Sentinels of the Republic
Encyclopedia
The Sentinels of the Republic was a national organization that opposed what it saw as federal encroachment on the rights of the States and of the individual. Politically right-wing, the group was highly active in the 1920s and 1930s, during which it worked against child labor legislation
and the New Deal
. Accusations of antisemitism and a decreasing relevance of its political agenda both served to weaken the organization, which ultimately disbanded in 1944.
, Louis A. Coolidge, together with a small group of Massachusetts residents, founded the Sentinels of the Republic, an organization they intended to serve as a defense against unconstitutional legislation. The Sentinels were particularly concerned with protecting the rights of the States, limiting government's interference with and regulation of business, and combating the threat of international communism
.
The founding principles of the Sentinels were:
The organization's motto was: Every citizen a Sentinel: every home a sentry box!
Coolidge served as the Sentinels' first president from 1922 until his death in 1925. He was succeeded by Bentley Wirt Warren, a Boston lawyer who had been the Democratic Party's candidate for Massachusetts' 11th Congressional District
seat in 1894. Warren served from 1925 to 1927 and was succeeded by Alexander Lincoln, also a Boston lawyer, who served from 1927 to 1936.
Raymond Pitcairn
, son of PPG Industries
founder, John Pitcairn, Jr.
, who served as the Sentinels' national chairman for several years, was also the group's primary benefactor: in early 1935 he single-handedly revitalized the Sentinels with a donation of $85,000 (more than $1.25 million in 2008 dollars
). To a group which had raised exactly $15,378.74 since 1931, this was a massive injection of capital.
Other notable or prominent supporters of the Sentinels included Pitcairn's two brothers, Harold Frederick Pitcairn
and Rev. Theodore Pitcairn
; several powerful members of the du Pont Nemours
chemical manufacturing dynasty (Pierre S. du Pont
, President; Irénée du Pont
, Vice Chairman; Henry du Pont, Director of the Du Pont family's Wilmington Trust; and A. B. Echols, Vice President of du Pont Nemours and Director of the Wilmington Trust); Alfred P. Sloan
, the long-time president and chairman of General Motors
; Atwater Kent, the wealthy radio manufacturer; former Pennsylvania Senator George Wharton Pepper
; Edward T. Stotesbury
, a prominent investment banker and partner of J.P. Morgan & Co.
and Drexel & Co.; Horatio Lloyd, also a partner of J.P. Morgan & Co.
; J. Howard Pew
, the President of Sun Oil; and Bernard Kroger, founder of the Kroger
chain of supermarkets.
The Sentinels' chief officers in 1933 included:
, the New Deal
, and child labor legislation
.
In 1924-1925 the Sentinels garnered national attention when, under the leadership of Louis A. Coolidge, they successfully swayed Massachusetts opinion against the Child Labor Act. They persuaded key Massachusetts constituents to oppose the Child Labor Act by convincing them that it had Bolshevistic origins, and that it would lead to extreme consequences; e.g. denying a teenager of the right to help his widowed mother support his siblings, or even to assist with household and farm chores. The Sentinels also claimed that the proponents of the Child Labor Act wanted to remove children from the influence of their families and the authority of their parents.
Following Coolidge's death in 1925, Bentley Wirt Warren became the Sentinels' second president. Under Warren, the Sentinels continued their efforts to oppose the Maternity and Infant Care Act (also known as the Sheppard-Towner Act) and the creation of a federal office of education. By 1927, in good part due to a flood of speakers, pamphlets, letters, and telegrams from the Sentinels, the latter was defeated.
In 1926, in a fund-raising pamphlet entitled "To Arms! To Arms!", the organization boasted that it had "card-indexed more than 2000 radical propagandists making it comparatively easy to check their movements and counteract their activities."
Alexander Lincoln succeeded Warren as president, and it was during his term that the Sentinels achieved their greatest prominence. During the mid-1930s, anti-New-Deal sentiment in the business community led to a substantial increase the Sentinels' standing and financial support.
The Sentinels held annual meetings during this period, at each of which they adopted a "program of policies" which were then disseminated in pamphlet form to stir public opinion. They also gave radio addresses, including two series of weekly addresses aired by the National Broadcasting Company
, one in 1931 and the other in 1933-1934. They also held special meetings with "keynote" addresses.
In 1934, under the coordination of national chairman Raymond Pitcairn
, the Sentinels conducted a large-scale campaign against a proposed tax law that would have required publication of personal financial data, including an individual’s gross income. They distributed hundreds of thousands of protest stickers and form letters urging people to demand that Congress repeal what they described as an “outrageous invasion of privacy.” The protest was successful: after receiving thousands of letters and telegrams opposing the legislation, Congress backed down.
, an influential muckracking
journalist of the 1940s, described the Sentinels as "the anti-Semitic enemy of child labor laws" and "the anti-Semitic wing of the first really important American Fascist movement." The historian Jules Archer
writes that Sentinel members labeled Roosevelt's New Deal as "Jewish Communism".
Substantiating these allegations, the Black Commission, a 1936 U.S. Senate
investigation into lobbying, discovered instances of antisemitic language and attitudes within the Sentinels. Specifically, the commission uncovered a written correspondence between Sentinel member Cleveland Runyon and Alexander Lincoln, the organization's president, in which the latter wrote that the "Jewish threat" to the United States was a "real one" and added that "I am doing what I can as an officer of the Sentinels." The former responded that the "old-line Americans of $1200 a year want a Hitler."
Following the resulting charges of antisemitism, Lincoln later denounced all forms of autocratic government, "whether they be communism
, bolshevism
, fascism
, or Hitlerism
." The commander-in-chief of the Jewish War Veterans
wrote to Lincoln that, following its own investigation, his organization had concluded that Lincoln did not "entertain any antipathy against the Jewish people or any racial minority." However, these statements failed to erase the damage done to the reputation of the American Liberty League
(the parent organization of the Sentinels) by the findings of the Black investigation. While the incident itself may have been a small part of the history of the Sentinels, it was the organization's largest source of press coverage.
The organization donated the remainder of its funds to Williams College
for the purpose of endowing the Sentinels of the Republic Advanced Study Prize, a yearly award for the best student essay on the U.S. Constitution. The Sentinels also donated a collection of primary documents (brochures, newsletters, minutes) to the College's archives, where they currently reside, for the purpose of aiding students in preparing their essays. The decision to endow Williams was presumably influenced by the fact that at the time the decision was taken to disband, former Sentinels president and trustee Bentley W. Warren was serving on Williams' Board of Trustees.
Child labor laws in the United States
Child labor laws in the United States include numerous statutes and rules regulating the employment of minors. According to the United States Department of Labor, child labor laws affect those under the age of 18 in a variety of occupations....
and the New Deal
New Deal
The New Deal was a series of economic programs implemented in the United States between 1933 and 1936. They were passed by the U.S. Congress during the first term of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The programs were Roosevelt's responses to the Great Depression, and focused on what historians call...
. Accusations of antisemitism and a decreasing relevance of its political agenda both served to weaken the organization, which ultimately disbanded in 1944.
Formation
On 22 September 1922, in honor of the 200th anniversary of the birth of Samuel AdamsSamuel Adams
Samuel Adams was an American statesman, political philosopher, and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. As a politician in colonial Massachusetts, Adams was a leader of the movement that became the American Revolution, and was one of the architects of the principles of American...
, Louis A. Coolidge, together with a small group of Massachusetts residents, founded the Sentinels of the Republic, an organization they intended to serve as a defense against unconstitutional legislation. The Sentinels were particularly concerned with protecting the rights of the States, limiting government's interference with and regulation of business, and combating the threat of international communism
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
.
The founding principles of the Sentinels were:
- "To maintain the fundamental principles of the American ConstitutionUnited States ConstitutionThe Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States of America. It is the framework for the organization of the United States government and for the relationship of the federal government with the states, citizens, and all people within the United States.The first three...
." - "To oppose further Federal encroachment upon the reserved rights of the States."
- "To stop the growth of socialismSocialismSocialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
." - "To prevent the concentration of power in Washington through the multiplication of administrative bureaus under a perverted interpretation of the general welfare clauseGeneral Welfare clauseA General Welfare clause is a section that appeared in many constitutions, as well as in some charters and statutes, which provides that the governing body empowered by the document may enact laws to promote the general welfare of the people...
." - "To help preserve a free republicRepublicA republic is a form of government in which the people, or some significant portion of them, have supreme control over the government and where offices of state are elected or chosen by elected people. In modern times, a common simplified definition of a republic is a government where the head of...
an form of Government in the United States."
The organization's motto was: Every citizen a Sentinel: every home a sentry box!
Leaders and notable members
The Sentinels' founding members were:- Louis A. Coolidge, Treasurer of the United Shoe Machinery Corporation, and former journalist and political publicist
- James JacksonJames Jackson (Massachusetts politician)James Jackson was an American politician who served as Treasurer and Receiver-General of Massachusetts from 1920-1924....
, Treasurer and Receiver-General of MassachusettsTreasurer and Receiver-General of MassachusettsThe Treasurer and Receiver-General of Massachusetts is an executive officer, elected state-wide every four years....
, former New England Chairman of the Red Cross, - Herbert Parker, former Massachusetts Attorney GeneralMassachusetts Attorney GeneralThe Massachusetts Attorney General is an elected executive officer of the Massachusetts Government. The office of Attorney-General was abolished in 1843 and re-established in 1849. The current Attorney General is Martha Coakley....
- Charles Sedgwick Rackemann, partner in the Boston law firm Rackemann, Sawyer & Brewster.
- Boyd B. JonesBoyd B. JonesBoyd B. Jones was an American attorney who served as the United States Attorney for the District of Massachusetts from 1897 to 1901. He later served on the faculty at the Boston University School of Law and was one of the founding members of the Sentinels of the Republic.-References:...
, a lawyer and former U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts - Henry F. Hurlbert, former District Attorney of Essex County, Massachusetts
- Maurice S. Sherman, editor of The Hartford CourantThe Hartford CourantThe Hartford Courant is the largest daily newspaper in the U.S. state of Connecticut, and is a morning newspaper for most of the state north of New Haven and east of Waterbury...
, and later The Springfield Union - Frank F. Dresser, Massachusetts attorney
- Katharine Torbert Balch, President of the Massachusetts Women's Anti-SuffrageAnti-suffragismAnti-suffragism was a political movement composed mainly of women, begun in the late 19th century in order to campaign against women's suffrage in the United States and United Kingdom...
Association
Massachusetts's 11th congressional district
Massachusetts Congressional District 11 is an obsolete congressional district in eastern Massachusetts. It was eliminated in 1993 after the 1990 U.S. Census. Its last Congressman was Brian Donnelly; its most notable were future Presidents John Quincy Adams and John F. Kennedy and Speaker Tip...
seat in 1894. Warren served from 1925 to 1927 and was succeeded by Alexander Lincoln, also a Boston lawyer, who served from 1927 to 1936.
Raymond Pitcairn
Raymond Pitcairn
Raymond Pitcairn , son of PPG Industries founder John Pitcairn, was a lawyer, a businessman, a collector of ancient and medieval art, and an amateur architect. He supervised the building of the Bryn Athyn Cathedral and his own castle-mansion of Glencairn.Pitcairn was also quite politically active...
, son of PPG Industries
PPG Industries
PPG Industries is a global supplier of paints, coatings, optical products, specialty materials, chemicals, glass and fiber glass. With headquarters in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, PPG operates in more than 60 countries around the globe. Sales in 2010 were $13.4 billion...
founder, John Pitcairn, Jr.
John Pitcairn, Jr.
John Pitcairn, Jr. was a Scottish-born American industrialist. With just an elementary school education, Pitcairn rose through the ranks of the Pennsylvania railroad industry, and played a significant role in the creation of the modern oil and natural gas industries...
, who served as the Sentinels' national chairman for several years, was also the group's primary benefactor: in early 1935 he single-handedly revitalized the Sentinels with a donation of $85,000 (more than $1.25 million in 2008 dollars
). To a group which had raised exactly $15,378.74 since 1931, this was a massive injection of capital.
Other notable or prominent supporters of the Sentinels included Pitcairn's two brothers, Harold Frederick Pitcairn
Harold Frederick Pitcairn
Harold F. Pitcairn was an American aviation inventor and pioneer. He played a key role in the development of the autogyro and founded the Autogiro Company of America...
and Rev. Theodore Pitcairn
Theodore Pitcairn
Theodore Pitcairn , son of PPG Industries founder John Pitcairn, was an arts collector and philanthropist, and a minister in the General Church of the New Jerusalem....
; several powerful members of the du Pont Nemours
DuPont
E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company , commonly referred to as DuPont, is an American chemical company that was founded in July 1802 as a gunpowder mill by Eleuthère Irénée du Pont. DuPont was the world's third largest chemical company based on market capitalization and ninth based on revenue in 2009...
chemical manufacturing dynasty (Pierre S. du Pont
Pierre S. du Pont
Pierre Samuel du Pont was president of the E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company from 1915 to 1919, and served on its Board of Directors until 1940...
, President; Irénée du Pont
Irénée du Pont
Irénée du Pont was a U.S. businessman, former president of the DuPont company and head of the Du Pont trust.-Biography:A descendant of Eleuthère Irénée du Pont, he graduated from Andover in 1894 and MIT in 1897, then worked for Fenn’s Manufacturing Contracting Company for a number of years before...
, Vice Chairman; Henry du Pont, Director of the Du Pont family's Wilmington Trust; and A. B. Echols, Vice President of du Pont Nemours and Director of the Wilmington Trust); Alfred P. Sloan
Alfred P. Sloan
Alfred Pritchard Sloan, Jr. was an American business executive in the automotive industry. He was a long-time president, chairman, and CEO of General Motors Corporation...
, the long-time president and chairman of General Motors
General Motors
General Motors Company , commonly known as GM, formerly incorporated as General Motors Corporation, is an American multinational automotive corporation headquartered in Detroit, Michigan and the world's second-largest automaker in 2010...
; Atwater Kent, the wealthy radio manufacturer; former Pennsylvania Senator George Wharton Pepper
George W. Pepper
George Wharton Pepper was an American lawyer, law professor, and Republican politician from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania...
; Edward T. Stotesbury
Edward T. Stotesbury
Edward Townsend "Ned" Stotesbury was a prominent investment banker, a partner in Drexel & Co. and its New York affiliate J. P. Morgan & Co. for over fifty-five years....
, a prominent investment banker and partner of J.P. Morgan & Co.
J.P. Morgan & Co.
J.P. Morgan & Co. was a commercial and investment banking institution based in the United States founded by J. Pierpont Morgan and commonly known as the House of Morgan or simply Morgan. Today, J.P...
and Drexel & Co.; Horatio Lloyd, also a partner of J.P. Morgan & Co.
J.P. Morgan & Co.
J.P. Morgan & Co. was a commercial and investment banking institution based in the United States founded by J. Pierpont Morgan and commonly known as the House of Morgan or simply Morgan. Today, J.P...
; J. Howard Pew
J. Howard Pew
J. Howard Pew was an American philanthropist and co-founder of Sunoco .Joseph Howard Pew was born in Bradford, Pennsylvania in 1882 and raised as a devout Presbyterian. In 1886 Pew’s father, Joseph Newton Pew, Sr. started an oil business in Pennsylvania, expanding to Texas when oil was discovered...
, the President of Sun Oil; and Bernard Kroger, founder of the Kroger
Kroger
The Kroger Co. is an American supermarket chain founded by Bernard Kroger in 1883 in Cincinnati, Ohio. It reported US$ 76.7 billion in sales during fiscal year 2009. It is the country's largest grocery store chain and its second-largest grocery retailer by volume and second-place general retailer...
chain of supermarkets.
The Sentinels' chief officers in 1933 included:
- Alexander Lincoln, President
- Frank L. Peckham, Vice-president
- William H. Coolidge, Treasurer
- John Balch, Secretary
- Thomas F. Cadwalader, Chairman of the Executive Committee
- H. G. Torbert, Executive Secretary
- Raymond Pitcairn, National Chairman
Activities and accomplishments
The Sentinels' primary activities consisted of organized opposition to expansions of the federal government, which they saw as unconstitutional encroachment on the rights of the States and of the individual. Key targets included the creation of the Department of EducationUnited States Department of Education
The United States Department of Education, also referred to as ED or the ED for Education Department, is a Cabinet-level department of the United States government...
, the New Deal
New Deal
The New Deal was a series of economic programs implemented in the United States between 1933 and 1936. They were passed by the U.S. Congress during the first term of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The programs were Roosevelt's responses to the Great Depression, and focused on what historians call...
, and child labor legislation
Child labor laws in the United States
Child labor laws in the United States include numerous statutes and rules regulating the employment of minors. According to the United States Department of Labor, child labor laws affect those under the age of 18 in a variety of occupations....
.
In 1924-1925 the Sentinels garnered national attention when, under the leadership of Louis A. Coolidge, they successfully swayed Massachusetts opinion against the Child Labor Act. They persuaded key Massachusetts constituents to oppose the Child Labor Act by convincing them that it had Bolshevistic origins, and that it would lead to extreme consequences; e.g. denying a teenager of the right to help his widowed mother support his siblings, or even to assist with household and farm chores. The Sentinels also claimed that the proponents of the Child Labor Act wanted to remove children from the influence of their families and the authority of their parents.
Following Coolidge's death in 1925, Bentley Wirt Warren became the Sentinels' second president. Under Warren, the Sentinels continued their efforts to oppose the Maternity and Infant Care Act (also known as the Sheppard-Towner Act) and the creation of a federal office of education. By 1927, in good part due to a flood of speakers, pamphlets, letters, and telegrams from the Sentinels, the latter was defeated.
In 1926, in a fund-raising pamphlet entitled "To Arms! To Arms!", the organization boasted that it had "card-indexed more than 2000 radical propagandists making it comparatively easy to check their movements and counteract their activities."
Alexander Lincoln succeeded Warren as president, and it was during his term that the Sentinels achieved their greatest prominence. During the mid-1930s, anti-New-Deal sentiment in the business community led to a substantial increase the Sentinels' standing and financial support.
The Sentinels held annual meetings during this period, at each of which they adopted a "program of policies" which were then disseminated in pamphlet form to stir public opinion. They also gave radio addresses, including two series of weekly addresses aired by the National Broadcasting Company
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
, one in 1931 and the other in 1933-1934. They also held special meetings with "keynote" addresses.
In 1934, under the coordination of national chairman Raymond Pitcairn
Raymond Pitcairn
Raymond Pitcairn , son of PPG Industries founder John Pitcairn, was a lawyer, a businessman, a collector of ancient and medieval art, and an amateur architect. He supervised the building of the Bryn Athyn Cathedral and his own castle-mansion of Glencairn.Pitcairn was also quite politically active...
, the Sentinels conducted a large-scale campaign against a proposed tax law that would have required publication of personal financial data, including an individual’s gross income. They distributed hundreds of thousands of protest stickers and form letters urging people to demand that Congress repeal what they described as an “outrageous invasion of privacy.” The protest was successful: after receiving thousands of letters and telegrams opposing the legislation, Congress backed down.
Accusations of antisemitism
The Sentinels faced charges of antisemitism in the media and in history books. George SeldesGeorge Seldes
George Seldes was an American investigative journalist and media critic. The writer and critic Gilbert Seldes was his younger brother. Actress Marian Seldes is his niece....
, an influential muckracking
Muckraker
The term muckraker is closely associated with reform-oriented journalists who wrote largely for popular magazines, continued a tradition of investigative journalism reporting, and emerged in the United States after 1900 and continued to be influential until World War I, when through a combination...
journalist of the 1940s, described the Sentinels as "the anti-Semitic enemy of child labor laws" and "the anti-Semitic wing of the first really important American Fascist movement." The historian Jules Archer
Jules Archer
Jules Archer was an American author who wrote many volumes of non-fiction history for a general audience and for young adults....
writes that Sentinel members labeled Roosevelt's New Deal as "Jewish Communism".
Substantiating these allegations, the Black Commission, a 1936 U.S. Senate
United States Senate
The United States Senate is the upper house of the bicameral legislature of the United States, and together with the United States House of Representatives comprises the United States Congress. The composition and powers of the Senate are established in Article One of the U.S. Constitution. Each...
investigation into lobbying, discovered instances of antisemitic language and attitudes within the Sentinels. Specifically, the commission uncovered a written correspondence between Sentinel member Cleveland Runyon and Alexander Lincoln, the organization's president, in which the latter wrote that the "Jewish threat" to the United States was a "real one" and added that "I am doing what I can as an officer of the Sentinels." The former responded that the "old-line Americans of $1200 a year want a Hitler."
Following the resulting charges of antisemitism, Lincoln later denounced all forms of autocratic government, "whether they be communism
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
, bolshevism
Bolshevik
The Bolsheviks, originally also Bolshevists , derived from bol'shinstvo, "majority") were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party which split apart from the Menshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903....
, fascism
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
, or Hitlerism
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
." The commander-in-chief of the Jewish War Veterans
Jewish War Veterans of the United States of America
The Jewish War Veterans of the United States of America is an American Jewish veterans' organization, and the oldest veterans group in the United States. It has an estimated 37,000 members.-History and purpose:The Jewish War Veterans were established in 1896...
wrote to Lincoln that, following its own investigation, his organization had concluded that Lincoln did not "entertain any antipathy against the Jewish people or any racial minority." However, these statements failed to erase the damage done to the reputation of the American Liberty League
American Liberty League
The American Liberty League was an American political organization formed in 1934 by conservative Democrats to oppose the New Deal of Franklin D. Roosevelt. It was active for just two years...
(the parent organization of the Sentinels) by the findings of the Black investigation. While the incident itself may have been a small part of the history of the Sentinels, it was the organization's largest source of press coverage.
Dissolution
By the 1940s, with their political objectives increasingly obsolete, the Sentinels had lost most of their support base, funds and influence. Finally, in 1944, they disbanded.The organization donated the remainder of its funds to Williams College
Williams College
Williams College is a private liberal arts college located in Williamstown, Massachusetts, United States. It was established in 1793 with funds from the estate of Ephraim Williams. Originally a men's college, Williams became co-educational in 1970. Fraternities were also phased out during this...
for the purpose of endowing the Sentinels of the Republic Advanced Study Prize, a yearly award for the best student essay on the U.S. Constitution. The Sentinels also donated a collection of primary documents (brochures, newsletters, minutes) to the College's archives, where they currently reside, for the purpose of aiding students in preparing their essays. The decision to endow Williams was presumably influenced by the fact that at the time the decision was taken to disband, former Sentinels president and trustee Bentley W. Warren was serving on Williams' Board of Trustees.