{"id":14142,"date":"2016-07-07T12:31:06","date_gmt":"2016-07-07T17:31:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/college.unc.edu\/?p=14142"},"modified":"2024-07-02T16:28:39","modified_gmt":"2024-07-02T16:28:39","slug":"american-presidents","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/?p=14142","title":{"rendered":"Getting to Know the American Presidents"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_14143\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-14143\" style=\"width: 584px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-14143 size-large\" src=\"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/21\/2024\/07\/Web-Leuchtenburg-1024x682.jpg\" alt=\"William Leuchtenburg is the William Rand Kenan Jr. Professor Emeritus of History at UNC. He\u2019s written 15 books on the American presidents, eight of which are solely on Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) \u2014 of whom he is the world\u2019s leading scholar. (photo by Dan Sears)\" width=\"584\" height=\"389\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-14143\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">William Leuchtenburg is the William Rand Kenan Jr. Professor Emeritus of History at UNC. He\u2019s written 15 books on the American presidents, eight of which are solely on Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) \u2014 of whom he is the world\u2019s leading scholar. (photo by Dan Sears)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><span class=\"drop\">W<\/span>illiam Leuchtenburg met the eyes of a towering Lyndon B. Johnson in September 1965, as they made introductions in the White House Oval Office. Leuchtenburg spent the next two hours in an intimate interview with John F. Kennedy\u2019s former vice president. In fact, Johnson indiscreetly vilified his predecessor, asking, \u201cWhat is it that Kennedy ever did that compares to what I\u00a0did?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A <em>Washington Post <\/em>reporter once compared the 36<sup>th<\/sup> president to a St. Bernard who licked your face for an hour and pawed you all over. \u201cJohnson was so overpowering that I understood what a commentator once said to me \u2014 that you could plug him in because he had so much electric power,\u201d he remembers. \u201cOr, what one of his aides later said to me: \u2018He\u2019s one of the only men I\u2019ve ever met that, at any moment, could take off his strap and belt me.\u2019 He was a force of\u00a0nature.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Leuchtenburg, a historian who taught at <span class=\"caps\">UNC<\/span>-Chapel Hill for 20 years, has spent his whole life getting to know the American presidents. He\u2019s written 15 books about them, eight of which are solely on Franklin Delano Roosevelt (<span class=\"caps\">FDR<\/span>). In fact, he\u2019s the world\u2019s leading scholar on <span class=\"caps\">FDR<\/span>, a man he\u2019s idolized from the time he was 9 \u2014 when he first heard his presidential nomination during a 1932 radio broadcast. Upon <span class=\"caps\">FDR<\/span>\u2019s death, a 23-year-old Leuchtenburg wandered around New York City lost for days. \u201cIt did seem as though I\u2019d lost my father,\u201d he\u00a0admits.<\/p>\n<p>In his most recent book, \u201cThe American President: From Teddy Roosevelt to Bill Clinton\u201d (2015), the 93-year-old scholar presents an anecdotal account of our nation\u2019s 20<sup>th<\/sup>-century presidents. Each one overflows with wit and intrigue, and reads more like a literary novel than a history book. His words are shaped by research and real-life experiences \u2014 he\u2019s met a handful of these leaders, some of whom had a greater impact on his life than others. Harry S. Truman and Lyndon B. Johnson are two of them, both of whom were forced to follow in their predecessors\u2019 shadows. Here\u2019s a view of their lives from Leuchtenburg\u2019s\u00a0perspective.<\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/vimeo.com\/173653499<\/p>\n<div id=\"content-region\" class=\"content-region row nested\">\n<div id=\"content-region-inner\" class=\"content-region-inner inner\">\n<div id=\"content-inner\" class=\"content-inner block\">\n<div id=\"content-inner-inner\" class=\"content-inner-inner inner\">\n<div id=\"content-content\" class=\"content-content\">\n<div id=\"node-4456\" class=\"node odd full-node node-type-story\">\n<div class=\"inner\">\n<div class=\"content clearfix\">\n<p><strong>The go-getter who never gave\u00a0up<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s really too bad about Harry,\u201d Leuchtenburg told a coworker. It was 3 a.m. in Kansas City on election night in 1948, and the results for the nation\u2019s 33<sup>rd<\/sup> president still hadn\u2019t been announced. Like most of the country, Leuchtenburg was sure Harry S. Truman would be defeated. \u201cTruman was ahead,\u201d he recalls, \u201cbut a famous <span class=\"caps\">T.V.<\/span> announcer at the time, <span class=\"caps\">H.V.<\/span> Kaltenborn, told viewers to keep waiting for the rural\u00a0return.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Nobody thought a president succeeding the man who got America through the Great Depression and most of World War <span class=\"caps\">II<\/span> would survive a second term. \u201cTruman was always talked about and depicted as the little man following <span class=\"caps\">FDR<\/span>,\u201d Leuchtenburg explains. But, in truth, he was a man of average height and full of\u00a0surprises.<\/p>\n<p>Upon entering the presidency after <span class=\"caps\">FDR<\/span>\u2019s unexpected death from a cerebral hemorrhage in 1945, Truman was anything but \u201cMr. President\u201d to both the American people and those in the White House, according to Leuchtenburg\u2019s book. In fact, it wasn\u2019t until two weeks after he took office that Secretary of War Henry Stimson felt confident enough to tell him about the atomic bomb. Four months later, Truman approved the drop of what he called \u201cthe most terrible thing ever discovered\u201d on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan surrendered five days\u00a0later.<\/p>\n<p>The war ended. And the strikes began. Workers in the automobile, steel, and railroad industries protested for one year after the war. No one thought Truman would be\u00a0reelected.<\/p>\n<p>But he persevered. He created the Department of Defense, National Security Council, Central Intelligence Agency, Atomic Energy Commission, and was the first president since Abraham Lincoln to truly make a stand for civil rights. In 1946 \u2014 nearly 20 years before John F. Kennedy\u2019s Civil Rights Act passed \u2014 he established a President\u2019s Committee on Civil Rights. He desegregated the military and was the first president to ever address the\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">NAACP<\/span>.<\/p>\n<p>And no one thought he\u2019d be\u00a0reelected.<\/p>\n<p>Truman campaigned hard. He traveled more than 30,000 miles by train across the country, stopping in nearly every major city, met by hundreds of thousands of Americans waiting to see what the \u201cgone goose\u201d had to say. He spoke of civil rights and the housing crisis, criticized the Republican Party, and fulfilled his promise to \u201cgive [the American people] hell.\u201d He gave 271 speeches and won over his\u00a0listeners.<\/p>\n<p>Still, no one thought he\u2019d be\u00a0reelected.<\/p>\n<p>At 9:30 a.m. on Nov. 3, Leuchtenburg stopped for breakfast at a Kansas City drugstore. A radio announcer came on the air to report that the presidential election was still in doubt, but had come down to the state of Ohio. \u201cThe music came back on, but was again interrupted by the radio announcer,\u201d Leuchtenburg remembers. \u201cHarry Truman \u2014 to everyone\u2019s astonishment \u2014 had been reelected\u00a0president.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think his victory in 1948 is a result of two things,\u201d he explains. \u201cOne, he took the initiative on civil rights to an extent that neither <span class=\"caps\">FDR<\/span> nor anybody before Truman ever had. And the other was that, at a time when Western Europe was facing devastation, he became the sponsor of the Marshall Plan to provide <span class=\"caps\">U.S.<\/span> aid to England, France, and other countries of Western Europe. Plus, <span class=\"caps\">FDR<\/span> left him a legacy of a voting coalition that Truman, by his combative campaign, was able to bring to the polls in a fashion that nobody anticipated was\u00a0possible.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>The poverty fighting\u00a0bulldog<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>On a fall day in 1963, Leuchtenburg and Harvard historian Franklin Ford sat on the 50-yard line of Harvard Stadium, engrossed in a football game against Columbia University. Three seats over sat Harvard President Nathan Pusey and his wife. \u201cDuring the second quarter, there was a rustle in the stands and people rose from their chairs,\u201d Leuchtenburg says. \u201cFor a few minutes, you couldn\u2019t tell what was happening. Then, President Kennedy appeared with his entourage. He stopped at our aisle to shake hands with President Pusey. He could not have looked more full of\u00a0life.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Three weeks later, around midday, Leuchtenburg headed to his local shoe repair store in Dobby Ferry, New York. Upon entering the shop, he noticed the owner wore an odd expression on his face. \u201cHe looked stunned,\u201d Leuchtenburg says. \u201cI thought maybe he was having some kind of psychotic episode. And then, finally, he blurted out: \u2018The president has been shot.\u2019\u201d Leuchtenburg bolted out of the shop, hopped in his car, and sped home, where he flicked on the television. \u201cPresident Kennedy is dead,\u201d a reporter announced. \u201cIt was the first time my children probably ever saw me crying,\u201d Leuchtenburg\u00a0recalls.<\/p>\n<p>Like Truman, Lyndon B. Johnson lived in the shadow of his\u00a0predecessor.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere were a whole series of Kennedy supporters who couldn\u2019t stand the sight of Johnson,\u201d Leuchtenburg explains. \u201cThey treated him as though he was a usurper. There were even some people who thought Johnson was responsible for Kennedy\u2019s murder. That\u2019s, of course, extraordinarily excessive and completely groundless. But whatever Lyndon Johnson did, there were people saying that all he was doing was carrying through Kennedy\u2019s program or that Kennedy would have done it\u00a0better.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But, also like Truman, Johnson persevered. Shortly after <span class=\"caps\">JFK<\/span>\u2019s death, he called upon Congress to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to honor the work of his predecessor. He declared a \u201cwar on poverty\u201d and established the Economic Opportunity Act, which created a Job Corps, Neighborhood Youth Corps, Head Start, Community Action Program, and the Food Stamp Act of 1964. He also convinced Congress to make an $11.5 billion tax cut. By the end of 1965, 1 million unemployed Americans found jobs. By 1969, the poverty rate had decreased by 9 percent since\u00a01959.<\/p>\n<p>The Civil Rights Act finally passed five months later and created an Equal Opportunity Commission to ensure fairness in hiring. Immediately after, Johnson knew in his heart that the decision would cost him the support of most southern\u00a0states.<\/p>\n<p>In 1964, Leuchtenburg worked as an election analyst for <span class=\"caps\">NBC<\/span>, writing material for anchors David Brinkley and Chet Huntley. On election night, \u201cit was so clear well ahead of time that Johnson was going to win,\u201d he says. \u201cI wrote the script for the election the Saturday before Election Day \u2014 that\u2019s how obvious it was what the results would be. And that was the only time I\u2019d known anything like that to\u00a0happen.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>On Nov. 3, 1964, Johnson won 44 states and Washington, D.C., making his win the biggest popular majority in American history. He became the first president of a southern state to make it to the White House since Zachary Taylor in 1848. \u201cWhen the returns came in 1964, showing this enormous Johnson victory, reporters expected him to be elated,\u201d Leuchtenburg says. \u201cInstead, they found him crabby. When they puzzled out why, it was because his returns didn\u2019t exceed that of <span class=\"caps\">FDR<\/span>\u2019s in 1936. Roosevelt stood in his way of having a higher reputation in the history\u00a0books.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>The man who was\u00a0there<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>From the campaign trail to the White House to the news desk, Leuchtenburg was there for most of the 20<sup>th<\/sup> century presidents. He spent countless hours with Eleanor Roosevelt after <span class=\"caps\">FDR<\/span>\u2019s death, helped Robert Kennedy organize <span class=\"caps\">JFK<\/span>\u2019s historical archives after his assassination, and, quite literally, was on the receiving end of a clumsy Gerald Ford crashing into him while waiting in a cafeteria line for lunch. \u201cI had always thought that the newspaper accounts of Ford\u2019s clumsiness were unfair to him,\u201d he says. \u201cHe had, after all, been an All-American football player. After this, I thought the press might have had a point.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>For more than 30 years, he\u2019s worked with American filmmaker Ken Burns on documentaries like \u201cBaseball,\u201d \u201cProhibition,\u201d and \u201cThe Roosevelts.\u201d And he\u2019s given lectures on the American presidency nearly everywhere imaginable, from the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library in Hyde Park, New York, to Ben Gurion University of the Negev in Israel, to Moscow State University in\u00a0Russia.<\/p>\n<p>With all these accomplishments under his belt, he considers \u201cThe American President\u201d to be the \u201cperfect capstone of [his] career.\u201d But, in truth, he\u2019s not quite done yet. Today, he\u2019s working on three different books, but his focus rests on a history of the American presidency from the Constitutional Convention in 1787 to 1900. \u201cHow many of these are going to be carried to completion is yet to be seen,\u201d he says, \u201cbut I\u2019m certainly going to do my\u00a0best.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"content-bottom\" class=\"content-bottom row nested \">\n<div id=\"content-bottom-inner\" class=\"content-bottom-inner inner clearfix\">\n<div id=\"block-views-boilerplate-block_1\" class=\"block block-views odd grid16-8\">\n<div class=\"inner clearfix\">\n<div class=\"content clearfix\">\n<div class=\"view view-boilerplate view-id-boilerplate view-display-id-block_1 boilerplate view-dom-id-d20bc54469baca1ec708570d76f60a94\">\n<div class=\"view-content\">\n<div class=\"views-row views-row-1 views-row-odd views-row-first views-row-last\">\n<div class=\"views-field views-field-field-boilerplate-value\">\n<div class=\"field-content\">\n<p><em>William Leuchtenburg is the William Rand Kenan Jr. Professor Emeritus of History in UNC&#8217;s College of Arts and Sciences.. He taught history for 20 years there before retiring in 2002. Prior to that, he taught at Columbia University for 30 years. He\u2019s written 15 books on the American presidents, eight of them on Franklin Delano Roosevelt, of whom he\u2019s considered the leading scholar in the\u00a0nation.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em><a href=\"http:\/\/endeavors.unc.edu\/getting_to_know_the_american_presidents\">Story by Alyssa LaFaro, Endeavors magazine<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Emeritus UNC College of Arts &amp; Sciences history professor William Leuchtenburg talks about his new book, 20th-century presidents, and the personal experiences that shaped his understanding of them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":14143,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center 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