Johnson, who assumed the presidency after John F. Kennedy's assassination and won a landslide election in 1964, died at age 64, just days before Richard Nixon's second inauguration and the signing of the Paris Peace Accords ending direct U.S. involvement in Vietnam. His domestic legacy—Medicare, Medicaid, the Civil Rights Act, and the Voting Rights Act—remained overshadowed by the war that consumed his presidency.
Johnson had retired to his Texas ranch on the Pedernales River in January 1969, a broken and exhausted man, having declined to seek reelection amid mass protests over Vietnam. He grew his hair long, in a style that startled visitors who remembered the crew-cut political operator of the mid-1960s.
His death came just one day before the Paris Peace Accords were formally signed, a bitter irony for a president whose escalation of the war had destroyed his political career and, many believed, his health.
Johnson's Great Society programs reshaped American life more thoroughly than almost any presidency of the 20th century, yet he died convinced that history would remember him chiefly for Vietnam. Secret Service agents found him on the floor of his bedroom, phone in hand, having called for help too late.