:John Nance Garner

Garner was born on November 22, 1868, in a mud-chinked log cabin in Red River County, Texas, to John Nance Garner Jr. and Sarah Guest Garner.{{cite web |url= https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/generic/VP_John_Garner.htm |title=John Nance Garner, 32nd Vice President (1933-1941) |access-date=October 23, 2017}}{{cite web |last=Lionel V. |first=Patenaude |date=June 15, 2010 |title=Garner, John Nance |url=https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fga24 |access-date=March 27, 2018 |website=Texas State Historical Association}} That cabin no longer exists, but the large, white, two-story house where he was raised survives, at 260 South Main Street in Detroit, Texas.

Garner attended Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, for one semester before dropping out and returning home. He studied law at the firm of Sims and Wright in Clarksville, Texas, was admitted to the bar in 1890, and began practice in 1896 in Uvalde, Texas.{{Cite book |last=Anders |first=Evan |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xK4eAgAAQBAJ&q=John+Nance+Garner |title=Boss Rule in South Texas: The Progressive Era |date=1987-02-11 |publisher=University of Texas Press |isbn=978-0-292-70763-4 |pages=106 |language=en}}

In 1893, Garner entered politics, running for county judge of Uvalde County, the county's chief administrative officer. Garner was opposed in the primary by a woman—Mariette Rheiner Garner, a rancher's daughter, whom, after the election, he courted and married in 1895. Garner won, and with the Democratic nomination seen as tantamount to election in the post-Civil War Solid South, was elected county judge and served until 1896.{{Cite web |title=GARNER, John Nance {{!}} US House of Representatives: History, Art & Archives |url=https://history.house.gov/People/Listing/G/GARNER,-John-Nance-(G000074)/ |access-date=2023-01-22 |website=history.house.gov |language=en}}{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3hILWuZPjd8C|title=Happy Days are Here Again: The 1932 Democratic Convention, the Emergence of FDR - and How America Was Changed Forever|first=Steve|last=Neal|date=July 6, 2004 |isbn=0-06-001376-1|page=83|publisher=Harper Collins |accessdate=January 13, 2023}}

File:Garner, Hon. J.W. (TX) Trim.jpg, 1903]]

Garner was elected to the Texas House of Representatives in 1898 and reelected in 1900. During his service, the legislature selected a state flower for Texas. Garner fervently supported the prickly pear cactus, and thus earned the nickname "Cactus Jack". The bluebonnet was ultimately chosen.

Garner also drafted a resolution that would have divided Texas into five states. It passed the Texas House but was vetoed by the governor.

{{main|Disfranchisement after Reconstruction era}}

In 1901, Garner voted for the poll tax, a measure passed by the Democratic-dominated legislature to make voter registration more difficult and reduce the number of minority and poor voters on the voting rolls."Nixon v. Condon. Disfranchisement of the Negro in Texas", The Yale Law Journal, Vol. 41, No. 8, June 1932, p. 1212, {{JSTOR|791091}} accessed 21 March 2008 This disfranchised most minority voters until the 1960s, and ended challenges to Democratic power; Texas became in effect a one-party state.[http://texaspolitics.laits.utexas.edu/6_5_3.html Texas Politics: Historical Barriers to Voting], accessed 11 Apr 2008 {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080402060131/http://texaspolitics.laits.utexas.edu/html/vce/0503.html |date=April 2, 2008 }}

Garner traveled parts of southern Texas controlled by the patrón system, currying political favor with the land bosses who exercised near-complete control of the local people and local elections. His patrón allies created a gerrymandered district for him, the {{ushr|TX|15|d}}, shaped in a narrow strip reaching south to include tens of thousands of square miles of rural areas.{{cite book |last=Minutaglio |first=Bill |date=2021 |title=A Single Star and Bloody Knuckles: A History of Politics and Race in Texas |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=lYcHEAAAQBAJ&pg=PA68 |location= |publisher=University of Texas Press |pages=68–69 |isbn=9781477310366}}

Garner was first elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1902. He was elected from the district 14 subsequent times, serving until 1933. His wife was paid and worked as his private secretary during this period. Throughout his career he maintained allegiance to the white landowners who controlled the voting booths in South Texas. He regarded his Mexican voting base as "inferior and undesirable as U.S. citizens."

Garner was chosen to serve as minority floor leader for the Democrats in 1929, and in 1931 as Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, when the Democrats became the majority.{{Cite web|url=https://history.house.gov/Historical-Highlights/1901-1950/The-opening-of-the-72nd-Congress/|title=The Opening of the 72nd Congress | US House of Representatives: History, Art & Archives|website=history.house.gov}}Patrick Cox, University of Texas at Austin, "John Nance Garner," West Texas Historical Association joint meeting with the East Texas Historical Association at Fort Worth, February 26, 2010

File:GARNER, JOHN NANCE. HONORABLE LOC hec.14876 (cropped).jpgIn 1932, Garner ran for the Democratic presidential nomination. It had become evident that Franklin D. Roosevelt, the governor of New York, was the strongest of several candidates, but although he had a solid majority of convention delegates, he was 87.25 votes short of the two-thirds required for nomination. After Garner cut a deal with Roosevelt, thus allowing Roosevelt to win the nomination, Garner became his vice-presidential candidate.

Garner was re-elected to the 73rd Congress on November 8, 1932, and on the same day was also elected Vice President of the United States. On February 8, 1933, then-vice president Charles Curtis announced the election of his successor, House Speaker Garner, while Garner was seated next to him on the House dais. He was the second man, Schuyler Colfax being the first, to serve as both Speaker of the House and president of the Senate. Garner was re-elected vice president with Roosevelt in 1936, serving in that office in total from March 4, 1933, to January 20, 1941.

{{anchor|Bucket}}

Like most vice presidents in this era, Garner had little to do and little influence on the president's policies. He famously described the vice presidency as being "not worth a bucket of warm piss" (for many years, this quote was bowdlerized as "warm spit").{{cite magazine|first=Daniel|last=Johns|title=The Vice Presidents That History Forgot|url=http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-vice-presidents-that-history-forgot-137851151/ |magazine=Smithsonian |date=July 1, 2012|access-date=January 3, 2017}} Historian Patrick Cox traces the possible origin of this quote to a 1960 conversation with Lyndon B. Johnson, who consulted Garner on John F. Kennedy's offer to run for vice president.{{Cite web |last=Cox |first=Patrick L. |date= |title=John Nance Garner on the Vice Presidency—In Search of the Proverbial Bucket |url=https://briscoecenter.org/about/news/john-nance-garner-on-the-vice-presidency-in-search-of-the-proverbial-bucket/ |access-date=2022-11-20 |website=Briscie Center for American History |language=en-US}}

During the early months of his vice presidency, Garner served as presiding officer of the impeachment trial of Harold Louderback in the Senate.Multiple sources:

({{cite web |title=Deschler's Precedents, Volume 3, Chapters 10 - 14 - § 17. Impeachment of Judge Louderback |url=https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-HPREC-DESCHLERS-V3/html/GPO-HPREC-DESCHLERS-V3-5-5-4.htm |publisher=United States Congress |via=Govinfo.gov |access-date=7 May 2025}}

• {{cite web |title=Cannon's Precedents, Volume 6 - Chapter 201 - The Impeachment and Trial of Harold Louderback |url=https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-HPREC-CANNONS-V6/html/GPO-HPREC-CANNONS-V6-54.htm |publisher=United States Congress |via=Govinfo.gov |access-date=7 May 2025}}

During Roosevelt's second term, Garner's previously warm relationship with the president quickly soured, as Garner disagreed sharply with him on a wide range of important issues. Garner supported federal intervention to break up the Flint sit-down strike, supported a balanced federal budget, opposed the Judiciary Reorganization Bill of 1937 to "pack" the Supreme Court with additional judges, and opposed executive interference with the internal business of the Congress.{{cite book|author=Sean J. Savage|title=Roosevelt, the Party Leader, 1932–1945|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=J7QlafgkrnUC&pg=PA33|year=1991|publisher=University Press of Kentucky|isbn=978-0-8131-1755-3|page=33}}

During 1938 and 1939, numerous Democratic party leaders urged Garner to run for president in the 1940 presidential election. Garner identified as the champion of the traditional Democratic Party establishment, which often clashed with supporters of Roosevelt's New Deal. The Gallup poll showed that Garner was the favorite among Democratic voters, based on the assumption that Roosevelt would defer to the longstanding two-term tradition and not run for a third term. Time characterized him on April 15, 1940:

{{blockquote|Cactus Jack is 71, sound in wind & limb, a hickory conservative who does not represent the Old South of magnolias, hoopskirts, pillared verandas, but the New South: moneymaking, industrial, hardboiled, still expanding too rapidly to brood over social problems. He stands for oil derricks, sheriffs who use airplanes, prairie skyscrapers, mechanized farms, $100 Stetson hats. Conservative John Garner appeals to many a conservative voter.{{cite magazine |url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,789728-2,00.html#ixzz0qlh51Y5z |title=National Affairs: Men A-Plenty |date=April 15, 1940 |magazine=Time |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121105135536/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,789728-2,00.html#ixzz0qlh51Y5z |archive-date=November 5, 2012}}}}

Some other Democrats did not find him appealing. In congressional testimony, union leader John L. Lewis described him using tetrameter as "a labor-baiting, poker-playing, whiskey-drinking, evil old man".Time August 7, 1939File:JohnNanceGarner.jpgGarner declared his candidacy. Roosevelt refused to say whether he would run again. If he did, it was highly unlikely that Garner could win the nomination, but Garner stayed in the race anyway. He opposed some of Roosevelt's New Deal policies, most notably those related to wooing labor,{{cite news |url=https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/john-nance-garner/ |title=John Nance Garner |work=Texas Monthly |date=November 1996 |accessdate=12 May 2021}} and on principle, opposed presidents serving third terms. However, Garner was also credited with steering a number of important bills through Congress in the crisis atmosphere of Roosevelt's first one hundred days in office and his relationship with the President would not become strained until Roosevelt's second term, when the Vice President's hopes of balancing the budget and paring New Deal programs faded.{{cite news|url=https://www.cah.utexas.edu/museums/garner_bio_three.php|title=Garner the Vice President (1933–1941)|publisher=Briscoe Center for American History|accessdate=May 12, 2021|archive-date=May 12, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210512142126/https://www.cah.utexas.edu/museums/garner_bio_three.php|url-status=dead}} He was also active in Roosevelt's Cabinet meetings on national policy and legislative strategy, which also resulted in the effective transformation of the previously ceremonial office of the U.S. vice president. However, the president's "court-packing" plan of 1937 widened the rift with Garner, and the final blow in their relationship came when the president attempted to purge opposition Democratic members of Congress in the 1938 elections. Also, by 1940, Garner had come to support federal legislation against lynching (although probably more out of political opportunism rather than for principled reasons) which Roosevelt opposed.{{Cite journal |last=Magness |first=Phillip W. |title=How FDR Killed Federal Anti-Lynching Legislation|url= https://www.aier.org/article/how-fdr-killed-federal-anti-lynching-legislation/|journal=American Institute for Economic Research |date=July 31, 2020}}

At the Democratic National Convention, Roosevelt engineered a "spontaneous" call for his renomination, and won on the first ballot. Garner received only 61 votes out of 1,093. Roosevelt chose Henry A. Wallace to be his vice-presidential running mate.{{cite book|author=Timothy Walch|title=At the President's Side: The Vice Presidency in the Twentieth Century|url=https://archive.org/details/atpresidentsside00walc|url-access=registration|year=1997|publisher=University of Missouri Press|page=[https://archive.org/details/atpresidentsside00walc/page/50 50]|isbn=9780826211330}}

Garner left office on January 20, 1941, ending a 46-year career in public life. He retired to his home in Uvalde for the last 26 years of his life, where he managed his extensive real estate holdings, spent time with his great-grandchildren, and fished. Throughout his retirement, he was consulted by active Democratic politicians and was especially close to Roosevelt's successor, Harry S. Truman.{{Cite web |title=Truman and the Texans |url=https://briscoecenter.org/programs/truman-and-the-texans/ |access-date=2024-12-02 |website=Dolph Briscoe Center for American History |language=en-US}} His papers are held at the Briscoe Center for American History at UT Austin, which also operates Garner's former home as a historical site.{{Cite web |title=Discover the Briscoe-Garner Museum |url=https://briscoecenter.org/briscoe-garner-museum/discover/ |access-date=2024-12-02 |website=Dolph Briscoe Center for American History |language=en-US}}

On the morning of Garner's 95th birthday, November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy called to wish him a happy birthday. This was several hours before Kennedy's assassination. Dan Rather stated that he visited the Garner ranch that morning to film an interview with Garner.Dan Rather, The Camera Never Blinks (1976), page 113.

File:Garner plot.jpg

Garner and Mariette Rheiner met and began dating after the primary election in 1893. They married in Sabinal, Texas, on November 25, 1895. Mariette served as her husband's secretary throughout his congressional career, and as Second Lady of the United States during her husband's tenure as vice president. Their son, Tully Charles Garner (1896–1968), became a banker and businessman. Garner died of a coronary occlusion on November 7, 1967, 15 days before his 99th birthday. Garner remains the longest-lived Vice President of the United States in history.{{cite news |last=Lewis |first=Janna |date=December 22, 2015 |title=Texans who were presidents, vice-presidents |url=http://www.forthoodsentinel.com/leisure/texans-who-were-presidents-vice-presidents/article_6b538cd2-aa2a-53a2-bc6f-6df30cfadf71.html |work=Fort Hood Sentinel |location=Fort Hood, Texas |access-date=December 21, 2022}}

File:John Nance Garner Museum sign IMG 4279.JPG, Texas]]

Garner State Park, located {{convert|30|mi|km}} north of Uvalde, bears his name, as does Garner Field just east of Uvalde. The women's dormitory at Southwest Texas Junior College in Uvalde bears his wife's name. John Garner Middle School, located in San Antonio's North East Independent School District, is also named after him.

Garner and Schuyler Colfax, vice president under Ulysses S. Grant, are the only two vice presidents to have been Speaker of the House of Representatives prior to becoming vice president. As the vice president is also the president of the Senate, Garner and Colfax are the only people to have served as the presiding officer of both houses of Congress.

• Conservative Democrat

{{reflist|30em}}

• Anders, Evan. "The Election of John Nance Garner to Congress" in Anders, Boss Rule in South Texas. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1982. [https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.7560/707368-007/html online]
• {{cite journal |last1=Brown |first1=Norman D. |title=Garnering Votes for "Cactus Jack ": John Nance Garner, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and the 1932 Democratic Nomination for President |journal=The Southwestern Historical Quarterly |date=2000 |volume=104 |issue=2 |pages=149–188 |jstor=30239246}}
• Champagne, Anthony. "John Nance Garner", in Raymond W Smock and Susan W Hammond, eds. Masters of the House: Congressional Leadership Over Two Centuries (1998) pp 144–80.
• Cooper, George. "Texas, Banks, and John Nance Garner." East Texas Historical Journal 56.1 (2018): 7+ [https://scholarworks.sfasu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2808&context=ethj online].
• Cox, Patrick. "John Nance Garner" in Kenneth E. Hendrickson Jr., ed. Profiles in Power: Twentieth-Century Texans in Washington (2nd ed. 2004)
• {{Cite book |last=Fisher |first=Ovie Clark |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3FYfAQAAMAAJ |title=Cactus Jack |date=1982 |publisher=Texian Press |isbn=978-0-87244-066-1 }}
• Patenaude, Lionel V. "The Garner Vote Switch to Roosevelt: 1932 Democratic Convention." Southwestern Historical Quarterly 79.2 (1975): 189–204. {{JSTOR|30238382}}
• Patenaude, Lionel V. "Garner, Sumners, and Connally: The Defeat of the Roosevelt Court Bill in 1937." Southwestern Historical Quarterly 74.1 (1970): 36–51. {{JSTOR|30236624}}
• {{cite journal |last1=Schwarz |first1=Jordan A. |title=John Nance Garner and the Sales Tax Rebellion of 1932 |journal=The Journal of Southern History |date=May 1964 |volume=30 |issue=2 |pages=162–180 |doi=10.2307/2205071 |jstor=2205071}}
• {{cite journal |last1=Spencer |first1=Thomas T. |title=For the Good of the Party: John Nance Garner, FDR, and New Deal Politics, 1933–1940 |journal=Southwestern Historical Quarterly |date=January 2018 |volume=121 |issue=3 |pages=254–282 |doi=10.1353/swh.2018.0000 |s2cid=149356041 |url=https://muse.jhu.edu/article/680095/summary|url-access=subscription }}
• Timmons, Bascom N. Garner of Texas: A Personal History. 1948. [https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.156777 online]
• Will, George. [http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/will010600.asp "In Cactus Jack's Footsteps"]. Jewish World Review Jan 6, 2000.

{{Wikiquote}}

{{Commons category|John Garner}}

• {{CongBio|G000074}}
• [https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/syk/136/ Let's get goin'!, Bill Sykes Editorial Cartoon] depicting Garner's 1940 presidential candidacy, December 19, 1939
• [http://dig.library.vcu.edu/cdm/ref/collection/syk/id/97 Conspicuous among the casualties, Bill Sykes Editorial Cartoon] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171022141859/http://dig.library.vcu.edu/cdm/ref/collection/syk/id/97 |date=October 22, 2017 }} depicting Vandenberg and Garner in 1940 presidential primaries, April 4, 1940

{{s-start}}

{{s-par|us-hs}}

{{s-new|constituency}}

{{s-ttl|title=Member of the U.S. House of Representatives
from Texas's 15th congressional district|years=1903–1933}}

{{s-aft|after=Milton H. West}}

|-

{{s-ppo}}

{{s-bef|before=Finis J. Garrett}}

{{s-ttl|title=House Democratic Leader|years=1929–1933}}

{{s-aft|after=Henry T. Rainey}}

|-

{{s-bef|before=Joe Robinson}}

{{s-ttl|title=Democratic nominee for Vice President of the United States|years=1932, 1936}}

{{s-aft|after=Henry A. Wallace}}

|-

{{s-off}}

{{s-bef|before=Finis J. Garrett}}

{{s-ttl|title=House Minority Leader|years=1929–1931}}

{{s-aft|after=Bertrand Snell}}

|-

{{s-bef|before=Nicholas Longworth}}

{{s-ttl|title=Speaker of the United States House of Representatives|years=1931–1933}}

{{s-aft|after=Henry T. Rainey}}

|-

{{s-bef|before=Charles Curtis}}

{{s-ttl|title=Vice President of the United States|years=1933–1941}}

{{s-aft|after=Henry A. Wallace}}

{{s-end}}

{{USVicePresidents}}

{{USHouseSpeaker}}

{{USHouseMinLead}}

{{USHouseDemLead}}

{{USDemVicePresNominees}}

{{FD Roosevelt cabinet}}

{{United States presidential election, 1932}}

{{United States presidential election, 1936}}

{{United States presidential election, 1940}}

{{Portal bar|Texas}}

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Garner, John Nance}}

Category:1868 births

Category:1967 deaths

Category:20th-century vice presidents of the United States

Category:1932 United States vice-presidential candidates

Category:1936 United States vice-presidential candidates

Category:Methodists from Texas

Category:American anti-communists

Category:American segregationists

Category:Candidates in the 1932 United States presidential election

Category:Candidates in the 1940 United States presidential election

Category:County judges in Texas

Category:Democratic Party (United States) vice presidential nominees

Category:Democratic Party vice presidents of the United States

Category:Democratic Party members of the United States House of Representatives from Texas

Category:Democratic Party members of the Texas House of Representatives

Category:Minority leaders of the United States House of Representatives

Category:People from Red River County, Texas

Category:People from Uvalde, Texas

Category:Protestants from Texas

Category:Speakers of the United States House of Representatives

Category:Texas lawyers

Category:Vanderbilt University alumni

Category:Vice presidents of the United States

Category:Anti-Mexican sentiment in the United States

Category:19th-century members of the Texas Legislature

Category:20th-century members of the Texas Legislature

Category:20th-century members of the United States House of Representatives