Tom Stewart

Arthur Thomas " Tom" Stewart ( born January 11, 1892 in Dunlap, Sequatchie County, Tennessee, † October 10, 1972 in Nashville, Tennessee) was an American lawyer and politician (Democratic Party) of the State of Tennessee in the U.S. Senate represented.

Legal career

Tom Stewart first visited the Pryor Institute, a private school in Jasper, and then the Emory College near Atlanta (Georgia ). After his return to Tennessee, he continued his education at the Law School of Cumberland University in Lebanon. In 1913 he was admitted to the bar, after which he began practicing as a lawyer in Birmingham (Alabama ). In 1915 he moved his office to Jasper in 1919 finally to Winchester.

Stewart ran in 1923 for the office of district attorney in the 18th District Court of Tennessee, which he held after his successful election to 1939. During this time he led before the criminal court in Dayton, the indictment in the Scopes trial, in which the teacher John Thomas Scopes was accused of illegally teaching the theory of evolution in a public school. He put the emphasis on the political aspect of his argument, according to which the control of the public schools was invariably the Parliament of Tennessee; this had previously adopted, the relevant law, which became known as Butler Act. Scopes was sentenced to a street of $ 100; in the appeal before the Supreme Court of Tennessee, the conviction was overturned due to procedural errors.

U.S. Senator

In 1938, Stewart ran for the seat of the late Nathan L. Bachman in the Senate of the United States. He met her in the Primary of the Democrats who practically anticipated the actual choice given the former weakness of the Republican Party, trade union leader George L. Berry, who had been appointed by Governor Gordon Browning Bachman kommissarischem successor. Stewart chose the area code for and won the official election on November 2, 1938, 75.9 percent of the vote clearly against the Republicans Dwayne D. Maddox ( 19.4 percent). Although he had the Senate seat can take immediately; but he decided to wait for the end of his tenure as a prosecutor, and went thus until 16 January 1939 in the Congress one.

When Senator Stewart belonged to the former conservative Southern wing of the Democratic Group. From contemporaries he was regarded as an ally of Edward Crump, the long time head leading his party in Tennessee. He was re-elected in 1942; in the same year began the internment of Japanese -born Americans, whereupon Stewart brought a bill in the Senate, according to which these and American citizenship should be revoked. In 1948, he lost the Democratic primary against the more progressive oriented Estes Kefauver, after which he retired from the Senate on January 3, 1949. As a result, Stewart worked as a lawyer again. He died in 1972 in Nashville and was buried in Winchester.