Skip to main content

Adlai Arguments

March 2023
1min read

In Tom Morgan’s memoir of the 1960 Democratic Convention, his unspoken premise is that, if Kennedy had not won on the first ballot, the nomination would have gone to Stevenson. This proposition is amply refuted by the statistics he himself provides—409 votes on the first ballot for Johnson, 79.5 for Stevenson. Had the Stevenson people succeeded in denying Kennedy the nomination, the inevitable beneficiary would have been Johnson. That is why a number of liberal Democrats, including Walter Reuther and Joseph Rauh, regarded the Stevenson effort as, in effect, a Johnson front.

However, that is a different matter from the conspiracy theory Mr. Morgan attributes to me regarding Eugene McCarthy. I have written twice at length about the convention (in A Thousand Days and in Robert Kennedy and His Times ), and I never set forth that particular thesis, which I would have done had I believed it. Mr. Morgan mistakes a hypothetical speculation for a declaration of belief. I was trying to explain to him how Kennedy liberals saw it at the time. I have no evidence that Eugene McCarthy was doing any conniving with Johnson, and I wholly accept Senator McCarthy’s own statement of the matter as printed in Mr. Morgan’s piece.

Mr. Morgan also repeats the canard that a Kennedy-Johnson ticket was “already in the works” before the presidential nomination. In fact, as Robert Kennedy’s oral history makes clear, the offer of the vice-presidential nomination was pro forma ; the Kennedys never dreamed Johnson would accept the offer; and, when he did, John Kennedy sent Robert Kennedy to do his best to persuade Johnson to change his mind.

Mr. Morgan wonders whether my tears after Stevenson’s appearance before the Minnesota caucus were tears of “regret or remorse.” If he had bothered to ask me, I would have said neither. Tears filled my eyes because I loved Adlai Stevenson and was sad that we were on opposite sides; but I never had any doubt that I was right to support Kennedy. Politics, like life, involves hard choices.

We hope you enjoy our work.

Please support this 72-year tradition of trusted historical writing and the volunteers that sustain it with a donation to American Heritage.

Donate

Stories published from "December 1984"

Authored by: David Shi

At the turn of the century, a crusading magazine editor exhorted women to seek peace of mind and body through simplicity. For a generation, they listened.

Authored by: Kenneth Finkel

For sixty-five years this photographic company has been recording America from overhead

Authored by: Richard H. Hopper

When did we start saying it? And why?

Authored by: Q. David Bowers

Solid-gold coins were legal tender for most of the nation's history. In their brilliant surfaces we can see our past fortunes.

Authored by: Edward Sorel

He was more than just a cartoonist. He was the Hogarth of the American middle class.

Authored by: The Editors

… 1885 that is, month by month

Authored by: Charles C. Hemming

All this Florida boy wanted to do was rejoin his regiment. Instead they drafted him into the Confederate secret service.

Authored by: Jerome Tarshis

California has always been as much a state of mind as a geographical entity. For the better part of two centuries, artists have been defining its splendid promise.

Featured Articles

Famous writers including Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, and the Alcotts turned Sleepy Hollow Cemetery into our country’s first conservation project.

Native American peoples and the lands they possessed loomed large for Washington, from his first trips westward as a surveyor to his years as President.

In his Second Inaugural Address, Abraham Lincoln embodied leading in a time of polarization, political disagreement, and differing understandings of reality.

A hundred years ago, America was rocked by riots, repression, and racial violence.

During Pres. Washington’s first term, an epidemic killed one tenth of all the inhabitants of Philadelphia, then the capital of the young United States.

Now a popular state park, the unassuming geological feature along the Illinois River has served as the site of centuries of human habitation and discovery.  

The recent discovery of the hull of the battleship Nevada recalls her dramatic action at Pearl Harbor and ultimate revenge on D-Day as the first ship to fire on the Nazis.

Our research reveals that 19 artworks in the U.S. Capitol honor men who were Confederate officers or officials. What many of them said, and did, is truly despicable.

Here is probably the most wide-ranging look at Presidential misbehavior ever published in a magazine.

When Germany unleashed its blitzkreig in 1939, the U.S. Army was only the 17th largest in the world. FDR and Marshall had to build a fighting force able to take on the Nazis, against the wishes of many in Congress.

Roast pig, boiled rockfish, and apple pie were among the dishes George and Martha enjoyed during the holiday in 1797. Here are some actual recipes.

Born during Jim Crow, Belle da Costa Greene perfected the art of "passing" while working for one of the most powerful men in America.