Charles McNary
| Charles Linza McNary | |
 | |
| In office March 4, 1933 – February 25, 1944 | |
| Preceded by | Joseph T. Robinson |
|---|---|
| Succeeded by | Wallace H. White, Jr. |
Chairman of the
Senate Republican Conference | |
| In office March 4, 1933 – February 25, 1944 | |
| Preceded by | Charles Curtis |
| Succeeded by | Wallace H. White, Jr. |
Chairman of the Senate
Agriculture Committee | |
| In office August 1926 – March 4, 1933 | |
| Preceded by | George W. Norris |
| Succeeded by | Ellison D. Smith |
| In office December 18, 1918 – February 25, 1944 | |
| Preceded by | Frederick W. Mulkey |
| Succeeded by | Guy Cordon |
| In office May 29, 1917 – November 5, 1918 | |
| Preceded by | Harry Lane |
| Succeeded by | Frederick W. Mulkey |
| Born | June 12, 1874} Salem, Oregon |
| Died | February 25, 1944 (aged 69) Fort Lauderdale, Florida |
| Resting place | Belcrest Memorial Cemetery in Salem |
| Political party | Republican |
| Spouse(s) | Jessie Breyman McNary (married 1902–1918, her death) Cornelia Woodburn Morton McNary |
| Children | One adopted daughter from second marriage |
| Alma mater | Stanford University |
| Occupation | Attorney |
| Religion | Baptist[1] |
Charles Linza McNary (June 12, 1874 – February 25, 1944) was a Republican United States Senator for his native Oregon. In office for twenty-seven years, he was his party's vice-presidential nominee in 1940, the political "insider" on the ticket headed by "outsider" businessman Wendell Willkie, a former Democrat from Indiana and New York. Willkie and McNary were defeated by the third-term election of Franklin D. Roosevelt, with Henry Agard Wallace in the second slot opposite McNary. Had Willkie and McNary unseated the Democrats, they likely would not have completed the terms ending in March 1945, because both men died in 1944, McNary on February 25 and Willkie seven months later on October 8. Oddly, the GOP ticket was at odds with itself regarding the Tennessee Valley Authority, which Willkie opposed and proposed to dismantle, and McNary was one of the leading Republican voices for the still-existing TVA. McNary won the vice-presidential nomination over then U.S. Representative Dewey Short of Missouri.
McNary was Senate Minority Leader from 1933 to 1944. He worked for the passage of legislation to construct Bonneville Dam on the Columbia River, and was particularly involved with agricultural and forestry issues. Like Willkie, a Moderate Republican, McNary supported many of the New Deal programs at the beginning of the Great Depression. He was the longest-serving senator from Oregon until Moderate Republican Mark O. Hatfield surpassed his years of service, holding the seat from 1967 to 1997.
From 1913 to 1915, McNary was a justice of the Oregon Supreme Court; from 1908 to 1913, he was the dean of Willamette University College of Law in his hometown of Salem, the Oregon state capital. Prior to 1908, he was a deputy district attorney under his brother, John Hugh McNary (1867–1936), later a federal judge in Oregon.
Contents
Background
McNary was the ninth of ten children born on a family farm north of Salem to Hugh Linza McNary and the former Mary Margaret Claggett. Hugh McNary taught school for a few years before devoting full-time endeavors to the farm. His mother died in 1878, when Charles was four years of age, and his father moved to Salem to operate a general merchandise story, to the detriment of the needs of the farm.[2]
Charles, nicknamed "Tot," began his education at a one-room school in Keizer and later attended Central School in Salem. Hugh McNary died in 1883, making Charlie an orphan at the age of nine.[3] His sister Nina McNary became the head of the household, while other siblings took jobs in order to provide for the family.[4] As a boy, Charles worked in newspaper delivery, in an orchard, and other tasks of farming.[4] He met Herbert Hoover, a future U.S. president, who moved to Salem in 1888.[4] He later worked in the county recorder's office while his brother John held that position in 1890. He attended Capital Business College and then enrolled in college preparatory classes at Willamette University, with an eye towards attending Stanford University, Herbert Hoover's alma mater.[4] During this time he met Jessie Breyman, who became his first wife.[4]
Legal career
In the autumn of 1896, McNary moved to Palo Alto, California, to attend Stanford and worked as a waiter to pay his expenses. At the request of his family, he left Stanford after only a year of study and returned to Oregon in 1897.[5] Back in Salem, he read law under his brother John and was admitted to the bar in 1898. Charles and John practiced law together in Salem as McNary & McNary, while John was the deputy district attorney for Marion County. At this time, Charles bought the old family farm and returned it to the family.[6]
Political career
During the 1922 gubernatorial race, incumbent GOP governor Benjamin W. Olcott, a staunch opponent of the Oregon Ku Klux Klan, faced opposition in the primary from Charles Hall (backed by pro-KKK RINO House Speaker Kaspar Kubli) and in the general election from liberal, progressive Democrat Walter M. Pierce, who the KKK backed. McNary endorsed Olcott,[3][7] who lost the general election to Pierce. The Klan during the period held a significant influence over Oregon politics.
U.S. Senate
In May 1918, McNary defeated then Oregon House Speaker Robert Nelson Stanfield (1877–1945) in the Republican senatorial primary, 52,546 votes (62.8 percent) to 30,999. (37.2 percent).[8] In the November general election, he defeated the Democrat Oswald West (1873–1960), a personal friend who was governor of Oregon from 1911 to 1915.[9] McNary polled 82,360 votes (56.2 percent) to West's 64,303 (43.8 percent), to win a full term in the Senate. Soon he was Oregon's senior senator, serving with former opponent Stanfield in the other Senate seat.[10]
In 1919 in his first year in office, McNary joined the senators known as "Reservationists" regarding ratification of the Treaty of Versailles, which ended World War I, and accompanying American entry into the then new and since defunct League of Nations. Those opposed to the treaty regardless of amendments were known as "Irreconcilable," led by conservative Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge, Sr., of Massachusetts. The other senators were followers of Woodrow Wilson and favored the treaty and entry into the League.[11] A quarter century late in 1945, hardly any senators opposed entry into what Franklin Roosevelt called the United Nations.
Consistent with his backing of the TVA, Nary supported the development of other federal hydroelectric power dams, such as the Grand Coulee and Bonneville dams on the Columbia River. In 1926, he voted for the American entry into the World Court, but the Senate rejected the proposal. He advocated the purchase of additional national forest land through his McSweeney-McNary Act of 1928. He pushed for fire protection under the Clarke-NcNary Act. He also pushed for farm legislation through his McNary-Haugen Farm Relief Bill, co-authored by Republican U.S. Representative Gilbert Nelson Haugen (1859–1933) of Iowa The proposal would have subsidized agriculture by raising the prices of domestic farm products to compensate for an economic slump on the farms.[12]
Civil rights
Under the FDR presidency where the Democratic Party heavily controlled Congress, the New Deal Coalition proved unable to pass anti-lynching legislation in the wake of racial terrorism in the South. In 1935, McNary was the leader of Republican forces in support of the Costigan–Wagner Act introduced by Democratic senators Edward P. Costigan and Robert F. Wagner.[13] Although Costigan and McNary fought for the bill's passage over Southern Democratic opposition, it faced defeat when political trading brought the Senate to adjourning on May 1, stalling off the Act enough to kill it.
The Anti-Lynching Bill of 1938 similarly faced a Southern blockade, and in spite of a cloture motion filed, there were insufficient votes to end the Democratic filibuster. McNary and the majority of Senate Republicans, although firmly in support of the bill, voted against cloture[14] and correctly attributed the failure to pass anti-lynching bills to the Democratic majority:[15]
| “ | My opposition to cloture being invoked against the right of a small minority has nothing to do with the merits of the bill. It is only a guise or alibi for those who are not willing to press forward to say that those who vote against cloture are not in favor of the bill. The responsibility for the failure to pass this bill lies with the Democratic administration. There are 77 Democrats enlisted under the banner of Democracy, 1 Independent, 1 Farmer-Labor, and 1 Progressive. | ” |
McNary previously backed the Copeland anti-lynching rider amendments in 1937, voting against the motion to table them.[16]
World War II years, death
Although an isolationist for a period of time, McNary supported the Lend-Lease Act in World War II.[3]
McNary was comatose when he was reelected Minority Leader in January 1944. He died in office at the age of sixty-nine after he underwent unsuccessful surgery on a brain tumor. The cancer had spread throughout his body. He was honored by lying in state at the Oregon Capitol. Named in his honor are McNary Dam, McNary Field, McNary High School, and McNary Country Club, of which he owned the land.[17]
References
- ↑ Odd Fellows: politicians, Oregon. The Political Graveyard. Retrieved August 19, 2021.
- ↑ Joseph Gaston (1912). The centennial history of Oregon, 1811–1912. S. J. Clarke Publishing Company in Chicago.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Mahoney, Barbara. Charles L. McNary (1874-1944). Oregon Encyclopedia. Retrieved August 19, 2021.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 Neal, McNary of Oregon, pp. 3–6.
- ↑ Neal, McNary of Oregon, pp. 9–13.
- ↑ Montague Colmer and Charles Erskine Scott Wood (1910). History of the Bench and Bar of Oregon. Historical Publishing Co0mpany of Portland, Oregon.
- ↑ FascinatingPolitics (July 31, 2021). Charles McNary: A Steady Captain in Stormy Waters. Mad Politics: The Bizarre, Fascinating, and Unknown of American Political History. Retrieved August 19, 2021.
- ↑ Steve Neal, McNary of Oregon: A Political Biography Portland, Oregon: " Western Imprints, 1985, pp, 39-50.
- ↑ OR US Senate Race - Nov 05, 1918. Our Campaigns. Retrieved June 14, 2021.
- ↑ Neal, McNary of Oregon,' ' pp. 61–70.
- ↑ Neal, McNary of Oregon, pp. 50–59.
- ↑ [Why did President Coolidge veto the McNary Haugen bill? (treehozz.com) Why did President Coolidge veto the McNary-Haugen bill?]. treehozz.com (May 5, 2020). Retrieved on March 9, 2021.
- ↑ Greenbaum, Fred (1967). "The Anti-Lynching Bill of 1935: The Irony of "Equal Justice—Under Law"," p. 72–73. Internet Archive. Retrieved December 3, 2022.
- ↑ TO IMPOSE CLOTURE ON DEBATE H.R. 1507, AN ANTI-LYNCHING BILL.. GovTrack.us. Retrieved August 19, 2021.
- ↑ GPO-CRECB-1938-pt1-v83-21-1.pdf. Congressional Record. Retrieved August 19, 2021.
- ↑ TO TABLE AN AMENDMENT TO S. 69, THE INTERSTATE COMMERCE ACT. THE AMEND. OFFERED BY SENATOR COPELAND WHICH WOULD HAVE ADDED HOUSE BILL 1507, THE ANTILYNCHING BILL, TO S. 69, A BILL LIMITING THE SIZE OF TRAINS IN INTERSTATE COMMERCE.. GovTrack.us. Retrieved August 19, 2021.
- ↑ U.S. Senate: Majority and Minority Leaders and Party Whips. United States Senate (October 17, 2019).
