Sublime

Public resentment at the post-war wave of strikes and long-smoldering conservative anger at the power the New Deal had given to labor unions crystallized in the Labor-Management Relations Act of 1947—the “Taft-Hartley Act”—which curtailed union powers, outraging workers and labor leaders, who called it a “slave labor bill.” Johnson voted with the c

Government, through its vast subsidies of land and money and its biased laws, had made it possible for railroads to become powerful, and now railroads were strangling the farmers; should not government, on their behalf, now regulate railroads? Government had protected manufacturers at their expense by high tariffs; should not government now lower t

When Emmett’s mother, Mrs. Bradley, sent the President a telegram asking him to intervene in Mississippi to halt the violence against blacks, Eisenhower did not even respond. The Autherine Lucy case certainly seemed like a clear-cut instance of defiance, by the University of Alabama trustees, of a federal court order he was sworn to enforce, but he

“Johnson did not win that election,” he said. “It was stolen for him.” And, he said, he, Luis Salas, had participated in the stealing. Three days after the election, he said, he was summoned to George Parr’s office in San Diego, where he found the Duke, Ed Lloyd, Alice City Commissioner Bruce Ainsworth—and Lyndon Johnson. Johnson, according to Sala

As his collar indicated, 10 was indeed dead. He had been shot by a local man named Chad McKittrick, who, after being arrested and charged with a federal offense for shooting an endangered animal, claimed he had thought he was shooting a feral dog. It wasn’t the perfect crime; a friend of McKittrick’s had disposed of 10’s collar in a culvert filled

At Roosevelt’s direction, legislation had been drafted giving the federal government authority to regulate the issuance of securities for the protection of those who bought them. Rayburn, who had seen so many financially unsophisticated farmers invest the little spare cash they had been able to scrape together in worthless stocks or bonds, had foug

Leland Olds’ renomination was defeated by a vote of 53 to 15. When the clerk announced those figures, a reporter wrote, “There was a moment of stunned silence [at] the overwhelming size of the vote.” In what the Washington Star said was “about as severe a political licking as any President ever got on a nominee,” Truman had been able to persuade on

Their creed was summed up in two quotes: Commodore Vanderbilt’s “Law? What do I care for law? Hain’t I got the power?” and J. P. Morgan’s “I owe the public nothing.”

Johnson’s voting record—a record twenty years long, dating back to his arrival in the House of Representatives in 1937 and continuing up to that very day—was consistent with the accent and the word. During those twenty years, he had never supported civil rights legislation—any civil rights legislation.