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Democrat US Congressman Graham A. Barden of northeastern North Carolina first took his seat in November 1934 and served initially on the Library Committee. His positions were usually conservative and often differed with the Truman administration. He was wary of the administration’s Palestine policy in 1948 characterizing it as “terribly dangerous” and one that “would arouse the whole Moslem world.” He charged that Truman was being influenced by American Zionists and bought UN support with Marshall Plan funds. He predicted that the US would be called upon to aid the new Israeli government with both men and money.
Barden was wary of federal aid to education while firmly stating that “the prime responsibility for financing education was in the hands of State and local government,” and that any federal aid must not bring with it any federal control. He rightly feared what the federal bureaucracy might do in interpreting the bill.
North Befogged by Bitterness and Prejudice
“Barden’s opportunity to appear as a champion of the American South occurred when a delegation of the Women’s Auxiliary of the Grand Army of the Republic appeared before the Library Committee to oppose a resolution to erect a memorial to Robert E. Lee near the Lee Mansion in Arlington. Barden sat quietly and uncomfortably until the ladies’ attack upon Southern generals and the Confederacy turned into a tirade against the South and all Southerners.
As the only Southerner present on the committee, Barden came to the defense of not only Robert E. Lee, but of the South’s heritage. The congressman declared that he had “never heard such sectional bitterness expressed.” Answering the women’s insistence that Arlington National Cemetery was a “Union and not a Confederate graveyard” and that even though a few Confederate dead were buried there, Arlington was not a place to honor Confederates, Barden pointed out that in his hometown of New Bern, North Carolina a thousand Union soldiers were buried with honor in a beautiful cemetery.
He continued “We of the South do not propose to keep our brains and characters befogged by bitterness and prejudice. The hospitality of the South has never been questioned, not even by a dead Union soldier.”
The effectiveness of Barden’s position was apparent when the committee voted to report the Robert E. Lee Memorial bill favorably.”
(Graham A. Barden: Conservative Carolina Congressman. Elmer L. Puryear, Campbell University Press, 1979, pp. 22-23; 55; 82)