U.S. Presidents

Frequently Forgotten President Rutherford B. Hayes

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Official Presidential Portrait of Rutherford B. Hayes 

Rutherford B. Hayes is the first in my new series of frequently forgotten U.S. Presidents.

Like President Grant, Hayes had personal integrity, but his presidency was tainted by the very corruption he deplored. During the 1876 presidential election Hayes’ Republican supporters disputed the electoral votes in a few southern states. Republicans promised that Hayes would withdraw federal troops in those states if elected, which he did.

The southern states did not keep their promise to grant civil rights to blacks, however. Though he made other reforms, Hayes’ troop withdrawal delayed the civil rights movement until the 20th century.

The circumstances of his election caused some to label Hayes as “His Fraudulence.” Hayes did gain some support from the public by promoting civil service reform. He signed an executive order that stated that people in public office would be fired only in the best interest of the government regardless of their political affiliations. Hayes followed through on this by firing future Republican president Chester Arthur who used his position at the New York Customs House to help other Republicans.

Though he had pledged to serve only one term, he couldn’t have run again if he wanted to because so many Republicans were angered by his efforts to root out corruption. He managed to accomplish some changes, however.

He had the first telephone installed and was the first president to have a college-educated wife. He and “Lemonade Lucy” banned alcohol from White House dinners. After leaving office he became one of the most active ex-presidents, supporting causes like black education and prison reform.

Lincoln’s Former General: The Presidency of Ulysses S. Grant

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As a young man Grant hated working in his father’s leather business. He didn’t especially want to go to West Point either but thought it a better alternative to manufacturing. The “S.” in his name was a typo made on his application to West Point. Grant kept the initial and was affectionately known as U.S. Grant during the Civil War.

Although West Point graduates were in demand, Grant had a tough time getting a position in the army due to his heavy drinking. His talents outweighed his faults, however. Grant was the first man since George Washington to earn the permanent rank of lieutenant general. That rank gave him the responsibility for the Union’s strategy.

Though he was a hero to Northerners at the end of the war, Grant still had to earn a living. With a family to support, he reluctantly went to work for the family leather business. In 1868 Republicans and Democrats both wanted the hero of the Civil War to run for president. He ran as a Republican. Though he was a great leader during the war, Grant had no political experience. It’s one thing to fight a war with a clear enemy–quite another to determine who one’s enemies are in the game of politics.

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Official Presidential Portrait of President Grant

Grant’s greatest problem as president was his trusting nature. Though honest himself, he surrounded himself with others who were not. He also felt inferior to intellectuals and tended to follow Congress’ lead. As a result his presidency was marked by multiple scandals. For example, his secretary of war was accused of accepting bribes from merchants who traded at army posts with Native Americans.

After two terms in office the administration’s scandals prevented him from trying for a third term. His trusting nature failed him again when he became a victim of Wall Street fraud.

Knowing that Grant was broke, his friend Mark Twain suggested that he write his memoirs in order to make money. Grant had just started writing when he developed throat cancer. He was determined to finish his memoirs before he died, however, and they are still selling today. Unsurprisingly, they focus on the time period that brought Grant the most success: the Civil War.

 

Lincoln’s Replacement: The Controversial Presidency of Andrew Johnson

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Like Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson was self-educated. He was the only senator from a state that left the Union (Tennessee) to stay in Washington. Because of his loyalty he was chosen as Lincoln’s vice-president in 1864. It was soon obvious that the choice was a mistake. Johnson showed up drunk to the inauguration and harangued Lincoln’s cabinet in his acceptance speech.

The main reason the Democrat Johnson stayed a Unionist was because he hated plantation owners whose wealth and resources hurt opportunities for small farmers. Unfortunately for the newly freed slaves, Johnson hated them just as much. After Lincoln was assassinated and Johnson took over, he stated, “This is a country for white men, and by God, as long as I am President, it shall be a government for white men.”

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 Official Presidential Portrait of Andrew Johnson

Yet Johnson proved that he couldn’t get along with many white men either, at least not if they happened to be Republicans. His policy towards the former Confederate states was so liberal that these states elected Confederate leaders to Congress. Furious Republicans refused to seat the delegates.

Johnson especially fought with Radical Republicans who favored equality for blacks. He vetoed the 1866 Civil Rights Act, which stated that everyone in the U.S. should have “full and equal benefit of all laws.” Congress overturned this veto and several others during Johnson’s presidency. During his fights with congressional leaders Johnson was nicknamed “The Grim Presence.”

Johnson is best known for being the first president to have an impeachment trial. Fortunately for him, a few Republicans thought that his disagreements with Congress did not add up to the “high crimes” required by the Constitution to oust a president. He escaped impeachment by one vote.

Though his presidency was a failure, Johnson later became the only former president elected to the U.S. Senate. After hearing the news, Johnson said, “Thank God for the vindication.”

Abraham Lincoln: The Moral Politician

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Until the 1850s Abraham Lincoln was a frustrated one-term congressman who had decided to focus on his law practice. Lincoln was drawn into politics again during the Kanas Nebraska Act controversy. While he accepted slavery where it existed, he couldn’t abide its expansion into new territories.

He was not in favor of giving blacks full citizenship, however. In 1840 he criticized Martin Van Buren for voting to enfranchise blacks, and he did not support giving blacks the vote in his bid for the U.S. Senate against Stephen Douglas. He believed that blacks had the right to earn their own living without it being taken away by their masters. Though he lost to Douglas, the debates helped raise Lincoln’s political profile.

Although he did not officially campaign for the nation’s highest office, Lincoln cleverly placed himself in the public eye. Prior to the election he had the debates with rival Stephen Douglas published; the volume became a national bestseller. He also travelled to New York so people in that part of the country could listen to his arguments and see his talent as a public speaker.

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Photo of President-elect Abraham Lincoln, 1860

 

While in New York he had his photograph taken so it could be handed out just in case his name was mentioned at the Republican convention. After he was elected, more than sixty photos were taken of Lincoln, making him the most photographed president up to that time. Though opponents often made fun of his plain, slightly unkempt appearance, Lincoln also poked fun at himself. After being called two-faced, Lincoln said, “If I had another face, do you think I would wear this one?”

Unlike Buchanan, who claimed that he could do nothing if a state wanted to leave the Union, Lincoln refused to bargain with secessionists and sent supplies to the federal fort in South Carolina. He also rejected the idea that the president could do nothing about slavery. While maintaining the Union was his first objective, he said that if freeing the slaves would save the Union he would free them.

Lincoln remained a great politician during the Civil War. He gave out contracts and government offices in exchange for votes. Yet he also knew how to unite people behind a moral cause such as the constitutional amendment that abolished slavery.

As the war drew to an end, he offered friendship to the defeated Southerners “with malice toward none, with charity to all.” Americans can only imagine what Lincoln would have accomplished during his second term in office. On April 14, 1865, he was the first president to be assassinated.

 

President James Buchanan: Career Politician

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James Buchanan had more political experience than most presidents. He had served in Congress for 20 years and was President Polk’s secretary of state. He was more effective socializing in small groups rather than making public speeches, however.

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Portrait of James Buchanan

As the only president who never married, he asked his niece Harriet Lane to be White House hostess. She ably presided over dinners with Buchanan’s cabinet members whom he thought of as his family.

President Buchanan was a Northerner who thought the Constitution supported slavery. Before his inauguration he convinced a Supreme Court Justice to vote pro-slavery in the Dred Scott case. The case decided that slaves taken to the North for a period of time were still slaves if their owners brought them back to a slave state.

Buchanan responded to the vote on secession in South Carolina by saying that while secession was wrong, the Constitution gave him no power to tell states what to do. He thought he could preserve the Union by making concessions to the South, but he only succeeded in angering anti-slavery and pro-Union voters.

Eager to let someone else deal with the country’s problems, Buchanan refused to run for a second term. He also refused to back Stephen Douglas in the presidential election. By causing a rift within the Democratic Party, he ensured that Abraham Lincoln would be elected.

Tippecanoe and Tyler, too: U.S. Presidents William Henry Harrison and John Tyler

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William Henry Harrison

In the 1840 election William Henry Harrison’s Whig party supporters got some extra help from a Democratic newspaper. The paper claimed that if he got his pension and a barrel of cider, Harrison would retire to a log cabin in Ohio. As a result people thought of Harrison as a common man, despite the fact that he was the son of a wealthy Virginian who signed the Declaration of Independence. Supporters nicknamed Harrison “Tippecanoe” after a battle he had fought against a confederation of Native Americans. “Tippecanoe and Tyler, too” made a catchy campaign slogan.

Official White House Portrait of William Henry Harrison

Official White House Portrait of William Henry Harrison

The election also gave birth to the American expression “O.K.” Democrats used O.K. as affectionate shorthand for Harrison’s opponent, Martin Van Buren, who was known as “Old Kinderhook” after the town in New York where he grew up.

Harrison was the first Whig party candidate to win a presidential election. The Whig party had formed out of opposition to President Jackson’s policies. Whigs wanted a strong federal government and social reforms.

Harrison was mainly nominated and elected because he had few political enemies and didn’t share his personal opinions. No one knows what kind of president he would have been because he died from pneumonia one month after his inauguration. He was the first president, though not the last, to die in office.

John Tyler

Tyler’s succeeding Harrison established the precedent of the vice-president taking over for a deceased president. Yet, since the Constitution didn’t specifically state what the vice-president’s role was in case a president died, not everyone thought Tyler should become president. John Quincy Adams referred to Tyler as “His Accidency.”

Official White House Portrait of John Tyler

Official White House Portrait of John Tyler

Shortly after taking the oath of office, Tyler’s wife died, which made him the first president to become a widower in office. Tyler soon married Julia Gardiner, a young woman thirty years younger than he.

In many ways, Tyler seemed like a natural fit for the presidency. At fifty-one he already had political experience serving as a governor and a congressman. His tall, thin frame made him stand out in a crowd, and he had an excellent speaking voice.

Tyler was a former Democrat who had switched over to the Whig party during Jackson’s presidency. Yet he still felt strongly about states’ rights. This feeling got him into trouble with his party, which favored a strong federal government. He vetoed bills that Whigs in Congress and in his cabinet wanted.

After vetoing a tariff bill introduced by Whigs, the first ever impeachment resolution of a president was made against Tyler. The resolution failed. Nevertheless, Tyler remained a mainly ineffectual executive.

Though he supported the annexation of Texas, the Senate would not approve it until Tyler’s successor James Polk was elected so that Tyler’s administration could not take credit. Tyler stated, “A Vice President, who succeeds to the Presidency by the demise of the President…has no party at his heels to sustain his measures.”

Andrew Jackson’s Apprentice: U.S. President Martin Van Buren

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Martin Van Buren was the first president born in the official United States of America. His ancestors were Dutch. Van Buren’s father managed a tavern in Kinderhook, New York. Politicians often dropped by for a drink and talked about their ideas. Listening to them gave young Martin an early interest in politics. His family couldn’t afford to send him to law school, but he studied on his own while he worked as law office clerk. Soon he entered state politics.

Van Buren got his nickname “The Little Magician” for his talents as a shrewd negotiator and political organizer. By the election of 1836 Van Buren had already helped to organize the new Democratic Party. His former party, the Democratic-Republicans, was crammed with members who just wanted to argue with each other. The new Democratic platform extended Andrew Jackson’s policies of limited federal government and promotion of states rights.

Official White House Portrait of Martin Van Buren

Official White House Portrait of Martin Van Buren

Though Van Buren was a gifted politician, he is largely regarded as a failure as president.

The economic crisis he inherited from Jackson only got worse under his watch. Not all of the factors were within his control: for example, England also had an economic depression and English banks stopped dealing with the United States. Unemployment among American workers soared and so did poverty.

Unlike future democratic president Franklin Roosevelt, Van Buren never offered the American people federal assistance. He thought the government should leave people alone. He did, however, want to make sure that the government had money. He proposed an independent treasury so the government wouldn’t have to keep its money in struggling individual banks.

The establishment of the U.S. Treasury would have been a victory for Van Buren, but it took him years to convince Congress to pass the bill. By then the public blamed him for the economic crisis and Van Buren was not re-elected.

U.S. President Andrew Jackson: Surprising Facts about the Man on the Twenty Dollar Bill

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When Andrew Jackson was elected president in 1828, he was the first to reach that office as a self-made man. He was born into a poor family in South Carolina. During the American Revolution, Jackson lost his mother and two brothers and was wounded by a British officer.

Family tragedy seemed to follow Jackson throughout his life. As he ran for president, his detractors claimed that Jackson had lived with his wife before their marriage. Actually, they were married for two years before they realized that Rachel’s divorce from her previous husband had not been finalized. Rachel Jackson died from an illness before her husband’s inauguration. Jackson blamed her death on the nasty comments made during the campaign.

Historians have dubbed Jackson’s presidency the “age of the common man.” He was certainly unlike any other president the country had elected.

White House Portrait of Andrew Jackson

White House Portrait of Andrew Jackson

After his inauguration Jackson invited members of the public to attend a reception at the White House. To the dismay of the staff, so many people tried to cram into the White House that items were broken. Shortly after becoming president, Jackson indulged his fondness for chewing tobacco by installing twenty spittoons in the East Room.

Despite his dislike of formalities, Jackson’s terms as president had little impact on the common man. It’s true that more people (at least white, taxpaying males) got to vote in the election that sent Jackson to the White House. Through the Indian Removal Act he gave more white men the opportunity to acquire Native American land.

He did not, however, believe that social or economic equality was desirable. He stated, “Distinctions in society will always exist under every just government. Equality of talents, or education, or of wealth cannot be produced by human institutions.”

Jackson established the office of president as the chief power in American government for the first time. He made it obvious that he was not going to allow others to tell him what to do. He used the presidential veto more often than any previous president. For example, he vetoed the re-charter of the National Bank and federal support for internal improvements.

His ignorance of financial matters led to an economic crisis which harmed his successor, Martin Van Buren.

 

Surprising Facts about U.S. President John Quincy Adams

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Though he was the first son of a former president to be elected, John Quincy Adams’ presidency was undermined before he even got into office.

The 1824 election was crowded with four Republican candidates: Andrew Jackson, Adams, Henry Clay, and William Crawford. Jackson and Adams received the most votes but neither won outright, so the election results were decided in the House of Representatives where Clay was Speaker of the House. Clay threw his support behind Adams. Afterwards, Adams named Clay as his secretary of state. Jackson supporters claimed without proof that Adams had bribed Clay and did their best to discredit Adams.

John Quincy Adams Official White House Portrait

John Quincy Adams Official White House Portrait

Adams had also inherited his father John Adams’ stubborn refusal to negotiate. His first annual message to Congress contained some good ideas, such as promotion of internal improvements and the creation of a national university. His insistence on broad federal powers and his assertion that government officials did not need to consider the opinions of their constituents made him very unpopular, however. As a result, Congress ignored President Adams’ domestic and foreign policies.

After being voted out of office and replaced by Andrew Jackson, Adams did not retire. Instead, he served as a member of the House of Representatives for 17 years. He was the only president to serve in the House after being president. His family objected to him serving in a lower office, but his election pleased him.

Nicknamed “Old Man Eloquent” for his speeches against slavery, Adams received more respect in the House than as president. He also accomplished more. For example, he helped repeal the gag rule that prevented the House from debating any criticisms of slavery.