Tennessee's War of the Roses
- Dennis L. Peterson
- 3 hours ago
- 4 min read
Yes, I know that today marks the anniversary of the beginning of the War of the Roses, the military contest between the Houses of York and Lancaster in 1455-1287. But I don't want to write about that. Besides, I'm not an Anglophile; my preferred subject matter involves U.S. history, particularly that of the South. And since this is my blog, I'll write what I want!
And what I want to write about is a family that was divided and had been for many years. I want to write about two brothers in the Taylor family who went head to head and toe to toe in mortal political combat--and stayed on cordial terms both during and after the election.
The brothers were born and reared in the Elizabethton-Johnson City area of Carter County, Tennessee. Their father was a Methodist preacher who had been a congressman, elected as a Whig. During the War Between the States, he supported the Union. Their mother, however, had a brother who was a Democrat who had served as Speaker of the House in the Tennessee legislature, so she favored the Democrat Party. During the War Between the States, she sided with the Confederacy. With such division within their immediate family, the brothers were destined, it seemed, for conflict.
That destiny seemed to come true as the brothers chose different political parties. Alfred (Alf), who was born on August 6, 1848, became a Republican, and Robert (Bob), who was born almost two years later on July 1, 1850, became a Democrat. And they both got involved in politics.
In 1886, Tennesseans had to choose a new governor. In June of that year, the Republicans met in Nashville and nominated Alf Taylor to be their candidate for governor. In August, the Democrats chose as their candidate Bob Taylor. The brothers decided that they would campaign together, debating each other in open public venues forty-one times during the canvas.
The campaign got underway and the brothers traveled around the state together. They stayed in the same hotels, stayed in the same room, and even slept in the same bed a few times. That gave an entirely new spin on the adage that politics makes strange bedfellows.
Supporters began to compare their race to the English War of the Roses and even began wearing different colored roses to identify with the candidate of their choice.
The brothers were cordial on the debate platforms. They were both accomplished storytellers and fiddlers, and they employed both skills on the platform rather than addressing issues. Bob even said the following concerning the publicizing of their contest as the war of the roses: "The red rose and the white rose bloom together and shed their odors upon the same atmosphere, and gently struggling for supremacy, glorify the twilight hours."
Bob expressed the brothers' mutual sentiments in one speech he gave, declaring, "I have a very high regard for the Republican candidate. He is a perfect gentleman because he is my brother.... I have never seen the hour that I would not willingly lay down my life to save him, nor the dawn of the day that I would not lay down my life to destroy his party!"
But, as brothers are wont to do, they sometimes played good-natured tricks on each other. For example (and this might--or might not--be apocryphal), Alf had worked hard preparing a wonderfully elegant new speech for one occasion and then left his hotel room to visit some friends. He was just returning when he heard Bob addressing the crowd. The words he was speaking sounded awfully familiar to Alf. He returned to his room to discover that the manuscript of his speech was gone. Bob had pilfered it and was delivering Alf's speech. Alf had to "make do" when it came his turn to speak.
On election day, the results came in. Bob got 126,151 votes; Alf garnered 109,837. Bob became governor and served two terms. But Alf was not discouraged. He ran for and won a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, where he served three terms. And then it was his turn to be governor, and he won the office in 1921. He was seventy-two years old at the time.
This reminds me of the way it was in the early 1980s. When Ronald Reagan, a Republican, was president, he and Tip O'Neill, the Democrat Speaker of the House, were at loggerheads during the day, but at night they could be the best of friends. Today, however, it's rough and tumble politics 24/7. As my mother used to say, it is possible to disagree without being disagreeable. But the politicians of today didn't have my mother as their mother. Otherwise, they'd behave differently, rather than being consumed by anger, hatred, vindictiveness, and vengeance.
I heard the other day of a mother who was determined to end the bickering and fighting between her children. So when she had had enough of it one day, she took one of her husband's T-shirts and put it on the two scrapping siblings. One had an arm in the left sleeve, and the other had the opposite arm in the right sleeve. And both of their heads had to fit through the one hole at the top of the shirt. The told the the kids to clean up their messy room. Face to face with each other and limited to using only one hand each, they had to get along to get anything done. Before long, they were laughing at themselves as they worked together to get the room cleaned.
I think Congress needs a giant-sized T-shirt to wear. Maybe then they'd finally get something done and the political air would be a lot clearer and cleaner.