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Senate Years of Service: 1909-1944 Party: Democrat
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SMITH, Ellison DuRant, a Senator from South Carolina; born in Lynchburg, Sumter (now Lee) County,
S.C., August 1, 1864; attended the private and public schools of Lynchburg, Stewarts School at
Charleston, S.C., and the University of South Carolina at Columbia; graduated from Wofford College
at Spartanburg, S.C., in 1889; member, State house of representatives 1896-1900; unsuccessful
candidate for the United States Congress 1901; engaged in mercantile and agricultural pursuits; one
of the principal figures in the organization of the Southern Cotton Association in 1905; field agent and
general organizer in the cotton protective movement 1905-1908 and became known as Cotton Ed;
elected as a Democrat to the United States Senate in 1908; reelected in 1914, 1920, 1926, 1932 and
1938 and served from March 4, 1909, until his death; unsuccessful candidate for renomination in
1944; chairman, Committee on Transportation Routes to the Seaboard (Sixty-second Congress),
Committee on Immigration (Sixty-third through Sixty-fifth Congresses), Committee on Interstate
Commerce (Sixty-fifth and Sixty-eighth Congresses), Committee on Conservation of Natural
Resources (Sixty-sixth Congress), Committee on Agriculture and Forestry (Seventy-third through
Seventy-eighth Congresses); died in Lynchburg, S.C., on November 17, 1944; interment in St.
Lukes Cemetery.
BibliographyAmerican National Biography; Dictionary of American Biography; Smith, Seldon. Ellison DuRant Smith: A Southern
Progressive 1909-1929. Ph.D. dissertation, University of South Carolina, 1970; U.S. Congress. Memorial Services. 79th Cong., 1st sess., 1945. Washington, D.C.: Government
Printing Office, 1947.
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