Alton B. Parker | |
|---|---|
 Parker in 1906 | |
| Chief Judge of the New York Court of Appeals | |
| In office January 1, 1898 – August 5, 1904 | |
| Preceded by | Charles Andrews |
| Succeeded by | Edgar M. Cullen |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Alton Brooks Parker (1852-05-14)May 14, 1852 Cortland, New York, U.S. |
| Died | May 10, 1926(1926-05-10) (aged 73) New York City,New York, U.S. |
| Resting place | Wiltwyck Cemetery |
| Political party | Democratic |
| Spouse(s) | |
| Education | Albany Law School (LLB) |
Alton Brooks Parker (May 14, 1852 – May 10, 1926) was an American judge. He was the Democratic nominee in the1904 United States presidential election, losing in a landslide to incumbent RepublicanTheodore Roosevelt.
A native ofupstate New York, Parker practiced law inKingston, New York, before being appointed to theNew York Supreme Court and elected to theNew York Court of Appeals. He served as Chief Judge of the latter from 1898 to 1904, when he resigned to run for president. In 1904, he defeated liberal publisherWilliam Randolph Hearst for theDemocratic Party nomination for President of the United States. In the general election, Parker opposed popular incumbentRepublican President Theodore Roosevelt. After a disorganized and ineffective campaign, Parker was defeated by 336electoral votes to 140, carrying only the traditionally DemocraticSolid South. He then returned to practicing law.
In later life, he managedJohn Alden Dix's successful 1910 campaign for Governor of New York and served as prosecution counsel for the 1913 impeachment of Dix's successor, GovernorWilliam Sulzer.[1] During the1912 presidential election, Parker joined with other constitutional conservatives in an absolute defense of the power ofjudicial review against critics like Theodore Roosevelt orWilliam Jennings Bryan who advocated a popular check on judicial decisions.[2]
Parker was born inCortland, New York, to John Brooks Parker, a farmer, and Harriet F. Stratton. Both of his parents were well educated and encouraged his reading from an early age. At the age of 12 or 13, Parker watched his father serve as a juror and was so fascinated by the proceedings that he resolved to become a lawyer.[1] He attendedCortland Academy, and left to begin working as a teacher inBinghamton. There he became engaged to Mary Louise Schoonmaker, the daughter of a man who owned property near his school. He then returned to Cortland Academy.
After graduation, he attended the State Normal School in Cortland (now theState University of New York College at Cortland), where he became a member of Gamma Sigma Fraternity. Parker married Schoonmaker in 1872 and became a clerk at Schoonmaker & Hardenburgh, a legal firm at which one of her relatives was the senior partner.[1] He then enrolled atAlbany Law School. After graduating with anLL.B. degree in 1873, he practiced law inKingston until 1878 as the senior partner of the firm Parker & Kenyon.[3][4]
Parker also became active with theDemocratic Party. In 1877, he won election assurrogate court judge of Ulster County, and he was elected to a new six-year term in 1883. He served as a delegate to the1880 and1884 Democratic national conventions.[5] In between the two conventions, he helpedGrover Cleveland get electedGovernor of New York in1882. At the 1884 convention, he supported Cleveland, who was named the party's presidential nominee; Cleveland went on to narrowly defeat RepublicanJames G. Blaine inthe fall election.[3] The new president offered Parker the position of first assistant postmaster general, but Parker rejected the offer, citing monetary reasons.[5] During this time, Parker also became a protege ofDavid B. Hill, managing Hill's1885 gubernatorial campaign.[6]
After his election, Hill appointed Parker to fill an 1885 vacancy on theNew York Supreme Court created by the death of Justice Theodore R. Westbrook.[1] In 1886, Parker was elected to his own fourteen-year term in the seat. The Republicans declined to nominate a candidate to run against Parker.[7] Three years later, Parker became an appellate judge when Hill appointed him to the newly formedSecond Department of theAppellate Division. In November 1897, Parker successfully ran for the post of Chief Judge of the Court of Appeals, defeating RepublicanWilliam James Wallace.[3]
As a judge, Parker was notable for independently researching each case that he heard. He was considered to be pro-labor and was an active supporter of social reform legislation, for example upholding a maximum-hours law as constitutional. His judicial opinions were noted "for their forceful diction, comprehensive grasp of the fundamental questions involved, unsparing labor in citing precedents, close reasoning, and their tendency to disregard merely technicalities."[8]
During his time as Chief Judge, Parker and his wife sold their Kingston home and bought an estate inEsopus on theHudson River, calling the house "Rosemount".[1] They were the parents of two children, Bertha and John.[3] John died oftetanus while still a child.[3] Bertha Schoonmaker Parker married the Reverend Charles Mercer Hall, with whom she had two children, Alton Parker Hall and Mary McAlister Hall Oxholm.[3]
As the 1904 presidential election approached, the Democrats began to search for a nominee to oppose popular incumbent Republican presidentTheodore Roosevelt, and Parker's name arose as a possible candidate. Roosevelt'sSecretary of WarElihu Root said of Parker that he "has never opened his mouth on any national question",[9] but Roosevelt feared that the man's neutrality would prove a political advantage, writing that "the neutral-tinted individual is very apt to win against the man of pronounced views and active life".[6]
The 1904 Democratic National Convention was held in July inSt. Louis, Missouri, then also hosting the1904 World's Fair and the1904 Summer Olympics. Parker's mentorDavid B. Hill—having attempted and failed to capture the nomination himself atthe 1892 convention—now led the campaign for his protege's nomination.[6]William Jennings Bryan, who had been nominated but defeated byWilliam McKinley in both 1896 and 1900, was no longer considered by delegates to be a viable alternative.[10] Radicals in the party supported publisherWilliam Randolph Hearst but lacked sufficient numbers to secure the nomination due to opposition from Bryan andTammany Hall, the powerful New York political machine.[11] Small clusters of delegates pledged support to other candidates, including Missouri SenatorFrancis Cockrell;Richard Olney, Grover Cleveland'sSecretary of State;Edward C. Wall, a formerWisconsin State Representative; andGeorge Gray, a formerSenator from Delaware. Other delegates spoke of nominating Cleveland, who had already served two nonconsecutive terms, but Cleveland was no longer popular outside the party or even within it, due to his rift with Bryan.[12]
Parker's long service on the bench proved to be an advantage in his nomination, as he had avoided taking stands on issues that divided the party, particularly that of currency standards. Hill and other Parker supporters remained deliberately silent on their candidate's beliefs. By the time the convention cast their votes, it was clear that no candidate but Parker could unify the party, and he was selected on the first ballot.[12]Henry G. Davis, an elderlyWest Virginia millionaire and former senator, was selected as the vice presidential candidate in the hope that he would partially finance Parker's campaign.[13][14]
The convention was driven by debate over whether to include afree silver plank in the campaign's platform, opposing thegold standard and calling for the government to mint large numbers of silver dollars. The "free silver" movement, a key plank for the party in 1896 and 1900, was popular among indebted Western farmers who felt that inflation would help them repay their debts. Business interests, in contrast, supported the lower inflation of the gold standard. Bryan, famous for his 1896"Cross of Gold" speech opposing the gold standard, fought bitterly to avoid the inclusion of the gold standard in the party platform in 1904. Ultimately the convention agreed not to include a plank on the subject.[15]
However, seeking to win the support of the Eastern "sound money" faction, Parker sent a telegram to the convention immediately upon hearing news of his nomination that he considered the gold standard "firmly and irrevocably established" and would decline the nomination if he could not state this in his campaign.[16] The telegram sparked a new debate and fresh opposition from Bryan, but the convention eventually replied to Parker that he was free to speak on the issue as he liked.[13] National support for Parker began to rise, and Roosevelt praised his opponent's telegram in private as "bold and skillful"[14] and "most adroit".[13]
After receiving the nomination, Parker resigned from the bench. On August 10, he was formally visited at Rosemount by a delegation of party elders to inform him of his nomination. Parker then delivered a speech criticizing Roosevelt for his administration's involvement in Turkish and Moroccan affairs and having failed to give a date on which thePhilippines would become independent of American control. The speech was considered even by supporters to be impersonal and uninspiring.[17][18] Historian Lewis L. Gould described the speech as a "fiasco" for Parker from which the candidate did not recover.[19] After this initial speech, Parker retreated into a strategy of silence again, avoiding comment on all major issues.[20]
Parker's campaign soon proved to be poorly run as well.[18] Parker and his advisors opted for afront porch campaign, in which delegations would be brought to Rosemount to see Parker speak on the model of McKinley's successful 1896 campaign. However, due to Esopus's remote location and the campaign's inefficient use of funds to bring in delegates, Parker received few visitors.[18] Rather than introducing issues that would differentiate the two parties, the Democrats preferred to emphasize Roosevelt's character, portraying him as dangerously unstable.[21] Parker's campaign also failed to reach out to traditional Democratic voting blocs such asIrish Catholic immigrants.[18] In contrast, Roosevelt's campaign, headed byGeorge Cortelyou, organized committees to appeal specifically to demographics including Jewish, black, and German-American voters.[21] John Hay, Roosevelt's Secretary of State, wrote of Parker's poor showing toHenry Adams, calling it "the most absurd political campaign of our time".[22]
A month before the election, Parker became aware of the large volume of corporate donations Cortelyou had solicited for the Roosevelt campaign, and made "Cortelyouism" a theme of his speeches, accusing the president of being insincere in previoustrust busting efforts.[23] In late October, he also went on a speaking tour in the key states of New York andNew Jersey, in which he reiterated the president's "shameless exhibition of a willingness to make compromise with dignity".[24] Roosevelt, enraged, released a statement calling Parker's criticisms "monstrous" and "slanderous".[25]
Parker's attacks came too late to turn the election, however. On November 8, Roosevelt won in a landslide of 7,630,457 votes to Parker's 5,083,880. Roosevelt carried every Northern and Western state, including Missouri, for a total of 336electoral votes; Parker carried only the traditionally DemocraticSolid South, accumulating 140 electoral votes. Parker telegraphed his congratulations to Roosevelt that night and returned to private life.[26]
InIrving Stone's 1943 book,They Also Ran, about defeated presidential candidates, the author stated that Parker was the only defeated presidential candidate in history never to have a biography written about him. Stone theorized that Parker would have been an effective president and the 1904 election was one of a few in American history in which voters had two first-rate candidates to choose from. Stone professed that Americans liked Roosevelt more because of his colorful style.[27]
After the election, Parker resumed practicing law and served as the president of theAmerican Bar Association from 1906 to 1907. He was a founding member of the New York County Lawyers' Association and served as the group's president from 1909 to 1912.[28] Parker was elected president of the New York State Bar Association on January 28, 1913. He served as the president of the NYSBA from 1913 to 1914.[29]
Parker representedorganized labor in several cases, most notably inLoewe v. Lawlor, popularly known as the "Danbury Hatters' case". In the case, the fur hat manufacturer D. E. Loewe & Company had attempted to enforce anopen shop policy; when unions had subsequently boycotted the company, it sued theUnited Hatters of North America for violation of theSherman Antitrust Act. TheU.S. Supreme Court found for Loewe by ruling that the union had been acting in restraint of interstate commerce.[1] Parker had more success representingSamuel Gompers and other labor leaders inGompers v. United States, in which the Supreme Court overturned their convictions forcontempt of court onstatute of limitations grounds.[30]
In 1913, Parker was appointed lead trial counsel in the impeachment of New York governor William "Plain Bill" Sulzer. Sulzer faced eight articles of impeachment, alleging that he made and filed a false statement regarding his campaign accounts, perjured himself in verifying the statement concerning his campaign accounts, bribed witnesses and fraudulently induced them to withhold evidence from the legislative committee investigating his misconduct, suppressed evidence by threatening witnesses, dissuaded a witness from appearing before the committee pursuant to a duly authorized subpoena, used campaign contributions to speculate in the stock market, promised and threatened to use his influence as governor to affect the votes or political actions of certain members of the general assembly and used his authority and influence as governor "to affect the current prices of securities listed and selling on the New York Stock Exchange."[31] Sulzer was found guilty of three charges (making and filing a false statement regarding his campaign accounts, perjuring himself in verifying the statement concerning his campaign accounts and suppressing evidence by threatening witnesses) and was ultimately removed from office.[32]
Parker later re-entered politics, managingJohn Alden Dix's successful 1910 gubernatorial campaign. He announced his support for women's suffrage in 1911, telling a group of women lawyers that he supported the suffrage movement "most heartily."[33] In 1913, he was counsel for the managers of the trial leading to the impeachment of Dix's successor as governor,William Sulzer.[34]
During that election year, Parker actively resisted what he viewed as dangerous positions regarding the nation's judiciary held by men like Theodore Roosevelt, who initially sought the Republican nomination, and William Jennings Bryan, who still held considerable sway in the Democratic Party. Roosevelt had come out as early as 1910 in opposition to whom he called "fossilized judges" that struck down reform legislation as unconstitutional. By 1912, both Roosevelt and Bryan had called for amendments to enable the recall of judges and judicial decisions that the people at large deemed incorrect as a popular check on judicial review. Parker believed this proposal to be a danger to the nation's constitutional order, siding with conservatives in the GOP likeWilliam Howard Taft andElihu Root to oppose Roosevelt's candidacy. Parker was elected to deliver the keynote address at the1912 Democratic National Convention. He was elected against the opposition of Bryan, and the convention ultimately nominatedWoodrow Wilson for president. While Wilson was more progressive than Parker's preferred candidate,Champ Clark, and held the endorsement of Bryan, he also came out against judicial recall. The result was the triumph of a supreme view ofjudicial review in both the Democratic and Republican parties.[35]
Parker's wife, Mary, died in 1917. He remarried in 1923 to Amelia Day "Amy" Campbell. On May 10, 1926, only a few days after recovering frombronchial pneumonia, Parker died from a heart attack while riding in his car through New York City'sCentral Park, four days before his 74th birthday. He was survived by Mrs. Charles Mercer Hall, his daughter from his first wife, two grandchildren, and his second wife.[36] He was buried inWiltwyck Cemetery in Kingston.[1]
| Legal offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | Chief Judge of the New York Court of Appeals 1898–1904 | Succeeded by |
| Party political offices | ||
| Preceded by William Jennings Bryan | Democraticnominee forPresident of the United States 1904 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Keynote speaker of theDemocratic National Convention 1912 | Succeeded by |
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Other | |
