Warren Hearnes: He took his stand

Missouri Governor Warren Hearnes

The following story was written by my friend David S. Reif who had the priviledge of interviewing Governor Hearnes in 2003. It is a moving tribute to one of Missouri's best and brightest leaders. Warren Hearnes was the last of the Southern Democrats. He believed in States Rights and fought with all of his might to preserve them. Governor Hearnes was a fixture of American politics and will be missed greatly. Rest in peace Governor. -Clint E. Lacy

Leaving the more familiar hills, small mountains, general rough country of the Ozarks with its resort lakes and small towns, and moving south and east into the Missouri "Bootheel" region is a geographically notable event for any traveler. The area south of Cape Girardeau is the beginning of the Mississippi River delta and its flat manicured farmland contrasts starkly with the toss and tumble of the predominately hilly rest of the state.

The Missouri Bootheel is technically the southeastern protrusion of the state but is the generic term for all of the flat country of the delta. Many natives simply call the whole thing "swamp-east" noting the swampy region now mostly dried out by extensive subsurface drainage projects. It is a cultural entity as well. One Blytheville, Arkansas wag observed that the Bootheel was a place where you drove north to get to Mississippi. Seeing the tabletop like landscape, the cotton and rice fields, and knowing of its traditional culture one is strongly reminded of the western part of that state.

The Bootheel is the home of former Democratic Governor Warren Hearnes (1964-1972) who now resides in his native town of Charleston where he quietly lives with his wife Betty, who is a five term veteran of the Missouri House. I had the privilege of interviewing both the Governor and his wife. This political couple was witness to and participants in the pivotal years of the post WW II period in American history. Like Missourians a century before they were soldiers in a great ideological war. The battle for Missouri continued in a different time but the combatants were the same; the state vs. the central government.

If we are to believe history at all we know that after the War Between the States ended we entered into a vague and troubling period antiseptically called Reconstruction. Without going into a study of those times we can accept that they began to come to an end with what C. Vann Woodward described as the "Invisible Compromise of 1877" when Northern Republicans and Southern Democrats made a covert deal to (among other things) remove the occupation troops from the South and allow the states to resume a growing measure of sovereignty. The South became a sort of "semi-autonomous zone" in a period of diminishing Federal involvement. This is important to understand in the story of what happened to Warren Hearnes in the 1960's a time when this arrangement came to an end.

Reconstruction in Missouri was accomplished through the dreaded "Drake Constitution". Like other states disenfranchisement of former Confederates was the law as well as a quasi-official policy of expropriation and outright stealing of the property and land of former secessionists and their supporters. The looting and humiliation of those people was as thorough as could be accomplished by the post war Republicans. Perhaps the beginning of the end of Reconstruction in Missouri can be placed with Gen. John Sappington Marmaduke (C.S.A.) taking office as Railroad Commissioner in 1877 and completed with his election as governor in 1884. Marmaduke was one of only two former Confederate generals to ever be elected governor of Southern states.

The office of governor is an emblem of the times. As with Marmaduke the election of Warren Hearnes came to the South in an uneasy and transitional time. In the twentieth century America made the change from regional to global power engaging in numerous trade and military wars to do it. By the second half of the century the drive to consolidate the states into a vast homogeneous union was again part of the agenda of the powerbrokers that now lusted after the great scheme of internationalism.

Although "winning" the War Between the States the political fallout for the Union was disastrous and divisive. Regional animosities and ceaseless wars with Native American people took their toll on those who would centralize power. But by the end of WW II those struggles were behind them and once again Missouri was in the thick of a heady new battle.

Missourian Harry Truman assumed the Presidency in time to see the end of hostilities abroad but they were just beginning at home. His fight to maintain civilian control of the military and the subsequent inter-departmental battles within the government are still not well understood but have shaped every aspect of foreign and domestic policy to this time.

As well as the dispute with Gen. Macarthur is known the public part of that brawl was only the tip of the iceberg. From that dispute ominous vibrations deep within the lithosphere of the central government continue to ricochet inside its containment vessel. The National Security Act of 1947 erupted out of a post-War caldron of money, power, and central authority that reshaped our notions about America. The recent Patriot Act is a direct policy result of those events that took place in the Truman Era.

Yet deeper in the bowels of the bureaucracy Missourians were active in molding events that shook the government with the power of a bomb blast. A confidant of President Truman St. Louis attorney Stuart Symington (who would become U. S. Senator Symington) was involved in the human affairs crucible from which the Department of War was transmuted into the Department of Defense. A rearrangement of priorities that was much more than a benign name change.

The administrative warfare that was involved in this process moved global power blocks around Washington D. C. and lead to the creation of President Eisenhower's cautionary term "...the military/industrial complex". But in the short run the process of creating the Department of Defense also found its first Secretary and WW II hero Admiral James Forrestall (1892-1949) dead under highly suspicious circumstances within days of his confirmation. At Bethesda Hospital his broken body was found on the pavement outside a tiny window from which he had "jumped" in a successful act of "suicide". A meeting with Stuart Symington was one of the last events on his schedule before he was hospitalized for a "nervous condition".

These are the swirling waters that were post-WW II America. The 1950's and early 1960's were not the tranquil period of malaise that the shapers of public opinion would like one to believe today. The events that defined the era of Warren Hearnes in the 1960's were the product of the still churning maelstrom of power collecting in Washington. A place where men played hardball with A-bombs and plans to control the world were being hammered out in backrooms and lounges with a double shot of bourbon in one hand and a Lucky Strike in the other. Military insiders, eager politicians, and defense contractors dreamed of far flung projections of market power and might and there was little talk of quaint notions like "states-rights".

In 1964 Lyndon Baines Johnson, symbol of the New South, political powerbroker, Texas New Dealer, and arguably the most liberal and nationalistic President the United States has ever seen was elected by a landslide over conservative Barry Goldwater. Warren Hearnes, West Point graduate, veteran legislator with a reputation as an anti-establishment populist won the governor's race in Missouri.

Johnson swooped to the Presidency by describing Goldwater as a right-wing nut and mindless war-monger. The Democratic Party was still riding a sympathy wave from the mysterious assignation of President Kennedy and anxiety about the smoldering war in far off Indochina. The Kennedy era "New Frontier" social policies were still unscrutinized by the public whose understandable sentimentality for a fallen President colored their judgment.

The New Dealers and their socialist programs continued to drive an American can-do attitude little diminished from the victory in WW II that made everything seem possible. An evolving national focus seemed to be replacing the state and local sensibilities that had served the country since its creation. National centralism coupled with New Deal socialism was rapidly redefining the American ethos.

Socialism is antithetical to the individualism that built America. Localism is not compatible with centralism. Here are the same ideas once more colliding in the American arena as they did in a violent manner during the War Between the States. That conflict lay unresolved in the spirit of the American people. The Constitutional roots that promoted Federalism as a solution to the conflict between central and local authority were deeply scarred by the Fourteenth and Sixteenth Amendments which strongly favored centralism.

Post-Civil War St. Louis was a mecca for the Marxist veterans kicked out of Europe after the failed Revolution of 1848. To a man this socialist cadre had supported the Lincoln Administration. Carl Schurz, Joseph Weydemyer, Franz Sigel, and Joseph Pulitzer cast their shadows but were not alone. This favorable ideological climate gave rise to the St. Louis Hegelian school of thought that would deeply tint the thinking of twentieth century socialists who would operate under the guise of "progressives", "liberals", and "new leftists".

The St. Louis Hegelians explored the place of Marxist materialism in the American context and editorialized against the "brittle individualism" that flawed the American character. Newcomers to Missouri these alien notions were in constant conflict with the innate wisdom of the Missourians whose bloodlines went to the South. The Hegelians favored centralism and its good works for society while supporting a professional class of intellectuals and bureaucrats. This important but little known group continues to hold a substantial sway over liberal and other centralist thinking in our country.

Yet in 1964 a more traditional path was also being promoted. The Southern way that emphasized a classical Greco-Roman worldview informed by Christian ethics; a path of State and local policy that sought to strengthen society at its most fundamental level. Trying to build a community based culture that was so self sufficient that it had little need for a strong central government except what was laid out in the Constitution. Warren Hearnes was the champion of this cause.

Political insider and well know Missouri capitol city reporter Jim Wolfe once told me that Hearnes was our "...transitional governor...". He said, "Hearnes filled the gap between the quiet Old South statesmen-like politician to the new style photographic media savvy clowns that we have now. Hearnes had some real substance to him and had ambition. People liked Warren and felt like he was going somewhere and taking the state with him. But he didn't know that was his biggest problem. Outside of Missouri there were walls he didn't see."

Hearnes was young, handsome, popular, and charismatic. He was a vigorous man with a taste for controversy and a cocky attitude to match his energy. A political cartoon of him after his election portrayed a Samson-like character breaking up a Roman style temple with the caption reading, "Disestablishmentarian".

This proved an important and prophetic distinction. Far from a liberal and not really a dogmatic conservative or a dimestore reformer, Hearnes was unique in a political milieu overburden with the teachings of all manner of centralists. From socialists and communists to the Democratic liberals and equally big government corporate Republicans, national centralism was in vogue. Hidden behind the Cold War and a plethora of other patriotic pretensions the urge to expand centralized power was everywhere the rage. To overstate the passion for centralization among the intellectual elites of the Northeast and elsewhere after World War II would be difficult.

In many ways by the 1960's the country was near its zenith of power. The American military could intimidated the other former powers at will. American products dominated the world market still recovering from WW II. Industry boomed and the markets flourished. The money rolled into Washington and it seemed that everyone's hand was out for some of the booty. The central government could dispense a seemly endless variety of services and fund industry's appetite for enormous construction and defense projects. The economy was called "Guns and Butter" after the government's ability to give money to both the military and civilian economy.

Yet with government largess came government control. Johnson's administration championed this idea. With each beneficial new program came centrally planned government regulations. The strings attached to these projects seemed benign enough at first but as the paperwork mounted and the number of civil servants proliferated the nature of restrictions became increasingly political. The agenda of central authority via the government in Washington and their allies on Wall Street started to cause friction and the dislocations of political power started to reveal themselves.

The contrasts between Hearnes and Johnson were sharp and evidently the people of Missouri wanted it that way. There was no love lost between the two. Gov. Hearnes related a story to me about being at L.B.J.'s ranch in 1966 with a group of governors. After being harangued by Johnson, Hearnes stood up and began to list the demands the States had of his administration. An argument ensued with Johnson telling Hearnes to shut up. After an icy silence Governor McNair of South Carolina stood up and said "Mr. President, don't jump on Gov. Hearnes, he speaks for all of us." After the meeting a stunned Johnson told his advisors to "...get that s.o.b. Hearnes out of here before the press gets to him." That was only the beginning.

The "Solid South" Democrat Warren Hearnes set up shop in the Governor's mansion in Jefferson City only vaguely aware of the ominous changes about to enter nearly every cherished institution of Dixie. He was neither a political scientist nor a sociologist in his orientation. A son of the rural South his values were decidedly traditional and small town. However, along with his military education he received a law degree from the Southeast Missouri State University while he was a state legislator. His wife, a daughter of a Southern Baptist minister from Arkansas, was college educated attending both Baylor and Southeast Missouri State University (now Missouri State).

He had few political heroes but a letter commemorating Jefferson Davis on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of his death may shed some light on his thinking. Gov. Hearnes wrote "I am sure I speak for the great majority of Missourians when I say ...his life (Jefferson Davis) and his record was one of service to his country and devotion to ideals without thought of self." Public service and devotion to ideals and his state were traits that Gov. Hearnes displayed throughout his life.

Yet unlike others in their generation who sought to remake the world in the modernist model Gov. Hearnes sought instead to revisit and improve the world he was raised with. A humane society with values based on structure tied to the cycles of nature. Although Missouri was transitioning from an agricultural to an urban economy the Governor felt that continuity could be preserved and that revolutionary measures were counterproductive. St. Louis, the major city in the state was beginning to clamor for more state and federal funds to "fix" its mounting problems. Its politics and media influenced by years of academic socialism and other centralist ideas demanded government action.

While the Johnson administration touted fatuous platitudes like the "Great Society", "The War on Poverty", and "Creative Federalism" he prosecuted a growing war in Viet Nam cloaking his internal policy efforts with this patriotic pretext. Johnson's domestic theory was that the individual states were "creatures of the federal government". The concept of state's rights was antiquated and out of step with the nationalizing impulse of the day. State borders must be virtually erased, laws need to be made uniform, and inter-state commerce must be unimpeded. "Civil rights" could only be insured by a fatherly central authority whose benevolent hand offered "fairness".

Eventual dissolving of state borders was a topic of seminars and workshops sponsored by the government. Drawing a map of the America with no internal boundaries punctuated instead by 25 or 30 "major metropolitan population centers" that would substitute for the states. This scheme would facilitate the distribution of federal aid to areas that were more accustom to dealing with the central government making the states irrelevant.

Hearnes knew there were problems generated by changing economic and social conditions but thought that the way to solve social problems was through the use of small scale state programs that would parallel the Federal government thus keeping the Fed locked out of State affairs. One staffer told me that Hearnes often would say of Federal programs "If it's worth doing then the States can do it better".

Setting up agencies within the state to handle state problems would work more effectively, he believed, that the massive efforts Johnson wanted. Many Federal projects didn't work at all and others were simply give-aways and pork barrel politics. Hearnes already could see that strings were attached to every dollar of tax money returned to the states. He also saw that central involvement was corrosive of state sovereignty.

Hearnes was not through with his program of "state's rights and responsibilities" as he is fond of calling it. Planning was crucial to the central policy. National planning would consolidate, unify, and homogenize the states into a great national entity fulfilling the dreams of Lincoln and the Republican aspirations of a century earlier. Johnson pushed hard to have uniform national planning but Hearnes had outfoxed him. He set up programs under a new Office of State and Regional Planning and a Department of Community Affairs to set state priorities before the Feds could enter the picture.

In an interview with former director of Missouri Department of Community Affairs Larry Gridley he told me that Hearnes set up this approach to better serve all areas of the state. "I believe it was Georgia that first used this system and we set up our state agency in a similar way to one in Georgia" according to Gridley. "The idea" said Gridley "was to break the state into internal development districts and let each one of them set the priorities for what they needed from the state government. Each district had a board comprised of the Mayors and the Presiding Commissioners of each county. They set policy and decided what type of help would be needed from the state for their area. It was really a way of decentralizing power."

Gridley also said that at the time the belief was the Federal government could not enter an area of state sovereignty if a program already existed to cover the scope of the centralized program. "Hearnes could see no need for Federal programs that duplicated state efforts" said Gridley, "He went out of his way to work ahead of central planners to keep them out of the state." In short order Hearnes would be speaking before the Southern Governor's Conference and other groups promoting this innovative approach.

He received national press when he was one of the few governors to fight the national Urban Renewal projects. He knew that along with Civil Rights legislation this was one of the "Trojan Horses" that Johnson had set up to grab state power. Urban renewal would work directly through the city government bypassing the States creating enclaves of Federal power within the states but not under state control. Not unlike the Union Army's strategy in Missouri a 100 years before, seizing most of the urban centers and leaving control of the rural areas to the Confederates. Warren saw through this program and characterized urban renew as a boondoggle of high rise slums and concrete Calcuttas. History would bear him out on these crucial points.

The governor was unyielding. He fought the Feds, the special interest groups, and their cities programs with his own policies. The fight was so bitter that former Hearnes administration officials say that Johnson got mad and threatened to freeze all Federal funds to Missouri until his advisors reversed him. Unfortunately, no matter how hard the Governor fought the Federal agencies they kept coming back.

Johnson would use even more emotional issues to garner support for his power-drunk policies. With the passage of Civil Rights legislation the door would be open to send Federal proxies into States to dictate policy. Once inside then all sorts of mischief could be accomplished to undermine the State's position in relation to the central government. Civil rights be damned the Johnson administration saw a way to club the States into submission with this new legislation.

Larry Gridley said the talk among Hearnes staff was that Robert Kennedy (the U.S. Attorney General) was going to use Civil Rights legislation not to promote racial fairness but only to "...break down the Constitutional walls separating the Federal government and the States." "Everyone saw that very clearly." said Gridley.

Never-the-less, Warren continued on the offensive setting up the Ozarks Economic Opportunity program across state lines and into Arkansas and Oklahoma. This farsighted innovation would have cut out the Federal administrators from the economic development arena. The program became a topic of great interest with the other Southern governors and had Johnson (and later Nixon) not come down so hard on Hearnes this trans-state government might have supplanted much Federal activity. The idea of multi-state agencies set up by states with little central intervention and no Federal funding is a policy idea that can serve future political leaders.

In this formulation states could join voluntary associations with neighboring states to tackle common problems. Gov. Hearnes said the original idea was to solve problems in urban areas by promoting development in the rural parts of the state. By bolstering the economy of the agrarian sector out-migration to the cities would be stopped thus ending many of the urban problems. This was an elegant and simple solution to the incessant carping of cities for more funds to solve their predicament. Moreover, it was also a model for states to regain powers lost to the central government by joining into sectional alliances. Not a new idea to Southerners.

Warren's friends like Lester Maddox in Georgia continued to fight for local solution for local problems. George Wallace and his administration tried to make Alabama as independent, vigorous, and sectionally aligned as possible. Yet Hearnes was young and vital and very visible. Many eyes were on him and his programs. When the St. Louis Post Dispatch liked Warren they called him "progressive" when they did not like him they call him "just another Southern Governor." The second observation became an epithet and eventually a threat.

According to Hearnes administration sources the implications of his plans were not lost on either Johnson or Nixon. Although at some other time this might have been a welcome solution to the aspirations of states and regions but in the extreme nationalism of the post-WW II era it was a dangerous idea. One that Hearnes would pay for in his second administration.

He was strong in his state and popular with other Southern governors like Tom McNair, John Connelly, and George Wallace (who was by then a third party candidate for President) but outside of the Southern Governor's Conference no other regional organization existed to champion Hearnes' program of "Creative Localism" as he termed it. The South was divided on this issue. Many responded to the clarion call of a seemly inexhaustible federal purse. The idea of a united nation vanquishing the Nazis, Soviets, Red Chinese and all the other evils of the world was very appealing. Not to mention the money the military/industrial complex was spending in the Southern states. Nationalism would weakened the bonds of the "Solid South" and eventually undo them.

By 1968 the prospect of national elections had brought conditions to a boil. L.B.J.'s war was becoming more and more unpopular as time went on. The Johnson administration was using every public relations ploy at their disposal to try to sway opinion to his side. He and his aides tried to force a resolution of support of the war through the National Governors Conference in effect endorsing his wartime policies. All the governors acquiesced except three. Two Republicans, Mark Hatfield from Oregon and George Romney of Michigan would not sign on. One lone Democrat stood in the door; Hearnes. He would not support the President.

This action by Warren sent shock waves through the Democratic Party and enraged Johnson. The former West Point officer told the national press that a he supported the troops but could not support an administration plan without sufficient knowledge of its intentions. State leaders had been cut out of the loop and dictated to by Federal agencies. In effect he was saying that Washington's leadership was so remote from the people's will and so obscure in its purpose that it did not deserve to be endorsed.

Of this situation Community Affairs Director Gridley says that within Hearnes' staff there was strong support for what the governor was doing. He explained "As much money as the States were sending to Washington and then the crap they (Washington) sent back to us all we could see is that they were squandering resources to fight a war of unknown intentions." There was a realization that the war was just another cynical attempt to advance the New Deal domestic policy of President Johnson.

Like Lincoln before him Johnson had attempted to hide his misjudgments, failures, and promotion of big government behind the pretext of racial equality and the flag waving of war. When the veils of patriotic pretensions finally fell away; Hearnes was vindicated. Unfortunately, it was a victory that neither he nor anybody else wanted. Johnson had succeeded in diminishing the Constitution while at the same time reframing domestic priorities into a template for big government intervention into the business of the States.

Years of domestic policy infighting, personal and political rivalry and flat out philosophical disagreement came to a head with the announcement that LBJ would not run again. Johnson's administration foundered and eventually fell. In 1972 while Missourians overwhelmingly re-elected their governor with the biggest landslide in Missouri history, Vice President Hubert Humphrey hand picked by Johnson to succeed him for President lost Missouri and the national election.

A discussion I had with Betty Hearnes is instructive here. She was once a candidate for governor herself and not a stranger to politics. I said Harry Truman had been a state's rights Senator and local populist who became a nationalist and finally under the sway of Gen. Marshall and the internationalists left the old South ideology. Some say he was a sell-out to his state's rights principles. She disagreed saying that this movement was merely evolutionary. It is the natural change a politician makes when they want enough power to get things done in an era when more and more power was stationed in Washington.

Indeed, that is what happened to her husband. His advisors who at one time helped him lead the charge against Federal regulations were themselves converted. Warren's first term brain trust finally "saw the light". Aides tell me that they began to advise the governor that the money and the power was in Washington. Abandon your idealistic notions about the States and learn to finesse the bureaucrats in the Capitol and the money would come your way.

Sometimes frustration begets expedience. Years of fighting Johnson turned into years of fighting Nixon. The old zeal for competent state programs gave way to accommodation like the passage of Revenue Sharing and other national solutions for local problems. Lacking sturdy regional alternatives, going to the Federal trough seemed to be the only way for state leaders to tend the needs of their citizens.

Hearnes and Wallace working concurrently, two Old South decentralists, won some victories for the States but they were Pyrrhic victories. The party of Thomas Jefferson, Jefferson Davis, and Claiborne Fox Jackson was in ruins; destroyed by the New South/New England alliance of L.B.J. The Democrats left their roots in the South to the machinations of the party of Lincoln. By the early 1970's only Hearnes and a few other old line Democrats continued to be a threat to the new order in the South and Nixon fought harder against Hearnes than Johnson had fought. But he saved his special wrath for George Wallace.

The seventies were a time of ceaseless investigations of Warren Hearnes. Surreptitiously lead at times by left-wing Democrats like Tom Eagleton from Missouri every Federal agency that could be mustered tried to hang him. He was shamelessly hounded for all sorts of imagined corruption. Nothing was ever found and he was never prosecuted for any violation and in the end completely vindicated but not until he was physically and financially exhausted. That is another story.

Nixon and his Republican party finally beat down or nearly co-opted the South but the triumph for the national centralist is hollow. The union is preserved but at what cost. Today the central government is everywhere in our lives protecting us from all manner of real and imagined hazards. We are taxed to the maximum for this service. Homogenization is turned into Orwellian multi-culturalism with its nebulous platitudes like "diversity" while the ubiquitous pandering media is at the service of leftist elites. Internationalist schemes have now replaced the national centralism of the 1960's. The concentration of power is escalating. Plotting for world domination continues to drive men and even more extravagant designs loom on the horizon threatening the sovereignty of our present super-state.

In 1964 when Missouri carried the New Dealer Johnson and the local populist Hearnes the underlying fears and beliefs of the all the South were exposed. This same formula was repeated all over Dixie and showed the deep cleavage in the thinking of the people of the South. Torn between the love of Old Glory and the memory of the First Republic its people were in torment. Can big government programs like T.V.A. or N.A.S.A. exist in the same states that once flew the Confederate Battleflag with pride? And what is the real price of these programs?

That question is being answered today. Will the states of the South or any other section be able to stand up with the pride they once had? The South finds itself in a great quandary. Honoring the past is now subject to central government guidelines. If you don't believe that go to any Civil War Battlefield and see for yourself. Go to any public school or state university and look at the history books approved by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Listen to the secular socialist materialism taught in the classes. Try to fly a Battleflag on your capitol dome.

When Hearnes came on the scene the politics of the old autonomous zone had lost its zest yet when sectional leaders emerged championing the solutions of their ancestors they were invisible. The citizens of the greater South were blinded by the glitter of modern nationalism and caught without any organization to oppose it. Today the situation is even more complicated.

If the paradigm of state's rights and responsibility could have been carried by one man in one state Warren Hearnes would have done it. With a united people, a solid mandate unencumbered by the plight of racial turmoil Hearnes strove to rebuild his state in the image of his fathers.

The stability of a rural society punctuated by a lively urban component held together with state constitutional power emanating from the local level. But one man or one state cannot do it. The leaders of both political parties saw to that. In the interim the legacy of Hearnes' philosophy may be in seeking sectional solutions for mutual problems: Alliances across state lines that can lead the way out of the centralist dilemma we find ourselves in today.

April 30, 2003

Rogersville, Ala