William Gibbs McAdoo Jr.McAdoo is variously differentiated from family members of the same name: * Dr. William Gibbs McAdoo (1820–1894) – sometimes called "I" or "Senior" * William Gibbs McAdoo (1863–1941) – sometimes called "II" or "Junior" * Lt. William Gibbs McAdoo Jr. (1895–1960) – sometimes called "III" (October 31, 1863 – February 1, 1941) was an American lawyer and statesman. McAdoo was a leader of the Progressive movement and played a major role in the administration of his father-in-law President

Woodrow Wilson Thomas Woodrow Wilson (December 28, 1856February 3, 1924) was an American politician and academic who served as the 28th president of the United States from 1913 to 1921. A member of the Democratic Party, Wilson served as the president of ...

. A member of the Democratic Party, he also represented

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...

in the

United States Senate The United States Senate is the upper chamber of the United States Congress, with the House of Representatives being the lower chamber. Together they compose the national bicameral legislature of the United States. The composition and po ...

. Born in

Marietta, Georgia Marietta is a city in and the county seat of Cobb County, Georgia, United States. At the 2020 census, the city had a population of 60,972. The 2019 estimate was 60,867, making it one of Atlanta's largest suburbs. Marietta is the fourth largest ...

, McAdoo moved to

Knoxville, Tennessee Knoxville is a city in and the county seat of Knox County in the U.S. state of Tennessee. As of the 2020 United States census, Knoxville's population was 190,740, making it the largest city in the East Tennessee Grand Division and the stat ...

in his youth and graduated from the

University of Tennessee The University of Tennessee (officially The University of Tennessee, Knoxville; or UT Knoxville; UTK; or UT) is a public land-grant research university in Knoxville, Tennessee. Founded in 1794, two years before Tennessee became the 16th sta ...

. He established a legal practice in

Chattanooga, Tennessee Chattanooga ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Hamilton County, Tennessee, United States. Located along the Tennessee River bordering Georgia, it also extends into Marion County on its western end. With a population of 181,099 in 2020 ...

before moving to

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

in 1892. He gained fame as the president of the Hudson and Manhattan Railroad Company and served as the vice chairman of the

Democratic National Committee The Democratic National Committee (DNC) is the governing body of the United States Democratic Party. The committee coordinates strategy to support Democratic Party candidates throughout the country for local, state, and national office, as well ...

. McAdoo worked on Wilson's successful

1912 presidential campaign The 1912 United States presidential election was the 32nd quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 5, 1912. Democratic Governor Woodrow Wilson unseated incumbent Republican President William Howard Taft and defeated former P ...

and served as the

United States Secretary of the Treasury The United States secretary of the treasury is the head of the United States Department of the Treasury, and is the chief financial officer of the federal government of the United States. The secretary of the treasury serves as the principal a ...

from 1913 to 1918. He married Wilson's daughter,

Eleanor Eleanor () is a feminine given name, originally from an Old French adaptation of the Old Provençal name ''Aliénor''. It is the name of a number of women of royalty and nobility in western Europe during the High Middle Ages. The name was intro ...

, in 1914. McAdoo presided over the establishment of the

Federal Reserve System The Federal Reserve System (often shortened to the Federal Reserve, or simply the Fed) is the central banking system of the United States of America. It was created on December 23, 1913, with the enactment of the Federal Reserve Act, after ...

and helped prevent an economic crisis after the outbreak of

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...

. After the U.S. entered the war, McAdoo also served as the

Director General of Railroads Director General of Railroads was a United States federal government position in the United States Railroad Administration (USRA), whose organization was announced on February 9, 1918. It consisted of the Director General of Railroads and eight m ...

. McAdoo left Wilson's Cabinet in 1919, co-founding the law firm of McAdoo, Cotton & Franklin. McAdoo sought the Democratic presidential nomination at the

1920 Democratic National Convention Nineteen or 19 may refer to: * 19 (number), the natural number following 18 and preceding 20 * one of the years 19 BC, AD 19, 1919, 2019 Films * ''19'' (film), a 2001 Japanese film * ''Nineteen'' (film), a 1987 science fiction film Music ...

but was opposed by his father-in-law, President

, who hoped to be nominated for a third term. In 1922, McAdoo left his law firm and moved to California. He sought the Democratic presidential nomination again in 1924, but the

1924 Democratic National Convention The 1924 Democratic National Convention, held at the Madison Square Garden in New York City from June 24 to July 9, 1924, was the longest continuously running convention in United States political history. It took a record 103 ballots to nomin ...

nominated John W. Davis. He was elected to the Senate in 1932 but was defeated in his bid for a second term. McAdoo died of a heart attack in 1941 while traveling from the

third inauguration of Franklin D. Roosevelt The third inauguration of Franklin D. Roosevelt as president of the United States was held on Monday, January 20, 1941, at the East Portico of the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C. This was the 39th inauguration and marked the commencemen ...

Early life and career

McAdoo was born during the middle of the Civil War in the historic William Gibbs McAdoo House in

. He was the son of author Mary Faith Floyd (1832–1913) and attorney William Gibbs McAdoo (1820–1894). His uncle, John David McAdoo, was a Confederate general and a justice of the Texas Supreme Court. McAdoo attended rural schools until his family moved to

, in 1877, when his father became a professor at the

. He graduated from the University of Tennessee and was a member of the Lambda chapter of Kappa Sigma fraternity. He was appointed deputy clerk of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee in 1882. He married his first wife, Sarah Hazelhurst Fleming, on November 18, 1885. They had seven children: Harriet Floyd McAdoo, Francis Huger McAdoo, Julia Hazelhurst McAdoo, Nona Hazelhurst McAdoo, William Gibbs McAdoo III, Robert Hazelhurst McAdoo, and Sarah Fleming McAdoo. He was admitted to the bar in Tennessee in 1885 and set up a practice in Chattanooga, Tennessee. In the early 1890s, he lost most of his money trying to electrify the Knoxville Street Railroad system.Imjort, ''et al.'' (August 22, 1938)
"California's McAdoo"
''

Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and event (philosophy), events that occurs in an apparently irreversible process, irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various me ...

''Lucile Deaderick (ed.), ''Heart of the Valley: A History of Knoxville, Tennessee'' (Knoxville: East Tennessee Historical Society, 1976), pp. 216–228. In 1892 he moved to

, where he met Francis R. Pemberton, son of the Confederate General

John C. Pemberton John Clifford Pemberton (August 10, 1814 – July 13, 1881) was a career United States Army officer who fought in the Seminole Wars and with distinction during the Mexican–American War. He resigned his commission to serve as a Confederate ...

. They formed a firm, Pemberton and McAdoo, to sell

investment securities A security is a tradable financial asset. The term commonly refers to any form of financial instrument, but its legal definition varies by jurisdiction. In some countries and languages people commonly use the term "security" to refer to any f ...

. In 1895, McAdoo returned to Knoxville and regained control of part of his bankrupt streetcar company, which had been auctioned off. In subsequent months, he engaged in a struggle with Ohio businessman C.C. Howell over control of the city's streetcar system, culminating in a bizarre incident known as the

Battle of Depot Street The Battle of Depot Street was a municipal dispute and riot that took place in Knoxville, Tennessee, United States, on March 1, 1897. The incident began with a disagreement between city officials and Knox County officials over whether or not the ...

. Litigation in the aftermath of this incident favored Howell, and McAdoo abandoned his streetcar endeavors in 1897 and returned to New York. Around 1900, McAdoo took on the leadership of a project to build the Uptown Hudson Tubes, a pair of railroad tunnels under the

Hudson River The Hudson River is a river that flows from north to south primarily through eastern New York. It originates in the Adirondack Mountains of Upstate New York and flows southward through the Hudson Valley to the New York Harbor between Ne ...

connecting

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

with

New Jersey New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delawa ...

. A tunnel had been partially constructed during the 1880s by

Dewitt Clinton Haskin Col. Dewitt Clinton Haskin (circa 1824 – July 17, 1900) was an American engineer who developed the initial methods for construction of the first tunnels under the Hudson River between New Jersey and Manhattan. In the late 1860s, Haskin gained ...

. With McAdoo as president of the Hudson and Manhattan Railroad Company, two passenger tubes were completed and opened in 1908. The popular McAdoo told the press that his motto was "Let the Public be Pleased." The tunnels are now part of the PATH train system. His first wife died in February 1912. That year, he served as vice chairman of the

Secretary of the Treasury

lured McAdoo away from business after their meeting in 1910, and he worked for the Wilson presidential campaign in 1912. Once he was President, Wilson appointed McAdoo secretary of the Treasury, a post McAdoo held from 1913 to 1918.Shook, Dale N. ''William G. McAdoo and the Development of National Economic Policy, 1913–1918''. New York: Garland Publishing, 1987. He married the president's daughter Eleanor Randolph Wilson at the

White House The White House is the official residence and workplace of the president of the United States. It is located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., and has been the residence of every U.S. president since John Adams in ...

on May 7, 1914. They had two daughters, Ellen Wilson McAdoo (1915–1946) and Mary Faith McAdoo (1920–1988). Ellen married twice and had two children. Mary married three times, but had no children. McAdoo's second marriage ended in divorce in July 1935, and he married a third time at nearly 72, to 26 year old nurse Doris Isabel Cross (1909-2005), in September 1935. McAdoo offered to resign after his wedding, but President Wilson urged him to complete his work of turning the

into an operational central bank. The legislation establishing the System had been passed by Congress in December 1913. As head of the Department of the Treasury, McAdoo confronted a major financial crisis on the eve and at the outbreak of

, in July and August 1914.Silber, William L., ''When Washington Shut Down Wall Street: The Great Financial Crisis of 1914 and the Origins of America's Monetary Supremacy'', Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J., 2007, At the time, the United States was still a net debtor nation (i.e., Americans' aggregate debt to foreigners was greater than foreigners' aggregate debt to Americans). The nations of Europe and their financial institutions held far more in debt of the United States, of many of the states of the Union, and of American private institutions of all kinds; than investors in the United States held in the debt of Europe's nations and institutions in all forms, both public and private. During the last week of July 1914, British and French investors began to liquidate their American securities holdings into U.S. currency. Many of these foreign investors then converted their dollars into gold, as was common practice in international monetary transactions at the time, in order to repatriate their holdings back to Europe. If continued, these actions would have depleted the gold backing for the dollar, possibly inducing a depression in American financial markets and in the American economy as a whole. Investors might then have been able to buy American goods and raw materials (for their war effort) at greatly depressed prices, which Americans would have had to accept in order to restart the economy from a consciously (albeit inadvertently) caused depression. McAdoo by Carlo de Fornaro 1914

McAdoo's actions, then, were both bold and outrageous: keeping the U.S. currency on the

gold standard A gold standard is a monetary system in which the standard economic unit of account is based on a fixed quantity of gold. The gold standard was the basis for the international monetary system from the 1870s to the early 1920s, and from th ...

, he arranged the closing of the

New York Stock Exchange The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE, nicknamed "The Big Board") is an American stock exchange in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It is by far the world's largest stock exchange by market capitalization of its liste ...

for an unprecedented four months to prevent Europeans from selling American securities and exchanging the proceeds for dollars and gold. Investors in the warring countries thus had no access to their holdings of U.S. financial assets at the outset of the war. As a result, the treasuries of those countries more quickly exhausted all of their net foreign exchange holdings (those that were on hand and in their possession before McAdoo closed the markets), currency, and gold reserves. Some of them then issued sovereign bonded indebtedness (IOUs) to pay for the war materials they were buying on the American and other markets. Economist William L. Silber wrote that the wisdom and historical impact of this action cannot be overemphasized. McAdoo's bold stroke, Silber writes, averted an immediate panic and collapse of the American financial and stock markets. It also laid the groundwork for a historic and decisive shift in the global balance of economic power, from Europe to the United States; a shift which occurred exactly at that time. More than this, McAdoo's actions both saved the American economy and its future allies from economic defeat in the early stages of the war. Silber wrote that the intact and undamaged American financial system and its markets managed the flow and operation of this financing more easily than they would have without McAdoo's measures, and that U.S. industry swiftly built up to the scale needed to meet the allied war needs. The managed liquidation of foreign holdings of U.S. assets moved the United States to a net creditor position internationally and with Europe from the net debtor position it had held prior to 1915. In order to prevent a replay of the bank suspensions that plagued America during the

Panic of 1907 The Panic of 1907, also known as the 1907 Bankers' Panic or Knickerbocker Crisis, was a financial crisis that took place in the United States over a three-week period starting in mid-October, when the New York Stock Exchange fell almost 50% fro ...

, McAdoo also invoked the emergency-currency provisions of the 1908 Aldrich–Vreeland Act. Silber credits his actions for having turned America into a world financial power, in his book ''When Washington Shut Down Wall Street''. Like President Wilson, McAdoo was a segregationist. During his tenure as Secretary, he broke with long-standing policy and ordered implementation of Jim Crow in all Treasury facilities, even in the north where they had previously not existed. McAdoo told reporter

Oswald Garrison Villard Oswald Garrison Villard (March 13, 1872 – October 1, 1949) was an American journalist and editor of the ''New York Evening Post.'' He was a civil rights activist, and along with his mother, Fanny Villard, a founding member of the NAACP. ...

that

racial segregation Racial segregation is the systematic separation of people into racial or other ethnic groups in daily life. Racial segregation can amount to the international crime of apartheid and a crime against humanity under the Statute of the Intern ...

was needed in the Treasury to prevent friction.

Later political career

After the United States entered World War I in April 1917, the United States Railroad Administration was formed to run America's transportation system during the war. McAdoo was appointed

, a position he held until the armistice in November 1918. In March 1919, after leaving the Wilson cabinet, McAdoo co-founded the law firm McAdoo, Cotton & Franklin, now known as

white shoe firm A white-shoe firm is an American term used to describe prestigious professional services firms that have traditionally been associated with the upper-class elite who graduated from Ivy League colleges. The term is most often used to describe leadi ...

Cahill Gordon & Reindel. His law firm served as general counsel for the founders of

United Artists United Artists Corporation (UA), currently doing business as United Artists Digital Studios, is an American digital production company. Founded in 1919 by D. W. Griffith, Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, and Douglas Fairbanks, the stu ...

, with McAdoo taking a 20 percent stake in the

common shares Common stock is a form of corporate equity ownership, a type of security. The terms voting share and ordinary share are also used frequently outside of the United States. They are known as equity shares or ordinary shares in the UK and other Co ...

of the joint venture, while founders

Mary Pickford Gladys Marie Smith (April 8, 1892 – May 29, 1979), known professionally as Mary Pickford, was a Canadian-American stage and screen actress and producer with a career that spanned five decades. A pioneer in the US film industry, she co-founde ...

Charlie Chaplin Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin Jr. (16 April 188925 December 1977) was an English comic actor, filmmaker, and composer who rose to fame in the era of silent film. He became a worldwide icon through his screen persona, the Tramp, and is conside ...

, Douglas Fairbanks and

D. W. Griffith David Wark Griffith (January 22, 1875 – July 23, 1948) was an American film director. Considered one of the most influential figures in the history of the motion picture, he pioneered many aspects of film editing and expanded the art of the n ...

each held a 25 percent stake in the

preferred shares Preferred stock (also called preferred shares, preference shares, or simply preferreds) is a component of share capital that may have any combination of features not possessed by common stock, including properties of both an equity and a debt inst ...

and a 20 percent stake of the common shares. He left the firm in 1922 and moved to California to concentrate on his political career. McAdoo ran twice for the Democratic nomination for president, losing to

James M. Cox James Middleton Cox (March 31, 1870 July 15, 1957) was an American businessman and politician who served as the 46th and 48th governor of Ohio, and a two-term U.S. Representative from Ohio. As the Democratic nominee for President of the United ...

in 1920, and to John W. Davis in

1924 Events January * January 12 – Gopinath Saha shoots Ernest Day, whom he has mistaken for Sir Charles Tegart, the police commissioner of Calcutta, and is arrested soon after. * January 20– 30 – Kuomintang in China hold ...

,Allen, Lee N. "The McAdoo Campaign for the Presidential Nomination in 1924". ''Journal of Southern History'' 29 (May 1963): 211–28. even though in both years he led on the first ballot.Gelbart, Herbert A. "The Anti-McAdoo Movement of 1924". Ph.D. dissertation, New York University, 1978.Stratton, David H. "Splattered with Oil: William G. McAdoo and the 1924 Democratic Presidential Nomination". ''Southwestern Social Science Quarterly'' 44 (June 1963): 62–75.Prude, James C. "William Gibbs McAdoo and the Democratic National Convention of 1924". ''Journal of Southern History'' 38 (November 1972): 621–28. While campaigning in the run-up to the 1920 presidential election, McAdoo voiced his support for such measures as injury compensation, unemployment insurance, and the eight-hour workday, while also expressing his support for the idea of permanent federal legislation in the labor sphere, especially concerning unemployment compensation and a minimum wage. A committed

Prohibition Prohibition is the act or practice of forbidding something by law; more particularly the term refers to the banning of the manufacture, storage (whether in barrels or in bottles), transportation, sale, possession, and consumption of alcoholi ...

supporter, McAdoo's first presidential bid was scuttled by the New York state delegation and other Northern opponents of the banning of alcohol at the

. After defeating his chief rival for the nomination, Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, McAdoo finally lost the party nomination to

dark horse A dark horse is a previously lesser-known person or thing that emerges to prominence in a situation, especially in a competition involving multiple rivals, or a contestant that on paper should be unlikely to succeed but yet still might. Origin Th ...

candidate Governor

Ohio Ohio () is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. Of the List of states and territories of the United States, fifty U.S. states, it is the List of U.S. states and territories by area, 34th-l ...

when the delegates decided in his favor on the 44th ballot. McAdoo was again a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1924. Widely regarded as the front-runner in 1923, McAdoo's candidacy was badly hurt by the revelation that he had previously accepted a $25,000 contribution from Edward L. Doheny, an oil tycoon implicated in 1922 in the

Teapot Dome scandal The Teapot Dome scandal was a bribery scandal involving the administration of United States President Warren G. Harding from 1921 to 1923. Secretary of the Interior Albert Bacon Fall had leased Navy petroleum reserves at Teapot Dome in Wyomi ...

. McAdoo had returned the normal-course contribution once he learned of Doheny's possible bribes to

Secretary of the Interior Secretary of the Interior may refer to: * Secretary of the Interior (Mexico) * Interior Secretary of Pakistan * Secretary of the Interior and Local Government (Philippines) * United States Secretary of the Interior See also *Interior ministry An ...

Albert Bacon Fall Albert Bacon Fall (November 26, 1861November 30, 1944) was a United States senator from New Mexico and the Secretary of the Interior under President Warren G. Harding, infamous for his involvement in the Teapot Dome scandal; he was the only pers ...

to get oil leases. At the

, McAdoo received the support of the

Ku Klux Klan The Ku Klux Klan (), commonly shortened to the KKK or the Klan, is an American white supremacist, right-wing terrorist, and hate group whose primary targets are African Americans, Jews, Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and Cat ...

. He refused to answer questions on if he was a member of the KKK and he did not repudiate the KKK causing the Catholic vote to turn against him. McAdoo defeated

Oscar Underwood Oscar Wilder Underwood (May 6, 1862 – January 25, 1929) was an American lawyer and politician from Alabama, and also a candidate for President of the United States in 1912 and 1924. He was the first formally designated floor leader in the Uni ...

, who was an opponent of the Ku Klux Klan and

, in the Georgia primary and split the Alabama delegation. McAdoo led after the first ballot of the convention, and on dozens of ballots thereafter, before John W. Davis won the Democratic presidential nomination on the 103rd ballot. He served as

Senator A senate is a deliberative assembly, often the upper house or chamber of a bicameral legislature. The name comes from the ancient Roman Senate (Latin: ''Senatus''), so-called as an assembly of the senior (Latin: ''senex'' meaning "the el ...

for

from 1933 until 1938, having lost his bid for renomination in 1938 to Sheridan H. Downey. McAdoo's wife filed for divorce in 1934. Two months after their decree was finalized in July 1935, the 71-year-old McAdoo married Doris Isabel Cross, a 26-year-old nurse.Staff report (September 23, 1935)
"No. 3 for McAdoo"
''

Death

McAdoo died on February 1, 1941, of a

heart attack A myocardial infarction (MI), commonly known as a heart attack, occurs when blood flow decreases or stops to the coronary artery of the heart, causing damage to the heart muscle. The most common symptom is chest pain or discomfort which ma ...

while traveling in Washington, D.C., after the

, and was buried in

Arlington National Cemetery Arlington National Cemetery is one of two national cemeteries run by the United States Army. Nearly 400,000 people are buried in its 639 acres (259 ha) in Arlington, Virginia. There are about 30 funerals conducted on weekdays and 7 held on Sa ...

Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States, between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography and climate of the Commonwealth are ...

.Staff report (February 10, 1941)
Footnote to History.
'' Times''

Legacy

McAdoo was enormously appealing with his handsome looks, obvious enthusiasm and boundless energy. He had an uncomplex personality that was always persuasive, optimistic and self-assured. What was lacking was depth or commitment to deep principles. He excelled first as a maverick promoter and businessman who supported antitrust measures that were favored by the progressive movement. The World War enormously enlarged his scope of Treasury Department activities, giving him a strong voice in all major foreign and domestic policies, with major impact on the entire economy. In the 1920s, as his Democratic Party polarized, he took the side of rural America, especially the South, as opposed to Al Smith's big cities. He never supported the Ku Klux Klan, but on the other hand refused to denounce it when so many loyal Democrats belonged. McAdoo and Smith stalemated each other in the fierce competition for the 1924 presidential nomination. In 1932, he helped stop Al Smith and instead promoted Franklin Roosevelt for the nomination. He supported the New Deal, but he was no longer comfortable with the growing radicalism in California in the mid-1930s, and was defeated for reelection in 1938. McAdoo was played by Vincent Price in the 1944 biopic ''

Wilson Wilson may refer to: People *Wilson (name) ** List of people with given name Wilson ** List of people with surname Wilson * Wilson (footballer, 1927–1998), Brazilian manager and defender * Wilson (footballer, born 1984), full name Wilson R ...

''. He is a significant character in the Glen David Gold novel '' Sunnyside'', encouraging

to help with efforts to raise funds for

before advising him on the formation of

. McAdoo's former home in

Chattanooga Chattanooga ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Hamilton County, Tennessee, United States. Located along the Tennessee River bordering Georgia, it also extends into Marion County on its western end. With a population of 181,099 in 2020, ...

's Fort Wood neighborhood has been restored and is now a private residence. The town of McAdoo in Dickens County,

Texas Texas (, ; Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2020, it is the second-largest U.S. state by ...

, is named for him. McAdoo's Seafood Company, a restaurant in

New Braunfels New Braunfels ( ) is a city in Comal and Guadalupe counties in the U.S. state of Texas known for its German Texan heritage. It is the seat of Comal County. The city covers and had a population of 90,403 as of the 2020 Census. A suburb just north ...

, Texas, also bears his name. McAdoo is quoted as having said, "It is impossible to defeat an ignorant man in an argument." And in reference to Warren Harding, McAdoo said his public utterances were "an army of pompous phrases moving over the landscape in search of an idea."Jack Lynch
"Guide to Grammar and Style"
Retrieved: 5 June 2011.

Selected works

* William G. McAdoo, ''The Challenge.'' New York: Century Co., 1928. * William G. McAdoo, ''Crowded Years: The Reminiscences of William G. McAdoo.'' Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1931. * Craig, Douglas B. ''Progressives at War: William G. McAdoo and Newton D. Baker, 1863–1941''. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013.

Footnotes

External links

William Gibbs McAdoo
via Tennessee Historical Society
Speeches by William Gibbs McAdoo
via

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The libra ...

*
Wm. G. McAdoo's Birthplace
historical marker , - , - , - {{DEFAULTSORT:McAdoo, William G. 1863 births 1941 deaths 20th-century American politicians American Episcopalians 20th-century American railroad executives People from Marietta, Georgia Politicians from Chattanooga, Tennessee Candidates in the 1920 United States presidential election Candidates in the 1924 United States presidential election United States Railroad Administration United States Secretaries of the Treasury University of Tennessee alumni Democratic Party United States senators from California California Democrats Burials at Arlington National Cemetery Woodrow Wilson administration cabinet members Woodrow Wilson family Progressive Era in the United States People associated with Cahill Gordon & Reindel American temperance activists Progressivism in the United States People born in the Confederate States