By Ray Hill   Just after the turn of the century, Tennessee’s Democratic Party became almost hopelessly fractured.  The candidacies of two men helped to heal the deep divisions inside the Democratic Party in Tennessee: that of Kenneth D. McKellar for the United...

By Ray Hill Austin Peay was once one of Tennessee’s more famous governors, hailed as perhaps one of the most talented reformers in the state’s history.  The late governor’s legacy is hardly confined to the university named for him in his home city of Clarksville. Born...

By Ray Hill Tennessee has been quite fortunate in oftentimes having an excellent Congressional delegation.  The landscape and economic condition of Tennessee would be much different had it not been for the ability of some of our Congressional delegation to secure...

By Ray Hill Prentice Cooper had been governor of Tennessee for six years; the first man to be elected to three two-year terms since Austin Peay.  Unlike Peay, Cooper lived through his entire tenure of office, but in 1944, he could not run again.  Governor Cooper was a...

By Ray Hill 2015 marks the one-hundredth year since the people of Tennessee cast their ballots to select a candidate for the United States Senate. There had previously been non-binding preferential primaries, as senators were still elected by the state legislature....

By Ray Hill Senator Kenneth D. McKellar once claimed that outside of the three men who served as President of the United States, Robert Love Taylor was “the best-known man to the Republic at large that Tennessee has ever produced”. It well may have been true. Robert...

By Ray Hill Cordell Hull had served in the U. S. House of Representatives since 1906, with one brief two-year interlude, when he announced he would be a candidate for the United States Senate in 1929.  It was rare, at that time, for a prospective candidate to declare...

By Ray Hill Tennessee’s senior United States senator, Kenneth D. McKellar, was well known for having a volatile temper and had won a well-deserved reputation as a feudist.  It was not uncommon for the peppery senator to become involved in a physical altercation, even...

By Ray Hill   “I have no hesitancy in insisting that Government in an emergency do everything that can reasonably be done to relieve human suffering and distress.” That was the philosophy of John William McCormack throughout his long political career and he lived...

By Ray Hill “Any jackass can kick down a barn, it takes a carpenter to build one.” So said Sam Rayburn of Texas. Completely bald, thickly built and one who never forgot his humble beginnings.  Sam Rayburn was the looniest serving Speaker of the U. S. House of...