Secret Lives of the U.S. Presidents
Page 8
TOUGH AS NAILS
At 6′4″, Abe Lincoln towered over his contemporaries. And until the cares of his presidency wrecked his health, he boasted more than two hundred pounds. If there’s any doubt that he was a tough son-of-a-gun, consider this: As a child, he was kicked in the forehead by a horse and lived to tell the tale. His wrestling skill was legendary—as a shopkeeper on the frontier, he won the undying support of a local gang of ruffians by accepting the challenge of their leader to a wrestling match. The details concerning who won remain sketchy to this day and have long since become legend. One thing is for sure: Afterward, the gang showed up at every one of Lincoln’s debates to show their rather persuasive support.
The sentiment went both ways: On seeing a supporter being attacked at an Illinois political rally, Abe waded through the crowd, lifted the attacker by the head and seat, and threw him some twelve feet out of the building onto his ass.
Worse Off Generally
While hurrying off on some errand, an officer in the War Department once ran right into President Lincoln. The soldier, upon realizing whom he’d bumped into, offered “ten thousand pardons.” Lincoln merely smiled. “One is enough. I wish the whole army would charge like that!”
And he wasn’t kidding. Northern armies during the Civil War were led by a long succession of hesitant, myopic, or just plain unimaginative generals whose poor efforts, along with Confederate resourcefulness, allowed the Civil War to drag on for years. When asked by a journalist how large the Confederate army was reported to be, Lincoln replied with the staggering figure, “1,200,000 men.” Seeing the astonished look on his questioner’s face, he went on to explain that every time one of his generals got whipped, he claimed to have been outnumbered at least three or four to one. “And we have 400,000 men,” Lincoln noted.
PARDON ME, MR. PRESIDENT
Desertion, treachery, cowardice—crimes like these were commonplace in the armies of the day, and the punishment was always the same: death. But the commander in chief was no harsh disciplinarian—if anything, he was a big softy. He loved to issue pardons. When one appeal for mercy turned up on his desk without the usual supporting letters from influential people, Lincoln asked the adjutant if this man had no friends. “No sir, not one,” came the reply. Lincoln said, “Then I will be his friend,” and pardoned him.
TOO MANY PIGS FOR THE TEATS!
Patronage, the appointing of applicants to positions in the new administration, is something that has plagued presidents since Washington. During the nineteenth century, when the White House was essentially open to the public, office-seekers would besiege the president with their appeals daily. It could be time-consuming and contentious (as Lincoln once exclaimed, “There are too many pigs for the teats!”). But he managed the hordes with his usual aplomb and became famous for finding imaginative ways to dismiss persistent applicants.
“My grandfather fought at Lexington, my father fought at New Orleans, and my husband was killed at Monterey,” claimed one woman intent on getting the president to appoint her son a colonel. Lincoln promptly replied that her family had clearly done enough already and that it was time to give somebody else a chance. When a group of men beseeched Lincoln to make their applicant commissioner to Hawaii (then called the Sandwich Islands), they made mention of the man’s delicate health, for which such an appointment would be ideal. “Gentlemen,” replied Lincoln, “I am sorry to say that there are eight other applicants for that place, and they are all sicker than your man.”
MASS EXECUTION
It is a little-known fact that Abraham Lincoln personally authorized the largest mass hanging in American history. In 1862, Sioux Indians on the verge of starvation attacked white settlements in Minnesota, killing more than eight hundred men, women, and children. Union troops eventually subdued the Indians, tried them, and condemned 307 of them to hang. Alarmed by rumors that justice had been a little too swift, Lincoln personally reviewed all 307 convictions. All but thirty-eight sentences were commuted. Four thousand spectators were on hand to watch the thirty-eight hang on December 26 in Mankato, Minnesota.
A WAY WITH WORDS
Lincoln suffered fools badly and had a gift for fending them off with grace and humor. In the midst of the Civil War, he received a written request for a personally autographed “sentiment.” He sent off the following reply: “Dear Madam: When you ask of a stranger that which is of interest only to yourself, always enclose a stamp. There’s your sentiment, and here’s my autograph. A. Lincoln.” On another occasion, Peter Harvey, the associate and biographer of the late Daniel Webster, went to see Lincoln. After filling the president’s ears with the advice that he, as Webster’s closest living friend, knew that the great Webster himself would’ve given were he alive, Harvey expected to make quite an impression on his listener. But Lincoln, having sat quietly and attentively for two solid hours, merely reached over, grabbed Harvey’s leg, and exclaimed, “Mr. Harvey, what tremendous great calves you’ve got!” No more was said.
DRUTHERS OF INVENTION
Abraham Lincoln was a tinkerer. He even patented an invention of his own, a device to lift steamships over dangerous shoals that employed a series of inflatable chambers. He was always on the lookout for innovations in weaponry that might give Union armies an advantage and was sometimes seen testing new creations on the back lawn of the White House. Among the inventions he personally reviewed were a primitive machine gun; a method for predicting the weather; and a steel cuirass, or breastplate, that proved far too bulky for troops to actually wear in combat.
Fearless Leader
President Lincoln had no shortage of enemies—he kept all the written death threats he received in a file at his desk marked “Assassinations.” That he lived as long as he did is something of a miracle, for his murder at the hands of John Wilkes Booth was only the last in a series of attempts on his life.
Consider the time Mary Todd Lincoln was injured in a carriage accident. It was discovered afterward that the bolts holding the driver’s seat to the vehicle had been loosened, almost certainly with the intention of harming the president. Lincoln himself was alarmingly cavalier about his safety, a fact that drove those in his immediate circle crazy. Ward Lamon, marshal of the District of Columbia, took the president’s protection very seriously, often to his own frustration. He once threatened to resign upon discovering that the president had up and gone to the theater attended only by radical Republican Charles Sumner and Baron Gerolt, the aged minister from Prussia, “neither of whom,” Lamon fumed, “could defend himself against an assault from any able-bodied woman.” Despite the precautions taken to protect Lincoln, there were a few close shaves—including a gunshot that would’ve killed him were it not for the fact that his horse reared up in fright (the bullet pierced the crown of his hat). It wasn’t until 1864 that Lincoln was assigned protection: four plainclothes agents.
But they weren’t there to protect him when, on April 14, 1865, actor and Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth casually walked into Lincoln’s box at Ford’s Theatre and shot him in the back of the head.
MOURNING HAS BROKEN
In the weeks following Lincoln’s assassination, an already shattered American people went into mourning. Many of them also went into the White House—specifically, to run away with whatever they could get their hands on. With Mary Todd Lincoln upstairs in hysterics and President Andrew Johnson still making preparations to move in, the White House became fair game for enterprising souvenir seekers. The lost china alone was worth a staggering $22,000.
17 ANDREW JOHNSON
December 29, 1808–July 31, 1875
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Capricorn
TERM OF PRESIDENCY: 1865–1869
PARTY: Democratic
AGE UPON TAKING OFFICE: 56
VICE PRESIDENT: None
RAN AGAINST: N/A
HEIGHT: 5′10″
NICKNAMES: “King Andy,” “Sir Veto”
SOUND BITE: “Of all the dangers which our nation has
yet encountered, none are equal to those which must result from success of the current effort to Africanize the southern half of the country” (on the subject of black suffrage).
Andrew Johnson was the only Southern member of Congress who didn’t quit his post in Washington at the beginning of the Civil War. That took grit. Though a devoted Tennessean, he was staunchly, militantly devoted to the Union—and when he was elected vice president under Lincoln, his name became synonymous with treason throughout the Confederacy. After Lincoln’s assassination, Johnson inherited one of the toughest situations faced by any president—and his grit merely got in the way. His administration would be a failure, and he would be the first president impeached by Congress.
Johnson’s campaign efforts did little to help the Democratic cause—especially when he compared himself to Jesus Christ.
Johnson rose from painfully humble means to become a tailor. Though he never spent a day in school, he taught himself to read and write (with the help of his wife, who’d had some schooling) and soon developed a talent for political debate that would take him to the Senate and the House of Representatives. He also served two terms as governor of Tennessee.
Johnson was a rare bird, a Southerner opposed to both emancipation and the landed, wealthy slave owners of the South. He saw himself as a champion of the common man—the common white man—who’d suffered too much at the hands of a bloated aristocracy. But in 1864, it was his Southern Democratic background that attracted the attention of Lincoln, who sought a running mate who could shatter the image that the Civil War was strictly a Republican cause.
After the Union took Nashville in 1862, Lincoln appointed Johnson military governor of Tennessee. In this post, Johnson would show his love of discipline and a seething hatred of treason. This is why many in the North, especially the radical Republicans, were thrilled when Johnson assumed the presidency in 1865. The South would be remade, they thought, with a real reformer like Johnson at the helm.
Boy, were they off the mark. Claiming that he was only doing what Lincoln would’ve done if he were alive, Johnson carried through a plan of Reconstruction that was anything but ambitious. Hampered by his own racism and a suspicion of vigorous federal involvement, he left much of Reconstruction up to the individual Southern states. The result was a return to power of the old landed aristocracy and the creation of laws and institutions that sought to turn African Americans into a perpetual underclass.
Radical Republicans, who controlled Congress, were appalled. Empowered by their voting numbers to put through their own Reconstruction agenda, they decided to rely on the army under Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, who was sympathetic to their cause. They strengthened their hand by passing the Tenure of Office Act, which prevented the president from firing a cabinet member (i.e., Stanton) who’d already been approved by the Senate. Johnson, convinced that the act was unconstitutional, sacked Stanton anyway—and was promptly impeached by the House. The Senate failed to convict him by a single vote, but the damage had been done, and neither party wanted to risk the White House on Andy Johnson in 1868.
The Senate that had almost kicked Johnson’s keister out of office made nice with him in 1875, when he was elected to that body once again (he was the only former president to serve in the Senate). They even gave him a bouquet of flowers. Isn’t that precious?
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YOU’VE COME A LONG WAY, BABY
No president has ever risen from such meager beginnings as Andrew Johnson. Born in North Carolina to a landless laborer and a washerwoman, Johnson lived in abject poverty until, at fourteen, he was apprenticed to a tailor. After two years of hard work, he fled and lived on the lam while authorities hunted him down for breaking his indentured servitude. He eventually returned to his former employer to fulfill his tenure but was rebuffed. Johnson then gathered up what was left of his family (his father had died when Andrew was three) and crossed the mountains into Tennessee—everything they owned fit into a two-wheeled cart hauled by a blind pony. Shortly thereafter, Johnson met Eliza McCardle, made her his wife (she was sixteen when they were married), and opened his own tailor shop. The rest is history.
CLOTHES MAKE THE MAN
Andrew Johnson is the only tailor to have become president of the United States. He loved his trade and couldn’t pass a tailor’s shop without stopping in to talk, even while he was in the White House. As governor of Tennessee, he once made a suit for the governor of Kentucky—who, as a blacksmith, returned the favor by giving Johnson a shovel and tongs.
INAUGURAL SCREECH
At Lincoln’s inauguration in 1865, Johnson was slated to precede the president’s appearance by giving his own speech as vice president. He wasn’t up to the job. Having taken sick, he wanted to skip the address altogether, but Lincoln insisted. So Johnson did the only thing he could do under the circumstances: He downed a few stiff drinks. Intoxicated and unprepared, he proceeded to deliver one of the most meandering, slurred, bizarre speeches in American history to a crowd that could only stare in stupefaction. The fiasco would’ve continued for Lord knows how long had it not been for Lincoln’s outgoing veep, Hannibal Hamlin, who took it upon himself to tug on Johnson’s sleeve. Andy got the hint and walked off the podium in disgrace.
LIQUOR-LADEN LEGACY
In truth, Johnson was a responsible drinker who (aside from the incident described above) almost never became inebriated. His three sons were another matter entirely. Andrew Jr. exacerbated his tuberculosis with a love of booze and died at age twenty-seven. Charles was spared a death from his own alcoholism by getting killed fighting the Confederates during the Civil War. And Robert, who liked to mix booze with prostitutes at his legendary White House soirées, was finally banished to Africa as an ambassador. He died of alcoholism at the age of thirty-five.
Narrow Escape
Abraham Lincoln was killed in a conspiracy that had been intended to take out more than just the president. As soon as Lincoln was shot, a friend of Johnson’s ran to the hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue in which Johnson slept. Secretary of War Edwin Stanton soon arrived and ordered guards to protect the vice president. They eventually discovered, in the room directly above Johnson’s, a pistol, a knife, and a bankbook in John Wilkes Booth’s name. They had been in the possession of one George Atzerodt, who had been ordered by Booth to assassinate Johnson. Atzerodt, however, was nowhere to be found—he’d apparently thought twice about his mission and fled.
GO AHEAD, MAKE HIS DAY
When you’re the only Southern congressman to oppose secession on the eve of the Civil War, you’ve got chutzpah. When you go to your secessionist constituents to try to talk them out of it, well, you’ve got to have some serious balls. And Andrew Johnson did. Never one to back away from a fight, he made a trip home to Tennessee at the height of the secession crisis that can only be described as suicidal. As the train to Tennessee made its way through Virginia, he had to force a mob off his car with a pistol. Another Virginia crowd made better headway—they dragged him off the train, beat the daylights out of him, and stopped short of hanging him only because they believed that folks in his native state of Tennessee should have the honor. Once home, he took to placing a revolver on the lectern before giving Unionist speeches.
DIVINE INTERVENTION?
Sometimes Johnson’s scrappiness went too far. While president, he made a campaign tour for the 1866 congressional elections, hoping to garner votes for men sympathetic to his lackluster Reconstruction policies. His eagerness to respond to hecklers—of which there were many—resulted in one ugly shouting match after another. In a fit of pique, he once rashly compared himself to Jesus Christ, claiming that God had deliberately struck down Lincoln so that he, Johnson, could be president. Little wonder the ranks of his opponents swelled.
18 ULYSSES S. GRANT
April 27, 1822–July 23, 1885
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Taurus
TERM OF PRESIDENCY: 1869–1877
PARTY: Republican
VICE PRESIDENT: Schuyler Colfax (first term); Henry Wilson (second term)
RAN AGAINST: Horatio Seymour (first term); Horace Greeley (second term)
HEIGHT: 5′8″
NICKNAMES: “Useless,” “Unconditional Surrender,” “Hero of Appomattox”
SOUND BITE: “Labor disgraces no man; unfortunately you occasionally find men disgrace labor.”
No man so ordinary has ever done so much for his country as Ulysses S. Grant. The fun lies in watching how an understated, retiring pauper very quickly became the most important soldier of his day and the first American president since Andrew Jackson to serve two full terms.
Grant had three natural gifts: riding horses, sketching pictures, and winning battles. Sadly, he attempted to do many other things and failed at nearly all of them. Even his father, Jesse, noticed his extraordinary ordinariness and nicknamed him “Useless” as a boy. When Jesse insisted that his son leave Ohio to make something of himself at West Point, young Useless wanted nothing to do with it. Jesse insisted, and Grant went. Though he proved an unremarkable student who seemed utterly bored by all things military, he did win awards for his equestrian skills. He went on to serve with distinction in the Mexican War (to which he was morally opposed) and then suffered through a string of monotonous postings on the northwestern frontier that drove him to drink.
Grant’s name is often associated with the mass slaughters of the Civil War, but the mere sight of blood nauseated him.
And drink. And drink some more. Even in a frontier military whose officer corps was known for its reliance on inebriation, Grant’s boozing began to turn some high-ranking heads, and he was forced to resign. Glad to be reunited with his wife and children, he tried to provide for them and fell flat on his face. He had no business sense whatsoever and eventually found himself scratching out a living by peddling firewood on the streets of St. Louis. The Civil War rescued him.