Eugene Talmadge was born in 1884 in Forsyth, Georgia, to Thomas and Carrie (Roberts) Talmadge. His father, an alumnus of the University of Georgia, was descended from early seventeenth-century settlers of New Jersey, a branch of the family having migrated to Georgia after the Revolution. He was a prominent cotton farmer and civic leader.
Eugene Talmadge attended public school in Forsyth and at his father's insistence entered the University of Georgia in 1901, but left before receiving a degree. He subsequently returned to earn an LL. B. degree in 1908.
In 1941, Talmadge received an honorary degree in Doctor of Laws from Oglethorpe University.
Following a year of law practice in Atlanta, where he made excellent political connections with some of his father's friends, Talmadge moved to Ailey in Montgomery County.
In 1909 he married and in 1912 the family moved to Telfair County, where Talmadge purchased farm property along Sugar Creek, and for the next fourteen years he engaged in farming and the law. His only involvement in politics during these years was on the local level: as solicitor for the McRae city court (1918 - 1920) and as county attorney (1920 - 1923).
Talmadge began his statewide political career in 1926 when he defeated the "machine" candidate for the office of commissioner of agriculture. He was reelected in 1928 and 1930, but his tenure was marked by controversy. Economically naive, he lobbied for a protective tariff on agricultural imports, which he felt would raise the price of Georgia farm products; and in an attempt to bolster hog prices he used $10, 000 of departmental funds to speculate on the Chicago hog market. A legislative investigation into this and other accounting irregularities in his department raised the threat of impeachment, but no action was taken. Talmadge's pugnacity, however, pleased the small farmers of Georgia, and with their help he was elected governor in 1932, after defeating a field of nine in the Democratic primary. He was reelected two years later. Talmadge proved a natural campaigner. He called himself a "dirt farmer, " and encouraged comparison with Sen. Tom Watson, a Georgia Populist hero.
Having grown up in rural Georgia in the days of the Populist revolt, he never entirely lost the agricultural tenets of that group. At the same time, he retained a conservative Bourbon financial philosophy, detesting deficit financing, cherishing states rights, and advocating a traditional American individualism. An innate believer in white supremacy, Talmadge in later years injected the issue of race into his campaigns, though with less virulence than demagogues like Ellison ("Cotton Ed") Smith.
Talmadge took office as governor at the same time that Franklin D. Roosevelt became president. Delighted at first by the Democratic sweep and Roosevelt's leadership, he gradually became a bitter foe of the New Deal. The chief objects of his attack were agricultural policies of acreage and poundage reduction and the WPA minimum-wage level of 30 cents per hour. As governor he vetoed three bills that would have permitted the establishment of the social security system in Georgia (1935). Determined to consolidate his authority, he suspended the entire Public Utilities Commission (1933), declared martial law to "subjugate" the Highway Commission (1933), and had the state treasurer bodily removed from office when he refused to honor the checks Talmadge drew to finance the state government after the legislature had failed to pass an appropriation bill in 1935. A determined foe of organized labor, Talmadge called out the National Guard to break strikes during attempts to unionize the state's textile mills in 1934.
By 1936 Talmadge was solidly in the "stop-Roosevelt" camp. He backed Huey Long and, after Long's assassination, with support from conservatives and reactionaries like John J. Raskob and Rev. Gerald L. K. Smith, called a "Grass Roots" convention at Macon, Ga. , which formed the "Constitutional Jeffersonian Democratic" party and nominated Talmadge for president. The movement soon collapsed, and the fiasco, together with his opposition to the Agricultural Adjustment Act, temporarily cost Talmadge the support of the farmers.
Ineligible to run again in 1936 for governor, he made an unsuccessful attempt to unseat incumbent United States Senator Richard B. Russell, Jr. A similar attempt against Walter F. George in 1938 also failed.
Between 1936 and 1940 Talmadge practiced law in Atlanta, continued to run his farms, and published the Statesman, a weekly newspaper that he founded in 1932. Talmadge was returned to the governor's chair in 1940. He wisely refrained from attacking Roosevelt, but embroiled himself in a feud with the University of Georgia while attempting to return a political favor. Unable to force reinstatement of a discharged faculty member, he attacked the dean as a champion of racial integration and pressured the board of regents into firing him, an action that led to the university's loss of accreditation. The episode was largely responsible for Talmadge's defeat by Ellis G. Arnall when he ran for a four-year term in 1942. Having discovered that his states' rights, laissez-faire position attracted the support of large corporations, Talmadge accepted their campaign contributions, thus opening himself to the charge that he had betrayed the farmers for political advancement. He was nonetheless again elected governor in 1946; but before assuming office he died in Atlanta, of cirrhosis of the liver and hemolytic jaundice, at the age of sixty-two. He was buried in Oak Grove Cemetery in McRae.
He served two terms as the 67th Governor of Georgia from 1933 to 1937, and a third term from 1941 to 1943. The Talmadge Memorial Bridge in Savannah, Georgia, is named after Eugene Talmadge and connects downtown Savannah, Georgia with the Carolina Low Country via the Savannah River. This bridge is currently being renamed due to the negative racial stigma associated with Eugene Talmadge.
A Baptist, he frequently obscured significant issues with biblical quotations.
Quotations:
"You all got only three friends in this world: The Lord God Almighty, the Sears Roebuck catalog and Eugene Talmadge. And you can only vote for one of them. "
"I may … surprise you - but I shall not deceive you. "
"You have only three real friends: Jesus Christ, Sears Roebuck, and Gene Talmadge. "
While at University of Georgia, he was a member of the Phi Kappa Literary Society and Sigma Nu fraternity.
He was slight and wiry, with horn-rimmed glasses and a lock of dark hair that fell across his forehead.
On September 12, 1909, he married Mrs. Mattie (Thurmond) Peterson, a well-to-do widow who in addition to rearing a young son was the local railroad depot agent and telegraph operator, as well as a landowner in Telfair County near the town of McRae. Of this marriage three children were born: Vera, Herman Eugene, and Margaret.
1858–1931
1864–1928
1881–1981
1889–1968
1882–1969
1886–1948
1911–1952
1917–2001
1913–2002
