Billy Graham and the Rise of the Republican South. Steven P. Miller
Even before the Richardson letter, Graham had declared during his 1951 Greensboro, North Carolina, crusade that the “Christian people of America are going to vote as a bloc for the man with the strongest moral and spiritual platform, regardless of his views on other matters…and regardless of political affiliation we are going to vote for the right man.” He chuckled when noting that Republican senator Robert Taft, the eventual chief rival of Eisenhower, had “been running for years.” A newspaper clipping about the sermon found its way into Eisenhower's files.25 For his part, Eisenhower was keenly aware of the usefulness of the evangelist. At the behest of Frank Carlson, the candidate sought Graham's advice on injecting a religious tone into campaign speeches. The evangelist talked briefly with Eisenhower at the Republican National Convention in Chicago (to which Graham had received tickets from House Minority Leader Joseph Martin of Massachusetts) and later met with the candidate at campaign headquarters in Denver. In communications with Washington governor Arthur B. Langlie, Eisenhower supported organizing Graham and other sympathetic pastors on an informal basis.26
Graham specifically viewed Eisenhower as a viable candidate in the South, someone who could garner the votes of conservative nominal Democrats like himself. In a 1952 letter to Walter Judd, the evangelist praised Eisenhower as “the strongest possible candidate, particularly throughout the South.” Graham went on to note that he had “been in close touch with Democratic leaders throughout the South,” including the Mississippi delegation to the Democratic National Convention. The annual gathering of the Mississippi Democratic Party that election year had overlapped with his Jackson crusade. The chair of the Jackson crusade, hotelier E. O. Spencer, was a prominent Eisenhower Democrat. City newspapers highlighted Graham's visible presence at the meeting, as well as his eagerness to pitch Eisenhower to a prominent area businessman. To Judd, Graham touted the possibility of state conventions endorsing Eisenhower: “I have strongly encouraged these [southern Democratic] leaders to nominate General Eisenhower if they do not get a platform and a candidate suitable to them. They are going to have their Conventions again when they return from the Democratic Convention, as you know. I believe the General can carry great sections of the South.”27 Graham's increasingly apparent leanings raised concerns among his Democratic friends. Well before Eisenhower officially received the GOP nomination, Virginia Democratic senator A. Willis Robertson sent the evangelist a friendly but pointed letter expressing the sentiment of their mutual friends that Graham was crossing the line into partisan politics. Graham replied that he would heed the warning, although his attempt to do so likely differed from what Robertson had in mind. Graham turned down an invitation from Democratic official Leslie Biffle, a longtime secretary of the Senate and native Arkansan, to serve as honorary assistant sergeant at arms at the Democratic National Convention. The title would have granted Graham access to the convention floor; more important, it would have neutralized his seeming support for Eisenhower. Graham claimed that a number of his Democratic congressional friends had advised him to decline the position. Still, he found time to attend the Democratic convention that year.28
The 1952 campaign represented Graham's inaugural contribution to the postwar emergence of the Republican Party in southern presidential politics. His support for Eisenhower, while by no means uncommon among evangelists around the nation, also paralleled larger developments in the South.29 Political scientists Earl Black and Merle Black have described Eisenhower as “the human triggering mechanism for the first Republican breakthrough in the South.” In 1952, the GOP candidate departed from party tradition and actively sought votes from the region's many conservative Democrats, beginning the formal part of his campaign with a train tour of the South. Eisenhower captured the peripheral southern states of Tennessee, Virginia, Texas, and Florida, attracting half of all southern white votes. The “partial realignment” of southern whites toward Republican presidential candidates had commenced.30
Eisenhower appealed to white southerners for a number of reasons other than the attention he gave them. Obviously, many white southerners were dissatisfied with the national Democratic Party. Most remained loyal, if only for reasons of patronage and tradition. The unsuccessful Dixiecrat rebellion of 1948, when a group of largely Deep South Democrats broke with incumbent Harry Truman, stood as a lesson that the national Democratic majority could withstand southern defections. All of this served to make Eisenhower more attractive. Eisenhower's military stature and Cold War bona fides also helped. Finally, the growing economy of the post–World War II South led some southerners to identify more with the business wing of the GOP. In both the 1952 and 1956 elections, Eisenhower received particularly strong support from affluent white residents of large and small southern metropolitan areas, the very types of growing southern cities—the Greensboros and the Charlottes—that Graham frequented throughout the decade.31
Graham worked to bolster this new line of support. During the reelection campaign, he pledged to Eisenhower to “do all in my power during the coming campaign to gain friends and supporters for your cause.”32 At the time, Graham had more social ties with southern politicians than with any other political group (although his congressional friends were by no means limited to his home region). His own words and behavior reveal his deep admiration for those southerners whom he considered the region's “better sort” of leaders. This group included moderates, such as Tennessee governor Frank Clement and Oklahoma senator Robert Kerr—but also strong conservatives like Mississippi senator Stennis and South Carolina governor and former secretary of state James Byrnes. On this list were many persons who backed Eisenhower in 1952, including Byrnes, South Carolina congressman Mendel Rivers, and Alabama congressman Frank Boykin. As a friend and occasional confidant of numerous southern politicians who were supportive of Eisenhower, Graham could serve as an informal conduit between these Democrats and a Republican Party now seeking votes in Dixie. Graham team member Grady Wilson claimed to have also done his part to aid Eisenhower's cause in North Carolina during the 1952 election, but complained to Rivers about “those thick-headed Tarheels [who] would vote Democratic straight down the line even if the Devil himself were running.”33
Strategic interests aside, Graham held a deep personal attraction to Eisenhower as a national leader. The evangelist clearly delighted in his role as a spiritual influence on the president, having suggested that the denominationally unaffiliated Eisenhower join a Presbyterian church. On inauguration day in 1953, Eisenhower attended a private prayer service at the church Graham had recommended, National Presbyterian. (Soon afterward, Eisenhower was baptized there.)34 The election of Eisenhower raised Graham's hopes that evangelical Christianity had returned to national prominence. Days after the 1952 election, the evangelist told an audience that he had “sensed a dependence upon God” during two previous conversations with the president-elect.35 Graham desired to perpetuate the new status quo. The BGEA soon announced a new “permanent national headquarters” in Washington, D.C., for what Graham called the “non-political” purpose of “bring[ing] what influence I can, from a spiritual standpoint, to our national leaders.”36
Still, the evangelist was conscious of the precarious status of Eisenhower's gains in the South. Along with his father-in-law, Nelson Bell, Graham saw the need for more GOP outreach in the region.37 In 1956, Graham urged the president to wait until after the campaign to enact specific policies on desegregation. “I hope particularly before November you are able to stay out of this bitter racial situation that is developing,” wrote Graham. Meanwhile, he advised, “it might be well to let the Democratic Party bear the brunt of the debate.” Two months later, Graham expressed concern that the GOP's efforts to attract northern black voters might hinder its southern ambitions: “I am somewhat disturbed by rumors that Republican strategy will be to go all out in winning the Negro vote in the North regardless of the South's feelings. Again[,] I would like to caution you about getting involved in this particular problem. At the moment, to an amazing degree, you have the confidence of white and Negro leaders. I would hate to see it jeopardized by even those in the Republican Party with a political ax to grind.” Eisenhower took notice of the recommendation, although his campaign garnered many African American votes, including that of Martin Luther King, Jr.38
Even as Graham supported Eisenhower, he remained a registered Democrat. At the time, he rarely mentioned this status. The correspondence between Graham and Eisenhower revealed the evangelist as someone who, at least in the area of political