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Michigan's Homer Ferguson objected. He moved that Arthur Vandenberg, who was scheduled to take over as president pro tem, be sworn in first. There was an instant flurry of argument. Mr. Biffle ruled that new members would be sworn in one at a time, alphabetically. Connecticut's Raymond Baldwin was sworn.
Bilbo straightened his necktie. He was next. He walked to the center aisle. Mississippi's junior Senator properly should have escorted him. But James O. Eastland, who has even outshouted Bilbo on the subject of white supremacy from time to time, has nothing but hatred for Bilbo (because of patronage squabbles). Bilbo took the arm of a friend, Louisiana's John H. Overton.
"This Cowboy." In the Republicans' plan, Ferguson was now supposed to get the floor and offer a resolution that Bilbo be barred until the Senate was organized. Then they could debate Bilbo's qualifications. But the plan went awry. From a back row, Idaho's Glen Taylor, onetime tent-show player and singing cowboy, bellowed so loud that the flustered Biffle recognized him. Taylor was against seating Bilbo, he declaimed, but he wanted the Senate to go slow. Taylor talked for an hour while Republicans writhed and members wandered into the cloakroom. Bilbo followed, cackling: "The greatest joke is that this nincompoop, this cowboy named Taylor, stole the whole Republican show." Outside, he ran spang into a group of Negroes. He returned to the floor to perch on a seat beside Taylor in silent mockery.
When Taylor finished, Overton took the floor. He moved that Bilbo be allowed to take the oath without prejudice. "What you are trying to do here today is take Bilbo by the heels and drag him out that door there and lynch him." The galleries, reflecting on the lynch record in Bilbo's Mississippi, roared.
Overton recalled acidly that Taft had voted to seat North Dakota's Republican "Wild Bill" Langer four years ago, when Langer was accused of "moral turpitude." Taft prodded Overton with an invitation to lay the Bilbo issue aside long enough to let the other Senators-elect take their seats. But Overton and the Southern Democrats aligned with him would not yield. They held the whip hand, they could delay organization indefinitely. They were going down the line for Bilbo.
Filibuster. Taft, to whom Bilbo was "a disgrace to the Senate," was as stubborn as the Southerners. He rejected any proposal to seat Bilbo now and settle the case later. Recalling the Langer case, he said: "I'd never again vote to seat a man until the issue is settled."
The battle wore on. On at least one skirmishing vote ten Democrats of the 30 seated lined up with Republicans. Bilbo, who once sneered that his enemy Taft was "like a young mocking bird—all mouth and no bird," shuffled into an anteroom, shoulders drooping. But the men who, for their various reasons, supported him, dug in. Oklahoma's white-haired Elmer Thomas, blandly suggesting the absence of a quorum, began a filibuster.