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History and Government—Congressional Biographies—MaineSMITH, Margaret Chase
(1897—1995)
Senate Years of Service:
1949-1973
Party:
Republican
SMITH, Margaret Chase, (wife of Clyde Harold Smith), a Representative and a Senator from Maine; born Margaret Madeline Chase, December 14, 1897, in Skowhegan, Somerset County, Maine; attended the public schools; taught school in Skowhegan, Maine 1916-1917; business executive for country weekly newspaper and a woolen company 1919-1930; secretary to husband while he was in Congress 1937-1940; lieutenant colonel, Air Force Reserve 1950-1958; elected as a Republican to the Seventy-sixth Congress, by special election, June 3, 1940, to fill the vacancy caused by the death of her husband, Clyde H. Smith; reelected to the four succeeding Congresses and served from June 3, 1940, to January 3, 1949; was not a candidate for reelection but was elected in 1948 to the United States Senate; reelected in 1954, 1960 and 1966 and served January 3, 1949, until January 3, 1973; unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1972; chairwoman, Special Committee on Rates of Compensation (Eighty-third Congress), Republican Conference (Ninetieth through Ninety-second Congresses), ranking Republican member on Armed Services Committee (Ninetieth through Ninety-second Congresses), ranking Republican member on Aeronautical and Space Sciences Committee (Eighty-eighth through Ninety-first Congresses); first woman to be placed in nomination for the presidency at a major party convention 1964; visiting professor for the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation 1973-1976; awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom on July 6, 1989; was a resident of Skowhegan, Maine, until her death on May 29, 1995; remains were cremated, and ashes placed in the residential wing of the Margaret Chase Smith Library, Skowhegan, Maine.
Bibliography
American National Biography
; Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives
; Smith, Margaret Chase. Declaration of Conscience
. New York: Doubleday, 1972; Sherman, Janann. No Place for a Woman: A Life of Senator Margaret Chase Smith
. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2000; Hutchison, Kay Bailey. “Margaret Chase Smith.” In American Heroines: The Spirited Women Who Shaped Our Country.
New York: HaperCollins, 2004: 210-243.
Braden, Maria. “A Rose by Any Other Name,” inWomen Politicians and the Media
, 50-62. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1996.
Gallant, Gregory Peter. “Margaret Chase Smith, McCarthyism, and the Drive for Political Purification.” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Maine, 1992.
Graham, Frank. Margaret Chase Smith: Woman of Courage
. New York: John Day Co., 1964.
Harris, Lois Anne. “Margaret Chase Smith: An Examination of Her Public Speaking with Emphasis on the ‘Declaration of Conscience, 1950’ and the ‘Declaration of Conscience, 1970’.” Ph.D. dissertation, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, 1974.
Hutchison, Kay Bailey. “Margaret Chase smith.” In American Heroines: The Spirited Women Who Shaped Our Country
. New York: HarperCollins, 2004: 210-243.
Kaptur, Marcy. “Margaret Chase Smith.” In Women of Congress: A Twentieth-Century Odyssey
, 84-101. Washington: Congressional Quarterly Inc., 1996.
Lamson, Peggy. Few Are Chosen: American Women in Political Life Today
. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1968.
Morrison, Dennis L. “Margaret Chase Smith’s 1950 Declaration of Conscience Speech.” Maine Historical Society Quarterly
32 (Summer 1992): 2-25; 51-55.
Schmidt, Patricia L. Margaret Chase Smith: Beyond Convention
. Orono: University of Maine Press, 1996.
Sherman, Janann. “‘Senator-at-Large for America’s Women’: Margaret Chase Smith and the Paradox of Gender Affinity,” included in Susan J. Carroll, ed., The Impact of Women in Public Office
. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001: 89-116.
___. “‘They Either Need These Women or They Do Not’: Margaret Chase Smith and the Fight for Regular Status for Women in the Military.” The Journal of Military History
54 (January 1990), 47-78.
___. No Place for a Woman: A Life of Senator Margaret Chase Smith
. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2000.
Smith, Margaret Chase. Declaration of Conscience
. Edited by William C. Lewis, Jr. New York: Doubleday Co., 1972.
Smith, Margaret Chase, and H. Paul Jeffers. Gallant Women
. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1968.
Vallin, Marlene Boyd. Margaret Chase Smith: Model Public Servant
. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1998.
Wallace, Patricia Ward. The Politics of Conscience: A Biography of Margaret Chase Smith
. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1995.
Source: Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1771-Present
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