Friends of the Governor's Mansion
Charles Culberson
I was introduced to Charles Culberson probably some 25 years ago while taking a walk through Oakwood Cemetery on the North Side.
If you’re in search for a place to get in touch with history, specifically Fort Worth history, Oakwood Cemetery is a great place for a connection. Among those making Oakwood their last stops are Burk Burnett, John Peter Smith, K.M. Van Zandt, Horace Carswell, and William McDonald. Just to name a few.
So, too, did antagonists of lore Luke Short and Jim Courtright, ironically together in perpetuity, Courtright, of course, arriving first with a few holes in his shroud.
There also is Charles Culberson, one of the state’s most eminent public figures of his day, onetime state attorney general — he won the Democratic nomination at the convention in Fort Worth — and twice elected governor on his way to a nearly 25-year career in the U.S. Senate.
He’s buried in the Harrison family plot, interred there after his death in 1925. Culberson and Sallie Harrison were wed in 1882. The Harrisons are still alive and well in Fort Worth.
I think about Culberson, mostly forgotten by history, during every election season.
“He looked the very picture of a man who had the utmost confidence in himself and who possessed the capacity to accomplish things — something worthwhile,” wrote James William Madden, a onetime Culberson aide, and author of the very friendly biography Charles Allen Culberson: His Life, Character and Public Service.
“I was so impressed with the man’s appearance and his strong personality that I could not help but mark him as one of the ‘coming men’ of Texas.”
I became intrigued by Culberson’s 30-year career in public life because of his role, as governor, in making boxing illegal in Texas in 1895. The governor wanted to stop a heavyweight championship fight in Dallas between “Gentleman Jim” Corbett and challenger Bob Fitzsimmons. The governor, like many of his constituents at the time, considered boxing to be barbaric.
Culberson was elected by the Texas Legislature to the U.S. Senate in 1899, 1905, and 1911. He won a fourth term by popular vote in 1916 under the Constitution’s 17th Amendment.
Culberson’s most consequential work was done in the U.S. Senate. As a member of the Lodge Committee, he investigated war crimes allegations in America’s fight against insurgents in the Philippine Islands after the Spanish-American War (think Iraq, 100 years later). A few years later, in 1903, the anti-imperialist delivered a speech on America’s moral obligations in dealing in international diplomacy. He also served as chair of the Judiciary Committee, and, for a spell, minority leader.
His is the seat today filled by Ted Cruz. Culberson’s permanent elected successors included Tom Connally, Price Daniel, Ralph Yarborough, Lloyd Bentsen, and Kay Bailey Hutchison.
“If Texas had been a doubtful state politically,” wrote Edward M. House, a backroom political kingmaker who was instrumental in Culberson’s rise to state and finally national office, “Culberson easily might have been the Democratic Party’s nominee for president. And a great president he would have made. The powers of that office are so far-reaching, so embracing, that Culberson with his rare ability would have achieved imperishable fame.”
Any ambition he might have had was undone by alcoholism, which rendered him completely incapable at times.
No doubt under House’s urging, Culberson introduced New Jersey Gov. Woodrow Wilson to an audience of 10,000 at the State Fair in Dallas in 1911. It was a seminal event in House’s campaign to deliver Texas to Wilson at the Baltimore Convention. House went on to become Wilson’s closest White House adviser. Culberson would later become an ally in Wilson’s failed bid to secure ratification of the Treaty of Versailles.
Culberson made a bid for a fifth term in 1922. He lost in a three-way primary race involving James Ferguson and Earle Mayfield. His declining health undoubtedly hurt him. He had been in sickly condition for several years, his toxic relationship with the bottle said to be the chief cause.
However, a missive outlining his opposition to the Ku Klux Klan, then in its “zenith,” likely did him in. Culberson’s record on race relations was imperfect, but his letter to a friend likely warrants Culberson a place among the honorable mentions of politics’ profiles in courage.
“If not curbed, [the KKK] will usurp the functions of the state and be destructive of government itself. It will indeed overthrow our Anglo-Saxon civilization in its relation to government. Steps should be taken, therefore, at once to arrest its progress and finally to destroy it.”
Wrote House: “No scandal ever touched him. … In the years to come the student and statesman will linger with pride and pleasure over those pages of history which treat of the unsullied record of Charles A. Culberson.”