William Borah

For more information on William Edgar Borah, visit Britannica.com.

(b. Fairfields, Illinois, 29 June 1865; d. 19 Jan. 1940) US; US Senator 1907 – 40 The son of a farmer, Borah attended local schools in Wayne County and then the Southern Illinois Academy at Enfield. He graduated from the University of Kansas in 1889, having studied law, was called to the bar that same year, and began practising at Lyon. Two years later he moved to Boise, Idaho, and practised with one of the state's leading law firms. His political career began inauspiciously with an unsuccessful bid for election to the US House of Representatives as a "Silver" Republican in 1896, followed in 1903 by an unsuccessful attempt to win nomination for US senator. In 1907, however, he was elected Republican Senator for Idaho and was re-elected for each subsequent term until his death.

Although he never travelled abroad, Borah's interest was foreign relations. An isolationist, in 1920 he orchestrated the Senate's opposition to the ratification of the Treaty of Versailles. He was a resolute opponent of America's membership of the International Court of Justice at The Hague. In 1924 he became chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee; this enabled him to play an influential part in the direction and development of America's foreign policy.

In domestic affairs Borah assumed the role of spokesman for the interests of the Midwest. He was a prohibitionist but gained a reputation as a radical by being one of the first leading politicians to champion women's suffrage.

United States senator William Edgar Borah (1865-1940) was influential in developing American foreign policy, particularly by his isolationist attitudes in the 1930s and his opposition to aid to France and Great Britain as World War II approached.

William E. Borah was born to William Nathan and Eliza West Borah on June 29, 1865, on a farm near Fairfield, III. The family had settled originally in Pennsylvania about 1750 and moved west at the turn of the 19th century.

Young William had little liking for farm life. He resisted a career in the ministry and, while still a schoolboy, ran away with a traveling troupe of actors. Then an older sister invited him to join her and her husband in Lyon, Kans., where William continued his education, entering the University of Kansas in 1885. Forced by illness to leave college after his freshman year, he read law at home and passed the Kansas bar examination in 1887. Hard times, however, forced him to leave Kansas, and he settled in Boise, Idaho.

Borah prospered and became prominent in Republican party circles. In 1895 he married Mary O'Connell, daughter of the governor of Idaho. Although Borah bolted the party to campaign for William Jennings Bryan in 1896, he rejoined it permanently in 1902. An unsuccessful candidate of the Progressive wing of the Republican party for U.S. senator in 1903, in 1907 he was elected to the Senate - where he served until his death. The senator was a political independent in his views. Although he was a corporation lawyer and champion of Idaho lumber interests, he also supported the working man. He led the Senate fight in support of President Wilson's income tax bill but opposed Wilson's trust-regulation policy. A nationalist and an imperialist before 1914, he led the most vocal opponents of Wilsonian internationalism after World War I.

Borah never traveled outside the United States, yet his significance in American history lies in his influence on foreign affairs. The "Idaho Lion's" commitment to isolationism, parochialism, legalism, and moralism in foreign affairs led him to oppose effective political and military intervention by the United States on the world stage during the 1920s and 1930s. He championed policy divorced from power and created illusions of peace in the United States just as violent forces were bringing on the most terrible war in modern times.

Borah opposed American membership in the League of Nations because he feared agreements committing the United States to the use of force at a time not of its own choosing. As a leader of the Senate "irreconcilables," he mapped the strategy in the Senate that defeated the Treaty of Versailles. In the Washington Disarmament Conference (1922), Borah supported the Washington Treaty system to limit naval armaments and maintain the status quo in the Pacific, but he was among those senators who insisted upon a reservation disassociating the United States from the use of military power to enforce it. As chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee after 1924, he enlarged the Kellogg-Briand Pact (out-lawing war) to include all the nations of the world, but he later refused to sanction the use of American arms to uphold the treaty.

With the rise of Hitler in Germany, Borah joined the isolationists' bloc in the Senate that imposed the neutrality legislation of 1935-1937. He did not believe that vital American interests were threatened by totalitarianism abroad. A war for democracy in Europe, he declared, would end democracy at home.

Borah opposed President Franklin Roosevelt's efforts to bring American resources to the support of the Western democracies and, when informed of approaching war in Europe at a White House conference in 1939, he refused to believe it, insisting that his information was more accurate than the President's. Still opposing President Roosevelt vigorously, the Idaho senator died on Jan. 19, 1940.

Further Reading

The best biography of Borah is Marian C. McKenna, Borah (1961). The three best books on Borah and American policy in the 1920s are Robert H. Ferrel, Peace in Their Time: The Origins of the Kellogg-Briand Pact (1952), and John Chalmers Vinson, The Parchment Peace: The United States Senate and the Washington Conference, 1921-1922 (1955) and William E. Borah and the Outlawry of War (1957). For Borah and the coming of World War II the best books are Selig Adler, The Isolationist Impulse: Its Twentieth Century Reaction (1957), and Robert A. Divine, The Illusion of Neutrality (1962).

• Born: June 29, 1865, Fairfield, Ill.
• Political party: Republican
• Senator from Idaho: 1907–40
• Died: Jan. 19, 1940, Washington, D.C.

The cry “Borah's got the floor!” sent newspaper reporters rushing to the press gallery, and senators to their seats, to hear him speak. William E. Borah was an independent maverick whose position was often unpredictable but whose speeches were always well reasoned and magnificently delivered. Thoughtful and deliberate, he was never swayed by the prevailing passions but sought to influence and change public opinion. Borah came to the Senate during the Progressive Era, and his efforts led to the direct election of senators, lower tariffs, the graduated income tax, and other progressive reforms.

After World War I, Borah's attention shifted to foreign policy, and he spoke out strongly against the Treaty of Versailles, which ended the war. During the 1920s, as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, he promoted isolationist policies designed to keep the United States out of foreign wars. One observer found Borah “so thoroughly independent that there was hardly a person with whom he did not differ at one time or another.” But even if they disagreed with him, liberals and conservatives alike found that Borah's independence helped give them sharper perspectives on the issues.

See also Treaty of Versailles

Sources

• LeRoy Ashby, The Spearless Leader, Senator Borah and the Progressive Movement in the 1920s (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1972)

(1865-1940), U.S. senator. Born near Fairfield, Illinois, Borah "went West" as a youth, spent several months at the University of Kansas, passed the easy Kansas bar, and headed for Seattle. But he got off the train at Boise, Idaho, and stayed. He ran for local office as a Republican and bolted momentarily to the Democrats in 1896, but thereafter he never strayed from the Republican fold. His role as prosecutor in a trial of three union leaders accused of killing former governor Frank Steunenberg, which he lost to Clarence Darrow, propelled him into the Senate in 1907, where he remained until his death.

The Lion of Idaho, a burly, leonine figure, was a great orator. He managed criticisms without personal rancor, so that even his enemies, such as President Woodrow Wilson, admired him. He possessed a way of catching the desire of the people of the United States for moral positions and often convinced them that words were better than actions, which doubtless made many people feel good.

Borah's essence, however, was contrariness, although he disguised it with his oratorical and moral periods. President Calvin Coolidge supposedly observed, when gazing out of a White House window and seeing the senator ride by on a horse, that it was remarkable that horse and rider were both going in the same direction. Although he entered the Senate as a devotee of Theodore Roosevelt, Borah often opposed him, notably in 1912 when he refused to join the Bull Moose party. He enthusiastically voted for war in 1917 and with equal enthusiasm became an "irreconcilable" over the Versailles treaty and League of Nations, believing they would entangle the United States in the toils of European politics; he said he wanted the League twenty thousand leagues under the sea. In the 1920s he pushed for naval limitation and the Kellogg-Briand Pact. In 1929 he supported Herbert Hoover for president and then turned against him. He voted for New Deal legislation but adamantly opposed Franklin D. Roosevelt on foreign policy, reversing his 1917 stance in favor of entering World War I and going over to isolationism. In the summer of 1939 he even predicted that a second world war was unlikely: he flatly told the president there would be no war, basing his judgment on an obscure and, of course, unreliable private intelligence digest published in London that he had happened to read.

It is insufficient, however, to categorize Borah as a nineteenth-century idealist, unable to adjust to the twentieth, for his views fit no categories. On domestic issues he seems to have been a progressive if allowance is made for his anticonservation and free-silver views, the result of his state's interests. On foreign policy he was a theorist only, evident in the fact that he served as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee in the late 1920s and took all sorts of international positions, but never found time to travel outside the continental United States.

Bibliography:

Robert James Maddox, William E. Borah and American Foreign Policy (1969); Marian C. McKenna, Borah (1961).

Author:

Robert H. Ferrell

William E. Borah
United States Senator from Idaho
In office March 4, 1907 – January 19, 1940
Preceded by	Fred Dubois
Succeeded by	John W. Thomas
Born	June 29, 1865(1865-06-29) near Fairfield, Illinois
Died	January 19, 1940 (aged 74) Washington, D.C.
Political party	Republican
Spouse(s)	Mary McConnell
Residence	Boise
Alma mater	University of Kansas
Profession	Attorney
Religion	Protestant

William Edgar Borah (June 29, 1865 near Fairfield, Illinois – January 19, 1940 Washington, D.C.) was a prominent Republican attorney and longtime United States Senator from Idaho noted for his oratorical skills and isolationist views. One of his nicknames later in life was "The Lion of Idaho."

Contents 1 Early life and career 2 Senator 3 Personality and views 4 1936 Presidential campaign 5 Legacy 6 Hitler quote 7 Other quotations 8 References 9 External links

Early life and career

Borah's schooling included the Wayne County common schools and the Southern Illinois Academy at Enfield. According to a drawing published by H. T. Webster in 1916, he had a boyhood ambition to be a railway conductor.^[1] He attended University of Kansas in 1885 but was forced to leave after contracting tuberculosis his freshman year. He studied law and was admitted to the bar in September 1887. After practicing law in Lyons, Kansas, he relocated to Boise, Idaho, in 1890, where he became the most prominent attorney in the new state.

Borah once wrote a letter to the Board of Pardons protesting the change of sentence in hanging "Diamondfield Jack" Davis, a man charged with killing a sheepherder who was working for a cattle company.^[2] Borah ran for the United States Senate in 1902, but was defeated in the Idaho Legislature by Weldon B. Heyburn, a Republican attorney from Wallace.

In 1907, shortly after entering the Senate, Borah, as the prosecuting attorney, was pitted against Clarence Darrow in the nationally publicized trial of "Big Bill" Haywood and two other radical labor union officials for the 1905 murder of former Idaho Governor Frank Steunenberg.

He married Mary McConnell, daughter of Governor William J. McConnell, in 1895. They had no children.

By his mistress, Alice Roosevelt Longworth, he had one daughter, Paulina (1925-1957).^[3]

Senator

In 1906, the Idaho Legislature elected William Borah to the U.S. Senate over the controversial Democratic incumbent, Fred Dubois. Borah was reelected by the Idaho Legislature in 1912, and four more times by popular vote (1918, 1924, 1930 and 1936). He remains the longest-serving member of the United States Congress in Idaho history.

A member of the Republican National Committee from 1908 to 1912, he was a delegate to the 1912 Republican National Convention. As a senator Borah was dedicated to principles rather than party loyalty, a trait which earned him the nickname "the Great Opposer." He disliked entangling alliances in foreign policy and became a prominent anti-imperialist and nationalist, favoring a continued separation of American liberal and European Great Power politics. He encouraged the formation of a series of world economic conferences and favored a low tariff.

In 1919 Borah and other Senate Republicans, notably Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts and Hiram W. Johnson of California, clashed with President Woodrow Wilson over Senate ratification of the Treaty of Versailles ending World War I and establishing the League of Nations. Borah emerged as leader of the "Irreconcilables," a group of senators noted for their uncompromising opposition to the treaty and the League. During 1919 Borah and Johnson toured the country speaking against the treaty in response to Wilson's own speaking tour supporting it. Borah's impassioned November 19, 1919, speech on the Senate floor in opposition to the treaty and League of Nations was contributive to the Senate's ultimate rejection of it.^[4]

From 1925 to 1933, Borah served as the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. As Chairman, he became known for his pro-Soviet views, favoring recognition of the Soviet Union, and sometimes interceded with that government in an unofficial capacity during the period when Moscow had no official relations with the United States. Purportedly, Kremlin officials held Borah in such high esteem that American citizens could gain permission to travel throughout the Soviet Union with nothing more than a letter from the Senator.

Domestically, he sponsored bills that created the Department of Labor and the Children's Bureau. He was one of the Senators responsible for uncovering the scandals of the Harding Administration. In 1932, unhappy with the conservative policies of President Herbert Hoover in light of the Great Depression, Borah refused to publicly endorse Hoover's reelection campaign.

After Hoover's defeat by Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt, Borah, now the Dean of the United States Senate, supported certain components of the New Deal, such as old-age pensions and the confiscation of U.S. citizens' gold by executive order, but opposed others, including the National Industrial Recovery Act and the Agricultural Adjustment Act.

Personality and views

Borah was a progressive Republican who often had strong differences of opinion with the conservative wing of the party. Borah also had a reputation for being headstrong. When conservative President Calvin Coolidge was told of Borah's fondness for horseback riding, the president is said to have replied, "It's hard to imagine Senator Borah going in the same direction as his horse."

Conservative Republicans in Idaho, notably Governor and later Senator Frank R. Gooding, often feuded with Borah as well. Nevertheless, Borah became a strong political force in Idaho and elsewhere often in spite of opposition from his own party.

Wallace E. Olson, then president of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants in mocking the United States income tax system and rates reported on the debates held in Congress that,

A fear expressed by a number of opponents was that the proposed law, with its low rates was the camel's nose under the tent that once a tax on incomes was enacted, rates would tend to rise. Sen. William E. Borah of Idaho was outraged by such anxieties, and derided a suggestion that the rate might eventually climb as high as 20 percent. Who, he asked, could impose such socialistic, confiscatory rates? Only Congress. And how could Congress, the Representatives of the American People, be so lacking in fairness, justice and patriotism? -- Wall Street Journal, October 5, 1973. Page 8 at columns 4-6.

In 1931 Borah declared he was in favor of the revision of the Versailles Treaty and the Polish corridor, and the revision of the Treaty of Trianon that divided lands from the old Hungarian Kingdom between Austria, Czechoslovakia, Romania and Yugoslavia.^[5]

In 1932 Borah strongly disagreed with the suggestion of the drafters of the London Economic Conference of 1933, who met in Geneva, that the United States should settle intergovernmental debts as a step to recover from the Great Depression.^[6]

1936 Presidential campaign

In an attempt to revitalize the progressive wing of the Republican Party, in 1936 a 71-year-old Borah ran for President of the United States, becoming the first Idahoan to do so. Borah's candidacy was opposed by the conservative Republican leadership and dismissed by Roosevelt. He managed to win only a handful of delegates. Borah won a majority of delegates in only one state, Wisconsin, where he had the endorsement of Progressive United States Senator Robert M. La Follette, Jr. Borah refused to endorse the eventual Republican nominee, Alf Landon, leading some to believe he might cross party lines and support Roosevelt's reelection. As he had four years earlier, ultimately he chose to support neither candidate.^[7]

Legacy

Borah Peak, Idaho's tallest mountain

Despite his failed presidential run, throughout his long career Borah remained personally popular among Idaho voters. While in the Senate in Idaho he never faced a serious political challenge from either the Republicans or Democrats. After abandoning his presidential campaign, later in 1936 at the height of Democratic power during the New Deal era, Borah ran for reelection against three-term Idaho Governor C. Ben Ross, a Roosevelt ally, and won with well over 60 percent of the vote.

Known for his public integrity, eloquent speaking ability, and genuine concern for his constituents, William E. Borah died in Washington, D.C., on January 19, 1940 of a cerebral hemorrhage at the age of 74. He is buried in Morris Hill Cemetery in Boise.^[8]

In 1947, the state of Idaho donated a bronze statue of Borah to the National Statuary Hall Collection. Idaho's highest point, Borah Peak, at 12,662 feet (3859 m), is named for him, as are two public schools: Borah High School in Boise, and Borah Elementary School in Coeur d'Alene. At the University of Idaho, an annual symposium on foreign affairs, a residence hall, and a theater in the student union building bear his name.

William E. Borah Apartment, Windsor Lodge, a home of his in Washington, D.C., was designated a U.S. National Historic Landmark in 1976.^[9]

Bora Laskin, the Chief Justice of Canada from 1973-1984, was named after Borah.^[10]

Hitler quote

Borah may be best known today for having reportedly said, in September 1939, after Germany invaded Poland, "Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler—all this might have been averted." The source of this quote was a 1940 Senate Document, News Articles on the Life and Works of Honorable William E. Borah, compiled and written by William Kinsey Hutchinson, then International News Service's Washington Bureau Chief. Hutchinson indicated that Borah said it to him in private "in words that ran like a prayer."^[11] There is no other public record of Borah saying this; Borah died before Hutchinson published the document, and thus could not deny or confirm it; its veracity is therefore questionable.

The quote has been repeatedly cited as evidence of the alleged naivete of a belief in the power of pure diplomacy. Conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer has referred to the quote in at least three of his columns, making an analogy to negotiating with China in 1989, with North Korea in 1994 and with Iran in 2006.^[12] In August 2006 United States Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld referred to the quote when decrying those who want to "negotiate a separate peace with terrorists".^[13]

On May 15, 2008, U.S. President George W. Bush referred to the quote in a speech to the Knesset in Israel commemorating that nation's 60th anniversary, after stating, "some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along." Some, including Barack Obama himself, interpreted Bush's comment to be a criticism of Obama for his stated willingness to negotiate with the leaders of Iran. White House staff stated that the reference was meant more as a criticism of former president Jimmy Carter, who has argued that the U.S. should be willing to meet with Hamas.^[14]

Other quotations

• "No more fatuous chimera has ever infested the brain than that you can control opinions by law or direct belief by statute, and no more pernicious sentiment ever tormented the heart than the barbarous desire to do so. The field of inquiry should remain open, and the right of debate must be regarded as a sacred right." —1917^[15]

• "America has arisen to a position where she is respected and admired by the entire world. She did it by minding her own business... the European and American systems do not agree." —1919 speech in Brooklyn opposing the League of Nations.^[16]

United States Senate
Preceded by Fred Dubois	United States Senator (Class 2) from Idaho March 4, 1907–January 19, 1940 Served alongside: Weldon B. Heyburn, Kirtland I. Perky, James H. Brady, John F. Nugent, Frank R. Gooding, John W. Thomas, James P. Pope, D. Worth Clark	Succeeded by John W. Thomas
Party political offices
Preceded by Pre-17th Amendment	Republican Party nominee, U.S. Senator (Class 2) from Idaho 1918 (won), 1924 (won), 1930 (won), 1936 (won)	Succeeded by John W. Thomas
Political offices
Preceded by Henry Cabot Lodge Massachusetts	Chair of the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations 1924–1933	Succeeded by Key Pittman Nevada
Honorary titles
Preceded by Reed Smoot Utah	Dean of the United States Senate March 4, 1933–January 19, 1940	Succeeded by Ellison D. Smith South Carolina
Awards and achievements
Preceded by Gelasio Caetani	Cover of Time Magazine 5 May 1924	Succeeded by Homer Saint-Gaudens

v • d • e United States Senators from Idaho Class 2 Shoup • Dubois • Borah • Thomas • Gossett • Dworshak • Miller • Dworshak • Jordan • McClure • Craig • Risch Class 3 McConnell • Dubois • Heitfeld • Heyburn • Perky • Brady • Nugent • Gooding • Thomas • Pope • Clark • Taylor • Welker • Church • Symms • Kempthorne • Crapo

v • d • e Deans of the United States Senate Gunn/Langdon • Foster • Brown • Hillhouse • Anderson • Gaillard • Ruggles • King • Benton • Mangum • Pearce • Bayard/Foot • Foot • Wade • Sumner • Chandler • Anthony • Edmunds • Morrill • Allison • Hale • Frye • Cullom • Gallinger • Lodge • Warren • Simmons • Smoot • Borah • Smith • McKellar • George • Hayden • Russell • Ellender • Aiken • Eastland/McClellan • Eastland • Magnuson • Stennis • Thurmond • Byrd

References

1. ^ "The Best of H. T. Webster" (Simon and Schuster, 1953), page 104
2. ^ Grover, David H. "Diamondfield Jack; A Study in Frontier Justice" (University of Nevada Press, 1968)
3. ^ Cordery, Stacy A. Alice: Alice Roosevelt Longworth, From White House Princess to Washington Power Broker. New York: Penguin Group, Viking Adult (2007). ISBN 0670018333 ISBN 978-0670018338
4. ^ Classic Senate Speeches: William E. Borah to The League of Nations on November 19, 1919. Accessed May 15, 2008.
5. ^ Show Stolen?, Time Magazine, November 2, 1931
6. ^ The World Economic Conference, Herbert Samuel, International Affairs (Royal Institute of International Affairs 1931-1939), Vol. 12, No. 4. (Jul., 1933) 445.
7. ^ A Lion Among The Liberals, by Kevin C. Murphy. Accessed May 15, 2008.
8. ^ Cemetery Walking Tour: William E. Borah, published by City of Boise. Accessed May 15, 2008.
9. ^ Cathy A. Alexander, Ralph Christian, and George R. Adams (January, 1976) (PDF), National Register of Historic Places Inventory-Nomination: William Edgar Borah Apartment, Number 21, Windsor Lodge / William Edgar Borah Apartment, Number 21, Chancellery Cooperative, National Park Service, http://pdfhost.focus.nps.gov/docs/NHLS/Text/76002134.pdf, retrieved 2009-06-22  and Accompanying three photos, exterior, from 1975 and 1978PDF (1.56 MB)
10. ^ Girard, Philip (2005), Bora Laskin: Bringing Law to Life, Toronto: Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History, ISBN 0802090443 
11. ^ William Kinsey Hutchinson, News Articles on the Life and Works of Honorable William E. Borah, Late a Senator from the State of Idaho, Senate Document 150 (Washington, D.C., 1940), p. 37.
12. ^ "Why the Nazi Analogy Is on the Rise", Brendan Nyhan, Time Magazine, August 31, 2006
13. ^ Address at the 88th Annual American Legion National Convention, Donald Rumsfeld, August 29, 2006
14. ^ CNN, "The Situation Room," May 15, 2008 at 5 PM EDT.
15. ^ William E. Borah Quote/Quotation at quotes.liberty-tree.ca
16. ^ U.S. Senate: Art & History Home > Classic Senate Speeches

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: William Edgar Borah

• BORAH, William Edgar at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
• National Statutory Hall - U.S. Capitol
• Borah Symposium at the University of Idaho
• Morris Hill Cemetery Boise, ID - walking tour
• Biography UMKC Law School - biography of William Borah
• Borah High School - biography of William E. Borah
• A Lion Among the Liberals: William Edgar Borah and the rise of New Deal Liberalism
• TIME magazine - cover - William Edgar Borah - 30-Mar-1936
  • article - "Long ago and far away"

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