Speaker Surprise

Monday, October 26th, 2015

Just over one month ago Speaker John Boehner, the Ohio Republican and 61^st Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, surprised many pundits and politicos by announcing his resignation from Congress effective this Friday, October 30^th. Boehner assumed the office of Speaker following the Republican victories in the 2010 midterm elections, but it was that same anti-establishment wave that ultimately proved his undoing.

Here at the TR Site we ask our visitors to consider the similarities between the issues that Theodore Roosevelt faced in the early 1900s and the issues facing the country today. Our tour focuses on five major social issues:  Environmental Conservation; Immigration and Urban Poverty; Race and Social Inequalities; Big Business and Labor; and the Role of the United States in Global Affairs. On occasion an issue emerges in our news cycle that would not necessarily fit within any of these five, yet still recall something TR faced as President. This series on inSITE will highlight those issues, starting today with the Speaker of the House. As it turns out, Speaker Boehner’s was not the first surprise September resignation from that office.

When TR assumed the Presidency in 1901, the reigning speaker of the House was Iowa Republican David B. Henderson, who held the office from December 1899 to March of 1903. Henderson has a fairly remarkable biography even as House Speakers go. He was the first Speaker to represent a district west of the Mississippi, the second Speaker to be foreign-born, the only Iowan to hold the office and the last one to be a Civil War veteran.  During his time serving in the U.S. Army in the Civil War, he was seriously wounded twice, first shot in the neck during the Battle of Fort Donelson and then losing a foot and part of his leg at the Battle of Corinth.

House Republicans held Henderson in high regard, and thus it came as a great surprise when Henderson announced he would not be running for re-election in September 1902. Reporting on Henderson’s decision the following day, the New York Times declared the declination “such a total surprise to Washington that most of those who heard the news refused to credit it at first.”[1] Speculation ran rampant almost immediately. The Times attributed it to divisions within the Republican Party surrounding tariff reform. House Democrats were reportedly “jubilant” that House Republicans were so hopelessly divided on the tariff question. Henderson himself admitted that he and his constituents were of differing opinions on the matter.

Few then and since have embraced that explanation for Henderson’s surprise announcement. Contemporary observers and more recent historians offer several possible explanations, ranging from Mrs. Henderson’s distaste for public life to complications from his war wounds to an improper relationship with a Senator’s daughter. However, a remarkable find in the 1990s provided a new possible answer to the question of Henderson’s resignation.

In 1994 a chest containing notes from Henderson’s successor Joseph Cannon (R-Ill) was discovered in an attic of the House office building. Among the many historically relevant documents found within that chest was a note to Speaker Cannon from former House Clerk Henry H. Smith written only days after Henderson’s announcement. Smith wrote to Cannon that “there can be but one explanation… his alleged intimacy with a certain ‘lobbyess’ who is reported to have some written evidence that would greatly embarrass the speaker.”[2]

So perhaps it was a scandalous affair and a threat of blackmail that ended the political career of David B. Henderson. The implications of his resignation were immediate. His successor “Czar” Cannon went on to become arguably the most powerful House Speaker in American history. As the leader of the “Old Guard” Republicans, Cannon often stood at odds with the progressivism of Theodore Roosevelt. Today, House Republicans are left to decide who will become John Boehner’s successor and the 62^nd Speaker of the House. Strong divisions remain in the Republican caucus, though consensus has been building around Wisconsin Representative and 2012 Vice-Presidential candidate Paul Ryan.

113 years ago a surprise resignation created a vacancy in one of the most powerful political offices in the world. It was a brief but consequential issue of the day, and the first of hopefully many issues of today that we explore here on inSITE.

-- Paul J. Zwirecki, Ph.D., Bookkeeper/Social Media Manager

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