ABSTRACT
In that sweltering August of 1927, as the Sacco-Vanzetti affair was reaching its denouement, Jacob Lippmann died of cancer after a long and painful illness. Walter Lippmann continued to visit her ritualistically until her death twenty years later. But he never forgave her for her indifference to him as a child, and their relations remained strained and formal. The Mexican episode, a remarkable story he never fully revealed, began when his friend Dwight Morrow became ambassador to Mexico in the fall of 1927 at a time when American oil companies and Catholic militants were urging Coolidge to overthrow the Mexican government. The American business community was divided on the Mexican issue. The dispute between the Mexican government and the Catholic Church had inflamed American Catholics, many of whom felt that their coreligionists were being persecuted by a godless regime. The Mexican settlement launched a minor Morrow boom. Lippmann urged him to seek the 1928 Republican nomination for President.
