Only a few people straggled into the galleries to see the wind-up of the second longest session in U.S. history. Only a few Congressmen were on the floors of House & Senate, and those few were somber and bitter. It was the day word came that Manila had fallen. Texas’ Tom Connally uttered Congress’ stammering epitaph: “We are a peaceful people. We were not expecting a war, we were not prepared for war. …” The gavels banged. The 77th Congress of the U.S. ended its first session.
The peaceful people and their Congress were not prepared, but they had been warned. In his message to Congress, starting its session a year ago, the President had said: “When the dictators are ready to make war upon us they will not wait for an act of war on our part.” But the nation’s political representatives had no more prescience than the rest of the U.S. Frequently they did not have as much.
On Jan. 3, 1941, the 77th Congress had started, in a thoroughly confused, sour mood. Republicans were sore at Franklin Roosevelt for getting himself elected to a third term. They were sore at Wendell Willkie because he had lost, because he supported the President’s theme of aid to Britain. Democratic isolationists, Anglo-phobes, Southern reactionaries glared distrustfully at Mr. Roosevelt.
The only truces were political expediencies. In the House, Republicans Fish, Tinkham and Mundt gathered enough strength from their own party and from anti-Roosevelt Democrats to harass and threaten every Presidential move. In the Senate, Wheeler, Bennett Clark, Taft and Nye did the same, with similar hybrid cohorts.
Heroes. In February and March they fought against Lend-Lease, shouting that the President was carrying the country into war. In May, they rose in protest against the President’s request for authority to take over 500,000 tons of Axis shipping tied up in U.S. ports. In hot midsummer, their volleys and thunders reached a climax. By a hair, by the margin of one vote, they just failed to wreck the country’s fumbling efforts to raise an army. Extension of the draft finally passed the House, 203-to-202.
At that point, frightened Administration leaders called a recess, sent Congress home to get an earful of what the people were talking about. The strategy worked. Many a Congressman came back to Washington realizing that he had been out of step with his constituents. But the diehard isolationists continued to think that the country was out of step. In November, only 24 days before the Japs attacked Hawaii, they fought an amendment to the Neutrality Act to permit arming of U.S. merchantmen. Even as he got news of the attack, Senator Nye was still isolating as hard as he could go.
That the isolationists lost in the final accounting was no thanks to Congress as a whole. Two men did most to turn the isolationist drive: Texas’ little, bald, Sam Rayburn, Speaker of the House, and Massachusetts’ long-toothed John McCormack. No heroes of the antique mold, they were political in-fighters doing a job for Franklin Roosevelt, but they sometimes seemed of heroic size in the dismal months of 1941.
On the Senate side, Texas’ Tom Connally, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, erupted warlike clouds of cigar smoke, breathed a kind of phony flame without heat. The Senate majority bumbled along without effective leadership.
“As Soon As.” There were a few well remembered side issues in the session: Congress’ frenzy over defense strikes; Congress’ gutting of a price-control bill as uncontrolled prices soared; Congress’ virtual lifting of the ceiling on farm prices; Congress’ record tax bill of $3,553,400,000. There were a few happily forgotten sideshows, such as the “investigation” of movie war propaganda.
The icy news of the attack on Pearl Harbor froze Congress in its tracks. Within twelve days, it declared war on various countries; appropriated $10½ billion more for defense, raising its total appropriations for the year 1941 to $58 billion; voted the President authority to send an A.E.F. to any part of the world.
But before that day, Congressmen saw dark days ahead for the nation, dark days ahead for Congressmen. In November there was an election coming up. Before then there would be terrible tax bills to pass, terrible decisions to face. This week the 77th Congress convened for its second session. As it prepared to listen to a message from the President, its mood was very different from its mood of twelve months ago. At least on the surface, and for practical war purposes, Congress was now unified. And it was sadder. The country hoped that it was also wiser.
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