85 Facts About Wayne Morse

Wayne Lyman Morse was an American attorney and United States Senator from Oregon.

Wayne Morse joined the Democratic Party in February 1955, and was reelected twice while a member of that party.

Wayne Morse made a brief run for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination in 1960.

In 1964, Wayne Morse was one of two senators to oppose the later-to-become-controversial Gulf of Tonkin Resolution.

Wayne Morse continued to speak out against the war in the ensuing years, and lost his 1968 bid for reelection to Bob Packwood, who criticized his strong opposition to the war.

Wayne Morse made two more bids for reelection to the Senate before his death in 1974.

Wayne Morse was born on October 20,1900, in Madison, Wisconsin, home of his maternal grandparents, Myron and Flora White.

Wayne Morse grew up on this farm, where the family raised Devon cattle for beef, Percheron and Hackney horses, dairy cows, hogs, sheep, poultry, and feed crops for the animals.

Wayne Morse held a reserve commission as second lieutenant, Field Artillery, US Army, from 1923 to 1929, and was a member of the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity.

Wayne Morse became an assistant professor of law at the University of Oregon School of Law in 1929.

Wayne Morse served on many government commissions and boards, including: member, Oregon Crime Commission; administrative director, United States Attorney General's Survey of Release Procedures ; Pacific Coast arbitrator for the United States Department of Labor ; chairman, Railway Emergency Board ; alternate public member of the National Defense Mediation Board ; and public member of the National War Labor Board.

In 1944, Morse won the Republican primary election for senator, unseating incumbent Rufus C Holman, and then the general election that November.

Wayne Morse had intended to pull the Republican Party leftwards on the issue of union rights, a stance that put him at odds with many of the more right-wing Republicans.

Wayne Morse was greatly influenced by the "one world" philosophy of Wendell Willkie, making it clear from the onset he was an internationalist, which caused much tension with the Republican Senate Minority Leader, Robert A Taft who favored a quasi-isolationist foreign policy.

Wayne Morse believed that World War II had been partly caused by American isolationism and in one of his first speeches before the Senate, in February 1945, called on the United States to join the planned organization that would replace the League of Nations, namely the United Nations.

In January 1946, after President Truman delivered an address criticizing Congress and defending his proposals, Wayne Morse referred to President Truman's speech as a "sad confession of the Democratic majority in Congress under the President's leadership" and called for the election of liberal Republicans in the midterm elections that year.

Also in January 1946, Wayne Morse called on Congress to vote on President Truman's pending legislation, citing continued delay would produce "a great economic uncertainty" and add to "reconversion slow-up".

Wayne Morse asserted that Americans were entitled to Congress being held accountable for the passage of bills.

Wayne Morse strongly criticized imperialism, saying neither the Netherlands or Great Britain were suitable allies for the United States, criticizing the Dutch for attempting to reconquer their lost colony of the Dutch East Indies and the British for staying in the Palestine Mandate against the wishes of the majority of people in Palestine, both Jewish and Arab.

Wayne Morse urged both the Dutch and the British to leave the Dutch East Indies and Palestine, saying they did not have the right to rule places where they were not wanted.

Wayne Morse supported Zionism, arguing that after the Holocaust the Jews needed their own state, and urged Britain to leave Palestine so that a Jewish state to be called Israel could be created.

Wayne Morse voted for the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, for the National Security Act and for the United States to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

In March 1948, Wayne Morse said he would support a tax reduction on the premise of world conditions worsening and Congress thereby being forced to recall the tax cut and admitted both his personal fear of large reductions and belief that Americans wanted tax cuts.

In February 1949, during a Senate Labor committee session, Wayne Morse stated the Truman administration labor bill was not going to pass in the Senate based on how it was presently written and that "a lot of compromises must be made".

In 1950, when Truman used United Nations Security Council Resolution 84 as the legal basis for committing USforces to action in the Korean War, Wayne Morse supported his decision.

At the time, Wayne Morse argued that Article 2 of the American constitution gave the president "very broad powers in times of emergency and national crisis" and that the resolution from the UN Security Council was binding.

In protest of Dwight Eisenhower's selection of Richard Nixon as his running mate, Wayne Morse left the Republican Party in 1952.

The 1952 election produced an almost evenly divided Senate; Wayne Morse brought a folding chair when the session convened, intending to position himself in the aisle between the Democrats and Republicans to underscore his lack of party affiliation.

Wayne Morse expected to retain certain committee memberships but was denied membership on the Labor Committee and others.

Wayne Morse used a parliamentary procedure to force a vote of the entire Senate but lost his bid.

In January 1953, after Dwight D Eisenhower nominated Charles E Wilson as United States Secretary of State, Morse told reporters a possible objection to the nomination could stem from the more than 10,000 General Motors shares owned by the nominee's wife.

Later that month, after the death of Senate Majority Leader Robert A Taft and questions arose of continued Republican control of the Senate, Morse confirmed his "ethical obligation" to vote with members of the party on organizational issues, citing his belief that he was acting on behalf of the American people given the Republicans gaining a majority in the 1952 elections.

Wayne Morse spoke against US intervention, saying "The American people are in no mood to contemplate the killing of thousands of American boys in Indochina" on the basis of "generalities".

Wayne Morse demanded that Congress be allowed to vote on Operation Vulture first, stating "if we get into another war, this country will be in it before Congress ever has time to declare war".

Wayne Morse argued that the United States should work through the United Nations for a diplomatic solution of the Vietnam issue and to promote economic growth that would lift Vietnam out of its Third World poverty.

Wayne Morse argued that such a policy would give the Soviet Union "clear notice" that the world community intended to protect the nations of Indochina their "right to self-government until such time as free elections can be held".

In late 1954, the First Taiwan Strait Crisis began and Wayne Morse led the fight in the Senate against what became the Formosa Resolution.

Wayne Morse argued that the "predated authorization" of military force that the resolution allowed violated the constitution as he noted the constitution explicitly stated that Congress had the power to declare war, and at most the president can do is merely ask Congress to declare war if he feels the situation warrants such a step.

Wayne Morse proposed three amendments to the Formosa Resolution, all of which were defeated.

Wayne Morse received criticism for denying passports for political reasons in the absence of due process rights but got support as her actions were seen as opposing Communism.

Wayne Morse characterized her decisions as "tyrannical and capricious" due to her failures to disclose her actual reasons for the denial of such passport applications.

Wayne Morse's supporters included President Truman's Secretary of State Dean Acheson and US Senator Pat McCarran of Nevada, the author of the Subversive Activities Control Act of 1950, Section 6 of which made it a crime for any member of a communist organization to use or obtain a passport.

In 1955, Democratic Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson persuaded Wayne Morse to join the Democratic caucus.

In February 1955, during his first public appearance as a Democrat, Wayne Morse stated that the vote on the Formosa resolution would have been different if senators were not under the belief that a resolution for a ceasefire was going to be introduced the following week and that Americans did not want war with the Chinese.

Wayne Morse defeated US Secretary of the Interior and former governor Douglas McKay in a hotly contested race; campaign expenditures totaled over $600,000 between the primary and general elections, a very high amount by then-contemporary standards.

In March 1957 when King Saud of Saudi Arabia visited Washington and was hailed by Eisenhower as America's number one ally in the Middle East, Wayne Morse was not impressed.

In 1957, Wayne Morse voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1957.

Wayne Morse was the only Senator opposed to the bill who was not from the South.

In 1959, Wayne Morse opposed Eisenhower's appointment of Clare Boothe Luce as ambassador to Brazil.

Wayne Morse remarked that riots in Bolivia might be dealt with by dividing the country up among its neighbors.

On September 4,1959, Morse charged Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B Johnson with having attempted to form a dictatorship over other Senate Democrats and with failing to defend individual senators' rights.

Wayne Morse befriended Neuberger and often gave him advice, and he used his rhetorical skill to successfully defend Neuberger against charges of academic cheating.

Wayne Morse gave him a "D" in the course and, when Neuberger complained, changed the grade to an "F".

Wayne Morse was a late entry in the race for the Democratic nomination for president in 1960.

Wayne Morse soon found himself at a meeting with Neal where they discussed his efforts.

On December 22,1959, Wayne Morse announced his candidacy for president.

Wayne Morse was accused of flip-flopping on whether or not he would run.

Wayne Morse owned a small farm in Poolesville, Maryland, and had spent fifteen years fighting for DC home rule, sponsoring legislation for that cause.

Wayne Morse had known when he entered the Maryland contest that he was climbing an extremely steep hill, and had hoped to offset a potential loss there with a win in the District.

Wayne Morse attempted to generate as much media coverage as possible.

Wayne Morse made his liberalism a key issue at every campaign stop.

Wayne Morse continued to pursue his liberalism strategy as the campaign moved to his home turf.

On Election Day, Wayne Morse came up roughly 50,000 votes short of defeating Kennedy.

Wayne Morse largely sat out the rest of the 1960 campaign.

Wayne Morse even opted out of going to the 1960 Democratic National Convention.

In September 1960, after Democrats James Eastland and Thomas Dodd asserted that lower-ranking officials in the State Department had cleared the way for the regime of Fidel Castro to reign in Cuba, Wayne Morse denied the charge and stated that he knew of no basis for the claim.

In February 1961, during a press release, Wayne Morse announced his intent to request $12 million for civil works in Oregon from Congress, furthering that the request would be based around information gathered by the Corps of Engineers and that the state of Oregon was facing "serious economic conditions".

In March 1961, after President Kennedy nominated Charles M Meriwether for Director of the Export-Import Bank, Morse labeled Meriwether as racist and antisemitic.

Wayne Morse added that President Kennedy owed an apology to every Jewish and black person in the United States as a result of the appointment.

Wayne Morse said the investigation had primarily been handled by White House staff instead of State Department officials.

In January 1962, at the nomination hearing of John A McCone whom Kennedy had nominated as CIA director, Morse accused the CIA having "an unchecked executive power that ought to be brought to an end".

In February 1963, after President Kennedy contended that American air cover for the Cuban invasion was never promised, Wayne Morse stated that the comments were supported by the testimony of members of the Kennedy administration following the invasion and that the document containing the testimony should be made public as a result of "subsequent developments".

When Wayne Morse spoke before the Senate, he usually allowed only five to ten minutes to speak before the other senators voted to cut him off.

However, Wayne Morse was known as a stubborn and cantankerous character who was determined to uphold Congress's powers against the presidency, and in a memo to President Johnson in March 1964, William Bundy predicted that Wayne Morse was the senator most likely to oppose a congressional resolution giving Johnson the power to wage war in Vietnam.

In June 1965, Wayne Morse joined Benjamin Spock, Coretta Scott King and others in leading a large anti-war march in New York City.

In February 1966, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, J William Fulbright, held televised hearings about the Vietnam war, which Morse took part in as a member of the committee.

Wayne Morse spent most of the remaining years of his life attempting to regain his membership in the US Senate.

Wayne Morse won the Democratic primary against his old foe, Robert Duncan.

The New York Times said in an editorial that Wayne Morse would serve the state with "fierce integrity if elected".

Wayne Morse managed to defeat Boe in the primary and began preparing for the general election.

On July 21,1974, while trying to keep up a busy campaign schedule, Wayne Morse was hospitalized at Good Samaritan Hospital in Portland due to kidney failure and was listed in critical condition.

Wayne Morse was given a state funeral on July 26,1974, in the Oregon House of Representatives.

Wayne Morse's body lay in state in the Capitol rotunda before the funeral.

Since 1996, the US Senate seat Wayne Morse filled has been held by Ron Wyden who as a 19-year-old, drove Wayne Morse in the senator's last campaign.

Wayne L Morse is interred at Rest Haven Memorial Park in Eugene.