Robert E. Hannegan

Robert E. Hannegan (1945)

Robert Emmet Hannegan (born  June 30, 1903 in St. Louis , Missouri , †  October 6, 1949 ibid) was an American politician of the Democratic Party . He served from 1944 to 1947 as chairman of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and from 1945 to 1947 was US Secretary of Post in the cabinet of President Harry S. Truman .

Life

After graduating as a Bachelor of Laws at the Law School of the Saint Louis University in 1925 Hannegan practiced until 1942 as an attorney in St. Louis.

politics

In 1933 Hannegan embarked on a political career. In the Democratic Party of St. Louis he was one of the leading figures alongside Senator Joel Bennett Clark . Until 1942 he was chairman of the Democrats in his hometown.

He used his strong position in 1940 to save Harry S. Truman from political failure. Truman, at that time Senator for the State of Missouri, was brought into connection with the tax offenses of his sponsor Tom Pendergast and had to fear for his re-election, since his internal party rivals positioned themselves against Pendergast. With strong support from St. Louis, Truman retained his Senate seat; Robert Hannegan had made use of his influence in Catholic circles.

Truman reciprocated for the support four years later when he was offered the office of DNC chairman by President Franklin D. Roosevelt , but renounced it and proposed in his place Hannegan, which Roosevelt accepted. Hannegan, in turn, campaigned for Truman to be a candidate for the post of vice president in the 1944 presidential election . Shortly before the Democratic National Convention this year there was a now famous correspondence between Roosevelt and Hannegan in which the president said he would be happy with either Truman or the judge at the Supreme Court , William O. Douglas , the choice in attack to take. When Hannegan delivered this letter at the convention, Douglas' supporters suspected that the chairman had reversed the order of the two names mentioned to make it look like Truman was Roosevelt's first choice. However, later investigations revealed that Truman had actually been named first in the letter.

Despite being in poor health throughout his tenure as DNC chairman, he did everything he could to prevent Republican candidate Thomas E. Dewey from winning the presidential election in 1944 . He campaigned for a liberal party platform and was seen as a supporter of the trade unions . Dewey ultimately received 46 percent of the vote.

In 1945 Hannegan was appointed Postmaster General to succeed Frank C. Walker . This was his second public office after he had been head of the IRS from October 1943 to January 1944 . The following year he resigned as chairman of the Democratic National Committee after the Democrats' losses in the congressional elections; he used his continued influence in the party, however, to stand up for President Truman afterwards. Hannegan played a major role in Truman's surprising victory in the 1948 presidential election .

After the political career

After he left the post of post office secretary to Jesse M. Donaldson in 1947 , Hannegan and his business partner Fred Saigh owned the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team . A few months after selling his stake in Saigh, Robert Hannegan died of complications from heart disease in October 1949. He is buried next to his wife Erma in Calvary Cemetery in St. Louis.

Web links

• Robert E. Hannegan in the database of Find a Grave (English)
• Robert E. Hannegan in the Miller Center of Public Affairs of the University of Virginia (English)
• Biography with photo in the Truman Library