Lyndon Johnson, Lyndon Baines Johnson Quotes
There was, and still is in some parts of the world, this belief taht one of the main reasons for capital punioshment with visible and public executions was to deter others from comitting crimes by seeing the example of what happens to the transgressors. For these people, exemplified by this quotation of Dr. Johnson's, public executions are crime prevention. This notion tirned out to have been a fallacy. In England they found that during every public hanging, skilled pickpockets would steal from the onlookers who were tranfixed on the macabre secene--this despite the fact that pickpocketing was a hanging offence.
He was right. Even the vaunted Southern Filibuster was broken by the strategy and tactics Johnson and Senator Humbert Humphry, the Floor Leader for the 1964 Civil Rights Bill.
President Johnson was trying to organize peace talks in Paris. Nixon didn’t want a public announcement to occur before election day when he was running against Hubert Humphrey. Knowing the South Vietnamese President was reluctant to go to Paris but was under pressure from America to do so, he sent a message through Chennault that he should not accept and “hang on” as Nixon would shortly win. The South Vietnam president refused to go to Paris, Nixon won the election, and then had to cope with the continuation of the war that might well have ended before he took office. Nixon believed that he could get Russia and China to pressure Ho Chi Min to make peace. Nixon's private overtures to the South Vietnam president, violated the Logan Act which prohiited private citizens negoatioating with foreign governments. President Johnson was aware of Nixon's commission of this felony want wanted to prosecute him, but the evicence had been obtained from secret intelligene agency bugging and wiretapping both the South Vietnam Embassay in Wishington and the Presidential Palace in Vietnam the public knowledge of which would have caused a scandal. Instead, he called Nixon and warned him to stop, but the damage had already been done, and the South Vitenamese government would not go to Pariis where they would have to agree to a coalition government with the Communists. THey waited for Nixon to deliver a peace treaty which would leave them in charge of South Vietnam. In the final analysis, the South Vietnamese ended up with nothing and no participation in anything when the U. S. Withdrew and the Communists took over.
When Lyndon Johnson was elected Vice President he, as the former Senate Majority Leader, wanted to lead the Democratic Senate Caucus. Gore objected because he thought that violated the separation of powers between the Executive and the Legislative branches, and he wanted the Senate to be independent from the administration. Despite Gore’s objection, Johnson was elected.
For the required Oath, see {623308} . There were several to the amnesty. These included graduates of West Point and the Naval Academy who had joined the rebellion, senior officers and officials of the Confederacy, those who were accused of war crimes and abusing Union prisoners of war, persons who went abroad to help the Confederacy, and Northerners who had gone South to aid the rebellion. Many scholars think that although Lincoln had expressed his desire to provide an amnesty after the war was over, he probably would have been more lenient than Johnson who exempted many on the Southern side—especially the leaders. Ironically, Johnson was a Southerner but was personally, morally outraged at taking up arms against the United States and in that sense was much more of a hawk than Lincoln and many of the radical Republicans even. However, he was an inveterate racist and resisted most of the attempts to implement equality during the Reconstruction. Many argue that but for Johnson, Reconstruction might have been much more successful. It was easy for Southerners to resist equal rights for Blacks when they knew that the President was also opposed to measures to produce equality.
