James F. Byrnes | |
|---|---|
(b).jpg) Byrnes,c. 1941–1942 | |
| 104thGovernor of South Carolina | |
| In office January 16, 1951 – January 18, 1955 | |
| Lieutenant | George Bell Timmerman Jr. |
| Preceded by | Strom Thurmond |
| Succeeded by | George Bell Timmerman Jr. |
| 49thUnited States Secretary of State | |
| In office July 3, 1945 – January 21, 1947 | |
| President | Harry S. Truman |
| Preceded by | Edward Stettinius Jr. |
| Succeeded by | George Marshall |
| Director of theOffice of War Mobilization | |
| In office May 27, 1943 – July 3, 1945 | |
| President | |
| Preceded by | Position established |
| Succeeded by | John Wesley Snyder |
| Director of theOffice of Economic Stabilization | |
| In office October 3, 1942 – May 27, 1943 | |
| President | Franklin D. Roosevelt |
| Preceded by | Position established |
| Succeeded by | Fred M. Vinson |
| Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States | |
| In office July 8, 1941 – October 3, 1942[1] | |
| Nominated by | Franklin D. Roosevelt |
| Preceded by | James Clark McReynolds |
| Succeeded by | Wiley Rutledge |
| United States Senator fromSouth Carolina | |
| In office March 4, 1931 – July 8, 1941 | |
| Preceded by | Coleman Livingston Blease |
| Succeeded by | Alva M. Lumpkin |
| Member of theU.S. House of Representatives fromSouth Carolina's2nd district | |
| In office March 4, 1911 – March 3, 1925 | |
| Preceded by | James Patterson |
| Succeeded by | Butler Hare |
| Personal details | |
| Born | James Francis Byrnes (1882-05-02)May 2, 1882 |
| Died | April 9, 1972(1972-04-09) (aged 89) Columbia, South Carolina, U.S. |
| Party | Democratic |
| Spouse | |
| Signature |  |
James Francis Byrnes (US:/ˈbɜːrnz/BURNZ; May 2, 1882 – April 9, 1972) was an American judge and politician fromSouth Carolina. A member of theDemocratic Party, he served in theU.S. Congress and on theU.S. Supreme Court, as well as in the executive branch, most prominently as the 49thU.S. Secretary of State under PresidentHarry S. Truman. Byrnes was also the104th governor of South Carolina.
Born and raised inCharleston, South Carolina, Byrnes pursued a legal career with the help of his cousin, GovernorMiles Benjamin McSweeney. Byrnes won election to theU.S. House of Representatives and served from 1911 to 1925. He became a close ally of PresidentWoodrow Wilson and a protégé of SenatorBenjamin Tillman. He sought election to theU.S. Senate in 1924 but narrowly lost a runoff election toColeman Livingston Blease, who had the backing of theKu Klux Klan. Byrnes then moved his law practice toSpartanburg, South Carolina and prepared for a political comeback. He narrowly defeated Blease in the 1930 Democratic primary and joined the Senate in 1931.
HistorianGeorge E. Mowry called Byrnes "the most influential Southern member of Congress betweenJohn Calhoun andLyndon Johnson".[2] In the Senate, Byrnes supported the policies of his longtime friend, PresidentFranklin D. Roosevelt. Byrnes championed theNew Deal and sought federal investment in South Carolina water projects, in addition to supportingRoosevelt's foreign policy, calling for a hard line against theAxis powers. However, he also opposed some of the labor laws proposed by Roosevelt, such as theFair Labor Standards Act, which established aminimum wage that hurt his state's competitive advantage of very low factory wages. Roosevelt appointed Byrnes to the Supreme Court in 1941 but asked him to join the executive branch after America's entry intoWorld War II after only 1 year and 87 days, making him the shortest serving Supreme Court justice in history. During the war, Byrnes led theOffice of Economic Stabilization and theOffice of War Mobilization. He was a candidate to replaceHenry A. Wallace as Roosevelt's running mate in the 1944 election, but insteadHarry S. Truman was nominated by the1944 Democratic National Convention.
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 thePotsdam Conference and theParis 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 thegovernor of South Carolina. As governor, he opposed the Supreme Court decision inBrown v. Board of Education and sought to establish "separate but equal" as a realistic alternative to thedesegregation of schools.
Byrnes was born at 538 King Street inCharleston, South Carolina,[3] and was reared in Charleston. Byrnes's father, James Francis Byrnes,[4] died shortly after Byrnes was born. His father was Catholic of English, Irish, Welsh and Scottish ancestry. He was descended fromSir John Stawell,Ralph Hopton, 1st Baron Hopton andWilliam Cavendish, 1st Duke of Newcastle, who all played significant roles in the English civil war as well as the Irish aristocratsGerald FitzGerald, 8th Earl of Kildare andMargaret Butler, Countess of Ormond.[5] His mother, Elizabeth McSweeney Byrnes, was a dressmaker who was born in 1859.[6] In the 1880s, a widowed aunt and her three children came to live with them; one of the children wasFrank J. Hogan, later president of theAmerican Bar Association.[7] At 14, Byrnes left St. Patrick's Catholic School to work in a law office, and became a courtstenographer. Notably, he transcribed the 1903 trial of South Carolina Lieutenant GovernorJames H. Tillman (nephew ofSenator and former governor"Pitchfork Ben" Tillman), for murderinga newspaper editor.[8] In 1906, he married the former Maude Perkins Busch ofAiken, South Carolina; they had no children. He was the godparent of James Christopher Connor. At this time, Byrnes converted from theCatholic Church to theEpiscopal Church.
In 1900, Byrnes's cousin, GovernorMiles B. McSweeney, appointed him as a clerk for Judge Robert Aldrich of Aiken. As he needed to be 21 to take this position, Byrnes, his mother, and McSweeney changed his date of birth to that of his older sister, Leonora.[9] He later apprenticed to a lawyer, then a common practice,read for the law, and was admitted to the bar in 1903. In 1908, he was appointedsolicitor for thesecond circuit of South Carolina and served until 1910.[10] Byrnes was a protégé of "Pitchfork Ben" Tillman and often had a moderating influence on the fiery segregationist Senator.
In 1910, he narrowly won theDemocraticprimary forU.S. Representative fromSouth Carolina's 2nd congressional district, which was thentantamount to election. He was formally elected in the general election, and was re-elected six times, serving from 1911 to 1925.
The platform Byrnes stood on for Congress had several progressive points, such as better conditions for workers in textile mills.[11] 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 PresidentWoodrow 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.
In 1924, Byrnes declined renomination to the House and instead sought nomination for the Senate seat held by incumbentNathaniel B. Dial though both were former allies of the now-deceased "Pitchfork Ben" Tillman. Anti-Tillmanite and extreme racist demagogueColeman Blease, who had challenged Dial in 1918, also ran again. Blease led the primary with 42 percent. Byrnes was second with 34 percent. Dial finished third with 22 percent.[12]
Byrnes was opposed by theKu Klux Klan, which preferred Blease. Byrnes had been raised as aRoman Catholic, and the Klan spread rumors that he was still a secret Catholic. Byrnes countered by citing his support byEpiscopal clergy. Three days before the run-off vote, 20 Catholics who said that they had beenaltar boys with Byrnes published a professed endorsement of him. That group's leader was a Blease ally, and the "endorsement" was circulated inanti-Catholic areas.[13] Blease won the runoff 51% to 49%.[12]
After his House term ended in 1925, Byrnes was out of office. He moved his law practice toSpartanburg, in the industrializingPiedmont region. Between his law practice and investment advice from friends such asBernard 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 sinceJohn C. Calhoun.[15] He had long been friends with PresidentFranklin D. Roosevelt, whom he supported for theDemocratic nomination in 1932, and made himself Roosevelt's spokesman on the Senate floor, where he guided much of the earlyNew Deal legislation to passage.[16]
He won an easy re-election in1936, promising:
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.
Byrnes also criticized those who spoke out against the interventionist policies of the Roosevelt administration by making references to Thomas Jefferson and states’ rights, arguing that Jefferson was a progressive and liberal as well a “champion of the masses.” Adding to his point, Byrnes asserted that
if the sage of Monticello were alive today, he would frown upon any effort to use his views of states’ rights to block social and economic reforms so badly needed to improve conditions for those who labor in the factories and toil in the fields.[17]
Since thecolonial era, South Carolina's politicians had dreamed of an inland waterway system that would not only aid commerce but also control flooding. By the 1930s, Byrnes took up the cause for a massive dam-building project,Santee Cooper, that would not only accomplish those tasks but also electrify the entire state withhydroelectric power. With South Carolina financially strapped by theGreat Depression, Byrnes managed to get the federal government to authorize a loan for the entire project, which was completed and put into operation in February 1942. The loan was later paid back to the federal government with full interest and at no cost to South Carolina taxpayers. Santee Cooper has continued to be a model for public-owned electrical utilities worldwide.
In 1937, Byrnes supported Roosevelt's highly controversialcourt-packing plan, but he voted against the 1938Fair Labor Standards Act, as aminimum wage would potentially make the textile mills in his state uncompetitive. He opposed Roosevelt's efforts to purgeconservative Democrats in the 1938 primary elections. On foreign policy, Byrnes was a champion of Roosevelt's positions of helping theUnited Kingdom againstNazi Germany in 1939 to 1941 and of maintaining a hard diplomatic line againstJapan. In this context he denounced isolationistCharles Lindbergh on several occasions.[18]
Byrnes played a key role in blockinganti-lynching legislation, notably theCostigan–Wagner Bill of 1935 and theGavagan bill of 1937.[19] Byrnes said that "rape is responsible, directly and indirectly, for most of the lynching in America."[20]
Byrnes despised his fellow South Carolina Senator"Cotton Ed" Smith, who strongly opposed the New Deal.[21] He privately sought to help his friendBurnet R. Maybank, then the Mayor ofCharleston, defeat Smith in the1938 Senate primary. During the primary, however,Olin Johnston, who was limited to one term as governor, decided to run for the Senate. Because Johnston was also a pro-Roosevelt New Dealer,[21] he would have divided the New Deal vote with Maybank and ensured a victory for Smith. Johnston was also supportive of the New Deal's labor legislation,[22] but Byrnes's support was limited,[22] and a series of labor strikes in the fall of 1937 made Byrnes withdraw consideration for potentially endorsing Johnston.[23] Taking advice from Byrnes, Maybank decided to run for governor instead, and Byrnes made the reluctant decision to support Smith.[24] Byrnes envisioned that Smith would retire in 1944 and that Maybank would successfully run for Smith's Senate seat and build a strongpolitical machine in the state with him.[24]
On June 12, 1941, Rooseveltnominated Byrnes as anassociate justice of the United States Supreme Court, and he was confirmed that same day.[25] He served on the Court for only 15 months, from July 8, 1941, until October 3, 1942.[1] His Supreme Court tenure isthe shortest of any justice.[26]
Byrnes left the Supreme Court to head Roosevelt'sOffice of Economic Stabilization, which dealt with the vitally important issues of prices and taxes.[10] 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 theOffice of War Mobilization, a new agency that supervised the Office of Economic Stabilization.[27] Under the leadership of Byrnes, the program managed newly constructed factories across the country that used raw materials, civilian and military production, and transportation forUnited States Armed Forces personnel and was credited with providing the employment that was needed to bring an official end to the Great Depression.[28][29][30] 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."[30][31]
Many expected that Byrnes would be theDemocratic nominee in 1944 forvice president in Franklin D. Roosevelt's1944 reelection campaign,[31] replacingHenry 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.[32] Roosevelt refused to endorse anybody other than Wallace. He had a personal preference for US Supreme Court justiceWilliam 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 SenatorHarry S. Truman ofMissouri, and Roosevelt issued a statement saying he would support either Truman or Douglas. Byrnes was regarded as too conservative fororganized labor; some big city bosses opposed him as an ex-Catholic who would offend Catholics; and blacks were wary of his opposition toracial integration.[32] 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 theYalta 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, andJoseph Stalin. After the Conference, he was influential in convincing theU.S. Congress and the general public to accept the terms of the agreement.[33]
In 1945, Byrnes was awarded theDistinguished Service Medal by President Truman for his work in the Office of War Mobilization.
As head of the wartime Office of War Mobilization, Byrnes provided oversight, material and financial resources for the high priorityManhattan Project.[34]
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 SecretaryHenry L. Stimson, included Byrnes,Vannevar Bush,James Conant,Karl T. Compton, Under Secretary of the NavyRalph Austin Bard, and Assistant Secretary of StateWilliam L. Clayton. The scientific panel of the committee consisted ofJ. Robert Oppenheimer,Arthur Compton,Enrico Fermi andErnest Lawrence. A business leaders branch of the committee includedWalter S. Carpenter Jr. andJames 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 byMetallurgical Laboratory of theUniversity of Chicago, chaired byJames Franck withLeo Szilard andGlenn T. Seaborg.[35]
It was Byrnes who shared information with the new president on theatomic bomb project (until then,[when?] Truman had known nothing about the Manhattan Project).[36]
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.[37][38] Indeed, Byrnes was one of the first people seen by Truman on the first day of his presidency.[36] 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.[36] 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.[36]: 388
Truman appointed Byrnes asUS Secretary of State on July 3, 1945.[39] Despite personally objecting to any guarantees of retainingHirohito, Byrnes remained ambiguous on that point in a draft reply to Japan's offer of surrender of August 10.[40] As Secretary of State, he was first in line to the presidency (until adoption of the1947 succession act) since there was no Vice President during Truman's first term. He played a major role at thePotsdam Conference, theParis Peace Conference, and other major postwar conferences. According to historianRobert Hugh Ferrell, Byrnes knew little more about foreign relations than Truman. He made decisions after consulting a few advisors, such asDonald S. Russell andBenjamin V. Cohen. Byrnes and his small group paid little attention to the State Department experts and similarly ignored Truman.[41]
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 theYalta Agreement and that Truman needed to be resolute and uncompromising with them.[42]
Byrnes and British Foreign SecretaryErnest Bevin issued a joint statement announcing that they werecombining the U.S. and British occupation zones of Germany.[43] GeneralLucius 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 theMorgenthau Plan of economic dismantlement to one ofeconomic reconstruction.[44]
Truman was rapidly moving toward a hard-line 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 MinisterViacheslav Molotov over Soviet pressures onBulgaria andRomania. Byrnes sent Mark Ethridge, a liberal journalist, to investigate; Ethridge found conditions were indeed bad. Ethridge wrote a damning report, but Byrnes ignored it and instead endorsed a Soviet offer. Truman read Ethridge's report and decided that Byrnes's soft-line approach was a failure and that the US needed to stand up to the Kremlin.[45]
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 theMoscow Conference in December 1945. Truman considered the "successes" of the conference to be "unreal" and was highly critical of Byrnes's failure to protectIran, which was not mentioned in the final communiqué. "I had been left in the dark about the Moscow conference," Truman told Byrnes bluntly.[46] 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".[47] That led to theIran crisis of 1946, in which Byrnes took an increasingly hard-line 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 theMorgenthau Plan, an economic program that would permanently deindustrialize Germany. Byrnes was namedTIME 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.
Byrnes was not yet ready to give up public service. At 68, he was electedGovernor of South Carolina in the1950 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[48]
Byrnes was initially seen as a relative moderate on race issues. Recognizing that the South could not continue with its entrenchedsegregationist policies much longer but fearing that Congress would impose sweeping change upon the South, he opted for a course of change from within. To that end, he sought to fulfill at last the "separate but equal" policy that the South had put forward in Supreme Court civil rights cases, particularly in regard to public education. Byrnes poured state money into improving black schools, buying new textbooks and new buses, and hiring additional teachers. He also sought to curb the power of theKu Klux Klan by passing a law that prohibited adults from wearing a mask in public on any day other than Halloween; he knew that many Klansmen feared exposure and would not appear in public in their robes unless their faces were hidden as well. Byrnes hoped to make South Carolina an example for other Southern states to follow in modifying their "Jim Crow" policies. Nonetheless, theNAACP sued South Carolina to force the state todesegregate its schools. Byrnes requestedKansas, a Midwestern state that also segregated its schools, to provide anamicus curiae brief in supporting the right of a state to segregate its schools. That gave the NAACP's lawyer,Thurgood Marshall, the idea to shift the suit from South Carolina over to Kansas, which led directly toBrown v. Board of Education, a decision that Byrnes vigorously criticized.
TheSouth Carolina Constitution then barred governors from immediate re-election, so Byrnes retired from active political life after the1954 election.
In his later years, Byrnes became a conservative, with one historian noting how in 1949 he publicly lashed out at the growth of the welfare state and Harry Truman’sFair Deal.[49] 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 endorsedDwight Eisenhower in1952, segregationist candidateHarry Byrd in1956,Richard Nixon in1960 and1968, andBarry Goldwater in1964.[50] He gave his private blessing to US SenatorStrom Thurmond of South Carolina to bolt from the Democratic Party in 1964 and to declare himself aRepublican, but Byrnes himself remained a Democrat.
In 1965, Byrnes spoke out against the "punishment" and the "humiliation" of South Carolina US RepresentativeAlbert Watson, who had been stripped of his congressional seniority by theHouse Democratic Caucus after endorsing Goldwater for president in 1964. Watson then resigned from the House and became a Republican. Byrnes endorsed Watson inthe 1965 special election to fill the seat, which Watson won.[51][52]
Byrnes died at the age of 89, and was interred in the churchyard atTrinity Episcopal Church inColumbia, South Carolina.
Byrnes is memorialized at several South Carolina universities and schools:
In 1948, Byrnes and his wife established the James F. Byrnes Foundation Scholarships. His papers are inClemson University's Special Collections Library.
Byrnes' portrait hangs in the South Carolina Senate chambers.[53]
In the 2023 filmOppenheimer, directed byChristopher Nolan, Byrnes was portrayed by actorPat Skipper.
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| U.S. House of Representatives | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | Member of the U.S. House of Representatives fromSouth Carolina's 2nd congressional district 1911–1925 | Succeeded by |
| Party political offices | ||
| Preceded by | Democratic nominee forU.S. Senator fromSouth Carolina (Class 2) 1930,1936 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Democratic nominee forGovernor of South Carolina 1950 | Succeeded by |
| U.S. Senate | ||
| Preceded by | U.S. senator (Class 2) from South Carolina 1931–1941 Served alongside:Ed Smith | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Chair of theSenate Contingent Expenses Audit Committee 1933–1941 | Succeeded by |
| Legal offices | ||
| Preceded by | Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States 1941–1942 | Succeeded by |
| Political offices | ||
| New office | Director of theOffice of Economic Stabilization 1942–1943 | Succeeded by |
| Director of theOffice of War Mobilization 1943–1945 | Succeeded by | |
| Preceded by | United States Secretary of State 1945–1947 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Governor of South Carolina 1951–1955 | Succeeded by |
| Class 2 |  | |
|---|---|---|
| Class 3 | ||
