The Governor

Jaunty and happy, James F. Byrnes stood in the bright southern sunshine outside the Capitol at Columbia and raised his right arm. He swore that he would defend the South Carolina and U.S. Constitutions, that he had not engaged in any duels since Jan. 1, 1881, that he would not engage in any while in office. The cheerful, unsegregated crowd of 65,000 whites and Negroes sent up a roar of applause for South Carolina's new governor.

The Opportunity. Jimmy Byrnes, once a Congressman, a Senator, an "Assistant President," a Supreme Court Justice, was also the man whom Harry Truman had once accused of "failing miserably" as Secretary of State. But Governor Byrnes bore no grudges. Launching into his inaugural address, he called for national unity to meet the threat of Soviet Communism.

"It is not only our duty," said he. "It is our great opportunity."

Byrnes urged the U.N. to 1) declare China an aggressor, and 2) authorize an air and sea blockade of China. If it did not, U.S. forces should be withdrawn from Korea. He firmly supported the President's policy of sending troops to Western Europe. "The people of America do not want to sit on the sidelines and permit Stalin to take control of all Europe," said the governor.

But on domestic issues, bantam-like Jimmy Byrnes, looking and acting younger than his 71 years, gave Harry Truman a keelhauling. Speaking as the natural leader and spokesman of anti-Fair Deal rebels in the whole Democratic South, he hoped that the "political proposals and socialistic programs" written into the President's budget would not be pressed, for they "are certain to divide our people." He tartly ridiculed Truman's civil-rights program: "We must assume that the Administration will again urge the court to repudiate what has been the law of the land for half a century." There would be firm adherence to South Carolina's segregation of schools, said the governor, but there would be better schools. "If we demand respect for state rights, we must discharge state responsibilities."

The Boss. For once in Jimmy Byrnes's long and lofty political career, there was no doubt who was boss. "In this state," he declared, "there can be but one government. That must be a government of the people under law. There can be but one governor ... I am going to be that governor ... I do not need the assistance of the Ku Klux Klan, nor do I want interference from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People."

In the happy confusion of Byrnes's inauguration, his predecessor was not forgotten. As outgoing Governor J. Strom Thurmond, 48, and his pretty wife, "Sugar," 24, packed up to move out of the executive mansion last week, a group of personal and political friends turned up to bid them goodbye. As a token of esteem for the man who ran for President in 1948 on the Dixiecrats' states' rights program, the friends brought along a shiny new Cadillac and five crisp $100 bills to help the Thurmonds set up housekeeping at Aiken. "I'm floored," said the ex-governor. Thurmond planned to practice law, said he was not sure whether he would stay in politics. But some of his admirers were not so doubtful. Said Thurmond's friend Leon Moore, ex-mayor of Spartanburg: "None of [us] figure we are buying oats for a dead horse."

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