Alexander Mitchell Palmer - Later Years

Later Years

Palmer sought the Democratic Party's nomination for President in 1920. In a crowded field of candidates, he presented himself as the most American of all. Campaigning during the Georgia primary, he said: "I am myself an American and I love to preach my doctrine before undiluted one hundred percent Americans, because my platform is, in a word, undiluted Americanism and undying loyalty to the republic." Journalist Heywood Broun pretended to investigate: "We assumed, of course, from the tone of Mr. Palmer's manifesto that his opponents for the nomination were Rumanians, Greeks and Icelanders, and weak-kneed ones at that....We happened into Cox's headquarters wholly by accident and were astounded to discover that he, too, is an American....Thus encouraged we went to all camps and found that the candidates are all Americans." Palmer had considerable support among party professionals, but no track record as a campaigner or a vote winner. He won delegates in the Michigan and Georgia primaries but did so without demonstrating voter appeal. He also faced strong opposition from labor for his use of an injunction against striking coal miners in the fall of 1919. Though he probably never had a chance of winning the nomination, he ran a respectable third until his support collapsed on the convention's 39th ballot and the nomination shortly thereafter went to Ohio Governor James Cox.

In 1921, in the closing weeks of the Wilson administration, Palmer asked the President to pardon imprisoned Socialist leader Eugene V. Debs, whose health was said to be failing. He suggested the birthday of President Lincoln as an appropriate day for the announcement, noting Lincoln's willingness to forgive the Confederate South. Wilson's response was "Never!", and he wrote "Denied" across the clemency petition.

After retiring from government service in March 1921, Palmer went into the private practice of law and continued to act the role of a senior statesman of the Democratic Party. Widowed on January 4, 1922, he married Margaret Fallon Burrall in 1923.

After the Republicans won the national election of 1924 in a landslide, he was quick to congratulate Governor Al Smith of New York on his re-election and declare him the party's new leader, and he backed Smith for the Democratic nomination in 1928.

As a Roosevelt supporter and a delegate from the District of Columbia, he served as one of nine members on the Platform Committee of the 1932 Democratic National Convention and authored the original draft of the platform. Time magazine later credited him with the platform's opposition to forgiving the debts of America's allies in World War I and its promise to reduce government expenditures by 25%. Palmer said that the savings could be devoted to programs to relieve unemployment. With the repeal of prohibition a major campaign issue, Palmer used his expertise as the Attorney General who first enforced Prohibition to promote a plan to expedite its repeal through state conventions rather than the state legislatures.

On May 11, 1936 at Emergency Hospital in Washington, D.C., Palmer died from cardiac complications following an appendectomy two weeks earlier. Upon his death, Attorney General Cummings said "He was a great lawyer, a distinguished public servant and an outstanding citizen. He was my friend of many years' standing and his death brings to me a deep sense of personal loss and sorrow." He was buried at Laurelwood Cemetery (originally a cemetery of the Society of Friends) in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania.