polishing up his
notes. He was excitedly interrupted by the Sergeant at
Arms, who told him that even then — ^two hours before the
Senate was to meet — ^the chamber, the galleries, tlie ante-
rooms and even the corridors of the Capitol were filled with
those who had been traveling for days from all parts of
the nation to hear Daniel Webster. Many foreign diplomats
and most of the House of Representatives were among those
vying for standing room. As the Senate met, members could
scarcely walk to their seats through the crowd of spectators
and temporary seats made of public documents stacked on
top of each other. Most Senators gave up their seats to
ladies, and stood in the aisles awaiting Webster’s opening
blast

As the Vice President’s gavel commenced the session.
Senator Walker of Wisconsin, who held the floor to finish
a speech begun the day before, told the Chair that "this vast
audience has not come to hear me, and there is but one man
who can assemble such an audience. They expect to hear
him, and I feel it is my duty, as it is my pleasure, to give the
floor to the Senator from Massachusetts.”

The crowd fell silent as Daniel Webster rose slowly to
his feet, all the impressive powers of his extraordinary
physical appearance — ^the great, dark, brooding eyes, the
wonderfully bronzed complexion, the majestic domed fore-

[ 90 ]

DANIEL WEBSTER

head — commanding the same awe they had commanded for
more than thirty years. Garbed in his familiar blue tailed
coat with brass buttons, and a bu£F waistcoat and breeches,
he deliberately paused a moment as he gazed about at the
greatest assemblage of Senators ever to gather in that cham-
ber — Clay, Benton, Houston, Jefferson Davis, Hale, Bell,
Cass, Seward, Chase, Stephen A. Douglas and others. But
one face was missing — that of the ailing John C. Calhoun.

All eyes were fixed on the speaker; no spectator save
his own son knew what he would say. "1 have never before,”
wrote a newspaper correspondent, “witnessed an occasion
on which there was deeper feeling enlisted or more uni-
versal anxiety to catch the most distinct echo of the speakers
voice.”

In his moments of magnificent inspiration, as Emerson
once described him, Webster was truly “the great cannon
loaded to the lips.” Summoning for the last time that spell-
binding oratorical ability, he abandoned his previous op-
position to slavery in the territories, abandoned his con-
stituents' abhorrence of the Fugitive Slave Law, abandoned
his own place in the history and hearts of his cotmtrymen
and abandoned his last chance for the goal that had eluded
him for over twenty years — the Presidency. Daniel Webster
preferred to risk his career and his reputation rather than
risk the Union.

“Mr. President,” he began, “I wish to speak today, not as
a Massachusetts man, nor as a Northern man, but as an
American and a Member of the Senate of the United States.
... I speak today for the preservation of the Union. Hear
me for my cause.”

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PROFILES IN COURAGE

He had spoken but for a short time when the gaunt, bent
form of Calhoim, wrapped in a black cloak, was dramatically
assisted into his seat, where he sat trembling, scarcely able
to move, and vmnoticed by the speaker. After several ex-
pressions of regret by Webster that illness prevented the
distinguished Senator from South Carolina from being pres-
ent, Calhoun struggled up, grasping the arms of his chair,
and in a clear and ghostly voice proudly announced, “The
Senator from South Carolina is in his seat.” Webster was
touched, and with tears in his eyes he extended a bow to-
ward Calhoun, who sank back exhausted and feeble, eyeing
the Massachusetts orator with a sphinx-like expression which
disclosed no hint of either approval or disapproval.

For three hours and eleven minutes, with only a few refer-
ences to his extensive notes, Daniel Webster pleaded the
Union’s cause. Relating the grievances of each side, he asked
for conciliation and understanding in the name of patriotism.
The Senate’s main concern, he insisted, was neither to pro-
mote slavery nor to abolish it, but to preserve the United
States of America. And with telling logic and remarkable
foresight he bitterly attacked the idea of “peaceable seces-
sion”:

Sir, your eyes and mine are never destined to see that miracle.
The dismemberment of this vast country without convulsioni
Who is so foolish ... as to expect to see any such thing? . . .
Instead of speaking of die possibility or utility of secession,
instead of .dwelling in those caverns of darkness, ... let us enjoy
the fresh air of liberty and union. . . . Let us make our genera-
tion one of the strongest and brightest links in that golden chain
which is destined, I fondly believe, to grapple the people of all
the states to this Constitution for ages to come.

[ 92 ]

DANIEL WEBSTER

There was no applause. Buzzing and astonished whisper-
hig> yes, but no applause. Perhaps his hearers were too in-
tent — or too astonished. A reporter rushed to the telegraph
office. “Mr. Webster has assiuned a great responsibility,”
he wired his paper, “and whether he succeeds or fails, the
courage with which he has come forth at least entitles him
to the respect of the country.”

Daniel Webster did succeed. Even though his speech was
repudiated by many in the North, the very fact that one who
represented such a belligerent constituency would appeal
for understanding in the name of unity and patriotism was
recognized in Washington and throughout the South as a
bona fide assurance of Southern rights. Despite Calhoun’s
own intransigence, his Charleston Mercury praised Web-
ster’s address as “noble in language, generous and concil-
iatory in tone. Mr. Calhoun’s clear and powerful exposition
would have had something of a decisive efiFect if it had not
been so soon followed by Mr. Webster’s masterly playing.”
And the New Orleans Picayune hailed Webster for “the
moral courage to do what he believes to be just in itself and
necessary for the peace and safety of the cotmtry.”

And so the danger of immediate secession and bloodshed
passed. As Senator Winthrop remarked, Webster’s speech
had “disarmed and quieted the South [and] knocked the
Nashville Convention into a cocked hat.” The Journal of
Commerce was to remark in later months that "Webster did
more than any other man in the whole country, and at a
greater hazard of personal popularity, to stem and roll back
the torrent of sectionalism which in 1850 threatened to over-
thrbw the pillars of the Constitution and the Union.”

Some historians — ^particularly those who wrote in the

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PROFILES IN COURAGE

latter half of the niaeteentb century under the influence of
the moral earnestness of Webster's articulate Abolitionist
foes — do not agree with Allan Nevins, Henry Steele Com-
mager, Gerald Johnson and others who have praised the
Seventh of March speech as "the highest statesmanship . . .
Webster’s last great service to the nation.” Many deny that
secession would have occurred in 1850 without such com-
promises; and others maintain that subsequent events proved
eventual secession was inevitable regardless of what com-
promises were made. But still others insist that delaying war
for ten years narrowed the issues between North and South
and in the long run helped preserve the Union. The spirit
of conciliation in Webster’s speech gave the North the
righteous feeling that it had made every attempt to treat the
South with fairness, and the defenders of the Union were
thus united more strongly against what they felt to be
Southern violations of those compromises ten years later.
Even from the military point of view of the North, post-
ponement of the battle for ten years enabled the Northern
states to increase tremendously their lead in popularity, vot-
ing power, production and railroads.

Undoubtedly this was imderstood by many of Webster’s
supporters, including the business and professional men of
Massachusetts who helped distribute himdreds of thousands
of copies of the Seventh of March speech throughout the
country. It was tmderstood by Daniel Webster, who dedi-
cated the printed copies to the people of Massachusetts with
these words: “Necessity compels me to speak true rather
than pleasing things. ... I should indeed like to please you;
but I prefer to save you, whatever be your attitude toward
me.”

[ 94 ]

DANIEL WEBSTER

But it was not understood by the Abolitionists and Free
Soilers of 1850. Few politicians have had the distinction of
being scourged by such talented constituents. The Rev.
Theodore Parker, heedless of the dangers of secession, who
had boasted of harboring a fugitive slave in his cellar and
writing his sermons with a sword over his ink stand and a
pistol in his desk ‘loaded and ready for defense,” denounced
Webster in merciless fashion from his pulpit, an attack he
would continue even after Webster’s death: “No living man
has done so much,” he cried, “to debauch the conscience
of the nation. ... I know of no deed in American history
done by a son of New England to which 1 can compare this,
but the act of Benedict Arnold.” “Webster,” said Horace
Mann, “is a fallen starl Lucifer descending from Heaven!”
Longfellow asked the world: “Is it possible? Is this the
Titan who hurled mountains at Hayne years ago?” And
Emerson proclaimed that “Every drop of blood in that man’s
veins has eyes that look downward. . . . Webster’s absence
of moral faculty is degrading to the coimtry.” To William
Cullen Bryant, Webster was “a man who has deserted the
cause which he lately defended, and deserted it under cir-
cumstances which force upon him the imputation of a sordid
motive.” And to James Russell Lowell he was “the most
meanly and foolishly treacherous man I ever heard of.”

Charles Sumner, who would be elevated to the Senate
upon his departure, enrolled the name of Webster on “the
dark list of apostates. Mr. Webster's elaborate treason has
done more than anything else to break down the North.”
Senator William H. Seward, the brilliant “Conscience”
Whig, called Webster a “traitor to the cause of freedom.”
A mass meeting in Faneuil Hall condemned the speech as

[ 95 ]

PROFILES IN COURAGE

*unwortliy of a wise statesman and a good man,** and re-
solved that "Constitution or no Constitution, law or no law,
we will not allow a fugitive slave to be taken from the state
of Massachusetts." As the Massachusetts Legislature enacted
further resolutions wholly contrary to the spirit of the
Seventh of March speech, one member called Webster "a
recreant son of Massachusetts who misrepresents her in the
Senate"; and anodier stated that "Daniel Webster will be a
fortunate man if God, in his sparing mercy, shall preserve
his life long enou^ for him to repent of this act and efface
this stain on his name."

The Boston Courier pronounced diat it was "unable to
find that any Northern Whig member of Congress concurs
with Mr. Webster”; and his old defender, the Boston Atlas,
stated, "His sentiments are not our sentiments nor we ven-
ture to say of the Whigs of New England." The New York
Tribune considered it "unequal to the occasion and un-
worthy of its author"; the New York Evening Post spoke in
terms of a "traitorous retreat ... a man who deserted the
cause which he lately defended"; and the Abolitionist press
called it "the scarlet infamy of Daniel Webster. ... An in-
describably base and wicked speech."

Edmund Quincy spoke bitterly of the "ineffable meanness
of the lion turned spaniel in his fawnings on the masters
whose hands he was licking for the sake of the dirty pud-
dings they might have to toss to him." And finally, the name
of Daniel Webster was humiliated for all time in the litera-
ture of our land by the cutting words of the usually gentle
John Greenleaf Whittier in his immortal poem "Icha-
bod":

[ 96 ]

DANIEL WEBSTEB

So falleni so losti the li^t withdrawn
Which once he wcnel

The glory firom his gray hairs gone
Forevennorel . . .

Of all we loved and honored, naught
Save power remains;

A fallen angel’s pride of thought,

Still strong in chains. . . .

Then pay the reverence of old days
To his dead fame;

Walk backward, with averted gaze.

And hide the shame!

Years afterward Whittier was to recall that he penned
this acid verse "in one of the saddest moments of my life.”
And for Daniel Webster, the arrogant, scornful giant of the
ages who believed himself above political rancor, Whittier’s
attack was especially bitter. To some extent he had at-
tempted to shrug off his attackers, stating that he had ex-
pected to be libeled and abused, particularly by the
Abolitionists and intellectuals who had previously scorned
him, much as George Washington and others before him had
been abused. To those who urged a prompt reply, he merely
related the story of the old deacon in a similar predicament
who told his friends, "1 always make it a rule never to clean
up the padi until the snow is done falling.”

But he was saddened by the failure of a sin^e other New
En^and Whig to rise to his defense, and he remarked that
he was

PROFILES IN COURAGE

engaged in a controversy in whidi I have neither a leader nor
a follower from among my own immediate friends. ... I am
tired of standing up here, almost alone from Massachusetts, con-
tending for practical measures absolutely essential to the good
of die country. . . . For five months ... no one of my colleagues
manifested the sli^test concurrence in my sentiments. . . . Since
the 7th of March there has not been an hour in which 1 have not
felt a crushing weight of anxiety. I have sat down to no breakfast
or dinner to which I have brought an unconcerned and easy
mind.

But, although he sought to explain his objectives and reas-
sure his friends of his continued opposition to slavery, he
nevertheless insisted he would

stand on the principle of my speech to die end. ... If nec^sary
I will take the stump in every village in New England. . . .
What is to come of the present commotion in men's minds I
cannot foresee, but my own convictions of duty are fixed and
strong, and I shall continue to follow those convichons without
faltering. ... In highly excited times it is far easier to fttn and
feed the fiames of discord, than to subdue them; and he who
counsels moderation is in danger of being regarded as failing in
his duty to his party.

And the following year, despite his seventy years, Web-
ster went on extended speaking tours defending his position:
"If the chances had been one in a thousand that Civil War
would be the result, I should still have felt that thousandth
chance should be guarded against by any reasonable sacri-
fice.” When his efiForts — ^and those of Clay, Douglas and
others — on behalf of compromise were ultimately sucx:essful,

[ 98 ]

DANIEL WEBSTER

he noted sarcastically that many of his colleagues were now
saying "They always meant to stand by the Union to the
last.”

But Daniel Webster was doomed to disappointment in
his hopes that this latent support might again enable him to
seek the Presidency. For his speech had so thoroughly de-
stroyed those prospects that the recurring popularity of his
position could not possibly satisfy the great masses of voters
in New England and the North. He could not receive the
Presidential nomination he had so long desired; but neither
could he ever put to rest the assertion, which was not only
expressed by his contemporary critics but subsequently by
several nineteenth-century historians, that his real objective
in the Seventh of March speech was a bid for Southern sup-
port for the Presidency.

But this “profound selfishness,” which Emerson was so
certain the speech represented, could not have entered into
Daniel Webster's motivations. “Had he been bidding for
the Presidency,” as Professor Nevins points out, “he would
have trimmed his phrases and inserted weasel-words upon
New Mexico and the fugitive slaves. The first precau-
tion of any aspirant for the Presidency is to make sure
of his own state and section; and Webster knew that his
speech would send echoes of demmeiation leaping from
Mount Mansfield to Monamoy Light.” Moreover, Webster
was sufficiently acute politically to know that a divided
party such as his would turn away from politically contro-
versial figures and move to an uncommitted neutral indi-
vidual, a principle consistently applied to this day. And the
1852 Whig Convention followed exactly this course. After

199 ]

PROFILES IN COURAGE

the procompromise vote had been divided for fifty-two
ballots between Webster and President Filhnore, die con-
vention turned to the popular General Winfield Scott. Not a
single Southern Whig supported Webster. And when the
Boston Whigs urged that the party platform take credit for
the Clay Compromise, of which, they said, "Daniel Webster,
with the concurrence of Henry Clay and other profound
statesmen, was the author,” Senator Corwin of Ohio was
reported to have commented sarcastically, "And I, with the
concurrence of Moses and some extra help, wrote the Ten
Commandments.”

So Daniel Webster, who neither could have intended his
speech as an improvement of his political popularity nor
permitted his ambitions to weaken his plea for the Union,
died a disappointed and discouraged death in 1852, his eyes
fixed on the flag flying from the mast of the sailboat he had
anchored in view of his bedroom window. But to the very
end he was true to character, asking on his deathbed, "Wife,
children, doctor, I trust on this occasion 1 have said nothing
unworthy of Daniel Webster.” And to the end he had been
true to the Union, and to his greatest act of courageous
principle; for in his last words to the Senate, Webster had
written his own epitaph:

I shall stand by the Union . . . with absolute disregard of per-
sonal consequences. What are personal consequences ... in
comparison with the good or evil which may befall a great
country in a crisis like this? . . . Let the consequences be what
they will, I am careless. No man can suffer too much, and no
man can fall too soon, if he suffer or if he fall in defense of the
liberties and Constitution of his country.

tlOO]

IV

I DESPISE THE BUBBLE
POPULARITY...”

☆

Thomas Hart Benton

M r. P*besident, sir ...” A burly, black-haired Sena-
tor was speaking to a nearly empty chamber in
. 1850. Those who remained, including a nervous
Senator who had just termed the speaker quarrelsome, saw
his great muscles tighten and his sweeping shoulders be-
come icily erect, and heard his hard, cold voice rasp out the
word “sir” like a poisoned dart from his massive, Romanesque
head.

“Mr. President, sir ... I never quarrel, sir. But sometimes
I fight, sir; and whenever I fight, sir, a funeral follows,
sir.”

No one regarded this as an idle boast by the senior Senator
from Missouri, Thomas Hart Benton. True, he had not killed
a man since his early days in St. Louis, when a U.S. District

[ 101 ]

PROFILES IN COURAGE

Attorney had the misfortune to engage the rugged Mis-
sourian in a duel (at nine feetl). But all the Senate knew that
Thomas Hart Benton was a rou^ and tumble fighter off
and on the Senate floor — ^no longer with pistols but with
stinging sarcasm, vituperative thou^ learned oratory and
bitterly heated debate. He himself was immune to die
wounds of those political clashes from which his adversaries
retired bleeding and broken. For his great ego and vigorous
health had made hiiri thick-skinned mentally as well as phys-
ically. (The leathery quality of his skin was in part the result
of a daily brushing with a horsehair brush “because, sir, the
Roman gladiators did it, sir.” When asked if the brush was
truly rough, he would roar: “Why, sir, if I were to touch
you with that brush, sir, you would cry murder, sirl”)

But now, with his last term rounding out thirty years in
the Senate, Benton was under attack in his final great fight
to the finish — and this time the political funeral to follow
would be his own. From 1821 to 1844 he had reigned su-
preme as Kingpin of Missouri politics, her first Senator, Jier
most beloved idol. In the words of one of his opponents,
it meant “political death 'to any man to even whisper a
breath against ‘old Bullion’” (the nickname derived from
Benton’s fight for hard money). Althou^ inexpert at poli-
tics, constantly the advocate of unpopular issues within his
state and gradually out of touch with most of her younger
politicians, Benton nevertheless did not even need to ask
to be re-elected during that charmed period. The fact diat
he alone disdained patronage, petty Congressional ^aft and
favors from lobbyists may have disturbed the politicians,
but not the people of Missouril Democratic candidates for

[ 102 ]

THOMAS HART BENTON

the Missouri Legislature were required to pledge to vote for
his re-election under pain of humiliating defeat in their own
campaigns. The first Senator ever to serve thirty consecutive
years, Thomas Hart Benton achieved a prominence which
no other Senator from a new state could claim, and he
championed the West with a boundless energy no opposing
candidate could match. The Pony Express, the telegraph
line and the hi^ways to the interior were among his proud
accomplishments — and a transcontinental railroad and fully
developed West, rich in population and resources, were
among his dreams. Defeat Benton, father of the Senate and
defender of the people? “Nobody opposes Benton, sir,” he
would roar. “Nobody but a few black-jack prairie lawyers;
these are the only opponents of Benton. Benton and the
people, Benton and Democracy are one and the same, sir;
synonymous terms, sir, synonymous terms.”

But by 1844, handwriting of inevitable defeat had al-
ready appeared on the wall. Missouri, a slave state, gradually
came to feel more strongly that her allegiance belonged to
her sister states of the South. She tended to look with in-
creasing suspicion upon her rebellious Senator whose pri-
mary loyalty was neither to his party nor his section, but
to the Union for which he had fought — on the battlefront
and in Congress — and upon the rugged independence of
his views for which he intended to fight, in or out of Con-
gress. His devotion to the Union was far greater than his
devotion to the South or the Democratic party. (His op-
ponents charged that Benton told the 1844 Democratic
National Convention, as it prepared to abandon Van Buren,
that he would “see the Democratic party sink 50 fathoms

[ 103 ]

PROFILES IN COURAGE

deq> into the middle of hell fire before 1 will give one inch
with Mr. Van Buren.”)

As the campaign for the legislatiure which would con-
sider his re-election began in 1844, Benton broke sharply
with his state and party by engineering the defeat of the
treaty for the annexation of Texas. Convinced that the
treaty was a plot hatched by Calhoun without consideration
of Mexican rights or resistance, and for political, slavery
and secessionist purposes, Benton — ^who actually favored
Western expansion on the nationalistic grounds of "manifest
destiny” — ^was handing his political enemies a choice op-
portunity to assail him openly. The Texas Treaty was popular
in Missouri, despite Benton s assertion that he did not know
whether his constituents really were opposed to his position:

if they were, and I knew it, I should resign my place; for I
could neither violate their known wishes in voting against it,
nor violate my own sense of constitutional or moral duty in
voting for it. If the alternative should be the extinction of my
political life, 1 should have to embrace it.

Labeled a traitor to his party and section and an ally
of the Whigs and British, Benton openly lost the support of
prominent candidates for the Missouri Legislature and was
subject to all manner of personal attacks — as a nonresident,
a defaulter in his debts, and one contemptuous of public
opinion. Senator Benton, declared the Missouri Register, is
“a demagogue and a tyrant at heart . . . the greatest egotist
in Christendom. . . . Wherever he goes, whatever he does,
he shows but one characteristic — that of a blustering, in-
solent, unscrupulous demagogue.”

[ 104 ]

THOMAS HART BENTON

But Benton did not hesitate even on the eve of election
to continue his denunciation of his party's Texas policy. He
charged on the Senate floor that his political opposition in
Missouri had been stirred up by Calhoun, Tyler and their
friends, including “300 newspapers in the pay of the De-
partment of State, many of them not visibly so.'' His tre-
mendous personal popularity among the ordinary citizens
carried him through the legislature — but by only eight votes,
in a legislature his party controlled by a twenty-seven vote
margin. At the same time, the proslavery Democrat Atchison
was elected to fill an unexpired Senate term by a margin of
thirty-four votes. Senator Benton could hardly mistake the
ominous unwritten instructions of his state — in effect: "tem-
per your mdrpc..dcnt tongue, sir, and stand by the South,
or suffer the inevitable consequences.”

But a hardy youth on the Tennessee frontier had not
taught Thomas Hart Benton how to avoid a fight, whether
with wild beasts, neighbors or politicians. (His brutal free-
for-all with Andrew Jackson, which caused him to leave a
promising legal and political career in Tennessee for Mis-
souri, was a subject of much comment when the two became
firm political and personal friends in Washington. And years
later, when Benton was asked by a novice whether he had
known Jackson, he haughtily replied: "Yes, sir, I knew him,
sir; General Jackson was a very great man, sir. I shot him,
sir. Afterward he was of great use to me, sir, in my battle
with the United States Bank.”) Like a "wild buffalo” —
some said a "gnarled oak”— he returned to the Senate con-
vinced that the entire nation depended upon him to cany
the attack on every issue every day.

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PROFILES IN COURAGE

Despite his near defeat in 1844-45, Senator Benton auda-
ciously opposed his party and state on the Oregon es^ansion
issue. Having personally aroused intense public approval for
expansion— particularly in Missouri, which had sent large
numbers of its citizens to Oregon— he now felt that the
Democratic “whole of Oregon or none,” “fifty-four forty
or fight” position was extravagantly unrealistic. Counseling
President Folk against adhering to those slogans in dealing
with England and Canada, he assailed his Democratic col-
leagues in the Senate for their refusal to concede the error
of their views — especially Michigan’s Lewis Cass. Explaining
that the “simples” was a kind of disease which made Missouri
horses physically and mentally blind, and which could be
cured only when the veterinary cut a certain nerve, he an-
nounced that he had “cut Cass for the simples, sir, and cured
him.”

Again he was assailed as a coward and traitor. His biog-
rapher believes that “probably no man in history has been
more vilified than he was at this time.”

But Benton pursued his independent and increasingly
lonely course. He would not go over to the Whig party,
whose petty politicians, he said, “are no more able to com-
prehend me . . . than a rabbit, which breeds 12 times a year,
could comprehend the gestation of an elephant which carries
2 years.” Nor would he seek financial aid from the lobbyists
swarming over Washington, telling the agent for one group
seeking a ship subsidy that the only condition upon which
he would lift a finger to help was “when the vessels are
finished they will be used to take all such damned rascals
as you, sir, out of the country.” Nor would he make peace

[ 106 ]

THOMAS HART BENTON

^th the Missouri political chiefs, carrying his Hisljlfe for
the St. Louis postmaster to the point where he resorted to
the express company for any mail he thought Postmaster
Armstrong might possibly handle.

Only at home was Benton at peace with the world. As his
dau^ter, Jessie Benton Fremont, wrote in her memoirs:
“To him home brought the strength of peace and repose,
and he never su£Fered the outside public atmosphere of strife
to enter there.” But his family life was clouded by the death
of his two sons early in life, and by the long physical and
mental illness of the wife to whom he was at all times tender
and devoted. On one occasion, which revealed the depth of
warm devotion which lay beneath that rough conceit, Benton
was entertaining, a French prince and other distinguished
guests when his wife, not fully dressed, rambled into the
room and stared adoringly at her husband. Interrupting
the embarrassed silence that followed. Senator Benton
with dignity and majesty introduced his wife to the prince
and others, seated her by his side, and resumed conversa-
tion.

But in the Senate he was alone, hard and mercOess Widi
piles of books and papers heaped on his desk, speaking fre-
quently to nearly empty galleries and an indifferent cham-
ber, Benton poured forth thousands of statistics, classical
illustrations and magnificent metaphors upon colleagues with
far more formal schooling and originality of thought. As an
obituary notice later described it:

With a readiness which was often surprising he could quote
from a Roman law or a Greek philosopher, from Virgil’s
Georgies, die Arabian Ni^ts, Herodotus or Sancho Panza,

[ 107 ]

PROFILES IN COURAGE

from tbe Sacred Carpets, the German Reformers or Adam
Smith, from Fenelon or Hudibras, from the Financial Reports
of Necca, or the doings of the Council of Trent; from the de-
bates of the adoption of the Constitution, or the intrigues of the
kitchen cabinet, or from some forgotten speech of a deceased
memba of Congress,

Benton, with but one year at the University of North
Carolina, was said to carry the Congressional Library in his
head; and he achieved great satisfaction, if another Senator
forgot a name or date, by obtaining from the library some
obscure volume, marking the exact page on which the cor-
rect information appeared and sending it to his colleague.
His own thirst for knowledge, particularly about the un-
settled West, was unquenchable, and led him not only to
books but also, a contemporary tells us, to “hunters and
trappers, scouts, wild half-breeds, Indian chiefs, and Jesuit
missionaries.”

But no amount of acquired information, bulldog per-
sistence or ferocious egotism could save Thomas Hart Ben-
ton from the tidal wave that engulfed the Senate and his
state over one burning issue— slavery. Unfortunately, until
it was too late, Benton refused to recognize slavery as a ma-
jor issue, believed that the Missouri Compromise of 1820
(which brought his state into the Union and Benton to the
Senate) had taken it out of politics, and refused to debate it
on the Senate floor. *1 cannot degrade the Senate by engag-
ing in slavery and disunion discussions,” he said. “Silence
such debate is my prayer; and if that cannot be done, I si-
lence myself.” One of the few Members of Congress who still
brought his slaves with him to his Washington household,
he nevertheless was equally opposed to the Abolitionists and

[ 108 ]

THOMAS HART BENTON

the secessionists, to the permanent extension of this evil into
new territory by the South and to the partisan exploitation
of its miseries by Northern agitators. Above all, he was most
distressed about the fact that the issue was constantly raised
by both sides as a barrier to Western expansion and the
admission of new states to the Union.

The beginning of Bentons end — so strongly suggested
already by the antagonisms he had aroused over Texas and
Oregon— came on February 19, 1847. John C. Calhoun read
to a worried Senate his famous resolutions insisting that
Congress had no right to interfere with the development of
slavery in the territories. Later events indicated the correct-
ness of Benton’s views that those resolutions were but “fire-
brands intended for electioneering and disunion purposes,”
providing the slave states with a program on which to
unite — ^not only as a section but behind the leadership and
Presidential candidacy of Calhoun himself. Nevertheless,
Calhoun called for an immediate vote; and in the momentary
confusion that followed, he was angrily amazed to see the
massive and stately Benton rising from his chair, his face
flashing with obvious contempt for Calhoun, the resolutions
and his own political fate.

Mr. Benton: Mr. President, we have some business to transact,
and I do not intend to avoid business for a string of abstractions.

Mb. Calhoun: ... I certainly supposed the Senator from Mis-
souri, the representative of a slaveholding state, would have
supported these resolutions . . .

Mr. Benton: The Senator knows very well from my whole
course in public life that I would never leave public business
to take up firebrands to set the world on fire.

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PROFILES IN COURAGE

Mb. Calhoun: Then I shall know where to find die gentleman.

Mr. Benton: I shall be found in the right place ... on the side
of my country and the Union. [“This answer," wrote Benton
in later years, “given on that day and on that spot, is one of the
incidents of his life which Mr. Benton will wish posterity to
remember."]

When Calhoun initiated a series of secret, ni^tly meet-
ings of Congressmen from slave states, strongly supported by
Benton’s Missouri colleague Atchison, Benton refused to
have anything to do with it. When Calhoun’s colleague from
South Carolina challenged him to a duel, he refused to have
anything to do with him. When he was warned not to
deliver his great eulogy in appreciation of that foe of slavery,
John Quincy Adams, he refused to heed such warnings. And
finally, when in 1848 the slavery issue split the Democratic
party at its convention, Benton, deploring the split and
denying the importance of the issue, refused to support
either camp actively. He was now a man without a party, a
politician without a recognized platform, and a Senator
without a constituency. '

The noose was set early in 1849. Calhoim, successful in
obtaining adoption of his resolutions by several Southern
legislatures, denounced Benton to his Missouri enemies as
one “false to the South for the last ten years. ... He can do
us much less injury in the camp of the abolitionists than he
could in our own camp. His will be the fate of all traitors."
By an overwhelming margin, the Missouri Legislature
adopted Calhoun’s resolutions, expressed Missouri’s desire
to cooperate with other slaveholdmg states, and instructed

[ 110 ]

THOMAS HART BENTON

her Senators to vote accordingly. Outraged at this setback,
Benton charged that the resolutions had been inspired in
Washington and falsified real opinion in Missouri. They
were, he said, “the speckled progeny of a vile conjunction,
redolent with lurking treason to the Union":

Between them and me, henceforth and forever, a hi^ wall
and a deep ditch! And no communion, no compromise, no caucus
with them. . . . From this command I appeal to the people of
Missouri, and if they confirm the instructions, I shall give them
an opportunity to find a Senator to carry their wishes into effect^
as I cannot do anything to dissolve this Union, or to array one-
half of it against the other.

Determined see the Legislature's resolutions withdrawn
or repudiated, Benton launched an aggressive tour of his
hostile state. He denoimced tlie leading Southern spokesman
for his party as “John ‘Catahne’ Calhoun” (a denuncia-
tion he would continue until shortly before Calhoun’s death
after a long illness in 1850. He withheld his attack then, he
said, because “When Cod Almighty lays his hand upon a
man, sir, 1 take mine off, sir”). Pouring out his taimting
sarcasm in short, bombastic thunderbolts of gigantic rage,
hate and ridicule, day after day, in town after town, he
assailed his opponents and their policies with bitter invective.
His overbearing and merciless roughness, personal vindic-
tiveness and uncompromising enmity drove away many
whose support he might otherwise have won by conciliation.
Beginning his address to crowded meetings with “My friends
— ^and in that term I comprehend diose who come to hear
the truth and to believe it — ^none others,” he attacked Ihe

[ 111 ]

PROFILES IN COURAGE

resolutions as "false in their facts, incendiary in their temper,
disunion in their object, hi^ treason in their remedy, and
usuipation in their character. . . . The whole concept, con-
coction and* passage of the resolutions were perfected by
fraud ... a plot to get me out of the Senate and out of the
way of the disunion plotters.” Attaddng his long-time
political enemy. Judge Napton, who had reportedly drawn
up the resolutions, he said that any man who acted accord-
ing to the provisions of those measures would “be subject
to be hung under the laws of the United States — and if a
judge will deserve to be hung.”

One day, bitterly reading and commenting upon the
names of each member of the Legislature, he stopped when
he came to the “D s” and said he smelled a NuUifier. A legis-
lator named Davies having arisen to protest, Benton
scowled: “I never called your name, sir. Turn your profile to
the audience. . . . [Like a fool, Davies complied] , . . Citizens,
that is not the profile of a man; it is the profile of a dog”
When an old friend, accidentally failing to remove his hat,
asked a question in the middle of a speech, Benton angrily
scolded, “Who is this man, citizens, who dares to stop Benton
in his speech?” “Aycock, Colonel Aycock,” came a dozen
voices. “Aycock? No, citizens, no, not a cock, but a hen
rather. Take oflF your hat, sir, and take your seat.”

In another town, spotting from the platform three of his
enemies sitting quietly in his audience while he character-
ized their resolutions as “fungus cancers,” he caustically re-
ferred to them by name “as demure as three prostitutes at a
christening.” When his attention was called to the criticism
of a distinguished opponent, he lashed baek, “Send him

[ 112 ]

THOMAS HART BENTON

word that Benton says he lied from the bottom of his belly
to the root of his tongue.” And when, upon his ignoring the
greeting of a former friend who had disapproved of his
course, that unfortunate gentleman bowed and reminded
him of his name, Benton coldly replied: “Sir, Benton once
knew a man by that name, but he is dead, yes, sir, he is
dead.” When he mounted the platform at Fayette, where his
life had been threatened if he dared enter the city limits, a
body of armed men began an uproar. But according to the
Jefferson Inquirer, “in a quarter of an hour the insulters were
cowed; and the speech for four hours was received with
respect and applause.”

But Benton's turbulent tour could not stem a tide much
greater than ary one man or single state. With undisguised
glee Calhoun wrote a friend by summer's end:

It is said that Benton will not be able to sustain himself in
Missouri. His colleague General Atchison . . . says that he has
as good a chance to be elected Pope as to be elected Senator.

A friend of Benton's, on the other hand, wrote:

I am sorry Mr. Benton indulges in so much profanity. Yet in
this respect his opponents . . . are not a whit behind. Nine out
of twenty-two Democratic papers in the state are unbounded
in vilifying him with such epithets as traitor, apostate, scoimdrel,
bam burner, abolitionist and free-soiler ... I am afraid Benton
wiU be defeated.

At the close of his tour, confident at least in his outward
appearances, Benton addressed a letter to the people of
' Missouri:

[ 113 ]

PROFILES IN COURAGE

I know of no cause for this conspiracy against me, except
that I am the natural enemy of all rotten politicians. ... I am
for the Union as it is; and for that cause Mr. Calhoun denounced
me for a traitor to the South. . . . the signal to all his followers
in Missouri to go to work upon me. . . . The conspiracy is now
established. . . . Nullification resolutions passed by fraud, which
it was known I would not obey. . . . Men appomted to attack
me in all parts of the state. . . . Packed meetings got up to con-
demn me. . . . Newspapers enlisted in the service . . . and many
good citizens deceived.

But he could not shame his enemies into submission. In De-
cember of 1849, the anti-Benton leadeis issued a statement
labeling the veteran Senator “reckless, dishonest and un-
scrupulous ... a wicked, deliberate and willful liar . . .
attempting to betray his party for selfish purposes.” And
when Congress reassembled, Calhoun was- successful in
forcing the Democratic caucus to strip Benton of all his
committees except Foreign Affairs, on which he was left
only for pmposes of a trumped-up story that Atchison had
graciously interceded for him.

Even his gigantic ego'could not have hidden from Thomas
Hart Benton the immistakable fact that this was his last term
— unless. Would he initiate a convention of all Missouri
Democrats to settle his differences with the proslavery camp^
“I would sooner,” he thundered, “sit in cmmcil with the six
thousand dead who have died of cholera in St. Louis than go
into convention with such a gang of scampsl” Would he
speak one word for the South in the great debate of 1850
on the Clay Compromise, or at least remain silent in order
to save the seat he loved for future battles? He would not.

[ 114 ]

THOMAS HART BENTON

As a Missouri associate recalled: "... At an early period of
his existence, while reading Plutarch, he determined that if
it should ever become necessary for the good of his country,
he would sacrifice his own political existence.”

As the contest for the State Legislature that would name
his successor raged m Missouri, Senator Benton stood fast
by his post in Washington, outspoken to the end in his con-
demnation of the views his constituents now embraced. Will-
ing to meet crushing defeat rather than compromise his
principles (for as Clay said, intending it to be disparaging,
Benton had the “hide of a hippopotamus”), he towered over
his more famous colleagues in terms of sheer moral courage.
Now isolated from his political friends in the West and
South, and liiaintaining his distaste for the Abolitionists,
whom he held equally responsible for splitting the Union,
Benton steered an extraordinaiily independent course in his
vituperative attacks on Clay’s compromise. Bitterly assailing
the collection of measures which formed the “Great Com-
promise” and scornfully ridiculing its sponsors, he com-
plained when he was constantly called to order by the
presiding oflBcer. The so-called compromise, in Benton’s
opinion, was a hollow sham containing too generous con-
cessions to the Secessionists and unnecessarily involving a
subject dear to his heart, California. To extend the slavery
line of the Missouri Compromise into California and thus
split the state, or to delay its admission by tying it to this
Omnibus Bill, was reprehensible to Benton, the father-in-
law of Colonel John Fr4mont, hero of California’s e]q>lora-
tion and development. What if California’s admission were
prevented by the failure of the compromise, he asked?

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PROFILES IN COURAGE

Mr. Benton: . . . Who then is to be blamed? I do not ask diese
questions of the Senator from Kentucky [Mr. Clay]. It might
be unlawful to do so; for, by die law of the land, no man is
bound to criminate himself.

Mr. Clay [from his seat]: 1 do not claim the benefit of the law.

Mr. Benton: As a law-abiding and generous man, I give him
the benefit of the law whether he claims it or not. It is time for
him to begin to consider the responsibility he has incurred in
jumbling California up in this crowd, where she is sure to meet
death. . . . Mr. President, it is time to be done with this comedy
of errors. California is sufiFering for want of admission. New
Mexico is suffering for want of protection. The public business
is suffering for want of attention. The character of Congress is
suffering for want of progress in business. It is time to put an
end to so many evils, and I have made the motion to move the
indefinite postponement of this unmanageable mass of incon-
gruous bills, each an impediment to the other, that they may be
taken up one by one to receive the decision which their respec-
tive merits require.

During the course of the year, still another melodramatic
event — termed “the greatest indignity the Senate had ever
suffered” — ^served to show the bitter feelings of the South
toward Benton. The peppery Senator Henry Foote of Mis-
sissippi, no blind follower of Calhoun but suspected by
Benton of helping plot his defeat in Missouri, took the floor
on several occasions to abuse Benton s position in a coarse
manner exceeding even the Missourian s own rhetorical ex-
cesses. Taunting him with his approaching defeat in Mis-
souri, and stinging under Benton’s counterattack, Foote

[ 116 ]

THOMAS HART BENTON

ridiculed Benton as one “shielded by his age . . . and shielded
by his own established cowardice.”

Finally Benton announced that, if the Senate failed to
protect him from such “false and cowardly” attacks, he
intended “to protect himself, cost what it may.” On April
17, in the midst of another verbal assault upon him by Foote,
Benton advanced toward the Mississippian, then turned back
at a colleague’s restraining touch. Suddenly Foote whipped
out a pistol and pointed it at Benton, w'ho dramatically threw
open his coat and cried: “I have no pistoll Let him firel Let
the assassin firel”

No one fired. The Senate was shocked — although its
special committee on censure barely rapped the knuckles
of the two participants — ^but verbal assaults between the
two did not cease. When Benton heard of Foote’s threat
that he intended to write a small book in which Vaffaire
Benton would play a leading role, Benton replied: “Tell
Foote that I shall write a very large book in which he will
not figure at alll” (And he did.) And Foote, referring taunt-
ingly to Benton’s expected defeat in Missouri, cried to the
Senate: “If we have been the subjects of tyranny, and if we
have borne it with patience for years, yes, sir, for almost
30 years, thank Godl we may exclaim at last, ‘Behold the
tyrant prostrate in the dust, and Rome again is free.' ”

Foote’s expectations were fully realized. Benton’s vote
against dividing California was his last act of importance in
the Senate. In January, 1851, climaxing a bitter twelve-day
struggle among its three distinct parties — Benton Democrats,
anti-Benton Democrats and Whigs — ^the Missouri Legislature
on its fortieth ballot elected a Whig. After thirty years of

[ 117 ]

PROFILES IN COURAGE

outstanding statesmanship in the Senate of the United States,
Thomas Hart Benton was ignominiously dismissed from the
service and called home.

Undismayed, and still stubbornly refusing to follow the
ea^ path to a graceful and popular political retirement,
Benton fou^t to return to Congress the following year as
Representative from St. Louis. His campaign, according to
the opposition New Orleans Crescent, “spared no public or
personal dentmciation. He exhausted every expletive of
abuse. He ransacked the entire range of the English language
for terms of scorn and derision.’' Elected in one final biust of
personal popularity, he promptly threw to the winds all
chances for future re-election by delivering one of his most
memorable, and one of his most vituperative, speeches in
opposition to the chief measure of his party, the Kansas-
Nebraska Bill. With violent invective he denounced pro-
visions repealing his cherished Missouri Compromise and
'pleaded for a national outlook. “He votes as a Southern man,”
he commented on the remarks of a member from Georgia,
“and votes sectionally. I also am a Southern man, but vote
nationally on national issues. ... I am Southern by my
birth — Southern in my convictions, interests and connec-
tions, and I shall abide the fate of the South in everything in
which she has right on her side.”

Soundly defeated for re-election in 1854, and grieved by
the death of his beloved wife, Benton was not yet ready
to submit. In vain he sought re-election to the Senate in
1855; and, at the age of 74, made one last, hopeless race for
Governor in 1856. Jessie Benton Fremont revealed in her
memoirs that her coiurageous father, sufiFering from what he

[ 118 ]

THOMAS HART BENTON

knew to be a fatal throat cancer, could speak in public only
by maintaining absolute silence for several days in advance.
Even then his throat bled during and following his still fero-
cious speeches. Yet he traveled more than twelve himdred
miles in a desperate speaking tour to defeat the Whig and
anti-Benton Democratic candidates, and he returned home,
defeated but proud, to complete his monumental historical
works.

That flamboyant ego, for which he was both loved and
despised, never deserted him. When the publishers of his
Thirty Years’ View sent a messenger to inquire as to how
many copies he thought ought to be printed, he loftily
replied: “Sir, they can ascertain from the last census how
many families iLeic are in the United States, sir”; and that
was the only suggestion he would make. In introducing his
work, Benton states tliat “the bare enumeration of the
measmes of which he was the author and the prime pro-
moter, would be almost a history of Congress Legislation.
. . . The long list is known throughout the length and breadth
of the land — repeated with the famiharity of household
words . . . and studied by the little boys who feel an honor-
able ambition beginning to stir within their bosoms . .

He died while still hard at work, using an amanuensis
when his feeble hands could no longer grasp a pen, and
uncomplaining even to his last whispered words: “I am com-
fortable, I am content.” His death, mourned throughout the
nation, revealed how little wealth his upright career had
accumulated for his daughters.

But even in death and defeat, Thomas Hart Benton was
victorious. For his voice from the past on behalf of Union

[ 119 ]

PBOFILES IN COURAGE

was one of the deciding factors that prevented Missouri
from yielding to all the desperate eflForts to drive her into
secession along with her sister slave states. Fate had home
out the wisdom of Benton s last report to his constituents
as Senator: “I value solid popularity — ^the esteem of good
men for good action. 1 despise the bubble popularity that is
won without merit and lost without crime. ... I have been
Senator 30 years. ... I sometimes had to act against the
preconceived opinions and first impressions of my constit-
uents; but always with full reliance upon their intelligence
to understand me and their equity to do me justice — and 1
have never been disappointed.’"

1120 ]

V

"...I CAN FORGET THAT I AM
CALLED A TRAITOR.”

☆

Sam Houston

I

■^HE FIRST BAYS OF DAWN were Streaking into the ill-lit
Senate chamber of 1854 as one final speaker rose to
seek recognition. Weary, haggard and unshaven
Senators, slumped despondently in their chairs after the
rigors of an all-night session, muttered “Vote, Vote” in the
hopes of discouraging any further oratory on a bill alr'-ady
certain of passage. But Senator Sam Houston of Texas, the
hero of San Jacinto, was not easily discouraged by over-
whelming odds; and as his deep, musical voice carried the
bold if unpolished words of a powerful message to his aston-
ished colleagues, they shook off the dull stupor which had
deadened their fatigued brains and sat upright and attentive.

The bill on which bitter and exhausting debate now closed
was known as the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, the new “unity”

[1211

PROFILES IN COURAGE

device of die Democratic party and the latest concession to
the South. It repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820,
and reopened the slavery extension issue thought settled in
the Compromise of 1850, by permitting the residents of that
vast territory from Iowa to the Roddes to decide the slavery
question for themselves, on the assumption that the northern
part of the territory would be free and the southern part
slave. For Democrats and Southerners, this bill had become
“must” legislation.

Sam Houston was a Democrat of long standing. And
Sam Houston was a Southerner by birdi, residence, loyalty
and philosophy. But Sam Houston was also Sam Houston,
one of the most independent, unique, popular, forceful and
dramatic individuals ever to enter the Senate chamber. The
first Senator from Texas, his name had long before been a
household word as Commander in Chief of those straggling
and imdermaimed Texas volunteers who routed the entire
Mexican Army at San Jacinto, captured its general and
established die independence of Texas. He had been ac-
claimed as the first President of the Independent Republic
of Texas, a Member of her Congress, and President again
before the admission of Texas into the Union as a state. He
was no easy mark at the age of six^-four, and neither sec-
tional nor party ties were enough to seal his lips.

Sam Houston looked upon the Missouri Compromise,
which he had supported in 1820 as a youthful Congressman
hrom Tennessee, as a solemn and sacred compact between
North and South, in efiect a part of the Constitution when
Texas was admitted into the Union. Nor was he willing to
discard the Compromise of 1850, which he had supported

[ 122 ]

SAM HOUSTON

despite die enmity of Texas fire-eaters who called his vote
“the damnedest outrage yet committed upon Texas." With
homely but earnest eloquence, he begged his weary
colleagues in an impromptu plea not to plunge the nation
into new agitations over the slavery issue.

Sam Houston must have known the bill would pass, he
must have known that not a single odier Southern Democrat
would join him, he must have known that, as rumor of his
position had spread the previous week, the Richmond En-
quirer had spoken for his constituents in declaring, “Noth-
ing can justify this treachery; nor can anything save the
traitor from the deep damnation which such treason may
merit." But, standing erect, his chin thrust forward, pic-
turesque if not eccentric in his military cloak and panther-
sldn waistcoat (at times he appeared in a vast sombrero and
Mexican blanket), Sam Houston, the "magnificent barbar-
ian," made one of his rare speeches to a weary but attentive
Senate:

This is an eminently perilous measure; and do you expect me
to remain here silent, or to shrink from the discharge of my
duty in admonishing the South of what I conceive the results
will be? I will speak in spite of aU the intimidations, or threats,
or discountenances that may be thrown upon me. Sir, the charge
that I am going wiUr the Abolitionists or Free-Soilers affects me
not. The discharge of conscious duty prompts me often to con-
front the united array of the very section of the country in
which I reside, in which my associations are, in which my af-
fections rest. . . . Sir, if this is a boon that is offered to propitiate
the South, I, as a Southern man, repudiate it. I will have none
of it. . . . Our children are either to live in after times in the

[ 123 ]

PROFILES IN COURAGE

enjoyment of peace, of harmony, and prosperity, or the alterna-
tive remains for them of anarchy, discord, and civil broil. We
can avert the last. 1 trust we shall. ... I adjure you to regard
the contract once made to harmonize and preserve this Union.
Maintain the Missouri Compromise! Stir not up agitation! Give
us peace!

It was,” Houston was later to remark, “the most im-
popular vote I ever gave [but] the wisest and most patriotic.”
Certainly it was the most unpopular. When old Sam had
first journeyed to the Senate, the baby-new state of Texas
was primarily concerned with railroad, land, debt and
bovmdary questions, without particularly strong Southern
ties. But now, Texas with 150,000 valuable slaves and an
overwhelmingly Democratic population consisting largely
of citizens from other Southern states, identified its interests
with those Houston had attacked; and with near unanimity,
she cried for Houston’s scalp as one who had “betrayed his
state in the Senate,” “joined the Abolitionists” and “de-
serted the South.” By a vote of 73 to 3 the Legislature ap-
plauded Houston's colleague for supporting the Nebraska
Bill, and condemned the stand of him who was once die
most glorious hero the state had ever known. The Demo-
cratic State Convention denounced the great warrior as
"not in accordance with the sentiments of the Democracy
of Texas.” The Dallas Herald demanded that Houston resign
the seat to which Texans had proudly sent him, instead of
“retaining a position he has forfeited by misrepresenting
them. . . . Let him heed for once the voice of an outraged,
misrepresented, and betrayed constituency, so that Texas
may for once have a united voice and present an undivided
front in the Senate.”

[ 124 ]

SAM HOUSTON

To make matters worse, this was not the first offense for
Senator Sam Houston, merely — ^as described by the indig-
nant Clarksville Standard — “the last feather that broke the
camel’s back.” He had tangled with John Calhoun on the
Oregon question, describing himself as a Southerner for
whom “the Union was his guiding star,” and who had “no
fear that the North would seek to destroy the South not-
withstanding the papers signed by old men and women and
pretty girls." “The South has been beaten by the South —
if imited, she would have conqueredl” cried an influential
Dixie paper when Calhoun rebuked Houston and Benton
for providing the winning margin for his opponents. But
Sam Houston would only reply: “I know neither North nor
South; I know c ily the Union.”

He would have nothing to do, moreover, with Calhoun’s
“hands-off” slavery resolutions and “Southern Address,”
attacking that revered sage of the South for his “long-cher-
ished and ill-concealed designs against the Union,” and in-
sisting to the Senate that he, Sam Houston, was “on this
floor representative of the whole American people.” But the
Texas Legislature adopted Calhoun’s resolutions, and cast
a suspicious eye on the ambitious former President of 1 exas
whose name was being mentioned, in the North as well as the
South, for the White House in 1852 or 1856.

Finally, Houston had been the first prominent Senator to
attack Calhoun’s opposition to the Clay Compromise of 1850,
quoting the Scripture to label those tlireatening secession as
mere “raging waves of sea, foaming out their own shame. . . .”

. Think you, sir, after the difficulties Texans have encountered
to get into the Union, that you can whip them out of it? No,
sir . . . we shed our blood to get into it. . . . We were among the

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PROFILES IN COURAGE

last to come into the Union, and being in, we will be the last to
get out. ... I call on the friends of the Union from every
quarter to come forward like men, and to sacrifice dieir difEer-
ences upon die common altar of their country's good, and to
form a bulwark around the Constitution diat cannot be shaken.
It will require manly efforts, sir, and they must expect to meet
with prejudices that will assail diem from every quarter. They
must stand firm to the Union, re^dless of all personal conse-
quences.

Thus his lonely vote against the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, on
that stormy dawn in 1854, was indeed die 'last straw." It
was loudly whispered about die Senate that this was the last
term for the colorful General. Those illustrious Senators
with whom he had served, whose oratory could not attract
the ^ory and romance which surrounded the name of Sam
Houston, may have frowned upon his eccentric dress and
his habit of whittling pine sticks on the Senate floor while
muttering at the length of senatorial speeches. But they could
not help but admire his stoical courage and rugge4.individ-
ualism, which his preface to a brief autobiographical sketch
expressed more simply': "This book will lose me some friends.
But if it lost me aU and gained me none, in Gods name, as I
am a free man, I would publish it. . . ."

• • •

The contradictions in die life of Sam Houston a century
ago may seem irreconcilable today. Although there are avail-
able endless collections of diaries, speeches and letters which
dirow light on every facet of his life and accomplishments,
yet in the c^enter of die stage Houston himself remains shad-

[ 126 ]

SAM HOUSTON

owed and obscured, an enigma to his friends in his own time,
a mystery to the careful historian of today. We may read a
letter or a diary in which for a moment he seemed to have
dropped his guard, but when we have finished we know little
more than before. No one can say with precision by what
star Sam Houston steered — ^his own, Texas' or the nation's.

He was fiercely ambitious, yet at the end he sacrificed for
principle all he had ever won or wanted. He was a South-
erner, and yet he steadfastly maintained his loyalty to the
Union. He was a slaveholder who defended the right of
Northern ministers to petition Congress against slavery; he
was a notorious drinker who took the vow of temperance;
he was an adopted son of the Cherokee Indians who won his
first military honois fighting the Creeks; he was a Governor
of Tennessee but a Senator from Texas. He was in turn
magnanimous yet vindictive, affectionate yet cruel, eccentric
yet self-conscious, faithful yet opportunistic. But Sam
Houston's contradictions actually confirm his one basic, con-
sistent quality: indomitable individualism, sometimes spec-
tacular, sometimes crude, sometimes mysterious, but always
courageous. He could be all things to all men — and yet,
when faced with his greatest challenge, he was faithful to
himself and to Texas. The turmoil witliin Sam Houston was
nothing more than the turmoil wliich racked tlie United
States in those stormy years before the Civil War, the color-
ful uniqueness of Sam Houston was nothing more tlian the
primitive expression of the frontier he had always known.

When still a dreamy and unmanageable boy, he had run
away from his Tennessee frontier home, and was adopted
by the Cherokee Indians, who christened him Co-lon-neh,

[ 127 ]

PROFILES IN COURAGE

the Raven. An infantry officer under Andrew Jackson in
1813, his right arm had been shredded by enemy bullets
when he alone had dashed into enemy lines at the battle of
the Horseshoe, his men cowering in the hills behind him. A
natural actor with a strikingly handsome figure and a flair
for picturesque dress and speech, he was a rapidly rising
success in Tennessee as prosecuting attorney. Congressman
and finally Governor at thirty-five. The story of his sudden
resignation as Governor at the height of a popularity which
his friend Jackson hoped would make Houston President is
shrouded in mystery. Apparently he discovered but a few
days after his marriage that his young and beautiful bride
had been forced to accept his hand by an ambitious father,
when in truth she loved anodier. His mind and spirit shat-
tered, Houston had abandoned civilization for the Cherokees,
drunken debauchery and political and personal exile. Several
years later, his balance and purpose restored. General Jack-
son to whom he was always faithful sent him to Texas, where
his fantastic military exploits became as much « part of
American folklore as Valley Forge and Gettysburg. But
neither adventure, adulation nor a happy second marriage
ever banished the inner sadness and melancholy which
seemed to some in 1856, now that political defeat ap-
proached, more evident than ever.

000

But Sam Houston was not one to sit morosely brooding
until the whispers of impending defeat were replaced by the
avalanche that would crush him. He had already made sev-
eral tours of Texas during the Senate’s autumn recesses, com-

[ 128 ]

SAM HOUSTON

paring Calhoun with “reckless demagogues” terming
Jefferson Davis “ambitious as Lucifer and cold as a lizard,”
and denouncing with equal vigor both “the mad fanaticism
of the North” and “the mad ambition of the South.” Many
years of hving among half-civilized Indian tribes had not
made him a respecter of high office; in earlier years he had
physically assaulted a Congressional foe of his idol, Andrew
Jackson. (He later told friends it made him feel “meaner
than I ever felt in my life. I thought I had gotten hold of a
great dog but foimd a contemptible whining puppy.”)

Now he struck out with one grand assault on Texas of-
ficialdom by announcing himself a candidate for Governor
in the 1857 election. He would not run as a Democrat, or as
the candidate of any faction or newspaper — or even resign
from the Senate. He would run as Sam Houston, to “regen-
erate die politics of the state. The people want excitement
and I had as well give it as anyone.”

And plenty of excitement is what he provided, in the first
real battle solidly Democratic Texas had ever known. Fre-
quently peeling off his shirt during the hot summer cam-
paign, he harangued audiences in every comer of Texas with
his great fund of vituperative epithets and withering sarcasm.
Well over six feet tall, still straight as an arrow with massive
yet graceful muscles, his penetrating eyes flashed scorn for
his opponents and derision of their policies as he reveled in
(he exercise of the sharp tongue which the dignities of the
Senate chamber had largely stilled. One of his speeches was
described — ^by an opposition newspaper, but undoubtedly
with some accuracy — as “a compound of abuses and egotism
. . . widiout the sanction of historical truth md . . . without

PROFILES IN COURAGE

decent and r^ned language. ... It was characterized
tfaiou^out from beginning to end by such epithets as fellow
thieves, rascals and assassins.** When refused the ri^t to
speak in the coun^ courtihouse at one stop on his tour, he
assured the crowd it was quite all ri^t,

1 am not a taxpayer here. I did not contribute to buy a single
brick or nail in this building and have no ri^t to speak here.
But if there is a man widiin the sound of my voice who would
desire to hear Sam Houston speak and will follow me to yonder
hillside, I have a right to speak on the soil of Texas because I
have watered it with my blood.

Denounced on one hand as a traitor and on the other as a
Know-Nothing (based on his brief flirtation with that in-
tolerant but nonsectional party), he wrote his wife that
"their dirty scandal falls o£F me like water ofiF a duck’s back.”

But his votes on Kansas and other Southern measures
could not be explained away to an angry constituency, and
Texas handed Sam Houston the first trormcing of ^ politi-
cal career. He ou^t to resign from the Senate now, said
the antagonistic Gazette, instead of *liolding on to the barren
office . . . merely to receive his per diem allowance.” But
Sam Houston, encouraged that the margin of his d^eat was
no ^eater than three to two, returned to Washington for
his final years in the Senate unshaken in his beliefs. When a
Southern antagonist taunted bim on the Senate floor diat his
vote against die Kansas-Nebraska Bill had now insured his
defeat, Houston merely replied with a graceful smile diat
it waa true ”that 1 have received an earnest and gratifying
assurance from my constituents that they intend to relieve

[ 130 ]

SAM HOUSTON

me of further service here. ...” He was not mistaken. On
November lo, 1857, Sam Houston was imceremoniously dis-
missed by the Texas Legislature and a more militant spokes-
man for the South elected as his successor.

In bidding farewell to his fellow Senators, Houston told
his colleagues that he desired to retire “with clean hands
and a clean conscience”:

I wish no prouder epitaph to mark the board or slab that may
lie on my tomb than this: “He loved his country, he was a
patriot; he was devoted to the Union.” If it is for this that I
have su£Fercd martyrdom, it is sufficient that I stand at quits
with those who have wielded the sacrificial knife.

But we canu ■>! conclude our story of Senator Sam Iloas-
ton s political comrage with his retirement from the Senate.
Returning to his ranch in Texas, the doughty ex-Senator
foimd he was unable to retire when the Governor who had
defeated him two years previously was threatening to lead
the state into secession. So in the fall of 1859, the aging
warrior again ran as an independent candidate for Governor,
again with no party, no newspaper and no organization be-
hind him, and m^dng but one campaign speech. He would
rely, he told his audience in that still fascinating voice, “upon
the Constitution and the Union, all the old Jacksonian de-
mocracy I ever professed or officially piacticed. ... In
politics I am an old fogy, because I cling devotedly to those
primitive principles upon which our government was
founded.”

Althou^ his opponents repeatedly insisted that secession
and reopening the Texas slave trade were not real issues,

[ 131 ]

PROFILES JN COUBAGE

Houston pressed hard on these grounds, as well as his prom-
ises of greater protection against Mexican and Indian frontier
terrorisms. It was a bitter campaign, the Democrats and
newspapers assailing Houston with acrimonious passion, re-
opening old charges of Houston's immorality and cowardice.
But strangely enough, the appeal of the issues (however pre-
mature) he had raised, his personal following among his old
comrades, disgust with the administration of his opponents,
new popularity which Houston had acquired just prior to
his retirement by his exposure on the Senate floor of a cor-
rupt federal judge, and a surge of sentimental feeling toward
him upon his return to his beloved Texas, all combined to
elect Sam Houston Governor in a complete reversal of his
defeat two years earlier. It was the first setback for Southern
extremists in a decade, and the Governor-elect was attacked
by disgusted Texas newspapers as “a traitor who ought to
fall never to rise again” and “one of the greatest enemies to
the South — a Southern Free Soiler.”

The old Jacksonian nationalism which had motivated his
entire career now faced its severest trial. Maintaining that
the overwhelmingly hostile Democratic Legislature did not
truly represent the people. Governor Houston violated all
precedent by delivering his inaugural address directly to the
people from the steps of the Capitol, instead of before a joint
session of the Legislature. To an immense audience gathered
on the Capitol grounds, Houston declared that he was Gov-
ernor of the people and not of any party, and that “When
Texas imited her destiny with that of the United States, she
entered not into the North or South; her connection was not
sectional, but national.”

[ 132 ]

SAM HOUSTON

But the wounds of his election were not healed; and when
the name of Sam Houston was proposed by a New Yorker
at the Democratic National Convention in i860 as one that
“would sweep the whole country for a great victory,” ex-
Govemor Runnels, the leader of the Texas delegation,
jumped to his feet: “Sir, by GodI I am the individual Sam
Houston recently thrashed for Governor and anything lauda-
tory to him is damned unpleasant to me.”

With obvious reference to such enemies, Houston told
the Legislatvure in his first general message in i860:

notwithstanding the ravings of deluded zealots, or the impious
threats of fanatical disunionists, the love of our common country
still bums with the fire of the olden time ... in the hearts of the
conservative people of Texas. . . . Texas will maintain the Con-
stitution and stand by the Union. It is all that can save us as a
nation. Destroy it, and anarchy awaits us.

When South Carolina invited Texas to send delegates to
the Southern Convention to protest “assaults upon the in-
stitution of slavery and upon the rights of the South,” Hous-
ton transmitted the communication to the Legislature as a
matter of courtesy, but warned in a masterful document:
“The Union was intended to be a peipetuity.” By skillful
political maneuvers, he prevented acceptance of South
Carolina's invitation, causing Senator Iverson of Georgia to
call for some “Texan Brutus” to “rise and rid his country of
the hoary-headed incubus.” As sentiment grew overwhelm-
ingly in favor of secession during the heated Presidential
campaign of i860. Governor Houston could only implore
his impatient constituents to wait and see what Mr. Lin-

[ 133 ]

PROFILES IN COURAGE

coin’s attitude would be, if elected. But tibe fact that he had
received a few unsolicited votes in the Republican Conven-
tion as Lincoln’s running mate furnished further ammunition
to his enemies. And when the town of Henderson mysteri-
ously burned in August, the Governor could do nothing to
prevent the wave of lynchings, vigilante committees and
angiy sentiment which followed rumors of Negro uprisings
and arson. Houston’s speech in Waco denouncing secession
was answered by the explosion of a keg of powder behind
the hotel in which he slept unharmed. But heedless of per-
sonal or political danger, he arose from a sickbed in Septem-
ber to make one final appeal:

I ask not the defeat of sectionalism by sectionalism, but by
nationality. . . . These are no new sentiments to me. I uttered
them in the American Senate in 1856. I utter them now. I was
denounced then as a traitor. I am denounced now. Be it sol
Men who never endured the privation, the toil, the peril that
I have for my country call me a traitor because I am willing
to yield obedience to the Constitution and the constituted
authorities. Let them suffer what I have for this Union, and
th^ will feel it entwining so closely around their hearts that it
wiU be like snapping the cords of life to give it up. . . . What
are the people who call me a traitor? Are they those who march
under die national flag and are ready to defend it? That is my
bannerl . . . and so long as it waves proudly o’er me, even as it
has waved amid stormy scenes where these men were not, I can
forget diat I am called a traitor.

Abraham Lincoln was elected President, and immediately
dirou^out Texas the Lone Star flag was hoisted in an
atmosphere of excited and belligerent expectation. Houston’s

[ 134 ]

SAM HOUSTON

plea that Texas fi^t for her rights "in the Union and for
the sake of the Union" fell on deaf ears. "A sentiment of
servility," snapped the press; and Governor Houston was
shoved aside as a Secession Convention was called.

Sam Houston, fitting desperately to hold on to the
reins of goveimnent, called a special session of die State
Legislature, denouncing extremists both North and South
and insisting that he had "not yet lost the hope that our ri^ts
can be maintained in the Union." If not, he maintained,
independence is preferable to joining the Soudiem camp.

But the Secession Convention leaders, recogpized by the
Legislature and aided by the desertion of the Union com-
mander in Texas, could not be stopped, and their headlong
rush into seoe^ifon was momentarily disturbed only by the
surprise appearance of the Governor they hated but feared.
On the day the Ordinance of Secession was to be adopted,
Sam Houston sat on the platform, grimly silent, his presence
renewing the courage of those few friends of union who
xemained in the hall. "To those who tell of his wonderful
charge up the hill at San Jacinto," said the historian Wharton,
"1 say it took a thousand times more courage when he
stalked into the Secession Convention at Austin and alone
defied and awed them." When, encouraged by the magic of
Houston's presence, James W. Throckmorton cast one of
the seven votes against secession, he was loudly and bittedy
hissed; and rising in his place he made the memorable reply,
"When the rabble hiss, well may patriots tremble."

But there were few who trembled as the Ordinance was
adopted and submitted to the people for their approval at
the polls one month later. Immediately tlm fitting ex-Sena^

[ 135 ]

PROFILES IN COURAGE

tor took the stump in a one-man campaign to keep Texas in
the Union. Ugly crowds, stones and denunciation as a traitor
met him throughout the state. At Waco his life was threat-
ened. At Belton, an armed thug suddenly arose and started
toward him. But old Sam Houston, looking him right in the
eye, put each hand on his own pistols: “Ladies and Gentle-
men, keep your seats. It is nothing but a fice barking at the
lion in his den.” Unharmed, he stalked the state in charac-
teristic fashion, confounding his enemies with powerful sar-
casm. Asked to express his honest opinion of the secessionist
leader, Houston replied: “He has all the characteristics of a
dog except fidelity.” Now seventy years old, but still an im-
pressively straight figure with those penetrating eyes and
massive white hair. Old Sam closed his tour in Galveston
before a jeering and ugly mob. “Some of you laugh to scorn
the idea of bloodshed as the result of secession,” he cried,
"but let me tell you what is coming. You may, after the
sacrifice of coimtless millions of treasures and himdreds of
thousands of precious lives, as a bare possibility, win South-
ern independence, if God be not against you. But I doubt
it. The North is determined to preserve this Union.”

His prophecy was unheeded. On February 23, Texas
voted for secession by a large margin; and on March 2, the
anniversary of Houston’s birthday and Texan independence,
the special convention reassembled at Austin and declared
tiiat Texas had seceded. Governor Houston, still desperately
attempting to regain the initiative, indicated he would make
known his plans on the matter to the legislature. Angry at
his insistence that its legal authority had ended, the Gonven-
tion by a thumping vote of 109 to 2 declared Texas to be a

[ 136 ]

SAM HOUSTON

part of the Southern Confederacy, and decreed that all state
officers must take the new oath of allegiance on the four-
teenth of March. The Governor’s secretary merely replied
that Governor Houston “did not acknowledge the existence
of the Convention and should not regard its action as bind-
ing upon him.”

On March 14, as an eyewitness described it, the Conven-
tion hall was .“crowded . . . electrified with fiery radiations,
of men tingling with passton, and glowing and burning with
the anticipation of revengeful battle. The air was full of the
stirring clamor of a multitude of voices — angry, triumphant,
scornful with an occasional oath or epithet of contempt —
but the voice of Sam Houston was not heard.”

At the appointed hour, the Convention clerk was in-
structed to call the roll of state officials. Silence settled over
the vast audience, and every eye peered anxiously for a
glimpse of the old hero.

“Sam Houston!” There was no response.

“Sam Houston! Sam Houston!” The rumbling and con-
temptuous voices began again. The office of Governor of
Texas, Confederate States of America, was declared to be
officially vacant; and Lieutenant Governor Edward Clark,
“an insignificant creature, contemptible, spry and pert,”
stepped up to take the oath. (A close personal and political
friend elected on Houston’s ticket, Clark would later enter
the executive office to demand the archives of the state, only
to have his former mentor wheel slowly in his chair to face
bim with the grandly scornful question: “And what is your
name, sir?”)

In another part of the Capitol, the hero of San Jacinto,
.. [ 137 ]

PROFILES IN COURAGE

casting aside a lifetime of political fortune, fame and devo-
tion from his people, was scrawling out his last message as
Governor with a broken heart:

Fellow Citizens, in the name of your rights and liberty, which
I believe have been trampled upon, I refuse to take this oath. In
the name of my own oonsdenoe and my own manhood ... I
refuse to take this oath. . . . [But] I love Texas too well to bring
civil strife and bloodshed upon her. I shall make no endeavor to
maintain my authority as Chief Executive of this state, except by
the peaceful exercise of my functions. When I can no longer do
this, I shall calmly withdraw from the scene. ...lam... stricken
down because I will not yield diose principles which I have
fought for. . . . The severest pang is that the blow comes in the
name of the state of Texas.

[1381

The Time and the Place

☆

☆ ☆
☆

The end of th-' 'X'stly military struggle between North and
South did not restore peace and unity on the political front.
Appomattox had ended the shooting of brother by brother;
but it did not halt the political invasions, the economic plun-
dering and the intersectional hatred that still racked a di-
vided land. The bitter animosities on both sides of the
Mason-Dixon line which had engulfed Daniel Webster,
Thomas Hart Benton and Sam Houston continued unabated
for some two decades after the war. Those in the Nortli who
sought to bind up the wounds of the nation and treat the
South with mercy and fairness — ^men like President Andrew
Johnson, and those Senators who stood by him in his im-
peachment — ^were pilloried for their lack of patriotism by
those who waved the “bloody shirt.” Those in the South
who sought to demonstrate to the nation that the fanatical
sectionalism of their region had been forgotten — ^men like
Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar of Mississippi — ^were at-

[ 141 ]

PROFILES IN COURAGE

tacked by their constituents as deserters to the conquering
enemy. When Confederate General Bob Toombs was asked
why he did not petition Congress for his pardon, Toombs
replied with quiet grandeur: ‘Tardon for what? 1 have not
yet pardoned the North.*

But gradually, the old conflicts over emancipation and
reconstruction faded away, and exploitation of the newly
opened West and the trampled South brou^t new issues
and new faces to the Senate. It was no longer the forum for
our greatest Constitutional lawyers, for Constitutional issues
no longer dominated American public life. Easy money, sud-
den fortunes, increasingly powerful political machines and
blatant corruption transformed much of the nation; and the
Senate, as befits a democratic legislative body, accurately
represented the nation. Corporation lawyers and political
bosses, not constitutional orators, were the spokesmen for
this roaring era; althou^ too many of the nation’s talented
men found fame and fortune more readily available in the
world of high finance and industry, rather than the seem-
ingly dull and unnoticed labors of government. (If Daniel
Webster had lived in that age, one editor commented, he
would have been "neither in debt nor in the Senate.”)
Eleven new states were added quickly as the West was de-
veloped; and twenty-two new Smiators and a tremendous
new chamber detracted from that old distinctive atmosphere.
Sectionalism, logrolling and a series of near-fanatical move-
ments— of which the "firee silver* movement that embroiled
Lamar was only the beginning — ^plagued Senate delibera-
tions on domestic economic issues. "We are becoming a mere
collection of local potato plots and cabbage grounds,” com-

[ 142 ]

THE TIME AND THE PLACE

plained one Senator, weary of the constant bickering over
local patronage, rivers and harbors projects and tariff-pro-
tected industries.

Senators, said William Allen White, represented not only
states and regions but "principalities and powers and busi-
ness”:

One Senator, for instance, repiesented the Union Pacific Rail-
way System, another the New York Central, still another the in-
surance interests. . . . Coal and iron owned a coterie . . . cotton
had half a dozen Senators. And so it went. ... It was a pluto-
cratic feudalism . . . eminently respectable. The collar of any
great financial interest was worn in pride.

And White '^elated the supposed conversation in which vet-
eran Senator Davis described to a freshman Senator the
characteristics of his colleagues in those roaring days as they
came down the aisle: "The jackal; the vulture; the sheep-
Idlling dog; the gorilla; the crocodile; the buzzard; the old
ducking hen; the dove; the turkey-gobbler.” Then, White
wrote, “as the big hulk of a greedy westerner— coarse, de-
vious, insolent— came swinging in heavily. Judge Davis
pointed his stubby forefinger at the creature and exdaimed:
‘A wolf, sir; a damned, hungry, skulking, cowardly wolfi’ ”

Thus by the end of the nineteenth century the Senate had
come to very nearly its lowest ebb, in terms of power as well
as prestige. The decline in Senatorial power had begun
shortly after die end of Grant's administration. Prior to that
time, die Senate, which had humiliated President Johnson
and dominated President Grant, had reigned supreme in what
was very nearly a parliamentary form of government. Sena-

[ 143 ]

PROFILES IN COURAGE

tors even claimed a place at the dinner table above members
of the Cabinet (who had previously outranked them at social
functions). “If they visited the White House,” George
Frisbie Hoar later recalled, “it was to give, not to receive
advice.” (Indeed the assertion of power by both Houses was
illustrated by the visit of Congressman Anson Burlingame
to the House of Commons. When an attendant told him he
must leave his seat, inasmuch as that particular gallery was
reserved for Peers, an old Peer sittmg nearby interposed.
“Let him stay, let him stay. He is a Peer in his own country.”
“I am a Sovereign in my own country. Sir,” replied the Con-
gressman as he walked out, “and shall lose caste if I associate
with Peers.”) But the peak of Congressional power passed
as Presidents Hayes, Garfield, Arthur and Cleveland suc-
cessfully resisted Senatorial attempts to dictate Presidential
appointments, and the government returned to the more
traditional American system of the Constitution’s checks and
balances.

The decline in the Senate’s power, moreover, had been
foreshadowed by a rapid decline in prestige even before
economic issues had replaced the sectional and constitutional
conflict. British and Canadian diplomats maintained that
they had secured approval of the Reciprocity Treaty of
1854 by seeing to it that it was “floated through on waves of
champagne. ... If you have got to deal with hogs, what are
you to do?” A Cabinet member, possibly recalling this
metaphor, impatiently told Henry Adams in 1869, “You
can’t use tact with a Congressman! A Congressman is a hog!
You must take a stick and hit him on the snout.” And in
quiet derision Adams, who thou^t most members of the

[144 1

THE TIME AND THE PLACE

Senate “more grotesque than ridicule could make them,” had
replied, “K a Congressman is a hog, what is a Senator?”

But the Senate, despite its decline in power and public
esteem during the second half of the nineteenth century,
did not consist entirely of hogs and damned skulking wolves.
It still contained men worthy of respect, and men of courage.
Of these, Edmund Ross and those who stood with him in the
Johnson impeachment trial selflessly sacrificed themselves to
save the nation from reckless abuse of legislative power. And
Lucius Lamar, by his gentle but firm determination to be a
statesman, was instrumental in remiiting the nation in prepa-
ration for the new challenges which lay ahead.

[ 145 ]

VI

I. ..LOOKED DOWN INTO
MY OPEN GRAVE.”

☆

Edmund G. Ross

I N A LONELY GBAVE, forgotten and unknown, lies "die
man who saved a President,” and who as a result may
well have preserved for ourselves and posterity con>
stitutianal government in the United States — ^the man who
peifonned in 1868 what one historian has called “the most
heroic act in American history, incomparably more difficult
dian any deed of valor upon the field of battle” — but a
United States Senator whose name no one recalls: Edmund
G. Boss of Kansas.

The impeadiment of President Andrew Johnson, the
event in which the obscure Ross was to play sudi a dramatic
role, was the sensational climax to die bitter strug^ be-
tween the President, determined to carry out Abraham Lin-
odn’s pdicies of recondliadon with the defeated South, and

1146]

EDMtJND G. ROSS

the more radical Republican leaders in Congress, who sou ght
to administer the downtrodden Southern states as conquered
provinces which had forfeited their rights under the Consti-
tution. It was, moreover, a struggle between Executive and
Legislative authority. Andrew Johnson, the courageous if
untactful Teimessean who had been the only Southern Mem-
ber of Congress to refuse to secede with his state, had com-
mitted himself to the policies of the Great Emancipator to
whose high station he had succeeded only by the course of
an assassin s bullet. He knew that Lincoln prior to his deadi
had already clashed with the extremists in Congress, who
had opposed his approach to reconstruction in a constitu-
tional and charitable maimer and sou^t to make die Legisla-
tive Branch ttf the government .supreme. And his own bel-
ligerent temperament soon destroyed any hope that Congress
might now join hands in carrying out Lincoln’s policies of
permitting the South to resume its place in the Union widi
as htde delay and controversy as possible.

By 1866, when Edmund Ross first came to the Senate, the
two branches of the government were already at each other’s
throats, snarling and bristling with anger. Bill after bill was
vetoed by the President on the grounds that they were un-
constitutional, too harsh in their treatment of the South, an
imnecessary prolongation of military rule in peacetime or
undue interference with the authority of the Executive
Branch. And for the first time in our nation’s history, im-
portant public measures were passed over a President’s veto
and became law without his support.

But not all of Andrew Johnson’s vetoes were overturned;
and the “Radical” Republicans of the Congress prompdy

[ 147 ]

PROFILES IN COURAGE

realized that one final step was necessary before they could
crush dieir despised foe (and in the heat of pohtical battle
their vengeance was turned upon their President far more
than their former military enemies of the South). That one
remaining step was the assurance of a two-thirds majority in
the Senate — ^for under the Constitution, such a majority was
necessary to override a Presidential veto. And more impor-
tant, such a majority was constitutionally required to accom-
plish their major ambition, now an ill-kept secret, conviction
of the President under an impeachment and his dismissal
from ofBcel

The temporary and unstable two-thirds majonty which
had enabled the Senate Radical Republicans on several occa-
sions to enact legislation over the President’s veto was, they
knew, insufiBciently reliable for an impeachment conviction.
To solidify this bloc became the paramount goal of Con-
gress, expressly or impliedly governing its decisions on other
issues — ^particularly the admission of new states, the readmis-
sion of Southern states and the determination of senatorial
credentials. By extremely dubious methods a pro-Johnson
Senator was denied his seat. Over the President’s veto Ne-
braska was admitted to the Union, seating two more anti-
administration Senators. Although last-minute maneuvers
failed to admit Colorado over the President’s veto (sparsely
populated Colorado had rejected statehood in a referen-
dum), an unexpected tragedy brought false tears and fresh
hopes for a new vote, in Kansas.

Senator Jim Lane of Kansas had been a ‘‘conservative”
Republican sympathetic to Johnson’s plans to cany out Lin-
coln’s reconstruction policies. But his frontier state was one
of tile most “radical” in tiie Union. When Lane voted to

[ 148 ]

EDMUND G. ROSS

uphold Johnson’s veto of the Civil Rights Bill of 1866 and
introduced the administration’s bill for recognition of the
new state government of Arkansas, Kansas had arisen in out-
raged heat. A mass meeting at Lawrence had vilified the
Senator and speedily reported resolutions sharply condemn-
ing his position. Humiliated, mentally ailing, broken in
health and laboring under charges of financial irregularities,
Jim Lane took his own life on July 1, 1866.

With this thorn in their side removed, the Radical Repub-
licans in Washington looked anxiously toward Kansas and
the selection of Lane’s successor. Their fondest hopes were
realized, for the new Senator from Kansas turned out to be
Edmund C. Ross, the very man who had introduced the reso-
lutions attPckiMg Lane at Lawrence.

There could be no doubt as to where Ross’s sympathies
lay, for his entire career was one of determined opposition
to the slave states of the South, their practices and their
friends. In 1854, when only twenty-eight, he had taken part
in the mob rescue of a fugitive slave in Milwaukee. In 1856,
he had joined that fiood of antislavery immigrants to “bleed-
ing” Kansas who intended to keep it a free territory. Dis-
gusted with the Democratic party of his youth, he luid left
that party, and volunteered in the Kansas Free State Army
to drive back a force of proslavery men invading the terri-
tory. In 1862, he had given up his newspaper work to enlist
in the Union Army, from which he emerged a Major. His
leading role in the condemnation of Lane at Lawrence con-
vinced the Radical Republican leaders in Congress that in
Edmund G. Ross they had a solid member of that vital two-
thirds.

Hie stage was now set for the final scene — ^the removal of

[ 149 ]

PROFILES IN COURAGE

Johnson. Early in 1867, Congress enacted over the Presi-
dent’s veto the Tenure-of-Office Bill which prevented the
President from removing without tfre consent of the Senate
aU new ofBceholders whose appointment required confirma-
tion by that body. At the time nothing more than the cry
for more patronage was involved, Cabinet Members hav-
ing originally been specifically exempt.

On August 5, 1867, President Johnson— convinced that
die Secretary of War, whom he had inherited from Lincoln,
Edwin M. Stanton, was die surreptitious tool of the Radical
Republicans and was seeking to become the almighty dic-
tator of the conquered South — ^asked for his immediate res-
ignation; and Stanton arrogantly fired back the reply that he
declined to resign before the next meeting of Congress. Not
one to cower before this kind of eflFrontery, the President
one week later suspended Stanton, and appointed in his place
the one man whom Stanton did not dare resist. General
Grant. On January 13, 1868, an angry Senate notified the
President and Grant that it did not concur in the suspension
of Stanton, and Grant vacated the office upon Stanton’s re-
turn. But the situation was intolerable. The Secretary of
War was unable to attend Cabinet meetings or associate
with his colleagues in the administration; and on February
21, President Johnson, anxious to obtain a court test of the
act he believed obviously unconstitutional, again notified
Stanton that he had been summarily removed from the of-
fice of Secretary of War.

While Stanton, refusing to yield possession, barricaded
himself in his office, public opinion in the nation ran heavily
against the President. He had intentionally broken the law

[ 150 ]

EDMUND G. ROSS

and dictatorially thwarted the will of Congress! Althou^
previous resolutions of impeachment had been defeated in
the House, both in committee and on the floor, a new resolu-
tion was swiftly reported and adopted on February 24 by a
tremendous vote. Every single Republican voted in the af-
firmative, and Thaddeus Stevens Pennsylvania — the crip-
pled, fanatical personification of the extremes of the Radical
Republican movement, master of the House of Representa-
tives, with a mouth like the thin edge of an ax — ^warned both
Houses of the Congress coldly: “Let me see the recreant who
would vote to let such a criminal escape. Point me to one
who will dare do it and I will show you one who will dare the
infamy of posterity."

With the President impeached — ^in effect, indicted — ^by
the House, the frenzied trial for his conviction or acquittal
under the Articles of Impeachment began on March 5 in
the Senate, presided over by the Chief Justice. It was a trial
to rank with all the great trials in history — Charles I before
the High Comt of Justice, Louis XVI before the Frendi
Convention, and Warren Hastings befmre the House of
Lords. Two great elements of drama were missing: the
actual cause for which the President was being tried was
not fundamental to the welfare of the mition; and the de-
fendant himself was at all times absent.

But every other element of the highest courtroom drama
was present. To each Senator the Chief Justice administered
an oath “to do impartial justice" (including even the hot-
headed Radical Senator from Ohio, Benjamin Wade, who as
President Pro Tempore of the Senate was next in line for die
’Presidency). The chief prosecutor for the House was Gen-

[ 151 ]

PROFILES IN COURAGE

eral Benjamin F. Butler, the “butcher of New Orleans," a
talented but coarse and demagogic Congressman from Mas-
sachusetts. (When he lost his seat in 1874, he was so hated
by his own party as well as his opponents that one Republi-
can wired concerning the Democratic sweep, “Butler de-
feated, everything else lost.”) Some one thoiisand tickets
were printed for admission to the Senate galleries during the
trial, and every conceivable device was used to obtain one
of the four tickets allotted each Senator.

From the fifth of March to the sixteenth of May, the
drama continued. Of the eleven Articles of Impeachment
adopted by the House, the first eight were based upon the
removal of Stanton and the appointment of a new Secretary
of War in violation of the Tenure-of-OfiBce Act; the ninth
related to Johnson’s conversation with a general which was
said to induce violations of the Army Appropriations Act;
the tenth recited that Johnson had delivered “intemperate,
inflammatory and scandalous harangues ... as well against
Congress as the laws of the United States”; and thensleventh
was a deliberately obscure conglomeration of all the charges
in the preceding articles, which had been designed by Thad-
deus Stevens to furnish a common ground for those who
favored conviction but were imwilling to identify themselves
on basic issues. In opposition to Butler’s inflammatory argu-
ments in support of this hastily drawn indictment, Johnson’s
able and learned counsel replied with considerable eflFective-
ness. They insisted that the Tenure-of-OfiBce Act was null
and void as a dear violation of the Constitution; that even if
it were valid, it would not apply to Stanton, for the reasons
previously mentioned; and that the only way that a judicial

[ 152 ]

EDMUND G. ROSS

test of the law could be obtained was for Stanton to be dis-
missed and sue for bis rights in the courts.

But as the trial progressed, it became increasingly appar-
ent that the impatient Republicans did not intend to give the
President a fair trial on the formal issues upon which the
impeachment was drawn, but intended instead to depose
him from the White House on any grounds, real or imagined,
for refusing to accept their policies. Telling evidence in the
President s favor was arbitrarily excluded. Prejudgment on
the part of most Senators was brazenly aimounced. At-
tempted bribery and other forms of pressure were rampant.
The chief interest was not in the trial or the evidence, but
in the tallying of votes necessary for conviction.

Twenty-seven states (excluding the unrecognized South-
ern states) in the Union meant fifty-four members of the
Senate, and thirty-six votes were required to constitute the
two-thirds majority necessary for conviction. All twelve
Democratic votes were obviously lost, and the forty-two
Republicans knew that they could aflFord to lose only six of
their own members if Johnson were to be ousted. To their
dismay, at a prehminaiy Republican caucus, six courageous
Republicans indicated that the evidence so far intro<luced
was not in their opinion sufiBcient to convict Johnson under
the Articles of Impeachment. “Infamy!” cried the Philadel-
phia Press. The Republic has “been betrayed in the house
of its friendsi”

But if the remaining thirty-six Republicans would hold,
there would be no doubt as to die outcome. All must stand
together! But one Republican Senator would not announce
his verdict in the preliminary poll— Edmund G. Ross of

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PROFILES IN COURAGE

Kansas. The Radicals were outraged that a Senator from
such an anti-Johnson stronghold as Kansas could be doubt-
ful. "It was a very dear case,” Senator Sumner of Massa-
chusetts fumed, “especially for a Kansas man. I did not think
that a Kansas man could quibble against his country.”

From the very time Ross had taken his seat, the Radical
leaders had been confident of his vote. His entire back-
ground, as already indicated, was one of firm support of
their cause. One of his first acts in the Senate had been to
read a dedaration of his adherence to Radical Republican
policy, and he had silently voted for all of their measures.
He had made it clear that he was not in sympathy with
Andrew Johnson personally or politically; and after the re-
moval of Stanton, he had voted with the majority in adopting
a resolution declaring such removal unlawful. His colleague
Rom Kansas, Senator Pomeroy, was one of the most Radical
leaders of the anti-Johnson group. The Republicans insisted
that Ross’s crucial vote was rightfully theirs, and they were
determined to get it by whatever means available. As stated
by De Witt in his memorable Impeachment of Andrew
Johnson, “The full brtmt of the struggle turned at last on
the one remaining doubtful Senator, Edmund G. Ross.”

When the impeachment resolution had passed the House,
Senator Ross had casually remarked to Senator Sprague of
Rhode Island, "Well, Sprague, the thing is here; and, so far
as I am concerned, though a Republican and opposed to Mr.
Johnson and his policy, he shall have as fair a trial as an
accused man ever had on this earth.” Immediately the word
spread that “Ross was shaky.” “From that hour,” he later
wrote, “not a day passed that did not bring me, by mail and

[ 154 ]

EDMUND G. ROSS

telegraph and in personal intercourse, appeals to stand fast
for impeachment, and not a few were the admonitions of
condign visitations upon any indication even of lukewarm-
ness.”

Throughout the country, and in all walks of life, as indicated
by the correspondence of Members of the Senate, the condition
of die public mind was not unlike tliat preceding a great battle.
The dominant party of the nation seemed to occupy the posi-
tion of public prosecutor, and it was scarcely in the mood to
brook delay for trial or to hear defense. Washington had be-
come during the trial die central point of die politically dissatis-
fied and swarmed with representatives of every state of the
Union, demanding in a practically united voice the deposition
of the President. The footsteps of the anti-impeaching Repub-
licans were dogged from the day’s beginning to its end and far
into the niglit, with entreaties, considerations, and threats. Hie
newspapers came daily filled with not a few threats of violence
upon their return to their constituents.

Ross and his fellow doubtful Republicans were daily
pestered, spied upon and subjected to every form of pressure.
Their residences were carefully watched, their social circles
suspiciously scrutinized, and their every move and compan-
ions secretly marked in special notebooks. They were
warned in the party press, harangued by their constituents,
and sent dire warnings threatening political ostracism and
even assassination. Stanton himself, from his barricaded
headquarters in the War Department, worked day and night
to bring to bear upon the doubtful Senators all the weight of
his impressive military associations. The Philadelphia Press
reported “a fearful avalanche of telegra-ns from every sec-

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PROFILES IN COURAGE

tion of the country,” a great surge of public opinion from
the "common people” who had given their money and lives
to the cormtry and would not “willingly or unavenged see
their great sacrifice made naught.”

The New York Tribune reported that Edmund Ross in
particular was “mercilessly dragged this way and that by
both sides, himted like a fox night and day and badgered by
his own colleagues, like the bridge at Areola now trod upon
by one Army and now trampled by the other.” His back-
ground and life were investigated from top to bottom, and
his constituents and colleagues pursued him throughout
Washington to gain some inlding of his opinion. He was the
target of every eye, his name was on every mouth and his
intentions were discussed in every newspaper. Although
there is evidence that he gave some hint of agreement to each
side, and each attempted to claim him publicly, he actually
kept both sides in a state of complete suspense by his judicial
silence.

But Avith no experience in political turmoil, no reputation
in the Senate, no independent income and the most radical
state in the Union to 'deal with, Ross was judged to be the
most sensitive to criticism and the most certain to be swayed
by expert tactics. A committee of Congressmen and Senators
sent to Kansas, and to the states of the other doubtful Re-
publicans, diis telegram: “Great danger to the peace of the
country and the Republican cause if impeachment fails.
Send to your Senators public opinion by resolutions, letters,
and delegations.” A member of the Kansas Legislature caUed
upon Ross at the Capitol. A general urged on by Stanton re-
mained at his lodge until four o'clock in the morning deter-

[ 156 ]

EDMUND G. ROSS

mined to see him. His brother received a letter offering
$20,000 for revelation of the Senator’s intentions. Gruff Ben
Butler exclaimed of Ross, “There is a bushel of money!
How much does the damned scoundrel want?” The night
before the Senate was to take its first vote for the conviction
or acquittal of Johnson, Ross received this telegram from
home:

Kansas has heard the evidence and demands the conviction of
the President.

(signed) D. R. Anthony and i,ooo Others
And on that fateful morning of May i 6 Ross replied:

To D. R. <\uL!i<my and 1,000 Others: I do not recognize your
right to demand that I vote either for or against conviction. I
have taken an oath to do impartial justice according to the
Constitution and laws, and trust that 1 shall have the courage
to vote according to the dictates of my judgment and for the
highest good of the country.

[signed] — E. G. Ross

That morning spies traced Ross to his breakfast; <ind ten
minutes before the vote was taken his Kansas colleague
warned him in the presence of Thaddeus Stevens that a vote
for acquittal would mean trumped-up charges and his po-
litical death.

But now the fateful hour was at hand. Neither escape,
delay or indecision was possible. As Ross himself later de-
scribed it: “The galleries were packed. Tickets of admission
were at an enormous premium. The House had adjourned

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PROFILES IN COURAGE

and all of its m^bers were in the Senate chamber. Every
chair on the Senate floor was filled with a Senator, a Cabinet
OflBcer, a member of the President’s counsel or a member of
the House.” Every Senator was in his seat, the desperately
ill Grimes of Iowa being literally carried in.

It had been decided to take the first vote under that bioad
Eleventh Article of Impeachment, believed to command the
widest support. As the Chief Justice announced the voting
would begin, he reminded "the citizens and strangers in the
galleries that absolute silence and perfect order are required.”
But already a deathlike stillness enveloped the Senate cham-
ber. A Congressman later recalled that "Some of the mem-
bers of the House near me grew pale and sick under the
burden of suspense”; and Ross noted that there was even “a
subsidence of the shuffling of feet, the rustling of silks, the
fluttering of fans, and of conversation.”

The voting tensely commenced. By the time the Chief
Justice reached the name of Edmund Ross twenty-four
“guilties” had been pronounced. Ten more wene certain
and one other practically certain. Only Ross’s vote was
needed to obtain the thirty-six votes necessary to convict the
President. But not a single person in the room knew how this
young Kansan would vote. Unable to conceal the suspense
and emotion in his voice, the Chief Justice put the question
to him: "Mr. Senator Ross, how say you? Is the respondent
Andrew Johnson guilty or not guilty of a high misdemeanor
as charged in this Article?” Every voice was still; every eye
was upon the freshman Senator from Kansas. The hopes and
fears, the hatred and bitterness of past decades were cen-
tered upon this ohe man.

[ 158 ]

EDMUND G. ROSS

As Ross himself later described it, his “powers of hearing
and seeing seemed developed in an abnormal degree.”

Every individual in that great audience seemed distinctly
visible, some with lips apart and bending forward in anxious
expectancy, others with hand uplifted as if to ward off an ap-
prehended blow . . . and each peering with an intensity that
was almost tragic upon the face of him who was about to cast
the fateful vote. . . . Every fan was folded, not a foot moved,
not the rustle of a garment, not a whisper was heard. . . . Hope
and fear seemed blended in every face, instantaneously alter-
nating, some with revengeful hate . . . others lighted with hope.
. , . The Senators in their seats leaned over their desks, many
with hand to ear. ... It was a tremendous responsibility, and
it was not strange that he upon whom it had been imposed by a
fateful combination of conditions should have sought to avoid
it, to put it away from him as one shuns, or tries to fight off, a
nightmare. ... I almost literally looked down into my open
grave. Friendships, position, fortune, everything that makes life
desirable to an ambitious man were about to be swept away by
the breath of my mouth, perhaps forever. It is not strange that
my answer was carried waveringly over the air and failed to
reach the limits of the audience, or that repetition was called for
by distant Senators on the opposite side of the Chamber.

Then came the answer again in a voice that could not be
misunderstood — ^full, final, definite, unhesitating and un-
mistakable: “Not guilty.” The deed was done, the President
saved, the trial as good as over and the conviction lost The
remainder of the roll call was unimportant; conviction had
(ailed by the margin of a single vote and a general rumbling
filled the chamber until the Chief Justice proclaimed that

[ 159 ]

PROFILES IN COURAGE

“on this Article thirty-five Senators having voted guilty
and nineteen not guilty, a two-thirds majority not having
voted for conviction, the President is, therefore, acquitted
under this Artide.”

A ten-day recess followed, ten turbulent days to change
votes on the remaining Articles. An attempt was made to
rush through bills to readmit six Southern states, whose
twelve Senators were guaranteed to vote for conviction. But
this could not be accomplished in time. Again Ross was the
only one uncommitted on the other Articles, the only one
whose vote could not be predicted in advance. And again he
was subjected to terrible pressure. From “D. R. Anthony
and others,” he received a wire informing him that “Kansas
repudiates you as she does all perjurers and skunks.” Every
incident in his life was examined and distorted. Professional
witnesses were found by Senator Pomeroy to testify before
a special House committee that Ross had indicated a willing-
ness to change his vote for a consideration. (Unfortunately
this witness was so delighted in his exciting role that he also
swore that Senator Pomeroy had made an offer to produce
three votes for acquittal for $40,000.) When Ross, in his
capacity as a Committee Chairman, took several bills to the
President, James G. Blaine remarked: “There goes the rascal
to get his pay.” (Long afterward Blaine was to admit: “In
the exaggerated denunciation caused by the anger and
chagrin of the moment, great injustice was done to statesmen
of spotless character.”)

Again the wild rumors spread that Ross had been won
over on the remaining Articles of Impeachment. As the
Senate reassembled, he was the only one of the seven “rene-

[ 160 ]

EDMUND G. ROSS

gade"* Republicans to vote with the majority on preliminary
procedural matters. But when the second and third Articles
of Impeachment were read, and the name of Ross was
reached again with the same intense suspense of ten days
earlier, again came the calm answer “Not guilty.”

Why did Ross, whose dislike for Johnson continued, vote
“Not guilty”? His motives appear clearly from his own
writings on the subject years later in articles contributed to
Scribners and Forum magazines:

In a large sense, the independence of the executive oCBce as
a coordinate branch of the government was on trial. ... If
. . . the President must step down ... a disgraced man and a
political outcast . . . upon insufficient proofs and from partisan
considerations, the office of President would be degraded, cease
to be a coordinate branch of the government, and ever after
subordinated to the legislative will. It would practically have
revolutionized our splendid political fabric into a partisan Con-
gressional autocracy. . . . This government Lad never faced so
insidious a danger . . , control by the worst element of American
politics. ... If Andrew Johnson were acejuitted by a nonpartisan
vote . . . America would pass the danger point of partisan rule
and that intolerance which so often characterizes the ..'^ay of
great majorities and makes them dangerous.

The “open grave” which Edmund Ross had foreseen was
hardly an exaggeration. A Justice of the Kansas Supreme
Court telegraphed him that “the rope with which Judas
Iscariot hanged himself is lost, but Jim Lane s pistol is at
your service.” An editorial in a Kansas newspaper screamed:

On Saturday last Edmund G. Ross, United States Senator
from Kansas, sold himself, and betrayed hi*, constituents; stulli-

[ 161 ]

PROFILES IN COURAGE

fied his own record, basely lied to his friends, shamefully vio-
lated his solemn pledge . . . and to the utmost of his poor ability
signed the death warrant of his country’s liberty. This act was
done deliberately, because the traitor, like Benedict Arnold,
loved money better than he did principle, friends, honor and
his country, all combined. Poor, pitiful, shriveled wretch, with
a soul so small that a little pelf would outweigh all things else
that dignify or ennoble manhood.

Ross’s political career was ended. To the New York Tribune,
he was nothing but “a miserable poltroon and traitor.” The
Philadelphia Press said that in Ross “litdeness” had “simply
borne its legitimate fruit,” and that he and his fellow recalci-
trant Republicans had “plunged from a precipice of fame
into the groveling depths of infamy and death.” The Phila-
delphia Inquirer said that “They had tried, convicted and
sentenced themselves.” For them there could be “no allow-
ance, no clemency.”

Comparative peace returned to Washington as Stanton
relinquished his office and Johnson served out Jhe rest of
his term, later — unlike his Republican defenders — ^to return
triumphantly to th6 Senate as Senator from Tennessee. But
no one paid attention when Ross tried imsuccessfully to ex-
plain his vote, and denounced the falsehoods of Ben Butler’s
investigating committee, recalling diat the General’s “well
known grovelling instincts and proneness to slime and un-
cleanness” had led “the public to insult the brute creation by
dubbing him ‘the beast.’” He clung unhappily to his seat
in die Senate until the expiration of his term, frequently re-
ferred to as “the traitor Ross,” and complaining that his
fellow Congressimen, as well as citizens on the street, con-

[ 162 ]

EDMUND G. ROSS

sidered association with him “disreputable and scandalous,”
and passed him by as if he were “a leper, with averted face
and every indication of hatred and disgust.”

Neither Ross nor any other Republican who had voted for
the acquittal of Johnson was ever re-elected to the Senate,
not a one of them retaining the support of their party’s
organization. When he returned to Kansas in 1871, he and
his family suffered social ostracism, physical attack, and
near poverty.

Who was Edmund G. Ross? Practically nobody. Not a
single public law bears his name, not a single history book
includes liis picture, not a single list of Senate “greats” men-
tions his service. His one heroic deed has been all but for-
gotten. But who might Edmund G. Ross have been? That is
the question — for Ross, a man with an excellent command of
words, an excellent backgroimd for politics and an excellent
future in the Senate, might well have outstripped his col-
leagues in prestige and power tliroughout a long Senate
career. Instead, he chose to throw all of this away for one
act of conscience.

But the twiiting course of human events eventually up-
held the faith he expressed to his wife shortly after tu * trial:
"Millions of men cursing me today will bless me tomorrow
for having saved the country from the greatest peril throu^
which it has ever passed, though none but God can ever
know the struggle it has cost me.” For twenty years later
Congress repealed the Tenure-of- 0 £Bce Act, to which every
President after Johnson, regardless of party, had objected;
and still later the Supreme Court, referring to “the extremes
of that episode in our government,” held it to be unconsti-

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PROFILES IN COURAGE

tutional. Ross moved to New Mexico, where in his later
years he was to be appointed Territorial Governor. Just
prior to his death when he was awarded a special pension by
Congress for his service in the Civil War, the press and the
country took the opportunity to pay tribute to his fidelity
to principle in a trying hour and his courage in saving his
government from a devastating reign of terror. They now
agreed with Ross’s earlier judgment that his vote had “saved
the country from ... a strain that would have wrecked any
other form of government.” Those Kansas newspapers and
political leaders who had bitterly denounced him in earlier
years praised Ross for his stand against legislative mob rule:
“By the firmness and courage of Senator Ross,” it was said,
“the country was saved from calamity greater than war, while
it consigned him to a political martyrdom, the most cruel in
our history. . . . Ross was the victim of a wild fiame of intoler-
ance which swept everything before it. He did his duty
knowing that it meant his political death. ... It was a brave
thing for Ross to do, but Ross did it. He acted for his con-
science and with a lofty patriotism, regardless of what he
knew must be the ruinous consequences to himself. He acted
ri^t.”

O • •

I could not close the story of Edmund Ross without some
more adequate mention of those six courageous Republicans
who stood with Ross and braved denunciation to acquit
Andrew Johnson. Edmund Ross, more than any of those six
colleagues, endured more before and after his vote, reached
his conscientious decision with greater difficulty, and aroused

[ 164 ]

EDMUND G. ROSS

the greatest interest and suspense prior to May i6 by his non-
committal silence. His story, like his vote, is the key to the
impeachment tragedy. But all seven of the Republicans who
voted against conviction should be remembered for their
courage. Not a single one of them ever won re-election to
the Senate. Not a single one of them escaped the unholy
combination of threats, bribes and coercive tactics by which
their fellow Republicans attempted to intimidate their votes;
and not a single one of them escaped the terrible torture of
vicious criticism engendered by their vote to acquit.

William Pitt Fessenden of Maine, one of the most eminent
Senators, orators and lawyers of his day, and a prominent
senior Republican leader, who admired Stanton and disliked
Johnson, became convinced early in the game that *‘the
whole tiling is a mere madness.''

The country has so bad an opinion of the President, which
he fully deserves, that it expects his condemnation. Whatever
may be the consequences to myself personally, whatever I may
think and feel as a politician, I will not decide the question
against my own judgment, I would rather be confined to plant-
ing cabbages the remainder of my days. . . Make up your
mind, if need be, to hear me denounced a traitor and perhaps
hanged in eflBgy. All imaginable abuse has been heaped upon
me by the men and papers devoted to the impeachers. I have
received several letters from friends warning me that my
political grave is dug if I do not vote for eonviction, and sev-
eral threatening assassination. It is rather hard at my lime of
life, after a long career, to find myself the target of pointed
arrows from those whom I have faithfully served. The public,
when aroused and excited by passion and prejudice, is little

[ 165 ]

PROFILES IN COURAGE

better than a wild beast. I shall at all events retain my own self-
respect and a dear conscience, and time will do justice to my
motives at least.

The Radical Republicans were determined to win over the
respected Fessenden, whose name would be the first ques-
tion mark on the call of the roll, and his mail from Maine was
abusive, threatening and pleading. Wendell Phillips scorn-
fully told a hissing crowd that “it takes six months for a
statesmanlike idea to find its way into Mr. Fessenden’s head.
I don’t say he is lacking; he is only very slow.”

Fessenden decided to shun all newspapers and screen his
mail. But when one of his oldest political friends in Maine
urged him to “hang Johnson up by the heels like a dead crow
in a cornfield, to frighten all of his tribe,” noting that he was
“sure I express the unanimous feeling of every loyal heart
and head in this state,” Fessenden indignantly replied:

I am acting as a judge ... by what right can any man upon
whom no responsibility rests, and who does not even hear the
evidence, tmdertake to advise me as to what the judgment, and
even die sentence, should be? I wish all my friends and constitu-
ents to understand that I, and not they, am sitting in judgment
upon die President. I, not they, have sworn to do impartial
justice. I, not they, am responsible to Cod and man for my
action and its consequences.

On that tragic afternoon of May i6, as Ross described it.
Senator Fessenden "was in his place, pale and haggard, yet
ready for the political martyrdom which he was about to
face, and which not long afterward drove him to his grave.”

The first Republican Senator to ring out "Not guilty” —
and the first of the seven to go to his grave, hounded by the

[ 166 ]

EDMUND G. ROSS

merciless abuse that had dimmed all hope for re-election —
was William Pitt Fessenden of Maine.

John B. Henderson of Missouri, one of the Senators young-
est members, had previously demonstrated high courage by
introducing the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery,
simply because he was convinced that it would pass only if
sponsored by a slave-state Senator, whose political death
would necessarily follow. But when the full delegation of
Republican representatives from his state cornered him in
his oflBce to demand that he convict the hated Johnson,
warning that Missouri Republicans could stomach no other
course, Henderson’s usual courage wavered. He meekly of-
fered to wire his resignation to the Governor, enabling a new
appointee to - ote for conviction: and, when it was doubted
whetlier a new Senator would be permitted to vote, he
agreed to ascertain whether his own vote would be crucial.

But an insolent and threatening telegram from Missouri
restored his sense of honor, and he swiftly wired his reply:
“Say to my friends that I am sworn to do impartial justice
according to law and conscience, and I will try to do it like
an honest man.’'

John Henderson voted for acquittal, the last imporKint act
of his Senatorial career. Denounced, tlireatened and burned
in eflBgy in Missouri, he did not even bother to seek re-elec-
tion to the Senate. Years later his party would realize its
debt to him, and return him to lesser offices, but for the
Senate, whose integrity he had upheld, he was through.

Peter Van Winkle of West Virginia, the last doubtful Re-
publican name to be called on May i6, was, hke Ross, a
“nobody’’; but his firm “Not guilty” e>"tinguished the last
faint glimmer of hope which Edmund Ross had already all

[ 167 ]

PROFILES IN COURAGE

but destroyed. The Republicans had counted on Van Winlde
— ^West Virginia’s first United States Senator, and a critic
of Stanton’s removal; and for his courage, he was labeled
“West Virginia’s betrayer’’ by the Wheeling Intelligencer,
who declared to the world that there was not a loyal citizen
in the state who had not been misrepresented by his vote.
He, too, had insured his permanent witlidrawal from politics
as soon as his Senate term expired.

The vetei<m Lyman Trumbull of Illinois, who had de-
feated Abe Lincoln for the Senate, had drafted much of the
major reconstruction legislation which Johnson vetoed, and
had voted to censure Johnson upon Stanton’s removal.

But, in tlie eyes of the Philadelphia Press, his “statesman-
ship drivelled into selfishness,” for, resisting tremendous pies-
sure, he voted against conviction. A Republican convention
in Chicago had resolved “That any Senator elected by the
votes of Union Republicans, who at this time blenches and
betrays, is infamous and should be dishonored and execrated
while this free government endures.” And an Illinois Repub-
lican leader had warned the distinguished Trumbull “not to
show himself on the streets in Chicago; for I fear that the
representatives of an indignant people would hang him to
the most convenient lamppost.”

But Lyman Tnimbull, ending a brilliant career of public
service and devotion to the party which would renounce him,
filed for the record these enduring words:

The question to be decided is not whether Andrew Johnson
is a proper person to fill the Presidential office, nor whether it is
fit that he should remain in it. . . . Once set, the example of im-

[ 168 ]

EDMUND G. ROSS

peaching a President for what, when the excitement of the
House shall have subsided, will be regarded as insufficient cause,
no future President will be safe who happens to difFer with a
majority of the House and two-thirds of the Senate on any
measure deemed by them important. . . , What then becomes of
the checks and balances of the Constitution so carefully devised
and so vital to its perpetuity? They are all gone. ... I cannot be
an instrument to produce such a result, and at the hazard of the
tics even of friendship and affection, till calmer times shall do
justice to my motives, no alternative is left me but the inflexible
discharge of duty.

Joseph Smith Fowler of Tennessee, like Ross, Henderson,
and Van Winkle a freshman Senator, at first thought the
President impeachable. But the former Nashville professor
was horrified by die mad passion of the House in rushing
through the impeachment resolution by evidence against
Johnson "based on falsehood,” and by the “corrupt and dis-
honorable” Ben Butler, “a wicked man wuo seeks to convert
the Senate of the United States into a political guillotine.”
He refused to be led by the nose by “politicians, tlirown to
the surface through the disjointed time . . . keeping alive the
embers of the departing revolution.” Threatened, investi-
gated and defamed by his fellow Radieal Republicans, tlie
nervous Fowler so faltered in his reply on May i6 that it was
at first mistaken for the word “guilty.” A wave of triumph
swept the Senate — ^Johnson was convicted, Ross’s vote was
not needed! But then came the clear and distinct answer:
“Not guilty.”

His re-election impossible, Fowler quietly retired from
the Senate at the close of his term two years later, but not

[ 169 ]

F*

PROFILES IN COURAGE

without a single statement in defense of his vote: “I acted
for my country and posterity in obedience to the will of
God."

James W. Grimes of Iowa, one of Johnson’s bitter and
influential foes in the Senate, became convinced that the
trial was intended only to excite public passions through
"lies sent from here by the most worthless and irresponsible
creatures on the face of the earth" (an indication, perhaps,
of the improved quality of Washington correspondents in
the last eighty-seven years).

Unfortunately, the abuse and threats heaped upon him
during the trial brought on a stroke of paralysis only two
days before the vote was to be taken, and he was confined
to his bed. The Radical Republicans, refusing any postpone-
ment, were delightedly certain that Grimes would either
be too sick in fact to attend on May i6, or would plead that
his illness prevented him from attending to cast the vote
diat would end his career. In the galleries, the crowd sang,
“Old Grimes is dead, that bad old man, we ne’ei;. shall see
him more.” And in the New York Tribune, Horace Greeley
was writing: “It seem's as if no generation could pass without
giving us one man to hve among the Warnings of history.
We have had Benedict Arnold, Aaron Burr, Jefferson Davis,
and now we have James W. Grimes.”

But James W. Grimes was a man of great physical as well
as moral courage, and just before the balloting was to begin
on May i6, four men carried the pale and withered Senator
from Iowa into his seat. He later wrote that Fessenden had
grasped his hand and given him a “glorified smile. ... I
would not today exchange that recollection for the highest

[ 170 ]

EDMUND G. ROSS

distinction of life.” The Chief Justice suggested that it would
be permissible for him to remain seated while voting — ^but
with the assistance of his friends. Senator Grimes struggled
to his feet and in a surprisingly firm voice called out, “Not
guilty.”

Burned in effigy, accused in the press of “idiocy and im-
potency,'* and repudiated by his state and friends. Crimes
never recovered — but before he died he declared to a friend:

I shall ever thank Cod that in that troubled hour of trial,
when many privately confessed that they had sacrificed tlieir
judgment and their conscience at the behests of party newspapers
and party hate, I had the courage to be true to my oath and
my conscience. . , . Perhaps I did wrong not to commit perjury
by order of a party; but I cannot sec it that way. ... I became
a judge acting on my own responsibility and accountable only
to my own conscience and my Maker; and no power could force
me to decide on such a case contrary to my convictions,
whether that party was composed of my friends or my enemies.

[ 171 ]

VII

TODAY I MUST BE TRUE
OR FALSE../'

☆

Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar

N b ONE HAD EVER SEEN that hardened veteran politi-
cian, Speaker of the House James G. Blaine, cry.
But there he sat, with the tears streaming un-
ashamedly down his cheeks, imable to conceal his« emotions
from the full view of the House members and spectators. But
few on the floor or iA the galleries on that dramatic day in
1874 were paying much attention to Mr. Blaine, and most
were making no attempt to hide their own tears. Democrats
and Republicans alike, battle-scarred veterans of the Civil
War and the violence of politics, sat in somber silence, as
they listened to the urgent entreaties of the freshman Con-
gressman from Mississippi. Speaking simply and clearly,
without resorting to the customary rhetorical devices, his
full, rich voice touched the hearts of every listener with its
simple plea for aitlity and justice between North and South.
All were touched, yes, by his message; but stunned, too,

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LUCIUS QUINTUS CINCINNATUS LAMAR

by its impact — for Lucius Lamar of Mississippi was appeal-
ing in the name of the South’s most implacable enemy, the
Radical Republican who had helped make the Reconstruc-
tion Period a black nightmare the South never could forget:
Charles Sumner of Massachusetts. Charles Sumner — who
assailed Daniel Webster as a traitor for seeking to keep the
South in the Union — who helped crucify Edmund Ross for
his vote against the Congressional mob rule that would have
ground the South and the Presidency under its heel — whose
own death was hastened by the terrible caning administered
to him on the Senate floor years earlier by Congressman
Brooks of South Carolina, who thereupon became a Southern
hero — Charles Sumner was now dead. And Lucius Lamar,
known in the pic war da)s as one of the most rabid “fire-
eaters” ever to come out of the deep South, was standing
on the floor of the House and delivering a moving eulogy
lamenting his departure!

For Charles Sumner before he died, Lamar told his
hushed audience,

believed that all occasion for strife and distrust between the
North and South had passed away. ... Is not that the common
sentiment— or if it is not, ought it not to be— of the great mass
of our people, North and South? . . . Shall we not, over the
honored remains of . . . this earnest pleader for the exercise of
human tenderness and charity, lay aside the concealments which
serve only to perpetuate misunderstandings and distrust, and
frankly confess that cn both sides we most earnestly desire to
be one ... in feeling and in heart? . . . Would that the spirit of
the illustrious dead whom we lament today could speak from the
grave to both parties to this deplorable discord in tones which
should reach each and every heart throughout this broad tem-

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PROFILES IN COURAGE

tory: “My countrymeiil know one another, and you will love one
anotherl"

There was an ominous silence — a silence of both medita-
tion and shock. Then a spontaneous burst of applause rolled
out from all sides. “My Cod, what a speech!” said Congress-
man Lyman Tremaine of New York to “Pig Iron” Kelly of
Pennsylvania. "It will ring throu^ the country."

Few speeches in American political history have had such
immediate impact. Overnight it raised Lamar to the first
rank in the Congress and in the country; and more impor-
tantly it marked a turning point in the relations between
North and South. Two weeks after the Sumner eulogy,
Carl Schurz of Missouri rose before ten thousand citizens of
Boston and hailed Lamar as the prophet of a new day in the
relations between North and South. The Boston Globe
called Lamar's speech on Sumner “evidence of the restora-
tion of the Union in the South”; and the Boston Advertiser
said it was “the most significant and hopeful utterwce that
has been heard from the South since the war.”

It was inevitable that some both North and South would
misunderstand it. Northerners whose political power de-
pended on maintaining the Federal hegemony over the
former Confederate states resisted any effort to heal sec-
tional strife. James Blaine, when his tears were dry, was to
write of the Simmer eulogy that “it was a mark of positive
genius in a Southern representative to pronounce a fervid
and discriminating eulogy upon Mr. Sumner, and skillfully
interweave with it a defense of that which Mr. Sumner, like
John Wesley, believed to be the sum of all villainies.”

Southerners to whom Charles Sumner symbolized the

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LUCIUS QUINTUS CINCINNATUS LAMAR

worst of the prewar abolitionist movement and the postwar
reconstruction felt betrayed. Several leading Mississippi
newspapers, including the Columbus Democraty the Canton
Mail and the Meridian Mercury^ vigorously criticized Lamar,
as did many of his old friends, maintaining that he had sur-
rendered Southern principle and honor. To his wife, Lamar
wrote:

No one here thinks I lowered the Southern flag, but the
Southern press is down on me. . . . Our people have suffered
so much, have been betrayed so often by those in whom they
had the strongest reason to confide, that it is but natural that
they should be suspicious of any word or act of overture to the
North by a Southern man. I know for once that I have done
her good . . . iiu-t I have awakened sympathies where before
existed animosities. If she condemns me, while I shall not be
indifferent to her disapprobation, I shall not be . . . resentful. I
shall be cheered by the thought that I have done a beneficial
thing for her. It is time for a public man to try to serve the
South, and not to subserve her irritated feelings. ... I shall serve
no other interest than hers, and will calmly and silently retire
to private life if her people do not approve me.

Such attacks, however, were in the minority. It wis gen-
erally recognized, North and South, that the speech which
could have been a disaster was in fact a notable triumph.
It was obvious that, moved by the strange forces of history
and personal destiny, the man and the occasion had met that
day in Washington.

• « •

Who was the man?

Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar was, in 1874, a "public

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PROFILES IN COURAGE

man.” No petty issues, no political trivia, not even private
a£Fairs, were permitted to clutter up his intellect. No parti-
san, personal or sectional considerations could outweigh
his devotion to the national interest and to the truth. He
was not only a statesman but also a scholar and one of the
few original thinkers of his day. Henry Adams considered
him to be one of "the calmest, most reasonable and most
amiable men in the United States, and quite unusual in social
charm. Abo\e all . . . he had tact and humor.” Henry
Watterson, the famous Washington reporter, called him the
“most interesting and lovable of men. . . I rather think that
Lamar was the biggest brained of all the men I have met in
Washington.” And Senator Hoar once lemaiked:

The late Matthew Arnold used to say that American public
men lacked what he called “distmction” Nobody would have
said that of Mr. Lamar. He would have been a conspicuous
personahty anywhere, with a character and quality of his own.
He was a very interesting and very remarkable and very noble
character.

The well-known Washington correspondent, William
Preston Johnson, wrote: “The Lamars are Huguenot in
origin. The fatal dowry of genius was on that house. All that
came forth from it felt its touch, its inspiration, its triumph
and some share of its wretchedness.” A roll call in his father s
home was an impressive experience, for Lucius Lamar’s
uncles included Mirabeau Bonaparte, whose charge at San
Jacinto broke the Mexican line and made him the second
President of the Texas Republic; JeflFerson Jackson, Thomas
Randolph, and Lavoisier LeCrand, indicating in the chris-

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LUCIUS QUINTUS CINCINNATUS LAMAR

tener a changing interest from history to politics and from
politics to chemistry. But that fatal touch of genius and
melancholia had marked his father, who, at thirty-seven,
with a notable career in the Georgia Bar before him, in a
period of intense depression, kissed his wife and children
good-by, walked into his garden and shot himself.

A similar black thread of moodiness and depression ran
throughout all of Lamar’s life. Although it never conquered
him, his contemporaries observed his self-absorption, his
sensitive and, on occasions, morose nature. His youth was
on the whole, however, a happy one, on a plantation in the
area where Joel Harris was to collect his Uncle Remus and
Br’er Rabbit tales. Lamar himself was famous later for his
stories of tb< rural South, as noted by Henry Adams in
speaking of how eflFective a representative of the 'Con-
federacy IjUmar would have made in I^ondon: “London
society would have delighted in him; his stories would have
won success; his manners would have made him loved; his
oratory would have swept every audience.”

Lamar from the begijming under his mother’s direction
showed a notable aptitude for study. Many years later he
said, “Books! I was surrounded with books. The fiist book
I remember having had put into my hands by my mother was
Franklin’s Autobiography^ The second was Roilin’s His-
tory, the same History which niue-year-old John Quincy
Adams had pondered over many years before. Lamar became
well read in diplomacy and the law, but he was also pas-
sionately fond of light literature, as several correspondents
discovered years later when they assisted Lamar m gathering
several books which had accidentally spilled from his official

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PROFILES IN COURAGE

briefcase as he entered the White House for a Cabinet meet*
ing. They were all cheap novels!

Emory College, which Lamar attended, was a hotbed of
states’ rights. Its President, a member of the celebrated
Longstreet family, was a flaming follower of Calhoun, and
his influence over Lamar, always strong, increased when
Lamar married his daughter. When Longstreet left Georgia
to take over the presidency of the State University at Ox-
ford, Mississippi, Lamar accompanied him to practice law
and to teach, and it was while at the university that Lamar
was presented with the opportunity which commenced his
public career.

On March 5, 1850, the Legislature of the State of Missis-
sippi adopted a series of resolutions instructing the repre-
sentatives of Mississippi to vote against the admission of
California. When Senator Foote disregarded these instruc-
tions in a noticeable display of courage, Lamar was prevailed
upon by a committee of states’ rights Democrats to debate
the Senator upon the latter’s return to Mississippi to run for
Governor. Lamar was only twenty-six years of age, new
to the state and the political life of his day, and was given
only a few hours to prepare for debate against one of the
most skilled and aggressive politicians of the times. But his
extemporaneous speech, in which he chastised Senator Foote
for ignoring the instructions of the Mississippi Legislature,
(as he himself was to do twenty-eight years later) was a
notable success, and at the end of the debate the students
of the university ‘Ixire him away upon their shoulders.”

His election to Congress as a strong supporter of the
doctrines of Calhoun and Jefferson Davis followed. In

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LUCIUS QUINTUS CINCINNATUS LAMAR

Congress, while Alexander Stephens, Robert Toombs, and
other Southern Unionists were vainly seeking to stem the
sectional tide, Lamar was violently pro-Southem. “Others
may boast,” he said on the floor of the House, "of their
widely extended patriotism, and their enlarged and compre-
hensive love of this Union. With me, I confess that the
promotion of Southern interests is second in importance only
to the preservation of Southern honor.” Some years later
he said that he never entertained a doubt of tlie soundness
of the Southern system imtil he found out that slavery could
not stand a war. He did not proceed, however, on his
course unmindful of its certain end. In a letter he wrote:
“Dissolution cannot take place quietly. . . . When the sun
of the Union ••‘'ts it will go down in blood.”

By i860 he passed, in the words of Henry Adams, “for
the worst of the Southern fire-eaters.” Having lost aU hope
that the South could obtain justice in the Federal Union, he
walked out of the Democratic Convention in Charleston
with JeflFerson Davis, helping to break still another link in
the chain of Union. His prewar career reached its climax
in 1861 when he drafted the ordinance of secession dissolv-
ing Mississippi’s ties with the Union. Ihe wind had been
sown; now Lamar and Mississippi were to reap the whirl-
wind.

On both it fell with equal violence. Certainly many of the
trials and much of die agony which dogged the South in
the years after the war were due to the loss in the struggle
of those who might have been expected to assert the leader-
ship of the region. Control in government had always been
narrowly held in the South, compared to the North, and

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PROFILES IN COURAGE

among the ruling families “the spilling of the wine” was
especially heavy. Of the thirteen descendants of the first
Lamar in America who served in the Confederate Armies
with the rank of lieutenant colonel or above, seven perished
in the war. Lamar s youngest brother, supposedly the most
brilliant, Jefferson Mirabeau, was killed as he leaped his
horse over the enemy’s breastworks at Crampton’s Gap. Ilis
cousin John, one of the largest slaveholders in the South,
fell near Inm. Two years later Lamar’s older brother,
Thompson Bird, Colonel of the Fifth Florida, was killed
in the bloody fighting at Petersburg. Lamar’s two law part-
ners were both killed: Colonel Mott at Williamsburg where
Lamar fought at his side, and James Autrey, in the slaughter
at Murfreesboro. Symbolic of the dark days that were
coming, the shattered office shingle beaiing the names of the
three partners was found ffoating in the river.

Lamar’s own militaiy career was ended by an attack of
apoplexy, a disease from which he suffered throughout his
entire life and which hung over him like death i» moments
of high excitement. He served nearly all of the remainder
of the war as a dipfomatic agent for the Confederate Gov-
ernment.

With the end of the war which had blasted all of Lamar’s
hopes and illusions, he was under strong pressure to leave
the wreck of the past and go to another country. He felt,
in the words of his biographer, Wirt Armistead Cate, that he
was discredited — a leader who had carried his people into
the wilderness from which there had been no return. But
he followed Robert Lee’s advice to the leaders of the South
to remain and “share the fate of their respective states,” and

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LUCIUS QUINTUS CINCINNATUS LAMAR

from 1865 to 1872 Lamar lived quietly in Mississippi teach-
ing and practicing law, as his state passed through the bitter
days of its reconstruction.

No state suffered more from carpetbag rule than Missis-
sippi. Adelbert Ames, first Senator and then Governor, was
a native of Maine, a son-in-law of the notorious “butcher of
New Orleans,” Ben Butler. He admitted before a Con-
gressional committee that only his election to the Senate
prompted him to take up his residence in Mississippi. He
was chosen Governor by a majority composed of freed
slaves and Radical Republicans, sustained and noiurished by
Federal bayonets. One Cardoza, under indictment for lar-
ceny in New York, was placed at the head of the public
schools and two former slaves held the ofiBces of Lieutenant
Governor and Secretary of State. Vast areas of northern Mis-
sissippi lay in ruins. Taxes increased to a level fourteen
times as high as normal in order to support the extravagances
of the reconstruction government and heavy state and na-
tional war debts.

As he passed through these troubled times, Lamar came
to understand that the sole hope for the South lav not in
pursuing its ancient quarrels with the North but n pro-
moting conciliation and in the development and restitution
of normal Federal-state relations and the withdrawal of mili-
tary rule. This in turn could only be accomplished by mak-
ing the North comprehend that the South no longer desired
— in Lamar's words — to be the “agitator and agitated pendu-
lum of American politics.” Lamar hoped to make the North
realize that the abrogation of the Constitutional guarantees
of the people of the South must inevitably affect the liberties

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PROFILES IN COURAGE

of the people of the North. He came to believe that the
future happiness of the country could only lie in a spirit of
mutual conciliation and cooperation between the people
of all sections and all states.

There were two forces in opposition to his policy. On
the one hand were those Republican leaders who believed
that only by waving the bloody shirt could they maintain
their support in the North and East, particularly among the
Grand Army of the Republic; and who were convinced
by the elections of 1868 that, if the Southern states should
once again be controlled by the Democrats, those states —
together with their allies in the North — ^would, make the
Republicans a permanent minority nationally. On the other
hand there were those in the Soutli who traveled the easy
road to influence and popularity through pandering to and
exploiting the natural resentment and bitterness of the de-
feated South against its occupiers.

In contrast, Lamar believed that “the only course I, in
common with other Southern representatives hav» to follow,
is to do what we can to allay excitement between the sec-
tions and to bring about peace and reconciliation.”

In 1872 he was elected to Congress, and his petition for a
pardon from the disabilities imposed on all Confederate
officials by the Fourteenth Amendment was granted. Sum-
ner’s death, and the invitation of Representative Hoar of
Massachusetts to pronoimce the eulogy, furnished the ideal
occasion for which Lamar had long waited to hold out the
hand of friendship to the North. Everything conspired to
insure his success: his prewar reputation as a disimionist,
his service as a Confederate official, the fact that Sumner

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LUCIUS QUINTUS CINCINNATUS LAMAR

was widely hated in Mississippi and in tlie Soutli, and his
own exceptional skill as an orator. All tliese factors in his
favor were reinforced by his impressive personal appearance
— ^including, in the words of Henry Grady, “that peculiar
swartliy complexion, pale but clear; the splendid gray eyes,
the high cheekbones; dark brown hair, the firm fixed mouth.”
His memorable eulogy of Sumner was Lucius Lamar’s first
opportunity to demonstrate a new kind of Southern states-
manship. But it would not be his last.

« O 0

Mississippians, on the whole, came either to understand
and admire the sentiments of the Sumner eulogy, to respect
Lamar’s sin<vrity if they did not adiniie it, or to forgive
him for what they considered to be one serious error of
judgment if they were strongly opposed to it. Riding a
wave of popularity and the 1876 return to Democratic rule
in Mississippi, Lamar was elected by Iht Legislature to the
United States Senate. But even before he moved from the
House to the Senate, Lamar again outraged many of his
backers by abandoning liis party and section on another
heated issue.

The Hayes-Tilden Presidential contest of 1876 had been
a bitter struggle, apparently culminating in a close electoral-
vote victory for the Democrat Tilden. Although Hayes at
first accepted his defeat with philosophic resignation, his
lieutenants, with the cooperation of the Republican New
York Times, converted the apparent certainty of Tilden’s
election into doubt by claiming the closely contested states
of South Carolina, Louisiana and Florida — and then at-

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PROFILES IN COURAGE

tempted to convert that doubt into the certainty of Hayes’
election by procuring from the carpetbag governments of
those three states doctored election returns. With rumors of
violence and military dictatorship rife, Congress determined
upon arbitration by a supposedly nonpartisan Electoral Com-
mission — and Lucius Lamar, confident that an objective
inquiry would demonstrate the palpable fraud of the Re-
publican case, agreed to this solution to prevent a recurrence
of the tragic conflict wliich had so aged his spirit and broad-
ened his outlook.

But when the Commission, acting wholly along party lines,
awarded the disputed states and the election to Hayes with
185 electoral votes to 184 for Tilden, the South was out-
raged. Four moie years of Republican rule meant four more
years of Southern bondage and exploitation, four more years
before the South could regain her dignity and her rightful
place in the nation. Lamar was accused of trading his vote
and his section’s honor for a promise of a future position;
he was accused of cowardice, of being afraid to stand up
for his state when it meant a fight; and he was accused of
deserting his people and his party in the very hour when
triumph should have been at last rightfully theirs. His
enemies, realizing that six years would pass before Senator-
elect Lamar would be forced to run for re-election, vowed
never to forget that day of perfidy.

But Lucius Lamar, a man of law and honor, could not
now repudiate the findings, however shocking, of the Com-
mission he had helped establish. He supported the findings
of the Commission because he believed that only force could
prevent Hayes’ Inaugural and that it would be disastrous to
travel that road again. It was better, he believed, for the

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LUCIUS QUINTUS CINCINNATUS LAMAR

South — ^in spite of provocation — to accept defeat on this
occasion. He was skillful enough, however, to get Hayes
committed to concessions for the South, including the with-
drawal of military occupation forces and a return to Home
Rule in key states. This genuine service to his state, on an
occasion when many Southern politicians were talking of
open defiance, was at first largely obscured. But unmoved
by the storm of opposition which poured forth from Mis-
sissippi, Lamar braced himself in preparation for the most
crucial test of his role as a nonsectional, nonpartisan states-
man which lay ahead in the Senate.

No other high-ranking Confederate ofiicer had yet en-
tered the Senate. Nor had many Senators forgotten tliat
nearly twenty vears earlier Lamar was an extreme sectionalist
Congressman, who had resigned his seat to draft the
Mississippi Ordinance of Secession. The time was not
auspicious for his return. The Republicans were already
accusing the Democrats of harboring insurrectionists and
traitors; and the Democratic contribution to increased inter-
sectional distrust was a new breed of Southern demagogues,
intolerant and vengeful, “sired by Reconstruction out of
scalawags.”

As Senator Lamar, ill and fatigued, rested at home
throughout much of 1877, a new movement was sweeping
the South and West, a movement which would plague the
political parties of the nation for a generation to come —
“free silver.” The Moses of the silver forces, William Jen-
nings Bryan, had not yet appeared on the scene; but “Silver
Dick” Bland, the Democratic Representative from Missouri,
was leading the way with his bill for the free coinage ot all
silver brought to the Mint. Inasmuch as a tremendous spurt

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PROFILES IN COURAGE

in the production of the Western silver mines had caused its
value in relation to gold to shrink considerably, the single
purpose of the silver forces was clear, simple and appealing
— easy, inflationary money.

It was a tremendously popular cause in Mississippi. The
panic of 1873 engulfed the nation into the most terrible
depression it had ever suflFered, and the already impoverished
states of the South were particularly hard hit. Businesses
failed by the thousands, unemployment increased and wages
were reduced. Farm prices dropped rapidly from their high
wartime levels and the farmers of Mississippi — desperate for
cash — vowed support of any bill which would raise the
price of their commodities, lower the value of the debts,
and increase the availability of money. Tlie South foresaw
itself in a state of permanent indebtedness to the financial
institutions of the East unless easy money could be made
available to pay its heavy debts.

Vachel Lindsay’s poem expressed clearly the helplessness
and bitterness with which the South and West watched the
steadily increasing financial domination of the East;

And all these in their helpless days
By the dour East oppressed.

Mean paternalism

Making their mistakes for them.

Crucifying half the West,

Till the whole Atlantic coast
Seemed a giant spiders' nest.

Silver suddenly acquired a political appeal as the poor
man’s friend — ^in contrast to gold, the rich man’s money;

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LUCIUS QUINTUS CINCINNATUS LAMAR

silver was the money of the prairies and small towns, nnlilcft
gold, the money of Wall Street. Silver was going to provide
an easy solution to everyone’s problems — falling farm prices,
hi^ interest rates, heavy debts and aU the rest. Although
the Democratic party since the days of Jackson and Benton
had been the party of hard money, it rushed to exploit this
new and popular issue — and it was naturally assumed that
the freshman Democratic Senator from poverty-stridcen
Mississippi would enthusiastically join the fight.

But Lamar, the learned scholar and professor, approached
the issue somewhat differently than his colleagues. Paying
but little heed to the demands of his constituents, he ex-
hausted all available treatises on both sides of the contro-
versy. His sti:dy convinced him — ^possibly wrongly — that the
only sound position was in support of sound money. The pay-
ment of oiu government’s debts — even to the “bloated
bondholders” of Wall Street — ^in a debased, inflated cur-
rency, as the Bland Bill encouraged and the accompanying
Matthews Resolution specifically provided, was an ethical
wrong and a practical mistake, he felt, certain to embarrass
our standing in the eyes of the world, and promoted not as a
permanent financial program but as a spurious rclk“f bill
to alleviate the nation’s economic distress.

On January 24, 1878, in a courageous and learned address
— ^his first major speech on the Senate floor — Lamar rejected
the pleas of Mississippi voters and assailed elaborate rational-
izations behind the two silver measures as artificial Rnd
exaggerated. And the following day he voted “No” on the
Matthews Resolution, in opposition to his colleague from
Mississippi, a Negro Republican of exceptional talents

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PROFILES IN COURAGE

elected several years earlier by the old “carpetbag” Legis-
lature.

Praise for Senator Lamar’s masterly and statesmanlike
analysis of the issue emanated from many parts of the coun-
try, but from Mississippi came little but condemnation. On
January 30, the State Legislature adopted a Memorial omit-
ting all mention of Lamar but — in an obvious and deliberate
slap— congratulating and thanking his colleague (to whom
the white Democratic legislators normally were bitterly
opposed) for voting the opposite way and thus reflecting
“tbe sentiment and will of his constituents,” The Memorial
deeply hurt Lamar, and he was little consoled by a letter
from his close friend, the Speaker of the Mississippi House,
who termed it "a damned outrage” but explained:

The people are under a pressure of hard times and scarcity
of money, and their representatives felt bound to strike at some-
thing which might give relief, the how or wherefor very few
of them could explain.

But the Legislature was not through. On Febniary 4, a
resolution was passed by both Houses instructing Lamar to
vote for the Bland Silver Bill, and to use his efforts as spokes-
man for Mississippi to secure its passage.

Lamar was deeply troubled by this action. He knew that
the right of binding legislative instructions had firm roots in
the South. But writing to his wife about the demands of the
Legislature that had appointed him, he confided, “1 cannot
do it; I had rather quit politics forever.” He attempted to
explain at length to a friend in the Legislature that he
recognized the right of that body to express its opinions

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LUCIUS QUINTUS CINCINNATUS LAMAR

Upon questions of federal policy, and the obligation of a
Senator to abide by those expressions whenever he was
doubtful as to what his course should be. But in this par-
ticular case, he insisted, “their wishes are directly in conflict
with the convictions of my whole life; and had I voted [on
the Matthews Resolution] as directed, I should have cast my
first vote against my conscience.”

If [a Senator] allows himself to be governed by the opinions
of his friends at home, however devoted he may be to them or
they to him, he throws away all the rich results of a previous
preparation and study, and simply becomes a commonplace ex-
ponent of those popular sentiments which may change in a few
days. . . . Such a course will dwarf any man’s statesmanship
and his vote would be simply considered as an echo of current
opinion, not the result of mature deliberations.

Moreover, consistent with the courageous philosophy that
had governed his return to public life, Lamar was determined
not to back down merely because his section was contrary
minded. He would not purchase the respect of the North
for himself and his section by a calculated and cringing
course; but having decided, on the merits, that the 1 was
wrong, he was anxious to demonstrate to the nation that
statesmanship was not dead in the South nor was the South
desirous of repudiating national obligations and honor. He
felt that on this issue it was of particular importance that the
South should not follow a narrow sectional course of action.
For years it had been argued that Southern Democrats would
seek to abrogate the obligations that the United States Gov-
ernment had incurred during the Civil War and for which

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PBOFILES IN COURAGE

Soudi felt no responsibility. Lamar alone among the
Southern Democrats opposed the “free silver” movement,
except for Senator Ben Hill of Georgia, who said that while
he had done his best during the war to make the Union
bondholder who purchased a dollar bond at sixty cents lose
the sixty cents he had given, he was now for repaying him
die dollar he was promised.

One week later, the Bland Silver Bill came before the
Senate for a final vote. As the debate neared its end. Senator
Lamar rose unexpectedly to his feet. No notes were in his
hand, for he was one of the most brilliant extemporaneous
speakers ever to sit in the Senate. (“The pen is an extin-
guisher upon my mind,” he said, “and a toiture to my
nerves.”) Instead he held an ofiBcial document which bore
the great seal of the State of Mississippi, and this he dis-
patched by page to the desk. With apologies to his col-
leagues, Senator Lamar explained that, although he had
already expressed his views on the Silver Bill, he had “one
other duty to perform; a very painful one, but one which is
nonetheless clear.” He then asked that the resolutions which
he had sent to the desk be read.

The Senate was first astonished and then attentively silent
as the Clerk droned the express will of the Mississippi Legis-
lature that its Senators vote for the Bland Silver Bill. As the
Qerk completed the instructions, all eyes turned toward
Lamar, no one certain what to expect. As the reporter for
the Washington Capitol described it:

Remembering die embarrassing position of diis gendeman
with respect to the pending bill, every Senator immediately
gave his attention, and the Chamber became as silent as the tomb.

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LUCIUS QUINTUS CINCINNATUS LAMAR

A massive but lonely figure on the Senate floor, Lucius
Lamar spoke in a quiet yet powerful voice, a voice which
“grew tremulous with emotion, as his body fairly shook
with agitation**:

Mr. President: Between these resolutions and my convictions
there is a great gulf. I cannot pass it. . . . Upon the youtli of my
state whom it has been my privilege to assist in education I have
always endeavored to impress the belief that tnath was better
than falsehood, honesty better than policy, courage better than
cowardice. Today my lessons confront me. Today I must be
true or false, honest or cunning, faithful or unfaithful to my
people. Even in this hour of their legislative displeasure and disap-
probation, I cannot vote as these resolutions direct.

My reasons for my vote shall be given to my people. Then it
will be for them to determine if adherence to my honest con-
victions has disqualified me from representing them; whether a
difference of opinion upon a difficult and complicated subject
to which I have given patient, long-continued, conscientious
study, to which I have brought entire honesty and singleness of
purpose, and upon which I have spent whatever ability God
has given me, is now to separate us; . . . but be their present
decision what it mav, 1 know that the time is not far distant
when they will recognize my action today as wise and just, and,
armed with honest convictions of my duty, I shall cahrly await
the results, believing in the utterance of a great American that
“truth is omnipotent, and public justice certain.”

Senators on both sides of the bill immediately crowded
about his desk to commend his courage. Lamar knew that
. his speech and vote could not prevent passage of the Bland

[ 191 ]

PROFILES IN COURAGE

Bill by a tremendous margin, and its subsequent enactment
over the veto of President Hayes. Yet his intentional and
stunningly courageous disobedience to the will of his con-
stituents was not wholly in vain. Throughout the North the
speech was highly praised. Distrust toward the South, and
suspicion of its attitude toward the national debt and na-
tional credit, diminished. Harpers Weekly, pointing out tliat
Lamar voted in opposition to “the strong and general public
feeling of his state” concluded:

No Senator has shown himself more worthy of universal
respect than Mr. Lamar, for none has stood more manfully by
his pnnciples, in the face of the most authoritative remonstrance
from his state. . . . The Democratic Senator from Mississippi
has shown the manly courage which becomes an American
statesman.

The Nation editorialized that the brief speech of Lucius
Lamar in explanation of his disiegard for the instructions of
his state, “for manliness, digmty and pathos has,pever been
surpassed in Congress. His vote will probably cost him his
seat.”

This prediction seemed certain of fulfillment. The assault
upon the Senator in Mississippi was instantaneous and vigor-
ous. He had turned liis back on his people and his section.
In the words of one political orator, he had “made such haste
to join the ranks of the enemy that he went stumbling over
the graves of his fallen comrades.” His old friend Jefferson
Davis hurt him deeply by publicly condemning Lamar’s dis-
regard of the Legislature’s instructions as an attack upon
“the foundation of our political system” and the long-stand-

[ 192 ]

LUCIUS QUINTUS CINCINNATUS LAMAR

ing practice of the Southern Democratic party. To refuse
either to obey or to resign the office, so that his constituents
“might select someone else who might truly represent them,”
was to deny, said Davis, that the people had the requisite
amount of intelligence to govemi (Lamar was hard hit by
the attitude of his former chieftain, but it is illuminating
to note that a few days later, when Senator Hoar sought
to deny Davis the Mexican War Pension to which he was
by law entitled, it was Lamar who spoke for the Confederate
leader in a memorable and dramatic defense:

Sir, it required no courage to do that; ... the gentleman, I
believe, takes rank among the Christian statesmen. He might
have learned a better lesson from the pages of mythology.
When Prometheus was bound to the rock, it was not an eagle,
it was a vulture that buried his beak in the tortured vitals of
the victim.

According to a contemporary account, as Lamar hissed
out, “it was a vulture,” his ri^t arm straightened out and
the index finger pointed directly at Hoar.)

All agreed that Lamar was politically dead after one
term, and the only question was who would succeed him.
Lamar loved Mississippi, and its criticism depressed him
deeply. He wrote his wife that he wished he was in a financial
position to vacate his office without doing his family in-
justice:

This world is a miserable one to me except in its connection
with you. ... I get a great many complimentary letters from
the Nordi, veiy few from Mississippi. . . . Can it be true that
’ the South will condemn the disinterested love of those who,

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PBOFILES IN COURAGE

perceiving her real interests, offer Aelr unaimored breasts as
barriers against the invasion of error? ... It is indeed a heavy
cross to lay upon the heart of a public man to have to take a
stand which causes the love and confidence of his constituents
to flow away from him.

But like his famous uncle, Mirabeau Lamar of Texas, and
other members of his family, Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus
Lamar was not afraid of overwhelming odds. Admittedly
he had violated the instructions of the Legislature, he said.
“I will appeal to the sovereign people, the masters of the
legislature who undertake to instruct me.”

With this declaration. Senator Lamar launched successive
tours of Mississippi. Speaking to thousands of people in
crowded halls and open fields, Lamar stated frankly that he
was well aware that he had not pleased his constituents; that
he was equally well aware that the easier path was to exploit
that sectional cause to which he had always been devoted;
but that it was his intention to help create a feeling of con-
fidence and mutuality between North and South by voting
in the national interest without regard to sectional pressures.

For three or fomr hours at a time, his passionate and
imaginative oratory held spellbound the crowds that came
to jeer. "He spoke like the mountain torrent,” as several
observers later described it, "sweeping away the boulders
in the stream diat attempted to oppose his coiuse.”

But Lamar did not employ oratorical tricks to sway emo-
tiiHis while dodging issues. On the contrary, his speeches
were a learned explanation of his position, setting forth the
Ccmstitutional history of the Senate and its relationship to
the state legislatures, and the statements and examples of

11941

LUCIUS QUINTUS CINCINNATUS LAMAR

Burke, and of Calhoun, Webster, and other famous Senators
who had disagreed with Legislative instructions: “Better to
follow the example of the illustrious men whose names have
been given than to abandon altogether judgment and con-
viction in deference to popular clamor.”

At each meeting he told of an incident which he swore
had occurred during the war. Lamar, in the company of
other prominent military and civilian officers of the Con-
federacy, was on board a blockade runner making for
Savannah harbor. Although the high-ranking officers after
consultation had decided it was safe to go ahead, Lamar re-
lated, the Captain had sent Sailor Billy Sxunmers to the top
mast to look for Yankee gunboats in the harbor, and Billy
said he h'ld ..cen ten. That distinguished array of officers
knew where the Yankee fleet was, and it was not in Savan-
nah; and they told the Captain that Billy was wrong and
the ship must proceed ahead. The Captain refused, insisting
that while the officers knew a great deal more about military
a£Fairs, Billy Summers on the top mast with a powerful
glass had a much better opportunity to judge the immediate
situation at hand.

It later developed that Billy was right, Lamar sd>d, and
if they had gone ahead they would have all been captured.
And like Sailor Billy Summers, he did not claim tu be wiser
than the Mississippi Legislature. But he did believe that he
was in a better position as a Member of the United States
Soiate to judge what was best for the interests of his con-
stituents.

Thus it is, my countrymen, you have sent me to the topmost
mast, and I tell you what I see. If you i ty I must come down,

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PROFILES IN COURAGE

I vdll obey without a murmur, for you cannot make me lie to
you; but if you return me, I can only say that I will be true to
love of country, trutb, and God. ... I have always diou^t
that the first duty of a public man in a Republic founded upon
the sovereignty of the people is a frank and sincere expression
of his opinions to his constituents. I prize the confidence of the
people of Mississippi, but I never made popularity the standard
of my action. I profoundly respect public opinion, but I believe
that there is in conscious rectitude of purpose a sustaining power
which will support a man of ordinary firmness under any dr*
cumstances whatever.

His tour was tremendously successful. “Men who were
so hostile that they could hardly be persuaded to hear him
at all would mount upon the benches and tables, swinging
their hats, and huzzaing until hoarse.” Others departed in
silence, weighing the significance of his words. When he
spoke in Yazoo County, the stronghold of his opposition, the
Yazoo City Herald reported that like “the lion at bay,” he
“conquered the prejudices of hundreds who had been led
to believe that his views on certain points were better
adapted to the latitude of New England than to that of Mis-
sissippi.” And shortly thereafter, the Yazoo Democratic
County Convention adopted a resolution that their legis-
lators should “vote for him and work for him, first, last, and
all the time, as the choice of this people for United States
Senator.”

It is heartening to note that the people of Mississippi con-
tinued their support of him, in spite of the fact that on three
important occasions — ^in his eulogy of Charles Sumner, in
his support of the Electoral commission whidi brought

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LUCIUS QUINTUS CINCINNATUS LAMAR

about the election of the Republican Hayes and in his ex-
ception to their strongly felt stand for free silver — ^Lamar
had stood against their immediate wishes. The voters re-
sponded to the sincerity and courage which he had shown;
and they continued to give him their support and affection
throughout the remainder of his political life. He was re-
elected to the Senate by an overwhelming majority, later to
become Chairman of the Senate Democratic Caucus, then
Secretary of the Interior and finally Justice of the Supreme
Court of the United States. At no time did he, who has prop-
erly been termed the most gifted statesman given by the
South to the nation from the close of the Civil War to the
turn of die century, ever veer from the deep conviction he
had expressed while under bitter attack in 1878:

The liberty of this country and its great interests will never
be secure if its public men become mere menials to do the bid-
dings of their constituents instead of being representatives in
the true sense of the word, looking to the lasting prosperity and
future interests of the whole country.

[ 197 ]

]PAR

FOU

The Time and the Place

☆

☆ ☆
☆

Two men of integrity — ^both Republicans, both Midwest-
erners, but wholly dissimilar in their political philosophies
and personal mannerisms — ^best illustrate the impact of the
twentieth century upon the Senate as a whole and the
atmosphere of political comage in particular. George W.
Norris and Robert A. Taft, whose careers in the Senate over-
lapped for only a brief period some seventeen years ago, were
masters of the legislative process, leaders of fimdamentally
opposed political factions, and expounders, each in his own
way, of great constitutional doctrines. And not among the
least of their accomplishments was the increased prestige
and respect which they and others like them brought to
the United States Senate. For, at the hum of the century, the
route to fame and power for men of ability and talent had
been in industry, not in politics. And a*: a result, the attitude
of the public toward the political profession had too often

[S»l]

PROFILES IN COURAGE

been characterized by apathy, indiflFerence, disrespect and
even amusement.

The Senate had shared in the poKtical profession's loss of
prestige. It was due in part to the public reaction to die
new type of legislator who too often, in 1900, included the
swollen corporation lawyer and the squalid political boss.
The Senate seemed to have little of the excitement and
drama that had been so much a part of its existence in the
years leading up to the Civil War, litde of the power and
prestige which it wielded so brazenly in the days of the
Johnson and Grant administrations. It was in part a reaction
to the increasing complexity and multiplicity of legislative
issues— even Santo Domingo seemed much farther away
than Fort Sumter (for blocking his Santo Domingo treaty,
the Senate was told by Teddy Roosevelt that it was “wholly
incompetent”), and “interstate commerce” ‘seemed much
less exciting and promising than "free silver.” No longer
were the names of famous Senators familiar household words,
as in the days of the great trimnvirate. No longer»did die
entire nation breathlessly follow Senate debates, as in the
days of the Great Compromise or the Johnson impeachment.
The nation’s brightest schoolboys, who sixty or seventy
years earlier would have memorized Webster’s reply to
Hayne, were no longer interested in politics as a career.

Those citizens who did take an active interest in the con-
duct of the Senate as the twentieth century got under way
generally viewed it more with alarm than widi pride.
Throu^out the nation there arose a remarkable array of
reformers, muckrakers and good-government movements,
represented in the Senate by a new breed of idealists and

[ 202 ]

THE TIME AND THE PLACE

independents, men of ability and statesmanship who would
have ranked with the more famous names of an earlier day.
To arrest the dual trends of an electorate indifiFerent to their
Senators and Senators indifiFerent to their electorate, the
reformers, both in and out of the Senate, finally accom-
plished a long overdue change in the election machinery —
the power of electing Senators was taken from the legis-
latures of the states and given directly to the people.

The Seventeenth Amendment, ratified in 1913, reflected a
far difiFerent attitude toward the “masses'* of voters than the
distrust with which they were regarded in 1787 by the
creators of the Constitution — ^but it also reflected a general
decline in the respect for state legislatures, which had too
often permitted powerful lobbyists and political machines
to usurp their sacred right of selecting Senators. A railroad
president told William Lyon Phelps that he had never de-
sired to be a United States Senator himself, because he had
made so many of them. Referring to this, a prominent New
England Senator, W. E. Chandler, laconically explained his
retirement to private life by saying that he had been “run
over by a railroad train.**

That the Seventeenth Amendment almost immediately
made the Senate more responsive to popular will, both in the-
ory and in fact, cannot be doubted; but its eflEects were not as
far reaching nor was the complexion and make-up of the
Senate changed as greatly as the reformers had hoped. Sen-
ator Boies Penrose, the boss of Peimsylvania, said to a re-
former friend:

Give me the People, every timel Look at mel No legislature
would ever have dared to elect me to the Senate, not even at

[ 203 ]

PROFILES IN COURAGE

Hatrisburg. But tbe People, die dear People elected me by a
bigger majority dian my opponent's total vote by over half a
million. You and your "reformer* friends diought direct elec-
tion would turn men like me out of the Senatel Give me die
People, eveiy time!

There was (and is) no way of measuring statistically or
scientifically the effect of the direct election of Senators
on the quality of the Senate itself. There has been no scarcity
of either contemptuous criticism or lavish praise for both the
Senate as a whole and individual Senators. But too often
such judgments consist of generalizations from limited cases
or experiences. Woodrow Wilson, for example, shortly be-
fore his death, buffeted by the Sen:.te in his efforts on behalf
of the League of Nations and the Versailles Treaty, rejected
the suggestion that he seek a seat in the Senate from New
Jersey, stating: "Outside of the United States, the Senate
does not amount to a damn. And inside the United States
the Senate is mostly despised; they haven’t had a thought
down there in fifty years.” There are many who 'agreed
with Wilson in 1920, and some who might agree with those
sentiments today.

But Professor Woodrow Wilson, prior to his baptism of
political fire, had regarded the Senate as one of the ablest
and most powerful legislative bodies in the world. In part
this power, and the ability it required in those Senators who
sought to harness it, sprang from the growing influence of
Federal legislation in domestic affairs. But even more im-
portant was the Senate’s gradually increasing power in the
field of foreign affairs — a power which multiplied as oiir
nation’s stature in the community of nations grew, a power

[ 204 ]

THE TIME AND THE PLACE

which made the Senate in the twentieth century a far more
significant body, in terms of the actual consequences of its
decisions, than the glittering Senate of Webster, Clay and
Calhoun, which had toiled endlessly but fruitlessly over the
slavery question.

And just as a nation tom by internal crisis had demanded
Senators of courage in 1850, so did a nation plunged into
international crisis. John Quincy Adams had realized this
one hundred years before George Norris ever came to Wash-
ington. But he could not have foreseen that this nation s role
in the world would bring constantly recurring crises and
troublesome problems to the floor of the United States Sen-
ate, crises which would force men like George Norris to
choose betv'^*e;’ conscience and constituents, problems which
would force men like Bob Taft to choose between principles
and popularity.

These are not the only stories of political courage in the
twentieth centvuy, possibly not even the most outstanding or
significant. Yet the changing nature of the Senate, its work
and its members, seems to have lessened the frequency with
which the nation is given inspiration by a selfless stand for
great but unpopular principles. Perhaps we are still too close
in time to those in our own midst whose actions a more
detached historical perspective may someday stamp as worthy
of recording in the annals of political courage. Perhaps the
twentieth-century Senator is not called upon to risk his
entire future on one basic issue in the manner of Edmund
Ross or Thomas Hart Benton. Perhaps our modem acts of
political courage do not arouse the public in the maimer
that crushed the career of Sam Houston and John Quincy

[ 205 ]

PROFILES IN COURAGE

Adams. Still, when we realize that a newspaper that chooses
to denounce a Senator today can reach many thousand times
as many voters as could be reached by all of Daniel Webster's
famous and articulate detractors put together, these stories
of twentieth-century political courage have a drama, an
excitement — and an inspiration — all their own.

[ 206 ]

vni

“l HAVE COME HOME TO TELL YOU
THE TRUTH.”

☆

George Norris

At precisely i:oo f.m. one wintry afternoon early in
1910, Representative John Dalzell of Pennsylvania
•A^ left the Speaker's Chair and walked out of the
House Chamber for his daily cup of coffee and piece of
pie in the Capitol restaurant. His departure was not unusual
— ^for Representative Dalzell, who was Speaker Joe Cannon's
first assistant in ruling the House from the Speaker's Chair,
had always left the Chamber at exactly that hour, and he
was almost invariably succeeded in the Chair by Representa*
tive Walter Smith of Iowa. But on that particular January
afternoon Representative Dalzell's journey up the aisle was
watched with curious satisfaction by a somewhat shaggy-
looking Representative in a plain black suit and a little shoe-
string tie. And the Assistant Speaker had no sooner reaihed

[ 207 ]

PROFILES IN COURAGE

the door of the Chamber when Republican Representative
George W. Norris of Nebraska walked over to Representative
Smith and asked if he might be recognized for two minutes.
Smith, a member of the Cannon-Dalzell Republican ruling
clique but a personal friend of Norris', agreed.

To his astonishment. Representative Norris sought to
amend the resolution then under debate — a resolution calling
for a joint committee to investigate the Ballinger-Pinchot con-
servation dispute — ^by requiring the entire House of Rep-
resentatives to appoint its members to the investigating com-
mittee, instead of granting the customary authority to the
Speaker to make such selections.

Page boys scurried out to find Cannon and Dalzell This
was insurrection in the ranks — the first attempt to limit the
previously unlimited power of “Czar" Cannon! But Norris
insisted that all he desired was a fair investigation, not one
rigged by the administration. Joined by Pinchot followers,
fellow insurgent Republicans and practically all of the
Democrats, he succeeded in having his amendment a'dopted
by the narrow margin of 149 to 146.

It was the first setback the powerful Speaker had ever
suffered, and he vowed never to forget it. But for George
Norris, the victory on the investigation resolution was only
a preliminary step. For in the inner pocket of his thread-
bare black coat was a scrawled resolution which he had
drafted years before — ^a resolution to have the House, rather
than the Speaker, appoint the members of the Rules Com-
mittee itself, the Committee which completely dictated the
House program and was in turn completely dominated by
the Speaker.

[ 208 ]

GEORGE NORRIS

On St. Patrick’s Day in 1910, Norris rose to address the
‘iCzar.” Only minutes before. Cannon had ruled that a census
bill promoted by one of his cohorts was privileged under the
Constitution and could be considered out of order, inasmuch
as that document provided for the taking of the census. “Mr.
Speaker,” called Norris, “I present a resolution made priv-
ileged by the Constitution.” “The gentleman will present
it,” replied Cannon, smugly unaware of the attack about to be
launched. And George Norris unfolded that tattered paper
from his coat pocket and asked the Clerk to read it aloud.

Panic broke out in the Republican leadership. Cloakroom
rumors had previously indicated the nature of Norris’ pro-
posed resolution — ^but it was merely a subject of contemptu-
ous amusemen*' among the regular Republicans, who knew
they had the power to bury it forever in the Rules Committee
itself. Now Cannon’s own ruling on the census bill in support
of his friend had given Norris — and his resolution, clearly
based on the Constitution’s provision for House rules — ^an
opening, an opening through which the Nebraska Congress-
man led all of the insurgent and Democratic forces. Cannon
and his lieutenants were masters of parliamentary maneuver-
ing and they were not immediately ready to concede. They
attempted to adjoinn, to recess, to make a quorum impossible.
They continued debate on whether the resolution was priv-
ileged while the party faithful hurried back from St. Patrick’s
Day parades. They kept the House in constant session,
hoping to break the less organized revolters. All night long
the insurgents stayed in their seats, unwilling to nap off the
floor for fear that Cannon would suddenly rule in their
absence.

Finally, all attempts at intimidation and compromise having

[ 209 ]

PROFILES IN COURAGE

failed. Speaker Gannon, as expected, ruled the resolution
out of order; and Norris promptly appealed the decision.
By a vote of 182 to 160, Democrats and insurgent Repub*
licans overruled the Speaker, and by a still larger margin
Norris’ resolution — already amended to obtain Democratic
support — ^was adopted. The most ruthless and autocratic
Speaker in the history of the House of Representatives
thereupon submitted his resignation; but George Norris, who
insisted his fight was to end the dictatorial power of the
ofBce rather than to punish the individual, voted against its
acceptance. Years later, Gannon was to say to him:

Norris, throughout our bitter controversy, I do not recall a
sin^e instance in which you have been unfair. I cannot say this
of many of your associates; and I want to say to you now that
if any m«nber of your damned gang had to be elected to the
Senate, I would prefer it be you more than any of them.

The overthrow of Gannonism broke the strangle hold
which the conservative Republican leaders had held ever the
Government and the nation; and it also ended whatever
favors the Representative from Nebraska had previously
received at their hands. Under the “Gzar,” the office of the
Jpeaker of the House wielded what sometimes appeared to
be very nearly equal power with the President and the entire
United States Senate. It was a power that placed party above
all other considerations, a power that fed on party loyalty,
patronage and political organizations. It was a power which,
despite increasing disfavor in all parts of the country outside
the East, had continued unchallenged for years. But ’‘one
man without position,” an editor commented, “against 200
welded into the most powerful political machine that Wash-

[ 210 ]

GEORGE NORRIS

ington has ever known, has twice beaten them at their
own game. Mr. George Norris is a man worth knowing and
watching.”

« * •

George W. Norris was worth watching, for his subse-
quent career in the Senate, to which he was elected shortly
after his triumph over Cannon, earned him a reputation as
one of the most courageous figiues in American political
life. The overthrow of Cannonism, although welcomed in
Nebraska by all but a few party stalwarts, had nevertheless
required tremendous courage and leadership on the part of
a young Congressman attacking his party’s well-entienched
leaders and willing to sacrifice the comforts and alliances
that party loyalty brings. In the Senate he frequently broke
not only with his parly but with his constituents as well.
He once declared:

I would rather go down to my political grave with a clear con-
science than ride in the chariot of victory as a Congressional stool
pigeon, the slave, the servant, or the vassal of any man, whether
he be the owner and manager of a legislative menagerie or the
ruler of a great nation. ... 1 would rather he in the silent grave,
remembered by both friends and enemies as one who remained
true to his faith and who never faltered in what he beheved to be
his duty, than to still hve, old and aged, lacking the confidence
of both factions.

These are the words of an idealist, an independent, a
filter — a man of deep conviction, fearless courage, sincere
honesty — George W. Norris of Nebraska. We should not
pretend that he was a faultless paragon of virtue; on the
contrary, he was, on more than one occasion, emotional in

[ 211 ]

PROFILES IN COURAGE

his deliberations, vituperative in his denunciations, and prone
to engage in bitter and exaggerated personal attack instead of
concentrating his fire upon the merits of an issue. But noth-
ing could sway him from what he thought was right, from
his determination to help all the people, from his hope to
save them from the twin tragedies of poverty and war.

George Norris knew well the tragedy of poverty from his
own boyhood. His father having died when George was only
fonr, he was obliged while still in his teens to hack out a
livelihood for his mother and ten sisters on the stump-cov-
ered farm lands of Ohio. He knew, too, the horrors of war,
from the untimely death in the Civil War of the older
brother he hardly remembered, but whose inspiring letter
— ^written by the wounded soldier shortly before his death
— ^was treasured by young George for years In 1917, as the
nation teetered on the edge of the European conflict, George
Norris had not forgotten his mother s sorrow and her hatred
of war.

A country teacher, a smaU-town lawyer, a local prose-
cuting attorney and judge — ^those had been the years when
George Norris had come to know the people of Nebraska
and the West, when he saw the growing pattern of farm
foreclosures, lost homesteads and farm workers drifting to
the city and to unemployment.

As die old nineteenth century became the new twentieth,
America was changing, her industries and cities were grow-
ing, her power in the world was increasing. And yet George
Norris changed — and would change — ^very litde. His chunky
figure was still clothed in the drab black suits, white shirts
and litde black shoestring ties he had worn most of his life
and would wear until his death. His mild manners, disarm-

[ 212 ]

GEORGE NORRIS

ing honesty and avoidance of the social circle of politics in
favor of a quiet evening of reading set him apart from the
career politicians of his country, whose popularity among the
voters, however, he far outstripped.

Only his political outlook changed as he began the long
career which would keep him in Washington for forty years.
For when George Norris had first entered die House of
Representatives in 1903, fresh from the plains of Nebraska,
he had been a staunch, conservative Republican, “sure of
my position,” as he later wrote, “unreasonable in my con-
victions, and unbending in my opposition to any other
political party or political thou^t except my own.” But
“one by one I saw my favorite heroes wither ... I discovered
that my party . was guilty of virtually all the evils that 1
had charged against the opposition.”

No single chapter could recoimt in full all of the coura-
geous and independent battles led by George Norris. His most
enduring accomplishments were in the field of public power,
and there are few parallels to his long fight to bring die
benefits of low-cost electricity to the people of the Ten-
nessee Valley, although they lived a thousand miles from his
home state of Nebraska. But there were three struggles in
his life that are worthy of especial note for the courage
displayed — ^the overthrow of “Czar” Cannon aheady de-
scribed; his support of A 1 Smith for President in 1928; and
his filibuster against the Armed Ship Bill in 1917.

• 9 •

When Woodrow Wilson, sorrowfully determined upon
a policy of “armed neutrality” in early 1917, appeared
before a tense joint session of Congress to request legislation

[ 213 ]

PROFILES IN COURAGE

authorizing him to arm American merchant ships, the
American public gave its immediate approval. Unrestricted
German submarine warfare was enforcing a tight blockade
by which the Kaiser sought to starve the British Isles into
submission; and Secretary of State Lansing had been politely
informed that every American ship encountered in the war
zone would be torpedoed. Already American vessels had
been searched, seized and sunk. Tales of atrocities to our
seamen filled the press.

As debate on the bill got under way, the newspapers
learned of a new plot against the United States, contained
in a message from the German Under Secretary of State for
Foreign Affairs, Zimmerman, to the German Minister in
Mexico. The alleged note (for there were those who ques-
tioned its authenticity and the motives of the British and
American governments in disclosing it at that particular
time) proposed a scheme to align Mexico and Japan against
the United States. In return for its use as an invasion base,
Mexico was promised restoration of her “American ’colonies,”
seized more than seventy years earlier by Sam Houston and
his compatriots.

When the contents of the Zimmerman note were leaked
to tlie newspapers, all resistance to the Armed Ship Bill
in the House of Representatives instantly collapsed. The
bill was rushed through that body by the overwhelming vote
of 403 to 13 — a vote which seemed clearly representative of
popular opinion in favor of the President’s move. Certainly
the overwhelming support given the bill by Nebraska’s
Congressmen represented the feelings of that state.

But in the Senate on March 2, 1917, the Armed Ship Bill
met determined opposition from a small bipartisan band of

[ 214 ]

GEORGE NORRIS

insurgents led by Robert La Follette of Wisconsin and
George Norris of Nebraska. As freshman Senator from a
state which the previous year had voted for a Democratic
legislative. Governor, Senator and President, George Norris
( unlike La Follette) was neither a solidly established political
figure in his own bailiwick nor confident that his people
were opposed to Wilson and his policies.

In previous months he had supported the President on
major foreign policy issues, including the severing of dip-
lomatic ties with the German government. Although a
militant pacifist and isolationist, his very nature prohibited
him from being a mere obstructionist on all international
issues, or a petty partisan opposing all of the Presidents
requests. (Indeed, by the time World War II approached,
his isolationism had largely vanished.)

But George Norris hated war — and he feared tbat “Big
Business,” which he believed was providing the stimuli for our
progress along the road to war, was bent on driving the
nation into a useless, bloody struggle; that the President —
far from taking the people into liis confidence— was trying
to stampede public opinion into pressming the Senate for
war; and that the Armed Ship Bill was a device to protect
American munition profits with American lives, a device
which could push us directly into the conflict as a com-
batant without further deliberation by Congress or actual
attack upon the United States by Germany. He was fearful
of the bill’s broad grant of authority, and he was resentful
of the manner in which it was being steamrollered through
the Congress. It is not now important whether Norris was
’ right or wrong. What is now important is the courage he
displayed in support of his convictions.

1215 ]

PROFILES IN COURAGE

"People may not believe it,” Senator Norris once said,
“but I don’t like to get into fights.” In 1917, whether he
liked it or not, the freshman from Nebraska prepared for
one of the hardest, most embittering struggles of his poUtical
career. Since those days were prior to Norris’ own Twen-
tieth, or Lame Duck, Amendment, the Sixty-fourth Congress
would expire at noon of March 4, when a new Presidential
term began. Thus passage of the bill by that Congress could
be- prevented if the Senate could not vote before that hour;
and Norris and his little band were hopeful that the new
Congress, chosen by the people during the Presidential cam-
paign of 1916 — Abased upon the slogan “He kept us out of
war” — ^might join in opposition to the measure, or at least
give it more careful consideration. But preventing a vote
during the next two days spelled only one word — filibuster!

George Norris, an advocate of a change in the Senate rules
to correct the abuses of filibustering, but feeling strongly that
the issue of war itself was at stake, adopted this very tactic
“in spite of my repugnance to the method.” As parlia-
mentary floor leader for his group, he arranged speakers to
make certain that there was no possibility of a break in the
debate which would enable the bill to come to a vote.

Many of his closest friends in the Senate were aghast at
this conduct. “No state but one populated by mollycoddles,”
complained one Senator well aware of the raging anti-
German sentiment back home, “would endorse what Norris
is trying to do.” But Nebraska did not endorse the position
of its junior Senator. As debate got under way, the Nebraska
newspapers, in a thinly veiled warning, reported that the
tremendous vote in the House “represents the sentiments
of die people.” And the Nebraska Legislature had already

[ 216 ]

GEORGE NORRIS

unanimously pledged to President Wilson "the loyal and
undivided support of the entire citizenry of the state of
Nebraska, of whatever political party and of whatever blood
or place of birth,' in whatever may be found necessary to
maintain the right of Americans, the dignity of our nation
and the honor of our flag.”

But George Norris’ guide was his own conscience. “Other-
wise,” he said, “a member of Congress giving weight to
expressed public sentiment becomes only an automatic
machine, and Congress requires no patriotism, no education,
and no courage. . . .” And so, with only his conscience to
sustain him, the Senator worked around the clock to bolster
the sagging spirits of his little band, to prepare new speakers
for continuous debate and to check every opposition move
to end the filibuster.

Several Senators, Norris later related, privately approached
him to wish the filibuster success, while pleading party
regularity and pohtical expediency as their grounds for
publicly supporting the President’s position. When Norris
told them that the important thing was to make certain there
were plenty of speakers, regardless of the views expressed,
two of the President’s supporters, by private agreement with
Norris, spoke at length in favor of the bill.

Day and night the debate continued; and on the morning
of March 4 the Senate was a scene of weary disorder. “Those
final minutes,” Norris later wrote, ‘live in my memory.”

In that chamber, men became slaves to emotion. The clash
of anger and bitterness, in my judgment, never has been ex-
ceeded in die history of the United States. When the hour hand
pointed to the arrival of noon, die chairman announced adjoum-

[ 217 ]

PROFILES IN COURAGE

ment. The filibuster had won. The conference report which
would have authorized the arming of American ships had failed
of Senate approval. . . . Tense excitement prevailed duoughout
the entire country, and especially in the Senate itself. ... I have
felt from that day to this the fihbuster was justified. I never
have apologized for the part I took in it. . . . [We] honestly
believed that, by oiur actions in that struggle, we had averted
American participation in the war.

But theirs was a fleeting victory. For the President —
addition to immediately calling a special session of Congress
in which the Senate adopted a closure rule to limit debate
(with Norris’ support) — ^also announced that a further
examination of the statutes had revealed that the executive
power already included the right to arm ships without Con-
gressional action. And the President also let loose a blast,
still frequently quoted today, against “a little group of will-
ful men, representing no opinion but their own, that ren-
dered the great government of the United States helpless and
contemptible.”

George Norris called the President’s scathing indictment
a grave injustice to men who conscientiously tried to do
their duty as they saw it; but, except for the unfortunate
and unhelpful praise bestowed upon them by the German
press, “the epithets heaped upon these men were without
precedent in the annals of American journalism.” They had
earned, in the words of the Louisville Courier Journal, “an
eternity of execration.” A mass meeting at Carnegie Hall
condemned Norris and his colleagues as “treasonable and
reprehensible” men “who refused to defend the Stars and
Stripes on the high seas”; and the crovrd hooted “traitor”
and “hang him” whenever the names of Norris, La Follette

[ 218 ]

GEORGE NORRIS

and their supporters were mentioned. "The time has come,”
the Mayor of New York shouted to another meeting, “when
the people of this country are to be divided into two classes
— ^Americans and traitors.”

The Hartford Courant called them “political tramps,”
and the New York Sun labeled twelve United States Sen-
ators “a group of moral perverts.” The Providence Journal
called their action ‘little short of treason” and the New York
Times editorialized that “The odium of treasonable purpose
will rest upon their names forevermore.” The New York
Herald predicted: “They will be fortunate if their names
do not go down into history bracketed with that of Benedict
Arnold.”

In the decades to follow. Senator Norris would learn to
withstand the merciless abuse inevitably heaped upon one
of his independent and outspoken views. On the Senate
floor itself, he would be called a Bolshevist, an enemy of ad-
vancement, a traitor and much more. But now the harsh
terms of vilification and the desertion of former friends hurt
him deeply. One afternoon several passengers left a Wash-
ington trolley car when Norris and La Follette took seats
beside them. His mail was abusive, several letters containing
sketches showing him in German uniform complete with
medals.

The Nebraska press joined in the denunciation of its junior
Senator. “Can Senator Norris believe,” cried the Omaha
World Herald (which had listed on page i the names of
“Twelve Senators Who Halt Action in Greatest Crisis Since
Civil War”), “can any man in his senses believe, that the
American Government could tamely submit to these out-
rages?”

[ 219 ]

PROFILES IN COURAGE

"The Norris fear of the establishment of an absolute
monarchy under Wilson is grotesque," said the Lincoln
Star. "Maybe it is a joke. If not, friends of Mr. Norris should
look after his mental status." And the Omaha Bee thought
his fear of Presidential authority “reflects little credit on the
Senators common sense."

It was believed in Washington tibat the conscience of the
freshman from Nebraska had led him, in the words of one
Washington correspondent, to “his political death." The out-
raged Nebraska State Legislature, with whooping enthusi-
asm, passed a resolution expressing the confidence of the
state in President Wilson and his policies.

George Norris was saddened by the near unanimity with
which “my own people condemned me . . . and asserted that
1 was misrepresenting my state." Although popularity was
not his standard, he had tried, he later wrote, throughout his
career “to do what in my own heart I believed to be right
for the people at large.” Thus, unwilling to “represent the
people of Nebraska if they did not want me,” he Q^me to a
dramatic decision — he would offer to resign from the Senate
and submit to a special recall election, “to let my constituents
decide whether 1 was representing them or misrepresenting
them in Washington." In letters to the Governor and the
Republican State Chairman, he urged a special election,
agreeing to abide by the result and to waive whatever con-
stitutional rights protected him from recall.

Sharing the fears of his astonished friends in the Senate
that hysteria and well-financed opposition might insure his
defeat which in turn would be interpreted as a mandate for
war, he nevertheless insisted in his letter to the Governor

[ 220 ]

GEORGE NORRIS

diat he had “no desire to represent the people of Nebraska
if my official conduct is contrary to their wishes."

The denunciation I have received . . . indicates to me that
there is strong probability that the course I have pursued is
unsatisfactory to the people whom I represent, and it seems,
therefore, only fair that the matter should be submitted to them
for decision.

I will not, however, even at the behest of a unanimous con-
stituency, violate my oath of office by voting in favor of a
proposition that means the surrender by Congress of its sole
right to declare war. ... If my refusal to do this is contrary to
the wishes of the people of Nebraska, then I should be recalled
and someone else selected to fill the place. ... I am, however, so
firmly convinced of die righteousness of my course that I be-
lieve if the intelligent and patriotic citizenship of the country
can only have an opportunity to hear both sides of the question,
all the money in Christendom and all the political machinery
that wealth can congregate ivill not be able to defeat the prin-
ciple of government for which our forefathers fought. ... If
I am wrong, then I not only ou^t to retire, but I desire to do
so. I have no desire to hold public office if I am expected
blindly to follow in my official actions the dictation of a news-
paper combination ... or be a rubber stamp even for the Presi-
dent of the United States.

The Senator, announcing an open meeting in Lincoln to
explain his position, was largely ignored by the press as he
journeyed homeward. Attempting to get the Republican Na-
tional Committeeman to act as Chairman of the meeting, he
was warned by that worthy gentleman that it was “not pos-
‘sible for this meeting to be held without trouble. 1 think the

[ 221 ]

PROFILES IN COURAGE

meeting will be broken up or at least you will have such an
unfriendly audience that it will be impossible for you to
make any coherent speech.” One of the few friends who
called upon him urged him to cancel the meeting by plead-
ing illness, telling Norris that he had made a very sad mistake
in returning to Nebraska when feelings ran so high. Others
predicted that agitators would be scattered throu^out the
audience to make presentation of his arguments impossible,
and told the Senator that the torpedoing of three more Amer-
ican merchant ships since the filibuster had further intensi-
fied the anger of his constituents. “I cannot remember a day
in my life,” the Senator wrote in his autobiography, “when
I have suffered more from a lonely feeling of despondency.
My friends led me to believe that the people of Nebraska
were almost unanimously against me.”

Unable to get a single friend or supporter to act as chair-
man, Norris was nevertheless determined to go through with
the meeting. “I myself hired the hall,” he told a lonely re-
porter in his deserted hotel room, “and it is to be my meeting.
I am asking no one to stand sponsor for me or for my acts.
But I have nothing to apologize for and nothing to take
back.”

Walking from his hotel to the city auditorium on a beauti-
ful spring night, Norris anxiously noted that more than three
thousand people — the concerned, the skeptical and the ciui-
ous — ^had filled the auditorium, with many standing in the
aisles and outside in the street. Calm but trembling, he
walked out on the stage before them and stood for a mo-
ment without speaking, a solitary figure in a baggy black
suit and a little shoestring tie. “I had expected an unfriendly
audience,” he wrote, “and it was with some fear that I

[ 222 ]

GEORGE NORRIS

stepped forward. When 1 entered the rear of the auditorium
and stepped out on the stage, there was a deathlike silence.
There was not a sin^e handclap. But I had not expected ap-
plause; and 1 was delisted that 1 was not hissed.”

In his homely, quiet, and yet intense manner. Senator
Norris began with the simple phrase: "1 have come home to
teU you the truth.”

Immediately there was a burst of applause from all parts of
the audience. Never in my lifetime has applause done me the
good that did. . . . There was, in the hearts of the common
people, a belief that underneath the deception and the mis-
representation, the political power and the influence, there was
something artificial about the propaganda.

There was no violence, there was no heckling; and the tre-
mendous crowd cheered mightily as Norris lashed out at his
critics. His dry, simple but persistent language and the quiet
intensity of his anger captivated his audience, as he insisted
that their newspapers were not giving them the facts and
that, despite warnings that he stay away until his role in the
filibuster was forgotten, he wanted it to be remembered.
More than half of the New York audience which had hissed
him had been in evening dress, he sarcastically recalled, and
he questioned how many of them were willing to fight or
send their children:

Of course, if poodledogs could have been made into soldiers
that audience would have supplied a regiment. . . . My col-
league talked two and a half hours for the bill and was called a
hero. I talked one hour and a half against the bill and was called a
traitor. Even though you say I am wrong, even though you
feel sure I should have stood by die President, has the time

[ 223 ]

PROFILES IN COURAGE

come when we can’t even express our opinions in the Senate,
where we were sent to debate such questions, without being
branded by the moneyed interests as traitors? I can stand up and
take my medicine without wincing under any charge except that
of traitor. In all of the English language, in all the tongues of the
world, you can’t find any other words as damnable as that.

The crowd, after more than an hour, roared its approval.
The newspapers were not so easily convinced or so willing
to forgive. "His elaborate and ingenious explanation,” said
the World Herald, is "foolish nonsense ... a silly statement,
which has disgusted the people.” "The Senator spent little
time meeting the issue as it actually stood,” said the State
Journal. "He should not let his critics disturb his balance.”

But Senator Norris, who was asked to appear before many
groups to explain what he felt to be the true issues, met ac-
claim throughout the state; and the Governor having an-
noimced that he would not ask the Legislature to authorize
a special recall election, the Senator returned to Washington
better able to withstand the abuse which had not yet fully
ceased.

O O •

During the next eleven years George Norris' fame and
political fortune multiplied. In 1928, despite his continued
differences with the Republican party and its administrations,
the Nebraska Senator was one of the party’s most prominent
members. Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and
a potential Presidential nominee. But Norris himself scoffed
at the latter reports:

I have no expectation of being nominated for President. A
man who has followed the political course I have is barred from

[ 224 ]

GEORGE NORRIS

the office. ... I realize perfectly that no man holding the views
I do is going to be nominated for the Presidency.

With an oath he rejected the suggestion that he accept
a position as Herbert Hoover s running mate, and he at-
tacked the Republican Convention’s platform and the meth-
ods by which it had selected its nominees. In those years
prior to the establishment of the T.V.A., the Senator from
Nebraska was the nation’s most outspoken advocate of public
power; and he believed that the “monopolistic power trust”
had dictated the nomination of Hoover and the Republican
platform.

Unwilling to commit himself to the Democratic party he
had always opposed, and whose platform he believed to be
equally weak, Norris toured the coimtry campaigning for
fellow progressives regardless of party. But as the campaign
utterances of Democratic nominee Al Smith of New York
began to fall into line with Norris’ own views, he was con-
fronted with the most difficult political problem of his career.

George Norris was a Republican, a Midwesterner, a Prot-
estant and a “dry,” and Herbert Hoover was all of those
things. But Al Smith — a Tammany Hall Democrat from the
streets of New York, and a Catholic who favored the repeal
of Prohibition — ^was none of them. Smely Smith could have
little support in Nebraska, which was also Republican, Mid-
western, Protestant and dry by nature. Could Norris possibly
desert his party, his state and his constituents imder such cir-
cumstances?

He could. He had always maintained that he “would like
to abolish party responsibility and in its stead establish per-
sonal responsibility. Any man even thou^ he be the strictest
kind of Republican, who does not believe the diings 1 stand

[ 225 ]

PROFILES IN COURAGE

for are right, should follow his convictions and vote against
me.” And thus in 1928 Norris finally declared that pro*
gressives

had no place to land except in the Smith camp. . . . Shall we be
so partisan that we will place our party above our country and
refuse to follow the only leader who affords us any escape from
the control of the [power] trust? ... It seems to me we cannot
crush our consciences and support somebody who we know
in advance is opposed to the very things for which we have been
fighting so many years.

But what about Smith s religious views? What about his
attitude on the liquor question?

It is possible for a man in public life to separate his religious
beliefs from his political activities. ... I am a Protestant and
a dry, yet I would support a man who was a wet and a Catholic
provided I believed he was sincerely in favor of law enforce-
ment and was right on economic issues. ... I’d rather trust an
honest wet who is progressive and courageous in his makeup
than politicians who profess to be on the dry side tAit do no
more to make prohibition effective than all the nun runners and
bootleggers in the country.

These were courageous sentiments, but they were lost on
an indignant constituency. As his train sped through the
state on the way to Omaha, where he was to speak for Smith
over a nationwide radio hookup, long-time friends and Re-
publican leaders climbed aboard to appeal in the name of
his party and career. The head of the powerful Nebraska
Anti-Saloon League, previously an important supporter of
Norris, termed his injection of the power issue poppycock.
‘The issue in this campaign is the liquor issue and Norris

[ 226 ]

GEORGE NORRIS

knows it If he makes this speech for Smith, the League is
through with him.” ( Norris, when asked if he would run for
re-election in 1930 in view of such statements, dryly replied
that “such things might drive me to it.”) The pastor of the
largest Baptist church in Omaha wrote the Senator that he
did not “represent us at all, and we are very much ashamed
of your attitude toward the administration.” But Norris, in
his reply, calmly asked the minister whether he had “made
any attempt to take the beam out of your own eyes, so that
you can see more clearly how to pluck the mote out of your
brothers eye.”

Old Guard Republican leaders had previously insisted, at
least privately, that Norris was “no Republican,” a charge
they now made openly. But now many of Norris’ most de-
voted followers expressed dismay at his bolt. Said an Eagle,
Nebraska, small businessman: “I have supported Norris for
20 years, but never again. He is politically warped and men-
tally a grouch, and has antagonized every Republican ad-
ministration since Roosevelt. The Senator should have more
respect for his admirers than to expect them to cast their lot
with a wet Democrat.” Norris’ first Congressional secretary
told reporters he was “bitterly opposed to the Senator’s un-
warranted support of Tammany’s candidate for President.”

A delegate who had supported Norris for President at the
Republican Convention told the press that Norris “does not
carry my political conscience in his vest pocket. I am deeply
grieved to see the stand he has taken. Norris should seek new
friends, and if he chooses to find them on the sidewalks of
New York that is his privilege. But it is unfortxmate that he
uses the Republican party as a vehicle to ride into office and
then repudiates its standard-bearer.”

[227 ]

PROFILES IN COURAGE

The editor of the Walthill Times wrote: "I say it sadly,
but I am through with Norris. Politically he is lost in the
wilderness, far away from his old progressive friends."

“For a hungry farmer or a thirsty wet of less than average
political judgment,” said a Lincoln attorney who was dose
to the Norris camp, “there may be an excuse. But for a
statesman of Norris’ ability and experience there is no
excuse.”

But George Norris sought to help the hungry farmer even
if it meant helping the thirsty wet. Uiunoved by either ap-
peals or attacks, he delivered a powerful plea for Smith at
Omaha. The New York Governor, he said, had risen above
the dictates of Tanunany, while the techniques employed by
the Republican Convention would “make Tammany Hall
appear as a white-robed saint.” He was “traveling in very
distinguished company” by supporting the candidate of the
opposing party, he told his audience, for Herbert Hoover
himself had acted similarly ten years earlier. But for the most
part his speech was an attack on the power .4rust, “an
octopus with slimy fingers that levies tribute upon every
fireside,” and upon Hoover’s refusal to discuss these ques-
tions: "to sin by silence when we should protest makes
cowards out of men.”

Finally, Norris closed his address by meeting the religious
issue openly:

It is our duty as patriots to cast out this Un-American doc-
trine and rebuke those who have raised the torch of intolerance.
All believers of any faith can unite and go forward in our po-
litical work to bring about the maximum amoimt of happiness
for our people.

[ 228 ]

GEORGE NORRIS

But in 1928 the people of Nebraska were not willing to
listen to the theme of tolerance or a discussion of the issues.
Telegrams poured in attacking Norris for his support of a
Catholic and a wet. “The storm which followed that Omaha
pronouncement for Smith ” Norris later recalled, “was more
violent than any I had ever encountered. It was well that 1
had had some training in the matter of abuse." Even his wife
was quoted by the papers as saying she would vote for
neither Smith nor Hoover: “1 am not following George in
all this. ... I have always been a dry and I am not going to
vote for Smith even if George does." Although the same
powerful Democratic newspaper, the Omaha World Herald,
which had assailed his stand for principle against Woodrow
Wilson, was now able to applaud Senator Norris “for his
splendid comrage and devotion," other Nebraska newspapers
accused him of deserting his state for Tammany Hall in the
hopes of reviving his own Presidential boom four years later.
His speech had endangered the chances for re-election of his
own hberal Republican colleague, and his fellow insurgent
Republicans in the Senate expressed their disapproval of his
course. When the Senator returned to his home town he
found his friends and other leading citizens turning away,
as though they would be glad to “cut my heart out and hang
it on a fence as a warning to others.”

The landslide for Hoover, who carried practically every
county and community in Nebraska, as well as the country
as a whole, embittered Norris, who declared that Hoover
had won on the false questions of religion and prohibition,
when the real problems were power and farm relief. The
special interests and machine politicians, he said, “kept this

[ 229 ]

PROFILES IN COURAGE

issue to the front [although] they knew it was a false, wicked
and unfair issue.”

• • •

George Norris’ filibuster against the Armed Ship Bill had
failed, both in its immediate goal of preventing the Presi-
dent’s action, and in its attempt to keep the nation out of the
war into which it was plunged a few months later. His cam-
paign for A 1 Smith also failed, and failed dismally. And yet,
as the Senator confided to a friend in later years:

It happens very often that one tries to do something and fails.
He feels discouraged, and yet he may discover years afterward
that the very effort he made was the reason why somebody else
took it up and succeeded. I really believe that whatever use
I have been to progressive civilization has been accomplished
in the things I faded to do than in the things I actually did do.

George Norris met with both success and failure in his
long tenure in public o£Bce, stretching over nearly a half a
century of American political life. But the essence of the
man and his career was caught in a tribute paid to the Re-
publican Senator from Nebraska by the Democratic Presi-
dential nominee in September, 1932:

History asks, “Did the man have integrity?

Did the man have unselfishness?

Did the man have courage?

Did the man have consistency?”

There are few statesmen in America today who so definitely
and clearly measure up to an afiSrmative answer to those four
questions as does George W. Norris.

[ 230 ]

IX

"...LIBERTY OF THE INDIVIDUAL
TO THINK HIS OWN THOUGHTS...”

☆

Robert A. Taft

1

LATE Senator Robert A. Taft of Ohio was
never President of the United States. Therein lies his
personal tragedy. And therein lies his national great-

ness.

For the Presidency was a goal that Bob Taft pursued
throughout his c'U’eer in the Senate, an ambition that this son
of a former President always dreamed of realizing. As the
leading exponent of the Republican philosophy for more
than a decade, “Mr. Republican” was bitterly disappointed
by his failure on three diflFerent occasions even to receive the
nomination.

But Robert A. Taft was also a man who stuck fast to the
basic principles in which he believed — and when those fun-
damental principles were at issue, not even the lure of the

[231 ]

PROFILES IN COURAGE

White House, or the possibilities of mjuring his candidacy,
could deter him from speaking out. He was an able politician,
but on more than one occasion he chose to speak out in de-
fense of a position no politician with like ambitions would
have endorsed. He was, moreover, a brilliant political analyst,
who knew that during his lifetime the number of American
voters who agreed with the fundamental tenets of his po-
litical philosophy was destined to be a permanen. minority,
and that only by flattering new blocs of support — ^while care-
fully refraining from alienating any group which contained
potential Taft voters— could he ever hope to attain his goal.
Yet he frequently flung to the winds the very restraints his
own analysis advised, refusing to bow to any group, refusing
to keep silent on any issue.

It is not that Bob Taft’s career in the Senate was a con-
stant battle between popularity and principle as was John
Quincy Adams’; he did not have to struggle to maintain his
integrity like Thomas Hart Benton. His principles usually
led him to conclusions which a substantial percentage of his
constituents and political associates were willing to support.
Although on occasions his political conduct reflected his
political ambitions, popularity was not his guide on most
fundamental matters. The Taft-Hartley Labor Management
Relations Act could not have gained him many votes in in-
dustrialized Ohio, for those who endorsed its curbs on union
activity were already Taft supporters; but it brought furious
anti-Taft reprisals during the 1950 Senate campai^ by the
unions in Ohio, and it nourished the belief that Taft could
not win a Presidential contest, a belief which affected his
chances for the nomination in 1952. Simultaneously, how-
ever, he was antagonizing the friends of Taft-Hardey, and

[ 232 ]

ROBERT A. TAFT

endangering his own leadership in the Republican party, by
his support of education, housing, health and other welfare
measures.

Those who were shocked at these apparent departures
from his traditional position did not comprehend that Taft’s
conservatism contained a strong strain of pragmatism, which
caused him to support intensive Federal activity in those
areas that he believed not adequately served by the private
enterprise system. Taft did not believe that this was incon-
sistent with the conservative doctrine; conservatism in his
opinion was not irresponsibility. Thus he gave new dimen-
sions to the conservative philosophy: he stuck to that faith
when it reached its lowest depth of prestige and power and
led it back to the level of responsibility and respectability.
He was an unusual leader, for he lacked the fine arts of
oratory and phrasemaking, he lacked blind devotion to the
party line (imless he dictated it), and he lacked the politi-
cian's natural instinct to avoid controversial positions and
issues.

But he was more than a political leader, more than “Mr.
Republican.” He was also a Taft — and thus “Mr. Integrity.”
The Senator’s grandfather, Alphonso Taft, had moved West
to practice law in 1830, writing his father that “The notori-
ous selfishness and dishonesty of the great mass of men you
find in New York is to my mind a serious obstacle to settling
there.” And the Senator’s father was William Howard Taft,
who knew well the meaning of political coimige and political
abuse when he stood by his Secretary of Interior, Ballinger,
against the overwhelming opposition of Pinchot, Roosevelt
and the progressive elements of his own party.

So Bob T^t, as his biographer has described it, was “bom

H* [ 233 ]

PROFILES IN COURAGE

to integrity,” He was known in the Senate as a man who
never broke an agreement, who never compromised his
deeply felt Republican principles, who never practiced po-
litical deception. His bitter political enemy, Harry Truman,
would say when the Senator died: “He and I did not agree
on public policy, but he knew where I stood and I knew
where he stood. We need intellectually honest men like
Senator Taft.” Examples of his candor are endless and
startling. The Ohioan once told a group in the heart of Re-
publican farm territory that farm prices were too high; and
he told still another farm group that “he was tired of seeing
aU these people riding in Cadillacs.” His support of an ex-
tensive Federal housing program caused a colleague to re-
mark: “I hear the Socialists have gotten to Bob Taft” He
informed an important political associate who cherished a
commendatory message signed by Taft that his assistant
“sent those things out by the dozen” without the Senator
even seeing, much less signing them. And a colleague recalls
that he did not reject the ideas of his friends by gentle in-
direction, but by coldly and unhesitatingly terming them
“nonsense.” “He had,” as William S. White has written, “a
luminous candor of purpose that was extraordinarily refresh-
ing in a chamber not altogether devoted to candor.”

It would be a mistake, however, to conclude from this
that Senator Taft was cold and abrupt in his personal rela-
tionships. I recall, from my own very brief service with him
in the Senate and on the Senate Labor Committee in the last
months of his life, my strong impression of a surprising and
unusiial personal charm, and a disarming simplicity of man-
ner. It was these qualities, combined with an unflinching
courage which he exhibited throughout his entire life and

[234 ]

ROBERT A. TAFT

most especially in his last days, that bound his adherents to
him with unbreakable ties.

Perhaps we are as yet too close in time to the controversial
elements in the career of Senator Taft to be able to measure
his life with historical perspective. A man who can inspire
intensely bitter enemies as well as intensely devoted follow-
ers is best judged after many years pass, enough years to
permit the sediment of political and legislative battles to
settle, so that we can assess our times more clearly.

But sufScient time has passed since 1946 to enable some-
thing of a detached view of Senator Taft's act of courage in
that year. Unlike the acts of Daniel Webster or Edmund
Ross, it did not change history. Unlike those of John
Quincy Adarp<: or Thomas Benton, it did not bring about
his retirement from the Senate. Unlike most of those deeds
of courage previously described, it did not even take place
on the Senate floor. But as a piece of sheer candor in a
period when candor was out of favor, as a bold plea for
justice in a time of intolerance and hostility, it is worth
remembering here.

« • •

In October of 1946, Senator Robert A. Taft of Ohio was
the chief spokesman for the Republicans in Washington, the
champion of his party in the national political arena and the
likely Republican nominee for the Presidency in 1948. It
was a time when even a Senator with such an established
reputation for speaking his mind would have guarded his
tongue, and particularly a Senator with so much at stake as
Bob Taft. The party which had been his whole life, the Re-
puUicans of the Congress for whom he spoke, now once

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PROFILES IN COURAGE

again were nearing the brink of success in the fall elections.
Capturing for his party control of both Houses of Congress
would enhance Bob Taft’s prestige, reinforce his right to
the Republican Presidential nomination and pave the way for
his triumphant return to the White House from which his
father had been somewhat ungloriously ousted in igi2. Or
so it seemed to most political observers at the time, who as-
sumed the Republican leader would say nothmg to upset the
applecart. With Congress out of session, with the tide run-
ning strongly against the incumbent Democrats, there ap-
peared to be no necessity for the Senator to make more than
the usual campaign utterances on the usual issues.

But Senator Taft was disturbed — and when he was dis-
turbed it was his habit to speak out. He was disturbed by
the War Crimes Trials of Axis leaders, then concluding in
Germany and about to commence in Japan. The Nuremberg
Trials, in which eleven notorious Nazis had been found
guilty under an impressively documented mdictment for
“waging an aggressive war,” had been popular tluroughout
the world and particularly in the United States. Equally
popular was the sentence already announced by the high
tribunal: death.

But what kind of trial was this? “No matter how many
books are written or briefs filed,” Supreme Court Justice
William O. Douglas has recently written, “no matter how
finely the lawyers analyzed it, the crime for which the Nazis
were tried had never been formalized as a crime with the
definiteness required by our legal standards, nor outlawed
with a death penalty by the international community. By
our standards that crime arose under an ex post facto law.
Goering et al deserved severe punishment. But their guilt

[ 236 ]

ROBERT A. TAFT

did not justify us in substituting power for principle.”

These conclusions are shared, I believe, by a substantial
number of American citizens today. And they were shared,
at least privately, by a goodly number in 1946. But no
politician of consequence would speak out — certainly not
after the verdict had already been announced and prepara-
tions for the executions were already imder way — none, that
is, but Senator Taft.

The Constitution of the United States was the gospel
which guided the policy decisions of the Senator from Ohio.
It was his source, his weapon and his salvation. And when
the Constitution commanded no “ex post facto laws,” Bob
Taft accepted this precept as permanently wise and univer-
sally applicable. The Constitution was not a collection of
loosely given political promises subject to broad interpreta-
tion. It was not a list of pleasing platitudes to be set lightly
aside when expediency required it. It was the foundation
of the American system of law and justice and he was re-
pelled by the picture of his country discarding those Con-
stitutional precepts in order to punish a vanquished enemy.

Still, why should he say anything? The Nuremberg Trials
were at no time before the Congress for consideration. They
were not in any sense an issue in the campaign. There was
no Republican or Democratic position on a matter enthusi-
astically applauded by the entire nation. And no speech by
any United States Senator, however powerful, could prevent
the death sentence from being carried out. To speak out
imnecessarily would be politically costly and clearly futile.

But Bob Taft spoke out.

On October 6, 1946, Senator Taft appeared before a con-
ference on our Anglo-American heritage, sponsored by

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PROFILES IN COURAGE

Kenyon College in Ohio. The war crimes trial was not an
issue upon which conference speakers were expected to
comment. But titling his address “Equal Justice Under
Law” Taft cast aside his general reluctance to embark upon
startlingly novel and dramatic approaches. “The trial of the
vanquished by the victors,” he told an attentive if somewhat
astonished audience, “cannot be impartial no matter how it
is hedged about with the forms of justice.”

I question whether the hanging of those, who, however
despicable, were the leaders of the German people, will ever
discourage the making of aggressive war, for no one makes ag-
gressive war unless he expects to win. About this whole judg-
ment there is the spirit of vengeance, and vengeance is seldom
justice. The hanging of the eleven men convicted will be a blot
on the American record which we shall long regret.

In these trials we have accepted the Russian idea of the
purpose of trials — government pohcy and not justice — ^with
little relation to Anglo-Saxon heritage. By clothing policy in
the forms of legal procedure, we may discredit the whole idea
of justice in Europe for years to come. In the last analysis, even
at the end of a frightful war, we should view the future with
more hope if even our enemies believed that wc had treated
them justly in our English-speaking concept of law, in the
provision of relief and in the final disposal of territory.

In ten days the Nazi leaders were to be hanged. But Bob
Taft, speaking in cold, clipped matter-of-fact tones, deplored
that sentence, and suggested that involuntary exile — similar
to that imposed upon Napoleon — ^might be wiser. But even
more deplorable, he said, were the trials themselves, which
“violate the fundamental principle of American law that a
man cannot be tried under an ex post facto statute.” Nurem-

[ 238 1

ROBERT A. TAFT

berg, the Ohio Senator insisted, was a blot on American
Constitutional history, and a serious departure from our
Anglo-Saxon heritage of fair and equal treatment, a heritage
which had ri^tly made this country respected throughout
the world. “We can’t even teach our own people the sound
principles of liberty and justice,” he concluded. "We cannot
teach them government in Germany by suppressing Uberty
and justice. As I see it, the English-speaking peoples have one
great responsibility. That is to restore to the minds of men
a devotion to equal justice under law.”

The speech exploded in the midst uf a heated election
campaign; and throughout the nation Republican candidates
scurried for shelter while Democrats seized the opportunity
to advance. Many, many people were outraged at Taft’s
remarks. Those who had fought, or whose men had fought
and possibly died, to beat back the German aggressors were
contemptuous of these fine phrases by a politician who had
never seen battle. Those whose kinsmen or former country-
men had been among the Jews, Poles, Czechs and other
nationality groups terrorized by Hitler and his cohorts were
shocked. The memories of the gas chambers at Buchenwald
and other Nazi concentration camps, the stories of hideous
atrocities which had been refreshed with new illustrations at
Nuremberg, and the anguish and suffering which each new
military casualty list had brought to thousands of American
homes — ^these were among the immeasurable influences
which caused many to react with pain and indignation when
a United States Senator deplored the trials and sentences of
these merely "despicable” men.

In New York, the most important state in any Presidential
race, and a state where politics were particularly sensitive

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PROFILES IN COURAGE

to the views of various nationality and minority groups.
Democrats were joyous and Republicans angry and gloomy.
The 1944 Republican Presidential nominee, and Taft’s bitter
rival for party control and the 1948 nomination. New York’s
Governor Thomas E. Dewey, declared that the verdicts
were justified; and in a statement in which the New York
Republican nominee for the Senate, Irving Ives, joined, he
stated: “The defendants at Nuremberg had a fair and exten-
sive trial. No one can have any sympathy for these Nazi
leaders who brought such agony upon the world.” The
Democratic State Campaign Manager in New York chal-
lenged Taft “to come into this state and repeat his plea for
the lives of the Nazi war criminals.”

The Democratic Party has a perfect right to ask if the public
wants the type of national administration, or state admmistra-
tion, favored by Senator Taft, who indicated he wants the lives
of the convicted Nazis spared and who may very well be pre-
paring the way for a Republican propaganda campaign to com-
mute the death sentences of the Nazi murderers.

New York Republican Congressional candidate Jacob K.
Javits sent a telegram to Taft calling his statement “a dis-
service to all we fought for and to the cause of future peace.”
The Democratic nominee for United States Senator in New
York expressed his deep shock at the Taft statement and
his certainty it would be repudiated by “right-thinking and
fair-minded Americans.” And the Democratic nominee for
Governor told his audiences that if Senator Taft had ever
seen the victims of Nazi concentration camps, he never
would have been able to make such a statement.

Even in the nation’s Capital, where Taft was greatly ad-

[ 240 ]

ROBERT A. TAFT

mired and his blunt candor was more or less expected, the
reaction was no di£Ferent. G.O.P. leaders generally declined
o£Bcial comment, but privately expressed their fears over
the consequences for their Congressional candidates. At a
press conference, the Chairman of the Republican Congres-
sional Campaign Committee refused to comment on the sub-
ject, stating that he had “his own ideas” on the Nuremberg
trials but did not “wish to enter into a controversy with
Senator Taft.”

The Democrats, however, were jubilant — although con-
cealing their glee behind a fa9ade of shocked indignation. At
his weekly press conference. President Truman smilingly
suggested he would be glad to let Senator Taft and Governor
Dewey fight ^he matter out. Democratic Majority Leader
in the Senate (and later Vice President) Alben Barkley of
Kentucky told a campaign audience that Taft “never ex-
perienced a crescendo of heart about the soup kitchens of
1932, but his heart bled anguishedly for the criminals at
Nuremberg.” Typical of Democratic reaction was the state-
ment of Senator Scott Lucas of Illinois, who called Taft's
speech “a classical example of his muddled and confused
thinking” and predicted it would “boomerang on his aspira-
tions for the Presidential nomination of 1948.”

11,000,000 fitting veterans of World War 11 will answer
Mr. Taft. ... I doubt that the Republican National Chairman
will permit the Senator to make any more speeches now that
Taft has called the trials a blot on the American record. . . .
Neither die American people nor history will agree. . . .
Senator Taft, whether he believed it or not, was defending
these culprits who were responsible for the murder of ten mil-
lion people.

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PROFILES IN COURAGE

Even in Taft’s home bailiwick of Ohio, where his strict
constitutionalism had won him immense popularity, the
Senator’s speech brou^t anger, confusion and political re-
verberations. The Repubhcan Senatorial candidate, former
Governor John Bricker, was not only a close ally of Taft
but had been the Vice Presidential nominee m 1944 as run-
ning mate to Governor Dewey. His Democratic opponent,
incumbent Senator James Huffman, challenged Bricker to
stand with either Taft or Dewey, declaring:

A country that has suffered the scourge of modem war, lost
more than 300,000 of its finest men, and spent $300,000,000,000
of its resources because of the acts of these convicted gangsters
can never feel that the sentences meted out have been too severe.
. . . This is not the time to weaken in the punishment of inter-
national crimes. Such criticism, even if justified, should have
been offered when the international tribunals were being set up.

The Toledo Blade told its readers that "on this issue, as on
so many others. Senator Taft shows that he has a^wonderful
mind which knows practically everything and understands
practically nothing.'. . .”

The Cleveland Plain Dealer editorialized that Taft "may
be technically correct,” but turning ‘loose on the world the
worst gang of cutthroats in all history . . . would have failed
to give the world that great principle which humanity needs
so desperately to have established: the principle that plan-
ning and waging aggressive war is definitely a crime against
humanity.”

Senator Taft was disheartened by the voracity of his
critics — and extremely uncomfortable when one of the ac-
quitted Nazi leaders, Franz Von Fapen, told interviewers

[ 242 ]

BOBERT A. TAFT

Upon his release from prison that he agreed with Tafts
speech. A spokesman for Taft issued pnly one terse state-
ment: ‘Tie has stated his feelings on the matter and feels
that if others want to criticize him, let them go ahead.” But
the Ohio Senator could not understand why even his old
supporter, newspaper columnist David Lawrence, called his
position nothing more than a "technical quibble.” And he
must have been particularly distressed when respected Con-
stitutional authorities such as the President of the American
Bar Association, the Chairman of its Executive Committee
and other leading members of the legal profession all de-
plored his statement and defended the trials as being in ac-
cordance with international law.

For Robe.t Taft had spoken, not in “defense of the Nazi
murderers” (as a labor leader charged), not in defense of
isolationism (as most observers assumed), but in defense of
what he regarded to be the traditional American concepts
of law and justice. As the apostle of strict constitutionalism,
as the chief defense attorney for the conservative way of life
and government, Robert Alphonso Taft was undeterred by
the possibilities of injury to his party’s precarious position or
his own Residential prospects. To him, justice was «tt, stake,
and all other concerns were trivial. “It illustrates at once,” a
columnist observed at that time, “the extreme stubbornness,
integrity and political strongheadedness of Senator Taft.”

The fact that thousands disagree with him, and that it is
politically embarrassing to other Republicans, probably did not
bother Taft at all. He has for years been accustomed to making
up his mind, regardless of whether it hurts him or anyone else.
Taft surely must have known that his remarks would be twisted

[243 ]

PROFILES IN COURAGE

and misconstrued and that his tuning would raise the devil in
the current campaign. But it is characteristic of him that he
went ahead anyway.

The storm raised by his speech eventually died down. It
did not, after all the uproar, appear to afiFect the Republican
sweep in 1946, nor was it — ^at least openly — ^an issue in Taft's
drive for the Presidential nomination in 1948. The Nazi
leaders were hanged, and Taft and the coimtry went on
to other matters. But we are not concerned today with the
question of whether Taft was right or wrong in his con-
denmation of the Nuremberg trials. What is noteworthy is
the illustration furnished by this speech of Taft's imhesitat-
ing courage in standing against the flow of public opinion
for a cause he believed to be right. His action was charac-
teristic of the man who was labeled a reactionary, who was
proud to be a conservative and who authored these lasting
deflnitions of liberalism and liberty:

Liberalism implies particularly freedom of thought, freedom
from orthodox dogma, the right of others to think differently
from one's self. It implies a free mind, open to new ideas and
willing to give attentive consideration. . . .

When I say liberty, I mean liberty of the individual to think
his own thoughts and live his own life as he desires to diink
and live.

This was the creed by which Senator Taft lived, and he
sought in his own fashion and in his own way to provide
an atmosphere in America in which others could do likewise.

[244 ]

...CONSOLATION. ..FOR THE CONTEMPT

OF MANKIND.

☆

Other Men of Political Courage

1

■^HERE IS NO OFFICIAL 'list” of politically courageous
Senators, and it has not been my intention to suggest
one. On the contrary, by retelling some of the most
outstanding and dramatic stories of political courage in the
Senate, I have attempted to indicate that this is a quality
which may be found in any Senator, in any political party
and in any era. Many more examples could have been men>
tioned as illustrative of similar conduct under similar cir-
cumstances.

Other Senators, placing their convictions ahead of their
careers, have broken with their party in much the same way
as John Quincy Adams, Thomas Hart Benton, Edmund
Ross, Sam Houston and George Norris. Tlie friends of Re-
publican Senator Albert Beveridge of Indiana pleaded widi

[ 245 ]

PROFILES IN COURAGE

him to soft-pedal his charges against the Fayne-Aldrich
Tari£F Act promoted by his party in his campaign for re-
election in igio; but he would not keep silent. “A party can
live only by growing,” he said. “Intolerance of ideas brings
its death.”

An organization that depends upon r^roduction only for its
vote, son taking the place of the father, is not a political party,
but a Chinese tong; not citizens brou^t together by thought
and conscience, but an Indian tribe held together by blood and
prejudice.

Disillusioned and discouraged when die opposition of in-
fluential i^egments of his own party accomplished his defeat,
he had but one comment on the morning following election:
“It is all right, twelve years of hard work, and a clean record;
I am content.”

Many of those who courageously break with their party
soon find a new home in another organization. But for those
who break with their section, as Senators Benton-and Hous-
ton discovered, the end of their political careers is likely to
be more permanent and more unpleasant. On the eve of the
1924 Democratic Convention, the advisers of Senator Oscar
W, Underwood of Alabama — a former Presidential candi-
date (in 1912), a former Democratic floor leader in both
the House and the Senate, author of the famous tariff bill
which bore his name, and a leading Presidential possibility —
urged that he say nothing to offend the Ku Klux Klan —
then a rising power, particularly in Southern politics. But
Senator Underwood, convinced that the Klan was contrary
to all the principles of Jeffersonian democracy in which he

[ 240 ]

OTHER MEN OF POLITICAL COURAGE

believed, denounced it in no uncertain terms, insisted that
this was the paramount issue upon which the party would
have to take a firm stand, and fought vigorously but unsuc-
cessfully to include an anti-Klan plank in the party platform.
The Louisiana delegation and other Southerners publicly
repudiated him, and from tliat moment on his chances for
the Presidency were nil. He could not even be re-elected to
the Senate, as Frank Kent has written:

for no other reason than the sincerity and honesty of his po-
litical utterances. . . . The opposition to him in Alabama, because
of the strength and the openness of his convictions, had grown
to a point where his renomination was plainly not possible with-
out the kind of fight he felt unwilling to make. . . . Had Senator
Underwood pla^< J the game in Alabama in accord with the
sound political ruin of seeming to say something without doing
so, there would have been no real opposition to his remaining
in the Senate for the balance of his life.

In those troubled days before the Civil War, great courage
in opposing sectional pressures — greater perhaps even than
that of Webster, Benton and Houston — ^was demonstrated
by Senator Andrew Johnson of Tennessee, the bold il tact-
less fighter who in 1868 was saved from a humiliating ouster
from tlie White House by the single vote of tlie hapless Ed-
mund Ross. As the Union began to crack in i860, Benton and
Houston were gone from the Senate floor, and only Andrew
Johnson, alone among the Southerners, spoke for union.
When his train, as he returned home to Tennessee to fight
to keep his state in the Union, stopped at Lynchburg, Vir-
ginia, an angry mob dragged the Senator from his car, as-

[ 247 ]

PROFILES IN COURAGE

saulted and abused him, and decided not to lynch him only
at the last minute, with the rope already around his neck,
when they agreed that hanging him was the privilege of his
own neighbors in Tennessee. Throughout Tennessee, John-
son was hissed, hooted, and hanged in efiBgy. Confederate
leaders were assured that “His power is gone and henceforth
there will be nothing left but the stench of the traitor.” Ob-
livious to the threat of death, Andrew Johnson toured the
state, attempting in vain to stem the tide against secession,
and finally becoming the only Southern Senator who refused
to secede with his state. On his return trip to Washington,
greeted by an enthusiastic crowd at the station in Cincinnati,
he told them proudly: “1 am a citizen of the South and of
the state of Tennessee. . . . [But] I am also a citizen of tlie
United States.”

John Quincy Adams was not the only Senator coma-
geously to resign his seat on a matter of principle. When
Andrew Jackson’s personal and pohtical popularity brought
increased support for Senator Benton’s long-pending meas-
ure to expunge from the Senate Journal the resolution cen-
suring Jackson for his unauthorized actions against the Bank
of the United States, Senator John Tyler of Virginia, con-
vinced that mutilation of the Journal was unconstitutional
and unworthy of the Senate, stood his ground. But the
Virginia Legislature, dominated by Jackson's friends and
Tyler’s foes, and influenced by the sentimental feeling that
die President should be permitted to retire without this per-
manent blot on his record, instructed its Senators to support
the expunging resolution.

[ 248 ]

OTHER MEN OF POLITICAL COURAGE

Realizing that his departure from the Senate would give
the Jacksonians greater strength on far more fundamental
issues, and that his own political career, which already held
promise of the Vice Presidential nomination, would be at
least temporarily halted, John Tyler courageously followed
his conscience and wrote the legislature these memorable
words:

I cannot and will not permit myself to remain in die Senate
for a moment beyond the time that the accredited organs [of]
the people of Virginia shall instruct me that my services are
no longer acceptable. . . .

[But] I dare not touch the Joiumal of the Senate. The Con-
stitution forbid' it. In the midst of all the agitations of party, I
have heretofore stood by that sacred instrument. The man of
today gives place to the man of tomorrow, and the idols which
one set worships, the next destroys. The only object of my po-
litical worship shall be the Constitution of my country. . . .

I shall carry with me into retirement the principles which I
brought with me into public life, and, by the surrender of the
high station to which I was called by the voice of the people of
Virginia, I shall set an example to my children which shall teach
diem to regard as nothing any position or office which must be
attained or held at the sacrifice of honor.

In one of the Senate’s first outstanding demonstrations of
political courage, the colorful and stormy Senator Humphrey
Marshall of Kentucky chose in 1795 to end his career in the
Senate by standing with the President in approving the im-
mensely unpopular Jay Treaty with Great Britain. Although

[ 249 ]

FBOFILES IN COURAGE

even the Federalists of Kentucky found it necessary to op-
pose President Washington on the issue, Marshall bluntly
told his constituents:

In considering the objections to this Treaty, I am frequently
ready to exclaim: Ahl men of faction! friends of anarchy!
enemies and willful perverters of the Federal Government! how
noisy in clamor and abuse, how weak in reason and judgment,
appear all your arguments!

Touring the state in defense of his vote, Marshall was
shunned and stoned. Late one night a mob dragged him from
his home with the avowed intention of ducking him in a
nearby river. At the water’s edge. United States Senator
Marshall, with great cahn and humor, told the raging
mob:

My friends, all this is irregular. In the ordinance of immersion
as practised in the good old Baptist Church, it is the rule to re-
quire the candidate to relate his experience before his baptism
is performed. Now, in accordance with established rules and
precedents, I desire to give my experience before you proceed
to my immersion.

Both amused and awed, the gang of unruly townspeople
— ^few of whom knew what the Jay Treaty was, though all
were convinced that Marshall had committed treason by
supporting it — ^placed the Senator upon a stump and ordered
him to explain his position. Beginning in the same humorous
vein, the Senator warmed to his work and conduded his
speech by caustically blistering all of his enemies, induding
those who stood sheepishly before him and whom he later
described as

[ 250 ]

OTHER MEN OF POLITICAL COURAGE

poor, ignorant beings who were collected on the bank of the
river for the very honorable purpose of ducking me for giving
an independent opinion. Among this patriotic group, old John
Byrnes, the drunken butcher, was one of the most respectable.

The freshman United States Senator from Kentucky was not
“immersed”; but his sharp tongue could not prevent his in-
voluntary retirement from the Senate.

Acts of political courage have not, of course, been con-
fined to the floor of the United States Senate. They have
been performed with equal valor and vigor by Congressmen,
Presidents, Governors, and even private citizens with po-
litical ambitions. One or two examples of each are sufiBcient
to show tha*- neither the Senate nor Washington, D.C., has
monopolized this quality.

Many years prior to his election to the Senate, John C.
Calhoun of South Carolina demonstrated his greatest courage
while a Member of the House of Representatives. When, in
1816, Congress raised its own pay from $6 a day to $1500 a
year, an astounding wave of condemnation had suddenly
engulfed the nation and members from all parties. Compara-
tively few members even dared to run for re-electior. Clay
narrowly avoided defeat only by the most intensive cam-
paign of his career. Calhoun s most faithful supporters urged
the young Congressman to issue a public statement prom-
ising to vote to repeal the bill if the voters would only forgive
and re-elect him. But Calhoun, who once told a friend:
“When I have made up my mind, it is not in the power of
man to divert me,” would not back down. Indeed, he sug-
gested that perhaps $1500 was too little.

Returning to Congress vindicated by the support he had

[ 251 ]

PROFILES IN COURAGE

received (despite the fact that most of his former colleagues
from South Carolina had been defeated for re-election), he
stood practically alone on the floor of the House as Mem-
bers, new and old, scrambled to dmiounce the bill. But not
Calhoun:

This House is at liberty to decide on this question according
to the dictates of its best judgment. Are we bound in all cases
to do what is popular? Have the people of Uiis country snatched
the power of deliberation from this body? Let die gentlemen
name the time and place at which the people assembled and
deliberated on dds question. Oh, nol They have no written, no
verbal instructions. The law is unpopular, and they are bound to
repeal it, in opposition to their conscience and reason. If this be
true, how are political errors, once prevalent, ever to be cor-
rected?

The President of the United States is not subject to quite
the same test of political courage as a Senator. His constitu-
ency is not sectional, his losses in popularity with one group
or section may be offset on the same issue by his^ains from
others and his power and prestige normally command a
greater political security than that afforded a Senator. But
one example indicates that even the President feels the pres-
sures of constituent and special interests.

President George Washington stood by the Jay Treaty
with Great Britain to save our young nation from a vrar it
could not survive, despite his knowledge that it would be
immensely unpopular among a people ready to flgjht. Tom
Paine told the President that he was "treacherous in private
friendship and a hypocrite in public. . . . The world will be
puzzled to decide whether you are an apostate or imposter;

[ 252 ]

OTHER MEN OF POLITICAL COURAGE

whether you have abandoned good principles, or whe&er
you ever had any." With bitter exasperation, Washington
exdaizned: "1 would rather be in my grave than in the
Presidency"; and to Jefferson he wrote:

I am accused of being tibe enemy of America, and subject to
the influence of a foreign country . . . and every act of my ad-
ministration is tortured, in such exaggerated and indecent terms
as could scarcely be applied to Nero, to a notorious defaulter,
or even to a common pidcpocket.

But he stood firm.

It is appropriate, in this book on the Senate, in selecting
one example from among those Governors who have dis-
played political courage, to choose one whose brave deeds
as Governor prevented him from realizing his ambition to
reach the Senate. After reviewing a tremendous stack of af-
fidavits and court records. Governor John Peter AUgeld of
Illinois was convinced that an unfair trial and insufBcient evi-
dence had convicted the three defendants, not yet hanged,
of murder in Chicago’s famous Haymarket Square bombing
of 1886. Warned by Democratic leaders that he must forget
these convicts if he still looked toward the Senate, \ltgeld
replied, "No man’s ambition has a right to stand in tire vray
of performing a simple act of justice’’; and when asked by
the Democratic State Chairman if his eighteen-thousand-
word pardon document was "good poli^,” he thimdered, “It
is ri^t."

For his action, the Governor was burned in efiBgy, ex-
cluded from customary ceremonies such as parades and
commencements, and assaulted daily in the press widi such

[253 ]

PROFILES IN COURAGE

epithets as “anarchist,” “socialist,” “apologist for murder”
and “fomenter of lawlessness.” Defeated for re*election in
i8g6, denied even the customary right to make a farewell ad-
dress at his successors inaugural (“Illinois has had enough of
that anarchist,” the new Governor snorted), John Peter
Altgeld returned to private life and a quiet death six years
later. He became, in the title of Vachel Lindsay’s famous
poem, “The Eagle That Is Forgotten”:

Sleep softly, . . . eagle forgotten, . . . under the stone,

Time has its way with you there and the clay has its own.

Sleep on, O brave-hearted, O wise man, that kindled the flame—
To live in mankind is far more than to live in a name.

To live in mankind, far, far more . . . than to live in a name.

Charles Evans Hughes in 1920 was neidier a Congress-
man nor a Governor — ^but he was the most prominent
lawyer in the country, a former Governor, Supreme Court
Justice and I^esidential nominee, and under active considera-
tion for further public office. (He was shortly-to become
Secretary of State md Chief Justice.) But when five Social-
ists — duly elected members of a legally recognized party —
were arbitrarily denied their seats in the New York State
Assembly largely on the basis of their unpopular views,
Hughes risked his standing and popularity to protest the
action as a violation of the public’s right to choose its own
representatives. After a classic battle in the New York Bar
Association, he succeeded in obtaining a special Association
committee, with himself as chairman, to defend the Social-
ists — ^whose views he personally abhorred — ^before the Legis-
lative.

[ 254 ]

OTHER MEN OF POLITICAL COURAGE

Denied the ri^t to appear in person, Hughes filed a brief
insisting that “if a majority can exclude the whole or a part
of the minority because it deems the political views enter-
tained by them hurtful, then free government is at an end.”
His arguments apparently had little effect on the New York
Legislature, which expelled the Socialists and outlawed their
party. But many believe that the distinguished voice of
Charles Evans Hughes, nearly alone but never afraid, and
the courageous vetoes by Governor Al Smith of that Legis-
lature’s measures for controlling radicalism in the schools,
were determining factors in arousing tlie nation to its senses.

To close our stories of American political courage, we
would do well to recall an act of courage which preceded
the founding of this nation, and which set a standard for all
to follow. On the night of March 5, 1770, when an abusive
and disorderly mob on State Street in Boston was rashly fiied
upon by British sentries, John Adams of Massachusetts was
already a leader in the protests against British indifference
to colonist grievances. He was, moreover, a lawyer of stand-
ing in tlie community and a candidate for the General Court
at the next election. Thus, even had he not joined in the sense
of shocked outrage with which all of Boston greeted the
“Boston Massacre,” he would nevertheless have profiled by
remaining silent.

But this mihtant foe of the Crown was asked to serve as
counsel for the accused soldiers, and did not even hesitate to
accept. The case, he later noted in his autobiography, was
one of the “most exhausting and fatiguing causes I ever tried,
hazarding a popularity very hardly earned, and incurring
popular suspicions and prejudices which are not yet worn

[255 ]

PROFILES IN COURAGE

out." Yet the man who would later be a bold President—and
father of an independent Senator and President — ^not only
remained as counsel, but acquitted his clients of the murder
charge, demonstrating to a packed courtroom that no evi<
dence was at hand to show that the firing was malicious and
without provocation:

Whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates
of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.
The law will not bend to the uncertain wishes, imagination and
wanton tempers of men. . . .

Gentlemen of the Jury — I am for the prisoners at the bar,
and shall apologize for it only in the words of the Marquis
Beccaria: “If I can but be the instrument of preserving one
life, his blessings and tears shall be sufficient consolation to
me for the contempt of mankindl”

[ 256 ]

XI

The Meaning of Courage
☆

y II BEEN a book about courage and politics.

I Politics ftimished the situations, courage provided

-IL. the theme. Courage, the universal virtue, is com-
prehended by us all — but these portraits of courage do not
dispel the mysteries of politics.

For not a single one of the men whose stories appear in
the preceding pages offers a simple, clear-cut pictuie of mo-
tivation and accomplishment. In each of them complexities,
inconsistencies and doubts arise to plague us. How er de-
tailed may have been our study of his hfe, each man lemains
something of an enigma. However clear the effoct of his
courage, the cause is shadowed by a veil which cannot be
tom away. We may confidently state the reasons why — ^yet
something always seems to elude us. We think we hold the
answer in our hands — ^yet somehow it slips through our
fingers.

Motivation, as any psychiatrist will tell us, is always .lif-

[ 257 ]

PROFILES IN COURAGE

ficult to assess. It is particularly di£Scult to trace in the
murky sea of politics. Those who abandoned their state and
section for the national interest — ^men like Daniel Webster
and Sam Houston, whose ambitions for higher office could
not be hidden — ^laid themselves open to the charge that they
sought only to satisfy their ambition for the Presidency.
Those who broke with their party to fight for broader prin-
ciples — ^m^ like John Quinqy Adams and Edmund Ross —
faced the accusation that they accepted office under one ban-
ner and yet deserted it in a moment of crisis for another.

But in the particular events set forth in the preceding chap-
ters, I am persuaded after long study of the record that the
national interest, rather than private or political gain, fur-
nished the basic motivation for the actions of those whose
deeds are therein described. This does not mean that many
of them did not seek, though rarely with success, to wring
advantage out of the difficult course they had adopted. For
as politicians — and it is surely no disparagement to term all
of them politicians — ^they were clearly justified in doing so.

Of course, the acts of courage described in this book
would be more inspiring and would shine more with the
traditional luster of hero-worship if we assumed that each
man forgot wholly about himself in his dedication to hi^er
principles. But it may be that President John Adams, surely
as disinterested as well as wise a public servant as we ever
had, came much nearer to the truth when he wrote in his
Defense of the ConsHtutUm of the United States: '‘It is not
true, in fact, that any people ever existed who love the public
better than themselves.”

If diis be true, what then caused the statesmen mentioned

[ 258 ]

THE MEANING OF COURAGE

in the preceding pages to act as they did? It was not because
they "loved the public better than themselves." On the
contrary it was precisely because they did love themselves —
because each one's need to maintain his own respect for him-
self was more important to him than his popularity with
others — ^because his desire to win or maintain a reputation
for integrity and courage was stronger than his desire to
maintain his office — ^because his conscience, his personal
standard of ethics, his integrity or morality, call it what you
will — wais stronger than the pressures of public disapproval
— because his faith that his course was the best one, and
would ultimately be vindicated, outwei^ed his fear of public
reprisal.

Although the public good was the indirect beneficiary of
his sacrifice, it was not that vague and general concept, but
one or a combination of these pressures of self-love that
pushed him along the course of action that resulted in the
slings and arrows previously described. It is when the politi-
cian loves neither the public good nor himself, or when his
love for himself is limited and is satisfied by the trappings of
office, that the public interest is badly served. And it is when
his regard for himself is so higjh that his own self-respect
demands he follow the path of courage and conscience that
all benefit. It is then that his belief in the rightness of his
own course enables him to say with John C. Calhoun:

I never know what South Carolina thinks of a measure. 1
never consult her. I act to the best of my judgment and accord-
ing to my conscience. If she approves, well and good. If she does
not and wishes anyone to take my place, I am ready to vacate.
We are even.

[ 259 ]

PROFILES IN COURAGE

This is not to say that courageous politicians and the prin>
ciples for which they speak out are always right. John
Quincy Adams, it is said, should have realized that the Em-
bargo would ruin New England but hardly irritate the
British. Daniel Webster, according to his critics, fruitlessly
appeased the slavery forces, Thomas Hart Benton was an
unyielding and pompous egocentric, Sam Houston was cun-
ning, changeable and unreliable. Edmund Ross, in the eyes
of some, voted to uphold a man who had defied the Con-
stitution and defied the Congress. Lucius Lamar failed to
understand why the evils of planned inflation are sometimes
preferable to the tragedies of uncontrolled depression. Nor-
ris and Taft, it is argued, were motivated more by blind
isolationism than Constitutional principles.

All of this has been said, and more. Each of us can decide
for himself the merits of the courses for which these men
fou^t.

• But is it necessary to decide this question in order to ad-
mire their courage? Must men conscientiously risk their
careers only for principles which hindsight declares to be
correct, in order for posterity to honor them for their valor?
I think not. Surely in the United States of America, where
brother once fought against brother, we did not judge a
man's bravery under fire by examining the banner under
which he fought.

I make no claim that all of those who staked their careers
to speak their minds were right. Indeed, it is clear that
Webster, Benton and Houston could not all have been right
on the Compromise of 1850, for each of them, in pursuit
of the same objective of preserving the Union, held wholly

[ 260 ]

THE MEANING OF COURAGE

different views on that one omnibus measure. Lucius Lamar,
in refusing to resign his seat when he had violated the in-
structions of his Legislature, demonstrated courage in totally
opposite fashion from John Tyler, who ended his career in
the Senate because he believed such instructions binding.
Tyler, on the other hand, despised Adams; and Adams was
disgusted with “the envious temper, the ravenoxis ambition
and the rotten heart of Daniel Webster.” Republicans Norris
and Taft could not see eye to eye; and neither could Demo-
crats Calhoim and Benton.

These men were not all on one side. They were not all
right or all conservatives or all liberals. Some of them may
have been representing the actual sentiments of the silent
majority of their constituents in opposition to the screams
of a vocal minority; but most of them were not. Some of
them may have been actually advancing the long-range in-
terests of their states in opposition to the shortsighted and
narrow prejudices of their constituents; but some of them
were not. Some of them may have been pure and generous
and kind and noble throughout their careers, in the best
traditions of the American hero; but most of them were not.
Norris, the unyielding bitter-ender; Adams, the iiritating
upstart; Webster, the businessmen’s beneficiary; Benton, the
bombastic bully — of such stuff are our real-liTe political
heroes made.

Some demonstrated courage through their unyielding de-
votion to absolute principle. Others demonstrated courage
through their acceptance of compromise, through their ad-
vocacy of conciliation, through their willingness to replace
conflict with co-operation. Surely their courage was of ei]ual

[261 ]

PROFILES IN COURAGE

quali^, thou^ of difiFerent caliber. For the American system
of Government could not function if every man in a position
of responsibility approached each problem, as John Quincy
Adams did, as a problem in higher mathematics, with but a
limited regard for sectional needs and human shortcomings.

Most of them, despite their differences, held much in com-
mon — ^the breath-taldng talents of the orator, the brilliance
of the scholar, the breadth of the man above party and sec-
tion, and, above all, a deep-seated belief in themselves, their
integrity and the rightness of their cause.

• • •

The meaning of courage, like political motivations, is fre-
quently misunderstood. Some enjoy the excitement of its
battles, but fail to note the implications of its consequences.
Some admire its virtues in other men and other times, but
fail to comprehend its current potentialities. Perhaps, to
make clearer the significance of these stories of political
courage, it would be well to say what this book* is not.

It is not intended to justify independence for the sake of
independence, obstinacy to all compromise or excessively
proud and stubborn adherence to one's own personal con-
victions. It is not intended to suggest that there is, on every
issue, one right side and one wrong side, and that all Sena-
tors except those who are knaves or fools will find the right
side and stick to it. On the contrary, I share the feelings ex-
pressed by Prime Minister Melbovune, who, when irritated
by the criticism of the then youthful historian T. B.
Macaulay, remarked that he would like to be as sure of any-
thing as Macaulay seemed to be of everything. And nine

[ 262 ]

THE MEANING OF COURAGE

years in Congress have taught me the wisdom of Lincoln’s
words: “There are few things wholly evil or wholly good.
Almost everything, especially of Government policy, is an
inseparable compound of the two, so that our best judgment
of the preponderance between them is continually de-
manded.”

This book is not intended to suggest that party regularity
and party responsibility are necessary evils which should at
no time influence our decisions. It is not intended to suggest
that the local interests of one’s state or region have no legiti-
mate right to consideration at any time. On the contrary, the
loyalties of every Senator are distributed among his party,
his state and section, his country and his conscience. On
party issues his party loyalties are normally controlling. In
regional disputes, his regional responsibilities will likely
guide his course. It is on national issues, on matters of con-
science which challenge party and regional loyalties, that
the test of courage is presented.

It may take courage to battle one’s President, one’s party
or the overwhelming sentiment of one’s nation; but diese
do not compare, it seems to me, to the courage required of
the Senator defying the angry power of the very coii.^^tituents
who control his future. It is for this reason that I have not
included in this work the stories of this nation’s most famous
“insurgents” — ^John Randolph, Thaddeus Stevens, Robert
La Follette and all the rest — men of courage and integrity,
but men whose battles were fou^t with the knowledge that
they enjoyed die support of the voters back home.

Finally, this book is not intended to disparage democratic
government and popular rule. The e\amples of constituent

[ 263 ]

PROFILES IN COURAGE

passions unfairly condemning a man of principle are not
unanswerable arguments against permitting the widest par-
ticipation in the electoral process. The stories of men who
accomplished good in the face of cruel calumnies from the
public are not final proof that we should at all times ignore
the feelings of the voters on national issues. For, as Winston
Churchill has said, “Democracy is the worst form of gov-
ernment — except all those other forms that have been tried
from time to time.” We can improve our democratic proc-
esses, we can enlighten our understanding of its problems,
and we can increase our respect for those men of integrity
who find it necessary, from time to time, to act contrary to
public opinion. But we cannot solve the problems of legisla-
tive independence and responsibility by abolishing or curtail-
ing democracy.

For democracy means much more than popular govern-
ment and majority rule, much more than a system of political
techniques to flatter or deceive powerful blocs of voters. A
democracy that has no George Norris to point to^no monu-
ment of individual conscience in a sea of popular rule — is
not worthy to bear the name. The true democracy, living
and growing and inspiring, puts its faith in the people — ^faith
that the people will not simply elect men who will represent
their views ably and faithfully, but also elect men who will
exercise their conscientious judgment — ^faith that the people
wiU not condemn those whose devotion to principle leads
them to unpopular courses, but will reward courage, respect
honor and ultimately recognize right.

These stories are the stories of such a democracy. Indeed,
there would be no such stories had this nation not main-

[ 264 ]

THE MEANING OF COURAGE

tained its heritage of free speech and dissent, had it not
fostered honest conflicts of opinion, had it not encouraged
tolerance for unpopular views. Cynics may point to our
inability to provide a happy ending for each chapter. But
I am certain that these stories will not be looked upon as
warnings to beware of being courageous. For the continued
political success of many of those who withstood the pres-
sures of public opinion, and the ultimate vindication of the
rest, enables us to maintain our faith in the long-nm judg-
ment of the people.

And thus neither the demonstrations of past courage nor
the need for future courage are confined to the Senate alone.
Not only do the problems of courage and conscience concern
every officeholder in om land, however humble or mighty,
and to whomever he may be responsible — ^voters, a legisla-
ture, a political machine or a party organization. They con-
cern as well every voter in our land — and they concern those
who do not vote, those who take no interest in Government,
those who have only disdain for the pohtician and his pro-
fession. They concern everyone who has ever complained
about corruption in high places, and everyone who has ever
insisted that his representative abide by his wishe« For, in
a democracy, every citizen, regardless of his inierest in
politics, “holds office”; every one of us is in a position of
responsibility; and, in the final analysis, the kind of govern-
ment we get depends upon how we fulfill those responsibil-
ities. We, the people, are the boss, and we will get the kind of
political leadership, be it good or bad, that we demand and
deserve.

These problems do not even concern politics alone— for

I* [ 265 ]

PROFILES IN COURAGE

the same basic choice of courage or compliance continually
faces us all, whether we fear the anger of constituents,
friends, a board of directors. or our union, whenever we
stand against the flow of opinion on strongly contested issues.
For widiout belittling the courage with which men have
died, we should not forget those acts of courage with which
men — such as the subjects of this book — ^have lived. The
courage of life is often a less dramatic spectacle than the
courage of a final moment; but it is no less a magnificent
mixture of triumph and tragedy. A man does what he must
— ^in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles
and dangers and pressures — and that is the basis of all human
morality.

To be courageous, these stories make clear, requires no
exceptional qualifications, no magic formula, no special com*
bination of time, place and circumstance. It is an opportunity
that sooner or later is presented to us all. Politics merdy
furnishes one arena which imposes special tests of courage.
In whatever arena of life one may meet the challenge of
courage, whatever may be the sacrifices he faces if he follows
his conscience — ^the loss of his friends, his fortune, his con-
tentment, even the esteem of his fellow men — each man must
decide for himself the course he will follow. The stories of
past courage can define that ingredient — ^they can teach,
they can offer h(^, they can provide inspiration. But they
cannot supply courage itself. For diis each man must look
into his own souL

[ 266 ]

THE MEANING OF COURAGE

When, Mr. President, a man becomes a member of this body
he cannot even dream of the ordeal to which he cannot fak
to be exposed;

of how much courage he must possess to resist the tempta-
tions which daily beset him;

of that sensitive shrinking from undeserved censure which
he must learn to control;

of the ever-recurring contest between a natural desire
for public approbation and a sense of public duty;
of the load of injustice he must be content to bear, even
from those who should be his friends;
the imputations of his motives;
the sneers and sarcasms of ignorance and malice;
aU fhr manifold injuries which partisan or private
malignity, disappointed of its objects, may shower
upon his unprotected head.

All this, Mr. President, if he would retain his integrity, he
must learn to bear unmoved, and walk steadily onward in the
path of duty, sustained only by the reflection that time may
do him justice, or if not, that after aU his individual hopes
and aspirations, and even his name among men, should be
of little account to him when weighed in the bdUofU-t against
the welfare of a people of whose destiny he is a constituted
guardian and defender.

Senator William Pitt Fessenden of Maine,
in a eulogy delivered upon the death of Sen-
ator Foot of Vermont in 1866, two years be-
fore Senator Fessendens vote to acquit
Andrew Johnson brought about the fulfillment
of his own prophecy.

[ 267 ]

Bibliography

☆

☆ ☆
☆

"Note: The works of Allan Nevins and Herbert Agar are particu-
larly helpful in commencing a study of this nature; and Haynes's
history of trie Senate, Cate’s biography of Lamar, De Witt’s re-
count of the Johnson impeachment, and William S. White’s biogra-
phy of Taft are basic reference works which have been essential
to my research . — ^jfk

GENERAL REFERENCES

( The following books were helpful in several chapters of the book
or in establishing the general theme of the book in the opening
and closing chapters . )

Agar, Herbert. The Price of Union. Boston, 1950.

Coit, Margaret L. John C. Calhoun. Boston, 1950.

Douglas, William O. An Almanac of Liberty. New York, 1954-
Callup, George. Public Opinion in a Democracy. Princeton Uni-
versity, 1939.

Gillett, Frederick H. George Frisbie Hoar. Boston, 1934*

Haynes, George H. The Senate of the United States, Vols. 1 & 2.
Boston, 1938.

[ 269 ]

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Holcombe, Arthur Norman. Our More Perfect Union; from Eight-
eetah-Century Principles to Ttoentieth-Century Practice.
Cambridge, Massadiusetts, 1950.

House Doc. 607: Biographical Directory of the American Con-
gress, 1774-1949. Washington, D.C., 1950.

Kent, Frank R. Political Behavior. New York, 1928.

Lippmann, Walter. Essays in the Public Philosophy. Boston, 1955.

Lowell, Abbott Lawrence. Conflicts of Principle. Cambridge,
Massachusetts, 1932.

Luthin, Reinhard Henry. American Demagogues: Twentieth Cen-
tury. Boston, 1954.

Malone, Dumas. Dictionary of American Biography. New York,
1943 -

Moore, Joseph West The American Congress. New York, 1895.

Morison, Samuel E., and Commager, Henry Steele. The Growth
of the American Republic, Vols. 1 & 2. London, 1942.

Morrow, Josiah. The Works of the Right Hon. Edmund Burke,
Vol. 2. Boston, 1894.

Nevins, AUan. Ordeal of the Union, Vols. 1 & 2. New York, 1947.

Nevins, Allan, and Commager, Henry Steele. Ameripa, the Story
of a Free People. Boston, 1942.

Peterson, Houston '(Ed.). A Treasury of the Worlds Great
Speeches. New York, 1954.

Schlesinger, Arthur M., Jr. The Age of Jackson. Boston, 1946.

Turner, Julius. Pari.j and Constituency: Pressures on Congress.
Baltimore, 1951.

ADDITIONAL REFERENCES ON HISTORY OF THE SENATE AND
SOURCES FOB MATERIAL CONTAINED IN THE PROLOGUES
TO THE VARIOUS CHAPTERS

Benton, Thomas Hart Thirty Years’ View, 1820-1850. London
and New York, 1863.

Binkley, WUfred. President and Congress. New York, 1947.

[ 270 ]

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Boni, Albert and Charles. The Journal of WUUam MacUty. Ne^
York, published in 1890 and revised in 1927.

Brown, Everett Somerville. WUUam Phanei'e Memorandum of
Proceedings in the United States Senate, 1803-1807. T/^ndnn,
19 * 3 -

Connor, R. D. W. History of North Carolina, Vol. 1. Chicago and
New York, 1919.

Corwin, Edward. The President, Office and Powers, and Edition.
New Yorl^ i94i>

Cosgrove, Henry. 'T'lew England Town Mandates,” Publications
of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Vol. 21 (Trans-
actions in 1919). Boston, 1920.

Dangerfield, Royden J. In Defense of the Senate. University of
Oklahoma Press, 1933.

Dodd, V.'illiu/ii E. ”The Principle of Instructing United States
Senators,” The South Atlantic Quarterly, Vol. 1. Durham,
North Carolina, January, 1902.

Foster, Roger. Commentaries on the Constitution of the United
States. Boston, 1895.

Galloway, George Barnes. Congress at the Crossroads. New York,
1946.

Harris, Joseph P. The Advice and Consent of the Senate. Berkdey
and Los Angeles, 1953.

Haynes, George H. The Senate of the United States^ V jIs. 1 & a.
Boston, 1938.

Matthews, Donald R. "‘United States Senators and the Class
Stnictiire,” The Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. XVIII, No. 1.
Princeton University, Spring, 1954*

McClendon, R. Earl. "Violations of Secrecy In Re Senate Execu-
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Miller, R., and Hoar, George F. “Has the Senate Degenerated?"
Forum. 1897.

[ 271 ]

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Moore, Joseph West. The American Congress, New York, 1895.

Nevins, Allan, and Commager, Henry Steele. AiheHca, the Story
of a Free People. Boston, 1942.

Pound, Merritt B. Benjamin HaivJdns — Indian Agent. Athens,
Georgia, 1951.

Rogers, Lindsay. The American Senate, New York, 1926.

Smith, Goldwin. 'Has the U. S. Senate Decayed?” Saturday Re-
view. 1896.

Von Holst, R. “Shall the Senate Rule the Republic?” Forum.
November, 1893.

Wilson, Woodrow. Congressional Government. Boston and New
York, 1885.

Young, Roland. This Is Congress. New York, 1943.

ADDITIONAL BEFEBENCES FOR CHAPTER H
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS

Adams, Charles Francis. Memoirs of John Quincy Adams (His
Diary from 1795 to 1848), Vol. 1. Philadelphia, 1874.

Adams, Henry. New England Federalism. Boston, 1905.

Adams, James Truslow. The Adams Family. Boston, 1930.

Adams, John Quincy. Correspondence tvith Citizens of Massachu-
setts. Boston, 1829.

Beard, Charles A. Economic Origins of Jeffersonian Democracy.
New York, 1949.

Bemis, Samuel Flagg. John Quincy Adams and the Foundations of
American Foreign Policy. New York, 1949.

Buckley, William. The Hartford Convention (Pamphlet). New
Haven, Connecticut, 1934.

Clark, Beimett Champ. John Quincy Adams. Boston, 1932.

Dwight, Theodore. The Hartford Convention. Boston and New
York, 1833.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ford, W. C. “The Recall of John Quincy Adams in 1808 " Massa-
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Ford, Wordiington Chauncey. Writings of John Quincy Adams,
Vol. III. New York, 1914.

Hoar, George F., Representative. Speech of December 12, 1876,
on dedication of statues of Samuel Adams and John Win-
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Lipsky, George A. John Quincy Adams. New York, 1950.

Morison, Samuel Eliot. Life and LiCtters of Harrison Gray Otis,
Vols. 1 & 2. Cambridge, 1913.

Morse, Anson Ely. The Federalist Party in Massachusetts to the
Year 1800. Trenton, New Jersey, 1909.

Morse, John T., Jr. John Quincy Adams, American Statesmen Se-
ries, Vol. 15. Boston and New York, 1883 and 1899.

Nevins, Allan ( Ed. ) . The Diary of John Quincy Adams, 1794-1845.
New York and London, 1929.

Prentiss, Ilervey Putnam. Timothy Pickering as the Leader of Hew
England Federalism, 1800-1815. Salem, Massachusetts, 1934.

Quincy, Josiah. Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. Boston,
1858.

Seward, William H. Life of John Quincy Adams. Philadelphia,
1916.

Sullivan, William. Public Men of the Revolution. P^i’ldelphia,
1847.

Wilson, Woodrow. “A Calendar of Great Americ'>ns,” Forum,
February, 1894.

ADDITIONAL REFERENCES FOR CHAPTER DI
DANIEL WEBSTER

Adams, Samuel Hopkins. The Godlike Daniel. New York, 193®*

Bemis, Samuel Flagg (Ed.). The Ame' ''an Secretaries of State

[ 273 ]

BIBLIOGRAPHY

And Their Diplomacy, VoL 5. Duniway, Clyde Augustus.
“Daniel Webster,’’ New York, 1928.

Benson, Allen L. Daniel Webster. New York, 1929.

Binkley, Wilfred E. American Political Parties: Their Natural
History. New York, 1949.

Current, Ridiard. Daniel Webster and the Rise of NaHotud Con-
seroatism. Boston, 1955.

Curtis, George Ticknor. The Last Years of Daniel Webster. New
York, 1878,

Curtis, George Ticknor. The Life of Daniel Webster, Vok. 1 & 2.
New York, 1870.

Dyer, Oliver. Great Senators of the United States 40 Years Ago.
New York, 1889.

Fisha*, Sydney George. The True Daniel Webster. Philadelphia
and London, 1911.

Foster, Herbert Darling. Webster’s 7th of March Speech and the
Secession Movement, 1850. New York, 1922.

Fuess, Claude M. Daniel Webster, Vols. 1 & 2. Boston, 1930.
Harvey, Peter. Reminiscences and Anecdotes of Daniel Webster.
Boston, 1909.

Johnson, Gerald W. America’s SUoer Age. New York, 1939.
Lanman, Charles. The Private Life of Daniel Webster. New York,
1852.

Lodge, Henry Cabot. Daniel Webster, American Statesmen Series,
Vol. 21. Boston and New York, 1899.

March, Charles W. Daniel Webster and His Contemporaries. New
York, 1859.

McClure, Col. Alexander K. Recollections of Half a Century.

Salem, Massachusetts, 1902.

McMaster, John Bach. Daniel Webster. New York, 1902.

Nevins, Allan. Ordeal of the Union, Vols. 1 & 2. New York, 1947.
Sandburg, Carl. Abraham Lincoln, the Prairie Years and the War
Years. New York, 1954.

[274 ]

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Schlesinger, Arthur M., Jr. The Age of Jackson. Boston, 1946.
Smyth, ClifiFord. Daniel Webster: Spokesman for the Union. New
York, 1931.

Van Tyne, C. H. The Letters of Daniel Webster. New York, 1902.
Webster, Daniel. The Private Correspondence of Daniel Webster,
Boston, 1857.

Whittier, John G. Whittier* s Poetical Works, “Ichabod,” Vol. IV.
Boston, 1888.

Wish, Harvey. Society and Thought in Early America. New York,

1950.

ADDITIONAL REFERENCES FOR CHAPTER IV
THOMAS HART BENTON

Benton, Tlioiiias Hart. Thirty Years* View, 1820-1850. London and
New York, 1863.

Dyer, Oliver, Great Senators of the United States 40 Years Ago.
New York, 1889.

Fremont, John Charles. Memoirs of My Life, Vol. 1. Fremont,
Jessie Benton. “Biographical Sketch of Senator Benton, in
Connection with Western Expansion.” Chicago and New
York, 1887.

McClure, Col. Alexander K. Recollections of Half a Century.
Salem, Massachusetts, 1902.

McClure, Clarence Henry. Opposition in Missouri to Benton.
Nashville, Tennessee, 1927.

McClure, Clarence Henry. “The Opposition Against Benton,”
Missouri Historical Review, Vol. 10, p. 151. State Historical
Society of Missouri; Columbia, Missouri, October, 1907, and
January, 1908.

Meigs, William Montgomery. The Life of Thomas Hart Benton.

Philadelphia and London, 1904.

Rogers, Joseph M. Thomas H, Benton. Philadelphia, 1905,

[ 275 ]

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Roosevelt, Theodore. Thomas H. Benton. Boston and New York,
1899.

Violette, Eugene Morrow. History of Missouri. Boston, 1820.
Wilson, Woodrow. "A Calendar of Great Americans,” Forum.
February, 1894.

ADDITIONAL BEETRENCES FOR CHAPTER V
SAM HOUSTON

Barker, Eugene C. Mexico and Texas, 1821-1835. Texas, 1928.

Bruce, Henry. Life of General Houston. New York, 1891.

Creel, George. Sam Houston. New York, 1928.

Culberson, Charles. “General Sam Houston and Secession,” Scrib-
ner’s Magazine, Vol. 39, 1906.

Day, Donald, and Ullom, Harry Herbert (Eds.). The Autobiogra-
phy of Sam Houston. University of Oklahoma Press, 1954.

De Shields, James T. They Sat in High Place. San Antonio, 1940.

Dyer, Oliver. Great Senators of the United States 40 Years Ago.
New York, 1889.

Evans, Gen. Clement A. Confederate Military History, Vol. XI.
Atlanta, Georgia, 1899.

Farber, James. Texas, C. S. A. New York, 1947.

Friend, Llerena. Sam Houston, The Great Designer. University of
Texas Press, 1954.

Hogan, William Ransom. The Texas Republic, a Social and Eco-
nomic History. University of Oklahoma Press, 1946.

James, Marquis. The Raven, a Biography of Sam Houston. New
York, 1929.

Lester, C. Edwards. Life and Achievements of Sam Houston. New
York, 1883.

McClure, Col. Alexander K. Recollections of Half a Century
Salem, Massachusetts, 1902.

[ 276 ]

BIBLIOGRAPHY

McGrath, Sister Paul of the Cross. Political Nativism in Texas,
1825-1860. Catholic University of America, 1930.

Seymour, Flora Warren. Sam Houston, Patriot. New York, 1930.

Smith, Justin. The Annexation of Texas. New York, 1911.

Sprague, Maj. J. T. The Treachery in Texas (The Secession of
Texas and the Arrest of the United States Officers and
Soldiers Serving in Texas). New York, 1862.

Weinberg, Albert K. Manifest Destiny. A Study of Nationalist Ex-
pansionism in American History. Johns Hopkins Press, 1935.

Winkler, William (Ed.). Journal of the Secession Convention of
Texas, 1861. Austin, 1912.

Wortham, Louis J. A History of Texas. Fort Worth, 1924.

ADDITIONAL REFERENCES FOR CHAPTER VI
EDKCUND G. ROSS AND THOSE WHO STOOD WITH HIM

Bowers, Claude Cemade. The Tragic Era; The Revolution After
Lincoln. Cambridge, 1920.

Bumgardner, Edward. The Life of Edmund G. Ross. Missouri,
1949 -

De Witt, David Miller. The Impeachment and Trial of Andrew
Johnson, Seventeenth PresiderU of the United States. New
York and London, 1903.

Dunning, Charlotte. Essays on the Civil War and Reconstruc-
tion. New York, 1931.

Fessenden, Francis. Life and Public Services of WiUiam Pitt
Fessenden, Vols. 1 & 2. Cambridge, 1907.

Holzman, Robert. Stormy Ben Butler. New York, 1954.

Lewis, H. H. Walker. “The Impeachment of Andrew Johnson,”
American Bar Association Journal. January, 1954.

Oberholtzer, Ellis P. A History of the United States Since the
Civil War, VoL 2, 1868-1872. New York, 1922.

[277 ]

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ross, Edmund G. *11181017 of the Impeachment of Andrew
Johnson,” Forum. July, 1895.

Ross, Edmund C. History of the Impeachment of Andrew
Johnson. Santa Fe, 1896.

Welles, Gideon, Diary of, Vol. 3, January 1, 1867-June 6, 1869.
Boston and New York, 1911.

White, Horace. The Life of Lyman Trumbutt. Boston, 1913.

ADDITIONAL REFERENCES FOR CHAPTER VH
LUCIUS LAMAR

Adams, Henry. The Education of Henry Adams — ^Autobiog-
raphy. Cambridge, 1918

Agar, Herbert. The Price of Union. Boston, 1950.

Blaine, James G. Twenty Tears of Congress, Vols. 1 & 2. Nor-
wich, Coimecticut, 1884 and 1886.

Bowers, Claude Gemade. The Outlook, Vol. 125. New York,
May-August, 1920 (July 2).

Bowers, Claude Gemade. The Tragic Era; The Revolution
After Lincoln. Cambridge, 1920.

Cate, Wirt Annistead. Lamar and the Frontier Hypothesis.
Reprinted from The Journal of Southern History, Vol. 1,
No. 4. Baton Rouge, Louisiana, November, 1935.

Cate, Wirt Annistead. Lucius Q. C. Lamar, Secession and Re-
union. Chapel Hill, 1935.

Congressional Record. February 15, 1878.

Hamilton, J. G. de Roulhac. ‘‘Lamar of Mississippi,” The Vir-
gjMa Quarterly Review, Vol. 8, No. 1. University of Virginia,
January, 1932.

Hill, Walter B. Q. C. Lamar,” The Green Bag, Vol. V,
No. 4. Boston, April, 1893.

Hoar, George Frisbie. Autobiography of 70 Years, Vols. 1 & a.
New York, 1903.

[ 278 ]

BIBLIOGRAPHY

House Report 265, 43rd Congress, and Session. Vickshurg
Troubles. Washington, D.C., February 27, 1875.

Johnston, Frank. "Suffirage and Reconstruction in Mississippi,”
FubUcaHons of the Mississippi Historical Society, Vol. VI.
Oxford, Mississippi, 1902.

Mayes, Edward. Lucius Q. C. Lamar. Nashville, Tennessee,
1896.

U. S. Supreme Court. In Memoriam, Lucius Q. C. Lamar. Wash-
ington, D.C., 1893.

Woods, Hiomas H. “A Sketch of the Mississippi Secession
Convention of 1861 — ^Its Membership and Work,” Publica-
tions of the Mississippi Historical Society, Vol. VI. Oxford,
Mississippi, 1902.

AODUIONAL REFERENCES FOR CHAPTER Vm
GEORGE W. NORRIS

Baker, Ray Stannard. Woodrow Wilson, Life and Letters, 1915-
1917. New York, 1937.

Bolles, Blair. Tyrant from Illinois: Uncle Joe Cannon’s Experi-
ment with Personal Power. New York, 1951.

Daniel, Josephus. The Wilson Era: Years of Peace — 1910-1917.
Chapel Hill, 1944.

Hechler, Kenneth W. Insurgency: Personalities and Pftlitics of
the Taft Era. New York, 1940.

Lief, Alfred. Democracies Norris: the Biography of a Lonely
Crusade. New York, 1939.

Link, Arthur. Woodrow Wilson and the Progressive Era: 1910-
1917. New York, 1954.

Millis, Walter. Road to War: 1914-1917. New York, 1935*

Mowry, George E. Theodore Roosevelt and the Proffessioe
Movement. Madison, 1947.

Nebraska State Journal, March, 1917; Octooer, 1928.

[ 279 ]

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Neuberger, Richarl L., and Kahn, Stephen B. Integrity: The
Life of George W. Norris. New York, 1937.

New York Herald Tribune. October, 1928.

New York Times. October, 1928.

Norris, George W. Fighting Liberal: Autobiography. New
York, 1945.

Norris, George W. Letters. Library of Congress Collections
and files of C. A. Sorensen.

Omaha World Herald. March, 1917; October, 1928.

Paxson, Frederic L. Prewar Years, 2913-1917. Boston, 1936.

Senate and House Journals for Nebraska, 1917, 35th Session.
Tansill, Charles C. America Goes to War. Boston, 1938.

ADOmONAL REFERENCES FOR CHAPTER IX
ROBERT A. TAFT

Cleveland Plain Dealer. October 7, 8, 10, 1946.

Coliunbus Dispatch. October 8, 1946.

Hamsberger, Caroline T. A Man of Courage. Chicago, 1952.

New York Times. October 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 19, 24, 25, 1946.
Taft, Robert A. A Foreign Policy for Americans. New York,

1951-

Toledo Blade. October 8, 9, 14, 1946.

White, William S. The Taft Story. New York, 1954.

ADDITIONAL REFERENCES FOR CHAPTER X
OTHER MEN OF POLITICAL COURAGE

Bernard, Harry. Eagle Forgotten (The Life of John Peter Alt-
geld). New York, 1938.

Bowers, Claude Gemade. Beveridge and the Proffressioe Era.
Cambridge, 1932.

Brown, Everett Somerville, William Plumer’s Memorandum

[ 280 ]

BIBLIOGRAPHY

of Proceedings in the United States Senate, 1803-1807. Lon-
don, 1923.

C3iitwood, Oliver Perry. John Tyler; Champion of the Old
South. New York, 1939.

Coit, Margaret L. John C. Calhoun. Boston, 1950.

Cralle, Richard K. Reports and Public Letters of John C. Cal-
houn, Vol. 2. New York, 1855.

Fraser, Hugh Russell. Democracy in the Making. Indianapolis
and New York, 1938.

Hapgood and Moskowitz. Up from the City Streets: Alfred E.
Smith. New York, 1927.

Kent, Frank R. Political Behavior. New York, 1928.

Marshall, Humphrey. History of Kentucky, Vol. 2. Frankfort,
Kentucky, 1824.

Morgan, Robert J. A Whig Embattled; the Presidency under
John Tyler. Lincoln, 1954.

Hew York Times. January 26, 1929.

Pusey, Merlo J. Charles Evans Hughes, Vols. 1 & 2. New York,

1951-

Quisenberry, A. C. The Life and Times of Hon. Humphrey
Marshall. Winchester, Kentucky, 1892.

Simms, Henry H. The Rise of the Whigs in Virginia. Richmond,
Virginia, 1929.

Stoddard, William O. John Adams, the Lives of the P.^sidents,
Vol. 2. New York, 1886.

Stryker, Lloyd Paul. Andrew Johnson, A Study in Courage.
New York, 1929.

Underwood, Oscar W. Drifting Sands of Party Politics. New
York, 1928.

Washington Evening Star. January 25, 1929.

[ 281 ]

Index

☆

☆ ☆
☆

Abolitionists, 76, 86-88, 94-97* loS,
110, 123, 1V.4
Adams, Abigail, 54
Adams, Henry, 144, 176, 177, 179
Adams, John, 53, 54, 55, 57 ff, 69.
70, 255-56, 258

Adams, John Quincy, 13, 15, 21, 38,
48, 51, 52-72 passim; 110, 177,
205-6, 232, 235, 245, 248, 258 ff
Adams, Sam, 57
Alien and Sedition Laws, 60
Altgeld, John Peter, 253-54
Amendment, Twentieth. See Twenti-
eth Amendment to the Constitu-
tion

American Bar Association, 243
Ames, Adelbcrt; 181
Anthony, D. R., 157, 160
Armed Ship Bill, 213-24, 230
Arnold, Benedict, 95, 170
Arnold, Matthew, 176
Arthur, Chester Alan, 144
Ashurst, Henry, 29
Atchison, David R., 105, 110, 113,
114

Autrey, James, 80

Ballinger-Pinchot Conservation Dis-
pute, 208, 233

Bank of the United States, 84, 105

Barkley, Alhen, 241

Bell, John, 91

Ben6t, Stephen Vincent, 82

Benton. Thomas Hart, 13, 57, 75. 77,

80, 91, 101-20 passim; 141. 187,

205, 232, 235, 245 ff, 260-61
Beveridge, \lbert, 34, 245
Blaine, James G , 160, 172, 174
Bland, Richard, 185
Bland Silver Bill, 186 ff
Boston Advertiser, 174
Boston Atlas, 96
Boston Courier, 96
Boston Globe, 174
Boston Massacre, 255
Bricker, John, 242
Brooks, Preston, 173
Bryan, William Jennings, 185
Br)ant, William Cullen, 95
Buchanan, James, 57
Biic hcnwald Concentration Camp,

239

Burke, Edmund, 33, 195
Burlingame, Anson, 144
Bums, James McGregor, 16
Burr, Aaron, 48, 170
Butler, Benjamin F., 152, i57» ‘62,

169, iP

[ 283 ]

INDEX

Byrd, Harry, 35
Bystrom, John, 16

Calhoun, John C, 57, 77 ff, 85 ff,
9i» 9a-93. 105, 109, 110-11.

113 ff, lag. 178. i 95 » aos, asi-sa,
259, 281

Calhoun Resolutions of 1847. 109,

125

Cannon, Joseph, 207-10, 213
Canton (Miss ) Mail, 175
Carlyle, Thomas, 11, 84
Cass, Lewis, 91, 106
Cate, Wirt A , 180
Chandler, W E , 203
Charleston Mercury, 93
Chase, Salmon, gi
Chesapeake-Leopard Encounter, 66
Churchill, Wmston, 264
Civil Rights Bill of 1866, 149
Civil War, 75, 87, 141. 172, 179-
180, 212, 247
Clark, Edward, 137
Clarksville Standard, 125
Clay, Henry, ai, 25, 57, 76 ff, 81, 82
8s. 86-87, 91. 98. 100, 114-15.
205

Clay Compromise of 1833, 78
of 1850, 78 ff, 81 ff, 100, 114-17,
121 ff, 260

Cleveland, Grover, 144
Cleveland Plain Dealer, 242
Columbus (Miss ) Democrat, 175
Commager, Henry Steele, 94
Congressional elections of 1946,

235 ff

Constitutional Convention, 46, ^9
Continental Congress, 46
Corwin, Thomas, 100

Daiker, Virginia, 16
Dallas Herald, 124
Dalzell, John, 207-08
Dante Aliehieri, 11
Davids, Jules, 16
Davis, David, 143
Davis, Jefferson, 57, 91, 129, 170,
178, 179. 192-93

Democratic party, 102 ff, 122-24,
129 ff, 179, 182. 183, 185 ff, 197.
208-9, 224 ff, 236 ff, 246-47, 253

Dewey, Thomas E , 240-42
DeWitt David Miller, 154
Dickinson, John, 46
Distnct of Columbia See Washing-
ton, DC

Distnct of Columbia slave trade, 81-
82, 86

Donovan, Jane, 17
Douglas, Stephen A., 91, 98
Douglas, William 0 , 236

Embargo of 1807, 52, 67, 68, 71
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 82, 91, 95,
99

Ex Post Facto Laws, 236 ff
Federahst party, 15, 47, 50, 53 ff,
250

Federalist Repertory, 66
Fessenden, Wilham P , 165-66, 170,
267

Fihbustenng, 216-18
Fillmore, Millard, 100
Fire-eaters See Southern fire-eaters
Fishbourne, Benjimin, 47
Foote, Henry, 116-17, 188
Forum (magazine), 161
Founding fathers, 45
Fowler, Joseph Smith, 169
Fox, Chirlcs James, 77-78
Franklin, Benjimin 57
and autobiography, 177
Free Silver Movement, 142, 185 ff,
202

Free Soilers, 74, 123

Fremont, Jessie Benton, 107, 118

Fremont, John, 115

Fugitive Slave Law, 81, 86, 91

Calloway, George, 16
Gallup Poll, 22
Gardenier, Barent, 69
Garfield, James, 144
Gamer, John Nance, 11
Garrison, Wilham Lloyd, 57-87
Grady, Henry, 183
Grant, Ulysses, 143, 150, 202
Greelev, Horace, 88, 170
Greenneld Gazette, 68
Grimes, James W , 158, 170 ff

Hale, John, 91

[ 284 ]

INDEX

Hamilton, Alexander, 46 ff
Hancock, John, 57
Harpers Weekly, 19a
Harris, Joel, 177
Hartford Courant, 219
Hastings, Warren, 151
Hayes, Rutherford, 144, 183, 184-85,
192

Hayes-Tilden Presidential Contest
of 1876, 183 ff, 197
Haymarket Square Bombing of 1886,

253

Hayne, Robert, 83, 202
Hemingway, Ernest, 21
Henderson, John D., 167, 169
Hill, Benjamin, 190
History (RoUin), 55, 177
Hoar, George Frisbie, 54, 144, 176,
182, 193

Holcombe, Arthur N., 16
Hoover, Herbert, 225-29
Houston, Sam, 13, 75, 77, 80, 91,
121-38 pas'ini, 141. 205, 214, 245,
246-47, 258, 260
Huffman, James, 242
Hughes, Charles Evans, 254-55

Impeachment of Johnson. See under
Johnson, Andrew
Iverson, Alfred, 133
Ives, Irving, 240

Jackson, Andrew, 9, 57, 105, 128 ff,
187, 248-49
' avits, Jacob, 240
ay, Jolm, 57
ay Treaty, 249, 252
efferson, Thomas, 47, 52, 57 , 58-59.

61, 66, 67, 68, 70, 71, 253
Jefferson Inquirer, 113
Johnson, Andrew, 57, 141, 143, 146-
171 passim; 247-48
and impeachment, 141, 145,

146 ff, 202

Johnson, Gerald W., 85, 94
Johnson, Lyndon Baines, 10
Johnson, Walter, 16
Johnson, William Preston, 176

Kansas-Nebraska Bill, 118, 121, 124,
126, 130

Kaplan, Milton, ib
Kelly, “Pig Iron," 174
Kennedy, Jacqueline Bouvier, 17
Kennedy, John Fitzgerald. 9-14

Kent, Frank, 29, 247

Khrushchev, Nikita, 13
Know-Nothing party, 130
Krock, Arthur, 16

Lafayette, Marquis de, 57
La FoUette, Robert, 214, 215, 218,
219, 263

Lamar, Jefferson Jackson, 176
Lamar, Jefferson Mirabeau, 180
Lamar, John, 180
Lamar, Lavorisier LeGrand, 176
Lamar, Lucius Q. C., 13, 141-42,
145, 172-97 passim; 260-61
Lamar, Mirabeau Bonaparte, 176,

194

Lamar, Thomas Randolph, 176
Lamar, Thompson Bird, 180
Landis, James M., 16
Lane, James, 148-49, 161
Lansing, Robert, 214
Lawrence, David, 243
Lee, Robert E., 180
Legislative instructions, 52-53, 71,
110 ff, 173, 188 ff, 248-49
Lehman, Herbert, 240
Liftman, Gloria, 17
Lincoln, Abraham, 11, 57, 77, 133.

134, 146 ff, 150, 168, 263
Lincoln (Nebr. ) Star, 220
Lincoln (Nebr.) State Journal, 224
Lindsay, Vachel, 186, 254
Lippmann, Walter, 23
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 95
Longstreet, Augustus Baldwin, 178
Louisiana Territory, 61, 62
Louisville Courier Journal, 218
Lowell, James Russell, 95
Lucas Scott, 241-42
L^rnian, Theodore, 6a

Macaulay, T. B., 262
McGroarty, John Steven, 30
Maclay, William, 47, 49
Madison, James, 49, 57
Mann, H( '^ce, 95
Marshall, Humphrey, 249-50

[ 285 ]

INDEX

Marshall, John, 57, 83
Martineau, Harriet, 78
Matthews Silver Resolution, 187 ff
Melbourne, William Lamb, 262
Meridian (Miss.) Mercury, 175
Mexican War, 77, 79
Missouri Compromise of 1820, 76,
108, 115, 118, 122-24
Missouri Register, 104
Monroe, James, 57
Morison, Samuel Eliot, 58
Morl^, John, 25
Morse, Wayne, 35
Mott, Christopher H., 180

Nashville Convention, 88, 93
Nation (magazine), 192
Nebraska ^ti-Saloon League, 226
Nevins, Allan, 94, 99
New Orleans Crescent, 118
New Orleans Picayune, 93
Newspaper correspondents, 48
New York Evening Post, 96
New York Herald, 219
New York Journal of Commerce, 93
New York Sun, 219
New York Times, 16, 183, 219
New York Tribune, 96, 156, 162, 170
Norris, Ella, 229

Norris, George W., 13, 16, 201, 205,
207-30 passim; 245, 260-61, 264
Northampton Hampshire Gazette, ^
Nuremburg trials, 236 ff

Omaha Bee, 220

Omaha World Herald, 219, 224, 229
Oregon Territoiy Debate, ^-87, 106
Otis, Harrison, 58

Paine, Thomas, 252
Panic of 1873, 186
Parker, Theixlore, 95
Payne-Aldrich Tariff Act, 246
Penrose, Boies, 203
Phelps, William Lyon, 203
Philadelphia Inquirer, 162
Philadelphia Press, 153, 155, 162,
168

Pickering, Timothy, 52, 60, 62, 6$,
70

Pinchot. See Ballinger-Pinchot Con-
servation Dispute
Polk, James K., 106
Pomeroy, Samuel Clarke, 134, 160
Presidential campaign of 1928, 244 ff
Prohibition, 225 ff
Providence Journal, 219
Puritans, 50, 53-54, 58, 60, 64

Quincy, Edmund, 96

Radical Republicans, 146 ff, 170
Randolph, John, 49, 77, 263
Reciprocity Treaty of 1854, 144
Reconstruction period, 146 ff, 181-97
Religious issue (A 1 Smith), 225-26,
229, 230

Republican (Jeffersonian) party, 59,
60, 61, 66, 67, 68, 72
Republican party, 146, 182, 185, 201,
208 ff, 220, 221-22, 223-29, 231-
*37. *39-44, *45-46
Richmond Enquirer, 123
RoUin. See History
Roosevelt, Franklin D., 230
Roosevelt, Theodore, 202
Ross, Edmund, 144-45, 146-71 pas-
sim; 173, 205, 235. *45. *58
Ross, Edward G., 43
Runnels, Hardin R., 133

Salem Gazette, 68
San Domingo Treaty, 202
Schlesinger, Arthur M., Jr., 16
Schuiz, Carl, 174
Scott, Winfield, 100
Scribne/s (magazine), 161
Sedition. See Alien and Sedition
Laws

Senate Journal, 63* *48, 249
Senatorial courtesy, 47
Senatorial pay, 48, 251
Seventeenth Amendment to the Con-
stitution, 203

Seventh of March speech. See under
Webster, Daniel
Seward, William, 91, 95

[ 286 ]

INDEX

Silver. See Free Silver Movement
Smith, Alfred, ai 3 , 2*5-30, *55
and religious issue, 225-26, 229,
230

Smith, Mark, 29
Smith, T. V., 37
Smith, Walter, 207
Socialist party, 254
Sorensen, C. A., 16
Sorensen, Theodore C., 117
Southern fire-eaters, 76, 179
Sprague, William, 154
Srb, Hugo, 16

Stanton, Edwin M., 150 ff, 162
Stephens, Alexander, 179
Stevens, Thaddeus, 151, 152, i 57 »
263

Summers, Billv, 195
Sumner, Charles, 95, 154 . 173. 174,
183, 196

Taft, Alphonso, 233
Taft, Robert A, 35 . 201, 205,
231-44 passim; 260-61
Taft, William Howard, 233
Taft-Hartley Labor Management Re-
lations Act, 232
Tammany Hall, 227 ff
Tansill, William R., 16
Taylor, Zachary, 81
Tenure-of-Office Act, 150, 152, 163
Texas, annexation of, 104-5
Texas Gazette, 130
Thomas, Evan, 17
Throckmorton, James W., 135
Tilden, Samuel, 183, 184

See also Hayes-Tilden Presidential
Contest of 1876
Toledo Blade, 242
Toombs, Robert, 142, 179
Trade Embargo. See Embargo of
1807

Treaty of Versailles, 204
Trenuune, Lyman, 174
Truman, Hany S, 234, 241
Trumbull. Lyman, 168
Tweedsmuir, Lord John Buchan, 12

Twentieth Amendment to the Con-
stitution, 216

Tyler, John, 35, 57, 105, 248-49, 261

Underwood, Oscar, W., 246-47

Van Buren, Martin, 104
Van Papen, Franz, 242-43
Van Winkle, Peter, 167, 169
Versailles Treaty, 204

Wade, Benjamin, 151
Walker, Isaac, go
Walthill (Nebr.) Times, 228
War of 1812, 58, 83
Washington, George, 47, 48, 57, 97,
250, 252-53

Washington Capitol, 190
Waslun^on, D.C., 45, 48, 52
See also District of Columbia slave
trade

Watterson, Henry, 176
Webster, Daniel, 21-22, 24, 40, 57,
72, 75 ff, 83-100 passim; 141-
142, 173, 195, 202, 205-6, 235.
247, 258, 60-61

and Seventh of March speech,
89 ff

Wharton Cla-ence Ray, 135
Wheeling (W. Va.) Intelligencer,
168

Whig party, 85, 96, 97, 99-100, 104,
106, 117, 119
White, William Allen, 143
White, William S., 234
Whittier, John Greenleaf, gf' 97
Wilmot Proviso, 86
Wilson, Woodrow, 204, 213, 217,
218, 220

Winthrop, Robert, 93
World War I, 230
World War II, 215. 236
Wright, Robert, 48

Yazoo City HerM, 196

Zimmerman note incident, 214

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