the United States Senate but withdrew before election due to ill health. During his congressional service, Tydings was chairman of the United States Senate Committee on Territories and Insular Affairs (73rd through 79th Congresses), the Subcommittee on the Investigation of Loyalty of State Department Employees ("Tydings Subcommittee") (81st Congress), and the U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services (81st Congress). Controversies During his time in the Senate, Tydings was well known for taking principled, controversial, often unusual stands on various issues. As a centrist Democrat, Tydings cautiously backed the New Deal, while dispensing its jobs as his personal patronage. In 1935, Tydings, who was opposed to the flexibility which the U.S. Treasury had accrued with respect to debt management, proposed a constitutional amendment which would have prohibited appropriations in excess of revenues in the absence of a new debt authorization and would required that any new debt be liquidated over a 15-year period. He was a strong critic of Prohibition prior to its repeal in 1933. Tydings in 1937 broke with President Franklin Roosevelt, by opposing the president's "court packing" proposal. In retaliation Roosevelt campaigned against him in 1938, speaking in Eastern Maryland on behalf of his opponent, Congressman David J. Lewis. The state's newspapers overwhelmingly supported Tydings and denounced Roosevelt's interference. Tydings easily won re-election. According to Philip A. Grant Jr.:Tydings' solid victory was interpreted as a serious political blow to the president, yet Roosevelt's 1940 performance in Maryland was creditable, suggesting that state Democrats, while resenting the assault on Tydings, nevertheless favored the New Deal and FDR's leadership. The equation of newspaper opinion with public opinion, in this case, is erroneous. Tydings won on his own record and merits, and the impact of the President's politicking was probably negligible. Biographer Caroline H. Keith is sympathetic in general, but concludes that Tydings' intense vitriol, harshness and arrogance left him an isolated politician with few friends. Death and legacy Millard E. Tydings died on February 9, 1961, at his farm, "Oakington", near Havre de Grace, Maryland. He was buried in Angel Hill Cemetery. Tydings' gravestone incorrectly gives his Senate election year (1926) as the start of his Senate service, which began in 1927. The Millard E. Tydings Memorial Bridge, which carries Interstate 95 across the Susquehanna River, is named in his honor. Millard E. Tydings Hall at the University of Maryland, College Park, which houses the departments of Government & Politics