Frederick Van Nuys

Who was Frederick Van Nuys?

Frederick Van Nuys was a United States Senator from Indiana. Born in Falmouth, he attended the public schools and graduated from Earlham College in 1898 and from the predecessor of the now Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law in 1900. He was admitted to the bar in 1900 and commenced practice in Shelbyville moving shortly afterward to Anderson. From 1906 to 1910 he was prosecuting attorney of Madison County and was a member of the Indiana Senate from 1913 to 1916, serving as president pro tempore in 1915. He moved to Indianapolis in 1916 and continued the practice of law; he was United States attorney for the district of Indiana from 1920 to 1922.

Frederick Van Nuys was elected as a Democrat to the U.S. Senate in 1932, soundly defeating longtime incumbent James Eli Watson. He was narrowly reelected in 1938, serving from March 4, 1933, until his death on a farm near Vienna, Virginia in 1944. While in the Senate he was chairman of the Committee on Expenditures in Executive Departments and a member of the Committee on the Judiciary.

In 1943 a confidential analysis by Isaiah Berlin of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for the British Foreign Office stated of Van Nuys: