(1927 photo Col. Sherwood A. Cheney & Col. Blanton Winship...)
1927 photo Col. Sherwood A. Cheney & Col. Blanton Winship, 3/29/27
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Blanton Winship was born on November 23, 1869, in Macon, Georgia, the older of the two sons of Emory Winship, a clothing merchant, and Elizabeth Alexander. His father, of English stock, was descended from colonial settlers of both Massachusetts and Georgia.
Winship attended Mercer University in Macon, graduating with the B. A. degree in 1889. He then studied law at the University of Georgia and received the LL. B. degree in 1893. For the next five years he practiced law in Macon.
Winship began his army career in 1898 when he joined the Georgia volunteers in the Spanish-American War as a captain. Commissioned the next year as a first lieutenant in the Judge Advocate's Department of the regular army, he served for two years in the Philippine Islands and in 1904 advanced to major.
In 1906 he was a member of the advisory commission headed by Gen. Enoch H. Crowder, which went to Cuba to rewrite the laws and draw up a new constitution for the insular government; he subsequently served as judge advocate of the Army of Cuban Pacification. In 1914, as a member of the American expeditionary force that occupied Veracruz, Mexico, Winship had charge of the civilian administration of the city.
With the entry of the United States into World War I, Winship, now a lieutenant colonel, was initially assigned to the staff of Gen. John J. Pershing as judge advocate of the 42nd Division. He requested front-line duty, however, and as commander of the 110th Infantry, 28th Division, participated in the battles of Aisne-Marne, St. -Mihiel, and Champagne-Marne. He received an officership in the French Legion of Honor for extraordinary heroism in action near La Chausee. After the Armistice, as director general of the Army Claims Settlement Commission (1918 - 1919), Winship promptly and efficiently handled more than 100, 000 claims.
He later served as judge advocate of the Army of Occupation in Germany, and on the Reparations Commission (1920 - 1923). He was promoted to colonel in 1920. Winship in 1925 was given the difficult and delicate position of legal counsel on the military board that tried the case of Gen. William L. ("Billy") Mitchell, an assignment in which his dignity and integrity won the respect of both sides in the controversy. He later served as military aide to President Calvin Coolidge (1927 - 1928) and as legal advisor to Governor-General Henry L. Stimson of the Philippine Islands (1928 - 1930).
In 1931 Winship was promoted to major general and named the army's judge advocate general. He retired from active duty in November 1933. Early in 1934 President Franklin Roosevelt appointed Winship governor of Puerto Rico to replace Robert H. Gore. The conservative Winship had little sympathy for the reform programs of the New Deal, but he was one of the first to recognize and foster the tourist potential of Puerto Rico, a fact that made him popular with the island's commercial interests. In Puerto Rico's highly charged atmosphere of economic depression and rising nationalist sentiment, Winship's military background and strict belief in public order were qualities of doubtful value. His position was made even less comfortable by the transfer of Puerto Rican affairs from the War Department to the Interior Department, since he did not have an amicable relationship with Interior Secretary Harold L. Ickes. Winship's response to the growing discontent on the island was to improve the efficiency and discipline of the insular police corps. Tensions mounted until in 1937 police tried to prevent a nationalist parade and fired into a crowd of unarmed civilians, killing seventeen and wounding over 100. Although Winship defended the police action, an investigation by the American Civil Liberties Union condemned both the police and the governor.
The following year Winship himself narrowly escaped assassination in an attempt that killed three bystanders. Winship resigned as governor in 1939. During World War II he was called back into active duty with the army and served as coordinator of the Inter-American Defense Board until his retirement in 1944. He died on October 9, 1947, in Washington, D. C. , of a heart attack and was buried in Macon, Georgia.
(1927 photo Col. Sherwood A. Cheney & Col. Blanton Winship...)
Blanton C. Winship never married.
Harold LeClair Ickes was an American administrator and politician. Winship criticized many of Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes's policies toward the island (Interior had responsibility for territories and insular affairs). Relief spending during the Great Depression for Puerto Rico was (per capita) far below either that of the mainland or Hawaii. This lack of spending contributed to the poverty of the island, and in turn to social unrest.
