Dead Presidents Daily

The Plan to Reanimate Washington

2012-01-29T19:48:00.001-06:00

News of the weird, presidential variety: A website called io9 ("We Come From the Future") recently published an article called "The Capitol architect wanted to reanimate George Washington's dead body," along with a George-Washington-as-zombie illustration that says more about the current penchant for zombies than the 18th-century statesman. Naturally, zombie George Washington prints are for sale by Plemont Studios, the image's creator; and a movie treatment can't be long in coming, especially if Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter does well.

The io9 article cites Blood Work: A Tale of Medicine and Murder in the Scientific Revolution, by Holly Tucker (2011) as the source for the story. "If William Thornton [pictured], physician and designer of the US Capitol, had had his way, Washington's body would have been subjected a scientific experiment designed to bring the deceased former president back to life," writes Lauren Davis. "... he planned to perform a tracheotomy so he could insert a bellows into Washington's throat and pump his lungs full of air, and finally to give Washington an infusion of lamb's blood. Friends and family declined Thornton's mad scientist offer..."

Lamb's blood, apparently, was thought at the time to have regenerative properties -- or at Thornton wanted to investigate the possibility, good Enlightenment scientist that he was. He probably deserves the benefit of the doubt, since medical science was primitive at the time, and at least he wanted to investigate new avenues of research, however strange they might sound to us.

A couple of other outlets have picked up the story, including the Daily Mail, which in true British tabloid style called its article, "Zombie George Washington: How a mad scientist planned to reanimate the first president with lamb's blood after he died."

Ronald Reagan's State of the Union Joke

2012-01-26T19:37:00.002-06:00

Ronald Reagan, well known for his talents as a raconteur, included a touch of humor at the beginning of his first state of the union address, which he delivered on January 26, 1982.

“Today marks my first State of the Union address to you, a constitutional duty as old as our Republic itself.

“President Washington began this tradition in 1790 after reminding the nation that the destiny of self-government and the ‘preservation of the sacred fire of liberty’ is ‘finally staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.’ For our friends in the press, who place a high premium on accuracy, let me say: I did not actually hear George Washington say that. [Laughter] But it is a matter of historic record.”[Laughter]

The Monroe Doctrine: Slipped Into the President's Annual Message

2012-01-25T20:28:00.001-06:00

The famed Monroe Doctrine got its beginning as a few paragraphs in the seventh annual message to Congress delivered -- in writing -- by President James Monroe. His Secretary of State, John Quincy Adams, is universally acknowledged as the one who actually formulated the doctrine. In nondiplomatic terms, the doctrine says, "Hands off Latin America, powers of Europe! (Especially you, Spain)."

Of course diplomatic language was used, which JQA, son of a president and soon-to-be president, excelled at. The money quote from President Monroe's annual message to Congress -- we would now call it a State of the Union address, dated December 2, 1823 -- is as follows:

"We owe it, therefore, to candor and to the amicable relations existing between the United States and those powers to declare that we should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety. With the existing colonies or dependencies of any European power we have not interfered and shall not interfere.

But with the Governments who have declared their independence and maintained it, and whose independence we have, on great consideration and on just principles, acknowledged, we could not view any interposition for the purpose of oppressing them, or controlling in any other manner their destiny, by any European power in any other light than as the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States.

Because the United States had a weak navy at the time, European powers generally ignored the doctrine during the 19th century -- and yet the Spanish and other powers didn't often try to colonize or recolonize Latin America, because it became part of the British Empire's informal sphere. What the U.S. Navy couldn't do (until the time of TR), the Royal Navy did, with the unintended consequence of enforcing the Monroe Doctrine.

The Four Freedoms

2012-01-24T19:40:00.002-06:00

On January 6, 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt delivered his State of the Union, which included what would be known as the Four Freedoms, making it one of the best-known in the long line of State of the Union addresses.

"In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.

"The first is freedom of speech and expression -- everywhere in the world.

"The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way -- everywhere in the world.

"The third is freedom from want -- which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants -- everywhere in the world.

The fourth is freedom from fear -- which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor -- anywhere in the world.

That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called new order of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb.

The complete speech is here, transcribed and on audio.

The State of the Union Address

2012-01-23T22:34:00.003-06:00

Tomorrow marks the latest of more than 200 State of the Union addresses given by a U.S. president. The custom has its origin in Article II, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution, which says, "[The president] shall from time to time give to Congress information of the State of the Union and recommend to their Consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient."

Though the term "State of the Union" is used in the Constitution, it wasn't widely used to describe the president's annual address until Franklin Roosevelt's presidency, and not universally used until Harry Truman was in office. Earlier, the document was simply the President's Annual Message to Congress. Note also that the Constitution is vague about timing, saying nothing about an "annual" message. Still, custom has established an annual timetable.

Moreover, George Washington and John Adams delivered the addresses themselves, but Thomas Jefferson started sending written messages to Congress, as all of his successors did until Woodrow Wilson revived the practice of the annual report to Congress a speech once more. Maybe his professorial leanings led to the change. Since Wilson's time most, but not all, of the State of the Union addresses have been delivered orally. The last president to send a written message was Jimmy Carter, during the waning days of his administration in January 1981.

The first paragraph of the First Annual Message to Congress on the State of the Union, delivered by President Washington on January 8, 1790, went as follows:

"Fellow-Citizens of the Senate and House of Representatives:

I embrace with great satisfaction the opportunity which now presents itself of congratulating you on the present favorable prospects of our public affairs. The recent accession of the important state of North Carolina to the Constitution of the United States (of which official information has been received), the rising credit and respectability of our country, the general and increasing good will toward the government of the Union, and the concord, peace, and plenty with which we are blessed are circumstances auspicious in an eminent degree to our national prosperity.

Lyndon Johnson Dies

2012-01-22T22:31:00.004-06:00

On this day in 1973, only about a month after the passing of Harry Truman, and only two days after the second inauguration of Richard Nixon, Lyndon Baines Johnson, 36th President of the United States, died suddenly at his ranch in central Texas.

A very young LBJ is pictured here.

A much older LBJ is pictured here -- the year before his death, and sporting a hairstyle not usually associated with the '60s president.

"He could take a bite out of you bigger than a T-bone steak and the very next day he would put his arms around you like a long-lost brother." -- Hubert Humphrey

"He is a master of the art of the possible in politics." -- Adlai Stevenson

"You know when I first thought I might have a chance? When I realized that you could go into any bar in the country and insult Lyndon Johnson and nobody would punch you in the nose." -- Eugene McCarthy

Inauguration Firsts

2012-01-19T23:40:00.001-06:00

First presidential inauguration: George Washington, April 30, 1789, later than March 4 because of the time it took for the First Congress to assembly in the temporary capital, New York City.

First time the Chief Justice of the United States gave the oath of office to the incoming president: John Adams, March 4, 1797.

First president to be inaugurated in Washington City (the District of Columbia): Thomas Jefferson, March 4, 1801.

First time the United States Marine Band played for an inaugural ball: that of James Madison, March 4, 1809.

First president inaugurated wearing long trousers instead of knee breeches: John Quincy Adams, March 4, 1824. Such fashion belonged to his father's generation. JQA is also the first president to not wear a powdered wig for formal occasions.

First president to be sworn in on the East Portico of the U.S. Capitol: Andrew Jackson, March 4, 1829. The move allowed more members of the public to attend, as befitting a president who had run as the champion of the common man. Previously, the ceremonies were held in the House or Senate chambers (except for Washington, on a balcony of Federal Hall on Wall Street, and Monroe in 1817, in front of the temporary capitol, because the U.S. Capitol had been destroyed in 1814 and was still being rebuilt).

First president-elect to arrive in Washington City for his inauguration by railroad: William Henry Harrison in 1841, for all the good it did him.

First inauguration thought to be photographed: that of James Buchanan, March 4, 1857.

First president to review an inaugural parade: James Garfield, March 4, 1881.

First inauguration recorded by a motion picture camera: that of William McKinley, March 4, 1897.

First president to use an automobile to arrive and depart from his inauguration: Warren G. Harding, March 4, 1921.

First inauguration broadcast on the radio: that of Calvin Coolidge, March 4, 1925.

First January 20th inauguration: for the second term of Franklin Roosevelt, 1937.

First televised inauguration: that of Harry Truman, January 20, 1949.

First time a poet participated in the inaugural program: at the ceremony for John Kennedy, January 20, 1961. Robert Frost, 86, read "The Gift Outright" by memory, when he was unable to read the poem he had written for the occasion, "Dedication."

First president to be sworn in on the west side of the U.S. Capitol: Ronald Reagan, January 20, 1981.

Nixon Quotes MacLeish

2012-01-18T19:03:00.002-06:00

On January 20, 1969, Richard Nixon assumed the presidency, taking his oath of office from Chief Justice Earl Warren at the East Portico of the U.S. Capitol. Toward the end of his inaugural address, Nixon quoted poet and librarian Archibald MacLeish (1892-1982) regarding the flight of Apollo 8, only a month earlier.

"Only a few short weeks ago, we shared the glory of man's first sight of the world as God sees it, as a single sphere reflecting light in the darkness.

"As the Apollo astronauts flew over the Moon's gray surface on Christmas Eve, they spoke to us of the beauty of Earth -- and in that voice so clear across the lunar distance, we heard them invoke God's blessing on its goodness.

"In that moment, their view from the Moon moved poet Archibald MacLeish to write:'To see the Earth as it truly is, small and blue and beautiful in that eternal silence where it floats, is to see ourselves as riders on the Earth together, brothers on that bright loveliness in the eternal cold -- brothers who know now they are truly brothers.'

"In that moment of surpassing technological triumph, men turned their thoughts toward home and humanity -- seeing in that far perspective that man's destiny on Earth is not divisible; telling us that however far we reach into the cosmos, our destiny lies not in the stars but on Earth itself, in our own hands, in our own hearts.

"We have endured a long night of the American spirit. But as our eyes catch the dimness of the first rays of dawn, let us not curse the remaining dark. Let us gather the light."

Kennedy's Inaugural Address

2012-01-17T20:38:00.000-06:00

John Kennedy uttered a number of memorable phrases in his inaugural address on January 20, 1961: "pay any price, bear any burden," "a long twilight struggle" and of course "ask not what your country can do for you..."

The speech was more than just a string of memorable sound bites, however. As a work of rhetoric, it's rightly considered a soaring masterpiece, one of the best of the presidential inaugurals (though none will likely ever best Lincoln's Second Inaugural). And, at about 14 minutes, worth listening to in its entirety from time to time.

Eisenhower's First Inaugural Address

2012-01-16T20:44:00.001-06:00

On January 20, 1953, Dwight D. Eisenhower took the oath of office as the 34th President of the United States from Chief Justice Frederick Vinson. The ceremony not only marked a change of presidents, but the recovery of the office by the Republican Party after Herbert Hoover had lost his re-election bid 20 years earlier.

Without naming names -- Stalin would be dead in less than two months, but no one knew that yet -- Eisenhower asserted that the United States had the lead role in a new geopolitical reality: the Cold War.

"How far have we come in man's long pilgrimage from darkness toward light? Are we nearing the light — a day of freedom and of peace for all mankind? Or are the shadows of another night closing in upon us?

"Great as are the preoccupations absorbing us at home, concerned as we are with matters that deeply affect our livelihood today and our vision of the future, each of these domestic problems is dwarfed by, and often even created by, this question that involves all humankind.

"This trial comes at a moment when man's power to achieve good or to inflict evil surpasses the brightest hopes and the sharpest fears of all ages. We can turn rivers in their courses, level mountains to the plains. Oceans and land and sky are avenues for our colossal commerce. Disease diminishes and life lengthens.

"Yet the promise of this life is imperiled by the very genius that has made it possible. Nations amass wealth. Labor sweats to create — and turns out devices to level not only mountains but also cities. Science seems ready to confer upon us, as its final gift, the power to erase human life from this planet.

"At such a time in history, we who are free must proclaim anew our faith. This faith is the abiding creed of our fathers. It is our faith in the deathless dignity of man, governed by eternal moral and natural laws...

"The enemies of this faith know no god but force, no devotion but its use. They tutor men in treason. They feed upon the hunger of others. Whatever defies them, they torture, especially the truth.

"Here, then, is joined no argument between slightly differing philosophies. This conflict strikes directly at the faith of our fathers and the lives of our sons. No principle or treasure that we hold, from the spiritual knowledge of our free schools and churches to the creative magic of free labor and capital, nothing lies safely beyond the reach of this struggle.

"Freedom is pitted against slavery; lightness against the dark."

FDR's Second Inaugural Address

2012-01-15T23:20:00.006-06:00

Because of the 20th amendment to the Constitution, in 1937 Franklin Roosevelt was the first president to take the oath of office in January, which has been the case for his successors since then. Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes administered the oath on the East Portico of the U.S. Capitol on January 20, 1937.

The election of 1936 had been a landslide victory for the president. In his second inaugural address, FDR reminded the nation that much had improved since his first inauguration in 1933, but much had not, and asserted that it was the obligation of progressive government to do something about the nation's ongoing problems.

"In this nation I see tens of millions of its citizens -- a substantial part of its whole population -- who at this very moment are denied the greater part of what the very lowest standards of today call the necessities of life.

"I see millions of families trying to live on incomes so meager that the pall of family disaster hangs over them day by day.

"I see millions whose daily lives in city and on farm continue under conditions labeled indecent by a so-called polite society half a century ago.

"I see millions denied education, recreation, and the opportunity to better their lot and the lot of their children.

"I see millions lacking the means to buy the products of farm and factory and by their poverty denying work and productiveness to many other millions.

"I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished.

"It is not in despair that I paint you that picture. I paint it for you in hope -- because the nation, seeing and understanding the injustice in it, proposes to paint it out. We are determined to make every American citizen the subject of his country's interest and concern; and we will never regard any faithful law-abiding group within our borders as superfluous. The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little."

William Polk Carey

2012-01-12T20:30:00.003-06:00

Real estate businessman and philanthropist William Polk Carey died in early January, aged 81. Among many other things, Carey was a pioneer of the sale-leaseback financing structure, which involves a property owner selling real estate assets to investors and then occupying the same property under a long-term lease. The arrangement works well in most cases: the seller capitalizes its real estate, allowing it to do something else with the money, while the investors get a steady, locked-in rate of return from the property.

Currently W.P. Carey & Co. oversees a worldwide investment portfolio of about $12 billion. The company's investments through the sale lease-back structure are highly diversified, comprising contractual agreements with about 288 long-term corporate tenants spanning 28 industries and 18 countries.

Carey was also renowned for his generous support of higher education thorough the W.P. Carey Foundation. His beneficiaries included the University of Maryland, Johns Hopkins University, and Arizona State University. He also gave millions to private schools in Baltimore.

Carey was not, however, a direct (lineal) descendant of James K. Polk, 11th President of United States, as was reported in a number of news stories recently. President Polk had no children. That Carey was a relative of the president's -- as well as Gen. Leonidas Polk, CSA -- there is no doubt. The Polk clan was quite extensive; the president's immediate family alone included ten brothers and sisters, all of whom (remarkably) survived childhood.

William Polk Carey was well aware of his connection to President Polk. According to the New York Times -- which merely uses the term "descendant," which might include collateral descent -- "Mr. Carey’s middle name, Polk, is an acknowledgment that he was a descendant of the 11th president of the United States, James K. Polk.

" 'He was very proud of that,' Mr. Carey’s great-nephew, William Polk Carey II, said last week. 'He liked to hand out those $1 gold coins with engravings of his Uncle Jim. That’s what he called him.' ”

Nixon and the Space Shuttle

2012-01-11T19:19:00.001-06:00

In early January 1972, at the beginning of the last year of the Apollo program, President Nixon gave his go-ahead for a new U.S. manned space craft: the Space Shuttle. Whether you consider it a white elephant or useful tool for getting into orbit, the Space Shuttle was Nixon's baby. The following is from the statement he released on that occasion:

I have decided today that the United States should proceed at once with the development of an entirely new type of space transportation system designed to help transform the space frontier of the 1970s into familiar territory, easily accessible for human endeavor in the 1980s and '90s.

This system will center on a space vehicle that can shuttle repeatedly from Earth to orbit and back. It will revolutionize transportation into near space, by routinizing it. It will take the astronomical costs out of astronautics. In short, it will go a long way toward delivering the rich benefits of practical space utilization and the valuable spinoffs from space efforts into the daily lives of Americans and all people...

The new system will differ radically from all existing booster systems, in that most of this new system will be recovered and used again and again -- up to 100 times. The resulting economies may bring operating costs down as low as one-tenth of those present launch vehicles... Preparation is now sufficient for us to commence the actual work of construction with full confidence of success. In order to minimize technical and economic risks, the space agency will continue to take a cautious evolutionary approach in the development of this new system. Even so, by moving ahead at this time, we can have the Shuttle in manned flight by 1978, and operational a short time later...

'We must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it', said Oliver Wendell Holmes, 'but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor'. So with man's epic voyage into space -- a voyage the United States of America has led and still shall lead.

The Citizens of the Granite State Are Not Easily Won

2012-01-10T18:14:00.001-06:00

"Eisenhower, Taft, Stassen, Warren, MacArthur, Truman, Kefauver -- it's a free country, and no armed guards to restrict your personal opinion."

So said the voice of a newsreel covering the first modern New Hampshire primary in 1952, in an unspoken comparison to Soviet Russia. As it happened, Eisenhower won the Republican primary and went on to win the presidency, while Estes Kefauver bested Harry Truman in the Democratic primary, though Kefauver didn't win the nomination (and neither did Truman, who chose retirement soon after New Hampshire). Kefauver won again in 1956, since New Hampshire clearly liked the Senator from Tennessee, and that year he was the vice presidential nominee.

"New Hampshire has spoken, and experts are looking for more straws in the political wind."

Richard Nixon's Birthday

2012-01-09T19:13:00.001-06:00

Richard Milhous Nixon, son of Francis Nixon and Hannah Milhous, would have been 99 today.

He will be remembered for many reasons, but also has one distinction among the men who have been president (besides the matter of quitting the job): He is the only person in U.S. history to have been elected both vice president and president twice: 1952, 1956, 1968 and 1972.

"I heard Nixon speak. He was talking about free enterprise, getting government off your back, lowering taxes and strengthening the military. Listening to Nixon speak sounded more like a breath of fresh air. I said to my friend, 'What party is he?' My friend said, 'He's a Republican.' I said, 'Then I am a Republican!'”

-- Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger

“Nixon is a shifty-eyed goddamn liar... He's one of the few in the history of this country to run for high office talking out of both sides of his mouth at the same time and lying out of both sides.”

-- President Harry Truman

Fillmore Week Wrap

2012-01-08T19:59:00.004-06:00

On Friday, January 6, 2012, Col. John Higgins, the Vice Commander of the New York Air National Guard's 107th Airlift Wing, laid a wreath at the grave of President Millard Fillmore at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Buffalo. Col. Higgins acted on behalf of President Barak Obama, since it's now customary for presidential wreaths to be laid at the grave sites of each dead president on the anniversary of their birth. Fillmore, of course, is the first on the calendar.

President Nixon is next. According to The Orange County Register, Rear Adm. Mike Shatynski will represent President Obama at the ceremony at the Nixon Library on January 9, which would have been Nixon's 99th birthday. According to the paper, Edward Nixon, Richard's youngest brother (and now 91) will attend. He is the last of the Nixon siblings.

The University of Buffalo also does not forget Millard Fillmore, who was not only 13th President of the United States, but the first chancellor of that institution. At the same event as Col. Higgins' wreath-laying, A. Scott Weber, UB vice provost and dean of undergraduate education, delivered a memorial address at graveside. This year's commemoration marks the 47th consecutive year UB has organized the ceremony, which dates back to 1937. From 1937 until 1965, the anniversary ceremonies were staged by the city of Buffalo and the Buffalo Board of Education.

The Adventures of John Fillmore

2012-01-05T18:20:00.005-06:00

A Narrative of the Singular Sufferings of John Fillmore and Others on Board the Noted Pirate Vessel Commanded by Captain Phillips, "With an Account of their daring Enterprise, and happy Escape from the tyranny of the desperate Crew, by capturing their Vessel" is a 23-page, first hand-account by Fillmore of what happened after the dread pirate John Phillips pressed him into service on September 5, 1723, after capturing the fishing sloop he was aboard.

In the fullness of time, John Fillmore would be the great-grandfather of Millard Fillmore. Born in Ipswich, Mass., on March 18, 1702, John Fillmore was the first child of John and Abigail Fillmore and later referred to as the first known American-born Fillmore. He died in 1777, but as a young man barely survived his time with Captain Phillips.

"The pirate soon came up and sent a boat on board our sloop, demanding who we were, and where we were bound," Fillmore wrote of his first encounter with the pirate ship. "To which our Captain gave a direct answer. By this boat's crew we learned that the noted pirate, Captain Phillips, commanded their ship... Having often heard of the cruelties committed by that execrable pirate, made us dread to fall into his hands."

Phillips in fact let the sloop go -- but only after deciding that Fillmore would join his crew as a "good, stout, resolute fellow," forcing him to serve aboard the pirates' ship Revenge. "Those only who have been in similar circumstances can form any adequate idea of the distress I experienced at this time. If I obstinately refused to join the pirates, instant death stared me and my comrades in the face; if I consented to go with them, I expected to be massacred for refusing to sign the piratical articles, which I had fully determined never to do..."

Fillmore did not sign the articles, but was put at the helm of the ship anyway. Captain Phillips had promised to release Fillmore after two months, but of course did not. "Captain Phillips... was not addicted to one particular vice, but to every vice," Fillmore wrote.

The better part of a year passed; the pirates attacked other vessels and pressed other men into service; and Fillmore and others plotted to take the ship from Phillips. Naturally, Phillips got wind of the plot.

"Phillips charged me, as he had done my friend, with contriving to betray him, and take the ship," Fillmore recalled. "The accusation was true enough, but I concluded a lie was warrantable in that case, and consequently replied, that I knew nothing of any conspiracy either against him or his crew. I had prepared to make resistance, in case he offered any abuse; but he had a pistol concealed under his coat, which he presented to my breast, and snapped it, before I had time to make any evasion; but happily for me it missed fire. He drew it back, cocked, and presented it again, but I struck it aside with my hand, so that it went off by my side, without doing any injury.

"I thought of knocking out his brains with the handspike that lay near me, but I knew it would be instant death for me, and therefore concluded if he would leave me, I would not meddle with him at that juncture. He then swung his sword over my head, damned me, and bid me go about my business, adding, that he only did it to try me... The pistol missing fire when snapped at my breast, and then going off by my side, was a strong indication to me that Providence had interposed graciously in my preservation -- that our final deliverance from the barbarity of the savage Phillips, and his abandoned banditti, might be more speedily effected."

And so it was. One morning after the rest of the crew had gotten good and drunk the night before, Fillmore, a man named Cheeseman and a captive referred to as "an Indian" rebelled. Direct action was the only thing to win their freedom: "The Master being busied, I saw Cheeseman make the motion to heave him over, and I at that instant, split the boatswain's head in twain with the broad axe, and dropped him upon the deck to welter in his gore. Before the Captain had time to put himself in a posture of defense, I gave him a stroke with the head of my axe, which partly stunned him; at which time Cheeseman, having dispatched the master overboard, came to my assistance, and gave the Captain a blow with his hammer, on the back side of his head, which put an immediate end to his mortal existence."

Having captured the ship, Fillmore and the others took it into Boston, where three of the surviving pirates were executed (and three others were sent to England for that fate). Fillmore concluded: "The honorable court which condemned the pirates gave me Captain Phillips' gun, silver hilted sword, silver shoe and knee buckles, a curious tobacco box, and two gold rings that the pirate Captain Phillips used to wear."

The Wisdom of Milliard Fillmore

2012-01-04T23:26:00.004-06:00

Every U.S. president leaves behind a body of quotes, a few of which ("Speak softly but carry a big stick") make it into the common heritage of English speakers everywhere.

Alas, none of President Fillmore's quotes fall into that category. Still, he had a few pithy things to say. The following are all attributed to him.

On the hell of being a pre-pension ex-president (a situation not dealt with until the Former Presidents Act of 1958):

"It is a national disgrace that our Presidents, after having occupied the highest position in the country, should be cast adrift, and, perhaps, be compelled to keep a corner grocery for subsistence."

On why he wasn't an abolitionist:

"God knows that I detest slavery, but it is an existing evil, for which we are not responsible, and we must endure it, till we can get rid of it without destroying the last hope of free government in the world."

A prescient thought indeed for the mid-19th century:

"England at present wields the destinies of the commercial world, and her power is concentrated in London; but if this country can maintain its union, there are those now within the hearing of my voice who will live to see New York what London is now."

Something to gladden the heart of Ron Paul:

"The government of the United States is a limited government. It is confined to the exercise of powers expressly granted, and such others as may be necessary for carrying those powers into effect; and it is at all times an especial duty to guard against any infringement on the just rights of the states."

On the 19th-century locusts known as office-seekers:

"Nothing brings out the lower traits of human nature like office-seeking. Men of good character and impulses are betrayed by it into all sorts of meanness."

In an antebellum moment of despair:

"May God save the country, for it is evident that the people will not."

Sure, I headed up the Know-Nothing Ticket in '56, but some of my best friends are foreigners:

"I have no hostility to foreigners. . . . Having witnessed their deplorable condition in the old country, God forbid I should add to their sufferings by refusing them an asylum in this."

Millard Fillmore Week

2012-01-03T21:31:00.004-06:00

First the basics, which every schoolchild should know.

Born on January 7, 1800, Millard Fillmore rose from modest circumstances to become the last Whig president of the United States on July 9, 1850, when his predecessor died. He himself died on March 8, 1874, reportedly after telling his doctor that "the nourishment is palatable."

His signature is on all the bills forming the Compromise of 1850; the bill that made California a state; an act creating the Washington Territory (essentially the future Washington state); the appointment of Brigham Young as the first governor of the Utah Territory; orders sending Commodore Matthew C. Perry to open Japan; and a message to Napoleon III telling him to back off on plans to annex Hawaii.

Fillmore amassed a library in the White House, having found the place practically empty of books, but he did not install the first bathtub in the executive mansion. His administration resolved major disputes with Peru and Portugal and other nations. He helped found the University of Buffalo and the Buffalo Historical Society.

As the head of the ticket for the American Party in 1856 (the Know-Nothings, unfortunately), former president Fillmore got 21.5 percent of the popular vote, a record for a third party at the time. The only third-party candidate to receive a higher share of the popular vote since then was Theodore Roosevelt, as the head Bull Moose (Progressives) in 1912, with 27.4 percent.

Dead Presidents: January

2012-01-02T19:11:00.002-06:00

January is comparatively rich in presidential birthdays and days of death. Leading the pack among chief magistrates born during the first month of the year is none other than Millard Fillmore, born in a log cabin in Cayuga County, New York very early in the year 1800.

Other U.S. presidents born in January were, in order, Richard Nixon (January 9, 1913), William McKinley (January 29, 1843), and Franklin Roosevelt (January 30, 1882). As for vice presidents, other than those who became presidents, the January birth list includes two living -- Walter Mondale and Dick Cheney -- and two dead, John C. Breckinridge and Charles Curtis.

A good number of presidents also checked out in January, beginning with Calvin Coolidge, who supposedly inspired Dorthy Parker to say, "How can they tell?" when informed of the former president's passing, which was on January 5, 1933. Theodore Roosevelt, Rutherford B. Hayes, John Tyler and Lyndon Johnson also joined the ranks of dead presidents in January.

And of course, January is an important month for the U.S. presidency because it includes the newfangled inauguration date, January 20, as specified by the 20th amendment to the Constitution, which was ratified in 1933. Since January 20, 1937, 12 presidents have taken the oath of office in January on 19 separate occasions.

Rutherford & Lucy Hayes Marry

2011-12-29T18:13:00.000-06:00

Dead Presidents Daily will be back after the first of the year. Much of the first week of January will be taken up with Millard Fillmore Week, to honor the 13th President of the United States, who has the first presidential birthday in the calendar (besides being the first president born in the 1800s).

The future 19th President of the United States and First Lady married in late 1852. This photo was taken on their wedding day, December 30.

Hayes was practicing law in Cincinnati at the time. Twenty-five years and a day later, on December 31, 1877, President and Mrs. Hayes celebrated their silver anniversary with a re-enactment of their vows at the White House, presided over by Rev. Dr. Lorenzo Dow McCabe of Ohio Wesleyan University, who had originally married them.

Woodrow Wilson's Birthday

2011-12-28T18:17:00.002-06:00

Today is the birthday of Thomas Woodrow Wilson, 28th President of the United States -- wartime leader, two-term president, internationalist, progressive, governor, academic administrator, Ph.D., racist, author, stroke victim, Noble Prize winner and more.

In Woodrow Wilson (1958), Arthur Walworth describes Wilson's coming into the world in antebellum Staunton, Virginia: "In the ground-floor chamber of the Wilson manse, near midnight on the third day after the Christmas of 1856, Jeanie Wilson gave to her Joseph his first son. They named him Thomas Woodrow, after his maternal grandfather.

"The baby was put into a well-fashioned crib and was cared for and fed by free Negroes who cooked in the cellar over an open fire, baked in a brick oven, and drew water from a well. Before the child was a month old, arctic winds swept down upon Staunton and drove snow through the cracks of less substantial houses. The town was cut off from the world for ten days.

"But in his snug home the infant was safe and warm, and grew larger and fatter than his sisters had been. In four months Jeanie Wilson was writing to her father that she had a baby whom everyone called 'beautiful,' and that he was 'just as good as he can be,' that Joseph's congregation was growing and there was 'no desirable thing' that God had not done for her."

By a curious coincidence, today is also the anniversary of the death of First Lady Edith Bolling Galt Wilson, the president's second wife and either "steward" of the presidency (her term) or conniving de facto president (critics' characterizations) during her husband's illness in late 1919 and early 1920.

Edith died at age 89 on what would have been Woodrow's 105th birthday in late 1961, having lived long enough at attend John Kennedy's inauguration.

Gerald Ford Dies

2011-12-27T22:26:00.002-06:00

Gerald R. Ford, 38th President of the United States, died five years ago. He lived longer than any other president, dying in late 2006 at 93 years, 165 days of age, of arteriosclerotic cerebrovascular disease and diffuse arteriosclerosis -- which is to say, old age.

But he almost died a young man's death in war, during his service as an officer on the USS Monterey (CVL-26), a light aircraft carrier on which he was director of physical training, a gunnery officer, and an assistant navigator. On December 18, 1944, Lt. Ford was deck officer during the midnight to 4 a.m. watch. A typhoon blasting through the Philippine Sea buffeted the ship -- a storm so intense that it sank three U.S. destroyers that were part of Adm. William Halsey's Third Fleet, as was the Monterey.

.
Exhausted, Ford went below decks after his watch, but didn't sleep long. "Waking, I thought I could smell smoke," Ford said in his 1979 memoir, A Time to Heal. "I went up the passageway and out to the catwalk on the starboard side which runs around the flight deck, where I started to climb the ladder. As I stepped on the flight deck, the ship suddenly rolled about 25 degrees. I lost my footing..."

John J. Kruzel, writing for the American Forces Press Service, continues the story: "The two-inch steel ridge around the edge of the carrier slowed him enough so he could roll and twist into the catwalk below the deck. As [Ford] later stated, 'I was lucky; I could have easily gone overboard.' "

The future president also risked his life that same day by leading the fire brigade that extinguished the fire that was ravaging the ship. "At the height of the storm, 100-knot winds and towering waves rocked the Monterey and several fighter planes tore loose from their cables and collided into one another," Kruzel says. "The collisions ignited aircraft gas tanks, and soon the hangar deck was ablaze. Because of a quirk in the Monterey's construction, flames were sucked into the air intakes leading to the lower decks, spreading the fire inside the ship.

“Into this furnace, Ford led his men, his first order of business to carry out the dead and injured. Hours later, he and his team emerged burned and exhausted, but they had put out the fire.”

Harry Truman Dies

2011-12-26T23:08:00.002-06:00

Two U.S. presidents died on the day after Christmas. The first was Harry Truman, who passed away in 1972. Exactly 34 years later, Gerald Ford died.

Today, Truman. Tomorrow, Ford. The following is an excerpt from President Truman's obituary in the New York Times by B. Drummond Ayers Jr.

"Mr. Truman's final illness was the eighth to put him in Research Hospital. The others involved four cases of intestinal infection, a broken rib, a hernia and appendicitis.

"The final period of illness began in late November as a case of minor lung congestion. Doctors initially treated him at home.

"But they ordered him hospitalized on Dec. 5 when the congestion grew worse and his heart, already weakened by a long struggle with hardening of the arteries, began to beat irregularly under the strain.

"At daybreak of the 18th day of his hospitalization, Mr. Truman went through was doctor's called a 'dangerous period' as his blood pressure dropped and his temperature rose.

"Mr. Truman's condition was changed from 'very serious' to 'critical' and his doctors and nurses began to monitor him almost constantly, particularly as his breathing became labored, his kidney output decreased, fluid built in his lungs and his heart began to flutter.

"On Christmas morning, the former President was so weak that that his doctors said that death could come 'within hours.'

"Today, it finally came.

"The room in which the former President died is on the sixth floor of Research Hospital, a 500-bed facility he helped dedicate in 1963. Two red and green Christmas bells hang in the window, which looks east toward Independence and the recently completed baseball and football stadium of the Harry S. Truman sports complex.

"The room cost $59.50 a day. In Mr. Truman's case it was paid for by private medical insurance and Medicare. Long an advocate of Federal Health plans, Mr. Truman held Medicare card number 1. He had not been able to push such a plan through during his own presidency, but Lyndon B. Johnson was more successful and came to Independence in 1965 to sign the Medicare Act in the Truman Library, enrolling the former President as the first member.

"It was a final political victory for Harry S. Truman."

A TR Christmas

2011-12-22T23:42:00.000-06:00

Merry Christmas from Dead Presidents Daily. Back again after Christmas Day.

"We had a delightful Christmas yesterday -- just such a Christmas thirty or forty years ago we used to have under Father's and Mother's supervision in 20th street and 57th street.

"At seven all the children came in to open the big, bulgy stockings in our bed; Kermit's terrier, Allan, a most friendly little dog, adding to the children's delight by occupying the middle of the bed. From Alice to Quentin, each child was absorbed in his or her stocking, and Edith certainly managed to get the most wonderful stocking toys. Bob was in looking on, and Aunt Emily, of course.

"Then, after breakfast, we all formed up and went into the library, where bigger toys were on separate tables for the children. I wonder whether there ever can come in life a thrill of greater exaltation and rapture than that which comes to one between the ages of say six and fourteen, when the library door is thrown open and you walk in to see all the gifts, like a materialized fairy land, arrayed on your special table?"

-- President Theodore Roosevelt, December 26, 1903, in a letter to his sister, Corinne Robinson. (The National Christmas Tree pictured, selected for being picturesque, is from another era: 1981, the first tree of the Reagan administration.)

Lincoln and the Dakota Uprising

2011-12-21T23:57:00.007-06:00

In the summer of 1862, President Lincoln had a great deal on his mind. The distant Minnesota frontier probably wasn't a high priority, considering everything else that was going on. Then in August the frontier along the Minnesota River exploded in a spasm of violence known as the Dakota War, or the Dakota Uprising, or the Sioux Uprising. Several bands of eastern Sioux, angered by Indian agent swindles and broken treaty promises, attacked settlers along the Minnesota River, killing as many as 800 before the U.S. army, along with Minnesota volunteers and allied Indians, crushed the uprising in the fall.

Unjust treatment of the Indians might have been a proximate cause of the fighting, but in The Dakota War: The United States Army Versus the Sioux, 1862-1865 (1998), Michael D. Clodfelter posits a more fundamental clash. "Central to the culture of the Plains tribes and ingrained in their history and philosophy was the warrior ethos," he writes. "Boundaries between tribes had rarely been negotiated without prior recourse to war. The introduction of white settlers to the Plains amounted to, in effect, a new tribe entering the arena of an ancient war. The white intruders, in turn, were used to a history of fighting for land.

The Siege of New Ulm, Minn., by Henry August Schwabe.

"The two cultures were ultimately irreconcilable. Even though there were individuals on both sides who argued for reason rather than violence, theirs were minority voices. Even if those had belonged to people in power, the individuality and democracy of both societies guaranteed that the young men of both cultures, reared on tales of glory of war, would ignore the concerns of their elders and seek their idea of justice in battle.

"Young braves were enraged as they witnessed their weary old chiefs sell their birthrights for beads and booze. Young officers and frontier commanders were infuriated by a government policy of sanctuary, whereby Indian marauders could return to government-protected reservations after they had tired of a season of raiding and scalping. The series of minor conflicts on the frontier in the 1850s was only a harbinger: a greater clash between the cultures was inevitable."

At the end of the fighting in 1862, more than 1,000 Indians were taken prisoner, and by early December, 303 Sioux were sentenced to death by military tribunals, mostly in swift trials that many of the defendants probably did not fully understand.

President Lincoln himself read the trial records. Minnesota Gov. Alexander Ramsey, among others, argued against clemency for the Indians; others, notably Bishop Henry Benjamin Whipple, the first Episcopal bishop of Minnesota, argued for clemency.

In the end, Lincoln authorized the execution of 39 Indians, and 38 of those (with one more reprieved) were duly hanged in public on December 26, 1862, at Mankato, Minnesota. It was the largest mass hanging in U.S. history.

Later, then-Sen. Ramsey told Lincoln that the Republican Party would have received more votes in 1864 had the president hanged more Indians in 1862. ""I could not afford to hang men for votes," Lincoln reportedly said.

The text of President Lincoln's letter authorizing the executions reads: "Ordered that of the Indians and Half-breeds sentenced to be hanged by the military commission, composed of Colonel Crooks, Lt. Colonel Marshall, Captain Grant, Captain Bailey, and Lieutenant Olin, and lately sitting in Minnesota, you cause to be executed on Friday the nineteenth day of December, instant, the following names, to wit [39 names listed by case number of record]. The other condemned prisoners you will hold subject to further orders, taking care that they neither escape, nor are subjected to any unlawful violence.

Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States."

Bomb the Bejesus Out of Them

2011-12-20T19:37:00.002-06:00

"They can't impeach me for bombing Cambodia. The president can bomb anybody he likes."

-- Richard M. Nixon in Nixon (1995)

In December 1972, the Nixon administration ordered a brief, exceeding violent bombing of North Vietnam, known to history as the "Christmas Bombing," but whose code name was "Operation Linebacker II." From December 18 to 29, with a day off for Christmas itself, the U.S. Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps flew 3,420 sorties and dropped nearly 16,000 tons of ordnance on North Vietnam.

Widely denounced at the time and later -- though it has some defenders -- the move stands as an example of war "as the continuation of politics by other means." The administration asserted that the bombing was to get the North Vietnamese back to the bargaining table in Paris, to conclude a peace deal. A less straightforward motive has also been suggested -- namely, that the bombing was a way to get the South Vietnamese government to go along with a settlement in Paris, by showing them that the U.S. government was still willing to fight on their behalf.

The December 14, 1972, meeting between President Nixon, U.S. National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger, and Al Haig, then deputy national security advisor, was captured on tape. In "Memoirs v. Tapes: President Nixon & the December Bombings," the Nixon Library describes the roundabout decision-making that occurred during that meeting, as documented by the tape recordings.

"When this round of talks finally broke down on December 13, both sides placed blame on each other," the library notes, referring to the Paris Peace Talks. "Although the talks were scheduled to resume in two weeks, the Nixon administration decided to reassess its entire approach. On December 14, in a meeting captured on tape, Kissinger and Haig discussed the next steps with the President....

"This presidential recording is our best evidence of how Kissinger persuaded President Nixon it was time to bomb. The President continued to believe the talks had reached an 'impasse,' whereas Kissinger was convinced the talks were finished without a change in the situation on the ground in Vietnam.

"Joined by Haig, Kissinger advocated 'bombing the bejesus out of them' and stated the U.S. needed to continue the bombing campaign for six months. Although less resistant than he had been earlier in the month to the idea of launching a new bombing campaign, President Nixon thought Kissinger unrealistic in thinking Congress would fund a six-month bombing assault on the North. President Nixon knew that a priority of the new Congress would be extricating the U.S. from Vietnam. Any bombing would have to be done before they came back into session.

"At no point during the conversation does the President say, 'OK, Henry, you are right. It's time to bomb.' But by the end of the 1 hour, 39 minute conversation, all three men are speaking of bombing as an inevitability."

Taft Pardons Van Schaick

2011-12-19T18:50:00.003-06:00

On December 19, 1912, President William Howard Taft, during the waning days of his administration, exercised his power to grant pardons by giving one to Capt. William H. Van Schaick. In the summer of 1904, Schaick was skipper of the General Slocum, an excursion paddlewheeler that caught fire in the East River off New York City. More than a thousand people died in the disaster, and the captain was eventually convicted of criminal negligence in the incident, which was New York's worst case of mass death until September 11, 2001.

When he received his pardon, Van Schaick had served three-and-a-half years of his 10-year sentence in Sing Sing, but had been paroled earlier in 1912. His wife and other supporters had been campaigning for clemency since his sentencing. President Roosevelt had declined to pardon Van Schaick, but President Taft decided otherwise. Naturally, the decision upset many others, especially relatives of those who died on the General Slocum and their sympathizers.

Yet the president was within his rights. Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution gives him broad pardoning powers: "The President ... shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment."

Jurist, which is maintained by the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, notes that there have been attempts to curtain that authority: "Shortly after President Gerald Ford’s controversial pardon of Richard Nixon in 1974, then-Senator Walter Mondale of Minnesota proposed an amendment to the Constitution that would have added the following sentence to the pardon clause: 'No pardon granted an individual by the President under section 2 of Article II shall be effective if Congress by resolution, two-thirds of the members of each House concurring therein, disapproves the granting of the pardon within 180 days of its issuance.'

"In 1993, a member of the House of Representatives introduced a Resolution proposing the following language: 'The President shall only have the power to grant a reprieve or a pardon for an offense against the United States to an individual who has been convicted of such an offense.'... In 2000, the proposed Crime Victims Rights Amendment provided that a victim of crime or violence had the right 'to reasonable notice of and an opportunity to submit a statement concerning any proposed pardon or commutation of a sentence.' "

None of these efforts went anywhere. President Obama has essentially the same pardoning power that President Washington did (who used it sparingly, however, pardoning only 16 people in his two terms).

The Site of Jackson's Law Practice Sold

2011-12-18T18:57:00.001-06:00

The Tennessean has reported that 333 Union St. in downtown Nashville has traded hands. The buyer, Nashville-area radio host Dave Ramsey, got the office property for $1.6 million, considerably less than its last sale price of $3.7 million in 2007, before the nationwide commercial real estate contraction. Ramsey hasn't disclosed his plans for the building yet.

In 1996, the Nashville Bar Association erected a marker on the building. It says, "Andrew Jackson settled in Nashville in 1788 and served as Atty. Gen. until 1796. Lawyer John Overton owned a building here (1791-96) and shared office space with his friend Jackson. Jackson was Tennessee's first Rep. to Congress (1796) and state Superior Court judge (1798-1804). He led U.S. troops to victory at the 1815 Battle of New Orleans and was elected President in 1828."

Old Hickory is well known for many things, such as dueling and leading men into battle and hanging miscreants and showing President Adams the door in 1828 and for the characteristic saying, "One man with courage makes a majority." He's less well known for his legal and legislative careers, as sketched above. Aside from Abraham Lincoln, Jackson probably counts as the nation's most famed country lawyer, who attains the position by reading law.

Letter to President Adams: "The Death of the Great and Good General Washington"

2011-12-15T18:56:00.001-06:00

JOHN ADAMS.

MOUNT VERNON, December 15, 1799.

The PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.

SIR: It is with inexpressible grief that I have to announce to you the death of the great and good General Washington. He died last evening between 10 and 11 o'clock, after a short illness of about twenty hours. His disorder was an inflamatory sore throat, which proceeded from a cold of which he made but little complaint on Friday. On Saturday morning about 3 o'clock he became ill.

Dr. Craik attended him in the morning, and Dr. Dick, of Alexandria, and Dr. Brown, of Port Tobacco, were soon after called in. Every medical assistance was offered, but without the desired effect. His last scene corresponded with the whole tenor of his life; not a groan nor a complaint escaped him in extreme distress. With perfect resignation and in full possession of his reason, he closed his well-spent life.

I have the honor to be, with the highest respect, sir, your most obedient and very humble servant,

TOBIAS LEAR.

Lear (1762-1816), pictured above, was Washington's personal secretary at the time of the former president's death.

George Washington Dies

2011-12-14T19:15:00.001-06:00

RIP, George Washington, First President of the United States, 1789-1797.

February 22, 1732 (N.S.) - December 14, 1799

Presidential Coin Production Slashed

2011-12-13T21:30:00.000-06:00

In a cost-cutting move, the Treasury Department has directed the U.S. Mint to stop producing presidential coins for circulation, beginning immediately. Going forward, instead of producing 70 million to 80 million coins per president, the mint will now only produce as many as collectors want, which will be sold at a profit to the federal government.

The last president to have circulating dollar coins, then, will be James Garfield, whose coin was released last month. There are 18 more presidents scheduled for the series, with the next four presidents slated for 2012 -- Arthur, Cleveland, Benjamin Harrison and McKinley.

The coins are victim the longstanding popular resistance to using dollar coins instead of the iconic dollar bill. The Federal Reserve estimates that it has roughly 1.4 billion presidential coins in storage, since demand for them has been been so meager.

There's an upside for collectors, however. The dollar coins from Washington to Garfield aren't particularly valuable, since there are so many of them. A steep drop in mintage will likely make the rest of the series more valuable in the long run.

A Worried Washington

2011-12-12T19:04:00.003-06:00

On the occasion of John Jay's birthday (born 1745), the following are excepts from a letter from George Washington to Jay (pictured). Jay was a confidant of Washington's, so much so that he offered Jay the position of Secretary of State in 1789 in the newly forming government under the Constitution. Jay declined that post, which went to Thomas Jefferson. Instead, Washington appointed Jay to be the first Chief Justice of the United States, a position he held for nearly six years, though had he held on to it as a lifetime post, he would have been on the bench until 1829 -- John Marshall would have had to find something else to do.

Before all that, in 1786, a worried Washington wrote to Jay: "Your sentiments, that our affairs are drawing rapidly to a crisis, accord with my own. What the event will be is also beyond the reach of my foresight. We have errors to correct. We have probably had too good an opinion of human nature in forming our confederation... I do not conceive we can exist long as a nation, without having lodged somewhere a power which will pervade the whole Union in as energetic a manner, as the authority of the different state governments extends over the several States.

"Many are of opinion that Congress have too frequently made use of the suppliant humble tone of requisition, in applications to the States, when they had a right to assume their imperial dignity and command obedience. Be that as it may, requisitions are a perfect nihility, where thirteen sovereign, independent[,] disunited States are in the habit of discussing & refusing compliance with them at their option. Requisitions are actually little better than a jest and a bye word through out the Land.

"What astonishing changes a few years are capable of producing! I am told that even respectable characters speak of a monarchical form of government without horror. From thinking proceeds speaking, thence to acting is often but a single step. But how irrevocable & tremendous! What a triumph for the advocates of despotism to find that we are incapable of governing ourselves, and that systems founded on the basis of equal liberty are merely ideal & falacious!"

The entire letter is here.

Brooklyn Statue of Lincoln to be Relocated

2011-12-11T23:01:00.002-06:00

The Wall Street Journal has reported on a plan to move a statue of Abraham Lincoln now standing in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, to Grand Army Plaza, the borough's monument to the Union war victory. Actually, move the statue back to the plaza, after it was removed in the 1890s.

"It should be noted that it isn't easy for a statue to find a place to park in Brooklyn, and this one of Lincoln has been circling the block since 1869," writes Barry Newman. "That's when it was put up in the plaza — the first time — by Calvert Vaux and his partner Frederick Law Olmsted, the Lincoln partisan and landscaper of Prospect Park. It was the nation's very first monument to Lincoln, 20 feet tall and paid for by donations of $1 apiece from 13,000 Brooklynites. Olmsted placed it on the commanding northern edge of his plaza's ellipse."

But later, "a grandiose triumphal arch went up in the plaza in 1892, trolley tracks were laid. 'The boys,' said the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, began making Lincoln 'a target for every kind of missile.' The dour president was out of place. In 1895, he was hauled to a Prospect Park lakeside..."

With the current renovation of Prospect Park to its original Olmsted design, moving the Lincoln statue back to its original location seems like the thing to do. But it would mean dislocating a statue of pioneering gynecologist Dr. Alexander Skene at the site, and not everyone is happy about that.

The article continues: "Tony Horwitz, whose new book, Midnight Rising, carves a warts-and-all Lincoln figure, puts it like this: 'He's on the penny, he's on the Mall. Enough Lincoln, already. It's time gynecologists get their due.' "

"The American People in Their Righteous Might Will Win Through to Absolute Victory"

2011-12-08T19:00:00.002-06:00

The Colin Kelly Letter

2011-12-07T19:37:00.001-06:00

In a letter dated December 7, 1941 -- symbolically, since it was written a little later -- President Roosevelt made a poignant request.

To the President of the United States in 1956:

I am writing this letter as an act of faith in the destiny of our country. I desire to make a request which I make in full confidence that we shall achieve a glorious victory in the war we now are waging to preserve our democratic way of life.

My request is that you consider the merits of a young American youth of goodly heritage — Colin P. Kelly, III — for appointment as a Cadet in the United States Military Academy at West Point. I make this appeal in behalf of this youth as a token of the Nation's appreciation of the heroic services of his father, who met death in line of duty at the very outset of the struggle which was thrust upon us by the perfidy of a professed friend.

In the conviction that the service and example of Captain Colin P. Kelly, Jr., will be long remembered, I ask for this consideration in behalf of Colin P. Kelly, III.

Capt. Colin P. Kelly Jr. (pictured, in a painting by Deane Keller), a U.S. Army Air Corps bomber pilot, died on December 10, 1941, in action against the Japanese in the Philippines, saving the crew of his B-17 at the cost of his own life. Kelly was posthumously awarded the Distinguished Service Cross.

His very young son, on whose behalf President Roosevelt wrote to his unknown successor, did indeed attend West Point, with President Eisenhower appointing Colin P. Kelly III to the academy in 1959. He graduated in 1963 and served in the military, but his life's work is as an Episcopal priest.

The Twilight of the Lincoln Penny?

2011-12-06T18:23:00.001-06:00

One C.G.P. Grey, who posts educational videos on YouTube, has it in for the Lincoln cent, a coin minted by the United States since 1909, though the history of the U.S. one-cent piece goes back to the founding of the Republic.

"The U.S. sure has Lincolnified the penny within an inch of its life," he says at the end of the video. [But] sooner or later, even the most ardent Lincoln-lovers will have to give up the penny. They cost more than they're worth, they waste people's time, they don't work as money, and because of inflation, they're less valuable every year, making all the other problems worse. Sorry, Abe, but it's time to kill the penny."

Polk: There's Gold in California. And Much More

2011-12-05T18:52:00.003-06:00

On December 5, 1848, President Polk transmitted his fourth and final Annual Message to Congress ("State of the Union" wasn't the term until Franklin Roosevelt's time). As was the custom during the 19th century, Polk sent a written message to Congress, rather than making a speech. Wilson revived the annual speech-making custom, which had lapsed in Jefferson's time.

In Polk's message, he confirmed some common knowledge about gold in California. "It was known that mines of the precious metals existed to a considerable extent in California at the time of its acquisition," the president noted. "Recent discoveries render it probable that these mines are more extensive and valuable than was anticipated. The accounts of the abundance of gold in that territory are of such an extraordinary character as would scarcely command belief were they not corroborated by the authentic reports of officers in the public service who have visited the mineral district and derived the facts which they detail from personal observation.

"Reluctant to credit the reports in general circulation as to the quantity of gold, the officer commanding our forces in California visited the mineral district in July last for the purpose of obtaining accurate information on the subject. His report to the War Department of the result of his examination and the facts obtained on the spot is herewith laid before Congress."

Not just a gold strike, in other words, but a lot of gold. Gold that would inspire an historic gold rush, and figure no small part in the development of California as a part of the United States, and indeed of the whole country.

But Polk knew that the value of California to the United States was much greater than any gold that might be extracted. He spoke with uncanny foresight, considering that in our time, California has, despite recent setbacks, the seventh- or eighth-largest economy in the world, counted as a separate entity -- larger than Brazil and almost as large as Italy.

"Upper California, irrespective of the vast mineral wealth recently developed there, holds at this day, in point of value and importance, to the rest of the Union the same relation that Louisiana did when that fine territory was acquired from France forty-five years ago," Polk emphasized. "Extending nearly ten degrees of latitude along the Pacific, and embracing the only safe and commodious harbors on that coast for many hundred miles, with a temperate climate and an extensive interior of fertile lands, it is scarcely possible to estimate its wealth until it shall be brought under the government of our laws and its resources fully developed.

"From its position it must command the rich commerce of China, of Asia, of the islands of the Pacific, of western Mexico, of Central America, the South American States, and of the Russian possessions bordering on that ocean. A great emporium will doubtless speedily arise on the Californian coast which may be destined to rival in importance New Orleans itself."

The Senate Shows Breckinridge the Door

2011-12-04T19:19:00.000-06:00

The U.S. Senate expelled former Vice President and southern Democratic nominee for president John C. Breckinridge in early December 1861. He had been a Senator from the commonwealth only since March 4 of the same year, following the expiration of his single term as President Buchanan's VP.

From the Journal of the Senate 2nd Session, 37th Congress:

Wednesday, December 4, 1861

Mr. Chandler submitted the following resolution for consideration:

"Resolved, That John C. Breckinridge be, and he hereby is, expelled from the Senate."

The Senate proceeded, by unanimous consent, to consider the resolution; and the same having been amended, on the motion of Mr. Trumbull, to read as follows:

"Whereas John C. Breckinridge, a member of this body from the State of Kentucky, has joined the enemies of his country, and is now in arms against the Government he had sworn to support: Therefore,

"Resolved, That John C. Breckinridge, the traitor, be, and he hereby is, expelled from the Senate."

Breckinridge wasn't around for his expulsion. Fearing arrest, he had already skedaddled behind Confederate lines. "I exchange with proud satisfaction a term of six years in the United States Senate for the musket of a soldier,” he wrote.

He became an important general in the service of the CSA, seeing action at Shiloh, Stones River, New Market and Cold Harbor, among other places. In the last months of the war, he was the final Confederate Secretary of War. After the war he spent a few years in exile, but returned the Kentucky after President Johnson's unconditional Christmas Day amnesty in 1868, resuming his legal work and becoming a railroad executive. He died in 1875 at a relatively young 54.

More on Breckinridge's decision to go south is at Disunion, the New York Times blog about the Civil War, 150 years after it happened.

Dead Presidents: December

2011-12-01T21:48:00.000-06:00

Three U.S. presidents were born in December: Van Buren (1782), Andrew Johnson (1808) and Wilson (1856). Three presidents also died in December: Washington (1799), Truman (1972) and Ford (2006).

Van Buren was born just before the United States won its independence in 1783, but he doesn't have the distinction of being the last president born before independence to hold the office. One-monther William Henry Harrison, who succeeded Van Buren, was considerably older, having been born not only before American independence was won, but even before it was declared (he was born in 1773).

Woodrow Wilson was the last president born before the Civil War to hold the office. His successor, Warren Harding, was the first one born after that war -- just barely, in November 1865.

George Washington was the first president born, the first to hold the office, and the first to die. Moreover, he was the only president whose entire live span fell within the 18th century.

Only two men who have been Vice President of the United States were born in December: Martin Van Buren and Andrew Johnson. No vice president who hasn't also been president has ever been born in December.

Twain Didn't Care for TR

2011-11-30T23:38:00.003-06:00

Mark Twain had opinions about many things, including some of the presidents of his time. On the occasion of Twain's birthday, the following are items he wrote toward the end of his life, expressing himself on former President Cleveland and President Theodore Roosevelt, as well as President-elect Taft.

On Grover Cleveland: In a letter to Jean Clemens, June 19, 1908.

Of all our public men of today he stands first in my reverence & admiration, & the next one stands two-hundred-&-twenty-fifth. He is the only statesman we have now. ... Cleveland drunk is a more valuable asset to this country than the whole batch of the rest of our public men sober. He is high-minded; all his impulses are great & pure & fine. I wish we had another of this sort.

On Theodore Roosevelt: In a letter written March 6, 1908, and reprinted in the New York Times in 1912, after Twain's death.

Our people have adored this showy charlatan as perhaps no impostor of his brood has been adored since the Golden Calf, so it is to be expected that the Nation will want him back again after he is done hunting other wild animals heroically in Africa, with the safeguard and advertising equipment of a park of artillery and a brass band.

On William Howard Taft: In a letter dated March 2, 1909, two days before Taft was inaugurated. It too was reprinted in the New York Times in 1912.

You can't help but like Mr. Taft. The country likes him and respects him; and I want him to make the best people in the country continue to respect him and every now and then dislike him -- sure proof, in a public servant, that he is doing his whole duty, as he sees it, regardless of personal consequences. He has the natural gifts, the culture, the experience, the training, the sanity, the right-mindedness, the honesty, the truthfulness, the modesty, and the dignity properly requisite in a President of the United States, the most responsible post on the planet. In a word, he possesses every qualification the other one [Theodore Roosevelt] was destitute of.

Reagan Shooter Wants More Freedom

2011-11-29T21:27:00.000-06:00

The Associated Press has reported that would-be presidential assassin John "I Love You Jodie" Hinckley, who shot President Ronald Reagan and three other people more than 30 years ago, is seeking to spend more time away from a Washington, DC, mental hospital "with the goal of eventually allowing him to live outside the facility full-time."

Hinckley is already allowed to visit his mother's home in Virginia. His lawyers have asked Judge Paul L. Friedman to allow longer visits of 17 and 24 days duration. Unsurprisingly, the government opposes the plan, calling Hinckley, now 56, not "sufficiently well to alleviate the concern that this violence may be repeated."

The assassination attempt was a nearer thing than was generally understood at the time. In 2001, Larry King interviewed Dr. Joseph Giordano, head of the trauma team that treated Reagan on March 30, 1981, after the president had been hit by one of Hinckley's bullets ricocheting off the side of the presidential limousine.

King: Dr. Giordano, how close to death was President Reagan?

Giordano: He had a very serious injury, Larry, and I think he was close to death. I think that the fact that he came immediately to George Washington [Hospital] and that there was a trauma team there that were quickly able to resuscitate him, saved the day.

He came in with a blood pressure that was barely obtainable, and he left a half-hour later from the emergency room with a blood pressure that was that essentially normal. In fact, it was above normal. So, that period of time was critical, and I think that happily, it worked out very well.

Nazi Plot to Kill the Big Three?

2011-11-28T19:15:00.002-06:00

Was there a Nazi plot to assassinate FDR, Churchill and Stalin at their meeting in Tehran during the last days of November 1943? Maybe.

The three Allied leaders met at the Soviet Embassy, which was across the street from the British Embassy. FDR was staying at the Soviet Embassy to avoid the necessity of being driven to the site each day from the American Embassy, more than a mile away, possibly exposing himself to attack. The story is that Hitler assigned Otto Skorzeny, the SS officer best known for freeing Mussolini from captivity in July 1943, to lead an effort to kill the Big Three during their meeting. Before any attempt was made, however, the Soviets got wind of it, and the plot was called off.

In the mid-1960s, Laslo Havas, a Hungarian, published a book about the supposed plot, Hitler's Plot to Kill the Big Three. Much of the information available about the plot, code-named Operation Long Jump, seems to come from that book and Russian sources.

Gary Kern, writing for the CIA's Studies in Intelligence, vol. 47, No. 1, 2003, is skeptical about the whole thing, and posits that Stalin and his men concocted the tale, which was later embellished by the KBG to glorify the skill of Soviet intelligence, which was credited with thwarting the plot. "... the NKVD retained the story of the plot and, twenty years later during a publicity campaign, its successor, the KGB, began to promote it in the press," Kern wrote.

"In its new guise, the purported plot against FDR acquired a wealth of details and a sterling cast of characters, most notably SS Capt. Otto Skorzeny, one of the legendary figures of World War II. In the literature generated by the KGB, Skorzeny was the man designated by Hitler to lead the attack on the Big Three in Tehran and, in one stroke, turn the war around. But — the story went — the Nazis did not count on NKVD ace Nikolai Kuznetsov, who, posing as a Wehrmacht lieutenant in occupied Ukraine, befriended a hard-drinking and talkative SS officer named von Ortel, who blurted out revealing tidbits of the plan... As might be expected, Skorzeny’s memoirs mention no such plan and the various Soviet accounts differ among themselves in names, places, and other specifics.

"In fact, a Georgian defector who claims to have heard the inside story from sources close to Stalin and Beria (both Georgians), debunks the idea of a Nazi plot. In order to impress Roosevelt and impose a feeling of indebtedness on him, writes Yuri Krotkov (a pseudonym), Stalin conceived a bogus assassination attempt and ordered Beria to set it up, with the provision that 'assassins' should actually be arrested..."

"Although the evidence remains insubstantial, it is not altogether impossible that the Nazis did plan an attack on the Allied leaders, perhaps even at the Tehran conference and even with only a week to prepare. It is completely impossible, however, that such a Nazi plan could have been the one that Stalin warned FDR about. If Stalin thought that Otto Skorzeny, who had whisked Mussolini off a mountain top as if he were a feather, were planning to assassinate him, or to try any action in Tehran, he would have postponed the conference and left. He would not have remained in the city even if the story that his own men were spreading were true, that a half-dozen assassins possibly capable of shelling the Soviet Embassy were in the vicinity. He was not a man to take such a risk."

Kern's entire article, "How 'Uncle Joe' Bugged FDR" is here, covering a lot more ground than Operation Long Jump.

TR's 1901 Thanksgiving Proclamation

2011-11-27T21:25:00.004-06:00

The Thanksgiving proclamations of George Washington (November 26, 1789) and Abraham Lincoln (November 26, 1863) are usually noted in any serious discussion of the American holiday, as well they should be. But every president since Lincoln has issued annual Thanksgiving Day proclamations, both before and after the 1941 law fixing the day as a federal holiday.

Theodore Roosevelt had a particularly delicate task in 1901, proclaiming a day of thanksgiving despite the recent violent murder of the popular William McKinley. This is how he handled it in a proclamation dated November 2, 1901:

"This Thanksgiving finds the people still bowed with sorrow for the death of a great and good President. We mourn President McKinley because we so loved and honored him; and the manner of his death should awaken in the breasts of our people a keen anxiety for the country, and at the same time a resolute purpose not to be driven by any calamity from the path of strong, orderly, popular liberty which as a nation we have thus far safely trod.

"Yet in spite of this great disaster, it is nevertheless true that no people on earth have such abundant cause for thanksgiving as we have. The past year in particular has been one of peace and plenty. We have prospered in things material and have been able to work for our own uplifting in things intellectual and spiritual. Let us remember that, as much has been given us, much will be expected from us; and that true homage comes from the heart as well as from the lips and shows itself in deeds. We can best prove our thankfulness to the Almighty by the way in which on this earth and at this time each of us does his duty to his fellow men.

"Now, Therefore, I, Theodore Roosevelt, President of the United States, do hereby designate as a day of general thanksgiving Thursday, the 28th of this present November, and do recommend that throughout the land the people cease from their wonted occupations, and at their several homes and places of worship reverently thank the Giver of all good for the countless blessings of our national life."

As it happened, more than 60 years later the last presidential proclamation issued by John Kennedy was his 1963 Thanksgiving proclamation, dated November 5, for a holiday that took place six days after his death.

Franksgiving

2011-11-23T20:12:00.006-06:00

Regards for Thanksgiving. Dead Presidents Daily will return on Sunday.

For a few years during the late 1930s and early '40s, Americans had the choice of celebrating Thanksgiving on either the third Thursday or the last Thursday of November, but it wasn't a choice that they particularly wanted. Rather, it was the result of a misstep by the Roosevelt administration.

"In 1939, FDR decided to move Thanksgiving Day forward by a week," wrote Melanie Kirkpatrick in the November 24, 2009, edition of the Wall Street Journal. "Rather than take place on its traditional date, the last Thursday of November, he decreed that the annual holiday would instead be celebrated a week earlier."

The last Thursday of November happened to be the 30th in 1939, and Secretary of Commerce Harry Hopkins had advised the president that the switch to the 23rd would add a week to the Christmas shopping season, presumably boosting sales. The announcement was made in August and it didn't sit well at all, despite FDR's reasoning that Thanksgiving had only been the last Thursday in November since the time of the Lincoln administration, not even 80 years earlier. Moreover, Congress had never designated the day -- successive presidents always had.

"Public sentiment ran heavily against Roosevelt's plan," continued Kirkpatrick "Ten days after the president's announcement, Gallup published the results of a national poll finding that 62 percent of Americans surveyed disapproved of the date change. By the time November arrived, the 48 states were nearly evenly divided. Twenty-three decided to stick with the old Thanksgiving, and 22 decided to adopt FDR's date. Texas, Mississippi and Colorado said they would celebrate on both days.

"It wasn't long before people started referring to Nov. 30 as the "Republican Thanksgiving" and Nov. 23 as the 'Democratic Thanksgiving' or 'Franksgiving.' "

This state of affairs persisted until 1941. By then, the government had reported that most retailers didn't see increased sales from the longer holiday shopping season, and the president acknowledged that the "experiment" with the earlier Thanksgiving hadn't worked. Beginning in 1942, he said, Thanksgiving would revert to the customary last Thursday of November.

Curiously, the fracas had a permanent impact on the date of Thanksgiving in the United States. After FDR relented, Congress took up the matter and in a joint resolution passed by both houses that the president signed on December 26, 1941, the holiday was fixed as the fourth Thursday of November, not the last one. Often these are one in the same, but not every year. This year, for example, they are the same, but in 2013 there will be a fifth Thursday in November, the 29th. It will not be Thanksgiving.

For a few years after 1942, some states clung to the last Thursday, but since the mid-50s, the fourth Thursday has been the universally accepted date for Thanksgiving in the United States, and it's unlikely any president will ever be able to, or would even want to change that.

The Kennedy Assassination, As Told on TV

2011-11-22T23:15:00.005-06:00

November 22 is one of the four presidential assassination anniversaries -- the others are April 14, July 2 and September 6 -- and the only one still in living memory, as it will be for a few more decades. That day in 1963 was also the only time that a president was shot and killed on the same day; Lincoln died the next day, while Garfield and McKinley lingered considerably longer.

Word of Lincoln, Garfield and even McKinley's assassination traveled by telegraph, and from there into print, but by the time Kennedy died, new media had arisen to spread the awful news.

CBS coverage.

NBC coverage.

ABC coverage.

The Bixby Letter

2011-11-21T18:44:00.000-06:00

This is the text of the famed "Bixby Letter," sent to one Lydia Bixby of Boston:

Executive Mansion,
Washington, Nov. 21, 1864.

Dear Madam,

I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle.

I feel how weak and fruitless must be any word of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save.

I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.

Yours, very sincerely and respectfully,

A. Lincoln

It's the best of Victorian sentiment without an excess of verbal ornamentation that era was also known for, and has been acclaimed as a Lincoln masterpiece. But did he or his secretary John Hay (pictured) actually write it? This argument as been going on for some years, and each side has its partisans. There's no dispute that such a letter was sent from the White House to a Mrs. Bixby, but the writing itself could plausibly be the work of either Lincoln or Hay.

Another thing: It's fairly clear that Mrs. Bixby did not, in fact, lose five sons, but two of five. A sad loss, certainly, but not quite the decimation described in the letter.

As Lincoln scholar Michael Burlingame put it in the Spring 1999 volume of the Abraham Lincoln Association newsletter: "Although extravagant praise has been lavished on this document, it is surrounded by ironies. Mrs. Bixby was deemed 'the best specimen of a true-hearted Union' ever seen, yet she was in fact a Confederate sympathizer who ran a whorehouse. In addition, Mrs. Bixby lied about her sons; despite her claim that five of them had been killed, she had really lost only two boys in the war."

In Unsolved History: Investigating Mysteries of the Past, author Joe Nickell is a little more sympathetic to Mrs. Bixby, whom he describes as a "nurse" and "widow," though he agrees that only two Bixby sons died for the Union (and two others deserted to the Confederacy). But Nickell says it isn't clear who gave Lincoln the erroneous information, Adjutant-General William Schouler, Bixby or someone else.

Vice President Dawes on the Vice Presidency

2011-11-20T22:55:00.003-06:00

Happy birthday to Joe Biden (Joseph Robinette Biden Jr.), 47th Vice President of the United States, and current holder of that not-always-well regarded office. He turns 69.

Back in 1935, former Vice President Charles G. Dawes published a book called Notes as Vice President, 1928-29, which was essentially a version of a diary he kept during the last year of his term. In as much as Dawes' vice presidency is remembered now, his rocky relationship with President Coolidge is usually mentioned. At one low point, the vice president missed being in the Senate to cast a tie-breaking vote in the administration's favor, infuriating the president.

In any case, Dawes puts the best face on the vice presidency in the first few paragraphs of the book. "My experiences in this office I have found far from uninteresting and unimportant," he wrote. "The superficial attitude of indifference which many public men assume toward the office of Vice President of the United States is easily explained. It is the office for which one cannot hope to be a candidate with sufficient prospects for success to justify the effort involved in a long campaign...

"The office is largely what the man it in makes it -- which applies to all public offices... For his prestige as a presiding officer, it is to his advantage that he neither votes nor speaks in the Senate Chamber. Outside the Senate Chamber, his position as Vice President gives him a hearing by the general public as wide as any Senator, other things being equal. If he lacks initiative, courage, or ideas, he of course will be submerged; but that is true also of a Senator or any other parliamentary member."

Presidential Relics

2011-11-17T19:32:00.001-06:00

They might be dead, but that doesn't keep dead presidents from making money -- for purveyors of their relics, that is. On December 1, Dallas-based Heritage Auctions will be selling five architectural drawing tools once belonging to Thomas Jefferson, which the company says are expected to fetch $45,000 or more.

The pieces have been consigned by descendants of James Monroe. “The Monroe and Jefferson families were closely intertwined in Virginia society and politics, and the Monroes became the custodians of various items originally owned by Thomas Jefferson,” notes Tom Slater, director of historical auctions at Heritage, in a statement. “A number went to Monticello and other Virginia museums, but this choice grouping remained in private hands, which has afforded us this amazing opportunity to bring it to auction.”

Besides the Jefferson items, also for sale at the same time are the last rocking chair John F. Kennedy was known to have sat in; a pair of glass decanters owned by George Washington; a portrait cameo brooch of Zachary Taylor, owned by Taylor and consigned by a direct descendant; James Monroe's own ceramic meat platter in the "Landing of Lafayette" pattern, commemorating Lafayette's triumphal visit to America in 1824, while Monroe was president; and several china pieces belonging to Mary Todd Lincoln, which she sold to pay off debt after her husband's death.

Separately, the Raab Collection, a historic documents dealer in Philadelphia, is selling a reel-to-reel tape made aboard Air Force One the day John Kennedy was assassinated, which it says is more than 30 minutes longer than a version at the National Archives. The Raab Collection bought the tape from the estate of Army Gen. Chester "Ted" Clifton Jr., who served as the senior military aide to Kennedy, and now wants to sell it for $500,000.

Attacks on the White House

2011-11-16T20:29:00.002-06:00

The Secret Service has arrested a man in connection with shots fired at the White House a few days ago. In this case, two bullets hit the executive mansion. But it was by no means the first time the residence of the president has been attacked.

The most famous -- and damaging -- attack was of course when a British force swept into town in 1814 and set fire to the recently completed presidential residence, among other public buildings. But there have been other, less destructive attacks during the two centuries since then.

In August 1841, President Tyler vetoed a bill to re-establish the Bank of the United States, inspiring a Whig riot outside the White House. The Whigs, ostensibly Tyler's own party, felt betrayed and, according to History.com, "The rioters hurled stones at the White House, shot guns into the air and hung an effigy of the president that they then set on fire. The protest is considered one of, if not the most violent demonstration held near the White House. As a result of the unrest, the District of Columbia decided to create its own police force."

In two separate incidents in 1974, a U.S. Army private in a stolen helicopter landed on the White House grounds (and was arrested) and a man crashed his car through one of the White House gates, holding off police for a few hours by claiming to have explosives strapped to his body (he too was then arrested).

In 1984, a man waved a samurai sword outside the White House grounds, another one brandished a shotgun on the sidewalk outside the property -- and was shot to death for his trouble -- and yet another climbed the fence surrounding the property.

In 1994 -- for some reason -- all kinds of violence broke loose near the executive mansion: one Frank E. Corder stole a Cessna and crashed it on the White House lawn in an apparent suicide; Francisco M. Duran let loose rounds from a semiautomatic weapon, putting 11 holes in the White House facade; and four shots were fired at the rear of the building by an unknown shooter.

But that's not all. Though not attacks, strictly speaking, over the years other people have tried to sneak past the Secret Service guards and wander around the grounds, and crash official functions. The White House is a popular place.

Nixon and Hiss

2011-11-15T19:25:00.000-06:00

Alger Hiss died 15 years ago today at the age of 92. The question of whether Hiss spied for the Soviet Union is beyond the purview of Dead Presidents Daily -- for that, readers can look to the long shelf of books on the subject, sprawling web sites, countless articles, documentaries and other materials.

There is no dispute that the case allowed a previously obscure California Congressman, Richard Nixon, to make a name for himself by nailing Hiss -- if not for espionage, at least in the court of public opinion in the late 1940s. (Hiss ultimately went to prison for lying to Congress, not spying.)

As American Experience put it: "Hiss denied that he had ever met Chambers [a Communist who accused Hiss of being a spy]. Nixon, however, suspected otherwise. He dissuaded other members [of the House Committee on Un-American Activities] from dropping the case. Then, by questioning Chambers about Hiss's personal life, he determined that the two men must have met before.

"On August 17, 1948, Nixon brought Hiss to the witness stand. Under a stinging cross-examination, Hiss admitted that he had known Chambers, albeit under the name George Crosely. Hiss continued to deny being a spy. In November, Chambers suddenly produced copies of State Department documents typed on Hiss' typewriter. Hiss was indicted for perjury and subsequently sentenced to five years in prison. Nixon, who shared the media limelight with Chambers, became an instant celebrity..."

Documents from Lincoln's Illinois Militia Service Discovered

2011-11-14T22:53:00.001-06:00

The Illinois National Guard reports that "previously unknown Black Hawk War documents written and signed by Capt. Abraham Lincoln while on duty in 1832, and an affidavit signed by Lincoln in 1855, have recently been discovered at the National Archives in Washington, D.C., and their authenticity confirmed by researchers at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Ill."

Lincoln is one of 19 presidents to serve in a state national guard (or as it would have been called in his time, state militia). Lincoln enrolled in 1832 on the occasion of a number of clashes known to history as the Black Hawk War. He was elected captain in the 31st Regiment of Militia of Sangamon County, 1st Division and in command of the 4th Regiment of Mounted Volunteers, a rifle company. Lincoln and his men saw no combat, though they arrived at the site of the Battle of Stillman's Run in present-day Ogle County, Illinois, not long after that battle, and helped bury the dead.

Later, Lincoln (as his wont) joked about this time in the militia: "I had a good many bloody struggles with the mosquitoes, and although I never fainted from the loss of blood."

The Illinois National Guard explains that "private researcher Anne Musella recently brought a previously discovered Certificate of Discharge signed by Lincoln to the attention of Papers of Abraham Lincoln staff who are working at the National Archives Building in downtown Washington. That led Assistant Editor David Gerleman to delve further in the Bounty Land Warrant files at the National Archives, where he found two more Certificates of Discharge written and signed by Lincoln.

"Together with other documents previously discovered, it appears that Lincoln, like other officers, filled out and signed dozens of these Certificates of Discharge. Given to soldiers as they mustered out to return home, the veterans later submitted these documents as proof of service when they claimed the bounty lands allotted to them by Congress. The certificates located at the National Archives more than double the number of surviving discharge certificates written and signed by Captain Abraham Lincoln, and likely others still await discovery."

Item Stolen From Lincoln's Tomb

2011-11-13T23:25:00.003-06:00

Thieves have desecrated the tomb of Abraham Lincoln, according to a report by the Springfield Journal-Register over the weekend.

"Not even Lincoln’s Tomb is immune to the spree of copper thefts that have hit the Springfield area," wrote Jason Nevel. "A copper sword brandished by a statue of a Civil War artillery officer atop the tomb was stolen sometime between September and early November."

It was the first time in more than 100 years that anything had been stolen from the site, according to the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency. In fact, in 1910 the same sword was stolen, though that would have been a bronze item, rather than a copper one.

Back in 1870s, a impromptu gang of criminals plotted not merely to steal an item from Lincoln's grave site (the fancy monument hadn't been built yet), but to steal the body itself and hold it for ransom. They failed, but ultimately the fear of a repeat attempt inspired Robert Todd Lincoln, the president's only surviving son, to have the body reburied in a steel cage under several tons of concrete in 1901.

Eisenhower Dedicates the Marine Corps Memorial

2011-11-10T19:16:00.000-06:00

On November 10, 1954, President Eisenhower dedicated of the Marine Corps Memorial near Arlington National Cemetery, depicting the iconic photo of the February 23, 1945 flag-raising on Iwo Jima, is dedicated to all U.S. Marines who have given their lives for their country.

"Erection of the memorial, designed by Horace W. Peaslee, began in September 1954," says Military.com. "On the 179th Birthday of the Marine Corps, President Dwight D. Eisenhower dedicated the statue before a large crowd assembled at the site bordering the northern end of Arlington National Cemetery. Those attending the dedication included members of 'The President's Own' United States Marine Band; Vice President Richard M. Nixon; the Commandant of the Marine Corps, General Lemuel C. Shepherd Jr.; Felix de Weldon; Joe Rosenthal; military personnel; Marine veterans; and friends of the Corps. "

A non-sound film of some of the proceedings that day is here.

The inscription on the based reads: "In honor and in memory of men of the United States Marine Corps who have given their lives to their country since November 10, 1775." On the opposite side this is: "Uncommon Valor was a Common Virtue," which is what Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz said of the Americans who fought on Iwo Jima.

In June 1961, President John Kennedy directed that the U.S. flag should fly from the memorial 24 hours a day.

The Day After the 1960 Election

2011-11-09T19:10:00.001-06:00

After presidential elections come concession speeches from the losers and the victory speeches from the winners -- usually. In the case of a particularly close election still within living memory, 1960, things weren't quite so simple. By the end of election day that year, no one was sure yet who had won. Early in the morning on November 9, Vice President Richard Nixon spoke to his supporters but did not concede, though he did note that things weren't trending his way.

Writing in 1960: LBJ vs. JKF vs. Nixon: The Epic Campaign That Forged Three Presidencies, David Pietrusza takes the story from there: "At 9:45 a.m. PST Herb Klein -- not Richard Nixon -- stood before the cameras to announce that the great chase had ended, just as he -- not Richard Nixon -- had so casually announced it had begun ten months earlier...

"Klein read Richard Nixon's terse concession -- a telegram Nixon had already sent to Kennedy: 'I want to repeat through this wire congratulations and the best wishes I extended to you on television last night. I know that you will have the united support of all Americans as you lead the nation in the cause of peace and freedom in the next four years.' "

Kennedy gave his victory speech on television that day at the Hyannis Armory, mentioning Nixon's telegram as well as one from President Eisenhower.

The Curse of Tecumseh

2011-11-08T21:47:00.006-06:00

On the day after the Battle of Tippecanoe, November 8, 1811, Gov. William Henry Harrison and the men under his command burned Prophet's Town, the base from which the Indians had attacked the day before, inspired into action by their spiritual leader, Tenskwatawa ("The Prophet"). After losing the battle, the Indians had scattered, and the Prophet was discredited. Less than two years later, Harrison defeated the British and their Indian allies at the Battle of the Thames -- which resulted in the death of the Prophet's brother, Tecumseh.

Was that the end of it? Not if you put stock in a fanciful explanation for the deaths in office of the presidents who were elected in a year ending in zero from 1840 (starting with Harrison) to 1960 (John Kennedy). "Those who look to make sense of eerie coincidences have come up with an explanation to account for this string of deaths: an ancient Indian curse, supposedly administered by Tecumseh himself..." says Snopes in "The Curse of Tecumseh."

"Another version attributes the curse to Tenskwatawa... 'Harrison will die I tell you,' the Prophet reportedly said. 'And after him, every Great Chief chosen every 20 years thereafter will die. And when each one dies, let everyone remember the death of my people.' "

It turns out that there's no record of either Tenskwatawa or Tecumseh ever saying such a thing. In fact, the story has all the hallmarks of a retroactive invention, once people noticed that a number of zero-year presidents had died in office. Moreover, no zero-year president has died in office in almost 50 years, which would seem to argue for "eerie coincidence."

Battle of Tippecanoe Bicentennial

2011-11-07T18:54:00.002-06:00

Today is the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Tippecanoe, which occurred in the Indiana Territory and pitted U.S. Army regulars, militia, and volunteers under the command of Gov. William Henry Harrison, who would briefly be Ninth President of the United States nearly 30 years later, against Indians following the leadership of Tenskwatawa, also known as the Prophet, brother of the famed Tecumseh.

"The white settlers of the Indiana Territory were disturbed by the increasing activities and power of Tecumseh's followers," notes the Tippecanoe County Historical Association. "In the late summer of 1811, the governor of the territory, Gen. William Henry Harrison, organized a small army of 1,000 men, hoping to destroy [Prophet's Town, which had been founded by Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa] while Tecumseh was on a southern recruitment drive. The regiment arrived on November 6, 1811, and upon meeting with representatives of the Prophet, it was mutually agreed that there would be no hostilities until a meeting could be held on the following day. Harrison's scouts then guided the troops to a suitable campsite on a wooded hill about a mile west of Prophet's Town.

"Upon arriving at the site, Harrison warned his men of the possible treachery of the Prophet. The troops were placed in a quadrangular formation; each man was to sleep fully clothed. Fires were lit to combat the cold, rainy night, and a large detail was assigned to sentinel the outposts.

"Although Tecumseh had warned his brother not to attack the white men until the confederation was strong and completely unified, the incensed Prophet lashed his men with fiery oratory. Claiming the white man's bullets could not harm them, the Prophet led his men near the army campsite. From a high rock ledge west of the camp, he gave an order to attack just before daybreak on the following day.

"The sentinels were ready, and the first gunshot was fired when the yells of the warriors were heard. Many of the men awoke to find the Indians upon them. Although only a handful of the soldiers had had previous battle experience, the army bloodily fought off the reckless, determined Indian attack. Two hours later, thirty-seven soldiers were dead, twenty-five others were to die of injuries, and over 126 were wounded. The Indian casualties were unknown, but their spirit was crushed. Angered by his deceit, the weary warriors stripped the Prophet of his power and threatened to kill him.

"The demoralized Indians left Prophet's Town, abandoning most of their food and belongings. When Harrison's men arrived at the village on November 8, they found only an elderly Indian woman, whom they left with a wounded chief found not far from the battlefield. After burning the town, the army began their painful return to Vincennes."

Tenskwatawa survived, finally dying in 1836, and never again enjoyed the kind of following he had in 1811. Tecumseh died in 1813 at the Battle of the Thames in Canada, an engagement in the War of 1812, fighting soldiers under the command of William Henry Harrison. Richard Mentor Johnson, Ninth Vice President of the United States, also participated in that battle.

The November 6 Elections, Especially 1860

2011-11-06T21:17:00.000-06:00

Six dead presidents have been elected or re-elected on November 6 -- and no living ones, the most recent November 6 election being 1984, when the late President Reagan prevailed over former Vice President Walter Mondale in a very big way. There will be a "November 6 president" after November 6, 2012, however.

Other presidents elected on November 6 include Lincoln, Cleveland (first term), McKinley, Hoover, and Eisenhower. The election of 1900, which saw McKinley-Roosevelt win handily over Bryan-Stevenson, would have been a November 5 election, except for the fact that 1900 was not a leap year. In the Gregorian calendar, all years divisible by four are leap years except for years divisible by 100 -- such as 1800, 1900 -- that aren't themselves divisible by 400 -- such as 1600, 2000.

The election of 1860 was clearly the most momentous of the November 6 elections -- of any U.S. presidential election, it is easy to argue.

As Susan Schulten wrote in the New York Times, "Abraham Lincoln won a decisive victory on Nov. 6, 1860, with more than double the Electoral College votes of John C. Breckinridge, the runner-up. The election also sparked a crisis where 11 Southern states left the union, formed a new country and fell into a disastrous war with the North, all within six months of Lincoln’s win."

November 3 Elections

2011-11-03T23:54:00.002-05:00

Five dead presidents (and one living one) were elected or re-elected to the office on November 3: Grant, McKinley, Taft, Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson (and Clinton).

In 1868, the Republican ticket of Gen. Ulysses S. Grant and Schulyer Colfax prevailed over the Democratic ticket of Horatio Seymour and Francis Preston Blair.

The Republicans received 52.7 percent of the popular vote and 214 electoral votes, while the Democrats received 47.3 percent of the popular vote and 80 electoral votes.

In 1896, the Republicans again took the prize, with William McKinley and Garret Hobart outpolling Democrats William Jennings Bryan and Arthur Sewall, despite Bryan's impassioned oratory, mostly famously the Cross of Gold speech.

McKinley-Hobart took 51.1 percent of the popular vote and 271 electoral votes, versus 45.8 percent and 176 for Bryan-Sewall. Bryan, nicknamed "the Great Commoner," did however invent the national stump tour in this election, traveling about 18,000 miles in the months before voting day.

In 1908, William Jennings Bryan lost again (his third and final defeat), with John W. Kern as his running mate. The victors were the Republicans William Howard Taft and James S. Sherman.

This time around, Bryan captured 43 percent of the popular vote and 162 electoral votes; Taft got 51.6 percent of the popular votes and 321 electoral votes.

In 1936, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Vice President John Nance Garner crushed Republican challengers Alf Landon and Frank Knox, with the Democrats winning 60.8 percent of the popular vote and 523 electoral votes. The Republicans took 36.5 percent of the popular vote and eight electoral votes, those of Maine and Vermont. Landon, incidentally, long outlived everyone else running in '36, finally passing away at the age of 100 in 1987, though Garner lived almost to 99 years of age, dying in 1967. Knox, later FDR's Secretary of the Navy, died in '44 and FDR himself died in '45.

In 1964, President Lyndon Johnson and Hubert Humphrey were also the beneficiaries of a Democratic landslide, collecting 61.1 percent of the popular vote and 486 electoral votes, versus Barry Goldwater and William E. Miller's 38.5 percent and 52 electoral votes.

Polk, Harding & November 2 Elections

2011-11-02T22:07:00.004-05:00

November 2 is the birthday of James Knox Polk, 11th President of the United States, who was the first of ten children born Samuel and Jane Knox Polk. The future president was born in 1795 on his family farm in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, though he came to manhood in Tennessee and entered politics in that state as a protégé of Andrew Jackson. Among other distinctions, he was the first president born in North Carolina and the first president whose mother survived him.

November 2 is also the birthday of Warren Gamaliel Harding, 29th President of the United States, who was the first of eight children of George Tyron and Elizabeth Dickerson Harding and named for great-uncle the Rev. Warren Gamaliel Bancroft. The future president was born in 1865 in Corisa, Ohio (now Blooming Grove), and came of age in Ohio and became the most recent president from that state -- the seventh born there and the sixth elected to presidency while a resident of Ohio. He was the first and only newspaper publisher elected president and the first president whose father survived him.

On November 2, 1852, Franklin Pierce and William R. King, Democrats, prevailed in the 17th presidential election over Winfield Scott and William Alexander Graham, Whigs. The Democrats won 254 electoral votes, while the Whigs got 42. Their shares of the popular vote were 50.8 percent and 43.9 percent, respectively. It was the death knell for the Whig Party. Minor parties in the race included the Free Soil Party, the Liberty Party, the Union Party and the Southern Rights Party.

On November 2, 1880, James A. Garfield and Chester Alan Arthur, Republicans, bested Winfield Scott Hancock and William Hayden English, Democrats, in the 24th presidential election. The Republicans polled 48.3 percent of the popular vote, compared with 48.2 percent for the Democrats -- a difference of only about 2,000 out of nearly 9 million cast -- and took the electoral college 214 to 155. The Greenback Party, Prohibition Party and the American Party also fielded candidates for president that year.

On November 2, 1920, Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge, Republicans, won the 34th presidential election over James M. Cox and Franklin D. Roosevelt, Democrats. Harding-Coolidge took 60.3 percent of the popular vote and 404 electoral votes, while Cox-Roosevelt took 34.1 percent of the popular vote and 127 electoral votes. The Socialist Party nominated Eugene V. Debs, who was in prison at the time, and he received 3.4 percent of the popular vote -- the highest ever for a Socialist. The Farmer-Labor, Prohibition, Socialist Labor, Single-Tax and American parties also fielded candidates.

On November 2, 1948, Harry S. Truman and Alben W. Barkley, Democrats, upset Thomas E. Dewey and Earl Warren, Republicans, in the 41st presidential election, capturing 49.6 percent of the popular vote and 303 electoral votes, compared with 45.1 percent of the popular vote and 189 electoral votes. The States' Rights Democratic Party, which nominated Strom Thurmond for president, took 2.4 percent of the popular vote and 39 electoral votes; the Progressive/American Labor Parties, whose nominee was former Vice President Henry Wallace, also took 2.4 percent of the popular vote, but no electoral votes. The Socialist Party and the Prohibition Party also fielded candidates.

On November 2, 1976, Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale, Democrats, won the 48th presidential election, beating Gerald Ford and Bob Dole, Republicans. Carter-Mondale took 50.1 percent of the popular vote and 297 electoral votes, while Ford-Dole captured 48 percent of the popular vote and 240 electoral votes. A number of other parties fielded candidates, such as the Libertarians, Socialists, Communists, People's and U.S. Labor.

Dead Presidents: November

2011-11-01T23:01:00.002-05:00

In 1845, Congress fixed the date of the presidential election on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November, and every president has been elected in early November since Zachary Taylor took the prize on November 7, 1848 -- though of course in some cases, the results weren't known on election day.

Since the election of 1848, among the presidents who are no longer alive, four were elected or re-elected on November 2; five on November 3; five on November 4; four on November 5; six on November 6; five on November 7; and five on November 8. Among the living presidents, Jimmy Carter was elected November 2; George H.W. Bush on November 8; Bill Clinton on November 3 and 5; George W. Bush on November 7 and 2; and Barack Obama on November 4.

Also in November: presidential birthdays for Polk (1795) and Harding (1865) on the same day -- tomorrow -- and Taylor (1784), Pierce (1804) and Garfield (1831). Arthur (1886) and Kennedy (1963) are the only presidents to die in November.

"I Welcome Their Hatred"

2011-10-31T20:38:00.003-05:00

Just before the 1936 election, on October 31 of that year, President Franklin Roosevelt made a major campaign speech at Madison Square Garden in New York. FDR was not one to shy away from strident rhetoric.

"For 12 years this nation was afflicted with hear-nothing, see-nothing, do-nothing government. The nation looked to government but the government looked away. Nine mocking years with the golden calf and three long years of the scourge! Nine crazy years at the ticker and three long years in the breadlines! Nine mad years of mirage and three long years of despair! Powerful influences strive today to restore that kind of government with its doctrine that that government is best which is most indifferent to mankind.

"For nearly four years you have had an administration which instead of twirling its thumbs has rolled up its sleeves. We will keep our sleeves rolled up.

"We had to struggle with the old enemies.... business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering.

"They had begun to consider the government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that government by organized money is just as dangerous as government by organized mob.

Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me -- and I welcome their hatred."

Four days later, the election proved to be one of the most lopsided in U.S. history. FDR received 27.4 million in the popular vote and 523 electoral votes, while Alf Landon received 16.6 million in the popular vote and 8 electoral votes.

The full text of the speech is here.

John Adams' Birthday

2011-10-30T19:52:00.000-05:00

Today is the birthday of John Adams, Second President and First Vice President of the United States, 1735-1826.

The following is a dramatization of John Adams' speech for independence to the Continental Congress on July 1, 1776, in the HBO series John Adams (2008), starring Paul Giamatti as Adams. John Dickinson of Pennsylvania (played by Zeljko Ivanek) spoke before Adams, pleading that the time wasn't right for independence, memorably asserting it would amount to braving the storm "in a skiff made of paper."

Adams better captured to mood of the Congress, which voted 12-0 the next day for independence, with only New York abstaining.

According to David McCullough in his book John Adams (2001), "No transcription was made, no notes were kept. There would only be Adams' recollections, plus those of several others who would remember more the force of Adams himself than any particular thing he said. That is was the most powerful and important speech heard in the Congress since it was first convened, and the greatest speech of Adams' life, there is no question.

"To Jefferson, Adams was 'not graceful nor elegant, nor remarkably fluent,' but spoke 'with a power of thought and expression that moved us from our seats.' "

Hoover on the Great Crash

2011-10-29T23:20:00.003-05:00

October 28 and 29, 1929, which are known to history as Black Monday and Black Tuesday, respectively, were merely "last week" when President Herbert Hoover held a news conference at noon November 5 in the White House. The stock market crash would later be considered the beginning of the Great Depression, but that was still in the future for Hoover and the gathered reporters.

The president told he reporters that what he said said was "simply for your own information. I see no particular reasons for making any public statements about it, either directly or indirectly."

The term "crash" was already current, if not "great crash." Hoover touched on it, characterizing it as a business correction, though he didn't use the term. "We have had a period of overspeculation that has been extremely widespread, one of those waves of speculation that are more or less uncontrollable, as evidenced by the efforts of the Federal Reserve Board, and that ultimately results in a crash due to its own weight," the president said.

He further spoke of the movement of capital "out of New York into the interior of the United States," and discussed interest rates and other matters, and then referenced an event many of the reporters would have remembered -- the Panic of 1907.

"Perhaps the situation might be clearer on account of its parallel with the last very great crisis, 1907 to 1908," Hoover said. "In that crash the same drain of money immediately took place into the interior. In that case there was no Federal Reserve System. There was no way to acquaint of capital movement over the country, and the interest rates ran up to 300 percent. The result was to bring about a monetary panic in the entire country.

"Here with the Federal Reserve System and the activity of the [Federal Reserve] Board, and the ability with which the situation has been handled, there has been a complete isolation of the stock market phenomenon from the rest of the business phenomena in the country... In other words, the financial world is functioning entirely normal and rather more easily today than it was two weeks ago, because interest rates are less and there is more capital available."

Hoover called the effect on production "purely psychological," and discussed the mortgage and bond markets. "The sum of it is, therefore, that we have gone through a crisis in the stock market, but for the first time in history the crisis has been isolated to the stock market itself. It has not extended into either the production activities of the country or the financial fabric of the country, and for that I think we may give the major credit to the constitution of the Federal Reserve System."

Hamilton on the Presidency

2011-10-28T22:50:00.004-05:00

In late October 1787, as the states were beginning to consider whether to ratify the recently drafted Constitution, the first of 85 essays by "Publius" started appearing in the Independent Journal in New York and other newspapers. Collectively they are known as The Federalist Papers or The Federalist, and they state the case for the Constitution.

Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay wrote the essays. In Federalist No. 70, Hamilton extolled the virtues of a strong executive, alluding to the example of Rome, which resonated with educated readers of the time.

"Energy in the Executive is a leading character in the definition of good government. It is essential to the protection of the community against foreign attacks; it is not less essential to the steady administration of the laws; to the protection of property against those irregular and high-handed combinations which sometimes interrupt the ordinary course of justice; to the security of liberty against the enterprises and assaults of ambition, of faction, and of anarchy.

"Every man the least conversant in Roman story, knows how often that republic was obliged to take refuge in the absolute power of a single man, under the formidable title of Dictator, as well against the intrigues of ambitious individuals who aspired to the tyranny, and the seditions of whole classes of the community whose conduct threatened the existence of all government, as against the invasions of external enemies who menaced the conquest and destruction of Rome.

"... A feeble Executive implies a feeble execution of the government. A feeble execution is but another phrase for a bad execution; and a government ill executed, whatever it may be in theory, must be, in practice, a bad government."

Joe Wiegand as TR, Part Two

2011-10-27T19:28:00.001-05:00

Today is the 153rd anniversary of the birth of Theodore Roosevelt, 26th President of the United States. This is the second part of Joe Wiegand doing the president in the East Room of the White House on the occasion of his 150th birthday.

Wiegand writes, "Now more than ever, I know that the American people benefit from hearing the words of and relearning the life story of TR. I know that the many months ahead will give me the opportunity to do so in all the right places, the places that need his message of strenuous living, good citizenship and perseverance."

Joe Wiegand as TR, Part One

2011-10-26T20:10:00.002-05:00

There are many Lincoln impersonators, but far fewer who bring Theodore Roosevelt back to life on stage. Tomorrow is TR's 153rd birthday, and in honor of the occasion is a posting of the first part of a bully performance by Joe Wiegand as Theodore Roosevelt in the East Room of the White House, on the occasion of the sesquicentennial of TR's birth in 2008.

Wiegand travels the nation re-acquainting its citizens with the 26th President of the United States in a way that no filmed re-creation can do -- full-bodied and in person. He plans to continue his touring in 2012, which is of course the 100th anniversary of Mr. Roosevelt's Bull Moose campaign.

The Iconic Dollar Bill, Starring George Washington

2011-10-25T18:49:00.004-05:00

The U.S. Government Accountability Office is being cited once again in news stories as the source of estimates that the permanent retirement of the dollar bill would save the federal government money, since coins last longer in circulation than notes. This year the GAO issued a 41-page report (GAO-11-281) entitled, "Replacing the $1 Note with a $1 Coin Would Provide a Financial Benefit to the Government."

This is nothing new. In 1993, the GAO issued, "One-Dollar Coin: Reintroduction Could Save Millions if Properly Managed" (GGD-93-56). In 1995, the agency issued, "A Dollar Coin Could Save Millions (T-GGD-95-203) as well as "1-Dollar Coin: Reintroduction Could Save Millions If It Replaced the 1-Dollar Note" (T-GGD-95-146).

Does the United States want to retire its iconic $1 note, which has featured George Washington in one form or another for nearly a century?

Other GAO reports hint at the answer, such as, "A New Dollar Coin Has Budgetary Savings Potential But Questionable Acceptability" (T-GGD-90-50, 1990); "National Coinage Proposals: Limited Public Demand for New Dollar Coin or Elimination of Pennies" (GGD-90-88, also 1990); and "New Dollar Coin: Marketing Campaign Raised Public Awareness but Not Widespread Use" (GAO-02-896, 2002).

The Wigwam: Gone, But Not Quite Forgotten

2011-10-24T23:53:00.000-05:00

Few temporary structures in U.S. history -- in this case, it stood only about seven years -- saw a more momentous event than the Wigwam, erected near the Chicago River in Chicago in 1860. The still-new Republican Party met in the building and nominated its second presidential candidate, a certain railroad attorney from Springfield.

A sizable office building now stands on the site on Wacker Drive. In 2002, the city of Chicago recognized the Wigwam site with a plaque in front of the building, easily visible from the sidewalk, though partly obscured by plants in the warm months.

Chicago Landmark

Site of the Sauganash Hotel/Wigwam

On this site stood the Sauganash Hotel, built in 1831 by pioneer Mark Beaubien, which was the location of the frontier town's first village board election in 1833. The Wigwam, an assembly hall built in 1860 (destroyed c. 1867) on the site of the hotel, was home to the 1860 Republican National Convention which nominated Abraham Lincoln as a candidate for president. Lincoln's nomination and subsequent election set in motion a series of events that ultimately led the United States into the Civil War and brought about the abolition of slavery.

Vice President Adlai Stevenson's Birthday

2011-10-23T19:41:00.001-05:00

Today is the birthday of Adlai Ewing Stevenson I of Illinois, 23rd Vice President of the United States during Cleveland's second term, and unsuccessful candidate for vice president in 1900 on the ticket with William Jennings Bryan. He is, of course, the grandfather of the Adlai Stevenson III who so gamely opposed the popular Dwight Eisenhower for the presidency twice in the 1950s, but he's also the great-granduncle of actor McLean Stevenson.

The Stevenson family is associated with Bloomington, Illinois, but a young Adlai Stevenson began practicing law in Metamora, Illinois, now a suburb of Peoria, in 1858. The Stevenson home in that town is currently undergoing a long process of restoration.

"The Stevenson House is an austere two-story Federal style structure built before the Civil War," notes the Metamora Association for Historic Preservation on its web site. "It is located a block south of the southwest corner of the Village Square and faces north on a corner lot. The home is approximately 35 feet wide and 30 feet deep and is set back from both front and side streets. It is constructed of “faded pink” brick made locally. The interior of the home contains eight rooms, four on the upper level and four on the lower, with room sizes and arrangements identical on the two levels."

After he married in 1868, Stevenson and future second lady Letitia Green Stevenson moved to Bloomington. The Metamora Association for Historic Preservation is currently seeking donations to help pave the walkway in front of the Stevenson home in Metamora.

Houston Becomes the President of Texas

2011-10-22T21:58:00.002-05:00

On October 22, 1836, Sam Houston became the first president of the Republic of Texas and Mirabeau Lamar became its first vice president, not counting the interim holders of those offices in the months since Texas won its independence from Mexico, David Burnet and Lorenzo de Zavala.

"At his inauguration in Columbia, Houston dramatically flourished, then gave up the sword he had used at the Battle of San Jacinto," says the Texas State Library and Archives Commission (TSLAC) in Triumph and Tragedy: Presidents of the Republic of Texas. "It was a symbolic gesture by which Houston hoped to signal to the people that it was time to turn away from war and to the business of building a new Texas."

Houston had a hard time of it during his first term in office. Among other problems, the United States refused to admit Texas as a state, most of the rest of the world refused to recognize it as a nation, and the Republic was deep in debt. Officers of the army that had won independence took to seizing citizens' cattle to feed their men, mutinies broke out in Galveston and Velasco, and Indians were a persistent threat.

The town of Houston was founded as the capital of Texas, but it wasn't a stately affair. "... there is evidence that this was not a happy time in [Sam Houston's] life," continues the TSLAC. "The muddy collection of tents and log buildings was known as the 'Bachelor Republic,' and Houston joined right in with the drinking, brawling, and carousing. During this time in his life, he was drinking very heavily and probably using opium as well."

Houston endured his troubles, however, holding another term as president and then becoming a U.S. Senator from Texas after annexation. He was elected governor of Texas in 1859, but forced from office in 1861 when he refused to take an oath of loyalty to the Confederacy. "It is almost impossible to overstate the influence of Sam Houston on Texas history," says the TSLAC. "For thirty years, Sam Houston was the dominant star around which the Texas political constellations revolved."

JQA Letters in Dispute

2011-10-21T21:27:00.004-05:00

The relics of dead presidents still have power over the living. To be more precise, pieces of paper once marked upon by a president can have monetary value, enough to inspire litigation some 200-plus years after their origin.

The Courthouse News Service, which specializes covering civil litigation, reports that Dallas-based Heritage Auction Galleries has asked a federal court to determine which of two men is the rightful owner of two letters written by John Quincy Adams.

The news service quotes the complaint: "In July 2011, Bradley B. Mugar contracted with Heritage to sell (among other things) two letters signed by John Quincy Adams on consignment. Heritage subsequently made two cash advances totaling $28,000 to Mugar, which were to be repaid from the auction sale proceeds. Before auction, Heritage learned of rival claims to the manuscripts and thus withdrew the two lots from the auction."

The rival claim was made by one Dr. David Light, of Palm Beach County, Fla., who asserts that the letters were stolen from him. For his part, Mugar, of Orange County, Calif., asserts that the letters are his. Heritage is holding onto the letters until the court rules on which of the two is the owner. The full story is here.

One letter is dated April 6, 1783, and the other is dated July 18, 1788, when JQA was quite young -- 16 years old and 21 years old, respectively. But the future president was already no stranger to copious amounts of writing, since he was secretary to Francis Dana on Dana's diplomatic mission to St. Petersburg in 1783, and was enrolled in Harvard College by 1788. Also, he began what would become a 50-volume diary when he was only 11.

Herbert Hoover Dies

2011-10-20T19:35:00.003-05:00

This is the grave of Herbert Clark Hoover, 31st President of the United States, who was born in 1874 and died this day in 1964.

Next to Herbert reposes his wife, Lou Henry Hoover (1874-1944).

Nixon Recalls Classical Athens

2011-10-19T19:37:00.002-05:00

October 19, 1973

In extending the authorization for the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act -- originally passed during the Johnson administration, thus creating both the National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities -- Richard Nixon appended the following statement. Though his staff probably drafted the statement, the line about Athens might well have been the president's personal touch.

"Government has a vital role to play in encouraging the arts and humanities in our national life, and this Administration has continually reaffirmed its commitment to the fulfillment of that role through the National Foundation.

The purpose of the Foundation is not to alter the role of private patronage in the arts and humanities, but rather to supplement, stimulate, and extend that role. The Federal Government should do its part in supporting cultural activities -- and appropriations for the Foundation have increased almost sixfold since I took office...

The highest expression of the quality of a nation is found in the development of its arts and refinement of its humanistic concerns. For this development to reach its full potential, it must be the expression of a whole people, and it must be available for the enjoyment of the whole people. That was the lesson of Athens. That was the rationale for the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities."

Washington's Overdue Book

2011-10-18T18:33:00.000-05:00

In the spring of 2010, the New York Daily News broke the story that President Washington, during his first year as president, borrowed at least one book from the New York Society Library and never returned it. The volume was The law of nations, or, Principles of the laws of nature, applied to the conduct and affairs of nations and sovereigns, by Emer de Vattel. It seems reasonable that the new chief executive might be interested in such a book, which has an 18th-century title if there ever was one.

Not long after the story broke, jokes were made about massive library fines. Mount Vernon, Washington's effective heir, however, offered to replace the volume, and formally did so in May 2010.

"To observe this auspicious occasion, the Library hosted a ceremony on May 19 at 11 a.m. at which Mount Vernon’s President, James C. Rees, and Librarian, Joan Stahl, presented the errant volume to Charles G. Berry, Chairman of the Library’s Board of Trustees and Mark Bartlett, Head Librarian," noted the New York Society Library in a statement, with no discussion of library fines.

Mount Vernon, as it happens, is in the process of establishing a library of its own: the Fred W. Smith National Library for the Study of George Washington, which will safeguard Washington’s books and manuscripts, serve as a scholarly retreat, create educational outreach programs on Washington, and provide seminars and training programs with a special focus on Washington’s leadership. Construction of the 45,000-square-foot facility began in early 2011, with a completion date in 2013.

FDR, Dewey and the Election of 1944

2011-10-17T18:59:00.002-05:00

FDR, Dewey and the Election of 1944 by David M. Jordan focuses on the neglected story of that election, and Jordan does a fine job of telling it, from the pre-primary maneuvering among both parties, but especially the Republicans, through to the surprisingly energetic campaign, both on the part of ailing FDR and his remarkably young opponent. Dewey was only 42 at the time, the youngest-ever Republican nominee for the top job and the first major-party presidential candidate born in the 20th century.

This particular election is generally glossed over in histories of the period, probably because hindsight considers it a foregone conclusion. In the event, it wasn't that close: FDR-Truman took 432 electoral votes and 53.4 percent of the popular vote vs. Dewey-Bricker's 99 electoral votes and 45.9 percent of the popular vote. Still, before the election, pollsters weren't quite so sure of the outcome, with some even predicting Dewey's election. That and '48 might tell us that pollsters weren't very good at predicting national elections in the 1940s, but that's with the benefit of hindsight. A Dewey upset was considered plausible at the time, even if not very likely, and in point of fact '44 was the closest presidential election in which FDR participated. As Jordan makes clear, Dewey ran a spirited campaign in the face of the odds.

But at a curious distance from the electorate. Apparently Dewey and his men thought it best, at least at first, to focus on radio speeches more than personal appearances. During an early campaign trip by train to the West Coast, for example, Dewey only made a handful of rear-platform speeches, the kind so effective for President Truman four years later. No doubt the strategy reflected Dewey's personality. "The man had one of the coldest personalities of anyone who ever contemplated a run for the American presidency," notes Jordan. "David Brinkley wrote, 'In public, Dewey came across as pompous and cold. And for good reason. He was both.' He was generally conceded to be intelligent, efficient, a master of detail, 'serious-minded to the point of severity' as one contemporary noted. 'He is as humorless as a man can be,' noted another."

Balancing the Republican ticket that year, at least in one respect, was Gov. John W. Bricker of Ohio. "The governor of Ohio... was an almost complete opposite of Thomas E. Dewey," says Jordan. "John William Bricker, it was said, was 'excellent company.' People liked being around Bricker, and he enjoyed being around others... Big, jovial John Bricker, one author wrote, 'had the essential of popularity, a real and lively interest in people.' " Bricker also represented the conservative wing of the Republican Party, as opposed to the more moderate Dewey, and had the endorsement of Sen. Robert A. Taft ("Mr. Republican") in the early '44 primaries. Bricker didn't fare well in those contests, however, but well enough to be an acceptable choice for the number-two slot.

No one is forgotten faster than a failed vice presidential candidate (e.g., William Miller, who did a "Do you know me?" Amex ad after the '64 election), and Gov. Bricker certainly falls into that category, though some lingering memory of him might remain in Ohio. Bricker did, however, offer the ticket a rhyming slogan, an example of which the book shows in a photo of Republican campaign memorabilia: "Win the War Quicker With Dewey and Bricker." Apparently the slogan wasn't that commonly used, and not destined for the fame of "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too." Dewey and Bricker lost, after all, but even before that the Republican ticket probably didn't want to emphasize that their victory would indeed mean a change in the management of the war effort, since that was in fact what the Democrats were emphasizing as a negative ("don't change horses in mid-stream").

As for the Democrats, the Roosevelt campaign didn't show much zing until the "Fala Speech" in late September, during which the president had some amusingly choice words for the Republicans, much to the delight of the audience, who were mainly Teamsters leadership. Late in the campaign, and thus late in the book, FDR went on an open-car motorcade through four of the five boroughs of New York City, which Jordan describes in fascinating detail. The president began at an Army base in Brooklyn, went through downtown Brooklyn, then on to Ebbets Field, then through Queens, then across to the Bronx, then down through Harlem and finally on down Broadway and into Times Square. "Through it all, the rain kept coming down, the wind blew, and Franklin Roosevelt kept smiling and waving to the thousands watching for him, with Fala by his side," Jordan says. "After all was over, the police estimated the total crowds at 3,050,000, though it may have been, as Ray Brandt of the St. Louis Post Dispatch put it, "a mere million or two."

The book spends an entire chapter and more on the central mystery of the 1944 election, namely how and why Harry Truman was chosen as the Democratic vice presidential candidate. No account of that event that I've ever read quite spells it out clearly, probably because it isn't quite possible to do so, but Jordan takes a good whack at it. Vice President Henry Wallace wanted to keep the job, but boll weevils and other conservatives in the party wanted him out. President Roosevelt seemed to prefer James Byrnes, but he also seemed to accept the judgment of other party leaders that as a Southerner, Byrnes would cost more votes (Northern blacks, labor) than he would win -- something FDR never told Byrnes he believed. Other names were bandied about, such as Sam Rayburn, Alben Barkley, William O. Douglas, Truman and even John G. Winant (American ambassador to the Court of St. James's at the time), though he wasn't very seriously considered.

Eventually, Democratic Party leaders held an informal but important meeting with the president at the White House before the convention that seemed to settle matters in favor of Truman -- except that it didn't quite, and Truman wasn't really told about it anyway, going to the convention supporting Byrnes for vice president, and even planning to put his name in nomination. When FDR's men told Truman, at first he said he didn't want it, but was famously persuaded by a brusk phone call from President Roosevelt to a room that Democratic leadership had rented in the Blackstone Hotel (not the first time the Blackstone made a president). Even then, Henry Wallace might have been re-nominated by his supporters at the convention, but FDR's men put a stop to it using hasty parliamentary maneuvers, and almost resorted to cutting an electric cable to stop the convention organist from playing "Iowa, Iowa, That's Where the Tall Corn Grows," a song associated with Wallace at the time.

The book also offers interesting sketches of some of the lesser figures in the election. The Republicans' 1940 surprise candidate, Wendell Willkie, wanted another shot and entered the early '44 primaries, only to lose to Dewey. Even more interesting for us (though not for him) was the fact that Willkie died unexpectedly about a month before the election, without endorsing Dewey -- or Roosevelt either, and while it seems hard to believe he might have, it was considered possible because he didn't believe Dewey was internationalist enough, or at least was bowing too much the isolationist elements in the Republican Party (presumably those isolationists would have finished the war and then rejected American participation in the likes of the UN, the Marshall Plan and NATO).

Another supporting character is Harold Stassen. Good old Harold Stassen, always running. That's how we remember him now, but 1944 was before all that. That year, Lt. Comdr. Stassen was off in the Pacific theater as Adm. Halsey's flag secretary, having resigned the governorship of Minnesota to do his part. He wasn't really a contender in '44, but his star was rising (he'd given the keynote at the Republican national convention in 1940), and he later had an important part in nominating Dewey again in '48 and Eisenhower in '52, after which he settled into his recurring-candidate mode. That's another story.

The book also provides some food for speculative thought. After all, we know that FDR was near the end of the line in November 1944, even if at time the electorate didn't. What if he had died six months sooner -- a few weeks ahead of the voting? Who would the Democratic National Committee have picked to take his place? Would Dewey have won against that person, and if so, how would have he deployed the atomic bomb? Assuming that FDR dies in 1945, as he did, what kind of president would Wallace have made, had he been allowed to stay on the ticket? Would he have used the bomb? And what kind of president would John G. Winant have made, anyway? In history as it happened, the three-time Republican governor of New Hampshire, first chairman of the Social Security Board, head of the International Labor Organization and ambassador to the United Kingdom through much of World War II, retired to private life after the war and put a bullet through his head in 1947.

That's just my digression, but it only goes to show how many fascinating stories there are in a good work of political history, such as FDR, Dewey and the Election of 1944. Well worth reading.

Lincoln's Only House

2011-10-16T19:36:00.000-05:00

"By May 1844, Abraham and Mary Lincoln needed more living space for their growing family and decided to buy a house," the National Park Service's Lincoln Home leaflet says. "They selected a Greek Revival-style cottage at the corner of Eighth and Jackson streets owned by Rev. Charles Dresser, who had married the Lincolns in 1842. Lincoln paid $1,500 for the home that the family would occupy for the next 17 years."

This is the house in our time.

The house and the entire neighborhood surrounding it are now part of the Lincoln Home National Historic Site in Springfield, Illinois.

It Takes More Than That to Kill a Bull Moose

2011-10-15T19:33:00.002-05:00

In October 1912, a deranged man named John Flammang Schrank (pictured) put a bullet into former President Theodore Roosevelt while he was campaigning to return to the White House under the Progressive (Bull Moose) Party banner. At one point, Schrank claimed that President McKinley's ghost told him to do it, but his motives remained murky. After the shooting, he spent the rest of his life -- he died in 1943 -- at the Central State Mental Hospital in Waupun, Wisconsin.

The wound wasn't serious, and TR famously made his scheduled campaign speech before going to the hospital. Turns out it was a near thing for the former president, however.

According to the book The Attempted Assassination of ex-President Theodore Roosevelt, written immediately after the incident by Wheeler Bloodgood, Oliver Remey and Henry Cochems, "That the shot fired by Schrank didn't succeed in murdering Col. Roosevelt is a miracle of good fortune. A 'thirty-eight' long Colt's cartridge, fired from a pistol frame of 'forty-four' caliber design, so built because it gives a heavier drive to the projectile, fired at that close range, meant almost inevitable death.

"The aim was taken at a lower portion of Col. Roosevelt's body, but a bystander struck Schrank's arm at the moment of explosion, and elevated the direction of the shot. After passing through the Colonel's heavy military overcoat, and his other clothing, it would have certainly killed him had it not struck in its course practically everything which he carried on his person which could impede its force.

"In his coat pocket he had fifty pages of manuscript for the night's speech, which had been doubled, causing the bullet to traverse a hundred pages of manuscript. It had struck also his spectacle case on the outer concave surface of the gun metal material of which the case was constructed. It had passed through a double fold of his heavy suspenders before reaching his body.

"Had anyone of those objects been out of the range of the bullet, Schrank's dastardly purpose would have been accomplished beyond any conjecture."

TR composed a telegram to his family from the hospital was taken to after completing his speech:

"Am in excellent shape, made an hour and half speech. The wound is a trivial one. I think they will find that it merely glanced on a rib and went somewhere into a cavity of the body; it certainly did not touch a lung and isn't a particle more serious than one of the injuries any of the boys used continually to be having. Am at the Emergency hospital at the moment, but anticipate going right on with my engagements. My voice seems to be in good shape. Best love to Ethel."

Dwight Eisenhower's Birthday

2011-10-14T17:41:00.002-05:00

Today is the 121st anniversary of Dwight David Eisenhower's birth, and a good time to celebrate the moderate that he was.

"Now it is true that I believe this country is following a dangerous trend when it permits too great a degree of centralization of governmental functions. I oppose this -- in some instances the fight is a rather desperate one. But to attain any success it is quite clear that the Federal government cannot avoid or escape responsibilities which the mass of the people firmly believe should be undertaken by it. The political processes of our country are such that if a rule of reason is not applied in this effort, we will lose everything -- even to a possible and drastic change in the Constitution. This is what I mean by my constant insistence upon 'moderation' in government. Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are H. L. Hunt (you possibly know his background), a few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid."

-- President Eisenhower, in a letter to Edgar Newton Eisenhower, his brother, November 8, 1954.

The White House Cornerstone

2011-10-13T19:32:00.001-05:00

The cornerstone of the White House was laid on October 13, 1792, on a site selected by President Washington, who would not live to see the completion of the executive mansion. The new federal government had asked for submissions for the design of the residents, and there were nine entries, including an anonymous one by Secretary of State Jefferson. The prize was $500, a substantial sum at the time, or a medal of that value. James Hoban, an Irishman living in South Carolina, won the prize.

The White House Historical Association says, "The earliest known drawing of the White House is Hoban’s plan, which he drew in 1792... Hoban’s original design had two stories and a raised basement, but some thought the house was too large.

"There was also a question of whether enough quality sandstone could be collected for building such a large house. Stone was also needed to build the Capitol, where Congress would work. George Washington agreed that the President’s House could be reduced to two stories by eliminating the raised basement. He knew that the design would enable future presidents to make additions if they needed more space. As Washington said, the President’s House and the other government buildings would need to change according to needs 'beyond the present day.'

"Hoban was hired to oversee construction. Stonemasons from Scotland, along with free laborers and hired slaves, worked on the building from spring through fall each year until November 1800, when John and Abigail Adams moved in. Adams came to a house that was still unfinished."

Benjamin Harrison's Columbus Day

2011-10-12T19:34:00.000-05:00

"WHEREAS, by joint resolution, approved June 29, 1892, it was resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, 'That the President of the United States be authorized and directed to issue a proclamation recommending to the people the observance in all their localities of the four-hundredth anniversary of the discovery of America, on the twenty-first day of October, 1892, by public demonstrations and by suitable exercises in their schools and other places of assembly.'

"Now, therefore, I, Benjamin Harrison, President of the United States of America, in pursuance of the aforesaid joint resolution, do hereby appoint Friday, October 21, 1892, the four-hundredth anniversary of the discovery of America by Columbus, as a general holiday for the people of the United States...

"Columbus stood in his age as the pioneer of progress and achievement. The system of universal education is in our age the most prominent and salutary feature of the spirit of enlightenment, and it is peculiarly appropriate that the schools be made by the people the center of the day's demonstration. Let the national flag float over every school-house in the country, and the exercises be such as shall impress upon our youth the patriotic duties of American citizenship.

"In the churches and in other places of assembly of the people let there be expressions of gratitude to Divine Providence for the devout faith of the discoverer, and for the Divine care and guidance which has directed our history, and so abundantly blessed our people."

October 21 because that was the date using the Georgian calendar (New Style) to correct for the Julian calender date (Old Style) of October 12, 1492, just as George Washington celebrated his birthday on February 22 N.S. to be mathematically correct, though he was born on February 11 O.S. The day did not become a federal holiday until 1937, at which time Congress thought it fit to move the day to October 12.

Washington Promoted to General of the Armies of the United States

2011-10-11T18:52:00.000-05:00

94TH UNITED STATES CONGRESS
2ND SESSION

Joint Resolution

to provide for the appointment of George Washington to the grade of General of the Armies of the United States.

Whereas Lieutenant General George Washington of Virginia commanded our armies throughout and to the successful termination of our Revolutionary War;

Whereas Lieutenant General George Washington presided over the convention that formulated our Constitution;

Whereas Lieutenant General George Washington twice served as President of the United States of America; and

Whereas it is considered fitting and proper that no officer of the United States Army should outrank Lieutenant General George Washington on the Army list: Now, therefore, be it

Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That

(a) for purposes of subsection (b) of this section only, the grade of General of the Armies of the United States is established, such grade to have rank and precedence over all other grades of the Army, past or present.

(b) The President is authorized and requested to appoint George Washington posthumously to the grade of General of the Armies of the United States, such appointment to take effect on July 4, 1976.

Approved October 11, 1976.

Agnew Speaks

2011-10-10T19:36:00.001-05:00

A selection of quotes attributed to the 39th Vice President of the United States, Spiro Agnew, on the anniversary of his ignominious resignation from that office in 1973.

"In the United States today, we have more than our share of the nattering nabobs of negativism."

"I didn't say I wouldn't go into ghetto areas. I've been in many of them and to some extent I would say this; if you've seen one city slum, you've seen them all."

"The lessons of the past are ignored and obliterated in a contemporary antagonism known as the generation gap."

"Some newspapers are fit only to line the bottom of bird cages."

"Three things have been difficult to tame: the oceans, fools and women. We may soon be able to tame the oceans; fools and women will take a little longer."

"Confronted with the choice, the American people would choose the policeman's truncheon over the anarchist's bomb."

Woodrow Wilson Says No Smoking in Bed

2011-10-09T19:38:00.001-05:00

National Fire Prevention Week, which is always in early October, had its origins in commemorations of the 40th anniversary of the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 (and the larger Peshtigo Fire in Wisconsin on the same day). In the waning days of his administration in 1920, President Wilson got involved, proclaiming National Fire Prevention Day.

Whereas, the destruction by fires in the United States involves an annual loss of life of 15,000 men, women and children and over $230,000,000 in buildings, foodstuffs and other created resources; and

Whereas the need of the civilized world for American products to replace the ravages of the great war is especially great at this time; and

Whereas, the present serious shortage of home and business structures makes the daily destruction of buildings by fire an especially serious matter; and

Whereas, a large percentage of the fires causing the annual American fire waste may be easily prevented by increased care and vigilance on the part of its citizens;

Therefore, I, Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States of America, do urge upon the governors of the various states to designate and set apart Saturday, October 9, 1920, as Fire Prevention Day, and to request the citizens of their states to plan for that day such instructive and educational exercises as shall bring before the people the serious and unhappy effects of the present unnecessary fire waste and the need of their individual and collective efforts in conserving the natural and created resources of America.

In 1925, President Coolidge expanded the event to a week, the seven days from Sunday to Saturday encompassing October 9th. Every president down to the present day as issued similar proclamations each year.

Pierce's Hairstyle

2011-10-08T19:55:00.001-05:00

On this day in 1869, Franklin Pierce, 14th President of the United States and aged 69 years, 319 days, died.

The February 15, 2008, edition of the New Hampshire Historical Society E-Newsletter says, "According to Peter A. Wallner, the Society's library director, every portrait or photograph of Franklin Pierce (1804–69) shows a shock of unruly hair cascading over his forehead. 'Written descriptions of Pierce by contemporaries frequently mention his elegant appearance, immaculate dress, and courtly manners,” said Wallner. 'Why, then, didn’t he comb his hair?'

"Is it possible that the wild, unkempt hair was actually a carefully managed affectation?

“ 'Until now, there were no references to Pierce’s hair discovered in his or his family’s letters,' said Wallner. But, the newly purchased letter, written by his wife in December 1857 from Norfolk, Virginia, after Pierce left the White House, hints that the hairstyle was not accidental. Jane writes, 'Today, Mr. Pierce has met the citizens of Norfolk and after the fatigue is quietly lying on the sofa by a bright fire with Miriam [Jane’s maid] brushing his hair soporifically.'

“ 'While the evidence is not conclusive, the letter leads one to suspect that the vanity Pierce showed for his appearance extended to his hair as well,' says Wallner. Not surprisingly, to those residents of New Hampshire who knew Pierce well, his hair was a distinguishing characteristic of the man."

Henry Wallace's Birthday

2011-10-07T21:00:00.003-05:00

Today is the birthday of Henry Agard Wallace (1888-1965), 33rd Vice President of the United States, and very nearly one of its presidents.

No Meeting With Reagan for the Bears

2011-10-06T19:53:00.001-05:00

The Chicago Tribune reports that the 1985 Chicago Bears, who won the Super Bowl in early 1986, will finally be invited to the White House to visit the president. "On that frigid day in 1986 when Chicago threw a tickertape parade to honor the Bears' Super Bowl win, Illinois Senator Alan Dixon sent a letter to the White House: Would President Reagan host a reception for the team?" Peter Nicholas of the Tribune Washington Bureau writes. "It never came off."

The day after the parade, but before plans could be finalized for a visit, the Space Shuttle Challenge was destroyed in flight. Understandably, the Reagan White House had other things on its mind in the wake of the accident, and the idea of a Bears visit faded away.

"But now the White House is home to a Chicagoan who roots for the Bears, reads local newspaper coverage of the team and is always eager to showcase his everyman credentials," notes Nicholas. "The NFL called the White House soon after Obama was sworn in and asked if the '85 Bears could get a belated celebration... On Friday, a quarter-century after they crushed the New England Patriots 46-10, Da Bears are getting their celebratory visit to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue."

Chester Arthur's Birthday

2011-10-05T19:27:00.000-05:00

Chester Alan Arthur, 21st President of the United States, was born on October 5, 1829, son of an Irish immigrant father and a mother from Vermont. Later in life, political enemies floated the idea than he was born a British subject -- in Ireland, or possibly Canada -- and thus not eligible to be president. Like later such claims about other presidents, it was nonsense.

Arthur did not attend the Republican National Convention in 1880 in Chicago to angle for the vice presidency. Rather, he came as a delegate from New York, a member of the Stalwart faction led by Sen. Roscoe Conkling and supporter of U.S. Grant for a third term. Unable to nominate Grant, the Stalwarts were nevertheless able to select the vice presidential nominee. Levi P. Morton, who later was Benjamin Harrison's vice president, declined to be considered. The convention then chose Arthur over his nearest competitor, Elihu B. Washburne of Illinois.

The convention did not know that it was selecting both the 20th and 21st presidents, nor that Chet Arthur, the "Gentleman Boss" and one-time Collector of the Port of New York, would one day sign the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act.

"No man ever entered the Presidency so profoundly and widely distrusted as Chester Alan Arthur, and no one ever retired ... more generally respected, alike by political friend and foe," wrote journalist Alexander McClure about Arthur.

Rutherford B. Hayes' Birthday

2011-10-04T19:26:00.003-05:00

Rutherford Birchard Hayes, 19th President of the United States, was born on this day in 1822 in Delaware, Ohio, the youngest of five children of Rutherford Hayes and Sophia Birchard Hayes.

Recently Dead Presidents Daily asked Tom Culbertson, executive director of the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center in Fremont, Ohio, what people who only know about the Stolen Election of 1876 should know about President Hayes.

"President Hayes was the only president wounded during the Civil War," says Culbertson. "He received five wounds (one serious) and had four horses shot out from under him. He rose from major to brevet major general during the war.

"He was 38 years old when the war started and could have avoided serving due to his age, but chose to fight because he and his wife Lucy thought that ending slavery was a good cause. As a lawyer in Cincinnati prior to the Civil War, he occasionally did pro bono work representing runaway slaves."

Culbertson added that the Hayes Center is within six months of wrapping up a major restoration of the interior of the Hayes home "so that it looks like it did when Rutherford and Lucy lived there. Come back if you get a chance."

Lincoln's Thanksgiving Proclamation

2011-10-03T19:43:00.001-05:00

Washington, D.C.
October 3, 1863

By the President of the United States of America.

A Proclamation.

The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God.

In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union.

Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defense, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship; the axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom.

No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.

And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and Union.

Wilson's Stroke

2011-10-02T19:35:00.001-05:00

On this day in 1919, President Woodrow Wilson suffered a major stroke, apparently not his first, but decidedly debilitating. Eyewitness to History describes the event:

"On the morning of October 2, Mrs. Wilson found her husband unconscious on the bathroom floor of their private White House quarters, bleeding from a cut on his head. Wilson had suffered a stroke -- a massive attack that left his left side paralyzed and impaired his vision. She immediately summoned Dr. [Cary] Grayson. Then the conspiracy began. The two of them formed a bulwark between the invalid President and the rest of the country, simultaneously shielding Wilson from intrusion and hiding his condition from outsiders."

Dr. Zebra notes that, "Wilson's first stroke was in May 1896. It caused marked weakness of the right upper limb plus sensory disturbances in the fingers. The finger problems were mis-diagnosed as neuritis. Wilson was unable to write normally for almost a year afterwards."

He also says that: "A photograph of Wilson on the day of his 1913 inauguration shows astonishingly bad teeth. This is relevant to Wilson's later stroke(s) because poor dentition has been suspected to increase the risk of atherosclerotic disease."

Dead Presidents: October

2011-10-01T23:09:00.006-05:00

Happy 87th Birthday to Jimmy Carter, 39th President of the United States and happily not a dead president, but an active former president, one of the most active the nation has ever seen.

October's a good month for presidential birthdays: Besides Carter, there's John Adams (1735), Rutherford B. Hayes (1822), Chester A. Arthur (1829), Theodore Roosevelt (1858), and Dwight Eisenhower (1890). All of them will be celebrated here.

Only two presidents died in October so far: Pierce (1869) and Hoover (1964). Their lives will be recalled here.

And there will be a few entertaining videos.

"The Presidents" by Jonathan Coulton. Video by Holger Baehern.

George Washington, Englishman

2011-09-30T23:36:00.001-05:00

From a review in the Wall Street Journal of Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow (Penguin Press, 2010) by Andrew Roberts, author of Masters and Commanders: How Four Titans Won the War in the West.

"The adjective that best describes Washington's personality and instincts, ironically enough, is 'English.' He had a fair complexion that sunburnt easily; he bought his clothes and most other goods from London merchants; he never affirmed the divinity of Jesus Christ but actively supported his local Anglican churches; he rebuilt Mount Vernon (named after an English admiral) on classically English architectural principles; he was phlegmatic and disliked overfamiliarity; he even played cricket during the dark days of Valley Forge. Mr. Chernow ascribes his break with Britain to the moronic refusal of the British authorities to grant Washington a regular army commission. 'His hostility to the mother country,' Mr. Chernow writes, 'was a case of thwarted love.' (Though he hints that it might also have involved greed, since Britain was threatening to curtail the distinctly dodgy Ohio land speculation that was enriching Washington in the mid-1770s.)

Church of the Presidents, Long Branch, NJ

2011-09-29T19:37:00.001-05:00

St. John's in Washington DC, conveniently located on Lafayette Square near the White House, is often called the "Church of the Presidents" because each president since James Monroe has attended services there. But there's another "Church of the Presidents," St. James Chapel in Long Branch, NJ.

Long before it was the setting of tawdry television show, the Jersey Shore was a place for the wealthy to escape pre-air conditioning summertime heat, and no fewer than six sitting presidents vacationed there -- Hayes, Garfield, Arthur, Benjamin Harrison, McKinley and Wilson -- while Ulysses S. Grant visited after he was president. The unfortunate President Garfield, who had been to the Jersey Shore with his ill wife shortly before he was shot in Washington, was taken to Long Branch in the vain hope that we would recover, but instead he died there.

All seven of the aforementioned presidents attended services at St. James Chapel, a branch of St. James Episcopal Church in the western part of Long Branch. That church wasn't convenient enough for the likes of George Pullman, so in the late 1870s, he and two other Gilded Age millionaires paid for the construction of the chapel, which was closer to their vacation homes. The New York firm of Potter and Robertson designed the small chapel in a pseudo-Tudor style popular at the time, and it has remain essentially unaltered since 1895.

Photo courtesy the Long Branch Historical Museum Association.

Long Branch faded as a vacation destination after World War I, and in the 1950s, the chapel was deconsecrated. Local residents Edgar Dinkelspiel and Bernard Sandler saved the structure from demolition, and it became the home of Long Branch Historical Museum in 1955. Among other artifacts on display were President Grant's gun cabinet and game table, and the flag placed over President Garfield's casket during services conducted by the Long Branch Masonic Lodge.

Currently the site is closed to the public while undergoing much-needed restoration work. Recently the Long Branch Historical Museum Association completed the restoration and repair of the masonry that comprises the lower exterior walls of the Church of the Presidents. Much work remains to be done, however, and the association is currently accepting tax-deductible donations for the project.

More information about the Church of the Presidents in Long Branch, and the effort to restore it, is at the association's web site.

William Windom

2011-09-28T19:15:00.003-05:00

Today is William Windom's 88th birthday. The well-known American character actor -- Commodore Matt Decker in the original Star Trek, the Thurberesque John Monroe in My World and Welcome to It -- has no direct connection to the presidency of the United States, though he did play "The President" in Escape from Planet of the Apes (1971).

He is, however, the great-grandson of William Windom (1827-1891), 33rd and 39th U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, first serving under Garfield and Arthur and later Benjamin Harrison, besides being a Representative and then Senator from Minnesota. Windom was regarded highly enough to earn a depiction on a series of $2 silver certificates issued after his death in office.

Windom also took a very modest stab at the presidency. In 1880, he received 10 votes on the first ballot at the Republican National Convention that year in Chicago as a favorite son candidate. The nomination ultimately went to the dark-horse James A. Garfield, who went on to the White House and an early grave.

Presidential Car Wash

2011-09-27T19:12:00.003-05:00

Dead presidents have long been used to sell things. The deader the better in most cases, since presidents that are still in living memory tend to have too much baggage. Successful presidents with name recognition are also much more common in the advertising realm. It's unlikely that Lincoln Auto Insurance first considered the name Buchanan Auto Insurance, for instance, though Millard Fillmore had his moment a few years ago.

The custom continues. Here's a commercial for a car wash in California that offers a George Washington Wash, a Teddy Roosevelt Wash, an Abe Lincoln Wash, a Thomas Jefferson Wash, a Martin Van Buren Full Detail, Besty Ross Express Polish, and Uncle Sam's Deal (107 car washes for $1,776).

Apparently it's a real commercial, as much as it looks like a Saturday Night Live commercial parody. Presidential Car Wash is a real car wash at 10515 Magnolia Blvd. in North Hollywood, and the commercial was created the duo Rhett & Link.

Adweek says "Rhett McLaughlin and Link Neal have made a name for themselves by creating intentionally bad commercials for local businesses across America... Here's the latest — an intentionally atrocious rap for Presidential Car Wash that makes all other intentionally atrocious raps from commercials pale by comparison.

"Rhett and Link definitely have a knack for mimicking the worst aspects of local ads — the terrible acting, the awkward moments, the crappy production values. But what really sets them apart is that they aren't really being irreverent. They're legitimately trying to drive traffic to these businesses."

The entire Adweek article is here.

Damage to the Washington Monument

2011-09-26T20:43:00.003-05:00

Bob Vogel, superintendent of the National Mall and Memorial Parks, said at a press conference today at the National Mall that the Washington Monument is "structurally sound" and -- as if anyone had any doubts -- "not going anywhere."

The monument, standing 555 feet and one-eighths inches tall on the Mall between the U.S. Capitol and the Lincoln Memorial, was damaged during the August 23, 2011, earthquake that shook the East Coast, and has been closed to tourists since then. According to Vogel, the quake damaged the elevator and put at least four cracks in the structure.

The Park Service will undertake an inspection of the exterior this week, with Brandon Lathan, a mountaineering specialist ranger, rappelling down the monument to look for more damage. Except some interesting pictures of the rappelling in the media in the days ahead.

The Washington Monument is the world's tallest stone structure, naturally dedicated to the memory of the First President of the United States, with construction beginning in 1848, during the term of the 11th President of the United States (Polk). It was dedicated in 1885, near the end of the term of the 21st President of the United States (Arthur).

The 12th Amendment

2011-09-25T20:49:00.007-05:00

On September 25, 1804, in a circular letter to the governors of the several states, Secretary of State James Madison declared that the 12th amendment to the U.S. Constitution had been ratified by three-fourths of the states. It modified the way the Electoral College selected the president, as originally specified by Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution, which had led to the electoral tie vote between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr in 1800 and the consternation that followed as the House of Representatives chose the president.

The first part of the amendment says: "The Electors shall meet in their respective states and vote by ballot for President and Vice-President, one of whom, at least, shall not be an inhabitant of the same state with themselves; they shall name in their ballots the person voted for as President, and in distinct ballots the person voted for as Vice-President, and they shall make distinct lists of all persons voted for as President, and of all persons voted for as Vice-President, and of the number of votes for each, which lists they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the seat of the government of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate..."

Under the original system, the electors voted for two candidates without specifying which was for president and which vice president. Whomever received the most votes of the grand total became president, provided he had a majority, and whomever was second became vice president. But in 1800, both Jefferson and Burr received 71 electoral votes, presumably when one of the Democratic-Republican electors forgot not to vote for Burr, as was the plan, since ostensibly Jefferson and Burr were on the same side.

The passage of the 12th amendment didn't prevent the selection of the president by the House one more time, in 1824, but that was because of a four-way race. Andrew Jackson actually received more electoral votes, 99 to John Quincy Adam's 84, but it wasn't a majority for Jackson, and the House picked Adams. (Jackson, of course, came back in four years to stomp on Adams, 178 to 83.)

TR Creates the First National Monument

2011-09-24T19:01:00.000-05:00

On this day in 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt proclaimed Devils Tower, Wyoming, as the first national monument, noting in the proclamation that “the lofty and isolated rock known as ‘Devils Tower'... is such an extraordinary example of the effect of erosion in the higher mountains as to be a natural wonder and an object of historic and great scientific interest.”

The authority for him to do so was the newly passed Antiques Act of 1906, a Congressional response to widespread looting of Indian burial grounds beginning at the end of the 19th century. According to the National Park Service, "[the act] it authorized permits for legitimate archaeological investigations and penalties for persons taking or destroying antiquities without permission. And it authorized presidents to proclaim 'historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures, and other objects of historic or scientific interest' as national monuments -- 'the limits of which in all cases shall be confined to the smallest area compatible with the proper care and management of the objects to be protected.'

"So it was originally expected that national monuments would be proclaimed to protect prehistoric cultural features, or antiquities, and that they would be small."

TR did not think small. Devils Tower National Monument is about 1,347 acres, and during his presidency, TR created 18 national monuments, including Muir Woods in California, Jewel Cave in South Dakota, and Petrified Forest and the Grand Canyon -- the latter some 800,000 acres -- both in the Arizona Territory.

The Fala Speech

2011-09-23T19:20:00.004-05:00

On September 23, 1944, President Roosevelt kicked his re-election campaign into high gear with the "Fala Speech," delivered in Washington, DC, to the Teamsters (the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Chauffeurs, Warehousemen and Helpers of America, to give its formal name).

This clip is a little disjointed, but it does include some of the more memorial parts of the speech.

Aged from his 11-plus years in office, FDR nevertheless gave a spirited campaign speech. Fala of course was his dog, pictured here in bronze at the FDR Memorial in Washington DC. The president mentioned Fala toward the end of the speech, to answer the untrue charge that the president had left the dog behind on the Aleutian Islands and had sent a destroyer back to find him, and as an example of Republican falsehoods.

The president had plenty else to say about his opposition. "You are, most of you, old enough to remember what things were like for labor in 1932," noted at one point.

"You remember the closed banks and the breadlines and the starvation wages; the foreclosures of homes and farms, and the bankruptcies of business; the Hoovervilles, and the young men and women of the nation facing a hopeless, jobless future; the closed factories and mines and mills; the ruined and abandoned farms; the stalled railroads and the empty docks; the blank despair of a whole Nation -- and the utter impotence of the federal government.

"You remember the long, hard road, with its gains and its setbacks, which we have traveled together ever since those days. Now there are some politicians who do not remember that far back, and there are some who remember but find it convenient to forget. No, the record is not to be washed away that easily.

"The opposition in this year has already imported into this campaign a very interesting thing, because it is foreign. They have imported the propaganda technique invented by the dictators abroad. Remember, a number of years ago, there was a book, Mein Kampf, written by Hitler himself. The technique was all set out in Hitler's book -- and it was copied by the aggressors of Italy and Japan. According to that technique, you should never use a small falsehood; always a big one, for its very fantastic nature would make it more credible -- if only you keep repeating it over and over and over again.

"Well, let us take some simple illustrations that come to mind. For example, although I rubbed my eyes when I read it, we have been told that it was not a Republican depression, but a Democratic depression from which this nation was saved in 1933 -- that this administration this one today -- is responsible for all the suffering and misery that the history books and the American people have always thought had been brought about during the 12 ill-fated years when the Republican Party was in power.

"Now, there is an old and somewhat lugubrious adage which says: 'Never speak of rope in the house of a man who has been hanged.' In the same way, if I were a Republican leader speaking to a mixed audience, the last word in the whole dictionary that I think I would use is that word 'depression.' "