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CANNON, BISHOP JAMES, JR. 1864-1944

RELIGIOUS LEADER AND PROHIBITION SUPPORTER

Behind Prohibition

James Cannon Jr. was elected a bishop of the Methodis t Episcopal Church, South, in 1918. The election reflected an esteem for his work in the denomination as president of Blackstone School, a women's college in Virginia. It also reflected enthusiasm for his efforts as editor of the Richmond Virginian, which served as a voice for the Virginia Anti-Saloon League, an organization he also led, and his work as chair of the Southern Methodist Board of Temperance and Social Service. Cannon served as the major voice of the Prohibition movement in the South. His work culminated with the 1919 ratification of the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which prohibited the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages in the United States.

Politics

In the 1920s Cannon became the effective head of the national Anti-Saloon League. He attracted national attention in the presidential campaign of 1928 when he led a split in the southern ranks of the Democratic Party over the nomination of Alfred E. Smith. Smith not only was a product of Tammany Hall, the notorious political machine in New York City, but he was also a wet, having stopped the enforcement of the Eighteenth Amendment in New York. Smith was also Roman Catholic. For all these reasons, the Smith candidacy encountered resistance in the deeply Protestant and mostly dry South, resistance that Cannon organized and used to help defeat Smith. His efforts, backed in part by money from the Republican National Committee, led many Democrats to vote Republican with a clear conscience, and Herbert Hoover broke the South for the Republican Party for the first time in the century, winning the electoral votes of five states in the upper South.

Stock-Market Scandal

After the 1928 election H. L. Mencken called Cannon "the most powerful ecclesiastic ever heard of in America." Newspapers and reporters attended his actions, which in the long run proved his undoing. He first encountered national scandal in 1929 when it was revealed that he had been speculating on the stock market with a notorious Wall Street bucket shop that had recently gone into bankruptcy. In eight months between 1927 and 1928 they had bought stocks for him worth $477,000 and sold them for $486,000, all on his investment of $2,500. Not only had Cannon been gambling, but he had been one of the largest customers of a company whose leaders were indicted for using the mail to defraud. The bishop was not brought to trial by his denomination, but his reputation was seriously damaged.

Marriage Scandal

More damage occurred in 1930, when it was announced that Cannon had quickly remarried after the death of his first wife. Initially, his new wife was identified as his secretary, who had traveled with him on several trips abroad. But after the marriage, stories began to circulate about his meeting her in a New York hotel under an assumed name and then supporting her in a New York apartment as his wife's health declined. He was with his secretary in New York when he learned of his first wife's approaching death. He returned to his future wife immediately after the funeral of his first. Once again charges were brought before the Southern Methodist Church, this time for immorality. Once again he was able to block the attacks when twelve bishops investigated the charges and countercharges and concluded that there was no evidence to warrant bringing Cannon before a church trial.

Campaign Scandal

In the meantime questions had been raised about election money directed to Cannon in 1928 and its use. A sum of $48,300 (equal to more than half a million dollars in 1990s currency) was not accounted for. The bishop successfully refused to testify before a Senate committee investigating lobbying but was brought before the Senate Committee on Campaign Expenditures. That committee charged that in December 1931 Cannon had failed to comply with election laws by his failure to account for $71,451.62 in contributions to block Smith's election. He was finally brought to trial in federal court in 1934 on charges that he had conspired with his secretary to defraud the government. The government's case fell apart when the secretary testified that she had no knowledge of the money that had been given to Cannon. The conspiracy failed to be proved, and both defendants were declared not guilty.

Hurting the Cause

The variety of scandals that enveloped the bishop, even though he surmounted each, helped to discredit the cause he had served so valiantly. One prominent anti-Prohibition activist insisted that Cannon was the person most responsible for repeal. Although his reputation was in ruins by the middle of the 1930s, he still had supporters in dry circles in the South and in the Southern Methodist Church. That support was not sufficient to have him elected presiding bishop, the highest office of his denomination, even though his seniority justified that elevation. Nor did it keep his fellow bishops from placing him on the retirement list shortly after his successful defense in federal court in 1934. He had become a liability for his cause.

Later Life

Cannon lived his later years in quiet retirement in Richmond. His income was limited; he had spent money not only in trials defending himself but also in suing others for defamation of his character. By the time of his death in 1944, biographer Virginius Dabney says, "he seemed almost a ghost out of the past,"