Political and Diplomatic Career
His father had been a delegate to the Wheeling Convention, which had created the state of West Virginia, but he had also opposed the abolitionists, Radical Republicans, and opposed ratification of the 15th Amendment. Davis acquired much of his father's conservative politics, opposing women's suffrage, Federal federal child-labor laws and anti-lynching legislation, Harry S. Truman's civil rights program, and defended the State's rights to establish the poll tax by questioning whether uneducated non-taxpayers should be allowed to vote. Additionally, as much as he was opposed to centralism in politics he was opposed to concentration of capitalism by supporting a number of early progressive laws regulating Interstate commerce and limiting the power and concentration of corporations. Consequently, he felt distinctly out of place in the big business controlled Republican Party and maintained his father's staunch allegiance to the Democratic Party, even as he later represented the interests of conservative business interests opposed to the democratic centralism of New Deal. Davis ranked as one of the last Jeffersonians, as he supported states' rights and opposed a strong executive (he would be the lead attorney against Truman's nationalization of the steel industry).
He represented West Virginia in the US House of Representatives from 1911 to 1913, where he was one of the authors of the Clayton Act. Davis also served as one of the managers in the successful impeachment trial of Judge Robert W. Archbald. He served as US Solicitor General from 1913 to 1918 and as ambassador to the United Kingdom from 1918 to 1921. As Solicitor General, he successfully argued in Guinn v. United States for the illegality of Oklahoma's "grandfather law". That law exempted residents descended from a voter registered in 1866 (i.e. whites) from a literacy test which effectively disenfranchised blacks. Davis's personal posture differed from his position as an advocate. Throughout his career, he could separate his personal views and professional advocacy.
Davis was a dark horse candidate for the Democratic nomination for President in both 1920 and 1924. His friend and partner Frank Polk managed his campaign at the 1924 Democratic National Convention.
He won the nomination in 1924 as a compromise candidate on the one hundred and third ballot. His denunciation of the Ku Klux Klan and his prior defense of black voting rights as Solicitor General under Wilson cost him votes in the South and among conservative Democrats elsewhere. He lost in a landslide to Calvin Coolidge, who did not leave the White House to campaign.
Davis was a member of the National Advisory Council of the Crusaders, an influential organization that promoted the repeal of prohibition. He was the founding President of the Council on Foreign Relations, formed in 1921, and a trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation from 1922 to 1939. Davis also served as a delegate from New York to the 1928 and 1932 Democratic National Conventions.
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