Item: i109080

Authentic Medal of:

United States of America
Minority Leader Hugh Scott – US Senate
1973 Proof Copper Token Medal 38mm (24.27 grams)
Reference: SCI 73-31 (Franklin Mint)
HUGH SCOTT MINORITY LEADER U.S.S., Hugh facing left.
UNITED STATES SENATE E PLURIBUS UNUM LIBERTY, Seal of the US Senate.
Edge Lettering:
73 P

You are bidding on the exact item pictured, provided with a Certificate of Authenticity and Lifetime Guarantee of Authenticity.

Hugh Doggett Scott Jr. (November 11, 1900 – July 21, 1994) was an American lawyer and politician. A member of the Republican Party, he represented Pennsylvania in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1947 to 1959 and in the U.S. Senate, from 1959 to 1977. He served as Senate Minority Leader from 1969 to 1977.

Born and educated in Virginia, Scott moved to Philadelphia to join his uncle’s law firm. He was appointed as Philadelphia’s assistant district attorney in 1926 and remained in that position until 1941. Scott won election to represent Northwest Philadelphia in the House of Representatives in 1940. He lost re-election in 1944 but won his seat back in 1946 and served in the House until 1959. Scott established a reputation as an internationalist and moderate Republican Congressman. After helping Thomas E. Dewey win the 1948 Republican presidential nomination, Scott held the position of Chairman of the Republican National Committee from 1948 to 1949. He also served as Dwight Eisenhower’s campaign chairman in the 1952 presidential election.

Scott won election to the Senate in 1958, narrowly prevailing over Democratic Governor George M. Leader. He was a strong advocate for civil rights legislation and voted in favor of the Civil Rights Acts of 1957, 1960, 1964, and 1968, as well as the 24th Amendment to the US Constitution, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the confirmation of Thurgood Marshall to the U.S. Supreme Court. He won election as Senate Minority Whip in January 1969 and was elevated to Senate Minority Leader after Everett Dirksen’s death later that year. As the Republican leader in the Senate, Scott urged President Richard Nixon to resign in the aftermath of the Watergate Scandal. Scott declined to seek another term in 1976 and retired in 1977.

In 1958, after fellow Republican Edward Martin declined to run for re-election, Scott was elected to the U.S. Senate. He narrowly defeated his Democratic opponent, Governor George M. Leader, by a margin of 51 to 48 percent. Scott continued his progressive voting record in the Senate by opposing President Eisenhower’s veto of a housing bill in 1959 and a redevelopment bill in 1960. He voted to end segregationist Democratic senators’ filibuster of the Civil Rights Act of 1960, and he later sponsored 12 bills to implement the recommendations of the Civil Rights Commission. A memorable quote from Scott came during the U-2 Incident in 1960, when he said, “We have violated the eleventh Commandment — Thou Shall Not Get Caught.”

In 1962, Scott threatened to run for Governor of Pennsylvania if the Republican Party did not nominate the moderate Representative William W. Scranton over the more conservative Judge Robert E. Woodside, a former Pennsylvania Attorney General. He even supported Scranton as a more liberal alternative to conservative Senator Barry Goldwater for the Republican nomination in the 1964 presidential election. Scott also faced re-election in 1964 and overcame the national landslide for Democratic President Lyndon Johnson to defeat the state Secretary of Internal Affairs, Democrat Genevieve Blatt, by approximately 70,000 votes.

Scott voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Civil Rights Act of 1968. In 1966, along with two other Republican Senators and five Republican Representatives, Scott signed a telegram sent to Georgia Governor Carl Sanders on the Georgia legislature’s refusal to seat the recently elected Julian Bond in its state House of Representatives. The refusal, said the telegram, was “a dangerous attack on representative government. None of us agree with Mr. Bond’s views on the Vietnam War; in fact we strongly repudiate these views. But unless otherwise determined by a court of law, which the Georgia Legislature is not, he is entitled to express them.”

Scott supported New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller for the Republican nomination in the 1968 presidential election. Scott was reelected again in 1970, defeating Democratic State Senator William Sesler by a margin of 51 to 45 percent. Scott served until January 3, 1977 and was elected Senate Minority Whip in January 1969. After the death of Illinois Senator Everett Dirksen in September 1969, Scott was narrowly elected Senate Minority Leader over Tennessee Senator Howard Baker (Dirksen’s son-in-law), serving until 1977.

In 1967, Scott held a Fellowship at Balliol College, Oxford, where he contributed regularly to Alan Montefiore’s politics seminar for postgraduates. Once, when he and Montefiore started talking at the same time, Scott carried on speaking with the amiable excuse: “You can remember what you want to say longer than I can.”

Scott was Chairman of the Select Committee on Secret and Confidential Documents (92nd Congress). He wielded tremendous influence.

Scott was displeased with the Nixon administration and believed that it was aloof, unapproachable, and contemptuous of him. Scott believed that he would be given a major role in setting administration policy but was disappointed when that did not occur. Actively assisting in the behind-the-scenes transition from the Nixon administration to the Ford administration in the months leading up to the resignation of President Richard Nixon, Scott sought assurance from Gerald Ford that Scott would be able to address Ford as “Jerry” even after Ford became President.

Scott was one of the three Republican leaders in Congress to meet Nixon in the Oval Office of the White House to tell Nixon that he had lost support of the party in Congress, on August 7, 1974. The meeting came the day before Nixon would announce his resignation from the presidency. The delegation was led by senior party leader and Arizona Senator Goldwater and also included House Minority Leader John Jacob Rhodes (R-Arizona). The erosion of Nixon’s support had progressed after the June 1972 Watergate break-in. At that meeting, Scott and Goldwater told Nixon that, at most, 15 Senators were willing to consider voting to acquit him–not even half of the 34 votes Nixon needed to avoid conviction and removal from office.

In 1976, the Senate undertook an ethics inquiry into accusations that he had received payment from lobbyists for the Gulf Oil Corporation. Scott acknowledged having received $45,000 but claimed that they were legal campaign contributions.

He did not run for re-election in 1976 and was succeeded by Republican John Heinz. The same year, he chaired the Pennsylvania delegation to the Republican National Convention.

The United States of America (USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country composed of 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, and various possessions. At 3.8 million square miles (9.8 million km²), the United States is the world’s third or fourth largest country by total area and is slightly smaller than the entire continent of Europe’s 3.9 million square miles (10.1 million km²). With a population of over 327 million people, the U.S. is the third most populous country. The capital is Washington, D.C., and the largest city by population is New York City. Forty-eight states and the capital’s federal district are contiguous in North America between Canada and Mexico. The State of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east and across the Bering Strait from Russia to the west. The State of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U.S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, stretching across nine official time zones. The extremely diverse geography, climate, and wildlife of the United States make it one of the world’s 17 megadiverse countries.

Paleo-Indians migrated from Siberia to the North American mainland at least 12,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century. The United States emerged from the thirteen British colonies established along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the colonies following the French and Indian War led to the American Revolution, which began in 1775, and the subsequent Declaration of Independence in 1776. The war ended in 1783 with the United States becoming the first country to gain independence from a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, with the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, being ratified in 1791 to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. The United States embarked on a vigorous expansion across North America throughout the 19th century, acquiring new territories, displacing Native American tribes, and gradually admitting new states until it spanned the continent by 1848.

During the second half of the 19th century, the Civil War led to the abolition of slavery. By the end of the century, the United States had extended into the Pacific Ocean, and its economy, driven in large part by the Industrial Revolution, began to soar. The Spanish-American War and World War I confirmed the country’s status as a global military power. The United States emerged from World War II as a global superpower, the first country to develop nuclear weapons, the only country to use them in warfare, and a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. The Rights Acts of 1964, 1965 and 1968 outlaws discrimination based on race or color. During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union competed in the Space Race, culminating with the 1969 U.S. Moon landing. The end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the world’s sole superpower.

The United States is the world’s oldest surviving federation. It is a federal republic and a representative democracy. The United States is a founding member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States (OAS), and other international organizations. The United States is a highly developed country, with the world’s largest economy by nominal GDP and second-largest economy by PPP, accounting for approximately a quarter of global GDP. The U.S. economy is largely post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge-based activities, although the manufacturing sector remains the second-largest in the world. The United States is the world’s largest importer and the second largest exporter of goods, by value. Although its population is only 4.3% of the world total, the U.S. holds 31% of the total wealth in the world, the largest share of global wealth concentrated in a single country.

Despite wide income and wealth disparities, the United States continues to rank very high in measures of socioeconomic performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP, and worker productivity. The United States is the foremost military power in the world, making up a third of global military spending, and is a leading political, cultural, and scientific force internationally.