Tom Connally

Connally studied at Baylor University and earned his A.B. in 1896.[2][3] He later attended the University of Texas School of Law, earning his LL.B. in 1898.[2][3] While there, Connally was a close friend of future Governor of Texas Pat Neff and future United States Senator Morris Sheppard.[4] After earning his law degree, he enlisted in the 2nd Texas Volunteer Infantry to fight in the Spanish–American War.[3] After the end of the war, he established a law firm in Marlin, Texas, where he worked until his entry into politics.[3]

Connally (next to Roosevelt) holding a watch to fix the exact time of the declaration of war against Germany (3:05 PM E.S.T. on 11 December 1941)

Connally ran unopposed and was elected to the Texas House of Representatives in 1900 and 1902.[5] During his tenure in the Texas House he was a prominent opponent of monopolies and co-authored the Texas Anti-Trust Law of 1903.[3] After 1904, he left state politics to pursue his legal career, and served as the prosecuting attorney for Falls County from 1906 to 1910.[5] In 1916, he made his first foray into national politics by running for the vacant House seat for the 11th Congressional District of Texas.[3][5] After resigning his office to fight in World War I, Connally returned to the House where he served on the House Committee on Foreign Affairs and worked against isolationist policies.[3]

In 1928 Connally was elected to the U.S. Senate.[3] During his time in the Senate he supported Roosevelt's New Deal legislation through the passage of the Connally Hot Oil Act of 1935, which attempted to circumvent the Supreme Court of the United States' rejection of a key part of New Deal legislation.

During most of his tenure in the Senate Connally was a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and served as chairman from 1941 to 1947, and 1949 to 1953.[3][6] As Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he was instrumental in the ratification of the treaty creating the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.[5]

He was also a member and vice-chairman of the United Nations Conference on International Organization in 1945 that chartered the United Nations.[3] He authored the noted "Connally Amendment," which amended the U.S. ratification of the U.N. charter to bar the International Court of Justice from having jurisdiction over domestic matters '"as determined by the United States"'.[7]

On October 20, 1951, when General Mark Wayne Clark, an Episcopalian whose mother was Jewish,[8][9] was nominated by President Harry Truman to be the U.S. emissary to the Holy See, Connally protested against the decision along with other Protestant groups on First Amendment grounds; Clark later withdrew his nomination on January 13, 1952.[10]

In 1953, Connally retired from the Senate, ending his career in national politics.[3]

Connally's first wife was Cincinnati Conservatory-trained vocalist Louise Clarkson of Marlin, Texas, who died in her husband's Senate office of a sudden heart attack in 1935.[3] The couple had one son, Houston attorney Ben Clarkson Connally, a U.S. district judge.[3] Connally later married Lucile Sanderson Sheppard, the widow of his former Senate colleague, Morris Sheppard of Texarkana, Texas.[13][14]

Tom Connally died of pneumonia on October 28, 1963. He is buried in Calvary Cemetery in Marlin, Texas, next to his first wife.

• United States Congress. "Tom Connally (id: C000684)". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
• Time magazine: Sept. 5, 1960

• Connally, Tom and Alfred Steinberg. My Name is Tom Connally (1954)
• Grant, Philip A. "Roosevelt, the Congress, and the United Nations." Presidential Studies Quarterly 13.2 (1983): 279-285.
• Heineman, Kenneth J. "Asserting states’ rights, demanding federal assistance: Texas Democrats in the era of the New Deal." Journal of Policy History 28.2 (2016): 342-374.
• Hill, Thomas Michael. "Senator Arthur H. Vandenberg, the Politics of Bipartisanship, and the Origins of Anti-Soviet Consensus, 1941-1946." World Affairs 138.3 (1975): 219-241. Online
• Porter, David L. The Seventy-sixth Congress and World War II, 1939-1940 (1979).
• Williams, Phil. The Senate and US Troops in Europe (Palgrave Macmillan, 1985), excerpt chapter on "The North Atlantic Treaty, Military Assistance and the Troops to Europe Decision." pp. 11-41.