Month: April 2009

Andrew Jackson by Sean Wilentz

Bob Timmermann6 Comments

President #7, C-SPAN Historians Ranking #13

Coming soon to an ATM near you!

andrewjacksonJust who was Andrew Jackson? Was he the first president to create a political following among the masses and ride that to power? Was he a shameless opportunist who pandered to the lowest common denominator? Was he a war hero? Was he a man who set into place a policy that turned out to be genocidal? Was he devoutly loyal to the United States and its Constitution? Did he interpret the Constitution as he saw fit?

According to Sean Wilentz, the answer to all these questions is “yes.” However, in Wilentz’s view, there was an explanation for all of Jackson’s actions, and, ultimately, they served to benefit the United States.

Andrew Jackson’s stock among historians has risen and fallen throughout the years like the Dow Jones 30 on a day when Timothy Geithner coughs. Wilentz traces these changes in the introduction to his book and then sets out, as best you can in 170 pages, to explain the complicated life of Andrew Jackson.

The future President was born near the South Carolina/North Carolina border in 1767 and was caught up in the tail end of the Revolutionary War, when he and his brothers were captured by British soldiers. The young Jackson refused to shine a British officer’s boots, claiming he was a prisoner of war, and for his insolence, Jackson received a gash in his head with a sword that never left him. That wound would be a constant reminder of Jackson’s distaste for Britain, aristocracy, and privilege.

Jackson’s father died before he was born, and his mother died when he was still in his teens.  So, Andrew Jackson was very much a self-made man. In 1791, he married a woman named Rachel Donelson, who provided both love and some financial security for him. However, Rachel was not completely divorced from her husband. After a period, the two would marry again to make it official. This would end up being a significant event in American politics later. Jackson would also fight several duels to uphold his wife’s honor, and killed one person during one.

By 1796, Jackson, who had moved west to Tennessee, used his political connections to become that state’s first member of the House of Representatives, and, a few months later, moved on to the Senate. Jackson resigned from the Senate in 1798 to serve on the Tennessee Supreme Court, and later took up farming at his plantation, the Hermitage.

However, Jackson was not bound for a quiet life. The War of 1812 gave Jackson the chance to serve in the military, and get some measure of revenge against the British who treated him so shamelessly during the Revolution.

Jackson’s first military encounters, however, were against the Creek Indians in Alabama. Responding to a massacre by a group of Creeks called the Red Sticks at Fort Mims in 1813, Jackson led his troops to extract vengeance. In two engagements, Jackson’s troops killed nearly every Red Stick Creek male and took all the women and children as prisoners. Additionally, Jackson was able to get a treaty ceding Creek land in Georgia and Alabama to the U.S. Jackson was prepared to do whatever it took to keep whites and Indians separate. He firmly believed that the two groups could not coexist peacefully.

After his success in Alabama (at least in the eyes of President Madison), Jackson moved on to New Orleans to defend that crucial port city against the British. On January 8, 1815, Jackson famously routed the British in what would be the last battle of the War of 1812, which was technically already over since a peace treaty had been signed about 10 days earlier. However, Jackson failed to receive a Tweet from @ghentytreaty in time that read “USA and UK say war over! Woo hoo! Henry Clay is totally wasted!”

Wilentz points out that Jackson’s victory at New Orleans was just as much the product of British bungling (there were numerous logisticial problems), but history judged that from then on, Jackson would be “The Hero of New Orleans.” And Jackson didn’t take kindly to anyone saying otherwise.

With the War of 1812 over, Jackson kept up his military adventures, moving on to Florida, which was still part of Spain. Jackson ostensibly had moved his troops to Georgia to deal with the Seminoles, but that soon morphed into a mission to take control of Florida. And with a few military victories and the executions of two British subjects, the United States was able to parlay this into buying Florida from Spain. Jackson became its first territorial governor.

In 1822, Jackson was nominated for President by the Tennessee legislature, which also elected him to the Senate. But in the election of 1824, Jackson, despite winning the most popular votes AND electoral votes, lost the election. With four candidates running, no one had a majority, and the House of Representatives chose John Quincy Adams as President. Jackson made Adams his enemy. And if you were an enemy of Andrew Jackson, that was a lifetime job. (Jackson would continually advocate for the direct election of the President. That has not worked so far.)

Adams turned out to be ill-suited for the presidency, and Jackson exacted his revenge with an easy win in 1828. However, the campaign was ugly, with numerous slurs brought up about Rachel Jackson, and her questionable first marriage. Rachel Jackson died of a heart attack in December of 1828. Andrew Jackson never forgave anyone for the slights on her reputation.

Crises hit Jackson almost immediately after his inauguration. Jackson, like most Presidents, removed many Adams supporters from their officers and replaced them with people loyal to him. Jackson referred to this as “rotation in office,” but it soon was dubbed “the spoils system.” While Jackson was not the first, or last, President to use the power of patronage, he became the most closely identified with it.

Jackson also faced a crisis within his own Cabinet. Secretary of War John Eaton, one of his closest friends, had married a woman named Margaret Eaton, who was not from upper crust society in Washington. Her first husband had reportedly killed himself while at sea. She was snubbed by many of the wives of the other Cabinet members along with the wife of Jackson’s Vice President, John Calhoun. Jackson backed Eaton, although by 1831, five members of Jackson’s cabinet had resigned in the fallout.

After this, three major domestic events defined Jackson’s presidency.

First, Jackson, in agreement with Georgia’s government, ordered the removal of Cherokees from that state to western territories, such as Arkansas. The removal was not voluntary, and the Seminoles would be subject to attacks by settlers along the way. Approximately 8,000 Cherokees died on the journey west (called “The Trail of Tears”). However, Jackson stood by his decision. He believed that it was better for all parties if Native Americans lived in Federal territories where they would receive more protection than they did from local authorities. This turned out to be one of the biggest mistakes of the Jackson administration.

Jackson’s second major crisis was the Rechartering of the Second Bank of the United States. Jackson greatly distrusted banks and paper money. Jackson especially disliked the way the Bank of the United States was run. He felt that it’s director, Nicholas Biddle, was creating an aristocracy who made money from the hard work of people who needed to use the bank to buy land or get credit.

In 1831, Henry Clay pushed forth a bill that would extend the bank’s charter for another 20 years. This was done four years before the charter expired for two reasons: 1) to remove the issue from the upcoming election, and 2) to make the bank an issue in the upcoming election. Clay assumed that the Bank, which was well run, would get its recharter.

However, Jackson shocked the political establishment by vetoing the bill rechartering the bank. His veto message used populist themes to explain why he took his action. Jackson felt that the bank was unconstitutional (although the Supreme Court had already said otherwise), and in his duty as President, he couldn’t allow it to continue. He did not want the Federal Government to sponsor an institution that benefited a group of wealthy Easterners.

The third crisis Jackson faced was the Nullification Crisis. The state of South Carolina believed that tariffs were too high (one bill was named “The Tariff of Abominations”), preventing residents from buying cheap goods from Europe, instead having to rely on more expensive goods made in other parts of the country. Also, South Carolina felt that too much of the revenue from tariffs was being used to build canals and roads in the North and East.

South Carolina believed that that the Constitution was a contract among the states. And if a state believed that a law was too onerous to uphold, the state had the right to declare it null and void within its borders. Or, if it was really offended, the state could secede all together.

Jackson was not going to allow one state to opt out of the country that he believed in so much. He used a two pronged approach to the crisis. In a message to Congress, Jackson offered to work with South Carolina to adjust the tariffs to more appropriate levels. And in another bill, Jackson authorized the use of force to collect tariffs. Jackson began sending ships out to sea to meet ships and collect tariffs there before the ships would dock in Charleston.

South Carolina eventually backed down as a compromise tariff was reached. But the crisis would be revisited again,  with more deadly implications over the issue of slavery in 1860.

Jackson campaigned for reelection in 1832 using the Bank Veto as something of a campaign platform. His opponent, Clay, tried to use the Veto against Jackson. But the people loved Jackson, and he was easily reelected. Jackson also had a new Vice President in Martin Van Buren.

Jackson’s second term saw him put the finishing touches on the Bank of the United States. Not content to wait for the charter to expire, Jackson ordered all Government deposits to be withdrawn from the Bank of the United States and redistributed to a series of state chartered banks. Biddle reacted to this by greatly curtailing credit, creating a brief financial panic. However, Jackson won the battle of popular opinion over Biddle. Credit markets loosened up, and the economy grew.

Wilentz spends a chapter examining Jackson’s views on slavery. And Jackson doesn’t come out well here. Jackson was a slave owner and profited greatly from having slaves. But during Jackson’s Presidency, the nascent Abolitionist movement was starting to grow from fringe level into a major political force. Abolitionists attempted to send through the mail to nearly everyone in South Carolina, political materials advocating their side. Jackson had to figure out which was more important: maintaing the Federal Government’s duty to deliver the mail, or to keep South Carolina happy by not delivering “objectionable materials.” Jackson ultimately sided with South Carolina on this point, allowing local postal officials to skirt any obligation to deliver all the mail.

At the end of Jackson’s administration, Texas split away from Mexico. Texas had been settled by many slaveholding Americans. Jackson saw Texas as a natural part of the United States, believing that John Quincy Adams had negotiated it away in 1819. However, Jackson was not able to negotiate any method to annex Texas. That would wait until 1845.

What stands out the most for Wilentz in his view of Jackson is that Jackson was a champion of democracy. He firmly believed in democratic ideals. Wilentz acknowledges that, according to today’s standards, Jackson can look like a monster. However, Jackson was a product of his time. And in many ways, Jackson was ahead of his time in his reliance on the people to make the right choices in a democracy. Jackson believed that the President had a job to lead the country. And leadership was not something he was afraid of.

Does America need another Andrew Jackson? Probably not. Did America need Andrew Jackson in its past? It’s hard to envision the country otherwise.

Other stuff: Jackson’s home, the Hermitage, is run by a private foundation. Jackson and his wife Rachel are buried there. It is about 12 miles east of Downtown Nashville. It is not this Hermitage.

Jackson’s portrait has appeared on the $20 bill since 1928 (the year of a major redesign of American currency). He replaced Grover Cleveland. Of course, in 1928, not many people had $20 bills.

Andrew Jackson was the first President to be subject to an assassination attempt. A man named Richard Lawrence tried to shoot Jackson with a pistol at close range in January of 1835. Both of Lawrence’s pistols failed to fire and Jackson subdued Lawrence by hitting him with his walking stick. Lawrence was sent to an asylum for the mentally ill.

Warren G. Harding by John W. Dean

Bob Timmermann8 Comments

President #29, C-SPAN Historians Ranking #38

Getting back to normalcy?

hardingAmerica’s 29th President, Warren Gamaliel Harding, has not fared well in the eyes of historians. He is viewed as a weak leader who appointed corrupt friends to high government positions. He was accused of extramarital affairs and fathering illegitimate children. People have speculated that he was murdered by his wife. And not many people even know or cared about what happened during his Administration.

John W. Dean (yes, that John W. Dean, from Watergate times) took on the task of trying to find out who the real Warren Harding was. And why Dean? Is it because he is an expert on presidential scandals? No, it’s actually because Dean grew up in Marion, Ohio, the same town where Harding grew up and lived most of his life. Dean has spent a good amount of his life studying the life of Harding.

Dean has been rather harsh toward other Presidents in books he’s written (namely Richard Nixon and George W. Bush), but in this biography, Dean is almost sympathetic to one of the lesser lights to inhabit the White House. Dean tries to get you to believe that Harding was a decent man, who was in over his head, yet still tried his best.

However, it is hard to believe that someone like Warren Harding ever made it to the White House. Harding did little in his political life except be nice to the right people and “look” presidential. He accomplished little on the domestic front, and his principal foreign policy initiative, the Washington Naval Disarmament Conference, was soon forgotten.

When Harding was 18, he was able to get the financing (all $300 of it) that let him purchase the Marion Star newspaper in his Ohio hometown. Harding loved running a newspaper and developed an interest in politics because of it.

One of the local figures in Marion that Harding took on was the richest man in town, Amos Kling. Eventually, Kling’s daughter, Florence, married Harding, despite the protestations of her father. Florence Harding had borne a child out of wedlock before marrying Warren Harding, although that son ended up being raised by her father, who described his grandson as his “son.” Kling disapproved of Harding and started a rumor campaign in Marion that described Harding as being part African-American. (Kling actually used a far less polite term.) Harding would have to confront stories about his ancestry throughout his life.

Florence, often described as the woman who pushed Warren into politics, actually didn’t do so, according to Dean. Harding decided to run for the state legislature on his own. While serving in Columbus, Harding developed a reputation as being an all around nice guy, who gave good speeches. This eventually elevated Harding into the lieutenant governor’s job in Ohio, but when he tried for the governor’s job in 1910, he was defeated.

Harding started his political comeback when he put William Howard Taft’s name into nomination at the Republican Convention in 1912. In 1914, when Ohio held its first direct senatorial election, Harding won and he and Florence headed off to Washington.

While in the Senate, Harding generally tried to spend most of his time developing connections that could help his standing. He befriended a senator from New Mexico named Albert Fall. This would end up not being a good career move in the long run for Harding. But, at least Fall had a nice mustache.

After eight years of Woodrow Wilson and the Democrats in the White House, the American voters were ready to vote Republican. Wilson’s popularity had plummeted after World War I with the rejection of the Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations. Wilson suffered a debilitating stroke and for the final 18 months of his term, he was rarely seen in public, and the government was run mostly by Wilson’s wife and some key aides.

Nevertheless, Wilson thought he could run for a third term. He was politely told by people that he shouldn’t do so. (Primarily because Wilson was almost dead and could barely talk or see.) Theodore Roosevelt was talked about as a candidate to run for the White House in 1920, but those plans were interrupted when Roosevelt died in 1919.

So, the two major political figures for the 1920 Presidential campaign (Wilson and Roosevelt) were either dead or incapacitated. Into the void, entered Warren Harding, the nice guy from Ohio.

Harding started his campaign in the winter of 1919, but his strategy, formed by Ohio’s Republican boss, Harry Daugherty, was to not try to win the nomination outright, but rather to just hang around during the primaries (which were still in their infancy) and then hope for a deadlocked convention. Harding’s plan was to try to offend as few people as possible.

And Harding’s plan worked. Leonard Wood, who had served with Roosevelt in Cuba in the Spanish-American War, was the leader among a crowded field heading into the Republican Convention. But Wood had irritated too many people during his campaign. No majority was reached by the Friday of the convention. Most observers felt that the delegates wanted to nominate someone on Saturday. Why? So they wouldn’t have to pay for an extra day of hotels. And on that Saturday, Harding ended up as the choice of the Convention on the tenth ballot.

Harding ran against another Ohioan, Governor James Cox (who had a young assistant Secretary of the Navy named Franklin Delano Roosevelt as his running mate, a counterpoint to dour Massachusetts governor Calvin Coolidge, Harding’s running mate). It would be the first election in which women could vote. It was a landslide. Harding won over 60% of the vote and racked up 404 electoral votes. Harding became the first sitting member of the United States Senate to be elected President.

Almost from the outset, Harding ran into problems in office. His Cabinet had some good people in it, such as Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes, Secretary of Labor James Davis, Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, and Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon.  However, Harding also picked friends like Daugherty to be Attorney General and Fall to be Secretary of the Interior. Florence’s personal physician, Charles Forbes, would be in charge of veterans medical affairs.

Harding, like seemingly every President, felt that there was too much government spending, and he needed to rein it in. And, like most Presidents, he wasn’t all that successful at doing that. Harding did establish the Bureau of the Budget (now the Office of Management and Budget) which may be the one legacy of Harding’s administration that lives on today that people have heard of.

Dean tries to detail other legislative initiatives that Harding tried, but none of them stand out. Harding vetoed a plan to award World War I vets a bonus because he didn’t like the way it was funded (primarily, because it wasn’t funded at all). There were some attempts at raising tariffs, which were a pet cause of Republicans of the time. Harding also tried to limit immigration, but that didn’t work as desired because Harding was hesitant to order wide-scale deportations. Dean paints a picture of Harding as a diligent worker, but someone who just didn’t have the temperament to be an executive. He was someone who was your pal, not your boss.

Harding had one minor success in foreign affairs when he was able to get the major powers (U.S, Britain, and Japan) to come to Washington (with Hughes mediating) and negotiate a treaty that was supposed to slow down (or stop all together) the buildup in naval armaments. This was a noble idea. But, World War II spoke to the lasting effect of that treaty.

Scandals started to touch the White House early in 1923. Forbes was discovered to have sold large amounts of surplus government medical supplies to private companies seemingly below cost. But, Forbes actually was taking kickbacks on the deals and enriching himself. Forbes was dismissed from his post.

In the summer of 1923, the Hardings embarked on a trip for the West Coast and Alaska, in order to relax and also to do some campaigning for his own agenda. Harding became the first President to visit Alaska and the first to visit Canada. But while golfing in Portland, Harding took ill with severe chest pains. Harding, who came into office with a bad heart and likely had suffered a mild undiagnosed heart attack in the winter, was suffering from congestive heart failure and pneumonia. In an era before antibiotics and detailed knowledge of cardiological problems, there was little that doctors could do for Harding. He passed away in San Francisco on August 2, 1923 at age 57.

Not long after Harding’s passing, more scandals came to the fore. The most famous was the Teapot Dome scandal. Interior Secretary Fall had been leasing what were supposed to be protected oil reserves to private interests, headed by California oilmen Harry Sinclair and Edward Doheny. The fact that Fall leased them was not the problem. The problem was that Sinclair and Doheny had furnished Fall with bribes in order to get the leases. Eventually, Fall would go to prison for receiving the bribes, although Sinclair and Doheny were acquitted of giving a bribe. Attorney General Daugherty was caught up in this scandal, as well as several others. (It would take a lot of space to list them.) Daugherty resigned his position, but was never convicted of any crime.

In addition to the real scandals, a cottage industry about fabricating Presidential scandals sprung up. A woman named Nan Britton wrote a book called The President’s Daughter, where she claimed to have had an affair with Harding in the White House and having a child with him. H.L. Mencken gave the book a favorable review and sales skyrocketed. Most historians believe that no such affair with Britton occurred.  Harding did have at least one extramarital affair before he became President, according to Dean.

A man named Gaston Means got author May Dixon Thacker to write a book about his “reminiscences” of Harding. It was titled The Strange Death of President Harding. It was supposed to revelatory and accused Florence Harding of poisoning her husband. The book is considered to be almost, but not quite, entirely untrue. Nevertheless, Florence Harding is still thought by some to have murdered her husband.

Warren Harding didn’t leave much of a legacy. His election showed the danger of electing a President who just looked the part. He came from an era where speeches with passages like this:

America’s present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration; not agitation, but adjustment; not surgery, but serenity; not the dramatic, but the dispassionate; not experiment, but equipoise; not submergence in internationality, but sustainment in triumphant nationality.

were considered brilliant oratory.

Dean states that his main reason for writing about Harding was to set the record straight on him. And to that extent, he succeeds. Warren Harding was not a great president, but he wasn’t a horrible person. He just was unremarkable, and overly loyal to his friends. He was a man who stumbled into the highest office in the land by pissing off fewer people than his opponents. It seems that Americans haven’t used that technique for electing a President subsequently.

Harding’s successor, the laconic and phlegmatic Calvin Coolidge, would actually be the President who become far more famous and beloved by the American people.

Other stuff: Warren Harding’s home isn’t part of the National Park Service. Instead, it is operated by the Ohio Historical Society and it is in Marion.

Author Malcolm Gladwell in his book Blink, described the “Warren Harding Effect”, where people judge a person instantly, but use the wrong clues.

Harding appointed former President Taft to be Chief Justice. Harding’s Secretary of Agriculture, Henry C. Wallace, was the father of Henry A. Wallace, who would hold the same position under Franklin Roosevelt, and then later serve as Vice President for one term.

Jimmy Carter: American Moralist by Kenneth E. Morris

Bob Timmermann3 Comments

President #39, C-SPAN historians’ ranking #25

Would you like some malaise on your sandwich?

carterJimmy Carter was, and in many ways still is, a confounding figure to understand. Just how did someone rise from the relatively obscure position of Governor of Georgia to the Presidency? And just what were Carter’s goals and aims in the White House? Was he just a man with a nervous grin who seemed paralyzed by events, especially the hostage crisis in Iran, or was he a shrewd politician? And why did he seem to blame America’s problems on the American people?

Kenneth Morris, the author of this book, is not a historian, but rather a sociologist. And as the subtitle of the book would lead you to believe, it is an examination about how and why Jimmy Carter tried to turn the office of the Presidency into a place where he could exert moral leadership of the country. Morris describes how Carter changed over time from a child of a comfortable upbringing in rural Georgia to a midshipman at the U.S. Naval Academy and then on to Georgia politics, and ultimately, the White House, using what he considered to be his two best skills: morality and competence.

The problem for Carter was that the American people often look for more than competence in their Presidents. They want to be inspired. They want to be led. They want to feel as if they are doing the right thing. And, in the end, Carter wasn’t able to convince the American people that they needed his style of leadership, which some thought sounded more like criticism than anything else.

Morris reveals quite a bit about Carter from an examination of his upbringing in Plains, Georgia. And, first of all, people should know that Carter actually grew up in a smaller town near Plains, called Archery. His father, James Earl Carter (called Earl by everyone), was a prosperous farmer and businessman and also served in the Georgia Legislature.

Earl was a strong supporter of Herman Talmadge, a Georgia governor and ardent segregationist. Earl was, like many Southerners of his era, also a supporter of segregation, although he was personally kind to African-Americans. Earl Carter didn’t mind the African-Americans who worked for him and was a good landlord to those who rented from him. But, Earl Carter was not of the mind that African-Americans should share any sort of economic or political equality with whites. His son did not share these views, however.

His wife, Lillian, primarily married Earl for his money, although she did bear him four children. But, she traveled a lot (she would later join the Peace Corps as a nurse) and was not a major figure in the life of her eldest, James Earl Carter Jr., aka Jimmy or Jim, or her other children. Jimmy was, like many people, a son who didn’t like his father, but wanted nothing more than his father’s approval. Morris writes that Earl’s favorite was his daughter Ruth, whom Morris hints that Earl may have been a bit too fond of.

Jimmy Carter left Plains in 1943 to go to the U.S. Naval Academy and get away from the influence of the man whom he felt he could never satisfy. So, Carter left Georgia to start out on a new phase of his life.

Because of World War II, the term of instruction at Annapolis was shortened from four to three years, but that still meant that Carter missed out on combat duty in World War II as he didn’t graduate until 1946, around the same time he married his wife, Rosalynn.

Despite serving on ships and submarines, Carter made few friends during his tour of duty in the Navy. Morris spoke to many other sailors that Carter served with and none of them had any stories to tell about him, except to say that he was a loner who almost always kept to himself, even on a submarine. Morris speculates that Carter may have been suffering from depression during this time.

In 1953, Earl Carter died of pancreatic cancer. His eldest son, who had wanted to not be like his father, immediately resigned his naval commission and headed back to Plains (that was where the family business was located) and, essentially, became his father. Jimmy Carter took over the family business (a peanut farm and processing plant) and reinvented himself.

Back in Plains, Carter worked at the family business, although his younger brother Billy was actually the better businessman. By 1962, Carter decided to try for his first government office, the Georgia State Senate. Carter sought this office in part because the U.S. Supreme Court had mandated that all state legislatures be chosen on a “one man, one vote” system and this changed the demographics of the district making it more favorable for someone like Carter, who would have been considered a liberal on civil rights at the time in Georgia.

Carter actually lost his first election for the State Senate seat, however; the results were thrown out because of voter fraud. After several court decisions changed the result back and forth, Carter’s opponent just gave up and Carter was elected for a four-year term.

During his four years in the State Senate, Carter vowed to read EVERY page of EVERY bill he voted on. He wanted to show that he was not a machine politician who could be swayed by his boss’ suggestions, as his father was by the Talmadge machine. Carter apparently did keep to this promise.  It likely required him to pull some all-nighters at the end of each legislative session. Carter was trying to emulate John Kennedy, not realizing that Kennedy would never have worked that hard.

In 1966, Carter was planning to run for a House seat and would likely have won it, except he decided, at the last minute, to run for governor instead. Carter didn’t win and he ended up splitting the Democratic primary vote in such a way that Lester Maddox, a segregationist who prided himself on not serving blacks at his restaurant, as well as chasing away any potential black customers away by waving an axe handle at them, won the primary, and later the general election.

Carter underwent another transformation after this setback. With time on his hands, Carter began to read the works of notable philosophers and theologians and became especially enamored with the work of Reinhold Niebhur. Also, Carter’s sister, Ruth, had become a minister and she brought about a religious reawakening in her older brother. And from this Carter would begin to identify himself as a “Born Again Christian.”

Along with this religious transformation, Carter also set his sights on correcting his mistakes in running for governor and started to prepare for another run in four years (at the time Georgia governors could not be reelected.) Carter, along with his political advisers Hamilton Jordan and Jody Powell, mapped out a strategy that would make Carter appeal to just about everyone in the state of Georgia. They studied voting patterns for each one of Georgia’s 159 counties. Carter gave speeches that were tailored for each particular ZIP code he was in. The hard work paid off and Carter assumed the Governor’s job in 1971.

Almost as soon as Carter was elected governor, he started to prepare for a presidential run. In 1972, Carter (or his supporters) tried to get him nominated as George McGovern’s running mate, but McGovern was not interested.

The lesson Carter took from McGovern’s landslide loss to Nixon in 1972 was that the American people liked McGovern’s ideas, but didn’t think that McGovern was competent enough to run the country. So, Carter went about showing his “competence” with a series of reforms in Georgia and a reform of the budget process. It’s hard to tell just what he accomplished as governor of Georgia.

Carter was one of the first declared candidates for the Democratic nomination in 1976, and most political pundits assumed that the election was in the bag for the Democrats in the wake of Watergate and President Ford’s pardon of Richard Nixon. However, after a quick start with wins in Iowa and New Hampshire, Carter’s momentum stalled as Democrats started looking at other candidates, like Morris Udall or Jerry Brown. Even Hubert Humphrey was still popular among Democrats. Carter had built enough of an early lead though, that his nomination was not in doubt.

In the general election, Carter, according to Morris, almost blew a huge lead in the polls, edging out Ford by a little more than 2% in the popular vote and by just 51 in the electoral vote. Carter won only one state in the West, Hawai’i. Carter’s election represented the last gasp of “The Solid South” for Democrats and that was was attributed more to the region’s desire to return one of its own to the White House for the first time since 1848. (Texans have told me that Texas is not in the South. I will not disagree with them. Also, Woodrow Wilson was born in Virginia, but was considered a New Jerseyan when elected.)

Carter’s four years in office were not a time that many Americans look back at with much fondness. The “stagflation” of the Nixon and Ford Era, continued. People were faced with double digit rates of inflation combined with interest rates well over 15 percent. Worker productivity declined. There were sporadic energy shortages.

Energy was the first issue that Carter tried to tackle. Immediately, he faced opposition from Congressional Democrats who found Carter’s style to be somewhat dismissive of them. Also, Carter wasn’t considered liberal enough by the Democrats in Congress. It took two years to get any sort of legislation in this field passed.

As Morris wrote, Carter worked very hard to find the perfect middle road and established a unique position on just about every political issue possible. There were estimates that Carter had over 250 different position papers on separate subjects. It was hard to figure out just what he stood for, except possibly just for Jimmy Carter.

In foreign policy, Carter decided to make the return of the Panama Canal to Panama, his first big issue to tackle. While negotiations had gone on for several years under different administrations, opposition to the return of the Canal was fierce. Carter won Senate approval of  the treaty after spending quite a bit of political capital.

In 1978, Carter’s made his greatest mark on history when he was able to get Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egypitan President Anwar Sadat to come to Camp David. Carter was able to mediate a peace treaty between these two enemies.

By 1979, the wheels came off of Carter’s Presidency. On July 15, 1979, Carter addressed the nation on television, ostensibly to discuss energy policy, but Carter changed his idea about the speech and spoke about a “crisis of confidence” in the United States. Carter said that the problem with the country wasn’t Congress not passing his energy policy, but the problem was that the country didn’t believe in itself and was skeptical that the country get itself back on track.

This speech was dubbed the “malaise” speech, even though Carter didn’t use that word in the speech. But, the American people didn’t like to be told that they were a bunch of whiners. Carter did not give the appearance that he was leading anymore.

And then on November 4, 1979, terrorists held 52 Americans hostage in the U.S. embassy in Tehran. This was, first in protest of Carter allowing the deposed Shah to come to the U.S. for medical treatment, but the crisis continued past the Shah’s death. Carter retreated in to the White House and seemed to offer little hope for the hostages’ return. Not that finding their release would be easy as the Iranian government was in flux and it was difficult to find anyone who had any authority. Also, decades of anti-American attitudes were being played out in this event.

Carter did order a commando style rescue of the hostages, but it ended up with two American helicopters crashing in the desert, the hostages still in Tehran, and Secretary of State Cyrus Vance resigning in protest.

In addition to his problems with Iran, Carter irritated Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev with his support of Soviet dissidents, such as Andrei Sakharov. Carter and Brezhnev negotiated a SALT II agreement to limit nuclear weapons. Neither side liked the agreement. It was scrapped when the USSR invaded Afghanistan. (That didn’t work out so well for anybody did it?)

How did Carter respond to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan? He ordered a boycott of the upcoming Olympic Games in Moscow, as well as an embargo on grain exports to the USSR.

In 1980, Carter had to survive a primary challenge from Ted Kennedy to be renominated. Then, Carter had to face one of the most polished campaigners in American politics in Ronald Reagan. Compared to Reagan, the earnest, moralizing Southern farmer seemed most inadequate against Reagan, who would keep asking if people were better off than they were four years ago. And, the answer to that was almost always “no.” Reagan won by nearly 9% and by 440 votes in the Electoral College.

And the electoral defeat in 1980, brought about yet another reinvention of Jimmy Carter. Now, he became Mr. Humanitarian. Carter was often shown building houses for Habitat for Humanity. Carter would serve as an election observer in countries like Haiti and Nicaragua. And Carter would show up on Jay Leno’s show from time to time.

This book was written in 1996, before Carter won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002. Carter has been seen with some world figures that have made conservatives blanch in horror. His legacy, the Carter Center, details most of his post-presidential career, although you have to judge the impartiality of the source.

It is difficult to make an assessment on the life of anyone who is still alive and still active. And with Jimmy Carter’s numerous reinventions, you feel like you have to read three different books to keep up with him. I lived during the Carter Administration and thought I followed the events of his Presidency closely for a nerdy kid in junior high. (Now I’m a nerdy adult, so I blog about Carter.) But, I still don’t fully understand what Jimmy Carter was about. Morris asks people to take a look at Carter’s moral leadership and judge him that way. However, moral leadership may not have the payoff that most people want.

Other stuff: In addition to the Carter Center, the National Park Service runs the Jimmy Carter National Historic Site in Plains, Georgia.

Carter did not appoint anyone to the Supreme Court. He was the first President since Andrew Johnson to not appoint a Justice. William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, and Barack Obama are the other presidents with no Supreme Court nominations, although the current president still has a few years for a vacancy to turn up.

Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter have the second-longest marriage of any U.S. Presidential couple. They will celebrate their 63rd anniversary on July 7, 2009. George and Barbara Bush were married on January 6, 1945.

During Carter’s first presidential campaign, he tried to portray himself as being much more “hip” than people’s perceptions of Southerners. One claim Carter made was that his views on tenant farming were changed after listening to Bob Dylan’s “Maggie’s Farm.” This was an excuse for me to link to this video.

William Howard Taft: An Intimate History by Judith Icke Anderson

Bob Timmermann11 Comments

President #27, C-SPAN historians’ ranking #24

Why Am I President? It Was On My Wife’s To Do List.

taftWhen it came time to find a biography of President William Taft, it wasn’t easy. Despite holding office during a time when Constitutional Amendments introducing the income tax and the direct election of senators, the admission of two states (New Mexico and Arizona), and running in an election against two of the 20th Century’s most famous presidents (Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson), Taft hasn’t received much interest from historians.

This left me finding this book, which was published commercially in 1981, but was actually a more commercial version of a UCLA dissertation by a woman for whom I can find no trace further trace of.

“An Intimate History” is the same subtitle that Jefferson biographer Fawn Brodie used for his study of our third president. That book was published in 1974. Brodie was Anderson’s adviser at UCLA and she followed in her footsteps. And in this book, the reader learns about William Taft, the man, and why he did what he did. And in Anderson’s view, Taft’s actions in all aspects of life were mostly an attempt to please his mother, and, then later, his wife.

And Anderson goes on at length about Taft’s weight. It is not something that can be ignored, especially since Taft tipped the scales at up to 355 pounds while he served as President.

Why was Taft so heavy? According to Anderson, Taft was someone who took solace in eating when he was either stressed out or felt a need to please someone. And when Taft was in the White House, he was stressed out. His enormous weight likely gave Taft a case of apnea as he often dozed off at inappropriate times and snored loudly during public gatherings.

Taft’s career path to the White House was not a normal one. The son of a former Secretary of War, Alphonso Taft, William went to college at Yale and then to law school at the University of Cincinnati. His mother assumed that William, like all Tafts would achieve greatness.

But first, Taft needed to find a wife. And he eventually met Helen “Nellie” Herron at a sledding party in Cincinnati. Taft courted Nellie for years before she agreed to marry him. Nellie’s hesitancy stemmed from the fact that she considered herself to be fairly independent. However, she also wanted to be attached to important people. And she sensed that William Taft was someone who could bring up her to the highest circles of power, even the White House.

But, Taft’s ambition was to be a judge. He served in a local court in Ohio and loved it. However, he was picked to go to Washington by President Benjamin Harrison to serve as Solicitor General.  Nellie loved the change of scenery. Although Taft was a good judge, he was a lousy litigator. He did not have an adversarial nature. He wanted to be everyone’s friend. Although I am not a lawyer, I’m guessing being conciliatory and jovial isn’t the tone you’re looking for.

In Washington, Taft became friends with a young man who was serving as the Assistant Secretary of the Navy. His name was Theodore Roosevelt.

President William McKinley offered Taft a position on the Federal District Court back in Ohio, so Taft returned there to a job he loved above all other.  Later, McKinley asked Taft back when he needed someone to serve as the first civil governor of the newest United States territories, the Philippines.

The people of the Philippines didn’t particularly enjoy being under Spanish control, and they didn’t particularly like having Americans tell them what to do either. The American military governor, General Arthur MacArthur (who had a son named Douglas), had to suppress an insurrection. MacArthur did so, but in a brutal fashion that often involved torture.

Taft had to work to repair America’s image both in the Philippines and the world while building up a system of government for the people of the Philippines. Anderson describes Taft as being well regarded by the Filipinos, although coming after MacArthur, that’s not much of a surprise.

By 1904, President Theodore Roosevelt needed a new Secretary of War and he asked his old friend William Taft to take over that post. Taft didn’t know much about running the Army, but Roosevelt thought well of him. Taft actually spent much of his time travelling on diplomatic missions as Roosevelt had stretched U.S. interests to all parts of the globe.

Roosevelt had promised Taft that he would get him a seat on the Supreme Court, preferably Chief Justice, if one ever came up. But the time was never right, so Taft remained in Roosevelt’s Cabinet.

When Roosevelt was elected to a full term in 1904, he promised he wouldn’t run again. This was a bit of a problem for him in 1908 because he was still relatively young (50 on Election Day) and extremely popular. But Roosevelt felt he couldn’t go back on his promise, so he designated Taft to be his successor.

Taft was not particularly interested in becoming President, but Nellie was quite interested in being First Lady. And in most discussions between William and Nellie, Nellie won. Taft was elected easily over Democratic nominee, and three-time loser, Wililam Jennings Bryan.

Almost as soon as the election was over, things went wrong for Taft. The President-elect had sent a telegram to supporters thanking two people for his election: Roosevelt (for his popularity that made it easy for another Republican to win) and his brother Charles Taft (for extensive financial support). Roosevelt was appalled to be lumped in with someone who just wrote checks.

One of the first major pieces of legislation Taft wanted to get passed was a tariff reform bill. Roosevelt advised Taft that tariffs needed to be lowered, but he didn’t do while he was in office because he knew the issue was too sensitive with an election coming up.

In 1909, the Republicans were the party of high tariffs. And the more conservative Republicans liked the tariffs to be as high as possible. The bill that passed Congress, the Payne-Aldrich Tariff ended up raising duties on nearly every type of imported goods. Conservatives were happy, but Progressive Republicans (who were Roosevelt supporters) were appalled. Taft was immediately branded as a weak leader.

Also in 1909, Taft faced a major political crisis in the Interior Department. Taft had appointed former Seattle mayor Richard Ballinger as his new Secretary of the Interior. However, Taft kept on in the Forestry Service, a Roosevelt loyalist named Gifford Pinchot.

Pinchot, who would likely be called an environmentalist now, although “conservation” was the term used in the day, accused Ballinger of leasing public lands in Alaska to large corporations for mining and other ways to tap their natural resources. Charges flew back and forth between the two men. Pinchot was eventually fired by Taft, an action that Roosevelt’s supporters could not abide. Eventually, Ballinger resigned as well. Taft bungled the matter every way possible. And mostly this happened because Taft didn’t want to take command of the situation, but rather just try to make everybody happy.

Another problem for Taft was one that was not of his own making. Roosevelt had established himself as a Progressive Republican, with a penchant for going after big business. Taft was a conservative. Roosevelt had to know this. Yet, Roosevelt backed a man for President whom he had to believe was going to reverse some of his policies.

In the midterm elections, the Republicans lost control of both houses of Congress. Soon after, Roosevelt returned from a long trip to Africa to great national acclaim. And soon set into his old friend Taft and started to position himself for another run at the White House.

Taft pretty much knew that he couldn’t get reelected in 1912. He just didn’t have the national support. His only reason for being elected in the first place was that he was Theodore Roosevelt’s friend. And now Roosevelt hated him. That left Taft without much to go on.

But Nellie was determined that her husband at least not lose the Republican nomination to Roosevelt. And Taft agreed with his wife. He decided he wanted to make Roosevelt run as a third party candidate.

Fortunately for Taft, there were only a handful of these newfangled things called primaries during the nominating season. Roosevelt won the majority of those, but Taft, through the power of patronage, was able to control enough delegates to win the nomination. Roosevelt was left to run on his own as the Progressive Party Candidate. Meanwhile, the Democrats nominated the nerdy, yet popular, governor of New Jersey, Woodrow Wilson.

Almost nothing went write right for Taft during the campaign. His trusted confidante and personal aide, Archie Butt, had left him because of personal issues in 1912. Butt had served as Roosevelt’s personal aide as well and he couldn’t decide whom to work for. So, he went to Europe to think about it. Butt booked passage on the Titanic for the trip home. He didn’t make it.

Taft’s Vice President, James “Sunny Jim” Sherman, died a few weeks before Election Day as well. Taft made odd statements to the press, including one where he said he would campaign “like a cornered rat.”

When the counting was done, Wilson was an easy winner. Taft won just two states, the worst showing of any incumbent President ever. And Taft won one of the states, Vermont, by just 923 votes. In 1912, Vermont was not yet run by the Ben & Jerry’s types, and was one of the most conservative states in the country.

Losing the election relieved a great burden from Taft. He no longer had to be the bad guy who told people “no.” Not that Taft said “no” all that often.

Once leaving office, Taft taught law at Yale, but finally got his dream job in 1921 when President Warren Harding appointed him to be Chief Justice of the United States. Taft loved this job more than any other. And according to Anderson, his weight dropped into the 260 lb range. He no longer had to eat his way through stress. He had found his dream job, the one he had thought about since he came to Washington in 1886.

William Taft passed away in 1930 and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery, the first President to be so honored. His wife Nellie wanted that honor. However, few people wander over to the section of Arlington to see Taft’s grave. Just like finding a biography of Taft, it’s something you have to seek out. Perhaps a better story of Taft’s life is still to be written.

But the life of Willam Howard Taft teaches us one thing: if you want to be remembered by historians as president, don’t have your term fall in between those of two far more famous presidents.

Psychobiography was a popular discipline in the 1970s, but it isn’t used now. Brodie was able to apply it to it someone like Jefferson because there was quite a bit to work on. The inner workings of the psyche of William Howard Taft may not be that be interesting. Especially since Anderson spells it all out very early in the book. The final 200 or so pages are more repetitions of the theme of “Taft tries to please wife, eats too much, becomes less happy, repeat.” Perhaps there is more to Taft than just a domineering wife and a battle with obesity. However, that book hasn’t been written yet.

But Nellie Taft got a major biography written about her just three years ago. Sorry Bill, you can’t win this game.

Other stuff: Taft, despite his great size, was an avid sportsman and he tried to play a round of golf nearly everyday. Taft was also the first U.S. President to throw out the ceremonial first pitch to mark the beginning of baseball season. This started in 1910.

The National Park service operates the William Howard Taft National Historic Site in Cincinnati.

Taft’s son, Robert, served as a Senator from Ohio and ran for the Republican nomination for President in 1940, 1944, and 1952. A William Howard Taft IV (great-grandson of the president) worked for a time in the George W. Bush Administration. Robert Taft III, who went by Bob Taft, served as governor of Ohio. Generally, if you run into something in the U.S. with the name “Taft” in it, it’s probably this president’s family.

John Adams by John Patrick Diggins

Bob Timmermann6 Comments

President #2, C-SPAN Historians’ ranking #17

May all your wars be Quasi Wars

johnadamsFor most of our lives, John Adams was an historical figure whom people recognized, yet thought little of. We figured he must have been important since he helped write the Declaration of Independence and also became President. But he was no George Washington, a larger than life military hero and “Father of the Country.” He was no Thomas Jefferson, Renaissance man, and thinker of deep thoughts.

John Adams was one of the Founding Fathers whom people had never developed a great deal of reverence for. His face didn’t appear on any currency that was commonly in use. He was just “that guy between Washington and Jefferson.” He doesn’t have a monument or memorial in Washington, D.C. that people go out of their way to see. (There are plans to build a new Adams memorial there.)

But recently, John Adams has had a significant revival among historians. Much of this came from David McCullough’s John Adams, which was a best-seller and later an HBO miniseries. And 175 years after he passed away, John Adams has become one of the most popular historical figures in American history.

John Patrick Diggins, a professor of history at City University of New York, got on board the John Adams train with his biography of the second president, which was published in 2003. Diggins’ biography, for a 150+ page book, is densely packed with discussions about Adams political writings. If you’re looking for something that would be starring Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney, this isn’t the book.

Diggins spends one chapter discussing at length (at least it seemed so to me because it was a slog despite being just over 20 pages) going over two of Adams political writings. One is A Defence of the Constitutions of the United States of America, which Adams had published in 1787 and 1788. It was Adams’ response to criticisms of the new U.S. Constitution by French philosophers.

In Defence, Adams explains why America needed a relatively complex system of government with numerous checks and balances instead of a model like the French National Assembly, where all the power was held by one body. If you’ve read the whole thing (it’s three volumes long), you have my admiration.

The other book Adams penned was titled Discourses on Davila. It serves as something of a fourth volume to Defence and it was published in 1790. In it, Adams answered charges that he was a monarchist and an aristocrat.

Adams felt that an aristocracy was something that could not be avoided in society. There was a natural tendency for people to associate with people from their own backgrounds economically. Also people always wanted to better themselves, so there was always going to be some group that people wanted to aspire to become part of. Adams felt that the U.S. Constitution was well-suited to providing a maximum amount of liberty despite the presence of an aristocracy.

Diggins spends a long time in a short book comparing the political philosophies of Adams and Thomas Jefferson and Diggins clearly believes that Adams was the superior. Jefferson is portrayed by Diggins as someone who claimed to be a champion of civil liberties and the common man, but failed to grasp the fact that the style of government Jefferson advocated ended up being the Directory of France, which led to the Reign of Terror. Diggins argues that Adams, as a constitutionalist, actually did more for civil liberties because it takes government action to grant such liberties. The Constitution, as Lincoln said, protects us from ourselves.

One of Adams arguments against always bending to majority rule boiled down to this “What if one day 51 people supported one issue and 49 people opposed it? And what happens if one person changes his mind the next day?”  John Adams would not be a big fan of California’s initiative system.

However, Diggins book was supposed to be about Adams’ presidency. And after about 80 pages, Adams takes over the Presidency, edging out Jefferson in the election of 1796 by three electoral votes (there was no popular vote at the time). Prior to 1804, the Vice President was whomever finished second. So, Adams had the uncomfortable position of having his arch-rival serving as his second in command. (Hey, it’s like California where we have a Republican governor and a Democratic lieutenant governor!)

Adams was not a successful president as he was presented with a difficult diplomatic situation with France and he faced opposition from Jefferson’s Republicans (who thought Adams was a monarchist) and  Alexander Hamilton’s arch-Federalists (who thought Adams was too conciliatory toward Jefferson).

One of Adams first acts was sending three envoys to France to start negotiations about the problem of French ships preying on American merchant ships that were trading with England. But the French demanded, for lack of a better word, a bribe before they would talk with the Americans. This event became known as the XYZ affair and since zippers had not been invented, I will state that XYZ referred to the three anonymous people who solicited the bribes. That ended that attempt at diplomacy and the United States and France soon started what became known as the Quasi War, a war that existed in all but name (see also Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, etc.).

Adams hoped that building an American Navy would help with the problems with France, but Hamilton wanted an Army and managed to get himself appointed to be general. Jefferson and his faction opposed any hostility with the French because they admired the French Revolution, which was mostly about lopping off heads at the time. A full-scale war was averted through a mixture of diplomacy and increased internal problems in France (such as Napoleon coming to power) which left the French not particularly interested in pursuing a war with a pipsqueak republic in North America.

Tensions during the Quasi War ran high in the press, which was extraordinarily partisan at the time. Personal attacks on Adams and Jefferson by either side were the norm, and often done by printers who were on the government payroll.  To combat this, Adams signed into law the Alien and Sedition Acts, which served to curb immigration (Irish and French immigrants tended to be on Jefferson’s side) and also make it crime to say anything bad about the President and Congress in the press.

So you might be saying to yourself, “This Sedition Act sounds unconstitutional.” It very well was, but there was never a court test of it and the concept of judicial review wouldn’t be established until 1803. The Acts themselves had built in expiration dates, and they ended as Adams left office. Diggins doesn’t believe Adams came up with the idea of the Alien and Sedition Acts, but since they happened on his watch, he was ultimately responsible, and they remain the biggest blot on the historical record for Adams.

Another event in Adams’ term in office that is little remembered now, but was a big issue at the time was something called Fries’ Rebellion. John Fries was a German immigrant who worked as auctioneer in Pennsylvania. To help fund the Quasi War, Adams had Congress pass a measure which was called the House Tax, which was a nationwide property tax of sorts. Fries led a movement (a rather tame one) that encouraged Pennsylvanians to not pay the tax since it wasn’t proportional to the population. Fries and two others were arrested for this and convicted of treason and sentenced to hang.

However, Adams pardoned Fries because he felt that he had not committed treason, but rather just led a protest that was not intended to overthrow the government. Hamilton and his supporters were aghast and in the election of 1800 they would get revenge on Adams for his perceived apostasy.

The election of 1800 is often called “The Revolution of 1800.” As Diggins points out, it was the first time that a nation that was born out of a violent revolution ever had a peaceful change of power. The election was nasty as Adams’ and Jefferson’s supporter slung mud in what would soon become an American tradition for campaigns. Jefferson and his running mate Aaron Burr tied for the top spot and Hamilton (who didn’t campaign too much for Adams) was able to get the House of Representatives to put Jefferson in the top spot, because while Hamilton hated Jefferson, Hamilton hated Burr twice as much. And of course, Hamilton and Burr ended up as the Tupac and Biggy of the early 19th Century.

And on March 4, 1801, heroic Thomas Jefferson rode his horse into Washington, D.C. and was inaugurated in front of an adoring crowd and gave an inaugural address that would be the standard by which others were judged for over a century. And dour John Adams slipped out of town and didn’t watch his successor’s inauguration, although Diggins speculates that Jefferson never invited Adams.

After both men had left office, Adams and Jefferson patched up their differences and started a famous series of correspondence where they debated the issues of the day. The standards of the time prevented either man from going on the lecture circuit or writing memoirs to make money, which is sad because I would have paid pretty good money to watch John Adams and Thomas Jefferson debate the issues of the day. It sounds a bit more appealing than watching David Frost interviewing Richard Nixon.

If you are inclined to take in Diggins book about Adams, bring your thinking cap. It is not a romp through the American Revolution and the Federalist Era. It’s a study about how Adams and his political philosophy stood up against the likes of Jefferson, Montesquieu, and Rousseau. It’s a biography of Adams for people who may be interested in placing Adams in the grand scheme of things as a political thinker, rather than just picturing him as a character in a premium cable series.

Other stuff: As mentioned in his son’s post, the Adams are remembered at the Adams National Historic Park in Quincy, Massachusetts. Henry Adams, the great grandson of John Adams, does have a famous statue by Augustus Saint-Gaudens by his grave at Rock Creek Cemetery in Washington.

John Adams died on July 4, 1826 at the age of 90 years, 247 days. That was the longest lifespan of any President until Ronald Reagan surpassed Adams in 2001. Gerald Ford later surpassed Reagan’s lifespan, passing away at age 93.

Adams was the first U.S. President who was a college graduate. Adams graduated from Harvard, the first of five alums (as undergrads) from Harvard who would become Chief Executive. John Quincy Adams, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, and John Kennedy were the others. George W. Bush received an MBA from Harvard, but was an undergrad at Yale. Rutherford Hayes and Barack Obama attended Harvard Law School, but were undergrads elsewhere.

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