Passed Presidents - # 17 – Andrew Johnson

Let’s face it.  Abe was a tough act to follow...Savior of the Union and our first martyred president, after all.  In some respects, Andrew Johnson has a great story.  His obituary in the New York Times said, 

“His career was remarkable, even in this country;

It would have been impossible in any other”.

This will be a special posting.  Johnson’s grave was the first one visited on my first post-retirement road trip.  With the posting schedule that I adapted this year based on death dates, this becomes the final grave site presented.  Thirty nine graves and life stories that reflect the history of this country.  Until the next one kicks, the Quest is done.

Finally, it also happens that # 17 died 139 years ago today and it is my birthday.  Good thing I was born 71 years later so I could not be accused of channeling his reincarnated soul.  He might have had the best ‘rise-from-nothing’ career but he was still a racist incompetent who is firmly lodged in the Bottom Three of every presidential ranking.  We remember Johnson today because we have to but my personal celebration is more about having survived another 365 days without dying -- and the end of the Dead Presidents Quest.  

Andrew Johnson Grave, Greenville, TN (12 June 2005)

Johnson came from the poorest part of Raleigh, North Carolina society.  Only black folk were lower on the social strata.  He had no formal education and was apprenticed to a tailor as a boy.  When he ran off, a published bounty was offered for his capture and return.  In those days, indentured servitude and slavery had that much in common. 

Eventually, he settled into his craft and opened a tailor shop in Greenville, Tennessee.  He married at age 18 and Eliza (age 16 when they married) taught him to read and write.  His budding interest in local politics spurred an amazing trajectory.  He was elected alderman and then mayor of Greenville.  He served in the state legislature and was elected governor.  He served in the U.S. House and Senate before Lincoln dumped his first term VP Hannibal Hamlin for Johnson.  Johnson was the only southern senator to vote against secession.  In the North, he was a hero.  In the South, he was a traitor whose family had to leave Tennessee.  Who better to balance the ticket than a Southern, Pro-Union Democrat?  Besides, he’ll be the useless, uninvolved, forgotten Vice President.  What could go wrong with that?

Two of Jonson’s sons are buried with their parents (12 June 2005)

The North won the war, Lincoln died and Johnson is now the president.  There were many Republicans who wanted Reconstruction to include more punishment for the rebel leaders.  The South did not help its cause by re-electing the same hard-boiled Confederates to their old positions.  These racists made things worse by implementing new “black codes,” laws that continued to make life miserable for the freed slaves.  Johnson seemed to have little problem with any of that.

Congress passed a number of Reconstruction and civil rights bills which Johnson vetoed.  He thought they were too punitive or unconstitutional.  Congress overrode the vetoes.  To say they didn’t get along was an understatement. 

The end of the Civil War marked the beginning of a 20-year period when Congress tried to overpower the Executive branch of our government.  When you pass enough laws that the president cannot or will not enforce, something has to give.  This culminated in the first presidential impeachment in our history.

Andrew Johnson Grave, Greenville, TN (12 June 2005)

The inscription on the left says,

“Andrew Johnson, Seventeenth President of the United States.

Born Dec. 29, 1808. Died July 31, 1875.

His faith in the people never wavered.”

On the right, the inscriptions are,

“Eliza Johnson, Born Oct. 4, 1810. Died Jan. 15, 1876.

Below that, “In memory of our father and mother.”

Eleven articles of impeachment were drawn up by the House.  The Senate trial lasted three months.  When it came time for a vote, the senators fell one vote short of the two-thirds number required for conviction.  Johnson was acquitted and finished his term.  He wanted to run for re-election but became one of five incumbents who were not re-nominated by his party.

To his credit, we acquired the Alaska Territory on his watch, although ‘Seward’s Folly’ was not appreciated until much later.  Also, Johnson is the only former president to return and serve in the U.S. Senate.  John Quincy Adams completes this short list of presidents who returned to Congress after leaving the White House. 

The president’s statue is on the grounds of the state capitol in Nashville (13 June 2005)

He died only months after returning to the Senate and Eliza passed six months later.  Along with two sons, they are buried on a hill top in a National Cemetery that bears his name.  A few blocks away, in the old quarter of Greenville, is the Andrew Johnson National Historic Site, where you can find an interpretive visitor center along with his old homes and tailor shop.  Before I read more about the guy, I came away from that visit with a more sympathetic view of his life and trying times.  His southern leanings were not emphasized and his racist view of blacks as inferior beings was certainly left off the agenda.  I guess that makes sense in one respect.  One is less likely to be drawn to an attraction that says,

Visit the Andrew Johnson National Historic Site

He was a bigot and a failed president

But come see it anyway

Since he’s the only president we have around here.

 

 Andrew Johnson

17th President; Served 1865-1869

Born: December 29, 1808, Raleigh, NC

Died: July 31, 1875, Carter County, TN

Grave Location: Andrew Johnson National Cemetery, Greenville, TN

Date Visited: 6/12/2005

Passed Presidents - # 8 – Martin Van Buren

I have a bad attitude about writing this one. We just finished the Grant story and he was a war hero with the biggest boot-strap ascension in presidential history. Martin Van Buren died 152 years ago today...and I’m not feeling it.

We’re not talking Mount Rushmore material here. Other factors that contribute to this lack of enthusiasm include:

· He was a one-termer...one of ten who ran for re-election and lost.

· He was a dapper dandy. A sharply-dressed man who lost his re-election, in part, because his opponent made the public believe he was too upper crusty, dare I say, ‘effete’, for us regular folks.

· After John Quincy Adams (# 6), all the presidents up to the Civil War and Lincoln were slave owners or chicken-bleep northerners who did little to oppose our ‘Original Sin’. President Van Buren was soft on slavery and wanted to return the Amistad and the mutinous slaves to Spain. Fortunately, the case was decided in the courts, again with J.Q. Adams successfully arguing for the slaves’ freedom.

· His one term was unremarkable and marked by financial crises and economic depression.

· Finally, the only images I have are mediocre scans of old slides taken on a gray day.

At least I could have thrown out the neat little trivia that our modern English use of the term, ‘okay’ or ‘OK’ came from the eighth president, whose nickname was ‘Old Kinderhook’. However, that’s not actually true.

Entrance to Kinderhook Cemetery (14 June 2003)

However, I hope we have learned that every president, no matter how dull and uninspiring, has something worth appreciating about him.

Martin Van Buren came from a home and community where Dutch was the primary language. He was the first president born after we gained independence...the first American-born Chief Executive and the only one who could claim English as his second language. He rose through New York politics, serving as senator, attorney general and governor. He was a U.S. senator and Andrew Jackson’s Secretary of State during Jackson’s first term and Vice President in his second.

Long before Van Buren entered the national scene, he lost his wife. Hannah died after only twelve years of marriage. She never recovered after the birth of their fifth child and our 8th president lived his last 43 years as a bachelor/widower.

He was Andrew Jackson’s staunch ally and protégé. He was a Democrat when he won and lost the presidency. He ran again in 1848 as the standard bearer of the Free Soil Party and garnered only ten percent of the popular vote and no electoral votes. At least he took a stand against slavery AFTER he left office, given the new and short-lived party was about that single issue, the opposition to expanding slavery into the new territories and states.

Martin van Buren’s Grave, Kinderhook, NY (14 June 2003)

The Little Magician is one of only eight presidents who are buried where they were born. He earned that nickname because of his stature (5’6”) and his political agility. I got to Kinderhook, New York on a whirlwind baseball weekend with Frank and Don. We went from Cooperstown, New York and the Baseball Hall of Fame to Boston for a game at Fenway Park. On the way east out of Albany toward Massachusetts, we made a quick stop to photograph the most prominent resident of Kinderhook Reformed Cemetery...a real drive-by affair. The next day, we saw a game at Yankee Stadium and then dragged our tired butts back home. I had to be back on the job Monday. 

Maybe that final memory of work contributes to this lackluster feeling for the guy and writing about him. 

Anyway, Happy Anniversary, Marty.

Martin Van Buren

8th President; Served 1837-1841

Born: December 5, 1782, Kinderhook, NY

Died: July 24, 1862, Kinderhook, NY

Grave Location: Kinderhook Reformed Cemetery, Kinderhook, NY

Date Visited: 6/14/2003

Passed Presidents - # 18 – Ulysses S. Grant

Imagine Ulysses Grant at age 38 in the beginning of 1861. He was out of the army for seven years, having risen only to the rank of captain in the eleven years he served following graduation from West Point. He resigned his commission rather than face court martial for repeated drunkenness. In the time since his discharge, he failed at farming and real estate ventures and was now a clerk in his father’s leather goods store. He was content to make a steady wage and support his wife and four children.

Then, boom...the Civil War breaks out. Never say war does not present opportunity. When the war began, he organized volunteers from his home state of Illinois. Four years later, General Grant commanded the entire Union army and accepted General Lee’s surrender to end the war. He was the first ‘General of the Armies’ since George Washington. Three years after that, he was elected president...at 46, our youngest one up to that time. Store clerk to president in seven years...with none of those annoying elected offices in between. Is this a great country, or what?

Grant's Tomb, New York City (1 November 2005)

Administration scandals and a poor economy marred his second term and his presidency was considered unsuccessful. There is disagreement as to whether his attempts to elevate the rights of former slaves was too much too soon and counterproductive. In 2014, I would consider it a compliment. Biographer H. W. Brands, in his biography, ‘The Man Who Saved the Union: Ulysses Grant in War and Peace’, concluded that, “Nearly a century would pass before the country had another president who took civil rights as seriously as Grant did.”

Grant’s Tomb, New York City (1 November 2005)

That probably explains why African Americans contributed significantly to the construction of Grant’s Tomb. Richard Greener, the first black to graduate from Harvard, was the first Secretary of the Grant Monument Association and helped raise funds for what became the largest mausoleum in North America. Lincoln may have emancipated (some of) the slaves but it was Grant’s army that sealed the deal.

Grant’s Tomb, New York City (1 November 2005)

The panel depicts the Gentlemanly Generals,

Lee and Grant, agreeing to end the conflict.

After the presidency, Grant retired to New York and opened a brokerage firm which, true to form, failed. In his last year of life, he wrote what many consider one of the finest presidential autobiographies. It was completed days before he died and the royalties supported his widow for the rest of her days.

Ulysses Grant is the only president who died of cancer. His 20-cigars-a-day habit was his undoing as throat cancer claimed him, 129 years ago today, at age 63. There’s no doubt The Man Who Saved the Union was a popular guy. He was the only president between #7 Andrew Jackson and #28 Woodrow Wilson to serve two full terms. His funeral in 1885 brought out over a million viewers. The procession was seven miles long and included 60,000 marchers. Twelve years later, his memorial was complete. In northern Manhattan, it sits high on a rocky bluff overlooking the Hudson River. The magnificent Riverside Church is across the street.

Ulysses S. Grant

18th President; Served 1869-1877

Born: April 27, 1822, Point Pleasant, OH

Died: July 23, 1885, Mount McGregor, NY

Grave Location: General Grant National Memorial, New York, NY

Date Visited: 11/1/2005

The Best Dog Ever

Three years ago, an important memory and anniversary came rushing back when I took down The Best Christmas Tree Ever. Recently, I realized another anniversary is here...one that, coincidentally, is in keeping with this macabre practice I have with graves and death dates. Fifty years ago, in mid-July, the Best Dog Ever went to his reward. We still talk about Toulouse and the memorable things he did.

My father was a commercial artist. We named our pets after artists. When sister Patti came along, our beagle, Van Gogh took exception to the new arrival. He decided the house was not big enough for the two of them. Since my parents were not about to give up their cherubic new daughter, the dog had to go. The next puppy in the house was Toulouse. He was small and cute. Full grown at 145 pounds, he was less cute but a great dog.

Toulouse and my Father, 1956

My dad’s boss at his Manhattan office had a female Saint Bernard. Ms. Berna had a boyfriend...a standard poodle...let’s call him ‘Pierre.’ We never learned much about the scoundrel except that this unchaperoned tryst left Berna with nine mouths to feed. Dad brought one of them home.

We were lucky that Toulouse grew to have what I consider the best qualities of both breeds. He had the size and gentle disposition of a Saint Bernard along with the tight, less allergenic hair of the poodle. And he had the poodle’s brains. He was a very smart dog.

Toulouse and my Sister Pat, 1957

People sometimes talk about whether dogs understand your words or if it’s the tone of our voices that register...happy and affectionate versus stern and reprimanding. We found a good way to test this on Toulouse. When the house was empty, he had this habit of sleeping in my bed. He never did that when we were home and since he’d rush to the door as soon as the key hit the lock, we never actually caught him in a bed. The evidence however, was clear since the bed looked like a bomb dropped on it...and no, he was not smart enough to actually MAKE the bed before we returned.

Anyway, one day we came in, greeted the dog, saw the bed and scolded him. He felt the scolding was totally inappropriate since dogs think every time you leave them alone, you’re abandoning them. They’re thrilled you’ve come home and this is no time for discipline. So he growled at us--while still wagging his tail--so you understood this was not a big problem. Seeing this as an opportunity to test the tone vs. words theory, we greeted him differently the next time he destroyed a bed. I greeted him, tousled him, pet him all over, calling him a good boy and said how glad we were to see him again. But I also added a couple of words, in the same happy, affectionate tone, about whether he was the one on that bed. Again, he growled his disapproval at the mention of the damn bed. Regardless of the tone of voice, he decided if we left him alone, it was going to cost us a made bed and we just had to deal with it.

Anyone else notice a dog in the room?

Christmas, 1953

Toulouse could even spell. This story probably has grown a bit out of proportion to the facts but I believe it is true since I was there and, as a scientist, I never lie or exaggerate...much. We were at the dinner table and, since we have seen Toulouse perk up when we talk about what we’ll do with certain bones from the meal, we tried to communicate more subtly. Someone said, “Should we give the b-o-n-e to the d-o-g?” and to the table he came.

Red and Rover comic by Brian Basset, July 3, 2014

Taken from gocomics.com

Imagine my surprise when I saw the daily comics in the Washington

Post and this first reference to our favorite dog’s name.

He died at age 12...sadly, a virgin. We fantasized later what it would have taken to seriously breed Saint Poodles so everyone could appreciate this blend of canine qualities. We imagined doing it well enough to have the Kennel Club certify it as a legitimate breed...The Ringgershound, he said, conceitedly.

Of course genetics and breeding can be a tricky proposition. When the renowned actress, Mrs. Patrick Campbell wrote to George Bernard Shaw, she said they should have children together because, with her beauty and his brains, they would be perfect. His reply expressed the fear that their children would have his beauty and her brains. Better to leave Toulouse as the singular canine he was.

His Last Portrait, July 1964

He liked to lie on the cool concrete in the shade of the front porch. His last months were hard as he battled the hip problems that often afflict big dogs as they age. I never saw my dad cry but remember my mother telling me that’s what he did after coming home from the ASPCA after they put Toulouse to sleep.

I hope he has 72 virgins with him in Dog Paradise.

Passed Presidents - # 12 – Zachary Taylor

Zachary Taylor died 164 years ago today. The second president to die in office, he was replaced by VP Millard Fillmore and our string of lousy leaders continued to be pushed around by the slave states for another ten years until the nation fractured into Civil War.

Entrance to Zachary Taylor National Cemetery, 

Louisville, KY (22 October 2006)

Zachary Taylor was a career soldier. Born into a Virginia plantation family, he moved to the frontier of Kentucky as a baby and grew up with little formal education. He entered the military in 1808 and fought in the War of 1812. He led troops in the Blackhawk and Seminole Wars before gaining national hero status in the Mexican War. He never even voted in an election, concluding his service was to the country and that was enough. He was politically naïve and had few positions to run on when the Whigs persuaded him to lead their ticket in 1848. Our enlightened electorate voted him in anyway because we prefer someone who is famous rather than smart.

He, along with Ulysses S. Grant and Dwight Eisenhower, are in that exclusive club of presidents who held no other elective office. They were popular because they were successful generals and we love our war heroes. Not that ‘Old Rough and Ready’ was a lousy president. He was on the job only 15 months before he passed. For a slave-owning Indian fighter, he had some decent qualities. He respected the Native Americans he defeated and worked hard to honor treaties and keep white settlers off their lands. Absent absolute proof of ownership, he also refused to return runaway slaves who lived with the Seminoles in Florida. And he was not going to let the South destroy the union and threatened to hang anyone who did. He opposed the Compromise of 1850 but died before it passed Congress and unlucky Number 13 gets credit for that next step toward secession and war.

Marker on the Louisiana State Capitol Grounds (21 June 2008)

While Huey Long planned to be president, an 

assassin had other ideas. Zachary Taylor, who had 

a plantation in Baton Rouge, remains the only 

Louisiana resident who rose to the highest office.

The inscription reads:

TO HONOR

ZACHARY TAYLOR

U.S. ARMY GENERAL AND TWELFTH PRESIDENT

OF THE UNITED STATES

KNOWN TO AMERICANS AS

“OLD ROUGH AND READY”

AND WHO LIVED FOR A TIME SOME 200 YARDS

SOUTHWEST OF THIS SPOT

THIS MARKER PLACED IN 1951 BY

CAMPS OF LOUISIANA

WOOODMEN OF THE WORLD

The circumstances surrounding Taylor’s death are still debated. Some believe he was really our first assassinated president...poisoned by southern conspirators for his insistence that the union be preserved. Some publicity hound actually arranged to have Taylor’s remains exhumed in 1991 and tested for arsenic. The results confirmed he was not murdered...on purpose.

What we should understand is that the best American medicine in the 19th century was still abominable, medieval torture. The record shows that July 4th, 1850 was a hot one and the president sweltered in his black suit through hours of speeches at the groundbreaking for the Washington Monument. Upon returning to the White House, he ate fresh (?) fruit and chilled milk and got sick.

Like James K. Polk before him, many say they both died of cholera. One wonders. While many today consider Washington D.C. a fetid swamp of corruption and amorality, it was literally a fetid swamp back then. The city had no sewer system and the government maintained certain plots of land where “night soils” were deposited and left for the flies to digest. On top of that, the White House water supply originated between one of these poop marshes and the residence.

Add to that our sterling medical practices and it’s a wonder anyone lived to old age. The president was overheated and ate too much so his doctors ‘treated’ him with calomel (a mercury compound), opium and ipecac (actually a plant derivative that induces vomiting so pronouncing the name reminds you of its use).

Monument near Zachary Taylor Tomb (22 October 2006)

Among the Mexican War battles that General

Taylor fought and won, the last one is misspelled.

But wait; there’s more. No proper treatment was complete without bleeding and blisters. Really? Compromise his circulatory system and injure his skin at the same time. That’s the ticket. And historians have the nerve to say the president died of cholera. What ever happened to the medical dictum ‘First Do No Harm?’ In my presidential research, I’ve compiled a list of their causes of death. Heart failure, heart attacks and strokes lead the list, but murder-by-medical-malpractice-and-ineptitude should be right up there after that.

It was a quiet autumn Sunday morning and I was on a great solo road trip to Wisconsin. The time there would include my first Badger and Packer football games and Beck’s high school reunion. I had dipped down into Kentucky to visit Zachary Taylor in a cemetery that bears his name. The day ended in Springfield Illinois after a stop in Indianapolis to pay respects to Benjamin Harrison. It was a good day of presidential grave-hunting.

Zachary Taylor

12th President; Served 1849-1850

Born: November 24, 1784, Montebello, VA

Died: July 9, 1850, Washington, D.C.

Grave Location: Zachary Taylor National Cemetery, Louisville, KY

Date Visited: 10/22/2006

Passed Presidents - # 5 – James Monroe

I suspect some of you are tired of Dead Presidents but I’m on a mission and a schedule. While this is the final month of POTUS graves, it is a busy one. It’s summertime and in the days before air conditioning, old men died. The Final Five all passed in the 19th century. Their burial sites will be presented this month with no more to follow...until the next one kicks.
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Isn’t it fascinating that among the Founding Fathers who became our Head of State, three of the first five died on the same day of the year...and that day just happens to be our nations’ birthday? Two years ago, I presented the lives and graves of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, who died on the 4th of July in 1826. Five years later, James Monroe bit the dust.

James Monroe Grave, Hollywood Cemetery, Richmond, VA (28 June 2005)

Monroe had another of those Founding Father pedigrees. He fought and was wounded in the Revolution. He was one of Virginia’s first senators and was twice governor of the state. He was Washington’s Minister to France and Jefferson’s Minister to England. He helped negotiate the Louisiana Purchase. He was Madison’s Secretary of State and Secretary of War.

As a two-term president, he was conciliatory and less partisan. He placed solid people in important positions and they did well for the country. John C. Calhoun was his Secretary of War. His Secretary of State, John Quincy Adams, wrote the Monroe Doctrine, which gave pause to the powers of Europe. In it, this upstart nation of former European opportunists and rejects actually drew the line in the sand and said all of North and South America was henceforth off limits to colonization and interference by their former owner nations. It’s one of the most enduring presidential decrees and has been cited by successors through the 20th century.

Inscription on James Monroe Tomb (28 June 2005)

The inscription reads:

James Monroe

Born in Westmoreland County 28’’ April 1758.

Died in the City of New York 4’’ July 1831.

By Order of the General Assembly

His Remains were removed to this Cemetery 5’’ July 1858.

As an evidence of the affection of Virginia

For Her Good and Honored Son

Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia is a favorite of mine. A grand, Gothic burial ground with big trees and impressive grave markers. Two other American presidents, John Tyler and Jefferson Davis, can be found there along with loads of Confederate and national notables. I’d add an image but will continue this macabre fixation with future postings dedicated to special cemeteries.

Just a few yards from Number 10, John Tyler, the ardent slave holder and baby maker, lays Monroe, in what historian Richard Norton Smith calls, “the most bizarre of presidential tombs – a black iron birdcage-like affair that only Charles Addams could love.”

James Monroe Grave, Hollywood Cemetery, Richmond, VA (28 June 2005)

Mr. Monroe’s final act was a sad affair. He was in debt because the government did not pay for the White House entertainment that the Monroe’s felt was necessary. Our ex-presidents actually did not receive pensions until 1958. A number of our earlier leaders retired in a financial hole. Monroe’s wife of 44 years, ‘Eliza’ died in 1830. Soon after, he sold their Virginia plantation and moved in with his daughter and son-in-law in New York City.

The following year, the president died and was buried in his son-in-law’s family vault in lower Manhattan’s Marble Cemetery. Twenty seven years later, as the War Between the States loomed, the Virginia legislature passed a resolution to move Monroe’s remains ‘home.’

Many states have named counties after former presidents. George Washington’s name is honored in 31 different state counties. While four other presidents have more counties named after them than Monroe’s 17, none has a foreign capital named after them. As an early supporter of the American Colonization Society, Monroe fostered repatriation of freed slaves to Africa. Monrovia, Liberia is named for our fifth president.

James Monroe

5th President; Served 1817-1825

Born: April 28, 1758, Westmoreland County, VA

Died: July 4, 1831, New York, NY

Grave Location: Hollywood Cemetery, Richmond, VA

Date Visited: 6/28/2005

Merry Independence Day.