The House of Truth: A Washington Political Salon and the Foundations of American Liberalism

by Brad Snyder

Overview

In 1912, a group of ambitious young men, including future Supreme Court justice Felix Frankfurter and future journalistic giant Walter Lippmann, became disillusioned by the sluggish progress of change in the Taft Administration. The individuals started to band together informally, joined initially by their enthusiasm for Theodore Roosevelt's Bull Moose campaign. They self-mockingly called the 19th Street row house in which they congregated the "House of Truth," playing off the lively dinner discussions with frequent guest (and neighbor) Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. about life's verities. Lippmann and Frankfurter were house-mates, and their frequent guests included not merely Holmes but Louis Brandeis, Herbert Hoover, Herbert Croly - founder of the New Republic - and the sculptor (and sometime Klansman) Gutzon Borglum, later the creator of the Mount Rushmore monument.

Weaving together the stories and trajectories of these varied, fascinating, combative, and sometimes contradictory figures, Brad Snyder shows how their thinking about government and policy shifted from a firm belief in progressivism - the belief that the government should protect its workers and regulate monopolies - into what we call liberalism - the belief that government can improve citizens' lives without abridging their civil liberties and, eventually, civil rights. Holmes replaced Roosevelt in their affections and aspirations. His famous dissents from 1919 onward showed how the Due Process clause could protect not just business but equality under the law, revealing how a generally conservative and reactionary Supreme Court might embrace, even initiate, political and social reform.

Across the years, from 1912 until the start of the New Deal in 1933, the remarkable group of individuals associated with the House of Truth debated the future of America. They fought over Sacco and Vanzetti's innocence; the dangers of Communism; the role the United States should play the world after World War One; and thought dynamically about things like about minimum wage, child-welfare laws, banking insurance, and Social Security, notions they not only envisioned but worked to enact. American liberalism has no single source, but one was without question a row house in Dupont Circle and the lives that intertwined there at a crucial moment in the country's history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780190261986
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	02/02/2017
Pages:	824
Sales rank:	771,111
Product dimensions:	6.50(w) x 9.40(h) x 2.10(d)

About the Author

Brad Snyder teaches constitutional law, civil procedure, twentieth century American legal history, and sports law at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He has written two critically acclaimed books about baseball, including A Well-Paid Slave: Curt Flood's Fight for Free Agency in Professional Sports, and contributed articles to Slate and the Washington Post. He has also appeared on ESPN, C-SPAN, and in HBO and New York Times documentaries. For many years, he lived two blocks away from the House of Truth in Washington, DC, where he and his family still reside.

Table of Contents

Dedication
Introduction
Chapter 1: Expanding Horizons
Chapter 2: 1727 Nineteenth Street
Chapter 3: The Call of the Moose
Chapter 4: The Center of the Universe
Chapter 5: Buddha
Chapter 6: The Soldier's Faith
Chapter 7: Temperamentally Unfit
Chapter 8: Our Founder
Chapter 9: Fighting Valentine's Fight
Chapter 10: The House at War
Chapter 11: One Man War
Chapter 12: Uniting the Labor Army
Chapter 13: The Inquiry
Chapter 14: The Wonderful One
Chapter 15: The H/T Cannot Be Re-constituted
Chapter 16: Harvard's Dangerous Men
Chapter 17: Touched with Fire
Chapter 18: Protestant of Nordic Stock
Chapter 19: We Live By Symbols
Chapter 20: The 1924 Election and the Basic Issues of Liberalism
Chapter 21: Eloquence May Set Fire to Reason
Chapter 22: A Fly on an Elephant
Chapter 23: No Ordinary Case
Chapter 24: This World Cares More for Red than for Black
Chapter 25: A Damn Poor Psychologist
Chapter 26: The Happy Warrior
Chapter 27: Freedom for the Thought that We Hate
Chapter 28: America's Shrine for Political Democracy
Chapter 29: The Best Men
Chapter 30: A Very Great Beginning
Chapter 31: The Hard Case Has Melted
Epilogue
Appendix
Photo Credits and Bibliography
Acknowledgments

Editorial Reviews

"For the first time, we have the real story of this incredible little galaxy that included such disparate figures as Felix Frankfurter, Walter Lippmann, and Gutzon Borglum, and reached out to cultivate and invigorate the aged Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes—with profound and lasting influence on the course of American politics. Brad Snyder tells this story with verve and insight. This is a major work in the history of this nation's public life." — John Milton Cooper, Jr., author of Woodrow Wilson: A Biography

"With his deep understanding of history and the law, Brad Snyder has crafted a notably illuminating and refreshing book. Deeply researched and finely written, The House of Truth brings to life a group of brilliant friends whose passion for justice helped shape what became known as the American Century." — David Maraniss, author of Once in a Great City: A Detroit Story

"This dazzling book provokes reconsideration of the Progressive era, legal reform and modern American liberalism. I know of no other work that so ably transports its readers into the packed and exciting years of the early twentieth century." — Laura Kalman, Professor of History, University of California, Santa Barbara

"The author's focus on the significance of the Supreme Court makes the book unusually timely. An accomplished, authoritative history of American liberalism."—Kirkus

"Lengthy, lively, and exhaustively researched... At its best, which is much of the text, The House of Truth does what history can do to evoke the past, explain its issues, re-create its personages and illuminate the present."—The Wall Street Journal

"The legal historian Brad Snyder has reconstructed the glories of this group house in a bulging, careful study of its inhabitants... Snyder's account usefully maps a hinge moment in American political history."—The Atlantic, Franklin Foer

"This is a highly readable volume from which both experts and the merely curious can profit."—CHOICE Reviews

From the Publisher

2016-10-31
The history of a Washington, D.C., residence that served as a crucible for liberal ideas and strategies.In 1912, a row house in DuPont Circle was dubbed the "House of Truth" by its original residents: labor relations expert Robert G. Valentine and lawyers Winfred Denison, Loring Christie, and Felix Frankfurter. Through the years, many others made their home there: among them, outspoken journalist Walter Lippmann, one of the founders of the New Republic; and Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. and Louis Brandeis, both of whom served on the Supreme Court. Lippmann, Holmes, Brandeis, and Frankfurter dominate Snyder's (Law/Univ. of Wisconsin; A Well-Paid Slave: Curt Flood's Fight for Free Agency in Professional Sports, 2006, etc.) richly detailed history of progressivism, which ends with Franklin Roosevelt's election in 1932 and Holmes' death in 1935. Drawing on a wealth of manuscript sources, the author traces the evolving alliances and views of his four passionate and influential protagonists. Except for Holmes, all believed "that government recognition of organized labor would create an industrial democracy." Except for Holmes, they were Jewish, with varying connections to their heritages and responses to anti-Semitism, which was rampant in government, at Harvard, where Frankfurter taught, and a growing threat in Europe. Brandeis was a leader in American Zionism; Lippmann described Hitler as "the authentic voice of a civilized people." Although Snyder depicts Holmes with warm admiration, the jurist emerges as a Victorian mired in the 19th century. Brandeis gently urged Holmes to read about "the pressing issues of the day," but Holmes, Snyder writes, "loathed" facts. The author provides details of liberals' involvement with each presidential aspirant and winner; with the Paris Peace Conference; with the notorious trial and executions of Sacco and Vanzetti, and many other social and political causes. At times, the sheer amount of information overwhelms the narrative, more appropriate for a reference source than a lively group biography. Nevertheless, the author's focus on the significance of the Supreme Court makes the book unusually timely. An accomplished, authoritative history of American liberalism.

Kirkus Reviews