Background

Thomas J. Walsh was born in Two Rivers, Wis. , the son of Felix and Bridget (Comer) Walsh. His parents met and were married after migrating from Ireland to the United States.

Education

He obtainined a public-school education. In 1884 he received the degree of LL. B from the University of Wisconsin. He was largely self-educated; recognizing the gaps in his formal education, he filled them in by his own efforts.

Career

Walsh began to teach at the age of sixteen, and finally became principal of the high school at Sturgeon Bay, Wis. Teaching provided the funds for a law course at the University of Wisconsin. For six years he practised law with his brother, Henry C. Walsh, in Dakota Territory at Redfield (now S. Dak. ). In 1890 he moved to Helena, Mont. In Montana, still in the frontier stage of development, he rapidly attained prominence. His reputation was made chiefly in copper litigation, but he became widely known also as a constitutional lawyer. He refused an offer to become general counsel for the Anaconda Copper Company, which he at times represented and at other times opposed in the courts. In 1906 he was an unsuccessful Democratic candidate for election to the federal House of Representatives, and in 1910 he was defeated for the Senate. Nevertheless he persisted, and in 1912 was elected to the Senate, in which he served from March 1913 until his death. For nearly ten years after his entrance into public life, Walsh's career in the Senate was one of single-minded although unspectacular devotion to the public welfare, and he was invariably found on the progressive side in debates. He could be depended on to expound lucidly constitutional points at issue, but he was not yet a figure of national importance in the popular mind. He advocated such advanced proposals as woman's suffrage and the child-labor amendment, and was identified with the section of the Clayton Act of 1914 which protected farm organizations and trade unions from suit under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. A devoted follower of Woodrow Wilson, Walsh upheld the League of Nations, the Treaty of Versailles, and the World Court, and advocated the limitation of armaments. He was a leader in the prolonged fight in 1916 to confirm the nomination of Louis D. Brandeis to the Supreme Court. He denounced the "anti-Red" raids of Attorney-General A. Mitchell Palmer after the war, saying, "I do not think it is any answer at all to the charge that illegal things have been done to say that there are Bolshevists and anarchists in this country. If there are, they are entitled to whatever protection the law affords". On April 29, 1922, the Senate passed a resolution introduced by Robert M. La Follette, directing the committee on public lands to investigate the leasing of naval oil reserves in Wyoming and California, and calling on the secretary of the interior for all pertinent information. Walsh was asked by La Follette and Senator Kendrick of Wyoming to take charge of the investigation, because they believed that the chairman and other majority members of the committee were unsympathetic with the inquiry. Considerable publicity had attended the La Follette resolution, but public interest quickly died down and Walsh was left to examine the evidence undisturbed. Eighteen months were spent in a preliminary digest of the material; in October 1923 the first public hearing was called, and the scandal of Teapot Dome and Elk Hills was slowly disclosed to an incredulous public. Walsh considered his rôle in the investigation a routine part of his public duty, but one commentator remarked that "no more magnificent display of a legal drive through a thwarting jungle of facts to incredible but proved conclusions has ever been witnessed in Washington". Calm precision of language, unemotional clarity of mind, and definiteness of purpose characterized his conduct of the investigation. Through his efforts all the sordid details of the transactions were uncovered, and the leases were subsequently voided. It is a commentary on the contemporary attitude toward political morality that the most vigorous condemnation by much of the press and the public was reserved for the public servants responsible for bringing the facts to light. The perspective of time, however, shows that the oil inquiry was Walsh's most valuable public service. A delegate to every Democratic National Convention from 1908 to 1932, Walsh was chosen permanent chairman in 1924 and again in 1932. His name was presented for the presidential nomination at the convention of 1924, but his maximum strength was 123 votes, on the 102nd ballot. After the long battle between the Smith and the McAdoo forces had ended in the compromise nomination of John W. Davis on the 103rd ballot, Walsh was offered the vice-presidential nomination but declined it. His suave but firm direction of the convention was universally applauded. In 1928 he allowed himself to be mentioned as a pre-convention candidate for the presidential nomination, and unsuccessfully contested the California primary with Smith, but he abandoned his candidacy before the convention opened. Walsh's activities in the Senate after the Teapot Dome disclosures were consistent with his earlier career. He voted against the McNary-Haugen bill to provide an equalization fee for farm products on the ground that the plan was unconstitutional, despite popular pressure for it in the West. He voted to submit repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment to the states, although he had been a consistent prohibitionist for many years. He opposed confirmation of the appointment of Judge John J. Parker to the Supreme Court because of the nominee's judicial record on sustaining drastic injunctions to uphold "yellow-dog" contracts. A lifelong interest in Irish independence was reflected in Walsh's proposal that the United States bring the problem of Ireland to the attention of the League of Nations in the latter's capacity as an international public forum. He believed that Anglo-American friendship was endangered by the recurrence of trouble in Ireland. The outstanding physical feature of Walsh during his early years in Washington was a remarkably long, drooping moustache, which later he clipped short. As a boy he had been an enthusiastic baseball player, and he organized the centennial baseball team in Two Rivers in 1876. Later in life he turned for recreation to golf, fishing, and horseback riding. He was a devout member of the Roman Catholic Church, and his private life was characterized by personal dignity and great kindliness. In 1933, when Walsh was seventy-three, President-elect Roosevelt selected him to be attorney-general. The press praised the choice as one of the most satisfactory for the new cabinet, and one newspaper said "no wise Democratic politician is likely to go to him in his new job looking for special favors. It would be like asking the statue of Civic Virtue for a chew of tobacco". Starting for Washington for the inauguration, Walsh was ill for several days in Florida, and he died suddenly on a northbound train early on the morning of March 2, 1933. His death unquestionably weakened the incoming administration.

Achievements

• He represented Montana in the United States Senate from 1913 to 1933. He had a national reputation as a liberal and was President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt's choice as Attorney General.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Visual Fields: Examination and Interpretation (American Academy of Ophthalmology Monograph Series)

    (An acknowledged classic since it was first published as a...)

  • Playwrights and Power: The Making of the Dramatists Guild

    (In this new and insightful history of the Dramatists Guil...)

Connections

On August 15, 1889, he married Elinor C. McClements of Chicago, a schoolteacher; she died on August 30, 1917. On Feburary 25, 1933, Walsh was married in Havana to Señora Maria Nieves Perez Chaumont de Truffin, the widow of a Cuban banker and sugar grower.

Father:

Felix Walsh

Mother:

Bridget (Comer) Walsh

Spouse:

Elinor C. McClements

Spouse:

Maria Nieves Perez Chaumont de Truffin

References

• Senator Thomas J. Walsh of Montana: Law and Public Affairs, from TR to FDR