With Election Day just two weeks away, Sen. Charles Culberson spent Oct. 21, 1916 doing what he did best – nothing. Why bother campaigning when a fourth term was already in the bag?

Looking for an appealing replacement for Gov. Jim Hogg in 1895, power broker E.M. House picked the handsome attorney general. Although his glaring lack of principles moved one politician to observe that 40-year-old Charlie Culberson “would be all right if he had a little more iron down his backbone,”...