Tuesday, Election day. Beautiful, warm, sunny day, 70. I cleaned the house all through in the am. Lorraine and Howard came about 11 am. We went to vote and ate dinner at Mrs. Dugan's; they went with us.
1964: Election triumph for Lyndon B Johnson
Lyndon Baines Johnson has been elected president of the United States defeating hard-line Republican Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona by an overwhelming majority.
The man who took over the presidency last year after the assassination of President Kennedy got the largest popular majority in US history - greater than Franklin D Roosevelt's landslide victory in 1936.
The campaign took place in the middle of an escalating Vietnam war.
Senator Goldwater's demands that North Vietnam should be continuously bombed and his questioning of the US social security system proved unpopular.The Democrats adopted a social reform platform, with President Johnson, also known as LBJ, campaigning as a candidate of peace, pledging not to widen US military involvement in Vietnam.
But soon after his election he increased the number of US troops in the region after sustained attacks by the communist Viet Cong. Troops numbers continued to mount reaching a peak of 550,000 in 1968.
In spite of this increase, there seemed no end to the war and LBJ's public support declined.
What is more, the cost of the war sucked money away from social programmes and began to fuel inflation.
Living standards for black Americans failed to improve and there were several race riots in the mid to late 1960s all over America.
On 31 March, 1968, LBJ shocked TV viewers with a national address in which he announced major reductions in the bombing of North Vietnam and a plan to request peace talks. He also said he would not be running for nomination for the 1968 presidency.
In 1969 LBJ retired to his ranch in near Johnson City, Texas. He died in January 1973 of a heart attack
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