Margaret Chase Smith
Margaret Madeline Chase Smith was an American politician. A member of the Republican Party, she served as a U.S. representative and a U.S. senator from Maine. She was the first woman to serve in both houses of the U.S. Congress. A Republican, she was among the first to criticize the tactics of Joseph McCarthy in her 1950 speech "Declaration of Conscience".
Smith was a candidate in the 1964 Republican Party presidential primaries; she was the first woman to be placed in nomination for the U.S. presidency at a major party's convention. Upon leaving office, she was the longest-serving female senator in history, a distinction that was not surpassed until January 4, 2011, when Senator Barbara Mikulski from Maryland exceeded her record. Smith was ranked as the longest-serving Republican woman in the Senate, a distinction that was not surpassed until January 3, 2021, when Susan Collins, who holds the same Senate seat she previously held, was sworn in for a fifth term.
Early life and education
Margaret Chase was born in Skowhegan in central Maine, to Carrie Matilda and George Emery Chase. She was the oldest of six children, two of whom did not survive to adulthood. Her father was of English ancestry, a descendant of immigrants to the original Thirteen Colonies in the 17th century; her great-great-grandfather commanded an artillery company during the War of 1812, and her grandfather served in the Union Army during the Civil War. Her mother's family was French Canadian, having immigrated from Quebec in the middle of the 19th century; her grandfather Lambert Morin changed his name to John Murray to avoid anti-French Canadian and anti-Catholic prejudice. Her father was the town barber, and her mother worked as a waitress, store clerk, and shoe factory worker.She received her early education at Lincoln and Garfield Elementary Schools. At age 12, she went to work at a local five-and-dime store and even bought herself a life insurance policy. She also shaved her father's customers when he was busy or away from the shop. She attended Skowhegan High School, graduating in 1916. During high school, she played on the girls' basketball team, of which she was captain in her senior year. She also worked as a substitute operator with a telephone company during this time. In that position she met Clyde Smith, a prominent local politician, who arranged a job for her as a part-time assistant to the tax assessor.
Early career
Following her high school graduation, Chase briefly taught at the Pitts School, a one-room school near Skowhegan. She also coached the girls' basketball team at Skowhegan High. She was a business executive for the Maine Telephone and Telegraph Company before joining the staff of the Independent Reporter, a Skowhegan weekly newspaper for whom she was circulation manager from 1919 to 1928. She became involved with local women's organizations. She co-founded the Skowhegan chapter of the Business and Professional Women's Club in 1922, and served as editor of the club's magazine, The Pine Cone. From 1926 to 1928, she was president of the statewide organization, the Maine Federation of Business and Professional Women's Clubs. She was a member of the Junior League of Bangor, ME. She became treasurer of the New England Waste Process Company in 1928 and was also employed as an office worker with the Daniel E. Cummings Woolen Company, a local textile mill.On May 14, 1930, Chase married Clyde Smith, who was 21 years her senior. She soon became active in politics and was elected to the Maine Republican State Committee, on which she served from 1930 to 1936. After Clyde was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Maine's 2nd congressional district in 1936, Smith accompanied her husband to Washington, D.C., to serve as his secretary. In this position, she managed his office, handled his correspondence, conducted research, and helped write his speeches. She also served as treasurer of the Congressional Club, a group composed of the wives of congressmen and Cabinet members.
U.S. House of Representatives
In the spring of 1940, Clyde Smith fell seriously ill after suffering a heart attack, and asked his wife to run for his House seat in the general election the following September. He prepared a press release in which he stated, "I know of no one else who has the full knowledge of my ideas and plans or is as well qualified as she is, to carry on these ideas and my unfinished work for my district." He died on April 8 of that year, and a special election was scheduled on the following June 3 to complete his unexpired term. Facing no Democratic challenger, Smith won the special election and became the first woman elected to Congress from Maine. Three months after the special election, she was elected to a full two-year term in the House in her own right. Smith defeated Edward J. Beauchamp, the Democratic mayor of Lewiston, by a margin of 65–35%. She was re-elected to three more terms over the course of the next eight years, never receiving less than 60% of the vote.During her tenure in the House, Smith developed a strong interest in issues concerning the military and national security. After being appointed to the House Naval Affairs Committee in 1943, she was assigned to the investigation of destroyer production, and made a 25,000-mile tour of bases in the South Pacific during the winter of 1944. She also became the first and only civilian woman to sail on a U.S. Navy ship during World War II. She became known as "Mother of the WAVES" after introducing legislation to create that organization. Although Congresswoman Smith was a strong supporter of women in the armed services, she did not write the legislation that created the special female military units during World War II. She did, however, champion the legislation that gave women permanent status in the military following the war.
A supporter of President Harry S. Truman's foreign policies, she was mentioned as a possible candidate for Under Secretary of the Navy in 1945 and for Assistant Secretary of State in 1947. Smith became a member of the House Armed Services Committee in 1946, also serving as chair of its Subcommittee on Hospitalization and Medicine. In this position, she sponsored and ensured the passage of the Women's Armed Services Integration Act, a bill to regularize the status of women in the armed forces that was signed into law by President Truman in June 1948.
Smith earned a reputation as a moderate Republican who often broke ranks with her party. She supported much of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal legislation, as had her husband while he was in office. She voted in favor of the Selective Service Act in 1940 and voted against the Smith–Connally Act in 1943. In 1945, she voted against making the House Un-American Activities Committee a permanent body. As a member of the House, Smith began wearing a single red rose that became a daily fixture of her attire throughout her career in public office. She waged a long campaign to have the rose declared the official flower of the United States, which Congress eventually approved in 1987.
U.S. Senate
1948 election
In August 1947, after three-term incumbent Wallace H. White Jr. decided to retire, Smith announced her candidacy for his seat in the U.S. Senate. In the Republican primary, she faced incumbent Governor Horace A. Hildreth, former Governor Sumner Sewall, and Reverend Albion Beverage. She ran a grassroots campaign with little money, using the slogan, "Don't change a record for a promise." When the wife of one of her opponents questioned whether a woman would be a good Senator, Smith replied, "Women administer the home. They set the rules, enforce them, mete out justice for violations. Thus, like Congress, they legislate; like the Executive, they administer; like the courts, they interpret the rules. It is an ideal experience for politics." On June 21, 1948, she won the primary election and received more votes than her three opponents combined. In the general election on September 13, she defeated Democrat Adrian H. Scolten by a margin of 71–29%. She became the first woman to represent Maine in the Senate, and the first woman to serve in both houses of Congress.Early tenure
Smith was sworn into the Senate on January 3, 1949. After a year in office, she gained national attention when she became the first member of Congress to condemn the anti-Communist witch hunt led by her fellow Republican Senator, Joseph McCarthy from Wisconsin. Smith was initially impressed by McCarthy's accusations of Communists working in the State Department, but became disillusioned after McCarthy failed to provide any evidence to validate his charges.Smith voted in favor of Harry Truman's Supreme Court nomination of Tom C. Clark on August 18, 1949, but was absent during the nomination of Sherman Minton while Senate Minority Whip Leverett Saltonstall announced that Smith would have voted in favor if present. Smith was present in the United States Senate on March 1, 1954, when Dwight Eisenhower's nomination of Earl Warren as Chief Justice of the United States was unanimously confirmed, voted in favor of the nomination of John Marshall Harlan II on March 16, 1955, was present for the unanimous nominations of William J. Brennan Jr. and Charles Evans Whittaker on March 19, 1957, and voted in favor of the nomination of Potter Stewart on May 5, 1959. She opposed the tactics being used by members of her party, such as Joseph McCarthy, and spoke out saying, "As an American, I condemn a Republican Fascist just as much as I condemn a Democrat Communist. They are equally dangerous to you and me and to our country. As an American, I want to see our nation recapture the strength and unity it once had when we fought the enemy instead of ourselves."
Declaration of Conscience
On June 1, 1950, Smith delivered a fifteen-minute speech on the Senate floor, known as the "Declaration of Conscience," in which she refused to name McCarthy directly but denounced "the reckless abandon in which unproved charges have been hurled from this side of the aisle." She said McCarthyism had "debased" the Senate to "the level of a forum of hate and character assassination." She defended every American's "right to criticize... right to hold unpopular beliefs... right to protest; the right of independent thought." While acknowledging her desire for Republicans' political success, she said, "I don't want to see the Republican Party ride to political victory on the four horsemen of calumny—fear, ignorance, bigotry, and smear." Six other moderate Republican Senators signed on to her Declaration: Wayne Morse from Oregon, George Aiken from Vermont, Edward Thye from Minnesota, Irving Ives from New York, Charles Tobey from New Hampshire, and Robert C. Hendrickson from New Jersey. Her speech ended with a warning: "It is high time that we all stopped being tools and victims of totalitarian techniques—techniques that, if continued here unchecked, will surely end what we have come to cherish as the American way of life."In response to her speech, McCarthy referred to Smith and the six other Senators as "Snow White and the Six Dwarfs." He removed her as a member of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, giving her seat to Senator Richard Nixon from California. He also helped finance an unsuccessful primary challenger during Smith's re-election campaign in 1954. Smith later observed, "If I am to be remembered in history, it will not be because of legislative accomplishments, but for an act I took as a legislator in the U.S. Senate when on June 1, 1950, I spoke... in condemnation of McCarthyism, when the junior Senator from Wisconsin had the Senate paralyzed with fear that he would purge any Senator who disagreed with him." She voted for McCarthy's censure in 1954.
On July 17, 1950, Smith was commissioned as a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force Reserve, and she served until 1958. In the 1952 U.S. presidential election, Smith was widely mentioned as a vice-presidential candidate under General Dwight D. Eisenhower. When asked by a reporter what she would do if she woke up one morning and found herself in the White House, she replied: "I'd go straight to Mrs. Truman and apologize. Then I'd go home." At that year's Republican National Convention, a group of women delegates had sought to nominate Smith. Smith, however, requested not to be proposed at the convention as a vice presidential delegate. Noting that Eisenhower's supporters had coalesced around Richard Nixon for the vice presidential nomination, Luce withdrew her nomination of Smith in the convention's vice presidential balloting. On December 3, 1957, Smith became the first woman in Congress to break the sound barrier, which she did as a passenger in an F-100 Super Sabre piloted by Air Force Major Clyde Good. Exhibiting the same independent nature in the Senate as she had in the House, Smith opposed President Eisenhower's nomination of Lewis Strauss as Secretary of Commerce in 1959.