West Virginians Lead the Campaign for Peace

By Jody Brumage

​Five years after the U.S. Constitution was ratified, Philadelphia physician, educator, and signer of the Declaration of Independence, Dr. Benjamin Rush, lamented “Among the defects which have been pointed out in the federal constitution by its antifederal enemies, it is much to be lamented that no person has taken notice of its total silence upon the subject of an office of the utmost importance to the welfare of the United States, that is, an office for promoting and preserving perpetual peace in our country.” Printed by the African American publisher Benjamin Banneker in his 1793 almanac, the sentiments expressed by Rush are the foundation of a movement that has persisted to the present day in the United States: the goal of creating a Department of Peace. West Virginia has played a significant role in advocating for this cause.

A leaf from Benjamin Banneker's 1793 almanac with Dr. Benjamin Rush's proposal for an office of peace.

​Over a century after Banneker circulated Dr. Rush's sentiments, calls for concentrated government-supported peacemaking began to swell in the United States and throughout the world. Emerging from World War I, efforts to create an international governing body to resolve conflicts with diplomacy rather than military action resulted in the formation of the League of Nations. Though the United States did not become a member of the League of Nations, it was among the first signatories of the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1929, binding governments around the world to seek diplomatic means of conflict resolution rather than war. Domestic efforts to establish a permanent office to invest in peacemaking and keeping were renewed by politicians, activists, and religious leaders, including Carrie Chapman Catt (founder of the League of Women Voters).

Senator Matthew Mansfield Neely

​The movement for a peace department found strong support beginning in the 1930s in West Virginia, whose congressional delegation, made up largely of progressive New Deal democrats, was led by the influential Senator Matthew Mansfield Neely. The first legislation to propose a cabinet-level peace agency was introduced by Senator Neely in 1935 during the 74th Congress. Failing to gain wide support, Senator Neely reintroduced the legislation twice in 1937 and 1939, the first three of the over one hundred subsequent bills introduced with the goal of establishing a peace office within the executive branch. Senator Neely’s sudden departure from Congress in 1940 to become Governor of West Virginia brought an abrupt end to his role in bringing about the proposed department, but five years later, World War II reignited calls for permanent peacemaking organizations around the world. Successors to Neely in West Virginia's congressional delegation took up his mantle, including Jennings Randolph, Harley O. Staggers, Melvin Snyder, and Robert Byrd.

By this time, one West Virginian had already gained attention for his staunch support of the idea of a peace department. Raymond Moses Davis, a coal mine operator from Morgantown, studied and published proposals for such a department on both a national and international level, lobbied members of congress and presidents for its implementation, and became a key advocate for peace over more than two decades.

​Born on a Ritchie County farm in 1882, Davis received an education from Mountain State Business College in Parkersburg while also working for a pipe line company, where he learned telegraphy, which in turn led him to work for several railroad companies until he married Fannie Wilson in 1905. Upon marriage, Raymond and Fannie moved west to Los Angeles, California, where he worked as a streetcar operator for two years. After returning to West Virginia in 1907, Raymond began working and investing in railroad, timber, hotel, and coal mining companies and a decade later in 1918 organized the Davis Coal Company. Within two years, the company grew to operating eight mines generating 4,000 tons of coal per day. At its height, the company employed over 500 miners working in West Virginia's Fairmont Coalfield.

​Davis’ prosperity enabled him to engage with West Virginia’s state and national political figures, and he used these opportunities to lobby for his chief interest, the creation of an international peacekeeping organization, centered in the United States. Davis published his ideas for a peace department in a book entitled Proposed New International Order in 1942. Two years later, after the United States’ entry into World War II, Davis met with President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to share his ideas. By the end of the war, his influence with the president led to his appointment as an observer at the San Francisco Conference in the spring of 1945 where the charter of the United Nations was drafted. Upon his return from the conference, Davis testified before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs as they considered legislation introduced by Indiana Representative Louis Ludlow to create a domestic peace department (the first bill attempted since Senator Neeley’s efforts before World War II). His testimony was covered in newspapers across the country and a few months later, a renewed proposal for the peace department was introduced in the House by West Virginia Congressman (and future Senator) Jennings Randolph. Davis' second book, The World Begins to Live, was published in 1946.

Raymond Moses Davis

Copies of the UN Charter from the Harley O. Staggers, Sr. Collection

​Though the legislation failed to garner enough support for passage, Davis continued his efforts in the late-1940s, meeting with newly-elected Congressman Harley O. Staggers of Keyser, West Virginia, who introduced his own legislation calling for a peace department during his first term in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1949. Congressman Staggers became an important ally of Davis, reintroducing his proposal four times in the early-1950s and becoming a strong advocate for the United Nations. In 1954, Congressman Staggers met with President Dwight D. Eisenhower at the White House and advocated on behalf of Davis' proposal. A newspaper account of the meeting quoted Congressman Staggers' remarks to the president: "Mr. President, maybe we would not reap any material advantages right away from the establishment of a department of peace in your cabinet, however, as a piece of psychology to capture men's minds, it would be a tremendous asset in the cold war of nerves with the communists. Every nation in the world has a department of war in its government, but not one major nation has a department of peace." 

​Two of Congressman Staggers' speeches on the U.N. and peace can be read below:

Between 1955 and 1968, eighty-five subsequent bills were introduced in the House and Senate and in 1969, the “Peace Act” garnered significant support including that of West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd. A Department of Peace has been the goal of legislation introduced in the late 1970s, early 2000s, and as recently as 2013. Citizen activism in support of this concept is organized through the Peace Alliance and the Student Peace Alliance.

For over twenty-years, some of the most ardent support for creating a cabinet-level office concerned with  brokering and maintaining international peace was found in West Virginia’s congressional delegation and especially through the efforts of Raymond Moses Davis.
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“I believe firmly that people the world over are today ready to follow a leadership that has as its main objective a warless world.”
                                                                                                                         Raymond M. Davis, The World Begins to Live, 1946.