Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 1,856

This is the grave of Herbert Brownell.

Born in 1904 in Nemaha County, Nebraska, Brownell grew up in the professional class in the small town of Peru. His father was a professor at Peru State, then a normal school. He went to the University of Nebraska and graduated early, in 1924. He stayed in Lincoln for his law degree and then went to New York to practice. He would stay with Lord, Day and Lord from 1929 until 1989, minus his time in the government. He became a big time corporate lawyer whose personal client was Aristotle Onassis, so that’s how high up he was over the years. This was pretty early too, by the late 30s and early 40s. He helped Onassis get access to ships restricted to the American military and certain American corporations in the years after the war, basically using a bunch of dummy corporations to cheat the system. This became a bit problematic for him later and in fact, Onassis would be indicted for this. J. Edgar Hoover, it seems in part to humiliate Brownell, forced him to work with the FBI on the case.

A good Republican and a well connected corporate lawyer to the very core, he became a central figure in the New York Republican Party, particularly being close to Thomas Dewey. In fact, he was the campaign manager for Dewey’s presidential runs in both 1944 and 1948, while also being chairman of the Republican National Committee between 1944 and 1946. He also had served in the New York legislature for a few years in the 30s, not a good time for Republicans, though Republicans could always win FDR’s district, which the president did not win in any of his four presidential elections!

Brownell was known for bringing modern polling methods to the Republicans and he got a lot of credit for Republicans winning Congress in 1946. But this is the kind of political talking point that is basically nonsense–I think a rock could have guided Republicans to winning Congress in 1946. This is how you end with James Carville still being a respected voice thirty years after ever doing anything useful at all. These people get lucky in situations that are really more or less out of their control but the press eats these kind of narratives up. In any case, Brownell became a major political operative. As a New York Times profile at the time said, Brownell was a “quiet tactician whose personal charm and shrewd political instinct made him as hard to dislike as a porpoise but about as deadly as a shark.”

Brownell was also close to Dwight Eisenhower. He helped convince Eisenhower to run for president as a Republican in 1952, which probably was his most significant contribution to American life, however you think about Ike. Eisenhower needed a VP and Brownell had a great idea to fill the role–Richard Nixon. Gee, thanks Herb. What a contribution. But really, despite the Nixon thing, Brownell really did do the world a favor, because this was a direct intervention to stop Robert Taft from becoming the Republican nominee. I wonder what would have happened in a Taft-Stevenson race…..But the idea of an angry evil man such as Taft becoming president in 1952 is a scary thing to contemplate. So Brownell, trying to halt this, flew to Europe and laid it all out for Ike, telling him what it would mean if he did not run. And Eisenhower responded to his duty.

So it’s not surprising that Eisenhower would then name Brownell his attorney general. Brownell was a mixed bag to say the least. He was more than happy to play up McCarthyism in order to help the Republicans. So sure, Brownell would hint that this or that person was a communist or a spy. But he also was decent on civil rights. In fact, Eisenhower really wanted to put Brownell on the Supreme Court during his second term and he had a couple of chances to do so. But he didn’t think Brownell could quite get over the top because all the segregationists hated him. I am a little skeptical here–given all the people who were put on the Supreme Court in the mid 20th century, there were plenty who were a lot more pro-integration than Brownell who got through. But you know, southerners were really pissed with Brownell because he is who provided Eisenhower his core legal advice around integrating Little Rock. So maybe that would have been their shot back at Ike. At the core of all of this was the fact Eisenhower really knew nothing about domestic policy. He knew that and relied on Brownell, who held an awful lot of real power in the first years of the administration, both on civil rights issues and otherwise.

Brownell had planned to step down early in 1957 but stayed on through Little Rock. He went back to his corporate work and his Republican insider hack work. He remained really not bad on civil rights issues. He chaired the early commission that led to the first civilian review board for the NYPD in 1965. Nixon considered Brownell to replace Earl Warren in 1969 but Brownell turned it down and Nixon chose the probably much worse Warren Burger. He also took on occasional projects that required well connected lawyers. He was on the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague. Nixon also named him a special envoy to Mexico to work out water rights on the Colorado River, which is still a source of tension between the United States and Mexico today as the states take almost all the water, even though the river drains to the Pacific over the border in Mexico. It’s actually slightly surprising to me that the U.S. never forced Mexico to give up the mouth of the Colorado, although at the time of the land cessions in the 1840s and 1850s, this whole issue was pretty unclear. He also was was vice chairman of the Bicentennial Commission on the U.S. Constitution from 1987-91.

Later in life, Brownell wrote a memoir, with help from John Burke. It was published in 1993 as Advising Ike: The Memoirs of Attorney General Herbert Brownell. He died in 1996, at the age of 92. it was cancer. He was the last survivor of the first Eisenhower term.

Herbert Brownell is buried in Hilltop Cemetery, Mendham, New Jersey.

If you would like this series to visit other attorney generals, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. James McGranery is in Arlington and J. Howard McGrath is in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. I suppose I can probably manage to see that one without expenses. Previous posts in this series area archived here and here.