US Senator. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as a representative of Tennessee in the US Congress from March 1911 until March 1917. Born into a family with a political heritage, he was tutored at home and attended University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, graduating with a bachelor's degree in 1899 and a master's degree in 1900. He then attended Columbia Law School in New York City, New York, graduating in 1903, and was admitted to the bar the same year, and began to practice law in Nashville, Tennessee. He then got into the newspaper business with the purchase of the "Nashville American," renaming it the "Nashville Tennessean," serving as its first editor and publisher. In 1911 he was elected to the US Senate by the Tennessee General Assembly, succeeding James B. Frazier. During his tenure, he served as Chairman of the Senate Committee on the Library of Congress. Socially progressive but fiscally conservative, he actively supported lowering tariffs, the creation of the Federal Reserve System, the regulation of major corporations, the breaking up of trusts, women's suffrage, and a national prohibition amendment. In 1916 he lost the Democratic nominate to the Senate to Kenneth McKellar and at the end of his term, he joined the US Army after the US entered World War I in April 1917. He was sent to the Western Front where, at the rank of colonel, he commanded the 114th Field Artillery Regiment and saw combat action at the Battle of Saint-Mihiel and the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, and was awarded the Army Distinguished Service Medal for his wartime efforts. Following the war, he returned to the US and resumed his newspaper business. In the 1920s, he was a major investor in the Nashville investment banking firm of Caldwell & Company Then, in 1931 he was indicted in North Carolina with others, including his eldest son, for bank fraud resulting from the 1930 collapse of the Central Bank and Trust Company of Asheville, North Carolina, a bank with which he had become affiliated through his connection with Caldwell & Company. He and his son were tried and convicted on three of seven accounts and served prison time from May 1934 until his parole two years later, followed by a full pardon in 1937. He died at the age of 66.