"23rd Governor of California" Hiram Johnson Signed TLS Dated 1942 For Sale

Up for sale the "23rd Governor of California" Hiram Johnson Hand Signed TLS Dated 1942.

ES-9302

Hiram

Warren Johnson (September 2, 1866 – August 6,

1945) was initially a leading American progressive

and then a Liberal Isolationist Republican politician from

California.

He served as the 23rd Governor of California from 1911 to 1917

and as a United States Senator from 1917 to 1945.

He was also Theodore Roosevelt's running mate

in the 1912 presidential election

on the Progressive

(also known as the "Bull Moose") ticket. After working as a

stenographer and reporter, Johnson embarked on a legal career. He began his

practice in his hometown of Sacramento, California, but moved to San Francisco,

where he worked as an assistant district

attorney. Gaining statewide notoriety for his prosecutions of public

corruption, Johnson won the 1910 California gubernatorial election with the

backing of the Lincoln–Roosevelt League. He instituted

several progressive reforms,

establishing a railroad commission and introducing aspects of direct

democracy such as the power to recall

state officials. Johnson joined with Roosevelt and other progressives to form

the Progressive Party and won the party's 1912 vice presidential nomination. In

one of the best third party performances in U.S. history,

the ticket finished second nationally in the popular and electoral vote. Johnson

won election to the Senate in 1916, becoming a leader of the chamber's

Progressive Republicans. But he emerged as an early voice for Liberal

Progressive isolationism, opposing U.S. entry into World War I

and U.S. participation in the League of

Nations. As a postwar Liberal Republican, he helped enact the Immigration Act of 1924, which severely

restricted immigration from East Asian

countries. Johnson unsuccessfully sought the Republican presidential nomination

in 1920 and 1924 and supported Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1932 presidential election.

Johnson supported many of the New Deal programs but came to oppose Roosevelt as the latter's

tenure continued. Johnson remained in the Senate until his death in 1945.