he could never resist a crowd. And it was a pretty large crowd, singing and chanting, that had marched to the White House from a rally at Grover’s Theater. Arriving at the portico, they yelled out for the President to come and say a few words, and Johnson happily, gratefully, complied. But he proceeded to unleash such a startling chain of venomous epithets and head-turning images—about decapitation and crucifixion—that many people, then and later, had to assume Andy Johnson was completely drunk. He hadn’t been drinking; he was seething. By his lights, he, the President, had been traduced,
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