As noted, Hubert Humphrey was born 100 years ago today. He was, I think, a genuinely great American politician.

Among the many then secret documents I came across at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library when I was an archivist there long ago, was a lengthy single-spaced typewritten memo from Vice President Humphrey to President Johnson. Humphrey had been to Vietnam and wanted to report his observations directly. Because the document was secret I couldn’t keep a copy, but I remember Humphrey being perceptive about what was really happening.

But mostly I remember the P.S. — the Vice President of the United States apologized to the President of the United States for the typing. Humphrey said he’d come into the office on Sunday and no one was available, so he had typed the memo himself.

UCLA historian Joan Waugh appreciates Ulysses Grant and thinks we should too — How the “Lost Cause” poisoned our history books. Worth your click.

Waugh praises Grant’s Memoirs and so do I. They are superb history, enjoyable and readable. (And free for Kindle.)

The essay includes this famous Grant quotation from the Memoirs, which sums up the American Civil War as well as any one sentence can:

“I felt like anything rather than rejoicing at the down fall of a foe who had fought so long and valiantly, and had suffered so much for a cause, though that cause was, I believe, one of the worst for which a people ever fought, and one for which there was the least excuse.”

Had Booth missed, Lincoln could have risen from his chair to confront his assassin. At that moment the president, cornered, with not only his own life in danger but also Mary’s, would almost certainly have fought back. If he did, Booth would have found himself outmatched facing not kindly Father Abraham, but the aroused fury of the Mississippi River flatboatman who fought off a gang of murderous river pirates in the dead of night, the champion wrestler who, years before, humbled the Clary’s Grove boys in New Salem in a still legendary match, or even the fifty-six-year-old president who could still pick up a long, splitting-axe by his fingertips, raise it, extend his arm out parallel with the ground, and suspend the axe in midair. Lincoln could have choked the life out of the five-foot-eight-inch, 150-pound thespian, or wrestled him over the side of the box, launching Booth on a crippling dive to the stage almost twelve feet below.

But Lincoln had not seen Booth coming.

From James L. Swanson’s Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer, a great read.

Go try that thing with an axe or other long-handled tool.

Abraham Lincoln made these remarks in Springfield before boarding the train for Washington 150 years ago today. He transcribed them on the train — it’s Lincoln’s handwriting at first, then his secretary John Nicolay’s. The movement of the train is seen in the scrawl. Click the image above for a larger version. The text is below.

My friends—No one, not in my situation, can appreciate my feeling of sadness at this parting. To this place, and the kindness of these people, I owe every thing. Here I have lived a quarter of a century, and have passed from a young to an old man. Here my children have been born, and one is buried. I now [2] leave, not knowing when, or whether ever, I may return, with a task before me greater than that which rested upon Washington. Without the assistance of that Divine Being, who ever attended him, I cannot succeed. With that assistance I cannot fail. Trusting in Him, who can go with me, and remain with you and be every where for good, [3] let us confidently hope that all will yet be well. To His care commending you, as I hope in your prayers you will commend me, I bid you an affectionate farewell

Lincoln never saw Springfield again.

Information and idea from Farewell to Springfield, today’s very interesting installment in The New York Times series marking each day in the 150th anniversary of the Civil War.

“I am not aware of ever having used a profane expletive in my life …”

Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs, Volume 1, Chapter 7

. . . was born on this date in 1706*.

As one biographer, Walter Isaacson, states:

[Franklin] was, during his eighty-four-year-Iong life, America’s best scientist, inventor, diplomat, writer, and business strategist, and he was also one of its most practical, though not most profound, political thinkers. He proved by flying a kite that lightning was electricity, and he invented a rod to tame it. He devised bifocal glasses and cleanburning stoves, charts of the Gulf Stream and theories about the contagious nature of the common cold. He launched various civic improvement schemes, such as a lending library, college, volunteer fire corps, insurance association, and matching grant fund-raiser. He helped invent America’s unique style of homespun humor and philosophical pragmatism. In foreign policy, he created an approach that wove together idealism with balance-of-power realism. And in politics, he proposed seminal plans for uniting the colonies and creating a federal model for a national government.

But the most interesting thing that Franklin invented, and continually reinvented, was himself. America’s first great publicist, he was, in his life and in his writings, consciously trying to create a new American archetype. In the process, he carefully crafted his own persona, portrayed it in public, and polished it for posterity.

Benjamin Franklin: An American Life

__________

* Actually it was January 6, 1705, when Benjamin Franklin was born. The calendar was changed in the American Colonies in 1752, adding 11 days and making January 1st the beginning of the year.

• The use of money is all the advantage there is in having money.
• He is not well-bred, that cannot bear ill-breeding in others.
• You may talk too much on the best of subjects.
• A good conscience is a continual Christmas.
• All would live long, but none would be old.
• One today is worth two tomorrows.
• Do not anticipate trouble, or worry about what may never happen. Keep in the sunlight.
• Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.
• Beer is living proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
• Certainty? In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes.
• Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days.
• Many people die at twenty five and aren’t buried until they are seventy five.
• I should have no objection to go over the same life from its beginning to the end: requesting only the advantage authors have, of correcting in a second edition the faults of the first.
• If you would not be forgotten, as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things worth reading, or do things worth the writing.
• I wake up every morning at nine and grab for the morning paper. Then I look at the obituary page. If my name is not on it, I get up.

Above by Benjamin Franklin.