Profiles In Courage is a collection of short stories about acts of courage in politics. An entire summary of the book would actually be eight different summaries of eight different people. So, I have chosen one of the eight different stories to base this report on. I am going to summarize, quote, and reflect on the story of Edmund G. Ross.

It was 1868 when Edmund G. Ross, a senator from Kansas, had to choose between his career and his conscience. President Andrew Johnson was under impeachment, and the Republican party was determined to force him to resign from the office. Johnson kept vetoing the bills passed by the senate on the grounds that they were unconstitutional. He believed that they were being to harsh on the south. The senate needed two-thirds of the senate to vote guilty on any one of the eleven different Articles of Impeachment. There were fifty-four different senators at that time which meant that a total of thirty-six guilty votes were necessary for a conviction.

It became apparent that the radical Republicans were willing to make the election unfair, if it meant that they would get what they wanted. They already made up for more tha

I have never been interested in politics. I have never understood them as a result. This book forced me to learn more about politics in order to understand it. John F. Kennedy also uses a lot of intellectual words that occasionally lost me. I kept a dictionary close by as I read this book, and I know that I have learned a number of new words as a result of reading this book. I think that this book was more of a learning experience than I had expected it to be. It wasn't a book that I would have been likely to pick up and read simply because I wanted to. It was a book that I would expect to be given as an assignment by my school. Even so, I did benefit from it in at least two ways. First, I now have a somewhat larger vocabulary. Second, I now have a greater appreciation for our government and it's operation.

"In a lonely grave, forgotten and unknown, lies 'the man who saved a President,' and as a result may well have preserved for ourselves and posterity constitutional government in the United States-the man who performed in 1868 what one historian has called 'the most heroic act in American history, incomparably more difficult than any deed of valor upon the field of battle'-but a United States senator whose name no one recalls: Edmund G. Ross of Kansas." - Page 132

Edmund Ross suffered as a result of his decision to vote in favor of what he believed was right. He was forced to change professions. His constituents would no longer support him. His party deserted him, and he was publicly attacked by newspapers and angry reporters. His family suffered as well. They were looked down upon as relatives of the political renegade that was Edmund G. Ross. He was now a poverty-stricken target for physical and verbal abuse

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Approximate Word count = 1176
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)