William Bourke Cockran
William B. Cochran | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Cockran c. 1904 | |
| Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New York | |
| In office March 4, 1921 – March 1, 1923 | |
| Preceded by | Thomas F. Smith |
| Succeeded by | John J. O'Connor |
| Constituency | 16th district |
| In office February 23, 1904 – March 3, 1909 | |
| Preceded by | George B. McClellan Jr. |
| Succeeded by | Michael F. Conry |
| Constituency | 12th district |
| In office November 3, 1891 – March 3, 1895 | |
| Preceded by | Francis B. Spinola |
| Succeeded by | George B. McClellan Jr. |
| Constituency | 10th district (1891–93) 12th district (1893–95) |
| In office March 4, 1887 – March 3, 1889 | |
| Preceded by | Abraham Dowdney |
| Succeeded by | Roswell P. Flower |
| Constituency | 12th district |
| Personal details | |
| Born | William Bourke Cockran February 28, 1854 County Sligo, Ireland |
| Died | March 1, 1923 (aged 69) Washington, D.C., U.S. |
| Resting place | Gate of Heaven Cemetery, Hawthorne, New York |
| Political party | Democratic Party |
| Signature | .png){kind=small} |
William Bourke Cockran (February 28, 1854 – March 1, 1923), commonly known as Bourke Cockran or Burke Cochran in contemporary reports, was an Irish-American attorney, Democratic Party politician and orator who represented the East Side of Manhattan in the United States House of Representatives for seven terms between 1887 and 1923. He was a leading conservative advocate for the gold standard, crossing party lines to endorse William McKinley in the presidential election of 1896 and Theodore Roosevelt in the presidential election of 1912.
He was a leading orator of the late 19th and early 20th century. Through his personal relationship with the Churchill family, he was an important, early influence on British statesman Winston Churchill.[1]
Early life and education
[edit]William Bourke Cockran was born at Claragh Cottage in Ballysadare, County Sligo, Ireland on February 28, 1854. His father was Martin Cockran and his mother was Harriet White Bourke.[2] His father was a gentleman farmer, well educated in the classics, and his mother was the daughter of a prominent magistrate from Leinster.[3] Bourke Cockran's father died in July 1859, and the family relocated to Dublin.[4]
Intending to educate him for a life as a priest, Cockran's mother sent him to France, where he was educated near Lille before returning in 1865 to finish his education at Summerhill College.[4] After graduation, he became a leading member of the debating societies of Dublin.[5]
In 1871, he traveled to New York City with the ambition of becoming a lawyer. On his arrival, he remarked to his mother that he was "a good deal bewildered" by the Gilded Age contrasts in New York society between fabulous displays of wealth alongside abject poverty of the tenements and streets.[6] He gained employment as a clerk at the A. T. Stewart & Company department store, though he never appeared for work, and secured a position as a tutor at St. Teresa's Academy, a private day school for girls on Rutgers Street.[7]
After briefly returning to Ireland to cover the unveiling of a monument to Daniel O'Connell in Dublin as a correspondent for the New York Herald, he declined a position at the foreign news desk and became principal of a public school in Tuckahoe, Westchester County.[8] Studying law privately during the night in the private library of judge Abraham R. Tupper, he was admitted to the bar on September 15, 1876 and opened a solo practice in Mount Vernon. After surviving a bout of diphtheria and mourning the death of his first wife in childbirth, he relocated to New York City in 1878.[9][10]
Political career
[edit]Early campaigns and Tammany Hall
[edit]
As his reputation as a litigator grew, Cockran entered politics in 1876 as a member of Irving Hall, a political organization composed of reformist followers of Samuel J. Tilden, including influential men such as Abram Hewitt and William C. Whitney. Cockran made his first political speeches in 1879 in support of Edward Cooper, the successful candidate for mayor, who defeated Tammany Hall candidate Augustus Schell.[11] He travelled to Maine in 1880 to speak in support of Harris M. Plaisted, the Greenback Party candidate for governor, who had been cross-endorsed by the Democratic Party of Maine; years later, he would defend himself against accusations that he had begun his career as a "greenbacker". These speeches greatly enhanced his reputation as an orator, and he joined the national campaign in support of Winfield Scott Hancock for president, travelling to the American Midwest for the first time.[12]
In 1882, Cockran endorsed the nomination of Roswell P. Flower for governor at the Democratic state convention. Impressed by his speech in support of Flower, John Kelly recruited him to Tammany Hall. Though he did not immediately accept, he was appointed as counsel to the Sheriff of New York County and became a member of the Tammany Society in fall 1883.[13] For the remainder of his career, he was the leading spokesman for the Tammany Hall position in national debates, though he avoided local and state political debates, and his standing as a member waned over time.[14]
His most famous early public speech was given at the 1884 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, opposing the adoption of a unit rule and nomination of Grover Cleveland for president.[15] Cleveland, who had been elected in 1882 with Tammany support, governed New York as a non-partisan reformist and distributed patronage positions with preference for merit over party loyalty, angering Kelly.[16]
When John Kelly died in 1886, Cockran was among those within Tammany Hall who opposed to continuation of boss rule under Richard Croker. Though he and Croker, a fellow Irishman, had been personal friends, they soon became bitter personal enemies. Croker once referred to Cockran as the most objectionable man he had ever encountered in politics.[15] Cockran continued to support Tammany as the society's leading campaign orator for the remainder of his life, but his standing within the organization's leadership was shaky, and Croker successfully blocked his election to the United States Senate in 1893 in favor of Edward Murphy Jr.[15]
United States House of Representatives
[edit]Beginning in 1886, Cockran, a Democrat, was a frequent candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives and won several non-consecutive terms.
In 1904, Cockran won a special election return to the House in the empty seat of George B. McClellan Jr., who had resigned to become mayor of New York City. He was elected to three more full terms.
Cockran was a member of the commission to revise the judiciary article of the New York Constitution in 1890.
1896 presidential election
[edit]In 1896, Cockran publicly broke with the Democratic Party, opposing the Free Silver platform of presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan. Cockran campaigned instead for Republican William McKinley, helping to bring Gold Democrats over to McKinley's winning coalition.
In 1900, Cockran returned to the Democratic Party, supporting Bryan's second presidential campaign.
In 1920, Cockran delivered the nominating speech for Al Smith at the Democratic National Convention.[17] Later that year, he was elected to his final term in the House of Representatives.
Personal life and death
[edit]Cockran was married twice. His first wife, Mary Jackson, was his pupil at St. Teresa's Academy. They fell in love in 1876, after he had left the academy, when Jackson nursed him back to health after a bout of diphtheria. They were married after a brief courtship, but she died in childbirth within a year.[18]
His second wife was the daughter of a millionaire merchant.[citation needed]
Cockran was a devout Roman Catholic and became deeply involved in support of Irish nationalism.[19]
Alice Roosevelt Longworth recalled Cockran as "an Anglophobe in public and an Anglomaniac in private."[20]
In 1901, he was awarded the Laetare Medal by the University of Notre Dame, the oldest and most prestigious award for American Catholics.[21]
The Churchills
[edit]Cockran was a friend of Britain's Churchill family and reputed one-time lover of Jennie Churchill.
In 1895, he introduced Jennie's 20-year-old son, Winston Churchill, to American high society during Churchill's first trip to New York. Years later, Churchill credited Cockran as his first political mentor and the chief role model for his own success as an orator.
Churchill wrote in the 1930s that Cockran was, "A pacifist, individualist, democrat, capitalist, and a 'Gold-bug'....He was equally opposed to socialists, inflationist, and Protectionists, and he resisted them on all occasions." Churchill never became a pacifist but he did adopt all the rest of Cockran's stances during his own political career, and carefully read and reread his speeches for oratorical advice.[1] Churchill quoted Cockran in his 1946 "Iron Curtain speech" recalling: "words which I learned 50 years ago from a great Irish-American orator, a friend of mine, Mr Bourke Cockran: 'There is enough for all. The earth is a generous mother. She will provide, in plentiful abundance, food for all her children, if they will but cultivate her soil in justice and in peace.'"[19]
Death and burial
[edit]He served his final years, 1921–1923, as a congressman, dying in Washington, D.C. He is buried in Gate of Heaven Cemetery, Hawthorne, New York.[22]
See also
[edit]
References
[edit]- ^ a b Andrew Roberts, Churchill: Walking with Destiny (2018) p 35.
- ^ Kennedy 1948, p. 10.
- ^ Kennedy 1948, p. 12.
- ^ a b Kennedy 1948, p. 13.
- ^ Kennedy 1948, p. 14.
- ^ McGurrin 1972, p. 21.
- ^ McGurrin 1972, p. 24–26.
- ^ McGurrin 1972, p. 30.
- ^ Kennedy 1948, p. 14–18.
- ^ McGurrin 1972, p. 33.
- ^ McGurrin 1972, p. 42.
- ^ McGurrin 1972, p. 44–45.
- ^ McGurrin 1972, p. 48–50.
- ^ McGurrin 1972, p. 52.
- ^ a b c Kennedy 1948, p. 23–35.
- ^ McGurrin 1972, p. 59–63.
- ^ James McGurrin, Bourke Cockran: a free lance in American politics (Arno Press, 1972).
- ^ McGurrin 1972, p. 31.
- ^ a b Eoin Butler, "The Irish orator who taught Winston Churchill how to win a crowd." Irish Times, February 17, 2017.
- ^ Longworth, Alice Roosevelt (1933). Crowded hours. New York, London: C. Scribner's Sons. pp. 78–79. OCLC 689757741.
- ^ "Recipients | The Laetare Medal". University of Notre Dame. Retrieved August 2, 2020.
- ^ "Archbishop Hays Conducts Mass in Cockran Funeral". New York Daily News. March 4, 1923. p. 89. Retrieved March 2, 2022 – via Newspapers.com.
Bibliography
[edit]- Kennedy, Ambrose (1948). American Orator: The Life of Bourke Cockran. Boston, Mass.: Bruce Humphries Inc.
- McGurrin, James (1972). Bourke Cockran: A Free Lance in American Politics. New York, N.Y.: Arno Press. ISBN 0405004281.
Further reading
[edit]- Gibson, Florence E. The attitudes of the New York Irish toward state and national affairs, 1848-1892 (AMS Press, 1951).
- Kennedy, Ambrose. American Orator: Bourke Cockran; His Life and Politics (1948). 225 pp.
- McElroy, Robert, ed. In The Name Of Liberty: Selected Addresses Of William Bourke Cockran (1925)
- Burns, Keville. www.williambourkecockran.org : The International Statesman
- McGurrin, James. Bourke Cockran: a free lance in American politics (Arno Press, 1972). Online review
- Stovall, Richard Lee. "The rhetoric of Bourke Cockran: a contextual analysis" (PhD dissertation, The Ohio State University, 1975). Online
- . Thom's Irish Who's Who. Dublin: Alexander Thom and Son Ltd. 1923. pp. 40–41.
- United States Congress. "William Bourke Cockran (id: C000575)". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
External links
[edit]
- William Bourke Cockran at Find a Grave
- Mrs. Bourke Cockran on woman suffrage From a scrapbook in the Carrie Chapman Catt Collection in the Rare Book and Special Collection Division at the Library of Congress
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| People | |
| Other | |
- 1854 births
- 1923 deaths
- 19th-century American politicians
- 19th-century Roman Catholics
- 20th-century American politicians
- 20th-century Roman Catholics
- American Roman Catholics
- Burials at Gate of Heaven Cemetery (Hawthorne, New York)
- Catholic politicians from New York (state)
- Democratic Party members of the United States House of Representatives from New York (state)
- Irish emigrants to the United States
- Laetare Medal recipients
- Politicians from County Sligo
- Politicians from New York City