8-11, Strom Thurmond speaking at a Watermelon festival: “I have advocated the repeal of the poll tax in my state. A Question, since I keep seeing this phrase: Had the state actually managed to enact the repeal by 1948? I know other Southern States, and a few districts in the North, are liking to keep the “people of bad moral character” from the polls. But I cannot agree that the Federal Government has the right to force any state to abolish this tax if the people of the state want it. Lynching is murder. And murder is a violation of state laws. We do not intend to let the Federal Government come in and take over our state courts.”

And the side-winder, a thinly veiled threat akin to “Nice home: it’d be a shame if anything happened to it.”, but one picked up on the “Southern Liberals” as a reason to be cautious: “If the segregation program of the President is enforced, the results in civil strife may be horrible beyond imagination. Lawlessness will be rampant. Chaos will prevail. And there will be the greatest breakdown of law enforcement in the history of our nation. Let us tell them that in the South, the intermingling of the races in our homes, in our schools, and in our theaters is impractical and impossible.” just as it is impractical to let the homos into the military, I hear. Ah, never mind.

8-11: Governor Thurmond tonight linked Harry S Truman, Thomas E. Dewey, and Henry Wallace together and charged that they would lead America to “the rocks of totalitarianism.” He charged that the Federal anti-poll tax bill would allow Congress to invade the power of the states, and that the Federal anti-lynching bill was a Federal seizure of police powers”. And, the proposal for a Federal Employment Protection Act, Thurmond said, was patterned after a Russian law written by Joseph Stalin in 1920 and “was made to order for Communist use in their designs upon national security.”

8-21: “President Truman and other Government officials are making a desparate effort to hide the extent to which Communists and Communist sympathizers have honeycombed the Administration and have dictated his policies.” To be fair, Dewey was making the same basic accusations, on the behest of the Committee of UnAmericans Activities, and the partnership of Robert Kennedy and Joseph McCarthy. But, as to what policies in particular are being dictated by the Communists… well: “The so-called civil rights program which this Administration wishes to foist upon the country has its origins in Communism.”

9-25: “Tonight the candidates of the Republicans, the radical Democrats, and the Wallace Reds claim to have discovered the road to great new freedoms and human rights. But the detour they ask us to take is the road to totalitarianism. These candidates pose as bearers of the torch of liberty. But the flame they carry is a firebrand from the steppes of Russia.

The so-called civil rights program is a cheap political trick designed to buy the votes of small but powerful racial minorities in big city states. [The opposition to the civil rights program] quickly developed in the Southern States, the cradle of American civilization. The radicals, the subversives, and the reds are now in complete control of the national Democratic Party.”

10-13: “A move to gain control of election within the states is disguised by a so-called anti-poll tax bill. A precedent for gaining Federal power of state law and state courts is hidden beneath the pretense of the anti-lynching bill. A move to build Federal power over the relationship between one man and another on the social level is disguised under the anti-segregation proposals. A precedent for the eventual control of business by Washington is concealed in the presences of the Federal Employment Protection Committee. A angerous precedent is hidden beneath the promise that a national police system will be established to enforce these proposals, yielding to the demands of the parlor pinks and the subversives.”

10-25: Governor Thurmond charged tonight that an FEPC law “would be carried out by a national police force already being trained” by President Truman. “This means,” he declared, “You would be hounded by Federal Police whom you never saw before and who neither know nor care what your problems are.”

10-26: “States rights are the only guarantee we have that a kind of Kremlin will not be established in Washington.”

A connector between the Southern Revolt of 1928 and the Southern Revolt of 1948, and than another connector between the Southern Revolt of 1948 and the Southern Revolt of 1964, all the “Vilest Insult Southern Democrats have ever been given.” During the end of the 1948 election campaign, Truman’s Vice Presidential candidate Senator Barkley campaigned down in the South and gave a spiel worthy of What’s the Matter with Kansas. The message was: Look what happened the last time you ditched the Democratic Party. Meanwhile, in Texas, Truman and his minions threw the national Democratic machine behind a campaign to win a Senate race for a “New Deal” Democrat over a former Governor — Coke Stevens, both of whom — incidentally, vehementally opposed his civil-rights program (though I should probably say Humphrey’s civil-rights program, because he fought a tougher plank into the Democratic platform than what Truman wanted), but here is an example of the strange sway of political expediency and found consciences. Winning by a stunning 87 votes (which, come to think of it, is a little suspicious) was… Lyndon Baines Johnson. Huh.

2-12, and this is a pattern from the Secession in 1860, and go read my last post on the 1928 election for the “de ja vu”: A resolution calling upon “all true white Jeffersonian Democrats” in the country to assemble here at a date yet to be determined to “formulate plans” opposing President Truman’s civil rights program was adopted unanimosly today in a voice vote by 4,000 wildly cheering and stomping Missippians. For three hours the City Auditorium resounded to oratory in which the audience clapped and cheered the linking of the names of Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Lee, Bilbo, and Rankin, and three times lustily booed the name of Mr. Truman. […]

Thurmond made an unexpected bid for national support on the grounds that Mr. Truman’s proposals would not only “wreck” the South but also the nation, and would next lead to Federal legislation “compelling complete intermingling of the races.” Thurmond likes to intermingle with the races, I hear.

2-18: A group of Southern Democrats tonight cancelled plans to attend the annual party dinners tomorrow night because of a “no segregation” plocy. Mrs. Olin D Johnston, wife of the junio South Carolina Senator, told a reporter she would not show up for the Jefferson – Jackson Day dinner “because she might be seated next to a negro.” Mrs. Johnston, vice chairman of the dinner committee, said she had asked National Chairman J. Howard McGrath to arrange it so her party of about 45 would not be seated next to Negros, and Mr. McGrath “would not give an inch.” Now the party was dwindling fast. Earlier it was revealed that Governor and Mrs. Strom Thurmond also had cancelled their reservations to attend the party’s fund-raising festivities. President Truman will give an address. Governor Thurmond is chirman of a group of five Southern Governors who will meet with national Democratic leaders here Monday to discuss the regional revolt against President Truman’s Civil Rights program.

2-23: Senator J Howard McGrath, Democratic National Chairman, politely but firmly rebuffed today Southern Governors who sought to get the party high command to backtrack on Truman’s Civil Rights program. He would not yield on a single point as they fired question after question at him in a conference of an hour and three quarters. The Governors departed grim-lipped and went across the street to their hotel to meet among themselves for two hours. Then they issued a statement:

“A vast majority of the Democrats of the South are determined to restore the Democratic Party to the principles of Jefferson and Jackson and, I might add, Lee and will resort to whatever means are necessary to accomplish this end. The Democrats of the South are united in their opposition to the so-called civil rights program proposed by the President and effective action in the Southern States will be taken to prevent adoption of this program. We feel we are expressing the firm conviction of our people when we say that the present leadership of the Democratic Party has deserted the principles of government upon which the party was founded. As never before, the time has come for strong and effective action by the Southern states not only to save the Democratic Party but to preserve the rights of the states to govern themselves and preserve American democracy.

5-10-1948: In an action believed to be unprecedented in Southern history, Governor Fielding L Wright “advised” the Negroes of this state today [… that …]

“If any of you have become so deluded as to want to enter our white schools, patronize our hotels and cafes, enjoy social equality with the whites, then kindness and true sympathy requires me to advise you to make your home in some state other than Mississippi.” He urged the Negroes to “protect the integrity of your race,” and scored the treatment of the Negroes in the north as lacking in neighborliness, friendliness, kindness and consideration.

Veteran observers were unable to recall any other instance in which a chief executive had addressed a state’s negro population as a distinctly separate group of citizens and warned them as to the extent of their rights and privileges.

There was virtually no comment by Negro leaders on Governor Wright’s address during the day and several said they wanted to study its impact on their people.

The Governor’s message was delivered on the eve of the meeting in the capital city of “all true White Jeffersonian Democrats” who are opposed to President Truman’s civil rights program.

I’m guessing the reaction among the “Negros” draws back to the February article:

Yesterday, a statewide meeting of 100 Negro leaders held in a Methodist Church building here endorsed with cheeres a resolution commending President Truman for his 10-point civil rights program.

Wright would go on to be the vice-presidential nominee on Strom Thurmond’s ticket… But, you know, Strom Thurmond wasn’t a racist, and, you know, his campaign had nothing to do with White Supremacy: See:

7-10: Governor Thurmond declared that by his “so-called civil rights program” President Truman had so offended most Southerners that he actually had slowed up social progress in the South, and alienated most of the supporters on whom he could traditionally count. The Southern States have been working to improve the educational and economic opportunities of Negroes, he said, but they believe firmly in segregation of the races and will not tolerate “unconstitutional” Federal attempts to break it down.

“The liberal minded people of America, those who believe in the progressive social and economic development of our country do not want a Republican administration.” (wait until 1964, when you break free of the democrats for having the termerity of offering up… yes… a civil rights program.) “We must defeat a Republican party which numbers … blah blah blah.”

7-19-1948: Governor J. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, who was chosen on Saturday as the Presidential candidate of the rebellious Southern Democrats, cracked down on his “white supremacy” followers today in a surprise action. He told reporters in a telephone conversation from the exceutive mansion in Columbia, SC that he was a “progressive Southerner” interested in bettering conditions for the Negro and that he would campaign on the “States’ Right” ticket soley in support of his beliefs in the “sovereignty of the states as against Federal Government Interference.”

Admittedly perturbed by the attitude of some of his followers on the subject of “white supremacy”, a theme which studded many of the speeches made at the nominating convention three days ago, Governor Thurmond pointed to his record in bringing about the arrest of 23 white men accused of lynching a Negro in Greenville in January of 1947. He also emphasized that in his inaugural address two years ago he had called for repeal of the poll tax and he insisted that “at all times I have advocated better facilities for the negroes.” […]

Thurmond has always identified himself as a “progressive” although he has seemed to shy away from the “liberal” label. Please note that if you cross out “Thurmond” and replace it with, say, “Feingold” the sentence would read fluently. His public statements during the recent controversy over the civil rights proposal of Truman, however, lost him a large part of the liberal following that acclaimed him for his forthright conduct in the Greenville lynching case. […]
We then get a batch of paragraphs that posit Thurmond “as a centrist” of the politics of the South on the “race question”, and I’m almost shielding you from how laughably tepid the “Liberal”-wing on this front is, almost… fretful. … Witness:

2-12: Holding Carter, widely known liberal editorial in Mississippi, in front-page editorial this week said, “The greatest danger from President Truman’s program is that an angry, frustrated, and fearful South may forget that the South’s 10 million negroes had nothing to do with it. Our targets should be the political cynics above the Mason-Dixon line an the unyielding reactionaries below it who jointly brought us to this tragic pass.”

But back-track, and we now go into the panoply of the speakers at the “States Right” Convention, and excuse me if I experience a whip-lash against Thurmond’s urging that “It ain’t about White Supremacy.” — left, center, and… right march!

Senator James O. Eastland of Mississippi is generally recongized as the “father” of a proposed Constitutional Amendment in Mississippi which calls for prospective voters to be of good moral character, widely regarded as a barrier aimed at Negro voters in Mississippi.

Frank M Dixon, former Governor of Alabama, spoke at the convention and repeatedly emphasized the “threat to the South” of the Civil Rights proposals, declaring that they would force the intermingling of the races and “make Southerners into a mongrel, inferior race.” Dear Dixon: I know you don’t know this, but you should probably know that Thurmond is banging a black woman … maybe not right as you speak, but at this rough time. That’s as “intermingling” of the races as you can get. Then again, I guess Thurmond is for “choice” and not for “forcing” you to have sex with blacks. Hm. Gawd, what I wouldn’t give for a time machine to go back to 1948 for a printing press to publish a tabloid with the headline “Thurmond Is Having Sex With A Negro!!!”

William H (Alfalfa Bill) Murray, 87 year old governor of Oklahoma, called to the speaker’s platform during the convention session, told the audience that “this country became great through Christian principles and the white man’s brain.”

Okay. That’s enough for now. Wait a while, and I’ll eventually post the story of Thurmond’s full frontal attack on Truman, Dewey, and Wallace — and their Master – Communist Plot. Come on! You knew he’d get arround to calling everyone Communists! I’ll start the next post with Thurmond speaking at… um… a Watermelon Festival. (!!!)

Pay attention, because there are some dejavu moments for Strom Thurmond’s 1948 campaign and the revolt over Truman’s Civil Rights plank, Strom Thurmond’s 1964 bolt to the Republican Party and the ensuring revolt over Lyndon Johnson’s Civil Rights program, The George Wallace campaign of 1968, and the use of various wedge issues in the 1988 and 2004 campaigns — (the threat of your bible being taken away and the call to arms against gay marriage), and for that matter Zell Miller’s early 21st Century disgruntlement over Snuffy Smith cartoons as an affront to the Southland. Plus, the actual Bob Jones (yes… BOB JONES!!!) makes an appearance.

7-17-1928: Opponents to the candidacy of Governor Smith crystallized here today at a conference of anti-Smith Democrats of Texas who pledged a state-wide campaign for the election of Secretary Hoover. About 500 persons attended the rally and among the speakers were half a dozen party leaders, ministers, and prohibition workers. Resolutions were adopted denouncing Governor Smith for his advocacy of a modification of the prohibition law; declaring resentment “of the efforts of Tammany Hall to nullify the 18th Amendment and to scrap the Volstead Act”; condemning the appointment of J.T. Roskab as chairman of the National Democratic Executive Committee, and denoucning “Tammany Democrats for the treatment with contempt the notice given by evangelical bodies of the South that they would not accept a wet nominee.” […]

Governor Smith’s message to the Houston convention in which he reaffirmed his stand for modification of the prohibition statues was characterized as “treason” by several speakers. His nomination was termed “The vilest insult ever hurled at Southern Democrats.”

V.A. Collins: “Any man who strike down the 18th Amendment also would strike down section 3 article 6 of the constitution pertaining to religious freedom. I don’t know if there is still a Ku Klux Klan organization in Texas. But if they are opposed to Al Smith I wish there were 10,000,000 of them in the state.”
…………………………

7-11: A few days ago a well known Washington correspondent wrote “political observers are surprised to see all the anti-Smith bitterness disappearing and the entire South getting ready to give a solid vote for the nominee.” Political observers not only in Washington but in the South are entitled to be “surprised” as the foregoing statement appeared in the Birmingham News and Age Herald in the column next to the “lynching” of Governor Smith in effigy at Wahouma, Alabama by the Nathan Bedford Forrest Klan of that Klux-ridden community. It was not an ordinary mob “lynching an effigy”. All the joys of Ku Kluxery were indulged. A straw effigy was introduced as “Al Smith, Democratic nominee for President”. Asked what should be done the crowd yelled, “Lynch him!” A vengeful Democratic Klansman plunged a knife into the effigy’s throat, while another poured on mercurochrome to heighten the effect of the “assassination.” A shot or two was fired into the effigy and it was then, amid the frenzy of the klan and its sympathizers, dragged around to hall to allow those present to vent their anger with kicks. The Robert E Lee Klavern in Alabama also assailed Governor Smith and did everything except “lynch” the Democratic candidate.

It should be said that the persons responsible in most cases for keeping alive and formenting hatred against Governor Smith in Georgia and Alabama are the preachers, those women who are members of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, and a handful of anti-Catholic newspapers.
…………………………………..

10-7, Alabama dispatch: The primary objection to Smith is his Catholicism. His wet views com second, his Tammany affiliation third. But it is hard to tell where one leaves off and the other begins. The simple truth is that there would be only a negligible amount of bolting among Democrats if Smith were not Catholic, regardless of his Tammany affiliations and his opposition to prohibition and regardless of his supposed views on immigration and his fondness for “those dirty Italians” as some speakers characterize them.

Klan politicians and preachers in Methodist and Baptist pulpits are the chief purveyors of evil reports about Smith. Some of these are Democrats, some are Republicans. All of them, however, enjoy the blessing of the Republican Campaign Committee of Alabama; indeed the Republican National Committee Chairman, Oliver D Street, last year a bitter foe of the Klan, now is attacking Smith because of his religion and printing his attack in a Klan organ, The American Standard of Birmingham. […]

Dr. Bob Jones, best known Methodist evangelist in the South and proprietor of Bob Jones College, is making 100 speeches for Hoover in Alabama. Jones tells his audiences that Catholics regard the children of non-Catholic parents as illegitimate. Though a vehement prohibitionist, Jones has repeatedly said, “I’d rather see a saloon on every corner than a Catholic in the White House.” He also is fond of saying that he’d “rather see a nigger” president than Smith. We are told that in Italy the watchword of the priests is, “If you can’t convert ’em, kill ’em.” Jones assures us this is true.

Other speakers, including Senator Heflin, say that every American President who has been assassinated was killed by a Catholic and that a Catholic shot Roosevelt. The “Anti-Smith Democratic Campaign Committee”, Judge Hugh A Locke Chairman, in his campaign book denoucnes Smith as a “negro lover”, and a “negro boot-licker”. He asserts that Smith favors and practices social equality (oh, the horror of it all!) and favors miscegenation. “Al Smith owes his entire political career to support by the lowest element of society. His plan of campaign is and has always been to divide the decent element of society between himself and his opponent, and then get the office by solidifying the negro, the alien, and the criminal element behind him.”
………………………………………………….

11-12, FDR surveys the wreckage: While Mr. Roosevelt has remained silent on this phrase of the situation, it is said that he believes the survey will show that many Democrats in the South who left the party to vote for Herbert Hoover can be brought back within the regular ranks if they are handled tactfully. He is said to feel that if intensive work is carried on, not for three months but for at least three years, not only can the losses of November 6 be met but important gains can be effected. Or maybe a Great Depression can submerge the difficulty, with the Democratic troubles in the South simmering back to the surface by the end of the 1930s and remaining there… indefinitely, bubbling over in 1948 before bursting in full in 1968.)
…………………

11-15: In his letter, Mr. Hoover says he is not at all unmindful of the conditions which for years brought about the political solidarity of the South, an apparent reference to the race question and resentment to the Republican Party’s reconstruction policy following the Civil War; but he expresses the belief “that the time has come when in all sections men and women should vote from their convictions as to conditions at the present time and not based on things of former generations.”
……………………..

11-25: The press of Tennessee and Arkansas has been much concerned since the election with the future political status of the negro, due to the break in the solid south. The word has passed that negro leaders in the North are prepared to fight in Congress for relief from the “Jim Crow” laws of the South and that they are going to call upon the Republicans, whose cause they aided in the recent election, to help them win their point. And the odd bed-fellows theory of politics wins true: the “negro” vote aided with the KKK vote. Take a wild guess on which constituency is going to win out in this battle! Previous efforts to break the “Jim Crow” law have been defeated by the votes of the Congressmen from the Solid South and Tammany Hall, but in the light of the events of the past few weeks the old cohesion is gone and the situation has reached panicky stage in some quarters. Wait. If Tammany man Al Smith is part of the political machine that historically stops Jim Crow laws, how can he then also be smeared by Bob Jones and company as a “negro lover”? For instance, editorial expression from Chattanooga is that Senator Glass and Senator Swanson of Virginia and Senator Sheppard of Texas, whose states refused to listen to them in the fight for the election of Governor Smith, will be keen to combat the rumored plans of the Republicans when the onslaught of the south begins in Congress. These men were in a sense repudiated by the voters of their states and it is quite possible that they will be more or less quiescent. Again, the confused political alliance is confusing this New York Times writer on what pressure is being brought to bear on these Senators, as well as confusing the following esteeemed individual.

It is understood that John R Hawkins, the negro who seconded the nomination of Hoover, is to lead the fight and that the first assault will be on the “Jim Crow” law of Virignia, because it joins DC where no such law exists. Virginia will be only the first step, it is understood, and other states of the South may expect to be asked to defend their right to enforce an act that deals with racial discrimination.

Newspapers of the region that supported the Democratic cause valiantly wax sarcastic in their comment on the situation, and although they express chagrin that things are as they are, they insist that Democratic bolters are merely being “given a taste of the menu which has been prepared for them by the negro leaders of the North.” The intimation is that they deserve all they recieve.
………………………

12-4: At a meeting of the Presbyterian Ministers Association of New York, Reverend Harry Bowlby: “The revolt of the Solid South was a rebuke to Governor Smith, who had the effrontery to kick aside the Democratic platform and to pose before the country as being himself the Democratic Party. Now that Governor Smith has discovered his avowed attitudes as the cahmpion of the open saloon has nearly wrecked the Democratic Party, I believe that he has the good sense to step aside.”
……………..

11-16, CH Patterson: What do the American people care about really statesmanlike questions, such as cooperation with foreign nations, peace and international trade? They are willing to vote on strict party lines, unless their prejudices are involved. Apparently, they neither know nor care about what such questions mean. The small futilities, however, engage them desparately.

One prominent paper in New England speaks of the “immense benefit” to the South of the election of Herbert Hoover! Any northerner who has lived in teh South knows that it is a disaster. I acknowledge, as a Republican, that Hoover’s election is a good thing for the country as a whole, but for the South especially it is a misfortune. Not that the South loved Hoover more but that it loves Catholics and liquor less! The choice of Hoover confirms all their prejudices. This victory will set back the progress of religious liberty and education in the South.
……………….

11-27: Hiram Wesley Evans, Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, has little use for the World Court, Governor Alfred Smith, Senator Reed of Missouri, or violations of the 18th Amendment. He made this plain in an address here [in Atlanta] tonight when he outlined Klan policies for the coming two years. The organization would continue along the line of its present endevor, he said. You mean it’s not going to stray from its platform of terrorizing blacks and Catholics? What departure, exactly, am I supposed to expect from the KKK?

“The Klan restored control in Reconstruction Days, and we will do the same now,” he said referring to violation of Prohibition. And the Minutemen will restore order at the Border.) Governor Smith came in for a hearty share of the Wizard’s vocal artillery. The Governor has proved himself a “bad citizen” by advocating the repeal of the Mullen-Gage law in New York, he charged. He referred to Governor Smith as “the great nullifer of today” and declared that “what was good for Calhourn, the first Great Nullifier, will be ample for Al Smith in 1928.” I don’t have time to google it — either refreshing my memory or teaching it to me for the first time, so will some historian please tell me what happened to Calhourn? “The Catholic Church is all right for Al Smtih but it does not fit an Imperial Wizard.” I think I’ll frame that quote. “Georgia will have her revenge in 1928 for the insult furnished at the national convention by the playing of ‘Marching Through Georgia,'” Um…? I wish we lived in an age where we could Dual! He asserted that a coffin would lead a procession with a funeral dirge, and that the inscription of the conffin would tell the uninformed “Here lies the political remains of Al Smith.”

The article then goes on to quote this KKK Wizard in praise of Woodrow Wilson, his prohibition policy and his war policies… which confuses me because it is in mark contrast to his having “no use for the World Court”, a Wilsonian creature that. Then again, I imagine Wilson’s approval of “Birth of a Nation” trumps all.

On the issues, he [Norman Thomas] added, the Socialists may agree with Mr. Wallace, “but we are obliged to reject any bid for leadership in democracy by the apolotist for the slave state of Russia, and the preacher of peace by blind appeasement.” (5-10-1948)

BOOL-YAH! “And those who supported Henry Wallace chose him because they and he were fellow travelers of communism and the Soviet Union. (Please don’t roll your eyes. Wallace’s Progressive Party was a pure creation of the Communist Party.)” indeed! Or so says… the Socialist Party. Who are not uncoincidentally, competing for many of the same voters as the Progressive Party. Never mind. As the Socialists of 1948 point out, one of the first acts of any nation that falls under the Communism of the Soviet Union is the destruction of the nation’s Socialist Party, or the “submerging” of the Socialist Party into Communism, the slave-state.

Now then, here’s what the New York Times saw when they looked into “Why They Join the Wallace Crusade”, 5-23-1948… where we find the Wallace meetings described as at one part a Religious Revival meeting, at one part PBS pledge / auction, and something shorned by all respectable members of the community they intrude into.

Two notes predominate in these warm-up preliminaries. There is the note of earnest, almost fearful desperation sounded by the political amateurs who have been attracted to the Wallace crusade. There is a heavy preponderance of these in evidence at all the meetings: GIs, Negro business and professional people — who, suddenly obsessed with the crisis in world affairs have turned their anxiety to collective action. There is the note of angry defiance by the more seasoned and politically sophisticated Union ment and office seekers: they condemn the existing order and seek tangible means of building a new one. The combined effect whips the audience, already receptive to such stimuli into spontaneous outbursts and “amens”. […]

A Wallace rally, at least as I have observed, brings out a heavy preponderance in the college and GI brackets. There are scores of boys with bristly crew haircuts wearing sports jackets and open collar shirts, and girls in oxford, bobby sox, and dirndls. Some of them seem to be the precocious upper crust of the jitterbug set. Others, a little older and more soberly dressed, have been through the war and now have their first job or their first baby. This is their first, tentative immersion in politics, and it’s a zestful business. The new party speaks to them through simple, action-packed symbols. It paints right and wrong in bold primary colors that leave no doubt about who are one’s friends and who are one’s enemies.

[Well, the comic book — all in four color for a dime — has been in existance for about a decade, and um… wait. This isn’t Batman, and it isn’t the Republican 2004 Convention, so what is he talking about?]

“The old parties just haven’t got the know-how to run the country in an atomic age,” one of Wallace’s followers, who probably did not antedate the New Deal by more than a few years, told me after Kansas City meeting.

“And we won’t ever be able to get a house,” his wife added.

Ba-de-dum! War with Russia and atomic destruction, followed by economic insecurities.

[…] Serious politics apparently is still a pretty esoteric business on many campuses and is confined largely to the graduate students and particularly to the older men who are in school under GI educational grants. I was told at Columbia that most of the Wallacites were “foreigners” from the North and East. The native-stock majority regards such striving rather disdainfully and takes its political cues, if any, from the predilections of its parents.

There is a joke in Jon Stewart’s America: The Book, in the graveyard of dead political parties, with the grave posting for Henry Wallace’s Progressive Party: “We swear we’re not all Jews!” Is that the “foreigner” element they’re talking about? I don’t know. I note that Einstein had a blurb for Wallace’s sort-of-campaign book of 1948, and invite you to make of that what you may. As for the campus apathy: (1) Wait a couple decades. (2) The voting age was 21. The people who concern themselves on a campus with politics are thus likely going to skew older — the GIs and the Graduate students, if you will.

Industrial communities will turn out a large and demonstrative crowd of workers for Wallace meetings, particularly if certain of the CIO unions are locally represented. In Kansas City, Mr. Wallace inserted a long peroration on police brutality in his speech which brough thunderous applause. Just the3 week before, the local police had smashed up the headquarters of the CIO Packinghouse Workers Union which had been direction a strike against Kansas City packing plants. In Peoria when he arrived, the CIO farm equipment workers had just initiated a strike against the huge caterpillar tractor company works. Two thrids of the audience of about 600 who hears Mr. Wallace that night were from the picket lines.

Stop me if you’ve heard this before. The more “militant” of the Unions supported Wallace. The others ran as far away from Wallace as possible, and went for Truman. Come to think of it, they probably endorsed a few Democrats who voted for Taft-Hartley while they were at it… that anti-union bill that Truman vetoed which was then overrided. Damn ye, Taft! Damn ye, Hartley! (This Senator Hartley father of one of the more bizarre comic book cartoonists — fundamentalist Christian Archie Comics as well as a biography of Chuck Colson– but that’s another story.)

[…] One suspects that some of them are Townsendites, coming to see if this latest political messiah will redeem their pension hopes. But a great many more, apparently, are the parents of sons who already have gone through one war or who may be of draft age for the next one. They come in a mood of skepticism — they have known other promises of “peace in our time” that were broken byt are hoping against hope to be convinced. They listen intently, applaud politely, but seem to reserve judgement. Few were observed signing the pledge to work for the new party.

I left out the part looking into the black contigency, who are described as just a little bit past “token”. “Less strident” than the “demagouges” that make up the white Wallacites, and just trying to advance the civil rights program past Truman’s careful careful nudgings. That’s how the article describes them, rather politely. Speaking of polite society:

Finally, in each of the meetings, there was to be seen a scattering of professional people, ministers, college professors, business men and women — “genuine liberals from the right side of the railroad tracks” as some one described them — who were there in some instances, at least, at the pearl of their standings in the community.

Wait. A few normal individuals supported Henry Wallace? Sheez. The Communists really did infiltrate all of the United States society. Sigh. Too bad there weren’t any beatniks to speak of in 1948. For Nader, we can toss in the WTO “anarchists” of Eugene in Seattle as a prototypical dirty shady character who makes up the Naderites. In 1948, these sort of counter-cultural Wallacites seem to be strikingly… clean-shaven.

Okay.

I note this in this list of Memorable State of the Union Addresses:

Grover Cleveland, as he was leaving office after his defeat for reelection in 1888, sounded the most radical note of any president in history. In his final message to Congress he denounced American corporations and exclaimed that they were “fast becoming the people’s masters.” At the end of his second term he denounced the trusts, assailing them as “palpable evils.”

The entire paragraph:

As we view the achievements of aggregated capital, we discover the existence of trusts, combinations, and monopolies, while the citizen is struggling far in the rear or is trampled to death beneath an iron heel. Corporations, which should be the carefully restrained creatures of the law and the servants of the people, are fast becoming the people’s masters.

Ah. Grover Cleveland. He won three consecutive popular vote counts. And two non-consecutive electoral vote counts. And what the heck am I supposed to make of his radical finale? I guess it’s the equivalent of Eisenhower’s farewell address on the Military Industrial Complex. You wait until the end to address something that is slapping the nation that during your actual tenor as most powerful figure in the nation you did not have the wherewithall to address. Case in point: Grover Cleveland actually faced Impeachment.

New York Times, 5-24-1896, “More Populistic Babies: Representative Howard’s Impeachment Scheme Killed by the House”

I stop here to note that the New York Times is doing a bit of editorializing within its “straight” coverage.

The populistic mania took a new form in the House today, when Mr. Howard of Alabama made a bid for blackguardly notoriety of the Tillman sort. He asked for the impeachment of President Cleveland and presented resolutions providing for investigations.

Mr. Dingley (Rep. MO) raised the question of consideration, and by an overwhelming vote, the House refused to consider the matter, only two or three scattering “yeas” being heard, and Mr. Howard apparently not voting for his own proposition.

Okay. It got only slightly furthur than the proposed Impeachment of George Herbert Walker Bush (there was a Houston, Texas Representative who pushed it in sub-committee), but there it is nonetheless… a Populist decrying a “Borbourn Democrat”, on the eve of the national Democratic Party more or less rejecting Cleveland and sucking itself to the winds of the third party Populist movement — which come to think of it broke the deadlock of the two party platforms being virtually identical, as with:

10-28-1896, William Jennings Bryan:

My friends, these are strange times. You will not find in our political history another instance where a presidnet has been thrown overboard by his own party only to be caught up and idolized by the opposition party. Yet that is what you find today. The only people who are commending the financial policy of Grover Cleveland are the men who are trying to elect a Republican President to continue that policy for four years more.”

I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to find something George McGovern said during the closing days of his 1972 presidential campaign. It was about a president who only makes speeches in front of military personal and avoids all confrontation. There don’t appear to be any McGovern campaign speeches online, save his acceptance speech in a few places and his announcement speech in one spot. I should probably check this out against Barry Goldwater, who he is forever linked with as the landslide loser who lost to a president who went down in disgrace, but in Goldwater’s case we have a better… panache toward electoral victory.

Not finding that, I guess I’ll content myself with some editorial cartoons from today’s newspapers.

As though torn from today’s headlines!

Yes! Those Diebold machines are uncertain items. Did you hear that quote about “I will deliver Ohio to Bush”?

Okay. I have no other purpose but to say than that we do not live in interesting times. I’ll scour the Teddy Roosevelt cartoons and see if I can see one carping on his usurption of presidential powers. Then we can pretend that Bush II is Teddy Roosevelt. Just as we can pretend that Abramoff is Tammany.

And the Railroads that owned the Republican party in the last two decades of the 19th century are… um… Halliburton maybe? I don’t know.

The presidential candidate who provided the template for the dualing “anti-war here, pro-war with some criticisms of the president’s handling of the war there” strategy toward presidential elections was DeWitt Clinton, during the 1812 election — which coincided with The War of 1812. The results were the same as John Kerry’s — which is to say that he lost (and let us for the moment assume that he did in fact lose). History repeats itself, or as I put it: History regurgitates forward. As for The War of 1812, it concluded… roughly where it started, but with a feeling that “we won”. The template for how the Korean Conflict ultimately unfolded.

Dwight Eisenhower, who had been running somewhat ahead of his competition in Adlai Stevenson in the 1952 election, and running with the strong anti-communism Conservative movement that lurked in the shadows of the Republican Party suggesting we need to bomb Korea to the stone-age. Eisenhower’s “October Surprise” was to announce that he would bring the damned thing to an end, a vote for Eisenhower was a vote for Peace, thus laying the groundwork to what looks like in 20/20 hindsight his inevitable landslide victory. Dwight Eisenhower would go on to accomplish two key things in his first term: (1) By ending the War in Korea, and not submitting to a policy of always fighting the Communists and never ever “appeasing” or making any type of agreement with the Soviet Union, a frustration with the Right-wing base of the Republican Party who hated “containment”, he assured at the very least some half-way decent boundary on where we could not go to war through the Cold War. (2) He was useful in defusing Joseph McCarthy. He never confronted McCarthy. Actually, his role as “Golfer in Chief” echoed a template set by George Washington: a minimalist presidency by a Supreme Commander.

Eisenhower’s second term was pretty darned useless, though.

From Paul Collins The Trouble With Tom, a Christmas gift from my brother– who gave my dad a different decaying corpse related book — Jeff… Octagon City also cited in Ghost Towns of Kansas (and probably mentioned in Tom Franks’s What’s the Matter with Kansas, too):

Home for All was a hit: the eight-sided panacea was immediately demanded bpy fashionable homebuilders across the country. Henry Ward Beecher built himself an octagonal house; so did P.T. Barnum. Clarence Darrow spent his childhood in one. In many towns, the builders of these homes came from the intersecting group of readers that Fowler’s works had always appealed to: doctors and ministers. Some of the latter wryly claimed that the octagonal form was ideal because they couldn’t be cornered by the devil — and, as was alleged of one minister in upstate New York, “so he could see the Lord coming from any angle.” Imitators upped the ante to twelve- and even sixteen- sided houses.

By the following spring, all traces of Octagon City were gone.

8-29-1918
MISS RANKIN LOSING

Scattered returns from thirty-six out of fifty-three counties showed Dr. O. M. Landstrum maintaining his lead over Jeannette Rankin for the Republican nomination for United States Senator. The votes stood tonight: Landstrum, 10,004; Rankin, 6,582.
………………………

June 2, 1932
Peace Caravan Is Lead by Jeannette Rankin
Pilgrimage, Starting from Capital, Will Be Met by Others at Chicago Conventions

Miss Jeannette Rankin of Montana, the first woman elected to the House of Representatives, and Miss Emma Wold of Oregon, technical adviser to the American delegation at The Hague Conference on the Codification of International Law two years ago, left Washington at noon today on an automobile speaking tour in the interest of peace. They are to reach Chicago on the eve on of the national conventions. Half a dozen cars, bearing flags and banners pleading for peace, followed theirs.

The expedition is to reach Chicago in time for the national conventions and there meet similar caravans starting from various parts of the country.

The travelers will include not only representatives of numerous peace organizations but also, according to the sponsors, the “large unorganized peace vote throughout the country,” which will unite in demanding peace planks in both party platforms.

According to William Brown of Washington, a Cornell graduate, his university will be represented in the pilgrimage, as well as Yale, Colgate, Pennsylvania State, Rochester, Syracuse, Washburn College, Washington University, Wesleyan University and others.

The “Chicago Peace Plan” of which Miss WOld is executive director is directed by a group including Mrs. Edward P Costigan, wife of Senator Costigan; Mrs. Emily Newell Blair, former vice chairman of the Democratic National Committee; Dorothy Canfield Fisher, Zona Gale, Kathleen Norris, Katherine Anthony, Mrs. Alice W Hunt and Mrs. Florence Brewer Boeckel.
………………………….

9-11-1933
“ROOSEVELT ASKED TO AID REFUGEES; Civil Liberties Union Urges Broader Asylum for Nazi Victims and Others. OUR TRADITIONAL POLICY Revision of Hoover Executive Order Suggested by 36 Signers of Memorial.”
(yes, signing the petition for easier asylum for Nazi victims is Jeannette Rankin.)
………………………………………

Apr 4, 1937
“NORRIS STANDS BY VOTE AGAINST WAR; Survivor of Six in Senate to Oppose It Declares After 20 Years He Would Do It Again DEPRESSION AS ‘HARVEST’ Nebraskan Declares Stated Aims Lost in Results of ‘Commercial’ Conflict Surrender to Money Power” Destructive Economic Ends” Cause of Present Suffering”

Twenty years ago tomorrow, the United States Senate passed the resolution declaring war against Germany. Only six Senators ventured to vote against the measure: La Fallette [sic] of Wisconsin, Norris of Nebraska, Lane of Washington, Stone of Missouri, Vardaman of Mississippi and Gronna of North Dakota.

Senator Norris alone survives to retell the tale to his younger colleagues. He is doing so at an unusual reunion in Washington of the twenty-five former mebers of the House or Representatives now living who, with twenty-five others since deceased, voted against war on April 6, 1917.

The dinner and reunion will be a private affair, with reporters excluded. Many of those invited, including Miss Jeannette Rankin former Representative from Montana and first woman elected to Congress, have not met each other since the adjournment of the Sixty-fifth Congress.

Seated in the Senate Office Building, Senator Norris, veteran Progressive, discussed in an interview the war and his opposition to it. Asked whether he had ever regretted his negative vote of April 4, 1917, or changed his view of the matter, the Senator replied quietly.

“In my service of nearly thirty-five years in Congress, I have undoubtedly made many mistkes, but I am more than ever convinced that my vote against the declaration of war in 1917 was not one of them.

“I am not sorry I opposed it. I should do it again if Congress were again confronted with that sort of problem in economics and moral decision . And I would not be along — or nearly so — today.

“I said then that we were surrendinger the policy of the country to the money power, and putting the dollar sign above the flag. And I have never seen any reason to withdraw the statement, but on the contrary, much evidence that confirmed it, as the years have passed.

“At the end of the war Woodrow Wilson publicly admitted that it had been primarily a commercial war, which was another way of saying what Senator La Follette and I had declared to be the facts.

“It was basically fought for, or occasioned by, economic and financial reasons and ends — and it was ruiniously destructive to every lasting interest of the American people.

“The large banking and business interests were making so much money, so fast, while we were nominally neutral that they sson discovered that they would have to lend money to the Allies in large quantities to keep up the game and keep our industries humming and expanding.

“When the Allies’ credit was stretched to the breaking point, and the private money-lenders had exhausted their resources, the next step was to open the Treasury of the American people, by a declaration of war.

“We went into that terrible war largely to collect the debts of the money-lenders, who were promptly paid out of the public treasury for what they had lent to their friends abroad and spent on all sorts of munitions in this country. But the queer thing about it all was that we were never able to collect the debts due this government.

“The terrible condition we are now in, and the wasting depression, in which all classes of our people are suffering, would affect us only in minor degree if we had kept out of that war. It was a war where no victory was possible. The vanquished suffered no more than the victorious.

“While thousands and millions of men were killing each other in France and Russia, other thousands, safe at home, were coining their blood into private gain and gold. It is always so. The rich were made richer, the poor poorer, here as in other countries.

“Fewer people own more of the wealth of the world today than ever since the days of the Roman Empire. If they are not to own all of it, this tiny minority, while the rest of us are reduced to the status of peasants and economic slaves, certain vital reforms are necessary at home, and war must be avoided abroad.

“Although I suffered some ostracism and much abuse, and was condemned by the foulest name of ‘traitor’ for my opposition to the war, I am still an optimist about life in America.”
…………………………………

11-7-1940
‘COMEBACK’ SCORED BY MISS RANKIN; WOMEN WHO WILL SERVE IN THE SEVENTY-SEVENTH CONGRESS

After an absence of twenty-two years from the political arena, Miss Jeannette Rankin of Montana, a Republican, the first woman to be elected to Congress, achieved a “comeback” in yesterday’s returns which makes her the single addition to the feminine contingent amongst the lawmakers in the national capital. Eight woman will serve in the next session of Congress, five of whom are Representatives who stood for re-election on Tuesday.

“Miss Jeannette,” who will be remembered as one of the members of the House of Representatives who voted against the entry of the United States into the first world war (shedding tears as she did so) won a closely contested race against the Democratic incumbent from her district, Jerry J. O’Connell. The decision was amongst the last to be made, the issue remaining a long time in doubt.

Since her initial tenure, Miss Rankin has been a lobbyist for peace in Washington.
…………………………………….

Dec 9, 1941
“ASKS MISS RANKIN RECANT; Montana Republican Leader Says State Deplores Anti-War Vote”

Represntative Jeannette Rankin, Republican, of this State, who cast the only vote in Congress against war on Japan, was called upon by Dan Whetstone, Montana Republican National Committeeman, to “redeem Montana’s honor” by changing her vote.

Mr. Whetstons telegraphed Miss Rankin the following:

“As soon as word of the treacherous attack of Japan on American possessions reached this State, Montanans made the only decision possible for loyal Americans, to assert full support to the Administration in defense of this nation.

“Messages from all parts of Montana indicate disappointment over your attitude in failing to support the war declaration. I urge and bessech you to redeem Montana’s honor and loyalty and change your vote as early as possible.”
……………………………………

12-12-1941
“Miss Rankin Voted ‘Present’ in Weak Voice; Clerk Had to Call Her Name a Second Time”

In a voice so weak the clerk had to call for her vote a second time — and in a tone very different from her distinct “No” of Monday — the lone member of Congress who had opposed declaring war on Japan answered “present” today to the roll-call on accepting Adolf Hitler’s challenge to fight.

Miss Jeannette Rankin, Republican of Montana, long-time peace advocate who voted against fighting Germany twenty-four years ago, also answered “present” when the question of replying to Italy’s war declaration came around.

It had been a terrible week for Miss Rankin — and she showed the strain. When the House convened, and while the Representatives were waiting for the expected message from the President, Miss Rankin sat in the galleries, crowded with young persons, most of them looking as if they were secretaries and clerks from Congressional offices.

As the time neared for the President’s message Miss Rankin went onto the floor. Several members stood talking to her in the aisle.

When the clerk began to read she took her seat. Representative Everrett Dirksen, Republican of Illinois, sat on her left and talked to her for a time as the roll-call started. She shook her head.

As the clerk’s voice droned through the alphabet, nearer and nearer to “R,” Miss Rankin nervously clasped and unclasped her handbag.

Called the clerk: “Rankin of Mississippi.” Miss Rankin leaned forward. She was next.

“Rankin of Montana.” She spoke. There was a moment’s hesitation, indicating that the clerk did not hear her reply. She spoke out again. “Present.” She leaned back. There was no booing as on Monday.

The resolution on declaring war against Italy was introduced. The members on the floor grew restless, the galleries began to empty. It was a thrice-told story and it had lost its appeal. The Speaker halted the roll-call until order was restored.

Her name was reached. “Present”– a firmer voice this tiem.

Then she went into a cloak room off the floor. She was sitting in an armchair, eating an apple and drinking milk, when the House, by voice vote, approved the sending of armed forces anywhere to win victory for the country.
……………………………….

12-12-1941
“SILENT GALLERIES WATCH WAR VOTE; Hear President’s Message and the Roll-Call on Germany, but Refuse to Stay for Italy HOUSES ACT IN CONCERT Poll Members Simultaneously — McNary Presents Republican Pledge of Support”

Without hesitation and without debate, and as rapidly as parliamentary procedure would permit, the Congress cast two more war votes today to carry the United States formally and constitutionally into battle to the finish with the Axis on all fronts.

No member of either house voted “no” on going to war against Germany and Italy.

One, Representative Jeannette Rankin of Montana, who voted against the 1917 declaration of war against Germany and who voted on Monday against accepting the Japanese challenge in the Pacific voted “present.”

Substitution, by unanimous House consent, of Senate texts to prevent procedural delays removed even this reservation.
…………………………..

12-13-1941
“LOS ANGELES SETS BLACKOUT RULES; Council Votes Jail and Fines for Violators — Police Transfer Japanese-American Clerks 6 CITIZENS UNDER ARREST One Is Quoted as Urging lmpeachment of President — Miss Rankin Hailed”

A drastic blackout ordinance, providing a six months’ jail term and a $500 fine for violators, wass passed by the City Council today as local and Federal officials moved on several fronts to tighten the city’s defenses and stamp out seditious actions.

Among other developments were the seizure of two French ships by the Coast Guard and internment of their crews; the transfer of six Japanese-Americans from key clerical positions in the records and communications division of the Police Department, and the arrest and arraignment of six American citizens on charges of “conspiracy to make false statements intended to interfere with operations of United States military and naval forces.”

The six arrests, the first made in this area since the start of the war, were of Robert K. Noble, 44, one of the original “ham and eggs” groups and admittedly a Hitler admirer; Ellis O. Jones, identified as a former eastern magazine editor and pacifist who went to Europe with Henry Ford’s peace ship during the last World War, and four of their followers, Leone Menier, 31, Mr. Noble’s secretary George Friend, 19, Mrs. Greta Robins, 40, and Mrs. Agnes Norman, 47.

They were arrested following a meeting of about 100 persons at which Mr. Noble was quoted as saying Japan had not attacked the United States and as urging impeachment of President Roosevelt.

The meeting gave a standing vote of thanks to Miss Jeannette Rankin for her vote against the war resolution. Arrested by Federal Bureau of Investigation agents as they left the meeting, the six were arraigned before the United States Commissioner Head and held in $25,000 bail each for a hearing Dec. 23.

The French ships seized were the freighters Wisconsin and Vannes, which had been in the harbor since June, 1940. Their offices and crews, fifty-nine men in all, were confined to the immigration station at Terminal Island.

The country defense council, charged with coordination of all civilian defense agencies, discussed plans to standardize blackout and air-raid alarm signals, procedures and efforts to avoid confusion in any further crises that may arise.

There was no repetition last night of Wednesday night’s blackouts but the city had two alerts of about an hour’s duration, the first from 9:42 to 11 P.M. and the second from 2:30 to 4 A.M.

San Diego, site of the west coast’s biggest naval base, was blacked out during the early morning alarm, which was sounded there several minutes ahead of Los Angeles. “Unidentified planes” were reported over the city and off Point Loma, near San Diego.

There has been much speculation here as to the possible base of the “unidentified planes” which have been reported in the area the last two nights. Possibility that such a base might be located in sparsely settled Lower California, where border rumors have placed large concentrations of armed Japanese, have gained the most credence.

Local Mexican sources, although not discounting the possibility, doubt the presence of any great concentration of Japanese and express the conviction that Mexican authorities can handle the situation. Whether American aid in policing the area has been offered or accepted remains in official secret.
………………………………

12-15-1941
“Sabotage Death Penalty If Jury Asks It Is Voted”

The House today passed and sent to the Senate legislation providing an optional death penalty for sabotage endangering human life.

The bill would permit a Federal trial jury to recommend the death penalty in sabotage cases in time of war “if such offense resulted in death or serious injury to any other person or placed any other person in grave danger of death or serious injury.”

Representative Jeannette Rankin, who voted against war with Japan and did not vote on war with the rest of the Axis, tried unsuccessfully to block passage of the sabotage death penalty. Hers was the only objection. Three objections would have been required to block consideration.
………………………..

June 3, 1942
“Miss Rankin Not Present”

Today’s declaration of war against Bulgaria, Hungary and Rumania left the House with a record of only one dissenting vote on six war declarations. Representative Jeannette Rankin, Republican, of Montana, voted against the war declaration against Japan and was recorded as “present” on the German and Italian resolutions. She was absent today, and her secretary said she was out of town.
…………………………..

July 22, 1942

Senator James E Murray, Democrat and backer of Roosevelt Administration policies, will be opposed in the November general election by Wellington D. Rankin, Republican Senatorial nominee and brother of Congresswoman Jeannette Rankin, who voted against United States entry into both World Wars.

Mr. Murray defeated Joseph P. Monaghan, former Congressman by a convincing margin in yesterday’s primary election.

Mr. Rankin, a former Montana Attorney General, pledged in his campaign that he would “vigoroulsy support every measure to win the war.” He won the nomination in a race with [several candidates whose names are lost to history.]
………………

1-124-1947
“US Heading to War, Miss Rankin Asserts”

Former Representative Jeannette Rankin, who cast the only vote against a declaration of war on Japan after the Pearl Harbor attack, declared yesterday that this country is again “going straight to war unless we change our course.”

Miss Rankin, a Republican from Montana, who ended her last term in Congress in 1943, arrived at Pier 84, North River, on the American Export liner Marine Carp after a tour of the Middle East.

The ship carried 842 passengers, including Dr. Calvin K. Staudt, founder and director of the American School for Boys in Baghdad, Iraq, and sity Egyptian students, here to study the petroleum industry.

“We’ve got to decide to get rid of the war method of settling disputes,” Miss Rankin said.

Replying to a question on when the next war would come, Miss Rankin said: “Unless we change, it will be as soon as we get another crop of men ready.” She added that war is a habit and the first step for this country to take is “to get out of the war habit.”

The former member of Congress, who also voted against war with Germany in 1917, described Gen. George C. Marshall, new Secretary of State, as a “good soldier, who will “take orders from those who decide the policy of the Government.”
…………………

October 13, 1916
The House Beautiful

Usually when a woman is nominated for Congress or the Legislature it is a meaningless but amiable compliment paid to the sex by a minority party that has no chance of winning. There is something more in the nomination of MISS JEANNETTE RANKIN in Montana, for she is running for Representative at large. That means that she is not the Republican candidate in a hopelessly Democratic district, but is running throughout the State, and if the State goes Republican she will be elected. Montana is more inclined to Democracy than Republicanism, but it is not a hopelessly Democratic State; it has even been represented in the United States Senate by Republicans.

If she is elected to Congress she will improve that body aesthetically, for she is said to be “tall, with a wealth of red hair.” Even when good, Congress is not beautiful, and needs adornment. Nothing is more beautifyl than red hair: the ancient superstition that it was ugly has long given way to sense and reason. There are some who qualify the admission by saying that “some kinds of red hair are pretty,” but they are bigoted. There is no shade of red hair that is not prettier than the mud brown which has become the American type we make no exception even in the case of that shade called “carroty,” the least beautiful of all reds. It so happens that Congress, which has improved its appearance by reducing the average of its waistcoat extension, but has taken no other steps toward sprucing up, is singularly lacking in red hair. VICTOR MURDOCK long upheld the average, but the plumage in its palmiest days could never be called “a wealth” of red, and Senator LEWIS’S whiskers were of a Lammie gingerousness. Congress can never become beautiful, can never even become tolerable in the eyes of landscape lovers until it imports red hair and a wealth of it. There is no other way to beautify Congress, for the other ways have all been tried: the House even went so far as to transfer JOHN SHARP WILLIAMS to the Senate, but this extreme step merely shifted the unpulchritudinous balance to the upper house and has no effect on the sum total. Congress needs Representative RANKIN, needs her badly. She cannot single-heded make the House beautiful, but a little red hair will go a long way toward it.
………………..

MISS RANKIN ELECTED
Montana Woman Will be the First to Sit in Congress (November 10, 1916)

With the greater part of the State heard from, Miss Jeannette Rankin this afternoon announced that she was asured of election to Congress from Montana. Reports showed her to be in the lead by 400 votes, and her managers say she will be elected by a majority of 2,000.

Miss Rankin did not finish campaigning until Tuesday night, and since then she has been watching the returns, taking only a few hours sleep. The votes was so close that no one could predict the result until this afternoon.

“I knew the women would stand by me,” said Miss Rankin., when she was assured that she had been elected the first woman in Congress. “The women worked splendidly, and I am sure they feel that the results have been worth the work. I am deeply concious of the responsibility, and it is wonderful to have the opportunity to be the first woman to sit in COngress. I will not only represent the women of Montana, but also the women of the country, and I have plenty of work cut out for me.”

As soon as it was learned that Miss Rankin had won, telegrams from all parts of the country began to shower upon her. Suffrage leaders sent messages saying that her election was significant of a great victory for the women of the country.

Miss Rankin is small, slight, with light brown hair. She is a graduate of the University of Montana and of the School of Philanthropy of New York City. Miss Rankin makes her own clothes and hats, and she is also an excellent cook.
……………………………..

November 12, 1916: Montana Woman Ran More Than 25,000 Votes Ahead of Her Party, Campaigned on Horseback; Intends to Push the Extension of Child Labor Laws While in Congress
[…]

Although Miss Rankin spent several years in New York CIty, it appears that she was comparatively little known here, and many women who have been active in suffrage work in this city for years have been asking during the what the “Lady from Montana” is like, how old she is, and what she looks like.

The fact that she was so little known in New York is probably explained in the description of her characteristics given by the few persons who could be found here who had known her personally while she was in this city. According to them, Miss Jeannette Rankin is of the most modest type personally, and if one will not talk suffrage or some other problem in which she is interested, she will not talk of it herself. Wehn she began to study public speaking, according to her former teacher in this subject who is now living here, Miss Rankin was really timid.

She is about 34 years old and is about five feet four inches in height, slender with light brown hair — not red, her friends insist — and has an unusual store of energy.

[…]In these campaigns, it is said, she went into mines and to farms to argue personally with men and women to induce them to fight for suffrage. She obtained a place as a field secretary of the National American Woman Suffrage Association after leaving New York City and went to Florida to establish suffrage organizations there. Then the campaign for woman suffrage in her home state was taken up, and she resigned as field secretary of the national body to begin campaigning at home.

She is credited with having done more perhaps than any other woman in the State to obtain suffrage for the women of Montana. Then after a hard fight she was nominated for Congress by an overwhelming vote in the primaries and between the primaries and election day, it is reported, she had to fight some of the Old Guard Republican leaders in her own State as well as teh Democrats. She did a large part of her campaigning on horseback.

Her friends joined her in creating electioneering innovations. She didn’t finish her campaign until election night, it is said. On election day, her friends telephones to practically everybody in the State who had a telephone, according to reports received here, and greeted whoever answered the telephone with a cheery:

“Good morning! have you voted for Jeannette Rankin?”

“Miss Rankin is a very feminine woman,” one young woman who had known her here — and who is now a reporter on a New York evening paper, said yesterday. “She dances well and makes her own hates, and sews, and has won genuine fame among her friends with the wodnerful lemon meringue pie that she makes when she hasn’t enough other things to do to keep her busy.
[… Bemusing Anecdote followed]

Among the things which Miss Rankin has announced that she will fight for in Congress is extension of the child labor laws — she intends to represent children as well as women in Congress, national woman suffrage, mother’s pensions, universal compulsory education, and similar propositions. It is expected that she will introduce a new national suffrage bill as soon as she has the opportunity.
………………………………….

November 19. 1916; Lousis Levine of the University of Montana “First Woman Member of Congress Versed in Politics”
[…]
Miss Rankin emphasized the fact that a new point of view has come to prevail in recent legislative work — the point of view of social welfare, of the effects of law upon our ways of thinking and feeling and upon the character of the coming generations.

The application of these general principles to the specific problems which the country may have to face in the near future is an inspiring task. It would be premature to expect Miss Rankin to give a definite answer to the many concrete questions which the acutely curious or the insensitively studious like to ask. She will have plenty of time between now and her first appearance in Congress to think many things over and to form opinions on a number of vital issues.

Our conversation drifted to the question of the war several times, and Miss Rankin pointed to her experience in New Zealand, where she spent the early part of 1916, and where she found the women vigorously supporting the war. Miss Rankin did not think this exceptional, but rather an indication of the fact that no war could continue for any considerable length of time without the support of the women.

This, of course, may be questioned by those who think that the present war is continuing despite the weariness and protests of the women. But to Miss Rankin, this is simply another illustration of the injustice of the present arrangement, which is just as injurious to man as it is humiliating to woman.

There is a great surprise in store the members of the new Congress when the convene in Washington next year and meet their first woman colleague. They will have to throw overboard a lot of mental baggage which they may have valued very hightly for many years. They will find in their midst not the impulsive, irrational, sentimental, capriciously thinking and obstinately feeling being which many imagine woman to be, but a strong and well-balanced personality, scientifically trained, accustomed to strict reasoning, well versed in the arts of politics, inspired by high social ideal, tempered by wide experience.
………………….

April 7, 1917: “Seek to Explain Miss Rankin’s ‘NO’. Congress Leaders Think She Has Hurt Suffrage By Not Recognizing the Big Issue. Overcome by Her Ordeal. Her Halting Decision on War Resolution Made a Tense Scene on the Roll Call. Almost Full House Voted. Of the Fifty Opposing the War Resolution, 32 Were Republicans and 16 Democrats”

Miss Jeannette Rankin, the first woman in the history of this Government to play a part in a declaration of war by Congress, did not go to her room in the House Office Building today. She remained at home, overwrought, harrassed by conflicting emotions, beset by doubts as to the expediency of her course, but comforted in part by a conscience that controlled when she she voted against a state of war with the Imperial German Government.

It is possible that no more dramatic scene has ever been staged in the House of Representatives than when Miss Rankin, casting her initial vote in the lower body, interrupted the roll call to say, in thirteen words, that she could not vote for war. This was the most tense moment in the roll call, which resulted in the House passing the war resolution at 3:12 o’clock this morning by a vote of 373 to 50.

In the House it is not customary for members to explain their votes. Such explanations are left to members of the Senate. When the House is voted no word is expected except “Aye!” “No!” or “Present!” to the call of the Reading Clerk.

Possibly Miss Rankin did not know this when she arose, soon after 3 o’clock, and said in a shaking voice that penetrated every corner of the big chamber:

“I want to stand by my country …. but I cannot vote for war.”

There was applause from the little group of pacifists. A murmur of conversation ran through the galleries and the membership. The advocates of a declaration of war sat silent, except for a score who cried:

“Vote! Vote! Vote!”

They did not understand that Miss Rankin intended to vote “No!” although she had not actually used the word.

Speaker Clark and the Reading Clerks did not know how to record Miss Rankin. .The Chief Clerk of the House was sent to her desk. “Did you intend to vote “No”?” he asked. Miss Rankin nodded in a tired sort of way and sank back into her seat. Then she pressed her hands to her eyes, threw her head far back and sobbed.

Ther Clerk of the House called Miss Rankin’s name four times before she responded. The roll is always called twice in the House, the second call being for absentees on the first call. But Miss Rankin was present when her name was first read.

“Miss Rankin,” droned Patrick J. Haltigan, the Reading Clerk. There was no response.

“Miss Rankin!” he repeated in a louder tone.

Practically every member in the House turned toward the seat where the “lady from Montan” sat. Those in the galleries leaned forward. Miss Rankin was evidently under great mental distress. Her appearance was that of a woman on the verge of a breakdown. She clutched at her throat repeatedly. Now and then she brushed back her hair, looking upward at the stained-glass ceiling, and rubbed her eyes and cheeks nervously. She clasped and unclapsed her hands as one does under teh stress of unusual emotion.

Miss Rankin’s name was passed and the first roll call proceeded.

“Uncle Joe” Cannon, entering the chamber, learned that Miss Rankin, though present, had failed to vote. He spoke to her and is understood to have said:

“Little woman, you cannot afford not to vote. You represent the womanhood of the country in the American Congress. I shall not advise you how to vote, but you should vote one way or the other — as your conscience dictates.”

Representative Good, an Iowa Republican, who sat beside Miss Rankin, was apparently seeking to reassure and sympathize with her.

“The clerk will call the names of those who failed to respond on the first roll call,” said Speaker Clark.

There were less than a dozen names. The absenttees came in — and answered. The “R’s” were reached in the alphabetical list.

“Miss Rankin,” called the clerk. Miss Rankin started forward in her seat, then dropped backward with a look of helplessness upon her face.

“Miss Rankin,” repeated the clerk.

The woman member from Montana rose slowly to her feet. Every eye was turned upon her. She swayed slightly, as her hands groped for the back of the seat in front. Her hands found it, and her fingers closed spasmodically as she steadied herself.

“I want to stand by my country — but I cannot vote for war.” Miss Rankin said.

She looked straight ahead, staring at nothing in particular. her voice trailed off into a sort of sob as Miss Rankin flung herself back into the seat, pressed her forehead and began to cry. There was a little applause, a hum of excited conversation and then silence over the chamber once more. A woman had for the first time in the nation’s history participated in a legislative referendum on war.

Soon Miss Rankin left the chamber. She had nothing more to say — she was too overwrought to say it had she been so inclined. Today she remained at her home, and her confidants said that she wondered what the comment of the public would be.

The “practical men” of the House say that Miss Rankin missed an opportunity in not voting for the resolution. Such a vote might have rallied the women of the country and helped inestimably the suffrage cause, whcih is dear to Miss Rankin’s heart.

Miss Rankin’s vote is regarded, not as that of a pacifist, but raher as one dictated by the inherent abhorrence of women for war. Throughout all yesterday Miss Rankin was preoccupied and distressed. Not unitl the last minute, it is said, did she yield to the anti-war arguments of her inner self. She made no speech for or against the resolution, but in the morning hours, when war was declared against Germany and the United States forsook the path of peace, she broke all House precedent by interrupting a roll call and uttering thirteen words in justification of her course.

Of the fifty members who voted against war thirty-two were Republicans, sixteen Democrats, one Socialist, and one Independent. Voting affirmatively were 198 Democrats, 177 Republicans, 2 Progressives, and 1 Independent.
…………………….

Letter to the Editor published June 1, 1917… Mercedes E. Llano

It would be interesting to know just what the suffragists are trying to prove by the statements made in Helen C. Mansfield’s letter published May 28. The eleven States having the highest percentage of enlistements may be suffrage States — no one intends to deny this — but what possible connection can there be between a woman’s voting and a man’s enlisting in the army? Are we supposed to infer that in the suffrage States the men are being persuaded to enlist by the more patriotic women? Perhaps this is true in some case in all the States, but such an argument would be absolutely contradictory to the theories of the suffrage agitators. For, if women have such strong an influence over men, why can they not exercise it in questions of politics, instead of demanding the vote for themselves? As usual, the suffragists have forgotten to be consistent.

And is a woman who votes more patriotic than one who does not? Most emphatically, no! The majority of women do not want to vote, and yet nearly every woman in the coutnry is striving to do whatever lies in her power to be of patriotic service. Who has ever, as Miss Mansfield states, “made light of the patriotism of women”? She seems to imply that this has been done by persons opposed to woman’s suffrage, but surely most of us would scorn an argument so unfair, knowing as we do that, since the beginning of this nation’s history, the women have stood by her loyally in every crisis. There are, no doubt, a few weak women who, like Jeannette Rankin “want to stand by their country” — conditionally — but Miss Rankin is no more a fair representative of America’s women than Senator La Follette and Champ Clark are fair reprsentatives of America’s men.
…………………………….

Next few headlines: “CROWD DESTROYS SUFFRAGE BANNER AT WHITE HOUSE; Angered at a Legend, Telling Russian Mission “America Is Not-a Democracy” AND ASSAILING PRESIDENT Women’s Party Leader Asserts Act Will Be Repeated and Police Give Warning. INDIGNATION IN WASHINGTON Congressmen and Others Deplore the Incident–Miss Rankin Withholds Her Opinion. Suffragists Sought Publicity. Angry Comments in Crowd. CROWD DESTROYS SUFFRAGE BANNER Another Banner Ordered. “Disloyal and Outrageous.” ; “MISS RANKIN VISITS BUREAU AS A SLEUTH; Women Printers’ Complaints of Overtime Investigated by Montana Congresswoman.”; : “VICTORY FOR MISS RANKIN.; McAdoo Puts Bureau of Engraving on 8-Hour Work Basis.”;
……………………..

The Case Against Suffrage: Presented by Mrs. James W. Wadsworth, Jr., Leader of Women’s Organization Which Wants No Votes

And now, as to the genuineness of the patriotism of the suffragist leaders and the sincerity of the military ardor: Don’t forget all the suffragists who, in the face of this fearful world cataclysm, agrued that if women had the vote there would be no war. Don’t forget that when our ships were being sunk, our citizens massacured at sea, our rights ignored, and our national digity spurned, not one woman among the suffragists declared herself for preparedness and against peace without honor. Don’t forget that Jane Addams, Fola La Follette, Crystal Eastman, and other prominent suffragists are still outspoken pacifists. Don’t forget that Mrs. Catt, in a speech in Columbus, Ohio, on May 18, 1917, long after we were at war, said: ‘The United States has no right to talk about making the world safe for democracy.’ ‘We had better blot the mote from our own eye before we go forth and want to blot it from the Prussian eye.’

Don’t forget that Mrs. Norman de R. Whitehouse, President of the Suffrage Party of New York State; Marie Jenney Howe, Alice Carpenter, and other prominent suffragists, over their signatures, made an appeal for contributions to a fund to be given as ‘a New Year’s present’ to The Masses, the revolutionary, socialistic magazine that was recently forbidden to use the mails because of its fight against conscription. And don’t forget Jeannette Rankin, the Representative from Montana, who in the solemn hour when the vote was being taken as to whether we would avenge the U-boat butcheries of our men, women, and children, whether we would take our stand with the Allies in the death struggle of democracy against militarism, stood up in the House of Representatives and quavered, ‘I want to stand by my country, but I cannot vote for war,’ and broke down and wept.

Government is a man’s jobn. And I have no doubt that at the coming elections Maine and New York will continue with that imposing galaxy of States — Michigan, South Dakota, Ohio, North Dakota, Nebraska, Missouri, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Iow, and West Virginia — which in the last four years voted an emphatic ‘no’ to the cry of “Votes for Women.”

[Editorial comment: It’s interesting to note that the editorial moves from venom of the militancy of women’s suffragists to venom over the pacifism of women’s suffragists. Go figure!)]
………………………………………….

Coming sooner or later: Wobblies, and Her second “no” vote.