James F. Byrnes
James F. Byrnes | |
---|---|
James Patterson | |
Succeeded by | Butler Hare |
Personal details | |
Born | James Francis Byrnes May 2, 1882 Charleston, South Carolina, U.S. |
Died | April 9, 1972 Columbia, South Carolina, U.S. | (aged 89)
Political party | Democratic |
Spouse |
Maude Busch (m. 1906) |
Signature | |
James Francis Byrnes (
Born and raised in
Historian
After Roosevelt's death, Byrnes served as a close adviser to Truman and became U.S. Secretary of State in July 1945. In that capacity, Byrnes attended the Potsdam Conference and the Paris Peace Treaties, 1947; however, relations between Byrnes and Truman soured, and Byrnes resigned from the Cabinet in January 1947. He returned to elective politics in 1950 by winning election as the governor of South Carolina. As governor, he opposed the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education and sought to establish "separate but equal" as a realistic alternative to the desegregation of schools. Though he remained a Democrat himself, he endorsed most Republican presidential nominees after 1948 and supported Strom Thurmond's switch to the Republican Party in 1964.
Early life and career
Byrnes was born at 538 King Street in
In 1900, Byrnes's cousin, Governor
In 1910, he narrowly won the
Byrnes proved a brilliant legislator, working behind the scenes to form coalitions, and avoiding the high-profile oratory that characterized much of Southern politics. He became a close ally of US President Woodrow Wilson, who often entrusted important political tasks to the capable young Representative, rather than to more experienced lawmakers. In the 1920s, he was a champion of the "Good Roads Movement", which attracted motorists and politicians to large-scale road building programs.
United States Senate and Supreme Court
In 1924, Byrnes declined renomination to the House and instead sought nomination for the Senate seat held by incumbent
Byrnes was opposed by the
After his House term ended in 1925, Byrnes was out of office. He moved his law practice to Spartanburg, in the industrializing Piedmont region. Between his law practice and investment advice from friends such as Bernard Baruch, Byrnes became a wealthy man, but he never excluded himself from a return to politics. He cultivated the Piedmont textile workers, who were key Blease supporters. In 1930, he challenged Blease again. Blease again led the primary, with 46 percent to 38 percent for Byrnes, but this time, Byrnes won the runoff 51 to 49 percent.[14]
During his time in the Senate, Byrnes was regarded as the most influential South Carolinian since
I admit I am a New Dealer, and if [the New Deal] takes money from the few who have controlled the country and gives it back to the average man, I am going to Washington to help the President work for the people of South Carolina and the country.
Since the
In 1937, Byrnes supported Roosevelt on the highly-controversial
Byrnes played a key role in blocking
Byrnes despised his fellow South Carolina Senator
On June 12, 1941, Roosevelt
World War II
Byrnes left the Supreme Court to head Roosevelt's Office of Economic Stabilization, which dealt with the vitally-important issues of prices and taxes.[11] How powerful the new office would become depended entirely on Byrnes's political skills, and Washington insiders soon reported that he was fully in charge. In May 1943, he became head of the Office of War Mobilization, a new agency that supervised the Office of Economic Stabilization.[25] Under the leadership of Byrnes, the program managed newly constructed factories across the country that used raw materials, civilian and military production, and transportation for United States Armed Forces personnel and was credited with providing the employment that was needed to bring an official end to the Great Depression.[26][27][28] Thanks to his political experience, his probing intellect, his close friendship with Roosevelt, and in no small part his own personal charm, Byrnes was soon exerting influence over many facets of the war effort that were not technically under his departmental jurisdiction. Many in Congress and the press began referring to Byrnes as the "Assistant President."[28][29]
Many expected that Byrnes would be the Democratic nominee in 1944 for vice president in Franklin D. Roosevelt's 1944 reelection campaign,[29] replacing Henry A. Wallace, who was strongly felt by party officials to be too eccentric to replace an ailing president who would likely die before his next term ended.[30] Roosevelt refused to endorse anybody other than Wallace. He had a personal preference for US Supreme Court justice William O. Douglas. Byrnes was on Roosevelt's list but was hardly his first choice. In a July meeting at the White House, the party bosses pressed hard for Senator Harry S. Truman of Missouri, and Roosevelt issued a statement saying he would support either Truman or Douglas. Byrnes was regarded as too conservative for organized labor; some big city bosses opposed him as an ex-Catholic who would offend Catholics; and blacks were wary of his opposition to racial integration.[30] In short, Byrnes never had a serious chance at being nominated for vice president, and the nomination went instead to Truman. Roosevelt brought Byrnes to the Yalta Conference in early 1945 in which he seemed to favor Soviet plans. Written in shorthand, his notes comprise one of the most complete records of the "Big Three" Yalta meetings. At the same time, Byrnes did not participate in the foreign ministers' meetings or the direct meetings between Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin. After the Conference, he was influential in convincing the U.S. Congress and the general public to accept the terms of the agreement.[31]
In 1945, Byrnes was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal by President Truman for his work in the Office of War Mobilization.
Byrnes, World War II and the atomic bomb
As head of the wartime Office of War Mobilization, Byrnes provided oversight, material and financial resources for the high priority Manhattan Project.[32]
Byrnes served on an Interim committee making a recommendations on the use of the atomic bomb during and after the war. The committee, headed by War Secretary Henry L. Stimson, included Byrnes, Vannevar Bush, James Conant, Karl T. Compton, Under Secretary of the Navy Ralph Austin Bard, and Assistant Secretary of State William L. Clayton. The scientific panel of the committee consisted of J. Robert Oppenheimer, Arthur Compton, Enrico Fermi and Ernest Lawrence. A business leaders branch of the committee included Walter S. Carpenter Jr. and James A. Rafferty. George C. Marshall was the US Military voice on the committee. Additional feedback was provided by the Committee on the Social and Political Implications of the Atomic Bomb, formed by Metallurgical Laboratory of the University of Chicago, chaired by James Franck with Leo Szilard and Glenn T. Seaborg.[33]
It was Byrnes who shared information with the new president on the
In the 2023 film Oppenheimer, directed by Christopher Nolan, Byrnes was portrayed by actor Pat Skipper.
Secretary of State
Upon his succession to the presidency after Roosevelt's death, on April 12, 1945, Truman relied heavily on Byrnes's counsel, Byrnes having been a mentor to Truman from the latter's earliest days in the Senate.[35][36] Indeed, Byrnes was one of the first people seen by Truman on the first day of his presidency.[34] When Truman met Roosevelt's coffin in Washington, he asked Byrnes and former Vice President Wallace, the two other men who might well have succeeded Roosevelt, to join him at the train station.[34] Truman originally intended for both men to play leading roles in his administration to signal continuity with Roosevelt's policies. Truman quickly fell out with Wallace but retained a good working relationship with Byrnes and increasingly turned to him for support.[34]: 388
Truman appointed Byrnes as
Because Byrnes had been part of the US delegation at Yalta, Truman assumed that he had accurate knowledge of what had transpired. It would be many months before Truman discovered that not to be the case. Nevertheless, Byrnes advised that the Soviets were breaking the
Byrnes and British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin issued a joint statement announcing that they were combining the U.S. zone of Germany and the British zone of Germany into one new territory called "West Germany."[41] General Lucius D. Clay, who had been a top aide to Byrnes in 1944, heavily influenced Byrnes' famous September 1946 speech in Stuttgart, Germany. The speech, "Restatement of Policy on Germany," marked the formal transition in American occupation policy away from the Morgenthau Plan of economic dismantlement to one of economic reconstruction.[42]
Truman was rapidly moving toward a hardline position on Soviet intentions in Eastern Europe and Iran, but Byrnes was much more conciliatory. The distance between them grew and ties of personal friendship weakened. In late 1945, Byrnes argued with Soviet Foreign Minister
Personal relations between the two men grew strained, particularly when Truman felt that Byrnes was attempting to set foreign policy by himself and to inform the President only afterward. An early instance of the friction was the Moscow Conference in December 1945. Truman considered the "successes" of the conference to be "unreal" and was highly critical of Byrnes's failure to protect Iran, which was not mentioned in the final communiqué. "I had been left in the dark about the Moscow conference," Truman told Byrnes bluntly.[44] In a subsequent letter to Byrnes, Truman took a harder line in reference to Iran: "Without these supplies furnished by the United States, Russia would have been ignominiously defeated. Yet now Russia stirs up rebellion and keeps troops on the soil of her friend and ally— Iran. .. Unless Russia is faced with an iron fist and strong language another war is in the making. Only one language do they understand.... I do not think we should play compromise any longer.... I am tired of babying the Soviets".[45] That led to the Iran crisis of 1946 in which Byrnes took an increasingly hardline position in opposition to Stalin, culminating in a speech in Germany on September 6, 1946. The "Restatement of Policy on Germany," also known as the "Speech of Hope", set the tone of future US policy by repudiating the Morgenthau Plan, an economic program that would permanently deindustrialize Germany. Byrnes was named TIME Man of the Year. Truman and others believed that Byrnes had grown resentful that he had not been Roosevelt's running mate and successor and so was showing disrespect to Truman. Whether or not that was true, Byrnes felt compelled to resign from the Cabinet in 1947 with some feelings of bitterness.
Governor of South Carolina
Byrnes was not yet ready to give up public service. At 68, he was elected Governor of South Carolina in the 1950 gubernatorial election and served from 1951 to 1955. Supporting segregation in education, the Democratic governor stated in his inaugural address:
Whatever is necessary to continue the separation of the races in the schools of South Carolina is going to be done by the white people of the state. That is my ticket as a private citizen. It will be my ticket as governor.
— James F. Byrnes[46]
Byrnes was initially seen as a relative moderate on race issues. Recognizing that the South could not continue with its entrenched
The
Later political career
In his later years, Byrnes foresaw that the American South could play a more important role in national politics. To hasten that development, he sought to end the region's nearly-automatic support of the Democratic Party, which Byrnes believed had grown too liberal and took the "Solid South" for granted at election time but otherwise ignored the region and its needs.
Byrnes endorsed
In 1965, Byrnes spoke out against the "punishment" and the "humiliation" of South Carolina US Representative
Following Byrnes's death at the age of 89, he was interred in the churchyard at
Legacy
Byrnes is memorialized at several South Carolina universities and schools:
- The James F. Byrnes Building, housing the Byrnes International Center at the University of South Carolina.
- The James F. Byrnes Professorship of International Studies at USC, its first endowed professorship.
- Byrnes Auditorium at Winthrop University.
- Byrnes Hall, a dormitory at Clemson University, where Byrnes was a Life Trustee.
- James F. Byrnes High School in Duncan, South Carolina.
In 1948, Byrnes and his wife established the James F. Byrnes Foundation Scholarships, and since then, more than 1,000 young South Carolinians have been assisted in obtaining a college education. His papers are in Clemson University's Special Collections Library.
Byrnes' portrait hangs in the South Carolina Senate chambers.[50]
Electoral history
See also
- List of justices of the Supreme Court of the United States by court composition
- List of United States Supreme Court justices by time in office
- List of law clerks of the Supreme Court of the United States (Seat 3)
- United States Supreme Court cases during the Stone Court
- Oliver Stone's Untold History of the United States, Episodes 2 and 3
Footnotes
- ^ a b "Justices 1789 to Present". Washington, D.C.: Supreme Court of the United States. Retrieved February 15, 2022.
- ^ "The Ku Klux Klan | National Geographic Society". education.nationalgeographic.org. Retrieved October 14, 2022.
- ^ David Robertson, Sly and Able: A Political Biography of James F. Byrnes (1994), p. 126
- ^ "Do You Know Your Charleston?". Charleston News & Courier. p. 8. Retrieved September 16, 2012.
- ^ "Governor of the State of South Carolina - James Francis Byrnes, Jr". Archived from the original on April 19, 2015. Retrieved April 19, 2015.
- ^ The Making of a Cold Warrior: James F. Byrnes and American-Soviet Relations, 1945-1946 by Robert Louis Messer: University of California, Berkeley, 1978. pg. 3
- ^ The Making of a Cold Warrior: James F. Byrnes and American-Soviet Relations, 1945-1946 by Robert Louis Messer: University of California, Berkeley, 1978
- JSTOR 25714990.
- ISBN 978-1-61117-300-0. Archivedfrom the original on November 8, 2021. Retrieved February 11, 2016.
- ^ "SC Governors - James Francis Byrnes, 1951 - 1955". SCIWAY. Archived from the original on September 28, 2008. Retrieved July 10, 2012.
- ^ a b "Byrnes, James Francis". Biographical Directory of the U.S. Congress. Office of the Clerk. Archived from the original on November 4, 2011. Retrieved January 9, 2012.
- ^ a b "Report of the Secretary of State to the General Assembly of South Carolina. Part II." Reports of State Officers Boards and Committees to the General Assembly of the State of South Carolina. Volume I. Columbia, SC: 1925, p. 59.
- ^ Pope, Thomas H. The History of Newberry County, South Carolina: 1860–1990. p. 110
- ^ "Supplemental Report of the Secretary of State to the General Assembly of South Carolina." Reports of State Officers Boards and Committees to the General Assembly of the State of South Carolina. Volume I. Columbia, SC: 1931, p. 3.
- JSTOR 27570082.
- ^ Those Angry Days by Lynn Olson pg. 103
- Walter Francis White#Anti-Lynching Legislation
- ISBN 978-0-8147-7208-9. Archivedfrom the original on February 24, 2017. Retrieved February 23, 2017.
- ^ a b "ELECTIONS: Curtains for Cotton Ed". Time. August 7, 1944. Archived from the original on December 14, 2008.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-8078-4838-8. Archivedfrom the original on November 8, 2021. Retrieved July 10, 2012.
- ^ Simon, Bryant. A fabric of defeat: the politics of South Carolina millhands, 1910–1948, p. 208-210
- ^ a b Simon, Bryant. A fabric of defeat: the politics of South Carolina millhands, 1910–1948, p. 212
- ^ McMillion, Barry J. (January 28, 2022). Supreme Court Nominations, 1789 to 2020: Actions by the Senate, the Judiciary Committee, and the President (PDF) (Report). Washington, D.C.: Congressional Research Service. Retrieved February 15, 2022.
- ^ Bialick, Kristen; Gramlich, John (February 8, 2017). "Younger Supreme Court appointees stay on the bench longer, but there are plenty of exceptions". Washington, D.C.: Pew Research Center. Retrieved April 1, 2022.
- ^ Wallace, David Duncan. South Carolina: A Short History (University of North Carolina Press: Chapel Hill, 1951) p. 677.
- ^ "| Economic History Services". Eh.net. Archived from the original on July 18, 2012. Retrieved September 6, 2012.
- ^ Research & Articles on Economy, World War II by. BookRags.com. Archived from the original on April 28, 2013. Retrieved September 6, 2012.
- ^ a b "Economy in World War II: Home Front". Shmoop.com. Archived from the original on September 2, 2012. Retrieved September 6, 2012.
- ^ ISBN 978-1-4000-6964-4.
- ^ JSTOR 2700719.
- OCLC 646810103.
- ^ "James F. Byrnes". Atomic Heritage Foundation. 2024. Retrieved March 2, 2024.
- ^ "DEBATE OVER HOW TO USE THE BOMB: (Washington, D.C., Late Spring 1945)". The Manhattan Project, US Department of Energy. 2024. Retrieved March 2, 2024.
- ^ a b c d McCullough, David (1992). Truman. New York: Simon & Schuster. p. 352.
- ISBN 0-399-14072-7.
- ^ Gar Alperovitz, "The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb" (New York: Vintage Books, 1996)
- ^ "A revealing moment during Byrnes' swearing-in ceremony as secretary of state offers insight into the relationship [between President Harry S. Truman and Byrnes]: The diary of Byrnes' friend and assistant Walter Brown records that 'when the oath was completed, the President said, "Jimmy, kiss the Bible." He did and then handed it over to the President and told him to kiss it, too. The President did so as the crowd laughed l ..." Gar Alperovitz, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb and the Architecture of an American Myth (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995, p. 197).
- ISBN 978-0-375-50915-5.)
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link - ISBN 978-0-8262-6045-1.
- ISBN 978-0-8262-1119-4.
- ^ "Joint Statement by James F. Byrnes and Ernest Bevin (3 December 1946)". March 7, 2015.
- ^ Curtis Franklin Morgan Jr, James F. Byrnes, Lucius Clay and American Policy in Germany, 1945-1947 (Edwin Mellen Press, 2002).
- S2CID 155033071.
- ^ Harry S. Truman, Memoirs, Vol. 1: Years of Decision (1955), p.547, 550, cited in George Lenczowski, American Presidents and the Middle East, p.10
- ^ Truman, Memoirs, Vol. 1: Years of Decision (1955), p.551–552, cited in Lenczowski, American Presidents, p.11
- ISBN 978-0-230-61138-2. Archivedfrom the original on February 24, 2017. Retrieved August 19, 2015.
- ^ Lamis, Alexander (1988). The Two-Party South. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 15–16.
- ^ Billy Hathorn, "The Changing Politics of Race: Congressman Albert William Watson and the South Carolina Republican Party, 1965-1970", South Carolina Historical Magazine Vol. 89 (October 1988), p. 230
- ^ Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report, Vol. 23 (June 18, 1965), p. 1185; Bernard Cosman and Robert J. Huckshorn, eds., Republican Politics: The 1964 Campaign and Its Aftermath for the Party (New York: Praeger, 1968), pp. 147–148
- ^ "Senate Chamber Portraits". South Carolina legislature. 2024. Retrieved March 2, 2024.
References
- Annotated bibliography for James Byrnes from the Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues (Archived August 28, 2006, at the Wayback Machine)
- James Francis Byrnes at the Biographical Directory of Federal Judges, a publication of the Federal Judicial Center.
- Messer, Robert L. (1982). The End of an Alliance: James F. Byrnes, Roosevelt, Truman, and the Origins of the Cold War.
- Robertson, David (1994). Sly and Able: A Political Biography of James F. Byrnes Archived June 5, 2011, at the Wayback Machine
Primary sources
- Byrnes, James (1947). Speaking Frankly.
- Byrnes, James (1958). All in One Lifetime.
Further reading
- Abraham, Henry J., Justices and Presidents: A Political History of Appointments to the Supreme Court. 3d. ed. (New York: ISBN 0-19-506557-3.
- Anderson, David L. "Byrnes, James Francis (02 May 1882–09 April 1972), U.S. senator and secretary of state" American National Biography (1999)
- Burns, Richard. "James Byrnes." in Norman A. Graebner, ed. An Uncertain Tradition: American Secretaries of State in the Twentieth Century (1961). pp 223–44.
- Clements, Kendrick A., ed., James F. Byrnes and the Origins of the Cold War (1982)
- Curry, George. James F. Byrnes (1965) online, a scholarly biography
- Cushman, Clare, The Supreme Court Justices: Illustrated Biographies, 1789–1995 (2nd ed.) (Supreme Court Historical Society), (ISBN 978-1-56802-126-3.
- Hopkins, Michael F. "President Harry Truman's Secretaries of State: Stettinius, Byrnes, Marshall and Acheson." Journal of Transatlantic Studies 6.3 (2008): 290–304.
- Messer, Robert L. The End of an Alliance: James F. Byrnes, Roosevelt, Truman, and the Origins of the Cold War (1982)
- Morgan, Jr., Curtis F. James F. Byrnes, Lucius Clay and American Policy in Germany, 1945-1947. (Edwin Mellen Press, 2002).
- Robertson, David. Sly and Able: A Political Biography of James F. Byrnes (1994)
- Ward, Patricia Dawson. The Threat of Peace: James F. Byrnes and the Council of Foreign Ministers, 1945–1946 (1979)
External links
- Excerpts from Speaking Frankly on the subjects of: (Yalta Conference), (Potsdam Conference) ("Flash Player" is required)
- Morgan, Curtis F. "Southern Partnership: James F. Byrnes, Lucius D. Clay and Germany, 1945–1947". James F. Byrnes Institute. Archived from the original on July 5, 2008. Retrieved June 9, 2008.
- Text of the famous "Stuttgart speech", September 6, 1946 The speech marked the change in U.S. occupation policy in Germany towards reconstruction.
- Time Magazine, September 16, 1946. "Journey to Stuttgart"
- SCIway Biography of James Francis Byrnes
- NGA Biography of James Francis Byrnes
- A film clip Byrnes Sets U.S. Policy for Germany, 1946/09/10 (1946) is available for viewing at the Internet Archive
- A film clip Byrnes Wants All To Share Peacemaking, 1946/10/17 (1946) is available for viewing at the Internet Archive
- A film clip Byrnes Denies Atom Threat, 1946/10/10 (1946) is available for viewing at the Internet Archive
- Annotated bibliography from the Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues Archived August 28, 2006, at the Wayback Machine
- James F. Byrnes Papers at Clemson University Special Collections Library
- A collection of various works by James F. Byrnes