monopoly of north and central Florida on the highest statewide offices. His victory marked the emergence of southeast Florida's significant economic and political power. For the first time in Florida history an incumbent United States Senator went down to defeat. Pepper's loss also broke the Florida tradition dating to 1845 of always electing one United States Senator from north Florida. Stand on civil rights The civil rights movement dominated southern politics during Smathers' time in Congress. Smathers publicly opposed federal intervention in racial matters except to support voting rights. He also stressed the rule of law and the need for southern states to comply with any federal legislation. Privately, Smathers rejected many of the doctrines and tenets of white supremacy and believed that, over time, whites would change their views on race relations. Smathers, though, fell into line with other southern senators by signing the 1956 Southern Manifesto, an attack on the Supreme Court's 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision. The signatories accused the Supreme Court of a "clear abuse of judicial power" and promised to use "all lawful means to bring about a reversal of this decision which is contrary to the Constitution and to prevent the use of force in its implementation." As Johnson's lieutenant in the Senate, he helped craft the Senate version of the Civil Rights Act of 1957. He publicly predicted the defeat of the southern filibuster of the bill and voted for its passage in the Senate. The bill was then referred to a conference committee and Smathers voted against the final version. After the chaos surrounding James Meredith's entry into the University of Mississippi in 1962, Smathers wrote "Federal law must be obeyed ... so that force does not have to be used to bring compliance." Smather's contradictory positions on racial matters as a private individual and a Florida senator responsive to his conservative state were never more evident than after Johnson became president. Smathers urged Johnson to act quickly to pass national civil rights legislation, stating "Now that you're the President, I should think they would agree that the sooner we get a civil rights bill over with ... the better the South would be, the better the North would be, the better everybody would be." Smathers privately strategized with Johnson on the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act telling Johnson, "I hope that he [Mansfield] has done his counting