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Library of American Biography
Messiah of the Masses: Huey P. Long and the Great Depression
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224 pages, Paperback
First published January 17, 1997
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About the author
Glen Jeansonne
26 books13 followersA specialist in twentieth-century American political history, Glen Stewart Jeansonne taught at the University of Louisiana-Lafayette, Williams College, the University of Michigan, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where he worked from 1978 until his retirement until 2015. He earned his BA in history from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and his Ph.D. at Florida State University under the direction of William Ivy Hair.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
March 28, 2021
The Great Depression saw no shortage of ideas to end Americans’ economic misery, but one of the most appealing was the “Share our Wealth” program. Part of its attraction was its breathtaking simplicity: any income beyond $1 million and the excess of fortunes greater than $5 million would be confiscated by the federal government and used to fund a guaranteed income for families and pensions for old people. That the math didn’t add up was irrelevant; it spoke to the needs of millions of people out of work and desperate for relief.
It also didn’t matter for another reason, as the program was less about addressing the Depression than it was promoting the political prospects of the man behind it. That man was Huey Long, a gifted orator from northern Louisiana who in the 1920s transformed his state’s politics by appealing to rural voters whose needs had long been ignored by the state’s political elites. Through a mixture of grandiose promises and visible results Long established a near-total dominance over the state’s government, one that earned him a multitude of enemies. Winning election to the Senate, he used his position as a platform from which to nakedly pursue the highest office in the land, only to be stopped short by an assassin’s bullet.
Death did nothing to end the polarization of opinions about Long and his legacy, with books and articles interpreting him as everything from a sincere man of the people to a dangerous demagogue interested only in his own self advancement. Glen Jeansonne’s short biography of Long rests firmly in the latter end of that spectrum, presenting him as a brilliant, insecure, and undisciplined man who was driven by an insatiable appetite for power and status. These traits were evident at an early age, when Long disdained schooling in favor of opportunity and pleasure. This led him to a career as a salesperson while still a teenager, which offered him opportunities but ultimately failed to satisfy his needs.
A career in politics by way of the law proved much more appealing to Long. Though he attended a few classes, he passed the Louisiana bar mainly by reading through the law, leavened with a generous amount of charm. Entering politics soon afterward, he made a name through populist attacks on special interests sold through rapid-fire oratory, which won him a position as a commissioner regulating the state’s public services. Jeansonne makes it clear that Long had no qualms about using his position for self-enrichment as well as self-promotion, and he quickly became a force to be reckoned with in Louisiana politics.
After an initial run in 1924 failed Long succeeded in winning election as governor in 1928. Moving quickly to exploit the powers of his office, he fired hundreds of state workers, employed the state police and National Guard as his own personal force, and bribed and bullied the legislature into passing most of his agenda. Though his opponents moved to impeach him, the governor survived what Jeansonne describes as a rushed and chaotic effort, emerging with his stature enhanced. Such was his dominance of the state by 1930 that he easily defeated a three-term incumbent to win a seat in the Senate, yet he held off on taking the seat for two years in order to ensure his continued control of Louisiana while he was away.
Jeansonne treats Long’s three years in the Senate as little more than an effort to lay the groundwork for a presidential run. Unpopular with his colleagues, he demonstrated little interest in advancing legislation and often voted against Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal agenda. Instead his focus was on selling himself to the American people, which he did through his “Share our Wealth” program. Jeansonne is dismissive of Long’s sincerity in pursuing the program, and he argues that president and the national Democratic Party regarded Long as more of a potential threat to Roosevelt’s reelection than an actual one. Whether this was to prove yet another fatal underestimation of the “Kingfish” will never be known, as Long’s assassination in Baton Rouge in September 1935 brought a premature end to his meteoric rise in politics.
As a specialist in Louisiana political history, Jeansonne brings a perspective to the study of long’s life that he argues was missing from many of the previous works on his subject. This adds considerably to his analysis of Long’s rise in Louisiana politics, to which he adds telling details about Long himself that give his readers a sense of the man’s personality and how his contemporaries saw him. Yet Jeansonne’s prose is more functional than engaging, while his interpretation of Long inhibits somewhat his ability to capture why so many people were devoted to him. These issues, however, are minor when set against the value of his book both as a short overview of Long’s life and as a critical examination of his public career.
It also didn’t matter for another reason, as the program was less about addressing the Depression than it was promoting the political prospects of the man behind it. That man was Huey Long, a gifted orator from northern Louisiana who in the 1920s transformed his state’s politics by appealing to rural voters whose needs had long been ignored by the state’s political elites. Through a mixture of grandiose promises and visible results Long established a near-total dominance over the state’s government, one that earned him a multitude of enemies. Winning election to the Senate, he used his position as a platform from which to nakedly pursue the highest office in the land, only to be stopped short by an assassin’s bullet.
Death did nothing to end the polarization of opinions about Long and his legacy, with books and articles interpreting him as everything from a sincere man of the people to a dangerous demagogue interested only in his own self advancement. Glen Jeansonne’s short biography of Long rests firmly in the latter end of that spectrum, presenting him as a brilliant, insecure, and undisciplined man who was driven by an insatiable appetite for power and status. These traits were evident at an early age, when Long disdained schooling in favor of opportunity and pleasure. This led him to a career as a salesperson while still a teenager, which offered him opportunities but ultimately failed to satisfy his needs.
A career in politics by way of the law proved much more appealing to Long. Though he attended a few classes, he passed the Louisiana bar mainly by reading through the law, leavened with a generous amount of charm. Entering politics soon afterward, he made a name through populist attacks on special interests sold through rapid-fire oratory, which won him a position as a commissioner regulating the state’s public services. Jeansonne makes it clear that Long had no qualms about using his position for self-enrichment as well as self-promotion, and he quickly became a force to be reckoned with in Louisiana politics.
After an initial run in 1924 failed Long succeeded in winning election as governor in 1928. Moving quickly to exploit the powers of his office, he fired hundreds of state workers, employed the state police and National Guard as his own personal force, and bribed and bullied the legislature into passing most of his agenda. Though his opponents moved to impeach him, the governor survived what Jeansonne describes as a rushed and chaotic effort, emerging with his stature enhanced. Such was his dominance of the state by 1930 that he easily defeated a three-term incumbent to win a seat in the Senate, yet he held off on taking the seat for two years in order to ensure his continued control of Louisiana while he was away.
Jeansonne treats Long’s three years in the Senate as little more than an effort to lay the groundwork for a presidential run. Unpopular with his colleagues, he demonstrated little interest in advancing legislation and often voted against Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal agenda. Instead his focus was on selling himself to the American people, which he did through his “Share our Wealth” program. Jeansonne is dismissive of Long’s sincerity in pursuing the program, and he argues that president and the national Democratic Party regarded Long as more of a potential threat to Roosevelt’s reelection than an actual one. Whether this was to prove yet another fatal underestimation of the “Kingfish” will never be known, as Long’s assassination in Baton Rouge in September 1935 brought a premature end to his meteoric rise in politics.
As a specialist in Louisiana political history, Jeansonne brings a perspective to the study of long’s life that he argues was missing from many of the previous works on his subject. This adds considerably to his analysis of Long’s rise in Louisiana politics, to which he adds telling details about Long himself that give his readers a sense of the man’s personality and how his contemporaries saw him. Yet Jeansonne’s prose is more functional than engaging, while his interpretation of Long inhibits somewhat his ability to capture why so many people were devoted to him. These issues, however, are minor when set against the value of his book both as a short overview of Long’s life and as a critical examination of his public career.
September 7, 2018
Huey Long was an obnoxious, self-centered, mean, egotistical, vindictive, drunken, misogynistic, asshole. And the author of this biography, Glen Jeansonne, was being even-handed! Long was driven, brilliant, and obsessed with power. His constituents loved him. He gave them "stuff" - free textbooks, jobs, roads, lower electricity rates, etc. But he did it at the expense of the democratic political process. He fixed elections, he bribed people, he took kickbacks, he installed his cronies in lucrative state jobs amongst his myriad other crimes. He gave thousands of $$ for band uniforms and nothing at all for anything academic at Louisiana State U . Oh wait - he built buildings. Those buildings cost 3x what they should have due to graft and corruption. He made an enormous amount of money and an enormous number of enemies. His enemies included those he kicked out of jobs, opportunities, and community organizations for not supporting him and his antics. And one of them shot him before he could do damage at the national level like he had in Louisiana. Good bye and good riddance to Huey the Scum. Unfortunately, his family and his "machine" continued to do damage in Louisiana for 20 more years.
March 16, 2021
For most of the last 41 years, I have considered T. Harry Williams' Huey Long to be the best biography I have ever read. The story is spellbinding; the writing is crisp and fun. The only flaw in Williams' bio was his sympathy for Long, who was an utterly corrupt demagogue. Well, I just finished Messiah of the Masses by Glen Jeansonne. This is the best bio of Huey Long I've read. An absolutely compelling and honest account of Long's life.
March 22, 2019
Brilliant politician; wreck of a human soul.
November 27, 2016
The book wasn't poorly written, but he was so rediculous and corrupt that it made it difficult to read! His life was sad and empty. I only finished it because I had to read it for my history class.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews