HUBERT H. HUMPHREY:

On April 14, 1944 Humphrey was a young professor at Macalester College and gave a keynote address at the Minnesota State Democratic Convention. The next morning, April 15, the Farmer-Labor Party and the Democratic Party became the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party. Humphrey was so influential in this merger that many consider him to be the founder of the DFL. The portrait included in this speech text looks very much as TIME magazine would later describe him when he first entered the Senate four years later: "glib, jaunty spellbinder with a 'listen-you-guys' approach who talks and looks like a high school teacher who coaches basketball on the side" (Lowry, January 17, 1949, p. 13).

The next DFL convention in March of 1946 had a very different feel. Humphrey, now mayor of Minneapolis, supported Truman for president and was affiliated with Americans for Democratic Action, an anti-Communist liberal organization. The Communist-controlled parts of the DFL turned against Humphrey and even tried to prevent Muriel Humphrey from entering the St. Paul Hotel hall where Humphrey was to give his keynote address. Though Humphrey was able to arrange an escort for his wife, Humphrey recalled in his autobiography The Education of a Public Man that, due to the excessive heckling he received, he never gave this particular speech that ironically focused on the DFL as a united, liberal and progressive party.

By July of 1947 Humphrey was already forming the political arguments that were included in his 1948 speech on civil rights, delivered to the Democratic National Convention the next year in Philadelphia. In a radio address entitled "Neither Free nor Equal" Humphrey used some of these arguments when describing the community self-survey conducted in Minneapolis concerning racial discrimination and the city's subsequent passage of a fair employment practices ordinance, which only two other cities had at that time.

During the 1948 Democratic National Convention, Humphrey found himself in the midst of an important historic decision: whether to take on the issue of civil rights promoted by President Truman in his ten point plan to Congress earlier that year, or to let the current plank endorsed by the platform committee stand as it was, excluding any specific measures that would force Congress to act.

The decision was a hard one that could potentially split the party in two and wasn't made until five in the morning, leaving Humphrey barely enough time to line up support and write the speech he was to give that night in support of the minority report. Gaining national attention, Humphrey's civil rights speech stirred the party to adopt a strong civil rights plank in its platform.

When the vote was announced and everyone realized that the Humphrey-Biemiller plank had passed, there was exhilaration. As Humphrey described it: "that night, all we knew was that we, a group of young liberals, had beaten the leadership of the party and led them closer to where they ought to have been... I was thirty-seven years old, and not very long from teaching and graduate school. I had taken on our establishment and won. It was a heady feeling. But it confirmed something I felt and hoped. You could stand for a principle in politics and you could move an unwilling party toward a necessary goal. How slowly and with what difficulty you kept it moving I was yet to learn" (The Education of a Public Man, 1976, p. 79).

Later that year Humphrey was elected to the United States Senate, the first Democrat from Minnesota to win that honor since before the Civil War.

In a Meet the Press interview Humphrey gave as Senator-elect he revealed his trouble with the Dixiecrats who had walked out of the 1948 Democratic National Convention following his speech. He declared that as the junior Senator from Minnesota he would have a lot to learn. "I'm going to look forward to the opportunity of becoming much more informed on many national issues and I'm going to be a cooperative member of the United States Senate... I'm surely not foolish enough, may I say, to think that some young fellow from out here in Minnesota is going to come down and upset the Congress of the United States, nor do I have any intention of trying to do so."

It was a naive comment to make so soon after being elected to office. Humphrey had already made life difficult for the southern Democrats who effectively ran the Senate and they refused to allow him to threaten their power again by virtually ignoring him in Congress his first year. Similarly, Humphrey's quest to pass a civil rights bill was ignored by his opponents through Senate filibuster and cloture. In a speech Humphrey made on the Senate floor in March of 1949 he not only explained that he had been silent in the Senate, perhaps having learned his lesson after being shunned by his seniors, but also described the ways in which his bill had continually been defeated by unfair rules in the Senate in "an unholy alliance against civil rights."

Even as Humphrey fought with Republican and Democratic senators over philosophical issues of political importance to him during this time, he also began to learn how to work with his opponents on domestic and regional issues important to his constituents and his own re-election. In a 1949 radio interview shared with Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin, Humphrey and McCarthy talked about their sponsorship of the Gillette-Wiley bill and answered questions in a well-balanced dialogue about the oleomargarine-butter controversy.

Still, it would take Humphrey some time to fully acculturate himself to the inner workings of the Senate. In a 1951 radio interview that discussed the President's dismissal of General MacArthur during the Korean War, Humphrey and Senator Homer Capehart clearly did not see eye to eye. After the interview Humphrey got physical with the Republican Senator and was held back from actually punching Capehart by his attentive aide. Not until Humphrey had more fully studied Senate etiquette and gotten to know people like Lyndon Johnson who took Humphrey under his wing did Humphrey begin to understand how to go about creating lasting legislative change.

By 1953 Humphrey was preparing his campaign for a second term in the U.S. Senate and began to push legislation that would have a lasting impact on the coming decades.

Humphrey lobbied heavily for farmers by matching a need for food in developing and occupied countries with wheat surpluses in the Midwest. In a 1953 speech Humphrey demanded that American wheat be sent to starving East Germans laboring under Communism. His efforts helped start the Agricultural Trade Development and Assistance Act of 1954, commonly known as Public Law 480. President John F. Kennedy renamed this act Food for Peace in 1961 and appointed George McGovern as its first director in that year. Humphrey was very proud of his role in this legislation and spoke often about it throughout the Midwest and on the Senate floor.

In 1953 Lyndon Johnson became the Senate Minority Leader. As leader of the Northern Democratic liberal bloc, Humphrey was a very useful go-between for Johnson. Working together, the two often garnered enough votes to pass important legislation. In press releases of a 1954 trip to a rally in Pipestone County, Humphrey shared a letter written by Johnson that outlined five approved talking points for the Democratic Party.

Still passionate about civil rights legislation, Humphrey's perseverance finally began to pay off. In a 1956 radio address Humphrey outlined what happened after the 1954 elections when the Democrats regained control of Congress. Civil rights had become a much more immediate pressure as protests, boycotts, bombings and public demand finally forced Congress to enact the 1957 Civil Rights Act, despite a 24 hour filibuster by Senator Strom Thurmond. The 1957 act was the first civil rights bill passed since Reconstruction and helped pave the way for two more acts passed during the 1960s that echoed the changing climate of the country.

Disarmament was of particular importance to Humphrey. In 1955 Humphrey suggested that disarmament should be included in one of the Senate sub-committees. When it wasn't, he created one. Harold Stassen, former Governor of Minnesota, was in attendance for the first hearings in 1956 as Eisenhower's newly named disarmament adviser. Humphrey's early work on this issue ultimately resulted in the creation of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency during the Kennedy administration.

In the last months of 1957 the Soviet Union successfully tested its first intercontinental ballistic missiles and launched Sputniks 1 and 2, the first artificial earth satellites, into space. These events began the space race between the Soviet Union and the United States. In December of 1957 the U.S. failed to launch the satellite Vanguard TV3 in front of a live television audience. Only after the U.S. was successful in launching its first satellite in late January of 1958 did Humphrey decide to address the Senate on the topic of disarmament in a 70 page speech that took four hours to deliver.

Being a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, as well as a member of the subcommittee focused on disarmament, Humphrey traveled to Geneva in late 1958 for a visit to the World Health Organization and United Nations Disarmament Committee, making stops in other European countries to encourage international cooperation for health research. During this trip Humphrey held an eight hour meeting with Nikita Khrushchev which he referenced in a speech to the Farmers Union Grain Terminal Association and in numerous others for months and years after. Humphrey described the meeting in his autobiography as a turning point in his career. "The unexpected visit was enlightening, and the resulting publicity helped give me more national prominence. But the prominence was less important than how I saw myself. I knew now that I was able to deal effectively with heads of state" (The Education of a Public Man, p. 148).

Partly because of this new confidence Humphrey decided to enter the 1960 presidential primaries in a few states to challenge Senator John F. Kennedy for the Democratic Party nomination. The Kennedy's, however, were a powerful family whose political and economic ties gained certain advantages. They had a lot more money to spend, a better organization, and a lot of relatives to send on the campaign trail. In a speech before the Madison Gridiron Club in Wisconsin on March 30, Humphrey admitted that "there are times when I envy the campaign of my adversary. It seems to have plenty of glamor - and it certainly has plenty of Jack."

After losing the Wisconsin primary and then the West Virginia primary to Kennedy, Humphrey endorsed Adlai Stevenson on July 13, 1960 in a speech at the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles. Two weeks later, however, Humphrey was campaigning for his own re-election to the Senate and had fully endorsed the Kennedy/Johnson ticket. Realizing that Kennedy had strengths that he did not, Humphrey also recognized that Kennedy needed him and his support to win against Nixon. Joining forces with Kennedy and Johnson allowed Humphrey to promote proposals that were important to him, such as the Peace Corps, an idea first introduced in 1957 that garnered little support, then broadened in 1959, and finally outlined in the presidential primaries of 1960 in speeches such as one given on Polka Day in New Ulm, Minnesota. With the election of John F. Kennedy, the Peace Corps became a reality in 1961.

Even as Humphrey gained further national and international attention, his crusade for civil rights continued. In May of 1959 Humphrey introduced another series of bills that addressed issues left out of the 1957 legislation. He continued to speak in support of civil rights at many events, including the NAACP's 50th anniversary convention and encouraged people not to lose hope. Like the first, the second civil rights bill focused only on the protection of voting rights and appropriations for administrative agencies. And while the 1960 legislation did not enact substantive change, it prompted Humphrey to believe more could be achieved under the Kennedy administration.

On January 20, 1961 John F. Kennedy gave his inaugural presidential address. "Ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country" he challenged America. Hubert Humphrey described the time in his autobiography: "There was simply a new step, a new cadence, to American life from the minute Kennedy gave his inaugural address. The whole country seemed to have awakened from the dormancy of the Eisenhower years, and the White House and the presidency served as a foundation of inspiration and a source of national revival" (The Education of a Public Man, p. 177).

Humphrey himself was challenged by the new administration to become majority whip of the Senate and described the next four years as being: "one of the most productive periods of my senatorial life" (The Education of a Public Man, p. 179).

President Kennedy took Humphrey's advice on many things. On March 5, 1961 President Kennedy officially established the Peace Corps. In an introduction to the WTTG program Prospects of Mankind, Eleanor Roosevelt asked the President to introduce the topic and Kennedy gave credit to Humphrey and others for creating the discussion that got him interested in promoting the program.

When asked to describe his job to a student, Humphrey used his weekly radio address in July of 1963 to tell his Minnesota constituents what kind of Senator he was. He replied: I am not the type of Senator who specializes in a few, particular subjects, and then votes a 'party line' on all other issues. For me the responsibility to understand fully the issues involved applies to every vote and every decision I must make." He described the leadership involved in his position and the opportunity it afforded to create progress through programs that would strengthen America. He cited the Food for Peace program, the Peace Corps and the United States Arms Control and Disarmament Agency as three examples of progress, all accomplished during the Kennedy administration.

Kennedy did not always ask Humphrey for advice, however, and that frustrated the Senator. In a speech given to the National Conference on World Disarmament and Development in Washington, D.C. on April 11, 1961, Humphrey said that "there is a new tone in American foreign policy. The quiet diplomacy of the new Administration is not designed to win a war of words. Its purpose is to attain peace with justice and to extend freedom and social progress throughout the world." President Kennedy, however, had already authorized the Bay of Pigs invasion in February of that year and within a week of this speech Cuban airfields were bombed by U.S. forces and the beach invasion had begun.

On May 16, 1961 Humphrey gave a speech to the National Association of Social Workers in Minneapolis telling them that poverty, illiteracy, disease and hopelessness cause countries to turn to communism, not the strength of leaders like Castro and Khrushchev. In June of 1961, however, Kennedy held a summit meeting with Khrushchev in Vienna that seemed to prove that the Soviet leader was indeed a more powerful adversary than Kennedy had anticipated. Humphrey later speculated in his autobiography that arrogant miscalculation on Kennedy's part could have contributed to the Cuban missile crisis in October of that year and "wondered why some of us -- Eleanor Roosevelt, Adlai Stevenson, or I, for example -- had not been asked for our views of Khrushchev and how he operated, since all of us had spent time with him" (The Education of a Public Man, p. 183).

On the last day of Kennedy's meeting with Khrushchev an NBC radio program was aired. The host and guests speculated on which international topics were being discussed by the two powerful leaders. Speculation centered on the issues of communism in Southeast Asia, East Germany and Berlin, Cuba and Latin America and disarmament. Calling Humphrey "long the most articulate American spokesman on disarmament," Chet Huntley questioned him about whether disarmament was "just a long-range dream for humanity" (pp. 24-28). Humphrey replied that it was a necessary dream, but maintained that it would require hard work and painful negotiations and must include international cooperation.

Just two years later in August of 1963, another NBC program was aired on television. Humphrey was able to tell the audience that he was in Moscow the previous Thursday with President Kennedy as representatives from the United States, United Kingdom and Soviet Union signed a treaty banning certain types of nuclear weapons testing. Humphrey quoted the President saying that this treaty was "a first step toward limiting the nuclear arms race."

While Humphrey was promoting disarmament abroad, important issues were also escalating at home. The rising crescendo of the civil rights movement was felt in places like Oxford, Mississippi and Birmingham, Alabama. Kennedy, while reluctant to propose civil rights legislation his first two years in office, was now persuaded to send a bill to Congress by June of 1963. On August 28 over 200,000 people marched on Washington, bringing the importance of civil rights to the Capitol. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his "I have a dream" speech to a crowd that included Humphrey. As Humphrey recalled: "If I had to pick one day in my public life when I was most encouraged that democracy could work, when my spirit soared on the wings of the American dream of social justice for everyone, it was that day. That day and that event did more to bring the truth of human rights and civil rights to the attention of the entire nation than anything that had happened in all of our history" (The Education of a Public Man, p. 201-202).

It was with great shock that Humphrey learned that President Kennedy had been shot in Dallas while Humphrey was attending a luncheon at the Chilean Embassy with his wife. In an NBC interview the next day Humphrey described the moment: "I stood alone in a hallway of the Embassy, and I am not ashamed to say that I just couldn't contain myself, I broke down and sobbed. Because it seemed like a bit of life had gone out of me. And then to try to tell others to come to the table and to tell the guests and the host that we had lost our President was very, very difficult."

Less than an hour later Humphrey was in the White House. As he entered the West Wing he began worrying about his friend Lyndon Johnson who was now president. "Strong man that he was, I feared he might be shaken by the trauma of the day, a day designed to smooth over local Texas political problems, a day that had exploded into a national disaster" (The Education of a Public Man, p. 192). It took almost a year without a vice president for the administration to adjust and carry on after the assassination, but by the following November Humphrey and Johnson had both been elected and the Kennedy agenda continued to be one of their highest priorities.

On January 17, 1964 Humphrey gave a speech at Johns Hopkins University in which he spoke about the anger and grief he felt over Kennedy's assassination and other acts of violence, extremism, and hatred of the previous year. These acts included the bombing of a church in Birmingham, Alabama, riots at the University of Mississippi, the murder of civil rights activists Medgar Evers and William Moore, and the use of dogs, high pressure hoses and cattle prods on civil rights marchers. He used this anger to explain the events that were about to take place in the Senate.

President Kennedy had introduced the civil rights bill shortly before his death. After his assassination, the House of Representatives passed the bill without a filibuster on February 10, 1964. Lyndon Johnson, promising to continue the work that Kennedy had begun, put Hubert Humphrey in charge of getting the bill passed in the Senate. Humphrey's problem was the strong opposition of the southerners and their careful organization of a Senate filibuster.

In a CBS report broadcast on March 18, 1964 Senate Democratic Whip Humphrey, as floor manager of the civil rights bill, faced off against Democratic senator and head of the southern opposition, Strom Thurmond. In the debate both men made their case for and against the bill's passage. Humphrey's approach went beyond a legislative exercise and insisted on the debate's moral nature: "This passage of the civil rights issue or bill to me is one of the great moral challenges of our time. This is not a partisan issue. This is not a sectional issue. This is in essence a national issue, and it is a moral issue, and it must be won by the American people."

President Johnson did not think the legislation would pass. The southern senators had repeatedly blocked civil rights legislation in the past by organizing into teams, splitting up the filibuster into manageable parts. Humphrey knew that fighting this opposition would be difficult. He therefore organized his forces in a similar way by creating teams for each part of the bill and appointing captains for each team, had frequent strategy meetings, and even issued a newsletter to clarify the nuances of the bill. He made sure that there were 51 senators present or available at all times in case the southerners requested a quorum call. As he organized his colleagues, he also began working on those Republicans who were initially against the legislation, but who would be needed in a bi-partisan coalition for the required 67 votes, a two-thirds majority, to close down a Senate debate. It had never before been achieved.

Senator Thomas Kuchel of California was the Republican floor leader for the bill. He and Humphrey worked together very successfully. Senator Everett Dirksen, however, was the key figure Humphrey needed on his side, and who ultimately spent much of his time working with Humphrey to revise the bill in order to attract enough Republican swing votes to end the filibuster. Although some goaded Humphrey for giving Dirksen too much of the credit, Humphrey maintained that all would mean nothing if the bill were defeated. However, if the bill succeeded there would be enough praise for everyone (The Education of a Public Man, p. 206).

Senator Humphrey continuously emphasized the moral element of the civil rights struggle. Spiritual leaders from many communities were invited to come to the Capitol and make their presence felt during the course of the debate and many did, prompting Humphrey to say later that the bill would never have been passed without them. In a speech given to the American Baptist Convention in May, after two months of debate, Humphrey encouraged spiritual leaders to continue their support and to keep mobilized even after the bill passed.

On June 10, 1964, after more than three months, the Senate voted. "The tension that morning was palpable. Confidence and enthusiasm were muted by a fear that, somehow, something had come unraveled... We were aglow with the electricity that charged the air in a chamber filled with a dramatic, historic tension beyond anything even the most senior senators had experienced" (The Education of a Public Man, p. 210).

They won, the Senate voting 71 to 29 to end the civil rights filibuster. "For me, personally, it was the culmination of the full year's fight for the Civil Rights Act, of fifteen years' battle for civil rights in the United States Senate, and of a lifetime in politics in which equal opportunity had been the objective above all others" (The Education of a Public Man, p. 210).

On June 23, 1964 Humphrey gave a speech before the NAACP annual convention. He thanked two people from Minnesota, both nationally known civil rights leaders in their own right, for their diligent work. Clarence Mitchell, director of the Washington bureau of the NAACP had been head of the Urban League in St. Paul when Humphrey had first met him in the early 1940s. Roy Wilkins was raised in St. Paul, attended the University of Minnesota, and, after being the executive secretary of the NAACP, became its executive director in 1964.

On July 2nd President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 on national television. Humphrey and Dirksen gave a radio interview a few days after and spoke about the future of the civil rights struggle.

In late July the Republicans held their national convention in California and President Johnson sent an additional 5,000 advisors to South Vietnam. Public concern began to surface about both Southeast Asia and who Johnson's running-mate would be in the next presidential election that November. In a Face the Nation interview Humphrey was questioned about both of these issues the same day that U.S. destroyers were attacked by the North Vietnamese in the Gulf of Tonkin. Humphrey emphasized that he did not think that combat troops would be necessary in Vietnam and maintained that Lyndon Johnson was the presidential candidate who offered the most restraint where military matters were concerned.

Much debate that year centered on who Johnson's running mate would be, debate created mostly by Johnson himself. Johnson offered Humphrey the vice presidency shortly before the convention, emphasizing the difficulties the position would hold and recognizing the strain it could cause on their current relationship. Humphrey felt that he was ready for the challenge and accepted privately, writing an acceptance speech with the help of his friends, including Bill Moyers who added the refrain "But not Senator Goldwater" after each important statement (The Education of a Public Man, p. 226-227). Humphrey accepted the nomination in Atlantic City, New Jersey and then, due to his recognized oratory abilities, began doing the bulk of the campaigning for both himself and President Johnson.

Johnson and Humphrey defeated their opponents in a landslide victory, taking 44 of 50 states. On the 9th of November Ray Scherer of NBC News interviewed Vice President-elect Humphrey and the conversation focused on the role Humphrey expected to fulfill as vice president in the Johnson administration.

In December Humphrey attended a rally in New York City to pay tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and reflect on the past year. In his speech he commented about how both he and King had accomplished a great deal in helping to create a "coalition of consciousness" regarding civil rights. Little over a year after King's speech on the Washington Mall, King received the Nobel Peace Prize for his work and Humphrey had become vice president of the United States. Humphrey admitted that these titles were superficial and emphasized that both he and King were still focused on a greater achievement; one where the "United States is a community at peace with itself."

For Humphrey, inauguration day was "a day of immense satisfaction, of success without struggle or other distracting circumstances... It was a moment of pure joy" (The Education of a Public Man, p. 233).

The moment, however, was not to last. In the first days of February, while Martin Luther King, Jr. continued to organize nonviolent demonstrations for voting rights in the country, mass arrests and police attacks against protestors increased, followed on February 18 by the shooting of Jimmie Lee Jackson, a 26-year-old church deacon from Marion, Alabama as he attempted to protect his mother. The night before, Humphrey had given a speech to the Pacem In Terris conference of the United Nations and declared that "The pursuit of peace resembles the building of a great cathedral. It is the work of generations. In concept it requires a master architect, in execution, the labors of many." Less than a week later, one of the many, Malcolm X, was assassinated.

In March civil rights activists marched from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. In his book Beyond Civil Rights: A New Day of Equality, Humphrey described this time in history: "Once again -- as in 1963 -- the brutality of the resistance furnished the public support and indignation to spur legislation through Congress. President Johnson responded to the moment with the full powers of moral leadership of his office; he went before Congress and the public to ask for a bill to allow the federal government to register voters in the intransigent counties of the Deep South."

But at the same time that Johnson was calling for troops to protect the marchers in Alabama and initiating national voting rights legislation, he was also authorizing the use of ground troops in Vietnam.

Humphrey had strong opinions on both the issue of civil rights and Vietnam. Now that Johnson required his loyal support, however, a markedly different approach to politics was outlined for him and Humphrey was no longer allowed to assert his own opinion concerning Vietnam.

Humphrey's speeches, from the moment he took office, were now reviewed in advance by the White House and rarely could he express his own convictions and opinions as openly and humorously as he did in a speech given to the Gridiron Club in Washington, D.C. on March 20.

Instead, Humphrey was encouraged to focus on those domestic issues that Johnson's Great Society programs addressed. Social reforms focusing on the issues of transportation, the environment, the elderly, housing, medicine and health, education, unemployment and unequal opportunity, poverty and civil rights were all discussed in a speech given by Humphrey on March 6, 1965 at a testimonial dinner for Senator Dodd of Connecticut.

Now that Humphrey was vice president, his responsibilities included not only being president of the Senate, a cabinet member and a member of the National Security Council, he also oversaw the space and marine programs, the poverty program, served as the administration's conduit to mayors and local governments, led the President's Committee on Youth Employment, and headed the Discover America program to promote stateside tourism. "On taking office, he received as many as a thousand speaking invitations a month" (Carl Solberg, Hubert Humphrey: A Biography, 1984, p. 278).

Humphrey packed his schedule with appearances at colleges and universities, raised funds for Johnson, and witnessed some of Johnson's domestic programs, which he had worked on in the Senate, finally become law. The Elementary and Secondary Education Act became law in April, the Head Start program began as an 8-week summer program in May and the Medicare amendment was signed in July.

Vietnam, however, was the topic many audiences wanted to hear about more. In a speech given at Michigan State University on June 1st, shortly after President Johnson himself spoke at Johns Hopkins University about "unconditional negotiations" in Vietnam, Humphrey spelled out the basis of the administration's policy in Vietnam: there would be no withdrawal, a political solution to the conflict was essential, and the Vietnamese people could only hope for better days.

That same day Humphrey also gave a speech to the National War College on the importance of a balanced military force that was flexible and experienced in guerrilla and psychological warfare. Where Johnson would not yield, Humphrey cautioned that military power alone was not an adequate response.

On August 6th, President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law. Humphrey gave a speech at the Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity Convention on August 9th dedicated to the topics of civil rights and the end of discrimination, and reminisced about a speech he had given to the same organization in 1948. That same month, riots in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles took place over five days causing millions of dollars of property damage, leaving 34 people dead and thousands injured and arrested.

As Humphrey's first year as vice president drew to a close he began to realize how limited the parameters of his new office were. "As the winter of 1965-66 approached, I was still outside. In fairness, it must be said that Johnson probably never intended for me to have any greater role in foreign-policy formulation than he himself had had during the Kennedy years. And there is good reason for that" (The Education of a Public Man, p. 245). The end of 1965 witnessed tens of thousands of troops sent to Vietnam and protests against the war in Washington, D.C. itself.

Regardless of his differences with Johnson, Humphrey promoted and supported his political party and it's agenda, encouraging those who were coming up in the ranks to continue to fight for political reform. Humphrey gave particular attention to Walter "Fritz" Mondale, newly elected to the Senate to fill out Humphrey's term. At a testimonial dinner for Mondale on October 23, Humphrey thanked Mondale for supporting him during his mayoral run in 1947, for cosponsoring Medicare, and for supporting the recently passed Voting Rights Act.

By the beginning of 1966 Humphrey was back in the good graces of Lyndon Johnson. "Now commences the most startling chapter in Humphrey's life" wrote his biographer Carl Solberg, "The vice president who had opposed the president's war policy persuaded himself that Johnson was right, and emerged as the leading spokesman for the president's course on Vietnam" (Hubert Humphrey: A Biography, p. 285).

At the end of 1965 Johnson sent Humphrey on a trip to the Philippines, Japan, Taiwan and Korea. Upon his return Humphrey gave his impressions of these countries and of his first trip abroad. In his arrival statement he remarked that "the future of Asia is full of hope."

After being summoned to Hawaii by the President and then sent on a tour of Vietnam, Humphrey gave a speech on February 19 at a Prime Minister's luncheon in Canberra, Australia. In this speech, a previous version of which he had discarded in one of his many disagreements with his staff, he likened the Communist oppressors in Vietnam with the forces that challenged Europe and America in the 1940s. Prime Minister Holt called it "the greatest speech I have ever heard in my years of public life." Humphrey's staff was far less enthusiastic (Hubert Humphrey: A Biography, p. 289).

But Humphrey's wholehearted adoption of Johnson's policies did not win him support among his liberal friends or among university students who were already vehemently opposing the war. On February 25, 1966 Humphrey addressed a dinner honoring Reinhold Niebuhr, co-father of the Americans for Democratic Action. Two hundred students paraded outside in protest as Humphrey gave a speech that included the cautioning words "The great tradition of social protest in America... has failings that crop up regularly. One failing is over-simplification and another is self-righteousness. Another is political naivety. Another is sweeping impatience with everybody in authority -- The Establishment and the Power Structure is what they are called now. We had other names in my younger days but it meant the same."

Despite continued and increasing protests at his speeches Humphrey maintained his support of the President's policies in Vietnam. In a March 11, 1966 speech to the National Press Club Humphrey predicted that "ten or twenty years hence, historians will mark Vietnam as a place where our nation -- and free peoples -- were faced with a challenge by totalitarianism... and where they met the challenge."

Though Humphrey was now almost totally in Johnson's favor, the country showed little favor towards either of them. Things were not going well in Vietnam where troop numbers exceeded 380,000 by the summer of 1966. Johnson increased the unpopular bombing in northern Vietnam in June. Great Society proposals stalled in Congress at home.

Civil rights protests continued to cause negative headlines as well. James Meredith, first African-American student to attend the University of Mississippi in 1962, was shot in a march he helped organize from Memphis, Tennessee to Jackson, Mississippi. On June 23 civil rights marchers in Mississippi were dispersed with tear gas. During a speech before the National Association of Counties in New Orleans in July Humphrey ad-libbed that he too would react strongly if his living conditions were as horrible: "As hot as it has been... I would hate to be stuck on the fourth floor of a tenement with the rats nibbling on the kids' toes -- and they do -- with the garbage uncollected -- and it is -- with the streets filthy, with no swimming pools, with little or no recreation -- I would hate to be put in those conditions, and I want to tell you, if I were in those conditions -- if that should happen to have been my situation... I have enough spark left in me to lead a might good revolt under those conditions." These ad-libbed words in an otherwise prepared text foreshadowed the summer riots that erupted in Cleveland, New York, Chicago and Los Angeles that year. The administration was seen by the media to condone unrest in America's cities.

Johnson was feeling his loss of popularity and arranged for Humphrey to do all of his campaigning that year. Though Humphrey tried to deliver the administration's message effectively to the American populace, 45 House seats and many important Senate races were lost by the Democrats.

1967 fared little better. Soured by the bad election year and dropping polls, Johnson rarely visited college campuses and was careful about his public appearances in general. Humphrey however, accustomed to being in the midst of protests and demonstrations, met with even more violence than usual. During a speech made to a Stanford University student panel discussion on February 20th "four hundred anti-war demonstrators mobbed his car, pushed placards in his face, and shrieked: 'War criminal,' 'Murderer,' and 'Burn, Baby, Burn.' Several tried to crash through the cordon of police, and one emptied a can of urine on a Secret Service man defending the vice president. Another threw himself under the front wheel of Humphrey's car but was dragged back by a policeman" (Hubert Humphrey: A Biography, p. 303).

One week later Humphrey gave a speech to the United Jewish Appeal Young Leadership Cabinet where he bemoaned the fact that, though it was laudable that students were able to protest in a country like ours, still: "There is something quite tragic and discouraging about young men and women, especially at an institution of learning, not being willing to listen to another point of view and to debate the great issues of our time."

On March 22, 1967 Humphrey gave a speech in the cradle of the civil rights movement to the Birmingham Red Cross Awards Program extolling their support of blood donations to the cause in Vietnam. Although Humphrey saw himself as a champion of civil rights, his loyalty towards Johnson was at cross purposes with Martin Luther King, Jr.'s view of the war in Vietnam. In April of 1967 King gave a speech titled: Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break the Silence in which he named the Vietnam War as the biggest obstacle to the civil rights movement. "A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor -- both black and white -- through the Poverty Program. Then came the build-up in Vietnam, and I watched the program broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political play thing of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic, destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such."

At the time King gave his speech, Humphrey was in Europe dealing with anti-war protestors abroad while visiting Switzerland, the Netherlands, Britain, Germany, France, Italy and even meeting with the Pope. He was back in time for more riots in numerous American cities that summer, a war in the Middle East, another escalation of troops to Vietnam by August of that year and a continuation of student protests.

In a speech to the National Defense Executive Reserve on October 23, 1967 Humphrey still vehemently supported the President's policies on Vietnam: "I support the President, and I support the course he is following because I too believe that it is right, and no amount of popularity that can be gained is worth the abandonment of conscience."

By late October Humphrey was again sent to Vietnam and Southeast Asia, and made a speech at the U.S. Embassy in Saigon where he exclaimed to the U.S. Mission Staff: "This is our great adventure and a wonderful one it is." People found his words obscene (Hubert Humphrey: A Biography, p. 312).

On November 18, 1967 Humphrey addressed the Young Democrats National Convention. In a note added to the speech, handwritten on hotel stationary, Humphrey wrote: "If you don't believe in yourself, your party or your President, how do you expect others to believe in you? Never put poison in the well from which you will have to drink." This staunch loyalty would be tested to the brink of Humphrey's endurance during the 1968 election year.

"In January 1968 there were 492,900 American men and women at war in Vietnam. Nearly seventeen thousand of their compatriots had already died there. President Johnson had only 48 per cent approval in the Gallup Poll, Gene McCarthy had announced for the presidency, and Bob Kennedy, waiting in the wings, had not" (The Education of a Public Man, p. 264).

On January 30, the Vietnamese New Year celebration of Tet was shattered by a massive attack from the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong against the South Vietnamese and American forces. The administration, continually promoting an optimistic view of the war, experienced a huge loss of credibility. In a TV interview with United Press International Humphrey answered questions about the nature of this brutal offensive and the administration's reaction, saying that he sensed a "steeling of the American attitude, that is a fixing of our desire" to see the war through.

In February the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, commonly known as the Kerner Commission, released its report concluding that frustration and lack of economic opportunity were the cause of the 1967 riots. It included the phrase "our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white -- separate and unequal." Humphrey confronted these findings in a speech at a National Housing Conference dinner on March 4th. He tried to explain how the administration had actually been doing a lot to combat this huge domestic problem, but that it also needed support at the neighborhood level.

In March Robert Kennedy joined the presidential race after Eugene McCarthy took 46 percent of the New Hampshire primary vote against Lyndon Johnson. In an ABC TV program Humphrey was questioned about the administration's answer to the Kennedy candidacy and whether or not President Johnson would run again. Humphrey replied that he thought it highly likely the President would run for another term.

By the end of the month, however, Humphrey received confidential information from the President that he would deliver a speech March 31st during which he might announce that he would not seek another term. Left out of the loop, Humphrey would not know Johnson's decision until he could listen to the speech, which inconveniently occurred during a U.S. Embassy dinner in Mexico City with President Gustavo Diaz Ortiz. Humphrey recalled later that when Johnson announced his decision, Humphrey's wife Muriel "was very shaken and emotionally upset. To say the least, I felt the same way. I resolved however to say little or nothing except to commend the President in my toast at the dinner" (Hubert Humphrey: A Biography, p. 322).

In a speech at the Gardner Cowles dinner a few days after Johnson's announcement, Humphrey explained how the President had equivocated over two endings for his March 31 speech: one that proposed a limit to the bombing; another that announced his decision not to seek re-election. At the last moment, Johnson realized he could not run for office and try to end the war in Vietnam at the same time.

A few days later, on the 4th of April, Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. The next day, at a meeting of the National Alliance of Businessmen Humphrey ended his remarks by saying "If we do recognize the testament in the life and death of Martin Luther King -- if we do rededicate ourselves to the mission of healing the torment of our poor and hungry, our deprived and our illiterate -- then truly this tragedy will be remembered, not as the moment when America lost her faith, but as the moment when America found her conscience."

Humphrey had been thinking about announcing his candidacy for the presidency. After King's death, however, all campaigning stopped. On April 27th Humphrey finally declared his candidacy in a written twenty minute speech. It was during this speech that Humphrey, excited about the support of the crowd and filled with a sense of personal triumph at finally reaching this height in his career, added the words: "here we are the way politics ought to be in America, the politics of happiness, politics of purpose, politics of joy." This positive attitude was not meant to detract from the severe realities of Dr. King's assassination, domestic rioting in United States cities, or the casualties and uncertainty of the ten year Vietnam war. The media, however, took this phrase out of context and berated Humphrey for being out of touch with current events.

Humphrey had decided not to enter any primaries, though he made many speeches during his travels, sometimes even at events that included his two rivals. McCarthy and Kennedy, meanwhile, competed for similar voters in primary states, and allowed Humphrey to focus on delegates in non-primary states and the southerners, who had not been swayed by either of his rivals. Kennedy had won the Nebraska primary by a majority but then lost Oregon to McCarthy. It was a terrible blow to Kennedy and imperative that he win in California. Humphrey stayed away from California during the primary and was preparing to give a speech in Colorado Springs when he learned about Kennedy's assassination.

Humphrey refused to give his speech the next day. Instead he flew back to the east coast for the funeral and internment and gave a short speech in the Senate on June 6th. Terribly shaken by the death of another Kennedy, Humphrey did not campaign for two weeks.

As Humphrey's biographer describes: "that period from Kennedy's death to the convention in August, this most voluble of American politicians had almost nothing to say about the issues that troubled his fellow citizens most . . . He was a man in the middle: tied to a president who dominated him, pulled by all the forces on the Democratic left that demanded a candidate who stood for anything different from Nixon" (Hubert Humphrey: A Biography, p. 341-342).

The Republican convention of 1968 was held in early August near the resort city of Miami Beach. A Gallup poll, taken right after the Republican convention, showed Richard Nixon leading Humphrey by sixteen points. Humphrey's staff was split on whether or not the candidate should break with the President's policies on Vietnam. Numerous drafts of statements were proposed to Humphrey, urging him to take his own stand on the issue.

President Johnson was attempting to set up peace talks with the Vietnamese in Paris. Humphrey was reticent to break with Johnson, especially if it would undermine the ongoing negotiations. He sought the President's consent on successive drafts of a compromise statement, however, and right up until the Democratic convention Humphrey thought that Johnson would give his consent. Walking a tight rope of media scrutiny, Humphrey declared on Meet the Press the morning of the convention that "My position on the Vietnam War and our effort to gain peace is as it has been. I believe that we could and should stop the remaining bombing of the North if we receive indication that there is restraint and reasonable response from Hanoi."

Johnson picked the city of Chicago to hold the Democratic convention. Mayor Richard Daley fully supported this decision. Both men refused to change the venue even after numerous difficulties presented themselves. Humphrey later admitted that the city was the worst possible place for the convention. Striking electricians, telephone workers and taxi drivers made communication and transportation difficult. Mayor Daley and the Chicago police were joined by Army troops and the Illinois National Guard to handle thousands of anti-war protestors both before and during the convention.

Tensions rose during the convention. Mayor Daley refused permits to protestors. Television cameras picked up delegates protesting for peace inside the convention and demonstrators rioting outside in the streets and parks of Chicago. Innocent bystanders were threatened and beaten by police alongside protestors. Humphrey and his family received death threats. In the midst of this turmoil staff were preparing an acceptance speech for Humphrey who would inevitably win the nomination. When he saw the final draft, however, Humphrey felt it did not reflect the events unfolding around him. Assisted by two of his personal secretaries, he dictated a new draft right up until the time he had to leave for the convention hall to give his speech. Humphrey realized on the way to the hall that the prayer of St. Francis of Assisi had been deleted from the final draft of the speech by one of his staff members who thought it inappropriate. He called the Chicago Public Library on the car phone and had them dictate it to him, asserting that it was indeed an appropriate prayer for so violent and chaotic a time.

"I have never had a more difficult assignment," Humphrey recalled of his speech that night. "It tested every nerve in my body, and it tested my will, my courage, and my capacity to overcome crisis and difficulty, to try to sway an audience to my side, to at least calm the fears of some, fortify the hopes of others, and hold a party together that was on the verge of an explosion that would have fractured it for a long, long time" (The Education of a Public Man, p. 296).

Humphrey received the Democratic presidential nomination, but he won it during one of the largest demonstrations of the century. He tried to pull the party together, but the protestors and young people of America found him old fashioned and out of touch, especially when he refused to join them in the parks and on the streets outside of the convention as Eugene McCarthy had done and instead sided with Mayor Daley and the police against the anti-war protestors. In an interview with Hugh Downs of the Today Show the last day of the convention Humphrey explained that the "tactics of rowdism do not add to a convention" and that history is "strewn with the wreckage of self-righteous militant minorities, who thought that they had a sort of a monopoly on truth."

Though he spoke strongly against the unrest, his own campaign was in shambles. Staff member Ted Van Dyke remembered: "we left Chicago fifteen points down, with blood in the streets, conflict in the convention hall, everything at rock bottom and not a penny in the bank by the way" (Mick Caouette, Hubert H. Humphrey: The Art of the Possible, 2010).

After the convention, Humphrey and his campaign floundered. The campaign officially began on September 9th in Philadelphia, the city where he first burst onto the national scene in 1948. The speech Humphrey gave that day focused on the choices Americans had to make in the conflict-ridden era of 1968. His organization, however, failed to provide buttons and pennants for the occasion and the crowd was all too eager to shout "Dump the Hump" at the candidate.

As the campaign went on, Humphrey's refusal to distinguish himself from the Johnson administration, of which he was still a part, remained a stumbling block. Protesters and critics met him at every stop. In a speech at the Western States Water and Power Conference in Sioux Falls, South Dakota after detailing a ten point program for the revitalization of rural America, Humphrey told the crowd his life was "dedicated to works of peace, the Peace Corps, the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, Food for Peace, the Disarmament Agency, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty." He stated: "I took as a top item on my agenda when I become your President on January 20, 1969, I put it at the top of my list to find a way to end this war and to make this country once again united." The crowd responded strongly when he mentioned peace and it became clear to Humphrey and his campaign managers that this was the issue above any other that resonated with his audiences.

By the end of September, Humphrey knew he needed to make his own statement on Vietnam despite what the President said or how the negotiations in Paris were going. In Seattle he faced the worst heckling of the campaign. The usual boos and shouts of the crowd were drowned out this time by one heckler with a bull horn. As the television cameras watched, Humphrey asked the man to "go ahead and make your speech." The man did, speaking about the scream of death, the wound of war, police brutality in Chicago, and of Humphrey's crimes against humanity by being complicit with the war in Vietnam. Though the police and Secret Service finally removed the protestors from the Civic Center and Humphrey was able to give his speech afterwards, the moment unnerved him and he resolved then to say what was on his mind and what he felt even if he lost the election.

On September 30th in Salt Lake City Humphrey gave a televised speech to the American people explaining his position on Vietnam. The speech had been hotly debated by his staff. They had argued for hours over wording and nuances of meaning. In the end Humphrey drafted a new speech and gave his trusted advisors a last look, then called Johnson fifteen minutes before he delivered it to tell him what he would say. After Humphrey assured him that it would not embarrass him or jeopardize Paris negotiations Johnson replied "I gather you're not asking my advice." Humphrey gave the speech in one take and afterwards felt that he had finally made his own stand.

After the Salt Lake City speech, Humphrey's campaign began to gain momentum. "Weeks of struggling, trying to catch up for lost time frantically putting together an organization, always short of finances, error compounded by error, led suddenly to a building momentum, to larger and larger crowds, to excitement and enthusiasm, to a feeling of possible success (The Education of a Public Man, p. 303).

Eugene McCarthy finally gave Humphrey his endorsement in the last days of October. A few days before the election President Johnson announced a breakthrough in the negotiations in Paris, saying that the bombing of North Vietnam would stop and that peace talks were scheduled for days after the election.

By November 3rd Johnson himself actively campaigned with Humphrey, joining him for an event at the Houston Astrodome. Accompanied by Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle and surrounded by an enthusiastic crowd Humphrey and Johnson had put their differences aside for the good of the party. In his speech Humphrey proclaimed that he would always be Johnson's faithful friend and proud of it, and during the remaining months of his presidency, his loyal vice president.

Humphrey and Nixon were in a dead heat in the polls. On the surface, it appeared that the hope of peace talks with the North Vietnamese and an end to the war may have handed Humphrey the presidency. Behind the scenes, the Nixon campaign promised the Vietnamese in Paris that a Nixon administration would give them a better deal after the election and convinced them to stay away from the ongoing negotiations. On election day, the numbers showed that Nixon had beaten Humphrey by less than one-half of one percent of the popular vote.

In his concession speech Humphrey said that he "couldn't possibly be any happier than in the knowledge that we had done the right thing. We have said what we believed, we have spoken the hard facts of our country as we saw them. We have offered what we thought were the alternatives and the solutions. We placed our case before the American people. We did it in a short period of time against tremendous odds, and all I can say tonight to the American people is they have been mighty good to us. They have given us a great vote of confidence in this popular vote."

In his autobiography, however, Humphrey admitted that "my dreams and hopes were smashed in a year when so much more in America was destroyed" (The Education of a Public Man, p. 305).

Humphrey gave only a handful of speeches during the remainder of 1968. Exhausted and depressed by the narrowness of his defeat he caught the flu for the third time that year and began to re-evaluate his life. It would be the first time in 25 years that he had not held an elective public office.

In 1969 Humphrey went back to teaching at the University of Minnesota and Macalester College. His keynote address at the five-day student-planned Urban Crisis Symposium at Macalester College on February 23, 1969 was his first public appearance in his new position as professor of political science and international affairs.

Humphrey also became the Chairman of the Board of the Encyclopaedia Britannica Education Corporation and traveled extensively around the country and the world. In an awards presentation speech in Skokie, Illinois on April 8, 1970 Humphrey congratulated School District 68 on significant improvement of its elementary school library media services on behalf of Britannica. He also became the first board chairman of the new Wilson International Center for Scholars, established by Congress in 1968.

About this period in his life, Humphrey recalled: "It was a special, mind-clearing opportunity to be not only my own man, but simply a private person again. Just Hubert Humphrey. I spent more time doing the things that people do in private life: traveling, fishing, playing with my grandchildren, catching up on conversations with my children (delayed for a decade), and earning more money than I ever had before. It was a wonderful time" (The Education of a Public Man, p. 325).

Ever the public man, however, Humphrey still looked for the next position he could attain. Nixon had offered him a position in his administration after becoming president but Humphrey firmly refused. After Ten Kennedy's incident at Chappaquiddick Humphrey's prospects of regaining a significant political office grew more promising. When Eugene McCarthy decided not to seek re-election for his Senate seat in 1969, Humphrey was ready to campaign again.

After easily regaining a seat in the Senate in 1971, Humphrey found that he was not accorded the same power or committee positions that he had earned during his previous tenure. Though refused a seat on the Foreign Relations Committee, he was again granted a place on the Agricultural Committee and got right to work. In a speech to the Dairymen, Inc. Roundtable in Louisville, Kentucky on January 29, 1971, Humphrey informed them of his new position and urged them to work together to influence national policy.

While adjusting to life in the Senate once more, the possibility of attaining the presidency again began to entice Humphrey. In an article printed a day after his 60th birthday in May of 1971 Humphrey admitted to reporters in Florida that he would love another chance at Richard Nixon in the next election, saying that he was "not running for president at this time, but I may. I've got my sails up, testing the weather. I'm not salivating -- but I'm licking my chops."

On January 10, 1972 Humphrey made his candidacy announcement in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Running against his long-time friend and fellow South Dakotan, George McGovern, Humphrey beat him in the Florida primary but was defeated in Wisconsin. Though Humphrey went on to win primaries in Pennsylvania, Indiana, Ohio and West Virginia in the next weeks and months, funding began to dwindle.

McGovern won the Oregon, California and South Dakota primaries, perpetuating the decline of Humphrey's campaign. Humphrey stayed in the race officially until he issued his withdrawal statement on July 11. By August he was campaigning at McGovern's side.

On January 22, 1973 Lyndon Johnson died of a heart attack. That same day Humphrey responded to his death in these remarks and talked about Johnson's ardent desire to end the war in Vietnam, saying: "I think that was his heartache that he could not find the peace, but I want to say that as he leaves us now the peace that he sought is in our grasp and is taking place in Paris." The next day National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger and North Vietnamese leader Le Duc Tho signed a ceasefire agreement at the Paris Peace Accords that would earn both a Nobel Peace Prize, though the war would continue for years after.

President Nixon's second term in office collided with the Watergate scandal in 1973, a story that began the summer before and exposed questionable campaign fund raising practices in both political parties. Humphrey was not immune to public scrutiny. In an October 1973 speech, which was re-printed in the Congressional Record, Humphrey addressed the AFL-CIO concerning the resignation of the attorney and deputy attorney general, the firing of special prosecutor Archibald Cox and the mounting pressure to begin impeachment hearings. Humphrey cautioned every American "not to fall prey to the abuse of rhetoric, just as the President has fallen prey to the abuse of power. We must act responsibly, with full adherence to legal procedures."

In an interview following Nixon's August 1974 resignation, Humphrey characterized the event as "a personal tragedy for the President and a new hope for the nation." He commended the democratic process by noting that "this unprecedented event has occurred not with disorder or disunity or with violence, but with rigorous devotion to the processes of law mandated by our Constitution."

Humphrey had other more personal concerns during this time. He was treated for bladder cancer by undergoing intensive X-ray treatments for eight weeks that left him in incredible pain for hours at a time. Becoming anemic before Christmas necessitated admittance to the hospital for over two weeks and required multiple blood transfusions. Throughout he continued to work and travel, even going as far as Europe and China.

During 1973 Humphrey was re-admitted to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs. During the later part of his Senate career Humphrey gave a multitude of speeches on expanding the Food for Peace program in developing countries, a proposal backed by then Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. In November 1974 Humphrey traveled to Rome for the World Food Conference to promote the development of a World Food Information System.

In January 1975 Humphrey poked fun at himself during the Alfalfa Club annual dinner saying: "I have been orbiting the White House longer than all the astronauts who orbited the moon." Though his speech also made fun of two other Minnesotans who "orbited" around the White House, Harold Stassen and Walter Mondale, Humphrey's political prospects were looking very positive for the 1976 election year.

In the end, Humphrey decided not to run. He made the decision after long conversations with his wife and family. In his announcement he cited the lack of a campaign committee and funds. However, the night before his announcement, he told his doctor that he would run. A note filed with his announcement sheds light on his state of mind at the time he made this decision. The note reads: "Mrs. Humphrey called: Whatever you decide in this meeting is fine with her. Whatever you want to do tonight is alright with her."

It was difficult for Humphrey not to seek the presidency. Nominating his protege Walter Mondale for the vice presidency, however, made him immensely proud. In remarks made at the Democratic National Convention in July of 1976 Humphrey declared that Mondale would be "a source of strength to our next president, Jimmy Carter. He will be loyal and he will be frank." In fact, Mondale asked Humphrey's advice prior to accepting the nomination and Humphrey advised him to take the job. During Mondale's tenure, the role of the vice president became more of a partnership with the president and many of the obstacles that Humphrey had experienced with Johnson were removed.

During the same Democratic National Convention Humphrey also delivered one of his most memorable quotes. Often thought of as part of one of his 1977 speeches and mis-dated as such, his statement in Madison Square Garden has been characterized as the liberal mantra of the Democratic Party: "The ultimate moral test of any government is the way it treats three groups of its citizens. First, those in the dawn of life -- our children. Second, those in the shadows of life -- our needy, our sick, our handicapped. Third, those in the twilight of life -- our elderly."

By the end of 1976 Humphrey's cancer had returned. Spending months in the hospital again and undergoing operations from which he would remarkably recover, he simultaneously won re-election to the Senate that November and even tried for Majority Leader Robert Byrd's job, though a bout of the flu forced him to concede.

His cancer, however, turned out to be terminal. Welcoming Humphrey in the Senate Chambers, Senator Robert Byrd (among others) paid tribute to him saying: "Some men attempt to alter the course of history, or bend the direction of their era, through thunder and threat; they launch armies, marshal forces and foster plots, Hubert Humphrey has changed our own time through the impact of his personality, the exertion of his energy, the vibrancy of his spirit, the exercise of his intellect, and the compassion of his heart. Consequently, he is a man whose influence will reverberate for generations, in America and around the world."

At a reception for Humphrey in the House of Representatives in November, Arizona Congressman Morris Udall said of Humphrey: "We have all kidded about your oratory. The plain fact is that this man is the premier political stump orator of this generation. A Hubert Humphrey speech always made you feel good. You laughed a little bit, you cried, and you felt good about yourself and good about your country... You really practice the politics of joy."

Hubert H. Humphrey died on January 13, 1978. One of his last requests was to invite Nixon to attend funeral services that were to be held for him in Washington. It was a gesture meant to bring Nixon back from political exile, and would be Nixon's first public appearance after his resignation. Humphrey's body lay in state at the Capitol both in Washington and in St. Paul. President Carter, Gerald Ford, Nelson Rockefeller and Lady Bird Johnson were among the mourners at his services.

At the service in St. Paul Vice President Mondale said: "While he was an international figure and a national figure, as we in Minnesota well knew, he was always a Minnesotan, and always a son of the prairie. There was something in this land and its lakes and, especially its people, that fed the springs of love, the strains of ideas, the torrents of enthusiasm, and which nurtured the special genius and the immense humanity of Hubert Humphrey... He was a special man in a special place, and I know he would want me to say today: Thank you, Minnesota."