U.S. Senate Elects Richard Mentor Johnson Vice President

In February of 1837, the U.S. Senate did sometime it had never done before, and has never done since: it elected the Vice President of the United States. According to the 12th amendment to the U.S. Constitution, if no vice presidential candidate has a majority of the electoral votes, "then from the two highest numbers on the list, the Senate shall choose the Vice President; a quorum for the purpose shall consist of two thirds of the whole number of Senators, and a majority of the whole number shall be necessary to a choice."

A funny thing happened on the way to the election of 1836. Presidential candidate Martin Van Buren, Democrat, received 170 of the 294 electoral votes, a clear majority and besting all of his Whig rivals. The Whigs hadn't had a national convention that year, and so state conventions nominated four separate candidates -- a recipe for losing.

Richard Mentor Johnson of Kentucky was on the ticket with Van Buren, mainly at the insistence of President Jackson, who perhaps thought Johnson would help win western votes. But not all of the electors liked Johnson, and only 147 voted for him, which was exactly half and thus one vote short of a majority. So the election was thrown into the Senate, where Johnson faced Whig Francis Granger of New York. Ultimately, Johnson prevailed in the Senate by a party-line vote of 33 to 16, and became the Ninth Vice President of the United States.

Why did Johnson face hostile electors? He had been in Congress for 30 years, both in the House and the Senate, but more importantly -- politically speaking -- he was a hero of the War of 1812, when he supposedly killed the Indian chief Tecumseh at the Battle of the Thames in 1813. It isn't clear that Johnson actually killed Tecumseh, but he used the story to his advantage anyway.

Damning, at least in the eyes of many slaveholders, was Johnson's unconventional behavior regarding his slave Julia Chinn. "Johnson never married," notes his U.S. Senate biography. "Family tradition recounts that he ended an early romance, vowing revenge for his mother's interference, after Jemima Johnson pronounced his intended bride unworthy of the family. He later lived openly with Julia Chinn, a mulatto slave raised by his mother and inherited from his father, until her death from cholera in 1833. Johnson freely acknowledged the relationship, as well as the two daughters born to the union, and entrusted Julia with full authority over his business affairs during his absences from Blue Spring Farm.

"The choice [of Johnson as vice presidential nominee] provoked bitter dissention in Democratic ranks... Van Buren's ally Albert Balch had previously warned Jackson that "I do not think from what I hear daily that the nomination of Johnson for the Vice Presidency will be popular in any of the slave holding states except Ky. on account of his former domestic relations," and a Van Buren correspondent later predicted that "Col. Johnson's... weight would absolutely sink the whole party in Virginia." Tennessee Supreme Court Chief Justice John Catron warned Jackson that Johnson was "not only positively unpopular in Tennessee... but affirmatively odious."

Nevertheless, Van Buren became president and Johnson vice president, both serving from 1837 to 1841, but losing their re-election bid to William Henry Harrison and John Tyler in 1840. One of the stranger things Johnson did as vice president was to return to Kentucky in 1839 and run a tavern for a while. Then again, vice presidents have little to do and Johnson was in chronic need of money, so a business venture probably wasn't that strange. He also took up with another slave woman.

The Senate bio continues: "By the spring of 1839, Amos Kendall reported to Van Buren on the vice president's latest venture: a hotel and tavern at White Sulphur Spring, Kentucky. He enclosed a letter from a friend who had visited 'Col. Johnson's Watering establishment' and found the vice president 'happy in the inglorious pursuit of tavern keeping -- even giving his personal superintendence to the chicken and egg purchasing and water-melon selling department.'

"Kendall wrote with consternation that Johnson's companion, 'a young Delilah of about the complexion of Shakespears swarthy Othello,' was 'said to be his third wife; his second, which he sold for her infidelity, having been the sister of the present lady.' Although one of the most fashionable in Kentucky, Johnson's resort also formed a source of considerable embarrassment for the administration."

The Senate Shows Breckinridge the Door

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.

Vice President Dawes on the Vice Presidency

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."

Vice President Adlai Stevenson's Birthday

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.

FDR, Dewey and the Election of 1944

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.

Agnew Speaks

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."

Henry Wallace's Birthday

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

Eleanor Mondale and Kara Kennedy

RIP, Eleanor Mondale Poling, daughter of Vice President Walter Mondale and Joan Mondale. January 19, 1960 - September 17, 2011.

RIP, Kara Kennedy Allen, niece of President John Kennedy. February 27, 1960 - September 16, 2011.

Vice President Thomas A. Hendricks

Vice presidents don't get nearly enough attention, especially 19th-century veeps who died in office after only a few months. So even though DPD has mentioned Thomas A. Hendricks of Indiana, 21st Vice President of the United States, on a previous September 7, he needs another mention. Today is his 192nd birthday.

He was nearly Samuel J. Tiden's vice president, but was cheated out of the job as surely as Tiden was the presidency. Instead, William Wheeler served as vice president from 1877 to 1881.

Hendricks became vice president on March 4, 1885, at the beginning of the first Cleveland administration. He died on November 25, 1885, during a visit to Indiana, and is still there, buried at Crown Hill Cemetery in Indianapolis.

December 28, 1832:Vice President Calhoun Resigns

John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, Seventh Vice President of the United States, quit that office about three months before his term would have ended, become the first of two vice presidents to do so. The vice presidency may be widely regarded as a hollow office, but it is worth noting that the holders of the office have given it up only once each century.

December 19, 1828:Calhoun's South Carolina Exposition and Protest

As political issues, the Tariff of Abominations and the Nullification Crisis seem as remote as the Moon these days, but in the 1820s and '30s, they were hot-button issues. No one was pushing those hot buttons quite like South Carolinian John C. Calhoun, Seventh Vice President of the United States. As a vice president, Calhoun has a number of distinctions, namely that he served under two presidents -- John Quincy Adams and then Andrew Jackson. The only other vice president to do so was George Clinton, under Thomas Jefferson and then James Madison. Calhoun was also the first vice president to resign, doing so in late 1832 to take a seat in the US Senate -- a much more powerful position, since at that juncture the presidency wasn't in the cards for him.

On December 19, 1828, Vice President Calhoun submitted a report to the South Carolina State House about the hated Tariff of 1828 (the Tariff of Abominations), which soon had copies of the 35,000-word document printed and distributed at its own expense. It was a statement against the tariff, but more than that. Known to history as the South Carolina Exposition and Protest, the document argued for nullification -- the right of the states to reject federal law.

Calhoun wrote (anonymously at first, though word got out soon enough): "If it be conceded, as it must be by every one who is the least conversant with our institutions, that the sovereign powers delegated are divided between the General and State Governments, and that the latter bold their portion by the same tenure as the former, it would seem impossible to deny to the States the right of deciding on the infractions of their powers, and the proper remedy to be applied for their correction. The right of judging, in such cases, is an essential attribute of sovereignty, of which the States cannot be divested without losing their sovereignty itself, and being reduced to a subordinate corporate condition. In fact, to divide power, and to give to one of the parties the exclusive right of judging of the portion allotted to each, is, in reality, not to divide it at all; and to reserve such exclusive right to the General Government (it matters not by what department to be exercised), is to convert it, in fact, into a great consolidated government, with unlimited powers, and to divest the States, in reality, of all their rights, It is impossible to understand the force of terms, and to deny so plain a conclusion."

In early 1833, President Jackson was prepared to -- and authorized by Congress to -- take military action against South Carolina for its act late in the previous year of nullifying the Tariffs of 1828 and 1832. Old Hickory wasn't known to be a bluffing sort, so South Carolina backed down, and nullification per se was discredited. But not, as it turned out, broader notions of states' rights that weren't settled until 1865.

November 24, 1877:Alben Barkley's Birthday

Alben William Barkley, Democratic politico from Kentucky and big wheel in the US Senate in the 1930s and '40s, won the vice presidency in 1948 on the same ticket with Harry Truman. At Barkley's inauguration on January 20, 1949, he was 71, thus becoming the oldest person ever to become vice president (the second-oldest was Charles Curtis, Coolidge's veep, who entered the office at age 69 in 1925).

Curtis wasn't ever actually called a "veep." Alben Barkley was, however -- he was the first vice president to be called that -- and the term stuck, even though Barkley's successor, Richard Nixon, didn't want it. "Alben W. Barkley, who served as vice president of the United States from 1949 to 1953, was popularly known as the 'Veep,' " wrote Mark O. Hatfield in Vice Presidents of the United States, 1789-1993. "His young grandson had suggested this abbreviated alternative to the cumbersome 'Mr. Vice President.' When Barkley told the story at a press conference, the newspapers printed it, and the title stuck. Barkley's successor as vice president, Richard Nixon, declined to continue the nickname, saying that it had been bestowed on Barkley affectionately and belonged to him...

"A storyteller of great repute, Alben Barkley frequently poked fun at himself and his office. He was especially fond of telling about the mother who had two sons. One went to sea; the other became vice president; and neither was heard from again. In Barkley's case, the story was not at all true. He made sure that the public heard from him, and about him, as often as possible. And what the public heard, they liked, for Alben Barkley performed admirably as vice president of the United States.

"...Alben Barkley was a genial grandfatherly figure -- but with enough life left in him to court and marry a widow half his age and to captivate national attention with their May-December romance. In many ways, Barkley was the last of the old-time vice presidents, the last to preside regularly over the Senate, the last not to have an office in or near the White House, the last to identify more with the legislative than the executive branch. He was an old warhorse, the veteran of many political battles, the perpetual keynote speaker of his party who could rouse delegates from their lethargy to shout and cheer for the party's leaders and platform. His stump-speaker's lungs enabled him to bellow out a speech without need for a microphone. He was partisan to the marrow, but with a sense of humor and a gift of storytelling that defused partisan and personal animosities."

Today is also President Zachary Taylor's birthday, born in 1784, and as such the first president born after Americans won their independence on the battlefield, as acknowledged by the 1783 Treaty of Paris. See March 5 (his swearing in), July 9 (his death) and September 25 (the Battle of Monterrey).

November 21, 1899:Garret Hobart Dies

Garret Augustus Hobart of New Jersey was the sixth of the seven vice presidents to die in office, passing away in late 1899, presumably from heart disease. He was only 55, and thus the vice president with the third-shortest life span. Only John C. Breckinridge (died at 54) and Daniel D. Thompkins (died at 50) had shorter lives.

Hobart served under President McKinley during his first term, and curiously his opponent for the vice presidency, Arthur Sewall of Maine, also did not survive until the end of what would have been his term, had he and WIlliam Jennings Bryan prevailed in the 1896 election. Sewall died on September 5, 1900.

Sometimes presidents and vice presidents dislike each other, but that wasn't the case with McKinley and his first veep. Hobart's US Senate biography has this to say about this now-obscure figure: "For a running mate, McKinley had preferred Speaker Thomas B. Reed, with whom he had worked for many years in the House, but Reed would accept only the top spot on the ticket. Although McKinley and Hobart were strangers by comparison, the president had no difficulty warming up to Gus Hobart. The wealthy Hobarts leased a house at 21 Lafayette Square, which became known as the 'Little Cream White House.' ... The Hobarts used it to entertain lavishly—particularly because President McKinley's wife was an invalid who could not shoulder the traditional social burdens of the White House. The president frequently attended Hobart's dinners and afternoon smokers, where he could meet informally with party leaders from Capitol Hill.

"No previous vice president had visited the White House as often as Gus Hobart, due in part to the warm friendship that developed between Ida McKinley and Jennie Hobart. Mrs. McKinley suffered from epilepsy, which left her a recluse in the White House. President McKinley doted on his wife and grew to depend on Jennie Hobart, who visited Ida daily. 'The President constantly turned to me to help her wherever I could,' Mrs. Hobart wrote in her memoirs, '—not because I was Second Lady, but because I was their good friend.' Whenever McKinley had to be away from his wife in the evenings, he would entrust her to Jennie Hobart's care. He also invited Mrs. Hobart to White House social functions because her presence 'gave him confidence.' In addition to seeing each other in Washington, the McKinleys and Hobarts vacationed together at Bluff Point on Lake Champlain.

"McKinley looked on Hobart as a trusted adviser. Although the vice president was not invited to join meetings of the cabinet, the president and cabinet members consulted with him freely. The mutual regard between the two men made them, in the words of one acquaintance, 'coadjustors in the fixing of the policies of the Administration to an extent never before known.' Arthur Wallace Dunn, a newspaper correspondent who covered presidents from Benjamin Harrison to Warren Harding, marveled that 'for the first time in my recollection, and the last for that matter, the Vice President was recognized as somebody, as a part of the Administration, and as a part of the body over which he presided.' "

October 12, 2007:Vice Presidents and the Nobel Prize

Al Gore is the second vice president -- among those who were never president as well -- to win the Nobel Peace Prize. In 1925, Charles Dawes, 30th Vice President of the United States (pictured left), won the prize.

According to the Nobel Foundation: "The League of Nations late in 1923 invited Dawes to chair a committee to deal with the question of German reparations. The 'Dawes Report,' submitted in April 1924, provided facts on Germany's budget and resources, outlined measures needed to stabilize the currency, and suggested a schedule of payments on a sliding scale. For his masterly handling of this crucial international problem, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize; he donated the money to the endowment of the newly established Walter Hines Page School of International Relations at Johns Hopkins University."

Like Gore, Dawes shared the prize. The other winner that year was British statesman Sir Austen Chamberlain (half-brother of Neville, pictured right), famed for his role in negotiating the Locarno Pact, a series of agreements in 1925 to re-normalize relations between Germany and other European states, among other things.

"After meticulous preparation during the summer of 1925, representatives of seven powers - Great Britain, Germany, France, Belgium, Italy, Poland, and Czechoslovakia - met at Locarno in southern Switzerland on October 5, 1925," says the Nobel Foundation. "On Chamberlain's birthday, October 16, the foreign ministers initialed the documents known as the Locarno Agreements. Eight treaties or agreements in all, they included the Rhine Guarantee Pact (or Locarno Pact) with Germany, Belgium, France, Great Britain, and Italy as signatories; individual treaties of arbitration between Germany and former enemy nations; guarantee treaties involving France, Poland, and Czechoslovakia; and a collective note on the entry of Germany into the League of Nations."

In short, these two gentlemen greatly helped lay the foundation of a peace in Europe that would last... for a while. Of course, it's easy to say that in hindsight. In 1925, it must have seemed reasonable to honor them with the Peace Prize.

October 10, 1973:Agnew Resigns

Spiro Agnew was not, in fact, the first vice president to resign from that office. John C. Calhoun, the Seventh Vice President of the United States, did so toward the end of his second term, after the election of 1832, when his successor -- Martin Van Buren -- had already been selected. Calhoun was one of the great statesmen of his day, and quit the vice presidency after the South Carolina legislature voted to send him to the US Senate. Calhoun, along with his colleagues Daniel Webster and Henry Clay, was one of the "Immortal Trio."

Agnew, by contrast, quit the vice presidency after pleading no contest to a tax evasion charge. It turned out he'd been taking bribes since the early days of his career in Maryland, and continued to do so after becoming vice president.

According to Eyewitness to History: "Lester Matz and John Childs started their Maryland construction company in 1956. Located in Baltimore County, the prospects for their business changed for the better in 1963 when Spiro Agnew took office as County Executive. After an initial meeting with Agnew and a close associate J. Walter Jones, Matz began making payments to Agnew in exchange for receiving county building contracts. The payments equaled 5% of the value of the contract and were always made in cash delivered in an envelope prior to receiving the contract. Matz and Childs contributed significantly to Agnew's 1966 gubernatorial campaign and were rewarded with a continuation of their arraignment with Governor Agnew. The relationship continued when Agnew became Vice President.

"Matz and Childs were targeted early on in the Justice Department investigation of Spiro Agnew. The following is excerpted from the Justice Department transcripts of interviews with Lester Matz. Matz describes receiving a phone call from Agnew's associate J. Walter Jones and subsequently delivering a payment to the Vice President in his office:

" 'Sometime in 1970, or early 1971, Matz received a telephone call from Jones who advised him that there was an upcoming federal job that the Vice-President would control. This job would generate something in the order of $100,000 in fees, and Jones advised Matz that a payment would be necessary. This job was the (blacked out) and Matz wanted it to go to (blacked out). The job was awarded to (blacked out). He then approached his partner in (blacked out) for the purpose of advising him that he (Matz) had committed them to make a 5% payment to Mr. Agnew, (blacked out) finally agreed to contribute $1,000.

'Matz arranged an appointment with Mr. Agnew and Jones in the Vice-President's office in Washington. He then arranged to meet with (blacked out) in Washington just before his appointment with the Vice-President. Matz met with (blacked out) across the street from the EOB (Executive Office Building) and there received from (blacked out) $1,000 in cash. Matz added $1,500 in cash and placed the entire sum in an envelope which he took with him to his meeting with Jones and the Vice-President. (blacked out) has been interviewed and confirms Matz's recollection of these events. We have the check by which he generated the $1,000...' "

October 7, 1888:Henry Wallace's Birthday

Iowa farm boy, newspaperman, agriculturalist, secretary of commerce and agriculture, and 1948 Progressive Party presidential candidate Henry Agard Wallace, who along the way was 33rd Vice President of the United States, was born this day in 1888. He died in 1965.

He made enemies among the upper reaches of the Democratic Party, and alienated President Roosevelt as well, so he lost his slot on the ticket in 1944 -- a shift that led to Harry Truman's accession to the White House instead. The Progressive Party was formed to run Wallace in the 1948 election. Wallace and his running mate Sen. Glen Taylor of Idaho polled about 1.15 million votes, only slightly fewer than Dixiecrats Strom Thurmond and Fielding Wright, but because of the structure of the electoral college, the Progressives got no electoral votes, while the Dixiecrats got 39.

His most famous speech, which he expanded into a book, came in 1942 when, as vice president, he spoke to the Free World Association in New York. "Some have spoken of the 'American Century,'" Wallace said. "I say that the century on which we are entering — the century which will come out of this war — can be and must be the century of the common man. Perhaps it will be America's opportunity to suggest that Freedoms and duties by which the common man must live. Everywhere the common man must learn to build his own industries with his own hands is a practical fashion.

"Everywhere the common man must learn to increase his productivity so that he and his children can eventually pay to the world community all that they have received. No nation will have the God-given right to exploit other nations. Older nations will have the privilege to help younger nations get started on the path to industrialization, but there must be neither military nor economic imperialism. The methods of the nineteenth century will not work in the people's century which is now about to begin. India, China, and Latin America have a tremendous stake in the people's century. As their masses learn to read and write, and as they become productive mechanics, their standard of living will double and treble. Modern science, when devoted whole-heartedly to the general welfare, has in it potentialities of which we do not yet dream.

"... Cartels in the peace to come must be subjected to international control for the common man, as well as being under adequate control by the respective home governments. In this way, we can prevent the Germans from again building a war machine while we sleep. With international monopoly pools under control, it will be possible for inventions to serve all the people instead of only a few.

"Yes, and when the time of peace comes, the citizen will again have a duty, the supreme duty of sacrificing the lesser interest for the greater interest of the general welfare. Those who write the peace must think of the whole world. There can be no privileged peoples. We ourselves in the United States are no more a master race than the Nazis. And we can not perpetuate economic warfare without planting the seeds of military warfare. We must use our power at the peace table to build an economic peace that is just, charitable and enduring."

September 18, 1812:Herschel Vespasian Johnson's Birthday

In the four-way race that was the presidential election of 1860, there were four candidates for vice president as well, including Herschel Vespasian Johnson (pictured), former governor of Georgia. He ran with Stephen Douglas as a "Northern" Democrat, but the ticket only won one state, Missouri, and took three of New Jersey's electoral votes, for a total of 12 electoral votes, a meager showing indeed. The ticket did, however, come in second behind the Republicans in the popular vote nationwide -- such as the nation was at that point.

After the election, Johnson served the Confederacy as a Senator. After the war, he was returned to the US Senate by voters in Georgia, but that body would not seat him, and he ended his days as a judge in Georgia, dying in 1880.

And who were the other vice presidential candidates in that momentous election? Republican Hannibal Hamlin, of course, won the veep prize, but has became as much of an historic footnote as any of the losers, which is a common fate of vice presidents. Running with John C. Breckinridge -- the incumbent vice president -- on the "Southern" Democratic ticket was Joseph Lane of Oregon. They got 72 electoral votes. Running with John Bell on the nonce Constitutional Union ticket was Edward Everett of Massachusetts, who got 39 electoral votes. He is not remembered for this vice presidential bid. Instead, Everett is remembered as the speaker who came before Lincoln at Gettysburg.

September 7, 1819:Thomas A. Hendricks' Birthday

Thomas Andrews Hendricks now reposes at the picturesque Crown Hill Cemetery in Indianapolis, under a sizable monument. Few know who he was. In his time, however, he was among Indiana's most successful politicians, serving as governor of that state, as well in the US Senate.

Though not running for president in 1872, he received 42 of the electoral votes that otherwise would have gone to Horace Greeley, the Democratic candidate who died shortly after losing the popular election. In that election, Hendricks received more electoral votes that election than any other Democrat -- Benjamin Brown of Missouri got 18 electoral votes, Charles Jenkins two, and David Davis, one -- though of course the Republican candidate, US Grant, won the electoral college with 286 votes.

In 1876, Hendricks was the Democratic vice presidential nominee, and had the office stolen from him every bit as much as Samuel J. Tilden lost the presidency through fraud, though that was merely incidental -- no one sets out to steal the vice presidency. In 1884, when Grover Cleveland became the first Democrat to win the White House since James Buchanan, his running mate Hendricks became the first Democratic vice president since John C. Breckinridge, unless you count Andrew Johnson.

Hendricks died in office in November 1885 after serving not quite nine months, becoming one of a long string of pre-1920s vice presidents to die in office, who also included George Clinton, Elbridge Gerry, William King, Henry Wilson, Garret Hobart and James Sherman. Hendricks' colleagues in government clearly thought enough of him to honor him in an unusual way -- in fact, in a unique way for vice presidents. In 1886, his face appeared on a 10-dollar silver certificate (pictured). Among vice presidents who were never also president, he is the only one thus honored.

August 27:Birthday of Vice Presidents

Three vice presidents were born on August 27, more than any other day in the calendar, though only two if you count vice presidents who never made it to the presidency.

In 1809, Hannibal Hamlin (pictured, left) was born in Paris, Maine, and spent most of his life as a successful Maine politician. He was 15th Vice President of the United States, under President Lincoln, and as such the first Republican to hold that office; he is also the only Mainer to be vice president, and the only veep named after a Carthagian. Lincoln unceremoniously dropped him from the ticket in 1864, so President Hamlin was not to be.

In 1865, Charles C. Dawes (pictured, right) was born Marietta, Ohio, though he's associated with Evanston, Illinois, where he lived later in life as a successful banker and Republican politico. Dawes was 30th Vice President of the United States, under President Coolidge, and in as much as one can fail at being vice president, Dawes did. Early in his term he managed to alienate both the president and the US Senate, so his time as vice president was even more uneventful than is usual for that office.

August 27 is also birthday of Lyndon Johnson, 37th Vice President and 36th President of the United States, born in 1908.

August 23, 1972:Agnew Re-nominated

At the Republican National Convention in Miami Beach on August 23, 1972, the party re-nominated Spiro T. Agnew for vice president. Agnew, 39th Vice President of the United States and the only Marylander to hold that office (none have been president), didn't really have President Nixon's confidence, but Nixon apparently stuck with the devil he knew because dumping him from the ticket would have been too much trouble.

Agnew's resignation and other matters will be described later in the year, but today, on the anniversary of the pinnacle of his unlikely success -- he was even being spoken of as presidential material for 1976 (the "Spiro of '76") -- better to offer some of quotes attributed to him. Whatever else you can say about Vice President Agnew, he wasn't one to shy away from colorful rhetoric.

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

An intellectual is a man who doesn't know how to park a bike.

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.

I apologize for lying to you. I promise I won't deceive you except in matters of this sort.

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

The American people should be made aware of the trend toward monopolization of the great public information vehicles and the concentration of more and more power over public opinion in fewer and fewer hands.

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

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.