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The University of North Carolina Press
448 pp., 61/8 x 91/4, 36 illus., notes, index
Senator Sam Ervin, Last of the Founding Fathers
2007 North Caroliniana Book Award, North Caroliniana Society
Many Americans remember Senator Sam Ervin (1896-1985) as the affable, Bible-quoting, old country lawyer who chaired the Senate Watergate hearings in 1973. Ervin's stories from down home in North Carolina, his reciting literary passages ranging from Shakespeare to Aesop's fables, and his earnest lectures in defense of civil liberties and constitutional government contributed to the downfall of President Nixon and earned Senator Ervin a reputation as "the last of the founding fathers."
Yet for most of his twenty years in the Senate, Ervin applied these same rhetorical devices to a very different purpose. Between 1954 and 1974, he was Jim Crow's most talented legal defender as the South's constitutional expert during the congressional debates on civil rights. The paradox of the senator's opposition to civil rights and defense of civil liberties lies at the heart of this biography of Sam Ervin.
Drawing on newly opened archival material, Karl Campbell illuminates the character of the man and the historical forces that shaped him. The senator's distrust of centralized power, Campbell argues, helps explain his ironic reputation as a foe of civil rights and a champion of civil liberties. Campbell demonstrates that the Watergate scandal represented the culmination of an escalating series of clashes between the imperial presidency of Richard Nixon and a congressional counterattack led by Senator Ervin. The issue central to that struggle, as well as to many of the other crusades in Ervin's life, remains a key question of the American experience today--how to exercise legitimate government power while protecting essential individual freedoms.
"In a biography of Ervin . . . Karl Campbell wrestles with [many] questions as he charts Ervin's life from his birth in Morganton to its climax in 1973-74 when he became America's folk hero as chair of the Senate Watergate hearings. . . . Campbell's compact description of Ervin's pre-Senate life is interesting and entertaining."
--Chapel Hill News
"An excellent biography that captures much of the essence of one of the prominent mid-20th-century senators. . . . A welcome addition to the understanding of Ervin's southern mind as it sought to cope with changing conditions in region and the nation caused by changing dynamics in US society. Highly recommended."
--CHOICE
"This is a masterful political biography. Karl E. Campbell's beautifully written biography of Senator Sam Ervin is a first-rate achievement. Campbell persuasively shows how Ervin's experiences in North Carolina shaped his Senate career as an opponent of civil rights as well as a supporter of civil liberties."
--Merle Black, co-author of Divided America: The Ferocious Power Struggle in American Politics
"Few U.S. Senators ever achieve the fame of North Carolina's Sam Ervin, whose punishing inquiry into the perfidies of the Nixon Administration brought down a President. Ervin became a hero to millions, but as Karl Campbell demonstrates in this carefully crafted, illuminating biography, Ervin was not the progressive saint of 1970s legend. There were few leaders better on civil liberties, few worse on civil rights. Campbell gives us both sides of Ervin, and his even-handed treatment enables us to reach our own judgment on this brilliant, complicated man."
--Larry J. Sabato, director, Center for Politics, University of Virginia, author of A More Perfect Constitution
"Rescuing Sam Ervin from the clichés that have marked much of what has been written about him, Campbell shows areas of continuity: Ervin's consistent apprehensions about the dangers of concentrated power and his defense of the individual's zone of privacy long before the courts recognized such a right. At the same time, Campbell captures the way in which Ervin's positions evolved over time and places him squarely in the context of his community, his state, and his region. This book should be of interest even to people who may not care a whit about Sam Ervin, because Campbell has so skillfully shown the culture of Ervin's lifetime and how it shaped him and his generation."
--Dan T. Carter, University of South Carolina, author of The Politics of Rage: George Wallace, the Origins of the New Conservatism, and the Transformation of American Politics
Cloth: $34.95
© 2007 The University of North Carolina Press
116 South Boundary Street, Chapel Hill, NC 27514-3808
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