Coleman Livingston Blease was an American politician and statesman. He was United States Senator from South Carolina from 1925 to 1931.
Background
Coleman Blease was born on October 8, 1868, on his father's farm near Newberry Courthouse, South Carolina, United States, the second son and sixth of eight children of Mary Ann (Livingston) and Henry Horatio Blease; he had five younger half brothers and sisters by his father's second marriage. Henry Blease, son of an emigrant from Liverpool, England, subsequently became a successful hotel and livery stable proprietor in the town of Newberry.
Education
Cleman attended schools in Newberry and went on in 1879 to Newberry College, where he took preparatory classes and completed the junior year of the collegiate course. In 1887 he entered the law school of South Carolina College; he was expelled the following year for plagiarism in an essay contest. In 1888, Blease enrolled at Georgetown University, received the bachelor of laws degree in 1889.
Career
Blease began a successful practice in Newberry and nearby Saluda. Reared in the convivial atmosphere of his father's hotel, he early acquired an ingratiating manner and a self-confident air. In 1890 a political revolution led by Benjamin R. ("Pitchfork Ben") Tillman swept over South Carolina, and Blease, who was elected to the house of representatives from Newberry County in 1890 and 1892, became a Tillmanite floor leader. He was defeated in 1894 and 1896, but returned for a third two-year term in 1898. Following two unsuccessful campaigns for lieutenant governor (1900, 1902), Blease was elected by his Newberry constituents in 1904 to a four-year term in the state senate. This success encouraged him to run for governor, and after twice failing (1906, 1908), he was victorious in 1910, campaigning as the champion of the poor white farmer and the textile worker.
Blease, however, was essentially a demagogue who fostered class and race antagonisms but ignored the real problems of poverty. His opposition to child labor laws, factory inspection, and compulsory school attendance mattered little to the mill workers and sharecroppers who formed the hard core of his political strength. They delighted in his attacks upon newspapers, corporations, aristocrats, and Negroes, whom he called "baboons and apes". Flattered by the personal recognition he gave them, his working-class supporters helped him win a second term in 1912 despite the combined opposition of press, clergy, corporations, educators, and even Senator Tillman, who was alarmed by Blease's executive irresponsibility.
When Blease ran for the United States Senate in 1914, a temporary reaction against "Bleaseism" brought about his decisive defeat by Ellison D. Smith. Two years later he lost the governorship by less than 5, 000 votes, and many Bleaseites were elected to the legislature. Blease's vociferous attacks against Woodrow Wilson and United States participation in World War I brought his fortunes to a low ebb in 1918, when he lost all but three counties in a Senate race.
In the 1920's the political warhorse returned to the campaigns as a "new Blease, " more dignified in manner and less vituperative in speech. Though unsuccessful in the gubernatorial contest of 1922, he won a seat in the United States Senate in 1924, defeating James F. Byrnes by a narrow margin. As a Senator, Blease was hostile to the League of Nations and the World Court, opposed the McNary-Haugen farm program, and delivered long harangues in defense of lynching and Southern womanhood. His Senate career was exhibitionist rather than distinguished, and in 1930 he was defeated for reelection in a second close contest with Byrnes. Although his influence now languished, the inveterate campaigner continued to win substantial support in his unsuccessful bids for the Senate in 1932 and for the governorship in 1934 and 1938.
Blease was a product of the agrarian upheaval that convulsed South Carolina in the 1890's. Where Tillman developed a constructive reform program, Blease merely led an incoherent protest that "never rose above partisan politics. " He resided in Columbia, South Carolina, from 1915 until his death, which followed an abdominal operation at the Providence Hospital there. He was buried in Rosemont Cemetery, Newberry.
Achievements
Religion
Blease was a member of the Methodist Church.
Politics
Blease was a member of the Democratic Party. He was a member of the South Carolina House of Representatives from Newberry County from 1890 to 1894 and from 1899 to 1901; member of the South Carolina Senate from Newberry County from 1907 to 1909.
Membership
Blease was active in a number of fraternal organizations, including the Odd Fellows, Red Men, and Moose.
Personality
An intelligent and personally attractive man, Blease used his talents to become the most thoroughgoing demagogue in South Carolina history.
Connections
Blease was twice married: on February 13, 1890, to Lillie B. Summers; and in 1939, five years after his first wife's death, to Mrs. Caroline Floyd, from whom he separated a year later.