Profiles in Courage
Cód:
491_9784871877640
In 1954-1955, John F. Kennedys active role as a Senator in the affairs of the nation was interrupted for the better part of a year by his convalescence from an operation to correct a disability incurred as skipper of a World War II torpedo boat. He used his idle hours to great advantage; he rediscovered, and did intensive research into, the courage and patriotism of a handful of Americans who at crucial moments in history had revealed a special sort of greatness: men who disregarded dreadful consequences to their public and private lives to do that one thing which seemed right in itself. These men ranged from the extraordinarily colorful to the near-drab; from the born aristocrats to the self-made. They were men of various political and regional allegiances - their one overriding loyalty was to the United States and to the right as God gave them to see it. There was John Quincy Adams, who lost his Senate seat and was repudiated in Boston for his support of his fathers enemy Thomas Jefferson; Sam Houston, who performed political acts of courage as dramatic as his heroism on the field of battle; Thomas Hart Benton, whose proud and sarcastic tongue fought against the overwhelming odds that insured his political death; and Edmond Ross who looked down into his open grave as he saved President Johnson from an impeachment; and Norris of Nebraska; and Taft of Ohio; and Lamar of Mississippi (who did as much as any one man to heal the wounds of civil war). There was Daniel Webster, scourged for his devotion to Union by the most talented array of constituents ever to attack a Senator. For the most part Kennedys patriots are United States Senators, but he also pays tribute to such men as Governor Altgeld of Illinois and Charles Evans Hughes of New York. And in the opening and closing chapters, which are as inspiring as they are revealing, Kennedy draws on his personal experience to tell something of the satisfactions and burdens of a Senators job - of the pressures, bo
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