Background
William Bourke Cockran was born on February 28, 1854 in County Sligo, Ireland, the son of Martin and Harriet (Knight) Cockran.
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William Bourke Cockran was born on February 28, 1854 in County Sligo, Ireland, the son of Martin and Harriet (Knight) Cockran.
Cockran was educated in the schools of Ireland and later studied in France. Although his parents intended him to enter the Church, he was not so disposed, and at the age of seventeen he came to New York to live his own life.
Cockran's first job was as a clerk in a department store, then he became principal of a public school in Tuckahoe, New York, and devoted his nights to the study of law. He was admitted to the bar in 1876, practised for two years in Mount Vernon, and then moved to New York. Leaders of the Irving Hall Democracy, a faction opposed to Tammany, made him their spokesman at the Democratic State Convention at Albany in 1881. Two years later, John Kelly, leader of Tammany, invited him to join the Wigwam, and he was made counsel to the sheriff of New York County. In the Democratic National Convention of 1884, Cockran, a Tammany delegate, forced a hostile convention to listen to his speech attacking the nomination of Grover Cleveland.
His greatest dramatic triumph occurred during the turbulent convention of 1892, when he was forced to place David B. Hill in nomination at two o’clock in the morning. Outside a terrible storm was raging. Rain was pouring through the leaking roof. Above the thunder and the jeers of the impatient Cleveland majority was heard the bold defiance of Cockran: “If New York’s candidate and his supporters cannot receive fair treatment, New York will withdraw from this convention. ” Thereafter the Hill speakers were heard.
Cockran was first elected to the House of Representatives in 1886, and again in 1890 and in 1892. In the following year he delivered an eloquent address against the free coinage of silver which was a forerunner of his break with Bryan and the Democratic party on the silver issue in the campaign of 1896. In that year he campaigned for William McKinley. His switch to McKinley and his return to the Democratic fold in 1900 were made the target for charges by the press that he was paid well for his speeches. Cockran denied the charges on the floor of the House emphatically and with dignity.
In 1900 he returned to the Democratic party and supported Bryan for president, making “the brutal imperialism of McKinley” the issue. He was elected to Congress again in 1904 and served until the end of 1909. He had, in the meantime, broken with Charles F. Murphy, who had become leader of Tammany Hall, and he once more found himself outside the party. He then embraced the cause of Roosevelt, whom he had frequently denounced in unsparing terms. He campaigned effectively for the Progressive ticket in 1912, although he himself was unsuccessful in seeking election to Congress. After a period of comparative political inactivity, he returned to the Democratic party once more, and, at the National Convention at San Francisco in 1920 delivered a ringing oration nominating Governor Alfred Smith of New York for the presidency. Later in the year he was returned to Congress, where he served until his sudden death, which occurred on March 1, 1923, the morning after his sixty- ninth birthday dinner.
(This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curat...)
Cockran was a friend of organized labor and opposed compulsory arbitration and labor injunctions. Himself an immigrant, he fought against any restrictions on immigration or naturalization. He was outspoken in his condemnation of the Eighteenth Amendment and the Volstead Act, and led an unsuccessful attempt to place a plank in the Democratic platform at the 1920 convention permitting the manufacture in homes of cider, light wines, and beer.
Cockran was married three times; first, to Jackson, sister of the Reverend Father Jackson of St. Anne’s Church, New York; second, to Rhoda E. Mack, daughter of Jonathan Mack; third, to Anne L. Ide, daughter of General Henry C. Ide.