“Although I differ . . . I think he is wrong”: Merle Miller, Lyndon, p. 369.
“Happy anniversary”: NYT, July 3, 1964.
“to that afternoon . . . was my country”: LBJ, VP, p. 160.
“For a century . . . our national life”: LBJ, “Remarks at the University of Michigan,” May 22, 1964, PPP, 1:407.
“an extension . . . best of his talents”: LBJ, VP, p. 104.
“We have enough . . . nation in the world”: DKG/LBJ Conversations.
“These are the goals . . . away from its promise”: “Remarks before the National Convention upon Accepting the Nomination,” Aug. 27, 1964, PPP, 1964, 2:1010, 1012.
“assemble the best . . . departmental jurisdictions”: LBJ, VP, pp. 326–27.
“too high rather than too low”: Ibid., p. 327.
“I was just elected . . . up his capital”: Evans and Novak, Lyndon B. Johnson, pp. 514–15.
“So I want you guys . . . me disappear”: Merle Miller, Lyndon, p. 408.
“Momentum is not . . . exotic than preparation”: DKG/LBJ Conversations.
“Gordian knots”: Greenstein, The Presidential Difference, p. 88.
“My experience in the NYA . . . drafting of the bills”: DKG/LBJ Conversations.
“like nothing” . . . attitude toward the bill”: Ibid.
“I was standing in the back . . . I never forgot that lesson”: LBJ, VP, pp. 447–48.
During the first ten months . . . enjoy each other’s company: Post-Herald and Register (Beckley, W.V.), Oct. 24, 1965.
“There is but one way . . . be almost incestuous”: DKG/LBJ Conversations.
“a dangerous animal . . . wild”: Goldman, The Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson, p. 60.
“the greatest breakthrough”: Michael Beschloss, ed., Reaching for Glory: Lyndon Johnson’s Secret White House Tapes, 1964–65 (New York: Touchstone, 2001), p. 159.
“Once the black man’s . . . from the white man”: LBJ, VP, p. 161.
The discriminatory system worked: Califano, The Triumph & Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson, p. 44.
“the mounted men . . . taken to the hospital”: Independent Press Telegram (Long Beach, Calif.), March 14, 1965.
“It was important to move . . . the right direction”: LBJ, VP, p. 162.
“LBJ, open your eyes . . . your homeland”: Ibid., p. 228.
“that a hasty display . . . victory for the North”: Ibid., p. 161.
“It’s his ox that’s in the ditch”: Kotz, Judgment Days, p. 303.
“they were not . . . difference in the world”: LBJ, VP, p. 163.
“I speak tonight . . . And we . . . shall . . . overcome”: “Special Message to the Congress: The American Promise,” March 15, 1965, PPP, 1965, 1:281, 284.
“There was an instant . . . stamping their feet”: Richard Goodwin, Remembering America: A Voice from the Sixties (New York: Little, Brown, 1988), p. 334.
“the real hero . . . clutches of poverty”: PRLBJ, Vol. 1, p. 285.
“Somehow you never . . . will use it with me”: Ibid., p. 286.
“What convinces . . . you are advancing”: DKG/LBJ Conversations.
“it was the best . . . president give”: Richard Goodwin, Remembering America, p. 237.
“Your speech . . . President of the Nation”: Daniel S. Lucks, Selma to Saigon: The Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2014), p. 142.
“of that magic time . . . course of fifty years”: LBJ, VP, p. 212.
“Why, Wilbur . . . same for me”: DKG, LJAD, p. 250.
“You have done me . . . quite a while”: NYT, July 31, 1965.
“Today is a triumph . . . of American life”: LBJ, “Remarks in the Capitol Rotunda at the Signing of the Voting Rights Act,” Aug. 6, 1965, PPP, 2:840–42.
“a class struggle between the haves and the have-nots”: Hamilton Daily News Journal (Ohio), Oct. 23, 1965.
“relations between . . . missing for years”: NYT, Oct. 25, 1965.
“the legislative harvest . . . President of the United States”: Hamilton Daily News Journal (Ohio), Oct. 23, 1965.
“an open field . . . in the race of life”: Independent Press Telegram (Long Beach, Calif.), March 14, 1965.
“It just worries the hell . . . damn mess I ever saw”: Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns, The Vietnam War: An Intimate History (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2017), p. 104.
“the best and the brightest”: David Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest (New York: Ballantine, 1993).
“like a filibuster . . . get it over with”: Goldman, The Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson, p. 404.
“the wonders of modern medicine”: LBJ, “Address at Johns Hopkins: ‘Peace without Conquest,’ ” April 7, 1965, PPP, 1: 397.
“stave off defeat . . . state of emergency”: LBJ, VP, p. 281.
“I could see and almost . . . Great Society”: DKG/LBJ Conversations.
“as plentiful as blackberries”: Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 2.
“every ounce”: LBJ, VP, p. 157.
“could survive another . . . unremitting tensions”: Ibid., p. 426.
“Lyndon Johnson’s finest hour”: Oakland Tribune, April 1, 1968.
“an act of political selflessness . . . political history”: Roscoe Drummond, quoted in Fairbanks Daily News-Miner (Alaska), April 6, 1968.
“an act of a great patriot”: Oakland Tribune, April 1, 1968.
“the voice of justice speaks again”: NYT, April 12, 1968.
“like a man who . . . peace of soul, or both”: Winona [Minn.] Daily News, April 2, 1968.
EPILOGUE
Of Death and Remembrance
“No. Either you come or you don’t”: DKG/LBJ Conversations.
“I need help . . . feelings about me”: Ibid.
“It’s not easy . . . you’re doing for me”: Ibid.
“wear out the carpet . . . something correctly”: Rosenman, Working with Roosevelt, p. 36.
“never looks back . . . It can drive you crazy”: DKG/LBJ Conversations.
“God damn it . . . backwoods politician!”: Ibid.
“All the historians . . . from Stonewall, Texas”: Ibid.
“There’s nothing I can . . . and that is my ranch”: Ibid.
“our heart’s home”: Hal Rothman, LBJ’s Texas White House: “Our Heart’s Home” (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2001), p. 264.
“Now . . . matter with those hens?”: DKG/LBJ Conversations.
“Here’s where my mother . . . I’m gonna be too”: Leo Janos, “The Last Days of the President: LBJ in Retirement,” The Atlantic (July 1973), https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1973/07/the-last-days-of-the-president/376281/.
“Those were the days . . . had gone differently”: DKG/LBJ Conversations.
“I’m an old man . . . I want to go fast”: Janos, “The Last Days of the President.”
“people know when . . . when you die”: DKG/LBJ Conversations.
“I’m hurting real bad . . . scared and breathless”: Janos, “The Last Days of the President.”
“So cold and icy . . . come here by bus”: Merle Miller, Lyndon, p. 559.
“Lyndon had been quite sick . . . positively could not go”: Ibid., p. 560.
“a dark-blue . . . polished oxfords”: Hugh Sidey, “The Presidency,” Life, Dec. 29, 1972, p. 16.
“very often” or for “very long”: “Lyndon Baines Johnson Civil Rights Symposium Address,” December 12, 1972, “American Rhetoric,” Online Speech Bank, Lyndon Baines Johnson Library, Austin, TX, http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/lbjfinalspeech.htm.
“Of all the records . . . we shall overcome”: Ibid.
“he knew what he was . . . how to spend it”: Sidey, “The Presidency,” p. 16.
“If I am ever . . . for civil rights”: DKG/LBJ Conversations.
“As the ages roll by . . . we call history”: TR to William Allen White, Nov. 28, 1906, LTR, 5:516.
“in the harness . . . of one�
��s fame”: TR to Henry Cabot Lodge, July 18, 1905, LTR, 4:1279.
“work worth doing”: TR to William Howard Taft, March 12, 1901, LTR, 3:12.
“In the days . . . aside as useless”: TR to Cecil Arthur Spring Rice, July 24, 1905, LTR, 4:1282–83.
“every hour . . . office in the world”: Oscar S. Straus, Under Four Administrations: From Cleveland to Taft (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1922), p. 251.
“the greatest popular . . . candidate for President”: TR to Kermit Roosevelt, Nov. 10, 1904, LTR, 4:1024.
“the wise custom . . . to two terms”: Herman A. Kohlsaat, From McKinley to Harding: Personal Recollections of Our Presidents (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1923), pp. 137–38.
“longer than it was . . . Washington to hold it”: TR to George Trevelyan, June 19, 1908, LTR, 6:1089.
“I would cut my hand . . . recall that written statement”: Kohlsaat, From McKinley to Harding, p. 137.
“The people think that my word . . . think anything else”: Sewall, Bill Sewall’s Story of Theodore Roosevelt, p. 112.
“so well fitted to be president”: Boston Daily Globe, June 19, 1908.
“It will let me down . . . break his fall”: Abbott, ed., The Letters of Archie Butt, p. 41.
“Like a war horse . . . distant battles”: Ray Stannard Baker, Notebook, Dec. 8, 1911, Ray Stannard Baker Papers.
“the only question now . . . get the most flowers”: Mark Sullivan, Our Times: The United States 1900–1925, Vol. 4: The War Begins (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1927), p. 531.
“point blank range . . . into his heart”: Oscar Davis, Released for Publication: Some Inside Political History of Theodore Roosevelt and His Times, 1889–1919 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1925), pp. 381–82.
“The bullet that rests in . . . Wilson for the Presidency”: NYT, Oct. 27, 1912.
“perhaps once in a generation . . . lines of division”: TR, “Address at Madison Square Garden,” Oct. 30, 1912, in Lewis L. Gould, ed., Bull Moose on the Stump: The 1912 Campaign Speeches of Theodore Roosevelt (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2008), p. 187.
“the haves . . . spend and be spent”: Ibid., pp. 191–92.
“his last chance to be a boy”: Candice Millard, The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey (New York: Broadway Books, 2005), p. 61.
“The Brazilian wilderness . . . ten years of his life”: Thayer, Theodore Roosevelt, p. 130.
“For a dozen years . . . ought to be done”: TR to John Callan O’Laughlin, Aug. 27, 1914, LTR, 7:813.
“usefulness”: TR to Edwin Van Valkenburg, Sept. 5, 1916, LTR, 8:1114.
“While I have . . . dangerous conservatism”: TR to John Callan O’Laughlin, Aug. 27, 1914, LTR, 7:813.
“it would be . . . of the Civil War”: TR to Gifford Pinchot, Feb. 8, 1916, LTR, 8:1016.
“There is some good . . . riders out here”: TR to HCL, Aug. 10, 1886, LTR, 1:108.
“The great prize . . . above all others”: Wood, Roosevelt as We Knew Him, p. 480.
“all who feel any . . . in the heart”: Wagenknecht, The Seven Worlds of Theodore Roosevelt, p. 247.
“do-nothing ease and safety”: TR to Quentin Roosevelt, Sept. 1, 1917, LTR, 8:1232.
“shut down”: Bishop, Theodore Roosevelt and His Time, Vol. 2, p. 468.
“a sickening feeling”: Patricia O’Toole, When Trumpets Call: Theodore Roosevelt after the White House (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005), p. 398.
“to bring justice . . . in a new world”: TR, “Eyes to the Front,” Metropolitan Magazine (Feb. 1919).
“I have only one . . . in case I am needed in 1920”: CRR, My Brother, Theodore Roosevelt, p. 345.
“All right! I can work that way, too”: Harbaugh, Power and Responsibility, p. 489.
“an absurdity longer to higgle”: TR, “Eyes to the Front,” Metropolitan Magazine (Feb. 1919).
“to work in a spirit . . . the common good”: Matthew J. Glover, “What Might Have Been: Theodore Roosevelt’s Platform for 1920,” in Naylor, Brinkley, and Gable, eds., Theodore Roosevelt, p. 489.
“rock of class hatred . . . course of any republic”: TR at Banquet of the Iroquois Club, Chicago. May 10, 1905, in TR; Alfred Henry Lewis, ed., A Compilation of the Messages and Speeches of Theodore Roosevelt, 1901–1905 (Washington, D.C.: Bureau of National Literature and Art, 1906), p. 620.
“two sections, or two classes . . . point of view”: TR, “Fellow Feeling as a Political Factor” (Jan. 1900), WTR, 13:355.
“sensation of depression about the chest”: New York Tribune, Jan. 9, 1919.
“I know . . . such a strange feeling”: DKG, BP, p. 746.
“the fellow feeling . . . for a common object”: TR, “Fellow Feeling as a Political Factor” (Jan. 1900), WTR, 13:355.
“I suspected something . . . lips and nail beds”: DKG, NOT, p. 494.
FDR examination: Ibid., pp. 494–95.
945th press conference: March 28, 1944, transcript, FDRL.
“Not only were . . . spirits were good, too”: NYT, March 29, 1944.
“some sunshine and exercise”: NYT, April 5, 1944.
“You just never said you were sick”: Ward, A First-Class Temperament, p. 607.
“I’m a young man again . . . a sense of glee”: Perkins, The Roosevelt I Knew, p. 374.
“like hell”: William D. Hassett, Off the Record with F.D.R. (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1958), p. 239.
“cheerful in spirit” and “good natured”: Ibid., p. 240.
“Terrible decisions to have to make”: Margaret Suckley, in Geoffrey C. Ward, Closest Companion: The Unknown Story of the Intimate Friendship between Franklin Roosevelt and Margaret Suckley (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), p. 316.
“duty to carry on, as long as he was able”: Ibid., p. 316.
“not going to be able . . . to run for another term”: Ibid., p. 302.
“A great moment in history . . . pleased with the world”: Letter from “B” to “Mom,” June 6, 1944, Reminiscences by Contemporaries, FDRL.
“he seemed happy and confident”: I. F. Stone, The War Years, 1939–1945 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1990), p. 236.
“You just don’t land . . . understands it the better”: FDR, “The Nine Hundred and Fifty-Fourth Press Conference—D Day,” June 6, 1944, PPA, 1:159.
“looked very well . . . plans for the future”: DKG, NOT, p. 510.
“in the pink of condition”: Ward, Closest Companion, p. 254.
“one of the greatest . . . vision”: Rosenman, Working with Roosevelt, p. 394.
“to keep his head . . . of highest importance”: Perkins, The Roosevelt I Knew, p. 371.
“so ordered by . . . of the United States”: Official announcement letter, FDR to Robert Hannegan, July 11, 1944, FDR, PPA, 1944–45, p. 197.
“People have been asked . . . wet through”: Perkins, The Roosevelt I Knew, p. 116.
“full of fight”: Ward, Closest Companion, p. 340.
gained twelve pounds as well as gained election to a fourth consecutive term: Perkins, The Roosevelt I Knew, p. 372.
Yalta: DKG, NOT, pp. 573–85.
“might have been better . . . did all he could”: William E. Leuchtenburg, In the Shadow of FDR: From Harry Truman to Barack Obama (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009), p. 7.
“great unfinished business”: Anne O’Hare McCormick, “ ‘His Unfinished Business’ and Ours,” NYT, April 22, 1945.
“make a really handsome appearance”: Frances Perkins, “The Roosevelt I Knew: the War Years,” Collier’s, Sept. 21, 1946, p. 103.
“genuine and spontaneous . . . triumphant return to London”: Rosenman, Working with Roosevelt, p. 546.
“But the war! . . . the war was at hand”: Perkins, The Roosevelt I Knew, p. 380.
“It wasn’t just a matter . . . assumed it would”: Ibid.
“The thought never . .
. to rally as he always had”: Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins, p. 880.
“exceptionally good”: Elizabeth Shoumatoff, FDR’s Unfinished Portrait (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1990), p. 108.
“He looked smiling . . . ready for anything”: Ward, Closest Companion, p. 417.
“a keen sense . . . own place therein”: Gunther, Roosevelt in Retrospect, p. 80.
“Of the papers . . . giving me their opinions”: FDR, Nov. 19, 1939, quoted in Oil City Derrick (Penn.), Nov. 20, 1939.
“in the streets . . . ‘lost our friend’ ”: Anne McCormick, “A Man of the World and the World’s Man,” NYT, April 14, 1945.
“The greatest human tribute . . . 130 millions feel lonely”: Ben Vine, April 13, 1945, in “Tributes to the Late President,” NYT, April 17, 1945.
“drunk with joy”: Montgomery C. Meigs Diary, quoted in Segal, ed., Conversations with Lincoln, p. 393.
“How I would rejoice . . . envy you its pleasures”: O. J. Hollister, The Life of Schuyler Colfax (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1886), p. 252.
“from the Rocky Mountains . . . treasury of the world”: Segal, ed., Conversations with Lincoln, pp. 392–93.
“This is the great question . . . begin to act”: Jay Winik, April 1865: The Month That Saved America (New York: Harper Perennial, 2002), p. 208.
“Enough lives . . . the worst of them”: Gideon Welles, “Lincoln and Johnson,” Galaxy (April 1872), p. 526.
“frighten them . . . for their crimes”: Winik, April 1865, p. 208.
“What terms did you make . . . glowed with approval”: Frederick William Seward, Reminiscences of a War-Time Statesman and Diplomat: 1830–1915 (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons [Knickerbocker Press], 1916), pp. 256, 255.
“Let ’em up easy”. . . “let ’em up easy”: Carl Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: The War Years, Vol. 6 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1943), p. 227.
“undertake to run . . . may do it badly”: Seward, Reminiscences of a War-Time Statesman, p. 256.
“Didn’t our Chief . . . in many a long day”: Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln, A Life, Vol. 2, p. 806.
“more glad, more serene”: Tarbell, The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Vol. 4, p. 29.
“indescribable sadness . . . life had been achieved”: Katherine Helm, The True Story of Mary, Wife of Lincoln (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1928), p. 253.