I could cite a hundred examples of how Ina’s research has enriched these volumes. She is a true historian, in the highest sense of that term: what she is interested in is the truth, and nothing will deflect her from her search to find it. If there is a farm woman on a ranch a hundred miles, or more, away, over bad roads, a woman who might—just might—tell her something she hadn’t been told before, Ina simply gets into the car and starts driving. If there is a possibility that some obscure folder, previously unopened, in the papers of some United States Senator in some out-of-the-way library will shed light on some maneuver of Lyndon Johnson, Ina will be up at dawn to catch the next plane out.
In a world that is hectic and frenzied, moreover, Ina Caro is quiet, and calm, and wise—and so are her judgments. When, after reading one of my chapters, she makes a comment about it, I have learned I’d better listen. There is a line in Shakespeare: “More is thy due than more than all can pay.” I used that line in dedicating the first volume of this work to Ina, because it was so apt, and, as I finish writing this second volume, there is still no better line to sum up my feelings. Ina, of course, is a medieval historian in her own right, and now her own book—a wonderful book—is going forward.
I don’t know what I am going to do without her help.
WHEN ROBERT GOTTLIEB, who edited my first two books line by line, left Knopf two years ago, he promised me that he would edit this book the same way.
Not a few of my friends who are writers or editors told me—some of them quite forcefully—that that would be impossible, that Bob’s new position as editor of The New Yorker would simply be too time-consuming. I, however, never had a moment’s doubt that he would do what he said, no matter how great the difficulties. He had given me his word, and I had learned about Bob Gottlieb’s word.
And he did in fact edit the book just as he said he would edit it. After his long days at The New Yorker, he was sometimes too tired to edit the book in the evenings, so he did it on weekends, and we reviewed it on weekends, all through a very hot summer. I remember more than one weekend on which the rest of the literary world seemed to be in East Hampton, where I have a summer home, and Bob’s family was in Williamstown, where he wanted to be—and we spent it together in New York City, battling over semicolons.
The editing process was not only as thorough as those on my earlier books, but the same in most other respects as well. He lavished on this book, as he had lavished on my other books, his talent, his energy and his unique editorial intelligence.
In only one respect was the editing process different this time. Whereas he had managed to edit my first and second books without once, in months of work, ever saying a single complimentary word about them in my hearing, this time, at the very end of the editorial process—as, in fact, we laid down the last page of the manuscript—he did say something. He said, “Not bad.”
KATHERINE HOURIGAN, Knopf’s managing editor, has given the same invaluable assistance to every stage of this book that she gave to both The Power Broker and The Path to Power. Her editorial judgments are characterized, in my opinion, not only by perceptivity but by an unflinching integrity that has only grown stronger over the years. For a number of reasons, this book presented daunting production problems. I have seen the ingenuity and the tireless effort she put into solving them—and I have appreciated it.
Those problems have also taxed the patience, ingenuity and strength of Andrew W. Hughes, the book’s production manager at Knopf. I thank him for his help. Andy’s father, Andrew L. Hughes, has served as my attorney on this work, as he did on my first two books. For the legal (and literary) advice which he began giving me while I was a reporter on Newsday and he was its general counsel, and which he has continued giving me ever since, I express to him, too, my deepest appreciation.
Among the many other people at Knopf to whom I am indebted, I must thank especially my old friends Bill Loverd, Nina Bourne, Jane Friedman, Janice Goldklang, Ellis Levine, Mel Rosenthal, Virginia Tan, and Sara Sternen.
I must thank as well a new friend, Sonny Mehta. It is wonderful to find in the publishing world an individual with both a discerning literary sensibility and an understanding of and sympathy for the aims and problems of writers.
Over the years, my agent, Lynn Nesbit, has always been there when I needed her. I value that relationship, and I am glad that it has continued.
THE STAFF of the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library have been, over many years now, of more help to me than I can easily express.
As always, Claudia Anderson has been of particular help because of her historian’s instinct and the depth of her knowledge of the contents of the Johnson archives. Tina Houston, the Library’s supervisory archivist, and Mike Gillette, Linda Hanson, Ted Gittinger, David Humphrey, Joan Kennedy, E. Philip Scott, Nancy Smith, Robert Tissing, Shellynne Wucher, Regina Greenwell, Irene Parra and Kathy Frankum deserve—and have—my deep gratitude for years of help.
For some years now I have also had not only the cooperation but the guidance of Dr. Richard A. Baker and Dr. Donald A. Ritchie, Historian and Associate Historian, respectively, of the United States Senate. While the assistance they have given me deals mainly with events that I describe in the next volume, I want to thank them now as well. Baker and Ritchie are both historians of great diligence and insight and I appreciate all they have done.
My thanks also to Dennis Bilger, Archivist, and Benedict K. Zobrist, Director, of the Harry S Truman Library; Betsey Hudon, Special Collections, The University of Texas at Arlington; Margaret Rose, Librarian at the Corpus Christi Public Library; Diane Bruce of the Institute of Texan Culture; Sharon Jenkins, Supervisor at the FCC; Audray Bateman of Austin; Louis Marchiafava of the Houston Metropolitan Research Center; Paul McGlaughlin at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library; Claire Maxwell of the Austin Public Library; Paul K. Goode of the James C. Jernigan Library at Texas A&I, in Kingsville; Don Jacobsen at the Fort Worth Public Library.
A Note on Sources
THE RESEARCH for these first two volumes of my life of Lyndon Johnson, two volumes which together cover what I consider the “Texas part” of the work since in the volumes to come the focus will shift to Washington, has taken place over the past fourteen years. A portion of it has taken place at a single location: a desk—two and a half feet by four feet—in the Reading Room on the eighth floor of the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum in Austin, Texas, where, on periodic visits to the Library, I sat while the Library’s archivists wheeled in to me on large wooden carts the document cases, some plain red or gray cardboard, most covered in red buckram (and stamped with a gold replica of the presidential seal), which contain the written materials—letters, memoranda, scribbled notes, transcripts of telephone conversations, speech texts—relating to my subject’s boyhood, his early years as a schoolteacher, congressional aide, and Texas State Director of the National Youth Administration, his eleven and a half years as a Congressman from Texas’ Tenth Congressional District and his 1948 campaign to become one of the state’s two United States Senators. Other boxes contain his Senate Papers, which I have studied primarily for my third volume, but which of course contained more than a little information that helped illuminate that earlier period. In all, during those fourteen years, a total of 787 boxes were delivered to my desk. They contained, by the Library’s estimate, 629,000 pages of documents. How many of those pages I read I don’t know, but I read a lot of them.
The time I have spent at that desk has been a wonderful time—thrilling, in fact. From the first time I thought of becoming a biographer, I never conceived of my biographies as merely telling the lives of famous men but rather as a means of illuminating their times and the great forces that shaped their times—particularly political power, since in a democracy political power has so great a role in shaping the lives of the citizens of that democracy. What I set out to try to do was to examine the way power works in America in the middle of the twentieth century. I have been fascinated by political power ever since I was a report
er and realized how little I knew about it—and you can learn quite a bit about that subject if you just sit there and read enough documents in the Lyndon Johnson Library.
A single example—one of a hundred that could be given—will perhaps illustrate what I mean. When I was beginning the research, one of my first interviews was with Thomas G. (“Tommy the Cork”) Corcoran, Franklin Roosevelt’s political man-of-all-work and a Johnson intimate during his early rise to power. By this time I had found that the crucial time in which young Johnson was elevated from the mass of congressmen to a congressman with influence over other congressmen—a Congressman with at least his first toehold on national power—occurred during a single month: October, 1940. When I asked Corcoran how Johnson had attained this power, Corcoran replied, in his gruff, cryptical way: “Money, kid. Money. But you’re never going to be able to write about that.” When I asked him why I would never be able to write about that, he replied, “Because you’re never going to find anything in writing.” For some years thereafter—perhaps three or four years—I felt that Corcoran was correct, but then, among those hundreds of boxes in the Johnson Library, there before me—suddenly—in Boxes 6, 7, 8 and 9 of the Johnson House Papers, to be exact, was the written documentation of what Corcoran had meant, and I was able to understand, and, I hope, to explain (in Chapter 32 of Volume I) Lyndon Johnson’s leap to national power through the campaign contributions he obtained from Texas oilmen and contractors to whom he alone had access and that he distributed, at his sole discretion, to other congressmen.
HERE is a description of the papers in the Johnson Library that form part of the foundation of these first two volumes—and an explanation of how they are identified in the Notes that follow.
House of Representatives Papers (JHP): The memoranda (both intraoffice and with others), casework, speech drafts and texts, and other papers kept in the files of Johnson’s congressional office from 1937 through 1948. These papers also include records pertaining to his other activities during this period, records which were originally compiled by his staff in other offices, such as the records compiled in an office he temporarily rented in Washington’s Munsey Office Building when he was raising money for Democratic congressmen in 1940, and records kept in his Austin campaign headquarters during his first campaign for Congress in 1937 and his campaign for that Senate in 1941.
More than 70 boxes of documents contain about 56,000 pages of material on his 1948 senatorial campaign. These include letters and memoranda from campaign headquarters in Austin to district leaders and campaign aides in the field; confidential intraoffice memoranda; communications between the Austin headquarters and Johnson’s congressional office in Washington, and reports from local campaign managers on Johnson’s activities and behavior in their districts. These boxes also contain memoranda sent back to Austin from Horace Busby, who traveled with Johnson during part of the campaign. Also in these boxes are Busby’s “suggested releases” and speech drafts, including releases to be issued and speeches to be given by others. These boxes also contain poll tax lists, lists of the candidate’s supporters, “contacts” and potential financial contributors (with notes about them), briefing papers for the candidate, newspaper clippings, schedules, and expense accounts. They include scribbled notes from one headquarters worker to another.
Lyndon Baines Johnson Archives (LBJA): These files were created about 1958, and consist of material taken both from the House of Representatives Papers and from Johnson’s Senate Papers. It consists of material considered historically valuable or of correspondence with persons with whom he was closely associated, such as Sam Rayburn, Abe Fortas, James Rowe, George and Herman Brown, Edward Clark and Alvin Wirtz; or of correspondence with national figures of that era. These files are divided into four main categories:
1. Selected Names (LBJA SN): Correspondence with close associates.
2. Famous Names (LBJA FN): Correspondence with national figures.
3. Congressional File (LBJA CF): Correspondence with fellow Congressmen and Senators.
4. Subject File (LBJA SF): This contains a Biographic Information File, with material relating to Johnson’s year as a schoolteacher in Cotulla and Houston; to his work as a secretary to Congressman Richard M. Kleberg; to his activities with the Little Congress; and to his naval service during World War II.
Pre-Presidential Confidential File (PPCF): This contains material taken from other files because it dealt with potentially sensitive areas.
Pre-Presidential Memo File (PPMF): This file consists of memos taken from the House of Representatives Papers, the Johnson Senate Papers, and the Vice Presidential Papers. While these memos begin in 1939 and continue through 1963, there are relatively few prior to 1946. While most are from the staff, some are from Johnson to the staff. The subject matter of the memos falls in numerous categories, ranging from specific issues, the 1948 Senate campaign, liberal versus conservative factions in Texas, phone messages and constituent relations.
Family Correspondence (LBJ FC): Correspondence between the President and his mother and brother, Sam Houston Johnson.
Personal Papers of Rebekah Baines Johnson (RBJ PP): This is material found in her garage after she died. It includes correspondence with her children (including Lyndon) and other members of her family, and material collected by her during her research into the genealogy of the Johnson family. It also includes scrapbooks.
Personal Papers of Alvin Wirtz (AW PP): 25 boxes.
Senate Papers (JSP): The scope is similar to that of the House Papers. However, these files are far more extensive than the House Papers. These papers include “Committee files” dealing with specific committees on which Johnson served and the papers collected when he was Democratic Leader during the years 1951–60.
Senate Political Files (SPF): These files cover a time period from 1949 to 1960. They concern the consolidation of Johnson’s position in Texas following the 1948 campaign, the 1954 Senate campaign, and Johnson’s 1956 bid for the presidency, as well as numerous county files. They were made into a separate file by the Library staff.
White House Central File (WHCF): The only files in this category used to a substantial extent in this volume were the Subject Files labeled “President (Personal)” (WHCF PP). They contain material about the President or his family, mainly articles written after he became President about episodes in his early life.
White House Famous Names File (WHFN): This includes correspondence with former Presidents and their families, including Johnson correspondence when he was a Congressman with Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Record Group 48, Secretary of the Interior, Central Classified Files (RG 48): Microfilm from the National Archives containing documents relating to Lyndon Johnson found in the files of the Department of the Interior.
Documents Concerning Lyndon B. Johnson from the Papers of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt, John M. Carmody, Harry L. Hopkins and Aubrey Williams (FDR-LBJ MF): This microfilm reel was compiled at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library at Hyde Park and consists of correspondence to and from Johnson found in various PPF and OF files at the Roosevelt Library. Whenever possible, the author has included the file number, by which the original documents can be located at the Roosevelt Library.
Johnson House Scrapbooks (JHS): 21 scrapbooks of newspaper clippings compiled by members of his staff between 1935 and 1941.
Each document from the LBJ Library is cited in the Notes by the title of the folder in which it can be found, the box number and the collection in the Library. If no folder title is included in the citation, the folder is either the name of the correspondent in the letter or, in the case of files kept alphabetically, the appropriate letter (a letter from Corcoran, for example, in the folder labeled C).
WRITTEN DOCUMENTS can never tell the whole story, of course, and, as in the first volume, I have also relied heavily on interviews with the men and women closest to Lyndon Johnson during the seven years covered by this volume. Thirteen of the men and women who were, during t
hese years, particularly close to Lyndon Johnson were alive when I began work on this book, and I have interviewed all of them, most of them in repeated, lengthy interviews. They are George R. Brown, Horace Busby, Edward A. Clark, John B. Connally, Thomas G. Corcoran, Helen Gahagan Douglas, Abe Fortas, Welly K. Hopkins, Walter Jenkins, Gene Latimer, Mary Rather, James H. Rowe, Jr., and Warren G. Woodward. (Busby and Woodward came to Johnson’s staff later than the rest of this group—only during the last year of this period—but were quickly put on an intimate footing with him.)
During this time, Johnson’s two principal assistants in his congressional office were Connally and Jenkins, both of whom joined his staff in 1939. Jenkins, who succeeded Connally as Johnson’s administrative aide during this period, had helped me greatly with his recollections on the first volume; for this volume, he continued his detailed assistance until his final illness. He died in November, 1985. Connally refused during the entire period of research on my first volume even to respond to requests for an interview. Some two years after it was published, however, Governor Connally said he had read the book, and now wanted to talk to me at length. He told me that the only way in which he could free the requisite bloc of uninterrupted time would be at his ranch in South Texas. For three days there, we talked, from early in the morning until quite late at night, about his thirty-year association with Lyndon Johnson. Governor Connally had told me that he would answer any question I put to him, without exception. He was true to his word, and discussed with me—as indeed he also did at a subsequent lengthy interview—with considerable, and sometimes startling, frankness, perhaps a score of pivotal events in Lyndon Johnson’s life in which he was a key participant. His interviews were especially valuable because, in more than one case, he is the only participant in those events still alive. I am all the more grateful to him because his silence about some of these events that he broke in talking to me was a silence that had lasted for decades.
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