PIECES OF OUR PAST - THOMAS WILLIAM HARDWICK, PRINCIPLE BEFORE POLITICS

                         THOMAS WILLIAM HARDWICK

Principle Before Politics

 

   He didn’t always do the popular thing.  He tried to do the right thing, even if it cost him an election.  In a sense, he was ahead of his time.  His ideas to improve Georgia turned out to be good ones, even though they didn’t seem to be popular with a majority of Georgia’s voters at the time.  He fought the Ku Klux Klan.  He appointed Georgia’s and the country’s first woman United States Senator.  He promoted the idea of a massive highway system and improved Georgia’s port system.  For three decades he served his county, his state, and his country in political office.  For a short time in 1926, Thomas Hardwick lived in Dublin, where he practiced law and published “The Dublin Courier Herald,”in which he espoused his political views.

    Thomas William Hardwick was born on the 9th day of December 1872 in Thomasville, Georgia.  His parents, Robert William Hardwick and Zemula Schley Matthews Hardwick, moved to Washington County, where Tom attended the Tennille School before studying at Gordon Military Institute.  Tom graduated from Mercer University in 1892.  He entered law school at the University of Georgia. One year after his marriage to Maude Perkins, Thomas Hardwick was admitted to the bar of Washington County Superior Court. From 1895 to 1897, Hardwick served as Solicitor of Washington County Court.      In 1898, Hardwick was elected to represent Washington County in the Georgia House of Representatives.  Hardwick, a conservative Democrat, prevailed in the election despite the strong Populist views of many Washington Countians.   Hardwick was elected Captain of Company D, 6th Infantry Regiment of the Georgia State Troops, also known as “The Washington Guards,” in 1901 and 1902.  He served in the Georgia Legislature for four years until 1902, when he was elected to the Congress of the United States.  His first speech in Congress urged the repeal of the 14th and the 15th amendments, which he maintained had been improperly ratified.  In 1906, Hardwick joined with populist leader Thomas E. Watson to elect Hoke Smith to the governorship of Georgia.  Hardwick and Smith sought and acquired the passage of a law to disenfranchise Negro voters of Georgia.  Watson and Hardwick fell out with each other in the 1908 gubernatorial election.  In 1910, Watson opposed Hardwick in his congressional race.   

 

   When U.S. Senator Augustus O. Bacon died in 1914, Hardwick threw his hat in the ring in the election to fill the remainder of the second term.  Despite a second-place finish to Gov. John M. Slaton, Hardwick was nominated by the Democratic Convention on the fourteenth ballot.    Hardwick, a supporter of state rights, abhorred the growing Federal government.  He supported Woodrow Wilson but voted against the passage of the Selective Service Act, the Food Act, the Railroad Act, the Child Labor Act,  and was opposed to America’s entry into World War II.  His stance cost him in his re-election campaign in 1918.  Hardwick, considered an isolationist, attacked the establishment of the League of Nations.  

    In his 1920 gubernatorial campaign, Hardwick promised voters that he would balance the state budget, cut government waste, increase teacher salaries, and support voting reforms.  Sound familiar?  Hardwick wound up only four votes shy of the necessary majority to capture the Democratic nomination in the primary election.  He easily defeated Clifford Walker in the run-off election with the aid of two heavyweight Georgia politicians, Sen. Thomas Watson, who was again on his side,  and his old ally, former governor Hoke Smith.  

    The economy was the main issue in the voters' minds.  Cotton production had dropped by nearly three-fourths during the pre-boll weevil years.  Hardwick made several new and bold proposals to jump-start the deteriorating economic situation in Georgia.  He advocated the creation of a Board of Regents to operate Georgia’s colleges and universities, a new highway system, a state income tax system, and the development of a port in Savannah. The democratically dominated legislature didn’t agree with all of Hardwick’s ideas.  In those days, there were no Democrats versus Republicans, only fights between various Democratic factions. The legislature did pass bills to allow citizens to vote by secret ballot, to place a state tax on gasoline, and to establish a separate department to audit the various branches of Georgia’s government.  

    Despite the fact that Hardwick opposed the adoption of the 14th and 15th Amendments which protected Negro citizens from injustice. He defied the Klu Klux Klan on every front.  Hardwick also protected many Negro prisoners by issuing an executive order prohibiting the beating of prisoners by their guards.  His position on these volatile issues cost him another re-election bid.  Clifford Walker easily defeated Hardwick, who again lost the support of Tom Watson after he failed to appoint enough of Watson’s friends to political offices and positions.

 

  In 1922, Thomas Hardwick was given the opportunity to make one of the most important appointments of his political career.  Sen. Thomas Watson, Hardwick’s on-again and off-again ally died on September 26, 1922.  In a gesture of friendship, Gov. Hardwick offered the position to Watson’s widow, who graciously declined to serve.  Hardwick then turned to Rebecca Felton, (left) an eighty-seven-year-old widow, who was a leading reform advocate of the day. Mrs. Felton accepted the offer and became the first Georgia woman and the first American woman to serve in the United States Senate.  Hardwick sought to return to the Senate, but he was defeated by Walter F. George.  In an interesting note, Sarah Orr Williams of Dublin served as secretary to Senators Watson, Felton, and George.  Hardwick, in his last senatorial campaign, lost in a landslide to William Harris in 1924.

    Hardwick retired from politics and resumed his law practice in Atlanta and Washington, D.C..  For a brief time, Hardwick served as a member of the Advisory Council of the War Transaction Section of the United States Department of Justice.  In 1926, he purchased the “Dublin Courier Herald.”  The newspaper gave Hardwick a forum in which to express his views on the political issues of the day.  The front and back pages carried nothing but political material.  The inside pages carried local news.  Hardwick’s paper, by his own account, was one of the largest circulated papers in Georgia.  

 

   Thomas Hardwick purchased a home at the northeast corner of Academy Avenue and South Calhoun Street in 1926.  Charlie Garbutt restored the home to house the offices of his construction company.  That same year, Hardwick argued for the appellant in the case of Fenner v. Boykin before the United States Supreme Court. Hardwick sold his house to R.T. Peacock, Sr., and returned home to Sandersville to practice law.  Hardwick lost his third bid for governor losing to Eugene Talmadge in 1932.  

  

    Thomas Hardwick died after suffering a heart attack at the home of his daughter, Mrs. Frederick B. “Mary” Rawlings in Sandersville on January 31, 1944.  He is buried there in the Old City Cemetery. Thomas William Hardwick was a politician with principles.  His belief in doing what was right in the face of what was politically expedient cost him many years of political service, which was profoundly important to him. His programs for the establishment of a Board of Regents, a state income tax, a more than adequate transportation system, and a seaport were eventually adopted.  His unpopular stand against the KKK eventually became the prevailing opinion of most Georgians.  By today’s standards, he would be considered an enigma, strongly conservative on some issues, and equally as liberal on others.  In the days of political corruption, he was a shining light for integrity and honesty.  The “Macon Telegraph” eulogized Hardwick as “a public servant of dauntless courage and unimpeachable integrity.  In every relation of his life, he was faithful to his trust.”

    Hardwick, along with Laurens County's George M. Troup were two of only four men in the 250-year history of Georgia to serve as Governor, U.S. Senator, and U.S. Congressman.