FDR's Republicans: Domestic Political Realignment and American Foreign Policy 0739136135, 9780739136133

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FDR’s Republicans

FDR’s Republicans Domestic Political Realignment and American Foreign Policy

Robert E. Jenner

LEXINGTON BOOKS A DIVISION OF ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC.

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Published by Lexington Books A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 http://www.lexingtonbooks.com Estover Road Plymouth PL6 7PY United Kingdom Copyright © 2010 by Lexington Books First paperback edition 2011 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including

information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The hardback edition of this book was previously cataloged by the Library of Congress as follows: Jenner, Robert E., 1952– FDR’s Republicans : domestic political realignment and American foreign policy/Robert E. Jenner. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. United States—Foreign relations—1929–1933. 2. United States—Foreign relations—1933–1945. 3. Roosevelt, Franklin D. (Franklin Delano), 1882–1945. 4. Republican Party (U.S. : 1854-)—History—20th century. 5. Political parties—United States— History—20th century. 6. Agriculture and politics—United States—History—20th century. 7. Progressivism (United States politics)—History—20th century. 8. United States—Politics and government—1929–1933. 9. United States—Politics and government—1933–1945. I. Title. E806.J37 2010 973.917—dc22 2009032223 ISBN: 978-0-7391-3612-6 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN: 978-0-7391-3613-3 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN: 978-0-7391-3614-0 (electronic) Printed in the United States of America ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

In loving memory of Diana Jenner

Acknowledgments The preparation of this manuscript was greatly aided by the advice and direction I received from my principal advisors at the University of Maryland at College Park, Dr. George Kent and Dr. James Gimpel. Special thanks are also extended to all of the archivists at the many private manuscript collections and the Library of Congress that were used in the preparation of this work and to the editors at Lexington Press. The published materials of many scholars helped to provide me with an understanding of the context in which the events covered in this book took place. The works of three scholars in particular helped me to comprehend the forces that shaped the period during the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt. James L. Sundquist’s Dynamics of the Party System: Alignment and Realignment of the Political Parties in the United States helped me to articulate the motives and currents of the agrarian populist progressive movement during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Karen A. J. Miller’s Populist Nationalism: Republican Insurgency and American Foreign Policy Making, 1918–1925 provided an important link that put forth the origins of the Republican coalition that preceded the New Deal. Clyde P. Weed’s The Nemesis of Reform: The Republican Party During the New Deal helped me to navigate that party’s realignment during the 1930s. Many friends also lent their critical judgment to this effort, and I owe a debt of gratitude to Mary Lou Warwick, Chris and Bill DeGrado, George and Gracie Schild, Scott Wibbert, Kathy Tama, Brooks Flippen, Monroe Couper, Nancy Farrell, Jacqueline Moore, Roland Walker, and Richard Krimm. The history department at the University of Maryland at College Park and the Dirksen Congressional Research Center generously provided me with financial support to conduct the research for this project. For their intellectual and moral support, I would also like to acknowledge my mother and father, Jean and Tom Jenner; my grandparents; and my sister Linda and brother Don, their spouses, and their children.

Introduction When I began the research to write this book, the subject matter appealed to me because it deals with a group of congressional Republicans who supported an opposition president’s foreign policy at a time of extreme partisanship. I was aware from the beginning that I would have to become familiar with the domestic issues that my subjects faced as well as concerns pertaining to their political party and constituents back home. At first it seemed rather straightforward since as a group many of them had come of age at a time when the Republican Party advocated a global foreign policy for the United States under the leadership of President McKinley and others. But the importance of domestic and party politics and the role that they play in the formulation of foreign policy became more evident when I began to confront the behavior of my subjects that didn’t fit my hypothesis. This group of internationalist Republicans suddenly began to sound rather isolationist during the mid-1930s, only to return to their internationalism later in the decade. Although trained as a diplomatic historian, on the advice from Professor James Gimpel of the political science department at the University of Maryland, I began to delve more deeply into the configuration of domestic political currents that occurred during the New Deal era. In this regard I have focused far more attention on domestic considerations than is customary for most diplomatic historians. In taking this approach, the work that follows addresses criticisms of those such as Dr. Michael Hunt, who have argued that it is time for those in the field “to sharpen their treatment of the domestic roots of policy and to expand their agenda to give more attention to the domestic impact of policy.”1 In addressing Dr. Hunt’s point, the research and writing of this project emphasized the relations between FDR’s Republicans, their party, and their constituents and thus relied heavily upon constituent mail and local sources of information. During the research phase of this project, it also became evident that historians and political scientists tend to work rather independently of each other, a fact that became relevant when my political science mentor directed my attention to the realignment literature of James L. Sundquist. Although historians do address the issue of political realignments that have occurred in American history, this subject is studied and discussed in far greater depth by political scientists. The national debate over intervention, neutrality, or isolationism—the three often being used interchangeably if incorrectly—was lengthy and complex. Examples of long, indecisive, and acrimonious public debates over foreign policy, characteristic of the debates over neutrality, are relatively rare in diplomatic history. The rarity of such intense levels of public involvement over foreign policy was conveyed by Robert Schulzinger when he stated, “during the war in Vietnam, the intensity of domestic debate over foreign relations was louder than at any point since the late 1930s.”2 Herein I have employed realignment theories to explain the relationships between the political parties, within the Republican Party, and among the body politic as a framework to help contextualize the subject matter of this work. It has been well documented that Franklin Roosevelt forged a coalition that brought new voters into the Democratic Party who had consistently voted for Republicans since the Civil

War. By 1936 most African Americans had departed the party of Lincoln to which they had heretofore supported overwhelmingly. Jewish voters and urban ethnic groups also became identified with the Democratic Party at this time. In addition, the votes of factory workers who had favored Republican high tariffs that protected their industries shifted to the Democrats when New Deal policies were designed to protect their rights to organize and strike. The impact of these desertions on the Republican Party during the 1930s and those of other parties at other times is still an open topic of debate. Although the reasonable expectation may be that a party encountering such departures would modify its platform to accommodate the winds of change, the evidence supports quite the contrary view—at least for the short-term. As outlined in the work of Clyde P. Weed, the departure of the more diverse or moderate members of a political movement during such realignments has the more common effect of entrusting the platform of that party to its remaining members, who tend to be less moderate and more orthodox and less compromising in their beliefs.3 Added to this, the party suffering such losses also exhibits elements of a defensive tone that seems to be a general human trait that follows in the tracks of failure, humiliation, and rebuke. Furthermore, the realignment of the political landscape that took place under the leadership of Franklin Roosevelt was arguably the most dramatic of all the realignments that have taken place in American history. Not only had the Republican Party dominated the American political scene for fifty of the preceding sixty years, but during the 1920s the party reached its apex of power and success. The Great Depression and the political realignment that followed presented the party with a sudden reversal of fortune for which it was completely unprepared. And yet diplomatic historians rarely even acknowledge this realignment, let alone the impact that this state of affairs may have had on the making of American foreign policy and the manner in which our political leaders addressed the growing threat of fascism. This book is an attempt to remedy that. Less commonly recognized but vital to the telling of this story is the realignment that also took place within the Republican Party during the New Deal era. As a result of the legacy of the Civil War, many northeastern and Midwestern agrarians who had at one time identified with the Democratic Party could no longer do so. As James L. Sundquist suggests, such voters could periodically vote for a Democrat but could not bring themselves to identify with or become members of the party of rebellion.4 As a consequence of that, within the largely oneparty states of New England and the Midwest there developed a tendency for the party to harbor both conservative and progressive wings. The tensions that resulted characterized Republican Party politics for many years and split the party in two in 1912. The consequences of that fissure resulted in the election of Woodrow Wilson and had a profound effect upon Old Guard Republicans and their willingness to compromise with their progressive wing, especially on issues regarding foreign affairs. That story is superbly documented and presented by Karen A. J. Miller in her book, Populist Nationalism: Republican Insurgency and American Foreign Policy Making 1918–1925. 5 During the late nineteenth century, neither party offered much to aid agrarians, but the bloody shirt was relentlessly and successfully waved to the Republican’s advantage. Western

agrarians fielded their own Populist political effort, and the Democrats took up their banner briefly under the leadership of William Jennings Bryan. But it wasn’t until 1932 that northern agrarians found a Democratic candidate for president who advocated for their economic agenda and with whom they could identify personally. From that point onward the agrarian progressive wing of the Republican Party began to dissipate. Although not evident at first while being courted at the time by both the Democratic president and their erstwhile coalition partners, northern progressive agrarian voters finally put to rest the legacy of the Civil War, and henceforth many voted as progressive Democrats. Those progressive agrarians that remained within the Republican Party tended to be the most radical, independent, and uncompromising of that faction. As if these major political realignments weren’t convulsive enough, the United States also underwent a demographic realignment from rural to urban that was felt during the time of the debate over neutrality. Although technically the demographic turning point had occurred during the early 1920s, it was during the mid-1930s that the new demographic balance became manifest in popular culture. Gone were the likes of Calvin Coolidge, a hometown president of few words, and entertainers such as Will Rogers, who had endeared the nation with his rural folksy wit. Cars went faster, buildings grew taller, and Hollywood replaced Tom Mix and Mary Pickford with James Cagney and Jean Harlow. I also think it is important for the purpose of better understanding the nature of these events to address a realignment that took place as a result of the New Deal and World War II. A dramatic shift in attitudes took place that differentiates the pre-war and post-war periods. Although this intellectual realignment did not impact the neutrality debates, it is important to recognize the shift that occurred in order to better understand the period during which the neutrality debates took place. Only when I began reading constituent mail did I become aware that many people of the late 1930s had much more in common with those of the nineteenth century than with those of us who were born and raised in the second half of the twentieth century. Because it is so difficult for those of us today to understand the mind-set of the everyday people who were at the grassroots of the debate over isolationism, I felt the need to devote an extensive opening chapter to address this. For those of us who grew up collecting for UNICEF and seeing animated mechanical children singing “It’s a Small World” at Disneyland, it is difficult to envision that many people of the pre-World War II era saw internationalism in a very different and negative way. For those of us who grew up after the war, it is almost unfathomable to read the letters of those who before the war referred to our most steadfast post-war ally, the English, in the most disparaging, unflattering, and disdainful terms. And even during the difficult economic circumstances that face our country at the time of this publication, the recriminations against the bankers and businessmen who irresponsibly led us down this path pale in comparison to the vehement anger exhibited toward the economic royalists during the Great Depression. Similarly, letters from rural constituents exhibit a visceral dislike and distrust of city dwellers in general during the pre-World War II period. Franklin Roosevelt initiated a global perspective, and his New Deal helped to heal the divisions between agrarian and urban

people, labor and management, and those of high and low status, fissures which contributed a poisonous effect on national unity prior to World War II. It is the purpose of this work to sort out the constellation of events that inhibited the internationalists and motivated those who advocated isolationism. The transition from an agrarian to an industrial society and the impact of the Great Depression led to political circumstances that exacerbated the creation of a coherent foreign policy consensus in the United States prior to Pearl Harbor. Any judgments should be tempered by the realization that the domestic changes and international problems presented to legislators and their constituents during that period were unusually profound and difficult to manage. The congressmen who were included in this study were determined by their voting records on matters concerning foreign affairs listed in Appendix A. On that basis, the following former members of the United States Congress were designated by this author as FDR’s Republicans.

SENATORS Senator Warren Austin of Vermont Senator Joseph H. Ball of Minnesota Senator Warren Barbour of New Jersey Senator Styles Bridges of New Hampshire Senator Ernest Willard Gibson of Vermont Senator Ernest William Gibson of Vermont Senator Chandler Gurney of South Dakota Senator Frederick Hale of Maine Senator Wallace White of Maine

REPRESENTATIVES Representative Joseph Baldwin of New York Representative George Joseph Bates of Massachusetts Representative Harold Cluett of New York Representative Sterling Cole of New York Representative Paul Cunningham of Iowa Representative Fred Douglas of New York Representative Charles Eaton of New Jersey Representative Leland Ford of California Representative Ralph Gamble of New York Representative Bertrand Gearhart of California Representative Charles Gifford of Massachusetts Representative Clarence Hancock of New York

Representative Clarence Kilburn of New York Representative Karl Le Compte of Iowa Representative Donald McLean of New Jersey Representative Charles Plumley of Vermont Representative Edith Nourse Rogers of Massachusetts Representative Margaret Chase Smith of Maine Representative Foster Stearns of New Hampshire Representative John Taber of New York Representative Albert Vreeland of New Jersey Representative James Wadsworth of New York

NOTES 1. Michael H. Hunt, “The Long Crisis in U.S. Diplomatic History,” Diplomatic History 16 (1992): 128. 2. Robert D. Schulzinger, “Complaints, Self-justifications, and Analysis: The Historiography of American Foreign Relations since 1969,” Diplomatic History 15 (1991): 246. 3. Clyde P. Weed, The Nemesis of Reform: The Republican Party During the New Deal (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 4. Mr. Weed argues against Anthony Downs’s view that a political party is a rational actor that will “alter its appeals in response to changes in policy preferences by the electorate.” 4. James L. Sundquist, Dynamics of the Party System: Alignment and Realignment of the Political Parties of the United States (Washington DC: Brookings, 1973), 87. 5. Karen A. J. Miller, Populist Nationalism: Republican Insurgency and American Foreign Policy Making 1918–1925 (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1999).

Chapter 1

Farmers, Foreign Policy, and Party Politics prior to 1930 It is important to consider the events that predated but highly influenced the character of the debate over foreign policy that took place in the United States during the 1930s. In the broadest possible terms, the issues that greatly affected that debate involved the radical economic, industrial, technological, political, and demographic changes that took place in the United States and elsewhere in the world between 1880 and 1930. Those changes resulted from the Second Industrial Revolution and affected the nature of American society, the conduct of international relations, and the philosophies of American political parties. Specifically, the themes that underscored the question of American involvement in the European crisis of the 1930s involved the three broad factors indicated by the title of this chapter: farmers, foreign policy, and party politics. Throughout the debate farmers were moved by their discontent and their declining power to oppose almost any initiative that emanated from the east coast establishment, including those related to foreign policy. Traditionally their differences related to tariffs, but the rise of an urban industrial society in the United States added new elements to the foreign policy debate between them. In particular, farmers were opposed to the global commercial perspective (first advanced by the Republican Party) and all of the expensive responsibilities that it entailed. The debate of the 1930s was also greatly affected by the attempts of the two major political parties to accommodate the new political and economic forces and to exploit or contain them.

FARMERS AND FOREIGN POLICY This chapter is an attempt to reproduce the historical consciousness of those who would later participate in the neutrality debates. The majority of the Republican anti-isolationists in this study were born or raised during the transitional times of the Gilded Age of the late nineteenth century. Two were born in the late 1860s, eight in the 1870s, six in the 1880s, nine in the 1890s, and six between 1901 and 1905. They grew up in an agricultural age and matured into an industrial one. During their careers they had to face the convulsions that accompanied that transition. They worked within the same historical context that affected the consciousness of their constituents and their opponents. The following is intended to describe that context and the impact it had on members of this study during the foreign policy debate of the 1930s. FDR’s Republicans began their lives during the Gilded Age, an age that stands out as a time of extreme agrarian discontent. The nations of Western Europe and North America became painfully aware of the shift in their economies from agriculture to industry during that era. By 1900 the total value of manufactured products in the United States was almost two-and-onehalf times as great as the total of farm products.1 The foreign policy debate of the 1930s was in

part the outgrowth of a whole range of political, economic, philosophical, and cultural differences that had divided agrarians and industrialists for many years. The conflict between those two segments of society had been a characteristic of politics in the United States since Jefferson and Hamilton. The yeoman farmer was idealized by the former while the latter believed urban manufacturing held the key to progress and security for the country. The American two-party system was based largely on the competition between rural agrarian Democrats and the urban commercial interests of the Federalist-Whig tradition. Competition between them was a primary factor that provoked the American Civil War, and the conclusion of that war did not resolve the tensions between them. After the Civil War, eastern credit and railroad interests were needed to develop the Great Plains, and farmers found themselves in debt to creditors who kept a tight reign on the dwindling money supply. The clash between western agrarian advocates of greenbacks, silver currency, and low tariffs and the urban investment interests opposed to inflating the money supply or lowering tariffs continued the schism that marked the early years of the republic. In addition to the inherent conflict of interests between borrowers and lenders, it became increasingly evident that the country was industrializing and that agrarians were losing influence.2 Concentrated wealth had a clear advantage over dispersed agrarians, and an agrarian political philosophy emerged that initially advocated political innovations to level the playing field. On the state and local levels, agrarians organized and won the right to referendums, recall, and primaries. But by 1900 it had become clear that agrarians lacked the numbers to control the national agenda, and their movement manifested a siege mentality that generally opposed any changes wrought by the forces of industrialization. Foreign policy may have been only one of many areas of debate between agriculture and industry, but it was a long-standing one and dealt with issues that struck at the heart of the wellbeing of every citizen: money and war. Conflicting positions on tariffs had traditionally divided agrarians and industrialists, but by the late nineteenth century new issues that further separated the two groups were being introduced to the foreign policy agenda. The most prominent of those new issues were globalism, imperialism, and new relations with Great Britain. The following thematic categorization analyses conflicts between agriculture and industry and their impact on the formation of American foreign policy during the 1930s.

TARIFFS The tariff issue is arguably the oldest foreign policy issue that divided rural farmers and urban businessmen. The high-tariff Hamiltonians and low-tariff Jeffersonians sparred over the issue. The Nullification Debate of the 1820s was a constitutional question that arose out of a disagreement over tariffs. Briefly stated, if industry received protection with high tariffs, then agriculture was disadvantaged by selling at traditionally low prices while being forced to buy manufactured goods at an artificially higher cost. Adding to this injury, American industrial products were frequently of lower quality than imports.

President Lincoln had raised tariffs to pay for the war. After the Civil War, northern urban congressmen infuriated rural southerners by justifying high tariffs as the means to pay the pensions of Union veterans. But the revenues from tariffs were also used to finance larger military and foreign adventures. The opening of the Great Plains to agriculture was capital intensive, and corn and wheat farmers soon began to feel the same pinch southern cotton growers had been feeling for years. World War I was a boon to U.S. farmers, but when Europe recovered, agricultural prices fell. The Republican administrations of the 1920s favored big business and raised tariffs higher than ever. Farmers suffered not only as consumers, but they soon discovered that it also made it more difficult to sell their products abroad. High tariffs stalled European exports to the United States, and as a result Europeans were unable to acquire U.S. dollars with which to purchase American corn, cotton, and wheat.

GLOBALISM Globalism was a departure from the traditional insularity of American foreign policy and represented the shift from a marginal role in world affairs to an active and influential one. Debates attempting to define the extent of the country’s international role can also be traced back to colonial days. The American Revolution was an expression of the desire for an independent voice and direct participation in world affairs. However, when the Founding Fathers considered to what extent the country should become involved in the French Revolution, they chose neutrality. In general, whenever the country expanded or in any other way came into conflict with foreign powers, its position in the wider world had to be considered. Those earlier debates were limited, however, since the country’s underdevelopment and geographic isolation generally dictated a continental orientation and a rather inactive role in world affairs. These traditional restraints to a worldwide role for the United States were removed before 1900. By the late nineteenth century the United States was no longer underdeveloped or incapable of competing with the world’s great powers. New technologies in transportation and communication that resulted from the Second Industrial Revolution lessened the gap between continents and encouraged the development of a global economy. In addition, the industrialization of the United States established an incentive to seek overseas markets. Globalism was a broad term used to define a course of action that abandoned traditional insularity and advanced the notion that the United States should take its place alongside the other great powers involved in world trade and politics. It is important for the purposes of this study to emphasize that globalism was primarily an initiative of the Republican Party after the Civil War and emphasized the commercial benefits. Although globalism had been pursued by President Grant and Secretary of State Seward, it met with only limited public acceptance until the election of William McKinley in 1896. His election of that year signaled the public’s acceptance of a more activist, global foreign policy. As H. Wayne Morgan explains, “many voted for McKinley in 1896, assuming that he would free Cuba, or at least compel Spain to

adopt more lenient policies. He presided over a party that traditionally favored overseas expansion. It was the home of James G. Blaine’s Pan-Americanism, filled with spokesmen for widening economic penetration in the Orient and South America.”3 The turning point for popular acceptance of a global foreign policy occurred at a formative and impressionable time in the lives of the members of this study. One of the more interesting coincidences encountered during research concerned Warren Austin’s early diplomatic interests. In 1897 Austin was a sophomore at the University of Vermont. He wrote a paper analyzing the power politics of the Franco-Prussian War in sophisticated detail and in keeping with the standard interpretation of Bismarck’s manipulation of the events.4 In the same year he participated in a debate over the question of U.S. neutrality prior to the War of 1812.5 Austin’s early interest in diplomatic history was in keeping with the rising tide of globalism characteristic of the late nineteenth century. His work in college was indicative of his particular support for the globalist position of his party. Austin’s study of Prussian aggression and American neutrality held him in good stead later in life, when circumstances forced him to confront the issues of German aggression and American neutrality prior to Pearl Harbor. In 1932 Warren Austin was elected senator from Vermont and went on to become the undisputed leader of the Republican internationalists. At the turn of the century globalism was a new and exciting departure for the United States. Other young people of Warren Austin’s generation were equally enthusiastic about the future the Republican Party offered them. James Wadsworth was in his junior year at Yale in 1896. During the late 1930s his position in the House of Representatives paralleled Warren Austin’s leadership of the internationalists in the Senate. While in college, Wadsworth supported McKinley enthusiastically to the point of contributing to the disruption and cancellation of William Jennings Bryan’s campaign speech in New Haven in 1896. Further evidence of Wadsworth’s support for Republican globalism was revealed following his graduation, when he volunteered for service in the Spanish-American War. In 1902 he married Alice Evelyn Hay, daughter of Secretary of State John Hay, who served under both McKinley and Roosevelt. That union brought him into contact with one of the greatest supporters of globalism with whom he agreed and respected. He considered his father-in-law “a truly great statesman, with vision.”6 John Hay’s definition of globalism entailed an investment in coaling stations and a large navy to protect them. Farmers saw these as being of benefit to industrialists and not to themselves. As producers of raw materials and agricultural exports like cotton that were sold to industrialized nations, farmers saw no profit in opening up markets in the underdeveloped world—only access to unwanted competition.7 The creation of a large army and navy also offended those who believed in the Jeffersonian agrarian tradition and objected to a strong central government and a professional and permanent army. But perhaps most important, globalism struck at the heart of an American tradition that opposed colonialism and imperialism. This tradition drew from the unpleasant American experience of having once been a colony and culminated in Monroe’s defiant ultimatum to the

European empires enshrined in his famous doctrine. Farmers in particular were sensitive to this issue and identified to some extent with colonized people. They felt themselves exploited, manipulated, and helpless to counter the powers of concentrated wealth located in far away cities. The tradition of American anti-imperialist sentiment worked against England and France at the outbreak of war in Europe in 1939. The western democracies were still perceived as evil imperialists even after Hitler’s invasion of Poland. That argument still carried weight and was employed by Senator William Borah during his nationwide radio speech not long after Hitler’s war machine had rolled over and decimated the Poles. Borah asserted that the English and French were waging an “imperialist war” against Germany, a small but telling example of the extent to which anti-imperialism was still a powerful tool to rally opinion in support of neutrality and to deny aid to the allies.8 Globalism became the generally accepted and seemingly inevitable approach to American foreign policy starting in 1896. Under the leadership of Woodrow Wilson, the Democratic Party embraced globalism during his presidency. But like the high tariff policies they had long opposed but failed to overturn, agrarians remained unconvinced that worldwide commitments were not in reality designed primarily for the benefit of urban banking and manufacturing interests.

ANGLO-AMERICAN RAPPROCHEMENT During the development of a new global perspective, the United States forged a partnership with its old adversary, Great Britain. This represented another dramatic departure for U.S. foreign policy given that the United States had engaged in numerous disputes with Great Britain for over a century. The American Revolution consolidated the Founding Fathers’ vision of government without a monarchy. Foreign policy disputes followed, from the War of 1812 to competition over the borders of Maine, Minnesota, and Oregon; the English elite’s sympathy with the South during the Civil War; mutual aspirations in Texas, Hawaii, the Caribbean, the North Atlantic, and the South Pacific; and not least of all, the Irish problem about which millions of Irish Americans felt passionately. It was not a small thing that the foremost enemy and rival of the United States for over a century became its foremost ally practically overnight. A dispute over the border between Venezuela and British Guyana in 1895–96 provided the occasion for a reassessment of AngloAmerican relations. The United States came to the defense of Venezuela and came close to waging war with Great Britain. The dispute was resolved peacefully, and a rapprochement between the United States and Great Britain followed. The British came to the conclusion that their splendid isolation was no longer tenable on a global scale. They sought a quid pro quo in which the United States would protect British interests in the western hemisphere in exchange for British protection of U.S. interests in Asia.9 Farmers who opposed globalism naturally opposed the greater financial commitment and military responsibility that came with Anglo-American rapprochement. Their opposition was

also based on a form of solidarity they shared with the subject peoples of the British Empire. American farmers felt exploited by eastern creditors and railroad interests and identified with those within the British Empire who felt exploited by similar investment groups centered in London. Egalitarian-minded American working-class people held no admiration for the British crown or the class system that it embodied. The English of the Victorian Age were proud of their empire, and their nationals were often perceived as arrogant and elitist. Europeans in general disparaged American culture as crude and unsophisticated, and only such curiosities as Annie Oakley and the Wild West Show elicited much interest. At least the wealthy class of industrialists in the United States had earned their success by their own efforts—and with it a degree of respect that the English nobility could not claim. During the polarizing decade that followed the Great Depression, the privileged classes of all nations were held in contempt, and none more so than those who had been born to privilege. People involved in the neutrality debates of the 1930s who opposed aiding Britain still held to these antagonistic American views of the English. After World War I, allegations were made that Britain, in collusion with New York bankers and industrialists, had tricked the United States into entering the war. Such allegations gave new life to older pre-existing agrarian antiEnglish, anti-elitist, and anti-east coast sentiments. They were a convincing argument for many who condemned closer ties with Britain and justified their opposition to aid for Britain when that nation faced Hitler alone. Franklin Roosevelt consciously began refraining from using the word “Tory” during and after the Battle of Britain was waged in 1940.10 This was a reversal from the early years of the Depression, when FDR liberally employed words such as “royalists” and “aristocrats” to demonize Wall Street bankers and others who opposed his New Deal policies. More than a century of anti-English sentiment also merged with a general pattern of antiEuropean pro-Americanism. Throughout the nineteenth century, the United States proudly distanced itself from European political traditions and institutions and rejoiced in American exceptionalism. George Washington’s “Farewell Address” was often quoted out of context as a warning against involvement in European affairs. His address was reshaped to portray Europe as a decadent and infectious entity, and many Americans were determined to “avoid foreign contamination.”11 Such was not the case for many members of this study who held positive views of Great Britain and Europe. Many of FDR’s Republicans had strong personal ties to Britain and Europe that negated anti-English and anti-European proclivities. Family backgrounds and religious preferences of this group could often be traced back to English roots. Others had family ties to France or Canada. Based on their surnames, at least twenty-four of the thirty-one anti-isolationists were of English ancestry, at least two were of French descent, and one was born in Canada. An informal survey of the religious affiliations of the group members revealed six Episcopalians, three Presbyterians, three Congregationalists, one Methodist, one Baptist, and one Catholic.12 There were no Germans, Italians, Russians, or Japanese among the members of FDR’s

Republicans. The majority belonged to Anglo-Protestant congregations; only one was identified as a Roman Catholic, and no members of the group identified themselves as Lutheran or Eastern Orthodox. Representative Joseph Baldwin had particularly strong personal ties to England and France. The New York City congressman reminisced in his memoirs of his family’s longstanding friendship with the Churchills. When Winston Churchill traveled to New York during the 1920s, Baldwin visited with him.13 Baldwin’s wife was of French descent, the grandniece of Jules Verne, and together with her husband returned annually to Europe. Edith Nourse Rogers, congresswoman from Massachusetts, attended a Parisian finishing school before World War I. During the war she returned to France to work as a Red Cross nurse. Many other members of this study also served in Europe during that war and are dealt with later in this chapter. Throughout the 1920s, Wallace White of Maine attended numerous conferences in such places as Paris, Geneva, Copenhagen, Cairo, and London. Many of his constituents were French speaking, and White kept a keen eye on Canada.14 Senator Gerald Nye of South Dakota was one of the best known isolationists during the 1930s. He never traveled outside the continental United States and would have found it much less difficult to ascribe to the anti-English and anti-European rationale for neutrality than his more worldly colleagues. This tradition of anti-Europeanism supported the isolationists’ argument during the neutrality debates of the 1930s. The rapprochement with Britain and the coordination of defense interests could still be interpreted as a new and aberrant contradiction of the country’s traditional foreign policy. One pro-neutrality publication of that period described international collective security as a “new theory” that “has no roots in experience.”15 For Europeans, the concept of collective security had been accepted since the Congress of Vienna. For Americans with little knowledge of European diplomatic history, that “new theory” was yet another break with the traditional foreign policy that had successfully kept the United States out of European conflicts. In search of domestic reasons for that break, isolationists focused on the greedy desires of East Coast capitalists as the most probable cause.

THE RISE AND DECLINE OF THE MISSIONARY IMPULSE The Spanish-American War and the acquisition of the Philippines in 1898 took the United States beyond globalism and into imperialism. The debate that preceded that step once again pitted the forces of agriculture against industry. In addition to the agrarian tendency to sympathize and identify with colonial subjects, opponents of United States imperialism pointed out the inconsistency of a democracy withholding rights of representation from its sovereign subjects. William Jennings Bryan, the foremost leader of discontented agrarians, feared that the United States was being led down the undemocratic colonial path by wicked Europeans. He also was concerned that imperialism was turning the country’s attention away from the agrarian

reforms that represented the core of his political agenda and campaign strategy. President McKinley advocated United States imperialism and countered criticism by presenting it to the general public in an emotional, evangelistic call to arms. His famous prayer appealing to God for guidance was answered, and he claimed to be divinely directed not to give the Philippines back to Spain, or entrust them to France or Germany, or allow them to govern themselves. It was the divine mission of the United States not to exploit but to selflessly civilize and Christianize the Filipinos, most of whom were already Catholic. An emotional sense of a moral mission thus became a characteristic of United States imperialism and the country’s foreign policy in general during the two decades that followed the war with Spain.16 Theodore Roosevelt followed in his predecessor’s footsteps, and during his own presidency the great white fleet conveyed an image that successfully combined the elements of force and morality. President Taft’s support of the effort to put China’s railroad development under the guidance of an international consortium continued the humanitarian trend and also ensured the participation of the United States. The actions of President Woodrow Wilson also fit the pattern of emotionalism and mission characteristic of his Republican predecessors. Wilson broke with diplomatic tradition when he refused to recognize the Huerta regime of Mexico on moral grounds in 1916. His declaration of war against Germany in 1917 likewise emphasized high-minded ideals over pragmatic necessities. Like McKinley, Wilson stressed idealism and mission in an effort to defuse the arguments of those who opposed his foreign policy objectives and military interventions. Wilson referred to United States participation in the League of Nations as a moral obligation.17 The tendency to justify imperialism and military activism on the basis of emotional appeals to the public’s missionary impulse proved successful for more than twenty years. Even William Jennings Bryan, an agrarian anti-imperialist early in his career, changed his mind after the occupation of the Philippines was presented in humanitarian terms. The missionary strategy coincided with the Republican Party’s historically strong, evangelical moral streak, and it was consistent with the popular activist social gospel associated with the Progressive Era of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. After the First World War, however, progressivism lost its momentum and the pendulum began to swing in the other direction.18 By the 1920s, emotional and self-sacrificing appeals proved to be a liability for policies that had previously benefited from such an approach. Exhausted from twenty years of progressive “do-gooder” reform and disillusioned by the results it had failed to achieve after the First World War, Americans lost interest in idealistic social activism, and any evangelistic call to arms became vulnerable to criticism. President Wilson was unable to move the American public in his final barnstorming appeal to save his Treaty and the League. The image of the allied victors squabbling over spoils reinforced the feeling that the president’s objectives were out of touch with reality. In William Leuchtenburg’s words: “in 1914 progressivism was triumphant; six years later it was apparently dead as a doornail.”19 Domestic policies with evangelistic overtones, such as prohibition or bans on teaching evolution, suffered similarly and were being openly scorned as naive or unrealistic by the late 1920s.20 Isolationists used such arguments against the emotionally motivated “do-gooder”

policies to discredit globalism, imperialism, and closer ties to Europe, which they portrayed as policies that had been inspired by irrational altruism and had failed. They advocated that such policies should be abandoned and replaced by the traditional and pragmatic American continental insularity of the past.21 Opponents of globalism and collective security discovered they could freely attack those ideals after the First World War without fear of being caught out of step with the emotional activist spirit that had characterized the pre-war Progressive Era. Similarly, foreign requests for American aid during the 1930s fell upon the deaf ears of a public that was tired and suspicious of humanitarian appeals. “Partiality and intervention have been glorified,” declared a scholarly and somewhat sarcastic defense of neutrality published by Yale University Press in 1940; “there are those [who regard neutrality] as insufficiently heroic and who recommend mixing in foreign wars as a ‘world service.’”22 Those who believed in neutrality asserted that “nonintervention has been denounced as immoral” and that interventionism “enlisted in its support the emotional morality of so-called idealists.”23 While claiming the mantle of pragmatism, isolationists depicted interventionism as having been inspired by an overly emotional idealism that had proven to be unsuccessful as evidenced by the failed results of the First World War.

WORLD WAR I As in the earlier debates over globalism, imperialism, and the rapprochement with Great Britain, agrarians and industrialists also disagreed over the issue of U.S. participation in the First World War. Farmers stood behind Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan in support of his position to maintain the country’s neutrality. Bryan’s public appearances were like revivals as he issued his own “call to arms.” He campaigned that advocates of war located in the big eastern cities did not speak for 80 percent of the population—that is, farmers, labor, and small businessmen.24 He opposed expansion of the navy on the grounds that the recently constructed Arizona cost nearly as much as the department of agriculture had spent over the entire preceding year, and he declared “the farmer’s interest in peace” was unyielding.25 He pointed out that manufacturers of munitions, who hoped to immerse the nation in war, would themselves, of course, be too busy negotiating army contracts and loans to go to the front lines.26 Sensing the president’s waning commitment to neutrality, Bryan resigned from the cabinet in June of 1915. Ironically, Wilson owed his re-election to Bryan supporters of the Great Plains and the far west who voted for him because he had “kept us out of war.”27 The United States entered the war on April 6, 1917, when the final vote on the war resolution was taken. Several members of this study were in Congress that year and hold the rare distinction of having participated in both rounds of the “Second Thirty Years’ War.”28 Senator Wadsworth felt President Wilson “was too weak, not aggressive enough, in the Lusitania case, and other challenges which the Germans threw at us.”29

Wallace White was a freshman in the House in April of 1917 and cast his first vote in favor of the declaration of war against Germany. His manuscript collection provided the opportunity to access the kind of “grassroots” information that diplomatic historians have been accused of neglecting.30 The following takes advantage of that opportunity to recount how one of FDR’s Republicans dealt with German aggression the first time. White’s run for Congress in 1916 was preceded by two failed attempts to be elected mayor of the heavily ethnic, working-class, and Democratic city of Lewiston, Maine. Wallace White’s campaign very much reflected the progressivism of the times. In a campaign letter of 1916, he outlined a very legalistic progressive platform: pro-government regulation of utilities and conservation of natural resources, pro-income and inheritance taxes, pro-civil service, antispoils, pro-old age insurance, pro-equal suffrage, pro-limited work laws for women and children, and pro-vocational education. White was also pro-tariff and pro-preparedness, but his campaign obviously focused on progressive social reform. His opponent, three-term incumbent Representative McGillicuddy, was a Democratic patronage politician with strong support from Catholics and labor groups.31 Congressman McGillicuddy’s voting record on preparedness issues prior to the war presumably was intended to appeal to his urban, working-class, Irish supporters and agrarians. He voted to abolish cavalry regiments and battleship construction during the 62nd Congress, the latter a seemingly odd decision for a congressman from a ship-building state. He voted against aircraft appropriations in the 63rd, and during the 64th he voted against increasing the size of the army. He voted like a Bryan Democrat in accordance with viewpoints held by both exploited agrarians and non-Anglo immigrants, positions that were anti-English and opposed to large military budgets. In March of 1915 McGillicuddy declared there was “no danger of war” and that “all this talk about preparing for war is not only uncalled for and unnecessary but is positively mischievous if not dangerous.”32 Both White and McGillicuddy held similar views on domestic issues; their differences over foreign policy must have determined the election that year. The voters of Maine’s 2nd Congressional district in 1916 chose the pro-preparedness challenger over the three-term antipreparedness incumbent. A difference of 547 votes, out of almost 38,000 cast, was responsible for setting White on his path to become one of FDR’s Republicans. During the rematch between White and McGillicuddy two years later, the concerns of constituents about foreign policy emerged more clearly in White’s speeches. His remarks from a 1918 speech would remain eerily appropriate twenty years later: “Germany is the victim of … a man filled with an insane conception of German destiny, fired with ambition, dreaming of a vast empire across central Europe … and into the heart of Asia, aspiring even as a Caesar of old to world domination.”33 White also expressed his lifelong concern for Maine’s maritime interests: “international law guaranteed to us definite privileges of trade and commerce” and “to have yielded would have meant demoralizing our industries and our trade.”34 To further emphasize his loyalty to President Wilson, White placed the slogan, “He has supported the Administration. Why not support him?” under pictures of himself in his campaign literature.35 But White’s most devastating attack on McGillicuddy was an attempt to portray

him as having been too cavalier about the prospects of a German attack on the state in the union that juts farthest out into the North Atlantic: “Mr. McGillicuddy voted against an effort to increase the regular army,” White said; “he miserably failed to sense and to meet the needs of the hour” and “thereby delayed for many months our participation in this conflict and made our burden many fold heavier.”36 The voters of the heavily Democratic district agreed in 1918 and returned Wallace White to office by a margin of almost 3,000 votes.37 The postwar period changed the character of the debate over foreign policy. The rejection of the Versailles Treaty confirmed that the country was tired of globalism. After twenty years of innovation in foreign affairs, the public appeared reluctant to pursue any more new departures. Wilson’s program of collective security as embodied in the League of Nations suffered defeat. As if in response to the public mood of the 1920s, Wallace White no longer identified himself with the progressive causes he had championed in 1916. He encouraged all kinds of shipbuilding and cosponsored the Jones-White Shipping Act that subsidized seagoing mail contracts and provided low-interest ship construction loans. He became the chairman of the Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries and represented the United States at the London Conference on Safety of Life at Sea in 1929. He kept a vigilant eye on the preferential trade agreements that tempted importers to avoid Maine’s ports (and duties) and unload and transship their goods through Canada. His favorite stump speech topic of the 1920s was “the tragedy of shipbuilding.” He reiterated to numerous civic groups the fact that the United States had fallen to tenth place among shipbuilding nations and accounted for a mere 2 percent of world construction in 1928. To groups like the Propeller Club of Boston he exposed the “sinister fact” that 81 percent of American exports were carried in foreign bottoms.38 During the debates over neutrality and preparedness that preceded World War II, Wallace White had precedents at his disposal suggesting what viewpoint the people of Maine would support. That was important for a politician like White. His personality combined some of the best and worst qualities associated with his profession. He was rather conventional and not a particularly original thinker; as one profile noted, his record was “unspectacular.”39 He was certainly no demagogue, a colleague having noted that “his thin voice … barely carries to the galleries.”40 A constituent said of him: “he is always just a plain everyday sort of young man.”41 Nor was White the kind of scrappy politician who liked to fight it out on the chamber floor. He was noted for “his good-humored exchanges of repartee with the Democratic minority.”42 His dislike of contentious arguments later played an important part in his vote, just prior to Hitler’s invasion of Poland, to postpone the debate over neutrality. If he was more inclined to be led by his constituents than to lead them, then his thirty-year career would seem to indicate that his constituents liked it that way.

WARTIME EXPERIENCES Of course, the decline of the missionary impulse and progressivism and the fading commitment to globalism only helped justify what was a reaction against war itself. Americans of the 1930s

had several fairly recent examples upon which to base their fears of increasingly modern warfare. The American Civil War had been more costly than ever imagined, and anyone born in the 1870s or 1880s could easily have had a close relative who fought or died in that war. The rapid victory against Spain caused elation in 1898 but was followed by protracted, costly, and unpopular guerilla warfare in the Philippines. Post-war revelations also exposed how carelessly clothed, fed, and cared for U.S. troops had been during the Spanish-American War. James Wadsworth, son of a Civil War veteran, saw firsthand the unprepared condition of the U.S. Army in 1898 and was aghast to find that “we had 25,000 men in the regular army, that’s all!”43 His tour of duty in the Philippines taught him how long it took to train a good soldier, and he noted, “what a wretched soldier I had been the summer before.”44 His experience gave him the insight and credibility to effectively advocate for Selective Service and its extension prior to Pearl Harbor. As a U.S. Senator, Wadsworth was elected to the Military Affairs Committee in 1918 and, not surprisingly in light of his experience, advocated for universal military training and a permanent army of 586,000 men.45 The greatest legacy of World War I was that it introduced total war. The fury and magnitude of entire national economies in combat was something for which the public was unprepared. However glorious war had appeared to be in the past, it ceased with the evidence of staggering losses due to innovations like poison gas and machine guns. Incompetent generals who pursued preindustrial strategies wasted the lives of hundreds of thousands of soldiers without achieving any perceptible gains.46 As the specter of a second world war approached, it was met not with the public enthusiasm that greeted the first but with dread. There were no illusions about a quick victory and no misconceptions about the cost and sacrifice that would be involved. It was no surprise that the public recoiled from the idea of repeating the tragic experience of the Great War. The politicians included in this study who were the loudest advocates for preparedness prior to World War II were also those who had acquired frontline experience in World War I. Their experiences seemed to have shown them not only what the consequences of another war could be but also what would be necessary to defend, pursue, and prevail in the event of such a contingency. Edith Nourse Rogers was not only a representative who favored preparedness before World War II, she was also the wife of a member of the House of Representatives who strongly supported American participation in the First World War. Her husband, John Jacob Rogers, represented the 5th district of Massachusetts from 1913 until his death in 1925. He had been a classmate of Franklin Roosevelt’s and “a friend of long standing.”47 He viewed the Central powers as, “the pirate and the desperado of nations.”48 Mrs. Rogers spent the year of 1917 in France as a Red Cross nurse. After the war she was a “grey lady,” volunteering at Walter Reed Hospital in Washington DC. President Harding appointed her as special representative for disabled veterans in 1922, and she continued in that position under Presidents Coolidge and Hoover. She succeeded her husband upon his death as a member of the Veterans Affairs Committee and later became its chairman. Mrs. Rogers’s experience as a wartime nurse had a far-reaching impact. Much like Senator

Wadsworth, she also witnessed the consequences of American troops infamously lacking in experience and training. Also like Wadsworth, she became one of the strongest supporters of military preparedness. In 1940 she said “better a thousand times to be overtrained and overprepared than undertrained and under-prepared” and cited her World War I experience as proof.49 Ernest Gibson Sr. was stationed in France during World War I and carried on a lifelong correspondence with the French family that housed him. Ernest Gibson Sr. and his son, Ernest Gibson Jr., both of whom served as senators from Vermont, were graduates of Norwich Military Academy. The senior Gibson took his military background seriously, and it was a major factor that led to his support for preparedness prior to Pearl Harbor. On June 8, 1940, Senator Gibson Sr. said, “I have always believed in military training. I graduated from a Military college, and educated my two sons in a Military school in order that they might be better prepared to serve their country in any emergency that might arise.”50 Joseph Baldwin interrupted his college education at Harvard in 1917 to enlist in the navy. After six months of sea sickness, he transferred to the army as a second lieutenant. With irony, he recalled in his memoirs how the excitement of his purchase of a new uniform contrasted with the reality of his experience as a machine gunner at the Battle of the Argonne.51 Foster Stearns, later a congressman from New Hampshire, was a first lieutenant and won the Silver Star and Purple Heart for his service in the World War I. He went on to join the state department and served in Constantinople from 1921 to 1923 and in Paris until 1924. Albert Vreeland, later a congressman from New Jersey in the army reserves, served as a seventeenyear-old ambulance driver in the First World War. Karl Le Compte served in the hospital service during the war, twenty years before becoming a congressman from Iowa. Clarence Kilburn, later a representative from upstate New York, was a captain in the infantry. Bertrand Gearhart served in the air service and later represented the Fresno, California, district in the House. Chan Gurney was a sergeant in World War I, twenty years before he became a senator from South Dakota. Clarence Hancock experienced the modernization of warfare as a member of the New York cavalry in Mexico during the 1916 incursion and as a machine gun captain in France during 1917. He later became a representative from New York. Others may not have seen active service but had ties to the military. Paul Cunningham, later a congressman from Iowa, was a lieutenant stationed near Lake Michigan. Charles Plumely, a representative from Vermont, served as the president of Norwich Military Academy from 1920 to 1934. As a consequence of their military experience, these members of this study were predisposed to support proposals that were suggested by the secretaries of the U.S. Army and the U.S. Navy prior to World War II. Throughout the foreign policy debate of the late 1930s, the isolationists marshaled memories of the costliness and destruction of the First World War to strengthen their position. That horrible experience provided them with an irrefutable example of what another war held in store. It was an example that had not been available to those who opposed American participation in the First World War. In addition, the central argument proposed by isolationists of the 1930s was also based on

the example furnished by the First World War. They maintained that a reversal of the United States’ pre-World War I policy would safeguard against a repetition of the events that had followed. Isolationists reasoned that “unhappily, the United States was not neutral from 1914 to 1917,” a situation that “served largely to drive the United States into the European war.”52 Their definition of the word “neutrality” inferred a meaning of noninvolvement or equal involvement. But the definition of neutrality employed during World War I was such that the United States was allowed to trade with all parties with no favoritism to any. But the opposing sides in that conflict did not benefit equally from American commerce; the seaboard countries had a distinct advantage. Therefore, the isolationists reasoned that if the United States remained neutral this time in a way that neither side had an advantage, the country would not be driven into another costly and pointless war. That one-dimensional deduction provided a seductively easy explanation and justification for neutrality that bolstered support for the isolationist movement. However, their argument failed to acknowledge that, although by their definition the United States was not neutral prior to World War I because the opposing sides in that conflict did not benefit equally from American commerce, neither had the United States committed itself to a policy of collective security and unlimited aid to the allies before entering World War I. Thus the adoption of collective security during the 1930s would have also represented a reversal of the pre-World War I position that the United States had taken. Such an argument was somewhat more complicated to convey. For the average American, it seemed that Great Britain and France had been the primary beneficiaries from the way American “neutrality” was applied during the first war. Therefore it was assumed that a reversal of that policy could avoid war, and that meant that the allies should get less support the next time, not more.

LEGALISM The United States’ foreign policy during the 1920s reflected the retreat from the idealistic and quasireligious tendencies of the Progressive Era. The new approach, however, was a continuation of the legalistic tendencies that progressives had also promoted. The policies of the 1920s were paradoxically both isolationist and internationalist. The United States threw up barriers to foreign goods and immigrants and eschewed participation in the League of Nations. However, the Washington Conference on Naval Disarmament, the Dawes Plan, and the Kellogg-Briand Pact indicated that the country still favored an active role in world affairs if it was couched in legalistic terms. The emotional and idealistic humanitarianism of the pre-World War I years was replaced by a new legalistic approach to foreign policy after the war: outlawing war and limiting the number of battleships was the way to prevent another world war. James Wadsworth, a member of the United States Senate at the time, disagreed, saying later that he “never had much faith in those limitation armament agreements.”53 Senator Wadsworth defended his opposition to the treaty to outlaw gas warfare on the grounds that “it is literally impossible to prevent people

with their backs to the wall … from using any weapon they can get their hands on in defense.”54 A more complete picture of the way the issue of a legalistic foreign policy was perceived on the grassroots level can be found in the manuscript collection of Wallace White. The congressman’s dual interests, international regulatory legislation and the interests of his home state, came into conflict in 1929 and 1930. The Kellogg Pact of 1928 and the London Conference of 1930 on naval arms limitation occasioned a vigorous debate in Maine. The Portland Press Herald and the Portland Evening News waged an editorial war over both issues between 1929 and 1930. The News felt that the Kellogg Pact reduced the danger of war, and thus “the cost of insurance against war naturally ought to come down.”55 The News went on to say that the Kellogg Pact was “a severe blow to the big army, big navy jingoes,” but “to the rest of us, it is just good news … the absurdity of renouncing war while we maintain the most expensive military and naval establishment in peacetime history is obvious.”56 The Press Herald editorials disagreed with the pacifist News and described the Pact as, “a delusion and a dream.”57 The News retorted that “it is the regular Republicans alone who are endangering the whole program of arms reduction.”58 The editorial contest between Portland’s two major daily newspapers clearly delineated the political division that existed in Maine between pacifist progressives and the Old Guard regulars both within the Republican Party. Wallace White positioned himself as a progressive on this issue despite his earlier stands in favor of national defense expenditures. In March of 1930 he joined thousands throughout Maine and signed a petition sent to the president. It urged “the U.S. delegation at the London Conference to conduct its negotiations in full remembrance of the renunciation of war as pledged in the Pact of Paris” and endorsed “the policy of naval reduction as announced by the president in his Armistice Day Address.”59 The Press Herald declared that sending expressions to the delegation at the London Conference “urging its members to arrive at an agreement for the reduction of naval armament is an undertaking sponsored by a group of pacifists” who “have set out to embarrass the American delegation at London.”60 The actions of signers like Congressman White, the presidents of Colby and Bates colleges, the Episcopal bishop, and the chief justice of the Maine supreme court were all labeled as “officious” by the Press Herald.61 No other congressman from Maine signed the petition; particularly noticeable in its absence was the signature of Maine’s senior senator and chairman of the Senate Naval Affairs Committee, Senator Frederick Hale. Senator Hale disapproved of the Kellogg Pact and feared it might lead to false expectations on the part of the general public. He opposed the London Treaty, the debt moratorium, and defense reductions.62 Six months later he introduced his own bill to build up the Navy to the limits permitted by the London Treaty. In his words, “the net results of our efforts to bring about permanent world peace seem to be that we ourselves are now far weaker relatively as compared with other powers than we were at the time of the Washington conference.”63 He said, “if one country desires to make war … the strongest deterrent … would be the fact that its opponent was too strong to overcome,” and “that is

precisely what we will not be if we keep up our present plan of allowing our navy to deteriorate.”64 Regarding the situation in Manchuria, he was no more hopeful: “the treaties in which we have placed such implicit confidence have utterly failed of immediate effect, and with their prestige damaged, may not be relied upon with any degree of safety as guaranties against future wars.”65 Nine months after signing the “pacifist” petition, Congressman White modified his popular stump speech and was quoting Teddy Roosevelt: “for spread of trade or peace and defense of flag in war, a great marine is indispensable.”66 He added, “we must have ships of our own and seamen of our own to carry goods to neutral markets and in case of need to reinforce our battle lines.”67 The reasons for White’s turnabout remain unclear. Senator Hale was greatly respected in Maine and was the dean of its Republican organization. His clear and unequivocal opposition to the treaties or any other form of legalistic pacifism had to have been taken seriously by Representative White. In addition, in 1931 White was being considered as a possible Republican candidate for the Senate. He would have needed the support of both Senator Hale and the regular Republican organization to attain the nomination. Henceforth, White expressed far less optimism about the chances that treaties could preserve the peace. In a radio speech in September 1930, he stated his pessimism to all “who believe in government by the people, Republican Germany trembles in the balance … in Italy we see an autocrat exercising power as sweeping as that of the Caesars of old … even in France, our sister republic … there are sinister suggestions of dissatisfaction with the existing order.”68 Legalistic means to solve world problems appealed to pacifists and internationalists alike, while isolationists made sure that United States commitments did not go beyond moral censure. It was an approach to foreign policy making that was inspired by the successful legalistic reforms of the Progressive Era. The legalistic approach remained popular well into the 1930s, and the Neutrality Acts reflected that tendency. A few politicians like Senator Wadsworth doubted the effectiveness of such an approach; Wadsworth’s practical view of war and human nature proved accurate after the Japanese occupation of Manchuria in 1931 revealed the irrelevance of laws that could not be enforced. For over twenty years Progressives had successfully enacted laws that regulated food, drugs, medicine, and health care; made the work place and our cities safer; and ensured that the voices of the people were heard in politics. It seemed logical that such legislative successes could be translated onto the international stage. The attempts to codify U.S. neutrality from 1935 onward were inspired by such thinking and by the examples of a legalistic approach to foreign policy making that had predominated in the 1920s. During the 1930s, isolationists maintained that the “theory that peace can be produced by coalitions of the worthy ‘peaceloving’ nations against an ‘aggressor’” was “anti-legal in its connotations.”69 For antiisolationists like Senator Wadsworth, who had witnessed earlier failed attempts to limit war by law and censure, military preparedness in coalition with our allies appeared to be the more realistic way to defend the country against lawless aggression.

POLARIZATION AND CYNICISM The foreign policy debate of the 1930s took place during a period of extreme political polarization and cynicism in the United States.70 The Great Depression heightened the sensitivity to the differences that already separated agriculture and industry, east and west, rural and urban, labor and management, and the common man from privileged elites. The conflict between agrarians and industrialists pervaded the politics of the United States during the fifty-year period that preceded the 1930s. The two camps were diametrically opposed to each other on many levels, and very little middle ground existed between them. A strong adversarial tradition had developed that was familiar to both. Domestic issues—and especially debates over the money supply and tariffs—far outweighed any foreign policy questions that arose during those years. Farmers staged a revolution of sorts in the 1880s and 1890s, in 1912, and again in 1924 in an attempt to redress their economic grievances. Ray Allen Billington suggested that during the 1930s the legacy of those antagonisms “inclined farmers to look with disfavor on anything sanctioned by Easterners. Thus if the East favored intervention in world affairs, they would automatically swing in the opposite direction.”71 The exploitation, frustration, and discontent that agrarians felt hardened into the opinion that their political rivals were essentially a predatory class of east coast capitalists. In the eyes of agrarians, exploitation for profit was the primary motive behind all of the domestic and foreign initiatives promoted by Wall Street. That opinion became more widespread during the Progressive Era as middle-class reformers focused on the abuses of big business and trusts. Allegations of wartime misconduct on the part of Wall Street and the fiasco over the Versailles Treaty left farmers feeling betrayed, swindled by fast-talking city slickers from Paris, London, and New York. The pattern of exploitation was consistent with what agrarians had perceived for the preceding fifty years. The same people who had been inflating railroad rates and maintaining the gold standard engineered American participation in the First World War. They had done so for their own profit and at the expense of hometown boys who did the fighting and the dying. The cultural differences between rural and urban America became more pronounced after the First World War as the United States “neared the end of a painful transition from a country reared in the rural village to a nation dominated by the great metropolis.”72 Technological and social changes altered the lifestyles of city dwellers long before the impact was felt in the countryside. City dwellers held “contempt” for small-town mores, and rural leaders attacked city life as debauched and “lost to fundamental American values.”73 Those differences added to the suspicion and polarization that were very evident during the debates over neutrality. From their rural and domestically oriented perspectives, agrarians simply could not see that the changes wrought by the Second Industrial Revolution were far more responsible for thrusting global involvement upon the United States than the actions of any particular class. Like the earlier Populists, small-town Americans held “the refreshingly simple belief that existing wrongs were the result of special privileges rather than impersonal economic forces.”74 The feelings of exploitation increased for agrarians during the agricultural crisis of

the 1920s and again and even more so during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Agrarians felt swindled by east coast capitalist elites and felt betrayed by a government that allowed the crash and the extended crisis to happen. The muckrakers of the Progressive Era had “accustomed many Americans to believe that neither political nor business leaders could be trusted.”75 The Depression revived and confirmed that impression. A Senate investigation of Wall Street “revealed that J. P. Morgan and his nineteen partners paid no federal income taxes for 1931 or 1932 and that Morgan kept a list of insiders who were allowed to buy at less than the market price.”76 Franklin Roosevelt’s elitist east coast lineage cast suspicion upon him, too. The Depression increased the sensitivity of the electorate to issues of class, adding to the polarization in politics.77 Agrarians could easily interpret Roosevelt’s desire to aid Britain as another swindle by a fast-talking east coast elitist. For agrarians of the East, class became a more significant factor than region to differentiate their adversaries. Like Roosevelt, many of the Republican anti-isolationists also fell into the elitist category. The majority of FDR’s Republicans received their undergraduate degrees from exclusive, private Eastern colleges.78 Fifteen attended graduate or professional schools after college. An occupational survey of the group revealed thirteen lawyers, six high-level business executives, two teachers, one diplomat, one doctor, one newspaper publisher, one minister, one journalist, one real-estate broker, one farmer, and three civil servants.79 With an electorate that had become increasingly sensitive to class divisions and less respectful of elites, many of the Republican anti-isolationists had to contend with a new source of resentment, as did the Republican Party in general. Candidates for political office were defined as either “with us” or “against us.” A candidate that deviated, even on a single issue, could be reclassified and lose their support. Sometimes a single issue became the litmus test of acceptability. For example, in 1928, upstate New York agrarian Republicans chose to run their own candidate against incumbent Republican Senator James Wadsworth. Prohibition was the litmus test that year, and Wadsworth was an outspoken “wet.” Even though he was a farmer himself, Wadsworth had violated the test of the agrarian progressive Republican “drys,” and they refused to give him their support. It was clearly obvious that their efforts would split the vote and result in the election of the Democratic candidate who hailed from New York City and was also a “wet.” Much like the national division that occurred in the party in 1912, Wadsworth had been scorned by the agrarian progressive wing of his own party. During the 1930s, neutrality became a litmus test of that sort that defined who was a true agrarian progressive and who was not. When Vermonter George Aiken faced his close race for the United States Senate in 1941, he adroitly crafted a position on neutrality that retained the support of agrarian progressives who were essential to his victory. Research revealed that by and large most isolationists were rural agrarians of modest income and did not hold the fancy degrees of many who were anti-isolationists. During the Great Depression it was natural that people were primarily concerned with their economic and personal well-being. Small-scale agrarians had been fighting an uphill battle for over fifty years to regulate rapacious railroad rates, loosen up the money supply, lower tariffs, and

develop a system that would provide price supports. With Franklin Roosevelt they finally succeeded in accomplishing their objectives, but they had not forgotten the lengthy battle they had waged. It was thus not surprising that agrarian isolationists focused on the economic, exploitative, and domestically oriented origins of foreign policy. That resulted in a polarized, cynical, and inflexible interpretation of the economic motives that lay behind the foreign policy agenda held by urban elites—the traditional domestic political rivals of the farmer.80 This polarization poisoned and clouded the debate over foreign policy and hampered the efforts by the president to achieve national unity in pursuit of his attempts to aid the Allies. The president voiced his concern for this problem in his State of the Union message of January 4, 1939. In that speech he stated that “even a nation well armed and well organized from a strictly military standpoint may, after a period of time, meet defeat if it is unnerved by self-distrust, endangered by class prejudice, by dissension between capital and labor, by false economy, and by other unresolved social problems at home.”81

THE POLITICAL PARTIES AND REALIGNMENT The periodic realignment of the major political parties is a well-documented phenomenon in American political history. With each realignment a new “party system” emerged. During the period between 1896 and 1932, the fourth party system characterized the politics of the United States. Although the Republican Party dominated during the years from 1896 to 1932, the fourth party system was neither stable nor static. The fluctuations, experimentation, and contradictions that occurred within the two major parties lend credibility to the thought that the period was not a system in itself but a transitional stage when both parties attempted to redefine themselves and adapt to an industrial age. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the regional animosities that resulted from the legacy of the Civil War benefitted the Republican Party. As tradition waned and the ideologies of the two parties became more consistent and well defined, the Republicans began to lose the allegiance of constituent groups whose support had been crucial to their success: agrarians, urban labor, and African Americans. Chapters Two and Three address the attempts by the Republican Party to mollify and retrieve those constituents when their departures became blatantly obvious after the realignment that accompanied the Democratic landslide of 1932. Fundamental differences between the parties were set early in the country’s history. The Federalist Party, and later the Whigs, associated the welfare of the country with the prosperity of the manufacturing, trading, and propertied classes and the educated (usually urban) elites. The Hamiltonian tradition advocated an activist government to promote the interests of the business community. The Democratic Republicans, who later shortened their name to the Democratic Party, represented the rights of the common man—and especially the yeoman farmer—against the

tyranny of the privileged. The Jeffersonian liberal tradition advocated a policy enunciated by the phrase “the less government the better.” Thus, prior to the Civil War, both national parties were defined by class and ideology rather than by region, ethnicity, or religion. Reflecting the predominantly agricultural nature of American society, the agrarian Democrats were usually the ascendant political party prior to the Civil War. The willingness of the Democrats to compromise on slavery alienated the party from abolitionists in the North, who formed the Republican Party in 1854. Equally important for the success of the new party were those supporters from the Northeast who opposed slavery solely because it hindered industrial development.82 From its inception, the Republican Party had to confront the conflicting interests of its Eastern industrial wing and those of its Midwestern agricultural adherents. That gap was bridged somewhat by the enactment of the Homestead Act in 1862, whose grant of free land in the west helped gain the support of Midwesterners. Southerners embraced the Democratic Party as the protector of their states’ rights, and after the Civil War Democrats were stigmatized as having precipitated the rebellion. The pace of industrialization accelerated after the Civil War, and the Republican Party promoted industrial growth with the introduction of a high protective tariff. Although the tariff was anathema to agrarian Republicans, their loyalty to the party was maintained as a consequence of their wartime allegiances and the cultural differences that set them apart from the new immigrant urban ethnic groups that supported the Democrats.83 The Republican Party represented northern Anglo-Saxon Protestantism and became the vehicle for anti-Catholic and prohibitionist sentiments.84 For many years the Republican Party was able to maintain the loyalty of its disparate parts by branding the Democrats as the party of “Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion.” The Democrats, discredited by their association with the Confederacy, succeeded in fielding only one successful presidential candidate between 1860 and 1912. That candidate was Grover Cleveland, and he proved to be no friend of farmer or laborer. His strict adherence to the gold standard and his use of force against Pullman strikers reinforced the feeling that both parties, in fact, gave priority to promoting industrial development at the expense of the best interests of farmers and laborers. With no party to represent their economic interests, farmers organized their own political movements during the 1870s and 1880s. They later united under the banner of the Populist Party and promoted a series of reforms that were intended to redress the imbalance of power that favored concentrated or predatory wealth. Their early successes bespoke of a great new party that would represent agrarian interests. In 1896 the Jeffersonian agrarianism of the Democratic Party reawakened in reaction to Cleveland’s conservatism and the success of the Populist Party. The Democratic Party reasserted its leadership on behalf of agricultural interests and infused itself with populist ideas that eventually resulted in a fusion with and absorption of the Populist Party. The Democratic candidate, William Jennings Bryan, inspired the party and defined its new, albeit original, priorities. Republicans portrayed the Nebraska Democrat as a wild-eyed, antiurban radical, and his campaign for the free coinage of silver held no appeal for east coast city

dwellers and factory workers.85 The radicalism of Bryan’s silver crusade scared laborers because its inflationary effects meant decreased value of their wages. Labor also supported Republican high tariff policies because they perceived that by protecting their employer’s profits it protected their jobs as well. Northeastern truck farmers who supplied food to the laboring masses of the eastern cities were also unmoved by Bryan’s crusade. They were “pulled into the political orbit of their industrialized urban centers” and felt no sympathy for their “cash-crop counterparts in the remainder of the nation.”86 More astoundingly, even agrarian Republicans of the Midwest and Great Plains had difficulty identifying themselves with the new, agriculturally oriented Democrats of 1896. According to James Sundquist: What repelled them, clearly, was the Democratic label itself; they were willing to ally themselves with the Democratic Party but unwilling to be called Democrats. The party’s stigma was still vivid, and its political enemies were devoting themselves to seeing that it remained so.87 Northern Democrats could become Republicans without too great an emotional and psychological strain, but silver Republicans could not bring themselves to become Democrats. So the Democratic Party was unable, even a generation after the Civil War, to absorb, become the vehicle of, and be rejuvenated by the massive forces of agrarian protest that had been building for three long decades of economic squeeze.88 Until a new generation of voters and politicians whose partisanship had not been hardened in battle arose, an alignment of parties around the crucial new issues of a new age would not be possible.89

The Republicans won the election of 1896, and within a year an upturn in the economy encouraged the loyalty of northeastern urban labor that continued for the next thirty years. The Midwestern agrarian wing also remained loyal to the Republican Party for the aforementioned reasons, but the tariff policy of the party remained a contentious issue. Urban professionals and remnants of the rural populists coalesced at the turn of the century in an effort to reform the political and governmental process. Appalled at the corruption and collusion between government and industry, they initiated a movement known as progressivism. Elevated to the presidency after McKinley’s assassination in 1901, Theodore Roosevelt surprised his own pro-business party when he became leader of the movement to break up monopolies and trusts, conserve natural resources, and regulate business practices. Roosevelt became the spokesman for good government and imposed the mantle of reform onto his party against the will of its Old Guard. After two successive electoral defeats under the leadership of William Jennings Bryan, the conservative wing of the Democratic Party regained control and fielded a candidate in 1904 who supported the gold standard. Republicans were forced to nominate Roosevelt that year, and his success at the polls further committed the party to policies that Wall Street considered traitorous.90 Thus by an unexpected turn of events, the party that had held the line against radical change under McKinley was transformed and became the leader of reform under Theodore Roosevelt. In 1908 the Democrats again selected Bryan as their standard-bearer and reaffirmed the predominance of their agrarian populist progressive wing. Roosevelt’s hand-picked successor, William Howard Taft, coasted to an easy victory on the coattails of his popular predecessor and then appeared to slip back into the pro-business Republican mold when he reneged on his campaign promise to revise the tariff. As Nicol C. Rae states, “while the western radicals and the urban progressives of the East had a common desire to improve living conditions and curb

the excesses of big business and political machines, the Eastern progressives were highly suspicious of agrarianism and the radicals’ attacks on the Eastern corporate and intellectual elite. Both sections of the movement nevertheless united in exasperation with the Taft administration.”91 Taft held the reigns of the Republican Party machinery and prevented Roosevelt’s resurgence as the party’s candidate in 1912. Roosevelt ran as the independent Progressive Party candidate that year and, by taking the agrarian progressive vote, split the Republican coalition apart. That insured the election of the progressive Democratic candidate, Woodrow Wilson. Taft’s overwhelming defeat in 1912 was a reminder to Republicans that they could not win a national election without the support of their agrarian, populist, progressive faction. Under Wilson’s leadership, and with the help of agrarians and insurgent Republicans, the Progressive Era reached its climax and achieved much of its legalistic regulatory agenda.92 The nomination of moderate progressive Republican Charles Evans Hughes in 1916 helped but did not completely repair the rift that had taken place between insurgent and conservative party factions in 1912. Theodore Roosevelt supported Hughes and refused to accept the nomination of the Progressive Party, which then disbanded. But Hughes lacked the common touch, and his campaign suffered from poor management in California. Thus Wilson was reelected despite improved Republican unity. But Wilson received only 49 percent of the vote. The predominance of progressive forces and the willingness of both major parties to accommodate them obscured the differences between the parties during Wilson’s first term. The progressive movement had evolved during those years from a reactive impulse inspired to regulate and correct abuses into an activist program designed to promote the welfare of the abused. Such a development favored the interests of urban, blue-collar ethnic groups and Midwestern agrarians that the Republicans had lured from the Democratic Party during its radical days under Bryan’s leadership. Middle-class progressives preferred the regulatory approach and never felt comfortable with the new pro-active direction toward which the progressive movement was evolving. By 1920 the public was weary “of the reformers and the demands they made for altruism and self sacrifice.”93 That sentiment was an encouragement to regular Republicans who were eager to return to the “stand pat” ideology of the McKinley years. Theodore Roosevelt’s experiment was shelved, and the Republican convention—“dominated by lobbyists for industrial and financial interests”—nominated Warren G. Harding in 1920.94 By distancing themselves from the League of Nations, the Republican Party also reversed its long-standing support for internationalism in 1920 in an effort to regain that crucial segment of agrarian support it had failed to win back in 1916. The Democrats continued the Wilsonian tradition, pairing progressive Ohio governor James Cox with internationalist Franklin Roosevelt. The new Republican strategy succeeded in reuniting the party and fully won back the support of its insurgent agrarian wing. Democratic candidates were buried under the Harding landslide. Harding and his successor, Calvin Coolidge, disdained “the activist presidential style of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson” and “allowed big business to manage the economy

unhindered by federal government interference.”95 That reversion to the party’s laissez-faire philosophy of the early 1890s created fissures within the coalition of manufacturers, labor, and Midwestern progressives that had provided the party with its base of support since 1896. Although agrarians were pleased with the Republican Party’s support for prohibition and withdrawal from world commitments, they were also the first to object to the administration’s “hands off” economic policy. A drought, a recession, and later overproduction resulted in a fall in wheat prices from $2.94 a bushel in July to $1.72 in December of 1920.96 The administration made attempts to provide relief to beleaguered farmers, but agrarians were unsatisfied when the business wing of the party prevented further subsidies. The business wing then added to the cleavage within the party with the passage of the Fordney-McCumber tariff in September of 1922. Unable to overturn the policies of the Eastern majority of their party, insurgent agrarian Republicans resorted to obstructionism and talk of founding a new party dedicated to their interests. Had the Democrats chosen a pro-agriculture candidate in 1924, it is questionable whether Republican agrarians would have switched their allegiance in numbers that would have made a difference. As James L. Sundquist states, “aggrieved Protestant Republicans could be lured away from their traditional attachment by a new party made up of, and led by, people like themselves who shared their political background. But except in a few silver states they could not bring themselves to shift to the Democratic Party, with its different tradition and multiple disabilities carried over from the nineteenth century.”97 As it turned out, the Democrats were hopelessly deadlocked at their convention of 1924. A compromise ticket was created to bridge the gap between the party’s northern urban and southern rural factions that resulted in the contrived combination of a New York corporate lawyer and the younger brother of William Jennings Bryan. Calvin Coolidge, elevated to the presidency after Harding’s death in office, had proven himself even friendlier to business than his predecessor. He easily won the nomination of his party on the first ballot. Since neither of the national parties was willing to advance the cause of agriculture, agrarians created their own in 1924 on the model of the Populist Party of the 1890s. Known as the Progressive Party, it attracted many members from its earlier namesake but without the support of the Eastern middle-class Republicans who had bolted their party to support Theodore Roosevelt in 1912. And unlike the earlier Populist Party, the Progressive Party of 1924 was able to successfully enlist the support of some labor groups equally disenchanted with the pro-business and anti-labor orientation of the Harding and Coolidge administrations. Hopelessly underfunded and without the support of a true party organization, their candidate, Robert La Follette, received too little support from organized labor and carried only his home state of Wisconsin. The Coolidge landslide of 1924 appeared to finally bring home the message to agrarians that their third-party strategy had little chance of success.98 That election also made it obvious that in order to enlist the support of labor, agrarians would have to overcome their animosity to urban ethnic groups. After their defeat in 1924, the bloc of 2.5 million agrarian votes that La Follette mobilized in 1924 appeared more likely to realign with whichever major party offered

a program that they could support, even if it was the party of “Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion.”99 Urban ethnic labor groups also appeared ready to realign their support by the 1920s. The protectionist policies that had aligned them with the Republican Party for so long were no longer sufficient to counter the anti-union and pro-management orientations of the Harding and Coolidge administrations. President Harding used his executive powers to support management efforts to break unions. His appointments to the Railroad Labor Board were conservatives, and his attorney general was a dedicated proponent of the open shop. Andrew Mellon, onetime president of ALCOA, was chosen as secretary of the treasury by Harding and retained that position under Coolidge and Hoover. Mellon sought the elimination of estate and luxury taxes, as well as the reduction of corporate taxes and income taxes of the very wealthy. As William Leuchtenburg has pointed out, the economic policy pursued by Mellon was not laissez-faire but Hamiltonian. Mellon advocated that government give its full cooperation to business interests in anticipation that the resulting prosperity would be maintained for the benefit of all.100 Urban ethnic groups found a voice they could relate to in Al Smith, the Irish Catholic Democratic candidate for president in 1928. The four-time governor of New York won the nomination against the wishes of southern delegates, who finally rallied to his support for lack of an alternative. Smith’s religion, his desire to legalize the consumption of beer and wine, and his New York City style of speech and dress alienated rural Protestant voters. For urban, and especially ethnic, voters, Smith clarified the differences between the major parties. Although Smith waged a campaign that conveyed a sense of economic conservatism, his metropolitan orientation began the process of realigning the urban labor vote with the Democratic Party. The contest for the votes of the agrarian bloc that La Follette had organized in 1924 depended on the fate of the McNary-Haugen Bill. First introduced in 1924, the bill was a complex program that stabilized agricultural prices by means of governmental purchases and resale of surpluses. The bill passed in 1926 and again in 1927 but was vetoed by President Coolidge both times. The Republican Party turned its back on agriculture during the 1920s while pursuing its Hamiltonian economic program. The Republican Convention voted down an appeal to incorporate the McNary-Haugen Bill into their platform of 1928, and their candidate, Herbert Hoover, refused to support it. When backers of the bill appealed to the Democratic Convention, they were welcomed, and the bill was incorporated almost fully intact into the Democratic platform. The election of 1928 focused on Smith’s ethnicity, Catholicism, and his leniency toward prohibition, all of which repelled many rural Protestants of Anglo-Saxon descent. Therefore the Republican landslide in the 1928 election indicated no realignment of agrarian voters despite Democratic support for the McNary-Haugen Bill. The Republicans carried the states of Florida, Texas, North Carolina, and Virginia for the first time since Reconstruction. But upon closer analysis, many Protestant counties in the Midwest registered gains for the Democratic Party even greater than those Bryan had achieved in 1896.101 The fact that such gains were registered despite the candidate’s alienating religious and cultural background makes them even more noteworthy. The Republican Party also lost ground with traditionally Republican

African American and Jewish voters in the North that year.102 It was evident at the time that the Republican Party was losing its support from urban labor groups. However, the development of agrarian support for the Democratic Party was camouflaged by the temporary rejection of the party’s culturally unacceptable candidate. As James Sundquist observed, “the western agrarian protest movement in its sixth decade— frustrated once again by a stand pat Republican conservatism, disenchanted with third-party experiments, supported now by most of the Democrats in Congress and courted by the party’s leadership—seemed about to find at last in the Democratic Party the activist political instrument it had been seeking and thus bring about a party realignment in the corn and wheat belts.”103 Four years later the Republican Party became painfully aware that it had, in fact, lost the support of many of its past agrarian progressive supporters when it was buried under a Democratic landslide with the election of Franklin Roosevelt.

THE INSURGENTS, THE LEAGUE, AND FOREIGN POLICY An insurgency of progressive Republicans resulted in tearing the Republican Party apart in 1912. The impact of that event was to set into play a pattern of intraparty compromise that was to have far-reaching effects on the conduct of American foreign policy for the next thirty years. The progressive faction of the Republican Party formed as a result of the sectional animosities that demonized the Democratic Party to Northerners after the Civil War. Similarly, in the South the Republican Party became anathema to people of that section of the country. Therefore, the states of both regions were dominated predominantly by one party within which coexisted liberal and conservative factions. The insurgency of progressive Republicans emerged after the election of 1908, when the Republican Party logged large majorities in the U.S. House and Senate. Insurgents reacted against the consolidation of power and control wielded by Old Guard conservatives Joe Cannon, Republican speaker of the house, and Nelson Aldrich, the Senate majority leader. With their power over committee appointments and rules, the two leaders were able to dictate the legislative agenda in their respective houses of Congress. In addition, the political views of both represented the values of nineteenth-century Old Guard Republicanism, which could be characterized as pro-business and against government regulation. Thus, many incoming Republican members of Congress who adhered to the progressive philosophy of government, which included regulation of industry and conservation of resources, found themselves shut out of the legislative process and positions of power within their own party. The progressive faction was a loose coalition of largely Midwestern and western legislators born out of the populist movement. In league with urban progressives, this loose coalition sought to protect small farmers and labor from the unrestricted power of big business. Their legislative agenda included regulations on railroad rates, anti-trust laws, lowering tariffs on manufactured goods, and implementation of a federal income tax. Being unable to move the Old Guard by persuasion, the progressive coalition undertook the

first battle of their insurgency in the House of Representatives early in 1909. In hopes of opening up the legislative process to their influence, they focused on procedural changes that would curtail Speaker Cannon’s power to appoint committee members and establish rules. And although they only comprised about 20 percent of the Republican House membership, the insurgents were able to eventually restructure the Rules Committee with the aid of House Democrats. In the Senate, progressives focused on tariff reform and the creation of a federal income tax. In these efforts they were stymied by Majority Leader Aldrich’s chairmanship of the Finance Committee. That committee was empowered to write the legislation on these issues, and Aldrich’s leadership of the Senate dictated the debate. The legislation that Aldrich supported did revise the tariffs as Republicans had promised during the campaign. But instead of lowering rates on imported goods also produced by established industries in the United States, the Aldrich reforms raised tariffs on such products to the level of imports that competed with nascent American industries that were in need of protection. Progressives were incensed at the Old Guard’s disingenuous tariff reforms and the strongarm tactics they used to achieve them. As in the House, the insurgents were able to enlist the aid of more moderate allies of both parties in order to change rules governing committees. But the Payne-Aldrich Tariff still passed. During the midterm campaigns of 1910, President Taft entered the fray on the side of Cannon and Aldrich. The Old Guard launched a campaign to unseat progressives that was a dismal failure. The results of the Old Guard’s efforts only served to unite progressives to fight even harder against the party leadership in the upcoming session. The insurgency of progressive Republicans erupted into a complete break with the Old Guard in 1912. Disgruntled and disillusioned by the Old Guard’s procedural manipulation that resulted in Taft’s renomination, the agrarian progressive Republicans formed their own party and ran Theodore Roosevelt as their candidate. In the three-way race Democrat Woodrow Wilson captured the White House, and the Democrats added control of the Senate to that of the House, which they had controlled since 1910. From the ashes Senator Henry Cabot Lodge sought to forge reconciliation with progressives from his position as the senior member of the Foreign Relations Committee. And although Lodge supported a globalist perspective himself, he promoted the membership of noninternationalist progressives like William Borah to the committee. Republican reconciliation, however, was hindered by Wilson’s reform program that encompassed an income tax, tariff reduction, and anti-trust laws that appealed to progressives Republicans. With large majorities of their own, Democrats made little effort to enlist bipartisan opinion and support. Thus again, the progressive Republican firebrands were excluded and resented the despotism with which Wilson ignored them and ruled his own party in Congress. Having been appointed to the Supreme Court in 1910, Charles Evans Hughes had not participated in the sparring between Republican factions in Congress during the insurgency. As a result, he was the perfect candidate to help reunite the party in 1916. Given that the progressive wing supported many of Wilson’s domestic programs, the Republican platform and

campaign focused on the president’s handling of foreign policy that year. Progressive Republicans feared that Wilson’s interventions in Mexico and China had been motivated to protect corporate interests. And although Senator Borah was an advocate of military preparedness for defense, he foresaw that such forces could also be used to entangle the United States in foreign wars. Despite the efforts to reunify the party, Hughes lost in 1916. As the nation edged toward war, progressives were opposed to Wilson’s armed merchant ship bill. Even after American entry into the world war, progressives did not share the aggressive interventionism of Old Guard Republicans. It is significant that the Republican Party regained control of the Senate after the midterm elections of 1918. The importance of that fact became evident when President Wilson sought the Senate’s advice and consent for the Versailles Treaty. When the congress convened in 1919, Henry Cabot Lodge was both Senate majority leader and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. With only a two-vote majority, Lodge sought party unity more than ever, even to the extent of accepting the outspoken progressive Robert LaFollette back into the fold. But Lodge was also mindful that insurgent leader William Borah, “if not handled correctly, could attack the Republican leadership and drag the party back into chaos.”104 In his committee assignments Lodge “was determined to pull key members of the potentially dangerous insurgent wing into the party’s hierarchy.”105 But Lodge made sure progressive appointments would be made to “high profile positions with little power” where their “reform ethic would not be translated into political action.”106 Thus, arch conservatives held chairmanships of the Senate Finance and the Appropriations committees while progressives chaired Interstate Commerce and the Committee on Elections. It was on the Foreign Relations Committee that Lodge held his greatest influence—and thus a logical position from which to fuse the two Republican factions back together. In 1919 Lodge added four anti-League Republican progressives to his committee.107 In one stroke Lodge helped heal the schism within his party and build a bulwark to dent the prestige of the sitting president’s foreign policy just prior to the presidential campaign of 1920. And although many regular Republicans favored the League or favored it with some reservations, Lodge was able to craft a coalition that intended to defeat the treaty and then reshape it into a Republican document. Maintaining the cooperation of pro-League and anti-League Republicans took some clever footwork. In general, pro- and anti-League Republicans supported reservations that included congressional approval of American participation in League interventions, recognition of the Monroe Doctrine, and retention of American jurisdiction over immigration and international trade issues. From their positions on the Foreign Relations Committee, the anti-League faction, known as the irreconcilables, took their reservations a step further and proposed a series of amendments to the treaty. Their objections reflected an anti-British and anti-Europeanism held over from the nineteenth century. More specifically their skepticism focused on the generous redistribution of German and Turkish empires acquired by England and France under the terms

of the treaty. The terms also gave England a voting block comprised of the voting rights granted to its colonial proxies. This inflamed progressive anti-colonialism and supported the suspicion that Wilson had been hoodwinked by the allies at Versailles. All forty-five of the amendments sponsored by the progressives failed to pass. These included Hiram Johnson’s amendment to give the United States six extra votes to make up for England’s colonial proxies and Robert LaFollette’s amendment requiring a national referendum prior to any commitment by the United States to enter a League-sponsored military engagement. Lodge publicly supported Johnson’s amendment, but the failure of all the progressive Republican amendments lay in the fact that many regular Republicans were absent and did not vote. Progressives doubted the commitment of Lodge to their cause and rightly suspected he may have influenced the absences of the nonvoting members. And it was a well-known fact that Lodge supported his party’s longstanding position that promoted global commerce. The votes on the League on November 19, 1919, resulted in a coalition of Democrats and irreconcilables defeating the treaty with reservations. In a second vote the treaty without reservations was defeated by a coalition of reservationists and irreconcilables. In a third vote to reconsider the version with reservations, Wilson instructed senate Democrats to vote against it, thus preventing American participation in the League under any circumstances. With Wilson incapacitated by a stroke and his party’s discipline waning, it was conceivable that a version of the treaty with milder reservations might be amenable to Democratic senators. In January of 1920 Lodge showed his true intentions by agreeing to meet with the Democrats to achieve a compromise. But the agrarian progressive irreconcilable faction that was opposed to the treaty in any form made it clear to Lodge that a compromise with the Democrats would lead to a floor fight and an open rebellion over his leadership of the Senate. Henry Cabot Lodge had spent years trying to mend the fissure that had torn his party apart in 1912. He would have preferred American entry into the League of Nations with Republican reservations and under bipartisan leadership. But he was not willing to unleash another intraparty battle reminiscent of 1912 in order to do it. And with the nominating convention less than six months away, Lodge deferred to the foreign policy demands of the irreconcilable agrarian progressive faction of his party. Thus a Faustian bargain was struck and the precedent was set that progressive Republicans would be given a place at the table for their loyalty, and that place was on the Foreign Relations Committee. On the surface it would appear that the election of 1920 was a defeat for the agrarian progressive wing of the Republican Party. A member of their ranks, Senator Hiram Johnson, had been the leading contender for the nomination until a compromise candidate, Warren Harding, was chosen by the party leadership. The progressive wing also failed to have their choice of Philander Knox selected as secretary of state. But at the convention Senator Borah had again used the threat of a bolt from the party to prevent the incorporation of a plank into the party platform that supported American entry to the League of Nations. Under the stewardship of Secretary of State Hughes and Senator Lodge, progressive influence over the Washington Conference was held to a minimum. Hughes carefully worded

agreements to avoid directly committing American troops to collective security agreements. Lodge used his position as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee to keep debates to a minimum and to table disagreeable amendments. And Democratic opposition was neutralized by bringing the Senate minority leader onto the American delegation at the conference. When the question of American entry to the World Court arose in 1924, the populist progressive wing of the party was again successful at exerting its opposition. Although Coolidge and the regular Republicans favored American entry, they chose to let the issue languish rather than incur the wrath and revolt of the party’s agrarian progressive wing. In 1925 Henry Cabot Lodge died, and the chairmanship of the Foreign Relations Committee passed onto William Borah. With that position he was able to strengthen agrarian progressive influence over American foreign policy. The strategy employed by the progressive faction followed the precedents that had been employed successfully since 1918. When the Republican Party was weak and needed their votes, the progressives could demand and receive concessions from the regular Republican majority. They successfully used vitriolic rhetoric to inspire fervor from their supporters, and they held in reserve the threat of a bolt from the party if their views were ignored. Progressive agrarian Senator LaFollette made good on that threat again in 1924 when he staged a third-party effort. Although that effort failed dismally, it was a reminder to the regulars of the party, and they continued to defer to their progressive faction on matters of foreign policy. The United States did not join the World Court, and the party supported the progressive effort to outlaw war through legislation embodied in the Kellogg-Briand Pact. In other areas of public policy, the Coolidge and Hoover administrations did not concede to the progressive agenda. The party leadership stood firmly against a progressive income tax, lower tariffs, nationalized railroads, campaign reform, and government regulation over the economy. It was in the area of foreign affairs that agrarian progressives achieved their greatest influence. The senior and most respected member of their faction chaired the Foreign Relations Committee and was recognized as one of the luminaries of American diplomacy. Having reached such heights of power and respect for himself and his movement during these years, the descent of William Borah’s reputation in late 1939 was all the more devastating for himself and his supporters and made the decline of the movement blatantly obvious. As a result of the election of a progressive Democrat who supported agricultural reforms, agrarian populist progressives found themselves being willingly courted by the new president. Throughout the period of Republican electoral defeats, including those of 1930, 1932, 1934, and 1936, the party of Lincoln also reached out to its old progressive coalition partners. Under these circumstances much of the agrarian progressive neutrality legislation was passed. The progressive’s honeymoon with FDR would come to an end after 1936, but out of desperation the Republican Party conceded a new degree of leadership to their agrarian progressive wing after its revolt of 1938. Populist progressive Republicans may have even deluded themselves for a short time into thinking that they had finally achieved their long-held goal of reforming the party into their own image. But ironically, after following the advice of their progressive wing and softening their

position against the New Deal for the midterm elections of 1938, the new class of elected Republicans almost immediately jettisoned that advice. The electoral gains by Republicans in 1938 were almost exclusively to the advantage of the capitalist east coast faction. Upon entering office they took up the battle cry to roll back the New Deal, and again the populist progressives were marginalized and relegated to the back benches of the party. But agrarian populist progressive Republicans still held onto their authoritative reputation regarding foreign policy until Senator Borah staked his reputation on the prediction during the summer of 1939 that Germany would not invade Poland. If the fallacy of that prediction and the resulting public rebuke were not enough, when the Republican Party nominated internationalist Wendell Willkie in 1940, it was clear that the populist progressives had lost their influence over foreign policy too.

NOTES 1. Sidney Fine, Laissez Faire and the General Welfare State: A Study of Conflict in American Thought, 1865–1901 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor Paperbacks, 1956), 24. 2. Fine, Laissez Faire, 24. The number of Americans who lived in cities of 8,000 or larger rose from 16.1 percent in 1860 to 32.9 percent in 1900. 3. H. Wayne Morgan, America’s Road to Empire: The War with Spain and Overseas Expansion (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1965), 18. Internationalist James G. Blaine was a Republican and a U.S. Senator from Maine, served as Secretary of State, and was defeated by Grover Cleveland in the presidential election of 1884. 4. Warren R. Austin Papers, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT, Carton B I, speech 9, “Bismark’s Relation to the FrancoPrussian War,” 1897. 5. Austin Papers, speech 11. Austin’s globalism was more concretely established by 1916, when he went to China as the attorney representing a banking consortium to negotiate loans for the building of railroads and canals. 6. James W. Wadsworth, Oral History Project, Special Collections, Columbia University, New York City, 37. 7. Richard Franklin Bensel, Sectionalism and American Political Development, 1880–1980 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984), 130. 8 Conrad Black, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Champion of Freedom (New York: Public Affairs, 2003), 533. 9. Charles S. Campbell, The Transformation of American Foreign Relations, 1865–1900 (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), 221. 10. Black, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 576. 11. William E. Leuchtenburg, The Perils of Prosperity, 1914–32 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), 205. 12. Albert Nelson Marquis, ed., Who’s Who in America, Vol. 21, 1940–1941 (Chicago: A. N. Marquis Co., 1940). 13. Joseph Clark Baldwin, Oral History Project, Special Collections, Columbia University, New York, 61. 14. Wallace White Papers, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Washington DC, Box 60, Profile, February 1947. 15. Edwin Borchard and William Potter Lage, Neutrality for the United States (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1940), vii. 16. The “Open Door” policy toward China was a good example of the humanitarian and moral side of that approach. 17. Leuchtenburg, Perils of Prosperity, 62. 18. Leuchtenburg, Perils of Prosperity, 120. 19. Leuchtenburg, Perils of Prosperity, 120. 20. The Scopes trial exemplified of the waning of popular support for the teaching of creationism. 21. Borchard and Lage, Neutrality, vi. 22. Borchard and Lage, Neutrality, vi. 23. Borchard and Lage, Neutrality, vi. 24. LeRoy Ashby, William Jennings Bryan, Champion of Democracy (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1987), 162. 25. Ashby, Bryan, Champion, 162. 26. Ashby, Bryan, Champion, 162.

27. California provided Wilson with the electoral votes that were crucial for his victory. 28. Eugene Weber coined this term in his film documentary, The Western Tradition, as a means of demonstrating that the two world wars were actually two phases of the same conflict. 29. Wadsworth, Oral History, 121. 30. Michael H. Hunt, “The Long Crisis in U.S. Diplomatic History,” Diplomatic History 16 (1992): 115. A more complete discussion of this point may be found in the Introduction of FDR’s Republicans. 31. White Papers, Box 74, Scrapbook, campaign letter, September 2, 1916. 32. White Papers, Box 73, Lewiston Sunday Journal, March 20, 1915. McGillicuddy also asked “In the first place, who is able to attack us?” Not only who but also where became the crucial question prior to Pearl Harbor, and Maine was certainly the primary contender. 33. White Papers, Box 67, campaign speech, 1918. 34. White Papers, Box 67. 35. White Papers, Box 73, campaign card. 36. White Papers, Box 67. 37. White Papers, Box 73, election tally for 1916 and 1918. 38. White Papers, Box 67, notes for Propeller Club speech, undated. 39. White Papers, Box 60, Profile, February 1947. 40. White Papers, Box 60, Profile, February 1947. 41. White Papers, Box 74, Lewiston Evening Journal, August 22, 1924. 42. White Papers, Box 60, Profile, February 1947. 43. Wadsworth, Oral History, 31. 44. Wadsworth, Oral History, 34. 45. Wadsworth, Oral History, 34. 46. The Battle of the Somme is an example of one of the most costly and pointless of all World War I battles. 47. Edith Nourse Rogers Collection, Radcliffe College, Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, Cambridge, MA, Box 9, folder 147, speech on Reorganization Bill, April 3, 1938. 48. Rogers Collection, LL file, folder 141, John Jacob Rogers speech, April 5, 1917. 49. Rogers Collection, Box 22, folder 302, 57. 50. Ernest Gibson, Jr. Papers, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT, Carton 2, statement of Ernest Gibson, Sr., June 8, 1940. 51. Joseph Baldwin, Oral History, 5. 52. Borchard and Lage, Neutrality, vi–vii. 53. Wadsworth, Oral History, 284. 54. Wadsworth, Oral History, 285. 55. White Papers, Box 75, Portland Evening News, July 25, 1929. 56. White Papers, Portland Evening News, July 25, 1929. 57. White Papers, Portland Evening News, July 27, 1929. 58. White Papers, Portland Evening News, July 27, 1929. 59. White Papers, Portland Evening News, March 11, 1930. 60. White Papers, Portland Evening News, March 12, 1930. 61. White Papers, Portland Evening News, March 12, 1930. 62. White Papers, Portland Evening News, October 30, 1931. 63. White Papers, Portland Press Herald, May 4, 1932. 64. White Papers, Portland Press Herald, May 4, 1932. 65. White Papers, Portland Press Herald, May 4, 1932. 66. White Papers, Box 67, Propeller Club of Boston speech, December 29, 1931. 67. White Papers, Propeller speech. 68. White Papers, Radio speech, September 6, 1930. 69. Borchard and Lage, Neutrality, vii. 70. The same could also be said of the Vietnam debate of the 1960s. Rigid camps diametrically opposed each other, and there existed very little middle ground. 71. Ray Allen Billington, “The Origins of Middle Western Isolationism,” Political Science Quarterly 60:1 (March 1945): 51. 72. Leuchtenburg, Perils of Prosperity, 225. 73. Leuchtenburg, Perils of Prosperity, 226. 74. George H. Mayer, The Republican Party, 1854–1966 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967), 291. 75. Mayer, Republican Party, 291.

76. Leuchtenburg, Perils of Prosperity, 259. 77. During the Vietnam debate polarization tended to be generational and cultural rather than inspired by class differences. 78. A tally of the private institutions attended by the Republican anti-isolationists: Amherst, Bowdoin, Colgate, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard (2), Norwich (3), Princeton, USC, Wesleyan, Williams, Yale (2). Four attended state universities and one a teacher’s college. One attended Acadia University in Canada. 79. Biographical outlines of each member of the study can be found in Appendix B. 80. The phrases “love it or leave it” and “don’t trust anyone over thirty” demonstrated the same kind of rigid and stereotypical polarization evident during the Vietnam era that Billington observed of the 1930s. 81. Black, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 499. 82. Malcolm Moos, The Republicans (New York: Random House, 1956), 30. 83. Nicol C. Rae, The Decline and Fall of the Liberal Republicans from 1952 to the Present (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 13. 84. Rae, Decline of Liberals, 13. 85. Ashby, Bryan, 70. Bryan carried only twelve of the eighty-two cities with populations exceeding forty thousand in the presidential election of 1896. 86. Bensel, Sectionalism and Development, 137. 87. Sundquist, Dynamics of the Party System, 115. 88. Sundquist, Dynamics of the Party System, 169. 89. Sundquist, Dynamics of the Party System, 115. 90. Theodore Roosevelt advocated policies such as federal income and inheritance taxes, reduced restrictions on unions and strikes, and reduced working hours. 91. Rae, Decline of Liberals, 21. 92. Sundquist, Dynamics of the System, 177. 93. Leuchtenberg, Perils of Prosperity, 84. 94. Leuchtenburg, Perils of Prosperity, 86. 95. Rae, Decline of Liberals, 24. 96. Bensel, Sectionalism and Development, 130. 97. Sundquist, Dynamics of the System, 185. 98. Leuchtenburg, Perils of Prosperity, 136. 99. Sundquist, Dynamics of the System, 187. 100. Leuchtenburg, Perils of Prosperity, 103. 101. Sundquist, Dynamics of the System, 191. 102. Mayer, Republican Party, 409. 103. Sundquist, Dynamics of the System, 191. 104. Miller, Populist Nationalism, 38. 105. Miller, Populist Nationalism, 38. 106. Miller, Populist Nationalism, 39. 107. Warren Harding (Ohio), Hiram Johnson (California), Harry New (Indiana), and George Moses (New Hampshire).

Chapter 2

The Progressive Tide and Foreign Policy, 1930–1936 It would be an understatement to say that Republican internationalists were distracted from foreign affairs by the Great Depression and the New Deal. The impact of the depression led to a tide of populist progressivism that attacked the party’s leadership and destabilized its organization. For Republicans in general, as well as the members of this survey, the growth of executive power that encroached upon the prerogatives of the U.S. Congress and state governments was of primary concern. That perspective greatly affected their outlook on questions that dealt with executive leadership in foreign policy. Democratic internationalists, including Franklin Roosevelt, were also distracted by the domestic political upheaval in the wake of the Great Depression. But for the party held responsible for the crisis, the Republicans, and especially the northeastern internationalist leadership of the party, the political realignment that took place turned their world upside down.

DECLINE IN THE VALUES AND PRESTIGE OF BIG BUSINESS Even before Franklin Roosevelt became president, the business community and its leaders were disgraced in full view of the general public. Had the business community not ballyhooed its own success and claimed exclusive credit for the prosperity of the 1920s, and had it not received the unfettered cooperation of the federal government for more than a decade, perhaps the repercussions would not have been so great. Had labor and agriculture not been treated with such disregard by the three Republican administrations of the 1920s, perhaps those two groups would not have become so reactionary, eager for reform, and, some might say, thirsty for revenge. As it was, the extreme economic theories of the 1920s that placed the economic welfare of the nation almost exclusively in the hands of private business were successfully challenged after depression displaced prosperity. Harsh and irrefutable evidence indicated that laissezfaire policies and the lack of government regulation led to the Crash and the Great Depression. The inability of large banking institutions to control the financial crisis led to a loss of selfconfidence among bankers. President Hoover contributed to the decline in prestige of big business in April of 1932 when his suspicions that hostile interests were prolonging economic recovery spurred his support for a Senate investigation of Wall Street. That investigation revealed some startling statistics. The president of the Florsheim Shoe Company paid $90.00 dollars in taxes for 1929, the chairman of the S.W. Straus investment firm only $18.00, and J.P. Morgan paid no personal income taxes in 1930, 1931, or 1932.1 After such revelations, public opinion became bitter toward the wealthy and powerful of the business world and toward the party with which they

were associated. From a position of adulation and respect during the twenties, the rich and powerful of Wall Street fell to levels of infamy and disgrace after the repercussions of the Great Depression became ever more severe. Several public servants who hailed from the business community were also disgraced in scandals concerning the disbursement of relief funds in early 1933. Under the guidance of chief counsel Ferdinand Pecora, the Senate Banking and Currency Committee revealed that the Reconstruction Finance Corporation loaned the bank of Charles G. Dawes $90 million only four weeks after Dawes had resigned as president of the RFC. The RFC president who succeeded Dawes was also discovered to have loaned $12 million to a bank of which he was a director. All RFC loans had been undisclosed until July of 1932, when Congressional pressure forced their disclosure. Prior to disclosure President Hoover had repeatedly stated that loans by the RFC were not being used to shore up banks and insurance companies. Thus, dishonor of the wealthy business class followed in the footsteps of earlier civic behavior that was perceived as morally disgraceful, if not technically illegal, by the general public.2 The regular wing of the Republican Party was controlled by the stalwarts of the big business establishment, and their influence over the party and its choice of presidential candidates was evident throughout the 1920s. Men like Dawes and Morgan had been heralded not only as great business leaders but also as great statesmen. Colonel Dawes had been vice president under President Coolidge and creator of the famous Dawes Plan. The elites of the business world were on intimate terms with Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon and President Hoover, both of whom had been chief executives of large corporations prior to their government service. The platform and ideology of the Republican Party were an expression of the priorities of its big business leadership. As long as times were good, the wisdom of that leadership predominated and its control of the party was secure. Businessmen were among the most respected and admired citizens in the United States throughout the 1920s, which made their fall in the 1930s even more dramatic. In the elections of 1932, 1934, and 1936, Republican stalwarts had to face the fact that voters had lost faith in the economic philosophy of the party that was blamed for the depression. In each of those elections the Republican leadership held to the economic course essentially set by Herbert Hoover in 1929: retention of the gold standard, high tariffs, a balanced budget, and the belief that relief issues were the concern of state and local governments. Adherence to that strategy resulted in debacles for the Republican Party in the three aforementioned elections. Since the progressives of their party swung their support to Roosevelt, that meant that only the most orthodox remained in the party. Initially the extremely rapid reversal of fortune for businessmen caught them off-guard, unprepared, numb, and somewhat speechless. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the NAM supported a program of cartelization that was similar to the NRA and thus looked forward to working in consortium with the government to stabilize markets, prices, and wages.3 But as the New Deal unfolded, it became clear that the leaders of big business had lost much of their influence and would have to accept intensified government intervention and regulation over the economy. By late 1934 most businessmen had became

disillusioned with the New Deal and returned to the Republican fold, thus reinvigorating the party’s tradition of opposing government intervention. Experience also encouraged the Old Guard to stay the course. In past depressions the captains of industry had weathered public outrage until good times returned. The correctness of their laissez-faire economic philosophy had remained largely unchallenged since the Civil War, despite periodic depressions. The muckrakers and political thinkers of the Progressive Era attacked the consequences of laissez-faire and concentrated wealth, but that challenge was cut short by World War I. The return to normalcy under the Harding administration also meant a return to economic conservatism, a policy that was continued under Coolidge and Hoover. The resistance with which business interests responded to the changes wrought by the New Deal seemed to reflect the “stand pat” philosophy of those who felt they were merely weathering yet another storm and were confident that it would pass. They held fast until the electoral defeat of 1936 finally reduced Republican representation to the lowest point in its history and forced the party to change its leadership and direction. Although economic issues were of greatest concern to just about everyone during the Great Depression, Republican candidates sought ways of defending their records that avoided discussion of economic issues or modification of past policies. During the election campaign of 1932, Wallace White of Maine chose to exploit regional antagonisms that had served the party so well in the past. In a stump speech that year, White referred to the Texas Democrat and vice presidential candidate John Nance Garner as “a hater of New England and as a demagogue I would give him first prize.” White also claimed Garner had said, “I have always done what I thought was best for my country unless I was advised 2/3 of Democrats were for a Bill, in that case I voted for it.”4 After Roosevelt was elected in 1932 Republicans were forced to modify their strategy. The old strategy that exploited fears of “Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion” was no longer enough to win votes. Newly appointed as a senator in 1933, Ernest Gibson Sr. seemed to have clearly understood the problems that faced the party. Republicans had lost their strongest campaign issue when they could no longer command public support for their economic policies. In a letter to a political confidant in December of 1933 Gibson Sr. said, “it is my purpose to go along with the President in this emergency just so far as I believe it is good for the country. Surely we have no substitute to offer for what is being done.”5 Wallace White’s 1934 speech at the Maine State Republican Convention exemplified that new mood and stood in stark contrast to his statements prior to the election of 1932, “no one should fail to note and acknowledge the extraordinary popularity of the President and the inclination of the people to yield the judgments to his leadership.”6 Regular Republicans could no longer use economic arguments to justify their platform of limited government intervention. Henceforth, the Old Guard portrayed President Roosevelt’s New Deal as a dangerous deviation from American political tradition. In a personal letter of May 1934, Senator Warren Austin stated, “we have started discussion of the Tariff. Probably I will debate the unconstitutional phrase of the delegation of powers to the President which the Congress alone should perform for the people.”7

Despite the kinder post-election approach to the administration taken by Wallace White, his criticisms, like Austin’s, remained focused on fears of the president’s departure from American constitutional and political traditions: the program inaugurated and put into effect since the 4th of March, a year ago, is a repudiation of every principle for which the Democratic Party has stood through more than a century … this road leads to further surrender of local self government, to a further encroachment on the rights of our States, to an abandonment of the functions of our legislative branch of government, to the building up of a great centralized federal State beyond the direct control of our people, a Government under which the social, the economic and industrial life of the Nation is regimented and ordered by a bureaucratic regime.8

Republicans attacked the early New Deal in more subtle ways by stressing the honor and dignity of individualism and the preservation of American political fundamentals. Prior to the midterm elections of 1934 Representative Plumley attempted to stir his constituents with the rallying cry “fellow Vermonters! Do you realize that: The record of Vermont as a resolute champion of individual freedom, as a true interpreter of our fundamental law, as an unselfish but independent and uncompromising commonwealth of liberty loving people, is not only unsurpassed, but unmatched by any other state in this union.”9 Senator Austin made a similar case, emphasizing that “something imbued in the average Vermonter … reveals itself in times of stress and that is the spirit of independence and permits no coercion.”10 The election returns of 1934, however, indicated that the electorate was concerned with economic relief far more than with theoretical arguments about constitutional law or appeals to state pride. Although Republicans did not abandon their appeals to regional pride and the Yankee spirit of rugged individualism, their criticisms of the administration moved in a new direction after that election. In a personal letter written in February of 1935, Senator Austin still chose to voice legalistic sounding complaints: “our Supreme Court has changed … to the supporter of the Government against the citizen respecting property that consists of contracts.”11 But by the spring of 1935 his criticisms of the New Deal became much shriller and focused on corruption. The New York Times reported on May 11, 1935, that “Senator Austin … made a stir on Thursday by some pungent criticisms of the Tennessee Valley Authority.”12 The Baltimore Sun reported on May 12, 1935, that “in substance Senator Austin charges that the TVA has grossly exceeded its powers granted by Congress, that it has been reckless in its accounting methods, so that, apart from the propriety of certain undertakings, considerable sums have been wasted in the routine conduct of its far-flung business; and it has deliberately written down in an extravagant manner its capital investment in order to make favorable comparison with privately owned power enterprises.”13 The new attacks on the administration were not only more emphatic than previous ones, they also began to stress President Roosevelt’s megalomaniacal intention to acquire power. Senator White advanced the new Republican approach in 1935 with a speech that appeared, at first glance, much like any other early defense of the legislative branch of government but that ended on a note that went beyond the standard defense of legislative powers. He criticized legislative proposals “not drafted by its members,” “executive dominated committees” that report those proposals to the House “with scant debate.”14 He argued further, “criticism has been resented”

and “minorities have been ruthlessly crushed.”15 His speech proved to be more than just a theoretical treatise on constitutional government and ended on a note that went further. Senator White capped his speech with a strong and sinister analogy that compared the president’s emergency measures with those of other disreputable world leaders: “delegation after delegation of power has been demanded and given until today the President in the extent of his control puts to shame the pretenses of a Mussolini, a Hitler, or a Stalin.”16 Republicans retaliated against the extended reach of the president’s programs by questioning the constitutionality of the New Deal and by later suggesting that the president sought dictatorial power. Their attacks on the big government philosophy of President Roosevelt also served as a justification for the limited government philosophy of Herbert Hoover and the party’s policies of the 1920s. No doubt the rapid changes that took place during the first hundred days, and later as a consequence of the Second New Deal, were truly too fast and too radical for the cautious men and women of America’s conservative party. But it is questionable whether the Republican attacks on the president’s accumulation of power, which drew upon the parallels of Hitler and Stalin, were genuine or merely a means of spreading fear for partisan advantage. For whatever reason, the Eastern internationalist wing of the Republican Party increasingly espoused a conspiratorial theory regarding the accumulation of power by the country’s chief executive. This became their party line and campaign strategy by mid-1935, leading them to distrust presidential leadership in general and executive discretion in the field of foreign policy in particular. The bitter criticisms of the president and the proposition that he intended to usurp power from the American people and destroy their institutions increasingly took hold of the party, foreshadowing the Republican campaign of 1936.

THE RISE OF THE COMMONER AND AGRARIAN PROGRESSIVES With the decline in prestige of the wealthy class, an era that idolized the common man began. The wealthy and elite citizens of the country were henceforth no longer idolized but rather pilloried and mocked in popular culture. The respect that the wealthy had been accorded during the 1920s dissipated dramatically after the Crash and during the last two years of the Hoover administration. In April of 1934, Walter Lippman noted, “in the past five years the industrial and financial leaders of America have fallen from one of the highest positions of influence and power that they have ever occupied in our history to one of the lowest.”17 Commensurate with the decline of America’s aristocracy of wealth was the ascendancy of the “forgotten man.” Working class and poor agrarian people were mobilized into action by the depression, and forgotten men and women emerged with an enhanced position in American politics. The reforms of the 1920s altered the nominating process within both political parties and gave those with little influence a greater role in the political process. A tide of progressive thinking and a call for reform swept over the country that emboldened the ranks of the previously downtrodden. But this tendency to no longer automatically defer to one’s betters

also meant that many less-educated citizens also began to disregard the knowledge, experience, and wisdom that came with the educations that wealth and leisure time had provided. On the east coast, progressive, urban, working-class people and ethnic groups that began their affiliation with the Democratic Party in 1928 solidified that allegiance in 1932. Midwestern and New England farmers now began to identify with the western Republican progressive insurgents who had been mocked by the east coast faction of the party during the 1920s. Progressive Republicans benefited from the fall from grace of their wealthy party coalition partners and were accorded greater respect and credibility at the ballot box and thus within the party. The ability of Eastern Republican stalwarts to make their influence felt was compromised. In many cases the tide against privilege threatened or ended the political careers of those who were associated with the wealthy class. One can only wonder what might have happened if a man like Hiram Johnson had run for president in 1932 against Franklin Roosevelt instead of Herbert Hoover. Although Franklin Roosevelt worked on behalf of the interests of progressive agrarians and forgotten Americans —and thus received their votes—he was not one of them. Average citizens became much less deferential to those with greater status during these years. Roosevelt was vulnerable in that regard. which explains in large part why he was so deferential to progressive ideas about foreign policy that he clearly opposed. Ideologically Roosevelt was well suited to the progressive tide that was unleashed by the depression. But his affectations, cultural orientation, and social rank marked him as a wealthy man very much like the business elite that had so recently fallen into disgrace. Many of his actions can be seen as means to prevent his opponents from casting an image of him in those terms. Most Republicans of the Eastern internationalist wing of the party faced a similar problem. Although unlike Roosevelt in that they often opposed progressive programs, many shared with Roosevelt the stigma of their privileged origins. The preference of many to defend their economic theories on constitutional grounds can be interpreted as an effort to downplay their socioeconomic differences with the working classes. Similarly, well-healed internationalists were less inclined to advance their views on foreign policy that differed from those of their poorer agrarian constituents during these times. The power of the reaction against the privileged and wealthy was well demonstrated by the experience of Senator Austin. A Senate colleague from Vermont stated that Austin “was very close to the granite industry and other business organizations.”18 Senator Austin was a wellestablished lawyer and a picture-perfect Republican, but he barely won his reelection bid of 1934 with only 51 percent of the vote. It was the closest election in Vermont’s history and was particularly significant because Austin was an incumbent in a state that had voted solidly Republican since the Civil War. One cannot help but note the air of disdain with which journalists described Austin after his reelection. A newspaper article of 1935 described him as “a New England Tory and allied with great and private power interests.”19 Senator Austin’s experience and influence were at times more of a liability than an asset in the Senate; after his attack on the TVA, the New York Times reported that “Senator Norris as patron saint of TVA, replied to Mr. Austin, and as a clinching argument referred to the fact that

the Vermont Senator had once been counsel for a utility company.”20 The loss of prestige of monied elites and the rise of the agrarian common man was also demonstrated by the election of Charles Plumley in 1934. In a letter of November 4, 1933, Senator Gibson Sr. commented on Plumley’s primary campaign to fill his old seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. In reference to one of Plumley’s opponents, Gibson said, “he evidently intends to purchase his path to Congress. The [American] Legion is planning to get out about a thousand of their magazines in November stating what they think of Evarts and supporting Plumley. It looks like the bar will support Evarts. There is, however a lot of feeling about Evarts having so much money to use.” Gibson continued his analysis saying that Mr. Wakefield “did give an excellent vote catching speech talk on the radio … saying he is the farmer’s candidate. He insists he can tell a Gurnsey from an Ayrshire but I doubt it. Mrs. Bryant gave a very lady like talk … reading it all which I am told was anything but effective.”21 Plumley successfully exploited the progressive tide that derided privilege. He was endorsed by W.A. Simpson because “he talks the common language, is one of us—he is real ‘folks’ as we New Englanders express it.”22 Plumley won the primary. Another beneficiary of the progressive national trend was Styles Bridges of New Hampshire. Born on a farm in Maine and fatherless at the age of nine, Bridges kept his family’s farm running and worked his way through the University of Maine, graduating in 1918. He was a federal agricultural agent and during the 1920s moved to New Hampshire to work for the agricultural extension service; he later became executive secretary of the State Farm Bureau Federation. A self-proclaimed progressive Republican, Bridges rode the crest of the progressive tide that swept over American politics in the wake of the Depression. He gained a reputation as a supporter of state regulation of utility rates and won the governorship in 1934 at age thirty-six. He ran for the Senate in 1936 and won that race at the ripe old age of thirtyeight. Styles Bridges was one of the earliest examples of the young Eastern progressive newcomers of the Theodore Roosevelt tradition that eventually wrested control away from both the Old Guard and the Midwestern progressive factions of the party in 1938. Until the resurgence within the party of men like Bridges, east coast Republicans usually suffered from the fact that they were identified with the wealthy and privileged of the Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover years.

THE REPUDIATION AND DIVISION OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY With the elder statesmen of the Republican Party disgraced and the economic philosophy of the party under fire, the election of 1932 confirmed how great a political upheaval the United States had undergone. The election returns of 1932 were a severe repudiation of the Hoover administration in particular and the Republican Party in general. In just four years the electoral strength of the parties had reversed. Support for Republican Herbert Hoover fell drastically

from 58.2 percent of the popular vote and 444 electoral votes he had received in 1928. In 1932 Democrat Franklin Roosevelt received 57.4 percent of the popular vote and trounced Hoover in the Electoral College, 472 to 59. It was a foregone conclusion that Hoover could not win. His administration was unable to arrest the depression, let alone reverse it. The 1930 elections had gone badly for the Republicans. Things had gotten worse between October of 1929 and the summer of 1932 when Republicans somberly renominated their leader. As James Wadsworth, a delegate to the 1932 Republican Convention, remembered: “we knew we were in for a tight election and there was a great deal of doubt that we could win it.”23 Hoover was very tired and uninspiring during the campaign. Roosevelt talked about the “forgotten man” and was buoyant and hopeful, as reflected in his campaign song “Happy Days Are Here Again.” It was hard to build a campaign against Roosevelt because he advocated dynamic but unspecified federal action and a balanced budget. Ironic in light of later events, one Democratic slogan during the campaign suggested that voters “Throw the Spenders Out.”24 As Roosevelt took the offensive and accused Hoover of overspending, he spoke only in vague terms about his own program for recovery. The Republicans had an uphill fight, carrying the onus of responsibility for the Great Depression; their party was also handicapped by dissension within its ranks. Several well-known progressive Republicans publicly supported Roosevelt in 1932, including Senators Hiram Johnson, George Norris, Robert La Follette, Jr., and Bronson Cutting. Walter Lippmann noted that the schism of 1912, “healed in 1920, and broke out again in 1932, is deeper than ever.”25 The Republican senators who supported Roosevelt were the descendants of a group within their party that had flirted with populism in the 1890s; some had supported Theodore Roosevelt’s Progressive Bull Moose Party and his rebellion against the Old Guard in 1912. After World War I, under the leadership of Robert La Follette Sr. and his Progressive Party of 1924, western and Midwestern progressive Republicans broke off and aligned with his independent party associated with agrarian interests and social democratic ideas. The Progressive Party’s candidate, Robert La Follette Sr. won only his home state of Wisconsin in 1924, yet other states where the Progressive ticket came in second—California, Idaho, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Washington, and Wyoming—gave a better indication of the breadth of its support. Party members who returned to the Republican Party after 1924 were henceforth referred to as “progressive Republicans” and formed an impressive bloc, but they were still viewed as radical “insurgents.” The members of this group were referred to in perhaps more honest and candid terms as “the sons of the wild jackass” during the 1920s by their fellow party members, the big business Republican stalwarts of the east coast.26 The most notable progressive Republicans included Senators Norris of Nebraska, Johnson of California, Borah of Idaho, Capper of Kansas, Brookhardt of Iowa, Norbeck of South Dakota, Frazier of North Dakota, and La Follette of Wisconsin. Throughout the 1920s the progressive bloc within the Republican Party was given short shrift by the party leadership and reduced to rearguard actions that were perceived as obstructionist. The progressive bloc sponsored and supported agricultural relief programs that resulted in the famous McNary-Haugen Bill of 1926. The

control of the stalwarts over the party and the presidency was best reflected in their ability to prevent that most cherished progressive legislation from becoming law. Meanwhile, members of the party’s Eastern urban progressive wing, which had supported Theodore Roosevelt over Taft in 1912, rejected La Follette’s agrarian priorities, merged back into the regular Republican Party under the Old Guard leadership of the 1920s, and virtually disappeared from view. For many years Fiorello LaGuardia was the only prominent example of progressive, Eastern, urban Republicanism. The realignment of the agrarian vote in support of the Democratic presidential candidate, somewhat noticeable in 1928, was hastened by the depression and by Hoover’s failure to provide relief to farmers as readily as he provided relief to financiers. Roosevelt actively cultivated the support of insurgent Republicans like Senator George Norris and praised progressives when he campaigned in their states. His appeals had the effect of neutralizing “any serious efforts to reconstruct the alliance of Eastern and Western wings that had been the cornerstone of the party’s strategy in the 1920s.”27 For his part Hoover offered farmers very little in 1932. Although willing since 1928 to intervene with loans and limited purchases of commodities, Hoover steadfastly opposed a federal dole and refused to allow the federal government to take the lead in setting production quotas. His remedy offered farmers only more blood, sweat, toil, and tears, and as a consequence, he was booed more than any president in American history.28 In the final days of the campaign, while speaking in the heart of the agricultural belt, Hoover unwisely chose to evoke the name of Calvin Coolidge, the president who had vetoed the McNary-Haugen bill twice, and then added that what the government needed to do was more belt tightening. The results of the 1932 elections devastated the Republican Party and left it in disarray. They were entering an era not unlike that felt by the Democrats in the post-Civil War decades, and they became embittered.29 Not only did the Republicans lose the presidency, but the Democrats also picked up 12 seats in the Senate for a total of 59 and added 99 seats in the House for a total of 313. It was a bitter bill for the party that had been in power for 56 of the preceding 72 years. In addition, the feud within the Republican Party between western progressives and east coast regulars worsened. After the debacle of 1932 a fight arose over the leadership, the strategy, and the chairmanship of the Republican Party. The Old Guard opposed Hoover’s choice for chairman but agreed on a frontal attack on the New Deal. The Republican National Committee began publishing anti-New Deal materials in November 1933. Many Republican House and Senate members were appalled by the committee’s failure to recognize the popularity of Roosevelt’s policies, and they set up independent reelection committees shortly thereafter. Ernest Gibson Sr., who had been a Bull Mooser in 1912, faced a special election in January 1934 to retain the Senate seat to which he had been appointed in late 1933. His letter of that year to a political confidant revealed the rift between regulars and insurgents: “I am very much troubled with respect to the conduct of the campaign for the coming election.” He felt it was important “not to let it appear that we are opposing the Administration for partisan advantages.” In Vermont, “some of the prominent [American] Legion men … take the position that they went out to fight Evarts and now find the same old crowd is planning to run

the campaign.”30 The fight over the national committee chairmanship was resolved in May 1934 when Hoover’s nominee finally won the position. Therefore, on the national level as in Vermont, the “same old crowd” would be running the campaign in the upcoming midterm elections. The Republican National Committee’s campaign for the midterm elections of 1934 reflected the frontal attack championed by its fallen leader and the chairman of his choosing. Many Republicans elected to Congress who had supported New Deal legislation understandably remained aloof from the attacks by the national committee. Senator Gibson wrote a fellow congressman, “I note what you say in regard to the feeling of the people in your section with respect to the present Administration. In this section I think the people still have confidence in the President while they do not agree with all his policies. In my opinion the time has not come, thru [sic] this section at least, when we can go out and attack the Administration and get away with it.”31 During the summer of 1934 the private and bipartisan American Liberty League was founded. Much like the Republican National Committee, it published materials that made the case that Roosevelt was leading the country down the road to communism. Given that the Liberty League’s membership reflected the elite of the business world, the twin attacks only served to confirm that the leadership of the Republican Party and the leading voices of the Liberty League were one in the same. President Roosevelt’s conduct during the campaign of 1934 reflected the manner in which he had championed the New Deal as a bipartisan emergency program. He stood above party, took the middle way, and attempted to cultivate good relations with business. Roosevelt took a cautious approach that made it difficult for his opponents to stigmatize him as a radical. The results of the midterm elections of 1934 were staggering. The party in power increased its seats in both houses during an off year election for the first time since the Civil War. The number of Democratic members rose from 313 to 332 in the House and from 59 to 69 in the Senate. After the election Senator Gibson discussed the results of the election in a letter to Warren Austin: “what a licking we took from the country at large: in view of the deluge you should feel pretty well satisfied with your vote since they were trying to get your scalp the same as they got Reed’s. I am sorry indeed we have lost Reed, Hebert, Kean, Patterson and others.”32 At the same time, the strength of the progressive wing within the Republican Party increased relative to the decline of candidates affiliated with the Old Guard. After the midterm election agrarian progressive Republicans controlled ten of the party’s twenty-five remaining Senate seats. Thus the Old Guard Republican stalwarts of the Coolidge/Hoover tradition were repudiated by the supporters of Franklin Roosevelt a second time in 1934. Even though the Republican Party had lost the urban labor vote in 1928 and later the support of agrarian progressives in the elections of 1932 and 1934, the party leadership refused to alter its agenda. Many Old Guard Republicans rationalized that the election of 1934 had been an unfair test. Senator Frederick Hale, in a letter to Warren Austin, clearly enunciated that view: “I suppose you had the same sort of conditions to contend with that we had in Maine with the Federal Relief money being used largely for political purposes … you and Townsend and I

were the ones who oppose actively the New Deal who pulled through. I do not look forward with much pleasure to our service during the next few years.”33 Meanwhile, Herbert Hoover remained the titular head of the party and was still determined to vindicate the reputation of his administration, himself, and his party in the election of 1936.

THE PROGRESSIVE TIDE AND FOREIGN POLICY Congressional voting on American foreign policy issues and the policy positions taken by President Roosevelt took some unexpected turns during the early years of the New Deal. Most notably, internationalists of both parties simply stopped talking about internationalism and, in some cases, even appeared to recant their belief in it altogether. Foreign policy issues were distinctly avoided during the election campaign of 1932—and by none more obviously than the long time backer of the League of Nations, Franklin D. Roosevelt himself. Many Republican internationalists exhibited similar reluctance to make an issue over foreign policy or emphasize their past internationalism. In 1922 the Tampa Tribune stated that “Charles Plumley, president of Norwich University, the military college of Vermont, says that wars are unpreventable and urges preparedness. It is his contention that nations will quarrel despite leagues and conferences because they are just as greedy as some humans.”34 His rather blunt and realistic view stood in stark contrast to a campaign speech of November 1933, when he asserted, “I am not a militarist.”35 Efforts to attain American membership to the World Court resulted in a miscalculated defeat for that measure. Later the munitions industry hearings conducted by agrarian progressive Republican Senator Gerald Nye of North Dakota became the symbol of the withdrawal from internationalism. The Nye Committee was encouraged, and their findings were supported by both parties and received little criticism from internationalists at the time. The lessons learned after World War I offered an important precedent that probably influenced the members of both parties. After that war regular Republicans regained the allegiance of their insurgent agrarian wing by reversing the party’s traditional support for internationalism. The Democratic Party’s embrace of internationalism, accomplished under Wilson’s leadership, alienated agrarians. Wilson’s failure to gain agrarian support for the Versailles Treaty, despite his Herculean efforts, led to the party’s defeat and exile from the White House for over a decade. The precedents were too clear for a savvy politician to overlook, and Franklin Roosevelt proved unwilling to repeat Wilson’s mistakes. Having achieved the long sought electoral support of western and Midwestern agrarian progressive Republicans, Franklin Roosevelt would not jeopardize the success of that realignment by emphasizing his internationalism. Conversely, regular Republicans were motivated to abandon their internationalism by hopes of regaining the lost allegiance of their agrarian progressive wing after 1932. Unwilling to concede on matters of economic reform, they sought concessions for progressive support in another area. Thus, agrarian progressives of the early 1930s were in the enviable position of

being courted by both the Democratic president and the Old Guard of the Republican Party. While Woodrow Wilson was still alive, the Democratic Party remained faithful to his vision of the League of Nations. The Democratic platform wholeheartedly supported American participation in the world organization in both 1920 and 1924. But after Wilson’s death, internationalism suddenly became anathema to the Democratic Party. There was no reference to the previously cherished League of Nations in the Democratic platform of 1928. The most plausible reason for the party’s turnaround was no doubt similar to what motivated the Democratic endorsement of McNary-Haugenism that year: a desire to court and win the agrarian vote. As outlined in Chapter One, agrarians associated the League of Nations with globalism, imperialism, and Anglo European traditions they had long opposed. The Democratic electoral defeats of 1920 and 1924 provoked a reevaluation that resulted in that party’s pro-agrarian strategy of 1928. Although the Democrats backed McNary-Haugenism and acquiesced to agrarian opposition to the League, they failed to win over enough agrarian progressives to win the election. Al Smith’s Catholicism, his stand against prohibition, and his city ways lost him many of the agrarian progressive votes that may otherwise have swung to the Democratic Party that year. In addition, the Republican platform of 1928 went one step beyond the Democrat’s removal of their League pledge: the Grand Old Party flatly opposed American entry to the League. Republican opposition to the League in 1928 was also in many ways a break from the new internationalism that was evolving during the Hoover years. As the 1920s advanced, the Republican Party had begun to depart somewhat from the isolationism that characterized the Lodge and Harding administration and return to the globalist tradition of William McKinley. Despite the rejection of League membership, by the end of the decade Coolidge and Hoover both supported American membership to the World Court. Hoover was readily identified with internationalism regardless of his party’s position on the League. He spent many years living abroad because of his engineering business and received worldwide fame for his coordination of Belgian relief efforts. During Hoover’s administration the Stimson Doctrine, enunciated by his secretary of state, refused to recognize Japanese gains in Manchuria and conveyed the impression that the United States was working in tandem with the League of Nations. Hoover’s approach to the Depression also became increasingly focused on the stabilization of international currency through his efforts to establish cooperation with the other great powers. Wanting to differentiate their platform as much as possible from Hoover’s agenda, the Democratic campaign of 1932 promised change; and a reversal of Hoover’s policies implied a reversal of his internationalism too. Franklin Roosevelt faced significant pressures during his race for the nomination to declare himself opposed to U.S. participation in the League of Nations. The progressive, isolationist, agrarian wing of the Democratic Party controlled the delegates of California and Texas that could deny the nomination to Roosevelt. Those delegations, in turn, were heavily influenced by isolationist publisher William Randolph Hearst. In addition, the candidate most likely to benefit from a split convention, League supporter Senator Newton Baker, announced he would not advocate American entry to the world body if nominated. That wasn’t good enough for Hearst, who demanded total

renunciation in exchange for his endorsement. As the Democratic vice presidential candidate in 1920, Roosevelt had strongly supported U.S. participation in the League of Nations. But in 1932 FDR faced the difficult choice of winning the nomination or defending internationalism. On February 2, 1932, Roosevelt stated that he opposed U.S. participation in the League of Nations. With the tricky footwork he was so famous for, FDR explained that the League was no longer the institution that Wilson had envisioned. Roosevelt sought to maintain that he was against participation in the League while remaining true to the Wilsonian idea that he himself had embraced earlier in his career. Such political wizardry earned the comment from Hoover that Roosevelt was like “a chameleon on plaid.”36 Roosevelt won the 1932 nomination because of his ability to dance around the League issue and gain for himself the support of the anti-internationalist agrarian progressive Democrats of the Texas and California delegations. That very talent for sidestepping difficult topics came back to haunt him. His opponents used such examples to later justify their claims that the president was shifty and could not be trusted with discretionary power in foreign policy. In fact, many Republican internationalists were no less likely to straddle foreign policy issues. Senator Austin’s pro-World Court speech of 1931 might have easily led one to believe he was opposed to the institution. In his speech the senator quoted George Washington’s advice to steer clear of permanent alliances and Jefferson’s opinion that the United States must never entangle itself in the broils of Europe. When he referred to American participation in the Washington Disarmament Conference and the settlement of the Shantung problem, Austin said: “if we had been pooling our interests with either Great Britain or Japan … we could not have acted as the peacemaker and go-between as we did. … We should not abandon our historic attitude by joining the League of Nations.” Only in the last sentence of a speech that evoked an isolationist viewpoint did Austin reverse himself and state his true internationalist perspective: “the world needs the Court. We cannot outlaw war by mere declarations.”37 Roosevelt’s campaign for the presidency in 1932 exhibited the conscious avoidance of not just internationalism but of foreign policy altogether. As Charles Beard pointed out in his convincing effort to dispel the myth that Roosevelt was a die-hard internationalist, “Volume I of the Public Papers reveals no words that could offend the strongest isolationist of the West or anywhere in the country and no words that could give aid and comfort to any citizen who still believed that the United States should be associated with the League. Nor is reference to the World Court to be found in the index.”38 As Beard also pointed out, neither did the Republicans pursue the issue of foreign policy during the campaign of 1932.39 In keeping with his reticence to advocate internationalism in that campaign, during the first years of the New Deal FDR conveyed mixed signals in regards to his support for the principle of international cooperation. On April 17, 1933, the House of Representatives passed the McReynolds Resolution that allowed the president to designate aggressor nations and place them under an arms embargo. Meeting with British Prime Minister MacDonald on April 23, 1933, President Roosevelt agreed to cooperate with the League and respect embargoes against aggressor nations. When the Senate version of the McReynolds Resolution passed through the

Foreign Relations Committee in May of 1933, an amendment was attached to it that stipulated that any embargoes must be applied impartially to all parties categorized as a belligerent. The amendment was the initiative of California agrarian progressive Republican Senator Hiram Johnson, and the president lent his support to it. Since Roosevelt’s support for Johnson’s amendment was in direct contradiction to the House version, his commitment to MacDonald, and the idea of collective security and discretionary embargoes, it has elicited frequent speculation. Roosevelt probably desired to avoid a heated debate that would be distractive and derail his coalition and domestic legislation. The president later reversed his decision, preferring to drop the matter of embargoes altogether rather than accept an embargo that failed to stipulate an aggressor. The president was focused on his domestic legislation, and that entailed maintaining his coalition with agrarian progressive Republicans like Senator Johnson. The following year, Senate Republicans proved as desirous as the president to court, or at least appease, the agrarian progressive sentiments within their party. By a unanimous vote, in February 1934 the Senate passed the arms embargo resolution with Senator Johnson’s impartiality amendment intact. The president had consideration of the resolution blocked in the House, again preferring no embargo legislation to any that failed to determine an aggressor in concert with the League. The issue of American participation on the World Court elicited a similar response from Roosevelt in early 1933. When Roosevelt renounced the League of Nations in his speech of February 2, 1932, he said nothing about the World Court. In March of 1933 American entry to the World Court became a policy objective of the administration.40 But the president hesitated to go forward with the issue in 1933 or 1934 despite the fact it was favored to pass.41 When the Court issue made it to the Senate floor in January of 1935, the final vote did not conform to earlier forecasts. It had been anticipated that the president had the support of sixtynine senators. In fact only fifty-two voted in favor of the bill, and it failed to achieve the required two-thirds majority by seven votes. The president had misjudged the impact of the elections of 1934. Progressive voices had become even stronger after the midterm elections. Most of the Republican losses that year were at the expense of the internationalist Old Guard. For Republican regulars, their weakened position becoming ever clearer, the World Court issue presented one of the few opportunities to form a coalition to appease their progressive wing and break the president’s winning streak. In the topsy-turvy world of the early 1930s, the rejection of internationalism in the guise of the World Court was in keeping with the rejection of all other things that were holdovers from the Coolidge and Hoover years. Therefore Democrats who rejected the faltering Court could maintain that they were being loyal to the voters’ mandate for change, if not their president. Not since the days when Senator Lodge deferred to the agrarian progressives in his quest for party unity had agrarians wielded so much power and influence over foreign policy. Into the vacuum that had been created by the reverses dealt the Old Guard in the elections of 1932 and 1934, the agrarian progressive wing was again able to assert its influence over the foreign policy agenda. State socialism advocated by progressive Midwestern governors served as an example for the New Deal, and progressives in Washington took the lead in shaping the debate

over foreign policy. Agrarian progressive Republican Senator Gerald Nye captured the public limelight, chairing the famous Senate Committee Investigating the Munitions Industry that commenced hearings on September 4, 1934. Under Nye’s leadership the hearings exposed the villains that were to blame for American involvement in World War I. Not surprisingly, the villains were the same people who had led the nation into the Great Depression and had been the enemies of agrarians for years. The deals and conspiracies of bankers and big business munitions makers were held responsible for dragging the country into World War I. The gist of the committee’s argument provided the rationale for future neutrality legislation that limited business transactions during wartime. Rather shortsightedly, Roosevelt encouraged the Nye hearings.42 Of course the hearings were yet another indictment of wealthy business and financial classes, and certainly Roosevelt realized how devastating those hearings would be to those who most vehemently opposed his domestic proposals. In addition, Roosevelt’s actions can be viewed as an attempt to link himself to the upswing in popularity of the agrarian progressives. There are varying interpretations of Roosevelt’s intentions, but most agree he “supported the Nye Committee when it supported his goals and clashed with it when it did not.”43 Republicans in the Senate also failed to object to the Senate resolution that enabled Nye to hold the hearings. Republican Senator Frederick Hale of Maine, the staunch militarist, was one of many who could have objected to the hearings but didn’t.44 As an east coast regular with internationalist leanings, Senator Warren Barbour of New Jersey was selected for the Nye Committee in order to give it balance. He was expected to offer resistance to isolationist sentiments and come to the defense of the munitions makers. But his role in the hearings was minimal, and when the committee chose its chair, the senator joined in the unanimous selection of the rigorously isolationist, agrarian, and anti-Eastern Senator Nye.45 After ninety-three hearings Senator Nye let the gavel fall for the last time on February 20, 1936. Eight days later the Neutrality Act of 1936 was signed. For over a year and a half the hearings had served as a backdrop before which the debates over neutrality were staged. The hearings fanned the flames of popular agrarian resentment toward Eastern elites who controlled industry and finance. Just as the Pecora hearings had sown distrust for the business elite’s influence on domestic policies, the Nye committee extended that distrust to include the realm of foreign policy. Businessmen were flogged by the committee, this time disgraced as merchants of death. The hearings legitimized neutrality and isolationism and greatly enhanced the prestige of prominent progressives, especially Senators Nye and Clark. Because of the hearings, the reputations of agrarian progressive senators—such as Senator Norris, who had voted against war and preparedness before World War I—no longer suffered from the stigma of slightly unpatriotic behavior that they shouldered when the United States joined the war effort in 1917. The Nye hearings seemed to confirm that World War I had been fought for profit and not for ideals and demonstrated that the old progressives had been right all along. The duration of the Nye committee hearings represented a high point of agrarian progressive influence on foreign policy. For a year and a half agrarian progressives held the initiative and defined the agenda in foreign affairs.

In December of 1934 a border conflict between Italian Somaliland and Ethiopia threatened to grow into a full-fledged conflict. On March 19, 1935, the president met with the Nye committee and urged them to prepare neutrality legislation. The president’s obvious deference to the committee came as quite a surprise to Secretary of State Hull, not to mention the isolationist committee members themselves. Why President Roosevelt would lay the sensitive subject of how to implement neutrality at the feet of those most likely to oppose his views remains a mystery, but his actions were consistent with his behavior prior to his nomination and after his election. Conscious of his elite background and sensitive to attacks on his previous support for internationalism, the president continued to court the support of agrarian progressives by identifying himself with the committee. Emboldened by the president’s request and riding the crest of their committee’s notoriety and prestige, Senator Nye and fellow munitions committee member Senator Champ Clark initially proposed two resolutions. One resolved to withhold passports of American citizens traveling in war zones or on belligerent ships. The other made it unlawful to give loans or credit for the purchase of contraband by any belligerent government. A third, introduced in May of 1935, proposed an embargo of arms impartially applied to any belligerent. The proposals were mandatory upon determination of a state of belligerency and did not allow the president the right to discriminate between aggressor and victim. The state department attempted to stall the resolutions and may have succeeded had not the progressive bloc, led by Nye, threatened a filibuster if neutrality legislation was not brought to a vote during the current session. The strategy worked, and a compromise bill was passed by the House on August 23 and by the Senate the following day. The vote in the House was unrecorded, but the roll call vote in the Senate was almost unanimous. No Republican senator voted against it, including those longtime internationalists who later reversed themselves and became Roosevelt’s allies in his effort for repeal. In 1946 Warren Austin recalled that “in respect to Foreign Relations … President Roosevelt vigorously developed policies which I had stood for years.”46 If that was true, then Austin certainly misled his constituents on June 22 1935, when he read George Washington’s Farewell Address into the congressional record. The Farewell Address was universally identified with isolationism and seen as the supreme justification for neutrality. The probable consequences of progressive insistence on impartiality toward belligerent nations were not unforeseen by Republican internationalists at the time. Representative Wadsworth, the one-time senator elected to the House in 1932, clearly foresaw and stated for the record that the law was “an open invitation to the great and powerful to attack the weak.”47 He also thought that “it was a surrender of our inherent international rights to enact a law forbidding the sale of munitions” because “in years past a neutral might sell munitions to a belligerent. In doing so, of course, he took the risk of blockade … in attempting to run … his ships might be seized.”48 Like the president, internationalists of both parties could console themselves with the fact that the law would have its greatest impact on Italy, the aggressor. Ethiopia was unlikely to purchase anything from the United States anyway, and thus progressive sentiments could be appeased without jeopardizing their intention of limiting

Italy’s access to weaponry. In its final form the Neutrality Act of 1935 gave the president the power to determine a state of belligerency, ban trade in arms and contraband with all belligerent countries, stipulate that travel on belligerent ships was at the traveler’s own risk, and set up a munitions board to monitor and publish sales of weaponry. The act did not address the question of loans or credits, and upon the insistence of the president the act was set to expire in six months on February 26, 1936. The debate over neutrality that followed in 1936, as the 1935 act approached its expiration, has been described by Robert Divine as a fiasco.49 The president again tried to assuage progressive sentiments while hoping to acquire more discretionary power. Progressives attempted to increase the breadth of the embargoes and insisted they be applied impartially. The more extreme among them advocated curtailment of all foreign trade as the only way to insure noninvolvement in foreign wars. This final option opened a Pandora’s Box of disagreement from producers of agricultural commodities as well as from producers of manufactured goods. It soon became apparent that implementing wide-ranging embargoes would be no easier for progressives in 1936 than it had been for President Jefferson prior to the War of 1812. The issue of extending the embargoes to include other commodities besides contraband arose as a direct result of the Italian campaign against Ethiopia that commenced on October 3, 1935. Although the Neutrality Act of 1935 denied Italy weapons of war, it failed to curtail the shipments of oil and scrap metal that literally fueled Italy’s war machine. Thus, when the Neutrality Act came up for renewal in 1936, the debate focused on that situation. The president went to the agrarian progressives with a compromise plan from the outset, again showing his willingness to defer to their sentiments. Roosevelt tried to appear magnanimous in his acceptance of an impartial arms embargo but outlined a plan that gave to the executive the authority to embargo raw materials at his discretion. The progressives were not impressed and believed that executive discretion of any kind was unacceptable. Regular Republicans took the opportunity to criticize the president. In a radio address during the debate, Congresswoman Edith Nourse Rogers called the administration’s policy “as shifty as a weathervane.”50 She added that: With the record of the past three years of nine major laws proven unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, it makes us hesitate to give discretionary powers. If the Administration were as indiscreet in its acts of neutrality as it was in passing unconstitutional laws, Americans very easily might become involved quickly in foreign conflicts. … I call attention to Section Four of the McReynolds Bill, the so-called Administration measure. This section deals with the embargo of war materials and authorizes the President to use his discretion in this regard. Think of the power that such a clause would place in the hands of one man. … This clause, I am told, would even enable President Roosevelt to join with the League of Nations in imposing economic sanctions. … The responsibility for peace lies with the Congress, not the President.51

Rogers’s speech touched upon the gamut of Republican criticisms of the president at the time: his shiftiness, the transference of excessive power to the executive, and the deviation from constitutional tradition. James Wadsworth, however, found it “ironic that the party that vociferously opposed New Deal economic regulations as an encroachment on individual

liberty saw no inconsistency in their support for the Neutrality Acts [that] … also limited free trade and the freedom of movement of U.S. citizens.”52 The events of 1936 were a watershed in the debate over neutrality because the agrarian progressives themselves could not field a proposal that was acceptable to the majority. They lost the initiative and some of their luster in that chaotic debate. Agrarian progressives no longer conveyed the certainty of their convictions or commanded the solidarity of their supporters. The theory that the elimination of weapons eliminated involvement in conflicts abroad was proven incorrect by the Ethiopian War. It wasn’t just a band of arms merchants and financiers that were providing the tools of war; one also had to consider all the oil, metals, food, cloth, medicine, and petroleum that were necessary to win a modern, twentieth-century military engagement. Again, James Wadsworth explained “in modern war … a cargo of wheat shipped to a belligerent may be absolutely necessary for that belligerent to preserve life. It’s a munition of war in that sense, just as much as a rifle or a gun.”53 In addition, total isolationism was against the best economic interests of the very people agrarian progressives professed to represent: the small farmer and laborer who were suffering from the Great Depression. Agrarians didn’t object to embargoes on weapons but were against any kind of embargo on the commodities that they produced, particularly during a time when they were so economically hard pressed. In Mrs. Rogers words, “we have our own war, but it is an economic one, and it is taking all of our effort, all of our resources to win it.”54 Although willing to characterize the president as shifty in order to gain partisan advantage, Mrs. Rogers also had to distance herself from the agrarian progressive view in order to please the constituents of her industrial district, as her speech of January 10, 1936, indicated: “it is a question also of whether or not this country wants to kill its trade entirely … for there are provisions in some of these bills which would shut this country up in a tight box as far as trading even with neutrals is concerned, and if legislation is not carefully drawn, that might happen.”55 The concise and easily understood method of preventing American involvement in foreign wars that agrarian progressives and the Nye committee had thus far put forth was proven to be too simplistic. The progressive view of neutrality failed to fully account for the nature of modern total mass industrial and economic warfare. The Italo-Ethiopian War had proven that it wasn’t just the financiers and merchants of weapons who were responsible for and stood to gain from American economic involvement in foreign wars. The issue was further complicated by nationalistic groups that pressed their legislators to support one belligerent or the other, which again proved that for a country like the United States, composed of so many diverse nationalities, entanglement in foreign wars involved much more than just weapons. The final result of the neutrality debate of 1936 was anticlimactic and disillusioning. The debate between different constituencies and interest groups sank into cacophony and chaos. With Congress unable to reach a consensus beyond what had already been reached, the act of 1935 was basically extended. The bill was enlarged to cover loans and credits to a belligerent, but it still fell short of agrarian progressive expectations. At the time it looked like a draw between the internationalism of the White House and the isolationism of the agrarian

progressives. In retrospect it appears that during the early months of 1936, agrarian progressive influence over foreign policy began its slow decline. The results of the 1936 debate were a fiasco for the president, the country, and the cause of collective security, but probably even more so for the cause of agrarian progressives. The certainty with which progressives asserted their solutions had proven to be not so certain after all. The chaotic nature of the debate of 1936 also made it seem doubtful that agrarian progressives could provide effective leadership. The debate made them again look less legitimate and was reminiscent of the way they were depicted by regular Republicans during the late 1920s: narrow-minded, on the fringe, lacking unity, and primarily obstructionists. Almost simultaneously as the debate and fiasco over the Italo-Ethiopian War was unfolding, in February of 1936 the Nye committee ended its hearings in a similarly indecorous fashion. In January of 1936 the committee brought into question the veracity of President Wilson, criticizing his failure during World War I to press for the revocation of secret Allied treaties designed to divide up the spoils of victory. During the course of Foreign Relations Committee hearings in 1919, President Wilson had denied that he had any knowledge of such treaties until after the war. The Nye committee believed Wilson and Lansing had knowledge of the treaties as early as 1917. Nye termed Wilson’s testimony “falsified” information.56 Nye’s statement unleashed an outrage that challenged the committee’s findings and led to its termination. Senators Glass of Virginia and Connally of Texas, munitions committee members Senators Pope and George, and numerous others rallied to the defense of Wilson and did their best to humiliate Nye for his infamous suggestion. Again, the agrarian progressives appeared to be wild-eyed radicals who were too often willing to shoot from the hip. Under the leadership of Senator Glass, the Senate voted against further funding for the committee and instructed it to complete its final report. In assessing the role played by President Roosevelt during this period, it must be remembered that he was hampered by his sensitivity to agrarian progressive feelings during the election year of 1936. His priority was to hold onto agrarian progressive support since he was being challenged for that support by some within his own party, by the Republicans, and by the possibility of a progressive third-party candidate. Hiram Johnson warned the president as early as the autumn of 1935 that his opponents were “hoping and praying” for anything that could be interpreted as an attempt to coordinate an American embargo of Italy with League actions and thus “allow them to make an issue of internationalism next year.”57 For internationalist Republicans of the Eastern establishment, the opportunity to defeat the New Deal eclipsed any feelings of sympathy they may have had for the president’s foreign policy. Their party and its leadership were under assault, and they were angered and afraid of the president’s accumulation of discretionary power and his use of it under the New Deal. These factors made conservatives all the more anxious to limit executive power in all areas and in any way possible. Had the president championed without compromise his plan for discretionary embargoes and collective security, there can be little doubt that even internationalist Republicans would have exploited the opportunity to make internationalism an issue as Senator Johnson suggested.

Had Roosevelt not been so clearly associated with internationalism for so long, perhaps he would not have engendered mistrust among agrarian progressive isolationists and thus avoided the hurdles they felt compelled to place before him. The president’s crafty political style also contributed to the distrust isolationists felt for him. Roosevelt’s confidence and eloquence could also be interpreted as being slick and untrustworthy. And although the president was progressive in thought, his privileged upbringing cast suspicion on his loyalty to progressive causes. Senator Key Pittman of Nevada, the Democratic leader of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, also made the work of Roosevelt and Secretary of State Hull that much harder during the early 1930s. Remembered for drinking too hard and given to antics like shooting out street lamps in London, Pittman lacked the stature or intellect to effectively champion the president’s case in the Senate.58 As a westerner Pittman was by nature somewhat sympathetic to isolationism and agrarian progressivism and lacked the president’s inner commitment to internationalism. The decline of agrarian progressive influence over foreign affairs was less evident than one might have expected. The appeal of progressivism and the politics of the forgotten man were still very popular and effective, and on the domestic front progressive ideas were just reaching their zenith under Roosevelt’s Second New Deal. Thus, agrarian progressive strength in the domestic sphere bolstered their image and camouflaged their waning influence over foreign policy. Despite the fiasco of the 1936 neutrality hearings, progressive views on foreign policy had accrued a degree of credibility and respect that enabled them to provide staunch resistance and grassroots support against the president’s internationalist initiatives for years to come. With the neutrality business concluded and the Nye committee hearings terminated, the nation turned its attention away from foreign policy and toward the presidential election of 1936. A letter from a constituent found in the manuscript collection of Representative Sterling Cole, one of FDR’s Republicans first elected to Congress in 1934, showed that it was common knowledge what it would take to win in 1936. Writing to John Hamilton, chairman of the Republican National Committee, a self-described “dyed-in-the-wool Republican” offered the following suggestion: “now, as I listened to Mr. Cole’s quiet, gentlemanly, non-bombastic speech, convincingly spoken, telling a true tale of the New Deal from his past two years in Washington … I believe if those western farmers could hear him they would be ‘not almost’ persuaded but quite brought over to see the futility of getting out of the disgraceful situation we are in through voting for Mr. Roosevelt.”59 So even to a political amateur it was obvious that in order to win the upcoming election Republicans would have to nominate a candidate who could tap agrarian support that could heal the breach in their coalition. NOTES 1. Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., The Age of Roosevelt, The Crisis of the Old Order, 1919–1933 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1957), 253. 2. Schlesinger, Age of Roosevelt, 238. 3. Weed, The Nemesis of Reform, 27.

4. White Papers, Box 67, campaign speech, 1932. 5. Ernest Gibson Sr. Papers, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT, letter to Consuelo Northrup, December 24, 1933. 6. White Papers, Box 67, draft of speech for the Maine State Republican Convention, 1934. 7. Austin Papers, Carton 1, letter to mother, May 7, 1934. 8. White Papers, Box 67, draft of speech to Maine State Republican Convention, 1934. 9. Charles A. Plumley Papers, Vermont Historical Society, Montpelier, VT, Western Development address, October 16, 1934. 10. Austin Papers, Carton BII, item 116a, Guy Bailey Radio Address, November 5, 1934. The reference to coercion was, no doubt, a veiled attack on the NRA. 11. Austin Papers, Carton 1, letter to mother, February 19, 1935. 12. Austin Papers, The New York Times, May 11, 1935. 13. Austin Papers, The Baltimore Sun, May 12, 1935. 14. White Papers, Box 67, speech at James Blaine Club, Augustana, Maine, March 12, 1935. 15. White Papers, Blaine speech. 16. White Papers, Blaine speech. 17. Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., The Age of Roosevelt, 459. 18. Austin Papers, as quoted in “Aiken’s Comments,” profile page. 19. Austin Papers, Carton 1, The Baltimore Sun, May 12, 1935. 20. Austin Papers, The New York Times, May 11, 1935. 21. Gibson Sr. Papers, Carton 1, letter to son Preston, November 4, 1933. 22. Plumley Papers, Clippings file, radio endorsement by W. A Simpson, 1933. 23. Wadsworth, Oral History, 371. 24. Thomas A. Bailey, Democrats vs. Republicans, the Continuing Clash (New York: Meredith Press, 1968), 108. 25. Lewis L. Gould, Grand Old Party, A History of the Republicans (New York: Random House, 2003), 265. 26. Moos, The Republicans, 365. 27. Weed, Nemesis of Reform, 26. 28. Bailey, Democrats vs. Republicans, 108. 29. George H. Mayer, The Republican Party (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964), 428. 30. Gibson Sr. Papers, Carton 1, letter to Miss Consuelo Northrop, December 24, 1933. 31. Gibson Sr. Papers, letter to Hon. Joe Manlove, Joplin, MO, December 12, 1933. 32. Gibson Sr. Papers, letter to Senator Warren Austin, November 10, 1934. 33. Frederick Hale Papers, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, Box 1, letter to Warren Austin, November 10, 1934. 34. Charles Plumley Papers, Clippings file, Tampa Sunday Tribune, May 14, 1922. 35. Plumley Papers, Clippings file, campaign speech, November 29, 1933. 36. Robert Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932–1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), 20. 37. Austin Papers, Carton BII, item 81, speech to Chittenden Bar Association Banquet, April 20, 1931. 38. Charles A. Beard, American Foreign Policy in the Making, 1932–1940 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1946), 102. 39. Beard, American Foreign Policy Making, 101. 40. Dallek, FDR. and Foreign Policy, 70. 41. Dallek, FDR and Foreign Policy, 71. A Senate poll of January 1934 indicated sixty-five in favor, sixteen opposed, and fifteen doubtful. 42. James MacGregor Burns, Roosevelt, The Lion and the Fox, 1882–1940 (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1956), 254. 43. Matthew Ware Coulter gives an excellent overview in his essay “FDR and the Nye Committee: A Reassessment,” chapter three in Franklin D. Roosevelt and Congress, The New Deal and Its Aftermath, Volume Two, (London: M. E. Sharpe, 2001), 26. 44. John E. Wiltz, In Search of Peace: The Senate Munitions Inquiry, 1934–36 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1963), 36. 45. Wiltz, In Search of Peace, 45–46. 46. Austin Papers, Biographical Sketches and Correspondence, 1920–1950, Folder 97, letter to Aluizio Napaleao, August 27, 1946. 47. Congressional Record, August 23, 1935, 14358. 48. Wadsworth, Oral History, 427–28. 49. Robert A. Divine, The Illusion of Neutrality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962), chapter 5.

50. Edith Nourse Rogers Papers, Box 9, folder 146, “Neutrality,” radio address, NBC, January 10, 1936. 51. Rogers Papers, Box 9, folder 146. 52. Wadsworth, Oral History, 430. 53. Wadsworth, Oral History, 428. 54. Wadsworth, Oral History, 428. 55. Edith Nourse Rogers Papers, “Neutrality.” 56. Wiltz, In Search of Peace, 202–3. 57. Dallek, FDR and Foreign Policy, 115. 58. Dallek, FDR and Foreign Policy, 50. 59. W. Sterling Cole Papers, Special Collections, Cornell University Library, Ithaca, NY, letter to John Hamilton from Lucretia Taber Kellogg, September 9, 1936.

Chapter 3

Decline of the West and Resurgence in the East, 1936–1938 The presidential election of 1936 was a great victory for the forces of agrarian progressivism. Most agrarian progressives supported Roosevelt, were part of the New Deal coalition, and shared in the president’s victory. Agrarian progressive Republican Senators William Borah of Idaho and Hiram Johnson of California did not campaign for Roosevelt, but neither did they do so for the Republican candidate. The election results of 1936 indicated a landslide of support for the president’s progressive domestic policies, and the election was yet another devastating defeat for the Republican Old Guard of the East. Incredibly, within six months of his great victory the president had squandered his popular mandate, and his progressive legislation was stalled in Congress. In addition, just two years after the landslide of 1936, the representation of east coast Republicans increased very dramatically in Congress. Generally cited as the causes for these turns in events were the president’s misconceived strategy to pack the Supreme Court, his economic policies that triggered the recession of 1937, sit-down strikes that followed in the wake of the Wagner Act, and his failed attempt to purge the Democratic Party of its conservatives.1 The consequences of those events led to the breakup of the New Deal coalition that resulted in the inability to enact further New Deal legislation. After a fifty-year battle by agrarians to exert their influence over national policy, they finally achieved that goal from 1932 through 1938. The rise of agrarian progressive influence was a stimulus to (and coincided with) the success of the New Deal. The decline of the New Deal also paralleled the decline of agrarian progressivism. It could be said that the progressive upsurge of the mid-1930s declined as a result of its own success. The New Deal enacted much of the agrarian progressive agenda and that of the progressive labor movement. Perhaps the New Deal would have stalled regardless of whether or not the president suffered his string of defeats and miscalculations in 1937 and 1938. Nonetheless, the president’s mistakes and defeats almost certainly hastened the trend. The Roosevelt revolution and the realignment of the political parties meant that agrarian progressives henceforth found their interests better served by the Democratic Party. The decline of the New Deal and the demise of progressive agrarian Republicanism made these years, in the words of Ronald Feinman, “the twilight of progressivism.”2 During the twilight years of 1937 and 1938, evidence of agrarian progressive decline was significant but probably not terribly obvious to the general public. Agrarian progressives retained their prominence and seniority, especially in the Senate. They were at the forefront and led major national debates, albeit more and more frequently on the losing side, and they were highly visible in the media. There were, however, subtle signs indicating that agrarian progressivism was on the wane at the national level during 1937 and 1938. Meanwhile, in New England and upstate New York agrarian progressives were just hitting their stride. The

Republican Party’s humiliating national defeat of 1936 broke the hold of the Old Guard in its most loyal sector and unleashed a backlash of pent-up agrarian progressivism in a region whose loyalty the Old Guard had been taken for granted. On the crest of that wave, agrarian progressive Governor George Aiken of Vermont led a movement to reform the Republican Party during 1937 and 1938. Progressive reformers succeeded in 1938 when they finally overturned the “stand pat” philosophy of the party’s diehard anti-New Dealers. Agrarian progressives, however, did not take control of the Republican Party after playing such a visible role in overturning the philosophy of the old leadership. The victory over the diehards succeeded in bringing the party orthodoxy back within the mainstream and made it more appealing to middle-class Americans who supported parts of the New Deal. In steering the party back to the middle, the agrarian progressives helped set the stage for the rise of a new generation of Republicans. That new generation was akin to the Bull Moose tradition of Eastern, urban, middle-management, progressive, and internationalist Republicanism. The new generation eventually took control of the party, and thus the agrarian progressives inadvertently contributed to their own loss of influence within it. That eventuality only became evident after the midterm elections of 1938 and when the new Congress took office in 1939.

THE REPUBLICAN CRUSADE OF 1936 The strategy employed by the Republican Party in the presidential campaign of 1936 gained momentum when the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other conservative business groups gave up any prospect of working with Roosevelt and declared war on the New Deal in the May of 1935.3 Although such a war had been declared, Republicans had sense enough of the political climate not to nominate a conservative Wall Street banker as their candidate for president in 1936. In fact, the candidate of almost certain choice from the outset appeared to be quite the opposite. The moderately progressive Republican governor of Kansas, Alf Landon, was the front-runner and eventual nominee. He had come to nationwide attention in 1934 as the only Republican governor to be reelected that year.4 Senator Borah, newspaper publisher Colonel Frank Knox, Senator Vandenberg, and Robert A. Taft were also in the running for the party’s nomination in 1936. In the primaries Borah did well at first, and Knox also showed drawing power until he failed to win a convincing victory in his own home state of Illinois. Landon’s campaign was poorly funded, and he did not enter many of the primaries. Even so, unregistered Landon received 10,000 write-in votes in the Nebraska primary against the 41,000 that were cast for Senator Borah, who was registered.5 Landon won in Oklahoma, Kentucky, Virginia, and New Jersey and was clearly the frontrunner by the end of April.6 Essentially, Borah’s agrarian radicalism made him unacceptable in the East, and he was seventy years old. Knox lacked experience in public office and affected the more aggressive and outspoken mannerisms of Teddy Roosevelt.7 Vandenberg and Taft

were relatively unknown “favorite son” candidates available in case of a deadlock. The Republican convention was held in Cleveland in early June. Waiting in the wings, Herbert Hoover cast a giant shadow over the party. For many of the party faithful, the convention speeches of Herbert Hoover and House Minority Leader Bertrand Snell defined the conservative crusade of 1936. On June 10 Snell announced, “this convention will nominate a man to lead a new crusade to restore to the American people their Constitution and liberties. It offers to lead America against the unconstitutional dictatorship—yes, the arrogant individualism of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He runs the true course of the dictator. Having seduced the legislative branch by billions of pork barrel patronage, he now casts a calculating eye on the Judiciary.”8 In his address to the convention, Hoover portrayed the New Deal as “sheer opportunism … a muddle of a spoils system, of emotional economics, a reckless adventure …. a desire for popular acclaim, an aspiration to make the front pages of the newspapers.”9 He went on to say, “fundamental American liberties are at stake … have you determined to enter a holy crusade for liberty which shall determine the future and perpetuity of a nation of free men?”10 On June 11 John Hamilton nominated Landon and in his speech warned, “today this Nation is faced with the unusual picture of a president of the United States, apparently without concern and at times seemingly by design, using the power and prerogatives of his high office to undermine democracy.”11 Landon tried to maintain his progressive image and distanced himself from Hoover and the rhetoric of the crusade. But the most emotional and stirring response from the delegates came after Hoover’s speech.12 Hoover secretly hoped there would be a groundswell of support for his candidacy and that he would be chosen as the nominee.13 His hopes were in vain; Landon was nominated on the first ballot, and Knox was chosen as his running mate. The response to Hoover’s speech would lead one to believe that his views were a more accurate reflection of Old Guard priorities and the will of the party than Landon’s.14 The invective that characterized the Republican campaign and the attacks on President Roosevelt were a reflection of the Old Guard’s quest for vindication.15 The “economic royalists” of Wall Street were still being held responsible for the depression and still being vilified by the president and the majority of voters.16 The honor of the Old Guard was at stake, and they were still nursing the wounds to their pride. The response they chose confirmed again that the core members of the minority in the aftermath of a realignment do not necessarily act in a rational manner. The Republican campaign of 1936 was an attempt to rehabilitate the party’s image and portray those of the Old Guard as the true keepers of the flame of freedom. Hoover “sought to identify conservative fiscal policy with fundamental Christian ethics … [of] self reliance.”17 It had been hard for the Republicans to mount a campaign against the chameleon-like Roosevelt in 1932. In his first run for the presidency, Roosevelt had advocated balanced budgets and courted the support of big business. After four years of deficit spending and dynamic executive and federal leadership, Republicans no longer lacked information upon which to formulate a campaign. The strategy that prevailed assailed the president’s New Deal and portrayed him as a

communist with dictatorial aspirations. Hoover described the New Deal with terms like “Fascism,” “despotism,” and “the poisoning of Americanism.”18 At the core of the Republican campaign was the argument that the New Deal was unconstitutional and that Roosevelt was tampering with the sacred governmental and cultural traditions of the country. Those accusations were not new, but added to that argument was an apocalyptical element.19 During the campaign the Chicago Tribune announced on a daily basis the number of days that remained to “save the American way of life.”20 Fear of fascism abroad fueled fears of it at home. That is what Maine’s Senator Wallace White had in mind when he asked, “what of the portentous and rapid movement we have been making along that road by which the dictators of other lands have marched to their commanding powers?”21 The crusading spirit of the 1936 Republican campaign presented to the American people the vision that they were being tricked, seduced, or corrupted into following the likes of a Hitler or a Mussolini. In their worst-case scenario Republicans postulated that Franklin Roosevelt planned to sell Americans on socialism, put a lot of people on the dole or in patronage jobs (thus buying their votes), and afterward tamper with the Constitution and assume dictatorial powers. The Old Guard still held to the precepts of laissez-faire economics and suddenly found itself in sympathy with the old Jeffersonian Democratic principles of states’ rights and small government. Republicans hoped to capitalize on the frontier ethic and bootstrap philosophy of small town Americans, who were traditionally skeptical of big and intrusive government. As Duane Lockard pointed out, those of the fiercely individualistic northern tier of New England were particularly inclined to respond to that approach.22 The specter of encroaching big government was taken very seriously by tenaciously independent Yankees, as the results of the 1936 election later verified. The election of 1936 represented the final stage and climax of the realignment of the political parties that began in 1928. Not only did the political parties realign along new geographic lines and among new constituencies, but they reversed themselves ideologically as well. That clearly lent a cataclysmic air to the election of 1936. The rhetoric of both parties during that campaign conveyed to the electorate that the country faced an important turning point. The realignment that culminated under Roosevelt resulted from a Democratic coalition of supporters in the North and Midwest that the party had not been able to draw upon since before the Civil War. Neither the Cleveland nor the Wilson administrations could marshal the kind of working majorities that Franklin Roosevelt had at his disposal. The new sources of Democratic strength outside the South were in northern cities with ethnic populations, African Americans, and labor unions. Roosevelt’s Second New Deal won over those groups to the Democratic Party, and they responded with overwhelming support for him in 1936. Roosevelt also won over agrarians in the Midwest in 1936 as he had in 1932, definitively ending the tradition of the “bloody shirt” and fears of “Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion” that were so long and so effectively used against the Democratic Party in the North. Only in the upper northeast and in New England did enough agrarians stay loyal to the party of Lincoln and

vote for Landon in 1936 as they had for Hoover in 1932. Having conceded that ethnic groups and labor would be hard to win back, the Republican nomination of Alf Landon was an attempt to win back the small town, main street Midwestern vote. By all accounts Landon was a bit too average and too “middle American” when it came to campaigning. His flat Midwestern accent projected poorly over the microphone and radio.23 The agrarian, progressive, lone-wolf Republicans were wary of Landon’s progressive credentials and were suspicious of the fact that the Old Guard found him acceptable. True, he was from a family of Bull Moosers, and as governor of an agricultural state he had supported the New Deal programs that benefited agrarians.24 On the other hand, Landon also owned a successful oil-drilling business and opposed increased federal meddling in state affairs, increased taxation, and deficit spending. In advocating both balanced budgets and continued federal agricultural assistance, Landon was the embodiment of the two major factions within the Republican Party. And like the party, Landon was unable to fuse those two ideological strains into a believable platform or a winning campaign. As the campaign progressed, Landon became increasingly influenced by the Old Guard. Skeptical progressives deserted his campaign, and he became increasingly dependent on the Old Guard for financial and organizational support. As Landon himself rather pathetically said, “who else can I get?”25 The influence of the Old Guard meant that his campaign abandoned moderation and increasingly took on the nature of a crusade against the New Deal. Roosevelt was happy to fight the Republicans on those terms. The president had himself suggested making his campaign for reelection into a crusade in November of 1935.26 The election was essentially a referendum on the Second New Deal, and the president’s crusade was designed to maintain it. The electorate had voted overwhelmingly for a New Deal in 1932, and in the president’s words, “in 1936 the issue is the preservation of their victory.”27 Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal had taken government beyond its previous limits. The election of 1936 was to determine whether the country would support or reject Roosevelt’s new definition of the expanded role and responsibilities of the federal government. Paul Kleppner suggests that New Englanders and upstate New Yorkers of the “burned-over district” were predisposed to respond to the apocalyptic language of the 1936 Republican campaign. Such language was reminiscent of earlier campaigns that evoked the Protestant moralism that had originally shaped the party.28 The party of Lincoln was founded on a moral cause, the crusade to abolish slavery. At various times the Republican Party drew support from nativists, prohibitionists, and anti-Popery advocates who viewed the party as a vehicle for their own moral crusades. The Republican campaign of 1936 was yet another crusade, one to save democracy from the demagogic Roosevelt, who sought to destroy it. But there were drawbacks to a crusade mentality that had so often and so effectively motivated and solidified support for the party in the past. In James Sundquist’s analysis, Hoover attempted to associate the Republican platform with Christian principles, and that lent an air of moral absolutism to the campaign.29 Regardless of the few progressive planks Landon and Borah maneuvered into the platform, the Old Guard stood for the reversal and total repeal

of the New Deal. Portraying Franklin Roosevelt as the incarnation of evil left no room for compromise, consensus building, or coalitions; appealed only to the most ideologically pure; and narrowed the base of voter support. Barry Goldwater’s presidential campaign projected a similar moral certitude and lack of flexibility in 1964. With the Republican campaign defined by moral absolutes, it was inconceivable that the internationalists of the party could appear to be in agreement with any aspect of the president’s program. Most Republican internationalists partook in the campaign and agreed with the crusade’s analysis of the president’s intentions. Senator White asserted: “this coming political battle is between those who would impose upon us alien conceptions of government.”30 He characterized the New Deal as a “one man power program leading to the ultimate dictatorship.”31 In a letter to his mother, Senator Austin expressed his opinion of Landon’s acceptance speech: “the simple, sincere adherence to Americanism and the fundamental principles of our plan of government was most encouraging after three long years of infidelity and apostasy.”32 Edith Nourse Rogers voiced similar sentiments and accused the administration of “acting more and more in the role of a tyrant.”33 She defined the “permissive powers” granted to the president as “the Rooseveltian synonym for dictatorial powers.”34 On the eve of the election Mrs. Rogers called the Republican campaign “a crusade to re-establish the fundamental principles of American Government.”35 James Wadsworth of New York and Charles Eaton of New Jersey would later lend invaluable support to Roosevelt’s aims to aid the Allies. But both spoke out fervently against Social Security and the Wagner Act prior to their enactment. Eaton charged that the aim of the New Deal was to place “all American industry, business, and individual liberties under the control of the Government in Washington.”36 It was impossible to support any part of Roosevelt’s political agenda as long as he was perceived to be in league with the devil. Compromise was not an option under those circumstances. Had Roosevelt pressed his internationalist ideas during the campaign, they almost certainly would have been vilified along with everything else for which he stood. Republican internationalists would have to contradict the moral absolutism of the campaign or wait until it abated before they could again assert their opinions on foreign policy that coincided with those of the despised president. Therefore, much like the campaign of 1932, any discussion of foreign affairs was conspicuously absent from the campaign of 1936.37 In August, Roosevelt announced in his Chautauqua address that he hated war.38 Who could argue with that? Otherwise, almost nothing was said of the civil war that had broken out in Spain, Italy’s conquest of Ethiopia, Germany’s reoccupation of the Rhineland, or the worsening relations between Japan and China. As in the past the president had no desire to alienate his isolationist, agrarian, progressive allies by emphasizing his east coast internationalism. It was to his advantage to focus on domestic programs about which those of his coalition generally agreed. Republicans also avoided foreign policy issues during the campaign. Landon was an internationalist but thought it wise to avoid an issue that alienated him from the many agrarian progressives of his region. Roosevelt campaigned on a vague platform to continue the progress initiated during his first

term. In response to Landon’s demand that he define his objectives, the president replied, “of course we will continue to seek to improve working conditions for the workers of America … Of course we will continue our efforts in behalf of the farmers of America … Of course we will continue our efforts for young men and women … for the crippled, for the blind, for mothers . . .”39 Roosevelt’s failure to clearly enunciate objectives during his reelection campaign later came back to haunt him. He could not claim that he had won a clear mandate for the important reforms he was to pursue during his second term. Neither Court packing nor neutrality repeal had been discussed during the campaign, and thus the president could not claim to have received the public’s approval for those initiatives when he later introduced them. Landon tried to maintain his moderate image, but he had no control over his running mate, Frank Knox, who preferred to employ frontal attacks on the president. Nor did he have much control over John Hamilton, chairman of the Republican National Committee, who suggested in a speech that the president’s campaign was being aided by communists.40 Landon kept his distance from Hoover, but in early September he succumbed to Old Guard influence, and his campaign underwent a noticeable shift.41 By October Landon was echoing the apocalyptic rhetoric of the crusade, and in his speeches he accused the president of leading the nation down the road to dictatorship and of violating the basic ideals of the American way of life.42 The results of the election of 1936 were a remarkable victory for Franklin Roosevelt and his interpretation of the role and responsibilities of government. He carried every state of the union except Maine and Vermont. The popular vote was 27,478,945 for Roosevelt and 16,674,665 for Landon. In the House, Democrats captured 333 out of 435 seats and in the Senate 76 out of 96. After the election Republicans controlled only 89 seats in the House and 16 in the Senate. In retrospect it is easy to say that the Republican strategy of 1936 was misconceived. But in the world of the mid-1930s, crusades and politics had become a popular combination, no doubt in reaction to the desperate conditions of the worldwide depression. For a time Huey Long led quite a successful crusade to make every man a king, and Dr. Townsend captured the imagination of millions with his crusade to provide pensions for the aged. Radio priest Father Coughlin combined the professions of cleric, politician, and entertainer and used apocalyptic rhetoric to promote a variety of his favorite causes. Roosevelt too had perceived his own campaign as a crusade. Around the world, dictators were justifying their conquests as crusades: Hitler for Aryan purity and rectification of the injustices of Versailles; Stalin for the working class and equality under communism; Mussolini phrased his as a crusade to recapture for Italy the security and glory of ancient Rome; and Japan led a crusade for co-prosperity and independence for Asians. The attacks on an incumbent president also seem extraordinarily severe in retrospect. As seriously as the accusations against Roosevelt were intended and were taken, it should be noted that fascism and dictatorship took on far more sinister connotations only just prior to and as a result of World War II. The word “Dictator,” for example, was used as the model name for a popular American automobile marketed from 1927 through 1937. The manufacturer was the

Studebaker Corporation, and over 89,000 were sold in 1937, the final year the model was referred to by that name.43

REVOLT AND THE REDEFINITION OF REPUBLICANISM The sweeping defeat suffered by the Republican Party in the election of 1936 occasioned a vigorous debate by its members over the principles for which they stood. Western progressives had pressed for liberalization of the party’s anti-New Deal orientation as early as 1934.44 Senator Borah was a strong advocate of liberalizing the party but was dismissed by the Old Guard as not much more than a windbag. James Wadsworth, the upstate New Yorker, recollected of Borah that “he was more of a critic than a constructor. Not a single law is upon the statute books as a result of Borah having introduced the bill. He was a critic.”45 Windbags or not, agrarian progressive Republicans fared well in the elections of 1936. Of the thirteen progressives in the House, only one failed to be reelected.46 Death proved to be a greater foe, and three important agrarian progressives (Senator Bronson Cutting and exSenators George Norbeck and James Couzens) had died by late 1936. Often overlooked among the ruins of that election is the fact that Landon actually won eighty-seven more counties than Hoover had captured four years earlier.47 Nevertheless, the disastrous election of 1936 was a lopsided defeat for the party. Responsibility for the party’s poor performance had to be shouldered almost exclusively by the Eastern Old Guard. The loss of Pennsylvania was perhaps the most dramatic defeat for Eastern Republicans in 1936. Referred to as the “Verdun of Toryism,” the loss of Pennsylvania marked the first time a Democratic presidential candidate carried the state since 1856.48 Philadelphia had given Roosevelt only 42.9 percent of its votes in 1932, but in 1936 he received 60.5 percent.49 In Pittsburgh there were more registered Democrats than Republicans in 1936 for the first time since the Civil War.50 Connecticut and Delaware (longtime Republican strongholds) fell to the Democratic column in 1936 for the first time since 1912.51 Even in loyal Maine the Democratic Party showed remarkable strength. Senator White, a popular incumbent and one of the foremost crusaders, won his reelection bid by a mere 5,000 votes out of over 310,000 that were cast.52 As if to add insult to injury, in areas of the east where Republicans won new ground, it was attributed to the fact that the winning candidates were a new breed of progressive, young, executive-type Republicans not identified with the Old Guard. Senators Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts and Styles Bridges of New Hampshire, as well as Governor George Aiken of Vermont, were symbolic of the new generation elected that year. They ran as progressive Republicans and quite consciously disassociated themselves from the Old Guard. In New Hampshire the Democratic Party was still too disorganized to offer an effective outlet for progressivism in 1936. Men like Styles Bridges filled the void as progressive Republicans. In his primary campaign, Bridges faced off against George Moses, who was endorsed by Herbert Hoover. The Granite State News observed of Bridges: “a new, firm,

intelligent breed of Republicans were growing fast, strong, and in numbers around him.”53 The state manager of the Townsend Plan referred to Moses as an “old man” who was “not in sympathy,” while Bridges was “considered friendly to the principles of our plan.”54 It was the opinion of candidate Moses that Roosevelt supporters would not be fooled by “disguising the elephant as a donkey.”55 Yet that is exactly what Bridges did, and he won both the nomination and the general election. His ads asserted: “Labor Can Trust Bridges,” and he reminded voters that he had established a minimum wage department while serving as governor.56 Although more progressive in outlook, the new Republican faces of 1936 were primarily from the east and did not necessarily share the entire agenda of the older agrarian progressives. But the two progressive factions were united in 1936, as they had been in 1912, in their belief that the leadership of Old Guard was leading the party to a fate similar to that which had befallen the Federalists and the Whigs. The Granite State News concluded, “We must have an overhauling lest our old system lead us to destruction.”57 The Old Guard would not give up its control without a fight. Throughout 1937 a debate raged within the party. In April of 1937 Herbert Hoover set in motion the idea for a Republican midterm convention in 1938 that would work out new positions for the party.58 Landon biographer Donald McCoy has stated, “Landon was certain the convention idea was part of a plan to enable Hoover and the old guard to regain control of the party.”59 Landon feared that Young Republicans and the Women Republicans would be excluded and that the event would be dominated by the Old Guard and the Hoover clique.60 George Aiken, the newly elected governor of loyally Republican Vermont, emerged as one of the most prominent voices for reform during that struggle. Much like Senator Bridges of neighboring New Hampshire, Aiken was a progressive Republican who filled the shoes of the nascent Democratic Party in Vermont. The Boston Globe perceived that the “two New England Governors, Aiken of Vermont and Murphy of New Hampshire are in open rebellion.”61 The Aiken challenge to the party’s orthodoxy was waged during 1937 and 1938 by means of a series of public speeches throughout the upper northeast. On May 5, 1937, Aiken told the Young Republicans of Syracuse that the “greediness of certain private industries … [sought] to acquire that which is not rightfully theirs,” and he deplored connections between the party and holding companies and speculators.62 The following month Aiken spoke to the oldest Republican club in the country, the Middlesex Club of Boston, and recommended that the GOP “discard the tall hat and get itself a blue shirt.”63 By June, Aiken’s speeches were receiving the attention of the Washington Daily News that noted, “Governor Aiken was positively disrespectful of the leadership of the party.”64 While Aiken worked independently and usually from outside the inner sanctums of the party organization, Alf Landon worked from within. Landon well knew the dangers of being identified with the Old Guard. He labored to prevent the Old Guard from continuing to exert its counterproductive and inordinate influence over the party. Senators White and Austin favored Hoover’s idea for a midterm convention, but old Senator Hale of Maine called the proposed convention a “political blunder” and explained that the party’s “ greatest asset … at the present time is the split from the Democratic ranks … [and] anything we do … to drive back into the

administration fold the anti-administration Democrats in Washington will weaken us … and that is exactly the effect the proposed convention will have.”65 Throughout the summer the issue was debated. Knox came out against the idea in September, and by the end of that month the countervailing forces were deadlocked.66 Landon met with the national committee in late October and advocated his preference for a policy committee instead of a convention.67 The Hoover faction was rebuffed on November 5 when the national committee met and endorsed Landon’s idea of a policy committee.68 On December 5, 1937, Aiken submitted his “Open Letter to the Republican National Committee.” In it he stated that ordinary citizens “see no hope in a party offering no constructive policy or program” and recommended that the party “accept in general the social aims which the opposing party has had the wisdom to adopt.”69 To the policy committee Aiken advised acceptance of New Deal social aims, compensation for farmers, and assistance to labor in getting its fair share.70 In an effort to dispel the thought that his actions were inspired by any intention of gaining the nomination in 1940, Landon renounced any possibility of his own candidacy on December 10. Frank Knox followed suit the next day in an obvious and coordinated effort to force Hoover to do the same.71 Thus by early 1938 the chance of a revival of Hooverism and dominance of the party by the Old Guard was finally put to rest. Governor Aiken’s Lincoln Day Address of 1938 before the National Republican Club of New York City symbolized the victory of the reformers. In that speech Aiken admonished the Old Guard: “Lincoln … would be ashamed of his party’s leadership today.”72 He told them to “stop crying fascist every time he [FDR] makes a move, … stop worrying about Reds in the White House.”73 Ernest Gibson Jr. wrote to his father, “I think George made a good speech in New York although its [sic] going to let him in for a lot of verbal and printed attack. I don’t think it will do any particular harm and I do think that what he said is true. I believe there is only one way to win an election and that is by securing more farm and labor votes to the Republican standard. I have reason to know that many of the National Committee are extremely peeved at George but, of course, most of them will not dare openly attack him because they might be attacking the farmer and the laborer.”74 During the spring of 1938 Landon toured the northeast and New England and met with liberal insurgents like Governor Aiken and new Republican faces like Thomas Dewey. Fittingly, Landon made his last major speech of the tour addressing the New York State Young Republicans and emphasized the party’s need for youth and independent ideas.75 The new, younger generation of Republican candidates usually accepted at least some aspects of the New Deal. Men like Styles Bridges, Henry Cabot Lodge, Warren Barbour, George Aiken, and Thomas Dewey exemplified the new wave of modern Republicans of the late 1930s. The initial phase of the realignment process had finally passed, and the party appeared ready to modify its platform in order to appeal to a broader base. The reformers often hailed from the progressive tradition of Teddy Roosevelt and accepted the need for some government regulation. Yet, unlike the Bull Moosers, the new breed had grown up, as it were, with the Great Depression and the New Deal. The conception of government responsibility had

advanced far beyond TR’s day. The new generation of Republicans that took office in 1937, 1939, and 1941 generally supported social security, the rights of labor unions and minimum wage legislation, security and exchange controls, conservation, and aid to farmers. A minority among them even supported deficit spending, higher taxes, and the reciprocal trade treaties. The right of government to exert economic controls and take on added welfare responsibilities was accepted by the newcomers. The moral element of the new generation was dedicated to honesty and competency in public service, not to a crusade to save democracy from big government. They didn’t advocate that Franklin Roosevelt wanted to be a dictator; their focus was on the inefficient and corrupt way that government was being run under the Democrats. The views of the new Eastern progressives came to predominate in the party. “Clean government” became the new Republican battle cry. It was the strategy that Roosevelt had most feared the Republicans might employ against him in 1936, and he frankly admitted the inefficiency of the New Deal.76 Two of FDR’s Republicans were self-proclaimed watchdogs. From her seat on the Civil Service Committee, Representative Edith Nourse Rogers of Lowell, Massachusetts, kept an eye out for abuses committed by the administration.77 She and the other watchdog, Representative John Taber (from upstate New York and a member of the Appropriations Committee), had been in Congress for over a decade.78 They were too young themselves to be true members of the Old Guard, and they quickly adapted to the new generation’s assault on the abuses and inefficiencies of the New Deal. In December of 1937, Mrs. Rogers launched her attack on James Farley, the presidential confidant who held the dual positions of postmaster general of the United States and chairman of the Democratic Party. In her attack, Mrs. Rogers quoted Farley’s own words, from a 1931 letter to Robert Moses, “appoint no one but a Democrat to these positions,” and from a 1933 speech, “we know that for every job we can find a Democrat of superior qualification.”79 “Think of it,” said Mrs. Rogers, “from March 3, 1933 to June 30, 1937, the Executive Branch payroll was increased by 278,177 persons, of whom only 64,801 … or 23.3 percent were appointed under the merit system. While Mr. Roosevelt has been giving lip service to a bigger and better Civil Service, Mr. Farley has been achieving a bigger and better political bureaucracy based on the spoils system.”80 Mr. Farley’s own words, printed in American Magazine, again added fuel to Mrs. Roger’s fire: “the patronage is a reward to those who have worked for party victory. It is also an assistance in building party machinery for the next election. The patronage belongs to the Democratic Party.”81 The impact of Mrs. Roger’s evidence, however, may have been blunted by her personal record of partisanship. Prior to the 1936 election, Farley criticized the verbal attacks upon the president made at a Liberty League dinner that Mrs. Rogers attended. The members of Congress responded with laughter (and some applause) when she defended the event and rather incredulously stated that the function “was in connection with a non political and non partisan meeting.”82 Other prominent senior Republicans also jumped on the “clean government” bandwagon. Senator White criticized the failure of the Bituminous Coal Commission to hire employees on the basis of Civil Service examinations.83 Representative Martin pointed out that the Civil

Service requirement was “carefully omitted” from the legislation that organized the Resettlement Bureau.84 It is true that Senator Vandenberg had made similar comments at the convention of 1936, and the platform of that year had also addressed the Democratic spoils system. But “clean government” was not yet the rallying cry in 1936 that it became in 1938. The Republican campaign of 1936 had portrayed the New Deal as alien and evil and a vast majority of Americans clearly disagreed. The new generation of progressive Eastern Republicans emphasized techno-bureaucratic efficiency and administrative professionalism. They were less likely to be small-town lawyers and more likely to have executive experience. Styles Bridges didn’t have a law degree, started out working on a farm, and eventually made his way to the top of the New Hampshire Farm Bureau and then the governorship. Aiken, Landon, Knox, and Barbour owned and ran their own companies. The new breed mirrored their counterparts in the business world who were also undergoing the transformation from the entrepreneurial capitalism of the Gilded Age to the bureaucratic norms of contemporary corporate America. The new breed was more familiar and comfortable with the bureaucratization of twentieth-century business, government, and life than either the Old Guard or the agrarian progressives. In that way the new breed had more in common with the brain trusters and bureaucrats that were managing the New Deal than many of their own party. During the years of 1937 and 1938, the new young, progressive, Eastern, corporate Republicans were probably more influential than they realized. Theirs were the ideas that were shaping the party, but the evidence of their rising prominence within the party did not become truly obvious until late 1938 and early 1939. That is when the new breed of progressive, Eastern, corporate Republicans experienced explosive growth within the party and in the Congress. Ironically, the new generation owed much of its success to Franklin Roosevelt. The debacles precipitated by the president (just a few months after his tumultuous victory) gave Republicans the confidence and the allies to successfully challenge him.

THE NEW DEAL DERAILED AND AGRARIANS ON THE WANE Franklin Roosevelt’s presidency faced numerous trials and tribulations in 1937 and 1938. His political mistakes and poor judgment on legislative matters initiated a time-consuming and unproductive fight with the Congress. During those years, Republican members of the Congress were busy exploiting the president’s mistakes and were able to effectively stop the expansion of the New Deal for the first time in over six years. Roosevelt’s surprise announcement of his Supreme Court packing scheme on February 5, 1937, led the way down that rocky road. If the president had hoped to devise a way to derail the New Deal, he could not have come up with a better strategy. The legislation he proposed empowered a president to appoint to the Supreme Court up to six additional judges at anytime six months after a sitting judge reached the age of seventy. Senator Austin described the reaction in Washington in a letter to his mother, “we are in a storm center here.”85 The president declared his motive to be the expedition of court business, but that rationale was exposed as a

ruse when Chief Justice Hughes publicly proved that the court was neither inefficient nor overextended.86 The president’s plan was a thinly disguised attempt to overturn the conservative majority on the bench, and his rationale appeared disingenuous. Again, according to Senator Austin’s analysis, “the President’s obvious designs on the Supreme Court have aroused a storm which beats up from all sides.”87 In addition, septuagenarian members of Congress did not like the plan’s implied insult to their competency. Considering the plan was a rather risky and radical legislative proposal, Roosevelt’s greatest mistake would appear to have been his failure to consult in advance with either Senator Robinson or Representative Ashurst, whom he expected to manage the bill through the Congress.88 Roosevelt’s own vice president, Charles Nance Garner, opposed the plan and held his nose when it was mentioned.89 James MacGregor Burns has speculated that Roosevelt’s secretive strategy stemmed from overconfidence, excessive cleverness, and his instinct for the dramatic.90 That strategy was a failure, and support for the president’s plan slowly eroded. Hearings and debates dragged on and held up other legislation. Then, any chance of the bill’s passage was lost when Senator Robinson died of a heart attack on July 14, 1937, one week after the Japanese attacked mainland China. The tough, six-month fight was followed by a recommittal of the bill to the Judiciary Committee, where the controversial elements were deleted. Senator Austin wrote to his mother and said, “this is an eventful day! The Court Bill is not only dead, it is interred.”91 The defeat of Franklin Roosevelt’s court plan marked a turning point for the New Deal. It also marked the downward turn in the president’s popularity and shattered the myth of his infallibility. Republicans were jubilant over the defeat of the bill. The president’s performance throughout the debate appeared to substantiate earlier Republican claims that Roosevelt would attack the Constitution, tamper with the judiciary, and employ sneaky and conspiratorial ways to do so. The president’s attempt to reorganize the executive branch met with similar distrust and defeat the following year. From her watch, Mrs. Rogers attacked the president’s reorganization bill as “the greatest single step toward the ultimate and absolute destruction of the Civil Service.”92 Her constituents backed her position in what looked like another court fight. Mrs. Rogers said she had “not received one single letter endorsing this reorganization bill.”93 Fellow watchdog John Taber received an estimated 400 letters against reorganization.94 In its day the Supreme Court fight was perceived as a great personal defeat for Franklin Roosevelt and a setback for the New Deal. Yet the agrarian progressive allies of the president did not share in his defeat because they led the fight against court reform. The opponents of the president’s plan were led by Senator Burton K. Wheeler of Montana. He was an agrarian, progressive Democrat, and most Democratic and Republican agrarian progressives worked with him against the president’s Court-packing plan.95 Therefore, the defeat of the president’s plan appeared to be a great victory for agrarian progressives. However, viewed from another perspective, the defeat of the court reform bill also had a negative effect on agrarian progressivism. The idea of changing the Constitution and

reforming the Supreme Court had originated from the progressive camp many years before. A call for judicial reform had been in the platforms of both the Progressive Bull Moose party of 1912 and the La Follette Progressive Party of 1924.96 Perhaps even more ironically, Wheeler himself strongly supported the idea of reforming the Supreme Court when he ran as the Progressive Party’s vice presidential candidate in 1924.97 With their success in bringing down the president’s Supreme Court plan, the agrarian progressives ended the prospects of a program with which they were traditionally associated. Agrarian progressives deserted the president on court reform, and he later reciprocated by deserting them in return. On October 5, 1937, Franklin Roosevelt made his landmark Quarantine Speech in Chicago. The speech affirmed Roosevelt’s belief in collective security, with the implication that aggressor nations should be quarantined like threatening diseases by the peaceful members of the world community. The president may have been putting agrarian progressives on notice with that speech. They had not only deserted him but actually led the opposition against his court reform program. The Quarantine Speech could thus be viewed as the president’s notice to agrarian progressives that he too was ready to abandon them and was thus no longer obliged to soft-pedal his opposition to their foreign policy positions. Further evidence of Roosevelt’s tendency to seek retribution against those who had deserted him in the court fight was exhibited when he attempted to purge the Democratic Party of its conservatives during the primary campaign of 1938. Agrarian progressives broke up the New Deal coalition and forged an alliance with conservative Democrats from the South and Republicans from the North to defeat the president’s Supreme Court plan. They shared in the success of that effort. However, that success did not enhance their political position. After the demise of their coalition with Roosevelt, agrarian progressives discovered that henceforth they possessed less influence over the president, the political parties, and public opinion.98 In foreign affairs the waning of agrarian progressive influence was somewhat more obvious but no less confusing and contradictory. Discussion of the Neutrality Act of 1937 took up where the debate and fiasco over the issue had left off in 1936. The 1936 act was scheduled to expire on May 1, 1937. A new and permanent law was under consideration that would retain most of the old law and expand upon it. The Italo-Ethiopian War had demonstrated that an arms embargo alone failed to take into account the raw materials that fuel modern industrial warfare. The crux of the issue in 1937 focused on items other than the arms, ammunition, loans, and civilian travel that were automatically embargoed under the terms of the earlier law. Congress set out to devise a policy to deal with nonembargoed items and develop a system to implement that policy. Again, Roosevelt was opposed to neutrality legislation of any kind but recognized that it was inevitable. He continued to seek as much presidential discretion over those matters as possible. Agrarian progressives such as Senators Nye, Clark, Bone, and Vandenberg were equally dedicated to the proposition that the permanent neutrality law should be both impartial and mandatory. As in the fight over the Supreme Court, agrarian progressives maintained a unified bloc in opposition to any increase of executive discretionary power. On other related

matters, however, they could not agree. Much like the problems they faced in 1936, in 1937 agrarian progressives were divided among themselves regarding the extent to which American neutrality should limit the country’s export trade. Senator Nye admitted that ideally he preferred legislation that would forbid all trade with any nation involved in an armed conflict.99 That was a difficult position to sell to the farmers and laborers, who were dependent upon foreign markets and still suffering from the worst economic depression in contemporary American history. One new element distinguished the debate of 1937 from its predecessor: the cash-and-carry provision. That provision appeared to offer a solution for those who were unwilling to abandon exports but feared the risks that accompanied American credit and ships involved in trade with countries at war. Cash-and-carry meant that belligerent nations could only buy nonembargoed items from the United States if they were willing to pay cash for them and carry them away in their own ships. It seemed a plausible way to maintain American trade and avoid entanglements. As James Wadsworth pointed out, less evident was the fact “we’d surrendered our own rights to sail the seas.”100 Most agrarian progressives supported the cash-and-carry provision and were pleased when it passed. Roosevelt accepted the compromise but also achieved some goals of his own. The final legislation that resulted from the compromise between the House and Senate versions gave to the president the power to determine when to invoke the neutrality law and the discretion to withhold application of the cash-and-carry provision until he deemed it necessary. Agrarian progressives lost their fight to make cash-and-carry mandatory upon declaration of hostilities. In addition, cash-and-carry was not really impartial and favored those nations with whom Roosevelt hoped to align the United States. Countries that bordered the Atlantic and possessed large merchant fleets clearly had an advantage. Thus, in Great Britain and France the cash-and-carry provision was generally well received.101 In Germany the provision was seen as a virtual Anglo–American alliance.102 If Senator Nye took some consolation from the partial success of the cash-and-carry legislation, the same could not be said of his attempts to undo the effects of the American embargo of arms to Spain. Approved by Congress on January 7, 1937, an arms embargo was placed against both belligerents in the Spanish Civil War. Congressman Wadsworth was incensed because “when the civil war broke out, the Spanish government of that time had been recognized by the government of the United States and they had an ambassador in Washington. We suddenly say to them, ‘we won’t let you buy anything in this country to defend your own government.’ I couldn’t see that.”103 Senator Nye correctly perceived that the embargo inadvertently aided Franco’s fascists, who were receiving not-so-secret aid from Germany and Italy. In 1937, Nye’s resolution to extend the embargo to include Franco’s allies was voted down in committee. In the spring of 1938 his attempt to repeal the embargo met the same fate. Roosevelt supported the embargo, despite the consequences, for the sake of establishing a precedent in which United States foreign policy was aligned with Britain and France. Those two European powers feared that, if not contained, the conflict in Spain might escalate into a general European war for which they were not prepared.104

Ironically, the foremost supporter of impartial and mandatory embargoes led a fight against that very policy as it applied to Spain. President Roosevelt, who advocated collective security, supported a policy that aided aggressors. More significantly, the debate over the Spanish embargo elucidated how an impartial and total embargo could also result in unintended consequences. The failure to embargo oil to Italy had aided that country’s aggression towards Ethiopia. In attempting to avoid that mistake, the total embargo of both parties in Spain also aided the fascist aggressor. As in the court debate, an agrarian progressive led the fight to discredit a policy that was traditionally perceived to be one of their own. Even though the Spanish embargo was upheld, supporters of impartial embargoes suffered a serious setback after their foremost advocate exposed its shortcomings. The president claimed a much-needed victory and in the process dealt a defeat to Senator Nye, one of the most prominent agrarian progressive leaders. The president also claimed a victory in his effort to resist applying the Neutrality Act and the cash-and-carry provision against either China or Japan in 1938. The conflict between those two countries erupted into full-fledged warfare when the Japanese attacked Shanghai in August 1937. Since neither belligerent officially declared war, Roosevelt was provided with a loophole, and he chose not to activate the neutrality law. Agrarian progressives were furious with the president and accused him of intentionally undermining the intent of the law by refusing to recognize the obvious state of belligerency. They made the case that a discretionary embargo was worthless if left in the hands of a chief executive who was not truly committed to neutrality. The debate over applying the Neutrality Act in Asia also confirmed the dangers of a mandatory law. It became increasingly clear that although cash-and-carry would work on the Atlantic against the interests of European aggressors, it would have quite the opposite effect on the Pacific. Roosevelt resisted declaring the embargo in Asia because he believed it would aid the fascist aggressor, Japan. With its propitious location, large merchant marine, and extensive financial resources, Japan would have stood to benefit from invocation of the Neutrality Act and the cash-and-carry provision. James Wadsworth clearly understood the situation and said, “why didn’t he do it? Because if he’d invoked the Neutrality Act against both Japan and China, China would have been unable to get arms.”105 Even after the American gunboat Panay was attacked in China by the Japanese, the president was able to rebuff agrarian progressives who called for him to invoke the Neutrality Act. Senator Austin believed “here is where we begin to realize the complexity of our foreign relations.”106 The situation in Asia effectively demonstrated the wisdom of discretionary rather than mandatory embargoes. Mandatory embargoes failed to account for unforeseen situations and differentiating circumstances. Senator Austin called it “the so-called neutrality of a statutory quarantine which really assists one combatant against another.”107 Support for the principle of mandatory embargoes suffered because people began to question them. Edith Rogers understood that “China would be entirely cut off [but] despite the fact … it seems that the only method which will prevent the profit-hungry war mongers from involving us … is to have our President invoke the embargo.”108 Although the influence of the agrarian progressive revolt in

New England caused her to be unsympathetic to the president’s position, Mrs. Rogers showed new depth of understanding and a willingness to debate the issue. In the debate over the SinoJapanese conflict, the president’s view prevailed and he scored another victory at the expense of a foreign policy initiative endorsed by agrarian progressives. In contrast, agrarian progressives still appeared able to achieve a victory in the field of foreign policy in late December of 1937. They successfully petitioned for a motion to release the Ludlow war referendum bill from the Judiciary Committee in order to allow for a floor debate. Indiana Congressman Ludlow was the last in a long line of agrarian progressives to lead the battle for a war referendum.109 His bill proposed a constitutional amendment that would establish a national referendum as the basis for declarations of war. It was Mrs. Roger’s view that “every subversive influence in this country, as well as every potentially hostile nation abroad would be extremely glad to see the Ludlow resolution passed.”110 The House chose to recommit the legislation after what proved to be a close but decisive vote of 209 to 188 on January 10, 1938. The defeat of that effort represented yet another failure in the advancement of a public policy long associated with agrarian progressivism. Erstwhile supporters like Mrs. Rogers voiced a new tone of disdain for the agrarian progressive foreign policy agenda after introduction of the Ludlow amendment. Furthermore, the debate over the Ludlow amendment tended to confirm the results of the earlier battles over discretionary embargoes. It became widely acknowledged that the referendum idea would be too time consuming in the event of a national emergency. Therefore, the results of the Ludlow debate tended to advance the opinion that in foreign policy, speed and flexibility were essentials that could only be provided through executive leadership. Japan’s aggressiveness may have been instrumental in getting the Ludlow amendment to the floor but it also provoked a drive for military preparedness. After the Japanese action against the American gunboat Panay, Mrs. Rogers stated, “a nation that is prepared for attack will not be attacked.”111 Senator Barbour, also from a coastal state, was known as a big navy senator and responded to the attack on the Panay with a plan that favored a 100,000-plane air force, a regular army of 500,000 men, and an army reserve of 1,000,000.112 Agrarian progressives were unable to prevent passage of the naval expansion bill when it passed in the Senate by a vote of 58 to 28 on May 3, 1938. The great orator, Senator Borah, could not get more than a third of the Senate to listen to his arguments against the bill.113 That marked the defeat of yet another long-cherished agrarian position against large defense budgets, a position that dated back to the days of Thomas Jefferson and later William Jennings Bryan. Both on domestic issues and in foreign policy, agrarian progressive ideas had not only stalled but were turned back in 1937 and 1938. The Neutrality Act of 1937 gave much more to the president than to agrarian progressives and cash-and-carry favored the president’s hopes for closer ties with Britain and France. Traditionally progressive ideas like court reform, the war referendum, and a small navy had become dead issues during those twilight years. The defeat of those measures conveyed the image that agrarian progressives were old fashioned and impractical. The logic of the principles that underlay impartial and mandatory embargoes lost credibility after the events that occurred in Spain and China. Contrary to the results of the

court fight, support for expanded executive leadership, in foreign affairs at least, advanced during those years. The crest of the agrarian progressive tide had been reached in 1936, and henceforth it became more and more obvious that their power and influence were receding. However, agrarian progressives succeeded in reforming the Republican Party in early 1938, and that camouflaged their slow decline. The agrarian progressives had a tradition of being almost fiercely independent “lone wolves.” That suggested that they were incorruptible, but it also meant that usually they could not unify on a program. They could not agree among themselves on foreign policy any more than they could agree on a way to reform the Supreme Court. While agrarian progressives were finding it difficult to maintain their cohesion and forward momentum, Eastern internationalists began to reassert themselves on matters concerning foreign policy. Republican Senators Bridges of New Hampshire, Austin of Vermont, and Lodge of Massachusetts and Democratic Senator Gerry of Rhode Island were among the only six senators who opposed cash-and-carry because of the limits it placed on American shippers. Though small in number, the New Englanders exhibited a boldness in challenging an agrarian progressive foreign policy initiative that had been lacking in the speeches and campaigns of Eastern internationalists for the preceding six years or more. It has been noted in the research of others that Senator Austin began to speak out in support of President Roosevelt’s foreign policy in 1937.114 The senator attacked isolationism because businessmen, left with only a domestic market, “would require a vast financing scheme to organize all control of business … centralizing further all government in Washington.”115 Austin began to enlarge his view of the Farewell Address and educated his listeners that George Washington “excluded both permanent alliances and isolation [but not] temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies.”116 When Austin addressed the Executives’ Club of Chicago, in the city recognized as the center of isolationism, his speech was not unlike Roosevelt’s provocative Quarantine speech of a year earlier. Austin showed little reluctance to rustle isolationist feathers when he said, “isolation is dead. We are inextricably involved in the affairs of the world … the Neutrality Act of 1937 … ought to be repealed.”117 On the latter point Austin was well ahead of public opinion and also a step ahead of the president.118 The proximity to the sea of their home states and the threat to their local economies played a major part in the voting behavior of the four New Englanders and the California and Idaho agrarian progressives who voted against cash and carry. Mrs. Rogers expressed “fear of unused merchant marine” in her New England state.119 In an article written for the Saturday Evening Post, Senator Lodge expressed his concern that Americans would be thrown out of work.120 No doubt, having two of the most senior and respected agrarian progressive Republicans stand with their position against cash-and-carry helped embolden the Eastern internationalists to challenge the more conventional agrarian sentiment.121 However, when observed from a wider perspective, an explanation for their new-found courage could also be attributed to other factors. With the tide turning against agrarian progressivism, pressure from that quarter was less threatening. The New Englanders were also encouraged by the successes of an Eastern internationalist president who was seizing the initiative over foreign policy. Like

the internationalist Republicans of the northeast, Roosevelt was undoubtedly aware that agrarian progressive disunity and decline offered him the opportunity to assert his opposing views. In direct relation to the inability of agrarian progressives to move their agenda forward, a few Eastern Republican internationalists began to speak up more confidently in 1937 and 1938 despite the fact that they were at a low point of their numerical strength and under attack by agrarian reformers from their own region. President Roosevelt showed similar boldness and succeeded in defeating numerous agrarian progressive foreign policy initiatives. Those successes reinforced the tradition of executive leadership over foreign policy and established Roosevelt’s discretionary powers with regard to the neutrality law. Even though the president succeeded in defeating many agrarian progressive foreign policy initiatives during their twilight years, his successes had limited impact on the psyche of the casually informed members of the general public. A cursory glance would have given the impression that agrarian progressivism was still going strong in 1937 and 1938. By 1938 agrarians had finally succeeded in their fifty-year campaign to bring down tariffs and establish protection and price supports for the American farmer. Those objectives were secured with the passage of the Trade Agreements Act of 1934 and the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938. Before the election of 1938 proved otherwise, agrarian progressives appeared to be the beneficiaries of the successful fight to curb the influence of the Old Guard within the Republican Party. Progressive legislation for the benefit of labor was also institutionalized during the twilight years of the New Deal. The Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Wagner Act in April of 1937 and of the Social Security Act a month later. The Fair Labor Standards Act established a minimum wage that was signed into law by the president in June of 1938. Despite those achievements, the administration’s legislative record for 1937 was “almost a total washout” and reflected the toll the court fight had exacted.122 Relations with Congress in 1938 were also discouraging and the president’s successes were limited to the Agricultural Adjustment Act and the watered-down minimum wage law.123 While at this low point of his presidency events in Europe were heating up. Hitler continued to consolidate his power with the annexation of Austria on March 13, 1938. Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland was also annexed after England and France tried to appease Hitler by signing the Munich Pact on September 29, 1938. The president experienced a realignment of his party during the first two years of his second term. This was confirmed by the midterm elections and when the new Congress took office in 1939. His legislative agenda had been defeated; his coalition had split when southern Democrats aligned with northern Republicans to stop his proposals. He had suddenly fallen from the pinnacle of his success to new lows for his administration, and the stress was taking its toll on him. He appeared confused and indecisive, and that further eroded his prestige and effectiveness.124 The administration succeeded in institutionalizing previously made gains but was unable to move forward in new directions. By late 1938 it was commonly recognized, even by the

president’s supporters, that the New Deal was dead.125 Although still not clearly evident, the surge of agrarian progressivism that had run a course parallel to the New Deal was also destined to come to a close.

A NEW REPUBLICAN PARTY Voters had a lot to be angry about in the autumn of 1938. At the top of their list was the recession that struck the economy in August of 1937. By May of 1938 unemployment had sky rocketed, and relief rolls in Chicago, for example, had jumped from fifty thousand to one hundred twenty thousand.126 Roosevelt had taken credit for the recovery of 1934–36, and thus he also had to take responsibility for economic decline of 1937–38. In addition, the president’s relations with the Supreme Court seemed cursed. When Roosevelt got the chance to appoint a Justice in 1938, he again chose the secretive and nonconsultative approach. Senator Hugo Black of Alabama, a progressive Democrat, was the surprise nominee. He seemed acceptable at first and sailed through his Senate confirmation. Only later was it revealed that Justice Black had once belonged to the Ku Klux Klan. The resulting embarrassment further tarnished Roosevelt’s already suffering image and popularity. The president was also held responsible for the rise in labor violence that swept the country during 1937 and 1938. The wave of sit-down strikes that followed in the wake of the Wagner Act frightened middle-class voters, and Roosevelt lost support from that quarter. Labor leaders were also angry at the president because in his exasperation with the behavior of both unions and management, Roosevelt publicly wished a plague on both their houses.127 By the summer of 1938 Roosevelt’s approval rating dipped to 50 percent.128 As if in response to his declining popularity, in June Roosevelt took the offensive and waged an assault against the conservatives of his own party. Ominously referred to as a purge, he took aim on those who had opposed the Court plan and other New Deal measures. He snubbed Senator Wheeler while on a tour through the West, and during the primary season the president actively promoted New Deal candidates with some success. In Georgia, South Carolina, and Maryland the president’s attempts to weed out conservatives provoked a counter reaction. Senators George, Smith, and Tydings, respectively, won handily against their New Deal opponents. As the midterm elections approached, the conditions were less than ideal for the Democratic Party. The policy committee endorsed by Landon in 1937 to reevaluate Republican Party doctrine made its preliminary report in August of 1938. Although it was a vaguely worded document, the report conceded the need for an “adequately regulated system of private enterprise” and a government responsible “to the weaker members of society.”129 Unlike the campaign of 1936, when the party leadership failed to support its own relatively progressive platform and standard-bearer, in 1938 many more Republican candidates stood behind the rhetoric of the policy committee’s preliminary report. Senator Barbour of New Jersey, who had voted in favor of social security, stated in September 1938, “we should freely and frankly concede the

wisdom and necessity of certain so-called New Deal legislation.”130 William Warren Barbour was appointed and then elected to fill the seat of Dwight Morrow from December of 1931 through January 1, 1937. Reflective of the party’s declining strength, he lost his reelection bid in the dark days of 1936. Senator Barbour’s positions were in line with the new Republicanism that got him elected again to fill the vacancy of A. Harry Moore in 1938. He supported the Railroad Retirement Act, a Federal wage and hour law, the antiinjunction bill, social security, and the right of workers to organize. He introduced an antilynching bill and a bill that prohibited transmission through the mail of material intended to arouse racial and religious hatred.131 He was also a very good friend of Senator Warren Austin, and they were often referred to as “the two Warrens.” Even some of the older faces began to look like the new breed in 1938. James Wadsworth favored the Securities and Exchange Act, the Banking Act, and along with fellow New Yorker Joseph Baldwin, he was one of the few Republicans who supported the reciprocal trade treaties.132 Aging Senator Gibson expressed the thought that “some of these so-called statesmen rush into print at every opportunity to condemn the President, no matter what … when I think he is right I am bound to be with him.”133 In 1938 the Old Bull Mooser, Senator Gibson, won his reelection bid with almost twice the number of votes as his opponent. Albert Vreeland, of suburban northern New Jersey, offered a good example of the newcomers first elected in 1938. He was described as one of the “young men with ideas of their own, unfettered by foolish tradition, men who see the good that is of the New Deal, … men who realize new problems exist and realize that they must be met … [a] middle of the roader … not inhibited with the die-hard Republican bias [and] far from being a stuffed shirt.”134 Foster Stearns of New Hampshire also won his run for the House in 1938. Symbolic of the new Republicans, Stearns did not come from the traditional legal background. His family owned a department store, he had been a diplomat in the early 1920s, he had held the position of state librarian of Massachusetts, and he later became the head librarian at the College of Holy Cross. Landon and the other reformers had been correct in their assessment; the new direction taken by the party proved successful at the polls. The returns of the midterm elections of 1938 were a devastating blow to New Deal Democrats. Roosevelt’s mistakes and miscalculations of 1937 and 1938 cost him dearly. Many of his allies that had survived their primaries lost to Republicans in the general election. The liberal bloc in the House was cut by half, and the number of Republicans increased from 88 to 170.135 In the Senate, Republicans increased their numbers by eight and did not lose a single seat in either chamber. Agrarian progressives, on the other hand, did not fare well in the 1938 elections. Although the majority of Republican victories were won at the expense of Democrats, editorial writer Turner Catledge reported that after the election Republicans “carved other gains out of the small number of Farmer-Laborites and Progressives.”136 Progressives lost five seats in the House; Farmer-Laborites lost four.137 Even in Wisconsin, the birthplace of the Progressive Party of 1924, Philip La Follette, the heir to that tradition, lost his bid to return to the governor’s mansion for a second term. However, the agrarian progressive losses were of less

significance than the tremendous successes of the party’s Eastern wing that year. The impressive electoral comeback of urban Republicans from the East diluted the relative importance of agrarian progressivism within the party except in New England and upper New York State. The influence of Townsend Clubs in New England and upstate New York reflected the strength of agrarian progressivism in that region. Representatives Taber, Cole, Stearns, and Plumley faced strong opposition from the Townsend forces between 1936 and 1942. Cole faced his first Townsend opponent in the primary of 1936 and won 5,134 to 1,523.138 John Taber faced a stronger Townsend Republican in his 1938 primary. Taber won the primary 2,825 to 1,834, but his opponent was confident enough to run in the general election as an independent. In the general election Taber received 12,775, the Democrat 5,681, and the Townsend independent 3,395.139 In Vermont, Congressman Charles Plumley undercut the growth of agrarian progressivism with his votes that favored the Ludlow amendment and opposed the naval buildup. Those votes were not those one might have expected from a past president of the military college of Vermont, but Plumley won reelection easily.140 George H. Mayer’s analysis of electoral maps revealed that the “Republican revival was more pronounced in the industrial East than in the farm states.”141 Voters in Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and Delaware elected their entire Republican slates in 1938.142 New Republican governors were elected in Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. New Republican senators were elected in Connecticut, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Ohio, Wisconsin, South Dakota, and Oregon. The number of Eastern Republican members of the House increased from 45 to 74.143 Nicole Rae agreed with Mayer’s analysis and added that in 1938 urban Republican progressivism reemerged, and “from the late 1930s onward, Eastern business influence was an important factor in turning the Republican party in a more activist direction in both foreign and domestic policy.”144 The Republican Party emerged anew after the election of 1938. In the words of the New York Times, “Republicans have pledged themselves to defend essential principles of New Deal legislation which seemed to the Republican Party only a few years ago to be radical and revolutionary.… [The] opposition found it necessary to reorient itself and adopt as its own the purposes of the party in power.”145 The new incarnation of the party accommodated the New Deal, and the uncompromising portrayals of Roosevelt as a dictator ceased for the most part. Eastern internationalists no longer had to fear accusations of disloyalty if they supported aspects of the president’s foreign policy. The new generation of young, urban, Eastern Republicans was more confident and willing to lead the party in new directions after winning their electoral mandate in 1938. At the time, agrarian progressives could still take credit for having led the reform movement that resulted in the Republican comeback of 1938. However, the leadership of the Republican Party was destined to return to those of its Eastern urban wing, as the East Orange Record correctly predicted in June 1938: “the results of these 1938 elections will determine the character and leadership of the Grand Old Party in 1940.”146

NOTES 1. William Leuchtenburg, James MacGregor Burns, and Wayne Cole are just three of the many who cite these as the main reasons for Roosevelt’s troubles in 1937 and 1938. 2. Ronald L. Feinman, Twilight of Progressivism: The Western Republican Senators and the New Deal (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1981). 3. Burns, Roosevelt, The Lion and the Fox, 1882–1940, 239. 4. Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., History of American Presidential Election 1789–1968 (New York: Chelsea House, 1971), 2812. 5. Donald R. McCoy, Landon of Kansas (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1966), 245. 6. McCoy, Landon, 245–6. 7. Mayer, Republican Party, 437. 8. White Papers, Box 62. 9. White Papers, Box 62. 10. White Papers, Box 62. 11. White Papers, Box 62. 12. Schlesinger, Politics of Upheaval, 545. 13. Mayer, Republican Party, 440. 14. Schlesinger, Politics of Upheaval, 616. 15. Schlesinger, Politics of Upheaval, 526. 16. Burns, Lion and Fox, 274. 17. Sundquist, Dynamics of the Party System, 301. 18. Sundquist, Dynamics of the Party System, 301. 19. Schlesinger, Politics of Upheaval, 618. 20. Schlesinger, Politics of Upheaval, 604. 21. White Papers, Box 68, speech to Maine Society of New York, December 8, 1938. 22. Duane Lockard, New England State Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959), chapters 1–4. 23. McCoy, Landon, 291. 24. Burns, Lion and Fox, 270. 25. Schlesinger, Politics of Upheaval, 616. 26. Burns, Lion and Fox, 266. 27. New York Times, November 1, 1936, 1. 28. Paul Kleppner, The Third Electoral System, 1853–1892 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979), 77. 29. Sundquist, Dynamics of the Party System, 301. 30. White Papers, Box 68, Bangor Radio speech, July, 14, 1936. 31. White Papers, Boston American, July 31, 1936. 32. Austin Papers, Carton 1, letter to mother, July 24, 1936. 33. Rogers Papers, Box 22, file 295, 39, March 3, 1936. 34. Rogers Papers, Box 15, file 199, 35. 35. Rogers Papers, Box 15, file 196, Boston Garden speech, October 31, 1936. 36. Gould, Grand Old Party, 270. 37. Burns, Lion and Fox, 281. 38. New York Times, August 15, 1936, 1. 39. New York Times, November 1, 1936, 1. 40. Schlesinger, Politics of Upheaval, 620. 41. McCoy, Landon, 296. 42. Schlesinger, Politics of Upheaval, 623. 43. Richard M. Langworth, Illustrated Studebaker Buyers Guide (Osceola, WI: Motorbooks International Publishers, 1991), 28–33. 44. Wayne Cole, Roosevelt and the Isolationists, 1932–1945 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983), 194. 45. Wadsworth, Oral History, 128. 46. Harry Wesley Morris, The Republicans in a Minority Role, 1933–1938 (Iowa City: M.A. Thesis, University of Iowa, 1960), 188. 47. Moos, The Republicans, 402.

48. Schlesinger, History of American Presidential Elections, 2846 & 2842. 49. Schlesinger, History of Elections, 2847. 50. Schlesinger, Histroy of Elections, 2847. 51. Schlesinger, History of Elections, 2842. 52. White Papers, Box 81. 53. Henry Styles Bridges Papers, File 23, folder 4, New Hampshire Historical Society, Concord, NH. 54. Bridges Papers, letter form Charles Parker. 55. Bridges Papers, File 23, folder 4. 56. Bridges Papers, File 23, folder 4. 57. Bridges Papers, File 23, folder 4. 58. Moos, The Republicans, 404. 59. McCoy, Landon, 365. 60. McCoy, Landon, 366. 61. Boston Globe, December 13, 1937. 62. George David Aiken Papers, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT, Speeches, file 48-6-1, Speech to Young Republicans of Onandaga County, Syracuse, NY, May, 5, 1937. 63. Aiken Papers, Speeches, file 48-6-1, speech to Middlesex Club, June 22, 1937. 64. Raymond Clapper, “G.O.P. May Run Out of Voters, if It Lives Long Enough,” The Washington Daily News, June 14, 1937, 19. 65. Hale Papers, Box 2, letter to Charles McNary, 1937. 66. McCoy, Landon, 366. 67. McCoy, Landon, 371. 68. McCoy, Landon, 373. 69. Aiken Papers, Speeches, file 48-6-1, “Open Letter to the Republican National Committee,” December 5, 1937. 70. Aiken Papers, Open Letter. 71. McCoy, Landon, 376. 72. Aiken Papers, Speeches, Lincoln Day Address, The National Republican Club, New York City, February 12, 1938. 73. Aiken Papers, file 51-2-2, Arthur Waller Schmidt Jr., Aiken and the Hillside Mentality (Princeton: Princeton University, Senior Thesis, 1974). 74. Gibson Sr. Papers, Carton 1, letter from Ernest W. Gibson Jr., February 16, 1938. 75. McCoy, Landon, 390. 76. Schlesinger, Politics of Upheaval, 603. 77. Rogers Papers, Box 15, f 198, Mrs. Rogers referred to herself in campaign literature as the “Watchdog of these Northeastern states.” 78. The Geneva Times (May 22, 1939) wrote of Representative Taber: “one of the keenest and most faithful watchdogs of the public money.” 79. Rogers Papers, Box 9, file 140, Civil Service speech, December, 1937. 80. Rogers Papers, Civil Service speech. 81. Rogers Papers, Civil Service speech. 82. Rogers Papers, Box 15, file 295, 39. 83. Rogers Papers, file 295, 39. 84. Rogers Papers, file 295, 39. 85. Austin Papers, Carton 1, letter to mother, February 8, 1937. 86. Burns, Lion and Fox, 301. 87. Austin Papers, Carton 1, letter to Mother, February 8, 1937. 88. Burns, Lion and Fox, 297. 89. Burns, Lion and Fox, 294. 90. Burns, Lion and Fox, 297. 91. Austin Papers, Carton 1, letter to mother, July 22, 1937. 92. Rogers Papers, Box 9, file 140, Civil Service speech, December 1937. 93. Rogers Papers, LL, folder 141, speech on Reorganization bill, broadcast over CBS radio, April 3, 1938. 94. John Taber Papers, Cornell University Library, Department of Manuscripts and University Archives, Ithaca, NY, Box 81. 95. Burns, Lion and Fox, 297–98. 96. Cole, Roosevelt and Isolationists, 212. 97. Cole, Roosevelt and Isolationists, 212.

98. Rae, Decline and Fall, 28. 99. Cole, Roosevelt and Isolationists, 234. 100. Wadsworth, Oral History, 429. 101. Divine, Reluctant Belligerent, 40. 102. Divine, Reluctant Belligerent, 40 . 103. Wadsworth, Oral History, 428. 104. Roosevelt was also keenly aware that the majority of American Catholics opposed the Loyalist regime because of its alliance with the USSR and its harsh treatment of devout Catholics. 105. Wadsworth, Oral History, 430. 106. Austin Papers, Carton 1, letter to mother, December 13, 1937. 107. Austin Papers, Speeches file, B III, 192, Armistice Day speech, Rutland, VT, November 11, 1937. 108. Rogers Papers, Box 10, folder 152. 19th Anniversary of World War Armistice speech. 109. Cole, Roosevelt and Isolationists, 254. Others included William Jennings Bryan of Nebraska, Charles Lindbergh Sr. of Minnesota, and Robert La Follette Sr., of Wisconsin. 110. Rogers Papers, Box 22, file 299, January 10, 1938. 111. Rogers Papers, The Sun, December 30, 1937. 112. William Warren Barbour Papers, New Jersey Historical Society, Newark, NJ, Eulogy by Warren Austin, 1943. 113. Austin Papers, Carton 1, letter to mother, April 26, 1938. 114. Michael John Jarvis, The Senators From Vermont and Lend-Lease, 1939–41 (Burlington: Masters Thesis, University of Vermont, May 1974), 16. 115. Austin Papers, Speeches, file III, Armistice Day speech, Rutland, VT, November 11, 1937. 116. Austin Papers, Armistice speech. 117. Austin Papers, Speeches file, Box III, speech at Executives’ Club of Chicago, November 4, 1938. 118. Jarvis, Senators from Vermont, 16. 119. Woburn Times, March 23, 1937. 120. Divine, Illusion of Neutrality, 196. 121. Both Senators Borah and Johnson voted against the cash-and-carry provision, but their reasons were quite different from those of the internationalists. The seaboard internationalists wanted to preserve the right of their mariners to sail the seas. The two isolationists believed that cash-and-carry would eventually elicit a response from a belligerent who was disadvantaged by the policy and thus lead the United States into a war. 122. William E. Leuchtenburg, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, 1932–1940 (New York: Harper & Row, 1963), 251. 123. Leuchtenburg, New Deal, 266. 124. Weed, The Nemesis of Reform, 174. 125. Leuchtenburg, New Deal, 265. 126. Leuchtenburg, New Deal, 249. 127. Leuchtenburg, New Deal, 243. 128. Burns, Lion and Fox, 337. 129. Mayer, The Republican Party, 449. 130. New York Times, September 28, 1938, 7. 131. Barbour Papers, Eulogy by Warren Austin, 1934. 132. Wadsworth, Oral History, 427, and Joseph Baldwin, Oral History, 14. 133. Gibson Sr. Papers, Carton 1, letter to Judge Howe, January 6, 1938. 134. Albert Lincoln Vreeland Papers, Newark Public Library, Newark, NJ, Scrapbook, 1927–1938, East Orange Record, June 10, 1938; and Morris Mogelever, “The State We’re In,” November 10, 1938. 135. Burns, Lion and Fox, 365. 136. New York Times, November 10, 1938, 1. 137. Morris, Republicans in Minority, 283. 138. Cole Papers, Box 3. 139. Taber Papers, Box 81. 140. Boston Herald, November 16, 1938. 141. Mayer, The Republican Party, 449. 142. New York Times, November 9, 1938, 1. 143. Morris, Republicans in Minority, 283. 144. Rae, Decline and Fall, 30.

145. New York Times, November 10, 1938, 26. 146. Vreeland Papers, Scrapbook 1938–42, East Orange Record, June 10, 1938.

Chapter 4

Receding Progressivism and Foreign Policy, 1939 During the two years that preceded official United States entry into World War II, the preeminent issue for agrarian progressives was keeping the United States from participating in another catastrophic global conflict. Diplomatic historians recognize that fact but neglect to consider that agrarian progressives also confronted other pressing and important developments that affected their perspective. Agrarian progressive Republicans faced the realization that their role within the party had become obsolete and their numbers were decreasing. Agrarian progressives who had joined FDR and the Democratic Party also had to face the fact that by 1938 their influence within the party was also in decline. In 1931 only 29 percent of House Democrats represented urban districts, but by 1937 that percentage had increased to 46 percent.1 Agrarians of both parties also faced the demographic fact that the country was rapidly becoming increasingly urban. Thus the agrarian progressive movement found itself confronting a realignment of power not unlike that which the Republican Party had itself faced between 1930 and 1936. The recognition of this realignment is an important contributing factor to help explain the “adamant” opposition to internationalism that agrarian progressives exhibited prior to Pearl Harbor.2 Agrarians were suddenly put on the defensive and fought a holding action to retain the achievements attained during their few short years of influence when they were courted by both the president and the Republican Party. The fervor to maintain isolationism was therefore linked to the effort to save the agrarian progressive movement in general. The efforts of President Roosevelt to guide the foreign policy of the United States slowly and cautiously before Pearl Harbor have been documented by many eminent diplomatic historians.3 The chronology of events is well-known. The following chapter answers critics that encourage diplomatic historians to view their field in a broader perspective and to not overlook the origins of policy at the grassroots level.4 In order to address those criticisms, the first half of this chapter presents an overview of the agrarian progressive movement and the effect that receding popular support had upon it. The case has also been made that diplomatic historians need to incorporate into their work information regarding the relations between Congress and the President. Specifically, more attention should address the impact that debates over domestic issues have on the making of foreign policy.5 The second half of the chapter addresses that criticism and demonstrates how the contentious debate between the President and the Congress over domestic issues affected foreign policy making during the legislative session of the winter, spring, and summer of 1939.

THE BATTLE TO DEFEND AGRARIAN PROGRESSIVISM

The parallel successes of the New Deal and the ascendancy of agrarian progressivism lasted only four years. In 1937 agrarian progressives allied themselves with conservative Democrats and Republicans to stop further expansion of the power of the federal government and the president. The success of that alliance conveyed the impression that agrarian progressivism was still vital, but as outlined in Chapter Three, signs of agrarian decline were already noticeable by 1937. Most notably, their break with the president meant that henceforth he was also less deferential to them. Within the Republican Party, the decline of agrarian progressivism was also obscured by the dynamic coalition forged between agrarian progressives and the new, modern, corporate northeastern wing of the party that had emerged after the debacle of 1936. The two progressive wings succeeded in overturning the laissez-faire ideology of the Republican Party in early 1938. The party’s new philosophy of qualified acceptance of the New Deal plus Roosevelt’s misjudgment and bad luck resulted in the Republican Party’s comeback in the midterm elections of 1938. The positive results of that election were attributed to the benefits of the progressive revolt that led to reform within the party. That impression again obscured the fact that agrarian progressives were actually in decline. With the new Young Republican class of 1938 seemingly in tow, agrarian progressives set out in January 1939 to continue with their two-year-old campaign of limiting the role of the federal government and attacking the president to forestall further expansion of his executive powers established under the New Deal. In that endeavor Old Guard Republicans were also in agreement, and the Republican Party was unified again as it had not been for many years. From January until September of 1939, agrarian progressive leaders still felt relatively confident, especially in the Senate. They continued to hold their position as an important swing vote necessary for the president to maintain the New Deal or for conservatives to contain it. However, the big Republican gains of 1938 had been attained primarily in the urban east, and as a result the relative strength of the agrarian progressive wing declined after that election. As the new 76th Congress began its work, it became more and more evident that the new, young, Eastern Republicans and the Old Guard had become less deferential to agrarian interests. Eastern Republicans were not satisfied with simply containing the New Deal but sought to roll back and even dismantle parts of it completely. The Old Guard and the new breed of Eastern Republicans also took back the spotlight and led most of the legislative battles in early 1939. Those factors gave credence to the impression that agrarian progressivism was entering a new phase. Agrarian progressives were beginning to slide back into the role of lesser partner in the Republican coalition, much like the position they had held within the party during the 1920s. But neither the president nor the Old Guard Republicans seemed to be consciously aware of that new dynamic, and both continued to court the support of agrarian progressives when it was expedient. In March of 1939 Hitler violated his vow to curtail further expansion and absorbed Czechoslovakia. Hitler’s actions accelerated a plan by the president to repeal the arms embargo and allow the export of weapons to Great Britain and France during wartime. Thus, agrarian progressives confronted the fact that their foreign policy agenda was under assault

from the president and that their domestic agenda was under attack from the east coast wing of the Republican Party. In what was a tragic convergence of events, the decline of agrarian progressivism was becoming apparent simultaneously with President Roosevelt’s attempts to more actively promote resistance to fascism through deterrence and aid to the democracies. Agrarians succeeded in postponing the President’s plans that spring by emphasizing an issue upon which all Republicans, conservative Democrats, and agrarians could agree—maintaining their coalition to limit presidential power and his discretionary authority. It took the German attack on Poland in September of 1939 to finally discredit the wisdom of the agrarian progressive leadership. For the preceding eight months, agrarian progressives had repeatedly denied the imminence of war. Less than two months before the attack, the senior agrarian progressive member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee adamantly contradicted state department warnings and asserted that his sources indicated there would be no war. Thus agrarian progressives were held largely responsible for the lost opportunity to pursue the president’s plan and repeal the mandatory arms embargo as a deterrent to Germany. Henceforth, the decline of agrarian progressive influence became truly obvious. The prestige of agrarian progressivism and its leaders plummeted in Congress, within the Republican Party, and among the general public. Secretary of State Hull later remarked, “after war came to Europe [the isolationist movement] was never again able to thwart an Administration proposal.”6 Throughout the remainder of 1939 and into 1940, agrarian progressives returned to the rearguard obstructionist tactics that were characteristic of their actions during the teens and the 1920s. During the spring and early summer of 1940, agrarian progressives continued to lose ground. Their most famous leaders were getting older, were less effective, or died. Many of the young modern Republicans of the east abandoned their erstwhile agrarian allies and joined with the Old Guard internationalists, loyal Democrats, and the president in the campaigns for preparedness and aid to the Allies. The prospect that the forces of the Eastern elites were allying against agrarian progressivism was confirmed when, after the fall of France, the Republican Party nominated an internationalist Wall Street lawyer, albeit a native Midwesterner, for president in June of 1940. The battle to defend agrarian progressivism began in earnest at that point. Agrarian progressives rallied in a holding action to defend their movement in the fights against LendLease and the Selective Service Act. The decline of agrarian progressivism and the rise of support for American participation in collective security converged in 1939. That convergence and the resulting maelstrom greatly impaired the efforts of President Roosevelt and internationalists to contain fascism. Isolationists in the United States were genuinely dedicated to their beliefs, but their arguments were laced with attacks on the privileged and powerful indicating that other factors were at play. Their arguments rang with the nineteenth-century worldview and rhetoric outlined in Chapter One. Agrarian progressives became angry, fearful, and recalcitrant when it became apparent their movement was under siege. Much like the jolt received by the Old Guard Republicans after

their landslide defeat in 1932, agrarians did not anticipate the degree or suddenness with which the public would withdraw its respect for their movement and its leaders. In a manner similar to that of the Hoover Republicans, the agrarian leadership was suddenly thrust from the limelight and into public disgrace. After repeal of the arms embargo, the agrarian progressive Senator Johnson of California felt “as if I had been run over by a truck in the neutrality fight.”7 Agrarians became ideologically rigid and fought to dam the hemorrhage, preserve their reputations and past accomplishments, and stem the tide of change. Republicans had acted in a similar fashion when they were under siege between 1932 and 1936, as did President Roosevelt when his popularity and support declined precipitously and he became confused, indecisive, and uncompromising between 1937 and mid-1939. Isolationism became the foremost symbol of the agrarian progressive movement, as well as a barometer of its political status.8 Isolationism touched upon all of the historic conflicts that separated urban and rural interests: industry versus agriculture, lenders versus borrowers, and the rich and well connected versus the poor and powerless. It was the cornerstone of an agrarian foreign policy platform established in the nineteenth century that also opposed American membership in the global community and economy, the rapprochement with Great Britain, and the creation of a large and permanent military establishment—all of which were assumed to have been spearheaded by urban commercial elites. The attempts to repeal prohibition during the late 1920s and its final success in 1933 presaged the impending decline of agrarian progressivism and provided an earlier example of a defensive agrarian counterreaction. Prohibition provided the litmus test of ideological purity for agrarian progressives during the late 1920s. Isolationism provided a similar litmus test of ideological purity for agrarian progressive candidates during the battle to defend agrarian progressivism of the 1940s. To thoroughly understand and judge Franklin Roosevelt’s cautious, covert, or disingenuous approach to foreign policy in early 1939, the threatened position of agrarian progressives must be taken into account. Recognition of that situation more fully explains the forces with which President Roosevelt and the Congress had to contend. It also explains the reluctance of the president and many Republicans to confront their isolationist opponents more overtly. The president did not want to unleash a prairie fire of reactionary agrarian populist radicalism reminiscent of the populist crusade of the 1880s or rekindle the kind of emotions demonstrated by Carrie Nation and her followers. The battle to maintain neutrality was part of a decades-old populist revolution that pitted the poor and powerless against the rich and powerful. It represented the final fight for a generation to preserve an ideological platform that had originated in the late nineteenth century. In the words of one historian, “an age was dying—the age of international optimism, Kellogg Pacts, disarmament drives, and goodwill pilgrimages.”9 For agrarian progressives the fight for neutrality was more than just a battle to save a policy or even a political movement. They were fighting to preserve a worldview that these policies had represented and a way of life that was being swept away by the forces of modernity.

THE CONGRESS AND THE PRESIDENT ON THE EVE OF WAR In an attempt to clarify our understanding of foreign policy making, diplomatic historians frequently separate their subject matter from that of other areas of political history. Noted diplomatic historian Dr. Ralph Levering has questioned that practice and colleagues who fail “to offer a serious, detailed analysis of the role of domestic politics in shaping American foreign relations … and make little or no reference to such important subjects as elections, Congress, interest groups, and the news media.”10 It has also been commented that even those historians who study domestic politics give too little attention to the U.S. Congress and its legislative history during the years of 1939 through 1941.11 That oversight has occurred because those years fall between the interests of historians who concentrate on the New Deal and those who focus on the years after the United States declared war against the Axis powers. This subchapter broadens the scope of foreign policy analysis to include the political strategy of the Republican Party and the debates over domestic legislation in 1939. It considers the impact of those debates on the implementation of foreign policy during the first session of the 76th Congress. Scholars of American foreign policy have not overlooked the activities of the 76th Congress, but they have given too little attention to the battles between the president and Congress that took place over domestic legislation. Legislation that concerned foreign affairs was not cordoned off from domestic affairs, factional politics, or partisan strategies. Foreign affairs were and are an integral part of the larger pattern of legislative behavior. Legislative debates that involved domestic issues affected the relations between Congress and the president, and the nature of that relationship, in turn, affected the discourse over foreign policy. President Roosevelt’s approach to the 76th Congress on matters of foreign policy in early 1939 has often been portrayed as cautious.12 But relations between FDR and Congress concerning domestic matters were handled much less cautiously, and in fact the president was rather belligerent. This helps explain why many internationalists rejected his desire to repeal the arms embargo—a position that they should have been expected to support—during the crucial eight months that preceded the German invasion of Poland. In addition, given the election results of 1938, FDR felt he could only act upon his commitment to collective security in a cautious but also devious and covert way.13 When the 76th Congress convened in January of 1939, President Roosevelt faced the same coalition that had stymied his actions in 1937 and 1938. Aligned against him were conservative Democrats, the vast majority of Republicans, and many agrarian progressives. The legacy of the president’s misconceived efforts to alter the Supreme Court, purge conservative Democrats, and reorganize the executive branch still loomed large. The issues that unified the conservative coalition remained the same as they had been in 1937 and 1938: the desire to limit presidential and federal authority, criticism of the mismanagement and corruption of the administration, and the perception that the president was secretive and untrustworthy. But there was something new added to the equation, as James MacGregor Burns

noted: “coalition leaders in Congress had left their defensive posture of ’37 and ’38 and had moved openly to the attack.”14 Foreign policy issues and the worsening world situation had been remarkably absent from the midterm campaigns of 1938. Dexter Perkins observed that “the European crisis of the fall of 1938 produced no important declaration on the part of the administration.”15 After the election, James Farley sought explanations from party members regarding the poor Democratic showing, and his respondents “rarely mentioned foreign policy.”16 Margaret Chase Smith was married to progressive agrarian Republican Representative Clyde Smith of Maine at that time. Theirs was very much a collaborative marriage in which she functioned as a campaign organizer, driver, and later as his office manager in Washington. Mrs. Smith had a flourishing career before their marriage and contributed the support of the connections she had made as the president of the Maine chapter of the National Federation of Business and Professional Women. As Clyde’s health declined and trips to Maine became more difficult for him, she would speak to civic groups on his behalf as she did in Skowhagen, Maine, on October 27, 1938. Thirty days after France and England agreed to appease Hitler by allowing Germany to annex the Sudetenland, Mrs. Smith was less timid than many and did not hesitate to discuss national defense. In doing so she also deviated from her husband’s position in her speech. Clyde Smith adhered to the agrarian progressive tradition that opposed military expenditures on moral and economic grounds, and he believed the profit motive of munitions makers lay behind the call for a larger navy.17 But Mrs. Smith advocated for a larger navy and justified the expenditure as a form of insurance.18 Margaret Chase Smith was independent and plucky in the best spirit of Maine. Her family was not well off, and her father’s periodic abuse of alcohol meant they had to live in the small house of her French Canadian maternal grandfather. She worked hard and did well in school and captained Skowhagen High School’s first women’s basketball team to the state championship twice. Her family couldn’t afford college, and her attempt at teaching was short lived. Belaying her humble origins, Margaret was actually a very modern woman for her day. She succeeded in a man’s world, married later in life, and was a very successful manager for a newspaper prior to her marriage. She fit the profile of the new, up-and–coming, businessoriented Young Republicans of her generation with the guts to defy her husband and talk about preparedness even if it was controversial. Senator Warren Austin was also not hesitant to speak on foreign affairs that year and on November 4, 1938, spoke to the Executives’ Club of Chicago and remarked, “Americans do not shirk cooperation with other nations whenever there is a sound basis for it … [President] Washington did not advocate isolation. Washington favored the adaptation of our foreign policy to changing circumstances according to informed public opinion. Isolation is impossible. We are inextricably involved in the affairs of the world.”19 Nonetheless, while advocating strength and cooperation, the senator realized “our people are still intent upon abstaining from participation in the political strife of Europe.”20 On the nights of November 9–10 the Nazis unleashed a Kristallnacht that torched Jewish

synagogues and businesses in Germany. Representative Edith Nourse Rogers awoke to the dangers of things to come and spoke publicly against those acts on the last day of 1938.21 On January 3, 1939, Mrs. Rogers followed up her speech with a resolution in Congress condemning the German government’s persecution of Jews.22 Despite the efforts of Representative Rogers, Senator Austin, and Mrs. Smith, the Republican Party remained focused on President Roosevelt. Republican representation in Congress had benefited from halting expansion of the New Deal while accepting aspects of it. That strategy had proven to be good for party unity, and it had succeeded to the extent that after the 1938 elections “the G.O.P. had been resuscitated as a national power.”23 Although still in the minority, Republicans were rejuvenated and vindicated by their sweep of the midterm elections and, after having spent six years in the political wilderness, were readier than ever to exploit the president’s weaknesses in 1939. The pursuit of a strong Republican offensive was also encouraged by the real possibility that Republicans could recapture the White House in 1940. Furthermore, “with 1940 just around the corner, the presidential batons began twirling early.”24 Thus, by 1939 the Republican Party had attained a new sense of unity and confidence that it had not possessed for more than a decade. Although now committed to accepting broad elements of the New Deal, Republicans were emboldened by the FDR’s toxicity to expand their agenda and attempt to roll back some of his programs. Democratic leaders were well aware of the Republican strategy when in the autumn of 1938 the administration began to press Senator Pittman, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, to pursue a revision of the neutrality law. Senator Pittman believed “forceful presidential leadership would jeopardize the chances for successful revision,” and the president took the senator’s advice and deferred to his leadership.25 On January 2, 1939, the Democratic speaker of the House remarked that a vigorous effort was underway to modify or amend the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938, the National Labor Relations Act, and the Social Security Act.26 The following day Senator Barbour, a Republican from New Jersey, demanded the liquidation of the WPA.27 On the first day of the 76th Congress, the Senate Campaign Expenditures Committee launched the Republican coalition’s offensive with the release of a report on the misuse of WPA funds during the elections of 1938. The report cited examples in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Pennsylvania where Democratic officials had solicited donations from agency employees, federal civil service personnel, and relief workers.28 In Pennsylvania, WPA officials had “ordered Republican workers to join the Democratic Party or risk the loss of their jobs.”29 On January 4, 1939, President Roosevelt addressed the nation and made foreign affairs and national defense the central themes of his State of the Union message. He outlined his desire that the neutrality law be revised so that the mandatory arms embargo would not give aid and comfort to aggressors. Reactions to the president’s address were mixed, and the battle lines of the upcoming session began to harden. Republicans were suspicious of the president’s intent, as reflected in Senator Bridge’s comment that the foreign situation “shouldn’t be used to prevent the amendment of the more vicious New Deal acts in this session of Congress.”30

Senator Capper, the progressive Republican from Kansas, responded to the president’s fears of war with the comment, “I don’t think we are in any danger.”31 Ever confident, President Roosevelt refused to concede that the election results of 1938 provided Congress with a mandate to cut back the New Deal.32 The president waged an aggressive counteroffensive and lashed out at his critics in his Jackson Day Dinner speech on January 7. He sardonically invited nominal Democrats to join the Republican Party, and he called Republicans “opportunists” who sought to capitalize on the New Deal without supporting it.33 The speech was perceived by conservative Democrats as another attempt by Roosevelt to purge the party and control the nominating process in 1940. Conservative congressmen of both parties believed that the midterm elections had, in fact, given them a mandate to curb the New Deal. The president’s attack on his own party members resulted in a backlash that increased support among conservative Democrats to cut the cost of federal unemployment relief. President Roosevelt then proceeded to make a series of controversial appointments that appeared uncompromising and certain to outrage Republicans. The president nominated WPA administrator Harry Hopkins as the new secretary of commerce, who the retiring Republican House minority leader believed “was the greatest spender in all history.”34 Roosevelt then chose Felix Frankfurter, generally considered to be one of the architects of the New Deal, to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court. And for his attorney general, the president chose Frank Murphy, the ex-governor of Michigan who had refused to dislodge strikers from General Motors plants in 1937. In response to the president’s unwillingness to compromise, no less than Vice President Garner and Democratic Representative Woodrum of the Appropriations Committee led a conservative Democratic and Republican flank that advocated reductions in funding, personnel, and projects associated with the WPA. They also recommended greater local control of the program in response to fears of the rapid growth of presidential power.35 Congressman Woodrum urged his colleagues to reduce the president’s budget request for the remaining fiscal year from $875 million to $725 million.36 On January 12, the president delivered an address requesting $552 million for defense that emphasized the production of airplanes. East Coast Republicans such as Warren Barbour supported the request enthusiastically and without reservation, while Republican Senator Vandenberg of Michigan was “unable to concede the imminence of American danger.”37 The pro-defense Senator Austin of Vermont received “ expressions of approval from all parts of the country.”38 But the issue of airplanes was overshadowed because the Woodrum proposal to reduce the president’s WPA budget request made it to the House floor on January 13. The House rejected the president’s WPA budget by a vote of 226 to 137, marking the first time in the history of the New Deal that a relief appropriation bill was reduced by the House.39 Observers were struck by the degree of unity achieved by the Republican Party, and the jubilation of the occasion masked the differences between its Eastern and western wings.40 The president still refused to acknowledge that the election had given Congress a mandate to scale back the New Deal even as voices from outside of Washington were also advocating a rollback. The six governors of New England united behind Governor George Aiken and

refused to cooperate with a federal government plan for flood control that they believed treaded insensitively on “the basic rights which belong to the people in the states.”41 Oklahoma’s new governor vowed to undo virtually all of the previous governor’s New Deal programs, and in Ohio and Wisconsin public officials prepared to follow suit.42 Throughout January the battle of wills continued. Eight proposals were introduced in the House and Senate to repeal or emasculate the Reciprocal Trade Agreements, while at the confirmation hearings for Felix Frankfurter witnesses testified that he was a Marxist.43 Under those circumstances Senator Pittman decided on January 18 to postpone neutrality hearings indefinitely. The conservative coalition was in the mood, at the time, to vote against almost any administration proposal simply to defy the president and teach him a lesson. Only the president’s defense program seemed to be moving through Congress and received “almost unanimous support,” according to Senator Austin.44 House Naval Affairs Committee Member Melvin Maas believed the bill succeeded specifically because it did not originate in the White House.45 The debate over the WPA appropriation reached the floor of the Senate on January 24. The White House was again determined to exert every effort to restore the full amount. Agrarian progressive Republican Senators Borah and Frazier favored the larger amount and refused to commit themselves to their party leader.46 In the final tally, an amendment to restore the president’s original request was defeated 47–46 on January 27. President Roosevelt had been sure of victory and was shocked by the defeat. The New Deal had again been thwarted and scaled back, and the prestige of the president damaged. The Democrats were divided and the Republicans were ecstatic. Yet the vote also indicated that there were cracks in the antiRoosevelt coalition. Agrarian progressive Senators Borah, Frazier, Lundeen, and La Follette had voted against the decrease.47 On January 31 President Roosevelt surprised the Senate Military Affairs Committee at a confidential meeting held in the White House. The meeting was called to calm suspicions that military secrets were being divulged to France after a French pilot was killed in an American military plane the week before. At the meeting, the president went far beyond the issue at hand and outlined a defense strategy that viewed France as the first line of defense for the United States. Isolationist senators were understandably dismayed by the sudden and unexpected revelation. Senator Hiram Johnson spoke for isolationists and emphasized their concerns about the secrecy of the whole affair, the efforts to conceal the identity of the French pilot, the strict confidentiality of the meeting, the possibility of secret sales of airplanes to France, and the failure of the president to consult with Congress and the public beforehand.48 Senator Nye refused to attend executive sessions of the Military Affairs Committee unless records were made public, and he reminded listeners that secret treaties were the cause of World War I.49 Senate Republicans also issued a statement that outlined similar concerns, and the House Foreign Affairs Committee requested the president to “present all the facts openly.”50 President Roosevelt had been battling with Congress and state governments for the previous month. His cabinet appointments had been grilled at confirmation hearings and accused of all

manner of improprieties. His efforts to aid the unemployed had been portrayed by his opponents and some members of his own party as nothing more than a ploy to buy votes. The president’s political power was at a low point, and no doubt it was a difficult time for him personally. After Roosevelt confided his fears for national security to his old agrarian allies, they retorted with accusations that he was making secret agreements with France. The president snapped, overreacted, and vehemently denied ever having said the country’s frontier was on the Rhine. He became resentful and rash and lashed out that his critics had perpetrated “a deliberate lie” and declared that their comments were “bunk.”51 President Roosevelt’s reaction escalated tempers and personalized the debate. When asked directly to “ explain what he had told the committee so he could clear up the conflicting interpretations as to what had taken place,” the president was reluctant to admit that what he had said was fairly similar to the alleged quote.52 Instead he replied incredulously that he “could not do so without obtaining the permission of those present at the meeting.”53 When asked why planes allocated for France were not being purchased by our own Army Air Corps, his evasion continued. The president responded that current models would be out of date when the U.S. Army orders came due in 1940.54 The president lost control of the debate, and it became focused on his secrecy and lack of candor, criticisms that had plagued Roosevelt for years. An indiscrete comment had ballooned into a trial of the president’s veracity. In the process any meaningful discussion of the country’s security and military strategy was lost. The president appeared to be anything but cautious and was, in fact, rather hysterical. Would it have been so difficult for the president to propose that should Hitler decide to move westward, a well-prepared France would keep the Nazi contagion from coming our way? Instead, isolationists presented the argument that it was not our place to play policeman of the world as we had done in World War I. The president never intended to benevolently defend France. His intent was to provide France with the tools that would aid them in their own defense, which would then relieve this burden from the United States. Those were not the ideas aired by the president at the time or by his secretary of state. In his four-point statement of February 3, the president argued against entangling alliances, favored the maintenance of world trade, sympathized with arms limitation, and voiced his belief that all nations should remain independent.55 Few were impressed. Representative Rogers said of the speech that it was “too generalized to throw much light on the crisis we will have to fight in the future.”56 Senator Warren Austin felt that the president’s policies were obscured by “a veil of secrecy,” and Austin’s objective was to unveil them.57 Representative Van Zandt commented, “The president will not help his cause or national defense by name calling. Let him tell the American people what confronts them and he will have a united nation behind him in an emergency.”58 In answer to such straight forward requests, Secretary of State Hull replied with the meaningless homily, “The first and most basic of the problems confronting the government in the field of foreign relations is that of the preservation of peace for our nation.”59 For Republicans and the conservative coalition, the entire episode played right into the

strategy most likely to unify their disparate factions, breeding distrust of the president and dividing the Democrats. Senator Styles Bridges, a consistent critic of the president but also a supporter of his foreign policy, described the entire episode as “the hottest thing in my experience—yes, in a decade—in Washington.”60 Even the internationalist Senator Austin joined in on the Republican feeding frenzy. On February 16 he inflamed the situation even further by casting doubt upon the president’s competence and veracity, announcing that General Molin Craig had opposed the sale of planes to France because it might interfere with the needs of the U.S. Army.61 In light of such partisan attacks, the president’s reluctance to be candid was not necessarily unfounded. There were, however, other Republicans who thought the country was more inclined “to favor support … for the democracies of Europe than Mr. Roosevelt and Secretary Hull apparently believe it is.”62 Representative Rogers felt that “public sentiment is rapidly turning against the Neutrality Act … it should be amended so that we might discriminate between the aggressor and the victim.”63 Throughout February and March, the Vermont League of Women Voters, the Burlington Young Womens Guild, and the Vermont Senate and House registered their support for embargoes that discriminated against aggressors, particularly Japan.64 Critics of the president were also telling him what it would take to convince them. Representative Shafer believed that Ambassadors Kennedy and Bullit were “high pressure salesmen sent up here by the White House to convince us Europe would be at war by Spring.”65 The Representative preferred “to go along with the calm, reasoned plans of our military officers rather than the hysterical outbursts of our envoys abroad.”66 Yet the president refused to forthrightly present his foreign policy views and did not remain calm. Within the administration the president’s advisers encouraged him to allay lingering suspicions and uncertainty regarding his foreign policy because they “were convinced that … the invective between the White House and the Capitol had given the wrong impression to the totalitarian governments as to the degree of national support for the practical steps he had in mind.”67 But the president preferred his own counsel, as Arthur Krock noted; “the President was still serenely confident”—as if the impact of the Supreme Court fight went unacknowledged—and thus there did not develop “in Mr. Roosevelt any doubt of his skill as an analyst.”68 Even while the flap over the Rhine comment was still front-page news, the president continued to show his contempt for his opponents. Roosevelt appointed a federal judge for northern Virginia that went against the wishes of that state’s Democratic leadership. The Senate voted 72-9 on February 5 and rejected his appointment, and that was a first for Roosevelt. The president assailed the Senate’s rejection of his candidate and accused the senators of usurping his executive power.69 Then on February 16, President Roosevelt retreated and left Washington to observe naval maneuvers in the Caribbean. While he was observing the maneuvers, the situation in Congress remained grim for the administration. The president’s desire to fortify Guam was defeated by a coalition of Republicans and 152 Democrats, and shortly thereafter twelve senators proposed reconsideration of the war referendum idea. Republican motives seemed clear to one

constituent who wrote the minority leader and said “that you were so far a partisan as to swing your block of Republicans solidly against the necessary work on the Island of Guam is disgusting. It will be impossible for us as a Democratic [sic] nation to defend ourselves against those nations whose leaders are ever watchful.”70 During the first week of March, the House voted 137–93 to take away from Secretary Perkins the supervision of funds of the wages and hours division of the Department of Labor.71 And although the House unanimously passed the Army supply bill, Republicans and conservative Democrats were gearing up for another fight over the Reorganization Bill. The coalition had defeated the bill the year before because, in ultraconservative John Taber’s words, it was a “delegation of more power to the President.”72 Despite the hostile mood of the Congress, upon his return from the Caribbean the president curtly requested a restoration of the $150 million cut from the WPA budget. He was able to do so by exercising a clause in the bill that granted him the right to make a second request in the event of an emergency. His speedy use of that clause was not well received by the Congress. Thus, during a period of rising international tension, the president chose to reopen a wound that had divided his party, united the opposition, and distracted the public from the pressing diplomatic concerns that he had given priority in his State of the Union message. On March 7, a letter by former Republican Secretary of State Henry Stimson was published in the New York Times that expressed his desire for the repeal of the mandatory arms embargo. The president announced his own opposition to the embargo on the same day. But when Representative Wadsworth attempted to stir up support for the idea, he discovered that congressional Democrats were fed up with the president’s belligerency, and “the possibility of a prolonged debate, cutting across party lines and affording the opportunity for unlimited criticism of President Roosevelt … strikes the Democratic leaders most unfavorably … they want to pass the supply bills … and send the legislators home.”73 The president’s stock rose a bit on March 8 when a compromise Reorganization bill passed by a wide margin in the House. But credit for that success rightfully belonged to Representatives Warren and Cochran, whose version provided safeguards and gave greater powers to the Congress than the president’s bill of the previous year. In addition, the two congressmen made it clear that neither the president nor any members of the executive branch had been consulted during the writing of the bill.74 President Roosevelt was still focused on the WPA debate, and he attempted to purge his foremost Democratic foe from the appropriations subcommittee on the very day Czechoslovakia was invaded by Germany, Hungary, and Rumania.75 The battle over the WPA and the Senate debate over the Reorganization bill seemed to overwhelm events occurring in Czechoslovakia. Opponents of the WPA again questioned the president’s veracity, belittled his claims of emergency need, and expressed their displeasure by calling for a whole new round of investigations into the WPA’s activities. The construction of a WPA building at the World’s Fair and criticisms of the Writers Project shed further doubt on the president’s claims of emergency need. Representative Barton stated that the president had announced thirty-nine emergencies since 1933—a rate of one every six weeks.76 A general cynicism toward all

emergencies was reflected in Senator Borah’s comment that the disappearance of Czechoslovakia had been “inevitable.”77 In the midst of the showdown over the WPA—and while the Senate focused on some close votes concerning amendments to the Reorganization bill—on March 21 Senator Pittman introduced his bill to revise the neutrality law. The bill was titled the Peace Act and proposed to revoke the mandatory arms embargo and put all trade with belligerents on a cash-and-carry basis. Senator Shipstead didn’t buy the peace label and clearly saw that the bill was aimed to help Britain and France against Germany.78 It was also quickly pointed out that the bill was seriously flawed because China would be hurt by the cash-and-carry clause. Senator Pittman opposed hearings on neutrality revision, but opponents decried his wish as yet another administration attempt at subterfuge and secrecy. Pittman then emulated the Warren-Cochran strategy and amended his bill to transfer to Congress the power to invoke the cash-and-carry provision, and hearings were scheduled for the following week. On March 30, the House voted to grant $100 million more for the WPA, to which President Roosevelt responded, “either $150 million or nothing” and vowed to take his battle on to the Senate.79 In early April the Republican mayoral candidate of Chicago garnered the party’s largest vote in a decade, and in Michigan the entire statewide Republican ticket was voted into office. The WPA fight and electoral trends in the Midwest made it more apparent to Democrats that their “intra-party feud may set the stage for an easy Republican victory in 1940.”80 Subsequently, the president’s luck seemed to change in Congress during April: William O. Douglas was confirmed to the Supreme Court by a vote of 62–4, the issue over WPA funding finally came to an end when the Senate agreed with the House and gave the president two thirds of his request, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Agricultural Adjustment Act, and on April 21 the House extended the president’s discretionary monetary powers by a vote of 225–150. April was also the month that neutrality revision finally appeared to be gaining momentum. The Germans had overrun Czechoslovakia in mid-March and pressured Lithuania to cede Memel to them later that month. Storm clouds were beginning to gather over Danzig, and with cash-and-carry due to expire May 1, there was pressure to act. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee began hearings on April 5, and Republican Henry Stimson injected some reality into the debate by stating, “we are not sitting down to draft peacefully and philosophically a code of behavior for normal times but to consider how we can best make the United States safe … in a totally novel and critical situation.”81 Italy invaded Albania two days later. During hearings also being held by the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Republican James Wadsworth stated, “foreigners smile with satisfaction in the knowledge that the United States under its own laws has surrendered its freedom of action.”82 Other Republicans disagreed with Stimson and Wadsworth. While fishing in Oregon, Herbert Hoover said, “I think we are going to miss a general conflict,” and Senator Borah concurred: “Hitler will avoid a major war.”83 On Easter Day the president made an incautious remark that had an impact not unlike his earlier statement about the Rhine frontier. As he departed Warm Springs, he told well-wishers

something to the effect that he would see them again in the fall if we did not have war.84 The comment provoked criticism and again revealed the secretive side of a president who seemed to hold thoughts that only emerged at unguarded moments. President Roosevelt regained the momentum on April 15 when he made a public appeal to the dictators to commit themselves not to invade thirty-one specified countries. The speech was dramatic in the best Roosevelt tradition and was widely praised in Canada, Russia, Britain, and France and throughout Latin America.85 Inexplicably, four days later President Roosevelt reversed his priorities and gave a major address to Young Democrats where he again told conservative Democrats to get out of the party and asserted that the party would fail if it offered ersatz Republicanism.86 At the time, commentators were bewildered: “the President’s message … gave no feeling that world conditions require national unity which factional recruiting and partisan attack prevent. If the foreign situation is what the President says it is … then the message to the Young Democrats was a distracting call to an inland skirmish when the troops should be mobilizing for the defense of the coasts.”87 The speech clearly sent a mixed signal to the public and gave credibility to Senator Taft’s assertion that “FDR was attempting to divert attention from his failures in the domestic field by ballyhooing the foreign situation.”88 Senator Bridges, who seemed to revel in his role as hatchet man for the Republicans, believed “the country does not support the President in his saber-rattling.”89 In response to FDR’s April 15 appeal to the dictators, on April 28 Hitler gave his response, and it had a devastating impact. Hitler said he “would not presume to address a similar request to the President, as Mr. President would undoubtedly consider it tactless.”90 The führer went on to say that the president was spreading panic. Did the thirty-one states feel threatened, had they suggested the United States request a commitment from Germany, and had they given their consent for the request? On all counts the answers were negative, and it was clear that the president’s appeal had been made unilaterally. Roosevelt had declared in advance that he would not provide a rebuttal, and in Senator Borah’s words, “Hitler ended all discussion.”91 Although reaction to Hitler’s speech was muted, Roosevelt’s preplanned retreat indicated he was unprepared to respond. Negative reviews of the president’s Young Democrats speech must have also had an impact on him. Henceforth the president exhibited a new conciliatory attitude toward Congress; he strengthened his ties with agrarians and refrained from attacking the conservatives of his own party. When the cash-and-carry provision expired on May 1, that policy again came under scrutiny in Congress, but the president stayed clear of the debate and deferred to the Democratic leadership. On May 4 Republicans led an attempt to reject the conference report on the Reorganization bill but failed 264–128, and four days later the House passed the president’s farm bill by an impressive majority of 297–58. In the Senate, the president also solidified his support with agrarians that resulted in a split within the Republican ranks. Nine Republicans supported the administration’s record farm bill, and economy forces (so named because they wanted to economize) were defeated by an overwhelming vote of 61–14. By mid-May political observers were noticing “that in recent weeks there has been a lessening of tension

between the two Democratic factions.”92 Rising political speculation concerning the 1940 election, as well as the president’s new conciliatory approach, increased the tendency for Democrats to coalesce. In May the Treasury Department introduced a plan to add six million new taxpayers as a means of reducing the deficit and placating the economy group. Harry Hopkins supported the plan, as did General Wood, the president of Sears Roebuck who was scheduled to testify before a congressional committee.93 Just prior to Wood’s scheduled appearance, President Roosevelt announced he was determined to reject the proposal and retain the profits tax. General Wood canceled his planned testimony and left Washington believing the president had missed an opportunity to show his solidarity with businessmen and the economy group. Secretary Wallace added salt to the wounds of the budget minded by hinting in late May that the government had plans for future pump priming in 1940.94 Republicans watched as their conservative coalition slowly dissolved around them in May, and “after a long period of near silence maintained because of its belief that the New Deal would harm itself politically if left alone, the Republican Party amassed some of its principle speakers for a concerted attack on one of the principle New Deal policies, public spending.”95 But the Republican surprise attack on the administration’s reciprocal trade treaties failed in the House by a vote of 165–139, as did a later attempt to instruct the House conference committee to limit the price parity section of the farm bill. Thus it was becoming more apparent than ever to the Republican leadership that division within the Democratic ranks was crucial to their own political success.96 Internationalist Republicans also became less sympathetic to Roosevelt’s worldview around that time. Senator Austin wrote that he had “ no real apprehension that we will get into war.”97 Representative Rogers had favored neutrality reform and supported the democracies in February, but by April she had changed her mind and felt “we owe no duty to any country in Europe.”98 Representative Charles Plumley, the ex-president of Vermont’s Norwich Military College, believed that Hitler “threatens the world, even the Americas,” but Plumley still joined the Fish Committee against repeal.99 Representative Foster Stearns, a House Foreign Affairs Committee member and a former diplomat, appeared less partisan than his colleagues when he wrote to a constituent, “the President has said that our present neutrality law has not worked out satisfactorily; and I find that some Members of Congress who voted for it when it was passed feel the same way about it.”100 With the political winds finally blowing in his direction, in late May the president pushed forward with his desire to repeal the arms embargo. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee was deadlocked, so the president turned to the House committee where he was certain of a majority. Although Roosevelt kept a low profile and let Secretary of State Hull lead the effort, it soon became obvious that the administration had regained its confidence and no longer thought it necessary to take a conciliatory approach. After spurning an invitation to appear before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Hull invited committee members to his private residence for a meeting that excluded isolationists. The selectivity of the secretary’s guest list and his unwillingness to testify bred new suspicions

and further attacks on the administration’s secrecy. Soon after, Hull sent Congress his proposal for a revised neutrality law that was essentially the same as Senator Pittman’s bill. Hull proposed to abolish the arms embargo and put all sales to belligerents on a cash-and-carry basis. The secretary made his case for repeal in an address to the Sunday Evening Club of Chicago on May 28. In that address he did not discuss security needs but instead emphasized that lower living standards would result from isolationism.101 The speech offered nothing new and again gave the impression that the administration was obfuscating its true intentions. Ever vigilant for partisan opportunities, Senator Styles Bridges responded soon after: “the Republican Party can sweep to victory in 1940 if it adopts a foreign policy that will guarantee that this nation will not become involved in any European war.”102 The senator’s statement made it clear that regular Republicans saw the advantages of reviving the coalition with its progressive agrarian faction. The administration’s decision to mount an assertive and uncompromising campaign to repeal the embargo was confirmed by the actions of the Democratic majority on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. The majority defeated an amendment that would have given Congress, in addition to the president, the right to recognize states of belligerency. The committee’s vote denied that power to the Congress, and isolationists felt betrayed because Senator Pittman’s earlier bill had granted that power to them. Isolationists were also mobilized by chairman Bloom’s intention to give the president the power to designate combat zones and modify the ban on loans if he determined they were for peaceful purposes. Representative Rogers reported that Congress received “letters by the thousands … praying that America be kept apart from foreign alliances and entanglements in foreign quarrels.”103 Opponents included even those like Representative Plumley, who realized that under the old law “we in reality have been made allies of nations fighting to destroy democracy.”104 Yet Plumley opposed the Bloom bill because “this bill gives the president control of all credits, of all banking, of all money, of all shipping.”105 Agrarian progressives and populists were further mobilized into action during early June when the Townsend Plan was defeated in the House by a vote of 302–97. In addition, the suspicions of agrarians, populists, and isolationists were heightened on June 7 when the king and queen of England visited the United States and were received by Secretary Hull dressed in a formal tuxedo. The royal visit was considered a public relations success, but the royal visit plucked a sensitive nerve in a Congress that was “always watching … [to] see if the executive branch [had] any sort of understanding with the British.”106 On the other hand, isolationists were encouraged by their success in delaying Chairman Bloom’s effort to report out his bill. Representative Tinkham, who represented a heavily Irish district in Massachusetts, was pleased that the House Foreign Affairs Committee decided to postpone further consideration of the bill during the royal visit. Mr. Tinkham believed Chairman Bloom was in a “hurry to turn out a favorable report for George IV.”107 Although Representative Rogers was an internationalist member of the foreign affairs committee, she also hailed from a heavily working-class district in Massachusetts and supported the

postponement. On June 10, Republican James Wadsworth took it upon himself to advance the foreign policy debate. In a speech to Young Republicans, he asked questions the administration appeared determined to avoid: supposing war did break out, “we would have to cancel orders to England and France … do you suppose the American people would stand for that?”108 Three days later the Bloom bill was finally reported out of the committee but by a closer vote than expected. The minority report strongly opposed the excessive discretionary powers allotted to the president. On the floor of the House, the relief bill for 1940 was under debate, and Representative Woodrum unleashed another assault on the WPA. The WPA suffered some further reductions, but party lines held firm when the tax bill easily passed on June 19. The next day President Roosevelt announced that the Bloom bill had to be passed during the current session. He justified his request for speedy passage with the uninspiring rationale that it would not be neutral to revise the law after potential hostilities had begun.109 Security talks between Britain and the Soviet Union were faltering at that time. Having chosen to avoid an honest debate, instead the administration “intended to use every parliamentary means” to push the Bloom bill through the House.110 Senator Austin wrote at the time, “I would repeal the neutrality act if we did not have a President like Roosevelt. I doubt if I would do it while he is the executive; but the issue will not be so simple, we will have a new act proposed which will give him more power than the neutrality repeal would leave him.”111 Simultaneously, the Senate was engulfed in a battle over the administration’s monetary program. At issue were the powers given to the president under legislation of 1933 and 1934 to enlarge the money supply, devalue the dollar, purchase foreign silver, and exercise authority over a $2 billion stabilization fund. Those executive powers were due to expire on June 30. The House had divided along party lines and extended the president’s monetary powers on April 21.112 In the Senate, partisan lines were less predictable. Mountain state senators led by Senator Pittman advocated higher domestic silver prices and the discontinuation of the purchase of foreign silver. Republicans wanted to discontinue the president’s devaluation powers and “shunned their usual southern allies, coalescing instead with western Democrats.”113 Silverites agreed to support removal of the president’s devaluation authority if Republicans supported an increase in the domestic price of silver. On June 26 that alliance succeeded in its aims, and Roosevelt was dismayed that his discretionary authority was revoked and domestic silver prices increased. But “the President also shared major responsibility for the outcome by refusing to compromise … if Roosevelt had agreed to a slight increase in silver rates, the western Democrats probably would have abandoned the nondevaluationists.”114 A new spirit of conciliation suddenly came over the White House in response to events in both the House and Senate. The president agreed to a last-minute compromise on the domestic price of silver, and the silver block conferees agreed to accept the House version of the bill. Republicans who had supported the silverites were incensed by the betrayal of their former allies. In the House, Democratic leaders also sought a compromise over the Bloom bill and decided not to press for the president’s right to define combat zones. But during the floor

debate on June 27, administration spokesmen still “repeatedly denied any intention of altering the neutrality act in order to aid England and France.”115 After such blatant falsehoods it was no surprise that sober Republicans, such as Senator Austin, referred to the president as a “bad actor.”116 As the final vote on the Bloom bill approached, the administration believed passage was assured because of the large Democratic majority in the House. But on the evening of June 29, Republican Representative Vorys proposed an amendment to reinstate a slightly modified arms embargo. The amendment passed 159–157, and the Democratic leaders in the House were shocked but determined to reverse the amendment the next day. On June 30 a coalition of Republicans and nondevaluationists in the Senate rejected the conference report on the monetary bill and vowed to filibuster until the president’s discretionary powers expired at midnight. The president responded that, in regard to monetary policy and neutrality, there would be “no surrender,” and friends said, “the Chief Executive had no thought of compromise on either issue.”117 In the House, Democratic leaders resorted to a rarely used parliamentary device to reverse the Vorys amendment but failed. “Bad feelings caused by the attempted steamroller tactics” were credited for that failure.118 Only seven Republicans voted against the Vorys amendment, and its adoption was cause for a partisan celebration.119 As the midnight hour approached and the Senate remained deadlocked, the attorney general issued the opinion that the president’s monetary powers would continue if the Senate failed to act. Opponents resented the president’s tricky and probably illegal tactic to outmaneuver their filibuster. More than ever they “detested the growth of his executive authority.”120 During the Independence Day break the administration attained the necessary votes, and on July 5 the conference report on monetary policy was adopted. During early July the administration’s reputation for election fraud was again receiving a public airing as the Senate considered the Hatch Act. Simultaneously, the president’s hopes for repeal of the arms embargo also focused on the Senate. The president had eleven certain votes on the Foreign Relations Committee, and the isolationists had ten, while two remaining conservative Democrats were undeclared. The two were Senator Gillette of Iowa and Senator George of Georgia, both of whom had been targets of the president’s purge of 1938. On July 11 the committee vote to report out the bill was preceded by another motion introduced by agrarian progressive Senator Champ Clark. He moved to postpone the entire matter until the next session of Congress. Isolationists threatened to filibuster the bill, and the motion to postpone gave the undecided senators the means to bypass the controversial issue and express their disapproval and distrust of the president, which they did. Thus, efforts to help England and France and send a warning to Germany by repealing the arms embargo were again delayed. The president’s final attempt that summer to persuade Senate leaders to repeal the arms embargo took place on the evening of July 18, 1939. Senators Pittman, Barclay, McNary, Borah, and Austin were present at the White House meeting. Prior to the meeting Senator Austin had already taken the position that “if we take a stand against aggression in advance, we

discourage it … we don’t have to promise that we will keep out of war.”121 At the meeting the president and the secretary of state implored the senators to repeal the embargo. That action alone, they said, would send the message that the United States was resolved to aid the democracies and would thus give pause to the aggressive plans of the dictators. In the famous exchange that took place between Senator Borah and Secretary of State Hull, the senator flatly contradicted the state department’s dire predictions of war.122 After the incident Senator Austin recalled, “the President assumed a threatening attitude, indicating that he would go to the Country, and put the responsibility on Congress, and especially the Senate, for all evil consequences that might ensue from adjournment without action. Vice President Garner made a vigorous statement to the effect that the President couldn’t afford to go out and slap down the Senate just because it had performed its function of legislating in a manner that did not conform to his views.”123 Senator Austin then reminded the president that Congress had “willingly passed legislation putting into effect his entire program for National Defense.”124 The president simply did not have the votes to reverse the committee’s decision, and repeal of the embargo was irreversibly delayed. Inevitably, historians ask why the president was unsuccessful in his effort to convince Congress to repeal the mandatory arms embargo. In Robert Divine’s analysis, “a combination of partisan animosities, isolationist yearnings, and growing resentment at strong presidential leadership converged to destroy Roosevelt’s cautious attempt to reorient American foreign policy.”125 The president’s caution, however, did not extend to the approach he took toward the Congress regarding the manner in which he pursued his domestic priorities. Therefore, internationalists like Senator Austin, who favored taking a stand against aggressors in advance, were “pleased with the postponement.”126 The record shows that President Roosevelt was not very cautious or tactful concerning his relations with Congress. He was often aggressive and belligerent with his opponents in early 1939, including those of his own party. The president’s Young Democrats speech suggested another attempted purge that exacerbated relations with conservative Democrats. Republicans then rationalized that his Jackson Day speech was an attempt to use a foreign policy crisis to distract from his domestic political troubles. The president played into the worst fears of his conservative Democratic critics. He continued the pattern of arrogant behavior he had exhibited during the Supreme Court fight and the attempted purge of conservative Democrats in 1938. The Bloom bill, the WPA, and the monetary program were all particularly distasteful to Republicans because they seemed to place “every man and every business under presidential control by means of rules and regulations to be proclaimed by him.”127 Those fears were not new, but with an election mandate supporting them, the conservative coalition that advocated limits to executive authority acquired the confidence and determination to try and take back some of the president’s power and roll back some of the New Deal. President Roosevelt did not move cautiously forward with his plans for repeal of the arms embargo either. He rather incautiously dropped a bomb on the Senate Military Affairs Committee by bringing up the defense of France. When he subsequently withheld his views

regarding that policy, he rekindled fears of secret diplomacy reminiscent of World War I. The president’s strategy would be better categorized as one of obfuscation rather than caution. Throughout the campaign for repeal, the secretary of state and representatives of the administration refused to appear at neutrality hearings, thus reinforcing charges that the president could not be trusted.128 As he had done in the Supreme Court fight, Roosevelt even kept his plans secret from his own allies. Hitler made use of that trait and portrayed Roosevelt’s dramatic appeal for peace as a misconceived and unilateral act. Again and again the president showed unwillingness to compromise with Congress. He showed contempt for his opponents in Congress by refusing to give any ground on the WPA budget or judicial appointments and refused to concede that the midterm elections had given his opponents at least some degree of a mandate. He seemed to stop at almost nothing to get his way, including what congressmen perceived as sneaky tactics. He fulfilled that assessment particularly well in soliciting the attorney general’s legally questionable intervention during the filibuster over monetary policy and claiming yet another emergency to reintroduce his request for a larger WPA budget. Analysts at the time and since have observed, “when his various trial balloons have met unfavorable reception he has retreated … in order to make a better leap.”129 President Roosevelt’s actions toward Congress reflected an ability to charge or retreat, to take center stage or stand behind the curtain, but he would not sing in the chorus or fashion a compromise that could make peace with the Congress. At a time of international crisis when national unity should have been the top priority, the president contributed more than his share to the exchanges of invective between the White House and Congress. Although the president learned to restrain himself—and he did so during the fight for the repeal of the embargo in May of 1939—in other ways the administration’s strategy showed surprising insensitivity and disregard for the views of his opponents. The Bloom bill needlessly “proposed a high degree of presidential discretion” and alienated internationalist Republicans and Democrats who were consumed by fears of increasing presidential power.130 The president’s actions were particularly hard to fathom given that so much of the legislative agenda in early 1939 focused on ways to lessen the influence of the president, a point that conservatives made abundantly and consistently clear. Senator Pittman’s bill, as well as one submitted by Senator Thomas, recognized that trend and proposed to share the right to declare belligerency with Congress. But the president supported neither bill and rather incautiously pressed for maximum executive control. The visit by the king and queen of England, at a time when the debate over the embargo was at its peak and the Bloom bill was up for a vote, can also be viewed as an incautious public relations blunder. Agrarian populists had no love for monarchy and had made it clear for many years their dislike of colonial empires, and Irish voters despised the English.131 In addition, the monarchs were hardly the best example of the two countries’ shared belief in democracy. That was obvious to those like Mrs. Rogers, who referred to Britain and France as “so-called democracies.”132 The royal visit also belied the president’s attempt to portray his plan for repeal as the most

neutral. Senators Frazier, Lundeen, and Reynolds had expressed their opposition to the visit five months beforehand in fear the royals intended to “curry favor” and induce the United States to “save” their country.133 The president also appeared to have overlooked that his patrician roots were a significant liability during the Great Depression.134 Escorting a king and queen around Hyde Park in formal attire was no way to dispel his elitist image. The partisan actions of Republicans in Congress must also be taken into consideration. The party rode a crest of success from January through March as their coalition proved capable of turning back the New Deal. Republicans were eager to maintain the new-found strength of the conservative coalition even if it meant postponement of a frank discussion on foreign affairs. The willingness of Eastern Republicans to paper over differences with the western wing of their party must be viewed in light of the revolts that had overtaken the Republican Party in the past. Since 1932, “to many observers the condition of the GOP recalled the disarray of Republican efforts in 1912.”135 The Republican Party reached its nadir in 1936 and faced speculation that it might even cease to exist. FDR received the support of agrarian progressives early on but then lost their support in 1937. It is understandable that there would be a desire to bring the coalition back together when the chance presented itself. Nonetheless, it was inexcusable that Republican politicians allowed their partisan interests to outweigh the need to candidly consider the nation’s foreign policy during a perilous period in world history. It should also come as no surprise that Republican internationalists were all the more willing to compromise with their agrarian progressive wing when the president and dissident Democrats began to coalesce in late April of 1939. By May the Democrats were compiling a string of legislative successes, and Eastern Republicans watched as their bright prospects of the winter melted away by spring. In June, Republicans lamented as their progressive coalition partners began to slip back into the president’s camp when he offered the Mountain group higher silver prices. The progressive-conservative split within the Republican Party was forty years old by 1939, and party leaders were anxious to avoid another break with their agrarian progressive wing.136 Establishment Republicans resorted to the methods they had used successfully throughout the 1920s to maintain their coalition. They conceded to agrarian progressives on a matter of foreign policy as they had conceded to that faction during the fight over the League of Nations. Undoubtedly, the president’s desire to avoid a frank discussion over foreign affairs was intended to prevent Republicans from unifying with their agrarian progressive wing against him. Thus he was just as guilty of putting the quest for agrarian progressive support before a frank discussion of German aggression. Only after the invasion of Poland were both the president and FDR’s Republicans willing to forego the support of agrarian progressives when the foreign policy agenda of that faction was discredited and its leadership disgraced. However, a frank discussion of foreign policy in early 1939 might also have driven Republicans apart, as it eventually did. The president seemed not to appreciate that those Republicans who most despised his domestic policies were, nonetheless, some of the strongest supporters of his internationalism. Of course, strident critics like Senator Bridges didn’t make

it easy for the president to recognize the possibility that support might be forthcoming from that quarter. But others made their approval more evident, and even Senator Bridges made it readily obvious that he did “not subscribe wholeheartedly to a foreign policy based on isolation. But … a new program which will more nearly satisfy the requirements of peace.”137 The neutrality bill that the president wanted more than anything else asked for Congress to give him their trust. Yet the president had done little, if anything, to gain that trust. He asked Congress to support neutrality legislation for reasons he had neither forthrightly explained to them nor to the public. Administration forces then tried to steamroll the bill through the House at the last minute. Earlier in the New Deal the president’s strategy might have worked, but Congress and public opinion no longer accepted such tactics in 1939. The president lost control of the foreign policy debate to his opponents because his veracity, candor, and trustworthiness became the central issues. Administration forces insisted on portraying the Bloom bill as the most neutral, a perspective that left more than ample room for debate. The votes on the Vorys amendment and that of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee were very close. A few internationalist Republican and conservative Democratic votes could have made the difference. But the president showed no inclination to make a deal with conservative internationalists and to concede something on the domestic front in order to acquire their support for repeal of the embargo. The president waited until he had achieved most of his domestic agenda, including the retention of his monetary powers, before approaching conservative internationalists for help. Republican Senator Austin led the fight against the president’s monetary policy, and one can only wonder how deeply it affected his judgment. Only later did Senator Austin become Roosevelt’s foremost supporter in the Republican Party on matters of foreign policy. With the monetary fight fresh in their memories and feeling they had just been cheated out of a victory, Republicans were in no mood to cooperate with the president when he asked for their support. There is no doubt that preservation of the embargo became a rallying cry for isolationists who disagreed with President Roosevelt’s efforts to aid the Allies. But for others, including most of FDR’s Republicans, the occasion was viewed in context as another opportunity to limit presidential power. The primary objective of the conservative coalition was to prevent the president’s attempts to “supersede and destroy the Congress of the United States.”138 In Senator Austin’s words, “many who voted against action would have preferred to repeal the neutrality act if the President had been less ambitious personally.”139 Internationalist Democratic Senators George and Gillette and Republican Senator White voted to postpone the neutrality issue until the next session, but they were not isolationists. Their votes should be interpreted more accurately as votes of no confidence in the president himself. The president’s internationalist perspective was not the problem that alienated those senators. They and others like them had no confidence in the president’s ability to work with the Congress. Senator White made it clear that his vote was motivated by the desire to avoid another angry and provocative debate between Congress and the president.140 Having been elected twice by huge majorities, the president appeared unaccustomed and

unwilling to concede more power and influence to conservatives despite their election mandate of 1938. President Roosevelt was wedded to the course upon which he set the nation during the first six years of his administration. He appeared unable to shift gears and accommodate the new political realignment that resulted after the midterm elections of 1938. In pursuing that course he allowed himself to be pulled into a war with the Congress—and one within his own party that distracted attention from the more serious war that was on the verge of erupting overseas.

NOTES 1. Weed, The Nemesis of Reform, 174. 2. David L. Porter, The Seventy-sixth Congress and World War II, 1939–1940 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press 1979), 63. 3. Robert Divine, Wayne Cole, and Robert Dallek are among the most prominent who portray President Roosevelt in this way. 4. Hunt, “The Long Crisis,” 128. 5. Ralph Levering, “Is Domestic Politics Being Slighted as an Interpretive Framework?” SHAFR Newsletter 25 (1994): 18. 6. Cole, Roosevelt and the Isolationists, 319. 7. Porter, The Seventy-sixth, 77. 8. During the 1980s the “Right to Life” issue became a symbol and litmus test of ideological purity for a similar agrarianfundamentalist-based political movement. 9. Marian C. McKenna, Borah (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1961), 368. 10. Levering, “Is Domestic Politics Being Slighted,” 18. 11. David L. Porter, Congress and the Waning of the New Deal (Port Washington, NY: National University Publications, 1980), xi. 12. Robert Divine, Illusion of Neutrality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962), 274. James MacGregor Burns, Roosevelt, The Lion and the Fox (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1956), 399. William Leuchtenburg, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal (New York: Harper & Row, 1963), 290. 13. Kenneth S. Davis, FDR, Into the Storm, 1937–1940 (New York: Random House, 1993), 363. 14. Burns, Lion and the Fox, 370. 15. Dexter Perkins, The New Age of Franklin Roosevelt, 1932–45 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957), 105. 16. Cole, Roosevelt and Isolationists, 294. 17. Janann Sherman, No Place for a Woman, A Life of Senator Margaret Chase Smith (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2000), 40. 18. Sherman, No Place for a Woman, 39. 19. Austin Papers, Speeches file, Carton BIII, speech 207. 20. Austin Papers, speech 207. 21. Rogers Papers, Fort Devens Citizen, December 31, 1938. 22. Rogers Papers, Fort Devens Citizen, December 31, 1938. 23. Leuchtenburg, New Deal, 272. 24. Moos, The Republicans, 408. 25. Divine, Illusion, 236. 26. New York Times, January 3, 1939, 10. 27. New York Times, January 4, 1939, 10. 28. Porter, Waning, 62. 29. Porter, Waning, 62. 30. New York Times, January 6, 1939, 13. 31. New York Times, January 6, 1939, 13. 32. New York Times, January 9, 1939, 2. 33. New York Times, January 8, 1939, 1.

34. New York Times, January 9, 1939, 2. 35. Porter, Waning, 63. 36. Porter, Waning, 63. 37. New York Times, January 13, 1939, 8. 38. Austin Papers, Carton 1, letter to mother, February 24, 1939. 39. New York Times, January 13, 1939, 1. 40. Porter, Waning, 70. 41. New York Times, January 14, 1939, 1. 42. New York Times, January 14, 1939, 1. 43. New York Times, January 15, 1939, section 4, 1. 44. Austin Papers, Carton 1, letter to mother, February 27, 1939. 45. New York Times, January 21, 1939, 1. 46. Porter, Waning, 73. 47. Porter, Waning, 73. 48. New York Times, February 2, 1939, 1. 49. New York Times, February 2, 1939, 1. 50. New York Times, February 2, 1939, 1. 51. New York Times, February 2, 1939, 4. 52. New York Times, February 2, 1939, 4. 53. New York Times, February 2, 1939, 4. 54. New York Times, February 1, 1939, 1. 55. New York Times, February 4, 1939, 4. 56. New York Times, February 4, 1939, 4. 57. Austin Papers, Carton 1, letter to mother, February 10, 1939. 58. New York Times, February 4, 1939, 4. 59. New York Times, February 13, 1939, 1. 60. New York Times, February 6, 1939, 2. 61. New York Times, February 17, 1939, 1. 62. Rogers Papers, Boston Herald, February 12, 1939. 63. Rogers Papers, Reading Chronicle, February 10, 1939. 64. Plumley Papers, Document Box 170, items 467, 1879, 1184. 65. New York Times, February 15, 1939, 7. 66. New York Times, February 15, 1939, 7. 67. New York Times, February 26, 1939, section 4, 6. 68. New York Times, February 19, 1939, section 4, 3. 69. New York Times, February 8, 1939, 1. 70. Austin Papers, Carton 1, letter to Rep. Joseph W. Martin from Walter H. Buck, February 24, 1939. 71. New York Times, March 1, 1939, 1. 72. New York Times, March 4, 1939, 6. 73. New York Times, March 9, 1939, 1. 74. Porter, Waning, 91. 75. New York Times, March 15, 1939, 1. 76. New York Times, March 17, 1939, 14. 77. New York Times, March 18, 1939, 3. 78. New York Times, March 26, 1939, 29. 79. New York Times, March 31, 1939, 1. 80. New York Times, April 4, 1939, section 4, 3. 81. New York Times, April 6, 1939, 10. 82. New York Times, April 12, 1939, 7. 83. New York Times, April 19, 1939, 8, and April 24, 1939, 1. 84. New York Times, April 14, 1939, 1. 85. New York Times, April 17, 1939, 1. 86. New York Times, April 20, 1939, 1. 87. New York Times, April 23, 1939, section 4, 3. 88. New York Times, April 21, 1939, 1.

89. Bridges Papers, file 68, folder 126, District Young Republicans Convention Speech, April 26, 1939. 90. New York Times, April 29, 1939, 10. 91. New York Times, April 29, 1939, 10. 92. New York Times, May 21, 1939, section 4, 3. 93. New York Times, May 11, 1939, 1. 94. New York Times, May 24, 1939, 11. 95. New York Times, May 21, 1939, 1. 96. New York Times, May 28, 1939, section 4, 6. 97. Austin Papers, Carton 1, letter to mother, May 4, 1939. 98. Rogers Papers, Box 10, file 152, DAR speech, April 20, 1939. 99. Plumley Papers, Burlington Free Press, April 3, 1939. 100. Stearns Papers, letter to F.C. McKee, April 19, 1939. 101. New York Times, May 29, 1939, 1. 102. New York Times, May 28, 1939, 10. 103. Rogers Papers, Box 10, file 153, Lowell Memorial Day speech, May 31, 1939. 104. Plumley Papers, Montpelier Evening Argus, June 30, 1939. 105. Plumley Papers, Montpelier Evening Argus, June 30, 1939. 106. New York Times, June 11, 1939, section 4, 3. 107. New York Times, June 8, 1939, 10. 108. New York Times, June 10, 1939, 11. 109. New York Times, June 21, 1939, 10. 110. New York Times, June 21, 1939, 8. 111. Austin Papers, Carton 1, letter to mother, June 24, 1939. 112. Porter, Waning, 9. 113. Porter, Waning, 12. 114. Porter, Waning, 17. 115. Divine, Illusion, 269. 116. Austin Papers, Carton 1, letter to mother, July 12, 1939. 117. New York Times, July 2, 1939, 1. 118. New York Times, July 1, 1939, 1. 119. Representatives Ball (CT), Barton (NY), Cole (NY), Kean (NJ), Maas (MN), Stearns (NH), and Wadsworth (NY). 120. Porter, Waning, 18. 121. Austin Papers, Carton 1, Statement of Senator Warren Austin Relating to His Attitude on the Neutrality Laws, July 10, 1939. 122. Dallek, Foreign Policy, 192 123. Austin Papers, Memorandum, 4. 124. Austin Papers, Memorandum, 4. 125. Divine, Illusion, 274. 126. Austin Papers, Memorandum, 6. 127. Plumley Papers, Montpelier Evening Argus, June 30, 1939. 128. Boston Herald, June 8, 1939. Mrs. Rogers was angry that neither a representative of the administration nor Secretary Hull had appeared before the Foreign Relations Committee since January. 129. New York Times, June 25, section 4, 4. 130. Divine, Illusion, 268. 131. Divine, Illusion, 268. 132. Rogers Papers, Box 10, file 152, DAR speech, April 20, 1939. 133. New York Times, January 17, 6. 134. Representative Karl Mundt (R, SD) charged that President Roosevelt, “while masquerading” as a liberal, was really a tory. New York Times, Jan. 15, 1939, 2. 135 Weed, The Nemesis of Reform, 26. 136. New York Times, January 22, 1939, section 4, 3. 137. Bridges Papers, file 6, folder 117, Radio Address, February 20, 1939. 138. Plumley Papers, Montpelier Evening Argus, June 30, 1939. 139. Austin Papers, Carton 1, letter to mother, July 12, 1939. 140. White Papers, Box 82, Lewiston Journal, July 12, 1939.

Chapter 5

The Rapid Decline of Agrarian Progressive Foreign Policy, 1939–1940 The two-year period that preceded American entry into World War II has been well documented by diplomatic historians, and the chronology of events is well-known. Although not discounting what they have done, social historians have criticized diplomatic historians for their “old fashioned methods and concerns, especially the tendency to identify with the political elite and ignore the links between policy and the patterns of privilege and power within American society and culture.”1 In this chapter an attempt is made to address those criticisms and explore the links between power and privilege and the making of American foreign policy. Constituent mail, hometown newspapers, and local speeches are used to establish a sense of what was important to people back in the district or home state. Certainly the public was concerned about the events taking place in Europe and Asia, but this chapter shows that the battle to preserve agrarian progressivism was also of considerable importance to the people back home. In doing so it suggests that the support garnered by agrarian progressive candidates in 1940 may be misinterpreted as support for isolationism. President Roosevelt fought to maintain the course he had set for the nation against a conservative coalition that attempted to roll back the New Deal in early 1939. That fight consumed his attention and compromised his ability to deal effectively with the world crisis. Similarly, Republican agrarian progressives fought to maintain the party reforms they had won by 1938 against the conservative resurgence of 1939 and assault of 1940. I argue that agrarians became preoccupied with preserving their stature, as had the president in 1939, to the detriment of the country’s foreign policy.

THE SHAME AND RAPID DECLINE OF AGRARIAN FOREIGN POLICY When the Nazi-Soviet pact was signed on August 23, 1939, it appeared that it was only a matter of time before the war in Europe would begin. Senator White was reported on August 29 to be “rather embarrassed” by his committee vote against the Pittman bill.2 He heard “forcefully from various thoughtful and some emotional constituents about it.”3 The Germans unleashed their blitzkrieg against Poland on September 1, 1939. The invasion gave President Roosevelt the opportunity to call an emergency session of Congress and again attempt to repeal the arms embargo. In response, isolationist leaders conducted a campaign to unify support to retain the embargo. Senator Borah, Charles Lindbergh, and Father Coughlin gave radio addresses, the latter being “remarkable for the violence of its imagery and the bitterness of its Anglophobia.”4

Diplomatic historians generally direct their attention to the isolationist public relations efforts that resulted in an outpouring of letters that flooded congressional offices in late September.5 Little attention has been given to the mail that was received from those who supported the repeal of the embargo. Representative Sterling Cole kept a complete collection of the correspondences he received from his constituents during those months. His collection offered an opportunity to assess both supporters and opponents of repeal in a district in upstate New York that was fairly representative of Middle America. A tally of his constituent mail confirms the general consensus. During September and October of 1939, the congressman received 273 letters, 159 preprinted cards, 30 telegrams, and five petitions in opposition to repeal of the embargo.6 The letters were written by common folk and often in longhand, and the preprinted cards were often signed by those who could barely write their own names. By comparison, the congressman received only 43 letters, 4 telegrams, and 6 petitions from those who supported repeal.7 Further analysis, however, shows that the hard numbers tell only part of the story. Although opponents outnumbered supporters almost six to one, it is important to remember that Representative Cole was one of the few Republicans who voted in favor of the Bloom bill and against the Vorys amendment during the regular session, and thus he was a prime recipient of isolationist mail. He received seventy-five letters opposed to repeal from April through July. In contrast, supporters of his internationalism wrote only six letters during the earlier debate. It is actually more noteworthy that the invasion of Poland led to the first real mobilization of internationalist public opinion. Representative Cole’s supporters had less incentive and need to write than his opponents. Supporters of repeal appeared not to be led by an organized effort, and their spontaneous sevenfold increase was a dramatic change from the lethargic interest of the previous June. Opponents managed a fourfold increase, but their impressive numbers were less convincing because theirs was a well-organized effort exemplified by the use of form letters and cards. The social standings and professional positions of the letter writers must also have been of significance to Congressman Cole. Among those who supported repeal in the fall were one architect, two doctors, one Presbyterian minister, seven lawyers, two high school principals, one educator, twelve business managers, eight presidents of large companies (including the Chairman of Corning Glass Works), one professor from Elmira College, Governor Smith, the Veterans Administration vice commander, and the Canisteo Grange.8 Those who opposed repeal of the embargo included one educator, one engineer, one business manager, five presidents of small firms (insurance and retail), seven ministers (three Methodists, two Presbyterians, two Baptists, four Methodist Episcopalians, one Catholic priest), one professor from Elmira College, publisher Frank Gannett, the Christian Temperance Union, and the VFW of Hornell.9 Supporters of repeal were represented by wealthier professionals, whereas ministers and small-scale businessmen were more representative of their isolationist opponents. One constituent cautioned the representative and voiced his impression that “the majority in favor of the repeal are not writing you … [and] you are being deluged with organized propaganda against repeal.”10 Ultimately Representative Cole voted

for repeal and stated, “it was not easy for me to desert the majority of my party but I could not conscientiously agree with their attitude.”11 Senator White received sixty-two letters that pertained to neutrality in one morning, ten for repeal and fifty-two that supported continuation of the arms embargo.12 Senator White noted that half the pro-embargo letters were identical even though he had previously stated that he paid no attention to form letters.13 By mid-September constituent mail overwhelmingly favored retention of the embargo. Yet as early as September 12 it was widely known by Republicans that their party’s “most eminent leaders and financial contributors [were] supporting his [FDR’s] foreign policy!”14 The slogan of those supporters was reported to be, “cooperate with the President and buy Allied Chemical.”15 In addition, “a preponderance of Republican newspapers, certainly the more prominent ones,” also supported the president.16 The surge of support for the arms embargo tapered off noticeably by mid-October, as did respect for agrarian progressive leaders. Their influence declined precipitously between the invasion and defeat of Poland. Senator Borah’s assertion that his sources indicated there would be no war, made during the White House meeting of July 18, looked ridiculous in retrospect. As one of his biographers noted, “he looked even more foolish” when it was revealed that his vaunted source was nothing more than an inconsequential British journal that had few subscribers.17 It is to President Roosevelt’s credit that in September he did not repeat the divisive mistakes he made during the first six months of 1939. He chose instead to seek cooperation and bipartisanship with the Congress. During the first week of September the president initiated a special effort to win back dissident members of his own party. An “intense effort” was carried on from the White House to win back members of the party who had voted for the Vorys amendment in June.18 The president also repaired fences with Virginia’s conservative Democratic senators and pledged to consult with them in the future about judicial appointments.19 On September 20 the president invited a bipartisan group of congressional leaders to meet with him and the secretary of state at the White House. The Republican standard bearers of 1936, Alfred Landon and Colonel Frank Knox, were also invited and attended the meeting.20 All of the Republicans who had attended the White House conference of July 18 were again invited with the very noticeable exception of Senator Borah. Other prominent Republicans, including Henry Stimson, William Allen White, and Henry Luce, were contacted and encouraged to counter the isolationist’s public relations efforts.21 The president also exhibited sensitivity to anti-elitist and anti-British opinion that he had overlooked in the spring. President Roosevelt thought it wise to postpone Lord Tweedsmuir’s request for a meeting until after repeal of the embargo had been achieved.22 The help of Al Smith and Cardinal Mundelein were sought to garner support for repeal from the Catholic and Irish communities.23 John L. Lewis was enlisted to gain support from labor, and the assistant secretary of war was assigned to lobby the American Legion.24 Farm groups were largely unmoved by those efforts and were perceived to be among the most opposed to repeal.25 In contrast to the president’s loss of composure during the Rhine frontier incident of

February 1939, it was agrarian progressives who now appeared hysterical during the floor debates over repeal.26 In September and October of 1939 isolationists were quoted as vowing to fight repeal “from Hell to breakfast” and called themselves a “vigilante committee.”27 Their behavior rekindled memories of the 1920s when similar behavior earned them the disdain of those who referred to them as the insurgent “wild jackasses” of the western plains.28 When the president spoke, he did so with more candor and control than he had during the first six months of 1939. Two days after the invasion of Poland, President Roosevelt said, “when peace has been broken anywhere, the peace of all countries everywhere is in danger … even a neutral cannot be asked to close his mind or conscience.”29 The bill that was presented to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on September 26 stood in stark contrast to the bill preferred by the president the previous spring. Although the new bill repealed the embargo, it retained many other elements of Senator Pittman’s original version. It differed notably from the Bloom bill by holding presidential discretion to a minimum. The cash-and-carry provision remained unchanged, but restrictions on shipping were increased. American citizens were still banned from belligerent ships, and merchant vessels could not be armed. The president’s right to grant short-term loans to belligerents was eventually stricken. Most important, Congress gained the right to invoke the act, a right that had been denied to them under the Bloom bill.30 Franklin Roosevelt’s careful groundwork waylaid fears of excessive presidential power and refocused the attention of Congress and the general public onto the world crisis. The president’s new strategy and the events in Europe had an impact on conservative Democratic Senators George and Gillette and Republican Wallace White. All three reversed their earlier votes in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and voted in favor of Senator Pittman’s bill to repeal the embargo. The bill went before the Senate on September 27 and was debated for the next four weeks. The fact that the Senate would eventually vote overwhelmingly in favor of the bill was wellknown in advance. When the battle for repeal reached the Congress, the president proposed a strategy to his supporters that he summed up as “the less said on either floor, the better.”31 The real battle was over public opinion. In lining up votes and public opinion, Republican Senator Warren Austin of Vermont was the most important, influential, and invaluable congressional Republican ally of the president. He was a member of the Judiciary Committee, was senior minority member of the Military Affairs Committee, and was assistant leader of the Senate Republicans. First elected to office in 1931, Senator Austin was invaluable because his “solid Republican credentials on domestic legislation made his support of Roosevelt’s foreign policy respectable for other Republicans.”32 The senator conducted a vigorous and unequivocal public campaign in full support of the president’s foreign policy after the invasion of Poland. The senator waged a sophisticated offensive and avoided the isolationist argument that any change of the neutrality law would not be neutral once hostilities had begun. Austin reversed the argument and stated simply, “retention of the embargo is not regarded as impartial: It helps Germany; it deprives Britain and France of a lawful advantage they possess through geographical location and command of the seas.”33 Unlike Secretary Hull’s argument of the

previous spring, the senator did not try to sell the cash-and-carry plan as an act to provide economic gain. Withholding our ships from belligerent waters was a self-sacrificing act of conscience and impartiality.34 Not only was the United States neutral, it actually went beyond international law that did “not require the Government to prohibit its nationals from commerce.”35 On the floor of the Senate Austin was no rhetorical match for the aging Senator Borah. That was not Austin’s forte, and he looked and acted more like a banker.36 Austin excelled outside the walls of Congress, however, and reached a wide audience through his public speaking engagements, many of which were broadcast on national radio. Austin was one of the first to promote the idea that aid to Britain and France would “cause the totalitarians to keep their distance.”37 He thus promoted the idea that American security was linked to that of the Allies more than six months before the Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies took up that cause in May of 1940. Austin’s speeches sounded remarkably similar to Roosevelt’s when he justified sales to Britain and France as a means to improve American military preparedness at home. To constituents he argued somewhat falsely that because of its limitations on shipping the new act was actually “broader than any heretofore.”38 But of course, weapons were no longer barred from purchase as they had been under the old law. Within the Republican Party, Austin also exerted enormous influence. He spoke before the Women’s National Republican Club of New York on November 10, 1939 (later aired on the Mutual radio network), and gave some astounding pre-election advice: “the Republican Party could do much to bring calamity on America in 1940 if it should hinder, impede and weaken the arm of the present administration in executing our foreign policy.” In contrast to the previous spring, he warned Republicans against accusing the administration of using foreign policy to cover up its mistakes.39 He added, “it would be folly for the Republican Party to minimize the hazard to our own institutions created by the attack upon similar institutions in the rest of the world. We should … maintain the unity … upon the present foreign policy … [and] we should advocate freedom of this government to change its attitude in light of changed contingencies … and promote confidence in the peaceful purpose of this government.”40 Comments such as these dramatically confirmed Senator Austin’s transformation from outspoken critic to avid supporter of the administration. The senator’s mail was generally supportive of his volte-face. The Vermont state librarian wrote, “thank God there are some Republicans who put patriotism above partisanship in foreign affairs.”41 A prominent architect was “glad that you showed no sympathy for the Republicans who only seem to aim at discrediting the Administration.”42 And a Congregationalist minister wrote, “the Party was guided in such a way that fundamental sentiments in all decent men, toward helping the oppressed, were constantly attacked by Republican figures, constantly defended by the White House forces. Had Roosevelt been allowed to bluff Hitler by implied threats to enlist on England’s side … Hitler would not have dared invade Poland … by making it plain to the Germans that the United States would not help Britain, the Republicans are largely responsible for the present war. They forced Roosevelt to

recall his bluff about our frontiers being on the Rhine.”43 It was evident that even nonprofessionals clearly held agrarian progressives and partisan politics accountable for the failure to impede Hitler’s aggression at an earlier date. Under Senator Austin’s leadership the entire Vermont delegation (of three) voted unanimously in support of the president’s wishes. Both Senator Gibson and Representative Plumley shared ties with Norwich Military College and favored a strong defense. Plumley could be a strong advocate for repeal, and in his remarks before the House on October 27 he made the argument, like Austin, that the bill was an act of self-defense.44 Plumley also mirrored the senior senator’s views that Germany benefited from the present law, and it was not unneutral to repeal the act of 1937 after war had been declared; it was the right of a selfgoverning nation.45 After the vote was taken, Representative Plumley told Jewish Veterans, “the only peace worth having is that worth fighting for.”46 But unlike Austin, Plumley was less consistent, and only a day after addressing the Jewish Veterans in Washington DC, his constituents back home were reading comments given by their representative that said “there is no call to fight other people’s wars” and “saving the world is not the task of the U.S.”47 Vermont’s junior Republican senator looked more like a kindly country physician than the starched and judicial Austin. Senator Ernest Gibson Sr., affectionately referred to as the Colonel, came from more humble and populist roots than his senior senatorial colleague. Senator Gibson’s father had been an outspoken Democrat, and the Colonel was himself an enemy of the Old Guard. The Colonel was a delegate to the Republican convention of 1912 pledged to Teddy Roosevelt. He followed his candidate into the Progressive Party and was read out of the Republican Party for doing so. The Colonel steered a primary election reform bill through the Vermont Senate in 1908 and condemned the old caucus system until it was overturned in 1915. While in Congress the Colonel took particular interest in Philippine affairs and the establishment of National Airport, and he was still active in the National Guard well into his late sixties.48 The Colonel never wavered in his support for a strong defense and maintained close friendships with conservative internationalist Democrats such as retired Senator William McAdoo.49 Senator Gibson supported the fortification of Guam and all of the president’s other defense appropriation requests. He also kept in close personal contact with Senator Austin, and the two were often linked together in the press and identified as examples of the candor, independence, and old-fashioned liberalism associated with Vermont.50 The two Vermont senators were flatteringly reported as having the courage of their convictions and the ability to “appreciate the times in which they are living.”51 Unlike Senator Austin, the Colonel had strong ties to the family of Vermont’s progressive agrarian Governor George Aiken. His correspondences with the Aiken family revealed the dilemma faced by a senator who possessed strong agrarian progressive sympathies yet differed with the majority of agrarians on questions of defense. The Colonel delicately justified the wisdom and safety of cash-and-carry while soliciting the governor’s help in determining the right course of action in foreign affairs.52

In a correspondence with the governor’s father, the Colonel agreed that the president need not be given any more power. But like a country doctor administering bitter medicine, he cautioned, “of course, during a war it may be necessary to centralize power in order to properly meet changing situations.”53 Colonel Gibson died just as France was on the verge of defeat, and thus he never had to face a showdown with his progressive agrarian friends when the threat to their movement suddenly became more apparent. Senator Austin’s influence over his peers may have had its greatest impact on New Jersey’s junior senator. Senator Barbour was wavering over the repeal of the embargo in early September of 1939. The Garden State’s senator was not a great speaker, but his reputation as a successful businessman and one-time national teenage boxing champion made him a popular political figure. Senator Warren Barbour described Senator Warren Austin as his greatest friend in Washington, and the two were often referred to as the “two Warrens.”54 As Senator Austin became more clearly recognized as the administration’s foreign policy point man within the Republican Party, Senator Barbour also emerged as the leader of repeal within the New Jersey delegation. By mid-October it was widely reported that Barbour sought to “get the 11 New Jersey congressmen behind FDR.”55 Barbour asserted that the president was right, that the neutrality act needed to be changed, and that the issue was above politics, and New Jersey sentiment favored such action.56 For those like New Jersey representative Charles Eaton, Barbour’s leadership and persuasiveness was unnecessary. The representative was born and raised in Canada and was already an outspoken interventionist when Senator Barbour was still wavering. Charles Eaton was also a minister, and thus his words carried a certain moral authority. Shortly after the invasion of Poland he said, “This is a world war. We cannot possibly escape all contact with it … we must … bring a speedy end to the conflict with victory for the democracies. The American people will not stand for a law that forbids the sale of necessities to Britain and France.”57 For young representative Albert Vreeland, the handpicked candidate of East Orange’s Mayor Charles Martins in 1938, the choice was not so simple.58 Vreeland won a relatively close race in 1938 largely as a result of a split among the Democrats. In June of 1939 the Chamber of Commerce and Civics of the Oranges and Maplewood registered their support for repeal.59 But by September the congressman’s mail was running two to one against repeal.60 Congressman Vreeland called upon his constituents to retain “an open mind on the neutrality question. We can’t avoid being un-neutral mentally, as we can’t avoid taking sides in a game. Don’t be misled by propaganda.”61 A veteran and member of the National Guard, Congressman Vreeland organized the paramilitary National Youth Brigade of Negro Youth and was decidedly pro-defense. The congressman also had close ties with other of FDR’s Republicans. He was a member of the House Committee on Small Business with the internationalist representative Sterling Cole, he sat next to Representative Leland Ford on the House Committee on the District of Columbia, and his district played host to pro-repeal senator Styles Bridges, who spoke before the Chamber of Commerce of West Orange in 1939.62 It seems reasonable to assume that under the

influence of Senator Barbour, like-minded Republicans, and the pro-repeal chambers of commerce in his district and on the basis of his own experience and support for the military, Representative Vreeland chose to reverse his earlier vote against repeal of the embargo when the issue was resubmitted to the House in November of 1939. While Senator Gibson faced the dilemma as an agrarian progressive who nonetheless favored stronger defense, Senator Styles Bridges faced that of a prospective presidential candidate who found himself in agreement with the foreign policy advocated by the opposing party. Thus, the senator from New Hampshire was unwilling to give President Roosevelt the kind of unconditional support forthcoming from those like Senator Austin. Senator Bridges presented a position that supported the president’s foreign policy while not supporting the president. His speeches reflected an attempt to align himself with the interventionists while retaining the loyalty of the isolationist rank and file whose support had provided him with his early political success. His strategy was no more able to bridge the gap between those two groups than was Wendell Willkie’s attempt later in the presidential campaign. Agreeing with the president that repeal of the embargo was necessary; the senator could not resist adding that FDR was “the same president who two short years ago ardently advocated against it.”63 While declaring that “America needs unity,” Senator Bridges dredged up partisan rhetoric and accused the New Deal for arraying “class against class and one section of the Nation against another. And I see no signs of abatement of this sort of leadership now that we are asked to show a common front to Europe.”64 Three weeks later the senator cynically pointed out that “there’s been a peculiar quiet among New Dealers … you would almost get the impression that … an era of good feelings was to be restored to the land. But there’s no reason for anyone to be deceived … the conniving that has kept New England and the whole country in economic bondage, you may rest assured, will continue right on.”65 Like most of FDR’s Republicans, Senator Bridges’s votes for repeal of the embargo and his support for other presidential foreign policy initiatives made him appear as a farsighted hero after Pearl Harbor. But despite the record of his votes, Bridges gave the president as much grief as support during the public relations battle that was waged between the fall of 1939 and spring of 1940. America’s need for unity in the face of a world crisis was forgotten by the senator by February of 1940. By then, Senator Bridges believed “it is time to bring an end the suspension of consideration of home affairs. For the next year we Republicans must continue as a fighting minority party.”66 The ever-candid Colonel Gibson recognized what lay behind Senator Bridges’s attacks. Senator Gibson wrote his son, “Bridges is devoting his entire time and attention to promoting his candidacy and has sent out a raft of postals to all sections of the country … and will soon use his efforts to control other New England voters.”67 New Hampshire Representative Foster Stearns released a statement on December 21, 1939, that indicated his constituents were in complete support of his position favoring repeal of the embargo. The tone of his statement stood in stark contrast to the remarks of Senator Bridges: I am very proud of the district that I have the honor to represent in the House. The people of the Second New Hampshire

District are a sober, earnest, industrious, thoughtful people. … They are tolerant, friendly, and peace-loving; but woe betide the man who thinks he can dictate to them or trample their rights. … I belong to them and I understand them; and it was more of a satisfaction than a surprise to me to find that the position I have taken met with the approval of an overwhelming majority of them.68

Like so many others, Representative Stearns was “convinced … that Hitler was encouraged by the failure of Congress to revise the Neutrality Act” during the earlier regular session.69 And for that oversight, the implication was clear that agrarian progressive Republicans were held primarily responsible for that error. Few senators could claim a birthright to govern like Senator Frederick Hale of Maine. His father was the senator from Maine from 1881 to 1911. His maternal grandfather had represented Michigan in the U.S. Senate. Young Frederick was educated at Groton, Harvard, and Columbia Law, and he was elected to the Senate in 1916. He was a member of the Senate Naval Affairs Committee and spoke with certainty and confidence. To his constituents, the senator was seen to have a “broad, realistic, and a politically wise view of the situation” of late 1939.70 Senator Hale spoke bluntly and concluded that if the Nazis were to win “the brunt of defending democracy will fall on this country … therefore, it behooves us to see to it if we can that the Nazis do not win.”71 By implication, the senator admitted that the country’s first line of defense was, in fact, on the Rhine. Long an advocate for a stronger defense and larger navy, the senator spoke in the clipped manner for which Maine is famous. He simply stated that he had “no fear” that repeal of the embargo would “drag us into war.”72 For Representative Wadsworth the repeal of the arms embargo must have been particularly rewarding. As the most outspoken House Republican critic of neutrality, for many years he seemed hopelessly out of step with the party. The invasion of Poland, so demoralizing to the agrarian progressive leadership, had the opposite effect upon Wadsworth’s career. He became one of the most influential and respected Republicans in the House of Representatives during 1940 and 1941. Many of those who later came to support Roosevelt’s foreign policy still did not officially support repeal of the arms embargo even after the invasion of Poland. Representative Rogers of Massachusetts had long been associated with those who supported a strong defense. She believed “the policies of Hitler are the reverse of every American concept … [and] his doctrines, his methods are abhorrent to all of us.”73 But throughout the debate she faced a strong public relations effort from the Christian Front and the Mothers Legion Against War in her heavily industrial and Irish Catholic district. Mrs. Rogers tried to take a middle path. She responded to the fears of her constituents and stated that Germany was “watching America closely to detect an un-neutral act … which might serve to bring us into the conflict.”74 But Mrs. Rogers was no isolationist even though she voted against revision. She justified her vote to internationalists by taking the position that cash-and-carry was manifestly unfair to northeastern shipping interests.75 She also refused to relinquish her support for a two-ocean navy and an air force second to none as further proof that she was no isolationist. But she had to walk a particularly precarious path to maintain the support of her constituency, and during the autumn of 1939 she made many personal

appearances in her district where she announced loudly and unequivocally that “we must be neutral.”76 However, it is perhaps more telling of Mrs. Rogers’s true intentions that on one such visit to Lowell she led the effort to form a commission to investigate factory space for war production.77 The kindly, quiet, and somewhat lonely Senator White felt “the whole problem of neutrality with Japan and other nations has been the most complex and difficult I have faced during my Congressional service.”78 As late as August of 1939, the senator still seemed unable to quite grasp that implementation of cash-and-carry would be beneficial to American allies in the Atlantic theater but not in the Pacific: “I have never had a satisfactory explanation as to why the President has not found fact of war being waged between Japan against China.”79 Regarding the repeal of the embargo, on the one hand the senator asked, “why leave this seemingly safe ground to experiment with our security …?”80 On the other hand, he was “anxious that our legislation shall not contribute to the cause of Germany.”81 Still on the fence, Senator White did not attend meetings of the isolationist block, but neither did he vote in favor of repealing the arms embargo in November of 1939. Ultimately Senator White justified his decision on issues with which he was more familiar: those that affected the interests of the merchant marine. He objected to the fact that the cashand-carry provision would drive 40 percent of American tonnage from the seas. He told his constituents that the bill was a “unnecessary assault on our business life.”82 But the senator also rationalized that his decision to oppose revision was actually in the best interests of the Allies. He calculated that 213 ships would be taken out of service that provided 25 percent of the exports to Britain and 35 percent of those to France. Senator White believed that despite the fact that revision would allow the Allies to buy weapons, the cash-and-carry provision in the bill would still hurt the Allies more than it would help.83 Senator White’s no vote came as a bit of a surprise because he had voted in favor of the bill as a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Senator Austin appeared to become closer to Senator White after that vote, and President Roosevelt lobbied the well-intentioned but wavering senator by inviting him to the White House on December 14. House member Karl Le Compte hailed from tiny and heavily Lutheran Corydon, Iowa. A graduate of the University of Iowa in 1909, he became publisher of the Corydon Times Republican in 1910 and entered Congress in 1939. Representative Le Compte admitted that he was not impressed with the arguments of Father Coughlin but still voted against revision.84 Like so many others, he interpreted the Neutrality Act of 1939 in literal terms and could not “follow the argument that repeal of the embargo will enhance and increase American neutrality. While my sympathies are naturally with the Allies … repeal of the embargo would appear to be of direct benefit to them … it cannot be contended that this is neutrality.”85 Congressman John Taber represented the Finger Lakes region around Auburn, New York. As the senior Republican on the Appropriations Committee, the congressman acquired a national reputation as leader of the most economically conservative block in the fights against WPA appropriations earlier in 1939. He was frequently referred to as “one of the keenest and most faithful watch dogs of the public money.”86

The tough, independent, and cynical Taber was as cantankerous, irascible, and critically direct with his constituents as he was with the president. It was harder for him than most to abandon the anti-New Deal offensive, and he only joined the ranks of FDR’s Republicans in 1941.87 After the president requested the special session of Congress, Taber remarked, “the only thing I was sure of was that it was not called because of the neutrality bill … the first reason for the extra session seems to be pique, because no attention was paid to his recommendations on neutrality during the last session.”88 His reasons for opposing revision in October of 1939 were blunt and clear, if somewhat short sighted and unconventional: “frankly, the repeal of the embargo amounts to very little … [and] would change the present situation only by permitting about three or four hundred airplanes to go out in the next nine months.”89 He also believed “the restrictions as to the operations of our ships going to belligerent ports … are so ridiculous that we should not consider them for a minute.”90 By late November, Representative Taber offered a more popular and conventional reason for his opposition to revision: “it is a fundamental rule that a neutral should not change its rules of neutrality during the progress of a war.”91 But for the straight-talking Taber, it was the duplicity of the policy that he really found so offensive: “if we are going to go into the war on one side or the other, we should have courage to say so, and not try to stay neutral and at the same time aid one side.”92 On October 27, 1939, as expected, the Senate repealed the embargo by a vote of sixty-three to thirty. Of the eight Republicans that supported the legislation, five represented northeastern states. Midwestern Republicans Senators Chan Gurney of South Dakota, Clyde Reed of Kansas, and Robert Taft of Ohio also voted for repeal. Of those three, only Senator Gurney remained a consistent supporter of future administration efforts to pass the Selective Service and Lend-Lease bills.93 In the House of Representatives the debate to amend the Senate bill was limited to ten hours. Representative Vorys introduced the same amendment he had sponsored in the spring, but it failed by a wide margin. The House passed the repeal of the embargo on November 2 by a margin of 243–181. The pattern of Republican support in the House was also unmistakably northeastern and coastal in its orientation.94 Members of this study who came from New Jersey, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire tended to focus more on economic issues than members from other states.95 It is also noteworthy that some of FDR’s Republicans did not face the kind of “adamant” opposition generally attributed to farm groups.96 The organized and wealthier farmers in upstate New York, Iowa, and Vermont supported repeal.97 Organized women’s groups also favored repeal in Iowa and Vermont while in Massachusetts women were more visibly opposed. On November 3 the conference committee reported out the Senate version of the bill, and it was then accepted by large majorities in both houses.98 After Poland’s defeat, Senator Borah nicknamed the stalemate between Germany and the Allies as “the phony war.”99 During the debate over repeal of the arms embargo, isolationists showed the populist agrarian propensity to be unsympathetic to Great Britain and France. The European democracies were colonial powers and capitalist exploiters seemingly cut from the

same cloth as the big money interests of Wall Street. Senator Borah found no sympathy with the arguments of those who stressed the common ideological bonds between the Allies and the United States in what seemed to be a second fight for democracy. To Borah and other agrarian progressives, there did not seem to be much of an ideological difference between the belligerents. The fight was strictly a territorial rivalry of power politics.100 In that fight the imperialist Allies were only marginally better than the expansionist Germans. That could not be said of the Russo-Finnish War when it began on November 30, 1939. The close-working relationship between President Roosevelt and Senator Austin was exemplified when the president consulted by telephone with the senator on the night of the Russian invasion.101 The president outlined the administration policy to Senator Austin, stating that the United States would be in a better position to help if relations with the Soviet Union were not severed.102 With the fighting having commenced between Russians and Finns, many agrarians found themselves in the position of identifying with the beleaguered Finns. It was easy for agrarians to sympathize with a small rural nation under assault from its larger aggressive and industrialized neighbor. The ideological differences were also more clearly defined in the Russo-Finnish War. In the words of Senator Gibson Sr., “the contest is developing into one between Communism and Democracy.”103 Agrarian sympathy for Finland outweighed their reluctance to become involved in a European crisis.104 Several agrarian isolationists broke precedent and suddenly took the forefront of the campaign to aid Finland. Ironically, agrarian support contributed to the success of an effort that culminated in Congress providing financial aid to a European belligerent and victim of aggression for the first time since World War I. The task the Congress set for itself was impossible to accomplish. “Notwithstanding our almost universal desire to help Finland in her present emergency, a grave problem is faced as to how to accomplish the purpose and not be drawn into the conflict.”105 Representative Eaton led the fight to aid Finland that resulted in a loan of $20 million, limited to nonmilitary items. It was too little and too late. Finland signed a peace treaty on March 12 and relinquished 25,000 square miles of territory and 12 percent of its population to the Soviet Union. The war had taken the lives of 18,000 Finns, and 40,000 more were wounded. Senator Borah died on January 19, 1940, not long before the vote on aid for Finland was taken. He had been the senior Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and one of the most important spokespersons for agrarian progressive interests. He was humiliated when his prophesy that war was not imminent proved incorrect in September of 1939. He did not live long enough to be humiliated again when the war he proclaimed was a phony one turned out to be very real indeed. From Representative Rogers’s Papers it is evident that the eastern Massachusetts district she represented was one of the first to gear up for war. Predictions of a war boom were reported during the late fall as WPA closings were being announced at nearly the same time.106 Representative Rogers played hostess on Capitol Hill in January of 1940 to the captain of an

American ship that had been held in Argentina by the Germans. By early March a movement was underway to install antiaircraft guns at Lowell and around the seaboard cities in her district.107 The “phony war” ended on April 9, 1940. With the invasion of Denmark and Norway, the war began in earnest. In mid-April of 1940 Representative Rogers advocated a protectorate over Greenland because it was only six hours by air from New York.108 It would be another year before American troops would fortify the island. Margaret Chase Smith voiced even stronger concerns in the spring of 1940: “The destruction of Maine would be the objective of any attack.”109 On May 10 the Low Countries were attacked, and Congress responded by passing one of the most sweeping defense bills in history. The president asked the Congress for $1.18 billion for defense on May 16. The Congress complied before the end of the month, and on May 31 the president again asked for another billion. In mid-May the Lowell Chamber of Commerce asked for Representative Rogers to help in attaining defense contracts. On May 21 Representative Rogers asked for a unified defense and a two-ocean navy.110 For John Taber, geographic and economic issues were less of a driving force than the old boy network of Auburn, New York. A group of lawyers that supported Taber and were wellknown to each other exerted tactful but firm pressure on their congressman to cease his trademark attacks on the administration’s inefficiency and economic mismanagement. Fellow lawyer F. E. Worden wrote Taber, “too bad that you get such unfavorable publicity [about] … your concern over the heads of the army and the navy departments and their inability to intelligently use the money provided for their departments.”111 Worden cautioned that to the man on the street “the inference was that you took a position against the President’s proposed armament program. I am sure you fully realize the great change in public sentiment that we have been undergoing in the past few days. To say that you have been roundly criticized would be putting it mildly … this is no time for partisan politics nor to weigh to closely the cost … [Taber’s friends suggested] preparing a statement … that will be published in the papers in this district not later than Tuesday [to remedy the adverse impression, otherwise] … a very serious embarrassment could occur to all your friends.”112 Lawyer Richard Drummond, a colleague of Worden’s and aware of his letter to Taber, also counseled the congressman not to attack the president or administration directly because “you really would be surprised to see how much tenderness … and sympathy and admiration and support towards the President … on the part of many well-meaning people who a short time ago [were concerned with] his bungling of all these vital affairs.”113 Congressman Taber was aware of the changing opinion in his district and wrote to one constituent that “congressional mail today contains many letters from people who want us to declare war on Germany right now … from the same individuals who a year ago were asking us to pass such resolutions as the Fish and Ludlow Resolutions.”114 Thus, it became obvious to many by May of 1940 that the tide was turning against the agrarian progressive policies of neutrality or isolation. Representative Cole correctly predicted: “ at present, the sentiment in Congress is predominantly against extending credit to

the Allies. I rather expect that this sentiment will change as the allies meet further defeat.”115 Again, as in September, a German invasion was probably more effective in awakening Americans to the gravity of the world situation than any public relations effort by the president or his supporters. Other battles remained to be fought, but agrarian progressives had to face the fact that, as of May 1940, the tide was turning against them.

AGRARIAN PROGRESSIVISM UNDER SIEGE As the month of June 1940 progressed, it became evident that the tide was not only turning, it had already turned against the foreign policy agenda of the agrarian progressives. On June 4 an article in the Portland Press Herald stated, “U.S. Senators Frederick Hale and Wallace H. White reported today a change in the trend of letters being received from Maine constituents from advocacy of strict neutrality to endorsements of freer aid to the allies.”116 The change in sentiment was also dramatically demonstrated by the correspondences received from constituents by upstate New York representative Sterling Cole. The previous fall his mail had run roughly six to one against repeal of the arms embargo. During June of 1940 the congressman received 113 letters in support of aid to the Allies and only 34 that were opposed.117 A hometown political confidant of Representative John Taber wrote in mid-June, “the pacifists are shutting up fast.”118 The congressman’s mail that month corroborated that impression. Representative Taber received thrity-five letters that favored selling planes to France and thirty that favored aid to the Allies exclusive of troops.119 In contrast, Representative Taber received only twelve letters that opposed aid to the Allies during the month of June.120 Undoubtedly, the defeat of the Low Countries, the evacuation of British troops from Dunkirk, and the fear that France would soon fall led to the reassessment and change in public opinion. The formation in May of the Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies also began to have an impact by June of 1940. In Vermont, chapters were founded in Middlebury, Barre, Burlington, Northfield, St. Johnsbury, Windsor, and Vergennes, and on June 6, 1940, the Burlington chapter held a meeting that attracted six hundred participants.121 The committee was also well organized in upstate New York and its success in both states was attributed to the availability of able leaders.122 The Vermont state committee was headed by Dr. Paul Moody, president of Middlebury College; the Burlington chapter by Dr. Paul Evans of the University of Vermont; and the Middlebury chapter was led by Professor Waldo Heinrichs. The well-known journalist and avid interventionist Dorothy Thompson lived in Vermont and lent her prestige to the effort. From June through August, the Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies was responsible for placing ads in Vermont newspapers that stated: “Between the U.S. and Hitler Stands the British Navy.”123 When isolationists later responded with the formation of their own America First Committee, no state or local chapter was ever founded in Vermont.124

In upstate New York, academics also spearheaded efforts to aid the allies by influencing Representative Taber. He received letters and petitions favoring aid from President Eddy of Hobart College, two former presidents of that institution, and faculty members of Wells College.125 Academics were also significantly represented in Congressman Cole’s mail. He received three pro-allied letters from faculty members of Elmira College, two from Cornell University, and one from Cook Academy.126 As the German blitzkrieg moved quickly on to Paris, Italy solidified its alliance with Germany, entered the war, and attacked France from the south. On June 10, President Roosevelt referred to the Italian action as a “stab in the back” during an address he gave in Charlottesville, Virginia. The president’s remark was generally viewed as an offense to Italian Americans and as a liability during his reelection campaign. But in upstate New York Representative Taber’s political confident seemed to think otherwise: “the bulk of the Italians recognize the dangers and unwisdom that envelope Italy’s course under Mussolini’s guidance … Italy will become practically enslaved by the Nazis.”127 It was during those trying times in the spring of 1940 that Margaret Chase Smith succeeded her husband as the representative from Maine’s second district. Her husband, Clyde Smith, was associated with the agrarian progressive elements in Maine’s Republican organization in opposition to those of the Old Guard such as Senator Hale. Mr. Smith was twenty years her senior and served in the Maine House and Senate before his election to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1936. In keeping with his agrarian progressive outlook, Clyde Smith voted against repeal of the arms embargo in late 1939. In classic agrarian terms Clyde Smith said in February of 1940, “we shall always have a minority ambition that the United States become a world power. Joining with them and stimulating the cupidity of those who hoped to profit by munition shipments, the administration was able to repeal the embargo.”128 Margaret Chase Smith agreed to succeed her husband at his insistence on the evening of his death, April 7, 1940. His death predated by two days the attack on Denmark. Mrs. Smith broke with her husband’s progressive agrarian views on foreign affairs. She advocated a strong national defense and aid to the allies in keeping with the views of FDR’s Republicans. But she was rather unlike most other members of that well-traveled and well-educated group. She was born and raised in Skowhagen, Maine; graduated from high school in 1916; and traveled little until her husband went to Washington. She never attended college and worked as a school teacher, telephone operator, newspaper reporter, and office manager—all in Skowhagen, where she married Clyde Smith in 1930.129 Her small-town values and limited travel did not seem to hinder the development of an internationalist perspective. Mrs. Smith was unencumbered by the agrarian commitments and outlook of her husband, and at a youthful forty-three she was far more a product of the twentieth century than he had been. On May 30, 1940, Margaret Chase Smith made one of her first speeches as the representative from her district. It was an important speech in that she openly attacked one of the traditional tenets of agrarian progressive thinking about foreign affairs. Mrs. Smith attempted to dispel the nineteenth-century Bryanite agrarian argument against large military budgets by saying “we are told that a nation cannot be prepared for war without becoming aggressive. This, in the minds of fair thinking people is an error.”130 The

new congresswoman also dispensed with the usual agrarian rhetoric that simplified the European conflict as one that involved greedy capitalist allies versus land hungry Germans. She shared with her audience a more sophisticated and realistic view and predicted that Hitler “will be burdened with policing his conquered nations. Hitler’s ‘good friends,’ Mussolini and Stalin trust him not at all, nor does he trust them.”131 The old Bull Mooser Senator Gibson Sr. also played a role that spring in breaking down the long held agrarian notion so aptly put by Clyde Smith.132 The Colonel dismissed the idea that a minority conspiracy of urban capitalists was behind the effort to make the United States into a world power. For Senator Gibson, the United States was forced to enter the global age because “the Atlantic has shrunk to a mere lake.”133 Colonel Gibson, Mrs. Smith, and later Senator Gibson’s son and successor, Ernest Gibson Jr., were innovative agrarian progressives who helped transform the traditional foreign policy agenda of their faction. But the visibility of the technology itself played an even greater role in discrediting the traditional agrarian progressive view that isolation was a viable option and that large defense budgets were to be avoided. Trans-Atlantic cables and large oceangoing vessels had a limited impact on the consciousness of rural Americans of the nineteenth century. However, “the development of the airplane … greatly reduced insular feelings” of rural Americans.134 The advent of commercial aviation captivated the public’s interest during the 1930s. New Englanders were particularly aware of their vulnerability to attack because of their geography, history of invasion, and their proximity to Canada, a commonwealth nation that had already declared war on Germany. In July of 1940 it was speculated that “in the event of an actual land invasion of the eastern United States a likely route, to be sure, would be from Canada down through Vermont. About the only other feasible route would be just to the west through New York State.”135 The Republican convention of 1940 was scheduled to begin on June 25 in Philadelphia. Earlier, on May 19, the chairman of the Republican National Committee hosted a dinner to discuss a strategy for the upcoming campaign. The dinner was attended by Herbert Hoover, Senate Republican leader McNary, House Republican leader Martin, assorted party officials, Senator Vandenburg, and Senator Austin. At that time the consensus of the group believed that hysteria over the war had reduced Republican chances of success. A strategy was agreed upon to focus the campaign on the incompetence of the administration’s spending for national defense.136 Those present believed that the hysteria would pass within two weeks, and domestic issues would then become prominent again and revive the prospects of the party.137 Few in the party had the demeanor to embrace that strategy with the gusto of the “watch dog” of the treasury, Representative John Taber. He responded to the pro-Allied petitioners from Hobart College and said, “Until the President gets over the idea that … he can pass out orders to the admirals and generals … [and] puts someone in charge who can get some efficiency … [he] is just failing to appreciate the situation we are in.”138 To another interventionist constituent, Taber said, “one of our worst troubles is the presence in the Administration of so many people who are Communists and not dependable.”139 President Roosevelt nominated Republican Henry Stimson as secretary of war and

Republican Frank Knox as secretary of the navy on June 19, 1940, to quell criticisms such as Taber’s. Their appointments provoked the wrath of the Republican National Committee, and both were read out of the party. One constituent characterized that move as “a foolish thing … there was a chance of hard feelings and we need harmony … [it was] ill advised and I would have thought members of the Committee … would have seen the futility of their action.”140 When General Motors president William Knudsen was appointed as head of defense mobilization, on the other hand, it was received with widespread support. As John Taber’s hometown booster put it, the Republican strategy was flawed because “the war hysteria won’t ‘quiet down.’”141 Events taking place in Europe did not improve, and the hysteria did not pass. Things got worse. France fell on June 17, after which Representative James Wadsworth later remembered how he had been approached to co-sponsor the Selective Service Act: A group of men in New York, headed by General William J. Donovan [and including Secretary Stimson, Robert Patterson, John McCloy, and Robert Lovett], came to me … they knew of my long interest in military policy. They told me that they were going to work in preparing … a draft bill. This group, with my cooperation and that of Senator Edward R. Burke of Nebraska made up their minds that with the fall of France we’d better introduce this bill … and try to make the people think about it. The Military Affairs Committee didn’t mind a bit … [and] were perfectly willing to see an outsider stick his neck out on that issue and I was willing to do it. We couldn’t get it started in either the House or Senate Military Affairs Committee with public hearings … [because] the White House would not commit [to it] … [and] the Secretary of War may not come before a committee … and urge a great expansion or change in our military policy without support of the chief executive. After the Republican and Democratic Conventions then the green light was displayed but not until those two conventions were out of the way.142

The crisis in Europe transformed Wendell Willkie’s chances of winning the Republican nomination in 1940. Polls of his popularity offered additional evidence that public opinion turned dramatically against neutrality in June. On May 7, prior to the German invasion of the Netherlands, Willkie was supported by only 3 percent of those polled.143 After the British retreat from Dunkirk, he registered 10 percent in the polls. When German troops crossed the Marne, he polled 17 percent, and with the fall of France his support rose to 29 percent.144 No doubt the timing was right for the internationalist Willkie. Representative Joseph Baldwin, an FDR Republican from New York, described Willkie as being on a mission to take the American people out of isolationism.145 Willkie’s candidacy also represented the culmination of efforts begun in 1937 to wrest control away from the party’s professional leadership. Somewhat naive and trusting, Willkie’s tousled hair and plain speaking differentiated him from traditional politicians.146 He acquired his fame as a business lawyer and was not a professional politician. His candidacy appealed to the new wave of corporate, East Coast, progressive Republicans symbolized by such men as Senators Barbour and Bridges. It was indicative of his appeal that the New Jersey suburbs of New York City gave Willkie the support that catapulted him into the national limelight.147 But Willkie’s unorthodox approach was not opposed by the professional leadership: “there was a lot of pressure from the ‘eastern establishment’ … they were for Dewey for a while. They didn’t like Taft. There was a lot of pressure on delegates from the eastern states to switch to Willkie.”148

The agrarian progressive Colonel Gibson agreed that “an ‘Old Guard’ candidate would suffer overwhelming defeat, and that to win it is necessary to nominate a moderate.”149 But as moderate and progressive as Willkie may have been, he was not the candidate for agrarian progressives. His outspoken internationalism broke with the populist progressive tradition, and his ties to business were stronger than his agrarian Indiana roots. After the election, George Aiken remarked, in true agrarian progressive fashion, that Willkie “is out to make every dollar he can out of this war, becoming a director in a shipbuilding company, a British controlled insurance company writing maritime insurance, Lehman Brothers international Banking House, and I understand he is also interested in an aircraft manufacturing plant. All he needs now is some stock in a coffin factory.”150 The dramatic and sudden decline of agrarian progressive prestige began with the invasion of Poland and culminated with the fall of France. The humiliation and decline of the Republican Party’s agrarian progressive wing offered an opportunity for the Old Guard to reverse the outcome of the victorious agrarian progressive reform movement of 1937–38. Senator Gibson was aware as early as March of 1940 that “there is no question about the Old Guard laying plans to trip Governor Aiken, and leave him off the delegation.”151 As one of the primary leaders of the reform movement, Governor Aiken naturally became one of the prime targets of retribution when he made his bid for the Senate in 1940. Therefore, as the battle to defeat isolationism entered its final phase, the battle to defend the successes of the agrarian progressive revolution was just beginning. In Vermont, the history of the progressive reform movement within the Republican Party closely paralleled that of the rest of the country. During the early part of the century, Colonel Gibson led the successful effort to reform and broaden the party’s nominating process. As in the rest of the nation, progressive influence waned during the 1920s but then revived when the depression discredited the Old Guard Republican leadership.152 George Aiken’s rise to fame was symbolic of the revival of agrarian progressivism that occurred between 1932 and 1938. He and Alf Landon led the fight to reform Republican ideology that succeeded in early 1938. With senior Senator Gibson’s death on June 20, 1940, Governor Aiken appointed his close friend and fellow progressive, Ernest Gibson Jr., to fill the seat of his deceased father. When the younger Gibson announced that he would not seek the nomination for his father’s Senate seat, his appointment was recognized as an effort by the two progressives to hold the seat for Governor Aiken. Senator Austin faced no primary opponent during his reelection bid in 1940. That was interpreted as further proof that public opinion had turned against neutrality in June—and by inference against agrarian progressivism as well.153 The Old Guard took the opportunity to try and remove Governor Aiken from Vermont politics. Newspapers reported: “The Old Guard has never cottoned to Gov. Aiken. He is too Progressive for them. They’d rather see Flanders in the Senate than Aiken. Most of the higher up politicians are with Flanders, a wealthy machine tool maker, with a big factory at Springfield.”154 Ralph Flanders emulated the internationalism and business orientation of Wendell Willkie. With the support for internationalism growing rapidly in Vermont, it looked like the Old Guard

had a good chance of defeating the agrarian progressive and isolationist Governor Aiken. But Flanders’s candidacy violated an unwritten rule in Vermont politics that was similar to that of the other virtually one-party states of overwhelmingly Republican northern New England and New York.155 Since the reform of the nominating process, there was an unwritten understanding that one Senate seat would be reserved for the agrarian progressive faction.156 Flanders attempted to exploit the opportunity offered by the decline in agrarian progressive prestige to challenge that tradition. He mounted a tough and well-financed campaign that actively courted the farm vote.157 The campaign proved to be the most serious challenge of George Aiken’s political career. Given that both national parties nominated internationalist presidential candidates, the election campaign of 1940 was less affected by the war than might have been expected. As early as mid-May, John Taber was counseled by a constituent, “don’t hesitate to take a stand for our taking over the European possessions in the West Indies—even without request. A formula can be devised.”158 And a plan was devised by the interventionist Century Group that proposed to exchange fifty outdated American destroyers for a lease on British bases that extended from Newfoundland to South America. After his nomination by the Democrats, President Roosevelt negotiated the destroyers-for-bases deal with Prime Minister Churchill, and it was finally accomplished by executive order in late August. Representative Cole received thirty-two letters in support of the deal and only two that were opposed.159 Nevertheless, Representatives Plumley, Rogers, and Cole took a position that reflected the desperation of Republicans late in the campaign and termed the trade an “act of war.”160 Congressman Stearns eschewed such partisanship and thought it “a fine trade,” and the thirty-nine-year-old Senator Gibson termed it “a logical step.”161 The Battle for Britain began on July 15 and girded Americans to the necessity of military conscription embodied in the Selective Service Act. The act was introduced by Senator Burke and Representative Wadsworth in July and reached the Senate floor for debate on August 9. Wendell Willkie gave his tacit approval for compulsory conscription legislation, and thus it did not become an issue during the campaign. The elder Senator Gibson had clearly stated his position on conscription shortly before his death: “I am convinced that we must have military training.”162 The younger Gibson lived up to his father’s expectations and emerged as one of the strongest voices in support of the measure during the Senate debate. In his maiden speech before the Senate on August 24, he told his colleagues that in the time they had spent debating the bill “Hitler was able to conquer France.”163 Senator Gibson’s speech was widely quoted, and Senate Majority Leader Barkley called it “the ablest speech” of the debate.164 The length and discord of the Senate debate did not accurately reflect the final outcome or the national mood.165 Senator Gibson kept a detailed account of the mail he received from all over the country in response to his speech. A tally dated August 29 totaled 132 letters, 8 telegrams, and 17 cards in support of his position and only 38 letters and 20 cards that were opposed.166 That tally also revealed that the Senator received not one derogatory letter from

Vermont, and one constituent remarked, “to me it is amazing that people have been so willing to stand for conscription. You would have been laughed off the stage a year ago for advocating anything of that kind.”167 Senator Gibson admitted that some reactions to his speech from outside Vermont had been quite “bitter” and that he had been accused of being “a puppet of the Rothschilds.”168 Representative Wadsworth noted that opposition to the Selective Service Act, unlike earlier efforts, was organized by “radical groups.”169 He noted that “a whole trainload of people would arrive from New York City … [and] would storm through the Capitol in solid columns. They’d been sent … by groups who didn’t want this country to be militarily strong. In two hours time I received four hundred telegrams, all from New York City … exactly duplicating each other.”170 He then added, “but they didn’t have many votes at home.”171 Senator Gibson received a similar assessment from one of his constituents who claimed “every Vermont newspaper and every individual … is strong for conscription.”172 Senator White also received hometown encouragement when the Auburn Chamber of Commerce voted unanimous support for conscription and a Portland poll found that 40 out of 41 approved of the bill.173 The Senate passed the Selective Service Act by a vote of 58–31 on August 28. The House followed suit on September 7 by a vote of 263–149, and the president signed the bill on September 16. With public opinion steadily moving against the fundamental precepts of agrarian progressive foreign policy, Governor Aiken was presented with an election year dilemma. The governor chose to prevent his opponent from making foreign policy the focal point of the campaign, a strategy Flanders intended to split the agrarian vote. Flanders sought to deprive Aiken of enough agrarian votes to prevent his victory. Aiken’s success depended on getting the overwhelming majority of all agrarian votes for the Senate seat traditionally allotted to progressives.174 Thus, Aiken could not afford to allow his agrarian credentials to appear ambiguous by supporting internationalism. Yet in foreign affairs, his state did not fit the classic agrarian model, and so neither was he able to position himself as an avid isolationist. James Wadsworth had allowed his progressive credentials to come into question when he supported the repeal of prohibition during his U.S. Senate campaign of 1928. That had been another year of agrarian discontent and impatience with the Republican Party; his anti-agrarian position on that issue cost him the support of agrarian progressives and without them he lost the election. Instead, candidate Aiken avoided being placed in that position and pleaded ignorance of foreign policy. He portrayed the election in other terms that resonated with agrarians at the time, such as the battle to defend and preserve the progressive revolution that he had led in 1938. Ernest Gibson Jr. contributed to that effort and later declared that “the old hierarchy of the party made no effort to appeal to the mass of voters in Vermont and convince them the party was their friend.”175 Aiken was accused of being “an insincere politician who stirs up popular prejudice to gain office or influence.”176 He avoided foreign policy and “not only has he no opinions on how the United States should conduct itself in its relations with other nations he apparently has no

interest in the whole matter.”177 The news media was appalled at Aiken’s “lack of knowledge on important questions of policy.”178 But Aiken’s campaign succeeded in solidifying his base of agrarian progressive support without alienating any who supported internationalism. It was imperative for his success that agrarians who supported isolationism did not boycott the primary. By claiming ignorance of foreign affairs, the inference was that he would not support any new ideas—like internationalism. Internationalist progressives could feel secure that the governor shared their domestic agenda and would at least refrain from becoming a strong advocate of isolationism. Governor Aiken won the nomination by a wide margin, and with that the certainty he would be elected to the Senate. Although Aiken had avoided foreign affairs during his campaign, it was reasonably assumed that he would uphold the agrarian progressive tradition that supported neutrality. Upon entering the Senate in 1941, he fulfilled those expectations by casting his very first vote against Lend-Lease.179 The reaction in Vermont to his vote was one of overwhelming anger and opposition. Newspapers headlines screamed: “Aiken’s Blunder” and “Petition Set to ‘Spank’ Aiken Spreads in Vermont.”180 The Burlington Free Press conducted two polls, one of which found 96 percent and the other 81 percent opposed to Aiken’s vote against Lend-Lease.181 Senator Austin supported Lend-Lease, as did Representative Plumley. Senator Aiken’s vote seemed incredibly out of step with what was quite arguably the most interventionist state in the union. But Aiken had portrayed himself in the campaign as the true friend of the farmer and as the candidate most likely to uphold the populist traditions of the agrarian progressive revolution. He was obligated to uphold the foreign policy plank of his wing of the party or appear as if he had betrayed his core constituency. The reaction to Aiken’s Lend-Lease vote show that Vermonters elected him not on the basis of his foreign policy but because they were primarily motivated to preserve the U.S. Senate seat that was reserved for the progressive faction. The debate in the United States between isolationism and internationalism was but one part of the election equation of the 1940s. The agrarian progressive movement faced a drastic situation after their leadership mistakenly pursued a foreign policy that later proved disastrous. That humiliation decimated the credibility of their movement, opened the door for a resurgence of the old order, and evoked in agrarians a solidarity of purpose to prevent the repeal of reforms they had won during their ascendancy. Recognition of the battle to defend agrarian progressivism lends another dimension to the election results and votes in Congress during the early 1940s. Were legislators addressing the concerns of their constituents about becoming involved in the war, or were they more concerned that the taint of internationalism would irrevocably stigmatize them as opponents of agrarian progressivism during that movement’s darkest and most defensive hour? Conversely, were agrarian progressive voters primarily motivated by their opposition to isolationism, or did they vote for isolationist candidates because passing that litmus test proved true allegiance to the agrarian populist progressive cause? No doubt, agrarian fears for the decline of their movement were mixed with anxieties about the human sacrifice another war

would entail. But an overriding concern still seemed to evoke the days of Bryan’s agrarian crusade. Populist aims to rectify social equality and economic injustice still resonated and influenced perceptions of how foreign policy was being made. Such concerns were expressed in a letter by one critic of the young Senator Gibson’s maiden speech: “I didn’t think much of your first speech as a ‘baby’ Senator although you were applauded by the pro-British International minded men who have the destiny of our great nation in their hands. Why should we have Conscription? … it would be essential if we were to go overseas to maintain our economic system, wouldn’t it, Mr. Senator?”182

NOTES 1. Hunt, “The Long Crisis,” 115. 2. White Papers, Box 82, The Christian Science Monitor, Erwin Canham, August 29, 1939. 3. White Papers, Canham, August 29, 1939. 4. Leuchtenburg, New Deal, 294. 5. Divine, Illusion, 301. 6. Cole Papers, Box 21. 7. Cole Papers, Box 21. 8. Cole Papers, Box 21. 9. Cole Papers, Box 21. 10. Cole Papers, Box 21, letter from Mr. D. C. Carey, October 28, 1939. 11. Cole Papers, Box 21, letter to Dr. Royden M. Vose, November 13, 1939. 12. White Papers, Box 82, Portland Press Herald, September 21, 1939. 13. White Papers, Box 82, Portland Press Herald, July 11, 1939. 14. White Papers, Erwin Canham, The Christian Science Monitor, September 12, 1939. 15. White Papers, Canham, September 12, 1939. 16. White Papers, Canham, September 13, 1939. 17. Robert James Maddox, William E. Borah and American Foreign Policy (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1969), 241. 18. Divine, Illusion, 291. 19. Porter, The Seventy-sixth Congress, 61. 20. Dallek, FDR and Foreign Policy, 201. 21. Dallek, FDR and Foreign Policy, 201. 22. Dallek, FDR and Foreign Policy, 202. 23. Divine, Illusion, 305. 24. Divine, Illusion, 306. 25. Porter, Seventy-sixth, 63. 26. See Chapter Four. 27. Maddox, Borah and Foreign Policy, 243. 28. Moos, The Republicans, 365. 29. Wayne Cole, Roosevelt and the Isolationists, 320–21. 30. See Chapter Four. 31. Porter, The Seventy-sixth, 56. 32. Michael John Jarvis, The Senators From Vermont and Lend-Lease, 1939–1941, Masters Thesis, University of Vermont, 1974, 84. 33. Austin Papers, Box 21, form letter addressed to Dear Friend, September 21, 1939. 34. Austin Papers, Box 21 letter to Roger W. Tubby re: Address to Bennington Club, December 14, 1939. 35. Austin Papers, Bennington address. 36. Congressional Record, 76th Congress, 2nd session, October 19, 1939, 1021. 37. Austin Papers, Box 21, letter to Arthur Krock, September 28, 1939.

38. Austin Papers, letter to the editor of the Green Mountain Citizen, November 6, 1939. 39. Austin Papers, Transcript of speech given November 10, 1939, to The Women’s National Republican Club of New York. 40. Austin Papers, Women’s Club speech. 41. Austin Papers, letter from Harrison J. Conant, October 28, 1939. 42. Austin Papers, letter from Frederick Brooke, November 13, 1939. 43. Austin Papers, letter from Owen Washburn, Minister, Congregational Church of Guilford, VT, February 10, 1940. 44. Congressional Record, 76th Congress, 2nd session, October 27, 1939, 1692. 45. Plumley Papers, The Free Press, October 2, 1939. 46. Plumley Papers, D.C. Times Herald, November 12, 1939. 47. Plumley Papers, St. Albans Messenger, Nov. 13, 1939. 48. Gibson Sr. Papers, Carton 1, profile. 49. Gibson Sr. Papers, Carton 2, letter from William McAdoo, January 24, 1939. 50. Gibson Sr. Papers, letter from Warren Austin, August 17, 1939, Christian Science Monitor, August 8, 1939. 51. Gibson Sr. Papers, Christian Science Monitor, August 8, 1939. 52. Gibson Sr. Papers, letter to Governor George Aiken, October 5, 1939. 53. Gibson Sr. Papers, letter to Mr. E. W. Aiken, January 30, 1940. 54. Austin Papers, Box 32, letter from Warren Barbour, September 17, 1941. 55. Vreeland Papers, Scrapbook 1938–1941, The State We’re In, Morris Mogelever, October 13, 1939. 56. Vreeland Papers, Scrapbook, October 13, 1939. 57. Vreeland Papers, Scrapbook, Newark Ledger, September 6, 1939. 58. Vreeland Papers, East Orange Record, June 10, 1938. 59. Vreeland Papers, East Orange Record, June 30, 1939. 60. Vreeland Papers, Newark Ledger, September 27, 1939. 61. Vreeland Papers, Newark Ledger, October 18, 1939. 62. Vreeland Papers, undated newspaper clipping from 1939. 63. Bridges Papers, Box 68, file 146, The Road to Peace, delivered over NBC red network, September 25, 1939. 64. Bridges Papers, file 162, America Needs Unity, speech to Washington Republican Club, Seattle, WA, December 4, 1939. 65. Bridges Papers, file 165, radio speech before the Suffolk County Republican Club, Boston, MA, December 29, 1939. 66. Bridges Papers, file 20, The Republican Job For 1940, speech given on February 24, 1940. 67. Gibson Sr. Papers, Carton 2, letter to Ernest Gibson Jr., May 26, 1939. 68. Stearns Papers, Press release, Tribute to New Hampshire, December 21, 1939. 69. Stearns Papers, entry entitled, “Some of Foster Stearns’ Comments on Foreign Affairs and the War,” quote dated September 13, 1939. 70. Hale Papers, Weekly Kennebec Journal, October 28, 1939. 71. Hale Papers, Weekly Kennebec Journal, October 28, 1939. 72. Hale Papers, Weekly Kennebec Journal, October 28, 1939. 73. Rogers Papers, M file 153, roll 5, Arlington, MA, Armistice Day speech, Nov. 11, 1939. 74. Rogers Papers, Armistice Day speech. 75. Rogers Papers, M file 57, roll 5, Woburn Times, March 23, 1939. 76. Rogers Papers, Woburn Times, March 23, 1939. 77. Rogers Papers, The Sun, October 2, 1939. 78. White Papers, Box 82, Rockland Courier Gazette, September 5, 1939. 79. Wallace White Papers, Box 82, Lewiston Evening Journal, August 8, 1939. 80. White Papers, Portland Press Herald, October 27, 1939. 81. White Papers, Bath Times, September 5, 1939. 82. White Papers, Portland Press Herald, October 27, 1939. 83. White Papers, Inside Washington, October, 16, 1939. 84. Karl Le Compte Papers, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa, Box 13, file 53, letter to Alice Phelps, Nov. 2, 1939. 85. Le Compte Papers, letter to Alice Phelps. 86. Taber Papers, Box 63, Geneva Times, May 22, 1939. 87. See Conclusion of FDR’s Republicans. 88. Taber Papers, Box 63, letter to Henry S. Ely, September 25, 1939. 89. Taber Papers, letter to Mr. Harry Tellier, October 10, 1939. 90. Taber Papers, letter to Harry Tellier. 91. Taber Papers, letter to Floyd W. Easton, November 20, 1939.

92. Taber Papers, letter to Floyd Easton. 93. See Appendix A. 94. Republican Representatives who voted against the Vorys amendment, by state: NJ, 5; NY, 3; MA, 2; CT, 2; CA, 2; ME, 1; VT, 1; NH, 1; OR, 1; IA, 1; TN, 1; IL, 1. 95. The papers and speeches of Representatives Vreeland and Rogers and Senator Bridges reflected particular concern for economic prospects resulting from war. 96. Porter, 76th Congress, 63. 97. Representative Cole received support for repeal from the Canisteo Grange, Representative Le Compte from the Farm Bureau of his district, and in Vermont the American Farm Bureau Federation backed repeal. 98. The Senate voted 55–24, and the House vote was 243–172. 99. Maddox, Borah, 242. 100. Maddox, Borah, 245. 101. Austin Papers, Memorandum by Senator Austin on his conversation with President Roosevelt on November 30, 1939. 102. Austin Papers, Memorandum, November 30, 1939. 103. Gibson Sr. Papers, Carton 2, Statement on Finland, January 15, 1940. 104. Porter, 76th Congress, 112. 105. Gibson Sr. Papers, Carton 2, Statement on Finland, January 15, 1940. 106. Rogers Papers, M 57, roll 5, The Evening Leader, September 27, 1939, and November 14, 1939. 107. Rogers Papers, The Courier Citizen, March 1, 1940 108. Rogers Papers, Box 9, file 141, April 14, 1940. 109 Sherman, No Place for a Woman, 45. 110. Rogers Papers, M 57, roll 5, The Courier Citizen, May 21, 1940. 111. Taber Papers, Box 67, letter from W. E. Worden, May 18, 1940. 112. Taber Papers, letter from W. E. Worden. 113. Taber Papers, letter from Richard Drummond, May 23, 1940. 114. Taber Papers, letter to Miss Huntley, May 20, 1940. 115. Cole Papers, Box 20, letter to Miss Shear, May 15, 1940. 116. White Papers, Box 82, Portland Press Herald, June 4, 1940. 117. Cole Papers, Box 20. 118. Taber Papers, Box 67, letter from Richard Drummond, June 12, 1940. 119. Taber Papers, Box 67. 120. Taber Papers, Box 67. 121. Burlington Free Press, June 7, 1940, 18. 122. Burlington Free Press, June 7, 1940, 18. 123. Jarvis, Vermont and Lend-Lease, 71. 124. Jarvis, Vermont and Lend-Lease, 68. 125. Taber Papers, Box 67. 126. Cole Papers, Box 20. 127. Taber Papers, Box 67, letter from Richard Drummond, June 12, 1940. 128. Margaret Chase Smith Papers, Margaret Chase Smith Library, Skowhagen, Maine, S & S misc. file, 21, “Heard, Seen & Said in Washington,” February 7, 1940. 129. Smith Papers, biographical profile. 130. Smith Papers, S & S file, 42. 131. Smith Papers, Radio Address, June 30, 1940, 42. 132. Refers to passage of footnote 127. 133. Gibson Sr. Papers, prepared form letter, “Warning to New England,” June 6, 1940. 134. Jarvis, Vermont and Lend-Lease, 2. 135. Gibson Jr. Papers, Box 20, Brattleboro Reformer, “Vermont’s Defense,” July 12, 1940. 136. Austin Papers, Box 20, folder 12. 137. Austin Papers, Box 20, folder 12. 138. Taber Papers, Box 67, letter to William A. Eddy, President of Hobart College, June 3, 1940. 139. Taber Papers, letter to Henry Allen, May 28, 1940. 140. Gibson Jr. Papers, Box 20, letter from L.D. Taylor, July 12, 1940. 141. Taber Papers, Box 67, letter from Richard Drummond, May 23, 1940. 142. Wadsworth, Oral History, 434–437.

143. Walter Stickle, “The Republican Campaign of 1940,” New Jersey History, New Jersey Historical Society, Vol. 93, No. 1 & 2, Spring-Summer 1975, 45. 144. Stickle, “Campaign of 1940,” 45. 145. Baldwin, Oral History, 63–64. 146. Baldwin, Oral History, 63–64. 147. Stickle, “Campaign of 1940,” 44. 148. Joseph Ball Papers, Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul, MN, Oral History Project, recorded by Charles Morrisey and Fern Ingersoll, September 18, 1978, 4. 149. Gibson Sr. Papers, Carton 2, form letter to constituents, March 19, 1940. 150. Gibson Jr. Papers, Carton 6, letter from George Aiken, October 25, 1941. 151. Gibson Jr. Papers, Carton 2, letter from Ernest Gibson Sr., March 1, 1940. 152. See Chapter One and Chapter Two. 153. Dorothy C. Fisher, Vermont Tradition: The Biography of an Outlook on Life (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1953), 362–364. 154. Gibson Jr. Papers, Carton 2, Boston Evening Globe, August 26, 1940. 155. For a complete discussion of this topic see Duane Lockard, New England State Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959). 156. Interview with Professor Samuel Hand, University of Vermont, August 17, 1992. 157. Gibson Jr. Papers, Carton 20, Boston Globe, August 26, 1940. 158. Taber Papers, Box 67, letter from Richard Drummond, May 23, 1940. 159. Cole Papers, Box 20. 160. Gibson Jr. Papers, Carton 20, Springfield, Massachusetts Republican, September 4, 1940. 161. Gibson Jr. Papers, Springfield Massachusetts Republican, September 4, 1940. 162. Gibson Jr. Papers, Statement of the late E. W. Gibson, “Universal Military Training,” June 8, 1940. 163. Gibson Jr. Papers, Washington Times Herald, August 24, 1940. 164. Gibson Jr. Papers, Washington Times Herald, August 24, 1940. 165. For an in-depth discussion of the legislative battle, see David Porter, The Seventy-sixth Congress and World War II, 1939–1940, 141–71. 166. Gibson Jr. Papers, Carton 20, Memorandum, August 29, 1940. 167. Gibson Jr. Papers, letter from L. D. Taylor, July 12, 1940. 168. Gibson Jr. Papers, letter to Colonel Linn Taylor, August 30, 1940. 169. Wadsworth, Oral History, 439. 170. Wadsworth, Oral History, 381–382. 171. Wadsworth, Oral History, 439. 172. Gibson Jr. Papers, Carton 20, letter from Merrill Stark, August 27, 1940. 173. White Papers, Box 82, Lewiston Journal, August 7, 1940, Portland Press Herald, August 3, 1940. 174. Gibson Jr. Papers, Carton 20, The Boston Evening Globe, August 26, 1940. 175. Gibson Jr. Papers, Utica Observer Dispatch, November 26, 1940. 176. Gibson Jr. Papers, Brattleboro Daily Reformer, March 3, 1941, 4. 177. Gibson Jr. Papers, Rutland Herald, July 31, 1940. 178. Gibson Jr. Papers, Rutland Herald, July 31, 1940. 179. See Appendix C. 180. Aiken Papers, University of Vermont, Burlington, Vermont, Crate 38, box 1, folder 1, Newport Daily Express, March 10, 1941, Burlington Daily News, February 28, 1941. 181. Aiken Papers, Crate 38, box 1, folder 1, Burlington Free Press, February 26, 1941 and March 5, 1941. 182. Gibson Jr. Papers, Carton 20, letter from Thomas Gallagher, August 26, 1940.

Chapter 6

Grassroots Initiative and the Repeal of Neutrality, 1940–1941 In June of 1940 American public opinion turned decidedly in favor of selling the democracies whatever and as many supplies as they needed. Although it was common knowledge that France and Great Britain enjoyed a maritime advantage over the Axis powers, the pretense continued that the United States was open for business and neutral to all. In August President Roosevelt also portrayed the destroyers-for-bases deal as a bargain primarily designed to enhance American defenses rather than as a means of giving aid and comfort to Great Britain. Throughout the summer and during the presidential campaign, Americans held to the belief that the United States could be spared direct military involvement in the European conflict. During the winter of 1940–41 there developed among FDR’s Republicans and the majority of Americans a fatalistic sense that inevitably the United States would become a full-fledged belligerent in the war. By the time of the Lend-Lease debate, it was generally acknowledged that Great Britain’s survival was essential for the defense of the United States. Americans were willing to give loans, material aid, and moral support to Great Britain even at the risk of German retaliation. With the lending and leasing of massive quantities of war material to Great Britain, there were no longer any illusions that the United States followed a neutral course. Neither were there any remaining illusions that Hitler and his fascist allies sought anything less than worldwide domination. By the summer of 1941 it was being stated frequently and openly that, in fact, the United States was already in the war and that it was just a matter of time before American troops would become involved in the fighting. The citizens of Saxtons River, Vermont, conveyed that sense of fatalism in their petition of January 4, 1941, that was sent to Senator Austin: We the undersigned …. are now deeply convinced that if Britain falls before the massed weight of the Dictator nations our hemisphere and our country will be in actual imminent danger of invasion. The Axis record of … daily publically [sic] declared hate and contempt for us, that, regardless of whatever solemn promises they may make to us in an effort to lull us into a feeling of false security, we will be subject to their combined attack once England falls. We, therefor, feel: That our present national policy of furnishing aid to Britain should be not only continued but strengthened to the utmost … and keep invasion from our shores. That our own ships under convoy … be used to ship supplies to England. This may be a violation of international law or an act of war or what you will, but it is a vital necessity if England is to survive and serve as our protection from the Axis hordes. That Britain be given outright whatever money or credits it needs to conduct the war to a victorious conclusion. Obviously from a purely selfish viewpoint it is better to send money than men and it seems equally obvious that if money can enable England to protect us from having to fight ourselves, such money, which could never be repaid anyway, should be freely given as a gift. It will be argued that if the measures urged above are adopted they will plunge our country into war. Regretfully we agree that this may be so. But we deeply feel that there are courses worse than war and we solemnly say that we would rather undergo war than see our liberties and our way of life destroyed and our children grow up under Nazi, Facist [sic], or Japanese oppression and barbarity. The total adult population of this town is approximately 400. Of about 300 of these whom it was possible to interview on this matter 260, or 86% of those interviewed, signed this letter.1

Senator Austin concurred with the sentiments of his constituents in Saxtons River. The senator himself was very fond of using the phrase “there are courses worse than war.” In his radio speech of January 6, 1941, he quoted Lord Lothian’s view that “this war therefore, is not a war between nations like the last war … [but] a revolutionary war waged by Hitler and his military totalitarian machine against all other nations.”2 In his own words the senator added that Americans “were not deluded by statements that the United States was safe beyond the oceans … the cause that Britain was fighting was their cause; the peril that Britain was experiencing was their peril.”3 From Asheville, North Carolina, Senator Austin was lauded as “A Great Senator,” and of all the voices raised in support of the president’s foreign policy “none has a stronger and clearer ring.”4 He was recognized for his “refreshing candor,” “intellect and character,” and as “an earnest Republican who is placing the welfare of his country above the claims of partisanship.”5 In all due respect for Senator Austin’s great courage, his burdens of leadership were made immeasurably lighter by the grassroots support he received from groups such as those from Saxtons River. A resolution of the combined Senate and House of the Vermont General Assembly gave added weight to that support on February 26, 1941, when they “most heartily commended and endorsed” Senator Austin and Representative Plumley for supporting the Lend-Lease bill.6 The wisdom and foresight attributable to the people of Vermont and New England did not necessarily spring forth from a greater humanitarian spirit or superior intellectual ability. The awareness and realism exhibited by New Englanders concerning the European crisis was something that was forced upon them. Expediency and necessity dictated their foresight and timely activism. In his speech before the Senate on February 6, 1941, Senator Austin made it quite clear what led the majority of New Englanders to favor all possible aid to Great Britain even at the risk of war: “New England, with its environs, reaches out as a thumblike [sic] salient, surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, the St. Lawrence River, Lake Champlain, and the Hudson River. Geographically, New England joins one of the belligerents. By air, it is less than an hour from Montreal to Burlington, and less than two hours from Burlington to Boston or New York. New England is particularly vulnerable.”7 Maine Representative Margaret Chase Smith stated the issue somewhat differently: “aviation will do for this country what automobiles did years ago. The people in the mid-West do not realize how near we are to Greenland and Iceland.”8 The two Californians and those from New Jersey that were among the list of FDR’s Republicans were also influenced, no doubt, by their vulnerability to attack. The thrust of the remarks of the interventionist senators and representatives of northern New England addressed two objectives. The first was to discredit agrarian progressive opinions concerning the European war. Agrarian progressives belittled the struggle and viewed it as just one more of the many that had destabilized Europe for centuries in the past. To counter such interpretations, the interventionists went to great lengths to portray the war as a fascist world revolution bent on the destruction of democracy everywhere. For those reasons Senator Austin

stressed the fact that the European conflict was unlike those of the past and could not be avoided because “the axis … proclaims that there can be no ultimate peace between their philosophy of government and our philosophy of government. Freedom is under attack. Mastery of the world is their objective.”9 Senator Bridges agreed that the war “is not one of the neverending wars that have plagued Europe through history.”10 The interventionists also tried to discredit the agrarian progressive belief that the United States could retain its traditional isolationism and remain safe from invasion. Thus, the interventionists stressed that the age of American isolationism had passed, not because some group wished to force a global role upon the country for profit but because new technologies had brought the world to our shores. Senator Bridges confronted isolationists head on: “the physical isolation in which we as a nation have lived and developed is a thing of the past. The progress in ways and means of transportation and communication has made the problems of the peoples of some nations a matter of common interest to the peoples of all nations. Let us not fool ourselves by thinking this threat will not eventually affect America and every one of us personally. We certainly do not want to live in a Nazi-dominated world; but we shall … if Great Britain and her allies fall.”11 That is why the interventionists and the president made constant references to airplanes; the proximity of Canada, Greenland, and Iceland; and the shrinking of the Atlantic. They hoped to drive home the message that the passing of isolationism was due to the forces of technological change and not because of the whims of greedy munitions makers and mercantile elites. The interventionists were trying to overcome agrarian progressive sentiments that still held onto the nineteenth-century agrarian populist worldview that the root of all evil stemmed from Wall Street. Progressive Republican Senators Aiken of Vermont and Tobey of New Hampshire and Representative Oliver of Maine still portrayed all politics, domestic and foreign, within the framework of the nineteenth-century polemic that pitted dirt poor farmers against rapacious urban capitalists. Representative Joseph Clark Baldwin of New York City was a prime recipient of that kind of anti-urban sentiment. After his debate with isolationists Hamilton Fish and Senator Wheeler, Representative Baldwin said, “I was looked upon as a New Yorker who couldn’t possibly understand the other regions of the country … so looked upon at least by the isolationists from the Middle West and elsewhere. In fact, I always resented it because I think I know the country fairly well.”12 That is why Senator Austin made a point of emphasizing that the American people were not deluded into thinking that “war mongers, international bankers, and tories” lay behind the origins of the conflict.13 In addition, the interventionists attempted to dispel the agrarian progressive notion that one could legislate international peace. During the Progressive Era, the reform of the electoral process and the advancement of social equality and justice had been achieved through legislative means. But Senator Bridges emphasized that the similar legislative approach to foreign affairs had been tried and failed: “we decided to legislate peace, and we went ahead with the neutrality legislation. Peace cannot be legislated, however. Peace will be determined by the emotions and convictions of the people of this country … [and the efforts to legislate

peace] … are all forgotten or scrapped today.”14 The efforts of the interventionists, as they openly came to refer to themselves during early 1941, were increasingly successful. They defined the world conflict in terms that went beyond the traditional agrarian populist progressive view that portrayed interventionism as yet another chapter in the long saga of urban elites overriding the interests of small farmers. Small-town agrarian progressive New Englanders, such as those of Saxtons River, proved capable of distinguishing between their traditional domestic foes and the fascist forces that threatened the country with annihilation. In that respect they outpaced the leaders of their own beleaguered political movement, who remained mired in a pedagogical political agenda forged during an earlier and much different age. The second objective to which FDR’s Republicans directed their attention in early 1941 was yet another faction of their own party. And it was a faction that also held onto a political battle formation designed for a previous engagement. Conservative Republicans appeared unwilling or unable to give up their partisan attacks upon the administration that were characteristic of the party’s strategy in early 1939. Ironically, a congressman who later became an interventionist himself spearheaded the attacks on the president and scathingly criticized administration efforts to prepare the country for war. Representative John Taber was one of the foremost of a group of congressman who refused to clap after the president’s State of the Union Address in January 1941. To make matters worse, when Eleanor Roosevelt reprimanded the group, Representative Taber announced that he had not clapped because he did not trust the president. His remarks resulted in an avalanche of letters from interventionists who thoroughly castigated him: “it was positively distressing to read your silly remarks concerning the President and that you don’t trust him, as recorded in this morning’s Herald Tribune. A statement of this nature is not alone absurd, puerile, … it is actually disgraceful, … what will they think of us in Japan, Germany, Italy, a Congressman bluntly declaring that he does not trust the President. … You do not yet seem to realize that Elections are over. … It does not behoove a Congressman from the ‘sticks’ to air his opinion on matters … of which he is more or less ignorant, rather more than less.”15 Taber defended his statement and lashed out at his critics that they should open their eyes to the corruption from within: “why not get on the bandwagon for national defense instead of sticking with Roosevelt against it?”16 Taber wrote to others who criticized him, “I am sorry you are on Mr. Hitler’s side,” and he rationalized that his detractors “simply did not enjoy hearing the truth.”17 Senator Austin countered such criticisms by quoting President Roosevelt frequently and with great respect. In Austin’s analysis, the American electorate “reversed the precedents of 150 years by electing Franklin Delano Roosevelt for a third term,” and “such reversal of fundamental practice was caused by their determination that the present attitude of their Government in the world revolution should be maintained.”18 Senator Bridges flattered the president less than Senator Austin, but his words carried a force that was all the more dramatic because the senator had a long history of partisan attacks against the administration: “no one can honestly accuse me of wanting to give President

Roosevelt any more powers. No Senator has stood on the floor of the United States Senate and fought many of his domestic policies any more vigorously than have I. No person campaigned against him any more vigorously than I did last fall; but today this country faces a crisis, the serious world situation overshadows all other issues. I believe that our duty today is to view this question not as partisans, but from the viewpoint of the best interests of America, not only for today, but for over the years ahead.”19 Senator Austin received mail from all over the country praising him for his nonpartisanship, and he and Senator Bridges became beacons that defused partisan attacks and helped to forge a unified bipartisan defense effort. John Taber had a number of reasons for taking such an aggressive stand against the president. The congressman had reached the zenith of his career only two years earlier when he became nationally recognized as one of the foremost leaders in the successful Republican effort to roll back the New Deal. Like many of his fellow Republicans, Taber overreacted when the country turned its attention away from their cause and began to focus on the president’s quest to confront the Nazi threat. Representative Taber epitomized the thoughts of many Republicans who originally felt that the president engineered the fear of a fascist threat to distract attention away from the failures of the New Deal and justify his run for a third term. In doing so, the president robbed Republicans of what had appeared to be an excellent chance of capturing the White House in 1940. President Roosevelt’s deceptive and secretive nature was responsible for providing the fertile soil in which conspiratorial theories took root. And Representative Taber was far from alone in expressing what were genuine and legitimate fears that the defense effort was not being well managed. As the senior Republican on the House Appropriations Committee, he had cultivated a respected and well-deserved reputation as the “watch dog” of the treasury. Representative Taber was a tough and principled politician who saw himself as bravely bucking conventional niceties, public pressure, and the president in order to perform his elected duty to speak out and expose corruption. But John Taber went too far, and he failed to see the proverbial forest for the trees. Taber said of the president, “he talks about helping Britain and then takes action which will help the axis powers.”20 Taber’s behavior revealed that he was obsessed by an anger that his critics generally categorized as sour grapes. His convoluted thinking was eventually mollified by the criticisms he received from his constituents and by advice he received from his political confidants. His old friend Richard Drummond wrote to him, “while it is true that, as you say, … ‘clean up the dishonesty and incompetence,’ no one is talking about that now.… I am glad you don’t take offense at my writing you frankly. I do not try to conceal from you my anxiety … for you personally and your standing.”21 Representative Taber did not vote in favor of Lend-Lease, but he did support the Conference Report when it was accepted on March 11, 1941.22 Taber also supported revision of the Neutrality Act the following November. Those votes solidified his alignment with FDR’s Republicans. But his votes were based on the same logic that led him to attack the president’s character and ability to manage the defense effort. John Taber was a realist who took pride in the fact that he was not afraid to face the truth and clearly recognized that “for all practical

purposes, we are in the war now. I don’t like it, but to me it appears as a reality which we might as well face.”23 The careful, kind, soft spoken, book wormish Senator Wallace White slowly emerged during the Lend-Lease debate and thereafter as a determined and unwavering supporter of unencumbered aid to the Allies.24 Wallace White appeared to make his decisions after careful consideration of what he thought his constituency desired. His New England contemporaries, Representatives Charles Plumley and Edith Nourse Rogers, were also successful politicians because they kept their fingers firmly on the pulse of the voters. At various times, all three tried to be all things to all people and would thus maddeningly contradict themselves. As early as November of 1940, Senator White was prepared to have “arms, ammunition and implements move to Britain in a constant strengthening stream; I would furnish her planes to the very limit of our capacity; I would permit ships to service her needs; and if the time comes when she cannot pay, then I would continue these aids on Britain’s credit.”25 On the other hand, Senator White was slow to give up the idea that the United States could remain aloof from actual combat. “I do not share the President’s belief that it is our obligation to bring about and maintain freedom of various peoples through out the world” he said amidst the debate over Lend-Lease.26 But Senator White played an important part as the only Republican member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to cast his vote in favor of moving the administration’s LendLease bill onto the Senate floor for consideration. The senator’s hometown newspaper lauded him for “his courage” and confirmed that his vote “expressed the wishes of his constituents” whose state was “nearest the European conflict.”27 For Margaret Chase Smith, Lend-Lease “was much more effective than having what seemed to be a hot war come across the Atlantic Ocean,” and “I had no unkind reaction to my vote on Lend-Lease.”28 Senator White had a keen sense of how public opinion was running. He also well knew that agrarian progressivism was a powerful factor in his home state. He had run as a progressive early in his career. Senator Brewster, Senator Hale’s successor, mailed out 10,000 questionnaires to his Maine constituents during the winter of 1941. The results ran 4 to 1 in favor of the provision in the Lend-Lease bill that would lift the embargo on loans to belligerents and eastern Maine registered the greatest support.29 A petition from Bowdoin College, Senator White’s alma mater, added further credibility to those results when it was reported that 42 of the 60 faculty supported Lend-Lease.30 Senator White’s decision may have also been influenced by the announcement in early February of 1941 that 45 firms in 32 Maine towns were awarded 78 government contracts for $175 million to make blankets, paper, rope fittings, shoes, twill cloth, steering gears, flannel shirts, linoleum, snow shoes, wool trousers, and destroyers.31 Because she represented a shipbuilding state, one might also question the motives of Margaret Chase Smith’s strong stand for preparedness and defense spending. Although acknowledging that “higher employment is always a goal,” Mrs. Smith felt that the cause was really about “helping our people,” and “it was much more satisfactory to help the people abroad than to stand aloof and hope for others to do it.”32

The strong, agrarian, progressive movement in Maine kept Senator White on the fence until it became clear that a firm majority favored all-out resistance to fascism. Representatives Plumley and Rogers had fewer agrarians to worry about in their districts. The two seemed to be more wary of the cantankerously independent voter of the John Taber mold. Mrs. Rogers cultivated a feisty jingoistic persona, an image as one of the boys, and did her share of partisan bashing. Representative Plumley was himself one of the group that refused with Taber to clap after Roosevelt’s January speech. With the popular and powerful Senator Warren Austin leading his state’s delegation, Plumley tended to vote in tandem with Austin on all the foreign policy bills. Mrs. Rogers had no such mentor. Senator Walsh was the senior senator from Massachusetts, and he was a strong isolationist. In Boston and other large cities isolationist support resulted from “inherited antiBritish feeling among Americans of Irish or German descent.”33 Therefore it was not surprising that Mrs. Rogers voted against Lend-Lease. However, the strong interventionist leadership of Senators Austin and Bridges helped bolster Senator White and Representatives Plumley and Rogers when the latter three voted to repeal the Neutrality Act in November of 1941. Throughout the spring and summer, the inevitability of American participation in the war became more and more obvious. Senator White’s constituents were on the vanguard of the move to convoy shipments to Britain. The results of a poll of Maine’s Republican committee women and county vice chairmen were announced on May 20, 1941. The tally indicated that 75 percent supported all-out aid to Britain including convoys.34 Only 10 percent registered their opposition to anything that might mean war.35 The plan for an American protectorate over Greenland and Iceland also aroused surprisingly little criticism from the general public. By the early summer of 1941, it seemed inevitable that the United States would be dragged into the conflict. Senator Austin boldly told the Woman’s Republican Club of Vermont on June 23, “I believe it is just a question of time before we will have to fight, physically fight to save this country.”36 Senator White stated two days later, “no nation liveth unto itself, America cannot live alone.”37 John Taber was appalled that “a lot of people refuse to wake up to the fact that we are in the war. I do not see how anyone can deny that we are in it.”38 Senator Bridges’s unquestionable Republican credentials were again useful after the German attack on the Soviet Union in late June of 1941. Senator Bridges could hardly be said to be soft on communism so his support for extending aid to the Russians carried added legitimacy: “no one has been more bitter in the denunciation of the Communistic theory of government than I. I have expressed my opinion of Stalin and I do not retract one thing I have said in the past. But I am practical enough to know we are confronted with a condition—not a theory. It is to our interest that Hitler be stopped and, therefore, it is in our interest that Russia be able to put up a formidable battle.”39 When the debate over extending the draft reached fever pitch in August, Mrs. Rogers needed no mentor to encourage her to speak out. Her experiences at a military hospital during the First World War prompted her strong conviction: “I want to have the young men trained so they know how to take care of themselves. There is no kindness in not training them. A thoroughly

prepared nation is not attacked.”40 The vote to extend the Selective Service Act was extremely close, and James Wadsworth remembered, “when the roll was called in the House, the score was 203 for extension and 202 opposed to it … only three months and a few days later, the Japanese attacked us at Pearl Harbor. Had that vote been reversed … [they] would have found us utterly helpless. There were only 19 Republicans who voted for it. The minority leader was opposed to it. It was supposed to be unpopular at home to keep these men in service.”41 The close vote over extending the enlistment period was misleading. The opposition votes were cast by those who felt “we were breaking faith with these young men.”42 The extension smacked of the kind of tricky, manipulative, devious reversal that was all too clearly associated with President Roosevelt. Republicans voted as they did in order to drive home the point that they were worthier of the public’s trust. Representative Paul Cunningham voted against it, and he was otherwise one of the president’s strongest foreign policy supporters. He believed “Iowans still cling to the old fashioned idea that promises are made to be kept, not broken.”43 There were a variety of other factors that led FDR’s Republicans to make the choices that they made in that last year before the United States officially entered the war. A significant number of FDR’s Republicans hailed from or delved into the world of journalism. Minnesota’s Joseph Ball was the most accomplished journalist in the group. He was a professional reporter and the political editor of the St. Paul Pioneer Press and Dispatch. It was quite a surprise when the thirty-five-year-old Ball was chosen to fill the Senate seat made vacant by the death of Senator Lundeen on October 14, 1940. Governor Stassen appointed him because “he knew how I felt about foreign policy. Stassen was one of the bright lights of the young, internationally-oriented Republican Party” and Wendell Willkie’s floor manager at the 1940 convention.44 When asked if his views had represented those of most Minnesotans, the senator replied, “it’s true, the largest single ethnic group … was of German descent … [and] were inclined to be isolationist. Also … the Swedes were pretty isolationist. But the Norwegians, of course, were quite the other way. We had a very active foreign policy association in the Twin Cities and quite a strong group of professional and business and some academic people who were quite interventionist. It wasn’t quite as isolationist as a lot of people made it out to be.”45 When asked how his vote for Lend-Lease was received, he said, “we were snowed under with mail … a lot of it organized pressure but a lot of it legit. A minority can make an awful big noise. I don’t think it was as isolationist as the number of letters that way would indicate … people who were doing business all over the world … and anybody who read any history … supported intervention, but they did not make as much noise as the isolationists.”46 The senator received a great deal of unfavorable mail from communists who were “very good at organizing floods of mail” and “darned strong in Minnesota.”47 Most importantly, Senator Ball played the journalist’s role as an educator: “after all, you’re in Congress you’re spending full time trying to learn what the issues are all about. No home citizen, who is trying to earn a living and take care of a family, can spend the time you spend on it. … Part of the job is to try to give them a little leadership on issues.”48 That is what Senator

Ball did in a series of newsletters he titled “Notes From Washington.” He carefully followed the issues and presented them to his constituents in readable, two-page formats. Margaret Chase Smith and Albert Vreeland pursued the same objective by means of local newspaper columns. Both published chronicles of events that were taking place in Congress and explained pending foreign policy issues to their constituents. Mrs. Smith’s column was titled “Washington and You” and emphasized her personal reasons for voting as she did. Albert Vreeland wrote “Vreeland Says” and attempted to give both sides of each issue without revealing his own opinions. Regardless of their contrasting formats, Senator Ball and Representatives Vreeland and Smith served as educators who helped to calm public fears and encourage an international perspective during the tense and apocalyptic year of 1941. Representative Joseph Baldwin had journalistic experience, and Representative Karl Le Compte was the publisher of a newspaper. It is hard to say what role those experiences played in their voting behavior, but it is likely that, as in the case of Senator Ball, their professions left them better informed about world affairs than most citizens. “I did read the newspapers … I had watched the thing during the thirties. First it was Japan that moved into Manchuria. Mussolini tried to conquer Ethiopia. Then Hitler moved into the Rhineland,” recounted Senator Ball.49 Not all of FDR’s Republicans were northeasterners. The aforementioned Senator Ball and three others hailed from the isolationist Midwest. Senator Chan Gurney of Yankton, South Dakota, was a wealthy nursery owner and a member of the Military Affairs Committee along with Senator Austin and Senator Bridges. His personal story was lost to historians when he destroyed his papers upon his defeat for reelection. Yet Senator Gurney’s voting record showed that he was as resolute a supporter of preparedness as Senators Austin and Bridges throughout the prewar debates. Paul Cunningham of Des Moines was the only representative from Iowa to vote for LendLease. His voting record reflected the unique makeup of his district that was home to Vice President Wallace, Director of Production Management William Knudsen, and U.S. Commissioner of Education of Vocational Training for Defense Industries John Studebaker. Des Moines was also the home of Senator Herring, who backed defense preparedness to the hilt. Therefore, Cunningham’s votes were less idiosyncratic than they might have seemed for someone from the heartland of isolationism. He received a majority of mail commending his lone stand in favor of Lend-Lease at the rate of one hundred to one.50 Representative Karl Le Compte of Corydon, Iowa, wrote his campaign manager that his “correspondence indicates that a big majority are in favor of the [Lend-Lease] bill and anything that Roosevelt wants but I am not. … But you might write me what you think and what you hear.”51 In response, Howard Tedford wrote, “now as to the Lend-Lease Bill … The man on the street wants to help England and do everything short of shooting. I consider Wadsworth the ablest man in the house and I would be inclined to follow his lead.”52 However, Karl Le Compte voted his conscience on February 8, 1941, and not the wishes of his constituents, and believed “it was the right vote—not by any means the most popular side.”53 His advisor consoled him two days later that “the only sensible thing you could do

was stay with your crowd.”54 Sounding a bit like Ibsen’s Dr. Rank, a few days later Howard Tedford wrote to Mrs. Le Compte, “I feel much as you do, and I have ceased to worry very much about the future here on earth. … Trying to be a fatalist. … If it’s foreordained, it is going to happen. I have a lot of faith in Churchill. … England has produced some wonderful statesmen and men. He at least seems to know what it is all about.”55 The Tedford-Le Compte correspondence heated up again during the debate over the virtual repeal of the Neutrality Act. President Roosevelt desired the repeal of articles 2 and 6, which would allow the arming of merchant vessels and permit them to travel to belligerent ports. Tedford wrote on September 19, 1941: We seem to be at the cross roads in the World’s crisis … there is a time to pray and a time to shoot, but our prayers are not doing much good. … Am reading Berlin Diary—Shirer … an absorbing chronological history of Hitler’s rise to power … almost unbelievable in our 20th Century civilization. Hitlerism must be destroyed at any cost before there will be any peace in the world. … Sentiment seems to be rapidly changing. … I also note that Dirksen is taking an advanced stand. … Some of the criticism you hear of Roosevelt is that he is not courageous enough … that he keeps waiting for sentiment to ripen. But then Lincoln and McKinley hesitated before taking us into war. … Any president in his right mind will think long and hard before taking the final step to involve our country in war. He is waiting for sentiment to demand repeal of the neutrality act. Don’t you think it would be patriotic and smart strategy for Joe Martin and our republican friends to follow the leadership of Wadsworth a little more and beat the democrats to the draw by declaring in favor of repeal … you cannot afford to be caught in the Hamilton Fish or Tinkham set, and thoughtful democrats will steer clear of the Clarks and the Wheelers.56

Karl Le Compte heeded the advice of his friend and advisor and voted for repeal of articles 2 and 6 of the Neutrality Act. He wrote to Howard Tedford afterward, “as you know I am very human and after a flood of letters, some anonymous, complaining, criticizing, and accusing, even charging me with betraying the safety and interests of the folks at home it is comforting and reassuring to have your letter.”57 Like John Taber and Sterling Cole, Karl Le Compte leaned heavily upon the advice of the truly unsung heroes in the fight against fascism: the internationalist political advisors and confidants back home. Although public opinion and political advisors played a crucial role in advancing the foreign policy debate in 1941, some of FDR’s Republicans must be credited with having drawn their strength from within. Some played outstanding roles that could only be attributed to their personal wisdom and intelligence about foreign affairs. Above all, Senator Austin and Representative Wadsworth were the most influential and farsighted leaders of FDR’s Republicans. The scrappy Senator Bridges was probably most effective at legitimizing the Democratic president’s foreign policy to conservative Republicans. Given that he was an ordained minister, Representative Eaton’s aggressive presence gave to the interventionist cause a religious and moral stamp of approval. Representatives Margaret Chase Smith and Edith Nourse Rogers added the voices of strong and pragmatic women to the group. And there were the quieter voices that were remarkably consistent in their support for the president’s foreign policy. It took real foresight and courage for Representatives Foster Stearns and Sterling Cole to back the president and support repeal of the arms embargo even before the attack on Poland.

Repeal of articles 2 and 6 of the Neutrality Act passed the Senate by slim majority of 50–37 on November 7, 1941. The House passed the bill on November 13 by a vote of 212–194. With that, the United States returned to the tenets of international law. A theory of foreign policy that merged the ideas of Jefferson with the worldview of late-nineteenth-century agrarian populists and the legalistic idealism from the Progressive Era had finally run its course. *** When the United States entered the war against the Axis powers, it would have been reasonable to expect that prewar isolationists would cease to be a serious factor in American politics. As late as 1944, prewar isolationists were still being flailed for having “misread the signs before Japan struck us, and that if they had their way the nation might have been helpless and broken.”58 But in fact, the wave of recrimination against isolationists served to strengthen the resolve of agrarian progressives in their battle to defend and preserve their movement. The record of Representative Sterling Cole placed him among the most farsighted and realistic congressmen before Pearl Harbor. One would have thought he had little to fear in his primary of 1942. But his campaign manager felt otherwise and pleaded, “I don’t give a damn how calm, dignified, and judicial you are in Washington; I want you at home.”59 Representative Cole faced the toughest primary opponent of his career that year: a Methodist minister who had been a strong supporter of isolationism before Pearl Harbor. “Ever since you have been in Congress you have been criticized for playing too close to Wadsworth,” his campaign manager said.60 Although Cole won the primary, his campaign manager said afterward, “that was one hell of a storm we just came through, captain.”61 Cole lost the Cheming county rural vote because he had “ceased to appear before the people … [while his opponent was] hoeing the corn fields religiously.”62 The evidence seemed to indicate “we must cater to the rural vote in the future.”63 As in Vermont, the battle to defend agrarian progressivism still proved to be the most important issue for rural voters in Congressman Cole’s district even after his wisdom had been proven by the attack on Pearl Harbor. Representative Foster Stearns also presumed that his solid support for internationalism before the war would be a political asset after the United States became a belligerent. The representative decided that the time was right for a move up to the Senate, and he challenged the outspoken prewar isolationist incumbent, Senator Charles Tobey, in 1944. He accused Senator Tobey not only of hampering the war effort before Pearl Harbor but of having done “his best to confuse us and to induce us to act on cowardly and unworthy motives.”64 Stearns embarked very confidently on a campaign that focused on Tobey’s prewar record in comparison to his own. Stearns attacked Tobey’s record and cautioned that “our nation will face problems in the future for which our statesmen will have to think ahead clearly. We cannot wait for some Pearl Harbor to awaken them … [can we] trust the judgment of a man who grossly failed once?”65 Stearns received the endorsement of Senator Bridges and “dozens of other party big wigs.”66 Senator Bridges had become identified as no friend to agrarians when in 1941 he pilloried the misjudgments and memory of Senator Borah.67 As one journalist characterized the fight, “it is the Republican party versus Charles Tobey.

In no campaign has he ever had the united support of his party.”68 In his campaign Tobey “emphasized that he was not interested in doing big things and getting a name for himself and his picture in the paper, but in serving the common people.”69 The primary was very similar to the Aiken/Flanders contest in neighboring Vermont four years earlier. But despite the difference that Stearns had been proven right about the likelihood of war and the need for preparedness, he lost the primary. With Senator Bridges holding the state’s establishment seat, agrarian progressive voters rallied to preserve the seat allotted to them, regardless of their candidate’s misjudgment, hampering, or cowardice before the war. As in Vermont, the crucial issue for voters in New Hampshire was the defense and preservation of the agrarian populist progressive revolution. For Foster Stearns and Sterling Cole, their reputations as internationalists were a marker that indicated they were no friend to the farmer. And even though their campaigns took place during war time, agrarian farmers were in no mood to contribute to their own marginalization during a period when their movement was in decline.

NOTES 1. Austin Papers, Box 20, Petition of residents of Saxtons River, Vermont, January 4, 1941. 2. Austin Papers, speech given by Senator Austin on the NBC radio network, January 6, 1941. 3. Austin Papers, NBC speech. 4. Austin Papers, letter and newspaper clipping from Mr. and Mrs. Abernathy, Asheville, NC, January 10, 1941. 5. Austin Papers, Abernathy clipping. 6. Austin Papers, Resolution relating to House Bill 1776, State of Vermont, February 27, 1941. 7. Austin Papers, reprint of remarks of Senator Warren R. Austin, Proceedings and debates of the 77th Congress, First Session, February 6, 1941. 8. Smith Papers, scrapbook 17, Courier Gazette, September 4, 1941. 9. Austin Papers, Box 20, speech of Senator Warren Austin, “America Will Support Britain, Greece, and China and Exert Utmost Effort to Become Invulnerable,” NBC radio, January 6, 1941. 10. Bridges Papers, reprint of his speech before the 77th Congress, First Session, March 3, 1941. 11. Bridges Papers, speech of March 3, 1941. 12. Baldwin, Oral History, 58. 13. Austin Papers, Box 20, reprint of remarks of Senator Warren R. Austin, Proceedings and debates of the 77th Congress, First Session, February 6, 1941. 14. Bridges Papers, reprint of speech by Senator Bridges before the 77th Congress, March 3, 1941. 15. Taber Papers, Box 87, letter from Barney R. Robbins, January 9, 1941. 16. Taber Papers, letter to L. Virginia Roff, January 13, 1941. 17. Taber Papers, letter to Mr. A. L. Lane, January 14, 1941, and Mrs. J. L. Peel, January 14, 1941. 18. Austin Papers, Box 20, reprint of remarks of Senator Warren R. Austin, Proceedings and debates of the 77th Congress, First Session, February 6, 1941. 19. Bridges Papers, reprint of remarks of Senator Styles Bridges, Proceedings and debates of the 77th Congress, First Session, March 3, 1941. 20. Taber Papers, Box 87, letter to Harriet C. Brown, January 30, 1941. 21. Taber Papers, letter from Richard C. S. Drummond, February 26, 1941. 22. The House passed the Lend-Lease bill by a vote of 260–165 on February 9, 1941. The Senate passed the bill on March 11 by a vote of 60–31, and the House accepted the Senate version by a vote of 317–71 on the same day. 23. Taber Papers, Box 87, letter to Mrs. Leon Wood, October 31, 1941. 24. Senator Margaret Chase Smith used those adjectives to describe Senator White in an interview with the author on August 8, 1992.

25. White Papers, file 68, speech to the Legion Post of Winthrop, Maine, November 29, 1940. 26. White Papers, file 82, Portland Press Herald, January 7, 1941. 27. White Papers, file 82, Lewiston Journal, February 14, 1941. 28. Letter from Margaret Chase Smith to Robert E. Jenner, September 25, 1992. 29. White Papers, Bangor News, February 15, 1941. 30. White Papers, Portland Press Herald, March 6, 1941. 31. White Papers, February 8, 1941. 32. Letter from Margaret Chase Smith to Robert E. Jenner, September 25, 1992. 33. White Papers, Christian Science Monitor, February 14, 1941. 34. White Papers, Portland Press Herald, May 20, 1941. 35. White Papers, Portland Press Herald, May 20, 1941. 36. Austin Papers, Box 20, Rutland Daily Herald, June 24, 1941. 37. White Papers, Box 82, Bangor Daily News, June 25, 1941. 38. Taber Papers, Box 87, letter to Mr. and Mrs. Herbert D. Brown, November 7, 1941. 39. Bridges Papers, undated speech notes entitled, “America’s Position in the International Crisis,” summer of 1941. 40. Rogers Papers, file 302, 57, September 1941. 41. Wadsworth, Oral History, 442–3. 42. Wadsworth, Oral History, 441. 43. Cunningham Papers, Box 1, folder 7, undated newspaper column, “Plain Talk.” 44. Joseph Ball Papers, The Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul, Minnesota, notes from interview conducted by Charles Morrisey and Fern Ingersoll, September 18, 1978, 2. 45. Ball Papers, interview, 6. 46. Ball Papers, interview, 7. 47. Ball Papers, interview, 10. 48. Ball Papers, interview, 17. 49. Ball Papers, interview, 8. 50. Cunningham Papers, Box 1, file 7, Mason City, Iowa Globe Gazette, March 11, 1941. 51. Le Compte Papers, Box 17, item 130, letter to Howard Tedford, February 2, 1941. 52. Le Compte Papers, item 131, Tedford letter, February 5, 1941. 53. Le Compte Papers, item 133, Tedford letter, February 9, 1941. 54. Le Compte Papers, file 134, Tedford letter, February 11, 1941. 55. Le Compte Papers, item 135, letter to Mrs. Margaret Le Compte from Howard Tedford, February 13, 1941. 56. Le Compte Papers, file 204, Tedford letter, September 19, 1941. 57. Le Compte Papers, Box 17, file 213, Tedford letter, October 24, 1941. 58. Stearns Papers, Manchester Union, May 15, 1944. 59. Stearns Papers, Manchester Union, May 15, 1944. 60. Cole Papers, Box 3, letter from Chas, campaign manager, July 24, 1942. 61. Cole Papers, letter from Chas, August 12, 1942. 62. Cole Papers, letter from Chas, August 12, 1942. 63. Cole Papers, letter from Chas, August 12, 1942. 64. Stearns Papers, letter of J. P. Troxell, July 1, 1944, featured in Manchester Union. 65. Stearns Papers, Manchester Union, July 7, 1944. 66. Stearns Papers, Off the Record, undated newspaper column, F. H. Dobens. 67. Bridges Papers, file 68, “America’s Position in the International Crisis,” speech outline, July, 1940. 68. Stearns Papers, Off the Record, F. H. Dobens, undated. 69. Stearns Papers, Keene Sentinel, July 10, 1944.

Conclusion Political realignments are defined as having an impact that wreaks havoc on a party relegated to minority status and a stunning defeat at the polls can derange the party’s structure.1 The Republican Party dominated the American political scene since the Civil War and held power for twelve years prior to the Roosevelt landslide. During that time the party took credit for the unprecedented prosperity of the 1920s. The realignment marked by Roosevelt’s election victory of 1932 jettisoned the Republican Party into the role of a minority to which it was unaccustomed, and the impact was nothing less than momentous. Contrary to the rationalist theory that parties modify their positions to accommodate the changing viewpoints of the electorate, the Republican Party failed to innovate and held fast to its philosophy of pioneer individualism and self-help as an answer to the ravages of the Great Depression. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party offered a series of federal social welfare programs that addressed the needs of agrarians and labor and thus garnered their votes. The derangement of the Republican Party’s structure in 1932 was reminiscent of the situation it had faced in 1912, when its agrarian progressive faction withdrew its support from the party. After a period of disarray and indirection, the same Republicans whose leadership was repudiated in 1932 formulated a dynamic campaign for 1936. They fashioned a crusade against the New Deal that made no allowance for compromise or deviation. The dismal failure of the 1936 crusade further decreased the size of the Republican minority and finally forced the party to acknowledge the need for a new course. The party campaigned with more tolerance for New Deal programs in 1938, and Republican successes that year unleashed a feeling of elation and overconfidence. The rejuvenated Republicans took their seats in 1939 and, encouraged by the president’s series of missteps, unveiled a legislative effort to roll back the New Deal. In addition, the party still set its sights on regaining the support of its past agrarian progressive coalition partners, which seemed plausible when that faction withdrew its support from the president after he unveiled his Supreme Court packing scheme. With this as a backdrop, it is more evident why internationalist Republicans that later aligned with FDR were not inclined to do so before 1939. As the world situation worsened during the mid-1930s, neither the president nor regular Republicans were eager to emphasize their internationalist viewpoints while courting the support of isolationist agrarian progressives. With the Republican comeback of 1938, the president faced a realignment situation of his own. After two incredibly impressive electoral landslides and the initiation of innovative social programs that institutionalized a whole new role for government, his New Deal stalled in 1937. Suddenly FDR found himself abandoned by numerous members of his coalition and placed on the defensive by a Republican Party that was revived and united by its electoral successes. I argue in these pages that FDR would have been more successful in his attempts to bring attention to the threat of Hitler and fascist aggression if he had taken a more conciliatory approach to the Republican efforts to roll back the New Deal in early 1939. To his credit, FDR

did take a conciliatory route after the invasion of Poland in September of 1939. But during the first half of that year, FDR acted in much the same manner as Republicans had reacted when they faced repudiation and a realignment that changed their status. He became uncompromising, defensive, and almost unreasonable, which only served to distract attention from the worsening situations in Europe and Asia. FDR’s Republicans were clearly influenced by the president’s erratic behavior, and that tipped the scales in favor of delaying action on the question of repealing the arms embargo. When Hitler’s troops invaded Poland in September 1939, Great Britain and France fulfilled their pledges to declare war on Germany. At this juncture agrarian progressives began to feel the effects of a realignment in public opinion that put their movement in the minority. And like the Republican Party in 1932 and the president in early 1939, they did not embrace change but rather girded themselves to wage a campaign to defend their interests. Concurrently, agrarians faced the fact that their foreign policy positions were losing ground, their influence within both political parties was waning, and the character of the country was transitioning from its longheld rural outlook to an urban one. These realignments were also momentous. As the sun was setting on the agrarian populist progressive movement, FDR’s Republicans had to face a counter reaction that was being waged by their rural constituents. The ability of FDR’s Republicans to accurately gage public opinion was hampered by the skill and commitment with which the agrarian progressives marshaled their forces. At that time grassroots efforts that supported preparedness and aid to the Allies rose to the occasion and helped demonstrate to elected officials that in fact a majority favored the president’s proposals to aid the Allies. World War II and the Cold War that followed forced a reassessment of the conceptions about foreign policy that agrarians had promoted since the founding of the United States. The attack on Pearl Harbor clearly showed that the United States could no longer depend on the two great oceans for protection. The atomic bomb and the threat of communism convinced Americans that they must play a role in world politics that entailed large defense budgets. Wartime comradeship and postwar dissolution of their empires removed most lingering agrarian populist opposition to permanent alliances with Great Britain and France. Within American society, the New Deal addressed the inequalities that had caused social tension between farmers and capitalists. Postwar prosperity, super highways, suburbanization, television, and shopping malls contributed to the homogenization of American culture that lessened the differences between urban and rural lifestyles. Both political parties accepted and promoted the Cold War consensus to contain communism. Agrarian progressives faded from view after the war, and the term ceased to be a prominent part of the popular lexicon. It appeared that the rift within the Republican Party between isolationists and internationalists had ended. Agrarian progressive ideas and their adherents, however, did not cease to be a factor in American politics. The realignment of the party system that was achieved under Franklin Roosevelt continued to flourish after his death. The North and South still voted in blocks for their respective parties until the realignment of 1968, when Civil Rights legislation

championed by the Democrats led to a mass defection by southerners. No doubt the realignment of that year also contributed to the complexity of the foreign policy debate over the Vietnam War. Yet even before the realignment of 1968, the legacies of the Civil War that alienated northern agrarian supporters from the Democratic Party began to recede. Democratic candidates throughout the northern tier of traditionally Republican states found that during the postwar era they could more and more frequently get elected to office. By the 1980s New England had reversed it self and become a Democratic stronghold. In Howard Tedford’s words, “it all about sums up to this; you are either a new-dealer or an anti-new dealer when it comes to American socialization. Honest democrats and honest republicans will know where to take their stand after the war is over.”2 The elections of General Dwight Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush also proved that agrarians could be won back to the Republican Party by charismatic and homespun candidates with whom they could identify. And although the two political parties continued to court the agrarian vote after the war, the Cold War consensus meant that neither would have to pander to isolationist tendencies. Electoral success for the party of Lincoln still depends on the unity of its somewhat disparate coalition. Suburban country club Republicans adhere to an economic philosophy that corresponds to that of the East coast regulars of the late 1930s, while Evangelicals share a religious outlook similar to their predecessors of the agrarian tradition. That coalition was tested in 2008, but it may be too soon to decide the magnitude of the realignment that accompanied the election of Barack Obama. Nonetheless, that electoral defeat brought havoc to the Republican Party, and both its structure and purpose have been destabilized. Ironically, by deferring so completely to the social and intellectual agenda of its Evangelical faction [antiabortion, anti-stem cell research, pro-creationism], the party lost significant support from prosperous and well-educated voters residing in upper middle-class suburbs. When I embarked on this project, I was primarily motivated to understand how a group of Republicans came to side with the Democratic president during a period of intense partisanship. It was not my original intention to address a question that remained unresolved in my mind since college. Like so many of my fellow students, I had difficulty comprehending why my country was so slow to react and counter the threat of fascism. History books explained American neutrality as stemming from the unfulfilled promises of Versailles and the secret agreements of the European powers, the machinations of munitions makers, Woodrow Wilson’s stubbornness and stroke, and the immediacy of dealing with the Great Depression. But as enlightening as those reasons were, I was still left believing that there must be more to the story. I did not plan or anticipate that I would find an answer to that question when I embarked on this project. My intent was to explore the reasons why a group of elected members of the House and Senate supported the foreign-policy objectives of a president of the opposing party whose domestic policies and personality they truly distrusted. While examining the larger context of the events that my subjects faced, I came to more fully understand how the historical traditions, social tensions, and domestic political realignments that prevailed during those

years muddied the debate and obscured the clarity of judgment that otherwise might have supported a deterrent to fascist aggression. Both political parties sought the support of agrarian progressives during the 1930s. Howard Tedford observed that the conduct of politicians during the fight over neutrality was reminiscent “of the 1896 free silver campaign … The politicians talked bi-metalism and tried to straddle for a while.”3 But for Republicans of the 1930s, maintaining their coalition with agrarian progressives appeared vital for the party’s very survival. Politicians straddled for as long as they could, but eventually they had to step forward, take a stand, and cast their votes. It fell to a group of forward-thinking and independent-minded internationalist Republicans to chart a course for their party that helped unify the country for war, preserve Great Britain as a bridgehead, and educate the skeptical regarding the necessity and wisdom of U.S. participation in the management of world affairs. Their leadership, their support for President Roosevelt, and their votes were crucial to those efforts. They were FDR’s Republicans, and they and their constituents deserve a special place of honor, respect, and gratitude in the hearts of all Americans.

NOTES 1. Weed, Nemesis of Reform, 2. 2. Le Compte Papers, Box 17, file 220, Tedford letter, November 10, 1941. 3. Le Compte Papers, Tedford letter, November 10, 1941.

Chronology of Events September 18, 1931 January 2, 1932 January 7, 1932 November 8, 1932 January 30, 1933 March 4, 1933 March 23, 1933 October 21, 1933 August 19, 1934 March 16, 1935 August 31, 1935 October 3, 1935 March 7, 1936 May 9, 1936 July 17, 1936 July 7, 1937 October 5, 1937 November 6, 1937 March 13, 1938 September 29, 1938 November 9–10, 1938 March 15, 1939 March 28, 1939 August 23, 1939 September 1, 1939 September 3, 1939 September 5, 1939 October 27, 1939 November 2, 1939 November 30, 1939 April 9, 1940 May 10, 1940 May 28, 1940 June 10, 1940 June 22, 1940 September 3, 1940

Japan attacks Manchuria. Japanese conquest of Manchuria completed. United States refuses to recognize Japanese conquest of Manchuria (Stimson Doctrine). Franklin D. Roosevelt elected president of United States. Adolph Hitler becomes chancellor of Germany. Franklin Roosevelt takes office. Hitler becomes dictator of Germany (Enabling Act). Germany withdraws from the League of Nations. President von Hindenburg of Germany dies. Hitler introduces conscription-violating treaties. The first Neutrality Act is signed by FDR. Italy invades Ethiopia. Germany reoccupies Rhineland. Italy conquers Ethiopia. The Spanish Civil War begins. Japan invades China proper. FDR delivers “Quarantine Speech.” Germany, Japan, and Italy enter into Anti-Comintern Pact. Austria is annexed by Germany. Germany acquires Sudetenland (Munich Pact). Jewish shops and synagogues destroyed on Kristallnacht. Germany absorbs the rest of Czechoslovakia. The Spanish Republic is defeated by General Franco. Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression Pact is signed. Germany invades Poland. Great Britain and France declare war on Germany. FDR announces U.S. neutrality. Senate repeals arms embargo House repeals arms embargo U.S.S.R. invades Finland Germany invades Denmark and Norway. Germany invades France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. Belgium surrenders, British Army evacuated from Dunkirk. Italy declares war on France and Great Britain. France surrenders; Battle for Britain begins. The destroyer-for-bases deal is announced.

September 16, 1940 September 27, 1940 March 11, 1941 June 22, 1941 July 24, 1941 July 26, 1941 August 14, 1941 November 7, 1941 November 13, 1941 December 7, 1941

The Selective Service Act is signed into law. The Tripartite Pact inaugurates the Axis powers. Lend-Lease Act is signed. Germany invades the Soviet Union. Japan occupies French Indochina. United States freezes Japanese assets. FDR and Churchill sign Atlantic Charter. Senate repeals Neutrality Act House repeals Neutrality Act Japan attacks Pearl Harbor.

Appendix A

Congressional Foreign Policy Votes, 1935–1941 Table A.1 Selected Foreign Policy Votes of Senate Republicans, 1935–1941 1. Neutrality Act of 1935, (8/24/35) 2. Extension of the Neutrality Act (no roll call), 1936, (2/18/36) 3. The Pittman Resolution (cash-and-carry), 1937, (3/3/37) 4. Neutrality Act of 1937, (4/29/37) 5. Neutrality Act Revision (repeal of arms embargo), 1939, (10/27/39) 6. Selective Service Act, 1940, (8/28/40) 7. Lend-Lease, 1941, (3/8/41) 8. Neutrality Repeal, 1941, (11/7/41) ST

NAME

VT NJ ID KS WY MI NM PA IA ND VT ME DE CA NH OR RI SD NE ND MN MN OR DE MI ME NH MA CT SD OR KS OH NH WI ID VT VT

Austin, Warren R. Barbour, W. Warren Borah, William E. Capper, Arthur Carey, Robert D. Couzens, James Cutting, Bronson Davis, James Dickinson, L. J. Frazier, Lynn J. Gibson, Ernest Willard Hale, Frederick Hastings, Daniel O. Johnson, Hiram Keyes, Henry W. McNary, Charles L. Metcalf, Jesse H. Norbeck, Peter Norris, George W. Nye, Gerald Schall, Thomas D. Shipstead, Henrik Steiwer, Frederick Townsend, John G. Vandenberg, Arthur H. White, Wallace Bridges, Styles Lodge, Henry Cabot Danaher, John A. Gurney, Chan Holman, Rufus Reed, Clyde Taft, Robert Tobey, Charles W. Wiley, Alexander Thomas, John Gibson, Ernest William Aiken, George D.

1. 2. 3. Y Y Y Y NV NV Y NV Y Y Y NV Y NV Y Y Y Y Y NV Y Y Y Y Y – – – – – – – – – – – –

– – – – – – – – – – – –

N – N Y – – – Y – Y N Y – N – Y – – Y Y – NV N Y Y Y N N – – – – – – – – – –

4. 5. 6. 7. 8. N – Y N – – – NV – N N N – N – NV – – NV N – NV – N N N N N – – – – – – – – – –

Y Y N N – – – N – N Y Y – N – N – – y N – N – N N N Y N N Y N Y Y N N – – –

Y Y – N – – – N – N Y Y – N – Y – – n N – N – N N Y Y Y N Y Y N N Y N N Y –

Y Y – N – – – N – – – – – N – Y – – y N – N – N N Y Y Y N Y N N N N N N – N

Y Y – N – – – N – – – – – N – N – – y N – N – N N Y Y N N Y N N N N N N – N

MN ME IL OH NE ND IN

Ball, Joseph H. Brewster, Ralph O. Brooks, C. Wayland Burton, Harold H. Butler, Hugh A. Langer, William Willis, Raymond

– – – – – – –

– – – – – – –

– – – – – – –

– – – – – – –

– – – – – – –

– – – – – – –

Y Y N Y N N N

Y N N N N N N

NV=not voting GP=paired voting y/n=no longer voting as a Republican 0 = absent

Table A.2 Selected Foreign Policy Votes of House Republicans, 1935–1941 1. Neutrality Act of 1935, (no roll call), (8/23/35) 2. Extension of the Neutrality Act, 1936, (2/17/36) 3. McReynolds Amendment (cash-and-carry), 1937, (3/18/37) 4. Neutrality Act of 1937 (no roll call), (4/29/37) 5. Ludlow Amendment, 1938, (1/10/38) 6. Neutrality Act Revision (worded as: to continue arms embargo), 1939, (11/2/39) 7. Selective Service Act, 1940, 9/7/40) 8. Lend-Lease, 1941, (2/8/41) 9. Neutrality Repeal, 1941, (11/13/41) ST-DST NAME

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

IL-13

Allen, Leo

Y Y

Y Y N NN

MN-1

Andresen, August H.

Y Y

Y Y N NN

MA-6

Andrew, A. Piatt

Y – – – – – – –

NY-40

Andrews, Walter G.

Y Y

N Y Y YN

IL-13

Arends, Leslie

Y Y

Y Y N NN

NJ-2

Bacharach, Isaac

Y – – – – – – –

NY-1

Bacon, Robert L.

Y N

MI-6

Blackney, William W.

Y – – – Y N NN

N – – – –

OH-22 Bolton, Chester

GP – – – – – – –

ME-3

Brewster, Ralph

Y Y

IL-12

Buckbee, John T.

GP – – – – – – –

ND-al

Burdick, Usher

N N

Y N Y – –

Y Y N NN

CA-20 Burnham, George

Y – – – – – – –

KS-6

Carlson, Frank

Y Y

Y Y N NN

CA-6

Carter, Albert E.

Y Y

Y Y N NN

NJ-11

Cavicchia, Peter

Y – – – – – – –

MN-5

Christianson, Theodore

Y – – – – – – –

IL-10

Church, Ralph

Y Y

Y Y N – –

NY-37

Cole, W. Sterling

N N

Y N Y YY

CA-19 Collins, Samuel

Y – – – – – – –

OH-19 Cooper, John G.

Y – – – – – – –

MI-8

Crawford, Fred

GP Y

Y Y N NN

NY-30

Crowther, Frank

Y Y

Y Y N NN

NY-32

Culkin, Francis

Y Y

Y Y Y NN

PA-7

Darrow, George

Y – – – Y GP – –

IL-16

Dirksen, Everett

N N

Y Y N NN

PA-17

Ditter, William

Y Y

Y Y Y NN

MI-17

Dondero, George

Y Y

Y Y N NN

PA-19

Doutrich, Isaac

GP – – – – – – –

NJ-5

Eaton, Charles

Y Y

OR-3

Ekwall, William A.

GP – – – – – – –

MI-9

Engel, Albert

Y Y

N Y N NN

CA-2

Englebright, Harry

Y Y

N Y Y NN

PA-3

Fenerty, Clare G.

Y – – – – – – –

NY-26

Fish, Hamilton

Y NV

PA-18

Focht, Benjamin

Y Y – – – – – –

CA-9

Gearhart, Bertrand

GP Y

N Y Y NY

MA-15 Gifford, Charles L.

Y Y

N N Y YY

IA-8

Gilchrist, Fred

Y Y

Y Y N NN

NY-27

Goodwin, Philip

Y GP – – – – – –

KS-2

Geyer, U. S.

Y Y

Y Y N NN

IA-3

Gwynne, John

N Y

Y N N NN

Y N Y NY

Y Y Y NN

NY-35

Hancock, Clarence

Y Y

N Y Y YY

NJ-10

Hartley, Fred A.

Y Y

Y Y N NN

OH-2

Hess, William E.

Y – – – – – – –

CT-2

Higgins, William L.

Y – – – – – – –

MI-4

Hoffman, Clare

Y Y

OH-1

Hollister, John B.

Y – – – – – – –

MA-4

Holmes, Pehr G.

Y Y

N Y Y YN

KS-7

Hope, Clifford

Y Y

Y Y N NN

OH-10 Jenkins, Thomas A.

Y Y

Y Y N NN

CA-4

Kahn, Florence

Y – – – – – – –

MI-3

Kimball, Henry

–

PA-10

Kinzer, J. Roland

Y Y

Y Y N NN

MN-10 Knutson, Harold

Y Y

Y Y N NN

KS-1

Lambertson, William

Y Y

Y Y N NN

NJ-12

Lehlbach, Frederick

Y – – – – – – –

ND-al

Lemke, William

N Y

Y Y N – –

NY-34

Lord, Bert

Y Y

Y – – – –

NJ-6

McLean, Donald H.

Y Y

Y N Y NY

MI-13

McLeod, Clarence

Y 0

0 Y N 0 0

MN-4

Maas, Melvin

N Y

N Y Y NN

MI-5

Mapes, Melvin

Y Y

N Y – – –

NY-20

Marcantino, Vito

Y – – – y n n y

OH-7

Marshall, L. T.

GP – – – – – – –

Y Y N NN

– – – – – – –

MA-14 Martin, Joseph

Y Y

GP Y Y N N

CT-4

Merrit, Schuyler

Y – – – – – – –

MI-2

Michener, Earl

Y Y

Y Y N NN

NY-25

Millard, Charles

Y Y – – – – – –

OR-1

Mott, James

Y Y

NJ-7

Perkins, Randolph

MN-3

Pittinger, William A.

Y – – – – – – –

VT-al

Plumley, Charles

Y Y

Y N Y YY

NJ-4

Powers, D. Lane

GP Y

Y Y Y YN

PA-1

Ransley, Harry C.

Y – – – – – – –

TN-1

Reece, B. Carroll

Y Y

N Y N NN

IL-11

Reed, Chauncey

Y Y

N Y N NN

NY-43

Reed, Daniel

Y Y

Y Y N NN

PA-16

Rich, Robert

Y Y

Y Y N NN

KY-9

Robsion, John M.

N N

Y Y N NN

MA-5

Rogers, Edith N.

Y N

N Y Y NY

NJ-8

Seger, George

Y Y

Y Y 0 – –

MO-7

Short, Dewey

NV N

Y Y N NN

NY-31

Snell, Bertrand

Y Y

N – – – –

NE-3

Stefan, Karl

Y Y

Y Y N NN

DE-al

Stewart, J. George

N – – – – – – –

NY-36

Taber, John

Y GP

N Y N NY

TN-2

Taylor, J. Will

Y Y

Y N – – –

NY-29

Thomas, William D.

Y – – – – – – –

IA-5

Thurston, Lloyd

Y Y

Y – – – –

MA-10 Tinkham, G. Holden

Y N

N Y N NN

NH-2

Tobey, Charles

Y Y

Y – – – –

MA-1

Treadway, Allen T.

Y Y

Y Y Y NN

PA-12

Turpin, C. Murray

Y – – – – – – –

Y Y Y NN

NV – – – – – – –

NY-39

Wadsworth, James

NV N

N N Y YY

CA-5

Welch, Richard J.

Y Y

Y Y N NN

MA-13 Wigglesworth, Richard

Y Y

N Y Y NN

PA-2

Wilson, William H.

Y – – – – – – –

MI-2

Wolcott, Jessie

Y Y

N Y N NN

PA-8

Wolfenden, James

Y Y

Y Y N NN

NJ-1

Wolverton, Charles

Y Y

Y Y N YN

MI-10

Woodruff, Roy D.

Y Y

Y Y N NN

IN-2

Halleck, Charles A.

Y Y

Y Y N NN

MI-3

Main, Verner

N – – – – – – –

RI-1

Risk, Charles F.

N – –

–

Y GP –

MA-6

Bates, George

– – Y

Y Y Y Y Y

SD-2

Case, Francis

– – Y

Y Y N N N

MA-2

Clason, Charles

– – Y

Y Y Y N N

NY-29

Cluett, H. Harold

– – Y

Y N Y Y Y

NY-33

Douglas, Fred

– – Y

Y Y N Y Y

IA-6

Dowell, Cassius C.

– – Y

Y Y 0

PA-20

Jarrett, Benjamin

– – Y

Y Y N N N

MA-9

Luce, Robert

– – Y

N Y Y –

IL-12

Mason, Noah

– – N

N N N N N

ME-1

Oliver, James

– – Y

Y Y N N N

KS-4

Rees, Edward D.

– – Y

Y Y N N N

PA-15

Rutherford, Albert

– – Y

Y Y Y N

MI-3

Shafer, Paul W.

– – Y

Y Y N Y N

ME-2

Smith, Clyde

– – Y

GP Y Y –

–

NJ-7

Thomas, Parnell

– – Y

Y Y Y –

–

OH-13

White, Dudley

– – Y

Y Y Y Y 0

NY-17

Barton, Bruce

– – – –

Y Y Y –

NY-25

Gamble, Ralph

– – – – N N Y Y Y

NH-1

Jenks, Arthur

– – – – NV Y Y N N

NY-27

Rockefeller, Lewis

– – – –

Y Y N N N

PA-18

Simpson, Richard

– – – –

Y Y Y N N

MN-3

Alexander, John G.

– – – –

–

Y N –

MN-7

Andersen, Carl

– – – –

–

Y N N N

CA-13

Anderson, John Z.

– – – –

–

N Y N GP

OR-3

Angell, Homer D.

– – – –

–

Y N N N

–

–

–

–

0

–

–

CT-4

Austin, Albert E.

– – – –

–

Y Y –

–

CT-2

Ball, Thomas R.

– – – –

–

N Y –

–

OH-al

Bender, George

– – – –

–

Y N N N

WI-9

Bolles, Stephen

– – – –

–

Y N N

MI-11

Bradley, Fred

– – – –

–

Y N N N

OH-7

Brown, Clarence

– – – –

–

Y N N N

IL-15

Chiperfield, Robert

– – – –

–

Y N N N

OH-5

Clevenger, Cliff

– – – –

–

Y N N N

PA-30

Corbett, Robert

– – – –

–

Y N –

NE-4

Curtis, Carl T.

– – – –

–

Y N N N

ID-2

Dworshak, Henry

– – – –

–

Y N N N

OH-1

Elston, Charles H.

– – – –

–

Y N N N

PA-13

Fenton, Ivor

– – – –

–

Y Y N N

CA-16

Ford, Leland

– – – –

–

N Y Y Y

PA-5

Gartner, Fred

– – – –

–

Y N –

PA-9

Gerlach, Charles

– – – –

–

Y Y N N

IN-4

Gillie, George W.

– – – –

–

Y N N N

PA-26

Graham, Louis

– – – –

–

Y N N N

IN-3

Grant, Robert

– – – –

–

Y N N N

PA-22

Gross, Chester

– – – –

–

Y N –

NY-34

Hall, Edwin A.

– – – –

–

–

NY-1

Hall, Leonard W.

– – – –

–

Y Y Y N

IN-5

Harness, Forest

– – – –

–

Y N N N

NY-41

Harter, J. Francis

– – – –

–

Y Y –

–

WI-2

Hawks, Charles

– – – –

–

Y N –

–

NE-1

Heinke, George

– – – –

–

Y 0

–

0

–

–

–

Y N N

–

CA-11

Hinshaw, Carl

– – – –

–

N N N N

WY-al

Horton, Frank

– – – –

–

Y Y –

–

NJ-2

Jeffries, Walter

– – – –

–

Y N –

–

IA-7

Jensen, Ben F.

– – – –

–

Y N N N

WI-8

Johns, Joshua

– – – –

–

Y N N N

IL-14

Johnson, Anton J.

– – – –

–

Y N N N

IN-6

Johnson, Noble

– – – –

–

Y N N N

OH-4

Jones, Robert

– – – –

–

Y N N N

NJ-12

Kean, Robert W.

– – – –

–

N Y N N

WI-6

Keefe, Frank

– – – –

–

Y N N N

PA-19

Kunkel, John C.

– – – –

–

Y N Y N

IN-7

Ladis, Gerald

– – – –

–

Y N N N

IA-5

Le Compte, Karl

– – – –

–

Y N N Y

OH-18

Lewis, Earl

– – – –

–

Y N –

–

PA-13

McDowell, John

– – – –

–

Y N –

–

OH-al

Marshall, L. L.

– – – –

–

Y N –

–

IA-1

Martin, Thomas E.

– – – –

–

Y N N N

CT-1

Miller, William

– – – –

–

Y N –

–

CT-al

Monkiewcz, B. J.

– – – –

–

N Y –

–

SD-1

Mundt, Karl

– – – –

–

Y N N N

WI-1

Murray, Reid

– – – –

–

Y N N N

NY-38

O’Brien, Joseph

– – – –

–

Y Y Y N

NJ-9

Osmers, Frank

– – – –

–

Y Y N N

OR-2

Pierce, Wallace

– – – –

–

N Y –

PA-29

Rodgers, Robert

– – – –

–

Y N N N

OH-3

Routzohn, Harry

– – – –

–

Y N –

–

–

RI-2

Sandager, Harry

– – – –

–

Y Y –

–

WI-4

Schafer, John C.

– – – –

–

Y N –

–

WV-1

Schiffler, Andrew

– – – –

–

Y N –

–

OH-16

Seccombe, James

– – – –

–

Y N –

–

OH-8

Smith, Frederick

– – – –

–

Y N N N

IN-10

Springer, Raymond

– – – –

–

Y N N N

NH-2

Stearns, Foster

– – – –

–

N Y Y Y

IL-18

Sumner, Jessie

– – – –

–

Y N N N

IA-4

Talle, H. O.

– – – –

–

Y N N N

WI-5

Thill, Lewsis D.

– – – –

–

Y N N N

MT-1

Thorkelson, J.

– – – –

–

Y GP –

PA-27

Tibbot, Harve

– – – –

–

Y N N N

PA-23

Van Zandt, James

– – – –

–

Y N N N

OH-12

Vorys, John M.

– – – –

–

Y N N N

NJ-11

Vreeland, Albert

– – – –

–

N Y N Y

IL-19

Wheat, William

– – – –

–

Y N N N

DE-al

Williams, George

– – – –

–

Y N –

KS-3

Winter, Thomas

– – – –

–

Y N N N

MN-10

Youngdahl, Oscar

– – – –

–

Y N N N

NY-17

Baldwin, Joseph Clark

– – – –

–

–

–

OH-13

Baumhart, A. B. Jr.

– – – –

–

–

– N N

MO-6

Bennett, Philip A.

– – – –

–

–

– N N

IL-25

Bishop, C. W.

– – – –

–

–

– N N

OH-22

Bolton, Frances P.

– – – –

–

–

– N N

NY-42

Butler, John C.

– – – –

–

–

–

NJ-8

Canfield, Gordon

– – – –

–

–

– N N

0

–

–

Y

0 N

CO-3

Chenoweth, J. Edgar

– – – –

–

–

– N N

NE-1

Copeland, Oren S.

– – – –

–

–

– N N

IA-6

Cunningham, Paul

– – – –

–

–

–

IL-al

Day, Stephen

– – – –

–

–

– N N

IL-9

Dewey, Charles S.

– – – –

–

–

– N N

ME-3

Fellows, Frank

– – – –

–

–

– N N

MN-3

Gale, Richard

– – – –

–

–

– N N

IL-24

Heidinger, James V.

– – – –

–

–

– N N

CO-2

Hill, William S.

– – – –

–

–

– N N

IL-21

Howell, Evan

– – – –

–

–

– N N

TN-2

Jennings, John Jr.

– – – –

–

–

– N N

CA-18

Johnson, Ward

– – – –

–

–

–

MI-5

Jonkman, Bartel

– – – –

–

–

– N N

NY-31

Kilburn, Clarence

– – – –

–

–

–

OH-17

McGregor, J. Harry

– – – –

–

–

– N N

MN-2

O’Hara, Joseph P.

– – – –

–

–

– N N

IL-10

Paddock, George

– – – –

–

–

– N N

NY-16

Pheiffer, William

– – – –

–

–

– N N

MO-12

Ploeser, Walter

– – – –

–

–

– N N

MT-1

Rankin, Jeanette

– – – –

–

–

– N N

OK-8

Rizley, Ross

– – – –

–

–

– N N

ND-al

Robertson, Charles

– – – –

–

–

– N N

CA-4

Rolph, Thomas

– – – –

–

–

– N N

PA-7

Scott, Hugh

– – – –

–

–

– N N

ME-2

Smith, Margaret C.

– – – –

–

–

–

WI-3

Stevenson, William

– – – –

–

–

– N N

Y Y

Y N

Y Y

Y Y

IL-al

Stratton, William

– – – –

–

–

– N N

IN-9

Wilson, Earl

– – – –

–

–

– N N

al=at large NV=not voting GP=paired voting y/n=no longer voting as a Republican 0=absent

Appendix B

Biographical Sketches SENATORS Austin, Warren R. (VT) b. Highgate, VT, 11/12/1877, University of Vermont, 1899, studied law with C. G. Austin, 1899–1902, m. 1901, two sons, admit to bar, 1902, state’s attorney for Franklin County, 1904–06, mayor St. Albans, 1909, trustee University of Vermont, 1914, president Vermont Bar Association, 1923, appointed to U.S. Senate, March 1931, reelected 1934, 1940, home in Burlington, VT. Ball, Joseph H. (MN) b. Crookston, MN, 11/3/1905, Antioch College, 1922–24, Eau Claire Normal, U. of MN, BA, 1926, newspaper reporter, 1927–34, political editor, 1934–40, appt. to U.S. Senate, Oct. 1940. Barbour, W. Warren (NJ) b. Monmouth, NJ, 7/31/1888, m. 1921, three children, appt. to U.S. Senate, Nov. 1931, defeated 1934, elected in 1936, Presbyn, home in Locust, NJ. Bridges, H. Styles (NH) b. West Pembroke, ME, 9/9/1898, U. of ME, BA, 1918, gov. agricult. agent, 1922-24, Sec. NH Farm Bureau, 1922–24, m. 1928, three children, member of St. Public Service Comm. 1930–35, gov. of NH, 1935-37, elected to U.S. Senate, 1936, home in Concord. Gibson, Ernest Willard (VT) b. Londonderry, VT, 12/29/1871, BS, Norwich U., 1894, AM, 1896, studied law at U. of MI, 1898– 99, m. 1896, four children, Prin. Chester HS, 1894–98, VT Hs. of Rep., 1906, VT Senate, 1908, state’s atty., 1919–21, member U.S. House of Rep., 1923–33, appt. U.S. Senate, 1933, elected in 1934, reelected in 1938, Episc., home in Brattleboro. Gibson, Ernest William (VT) b. Brattleboro, VT, 3/6/1901, Norwich U., 1923, faculty NY Military Acad., 1923–24, GWU Law School, admit. to bar, 1926, ass’t. sec. VT Senate, 1929–33, sec., 1933–40, appt. U.S. Senate June, 1940, did not seek reelection. Gurney, John Chandler (SD) b. Yankton, SD, 5/21/1896, Yankton H.S., 1914, m. 1917, sergt. WWI, three children, sec. & tres. of Gurney Seed Co., 1918–1933, pres. Gurney Oil Co. 1933-35, elected to U.S. Senate in 1938, home in Yankton, SD. Hale, Frederick (ME) b. Detroit, MI, 10/7/1874, Harvard, BA, 1896, Columbia Law, 1898, LLD, Bowdoin, 1931, unmarried, ME Hs. of Rep., 1904, member Repl. Nat. Comm., 1912–18, elected to U.S. Senate 1916–41, Conglist., home in Portland, ME. White, Wallace Humphrey, Jr. (ME) b. Lewiston, ME, 8/6/1877, Bowdoin College, BA, 1899, Columbia Law, m. 1917, sec. to Sen. Wm. P. Frye, admit. to bar, 1902, member U.S. House, 1917–31, elected to U.S. Senate in 1930, reelected in 1936, Conglist., home in Auburn.

REPRESENTATIVES Baldwin, Joseph (NY) b. NYC, 1/11/97, St. Paul’s School, Concord, NH, grad. 1916, Harvard, BA 1920, 39th infantry, 1917, newspaper reporter, 1922–30, NYC alderman, 1929–34, NY St. Senate, 1934–36, NYC city council, 1937–41, elected to House, 1940. Bates, George Joseph (MA) b. Salem, MA, 2/25/1891, m. 1911, nine children, mem. MA legislature, 1918–24, mayor of Salem, 1924–37, elected to House in 1936, reelected in 1938, 1940, home in Salem Cluett, Ernest Harold (NY) b. Troy, NY, 6/6/1874, grad Albany Acad., 1892, Williams, BA, 1896, studied at Oxford, m. 1899, tres. Cluett, Peabody, & Co., 1900-1916, VP, 1916–29, chrmn. bd., 1929–37, YMCA mission to Fr., 1918, U.S. Senate cand., 1934, elected to House, 1936, reelected 1938, 1940, home in Troy. Cole, W. Sterling (NY) b. Painted Post, NY, 4/18/1904, Colgate U., BA 1925, LLB Albany Law School, 1929, m. 1929, three sons, teacher public school, 1925–26, Cole & Cole law firm, 1930, elected to House, 1934, reelected in 1936, 1938, 1940, Presbyn., home in Bath. Cunningham, Paul (IA) b. Indian City, PA, 6/15/1890, St. Teachers College, BA 1911, U. of MI Law, 1915, practiced law in Grand Rapids, Lieut. infantry, 1917–19, moved to Des Moines, 1919, IA St. Hs. of Rep., 1933–37, elected to House in 1940, home in Des Moines. Douglas, Fred James, M.D. (NY) b. Clinton, MA, 9/14/1869, M.D., Dartmouth, 1895, intern Faxton Hosp., Utica, 1895–97, m.

1897, three children, Bd. of Ed., Utica, 1910–1920, mayor, Utica, 1922–23, Surgical staff mem., 1923, elected to House in 1936, reelected in 1938, 1940, home in Utica. Eaton, Charles Aubrey, (NJ) b. Nova Scotia, Canada, 3/29/1868, Acadia U., BA, 1890, Newton Theol. Inst., MA, MA, 1893, McMaster U., Toronto, MA, 1896, m. 1895, six children, pastor, First Church, Natick, MA, 1893-95, Bloor St. Church, Toronto, 1895–1901, Euclid Ave. Ch., Cleveland, 1901–09, Madison Ave. Ch., NYC, 1909–19, wrote for Toronto Globe, N.Y. Tribune, ed. Leslie’s Weekly, 1919–20, indust. rel. dir., Gen. Elec. Co., 1919–25, mem. House, 1925–33 from NJ 4th, 1933–45 from NJ 5th, home in Watchung, NJ. Ford, Leland Merrit (CA) b. Eureka, NV, 3/8/1893, grad. Berkeley, CA HS, 1910, m. 1914, two children, surveyor, S. Pac. RR, 1910–14, Union Pac. RR, 1914–16, rancher, Leesburg, VA, 1916–19, real estate broker, Santa Monica, CA, 1919–38, Santa Mon. dist pres., 1923, L.A. city dist. sup., elected to House in 1938, reelected in 1940, Episc., home in Santa Monica. Gamble, Ralph Abernethy (NY) b. Yankton, SD, 1885, Princeton, BA, 1909, GWU Law, 1909–11, LLB, Columbia, 1912, m. 1911, adm. to NY bar, 1913, town council, Mamaroneck, 1918–34, Larchmont, 1926–28, NY St. Assem., 1931–37, elected to House 1936, reelected in 1938, 1940, home in Larchmont. Gearhart, Bertrand Wesley (CA) b. Fresno, CA, 12/25/1880, LL B, USC, 1914, unmarried, adm. to CA bar, 1913, mem. Lindsay & Gearhart, 1914–17 & 1923–34, 2nd Lt. Air Service, WWI, dist. atty., Fresno Cty., 1917–23, dir. CA Vets. Home, 1932, elected to House 1934, reelected in 1936, 1938, 1940, home in Fresno. Gifford, Charles L. (MA) b. Cotuit, MA, 3/15/1871, pub. sch. ed., m. 1892, HS teacher, real estate, 1900, mem. Gen Court, MA, 1912–13, MA Senate, 1914–19, mem. of House, 1921–33 from 15th dist. & 1933–42, Conglist., home in Barnstable, MA. Hancock, Clarence Eugene (NY) b. Syracuse, NY, 2/13/1885, Wesleyan U., 1906, LLB, NY Law School, 1908, adm. to NY bar, 1908, m. 1912, one son, mem. Hancock, Hogan & Hancock, Syracuse, 1911–16, Hancock, Dorr, Kingsley & Shove, 1919, with NY Cavalry at Mex. border, 1916, mach. gun capt. in WWI, corp. couns. for Syracuse, 1926–7, elected to House in 1926, reelected through 1942, Presbyn., home in Syracuse. Kilburn, Clarence E. (NY) b. Malone, NY, 4/13/1893, Cornell U., BA 1916, capt. infantry, 1917–18, pres. Peoples Trust Bank, 1930, appt. to House, Feb 1940, reelected 1940. Le Compte, Karl (IA) b. Corydon, IA, 5/25/1887, U. of IA, BA 1909, publ. Corydon Times-Republican, 1910, WWI hosp. serv., IA St. Senate, 1917–21, elected to House in 1938, reelected inn 1940, home in Corydon. McLean, Donald H. (NJ) b. Paterson, NJ, 3/18/1884, U.S. Senate page, 1897–1902, pvt. sec. to Sen. John Kean of NJ, 1902– 11, LLB, GWU Law, 1906, m. 1909, one son, adm. to NJ bar, 1909, mem. Whittemore & McLean, elected to House in 1932, reelected in 1934, 1936, 1938, 1940, Episc., home in Hillside, NJ. Plumley, Charles Albert (VT) b. Northfield, VT, 4/14/1875, Norwich U., BA, 1896, MA, 1899, m. 1900, three children, asst. sec. VT Senate, 1894, Prin. Northfield HS, 1896–1900, adm. to VT bar, 1903, mem. firm of Plumley & Plumley, 1903–17, clerk of VT Hs., 1908–10, mem. & spk. of VT HS. 1912–15, pres. Norwich, 1920–34, elected to House in 1934, reelected in 1936, 1938, 1940, Meth., home in Northfield, VT. Rogers, Edith Nourse (MA) b. Saco, ME, 1881, pub, sch., Lowell, MA, attended Mme. Julien’s Sch., Paris, FR, m. 1907, Red Cross worker in FR, 1917, at Walter Reed Hosp., 1918–22, elected to succeed her husband in 1925, reelected to 1960, Episc., home in Lowell. Smith, Margaret Chase, (ME) b. Skowhagen, ME, 12/14/97, pub. HS, grad. 1916, school teach., 1916–17, woolen & newspaper businesses, 1917–30, sec. to congressman-husband, 1937–40, succeeded him in office, 1940, reelected in 1940, home in Skowhagen. Stearns, Foster (NH) b. Hull, MA, 7/29/1881, Amherst, BA, 1903, Harvard, MA, 1906, m. 1905, Librarian Mus. Fine Arts, Boston, 1913–17, MA St. Lib., 1917, 1st Lt. infantry, WWI, 1917–19, Dept. of St., 1920–24, Lib. at Holy Cross, 1925–30, mem. NH House, 1937–38, elected to House 1938, reelected 1940, Cath., home in Hancock, NH. Taber, John (NY) b. Auburn, NY, 5/5/1880, Yale, BA, 1902, NY Law Sch., 1903, pres. Whitney Pt. Water Co. & Auburn Trust, m. 1929, elected to House in 1923, reelected through 1955, Episc., home in Auburn. Vreeland, Albert Lincoln (NJ) b. East Orange, NJ, 7/2/1901, ambulance corps, 1918, NY Elec. Sch., 1918, LLB, NJ Law Sch., 1925, m. 1923, two children, adm. to NJ bar, 1927, asst. city counsel, E. Orange, 1931–34, judge, Recorders Ct., 1934–38, elected to House in 1938, reelected in 1940, Baptist, home in E. Orange. Wadsworth, James Wolcott (NY) b. Geneseo, NY, 8/12/1877, Yale, BA, 1898, served in Span-Am War, 1898–99, m. 1902, three children, livestock and farming, Geneseo, 1899, ranch mgr., Paloduro, TX, 1911–15, mem. NY Ass., 1905–10, (speaker, 1906– 10), U.S. Senator, 1915–27, elected to House in 1932, reelected through the war, Episc., home in Geneseo.

Bibliography PRIMARY SOURCES Unpublished Sources Library of Congress, Washington DC, Manuscript Division: Wadsworth Family Papers Wallace Humphrey White Jr. Papers

Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library, Hyde Park, New York: Franklin D. Roosevelt Papers

Bailey-Howe Library, University of Vermont, Burlington, Vermont: George David Aiken Papers Warren Robinson Austin Papers Ernest Willard Gibson Papers Ernest William Gibson Jr. Papers

Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul, Minnesota: Joseph Hurst Ball Papers

New Jersey Historical Society, Newark, New Jersey: William Warren Barbour Papers

New Hampshire State Archives, Concord, New Hampshire: Henry Styles Bridges Papers

George Arendt Library, Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York: Frederick Hale Papers Dorothy Thompson Papers

Cornell University Library, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York: William Sterling Cole Papers John Taber Papers

University of Iowa Libraries, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa: Paul Harvey Cunningham Papers Karl Miles Le Compte Papers

Vermont Historical Society, Montpelier, Vermont: Charles Albert Plumley Papers

Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe College, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Edith Nourse Rogers Papers

Margaret Chase Smith Library, Skowhagen, Maine: Margaret Chase Smith Papers

New Hampshire Historical Society, Concord, New Hampshire: Foster Waterman Stearns Papers

Holy Cross Library, The College of Holy Cross, Worcester, Massachusetts: Frank Waterman Stearns Papers

Newark Public Library, Newark, New Jersey: Albert Lincoln Vreeland Papers

Divinity Library, Yale Divinity School, New Haven, Connecticut: Waldo Heinrichs Sr. Papers

Official Documents and Publications Congressional Record, 1935–1941. Guide to Research Collections of Former Members of the United States House of Representatives, 1789–1982. United States House of Representatives. Guide to Research Collections of Former United States Senators, 1789–1982. United States Senate. U.S. Congress, House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs Papers. National Archives, Washington DC. U.S. Congress, Senate Committee on Foreign Relations Papers. National Archives, Washington DC.

Memoirs and Other Private Papers Joseph Hurst Ball, Oral History Project, Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul, Minnesota. Interview with Professor Samuel Hand, University of Vermont, Burlington, Vermont, August 17, 1992. Karl E. Mundt, Oral History Project, Dakota State College, Madison, South Dakota. Interview with the Honorable Margaret Chase Smith, Skowhagen, Maine, August 8, 1992. James Wolcott Wadsworth Jr., Oral History Project, Columbia University, New York, New York.

Newspapers and Journals Baltimore Sun Bangor Daily News Bath Times Boston Globe

Boston Herald Brattleboro Daily Reformer Burlington Daily News Burlington Free Press Christian Science Monitor Courier Citizen D.C. Times Herald East Orange Record Evening Leader Fort Devens Citizen Geneva Times Globe Gazette Green Mountain Citizen Keene Sentinel Lewiston Journal Manchester Union Montpelier Evening Argus Newark Ledger Newport Daily Express New York Herald Tribune New York Times Portland Evening News Portland Press Herald Reading Chronicle Rockland Courier Gazette Rutland Herald St. Albans Messenger Springfield, Massachusetts, Republican Tampa Sunday Tribune The Sun Utica Observer Dispatch Washington Daily News Weekly Kennebec Journal Woburn Times

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About the Author Robert E. Jenner was raised in the heartland of Republicanism. His hometown of Wheaton, Illinois, is the county seat of traditionally Republican DuPage County, located forty miles west of Chicago. The town is also the home of Wheaton College, the highly regarded evangelical institution where Billy Graham received his divinity degree. The author received his BA in international studies from American University in Washington D.C. He attended the University of Chicago, where he received an MA in international relations and completed the requirements for a PhD in diplomatic history at the University of Maryland at College Park. The author’s professional endeavors have included college teaching, research, documentary filmmaking, and television production, and he has written on the subjects of decolonization in Zimbabwe and the foreign policy of Grover Cleveland.