The Gentleman From Ohio

John Martin Vorys

By Ray Hill
From 1932 through 1937, American voters consistently voted to approve the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. If Roosevelt did not resolve every problem, he gave people hope that the worst days were behind them. The profound suffering and deprivations wrought by the Great Depression seemed to be dissipating, albeit very slowly. The 1938 election saw the Republicans make significant gains in both the House and the Senate. The 1936 election had been a debacle for the GOP and only 16 (including one Progressive who caucused with them) Republicans remained in the United States Senate. Republicans won eight Senate seats in 1938; Republicans won 81 House seats in the 1938 midterm elections. In the freshman Class of 1938 was a young Republican representing the Columbus, Ohio, area named John Martin Vorys.

The rise of John Vorys in the House was rapid, and eventually, he became perhaps the most influential Republican in foreign policy matters in the U.S. House of Representatives. A large man, Vorys was unusual inasmuch as when speaking with small groups or in one-on-one conversations, he was frequently difficult to follow because he had a habit of beginning a new sentence before finishing the old. When making a speech, colleagues could not ever recall his speaking from notes and the words flowed freely, according to his biographer, Professor Jeffrey Livingston.

Like many of those who had served in the First World War, John M. Vorys abhorred the very idea that the United States would become entangled in another foreign war. World War I became the first large-scale war fought with all too many means of efficiently killing enemies. Tanks, airplanes, and deadly gas were all used for the first time during the Great War. Navies were armed with battleships whose guns could bombard and kill the enemy twenty miles inland. The methods of conducting modern warfare were highly effective and as a result, the bloodletting was on a vast and unprecedented scale. Those who lived through it never forgot it and many of those who were elected to Congress were profound noninterventionists. John Vorys became one of those who became adept at using one of the new machines of dealing death, as he served with an air unit during the war.

Few, if any, of those veterans of the First World War could be truthfully called pacifists; they merely hated the idea of subjecting their own sons and relatives to what they suspected would be an even greater expenditure by the American government of blood and treasure. John M. Vorys was one of those during his first years in the House of Representatives.

TIME magazine, read by millions each week, was, like its publisher, deeply internationalist in its outlook and it spared no congressional isolationist in its condemnation, both personal and political. Eventually, even TIME magazine acknowledged the honesty of Congressman John Vorys in his representation of his people, as well as his own convictions.

John M. Vorys accepted one challenge after another throughout his life. After his service in the First World War, Vorys accepted an assignment teaching at the College of Yale in China for a year. Vorys was working to earn a law degree when he was interrupted by the call to serve as an assistant secretary to the American delegation at the Washington Arms Conference from 1921-1922. His stint done with the Washington Arms Conference, Vorys returned to Ohio State University in 1922 to complete his degree. That same year, John M. Vorys won election to Ohio’s State House of Representatives at age 26. In 1924, Vorys moved up after winning election to the state Senate. John Vorys was the author of Ohio’s budget law, as well as the legislation that created the Ohio State Office Building.

Vorys was named as the first Ohio Director of Aeronautics in 1929 and practiced law until he was elected to Congress in 1938. John Vorys had been elected president of the Columbus Bar Association in 1938 when he launched his first campaign for the House to oppose Congressman Arthur P. Lamneck, who had first run for Congress in 1920. Lamneck had lost his first congressional race but had better luck when he tried again ten years later. Lamneck beat the incumbent Republican and was reelected in 1934 and 1936, each time winning bigger majorities. Lamneck was an oddity inasmuch as he was an anti-New Deal Democrat. Vorys printed literature proclaiming himself “A Real Republican.” The inference was clear; Vorys was advertising himself as a genuine Republican while Lamneck was merely pretending to have some Republican inclinations. One unusual feature of the 1938 congressional campaign between Arthur Lamneck and John Vorys was the candidates met for a debate. The Jackson Center News sniffed it was less a debate between candidates than a name-calling contest.

After six years of Democrat rule, Republicans swept Ohio in the 1938 elections. John W. Bricker was elected governor, while Robert A. Taft, son of the late president, beat incumbent Robert Bulkley for the U.S. Senate. Congressman Lamneck had done a respectable job at entrenching himself, but Vorys managed to eke out a 2,383-vote victory, giving him just over 50% of the votes cast.

Twice more John M. Vorys and Arthur Lamneck contested for Ohio’s Twelfth District; Congressman Vorys turned back Lamneck’s determined bid to reclaim his seat in the House by an increased, albeit very narrow, margin of 4,652 votes. By 1942, John Vorys had effectively entrenched himself inside the Twelfth District and with the Second World War raging, the congressman received a big vote of confidence, beating Arthur Lamneck with better than 58% of the votes. Thereafter, Congressman John M. Vorys always won a comfortable victory, even in the best Democratic years. Vorys had made Ohio’s Twelfth District safe for himself.

Isaiah Berlin wrote a confidential memorandum for the British Foreign Office, which was, naturally, deeply interested in those congressmen occupying seats on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “The real leader of the Opposition Bloc on the committee,” Berlin wrote. “He voted against all foreign policy measures and was the author of the amendment in June 1939 which provided for a mandatory embargo on the export of arms to belligerent nations. A shrewd and active member likely to prove the most stubborn member of the committee. He constantly presses (and for obvious reasons) for some sort of dollar and cent estimate of the current balance as between Lend-Lease and Reciprocal Aid and proposed the amendments, which were later defeated, whereby Congress alone could authorize the final settlement. A Methodist; age 47; a formidable nationalist.”

Isaiah Berlin’s assessment was accurate and so was John Vorys in his own interpretation of the views of the people who sent him to Congress. The United States had loaned or given billions of dollars (amounting to trillions today) to governments, including that of Great Britain, during the First World War. Britain had never repaid American loans from that war and many congressmen like John Vorys worried they would not yet again. Britain made its final payment for American loans for the Second World War in 2007.

Vorys was part of a visiting group of American congressmen and senators who saw Buchenwald Concentration Camp immediately following the collapse of Hitler’s Germany in April 1945. General Dwight D. Eisenhower left the decaying corpses where they lay so the congressional group, along with some powerful press lords, could see for themselves the horrors wrought by Adolf Hitler’s gruesome Final Solution. None of them ever forgot it.

Congressman Vorys was one of those Republican members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee who fought to protect the $1.35 billion price tag of the United States’ share of aid to the victims of the Second World War through the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration. Hamilton Fish, a leading noninterventionist, grumbled it resembled a “gigantic international WPA” (one of the New Deal welfare agencies), while Congresswoman Jessie Sumner believed the entire effort was a plan to “make Stalin dictator of Europe.” Vorys told his colleagues he would be the first to acknowledge the situation was not perfect but thought “it is our responsibility to give it a chance.” Congressman Charles Eaton of New Jersey said, “The object of this legislation—and do not forget it—is to help those people help themselves … It is impossible for us to continue to be an island of prosperity in an ocean of adversity … We cannot be a healthy nation surrounded by a sick world.”

John M. Vorys was one of those few congressmen who, when he had a notion, something was bound to happen. That was certainly the case when Vorys became annoyed because of the failure of the United Nations to declare China (which had fallen to the Communists in 1949) the aggressor in Korea in 1951. Congressman Vorys met with John McCormack, the majority leader in the House and a Democrat, and Minority Leader Joe Martin. Vorys was determined to cobble together appropriate language that would be acceptable to both Republicans and Democrats. The trio hammered out the necessary details and it was John McCormack who rose on the floor of the House just hours before the UN was to discuss the issue of China. McCormack offered a resolution that was both succinct and blunt: “The United Nations should immediately act and declare the Chinese Communist authorities an aggressor in Korea.” The bells rang, notifying members to come to the House floor to vote. When the Speaker asked all in favor to say “aye,” there was a roar of approval. The “nays” were feeble and barely audible.

It was also John M. Vorys who sponsored two amendments that sharply reduced America’s commitment to foreign aid. Paul Hoffman, the administrator of the Marshall Plan, which ladled billions of American tax dollars to the rebuilding and feeding of war-torn Europe, had frequently warned that Congress would be reluctant to vote more funding at the plan’s expiration in 1952. Hoffman proved to be a prophet and Vorys’ effort came as a big surprise to the Democrat majority, who had allowed too many supporters of the Truman Administration get out of the building. Vorys and the Republicans saw their chance and took it. For a brief time, the House Chamber contained a majority of Republicans and like a snapping turtle, they bit down and refused to let go. Minority Leader Joe Martin’s long experience helped him to fend off the efforts by Democrats to regain control. The two Vorys amendments cut a total of $726.5 million, which was on top of the $1 billion reduction recommended by the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Even powerful Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn was washed away by the clever timing of John Vorys and the GOP leadership. “I am not happy about our situation in the world, nor in the U.S., nor in this House,” the speaker barked. “I notice this House, in glee, and … without a great deal of reason” had cut the appropriations bill “below what those in charge, and who are supposed to know the most about world affairs, said was necessary.” The Vorys amendment passed, the most important of the two fueled by the votes of 160 Republicans along with 61 mostly Southern Democrats. Only ten Republicans voted against that particular amendment.

In 1958, after serving 20 years in the House of Representatives, John M. Vorys announced he would not be a candidate to succeed himself. The 62-year-old congressman said it was time for him to return to Ohio and the practice of law. Vorys and his wife departed Washington, D.C., and didn’t seem to much miss it. The former congressman began experiencing health problems associated with his heart disease. John Vorys died on August 25, 1968; he was 72 years old.

From the very beginning of his congressional service, John M. Vorys made his presence felt and over time became one of the most influential members of the U.S. House of Representatives.

© 2025 Ray Hill