“I voted in the interest of the American people this morning when [I] voted against this resolution”: Wayne Morse
In 1964, the US Congress was debating the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, a resolution that gave President Johnson the power to take military action against North Vietnam. Despite the fact that the resolution was unconstitutional (the Constitution states that only congress has the power to make and declare war), it passed by an overwhelming margin.
Only two senators voted against it. One of those senators was Wayne Morse.
Though he is now thought of as a proud son of Oregon, Wayne Lyman Morse was born in Madison, Wisconsin in 1900. His parents were farmers, and like many farmers in the early decades of the twentieth century, they were Progressives. Wisconsin’s governor, Robert La Follette, Sr., was a leader of the Progressive movement. Morse would go on to become a legendary Progressive who presciently warned against many government acts, like the ceding of public lands to oil companies, Congressional acts that gave a president the power to wage war under false pretenses, and giving power to corporations over workers, that would foresee many of the great political controversies of the twenty-first century.
The Progressive movement rose out of the increasing industrialization and urbanization of the United States in the early twentieth century. As factories, railroads, and other industries greatly increased the wealth of corporations, corporate leaders used that wealth to influence politicians.
Progressives advocated for the rights of the common man (the farmer, factory worker, office worker, etc.) above the rights of the corporation. Morse’s father encouraged his children to debate political, religious, and agricultural issues. Morse’s parents, like many Progressives, strongly believed in the importance of a good education.
In his grade school years, Morse made a daily 22-mile round-trip commute by horseback to travel to a school his parents had enrolled him in because it was better than the local school. After high school, Morse went to the University of Wisconsin, where he earned degrees in economics and speech. He went to law school at the University of Minnesota, and was offered a teaching position at the University of Oregon School of Law in 1929. Less than a year later, at 31, he was named dean of the school. In 1932, Morse earned a Doctorate in Law from Columbia University.
While still serving as dean at the University of Oregon, Morse began to build a reputation as a consummate labor arbitrator. Employers and unions both valued his services. During World War II, Morse served on the National War Labor Board, a group that oversaw negotiations between employers and workers; the board helped ensure that labor issues were resolved with limited impact on manufacturing that was critical to the war effort. It was during the war that Morse, a Republican, first ran for the Senate. He won election in 1944, defeating the incumbent. In the Senate, Morse fought for workers’ rights, civil rights, education, and human rights. While a strong supporter of law enforcement, Morse was against the death penalty, stating that only God should be allowed to take a man’s life. Morse also weighed in against the interests of big corporations.
Morse left the party in 1952 because he did not support Eisenhower’s pick of Richard Nixon as vice president. The senator from Oregon became an Independent, and brought a folding chair to the Senate in the 1952 session to emphasize his position in the aisle between the two parties. In 1953, Morse set a record for what is now the second-longest filibuster in the Senate’s history (at the time, it was the longest filibuster performed by an individual senator). The issue was tidelands oil legislation. Texas, whose state legislature was heavily influenced by the oil industry, was petitioning for ownership of the Gulf of Mexico’s submerged tidal lands. Morse believed the tidelands should remain under U.S. control, but despite his 22-hour, 26-minute filibuster, the bill passed, and some of the nation’s most valuable reserves of oil and gas were given to the oil companies.
In 1955, future president and then-Democratic Senate leader Lyndon Johnson convinced Morse to join the Democrats; despite his changing affiliations, the people of Oregon re-elected Morse to the Senate in 1956. In 1960, Morse ran for president. Several supporters had planned to put his name on the ballot even if he didn’t agree to run. His opponents included Hubert Humphrey and John F. Kennedy; Kennedy outspent him in Oregon and Morse did not win a single primary before he dropped out of the race.
On August 2, 1964, the U.S. was involved in a naval skirmish with North Vietnamese forces in the Gulf of Tonkin. The skirmish involved a U.S. destroyer and three North Vietnamese torpedo boats. The National Security Administration alleged that a second Gulf of Tonkin battle occurred two days later, but later reports (including one by the NSA) contradicted this. At President Johnson’s request, Congress made a Joint Resolution, called the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, authorizing military action against North Vietnam.
Morse had received a tip from an informant he would not name that the second incident in the Gulf of Tonkin was misrepresented by the government in order to escalate the war. He vigorously fought against the resolution, stating that it would allow the president powers not granted him by the Constitution:
I’ll have the American people remember what this resolution really is. It’s a resolution which seeks to give the president of the United States the power to make war, without a declaration of war.
Morse also balked at the idea that Congress must fall into lock-step behind the president:
Since when do we have to back our president, or should we, when the president is proposing an unconstitutional act?
The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution passed. It gave Johnson the green light to escalate the War in Vietnam. Morse was one of only two senators who voted against it. (The other was Alaska senator Ernest Gruening.) After the vote, Morse defended his decision:
History will record that Senator Gruening and I voted in the interest of the American people this morning when we voted against this resolution.
Of course, the Vietnam War went on to claim thousands more American and Vietnamese lives, and America eventually withdrew. Many years after his death, Morse was proven right regarding his suspicions of the Tonkin incident; the NSA eventually admitted that the incident had been misreported and based on what they knew was bad intelligence.
Morse continued to speak out against what he felt were unconstitutional acts and a lack of transparency committed by the Johnson Administration as the war escalated. The FBI investigated Morse because of his opposition. His stance eventually cost him his Senate seat; war supporter Bob Packwood (who would resign decades later from the Senate because of sexual harassment allegations against him) defeated Morse in the 1968 election.
Morse was in the midst of a campaign to regain his seat when he died of kidney failure in 1974.
Wayne Morse was a true independent who had described his political philosophy as “principle above politics.” He did not vote predictably and unthinkingly along party lines and he disagreed with fellow Democrats and fellow Republicans when his conscience and his legal prowess told him he had to. Politically, this left him with few friends and many enemies.
Wayne Morse is not a household name. Even in Oregon, it was not until recently that he began to attain more widespread recognition. In 2006, Eugene’s new U.S. Courthouse was named for Morse; that same year, the Oregon University School of Law named a commons after him. The Wayne Morse Historical Park Corporation, with the city of Eugene, operates Morse’s home as a historical site.
The Wayne Morse Historical Park Corporation also established the Wayne L. Morse Integrity in Politics Award. The award is given to individuals who “exhibit an extraordinary level of integrity and independence, a commitment to justice, and a willingness to take a principled stand even at great political cost.”
