By Ray Hill West Virginia was once one of the more reliably Republican states in the country. Following the Great Depression and the rise of the machine headed by U. S. Senator Matthew Mansfield Neely of Fairmont, the election of 1932 changed the political...
By Ray Hill Before Strom Thurmond, Theodore Francis Green was well known for some years as being the oldest member of the United States Senate. First elected when he was sixty-nine years old, Theodore Francis Green frustrated several generations of aspiring...
By Ray Hill Margaret “Peggy” Timberlake Eaton has been the subject of books and even one Hollywood film (The Gorgeous Hussy) and is oftentimes portrayed as the vixen who nearly caused the collapse of President Andrew Jackson’s administration. The controversy over...
By Ray Hill Francis Biddle was attorney general of the United States under President Franklin D. Roosevelt. He noted Tennessee’s Senator Kenneth D. McKellar could be “obstinate” and “vindictive," but was careful to note McKellar was “shrewd." Biddle also added that...
By Ray Hill Prentice Cooper was barred by state law from seeking yet another term as Tennessee’s governor in 1944; there was no Senate seat to contest and he was faced with the prospect of retiring from public office. Cooper clearly wanted to remain in public life and...
By Ray Hill Governor Prentice Cooper was seeking a third two-year term in 1942 and found himself hard pressed by his opponent, J. Ridley Mitchell. Mitchell was a wily politician and had served as the Congressman from Tennessee’s Fourth District from 1931-39, leaving...
By Ray Hill The administration of Governor Prentice Cooper, unlike that of his predecessor Gordon Browning, had been relatively quiet. Cooper and Browning were as different in temperament as they were in appearance. Gordon Browning was a big, bluff man with a shock of...
By Ray Hill By the fall of 1937, E. H. Crump, leader of the Shelby County political machine, was openly fighting Governor Gordon Browning. After having supported Browning for governor in 1936, Senator Kenneth D. McKellar’s prediction that Crump could not trust...
By Ray Hill A bare-knuckle political battle had rolled across Tennessee for the Democratic nomination fort the United States Senate in 1938. The contest was a three way fight between incumbent U. S. Senator George L. Berry, Congressman J. Ridley Mitchell, and A. T....
By Ray Hill Following the demise of Governor Gordon Browning’s plan to emasculate the Shelby County political machine headed by E. H. Crump, Tennessee Democrats were deeply divided. Governor Browning watched with dismay as his appointee to the United States Senate,...
By Ray Hill Despite...
By Ray Hill Kenneth...
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By Ray Hill It will...
By Ray Hill Kenneth McKellar...
By Ray Hill Even as a...