Welcome to today's deep dive. I'm just so glad
you could join us today because we are taking
a completely unexpected route. We really are.
It's a bit out of left field. Right. We are looking
at a document that on its surface might sound
like a total cure for insomnia. It is a Wikipedia
article and it's titled List of United States
Senators from North Carolina. I know. I know.
It sounds incredibly dry. It does. If you were
to pull this up on your screen right now, you
would see exactly what you'd expect. Just a massive
scrolling data table of names, dates and political
parties. Just rows and rows of data. Exactly.
But I promise you, if you stick with us today,
you're going to see that this seemingly dry spreadsheet
is actually a massive treasure trove. It is full
of. human drama, utter unpredictability, and
these really major historical shifts. Okay, let's
unpack this. We are going to prove that a simple
chronological list of politicians is really a
gripping story about how power actually operates.
It genuinely is a fascinating lens to look through.
To set the stage for you, we really have to go
all the way back to the very beginning of the
country. North Carolina ratified the Constitution
on November 21st, 1789. Which was a bit late,
right? Yeah, that was actually quite late in
the game. The first Congress had already convened
and they'd begun their work months prior. But
once they ratified, they didn't waste any time.
Just six days later, on November 27, 1789, the
state elected its first two senators. That was
Samuel Johnston and Benjamin Hawkins. So they
move fast once they're in. Very fast. So right
out of the gate, we shouldn't look at this list
as just raw data. It is a literal timeline of
a state's evolution. And by extension, it's a
microcosm of the entire nation's evolution. Whether
you are a massive history buff or just someone
who is insanely curious about how the machinery
of government actually developed, this deep dive
is going to give you some serious aha moments.
Because we tend to project our modern understanding
of politics backward. You know, we assume things
were always the way they are now. Right, which
is a huge mistake. Exactly. Let's start with
the early days of the republic, because the way
politicians treated the job back then is just
wild compared to today. Imagine someone running
for the U .S. Senate today, winning the election,
and then just shrugging and saying, thanks, but
no thanks. It sounds completely absurd. It does.
Given the modern political machine, it's unthinkable.
But that is exactly what happened. It's one of
the most glaring anomalies right at the top of
the timeline. In 1804... A man named Montfort
Stokes was elected to the Senate and he simply
refused the position. He just said no. He just
flat out turned it down, which actually left
the seat completely vacant from March until December
of 1805. I just have to laugh at the idea of
turning down a U .S. Senate seat today. I mean,
we're talking about a job that now requires years
of intense campaigning, national media scrutiny
and tens of millions of dollars just to secure.
And Stokes just walked away from it. What's fascinating
here is what that refusal reveals about the mindset
of the early republic. Today, we view serving
in the United States Senate as the absolute pinnacle
of a political career. But back then the federal
government was still a very new, very untested
experiment. It wasn't the powerhouse it is now.
Not at all. You have to picture the reality of
early 19th century Washington, D .C. It wasn't
this gleaming capital of global power. It was
essentially a swamp. A literal swamp. A literal
swamp. Travel from North Carolina to D .C. was
incredibly arduous. It often took weeks over
muddy, dangerous roads. Furthermore, the real
day -to -day power laws and decisions that actually
impacted people's lives, that was held at the
state level. So local politics was where the
real action was. Exactly. The federal government
just wasn't the center. So for a prominent local
figure, packing up and moving to a miserable
swamp to debate federal tariffs wasn't necessarily
an attractive proposition. That makes perfect
sense of the rest of this early list, because
Stokes wasn't the only one treating the Senate
like a temporary gig or even an inconvenience.
Oh, definitely not. The early 1800s portion of
this table is basically a revolving door of people
quitting. You have David Stone. who was elected
in 1800 but resigned in 1807 to return to the
state superior court. Right. Then there is John
Branch. He resigned from the Senate in 1829 to
become the U .S. Secretary of the Navy. You jump
forward a bit to Asa Biggs, who resigned in 1858
to become a U .S. district court judge. But my
absolute favorite entry in this era is Francis
Locke Jr. Oh, yes. The 1814 appointment. That
one is incredibly telling. In December 1814,
Francis Locke Jr. was elected to finish a vacant
term. And the table notes that he resigned in
1815 without having qualified. Just incredible.
For anyone who might not be familiar with that
term, qualifying for a seat essentially means
showing up, presenting your credentials, and
officially taking the oath of office. So Locke
basically got the job and then quit before he
even officially started his first day of work.
If we connect this to the bigger picture, I want
you to really consider how the prestige of federal
versus state power has completely inverted over
the centuries. In the 1800s, leaving the U .S.
Senate to take a job as a state judge or a district
judge was seen as a perfectly logical career
move. A promotion almost. Very much so. It was
often a step up in terms of immediate local influence
or at least a step toward a much more comfortable,
practical life closer to home and family. You
look at that data. today. And it feels completely
backward to our modern understanding of political
ambition, where local politicians spend their
whole lives trying to climb the ladder to get
to Washington. So we have this early era of personal
ambivalence where people are treating the Senate
like a temp job. But as we move toward the mid
19th century, that personal choice eventually
gives way to a total systemic breakdown. Yes,
the tone shifts dramatically. You don't just
see individuals quitting. you see the entire
state legislature failing to function. The first
major structural failure jumps right off the
page. From March 1853 to December 1854, there
is a giant gap in the representation. And the
reason listed for this near two -year vacancy
is simply that the state legislature failed to
elect. It's important to remember the mechanics
of the era. Senators weren't elected by popular
vote back then. They were chosen by the state
legislatures. So if a state legislature was deeply
fractured or deadlocked, they simply couldn't
produce a majority vote to send a senator to
Washington. They were just stuck. Completely
stuck. In the 1850s, the nation was buckling
under the extreme partisan tensions leading up
to the Civil War, particularly regarding the
expansion of slavery and states' rights. That
gridlock in the North Carolina Statehouse resulting
in a failure to elect a senator for two years
was a direct reflection of the of a rapidly polarizing
country. Here's where it gets really interesting.
That bureaucratic gridlock was just the tremor
before the earthquake. When you look at the entries
surrounding 1861, the data transitions from political
stalemates to literal warfare. It does. It's
jarring to read. We see the entry for Senator
Thomas Bragg. He was elected in the late 1850s
and then reelected in 1861. But his term abruptly
ends in March of 1861. He resigned and was subsequently
expelled by the Senate for his support of the
Confederacy. The historical reality sets in right
there on the page. Exactly. We're looking at
a stark, recorded action taken by the U .S. Senate
during the onset of the Civil War. There's no
editorializing in the table, just the historical
facts. A fractured government taking formal action
against its own members. And the consequence
of that fracture creates the most visually jarring
anomaly in the entire Wikipedia table. There
is a massive vacancy listed as the Civil War
and Reconstruction era. From March 11, 1861 all
the way to July 14, 1868, North Carolina had
absolutely zero representation in the United
States Senate. That is over seven years of just
nothing, a complete blank space on the timeline.
What's fascinating here is how a simple blank
space on a spreadsheet so perfectly represents
a shattered nation. It's not just missing data
or a clerical error. It is the visual representation
of a state that had seceded, fought a catastrophic
war, and then had to undergo a lengthy and complex
reconstruction process before it was legally
readmitted to the national political apparatus.
It's heavy. It really is. We usually learn about
the Civil War through the lens of major battles
or presidential speeches. But seeing it represented
as a giant empty void on a bureaucratic spreadsheet
is a stark reminder of how completely the nation
broke. The institutional machinery simply ceased
to exist for millions of people. It's a completely
different way to visualize that era of history.
But the drama in this table doesn't stop after
the Civil War and Reconstruction. As we track
into the late 19th and then the 20th century,
we enter what looks like an era of wild unpredictability.
Yes, the data gets very chaotic again. For instance,
you scroll through decades of Democrats and Republicans,
the typical two -party back and forth we're all
familiar with. And then suddenly, right at the
end of the 19th century, you hit Marion Butler.
From 1895 to 1901, North Carolina was represented
by Butler, whose party affiliation is listed
squarely as populist. It completely breaks up
the visual sea of red and blue in the table.
That is a great detail to pull out. The Populist
Party or the People's Party was a major left
wing agrarian political movement in the late
19th century. It was largely driven by farmers
who felt completely ignored by the mainstream
banking and political establishments of both
the Democrats and the Republicans. They just
felt left behind by the system. Exactly. Seeing
Butler's name pop up as a solitary populist senator
is a tiny, perfect window into a very specific
moment of profound economic archival and rural
rebellion in the United States. It was a moment
when the two party duopoly briefly cracked under
the pressure of working class frustration. That
context makes that single row in the spreadsheet
so much more meaningful. But as we move into
the mid 20th century, the anomalies turn from
political party shifts to something a lot more
grim. If you look closely at the class two Senate
seat during this era, there is a statistical
cluster of tragedy that almost defies belief.
It really is unbelievable. And just to clarify
for everyone listening, the U .S. Senate is divided
into three classes so that only about a third
of the Senate is up for election every two years.
It's a built -in stability measure designed by
the founders so the entire chamber can't be replaced
all at once. North Carolina holds a Class 2 seat
and a Class 3 seat. Right. And it's that Class
2 seat that experiences this incredible run of
instability. Between 1930 and 1958, an unbelievable
number of senators died while holding that specific
office. You have Lee S. Hoverman, who died in
1930. Josiah Bailey died in 1946. J. Melville
Broughton died in 1949. Will Smith died in 1953.
And W. Kerr Scott died in 1950. That is an astonishing
cluster of mortality. Five sitting U .S. senators
dying in office within a 28 -year span, mostly
concentrated in the 1940s and 50s. And if we
connect this to the bigger picture, it caused
absolute political chaos for the state's representation.
Seniority is the currency of power in the U .S.
Senate. The longer you serve, the better committee
assignments you get, and the more influence you
have to steer federal resources back to your
home state. So they were constantly resetting
to the bottom of the ladder. Precisely. Because
of all these sudden deaths, North Carolina was
constantly losing its seniority. Furthermore,
it created a massive headache back home because
the state's governor had to keep stepping in
to appoint short -term replacements to fill the
seat until a special election could be held.
I'm trying to imagine the internal party chaos
of that. If the governor keeps having to handpick
replacements, did any of those appointees actually
manage to hold onto the seat when the special
elections finally rolled around? That is where
the data reveals a really intriguing pattern.
Those appointed senators almost never held on
to the job. Yes, you see a constant string of
short -term appointees, and then the special
election hits, and the appointed senator frequently
loses the nomination to finish the term. Take
William B. Umstead. He was appointed in December
1946 to continue Josiah Bailey's term after Bailey
passed away. But by 1948, when it came time for
the voters to weigh in, Umstead lost the election
to actually finish that term. So the voters just
rejected him. They did. And the exact same scenario
played out with Alton Lennon. He was appointed
in July 1953 after Willis Smith died, but lost
the nomination to finish the term in 1954. So
the governor's blessing essentially meant nothing
to the voters. Exactly. This raises an important
question about the nature of democratic legitimacy.
It showed a clear disconnect between the political
establishment, the governors making the appointments
and the voting public who consistently rejected
those handpicked successors. It is a perfect
example of how much instability, loss of influence
and raw political friction is hiding behind these
neat little rows and columns of names and dates.
It really is. But eventually that mid -century
turbulence calms down. We see a massive shift
in the late 20th century, specifically beginning
in the 1970s, where the idea of the lifelong
career politician truly solidifies in the data.
This is most obvious when Jesse Helms, a Republican,
takes office in 1973. Yes. Looking at the data
neutrally, the sheer length of Helms' tenure
is staggering compared to the rapid turnover
and deaths we just discussed. He held that seat
from 1973 all the way until 2003. 30 years. That
makes him North Carolina's longest serving senator.
30 straight years in the chamber. Which perfectly
mirrors a broader national trend. Across the
country during this era, we see senators building
these massive multi -decade careers. A 30 -year
uninterrupted run is a monumental shift from
those early days we talked about, where guys
like David Stone were quitting after a few years
to go be local judges. It's a completely different
world. It completely redefines the modern expectation
of what a Senate career looks like. You go to
Washington and you stay there. It absolutely
does. The accumulation of seniority became the
ultimate goal. And as we scan down the rest of
the modern era, you start seeing names and political
maneuvers that will probably be very recognizable.
You have John Edwards, who was elected in 1998.
And as we know from recent political history,
he stepped away from that Senate seat in 2005
to mount a presidential run, treating the Senate
as a springboard to the executive branch. You
also see the barrier breaking presence of notable
female senators with Elizabeth Dole and Kay Hagan.
representing different parties in the 2000s.
And that brings us right up to the current snapshot
of North Carolina's representation. Right now,
the state is represented by a Republican delegation,
Tom Tillis, who was first elected in 2014, and
Ted Budd, who was elected in 2022. And the beauty
of this timeline is that it doesn't just show
us the past. It points us toward the future.
The data shows us exactly when the next political
battles are going to be waged. Tillis' class
two seat will be determined in the upcoming 2026
election, and Budd's class three seat is up for
grabs in 2028. It is also worth pointing out
the sheer scale of the modern political apparatus
we are looking at. A senator doesn't operate
in a vacuum anymore. Today, North Carolina have
those two senators, but they also have 13 representatives
in the House, bringing their total congressional
delegation to 16 people. That is an excellent
point of comparison. When you put that massive
16 person federal delegation with all their staffs
and committees and multimillion dollar budgets.
Next to the very first entry on this list, just
Samuel Johnston and Benjamin Hawkins riding carriages
up from North Carolina back in 1789. You really
see how profoundly the state, the population
and the sheer scope of the federal government
have expanded over two and a half centuries.
OK, let's bring it all together. So what does
this all mean? It means that a simple Wikipedia
list of politicians is never just a list. It
is a mirror. It reflects a nation's history with
absolute clarity if you know how to read it.
Through these names and dates, we watched the
growing pains of a new republic where no one
was quite sure if the federal government actually
mattered. We saw the catastrophic break of a
civil war represented by a chilling seven -year
void of representation. We saw the working class
outrage of a lone populist. We saw how sudden
deaths can cause decades of partisan chaos. And
we saw the sweeping modern realignment that led
to 30 -year lifelong political tenures. It's
incredible. And I really hope that for you listening,
the next time you are faced with a dry data table,
a spreadsheet, or a list of historical dates,
whether it's for your local town council or the
federal government, you remember to look for
the blank spaces. Look for the statistical anomalies.
Check the footnotes. Because as we just saw with
politicians refusing office or state legislatures
utterly failing to function or a tragic cluster
of early deaths, that is where the real human
stories hide. Absolutely. And to wrap up our
deep dive today, I want to leave you with a final
thought to mull over, building on everything
we've traced through this timeline. Let's hear
it. Considering that early on, men like Monfort
Stokes once outright refused a U .S. Senate seat,
and early politicians frequently quit to take
local state judge jobs, how fundamentally different
would our modern political landscape be if the
United States Senate was still viewed as a temporary,
burdensome chore rather than a lifelong, lucrative
career goal? Wow. That is quite the question
to leave us on. Thank you for joining us on this
deep dive, and we'll catch you next time.