Overview

Justice for All chronicles the career of Dick T. Morgan, an Oklahoma founding father whose public service reflects a passion for fairness that was sorely lacking in Gilded Age America. After arriving in the Unassigned Lands (later, central Oklahoma) with the first wave of non-Indian settlers on April 22, 1889, Morgan developed a reputation as the go-to lawyer for land disputes, built a substantial real estate business, and promoted church-building across Oklahoma Territory. During his tenure in Congress from 1909 until his death in 1920, he helped create institutions that were central to progressivism in the post-frontier period and have shaped modern America, including the Federal Reserve System, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Federal Farm Credit System. Morgan’s adeptness in working across the aisle in a perpetually divided Congress serves as a wake-up call to politicians in thrall to ideology and identity politics at the expense of the public welfare. His speeches, publications, correspondence, newspaper interviews, and congressional testimonies reveal him as a public servant whose bedrock principles were rooted in the Republican Party—that is, the party of Lincoln. In both public and private life, Morgan demonstrated a deep allegiance to what one of his role models, President James A. Garfield, defined as the heart and soul of the nation and the basis of a free government: the church, the school, and the home. Justice for All owes its existence to Dick T. Morgan’s great-grandsons, David and Kenyon Morgan, who resolved to rescue their ancestor from a century of undeserved obscurity. Traveling, literally and figuratively, in their great-grandfather’s footsteps, the Morgan brothers combined their talents in a journey of discovery that helped this biographer illuminate the Progressive Era through the experiences of a native Hoosier who became one of his adopted state’s most beloved and influential citizens.

Full Product Details

9780984705689

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Reviews

""This book is a marvelous addition to any Oklahoma history buff's library, and Hightower has once again proven to be engaging and informative in his prose. People unfamiliar with Morgan's life before reading this book will come away wishing we had a few more elected officials like him."" - Trait Thompson, Executive Director of the Oklahoma Historical Society, for the Chronicles of Oklahoma

Author Information

Michael J. Hightower is a fourth-generation Oklahoman and an independent historian and biographer. He is the author of the two-volume chronicle Banking in Oklahoma; 1889: The Boomer Movement, the Land Run, and Early Oklahoma City; and At War with Corruption: A Biography of Bill Price, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Oklahoma. He has taught sociology at the University of Virginia and Washington and Lee University and splits his time between Oklahoma and Virginia. Bob L. Blackburn retired as executive director of the Oklahoma Historical Society in 2021 and is the author of numerous books, including (with Duane King and Neil Morton), Cherokee Nation: A History of Survival, Self Determination, and Identity.

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