Reviews for The Life Of Abraham Lincoln Part Two, V1: Drawn From Original Sources And Containing Many Speeches, Letters, And Telegrams Hitherto Unpublished

The average rating for The Life Of Abraham Lincoln Part Two, V1: Drawn From Original Sources And Containing Many Speeches, Letters, And Telegrams Hitherto Unpublished based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2019-06-04 00:00:00 Christopher Rogacki There'll be peace without end Every neighbor a friend And every man a king! - Huey Long campaign song, composed by Huey Long THE LOST ART OF THE POLITICAL INSULT Let's start with the fun part. In those days, the 20s and 30s, they had a real gift for insulting their political opponents. I don't hear that so much anymore. In the last couple of days Sadiq Khan, Mayor of London, said Donald Trump was like a twentieth century fascist - in reply the president called Mayor Khan "a stone cold loser" - really, this is not a patch on the good old days. Huey's haters : Huey Long is a demagogic screech owl from the swamps of Louisiana A stench in the nostrils of the people of Louisiana, a liar, a briber, an embezzler of other people's money A boon companion of indicted criminals, a chronic distorter of facts, a habitual double-crosser, a traducer of character, a beneficiary of funds contributed by gamblers, a tyrant suffering from delusions of grandeur, and the singing fool of New Orleans cabarets A reprobate of the first water, a man possessing neither culture nor refinement, a man whose every public or private act is offensive to good taste Big mouth, feeds off suckers, thrives best in mud and slime, and is very hard to catch Huey on his enemies: You pronounce LeBlanc's name by trying to grunt like a hog and changing your mind when you're half way through Jim can take the corns off your feet without removing your shoes No music ever sounded one-half so refreshing as the whines and moans of pie-eaters when shoved away from the pie. DON'T STOP BELIEVIN' He started out not poor - it was useful to massage that truth later on - and once he figured out his thing was politics he did not stop. He speechified everywhere and anywhere, week in, week out, nowhere too small or godforsaken that Huey might not get up on the back of a pickup and fulminate against the mighty to a crowd of seven, he was tireless. And this is how politics used to be done. I have noticed this indefatigable speechifying thing twice before, this non-stop gladhanding truehearted man of the people schtick - once in Adolf Hitler's career throughout the 1920s, and again in Richard Nixon 1961 to 1967. In all three cases they were very far away from any hope of political power but they did not stop for a second. I don't of course mean that there were similarities in their politics, but their unflagging obsession to get into office was really astounding. THE KINGFISH He became governor in 1928 and served one 4 year term, then became a senator. He installed a stooge as the next governor (a guy called O K Allen who was so supine he would move out of the governor's office whenever Huey came barrelling back to Baton Rouge). How Huey got to have total power in Louisiana is that he could hire and fire hundreds of people on the state payroll, and he just went through the entire lot of them and installed his own supporters. Over and over again. Judges, librarians, contractors, whoever. If you were against Huey you got fired. Then, of course, he had his guys controlling electoral registers and making sure the right people voted and the wrong 'uns didn't. All of this bag of tricks was old hat but Huey used it with demonic glee and total ruthlessness. And of course he believed he was doing this all in the best cause, it was all for the righteous poor people of Louisiana. As an example of the way Huey rolled, there was an investigation of the state Board of Health and the chairman of that board was asked if the employees of the Board of Health were forced to contribute 10% of their salary towards Huey Long's political expense account. Oh no, he said, they weren't forced, "they had to pay it voluntarily." IT'S ALL IN THE LAW OF GOD What Huey did first for the people of Louisiana is he built thousands of miles of roads. That was good, right? Except they were never more than 18 feet wide (22 feet was the safe minimum) and there was no drainage and no foundations and almost no maintenance, so they eroded away really fast. But they were really popular because they were a lot better than nothing. And not just the highways, there were a hundred new bridges, new schools, free textbooks, free reading classes for 175,000 illiterates, state charity hospitals doubled in size, a new governor's mansion, a new state capitol, and thousands of extra state workers Huey was all for the poor and wretched, of whom there was no shortage in the early 30s in the Southern states. He would electrify them with roaring handwaving redfaced popeyed Biblical denunciations of inequality. He was against wealth. He was for redistribution. God told you what the trouble was. The philosophers told you what the trouble was; and when you have a country where one man owns more than 100,000 people, or a million people, and when you have a country where there are four men, as in America, that have got more control over things than all the 120,000,000 people together, you know what the trouble is. And again We say to America, 125 million, none shall be too big, none shall be too poor; none shall work too much, none shall be idle. No luxurious mansions empty, none walking the streets, none impoverished, none in pestilence, none in want. But in the land blessed by the smile of the Creator, with everything to be consumed, to be eaten, to be worn... that America will become a land, sharing the fruits of the land, not for the favored few, not to satisfy greed, but that all may live in the land in which the Lord has provided an abundance sufficient for the luxury and convenience of the people in general. He was very popular. He got more mail than all of the other senators combined. Those other old fuddy duddy timeservers in Washington were frankly gobsmacked. People called him a Marxist. He said "I never read a line of Marx or any of them economists. It's all in the law of God." WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN At first he supported Roosevelt but quickly decided he wasn't the real deal, way too timid. By 1935 he was thinking how he could take a run at the presidency himself, whilst still keeping the tightest control over Louisiana where every day the constitution was being shredded, where every day it was looking more like a police state, and where every day the poor folks were still loving Huey P Long in spite of everything. If he had run, he might have been the Bernie Sanders of 1936 - way too radical to get elected - or he might have been the Donald Trump of 1936 - the leftfield rabblerousing maverick who upsets everyone's idea of how politics works. But we didn't get to find out because at that point Huey P Long was assassinated.

Review # 2 was written on 2015-01-12 00:00:00 Ender Cilsaat Huey P. Long was a richard cranium and a rooster lollipop. The only wonder is that he wasn't killed sooner. He certainly put the 'ass' in assassination. Thank you, Mr. White, for providing a thorough and highly readable account.