JEFFERY C. LIVINGSTON
Between "America First" and
"All-Out" Internationalism: The
Fulbright Resolution and Ohio
Republican John M. Vorys
In the U.S. House of Representatives on
June 16, 1943, Congressman
John M. Vorys interrupted a floor debate
on domestic programs to present the
Fulbright Resolution. Passed by the
House in September 1943, the
Fulbright Resolution was during the
Second World War the first official en-
dorsement of permanent U.S. participation
in a collective security arrange-
ment. The resolution highlighted growing
public support for a successor to
the League of Nations, and thus
represented a significant step toward forma-
tion of the United Nations. A Republican
from isolationist Ohio, John
Vorys had opposed America's political
involvement in Europe in the years
before Pearl Harbor. Now, he stood
before the House on his forty-seventh
birthday and publicly reversed course,
arguing that the United States should
maintain strong commitments overseas,
including Europe, even after the
Second World War ended.
Vorys' action placed him in the
forefront of a crucial shift in the foreign
policy attitudes of conservative
Republicans. Prior to World War II,
Republican isolationists, often from the
midwestern states, suspected foreign
political and military involvement. They
contended that overseas entangle-
ment would erode American freedom of
action and portended for the United
States higher taxes, deficit spending,
an imperial presidency, and garrison
state militarism. World War II and the
ensuing cold war, however, led
Jeffery C. Livingston is Assistant
Professor of History at California State University, Chico.
He would like to thank Robert Freeman
Smith, Nelson L. Dawson, Donald Platt, Kenneth J.
Bindas, Craig Houston, Robert Cohen, and
Michael Magliari for reading and commenting on
drafts of this article.
1. For the significance of the Fulbright
Resolution, see Robert A. Divine, Second Chance:
The Triumph of Internationalism
During World War II (New York, 1967),
141-45; and Philip J.
Briggs, "Congress and Collective
Security: The Resolutions of 1943," World Affairs, 132
(March, 1970), 332-44; reprinted in
Briggs, Making American Foreign Policy: President-
Congress Relations from the Second
World War to Vietnam (Lanham, Md.,
1991), 19-38. For
Vorys' remarks, see 16 June 1943, Congressional
Record, 77th Cong., 1st sess., 5943-44.
Congressional Record hereafter referred to as CR.
Fulbright Resolution and Vorys 119
rightwingers in the GOP to change their
tune and back sustained foreign in-
tervention, first to defeat the Axis,
then to contain communism. When they
reversed their thinking, Republican
conservatives helped to forge a bipartisan
consensus in support of a globalist
foreign policy. Though some liberals in
both parties later deserted during the
Vietnam War, the consensus endured fun-
damentally intact through the 1980s.2
The recent end of the cold war, however,
has removed many of the condi-
tions that turned isolationists like
Vorys into globalists during the 1940s and
1950s. Buried for decades, conservative
isolationism in the GOP has been
resurrected in the past several years.
Led by Patrick Buchanan, candidate for
his party's presidential nomination in
1992, some rightwingers have rebelled
against modern GOP orthodoxy and urged
U.S. retrenchment. Their calls for
"America First" echo the
campaign against intervention in World War II
mounted by their ideological forebears.
It is timely to reexamine why con-
servative Republicans such as John Vorys
renounced isolationism in the first
place.3
Leading accounts of that transformation
oversimplify and distort it. The
most complete study is Robert A.
Divine's impressive and influential Second
Chance. Writing from a Wilsonian perspective, Divine presents
American
entry into World War II as a millennial
"triumph of internationalism" over
myopic, old-fashioned isolationism. In
his portrayal, conservative isolation-
ists suddenly woke up during the early
forties, faced reality, and accepted the
international responsibilities
commensurate with America's role as a great
power. Richard E. Darilek argues in A
Loyal Opposition in Time of War
that pragmatic political calculations
were central. To save their party, demor-
alized after years of minority status
and discredited by its responses to both
the Depression and foreign war,
Republicans adopted internationalism "as a
strategic response to a hazardous
situation in American politics." Foreign
Policy and Party Politics, a classic work written by political scientist H.
Bradford Westerfield in the 1950s,
offers still another explanation.
Westerfield contends that the need for
bipartisan unity in wartime led
Republicans to concur uncritically with
Democratic proposals for internation-
2. On the cold war consensus, see Justus
D. Doenecke, Not to the Swift: The Old
Isolationists in the Cold War Era (Lewisburg, Pa., 1979); Michael W. Miles, Odyssey of the
American Right (New York, 1980); Michael Vlahos, "The End of
America's Postwar Ethos,"
Foreign Affairs, 66 (Summer, 1988), 1091-1107. Richard A. Melanson argues in
Reconstructing Consensus: American
Foreign Policy since the Vietnam War (New
York, 1991)
that the consensus collapsed entirely
during the Vietnam War.
3. On renewed isolationism, see for
example The Nation (24 Sept. 1990), 298; New York
Times, 28 Aug. 1990; Joseph Sobran, "Analyzing the
Warmongers," Chico Enterprise-Record
(Chico, Calif.), 4 Sept. 1990; Sidney
Blumenthal, "Tomorrow Belongs to Me," The New
Republic (27 Jan. 1992), 24-26; William Greider, "Buchanan
Rethinks the American Empire,"
Rolling Stone (6 Feb. 1992), 37-39.
120 OHIO
HISTORY
alism, a position that Donald R. McCoy
effectively attacks in a superb but
overlooked article.4
A close look at John Vorys reveals the
need for a more complex analysis.
Divine, Darilek, and Westerfield each
stress only one of the many pressures
that operated on Republicans. In Vorys'
case, the interaction of diverse con-
siderations-national security, ideology,
congressional and House parochial-
ism, and party and electoral
politics-motivated his wartime movement to in-
ternationalism. His involvement with the
Fulbright Resolution illustrates
how Vorys finessed this web of concerns.
By failing to define precisely the term
"internationalism," the three authors
also tend to overstate conservative
Republican agreement with schemes for
American foreign involvement proposed by
liberals and Democrats. The
meaning of "internationalism"
is slippery. Since the outbreak of World War
II the word has been used by scholars
and the public in at least two ways.
During the war it often had idealistic
overtones. Expressed in phrases such as
Wendell Willkie's "one world"
and associated with the ideas of Woodrow
Wilson, internationalism connoted the
surrender of a large degree of national
sovereignty to transnational
institutions that would establish and maintain
lasting peace. Yet, during and after the
war the term also simply meant en-
hanced American responsibility in
foreign affairs, usually in pursuit of world
order whether in concert with other
nations or alone.5
In this article,
"internationalism" will be counterpoised to "isolationism."
At a minimum, an
"isolationist" opposed involvement in a European military
conflict and resisted participation in
military alliances and collective security
organizations. Isolationists sought
above all else to preserve America's free
hand. "Internationalists"
accepted commitments to military alliances and col-
lective security. They could differ
greatly, however, on precisely how much
national sovereignty they were willing
to relinquish to an international body
and on just how collective security
should be organized.6
As will be demonstrated, John Vorys
developed a conservative variant of in-
ternationalism. The Ohioan concluded
early in World War II that American
4. Divine, Second Chance; Richard
E. Darilek, A Loyal Opposition in Time of War: The
Republican Party and the Politics of
Foreign Policy from Pearl Harbor to Yalta (Westport,
Conn., 1976), esp. 182-85; H. Bradford
Westerfield, Foreign Policy and Party Politics: Pearl
Harbor to Korea (New Haven, 1955), 135, 138-39, passim; Donald
R. McCoy, "Republican
Opposition During Wartime," Mid-America:
An Historical Review, 49 (July, 1967), 174-89.
5. For example, in Second Chance, Divine
often seems to mean "Wilsonian" when he
employs "internationalism."
But he also discusses a "spectrum" of internationalism that
includes Wilsonians,
"idealists," and "realists." See Second Chance, 22,
62, 135, 176, 183. A
useful discussion of the term's
definition can be found in Warren F. Kuehl, "Internationalism,"
in Alexander DeConde, ed., The
Encyclopedia of American Foreign Policy: Studies of the
Principal Movements and Ideas (New York, 1978), 443-54.
6. See Kuehl,
"Internationalism," and Justus D. Doenecke, Anti-Intervention: A
Bibliographical Introduction to
Isolationism and Pacificism from World War I to the Early Cold
War (New York, 1987), xv.
Fulbright Resolution and Vorys 121 |
|
national security frontiers had expanded beyond U.S. borders to include Europe. In the interests of national security, he accepted the need for American participation in an organization such as the United Nations. But Vorys remained committed to safeguarding American unilateralism as much as possible. Vorys was born in 1896 to a family prominent in the Ohio Republican Party. A star athlete at Columbus East High School, he fought as a naval aviator in World War I, then graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a degree in his- tory from Yale in 1919. After college, Vorys taught for a year at Yale-in- China, a secular mission school in Hunan Province. Upon his return home, Vorys used his father's political contacts to wangle an appointment as an as- sistant secretary in the U.S. delegation to the Washington Naval Conference. After taking a law degree at Ohio State University in 1922, where he was also an assistant football coach, he joined the family law firm in Columbus. He had already by then won a seat in the Ohio General Assembly, successfully campaigning while still in law school. Vorys served in the Assembly for two consecutive terms, one as a house representative, the other as a state sen- |
122 OHIO HISTORY
ator. In 1929 he was named the first
director of the Ohio Bureau of
Aeronautics, a position he held for two
years.7
Opposed to the New Deal early on, Vorys
bid unsuccessfully for a nomina-
tion to the U.S. Senate in 1934. Turning
his attention to the U.S. House of
Representatives, he lost in the 1936
primary before election to Congress in
1938 from Ohio's twelfth congressional
district, which included Columbus
and environs. He immediately obtained a
seat on the House Committee on
Foreign Affairs, which he held for the
rest of his political career. A stocky
workaholic who possessed high
intelligence and enormous physical and men-
tal energy, Vorys' reputation rose
quickly. Early in 1941 House Majority
Leader John W. McCormack from
Massachusetts called the Ohioan "one of
the two recognized leaders" of
House Republicans [the other was New York's
Hamilton Fish] "in determining the
policy ... on foreign affairs." Not long
afterward a veteran reporter on Capitol
Hill observed that Vorys' reputation
for hard work and careful preparation
made him one of "20 members of the
House who [could] swing votes one way or
another." By the time he left
Congress in 1958 Vorys was hailed as
"the intellectual leader" of Republicans
in the House on international issues.8
Throughout his career, Vorys held to a
conservative nationalist conception
of American foreign policy interests. As
a nationalist he sought to maximize
America's free hand. A thoroughgoing
conservative, he prized global stabil-
ity and feared revolutionary change,
especially if associated with communism.
Instability frightened Vorys because it
invited war, which could undermine
American unilateralism. The First World
War demonstrated to him that war
also could subvert the American way of
life by increasing executive power
and necessitating economic regimentation
and heavy government expendi-
tures. At the same time, Vorys
recognized the inevitability of change in the
international system. An attorney by
training, he hoped to manage change
within a framework of international law.
In the twenties and early thirties Vorys
opposed Wilsonian-style interna-
tionalism. American membership in the
League of Nations, he believed,
would unnecessarily compromise national
sovereignty and entangle the United
States in European quarrels. Vorys
argued that it would be foolish "to plunge
into the maelstrom of western Europe on
equal terms with the most backward
7. For Vorys' early years, see Jeffery
C. Livingston, "Ohio Congressman John M. Vorys: A
Republican Conservative Nationalist and
American Foreign Policy" (Ph. D. dissertation,
University of Toledo, 1989), Chapter
One.
8. For McCormack, see 13 Feb. 1941, CR,
77th Cong., 1st sess., 991-92. For the reporter's
comments, see Richard [Thornburg] to
"Chuck," no date [early World War II], 1962 and 1963
folder, Box 89, The Papers of John M.
Vorys, Ohio Historical Society, Columbus, Ohio. The
Papers of John M. Vorys hereafter
referred to as JMV, with appropriate folder name and box
number indicated. For "intellectual
leader," see William Benton, "The Big Dilemma:
Conscience or Vote?" New York
Times Magazine (26 April 1959), 12, 83-84. See also Mark
Sullivan's comments in Washington Post,
6 Feb. 1941, and Westerfield, Foreign Policy, 103.
Fulbright Resolution and Vorys 123
of these decadent nations."
Moreover, in Vorys' eyes the League lacked an
explicit commitment to adhere to
principles of international law, so it would
simply enforce the status quo as defined
by the great powers. Vorys thought
instead that the Republican-sponsored
treaties signed at the Washington Naval
Conference, which defused tensions in
the Pacific and East Asia, the Kellogg-
Briand Pact, which outlawed war, and
American adherence to the World Court
would combine to provide a solid legal
framework for containing evolutionary
change.9
In the 1930s three "gangster"
nations-Japan, Italy, and Germany-refused
to operate by international law and
thereby made it irrelevant. Convinced that
a European war was in the making, and
certain as well that Franklin D.
Roosevelt and the New Dealers would
exploit American involvement in war
to aggrandize presidential power, Vorys
urged disengagement from Old World
affairs before it was too late. As a
rookie congressman, in June 1939 he
helped spearhead the isolationist fight
in the House by guiding to passage the
"Vorys Amendment." The
amendment temporarily blocked the efforts of
President Roosevelt to secure repeal of
a law which stipulated an embargo of
arms for any nation at war. Congress
eventually eliminated the embargo in
November 1939, but Vorys continued, with
the solid support of his con-
stituents, to battle subsequent policies
that inched the United States toward
war.10
Official U.S. entry into World War II
forced Vorys to reexamine isolation-
ism. America's inability to stay
uninvolved demonstrated to him that nonin-
tervention was outmoded, because the
United States could not remain at peace
while Europe was at war. ll Vorys
concluded that to avoid future wars the
United States had to take the lead in
fashioning a new, stable world order. By
1943 he concurred with the sentiment
that a global organization assembled
roughly along the lines of the League of
Nations would be a central pillar in
the postwar reconstruction process.
Membership in this international
organization could take many forms and
could come about in many ways, however.
Just because he now appeared
wrong about nonentanglement, Vorys was
not about to let Roosevelt and lib-
eral Democrats monopolize American
foreign policy making. Otherwise, he
9. Vorys to Alonzo Tuttle, 9 Nov. 1921,
Arms Conference-1922 folder, and "Rough
Notes," n.d., Miscellaneous
Speeches and Papers folder, both in Box 99, JMV; typed
mimeograph, n.d., Campaign Literature
folder, Box 91, JMV; notes for talk on Washington
Conference, n.d., Misc. 22-27 folder,
Box 95, JMV; Vorys to Simeon D. Fess, 5 Jan. 1929, 1929
Personal Correspondence folder, Box 77,
JMV.
10. On the Vorys Amendment, see David L.
Porter, "Ohio Representative John M. Vorys
and the Arms Embargo in 1939," Ohio
History, 83 (Spring, 1974), 103-13; and Livingston,
"Ohio Congressman John M.
Vorys," 54-71. Vorys' fight against U.S. intervention in World
War II can be followed in Livingston,
Chapter 2.
11. New York Times, 1 Oct. 1941.
As the date indicates, Vorys' change in thinking actually
began on the eve of official American
military intervention.
124 OHIO HISTORY
feared, the New Dealers would dole out
American sovereignty and resources in
pursuit of an idealistic "One
World" or superstate. Vorys developed a version
of internationalism that was a logical
extension of his conservative national-
ist core. He insisted that the United
States give up only enough sovereignty
to make an international organization
workable, and he demanded that such a
body not undermine American
constitutional safeguards by circumventing
congressional prerogatives.
The wartime transition of Vorys involved
more than a reassessment of U.S.
foreign policy. Serious political
hurdles challenged the Ohioan. After Pearl
Harbor isolationism appeared to many
Americans as short-sighted at best and
treasonous at worst. Democrats were sure
to pounce on Vorys' national repu-
tation as a partisan, isolationist
leader and a spokesman for the America First
Committee, the national organization
that in 1940-41 led the fight against in-
tervention in the Second World War.
Adopting an internationalist stance took
care of this, at least partly. Yet if
Vorys repudiated isolationism too force-
fully, he ran the risk of looking
opportunistic or of alienating die-hard isola-
tionists back home in Columbus and state
GOP leaders, such as Senator
Robert A. Taft and Governor John W.
Bricker, who remained wary of interna-
tionalism. It was all well and good to
insist on the careful monitoring by
Republicans and by Congress of FDR's
postwar planning, but there were
tremendous pressures in wartime for the
GOP, Democrats, the White House,
and Capitol Hill to close ranks. Vorys
had to walk a fine line. He managed
by adopting a stance of loyal opposition
that allowed him on the one hand to
promote national unity, and on the other
gave him the leeway to carve out his
own positions on policy specifics.l2
Once the United States entered World War
II most serious thinkers, includ-
ing those identified as isolationists,
agreed that the country henceforth would
be far more active in international
affairs. There was sharp controversy over
exactly how this should take form. At
one end of the spectrum idealists such
as Vice President Henry A. Wallace and
Republican presidential contender
Wendell Willkie offered vague, almost
mystical programs for world federa-
tion. At the other end
"realists" such as Walter Lippmann and Herbert
Hoover emphasized great power domination
and spheres of influence. In be-
tween, Wilsonian Democrats such as
Secretary of State Cordell Hull proposed
a new League of Nations to enforce a
liberal-capitalist world order and politi-
cal self-determination. Some
conservative Republicans, Senator Robert Taft
for example, accepted American
participation in a very weak world organiza-
12. For the wartime political problems
that Vorys and fellow Republicans grappled with, see
Darilek, Loyal Opposition, esp.
21-47; McCoy, "Republican Opposition During Wartime";
Thomas Philipose, "The 'Loyal
Opposition': Republican Leaders and Foreign Policy, 1943-
1946" (Ph. D. dissertation,
University of Denver, 1972); Westerfield, Foreign Policy, 139-45;
press release, 29 Jan. 1942, Statements
1942 folder, Box 85, JMV; radio campaign address, 26
Oct. 1942, Radio and TV Talks-Campaign
1942 folder, Box 96, JMV.
Fulbright Resolution and Vorys 125
tion, but placed more faith in
international law and a world court. Others,
like Vorys and Senator Arthur Vandenberg
of Michigan, thought international
law important but were open to American
membership in new multilateral
political and economic arrangements.
They sought to preserve national
sovereignty and constitutional
procedures, and insisted on White House con-
sultation with Congress and the GOP in any
postwar planning.13
The contemporary perception was that, in
the interests of creating a strong
international organization, the
Democrats would relinquish more national
sovereignty than would Republicans.
Wendell Willkie was the most idealis-
tic of the major Republican leaders, and
he was a former Democrat who by
1942 exercised minimal influence in
conservative, Midwestern party circles.
Not clear at the time was the
inconsistency within the Roosevelt administra-
tion. Henry Wallace's "Century of
the Common Man," which represented a
kind of global New Deal, and the calls
for a world police force by
Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles
went beyond anything Cordell Hull
envisioned. Roosevelt himself was more
of a power politics diplomatist than
was generally realized. FDR hoped to
delay specific planning for as long as
possible, and he tried to keep it in his
own hands. The absence of strong
presidential leadership allowed Vorys
and other Republican conservatives to
exercise great influence in defining
America's overseas responsibilities in the
postwar era.
Until 1943, Vorys improvised. The day
after Pearl Harbor, he declared
vaguely that American entry into the war
thrust the nation into a position of
permanent global leadership. When the
Republican National Committee met
in Chicago in April 1942 to discuss
resolutions concerning conduct of the
war and peace planning, Vorys urged an
innocuous statement pledging GOP
commitment to the war effort. He warned
that to go beyond that might en-
danger American unity. Two months later
Vorys called for a meeting of the
Inter-Parliamentary Union. This was an
unofficial, hands-across-the-Atlantic
association that since the late
nineteenth century had promoted contact be-
tween members of national legislatures
in Western Europe and North
America. Vorys felt that a meeting of
Allied members of the Union would
facilitate discussion between
democratically elected representatives on "basic
war aims and peace aims." He
cautioned that, without popular support,
postwar planning was useless.14
13. Both this paragraph and the
following one draw from Divine, Second Chance, 47-68,
84-85, 103-05, 119-27; Thomas M.
Campbell, Masquerade Peace: America's UN Policy,
1944-1945 (Tallahassee, 1973), 1-4; Robert Dallek, Franklin D.
Roosevelt and American
Foreign Policy, 1932-1945 (New York, 1979), 419-20, 536-37; James T. Patterson, Mr.
Republican: A Biography of Robert A.
Taft (Boston, 1972), 285-98.
14. 8 Dec. 1941, CR, 78th Cong.,
1st sess., 9352-53; copy of Vorys telegram to Joseph
Martin, 20 Apr. 1942, Statements 1942
folder, Box 85, JMV; 25 June 1942, CR, 78th Cong., 2d
sess., A2423. For information on the
Inter-Parliamentary Union, see Michael A. Lutzker,
"Richard Bartholdt," in Biographical
Dictionary of Internationalists, Warren F. Kuehl, ed.
126 OHIO HISTORY
The congressional election campaign of
1942 pressured Vorys to clarify his
position. The New Republic devoted
an entire issue in May 1942 to expos-
ing congressional isolationists. The
journal did not single out the Ohioan
but included the Vorys amendment of 1939
in a list of twenty bills used to
gauge performance on Capitol Hill. In a
letter to the periodical published on
June 29, internationalist Clarence
Streit, who in 1939 authored a blueprint for
an Atlantic federation in the
widely-read Union Now, defended Vorys. Streit
had been impressed with Vorys when they
publicly debated the intervention
issue in 1941. Now he praised Vorys'
"exceptionally thoughtful and studious
attitude toward the world problem."
No other congressman, Streit continued,
was "now giving more earnest,
active and constructive thought to the prob-
lem of organizing the world for peace
than Mr. Vorys." The New Republic
would have none of Streit's defense and
damned him as "politically naive in
the extreme." The magazine ripped
Vorys for voting wrong on nineteen of
the twenty items it utilized to measure
records.15
The salvo of The New Republic infuriated
Vorys. His office put together a
detailed, ten-page response that
stressed the magazine's leftist leanings while
portraying Vorys as a responsible,
mainstream conservative. The fallout
from The New Republic affair
proved manageable, given the journal's modest
circulation and liberal, highbrow
audience. Much more damaging was an arti-
cle published in August in Life, a
mass-circulation magazine. Roger
Butterfield, Life's national
affairs editor, accused Vorys of continuing to play
politics with isolationism and urged
voters in Columbus to throw him out of
office.
The article was a personal as well as
political blow to Vorys. Ironically,
he was an old friend of Life publisher
Henry R. Luce, a fellow Yalie, and had
been retained by Time, Inc. as an
attorney in the late 1920s. After publica-
tion of the article, which he had not
seen in advance, Luce wrote Vorys an
apologetic letter. In a Life editorial
published in October, Luce tried to make
amends and characterized Vorys as an
"able Congressman" who was open to
"international solutions, providing
they are real enough to work." Vorys ac-
cepted the apology and welcomed Luce's
editorial. Nonetheless, he admitted
that the Butterfield article caused
"difficulties." The article, combined with
the tactics of his Democratic opponent,
Arthur P. Lamneck, made the election
"a referendum" on Vorys'
prewar isolationism.16
(Westport, Conn., 1983), 55-56;
"Financial Report of Interparliamentary Union Conference,"
14 Nov. 1953, IPU folder, Box 24, JMV;
scattered information in Box 71, JMV.
15. The New Republic (18 May
1942), 683-711, and (29 June 1942), 894-95.
16. "Synopsis of Record," New
Republic 1942 folder, Box 9, JMV; Roger Butterfield, "Is It
True What They Say About Congress?"
Life (17 Aug. 1942), 76-87; "Life on the Newsfronts
of the World," Life (19 Oct.
1942), 36; Henry R. Luce to Vorys, 23 Sept. 1942, Vorys to Luce,
25 Sept. 1942, Luce to Vorys, 7 Oct.
1942, Vorys to Luce, 3 Nov. 1942, all in Correspondence
Relating to John M. Vorys, Time Inc.
Archives, New York, New York.
Fulbright Resolution and Vorys 127
On the campaign stump Vorys conceded
that he "may have made mistakes"
in the past. He did not apologize for
his record of anti-interventionism, but
instead stressed that before the war he
had supported a defense buildup and had
called for an embargo of Japan. He
emphasized, still in very general terms,
that the United States should assume an
active international role after the war.
Drawing on traditional themes of
American mission to bolster campaign
rhetoric, Vorys identified for the
United States "a duty and a destiny in a new
world order that cannot be denied."
He assured Columbus audiences that with
its moral, economic, and military power,
the nation would lead the world to
lasting peace. Even here, however, when
on the defensive, Vorys' conserva-
tive distrust of Roosevelt showed
through. He called for clarification of
American "peace aims ...
concurrently by Congress and the President," not
by the administration alone.17
Vorys won the election by a wide margin,
but still had reason for discom-
fort. The 1942 campaign was one of only
two times in his congressional ca-
reer that he faced primary opposition,
which indicates that some local
Republicans were unhappy with his
politics. He had already defeated
Democrat Arthur Lamneck in 1938 and
1940. Though Vorys' victory in
1940 was a squeaker, easy wins in 1938
and 1942 suggest that Lamneck was
not a consistently strong candidate. A
more able opponent in 1942 might
have presented Vorys with more problems.
Across the country only five of
115 congressmen with prewar isolationist
records suffered defeat. Yet opinion
polls showed that almost three-quarters
of Republican voters thought that the
United States should join an
international organization after the war.18 If the
election was indeed a referendum on the
isolationism of Vorys, as he believed,
no clear verdict emerged. Nevertheless,
he concluded from the campaign that
he had to reshape his image and record
to protect his political future.
Across the country, public pressure
mounted throughout late 1942 and early
1943 in favor of the United States
joining a permanent international peace-
keeping body. In response, congressional
Republicans and Democrats intro-
duced a number of resolutions calling
for postwar planning. Vorys repeated
his call for a meeting of the
Inter-Parliamentary Union. He also kept in
touch with ex-president Herbert Hoover,
who co-authored with Hugh Gibson
in 1942 an influential book entitled The
Problems of Lasting Peace. The two
accepted expanded overseas commitments,
but also stressed a world order
based on retention of national
sovereignty. This theme resonated with Vorys,
and he urged Hoover to continue public
discussion of the issue. Since
17. "Life on the Newsfronts of the
World," Life (16 Nov. 1942), 40; radio campaign ad-
dress, 5 Oct. 1942, radio campaign
address, 26 Oct. 1942, texts for both in Radio and TV
Talks-Campaign 1942 folder, Box 96, JMV.
See also campaign pamphlets, Campaign
Literature 1942 folder, Box 96, JMV.
18. Divine, Second Chance, 70-74.
Vorys won by 16,000 votes out of the 96,000 cast. See
"John M. Vorys in Politics,"
Bio Material folder, Box 87, JMV.
128 OHIO
HISTORY
Hoover was highly respected by the
conservative wing of the GOP, Vorys as-
sured him that he could help "keep
Republicans from becoming too crystal-
lized in an isolationist frame of
mind." At Hoover's request, Vorys set up a
meeting in early Spring 1943 between the
"Chief' and House Republicans to
discuss postwar plans. 19
This flurry of activity caught the
Roosevelt administration by surprise. At
the request of the White House, Democrat
Tom Connally of Texas, chair of
the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,
delayed all consideration of postwar
schemes. Although within Congress the
Senate traditionally had dibs on for-
eign affairs, House members grew impatient.
Recognizing the public clamor
for a congressional endorsement of an
international organization, the House
seized a rare chance to jump out in
front on a foreign policy issue.
In June 1943 the House Foreign Affairs
Committee met to consider a
number of resolutions on postwar
planning that had been introduced in recent
months. The most prominent were measures
drafted by two Democrats on
the committee, J. William Fulbright of
Arkansas and West Virginia's John
Kee. Thirty-eight years old, Fulbright
was a former law professor, ex-
president of the University of Arkansas,
and a freshman congressman. He
proposed American participation in
"the creation of appropriate international
machinery with power adequate to prevent
future aggression to maintain
lasting peace." Kee, a seasoned
representative nearing seventy, included in his
lengthier resolution specific
suggestions for a collective security system.20
For several months previous, Fulbright
had held weekly bipartisan meet-
ings in his office to discuss world
organization. An occasional opponent of
Fulbright on the paddleball courts in
the Capitol Hill gymnasium, Vorys had
been the only senior congressman to
participate in what were otherwise con-
claves of first-term representatives.
Now he played a prominent role during
the committee hearings, promoting
Fulbright's resolution as "the easiest one"
to agree on. He urged his colleagues to
report the proposal out quickly before
the summer recess, with a unanimous
recommendation for House adoption.
A unanimous vote, he argued, would help
prevent a partisan backlash on the
19. Divine, Second Chance, 75-97;
Gary Dean Best, Herbert Hoover: The Postpresidential
Years, 1933-1964 (Stanford, 1984), 230; 23 Mar. 1943, CR, 78th
Cong., 1st sess., A1383;
George H. Gallup, The Gallup Poll:
Public Opinion, 1935-1971: Volume I, 1935-1948 (New
York, 1972), 340, 361, 377, 383. For
Vorys-Hoover correspondence, see Box 544, Herbert
Hoover Papers, Post-Presidential
Individual Files, Herbert Hoover Presidential Library, West
Branch, Iowa.
20. An interesting contemporary sketch
of Fulbright can be found in Max Hall, "J. William
Fulbright: Hell-bent on His
Objective," in J.T. Salter, ed., Public Men In and Out of Office
(Chapel Hill, 1946), 181-95. On Kee, see
Biographical Directory of the American Congress,
1774-1971 (Washington, D.C., 1971), 1215. The texts of the
resolutions by Kee and Fulbright
can be found in House Committee on
International Relations, Selected Executive Session
Hearings of the Committee, 1943-1950,
Volume 1: Problems of World War II and Its Aftermath,
Part 1 (Historical Series) (Washington,
D.C., 1976), 273-74.
Fulbright Resolution and Vorys 129 |
|
House floor or from the public. The Foreign Affairs Committee could later study postwar problems in more detail. Because of his legal training and conservative outlook, Vorys held precedent in high regard. He thought it vi- tal to portray the Fulbright Resolution as springing from a "committee that was constituted under our laws and traditions long before this particular thing came up." That way, the measure would not appear to be a radical departure for the United States. Vorys insisted that simply to get a resolution out was important, in order to forestall a postwar resurgence of isolationism. Congress had to "create and crystallize the sentiment of [Americans]" and the best time to do so was during, not after, the war.21 Vorys' colleagues shared his fear that the specificity in Kee's proposal would spark a bitter floor debate. They therefore retained most of Fulbright's vague phrasing when hammering out the committee's report. Vorys did work to get Kee's reference to global "law and order" inserted into the resolution. At one point the committee assented, but then cut the phrase from the final
21. Hall, "Fulbright," 185-86; Committee on International Relations, Executive Session, 1, 29-32, 36-37, 48-50, 52-53. |
130 OHIO HISTORY
draft. At Vorys' suggestion, the
committee deleted Fulbright's reference to
prevention of future aggression so as to
avoid two dangers: (1) the implica-
tion of an international police force,
an idea that isolationists such as Senator
Robert Taft strenuously objected to; and
(2) the notion that the United States
would guarantee the status quo, which
might be construed by Anglophobes
like Robert C. McCormick, publisher of
the Chicago Tribune, as a guarantee
of the British Empire.22
On June 15, 1943, a unanimous House
Foreign Affairs Committee reported
favorably a resolution calling for
American participation in "the creation of
appropriate international machinery with
power adequate to establish and
maintain a just and lasting peace."
The following day Vorys presented the
resolution on the House floor. The
symbolism of a staunch, prewar isola-
tionist making the first endorsement of
the resolution was obvious. Vorys
stressed that the proposal was a product
of both committee Democrats and
Republicans. It was neither "a
pious generality" nor "a blueprint of a super-
government," but "a statement
of congressional preference in postwar poli-
cies." Though vague, it made clear
that "we prefer post-war participation-
not post-war isolation." Knowing
that many Republicans doubted that
Roosevelt would consult Congress, Vorys
reassured them that the resolution
marked a significant step toward congressional
foreign policy making.23
Immediate reaction by House Republicans
demonstrated Vorys' wisdom in
insisting on vague language. A few
isolationists, such as Ohio's Frederick
C. Smith, attacked the proposal as a
surrender of American sovereignty. But
for the most part, comments were
favorable but innocuous. Representative
Frances Bolton of Ohio maintained that
the resolution "merely clarifies a be-
ginning." New York's Hamilton Fish,
an important isolationist, believed
that the resolution committed Congress
"only to the principle of favoring a
just and lasting peace." Edith
Nourse Rogers of Massachusetts insisted that
"absolutely nothing . . . will be
binding on us."24
To allow time for reducing isolationist
opposition, House leaders delayed a
vote on the Fulbright Resolution until
fall.25 During the summer con-
stituents generally praised Vorys for
his support of the measure. One urged
Vorys to continue searching for middle
ground between ultranational isola-
tionists, like Tribune publisher
Robert McCormick, and "all-out" internation-
alists such as Wendell Willkie. Party
welfare demanded that the GOP find
this golden mean. Vorys agreed, adding
in a verbal poke at Roosevelt that
"open democratic arrangements"
were necessary, as opposed to the "present
22. Committee on International
Relations, Executive Session, 1, 48-50, 52-53, 63-64.
23. New York Times, 16, 17 June
1943; 16 June 1943, CR, 78th Cong., 1st sess., 5943-44.
24. 16 June 1943, CR, 77th Cong.,
1st sess., 5944; New York Times, 17 June 1943.
25. Divine, Second Chance, 112.
Fulbright Resolution and Vorys 131
secret and uncertain diplomatic
contacts" with American allies. "Our mild lit-
tle resolution" was part of this
process.26
Still, Vorys faced static in his home
district, for isolationism had not van-
ished in Columbus. One constituent
accused Vorys of "being taken in" by
"eastern seaboard
Republicans." He warned that, if the GOP was not careful,
it could "write its own death warrant."
Vorys countered that the United States
always had, and would continue to,
"participate in international affairs."
There had always been international
machinery; he hoped to insure that after
the war it squared with American
interests. Vorys argued that, for the sake of
party survival, the GOP could not
concede the initiative on foreign affairs to
Franklin Roosevelt. To maintain
credibility, Republicans had to offer alter-
natives. Merely to naysay would
guarantee the Democrats a victory in the
1944 elections.27
Support for the Fulbright Resolution
soared by September. A national
poll taken in mid-summer indicated that
78 percent of the American people
wanted their congressmen to vote for the
resolution. Another survey found
that 81 percent of the public favored
the United States joining "a union of na-
tions." The Midwest was but
slightly behind the rest of the country in these
polls. At a Republican Party conference
in Michigan in mid-September, the
GOP issued the Mackinac Declaration.
Carefully worded, the statement called
for "responsible participation by
the United States in post-war cooperative or-
ganization among sovereign nations to
prevent military aggression and to at-
tain permanent peace with organized
justice in a free world." Without naming
the Fulbright Resolution, the
Declaration added to the momentum favoring
its passage.28
Fears remained that hardliners in
Republican conservative ranks would try
to sabotage the resolution. For example,
Daniel Reed of New York, a vocal
and unrepentant isolationist, dubbed the
resolution "a wild and reckless plunge
in the dark." Hoping to reduce
opposition as much as possible, in mid-
September the Foreign Affairs Committee
amended the measure. The new
draft read that Congress favored
participation in an international organization
through American constitutional
processes.29 House debate on the proposal
then began on September 20.
To underscore the bipartisan backing of
the Fulbright Resolution, Vorys
and Democrat Sol Bloom of New York,
chair of the Committee on Foreign
Affairs, made the opening speeches. The
thrust of Vorys' remarks was two-
26. Francis J. Wright to Vorys, 18 June
1943, Vorys to Wright, 23 June 1943, Fulbright
Resolution folder, Box 79, JMV. See this
folder and Peace Plans folder, Box 11, JMV, for
other favorable correspondence.
27. Harold A. Stacy to Vorys, 17 June
1943, Vorys to Stacy, 21 June 1943, Fulbright
Resolution folder, Box 79, JMV.
28. Gallup Poll, 1, 392, 409-10;
Divine, Second Chance, 134, 141; Darilek, Loyal
Opposition, 107-15.
29. New York Times, 15, 21 Sept.
1943; Darilek, Loyal Opposition, 119-20.
132 OHIO
HISTORY
fold. Once again, he contended that the
resolution demonstrated the firm in-
tention of Congress to participate in
subsequent postwar planning. The other
issue that Vorys addressed was national
sovereignty. He identified the choice
of entering war as "the most
important aspect of sovereignty." Yet, he
pointed out, in the twentieth century
the United States had twice been pulled
into wars unwillingly. An effective
international organization that main-
tained peace could restore that choice.30
World War II convinced Vorys that
isolation was unworkable. As he saw
it, either the United States tried to
shape foreign events, or it would be con-
trolled by them. The president and
Congress had to work together to build a
new global body that, with full American
involvement, would prevent World
War III. Paradoxically, though appearing
to be a surrender of sovereignty,
membership in an international
organization would actually retrieve it, for
collective security would ensure
stability and peace. Vorys wanted the United
States to move out in front in forming a
global body, because he felt there
was no sense in sitting by "and
getting dragged into something we did not
help fix up." Vorys, then, cast off
isolation but not his fundamental conser-
vative nationalism. He still sought to
protect America's free hand. He main-
tained in addition that, under a system
of global law and order enforced by an
international association, individual
Americans would have more freedom be-
cause they would escape military
conscription and other wartime restric-
tions.31
The following day, September 21, the
House passed the Fulbright
Resolution, 360-29. Republican
isolationists of Ohio who voted for the
measure included Vorys, George Bender,
and Frances Bolton. Of the opposi-
tion votes, twenty-six were Republican;
eighteen of these were from Ohio,
Illinois, and Michigan. Six Ohio
representatives, all Republican, voted
against the bill,32 which
suggests that isolationism was not completely dead
in the Buckeye State.
30. 20 Sept. 1943, CR, 78th
Cong., 1st sess., 7657-59.
31. House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Extension
of the Lend-Lease Act: Hearings on
H.R. 1501, 78th Cong., 1st sess., 1943 (Washington, D.C., 1943),
225, 238-44; 20 Sept. 1943,
CR, 78th Cong., 1st sess., 7657; 18 Apr. 1944, CR, 78th
Cong., 2d sess., 3538: 10 May 1944, CR,
78th Cong., 2d sess., 4287-88; 2 June
1944, CR, 78th Cong., 2d sess., 5223; 13 Mar. 1945, CR,
79th Cong., 1st sess., 2122; 11 Sept.
1945, CR, 79th Cong., 1st sess., 8508; press release, 30
Mar. 1944, and radio broadcast, 6 Nov.
1944, both in Correspondence Concerning John M.
Vorys, Time Inc. Archives; Vorys to
Herbert Hoover, 17 Mar. 1943, Box 544, Hoover Papers,
Post-Presidential Individual Files;
"Opening Statement, 16 Oct. 1943," Statements 1943 folder,
Box 85, JMV; League of Women Voters
questionnaire, Questionnaire folder, Box 9, JMV;
Vorys to Franklyn Gerard, 9 June 1945,
Bretton Woods folder, Box 13, JMV.
32. 21 Sept. 1943, CR, 78th
Cong., 1st sess., 7728-29; New York Times, 22 Sept. 1943;
Newsweek (4 Oct. 1943), 43-44. Ohio representatives who voted
against were Henderson H.
Carson (Canton), Cliff Clevenger
(Bryan), Walter E. Brehm (Logan), Robert F. Jones (Lima),
Ed Rowe (Akron), and Frederick Smith
(Marion).
Fulbright Resolution and Vorys 133
Jealous of its turf, the Senate ignored
the Fulbright Resolution and in
November 1943 passed its own measure,
authored by Tom Connally.
Nevertheless, the Fulbright Resolution
had captured and contributed to the ris-
ing tide of support for permanent
foreign involvement by the United States.
Republicans and Democrats had cooperated
throughout, setting the pattern for
subsequent bipartisanship. When writing
his resolution, Connally consulted
with Senator Arthur Vandenberg. By
mutual agreement, FDR and his
Republican opponent, Thomas E. Dewey,
dropped the question of interna-
tional organization as a campaign issue
in the 1944 presidential race.
Vandenberg and John Foster Dulles, the
in-house specialist on foreign policy
for the GOP, served on the U.S.
delegation to the United Nations Conference
at San Francisco in 1945.33
The House of Representatives had taken
the lead in this process. Vorys
remarked that for "the first time
in modern history . . . the House . . . at-
tempted to initiate a statement of plans
as to .. . foreign policy." Charles
Eaton of New Jersey, the senior
Republican on the Foreign Affairs
Committee, crowed that the Fulbright
Resolution elevated the House "to a
first-rank place in the affairs of this
republic." Though Eaton vastly inflated
the importance of the lower body, the
House had demonstrated that it could
play a role in foreign policy making.
Vorys stood at the center of these cru-
cial developments.34
In October Vorys discussed postwar
planning with Democratic
Representative Albert Gore of Tennessee
on "America's Town Meeting of the
Air," a radio program broadcast
nationwide. Vorys' comments summarized
just how multifaceted his support for
the Fulbright Resolution was. Coming
as close as he ever would to admitting
that he had erred in supporting isola-
tionism, he conceded that in the past
the nation "may have" been too self-ab-
sorbed.
But no longer. The Fulbright
Resolution was a bipartisan
"statement of the objective [the
United States] must achieve if [it] would win
the peace this time." Plans for
this peace could not wait if international law
and order was to be reestablished soon
after the war. But any plan had to
serve U.S. interests, "must
preserve [America's] national sovereignty, its sol-
vency and security." Vorys also
warned the president not to bypass Congress.
Throughout the remainder of the war, he
sounded the same themes. Given his
future campaign success, and judging
from constituent mail, most Columbus
residents at least acquiesced to Vorys'
brand of internationalism.35
33. Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt, 483-84;
Darilek, Loyal Opposition, 121-22,
162-72, 175-
76; Robert A. Divine, Foreign Policy
in U.S. Presidential Elections, 1940-1948 (New York,
1974), 122-25, 147-64.
34. Memo on Fulbright Resolution, 15
Sept. 1943, Fulbright Resolution folder, Box 79, JMV;
New York Times, 22 Sept. 1943.
35. Radio address, 16 Oct. 1943,
Statements 1943 folder, Box 85, JMV. Vorys won the
1944 election by 15,000 votes. That was
a smaller winning margin than in 1942, but he did not
face primary opposition in 1944. See
"Vorys in Politics," JMV. Moreover, he continued to
134 OHIO HISTORY
Vorys' role in the legislative history
of the Fulbright Resolution demon-
strates that the wartime evolution of
conservative Republicans from isolation-
ism to internationalism was more
complicated than scholars have seen.
Vorys' backing of the Fulbright
Resolution was more than a "triumph" over
atavistic isolationism. His action was
not merely a calculated strategy to
save the GOP and his own political career.
Vorys did not, in the interests of
wartime unity, refrain from criticism of
administration policy. Instead, the
interplay of diverse foreign policy and
domestic considerations accounted for
Vorys' support of the resolution. He
accommodated himself to the changed
domestic political climate. As a
partisan Republican congressman he strove
to insure a meaningful role for his
party, for Congress, and for the House of
Representatives in foreign policy
making. As a conservative nationalist, he
concluded that active U.S. membership in
an international organization
promised the global order most conducive
to preserving America's free hand.
This account illuminates an important
strand of the wartime internationalist
consensus, which provided the foundation
for bipartisan support of American
foreign policy in the four decades of
the cold war. It is not surprising that
some GOP conservatives are now
abandoning this consensus. As these
rightwingers see it, the collapse of the
Communist "aggressor" and the undis-
puted military hegemony of the United
States remove the need for sustained
internationalism. Conservatives like
Patrick Buchanan are now attempting to
retool for a new world order in which
environmental calamity and internal
problems such as economic and social
malaise appear to pose greater threats
to American national security than do
foreign aggression and international
disorder.
support an internationalist policy,
becoming in the late 1940s an important House architect of
containment. Not until 1951-52 did his
foreign policy stance again become a serious campaign
issue. See Livingston, "Ohio
Congressman John M. Vorys," chapters 4 and 5. For constituent
mail, see Fulbright Resolution folder,
Box 79, JMV, and Peace Plans folder, Box II, JMV.
JEFFERY C. LIVINGSTON
Between "America First" and
"All-Out" Internationalism: The
Fulbright Resolution and Ohio
Republican John M. Vorys
In the U.S. House of Representatives on
June 16, 1943, Congressman
John M. Vorys interrupted a floor debate
on domestic programs to present the
Fulbright Resolution. Passed by the
House in September 1943, the
Fulbright Resolution was during the
Second World War the first official en-
dorsement of permanent U.S. participation
in a collective security arrange-
ment. The resolution highlighted growing
public support for a successor to
the League of Nations, and thus
represented a significant step toward forma-
tion of the United Nations. A Republican
from isolationist Ohio, John
Vorys had opposed America's political
involvement in Europe in the years
before Pearl Harbor. Now, he stood
before the House on his forty-seventh
birthday and publicly reversed course,
arguing that the United States should
maintain strong commitments overseas,
including Europe, even after the
Second World War ended.
Vorys' action placed him in the
forefront of a crucial shift in the foreign
policy attitudes of conservative
Republicans. Prior to World War II,
Republican isolationists, often from the
midwestern states, suspected foreign
political and military involvement. They
contended that overseas entangle-
ment would erode American freedom of
action and portended for the United
States higher taxes, deficit spending,
an imperial presidency, and garrison
state militarism. World War II and the
ensuing cold war, however, led
Jeffery C. Livingston is Assistant
Professor of History at California State University, Chico.
He would like to thank Robert Freeman
Smith, Nelson L. Dawson, Donald Platt, Kenneth J.
Bindas, Craig Houston, Robert Cohen, and
Michael Magliari for reading and commenting on
drafts of this article.
1. For the significance of the Fulbright
Resolution, see Robert A. Divine, Second Chance:
The Triumph of Internationalism
During World War II (New York, 1967),
141-45; and Philip J.
Briggs, "Congress and Collective
Security: The Resolutions of 1943," World Affairs, 132
(March, 1970), 332-44; reprinted in
Briggs, Making American Foreign Policy: President-
Congress Relations from the Second
World War to Vietnam (Lanham, Md.,
1991), 19-38. For
Vorys' remarks, see 16 June 1943, Congressional
Record, 77th Cong., 1st sess., 5943-44.
Congressional Record hereafter referred to as CR.