Sublime

John Wheeler Bunton, a six-foot-four-inch Tennesseean, had come to Texas only that year, but apparently he impressed others as he impressed that rider: when the settlers of the Bastrop area met the next year to elect a delegate to the constitutional convention that would, in defiance of Mexico, create the Republic of Texas, he was elected—at the ag

Not only does a Governor not interfere with an official like Robert Moses; he heaps on him more and more responsibilities. No matter what the job was, it seemed, if it was difficult Roosevelt turned to the same man. During 1930, 1931 and 1932, Moses handled more than a dozen special assignments for Roosevelt and produced results on every one. And i

He wanted forty thousand acres of parks.

The chorus of approval that greeted Hubert Humphrey’s motion in the Democratic Caucus of January 2, 1953, to make Johnson’s election unanimous had installed him as his party’s leader in one of the two houses of the national legislature, and his party was the opposition party; there was no Democratic President to whom he had to defer; that vote in t

Robert A. Caro, The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Path to Power (New York: Knopf, 1982). Robert A. Caro, Master of the Senate (New York: Knopf, 2002).

Moses would suggest that the commissioner designate one of his aides to do nothing but handle Park Department liaison, perhaps even allowing him to work in the Arsenal. Then Moses, by bullying or by charm, would take the aide into camp—making him an ally of the Park Department and thereby practically freeing himself of the necessity of winning the

He had told Moses, O’Dwyer said, that if he was elected he would immediately create a new post to handle a vast program of postwar public works construction, a “Coordinator of Construction” with sweeping powers not only over parks, parkways, bridges and tunnels, but over the construction of public housing, the field from which Moses had been barred

Mann’s candidacy was a different story. The young Attorney General’s personal qualities attracted loyalty. The wording on the plaque he had hung on the wall behind his desk—“I sacrificed no principle to gain this office and I shall sacrifice no principle to keep it”—did not strike a false note with those who knew him, and neither did his habit of c