"Kentucky Senator" Thruston Morton Hand Signed TLS Dated 1965 For Sale

Up for sale "Kentucky Senator" Thruston Morton Hand Signed TLS Dated 1965. 

ES-5051

Thruston Ballard Morton (August

19, 1907 – August 14, 1982), was an American politician. A Republican,

Morton represented Kentucky in the U.S. House

of Representatives and the U.S. Senate. Morton was

born on August 19, 1907, in Louisville, Kentucky, to

David Morton and his wife, Mary Ballard, descended from pioneer settlers of the

area. He had a brother, Rogers Clark Ballard Morton, who also became a politician, and

a sister, Jane, who survived him. He attended local public schools and

the Woodberry Forest School,

before he entered Yale University. He

received a B.A. there in 1929. Morton then worked in the family business,

Ballard & Ballard Flour Milling, becoming its chairman of the board before

the company was sold to the Pillsbury Company. A lifelong Episcopalian,

he married Belle Clay Lyons and was survived by their two sons, Clay Lyons

Morton and Thruston Ballard Morton, Jr., and five grandchildren. His

brother, Rogers Clark Ballard Morton,

represented Maryland in the U.S. House

of Representatives from 1963 through 1971. The Morton brothers

served together in the U.S. Congress from 1963 to 1968, with Thruston as a U.S.

Senator representing Kentucky and Rogers as a U.S. Representative representing

Maryland. Both brothers also served as chair of the Republican National

Committee. Rogers Morton subsequently became U.S.

Secretary of the Interior in the administration of Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, and then became U.S.

Secretary of Commerce under Ford, before chairing Ford's

re-election campaign in 1976.

In 1956,

Morton, by a very narrow margin, defeated Clements from Kentucky, a former governor of in the U.S. Senate, by 506,903 votes to 499,922. Morton was

re-elected to a second term in the U.S. Senate in 1962,

defeating the Democratic lieutenant governor and

former mayor of

Louisville, Wilson W. Wyatt. Morton served from January 3, 1957 until his

resignation, on December 16, 1968. He vacated the seat a few weeks early to

allow his successor, Marlow Cook, a fellow

Republican with similar views, to gain an

edge in seniority. In the Senate, Morton was considered a moderate

and voted, along with his Republican colleague, Sen. John Sherman Cooper from Kentucky and most other Republicans, for the Civil Rights Acts of 1957, 1960, 1964, and 1968, as well as the 24th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and

the confirmation of Thurgood Marshall to the U.S. Supreme Court.

A compromise that Morton proposed to guarantee jury trials in all criminal

contempt cases except for voting rights proved, with the assistance of Sens. Everett  Kirksen from Illinois and Bourke Hickenlooper from Iowa,

crucial in passing that Civil Rights Act. Morton

was the chair of the Republican National

Committee from 1959 to 1961 and chaired the Republican National

Convention of 1964. When Morton retired, he surprised many, who considered him

at the peak of his political power. However, he opposed the Vietnam War despite being criticized by Rep. William Cowger from Kentucky. Also, he was both depressed by

the urban violence after the deaths of civil rights leader Martin Luther King and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy from New York, and disappointed in his party's failure to address

the broader social issues. He also ultimately counseled then-President Lyndon Johnson to decline to seek re-election, and he

supported the unsuccessful presidential candidacy of Gov. Nelson Rockefeller of New York. Morton is interviewed in the 1968 documentary film In the Year of the Pig,

and another interview is available through the Lyndon Baines Johnson

Presidential Library.