The Home Front
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
THE HOME FRONT Men Independent Of the Mob By William E. Bohn A young Senator has written a book which I commend to all ambitious and politically-minded young people. The Senator, of course, is...
...The distinguishing mark of this array of heroes is their independence...
...And Wilson occupies a somewhat more prominent place just because he made life tough for George Norris...
...Edmund G. Ross, for example, came to Washington from Kansas when the Capitol was hot with the fight of the '"radical" Senators to destroy President Andrew Johnson...
...He is fully aware of the activities of well-equipped and -financed pressure groups...
...He denounced the Nuremberg trials as contrary to all our principles of law and justice...
...he made an address that ran counter to all the prejudices of the conservatives...
...Republican, a conservative, a rather conventional man...
...The men who are honored with description are those who stood up either against the mob of fellow politicians or against the greater, wilder mob of voters...
...Jefferson and Lincoln are referred to now and then, but no sketches of their character or achievements are included...
...Senators...
...The man from Kansas knew that his constituents were against the President and against all the moderate Reconstruction measures which he favored...
...He was Mr...
...He did something distinctly brave and fine, for which we should all give him credit...
...But the man stood up...
...And now, author Kennedy reports, he "lies in a lonely grave, forgotten and unknown...
...This series of short, sharp, plainly-written historical essays has something which is needed in this age of the hucksters...
...The Senator, of course, is John F. Kennedy and the book is Profiles in Courage (Harper, $3.50...
...He relates no personal incidents, but the reader has a feeling that he could fill long chapters with them...
...I am astonished that the reviewers have given so little attention to the account of Senator Robert Taft...
...The youthful author is motivated by a very clear picture of what is going on in the world...
...For our everyday life is becoming so saturated with the tremendous power of mass communications that any unpopular or unorthodox course arouses a storm of protest...
...But he remembered Lincoln, he thought of the hope of reunion...
...There he stood up for the people's real interests rather than for their inclinations...
...A two-thirds vote was required for condemnation...
...And John Quincy refused "to be palsied by the will of his constituents" or to achieve success by becoming "a patriot by profession...
...What we have here is a series of biographical sketches torn raw and realistic out of American history...
...In between are ranged such seemingly ill-assorted comrades as Daniel Webster and George Norris...
...the deciding vote...
...Consequently, he was defeated for the Senate but later returned to the House on his own terms...
...This is no conventional exhibit of heroes, reformers or liberal intellectuals...
...John Quincy Adams set the tone for the lot of them...
...It was the father, old John, who set the standard: "The magistrate is the servant, not of his own desires, not even of the people, but of his God...
...What did he do to get into this peculiarly distinguished company...
...He knew that his colleagues in the Senate were on the same side...
...With the war feeling still running high, this amounted to political suicide...
...Practically all the protagonists are U.S...
...He early makes clear what he is driving at: "Today the challenge of political courage looms larger than ever before...
...The man had '"the unhesitating courage" which is, for our author, the admission card to the upper class of statesmen...
...Some of these men have been overlooked by conventional history...
...What sort of line-up, then, are we given...
...He wrote long afterward: "I almost literally looked down into my open grave...
...Anyone who has any feel for American history will experience a thrill as he watches this 38-year-old successor of the Adamses expound the character of that stubborn and clear-thinking family...
...It starts with John Quincy Adams and ends with Robert A. Taft...
...When the Senate finally sat as a jury and the House drew up the impeachment charges against the President, feeling ran so high that there was little hope of fair judgment...
...The young author is far from being either a Puritan or a Federalist, but you feel as you read that he is deeply qualified to represent old Massachusetts in the Senate...
...Friendship, position, fortune, everything that makes life desirable to an ambitious man, were about to be swept away by the breath of my mouth...
...The two Roosevelts and Cleveland are honored with only one reference each...
...In 1946...
...He voted "Not guilty...
...It is not strange that my answer was carried waveringly over the air and failed to reach the limits of the audience, or that repetition was called for by distant Senators on the opposite side of the chamber...
...when it was widely taken for granted that Taft would be given the Republican nomination for President in 1948...
...The list of subjects itself gives evidence of a good deal of patient research and sharp thinking...
...So he defended Jefferson's foreign policy against the outcries of all the politicians in New England...
Vol. 39 • February 1956 • No. 6
