“Divided We Fall”
“
General, what shall I do? The people are impatient; Chase has no money and tells me he can raise no more; the General of the Army has typhoid fever. The bottom is out of the tub. What shall I do?” - Abraham Lincoln
President Al Smith
President Al Smith was surrounded on all sides in 1935. Alan Brinkley describes the mood around the March on Washington and the war more broadly as “jaunty fascism”, the tendency to treat the war as more of an article of fascination or amusement rather than the serious threat to the existence of the American state that it was. After six months of hard, brutal, total war the country was completely unrecognizable. And the Natcorps’ string of victories in Wisconsin was the last of many last straws for the Smith Administration, whose existence was already in jeopardy and whose position went from “dire” to from much, much worse. The majority of the 73rd Congress had trickled into Albany following the Civil War’s commencement. There were more than a few direct defectors to Washington, and more or less the entire southern delegation fled for their seats of power, but on the whole the overwhelming majority were nominally aligned with the Republic. Historians still debate whether or not this was a good thing. Congress’s continued existence granted the Republic much needed legitimacy and, of course, the legal justification for the Smith Administration to prosecute the war against MacArthur. Ordinances passed by the 73rd Congress, including authorization of confiscations for Natcorp partisans’ property and other war powers, were vital in staving off total collapse as the Natcorps marched north.
Congress’s loyalty was also just nominal in many cases, and while Smith could fairly claim to wave the flag of the same American republic kickstarted with the signing of the Declaration of Independence and the Philadelphia Convention, he also had to deal with constant attempts to knife him and undermine his power. The most egregious examples where the directly anti war members of Congress allied with William Gibbs McAdoo and Hiram Johnson, and across the board Smith’s troubles with Congress were perhaps the most striking part of the entire war’s domestic politics and made ample fodder for the giddy Natcorp press. “The corpse of so-called liberty and so-called democracy is torn apart by jackals,” sneered one editor. “General Mac has defeated the Rumpublic without exerting a finger.” History has been very unkind to the 74th Congress, but the general consensus is that machinations by bad faith actors, some of which were affiliated with the DOJ, was only one part of the unprecedented struggle between the Legislative and Executive. “With defeat staring the Republic down the barrel and the U.S. looking smaller with every day, many simply panicked,” writes Brinkley. John Nance Garner was considerably less generous when he fumed that Congress “isn’t worth a warm bucket of piss.”
Vice President John Nance Garner
The first issue that the Republican government faced was that many of its members were from areas under direct Natcorp control or active war zones, which made elections extremely complicated if not completely possible. Between that and the southern and western blocs, it was quite realistic to say that a majority of the 74th Congress’s, and therefore Republican democracy’s, clientele was illegitimate. This had forced the 73rd Congress to cede considerable power to Smith. In 1935, however, they were howling for blood. Smith and Congress frequently stepped around one another through executive orders and joint resolutions, and as relations deteriorated between the two they became less likely to find common ground, even on vital issues of the war. Congress began to suspect that Smith was a Bolshevik, and Smith dramatically blew out of proportion the operating power of the DOJ in Congress.
Douglas MacArthur had declared that “the National Corporate government is, above all else, stable” and one of the Natcorps’ favorite subterfuge techniques was to cause as much chaos as possible among the Republicans to further justify the dictatorship. This lie of stability almost seemed believable as Albany multiple times came within inches of complete disintegration. The DOJ under Hoover spearheaded complex operations to exert pressure on Congress, with DOJ agents going on the hunt for Congressmen’s family members and threatening them with torture if they weren’t given what they wanted. The Secret Service, which rapidly took on the function of a federal police force and investigative agency for the Republic, was well aware of the scheme and even knew who some of the main figures under Natcorp pay or blackmail were. What they could do, however, was often limited, as losing Congress completely would arguably be a more serious blow to the war effort than whatever Hoover had planned. The Director maintained a sizable force of “sleepers” in Congress numbering several dozen. He was fond of keeping votes “in reserve” and deploying them where Smith least suspected it. The DOJ’s scheming provided constant fuel for the very real anti-Smith sentiment that Congress and most of America, the Republic included, felt.
Smith’s issues with Congress directly correlated with the Republican armies’ success in the field. And in the spring of 1935, when the Republicans were on the run and enduring casualty intense defeat after casualty intense defeat, Albany was in shambles. After the war fury that followed the March on Washington petered out, cabin fever set in and Congress wanted a more active role in how the war was fought. Garner was initially successful in tiding them over. The Johnson Offensive and particularly the Battle of Rockford lit a fire that never truly went out, however. Investigations into the competence and loyalty of Smith Administration officials were easy to do, and contributed to the overall atmosphere of mutual distrust between the two factions. This united with another lightning rod, Smith and Stimson’s complicated series of informal alliances with the Soviet Union for military aid in exchange for executive action like recognition for the U.S.S.R. It was this that would lead to Congress impeaching Smith. Impeachment was not a new idea. It had been floated by Protestant zealots the day Smith stepped into office, and had alternately been suggested by both sides of the political spectrum even before the March on Washington. After the beginning of the Second American Civil War, the idea that Smith’s inability to stop the coup had amounted to criminal incompetence was also one frequently brought up with varying degrees of accuracy and seriousness. The Californian delegation had organized the first attempts to assemble a committee to study the issue in December of 1934, and afterwards combined with the Natcorp victories in the Midwest and constant anticommunist paranoia Smith’s removal snowballed into a genuine issue for the new year.
The initial strategy the Administration was to use their increasingly dwindling number of allies in Congress to defuse the threat. The Democrats captured the House and Senate following the Stock Market Crash of 1929, but the aftermath of the War’s beginning, particularly the mass bolt of the southern Democrats, gave the Republicans a narrow plurality that through alliances with conservative Democrats would make the lion’s share of the 74th Congress. Bertrand Snell was poised to become Speaker when Congress came back into session, if there was to be a session at all. Henry Thomas Rainey, the Speaker when Smith entered office, died in August and had left Smith entirely reliant on Garner to control the House. Garner attempted to bypass a floor vote, which could have potentially humiliating consequences for the Administration, by having the lame duck Democratic leadership settle the matter behind closed doors. The strategy backfired when the committees refused to close the door on wrongdoing.
Speaker of the House Bertrand Snell
Smith faced many charges from Congress, but the one that united all of his many opponents were the actions of a Russian pilot named Aleksander Shyetzkin, part of one of many Soviet detachments in America— and one that had received direct orders from Secretary Stimson to “harass the enemy as we retreat foremost, and make no regard for our troops or there [sic]” The result was Russian pilots bombing advancing Natcorps in a minor skirmish outside of Chicago, killing hundreds on both sides. Shyetzkin was notable for failing in his mission, accidentally targeting the Republicans (who didn’t have the proper armaments to ward off an airstrike) apparently due to the influence of alcohol. The War Department was furious, obviously, and intended to cover up the debacle. To avoid complications, both from the embarrassment of accidentally causing a foreign pilot to bomb their own ranks and an unwillingness to get into any deeper drama with the Soviets, the War Department intended to simply send Shyetzkin back to Russia. News of this, however, was leaked to the public.
The Natcorp government actively intervened to destroy Smith politically. Beyond the DOJ’s chicanery, MacArthur believed that then was the time to “twist the knife”. He gave Hugh Johnson direct orders to ramp up the war in the Midwest, despite the fact that the Natcorps were already spread thin and waiting for reinforcements. MacArthur also ordered an air war against Republican holdings in the Northeast, basically expanding what the Natcorp air fleet had done to Philadelphia to the entirety of New England and New York. The Natcorps’ raids intentionally targeted civilian infrastructure, with the goal being to “break the Rumpublic’s will to fight”. Each passing week loaded with devastation and defeat further damaged the Smith Administration’s credibility. There was rioting and protesting against the Administration in every major urban center in Republican territory for nearly every conceivable cause. Many, of course, were against the usual devils of “Romanism and Bolshevism”, sometimes overtly pro Natcorp. The Secret Service responded with arrests of prominent “agitators”, while protests frequently turned into riots that required military retaliation. These retaliations were chaotic and bloody, hardening the opposition and inspiring gleeful accusations of hypocrisy from Washington.
Demonstrators gathering in Albany
“I do not know how I will live much longer,” wrote Smith to a confidant. “They intend to eject me from the Presidency. Between the Jackboot and my heart I am sure I will not live to see their designs fulfilled.” Even victories came in a poisoned chalice for Smith. In March, thanks largely to the dangerously overextended Natcorp lines in Wisconsin, Smedley Butler scored a victory. The Battle of the Grand River saw the Natcorps under Johnson’s indirect control whipped by a larger Republican force. The Republicans compensated for their lack of heavy equipment with discipline and ferocity, allowing them to get the jump on better armed opponents. And in doing so, it raised the profile of Butler— whose real or perceived competence and ability to deliver for the Republican cause made him an attractive leader for those dissatisfied with Smith’s comparative political moderation. “Butler’s better than that jackass,” said Floyd Olsen, whose home state had at that point been omitted from direct devastation by the Natcorps thanks to Butler’s efforts. Socialist organizations accused Smith of deliberately undermining his generals and credited successes as something that came in spite of his efforts and not because of them. Some went further still: one editorial demanded a “Butler, or perhaps George S. Patton, dictatorship/junta until the war is returned to a stable place.” Mass racial unrest also wounded the Smith Administration’s leadership. Early in 1934, Smith had desegregated the armed forces, which he saw as a measure that was no longer practical and was immoral. It was true that integration was a boon overall for the Republicans, but it also created backlash the government couldn’t afford. “During the course of the war,” writes Brinkley, “every city where there was a considerable black population exploded in racial violence at one point or another.”
Perhaps the most notable of these incidents was in the battleground of southeast Michigan, in the city of Detroit. Like many other cities in the northeast United States, Detroit had witnessed a significant increase in its black population following the so-called “Great Migration” of southern African Americans. In 1934, the DOJ had successfully destroyed the government of Michigan, capturing Lansing and driving Republican elements into the fringe north. Charles Coughlin, notably, had been arrested and brutalized from his home in Detroit. In spring of 1935, MacArthur ordered the Natcorp rule over Michigan secured. That meant capturing the industrial Detroit, which was home to a large organized labor presence and a hotbed of Republican sympathy. Smith loyalists in Detroit prepared to make a fight out of it— only for their attempts to draft the state’s black community sparking mass rioting, and for black Republican troops in white areas to face violent backlash. Republican units, numbering in the thousands, were quickly swamped and scrambled to escape to Canada. Soldiers, who did not universally have access to uniforms, shed what military insignia they had and joined or ran from angry mobs. A fire was started at some point, and by the time Natcorp tanks had reached the city outskirts it had descended into total chaos. They restored order at gunpoint, immediately purging it of organized labor and brawling with communists in the streets. This made for good press in Washington, which portrayed the Rumpublic as one continual anarchy fueled slaughter dominated by godlessness and communism.
A Natcorp soldier in the aftermath of the fall of Detroit
It was all of this combined that left the Smith Administration not just weakened politically, but completely hobbled. Garner’s strategy had been to bypass the general House, which he saw as harder to deal with and more susceptible to DOJ meddling than leadership, in hopes that he would be able to kill the threat of potential punishment before it could snowball into something he wouldn't be able to control. Here he dramatically miscalculated: in January, the House voted to open an impeachment inquiry into Al Smith and Henry Stimson. In March, two years after Smith assumed the Presidency, the House committee found sufficient evidence to impeach them in the Shyetzkin Affair. However, it was not Stimson’s head that Congress wanted. The next month, the full House voted by a margin of three quarters to impeach Al Smith, making him only the second President along with Andrew Johnson to be subjected to such an attack. It also made for a grim prognosis in the Senate, which by a vote of two-thirds had the Constitutional to remove a President. Garner, who stood to become President if the attempt would succeed, saw his relationship with Smith irreparably damaged. Garner believed that Smith had made impossible demands of him and marginalized him when he failed to deliver. Smith, for his part, suspected deliberate sabotage in Garner's failures. Garner had “stringently objected” to chartering Soviet pilots to begin with and was kept in the dark about the Shyetzkin incident until it was too late. Smith thought Garner was intentionally trying to oust him, an assessment most modern scholarship agrees was completely false. The damage was done, however, and the two men would seldom be in the same room together after the incident.
It seemed, in the spring of 1935, exceedingly likely that Smith would be removed from office. Smith did not have particularly good relations with the Senate to begin with, and losing the Southern Democrats along with the debacles of 1934 had left Republicans with much more strength in the upper than lower chamber. Progressives and leftists were, at best, apathetic to Smith’s plight. Robert La Follette Jr., the Progressive Senator from Wisconsin, plainly told a crowd of enthralled reporters that he would make his decision “based on whoever could shoot better” during the trial. Conservatives in the Republican Party were hostile to Smith, preferring Garner, while conservatives in the Democratic Party that had previously been Smith’s closest allies had deemed him too sympathetic to communism and a weak leader. Smith’s most notable backer in both his 1928 and 1932 successful bids for the Democratic nomination, John J. Raskob, had written him off and was unnerved by his perceived embrace of radicalism and property confiscations. Perhaps the most notable enemy of Smith’s in the Senate and a consistent thorn in his side throughout the duration of his Presidency was the staunch Progressive Republican from Idaho, William Borah. The aging legislator had basically become the Senate’s most important man after Democrats lost control of the chamber and as the Second American Civil War changed the face of the political map. Borah had actually been an early proponent of diplomatically recognizing the Soviet Union. He nonetheless saw Smith’s unilateral, purely executive dealings with them as “highly improper”. The news that Republicans defending Chicago had been bombed by fighters Smith brought to America from its enemy under dubious legal pretexts was the breaking point. Borah made no secret of his desire to have Smith removed. He did not see a conviction as a serious detriment, and perhaps even as a boon, to the Republican war effort. Perhaps most importantly, Borah was an idealist and a romanticist that believed firmly in America’s innocent character. There was no tolerance, in Borah’s worldview, for secret deals with Soviet thugs that backfired and killed Americans fighting for their freedom. Borah’s influence crossed party lines, which made him the single greatest threat to Smith’s Presidency in the impeachment trial. The sixty nine year old Senator had served since 1904 for Idaho, and was a staunch dry and progressive that had put aside his doubts and enthusiastically supported Herbert Hoover against Smith in both his runs. He sparred with Smith frequently in 1934 over the question of how to rebuild the Supreme Court, and had felt his response to the banking crisis in 1933 was "wholly inadequate to the point of being cowardly". While he was out of his element in Albany, he knew the Senate’s members like the back of his hand and whipped votes in both parties to oust the President. When asked if he played a role in rallying prominent Republicans for impeachment, Borah joked that “it’s easy when you live in the same building.”
The war remained grim. Philadelphia was a meat grinder comparable to the Somne campaign in the Great War, eating into both sides' manpower reserves through extensively bloody fighting that left most of one of the nation’s original capital in ruins. Civilian casualties were rapidly becoming difficult to calculate. In the long term, the Natcorps were becoming overextended in Wisconsin and Butler was turning the Republicans into a force that could seriously contest their control of the Midwest, but these efforts wouldn’t bear fruit until the future. Michigan, of course, had fallen and George S. Patton’s Finger Lakes campaign was perhaps the only bright spot in the entire war for the Republicans. Facing almost certain ruin, Smith nearly contemplated resigning. He was reviled through most of the world, especially in his home country, and just a little bit of bad luck would leave him with no choice but to flee or be executed by MacArthur. He had few allies. He needed only to avoid being completely conquered by MacArthur’s armies in the field and find a measly third of the Senate to keep his office, and even those tasks seemed nearly impossible. He was inspired to stay and make a fight of it by his wife Katie’s urging, and also, as he would later comment: “Hoover’s rats going after me made me think I was onto something.” He dug in, rallying whatever allies he still had and making it clear that he would not bow out willingly. Smith’s political strength was on the eastern seaboard, with immigrants and Catholics. He reached out to leaders of those communities, correctly assessing that keeping that region in his pocket would give him a reasonable shot at cobbling together enough Senators to avoid being convicted.
When the trial commenced in April, Smith submitted to Congress's whims, personally testifying to investigators. His war-weary appearance was mocked by his opponents, particularly the Coward Caucus. This backfired, raising sympathy for the President in a time of war. He and Stimson passionately defended their conduct. Smith’s many enemies, meanwhile, got to work whipping votes. Here, of course, was their main issue. It was impossible to conceal the complex and extensive operations the DOJ was masterminding to destroy Smith. “I’m no fascist,” said one Senator to the Secret Service. “Seems that’s the company I find myself in when it comes to this impeaching business.” The complex array of factions that wanted Smith gone found themselves struggling under their own weight. As the trial commenced, presided over by Chief Justice Hugo Black, chaos reigned on the Senate floor. The Secret Service worked furiously to snuff out traitors, drawing livid denunciations of intimidation. Hiram Johnson made a speech advocating for impeachment which drew a wave of jeers from his colleagues. The many factions that wanted Smith gone struggled under their own weight. When the smoke had cleared, Smith evaded impeachment by a mere five votes. Smith survived thanks to the staunch loyalty of both Republican and Democratic Senators in his native Northeast. After his acquittal, he appointed as Secretary of State one of his closest allies, a wealthy donor who had long been in Smith's camp and who went to great pains to win over reluctant Senators, Joseph P. Kennedy.
Joseph P. Kennedy, Secretary of State
