1940 election

On September 29, 1939, McMillan died and Rivers immediately made plans to run for Congress. He quit his federal job in February 1940 and opened a law practice in Charleston to provide a base for his campaign. His opponent in the Democratic primary was Alfred von Kolnitz, who had the backing of the Charleston political establishment and Thomas McMillan's widow, Clara. Rivers knew that he was not going to win the vote in Charleston, so he tried to maximize his vote outside of Charleston by making the theme of his campaign about the chicanery of the city. Furthermore, with World War II raging in Europe, Rivers played up von Kolnitz's German name to make him appear as if a Nazi sympathizer. He was aided in this effort by the fact that von Kolnitz was outspokenly antisemitic, and was in favor of isolationism (von Kolnitz advocated that the U.S. not help the United Kingdom in the British war effort against the Nazis.) On August 27, Rivers won the Democratic primary election by running up a huge margin in the counties outside of Charleston, which offset his loss in Charleston County. In those days, victory in the Democratic primary was tantamount to election in South Carolina, and Rivers took office on January 3, 1941. Making good on his pro-British campaign rhetoric, Rivers voted in favor of the first Lend Lease Act in 1941 to lend material military aid to the British Army and Royal Navy, as well as food aid for British soldiers and civilians.^[3] He then voted to extend the lend lease act in 1944.^[4]

Domestic legislation

Once in Congress, Rivers sought a seat on the Agriculture committee, but it was full and he was instead placed on the Merchant Marine and Fisheries committee. In March, he was appointed to the Naval Affairs committee which was later combined with the Military Affairs committee to form the House Armed Services Committee. His first legislative success was in 1942 when he authored a bill to build an oil pipeline from Mississippi to the Southeast coast to reduce the transportation costs of the product. The bill was passed by Congress and signed by President Roosevelt, but Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes refused to construct the pipeline because of the opposition by Big Oil.^[5]

Rivers's first major success was the repeal of the federal tax on colored oleomargarine. The tax was first implemented because margarine was a much cheaper substitute of butter which threatened the interests of the dairy farmers. When Rivers first introduced the bill in 1944 to repeal the tax, it was vigorously opposed by Midwestern Representatives and the bill died in the agriculture committee. Undeterred, Rivers reintroduced the bill every year and made so many speeches in favor of the repeal of the tax that he was nicknamed "Oleo" Rivers.^[6] In 1949, he circulated a petition in the House to force the bill out of the agriculture committee and to the full House for a vote. The bill passed the House and then the Senate and was signed into law by President Truman in 1950. The manufacturers of margarine were forever grateful to Rivers and sent him complimentary boxes of oleo until the day he died.^[7]

Views regarding race

Like most South Carolinian Democrats from his era, Rivers was an ardent segregationist. Rivers and the entire South Carolina delegation signed the Southern Manifesto^[8] in 1956. Rivers voted against the Civil Rights Acts of 1957,^[9] 1960^[10], 1964^[11], and 1968^[12] as well as the 24th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution^[13] and the Voting Rights Act of 1965^[14].

River attempted to have Charleston federal district court judge J. Waties Waring impeached for having ruled that blacks had to be allowed to vote in the Democratic primary and that segregated schools were unconstitutional.^[15] In South Carolina in the 1940s the Democratic Party had all-white primary elections, which was contested in the court case Elmore v. Rice where George Elmore was represented by Harold Boulware and Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP. Judge Waring ruled in favor of Elmore in 1947, but the ruling was rebuffed by South Carolina outside of Richland County. In a second case Brown v. Baskin (1948), Judge Waring once again ruled that the South Carolina Democratic Party must hold primaries that are "freely open to all parties... without discrimination of race, color or creed."^[16] Judge Waring was eventually forced to leave South Carolina after his dissenting opinion in Briggs v. Elliot (1951), which challenged segregation in public schools, eventually becoming one of five cases that was seen by the U.S. Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education. Despite Rivers' fundraising campaign against him, Judge Waring was not impeached, but he eventually moved to New York to continue his work as a federal judge where he died in 1968. Judge Waring was buried in Magnolia Cemetery on Meeting Street in Charleston and his funeral was attended by more than 200 blacks and less than a dozen whites.^[17] When President Truman integrated the U.S. Army in 1948, Rivers called him a "dead chicken" and a "bankrupt politician".^[18] Rivers was so incensed by Truman that he supported Strom Thurmond in the 1948 Presidential election. After Truman's victory, he lost his patronage privileges and was lucky to retain his seat on the Armed Services Committee.

Rivers attended the 1952 Democratic National Convention and believed that Adlai Stevenson would reverse the policies of Truman by returning to traditional Democratic principles. However, Rivers became disillusioned with Stevenson and he openly supported Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower in the 1952 Presidential election because he said that he would be sensitive to Southern concerns.^[19][20] Rivers's long-held distrust of Republicans was reinforced shortly after Eisenhower became president when he ordered the desegregation of all schools on military bases and did not grant Rivers patronage privileges, despite Rivers being the only Democrat to support Eisenhower in 1952.^[21] Eisenhower's continual push for integration infuriated Rivers. When asked if he would back Eisenhower again in 1956, Rivers later claimed to have responded "Hell no! Ain't no education in the second kick of a mule."^[20]

In the 1960s, Rivers softened his vocal opposition to civil rights legislation. He had risen in the ranks and his power in the House depended upon the continual support of national Democrats. Rivers shifted his approach from defending segregation to the maintenance of law and order. He found a kindred spirit in George Wallace and he attended one of Wallace's fundraising dinners in 1968. Wallace asked Rivers in July to be his running mate for the 1968 Presidential election, but Rivers dared not risk losing his chairmanship of the House Armed Services Committee and declined the offer.^[22]

House Armed Services Chairman

L. Mendel Rivers at the White House, March 7, 1968

Rivers became the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee in 1965 following the retirement of Carl Vinson. Upon moving into the Rayburn House Office Building, Rivers placed a plaque of Article 1, Section 8 of the United States Constitution that specified the role of the legislative process with the military. He felt that the Congress should not delegate its powers to the President nor the Secretary of Defense, and that a vigorous Congress would make the President perform his job better.^[23] As Rivers inspected the committee room, he became incensed when he discovered there were cloakrooms adjoining the chamber for use by Democratic and Republican Party members to discuss their strategies. Viewing national defense as a non-partisan issue, Rivers had the cloakrooms turned into offices.^[23]

By the time Rivers became the chairman, he was well known for being a strong supporter of the American military in general, and of enlisted military service members in particular. In 1963 he established, through the vehicle of the House–Senate Conference Committee, the principle of linking military retired pay to increases in the Consumer Price Index (CPI), similar to the practice for retired federal civil servants. In 1964 he championed the cause of "hospital rights," guaranteeing medical care in military hospitals for military retirees and their dependents.

After becoming chairman, in 1965 he helped secure the first military pay raise since 1952, despite opposition from the Secretary of Defense McNamara and President Johnson. Rivers was instrumental in establishing the additional enlisted pay grade of E-9, and he helped secure mobile home allowances and cheap air fares for soldiers returning from Vietnam.^[24]

Rivers strongly supported the constant upgrading of US military preparedness, regardless of the cost. He supported making all US Navy ships nuclear powered,^[25] and he championed development of the US Air Force's C-5A Galaxy military airlift jet, despite huge cost overruns.^[26] In his last speech to his colleagues in the US House of Representatives on December 7, 1970, delivered just before he departed for Birmingham, Alabama to have heart surgery, he stated, "While we debate the question of maintaining our military capability, the Soviet Union forges ahead. We seem hell-bent on national suicide....We cannot as a nation afford to spend one penny less on national defense than that amount which is required to insure that you and I, and our children, can convince the Soviets they dare not pull the trigger when a Soviet gun is placed against our heads."^[27]

In that same speech, he delivered the quote for which he is best remembered: "The final measure of our ability to survive as a nation in a hostile world will not be how well we have managed our domestic resources and domestic programs, but whether or not we have avoided and frustrated the forces of evil which would draw us into the crucible of war with the Soviet Union. If we fail in that endeavor, we will have failed in everything."^[27]

Vietnam War, and cover-up of Mỹ Lai Massacre

Rivers was initially skeptical of the administration's escalation of the Vietnam War and its decision to send combat troops to Vietnam, but later became one of the strongest Congressional supporters of the war. He enjoyed referring to himself as "The Granddaddy of the War Hawks."^[28] He urged the President to use nuclear weapons against the North Vietnamese and to invade and occupy Hanoi.^[29]

During a Congressional investigation of the 1968 Mỹ Lai Massacre, Rivers criticized Army helicopter pilot CW2 (later Major) Hugh Thompson, Jr. for giving the order to his men to fire upon American soldiers at Mỹ Lai if they continued to shoot unarmed Vietnamese civilians, calling him a traitor and saying he should be prosecuted.^[30] Rivers was unable to believe that American soldiers would do such a thing and denied that any massacre ever happened. He attempted to protect Army 2nd Lt. William Calley, later convicted of 22 killings at Mỹ Lai, by quickly holding hearings of his subcommittee on Mỹ Lai. He called every major witness to the event (including Thompson) before the subcommittee, and then refused to release the transcripts of the testimony. This meant that military prosecutors would be prohibited from calling those persons as witnesses at Calley's court martial.^[31] For this, Rivers is remembered as a Congressman who tried to cover up a massacre in the Vietnam war and court-martial the man who stopped it.