K. Ross Toole Archives
The Mike Mansfield Papers: Series Notes
Series XXII: Senate: Leadership, 1961-1977 (72 linear ft.)
RESTRICTIONS APPLY; SEE ARCHIVIST FOR INFORMATION.
This series includes an interesting amalgamation of information relating to Mansfield's time as Senate Majority Leader. The documents range from voting and attendance records for Senators during a Congressional session to memorabilia from Maureen Mansfield's trips abroad with the Kennedys and Johnsons. The bulk of the series focuses on boxes relating to legislation, foreign affairs, and other policy business in the Senate. There are also files on weekly Majority Conference meetings and files for individual people including constituents, ambassadors, General MacArthur, and Jacqueline Kennedy. The series holds letters, reports, press releases, clippings, survey results, minutes for informal Democratic leadership meetings, detailed documents from the Democratic Policy Committee, and memorandums from the Central Intelligence Agency.
The structure of the series is inconsistent, though parts of the series are clearly organized. The first boxes in the series contain basic housekeeping documents from the Senate. These include voting worksheets on various bills, absentee lists, attendance records for each senator, and copies of the Congressional Record. The boxes are not arranged chronologically but individual folders are labeled by Congressional session. Following these boxes are about fifty that contain material on a wide variety of topics. There is no clear organizing principle and most of this information overlaps with other series. For example the folder "Legislation-Gun Control (Firearms)" holds letters from interest groups, copies of Mansfield's letters and statements on the issue, a working draft of the bill, and newspaper clippings. Generally these folders are titled by legislative subject or foreign affairs area. Individual nations have their own folders, though there are regional folders as well. For example, there are extensive files on the Middle East concerning the 1967 Egypt-Israeli war. Some of the legislation files do have a specifically leadership slant and contain documents analyzing legislative strategies for passing pending bills. Progress reports on President Johnson's legislative agenda, synopses of Senate activity for a given Congressional session, and letters from the Democratic Policy Committee also reveal leadership issues. The foreign affairs folder tend to be general but also contain information like choices for Great Britain's bicentennial gift that concern Mansfield's leadership position in the Senate. The synopsis reports from the weekly Majority Conference meetings are especially interesting because they chronicle candid policy discussions among Congressional Democratic leaders. These reports are collected chronologically by Congressional session and also include meetings on particularly important topics like the nation's economic situation in 1970. The end of the series has a number of folders labeled "personal" and containing correspondence and reports relating to the person on the title. Typically the letters pertain to business connected with Mansfield's majority leadership and many are on purely partisan matters. The folder on Charles Ferris provides an interesting glimpse into the importance of party workers in determining the practices of elected officials. Some of the folders contain nothing more than thank-you letters for helping a constituent gain contacts abroad while others hold information about Senate scandals like the resignation of Secretary of the Majority Baker.
The organization of the series makes no clear sense, though its component pieces often relate quite logically. The attendance records and voting tallies are easy to follow. The following foreign affairs and legislation files show no particular structure and adjacent folders might contain a bill from 1966 and another from 1974. The Majority Conference meetings follow chronologically but the personal files have no apparent order. Finding specific information here is difficult and folder names are probably the best guide to the hidden treasures about the real workings of American government.
See a sample document from this series: Schedule for Mrs. Mansfield, Mexico-United States Interparliamentary Group, Washington, DC, 12-17 May, 1962.
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Last Updated: 7 July 2002.