Bishop James Cannon Jr. Upon Retirement

Bishop James Cannon Jr. was prominent in Virginia Democratic Party politics and a founding member of the Virginia Anti-Saloon League, but by the end of his career he had both broken with the Democratic Party and suffered the weakening of his own moral authority. Cannon severed his ties to the Democratic Party over the 1924 nomination of Catholic New Yorker Al Smith for president. Over the next decade, Cannon endured a series of personal scandals, including charges that he had gambled in the stock market and misappropriated Anti-Saloon League campaign funds. Prior to his 1938 retirement, Cannon spent the final years of his bishopric in California, far from the Virginia politics in which he had built his reputation.