Manhood and Politics: The Bankhead-Hobson Campaigns of 1904 and 1906

Alabama voters encountered a new political landscape at the turn of the twentieth century. For African American citizens, this landscape was foreboding, as the new constitution of 1901 and subsequent legislation disfranchised great numbers of them and poor whites as well. Less well known are the changes that transpired because of the introduction of the Democratic primary. For years, conservatives and progressives alike had been demanding the institution of a primary for all political offices. They got their wish. The Democratic Party introduced the primary system, and the first primary—confined to races for state offices—was held in 1902. The first congressional primary was held in 1904. The most exciting race of that year pitted nine-term congressman and Civil War veteran John Hollis Bankhead against Spanish-American War hero Richmond P. Hobson. It was Congressman Bankhead’s first serious political challenge after almost twenty years in office. Political fireworks that earlier might have been confined to the convention hall were now on full display for the voters in the Sixth Congressional District as the two candidates crisscrossed the region in 1904 and again in 1906, engaging each other in a series of spirited and entertaining debates. ¹

The sixty-two-year-old Bankhead was the oldest Democrat serving in Congress, while Hobson was a dashing naval officer almost thirty years Bankhead’s junior. Whereas Hobson may have had youth and vigor on his side, Bankhead had a solid record, power, and connections. It was a campaign of opposites: the aging Confederate veteran dedicated to the development of his state’s resources versus the hero of the Spanish-American War committed to building a strong navy and expanding American power overseas. As veterans, both men benefited from the cultural link between manhood, military service, and political leadership. Nevertheless, campaign rhetoric and correspondence reveals interesting shifts in the changing standards by which masculinity was defined—standards that allowed a relative newcomer to challenge a nine-term incumbent. By most accounts, Hobson had set himself a huge task. Bankhead bested Hobson in 1904, but the naval hero never stopped campaigning and returned to challenge the senior congressman two years later, finally defeating him in 1906. To a greater degree than in the 1904 contest, Hobson took advantage of the surge of progressive politics across the state, tying himself to a number of reform movements, in particular the push for prohibition. In so doing, he benefited from a larger shift that saw evangelical men like himself making their own claims to the culture of honor—a culture that had been at odds with that of evangelical Protestants before the war. These two hard-fought political races cemented in the arrogant and prickly Hobson a firm belief that John Bankhead was not just a political opponent but a personal nemesis determined to thwart the younger man’s ambitions.

The son of a successful planter and slaveholder who marched off to war at the age of 18, John Bankhead spent nearly his entire adult life in public service. He returned home from the war a young man of twenty-three. He represented Marion County in the state legislature in the 1865–67 sessions, where he worked hard to limit the revolutionary aspects of Reconstruction, voting in favor of various Black Codes and opposing the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment. He was elected in 1875 as state senator from the 12th district and supported the new conservative Democratic regime, and again as a representative of the newly created Lamar County in 1881.² He did not remain in the General Assembly for long, however. He sought a higher-profile post, and in 1881 he was appointed warden of the state penitentiary at Wetumpka. He came into that position promoting a reform agenda, and during his tenure conditions for prisoners improved somewhat. His major accomplishment, though, was creation of the Bankhead Plan, which effectively wedded the state’s practice of leasing state convicts to the burgeoning coal industry.³ Having helped develop a framework for the state’s political, social, and economic development during the...