James Francis Byrnes

BYRNES, JAMES FRANCIS

James Francis Byrnes, a self-taught lawyer, was
briefly an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme
Court during the 1940s and also served as SECRETARY OF STATE, the governor of South Carolina, a U.S. senator, and an influential member
of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s cabinet.
Byrnes was born May 2, 1879, in Charleston,
South Carolina. Economic circumstances forced
him to quit parochial school at the age of 14 and
go to work as a clerk in a Charleston law firm for
$2 a week to help support his family. He learned
shorthand and eventually obtained a job in Aiken,
South Carolina, as the official court reporter for
the Second Judicial Circuit, a state court. He studied
law in his spare time and was admitted to the
South Carolina bar in 1903. He then purchased a
newspaper in Aiken, the Journal and Review, and
served as its editor for five years. Active in the
DEMOCRATIC PARTY, Byrnes was elected district
attorney for the Second Judicial Circuit in 1908,
and two years later won a seat in the U.S. House
of Representatives, where he served for 15 years.
Following an unsuccessful bid for the U.S. Senate,
he returned to South Carolina in 1925 to practice
law in Spartanburg. In 1930, he again ran for the
Senate, and this time he won election.
Initially, Byrnes was a strong advocate of
Franklin D. Roosevelt’s NEW DEAL legislation
and served as Roosevelt’s legislative adviser, thus
playing a crucial role in securing support in the
Senate for Roosevelt’s policies. Byrnes also
helped the president successfully manage the
furor surrounding the chief executive’s “courtpacking”
plan, a bill proposed by Roosevelt to
expand the Supreme Court so that he could
nominate justices who would uphold New Deal
legislation. Roosevelt heeded Byrnes’s advice not
to seek a vote on the bill after several 1937 decisions
indicated that the Court would be more
inclined than its members previously had been
to hold Roosevelt’s programs to be constitutional.
Later in his second Senate term, Byrnes
joined the Democratic opposition to pro-union
New Deal legislation. Nevertheless, he remained
close to Roosevelt and helped secure the repeal
of the Neutrality Act of 1935, 49 Stat. 1081, and
the passage of the LEND-LEASE ACT of 1941, 22
U.S.C.A. § 411 et seq.
In June 1941, Roosevelt nominated Byrnes
to fill the seat on the U.S. Supreme Court
vacated by the resignation of Associate Justice
JAMES C. MCREYNOLDS. Byrnes won confirmation
easily but served on the Court for little
more than a year, completing the shortest tenure
in the history of the Court.
Byrnes wrote only 16 majority opinions,
including Edwards v. California, 314 U.S. 160, 62
S. Ct. 164, 86 L. Ed. 119 (1941), in which the
Court struck down a California law that made
bringing indigents into the state a crime. In his
opinion, Byrnes argued that the law posed an
unacceptable burden upon interstate commerce.
He also wrote the majority opinion in Taylor v.
Georgia, 315 U.S. 25, 62 S. Ct. 415, 86 L. Ed. 615 (1942), where the Court held that a state penal
law that required workers receiving advances to
remain at their jobs until the advances were paid
back violated the THIRTEENTH AMENDMENT
prohibition against INVOLUNTARY SERVITUDE.
Despite these significant contributions,
Byrnes was not happy on the Court. He wanted
to be more actively involved in the country’s war
effort. In October 1942, after only sixteen
months on the Court, Byrnes resigned his seat.
He left the Court at the request of President
Roosevelt to become director of the newly created
Office of Economic Stabilization, established
to help prevent wartime inflation. Less
than a year later, Byrnes became head of the
Office ofWar Mobilization, an agency created to
manage the production of war and civilian
goods. The range of authority and influence
Byrnes wielded in both posts led Roosevelt to
refer to him publicly as “assistant president.”
In Roosevelt’s 1944 campaign for a fourth
term, Byrnes was considered for the vice presidential
nomination when opposition to Henry
A. Wallace, the current vice president, surfaced.
But Byrnes’s pro-management views proved to
be unacceptable to labor leaders, and the nomination
instead went to HARRY S. TRUMAN.
Byrnes nevertheless remained a close adviser to
Roosevelt, accompanying him in 1945 to the
YALTA AGREEMENT with JOSEPH STALIN and
Winston Churchill.
Byrnes continued to play a major role in
government after Roosevelt’s death, when President
Truman, a longtime friend, appointed
Byrnes secretary of state. Byrnes’s service in the
STATE DEPARTMENT was controversial. He took
criticism for his recommendation that the
atomic bomb be used to end the war with Japan.
As secretary of state, Byrnes was the chief representative
for the United States in a number of
high-level international conferences held following
the war, including the Potsdam Conference.
In negotiations with the Soviet Union,
Byrnes favored a settlement that greatly weakened
Russia’s control over Eastern Europe and
increased the United States’ MONOPOLY on
atomic weapons. He also argued for the reunification
of Germany. The Soviets strongly resisted both proposals, and the failure of these negotiations
helped to launch the COLD WAR.
Byrnes resigned from the cabinet in 1947
after a disagreement with Truman over his Fair
Deal programs, which Byrnes saw as socialistic.
After leaving the Truman administration,
Byrnes practiced law in Washington, D.C., for
several years. In 1947, he published Speaking
Frankly, an account of his experiences with postwar
diplomacy, which became a best-seller.
Byrnes returned to politics in 1950 when he
was elected governor of South Carolina. He
served for one term, during which he compiled
a somewhat mixed record with respect to CIVIL
RIGHTS. His administration suppressed the
activities of the KU KLUX KLAN in the state, but
Byrnes was a vocal opponent of SCHOOL DESEGREGATION.
After leaving office in 1955, Byrnes retired to
Columbia, South Carolina, where he died in
1972. Byrnes was the only U.S. citizen in the
twentieth century to have served in prominent
roles in all three branches of the government—
legislative, judicial, and executive. His autobiography,
which was published in 1958, is titled All
in One Lifetime.
FURTHER READINGS
Brown, Walter J. 1992. James F. Byrnes of South Carolina: A
Remembrance. Macon, Ga.: Mercer Univ. Press.
Byrnes, James. 1958. All in One Lifetime. New York: Harpers.
—. 1947. Frankly Speaking. New York: Harpers.
Congressional Quarterly. 1989. Guide to the U.S. Supreme
Court. 2d ed. Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly.
Messer, Robert L. 1982. The End of an Alliance: James F.
Byrnes, Roosevelt, Truman, and the Origins of the Cold
War. Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press.
Ward, Patricia Dawson. 1979. The Threat of Peace: James F.
Byrnes and the Council of Foreign Ministers, 1945–1946.
Kent, Ohio: Kent State Univ. Press.
CROSS-REFERENCES
New Deal; Roosevelt, Franklin Delano.