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William Edgar Borah and the Republican Civil War 1930

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William Edgar Borah and the Republican Civil War 1930 REORGANIZE OR PERISH: WILLIAM EDGAR BORAH AND THE REPUBLICAN CIVIL WAR 1930‐‐‐1936 BY PAUL MICHAEL WARDEN A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS IN HISTORY WASHINGTON STATE UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY MAY 2011 To the Faculty of Washington State University: The members of the Committee appointed to examine the thesis of PAUL MICHAEL WARDEN find it satisfactory and recommend that it be accepted. ______________________________________________ Matthew Avery Sutton, Ph.D., Chair ______________________________________________ Robert Bauman, Ph.D. ______________________________________________ Peter Boag, Ph.D. ii REORGANIZE OR PERISH: WILLIAM EDGAR BORAH AND THE REPUBLICAN CIVIL WAR 1930-1936 Abstract By Paul Michael WardEn, M.A. Washington State UnivErsity May 2011 Chair: Matthew Avery Sutton In the aftermath of the electoral humiliation of 1932, the Republican Party faced a crossroads on two fronts. ThE first of thEsE was thE prEssurE placed on thE party by its, largely western, leftwing to liberalize and embrace reform in order to wrest the White House from Franklin Delano Roosevelt. WhEn thE Old Guard rEfusEd to accEdE to the demands of its West wing, a Republican civil war commenced: further dividing the party in its darkest hour. The second impasse was in regard to thE Republican Party’s southern strategy. The party faced increasing pressure to capitulate to white southerners on issues of states’ rights and anti-lynching legislation: a move that would cost them the legacy of Lincoln and African American voters. At the center of both controvErsiEs was Idaho senator William Edgar Borah, whose presidential ambitions in 1936 forced these issues out of the smoke-filled rooms and into the public sphere. Borah not only led the campaign to reorganize the party along western lines, he also ultimately forced the GOP to adopt a national policy with regards to anti-lynching legislation: forcing them to choose between the coveted white South or their traditional African American voting base. I argue that the Republican civil war had a profound iii effect on the future of the Republican Party and, consequently, the development of modern American conservatism. iv TablE of ContEnts I. PrEfacE 1 II. Chapter I – ThE 1930s: DEfining Borah and ConsErvatism 3 III. Chapter II – The REpublican Civil War 1930-1936 15 IV. Chapter III – ThE TEn Dollar Campaign 38 V. Epilogue 67 v PREFACE On March 22, 1936, William Edgar Borah emerged from behind the curtain of Chicago’s Civic Opera House to a stirring round of applause. He had arrived in the state by bus late the previous evening. Ragged from his arduous travel schedule and dElayed by extreme weather, the senator’s advanced age exacerbated the toll of the campaign on his constitution. Shortly before the doors opened, Borah’s associates draped an American flag over the podium as Borah poured over his notes one last time. The senator waited patiently behind the heavy brown curtain as the audience found their respective seats. With little sleep and a slew of achEs and pains, Borah was in no shape to dElivEr a speEch. Yet after a succession of determined steps towards the star- spangled podium, he did just that. Borah began his address with an account of the Republican Party’s electoral humiliation of 1932. In the even-toned voicE of a master orator, Borah questioned his audience, rhetorically, as to thE whErEabouts of thE ten million registered Republicans who had abandoned thE party for the last four years. According to Borah, the party had to reestablish its connection with the Constitution and thE people for whom it was written. He warned the audience that if the men who led thE party in 1932 werE still “sitting in thE front row of thE ClevEland convEntion,” dominating the platform and choosing the candidate in 1936, those “ten million will never come back and… millions [more] will go with them.”1 1 Arthur Evans, “Borah LashEs NEw DEal and Old Guard HErE: OpEns Campaign for Primary VotEs,” Chicago Daily Tribune, March 22, 1936; “IssuEs bEforE thE PEoplE” Vital SpeEchEs of thE Day (date obscurEd in documEnt ca. March 1936). 1 In his thirty-thrEE years as a Republican senator from Idaho, Borah earned a reputation for being a maverick. Though he had dedicated a fair amount of his criticism towards Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his New Deal that evening, Borah’s dErision of his own party left an indelible mark on his audience. DespitE thE fact that only one thousand people had turned out to hear the “Lion of Idaho,” NBC broadcast thE speEch nationally, while several regional newspapers and journals such as Vital Speeches of the Day printed the speech in its entirety. Needless to say, it left quite an impression. One month later, Borah received nearly half of the state’s nine hundred thousand votes in a primary that pitted him against Illinois’ “favorite-son” and future Republican vice presidential nominee, Frank Knox. After years of poor health, many had wondered if the seventy-year-old Idahoan had the wherewithal to finish his Senate term. Yet, on a shoestring budget and in a campaign propelled by grassroots organization, the elder statesman had become relevant once again. The events that unfolded in the handful of years prior to the presidential Election of 1936 were the culmination of a career often overlooked and just as often misunderstood.2 2 Arthur Evans, “Borah LashEs NEw DEal and Old Guard HErE: OpEns Campaign for Primary VotEs” The Chicago Daily Tribune, March 22, 1936; “IssuEs bEforE thE PEoplE” Vital SpeachEs of the Day (datE obscurEd in documEnt ca. March 1936). 2 CHAPTER I THE 1930s: DEFINING CONSERVATISM AND BORAH The 1930s was an extremely tumultuous decade for a number of reasons. It is axiomatic that the crisis of the Great Depression shook the very pillars of American society and, as a result, even the most fundamental institutions were being transformed. Beyond the obvious, other more subtle shifts were occurring. In this thesis I argue that thE Republican civil war, waged between two factions—thE “Old Guard” and thE “sons of the wild jackass”—had a profound effect on the future of the Republican Party and, consequently, the development of modern American conservatism. At the center of this civil war liEs William Edgar Borah’s attempt to reorganize the party from 1930-1936. Reexamining Borah’s career from 1930 to 1936 reveals deep conflicts within thE Republican Party during the Great Depression: more specifically, conflicts between libertarians and corporatists, Young Republican leagues and the “Old Guard,” as well as farmers and manufacturers. Underlying each of these conflicts, to some extent, was a battle for control of the Republican Party between Eastern and Western factions. Among those politicians in the West, none utilized the media and grassroots organization to the extent that Borah did. The most influential venues for activism among the rank and file were farmers’ organizations like the National Grange and informal political organizations such as the Young Republican leagues. Throughout this period, Borah used thEsE grassroots organiZations to wage a civil war against thE Old- Guard power-basE in the East. The outcome of this war produced neither victor nor 3 vanquished. Conventional historiography tells us that Alfred Landon won the Republican nomination and went on to be squarely defeated by Franklin Delano Roosevelt by one of the largest margins in American history. What scholars have overlooked is that Borah’s prEdiction proved accurate; the Republican Party had to “reorganize or perish.” As a result of Landon’s defeat, Republicans realized that in ordEr to dEfEat thE NEw DEal coalition, thEy neEded to build a new coalition of thEir own. This is not to say that the Old Guard would agree to a redistribution of power. They ultimately reorganized the party on their own terms and salvaged as much of their power and influence as possible. To do it, they needed to outmaneuver the Idahoan and his fellow sons of the wild jackass in order to thwart their hostile takeover of the party. The Old Guard was forced to compromise, expand southward, heed the westernization of the party and embrace coalitions that it had previously refused. It is the fruit of these early compromises and coalitions that garnerEd thE Republican Party thE broad-basEd support that allowed it to rEbound in thE dEcadEs after World War II. As a result of this endeavor for new broad-basEd Republican coalitions, African Americans, once the GOP’s most dependable voting demographic, were alienated. Borah’s campaign for the Republican presidential nomination inadvertently accelerated tensions between the Republican Party and African Americans, creating a legacy that haunts the party to this day. African Americans had begun abandoning thE Republican Party in earnest by 1934, but it was Borah’s stand on fEdEral anti-lynching legislation and thE states’ rights idEology he drew on that issued the most decisive blow. Cornered by the Idahoan’s insistence on a uniform national policy of states’ rights that was 4 directly challenged by the NAACP, Republican Party leadErs werE forced to make a choice between holding on to a small and once loyal, but now faltering voting base of African Americans or attempt to make inroads into the South in search of larger returns. With Borah forcing the issue by actively campaigning for support among southern whites, the Republican Party did what it determined was in its best interests; it abandoned African Americans. As a result, the legacy of Lincoln was no more. The conflict among Republican Party factions and the tensions between the party and the African American population werE not completely resolved in 1936. New broad-basEd consErvativE coalitions across thE South and West werE not formed in any substantial manner until the 1960s.
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