American Policy on the League of Nations and the World Court

Archive Report

Administration's Senate Majority and Foreign Policy

Administration gains in the elections of November 6, 1934, increased the number of Democrats in the United States Senate from 59 to 69, giving the dominant party five more than a two-thirds majority. Franklin D. Roosevelt thus became the first Democratic President since Franklin Pierce to enjoy more than a simple majority in the Senate, the 34th Congress (1855–1857) having been the last in which there was so great a preponderance of Democrats in the upper house. Except for 12 years during the Civil War and Reconstruction periods, the only subsequent time in which any administration occupied as strong a position in the Senate was in the last two years of Theodore Roosevelt's term (1907–1909), when one more than ...

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