(b. Charleston, South Carolina, 2 May 1897; d. 15 Nov. 1972) US; US Senator 1931 – 41, Secretary of State 1945 – 7, Governor of South Carolina 1951 – 5 Born into an Irish Catholic family, Byrnes had a limited education but studied law part-time and then practised law in South Carolina. He served in the US House of Representatives 1911 – 25 and in the Senate 1931 – 41. Although a conservative Democrat from a southern state, he acted as a bridge between southern conservative Democrats and progressive New Deal Democrats. In 1941 he was appointed as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. After only a year on the Supreme Court, however, in 1942 Franklin Roosevelt appointed him director of the Office of Economic Stabilization and in 1943 he was appointed director of the Office of War Mobilization. Roosevelt described him as "Assistant President on the home front". In 1944 he was a leading contender for the vice-presidential nomination when Roosevelt decided not to renominate Vice-President Wallace. Since Byrnes was a Catholic and was divorced, however, Roosevelt felt that he would be unacceptable to significant elements in the Democratic coalition, so that Harry Truman was instead given the vice-presidential nomination and succeeded to the presidency on Roosevelt's death in April 1945.

Truman appointed Byrnes as Secretary of State in 1945. He attempted to reach an agreement with the Soviets in his years as Secretary of State, 1945 – 7. But his dealings with the Soviets became increasingly acrimonious, while Truman became dissatisfied that he failed to keep the president fully informed. In 1947 he was replaced as Secretary of State by George Marshall. He returned to law practice in South Carolina and became increasingly conservative. He was elected governor of South Carolina in 1950 and was an outspoken opponent of civil rights during his term of office as governor, 1951 – 5. In 1952 he supported the Republican candidate for president, Dwight D. Eisenhower, over his Democratic opponent, Adlai Stevenson.

Byrnes served in all three branches of the US government — the judiciary, the legislature, and executive. He was a pragmatic conservative, who played a vital role in America's war effort, but whose pragmatism was ineffective in dealing with Soviet negotiators and who became increasingly conservative, especially over the race issue. He wrote important memoirs, Speaking Frankly (1947) and All in One Lifetime (1960).

(b. Charleston, S.C., 2 May 1879; d. 9 Apr. 1972, Columbia, S.C.; interred Trinity Cemetery, Columbia), associate justice, 1941–1942. A self‐taught South Carolina lawyer, Byrnes was the son of James F. Byrnes and Elisabeth E. McSweeney, a dressmaker. He studied at St. Patrick's parochial school, worked as a court stenographer and reporter, and read law in his spare time.

“Jimmy” Byrnes served as a Democratic member of the House of Representatives (1911–1925) and from 1931 to 1941 as a member of the U.S. Senate. Byrnes was a crucial Southern advocate of the New Deal, particularly effective in behind‐the‐scenes negotiations in support of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's policies. He also earned the president's gratitude in working for a compromise in the wake of the ill‐advised court‐packing bill. Byrnes counseled against pressing for a vote on the bill because several decisions of 1937 revealed a new alignment on the Court and because of the resignation of Justice Willis Van Devanter. Byrnes allegedly asked, “Why run for a train after you've caught it?”

In June 1941 Roosevelt nominated Byrnes to fill the seat vacated by Harlan Fiske Stone who had been appointed chief justice. During his one term on the Court, Byrnes wrote only sixteen majority opinions. He wrote no concurring or dissenting opinions. His brief Supreme Court service is remembered principally for his decision in Edwards v. California (1941), which struck down a California law that made it a crime to bring indigents into the state. In his opinion for the five‐member majority, Byrnes argued that California's “anti‐Okie” law placed an unacceptable burden upon interstate commerce. Among Byrnes's other majority opinions was a decision limiting the right to strike on board ship, a decision exempting a New York teamsters' strike from provisions of a federal anti‐racketeering law, and a decision striking down a Georgia law that made it a criminal offense not to fulfill a labor contract (see Labor).

At President Roosevelt's request, Byrnes left the Court in October 1942 to serve as the director of economic stabilization. Less than a year later he accepted another presidential appointment to head the new War Mobilization Board. An able administrator, Byrnes made the most of this post, becoming popularly known as “assistant president.” Shortly after Roosevelt's death, the new president, Harry S. Truman, nominated his good friend and former Senate colleague to become secretary of state. After two years in Truman's cabinet, Byrnes resigned and returned to South Carolina. In 1951 he was elected overwhelmingly governor of the Palmetto State. As a Southern governor in the 1950s, Byrnes was a racial moderate: he supported segregation in schools and public facilities but successfully pushed for a bill to suppress the Ku Klux Klan (see Separate but Equal Doctrine).

Byrnes was clearly more comfortable and effective in his positions as a legislator, administrator, and executive than as a justice. Of South Carolina's many noted political figures, only John C. Calhoun and Strom Thurmond held as many important governmental positions or had as significant a national stature as had James F. Byrnes. Appropriately, Byrnes's autobiography is titled All in One Lifetime.

— John W. Johnson

The American public official James Francis Byrnes (1879-1972) was a prominent political figure for some 40 years, serving under presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman.

James F. Byrnes was born to immigrant Irish parents in Charleston, S.C., on May 2, 1879. His early years were difficult, for his father died a few weeks before his birth. His mother, left with two young children and almost penniless, took up dressmaking to support her family. To help, James left school when he was 14 to work as an office boy in a local law firm. Taught shorthand by his mother, he won a competition and obtained a job as a stenographer in the Second Circuit Court of South Carolina in 1900. In his free time he studied law and 3 years later was admitted to the South Carolina bar.

Byrnes opened his own law office in Aiken. He found few paying clients, however, and continued in his job as a court reporter. He also bought the Aiken Journal and Review, but his career in journalism was brief. In 1908 he was elected a circuit solicitor (an office equivalent to that of a prosecuting or district attorney) and sold his interest in the newspaper to his partner. Two years later he was elected to his first term in Congress. Before entering public life, Byrnes had married Maude Busch of Aiken in May 1906.

In 1911 Byrnes entered the House of Representatives, remaining until 1925, serving on the House Committee on Roads, the Banking and Currency Committee, and the Appropriations Committee. These experiences, together with his personal qualities, contributed to his political success. Byrnes was a genial and charming person, with a sense of humor, who quickly mastered the game of politics. "The art of legislating," he later observed," is the art of intelligent compromise."

Defeated for the Senate in 1924, Byrnes was elected in 1930. A realistic politician, a southerner, and a loyal Democrat, he supported Franklin Roosevelt in the election of 1932 and was tapped as a "brain truster" for budgetary matters. Byrnes strongly promoted New Deal legislation in the Senate during Roosevelt's first term, but after 1937 he adopted a more conservative position. He loyally defended the President's foreign policy, however, especially in the extension of trade agreements and defense appropriations. In 1940 Roosevelt considered Byrnes for the vice-presidential nomination but decided in favor of Henry Wallace. Following his third-term reelection, the President appointed Byrnes associate justice to the Supreme Court (June 1941).

But World War II was at hand, and Byrnes was on the Supreme Court for only 16 months before Roosevelt made him director of the Office of Economic Mobilization and, in the next year, head of the six-man War Mobilization Board. Byrnes now had considerable authority in the management of domestic affairs, while Roosevelt concentrated on the military conduct of the war. Byrnes's administrative performance was so outstanding that he became popularly known as "Assistant President." Roosevelt again considered Byrnes as a vice-presidential candidate in 1944 but chose Harry S. Truman. Byrnes, however, accompanied Roosevelt to the Yalta Conference in February 1945, and his detailed shorthand notes proved to be very helpful to President Truman. Shortly after Roosevelt's death in 1945, Truman appointed Byrnes secretary of state, a post he held until January 1947.

Byrnes's tenure coincided with the collapse of the wartime cooperation with the Soviet Union and the onset of the cold war. As secretary of state, he tried unsuccessfully to reconcile the conflicting interests between the United States and the Soviet Union. To satisfy the Soviet Union's demand for security against Germany, he proposed a four-power treaty of alliance to keep Germany demilitarized for 25 years; but the Kremlin rejected this offer. His effort to resolve the atomic energy issue between the two powers in 1945 - he suggested the exchange of atomic information without absolute and effective agreement on inspection and control - met with opposition in Congress. Although unable to obtain solutions on either issue, Byrnes managed in 1946 to work out compromise peace treaties with the Soviet Union for Italy, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Finland. On Sept. 6, 1946, he delivered his famous Stuttgart speech, which called for the creation of an autonomous democratic German state. Increasingly, Byrnes adopted a tough posture toward the Soviet Union, but disagreements with President Truman led to his resignation on Jan. 10, 1947.

Following his departure from the Cabinet, Byrnes became associated with a Washington law firm, but in 1950 he ran for governor of South Carolina and was elected by an overwhelming majority. As governor, he fulfilled his campaign pledge to suppress the Ku Klux Klan in the state, but he resisted the efforts of the Federal government to desegregate public schools. Byrnes retired in 1955 and died on April 9, 1972, in Columbia, S.C.

Further Reading

There are no biographies of Byrnes. The most important sources on his life are his two memoirs, Speaking Frankly (1947) and All in One Lifetime (1958). The best account of Byrnes's tenure as secretary of state is the chapter by Richard D. Burns in Norman A. Graebner, ed., An Uncertain Tradition: American Secretaries of State in the Twentieth Century (1961). A brief, impressionistic vignette is in Raymond Moley, 27 Masters of Politics: In a Personal Perspective (1949).

• Born: May 2, 1879, Charleston, S.C.
• Education: studied law privately
• Previous government service: court reporter, Second Circuit of South Carolina, 1900–1908; solicitor, Second Circuit of South Carolina, 1908–10; U.S. representative from South Carolina, 1911–25; U.S. senator from South Carolina, 1931–41
• Appointed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt June 12, 1941; replaced James McReynolds, who retired
• Supreme Court term: confirmed by the Senate June 12, 1941, by a voice vote; resigned Oct. 3, 1942
• Subsequent government service: director of the Office of Economic Stabilization, 1942–43; director of the Office of War Mobilization and Reconversion, 1943–45; U.S. secretary of state, 1945–47; governor of South Carolina, 1951–55
• Died: Apr. 9, 1972, Columbia, S.C.

James F. Byrnes was the son of Irish immigrants who settled in Charleston, South Carolina. His father died before the younger Byrnes was born. His mother raised the family alone, and James left school to help support himself and his family. He worked as a law clerk and then as a court reporter. These jobs led to an interest in the law, which he studied on his own. He passed the state bar exam in 1903 and began a career as solicitor, or district attorney, for South Carolina's Second Circuit.

In 1910, Byrnes became a Democratic party candidate for a seat in the House of Representatives. His victory launched a spectacular career in the federal government. He became a close friend of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and served in the U.S. Senate during Roosevelt's first two terms. The President rewarded Byrnes for his loyal support by appointing him to the Supreme Court in 1941.

Byrnes's service on the Court lasted less than 14 months. During this time he wrote only 16 opinions. He left the Court to serve President Roosevelt as director of the Office of Economic Stabilization (1942–43) and then as director of the Office of War Mobilization and Reconversion (1943–45). He was secretary of state from 1945 to 1947 under President Harry S. Truman. Byrnes was governor of South Carolina for one term, from 1951 to 1955.

1879–1972, American public official, Secretary of State (1945–47), governor of South Carolina (1951–55), b. Charleston, S.C. He studied law while working (1900–1908) as a court reporter, owned and edited a newspaper in Aiken, S.C., and represented (1911–25) South Carolina in the House. As Senator (1931–41), Byrnes, a Southern Democrat, became budgetary expert for the New Deal. He served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court (1941–42), but resigned and became director of economic stabilization (1942) and later (1943) director of war mobilization. As Secretary of State he tried to mend postwar differences with the USSR. He later became extremely anti-Soviet. An opponent of racial integration, he was elected governor of South Carolina, and opposed further federal centralization.

Bibliography

See his Speaking Frankly (1947) and All in One Lifetime (1958); K. A. Clements, James F. Byrnes and the Origins of the Cold War (1982).

James Francis Byrnes was a self-taught lawyer who was briefly an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court during the 1940s and who also served as secretary of state, the governor of South Carolina, a U.S. senator, and an influential member of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's cabinet.

Byrnes was born May 2, 1879, in Charleston, South Carolina. Economic circumstances forced him to quit parochial school at the age of fourteen and go to work as a clerk in a Charleston law firm for $2 a week to help support his family. He learned shorthand and eventually obtained a job in Aiken, South Carolina, as the official court reporter for the Second Judicial Circuit, a state court. He studied law in his spare time and was admitted to the South Carolina bar in 1903. He then purchased a newspaper in Aiken, the Journal and Review, and served as its editor for five years. Active in the Democratic party, Byrnes was elected district attorney for the Second Judicial Circuit in 1908, and two years later won a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, where he served for fifteen years. Following an unsuccessful bid for the U.S. Senate, he returned to South Carolina in 1925 to practice law in Spartanburg. In 1930, he again ran for the Senate, and this time he won election.

Initially, Byrnes was a strong advocate of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal legislation and served as Roosevelt's legislative adviser, thus playing a crucial role in securing support in the Senate for Roosevelt's policies. Byrnes also helped the president successfully manage the furor surrounding the chief executive's "court-packing" plan, a bill proposed by Roose- velt to expand the Supreme Court so that he could nominate justices who would uphold New Deal legislation. Roosevelt heeded Byrnes's advice not to seek a vote on the bill after several 1937 decisions indicated that the Court would be more inclined than its members previously had been to hold Roosevelt's programs to be constitutional. Later in his second Senate term, Byrnes joined the Democratic opposition to pro-union New Deal legislation. Nevertheless, he remained close to Roosevelt and helped secure the repeal of the Neutrality Act of 1935, 49 Stat. 1081, and the passage of the Lend-Lease Act of 1941, 22 U.S.C.A. § 411 et seq.

In June 1941, Roosevelt nominated Byrnes to fill the seat on the U.S. Supreme Court vacated by the resignation of Associate Justice James C. McReynolds. Byrnes won confirmation easily, but would serve on the Court for little more than a year, completing the shortest tenure in the history of the Court.

Byrnes wrote only sixteen majority opinions, including Edwards v. California, 314 U.S. 160, 62 S. Ct. 164, 86 L. Ed. 119 (1941), in which the Court struck down a California law that made bringing indigents into the state a crime. In his opinion, Byrnes argued that the law posed an unacceptable burden upon interstate commerce. He also wrote the majority opinion in Taylor v. Georgia, 315 U.S. 25, 62 S. Ct. 415, 86 L. Ed. 615 (1942), where the Court held that a state penal law that required workers receiving advances to remain at their jobs until the advances were paid back violated the Thirteenth Amendment prohibition against involuntary servitude.

Despite these significant contributions, Byrnes was not happy on the Court. He wanted to be more actively involved in the country's war effort. In October 1942, after only sixteen months on the Court, Byrnes resigned his seat. He left the Court at the request of President Roosevelt to become director of the newly created Office of Economic Stabilization, established to help prevent wartime inflation. Less than a year later, Byrnes became head of the Office of War Mobilization, an agency created to manage the production of war and civilian goods. The range of authority and influence Byrnes wielded in both posts led Roosevelt to refer to him publicly as "assistant president."

In Roosevelt's 1944 campaign for a fourth term, Byrnes was considered for the vice presidential nomination when opposition to Henry A. Wallace, the current vice president, surfaced. But Byrnes's pro-management views proved to be unacceptable to labor leaders, and the nomination instead went to Harry S. Truman. Byrnes nevertheless remained a close adviser to Roosevelt, accompanying him in 1945 to the Yalta Agreement with Joseph Stalin and Winston Churchill.

Byrnes continued to play a major role in government after Roosevelt's death, when President Truman, a longtime friend, appointed Byrnes secretary of state. Byrnes's service in the state department was controversial. He took criticism for his recommendation that the atomic bomb be used to end the war with Japan. As secretary of state, Byrnes was the chief representative for the United States in a number of high-level international conferences held following the war, including the Potsdam Conference. In negotiations with the Soviet Union, Byrnes favored a settlement that greatly weakened Russia's control over Eastern Europe and increased the United States' monopoly on atomic weapons. He also argued for the reunification of Germany. The Soviets strongly resisted both proposals, and the failure of these negotiations helped to launch the cold war.

Byrnes resigned from the cabinet in 1947 after a disagreement with Truman over his Fair Deal programs, which Byrnes saw as socialistic. After leaving the Truman administration, Byrnes practiced law in Washington, D.C., for several years. In 1947, he published Speaking Frankly, an account of his experiences with postwar diplomacy, which became a best-seller.

Byrnes returned to politics in 1950 when he was elected governor of South Carolina. He served for one term, during which he compiled a somewhat mixed record with respect to civil rights. His administration suppressed the activities of the Ku Klux Klan in the state, but Byrnes was a vocal opponent of school desegregation.

After leaving office in 1955, Byrnes retired to Columbia, South Carolina, where he died in 1972. Byrnes remains the only U.S. citizen in the twentieth century to have served in prominent roles in all three branches of the government—legislative, judicial, and executive. His autobiography, which was published in 1958, is titled All in One Lifetime.

Quotes:

"Friendship without self-interest is one of the rare and beautiful things of life."

"Power intoxicates men. When a man is intoxicated by alcohol, he can recover, but when intoxicated by power, he seldom recovers."

"Too many people are thinking of security instead of opportunity. They seem more afraid of life than death."

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