He represented Virginia in both houses of Congress and served as the United States Secretary of the Treasury under President Woodrow Wilson.

Historian J. Douglas Smith described him as “the architect of disenfranchisement in the Old Dominion.”[1] He also promoted progressive fiscal and regulatory reform but these contributions were often superficial since Glass generally opposed the most reformist aspects of federal legislation and was a New Deal critic.

Working with President Wilson, he passed the Federal Reserve Act, which established a central banking system for the United States.

An ardent supporter of states' rights, Glass opposed much of the New Deal and clashed with President Franklin D. Roosevelt over the control of federal appointments in Virginia.

[4] When the American Civil War (1861–1865) broke out, Lynchburg was pro-Union but also pro-slavery, since its economy depended on the manufacture of tobacco as well as slave-trading and the new railroads.

In poverty-stricken Virginia during the post-War period, Glass received only a basic education at a private school run by one-legged former Confederate Henry L.

He became an apprentice printer to his father (and Hardwicke) when he was 13 years old, and continued his education through reading Plato, Edmund Burke and William Shakespeare, among others who stimulated his lifelong intellectual interest.

Not long afterward, Major Glass accepted the editorship of the Danville Post, but Carter did not join him, instead returning to Lynchburg.

However, when young Glass could not find a job as a newspaper reporter in Petersburg, he returned to Lynchburg, and went to work for former Confederate General (and future U.S.

His formative years as Virginia struggled to resolve a large pre-War debt (Mahone being a leading figure in the Readjuster Party) and dealing with boom-and-bust economic cycles (some linked with stock speculation), helped mold Glass' conservative fiscal thinking, much as it did many other Virginia political leaders of his era.

Desperate to find financial backing, Glass received the unexpected assistance from a relative who loaned him enough for a $100 down payment on the $13,000 deal.

[8] Free to write and publish whatever he wished, Glass wrote bold editorials and encouraged tougher reporting in the morning paper, which increased sales.

As a prominent and respected newspaper editor, Glass often supported candidates who ran against Virginia's Democrats of the post-Reconstruction period, who he felt were promoting bad fiscal policy.

In 1896, the same year his father died, Glass attended the Democratic National Convention as a delegate, and heard William Jennings Bryan speak.

[13] Carter Glass remained one of the strongest advocates of segregation and continued to dedicate much of his political career to the perpetuation of Jim Crow laws in the South.

In 1913, he became Chairman of the House Committee on Banking and Currency, where he worked with President Woodrow Wilson to pass the Glass-Owen Federal Reserve Act.

Glass served in the U.S. Senate for the remainder of his life, turning down the offer of a new appointment as Secretary of the Treasury from President Roosevelt in 1933.

He was President pro tempore from 1941 to 1945, being succeeded as such by Kenneth McKellar at the start of the custom of giving that post to the senior senator of the majority party.

As a Senator, Glass's most notable achievement was passage of the Glass–Steagall Act, which separated the activities of banks and securities brokers and created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

The fruit-growing interests of his State make him an opponent of the reciprocal trade pacts, but on all other questions he has loyally supported the President's anti-Isolationist policy.

"Montview", also known as the "Carter Glass Mansion", was built in 1923 on his farm outside of the-then boundaries of Lynchburg in Campbell County.