James Francis BYRNES, Congress, SC (1882-1972)

BYRNES James Francis , a Representative and a Senator from South Carolina; born in Charleston, S.C., May 2, 1882; attended the public schools; official court reporter for the second circuit of South Carolina 1900-1908; editor of the Journal and Review, Aiken, S.C. 1903-1907; studied law; admitted to the bar in 1903 and commenced practice in Aiken, S.C.; solicitor for the second circuit of South Carolina 1908-1910; elected as a Democrat to the Sixty-second Congress, reelected to the six succeeding Congresses (March 4, 1911-March 3, 1925); was not a candidate for renomination in 1924, but was an unsuccessful candidate for United States Senator; resumed the practice of law in Spartanburg, S.C.; elected as a Democrat to the United States Senate on November 4, 1930; reelected in 1936 and served from March 4, 1931, until his resignation on July 8, 1941, having been appointed to the Supreme Court; chairman, Committee to Audit and Control the Contingent Expense (Seventy-third through Seventy-seventh Congresses); Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court from July 1941 until his resignation on October 3, 1942, to head the wartime Office of Economic Stabilization until May 1943; director of the Office of War Mobilization, May 1943 until his resignation in April 1945; Secretary of State in the Cabinet of President Harry Truman 1945-1947; resumed the practice of law in Washington, D.C.; Governor of South Carolina 1951-1955; retired and resided in Columbia, S.C., where he died April 9, 1972; interment in Trinity Episcopal Cathedral Cemetery.

Bibliography

American National Biography; Byrnes, James Francis. All in One Lifetime. New York: Harper, 1958; Robertson, David. Sly and Able: A Political Biography of James F. Byrnes. New York: W.W. Norton Co., 1994.

Source: Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1771-Present