On this day in 1968, Robert F. Kennedy visited historic sites in southern Indiana as part of his effort to win the Hoosier State's Democratic presidential primary.

Kennedy seemed relaxed and in good spirits during his visit to such sites as the George Rogers Clark Memorial; Grouseland, the home of William Henry Harrison; and the grave of Nancy Hanks Lincoln.

RFK adviser John Bartlow Martin remembered the candidate saying to him, "T'his is nice' or 'It's good isn't it.' He seemed to be enjoying it." RFK said he had come to Vincennes because he “believed deeply that the seeds of national greatness lie in the greatness of the past.”

The visit had some problems. When Kennedy and his wife, Ethel, visited Vincennes’s Old Cathedral Catholic Church, their dog, Freckles, caused some excitement when he ran into the church, ran up to the wooden altar, and started sniffing around in preparation for relieving himself.

RFK aide Fred Dutton caught the dog before he could do any damage and eased him out of the house of worship. Also, at Grouseland, Martin recalled, pro-Eugene McCarthy students "tried to break things up; didnt go well."

Martin, who grew up in Indianapolis, noted that the RFK campaign motorcaded through several small towns where he used to go quail and rabbit hunting--Washington, Oolitic, and others.

"At each place the motorcade would stop in the main street and Kennedy--who had risen to the tonneau of the convertible as his car approached town--would climb out onto the trunk and speak," Martin recalled.

Martin remembered RFK advisers scrambled together in the car as it sped down the road at 50 mph across the countryside, "a police car ahead, the photographers car behind us, then a couple of cars with local politicians . . . then two press buses."

"Most of the crowds were young but not all," said Martin. "They screamed and tore at him and at his clothes. I kept a hand out so he could grab it if he needed it, that is, if the crowd pulled him off the trunk."

"One of the hardest jobs was to get the car moving again after the speech," Martin noted. "[Fred] Dutton would get in front of it and face it and inch his way backward into the crowd, and the driver would inch forward as Dutton beckoned."

Martin made sure to tell kids in the crowd to be careful and "not get their toes run over."

The visit to southern Indiana ended on a sour note for the Kennedy entourage as the candidate drew a sparse crowd of only 1,500 people for an early evening speech at Roberts Municipal Stadium in Evansville.

During his remarks, Kennedy criticized the Johnson administration for letting inflation run out of control and called on the “enthusiastic if small audience,” most of whom had been waiting for nearly an hour and a half for the candidate’s speech, to not waste their votes May 7.

Joe Dolan, who scheduled the event, said he had mistaken one of the advance men with a person in whom he had confidence and “took his judgment that we could go in and fill a hall of fourteen thousand people at 6:30 in the evening when everybody in Evansville eats, apparently.”

When they had returned to Indianapolis for the evening, Kennedy met with Dolan and Jerry Bruno, his main advance man, to discuss the fiasco. Although Bruno tried to take some of the blame, Dolan refused to let him, telling Kennedy it had been entirely his fault.

“It was the worst time he ever read me out,” Dolan remembered, “but he was tired, and it was a ghastly mistake. But we had taken chance after chance, and we won, you know. And you get so you don’t look at it as carefully."