V. SUMNERS’S KEY ROLE IN RESOLVING THE CRISIS
a. The Congressman’s Post-Crisis Relationship with Roosevelt
Whitehurst asserted that “F.D.R. never spoke to him again,”247
and legions of commentators and historians have asserted that
Sumners had departed the Roosevelt team. But those views are
incorrect. The President was peeved that his plan failed, and he
undoubtedly recognized Sumners’s significant responsibility. But
Roosevelt had been miffed at the Congressman previously, without
permanent alienation.248 In the immediate aftermath of the crisis,
Roosevelt did take a small jab at Sumners. On September 21st,
Congressman W.D. MacFarlane of Graham, Texas, sent FDR a
clipping from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reporting a speech
Sumners made to the Dallas Bar Association on September 11th
and characterizing it as expressive of the views “held by a large
majority of the Texas Delegation and many other Delegations in the
South as well as the North, all of whom call themselves
democrats.”249 The newspaper reported that Sumners had stated
that Congress “abdicated its power to follow the leader,” implying
that Roosevelt was acting like a dictator.250
With MacFarlane’s missive in hand, Roosevelt drafted a letter
dated September 21st for signature by his assistant W.H. McIntyre.
Addressing the Congressman as “a dear friend of mine,” the letter
inquired about “the enclosed clipping.”251 FDR’s covering memo to
McIntyre directed: “Check and be sure you get an answer from
Hatton. If you don’t get an answer with a week or 10 days, check
again.”252 Two weeks later Sumners replied to McIntyre that he had
spoken to the bar group extemporaneously but recalled “the drift”
of his speech as distinguishing “between our way of dealing with a
crisis in our country and the method pursued in Germany and
Italy.”253 He then turned the tables to chide the President for “our
present situation” in which “some people are so intense with regard
to this court issue” that “it is almost impossible” to discuss
fundamental public problems.254
But Sumners confirmed his loyalty:
I want to be as useful as I can. You call on me just as you always have
done. I feel just as I always did, but I would be willing to go to night
school for a whole year to learn the barbers’ trade if I could get the
fellow just one time in my chair who started things.255
His allusion after the conjunction “but” in the last-quoted sentence
portrays himself as a “barber” so devoted to the President that he
would put his razor to the throat of “the fellow . . . who started
things.” In handwriting Sumners added: “I am a better friend to the
Chief than he, whoever he is.”256 By referring “the fellow” and
“whoever he is,” Sumners was not indicating MacFarlane but rather
insinuating the existence of an unknown, backstage manipulator.
From the outset of the crisis, Sumners posited repeatedly that
“someone” had “imposed” on Roosevelt to make the court-packing
proposal.257 The President was not amused, telling McIntyre that
“[Sumners’s letter] is very interesting and we can now file it with
the reservation that he has not answered in any way.”258 But his
pique did not damage the relationship. . . .
Josiah M. Daniel, III, “What I Said Was ‘Here Is Where I Cash In’”: the Instrumental Role
of Congressman Hatton Sumners in the Resolution of the 1937 Court-Packing Crisis, 54 UIC J. Marshall L. Rev. 379, 420-21 (2021), available free at the law review's website: https://repository.law.uic.edu/lawreview/vol54/iss2/1/