Thomas Watt Gregory | Biography

Thomas Watt Gregory served as U.S. attorney general from 1914 to 1919 under President Woodrow Wilson. Gregory, a Texas attorney and politician, expanded the Department of Justice but is most remembered for his aggressive prosecution of radicals and pacifists during World War I.

Gregory was born on November 6, 1861, in Crawfordsville, Mississippi. He graduated from Southwestern Presbyterian University in Clarksville, Tennessee, in 1883 and studied law at the University of Virginia in 1884. In 1885, Gregory received a law degree from the University of Texas. He opened a law office in Austin, Texas, and soon gained attention for his prosecution of an oil monopoly case that ultimately barred the company from doing business in the state.

Gregory served as assistant city attorney in Austin from 1891 to 1894, yet his interests began to shift towards politics. He rejected numerous opportunities involving state political office in the hopes of attaining a national political role. He served as a Texas delegate to the Democratic national conventions of 1904 and 1908 and was an early supporter of New Jersey governor Woodrow Wilson's quest for the 1912 Democratic presidential nomination.

Gregory's hopes for national office were realized in 1913, when U.S. attorney general James C. McReynolds named Gregory special assistant attorney general and charged him with prosecuting antitrust cases. The following year Wilson appointed McReynolds to the U.S. Supreme Court and named Gregory as his successor. With the start of World War I in August of 1914, Gregory created a war emergency division that sought to combat foreign espionage and to maintain U.S. neutrality. During the next three years, as the United States edged closer to war with Germany, Gregory began to increase the investigatory staff of the Bureau of Investigation, the predecessor of the FBI. After the United States entered the war in 1917, Gregory's Department of Justice became intensified its efforts to combat espionage and sabotage. However, the department also arrested and prosecuted political opponents of war, who violated federal sedition laws. The Socialist leader Eugene Debs was prosecuted and sentenced to prison for his anti-war actions. Finally, during Gregory's tenure the government arrested or charged over 200,000 men with avoidance of the military draft.

Wilson thought highly of Gregory and in 1916 offered him a seat on the Supreme Court. Gregory declined the offer, citing his poor hearing and his lack of a suitable judicial temperament. He resigned from the cabinet in March of 1919 under pressure from the administration. Nevertheless, Gregory served as an advisor to Wilson at the Paris Peace Conference, where the victors imposed onerous terms on Germany and created the League of Nations. Gregory was unsuccessful in persuading Republicans to endorse the league, a situation that ultimately kept the U.S. out of the world organization.

After Gregory returned from the peace conference, he remained in Washington, D.C., and returned to the practice of law. However, his health declined, and he moved back to Texas. He died on February 26, 1933, in New York City.