Ellison D. Smith
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Ellison DuRant “Cotton Ed” Smith (August 1, 1864 – November 17, 1944) was a
Democratic Party Democratic Party most often refers to: *Democratic Party (United States) Democratic Party and similar terms may also refer to: Active parties Africa *Botswana Democratic Party *Democratic Party of Equatorial Guinea *Gabonese Democratic Party *Demo ...
politician A politician is a person active in party politics, or a person holding or seeking an elected office in government. Politicians propose, support, reject and create laws that govern the land and by an extension of its people. Broadly speaking, a ...
from the U.S. state of
South Carolina )''Animis opibusque parati'' ( for, , Latin, Prepared in mind and resources, links=no) , anthem = " Carolina";" South Carolina On My Mind" , Former = Province of South Carolina , seat = Columbia , LargestCity = Charleston , LargestMetro = ...
widely known for his virtuently racist and segregationist views and his advocacy of
white supremacy White supremacy or white supremacism is the belief that white people are superior to those of other races and thus should dominate them. The belief favors the maintenance and defense of any power and privilege held by white people. White su ...
. He represented South Carolina in the
United States Senate The United States Senate is the upper chamber of the United States Congress, with the House of Representatives being the lower chamber. Together they compose the national bicameral legislature of the United States. The composition and pow ...
from 1909 until 1944.


Early life

Smith was born near Lynchburg, South Carolina, the youngest child of William Hankin Smith and Mary Isabella Smith (née McLeod), at his ancestral home,
Tanglewood Plantation Tanglewood Plantation, also known as the Ellison Durant Smith House, is a historic plantation house located at Lynchburg, Lee County, South Carolina. It was built about 1850, and is a two-story, Greek Revival-style clapboard house. It was the s ...
(formerly Smith's Grove). Throughout his life, he would reside in Tanglewood. Smith attended the University of South Carolina, where he was a member of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity, and graduated from
Wofford College Wofford College is a private liberal arts college in Spartanburg, South Carolina. It was founded in 1854. The campus is a national arboretum and one of the few four-year institutions in the southeastern United States founded before the America ...
in 1889. He first married at the age of 28 in 1892 to Martha Cornelia Moorer (1865-1893) of
St. George, South Carolina Saint George is a town in Dorchester County, South Carolina, United States. The population was 2,084 at the 2010 census, eight fewer than in 2000. It has been the county seat of Dorchester County since the latter's formation from Colleton County ...
. She died giving birth to their son Martius Ellison in 1893. At 19 Martius was accidentally shot by his own gun while drinking water at the barnyard well. He died five days later. In 1906 Ellison married Annie Brunson Farley (1882-1958). Her uncle Henry Farley fired the first shot in the
Confederate Army The Confederate States Army, also called the Confederate Army or the Southern Army, was the military land force of the Confederate States of America (commonly referred to as the Confederacy) during the American Civil War (1861–1865), fighting ...
, serving under
J. E. B. Stuart James Ewell Brown "Jeb" Stuart (February 6, 1833May 12, 1864) was a United States Army officer from Virginia who became a Confederate States Army general during the American Civil War. He was known to his friends as "Jeb,” from the initials of ...
, and died fighting in the Civil War. Ellison and Annie had four children of their own, two boys and two girls. Their eldest daughter, Anna, was married to L.L. Smith, vice president of
Kohler Kohler is a surname of German origin. The name was first found in Saxony. It means, "charcoal burner" so the first "Kohlers" were most likely of that occupation. Notable people with the surname include: *Alan Kohler, Australian journalist *Anton ...
Plumbing Co. of
Wisconsin Wisconsin () is a state in the upper Midwestern United States. Wisconsin is the 25th-largest state by total area and the 20th-most populous. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake M ...
. Isobel Smith Lawton moved to
Florence, South Carolina Florence is a city in and the county seat of Florence County, South Carolina, United States. It lies at the intersection of Interstates 20 and 95 and is the eastern terminus of the former. It is the primary city within the Florence metropolit ...
, when she married. Ellison DuRant, Jr. married Vivian Manning, daughter of Governor
John Lawrence Manning John Lawrence Manning (sometimes spelled John Laurence Manning) (January 29, 1816October 24, 1889) was the 65th Governor of South Carolina, from 1852 to 1854. He was born in Clarendon County. He attended South Carolina College, where he was a m ...
. Charles Saxon Farley, a past member of the South Carolina legislature from Lee County, married Laura Douglas. Laura was the daughter of Oscar Douglas (co-founder of the
F.W. Woolworth Frank Winfield Woolworth (April 13, 1852 – April 8, 1919) was an American entrepreneur, the founder of F. W. Woolworth Company, and the operator of variety stores known as "Five-and-Dimes" (5- and 10-cent stores or dime stores) which featured ...
empire). All five of Smith's children are now deceased. Smith served in the South Carolina House of Representatives from 1896 to 1900. He was unsuccessful in his bid to become a member of the
U.S. House of Representatives The United States House of Representatives, often referred to as the House of Representatives, the U.S. House, or simply the House, is the lower chamber of the United States Congress, with the Senate being the upper chamber. Together they ...
in 1900. In 1901, Smith helped organize the Farmer's Protective Association and eventually became one of the principal figures in the formation of the Southern Cotton Association in 1905. Between the years 1905 and 1908, he served as a field agent and general organizer in the cotton protective movement. Smith received the nickname “Cotton Ed” after he declared


Election to the U.S. Senate

Smith was elected to the
United States Senate The United States Senate is the upper chamber of the United States Congress, with the House of Representatives being the lower chamber. Together they compose the national bicameral legislature of the United States. The composition and pow ...
in 1908. He was re-elected five times, although from 1920 until 1944, he had four close elections, with three of them leading to run-off elections because he failed to capture a majority. Smith never won more than 61 percent in Democratic Party primaries during that time. During his time in Congress, he had a goal to “keep the Niggers down and the price of cotton up.” Known for being a reputed showman, Smith would publicly promote this goal by riding to Washington on a wagon-load of cotton waving the banner of white supremacy. He also developed a reputation for having a violent temper while speaking in Congress and would at times stand on his feet and try to get the floor speaker's attention by repeatedly hacking his armchair with a penknife whenever the speaker angered him. Smith was not fond of his fellow Senators and often described the Senate Chamber as "the Cave of the Winds."


Senate career

Between 1909 and 1933, Smith was regarded as a fairly effective senator, though admittedly not of the first rank. A tireless champion of agriculture, he supported some planks of the Progressive Era, having written a small part of them. He authored the Smith-Lever Act and sponsored the Muscle Shoals project, a forerunner to the
Tennessee Valley Authority The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is a federally owned electric utility corporation in the United States. TVA's service area covers all of Tennessee, portions of Alabama, Mississippi, and Kentucky, and small areas of Georgia, North Carolina ...
. Smith, however, would not favor legislation he felt would largely diversify the Southern economy, reduce the need for the vast presence of the plantation system in the South, or endanger the old Southern way of life. In the 1930s, Smith became Chairman of the Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry and would imperiously summon the fellow Senators on the committee by saying Smith opposed the
women's suffrage movement Women's suffrage is the women's rights, right of women to Suffrage, vote in elections. Beginning in the start of the 18th century, some people sought to change voting laws to allow women to vote. Liberal political parties would go on to gran ...
, and specifically the
19th Amendment to the United States Constitution 19 (nineteen) is the natural number following 18 and preceding 20. It is a prime number. Mathematics 19 is the eighth prime number, and forms a sexy prime with 13, a twin prime with 17, and a cousin prime with 23. It is the third full re ...
. Tying the amendment to
black suffrage Black suffrage refers to black people's right to vote and has long been an issue in countries established under conditions of black minorities. United States Suffrage in the United States has had many advances and setbacks. Prior to the Civil ...
, he warned on the Senate floor, ''
Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...
'' called Smith a “conscientious objector to the 20th Century.” One observer claimed he “taxed neither his brain nor the voters with a new issue.” He had at first welcomed US President
Franklin Roosevelt Franklin Delano Roosevelt (; ; January 30, 1882April 12, 1945), often referred to by his initials FDR, was an American politician and attorney who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945. As the ...
but soon emerged as an opponent to the
New Deal The New Deal was a series of programs, public work projects, financial reforms, and regulations enacted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the United States between 1933 and 1939. Major federal programs agencies included the Civilian Cons ...
, which he dubbed as “the Jackass Age” when he noticed that Roosevelt's programs were leading the Southern economy in a new direction. Although he voted for part of the draft of the Revenue Act of 1935 he voted against the final bill, due to the highly progressive rates. In 1935, a group of reformist officials in the Agriculture Department proposed a directive that would ensure that Southern landlords actually paid their sharecroppers for their labor, which most of them did not.Kennedy, David ''Freedom From Fear'', Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005 p.212 Smith stormed into the office of the author of the directive,
Alger Hiss Alger Hiss (November 11, 1904 – November 15, 1996) was an American government official accused in 1948 of having spied for the Soviet Union in the 1930s. Statutes of limitations had expired for espionage, but he was convicted of perjury in con ...
, and shouted: "Young fella, you can't do this to my niggers, paying checks to them. They don't know what to do with the money. The money should come to me. I'll take care of them". At the
1936 Democratic National Convention The 1936 Democratic National Convention was held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania from June 23 to 27, 1936. The convention resulted in the nomination of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Vice President John N. Garner for reelection. Changes to ru ...
in Philadelphia, Smith walked out of the convention hall once he saw that a black minister,
Marshall L. Shepard Marshall Lorenzo Shepard, Sr. (July 10, 1899 – February 21, 1967) was an American Christian clergyman and politician. Affiliated with the Democratic Party, his political career was focused in the city of Philadelphia. Born to an African Ameri ...
, was going to deliver the invocation. At the sight of Shepard, Smith shouted: "By God, he's as black as melted midnight! Get outa my way. This mongrel meeting ain't no place for a white man! I don't want any blue-gummed, slew-footed Senegambian praying for me politically". Smith opposed a Federal minimum wage; he filibustered it in the 1938
Fair Labor Standards Act The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA) is a United States labor law that creates the right to a minimum wage, and "time-and-a-half" overtime pay when people work over forty hours a week. It also prohibits employment of minors in "oppres ...
, saying “South Carolinians are willing to work for less than 50 cents/hour.”Kennedy, David ''Freedom From Fear'', Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005 p.345 In common with other Southern senators, Smith was vigorously opposed to the Fair Labor Standards Act, believing that a national minimum wage of 40 cents/per hour would undermine the Southern economy, which was based upon having lower wages than could be found anywhere else in the nation. Roosevelt's Attorney General, Homer Stille Cummings wrote in his diary: "Southern Senators actually froth at the mouth when the subject f a national minimum wageis mentioned". Smith's opposition to the New Deal led to Roosevelt's decision to make an unsuccessful attempt to have him defeated in the 1938 primary by supporting the candidacy of Governor
Olin D. Johnston Olin DeWitt Talmadge Johnston (November 18, 1896April 18, 1965) was an American politician from the US state of South Carolina. He served as the 98th governor of South Carolina, 1935–1939 and 1943–1945, and represented the state in the Unite ...
. During a campaign speech, Roosevelt announced that "no man can live on 50 cents a day" and appealed to the people of South Carolina to replace Smith with Johnston. Smith called Roosevelt a "Yankee carpetbagger" and ran a campaign depicting himself as the defender of traditional Southern values.Kennedy, David ''Freedom From Fear'', Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005 p.348 Standing under a statue of the Confederate general Wade Hampton, Smith declared "No man dares to come into South Carolina and try to dictate to the sons of those men who held high the hands of Lee and Hampton". Smith billed himself as "Roosevelt's worse enemy" and vowed to stop the New Deal. Smith won re-election in a close race in that year, thanks mainly to the unpopularity of Roosevelt's interfering in the primary, Johnston's inability to please either the state's powerful textile mill owners or staunch white supremacists and an endorsement from Smith's fellow South Carolina senator,
James F. Byrnes James Francis Byrnes ( ; May 2, 1882 – April 9, 1972) was an American judge and politician from South Carolina. A member of the Democratic Party, he served in U.S. Congress and on the U.S. Supreme Court, as well as in the executive branch, mos ...
, a highly popular outspoken New Dealer who had been re-elected in 1936 with over 87% of the vote. Byrnes, however, despised Smith and only endorsed him because he was opposed to Johnston's strong support for Roosevelt's new push for vast labor reform,Bryant Simon, A fabric of defeat:the politics of South Carolina millhands, 1910–1948, pp. 210–211 which was evident in the Fair Labor Standards Act. He hoped that Smith would retire in 1944 and his friend
Burnet R. Maybank Burnet Rhett Maybank (March 7, 1899September 1, 1954) was a three-term United States Senate, US senator, the List of Governors of South Carolina, 99th governor of South Carolina, and mayor of Charleston, South Carolina. He was the first governo ...
, the
mayor of Charleston The Mayor is the highest elected official in Charleston, South Carolina. Since the city's incorporation in 1783, Charleston's chief executive officer has been elected directly by qualified voters, except for the years 1867–1868, when mayors w ...
who was running for governor of South Carolina that year, would then go on to win Smith's Senate seat and build a powerful
political machine In the politics of Representative democracy, representative democracies, a political machine is a party organization that recruits its members by the use of tangible incentives (such as money or political jobs) and that is characterized by a hig ...
with Byrnes that would control the South Carolina political scene.Bryant Simon, A fabric of defeat: the politics of South Carolina millhands, 1910–1948, p. 212 While the 1938 election would mark the first time since 1914 where “Cotton Ed” faced no runoff, it was also believed that the vast majority of the people in South Carolina at this point in time were fed up with Smith, who would probably have easily lost the primary if Roosevelt had not interfered. In 1940, a survey found that there was no great admiration for Smith among the people in South Carolina and that his 1938 victory was symbolic because it showed that an unpopular person was elected because “the president picked him out as the victim.” During
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
, Smith opposed the national war mobilization efforts, which consisted of programs that developed a vast number of factories across the states that manufactured and supplied the U.S. military with munitions, metal, fuel and other materials needed in order to win the war. During this time, the aged senator would violently criticize Americans for supporting both the war effort and the New Deal, and even supported Republican
Thomas E. Dewey Thomas Edmund Dewey (March 24, 1902 – March 16, 1971) was an American lawyer, prosecutor, and politician who served as the 47th governor of New York from 1943 to 1954. He was the Republican candidate for president in 1944 and 1948: although ...
in the 1944 presidential election. Smith capitalised on this sentiment when he made his famous "Shut the Door" speech to Congress in 1924, inspiring an immigration act that would bar further emigres and effectively entrap Europe's Jews in the feverish atmosphere of emergent fascism. 


Last election and death in office

In 1944,
Olin D. Johnston Olin DeWitt Talmadge Johnston (November 18, 1896April 18, 1965) was an American politician from the US state of South Carolina. He served as the 98th governor of South Carolina, 1935–1939 and 1943–1945, and represented the state in the Unite ...
again challenged Smith in the Democratic primary. During the campaign, Johnston, once again governor of South Carolina, was strongly supportive of Roosevelt's foreign policy, but was now lukewarm towards the New Deal and was able to snatch the “flag of white supremacy” from Smith by boasting how he countered the
U.S. Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...
’s recent '' Smith v. Allwright'' decision, which ruled that racial segregation in state primaries was unconstitutional, by passing a series of laws making the
South Carolina Democratic Party The South Carolina Democratic Party is the affiliate of the Democratic Party in the U.S. state of South Carolina. It is headquartered in Columbia, South Carolina. History The Democratic Party thrived during the Second Party System between 1832 ...
a private club which could keep blacks from voting in the state’s primary. During the campaign, Smith presented himself as an aged and tired old man and during at least one debate with Johnston, he spoke for only a few minutes and then played a recording of a speech he had made six years earlier. Johnston would go on to win the primary with over 55 percent of the vote, thus achieving the majority needed to avoid a run-off, and Smith would only receive just over 35 percent of the vote. After hearing word of his defeat on his 2,500-acre farm near Lynchburg, Smith stood up in frustration and said "Well, I guess I better go out and look at the pigs." On November 17, 1944, a month and a half before the end of his term, Smith died at Tanglewood Plantation in the same bed in which he was born. He is buried at St. Luke's Cemetery near Wisacky in Lee County.


See also

*
List of United States Congress members who died in office (1900–49) There are several lists of United States Congress members who died in office. These include: * List of United States Congress members who died in office (1790–1899) *List of United States Congress members who died in office (1900–1949) *List o ...


References

* David Robertson (1994). ''Sly and Able: A Political Biography of James A. Byrnes'', New York: W.W. Norton. . pp. 150, 190–96, 269–98, 328, 337, 342, 495–496, 533.


External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Smith, Ellison Durant 1864 births 1944 deaths People from Lee County, South Carolina University of South Carolina alumni Democratic Party members of the South Carolina House of Representatives Wofford College alumni Democratic Party United States senators from South Carolina Neo-Confederates History of racism in South Carolina Old Right (United States) People born in the Confederate States