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Dr. M.A. Davis

@mikedavis.bsky.social

2K followers 1.9K following 27K posts

Historian in WNC, working on THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW and how great WWIII will be (or not), teaching part-time at Lees-McRae College, opinions my own, available for professional consultation.

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Dr. M.A. Davis @mikedavis.bsky.social · Jun 6

I do not think what that man says is true

Dr. M.A. Davis @mikedavis.bsky.social · 45m

it's frightening to contemplate that yes, strokes and other brain problems can indeed change who we are in profound ways, but it seems to be true

Dr. M.A. Davis @mikedavis.bsky.social · 58m

hard to say really. I feel for the widow, married five days, with her dead husband's body stopped in a small city in eastern North Carolina in 1933, surrounded by people who only spoke English.

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Dr. M.A. Davis @mikedavis.bsky.social · 1h

www.nytimes.com/1933/03/03/a...

dailyinterlake.com/news/2019/au...

WALSH'S COLLAPSE ON TRAIN SUDDEN; He Died as Bride Tried to Aid Him and Before Doctor Could Arrive. WIDOW TELLS OF ILLNESS Body Held at Rocky Mount, N.C., Before Being Taken to Capital -- Mrs. Walsh I...

www.nytimes.com

Dr. M.A. Davis @mikedavis.bsky.social · 1h

there were some crude jokes at the time that the elderly Senator (who had recently married Señora Nieves Perze Chaumont de Truffin of Havana) had died with a smile on his face - but some argue he was killed by political rivals of his wife's family in Cuba, or by potential targets of investigation.

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Dr. M.A. Davis @mikedavis.bsky.social · 1h

- which remember would keep Catholics from the Presidency until 1960 - would have been rather different...

Dr. M.A. Davis @mikedavis.bsky.social · 1h

But Walsh was a man who straddled those issues - yes he was Irish-American, yes he was Catholic, but he was a rural dry who was a national hero for his battles against political corruption. I don't think he'd have won in 1924 (or 1928) - but the conversation about Catholics in politics

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Dr. M.A. Davis @mikedavis.bsky.social · 1h

Dems were divided badly on ethnocultural issues, as Al Smith found out when the Solid South broke for the first time since Reconstruction. Smith was Catholic, Irish and Italian-American, with a New York accent and ties to Tammany - anathema to many voters of his own party.

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Dr. M.A. Davis @mikedavis.bsky.social · 1h

He went on to support FDR - who nominated him for the AG position - but died under let's just say mysterious circumstances on the train ride to DC for FDR's inauguration.

I have always thought Walsh would have made an interesting 'test case' for 1920s Dems if he had become a Presidential nominee.

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Dr. M.A. Davis @mikedavis.bsky.social · 1h

In 1924, while serving as chair of the long, horrible Madison Square Garden Democratic National Convention, Walsh was offered the Presidential nomination but turned it down - in 1928 he actively sought the nomination but it was too late, it was Al Smith's year to lose (and lose badly).

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Dr. M.A. Davis @mikedavis.bsky.social · 1h

in the 1920s, Walsh made himself nationally famous in a familiar way for a Senate committee chair - investigating scandals in the opposition party POTUS (and as it turned out, even some members of his own party). He was the face of the anti-Teapot Dome forces and became a national hero for it.

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Dr. M.A. Davis @mikedavis.bsky.social · 1h

all typical so far but in other ways he was unusual politically for a western Dem (especially an Irish Catholic) - he was a vigorous supporter of Woodrow Wilson and supported entry into WWI, and most unusually was a "dry" politically on Prohibition.

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Dr. M.A. Davis @mikedavis.bsky.social · 1h

Senator Walsh favored women's suffrage, farm loans, and the income tax - and would near the end of his life start the federal investigations of the electrical industry that a later generation of Dems would use to break up the various private electrical monopolies during the New Deal.

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Dr. M.A. Davis @mikedavis.bsky.social · 1h

he failed a House race in 1906 and then a Senate race in 1910 - but then was elected to the Senate in 1912, the split in the Republican Party having helped Dems win the state legislature. (He would be steadily re-elected even after Senators were elected by popular vote.)

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Dr. M.A. Davis @mikedavis.bsky.social · 1h

Wikipedia uses the lovely phrase to describe his work - a "law practice that specialized in personal injury cases and cases involving water rights and copper mining." You can imagine what they meant in 1890s Helena! He was a partisan Democrat and quickly became a leader in the MT Dems.

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Dr. M.A. Davis @mikedavis.bsky.social · 1h

Two Rivers is a pleasant little town on Lake Michigan, one of many places today that claim to have invented the ice cream sundae.

He went to UW Law, moved to the Dakota Territory where he met and married his first wife Elinor. A year later, they had a daughter - and had moved to Helena, MT.

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Dr. M.A. Davis @mikedavis.bsky.social · 1h

If it didn't get him killed, that is. (or perhaps he was poisoned by his new wife. or one of her many enemies in the Cuban aristocracy. or maybe he just had a heart attack and died. who knows.)

But that's another conversation. The son of Irish immigrants, Walsh was born in Two Rivers, WI.

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Dr. M.A. Davis @mikedavis.bsky.social · 1h

If you look at pictures of the late Montana Senator Thomas J. Walsh (1859-1933), he generally cuts a rather stern figure, with one recent newspaper conceding that there are no known pictures of the Senator smiling.

However, flinty moral rectitude served him rather well in his national career.

Title: WALSH, THOMAS J. SENATOR Abstract/medium: 1 negative : glass ; 8 x 10 in. or smaller

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Dr. M.A. Davis @mikedavis.bsky.social · 2h

you don't need to praise him.

Dr. M.A. Davis @mikedavis.bsky.social · 2h

good luck to mom and baby I guess!

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Dr. M.A. Davis @mikedavis.bsky.social · 3h

just like Coruscant - by the forces of the Serrano Light Infantry!

Dr. M.A. Davis @mikedavis.bsky.social · 3h

"look I said I was going to be a record-breaking pitcher, didn't I?"

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Dr. M.A. Davis @mikedavis.bsky.social · 3h

love this image

Doc Revan @docrevan.bsky.social · 3h

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Dr. M.A. Davis @mikedavis.bsky.social · 3h

oh sure - I wouldn't deny that either! Just that if any group was forced en masse into another country, said destination would probably evolve some nasty politics re:the displaced population.

Dr. M.A. Davis @mikedavis.bsky.social · 3h

if the US collapsed and Polish-Americans were driven 'back to the motherland', I think they'd be targets of discrimination/violence too, but nobody would say Poland is necessarily anti-American.

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Dr. M.A. Davis @mikedavis.bsky.social · 3h

yeah I'm pro-natalist, pro-KwaZulu-Natalist. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KwaZulu...
they seem like OK Joes and Janes over there.

KwaZulu-Natal - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org