Henry Hollis Horton


Henry Hollis Horton was an American attorney, farmer and politician who served as Governor of Tennessee from 1927 to 1933. He was elevated to the position when Governor Austin Peay died in office, and as Speaker of the Tennessee Senate, he was first in the line of succession. He was subsequently elected to two full terms, then of only two years each.
Horton's tenure as governor was marred by a scandal after the Stock Market crash in 1929. The related collapse of the financial empires of his political allies, Luke Lea and Rogers Caldwell, cost the state more than $6 million in funds deposited in their banks by Horton's administration. The legislature voted to impeach the governor, but the measure did not carry and he served out his term. He retired from politics and returned to his farm in Marshall County.

Early life

Horton was born in 1866 in the Princeton community of Jackson County, Alabama, one of twelve children of Henry Hollis Horton, a Baptist minister, and Anne Horton. He attended Scottsboro Academy in Scottsboro, Alabama, before graduating from Winchester College in Winchester, Tennessee, in 1888. He moved to Hillsboro, Texas, to teach school, but returned to Tennessee after about a year. He attended the University of the South in Sewanee in the early 1890s to study law.
Horton was admitted to the bar in 1894, and practiced law in Franklin County. He held various local offices, including school director and election commissioner, and worked as director of the Home Bank of Winchester.

Marriage and family

Horton married Adeline Wilhoite in 1896. They had one son.

Early political career

Horton was elected to represent Franklin County for one term in the Tennessee House of Representatives, from 1907 to 1909. He was a supporter of prohibition.
In 1911, Horton and his family moved to Marshall County, Tennessee. He operated a farm and mill that had been established by his in-laws, the Wilhoites, on the Duck River near Chapel Hill.

Governor

Horton was elected to the Tennessee Senate in 1926 for the district of Marshall and Lincoln counties. When the senate convened early the following year, he was chosen as Speaker of that body, which in Tennessee is the governor's constitutional successor. Following Governor Austin Peay's death in office on October 2, 1927, Horton thus became governor.
Unfamiliar with running a statewide campaign, Horton turned to Peay's longtime adviser, Luke Lea, publisher of the Nashville Tennessean, to help him win reelection in 1928. Lea's rivals, Memphis political boss E. H. Crump and Nashville political boss Hilary Howse, both endorsed Hill McAlister, who had been defeated by Peay in 1926. A third candidate, Lewis S. Pope, also sought the Democratic nomination, and had the backing of Peay's widow. After a hard-fought primary campaign, Horton won the nomination with 97,333 votes to 92,017 for McAlister, and 27,779 for Pope. In the general election, he defeated the Republican candidate, Raleigh Hopkins, 195,546 votes to 124,733. Because of Unionist whites in Eastern Tennessee and numerous freedmen and their descendants in Middle and especially Western Tennessee, who aligned with the Republican Party, Tennessee had competitive elections for a longer period than most of the Confederate states. They had disenfranchised most blacks and were one-party states from the turn of the 20th century.
During Horton's second term, he and Lea began using state patronage to distribute jobs in Memphis in an attempt to weaken Crump's influence there. Crump, who was running for Congress and wanted to focus on his own campaign, agreed to support Horton in the 1930 governor's race if he and Lea would stop providing patronage to his foes. With Crump out of the way, Horton defeated his chief opponent, Lambert Estes Gwinn, 123,642 to 88,416 in the Democratic primary. He defeated the Republican candidate, C. Arthur Bruce, in the general election, winning 144,995 votes to Bruce's 101,285.
While the stock market had crashed in 1929, its effects had not fully reached Tennessee by the 1930 elections. Four days after Horton was reelected governor, however, the Bank of Tennessee, which was controlled by Lea and his business associate, Rogers Caldwell, was declared insolvent, and numerous banks controlled by Caldwell across the South soon followed. Horton had deposited more than $6 million in state funds in Caldwell's banks, all of which was lost.
Crump and his allies, sensing an opportunity, assailed Horton for depositing state funds in the banks of his political allies. They also attacked Horton for awarding no-bid contracts to Caldwell's road-paving company, Kyrock. A motion calling for Horton's impeachment was voted on by the state House in June 1931, but the motion failed, 58 to 41. Horton was allowed to finish out his term, but did not seek further reelection. At the time, the term limit provision in the Tennessee State Constitution limited an incumbent to three consecutive full two-year terms. Both Lea and Caldwell were eventually convicted of bank fraud.
During Horton's tenure as governor, he continued most of Peay's reform initiatives. He abolished a land tax that had been unpopular with farmers, established a parole board, created a state division of aeronautics, and developed a secondary state highway system. He also had statues of Andrew Jackson and John Sevier placed in Statuary Hall in Washington, D.C.

Later life and legacy

Following his final term as governor, Horton retired to his farm in Marshall County. He died from an apparent stroke on July 2, 1934. He was buried in Lewisburg, Tennessee.