Burnet Rhett Maybank — his very name evokes the old Southland of books and stories. So, too, did his life story. Maybank’s middle name was for his mother’s family; Andrew Rhett had been a major in the Confederate Army. Burnet Maybank was the scion of a socially prominent and wealthy family from Charleston. If anyone had a political pedigree, it was Burnet Maybank, as he was directly descended from at least five governors of the colony and state of South Carolina. Maybank was the eldest of ten children.
Maybank’s family was practically a time capsule of America; his forebears had served the British Crown, the Continental Congress, as well as the Union and Confederacy. There had been Maybanks in South Carolina since 1670.
Throughout his life, Burnet Rhett Maybank did not have the attitude of an aristocrat or country squire. Maybank was not the laid-back sort; instead, he was known for his abundance of nervous energy and drive to succeed. Burnet Maybank was not easily defined as a politician. When Maybank died, TIME magazine remembered the senator, noting, “Insofar as he was a liberal — and he was — he had little or nothing in common with such liberals as Hubert Humphrey or Herbert Lehman. Insofar as he was a conservative — and he was — he had little or nothing in common with such conservatives as Joe Grundy or John Bricker.”
While he was certainly from an aristocratic family, Burnet Maybank liked to think of himself as a common man and was especially supportive of farmers. From his first election until his last, Maybank never lost a race in his political career. Known for his rapid speech pattern, which carried the distinct accent peculiar to native Charlestonians, Maybank attributed his fast talking to his having to do business with foreign cotton merchants. “I had to say what I wanted to say in a hurry,” Maybank insisted. While his family was wealthy, Burnet Maybank was quick to point out that after he had finished school, he had earned “every dime I ever had.”
Yet TIME magazine thought Burnet Maybank could only be understood as an aristocrat. Unlike many of “the South’s small farmers and small townsmen,” TIME stated, “Maybank trusted government because he was born to it.” “Unlike them, he distrusted big government because he wanted nothing from it for himself or his group – – – other than participation in responsibility and power.”
Burnet Maybank did not hear the siren call of politics until 1927 when he ran for and won a seat as an alderman on the Charleston Board of Aldermen. Prior to that time, Maybank had married, and he and his wife Elizabeth deRosset Myers had three children. Maybank was also busy earning a living for his family and had been successful in exporting the South’s most notable crop: cotton. After having apprenticed with his Uncle John’s cotton business, Burnet Maybank went out on his own and did well. Traveling extensively for his business, Maybank went to those foreign ports like Hamburg, Germany, and global textile centers like Ghent, Belgium, and Milan, Italy.
In 1930, Burnet Maybank was elected mayor of Charleston and served in that post until 1938 when he launched a campaign to become governor of the Palmetto State. Few people who actually knew Burnet Maybank at the time believed that when he took the oath of office as an alderman he would move up through the political ranks to become one of a handful of people who have served as mayor, governor and United States senator.
During his time as mayor of Charleston, Burnet Maybank presided over the city government during the hardships of the Great Depression. Maybank deftly handled many of the challenges forced upon him by the suffering and deprivations of the Depression and was recognized nationally for having successfully used scrip to resolve the fiscal problems of a municipality in crisis. Maybank took on the added responsibility of becoming chairman of the South Carolina Public Service Authority, which was the agency that built the vast Santee-Cooper hydroelectrical power plant. Mayor Maybank helped the South Carolina congressional delegation nudge federal authorities for appropriations for the project. President Franklin Roosevelt took notice of the Charleston mayor and thought enough of Maybank’s abilities to offer him an appointment to the Federal Power Commission, which paid a $10,000 a year salary, which was very good money at the time. Throughout his time in public office, Burnet Maybank was a vocal proponent and supporter of public power.
Maybank was one of eight candidates vying for the Democratic nomination, including Wyndham Manning, who had gained statewide recognition from a failed gubernatorial bid four years earlier. At the time, most of those who aspired to become South Carolina’s governor had to go through one losing race before winning the next campaign and Wyndham Manning was back for his second try.
Perhaps the most notable candidate competing in the primary election was Coleman Blease, a former governor and United States senator, who still retained a large following, especially amongst the state’s mill workers. Blease was an accomplished hellraiser and race-baiter of long-standing, but at seventy years of age, he was past his prime and long past the peak of his personal popularity.
South Carolina was very much a one-party state and Republicans offered no competition to Democratic nominees for any office. Like most Southern states at the time, South Carolina’s primary called for a run-off between the two leading candidates if no candidate received a majority of the votes cast. Maybank led in the first primary with 35% while Manning came in second with 22%. Burnet Maybank won the run-off election by just over 14,000 to become the first resident of Charleston to be elected governor of South Carolina since the Civil War. Only thirty-nine when elected governor, Burnet Maybank had broken the traditional jinx by winning the governorship on his first try for office.
As governor, Maybank was no mere placeholder but rather sought to implement several reforms, urging coordination of all the various police units in South Carolina, which were scattered and had a penchant for not cooperating with one another. Governor Maybank was also a vocal advocate for lower freight rates for Southern products and was supportive of electric cooperatives at a time when not every home had electricity.
Burnet Maybank was the political protégé of South Carolina James F. “Jimmy” Byrnes. The title of Byrnes’ autobiography was aptly named “All In One Lifetime.” During that lifetime Brynes had been elected congressman, United States senator, appointed as an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, served as the primary assistant to President Roosevelt and “czar” of the war effort during the Second World War, and Secretary of State under Harry Truman. Byrnes capped off his career by later being elected governor of South Carolina.
It was perhaps fitting that Burnet R. Maybank sought to succeed Byrnes when he resigned from the U.S. Senate to accept an appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1941. Maybank ran in the special election to choose a successor for Jimmy Byrnes. Maybank faced serious opposition in the primary from his predecessor as governor, Olin D. Johnston, who had lost a hotly contested race for the United States Senate to Ellison D. Smith in 1938, despite having the tacit backing of FDR. Congressman Joseph R. Bryson also ran for the Senate, but he was not well enough known throughout the Palmetto State to make much of an impact. Maybank led in the first primary well ahead of Johnston. Governor Maybank won the run-off by a decisive margin and resigned his office to become South Carolina’s junior U.S. senator.
Almost immediately, Senator Maybank had to once again face the voters in the 1942 election. Yet again Maybank faced fierce competition, this time from Eugene S. Blease, brother of Coleman Blease, and a former Chief Justice of the South Carolina State Supreme Court. Eugene Blease had shot and killed his brother-in-law but was later acquitted of murder and it proved no political impediment to his career. Blease resigned from the South Carolina Supreme Court due to health reasons in 1934 but was apparently hale and hearty enough to run for the United States Senate in 1942. And run he did. Blease quite nearly beat Senator Maybank, losing by only a handful of votes.
Few human beings leave this life without suffering adversity and strife. Burnet Maybank was no exception. Maybank went through a serious illness and lost his wife in 1947. Elizabeth Myers Maybank died at their summer home in Flat Rock, North Carolina, on October 5. Ironically, the senator would die at the same vacation home. Maybank later married Mary Cecil, the widow of an admiral whom he had known since they had been children together.
Politically, Maybank managed to entrench himself through hard work and keeping in close touch with the folks back home, always a recipe for political success. During the Second World War, Maybank was a reliable vote in support of the Roosevelt administration. Senator Maybank’s support for President Harry Truman was a more mixed bag, as the South Carolinian was opposed to the Truman civil rights program, but strongly backed the Marshall Plan and Truman’s foreign policies.
Maybank tended to the various military installations in the Palmetto State, a tradition followed by his successors in office. As a member of the U. S. Senate, Burnet Maybank rose to become chairman of the Banking and Currency Committee. When his mentor Governor Jimmy Byrnes led a revolt against Adlai Stevenson as the Democratic nominee for president, Maybank remained loyal to his own party and did not support the GOP candidate, former General Dwight D. Eisenhower. When he later spoke before South Carolina’s State Democratic convention, Senator Maybank extended an olive branch to those who had nearly carried the state for Eisenhower by asking them to come home to the party of their forefathers.
Maybank had suffered a sick spell earlier in his career, which had caused rumors to circulate that he wouldn’t run again, but the senator recovered and was reelected. From all appearances, Maybank was vigorous and in good health when he left for a vacation in 1954.
Burnet Maybank was sleeping in the same vacation home in Flat Rock, North Carolina where his wife had died in 1947. Family members later recalled the fifty-five-year-old senator had been “feeling fine” earlier that day and had gone to bed the night of August 31, 1954, and slept. Sometime after midnight, during the early morning hours of September 1, Burnet Maybank’s heart stopped beating.
Maybank’s death had been utterly unexpected, and he was already the nominee of the Democratic Party for reelection to his seat in the United States Senate in the 1954 general election and had no opposition. Theoretically speaking, Burnet Maybank could have served in the United States Senate for another twenty years.
Maybank’s passing threw the South Democratic Party into a frenzy of activity. Governor Byrnes wanted a special election to determine Maybank’s successor. Edgar A. Brown, perhaps the single most powerful member of the South Carolina State Senate, engineered his own nomination through the Democratic State Executive Committee, which set off a firestorm. Brown doubtless was convinced as the regular nominee of the Democratic Party he could not lose the general election.
Ordinarily, that would have been true, but a former governor announced he would run as a write-in candidate in the general election. That former governor’s name was Strom Thurmond. Thurmond had the support of Governor Byrnes and waged a relentless campaign and became the first person ever to be elected to the United States Senate by a write-in vote. But that is a story for another time.
Burnet Maybank, South Carolina aristocrat, had devoted his life to serving the people of Charleston and South Carolina. He was laid to rest beneath the Magnolia trees of his home state.
© Ray Hill 2023
