(This work does not attempt to cover the history of Maryla...)
This work does not attempt to cover the history of Maryland during the early period of the Civil War; nor even to be a full account of the political agitation in the state at that time. I have endeavored simply to trace the course of Governor Hicks, but in doing so, have found it advisable to mention events which had no direct connection with him. A concise statement of these from time to time is necessary to show the setting in which Hicks was placed. Consequently, the importance of the topics dis cussed can by no means be measured by the respective degrees of fulness of treatment given to them. The data available for a study of the period are numerous; but they are generally so partisan and biased in character, and withal so contradictory, that attempts at drawing conclusions from them are, on the whole, hazardous. The course of events during this period may be traced with a fair amount of assurance, but the influences and the causes which are behind these are wrapt in much obscurity. The sources which have been found most valuable are: I. Newspapers. II. Private correspondence; especially that of Hicks, including thousands of letters, papers, etc. III. War of the Rebellion, Official Records of the Union and Confederate A rmies. Moore s Rebellion Records are useful, especially for giving the views of the press during the period under discussion. IV. Official records in A nnapolis, such as the Proceed ings of the Executive and the Letter Book of the Execu tive. V. State publications; as the journals of the Legisla ture and the laws of Maryland. (Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.) About the Publisher Forgotten Books is a publisher of historical writings, such as: Philosophy, Classics, Science, Religion, History, Folklore and Mythology. Forgotten Books' Classic Reprint Series utilizes the latest technology to regenerate facsimiles of his
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(Excerpt from Governor Thomas H. Hicks of Maryland and the...)
Excerpt from Governor Thomas H. Hicks of Maryland and the Civil War II. Private correspondence; especially that of Hicks, including thousands of letters, papers, etc. III. War of the Rebellion, Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Moore's Rebellion Records are useful, especially for giving the views of the press during the period under discussion. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
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George Lovic Pierce Radcliffe was born on August 22, 1877 in Lloyds, Maryland, the son of Sophie D. Travers and John Anthony LeCompte Radcliffe, who owned farms, a shipyard, and an oyster canning factory on Maryland's eastern shore. An heir to considerable wealth and social standing, Radcliffe grew up on a farm that had been in his family since the seventeenth century.
He had several years of private tutoring before entering public school in Cambridge, Md. After graduation from Cambridge High School in 1893, he went on to The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, where he excelled in history and political science. He earned a B. A. in 1897 and a Ph. D. in 1900. His doctoral dissertation, "Governor Thomas H. Hicks of Maryland and the Civil War, " was an able study of the governor's effort to prevent his state's secession from the Union. It was published by The John Hopkins Press in 1901.
Radcliffe served as principal of Cambridge High School from 1900 to 1901 and then taught history and civics at Baltimore City College for two years. After school hours he attended law classes at the University of Maryland and received his LL. B. in 1903.
Shortly after passing the bar in the same year, Radcliffe joined the law department of the American Bonding Company, a surety concern in Baltimore. A skilled negotiator and dependable troubleshooter, he became head of the law department in 1904 and was made a second vice-president in 1906. After American Bonding merged in 1913 with a competitor, Fidelity and Deposit Company of Maryland, Radcliffe as president oversaw the liquidation of his company. He became an executive vice-president with Fidelity and Deposit and in this capacity met and formed a friendship with Franklin D. Roosevelt, who had signed on with the firm as vice-president and head of the New York office in 1920.
Radcliffe entered public life modestly in 1916 by accepting the appointment of Governor Emerson C. Harrington to the Baltimore Liquor License Commission. During World War I, he was associate director of personnel for the American Red Cross in Washington and chairman of a commission charged with organizing Maryland's war records. After the war Harrington appointed Radcliffe secretary of state. He was Maryland's chief record keeper in 1919 and 1920. An active Democrat, Radcliffe helped to plan the campaigns of a number of successful candidates, including Governor Albert C. Ritchie and Senator Millard E. Tydings. He chaired the inaugural committees for Ritchie in 1923, 1926, and 1930 and headed the state Democratic Campaign Committee in 1932. In the latter role, he presided over his friend Roosevelt's victory over President Herbert Hoover by 130, 000 votes in Maryland.
In 1933, Radcliffe joined the Roosevelt administration as a regional director for the Public Works Administration (PWA). In this early New Deal period, when public projects were funded at 30 percent by the federal government and 70 percent by states and municipalities, Radcliffe was able to get such officials as the fiscally conservative Governor Ritchie and Mayor Howard W. Jackson of Baltimore to produce the financing for construction work on the Susquehanna and Potomac River bridges; hospital, dormitory, and arts and science buildings at the University of Maryland; and water and sewage systems.
In spring 1934, Radcliffe was promoted by Senator Tydings as a compromise candidate for governor of Maryland. Factional feuding among Democrats threatened the party's election chances. The Radcliffe candidacy was designed to coax Governor Ritchie into eschewing a fifth term and running for the United States Senate and to avoid a divisive multicandidate struggle for the gubernatorial nomination.
Ritchie was determined to run again for governor, however, and Radcliffe ended up on the Democratic ticket as the nominee for the Senate. Ironically, the veteran Ritchie lost the general election to liberal Republican Harry W. Nice by 6, 149 votes, while Radcliffe, in his first race for elective office, trounced former senator Joseph I. France by 66, 637 votes.
In 1940, Radcliffe was himself easily reelected, outdistancing his primary opponent Howard Bruce by eighty thousand votes and drubbing Republican former governor Nice by 190, 327 votes in the November election. He thus ran well ahead of the president, who carried Maryland by 115, 018 votes over Wendell L. Willkie on his way to a third term. In the Senate, Radcliffe seldom took the floor to speak and served as a relatively unobtrusive member of the banking and currency, commerce, finance, and immigration committees. His major legislative activity was in behalf of the shipping industry, which was vital to Maryland and had been his father's chief business interest.
He participated in the writing of the Merchant Marine Act of 1936, which established the United States Maritime Commission to dispense subsidies to shipbuilders and steamship companies and revitalize an outdated and inefficient American foreign trade fleet. Radcliffe also had a hand in the preparation of most of the shipping legislation passed by Congress during his Senate tenure.
Toward the end of his second term, Radcliffe came under fire from opponents in Maryland for his frequent absences from Washington to attend business meetings at Fidelity and Deposit, where he had been an officer since 1913, and at other banks and corporations in Baltimore. This issue helped to bring about his defeat by Governor Herbert R. O'Conor in the Democratic primary of 1946.
O'Conor, who had the endorsement of the Political Action Committee of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, won by twenty-two thousand votes.
He died in Baltimore.
(This work does not attempt to cover the history of Maryla...)
(Excerpt from Governor Thomas H. Hicks of Maryland and the...)
Because of his personal friendship with the president and his brief service in the administration, Radcliffe was expected to be a staunch New Dealer as a senator. Owing to his business background, however, he was only moderately supportive of Roosevelt's policies.
Between 1935 and 1939, he supported the administration agenda on key roll-call votes 76 percent of the time, dutifully voting for the Social Security Act (1935), the National Labor Relations Act (1935), the Federal Emergency Appropriation Act (1935), and the Supreme Court nomination of Hugo Black (1937).
At the same time, he backed conservative amendments designed to derail the Public Utility Holding Company Act (1935) and to cut funding for housing and unemployment relief in 1937. Even as he lauded the New Deal in public speeches for having saved the country from the Great Depression, Radcliffe wrote privately to Roosevelt that he was "disturbed" by the administration's legislative program.
In 1937, Radcliffe broke openly with Roosevelt over the latter's unsuccessful effort to reorganize the Supreme Court. A year later, when the president sought to "purge" Democratic opponents of his policies, including Senator Tydings, Radcliffe served as campaign manager for his colleague's easy primary victory over Congressman David J. Lewis, who had the support of the White House.
An internationalist in foreign affairs, Radcliffe supported Roosevelt's efforts against the arms embargo in 1939 and for Lend-Lease and the extension of selective service in 1941. After World War II he strongly favored the creation of a United Nations organization and sought unsuccessfully to have it headquartered in Baltimore. On the domestic front, however, Radcliffe remained cautious about large-scale government undertakings and thus collaborated with Senator Robert A. Taft of Ohio and other conservative Republicans in weakening President Harry Truman's Full Employment Bill (1945), a massive public-works initiative.
Outside of business and politics, Radcliffe had a variety of interests. He was active in nearly every important charitable enterprise in Maryland, including the March of Dimes, which he chaired for thirty years. He was a major contributor to and fundraiser for Johns Hopkins. He chaired the first general reunion of alumni in 1908, organized the university's alumni council, and, with General Electric president Owen D. Young, led the campaign to create the Walter Hines Page School of International Relations in 1924. Radcliffe's principal avocation over the years, however, was history. A member of the Maryland Historical Society after 1908, he served as the society's secretary (1911 - 1931), president (1931 - 1965), and chairman of the board (1965 - 1974). During his presidency, a steady flow of funds allowed the society to expand its facilities and increase its collections substantially. The house of Baltimore philanthropist Enoch Pratt and the original manuscript of the "Star Spangled Banner" by Francis Scott Key were important acquisitions during Radcliffe's active involvement. In tribute, the society named its maritime museum for him in 1973. Radcliffe's enthusiasm for history and civic activism extended beyond his service to the Maryland Historical Society. He chaired committees that saved Baltimore's historic nineteenth-century Shot Tower from demolition in 1924 and celebrated the writing of the "Star Spangled Banner" (1939) and the tercentennial of the Religious Toleration Act (1949). In 1954, he even donned a bushy brown wig and a black hat with a yellow plume to play Lord Calvert in a parade honoring the return of major league baseball to Baltimore for the first time in fifty-two years. A member of the Johns Hopkins one-mile relay team in college, Radcliffe still jogged on the roof of the Fidelity and Deposit building at the age of eighty. He also had a lifelong fascination with Christmas, which led him to collect two thousand books and five hundred articles on the subject.
On June 6, 1906, Radcliffe married Mary McKim Marriott of Baltimore, a painter and writer who had been an editor of the Ladies Home Journal. They had one child.
