By Ray Hill
For decades, Tennessee was either a largely or solidly Democratic state, especially in statewide elections. Democrats also dominated the congressional seats from Tennessee save for the First and Second Congressional Districts. Tennessee had only once been carried by a Republican presidential candidate. That was in 1868 by Ulysses S. Grant and then only because most of the Democrats had been disenfranchised following the Civil War. Tennessee remained reliably Democratic in every successive presidential election until 1920.
For more than half a century, 1920 was the high-water mark for Republicans in Tennessee. Warren G. Harding was the Republican presidential nominee, facing Governor James M. Cox of Ohio and his vice-presidential running mate, Franklin D. Roosevelt, the assistant secretary of the Navy under President Woodrow Wilson. There had been some difficult times for Democrats in the Volunteer State for several years when the party was blown apart by factionalism and infighting. A bruising battle for the 1908 Democratic nomination for governor was fought by incumbent Malcolm Rice Patterson and former U.S. Senator Edward Ward Carmack. Patterson had, like his father before him, been a congressman from Shelby County and had won the governorship in 1906. Oddly, both candidates were redheaded, and both were compelling speakers. Carmack had only narrowly been denied a second six-year term in the U.S. Senate by Robert L. Taylor, a three-time governor and one of the most personally popular figures in Tennessee. Carmack ran as the champion of those voters who favored prohibition, while Governor Patterson said he was for local option, meaning each city or county decided whether alcohol could be bought and sold. The primary campaign was extremely bitter with Patterson winning the primary and general election.
Edward W. Carmack went back to his occupation as a newspaper editor, hired by Colonel Luke Lea for his Nashville Tennessean. Carmack assailed the governor and several of his associates in print, which ended with the editor engaging in a gun battle on the streets of Nashville with Colonel Duncan Cooper and his son, Robin. The exchange of gunfire left Carmack dead. Robin Cooper was freed on a technicality, and Governor Malcolm Patterson pardoned his friend Colonel Cooper, which set off a firestorm of indignation all across the state. The fury of the voters ended Malcolm Patterson’s political career. In 1910, the Democratic Party broke in two, with a ticket running as Independent Democrats, and Patterson was forced out of the race for a third two-year term as governor. Fusionism was born in Tennessee, with Republicans forming a combine with the Independent Democrats. Ben W. Hooper, a young Republican from East Tennessee, defeated Robert L. Taylor for governor in an upset. Luke Lea was elected by the General Assembly as Tennessee’s United States senator, and while he was seated as a Democrat, he had been elected by the fusionist combine. Two years later, Hooper defeated the “Old Warhorse” of Tennessee’s Democratic Party, former Governor Benton McMillin, to win a second two-year term. The fusionists elected Tennessee’s other United States senator in 1912 as well, John Knight Shields.
Tennessee Democrats reunited in 1914, defeated Governor Hooper, who was seeking a third two-year term, and elected Tom C. Rye. Lea was ousted from the U.S. Senate in 1916 by Kenneth McKellar. Rye was succeeded after two terms by Albert H. Roberts, who experienced a particularly turbulent two-year term. Tennessee was roiled by the fight over the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, giving women the right to vote. Senator McKellar and his friend E. H. Crump were both strongly in favor of suffrage for women, but many Democrats were not, including Governor Roberts. Congressman Cordell Hull had voted against ratification in the U.S. House, saying it was a matter for the individual states to decide.
Angry women were the tip of the spear in the 1920 campaign, and Democrats were stunned in Tennessee by the results. Governor A. H. Roberts had been defeated by 72-year-old Alf Taylor, the Republican brother of the late Robert Taylor. Five out of Tennessee’s ten seats in the U.S. House had been won by Republicans. Among the five, only one was an incumbent, J. Will Taylor of the Second District. “Hillbilly Bill” Taylor had first been elected in 1918, defeating Congressman Richard Austin. Carroll Reece, an economist and hero of the First World War, had toppled the overconfident incumbent, Sam Sells, inside the Republican primary and was easily elected in the fall.
Three other freshmen Republicans had been elected in 1920 from Tennessee. Joe Brown, the son of a former Republican congressman, had defeated veteran congressman John A. Moon, who had been in the House since 1896. Brown was a 40-year-old lawyer from Chattanooga.
The biggest surprise of the 1920 election in Tennessee was the loss of Congressman Cordell Hull in Tennessee’s rock-ribbed Democratic Fourth district. The Fourth Congressional District had never elected a Republican to Congress and was a collection of rural counties in Middle Tennessee. Hull narrowly lost to Wynne F. Clouse, who was also an attorney by profession and 37-years-old. Cordell Hull had been in Congress since 1907 and had never been defeated.
Congressman Thetus Sims, a rotund, verbose man, was a veteran of the U.S. House of Representatives who had also come to Congress in 1896. Sims had lost the Democratic primary to young Gordon Browning, an ambitious veteran of the First World War. Browning had lost the general election to Lon Scott, a 32-year-old Republican businessman and former state legislator.
Carroll Reece, of course, would go on to serve longer in the House than any Tennessean except for his successor, Jimmy Quillen. Wynne Clouse, Joe Brown and Lon Scott would serve abbreviated tenures in the House.
Joseph Edgar Brown was the son of Foster V. Brown, who was a lawyer and a Republican who served a term in the U.S. House of Representatives. Joe Brown was the first Republican to serve Tennessee’s Third Congressional District since his father’s election in 1894. Brown would also be the last member of the Republican Party to hold that seat until Bill Brock won election to the House in 1962.
Joe Brown, like his father before him, did not seek a second term. Brown became the chairman of Tennessee’s Republican State Executive Committee and continued practicing law with the firm started by his father.
Brown would only outlive his father by a couple of years. The former congressman was found dead in his hotel apartment in Chattanooga of a heart attack on June 13, 1939. Brown’s wife was away in Charlottesville, Virginia, when her husband died suddenly.
Wynne F. Clouse graduated from the Cumberland School of Law and began practicing in Cookeville, Tennessee. Clouse was an active Republican and was elected as a delegate to the Republican National Convention in 1916 and 1924. Few gave Wynne Clouse much of a chance to defeat Congressman Cordell Hull, who was deeply entrenched inside the Fourth Congressional District after having served 14 years in the House. Clouse ran an active campaign, and Hull’s political nose did not betray him as he sniffed a whiff of apathy amongst Democratic women. On the other hand, Republican women were eager to cast their first vote for president and the lesser offices. Hull won five of the counties while Clouse won the remaining eight. Clouse won surprisingly large majorities in several of the counties to eke out a victory by exactly 332 votes.
Hull never stopped running and sought a rematch in 1922 after having become chairman of the Democratic National Committee. The Republican tide had receded, and Hull reclaimed his seat in the House by more than 8,000 votes and Congressman Clouse polled only slightly more than 37% of the ballots cast.
After his defeat, Wynne Clouse never again sought elective office. Clouse became a special assistant to the U.S. Attorney General, and he was appointed a referee in the bankruptcy court by federal Judge John Gore and practiced law in Nashville until his retirement. Clouse died at his home in Franklin, Tennessee, on February 19, 1944, at age 60.
Lon Allen Scott was from Savannah, Tennessee, and also attended the Cumberland Law School, but apparently never practiced law as much as he engaged in a number of business enterprises. At one time or another, Scott was involved in timber and real estate and was also the president of the Dixie Oil Company.
Lon Scott was elected to the Tennessee House of Representatives in 1912 and was reelected in 1914 and 1916. Scott was the Republican leader during his second term in the Tennessee House. Lon Scott resigned his House seat to join the Marine Corps as a private when the United States entered the First World War and rose to the rank of lieutenant.
Lon Scott, Carroll Reece and Gordon Browning were all veterans of World War I, and each had good reason to be very proud of his service. Scott became the GOP nominee for Congress from Tennessee’s Eighth Congressional District. After a hard-fought campaign, Scott won the general election by 659 votes.
Browning was stubborn to a fault and could never be deterred once he had made up his mind. After having beaten the incumbent and losing by such a close margin, Browning kept running for the next two years. Browning won the rematch in 1922 by better than 4,000 votes, while Congressman Scott tallied 42% of the ballots cast.
The 1920 election brought the Republicans into the majority of both houses of Congress, and Warren G. Harding occupied the White House. After eight years of Woodrow Wilson, there were some mighty hungry Republicans, and those in Tennessee were no exception. The five GOP congressmen spent two years bickering over patronage plums and appointments. J. Will Taylor was the senior member of the Tennessee House, albeit by only two years. Lon Scott and “Hillbilly Bill” Taylor were constantly at odds throughout Scott’s time in the House. Even after leaving Congress, Lon Scott remained opposed to Bill Taylor’s domination of Tennessee’s Republican Party throughout the decade of the 1920s.
Taylor, an affable man most of the time, could be tough as nails when he needed to be. Taylor prided himself on never forgetting a friend, but he was also able to forgive an enemy. Taylor occupied his seat in the House and was also Tennessee’s Republican National Committeeman and had the biggest say in filling federal jobs in Tennessee during the Harding, Coolidge and Hoover administrations outside the First District, where Carroll Reece usually got his way.
For the rest of his life, Lon Scott remained a prominent GOP leader inside his former congressional district. After his defeat for reelection, Scott went back to his former business pursuits. Evidently, he either did not want any federal office or was not considered for any appointment by Presidents Harding or Coolidge. When Delong Rice, the longtime superintendent of the Shiloah National Military Park died from burns suffered in a ghastly accident that also took the life of Rice’s 16-year-old son, Scott very much wanted to become the new superintendent. Taylor was able to forgive Scott’s constant opposition when he sponsored his former colleague’s appointment to serve as superintendent of the Shiloh National Military Park. Scott was ready to be named to the post when the Civil Service Commission managed to derail the appointment.
Lon Scott’s health began to fail at the young age of 43, and he eventually underwent a surgery from which he did not recover. Scott died in the Webb-Williamson Hospital in Jackson, Tennessee, on February 12, 1931. Never married, several of Lon Scott’s siblings were with him as he quietly slipped Away.
It would be 1972 before Republicans would occupy five of Tennessee’s seats in the House of Representatives once again, and then it would also last only two years, with two seats being lost in the 1974 election. In 1973, Republicans occupied the governorship, both of Tennessee’s seats in the United States Senate, and five seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.
© 2026 Ray Hill
