Means of Ascent (87 page)

Lafayette Park rally:
WP
, Mar. 15, 1965; Darden Jorden, Bryce Harlow, and Joseph L. Rauh, Jr., interviews.
“President Johnson’s words”
:
Rev. Channing E. Phillips, quoted in
WP
, Mar. 15, 1965.
“Same old story”
:
Rauh, quoted in WP, Mar. 15, 1965.

Trip in limousine:
Goodwin,
Remembering America
, p. 330; Horace Busby and George Reedy interviews.

“He heard”
:
Busby interview.
Johnson’s speech to Congress:
NY Herald Tribune, NYT, WP, CCC-T, AA-S, FWS-T
, Mar. 16, 1965;
Shaffer, Chapter
6.

King crying:
Cagin and Dray, p. 427. In a statement issued later that night, Dr. King said: “In his address … last night, President Johnson made one of the most eloquent, unequivocal and passionate pleas for human rights ever made by a President of the United States. He revealed great and amazing understanding of the depth and dimension of the problem of racial injustice.… His power of persuasion has nowhere been more
forcefully set forth” (King, quoted in
NYT
, Mar. 17, 1965).
Pickets were gone:
Stolley, “Inside the White House,”
Life
, Mar. 26, 1965;
NYT, WP
, Mar. 17, 1965.

Johnson-Celler conversation:
Shaffer, p. 100;
Newsweek
, Mar. 29, 1965; Emmanuel Celler interview.
“Cajoling, threatening”
:
Farmer, quoted in Miller, p. 434.
Johnson’s protection of Selma-Montgomery march:
Time
, Mar. 26, 1965.

“Greatest accomplishment”
:
Bornet,
The Presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson
, p. 221.
“Thank you, Mr. President”
:
Marshall, quoted by Lady Bird Johnson,
A White House Diary
, p. 758.

“That horrible song”
:
Johnson to Doris Kearns, quoted in Kearns,
Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream
, p. 340.

“Some are eager”;
“They call upon”
:
Johnson, speech to American Bar Association, Aug. 12, 1964, quoted in Evans and Novak, p. 531.
“Those who say”
;
“We are not about”
:
Johnson,
quoted in Evans and Novak, p. 532.
Not a month:
Johnson’s inauguration was Jan. 20. The first major air raid of Operation Rolling Thunder was Feb. 7.

Vietnam escalation:
NYT, WP
, Apr-Dec, 1965.
549,000:
Manchester, p. 1124. 58,000:
World Almanac and Book of Facts
, 1988.

“The standing”
:
Eisenhower, unpublished draft of memoirs, quoted in Ewald, p. 120.

Whispers and lies:
Berman, pp. 56–57, Halberstam,
The Best and the Brightest
, pp. 569–70, 585–87; Turner,
Lyndon Johnson’s Dual War
, pp. 134–46; White,
The Making of the President 1968
, pp. 121–23;
Time, Newsweek, NYT, WP
, Apr. 1–30, 1965.
“The American
People”
:
Editorial,
NYT
, June 9, 1965. See also June 10 editorial; Berman, pp. 56–57; White, pp. 21–23; Turner.

“American blood”
:
Johnson, quoted in Cormier,
LBJ: The Way He Was
, p. 187; Turner, p. 136.
“Was talking to us”
; 1500 murdered:
Johnson, quoted in Miller, p. 427. But “Bennett said later that his office had never been attacked and that he had never talked to
the President or anyone else from beneath his desk” (Miller, p. 427). Cormier (p. 188), giving a fuller Johnson quote, which shows the vividness of Johnson’s descriptive powers, states that the President said: “There has been almost constant firing on our American Embassy. As we talked with Ambassador Bennett, he said to apparently one of the girls who brought him a cable, ‘Please get away from the window, that glass is going to cut your hand,’
because the glass had been shattered, and we heard the bullets coming through the office where he had been sitting while talking to us.…

“Some fifteen hundred innocent people were murdered, and their heads cut off, and … as we talked to our Ambassador to confirm the horror and the tragedy and the unbelievable fact that they were firing on Americans and the American Embassy, he was talking to us from under a desk while bullets were going through his windows.…”

But Cormier notes that “Bennett later reported that he knew of no bullets being fired into his office, and that he never had cowered under a desk. Nor was it ever established that anyone was beheaded. And the only Americans harmed were two newsmen shot by Marines.”

“A band of”
:
Johnson, quoted in Turner, p. 136. Evans and Novak were to write that while Johnson’s initial decisions in the Dominican Republic were courageous and decisive, his later statements and actions “transformed the crisis of revolution in the Dominican Republic into a crisis of credibility in Lyndon Johnson” (p. 516). Max Frankel of the
NYT
was to say: “Johnson was fundamentally dishonest in presenting the facts about what was happening in the Dominican Republic to the American people.… telling ridiculous stories about 1,500 heads rolling around in the streets and so on. Whatever the credibility gap ultimately became, the combination of opposition to the policy and the horror at the government’s handling and explanation of the event is probably where it was born” (Frankel,
quoted in Miller, p. 424). For an analysis of the effect on his public image of Johnson’s “inconsistent reconstructions of events,” see Turner, pp. 134–37.

“Distrust of the President”
:
White, p. 102.
“Died at the Alamo”
:
Turner, p. 167.
A new phrase:
Turner (p. 167) says “It first hit the newspapers in the
NYHT
of May 23, 1965 over an article by David Wise.”
“Ambushed
;” buttons:
White, p. 102.

“It is difficult”
;
“could hardly believe”
;
“the reverence”
:
Tom Wicker, “Hey, Hey, LBJ …”,
Esquire
, Dec., 1983.
$20 million:
Caro,
Path to
Power
, pp. xxii, xxiii, 788–89.

“
87-VOTE ‘LANDSLIDE’
”
:
Life
, Aug. 14, 1964.
“THE STORY OF”
:
USN&WR
, Apr. 6, 1964.

SOURCES

Much of this chapter is drawn from my first volume of
The Years of Lyndon Johnson, The Path to Power
.

Books and documents:

Dugger,
The Politician;
Miller,
Lyndon;
Montgomery,
Mrs. LBJ;
Steinberg,
Sam Johnson’s Boy
and
Sam Rayburn
.

Papers of Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDRL).

Oral Histories:

Helen Gahagan Douglas, Clifford Durr, Virginia Durr, Welly K. Hopkins, W. Ervin (“Red”) James.

Interviews:

George R. Brown, Edward A. Clark, Benjamin V. Cohen, Thomas G. Corcoran, Abe Fortas, Arthur (“Tex”) Goldschmidt, Elizabeth Wickenden Goldschmidt, Lady Bird Johnson, Alice and Welly K. Hopkins, James H. and Elizabeth Rowe.

NOTES

Johnson’s youth, early career through 1941 Senate race:
Caro,
Path to Power
.
“I’ll never forget”:
Mrs. Johnson interview with author, and quoted in Montgomery, p. 27.

McFarlane’s exclusion:
McFarlane to Roosevelt, July 29, 1939, OF-300-Texas, Box 70, Roosevelt Papers; McFarlane to Roosevelt, May 15, 1939, OF-300, Roosevelt Papers.

Roosevelt’s
“special feeling”
for Johnson:
Cohen, Corcoran, Fortas, Goldschmidt, Rowe, Wickenden Goldschmidt interviews; Caro,
Path to Power
, pp. 444–49, 535–36, 555–56, 666–69, and
passim
.
Exceptions in 1941:
Caro,
Path to Power
, pp. 678–80, 724–27.
“In the heat”
:
Johnson to Roosevelt, July 21, 1941, PPF 6149, Roosevelt Papers.
“Sit”
:
Rowe, quoted in Miller, p. 88.
“Everything”
: Corcoran interview; quoted in Miller, p. 88. Young Democrats: Johnson,
quoted in Dugger, pp. 237–38; Corcoran interview; Rowe put the suggestion in writing, Rowe to Roosevelt, July 17, 1941, PSF 184, Roosevelt Papers.

“Most remarkable”
;
“help him”
:
Corcoran interview.
Circle in Washington:
Caro,
Path to Power
, pp. 450–58; Clifford and Virginia Durr, Hopkins, James OHs; Brown, Cohen, Corcoran, Fortas, Goldschmidt, Wickenden Goldschmidt, James and Elizabeth Rowe, Alice and
Welly Hopkins interviews.
“I like mules”
;
“wasn’t a man”
:
Wirtz, quoted in Virginia Durr OH.
Rayburn’s birthday party
: Corcoran, quoted in Steinberg,
Sam Rayburn
, p. 97.
“If you had
fallen”
:
Rowe to Johnson, Sept. 16, 1941, Box 32, LBJA SN.

“I would reproach”
:
Virginia Durr OH, and quoted in Miller, p. 73.
“Lyndon would”
:
Virginia Durr, quoted in
WP
, Nov. 21, 1985.
“Once”
:
Rowe, quoted in Miller, p. 68.
“Made fun”
:
Douglas OH.

“He gave”
:
Miller, quoted in Caro,
Path to Power
, p. 273. For Johnson being “in tune” with the conservatives as a congressional secretary, see Chapter 16.
“Basically”
;
“That was his
leadership”
:
Brown, quoted in Caro, pp. 471, 552.
“Hard to tell”
:
Douglas OH.
“Protected himself”
:
Douglas OH.
“Witty”
:
Douglas, quoted in Caro, p. 550.
“Close-mouthed”
:
Douglas OH.

Johnson had made Brown rich:
Caro,
Path to Power
, pp. 459–75, 577, 583–86, 598.
Brown & Root’s role in 1941 campaign:
Caro, pp. 685, 717, 742–53.
Pledge:
Brown, Clark interviews.

Rayburn’s loneliness:
Caro,
Path to Power
, pp. 317–33.
Relationship with Johnsons:
Caro, pp. 333–34.
“Now, Lyndon”
:
Rayburn, quoted in Caro, p. 334.
Begging a favor:
Connally to his biographer, Steinberg, quoted in Steinberg,
Sam Johnson’s Boy
, p. 94.
Rayburn’s
help to Johnson:
Caro,
Path to Power
, pp. 452–53, 468.
Johnson’s betrayal of Rayburn:
Caro, pp. 557–605.
Rayburn’s coldness to Johnson:
Caro, pp. 618–25.
Partial thaw:
Caro, pp. 754–57.
Rayburn’s attempts to get Mann a meeting with Roosevelt:
Rayburn to Watson, Sept. 2, 1941, Watson to Rayburn, Sept. 3, 1941, unsigned to Watson, Sept. 11,
1941—all PPF 474, Roosevelt Papers.

“Shook hands”
:
Beaumont Enterprise
, Nov. 11, 1941.
“Close enough”
:
Johnson, quoted in
Beaumont Journal
, Nov. 10, 1941.

SOURCES

Books and documents:

Beasley,
Knudsen; The Biographical Directory of the American Congress, 1774–1971;
Burns,
Roosevelt: The Lion and the Fox
and
The Soldier of Freedom;
Caidin and Hymoff,
The Mission;
Daniels,
White House Witness;
Dugger,
The Politician;
Miller,
Lyndon;
Mooney,
Lyndon Johnson Story;
Newlon,
L.B.J.: The Man from Johnson City;
Sherwood,
Roosevelt and Hopkins;
Steinberg,
Sam
Johnson’s Boy;
White,
Queens Die Proudly
.

Papers of Tom C. Clark (HSTL).

Papers of Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDRL).

Oral Histories:

Warren Magnuson.

Interviews:

John B. Connally, Thomas G. Corcoran, Alice Hopkins, Lady Bird Johnson, Sam Houston Johnson, Warren Magnuson, Mary Rather, O. J. Weber, Harold Young, Mary Louise Glass Young, James Van Zandt.

NOTES

“If the day ever comes”
:
For example, in radio address, Abilene, Texas, May 6, 1941. Also
DMN, AA, AA-S
, May 6-June 30, 1941.
Variations:
For example, “I hope as your Senator I shall never have to vote to send your boy to the trenches. I love peace, but I tell you mothers, the day my conscience tells me to vote that way, 32-year-old Lyndon
Johnson who registered for the draft will give up his seat and go with your boys” (radio address, Lubbock, Texas, May 7, 1941, “Campaign Speeches,” Lyndon Johnson Senate Race—1941,” Box 331, JHP). In San Angelo, he said: “If I ever feel it necessary to cast a vote for a declaration of war, I’ll offer my services the next day to go up there to the front with the rest of the boys” (requoted on the occasion of his enlistment,
San Angelo Evening Standard
, Dec. 9, 1941). In Elgin, he said: “The day I vote to send your boy to war, that day I will resign and go with him” (requoted,
Elgin Courier
, Dec. 11, 1941).
“Would be in the front line”
:
Johnson, quoted in
Fredericksburg Standard
, Oct. 9, 1941.
“If Hitler makes”
:
Undated text of Johnson speech, p. 5, Box 331, JHP. He added the “I shall never vote” sentence in hand.
“WE NEED COURAGE LIKE THIS”
: “Postcards,” Box 34, JHP.
“I may be
scrubbing”
:
Beaumont Enterprise
, Nov. 11, 1941.
“Already in that war”
:
Austin Tribune
, Oct. 9, 1941. In another speech, he said: “When the president said shoot on sight, that meant we were in war!”
(Austin Statesman
, Oct. 7, 1941).
“A number of persons”
:
Fredericksburg Standard
, Oct. 9, 1941.
“Some time ago”
:
San Antonio Light
, quoted in
San Marcos Record
, Oct. 25, 1941.