James Wolcott Wadsworth, Jr.

James Wolcott Wadsworth Jr. (August 12, 1877 Geneseo, Livingston County, New York – June 21, 1952 Washington, D.C.) was a U.S. Republican politician from New York. He was the son of New York State Comptroller James Wolcott Wadsworth, Sr., and the grandson of Union General James Samuel Wadsworth ,Sr.

Biography

A member of Skull and Bones, he attended St. Mark's School, then graduated from Yale in New Haven, Connecticut in 1898, and immediately entered the livestock and farming business, first in New York and then Texas.

He became active early in Republican politics, being elected to the New York State Assembly in 1905 and serving continuously until 1910. He was Speaker from 1906-1910.

In 1911, while Wadsworth was on a European tour, he encountered his aunt, Cornelia Wadsworth Ritchie Adair (1837-1921), the widow of Irish businessman John George Adair. She maintained residences at Glenveagh Castle in Ireland and at the JA Ranch in the Texas Panhandle, which her husband had financed. Mrs. Adair invited Wadsworth to become general manager of the JA, located southeast of Amarillo. The ranch was begun by her second husband, John "Jack" Adair (hence the initials "JA"), and his partner, the legendary Texas cattleman Charles Goodnight. Wadsworth accepted his aunt's offer and ran the ranch until 1915, when he assumed his U.S. Senate seat. He once joked that he "had no change of clothes for twelve days and fully expected the Board of Health to be after me." Wadsworth was succeeded as JA manager by Timothy Dwight Hobart. [James Wolcott Wadsworth, Jr., exhibit at Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum in Canyon, Texas]

In 1914, during the Woodrow Wilson administration, with the popular election for U.S. Senate, Wadsworth defeated the Democrat James W. Gerard, who had been the United States Ambassador to Berlin. Wadsworth was the Senate Minority Whip in 1915 because the Democrats held the majority of Senate seats. He was re-elected in 1920, but defeated by popular Democrat Robert F. Wagner in 1926.

Wadsworth was a proponent of individual rights and feared what he considered the threat of federal intervention into the private lives of Americans. He believed that the only purpose of the United States Constitution is to limit the powers of government and to protect the rights of citizens. For this reason, he voted against the Eighteenth Amendment when it was before the Senate. Before prohibition went into effect, Wadsworth predicted that there would be widespread violations and contempt for the law.

By the mid-1920s, Wadsworth was one of a handful of congressmen who spoke out forcefully and frequently against prohibition. He was especially concerned that citizens could be prosecuted by both state and federal officials for a single violation of prohibition law. This seemed to him to constitute double jeopardy, inconsistent with the spirit if not the letter of the Fifth Amendment. The Fifth Amendment in criminal cases prevents two trials for the same offense in the same level of court, not two trials for the same charge in separate state and national jurisdictions. In 1926, he joined the Association Against the Prohibition Amendment and made 131 speeches across the country for the organization between then and repeal. His political acumen and contacts proved valuable in overturning prohibition.

Wadsworth also opposed women's suffrage. His wife, Alice Hay Wadsworth (daughter of former United States Secretary of State John Hay), served as president of the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage.

He served as a United States Representative from 1933-1951, and, like Claude Pepper, is one of the few modern Senators to go on to serve later in the House of Representatives. As such, Wadsworth opposed the Isolationism shared by many of his conservative Republican colleagues, opposed anti-lynching legislation on state's rights grounds, rejected minimum wage laws and most of FDR's domestic policy.

His son-in-law was Stuart Symington, the first Secretary of the Air Force and a Democratic U.S. Senator from Missouri, who unsuccessfully sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 1960.

Wadsworth is buried in Temple Hill Cemetery in Geneseo.

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