A cool spring evening had settled over Washington. Most of the city's federal buildings were dark, but chandeliers shone brightly from the National Portrait Gallery. Inside the building in which Walt Whitman once read his poetry to wounded Union troops and Abe Lincoln held his second Inaugural Ball, a black-tie assemblage of guests stood chatting, their voices mingling with the strains of a string quartet.
Many of those gathered in the historic building had helped to make history during the past 30 years: Senator Eugene McCarthy, Lady Bird Johnson, General William Westmoreland, Judge John Sirica, Buckminster Fuller, Julia Child, Van Cliburn, Arthur...
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