Millard Tydings

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American politician (1890–1961)

title: "Millard Tydings" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["1890-births", "1961-deaths", "american-christian-zionists", "people-from-havre-de-grace,-maryland", "military-personnel-from-maryland", "democratic-party-maryland-state-senators", "victims-of-mccarthyism", "speakers-of-the-maryland-house-of-delegates", "united-states-army-officers", "united-states-army-personnel-of-world-war-i", "candidates-in-the-1940-united-states-presidential-election", "democratic-party-united-states-senators-from-maryland", "university-of-maryland-francis-king-carey-school-of-law-alumni", "university-of-maryland,-college-park-alumni", "democratic-party-united-states-representatives-from-maryland", "20th-century-members-of-the-maryland-general-assembly", "20th-century-united-states-senators", "20th-century-united-states-representatives", "chairs-of-the-democratic-senatorial-campaign-committee"] description: "American politician (1890–1961)" topic_path: "history" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millard_Tydings" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary American politician (1890–1961) ::

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

Field	Value
name	Millard Tydings
image	Senator Tydings LCCN2016874790 (resized).jpg
jr/sr	United States Senator
state	Maryland
term_start	March 4, 1927
term_end	January 3, 1951
predecessor	Ovington Weller
successor	John Marshall Butler
state2	Maryland
district2
term_start2	March 4, 1923
term_end2	March 3, 1927
predecessor2	Albert Blakeney
successor2	William Purington Cole, Jr.
office3	Member of the Maryland Senate
term_start3	1922
term_end3	1923
predecessor3	J. Royston Stifler
successor3	David G. Harry
constituency3	Harford County
office4	87th Speaker of the Maryland House of Delegates
term_start4	January 1920
term_end4	September 1920
predecessor4	Herbert R. Wooden
successor4	John L. G. Lee
state_delegate5	Maryland
district5	Harford County
term_start5	1920
term_end5	1920
alongside5	Frederick Lee Cobourn and J. Fletcher Hopkins
term_start6	1916
term_end6	1917
alongside6	Frank E. Baker and Thomas H. Ward
birth_name	Millard Evelyn Tydings
birth_date
birth_place	Havre de Grace, Maryland, U.S.
death_date
death_place	near Havre de Grace, Maryland, U.S.
resting_place	Angel Hill Cemetery
Havre de Grace, Maryland, U.S.
party	Democratic
spouse	Eleanor Tydings Ditzen
profession	Civil engineer, lawyer, politician, author
education	University of Maryland
allegiance	United States
branch	United States Army
serviceyears	1917–1919
rank	Lieutenant Colonel
battles	World War I
::

Millard Evelyn Tydings (April 6, 1890February 9, 1961) was an American attorney, author, soldier, state legislator, and served as a Democratic Representative and Senator in the United States Congress from Maryland, serving in the House from 1923 to 1927 and in the Senate from 1927 to 1951.

Early life and education

Tydings was born in Havre de Grace, located in Harford County, and was the son of Mary Bond (O'Neill) and Millard Fillmore Tydings. He attended the public schools of Harford County and graduated from Maryland Agricultural College (now the University of Maryland, College Park) in 1910. He engaged in civil engineering with the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in West Virginia in 1911. He studied law at the University of Maryland School of Law, in Baltimore, and was admitted to the bar; he started practice in Havre de Grace in 1913.

In 1916 Tydings was elected to the Maryland House of Delegates; he was elected as Speaker of the House by his colleagues from 1920 to 1922. He served in the Maryland State Senate during 1922–1923.

Tydings served in the U.S. Army during World War I and was promoted to lieutenant colonel and division machine-gun officer in 1918. He served on the Western Front with the American Expeditionary Forces and received the Distinguished Service Cross and Army Distinguished Service Medal.

House and Senate career

In 1922, Tydings was elected as a Democrat to the 68th session of the U.S. Congress, and was re-elected to the 69th session, representing the second district of Maryland (March 4, 1923 – March 3, 1927) in the House of Representatives. He was not a candidate for renomination in 1926, having become a candidate for the United States Senate.

He was elected to the Senate in 1926, 1932, 1938 and 1944, and served from March 4, 1927, to January 3, 1951. With Alabama Representative John McDuffie, he co-sponsored the Philippine Independence Act, commonly known as the Tydings–McDuffie Act, which established an autonomous 10-year Commonwealth status for the Philippines. It was planned to culminate in the withdrawal of American sovereignty and the recognition of Philippine Independence.

In January 1934, Tydings introduced a resolution "condemning Nazi oppression of Jews in Germany, and asking President Roosevelt to inform the Hitler government that this country was profoundly distressed about its antisemitic measures." His resolution was bottled up in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

In 1936, Senator Tydings introduced a bill in Congress calling for independence for Puerto Rico, but it was opposed by Luis Muñoz Marín, an influential leader of Puerto Rico's pro-independence Liberal Party. Tydings did not gain passage of the bill.

Following the end of World War II, when the U.S. dropped two atomic bombs on Japan, Tydings sponsored a bill calling for the U.S. to lead the world in nuclear disarmament.

In March 1950, Tydings was appointed to head a committee, generally known as the Tydings Committee, to investigate Joseph McCarthy's early claims of Communist penetration of the federal government and military. The hearings revolved around McCarthy's charge that the fall of the Kuomintang regime in China had been caused by the actions of alleged Soviet spies in the State Department, and his allegation that the Sinologist Owen Lattimore was a "top Russian agent." The hearings, held from March to July 1950, were stormy as charge was met with counter-charge. In McCarthy's first 250 minutes on the stand, Tydings interrupted him 85 times with questions and demands for substantiation, enraging McCarthy who condemned Tydings as an "egg-sucking liberal". As such, the trial attracted much media attention, especially after Louis F. Budenz entered the proceedings as a surprise witness supporting McCarthy's charges. In July, the committee published its report, concluding that McCarthy's accusations were spurious and condemning his charges as an intentionally nefarious hoax.

When Tydings ran for re-election in 1950, he battled Senator McCarthy and would dismiss the Senator's claims of Communist infiltration of the State Department as "a fraud and a hoax." McCarthy's staff distributed a composite picture of Tydings with Earl Browder, the former leader of the American Communist Party. Tydings had never met him before Browder testified in July 1950. The composite photo merged a 1938 photo of Tydings listening to the radio and a 1940 photo of Browder delivering a speech; the text under the composite photo stated that when Browder had testified before Tydings's committee, Tydings had said, "Thank you, sir." Although the quote was technically accurate, it was generally held to be misleading, as it implied a degree of amity between Browder and Tydings that did not exist.

In the 1950 election, Tydings was defeated by John Marshall Butler. In 1956, he was nominated as the Democratic candidate for the United States Senate but withdrew before election due to ill health.

During his congressional service, Tydings was chairman of the United States Senate Committee on Territories and Insular Affairs (73rd through 79th Congresses), the Subcommittee on the Investigation of Loyalty of State Department Employees ("Tydings Subcommittee") (81st Congress), and the U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services (81st Congress).

Controversies

During his time in the Senate, Tydings was well known for taking principled, controversial, often unusual stands on various issues. As a centrist Democrat, Tydings cautiously backed the New Deal, while dispensing its jobs as his personal patronage. In 1935, Tydings, who was opposed to the flexibility which the U.S. Treasury had accrued with respect to debt management, proposed a constitutional amendment which would have prohibited appropriations in excess of revenues in the absence of a new debt authorization and would required that any new debt be liquidated over a 15-year period. He was a strong critic of Prohibition prior to its repeal in 1933.

Tydings in 1937 broke with President Franklin Roosevelt, by opposing the president's "court packing" proposal. According to Philip A. Grant Jr.:Tydings' solid victory was interpreted as a serious political blow to the president, yet Roosevelt's 1940 performance in Maryland was creditable, suggesting that state Democrats, while resenting the assault on Tydings, nevertheless favored the New Deal and FDR's leadership. The equation of newspaper opinion with public opinion, in this case, is erroneous. Tydings won on his own record and merits, and the impact of the President's politicking was probably negligible.

Biographer Caroline H. Keith is sympathetic in general, but concludes that Tydings' intense vitriol, harshness and arrogance left him an isolated politician with few friends.

Death and legacy

Millard E. Tydings died on February 9, 1961, at his farm, "Oakington", near Havre de Grace, Maryland. He was buried in Angel Hill Cemetery. Tydings' gravestone incorrectly gives his Senate election year (1926) as the start of his Senate service, which began in 1927.

The Millard E. Tydings Memorial Bridge, which carries Interstate 95 across the Susquehanna River, is named in his honor.
Millard E. Tydings Hall at the University of Maryland, College Park, which houses the departments of Government & Politics and Economics, is also named for him.

Tydings' adopted son, Joseph Tydings, was elected to a term as a U.S. Senator from Maryland in 1964, but was defeated for re-election in 1970, serving from 1965 to 1971.

His wife was Eleanor Tydings Ditzen. Her father was Joseph E. Davies, who served as U.S. Ambassador to the USSR, Belgium and Luxembourg.

Tydings' granddaughter Alexandra Tydings is an actress.

The law firm which Millard Tydings formed with Morris Rosenberg continues its law practice today in Baltimore, Maryland.

Notes

References

Retrieved on 2008-01-25

Millard E. Tydings Papers at the University of Maryland Libraries

Bibliography

Grant Jr., Philip A. "Maryland Press Reaction to the Roosevelt-Tydings Confrontation." Maryland Historical Magazine 68#4 (1973): 422–437.
Keith, Caroline H., For Hell and a Brown Mule: The Biography of Senator Millard E. Tydings, Madison Books, 1991.

References

Baltimore Sun. (8 April 2007). "Harford History".
(1999-04-30). "Historical List, House of Delegates, Harford County". [[Maryland State Archives]].
Lawrence, Joseph Douglas. (1985). "Fighting Soldier: The AEF in 1918". Colorado Associated University Press.
"Legitimating Nazism: Harvard University and the Hitler Regime, 1933–1937", ''American Jewish History ''92.2 (2004) 189–223
[https://www.jstor.org/stable/2510353 Frank Otto Gatell, "Independence Rejected: Puerto Rico and the Tydings Bill of 1936"], ''Hispanic American Historical Review'', Vol. 38, No. 1 (Feb., 1958), pp. 25–44, accessed 15 December 2012
"Papers of Millard E. Tydings". University of Maryland.
Keith 2
Evans 208
Stone 1395
"Millard E. Tydings: A Featured Biography". senate.gov.
"Tydings, Millard Evelyn – U.S. House of Representatives: History, Art & Archives".
Jay, Peter A.. (May 3, 1992). "Millard Tydings is Remebered [sic] in His Home Town". The Baltimore Sun.
(August 22, 2019). "A Balanced Budget Constitutional Amendment:Background and Congressional Options". Congressional Research Service.
In retaliation Roosevelt campaigned against him in 1938, speaking in Eastern Maryland on behalf of his opponent, Congressman David J. Lewis. The state's newspapers overwhelmingly supported Tydings and denounced Roosevelt's interference. Tydings easily won re-election.Susan Dunn, ''Roosevelt’s Purge How FDR Fought to Change the Democratic Party'' (2012) pp. 191–201.
Philip A. Grant Jr, "Maryland Press Reaction to the Roosevelt-Tydings Confrontation." ''Maryland Historical Magazine'' 68#4 (1973): 422–437.
Keith, 1991.
Eisenberg, Gerson G.. (1992). "Marylanders Who Served The Nation: A Biographical Dictionary of Federal Officials from Maryland". Maryland State Archives.
"Collection: Eleanor Tydings Ditzen papers {{!}} Archival Collections".
"From Roosevelt to Truman: Potsdam, Hiroshima, and the Cold War," by Wilson D. Miscamble
"Millard E. Tydings".
Tydings. "Baltimore, Maryland Business and Litigation Law Firm".

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