Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson

by Robert A. Caro

  “I would attribute”: Ervin OH.

  “Very unobtrusive”: Krock, NYT, March 17, 1935. “When he spoke”: Fite, p. 126.

  “With the blood”: CR, 78/1, pp. 8859–66. “Let us”: Russell to Truman, Aug. 7, 1945, White House Central Files, OF 197, HSTL. Truman’s reply is revealing of the difference between the two men. The President wrote “Dear Dick” that while Japan was “a terribly cruel and uncivilized nation in warfare,” he could not agree that “because they are beasts, we should ourselves act in the same manner.” He was unwilling, he said, to decimate an entire people because of their leaders’ “pigheadedness” unless “it is absolutely necessary” (Truman to Russell, Aug. 9, 1945, White House Central Files, OF 197, HSTL).

  “No more ardent”: Robert Byrd, “Richard Brevard Russell,” CR, 100/2, p. S 353. “If Sherman”: Milton Young OH; Fite, p. 353. “I want”: Fite, p. 353. “In the field”: Jack Bell, “Dick Russell, King of the Filibusterers,” advance for AMs of Sunday, July 28, 1963, III Speech, Box 78, folder “Russell Material (Biog. and articles),” RBRL. “He is considered”: Manatos to Johnson, May 20, 1968, WHCF, Box 344, LBJL.

  “Every great”: Fite, pp. 466–67. Agreeing with Humphrey: Meg Greenfield, “The Man Who Leads the Southern Senators,” The Reporter, May 21, 1964. For thirty-eight years: Russell’s long fight for farmers is based on Fite, pp. 149–60, 212–16, and Robert Byrd, “Richard Brevard Russell,” CR, 100/2, pp. 350–51. “He kept”: Harold H. Martin, “The Man Behind the Brass,” SEP, June 2, 1951. “Essentially”: Fite, p. 187. “Throughout”: Robert Byrd, “Richard Brevard Russell,” CR, 100/2, pp. 350, 351.

  “He considered”: Fite, p. 145. “There are no”: Fite, p. 167; CR, 75/3, p. 1101. “I was”: WS, Feb. 29, 1960. “The rights”: Meg Greenfield, “The Man Who Leads the Southern Senators,” The Reporter, May 21, 1964. Challenged in his bid for a full Senate term by Georgia’s most politically powerful racist, Governor Eugene Talmadge, he replied to Talmadge’s charge that he was unreliable on segregation by calling the Governor “despicable” for “doing what every candidate who is about to be beaten does. He comes in crying nigger.” But Russell vigorously defended white supremacy and segregation, and said in one speech that “this is a white man’s country, yes, and we are going to keep it that way.” In another speech, he said that it was an insult to the people of Georgia “to even insinuate that I stand for political and social equality with the Negro.” As Fite puts it (p. 149), “He used legal arguments in contrast to Talmadge’s bombastic accusations of dictatorship, but the difference between the Russells and the Talmadges in the South was mainly one of degree rather than substance.” Full-dress speeches: CR, 75/3, pp. 374–75, 1098–1115; CR, 77/2, pp. 8804–05; CR, 78/2, pp. 8859–66; CR, 80/2, pp. 7355–64; Current Biography, 1949. “More”; “strike vital”: Fite, p. 167.

  “Been evolved”: CR, 75/3, p. 1101. “We believe”; “promotes”: CR, 79/2, pp. 10259–61. “In a short”: CR, 75/3, p. 1101. “I challenge”: CR, 77/2, p. 8904. “Whites and blacks alike”: CR, 75/3, p. 1101. “We have worked”: CR, 77/2, p. 8904.

  “Unnecessary”: CR, 75/3, pp. 374–75, 1098–1115. “As interested”: “The Rearguard Commander,” Time, Aug. 12, 1957. “If it”: CR, 75/3, p. 1101.

  “Let the”: CR, 77/2, p. 8904.

  “I don’t know”: Time, Aug. 12, 1957. “We’ve had”: Fite, p. 184. “Russell did not”: Fite, pp. 184, 168.

  Borah, Norris: Fite, pp. 167–68.

  “At opposite”: “Senator Russell of Georgia: Does He Speak for the South,” Newsweek, Aug. 19, 1963. “Not a racist”; “must be respected”: Shaffer, pp. 202, 206. “Honest”: Harold H. Martin, “The Man Behind the Brass,” SEP, June 2, 1951. “Roots”: Time, Aug. 12, 1957.

  “Knightly”: Ervin OH. 1908 lynching: Winder Weekly News, Dec. 10, 1908. 1922 lynching: Winder Weekly News, Sept. 7, 1922.

  Dorsey attempting; He “avoided”: Fite, p. 43.

  “Georgia exceeds”: Burns, Out of These Chains, p. 369. A vivid description of the chain gangs is in T. H. Watkins, “A Fugitive’s Epic,” Constitution, Fall 1993. “I used to”: Martin, Deep South, p. 176. “I suppose”; “had never”: “Georgia Giant,” edited transcript, Part I, pp. 25, 26. “So hungry”: NYWT, undated, but obviously 1932. Promise broken: Burns, Out of These Chains, p. 387; T. H. Watkins, “A Fugitive’s Epic,” Constitution, Fall 1993. “Real importance”: NYT, Jan. 31, 1932. “One would”: NYHT, Jan. 18, 1932.

  Georgia’s Governor demanded; affidavits: Burns, Out of These Chains, pp. 382–83. Russell’s statements: AC, Dec. 23, 1932. “A slander”: Russell, quoted in Burns, Out of These Chains, pp. 396–97. Russell added, in what Watkins calls “a nasty aside,” that “the decision makes it easy to understand how the most horrible crime of modern times—the kidnapping of the Lindberg baby—could occur and go unpunished in a State whose Governor has such ideas of law….” (T. H. Watkins, “A Fugitive’s Epic,” Constitution, Fall 1993). “Telling the world”: NY Sunday News, Dec. 25, 1932.

  Russell saw it: David B. Potenziani, “Look to the Past: Richard Russell and the Defense of White Supremacy,” unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Georgia, 1981, pp. 15 ff. Potenziani’s thesis is a perceptive analysis of Russell’s racial views. “To force”: CR, 77/2, p. 9065. Blocked: NYT, Nov. 24, 1942.

  “I am afraid”: Russell to Cobb C. Torrance, May 31, 1944, X. Civil Rights Series, FEPC, 1944–1949, RBRL. “Any southern”: Russell to Alan Reid, Feb. 4, 1936, IV, Early Office Series, RBRL. “A terrible”: Russell to Storey, Feb. 13, 1942, Series X, Box 158, RBRL. Not necessary; “Fully aware”: Marion Young to Russell, Aug. 15, 1942; Russell to Mrs. Young, Aug. 18, 1942, X. Civil Rights Series, Negro File, Box 139, RBRL.

  “In the last”: Russell to R. F. Hardy, July 4, 1942, Series X, Box 158, RBRL. “Fading away”: Russell in CR, 80/2, p. 7360. Marines: When S. D. Mandeville of Tennille, Ga., wrote Russell that the Marine Corps “have achieved a brilliant record and a great fighting spirit without the aid of the Negro. Don’t let them ruin the morale of the boys by letting the Negro in the Marine Corps,” Russell wrote back, “I feel just as you do about the enlistment of Negroes in the Marine Corps, and I have vigorously protested any such policy.” (Mandeville to Russell, Feb. 5, 1942; Russell to Mandeville, Feb. 13, 1942, both from X. Civil Rights Series Negro File (subject) Correspondence, Box 139, RBRL. “These people”: Patience Russell Patterson OH. “In spite”: David B. Potenziani, “Look to the Past: Richard Russell and the Defense of White Supremacy,” unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Georgia, 1981, p. 41. “Health and morals”: CR, 80/2, p. 5666. “No more intimate”: CR, 80/2, pp. 7356, 7361. Special camps: Russell to George Reynolds and to Theodore Cowart, Jan. 25, 1943, X. Civil Rights Series, Negro File, 1942–43, Box 157, RBRL.

  “All of the men”: III A. Speech, Box 32, Folder, “Dragon Speech,” pp. 18, 19, RBRL. This is a typed, 22—page text, evidently transcribed from notes taken by a secretary to whom Russell dictated it. On the typed text are changes made in Russell’s handwriting. Archivists at the RBRL say that Russell dictated the text after rushing from the Senate floor in a rage after he had suffered a setback during the 1957 civil rights debate, and that the speech was never delivered. The purpose of the speech would have been “to ask unanimous consent that” an article, dated July 20th, from the Portland Oregonian describing the rape “be printed in the Record.” The precise date that Russell dictated it is unknown. It was filed in his office files on Sept. 28, 1957. An unknown individual in Russell’s office named it the “Dragon Speech” because its theme is that in order to slay an imaginary “Southern dragon,” northerners had given themselves illegal powers. As a result, says the text Russell dictated, “the N.A.A.C.P. had achieved such power”—“controlling the policies of [America’s] only two political parties” that “the rights of ordinary white people, the most numerous group in the country, are enjoyable contingent upon the possibility that they may collide with any right, real or imaginary, claimed by a N
egro citizen” (p. 20).

  “No such thing”: Russell to Hansell, Sept. 30, 1957, Civil Rights, Little Rock, Box 345, RBRL. “They are determined”: Undated newspaper clipping, Mrs. Ina Russell’s scrap-book, 1947–48, RBRL, cited in Fite, p. 233.

  “Scathingly”: Drury, A Senate Journal, p. 122.

  “I am sick”: Fite, p. 183.

  Even “baseball [and] football”: Fite, p. 184. “Almost entirely”: Russell to John M. Slaton, Aug. 17, 1944, Series X, RBRL. “A wild-eyed”: Fite, p. 229.

  Transit plot: Drury, p. 238.

  1948 FEPC speech: CR, 80/2, pp. A-1863–64. “The agitation”: CR, 76/3, p. 1102. “This bill”: CR, 79/2, p. 179. “Any white man”: CR, 79/2, p. 380.

  Lynching in Monroe: NYHT, NYT, July 27, 1946. “We can’t cope”; “persons unknown”: NYT, NYHT, July 28, 1946. “Mr. President”: CR, 79/2, pp. 10258–60; NYT, July 28, 1946. Other 1946 lynchings: Zangrando, NAACP Crusade, p. 174; Egerton, Speak Now Against the Day, p. 362. “I mean”: Donovan, Conflict and Crisis, p. 334.

  “South haters”; “hellhack”; “obloquy”: Meg Greenfield, “The Man Who Leads the Southern Senators,” The Reporter, May 21, 1964. “To alienate”: Fite, p. 226. “Cannot”: Russell to Lemuel S. J. Smith, Feb. 20, 1948, RBRL. “Gestapo”: Fite, p. 231. “hordes”: CR, 80/2, p. A-1864.

  Facing Connally down: Margaret Shannon, Atlanta Journal and Constitution, Nov. 24, 1963. “A good case”: “The Rearguard Commander,” Time, Aug. 12, 1957.

  “Whether”: CR, 79/2, p. 161. “We’ve had”: Fite, p. 184.

  “The Negro”; “Under Russell”: Harold H. Martin, “The Man Behind the Brass,” SEP, June 2, 1951.

  “Almost Roman”; “Olympian”: Frederic W. Collins, NYT Magazine, Oct. 20, 1963. “No one laughed”: Wicker, On Press, p. 40.

  “A monumental”: Douglas Kiker, “The Old Guard at Its Shrewdest,” Harper’s, Sept. 1966. “dishonorable”: WS, March 15, 1964; BeLieu interview. “His colleagues”: Fite, p. 200. “A thousand”: Harold Davis, quoted by Fite, p. 200. “His bond”: Fite, p. 289. “Incomparably”: White, Citadel, p. 87.

  “Remember so well”: Humphrey OH. “A wink”: Mann, Walls of Jericho, p. 75. “Check it”: Jack Bell, “Dick Russell, King of the Filibusterers,” advance for AMs of Sunday, July 28, 1963. “No major”: Don Oberdorfer, “The Filibuster’s Best Friend,” SEP, March 15, 1965. “Well, I want”: Gale McGee, quoted in Fite, p. 323. “Scores”: Fite, p. 317. “Favorite uncle”: Fite, pp. 323, 199.

  “It has not”: Meg Greenfield, “The Man Who Leads the Southern Senators,” The Reporter, May 21, 1964.

  “Of their own”: CR, 80/2, pp. 7355–64. “I could not”: CR, 80/2, p. 5666. Not one got through: Mann, p. 43. “As such”: CR, 77/2, pp. 8904–05.

  “Thin gray line”: NYT, March 2, 1960. “Words of war”: Meg Greenfield, “The Man Who Leads the Southern Senators,” The Reporter, May 21, 1964. Don Oberdorfer, “Richard Russell, Senator of Influence,” WP, Jan. 22, 1971. “The last ditch”: Ervin OH. “Our position”: Russell to Ervin, July 29, 1948, Dictation Series, Civil Rights, RBRL.

  8. “We of the South”

  “That persuasive”; “The greatest”: Fite, Russell, pp. 43, 203. “That’s a”: Russell, replying to a question by Harry Reasoner on “Portraits,” CBS News, July 17, 1963.

  Collins relationship: Fite, pp. 171–72, 201.

  “About as close”: Fite, p. 326. Puttering around: Richard Russell III interview (the Senator’s nephew). Could think best: Griggs to Williamson, Aug. 1, 1957, SP. “We could run”: Rev. Henry E. Russell OH.

  “He just”: Harry O. Smith, quoted in WP, May 11, 1952. He often walked around the town barefoot. “Warm feelings”; “A host”; “somewhat”: Fite, p. 208. “I had always”; six months: McConaughy to Williamson, July 31, 1957, SP. Stopped; “frankly”: Fite, pp. 201–02.

  With his staff, and the pattern of his life: Fite, passim; interviews with BeLieu, Braswell, Darden, Gwen Jordan, William H. Jordan, Moore, Reedy; and the OHs of BeLieu, John T. Carlton, Darden, Robert M. Dunahoo, Felton M. (Skeeter) Johnston, Gwen Jordan, William Jordan, Barboura Raesly, Dorothye Scott. “‘Miss’”: Fite, p. 207.

  Going to Opening Day: Felton Johnston OH. Eating at O’Donnell’s: Jordan, BeLieu interviews. BeLieu saw him there; Fite, p. 468. “My life and work”: Cecil Holland, WS, March 15, 1964.

  “I knew”: Goodwin, Lyndon Johnson, p. 103. Actually, Johnson had included Armed Services—as his third choice—on his list of desired committee assignments in some of his earlier letters requesting a seat on Appropriations. John Connally and Walter Jenkins say this was done as what Connally calls a “sop” to Tom Connally, to make the senior senator feel Johnson was following the suggestion Connally had made to him in Marlin. The Bobby Baker discussion apparently took place during the week after Christmas, 1948. Dropping by: Busby, Connally, Jordan interviews. Invitations to dinner: Lady Bird Johnson OH. “An entirely”: Oltorf interview.

  “The best of us”: Caro, Path, p. 759. And see also Path, pp. 762–63.

  “I early knew”: Lady Bird Johnson OH. Were encouraged: Baker, Wheeling and Dealing, p. 42; Dugger, The Politician, p. 344.

  “We both like”: “Georgia Giant,” unedited transcript, Reel 19, p. 30, Atlanta, WSB-TV, Cox Enterprises, 1970. “Hot dogs”: Lady Bird Johnson OH. “I doubt”: Connally with Herskowitz, In History’s Shadow, p. 122. Now began: Busby, Connally, Jenkins interviews.

  “With no one”: Goodwin, Lyndon Johnson, p. 105. “You never”: Oltorf interview.

  “I shall take you”: Caro, Path, Chapter 17.

  “My mentor”: Goodwin, p. 105. “Snickered”: Baker, Wheeling and Dealing, p. 42. “He flattered”: Baker, quoted in Miller, Lyndon, p. 142. “Had he”: Baker, on The American Experience: LBJ, PBS Home Video, 1997. “Well, I suppose”: “Georgia Giant,” unedited transcript, Reel 21, p. 30.

  “Bosom friend”: Stennis interview, April 21, 1971, quoted in Stephen B. Farrow, “Richard Russell and Lyndon Johnson: Principle and Pragmatism in Senatorial Politics, 1949–52,” unpublished senior thesis, University of Tennessee, 1979, p. 34. Stennis also said, “Personal things didn’t mean anything to Russell where constitutional principles were concerned” (Stennis OH, RBRL).

  Maiden speech: CR, 81/1, pp. 2042–49.

  A “nove l”: CCC-T, March 9, 1949. “No quarrel”: Dallek, Lone Star, p. 367.

  Russell telling reporters: Dugger, p. 344; Steinberg, Sam Johnson’s Boy, p. 291. “Worth a story”: “Sense and Sensitivity,” Time, March 17, 1948. “Long line”: Lubbock Journal, March 10, 1949. Russell the first: San Angelo Standard-Times, March 10, 1949. “One of the ablest”: Goodwin, Lyndon Johnson, p. 106. And the conservative columnist Holmes Alexander reported that “Russell pronounced it to be the best speech on the subject ever made before this body” (Berkeley [Calif.] Gazette, April 28, 1956).

  “The President”: Stokes, quoted in Donovan, Tumultuous Years, p. 22. “It seems”: Krock, NYT, Jan. 30, 1949.

  “Gird our loins”: NYT, Feb. 1, 1949. “Know if”: Russell to Anderson, Dec. 13, 1949, Civil Rights, FEPC, Correspondence, Box 127, folder FEPC Dictation, 1944–49, RBRL. “Made it”; Russell told: Fite, p. 246; NYT, Feb. 27, 28, 1949. “A number”; “Will forecast”; “Taft’s help”: Thomas Sancton, The Nation, April 9, 1949. Vandenberg’s ruling: NYT, March 11, 12; WP, March 12, 1949. “In the final analysis,” Vandenberg also said, “the Senate has no effective cloture rule at all…. The existing rules … still leave the Senate, rightly or wrongly, at the mercy of unlimited debate ad infinitum” (NYT, Jan. 30, 1949). Strategy worked: For example, Krock, NYT, Feb. 22, 1949. “Working”: New Republic, March 14, 1949. “Has virtually”: NAACP, Box 61, “Press Releases, 1949,” LC. Lucas confessing: NYT, March 15, 1949. Barkley’s ruling; Russell’s appeal: Newsweek, March 21, 1949; NYT, WP, March 11, 12, 1949. See also NYT, March 5, 11, 1949. “Not simply”: Newsweek, March 21, 1949. “Sinking heart”: Time, March 21, 1949. “Mr. Vandenberg has”: The Nation, March 19, 1949.
“An aura”: NYT, March 12, 1949. The vote: NYT, WP, March 15, 1949. Agreeing after the vote to drop attempts at cloture, Lucas said, in a definitive statement on the southerners’ strength: “We realize that the filibuster can go on for weeks. They [the southerners] have the manpower to do it. Meanwhile, rent control would go out the window.” The Times said: “Senator Lucas noted also that other major bills … were lagging in the legislative process. There was thus, he declared, a log jam that could not be allowed to continue.” “With less”: Byrd to Chapman, March 16, 1949, Box 118, Personal Miscellaneous, RBRL. A sample of the feeling of other members of the Southern Caucus toward their general is in Stennis to Russell, and Johnston to Russell, March 18, 1949 (same file as Byrd letter).

  “To his cohorts”: Stephen B. Farrow, “Richard Russell and Lyndon Johnson: Principle and Pragmatism in Senatorial Politics, 1949–52,” unpublished senior thesis, University of Tennessee, 1979, p. 44. “compromise”: NYT, WP, March 18, 1949.

  An accepted part: Goodwin, p. 106; Evans and Novak, LBJ: Exercise, p. 32; Mann, Walls of Jericho, p. 82. Dallek, who seems to feel that the Caucus was formed in 1949 (it had actually been a major fact of Senate life for at least a decade before that), writes (p. 367): “To defeat Truman’s cloture proposal and his whole civil rights program, senators from the former eleven Confederate states organized themselves into a southern caucus and met to map strategy…. Johnson stayed away from the southern strategy meeting.” “Senator Johnson”: Darden OH. “I was”: Darden interview.

  “No, no”: Busby, Connally, Young interviews. When the author interviewed Busby in 1985, Busby related this incident, and said he wasn’t sure whether Johnson had or had not been at the Caucus (he also said he didn’t know which Caucus it was), but in 1988, when he was interviewed by an oral history interviewer for the Lyndon Johnson Library, he said Johnson had not been at the Caucus, and related an elaborate explanation that Johnson had given him to explain he had been elsewhere. When, also in 1985, the author asked John Connally about the incident, Connally at first didn’t recall it, but after the author told him about Busby’s account, did remember it, and said, smilingly, “We didn’t know whether he didn’t want to comment because he wasn’t there, or because he was there.” Mary-Louise Young was not in the office at the time of the incident but was told about it later by other members of the staff. She says that Johnson didn’t want to comment because he had been at the Caucus. In his book, The Walls of Jericho, Mann, relying on Dallek’s account, says that Johnson was holding the door closed to keep the Associated Press reporter from asking “why he was not at the meeting” (Mann, p. 82). More importantly, both Mann and Dallek write as if there was only one meeting of the Southern Caucus or bloc in 1949; in fact, there were many.