A cab ride in New York City more than a century ago determined the trajectory of Virginia politics, the effects of which we still feel to this day.
It was the summer of 1924, a dreadful summer as far as Democrats were concerned. They were out of power nationally and doing their best (or worst) to stay that way. Calvin Coolidge was in the White House and Democrats were locked in a stalemated convention to pick their party’s candidate. It eventually went on for more than two weeks and 103 ballots before a winner emerged.
This isn’t about that, though. This is about when one of those Democratic convention delegates from Virginia, a young but ambitious state senator named Harry Byrd, happened to share a cab ride with one of the most powerful figures in the state at the time, the Methodist bishop and Prohibition crusader James Cannon Jr.
The ride did not go well.
History does not remember Cannon as a pleasant man to be around. One colleague in the Prohibition movement called him “cold as a snake,” and that was one of the more favorable descriptions. Another said they’d never seen him laugh or smile. He certainly wasn’t smiling during that cab ride with Byrd and, by the end of it, neither was Byrd.
Cannon had risen to power as head of the Methodist Board of Temperance, Prohibition and Public Morals — and then kept going. The journalist H.L. Mencken once wrote about him: “Congress was his troop of Boy Scouts and Presidents trembled whenever his name was mentioned.” In Virginia, Cannon exerted a power within the Virginia Democratic Party at the time that is difficult to comprehend now. When the General Assembly was debating anything dealing with alcohol, Encyclopedia Virginia says “Cannon often stationed himself on the floor of the General Assembly, sometimes occupying the Speaker’s chair.” A biographer said Cannon “loved power and prestige, profit and pleasure.” The latter two eventually were his downfall — he got embroiled in both financial and sex scandals — but on this summer day in 1924, he was still focused on power and prestige. He’d already deretailed the gubernatorial ambitions of at least two prominent politicians of the day and now he was about to try to derail a third.
Byrd had been mentioned as a candidate for governor in 1921, but he was just 34 at the time and deferred to Lee Trinkle of Wytheville, who had gone on to win. His name was very much in the mix as a candidate for 1925. Byrd had privately decided to wait until 1929 — but then he got in the cab with Cannon.
Cannon warned Byrd against running because “we have decided to elect Walter Mapp.” By the time the ride was over, Byrd was “so mad” that he decided to advance his timetable and run the next year, after all.
The rest, as they say, is history.
This year, when we elect another governor, marks the 100th anniversary of Byrd’s election as governor. His administration remains one of the most important in Virginia history — he built roads, changed the tax system and reorganized state government, turning some offices we once elected (such as superintendent of public instruction) into appointed ones. He grabbed control of the state Democratic Party with such firmness that his political organization became known as the Byrd Machine. Long after he had left the governorship and moved on to a U.S. Senate seat, he remained the master of Virginia politics. Whatever good he might have done with roads and government reforms is overshadowed today by his 1950s insistence on “Massive Resistance” to integration. That is why his statue that once stood in Capitol Square has now been hauled away into storage. Byrd had roads built, but schools shut down. All these decades later, Virginia still has a scholarship fund to help educate those who Byrd, directly or indirectly, denied education to simply because of the color of their skin.
How much of this could have been avoided if Byrd and Cannon hadn’t gotten into the same cab?
We’ll never know, of course. Since Byrd planned to run for governor anyway, maybe the Byrd Machine would have come into existence anyway, just four years later. What we do know is that 100 years ago, Byrd smashed the power of Bishop Cannon and seized it for himself. This was a three-part process.
The first part was winning the Democratic nomination, which was then tantamount to election. Mapp seemed a formidable opponent. The Accomack County legislator had been the leader of the Prohibition forces in the legislature, and Prohibition was now the law of the land. All this may seem strange to us now, but Mapp was considered “a forward-looking man in most respects, with progressive ideas concerning the needs of Virginia,” according to historian Virginius Dabney. Remember that Prohibition was considered by some to be a social advancement. Cannon had begun his anti-alcohol campaigning as a progressive and only allied himself with the conservative forces once it was clear that they had the power he craved. There was not yet a “machine,” but there was an “organization” — “The Ring” led by U.S. Sen. Thomas Martin. Martin, though, had died in 1919 and the “organization” was leaderless.
In some respects, Mapp should have won the primary. Mapp had been a good member of that organization and was certainly an ally of the powerful Cannon. He had also supported women’s suffrage — more evidence of his relatively progressive ways — and women now had the vote. Byrd had opposed suffrage. Mapp had seniority in the legislature. Byrd, though, was connected. His father had been speaker of the House. His uncle was a congressman from Appomattox County. Between those family ties, Byrd “had innumerable contacts all over the state, especially in the rural courthouses,” Dabney wrote in his history of Virginia. Byrd didn’t just win, he won in a landslide, with 61% of the vote. The old Martin organization was now his, although its members may not have realized that yet.
Victory in November was a foregone conclusion in those days when the Republican Party in Virginia counted for little. The Republican nominee was Samuel Hoge, a lawyer in Roanoke (who had been born in Montgomery County and lived for a time in Patrick County). Byrd easily brushed him aside, winning with 74% of the vote — a high figure even for those one-party rule days.
Next came the third part of Byrd’s plan. He did not intend to be an ordinary governor. Here’s how Dabney chronicles Byrd’s acquisition of power: “Byrd came into the governorship in 1926 at a time when the organization [as it was called in pre-Byrd Machine days] was on the defensive because of Virginia’s backwardness and in danger of losing its hold on the state. He knew the situation was precarious and that he would have to move aggressively, with a sweeping program of reform, in order to keep control. He had been careful during the campaign not to disclose the magnitude of his plans, since public opinion had not been adequately prepared. He was largely content to lay down general principles — such as the need for ‘greater economy and efficiency,’ which could mean almost anything.”
One wag joked that his platform was so vague he may have well included the Lord’s Prayer and Ten Commandments as things he was for.
Once Byrd took office, though, he “convinced the most hardened courthouse politicians that he meant business.” He overwhelmed the legislature with very specific proposals, and persuaded legislators that his program “was essential to their salvation.” They passed his measures almost unanimously. Dabney writes that Byrd’s makeover of state government was so amazing to behold that he was “regarded as a youthful progressive, a fact somewhat difficult to grasp for those who knew him only in his ultraconservative later years.”
Cannon’s power lived on for a while despite Byrd’s victory, but Byrd outmaneuvered him — and then, conveniently enough, Cannon was brought down by charges that he had hoarded flour during World War I, engaged in some shady Wall Street speculation and carried on an adulterous affair while his wife was dying. That was the end of Cannon but only the beginning of Byrd. Future federal judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III, in a history of Byrd and his era, wrote that Byrd controlled state government so tightly that “a deadening conformity was always in danger of developing. Yet for decades Virginians felt the Byrd banner the best possible standard to which to conform.”
All that was set in motion by two elections a century ago this year — and that fateful cab ride a year before that.
For more on this year’s election . . .
Want to know where this year’s candidates stand? All six statewide candidates (along with many House of Delegates candidates and local candidates) have responded to our questionnaire. Find their answers on our Voter Guide. We have individual pages for all 133 counties and cities in Virginia so no matter where you live, you can look on our Voter Guide to see who’s on the ballot in your community.
Want more political news and insights? You can sign up for our weekly political newsletter, West of the Capital. This week I’ll be taking another look at the latest early voting trends.
