A Very OK Podcast
Episode 44: “A Life of Service”
February 18, 2025
Episode Transcript
(upbeat music playing)
Trait Thompson: Hello, and welcome to A Very OK Podcast. My name is Trait Thompson. I’m the executive director of the Oklahoma Historical Society, and with me as always is Dr. Bob Blackburn. Bob, it's great to see you again.
Dr. Bob Blackburn: Thank you. It’s good to be here. And it’s good to own a Subaru on a day like this to get around town.
Thompson: For all our listeners, this is the day we got a little bit of an ice storm here in Oklahoma. And the parking lots are slick, and the sidewalks are slick, and the driveways are slick. And we're just amazed that we could all get together here today to be here in person to do this.
Blackburn: That's right. Well, it’s good to see you. And, of course, I saw you a couple of weeks ago when you and I entered a major pickleball tournament and did well, of course. And we just showed what two historians can do.
Thompson: That’s right. And I want to let everyone know we played in the Oklahoma City Rotary Club’s pickleball tournament together in the advanced/intermediate bracket. And we ended up getting second place, which I thought is pretty good. And here are a few of the team names that I workshopped for us. One was the “History Bros.” Now may maybe need a little, little work. The other was “You’re History.” I thought of setting for a little trash talk for our team there. Yeah, but, but we had a lot of fun doing that. At the risk of this morphing from a history podcast into a pickleball podcast, which we’ve sort of been on the edge of that from time to time. But, the people who listen to us frequently know about our love of the game of pickleball, so. Bob, we have such a great topic to cover today, and I’m really excited about it. So I want to introduce our guests. We’re going to be talking about a brand new book about one of Oklahoma’s very first congressmen right after statehood— Dick Thompson Morgan, Dick T. Morgan. And the book is called Justice for All: Dick T. Morgan, Frontier Lawyer and Common Man’s Congressman by Michael Hightower. And Bob, you wrote the foreword for this book, and we have a couple of great guests to get into this subject with us. First, the author of the book, Michael Hightower. He’s an independent historian and biographer. He’s a scholar and descendant, a pioneer bankers, and his field of interests includes the American frontier, banking, and law. He holds degrees from Washington and Lee University, the University of Denver, Oklahoma State University, and the University of Virginia. That is a lot of school in there, Michael.
Michael Hightower: Probably way too much school.
Thompson: He has been a teacher and a coach at college prep schools in Denver and Tulsa, a founder and president of the Council Oak Books in Tulsa, communications director for the Tulsa metro chamber, Go on and on and on. He lives in Charlottesville, Virginia, and splits his time, with, in Oklahoma City as well. He lives with his wife Judy in both of those places. And so, Michael, we're thrilled to have you with us here today.
Hightower:
Thompson: And then our other guest with us is David Morgan. He’s a fourth-generation Oklahoman. He taught school for nine years before becoming a lawyer. He was in private law practice for 15 years and then served as general counsel for MidFirst Bank for 20 years. He retired nine years ago to have more time with his grandchildren. And for fun, this is great, I didn’t know this, he learned to play piano after his retirement and gives country and western concerts to friends. I’m going to need to get in on one of those at some point. And he says my greatest accomplishment has been a 55 year, and still counting, marriage to Ellen. I think that’s wonderful.
David Morgan: For sure.
Thompson: And of course, David, the reason you're here with us is you are the great-grandson of Dick T. Morgan. Correct?
Morgan: I am, and I really appreciate the opportunity to talk to you guys.
Thompson: And I want to shout out to the other person in the room who you won’t hear on the podcast today, but David’s brother Kenyon is with us here, and, he’s just observing here today. But if you read the book, you’ll kind of see some of Kenyon gets in and out of the book as well. And so we’re happy to have Kenyon with us here to or to watch from the gallery, so to speak.
Blackburn: Trait, might add here a little bit on the introductions, in my role in this not just being on this podcast, but part of this book and writing the foreword, of course, which I was pleased to do. But I’ve known Michael for probably almost 50 years, not quite, pretty close to 50 years. And I remember the day that Michael came to me and wanted to talk about his idea of starting a press in Tulsa. And, I loved his ideas. He did it, created a press, did some beautiful books. And then as we kind of cemented our relationship, I was able to direct some projects to Michael. Michael would always deliver. So I never felt any hesitation in saying, “Well, I can’t do that right now, but I know who can.” And Michael was it. And then when talking to David and Kenyon about their great-grandfather, and I fell in love with the topic as well. And again, I recommended Michael. And that started this relationship, and they have done so much with it. I’m really proud of the book. It really puts Dick T. Morgan into the pantheon of Oklahoma’s founders. You know, typically we’ll think of Charles Haskell or Alfalfa Bill Murray, maybe Lee Cruce and some of those other guys. In a way, Kate Barnard. But Dick T. Morgan deserves a place in that pantheon. When we think about creating a personality, the DNA of our state, he was there when it was being brewed, and he helped create a foundation we’ve built on ever since.
Thompson: Yeah, you’re exactly right, Bob. And David, I’d like to ask you, just from the family perspective, were you always aware of your great-grandfather and, you know, what he did early in our state's history? Or was it one of those situations where as you got older, you started seeing some family heirlooms and kind of learning more about him? And what was the genesis of saying, we need to get a book out about this guy?
Morgan: Yes. Yeah. Well, the answer is kind of both in all. We certainly were aware that we had a great-grandfather who was, who had been important in Oklahoma history to some extent, but we didn’t... I didn’t know exactly what he, what he had done. Kenyon remembers playing with his top hats that we had around the house that we’ve just played dress-up games with and act like we were Abraham Lincoln or somebody. I had an opportunity at one time, we could talk about later, of interviewing my grandfather, who was Dick’s son.
Thompson: That's Porter.
Morgan: Porter. Right. But it was really, after, I mean, it really got serious after, as I was retiring and looking for projects, Kenyon and I had talked several times about going through the stuff we had of our great-grandfather. But the real key to, I think, all of us, when we realized that in 1949, our grandfather had taken down to OU just boxes and boxes of material of his father, and OU had a, has a department called the Carl Albert Congressional Research Center.
Thompson: Yeah, a wonderful research center.
Morgan: And once I saw that, I mean, this became natural to start, that there was, there’s too much there to ignore and really got involved in reading and, you know, and the idea to the book, we can talk about later too, just kind of evolved. But it started out by all the materials, that treasure trove of materials that the Carl Albert Research Center had.
Thompson: Well, I think we’re really fortunate that all of those materials were kept over the years because, you know, I’ve been doing some of the genealogical research on my own family. Now to the to the part that I’ve discovered, I don’t have any former congressman or congresswoman in my family or anybody like that, but it can be really hard to try to piece together their lives based on a few letters here or there or, you know, scant evidence. And so the fact that you had so much of this material to go on was a real blessing.
Morgan: Well, and we had and he, Dick T. evolved in my life. When I started, I was just there to go down there and have some fun, read some letters, and read speeches and so forth, and just kind of get a general idea of who he was. But eventually, and Bob may remember this, you know, I said, this guy seems more important than just a normal family. And I asked Bob the simple question, is this just, do I just like this stuff because it’s my great-grandfather, or does he really have some importance in Oklahoma history? And Bob’s, you know, convinced me that, yeah, he does. And you would do a service to the state to follow up on this, and we, and when once he told me that, that was just an easy answer. He really gave me the extra incentive, and then I started realizing not only how and what he did, what he did, but also the character that he had to do these things. And I really started thinking him as a person, and he and I were like talking to one another through his letters and speeches and newspaper articles and became almost like a live person to me. And it really became really important in my life. And I started doing some talks around the state and some things to kind of bring his bring his story to other people.
Thompson: And so he died in 1920. So you wouldn’t have ever had a chance to meet him.
Blackburn: And Trait, one thing that I admired about what David and Kenyon did is that when they said they wanted to give presentations, you know, we talked about the structure of presentations and what people wanted to hear. And I think David, you found, and what Michael and I, we’ve given thousands of speeches between us. But as you’re giving speeches, you’re learning too, because the pieces start fitting together. You see what works with an audience. So, oh, yeah, I’ll do that again. Then you bring up certain points, and if it fell flat, you eliminate it. You’re editing as you go. So you spending a couple of years on the road, I don’t know how many rotary groups you spoke to.
Morgan: Probably 40.
Blackburn: Yeah, I would guess so. And you’d report back, and we’d talk about what you’d learned. And, you know, I just, I enjoyed watching the evolution of this story coming out of your experience.
Morgan: Right.
Blackburn: Two brothers who were looking into your family history.
Morgan: Well, and it was fun, you know, fun talking with, working with Kenyon as much, you know, so much we both had, I would say, within the last, you know, 40 years or so before this raising families and starting and starting grandkids and so forth. So there was a lot to do. It was really fun to have a have a project with, with a brother that you had, you know, I mean, we saw each other all the time, obviously, when we were, you know, with kids, but to actually have a project to work together became very meaningful. I think both of our lives. You'll have to ask Kenyon his opinion of that. But from my perspective, it certainly was.
Thompson: I’d like to bring Michael into the conversation because, Michael, how did you get roped into this project? And when they talked to you about it, did you immediately think, yes, this is a great idea for a book, or did you need a little bit of convincing?
Hightower:
Thompson: Yeah.
Hightower: Land Credits: A Plea for the American Farmer, from start to finish on Google Books. So yeah, I was able to access these materials and then do a lot of my own research. One of the best resources there is around here is The Gateway to Oklahoma History. I mean, once I had some dates in place and some events in place, I could go to that, which is an OHS resource, and access thousands of newspapers.
Thompson: That is gateway.okhistory.org for those of you out there who want to take advantage of that website.
Hightower: The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History, obviously, The Chronicles of Oklahoma. All of those are really terrific websites, and those supplemented what I was getting from the Carl Albert Center and getting from David Kenyon’s own experiences.
Blackburn: And Trait, one advantage Michael had in this is that the books that he’s written in the past, the Land Run of 1889, gave him a firm foundation with the impact of land runs on Oklahoma. And if you look at Oklahoma history of the big brush, you know, what created the DNA we've been living with ever since? It's really the transfer of land from tribal ownership and public ownership to private ownership. So it’s the allotment process in Indian Territory that helped define everything that has happened since. And in Oklahoma Territory, the land openings, whether it was a lottery or a land run, same effect. Getting people from around the world on the land, trying to make a living, raising their families, becoming communities, investing with hope, struggling, perseverance, all of this. That helped create the Oklahoma personality. Those two things more than anything else. That and mobility, as Arrell Gibson would have said.
But Michael has been working in that field for at least 30 years with the books that he’s done, histories. In fact, one through the Oklahoma Historical Society, a couple of books with OU Press on banking in Oklahoma, that we were able to put together, the land run book, and then others. And so Michael started this with a pretty broad knowledge of why Dick Morgan was important. So he saw that and, of course, writing a book is a jigsaw puzzle. You’re trying to find the pieces, and then you got to fit the pieces together. And he had that, the great jigsaw puzzle gatherers in David and Kenyon. But he had to find out how to fit those together and to tell a story that the reading public would understand.
Thompson: Well, I want to encourage folks, and I just want to say that you you should buy this book, everybody, especially if you’re into Oklahoma history or, you know, any Southwestern or Western history. But this book is really important because, as I was reading it, it struck me this is not just a biography of Dick T. Morgan. Michael includes a lot of history of United States history. He goes into a history of the Homestead Act of 1862. He goes into a history of, you know, one of the things that, that Dick T. Morgan ends up advocating for in Congress is what eventually ends up becoming the Federal Trade Commission and business regulation. So you get into a lot of that history of why some of these things were needed. And it’s not just a, “He did this, and he did this, and then he did this.” This is chock full, if you are, if you like this history from 1870s, from 1920s, you are going to get a great education in not only Oklahoma history but American history.
Hightower:
Thompson: Yeah.
Hightower:
Blackburn: And if you could, Michael, I think this is very important to explain to people Dick Morgan’s ethics, at least his connection with Abraham Lincoln. He was a Lincoln Republican. And there are different kinds of Republicans, just so there are many even more kinds of Democrats. But he was a Lincoln Republican at heart, and he never lost that compassion for people. And, you know, people have studied Abraham Lincoln with the second inaugural address or Gettysburg Address, which really expressed the man in his heart. I think Dick Morgan bought into that and stayed true to that message his entire life.
Hightower:
Thompson: Let’s get into who he was and where he came from. Because, you mentioned Indiana with the Panhandle, and so he was born in 1853, David, in Prairie Creek, Indiana. He grew up on his family’s farm there. One of the things I thought was really interesting is he was a singer. He would do that really off and on for the rest of his life. He would entertain people with singing and, kind of had that, you know, that idyllic Midwestern growing up experience. So can you talk about his early years there in Indiana and how that shaped him for the future?
Morgan: Well, we were very lucky that we found the Carl Albert Center, a memoir, 21-page memoirs he had done. And unfortunately, it looked like there was another 21 pages we didn’t, that we could never, never found. So a lot of the things about his early life are from his own voice. And, but the thing that kind of shone through from the very start was his character, his hard work and his character. Trait, when he was he was seven years old when the Civil War started, and, but he knew what was going on. I mean, he knew the issues. He knew the issue of slavery. Indiana was a free state, but there weren't, there wasn't a black line between free states and slave states. Southern Indiana was filled with slaves and slave owners, and there was a lot of tension in, in Vigo County, where he was, between the Confederate sympathizers, who they called butternuts. I had never heard. That's a new term me, butternuts. Because of the little emblem, they wore a little nut. They would wear it to show they were Confederate sympathizers. There were fights at school. I mean, he saw the the war right in front of him, you know, seven or eight years old. But the amazing thing he did is he wanted to do something for the war effort. And he noticed that about every three weeks, these troops would march through Prairie Creek. And there were the Home Guard troops. They were the ones who were kind of keeping the home safe while the other people were out fighting. And he wanted, he thought, well, maybe they'd let me march in their band or march with their troops. And I can kind of see this happening from his story. He probably tugged on some 17-year-old troop guy and said, "Can I march with you all?" And the guy said, "Well, learn how to play the tenor drums, and come back and talk to me?" Well, guess who would learn how to play the tenor drums to come back to talk to him? You know, three weeks later, he's there again. Okay. I'm ready. And the guy said, "Well, you ought to go up to the front."
And so his memory 60 years later was leading troops as a seven-year-old. And, and that's the position he would take over and over in life. It's just he knew he could be successful if he worked hard and would have the passion towards his work, and these projects he got involved in were all passion-driven. And eventually, you all can probably tell when you hear me talk, I inherited that passion from him, about his life, and it's really hard for me to talk about him and not talk about how passionate was, he was towards his representation of homesteaders, farmers, this law, the FTC, the Rural Credits Act. Whatever he was involved in, the passion really came through. But, I got away from your question. I apologize. But Indiana certainly was an important place to him. All his life, way after he was in Oklahoma, he thought back to his roots. He was, aside from the famous presidents like Jefferson and Lincoln and Adams, his other favorite president was Garfield.
Thompson: Yes.
Morgan: And, Garfield, and he stole a quote from Garfield. "The strength of the country is church, school, and family." And that was his, and that was his kind of trademark of how you have a strong country.
Thompson: Now, he was elected to the Indiana House of Representatives in 1880. I'm sorry. Yes, in 1880. And that's the same year that your grandfather Porter was born.
Morgan: Not only the same year, the same day.
Thompson: Oh that's right, yes. That's right.
Morgan: Columbus Day. On this day, he had, he was elected to the State Assembly. For some reason, Indiana at that time had their state elections in October, and they would have their national elections, like for Congress and president- elect, in November. So, on Columbus Day, Porter was born, named after Albert Porter, who was elected governor on that day.
Thompson: And now Michael, in his capacity in the Indiana House, he would run into a person who would be important to Oklahoma, ultimately. And that would be Benjamin Harrison.
Hightower:
Morgan: Yeah. And he's listing all these guys from Indiana who had been really Founding Fathers in the Oklahoma, the legislature, and the administration. So they had a big old rowdy party in Guthrie, and they hooked it up and, you know, celebrated their Hoosier-dom.
Morgan: And the speech they gave to that party actually survived. So we actually have, we have, and you and you have a lot of that in your, in your book.
Hightower:
Morgan: About what he and he was giving you a list of all the Hoosier accomplishments in Oklahoma.
Hightower:
Morgan: And I remember my grandpa, who was born in born in Indiana himself, was born on that day. His father got elected to the assembly and lived in Terre Haute until he was about five. So he, I remember he was from, you know, my own grandpa was from Indiana. It's part of the, part of history.
Thompson: And he runs for the State Senate in 1884. He doesn't end up winning. The big gerrymander of 1885 kind of puts the kibosh on what he thinks is a future in politics in Indiana for the foreseeable future. So that gives him the opportunity to come out west. And that's when he moves to Garden City, Kansas, which was growing by leaps and bounds at that, at that particular point of time. And he's an attorney by this point in his life, and he is going to open up his own law firm and also do some work for the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad in Garden City. So what's that transition like for him?
Morgan: It was amazing that you would leave to Terre Haute, Indiana, where they lived was a town of about thirty-thousand people, cosmopolitan town, you know, had all the amenities. He somehow he convinced his wife to move to Garden City, Kansas. He really had his pick of places to go in Kansas, but he picked Garden City, you know, town of about three-thousand with mud streets and dirt streets and so forth. And just basically, you know, gone back several generations in American history to go from Terre Haute to Garden City. He made another move to Guthrie. So he was, that was just his first step. He still had a move to Guthrie coming. But he used those years in Kansas, I think, to become a better attorney. And that's where I think he really probably learned the homestead rules. He decided the best way to learn this was to write a book about it. He wrote a book called Morgan’s Manual that he took to Oklahoma with him and became, you know, kind of the go-to book for homesteaders. But I think that move to Garden City was quick, was only there three-and-a-half years, but it was an important stepping stone to getting him to Oklahoma.
Thompson: Bob, I'd love to bring you in here and talk about, you know, the land run, April 22, 1889. Dick T. Morgan shows up on the very first day in Guthrie and hangs out a shingle. But I love this quote that you had in the book, Michael, from Cosmopolitan Magazine about this early time. It says, “Civilization and barbarism seem here to come into immediate contact. Industry and shiftlessness here stand face-to-face. Order and lawlessness seem to glare at each other across the border.“ Can you can you give us a little context about what these early days after that first land run were like?
Blackburn: Sure. And to use Oklahoma City as an example, there was no organized government until August of 1890. So you go more than a year, and it’s provisional government, martial law. The first mayor was killed in a land dispute. And so you get people coming from everywhere, literally around the world. So yes, you have your Hoosiers, but you also have a lot from Kentucky. You have a lot of people from Tennessee and other states, and no one knows each other, and there are no institutions. There's no resource to exploit, to pull everyone together. So you're here without purpose almost other than hope and the chance to get land. And they're looking for a sense of order. And I think Dick Morgan becomes a hero to so many of those homesteaders, because the one thing they hope for is if they could claim that land and they stayed on it and improved it for five years, then they get title to it. And getting title to the land was all-important because you could not borrow against that land. And for any farmer on any frontier, the ability to borrow money, whether it's from family or friends or business or a bank, you had to invest to do improvements. Yeah, you could put cattle on pasture, but to make improvements, to get the plows, to build the barn, buy the livestock, to buy the nursery stock, to plant an orchard, you had to have capital. And this was a capital-poor frontier. But it comes back to law and understanding the law, the rights of these people who were on that land, and there were so many people that would move off. It was very mobile frontier. I would guess, I mean, Michael might have a better idea.
I'd say half of the people who came in ‘89 never stayed for the five years, and they call those relinquishments. So someone else would come in and buy relinquishment or just move on to the land and start the process again. So it is a very fluid frontier. People didn't know each other, but rule of law was one of the few things there. And as long as people believed in rule of law, even with provisional government, even with martial law, it kind of would bind people together. Mutual respect. And Dick Morgan, there knowing the law, became a central figure in this evolution from this frontier chaos to really coming up with an organized territory, with government institutions, people putting roots down, building, raising families. That was a transition that was chaotic, but the people who went through that process never forgot it. There’s an entire band of literature on the land run experience. It was a life-defining moment. So people like Angelo Scott, who came in ‘89 from Kansas and started a newspaper, he would write about that spirit of ‘89. And those people who came, survived, and then saw this thing growing in front of their very eyes, was this experience that they would never forget. And it helped define what Oklahoma is today.
Thompson: I want to take a quick break, and we'll be back right after this short message.
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Thompson: Okay, we're back, and one of the things I wanted to pick up on that you see throughout the book is how important Dick Morgan’s faith was to him. And wherever he went, it seems like if there wasn’t a Christian church that was already there, he was establishing a church. He was very involved in Sunday school ministry and planting Sunday schools across the state, the territory as well. And so can you talk about his faith and and why that was so important to him? Because it really does lead into his character.
Morgan: Well, it was definitely very important to him. And in fact, sometimes I kind of wondered how he was able to have time to make money as a lawyer because he was spending so much time on church work and helping build new churches and so forth. It kind of goes back to his birth. In the Morgan family in Indiana, the day you were born, They put your name in the family Bible. We have those Bibles from, you know, still existing one-hundred, some, almost two-hundred years later. You know, it's not so much important for the infant himself at the time, but I think when that person becomes eight, nine years old and realizes that the first thing my parents did was announce to God that I'm here, and I think that became engraved on his life. But everywhere he would go, he would be very active church member. If there wasn‘t a church where he was, he would make one, and he also would would build churches for other towns that he really had no relationship with. He formed an organization called the Oklahoma Christian Missionary Society, which was a branch of a national agency, which sole purpose was to find churches for Disciple of Christ homesteaders in Oklahoma. They found almost 500 churches. And during the time in statehood, the Disciple of Christ was the biggest membership of all the denominations in Oklahoma.
There is one, there is one story about his faith, though. Michael mentioned it in his epilogues. We call it “Malice Toward None. Charity for All.” Yeah, I should know that quote. An Abe Lincoln quote. But he, but one of the stories one of the persons told about him was a really important reception that one of the congressmen was having. And one of Dick's friends had bought a new car, and he thought it’d be fun to see Dick. I'll come by and pick you and Orrieta up, and we'll go to the reception and Dick said, “Orrieta and I, we aren't going to that reception.” And the congressman said, “I was kind of baffled by that because I knew this was important.” And he said, I asked him again. He said, “No, this is the the Jones deal. You know, the Jones reception.” And he said, “Oh, I’m, I’m sorry.” We’re not going to, we're not planning to go to that.” And finally the guy said, “I got a little irritated. Why would he not go to this reception?” And he said again, he said, “Dick, you got to go to this reception. This is very important to you, to Oklahoma and so forth.” And he said that Dick said in a very modest way, not in a bragging way, a very modest way. He said, “I’m sorry, but Orrieta and I do not attend receptions on Sundays.” And that was just an example of his faith. Of course, he wanted to go to that reception. It was an important reception, but he wasn't willing to give up, you know, that faith. But most of us would. It kind of stuck with it, stuck with that faith there. And that's an important story in his faith life.
Thompson: Yeah, that's a great story. Yeah. You know, Michael, one of the the patterns that Dick develops throughout his career is when he moves to a new town, he puts his law office either right next to or right across the street from the US Land Office. Why does he do that?
Hightower:
Morgan: Trait, the other thing he did to get business, of course, was to write the books and so forth. But also, when I to go on newspapers.com and look for things about Dick T. Morgan, I kept getting these references to Pennsylvania and Ohio, and you mentioned Kentucky. I started looking at those things. He was advertising. He was advertising. Heo’d have a little just, ten line and say come to Oklahoma, and I’ve got a manual. I got a map for you. And so he was out trying to get business from other states, particularly the states where he wanted people to come from to Oklahoma, the Midwestern states. I don't think he was sending those to Georgia and Alabama.
Thompson: Right. But he was sending those to the Midwestern states, Nebraska, and Iowa. And you realize how important that kind of, you know, building that law practice was becoming, you know, to him, and this is part of his MO to become a successful attorney.
Blackburn: You know, Trait, too, one thing about going from city to city is if the land run was a defining moment in people’s lives, here is a man that goes from land opening to land opening to land opening with the energy that’s coming in, getting to know more people, understanding their goals in life and serving them. And any good attorney will say, “Okay, client, what's your goal? And I'll find a way to get you there.” By talking to all these people coming these people coming from different parts of the world, men and women. And he would deal with these people in each of these communities. And for you and I, who have to work with the political culture in Oklahoma, working with someone from the Cherokee Outlet and dealing with someone who settled the Cheyenne-Arapaho lands is totally different. They came from different parts of the world, different worldviews, different sets of values. Dick Morgan experienced all of that through those, and so he was going through life-defining experience after life-defining experience, and the exhilaration. He probably was addicted a little bit to that energy. Not only was a good for business because he was just an open slate with the people wanting land, and he could help, but he just kept going back for more and back for more. And that impresses me about him.
Thompson: One of the things we briefly mentioned a minute ago, but I want to touch on it a little bit more, is he wrote a book to help homesteaders navigate this complex, you know, web of how do you stake a claim, how do you protect your claim, how do you make sure you prove up your claim? And it was called Morgan’s Manual of the United States Homestead Mining and Townsite Laws. We might have talked to him about, you know, maybe making that a little bit more of a brief title. But, you know, it certainly says everything that it does. But, you know, in reading the book, Michael, it seems like that that was very much of a helpful guide for a lot of people. And it was kind of the go-to manual for if you’re going to do this, you’ve got to have this book.
Hightower: Morgan’s Manual and some other titles as well, but that was a very helpful. And David mentioned a minute ago, the eulogies that were given in Congress a few months after he died. I remember reading one of them, and it was a congressman who was, a homesteader came to Oklahoma Territory way before, and he said the one of the most helpful things in his selling his claim was Morgan’s Manual So here you go, many years later, they're both serving in Congress and reminiscing about the good old days when all these homesteaders were flooding into the territory, and who was there to help them, but Dick T. Morgan and his homestead manual.
Thompson: All right, I want to fast forward a little bit so we can get into his congressional career. But he moves. He goes from Guthrie to Perry to El Reno to Woodward. Well, it was a little stop in South Dakota there for for just a brief couple of months. And then he comes, and he’s appointed the registrar of the US Land Office in Woodward, and that really becomes the springboard to his congressional career. And all along the way, he has never given up on public office. And we kind of feel bad about him a little bit because, bless his heart, he just keeps running for office, and he keeps not winning. And he runs into, you know, people like, you know, Dennis Flynn is elected to the Territorial Congress, Bird McGuire. And, you know, all of these people that are very well respected in their own right. And so he keeps trying, and he keeps not succeeding. I think if it would have been me, I would have said, “Well, you know what? This is not in the cards for me.” But finally, after statehood, which, you know, he campaigns against, he’s not in favor of the state Constitution, which most Republicans were not, although his son Porter said that he was going to vote for the Constitution. Because some people recognized, like it’s now or never, you know, we’re going to become a state now. We're going to wait however many years.
But he ultimately ends up running for Congress, and he ultimately ends up winning, although, in 1908, he wins by just 924 votes for Congress. And he’s helped out for his first few elections by the fact that there was such a strong socialist contingent that it pulls, it pulls some votes from the Democratic candidates. And in that district that he was in, it helped him to win. And so let's talk about his congressional career. One of the first things that he does is he votes for Joe Cannon to be speaker of the House, which kind of paints him as what they called, I had not heard this term, Michael, but standpatter. When you know, in today’s day and age, we say status quo, or you know. But he comes back home, and he’s called “the Million Dollar Congressman.” And so, what does he do that leads him to that nickname?
Hightower:
Thompson: Bob, I wonder if you could talk, because one of the things that Dick Morgan was in favor of was tariffs. And that is something that is, all of a sudden, it is back in the news again.
Blackburn: Yeah.
Thompson: Tariffs here in the United States, and he felt like tariffs would protect small businessmen and protect farmers, particularly in Oklahoma especially in making sure that that they could have affordable materials for all of all of the work that they did. So can you talk a little bit about why tariffs would have been so important to him?
Blackburn: Well, tariffs, the large part of the federal budget was paid with tariffs, with the income from tariffs. This was before income taxes. This is before a lot of the thing, fees we have now that we pay in life. You know social security of course would not have been around, and so tariffs generated a lot of cash. So in going back to Lincoln and the Whigs Party of his time, internal improvements were important. If we're going to move forward, we have to have infrastructure, and we need to invest. So income was important, and then two, it probably, his leading opponents would have been the populists at the time. William Jennings Bryan was a perennial candidate for the Democratic Party at a time when the socialists were even farther left, at a time when in Roger Mills County, believe it or not, if you know the politics of Roger Mills County today, they sent socialists to the Oklahoma Legislature in 1910 and 1912. So he was in a part of the state where you have this real divide between the populist attitudes of William Jennings Bryan, the great commoner, and the Republican Party. And I’m sure Dick may have had different feelings about it because William Jennings Bryan was, you know, campaigning on the Bible. That was one of his big deals. You know, we looked at the Bible, take care of each other, you know, the common people. Dick really believed in helping the common people.
But in terms of national policy and getting things done, he saw the revenue. He saw the fact that we needed to incubate industry, especially in Oklahoma, where we did not have a lot, other than oil and gas had just started. First big oil boom would have been 1905. So that’s an infant industry when he gets started. And there were coal mines, but that was isolated largely in the southeastern part of the state. So how do you generate jobs? How do you build capital? He would have been a Republican, along with the Theodore Roosevelts of the world. Let's reform business. Yeah, we need to we need to control these ultra-millionaires in this Gilded Age and have regulations and have processes. Let’s protect everybody, give everyone equal opportunity. But let’s not set on industry. We need industry. He was a capitalist. So, I think that, he lived in an interesting time, and he came up with his own philosophies based on what he believed was the right way to go. And if he was going to lose an election, I think that he would have stuck with his principles. He would not have pandered to what’s going to be popular with the people down in Roger Mills County. He would have gone in there probably with courage to stand up on the platform and say, “Nah, we need tariffs.”
Thompson: David, he goes from being known as a standpatter to being more of a progressive Republican. He advocates, we talked about this a little bit, but he advocates for what eventually becomes the Federal Trade Commission to help regulate some of these abuses in business. He, he votes against, our last podcast episode was about Senator Robert Owen and the creation of the Federal Reserve. But, and he ends up voting against that bill. But one of his main reasons is because it doesnt, it doesn't have anything in there to protect depositors. And so that would be something that would come about during the FDR administration was the FDIC to protect people who have their deposits in banks. And then later, he really advocates for farmers, and that becomes one of his big passions in trying to make sure that farmers have access to credit, because farming is a whole different way of life. It's a whole different way of finance, and he saw a gap there that farmers really couldn't expand their operations and be successful without access to credit. So he writes this book called Land Credits: A Plea for the American Farmer. Can you talk about that a little bit?
Morgan: Absolutely. Well, first of all, when he was a child, his father died. Actually, I guess he was gone by this time. His father died in 1880, and the family lost half their farm because of taxes due from estate taxes. So he had personal, you know, he had a personal experience of how the farmers could be treated, how they could just lose half your land just because someone dies. So he also felt that farmers were being you know, the “justice for all” is important. He thought the farmers were not getting justice because, in his mind, they were creating half the net worth of the country, as much as manufacturers. They were getting 10 percent of the amount of credit, and the type of credit farmers need are long, long-term credits for the land. They can’t, they can’t control the droughts. They can’t control what the railroads are going to do to them next year They have, they depend on so many things of nature. They can’t have a loan become due in a short timespan. So he really spent, Congress was working hard on these different, types of lending. Dick did not like any of them. Now he’s in the minority party. Didn’t have a lot, he didn’t have a lot of sway here. And now this is this is 1916, and Wilson’s president, and the Democrats own both houses. But then, for some reason, it was a funny time. The Congress in 1915, I guess, they they got sworn in in March. They did not meet until December that year. So they had been elected in November 1914. They didn't meet until December of 1915, 13 months later.
The reason I mention that is be important is because almost everybody went home except Dick. He went to the Congressional Library and wrote this book about the plea for the American farmer, and he made all these arguments I just made earlier about what farmers really need. And this is, this is hard for a banker to say, I mean Michael knows this story too, is his main concern is that he did not think that banks should make profits off these farm loans. He wanted every dollar of value to go back to the farmer at some. They should own. They should be like co-ops. They should own this. And of course, that didn’t happen. But that was his, he was very avid, you know, very avid farmer. But he became the expert on farm law when they had their debates, even though he was not in the majority party. And he was also invited to come and watch Woodrow Wilson’s signing and the Rural Credit Act, which we have the original picture of.
Thompson: And that’s in the book.
Morgan: And, yeah, there. It's in the book there.
Hightower:
Thompson: Yeah. Yeah.
Hightower: Land Credits: The Plea for the American Farmer that indicates what a scholar this guy was. I mean, you know, he spent that 13 months researching land credit systems across the world. And his favorite one was from the 18th century, developed by Frederick the Great of Prussia. It's called the Landschaften. I hope I pronounced that correctly, but that was a land credit system developed by Frederick the Great of Prussia, recognizing how important agriculture was to the Prussian economy or any economy. And, yeah, one reason Dick T. voted against the Federal Reserve Act was because it did not include any credit provisions for farmers. It was all tilted toward business and manufacturing. So I thought that was a really important part of the book. And it does demonstrate his scholarship. And really, the fact that he, what I call him is he’s a bulldog about facts. He was not going to author any legislation that wasn’t based on fact, and how do you establish facts? Well, you research. You separate fact from fiction, and you do your research. You do your homework, and then you make your legislation,
Blackburn: You know, the land bank would have been a future accomplishment that he would have supported. Just like FDIC, he would have supported that, land bank, which allowed farmers to expand their operations at a critical time. He would have been all over that.
Hightower:
Morgan: One real quick funny story about his debates in the House during these Farm Rural Credit Act. He's in the minority party. He has no power, but he talks and talks and talks and has amendments and amendments. And you can just tell the Congress, the House is tired of hearing him. And finally he says, someone is talking now, The House says, “May I have your, may I have your, I'd like to say something.” I mean, I forgot the word they used, and they say, “Will you yield? Yield the floor.”
Thompson: I’m sorry.
Morgan: And this guy says, “No, I won't yield the floor to you. You’ve already spoken more than anybody else on this bill.” And then someone, one of Morgan’s friends says, “Yeah, but he knows more than everybody else.”
(laughter)
Morgan: And that’s Dick. He’s, you know, he becomes a little pest.
Thompson: So the Federal Farm Loan Act is passed in 1916, and as you mentioned, Woodrow Wilson invites him to come to the signing ceremony and be a part of the photograph, which I thought was a great gesture by President Wilson. And then World War I breaks out and he becomes a staunch advocate for, and a supporter of Wilson and what Wilson wants to do in the war. And this is a quote from a speech that, speaking of speeches on the House floor, this is in the book. But I love this quote. This is what he says. He says, “In enacting war legislation, members of Congress should say to their political prejudices, get thee behind me, Satan. Move out into the higher, impure atmosphere of loyalty, and stand squarely upon the solid, immovable, and imperishable rock of patriotism.” That's a speech on the House floor, May 13, 1918. And if that doesn't make you think that he was a good preacher, I don't know what would, because if your work “immovable, imperishable,” that was I mean, that's some pretty strong language.
Morgan: Yeah. He was, he was initially against the Selective Service, the draft, because he just didn’t think it was right to be able to take people off the farms in Iowa and send them. I mean, he just had a philosophical problem with that. But he changed his mind. I think he probably talked to the generals, realized we need to raise, they tell him we need to raise four million troops. We can’t do it by volunteer army. And he, but once he made that change, then he was all in for the war. And that’s when he became the Wilson advocate and so forth. And Michael described it very well in the book, by the way.
Hightower:
Thompson: Well, as we’re sort of getting to the end of Dick T. Morgan’s story, he leaves to go home. He stops in Indiana in 1920. Congress had adjourned on June 5, 1920. He leaves to go home to Covington, Indiana, visit his mother, and he ultimately ends up, He passes away at the age of 66 years old on July 4, 1920, most likely from complications related to pneumonia. And he ends up being laid to rest at Rose Hill Cemetery here in Oklahoma City. And that, of course, 66 years old is, we consider that dying young, today. And, most likely, you know, we know that Congress turned Republican, after the 1920 election. So he most likely would have been set up to be in a position of power, had he lived.
Morgan: Very definitely. He probably would have been. The papers say he would have been the head of the Judiciary Committee, and that would have been a real powerful position for an Oklahoman to have in that, that time.
Thompson: So I want to ask just to kind of start wrapping things up a little bit and, and Michael, and it’s for everybody here at the table. But what do you think the takeaway here is? What do you want people to know and understand about the type of person he was and the legacy left and his importance to Oklahoma history?
Morgan: Well, my objective was to get him known. So number one, what do you want people to know? Just to know who he was, about him. But once you get past that question, then my next thing is the character. It’s more than what he does in any particular situation. It’s the character and the way he does it with the passion the that he spends on it. And then maybe thirdly, you get down to the actual what did he do with the FTC idea and so forth, but it’s that, you know, get him known, which was what Bob and I first talked about when I first talked to Bob about his life, and then the character part, and then finally the details of some of these laws that he passed, which are, they’re still interesting to historians and historians. Not as interesting to the person on the street, of course, but, that’s what I, that’s what I'm hoping for.
Thompson: How about you, Michael?
Hightower:
Blackburn: Yeah.
Blackburn: Well, if I had to simplify it, and I agree with everything that’s been said, as a historian who’s, you know, spent a career trying to pull together the pieces of our story, a collective story. And Oklahoma history is difficult to understand because it comes in from so many different directions, and it’s so contradictory in so many ways, but so interesting and fascinating for that reason. But I think Dick Morgan’s story helps people understand the times he lived through, going from, he started with the land runs, that transfer of public land to private property, the people’s dreams, the hopes, the way that it all unfolded, the rule of law, doing things the right way, never accepting, you know, corrupting your own principles. Not going to a reception on Sunday. That’s a great story. I think that this is a good lesson for people to understand, if they're going to understand Oklahoma history, and we’ve got plenty of scoundrels in our story. And to have a few people of high integrity that that were there at the time, I think is a lesson that we need to know. That it wasn’t all bad. Yeah, Angie Debo wrote about those early leaders who exploited Indian orphans and took their land away and saw Indians as something to exploit. Here is a man that that was above that and really believed in rule of law and justice, and I think really representing what Abraham Lincoln wanted for the country. Let’s do this together. Let’s find a way forward that everyone can benefit. So I, I think people need to understand his life to understand Oklahoma history.
Thompson: And I’ll say just from my perspective, and I wrote David an email after I finished reading the book a few days ago, and I just said, you know, and I’ll say this, I’m not one of these people who thinks everybody in elected office is crooks and scoundrels. And, you know, we have a lot of good elected officials, even today. But what I lamented after reading this is that we don’t have more people like Dick Morgan in office today, that for all the reasons that we’ve talked about, he was not a ranter and a raver. He was not trying to get his name in the paper for having the most outlandish political opinion. As Michael said, he did the work. He knew the facts. He knew why he believed in certain ways. And you could agree, but, or you could disagree, but do it in an agreeable way. And at the very end of the book, you have what people said about him in their eulogies to him. And these are, remember, most of his colleagues here in Oklahoma, in Congress, they were all Democrats, and not a one of them had a bad thing to say about him. And so that just tells me the kind of character he was, and I would hope that we would have more people like that today.
Blackburn: Well said.
Thompson: I would like to also say, where can people get the book if they’re interested in it?
Hightower:
Morgan: So I am assuming downstairs here.
Thompson: You’ll be able, a little commercial plug, we you'll be able to get the book here at the bookstore and gift shop here at the Oklahoma History Center. And I imagine we’ll put it in some of our other museums, like the Territorial Museum in Guthrie and some of those places where Dick T. Morgan lived certainly. But I also want to plug on Wednesday, February 26, in the evening, and you can go to our website, okhistory.org on our calendar section to look for the exact time, we’re going to be having a book signing event. And, Michael, I believe you'll be here for it.
Hightower:
Thompson: David and Kenyon will be here.
Morgan: It’s at 5:30.
Thompson: 5:30, thank you for that clarification. But that’ll be here at the Oklahoma History Center. And I would like for everybody to come out and to purchase this book and to hear David and Kenyon and Michael talk about it and talk about anything that we might not have covered today. But it’ll be a great opportunity to purchase a book, get the book signed, and I promise you, you will enjoy reading this book. Well, Bob, that’s it for us today. It’s been such a great conversation, as always, and I always enjoyed enjoy doing this.
Blackburn: Well, and I do too. And I especially enjoy people who do things with passion. And, I think we’ve got that here today with with David and Kenyon and Michael. And so I appreciate that passion, and thanks for producing this book.
Thompson: Okay. Well, folks, we’ll see you around the bend. You’ve been listening to A Very OK Podcast, hosted by Trait Thompson and Dr. Bob Blackburn. The podcast is produced by the Oklahoma Historical Society. Visit us at okhistory.org and find us on social media by searching for @okhistory. I encourage you to purchase a membership to OHS to help us continue our mission to collect, preserve, and share Oklahoma’s unique and fascinating history.
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