Thomas William Hardwick

Background

Thomas William Hardwick was born on December 9, 1872 in Thomasville, Georgia, United States. He was the younger of two sons of Robert William Hardwick, a planter, and Zemula Schley (Matthews) Hardwick. His father died when the boy was ten, and his mother moved to Tennille in Washington County, Georgia, where his English forebears on both sides of the family had been pioneer settlers.

Education

Hardwick attended grammar school in Tennille and Gordon Institute in Barnesville, Georgia, before graduating in 1892 from Mercer University. He then studied at the Lumpkin School of Law of the University of Georgia. He graduated in 1893.

Career

Hardwick was admitted to the Georgia bar, and ran his own law practice from 1893 to 1895, when he became the Washington County prosecutor. In 1897 he ran for the Georgia House of Representatives and served as a legislator for the next four years, until he won a seat in the U. S. House, where he served his district until 1914.

When the U. S. senator Augustus O. Bacon died in office, Hardwick took his seat in a special election in 1914 and stayed for five years in the U. S. Senate, where he became known for his opposition to U. S. president Woodrow Wilson's war-preparedness legislation. William J. Harris subsequently defeated Hardwick in the 1918 Democratic primary.

In spring 1919 Hardwick, along with several other national politicians and judges, as well as several Catholic churches, was the target of a mail bomb. He was not injured, but his housekeeper, who opened the package, was maimed. The U. S. attorney general, A. Mitchell Palmer, ordered the detention of 4, 000 suspected Communists (mainly immigrants from the Soviet Union) in what was called the Palmer Raids.

Thomas Hardwick, pictured circa 1912, became governor of Georgia in 1921. A native of Thomasville, Hardwick also served in the state legislature and in both houses of the U. S. Congress during his political career.

They were held without bail, and many were deported without trials. The raids continued throughout the year and extended to union halls, homes, and anywhere socialist sympathizers or revolutionaries were thought to be gathered. In all, around 10, 000 people were rounded up before the raids ended in 1920.

In 1921 Hardwick rebounded to win the Georgia governor's office, a position he held until 1923. Although he had led efforts to disenfranchise Georgia blacks at the turn of the twentieth century, as governor Hardwick proved to be somewhat more progressive. He opposed the rise of the new Ku Klux Klan and advocated prison reform, issuing an executive order that ended the common practice of flogging inmates.

Hardwick also passed Georgia's first gas tax to build new roads and pushed for a graduated state income tax, which would not be adopted until 1931. Yet he was most noted for selecting Rebecca Latimer Felton as the first woman to the U. S. Senate. Motivated partly for selfish reasons, Hardwick made the appointment after Thomas E. Watson died in office. He wanted to run for Watson's seat and hoped that appointing a woman, who would not even serve in office due to the fact that Congress was out of session, would make his road back to the Senate easier by winning him women's votes. Instead, Hardwick lost the election to Walter F. George, who waited to take his new seat so that Felton could be sworn in as the first female senator, even though her term lasted only twenty-four hours.

When Hardwick sought reelection in 1918, President Wilson, in an open letter to Georgia voters, called him "a constant and active opponent of my administration. " This letter contributed to Hardwick's overwhelming defeat by William J. Harris, an ardent Wilsonian and chairman of the Federal Trade Commission.

In 1920 Hardwick was elected governor of Georgia. His victory was based upon a new accord with Watson, whose disenchantment with Wilson, opposition to the League of Nations, and nativist views he shared.

In the 1922 gubernatorial campaign, Clifford Walker, a supporter of the Ku Klux Klan, defeated Hardwick. Hardwick spent the following year as a special assistant to the U. S. attorney general. In 1924 Hardwick again lost a Senate election, and in 1932 he lost his bid for governor in the Democratic primary. Later, he provided legal representation to the Soviet ambassador to the United States and urged the U. S. government to recognize the Soviet Union.

Hardwick maintained a law practice in Atlanta, Sandersville, and Washington, until his death from a heart attack on January 31, 1944. He was buried in the Old City Cemetery in Sandersville, where a state historical marker stands in his honor at the courthouse square.

Achievements

• Thomas Hardwick is remembered as a noted state legislator and congressman who served Georgia over a long political and legal career. As governor, Hardwick established a state audit department, enacted the state's first gasoline tax, and recommended a graduated income tax in an effort to bolster Georgia's economy, which had sagged in the wake of the boll weevil's devastating destruction of cotton crops. Another one of Hardwick's most notable actions as governor of Georgia was his appointment of Rebecca Latimer Felton to the United States Senate as a temporary replacement for Tom Watson. Though Felton only served for one day, she was the first woman to serve in the Senate.

Works

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  • The regulation of commerce between the states under the commerce clause of the Constitution of the United States.

    ( The Making of the Modern Law: Legal Treatises, 1800-192...)

  • Vital Records of Hardwick, Massachusetts, to the Year 1850

    ( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)

  • In the matter of L. C. A. K. Martens, an alleged alien. Brief on behalf of Mr. Martens

    (This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)

  • John P. Weathersbee, Petitioner, v. the United States of America. U.S. Supreme Court Transcript of Record with Supporting Pleadings

    (The Making of Modern Law: U.S. Supreme Court Records and ...)

  • Gay, Savannah & Atlanta Railway v. Ruff U.S. Supreme Court Transcript of Record with Supporting Pleadings

    (The Making of Modern Law: U.S. Supreme Court Records and ...)

  • The Status and Activities of L.C. Martens, representative of the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic, as shown in the evidence before the sub-committee of the Committee on Foreign Relations of the United States Senate.

Religion

In religion, Hardwick was an Episcopalian.

Politics

Running as a conservative Democrat, opposed to the radical agrarianism of Thomas E. Watson, Hardwick overcame stiff Populist opposition in 1898 to win a seat in the state house of representatives. There his support of railroad regulation and his pledge to disenfranchise the Negro laid the basis for an alliance with Watson, who in 1902 backed Hardwick in his successful bid for election to Congress. For the next eight years the two remained allies; in 1906, at the Democratic state convention, they overthrew the party's conservative faction and secured the nomination of a progressive, Hoke Smith, for governor. In 1908, however, Watson, over Hardwick's objection, deserted Smith for the conservative Joseph M. Brown; and the alliance finally disintegrated in 1910 when Hardwick refused to appoint one of Watson's friends to a petty political office.

Though Watson ran against him that year, Hardwick was returned to Congress, where, as a member of the House Rules Committee, he helped the Wilson administration enact the Clayton Anti-Trust Act, the Underwood Tariff, and the Federal Reserve Act. With backing from Hoke Smith, Hardwick was elected in 1914 to complete the unexpired Senatorial term created by the death of Augustus O. Bacon. In the Senate, Hardwick became increasingly hostile to the Wilsonian program.

He opposed the Keating-Owen Child Labor Act and the Eighteenth Amendment. Though he voted, reluctantly, for the declaration of war in 1917, he considered the draft an attempt to "Prussianize" the country. He particularly objected to the extraordinary wartime powers granted to the president, and voted against the Food and Fuel Control Act, the Railroad Control Act, and the Espionage Act.

During his final year in the Senate, Hardwick favored United States membership in the League of Nations but objected on constitutional grounds to participation in measures for collective security.

Despite his nativist sympathies, Hardwick's abhorrence of violence brought him into conflict with a resurgent Ku Klux Klan. He publicly demanded that the Klan unmask, offered legal assistance to Klan victims, and recommended martial law to maintain order in areas where Klan terrorism prevailed. His attack upon the Klan brought about his defeat for reelection in 1922. Hardwick made two unsuccessful bids to return to the Senate, running in 1922 against Walter F. George and in 1924 against William J. Harris. He placed third in the 1932 gubernatorial race, which was won by Eugene Talmadge. Between political campaigns Hardwick had resumed the practice of law in Washington, Atlanta, and Sandersville.

Membership

Hardwick was an active member of Phi Delta Theta at Mercer, and while at UGA, he was a member of the Phi Kappa Literary Society.

Connections

In 1894 Hardwick married Maude Perkins, and together they had two children - Mildred, who died in childhood, and Mary. His wife died in 1937, and the following year Hardwick married Sallie Warren West.

Father:

Robert William Hardwick

Mother:

Zemula Schley (Matthews) Hardwick

Spouse:

Sallie Warren (West) Hardwick

Spouse:

Maude Elizabeth (Perkins) Hardwick

Daughter:

Mary (Hardwick) Rawlings

Daughter:

Mildred Hardwick

References

• Sacco and Vanzetti: The Anarchist Background
• Wilson: the struggle for neutrality, 1914-1915
• Tom Watson: Agrarian Rebel (Galaxy Book)
• Politics is adjourned;: Woodrow Wilson and the War Congress, 1916-1918