Calvin Coolidge is synonymous with the 'roaring 20s'. The reticent president presided over one of the greatest urban economic expansions in American history and came to be an icon of prudence and stability in the White House..
If the question 'who was John W. Davis?' were thrown out to a class of college freshmen at any university in the United States, few students if any would be able to answer. A number of history professors would likely be stumped by the question as well.
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The presidential election of 1924 has been eclipsed in an era dominated by the titanic personalities of Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt both prior and subsequent to the contest between John W. Davis (Democrat), Calvin Coolidge (Republican) and Robert LaFollette (Progressive Party). Historians, however, need to revive and reappraise the accomplished yet faded career of John W. Davis (1873-1955) in order to explore the lingering socio-economic chasm between the North and the South sixty years after the Civil War.
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The Rise of John William Davis
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In his early years, Davis, a native of West Virginia, traveled to eastward in order to pursue a degree in Latin from the literature department at Washington & Lee. Thereafter, he took a law degree at the same institution of higher learning and proceeded to become one of the most prominent lawyers of the 20th century. His exposure to the higher courts, including the Supreme Court, and increasing notoriety among his peers and hometown community resulted in being elected to Congress in 1911. Rather than take a backseat and learn the ropes from senior lawmakers, Davis immediately took the initiative and contributed to the the composition of the landmark Clayton Anti-Trust Act (1914). As a progressive, Davis sought to use federal and state power to curb price collusion and other abuses by monopolies, and his quest to ensure fair and transparent business practices both in the courts and in the halls of Congress did not go unnoticed by the new Democratic president. When Woodrow Wilson, a former governor of New Jersey, won the White House in 1912 over the docile incumbent William Howard Taft and the often bellicose Theodore Roosevelt, he appointed Davis to the post of Solicitor General.
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His signature achievement over the next five years in that position was overturning the 'grandfather laws' in Oklahoma. Rigged literacy tests were used to exclude illiterate or semi-literate blacks from voting, but whites with similar educational inadequacies were accorded an exemption if their grandfather had been a registered voter in years past. Davis convinced the Court, rightly, that the law was a violation of the 14th amendment.
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Presidential Nominee
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A few years later, Davis emerged as a potential candidate for the 1924 presidential election due to his progressive record and personal integrity. After a deadlocked convention, Davis was selected to be the standard-bearer for the Democratic Party in the fall campaign. Despite a formidable resume, Davis utterly faltered as a candidate. First and foremost, Davis was not a rhetorician. After years of having their passions stoked by the oratorical talents of William J. Bryan, Theodore Roosevelt and Robert LaFollette on the substantive issues of the day, the electorate, weary of speechmaking and largely interested in re-establishing a sense of 'normalcy' (as stated by the late Warren Harding), could only have been moved by a unique clarion call for action. Otherwise, the public was more interested in starting families and rebuilding their lives after a treacherous war and outbreak of influenza. Lacking either a pressing agenda or a passion for public speaking, Davis muddled through the election as a relatively non-descript nominee. American city-dwellers, who were quickly becoming addicted to installment payments, modern appliances and higher paying jobs, overwhelmingly opted for the non-descript incumbent - Calvin Coolidge. The addition of Charles Bryan to the ticket, the younger brother of demagogic William Jennings Bryan, also failed to spark any measurable interest north of the Mason-Dixon line.
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Analyzing The Election
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The electoral map is both telling and enigmatic. Northerners seemed to have been politically bifurcated between the conservative Coolidge and his diametric opposite Robert LaFollete. Hence, voters were either for the status quo (Coolidge) or against the status quo (LaFollete). The quiet and somewhat murky politics of Davis disappeared in the center. Coolidge and his pro-business, prosperity platform won easily. By voting for Coolidge, northerners endorsed another four years of pro-business prosperity over an agenda of economic reform.
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The South, however, was a different story. Historians have correctly noted that large parts of the more agrarian South remained in an economic malaise. Farmers struggled to fetch a decent price for their crops on both domestic and international markets. While substantially eschewing progressivism, the South seems to have chosen Davis more to protest Coolidge's neglect of farmers for big business than for Davis himself. In light of the fact that Davis was well-known for defeating racially discriminatory voting legislation (the Grandfather laws in Oklahoma) and condemning the Ku Klux Klan, the decision of the South to award him with his only electoral votes (136) is all the more surprising. Interestingly, Davis managed to lose his home state of West Virginia. As expected, Robert LaFollette came in third and gained victory only in his home state of Wisconsin.
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The 1924 presidential election tally was as follows:
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Ticket------------------------- --Popular Vote---Electoral Vote
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Calvin Coolidge/Charles Dawes (R)--15,725,016 (54.1%)-382
John W. Davis/Charles Bryan (D)----8,386,503 (28.8%)-136
Robert LaFollette/Burton Wheeler (P)-4,822,856 (16.6%)-13
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Old Wine, New Bottle
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In the last year of his life, Davis returned to the Supreme Court to argue one last landmark case. Since Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), America had operated under the principle of 'separate but equal' for blacks and whites in society. As long as each race enjoyed similar opportunities of education and employment in their respective spheres, segregation was perfectly legal. Blacks, however, continued to live below the poverty line in large numbers and were still being denied basic civil rights. A new case had arisen to challenge educational segregation in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954), and Davis, by a matter of conviction, argued the case against integration and for 'separate but equal' to remain the law of the land. Although his position was encased with some valid logic, The Court struck down Plessy v. Ferguson by a unanimous vote of 9-0. Thurgood Marshall, the victorious attorney for the plaintiff, would subsequently earn both a reputation as the nation's premier civil rights attorney and a seat on the Supreme Court thereafter. For Davis, it was an unfortunate end to a prestigious career in law and public service. Due to being a product of 19th century thought and social mores, he was on the wrong side of history. While sympathetic to the plight of blacks, he considered the idea of the Court forcibly integrating schools as radical and something akin to social engineering. Most of the white South and large segment of the white North agreed.
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The Ghost of John William Davis
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History needs to remember the life of John William Davis and the election of 1924. While his career marks the limits of progressivism and tolerance, the Coolidge-Davis-LaFollette presidential contest, only six years after the end of WWI, illuminates the complex socio-economic forces behind the still extant North-South divide. Coolidge may have won a term as president in his own right, but a large swath of the country was clearly alienated from the so-called 'roaring 20s' and its liberal values. Indeed, the election of 1924 has been repeated every four years ever since, and the same socio-economic concerns will again surface in 2008 with a North-South fault line on questions about the role of big business, the federal government and the relationship between church and state. In a sense then, John W.Davis has only been forgotten in name.
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J Roquen