William Polk Carey

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.' ”

December 12, 1831:Proto-Whigs Meet to Nominate Clay

The idea of a national convention to nominate a presidential candidate was a novelty in December 1831 when members of the National Republican party -- elements of which would later evolve into the Whigs -- met in Baltimore to nominate Henry Clay (left) to run for president in 1832. In previous election cycles, party candidates had been nominated by caucuses of Congressmen. After the election of 1832, however, the parties realized the value of state and then national conventions in building membership and loyalty, so conventions became the norm.

The 1831 National Republican meeting was essentially one against President Jackson, spurred especially by his veto of the Maysville Road bill in 1830 and later vetoes of other internal improvements funded by the federal government. Such improvements were a cornerstone of the "American System" of Henry Clay, the leading anti-Jacksonian. The platform of the National Republicans included federal support for internal improvements, a protective tariff to nurture infant industries, and a strong Bank of the United States, all of which were articulated in the convention's journal -- an early version of a party platform decided by a convention.

John Sergeant, a Congressman from Pennsylvania, was also nominated in December 1831, as Clay's running mate. Ultimately, though, President Jackson (running with Martin Van Buren) was far too popular for Clay and Sergeant to overcome, with the Democratic ticket capturing 54.2 percent of the popular vote vs. 37.4 percent for the National Republicans, and 219 electoral votes vs. 49.

Interestingly, the convention nominating Clay wasn't the very first such meeting. In the summer of 1831, the Anti-Masonic party met to nominate William Wirt (right), a former US attorney general (and former Mason) for president. Wirt, of Maryland, and his running mate Amos Ellmaker of Pennsylvania, must have capitalized on strong anti-Masonic feelings in Vermont, because they won that state in 1832 -- the only state they won -- and got all of seven electoral votes for their trouble.

November 28, 1866:Henry Bacon's Birthday

Today is the birthday of Henry Bacon, architect of the Lincoln Memorial. He was one of the best-known architects of his day, known especially for designing settings for sculpture. The Lincoln Memorial was his final project, now known the world over. He died in 1924, two years after the memorial was dedicated.

The April 17, 1912 edition of The New York Times noted that "the Lincoln Memorial Commission by a close vote decided to-day to recommend to Congress the design for a memorial to Abraham Lincoln submitted by Henry Bacon, a New York architect.

"Mr. Bacon's design, already approved by the Commission of Fine Arts, calls for a rectangular marble structure surrounded by Doric columns, each forty feet high, not unlike the Treasury Building here except that there is to be only one story. The statue of Lincoln, designs for which are yet to be submitted, will stand on a pedestal at one end of the structure. On one wall will be Lincoln's Gettysburg address, probably in bronze, and on the opposite wall his second inaugurate address....

"Russell Pope, another New York architect, was the only other architect whose design was considered at to-day's meeting."

John Russell Pope might have lost that commission, but he too eventually designed a major presidential memorial: the Jefferson Memorial, dedicated in 1943, six years after he died.

May 13, 1920:Debs Nominated for President

Eugene V. Debs ran for president as a socialist every election from 1900 to 1920, except for 1916, polling remarkably good numbers, especially in 1912 and 1920, when he won 900,672 and 919,799 votes in those respective elections (third-place William Howard Taft got about 3.4 million votes in 1912). It was the high-water mark of organized socialism in this country.

On May 13, 1920, even more remarkably, Debs was nominated for the presidency at the Finnish Socialist Hall in New York City while he was in Georgia, unable to attend. He was, in fact, in federal prison, convicted under the draconian Espionage Act of 1917 for an anti-war speech he made in Canton, Ohio, on June 16, 1918, It's clear from the text of the speech he knew what was coming:

"I have just returned from a visit over yonder, where three of our most loyal comrades are paying the penalty for their devotion to the cause of the working class. They have come to realize, as many of us have, that it is extremely dangerous to exercise the constitutional right of free speech in a country fighting to make democracy safe in the world.

"I realize that, in speaking to you this afternoon, there are certain limitations placed upon the right of free speech. I must be exceedingly careful, prudent, as to what I say, and even more careful and prudent as to how I say it. I may not be able to say all I think; but I am not going to say anything that I do not think. I would rather a thousand times be a free soul in jail than to be a sycophant and coward in the streets. They may put those boys in jail—and some of the rest of us in jail—but they can not put the Socialist movement in jail. Those prison bars separate their bodies from ours, but their souls are here this afternoon. They are simply paying the penalty that all men have paid in all the ages of history for standing erect, and for seeking to pave the way to better conditions for mankind."

A critical factor in the Democratic loss of the White House in 1920 was Woodrow Wilson's overreaction in suppressing dissent during the war and during the Red Scare afterwards, which featured many of the same applications of coercive federal power. Wilson's successor, Warren Harding, commuted Debs' sentence on Christmas Day 1921. In ill health by that time, however, he never ran for office again and died in 1926.

May 2, 1740:Elias Boudinot's Birthday

Elias Boudinot of New Jersey -- one of the richest men in the colony and then the state -- is another of the quasi-presidents under the Articles of Confederation, the Fourth President of the United States in Congress Assembled. An important man in his time, almost completely forgotten today. Sic transit gloria mundi.

During his tenure as presiding officer of the Confederation Congress, which was from November 4, 1782, to November 3, 1783, the United States achieved its formal independence. In negotiations, Great Britain had acknowledged as such. On March 12, 1783, Boudinot received word of the Preliminary Treaty of Peace, agreed to on November 30, 1782. He wrote to George Washington at once:

"The arrival of Captain Barney this morning creates so great a field for the circulation of reports agreeably to the complexion of the Reporter, that I have thought it not amiss to inform your Excellency of the substance of his dispatches, tho' you may perhaps receive it from other hands. He left L'Orient the 17th of January last. His latest dispatches are dated the 25th December. The Preliminaries between America and Great Britain were signed the 30th of November and contain nine articles, in substance as follows.

  "1st. The acknowledgment of our Independence and the relinquishment of all rights, Claims & etc. over us.

"2dly. The Boundaries of the United States very Consonant to our Claim.

"3rd. A full and free right to the fisheries, with liberty to take fish on the several shores &c..."

Later, Boudinot served in the First, Second and Third Congresses under the Constitution, and in 1795 President Washington appointed him director of the US Mint, a position he held for 10 years, overseeing the first coinages of the United States.

But that's not all. Clearly vexed by some of the more unorthodox religious attitudes of the Enlightenment, Boudinot wrote "Age of Revelation" in 1790 as a reply to Thomas Paine's "Age of Reason." Later, he helped found the American Bible Society, and was its first president. He also thought that American Indians just might be the descendants of the Lost Tribes of Israel, and wrote a book about that as well.

Boudinot lent his name to a young Cherokee (pictured below). This curious story is related at ngeorgia.com (a site about North Georgia):

"Although he lived less than 40 years, few people had a more profound effect on the Cherokee Nation than Elias Boudinot. His legacy includes:

• Editor, Cherokee Phoenix
• Leader of the Treaty Party
• Signed Treaty of New Echota

"Born in 1800 (shortly after the arrival of his lifelong friend and cousin John Ridge) Gallegina, or Buck, Watie would be educated by the Moravians at Spring Place, not far from his parent's home in the Oothcaloga Valley.

"In 1818 he journeyed north to the American Board School in Cornwall, Connecticut. During this journey he visited two former American presidents, Thomas Jefferson at Monticello and James Madison at Montpelier. Both were pleased to see young Buck and the other Cherokee and Choctaw youths who accompanied him.

"Moving north from Virginia the young men stopped in Washington, D. C. and Burlington, New Jersey, where Buck met with Dr. Elias Boudinot, a writer, poet and statesman who is probably best-known for his election to a one-year term as President of the United States under the Articles of Confederation, his role as director of the U. S. Mint for many years, and his fight for Negro rights in New Jersey. The doctor took a strong liking to Gallegina and offered to support the Cherokee financially. Buck agreed to use his name from that day forward."

His son, Elias C. Boudinot, was a Confederate general and Congressman from Arkansas.

March 9, 1847:Winfield Scott Besieges Veracruz

The war with Mexico made two generals into heroes in the United States who soon ran for president: Zachary Taylor and Winfield Scott. Taylor was destined to be elected president in 1848, though he served for only for a year and a half. The Whigs, bypassing their incumbent Milliard Fillmore in 1852, nominated Winfield Scott as the party's standard-bearer, with William Alexander Graham, Fillmore's secretary of the Navy, in the number two slot.

They lost to Democrats Franklin Pierce and William R. King, however, and it would be the last time the Whigs participated as a stand-alone party in a presidential election. Whigs supported the nominees of the American Party in 1856 -- with Fillmore the nominee for president -- and the Constitutional Union Party in 1860, with the top of the ticket going to John Bell. After that the Whigs were history, literally and figuratively, unless you count this group.

Back in 1847, that was all still in the future the day Winfield Scott, Old Fuss & Feathers, oversaw a successful amphibious landing of 12,000 US troops near Veracruz, Mexico (pictured). The city fell to Scott's forces in less than three weeks, and the operation opened Mexico up to further penetration, including the capture of Mexico City in September.

March 7, 1850:Daniel Webster Gives His March 7 Speech

Star politician, successful diplomat, famed orator -- none of these achievements could get Daniel Webster of Massachusetts the presidency. In 1836, he was one of the new Whig Party three candidates (the party couldn't agree on one), along with William Henry Harrison and Hugh Lawson White. The strategy, such as it was, was to deny the Democrat Martin Van Buren a majority in the electoral college. Webster got Massachusetts' 14 electoral votes. fewer than the other two Whigs, but Van Buren won anyway with 170.

In 1840, Webster unwittingly missed a chance to be president. He declined an offer to be the Whig vice president under William Henry Harrison, a post that went to John Tyler. He served President Tyler with distinction as Secretary of State, however, and was the architect of the treaty that established the eastern border of the United States and Canada and signaled a lasting peace between the two great English-speaking nations of the world.

In 1848, he made another bid for the top job. No dice. Zachary Taylor was the Whig candidate, and again Webster was offered the second spot. "I do not propose to be buried until I am dead," he said of the offer. Taylor was dead and buried in 1850 and Millard Fillmore became president.

On March 7, 1850, Webster spoke on the Senate floor at length in support of the various pieces of legislation later called the Compromise of 1850, which is known as his March 7 Speech. He spoke, famously, "not as a Massachusetts man, nor as a Northern man but as an American..." His efforts helped win passage of the bills, including the notorious Fugitive Slave Law, but turned New England abolitionists bitterly against him and doomed Webster's last attempt at the Whig presidential nomination in 1852. In any case, he died toward the end of that year after a fall from a horse.

March 6, 1926:Alan Greenspan's Birthday

There have been 14 chairmen of the Federal Reserve since its creation in 1914, a period in which there have been 16 presidents. Fifteen if you count William McAdoo, who got the organization up and running at President Wilson's direction. Before the Banking Act of 1935, the formal title was actually Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Federal Reserve System; since then it's been Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. The chairman gets a four-year term, appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate, though some chairmen have quit early while others have been reappointed successively, even by presidents of different parties.

Wilson appointed two chairmen; Harding one; Coolidge one; Hoover one; FDR two; Truman two; Nixon one; Carter two; Reagan one; and George W. Bush one. Other presidents, however, have reappointed sitting chairmen, such as Eisenhower and William McChesney Martin Jr. and Clinton and Alan Greenspan. The Fed chairman and the president have been at odds over monetary policy from time to time, and the chairman's power is thought to rival that of a president. In economic terms, a good case can be made for that; but no chairman of the Federal Reserve has ever ordered air strikes or cruise missile attacks.

Alan Greenspan, celebrating his 81st birthday today, was not the longest serving chairman, but he was close. William McChesney Martin Jr. was in office from April 1951 to February 1970, nearly 19 years, while Greenspan was chairman for a few months less, retiring last year. The chairman in office the shortest time was Eugene R. Black, serving about 15 months in the 1933-34 trough of the Great Depression; William Miller was Fed chairman only a little longer than that in the late '70s, the era of stagflation.

February 9, 1773/1814:The Birthdays of William Henry Harrison and Samuel J. Tilden

Two sets of presidents share the same birthday: James K. Polk and Warren G. Harding on November 2 (1795 and 1865, respectively) and Andrew Johnson and Woodrow Wilson on December 29 (1808 and 1856, respectively). But for a twist of electoral fate in 1877, however, February 9 would have been another such shared-birthday: William Henry Harrison (1773) and Samuel J. Tilden (1814).

Though the presidency didn't really work out for either of these men -- one won the prize, then dropped dead, while the other had it stolen from him -- in terms of posthumous fame, they haven't done badly. They're fairly large footnote characters in American history for exactly those things, dying in office and being denied office.

But there's so much more. Harrison was instrumental in the settlement of the Northwest Territories, both as a military and political leader; and his campaign in 1840 anticipated much in modern US electoral politics. His party, the Whigs, "flooded the electorate with posters and badges extolling the virtues of their colorful, down-home 'log cabin and hard cider' candidate, the hero of Tippecanoe," notes the Harrison biography published by the Miller Center for Public Affairs at the University of Virginia. "In their image remaking of Harrison, the Whigs misrepresented him to the electorate. Harrison was actually from an established Virginia family, a learned student of classics, and a man who enjoyed luxurious living to the point that he was continually in debt. The Whigs' strategy worked. It became the first true use of political 'handling,' or public image-making, in an American presidential race."

As for Tilden, he didn't get to be the 19th president of the United States. (Or perhaps he could be referred to as the 19th* president.) But he did well in the rough-and-tumble of New York State politics in the Gilded Age. As corporation counsel for New York City and chairman of the New York State Democratic committee in 1871, "he seized the opportunity... to endeavor to fasten upon the principal city officials the crime, universally suspected, but of which there was no proof, of having corruptly embezzled to an enormous extent the moneys of the city," wrote John Biglow in the preface to Letters and Literary Memorials of Samuel J. Tilden (1909). "By a long and patient tracing of the multitude of accounts in different banks, he reached a series of results which, when compared, not only disclosed but conclusively demonstrated... the whole scheme of fraud."

Tilden played a large part, then, in the fall of Boss Tweed. Later, upon his death in 1886, Tilden also left part of his considerable fortune for the establishment of a library in New York City. Ultimately, in combination with two other libraries, it became the New York Public Library, one of the world's great libraries.

February 4, 1801: John Marshall Becomes Chief Justice

With certain exceptions, such as the popular David McCullough, historians tend to be sour on John Adams, second president of the United States, but he did leave the new nation an incalculable legacy: John Marshall as chief justice (pictured). In the waning days of his term in office -- but before it was clear whether Thomas Jefferson or Aaron Burr would succeed him -- President Adams nominated Virginia lawyer, representative and then Secretary of State John Marshall, a Federalist, as chief justice of the United States. He was nominated by Adams late in January, confirmed and sworn in on February 4, 1801.

"There is no evidence that Adams had planned to name Marshall, or that he had calculated the move beforehand," wrote Jean Edward Smith in John Marshall: Definer of a Nation (1996) "Instead, the available information suggests that pace of events forced the choice. Adams simply could not afford to delay naming a new chief justice if the Federalists were retain control of the Court. Marshall was at hand, he was prepared to accept the post, and his personal loyalty to the president had been demonstrated time and again over the past year. By choosing Marshall, the petulant Adams was also demonstrating the power he still held as president. ..."

Which would make the appointment another example of a short-term expedient growing into something monumental. At the time, Adams probably couldn't imagine that Marshall would find his life's work on the court, serving over 34 years, and participating in more than 1,000 decisions and writing more than 500 opinions, including the landmark Marbury v. Madison. But Adams lived until 1826, so he might have had a notion of how his hasty appointment helped make the Supreme Court such an important institution.

January 16, 1888:L.Q.C. Lamar, Cleveland Appointee, Confirmed by US Senate

Appointing chief justices of the United States and associate justices to the US Supreme Court is one of the president's important powers, but there's no way to know how much any given president will exercise that power until his term is over. The vagaries of death, illness and retirement mean that some long-serving presidents appoint only a few, while other short-timers appoint more.

George Washington, of course, appointed the most, since there was no Supreme Court when he took office. He appointed 10, or 11 if you count John Rutledge, a 1795 recess appointment to chief justice that the Senate refused to confirm. FDR would seem a natural for the second highest number of appointees, and indeed that's the case. He got nine, a full court's worth; no packing necessary in the long run.

The third-highest number of appointees is a surprise -- but also appropriate. The judicial-minded William Howard Taft, president only four years, nevertheless named six justices to the high court, including Chief Justice Edward White, whom Taft succeeded in the job in 1921.

Only four presidents missed the opportunity to appoint justices. William Henry Harrison barely had time to unpack his bags, much less make judicial appointments. Likewise, Zachary Taylor died before he could name any Supreme Court justices -- though Millard Fillmore, who didn't have much more time in office, got to appoint one, Associate Justice Benjamin Curtis. The remarkably luckless Andrew Johnson didn't have the opportunity either, though he served nearly an entire four-year term. He was so much at odds with the Senate that his appointments probably would have been problematic anyway. Finally, Jimmy Carter didn't appoint any justices, which was probably as much a function of good health and longevity among sitting justices in the late 20th century as anything else.

On January 16, 1888, Mississippian Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar (pictured) was confirmed by the Senate as an associate justice. It was the cap of a remarkable career that saw Lamar in the antebellum US Congress, serve the Confederacy both in military and civilian capacities, and then return to the US Congress after the war. Lamar was the first of four justices appointed by President Cleveland, and he was recalled many years later in Profiles in Courage as a courageous Senator, especially for his eloquent eulogy of one-time Radical Republican and bitter enemy Charles Sumner in 1874. Short bio here.