Hosea Blackford

Hosea Blackford (1860-1937) was the thirtieth President of the United States, as well as its second Socialist president. He served only one term, from 1929 to 1933. He was a lawyer in Dakota before he was elected Congressman. He served as a chairman of the Socialist Party and the husband of fellow representative, Flora Hamburger. His presidency was marred the stock market crash and the Pacific War.

Blackford was inspired to enter politics by chance. While a miner, he was aboard train from Montana to Dakota, where he met fellow passenger and former president Abraham Lincoln. They conversed about Lincoln's positions regarding labor. In later years, Blackford told his future wife, Flora Hamburger, that Lincoln had "opened his eyes" during that conversation.

Blackford entered politics. He was elected a Socialist representative of Dakota. While in Congress, he became friendly with freshman New York representative Flora Hamburger, herself a committed Socialist, adamently opposed to the Great War. Despite the differences in their ages, their politics (Flora was far more radical) and their religion (Flora was Jewish) their friendship blossomed into a romantic one, and they married.

By 1918, with the United States victory in the Great War, the political tides in the country had shifted. That year, for the first time, the Socialists won a majority in Congress, breaking the Democrats' monopoly on power. In 1920, Blackford was asked by Upton Sinclair to be the Socialists' Vice Presidential nominee. The Socialists won the 1920 election, defeating incumbent Democrat Theodore Roosevelt. Sinclair and Blackford were re-elected in 1924. Blackford described the job as being a "$12,000 a year hatrack."

In 1928, Blackford was the Socialist Party candidate for President, defeating Calvin Coolidge. When Coolidge phoned Blackford to concede, he predicted that the bull market could not last, and that a dramatic crash was certain. Blackford naively dismissed Coolidge's predictions.

But history proved Coolidge right as an economic panic and subsequent stock market crash came in mid-1929. The blame was laid at Blackford's feet. Shantytowns of unemployed people in the United States become known as Blackfordburghs, whose names mocked the failure of the Blackford Presidency. In response he passed make-work legislation, which proved both costly and ineffective.

Things were made even worse for Blackford in 1932 when the USS Remembrance caught a disguised Japanese ship supplying weapons to Canada's resistance. The Japanese attacked the Remembrance, and the Pacific War began. Blackford's hopes of reelection were completely crushed, when, during a rally for Blackford in Los Angeles, the Japanese carried out an air-raid on the city. Blackford immediately rolled back the military budget cuts that had been instituted under Sinclair, but the war quickly stalemated on the high seas.

Blackford was easily defeated by Coolidge for the Presidential spot in 1932. He retired to Dakota, and then returned to New York City and Philadelphia with his wife, Flora, when she was reelected to Congress.

Despite Blackford's failures, the Democrats under president Herbert Hoover (who served Calvin Coolidge's term when the latter died as president-elect) proved just as incapable of solving the depression. Thus, Blackford lived to see the Socialists regain power, with the election of Al Smith as president in 1936. However, Blackford died shortly after, in 1937. Former presidents Hoover and Sinclair were among his pall-bearers.

He and Flora had one son, Joshua.