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Teapot Dome Scandal:

On April 15, 1922, Wyoming Democratic Senator John Kendrick introduced a resolution that set in motion one of the most significant investigations in Senate history. On the previous day, the Wall Street Journal had reported an unprecedented secret arrangement in which the secretary of the Interior, without competitive bidding, had leased the U.S. naval petroleum reserve at Wyoming's Teapot Dome to a private oil company. Wisconsin Republican Senator Robert La Follette arranged for the Senate Committee on Public Lands to investigate the matter. His suspicions deepened after someone ransacked his quarters in the Senate Office Building.

Expecting this to be a tedious and probably futile inquiry, the committee's Republican leadership allowed the panel's most junior minority member, Montana Democrat Thomas Walsh, to chair the panel. Preeminent among the many difficult questions facing him was, "How did Interior Secretary Albert Fall get so rich so quickly?"

Eventually, the investigation uncovered Secretary Fall's shady dealings and Senator Walsh became a national hero; Fall would end up as the first former cabinet officer to go to prison. This and a subsequent Senate inquiry triggered several court cases testing the extent of the Senate's investigative powers. One of those cases resulted in the landmark 1927 Supreme Court decision McGrain v. Daugherty that, for the first time, explicitly established Congress' right to compel witnesses to testify before its committees.
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Harlan Fiske Stone:



was born in Chesterfield, New Hampshire, on October 11, 1872. He graduated from Amherst College with a B.S. degree in 1894, Columbia Law School in 1898, and was admitted to the New York bar. He became a member of the law firm of Wilmer & Canfield, and later of its successor, Satterlee, Canfield & Stone. While practicing law, he lectured at Columbia Law School from 1899 to 1902. He was professor of law from 1902 to 1905, and dean of Columbia Law School from 1910 to 1923. He then resigned and joined the law firm of Sullivan & Cromwell in New York. Stone was appointed Attorney General of the United States by President Coolidge on April 7, 1924, and held that office until March 2, 1925. He served as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1941 until his death on April 22, 1946, in Washington, D.C.
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Calvin Coolidge:



A Life in Brief

A quiet and somber man whose sour expression masked a dry wit, Calvin Coolidge was known as "Silent Cal." After learning of his ascendancy to the presidency following the death of Warren Harding in 1923, Coolidge was sworn in by his father, a justice of the peace, in the middle of the night and, displaying his famous "cool," promptly went back to bed.

Calvin Coolidge was born on Independence Day, 1872, and raised in Plymouth Notch, Vermont. His father was a pillar of the community, holding a variety of local offices from tax collector to constable. From him, Coolidge inherited his taciturn nature, his frugality, and his commitment to public service. The early death of his mother and sister contributed to his stoical personality.

Climbing the Political Ladder

While practicing law in Northampton, Massachusetts, Coolidge began to climb the ladder of state politics. From a spot on the City Council in 1900, he became chairman of the Northampton Republican Committee in 1904 and joined the state legislature in 1907. His term as governor of Massachusetts placed him in the national arena just in time to benefit from the return to power of the Republicans at the end of World War I. As governor, he called in the state guard to break a strike by city police in Boston, claiming that "there is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, anytime." This bold action won him public acclaim and swept him onto the Republican ticket as the vice presidential nominee with Warren Harding. As vice president, Coolidge kept a low profile, sitting silently during cabinet meetings and seldom speaking in his constitutional position as presiding officer of the U.S. Senate.

After Harding's death in 1923, Coolidge became President. Intent on running for reelection in 1924, he dispatched his potential Republican rivals with relative ease. He had emerged unscathed from the scandals that plagued the Harding administration, earning a reputation for being honest, direct, and hardworking. The Democrats were split in 1924, finally settling on a compromise candidate, John W. Davis of West Virginia. With a rebounding economy to help him, Coolidge won handily with the slogan "Keep Cool With Coolidge."

A Visible Yet Passive Presidency

In contrast to his disdain for small talk, Coolidge was a highly visible leader, holding press conferences, speaking on the radio, and emerging as the leader among what one survey called "the most photographed persons on earth." Reveling in what would become known as the "photo op," he posed before the cameras dressed in farmer overalls, a cowboy hat and chaps, and an Indian headdress. But his prominent profile was not matched by a commitment to activism. He believed in small government, especially at the federal level, and practiced a passive style of leadership. He saw little need to intervene in issues that Congress or the states could handle without him.

Nonetheless, Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson had changed the presidency into an activist institution, and public opinion fairly demanded a modicum of leadership from the White House. Coolidge did have an agenda. His chief concern was economics, where he favored low taxes, reduced regulation of business, and a balanced budget. Alongside his Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon, the wealthy Pittsburgh industrialist who advocated "trickle-down" economics, as critics called it, Coolidge secured reductions in rates for wealthy Americans (most citizens at the time paid little federal tax). Although many observers at the time gave the President and Secretary Mellon credit for the so-called "Coolidge Prosperity" that characterized the seven years of his presidency, in retrospect he came under criticism for having failed to try to stop the feverish stock-market speculation toward the end of his term that contributed to the stock market crash of 1929. Coolidge also fought against farm-relief legislation that might have shored up the depressed farm economy.

Like Harding, Coolidge allowed his cabinet a free hand in foreign affairs, delegating authority to Treasury Secretary Mellon, Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes, and Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover, all holdovers from Harding's cabinet. The President believed that the United States should seek out foreign markets and refrain from entangling alliances and participation in the League of Nations. He supported the 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact renouncing war as a means of settling international differences, a largely symbolic pact that nonetheless became an important precedent in fostering reliance on international law. In Latin America, Coolidge's administration tended to support the interests of U.S. businesses, although the President made steps toward a less adversarial posture than his predecessors had typically maintained.

Coolidge chose not to run for a second term because his republican political philosophy led him to value highly the unwritten two-term precedent (toward which he counted the balance of Harding's term that he served). Moreover, the death of his teenage son in 1924 had taken much of the joy out of his work. True to his simple tastes, he imagined he would be happier in retirement in Northampton, Massachusetts.

First Lady Grace Coolidge was as sunny and sociable as her husband was taciturn and sardonic. The press photographed her at every opportunity, and she once joked that she was the "national hugger." Having been trained as an instructor for the deaf, Grace Coolidge brought national attention to the plight of the nation's hearing-impaired and became a close personal friend of the author and activist, Helen Keller, who was both deaf and blind.

Although the public admired Coolidge during his time in office, the Great Depression turned public opinion against him. Many linked the nation's economic collapse to Coolidge's policy decisions. He vetoed the problematic McNary-Haugen bill to aid the depressed agricultural sector while thousands of rural banks in the Midwest and South were shutting their doors and farmers were losing their land. His tax cuts worsened the maldistribution of wealth and overproduction of goods, which destabilized the economy. Although in the 1980s, conservatives, led by Ronald Reagan--who hung Coolidge's portrait in the White House--revived something of a cult of Coolidge, most historians look upon the Coolidge presidency with skepticism, considering him to have offered little in the way of a positive vision, however strong his personal integrity.
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Robert H. Ferrell

Robert Baldwin:


was one of the founders of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). He served as executive director of the ACLU until 1950.

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ACLU:

In the years following World War I, America was gripped by the fear that the Communist Revolution that had taken place in Russia would spread to the United States. As is often the case when fear outweighs rational debate, civil liberties paid the price. In November 1919 and January 1920, in what notoriously became known as the “Palmer Raids,�� Attorney General Mitchell Palmer began rounding up and deporting so-called radicals. Thousands of people were arrested without warrants and without regard to constitutional protections against unlawful search and seizure. Those arrested were brutally treated and held in horrible conditions.
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Nicola Sacco:



Sacco was born Ferdinando “Nando�� Sacco in Torremaggiore, Italy in 1891 to a fairly successful olive oil dealer. Some accounts say he either had no formal educationor dropped out at age nine; at trial he claimed he spent seven years in school and dropped out at age 14.He was an inquisitive boy with a love of machinery.

Sacco emigrated to the United States in 1908 at the age of sixteen with his older brother Sabino, and the two settled in Milford, Massachusetts. He soon found a job working for the Cenedella Construction Company as a water boy for $1.15 per day. Three months later, he was promoted to pick-and-shovel (a fairly common job for Italian immigrants who referred to it as “pick ‘n shove��) for $1.75 per day. After it became too cold for outdoor work, Sacco went to work at the Draper Company doing textile work.

Sacco’s brother Sabino returned to Italy in 1909. Left alone in the United States, Sacco began to take lessons on shoe-trimming and became an excellent shoe trimmer. He would practice this trade for the remainder of his unincarcerated life. In 1910, he went to work at the Milford Shoe Company where he would remain until 1917.

Sacco met and married Rosina (Rosa) Zambelli in 1912. He was twenty-one; she was seventeen. Their first child, son Dante, was born in 1913, and their daughter Ines was born months after Sacco’s 1920 arrest.

In 1912 Sacco helped with the defense of Arturo Giovannitti, an Italian immigrant who had been arrested on a dubious murder charge. It was one of his first radical activities.

Sacco began attending weekly meetings of Circolo di Studi Sociali, a twenty-five member strong anarchist group, in 1913. He began to subscribe to Cronaca Sovversiva (Subversive Chronicle), an anarchist newspaper published by Luigi Galleani. Sacco became a devotee of Galleani and spent the next several years writing for the paper, donating and soliciting funds for anarchist activities, as well as caring for his family.

In 1917, Sacco met Vanzetti shortly before the two, along with several other anarchists, moved to Mexico to avoid conscription for World War I. While living incognito south of the border, the anarchists took pseudonyms. Thus, Ferdinando Sacco became Nicola (after an older brother who had passed away earlier in the year) Mosmacotelli (his mother’s maiden name). While he later resumed using his own surname and occasionally was called Ferdinando, he was forever to be known as Nicola Sacco.

He moved back to the United States a few months later and settled, with his family, in Stoughton, Massachusetts. He was living there when he was arrested in 1920 and became inexorably linked with Bartolomeo Vanzetti as Sacco-and-Vanzetti.
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Bartolomeo Vanzetti:



Vanzetti was born in Villafelletto, Italy in 1888 to a a very loving mother and a fairly prosperous farmer who would later open a café. He loved his parents very much and did as much as possible to win their affection and approval. He was a bright and spiritual lad who William Thompson, his lawyer decades later, said would have been a Harvard professor had he received an education. Instead, his father took him out of school in 1901 at the age of thirteen to begin an apprenticeship. His father apprenticed him to one Signor Comino, the owner of a pastry shop. Vanzetti worked fifteen hour days, seven days a week, with three hours off every other Sunday. He hated the job but continued at it to please his father.

After seven years of work in the pastry shop, Vanzetti was afflicted with pleurisy, a condition that inflames the membrane around the lungs and makes breathing very difficult. In 1907, while convalescing, Vanzetti read voraciously, particularly philosophy and religious works.

Almost immediately after recovering, Vanzetti’s mother contracted cancer and died in Vanzetti’s arms. Vanzetti never truly recovered from his mother’s death and was never emotionally close to another woman the rest of his life. To deal with the pain, Vanzetti set out for the United States in 1908. He arrived in New York city and began working in restaurants and clubs throughout the city.

Vanzetti left New York in 1909 to seek work in the countryside, eventually making his way to Springfield, Massachusetts and working in a brick factory. He then bounced around Connecticut and Massachusetts, all the while working at various jobs and living a solitary existence. In 1909, he went back to New York and worked as a pastry chef at various New York eateries where he was at the mercy of head chefs and employment agencies. The chefs and employment agencies had agreements whereby chefs would fire workers so the workers would be forced to go to an employment agency for a new job and the agents and head chefs would split the fee.

Living in New York, Vanzetti went five months without a job and was forced to sleep outside and put newspaper in his clothes to stay warm. In 1912, however, Vanzetti found an employment agency that sent him to Springfield, Massachusetts again, this time as a pick-and-shovel man. Though it was hard, back-breaking work, it was outdoor work, which Vanzetti far preferred over working inside.

Vanzetti continued to read. After reading books on poltical philosophy, he moved toward anarchism. He soon found his first anarchist comrades and began receiving the Cronaca Sovversiva, the same anarchist newspaper that Sacco read and wrote for.

Vanzetti moved to Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1913 where he lived with Vincenzo Brini and became a virtual member of the Brini clan. He stayed in Plymouth until 1917, when he and some of his fellow anarchists left for Mexico to escape the draft. Strangely (for an anarchist who does not like government or the idea of “country��), he applied for United States citizenship May 5, 1917, just a short while before leaving for Mexico. While in Mexico, he supported the group by once again practicing the trade he hated—baking—and grew his now famous long, droopy mustache.

Vanzetti left Mexico in September of 1917 and moved around the Midwest for a time before he found his way back to the Brinis in Plymouth, Massachusetts. He took up fish peddling, a profession which allowed him to be in his beloved outside all day long, and continued his anarchist activities. He continued living this way until his 1920 arrest with Sacco.
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Hamilton Fish III:



a Representative from New York; born in Garrison, Putnam County, N.Y., December 7, 1888; attended St. Marks School; was graduated from Harvard University in 1910; elected as a Progressive to the New York State assembly, 1914-1916; commissioned on July 15, 1917, captain of Company K, Fifteenth New York National Guard (colored), which subsequently became the Three Hundred and Sixty-ninth Infantry; was discharged as a major on May 14, 1919; decorated with the Croix de Guerre and the American Silver Star and also cited in War Department general orders; colonel in the Officers�� Reserve Corps; delegate, Republican National Convention, 1928; elected as a Republican to the Sixty-sixth Congress to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of Edmund Platt; reelected to the Sixty-seventh and to the eleven succeeding Congresses and served from November 2, 1920, to January 3, 1945; unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1944 to the Seventy-ninth Congress; author; was a resident of Cold Spring, N.Y., until his death there on January 18, 1991.
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Charles Evans Hughes:



was born in Glens Falls, New York, on April 11, 1862. He was graduated in 1881 from Brown University and received a law degree from Columbia University in 1884. For the next twenty years, he practiced law in New York, New York, with only a three-year break to teach law at Cornell University. Hughes was elected Governor of New York in 1905 and re-elected two years later. On April 25, 1910, President William H. Taft nominated Hughes to the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Senate confirmed the appointment on May 2, 1910. Hughes resigned from the Court in 1916 upon being nominated by the Republican Party to run for president. After losing the election to Woodrow Wilson, he returned to his law practice in New York. Hughes served as Secretary of State from 1921 to 1925. He subsequently resumed his law practice while serving in the Hague as a United States delegate to the Permanent Court of Arbitration from 1926 to 1930. On February 3, 1930, President Herbert Hoover nominated Hughes Chief Justice of the United States, and the Senate confirmed the appointment on February 13, 1930. He served as Chairman of the Judicial Conference of the United States from 1930 to 1941. Hughes retired on July 1, 1941, after serving eleven years as Chief Justice. He died on August 27, 1948, at the age of eighty-six.
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Stromberg v. California (1931):

Nineteen-year-old Yetta Stromberg works at a summer camp run by the Communist Party. Like camp counselors across the country, everyday she leads children in a flag ceremony -- except her flag is red, for the Communist Party. And the pledge goes: "to the workers' red flag, and to the cause for which it stands, one aim throughout our lives, freedom for the working class."

California law prohibits displaying a symbol which "opposes organized government," including a red flag. Ms. Stromberg is charged and convicted.

In 1931,[Charles Evans Hughes] the U.S. Supreme Court absolves her. "There is no question," writes Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, "but that the State may thus provide for the punishment of those who indulge in utterances which incite to violence and crime and threaten the overthrow of organized government by unlawful means." However, he adds, "The maintenance of the opportunity for free political discussion to the end that government may be responsive to the will of the people and that changes may be obtained by lawful means, an opportunity essential to the security of the Republic is a fundamental principle of our constitutional system. A statute which upon its face, and as authoritatively construed, is so vague and indefinite as to permit the punishment of the fair use of this opportunity is repugnant to the guaranty of liberty contained in the Fourteenth Amendment."
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William DeWitt Mitchell:



William Dewitt Mitchell was born in Winona, Minnesota, on September 9, 1874. He attended the University of Minnesota, earning his A.B. in 1895, and his L.L.B in 1896.

Mitchell began a private law practice in St. Paul but soon saw action as an infantry officer during the Spanish-American War; he would also fight in World War I. On June 4, 1925, President Calvin Coolidge appointed Mitchell solicitor general. Mitchell remained at that post until President Herbert Hoover appointed him attorney general, a position Mitchell held from 1929 to 1933.

Following his time in the cabinet, Mitchell served as chairman on the Committee of Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, and as chief counsel to the joint committee investigating the Pearl Harbor attack.

William Mitchell died in Syosset, New York, on August 24, 1955.
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Bonus Marchers:



The Bonus Army, some 15,000 to 20,000 World War I veterans from across the country, marched on the Capitol in June 1932 to request early payment of cash bonuses due to them in 1945. The Great Depression had destroyed the economy, leaving many veterans jobless.
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Lindbergh Baby Kidnapping:



On March 1, 1932, in a crime that captured the attention of the entire nation, Charles Lindbergh III, the 20-month-old son of aviation hero Charles Lindbergh, is kidnapped from the family's new mansion in Hopewell, New Jersey. Lindbergh, who became an international celebrity when he flew the first solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean in 1927, and his wife Anne discovered a ransom note demanding $50,000 in their son's empty room. The kidnapper used a ladder to climb up to the open second-floor window and left muddy footprints in the room.

The Lindberghs were inundated by offers of assistance and false clues. Even Al Capone offered his help from prison. For three days, investigators found nothing and there was no further word from the kidnappers. Then, a new letter showed up, this time demanding $70,000.

The kidnappers eventually gave instructions for dropping off the money and when it was delivered, the Lindberghs were told their baby was on a boat called Nelly off the coast of Massachusetts. After an exhaustive search, however, there was no sign of either the boat or the child. Soon after, the baby's body was discovered near the Lindbergh mansion. He had been killed the night of the kidnapping and was found less than a mile from home. The heartbroken Lindberghs ended up donating the mansion to charity and moved away.

The kidnapping looked like it would go unsolved until September 1934, when a marked bill from the ransom turned up. The gas station attendant who had accepted the bill wrote down the license plate number because he was suspicious of the driver. It was tracked back to a German immigrant and carpenter, Bruno Hauptmann. When his home was searched, detectives found a chunk of Lindbergh ransom money.

Hauptmann claimed that a friend had given him the money to hold and that he had no connection to the crime. The resulting trial was a national sensation. The prosecution's case was not particularly strong; the main evidence, besides the money, was testimony from handwriting experts that the ransom note had been written by Hauptmann. The prosecution also tried to establish a connection between Hauptmann and the type of wood that was used to make the ladder.

Still, the evidence and intense public pressure were enough to convict Hauptmann and he was electrocuted in 1935. In the aftermath of the crime—the most notorious of the 1930s—kidnapping was made a federal offense.
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FDR:



Faced with the Great Depression and World War II, Franklin D. Roosevelt, nicknamed "FDR," guided America through its greatest domestic crisis, with the exception of the Civil War, and its greatest foreign crisis. His presidency—which spanned twelve years—was unparalleled, not only in length but in scope. FDR took office with the country mired in a horrible and debilitating economic depression that not only sapped its material wealth and spiritual strength, but cast a pall over its future. Roosevelt's combination of confidence, optimism, and political savvy—all of which came together in the experimental economic and social programs of the "New Deal"—helped bring about the beginnings of a national recovery.

In foreign affairs, FDR committed the United States to the defeat of the fascist powers of Germany, Japan, and Italy, and led the nation and its allies to the brink of victory. This triumph dramatically altered America's relationship with the world, guiding the United States to a position of international prominence, if not predominance. By virtue of its newfound political and economic power, as well as its political and moral leadership, the United States would play a leading role in shaping the remainder of the twentieth century.

Franklin Roosevelt also forged a domestic political revolution on several fronts. In politics, FDR and the Democratic Party built a power base which carried the party to electoral, if not ideological, dominance until the late 1960s. In governance, FDR's policies, especially those comprising the New Deal, helped redefine and strengthen both the American state and, specifically, the American presidency, expanding the political, administrative, and constitutional powers of the office.

Political Rise and Personal Tragedy

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was born in 1882 in Hyde Park, New York, to James and Sara Roosevelt. James Roosevelt was a land-owner and businessman of considerable, but not awesome, wealth. FDR grew up under the watchful eyes of his mother, whose devotion to her only child was considerable, and a host of nannies. At age 14, Franklin's parents sent him to the Groton School, a prestigious boarding school in Massachusetts. At Groton, FDR grew increasingly fond of his distant cousin, Theodore Roosevelt, a rising star in the Republican Party. FDR went on to Harvard College, where he spent more time on the college newspaper than he did on his studies. While at Harvard, FDR apparently declared himself a Democrat and began courting his distant cousin, Eleanor Roosevelt.

Franklin and Eleanor were married in New York City in 1905, a few months after FDR began law school at Columbia. Roosevelt had little interest in the law, however, and his attention soon turned to politics. He ran successfully for the New York State Senate in 1910 and was re-elected in 1912. In 1913, he joined the Wilson administration as assistant secretary of the Navy and played a key role in readying the United States for entry into the world war. FDR was roundly praised for his efforts and the leaders of the Democratic Party tabbed him as a Democrat to watch. Indeed, in 1920, the party named him its vice-presidential candidate. Although the ticket of James Cox and FDR lost, FDR's future seemed bright.

Tragedy struck, however, in 1921. Roosevelt contracted polio, a terrifying and incurable disease that left him paralyzed in his legs. Only through an arduous rehabilitation process—and with the support of his wife, his children, and his close confidantes—was FDR able to regain some use of his legs. In the 1920s, he invested a considerable part of his fortune in rehabilitating a spa in Warm Springs, Georgia, whose curative waters aided his own rehabilitation. In later years, the cottage he built there would be called "the Little White House." Though polio devastated FDR physically, his steely will seemed to grow stronger as he fought through his recovery. Eleanor later said of this time: "I know that he had real fear when he was first taken ill, but he learned to surmount it. After that I never heard him say he was afraid of anything."

Successful Governor and Presidential Candidate

FDR's political comeback began in earnest in 1928 when he won the governorship of New York. The crash of the stock market in October 1929 served as a harbinger of tougher times to come and led Governor Roosevelt to focus on combating the state's economic woes. FDR implemented a number of innovative relief and recovery initiatives—unemployment insurance, pensions for the elderly, limits on work hours, and massive public works projects—that established him as a liberal reformer. FDR's efforts also won him reelection as governor in 1930, a rare feat in the midst of depression.

By the presidential election season of 1932, the Great Depression had only worsened and showed no signs of abating. Democrats turned to FDR, a popular and successful two-term governor with a recognizable last name, to challenge President Hoover. Promising a "New Deal" for the American people, FDR was swept into office in a landslide. In his inaugural address, Roosevelt gave hope to dispirited Americans throughout the nation, assuring them that they had "nothing to fear but fear itself."
Fighting the Great Depression

President Franklin Roosevelt's "New Deal" fought the Great Depression on a number of fronts. In the famous "First Hundred Days" of his presidency, FDR pushed through legislation that reformed the banking and financial sectors, tried to cure the ills afflicting American agriculture, and attempted to resuscitate American industry. To meet the immediate crisis of starvation and the dire needs of the nation's unemployed, FDR provided direct cash relief for the poor and jobs programs. Roosevelt's reassuring "fireside chats," in which he spoke to the nation via radio about the country's predicament, calmed a worried public.

In 1935, FDR took the New Deal in a more liberal direction, overseeing the enactment of some of the most far-reaching social and economic legislation in American history. The Wagner Act allowed labor unions to organize and bargain collectively, conferring on them a new legitimacy. The Social Security Act set up programs designed to provide for the needs of the aged, the poor, and the unemployed, establishing a social welfare net that, at least theoretically, covered all Americans. By the end of his second term, FDR and his advisers insisted that the federal government should stimulate the national economy through its spending policies, a strategy that held sway for the next thirty years.

All of these actions, though, could not end the Great Depression. Only American mobilization for war in the early 1940s brought the United States out of its economic doldrums. Nor did New Deal programs, because they reflected the biases of 1930s American politics and culture, offer the same aid to all Americans; white men generally received better benefits than women, blacks, or Latinos.

Nonetheless, FDR did much to reshape the United States. With Roosevelt as its presidential candidate, the Democratic Party won again in 1936, signaling the beginning of 30 years of political dominance that extended long after FDR's death. With FDR in the White House, the federal government played a greater role than ever before in managing the American economy and in protecting the welfare of the American people. In short, FDR oversaw major and important changes in American politics and governance that would define life in the United States for most of the twentieth century.

World War II

In addition to changing life at home, Roosevelt permanently altered America's role in the world. Hamstrung in the 1930s by domestic economic woes and a strong isolationist bloc in Congress and the public, FDR confronted Germany and Japan only tentatively as those powers looked to establish dominance in Europe and Asia, respectively. Nevertheless, Roosevelt did extend massive amounts of aid to Great Britain as that nation successfully held out against the Nazi onslaught during 1940 and 1941 Working with America's allies in the Pacific, FDR also tried to contain the Japanese threat.

Japan's surprise attack on the American Navy at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 officially brought the United States into World War II. FDR proved a talented war-time leader and, by 1943, the United States military, along with its allies, had turned the tide against both Germany and Japan. But Roosevelt did not live to see the war's end., In April 1945, just weeks before the German surrender, the president collapsed and died of a cerebral hemorrhage.

Under Roosevelt's leadership, the United States emerged from World War II as the world's foremost economic, political, and military power. FDR's contributions to domestic life during his presidency were just as vital. While his "New Deal" did not end the Great Depression, Roosevelt's leadership gave Americans hope and confidence in their darkest hours and fundamentally reshaped the relationship between the federal government and the American people. FDR so dominated American politics that he almost single-handedly launched the Democratic Party into a position of prolonged political dominance.. During his tenure, FDR also lifted both the standing and power of the American presidency to unprecedented heights. More broadly, however, his New Deal programs, marked a substantial turning point in the nation's political, economic, social, and cultural life.
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Thomas J. Walsh:



Senator from Montana; born at Two Rivers, Manitowoc County, Wis., June 12, 1859; attended the public schools; taught school; graduated from the law department of the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 1884; admitted to the bar in 1884 and commenced practice at Redfield, Dakota Territory; moved to Helena, Mont., in 1890 and continued the practice of law; unsuccessful candidate for election in 1906 to the Sixtieth Congress and in 1910 for the United States Senate; elected as a Democrat to the United States Senate in 1912; reelected in 1918, 1924, and 1930 and served from March 4, 1913, until his death; chairman, Committee on Mines and Mining (Sixty-third through Sixty-fifth Congresses), Committee on Pensions (Sixty-fifth Congress), Committee on the Disposition of Useless Executive Papers (Sixty-sixth Congress); died on March 2, 1933, on a train near Wilson, N.C., while en route to Washington, D.C., to accept the appointment as Attorney General in President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Cabinet; funeral services were held in the Chamber of the United States Senate; interment in Resurrection Cemetery, Helena, Mont.
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J. Leonard Bates

Homer Cummings:



Homer S. Cummings was born April 30, 1870, in Chicago, Illinois. He attended Yale College and Yale Law School, graduating in 1893, and was admitted to the Connecticut bar the same year. He began his career at a law firm in Stamford, Connecticut, before serving two terms as mayor of Stamford (1900-1902 and 1904-1906).

In 1909, he established a law firm with Charles D. Lockwood, where he practiced until becoming attorney general in the presidential administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Cummings was also a member of the Democratic National Committee, representing Connecticut from 1900 to 1925 and serving as committee chairman from 1919 to 1920.

Originally, President Roosevelt chose Cummings to serve as governor-general of the Philippines, but the sudden death of Senator Thomas J. Walsh prompted his appointment to the Department of Justice. After resigning his cabinet post in January 1939, Cummings returned to practicing law. He died on September 10, 1956.
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Olmstead v. U.S.:

Olmstead along with several others were convicted in the District Court for the Western District of Washington of a conspiracy to violate the National Prohibition Act (27 USCA) by unlawfully possessing, transporting and importing intoxicating liquors and maintaining nuisances, and by selling intoxicating liquors. In Olsteads�� Seattle offices, there were three telephones on three different lines and the call numbers were said to be given to likely customers. Based on information given to federal agents, four federal prohibition officers�� inserted wiretaps along the telephones wires from the residences of the petitioners all the way to the chief office. The insertions were made without trespass upon any property of the defendants.

Judgment/Disposition: Affirmed

Issue(s): Whether the use of evidence of private telephone conversations between the defendants and others, intercepted by means of wiretapping, amounted to a violation of the Fourth and Fifth Amendments.

Holding: The court held that the government’s wiretapping of conversations did not amount to a physical search and seizure and thus were not protected by the Fourth Amendment. The court further held that since the Fifth Amendment did not apply to this case since the Fourth Amendment was not violated.

Majority Rational: Chief Justice Taft relied upon the historical purpose of the Fourth Amendment, which was directed against general warrants and writs of assistance so that the government could not search a man’s house, his person, his papers, and his effects, against his will. Taft’s interpretation of the Fourth Amendment was that it only pertained to material things, and not voluntary conversations that were secretly overheard. He further noted that the intervening wires are not part of his house or office, any more than are the highways along which they are stretched. Taft goes on to state that “The reasonable view is that one who installs in his house a telephone instrument with connecting wires intends to project his voice to those quite outside, and that the wires beyond his house, and messages while passing over them, are not within the protection of the Fourth Amendment��.

Dissent: Justice Brandeis, who wrote a dissenting opinion, accused the majority of acting in a contradictory manner. He cited former Chief Justice Marshall’s words from McCulloch v. Maryland by stating “We must never forget…that it is a constitution we are expounding��. Justice Brandeis noted that since that ruling, the court has repeatedly sustained the exercise of power by Congress, under various clauses of that instrument, over objections of which the founders could not have dreamed. Most importantly, he writes “Clauses guaranteeing to the individual protection against specific abuses of power, must have a similar capacity of adaptation to a changing world��. He goes on to talk about Constitutions by stating “They are not ephemeral enactments, designed to meet passing occasions. They are, to use the words of Chief Justice Marshall, ‘designed to approach immortality as nearly as human institutions can approach it’��. Like Chief Justice Taft, Justice Brandeis also notes some historical aspects of the Fourth Amendment. He writes “When the Fourth and Fifth Amendments were adopted ‘the form that evil had theretofore taken�� had been necessarily simple. Force and violence were then the only means known to man by which a government could directly effect self-incrimination�� He also uses some of the language in Boyd v. United States to emphasize his point in which it says “time works changes, brings into existence new conditions and purposes��. The court should not rely on such as narrow interpretation of the Fourth Amendment and extend its protection to modern technology, such as telephone wiretaps.
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Cordell Hull:



Cordell Hull was born October 2, 1871, in Olympus, Tennessee. He graduated from the law department of Cumberland University (Tennessee) and was admitted to the Tennessee state bar in 1891. He began his political career in the Tennessee House of Representatives (1893-1897) before serving as a captain in the U.S. Army during the Spanish-American War. He then restarted his law practice and sat as a judge of the Fifth Judicial Circuit Court of Tennessee (1903-1907).

Hull served as a U.S. Representative from Tennessee from 1907 to 1921. After briefly losing his House seat in 1920, Hull acted as chairman of the Democratic Executive Committee (1921-1924). He returned to Congress from 1923 to 1931 before accepting a nomination to the U.S. Senate following the death of Senator Lawrence D. Tyson (1931-1933).

While in Congress, he was chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, author of the Federal Income Tax Bill (1913), and also author of the Federal State and Inheritance Tax Bill (1916).

Hull became FDR's secretary of state in 1933 and served in that capacity until 1944. He was instrumental in promoting Roosevelt's "Good Neighbor" policy in Latin America and in the creation of a postwar peace organization modeled after the League of Nations. Nicknamed the "Father of the United Nations," Hull received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1945. Cordell Hull died on July 23, 1955, in Bethesda, Maryland.
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James Semer Farnsworth:



was a former United States Navy officer who was convicted of spying for Japan during the 1930s. He was identified as Agent K in radio messages intercepted by the Office of Naval Intelligence.

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Harry Thompson:

was a former United States Navy yeoman who spied for Japan against the United States in 1934��35. He was the first American to be convicted of espionage since World War I.

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German Spy Ring:

It was our first major international spy case: on December 2, 1938—less than a year before World War II broke out in Europe—three Nazi spies were found guilty of espionage in the U.S. And the man who had exposed the ring, Guenther Rumrich, was sentenced to a reduced prison term for his cooperation.

But it was hardly a roaring success for the FBI. Four times as many spies had escaped, including the biggest fishes. We were roundly criticized in the press, and for good reason, as we were simply unprepared at that point in history to investigate such cases of espionage.

The complicated story. It all began that February when the crafty Rumrich—a naturalized U.S. citizen recruited by German intelligence—was arrested by the New York Police Department for the U.S. Army and the State Department, following a tip by British intelligence. The charge: impersonating the Secretary of State in order to get blank U.S. passports.

Rumrich was willing to talk, confessing that he was acting on behalf of Nazi agents and saying he’d provide the name of 10 to 15 spies working for Germany.

But who would lead the investigation? The Department of State, the FBI, and what was then called the War Department debated the issue. Director J. Edgar Hoover didn’t want to take it on, believing that the lack of coordination between agencies had already compromised the case. But the War Department insisted, and the case landed squarely in our lap.

An experienced criminal agent named Leon Turrou was placed in charge. Turrou debriefed Rumrich and other agent German agents and interviewed Dr. Igantz Greibl, head of the U.S. German intelligence ring. But after each interview, Turrou told the spies that they’d need to testify before a grand jury, and most fled the country to avoid prosecution. Turrou’s background simply didn’t prepare him for the nuances of an espionage case. Worse yet, he leaked information about the case to the New York press and even agreed to write a series of articles for one paper.

In June 1937, Turrou was fired for breaking the FBI oath. But his damage was far from done. When he took the stand at the trial of the few remaining suspects in October 1938, he was accused being an overzealous government agent motivated by profit and fame, of tampering with witnesses, and even of taking a bribe from Dr. Greibl. Despite the convictions, the FBI looked unprofessional and unprepared to protect the nation from espionage.

The aftermath. In response, we immediately began reforming our counterintelligence operations. We trained our agents how to conduct espionage investigations and how to the make the U.S. a more difficult operating environment for foreign agents. Since the Rumrich case was based solely on statements by the spies themselves, we also began developing other tools and techniques to corroborate testimony.
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Frank Murphy:



Francis William Murphy was born April 13, 1890, in Harbor Beach, Michigan, and graduated from the University of Michigan Law School in 1914. He began his career as a lawyer before enlisting in the U.S. Army during World War I, where he was promoted to captain of infantry and served in the army of occupation of Germany.

He was assistant U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan (1919-1922) and briefly a judge of the Recorders Court in Detroit (1923) before becoming mayor of Detroit (1930-1933). Murphy's political career continued as governor of the Philippine Islands (1933-1935) and as high commissioner in 1936.

He served as governor of Michigan (1937-1939) before accepting a cabinet position. He was attorney general in the Roosevelt administration from 1939 to 1940. In 1940, Murphy was appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court. He also acted as chairman of Philippine War Relief and as chairman of the National Committee against Nazi Persecution and Extermination of the Jews during World War II, after being told he was too old to join the Army. Murphy died on July 19, 1949, in Detroit, Michigan, while still serving as a justice on the Supreme Court.
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Robert Jackson:



Robert Houghwout Jackson was born in Spring Creek, Pennsylvania, on February 13, 1892. He was admitted to the bar in 1913. He was president of the Western New York Federation of Bar Associations from 1928 to 1930, a member of the New York State Commission to Investigate the Administration of Justice, a member of the board of directors of the New York Emergency Script Corporation, in 1933, and chairman of the National Conference of Bar Association Delegates from 1933 to 1934. He was General Counsel for the Bureau of Internal Revenue in 1934. His service with the Department of Justice included appointments as an Assistant Attorney General of the Tax Division on February 26, 1936, Assistant Attorney General of the Antitrust Division on January 21, 1937, and Solicitor General of the United States on March 4, 1938. On January 18, 1940, President Roosevelt appointed Jackson Attorney General of the United States. He was appointed Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States on July 11, 1941, also by Roosevelt. At the close of World War II in 1945, President Truman appointed Jackson as United States representative in meetings with the "Big Three" powers, England, Russia, and France, to negotiate agreement for the international trials of German criminals. Justice Jackson was chief counsel of the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. He was an author, lecturer, and a trustee of George Washington University and Union College. He died on October 9, 1954.
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U.S. v. Nardone (1937):



U.S. v. Nardone (1939):

Smith Act:

To prohibit certain subversive activities; to amend certain provisions of law with respect to the admission and deportation of aliens; to require the fingerprinting and registration of aliens; and for other purposes.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled

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Great adds Bryan.

Henry Morgenthau:



Henry Morgenthau Jr. was born May 11, 1891, in New York City. He studied agriculture and architecture at Cornell University but left after three semesters. His career began in agricultural pursuits; during World War I, Morgenthau worked with Herbert Hoover in the U.S. Farm administration in an effort to send tractors to France.

He also published what became the leading national weekly on farming and agriculture, The American Agriculturalist (1922-1933). Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt named him chairman of the New York State Agricultural Advisory Commission in 1928; Morgenthau was subsequently promoted to chairman of the state conservation commission. As President, Roosevelt tapped Morgenthau to be chairman of the Farm Credit Administration and later as undersecretary of the treasury.

Morgenthau took over the top spot later in 1933 from ailing treasury secretary William Woodin and remained in that post until 1945. Among his accomplishments was the convening of the Bretton Woods Conference, which established the post-World War II international banking system. Morgenthau kept his cabinet position three months into the Truman administration but resigned over a disagreement with the new President.

After leaving the cabinet, he served as chairman of the United Jewish Appeal (1947-1950) and chairman of the board of governors of the American Financial and Development Corporation for Israel. Henry Morgenthau died on February 6, 1967, in Poughkeepsie, New York.
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Edwin "Pa" Watson:

was a United States Army Major General, friend and a senior aide to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, serving both as a military advisor and Appointments secretary (a role that is now encompassed under the duties of the modern-day White House Chief of Staff).

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Charles Lindbergh:



One of the finest fliers of his time, Charles Lindbergh was the chief pilot for the first St. Louis to Chicago airmail route, in April 1926. While based at Lambert Field, he conceived of an airplane that could fly from New York to Paris, and persuaded a group of St. Louis businessmen to finance the project. The result was the immortal "Spirit of St. Louis," which he flew across the Atlantic on May 20-21, 1927. The feat made Lindbergh a national hero, and raised public awareness of aviation's potential to an unprecedented level.
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A. Scott Berg

American First Committee:

The America First Committee (AFC) was organized in July 1940 to oppose America's potential intervention in World War II. Spokesman Charles A. Lindbergh argued that the only way to save the country was to stay out of a tragic war in Europe and concentrate on defending America's way of life. The AFC strongly opposed President Franklin D. Roosevelt, as well as his New Deal.

Soon after it was founded, the AFC became the most powerful isolationist group in the U.S. The AFC had four main principles:

The United States must build an invulnerable national defense

No foreign power, nor group of powers, can successfully attack an America that is prepared
American democracy can be preserved only by keeping out of the war in Europe

"Aid short of war" weakens national defense at home and threatens to involve America in war abroad.

The AFC influenced the public's opinion through various publications and speeches. Membership was strong, particularly in the Midwest. Within a year the organization had more 800,000 members.

When Hitler invaded Poland in September 1939 and Britain and France declared war on Germany, Roosevelt maintained America's neutrality. However, within weeks, he urged Congress to remove an arms-sale restriction so that countries fighting the Axis powers could turn to the United States for matériel. The AFC strongly opposed that action, which compromised America's neutrality.

The tide of public opinion was moving against isolationism and the committee was not able to prevent the reelection of Roosevelt in 1940. In addition, the Lend-Lease Act was passed in March 1941, which gave the President the power to sell, transfer, exchange, and/or lend equipment to any country to help it defend itself against the Axis powers.

Some AFC members even suspected that Roosevelt had deliberately created a diplomatic crisis with Japan in order to provoke an attack and create public support for entering the war. An alleged Roosevelt Administration document known as "Rainbow Five," which clearly laid out plans for inciting an attack on America, was leaked to the press and published in numerous major newspapers just days prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor.

The AFC was dissolved four days after the attack on December 7, 1941. Many leading right-wing members of the committee vowed to continue fighting for the principles of the America First Committee, and revived the America First Party during the war, but most members vowed to fully support the war effort.
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Laura Ingalls:



Laura Ingalls was a highly successful female pilot of the 1930's with several unusual records to her credit.

Daughter of a wealthy New York City family, Ingalls learned to fly in 1928.

In 1930, she performed 344 consecutive loops, setting a women's record, and she shortly broke her own record with 930.

She also did 714 barrel rolls breaking both women's and men's records.

Ingalls held more U.S. transcontinental air records during the 1930's than any other woman, including a transcontinental record of 30 hours east to west and 25 hours west to east (round trip New York and Los Angeles), both in 1930.

In 1935, she became the first women to fly nonstop from the east coast to the west coast and then immediately broke Amelia Earhart's nonstop transcontinental west-to-east record with a flight from Los Angeles to New York in 13 hours, 34 minutes.

Her most well-known flights were made in 1934 and earned her a Harmon Trophy as the most outstanding female aviator of the year. Ingalls flew in a Lockheed Orion from Mexico to Chile, over the Andes Mountains to Rio, to Cuba and then to New York, marking...

the first flight over the Andes by an American woman,
the first solo flight around South America in a landplane,
the first flight by a woman from North America to South America, and
setting a woman's distance record of 17,000 miles.

In 1936, she placed second behind Louise Thaden in the prestigious Bendix Trophy Race howver Ingalls' flying career ended with questions about spying for the Germans in World War II, charges she denied.
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Adolf Berle:



was an educator, a diplomat, a government official, and a provocative interpreter of the United States corporate economy.

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Percy Foxworth:



Percy E. Foxworth was born on 29 November 1906 in Purvis, Mississippi. He received his early education in the grade and high schools of Poplarville and Derby, Mississippi. He attended the Pearl River Junior College for two years and then began his accounting studies at the Walton School of Commerce and the LaSalle Extension University. In 1926 he entered the employ of the Edward Hines Western Pine Company at Poplarville, Mississippi, and later was transferred to the company's offices at Burne, Oregon where he allegedly picked up the nickname "Sam".

Foxworth applied to enter the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on 21 March 1932. After completing his initial training he was assigned to FBI field offices located at Jacksonville, FL, Oklahoma City, OK, New York City and Washington, D.C. He served as an Administrative Assistant to J. Edgar Hoover, Director of the FBI from 8 April 1935 until June 1939, when he was made Special Agent in Charge of the New York Field Division of the FBI. From June 1940 until 9 April 1941 Foxworth was assigned at the Washington headquarters of the FBI as an Assistant Director in charge of the FBI's New York City Field Office.

Foxworth was killed in the line of duty on 15 January 1943 when his plane crashed in Surinam, Dutch Guiana. The FBI Medal of Honor was given posthumously to Foxworth in 1991.
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Nelson Rockefeller:



Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller (1908-1979), son of John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, served as governor of the State of New York (1959-1973) and as Vice President of the United States (1974-1977). A graduate of Dartmouth (1930), he served the Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower and Nixon administrations in a variety of positions. As governor, his achievements included the expansion of the State University of New York; efforts to protect the environment; the building of the Nelson A. Rockefeller Empire State Plaza in Albany; increased facilities and personnel for medical care; creation of the New York State Council on the Arts; and support of New York State agriculture. Rockefeller also held an important place in the art world as a collector, as the founder of the Museum of Primitive Art in 1954, and as trustee, treasurer, president, and chairman of the Museum of Modern Art. During the last years of his life, he concentrated on his art collection and writing books about art. He was also a prominent philanthropist, establishing the American International Association for Economic and Social Development (1946) and founding with his brothers the Rockefeller Brothers Fund (1940). He also formed the International Basic Economy Corporation (1947).
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William Donovan:




World War I Congressional Medal of Honor Recipient, US Diplomat. Known by the sobriquet "Wild Bill", he is most noted for founding and directing the United States Office of Strategic Services during World War II, which was the predecessor to the Central Intelligence Agency. A trained lawyer, he began the practice of law in Buffalo, New York in 1907. In 1916, he joined the New York National Guard on the Mexican Border, and in World War I he served in the United States Army in France with the 165th Infantry Regiment, 42nd Division, advancing to the rank of Colonel. He was awarded the CMOH for his bravery near Landres-et-St. Georges, France, on October 14 and 15, 1918. His citation reads "Lt. Col. Donovan personally led the assaulting wave in an attack upon a very strongly organized position, and when our troops were suffering heavy casualties he encouraged all near him by his example, moving among his men in exposed positions, reorganizing decimated platoons, and accompanying them forward in attacks. When he was wounded in the leg by machine-gun bullets, he refused to be evacuated and continued with his unit until it withdrew to a less exposed position". His Medal was presented to him in 1922. At the end of the war, he left the Army, and in 1922, he was appointed United States District Attorney for western New York. From 1924 to 1929, he served as Assistant Attorney General in the United States Department of Justice, but during the 1930s, he returned to the private practice of law. In 1940, President Franklin D. Roosevelt asked him to create plans for a central intelligence service for the United States; this group was to become the OSS. On July 11, 1941, Donovan was appointed coordinator of information, and on June 13, 1942, he became the first Chief of the newly created agency. It was most active in Europe during World War II, collecting foreign intelligence and carrying out covert operations. Promoted to Brigadier General in 1943, at the end of the war, he assisted in the procession of Nazi War Criminals at the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal, and declined any role in the Central Intelligence Agency. In 1953 he was named United States Ambassador to Thailand, where he served until his retirement in 1957. He died at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, DC in 1959. He is the only holder of the top four highest awards of the United States: The Medal of Honor, the Distinguished Service Cross, the Distinguished Service Medal, and the National Security Medal.
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(no image)Donovan, America's Master Spy by Richard Dunlop

Benjamin Sumner Welles:

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Assistant Secretary of State during the Franklin Roosevelt Administration. He helped develop the Good Neighbor Policy in Latin America. His career ended with his resignation in 1943 after a homosexual scandal with a Pullman car porter.
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Bryan wrote: "Charles Lindbergh:



One of the finest fliers of his time, Charles Lindbergh was the chief pilot for the first St. Louis to Chicago airmail route, in April 1926. While based at Lambert Field, he c..."

I truly enjoyed the biography of Lindbergh, which you listed. A. Scott Berg

Glad to hear it. I have it in my library and I look forward to reading it.

A. Scott Berg

Rodney shared with us an interesting article. Thanks, Rodney

The NSA Is Building the Country’s Biggest Spy Center

Francis Biddle:



Francis Beverley Biddle was born May 9, 1886, in Paris, France, to American parents. He attended Harvard University and graduated with honors from Harvard Law School in 1911. Biddle began his career as the private secretary of Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes (1911-1912) before beginning a law practice in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he worked until 1937.

He acted as a special assistant U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania (1922-1926), chairman of the National Labor Relations Board (1934-1935), and chief counsel of the Special Joint Congressional Committee to Investigate the Tennessee Valley Authority (1938-1939). He was also a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals, Third Circuit, for one year (1939-1940), and he then served as solicitor general before joining the cabinet in September 1941.

Biddle served as FDR's attorney general from 1941 to 1945, handing in his resignation when Vice President Harry S. Truman assumed the presidency. He then became a member of the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal (1945-1946), writing The Fear of Freedom (1951), A Casual Past (1961), and In Brief Authority (1962) in retirement. Francis Biddle died on October 4, 1968, in Wellfleet, Massachusetts.
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George Dasch:



was a German spy and saboteur who landed on American soil during World War II. He helped to destroy Nazi Germany’s espionage program in the United States by defecting to the American cause, but was tried and convicted of treason and espionage.
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Ex parte Quirin:

Brief Fact Summary. Four enemies of war filed a habeas corpus to contest the right to a civil trial instead of a trial in front of a military tribunal.


Synopsis of Rule of Law. The Court will not set aside acts ordered by the President concerning acts of war, as that power is invested to the President under the Constitution

Facts. Four men were captured on American soil and accused of acts in violation of the Articles of War. Under this act, their crimes are to be tried in front of a military tribunal and they were not afforded a trial in a civil court. A military tribunal trial does not afford a person all of the rights afforded under the United States Constitution. These four men were born in Germany and have all lived in the United States. They all received training at a school in Germany which taught explosive methods and secret writings. Each of the petitioners left Germany on boats in civilian clothing, and came to different coast in the United States. With explosives, they planned on retrieving secret information and were instructed to destroy the war industries and war facilities in the United States. The petitioners were caught on shore, and detained.

Issue. Whether a presidential order, which creates a military tribunal to try war crimes committed by war criminals/enemy belligerent’s instead of trying these cases in a civil court is constitutional

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Steve Nelson:

was a Croatian-born American political activist. Nelson achieved public notoriety as the political commissar of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in the Spanish Civil War and a leading functionary of the Communist Party, USA. Nelson is best remembered for having been prosecuted and convicted under the Smith Act in 1953.

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Vasily Zarubin:

was a Soviet intelligence officer. In the United States, he used the cover name Vasily Zubilin and served as Soviet intelligence Rezident from 1941 to 1944.

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W. Averell Harriman:



statesman who was a leading U.S. diplomat in relations with the Soviet Union during World War II and the Cold War period following World War II.

The son of the railroad magnate E.H. Harriman, W. Averell Harriman began his employment with the Union Pacific Railroad Company in 1915; he served as chairman of the board (1932��46). During the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration he was an officer of the National Recovery Administration and during 1940��41 served with the National Defense Advisory Commission and its successor agency, the Office of Production Management. In 1941 President Roosevelt sent him to Britain and the Soviet Union to expedite U.S. lend-lease aid. He then served as U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union (1943��46), ambassador to Great Britain (April to October 1946), and secretary of commerce (1947��48).

From 1948 to 1950 he was special U.S. representative in Europe to supervise administration of the European Recovery program; in 1950 he was named special assistant to the president and in 1951 director of the Mutual Security Agency. He was twice unsuccessful in his attempt to win the Democratic nomination for the presidency (1952 and 1956). Governor of New York from 1954 to 1958, Harriman lost the position to Nelson A. Rockefeller. He served as Pres. John F. Kennedy’s assistant secretary of state for Far Eastern affairs from 1961 to 1963. During that period he advocated U.S. support of a neutral government in Laos and helped to negotiate the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty. Under Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson Harriman served as ambassador-at-large and headed the U.S. delegation to the Paris peace talks between the United States and North Vietnam (1968��69). He retired in 1969 (though he remained active in foreign affairs in an unofficial capacity) and was replaced by Henry Cabot Lodge.
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(no image)America and Russia in a Changing World: A Half Century of Personal Observation by W. Averell Harriman

Vyacheslav Molotov:





Vyacheslav Molotov was born Vyacheslav Scriabin in Kukarka, Russia (now Sovetsk, in the Kirov province). By 1905, he had become involved in revolutionary activities and was twice arrested and exiled over the next decade. When the Bolsheviks came to power in 1917, he had changed his name to Molotov (meaning “hammer��), had made Joseph Stalin’s acquaintance, and was working on the Communist party newspaper, Pravda, in the capital, St. Petersburg (at that time, Petrograd). Molotov became an ardent supporter of Stalin and as Stalin accumulated power, Molotov also rose in the party, holding positions of increasing responsibility until becoming chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars (similar to the position of prime minister) in 1930. He held this post until 1941, when Stalin took it over. In 1939, Molotov also became the commissar of foreign affairs, a position he held until 1949.

Molotov callously enforced Stalin’s severe directives, implementing plans for the country’s rapid industrialization and collectivization of agriculture at the cost of millions of lives. He also signed off on the purge of Stalin’s potential rivals in the party and military commands; he was one of the few who emerged from this period unscathed. During wartime, Molotov was known as a tough negotiator, picking up the nickname “Iron Pants.�� His name was also borrowed to describe a homemade bomb: the “Molotov cocktail.�� Molotov used his bargaining skills to arrange the 1939 alliance between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany cemented in the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and, after Germany attacked the USSR, to ally his country instead with Great Britain and the United States. Along with Stalin, he attended the Teheran conference in 1943, the Yalta conference in 1945 and the Potsdam conference , which followed the defeat of Germany. Molotov also represented the Soviet Union at the 1945 San Francisco conference, the first meeting of the United Nations .

After the war ended, Molotov, who had been Stalin’s faithful confidant and a valuable adviser, lost the Soviet leader’s favor. In 1948, Stalin called for Molotov’s wife, Polina Zhemchuzhina, to be expelled from the party. Molotov abstained from the Politburo vote, but later wrote an apology to Stalin.

Molotov’s wife was arrested and exiled. He lost his position as foreign minister but continued working in the Politburo and regained the post in 1953, following Stalin’s death. Disagreements with Stalin’s successor, Nikita Khrushchev , resulted in Molotov’s steady loss of power after 1956. From 1957 to 1960, he served in a semi-exile as the Soviet ambassador to Mongolia before being stripped of party membership in 1962. Although his party membership was eventually restored without fanfare in 1984, he died two years later in Moscow at the age of 96.
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Bryan wrote: "W. Averell Harriman:



statesman who was a leading U.S. diplomat in relations with the Soviet Union during World War II and the Cold War period following World War II.

The son of the railroad mag..."

I like the photo of Harriman. The Yale graduate and member of the old “Skull and Bones�� secret society certainly lived an active life with plenty of contacts in America’s 20th Century.

Thomas C. Clark:



Tom C. Clark served as Associate Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court from 1949 to 1967, and was the first Texan to serve on the Court. Born in Dallas, Texas, September 23, 1899, Clark received his law degree from the University of Texas in 1922. He joined the Justice Department in 1937 and rose through the ranks. President Truman appointed him U.S. Attorney General in 1945 and to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1949. Clark resigned from the Court in 1967 when his son Ramsey Clark was appointed Attorney General, and afterwards sat on the Courts of Appeal in all eleven U.S. Circuits and in federal district court. An advocate of improved judicial administration, Clark chaired several American Bar Association committees on judicial administration and was the first director of the Federal Judicial Center.
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Potsdam Conference:



On 16 July 1945, the "Big Three" leaders met at Potsdam, Germany, near Berlin. In this, the last of the World War II heads of state conferences, President Truman, Soviet Premier Stalin and British Prime Ministers Churchill and Atlee discussed post-war arrangements in Europe, frequently without agreement. Future moves in the war against Japan were also covered. The meeting concluded early in the morning of 2 August.

One result of the conference was a 26 July joint proclamation by the U.S., Great Britain and China, the three main powers then fighting Japan. This "Potsdam Declaration" described Japan's present perilous condition, gave the terms for her surrender and stated the Allies' intentions concerning her postwar status. It ended with an ultimatum: Japan must immediately agree to unconditionally surrender, or face "prompt and utter destruction".
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Harry H. Vaughan:



Personal friend of Harry S. Truman since 1917; military associate in World War I and subsequently in the Field Artillery Officers Reserve Corps; treasurer for Senator Truman's 1940 reelection campaign committee; secretary to Senator Truman, 1941; a liaison officer for the Truman Committee, 1944; and Military Aide to Mr. Truman when he was Vice-President and President, 1945-53.
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