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| Epilog -- What Happened to the Men, Women and Institutions of David Pietrusza's 1920: The Year of the Six Presidents Available from Basic Books Order from amazon.com |
Senator Frank B. Brandegee, in ill health and having suffered severe financial reversals in real
estate, killed himself by inhaling "illuminating gas" at his Washington mansion on October 14,
1924. He was 60.
Nan Britton relocated to Chicago in 1933, where she operated an employment office under an
assumed name and resided with her companion and business partner Miss Gertrude Davis in
what was described as "a comfortable apartment" near Lake Michigan. She died in California in
1995. She was 96.
Elizabeth Ann Britton, President Harding's illegitimate daughter, married in September 1938,
keeping her identity secret until 1964, when she revealed she was Mrs. Henry E. Blaessing, a
Glendale, California housewife and mother of three sons, the first of whom was named Warren.
Heywood Broun ran for Congress on the Socialist Party ticket in 1930. In April 1933, facing
expulsion after gracing a Communist Party rally, he resigned party membership. That same year
he helped found the American Newspaper Guild and was elected its first president. In 1939,
haunted by a premonition of impending death, Broun, with the assistance of Monsignor (later
Bishop) Fulton J. Sheen, converted to Catholicism. He died of pneumonia at New York's
Columbia Presbyterian Hospital on December 18, 1939. Broun was 51. "He was a hard
fighter," wrote Franklin Roosevelt, "but always a fair fighter . . ."
William Jennings Bryan locked horns with Clarence Darrow in 1925's successful prosecution
of evolutionist John T. Scopes at Dayton, Tennessee's famed "Monkey Trial." Bryan
proclaimed Scopes' guilty verdict a triumph over "the forces of darkness." He left Dayton by
train, addressing huge crowds from his locomotive platform--an estimated 50,000 persons in
200 miles--before apoplexy claimed him two days later, on July 26, 1925. The Great
Commoner was 65.
Carrie Chapman Catt opposed the Equal Rights Amendment the Nation Women's Party
proposed in 1923. She also opposed repealing Prohibition, but soon warmed to Franklin
Roosevelt's administration. Mrs. Catt died at her New Rochelle home on March 9, 1947. She
was 88.
Professor William Estabrook Chancellor, Harding's racist nemesis, returned to the States after
Harding’s death, teaching at Cincinnati's Xavier University from 1927 through 1940 and
serving on the Norwood, Ohio city council from 1933 through 1940. Chancellor died on May
4, 1963. He was 96.
The Chicago Coliseum, home of the 1920 Republican National Convention, eventually became
home to roller derby, the Chicago Blackhawks and the Chicago Bulls. The venue's unlikely last
hurrah was Abbie Hoffman's August 1968 Yippie "L.B.J.'s un-birthday" party. Demolished in
1982, it survives as "Coliseum Park," a children's playground and dog run.
Parley Parker Christensen, 1920 Farmer-Labor Party presidential candidate, spent two years
in Moscow in the early 1920s, twice meeting with Lenin. In 1926 he unsuccessfully ran for the
United States Senate from Illinois, before moving to California and serving ten years on the Los
Angeles city council. Christensen died in Los Angeles on February 10, 1954. He was 84.
Edward Young Clarke, the KKK's publicity man, was convicted in 1924 for violating the Mann
Act, i.e., transporting women across state lines for immoral purposes. In 1932 Clarke devised a
prosperity scheme called Esskaye, based on the magical properties of the numeral seven.
Locked up as insane, Clarke convinced doctors he wasn't. In 1934, however, authorities
convicted Clarke of mail fraud regarding Esskaye. In March 1949, en route to Atlanta
Penitentiary, the 73-year old Clarke escaped from his federal parole supervisor.
Bainbridge Colby, Wilson's final Secretary of State, returned to New York and to private
practice, with Wilson as his official partner. The firm soon dissolved. A vigorous opponent of
prohibition, Colby campaigned for FDR in 1932, but quickly accused FDR of having fallen
"hook, line, and sinker to the Communists and Socialists by whom he is surrounded." In 1936
he supported Alf Landon for president and, in 1940, opposed Roosevelt's bid for a third term.
Colby died at Bemus Point, New York on April 11, 1950. He was 80.
Grace Goodhue Coolidge remained in Northampton, did defense work in Work War II, and
distinguished herself as one of New England's premier Red Sox fans. She died in her sleep at
Northampton on July 8, 1957. She was 78.
James Middleton Cox remained in the newspaper business and, to a lesser extent, in politics. In
1933 Franklin Roosevelt appointed Cox Vice Chairman of the United States Delegation to the
World Economic Conference at London (FDR wanted to appoint him ambassador to Berlin).
In 1946 Cox declined appointment to the United States Senate. He died in Dayton, Ohio on
July 15, 1957. He was 87. In 2003, the company he founded, Cox Enterprises employed
77,000 persons, operated 300 separate businesses, and reported revenues of $10.7 billion.
Margaretta Blair Cox, Cox's wife, died of asphyxiation at her Dayton home after smoking in
bed. Firemen could not understand why she remained in a smoke-filled bathroom when both
stairwells remained clear. She was 70.
Josephus Daniels served for eight years as ambassador to Mexico under FDR, who still called
him “Chief.� Mexicans, recalling Daniels' shelling of Vera Cruz while Navy Secretary,
were not initially overjoyed by the appointment, but Daniels soon won them over despite an
abstemious lifestyle, that saw him do little entertaining (and enabled him to annually bank
$10,000 of his $17,500 salary). In early January 1948 Daniels, suffering from bronchitis,
insisted on attending Methodist services. He contracted pneumonia and died in Raleigh that
January 15. Daniels, last surviving member of Woodrow Wilson's cabinet, was 85.
Harry Micajah Daugherty beat the rap. Indicted for conspiracy to defraud the government, he
went free after two juries deadlocked. Daugherty pled the Fifth Amendment, some said, to
protect Warren Harding more than himself. "I never talk about dead men or living women," he
later said. In 1932, with Thomas Dixon (of The Birth of a Nation fame) he wrote a defense of
his--and Harding's--career, The Inside Story of the Harding Tragedy. Daugherty died of
congestive heart failure in his Columbus apartment on October 12, 1941. He was 81.
Eugene Victor Debs suffered a nervous breakdown in October 1926 and entered Elmhurst,
Illinois' Lindlahr Sanitarium. A kidney ailment weakened him further and as he lay ill, he could
not speak. Motioning for paper and pencil, he scrawled out the words to William Ernest
Henley's poem Invictus: "It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the
scroll, I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul." Gene Debs died that October
20. He was 70.
W. W. Durbin, racist Ohio Democratic Chairman, was an early FDR supporter in 1932 and
FDR returned the favor by appointing him Register of the United States Treasury. Durbin died
of a cerebral hemorrhage at his Kenton, Ohio home on February 4, 1937. He was 71.
Albert Bacon Fall, Harding's Secretary of the Interior, was convicted in October 1929 of
receiving a $100,000 bribe from oilman Edward Doheny. Ironically, Doheny was acquitted of
tendering the bribe. Fall and Doheny contended the $100,000 was a loan, a mortgage on Fall's
one million acre Tres Ritos ranch--not a bribe. It eventually did turn out to be a mortgage.
Doheny foreclosed on the property, intending to return it to Fall, but he died shortly thereafter.
Doheny's estate kept all but five acres of Tres Ritos.
Fall spent ten months in New Mexico State Prison, the first cabinet officer to serve time. He
died on November 30, 1944 at El Paso's Hotel Dieu Hospital, where he had been a patient
since 1942. Albert B. Fall was 83.
James E. "Pa" Ferguson, 1920 American Party presidential candidate, was barred in 1924
from holding Texas public office, which didn't prevent his wife, Miriam A. "Ma" Ferguson, from
being elected governor that year and again in 1932 (she did, however, lose three other times).
Pa Ferguson died on September 21, 1944. He was 73.
Colonel Charles R. Forbes, Harding's crooked Veteran's Administration chief, was released
from prison in 1927 and made his living selling restaurant kitchenware. He died at Walter Reed
Army Hospital on April 11, 1952. He was 74.
Henry Ford, facing a $1 million libel suit, closed the Dearborn Independent in July 1927 and
retracted his previous anti-Semitic statements. Many questioned his sincerity, particularly after
Ford accepted the Grand Cross of the Order of the German Eagle from Hitler's government in
December 1938. Ford died at his Dearborn estate on April 7, 1945. He was 83.
Marcus Garvey's popularity quickly faded. The NAACP denounced him as a "robber of
innocent Negroes," ridiculed his back-to-Africa plan, and, not surprisingly, found itself outraged
by Garvey's cooperation with the Ku Klux Klan. In 1922 federal authorities indicted Garvey on
rather flimsy evidence for mail fraud regarding his Black Star Steamship Company. He
conducted a spiritedly if unsuccessfully defense and entered Atlanta Penitentiary in February
1925. Calvin Coolidge commuted his sentence in November 1927, and Garvey was deported
to his native Jamaica where he died on June 10, 1940. "Fortunately for himself and for others,"
editorialized the New York Times, "he was not able to translate his dream into widespread
slaughter. It came down at last to some fairly successful retail stealing, for which he did
penance. Now he is dead." He was 60.
Rear Adm. Cary T. Grayson assumed leadership of the American Red Cross in 1935. He died
of anemia in Washington on February 15, 1938. He was 59 .
Jake Hamon's son Jake L. Hamon continued in the family business, making a fortune in the
Texas oil fields. When he died in Amsterdam in 1985, he left an estate valued at $200 million.
Col. George B. Harvey remained editor of the North American Review and briefly edited the
Washington Post. Plagued by asthma, he died at his Dublin, New Hampshire summer home on
August 20, 1928. He was 64.
Will H. Hays, Republican National Chairman in 1920, left the Harding cabinet in March 1922
to assume the new position of president of Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of
America, in effect, the "czar" of the film industry. Serving until 1945, he established Hollywood's
code of morals for film content. Hays, 74, died of heart disease at his Indiana home, on March
7, 1954.
Herbert C. Hoover spent the 1930s vainly arguing against Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. In
1946 President Truman appointed Hoover to head the Famine Emergency Commission, to
alleviate hunger in a war-town world, and later to reorganize the federal executive branch—a
mission popularly known as the Hoover Commission. His energy belied his years (in 1960,
when he was 86, he wrote 55,952 letters). His reputation soiled by the Great Depression
seemed, at least, partially restored. "He had the last laugh," wrote James Reston, "he convinced
most of his critics in the end and outlived the rest of them." Hoover died in his 31st floor
Waldorf-Astoria apartment on October 20, 1964. He was 90.
J. Edgar Hoover not only survived the passing of Franklin Roosevelt in 1945, he survived
everybody, remaining as FBI chief until his death on May 2, 1972. He was 77.
Col. Edward Mandell House served as a confidential advisor to Franklin Roosevelt in his 1932
presidential campaign and was later occasionally called upon by FDR for advice. In January
1933 he wrote a magazine article musing that the country might be ready for dictatorship. In
June 1937 he retracted that view and predicted that FDR ("my friend") would not seek a third
term. He also predicted world peace. House, 79, died at his Manhattan townhouse on March
28, 1938.
Dr. Erastus Mead Hudson, Franklin Roosevelt's homosexual-hunting navy lieutenant, became an
internationally recognized expert on fingerprinting and testified for defendant Bruno Richard
Hauptman in the Lindbergh kidnapping case. Appointed to the Medical Advisory Board of the
United States Trade Commission in 1942, Hudson died at Washington on September 12,
1943. He was 55.
Senator Hiram W. Johnson helped lead the resistance to FDR's 1937 court-packing schemes.
Johnson, still in the Senate, died at Bethesda Naval Hospital on August 6, 1945. One of his last
votes was against ratification of the United Nations Charter--one of only two votes in
opposition. He was 78.
Rev. Samuel Neal Kent left the active ministry, working instead for the Chautauqua Association
of Philadelphia and the English Speaking Union of the United States, although occasionally he
served as a cruise ship chaplain. He died on November 1, 1943 in Daytona Beach, Florida. He
was 70.
John T. King, TR and Leonard Wood's key political advisor, found himself indicted (along with
Harry Daugherty) in early 1926 on charges of defrauding the government and later on income
tax charges. He died of pneumonia in Bridgeport that May 14. He was 51.
Robert Lansing returned to private practice, specializing in international law. A diabetic for 30
years, Lansing died of myocarditis at his Washington home on October 30, 1928. He was 64.
In 1953, his nephew, John Foster Dulles, became Dwight Eisenhower's Secretary of State.
Foster Dulles' son, Avery, converted to Catholicism and became a cardinal.
Albert D. Lasker, Harding's campaign advertising guru, served as Chairman of the War
Shipping Board. He supported Charles Dawes in 1924 and Wendell Willkie in 1940. In 1942
Lasker sold his advertising agency, Lord & Taylor, and devoted his life to philanthropy. He
died of cancer in New York City on May 30, 1952. He was 72.
The League of Nations failed to prevent World War II and transferred all its assets to the
United Nations on April 18, 1946. It was 26.
Missy LeHand became, in Elliott Roosevelt's words, "the true hostess of the White House." not
too surprising considering she lived on the third floor. Missy, who suffered a stroke in 1941 and
retired as FDR's secretary, died of a cerebral thrombosis in Boston's Chelsea Naval Hospital
on July 31, 1944. She was 46. FDR's will earmarked up to half of his estate for her medical
care.
Senator Irvine L. Lenroot narrowly won re-election in November 1920 but failed to win re-
nomination in 1926. Two years later, Coolidge appointed him to the United States Court of
Custom and Patent Appeals, a post he held until 1944. He died in Washington on January 26,
1949. He was 79.
The Literary Digest continued presidential polling, picking winners in 1924, 1928, and 1932
(coming within 0.71% of 1932's actual result). In 1936, basing its forecast on 2.3 million ballots
returned, it forecast Kansas Governor Alf Landon would defeat FDR 57%-43% and garner
370 electoral votes. Landon received 38% and 8 electoral votes. The fiasco shattered the
magazine's credibility. In June 1937 the Literary Digest merged with The Review of Reviews
and finally folded the following spring. It was 47.
Henry Cabot Lodge's grandson, Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. followed him into the Senate but lost
his seat in 1952 to John F. Kennedy. In February 1953, Dwight Eisenhower appointed Lodge
Jr. as United States Ambassador to the United Nations, successor organization to the League
of Nations. Another grandson, John Davis Lodge, acted in the films as Katherine Hepburn's
Little Women (1933) and Shirley Temple's The Little Colonel (1935), later served as
governor of Connecticut and United States ambassador, and returned to screen to portray a
Russian agent in In Like Flint (1967). John Davis Lodge died while addressing the National
Women's Republican Club.
Alice Roosevelt Longworth, TR's sharp-tongued daughter, remained in Washington after her
husband Nick's death in 1931, continuing her acerbic ways, viewing the world, as she put it,
with "malevolent detachment."
"I'm the old fire horse, she explained toward the end, "I just perform. I give a good show--just
one of the Roosevelt show-offs." She died at her Dupont Circle mansion on February 20,
1980. She was 96.
Frank Orren Lowden's wife Florence Pullman Lowden died in 1937, leaving her husband $4.5
million. Frank Lowden died of cancer in Tucson on March 20, 1943. He was 82.
Helen Harding Cox Mahoney, daughter of James M. Cox, died after a fall at her suburban
Dayton home on May 16, 1921. She was 25.
Dudley Field Malone, Wilson's Collector of the Port of New York who resigned over the
suffragette issue and abandoned his wife to marry suffragette Doris Stevens, divorced Stevens
in 1929. He assisted Clarence Darrow in the 1925 Scopes evolution trial, and spent much of
the '20s protesting Prohibition--often by drinking heavily. In 1932, he helped secure Franklin
Roosevelt's nomination--but then endorsed Herbert Hoover. Malone later moved to California,
became counsel to Twentieth Century-Fox, and portrayed Winston Churchill in Warner
Brothers' 1943 paen to Stalin, Mission to Moscow. Malone died of a heart attack in Culver
City on October 5, 1950. He was 68.
William Gibbs McAdoo divorced his wife Eleanor in July 1934. In September 1935, McAdoo,
71, married 26-year old San Diego public health nurse Doris Cross. Despite FDR's support, he
was denied re-nomination in 1938. McAdoo died of a heart attack while visiting Washington on
February 1, 1941. He was 77.
Kate Richards O'Hare, former Socialist Party activist jailed for anti-war activities, became
California’s Assistant State Director of Penology in 1939. She died in January 1948.
Thomas Mott Osborne, FDR's warden at Monmouth Naval Prison, never held another
responsible government position. Complicating matters was a $25,000 alienation of affection
suit launched against him by a young woman aggrieved in the matter of her ex-convict fiancé,
Osborne's aide and occasional bodyguard.
On the evening of October 20, 1926 a body was found outside a theater in Auburn, New
York. It was Osborne, who had suffered a heart attack at age 67. Newspapers refrained from
revealing that the deceased carried no identification, save for his old "Tom Brown" prison
badge, wore a false beard and teeth and had disguised his nostrils, in the manner of movie
master of disguise Lon Cheney. It is best not to consider what he was up to.
A. Mitchell Palmer suffered a heart attack in 1922 and abandoned his political ambitions. He
did, however, maintain close relations with former neighbor Franklin Roosevelt, and FDR
entrusted Palmer to write the 1932 Democratic platform--a document Roosevelt took care to
keep under glass on his Oval Office desk but never to implement. Palmer died in Washington
on May 11, 1936 of heart disease following an appendicitis operation. He was 64.
Alice Stokes Paul earned three law degrees in the 1920s, drafted the ill-fated Equal Rights
Amendment to the federal constitution in 1923, and, in 1938, helped organize the World
Woman's Party. She died in Moorestown, New Jersey on July 9, 1977. She was 92.
Mary Allen Hulbert Peck, Woodrow Wilson's mysterious correspondent and friend, died in
Norwalk, Connecticut on December 17, 1939. She was 76.
Andrew J. Peters, mayor during Boston's police strike, returned to the private practice of law
and to other sundry private matters, most notably those concerning a beautiful, young girl with a
beautiful name, Starr Faithfull. The affair--actually, a series of rapes--started in 1917 when she
was 12. Peters paid somewhere between $20,000 and $80,000 to silence her outraged, but,
nonetheless, quite practical, family. Starr moved to New York, became a showgirl, and was
found drowned, but fully dressed, on a Long Island beach on June 8, 1931. Some suspected
Peters, but as he still retained some influence (he seconded Al Smith's nomination at the 1928
Democrat convention), nothing was done to him. Peters died of pneumonia on June 26, 1938.
He was 66. The case has never been solved.
Alexandra Carlisle Pfeiffer continued her stage career against her second husband's wishes. In
1923 Dr. Albert Pfeiffer sued for divorce, charging desertion. In 1934 her estranged third
husband, J. Elliot Jenkins, shot and killed himself in Chicago. She was in her apartment, eleven
floors above. Jenkins left two suicide notes. One read: "To the hotel bellboys: I'm sorry I wasn't
able to tip you while I was here. Thank you for your good service." Atop the note was
seventeen dollars. Alexandra Carlisle Pfeiffer died alone at her room in Times Square's Hotel
Astor on April 22, 1936. She was 50.
Carrie Fulton Phillips, Warren Harding's mistress, died in 1960 in what the New York Times
described as "an institution for the aged maintained by public welfare." She left behind a
cardboard box containing 98 letters from Harding that confirmed their relationship, often in
graphic detail. She was 84.
Eleanor Roosevelt served as an American delegate to the United Nations under Presidents
Truman and Kennedy, wrote a newspaper column, "My Day," and actively encouraged the
liberal wing of the Democratic Party. She died of tuberculosis in New York City on November
7, 1962. She was 78.
Franklin D. Roosevelt never seemed to lack for confidence as he won four terms as president,
defeated the Axis powers, and created the United Nations, the successor to Woodrow
Wilson's League of Nations. But he had second thoughts about his 1920 performance. "I, too,â
€� he confided in 1939 to Col. Frank Knox (1936's Republican vice-presidential candidate), â
€œwas inexperienced in national campaigns in 1920 and later regretted many of the things I said
at that time!" He died at Warm Springs, Georgia on April 12, 1945.
Lucy Mercer Rutherford, Franklin Roosevelt's wartime mistress, married wealthy New Yorker
Winthrop Rutherford in February 1920. She, nonetheless, maintained contact with FDR and
was with FDR in April 1945 when he died at Warm Springs, Georgia. Her husband had died in
1944. Jonathan Daniels, FDR's former press secretary and Josephus Daniels' son, hinted at the
relationship in a 1954 memoir, aptly titled The End of Innocence, and fully revealed it in his
1966 effort, The Time Between the Wars. Lucy Mercer Rutherford died in New York City on
July 31, 1948--four years to the day after Missy Le Hand died. She was 57.
Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, accused, convicted of, and executed for the April 1920
South Braintree robbery and murder, remained cultural icons, symbols of American judicial
injustice. On August 23, 1977 Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis officially pardoned
the two men. Yet, doubts--and evidence--have mounted against a presumption of their
innocence. In 1943 anarchist leader and key Sacco and Vanzetti supporter Carlo Tresca, who
had first began hearing rumors of Sacco and Vanzetti's guilt as early as 1922, admitted to leftist
intellectual Max Eastman, "Sacco was guilty but Vanzetti was innocent." He had earlier made
the same accusation to socialists Norman Thomas and John P. Roche.
In October 1961 ballistics tests revealed that some of the bullets found in factory guard
Alessandro Berardelli's body came from Sacco's Colt automatic pistol.
In 1982 Ideale Gambera, son of one of Sacco and Vanzetti's four-man defense committee
wrote author Francis Russell: "Everyone [among the anarchist leadership] knew that Sacco was
guilty and that Vanzetti was innocent as far as the actual participation in killing."
The San Francisco Civic Auditorium, site of the 1920 Democratic National Convention,
functions to this day, but being that it functions in San Francisco, it is now the Bill Graham Civic
Auditorium, in honor of the famed concert promoter of the city's Haght-Ashbury era.
Thomas D. Schall, Hiram Johnson's seconder at the 1920 convention, evolved from progressive
Congressman to the Senate's most vitriolic opponent of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. On the
morning of December 22, 1935, the blind Schall was run over in Washington traffic. His death
coincided with a national conference of traffic safety experts. Schall was 58.
Colonel William J. Simmons, founder of the Ku Klux Klan, after a series of legal battles,
surrendered Klan leadership in 1924, bought off for somewhere between $90,000 and
$145,500. He pondered founding a rival Klan--the Hidden Hosts, Knights of the Flaming
Sword--but nothing came of the idea. In 1936 the Klan's former national headquarters in
Atlanta became a Catholic school. In April 1944, the Invisible Empire, facing a $685,000 on
IRS tax, formally dissolved. Simmons died in Atlanta on May 18, 1945. He was 64.
Al Smith broke with Franklin Roosevelt, declaring the New Deal anathema. "Don't let anyone
tell you that President Roosevelt is a Communist," said Al Smith in his last speech of the 1936
campaign against FDR, "That is not so. Or don't let anyone tell you he is a Socialist. That is not
so. He is neither a Communist nor a Socialist--any more than I am--but something has taken
place in this country—there is a certain kind of foreign "ism" crawling over this country. What it
is I don't know. What its first name will be when it's christened I haven't the slightest idea. But I
know it is here, and the sin about it is that [Roosevelt] doesn't seem to know it." He died of lung
and heart disease on October 4, 1944. He was 70.
Seymour Stedman, Eugene Debs' 1920 running mate, became vice president of the City State
Bank of Chicago. In 1929 it failed and in 1933 authorities indicted him for receiving deposits
during its insolvency but dropped charges two years later. Stedman died at his Chicago home
on July 9, 1948. He was 78.
Lothrop Stoddard, author of The Rising Tide of Color, continued writing racist books,
including 1922's proto-Nazi The Revolt against Civilization: The Menace of the Underman.
In 1921, with Margaret Sanger, he helped found the American Birth Control League and
served on its Board of Directors. In 1940, Stoddard interviewed Hitler, Himmler, and
Goebbels for the North American Newspaper Alliance and conferred with prominent German
eugenicists. He died in Washington, D.C. on May 1, 1950. He was 66.
William Howard Taft resigned as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in February 1930 and
died that March 8. "To me he was a friend," said Calvin Coolidge, "kindly, genial, and helpful.
He often came to my office when I was in Washington and always brought mature thought and
good cheer." Taft was 72.
Joseph K. Taussig, critic of FDR's naval prison policies, rose to the rank of admiral, retiring just
prior to Pearl Harbor. Recalled to active duty in 1943, he served as senior member on the
Navy's clemency and prison inspection board--for which he received the Legion of Merit.
Taussig died of a heart attack at Bethesda Naval Hospital on October 29, 1947.
Judge Webster Thayer, presiding judge in the Sacco and Vanzetti case, had his Worcester,
Massachusetts home destroyed by a bomb on the night of September 27, 1932. After the
incident, he remained under police guard. Thayer died in Boston the following April 18th of a
stroke. He was 75.
Carlo Tresca, early organizer of Sacco and Vanzetti's defense, was convicted of sending
obscene material (an ad for a book on birth control) through the mails in 1924, but after serving
four months was freed by President Coolidge. On the evening of January 11, 1943, Tresca and
an associate strolled through Greenwich Village. At 9:40 PM, they reached Fifth Avenue and
15th Street, when a dark sedan pulled alongside. A man jumped out and fired three shots, one
hitting Tresca in the temple. He died instantly. Fascists, Communists, and mobsters were
suspected. No one was ever convicted.
Joseph P. Tumulty entered Washington private practice. He refused, however, to engage in
lobbying. Tumulty died at his Maryland home on April 8, 1954. He was 74.
Wayne Bidwell Wheeler, boss of the Anti-Saloon League, suffered horrendous personal
tragedy. In August 1927 a gasoline stove exploded at Wheeler's Little Point Sable, Michigan
summer cottage. His wife's apron caught fire, enveloping in flames, burning her entire body and
even the inside of her mouth (she had inhaled some of the flames). Her 81-year old father, who
had just suffered a heart attack, witnessed the scene, suffered a second heart attack, and died
on the spot. Wheeler wrapped his wife in a carpet, treated her with baking soda, and rushed
her to a hospital. She died the next morning. Wheeler soon followed. Beset by kidney disease,
he died at the Battle Creek Sanitarium on September 5, 1927. When Wheeler died, Will
Rogers remarked, "The best fight a man can put up is to have his enemies say, if he passes out
in the middle of the fight, is: "Well, I am glad he is out of the way." Wayne B. Wheeler was 57.
William Allen White, tireless progressive chronicler of Republican (and sometimes
Democratic) politics, remained an "unreconstructed liberal," ran for governor of Kansas as an
independent anti-Klan candidate in 1924, and vigorously urged support for Britain prior to
Pearl Harbor. Less notably, in 1928 he attacked Al Smith for allegedly supporting gambling and
prostitution while in the state legislature. He later withdrew those charges. White died at
Emporia, Kansas on January 29, 1944. He was 85. His Autobiography, published
posthumously in 1946, won the Pulitzer Prize for biography.
Edith Bolling Galt Wilson personally answered each piece of mail she received--but only if it
contained a stamped, self-addressed envelope. In 1939, she published her autobiography, My
Memoir. Mrs. Wilson died at her Washington home on December 29, 1961. She was 89.
estate, killed himself by inhaling "illuminating gas" at his Washington mansion on October 14,
1924. He was 60.
Nan Britton relocated to Chicago in 1933, where she operated an employment office under an
assumed name and resided with her companion and business partner Miss Gertrude Davis in
what was described as "a comfortable apartment" near Lake Michigan. She died in California in
1995. She was 96.
Elizabeth Ann Britton, President Harding's illegitimate daughter, married in September 1938,
keeping her identity secret until 1964, when she revealed she was Mrs. Henry E. Blaessing, a
Glendale, California housewife and mother of three sons, the first of whom was named Warren.
Heywood Broun ran for Congress on the Socialist Party ticket in 1930. In April 1933, facing
expulsion after gracing a Communist Party rally, he resigned party membership. That same year
he helped found the American Newspaper Guild and was elected its first president. In 1939,
haunted by a premonition of impending death, Broun, with the assistance of Monsignor (later
Bishop) Fulton J. Sheen, converted to Catholicism. He died of pneumonia at New York's
Columbia Presbyterian Hospital on December 18, 1939. Broun was 51. "He was a hard
fighter," wrote Franklin Roosevelt, "but always a fair fighter . . ."
William Jennings Bryan locked horns with Clarence Darrow in 1925's successful prosecution
of evolutionist John T. Scopes at Dayton, Tennessee's famed "Monkey Trial." Bryan
proclaimed Scopes' guilty verdict a triumph over "the forces of darkness." He left Dayton by
train, addressing huge crowds from his locomotive platform--an estimated 50,000 persons in
200 miles--before apoplexy claimed him two days later, on July 26, 1925. The Great
Commoner was 65.
Carrie Chapman Catt opposed the Equal Rights Amendment the Nation Women's Party
proposed in 1923. She also opposed repealing Prohibition, but soon warmed to Franklin
Roosevelt's administration. Mrs. Catt died at her New Rochelle home on March 9, 1947. She
was 88.
Professor William Estabrook Chancellor, Harding's racist nemesis, returned to the States after
Harding’s death, teaching at Cincinnati's Xavier University from 1927 through 1940 and
serving on the Norwood, Ohio city council from 1933 through 1940. Chancellor died on May
4, 1963. He was 96.
The Chicago Coliseum, home of the 1920 Republican National Convention, eventually became
home to roller derby, the Chicago Blackhawks and the Chicago Bulls. The venue's unlikely last
hurrah was Abbie Hoffman's August 1968 Yippie "L.B.J.'s un-birthday" party. Demolished in
1982, it survives as "Coliseum Park," a children's playground and dog run.
Parley Parker Christensen, 1920 Farmer-Labor Party presidential candidate, spent two years
in Moscow in the early 1920s, twice meeting with Lenin. In 1926 he unsuccessfully ran for the
United States Senate from Illinois, before moving to California and serving ten years on the Los
Angeles city council. Christensen died in Los Angeles on February 10, 1954. He was 84.
Edward Young Clarke, the KKK's publicity man, was convicted in 1924 for violating the Mann
Act, i.e., transporting women across state lines for immoral purposes. In 1932 Clarke devised a
prosperity scheme called Esskaye, based on the magical properties of the numeral seven.
Locked up as insane, Clarke convinced doctors he wasn't. In 1934, however, authorities
convicted Clarke of mail fraud regarding Esskaye. In March 1949, en route to Atlanta
Penitentiary, the 73-year old Clarke escaped from his federal parole supervisor.
Bainbridge Colby, Wilson's final Secretary of State, returned to New York and to private
practice, with Wilson as his official partner. The firm soon dissolved. A vigorous opponent of
prohibition, Colby campaigned for FDR in 1932, but quickly accused FDR of having fallen
"hook, line, and sinker to the Communists and Socialists by whom he is surrounded." In 1936
he supported Alf Landon for president and, in 1940, opposed Roosevelt's bid for a third term.
Colby died at Bemus Point, New York on April 11, 1950. He was 80.
Grace Goodhue Coolidge remained in Northampton, did defense work in Work War II, and
distinguished herself as one of New England's premier Red Sox fans. She died in her sleep at
Northampton on July 8, 1957. She was 78.
James Middleton Cox remained in the newspaper business and, to a lesser extent, in politics. In
1933 Franklin Roosevelt appointed Cox Vice Chairman of the United States Delegation to the
World Economic Conference at London (FDR wanted to appoint him ambassador to Berlin).
In 1946 Cox declined appointment to the United States Senate. He died in Dayton, Ohio on
July 15, 1957. He was 87. In 2003, the company he founded, Cox Enterprises employed
77,000 persons, operated 300 separate businesses, and reported revenues of $10.7 billion.
Margaretta Blair Cox, Cox's wife, died of asphyxiation at her Dayton home after smoking in
bed. Firemen could not understand why she remained in a smoke-filled bathroom when both
stairwells remained clear. She was 70.
Josephus Daniels served for eight years as ambassador to Mexico under FDR, who still called
him “Chief.� Mexicans, recalling Daniels' shelling of Vera Cruz while Navy Secretary,
were not initially overjoyed by the appointment, but Daniels soon won them over despite an
abstemious lifestyle, that saw him do little entertaining (and enabled him to annually bank
$10,000 of his $17,500 salary). In early January 1948 Daniels, suffering from bronchitis,
insisted on attending Methodist services. He contracted pneumonia and died in Raleigh that
January 15. Daniels, last surviving member of Woodrow Wilson's cabinet, was 85.
Harry Micajah Daugherty beat the rap. Indicted for conspiracy to defraud the government, he
went free after two juries deadlocked. Daugherty pled the Fifth Amendment, some said, to
protect Warren Harding more than himself. "I never talk about dead men or living women," he
later said. In 1932, with Thomas Dixon (of The Birth of a Nation fame) he wrote a defense of
his--and Harding's--career, The Inside Story of the Harding Tragedy. Daugherty died of
congestive heart failure in his Columbus apartment on October 12, 1941. He was 81.
Eugene Victor Debs suffered a nervous breakdown in October 1926 and entered Elmhurst,
Illinois' Lindlahr Sanitarium. A kidney ailment weakened him further and as he lay ill, he could
not speak. Motioning for paper and pencil, he scrawled out the words to William Ernest
Henley's poem Invictus: "It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the
scroll, I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul." Gene Debs died that October
20. He was 70.
W. W. Durbin, racist Ohio Democratic Chairman, was an early FDR supporter in 1932 and
FDR returned the favor by appointing him Register of the United States Treasury. Durbin died
of a cerebral hemorrhage at his Kenton, Ohio home on February 4, 1937. He was 71.
Albert Bacon Fall, Harding's Secretary of the Interior, was convicted in October 1929 of
receiving a $100,000 bribe from oilman Edward Doheny. Ironically, Doheny was acquitted of
tendering the bribe. Fall and Doheny contended the $100,000 was a loan, a mortgage on Fall's
one million acre Tres Ritos ranch--not a bribe. It eventually did turn out to be a mortgage.
Doheny foreclosed on the property, intending to return it to Fall, but he died shortly thereafter.
Doheny's estate kept all but five acres of Tres Ritos.
Fall spent ten months in New Mexico State Prison, the first cabinet officer to serve time. He
died on November 30, 1944 at El Paso's Hotel Dieu Hospital, where he had been a patient
since 1942. Albert B. Fall was 83.
James E. "Pa" Ferguson, 1920 American Party presidential candidate, was barred in 1924
from holding Texas public office, which didn't prevent his wife, Miriam A. "Ma" Ferguson, from
being elected governor that year and again in 1932 (she did, however, lose three other times).
Pa Ferguson died on September 21, 1944. He was 73.
Colonel Charles R. Forbes, Harding's crooked Veteran's Administration chief, was released
from prison in 1927 and made his living selling restaurant kitchenware. He died at Walter Reed
Army Hospital on April 11, 1952. He was 74.
Henry Ford, facing a $1 million libel suit, closed the Dearborn Independent in July 1927 and
retracted his previous anti-Semitic statements. Many questioned his sincerity, particularly after
Ford accepted the Grand Cross of the Order of the German Eagle from Hitler's government in
December 1938. Ford died at his Dearborn estate on April 7, 1945. He was 83.
Marcus Garvey's popularity quickly faded. The NAACP denounced him as a "robber of
innocent Negroes," ridiculed his back-to-Africa plan, and, not surprisingly, found itself outraged
by Garvey's cooperation with the Ku Klux Klan. In 1922 federal authorities indicted Garvey on
rather flimsy evidence for mail fraud regarding his Black Star Steamship Company. He
conducted a spiritedly if unsuccessfully defense and entered Atlanta Penitentiary in February
1925. Calvin Coolidge commuted his sentence in November 1927, and Garvey was deported
to his native Jamaica where he died on June 10, 1940. "Fortunately for himself and for others,"
editorialized the New York Times, "he was not able to translate his dream into widespread
slaughter. It came down at last to some fairly successful retail stealing, for which he did
penance. Now he is dead." He was 60.
Rear Adm. Cary T. Grayson assumed leadership of the American Red Cross in 1935. He died
of anemia in Washington on February 15, 1938. He was 59 .
Jake Hamon's son Jake L. Hamon continued in the family business, making a fortune in the
Texas oil fields. When he died in Amsterdam in 1985, he left an estate valued at $200 million.
Col. George B. Harvey remained editor of the North American Review and briefly edited the
Washington Post. Plagued by asthma, he died at his Dublin, New Hampshire summer home on
August 20, 1928. He was 64.
Will H. Hays, Republican National Chairman in 1920, left the Harding cabinet in March 1922
to assume the new position of president of Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of
America, in effect, the "czar" of the film industry. Serving until 1945, he established Hollywood's
code of morals for film content. Hays, 74, died of heart disease at his Indiana home, on March
7, 1954.
Herbert C. Hoover spent the 1930s vainly arguing against Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. In
1946 President Truman appointed Hoover to head the Famine Emergency Commission, to
alleviate hunger in a war-town world, and later to reorganize the federal executive branch—a
mission popularly known as the Hoover Commission. His energy belied his years (in 1960,
when he was 86, he wrote 55,952 letters). His reputation soiled by the Great Depression
seemed, at least, partially restored. "He had the last laugh," wrote James Reston, "he convinced
most of his critics in the end and outlived the rest of them." Hoover died in his 31st floor
Waldorf-Astoria apartment on October 20, 1964. He was 90.
J. Edgar Hoover not only survived the passing of Franklin Roosevelt in 1945, he survived
everybody, remaining as FBI chief until his death on May 2, 1972. He was 77.
Col. Edward Mandell House served as a confidential advisor to Franklin Roosevelt in his 1932
presidential campaign and was later occasionally called upon by FDR for advice. In January
1933 he wrote a magazine article musing that the country might be ready for dictatorship. In
June 1937 he retracted that view and predicted that FDR ("my friend") would not seek a third
term. He also predicted world peace. House, 79, died at his Manhattan townhouse on March
28, 1938.
Dr. Erastus Mead Hudson, Franklin Roosevelt's homosexual-hunting navy lieutenant, became an
internationally recognized expert on fingerprinting and testified for defendant Bruno Richard
Hauptman in the Lindbergh kidnapping case. Appointed to the Medical Advisory Board of the
United States Trade Commission in 1942, Hudson died at Washington on September 12,
1943. He was 55.
Senator Hiram W. Johnson helped lead the resistance to FDR's 1937 court-packing schemes.
Johnson, still in the Senate, died at Bethesda Naval Hospital on August 6, 1945. One of his last
votes was against ratification of the United Nations Charter--one of only two votes in
opposition. He was 78.
Rev. Samuel Neal Kent left the active ministry, working instead for the Chautauqua Association
of Philadelphia and the English Speaking Union of the United States, although occasionally he
served as a cruise ship chaplain. He died on November 1, 1943 in Daytona Beach, Florida. He
was 70.
John T. King, TR and Leonard Wood's key political advisor, found himself indicted (along with
Harry Daugherty) in early 1926 on charges of defrauding the government and later on income
tax charges. He died of pneumonia in Bridgeport that May 14. He was 51.
Robert Lansing returned to private practice, specializing in international law. A diabetic for 30
years, Lansing died of myocarditis at his Washington home on October 30, 1928. He was 64.
In 1953, his nephew, John Foster Dulles, became Dwight Eisenhower's Secretary of State.
Foster Dulles' son, Avery, converted to Catholicism and became a cardinal.
Albert D. Lasker, Harding's campaign advertising guru, served as Chairman of the War
Shipping Board. He supported Charles Dawes in 1924 and Wendell Willkie in 1940. In 1942
Lasker sold his advertising agency, Lord & Taylor, and devoted his life to philanthropy. He
died of cancer in New York City on May 30, 1952. He was 72.
The League of Nations failed to prevent World War II and transferred all its assets to the
United Nations on April 18, 1946. It was 26.
Missy LeHand became, in Elliott Roosevelt's words, "the true hostess of the White House." not
too surprising considering she lived on the third floor. Missy, who suffered a stroke in 1941 and
retired as FDR's secretary, died of a cerebral thrombosis in Boston's Chelsea Naval Hospital
on July 31, 1944. She was 46. FDR's will earmarked up to half of his estate for her medical
care.
Senator Irvine L. Lenroot narrowly won re-election in November 1920 but failed to win re-
nomination in 1926. Two years later, Coolidge appointed him to the United States Court of
Custom and Patent Appeals, a post he held until 1944. He died in Washington on January 26,
1949. He was 79.
The Literary Digest continued presidential polling, picking winners in 1924, 1928, and 1932
(coming within 0.71% of 1932's actual result). In 1936, basing its forecast on 2.3 million ballots
returned, it forecast Kansas Governor Alf Landon would defeat FDR 57%-43% and garner
370 electoral votes. Landon received 38% and 8 electoral votes. The fiasco shattered the
magazine's credibility. In June 1937 the Literary Digest merged with The Review of Reviews
and finally folded the following spring. It was 47.
Henry Cabot Lodge's grandson, Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. followed him into the Senate but lost
his seat in 1952 to John F. Kennedy. In February 1953, Dwight Eisenhower appointed Lodge
Jr. as United States Ambassador to the United Nations, successor organization to the League
of Nations. Another grandson, John Davis Lodge, acted in the films as Katherine Hepburn's
Little Women (1933) and Shirley Temple's The Little Colonel (1935), later served as
governor of Connecticut and United States ambassador, and returned to screen to portray a
Russian agent in In Like Flint (1967). John Davis Lodge died while addressing the National
Women's Republican Club.
Alice Roosevelt Longworth, TR's sharp-tongued daughter, remained in Washington after her
husband Nick's death in 1931, continuing her acerbic ways, viewing the world, as she put it,
with "malevolent detachment."
"I'm the old fire horse, she explained toward the end, "I just perform. I give a good show--just
one of the Roosevelt show-offs." She died at her Dupont Circle mansion on February 20,
1980. She was 96.
Frank Orren Lowden's wife Florence Pullman Lowden died in 1937, leaving her husband $4.5
million. Frank Lowden died of cancer in Tucson on March 20, 1943. He was 82.
Helen Harding Cox Mahoney, daughter of James M. Cox, died after a fall at her suburban
Dayton home on May 16, 1921. She was 25.
Dudley Field Malone, Wilson's Collector of the Port of New York who resigned over the
suffragette issue and abandoned his wife to marry suffragette Doris Stevens, divorced Stevens
in 1929. He assisted Clarence Darrow in the 1925 Scopes evolution trial, and spent much of
the '20s protesting Prohibition--often by drinking heavily. In 1932, he helped secure Franklin
Roosevelt's nomination--but then endorsed Herbert Hoover. Malone later moved to California,
became counsel to Twentieth Century-Fox, and portrayed Winston Churchill in Warner
Brothers' 1943 paen to Stalin, Mission to Moscow. Malone died of a heart attack in Culver
City on October 5, 1950. He was 68.
William Gibbs McAdoo divorced his wife Eleanor in July 1934. In September 1935, McAdoo,
71, married 26-year old San Diego public health nurse Doris Cross. Despite FDR's support, he
was denied re-nomination in 1938. McAdoo died of a heart attack while visiting Washington on
February 1, 1941. He was 77.
Kate Richards O'Hare, former Socialist Party activist jailed for anti-war activities, became
California’s Assistant State Director of Penology in 1939. She died in January 1948.
Thomas Mott Osborne, FDR's warden at Monmouth Naval Prison, never held another
responsible government position. Complicating matters was a $25,000 alienation of affection
suit launched against him by a young woman aggrieved in the matter of her ex-convict fiancé,
Osborne's aide and occasional bodyguard.
On the evening of October 20, 1926 a body was found outside a theater in Auburn, New
York. It was Osborne, who had suffered a heart attack at age 67. Newspapers refrained from
revealing that the deceased carried no identification, save for his old "Tom Brown" prison
badge, wore a false beard and teeth and had disguised his nostrils, in the manner of movie
master of disguise Lon Cheney. It is best not to consider what he was up to.
A. Mitchell Palmer suffered a heart attack in 1922 and abandoned his political ambitions. He
did, however, maintain close relations with former neighbor Franklin Roosevelt, and FDR
entrusted Palmer to write the 1932 Democratic platform--a document Roosevelt took care to
keep under glass on his Oval Office desk but never to implement. Palmer died in Washington
on May 11, 1936 of heart disease following an appendicitis operation. He was 64.
Alice Stokes Paul earned three law degrees in the 1920s, drafted the ill-fated Equal Rights
Amendment to the federal constitution in 1923, and, in 1938, helped organize the World
Woman's Party. She died in Moorestown, New Jersey on July 9, 1977. She was 92.
Mary Allen Hulbert Peck, Woodrow Wilson's mysterious correspondent and friend, died in
Norwalk, Connecticut on December 17, 1939. She was 76.
Andrew J. Peters, mayor during Boston's police strike, returned to the private practice of law
and to other sundry private matters, most notably those concerning a beautiful, young girl with a
beautiful name, Starr Faithfull. The affair--actually, a series of rapes--started in 1917 when she
was 12. Peters paid somewhere between $20,000 and $80,000 to silence her outraged, but,
nonetheless, quite practical, family. Starr moved to New York, became a showgirl, and was
found drowned, but fully dressed, on a Long Island beach on June 8, 1931. Some suspected
Peters, but as he still retained some influence (he seconded Al Smith's nomination at the 1928
Democrat convention), nothing was done to him. Peters died of pneumonia on June 26, 1938.
He was 66. The case has never been solved.
Alexandra Carlisle Pfeiffer continued her stage career against her second husband's wishes. In
1923 Dr. Albert Pfeiffer sued for divorce, charging desertion. In 1934 her estranged third
husband, J. Elliot Jenkins, shot and killed himself in Chicago. She was in her apartment, eleven
floors above. Jenkins left two suicide notes. One read: "To the hotel bellboys: I'm sorry I wasn't
able to tip you while I was here. Thank you for your good service." Atop the note was
seventeen dollars. Alexandra Carlisle Pfeiffer died alone at her room in Times Square's Hotel
Astor on April 22, 1936. She was 50.
Carrie Fulton Phillips, Warren Harding's mistress, died in 1960 in what the New York Times
described as "an institution for the aged maintained by public welfare." She left behind a
cardboard box containing 98 letters from Harding that confirmed their relationship, often in
graphic detail. She was 84.
Eleanor Roosevelt served as an American delegate to the United Nations under Presidents
Truman and Kennedy, wrote a newspaper column, "My Day," and actively encouraged the
liberal wing of the Democratic Party. She died of tuberculosis in New York City on November
7, 1962. She was 78.
Franklin D. Roosevelt never seemed to lack for confidence as he won four terms as president,
defeated the Axis powers, and created the United Nations, the successor to Woodrow
Wilson's League of Nations. But he had second thoughts about his 1920 performance. "I, too,â
€� he confided in 1939 to Col. Frank Knox (1936's Republican vice-presidential candidate), â
€œwas inexperienced in national campaigns in 1920 and later regretted many of the things I said
at that time!" He died at Warm Springs, Georgia on April 12, 1945.
Lucy Mercer Rutherford, Franklin Roosevelt's wartime mistress, married wealthy New Yorker
Winthrop Rutherford in February 1920. She, nonetheless, maintained contact with FDR and
was with FDR in April 1945 when he died at Warm Springs, Georgia. Her husband had died in
1944. Jonathan Daniels, FDR's former press secretary and Josephus Daniels' son, hinted at the
relationship in a 1954 memoir, aptly titled The End of Innocence, and fully revealed it in his
1966 effort, The Time Between the Wars. Lucy Mercer Rutherford died in New York City on
July 31, 1948--four years to the day after Missy Le Hand died. She was 57.
Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, accused, convicted of, and executed for the April 1920
South Braintree robbery and murder, remained cultural icons, symbols of American judicial
injustice. On August 23, 1977 Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis officially pardoned
the two men. Yet, doubts--and evidence--have mounted against a presumption of their
innocence. In 1943 anarchist leader and key Sacco and Vanzetti supporter Carlo Tresca, who
had first began hearing rumors of Sacco and Vanzetti's guilt as early as 1922, admitted to leftist
intellectual Max Eastman, "Sacco was guilty but Vanzetti was innocent." He had earlier made
the same accusation to socialists Norman Thomas and John P. Roche.
In October 1961 ballistics tests revealed that some of the bullets found in factory guard
Alessandro Berardelli's body came from Sacco's Colt automatic pistol.
In 1982 Ideale Gambera, son of one of Sacco and Vanzetti's four-man defense committee
wrote author Francis Russell: "Everyone [among the anarchist leadership] knew that Sacco was
guilty and that Vanzetti was innocent as far as the actual participation in killing."
The San Francisco Civic Auditorium, site of the 1920 Democratic National Convention,
functions to this day, but being that it functions in San Francisco, it is now the Bill Graham Civic
Auditorium, in honor of the famed concert promoter of the city's Haght-Ashbury era.
Thomas D. Schall, Hiram Johnson's seconder at the 1920 convention, evolved from progressive
Congressman to the Senate's most vitriolic opponent of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. On the
morning of December 22, 1935, the blind Schall was run over in Washington traffic. His death
coincided with a national conference of traffic safety experts. Schall was 58.
Colonel William J. Simmons, founder of the Ku Klux Klan, after a series of legal battles,
surrendered Klan leadership in 1924, bought off for somewhere between $90,000 and
$145,500. He pondered founding a rival Klan--the Hidden Hosts, Knights of the Flaming
Sword--but nothing came of the idea. In 1936 the Klan's former national headquarters in
Atlanta became a Catholic school. In April 1944, the Invisible Empire, facing a $685,000 on
IRS tax, formally dissolved. Simmons died in Atlanta on May 18, 1945. He was 64.
Al Smith broke with Franklin Roosevelt, declaring the New Deal anathema. "Don't let anyone
tell you that President Roosevelt is a Communist," said Al Smith in his last speech of the 1936
campaign against FDR, "That is not so. Or don't let anyone tell you he is a Socialist. That is not
so. He is neither a Communist nor a Socialist--any more than I am--but something has taken
place in this country—there is a certain kind of foreign "ism" crawling over this country. What it
is I don't know. What its first name will be when it's christened I haven't the slightest idea. But I
know it is here, and the sin about it is that [Roosevelt] doesn't seem to know it." He died of lung
and heart disease on October 4, 1944. He was 70.
Seymour Stedman, Eugene Debs' 1920 running mate, became vice president of the City State
Bank of Chicago. In 1929 it failed and in 1933 authorities indicted him for receiving deposits
during its insolvency but dropped charges two years later. Stedman died at his Chicago home
on July 9, 1948. He was 78.
Lothrop Stoddard, author of The Rising Tide of Color, continued writing racist books,
including 1922's proto-Nazi The Revolt against Civilization: The Menace of the Underman.
In 1921, with Margaret Sanger, he helped found the American Birth Control League and
served on its Board of Directors. In 1940, Stoddard interviewed Hitler, Himmler, and
Goebbels for the North American Newspaper Alliance and conferred with prominent German
eugenicists. He died in Washington, D.C. on May 1, 1950. He was 66.
William Howard Taft resigned as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in February 1930 and
died that March 8. "To me he was a friend," said Calvin Coolidge, "kindly, genial, and helpful.
He often came to my office when I was in Washington and always brought mature thought and
good cheer." Taft was 72.
Joseph K. Taussig, critic of FDR's naval prison policies, rose to the rank of admiral, retiring just
prior to Pearl Harbor. Recalled to active duty in 1943, he served as senior member on the
Navy's clemency and prison inspection board--for which he received the Legion of Merit.
Taussig died of a heart attack at Bethesda Naval Hospital on October 29, 1947.
Judge Webster Thayer, presiding judge in the Sacco and Vanzetti case, had his Worcester,
Massachusetts home destroyed by a bomb on the night of September 27, 1932. After the
incident, he remained under police guard. Thayer died in Boston the following April 18th of a
stroke. He was 75.
Carlo Tresca, early organizer of Sacco and Vanzetti's defense, was convicted of sending
obscene material (an ad for a book on birth control) through the mails in 1924, but after serving
four months was freed by President Coolidge. On the evening of January 11, 1943, Tresca and
an associate strolled through Greenwich Village. At 9:40 PM, they reached Fifth Avenue and
15th Street, when a dark sedan pulled alongside. A man jumped out and fired three shots, one
hitting Tresca in the temple. He died instantly. Fascists, Communists, and mobsters were
suspected. No one was ever convicted.
Joseph P. Tumulty entered Washington private practice. He refused, however, to engage in
lobbying. Tumulty died at his Maryland home on April 8, 1954. He was 74.
Wayne Bidwell Wheeler, boss of the Anti-Saloon League, suffered horrendous personal
tragedy. In August 1927 a gasoline stove exploded at Wheeler's Little Point Sable, Michigan
summer cottage. His wife's apron caught fire, enveloping in flames, burning her entire body and
even the inside of her mouth (she had inhaled some of the flames). Her 81-year old father, who
had just suffered a heart attack, witnessed the scene, suffered a second heart attack, and died
on the spot. Wheeler wrapped his wife in a carpet, treated her with baking soda, and rushed
her to a hospital. She died the next morning. Wheeler soon followed. Beset by kidney disease,
he died at the Battle Creek Sanitarium on September 5, 1927. When Wheeler died, Will
Rogers remarked, "The best fight a man can put up is to have his enemies say, if he passes out
in the middle of the fight, is: "Well, I am glad he is out of the way." Wayne B. Wheeler was 57.
William Allen White, tireless progressive chronicler of Republican (and sometimes
Democratic) politics, remained an "unreconstructed liberal," ran for governor of Kansas as an
independent anti-Klan candidate in 1924, and vigorously urged support for Britain prior to
Pearl Harbor. Less notably, in 1928 he attacked Al Smith for allegedly supporting gambling and
prostitution while in the state legislature. He later withdrew those charges. White died at
Emporia, Kansas on January 29, 1944. He was 85. His Autobiography, published
posthumously in 1946, won the Pulitzer Prize for biography.
Edith Bolling Galt Wilson personally answered each piece of mail she received--but only if it
contained a stamped, self-addressed envelope. In 1939, she published her autobiography, My
Memoir. Mrs. Wilson died at her Washington home on December 29, 1961. She was 89.
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