LIBRARY
Presidential Campaigns in U.S. History: Al Smith
Links
- Alfred E. Smith Foundation, includes biographyFounded by His Eminence, Francis Cardinal Spellman in 1946, to honor the memory of Alfred Emanuel Smith, New York's renowned Governor and patron of the "Little People"...
- Alfred Smith Obituary and bio from the NY TimesFrom a newsboy and fishmonger to four times Governor...and [a contender] for President, the rise of Alfred E. Smith had no exact parallel in American history....
Foreshadowing the Great Depression
The Great Depression was triggered by a number of factors. For an overview of the circumstances leading to the Great Depression, read the following articles:
Lords of Finance: 1929, The Great Depression and The Bankers who broke the World.
5 Myths of the Great Depression
The Slide into Protectionism in the Great Depression
Al Smith (Prohibition, PBS series by Ken Burns)
election
Prohibition and Al Smith
Alfred Emanuel Smith was born in a tenement building on New York's Lower East Side, the son of a freight handler. The contrast between Smith and his opponent in the 1928 presidential election could not have been clearer. Herbert Hoover, the Republican nominee, favored Prohibition, at least in public.
Smith's cause had probably always been hopeless; the economy was still booming and no one saw a way that the Republicans could lose. Smith's candidacy did bring thousands of big-city working-class voters to the polls for the first time, but his religion and his opposition to Prohibition cut deeply into the supposedly solid Democratic South. Hoover won by six million votes. Smith was stunned at the size of his defeat and the viciousness of the campaign against him.
Books in the Library
Al Smith the Happy WarriorISBN: 0809030330
Empire Statesman by ISBN: 0684863022
Historical Atlas of U.S. Presidential ElectionsISBN: 1568029551
Campaigns and the Court: the U.S. Supreme Court in Presidential ElectionsISBN: 0231100345
