By Ray Hill “If you haven’t got anything nice to say about anyone, come sit here by me” – pillow in the home of Alice Roosevelt Longworth. Alice Roosevelt Longworth, eldest child of former President Theodore Roosevelt, had been in the public eye since the assassination of William McKinley in 1901. Banned from the White […]
By Ray Hill Alice Roosevelt Longworth remained the most famous presidential daughter in our country’s history; certainly she was the most enduring. An especially astute observer of politics and things political, Alice Roosevelt Longworth was also known for her elegance, entertaining, and most especially her acid tongue. No insipid child dependent upon a powerful […]
By Ray Hill Despite intense pressure from constituents and his own political party, Senator John Knight Shields of Tennessee remained determined to vote his convictions as the United States Senate considered the Treaty of Versailles. John Knight Shields had been the only Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to break ranks and support the […]
By Ray Hill Tennessee’s senior United States senator, John Knight Shields, had surprised tens of thousands of his constituents and infuriated many members of his own Democratic Party when he had voted to add reservations to the Treaty of Versailles in the Senate. The treaty was the culmination of months of torturous negotiations between the […]
By Ray Hill Governor Tom C. Rye had run for the United States Senate in the 1918 Democratic primary against Senator John Knight Shields as a supporter of President Woodrow Wilson and lost. Rye’s defeat did not necessarily mean the people of Tennessee had turned against Wilson; in fact, had the President written the public […]
By Ray Hill Colonel Luke Lea, away in Europe during the First World War, had never gotten along with John Knight Shields when they were colleagues in the United States Senate. Lea’s newspaper, the Nashville Tennessean sided with Shields’ opponent, Governor Tom Rye in the Democratic primary. According to Lea’s newspaper, Shields had made several […]
By Ray Hill Tennessee had been staunchly for Woodrow Wilson, both in his 1912 campaign for the presidency and his 1916 reelection campaign. Tennessee’s junior United States senator, Kenneth D. McKellar, had been a fervent admirer of President Wilson as a member of the House of Representatives and if any-thing, his admiration grew as a […]
By Ray Hill The United States was finally catching a glimpse of the end of the bloodiest conflict in human history, World War II, as President Franklin Delano Roosevelt vacationed at his cottage in Warm Springs, Georgia. Roosevelt was sitting for a portrait by artist Elizabeth Shoumatoff, who had been chosen by the president’s former […]
The Strickland Case By Ray Hill “I’m guilty,” were the only words spoken by William “Billy” Strickland, a fresh-faced twenty-eight year old when he revisited the Knox County Court House. Strickland had been engaged in a bitter battle for custody of his four year-old son with his pretty twenty-three year-old wife, June. Six months after […]
By Ray Hill The very idea that anything but a Democrat could represent Tennessee’s Hermitage District in Congress seemed not only outlandish, but utterly unthinkable. The Fifth Congressional district of Tennessee was known as “the Hermitage District” because it contained the home of the founder of the Democratic Party, General Andrew Jackson. Congressman Joseph W. […]
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