This collection houses two cards and six letters from eight United States Senators from Tennessee. Most are short letters to their constituents. The letters of Albert Arnold Gore, Sr., Howard H. Baker, Jr., James Sasser, and Estes Kefauver express their opinions on various political matters.
Click here for the Guide to the United States Senate papers, 1929-1978, mpa.316 / ms.2307. Collection location: row 11, box 21.
Howard H. Baker, Jr. served three terms as a United States Senator from Tennessee (1967-1985) and was Tennessee’s first popularly elected Republican Senator. He rose to national prominence during the Watergate Hearings of 1973-1974 as Vice Chairman of the Senate Watergate Committee, the highest ranking Republican on the Committee. He served as Minority Leader of the Senate from 1977-1981 and as Majority Leader from 1981 until he retired from the Senate at the end of this third term in January, 1985. He was a candidate for the 1980 Republican presidential nomination and served as President Ronald Reagan’s Chief of Staff in 1987-1988. For the next thirteen years he worked in several Tennessee law firms. In 2001 President George W. Bush appointed him as U.S. Ambassador to Japan.
Ross Bass (March 17, 1918 – January 1, 1993) was a captain in the Army during World War II and Democratic United States Congressman from Tennessee’s 6th District. He was reelected four times and served until 1964, when Senator Estes Kefauver died in office. A Democratic primary was held for the unexpired balance of this term in August, 1964, and Bass entered this contest, surprising some by defeating Governor of Tennessee Frank G. Clement. In November, Bass defeated the Republican nominee, Howard H. Baker, Jr. to win the final two years of the term.
Albert Gore, Sr., (1907-1998) attended the University of Tennessee, graduated from what is now Middle Tennessee State University in 1932, and attained a law degree from the Nashville Young Mens’ Christian Academy law school in 1936. He was Tennessee’s Commissioner of Labor (1937), a United States House Representative (1939-1953), and a United States Senator (1953-1971).
While a Senator, Gore supported the federal minimum wage bill, proposed the first federal health insurance program enacted into law, and voted for bills for the Interstate Highway System.
Carey Estes Kefauver was born in Madisonville, Tennessee on July 26, 1903. He graduated from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville in 1924 before graduating from Yale Law School in 1927. He became a member of the bar in 1926 and practiced in Chattanooga, Tennessee, with his firm, Kefauver, Duggan, and McDonald. In 1935, he married Nancy Patterson Pigott and they had four children.
Three years after a unsuccessful bid for the Tennessee State Senate in 1936, Kefauver served as Tennessee State commissioner of finance and taxation for a few months in 1939 before he was elected to the United States Congress where he served for ten years. In 1948, Kefauver was elected to the Senate where from 1949-1952 he held the position of chairman of the Special Committee on Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce that gained him national fame. Kefauver was an unsuccessful candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination twice in 1952 and 1956. However, he served in the United States Senate as a Democratic representative for Tennessee until his death on August 10, 1963.
Kenneth Douglas McKellar (1869–1957) was an American politician from Tennessee who served as a United States Representative from 1911 until 1917 and as a United States Senator from 1917 until 1953. A Democrat, he served longer in both houses of Congress than anyone else in Tennessee history, and only a few others in American history have served longer in both houses.
James Ralph Sasser (1936- ) was an attorney, United States Senator (1976-1994), and United States Ambassador to China. He attended the University of Tennessee, graduated from Vanderbilt University in 1958, and received a degree in 1961 from the Vanderbilt Law School. He chaired the Senate Budget Committee and several subcommittees, including the military construction subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations and the subcommittee on International Finance and Monetary Policy of the
Senate Banking Committee.
Arthur Thomas Stewart (1892–1972) was a lawyer and Democratic United States Senator from Tennessee from 1939 to 1949. Stewart was born in Dunlap, Tennessee and attended Cumberland School of Law. In 1923 he became district attorney for the 18th Circuit and in 1925 he was the chief prosecutor for the Scopes Trial in which a high school Biology teacher was accused of teaching evolution. Stewart entered politics in 1938 by running to fill the vacancy of then recently deceased Senator Nathan L Bachman.
Lawrence Davis Tyson (1861–1929) was an American general and politician, operating primarily out of Knoxville, Tennessee, during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He moved to Knoxville in 1891 to teach military science at the University of Tennessee and commanded the 6th Regiment Tennessee Volunteer Infantry during the Spanish-American War.
From 1902 to 1908, Tyson served in the Tennessee House of Representatives and was Speaker of the House from 1903 to 1905. He also served as a Democratic United States Senator from Tennessee from 1925 until his death.