by Jon Meacham
A WHITE HOUSE WAITER Ibid.; Leuchtenburg, White House Looks South, 366–67.
“THOSE—THE BILL OF RIGHTS” Miller, Plain Speaking, 80.
“I WAS JUST THINKING” Ibid., 80–81.
DICTATING TO HIS SECRETARY Truman, Where the Buck Stops, ix.
“YOU NEVER CAN” Ibid., 79.
“THE NEXT GENERATION” Samuel W. Rushay, Jr., “Harry Truman’s History Lessons,” Prologue 41, no. 1 (Spring 2009).
“RIGHTEOUSNESS IS EASY” Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., Life in the 20th Century, 311.
“THE PRESIDENT,” WOODROW WILSON WROTE Wilson, Constitutional Government, 40.
“MAN CAN BE” John F. Kennedy: “Commencement Address at American University in Washington,” June 10, 1963, American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=9266.“No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings,” Kennedy added. “Man’s reason and spirit have often solved the seemingly unsolvable—and we believe they can do it again.” Ibid.
“THE METHOD OF” Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America, 677–78.
CODED RACIAL APPEALS See, for instance, Timothy Nels Thurber, Republicans and Race: The GOP’s Frayed Relationship with African Americans, 1945–1974 (Lawrence, Kan., 2013), and Thomas Byrne Edsall with Mary D. Edsall, Chain Reaction: The Impact of Race, Rights, and Taxes on American Politics (New York, 1992).
A “CRISIS OF CONFIDENCE” Jimmy Carter, “Address to the Nation on Energy and National Goals: ‘The Malaise Speech,’ ” July 15, 1979, American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=32596.
A REMARKABLE ABILITY See, for instance, William Ker Muir, Jr., The Bully Pulpit: The Presidential Leadership of Ronald Reagan (Berkeley, Calif., 1992).
“SOMETIMES I WANT” Ronald Reagan, “Remarks at a Fund-raising Reception for the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation,” June 24, 1985, American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=38816.
THAT JOHN KENNEDY HAD John F. Kennedy, “Address to Massachusetts State Legislature,” January 9, 1961, National Archives Catalog, https://catalog.archives.gov/id/193879.
“I’VE SPOKEN OF” Ronald Reagan, “Farewell Address to the Nation,” January 11, 1989, American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=29650.
KILLING 168 “Oklahoma City Bombing,” FBI.gov, https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/oklahoma-city-bombing.
“LET US LET” William J. Clinton, “Remarks at a Memorial Service for the Bombing Victims in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma,” April 23, 1995, American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=51265.
IN THOSE TERRIBLE WEEKS George Bush, All the Best, George Bush: My Life in Letters and Other Writings (New York, 2013), 591–92.
“THE TERRORISTS ARE” George W. Bush, “Address Before a Joint Session of the Congress on the United States Response to the Terrorist Attacks of September 11,” September 20, 2001, American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=64731.
“OUR PURPOSE AS” George W. Bush, “Remarks at the National Day of Prayer and Remembrance Service,” September 14, 2001, American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=63645.
“THIS WORLD HE CREATED” Ibid.
A YOUNG WHITE SUPREMACIST Glenn Smith, Jennifer Berry Hawes, and Abigail Darlington, “SLED analysts: Dylann Roof’s prints found on gun that killed nine at Emanuel AME Church,” The Post and Courier (Charleston, S.C.), December 12, 2016, https://www.postandcourier.com/church_shooting/sled-analysts-dylann-roof-s-prints-found-on-gun-that/article_dbe60122-bfef-11e6-9ba5-5f9142dfcf38.html.
“ACCORDING TO THE” Barack Obama, “Eulogy at the Funeral Service for Pastor Clementa C. Pinckney of the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina,” June 26, 2015, American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=110387.
“FOR TOO LONG” Ibid.
OBAMA BEGAN TO SING Ibid.
“WE MAY NOT” Ibid.
“OUR NATION WAS” Barack Obama, “Remarks by the President on the Supreme Court Decision on Marriage Equality,” June 26, 2015, Obama White House Archive, https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2015/06/26/remarks-president-supreme-court-decision-marriage-equality.
“I KNOW CHANGE” Ibid.
“THE COUNTRY HAS TO” Truman, Where the Buck Stops, 111.
TRUMAN HAD IMMENSE Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins, 883.
“GOD DAMN IT” Ibid., 881.
“COMMERCE, LUXURY, AND” Schlesinger, Cycles of American History, 7.
“THE LAST RED” William Faulkner, “Banquet Speech,” December 10, 1950, NobelPrize.org, https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1949/faulkner-speech.html.
“THE FIRST DUTY” Roosevelt, “Duties of American Citizenship.”
THE “PASSION AND ACTION” Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., “In Our Youth Our Hearts Were Touched with Fire,” Memorial Day Address, May 30, 1884, Keene, New Hampshire.
“EVERY MAN WHO” Roosevelt, Rough Riders and An Autobiography, 407–8.
“THE SECRET PERVADING” Bagehot, English Constitution, 73.
“HEREDITARY MONARCHS WERE” Bryce, American Commonwealth, 1:67.
“THE SPIRIT OF RESISTANCE” Thomas Jefferson to Abigail Adams, February 22, 1787, Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-11-02-0182.
“WE KNOW INSTINCTIVELY” Addams, Democracy and Social Ethics, 8.
“IT IS NOT ONLY” Roosevelt, You Learn by Living, 174.
“I HAVE BEEN” Truman, Mr. Citizen, 113.
FACTS, AS JOHN ADAMS “Speech by John Adams at the Boston Massacre Trial,” Boston Massacre Historical Society, http://www.bostonmassacre.net/trial/acct-adams3.htm.
“THE DICTATORS OF” Truman, Where the Buck Stops, 100.
“WHEREVER THE PEOPLE” Thomas Jefferson to Richard Price, January 8, 1789, Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-14-02-0196.
AS PART OF A SERIES I am indebted to Michael Beschloss, who discussed the evening long afterward with Professor Donald, for the details about the Hickory Hill series. For notes about the evenings, see also Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., Papers, Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library.
“NO ONE HAS” Donald, Lincoln, 13.
“THE POLITICIAN’S OPTIC” White, Making of the President, 1964, 55.
“THIS IS AN” Ibid.
“TO ANNOUNCE THAT” “Roosevelt in the Kansas City Star,” May 7, 1918, Theodore Roosevelt Association, http://www.theodoreroosevelt.org/site/c.elKSIdOWIiJ8H/b.9297493/k.7CB9/Quotations_from_the_speeches_and_other_works_of_Theodore_Roosevelt.htm.
“PUBLICITY IS THE” Jeremy Bentham, Benthamiana; or, Select Extracts from the Works of Jeremy Bentham, ed. John Hill Burton (Philadelphia, 1844), 139.
I THINK [THE PRESS] IS INVALUABLE John F. Kennedy, “Television and Radio Interview: ‘After Two Years—a Conversation with the President,’ ” December 17, 1962, American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=9060.
“WHEN THE MARINER” Pollard, Lost Cause Regained, 159.
“I CANNOT EASILY” Rovere, Senator Joe McCarthy, 256.
“BUT IF I AM” Ibid., 258–59.
WARNED OF THE DANGERS Bryce, American Commonwealth, 1:68.
“A BOLD PRESIDENT” Ibid.
“THE PEOPLE HAVE” Truman, Mr. Citizen, 27.
“HE WAS A” Truman, Where the Buck Stops, 11–12.
IN THE SUMMER OF 1864 Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln, 2:655–58; Thomas A. Lewis, “When Washington, D.C. Came Close to Being Conquered by
the Confederacy,” Smithsonian.com, July 1988, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/when-washington-dc-came-close-to-being-conquered-by-the-confederacy-180951994/; Osborne, Jubal, 261–93.
HAD SEEN ACTION “166th Regiment, Ohio Infantry (National Guard),” National Park Service, https://www.nps.gov/civilwar/search-battle-units-detail.htm?battleUnitCode=UOH0166RIN.
HEADQUARTERED AT SILVER SPRING Osborne, Jubal, 284–85.
“IN SIGHT OF THE DOME” Lewis, “When Washington, D.C. Came Close.”
THE FEDERAL TROOPS MOUNTED Ibid.; Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln, 2:656–57.
LINCOLN, WHO OBSERVED Ibid., 2:656. At Fort Stevens, Lincoln “became the first and only sitting American president to come under serious enemy fire.” Ibid.
“A MAN,” HIS SECRETARY John Hay, Inside Lincoln’s White House: The Complete Civil War Diary of John Hay, ed. Michael Burlingame and John R. Turner Ettlinger (Carbondale, Ill., 1997), 222.
“HE STOOD THERE” Donald, Lincoln, 518–19.
“GET DOWN, YOU” Lewis, “When Washington, D.C. Came Close.”
HIS FACE HEAVILY LINED See the portrait taken by Alexander Gardner in Washington on February 5, 1865. Abraham Lincoln, The Annotated Lincoln, ed. Harold Holzer and Thomas A. Horrocks (Cambridge, Mass., 2016), 562.
“IT IS,” HE SAID Lincoln, “Address to the 166th Ohio Regiment.”
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Manuscript Collections
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