Ellison D. Smith

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American politician (1864–1944)

title: "Ellison D. Smith" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["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", "history-of-racism-in-south-carolina", "american-segregationists", "20th-century-united-states-senators", "19th-century-members-of-the-south-carolina-general-assembly", "red-shirts-members", "american-anti-suffragists", "old-right-(united-states)"] description: "American politician (1864–1944)" topic_path: "history" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellison_D._Smith" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary American politician (1864–1944) ::

::data[format=table title="Infobox officeholder"]

FieldValue
nameEllison D. Smith
imageSenator Ellison D. Smith (cropped).jpg
captionSmith in 1937
jr/sr1United States Senator
state1South Carolina
term_start1March 4, 1909
term_end1November 17, 1944
preceded1Frank B. Gary
succeeded1Wilton E. Hall
order3Chairman of the Committee on Agriculture and Forestry
term_start31933
term_end31944
preceded3Charles L. McNary
succeeded3Elmer Thomas
order4Chairman of the Committee on Interstate Commerce
term_start41924
term_end41925
preceded4Albert B. Cummins
succeeded4James E. Watson
term_start51917
term_end51919
preceded5Francis G. Newlands
succeeded5Albert B. Cummins
office6Member of the South Carolina House of Representatives from Sumter County
term6January 12, 1897 – January 8, 1901
birth_nameEllison DuRant Smith
birth_date
birth_placeLynchburg, South Carolina, U.S.
death_date
death_placeLynchburg, South Carolina, U.S.
residenceLynchburg, South Carolina
spouse{{plainlist
*{{marriageMartha Cornelia Moorer
partyDemocratic
children5
::

| name = Ellison D. Smith | image = Senator Ellison D. Smith (cropped).jpg | caption = Smith in 1937 | jr/sr1 = United States Senator | state1 = South Carolina | term_start1 = March 4, 1909 | term_end1 = November 17, 1944 | preceded1 = Frank B. Gary | succeeded1 = Wilton E. Hall | order3 = Chairman of the Committee on Agriculture and Forestry | term_start3 = 1933 | term_end3 = 1944 | preceded3 = Charles L. McNary | succeeded3 = Elmer Thomas | order4 = Chairman of the Committee on Interstate Commerce | term_start4 = 1924 | term_end4 = 1925 | preceded4 = Albert B. Cummins | succeeded4 = James E. Watson | term_start5 = 1917 | term_end5 = 1919 | preceded5 = Francis G. Newlands | succeeded5 = Albert B. Cummins | office6 = Member of the South Carolina House of Representatives from Sumter County | term6 = January 12, 1897 – January 8, 1901 | birth_name = Ellison DuRant Smith | birth_date = | birth_place = Lynchburg, South Carolina, U.S. | death_date = | death_place = Lynchburg, South Carolina, U.S. | residence = Lynchburg, South Carolina | spouse = {{plainlist|

| profession = | party = Democratic| | children = 5 Ellison DuRant Smith (August 1, 1864 – November 17, 1944) was an American cotton planter, lobbyist, and Democratic Party politician who represented South Carolina in the United States Senate from 1909 until 1944.

Smith was widely known for his virulently racist and segregationist views, his advocacy of white supremacy, and his support for the Southern cotton industry, earning him the nickname “Cotton Ed”.

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 (formerly Smith's Grove). Throughout his life, he would reside in Tanglewood. and graduated from Wofford College in 1889.

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 in 1900. In 1901, Smith helped organize the Farmer's Protective Association Smith received the nickname "Cotton Ed" after he declared: "Cotton is king and white is supreme."

Election to the U.S. Senate

Smith was elected to the United States Senate 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 Negroes down and the price of cotton up.” 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 liked to describe 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 sponsored the Muscle Shoals project, a forerunner to the Tennessee Valley Authority. During this time Smith's policies were "a curious mixture of conservatism and liberalism". He was a loyal supporter of President Woodrow Wilson and his New Freedom agenda especially regarding agriculture supporting the Smith–Lever Act of 1914, Smith–Hughes Act, the Warehouse Act of 1916, Federal Farm Loan Act, and Federal Aid Road Act of 1916. His passage of the Cotton Futures Act earned him the nickname "Cotton" Ed Smith. 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, He also supported the Clayton Act, the Federal Trade Commission, the Underwood tariff, and the Adamson Act. He opposed the Keating–Owen Act which prohibited child labor.

Smith, reflecting the xenophobic views of constituents, sponsored numerous bills restricting immigration culminating in the Immigration Act of 1917 that passed over President Wilson's veto. Smith spoke out in support of the Immigration Act of 1924, which limited emigration from Southern and Eastern Europe and effectively entrapped European Jews in the feverish atmosphere of emergent fascism.

During the First World War he supported most of the war time actions of President Wilson but prevented attempts by the President to impose price controls on cotton. After the war he supported the League of Nations and the Treaty of Versailles.

Smith opposed the women's suffrage movement, and specifically the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Tying the amendment to black suffrage, he warned on the Senate floor,

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

Time called Smith a “conscientious objector to the 20th Century.” Smith stormed into the office of the author of the directive, Alger Hiss, 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 in Philadelphia, Smith walked out of the convention hall once he saw that a black minister, Marshall L. Shepard, was going to deliver the invocation. Shepard's response to the incident was to say "it was just a sign the good brother needs more prayer."

Smith opposed a Federal minimum wage; he filibustered it in the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act, saying “South Carolinians are willing to work for less than 50 cents/hour.” 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 [of a national minimum wage] is 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. 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. 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, 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, which was evident in the Fair Labor Standards Act.

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.

During World War II, Smith opposed the national war mobilization efforts, 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 in the 1944 presidential election.[[File:Olin D. Johnston (SC).jpg|thumb|Governor [[Olin D. Johnston]], a supporter of [[Franklin D. Roosevelt]]'s labor reforms, unseated Smith in 1944 shortly before Smith's death in office.]]

1944 election defeat

Main article: 1944 United States Senate election in South Carolina

In 1944, Olin D. Johnston 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, 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."

Personal life and death

He first married at the age of 28 in 1892 to Martha Cornelia Moorer (1865-1893) of St. George, South Carolina. She died giving birth to their son Martius Ellison in 1893. In 1912, at age 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, serving under J. E. B. Stuart, 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 Plumbing Co. of Wisconsin.
  • Isobel Smith Lawton moved to Florence, South Carolina, when she married.
  • Ellison DuRant, Jr. married Vivian Manning, daughter of Governor John Lawrence Manning.
  • 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 empire).

All five of Smith's children are now deceased.

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.

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.

References

  1. "Tanglewood Plantation - History".
  2. (November 13, 1910). "Grand catalogue of the Phi kappa psi fraternity, February 1, 1910;". Chicago, Ill..
  3. "Biographical Directory of the U.S. Congress - Retro Member details".
  4. Gould, Lewis L.. (2005). "The Most Exclusive Club". Basic Books.
  5. (October 1970). ""Cotton Ed Smith": Showman or Statesman?". The South Carolina Historical Magazine.
  6. (August 7, 1944). "Curtains for Cotton Ed".
  7. "National Register of Historic Places - Nomination Form".
  8. (2018-05-10). "Superman's Jewish origins and the 'curse' that haunts the actors who play him".
  9. Cong. Rec., 58:618 (June 4, 1919)
  10. (1993). "Shepard, Marshall Lorenzo, Sr". Routledge.
  11. Kennedy, David ''Freedom From Fear'', Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005 p.345
  12. Kennedy, David ''Freedom From Fear'', Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005 p.346
  13. Kennedy, David ''Freedom From Fear'', Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005 p.347
  14. Kennedy, David ''Freedom From Fear'', Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005 p.348
  15. Bryant Simon, A fabric of defeat:the politics of South Carolina millhands, 1910–1948, pp. 210–211
  16. He hoped that Smith would retire in 1944 and his friend [[Burnet R. Maybank]], the [[mayor of Charleston]] 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]] 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
  17. Sullivan, Gordon R.. "Mobilization".
  18. (August 16, 1943). "Radio: Cotton Ed Blows a Fuse".
  19. ‘Cotton Ed Smith Organizes Drive To Elect Dewey’; ''The Chicago Defender'', September 30, 1944, p. 1
  20. (August 7, 1944). "Elections: Curtains for Cotton Ed".
  21. "Martha Moorer Storia della famiglia e documenti storici".

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1864-births1944-deathspeople-from-lee-county,-south-carolinauniversity-of-south-carolina-alumnidemocratic-party-members-of-the-south-carolina-house-of-representativeswofford-college-alumnidemocratic-party-united-states-senators-from-south-carolinahistory-of-racism-in-south-carolinaamerican-segregationists20th-century-united-states-senators19th-century-members-of-the-south-carolina-general-assemblyred-shirts-membersamerican-anti-suffragistsold-right-(united-states)