Born and educated in Virginia, Scott moved to Philadelphia to join his uncle's law firm. He was appointed as Philadelphia's assistant district attorney in 1926 and remained in that position until 1941. Scott won election to represent Northwest Philadelphia in the House of Representatives in 1940. He lost re-election in 1944 but won his seat back in 1946 and served in the House until 1959. Scott established a reputation as an internationalist and moderate Republican Congressman. After helping Thomas E. Dewey win the 1948 Republican presidential nomination, Scott held the position of Chairman of the Republican National Committee from 1948 to 1949. He also served as Dwight Eisenhower's campaign chairman in the 1952 presidential election.
Scott was admitted to the bar in 1922 and then moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he joined his uncle's law firm.[12] Two years later, he married Marian Huntington Chase to whom he remained married until her death in 1987. The couple had one daughter, Marian.[11]
Scott, who had become a regular worker for the Republican Party, was appointed assistant district attorney of Philadelphia in 1926[12] and served in that position until 1941. He claimed to have prosecuted more than 20,000 cases during his tenure.[14] From 1938 to 1940, he served as a member of the Governor's Commission on Reform of the Magistrates System.[13]
In 1943, he became a member of the Virginia Society of the Cincinnati. In 1944 Scott spoke out fearlessly in the House of Representatives accusing President Roosevelt of having dishonestly manipulated the country into war by: a) moving the U.S. battleship fleet from San Diego to Pearl Harbor over the objection of Admiral Richardson (whom Roosevelt then fired) in order to give Japan a target it could reach; b) refusing to give Admiral Kimmel at Pearl Harbor (Richardson's replacement) enough PBY Catalina reconnaissance planes to scout the area around the Hawaiian Islands; and c) by withholding from Admiral Kimmel a message received by the U.S. government from the Australian government on the day before the Pearl Harbor attack that the Japanese fleet was steaming toward Pearl Harbor. In 1944, Scott was defeated for re-election by Democrat Herb McGlinchey, losing by only 2,329 votes.[17]
In 1946, Scott reclaimed his House seat, handily defeating McGlinchey by a margin of more than 23,000 vote by speaking out against both President Franklin Roosevelt's "betrayal at Yalta" and communists in Washington, DC.[14][18] He was reelected five times, and served until winning election to the U.S. Senate.
Scott watches as PresidentGerald Ford signs H.R. 5621, Establishing Valley Forge State Park a National Historical Site on July 4, 1976
In 1958, after fellow Republican Edward Martin declined to run for re-election, Scott was elected to the U.S. Senate.[13] He narrowly defeated his Democratic opponent, Governor George M. Leader, by a margin of 51 to 48 percent.[20] Scott continued his progressive voting record in the Senate by opposing President Eisenhower's veto of a housing bill in 1959 and a redevelopment bill in 1960.[21] He voted to end segregationist Democratic senators' filibuster of the Civil Rights Act of 1960, and he later sponsored 12 bills to implement the recommendations of the Civil Rights Commission.[21] A memorable quote from Scott came during the U-2 Incident in 1960, when he said, "We have violated the eleventh Commandment — Thou Shall Not Get Caught."[22] In April 1962, he joined Senator Kenneth Keating of New York in denouncing a UN resolution condemning Israeli retaliation against Syrian gun positions firing on Israeli fishermen on Lake Tiberias. They criticized the action as a form of evenhandedness that "looks like the palm of the hand for the Arabs and the back of the hand for the Israelis."[23]
Scott voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Civil Rights Act of 1968.[21] In 1966, along with two other Republican Senators and five Republican Representatives, Scott signed a telegram sent to Georgia Governor Carl Sanders on the Georgia legislature's refusal to seat the recently elected Julian Bond in its state House of Representatives. The refusal, said the telegram, was "a dangerous attack on representative government. None of us agree with Mr. Bond's views on the Vietnam War; in fact we strongly repudiate these views. But unless otherwise determined by a court of law, which the Georgia Legislature is not, he is entitled to express them."[24]
In 1967, Scott held a Fellowship at Balliol College, Oxford, where he contributed regularly to Alan Montefiore's politics seminar for postgraduates. Once, when he and Montefiore started talking at the same time, Scott carried on speaking with the amiable excuse: "You can remember what you want to say longer than I can."[28]
Scott was Chairman of the Select Committee on Secret and Confidential Documents (92nd Congress). He wielded tremendous influence.[citation needed]
Scott was displeased with the Nixon administration and believed that it was aloof, unapproachable, and contemptuous of him.[29] Scott believed that he would be given a major role in setting administration policy but was disappointed when that did not occur.[29] Actively assisting in the behind-the-scenes transition from the Nixon administration to the Ford administration in the months leading up to the resignation of President Richard Nixon, Scott sought assurance from Gerald Ford that Scott would be able to address Ford as "Jerry" even after Ford became president.[29]
Scott was one of the three Republican leaders in Congress to meet Nixon in the Oval Office of the White House to tell Nixon that he had lost support of the party in Congress, on August 7, 1974. The meeting came the day before Nixon would announce his resignation from the presidency. The delegation was led by senior party leader and Arizona Senator Goldwater and also included House Minority LeaderJohn Jacob Rhodes (R-Arizona). The erosion of Nixon's support had progressed after the June 1972 Watergate break-in.[30] At that meeting, Scott and Goldwater told Nixon that, at most, 15 Senators were willing to consider voting to acquit him–not even half of the 34 votes Nixon needed to avoid conviction and removal from office.[31]
In 1976, the Senate undertook an ethics inquiry into accusations that he had received payment from lobbyists for the Gulf Oil Corporation. Scott acknowledged having received $45,000 but claimed that they were legal campaign contributions.[32]
Kotlowski, Dean J. "Unhappily Yoked? Hugh Scott and Richard Nixon." Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 2001 125(3): 233–266. ISSN 0031-4587 online[permanent dead link]
Abstract: While their different public personas, political interests, and institutional duties led to occasional disagreement, President Richard Nixon and Senate Minority Leader Scott were not always unhappily tethered as evidenced by their stances on domestic and foreign issues throughout Nixon's presidency, during 1968–74. While he jousted with Nixon over racial policies and his Supreme Court nominations, including his choice of Judge Clement F. Haynsworth Jr., of South Carolina, Scott supported much of Nixon's domestic agenda, applauded the president's conduct of foreign affairs, backed his Vietnam policy, praised his invasion of Cambodia, publicly proclaimed Nixon's innocence during the Watergate scandal, and endorsed President Gerald Ford's pardon of his predecessor. The Nixon-Scott relationship is notable because it confirms scholars' assumptions about Nixon's hot-and-cold association with Congress and indicates that sparring between moderate Republicans like Nixon and Scott was on its way out.
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