Lewis L. Morgan

Lewis Lovering Morgan (March 2, 1876 - June 10, 1950) was a Louisiana attorney and politician who served in the United States House of Representatives from November 5, 1912, to March 4, 1917, from the Sixth Congressional District, which then included part of the New Orleans area. He is best remembered, however, as the Long factional candidate who lost the pivotal Democratic gubernatorial nomination in 1944 to James Houston "Jimmie" Davis.

Morgan was born in Mandeville in St. Tammany Parish. He was a descendant of David Bannister Morgan (1773-1848), a pioneer in the settlement of Louisiana who was also a brigadier general in the battle of New Orleans in the War of 1812. Morgan attended public schools and St. Eugene's College in St. Tammany Parish. In 1899, he graduated from the law department of Tulane University in New Orleans. In 1902, he was admitted to the bar and began his law practice in Covington, the seat of St. Tammany Parish. He married the former Lenora Cefalu, and they had two children.

Morgan was the president of the St. Tammany Parish supervisors of elections from 1900-1908, and the president of the parish school board as well from 1904-1908. He served briefly in the Louisiana House of Representatives in 1908 but resigned to become the St. Tammany Parish district attorney, having served from 1908-1912, when he was elected to Congress to fill the vacancy caused by the death of U.S. Representative Robert C. Wickliffe. He did not seek a third term in Congress in 1916 but resumed his law practice in both Covington and New Orleans in 1917.

Morgan was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 1912 (which nominated Woodrow Wilson on the 46th ballot), 1928 (which nominated the Catholic Alfred E. Smith), and 1936 (which renominated the Roosevelt-Garner ticket). He was also a delegate to the Democratic State Convention in 1912, 1916, 1920, and 1924.

Morgan was an unsuccessful candidate for governor in the election of 1944, having been backed by New Orleans Mayor Robert Maestri as the choice of the Long faction. Former Governor Earl Kemp Long was running for lieutenant governor that year, and Long had a plurality in the first primary election. Morgan was pressured to withdraw from the runoff against Davis. Had he done so, Earl Long would have become lieutenant governor without the need of a party runoff primary. By contesting the second balloting with Davis, Morgan set the stage inadvertently for J. Emile Verret of New Iberia, the seat of Iberia Parish, to defeat Earl Long for the nomination to the state's second highest office. (See Wade O. Martin, Jr. for more details on the 1944 election.)

Davis received 251,228 votes (53.6 percent) to Morgan's 217,915 ballots (46.5 percent). At sixty-eight, Morgan was one of the oldest major candidates to have sought the Louisiana governorship. In 1964, the Republican nominee, Charlton H. Lyons, Sr., of Shreveport, sought the office at the age of sixty-nine, and his successful Democratic opponent, John J. McKeithen, made age an issue in that race.

Morgan died in New Orleans. He is interred in Covington Cemetery in Covington. He was Episcopalian.

References

*Lewis Lovering Morgan," "A Dictionary of Louisiana Biography" (1988), p. 582.
*http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=M000955

*"Who's Who in Louisiana and Mississippi" (1918)

*Morgan obituary, "New Orleans Times-Picayune", June 11, 1950

*"Congressional Quarterly's Guide to U.S. Elections", Gubernatorial primaries, 1944