Tom Watson: Agrarian Rebel

by C. Vann Woodward

Altho Thomas E. Watson championed the rising Populist movement at the turn of the 19th century--an interracial alliance of agricultural interests fighting the forces of industrial capitalism--his eventual frustration with politics transformed him from liberalism to racial bigotry, from popular spokesman to mob leader. Pulitzer Prize winning scholar C. Vann Woodward clearly & objectively traces the history of this enigmatic Populist leader.

Genres: History, Biography, Politics, American History, Nonfiction, The United States Of America

528 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1938

About the author

Comer Vann Woodward was an American historian who focused primarily on the American South and race relations.

Reviews

[Maureen · Rating 5 out of 5]

In his life and in his death, Tom Watson embodied both the best and worst of the South. When he was at this finest, Watson was a populist crusader who electrified crowds with his rousing stump speeches espousing farm reform and working together between the races. He is known as the "Father of Rural Free Delivery," and lobbied for many reforms.

Toward the end of his life, Watson turned into a bitter anti-Catholic and racist, downtrodden by his earlier efforts. On the steps of the Georgia capital, there is a statue of Tom Watson with his arm raised, hair askew, obviously in the middle of delivering a fiery oration. He served in both the U.S. House and Senate, and was the Populist candidate in 1906, one of the most interesting chapters in his wonderful, horrible life.

[C.P. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Being a populist myself, my interest was in Tom Watson as a populist leader and his sad transformation towards the end of his career. What I found out was that, after years of political failure at the hands of a brutally racist Democratic Party in Georgia, which murdered and otherwise intimidated the black populists, he adopted the attitudes of the Democrats -- for which, as a son of a slave-owner, he had more "street creds" (as we would say today) than the Democratic candidates -- and was finally elected! This was a truly Pyrrhic victory that I certainly would not emulate. Nonetheless, it made me think what are my "street creds" that might get me elected at the loss of my ideals? That is, what should I look out for? Fortunately, or maybe that is unfortunately, my "street creds" are precisely the things that would keep me from getting elected.

[Jesse · Rating 4 out of 5]

A brief review

Before I summarize the life of Tom Watson, let me briefly review the book. I had previously read Vann Woodward's The Strange Career of Jim Crow, and it is clear how the research undertaken for this biography influenced that later, more famous work.

Unfortunately, this book is marred by its old-fashioned interpretation of Southern "Redemption" as a glorious overthrow of a corrupt Reconstruction period whose pro-Black rhetoric was merely a cynical ploy of Northern Industrial Capitalism. While there seems to be a kernel of truth to this, as even W.E.B. Dubois believed that Industrial Capitalism formed a temporary alliance with "Abolition Democracy", it ignores the fact the the "redeemers" were ruthless, anti-democratic servants of Industrial Capitalism themselves. It's not that Vann Woodward ignores this fact about the Southern Democrats - it is one of the main points of the book! But this disdain for Southern Democrats is ignored when he discusses Reconstruction. I wouldn't go as far as calling Vann Woodward racist, but his trust of this racist historiography does make it harder for me to trust his interpretation of the complex interaction of Populism with the Black farmers of the South.

Nevertheless, the book was quite readable, if a bit too long, and gives a compelling portrayal of the material forces which lead to the growth and decline of Southern agrarian revolt.

Tom Watson and the Populist Party

Onwards to Tom Watson. Born in 1856, his father was a small landowner from Georgia whose life fell apart in the poverty following the Civil War. From a young age, Watson was obsessed with oratory, and this led him to become a small country lawyer, overly fond of his own voice but nevertheless willing to fight for the "common man". In the 1880s, he entered politics as a Democrat (as all white men were), where he tended to pick fights against people he saw as representing Northern industry. He loves campaigning and speechifying, and he seems able to draw big audiences, despite not being terribly effective in the state Congress.

In the late 1880s, the increasing poverty of Southern and Western farmers, due in part to national economic policies which favored industry (protective tariffs, low regulation, the gold standard), led to a mass movement of farmers called the Farmer's Alliance. Watson maneuvered to be the Southern leader of this movement, or at least its main man in politics. He seemed to be rather sincere about this, trying to win the favor of the masses by insisting that he, and he alone, would be accountable to the people and true to the political program developed by the movement.

Unfortunately, electoral politics in the USA are, as usual, a mess. The country had a two-party system of Republicans and Democrats, but the South really had only a one-party system: the Democrats. This "Solid South" was the means developed after Redemption of enforcing White Supremacy - the Democrat's political machine could shut out all candidates that refused to toe the line on racial issues. So when the farmers pushed to create a third party, the Populist Party, this put the Southern farmers in a tricky position. Perhaps the white Southern farmers did seek honest alliance with the Black farmers, but they were also pushed into it by these electoral dynamics, where breaking the one-party "Solid South" was seen as a challenge to White Supremacy.

At this point of his life, Tom Watson seemed glad to fight for white and Black farmers alike, giving speeches to mixed-race crowds, fighting against lynching, and working closely with certain Black Populists. It really seemed like a revolutionary moment was at hand during the depression of the 1890s. These were the shining moments of Watson's life, soon to go downhill. Perhaps this was also the moment of Watson's first mistake: he tied himself and his party to electoral means, reducing a mass movement to an organization for electing Populists.

In the elections of the early 1890s, he and his party suffered crushing electoral defeats, as the Democrat's political machine utilized the same corrupt techniques they had developed during Redemption. The final blow came with the Presidential election of 1896. Cracks had been developing in the Populist Party, as local chapters were tempted to ally or merge with Democrats or Republicans in what was called "fusionism". Most prominently, the Western farmers were tempted to fuse with the Democratic Party, whose presidential candidate, William Jennings Bryan, developed a pseudo-populism that reduced the more radical goals of the Populists (income taxes, direct election of Senators, nationalization of railroads and communication infrastructure, financial reform), to the single goal of "free silver".

Watson was a staunch anti-fusionist, devoted to the "true" populist platform. (I do wonder if his disinterest in fusing with the Republicans was in part due to racism and the fear that Republicans would push for Black "social equality"...) But after the previous elections, it seems likely that Watson was a bit depressed, and decided not even to attend the Populist national convention. Perhaps he was hoping that this would prevent him from being roped into being its presidential candidate. This succeeded in the worst possible way - the Western fusionists manipulated the convention into endorsing the Democrat WJB for president, but with Populist Watson as his vice-president. The fusionists didn't even ask Bryan if this was acceptable to him, and subsequently maneuvered to get the Populists to vote for Bryan and Bryan's actual, Democrat vice-president, Sewell, throwing Watson under the proverbial bus.

When Bryan and Sewell/Watson (!) lost the 1896 election to McKinley, the Populist party's national organization was shattered. Watson disappeared from politics for 8 years. When he returned to politics, his festering resentments and desire for power turned him into a racist crank. He supported the disenfranchisement of Black people, and developed into a virulently anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant, anti-semitic tabloid writer. His lowest moment seems to have been utilizing his self-published tabloids to drive rural Georgians into an anti-semitic frenzy that ended in the lynching of a Jewish man. Vann Woodward suggests that this mob frenzy played a significant part in the rebirth of the KKK.

However, he was not just a racist tabloid writer, he also maintained some power in Georgia politics. He became a king-maker within the Democratic party with his lingering ability to control the rural vote, which was highly over-represented due to anti-majoritarian electoral laws that favored the country over the city. But he seemed to entirely lose touch with any of his old values, favoring one candidate over another based simply on considerations of loyalty and power.

In his final years, Watson did support one good cause. He had always been anti-military, viewing foreign wars and imperialism as a means of silencing dissent at home, of enriching corporations, and of increasing federal power. When WWI occurred, he fought for the freedom of speech of dissenters, against rabid militarism, and against US involvement against revolutionary Russia.

Nevertheless, when he entered the US Senate in 1921 in a surprise victory (due to his principled anti-militarism? due to extreme racism against returning Black soldiers?), he was a broken man, paranoid, angry, and alcoholic, and he accomplished nothing. He died in 1922.


Interpretations of Populism

Given the turbulent life of Tom Watson, it is not hard to see how progressive historians like Richard Hofstadter turned Populism into a synonym for racist, anti-intellectual demagoguery that speaks in the name of a vague "people". This does not seem to be fair to the original movement. Only the vestiges of this movement deserve the scorn Hofstadter heaps on them.

Thomas Frank's desire to resuscitate the original meaning of Populism, in his book The People, No: A Brief History of Anti-Populism, as an American radical tradition distinct from the European, un-American Socialism, seems equally pig-headed. The word populism has a pretty well agreed upon meaning now, and at best one can say that the Populist movement was not populist in this derogatory sense. But capital-P Populism was a short-lived movement, and in no small part due to Watson, has a tainted heritage not worth salvaging. Moreover, Frank tries to recast Populism as patriotic, all-American rebellion against elitism, ignoring the fact that the Populists were a movement of farmers, fighting for their class and regional interests, against the ravages of capitalism and debt-bondage.

Agrarian Socialism?

The Farmer's Alliance seems to have been an organic mass movement of farmers who were torn apart by electoral politics, as well as by the growing contradictions internal to their movement: rich versus poor farmers, tenants versus landowners, Black versus white, West versus South.

These farmers seem like the forgotten heroes of this story. While not quite Socialist, they tried to ally with the urban workers, supported limited nationalization, and created farmers cooperatives. One can only wonder about the alliance of workers and proletarianized farmers that they might have formed had they not died upon the cross of electoral politics, led by career politicians like Watson and Bryan.

[Michael Elkon · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is proper history. I wasn't sure if I would like this book because it was written in 1938 about a figure who is distant in Georgia history, but the book was thoroughly interesting from start to finish. Watson is a fascinating figure. He came from a somewhat privileged background in the post-war South, but his father lost much of the family's property with bad business decisions. Watson was a smart kid who loved to read and write, so he went to Mercer University in Macon, worked as a traveling preacher for a period of time, and then became a lawyer. He gained notoriety handling cases in the area around August and then moved into politics, getting elected to Congress in 1890 at the age of 34 and casting himself as the successor to Alexander Stephens, the Vice President of the Confederacy. Watson was from Thomson, which is close to Stephens' home of Crawfordville.

Watson's base of support was the class of farmers in the rural areas of the Tenth Congressional District. He ran against the Democratic establishment, which was based in Atlanta and coalesced around Henry Grady. The establishment supported investment from the North, industrialization, railroads, and economic growth. Watson ran against all of these institutions. He supported the local farmers, so he railed against railroad monopolies that charged high prices to get the farmers' goods to market, as well as politicians who supported the railroads, general stores that gained leverage over the farmers through the extension of credit, banks, tight money, and the general lack of services for rural people (especially mail service). Watson was a classic Jeffersonian; his support of agrarian interests against commercial ones reminded me of the Jefferson/Hamilton split that Michael Lind wrote about in his economic history of the US. Watson was ostensibly a Democrat, but caucused with the Populists in Congress and proved to be a thorn in the side of the dominant party in Georgia from the start. As a result, the Democrats ran a candidate against Watson in 1892 and knocked him out of Congress, relying heavily on votes from Augusta.

Watson then moved away from elected office and became a historian and journalist. For a period, he was affiliated with various muckraking publications based out of New York. He wrote a lengthy history of France and was a fan of Napoleon, despite the fact that Watson was a strident opponent of American projection of military power and therefore should not have been a fan of Napoleon's constant warfare. He was put up as the Populist Party's Vice Presidential candidate in 1896 alongside William Jennings Bryan, who was also the Democratic nominee. I have to admit that I was confused by the mechanics here, but the general point of a third party struggling to decide on a course of action resonated. The Populists were split between Middle Roaders, who were adamant that they could not join either the Republicans or the Democrats, and Fusionists, who were willing to join the Democrats if they made significant policy concessions. The movement ended up being split when the Democrats nominated Bryan, a populist figure, in 1896. The whole thing came apart, much to Watson's dismay.

It is impossible to talk about Watson without covering the subject of race. At the outset of his career, he was progressive on the subject. He believed that the Democratic establishment exploited Black votes (often fraudulently) to get their preferred candidates elected. He believed that a coalition of White and Black farmers was the only way to defeat the establishment candidates and campaigned on that basis. In one memorable instance, he deployed his armed supporters to protect a Black preacher who was campaigning on Watson's behalf, preventing the preacher from being lynched. The establishment attacked Watson for acting counter to the South's racial traditions, constantly raising the specter that Watson would empower Blacks. Watson ultimately capitulated to this line of reasoning, arguing in favor of Black disenfranchisement. He was tired of being attacked on the basis that he was encouraging a Black political revolt, so he figured that with Blacks unable to vote, that line of assault would no longer work. He then became racist in his rhetoric and added strident anti-Catholicism and anti-Semitism to the mix. He was a key figure in the lynching of Leo Frank, devoting consistent attention in his magazine to the case and the fact that the commutation of Frank's death sentence was a miscarriage of justice. As if to illustrate the fact that pandering to prejudice is a consistently successful tactic in American politics, Watson returned from the political wilderness and was elected to the Senate in 1920 after his turn to bigotry. He was strongly against American participation in WWI and was prosecuted for speaking out against the war, but the negative currents of being seen as unpatriotic were not as strong as the positive currents on which he traveled when he became a bigot.

Watson also comes across as someone who allowed his dour, mercurial personality get in the way of larger goals. The best example is his relationship with Hoke Smith. Watson allied himself with Smith in the lead-up to the 1907 gubernatorial election, gaining substantial policy concessions from Smith. One would think that a committed populist like Watson would use this leverage to continue to advance his aims. Instead, Watson had a falling out with Smith over Smith's refusal to commute the death sentence of a Watson supporter for a murder that the supporter obviously committed. From that point forward, Watson became an implacable foe of Smith and supported Joseph Brown (a long-time Watson foe) in an effort to get revenge.

Woodward does a terrific job of telling this story. One can see Woodward's later and most famous work coming. Woodward wrote "The Strange Career of Jim Crow" about how segregation did not come immediately after the Civil War, but that instead, there was a period of progress and then a rebellion against that progress by Southern Whites decades later. Watson's career is a metaphor for this larger story. He started off progressive on race and the Black vote played an important role in the elections in which Watson was involved in the 1890s. Black disenfranchisement was a conscious choice of the Georgia Legislature in the years that followed, possibly because of fears of an alliance of Black and White farmers. The work that made Woodward famous was starting to germinate when he wrote about Tom Watson as a young historian.

[William Guerrant · Rating 5 out of 5]

If nothing else, this fascinating biography, the first book in C. Vann Woodward's brilliant career, reveals the complexities, incongruities and contradictions of the Southern Populist movement, as seen through the life of one of its most compelling and controversial proponents. It is a history that is now largely forgotten, but which holds valuable lessons of which we would do well to remain mindful.

[Sean Chick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reminds me of some wisdom I picked up years ago: where reform fails, chaos is not far behind.

[Jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

Woodward's goal is to map out a lifelong portrait of Tom Watson from his early childhood in Georgia to his death in Washington, taking with him the hopes and dreams of agrarian Populism. Yet as Woodward dramatically notes, the rupture that occurred midway through his career dramatically changed Watson's views and arguments to the point of near unrecognizability. Where does Woodward locate this rupture? It seems, to the point of romanticizing Watson, in the traumas of his youth after the Civil War (watching his Confederate father fall into disillusion and family into poverty), then in the continual thwarting of the emergent populist agenda, first with the Omaha Platform failing to gain ground as a talking point in the Democratic party, then being picked into a single-ballot issue under the presidential candidacy of William Jennings Bryan. If Watson’s primary goal was to argue for a platform of agrarian self-determinacy, he seemed often to thwart it by way of his own grandiose oratory, and, to a certain extent, his own popularity and ego. (Woodward notes that, like some other key Southern populists, Watson was willing to go to bat to demand equitable treatment for all farmers, including black sharecroppers, but that proved a point of disagreement and rupture within the Southern populists who supported them.)

The notion that Watson retreated into himself after the failure of Bryan on the Populist third-party ticket (where Watson served as VP), seems to be the origin point of where Woodward maps his downfall. He alludes briefly to his years reading and writing about Napoleon, perhaps as a study of power and dominance, and then to his resurgence in politics as a firebrand promoting white supremacy, anti-Catholicism, anti-semitism, and isolationist/restrictionist policies. What happened to Watson that he became this way? Was it the lynching of his friend Arthur Glover under the purview of Governor Hoke Smith that then caused Watson to turn against Smith and endorse his opponent, Joseph Brown? How did Watson come to rejoin democratic causes, a shift he said he would never make under the guise of his Populist ticket? And was it the decline of the Populist cause itself that accelerated Watson’s decline into mania and racial antipathy? If Woodward were writing today, his attentive gleaning of the archive might have been on the lookout for signs of mental decay (as Watson’s later writings look an awful lot like Trump’s tweets). And indeed he does a disservice to his nuanced, passionately written portrait of Watson’s life by arguing that it was itself reduced to the story of one man how fought, struggled, and failed. But nevertheless this expansive biography chronicling both Watson’s life and the long fall of the Populist cause gives us lots of room to think about the shaping of early 20th century politics and the power (or powerlessness) of the agrarian cause.

[Anne Cupero · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is definitely a product of its time, and C Vann Woodward was a Southern historian that was well-known. But the analysis which would happen now, in light of Trump, and the behaviors we are seeing now, would be terrific. So I am in favor of someone writing another book on this guy and why demagogues like him need to be studied and eventually imprisoned. It definitely shows how people get whipped up into frenzies and will believe anything.

[B · Rating 3 out of 5]

The whole time I've been reading this I keep trying to figure out what is wrong and why this book isn't amazing.

I think part of it is that because it is so old Woodward assumes certain things are common knowledge. It might also be because Woodward does not seem to have a clear thesis. Part of it again is that Woodward does not dwell especially deeply in totally nutball things Watson said and did so it diminishes the entertainment value.

The idea that Watson could run a series of utterly insane newspapers and newsletters and simultaneously run the Georgia state Democratic Party is mindboggling. It's hard to think of any other analogue in American history, excepting, I guess the vituperative way that major political figures wrote around the early years of the Republic.

Finally, one can't help but think that if you overlaid a map of counties with sizable Populist support and counties won by Mitt Romney in 2012, there would be an almost 1:1 overlap. (To say nothing of extrapolating back and forth against other incongruous movements in America.) It may very well be that the past decades have been the most static in defining American political tribes in a long time.

[Queme · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this while doing graduate work in history. I became intrigued with the U.S. Populist, Labor, and Agrarian movements and parties. It seems now that Populists like Watson were a forerunner of today's Libertarians. If you are interested in late 19th century U.S. history or politics, and especially if the Populist movement, agrarian lifestyle, or southern culture appeal to you, and you don't mind a little heavy reading, you will probably like this. If you loathe socialism, anti-capitalism, or conservatism, you might enter these fields of grain with a little caution, as this book may then not be your cup of tea.

[Luke · Rating 2 out of 5]

Drawn out tragic history of a Georgia lawyer's rise in politics during the Progressive era and as a key spokesman during the southern Farmers Alliance attempt to create a 3rd party split from the Democrats. When [dirty] politics prevails and he is ousted from Congress, his story is disillusion and reversion from populist ideals.

[Lenny · Rating 4 out of 5]

Had to get this book after reading about the trial and subsequent lynching of Leo Frank. Tom Watson was definitely an unusual person. He got a lot stranger as he got older. C.Vann Woodward gave you a good taste of the old South.

[Michael · Rating 2 out of 5]

The text was very dry. The author did not do a very good job at making the subjects more interesting.

[S.L. Berry · Rating 3 out of 5]

Given when it was written, it is an excellent biography of Tom Watson.

[Christopher Richardson · Rating 4 out of 5]

An amazing book on the life and times of Tom Watson and his rise from agrarian populist to white supremacist.