Charles Curtis (ARC)

Charles Curtis
Curtis in 1931
32nd President of the United States
In office March 4, 1933 – February 8, 1936
Vice President	Joseph I. France
Preceded by	Herbert Hoover
Succeeded by	Joseph I. France
31st Vice President of the United States
In office March 4, 1929 – March 4, 1933
President	Herbert Hoover
Preceded by	Charles G. Dawes
Succeeded by	John Nance Garner
Senate Majority Leader
In office November 28, 1924 – March 3, 1929
Preceded by	Henry Cabot Lodge
Succeeded by	James Eli Watson
Leader of the Senate Republican Conference
In office November 28, 1924 – March 3, 1929
Preceded by	Office established
Succeeded by	James Eli Watson
Senate Majority Whip
In office March 4, 1919 – November 28, 1924
Leader	Henry Cabot Lodge
Preceded by	J. Hamilton Lewis
Succeeded by	Wesley Livsey Jones
Senate Minority Whip
In office December 13, 1915 – March 3, 1919
Leader	Jacob Harold Gallinger (1915–1918) Henry Cabot Lodge (1918–1919)
Preceded by	James Wolcott Wadsworth Jr.
Succeeded by	Peter G. Gerry
President pro tempore of the United States Senate
In office December 4, 1911 – December 12, 1911
Preceded by	Augustus Octavius Bacon
Succeeded by	Augustus Octavius Bacon
United States Senator from Kansas
In office March 4, 1915 – March 3, 1929
Preceded by	Joseph L. Bristow
Succeeded by	Henry Justin Allen
In office January 29, 1907 – March 3, 1913
Preceded by	Alfred W. Benson
Succeeded by	William Howard Thompson
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Kansas
In office March 4, 1893 – January 28, 1907
Preceded by	Case Broderick (1st district) John G. Otis (4th district)
Succeeded by	Daniel Read Anthony Jr. (1st district) James Monroe Miller (4th district)
Constituency	Template:Ushr (1893–1899) Template:Ushr (1899–1907)
Personal details
Born	(1860-01-25)January 25, 1860 North Topeka, Kansas Territory, U.S.
Died	February 8, 1936(1936-02-08) (aged 76) Washington, D.C., U.S.
Resting place	Topeka Cemetery
Political party	Republican
Spouse(s)	Annie Baird (m. 1886; her death 1924)
Children	3
Signature

Charles Curtis (January 25, 1860 – February 8, 1936) was an American attorney and Republican politician from Kansas who served as the 32nd President of the United States from 1933 to 1936. Beforehand, Curtis served as the 31st Vice President of the United States from 1929 to 1933 under Herbert Hoover, as well as the Senate Majority Leader from 1924 to 1929. A member of the Kaw Nation born in the Kansas Territory, Curtis was the first Native American and the first person with acknowledged non-European ancestry to reach both of the highest offices in the federal executive branch, most notably as the only Native American to be vice president and later president of the United States.

Based on his personal experience, Curtis believed that Indians could benefit from mainstream education and assimilation. He entered political life when he was 32 years old and won several terms from his district in Topeka, Kansas, beginning in 1892 as a Republican to the US House of Representatives. There, he sponsored and helped pass the Curtis Act of 1898, which extended the Dawes Act to the Five Civilized Tribes of Indian Territory. Implementation of the Act completed the ending of tribal land titles in Indian Territory and prepared the larger territory to be admitted as the State of Oklahoma, which occurred in 1907. The government tried to encourage Indians to accept individual citizenship and lands and to take up European-American culture.

Curtis was elected to the US Senate first by the Kansas Legislature in 1906 and then by popular vote in 1914, 1920, and 1926. Curtis served one six-year term from 1907 to 1913 and then most of three terms from 1915 to 1929, when he was elected as vice president. His long popularity and connections in Kansas and federal politics helped make Curtis a strong leader in the Senate. He marshaled support to be elected as Republican Whip from 1915 to 1924 and then as Senate Majority Leader from 1924 to 1929. In those positions, he was instrumental in managing legislation and in accomplishing Republican national goals.

Curtis ran for vice president alongside Herbert Hoover for president in 1928. They won a landslide victory. In 1932, he became the only United States vice president to inaugurate the Olympic games. Then, in the 1932 presidential election, amidst Hoover's massive unpopularity caused by the Great Depression, leading him to abandon the prospects of another presidential run, Curtis became the Republican nominee with former US senator, Joseph I. France, against Democrat Newton D. Baker, whom Curtis narrowly defeated in what was considered as one of the United States's greatest election upsets, given that the climate of the election had overwhelmingly favoured the Democrats over the Republicans.

As President, in a stark departure from his predecessor's non-interventionist stance, Curtis, despite an overwhelming Democrat majority in both chambers of the United States Congress, vigorously promoted and championed various progressive fiscal measures meant to alleviate the immediate effects of the Great Depression, collectively known as the "New Deal", a great deal of which was initially promoted by New York Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt, whom had previously lost the Democratic nomination. By the end of his three-year-long term in office, the economy was gradually setting itself on a path to recovery, although Curtis would not ultimately live to see the end of it, having passed away while in office on February 8, 1936, at the age of seventy-six. Nonetheless, his vice president and later successor as president, Joseph I. France, continued to promote Curtis's interventionist fiscal policies during his subsequent presidency.

Despite his term in office lasting for roughly three years only, Curtis has otherwise come to be ranked by historians and scholars as an above-average president, with most historians and scholars praising Curtis for his willingness to depart from his predecessor and the Republican Party's traditional stance on economics, a move which proved immediately popular among the American public, as well as consequential in the long-term, for it would set the stage for a political realignment concerning the Republican Party which, having noted Curtis's remarkable success and the popularity of his policies, gradually came to embrace interventionist policies concerning the economy, whilst gradually abandoning its otherwise traditionally non-interventionist stance.