Sam Ervin Leaves His Mark

The Senate’s Watergate hearings in 1973 helped expose gross wrongdoing and an arrogant abuse of power in the Nixon Administration, setting the stage for the only resignation by a President in American history. But as they unfolded the hearings did much more, becoming a continuing lesson on the meaning of the Constitution and the responsibilities of those who are entrusted with public office. The most memorable teacher in this process was Sen. Sam J. Ervin Jr., the North Carolina Democrat who chaired the Watergate committee.

Ervin won that role because of the enormous bipartisan support that he commanded in the Senate and because, at the age of 76, he was past political ambition. Judicious and fair, equable and witty, Ervin was also capable of explosive indignation toward witnesses who lied or equivocated when confronted with evidence of their wrongdoing. Politics may be the art of compromise, but in his insistence that the truth must emerge Ervin proved resolutely uncompromising.

Ervin was a respected constitutional scholar, though his voting record, as an unflagging champion of civil liberties but also as a persistent opponent of civil-rights legislation, resists any easy effort to categorize his ideological bent. A man of rectitude, Ervin also was a representative of his region and his times.

The televised Watergate hearings made Ervin a national celebrity, but within a year he was content to retire from the Senate and return home. He had left his mark during a crucial period in American history. In a confrontation with meanness and dishonesty he had insisted that law and morality must prevail. And in the end they did.