The Purpose and Powers of the Senate, Part LXXXV: “Our Rather Irrational Action”

            When, on March 27^th, 1962, the Senate finally arrived at a formal consideration of Spessard Holland’s anti-poll-tax amendment after enduring two weeks of pseudo-filibuster by a gang of Holland’s fellow Southern Democrats, the senior senator from Florida had more than a few things to get off his chest. For two weeks he had patiently borne the incessant prattle of men who would normally have counted him as an ally, listening calmly and cooly as they insisted without proof that his efforts were all in vain, that his methods were out of order, and that the problem he was trying to solve wasn’t really a problem at all. On occasion, he would interject – mostly to provide the same increasingly wearied clarification of fact – but for the most part, he allowed his opponents to talk to their heart’s content. By March 27^th, however, Holland was through with listening. He had permitted his fellow Southerners to pour out their resentment at his efforts without interruption and stood by as his various allies rose to the defense of what was arguably his life’s work. But now that the Senate had formally agreed to hear his proposal, the time had at long last come for the gentleman from Florida to make his case. Whether he had waited simply out of a sense of propriety – preferring to discuss his proposed amendment after the appropriate motion had been adopted – or because he wished to take stock of all of his opponents’ various counterpoints before beginning to dismantle them, the effect was ultimately the same. This is all to say that, on the 27^th, Spessard Holland put on a clinic.

            To begin with, Holland addressed himself to his opponents’ hand wringing over his supposed disregard for Senate procedure. As custom dictated that proposed amendments had to be submitted to, and approved by, the Senate Committee on the Judiciary before being brought to the floor for a vote, a number of the senators who took issue with Holland’s proposal avowed that his attempt to circumvent this process was fundamentally improper and represented a threat to the long-term health of the upper chamber of Congress. In response to this criticism, the senator from Florida keenly asserted that the reverse was actually the case. That is to say, he wasn’t actively harming the Senate by threatening the authority of the Judiciary Committee. Rather, he was saving the Senate by circumventing the efforts of the obstructionists in control of the same. To this end, he observed that,

Some comment has been made to the effect that we are destroying the jurisdiction of one of our ablest committees, the Committee on the Judiciary, in taking up this measure as we are. I want it made very clear that not only are we not destroying that jurisdiction, but that for 14 long years I have been invoking that jurisdiction, and that there have been five thorough, detailed hearings upon this proposal, the records of which are printed and are available now to any Senator who may wish to read them, and on four occasions there have been recommendations from the subcommittees which handled these hearings to the full committee that the measure be reported to the Senate. However, the measure has never been reported to the Senate.

Holland seemed to want to make clear that he was not a radical by nature. His instinct had always been to go through the proper channels and observe the established procedures. And so he had done while pursuing a federal ban on the poll tax. In this case, however, the established procedure had become a trap. In spite of submitting and resubmitting his proposal to the Judiciary Committee over the course of fourteen years – and in spite of the relevant subcommittee holding numerous hearings and publishing a number of favourable reports – the proposed amendment in question had yet to be sent to the Senate floor. Clearly, something or someone was actively stopping the Judiciary Committee from properly performing its essential function. Bearing this in mind, it was only sensible for Holland and his cosponsors – within the bounds of propriety, of course – to take matters into their own hands.

            Certainly, Holland wasn’t of the opinion that the Judiciary Committee should be ignored as a matter of course. Nor did he feel that his desire, in this instance, to circumvent the same represented any kind of imposition upon the authority of one of the most venerable organs of the United States Senate. It was just that, as far as Holland and his cosponsors were concerned,     

The conditions in which we found ourselves were such that the joinder of 68 Senators, more than enough to sustain this or any other constitutional amendment, had not brought forth a report or even a report without recommendation which would bring the measure to the floor of the Senate. So when we come to the point where the inaction of a great committee has resulted in such a situation as this for 14 years; and when we now have an ample number of Senators as cosponsors of this measure to assure its submission to the States, so far as the Senate is concerned, it is a protection of the rights of Senators and a protection of the rights of the Senate itself to bring up the matter in any way that is available, from a strict parliamentary standpoint, and that is what we have done here.

The Judiciary Committee was important. Its authority was worth respecting. But it was not more important or more worthy of respect than the Senate itself. When sixty-eight senators signaled their support for a given measure, but a single Senate committee prevented them voting on the same, clearly something was amiss. And it was not just a majority that favoured the Holland amendment, but a two-thirds majority. That was enough – at the time – to break a filibuster, confirm a cabinet nominee, ratify a treaty, or send a constitutional amendment to the states. Did it make any sense at all that a single committee – or perhaps just the chair of a single committee – should have been able to deny such an overwhelming majority from making manifest its will? Spessard Holland certainly did not think so and acted appropriately.

            As to the argument – put forward frequently by a number of Southern Democrats during the preceding two weeks of debate – that Holland and his allies were carrying out the will of pro-civil rights interest groups rather than working on behalf of the welfare of the American people, Holland likewise had quite a bit to say. “There are persons [,]” he said,

Who think we are interested only in white voters, and there are persons who think we are interested only in Negro voters. So far as I am concerned, I think a citizen is entitled to vote for his President, his Vice President, his Senators, and his Representatives, regardless of what may be the law of the State with reference to local elections. I think the results accomplished in our State, where in 1960 1,540,000-plus voted, indicate rather conclusively the beneficent nature of what Florida has done.

Certain of Holland’s fellow Democrats, to be sure, would violently disagree with this particular view of things. Indeed, they had done so numerous times already. As far as these Southern senators were concerned, it was no business of anyone living in any state outside of their own what went on there in terms of the law and its enforcement. Every state was sovereign, they said, and answerable only to its citizens. But while Holland, in almost any other instance, would have heartily agreed, in this case he could not help but beg to differ.

            Consider, the Floridian asked of his fellow senators, the results of the recent Election of 1960 in the State of Mississippi. “The winning ticket of electors [,]” he said, referring to that of the Democratic Party,

Polled 116,000 votes, just under 10 percent of the total. As I have just remarked, the total vote cast was 25 percent. How anyone can feel that that was a representative expression of the people of that good State, and how anyone can feel that other States and other people everywhere in the Nation do not have a stake and a proper interest in that sort of situation, I do not see. Personally, I have a very deep interest in seeing that representative expressions are made in elections for national officers, whether it be in my own city, my county, my State, or any other State, by as full participation of the citizens as can be had, because I believe in the voice of the people. I decry any effort to confine the voice that is heard at elections to a much smaller segment of the citizens than that which truthfully represents the whole people.

In presenting this argument, Holland effectively reiterated the essential premise of American federalism under the auspices of the Constitution. That is to say, he asserted the existence of dual layers of sovereignty existing on roughly co-equal terms. Within this model, the states are each sovereign and self-governing entities and thus fully entitled to all of the accustomed powers and responsibilities thereof. And each of these sovereign states derives said powers and responsibilities from the constituent citizens residing therein. But these same constituents, in addition to being citizens of a given state, are also citizens of the United States of America. And that entity, which is also sovereign and self-governing, has powers and responsibilities separate from those of the states and is entitled to exercise the same outside of state interference.

In consequence, if a majority of the citizens of the United States – through the medium of their elected representatives – express their collective intention to ensure that federal electoral laws across the country are structured and applied in a fair, equitable, and consistent manner, it makes no difference if a handful of states raise objections. In the first place, the outcomes of federal elections affect the residents of more than just a handful of states, thereby arguably placing the regulation of federal election law more in the federal sphere than in that of the states. And also, unless the relevant states amount to a majority of the overall population, denying the majority’s right to make manifest its will would place a potentially dangerous amount of power in the hands of the minority. Again, this could hardly be said to constitute a novel line of reasoning. Federalism and majority rule are at the heart of the American understanding of republican government. But given the circumstances, it’s not so hard to understand why Senator Holland felt the need to restate their importance as he did. His opponents were acting in a way that essentially defied how the United States was designed to function. Individual states are not supposed to be able to countermand the will of an overwhelming national majority to see accomplished an entirely constitutional objective. And for that matter, said national majority is not supposed to turn a blind eye when it perceives an injustice taking place, even if said injustice is only occurring in a few states. Whether Alabaman or Mississippian, New Yorker or Californian, Americans of all stripes have a vested interest in looking out for one another and in ensuring that the same rights and privileges are enjoyed by all.

Operating from within this very basic understanding of American federalism, Holland’s tone was very much one of neighbourly concern. “How can we feel that that is a representative expression?” he lamented of the cited election results.  

Should not other States be deeply concerned about expressions from my State, or from the State so ably represented by the present Presiding Officer, the Senator from Illinois [Mr. Douglas], or from every other State, as representative of the thought of the people of those States? How else may we be satisfied that righteous verdicts are being reached?

Certainly, in some very important ways, the states were – and are – legally distinct and sovereign entities upon which neither the federal government nor the governments of their fellow states can rightly exert their will. But in other ways – equally real and important – there exists a single country called “The United States of America” whose citizens are both bound and empowered to be responsible for one another. And so while it may have been fair in some cases to say – as men like J. Lister Hill and James Eastland were fond of saying – that it was legally beyond the remit of the people and government of the state of Florida, say, or New York, or Massachusetts to attempt to question or alter the legal status of the citizens of any other state, it was also perfectly acceptable – or indeed eminently desirable – for the inhabitants of one part of the American republic to express concern for, and attempt to render aid to, the inhabitants of another part.

            This, Holland avowed, was all that he was trying to do. Offer aid, that is, to some of his fellow citizens. And while certain of his colleagues in the Senate might have felt compelled to make a personal objection, none of them could rightly claim that the senior senator from Florida was acting either unconstitutionally or with anything less than the best interests of the Senate at heart. “I have done my level best [,]” he explained,

In every Congress to bring it out of committee and before the Senate in the regular way; and I have no apology whatever to make for bringing it up at this time, in this way, with the gracious concurrence of both the majority leader and the minority leader. When the time comes that the will of the Senate can be thwarted, instead of furthered, by the inaction in a committee for 13 years, it occurs to me that the Senate then has a right to act, particularly when it may act only by two-thirds vote of its membership, indicating the breadth of the support the measure enjoys.

In furtherance of his cause, Holland then described a series of letters and wires he had received from people living in Mississippi and Alabama who had been prevented from voting because of the poll tax laws then in force in their states. These people, he avowed, were not necessarily prevented from voting because they could not afford to pay said tax, but because the systems of collection created issues for them which they found they could not ultimately overcome. And if the senators from those states were adamant in their refusal to offer any kind of assistance, then Holland would take it upon himself to do so on their behalf.

            As if to drive home the patent absurdity of the situation that Holland had but moments before lamented, the Chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution, one Estes Kefauver (1903-1963), then took the floor to commend Senator Holland on his efforts thus far. “I believe the committee system has served its legitimate purpose several times on this particular subject [,]” he began.

No useful purpose would be served by deferring action on this amendment. The hearings held by the subcommittee in the present and past Congresses have been widely distributed and many Members of the Congress and the public have made use of them. The issue is a clear and straightforward one. It has been thoroughly heard and discussed and debated more than enough over the past 12 years. I, therefore, strongly urge my colleagues to join me in voting in favor of the amendment proposed by the distinguished Senator from Florida.

For context, let it be recalled that the aforementioned Subcommittee on the Constitution was specifically a subcommittee of the Committee on the Judiciary. Which is to say that Kefauver – a Tennessee Democrat – was also a member of the Judiciary Committee, the chair of which was James Eastland. Bearing this fact in mind, Kefauver’s encouragement of Holland’s efforts would seem to take on an added significance. Not only was he arguing – as the leader of the body responsible for evaluating such things – that Holland’s proposed constitutional amendment was both sound and necessary, but he was doing so in defiance of the chair of the larger committee on which he sat. A member of the Judiciary Committee, he was in effect telling Holland to go ahead with his plan to circumvent the Judiciary Committee. This was quite far from normal procedure. But then again, so was keeping a proposed constitutional amendment from reaching the Senate floor for thirteen years in spite of numerous favourable reports from the relevant subcommittee.

            Eager, it seemed, to add strangeness to strangeness, Richard Russell chose this point in the debate to introduce the point of order he and his colleagues had threatened to bring to the Senate’s attention over a week prior on March 15^th. “I take the position [,]” he said,

That the Constitution itself prescribes the method by which it may be amended, and that the pending proposal does not appear in the Constitution as a means whereby a proposed constitutional amendment may be submitted to the several States. I further submit that in the 173 years since the Constitution of the United States was first ratified and approved, no attempt whatever has ever been made to so distort the constitutional process. This is the first time in 173 years that an effort has been made to use a piece of proposed general legislation as a vehicle for amending the Constitution of the United States and submitting that amendment to the several States.

In point of fact, Russell was not wrong. It was true that the text of the Constitution did not explicitly justify Holland’s use of a joint resolution as a vehicle for a proposed amendment. Nor was there any precedent – “In the 173 years since the Constitution of the United States was first ratified and approved” – for the specific procedural “switcheroo” that Senator Holland was attempting. But whereas Holland did not take it as a given that these facts equated to a functional disqualification of his efforts, Russell and his cohorts very much did. “There is nothing in the rules of the Senate,” the Georgian continued, “there is nothing in any statute to be found anywhere in the statute books, and there is not a line in the Constitution of the United States that would justify the procedure which is undertaken here, today. I submit, Mr. President, that it is wholly unconstitutional.”

            The only problem with this position, of course, is that it was itself unjustified by any standing precedents, rules, or procedures. The fact that a particular legislative procedure is not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution does not necessarily make it unconstitutional. The fact that there is no precedent for a particular parliamentary manoeuvre does not necessarily make it invalid or functionally null. And the fact that the rules of the Senate do not give sanction to a particular congressional process does not necessarily make it against the rules of the Senate. Holland’s chosen approach was novel – he would not have argued otherwise – but that did not automatically mean that it was improper or impermissible. It would have been different, of course, if Russell could point to an explicit contradiction between what the senior senator from Florida was attempting and the specific terms of the Constitution. But he quite simply could not. Indeed – and though he had previously intimated otherwise – Russell couldn’t even argue that Holland was violating the rules of the Senate. He admitted as much when asked to clarify precisely which of the Senate explicit regulations Holland was supposed to have violated. “I did not say any rule of the Senate is violated by it [,]” Russell responded.

I said the Constitution is violated by it. The Senate itself has never dealt with this matter. Even in its wildest dreams, the Senate could never imagine that any resort would be made to such an unorthodox procedure as this one, in order to get such a matter as this before the Senate. Therefore, the Senate did not adopt a rule in that connection.

            Notwithstanding his and his cohorts’ prior claim to have had the defeat of Holland’s proposed amendment well in hand, it was at this point that Russell’s confidence began to waver. Heretofore unswervingly confident, the Georgian began to grow increasingly strident and embittered. Having been forced to admit that Holland was in fact not in danger of breaking any Senate rules, Russell hastened to add that this should not have been the end of the matter.  “I think that in order to justify our positions,” he noted sourly,

And our rather irrational action, we might follow rule XL—I believe we now have 40 Senate rules—by a rule XLI, stating about as follows: "Provided, That none of these rules shall be considered to apply in any case in which an organization of professional do-gooders claiming a membership of a million voters shall declare that any resolution, motion, legislation, or other proposal involves a question of minority rights. In all such cases, neither any rule, precedent, law, nor constitutional provision shall be binding or shall be cited in an effort to restrain the Senate from an immediate vote or the Presiding Officer from declaring all points of order out of order.

Almost two weeks prior, the Southern opponents of Holland’s amendment had been crowing that because the procedure he was endeavouring to follow required the unanimous consent of the Senate – and because they were in no way inclined to give their consent – the thing was as good as dead. And now, here was Richard Russell essentially admitting defeat while complaining that as long as the Senate was going to persist in making things up as it went, it might as well give itself written permission to do so.

            As ever a model of patience and composure, Spessard Holland ignored his fellow Southerner’s rather petulant outburst and instead addressed himself entirely to the logical basis of the latter’s argument. “The rule laid down in article V of the Constitution does not go so far as to provide what vehicle shall be used by Congress [,]” he stated accordingly.

It simply says Congress, by two-thirds vote in both Houses, may accept the amendment. My information and belief is that there is no requirement at all as to the vehicle or resolution number, so long as the body of the resolution is there. It describes definitely that it must be approved by two-thirds of the Members of each House before it can be submitted to the several States. There is no doubt at all in my mind that that is the situation.

Naturally, Russell was disinclined to budge. He and his fellow obstructionists had not held up the business of the Senate for almost two weeks just to completely cave in when the going got tough. “This proposal to amend a regular legislative proposal,” he replied,

Which requires a majority vote and which would go to the President for his approval or disapproval, by a constitutional amendment, which requires a two-thirds vote and which would not go to the President for his approval or disapproval, is wholly unconstitutional and that it should be so declared, and that this matter should be brought up in a way in keeping with the Constitution of the United States.

            So, perhaps it would not be fair to say that Russell had already admitted defeat. He had granted, upon being pressed, that Holland’s initiative did not violate any of the Senate’s rules as written, and seemed to tacitly acknowledge that, regardless of any precedents or regulations to the contrary, the Senate was going to do whatever the majority commanded. But he wasn’t prepared to concede that the means by which Spessard Holland was attempting to amend the Constitution were themselves constitutional. This, in the end, is what his point of order sought to establish—whether it was constitutional to submit an amendment for the approval of the Senate by way of a joint resolution of the same. Fortunately for all concerned – with the notable exception of Russell and his fellow obstructionists – there was a procedure in place for adjudicating the constitutionality of motions before the Senate. Accordingly, Vice-President Johnson – in his capacity as presiding officer – declared that the precedents of the Senate held that such a question could only be settled by resorting to a roll call vote. The yeas and nays were thus ordered, and Russell’s point of order was subsequently tabled – suspended, that is to say – by a margin of 58-34. The finding, in essence, was that Russell’s belief in the unconstitutionality of Holland’s plan was not reason enough to keep said plan from being enacted.

The Purpose and Powers of the Senate, Part LXXXIV: “Bulldozers”

            By now, it should be exceptionally clear what kind of defence the various segregationist senators were attempting to mount as the discussion concerning Spessard Holland’s proposed anti-poll-tax amendment neared its destined conclusion in the spring of 1962. There was, as aforementioned, no chance that the opponents of the measure could stage a successful filibuster. Holland had already accrued enough co-sponsors to ensure that the proposed amendment would enjoy the requisite two-thirds support once submitted to the floor for a vote. And while Mississippi Senator James Eastland and his cohorts had managed to keep previous versions of Holland’s proposal from being reported out by the Judiciary Committee – and in this instance had likewise seemingly kept the measure bottled up – the tactical assistance of Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield ensured that Holland’s amendment would indeed get a floor vote whether approved by the Judiciary Committee or not. The segregationists, in consequence, were fighting a losing battle. They could not have but known this – they could count as well as anyone – but soldiered on all the same. Perhaps they held out some feeble hope that sufficient delay would allow them to convert just enough of Holland’s co-sponsors to make a difference. Perhaps they counted on their fellow Southern Democrat not going so far as to invoke cloture and effectively slam the door in their faces. Whatever their strategy, their approach was a simple one. All they had to do – all that they could do – was keep talking.

And so they did. Not just for hours on end, but for days. The Senate session of March 16^th concluded – after memorably witnessing James Eastland compare the proposed anti-poll-tax amendment with Adolf Hitler’s attempt to “Crush the liberties of the German people” by first federalizing “the German Government and [destroying] the powers of the States” – with Mississippi Senator John C. Stennis (1901-1995) asserting that voting was a privilege granted by the states rather than a right guaranteed by the Constitution. Senator Holland responded by asking for a recess until March 19^th. By the end of that session, Stennis had further called the pending joint resolution “a legal monstrosity” and avowed that voting “Is a privilege, that one must do something to earn” while Holland had opined that the Framers perhaps knew less about “The problems of today than do the men who sit now in the Senate and the House of Representatives.” Other Southern Democrats had joined the chorus of opposition as well. South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond (1902-2003) gave a disquisition on the dangers of excessive conformity. Virginia Senator Harry F. Byrd (1887-1966) spoke at length about the socio-economic hardiness of his home state notwithstanding the existence of a poll tax. But in the end, nothing was accomplished. Holland would not back down, and neither would his increasingly long-winded opponents. And so, the speechifying went on through the session of the 20^th. And the 21st. And the 22^nd, 23^rd, 24^th, and 26^th. Was it a filibuster? More or less. It was a filibuster in everything but name, let us say. A soft filibuster, permitted to go on because no one was willing to go so far as to invoke cloture even though the parties whose initiative was being blocked most definitely had the votes to do so.

Of the events leading up to the final approval of Holland’s aforementioned amendment on March 27^th, it will suffice to offer a few excerpts of some of the more memorable exchanges therein. On the same day – the 21^st – that Virginia Senator Absolom Willis Robertson (1887-1971) declared that it was incumbent upon the American people to conform to the, “fundamental principles of ethics, morality, and principles of government that were handed down to us by our forefathers and which have been tested by time [,]” Georgia Senator Richard Russell rather memorably avowed that the “cult of conformity” which he perceived to be behind the efforts of the burgeoning civil rights movement “is a greater danger than the dread missiles the Soviets are supposed to possess.” One wonders if the two of them even noticed that their respective arguments were ostensibly in conflict. And then, of course, there was Texas Senator John Tower’s warning of what the Holland amendment seemed to him to portend. “We may think that we could never have a totalitarian system in this country [,]” he said. “But I point out that Mr. Hitler came to power in a free election. It could happen here.” On the following day – the 22^nd – in the midst of extended orations on the parts of Southern senators Herman Talmadge (1913-2002), Allen J. Ellender (1890-1972), John Sparkman (1899-1985), and J. William Fulbright (1905-1995), New Yorkers Kenneth Keating and Jacob Javits both pointedly remarked upon the similarity to what the upper chamber was experiencing of the conventional definition of a filibuster. “A leading newspaper in New York has stated that a filibuster is building up on the floor of the Senate [,]” the latter accordingly observed, in which case,

The country ought to understand that a profound issue is involved, and that if cloture does ensue, there was a profound reason why cloture did ensue, and why such a move should be sustained, and why this may be the time to "shoot the cat." If this is the time chosen by those who oppose civil rights legislation to institute extended debate or a filibuster, then this is the time to deal with it and this is the time to end it, if we can.

But Senator Holland, as mentioned previously, had no interest in invoking cloture. It was his preference, as the author of the proposed amendment, to simply let its critics talk until they no longer had anything to say.

            And so it was, into the 23^rd, that the show went on. During that day’s session, Arkansas Senator John L. McClellan (1896-1977) repeated the common refrain of the chamber’s segregationist wing that even just discussing the issue of the poll tax was, “beneath the dignity of the Senate” while North Carolina Senator Sam Ervin (1896-1985) went so far as to declare that, “The statutes which impose the poll tax as a prerequisite for voting do not disfranchise anyone. The people who refuse to pay their poll tax disfranchise themselves.” In response to the latter claim – and doubtless also to the various other monologues which he had thus far been forced to sit through – Texas Senator Ralph Yarborough then veritably exploded. A progressive Democrat of the old school, Yarborough had far more in common ideologically with his Northern counterparts than he did with his fellow Southerners, and it was arguably only a matter of time before he had no choice but to vent his spleen. The resulting oration was nothing short of poetic. “There was a time when voting was considered a privilege [,]” the Texan began,

It was considered a privilege to vote," rather than a "right to vote." But that ancient time is past […] We are now in "the soaring sixties." As man reaches for the stars in space, so must he reach for the stars on earth: for stars of fairness and justice and for the dignity of the individual. The time has come to drop the word "privilege," meaning some governmental granted boon, and to substitute the word "right," insofar as the franchise is concerned […] Now is the time to expand the horizons of American liberty. Now is the time to remove from the necks, backs, and hands of our fellow citizens the shackles and yokes of governmental disfranchisement because of economic impoverishment. Let us strike off the bonds and free their hands, so that they can help write the people's verdict at the ballot box in the national elections.

To these righteously indignant words, Yarborough appended two eminently quotable phrases. “American citizenship [,]” he said, “should not come equipped with an arbitrary price tag, for it is priceless.” To this bon mot he further added that, “The way to the American ballot box should be a freeway, not a toll road.” Clearly, far more than Holland, Yarborough was what the Segregationist South most feared. Not only was he a progressive Democrat with conviction and talent to spare, but he was a Southerner who under no circumstances could be labelled an unknowing carpetbagger. 

            March 24^th, amidst all the rest, was comparatively uneventful. The Southern segregationists endeavored to continue holding court, though by this time they had been placed under a set of speech restrictions by the Majority Leader. On the topic of the amendment proposed by Spessard Holland, each senator was limited to only two complete speeches. And during the delivery of said speeches, each senator could only yield the floor for questions without bringing their oration to a close. The results were a moderately more focused set of bloviations on the part of the Holland amendment’s opponents, though digressions were still common in terms of specific subject matter. For example, in an attempt to dismiss the supposed urgency of any measure aimed at abolishing the poll tax, J. Lister Hill and James Eastland ended up engaging in a little byplay whereby they each lamented both the high levels of crime that then plagued certain neighborhoods of the nation’s capital and the tragedy that they believed would result from the federal government becoming involved in any form of national policing. And during that self-same byplay, they each rather memorably commented upon the quality of the man who was then the top law enforcement official in the country. “Is there any man in the United States who can speak with more intimate knowledge and with greater authority and one in whom people have greater confidence, than Mr. J. Edgar Hoover?” said Hill. “There is no one in this country who can speak with a greater knowledge [,]” Eastland agreed. “He is regarded as absolutely conscientious and sincere, a man in whom the people have implicit confidence.” In light of what are now known to be the essential facts of Hoover’s tenure as the Director of the FBI – the illegal wiretapping, burglaries, blackmail, and harassment campaigns – these statements would appear to have aged particularly poorly. They were very much in keeping with the times, of course. Circa 1962, Hoover remained – publicly, at least – the heroic guardian of American domestic tranquility. But they do rather stand out in the eyes of the modern observer as hopelessly disconnected from reality.  

            One might say the same of another comment made by James Eastland, this time in response to the persistent inquiries of California Senator Thomas Kuchel (1910-1994). Kuchel, a Republican, wanted to know if Eastland was aware that the platform of the Democratic Party going into the Election of 1960 contained a plank which stated that it was the party’s explicit policy to, “Support whatever action is necessary to eliminate literacy tests and the payment of poll taxes as requirements for voting.” When Eastland avowed that he had not read his party’s platform and so was forced to take Kuchel at his word, Kuchel then asked if Eastland was inclined to repudiate said platform in light of his own stated position on the poll tax. To this, the Mississippian gave an unknowingly profound reply. “I tell the distinguished Senator from California [,]” he said,

That I am a Senator of the United States, elected by the people of my State to the U.S. Senate; that my first allegiance is to my country, not to any political party; that no group of politicians representing special interests, and sitting in a smoke-filled room, can control my vote as a Senator of the United States; and God knows that if this country is ever destroyed, it will be destroyed when political conventions control the votes of Members of Congress. God forbid that such a thing would ever come about.

While the “special interests” to which Eastland was referring doubtless included the likes of the NAACP, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, one would be hard-pressed to read his words in 2023 and not immediately think of the myriad of organizations that presently make it their business to court the favour and support of members of Congress. Coal companies, oil companies, insurance companies, tobacco companies; modern Washington is awash in representatives of all of these concerns, not to mention the various social and political advocacy groups whose stated goals require them to work closely with public officials. Indeed, it would seem to be something of a given that all lawmakers necessarily have relationships with lobbyists and special interests. The lobbyists have the money, after all, and running for office is notoriously expensive. At the same time, while it is arguably true that the leadership of the Democratic and Republican parties now have less control over their membership than was previously the case, in Eastland’s time there remained strong connections between party leaders, regional notables, and rank and file public servants like himself. Did the Democratic National Convention control his vote in Congress? Not as such, no. But it would have been difficult to deny – in spite of how effortlessly Eastland did so – that there then existed a good deal of push and pull between the general membership of the Democratic Party and its national leadership, particularly as far as the topic of civil rights was concerned. Eastland may not have felt bound by his party’s official stance on certain issues, but this surely did not stop him from attempting to shape said stance, or from using his influence within the Southern wing of the party to secure concessions from Northern aspirants after the party’s highest nomination for office. “My first allegiance is to my country,” he said, “not to any political party [.]” Sour grapes, to be sure. Eastland was as likely to be loyal to the Democratic Party as he felt that the Democratic Party was inclined to be loyal to him. As of 1962, the party was officially in favor of civil rights reform. And so Eastland, correspondingly, was all patriotism and no partisanship.

The Senate did not meet again until March 26^th, the 25^th being a Sunday. By that point, the chamber had been debating the consideration – not the measure itself, mind you, but simply the prospect thereof – of Spessard Holland’s proposed anti-poll-tax amendment for the better part of two weeks. The chamber’s erstwhile cohort of Southern segregationists were doubtless elated by this fact, their combined efforts having thus staved off passage of a measure they roundly opposed in spite of the odds being firmly stacked against them. The measure’s sponsors, however, were somewhat less than enthused. Senator Holland, of course, maintained his usual equanimity. But Majority Leader Mike Mansfield was beginning to lose his patience. The repeated complaints of the aforementioned Southerners did not help in the slightest. When, for example, Mississippi Senator John C. Stennis had the audacity to declare that Holland and his supporters were attempting to “ram through a constitutional amendment by sheer force of numbers [,]” Mansfield let him have it. “I point out to Senators that we have been on this matter of taking up a joint resolution for over 2 weeks,” he declared,

And that, to the best of my knowledge […] nowhere will we find two greater bulldozers, perhaps I should say bulldoggers, on this particular proposition than the Senator from Mississippi [Mr. STENNIS] and the Senator from Alabama [Mr. HILL]. They have made life not miserable, but certainly uncomfortable. They have been tenacious, persevering, and on the floor of the Senate every minute that we have been in session over the past 2 weeks. I express the hope that we can get to the matter of taking up Senate Joint Resolution 29, having to do with Alexander Hamilton’s home, very shortly, because I wish to say that these two Senators are certainly holding my feet to the fire and I think also the feet of the Senate as a whole.

Given some of what Stennis and his colleagues had been saying during the aforementioned two-week interval, this was really a perfectly understandable reaction on the part of the Majority Leader. In light of the pressures then being faced by the United States of America, they’d lamented time and time again, it was downright irresponsible for the Senate to waste time discussing something as trivial as an electoral qualification that was only recognized in five of fifty states. But what had these same Southerners done but waste the Senate’s time?

            For two weeks – through speech after speech – a group of Southern Democrats turned what should have been a pro forma discussion about a constitutional amendment which already had more than enough support to secure passage into a pseudo-filibuster during which a legion of court cases, newspaper articles, and other such documents were laboriously read into the Record. These Southerners traded floor time back and forth by asking pointless questions of one another, asking and answering to their own satisfaction while the rest of the Senate was forced to sit, and watch, and listen. Did these dedicated obstructionists have any real chance of stopping Holland’s proposed amendment from eventually being approved by the requisite two-thirds majority? They did not, in fact. But still, they talked, and talked, and talked, as if their words would make any difference at all. And these same men, after two weeks of exhaling more hot air than a jet engine, had the audacity to accuse their opponents of wasting time? It was no wonder that, by the 26^th, Senator Mansfield had grown a bit testy. “I am sure the Senator understands my position,” he declared accordingly,

As I do his, and I only hope he will get off my back long enough to allow the Senate, after 2 weeks, I repeat, to get down to the pending proposal. The Senator from Mississippi has faced up to his responsibility far more effectively than I had anticipated. It is now the time, long past, in my opinion, for the Senate to face up to its responsibility.

In spite of the Majority Leader’s manifest determination to finally move things along, however, the Southern obstructionists in the Senate still had a final card to play. It was not a winning card, of course – as aforementioned, they’d lost before they even begun their little campaign – but one could nearly admire the sheer boldness of the attempt. It was the aforementioned Senator Stennis who made the first move. “From the investigation which the Senator from Mississippi has made,” he said,

And merely taking the information he has obtained on this question from Senators whose names appear on the resolution, he is fully satisfied that they did not understand the import or the origin of the measure when their names were placed on the proposed amendment.

So it seemed that, far from obstructing the business of the Senate, Stennis and his colleagues were actually attempting to save their fellow legislators from unknowingly committing a grievous error. Yes, some sixty-odd senators had agreed to cosponsor the proposed anti-poll-tax amendment, but many of them clearly did not know what they were agreeing to. Was it not the height of condescension for Stennis to suggest that a group of United States senators might have mistakenly cosponsored a proposed constitutional amendment? Was he not more or less declaring that these people were too hapless to be taken at their word? Of course not. He was merely offering them his assistance, as any friend and colleague would. Knowing each of them as he did, he was sure that they would not have put their name to such a measure as Holland’s unless they had been somehow misled into doing so. All that he was doing was helping them to see the light of truth.

            Stennis continued in this vein for some time, aided in no small part by Louisiana Senator Allen J. Ellender (1890-1972). Of the supporters of the proposed anti-poll-tax amendment, for example, the Mississippian went on to say that,

They have not shown that there is active support for it by the people throughout the Nation. Even though there has been large support for it here on the floor, there has not been shown an active interest and support of it by the people by and large. The informed people, or those who are merely casually informed, just have not been aroused to give the real support that ordinarily goes with a matter of grave importance as that of a constitutional amendment.

This would seem to have been a rather odd thing to say, given the circumstances. As a constitutional amendment, Holland’s proposal would require the approval of three-fourths of the state legislatures before it could be considered to have been ratified. And if, as Stennis avowed, the proposal simply didn’t enjoy “the real support that ordinarily goes with a matter of grave importance as that of a constitutional amendment [,]” then there was no chance that this would occur. So why, then, were Stennis and his Southern colleagues working so hard to defeat the proposed amendment on the floor of the Senate? If it truly lacked the “real support” that a constitutional amendment required to gain ratification, why not let the Senate approve the measure and leave it to its inevitable defeat in the states? The answer, to put it bluntly, is that Stennis was not being entirely truthful. In fact, he did not know what kind of support the proposed anti-poll-tax amendment enjoyed among the American people. That, or he did know, and desired to mislead certain of his fellow senators. Doubtless he hoped that enough of the measure’s sixty-odd cosponsors could be convinced that the public was not behind their efforts so as to render it a dead letter in the event that it reached the floor for a vote. A crude method, to be sure – what senator, in their right mind, would publicly back a proposed constitutional amendment without first taking the temperature of their constituents? – but hardly inexplicable.

            Ellender sought to second Stennis’s assertion by making a rather curious claim of his own. “There is no doubt about that,” he first avowed, in specific reference to the Mississippian’s statement cited above. “Notwithstanding that fact,” he then continued, “there are people in politics who wish to make a little hay while the sun shines, so that they can get the folks back home stirred up, so that they will vote for them.” Again, there was nothing particularly illogical in what Ellender was trying to accomplish. The only real hope that he and his Southern colleagues had to defeat the proposed anti-poll tax amendment was to detach as many co-sponsors as possible from the measure before it came to the floor for a vote. And if it took making certain of his fellow senators feel self-conscious by intimating that they were acting out of a desire to “whip up” public sentiment for the purpose of shoring up their own popularity rather than responding to popular pressure, Ellender was certainly not going to stay his hand. It was just that, coming from a white Southerner, it was a strange thing indeed to be accused of indulging in demagoguery. Since the end of the Civil War in 1865, the Southern wing of the Democratic Party had done little else but engage in a campaign of vile and persistent race-baiting, all for the purpose of first regaining and then reaffirming their accustomed monopoly on political power. Granted, at times Southern Democrats were as much representing popular opinion as they were actively seeking to shape it. But as the rise and fall of “fusion politics” in the late 19^th-century South would seem to make clear – during which Southern Democrats successfully executed a series of propaganda campaigns aimed at driving apart the coalition of poor Black and poor white voters who had succeeded, in some states, in upending the partisan status quo – they were perfectly willing and able to defy public sentiment when it suited them.

            Finally, in response to this rather hypocritical accusation on the part of Ellender, Stennis then chimed in with one last bit of dubious wisdom. “Is not that the basic reason why the Constitution,” he remarked to his colleague from Louisiana, “certainly in spirit as well as in fact, is a compact and, except under the most extreme conditions, politically sacred ground, so to speak, and should not be disturbed?” It was a rhetorical question, to be sure; a statement ending in a question mark. It was also patently and exceedingly untrue. While the Constitution absolutely represents the primary legal authority within the entire American system of government, to call it “politically sacred ground” would seem to be a tad hyperbolic. Not only had the Framers seen fit to include an amending formula along with the original text of the same, but said formula had thereafter been invoked fully twenty-three times as of 1963. The last two instances had even taken place within Stennis’s own term of service in the Senate. Granted, amending the Constitution was not an easy thing to do, as had been made abundantly clear to Spessard Holland over the course of his own career in Congress. But nor was it something that lawmakers shuddered to even contemplate. It was simply another tool in the legislator’s toolbox, and one which they employed as the situation seemed to demand. Bearing this in mind, Stennis’s further claim that the Constitution was not to be disturbed “except under the most extreme conditions” would likewise appear to be something of an exaggeration. The Reconstruction Amendments, as aforementioned, were certainly the product of dire circumstances, but one could hardly say the same of the 16^th, 18^th, or 20^th Amendments. “Extreme conditions” did not prompt Congress and the states to ban the sale of alcohol or lay term limits upon the office of President. Rather, the relevant amendments resulted from public pressure campaigns and basic political calculus. For Stennis to avow that only a crisis could give rise to an amendment was accordingly more than a little disingenuous. He had seen for himself that this was not the case.

            It was at this stage, thankfully, that a vote was finally called. Stennis, and Ellender, and their Southern colleagues had taken advantage of Holland’s good-natured determination not to invoke cloture for the last time during this debate. To be sure, there would go on to be further votes in the future. At this point, the Senate was only deciding whether or not to consider S.J. Res. 29, to say nothing of Holland’s motion to substitute his proposed amendment for the text thereof. But it was a step in the right direction. After two weeks of legislative paralysis, the Senate was finally working again. The final tally, once the yeas and nays had been called, was 62 to 15. But while Holland then immediately moved to make the aforementioned substitution, the day’s session came to a close before the matter could be resolved. March the 26^th, it seemed, was not to be the day upon which Spessard Holland’s career in the Senate reached its legislative culmination. No, that would have to wait until the fated day of March the 27^th.