Billy Graham and the Rise of the Republican South. Steven P. Miller

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      Niebuhr's critique of Graham resonated with two leading southern liberals, James McBride Dabbs and Francis Pickens Miller. Dabbs, a South Carolina Presbyterian active in the liberal Southern Regional Council, expressed the hope that Graham would mature as an evangelist and urged him to “step into the breach and make his own the power that lies both in the Negroes’ insistence on equality and in the whites’ shame at maintaining inequality.”¹⁹ Miller, a Virginian and former New Deal official, as well as a leading southern Presbyterian, abandoned hope in the evangelist after drawing initial inspiration from Graham's willingness to address race during the New York City crusade. Soon afterward, however, he observed how the evangelist shied away from offering similar remarks at a Presbyterian laymen's conference in Miami. Had Graham spoken like a “true Christian prophet,” Miller later reflected, he would not have been “idolized by the rank and file of Southern Protestants.” By saying “what he thought his audiences wanted to hear,” Graham squandered an opportunity “to create an atmosphere favorable to compliance with the law of the land.”²⁰ In truth, Graham had never ceased crusading in parts of the South and had addressed race in several speeches in the region. Still, as his critics could not help but observe, the evangelist had exhibited little desire since the Brown decision to crusade in the Deep South (a sentiment the 1958 Columbia, South Carolina, rally undoubtedly reinforced).

      The Eisenhower Network

      Many of Graham's critics also noted the way in which his social ethic operated not just within the framework of his theology but within the parameters of the Eisenhower White House as well. Graham's impulse to compromise derived not only from his evangelistic priorities but also from his political connections, which complemented and occasionally clashed with his racial moderation. Indeed, his private communication with political leaders would have confirmed the suspicions of many of his critics. The highest profile of these political allies, Dwight Eisenhower, revealed Graham to be a Republican at heart, if not in name. The Graham-Eisenhower alliance also suggested the way religion and region blended in the evangelist's analysis of contemporary politics.

      The relationship between the evangelist and the war hero took root during the run-up to Eisenhower's successful bid for the 1952 Republican presidential nomination. Graham's faith in President Truman, who remained a threat to seek reelection until March of that year, had waned. After the hoopla surrounding their one and only visit, Truman pointedly made no time for the evangelist, despite repeated attempts by Graham to convince the president to appear at the 1952 Washington, D.C., crusade.²¹ By then, Graham had joined a host of powerful GOP officials (along with a few optimistic Democrats) in urging Eisenhower to enter the race. Included in this group were several of Graham's political friends, such as Republicans Frank Carlson, a Kansas senator, and Walter Judd, a Minnesota representative.²² Graham's contribution came primarily by way of Sid Richardson, a Texas oil baron close to both the general and the evangelist. In the fall of 1951, Richardson gave Eisenhower a letter, written by Graham, in which the evangelist expressed the hope that Richardson would convince Eisenhower to seek the presidency. In a quick response to Graham, Eisenhower (then serving as commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces in Europe) politely balked at assuming a partisan political identity while still in his post. At the behest of Richardson, Graham responded to Eisenhower with a flurry of theologically tinged hyperbole. “Upon this decision could well rest the destiny of the Western World,” the evangelist wrote of Eisenhower's possible run. Graham asked for an audience with the general in order “to share with you some of the information I have picked up” from “your many friends” in the United States. With assistance from Richardson, they met in France during March 1952.²³

      After Eisenhower had taken destiny by the reins and entered the race, Graham's public statements routinely echoed the GOP theme of cleaning up a corrupt Washington, D.C. Graham also criticized the Cold War policies of the Democratic administration. “The Korean War,” he told an audience in Houston, “is being fought because the nation's leaders blundered on foreign policy in the Far East…. [Accused Soviet spy] Alger Hiss shaped our foreign policy and some of the men who formulate it [now] have never been to the East.”²⁴ As Graham would attempt to do in subsequent presidential campaigns, he carefully avoided an official endorsement of his preferred candidate. His public appeals on behalf of Eisenhower, however, were no more subtle than his altar calls. By emphasizing the importance of personal character when choosing elected officials, Graham played to a perceived strength of Eisenhower, who ran on stature more than platform. Even before the Richardson letter, Graham had declared during his 1951 Greensboro, North Carolina, crusade that the “Christian people of America are going to vote as a bloc for the man with the strongest moral and spiritual platform, regardless of his views on other matters…and regardless of political affiliation we are going to vote for the right man.” He chuckled when noting that Republican senator Robert Taft, the eventual chief rival of Eisenhower, had “been running for years.” A newspaper clipping about the sermon found its way into Eisenhower's files.²⁵ For his part, Eisenhower was keenly aware of the usefulness of the evangelist. At the behest of Frank Carlson, the candidate sought Graham's advice on injecting a religious tone into campaign speeches. The evangelist talked briefly with Eisenhower at the Republican National Convention in Chicago (to which Graham had received tickets from House Minority Leader Joseph Martin of Massachusetts) and later met with the candidate at campaign headquarters in Denver. In communications with Washington governor Arthur B. Langlie, Eisenhower supported organizing Graham and other sympathetic pastors on an informal basis.²⁶

      Graham specifically viewed Eisenhower as a viable candidate in the South, someone who could garner the votes of conservative nominal Democrats like himself. In a 1952 letter to Walter Judd, the evangelist praised Eisenhower as “the strongest possible candidate, particularly throughout the South.” Graham went on to note that he had “been in close touch with Democratic leaders throughout the South,” including the Mississippi delegation to the Democratic National Convention. The annual gathering of the Mississippi Democratic Party that election year had overlapped with his Jackson crusade. The chair of the Jackson crusade, hotelier E. O. Spencer, was a prominent Eisenhower Democrat. City newspapers highlighted Graham's visible presence at the meeting, as well as his eagerness to pitch Eisenhower to a prominent area businessman. To Judd, Graham touted the possibility of state conventions endorsing Eisenhower: “I have strongly encouraged these [southern Democratic] leaders to nominate General Eisenhower if they do not get a platform and a candidate suitable to them. They are going to have their Conventions again when they return from the Democratic Convention, as you know. I believe the General can carry great sections of the South.”²⁷ Graham's increasingly apparent leanings raised concerns among his Democratic friends. Well before Eisenhower officially received the GOP nomination, Virginia Democratic senator A. Willis Robertson sent the evangelist a friendly but pointed letter expressing the sentiment of their mutual friends that Graham was crossing the line into partisan politics. Graham replied that he would heed the warning, although his attempt to do so likely differed from what Robertson had in mind. Graham turned down an invitation from Democratic official Leslie Biffle, a longtime secretary of the Senate and native Arkansan, to serve as honorary assistant sergeant at arms at the Democratic National Convention. The title would have granted Graham access to the convention floor; more important, it would have neutralized his seeming support for Eisenhower. Graham claimed that a number of his Democratic congressional friends had advised him to decline the position. Still, he found time to attend the Democratic convention that year.²⁸

      The 1952 campaign represented Graham's inaugural contribution to the postwar emergence of the Republican Party in southern presidential politics. His support for Eisenhower, while by no means uncommon among evangelists around the nation, also paralleled larger developments in the South.²⁹ Political scientists Earl Black and Merle Black have described Eisenhower as “the human triggering mechanism for the first Republican breakthrough in the South.” In 1952, the GOP candidate departed from party tradition and actively sought votes from the region's many conservative Democrats, beginning the formal part of his campaign with a train tour of the South. Eisenhower captured the peripheral southern СКАЧАТЬ