James F. Byrnes

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Image:JamesFByrnesSoS.jpg James Francis Byrnes (May 2, 1879 – April 9, 1972) was a confidant of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and one of the most powerful men in American domestic and foreign policy in the mid-1940s.

His mother was an Irish-American dressmaker in Charleston, South Carolina. He left Catholic parochial school at 14 to work in a law office, and became a court stenographer. He left the Catholic church to marry Maude Perkins Busch of Aiken in 1906; they had no children. He became an Episcopalian. He never attended high school, college or law school, but apprenticed to a lawyer and was admitted to the bar in 1903. In 1910 he narrowly won the Democratic primary for Congress from the state's 3rd Congressional District, which was tantamount to election. Byrnes proved a brilliant legislator, working behind the scenes to forms coalitions and avoiding the high-profile oratory that characterized much of southern politics. He was a champion of the "good roads" movement that attracted motorists, and politicians, to large-scale road building programs in the 1920s. He lost the 1924 Senate primary to Cole L. Blease, often considered a notorious demagogue. Out of office, he moved his law practice to Spartanburg, in the industrializing Piedmont region. He used his new base to gain the support of factory workers, and defeated Blease in 1930. He had long been friends with Franklin D. Roosevelt and made himself the President's spokesman on the Senate floor. He won easy reelection in 1936, promising:

"I admit I am a New Dealer, and if [the New Deal] takes money from the few who have controlled the country and gives it back to the average man, I am going to Washington to help the President work for the people of South Carolina and the country."

In 1937 he supported Roosevelt on the highly controversial court packing plan, but voted against the minimum wage law of 1938 that would have made textile mills in his state uncompetitive. He opposed Roosevelt's efforts to purge conservative Democrats in 1938. On foreign policy, however, he was a champion of Roosevelt's positions of helping Britain and France against Germany in 1939-41. Byrnes also served briefly as a Justice of the Supreme Court, a role which bored him at a time when the country was about to go to war. He only served in that position for a year and a half from 1941 to 1942.

Byrnes left the Supreme Court to head Roosevelt's Economic Stabilization Office, which dealt with the vitally important issues of prices and taxes. How powerful the new office would become depended entirely on Byrnes's political skills, and Washington insiders soon reported he was in full charge. In May 1943 he added another hat as head of the War Mobilization Board; people called him "assistant president."

He was a serious possibility for vice president in 1944. While Roosevelt preferred him, he was too conservative for the labor unions, big city bosses vetoed any ex-Catholic, and blacks were wary of his opposition to racial integration. The nomination went to Harry S Truman, who had fewer assets than Byrnes, and far fewer liabilities. Roosevelt brought him to the Yalta Conference in early 1945, where he seemed to favor Soviet plans. Truman appointed him as Secretary of State in June 1945. He played a major role at the Potsdam Conference and other major postwar conferences. In 1946, he took an increasingly hardline position in opposition to Stalin. Byrnes was named TIME magazine's Person of the Year. After a falling out between Byrnes and Truman, Byrnes left his post in 1947.

Byrnes was elected governor of South Carolina, serving from 1951 to 1955, in which capacity he vigorously criticized the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education. He endorsed Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1952 and 1956, Richard Nixon in 1960 and 1968 and Barry Goldwater in 1964. He eventually switched allegiances to the Republican Party. In 1968, he secretly advised Nixon on how to win over old-time Southern Democrats to the Republican Party.

Today, a building housing international programs is named after Byrnes at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, South Carolina, and former U.S. ambassador to South Korea, Richard L. Walker, was the James F. Byrnes Professor Emeritus of International Studies there. An auditorium is named after him at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, South Carolina. A dormitory on the east campus of Clemson University in Clemson, South Carolina is named for him and he was on the board of trustees there. A high school in Spartanburg, James F. Byrnes High School, is also named after him.

References

• Messed, Robert L. The End of an Alliance: James F. Byrnes, Roosevelt, Truman, and the Origins of the Cold War (1982).
• Robertson, David. Sly and Able: A Political Biography of James F. Byrnes (1994)
• Annotated bibliography for James Byrnes from the Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues

Primary sources

• Byrnes, James. Speaking Frankly (1947)
• Byrnes, James. All in One Lifetime (1958).

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