Hottest Heads of State

by J. D. Dobson

  Here is an editorial cartoon criticizing Hollywood actor Tommy Lee Jones for vetoing the Freedmen’s Bureau Act, which was intended to help freed slaves during Reconstruction.

  Why You’ll Love Him

  You want excitement. After siding with the Union, Johnson had to flee Tennessee under gunfire from angry Confederate sympathizers. When was the last time you were chased out of your state by an angry mob? If you can’t remember off the top of your head, then it’s been too long, and it’s time to entwine your fate with that of Andy Johnson.

  You enjoy hearing about Andrew Johnson. In an hour-long speech about George Washington, Johnson referred to himself more than 200 times. And he still had time to squeeze in the accusation that a couple members of Congress were trying to have him assassinated.

  You love mice. It can be a hard to find a guy who loves mice! Well, maybe you just haven’t been looking in the right place: the White House. When President Johnson wasn’t busy sewing his own clothes or undermining Reconstruction, he was tending to a family of mice in his bedroom by leaving out water and flour for them. He called these mice his “little fellows.” So if Johnson ever asks you to come to his bedroom to see his little fellow, one way or another, you are in for a memorable experience.

  Sort-of Fun Facts

  Johnson vetoed the Civil Rights Bill of 1866, arguing that it discriminated against whites in favor of African-Americans. Yes: politicians were claiming reverse discrimination ONE YEAR AFTER EMANCIPATION.

  Johnson was a tailor by trade, and even after he became president he continued making his own clothes. It sounds ridiculous, but in retrospect, we’d probably all be better off if he’d spent even more of his presidency sewing.

  SCANDAL!

  When you hear that President Johnson was impeached, you probably think, “Ooh, did he lie about having an affair with an intern? Tell me more!” Sadly, to the best of our knowledge, Johnson did not have affairs with any interns. He was impeached because he kept trying to sabotage Reconstruction. If only the Constitution’s framers had had the foresight to limit impeachable offenses to “hot sex scandals,” he would have been fine.

  Timeline of Andrew Johnson Not Being a Drunkard

  The peerlessly eloquent Abraham Lincoln once said of his vice president, “Andy ain’t a drunkard.” Nevertheless, alcohol played a key role in Andy Johnson’s life.

  MARCH 4, 1864: Johnson wakes up with a hangover on Lincoln’s inauguration day, and asks outgoing Vice President Hannibal Hamlin for some whiskey. (By the way, this is a solid first-day-at-a-new-job ice breaker: Ask your predecessor if he has any whiskey.) Johnson goes on to give a rambling and obviously drunken inauguration speech. Afterward, he goes into hiding while Washington society mocks him. Just imagine how much worse all that teasing and bullying would have been in an age of social media. It gets better, Andy Johnson! (Well, not for you personally, Mr. Vice President. For you, it’s just going to keep getting worse.)

  APRIL 15, 1864: The conspirators who killed Abraham Lincoln planned to murder Andrew Johnson and Secretary of State William Seward the same day. Seward’s would-be assassin almost succeeds. But the man assigned to shoot Johnson gets drunk at the hotel bar instead. (Don’t worry, George Atzerodt: This book is a judgment-free zone when it comes to getting drunk at the hotel bar.)

  SUMMER, 1866: During the 1866 election, Johnson decides to go on a speaking tour around the country. His advisors urge him to stick to a script, but instead he goes off-the-cuff and relies on one of the golden rules of public speaking: Compare yourself to Jesus. At stop after stop, President Johnson says that like Jesus, he wants to forgive. Specifically, he wants to forgive white Southerners, and stop punishing them with things like the 14th Amendment granting citizenship to freed slaves. You know, just like Jesus would do. In response, Republicans spread the rumor that Johnson was drunk. And you know what? If you’re comparing yourself to Jesus and criticizing the 14th Amendment, hopefully you are drunk.

  How to Win His Heart

  Here is a foolproof, five-step process for winning Andy Johnson’s heart, based on his courtship of Eliza Johnson.

  Be a teenager. If you’re not already a teenager, become one. This happens a lot in movies so we’re confident you can figure it out.

  Keep an eye out for handsome teenagers moving to town. Extra points if he’s an illiterate runaway tailor’s apprentice, like Johnson was. (Also, if you have illiterate runaway tailor’s apprentices roaming the streets of your town, please alert OSHA.)

  Pick the handsome teenage runaway tailor’s apprentice who looks the most like Hollywood actor Tommy Lee Jones. Carry an 8.5 X 11 inch glossy of Tommy Lee Jones around and hold it up next to their faces to compare, if needed.

  Teach him to read and do basic math. Just sit him down in front of Sesame Street for several hundred hours until he picks it up.

  Voilá! You’ve given him the gift of knowledge, and now he will give you the gift of marriage to a penniless teenager.

  Here’s a Tip

  If you ever accidentally become president, do what Andy Johnson did: DON’T HAVE A VICE PRESIDENT. This will make the Senate less likely to remove you from office, because your successor would be the pro–women’s suffrage Senate president pro tem. And if there’s one thing the Senate likes less than your efforts to block Reconstruction, it’s women getting the vote. (On second thought, this tip is pretty specific to Andrew Johnson.)

  Let’s Talk About Clothes

  If someone claims to be a professional tailor and this is how his clothes fit, you need to consider the possibility that he is lying. And if he’s lying about that, he might also be lying about why he wears 19th–century suits.

  Vital Stats

  Looks:

  Andrew Johnson looks exactly like Tommy Lee Jones. We can’t assign a rating to Tommy Lee Jones any more than we could assign a rating to the sun overhead, or the earth beneath our feet. Who are we to judge such things?

  Physique: 6

  Johnson wasn’t known to be particularly athletic. But as an accomplished tailor, he had very talented hands, if you know what we mean. (We mean he can sew you some great outfits!)

  Charisma: 8

  Johnson had a plainspoken, direct style that appealed to his Tennessee constituency, and he was a rousing public speaker. The Richmond newspaper Whig called him the “the most unscrupulous demagogue in the Union,” which sounds pretty charismatic to us! Plus we implicitly trust anything printed in Whig.

  Impeached: 10

  Getting impeached sounds easy, but Johnson is one of only two presidents to have actually pulled it off. (As of this writing.)

  ULYSSES S. GRANT

  1869–1877 | Republican

  Do you sometimes feel frustrated that your boyfriend is such a loser? He got kicked out of the army, and you’re living in the woods, broke, because he has no marketable skills?

  Well, keep in mind that this describes exactly the situation of Ulysses S. Grant after he and his wife, Julia, got married. Following a series of professional failures, he was reduced to selling firewood on street corners in St. Louis, which is about as lucrative and prestigious as it sounds. But just six years later he was the commanding general of all Union forces, and five years after that he was in the White House.

  Eleven years is a pretty short time to go from “Hi, I live in the woods, oh sorry that was my stomach rumbling, I’m very hungry, all the time” to “Hi, I live in the White House because I am the president.” And so before you dump your boyfriend, keep in mind that this kind of radical transformation could happen in your life, too! Then, go ahead and dump him, and find a guy more like Ulysses S. Grant. He could become president!

  But that doesn’t necessarily mean he’ll be a good president.

  To anyone who says that history doesn’t remember vice presidents, we have two words for them:

  Schuyler Colfax.

  Why You’ll Love Him

  He knows how to ride a horse. During the Mexican-American war, Grant rode a
galloping horse down a sniper-lined street and hung off one side, to use the horse as a shield. This made him famous for his horsemanship. Apparently, that’s how you’re supposed to ride a horse.

  He is a leather man. Grant had a leather store called “Grant & Perkins” that sold harnesses, saddles, and other leather goods. So let your imagination run wild on what kind of a “leather store” this was.

  He respects the dead. Let’s face it: Someday, your pet canary is going to die. When this happens, some boyfriends would be quietly guessing whether it will fit down the toilet. But not Ulysses S. Grant! When Julia Dent’s pet canary passed away, Grant built it a tiny yellow coffin and arranged for eight fellow army officers to attend its funeral.*

  He tries to protect civil rights. Grant created the Justice Department and used it and the army to fight the KKK and other armed groups that terrorized and subjugated blacks. For a while he was pretty successful, and a number of black politicians were elected to Congress. But eventually the armed groups and their political allies won, and blacks in former Confederate states essentially lost the vote they had so recently gained. Don’t let anyone tell you that terrorists never win.

  He is a great writer. Grant’s autobiography was so good that some people suspected Mark Twain had ghostwritten it. That is almost certainly not true. And besides, if Mark Twain writes your memoirs you shouldn’t keep it a secret, because that’s a lot more impressive than being a good memoirist.

  His father might not come to your wedding if he disagrees with your parents about something. Slavery, for example, which is the reason he skipped Ulysses and Julia’s wedding. Oh well, more cake for you!

  *Unfortunately he was not able to provide this same level of ceremony at his inaugural ball, when the temperature plummeted and the hundreds of canaries in cages suspended from the rafters started freezing to death and raining down on the dance floor. Grant was pretty superstitious, and he probably didn’t view a rain of dead, frozen canaries at his inaugural ball as a positive omen for his presidency.

  WHEN HE WAS YOUNG

  In the 1840s, officers were always trying to achieve an “hourglass” figure.

  SCANDAL!

  Grant’s administration accomplished a lot in eight years, if you include scandals. In his defense, Grant himself was a man of integrity. But he was also a man of incompetence when it came to judging character, and a man of laziness when it came to overseeing employees. (It’s not a great defense.)

  If you saw this picture in GQ you would not think it was a photo from 1864. You would think, “Huh, I guess Civil War uniforms are in this season.”

  How to Win His Heart

  Cross your eyes. Grant’s wife Julia was born with crossed eyes, and after they got married she considered having surgery to fix them. Grant’s response to this plan was, “I like them just as they are, and now, remember, you are not to interfere with them. They are mine.” Which is sort of sweet? Although it’s also a little creepy for your husband to claim ownership of your eyes.

  Get your brother to room with him. Julia met Grant through her brother, who was Grant’s roommate at West Point. You can try this same angle, but it might take some doing. Especially if you don’t currently have a brother.

  Have clairvoyant dreams. Throughout her life, Julia had dreams she thought predicted the future. Your best shot at having a prophetic dream is to have lots and lots of dreams, because statistically speaking, some of them will probably come true. So you’re going to need to spend more time asleep. This will have the added benefit of making your shoes last longer.

  Here’s a Tip

  Here are a few lifehacks from Ulysses S. Grant, perfect for hacking up your life.

  CHANGING YOUR NAME If you need to change your name, you can do it the hard way, through the legal system, or the easy way, by stealing a name and date of birth from a tombstone. Or you can do what Grant did: His given name was Hiram Ulysses Grant, but the congressman who wrote his nomination letter to West Point accidentally wrote “Ulysses S. Grant.” And Grant just decided to roll with it because honestly who cares what your name is.

  LEAVING THE ARMY Eventually, the day will come when you’ll want to leave the army. But how? Well, you could do what Grant did–start drinking a lot and moping around because you miss your family, and your commanding officer will encourage you to resign. But be careful: If a civil war breaks out, the army might decide it doesn’t care about your drinking after all.

  NEGOTIATING When Grant wanted Britain to pay for damage done by warships they’d sold to the Confederacy, he drove a hard bargain. He told them they could either pay us $2 billion in gold, or give us Canada. (They counteroffered with “How about we keep Canada and don’t give you any gold?” which Grant accepted.)

  Vital Stats

  Looks: 9

  Just look at him. He’s looking at you, after all. In fact … we’d say he’s having a hard time looking away!

  Physique: ?

  Grant insisted on absolute privacy when naked. This means history has handed down no daguerreo-types of a bathing General Grant. Which, in turn, means that the photo of him you inherited from your great-great-grandmother is probably a fake.

  Charisma: 1

  Grant is quiet and reserved. If you want to get him talking, try swearing or telling a dirty joke, because he hates both and will scold you. And we can tell that you secretly want Grant to scold you.

  Nickname: 10

  Grant was dubbed “The Butcher” by the press after taking about 50,000 casualties in a month. To which he should have replied, “Guys, if you think 50,000 casualties a month is a lot, just wait seventy years. There are going to be more casualties than that on the first day of the Battle of the Somme.” But he couldn’t, because it would have revealed his secret.

  RUTHERFORD B. HAYES

  1877–1881 | Republican

  Maybe you’re not looking for anything too flashy. Maybe you just want a boyfriend who is safe, family-friendly, and won’t leave you stranded by the side of the road. So tell us—what will it take to get you into a Rutherford B. Hayes today?

  Rutherford B. Hayes is not very exciting. But neither is toast, and people still love toast. Plus Hayes is a Civil War hero and three-term governor of Ohio, which is more than most toast can say. He’s also politically moderate, he doesn’t smoke or drink, and he has a passion for travel that was ignited by his first visit to Fremont, Ohio.

  So what could anyone possibly find objectionable about Rutherford B. Hayes? Well, what if we told you that Hayes only won the presidency because a special Republican-led commission awarded him 20 electoral votes that both sides claimed to have won? And what if we told you that the Democrats only accepted his presidency after Republicans agreed to withdraw federal troops from the South, effectively ending Reconstruction and federal efforts to protect the rights of black Americans living in former Confederate states? You’d be OK with all of that? Oh. Well, it sounds like you’re pretty easygoing! You would probably get along great with Rutherford B. Hayes.

  Before you elope with Rutherford B. Hayes, we feel compelled to warn you that “Rutherford” is a family name.

  How to Win His Heart

  Don’t drink. Hayes banned alcohol from the White House. So you’re going to have to either give up drinking or finally make that throw pillow with a bag of wine hidden inside that you’ve been talking about all these years.

  Buy new curtains. One evening, Hayes spotted a woman at a lecture and was so taken by her that he followed her back to her house. (So romantic!) The next day, he went back to her house to scope it out (Aww!), and that’s when he noticed that her window curtain was all gross and faded. And he was like, “Pass!” The lesson here is to always keep your place clean, because you never know when the future president might be doing a surprise home inspection.

  Why You’ll Love Him

  He likes routine. This makes him easier to stalk!

  He won’t mind living with your mother. After marrying Lucy Webb, the newlyweds mov
ed in with Lucy’s mother. Hayes wrote in his diary that he found this arrangement “most agreeable.” Other things that Hayes found agreeable included law school and Burlington, Vermont. So maybe don’t take his word for it.

  He’ll defend you in a murder trial. Hayes’ legal career first took off after he served as the defense lawyer in two high-profile murder cases. Though we should probably mention that one of his clients was sentenced to life in prison, and the other one was put in an asylum. So … hopefully you finished reading this paragraph before murdering anyone.

  Pop QUIZ

  In the election of 1876, the Democratic party came up with all sorts of creative ways to commit voter fraud. One method was to print voting ballots that would trick illiterate Republicans into voting Democratic. Now is your chance to find out if YOU are smarter than an illiterate Republican, by seeing if you can identify which of these ballots is fraudulent!

  ANSWER: All three ballots are fraudulent! If you don’t believe us, try inserting one into a ballot box on the next election day and see what happens.

  (What will happen is that you will be arrested.)

  Sort-of Fun Facts

  Hayes moved to Cincinnati because one of his friends told him about Cincinnati and he was like, “Man, I gotta get in on that!”