"Tennessee Senator" Kenneth McKellar Signed TLS Dated 1945 Todd Mueller COA

Description

Up for auction "Tennessee Senator" Kenneth McKellar Signed TLS Dated 1945.
This item is certified authentic by Todd Mueller Autographs and comes with their Certificate of Authenticity.
ES-3851D
Kenneth Douglas McKellar
(January 29, 1869 – October 25, 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. McKellar was a native of
Dallas County, Alabama
and graduated from the
University of Alabama
in 1891 and its
law school
in 1892. He moved to
Memphis, Tennessee
, and was admitted to the
bar
the same year. McKellar was first elected to the House in a
special election
in November 1911 to succeed
George W. Gordon
in the 10th Congressional District, which included Memphis. He won the seat in his own right in 1912 and was reelected in 1914 serving until his election to the United States Senate. McKellar ran for the Senate in
1916
, defeating
incumbent
Senator
Luke Lea
in the Democratic
primary
and winning the
general election
against former
Republican
Governor
Ben W. Hooper
. He was reelected to the Senate in
1922
(defeating former Senator
Newell Sanders
),
1928
(defeating former U.S. Assistant Attorney General
James Alexander Fowler
),
1934
(again defeating Ben Hooper),
1940
(against
Howard Baker, Sr.
, father of future Senator
Howard Baker
), and
1946
when he defeated
William B. Ladd
.
McKellar was considered a moderate progressive in his early days in the Senate, supporting many of President
Woodrow Wilson
's reform initiatives as well as ratification of the
Treaty of Versailles
. He also staunchly supported the
New Deal
, especially the creation of the
Tennessee Valley Authority
(TVA). McKellar was also a close ally of Memphis political
boss
E. H. Crump
. Kenneth McKellar was a crusader of
free trade
and supported the repeal of the
Smoot-Hawley Tariff
after 1930. Despite his early support for the policies of
Franklin D. Roosevelt
(FDR), McKellar grew more conservative in his political stances and began opposing the
administration's appointments
. The most noted of these would be a prolonged feud with FDR's appointee to head the TVA,
David E. Lilienthal
. As ranking member of the
Appropriations Committee
McKellar, who was an avid supporter of property rights, successfully forced the TVA to properly reimburse landowners whose property was taken over by the TVA for such purposes as
dam building
. Prior to McKellar's threats to withhold Federal appropriations for the purchase of
uranium
early in
World War II
, the TVA was commonly offering to give landholders "pennies on the dollar" for their property taken over by the TVA. As head of the Appropriations Committee, McKellar had full knowledge of the appropriations needed for the
Manhattan Project
to build an
atomic bomb
. He was often called upon to "keep the secret" of the Manhattan Project by mingling funds for the bomb project with other projects, or through carefully planned (secret) War Projects Funding. As the Tennessee Valley Authority was centered in Tennessee, his home state, McKellar felt that the harsh treatment of his constituents by the TVA was a personal affront by David Lilienthal. McKellar's threat to withhold funding for purchases of uranium had a much deeper meaning though. Lilienthal was also intimately associated with the Manhattan Project's work done to electromagnetically enrich uranium, coincidentally at the facility later known as
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
.
Ernest Lawrence
's
"electromagnetic" enrichment
of uranium at
Oak Ridge, Tennessee
would eventually use the electricity created by the TVA to enrich the uranium used in the
atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima
. By threatening to withhold funding for the purchase of uranium, Senator McKellar was making it clear to David Lilienthal that it was he (McKellar, as ranking member and Acting Chairman of the Appropriations Committee) who was holding the cards, and that it was Lilienthal who was being forced to give a fair market value for land appropriated by the TVA. McKellar twice served as
President pro tempore of the United States Senate
, commencing in 1945, the first to hold the position under the system that has prevailed since of reserving it for the most senior member of the majority party.
[2]
When
Harry Truman
became
president
in April 1945, upon FDR's death, the
vice presidency
became vacant (the mechanism for filling intra-term vacancies had not yet been created by the
25th Amendment
), and so McKellar became the permanent
presiding officer of the United States Senate
. Also, as the President pro tempore of the Senate had, prior to 1886, been second in the
presidential line of succession
, behind only the vice president, Truman viewed McKellar as the logical wartime replacement for himself, and asked McKellar to attend all
Cabinet
meetings. In 1947 Truman successfully lobbied Congress to pass a new
Presidential Succession Act
restoring both the Speaker of the House and the President pro tempore of the Senate to the succession ahead of the Cabinet secretaries. By the time the law came into effect, McKellar was no longer in the position of President pro tempore, because Republicans held the majority in the
80th Congress
. Truman vetoed the
Taft-Hartley Act
in 1947 to restrict labor unions, which McKellar voted in favor of. As such Truman selected
Alben Barkley
of
Kentucky
as his running mate in the
1948 presidential election
. When Democrats regained control as a result of the
1948 elections
, McKellar again became President pro tempore. He was therefore second in line for the presidency (behind the Speaker of the House) from January 3, 1949 until January 20, 1949, when
Alben Barkley
took office as Vice President of the United States. McKellar also served as chairman of the
Civil Service Committee
, Post Office and Road Committee, and, most notably, the powerful
Appropriations Committee
from 1945–1947 and again from 1949–1953.