In Junior High School, my History teacher offered extra credit to any student who would read and write an essay on a profile in John F. Kennedy's Profiles in Courage. I was the only one to take him up on the offer. Oh, what a great book it was and its author quite deserving of his Pulitzer Prize!
As a student of public schools, I learned my lessons well: JFK was wonderful writer and each Senator in the book was a Saint.
Last week, I read, in passing, a jaw-dropping notion. JFK didn't write Profiles in Courage. Another chink in the armour of Camelot. Turns out, Ted Sorenson, JFK's amazing speechwriter, actually wrote the majority of the book and this was alleged as early as 1957.
This idea led me to to reassess also the courage of the book's Senators.
- John Quincy Adams a Senator (1803-1808) (later congressman) from Massachusetts, for breaking away from the Federalist Party.
- Daniel Webster also from Massachusetts, for speaking in favor of the Compromise of 1850.
- Thomas Hart Benton from Missouri, for staying in the Democratic Party despite his opposition to the extension of slavery in the territories.
- Sam Houston from Texas, for speaking against the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. Sam Houston was also profiled for opposing Texas' secession from the Union. For refusing to support the secession of Texas, Houston was deposed from the office of Governor.
- Edmund G. Ross from Kansas, for voting for acquittal in the Andrew Johnson impeachment trial. As a result of Ross's vote, along with those of six other Republicans, Johnson's presidency was saved, and the stature of the office was preserved.
- Lucius Lamar from Mississippi, for eulogizing Charles Sumner on the Senate Floor and other efforts to mend ties between the North and South during Reconstruction, and for his principled opposition to the Bland-Allison Act to permit free coinage of silver.
- George Norris from Nebraska, for opposing Joseph Gurney Cannon's autocratic power as Speaker of the House, for speaking out against arming U.S. merchant ships during the United States' neutral period in WWI, and for supporting the Presidential Campaign of Democrat Al Smith.
- Robert A. Taft from Ohio, for criticizing the Nuremberg Trials for trying Nazi war criminals under what Taft considered ex post facto laws.
Now I'm not too sure how courageous these Senators were. It seems the older I get, the less I know because I discover I was taught only one side of the story - the Democrat side. This is all very disconcerting.
Here's another tidbit of revelation: Drew Pearson, the newspaper columnist who alleged in 1957 that JFK didn't really author his book, had a chief aide, David Karr, who was investigated by the FBI and Joe McCarthy for Communist ties. Of course we all know Joe McCarthy was a paranoid loon who saw Reds around every corner, right? In 1992, however, KGB documents revealed that Karr was a KGB source and had supplied information on the technical capabilities of the United States and other Capitalist nations.
All this makes me doubt the veracity of much of my education. How about you?
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