Henry Fountain Ashurst was an American Democratic politician and one of the first two Senators from Arizona.
Background
Henry Fountain Ashurst was born on September 13, 1874 in Winnemucca, Nevada, United States to William Henry Ashurst and Sarah Elizabeth Bogard.
His father, a sheep rancher, and his mother had been brought as children to California following the Gold Rush. In 1875 the family migrated south in a covered wagon and settled nine miles south of what now is Williams, Arizona. Drought in 1877 devastated Ashurst's stock and forced the family to move to a ranch near Mormon Lake, southeast of present-day Flagstaff. In this rugged and scenic country Ashurst grew to manhood. His father served as a representative in the Fourteenth Territorial Legislature (1887).
Supporting a family of ten children placed a severe strain on him, and because ranching proved unprofitable, he began mining a claim in the Grand Canyon. He died in an accident there in 1901.
To better educate her children and to avoid another harsh winter on the ranch, Sarah Ashurst moved the family into Flagstaff.
Education
Ashurst received, at best, the rudiments of an education.
In 1895 he resumed work briefly in the Flagstaff lumber yard, but returned to California in the fall to enroll in Stockton Business College.
He spent a year (1903 - 1904) at the University of Michigan Law School, completing his formal education.
Career
When he was nineteen, Sheriff J. J. Donahue hired him as turnkey in the county jail at Flagstaff. Shortly thereafter Ashurst took a job in a lumber yard and started to study law at night. In 1895 he went to California, where he worked as a lumberjack in the Los Angeles area and as a hod carrier in San Francisco.
In 1895 he resumed work briefly in the Flagstaff lumber yard, but returned to California in the fall to enroll in Stockton Business College. He worked as a newspaper reporter in his spare time. Graduating at the end of the term, he returned to Arizona and secured a job as a stenographer in Williams. Shortly thereafter he was appointed justice of the peace.
In November 1896, Ashurst was elected as a Democrat to the Territorial House of Representatives. He was elected to a second term and was chosen speaker, reportedly the youngest person ever to hold that position. As speaker he sponsored a bill establishing the Northern Arizona Normal School (today Northern Arizona University). In 1897, Ashurst was admitted to the bar and started his law practice in Williams. He was elected to the Territorial Senate in 1902.
His early training enamored Ashurst with the joys of public speaking. He practiced extensively, sometimes bellowing his remarks in the open country while riding the range, or even while running, to expand his lung capacity. He continually improved his vocabulary and throughout his life devoted considerable time to studying the classics. He gained an ever-expanding reputation and skill as an orator, which afforded him a great advantage in launching his legal and political career. It also brought him considerable public attention in later years and, indeed, was his chief claim to fame. Ashurst, reviewing his career, estimated that he had delivered 5, 000 speeches.
Ashurst's first post after his marriage was that of district attorney of Coconino County, an office he held until 1908. The following year he moved to Prescott, where he maintained a residence for the rest of his career, and quickly established himself as the most prominent lawyer in northern Arizona.
Ashurst was one of five Democratic candidates for the Arizona senatorial seats in 1911. He and Marcus A. Smith were chosen the Democratic nominees. At the general election in December, both of them were elected.
The following March, by the unanimous vote of both houses of the first legislature of the new state of Arizona, Ashurst and Smith were elected United States senators. Ashurst was handily reelected to four successive terms in the Senate, garnering 72 percent of the votes in 1934 and never receiving less than 54 percent. In the Senate he was a devoted Wilsonian. From May 1914 to March 1921, he chaired the Indian Affairs Committee.
By 1933 he had gained enough seniority to chair the Judiciary Committee, a post he filled for the remainder of his career in the Senate. At first a reluctant, critical New Dealer, he eventually supported its measures.
Although he served almost forty years on Capitol Hill, Ashurst's name is associated with no significant measure or cause. He gained a widespread reputation for three related reasons. Two were suggested by Senator Lawrence Y. Sherman in 1919, during the debate on the Versailles Peace Treaty, when the Illinois senator, an irreconcilable opponent of the treaty, called Ashurst, a treaty supporter, "the Chesterfield in charge of Senatorial behavior and the Beau Brummel of forensic taste. " Sherman's barbed remarks called attention to Ashurst's sartorial splendor and eloquent oratory. The other characteristic in which Ashurst also delighted was inconsistency. He made a virtue of it and relished in being known as the "Dean of Inconsistency. "
Throughout his career Ashurst often appeared on the Senate floor, and elsewhere, in a black-braided coat, striped trousers, wing collar, and corded eyeglasses. Tall and with the manner of a Shakespearean actor, Ashurst matched his florid oratory to his attire. His speeches were models of polysyllabic splendor.
Although he was not a Latin scholar, he memorized innumerable Latin quotations. His speeches were rich in literary references, and he spent part of every morning reading from the classics and ransacking the dictionary to expand his vocabulary. Ashurst used his oratory to defend and support the best interests of his constituents, once stating at a luncheon in his honor that he served in Washington "as a very well-paid messenger boy doing your errands. My chief occupation is going around with a forked stick, picking up little fragments of patronage for my constituents. "
Throughout the 1920's he championed the cause of Arizona in fighting for a greater share of the water of the Colorado River, which he believed was threatened chiefly by California. Possibly the highlight of Ashurst's Senate career came on June 15, 1935, when he attacked Huey Long in what Time called "one of the most comprehensive dressing downs administered in the Senate chamber in modern history, " politely and neatly executed, brimming with classical allusions and historical references.
More often, though, observers noted his shifting views on important issues. Ashurst made a virtue of what others usually considered a vice, claiming that the first law of politics is "Rise above your principles. "
Although his name came first in the roll call, Ashurst usually voted after the initial calling of the roll. Elected as a "dry, " he voted both for the Eighteenth Amendment and for its repeal. Of his four votes on a bonus for veterans, two were for and two against. In 1937, when a woman wrote applauding his stand during the Supreme Court fight, he replied, "Dear Madame: Which stand?"
Despite his concern for Arizona, Ashurst was honest and courageous in denouncing the "pork barrel" and the spoils system. He attacked the Ku Klux Klan at the height of its political power in the 1920's. He also argued that "constitutional amendments should be ratified by the qualified electors in each state, and not by the legislatures of the states. "
From June 1910 to July 27, 1937, Ashurst kept a diary. The diary, edited by George F. Sparks and entitled A Many Colored Toga, was published in 1962. In 1940, when Ashurst sought his sixth term in the Senate, at the age of sixty-six, he was sad and weary. He did not campaign in the primary. His opponent, Ernest W. McFarland, made much of Ashurst's long absences from the Senate and of his vote against conscription. McFarland won the primary and Ashurst withdrew from the race.
Although he talked about returning to Arizona, Ashurst stayed on in Washington. He served for two years (1941-1943) as a member of the Board of Immigration Appeals of the Department of Justice. Thereafter, the traits that made him attractive as a political figure brought him twice again to public attention.
He appeared on the television quiz program "The $64, 000 Question, " winning $16, 000. In 1959, after fraud by the producers of the program had been revealed, Ashurst said he had received no assistance with his questions and answers and found nothing irregular with the show.
In 1961 he went to Hollywood to appear in the movie version of Allen Drury's novel Advise and Consent as Senator McCafferty, who dozed throughout most of the film except for intermittent eruptions of flowery rhetoric.
Ashurst died in Washington, D. C. Ashurst's life fulfilled the response he offered to reporters and others who asked him, in various ways, "What is the greatest thing in your public life?" His invariable reply was: "Ability to control my temper and the realization that this is a comic world. "
Achievements
Ashurst's political career was noted for a self-contradictory voting record, the use of a sesquipedalian vocabulary, and for a love of public speaking that earned him a reputation as one of the Senate's greatest orators. Among the sobriquets assigned to him were "the Dean of Inconsistency", "Five-Syllable Henry", and the "Silver-Tongued Sunbeam of the Painted Desert".
Politics
During the 1920s he was a consistent critic of the Republican administrations: their programs, their policies, and their presidential appointments.
Personality
He was a patient, fair prosecutor, and a sympathetic pleader.
Connections
On March 2, 1904, after his return from Ann Arbor, Ashurst married Elizabeth McEvoy Renoe, a widow with four children, who had come from Baltimore in 1898 to establish, and then manage, a United States weather station. They had no children. She became his constant companion and political confidante.
