History in the Margins

Shin-kickers From History: Margaret Chase Smith

By on

A blog post about Senator Margaret Chase Smith (1897-1995) could easily consist of nothing more than a collection of the trenchant remarks with which she skewered political opponents, reporters, and occasionally herself:

  • Speaking against Senator Joseph McCarthy’s scare tactics: “I don’t want to see the Republican Party ride to political victory on the four horsemen of calumny–fear, ignorance, bigotry and smear.”*
  • On her presidential campaign in 1964: “When people keep telling you that you can’t do a thing, you kind of like to try it.”
  • In a speech on civil rights: “We should not permit tolerance to degenerate into indifference.”
  • “Strength, the American way, is not manifested by threats of criminal prosecution or police state methods. Leadership is not manifested by coercion, even against the resented.”
  • “Those of us who shout the loudest about Americanism, are all too frequently those who…ignore some of the basic principles of Americanism–the right to criticize, the right to hold unpopular beliefs, the right to protest, the right of independent thought.”

Known as the “Quiet Woman from Maine” and the “conscience of the Senate,” Smith was the first woman to be elected to both houses of Congress and to be nominated for president on the floor of a national convention. (She was supported by 27 delegates at the Republic National Convention in 1964.) She is best known for being the first Senator to denounce Joseph McCarthy’s red-baiting tactics on the Senate floor.

Like many women who entered politics in the twentieth century, she took what political scientists have described as the “widow’s walk to power,” in which a woman steps into a position of political power after her husband’s death.  Her husband was elected as the representative to the House from Maine’s Second Congressional District in 1937. When he suffered a serious heart attack several years later, he asked the voters to continue to his policies by electing Smith to replace him–the classic reasoning that results in the “widow’s walk to power.” She was elected to fill the unexpired term in a special election. Thereafter she was elected in her own right. She served four terms in the House of Representatives, from 1941 to 1949, and then four terms in the Senate, through 1975. She was a lifelong Republican who voted her conscience rather than the party line and made enemies from both ends of the political spectrum.

It takes a special politician to piss off both the Communist-hunting Senator Joseph McCarthy and Soviet leader Nikita Krushchev. We need more like you, Maggie.

 

*Part of a speech known as the “Declaration of Conscience.” McCarthy responded by calling Smith and the six Republican Senators who supported her “Snow White and the Six Dwarves.”

The Strange Case of Dr. Couney

By on

A number of years ago I read a novel titled The Hatbox Baby, by Carrie Brown. It was the story of a man who brought a premature infant to the Century of Progress (aka as the World’s Fair of 1933*) here in Chicago, where premature babies were displayed in incubators as an exhibit alongside freak shows, “ethnographic villages,” and the titilating gyrations of fan dancer Sally Rand. I no longer remember any details about the plot,** but the image of the incubator babies on display stuck with me. All of which is to say that I was eager to read Dawn Raffel’s newly released The Strange Case of Dr. Couney: How a Mysterious European Showman Saved Thousands of American Babies.

I was not disappointed. The story that Raffel unfolds is far more complex than I had any reason to hope, and absolutely fascinating. The enigmatic Dr. Couney himself stands at the heart of the story: the immigrant who reinvented himself multiple times, the showman who put premature babies on display for public entertainment, the unrecognized visionary who pioneered American neonatology. Raffel’s search to understand Dr. Couney and his past takes the reader on a merry-go-round of past and present, placing the story of her research alongside Couney’s own story.*** In the course of unraveling Couney’s story, she introduces the reader to the history of neonatal medicine and the complex politics behind “World’s Fairs.” She describes the common fate of premature infants in the early twentieth century who were not lucky enough to find their way to Couney’s incubators, and interviews some of the now elderly infants whom Dr. Couney saved.

The Strange Case of Dr. Couney is an excellent read, particularly if you’re interested in early twentieth century popular culture, the places where science and history intersect, or the stories of flamboyant, slightly shady showmen.

If you want to know more about the book and its author, join the Nonfiction Fans Group over on Facebook, where Dawn Raffel will be answering questions about the book and her research starting on Monday.

*Not to be confused with the Columbian Exposition of 1893, the setting for Erik Larsen’s The Devil in the White City. Which I have not yet read.

**Not a criticism of Brown’s work. I enjoyed the book enough that I immediately read everything else Brown had written.

***A narrative style I find particularly appealing.

Word with a Past: Gerrymander

By on

Gerrymander

 

If Elbridge Gerry (1744-1814) had played his cards right, he could have been a minor but respected figure in American history. He signed the Declaration of Independence, helped draft the Bill of Rights, served two terms in Congress, and was the fifth Vice President of the United States. His contemporaries thought him intelligent, gentlemanly, quirky, and a bit of a hot-head.

Instead his name is permanently linked to the practice of re-drawing political districts for partisan advantage. In 1812, Gerry was a member of the Democratic-Republican party and the governor of Massachusetts. Although he had called for an end to partisan bickering in his inaugural address in 1810, he came to believe that the Federalist party was too close to the British and wanted to restore the monarchy. Gerry went on a partisan power binge. He removed Federalists from state government jobs and replaced them with Democratic-Republicans. He had his attorney-general prosecute Federalist newspapers editors for libel. He even seized control of the Federalist-dominated Harvard College board–presumably recognizing the college as the source of future American political leaders. (Though he may have just gotten carried away. Power is an addictive and intoxicating beverage.)

To put the cherry on the partisan sundae, his fellow Democratic-Republicans, who controlled the legislature, redrew the state’s Senate districts in a way that would benefit their party. Previously, Massachusetts’ senatorial districts followed country boundaries. The new senate map twisted and turned in irrational patterns to insure a Democratic-Republican victory. Gerry may not have been responsible for the map’s design, but he signed it into law in February, 1812.

The Federalist controlled Boston Gazette ran an illustration of the district map in the form of a salamander-like monster and ran it with the title “The Gerry-Mander,” claiming it had been born of “many fiery ebullitions of party spirit, many explosions of democratic wrath and fulminations of gubernatorial vengeance within the year past.”

There are better ways to have your name live on in the language: public toilets for example.

Gerrymander: To manipulate the boundaries of an electoral constituency so as to favor one party or class.