Fred M. Vinson

Portrait of Fred M. Vinson in the Treasury

Frederick (Fred) Moore Vinson (born January 22, 1890 in Lawrence County , Kentucky - † September 8, 1953 in Washington, DC ) was an American Democratic politician, lawyer, Treasury Secretary and the 13th  Chief Justice of the United States .

Studies and professional career

The son of a jailer of the Lawrence County Jail graduated after school to study law at the Center College in Danville . After graduating, he worked as a lawyer in the small town of Louisa and was soon elected prosecutor for the town.

During the First World War he served as a soldier in the United States Army . After the war, he was elected District Attorney for Kentucky 32nd Justice District.

Political career

Member of the House of Representatives

Vinson began his political career in 1924 with the election to the House of Representatives . There he represented the interests of the Democratic Party until 1929 as the successor to William J. Fields , who was elected governor . From 1931 to 1938 he was again a member of the House of Representatives, where he first again represented the 9th congressional district and from 1935 the 8th congressional district of Kentucky.

During this time he made a lifelong friendship with the future President Harry S. Truman , who was a Senator from Missouri at the time.

Judge at the United States Court of Appeals

On November 26, 1937, he retired as a member of Parliament after US President Franklin D. Roosevelt had appointed him judge on the United States Court of Appeals of the District of Columbia . He held this office until his resignation on May 27, 1943. At the same time, he was appointed on March 2, 1942 by Supreme Federal Judge Harlan Fiske Stone as Chief Justice of the Federal Court of Appeals in Urgent Matters ( Emergency Court of Appeals ).

Promotion to finance minister

After resigning as a judge, he became director of the Office for Economic Stabilization, an administrative agency that dealt with the fight against inflation . He was also head of the Federal Loan Administrator for a short time from March 6 to April 3, 1945 and director of the Office of War Mobilization and Reconversion from April 4 to July 22, 1945 ).

Signature of FM Vinson on US $ banknotes

After his friend Harry S. Truman, recently elected vice-president, rose to president due to the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Vinson was appointed Treasury Secretary in his new cabinet on July 23, 1945; he succeeded Henry Morgenthau .

In this role he tried to stabilize the economy after the Second World War and to adapt the financial position of the USA to the circumstances of the post-war period. Before the end of the war, he initiated the last major issues of war bonds . After the war ended, he negotiated the repayment of the 1940 loan to the United Kingdom , the largest US loan to another country, as well as the loan and lease terms for the economic and military aid the Allies gave during the war . To encourage private investment, he introduced tax cuts through the Tax Act of 1945 . In addition, as chairman of the respective boards, he oversaw the introduction of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), both of which had been approved at the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944 .

On June 23, 1946, he resigned from his position as Minister of Finance. Successor was John W. Snyder .

President of the Supreme Court, key decisions and rejection of other government offices

FM Vinson as Chief Justice

On June 20, 1946, at the suggestion of his old friend Truman, he was elected President of the Supreme Court ( Chief Justice of the United States ) by the Senate to succeed the late Harlan Fiske Stone .

At the time, the Supreme Court was deeply divided, both intellectually and personally. Vinson was initially responsible for approximating the "conservative" wing around Hugo Black and the "liberal" wing around Felix Frankfurter . During his tenure he drafted 77 decisions and thirteen minor opinions of the Supreme Court.

The most important issues with which the Supreme Court dealt at this time were, besides questions of racial segregation and trade unions , also the question of the treatment of communism , which determined the political life of the USA especially through the campaign of the then Senator Joseph McCarthy . At times, a change of office was also discussed with Secretary of State Dean Acheson , who was accused of being too soft with communism. However, there was no exchange of offices because President Truman stuck to his foreign minister.

In 1947 he received the Medal for Merit , at that time the highest civilian award in the USA.

After President Truman had decided against running again in the 1952 presidential election for a third term, Vinson was his first election as his successor. As both he and Dwight D. Eisenhower rejected a candidate for the Democratic Party, who was governor of Illinois , Adlai E. Stevenson , nominated for the Democratic presidential candidate.

His last public appearance as Chief Justice was when the Supreme Court's decision was read that the appeal against the death sentence against Ethel and Julius Rosenberg would not be admitted despite international protests.

The most important racial segregation decision, Brown v. Board of Education from May 17, 1954, he could no longer witness. Ultimately, however, it is due to his arrangement of a second reading that it is not a scarce 4 was 5 Votes decision, but to a unanimous decision that racial segregation in schools against the principle of equality of the Constitution of the United States violated.

In his role as Chief Justice, he not only took Harry Truman's oath of office , but also Dwight D. Eisenhower after their election as President .

After his death, Earl Warren succeeded him as President of the Supreme Court. Since Vinson died during the term of office of Republican Eisenhower and his successors all resigned during the term of office of a Republican or William H. Rehnquist died during such term, Vinson was to this day the last Chief Justice to be appointed by a Democratic president.

literature

• C. Herman Pritchett : Civil liberties and the Vinson Court . University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1954, LCCN  54-008459 , OCLC 414681 (296 pp.).
• James E. St. Clair, Linda C. Gugin: Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson of Kentucky: a political biography . University Press of Kentucky, Lexington, KY 2002, ISBN 0-8131-2247-3 (394 pages).
• Frederick M. Vinson , in: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 01/1954 of December 28, 1953, in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely available)

Web links

Commons : Fred M. Vinson  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

• Biography and portrait on the US Treasury Department homepage
• Fred M. Vinson in the Miller Center of Public Affairs of the University of Virginia (English)
• Biography on the homepage of the Supreme Court
• Reconverter . In: TIME magazine , July 9, 1945, cover story
• Kith & Kin . In: TIME Magazine , September 10, 1951
• Fred M. Vinson in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)
• Fred M. Vinson in the database of Find a Grave (English)