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Charles L. McNary

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Charles L. McNary
Man of about 65 in an ornate wooden chair. Formally dressed in a dark suit, white shirt, and black bow tie, he holds a rolled document in his left hand.
Portrait by Henrique Medina
3rd United States Senate Minority Leader
In office
1933–1944
Preceded byJoseph T. Robinson
Succeeded byWallace H. White, Jr.
United States Senator
from Oregon
In office
May 29, 1917 – November 5, 1918
Preceded byHarry Lane
Succeeded byFrederick W. Mulkey
United States Senator
from Oregon
In office
December 18, 1918 – February 25, 1944
Preceded byFrederick W. Mulkey
Succeeded byGuy Cordon
Personal details
BornMinority Leader of the U.S. Senate
(1874-06-12)June 12, 1874
Salem, Oregon
DiedFebruary 25, 1944(1944-02-25) (aged 69)
Fort Lauderdale, Florida
Resting placeMinority Leader of the U.S. Senate
NationalityAmerican
Political partyRepublican
SpouseCornelia Morton McNary
Parent
  • Minority Leader of the U.S. Senate
Alma materStanford University
ProfessionAttorney

Charles Linza McNary (June 12, 1874 – February 25, 1944) was a U.S. Republican politician from Oregon. He served in the United States Senate from 1917 to 1944, including time as Senate Minority Leader from 1933 to 1944. In the Senate, McNary helped to pass legislation that led to the construction of Bonneville Dam on the Columbia River, and advocated agricultural and forestry issues. He also supported many of the New Deal programs at the beginning of the Great Depression. He was Oregon’s longest serving senator until Mark O. Hatfield surpassed his mark in 1993.

A native of Oregon, McNary was the Republican vice presidential candidate of presidential candidate Wendell Willkie in 1940. The ticket lost to Franklin D. Roosevelt in his second re-election. Before serving in the Senate, McNary served on the Oregon Supreme Court from 1913 to 1915 and was dean of Willamette University College of Law from 1908 to 1913 in his hometown of Salem, Oregon. He had also served as a deputy district attorney under his brother John Hugh McNary, who later became a federal judge for the District of Oregon.

He died in office after unsuccessful surgery on a brain tumor. Oregon afforded McNary a state funeral, during which his body lay in state at the Oregon State Capitol in his hometown of Salem. McNary Dam, McNary Field, and McNary High School in Oregon are all named in his honor.

Early life

McNary was born on his maternal grandfather's family farm north of Salem on June 12, 1874.[1][2][3] He was the ninth child and third son of the ten children born to his parents, Hugh Linza McNary and Margaret McNary (née Claggett).[3] When the two married in 1860, McNary was given a 112-acre (0.45 km2) farm in what is now the city of Keizer by his new father-in-law.[3] McNary's paternal grandfather, James McNary, immigrated to the Oregon Country from Kentucky in 1845, while his maternal grandfather immigrated from Missouri in 1852.[2] Charles was named after his maternal grandfather, Charles Claggett.[3]

McNary's father, Hugh, was a former brickyard operator and school teacher.[2] McNary's mother died in 1878 and Hugh moved the family to Salem where he purchased a general merchandise store after being unable to run the family farm due to his own declining health.[3] Charles, known as Tot, began his education at a one-room school in Keizer and later attended Central School in Salem once the family relocated to that city, living on North Commercial Street.[3] Hugh McNary died on July 18, 1883, at which time the nine-year-old Charles McNary was raised by four siblings.[2]

Nina McNary became the head of the household while other siblings took jobs in order to provide income for the family.[4] As a boy, Charles worked as a paperboy, in an orchard, and at other agricultural tasks.[4] He also met Herbert Hoover, who moved to Salem in 1888.[4] McNary in turn worked in the county recorder's office for his brother John Hugh McNary, who had been elected as county recorder in 1890, and for a short time attended the Capital Business College.[4] After leaving that school, he enrolled at Willamette University in college preparatory classes with an eye towards attending Stanford University or the University of California.[4] During this time he met and began dating Jessie Breyman at a social club he helped to found.[4]

Legal career

In the autumn of 1896, Charles McNary moved to California to attend Stanford, where he studied law, economics, science, and history while working as a waiter to pay for his housing.[1][2] McNary left Stanford and returned to Oregon in 1897 after his family requested he return home.[5] Back in Salem, he read law under the supervision of his brother John Hugh, and passed the bar in 1898.[2] The two brothers then practiced law together in Salem as the firm McNary & McNary, while John also served as deputy district attorney for Marion County.[5] At this time, Charles bought the old family farm and returned it to the family, and he also organized the Salem Fruit Union.[2]

Jessie Breyman circa 1896

McNary began teaching property law at Willamette University College of Law in the spring of 1899 while still a part of the firm with his brother.[5] During this time he started to court Jessie Breyman.[5] In 1908, he was hired as the dean of the College of Law to replace John W. Reynolds.[5][6] As the dean, McNary worked to secure classroom space on campus and to increase the size of the school.[5] During his tenure he brought in prominent local attorneys to serve on the faculty and was able to increase the size of the school from four graduates in 1908 to thirty-six in 1913, his last year as dean.[5] In his drive to make Willamette's law school one of the top programs on the West Coast, he was also able to move the school to campus from previously leased space in office buildings.[5]

On November 19, 1902, he married Breyman, the daughter of a successful Salem businessman, Eugene Breyman.[2][7] Jessie died in 1918, in one of the first automobile accidents in the Salem area, while Charles was on a summer break from the Senate.[2][7][8] Jessie was returning from Portland in the car of the Boise family when the car flipped and crushed her underneath.[9] Charles and Jessie had no children.

Political career

McNary's first held public office in 1892 when he became Marion County’s deputy recorder, remaining in the position until 1896.[2] After becoming an attorney, he served as deputy district attorney for the third judicial district of Oregon from 1904 to 1911.[1] While in that position, he served under his brother, who was appointed district attorney in 1905.[2] From 1911 until 1913 he worked as special legal counsel to Oregon’s railroad commission.[2]

He first held political office in 1913 when he was appointed to the Oregon Supreme Court by Governor Oswald West to fill a new position created by the legislature's expansion of the court from five justices to seven.[10][11] The youngest of the justices on the state's highest court at age 38, McNary left the law school and private practice behind.[12] In 1914, the court moved into the new Oregon Supreme Court Building and McNary filed to run for a full-six year term on the bench.[12] At that time the office was partisan and McNary was a Republican.[12] In the primary he lost the nomination by a single vote, to Henry L. Benson after several recounts and the discovery of uncounted ballots.[12] After failing to win the nomination, he served the remainder of his partial term and left the court in 1915.[2] From 1916 to 1917, he was chairperson of the Republican Party’s central committee in Oregon.[2]

National politics

McNary as senator

As chairman of the state's Republican Party, McNary campaigned to get Republican presidential nominee Charles Evans Hughes elected in the November 1916 general election.[13] Hughes, a U.S. Supreme Court justice, carried Oregon but lost the presidency to incumbent Woodrow Wilson.[13] McNary continued to lead the party in the state, and on May 23, 1917, Senator Harry Lane died in office, which created an opportunity for McNary to redeem himself after the failed bid for election to the Oregon Supreme Court.[13][14] Oregon Governor James Withycombe appointed McNary to the unexpired term on May 29.[13]

After resigning as state party chairman, McNary prepared to campaign for a full term in the Senate and then faced Speaker of the Oregon House of Representatives Robert N. Stanfield in the Republican primary.[9] McNary defeated Stanfield in the May 1918 primary with 52,546 votes to 30,999 votes to win the Republican nomination and his first election.[9] In the November general election he then defeated friend and former governor Oswald West by a vote of 82,360 to 64,303 to win a full six-year term in the Senate.[9] Meanwhile, Frederick W. Mulkey won the election to finish Lane's term and took office on November 6, 1918, replacing McNary.[9]

Mulkey then resigned after taking office, effective December 17, 1918, in order to provide a slight seniority advantage for the incoming McNary.[2] He was then re-appointed to the Senate on December 12, 1918, taking office on December 18.[1] In 1920, former adversary Stanfield defeated incumbent Democrat George Earle Chamberlain for Oregon's other Senate seat, making McNary the state's senior senator.[15] McNary won re-election four times, in 1924, 1930, 1936, and 1942. McNary served in Washington, D.C., until his death in 1944.

Senate years

Following World War I, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson sought Senate approval of the Treaty of Versailles. Because the treaty included provisions for establishing and joining the League of Nations, a key point of Wilson's Fourteen Points, Republicans opposed it.[16] Going against much of his party, McNary was a reservationist in the debate and proposed minor changes but supported the United States entry into the League.[16] Ultimately, the Senate never ratified the Treaty of Versailles, and the United States never joined the League of Nations.[17]

One of the prime opponents of Wilson and the League of Nations was Senate Majority Leader Henry Cabot Lodge.[15] After McNary demonstrated his skillfulness in the debate over the League, Lodge took him under his wing and the two formed a longtime friendship.[15] This friendship helped secure favorable committee assignments for McNary and ushered him into the inner power circle of the Senate.[15] Early in his career McNary served as chairman of the Irrigation and Reclamation of Arid Lands Committee, and was a member of the Agriculture and Forestry committee.[1] In 1922, President Warren G. Harding asked McNary to be the Secretary of the Interior to replace Albert B. Fall due to the later's involvement in the ongoing Teapot Dome scandal.[15] McNary declined, preferring to stay in the Senate.[15]

In 1933, McNary was selected as the Senate Minority Leader by fellow Republicans when the Senate was under Democratic control during the New Deal era.[1] He remained minority leader for the rest of his time in office.[1] As minority leader he advocated a progressive agenda for the Republicans in the Senate, and recommended not disciplining Republican senators who crossed party lines and supported President Roosevelt.[2] McNary supported many of the New Deal programs at the beginning of Roosevelt’s presidency. As World War II approached he supported keeping the arms embargo in place, but voted for the lend-lease agreement with the British in 1941 and to implement selective service in 1940.[2]

In 1933, he introduced the legislation that led to the building of Bonneville Dam on the Columbia River.[6] McNary voted in favor of the United States joining the World Court in 1926. During the 1920s, as chairman of the Irrigation and Reclamation Committee, McNary supported the development of hydroelectric power on the Columbia, Tennessee, and Colorado rivers.[2] Other bills he supported included the purchase of additional National Forest lands, re-forestation laws, fire protection for forests in the Clarke-McNary Act, and agricultural support. He also co-sponsored the McNary-Haugen Farm Relief Bill, which was vetoed by President Coolidge and was the forerunner of the agricultural part of the New Deal.[2]

Vice presidential nomination

In 1940, he was the Republican vice presidential nominee,[1] as a western conservative to balance the eastern liberalism of presidential nominee Wendell Willkie.[2] McNary did not support the nomination of Willkie, and during McNary’s acceptance speech for the vice presidential nomination he re-iterated his support for the Tennessee Valley Authority, which Willkie had opposed.[2] During the campaign, McNary promoted farming issues and support for reciprocal foreign trade agreements.[2] The Willkie-McNary ticket lost the Electoral College to President Roosevelt, 449 to 82.

Family and legacy

McNary in 1912

On December 29, 1923, McNary married for the second time, to Cornelia Woodburn Morton. Charles met Cornelia at a dinner party during World War I, in her hometown of Washington, D.C.[8] Before the marriage, she worked as his private secretary.[8] As with his first marriage, his second marriage did not produce children, but Charles and Cornelia adopted a daughter named Charlotte in 1935.[2]

In 1926, McNary built a new ranch style house on his farm on Claggett Creek.[8] His estate, called "Fircone", featured amenities such as a putting green, rose garden, tennis court, fishpond, and an arboretum. The farm included 110 acres (0.45 km2) planted as orchards of both nuts and fruits, with McNary helping to establish the filbert industry in Oregon.[8] At one point he also had the only prune orchard in the Western United States.[8] Before his political career, Charles had served as president of both the Salem Fruit Union and the Salem Board of Trade.[8]

After complaining of headaches and suffering slurred speech beginning in early 1943, McNary went to the Bethesda, Maryland, Naval Hospital on November 8, 1943, where he was diagnosed as having a malignant brain tumor.[18] Doctors removed the tumor that week, and he was released from the hospital on December 2, but the cancer had already spread to other parts of his body.[18] McNary and his family departed for Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to spend the winter.[18] He partly recovered from the surgery, but by February 24, 1944, when he was re-elected as party leader, he had become comatose.[18] Charles L. McNary died in office on February 25, 1944, while in Fort Lauderdale and was buried in Belcrest Memorial Cemetery in his hometown of Salem.[1] He was afforded a state funeral, during which his body lay in state in the chamber of the Oregon House of Representatives at the Oregon State Capitol in Salem.[18]

McNary's running-mate Willkie died six months later. It was the only occasion where both members of a major party presidential ticket died during the term for which they sought election. At the time, he held the record for longest-serving Senator from Oregon, a record he kept until 1993 when Mark O. Hatfield surpassed his mark of 9,726 days in office.[19]

McNary Dam on the Columbia River between Oregon and Washington is named after him, as is McNary Field, the airport in his hometown of Salem. McNary High School in Keizer and McNary Residence Hall at Oregon State University are also both named in his honor.[8]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i "McNary, Charles Linza". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress. United States Congress. Retrieved 2007-02-03.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w Oregon Biographical Dictionary. St. Clair Shores, Michigan: Somerset Publishers, Inc. 1999. pp. 130–134. ISBN 0-403-09841-6.
  3. ^ a b c d e f Neal, Steve (1985). McNary of Oregon: A Political Biography. Portland, Oregon: Western Imprints. pp. 1–2. ISBN 0875951732. OCLC 12214557.
  4. ^ a b c d e f Neal, pp. 3–6.
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h Neal, pp. 9–13.
  6. ^ a b "Notable Oregonians: Charles McNary". Oregon Blue Book. Oregon Secretary of State. Retrieved 2007-09-05.
  7. ^ a b "A Training Manual for Interpreters McNary Lock and Dam, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Walla Walla District". 1999. Retrieved 2007-09-06.
  8. ^ a b c d e f g h "The McNary Family". Keizertimes. Retrieved 2007-09-06. {{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  9. ^ a b c d e Neal, pp. 39–50.
  10. ^ "Supreme Court Justices of Oregon". Oregon Blue Book. Oregon Secretary of State. Retrieved 2007-09-05.
  11. ^ "Governors of Oregon". Oregon Blue Book. Oregon Secretary of State. Retrieved 2007-09-05.
  12. ^ a b c d Neal, pp. 17–24.
  13. ^ a b c d Neal, pp. 29–38.
  14. ^ "Harry Lane". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress. United States Congress. Retrieved 2008-11-26.
  15. ^ a b c d e f Neal, pp. 61–70.
  16. ^ a b Neal, pp. 50–59.
  17. ^ "Woodrow Wilson". American Experience. PBS. 2001. Retrieved 2008-12-11.
  18. ^ a b c d e Neal, pp. 233–235.
  19. ^ Ultich, Roberta. "Hatfield chalks up yet another mark", The Oregonian, 1993-08-26.

External links

Legal offices
Preceded by
None (new seat)
 Associate Justice of the Oregon Supreme Court
1913–1915 		Succeeded by
U.S. Senate
Preceded by U.S. senator (Class 2) from Oregon
1917–1918
Served alongside: George E. Chamberlain 		Succeeded by
Preceded by U.S. senator (Class 2) from Oregon
1919–1944
Served alongside: George E. Chamberlain, Robert N. Stanfield, Frederick Steiwer,
Alfred Evan Reames, Alexander G. Barry, Rufus C. Holman 		Succeeded by
Party political offices
Preceded by Senate Republican Leader
1933–1944 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Republican Party Vice Presidential candidate
1940 		Succeeded by
Academic offices
Preceded by
John W. Reynolds
 Dean of Willamette University College of Law
1908–1913 		Succeeded by

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