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Margaret Chase Smith, pioneering senator from Maine, enjoyed a 30-year congressional career that showed her to be a woman of intelligence with unflappable courage. In 1950, for example, Smith famously denounced McCarthyism with her “Declaration of Conscience,” something few senators had dared to do. She even had the nerve to take on Eleanor Roosevelt! In 1956 the two women faced off in a televised debate on “Face the Nation”; this occasion marked the first time a woman was featured on the program.

In characteristic style, Smith embraced a new challenge in 1954. Explaining that official "codels" (congressional delegations) were too carefully managed, Smith embarked on an extensive world tour at her own expense. She wished to become better informed and, in the midst of the Cold War, to assess the extent of the Communist threat. On this trip, she would set her own agenda and ask her own questions. Working with the State Department, Smith and a small staff planned two separate tours, one in October to visit European countries, and a second in the spring of 195

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SMITH, Margaret Chase

For more than three decades, Margaret Chase Smith served as a role model for women aspiring to national politics. As the first woman to win election to both the U.S. House and the U.S. Senate, Smith cultivated a career as an independent and courageous legislator. Senator Smith bravely denounced McCarthyism at a time when others feared speaking out would ruin their careers. Though she believed firmly that women had a political role to assume, Smith refused to make an issue of her gender in seeking higher office. “If we are to claim and win our rightful place in the sun on an equal basis with men,” she once noted, “then we must not insist upon those privileges and prerogatives identified in the past as exclusively feminine.”¹

Margaret Madeline Chase was born on December 14, 1897, in Skowhegan, Maine—the oldest of six children—to George Emery, the town barber, and Carrie Murray Chase, a waitress, store clerk, and shoe factory worker.² After graduating from Skowhegan High School in 1916, Chase took jobs as a teacher, telephone operator, and office manager

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Biography

Margaret Chase Smith was born in Skowhegan, Maine, on December 14, 1897. Her entry into politics came through the career of Clyde Smith, the man she married in 1930. Clyde was elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1936. Margaret served as his secretary. When Clyde died in 1940, she succeeded her husband. After four terms in the House, she won election to the United States Senate in 1948. In so doing, she became the first woman elected to both houses of Congress.

Senator Smith came to national attention on June 1, 1950, when she became the first member of the Senate to denounce the tactics used by colleague Joseph McCarthy in his anti-communist crusade. Following her "Declaration of Conscience" speech, some pundits speculated that she might be the vice-presidential candidate on the 1952 Republican ticket. The opportunity, however, never materialized. In 1964, Senator Smith pursued her own political ambitions, running in several Republican presidential primaries. She took her candidacy all the way to the Republican National Convention in S