Charles McCurdy ("Mac") Mathias Jr. (1922–2010) was an American lawyer and Republican politician who represented Maryland in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1961 to 1969 and in the U.S. Senate from 1969 to 1987. He was known for liberal positions on civil rights, Chesapeake Bay conservation, and congressional procedure.
Background
Charles McCurdy Mathias Jr. was born on July 24, 1922, in Frederick, Maryland, the son of Theresa Trail Mathias and Charles McCurdy Mathias. Frederick is the county seat of Frederick County in western Maryland, and it was the community in which Mathias grew up and first practiced law.
His father was a Frederick lawyer who was active in the Republican Party. The family's public life had earlier roots in Maryland: Mathias was a descendant of several state legislators, including his grandfather John P. T. Mathias and Charles Edward Trail. Mathias was one of three children, and his mother was known in the Frederick area as a source of local historical information and as a collector of Maryland furniture.
Education
Mathias attended Frederick High School, which he completed in 1939, and spent a year at a preparatory school in Pawling, New York, before entering Haverford College in Pennsylvania in 1940. Haverford was founded in 1833 under Quaker auspices near Philadelphia and developed as a liberal arts college with a small, residential character.
In 1942 he left Haverford to enlist in the Navy, which assigned him to the V-12 officer-training program. The program placed enlisted men in civilian colleges for study, and Mathias was sent to Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, a private university founded in 1701, and then to Columbia University in New York City for midshipmen's training. Haverford counted his Navy coursework toward his degree and awarded him a Bachelor of Arts in 1944.
After the war he studied law at the University of Maryland, whose law school in Baltimore is one of the oldest law schools in the United States. He graduated in 1949, and that year he was admitted to the bar and began practicing law in Frederick.
Career
Mathias's career began with military service. He enlisted in the United States Navy as an apprentice seaman in 1942, was commissioned an ensign in 1944, and served in the Pacific until his release from active duty in 1946. The wartime Navy expanded rapidly to meet the demands of the Pacific campaign, and Mathias's service included duty on a communications ship and, after the war, an inspection of the atomic-bomb damage at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He remained in the Naval Reserve and later attained the rank of captain.
He was admitted to the Maryland bar in 1949 and practiced law in Frederick. He was admitted to practice before the Supreme Court of the United States in 1954, and his professional credentials also include a bar admission dated 1978. In 1953 and 1954 he served as an assistant attorney general of Maryland, and from 1954 to 1959 he was city attorney of Frederick. In that post he helped desegregate the Frederick opera house.
Mathias was elected to the Maryland House of Delegates in 1958, the lower chamber of the state legislature in Annapolis, and he served there in 1959 and 1960. In 1960 he was elected as a Republican to the United States House of Representatives, where he represented Maryland's 6th congressional district in western Maryland for the 87th through 90th Congresses, from January 1961 to January 1969.
In 1968 he was elected to the United States Senate by defeating the Democratic incumbent Daniel Brewster, and he served from January 3, 1969, until January 3, 1987. He was re-elected in 1974 and 1980. As chairman of the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration from 1981 to 1987, he oversaw the Senate's internal administration and procedures, a position that gave him authority over the budgets of Senate committees. He also chaired the Special Committee on Termination of the National Emergency and co-chaired the Joint Committee on Printing. As a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, he played a central role in congressional efforts to control the spread of nuclear weapons.
After leaving the Senate he practiced international law in Washington with Jones Day Reavis and Pogue, a large firm that had grown from Cleveland, Ohio, into a multinational practice. He was also a visiting Milton Eisenhower professor at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, an institution founded in 1876. In retirement he worked to establish a museum of diplomacy in Washington.
Achievements
As chairman of the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration from 1981 to 1987, he oversaw the Senate's internal administration and the budgets of its committees.
As a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he played a central role in congressional efforts to control the spread of nuclear weapons.
He helped secure federal funds for Maryland projects, including the cleanup of the Chesapeake Bay, the revitalization of Baltimore, and the expansion of the state's transportation system.
He supported legislation giving home rule to the District of Columbia and advocated public financing of congressional campaigns along with ceilings on contributions, measures enacted the following year.
He led efforts to establish the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and to advance civil rights and voting rights legislation.
Works
article
Advice and Consent: The Role of the United States Senate in the Judicial Selection Process
(Article in the University of Chicago Law Review, volume 5...)
1987
National Emergencies and the Constitution
(Article in the journal Congressional Studies, volume 7, o...)
1979
Should There Be Public Financing of Congressional Campaigns?
(Article in the Annals of the American Academy of Politica...)
1986
Turning the Tide on the Chesapeake
(Opinion article published in The Washington Post on Chesa...)
2003
Ethnic Groups and Foreign Policy
(Article published in Foreign Affairs by the Council on Fo...)
1981
Habitual Hatred: Unsound Policy
(Article published in Foreign Affairs by the Council on Fo...)
1983
A Bad Option to Take
(Opinion article published in The Washington Post.)
2005
chapter
Managing the District of Columbia
(Chapter in We Propose: A Modern Congress, a collection of...)
1966
speech collection
For a More Perfect Union: Public Words of Charles McC. Mathias, Jr.
(A 1986 collection of Mathias's public speeches and statem...)
1986
Religion
Mathias was an Episcopalian, a member of the Episcopal Church, which is the American branch of the Anglican Communion. The church traces its origins to the Church of England; after the American Revolution, its American congregations organized as the Protestant Episcopal Church in 1789 and adapted their structure to the new republic.
The Episcopal tradition combines a liturgical form of worship, centered on the Book of Common Prayer, with a governing structure of bishops, clergy, and lay representatives. Its religious life has been shaped by a broadly moderate Protestant outlook, which in Mathias's era was closely linked with the mainstream Protestant churches of Maryland and the wider United States.
Politics
Mathias was a Republican throughout his public career, winning election to the Maryland House of Delegates, the United States House of Representatives, and the United States Senate as a member of that party. He was a liberal or moderate Republican within his party, and he took liberal positions on race, abortion, and military spending.
The Republican Party traced its origins to Abraham Lincoln and the antislavery movement, and it had long emphasized national union and civil rights. During the decades of Mathias's public life, the party contained conservative and moderate or liberal currents, with conservatism gaining strength after the 1964 presidential campaign of Barry Goldwater. Mathias represented the moderate and liberal current, which sometimes placed him in conflict with Republican administrations, including those of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.
As a Republican in a state dominated by Democrats, Mathias built his record on civil rights, the environment, and institutional reform. His advocacy of public financing of campaigns and his support for arms control and European ties reflected a政治 outlook that combined loyalty to his party with independence from its conservative leadership.
Views
Mathias's public statements and writings focused on constitutional government and the responsibilities of Congress. His published work addressed congressional responsibility in foreign affairs, national emergencies and the Constitution, the Senate's role in judicial selection, and public financing of congressional campaigns. He advocated campaign finance reform, including public financing and limits on contributions, and he regarded the Constitution as the basis of national unity.
Membership
Mathias was an honorary member of the Order of the Coif, an honor society associated with American law schools that recognizes scholarship and academic achievement in legal education. Membership in the society reflects his legal training at the University of Maryland rather than a separate professional role.
Honorary member
Order of the Coif
,
United States
Personality
Quotes from others about the person
Democratic majority leader Mike Mansfield called Mathias "the conscience of the Senate."
Connections
Mathias married Ann Hickling Bradford on November 8, 1958. The couple had two sons, Charles Bradford Mathias and Robert Fiske Mathias. Mathias was survived by his wife, his sons, two grandchildren, a sister, Theresa Mathias Michel, and a brother, Edward.
His law school contemporary Daniel Brewster was a former classmate and friend at the University of Maryland Law School. Mathias later defeated Brewster, a Democratic incumbent senator, in the 1968 Senate election.
Father:
Charles McCurdy Mathias
Frederick lawyer who was active in the Republican Party.
Mother:
Theresa McElfresh Trail Mathias
Née Trail; known in the Frederick area as a source of local information and as a collector of Maryland furniture.
Son:
Charles Bradford Mathias
Son:
Robert Fiske Mathias
Wife:
Ann Hickling Bradford
Also known as Ann Bradford Mathias; they married in 1958.
Charles McCurdy Mathias, Jr. papers
Johns Hopkins University archival collection documenting his House and Senate service, including office, legislative, and campaign records from approximately 1958 to 1988.
Former U.S. Sen. Charles Mathias of dies at 87
Obituary from the Maryland Daily Record summarizing his education, wartime Navy service, state and federal offices, and civil rights and Chesapeake Bay work.
