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 |
|
| 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 | January 25, 1860 North Topeka, Kansas Territory, U.S. |
| Died | February 8, 1936 (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.