Almost President (55 page)

Interestingly, Foner does not even mention Douglas in his
Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877
(Harper and Row, New York, 1988). Foner emphasizes, not inappropriately, the Democrats' interest in keeping freed African Americans disenfranchised after the war but does not emphasize that the Democratic Party seemed to play a role as envisioned by Douglas and his followers, which was to be a legitimate vehicle for sectional reconciliation when the war ended. That task is left to Joel Sibley,
A Respectable Minority: The Democratic Party in the Civil War Era, 1860–1868
(W. W. Norton and Co., New York, 1977), which shreds the cliché, pushed by Republicans for decades after the war, that Democrats were broken into two distinct groups: War Democrats who set aside all partisan activity and Copperheads who favored peace at any price, even if it undermined the Union cause. Jules Witcover,
Party of the People: A History of the Democrats
(Random House, New York, 2003) does not discuss the Democrats' positive role in Reconstruction but does claim Douglas joined the National Union Party, which is not correct.

Two other books that influenced my thinking in this chapter were James M. McPherson,
Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era
(Oxford University Press, New York and Oxford, 1988), and Doris Kearns Goodwin,
Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln
(Simon and Schuster, New York and London, 2005). Both books have earned immense praise, and while neither spends a great deal of time on Douglas, they acknowledge his key contribution as expanded upon in this book. Douglas's probable influence on Ulysses S. Grant was gleaned from Jean Edward Smith,
Grant
(Simon and Schuster, New York, 2001).

CHAPTER FOUR. WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN Four

A superb recent William Jennings Bryan biography is Michael Kazin,
A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan
(Anchor Books, New York, 2006). Kazin acknowledges that, as a secular liberal, he has a “certain ambivalence” regarding Bryan's religious beliefs, but the book is admiring of its subject and fair on all the key points. Three slimmer volumes on Bryan are also recommended: LeRoy Ashby,
William Jennings Bryan: Champion of Democracy
(Twayne, Boston, 1987); Robert Cherny,
A Righteous Cause: The Life of William Jennings Bryan
(University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1994); and Kendrick A. Clements,
William Jennings Bryan: Missionary Isolationist
(University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville, 1982). The latter, as the title implies, especially focuses on Bryan's views on foreign policy.

To compare Woodrow Wilson's own infusion of morality into foreign affairs, there is John Morton Blum,
Woodrow Wilson and the Politics of Morality
(Little, Brown, Boston, 1956). On one of Bryan's harshest critics and putting that criticism in perspective, a fine biography is Fred Hobson,
Mencken: A Life
(Random House, New York, 1994).

Perhaps the most influential study of Bryan in recent times is Lawrence W. Levine,
Defender of the Faith: William Jennings Bryan, The Last Decade, 1915–1925
(Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1987), which first came out in 1965, five years after
Inherit the Wind
was made into a film, and which offers a fresh assessment of Bryan's motivations for embarking on his crusade against the teaching of evolution. A collection of essays edited by Paul W. Glad,
William Jennings Bryan: A Profile
(Hill and Wang, New York, 1968) is extremely illuminating. This book includes Richard Hofstadter's essay on Bryan, “The Democrat as Revivalist,” which can also be found in Hofstadter's
The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It
(Alfred A. Knopf Inc., New York, 1948). Glad also includes a wonderful essay by Ray Ginger on the Scopes Trial that comes from Ginger's book,
Six Days or Forever?: Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes
(Oxford University Press, London and New York, 1974). The best complete study of the Scopes trial is likely Edward J. Larson,
Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate over Science and Religion
(Basic Books, New York, 1997). Two other Hofstadter books have been key in painting both Bryan and the Populists in negative terms:
The Age of Reform: From Bryan to F.D.R.
(Vantage Books, New York, 1960), and
The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays
(Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1965).

A nice antidote to Hofstadter is an article by Robert M. Collins, “The Originality Trap: Richard Hofstadter on Populism,”
Journal of American History
76 (1989: pp. 150–167), as are these key books on Populism: John D. Hicks,
The Populist Revolt: A History of the Farmers' Alliance and the People's Party
(University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1931), C. Vann Woodward,
Origins of the New South
(Third Edition) (Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge, 1994), and the most influential contemporary overview of Populism, Lawrence Goodwyn,
The Populist Moment: A Short History of the Agrarian Revolt in America
(Oxford University Press, Oxford, London, and New York, 1978).

Bryan himself was a fine writer, as was his wife, Mary Baird Bryan, who finished Bryan's memoirs after his death. Memoirs are never objective, of course, but these at least appear guileless:
The Memoirs of William Jennings Bryan, Volumes 1 and 2
(Kennikat Press, Port Washington, N.Y., and London, 1971).

For a more detailed look at the 1896 campaign, the University Press of Kansas continues its superb series on pivotal presidential elections with R. Hal Williams,
Realigning America: McKinley, Bryan, and the Remarkable Election of 1896
(University Press of Kansas, Lawrence, 2010). It is the finest account since Paul W. Glad,
McKinley, Bryan, and the People
(J. B. Lippincott Co., Philadelphia and New York, 1964).

On Bryan's role in the period in which the Fundamentalist movement was born, I have relied on Ferenc Morton Szasz,
The Divided Mind of Protestant America: 1880–1930
(University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa, 1982). Other works consulted include Willard H. Smith,
The Social and Religious Thought of William Jennings Bryan
(Coronado Press, Lawrence, Kans., 1975); Susan Curtis,
A Consuming Faith: The Social Gospel and Modern American Culture
(John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore and London, 1991); and Ronald C. White and C. Howard Hopkins,
The Social Gospel: Religion and Reform in Changing America
(Temple University Press, Philadelphia, 1976).

Recent books that explore the intersection of faith and populism in contemporary politics include Garry Wills,
Head and Heart: American Christianities
(Penguin Press, New York, 2007); Amy Sullivan,
The Party Faithful: How and Why Democrats Are Closing the God Gap
(Scribner, New York and London, 2008); E. J. Dionne,
Souled Out: Reclaiming Faith and Politics after the Religious Right
(Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J., 2008); Jim Wallis,
The Great Awakening: Reviving Faith and Politics in a Post-Religious Right America
(HarperOne, New York, 2008); and Thomas Frank,
What's the Matter with Kansas: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America
(Henry Holt and Co., New York, 2004).

CHAPTER FIVE. AL SMITH

Al Smith is the subject of two excellent recent biographies: Robert A. Slayton,
Empire Statesman: The Rise and Redemption of Al Smith
(Free Press, New York and London, 2001); and Christopher M. Finan,
Alfred E. Smith: The Happy Warrior
(Hill and Wang, New York, 2002). Slayton particularly focuses on Smith's Lower East Side upbringing as key to understanding the man, while Finan is intrigued by the real motivation behind Smith's rupture with Roosevelt. One of the few earlier biographies of Smith, Oscar Handlin,
Al Smith and His America
(Little, Brown and Co., Boston and Toronto, 1958), is less satisfying, perhaps because it seems to be less critical—perhaps in deference to the aspirations of the man whose recommendation appears on the book's dust jacket: John F. Kennedy. Smith also receives insightful treatment in Robert Caro,
The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York
(Vintage Books, New York, 1975), which chronicles the long partnership between Smith and Moses, dating to Smith's time in the New York Legislature.

The four books I most relied upon in regard to Smith's legacy and how Kennedy's Catholic faith impacted the 1960 election were W. J. Rorabaugh,
The Real Making of the President: Kennedy, Nixon, and the 1960 Election
(University Press of Kansas, Lawrence, 2009); Shaun A. Casey,
The Making of a Catholic President: Kennedy vs. Nixon 1960
(Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York, 2009); Michael Sean Winters,
Left at the Altar: How the Democrats Lost the Catholics and How the Catholics Can Save the Democrats
(Basic Books, New York, 2008); and Richard Nixon,
Six Crises
(Touchstone, New York and London, 1990). Nixon is obviously biased but had a knack for political analysis, and his own view of how religion played as an issue in 1960 seems right.

The most accessible history of the Roman Catholic Church in America is Charles R. Morris,
American Catholic: The Saints and Sinners Who Built America's Most Powerful Church
(Times Books, New York, 1997). Also excellent is Jay P. Dolan,
The American Catholic Experience: A History from Colonial Times to the Present
(University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame, 1992), which describes how Catholicism evolved as a church for poor immigrants into a church of the middle class. Also recommended is Dolan's
The Irish Americans: A History
(Bloomsbury Press, New York, Berlin, and London, 2008).

An especially interesting book is George J. Marlin,
The American Catholic Voter: 200 Years of Political Impact
(St. Augustine's Press, South Bend, Ind., 2004). Marlin has compiled reams of data and anecdotes in arguing that Catholics have always been a pivotal (and often controversial) voting bloc, and that the shift of many Catholics to the Republican Party is one of the key partisan developments of the last half-century. Though it also seems true to me, from reading Marlin, that it can also be said there is no “Catholic vote” anymore and that Catholics are now so fully assimilated and so diverse that their votes are divvied up in the same proportion as the overall vote.

In offering my thesis on how Smith's loss changed how Catholics interacted with the mass media, I was fortunate that a fine book had just been published: Anthony Burke Smith,
The Look of Catholics: Portrayals in Popular Culture from the Great Depression to the Cold War
(University Press of Kansas, Lawrence, 2010). Smith, however, believes the Great Depression was the impetus for the glowing portrayals of Catholicism in films and on radio because Catholic teaching on community resonated during this period. Since I am skeptical that even many of my fellow Catholics know much about Catholic social teaching, I will stay with my own thesis that the overt bigotry faced by Smith was the more likely stimulant. More closely aligned with my own thinking is Thomas Doherty,
Pre-Code Hollywood: Sex, Immorality, and Insurrection in American Cinema, 1930–1934
(Columbia University Press, New York, 1999), which described the Production Code as being such a Catholic effort.

Regarding other issues raised in the chapter, I thought Nancy MacLean,
Behind the Mask of Chivalry: The Making of the Second Ku Klux Klan
(Oxford University Press, New York and Oxford, 1994), does a fine job of describing what the second iteration of the Klan was all about. For Prohibition, I relied on one of the more influential studies, Norman H. Clark,
Deliver Us from Evil: An Interpretation of American Prohibition
(W. W. Norton and Co., New York and London, 1976), which makes the observation that not only were many Catholics active in the Anti-Saloon League, but many Catholics were leaders in that group and the Prohibition effort. Regarding the “Radio Priest,” Father Charles Coughlin, there is no better book than Alan Brinkley,
Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin and the Great Depression
(Vintage Books, New York, 1983). To place Smith in the context of the 1920s, I used Geoffrey Perrett,
America in the Twenties: A History
(Touchstone, New York, 1982), and the classic by Frederick Lewis Allen,
Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920s
(Wiley, New York, 1997).

Persuasive data that the magnitude of Smith's defeat was due to his Catholicism can be found in Allan J. Lichtman,
Prejudice and the Old Politics: The Presidential Election of 1928
(Lexington Books, Lanham, Md., 2000).

CHAPTER SIX. THOMAS E. DEWEY

Dewey is fortunate to have a particularly excellent and comprehensive biography by Richard Norton Smith,
Thomas E. Dewey and His Times
(Simon and Schuster, New York, 1982). Smith's exuberance for his subject is indicated by his lively prose, though his judgments are sober.

Dewey himself explained his political thinking in a series of lectures that were captured in John A. Wells, ed.,
Thomas E. Dewey on the Two-Party System
(Doubleday and Company, Inc., Garden City, N.Y., 1966). Also influential in how I thought about Dewey and his development of “Modern Republicanism” was an article published in 1982, Robert Griffith, “Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Corporate Commonwealth,”
American Historical Review,
Vol. 87, No. 1 (February), pp. 87–122.

Dewey's career as a prosecutor is well chronicled in Mary M. Stolberg,
Fighting Organized Crime: Politics, Justice, and the Legacy of Thomas E. Dewey
(Northeastern University Press, Boston, 1995), though Stolberg is critical of the prosecutorial techniques pioneered by Dewey and emulated by most prosecutors today to the detriment of defendants' civil liberties.