FH115 Final.qxd - Winston Churchill

tence in my speech, and as the concluding phrases were
not in the nature of argument but of rhetoric, when my
memory failed me....I shall look forward immensley [sic]
to having some long talks with you. You are in some measure
responsible for the mould in which my political
thought has been largely cast, and for the course which I
have adopted on these great questions of Free
Trade....Whether American competition would not become
much more formidable...I do not now examine....” 19
Churchill had hoped to come to America for the
1904 Democratic Convention. He was forced to cancel in
July, but in a rare declaration to a citizen of another country
he told Cockran he considered himself a “Democrat as
far as American politics are concerned. I beg you to send
me as much of your political literature as you can.” 20
Through his cousin, Shane Leslie, Churchill wrote
to Cockran in 1906: “Tell him that while our political
views on the Irish question differ, I regard his as the
biggest and most original mind I have ever met. When I
was a young man he instantly gained my confidence and I
feel that I owe the best things in my career to him.” 21
Ahighlight of Bourke Cockran’s later years was his
defense of labor leader Tom Mooney, who was accused
of participation in a bomb plot during a Preparedness
Day Parade in July 1906. Mooney was convicted
of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison.
Since the others accused were acquitted, President Wilson
appointed an investigatory commission which in 1918 reported
that the trial had been unfair owing to perjured testimony.
Cockran spoke all over the country in support of a
new trial, even carried his plea to the White House; yet
Mooney remained in prison. Five California governors refused
to review the decision, as did the Supreme Court of
the United States. Mooney was not released until Governor
Olsen gave him an unconditional pardon in 1939.
In 1919 Cockran returned to Tammany for good.
He supported Al Smith at the Presidential Convention of
1920, was nominated to represent New York’s 16th Congressional
District, and again took his seat in the House of
Representatives on 4 March 1921. Two years later on
March 1st, 1923, he spoke in the House against the Rural
Credit Bill, and then went to dinner with friends to celebrate
his 69th birthday. Two hours after the dinner he
died of a brain hemorrhage.
Churchill often used Bourke Cockran’s phrases in
his own speeches, and in his famous “Iron Curtain”
speech at Fulton, Missouri in 1946, Churchill paid his
American mentor due credit:
I have often used words which I learned fifty years ago
from a great Irish-American orator, a friend of mine, Mr.
Bourke Cockran. “There is enough for all. The earth is a
generous mother; she will provide in plentiful abundance
food for all her children if they will but cultivate her soil
in justice, and peace.” 22 ,
Bibliography
The indicated Churchill and Cockran letters are
courtesy of the New York Public Library (citation below).
Other letters are courtesy of the Churchill Archives Centre,
Churchill College, Cambridge, England.
Churchill, Randolph S., Winston S. Churchill, vol. I
Youth, 1874-1900; vol. II, Young Statesman, 1901-1914
and the relevant Companion Volumes, London: Heinemann,
1966, 1967.
Churchill, Winston S., Thoughts and Adventures,
London: Thornton Butterworth Ltd., 1932.
Cockran, William Bourke, In the Name of Liberty.
Selected addresses by William Bourke Cockran, William
Bourke Cockran Papers, The New York Public Library,
Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundation, New York City.
Hofstadter, Richard, The Age of Reform, New York:
Vantage Books, 1955.
Kennedy, Ambrose, American Orator/Bourke Cockran/His
Life and Politics, Boston: Humphries, 1948.
McGurrin, James, Bourke Cockran/A Free Lance in
American Politics, New York: Charles Scribners Sons,
1948.
Martin, Ralph G., Jennie: The Life of Lady Randolph
Churchill, vol. 2, The Dramatic Years, 1895-1921,
New York: Signet, 1971.
Rhodes James, Robert, Winston Churchill. His
Complete Speeches, 1897-1963, 8 vols., New York:
Chelsea House Publishers, 1974.
Stovall, Richard Lee, “The Rhetoric of Bourke
Cockran: A Contextual Analysis.” Ph.D. Dissertation,
Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, 1975.
Endnotes
1. Martin, Jennie, vol. 2, 37-38.
2. Stovall, “The Rhetoric of Bourke Cockran,” xxvi.
3. Churchill, Thoughts and Adventures, 52.
4. McGurrin, Bourke Cockran, 3.
5. Ibid., 47.
6. Stovall, 47.
7. McGurrin, 74
8. William Bourke Cockran Papers. (Letter not in
the Churchill official biography.)
9. Ibid.
10. The New York Times, 28 November 1896.
11. McGurrin, 199-200.
12. The New York Times, 15 December 1900.
13. The New York Times, 27 March 1893.
14. McGurrin, 232.
15. WSC to Cockran, 12 April 1896, William
Bourke Cockran Papers.
16. Cockran to WSC, 27 April 1896, Churchill
Archives Centre, Cambridge.
17. WSC to Cockran, 12 December 1903, William
Bourke Cockran Papers.
18. Randolph S. Churchill, Winston S. Churchill,
vol. I, Young Statesman 1901-191, 79.
19. WSC to Cockran, 31 May 1904, Cockran Papers.
(Letter not in the Churchill official biography.)
20. WSC to Cockran, 16 July 1904, Cockran Papers.
(Letter not in the Churchill official biography.)
21. McGurrin, 232.
22. Rhodes James, Complete Speeches, VII, 7288.
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