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James Mann, 90, Dies; Worked on Nixon Impeachment

James R. Mann, a South Carolina congressman who played a critical role in drafting the articles of impeachment against Richard M. Nixon and emerged as one of the South’s most eloquent voices on the matter, died Monday in Greenville, S.C. He was 90.

The cause was Alzheimer’s disease, his son James Jr. told The Associated Press.

Mr. Mann, a previously obscure legislator who had never held a leadership position in the House, unexpectedly took center stage during the post-Watergate impeachment hearings held by the House Judiciary Committee in late July 1974.

As a conservative Democrat from a district, along the northwest border of the state, where Nixon had won 80 percent of the vote, he made an effective broker in the bargaining among liberal Democrats, conservative Democrats and wavering Republicans over the language in the articles of impeachment.

In the days before the hearings opened, it became clear that the original draft of the articles — which many members regarded as scattershot and inflammatory — would not command the widespread support needed to ensure a vote for impeachment in the full House. The committee’s chairman, Representative Peter W. Rodino Jr., Democrat of New Jersey, urged Mr. Mann to revise the articles in consultation with his colleagues.

“He has a kind of entree into the Republicans and the conservative Democrats that Waldie or Drinan could never establish in a lifetime,” Representative Don Edwards, a liberal Democrat from California, explained to reporters at the time, referring to two of his liberal colleagues on the committee, Jerome R. Waldie of California and Robert F. Drinan of Massachusetts. “He can go to them and say, ‘I have the same problem as you in my district. I can support this. So can you.’ ”

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Representative James R. Mann, Democrat of South Carolina, spoke during a Congressional session in July 1974.Credit...Mike Lien/The New York Times

Committee members had been deeply impressed by Mr. Mann’s oratory in the early days of the hearing, and his quietly moving appeals to duty and principle circulated widely in the news media.

“We have built our country on the Constitution,” he said on the first day of debate. “That system has been defended on battlefields and statesmen have ended their careers on behalf of the system and either passed into oblivion or immortality.”

In a later debate, he delivered some of the most quoted lines of the hearings. “We would strive to strengthen and preserve the presidency,” he said. “But if there be no accountability, another president will feel free to do as he chooses. The next time there may be no watchman in the night.”

Nixon resigned in August 1974 before the House voted on his impeachment.

James Robert Mann was born on April 27, 1920, in Greenville, S.C. After earning a bachelor’s degree from the Citadel in 1941 he enlisted in the Army, receiving his discharge in 1946 with the rank of lieutenant colonel.

He earned a law degree from the University of South Carolina in 1947 and entered private practice in Greenville with his father, a former mayor of the city. He served in the State House of Representatives for three years before being appointed a prosecutor for the 13th Judicial Circuit.

In 1968 he won election to Congress, where he served five terms before returning to his law practice in 1979.

In addition to his son James, of Greenville, he is survived by his wife, Virginia; another son, David, of Greenville; a daughter, Virginia Camarda of Las Vegas; a brother, Dr. Thomas G. Mann of Greenville; a sister, Betty Mann Jackson Newton of Hilton Head, S.C; four grandchildren; two stepgrandchildren; and six great-grandchildren.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section B, Page 19 of the New York edition with the headline: James Mann, 90, Dies; Worked on Nixon Impeachment. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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