John Hamilton was born on March 2, 1892 in Fort Madison, Iowa. He was the son of John Daniel Miller Hamilton, a lawyer, and Mary Rice. He was also the grandson of John Hamilton, the first governor of the Kansas-Nebraska territories.
At the age of seven, Hamilton moved with his family from Iowa to Topeka, Kansas, where his father was a lawyer for the Santa Fe Railroad.
Hamilton attended Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachussets, graduating in 1913. He then entered Northwestern University, where he graduated from the law school in 1916.
Hamilton practiced law for two years in Kansas City and then enlisted in the army during World War I as a machine gunner. He was still in training at Camp Hancock, Georgia, when the war ended. On his return to Kansas, Hamilton practiced law in Topeka with Ralph T. O'Neil, past commander of the American Legion, which emerged as a significant political force in the 1920s. When Hamilton wanted to run for probate judge in 1920, he sought the support of Kansas Republican leader David W. Mulvane. Mulvane suggested that Hamilton wait a few years, but Hamilton ran anyway. He waged an aggressive door-to-door campaign, with strong support from returning veterans, and won the election. Impressed with Hamilton's drive and political skills, Mulvane became his mentor and sponsor.
Hamilton quickly rose to power and prominence. Elected to the Kansas legislature in 1924, he was chosen Republican floor leader in his first term and House speaker in his second term. He helped to defeat the Child Labor Amendment to the Constitution.
In 1928, Hamilton sought the Republican nomination for governor of Kansas. He had the support of Mulvane and the conservative wing of the party. Clyde M. Reed, Hamilton's major rival, was supported by Republican progressives, including the editor of the Emporia Gazette, William Allen White; Senator Arthur Capper; and Alfred M. Landon. Reed defeated Hamilton and won the governorship. Two years later, Hamilton managed the gubernatorial campaign of Frank Haucke, former American Legion state commander, who defeated Governor Reed for the Republican nomination. Democrat Harry Woodring, capitalizing on the Republican split, beat Haucke in the general election.
Hamilton was elected Kansas Republican party chairman in 1930. He supported Lacey Simpson for governor in 1932, but when Simpson lost the primary to Landon, Hamilton backed Landon in the general election. The day after Landon's victory, Mulvane died and Landon named Hamilton as the state's Republican national committeeman. During the next two decades, Hamilton gained recognition as one of the more skillful strategists in national politics. With his frank manner and forceful speaking style, he was an eloquent spokesman for his party. There was a serious movement among western committeemen to make Hamilton national chairman in 1934.
In recognition of his growing influence, in 1935 Republican national chairman Henry P. Fletcher named Hamilton as assistant chairman and general counsel. Hamilton was the Republican point man against Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal. With Landon emerging as a contender for the 1936 Republican presidential nomination, Hamilton resigned his job with the national committee and became Landon's campaign manager. In paving the way for Landon's nomination, Hamilton toured the country, forging alliances with party chairmen and elected officials, as James A. Farley had done for Roosevelt in 1932.
After Landon's first-ballot nomination, Hamilton was selected by Landon as the Republican national chairman. Hamilton's style was as flamboyant as Landon's was bland. "To bored political onlookers, " Time magazine reported from the 1936 Republican convention, "not Alf Landon but John Hamilton was the young Lochinvar come out of the West. " It was an uneasy collaboration. Hamilton wanted Landon to take a hard line against the New Deal, but the Kansas governor echoed Roosevelt by endorsing Social Security and farm subsidies. In a speech, Hamilton held up a dog tag and asked his audience if they wanted to wear a metal Social Security number. "In European countries, people carry police cards and are subject to police surveillance, " he declared. "So far, American citizens have not been subjected to these indignities. "
Landon viewed Hamilton's rhetoric as excessive. Hamilton was also rankled that Landon denied a meaningful campaign role for former President Hoover. Hamilton helped Landon win the endorsement of Alfred E. Smith, Hoover's 1928 Democratic presidential rival.
In October 1936 letter to U. S. News publisher David Lawrence, Hamilton predicted that Landon would carry five states. Hamilton said in an interview in 1972 that despite Landon's lopsided defeat, the 1936 campaign served a purpose. "If the Republican party hadn't contested the 1936 election, " he said, "we might have entered an era of splintered parties. " From the ashes of the Republican party's worst defeat, Hamilton built new foundations. He traveled to London and conferred with leaders of the British Conservative and Labour parties about the maintenance of political institutions.
Hamilton, using the British parties as his model, returned to Washington, and opened the Republican party's first permanent headquarters. He also hired a team of scholars, headed by former University of Wisconsin president Glen Frank, to define the party's goals and provide research for Republican speakers. Hamilton became the party's first fulltime, salaried chairman. Hamilton developed working relationships with the Republican congressional leadership, sponsoring weekend seminars on Capitol Hill and providing research on topical issues.
He helped Senate Minority Leader Charles L. McNary and Democratic senator Burton K. Wheeler plot strategy to block Roosevelt's 1937 attempt to enlarge the Supreme Court. Hamilton funded the travel of hostile witnesses to Senate hearings on the court plan. The Republican chairman aided conservative Democratic senators in making their case against Roosevelt's domestic policies and made a public plea for Republicans and "Jeffersonian Democrats" to work together. Hamilton ran the party's first coordinated campaign for a midterm election in 1938. He toured the country, recruiting candidates and visiting more than three thousand county chairmen. His efforts to rejuvenate the party were successful.
In the 1938 midterm elections, Republicans gained eighty-one seats in the House, six in the Senate, and thirteen governorships. At the 1940 Republican convention, Hamilton denounced Roosevelt's appointments of prominent Republicans Henry L. Stimson as secretary of war and Frank Knox as secretary of the navy, declaring that Stimson and Knox were "no longer qualified to speak as Republicans. " His comments polarized the party's bipartisan internationalist wing. Though publicly neutral in the competition for the presidential nomination, Hamilton worked behind the scenes for dark horse Wendell L. Willkie.
At the party's convention, Hamilton broke the deadlock for Willkie by obtaining the support on the sixth ballot of Michigan Republican leader Frank McKay. Willkie, who had pledged to retain Hamilton as chairman, replaced him with Joseph W. Martin at the urging of New York Herald Tribune publishers Ogden and Helen Rogers Reid and of William Allen White, who had been appalled by Hamilton's attack on Stimson and Knox. "Willkie's refusal to accept me was ample evidence in my mind that the party would not accept the English theory of permanency of personnel in organizational activities, " Hamilton wrote in his memoirs. Willkie appointed Hamilton as executive director of the Republican National Committee and as political director of Willkie's campaign. Hamilton worked for Willkie with little enthusiasm and resigned from the national committee after Willkie's defeat.
In 1943, Hamilton organized a coalition of Republican politicians who helped to block Willkie's bid for the 1944 presidential nomination. Hamilton was a strategist and adviser to Senator Robert A. Taft in his unsuccessful campaigns for the 1948 and 1952 Republican presidential nominations. Taft valued Hamilton's judgment and experience, though he later regretted following Hamilton's advice to enter the 1952 New Hampshire primary, which he lost to Dwight D. Eisenhower.
In 1941, Hamilton moved to Philadelphia and practiced law with former senator George Wharton Pepper. Their firm, Pepper, Hamilton, and Scheetz, was among Philadelphia's more respected and successful firms. Their clients included the Saturday Evening Post and the Sun Oil Co.
In 1950, Hamilton was named by a federal judge as the defense attorney for Harry Gold, who was arrested as a courier for the Soviet spy ring that included Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Gold, who had confessed following his arrest, asked the court for a defense lawyer with "no radical connections" who "would not make a show. " The judge praised Hamilton's defense as brilliant. Gold, who was sentenced to a thirty-year term, was released after serving sixteen years. Hamilton died in Clearwater, Florida, where he lived in retirement.
A year before his death, Hamilton said that he would be remembered as the manager of two losing presidential campaigns. But he was also the Republican party's most resourceful national chairman since Mark Hanna.
As speaker, Hamilton fought the Ku Klux Klan, which had strong support in parts of the state. But he was no liberal.
Hamilton was married three times and divorced twice. He married Laura Hall on December 28, 1915; they had two children and divorced on December 29, 1937. Hamilton married Jane Kendall Mason in 1940; this marriage lasted five years, and Hamilton married Rosamond Kittle Jackson on November 1, 1947.
