Sublime

“I have not been able to think out any solution to the terrible problem offered by the presence of the negro on this continent,” he wrote, “but of one thing I am sure, and that is that inasmuch as he is here and can neither be killed nor driven away, the only wise and honorable and Christian thing to do is to treat each black man and each white man

IN UNDERSTANDING what many perceptive men had so much difficulty in understanding—the bond that, for the next twenty years, made Sam Rayburn the ally of a man so utterly opposite to him in both principles and personality—part of the answer lies in Lady Bird Johnson’s sweetness and graciousness, and in the shyness that made Rayburn so fond of her.

Years later, writing from the oval office, FDR drew on his own political experience to contrast Wilson with his early role model, Cousin Theodore. As Franklin saw it, TR lacked Wilson’s depth “and failed to stir, as Wilson did, the truly profound moral and social convictions.” Wilson, on the other hand, failed where TR succeeded in arousing popular

A true friend of man; almost the only friend of human progress. An Old Mortality, say rather an Immortality, with unwearied patience and faith making plain the image engraven in men’s bodies, the God of whom they are but defaced and leaning monuments.

the veil lifted. Is that where the “lazy white Southerner” stereotype came from? Is that why Southern whites looked funny—lanky, pale, and slack? Page introduced Stiles to John D. Rockefeller’s aide, who arranged for the oil baron to give a million dollars to deworm the South. This was an early venture by Rockefeller into philanthropy, which would

“Every generation of Americans needs to know that freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought.”12

Rather let it be named from the fishes that swim in it, the wild fowl or quadrupeds which frequent it, the wild flowers which grow by its shores, or some wild man or child the thread of whose history is interwoven with its own; not from him who could show no title to it but the deed which a like-minded neighbor or legislature gave him—him who

A key argument in Lincoln’s case against slavery was that it supported an aristocracy determined to undermine America’s promise that “the humblest man [has] an equal chance to get rich with everyone else.”

Mark explains that Jackson’s the greatest president America has ever had, that he was ruthless, a populist and an individualist, and that he “got