Almost President: John W. Davis
As 2023 begins, and candidates for next year's presidential election start to ramp up their campaigns, this month we'll look at 28 people (27 men and 1 woman) who "almost" became President of the United State. The criteria we'll be using will be the difference in electoral college votes between them and the ultimate winner. The margins of victory for these 28 people range from 246 to 0, and we'll count them down from farthest to closest. Today we'll begin with John W. Davis, who ran as the Democratic candidate for President in 1924 against Calvin Coolidge.
Davis is largely unknown these days, and is often remembered more for his distinguished career as a lawyer than for his political career. He was a one-term Congressman from West Virginia, and is the answer to this trivia question: Who was the candidate nominated for President by one of the two major political parties at the longest nominating convention ever held in the United States?
John William Davis was born on April 13, 1873 in Clarksburg, West Virginia. His father, John James Davis, attended Lexington Law School (the school was later renamed the Washington and Lee University School of Law) and practiced law in Clarksburg. The elder Davis was a delegate in the Virginia General Assembly, and after the northwestern portion of Virginia broke away from the rest of Virginia in 1863 and formed West Virginia, and was elected to the new state's House of Delegates and later to the United States House of Representatives. John W.'s mother Anna Kennedy was from Baltimore and came from a prominent Quaker family. He was home schooled by his mother until age 10, and excelled scholastically. Like his father, he attended Washington and Lee University, and graduated in 1892 with a major in Latin. He became a teacher in Charles Town, West Virginia, and ended up later marrying one of his students, 19 year old Julia McDonald, daughter of the school's headmaster.
He returned to Clarksburg and apprenticed at his father's law practice. Davis graduated with a law degree from Washington and Lee University School of Law in 1895 and was elected Law Class Orator. After graduation, Davis received his law license and joined his father in practice in Clarksburg. They called their partnership Davis and Davis, Attorneys at Law. Even before completing his first year of practice, he served as an assistant professor at Washington & Lee Law School, commencing in the fall of 1896. Davis became the third member of the law school faculty. He served in this role only for one year.
He married Julia on June 20, 1899, but they were married for just over a year. Julia died on August 17, 1900. They had one daughter together, also named Julia. Davis remarried on January 2, 1912, to Ellen G. Bassel. Davis was also the cousin and the adoptive father of Cyrus Vance, who later served as Secretary of State under President Jimmy Carter. Davis's daughter Julia was one of the first two female journalists hired by the Associated Press in 1926. Her husband William had the distinction of being one of the survivors on the Lusitania, a US luxury liner that was sunk by a German submarine in 1915.
Davis acquired much of his father's political beliefs. He was opposed to women's suffrage, Federal child-labor laws and anti-lynching legislation. He supported the poll tax and he maintained his father's staunch allegiance to the Democratic Party. He represented his state of West Virginia in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1911 to 1913, where he was one of the authors of the Clayton Antitrust Act. Davis also served as one of the impeachment managers in the successful impeachment trial of Judge Robert W. Archbald. He served as U.S. Solicitor General from 1913 to 1918.
President Woodrow Wilson appointed Davis as ambassador to Great Britain from 1918 to 1921, and Davis was a strong supporter of Wilson's. He advocated in London for the League of Nations, but was disappointed by Wilson's mismanagement of the treaty ratification and by Republican isolationism and opposition to the League.
Davis was a candidate for the Democratic nomination for President in both 1920 and 1924. His friend and law partner Frank Polk managed his campaign at the 1924 Democratic National Convention. The 1924 convention was the longest convention to select a candidate for president held by a major political party. The Democrats needed 103 ballots to nominate John W. Davis as their candidate to challenge Republican incumbent Calvin Coolidge for the presidency. The fascinating story of this ultra-marathon political event is ably told in Robert K. Murray's 1976 book The 103rd Ballot: The Incredible Story of the Disastrous Democratic Convention of 1924 (reviewed here in this community). The convention is a classic study in how a contentious nominating contest can badly injure a party as it heads into the election.
Davis won the nomination in 1924 as a compromise candidate on the one hundred and third ballot, after a stubborn battle between Wilson's Treasury Secretary (and also his son-in-law) William Gibbs McAdoo and New York Governor Al Smith failed to produce a winner. Davis's denunciation of the Ku Klux Klan and prior defense of black voting rights as Solicitor General under Wilson cost him votes in the South and among conservative Democrats elsewhere. He lost in a landslide to Calvin Coolidge, who did not leave the White House to campaign. The electoral college result was 382 for Coolidge and 136 for Davis. He only received 28.8% of the popular vote.
Davis remained politically active despite the loss, but he never ran for elected office again. He was a member of the National Advisory Council of the Crusaders, an influential organization that called for the repeal of prohibition. He was the founding President of the Council on Foreign Relations, formed in 1921, Chairman of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and a trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation from 1922 to 1939. Davis also served as a delegate from New York to the 1928 and 1932 Democratic National Conventions. He campaigned on behalf of Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1932 presidential election but was never very close with Roosevelt. After Roosevelt took office, Davis turned against the New Deal and joined with Al Smith and other anti-New Deal Democrats in forming the American Liberty League. He changed political allegiances and supported the Republican presidential candidate in the 1936, 1940, and 1944 elections.
Davis was implicated by retired Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler in the Business Plot (this incident was discussed in an earlier entry in this series, found here). This was an alleged political conspiracy in 1933 to overthrow President Roosevelt. In testimony before the McCormack-Dickstein Committee, whose deliberations began on November 20, 1934, Butler implicated Davis as one of the plotters. Davis was not called before the committee because the committee considered Butler's accusation to be hearsay, since her had not actually met with Davis.
In 1949, Davis testified as a character witness for Alger Hiss during his trials. Davis was one of the most prominent and successful lawyers of the 20th century, arguing 140 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. From 1931 to 1933, Davis also served as president of the New York City Bar Association. In 1933, Davis served as legal counsel for the financier J.P. Morgan, Jr. and his companies during the Senate investigation into private banking and the causes of the recent Great Depression. His most famous cases included Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer in May 1952, (when the Court ruled on President Harry Truman's seizure of the nation's steel plants).
His final appearance before the Supreme Court, in which he unsuccessfully defended the "separate but equal" doctrine in Briggs v. Elliott, a companion case to Brown v. Board of Education. Davis, as a defender of racial segregation and state control of education, After the Supreme Court unanimously ruled against his client's position, it is said that he returned his legal fee that he had received from South Carolina.
Davis practiced law in New York City until his death in Charleston, South Carolina, at the age of 81. He is interred at Locust Valley Cemetery in Locust Valley, New York. In the 1991 television film "Separate but Equal", a dramatization of the Brown case, Davis was portrayed by the famed actor Burt Lancaster in his final film role.
Davis is largely unknown these days, and is often remembered more for his distinguished career as a lawyer than for his political career. He was a one-term Congressman from West Virginia, and is the answer to this trivia question: Who was the candidate nominated for President by one of the two major political parties at the longest nominating convention ever held in the United States?
John William Davis was born on April 13, 1873 in Clarksburg, West Virginia. His father, John James Davis, attended Lexington Law School (the school was later renamed the Washington and Lee University School of Law) and practiced law in Clarksburg. The elder Davis was a delegate in the Virginia General Assembly, and after the northwestern portion of Virginia broke away from the rest of Virginia in 1863 and formed West Virginia, and was elected to the new state's House of Delegates and later to the United States House of Representatives. John W.'s mother Anna Kennedy was from Baltimore and came from a prominent Quaker family. He was home schooled by his mother until age 10, and excelled scholastically. Like his father, he attended Washington and Lee University, and graduated in 1892 with a major in Latin. He became a teacher in Charles Town, West Virginia, and ended up later marrying one of his students, 19 year old Julia McDonald, daughter of the school's headmaster.
He returned to Clarksburg and apprenticed at his father's law practice. Davis graduated with a law degree from Washington and Lee University School of Law in 1895 and was elected Law Class Orator. After graduation, Davis received his law license and joined his father in practice in Clarksburg. They called their partnership Davis and Davis, Attorneys at Law. Even before completing his first year of practice, he served as an assistant professor at Washington & Lee Law School, commencing in the fall of 1896. Davis became the third member of the law school faculty. He served in this role only for one year.
He married Julia on June 20, 1899, but they were married for just over a year. Julia died on August 17, 1900. They had one daughter together, also named Julia. Davis remarried on January 2, 1912, to Ellen G. Bassel. Davis was also the cousin and the adoptive father of Cyrus Vance, who later served as Secretary of State under President Jimmy Carter. Davis's daughter Julia was one of the first two female journalists hired by the Associated Press in 1926. Her husband William had the distinction of being one of the survivors on the Lusitania, a US luxury liner that was sunk by a German submarine in 1915.
Davis acquired much of his father's political beliefs. He was opposed to women's suffrage, Federal child-labor laws and anti-lynching legislation. He supported the poll tax and he maintained his father's staunch allegiance to the Democratic Party. He represented his state of West Virginia in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1911 to 1913, where he was one of the authors of the Clayton Antitrust Act. Davis also served as one of the impeachment managers in the successful impeachment trial of Judge Robert W. Archbald. He served as U.S. Solicitor General from 1913 to 1918.
President Woodrow Wilson appointed Davis as ambassador to Great Britain from 1918 to 1921, and Davis was a strong supporter of Wilson's. He advocated in London for the League of Nations, but was disappointed by Wilson's mismanagement of the treaty ratification and by Republican isolationism and opposition to the League.
Davis was a candidate for the Democratic nomination for President in both 1920 and 1924. His friend and law partner Frank Polk managed his campaign at the 1924 Democratic National Convention. The 1924 convention was the longest convention to select a candidate for president held by a major political party. The Democrats needed 103 ballots to nominate John W. Davis as their candidate to challenge Republican incumbent Calvin Coolidge for the presidency. The fascinating story of this ultra-marathon political event is ably told in Robert K. Murray's 1976 book The 103rd Ballot: The Incredible Story of the Disastrous Democratic Convention of 1924 (reviewed here in this community). The convention is a classic study in how a contentious nominating contest can badly injure a party as it heads into the election.
Davis won the nomination in 1924 as a compromise candidate on the one hundred and third ballot, after a stubborn battle between Wilson's Treasury Secretary (and also his son-in-law) William Gibbs McAdoo and New York Governor Al Smith failed to produce a winner. Davis's denunciation of the Ku Klux Klan and prior defense of black voting rights as Solicitor General under Wilson cost him votes in the South and among conservative Democrats elsewhere. He lost in a landslide to Calvin Coolidge, who did not leave the White House to campaign. The electoral college result was 382 for Coolidge and 136 for Davis. He only received 28.8% of the popular vote.
Davis remained politically active despite the loss, but he never ran for elected office again. He was a member of the National Advisory Council of the Crusaders, an influential organization that called for the repeal of prohibition. He was the founding President of the Council on Foreign Relations, formed in 1921, Chairman of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and a trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation from 1922 to 1939. Davis also served as a delegate from New York to the 1928 and 1932 Democratic National Conventions. He campaigned on behalf of Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1932 presidential election but was never very close with Roosevelt. After Roosevelt took office, Davis turned against the New Deal and joined with Al Smith and other anti-New Deal Democrats in forming the American Liberty League. He changed political allegiances and supported the Republican presidential candidate in the 1936, 1940, and 1944 elections.
Davis was implicated by retired Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler in the Business Plot (this incident was discussed in an earlier entry in this series, found here). This was an alleged political conspiracy in 1933 to overthrow President Roosevelt. In testimony before the McCormack-Dickstein Committee, whose deliberations began on November 20, 1934, Butler implicated Davis as one of the plotters. Davis was not called before the committee because the committee considered Butler's accusation to be hearsay, since her had not actually met with Davis.
In 1949, Davis testified as a character witness for Alger Hiss during his trials. Davis was one of the most prominent and successful lawyers of the 20th century, arguing 140 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. From 1931 to 1933, Davis also served as president of the New York City Bar Association. In 1933, Davis served as legal counsel for the financier J.P. Morgan, Jr. and his companies during the Senate investigation into private banking and the causes of the recent Great Depression. His most famous cases included Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer in May 1952, (when the Court ruled on President Harry Truman's seizure of the nation's steel plants).
His final appearance before the Supreme Court, in which he unsuccessfully defended the "separate but equal" doctrine in Briggs v. Elliott, a companion case to Brown v. Board of Education. Davis, as a defender of racial segregation and state control of education, After the Supreme Court unanimously ruled against his client's position, it is said that he returned his legal fee that he had received from South Carolina.
Davis practiced law in New York City until his death in Charleston, South Carolina, at the age of 81. He is interred at Locust Valley Cemetery in Locust Valley, New York. In the 1991 television film "Separate but Equal", a dramatization of the Brown case, Davis was portrayed by the famed actor Burt Lancaster in his final film role.