Eugene Talmadge

Eugene Talmadge (born September 23, 1884 in Forsyth, Georgia , † December 21, 1946 ) was an American politician and multiple governor of Georgia. He was also known for the political crisis that his death triggered in 1946 and that led to the bizarre situation that Georgia suddenly had three governors at the same time.

Youth and political advancement

Young Eugene graduated from the University of Georgia with a law degree . He then worked as an administrative clerk with the Telfair District in Georgia. Two attempts to be elected to the Georgia State Parliament failed. After all, he was elected Minister of Agriculture of the state in 1926. He was re-elected twice in this office. However, he soon came under fire. His opponents accused him of enrichment because he u. a. Funded trips to horse races with government funds. This criticism did not harm him in Georgia at that time. In 1932, the previous Governor Richard B. Russell was elected to the US Senate and Talmadge decided to run for governor himself. After receiving the Democratic Party nomination , the election was a formality because there was no serious opposition in Georgia at the time. The Republicans were so weak in this state that they practically did not exist.

Georgia Governor

The election victory in 1932 was followed by re-election in 1934. He ruled the state in an authoritarian manner. His opponents often described his measures to enforce his will as dictatorial. He was a critic of President Franklin D. Roosevelt even though both politicians belonged to the same party. In 1936 he could not be re-elected according to the constitution. Instead, he ran for the US Senate and was clearly defeated by Senator Russell. In 1938 he made another attempt to be elected to the Senate. This time he was defeated by Senator Walter F. George . In 1940 he was re-elected Governor of Georgia for two years. During this time there was a conflict with the University of Georgia. Talmadge accused the previous dean Walter Cocking of communist activities and demanded that the university management not confirm him in his office. The board rejected the governor's motion, who then dismissed three members of the university's board of directors from their offices and replaced them with three of his sympathetic friends. Cocking has now been sacked with the new majority. This led to sanctions by the "Southern Association of Colleges", a school and university association in the southern United States, against the University of Georgia. This conflict then led to the governor being voted out of office in 1942. Ellis Arnall became the new governor . During his tenure, the governor's legislative period was extended from two to four years. A re-election of a governor after four years was prohibited. In addition, the office of lieutenant governor was newly introduced in Georgia. Talmadge decided after Arnall's four-year term to run again in 1946 despite health problems and actually managed to be elected governor of Georgia for a fourth time after 1932, 1934 and 1940.

Talmadge's Death and the Crisis of the Three Governors

On December 21, 1946, Talmadge died of liver disease before he was appointed governor. The result was one of the most bizarre situations in all of American history. In the Georgia constitution, the office of lieutenant governor had only recently been created and should now be filled for the first time. Melvin Thompson , an opponent of Talmadge, had been elected Georgia's first lieutenant governor in the 1946 elections. According to the constitution, the lieutenant governor should exercise the office of governor if the governor died during his tenure or left office for other reasons. Now, at the time of his death, Eugene Talmadge was not even in office, and the discussion about the successor flared up between three groups. First, Thompson claimed office as the elected lieutenant governor. The Talmadge supporters were firmly against this solution. They proposed the election of Herman Talmadge , son of the late governor, by the National Assembly. Eventually the congregation accepted this proposal and on January 15, 1947, elected Herman Talmadge as the new governor. Thompson then sued the Georgia Supreme Court. The outgoing Governor Ellis Arnall now saw another problem. Not knowing exactly who his successor was, he refused to hand over the office. This enraged the Talmadge supporters, who hated Arnall anyway for his politics over the past four years. Solid fights broke out among the supporters of the various camps. In the meantime, Herman Talmadge had occupied the governor's house and declared himself governor of Georgia, while Arnall and Thompson also claimed that office. For a short time in January 1947, Georgia had three governors at the same time. Eventually Arnall gave up and recognized Thompson as the new governor. So there were still two opponents, Thompson and Herman Talmadge, who plunged the state into political chaos for another two months. In March 1947, the Georgia Supreme Court ruled in Thompson's favor. He was to serve as governor until the new elections in 1948. Herman Talmadge gave up surprisingly quickly and prepared for the new elections, which he would win in 1948.

The crisis triggered by the death of Eugene Talmadge severely damaged the reputation of the State of Georgia because it was seen as a relapse into times long past. Eugene Talmadge hit the headlines again in June 2007 when the FBI released old files from 1946 under the new Freedom of Information Act in which the FBI suspected Talmadge to be implicated in the murder of two black married couples in Monroe , Georgia and that he protected the perpetrators for electoral reasons.

additional

The Talmadge Memorial Bridge in Savannah, Georgia is named in his honor. This crosses the Savannah River and connects downtown Savannah with the Carolina Low Country .

literature

• William Anderson: The Wild Man from Sugar Creek: The Political Career of Eugene Talmadge. Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge 1975.
• Charles Myer Elson: The Georgia Three-Governor Controversy of 1947. In: Atlanta Historical Bulletin. 20 (Fall 1976): 72-95.
• Calvin McLeod Logue: Eugene Talmadge: Rhetoric and Response. Greenwood Press, New York 1989.
• Willis A. Sutton Jr .: The Talmadge Campaigns: A Sociological Analysis of Political Power. (Ph.D. Dissertation), University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 1952.

Web links

• The New Georgia Encyclopedia (History of the State of Georgia in Biographies )
• Eugene Talmadge in the National Governors Association (English)
• Eugene Talmadge in the database of Find a Grave (English)