Wayne Morse

Early life and career

Morse was born on October 20, 1900, in Madison, Wisconsin, home of his maternal grandparents, Myron and Flora White. Morse's parents, Wilbur F. Morse and Jessie Elnora Morse, farmed a 320-acre (130 ha) plot near Verona, a small community 11 miles (18 km) west-southwest of Madison. Morse grew up on this farm, where the family raised Devon cattle for beef, Percheron and Hackney horses, dairy cows, hogs, sheep, poultry, and feed crops for the animals. The family eventually included five children: Mabel, seven years older than Morse; twin brothers Harry and Grant, four years older; Morse; and Caryl, fourteen years younger.

Encouraged by Jessie, the Morse family held relatively formal nightly discussions about crops, animals, education, religion, and most frequently about politics. Like many of their neighbors, the family was progressive and discussed ideas championed by Robert M. La Follette, Sr., a leader of the progressive movement who served as Wisconsin's governor from 1900 to 1906 and thereafter as a member of the U.S. Senate. During these family discussions, Morse developed debating skills and strong opinions about political corruption, corporate domination, labor rights, women's suffrage, education, and, on a personal level, hard work and sobriety.

Morse and his siblings began their education in a one-room school near Verona. However, the Morse parents, particularly Jessie, shared the Progressive belief that improvement of self and society came through good education, and they admired the schools in Madison. After Morse finished second grade, his parents enrolled him in Longfellow School in Madison, to which Morse commuted 22 miles (35 km) round-trip daily by riding relay on three of the family's smaller horses. After eighth grade, Morse attended Madison High School, where he became class president and debating club president, and placed academically among the top 10 in his graduating class. In high school, he developed his relationship with Mildred "Midge" Downie, whom he had known since third grade, and who was class valedictorian and class vice-president the same year Morse was president.

Morse received his Bachelor of Philosophy degree from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1923 and his Master of Arts degree in speech from Wisconsin the next year. He married Downie in the same year. For several years, he taught speech at the University of Minnesota Law School, and he earned his LLB degree there in 1928. He held a reserve commission as second lieutenant, Field Artillery, U.S. Army, from 1923 to 1929, and was a member of the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity.

United States Senator

1944 election and first term

In 1944, Morse won the Republican primary election for senator, unseating incumbent Rufus C. Holman, and then the general election that November. To secure the support of the ultra-conservative wing of the Oregon Republicans in 1944, Morse had presented himself as being more right-wing than he really was, criticizing the New Deal in vitriolic terms though he also praised the wartime foreign policy of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Once in Washington, D.C., he revealed his progressive roots, to the consternation of his more conservative Republican peers. Morse had intended to pull the Republican Party leftwards on the issue of union rights, a stance that put him at odds with many of the more right-wing Republicans. Morse's political heroes were other progressive Republicans such as Theodore Roosevelt and Robert La Follette, and despite being a Republican admitted that he had voted in the 1944 presidential election for Franklin D. Roosevelt against the Republican candidate Thomas E. Dewey. He was greatly influenced by the "one world" philosophy of Wendell Willkie, making it clear from the onset he was an internationalist, which caused much tension with the Republican Senate Minority Leader, Robert A. Taft who favored a quasi-isolationist foreign policy.

Morse believed that World War II had been partly caused by American isolationism and in one of his first speeches before the Senate, in February 1945, called on the United States to join the planned organization that would replace the League of Nations, namely the United Nations (UN). As a former law professor, Morse believed very strongly in international law, and in the same speech called upon the United Nations to be an "international police organization" with such powers as to enforce via military means international law against any nation that might break it and to be given the power to prevent rich nations from economically exploiting poor nations. In another speech in March 1945, he called upon the two militarily strongest members of the "Big Three" alliance, namely the Soviet Union and the United States to work together after the war to preserve the peace and end poverty all over the world. In a speech in November 1945, he declared his concern as he "watched some of the nations of the world taking a toboggan ride down the slopes of national aggrandizement and into the abyss of blind nationalism." In the same speech, he deplored the "rattling of swords and manufacturing of atomic bombs" as he called the nations of the world to stop dividing themselves into "power blocs", to take their disputes to the World Court and for the UN to have control of nuclear weapons, which he maintained were too dangerous to be entrusted to any nation.

Re-election and independence from the Republican Party

Morse was reelected in 1950. Earlier in that year, he was one of the six Senators who supported Margaret Chase Smith's Declaration of Conscience, which criticized the tactics of McCarthyism.

Morse was kicked in the head by a horse in 1951. He sustained major injuries: the kick "tore his lips nearly off, fractured his jaw in four places, knocked out most of his upper teeth, and loosened several others."

In protest of Dwight Eisenhower's selection of Richard Nixon as his running mate, Morse left the Republican Party in 1952. Morse criticized the 1952 Republican platform with its call to repeal much of the New Deal and further felt that Eisenhower had shown cowardice by his refusal to publicly criticize Senator Joseph McCarthy, whom Morse felt was a menace to American democracy. The 1952 election produced an almost evenly divided Senate; Morse brought a folding chair when the session convened, intending to position himself in the aisle between the Democrats and Republicans to underscore his lack of party affiliation. Morse expected to retain certain committee memberships but was denied membership on the Labor Committee and others. He used a parliamentary procedure to force a vote of the entire Senate but lost his bid. New York's Senator Herbert Lehman offered Morse his seat on the Labor Committee, which Morse ultimately accepted.

As a result of Morse's becoming an independent, Republican control was reduced to a 48–47 majority. The deaths of nine senators, and the resignation of another, caused many reversals in control of the Senate during that session.

In January 1953, after Dwight D. Eisenhower nominated Charles E. Wilson as United States Secretary of Defense, Morse told reporters a possible objection to the nomination could stem from the more than 10,000 General Motors shares owned by the nominee's wife. In February, Morse stated that Eisenhower was partly to blame for a waste of both American manpower and money as it pertained to overseas military bases, reasoning that this had occurred while he was commander of NATO forces in Europe under the Democratic administration of President Truman. In July, Morse joined nine Democrats in sponsoring a bill proposing a revision of present law to add 13,000 people to Social Security and aid benefits increases. Later that month, after the death of Senate Majority Leader Robert A. Taft and questions arose of continued Republican control of the Senate, Morse confirmed his "ethical obligation" to vote with members of the party on Senate organizational issues and preserve the GOP Senate majority, citing his belief that he was acting on behalf of the American people given the Republicans gaining a majority in the 1952 elections.

Joining the Democratic Party

After a term as an independent, during which he campaigned heavily for Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Richard Neuberger in 1954, Morse switched to the Democratic Party in February 1955. His switch meant that the Democrats won control of the Senate and had been facilitated through giving Morse his desired places on the Foreign Affairs and Banking Committees. The New York Times' Saturday, February 19, 1955, issue featured a front-page photograph of Morse with the caption, "Democrats Welcome Morse to the Fold." The New York Times noted that Morse had made the switch and registered as a Democrat that Friday in his hometown of Eugene, Oregon.

In his book, Profiles in Courage, Sen. John F. Kennedy makes reference to Morse's time in the Republican and then later in the Democratic Party during Kennedy's tenure in the Senate.

When the Formosa resolution came to a vote in January 1955, Morse was one of the three senators who voted against the resolution. In February 1955, during his first public appearance as a Democrat, Morse stated that the vote on the Formosa resolution would have been different if senators were not under the belief that a resolution for a ceasefire was going to be introduced the following week and that Americans did not want war with the Chinese.

Despite his changes in party allegiance, for which he was branded a maverick, Morse won re-election to the United States Senate in 1956. He defeated U.S. Secretary of the Interior and former governor Douglas McKay in a hotly contested race; campaign expenditures totaled over $600,000 between the primary and general elections, a very high amount by then-contemporary standards. One of the major issues of the campaign were proposals for the Hells Canyon Dam which Morse wanted to be publicly built and run and McKay wanted to be privately run.

In March 1957 when King Saud of Saudi Arabia visited Washington and was hailed by Eisenhower as America's number one ally in the Middle East, Morse was not impressed. In a speech before the Senate, Morse stated: "Here we are, pouring by the way of gifts to that completely totalitarian state, Saudi Arabia, millions of dollars of the taxpayers' money to maintain the military forces of a dictatorship. We ought to have our heads examined!" Morse charged that Saudi Arabia's abysmal record on human rights made it an unacceptable ally.

Feud with Richard Neuberger

Toward the end of the 1950s, Morse's relationship with Richard Neuberger, the junior senator from Oregon, deteriorated and led to much public feuding. The two had known each other since 1931, when Morse was dean of the University of Oregon law school, and Neuberger was a 19-year-old freshman. Morse befriended Neuberger and often gave him advice, and he used his rhetorical skill to successfully defend Neuberger against charges of academic cheating. After the charges against him were dropped, Neuberger rejected Morse's advice to leave the university and start afresh elsewhere but instead enrolled in Morse's class in criminal law. Morse gave him a "D" in the course and, when Neuberger complained, changed the grade to an "F".

According to Mason Drukman, one of Morse's biographers, even after the two men had become senators, neither could get past what had happened in 1931. "Whatever his accomplishments," Drukman writes, "Neuberger was to Morse a man flawed in character" while Neuberger "could not forgive Morse either for propelling him out of law school ... or for having had to protect him in the honor proceedings." Morse later helped Neuberger, who won his Senate seat in 1954 by only 2,462 votes out of more than a half-million cast, but he also continued to give Neuberger advice that was not always appreciated. "I don't think you should scold me so much," said Neuberger, as quoted by Drukman, in a letter to Morse during the 1954 campaign.

By 1957, the relationship had deteriorated to the point where, rather than talking face-to-face, the senators exchanged angry letters delivered almost daily by messenger between offices in close proximity. Although the letters were private, the feud quickly became public through letters leaked to the press and comments made to colleagues and other third parties, who often had trouble deciding what the fight was about. Drukman describes the feud as a "classic struggle ... of dominating father and rebellious son locked in the age-old fight for supremacy." The feud ended only with Neuberger's death from a stroke in 1960.

1960 presidential campaign

Morse was a late entry in the race for the Democratic nomination for president in 1960. It began unofficially at a 1959 press conference held at the state capitol in Salem by local resident Gary Neal and other Morse supporters. They declared they would put Senator Morse on the ballot by petition. As early as April 1959, Morse told a meeting of the state's Young Democrats that he had no intention of running. The group still voted to advance Senator Morse, after Congresswoman Edith Green introduced him as a favorite son.

Gary Neal was persistent and by winter of 1959 was nearing completion of his signature petition to place Morse on the May ballot. Morse soon found himself at a meeting with Neal where they discussed his efforts. Neal said to Morse, "if we [supporters] don't put your name on the ballot, your enemies will." It was clear the elephant in the room with Gary Neal and Wayne Morse was the Oregon Republican Party. Morse shot back about the Oregon Republicans, "I say to the Republican Party, trot out your governor. I'm ready to take him on."

On December 22, 1959, Wayne Morse announced his candidacy for president. He said at his announcement, "Although I would have preferred not to have entered the Oregon race, I shall not run away from a good political fight if it is inevitable." The Morse for President Oregon Headquarters was located at 353 S.W. Morrison St. Portland, Oregon 97204. The Morse entry into the presidential race did not sit well with many who had anticipated significant campaigning in Oregon from a large field of candidates. Morse was accused of flip-flopping on whether or not he would run.

Morse filed to run in May primaries in the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Oregon, in that order. He had solid connections in all three areas. Oregon was his home and where his wife and family lived. He owned a small farm in Poolesville, Maryland, and had spent fifteen years fighting for D.C. home rule, sponsoring legislation for that cause. Kennedy did not enter the D.C. primary. Senator Hubert Humphrey was Morse's main opponent in the D.C. contest, which Humphrey won 7,831 to 5,866.

Morse had known when he entered the Maryland contest that he was climbing an extremely steep hill, and had hoped to offset a potential loss there with a win in the District. John F. Kennedy was a Catholic and Maryland was the birthplace of the American Catholic church. Morse attempted to generate as much media coverage as possible. The New York Times caught wind of the Morse campaign and did their best to follow Morse around. Morse made his liberalism a key issue at every campaign stop. His remarks in Cumberland, Maryland, suggest that Kennedy was anything but a liberal:

Final Senate term

In a press release published in February 1961, Morse announced that he would be requesting $12 million from Congress for civil works which would mitigate the economic issues faced by Oregon. In March 1961, he criticized Charles M. Meriwether, nominated as Director of the Export-Import Bank, for his racism and anti-Semitism. He added that President John F. Kennedy owed an apology to every Jewish and Black person in the United States.

In February 1963, in his capacity as a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Morse stated that while France received the most American aid worldwide, it was not fulfilling its responsibilities to NATO. He announced that the committee would investigate whether an appropriate amount of funds were being sent, and declared that the country should be allowed to act independently of NATO if that was what President Charles de Gaulle wanted.

By 1964, Morse was the "Typhoid Mary" of the Senate, an eccentric whose humorlessness and teetotalism made him widely disliked and shunned. He rarely frequented the "Club", where important informal meetings were held in a convivial, alcohol-heavy atmosphere, and his speeches on the Senate floor usually lasted only five to ten minutes before being cut off.

In September 1960, senators James Eastland and Thomas Dodd accused lower-ranking officials in the State Department of allowing Fidel Castro and his supporters to coup Fulgencio Batista at the end of the Cuban Revolution. Morse denied the charge and stated that he knew of no basis for the claim.

Morse was outraged by the Bay of Pigs invasion, an attempt by exiles in April 1961 to return to Cuba and overthrow Castro. Through a letter, he told Secretary of State Dean Rusk that the Kennedy administration was acting unconstitutionally, expressing "deep regret" that Congress was not informed of the invasion, and U.S. support of it, beforehand. In May, Morse announced that the Senate Latin Affairs Committee would follow up on reports that survivors were being held incommunicado at a submarine base in Vieques, Puerto Rico, noting that the internal investigation of this was primarily handled by White House staff, not State Department officials.

In January 1962, at the confirmation hearing of John A. McCone for the position of Director of Central Intelligence, Morse told McCone that the CIA needed to be brought to heel. The agency, he said, engaged in reckless actions that could easily cause a war—as nearly happened in Cuba nine months later. He also complained that none of this was being done with a formal declaration of war by Congress.

Post-Senate career

Not content with retirement, Morse twice attempted to return to the Senate. In 1972, he won the Democratic primary against Duncan, but lost the general election to Hatfield; Drukman believes that his opposition to the Vietnam War became a "dismissible virtue" in the intervening years. After Thomas Eagleton, Democratic nominee for Vice President, withdrew from that year's presidential election, four of thirty-four delegates from Oregon voted for Morse to succeed him instead of Sargent Shriver.

Morse's final election, in 1974, saw him campaign to unseat Packwood. He prevailed in the primary, withstanding concerns about his age, but died of kidney failure induced by a urinary tract infection on July 22. The Oregon Democratic Central Committee replaced him with Betty Roberts; she was beaten by Packwood in November.

Legacy

The New York Times, which had praised Morse after the 1974 Senate primary, mourned the loss of "a superb public servant". Respectively, fellow Senators Hatfield and Mike Mansfield highlighted his foresight on Vietnam, and called him "a man of fierce independence".

Morse lay in state in the rotunda of the Oregon State Capitol, and a funeral was held in the chamber of the state House of Representatives. More than 600 people attended it, with Hatfield, Governor Tom McCall, state Speaker of the House Richard Eymann, primary opponent and president of the State Senate Jason Boe, and Senate colleague Eugene McCarthy giving eulogies. Among the pallbearers were Congressman Al Ullman, Congressional candidates Les AuCoin and Jim Weaver, and Duncan, aiming to gain the seat of retiring Congresswoman Edith Green.

AuCoin's failed 1992 Senate campaign was given the motto of Morse, "principle above politics". Morse's beliefs would triumph on January 30, 1996, when Ron Wyden, his driver in 1968, won a special election called after Packwood resigned.

In the 1967 book The Pacific States, Morse was deemed a quintessential example of the disinterest of politicians in the western United States in committing to a single party. He gained a lasting reputation among those involved with the Senate as the "Five-o'clock-Shadow", someone who would give long floor speeches late in the afternoon, disrupting others' plans for the evening.

Morse was honored by the University of Oregon with a position called the Wayne Morse Chair of Law and Politics; former Representative Charles O. Porter was the first holder, in 1980. UO has also named a common space at the William W. Knight Law Center for him. The Lane County Courthouse in Eugene renovated and rededicated its adjacent Wayne L. Morse Free Speech Plaza in the spring of 2005, complete with a life-size statue and pavers imprinted with quotations, and in 2006, the Wayne L. Morse U.S. Courthouse opened in downtown Eugene.

The Morse family's 27-acre (11 ha) Eugene property and home, Edgewood Farm, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the Wayne Morse Farm. The City of Eugene, assisted by a nonprofit corporation, operates the historical park formerly known as Morse Ranch. The City of Eugene officially renamed the park Wayne Morse Family Farm in 2008, following a recommendation by the Wayne Morse Historical Park Corporation Board and Morse family members. The new name is more historically accurate. Wayne L. Morse is interred at Rest Haven Memorial Park in Eugene.

Documentary films

The Last Angry Man: The Story of America's Most Controversial Senator, documentary film by Christopher Houser and Robert Millis

Clip from War Made Easy on YouTube, a 2007 documentary film