Dead Presidents: March

There are a number of presidential birthdays in March -- Madison, Jackson, Tyler and Cleveland -- and days of death -- Fillmore, Benjamin Harrison, Taft and Eisenhower -- but the key presidential date of the month is March 4.

Lincoln's First Inauguration, March 4, 1861

From Washington to Franklin Roosevelt, no fewer than 27 presidents took the oath of office on that day (four did not because they were vice presidents who succeed presidents, but didn't win their own terms). Only 12 presidents have taken the oath on January 20 (FDR is in both categories and Ford didn't win his own term). Eventually, assuming the office endures and the Constitution isn't changed again, January 20 will overtake March 4, but it will be well into the 21st century before it does.

The March 4 inaugurations are rich in history. In 1801 and 1877, disputed elections almost meant the inauguration would have been delayed -- but it's never happened. William Henry Harrison famously gave a long, long speech on March 4, 1841, picked up a virus (presumably) and went down in history as a one-month president. Two of Lincoln's most famed speeches, the First and Second Inaugurals, were on March 4 four years apart. FDR's 1933 First Inaugural, which came on the very last March 4 swearing-in, is also rightly remembered as a rhetorical gem.

The Birth of the Republican Party

The Whig Party, never really a cohesive whole, fell apart in the aftermath of its loss in the election of 1852, when Democrat Franklin Pierce bested Whig Winfield Scott. The party had also lost its leading lights that year with the deaths of Henry Clay and Daniel Webster. The Free Soil Party formed in the late 1840s as a single-issue party, but failed to take the Whigs' place in national politics in the early 1850s.

Rather, former Whigs (like Abraham Lincoln) and those who had dallied with Free Soil (such as Salmon P. Chase and Charles Sumner) soon found a political home in the Republican Party. A gentlemen by the name of Alvan Earle Bovay (1818-1903) is credited with founding the party by calling for a meeting in Ripon, Wisconsin in early 1854, in opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Act. That measure was then a bill (the "Nebraska" bill) pending before Congress that would allow a popular vote on whether the Kansas and Nebraska territories could have slavery, in contradiction to the Compromise of 1820.

"This meeting was held on Wednesday, March 1, 1854,: wrote A.F. Gilman of Ripon College in The Origin of the Republican Party in 1914. "What took place may be best expressed by the resolution that was adopted, which is as follows: 'Resolved, That of all the outrages hitherto perpetrated or attempted upon the North and freedom by the slave leaders and their natural allies, not one compares in bold and impudent audacity, treachery and meanness with this, the Nebraska Bill; as to the sum of all its villainies it adds the repudiation of a solemn compact held as sacred as the constitution itself for a period of thirty-four years.' "

Should the bill pass (which it did), the Ripon meeting further agreed that a new political party would be necessary to oppose it and the expansion of slavery. The meeting was not, of course, the only such meeting in the country, nor the only one to express those strong sentiments, but it's generally considered the first one out of the gate. Also, Bovay helped cement the name of the party with a timely letter to Horace Greeley, who endorsed the name in the June 24, 1854, issue of the highly influential Weekly Tribune.

The Republican Party has fielded a presidential candidate every election since 1856, claiming the prize 23 out of the last 39 elections.

Third Monday of February, the Song

Dead Presidents Daily will return after Presidents' Day, which of course is officially no such thing (see February 1). But never mind. In recent years, the day has been promoted relentlessly by advertisers, who sometimes prove themselves adept at establishing quasi-holidays.

Entertainers have fun with the concept, too.

Racing Presidents Tryouts

Baseball season is still a couple of months away, but the Washington Nationals are determined to be ready with newly recruited Racing Presidents. According to the team's web site, "The Washington Nationals are seeking part-time, seasonal staff to perform as the award-winning Racing Presidents. Each runner will wear a costume depicting one of the four Mount Rushmore presidents and race around Nationals Park while thousands cheer. Presidents will also pose for photos, sign autographs, and appear at select outdoor events."

Applicants must be between 5'7" and 6'6" and be at least 18 years old. They must also be able to run from center field to home plate -- about 200 yards -- in 40 seconds, and be able to stand wearing a costume that weighs about 45 lbs. for the duration of a game.

The deadline for applications is February 10, and there will be tryouts by invitation only, the team stresses, on February 18. So no wise guys in Millard Fillmore or William Howard Taft costumes need show up uninvited. The Racing Presidents web page is here, including photos. There are also numerous videos of the Racing Presidents racing, such as this one.

Dead Presidents: February

February has so many important presidential birthdays that more than 40 years ago it landed Presidents Day under the terms of the Uniform Monday Holiday Act. Except that there's no mention of "Presidents Day" or "Presidents' Day" or "President's Day" in the law, though the idea had been floated in Congress (as "Presidents' Day").

The official name of the federal holiday remains "Washington's Birthday," though of course to complicate things further, some states do have an official Presidents' Day holiday -- or some variation of that, see below -- which happens to be the same day as the federal holiday, the third Monday of February.

The holiday is "President's Day" in Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Maryland, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Ohio, Oregon, Tennessee, Washington, West Virginia and Wyoming. It's "Lincoln/Washington/Presidents' Day" in Arizona; "George Washington's Birthday and Daisy Gatson Bates Day" (who?) in Arkansas; and "Presidents' Day" in Hawaii, Massachusetts, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas, and Vermont. Maine calls it "Washington's Birthday/President's Day," while it's "Presidents Day" in Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada and New Jersey. The holiday is "Lincoln's and Washington's Birthday" in Montana; "Recognition of the birthday of George Washington" in North Dakota; "Washington and Lincoln Day" in Utah, and "George Washington Day" in Virginia.

It should also be noted that the third Monday in February can never be February 22, the New Style date on which the adult George Washington celebrated his birthday. The third Monday can only be from February 15th to the 21st, which explains the anomaly in some years of having Washington's birthday celebrated on a Monday a week ahead of his birthday (the 15th) rather than a week later on his actual birthday.

One more thing: George Washington, son of Augustine and Mary Washington, was actually born on February 11, 1731, Old Style. After the adoption of the Gregorian calendar by the British Empire in 1752, Washington changed the date to be mathematically correct, and the year to conform to the new custom of starting the year on January 1.

Also born in February: Ronald Reagan (6th) and William Henry Harrison (9th), and of course Abraham Lincoln (12th), who is honored on his birthday with a holiday in a few states. Woodrow Wilson died on February 3 and John Quincy Adams died on the 23rd.

Among Vice Presidents of the United States, the dead Aaron Burr and Henry Wilson were born in February (the 6th and 16th, respectively). The living Dan Quayle celebrates his birthday on February 4. Vice President Charles Curtis is the only veep to die in February, on the 8th.

The State of the Union Address

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 giving the annual report to Congress as 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.

Inauguration Firsts

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.

The Citizens of the Granite State Are Not Easily Won

"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."

Dead Presidents: January

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.

Taft Pardons Van Schaick

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).

Presidential Coin Production Slashed

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.

Dead Presidents: December

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.

Attacks on the White House

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.

The November 6 Elections, Especially 1860

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

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

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

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.

Hamilton on the Presidency

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."

The White House Cornerstone

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."

Dead Presidents: October

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.